Chapter Text
She’d never had a mark.
Not once. The faint pinkish-red skin to show her that her (supposed) soulmate was out there, alive, albeit hurt. A darker hue to her already pale skin to show where her soulmate had been bruised, cut, stabbed, or otherwise hurt until it faded into her own normally colored skin once the original injury was healed.
Everyone was said to have one. A soulmate, that was.
She remembered when she’d watched Ino’s arm turn bright red when they were twelve and coming to find out later Shikamaru had fallen off a roof when he was napping and broke his whole left arm. She remembered looking in the mirror in nothing but her underwear at home after a long mission, healing her own cuts and burns, but never finding any darker hued skin she couldn’t heal, because they were only the shadows of the real injuries on a different person.
Tsunade had always looked at her with weary and sad eyes. “They might not be out there,” she’d once told her, bluntly, like no one else would. “They might already be dead.”
It happened. They were shinobi, after all. And if her soulmate was a shinobi and not a civilian, the odds were stacked against her.
What was odd, however, was how she’d never had one mark. Even if her soulmate was already dead, she should have gotten the mark that killed them. The kill mark. The one mark that would never go away because it would never heal.
Sakura tried not to think about it too often. She’d never been overly fond of the idea of being predestined for one single person. She preferred choices, thanks ever so much. None of this destiny crap.
But when she stood in the cave surrounded by the remains of hundreds of creepy-ass puppets, her hand wrapped around the object she’d realized was once a beating heart, she heard Chiyo—bleeding, about to be dead Chiyo—gasp loudly.
Sakura forced herself not to look at her, refusing to look away from this puppet-boy called Sasori. She was bleeding and panting and sweating off dirt. She’d already been impaled with a damn sword and her clothes were hanging off her in tatters. There was no way in hell Sasori was going to beat her because she took her eyes off him for one measly second.
She started to close her fist around his fake heart.
“No!” Chiyo gasped, and Sakura saw out of the corner of her eye as she raised one weak arm towards her, then saw it flutter back down to her lap where she lay on the ground. Blood trickled out of her mouth.
Sakura paused, not clenching any harder, but not releasing any pressure either.
Sasori was looking at her oddly. Frankly, Sakura had stopped really listening to the man—puppet? man? thing?—after the fifth time he tried to talk her into becoming a puppet for him. She was so done with that day.
“Sakura,” Chiyo gasped. “Look down.”
She was most certainly not going to look down. Rule number one when not trying to get yourself killed when fighting an Akatsuki member: don’t fucking look away.
“Girl,” Sasori said. “Look down now.”
Sakura let out a sound of confusion and indignation.
He sneered. “You have my heart in your tight little fist. I’m not going to try anything. Look down.”
She looked down.
And stopped.
Her clothes hung off her in tatters. That sword of his had done quite some damage to her—besides the damn impalement—and to her clothes. One of the things it had done was rip her vest completely off her left shoulder so that her collarbone and a few inches of skin below were exposed. Sakura had been studiously ignoring that little detail and just counted herself lucky it was still covering all the important areas.
The area around her heart was red. Bright red. Blood red.
She blinked.
Then she looked up to see Sasori, who was also looking at her chest in something like rising fascination and horror.
And all she could say was, “Oh, fuck.”
And then she heard Chiyo, off to her left, say in quiet amazement and fascination, “Fuck.”
Sasori just stared, not blinking.
Her mind raced. His body was a puppet—his body was a puppet.
A puppet didn’t get injured. A puppet body that wasn’t his original body. And how long had Sasori been in his puppet body? Longer than she’d been alive, surely.
Shit. Shit.
Sakura quietly cursed Kami.
Chiyo started to chuckle, the blood in her throat making it sound like something wet was rattling around. “Well, boy,” she said to Sasori, “it seems that Kami still has some humor after all.” She made a considering noise. “Ruined my chance of great-grandchildren, you did. Selfish boy.”
And then she fell back on the ground, dead.
Sakura really, really didn’t know what to do. She sure as hell wasn’t going to look back down at her chest to see the red lining where her heart was. Her hand was still clenched tightly around Sasori’s heart.
It just had to be a homicidal maniac who was who knew how old and had a fetish for puppets, didn’t it?
“This is unfortunate,” Sasori finally said.
“Hmm,” Sakura said, her mind whirling. She was going to have a permanent red stain around her heart when she crushed Sasori’s. She was going to kill her soulmate and it would leave a physical mark on her until the day she died. She was going to have to tell Tsunade and the others that her soulmate was—
She took a steady breath.
She closed her fist.
It made a sickeningly wet crunching noise. Some kind of thick blue liquid gushed out between her fingers.
Sakura watched Sasori as he watched her.
He smiled.
“Impressive,” he murmured. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You don’t know me,” she hissed, not understanding what was happening. Why was he still standing?
She risked a look down, saw that her deep red mark was still there on her chest, darker now. Permanent.
