Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sakura was six when she first realised that her soulmate was completely unlike that of the other children she knew.

It wasn’t that her soulmark was weird. The scorpion on her inner wrist was fine, even if considerably creepier than the beautiful designs, patterns, and symbols the other girls at the Academy were so proud of. No, it was her dreams that were strange.

It hadn’t taken her too long to discover it. The other children, civilian or not, often dreamt of their soulmates every night. They were mundane dreams, at least as far as she could tell: walks by the Naka river as it meandered through the centre of Konoha, the rustling of the forest’s leaves in the spring, and watching fireworks at the summer festival.

Sakura’s were different.

Her dreams often involved her blinking her eyes open to seas of sand, coarse and ever-present under the blistering sun. The barren, inert landscape seldom changed. It sprawled up to the horizon, only ever leaving behind memories of blinding heat and blurs of loneliness.

She did get shared dreams, but even those—which rarely ever came—weren’t fully right. They weren’t the same.

Once, she dreamt of a battle. Foreign shinobi leapt from the sands as they fought one another. Shouts filled the air, broken only by the loud clang of metal as weapons clashed against each other. A single, masked man desperately bellowed orders, helpless as his men fell around him. At a side, a young shinobi in a dark bodysuit and a simple, beige flak jacket observed the battle from a distance. His fingers twisted delicately before him, directing the movements of some of the oddly coloured fighters soaking the sand in red.

Sakura woke up with a scream. Terrified at the heavy, lingering scent of blood, she raced to wake her mother.

“Sakura?” her mother asked. Her eyes, still heavy with sleep, narrowed as she sat up. “Are you sure it was a shared dream?”

“I think so,” Sakura muttered. It had to be. She had never seen people like that before, let alone fighting like that. “Is he okay?”

Mebuki’s eyes darted away from Sakura’s. “I’m sure he is,” she said hesitantly. Sakura flinched as her expression soured, making her real thoughts all too clear. “It must have been a memory if you saw it. Is your mark still there?”

Her hand reached for the scorpion at her wrist. It was still there, its texture raised and slightly warm to the touch. “It is,” she confirmed quietly.

“Everything’s alright then,” her mother affirmed. She fixed her eyes on the exposed mark. “You do know that it’s alright if you want to avoid your soulmate, right, Sakura? It doesn’t sound like they’re from Konoha at all, and someone who is involved with those sort of things…” she said, voice tailing off. “They could be dangerous.”

“But you and dad were soulmates, right?” Sakura asked. Her eyes flicked to the doodle-like grapevine circling up her mother’s wrist. It was still there, its colour a cheerful green even after her father’s passing. “You said that they’re important. Dad did, too.”

The corners of Mebuki’s mouth twisted downwards. Sighing, she looked away. “Go back to sleep, Sakura.”

Sakura did, knowing better than to confront her mother when she was in a bad mood. She struggled to fall asleep once she returned to her room. The memory of the battle was still too vivid. Once she did, she opened her eyes, bracing for the worse, only to see the figure of the boy at a far distance, clad in the same clothes as before. Turning around, the boy observed her impassively before eventually flickering away, not saying a single word.

She didn’t dream of him again for months—a fact Ami and her friends quickly began to mock her for at the Academy. Slowly, Sakura began to doubt whether she had dreamt about him at all. Perhaps she didn’t actually have a soulmate, scorpion mark or not.

It only made sense, after all.

Sakura was seven when she discovered that another girl in her class, Ino, had strange dreams too. A fact which quickly turned their tentative friendship into something far stronger.

She had discovered it a few months after the blonde girl swooped in and saved her from Ami’s poisoned words. Her mark—a stylised drawing of a bird in thick, ink-like lines—covered a considerable part of her upper arm. It was a magnificent sight, and easily one of the most eye-catching and beautiful soulmarks Sakura had ever gotten to see.

Ino’s dreams were a different matter, as it turned out, and easily just as bad as Sakura’s.

“I was hoping that it’d be Sasuke, but there’s no way it’s him,” the blonde girl confessed to her one day. She rested the palms of her hands on the park’s grass. “I still don’t know his name. He never speaks to me at all. I wonder if he can even smile.”

She had remained silent, unsure if sharing the fact that she had also hoped that Sasuke, her first and very brief crush, would be her soulmate too was a good idea. She couldn’t have been the only one that had, not with how tight lipped and guarded the silent boy was about the entire topic.

No one had ever even seen his soulmark.

The smile with which Ino met her confession prompted Sakura to share what few, rare dreams she had. “I don’t know mine either,” she said. “I dreamt of him once, but he didn’t say a word. It was at a battle of some sort.”

The blonde girl’s curiosity was piqued instantly. “A battle?” Ino asked. She leant forwards, inching closer to Sakura. “Where was it? What was it like?”

The memory of the sand, vivid and bright as it became soaked with blood, flashed though Sakura’s mind. “Horrible,” she muttered, unsure of the best way to put her first dream into words. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Were they from Konoha?”

