Note: Pay very careful attention to this chapter. Also, sun is a source of light, and light illuminates the darkness; it lets you see. Derp.
21
The fog-soaked valley
Is more difficult to see
When it glows with sun
A few days later, while Inazuma was in the middle of brushing out her long hair, she vanished from her room in a familiar smoke cloud, and found herself back in the presence of a certain puppet master. She listened to his instructions without shivering, not for even a moment.
She summoned and re-sealed various puppets into their scrolls, checking to see that they were correctly labeled before placing them back onto their proper places on the rack. The rack was situated in a deep, unlit closet that frightened her more so than the newer human puppets that were still in construction in Sasori's workshop. The rows upon rows of scrolls seemed to stretch indefinitely into the closet. It was a place she knew she could never escape if she ever got turned around in.
"Sasori, can I ask you something?"
He didn't respond. She interpreted his silence as invitation to continue speaking.
"Why are you doing this?" Somewhere in her subconsciousness, she hoped that the vague question would allow him to explain away all the death and blood that permeated the very air of the room. She wanted to believe in the simple, child's laws of right and wrong, of hurt and understanding and love. She wanted to continue believing that evil couldn't touch her life.
He didn't ask her for clarification as he sat there, carving, blood dripping from his hair and his fingers. Sometimes she thought that it dripped from his eyes, too.
"Brat," he said quietly, "sometimes, puppets break, malfunction, or get destroyed in battle. Therefore, I need backups. You do understand that puppets are only useful because they do whatever you want them to do?"
She bobbed her head, certain that he would be able to tell that she had nodded, although his back was turned to her. As she unfurled yet another summoning scroll, Inazuma fought back the urge to shiver until her boots trembled against the floor. Was it really the dead, unfeeling puppets he was talking about? To him, was she already...
She barely heard his next words, which were carried on a whisper that could've been mistaken for a breeze in the leaves, had they not been in a room filled with stagnant air.
"Besides," Sasori held a spherical, bloodshot eyeball in his palm, examining its color carefully, "Why wouldn't I, when there's nothing for me to lose?"
She tied off the thick scroll in her miraculously steady hands.
"But is there anything for you to gain?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
She looked down at the scroll, clutched between her small hands, and thought of all the things they were capable of doing. She'd trained to her utmost for the past few years of her life, and could hit a moving target with a kunai from thirty paces away, could blind an opponent with a flash of lightning-powered light, could almost stun a squirrel with a flying, shaky ball of light. But the room where she stood was filled with blood. It was filled with poison and weapons made specifically to destroy powerful opponents in a short span of time. Her face burned.
Doubt fed on her thoughts.