Note: This story has finally cleared 1,000 hits. I'm so joyful. :D I struggled a lot with this chapter, but the next few should come pretty quickly, and I'll finish it soon. Much thanks to the mighty Chocolate Pencil for going through this and helping me out. There's only two more chapters to go!
23
The war is truly lost
When the blood of enemies
Sinks into one's heart
When she was finally summoned again another several months after that B-rank mission, Inazuma watched as Sasori climb into a war puppet of his that he called Hiruko, which she recognized from the first time that he'd summoned her. That mission had made her realize how far she'd come, but it also made her realize how easy it was to kill. Killing wasn't the hard part; it was dealing with the aftershocks. Humans are extremely fragile. She stared at his back as he crouched down and fiddled with a piece of the puppet, and wondered vaguely if it really was made of wood as she'd first thought. She swallowed, and knew that this was her chance; she'd stop Sasori from creating any more human puppets. She'd spare them from her fate.
But... She hesitated.
She couldn't help but ask questions. They distracted her from her thoughts.
"What were your reasons for making me a summon of yours?" Her tone was flat, oddly even, and she stared calmly at him as he dipped some senbon into a vial of purple liquid. He crouched by his puppet, and after he carefully set the last of the needles in their proper places, he looked up.
He stared at her, about to latch Hiruko closed. His eyes glinted like glass in the light of the bulb overhead as they bored into her own.
"Well?" she asked.
"You've lost it, haven't you?" he asked, finally.
"What?" she thought she knew what he meant, but wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about a lot of things, these days.
"You've killed," he said simply.
She nodded.
"The purity of childhood is beautiful, but alas, short lived," he muttered, mostly to himself, "I fear that I may have poisoned you, after all."
"Is that your answer? Was that why you made me a summon of yours?"
He cracked a smile that lacked utterly in joy.
"I suppose it was."
"Then I suppose you don't have any more use for me, do you?"
He stared at her for a while. His eyes took in her silent mouth, her bright eyes (that weren't quite so bright as they used to be), her sleek, snow-white hair (it was shorter than when he saw her last) and dark skin.
He'd always wondered how the land of Lightning could produce people with such dark skin and pale hair. It made no sense, from a scientific standpoint. Then again, it was another anomaly in itself that most desert-dwellers, like himself, had such a pale complexion.
To Sasori, the changes that people went over time were at once fascinating and depressing. These must be the changes, the destruction, that his fool of a partner always prattled on about. The naïve and unconditional faith of her childhood had been mesmerizing and impossibly addictive to watch. The fact that something so pure could exist in this corrupt world had seemed so improbable (truly, this brightnessmust be art, and as art, it had seemed impossible that it would eventually be corrupted and broken in time). He wondered if he should have made her a puppet at the very beginning, before the child in her had a chance to die. But no…
He shook his head wearily. "No. I suppose not."
"So are you going to send me away?" She wasn't bitter, or sad, or anything. The bright, talkative toddler was practically wiped away.
"I've got nothing to gain from you," he said mechanically. She nodded, and stepped back onto the scroll, just as mechanically.
How strange, he thought. How strange that humans could be dehumanized so quickly. Then, his heart thudded dully in his chest, and he reconsidered. Just look at him, the farthest thing from human that he'd ever met, and he still had a heart. But then again, it was too late for him. He'd progressed to the point where he could carve any other human into any form he desired (without any hesitation), and make it a part of his arsenal, make it a part of him. He was a menagerie of interchangeable parts. However, her eyes were dull, but he suspected she still felt pain. Her heart had a expiration date on it, but it was still fully connected to her body and her emotions. She was alive in a way he never would be again. Because she was alive, she could not quite become one of his parts.
Deidara said that perfection expires immediately. Sasori said that it lasts forever. But perhaps it was neither. There never was such a thing as perfection, and there never would be. What glowed beautifully decayed with each strike it recieved, but glowed all the brighter when alongside its ruin. His heart thudded again, and he tried imagining an eternity. It was far more difficult than it used to be, and he realized that his own naïve, unconditional faith wasn't the same as it used to be.
It really was too late for him.
"But, Inazuma," (she glanced up at him), "there is still hope for you."
He smiled faintly, now, eyes wide like madness. She felt a twinge of fear, but didn't show it.
"Though there are things that can no longer change, and I am one of them, you're still alive and malleable. Don't let the wrong hands forge your path any longer."
In the moment it took for the words to sink in, in the moment just before she disappeared in a cloud of smoke, she hesitated.
She failed to strike him with the intense, deadly chakra that she'd built up in her fingertips.