This is the extended form of 'One Last Time'.
The beginning, up up the first page break about a fourth of the way down, is the exact same.
Some of my friends liked the shortened, more 'mysterious' (LMAO--NO,) version, but other readers were all like ... 'WTF! U DIN FINSH IT!! FINSH NOW!! RAWR!!'.
=P Sorry Xhrae, Lavsie...
Enjoy.
Click me please →
When lightning tears though the sky, throwing the heavens on fire for a brief moment, it is coupled with, if not instantaneously followed by, a great strident CRACK!. Then the rumbling echoes of the initial explosion, caused by the sudden and colossal change in heat, ensue.
But when my final puppet, my best one to boot, had exploded violently, the audio effects between the two were indistinguishable.
The iron sand had slammed into the walls of the cavern with such a force, all the walls had been broken down into rocks of varying sizes, from minute pebbles of which one could hold by the scores at a time in the cup of their hand, to the immense boulders, though there weren't many, that even strongest of man or ninja would have quite an ordeal of moving if from its place.
Sunlight shone through the newly made and opened windows of the Akatsuki lair. It fluttered over the limestone and reflected off the mica crystals, lighting up the once oppressively dark room. As more stone of my organizations hideaway crumbled and fell to the ground, light had grown from a rather faint trickle to a veritable flood.
I was momentarily blinded by the vibrant shine.
As my pupils dilated subtly, adjusting to the inflow of illumination, I took in the scene of destruction.
Strewn across the sharp vivid, glaring white was the undeniable black splotches that, when it had been whole, had been my Sandaime Kazekage puppet; my pride, my trump card.
I slowly lowered myself to a squatting position. The back of my hand grazed upon the worn clothe, the feeling not dissimilar to that of silk, as I reached out to pick up a handful of iron sand and a small piece of midnight burlap.
'I guess this is the end...'
"Sasori!!" I heard the distinctive grating of my obaa-chan's voice call from a little ways away. I glanced at her shrunken and wrinkled frame from behind a few strands of burgundy hair that hung low in my face. "It's over!!"
'Indeed, it... is...'
"You couldn't possibly win!!" A younger woman yelled from besides my ancient relative. She had a rather abnormal shade of hair and bright green eyes, far more saturated and vibrant of my own. Far more... alive...
'I could if I wanted to...'
"Your best puppet was destroyed! You have no more..."
'...not true.'
"It's two against one, Sasori. You won't win."
The life had fled my eyes years ago. Just over twenty years ago. It was that day... That godforsaken day...
From the depths of my black cloak, adorned with dark red clouds, I found a summoning scroll and a diminutive vial of my blood. I dropped it, gently of course, upon the ground.
The faintest zephyr picked up as I just stood there. It tenderly tugged at the sand grains I had enclosed my fist upon, and after an instant, it was gone carried away by the wind.
I watched the black sands sweep away, flying into the gorgeous cerulean sky, its color, a vicious reminder of her eyes...
With a flourish, I emptied the vial upon my left palm, watching with mute fascination as a few rare drops of my blood came spilling out.
'This is...'
Delicately, I dipped a long, tapered finger into the crimson puddle. After saturating my fingertip with blood, I lowered it to the worn, and slightly torn, scroll summoning parchment, colored a faded hue of ochre.
'...the end.'
As soon as the scarlet liquid made contact with the parchment, its dull color spider-webbed outwards, spreading heartbreak over the desert sands.
'I just want...'
Daintily, I began write on the parchment. Intricate designs bloomed across the paper. Flourishes, ornamentals, but underlying it all were words; was a song that sang for, begged for, needed... her.
'...to see her...'
The blood had dried, and it's imprint-eternal. Tenderly, I rolled it up, and brought it up to my nose so I could smell it... so I could smell her.
Her essence lingered upon the roll.
'...one last time...'
"Sasori, we can't keep doing this."
Sasori was listless. He couldn't sleep as he lay down on his stiff, bed, staring at the nondescript cement ceiling above. Even there, amidst shades of grey, her china-doll face appeared, haunting him.
