To Die Alone

"It's payback time, Akatsuki bastards!" Naruto declared at once, stepping further into the cave. "Give back Gaara or face the consequences!"

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Naruto and Kakashi took off after Deidara in order to incapacitate him whilst Sakura and Chiyo remained inside the cave, facing down Sasori.

Just my luck, Sakura thought. She'd really have preferred to go after explodo-man. At least he was good-looking.

By contrast, Sasori's appearance was disgusting, hunched and deformed in a way that induced fear at a glance. His aura was just as threatening.

"If it isn't my dear old grandmother," he said quietly, in a tone that sent shivers down Sakura's spine. Next to her, Chiyo seemed to be fighting a battle with her emotions, even if her expression remained hard as stone.

"Sasori," she croaked out in a whisper that only Sakura heard.

"I see you've brought me a new doll for my collection," the missing nin commented, slanting Sakura a dark glance. "Oh, I think I'll enjoy the prep work for this one… Do you know how I make my puppets, girl?"

Sakura didn't reply. A part of her was frozen in horror as she stared into those soulless eyes. A part of her had just realized that her chances of leaving this cave alive were very slim, had realized that she was standing before a living legend, and legends never die, but little girls do.

Sasori continued with his explanation undeterred. "The first step is to exsanguinate the corpse. In this case, you are rather small so I don't think it will take too long. This is a significant advantage. You see, I detest waiting times. Then I suppose I'll remove your organs; they are rather useless nuisances. After that, I'll hollow you out from within and add a protective film underneath your skin to preserve your body for all eternity. Last step is to pepper your inner cavities with hidden weapons… and then you'll be ready to stock up with the rest of my collection." He eyed Sakura, head cocked eerily. "What do you say? Isn't it wonderful that you will be eternalized as my art?"

"That isn't called art!" Sakura shouted. "It's called being a psycho!"

"Oh? Don't tell me my proposal doesn't appeal to you? As my puppet you could become so much more than you are now, little girl. You would be elevated. You would become a piece of a whole, instrumental in conquering some of the strongest men to step upon this world, an aide in the conquest of entire hidden villages. I have killed kage before with beautiful puppets such as the one I could make you into. You would reach perfection, inhuman and eternal. And yet you prefer to snivel away as a mere mortal?"

"Leave her, Sasori," Chiyo growled. "You won't be turning either of us into puppets on my watch!"

"Oh?"

"In fact, you won't be making any puppet ever again period – because you won't be leaving this cave alive!"

Sasori's head turned ninety degrees in order to fix his gaze on her. "If you insist on defying me, grandmother, then you give me no choice...How about I add you and the little girl to my collection! I don't normally use aged specimens such as you… but I think I would take pleasure in it this time."

And so the fight began. Suddenly Sakura was glad for all of Tsunade's grueling practice sessions, because fighting Sasori was so much worse. He kept producing puppet after puppet, each boasting enough hidden compartments to conceal a jonin's weapon stash in and more poisoned blades than Sakura could think about without losing her shit. She could not get hit, no matter what. If she let one of those blades touch her, it would all be over.

Sasori was not one for playing nice. He used his puppets to pelt her with over a thousand poison-coated senbon at once, an attack that would have been impossible to dodge if not for Chiyo.

"Girl, do you trust me?" the woman shouted.

"Yes!" Sakura screamed as she hid behind a boulder.

"Then I will need you to break your elbows and kneecaps. You can fix them the same as the slug queen can, right?"

Sakura stared at her, horror struck. "You what?!"

"It's the only way to get close enough to him whilst dodging that attack! You need to be able to move your limbs in every direction, even the ones they shouldn't be able to move in."

Sakura breathed in shallowly. "But I won't be able to move with nonfunctional articulations!"

"Not you, but I can. With my jutsu, I can move them for you. I'm not a puppet master for show," said Chiyo curtly. "If we team up, we can combine the might of a puppet with the might of a human. I can move your limbs for you as needed, in any of the three spacial directions and then – the moment you get close enough, you heal whatever joints necessary to take over and deal some serious damage, got it?

Sakura gulped. Yes, she had mastered accelerated healing of the hands, knees and elbows way back when she had been learning Tsunade's boulder-smashing technique, but the pain of breaking four of her articulations at once ? She wasn't eager to stomach it. And yet she had no choice if she wanted to survive this.

She set her jaw. "Alright then, Chiyo-baasama. Please take care of me."

The battle against Sasori was the stuff of nightmares. It turned out that voluntarily breaking four of her joints was one of the less horrible things she had to undergo. Chiyo was so kind as to keep her movements within normal range whenever possible, but even then she found herself twisting inhumanly around senbon more often than not. Sakura was certain she would have nightmares about that sensation for years. She healed and re-broke the four joints as many times as was necessary, she ran and jumped and kicked and healed andfought like she never had before. It was after grueling minutes of this, right when she'd almost thought she had won, that Sasori pulled out the puppet belonging to the third kazekage. A legend she'd studied about in the Academy – and this man, Sasori Akasuna, had killed the kazekage and preserved his body and special ninjutsu techniques in a puppet. Sakura would essentially have to fight the third kazekage on top of everything else, only this one could fly, twist inhumanly and had knives all over his body.