Sakura’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “The place didn’t seem to be near Konoha at all. There was too much sand for that.”

“Sand?” Ino echoed. “Maybe he’s from the Land of Wind. Was he hurt?”

“I don’t think he was,” she said. The idea had scared her at first, but, in retrospect, the other shinobi that had been the ones in trouble. “He didn’t look hurt at all.” She looked at her friend and, hesitantly, asked a question she had never dared to ask her mother. “What do you think? Is it bad?”

“Well, he must be in active duty. Probably quite good, too, if he’s already defeated a team like that,” Ino theorised openly. Crossing her arms, she thought about the details Sakura had told her. “It doesn’t sound like anyone at Konoha, though. That could be bad, depending on who he is.”

Sakura nodded slowly. Their teachers had made it perfectly clear what was expected of them, particularly if their soulmates belonged to a different village. “My mum doesn’t like it,” she said, rubbing the mark on her wrist self-consciously. “She hardly even looks at my mark. I think she still hopes that he’ll be a civilian.”

Ino scoffed. “There’s no way he is if you dreamt something like that,” she said, shaking her head. “Your soulmate must be a Chunin at the very least.”

Sakura glanced at the near-empty park around them. Maybe her mother was right and she’d be better off ignoring her mark and focusing on someone from their village. Perhaps even one of her trading partner’s children.

“Do you think I’ll ever meet him?” she asked shyly. “What if one day he turns out to be an enemy of Konoha?”

“Of course!” Reaching forwards, Ino grabbed Sakura’s shoulder, forcing her to meet her eyes. “It may seem difficult now, but do you think that’ll always be the case? Besides, foreign Hidden Village or not, he’s your soulmate.”

Sakura faltered. “He seemed so strong, though,” she muttered. There was hardly any doubt that he was. Ino was probably right. He was most likely a Chunin already, no matter how young he had looked. “What if I can never reach him?”

“I have that problem too, you know? Maybe not to that much of a degree, but still,” Ino said loudly. Her lips curled into a grin. “We both want to be kunoichi, right? We’ll just have to make sure to catch them.”

Sakura smiled back, surprised at the blonde’s words. Nodding energetically, she felt her resolve grow.

Sakura was eight when she finally got to talk to her soulmate.

She had fallen asleep easily, the training she and Ino had decided to undertake together weighing her limbs down in a way that foretold the muscle aches that were to come the following day. Her mother hadn’t said anything about their obvious pastime, instead choosing to glance at one of the many pictures of Kizashi lining their living room’s walls.

Upon her falling asleep Sakura had found herself in a place wholly unlike the vast desert that frequented her dreams. The room—it had to be a room—was big, almost as big as some of the classrooms at the Academy. It was slightly hazy, much like all her dreams tended to be. Its walls, painted in a dull grey, were lined with a variety of puppets in various stages of completion, barely leaving a single inch devoid of clutter. A variety of tools lined the few tables set at one of the sides of the room. There were no windows, at least as far as she could see, and a simple, white domed ceiling rose above her. 

A workshop, this must be a workshop of some sort, she thought. A shared dream, too, given how she had never a space like this before.

Taking a few tentative steps further into the room, Sakura looked at the area around her. The puppets, though still incomplete, were noticeably intricate. Oddly beautiful, too, though Sakura knew Ino would have undoubtedly disagreed with her.

She pressed on distractedly, focusing on the detail carved into the wood until a sudden voice made her come to a sudden stop.

“Took you long enough. I hate waiting, you know?”

Sakura whipped her head around, surprised, only to inhale sharply at the sight of a mess of red hair and soft, half-lidded, brown eyes. It was the same shinobi she could remember seeing in her dream two years ago, though he was wearing a loose, short-sleeved, black shirt rather than the beige flak jacket he had back then. A hitai-ate bearing the symbol of Sunagakure was tied to his forehead. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his arms elbow-deep inside a particularly large puppet.

“Who are you?” she asked. Judging by his appearance and voice, he couldn’t have been that much older than her.

The boy didn’t reply. He looked at her up and down, observing her dispassionately before looking back down at the puppet on his lap. Not saying a single word, he grabbed a chisel and began to chip away at something within the puppet’s interior.

Sakura felt her anger spike at his lack of an answer. “I’ve seen you before—once, in a battle of some sort.” She paused, studying the finesse with which he handled the tool. “Are you a Genin?”

Something about her words caught the boy’s attention. “No.”

She frowned. “Chunin?”

A flicker of amusement shone in the boy’s eyes. “Jounin.”

“Jounin?” Sakura crowed. Her eyebrows rose as the boy gave her a slow, regal nod in response. “How old are you?”

The boy eyed her again, as if mulling over what to say. A few seconds of silence went by before he finally answered. “Twelve.”