"We can't keep doing this."
She had been afraid, mortally so, of have them being found out. He could feel her fear, as much as her ardent love, every time they touched... in every kiss they shared.
"This... affair... it cannot go on..."
Sasori's eyes became delicate slits as he thought of the reasons of as to why he couldn't be with her.
The reason.
Him.
She had always been an eminent girl. I mean, she had mauve hair, for gods' sake. Her beauty knew neither rhyme nor reason and it was rumored that she was the daughter of a seraph, or maybe even of a god.
Whoever's child she may have been, her radiance was unrivaled and every man in Sunakagure no Sato fell to her charm. Sandaime Kazekage included.
"He's starting to act strange..."
The wedding had been a magnificent affair, vividly etched into young Sasori's mind. He could remember just how broken and helpless she had appeared to be as she lifelessly whispered the words, "I do."
"It's like... he knows..."
Sasori had been her first and best friend... first crush... first kiss... He was her world, and she, his...
She had came to him the next day, her eyes bloodshot, completely dry... they were lifeless, and her once vivacious spirit, as he could clearly see, was broken.
He had held small frame in his arms, hoping, wanting, desiring to heal the girl that slept, and shivering not from cold, but from fear and pain, in his lap.
Lovingly, he stroked her rumpled violet hair, wiping away her tears, smoothing out her fears. He sang softly in her seashell shaped ears until the final emotionally wrecked sobs died away.
"Sasori-kun, I love you... I freaking love you..."
As the sun slowly melted into the horizon that evening, she slipped away. A single tear, one worth more than a diamond its size, formed at the corner of her eye, caught by her entrancingly long eyelashes. Sasori kissed it away, and as her petite back disappeared into the distance, his heart imploded upon itself.
And in the morning, she would come back again, with new bruises, pains, aches, and other horrors of the mind and body. He gladly took her in and healed her. It was as if the moon had disappeared, and only during day, was he enlightened with her touch. She was his sun, and it was she who took away the pain, however ephemeral, of a great heartbreak. Not the other way around.
"Please don't forget that..."
Every single day, she would come, a little after sunrise. And everyday, Sasori would greet her with a gentle kiss.
Soon, the dams that withheld the pent up passion broke. Confessions and love was made and the charade went on for months. Only the wind, the sky, and the small oasis around stood witness.
"Long after my bones have turned to dust, and my remnants carried away by the winds..."
Everyday but today. There wasn't a soft, meek knock at his ebony door this morning, and he threw it open, instead of the usual oppressive heat that beat down and choked the normal human was absent, and in its place cold. A biting, wintry cold that made the heart freeze and the soul perish.
The sun was gone. The sky was covered with an oppressive and impermeable layer of stormy grey cloud, threatening to unfurl is wrath at any given moment.
Foreboding built up within his chest, nearly asphyxiating him.
Without a second thought, Sasori ran. He ran, leaping from treetop to treetop, from roof to roof, shoving away any people who stood in his way. He made a rapid advancement to the center of Sunagakure, the Kazekage's palace.
"...my love for you, and only you, will last. It won't fade."
It rained. For the first time in centuries, it rained. It rained in Sunagakure.
The heavens threw down its fury, first small, and increasing as Sasori hurried along. The air currents coiled themselves around him, almost as in attempt to draw him away. He was unhindered,
He vaulted the walls, and raced around the parapets. The coppery scent of blood wafted in spirals, ascending to the realm of the gods above the northwestern courtyard.
She was sitting, not moving, not breathing, on a low, pink marble bench, surrounded by lilac orchids. Sasori crushed her small frame in a hug, then lifting her up, spinning her around in circles.
Only when he set her down on her small, bound feet, did he notice that she had already departed from this world.
She collapsed to the stone-paved ground of the lusciously nurtured garden's courtyard, filled with her favorite flowers.
The bench was now white, and the rain beat down upon it and all of humanity with a vengeance oh-so-bitter.
Disbelievingly, desperately, Sasori knelt down and hesitantly touched a tendril of her amethyst hair. Her wide turquoise eyes stared inanely back at him.