Would this horror show never end? She stared at the puppet wide-eyed, at its hollow gaze and the magnetized black sand floating around it – the former kazekage's signature technique – so much like the sand Gaara had once attacked her with that she wanted to heave. And yet there was no Naruto to jump in to save her this time, nor did she want there to be. She could do this. She had to.

Yet again, Sakura was drawn into a fight she never would have thought could be won. Sasori had stopped with the myriad of poisoned needles, so she could once more move without Chiyo's intervention – thank god for small mercies – but the kazekage's jutsu more than made up for it in terms of difficulty. And yet once more, somehow she persevered thorough it, persevered through fighting against Sasori's horrible hunchback figure and his scorpion tail, persevered through her phobia of sand and the psychological impact of fighting a fucking kage .

It was thanks to a well-timed punch that Sakura learned about Sasori's horrifying appearance and that it was owed to the fact that his visage was that of a wooden puppet, Hiruko, and that the real Sasori hid within. She'd finally, finally managed to finish off Hiruko, only to find out that the real enemy was barely done warming up. Once Sasori had shed Hiruko's now broken husk aside, Sakura was met with the most horrifying shock anyone could be at that point.

Inside the monster, inside Hiruko, was something even more horrifying than the previous human-scorpion hybrid. It was the face of a young man, red-headed and almost androgynous-looking, in a pure sort of way… or it would have been pure if not for the fact that this face, too, was a puppet.

His eyes were glassy, his hair soft, his skin coarse but real and so, so human, and yet the strange carvings across his body signaled to the contrary. A living puppet.

"S-sasori!" Chiyo chocked out. "What have you done to yourself?"

The boy, for he looked too young and innocent to be any older than fifteen, Sakura's own age, grinned. "Well, since you asked… I would describe myself as a human being with the potential to become a complete puppet, though currently I am an unfinished one, whose lifeless frame still contains a beating heart at it's core. I am neither dead, nor am I alive. I am eternal. I am art."

"You are an aberration," Sakura spat.

Sasori's face contorted, turning toward her. "Oh? And why is that? Shouldn't a medic be able to appreciate the genius of my creation?"

"Because you're a monster!" With these words, Sakura launched herself at him again, intent of finishing this once and for all, but Chiyo's scream was all the warning she got before black, poisonous fumes burst from Sasori's form, blinding and surrounding her, cutting off her oxygen supply, and forcing Sakura to use a fucking explosion on herself in order to get out of there. Her momentum threw her against a rock next to Chiyo and she panted hard, once more in the clear as she stared at Sasori hatefully.

"A monster, huh? It amuses me that you would say that after I stopped using Hiruko."

"Appearance has nothing to do with this! You're standing there, chatting about killing your kin like it doesn't mean anything to you!" Sakura shouted. "How is that not monstrous?"

"I don't see why it would be," Sasori said coldly. "Do you know what that old woman did to me, girl?"

"If it was being kind to an ass like you then yeah!"

"None of that," Sasori said. "She lied. She lied and lied and lied . She told me that my parents were coming back, but they never would be. My parents were dead, and yet she didn't tell me."

"Sasori, you were six!" Chiyo exclaimed. "What was I supposed to do?!"

Sasori ignored her. "The old woman kept pretending she'd received letters from them, went as far as to forge my mother's handwriting to convince me, to keep me in the dark."

"I knew you weren't ready to hear it!" Chiyo defended herself. "I couldn't tell you!"

"That wasn't your call to make," Sasori replied coldly.

"It was the right call!"

"It was not. I would have understood. I had a right to know."

"Oh, understood? As in how you started making puppets that looked like your parents and obsessed over pretending they were real people?"

Sasori looked away abruptly. "Shut up!" He turned his cool, amber eyes upon a horror-struck Sakura. "Even connected by blood ties as we are, I won't feel a thing if Grandma Chiyo here dies. My heart... is just like this body. Of all the hundreds and thousands I've killed so far, she's just another one of them. It's that simple."

"That's it," Chiyo cut in, retrieving a scroll from her pocket. Ten large, humanoid wooden puppets burst forth from it. "Time to finish this!"

"Huh… that is a considerable amount of puppets," Sasori said mockingly, even as he retrieved a scroll of his own. He pressed his finger down upon it and from the resulting burst of smoke – Sakura couldn't believe it – resulted in what had to be over fifty, no, over sixty, even over eighty shapes that burst forth. Sasori grinned at their horrified faces. "As I was saying… you have a decent amount of puppets… but with these I took down a nation."

