It’s five before midnight and in the shadows at the end of the bed, there sits a boy. There is no expression on the perfect porcelain features, and the only movement is that of the long, slender fingers curling in his lap.

The boy is watching the window, his gaze tracing the path of the wind in the trees. He can hear the branches rustle, and the sighing of their leaves gives life to the voices in his head. Even the rain that patters on the windowpane cannot smother the sound of the soft discourse floating around him.

From all sides come snatches of conversation, fragments of sentences layered one on another, individual words lost in the rush of their sighing. At his side, head nodding to the delicate twitch of the boy’s fingers, Sandaime Kazekage whispers his own mourning song. His voice is the rush of the wind across the dunes, the scattering of dust whipping across the streets of Suna, the hiss of the sands flowing across stone. Deep in the dull oak of his eyes is reflected the remembered gleam of the desert sun.

In the corner of the room, Hiruko lurks in the shadows, his scorpion’s tail shifting in time with the steady cadence of his words. The Scorpion speaks of love and betrayal, his voice harsh and grating, wooden teeth catching on the gentler words of peace. His voice is drenched in blood and every phrase he utters comes away stinking of carnage.

Sasori is used to the voices of his creations. They keep him company at night, chasing away the darkness with their words. Each puppet has a different voice, and he can recognise each one by their tone and the phrases they utter through their wooden lips. Every one of his puppets has its own secret recital that only its boy-maker knows. A snatch of song, a broken promise, a memory of a place or a person long since lost. Sasori knows them all. With the voices of his creations in his ears, low and subtle in his mind and twisting in his heart, he is never alone.

At the back of his mind, melodious above the keening of the wind, the Sisters are singing again. He brought them both out of Iwa, beautiful child-wraiths with long silken hair the colour of the desert at noon. They had reminded him of home and he had wanted them so very much for his collection. He smiles at the memory of their voices, at their eyes so full of hope and trust, even up to the very end when the kunai was biting at their necks.

Sasori smiles fondly and his fingers shift, a delicate movement hardly discernable in the darkness. The window shutters snap closed, muting the wind’s keening, the heavy boards drawn across by invisible threads of chakra.

Around him, the puppets continue to whisper. Some day, not so very far in the future, the last thing he will hear will be the sibilant sigh of their voices in his ear. And there, at the very end, the strange man-boy will smile an odd, peaceful smile, full of love. And his puppets will whisper to him one last time, sweet words of welcome, before finally they fall silent forever.