Sakura’s reaction was immediate. “That’s amazing!” she exclaimed. She had barely ever heard of anyone in Konoha managing to reach the rank of Chunin at that age, let alone Jounin. Her eyes flicked to the puppet on his lap. It was clear that he had made it, though she couldn’t understand why he would bother to work on something like that in a dream. “What is it for?” she asked.

His lips curled up at the compliment. Raising a hand, he twisted delicately his fingers. Unprompted, Sakura felt her hand rise by itself and mirror his action.

“Wow,” Sakura said reverently, fascination trumping any of the unease she would have otherwise felt at the action. “How did you do that?”

“Chakra strings,” the boy said simply, lowering his hand.

A passage on chakra strings she had read in a book at the library flashed through her mind. They required a high level of chakra control and concentration, and they were difficult for most shinobi to so much as use. She had never seen anyone use them at the Academy.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said admiringly. “Are you a puppet master?”

He preened at her attention. “This is my workshop,” he said, gesturing at the area around them. “Some of the puppets belong to my grandmother, but most of these are mine.”

“Is that one yours?” Sakura asked, eying the puppet on his lap. She stepped towards him. “Why work on it in a dream?”

An odd, closed expression appeared on the boy’s face. “And why wouldn’t I?” he said defensively. He looked at her silently. “You’re not a Genin.”

Sakura bristled at his words. “Not yet, but I will, soon,” she said. Then, before she could stop to think about her words, “I’m in Konoha’s Academy.”

He didn’t say anything. Turning away from her, he focused on the puppet on his lap again, unwittingly drawing Sakura’s attention to his hitai-ate. Abruptly, she remembered the words of her teachers at the Academy. It wasn’t safe to talk to him, not with his allegiance and rank. She had already said too much.

But, she mused, reaching to brush the scorpion mark on her wrist, he is my soulmate.

Decision made, she sat cross-legged on the floor before him and reached out her hand. The boy’s eyes darted up at her action. “I’m Sakura,” she said, “and you?”

The boy frowned almost immediately. “Should you be asking that?” He looked at her hand with a frown, eyes narrowing on the now plainly visible scorpion mark. “I’ve barely even dreamt of you. We don’t know anything about each other. Why bother?”

Sakura pressed on. She wouldn’t gain anything by being intimidated now. “You’re my soulmate.”

The boy regarded her with a slightly disbelieving look. After a few moments of silence, he grabbed her hand and shook it slowly. The action revealed a small sakura flower imprinted on his inner wrist. “Sasori,” he said.

Dazzled by his sudden action and the hazy warmth of his skin, Sakura forgot what she had wanted to say. Instead, a different kind of question tumbled out of her lips as she looked at his puppet. Sasori paused and, surprisingly, answered. His words, smooth and precise, went straight to the point.

An image of her soulmate began to develop in Sakura’s mind: He was from Sunagakure and very good with the puppet technique.

He appeared in one of Sakura’s dreams barely a month after their first meeting.

Barely a second passed before she noticed his presence, jarringly at odds with the Academy’s lush training grounds. Turning away from the spot she and Ino had begun to frequent after their classes, she looked at the Suna shinobi, his figure startlingly vivid amongst the backdrop of hazy, grey figures of her dream.

Sasori’s upper lip curled up as he looked at the kunai scattered around the centre of one of the targets. “Your posture is wrong. You won’t hit anything like that.”

Sakura clenched her fists instinctively. “Do you ever sleep?” she asked, annoyed at his obvious disdain. “Sometimes I doubt you even exist.”

Sasori’s answering stare was empty and cold. “I just returned to the Suna,” he said. “Getting to sleep for a full night is rare.”

“Oh,” Sakura said, taken aback by his words. She looked him up and down. He didn’t seem to be injured in any way, though she wasn’t sure things like that could be seen a dream. “Are you okay?”

The Jounin’s eyes widened imperceptibly at her question. He was surprised, though she couldn’t see why that would be the case. “I am,” he said, after a few moments of silence. “I work on my puppets at night.”

She decided to speak again when it became clear that he wasn’t going to give any more details. Stepping forwards, she forced herself to take his earlier, cold criticism in stride. This was her soulmate, not one of her classmates.

“How should I do it, then?” Sakura asked. Reaching for one of her pouches, she took out a kunai knife out of her pouch’s seemingly endless supply. She hadn’t managed to get the technique fully right quite yet, even after practicing with Ino, and it had translated into her dream’s setting. “I’ve been trying to improve.”

Sasori’s eyes flicked to hers. Before she knew it, he was walking towards her, hands reaching to one of his own pouches. He threw the kunai almost as soon as it touched his fingers, his movements fluid and quick, and didn’t so much as look as it embedded itself into the target’s centre with a soft thud.

“Your posture,” he said again. “You’re too tense. It’s making you release the kunai too early. Relax your shoulders and keep your elbows below them.”

Sakura nodded. Following his instructions, she grabbed hold of another kunai and threw it at the target with a quick flick. The weapon cut through the air and buried itself into the target inches besides Sasori’s own.

