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The ultimate perfection of being: that was Sasori’s goal, his earliest ambition.
He envied his creations’ lack of pain, even as they splintered to pieces in combat. But then again, they were not alive. They felt no pain, not in this form.
Did living equate to feeling pain? He had spent many sleepless nights with this thought rolling around inside his skull. Surely, he reasoned, there was a way that he could live and never again experience a world-shattering loss like the death of his parents.
The thought stilled his hand, the carving tool resting loosely in his palm.
He stared down at his latest project with no memory of starting it.
Life in Suna was tedious as always, but there was a restlessness in his bones these days. There was a whisper of a thought in the back of his brain - there was someone he wanted to see.
The rhythmic scraping of his knife on wood began again as he thought. Someone, but not in Suna. Someone that made his heart do weird things at the thought of them.
He allowed himself a wry smile. Who would ever want to be close enough to him to stir up these kinds of feelings?
A flash of pink in his mind’s eye kindled something else. A girl with pastel hair and leaf green eyes in the flush of youth, and she’s shyly holding his hand. More flashes: the girl is older and laughing at something he said - the girl is tenderly kissing his fingers - the girl is whispering secrets to him in a shared bed.
Sasori swallowed thickly. Of course he knew who she was, how could he forget?
Sakura, his turning point. She was the reason he chose humanity instead of forsaking everything he had ever known.
It’s true his puppets never felt pain, but they also felt no joy or the comfort of love. And to him, Sakura was worth all the pain and the struggle and the mess of living.
Comforted by this realization, Sasori kept working. The formless piece of wood became the framework for an arm complete with hidden compartments. He was sure he had been in his workshop for hours and Sakura must be looking for him by now.
He stretched his back but felt no pain from hunching over his bench all day. Strange, since he always felt a twinge at the very least. Even his fingers were without soreness. He brushed away some stray wood shavings and froze.
There, on the left side of his chest, was a gaping wound where his heart should be. Blood oozed slowly, the viscera almost visible in the dark cavity of his body. Sasori fumbled to close the wound, first with wads of his shirt and then with his chakra, but the wound did not respond. How was he still alive? Why didn’t it hurt? He was sure he should’ve felt lightheaded from the shock of such a severe wound.
He probed the wound further with his chakra, trying to puzzle out what kind of seal was preventing the healing process, when he noticed something odd. Sasori withdrew his hand, tremors now making their way through his body as realization dawned on him.
His hands were not his hands. Or rather, they were not the hands he had been born with. They were finely crafted puppet hands. He traced up his synthetic arm to his torso with rising horror, ripping aside his shirt to discover more of the same.
His fingers scrabbled frantically against his wooden torso, desperation threatening to swallow him whole. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he had changed his mind! He was--
Awake.
Sasori was awake now, panting in the dark. His fingers flew to his skin and yes, it was still skin, pliable to the touch. He had never been so relieved to be made of fragile flesh and bone.
His exhale was shaky, but he had control of his faculties after a moment.
That life wasn’t his, but it was a life he had often imagined. The idea still clung to his subconscious, now more of a nightmare than a daydream.
Sasori rolled over and reached for his, well, girlfriend didn’t seem adequate but they were not yet wed. His Sakura. His new existence.
Her sleeping form was just visible in the dim moonlight filtering in through the window in their humble room. Reality was slowly coming back to him: they were travelling medics in times of peace, staying at a shabby inn. He took another deep breath and thanked every star in the sky that he was lucky enough to share this life with her.
He rolled over towards her, gently placing his arm around her and careful not to wake her. She worked too hard during the day for such a meager reward. The least she deserved was a good sleep.
But something was wrong.
He knew it when he scooted closer to her and there was no heat from her body, no rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.
Sasori threw back the covers. His heart raced with too much adrenaline and it hurt as the blood pumped forcefully through his body, pounded in his ears.
A low moan escaped him as he felt for a pulse.
She was long, long past help.
He wanted to scream, wanted to throw himself off the nearest cliff and break himself on the ground below.
His mouth had gone dry with dread, all because the body in the bed next to him was made of wood instead of flesh. He was staring down at a puppet of his own design, his seal stamped into her chest.
