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Sakura knew she was destined to be alone ever since she was sixteen. Her soul mark, a scorpion, faded when the light finished leaving Akasuna no Sasori’s eyes after their battle in a cave. The moment she’d been waiting for since she was a little girl: meeting her soulmate, realizing her fated person was right there—it was all ripped away before she had time to process it.
The Pein attack was the one thing that shook her out of her funk. Unfortunately, war followed on its heels, and Sakura was thrust into more chaos than she had been prepared for.
But she saw him again.
Sasori looked unnatural, with his dark eyes and cracked skin that belied his status as an Edo Tensei victim. But, even though she knew he was compelled to kill her, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy him.
“Sakura,” his voice was low, softer so they wouldn’t be overheard by any of the shinobi engaged in battle around them. “You have to kill me.”
“But you—”
“Does it matter? I’m already dead. You’re free of your bond.” Then, he scoffed, attempting to attach chakra strings to her arms, “You;re too clever to think we would have ended up any other way.” They were enemies from the moment they’d been born, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
It didn’t stop her from shedding a few tears as she lodged a sword in his heart for the second time in her life.
Her life after the war seemed to be going through the motions, taking on hospital shifts and regular missions without much thought to her own health, until Tsunade forced her to take a two-week vacation.
“I don’t want to see you in Konoha until New Years,” she ordered, glowering at her apprentice. Sakura couldn’ even muster up the energy to fight back—she just went home and began tossing supplies into a sealing scroll.
It was only as she reached for a spare shirt, uncovering a picture she’d ripped out of an old Bingo Book, that she figured out where, exactly, she would go: a cave in the Land of Rivers. Or, what was left of the cave.
Maybe it was a foolish hope, but maybe…maybe if she went to the place they first met, where she found him and lost him almost in the same breath, she could finally get the closure she needed. But she couldn’t help it, especially when, right before he crumbled into ash after she killed him for the second time, she could have sworn Sasori smiled at her.
Sakura packed light and traveled quickly, making it to her destination in less than two days. She found the cave in much the same condition as she’d left it two years before: decimated. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, now that she’d arrived, but maybe seeing what remained of his puppet body, if there was anything left…
She’d only just bent over to start sifting through the rubble when she was interrupted.
“You won’t find me under all that.” The voice that haunted her dreams for almost three years floated across the breeze, causing her to whip around sharply, fists raised defensively.
There in all his glory, stood Akasuna no Sasori. He was no longer wearing Akatsuki robes, but a more traditional Sunese one, the beige and tan colors sticking out in the lush surroundings.
“You’re here!”
“Yes.”
“How are you here?!”
“The Sage is very invested in the personal life of the woman who managed to land a hit on his mother, as it turns out.” Sakura’s face flooded with heat. The Sage was still keeping an eye on her?
She was so overwhelmed that it took her a moment to register another very important fact about her newly reanimated soulmate.
“You’re not a puppet anymore?” Sasori scrunched his nose up in distaste (it was such a cute expression for such a serious man).
“It would appear so.” He sounded as though he were planning on fixing that in the near future.
“Will you go back to Suna, then? Or find somewhere else?” Since he’d died (twice over), was he technically freed of his commitment to his village? Not that such a thing had stopped him from defecting before, of course.
“Perhaps. Now that Rasa is no longer in control…”
“You could come to Konoha. We don’t have a puppet master, and our poison specialist is about to get married.” Shizune would undoubtedly have a child in the future, too, once she and Genma had tied the knot. So it was all but a permanent vacancy.
“You won’t take the post of poison specialist? You did well enough finding an antidote to my own blend.” Sasori quirked an eyebrow, and Sakura felt her cheeks flood with heat once more. It was high praise, coming from him.
“I’m supposed to become medical director,” she averted her eyes as she replied, feeling more meek than she usually would have. “And I’m hoping to open a children’s mental health ward, too. I don’t have the time to be in a lab all that often.”
Sasori hummed in consideration.
“I find the rules of a village to be…constricting.” Her heart began to sink. “But I don’t believe the Sage will allow me to part from you again. If your Hokage makes an attempt on my life, however…”
“She won’t!" Sakura rushed to assure, chest feeling as though it would burst with joy. “Well, she might throw a few boulders at you, but she does that to me, too.” Tsunade understood what it was like to lose a soulmate, so to see Sakura regain her own? Well, if strings could be pulled for Sasuke, then surely something could be done for Sasori.
He said nothing, but held out his hand in offering.