an everlasting lazarus
A/N: A three-parter. The first three scenes have been sitting in my drafts since July and I only had the creative energy to continue it. Note that this is an AU, with my version of Sasori's history. Contains mild spoilers for my upcoming project, The Ocean and the Wanderer.
His first and last deaths, he delivered himself.
The scenes that defined Sasori, as both god and mortal. Mild AU.
"Not a lot of animals can survive in Suna."
He is three years old, watching a dark green lizard breathing in a glass bowl, when his father told him this. He didn't understand, of course, and he merely continued to watch the reptile crawl and look around what space it had.
But it is true, that only few animals can survive the desert weather, only insects and reptiles, some amphibians, very few mammals, and even fewer fish. Snakes, lizards, and beetles he has often seen crawling on the sand. These animals are quiet, solitary, much like him.
So his parents decided to give him a pet. Tama, they named it after the jade color of its eyes. His mother showed him how to write it and told him it also meant "king" and "rule" as if the other meanings would fly over his young head.
"Tama." He called it and it looked at him with its beady eyes.
"Tama." He repeats it as he drops an insect into the glass. "Eat."
And the lizard eats, not on command, but on instinct, like everything else.
Later in life, he will learn that instinct is what tells one to survive and greed is what tells one to thrive. He will also learn that animals are rarely ever greedy. If they are, they only appear to be. Animals will never be as greedy as people.
He watches the lizard eat, listens to the faint crunch of the insect in the lizard's mouth.
"Tama," he asks, "are you still hungry?"
The lizard doesn't answer him, because how could it? So he drops another insect, then another, and another. They're a different species. He watches the insects scamper to get away, but the lizard eats them all.
This isn't selfishness or greed to his young eyes, it is only instinct. It is only natural. Three days later, the lizard is buried.
This too, is only natural.
"Not a lot of shinobi survive long enough to live."
He is six years old when he overhears this at the funeral, but it is no grand affair. Those shinobi arrived dead in Suna earlier that day, along with another platoon of shinobi. They were killed, according to hearsay, by Konoha shinobi. He didn't know who they were, he only knew that Konoha was their enemy. This is a time of war, and death and survival go hand in hand.
"Sasori." His grandmother calls him over and embraces him. Her hands are cold. She is shivering.
He listens to his grandmother sniffle her tears. She smooths his hair and soothes his non-existent tears as she soothes hers. This, he will later realize, is one of the very few times his grandmother ever cried. And he will later realize as well that that shinobi rarely ever cry. It is their instinct, their nature. Shinobi do not cry because they were trained not to, they simply choose not to.
And even later on, he will realize that this makes shinobi weak.
"It's going to be all right."
But today he is seven years old, clutching his hands and keeping quiet. He has found out that his parents have died long ago. Chiyo lied. Chiyo has lied for a long time. Maybe she's still lying now. He isn't crying or whimpering, and he doesn't understand why. He should be sad. He should be the one crying. He is still a child after all. He should still be free to express all these emotions. He is no shinobi. His parents never wanted him to be a shinobi, and he…
And now he doesn't know what is there for him.
"It's going to be all right." The mother in his head says, holding him closer.
He takes comfort in the ghost.
Later that day, a man he will later know as the Sandaime Kazekage approaches him at his parents' graves.
"You will make a fine shinobi one day." The man says.
He thinks it's because he hadn't shed a single tear.
"Not all shinobi are strong enough to survive."
He is nine years old when he hears this. No longer a fresh academy graduate, but a chunin, a full-fledged shinobi in the eyes of his village. This makes him disposable. Every shinobi is. They graduate the academy with this drilled into their heads. It is their strength and intelligence that decides their survival.
He is a prodigy, a genius, the top of his class, and the sole survivor of a scouting mission gone wrong.
"It's not your fault." His superior tells him during the debriefing, "I'm glad you survived, Sasori."
It doesn't surprise him that they're trying to reassure him. In their eyes, he is still a child and he needs to be taken care of. His grandmother couldn't do it on her own, with her being on the village council, so they take turns, in a way. They try to reassure him of his place in this village. They want to make him believe that he is needed, important.
"You always say that." He says, "You want me to believe you."
His superior looks at him carefully. "The decision is always up to you, whether you believe us or not doesn't concern me personally."
Of course. This is just protocol. He is still a child and they should ensure that any sign of trauma or stress should be addressed immediately. This is a time of war, and they should ensure their forces, no matter their age, must be in prime condition to fight, survive, and win.
"You've always been strong, Sasori." His superior adds, "It'd be best if you stay that way."
The next week, he is sent on a scouting mission with his superior.
"Survive, Sasori."
His superior sacrifices himself, making him the sole survivor yet again.
"Survive." He spits at his superior's bloody face. "I disagree."
He wipes the sweat from his brow and stares the single enemy in the eye. It's down to just the two of them now, the young chunin from Suna and the middle-aged jounin from Kumo.
"I will become."
"Not all shinobi are strong enough."