The sight made her lips curl into a wide smile. “I did it!” she said. Then, turning to look again towards Sasori, “thank you.”

The Suna shinobi nodded curtly. “It’s different if you practice in a dream, but you shouldn’t have any more problems if you keep that in mind.”

Sakura nodded enthusiastically. “I will,” she assured him. She would make sure to do so. It would take some practice, but Ino wouldn’t be able to believe it when she finally saw her. “I practiced what you showed me the other day,” she quickly continued saying. “I didn’t quite manage to get the chakra strings fully right at first, but I can now make objects move for a short amount of time.”

Sasori visibly perked up at her words. “What have you been practicing with?”

“My kunai,” she confessed. “I don’t have much else to practice with.”

As if to demonstrate, she twisted her hand towards the wooden target. A bright, blue chakra string lit and connected her fingers to the back of one of the kunais. A soft pull of her hand sent the weapon flying back to her. Sasori caught it before she could reach for it. His soft brown eyes held hers as he studied her silently, as though trying to decide what to make of her.

Sakura swallowed. He had been expecting her to try the technique out, right? “Sasori?” she asked.

The sound of his own name seemed to break him out of his reverie. Looking away, he handed her the kunai back. “You should practice tree climbing. Water surface walking, too.”

“Tree climbing?”

 “You have very good chakra control,” he stated, as if it were obvious. “There should be a scroll in your village’s library detailing it.”

The red-haired boy took a step back, and then, without saying a single other word, flickered away.

Sakura stared at the empty spot where he had been standing, not quite knowing what to make of the strange boy. Gradually, her mental image of her soulmate began to develop further: he was from Sunagakure, very good with the puppet technique, and rudely and reluctantly helpful.

It didn’t take long for Sakura to find a scroll detailing the tree climbing exercise. Surprised at how easy it had been to find, she had read it in a single day, eager to practice the exercise Sasori had spoken of.

Ino had been considerably less enthusiastic. “Are you sure about this, forehead?” she asked. “He may be your soulmate, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually being honest.”

“It wouldn’t be in the library if it wasn’t, pig” Sakura reasoned, smiling at the affectionate, if rude, nickname. “Besides, the shinobi working there allowed me to borrow the scroll.”

Her friend crossed her arms in response, still unsure about what Sakura wanted to attempt to do. She had been happy to hear about Sakura’s first contact with her soulmate, but that didn’t mean she approved of her going through and testing out his advice.

Ignoring her friend, Sakura brushed at her red dress absentmindedly and turned to face the tree before her. So long as she focused her chakra to the bottom of her feet and used it to cling to the trunk, she should be able to manage it. The only trick would be to use only the necessary amount of chakra and, if possible, to maximize its effectiveness.

Sakura closed her eyes and took a step forwards, placing her foot at the base of the tree. It was all about control. Control—that she could do.

The bark cracked.

Sakura’s eyes widened. Behind her, he heard Ino let out a startled laugh. Too much chakra, she reasoned mentally. I must have used too much chakra.

Slowly, she placed her foot at the base of the tree again. Avoiding the damaged bark, she lessened the stream of chakra to her feet, lifted her other foot, and—.

It stuck.

Sakura took another step, this time up. After then came another and another, until she had reached the highest part of the tree. Sitting on one of its branches, she smiled and looked down at Ino, who was staring at her open-mouthed.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to do it,” her friend said.

Her smile grew. Sasori had said she had good chakra control, and he’d turned out to be right. Would she be able to successfully repeat her success if she practiced whilst doing something else at the same time, like aiming shuriken?

Sakura stood back up and walked down the trunk, jumping onto the ground once she reached the base of the tree. “He recommended I try water walking too, though it seems to be a bit more complicated.”

“I suppose he’s a Jounin, after all,” Ino said. She looked away. “I can’t believe you finally got to talk to him. How was he like?”

Sakura frowned, not quite sure about how to describe her soulmate. A bit weird, she thought, and clearly not too used to having people around, too. Still she couldn’t quite just go ahead and say that.

“Calculating,” she said after a few moments of silence, settling for what seemed like the best word to describe him. “Impatient, too, though he did end up helping me.” It was a fact she was grateful for, particularly given how little he seemed to actually sleep.

“I’m happy for you, forehead,” Ino said earnestly, “though he sounds like a bit of a jerk.” Her expression softened. “Mine still doesn’t really speak much at all, though I suppose it’s only a matter of time.”

Sakura observed with amazement as a slight blush rose to her friend’s cheeks. It wasn’t rare for her to have a crush on one of their classmates, but this seemed to be different. “Is he from Konoha?” she asked.

“I think so,” Ino said, nodding tightly. “I haven’t seen him at the Academy, though, and my dad doesn’t know anyone with his description.” It didn’t take long for the blonde to shake herself out of her odd mood. Forcing herself to smile, she looked away from Sakura. “So, what would you like to do, forehead?”

