Title: Trading in Dreams for Reality
Author: vendettadays
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Sai, Sakura Haruno
Rating: T
Length: 960
Summary: He was falling, hurtling through the air without his inked wings and there was nothing he could do about it.
A/N: I have been sitting on this since June (along with all my Naruto fics that I have started since 2008) and I had to get it out before the conclusion of the manga. It's almost over...

Sai jolted awake in bed with a gasp, his heart pounding a furious rhythm around his body. His muscles were tensed, like tightly coiled springs, ready to defend and attack. But there were no enemies to cut down, no danger to evade, and no war to survive. There was only the wood panelled ceiling above and the warmth of bare skin pressed closely against him. He released a long breath, the tension easing from his body and emptying from his lungs. The dream had thrown him forcibly into consciousness and he was too alert to sleep again.

Sunlight filtered through the bamboo blinds, casting the bedroom with the golden glow of a spring morning and carrying away the remains of the dream from his mind. His eyebrows furrowed, as he tried to recall the dream in detail. It was hazy and dark, but his pulse quickened when the feeling of falling flooded his senses. The room span like the world had tilted on its axis suddenly and quickly. He closed his eyes and fought the urge to be sick, unaware that the arms around his waist had left.

'Are you alright?' Sakura's sleep-roughed voice cut through his nausea and he sighed when callused fingertips brushed his brow, smoothing over the frown that had appeared.

He shifted onto his side and nodded, opening his eyes to Sakura's concerned face. She did not look convinced and she was right to be. The dizziness had not disappeared, but had ebbed to a constant throbbing that settled at the back of his head.

'I'm okay.'

'It was that dream again.' Sakura brought her hand to rest against his neck, her fingers massaging away the knot in his shoulder. 'Can you remember what it was?'

Sai shook his head and his stomach flipped in discomfort. He did not want to remember. It was not important to remember, not when he could be present in the here and now. He shifted closer to Sakura, their legs sliding against each other's effortlessly. Burrowed underneath the covers of their bed it was hard to imagine that they had been anything but this.

They had clung to each other in a new world where everyone had lost something. Back then it had been the most natural thing for him to take her hand in his. He had fallen and there was a pull from deep inside his chest that told him that it was over.

'Sai?'

He blinked slowly, but with each blink he felt less inclined to keep his eyes open. The edges of his vision blurred and Sakura sounded far away, drowned by the rush of wind in his ear as he flew towards the Ten-Tails. He was a member of Team 7 too and a direct aerial assault was what he could provide.

Blackness settled into his view like the ink that soaked his clothes, raining down in splatters from his inked eagle. The shot from the Ten-Tails' Fission had hit home.

He was falling and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He hurtled through the air and his grasp on his consciousness slipped, as the ground got closer and closer towards him—

'Sai!'

Sai opened his eyes, his vision wavering as he tried to focus on the face that hovered above him. He was lying on his back and he moved his arms to push himself up, but his arms shook under his weight like a child's. Someone grabbed his shoulders and helped him into a sitting position. His stomach lurched and he put his head between his knees as the world span from his new angle.

'How do you feel?'

Sakura's tired voice jump-started his heart, clearing the last of the dizziness and nausea that clouded his mind. He looked at Sakura and drew a shuddering breath into his lungs. Her face was covered with dirt and sweat and grime, cut through with dried tear tracks that ran from the corner of her eyes and down her cheek where it stopped at her jaw. She rubbed her forehead with her sleeve, mussing her pink hair and plastering several strands to her skin.

'Say something,' whispered Sakura. The words quavered like her grip on his arm, turning the skin of her knuckles white where they were not bloody and bruised.

He gently unclasped her hand from his arm and with the rough skin of his thumb he massaged her scraped fingers, which shook and trembled with fatigue. He had moved instinctively, falling into an unfamiliar rhythm that soothed a hidden fear, but sent his heart into erratic beats. He dropped her hands and turned away from Sakura's confusion.

'I'm fine,' muttered Sai to the flaking, green wood that he was sat on.

Sakura hesitated next to him, uncertainty and unasked questions hung heavy in the air between them, but now was not the time. She got up from her crouch and walked away from him, the crunch of gravel loud in the silent aftermath of the battlefield. He watched her walk towards one of the many hulking roots of the Shinju that towered in arches into the sky. She bent her knees and jumped onto the root, running up the length of it, holding a chakra-infused kunai to free another person from the cocoon that trapped them.

Sai stood up, his legs wobbling weakly and sweat beaded at his temples with the effort of stretching his aching body. The creaking in his joints and the soreness of his overused muscles felt real enough. He checked his supplies of scrolls, inks and brushes, so that he could help Sakura release the remaining survivors.

He resisted the urge to pinch his arm and pushed the dreams away from the forefront of his mind.