Lover of the Red Sand

Most Akatsuki members didn't know very much of Sasori. They didn't even see what his true form looked like, or heard his voice. Not that the puppet master minded. He didn't care what anyone thought. The only one who had seen Sasori as he truly was had been gone from this world for a very long time. As a young and ignorant Sunagakure shinobi, Sasori had shown his pride in the puppets he had created to her – smiling was so much easier back then. Now the girl was dead for twenty years long past, and sometimes Sasori found himself imagining her smile again. He heard her voice in his ear, and felt the taste of her gentle lips against his own. Emi... For some time, that name had stopped creating any meaning for him, but at times when Sasori was alone with his thoughts, the puppet master thought of the young Sunagakure kunoichi who had died much too young. Curse you, Sandaime Kazekage. Although the Kazekage had ceased to breathe and was now one of Sasori's puppets, the hole in his heart seemed to bleed anew when he thought of the person who had sent Emi on the mission that had cost her life.

"I'll return, Sasori," Emi had said. But she never had.

Sasori hadn't expected to feel such love for a girl. His parents had died in the Second Shinobi World War when he was the tender age of four, and although his grandmother had tried her best to love him, it hadn't been enough to fill the emptiness inside him. Like him, Emi had lost her parents to the war at a very young age. She didn't seem to miss their existence at all – in fact, she seemed happy in his eyes. She was small and slim as a child, and had light hair the color of sand, and had deep blue eyes. Once as a child, Sasori had made a mistake of looking into those eyes. They stunned him, and even when they both were fighting for their lives as full-fledged shinobi, Sasori was still mesmerized by Emi's eyes. Somehow it seemed as though the dark blue eyes he grew to love did not reproach him, or mock him, or fear him. The other shinobi feared Sasori and his puppets for their mercilessness. "He is a valuable shinobi. Chiyo-san." Sasori heard this stated many times before he reached the age of fifteen. The praise had always hid the fear the shinobi had for him. Somehow the only person immune to this fear was Emi, but he did not know why. Sasori didn't care what they or anyone else thought, for the only opinion that mattered was Emi's. Twenty years later, the puppet master could still hear Emi's voice in his mind. "Even thought we are both shinobi, we are human. Having emotions is what makes us human, Sasori. That's why I want to see your beautiful face break into a smile, and hear the laughter that is hidden inside." Her voice that had lulled him to sleep more than once during the war, when the young puppet master was empty inside, Sasori only had to think of Emi, and he would fall into a sleepless bliss.

Both Sunagakure shinobi had seen the hardships of war. The war their parents had died and fought in were faint in their memories. Emi had seen her little brother, a genin, slaughtered before her very eyes. She had taken care of him ever since he was a baby. Sasori's teammates and sensei had died in battle, and blood was spilled on both of their hands. One time after a deadly mission when both Emi and Sasori had barely escaped death, the puppet master had confessed to her what he thought about life and art. "Fine art is something wonderful that's left long into the future…eternal beauty." Emi had been dressing a wound on his chest, and had startled him by placing her hands on his cheeks. She smiled, almost timidly, and kissed him for the first time. They had kissed and done other things that night, and Sasori remembered believing that he had seen the work of an eternal beauty as she slept beside him, her long hair looking like gold. She is a work of art…to me.

One day on a mission, Emi did not come home. Sasori waited for her even when night fell and his grandmother worried. It was at the end of the Third Shinobi World War, and Sasori wanted to be the first person to embrace Emi when she came home from her last mission. He remembered smiling. She was the only person he could wait for. What a fool I was back then. I didn't accept her death then. I thought that she couldn't die, that she wouldn't die…for in my cold heart, she made me happy. I thought that she was immune to the fragility of human existence. Emi didn't come home that night, or any other night. Sasori remembered staring blankly at his grandmother as she held him fearing that he would finally cry after so many years. But Sasori didn't cry. He only felt emptiness where his heart had been. At the age of four, he had lost his parents, and now he had lost the person most precious to him. Ore wa… Sasori thought, clenching his fist, desperately trying to push the memory of Emi's last words to him in his mind. Ore wa… Sasori couldn't finish his sentence.

He was told that Emi's body could not be found – nor had they any reason to look for it, for all of her surviving relatives were dead. There was no grave to be dug, or a tombstone laid. Crouching down and looking at the endless marked graves before him, Sasori thought of the man who had started it all – the Third Kazekage, who had declared his parents to go out into the battlefield despite having a newborn son, and sending them out again to their deaths. The same was for many other families. Many widows and orphans had been born from the two wars that had occurred in less than a decade a part from each other. And now that same man had taken Sasori's most precious person, the only person that he was able to be human with. Despite not finding his Emi's body, the Third Kazekage was a reluctant replacement. Sasori remembered walking into the night, holding the puppet of the Third Kazekage in his hands. I'll never go back, my Emi. Never. I'm sorry…

"Never die, Sasori! I don't care if I die, but…if you fall in battle, I will be like the puppets you carry, without a heart and without a soul!" As Sasori trudged through the sand, he thought again of the kunoichi who had been his lover. "Don't become a person I don't know if I do die, for then I will no longer be living. Promise me." I'm sorry, Emi. The bane of human existence is not worth it. The life has no color without you there, and I see no point of living as a human being any longer. I will not die, just not in the way you envisioned. I will live forever, remembering your death.

"I say these things to you, Sasori, because…I love you."

Sasori felt a tear trickle down his neck and towards his heart, the first tear he had shed in eleven long years. Yes, he thought. I love you too.

The thoughts he had twenty years ago echoed in his mind as he faced the foes that were about to come.