Sakura took a step back, eyes wide and breath shallow, but it was much too late. "It's show time," Sasori whispered. "Secret red technique… performance of a hundred puppets."

Over a thousand tiny chakra cords shot out of his torso, which, though invisible Sakura could simply feel due to the sheer amount of them, all of them tied to a veritable sea of puppets. There were a hundred of them, surging forth into the air, attacking her from every angle at once.

Sakura had never been as grateful for her large-scale melee attacks as in that moment. The force of Tsunade's punches made it possible to end each puppet with a single blow, and all of the woman's dodging lessons ensured that Sakura didn't get hit. The fight passed her by in a blur, as she and Chiyo's puppets engaged opponent after opponent, sprinting for their lives all over the rocky cave now lacking a ceiling, without pausing or faltering for there was no time, only action. Sakura had no idea how, only knew that somehow, at the very end every last puppet was down and she was still standing. At some point, Chiyo had been hit by one of the attacks and Sakura had sacrificed her only antidote vial for the old woman. It should be enough to make sure she survived, but the dose was too little to provide an instant cure. Together with her age, it meant that Chiyo likely wouldn't be able to move for a while… in other words, Sakura and Sasori were the last ones standing.

The red-haired humanoid eyed her like he couldn't quite believe she was still on her feet. "Heh…" He chuckled quietly. Suddenly, with a sharp, metallic twang, six gigantic curved blades shout out of his abdomen, three at each side. The red-head's visage did a hundred and eighty turn, stopping to fix his glassy eyes on Sakura.

"So, it seems it is just you… and me, no? Interesting…"

Sakura gulped. It was all or nothing now. She had to survive, no matter what. She'd come this far… she couldn't lose now. She scrambled for courage and found none, but, as they say: fake it till you make it. "Not once I punch your face in!"

He ignored her taunt. "Yes… It's been a while… since I've used myself." And then he leapt at her.

Sakura barely managed to scurry out of the path of his blades. From her position on the ground, Chiyo shouted encouragements and advice, but Sakura barely heard any of it. There was a rush in her ears, a feeling that was almost animal in nature. Her entire person had been reduced to impulses, act and react, muscle memory and she and him. A part of her could suddenly understand why so many shinobi thrived on the rush of combat. She had never felt more alive.

However, she didn't think she'd ever grow to like fighting for her life like this. Every passing moment felt like her last. She was badly outclassed with this guy, at least that was her impression, and it was already a miracle she'd lasted so far. Sasori was just so fast. Sakura was tired and sleep deprived, her body caving under the strain of her human limitations, but he was a puppet, and puppets never tire.

Without pause he launched one attack after the next and it was all Sakura could do to keep up. She kept telling herself that she was biding her time, waiting for an opening in Sasori's defenses, only that opening never came. Instead, Sasori went for his grandmother. Sakura saw it as if in slow motion; his surging blade, Chiyo laying there, helplessly, and the only thought rushing through her brain was: no!

She barely knew this woman at all, but she could tell how much Chiyo had loved her grandson, she could tell that for all her grumpiness, the elder woman was a truly brilliant person, that she cared about people, had come to care about Sakura so quickly even though she was her rival's apprentice, had taught Sakura some of the secrets of Suna's poison-knowledge in the short span of their acquaintance. And that someone with so much knowledge, someone who had seen and done and lived through so much would die, at the hands of their own grandchild no less –

Before Sakura could finish that train of thought, she suddenly found herself standing over Chiyo in an unavoidable collision course with Sasori's blade.

"Sakura no!" the old woman shouted.

It all happened in less than a second, less than a blink, than a heartbeat. In that moment, all she could think of was:

Useless. As always.

And then Sasori's blade ran her straight through.

The pain was out of this world.
Sakura felt it arcing up her spine as the blade pierced through her stomach, cleaving its way through her every skin cell and molecule, past her upper abdominal muscles and narrowly missing a kidney, finally ripping open the skin of her back and exiting through it. It hurt. It hurt so damn much–

Sakura could literally feel the poison coating the blade (because of course) beginning to seep into her abdomen, could feel the deathstalker venom insidiously crawling into her bloodstream. It was all she could do not to scream like a witch at the stake or a pig at the slaughterhouse. She pushed through the pain and began healing her wound, even as the blade still protruded both from her stomach and out her back.

It was only in a matter of seconds that her legs began to grow weak. Staying on her feet became a struggle. Breathing did. Everything hurt so much she could barely even think.

"Heh," Sasori said, observing the healing tissue. "You're a talented medic, I'll give you that much, but it appears the poison has started to take." He turned toward his grandmother. "The girl is dead at this point."