Chapter Text

Sakura was almost ten when she discovered that her soulmate was in Konoha’s Bingo Book.

It had happened during one of the final classes of the day. The utility of genjutsu when fighting against foreign shinobi had just been raised when Naruto had asked whether Konoha had any knowledge of what foreign shinobi were like.

Iruka had berated the blond boy for his interruption and, unexpectedly, drawn out a simple-looking dark book. Konoha’s very own Bingo Book, as it had turned out. The class had gasped at his explanation of the types of shinobi who had been added as entries by the village’s high-ranking officials, awed at the expertise such a thing required.

A single, impossible to ignore question had flashed though Sakura’s mind: Did Sasori have an entry?

Thus, she had directed herself to Konoha’s library at the end of the class, fully intent on discovering whether her soulmate featured in Konoha’s Bingo Book or not. Finding a copy available to Academy students had been a challenge, but after some searching through the building’s towering bookcases, she had finally managed to find a slightly out of date edition.

Feeling excited, Sakura sat on a nearby table, intent on discovering whether her soulmate featured within the book or not.

He did, as it turned out.

The picture displayed by his name was slightly out of date. He looked considerably younger, less like the teen she now knew and more like the boy she had caught only managed to catch glances of three years ago, but she could have recognised him anywhere.

Leaning forwards, Sakura began to read his record.

Shinobi: Akasuna no Sasori

Age: 11

Affiliation: Sunagakure

Classification: A-rank

Unit: Puppet Brigade.

Additional details: Likely ANBU operative. Grandson of a retired counsellor of Sunagakure.

Sakura blinked. Doubtful, she reread his record, her eyes lingering on his classification at the time of publication of the Bingo Book and his nickname.

She had only been seven years old at the time.

Leaning back against her chair, Sakura read over the list of known abilities and combat techniques. She knew of his use of puppets, but the poison and details on his additional, experimental puppets were new. As was, for that matter, the final note on his potential for S-rank.

Had he achieved that rank by now?

Shutting the book with a loud thump, Sakura stood up and returned the book to its shelf. Breathing in deeply, she attempted to force herself to think through her soulmate’s Bingo Book entry as rationally as she could, only to fail at the thought of his nickname and rank.

Returning home, she unsuccessfully attempted to piece together image of the boy she had shared dreams with, with the one in Konoha’s Bingo Book.

Akasuna, she thought disbelievingly, shaking her head.

Just what had he done to earn ‘of the Red Sand’ as a moniker? Besides, how did human puppets even work?

Had he been lying to her?

Lying in her bed, Sakura glanced at the small pile of scrolls she had taken out of the library at Sasori’s own suggestion. He had started by recommending her chakra control exercises after she had shared with him her early success at forming chakra strings, and it had quickly escalated to simple medical ninjutsu once she had managed to perform water surface walking practice.

If not for him, she mused, would I have learnt any of that?

A small smile grew on Sakura’s lips. She wouldn’t have, that much was clear. Not to the extent that she had. Besides, the thought of her soulmate had been what had strengthened her resolve to train.

Slowly, her mental image of her soulmate began to grow nuance: he was from Sunagakure, a puppet master, a known danger and, despite it, always helpful—at least to her.

Her tenth birthday came and went without a shared dream of any sort, and it was only after a few weeks had passed that she saw Sasori again.

He appeared as if out of a nightmare, barging into a strange, memory-like dream of her father and mother. The hazy, vague figures of her parents froze as she turned to face the Suna shinobi.

“Are you alright?” Sakura asked hesitantly.

He didn’t look it. Some of the state he had been in before falling asleep must have carried over, because she had never seen him as unkempt and damaged. His red hair clung in strange lumps to his forehead, matted with blood. Cuts and gashes littered his skin, with the most prominent cutting deep into his shoulder. His clothes, which rarely were anything but immaculate in what few dreams they had had, hung in tatters, with his beige flak jacket nowhere to be see.

The fourteen-year-old ignored her. Instead, he observed the frozen familial scene in the living room behind her as if it were something wholly foreign.

Feeling unnerved by his silence, Sakura stood up and approached him. “Did something happen?”

Sasori looked at her with a cold gaze. Were he not her soulmate, Sakura was certain she would have been afraid of him. Something about him was cold and twisted, though she couldn’t place exactly what. It was something in his soft, brown eyes, which even when half-lidded projected an indifference so sharp she could almost believe herself to be an enemy.

He didn’t reply.

A chill ran through back. Unprompted, the list of techniques in Konoha’s Bingo Book ran through her mind, and she had to all but herself to speak again. This wasn’t any shinobi. This was her soulmate.

“You look hurt. More than I’ve ever seen before,” she said, trying to explain the terrible feeling coiling in her stomach. “Do you need help?”

“Why do you care?” the Jounin asked tonelessly.

She flinched. “You’re my soulmate.”