He is thirteen years old now, and the war that threatens to swallow them whole is looming above their heads. There's talk, there always is, and there's so much noise. Suna has never had as much noise as it does now, with weaponsmiths and mercenaries coming in and out of the village. Deals are being made every day, alliances are being forged in ink and blood, blood pacts as they were known, and promises are being sworn.
It is then he meets the samurai again, for the first time.
"Sasori!"
Amakuni Shikai is bright and lively in this otherwise bleak atmosphere, but still naïve–as she runs to embrace him without a care. She is a friend from Yuukou no Sato, a samurai nation located north of Kaze no Kuni, which is allied to Sunagakure. Her father is a blacksmith, one of Chiyo's friends, and he taught Sasori how to craft a sword.
"Do you want to spar?"
She moves wildly, like an animal fighting for its life. Struggling. Desperate. Like how she would drag him along with her on small-scale adventures around Yuukou. He can easily take her down. He can easily defeat her. He can tell she's hesitating. He can think her weak and unimpressive, but she floors him with a quick draw–faster than anything he's seen–and he acknowledges it.
"You're faster now."
She laughs. "I've always been fast. We just never sparred until now."
He tells her about the time she led him through the crawlspace and into a small courtyard with a plum blossom tree, and the story she told him about the man who carved the ice around the Dragon God's palace with a bolt of lightning.
"I'm going to find that sword one day." She's promised him two things now. She would take him to the ocean, after all this, and he believes her. Beyond her naivety and her pride, there is an honesty in her he appreciates, desires even.
She wouldn't lie to him, would she?
So they head to war in the early hours of the morning, children bearing arms and wearing armor, ready to have blood on their teeth and nails. And she comes back broken and bleeding, a complete mess like many others, but still somehow alive. When he sees her, she is empty, all the light in her snuffed out and dimming. She is missing two-thirds of her arm. She couldn't possibly continue being a samurai now.
"You're going to be fine."
So he makes her a promise this time, his first promise, and crafts an arm just for her. But before he could finish it, she is taken away by her family, her sweet, protective family, but not before she gives him a bracelet, tarnished silver but still shining in the light.
"I promise I'll come back."
When she leaves, he realizes that she, like all the others, will break these little promises. She is only human, they are only human. As if it's any excuse. He looks at the incomplete arm and decides to smash it into pieces unidentifiable. At night, he dreams of Chiyo burning in fields, of Shikai's arm being ripped from her body, a desert wolf looming above him.
He looks at the silver moon, looks at the silver band on his wrist, and frowns. He looks at the puppet limbs laid around his room, and considers smashing and burning them. Wood and steel are not enough, not for her, not for him, not for anyone else.
It is years later, too many but not enough, when he hears news of another war approaching. There's distaste for the daimyo's current activities, his luxurious lifestyle, and his self-serving court. There's never been news about such things until now, when the previous war has been declared over, when Suna and all the shinobi countries have finally settled on a truce, albeit begrudgingly.
The shadow still looms beyond them, for wars never truly end until everyone who had participated in them has passed. To some, even such a thing wouldn't mean the end of a war. Sometimes, they live on. Sometimes, they're made to. In Sasori's growing collection, the dead find a place for them to live forever, in bodies made of hardened skin and steel-encased bone.
"You have a gift, Sasori." The Sandaime Kazekage approached him one day, "And you make good use of it."
The hand on his shoulder is heavy, with the weight of all Suna's secrets, those of which he had long known. More than anyone else, he knows of the Sandaime's willingness to bloody his hands–which is why Sasori knows no one else would understand him better.
"The dead find purpose here." He says, "A far better purpose than to serve those wretched fools in Heaven."
Neither him nor the Sandaime believe in the gods of higher, holier planes. For if they existed, no wars would have come to this land, no deaths would be wasted, no children would be left orphans, no parents would have had to die. His parents wouldn't have had to–
"All is justified in the end."
But if there was something he didn't agree on, if there was something about the Sandaime he loathed, it was this.
"All deaths are justified." The Sandaime continued, eyeing the discarded pieces of the collection. "You are doing good, Sasori."
If that was so, his death would be justified as well. Sasori scowls at the man's back, wishing to bury him in blood and steel.
And he did just that, weeks later, when news of the daimyo's death broke out. He doesn't know the specifics behind it all, how a man so protected and so powerful as the daimyo himself could just fall over and die.
Unless...
But he doesn't care, not right now, not when the needle pricks the Sandaime's iron-clad skin, not when the poison floods into the man's body like a thunderstorm, not when he's so close, not when he's won–
"Is this revenge, Sasori?"
Sasori watches the man choke on his own blood.
"It is only justified, Sandaime-sama."
War breaks out.
And it is during this war that Sasori is branded a traitor. Not for the kidnapping or assassination of the Sandaime Kazekage–not at all. No one had an inkling of what or who stole away their Kazekage in such a worrying time, but the war was more important. Without a leader, they would be done for.
So it is Rasa, the Sandaime's younger brother, who becomes the Yondaime and sentences Sasori, among many others, to prison.
"Of all times, Rasa? War is about to break out. We need him!"
