Fate Wheel | Naruto

𝟗𝟔| "As the raindrops cry"

CHAPTER 96 — AS THE RAINDROPS CRY
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SIX MONTHS AGO

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

All his experiences left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Back when he was a young, inquisitive boy who'd experiment with his grandmother's apparatus and gadgets, who'd watch with admiration as she mixed herbs and concoctions, who'd let him read her books with eagerness and memorise the words by heart; he'd never realised the importance of treasuring seemingly insignificant moments and how that would affect the person he was today. If it was an option, Sasori would return back to the time where he knew nothing but ignorance and the safety it bestowed. At least then, his experience wouldn't weigh him down with such heavy roles.

He experienced the nature of man, had become it at some point in his life, the hubris in human nature and how it was an innate instinct to act upon needs no matter how selfish they may seem.

He experienced altruism, how selflessness and love could exacerbate to such extreme levels that it rendered one incapable of caring about themselves like how they cared about others. How the body becomes a vessel to abide by the want of another. A body disposable and a weak mind unable to grasp onto will.

He experienced exploitation, how fragile minds could easily be manipulated and moulded into perfect slaves, how humans could mindlessly be controlled and stripped off their identity. How the strong take advantage of the weak; a step stool for eternal glory and pointless sacrifices.

Most importantly, Sasori had felt what it meant to be reborn. To experience life again from a different perspective, as a different person with the same body and the same mind. How his memories forged a different outcome of the same person. His old self once pondered how life would've been if he didn't try to defy natural law and become something beyond human, a life where his parents existed and he knew nothing but Suna's blistering heat and occasional sand storms. Unlike then, thoughts of things that could've been never seemed to stir much emotion in his puppet heart.

Unlike then, Sasori felt. He felt a lot more than he was used to.

The glorified mass murderer he'd been had no difficulty in numbing his emotions. He didn't know if he had emotions at all- whether parts of him still clung onto humanity or remembered the human aspects of his life. Feeling was the repercussion of desiring a self-seeking life, because in order to live you had to empathise, you had to feel, you had to give and take and understand what it meant to retain the part of your soul untainted by the darkness of the world.

Despite how the white cloaks claimed to despise humans, their actions seemed so feasibly human. So predictable. He didn't even need his Fate Wheel abilities to predict what would happen next.

Over the past years Sasori changed his approach. Each encounter he surmounted, he failed. Why? It wasn't that he hadn't prognosticated it, he simply didn't understand- or, retrospectively speaking, didn't acquire the necessary knowledge, resources and allies that would aid him in this silent war. It was an unwritten rule amongst Fate Wheels to weigh burdens without expecting help. That so long the world remained oblivious to its true enemy, it would be their moral duty— their chance of redemption, to fulfil their purpose.