"I won't allow it!" Chiyo thundered, and something about that heartfelt declaration meant so much to Sakura. It was then that she felt a sharp sting in her leg and when she looked down, she was just in time to spot the syringe leaving her thigh. Chiyo-baasama had used the antidote on her . Sakura had thought she'd already injected into her own bloodstream long ago! Why had she waited?

"No!" Sakura cried, tears coming to her eyes. "Why would you do that?!"

"Hold him down, girl!" was the only answer she got. Sakura automatically complied even as every muscle in her arm screamed and the sword crisscrossing her abdomen burned something fierce. She barely registered Sasori's panicked attempts at freeing himself from her iron grip, though they were soon drowned out by even starker pain as he tried to hack away at her abdomen, breaking skin all over in order to get her to let go, but Sakura grit her teeth through it all and held on with all of her might, hoping it would be enough – just one more second Sakura, you can do it, you can – and then it was over. Her vice grip on Sasori had bought Chiyo enough time to destroy his heart cavity – the only human part of him that remained – with one final, decisive sweep of her chakra threads. And then it was done.

With a dull clonk, Sasori fell boneless to the ground and moved no more.

Fifteen minutes later, Sakura found herself sitting on a rock outside of the horrible cave, waiting for Naruto and Kakashi to come back. Gaara, by all accounts, was dead and could no longer be healed. Sakura had somehow managed to recover from her injury thanks to Chiyo's medical ninjutsu. She had been rather out of it during the procedure but couldn't stop wondering about how on earth the woman had managed to heal her. She'd thought she was a goner.

Once she was feeling better, Sakura herself had managed to extract some of the antidote that had still been flowing through her body and in turn provided treatment fro Chiyo. The old woman was now sitting next to her on a rock, both of them quiet as they came to terms with what they'd just been through. Sakura couldn't even begin to fathom what it must feel like to have killed her own grandson.

It was in that moment that Kakashi reappeared out of nowhere. "Yo!"

Sakura raised her head to stare at him blankly. "Where's Naruto?"

"Ah, I think he'll be with us in a bit."

Sakura's eyes narrowed. "You mean to tell me you left him alone with the Akatsuki on the prowl?"

"It's fine. Deidara's no longer in the area."

"Great." Sakura looked away, not in the mood to deal with Kakashi's usual shit. Unfortunately, today of all days, the man appeared to be feeling chatty.

"How about Sasori? What direction did he escape in?"

Sakura lifted her head again, her jaw ticking as she forced herself not to snap at him.

"What makes you think he escaped, Copy Nin?" Chiyo came to her rescue. "Seems a little presumptuous of you, wouldn't you agree?"

Kakashi, as usual, ignored her. He clearly seemed to think that Chiyo was just contradicting him for the heck of it.

"Hm, I'll go check if there's a trail," he told Sakura, moving to wander into the cave. She found herself staring after him with a mix of outrage and exhaustion.

"And you have to deal with this guy daily?" Chiyo asked her with disgust.

She shrugged. "Actually, he's done a rather stellar job of avoiding me these past few years."

"Why am I not surprised." They descended into silence, which was once again broken when Kakashi returned half a minute later.

Well, that was quick, Sakura thought sourly. The one time she was not in the mood to see him, and he just had to keep popping in. And worst of all – talking to her.

"Uh… Sakura-chan?"

Sakura looked up at him exasperatedly. "What now?" She was pretty sure this was the most he had talked to her ever.

"Err… what is that?" He pointed at the cave entrance, where chunks of Sasori and his puppets could be seen strewn about.

"Sasori's remains," Sakura replied blankly.

Kakashi just stared at her.

Sakura stared back, crossing her arms. "What ?"

Kakashi turned to look at the cave again. "His… remains? As in… when a person dies?"

"I do believe that's the definition."

Kakashi seemed at a loss. "There are… a lot of remains."

"Well. He had a lot of puppets."

"A hundred," Chiyo specified gleefully, "and that's if you don't count the third kazekage and Hiruko."

Kakashi's brain seemed to short-circuit at that. He kept looking over at Sakura as if expecting her to burst out laughing and shout 'got you!'… only Sakura didn't. Finally, Kakashi seemed to realize that they were being serious.

"Wait. You mean you fought the third kazekage's puppet ?"

"What else is there," Sakura snapped. "Did you think Sasori had enlisted it for a cheerleader gig?"

Kakashi, apparently, was finally done asking questions.

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'," Chiyo mocked him. Kakashi sat on another rock and pointedly looked away from the old woman. An uncomfortable silence blanketed them after that. Sakura couldn't bring herself to give a damn. She felt empty, drained whole like a broken bottle of sake. Her very senses kept waiting for Sasori to reappear from behind a boulder, but her logic knew he was dead... had nearly taken Sakura with him in the process. She had almost died. She would have never seen Tsunade-shishou, Naruto, Shizune, Ino... any of them... again. She would have died a nothing. She would have died alone.