Trembling, Sasori wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her corpse up to his chest. With gentle fingers, he closed her near-translucent eyelids over now dimmed jewels of light.
His dry lips grazed across her forehead, her eyelashes tickling his chin. Blood and tears fused, and the angels mourned her death for their tears fell as her soul flew.
As puddles formed and new raindrops made rippling waves across the cobblestone floor, Sasori felt his humanity bleed away.
After that day, Sandaime Kazekage was no where to be found, and Sasori was now marked across all five of the Shinobi Nations as a missing ninja of the worst and most dangerous grade.
Alive...
In the twenty years from which I had defected from Sunagakure no Sato, I have never felt so alive.
It was because of her. Her death led to mine. Her body now soulless, and mine... the same.
But now she's here! She's with me again, at last.
We're together once more.
Apart, we were half-persons. Un-whole. Incomplete.
But now... as the glitter dust settles, I can still smell the lilac that wafts about her. Her skin retained its flawlessness and its silken texture not at all faded.
Her dress was a dark plum kimono, richly embroidered with golden flowers and the stars and I gently trailed my roughened fingers down the side of her frame.
She was as beautiful as ever, or, perhaps... even more so.
Together, we were whole.
"Is that...her?" I heard my dear obaa-san whisper, her words carried across the wide, silent, opening. "Is it...?"
"She's not my strongest," I remarked, making no attempt to hide the emotion that filled me up now that she was with me once more. "But she is my finest, my best, my one, my only. She means so much more... so much more..."
I bent my neck and kissed her lightly, clasping my hands around her small china doll ones. I tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear, and secured it was a beautifully dried rose.
"My love."
"...my love for you, and only you, will last."
The sun had gone down and faded beyond the dark horizons. The moon slowly made its appearance in the velvet navy sky, accompanied by serenely twinkling stars that mocked the vicious carnage below.
"It won't fade...ever."
Sakura Haruno and my grandmother had long left, trailing and limping laggardly. Their wounds should have been fatal, to the worst degree possible. But somehow, some obscure how... the lived.
Oh how I wished for her life.
Oh how I wished to see that brilliant smile, those sparkling emerald eyes. Oh how dearly I wished for the gentle flutter, a butterfly touch, upon my lips.
No matter how perfect her puppet had been, it was of no comparison to her when she was alive.
Alive...
I could slowly feel my own life lines slip away. They broke free of this body, made purely of materials of the earth. Not flesh, not bone. No blood.
My bonds to humanity snapped and could see, the little bit that remained, float up into the dark sky; in hopes of vain that it might join hers, to be together, for all eternity.
'You were always the emotional kind...'
There remained little, very little, chakra in this puppet-body of mine, but I gathered it and forced it to remain in my head and left arm. Torturously so, I craned my neck and bent to at angles inhumane in her direction.
'More than once did you profess your love...'
Her lavender hair glimmered in the moonlight and my wooden arm shook and swayed as I reached for a lock of violet. The finest silks of China couldn't hold a candle to it, even after one score years of limbo.
With a firm grip upon her shoulder, I gently pulled her closer, as the scent of lilacs washed over me.
'But I never returned the words. Never did I truly voice these emotions aloud.'
After exerting an excruciating of effort, I managed to shift myself so I was on my side, lying down, face to face with her doll.
'But now, my love, but now...'
My voice, once cold, cool, void, was now choked as I whispered sweet lullabies in her ear, stroking her face with shaking fingers.
"Aishiteru, my beautiful... I love you..."
I reached one wooden hand down and carefully wrapped my fingers around her hand and held it as my eyes closed... One. Last. Time.
This blessing.
Love lasts forever... and beauty...the same.
There's beauty in eternity. There's love in forever.
Two empty shells lay on the ground of the battle scene, fated to be there forevermore as their souls reunited in the heavens above.
Hateshiganai no Banzen
The Beauty of Forever
x{FIN}x
I'd love it if you went to the results →
Rating is Love.
Messaging is Devotion.
Both is Insanity. Join the Club.
---Sing-My-Lullaby
=)