Just like that, his cold demeanour changed. Shoulders sagging, he dropped himself gracelessly onto her house’s wooden floor. When he looked at her again, the cold indifference from earlier had diffused considerably. Instead, it had been replaced with the beginnings of something warm she had never quite seen before and which made his eyes unbearably pretty to look at.

“I was sent on a mission to hunt two S-rank missing-nins in Kumogakure,” Sasori said lowly. He looked away. “I’m alright.”

Sakura’s eyebrows rose. “Alone?” she asked, shocked. Her soulmate was good, very good, but she didn’t think practice like that was standard. Not in Konoha, at least.

She took a seat on the empty expanse of floor besides him, choosing to ignore the frozen, hazy figure of her parents. Sasori observed her movements with an unreadable expression.

“Why would they send you alone? Is that normal?”

“No,” Sasori said. “They didn’t expect me to return, but I did. I will.”

“What?” Sakura asked. A flicker of anger coursed through her. How could a Hidden Village’s higher-ups do something like that? To one of their best shinobi, no less. “But that’s—.”

A single look from the red-haired teen silenced her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. The edges of his lips quirked up disdainfully. “They fear me.”

He didn’t look back at her. For a long series of moments Sakura looked at his profile in silence, unsure of how to break the odd tension that had settled around them. She wanted to ask more about whatever it was that had happened, but the faraway gleam in Sasori’s eyes made the sheer improbability of an answer plain to see. Still, she couldn’t just stay silent. Not with the way he looked, bedraggled and hurt as he was.

She swallowed to wet her suddenly dry throat. “I wish there was something I could do help,” she said quietly, after a few minutes of silence. There wasn’t anything she could do, though, even assuming that what brief practice she had gotten of medical ninjutsu were useful. They hadn’t ever met.

A hint of surprise flashed through Sasori’s expression. It was gone before she knew it, morphing instead into incredulity. “We could be enemies one day.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Even so.”

“That’s stupid,” Sasori said. He gestured at the figure of her father, still frozen beyond them. “What’s there to say our villages won’t be at war one day? I could be the man responsible for the deaths of your parents.” He turned to look at her, a cold gleam returning to his eyes. “Any care you feel is misplaced. It’s not respectable for a shinobi.”

Anger flared within her. “I can’t see how, my dad died in a mission years ago,” she spat. “Sometimes mum can barely stand to look at me after I finish training. She wants me to ignore you and marry a civilian.”

If her words surprised him, he didn’t show it. “A reasonable desire, given what shinobi are,” he said, speaking with a levelled voice. “Caring only makes things harder.”

Sakura clenched her fists. She refused to back down, even in the face of the Jounin’s cold and cutting demeanour. “It’s not stupid to care,” she argued, pressing on. “I saw your Bingo Book entry—you’re one of their best. Your village shouldn’t treat you like that.”

“I killed the two missing-nins. There is nothing more to it,” he said detachedly. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“Yes, it does!” Sakura exclaimed. She pushed herself forwards, towards him, and gestured widely. “What if you hadn’t survived? What then?”

“Then I wouldn’t have made it, just like they wanted,” Sasori said blankly. “But I didn’t.”

Something warm and wet began to gather in the corners of her eyes. Dimly, she noticed the way Sasori’s upper lip curled with disgust at the sight. She looked at the scorpion on her wrist. What was wrong with her soulmate that he wasn’t able to understand what she meant?

Her voice quivered. “How could I possibly not care?”

The Suna shinobi remained silent as Sakura’s shoulders shook, not saying a word as she tried to recompose herself. By the time she dared to look at him his expression had returned to the same blank one she had slowly grown familiar with, though his tense posture belied the frustration he felt.

He didn’t look at her again. Standing up abruptly, he looked at the frozen figure of her father, expression contorting into a scowl.

And just like that, he was gone.

She didn’t see Sasori too much after that, likely on account of his deliberately strange sleeping schedule. Slowly, the Academy classes came to an end, and before Sakura knew it she been placed in a Genin team together with Naruto and Sasuke, under one Hatake Kakashi. It was a disaster in the making, if the strange rivalry her two teammates seemed to share was anything to go by.

It was after the catastrophe that their first official day as a Genin team had proven to be that Sakura saw Sasori again.

It hadn’t happened immediately, even with the easiness with which she had fallen asleep after all that the bell test had entailed. No, the familiar pull of a shared dream had only started after her third time revisiting the brief glance she had gotten of Sasuke’s mark—a hauntingly familiar red and black whirlpool on his upper forearm—and she had quickly let herself go.

It hadn’t taken her long to find herself within the now-familiar hall that was his workshop. It remained unchanged even after four years of dreaming intermittently of the place; frozen at an unspecified point in time Sasori had never bothered to talk of. Taking a few steps forwards, Sakura scanned her surroundings, looking for the familiar figure of her soulmate amidst the rows of puppets. He didn’t tend to be hard to find, not in their shared dreams. He had to be relatively close within his dreamscape.