And Chiyo, his long-suffering grandmother, defended him so openly that Rasa was almost tempted to remove her from the council.
"He's desecrated the dead. He's done enough."
There's a stiffness in him that's all too-reminiscent of his older brother. He's still grieving–they all are–and it's no surprise that Rasa has accused Sasori of being part of a conspiracy. He's always found the boy odd, strange, and sometimes murderous even.
"He's been accused of murder."
It's the way Rasa addresses the elephant in the room, the rumors of Sasori killing for his own gain and him using said bodies in his puppets, that makes Chiyo stutter. It's the sureness in his voice, the very tone of command used to wage war and sanction executions, that makes her afraid.
Everything her grandson had done was for the betterment of Suna.
"It is only right."
The council made their decision, all in favor of the arrest, except for her.
"This is for the betterment of Suna."
And it is later that night, that Sasori finds out.
"Leave, Sasori." Chiyo says to him as he busies himself with another puppet. "Leave Suna."
It's her wary and worried tone that shakes him. His grandmother had never sounded so meek in all her life, not even in his parents' deaths, not even during the war. He doesn't like it, doesn't like how she's been reduced to a wilting old hag.
"And where would I go?"
Sasori knows of the accusations made towards him, the rumors circulating about his method and his manner. He is not selfish, he is far from it, and everything he does, everything he says, everything he's ever experienced–
"It is for the betterment of Suna."
The explanation he gives for it all, his grand collection of corpses given new life and purpose, is the simplest explanation that can be given. It is no grand work of art, not just that. And it is no selfish work of pride, it is more. It always has been. If they could only understand, if he, if she could only understand that…
"They will have no mercy, Sasori." Chiyo pleads, tears forming in her eyes, "So leave. Leave and survive."
The first time he strikes his grandmother is also the first time he cries.
"I will do more than just survive, Chiyo-baasama." He says, rooted in his stance and his belief, his quiet fury raging beneath the surface, "I will become."
When he leaves Suna, he leaves everything behind. All his creations, all the spare parts and prototypes, and everything that would tie him to his barren desert home. He leaves Chiyo weeping in the dark. He leaves the samurai's letters on a high shelf. He leaves the child in him behind, leaving it with the Mother and Father puppets he made so long ago. He only took with him his pride, his strength, his cruelty.
There is no place for his grief.
But before, before everything came tumbling out and crashing, he found himself in Takamura no Kuni, land of the samurai bordering Kaze no Kuni. He found himself in Yuukou no Sato, in her village of tall bamboo and taller, loftier ideals. The samurai did not know him, not yet, so he considered this place a refuge for the meantime, an escape from the pressures and responsibilities.
Seated under the shade of a tea stall, he sees the samurai again. He spots her, rather, a tall head in a crowd of children. Dressed in a simple yukata, looking more like her younger self, the version he knew from before. The carefree heiress, a child in every sense of the word. But now she looks somber, sorry, matured in all the ways war can change someone.
"Shikai."
He approaches her, but she doesn't rush forward to meet him. She simply stands and waits. He notices her empty sleeve.
"Sasori. You're here."
He touches her empty sleeve and she looks away. The years between this meeting and their last seem to extend far and wide.
"Are you visiting?" She smiles, but he doesn't think the meekness suits her.
He misses the bombastic, unapologetic girl from their youth. The one who pulled and dragged him everywhere. The one who would tell him stories about warriors and mythical battles under the shade of a plum blossom tree. The one who would make him feel wanted and needed, who gave him a childhood most shinobi children could only dream of.
"Yes."
He smiles back, and she leads him through the streets and into her family home, the grand Amakuni compound. As they pass the gates, the memory hits him like a sandstorm. It creeps on him, calling him from the back of his head, but he ignores it. When her father greets him, the storm finally makes its descent.
"Are you alright, Sasori?"
The memories are rose-tinted and sweet-smelling, soft and shining in the sun. They're clear enough to make him weep, clear enough to make him blind, clear enough to make him forget why he came here–
But he accepts the welcome they give him, takes the hospitality they offer, and reminds himself that this is only for the meantime, that this is only temporary. And Shikai doesn't talk much, unlike before. Maybe she's learned now, she's realized the fault in her carefree, prideful nature. She's become mature, like the heiress she should be, and it's only right. They're different people now, and it's only right.
And perhaps it is only right that she remains quiet when the order for his summons is read. She doesn't speak up or tell them she wants him to stay, she merely sits with her eyes brimming with tears.
Now he's found himself at Yuukou's perimeter, gazing at the tall, stone walls. There are samurai lined like shoji pieces. The daimyo is dead. The Sandaime is missing. This is a heightened state of security in a time of war. It's an impossible breach. He shouldn't even dare–
He leaves Takamura no Kuni with a single question. If she was there, if she was still there, would she...
There is no space for him there. There is no space for him in Suna. No space for him anywhere.
"I will become."
So if he can't find a space for himself, he will make one. He will carve a place for himself in this world, permanent and perfect.
A/N: It's time for the Akatsuki next. Stay tuned!