He pressed the heel of his palms to his eyes until he saw stars, and then she was talking to him.
“Sasori,” she said, and when he opened his eyes this time, the sun nearly blinded him.
Sakura was leaning over him, a bowl and a wet cloth in her hands. He blinked blearily, trying for the life of him to decide if he was actually awake this time around.
Sasori tried to speak, but his throat was dry and his mouth gummy from disuse. His arms were weak but he pawed at her neck for a pulse. He had to know, had to confirm this was real .
“What are you doing,” she half laughed as he settled for gripping her arm. He was relieved to feel warm flesh, and checked his own body. Flesh and blood. The relief he felt washing over him could’ve made him cry, and Sasori prided himself in being a man of few tears.
“Alive,” he croaked finally.
“Barely. You’ve had a high fever for days,” she said, coaxing him into a sitting position and trying to spoon soup into his mouth. “I was beginning to worry. You...started thrashing around.”
Sasori noted the dark circles under her eyes and wondered when the last time she had a full night’s rest. He grasped her to him with a delicate desperation, as if she would dissolve if he clung to her too tightly.
“Sasori, your soup,” she sighed, exasperated as she tried and failed to keep from spilling it.
“Days? Strange,” was all he could say, taking a drink of the broth. He was reluctant to let her go, but his throat was begging for liquid.
“Your fever does seem to have finally broken.” She looked dubious, but she also knew sickness was more of a “mind over matter” game to him. She insisted they linger at the inn for a few more days while she monitored his recovery.
Sasori couldn’t shake his nightmares, though. His sleep was fitful and his appetite did not recover like it should have.
“I think your fever is coming back,” Sakura finally said one evening. She had watched him pick at his dinner for what felt like hours. “You’re not eating, and I know you spend half the night lying awake.” She caressed his forehead with the back of her hand. “But you don’t feel warm...we might have to go into town…”
“I had nightmares. Fever dreams. I’m...still having them.” Sasori did not make that confession lightly. Their mortality weighed heavily on him, knowing their existence together was as fragile as separation by death. He dreaded being separated so forcefully from her. Thoughts of her bloodied, mangled corpse flashed unbidden through his mind, and he suppressed a shudder.
“Bad dreams? Seriously?” She huffed. “You had a life-threatening fever and you can’t recover because of a few bad dreams?”
“I don’t think you would sleep very well either if you were holding my lifeless body every time you closed your eyes,” he replied dryly. It almost satisfied him to see her look so ashamed so quickly.
“I didn’t know..”
“I don’t want you to leave me all alone.”
Sasori’s voice reverberated in the stillness that followed. Bird song filtered in from outside as the sun sank lower on the horizon. The world felt frozen and somehow still managed to move forward.
He hated feeling so vulnerable and honest. These were traits that were burned out of small children as quickly as possible in Suna, but not in Konoha. She said she wished he would share more of his emotions, well, here they were. He stared down at his food, waiting for whatever fallout awaited him.
“Fortunately for you, you don’t have much choice in the matter,” she said lightly. “I’ve already put a significant amount of planning into our wedding and I’m afraid I don’t want it to go to waste.”
He should’ve gotten whiplash from how fast his head shot up.
Sakura grinned at him shyly, color rising in her cheeks at her own personal admission.
Sasori felt a tremor begin in his core, but his hands were steady as he grasped hers from across the table.
“Yes, yes,” he began, and cleared his throat. “Please, Sakura, do me the honor of becoming my wife.”
“Now?!” She squeaked, the pretty blush turning into an all encompassing red.
“The sooner the better,” he insisted, and pressed a delicate kiss to her hand.
“We can’t! We still have so much to do!” The more panicked Sakura became, the higher the octave of her voice. Sasori decided he liked that very much, but not nearly as much as her vibrant blush.
“We can do more when we’re wed,” he smirked, simply because he knew the reaction it would elicit in her.
She made a garbled noise somewhere between a protest and a frustrated sigh as she snatched her hand back from him.
“Well, I - I have to do more planning. For the wedding.” She finally explained when her brain was in working order.
“Don’t keep me waiting, Haruno,” he smiled, and for the first time in a long time, the nightmares seemed like someone else’s problems.