She heard him give a mirthless chuckle. “That, my dear,” Sasori said, “was only part of my heart. You didn’t think I’d keep it in one place, did you?”
Sakura felt her heart leap into her throat, both in panic and rage. Fucker.
Of course he wouldn’t. Why build a freaking puppet army, make yourself into a living puppet, find some way to maintain your original heart but not split it into more than one piece? Silly girl.
Sakura thought quickly. She didn’t have much chakra left. And she had no idea where his other piece—or maybe pieces?—of his heart was. It probably wasn’t even with him.
She was so screwed.
And then she realized he could have killed her already. Should have, really. She’d looked away to see her heart when both Chiyo and Sasori had told her to. He had an opening then. Hell, he had an opening now and she was still standing there, albeit shakily.
Sasori looked at her through hooded eyes. “You know, I never thought I had a soulmate. Never had a mark, of course. It was just one less thing holding me back, but now, with you here—” his eyes raked down her figure with renewed interest. “—after all this time, and you show up with fire in your eyes and a flaming heart.”
He took slow steps towards her, stopped about an arm’s length away from her chest. He quirked his head at her. Sakura fought back the shudder that wanted to wrack through her body at how inhuman that movement was, how his neck tilted just a little too much to the side, his eyes glassy and flat in his face. They were an odd amber color, and Sakura wondered idly if they’d been that color when he was alive.
Her eyes were drawn to his chest then, his doll chest cavity where it was only a gaping hole from where his heart—the one she’d crushed in her fist, the one that was leaking blue fluid down her wrist and fingers—had once resided.
Her whole body went still at the red leaking from the hole, seemingly out of thin air.
Sasori saw her freeze and looked down. His puppet body gave her no indication of what he felt, did not flinch or twitch, but she watched as he raised one hand towards it. Saw him pause as he touched the red, lifted it in front of his face to inspect it.
“Blood,” Sasori muttered, more to himself than to her.
“Oh,” she said, because of course this whole event was just getting weirder and weirder still.
“I don’t bleed,” Sasori said, sounding almost lost.
Sakura scoffed. “Yeah, I got that during our fight. If you did it would’ve made my life a ton easier.”
His head raised and he looked at her, and she froze at his look. “What have you done to me?” His voice was laced with quiet, simmering rage—something she hadn’t heard from him before, even during their fight.
Sakura felt herself bristle at his tone and accusation. “As much as I would love to be able to take credit for making you bleed,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “I have nothing to do with this.”
Then she paused. And looked down at her own heart.
She started chuckling.
Sasori looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
“Your grandmother was right,” she said between inhaled breaths, just being so done with that day and that fight and this stupid, infuriating puppet-boy who was her soulmate. “Kami does have a sense of humor.”
She pointed a finger at his gaping hole of a heart that was still bleeding red, waved the hand that was still clenching what remained of his fake heart. “It seems that soulmates are our biggest weakness.”
Sasori went very, very still as the meaning of her words hit him.
“You’ve already destroyed a part of my heart, doll-face,” he finally said, breathing the words out like they cost him something. “As my soulmate, you already own the rest of it.”
The unspoken question of if she was going to crush that part too hung in the air between them, charged and making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
“I should,” she said. “I already did it once.” She held up her blue stained hand again, like it was the proof they both needed.
She watched his throat bob, even though she was pretty sure he didn’t need to swallow. But that train of thought would just lead her into wondering how life-like he’d made his puppet body, how much normalcy did he put the effort into keeping?
Sakura took a breath. “I don’t want you.”
He shrugged. “But I might need you.”
It hit her like a physical blow.
She wondering, almost as an afterthought, if she stabbed herself through her heart, would he die too? That wasn’t how it usually went with soulmates as she understood it, but usually one half of the soulmates didn’t ruin their human body to turn it into something inhuman and unfeeling. And usually one half didn’t try to kill the other half. Usually one half of the soulmate bond didn’t twist their own heart into something unholy. Usually a person’s heart didn’t bleed blue liquid and the chest cavity didn’t have a gaping hole in it. But, hey, apparently that day was just full of surprises.
She clenched her fists at her sides, further crushing his heart. “I owe you nothing.”
“Oh, doll-face,” he practically purred, looking at her through his lashes. “I don’t want you owing me anything—I want you to offer me everything.”
“So that’s it, then?” she asked, trying to make her voice not shake with suppressed rage. She was already so tired from their fight, so ready to just collapse to the ground. “You suddenly want this when you know I hold your life in my hands?”
“I believe you hold my life in your heart, if we’re getting particular about it.” A smile curled one corner of his lips. “And you’re mistaken, doll-face.”
He took another step towards her, lifted a hand to her face, letting the tips of his fingers run over the surface of her skin, shifted the dust and blood on it. “I’ve waited a very long time for my soulmate,” he murmured, and she was taken aback at how real his skin felt, like normal, human skin. The only thing that gave it away was how ice cold it was with the lack of blood flow. With the lack of any circulating flow, really. He had nothing in his body to warm it.