She found him minutes later, at the end of the hall, sitting cross-legged by a jutting door. The space behind it was dark and featureless, lifeless and empty by comparison to the cramped workshop.

“Sasori?” Sakura called out.

The Suna shinobi didn’t reply.

Feeling concerned, Sakura approached him, taking in his appearance. He looked slightly more dishevelled than normal. Gone was his beige flak jacket. Instead, the older teen was only wearing a sleeveless undershirt that clearly outlined the shape of his body. The bandages wrapped around his arms, a recent addition to his habitual look, were torn and dirty. His red hair, messier than usual, fell over his bare forehead, hiding away his expression as he looked down at what could only be his hitai-ate.

Sasori looked up as she kneeled beside him, close enough that she could almost smell him. “You graduated,” he said, looking at her own hitai-ate.

No flurry of pride sparked up at his words. “I did,” Sakura said quietly. “What are you doing?”

It took a moment for the Suna Jounin to reply. “What would happen if I were to carve a line through this,” he said blankly, looking at his own forehead protector. Frowning, Sakura followed Sasori’s elegant fingers as they mimicked the gesture across Sunagakure’s symbol. “Right here.”

The sight made her panic. Surely, he can’t mean to—.

“A line?” she asked, forcing herself to inhale deeply.

Heedless of her dismay, Sasori continued speaking. “It’d be easy to do it. I’ve already it done it a number of times in here,” he said, more to himself than to her. As if to demonstrate, he drew a kunai from a pouch and sliced it through Sunagakure’s symbol cleanly. “Reality wouldn’t be that different.”

Sakura felt her heart skipped a beat. “You can’t mean it,” she blurted out. “You’re not thinking about becoming a missing-nin, are you?”

“Why not?” he asked, voice jarringly calm. “What is there to stop me?”

“What about Sunagakure?” Sakura said indignantly. “What about your family? Wouldn’t they miss you?”

“Family?” he intoned dryly, as if tasting the word. His expression shifted minutely. “There’s no such thing,” he said. Then, continuing, “The village only holds my art back. If I left—.”

“You can’t mean that,” Sakura said, interrupting him. Her mind went back to the Bingo Book entry she had read so long ago. “There has to be someone, right? Don’t they already let you use your puppets?”

Sasori peered over his shoulder, his soft, brown eyes languid as they met her own. Sakura felt anger flare up at his expression.

Bored, she thought. He looks bored.

She clenched her fists. “So?” she spat. “Can you even answer?”

“Why do you care?” Sasori asked, his tone of voice very much the same as it had been the last time he had asked that question. “I’ve got it all planned out. No one will be able to stop me. I’ll retrieve the Third Kazekage and leave.”

She answered instinctively. “Because you’re my soulmate. Because you’ve helped me become a better Genin that I otherwise would have been without you.” She paused. She was repeating the same arguments that had angered him the last time they had spoken, but she couldn’t think of a better way to explain herself. “Because I simply do, even if you can’t understand why.”

Her words incensed him again. “Do you even know what being a shinobi means? What the real, meaningless purpose behind all of the missions you will start to take soon is?” Sasori said harshly. “All those stories you were told about dreams, honour, and heroism—none of them are true, even if you want them to be.”

Sakura faltered. “I…”

“What do you think is the real nature of a Hidden Village? Do you think loyalty, family, or friendship changes any of it?” Sasori continued. Rising to stand, he threw his hitai-ate onto the floor. “Do you lie to yourself and pretend? Wait for something impossible to happen?”

“What is wrong with you?” Sakura asked.

Her soulmate’s pretty, dead eyes bore into her own. “Someone like you wouldn’t understand.”

“So tell me!” Sakura exclaimed. Her voice quavered. “How do you expect me to understand any of what you mean if you don’t explain?”

Something shifted in Sasori’s expression. Slowly, his eyes lost some of their cold edge. A full minute passed before his posture lost the tension it had displayed since her arrival. “Explain?” he said quietly.

Sakura clenched her jaw. “Yes.”

His eyes held her own as he studied her silently, as if she had said something that was puzzling and almost impossible to believe.

Then, to her surprise, he began to speak.

Things relaxed as Sakura’s first year as a Genin came and went. Slowly, the number of shared dreams grew. She began to train in earnest, trying to do her best in missions with Team Seven, all whilst growing undeniably closer to the dangerous, red-haired teen. Her mother didn’t say anything, choosing instead to abandon the topic of soulmates entirely.

As the months went by, something irrevocably shifted between them. Before she knew it, a vivid image of the person who Akasuna no Sasori was had consolidated in Sakura’s mind: he was a puppet master from Sunagakure, a known danger, always helpful, and, also, horribly and undeniably lonely.

Konohamaru fell to the ground with a loud thud. The Suna-nin that had been holding him up grunted in pain, scowling as he turned around to look at Sasuke.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Sasuke stared at the foreign shinobi impassively, keeping two more rocks in his left hand. “What are you bastards doing in our village?”

