Answer to a prompt off Tumblr. Prompt: Prompt; [SasoSaku- Set after their fight.] Sakura asks Chiyo for some pictures of Sasori.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Naruto.

He was smiling.

A tender expression dotted his face; a kind, optimistic gaze lighting up his warm, brown orbs. The traditional robes of Suna were wrapped around his small form; shielding him from both the heat of the glaring sun and the stray sand that blew in the desert wind. Red hair fell in vibrantly coloured strands down over his forehead and occasionally obscured his eyes from the camera lens.

He was a happy, gentle child.

Then her eyes rose from the photograph in her hands to the body suspended by two puppets before her.

Sasori of the Red Sand was dead; the centre of his life torn out from his puppet body and lying on the jagged, rocky floor.

And she had played a part in his death.

Her eyes flicked back down to the photograph, and then once more to the lifeless puppet. It was astounding to her that the creature, the twisted man that had just speared a blade inside her stomach, could have once been the gentle boy smiling up at her.

"He was human…once," Chiyou, who had been noting her expression, croaked from her weary throat. "A beautiful child who lived a tender existence."

Sakura shifted her gaze away from the photograph and stared at the old woman. The pinkette had heard the history of the grandmother and her young grandson during the battle, so she understood that that Sasori had defected and gradually become the sociopath he was out of the initial betrayal he felt.

"How could he," she gestured down at the boy, and then to the lifeless puppet, "become that?"

"He was gentle," Chiyou replied, memories clouding her gaze, and sorrow prominent at the death of the last remaining blood-child she had. "Yet he detached himself further and further from the people around him, until he knew and relied on only his puppets."

Sakura's heart was still calming itself from the recent battle and danger that it had been in, and she was using the small vestiges of chakra left from her reserves to push the gaping wounds in her body in the direction of healing.

Sasori of the Red Sand had nearly killed her. If Chiyou had not been present, then she would have definitely succumbed to the blood loss.

But despite this, she could not bring herself to fully hate him. Perhaps because she…understood.

A child whose village had failed him; a beautiful child leaving the village to pursue their own objectives.

Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to fully hate Sasori of the Red Sand because he reminded her of her dear ex-teammate, Sasuke Uchiha.

If he hadn't doomed himself to feeling nothing, perhaps the puppet master could have grown, and set himself back onto the right path. But, that had been impossible once he'd become a puppet.

"I feel nothing. This body will not accommodate emotion." The words had been chilling; the very notion that someone could willingly erase their capability of emotion. "I can show you…if you'd like."

Now that had been the most chilling. He had basically offered to make her into a puppet; to create her a body like his.

A body void of emotion.

"His smile was so kind," Sakura broke her thoughts by voicing aloud her observation of the photograph and its model. It was true; the boy's very expression screamed of his calm, observant compassion.

It was a stark contrast to the smirks that had been exchanged in his final battle.

"How could someone change that much?" Her heart was kind, and in turn , was breaking at the thought that such a child was subjected to such a strong amount of cruelty in his life that he simply had to change. "Chiyou?"

The old woman blinked, and then sighed as she understood the question all too well.

"Once, I would never have cared for my village, Sakura," Chiyou replied, as her eyes began to narrow, and the pinkette sensed that the old woman was considering something very dire. "But sometimes we need a catalyst; a changing factor that will alter us and our thoughts."
Naruto.

He was a catalyst for many people, Sakura knew that. People like Gaara, who had given up fighting and believing that he could hold any connections to the world and its inhabitants. Now he was Kazekage, and Naruto had been the one to push him in that direction.

But Sasori…

"If he had truly become as heartless as he claimed," Sakura began, as her thoughts of her previous battle's climax whirled in her mind, "Then why do you think he let himself die?"

Chiyou was silent for a moment, and it was obvious that she was also thinking quite hard in her mind. But then her expression softened, and she had her answer.

"In Suna, we don't get varying seasons for too long," the old woman muttered just loud enough for her company to hear, "But he…Sasori always loved the spring."

Sakura blinked at her words. Spring. But what did that have to do with it?
Chiyou turned her head and smiled gently at the young woman with her; a woman that she saw so much currently-untapped potential within and the capabilities to assist in the changing of the world.

"I do believe that Sasori needed a fresh glimpse of the spring."

Sakura Haruno.

Cherry Blossoms of Spring.

The picture would later be stored away in the young girl's bag; a token of her battle and a constant reminder that no matter how dark and gloomy a situation may be…Spring has a habit of fighting its way through in the end.

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