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Sand, Sasori knows, is an ever-changing thing. 

Sand has cycles, a constant and moving motion flowing beneath rolling dunes, and life repeats here, out in this world of desolation and bare and rough. There is a pattern, has been since the desert’s inception, grains floating through wind, building and building upon each other, tipping into dunes that sift across the surface, over and over and over, a cyclical rotation of replenishment, of constant, of new.

Sasori was born in sand, knew it from his first days and will know it into eternity, will remember what grit feels like against his skin, coarse and rough and warm beneath scorching sun. He remembers the sting of sand against his eyes, of his shoulders going red beneath unforgiving heat. Sun will always rise here, he knows, will always beat down on the vast ocean of dune, an entire ecosystem, an entire world consisting only of the barren, the burned. 

The sand has seen his first steps, was with him when he took his first breaths, when he took his first life, and Sasori remembers what sand looks like when it bleeds red. 

He remembers the sand then, that night, that night, how it shifted and tilted beneath stumbling, uneasy feet, how it cradled him when he fell, exhausted and bleeding but victorious, miraculously, skillfully victorious. The sand was there when he ran, bloody and bruised and one step closer to what he knew he could be, one step closer to unimaginable strength, and it guided him between pillars and outcrops of sandstone deep into the night, kept him hidden when the village realized their Kazekage had gone missing. He was never found, and the sand never told.

Sand holds no memory. It keeps no grudges, gives no affection. Sand erases the imprints made on its skin and wipes itself clean, rebirths itself anew as a transitional thing, never in stasis, always in flux, rolling dunes for miles and miles and miles. When blood stains sand, the sand does not mind, will only bring more if itself, dragged by wind and laid atop any impurity, erasing history and contamination and pollution. Sand is an untainted thing, pure in complexion and clean in composition, and sand does not tell its secrets, only hides them, whispers them between grains of flying grit, unknown to human ears, a language arcane. 

It’s part of the cycle, he knows, of rebirth, of repetition and creation, of immortal existence. 

It is with sand that Sasori begins to think, to consider what eternal life would be like. Sand has seen the collapse of life, has heard men take in their last breaths, has settled into lungs that do not expel air and will exist there until decomposition frees it from a mortal body it was never meant to inhabit. Sand was not meant to be contained.

And Sasori considers, briefly, at first, and then deeply, what life would be like if he could see it forever, if he could become part of it, embed himself within the timeline of the Earth and exist alongside her, as everlasting as the world beneath his feet. Time would be different, then, an insignificant thing, though not punctuality, never punctuality, and he would always be mindful of waiting, of waiting, of a life of waiting and making others wait and to feel the tick of time as it passes-

Sand does not show time, does not scar the way life does, does not keep cracks and crevices alive. Days bleed together in the desert, an unending stream of dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, and it’s repetition, always repetition, of time as an endless stream that would lead men to madness, if the sand so chose. It could lead men to madness.

It will lead men to madness.

But Sasori understands sand, knows it like no other, can see the roll of its dunes and recognize that sand was not made for human comprehension, that sand and desert exist beyond mortal lifespans. Sasori will make himself otherworldly, as constant and unending as the desert. He was made for eternity, for a life everlasting, and the sand will see him through this life, through every life, will cradle his feet as he walks and will cover his tracks, forever wiping itself clean, forever building itself anew.  

When Sasori is inducted into an organization he does not know, it will be in the desert, on sand he has walked hundreds of times before, will walk hundreds of times again. Sand will see him lose, will watch as he admits defeat and will wave away the proof, will hide his loss in the same way it would his victory, erasing imperfection indiscriminately. 

Sand will not see Sasori’s new body, but Sasori will think of it when he takes a scalpel to his skin, will imagine sifting dunes as he creates himself anew, will think of unmarred desert lasting for eons on a timeline unknown to humanity but will soon be known to him. He will see the world the way the sand does, will exist as an equal to the desert, and he does not flinch when he spills his own blood, knows the sand would hide it the way it does every blemish, and so he will, too. 

The sand does not allow for weakness, and Sasori has never been fragile.

Immortality suits him, he thinks, birthed alight into the life of gods, of men unchained, uncaged, free and untethered like unclaimed desert. 

The sand will not know him when he returns, cloaked and hidden inside a body not his own, but it will welcome him regardless, will dare him to traverse its scorching sun and flowing hillocks, and it will not know that he was born in this, that he knows this land like he knows himself, that as much as he despises the desert, it cannot be taken from him, as intertwined with his soul as timelessness, as art. 

When he uses a puppet to push himself through miles of unwalked desert, it will cover his tracks and hide him in the way it has always done, and it will bury the blood he spills here, will soak in the violent red and expunge it from existence, the only witness to mass devastation, and it will not give him away.

There are more grains of sand in a sand dune than there are puppets he is able to control, even in this new body, a creation of art and perfection and unerring precision, but that’s fine, he thinks, that’s fine. He will not compete with an adversary to which he knows he will lose, will not waste time on trivialities and lost causes. But he will work, and he will build, and he knows an army of three hundred is enough, for now, at least, it will be enough, and so he will build, and the sand will watch, and he will build.

Sasori will have memory enough for both of them, will remember how sands run red, will know the cracks and crevices that bleed beneath his feet. He will remember the time, will count the days and nights as they tip into each other, inseparable in the way Sasori is with immortality, and he will remember the landscape as it was. 

Sand, Sasori knows, is an ever-changing thing, and that's fine, he thinks, that's fine. Sasori will be the permanence that walks across its dunes.