The Suna-nin’s eyes narrowed as he rubbed his wrist, trying to soothe the pain left behind by Sasuke’s hit. “Another guy who pisses me off…” he muttered.

Sakura observed silently as Sasuke bit another reply. Naruto, who had been standing beside her, glared at their third teammate, unhappy at having missed the chance to help the now-retreating Academy students.

It didn’t take long for the foreign-nin to become enraged. Clenching his jaw, he stepped forwards, approaching the tree branch Sasuke still was perched on. “Get down here and fight!” he demanded, readjusting his gloves. “I hate show-offs like you the most.”

Sakura pursed her lips, thinking the scene before her through.

The two shinobi were from Sunagakure, that much was clear, though she’d be lying if she said that she knew what they were doing in Konoha. Sasori had been strangely busy over the last couple of weeks, having had to undertake one high ranked mission after another, and the most information he had offered for his prolonged absence was the fact that a number of them were classified and involved Otogakure.

Still, she mused, observing detachedly as the Suna-nin in the black, baggy bodysuit let out another threat, allied or not, it is forbidden to enter foreign Hidden Villages without permission. Why are they here?

Before she could voice her thoughts, the Suna-nin detached the strange, bandaged package at his back. He smirked as he rested it on the ground, visibly ready to use whatever it was that he was hiding.

The action alarmed the blonde kunoichi, who began to approach her teammate. “Kankuro!” she exclaimed. “Are you even going to use Karasu?”

Sasuke’s posture tensed immediately, and Naruto readied himself for combat.

“Kankuro, stop it,” a voice suddenly intoned dryly. “You’re an embarrassment to our village.”

Sakura’s head snapped up. She could have recognised the voice anywhere. It was deeper and smoother than she could remember—clearer without the hazy, blurry undertone of all dreams—but it was impossible to mistake.

I didn’t sense him at all, she thought frantically. Why is he here?

His red hair, as messy as she could remember, fell around his half-lidded brown eyes, brushing against his cheeks. His attire—the same she had seen him wear in a number of dreams—was complimented by a large scroll strapped to his lower back, over his beige vest.

The last time they had spoken he had shown her the inner workings of one of his human puppets. Despite the brief, initial aversion his explanation had provoked, it hadn’t taken long for her curiosity to win over, easily fascinating her at the thought of just how he made the chakra pathways in his puppets work.

Sasori approached them slowly, as if he had been standing behind the Suna-nin the whole time. A shorter Suna-nin with auburn hair and thick black rings around his eyes followed behind him. “Losing control of yourself in a fight, how pathetic,” he said derisively. “What do you think we came to Konohagakure for?”

“Sasori,” Kankuro said. His posture shrank as he visibly deflated. “Listen, they started it. I—.”

Sasori didn’t reply. His stare, cold and empty despite his deceptively open posture, silenced the younger boy, making him mutter a string apologies.

“We’re sorry,” the blonde girl said falteringly. “We didn’t mean to start a fight.”

“Good,” Sasori said. “We didn’t come here early to play around.”

“We know that—.”

Sakura’s mouth opened with confusion. Frowning at her strange reaction, Sasuke jumped off the tree branch and rejoined his team, his eyes flicking to the partially covered scorpion on her wrist.

“Sasori?” she asked moments later. She breathed in. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

The two Suna-nin turned to look at her, shocked and wide-eyed at her easy way of address. The third one observed her in silence, impassive and unfazed.

Only Naruto dared to voice his thoughts. “Sakura?” he asked. “How do you know this guy?”

Sasori’s expression softened. He studied her for a heartbeat, as though trying to decide whether to not to say something, until the corners of his lips quirked up. “Sakura.”

Kankuro gasped.

“I thought you said you were in a mission.”

“I am,” he answered. “Chunin exams. Your Jounin teacher should have already informed you.”

Sakura nodded slowly. It must have been true, especially if he said as much, though she knew for a fact that he didn’t have a Genin team. “Then why are you—?”

Her soulmate answered before she could finish her question. “There has been an important development. I need to inform the Hokage,” he said matter-of-factly. Glancing back at the three Suna Genin, he gestured at the street they had come from. “You know what to do. I will meet with you in an hour.”

The three Suna-nin nodded. The auburn-haired one turned around and began to walk away. The other two shared a brief look and followed after him.

Sasori approached her and, slowly, reached out his hand. “It’s good to meet you, Sakura.”

Naruto bristled. “Hey!” he shouted. Sharing a quick look with Sasuke, he turned to glare at the Jounin. “Who do you think you are?”

Sakura ignored him. Dazedly, she reached out and grabbed his hand. The warmth, far more lifelike and real than what rare touches she got of his skin in their shared dreams, soothed the nervousness the encounter had made her feel.

Before she knew it, a bright smile had grown on her face. “It is,” she said, feeling herself flush.

Distantly, she heard Kakashi land near them.