“You already piqued my interest, showing up to fight me with my grandmother, glaring at me with hate and fury in your eyes. I thought you were going to be an easy kill, nothing to think twice about. How pleasantly surprised I was when you desiccated the cave around us with those tiny, fragile looking fists.” He licked his lips as he looked at her.
Sakura was tense, her muscles coiled and she felt ready to snap, but all her internal alarms were just gone, her body and mind telling her she was safe with his puppet-boy who’d tried to kill her, morph her body into something unfeeling and dead inside, whose heart she’d just crushed in her ‘tiny, fragile fist.’ It terrified her that her body was betraying her now that it—her damn soul—had recognized him as hers.
Sasori gently lifted the hand that was covered in blue liquid, prying her fingers open until the remains of his heart fell at her feet with a sickening squelch. He lifted her fingers to his mouth, traced his lips—surprisingly smooth, soft lips—along her bruised knuckles until his mouth was tainted blue.
“I’ve waited a long time for you,” he said again. “You’re a weakness to me. I’ve spent a great deal of time making myself immortal, unbreakable. And just after I’m sure I’ve succeeded, fate throws you at me.” A rueful smirk twisted his blue lips. “You, a loyal Konoha kunoichi with steel in your spine and hate in your gaze. A twist of fate and irony that your life is now my life, and as you’ve so beautifully proven, you’re not above killing me.”
Sasori leaned closer to her until she could feel his breath on her face. “And I find it impossible to even want to kill you, even if killing you didn’t ensure my own death. So no, doll-face, I find myself wanting to crack open your soul to see what lay inside, to see how fate decided it would merge with my own.”
“You’re a puppet,” she hissed. “I’m not sure if you have a soul anymore.”
He shrugged. “What do I care about the existence of my own soul when my very being aches for yours? What could possibly compare to that?”
“Loyalty,” she said. “Commitment. I will not love you.”
“Curious, how you say ‘will not’ instead of cannot.” He smirked down at her then, something lazy and vicious at once. “I want you, doll-face, and it has nothing to do with you holding my life in your tight little fists.”
“Does that mean you’ll hand me the rest of your heart then?” Sakura asked in her sweetest voice.
Sasori chuckled. “Asking for favors already, doll-face?” He licked his lips, smearing the blue residue there. He still had her hand in his, running his thumb over her bleeding and bruised knuckles. “Come with me.”
She snarled. “You’re insane.”
“No? Ah, well, maybe it’s too soon. But the thing about soulmates is that they’re drawn to each other, whether they like it or not. Whatever is left of my soul has already claimed you as mine, but I want more than that. I want your loyalty, your commitment,” he voiced back her own words with a smirk. “I want you to claim me as I’ve claimed you. I want to be able to crawl beneath your skin and see all your secrets, all your desires, and take them as my own.”
“You have no claim on me,” Sakura said heatedly.
“I do,” he retorted in an infuriating voice that demanded no argument. Sakura was positively seething. “I once thought about killing my soulmate if I even had one,” he murmured idly. “Thought about impaling them.” His eyes darted to her abdomen where his sword had done just that.
“But now—” he whispered in almost a reverent tone. “—now I find the mere thought repugnant and obscene.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Sakura questioned, narrowing her eyes at him. “You’re telling me that you’re unable to kill me—that gives me quite a bit of power over you.”
“A gift for a gift.” Sasori encircled her wrist in his long fingers, pulled her to him in that last bit of distance until her chest was flush with his. “One day you’ll repay the favor, doll-face.”
She sneered and tilted her head back to look him in the eye, let him see the loathing at the mere idea of that, of her stubbornness and the unyielding iron in her gaze. “You’re my soulmate,” she said with obvious distaste. “That alone is more than I’m willing to share with you—an Akatsuki member, a man who twisted his body into something else, a man who could kill his own grandmother.”
She licked her lips and saw Sasori watch the movement with greedy, possessive eyes. “I don’t trust you,” she went on. “Not even a little bit. And you have no hope with me without it.”
Something flared in his amber eyes at that, and Sakura watched as his previous dead eyes went just a little bit brighter. He licked his lips again. “A dare, doll-face?” A grin twisted his face and he lowered it to hers. “I accept.”
Her breath hitched at his sudden closeness, but she refused to give an inch, to back down or be intimidated by this puppet-boy, soulmate or not.
Their breaths mingled, and something deep in her sang, Oh, there you are.
She whispered, “Go to hell, puppet-boy,” and kneed him in the crotch.
His eyes went wide and he immediately released her, hunching over in pain. Sakura didn’t hesitate and ran out of that accursed cave, not looking back as Sasori cursed lowly and called out her name in something that almost resembled a plea.
She chalked it up to her disorientation and exhaustion.