Written for the LadyofSnark, SpoiledSweet (House Calls author) from a prompt I offered to do for her. She said something involving Sai and him learning about emotions via experiencing them rather than reading about them. I can't remember if it was sadness or happiness, but I pretty much usually default to happiness as all of you well know.

As usual, I am a crap writer who can't think of anything but KakaSaku even when I'm doing volunteer work for someone else, so there is some of that if you squint. Kind of a pre-relationship UST/epic deep friendship. It also involves my own interpretation of how Rin died, based on Chiyo-baa-chan's death a little as well as the flashback scene in the anime for Tsunade about when Dan died. Medic-nin can do freakishly epic stuff but that also requires a lot of their chakra which is why those with perfect chakra control are highly valued in the profession, and if they overextend they start eating into their life-energy to fuel their jutsu. My interpretation of Rin's death is that she died of doing some sort of over-extending of herself that way. Thought I'd clarify.

Anyway: Enjoy!

Sakura was surprised, to say the least, when her first appointment of the day was Sai. Her teammate was usually of Kakashi or Yamato's opinion of personal injuries: If still conscious, remain conscious, patch own wounds in private. It seemed to be a regular ANBU thing, which always made her heart twist a little. There was so much even a little medical ninjutsu could help—even a diagnosis was beneficial in the cases where the patient refused treatment. Kakashi had been bribed somehow into coming to her after his missions for a diagnosis—he still refused to allow her to treat many the wounds he came home to Konoha with, a haunted look coming into his eyes whenever she offered to help him out. She had to give credit where it was due however, her three former-current-former—ANBU teammates were excellent at tying stitches one handed.

But that didn't solve the mystery of Sai.

Sai had been in-village all week following a rather harrowing mission. Sakura hadn't personally seen him in that time, but as Naruto had complained bitterly that Team Kakashi was grounded because Tsunade worried that the mission had been too psychologically rough on the team. Sakura hadn't been able to go, so she had no way of truly knowing. Kakashi had wandered by yesterday (with an obviously self-inflicted 'training wound,') to take Sakura up on her offer of healing him to the best of her ability any time, any where. He had stared at her for most of the fifteen minutes she was able to drag out healing his cut, indulging him and his irrational superstitions. He hadn't spoken of anything mission related, but then again he hadn't needed to—Kakashi was about as likely to accidentally injure himself while training as Tsunade was about to give up sake. He had hurt himself to form an excuse to come see her.

Knocking softly at the hospital room where the nurses had put her teammate, Sakura tried to put the pieces together. Sai's voice came through the door almost immediately, inviting her inside. What she saw after closing the door behind her, however, was absolutely shocking.

Sai had tears welling in his eyes, and tears staining his cheeks. His voice and overall manner was unruffled as always save for a slight tremble of his lip. The only thing she read in his eyes, however, was a nervous anticipation almost akin to fear. iWhat had they done to him?/i

"Sakura-san, I'm glad you were available so soon after this started. I fear I've been unable to control this, and my research on the subject of tears shows that they are indicators of personal distress."

"Are you distressed?" Her voice sounded gawky, like when she was thirteen and being told to punch a boulder until it crumbled. Screw the medical procedures and questions, her teammate was bawling his eyes out in front of her. Well…as 'bawling' as Sai might ever come close to.

"No, but I felt that since you treat Kakashi-senpai's Sharingan when he comes back to the village unconscious that you might be able to aid me with my own eyes." Sakura felt herself come close to almost laughing, that Sai would think the massive nerve, and visual damage she treated for Kakashi would be similar to treating…tears.

Blinking her own eyes a little quicker to sever the impulse to cry, Sakura decided to go back to basics.

"When did this start, Sai?" she leaned in and put her hands on either side of his face, sending a little exploratory chakra in at his temples to check out his optic nerves. Those were fine.

"Yesterday. I was asked by Tsunade-sama to formulate my own report of what happened on last week's mission and as I was reviewing the facts my eyes watered and they've not stopped since. Well, fully stopped. When they are not watering they itch and burn." She wove her chakra through to his tear ducts looking for some sort of bizarre infection. None, these were regular tears. Just regularly occurring, normal human tears.

"Sai…what happened on your mission?"

"Everything that was supposed to happen, except for a minor miscalculation towards the end of the martial action. I over-extended myself and left an opening for the enemy. Naruto and Kakashi-senpai jumped to my defense rather than allow the enemy to take me down. Naruto seemed to have been rather distraught at the time, although he has since recovered. Kakashi-senpai went on a bit of a rampage after that, but only after ensuring I hadn't been severely injured. I'm sorry I can't provide you on the details of the rest of the mission, it was highly classified."

"No, no, that's okay Sai. Um…I don't exactly know how to tell you this, but I'll do my best." She stepped back from her examination, pulled the exam room stool over to the table and sat down in front of her teammate.

"You are crying, just…crying. There's nothing malicious in you physically that's making you do it, this is coming from you emotionally. And yes, crying is most often associated with sadness or pain—but there are also tears of gratitude or joy. I think you…I think in some part of your mind you feared your death in that moment, that you felt no one was coming to save you. And then you were saved. But you've been so emotionally repressed all these years you automatically clamped down on the feeling, but were unguarded against it when you were writing your report."

"This feeling is…gratefulness? I don't think I've ever experienced that…" his voice was soft, introspective. He raised an awkward hand to wipe at his tears, awkward because he'd never had practice doing it and was rather lost. Sakura ached for him that he'd never had someone to be truly grateful for or to.

"Will I ever stop?"

"Yes, well, probably—it might take a while for you, I don't know. But maybe now that there's some closure or understanding there, you'll heal faster. But Sai," she put her hands on his knees and leaned closer to him, "now you've broken through to being able to feel gratitude, I'm happy for you." And then that was when she saw it. Twitching there, in just the corners of his mouth, was a tiny smile. It was just as awkward as when he'd wiped his tears, but it was no less real. Sakura had been on the receiving end of many of Sai's fake smiles, but this tiny, fragile thing was a real smile.

"Thank you, Sakura-san, for your diagnosis."
Sakura smiled herself and backed away, allowing her usually emotionless teammate leave the exam room. She had the rest of the next two hours free—Sai had come to her for eye problems, and the only eye problems Sakura usually treated were Kakashi's, which took several hours sometimes, so the nurses had scheduled him a three hour long slot. So she opened the window and hopped out, wallwalking to the roof, intent on finding Kakashi.

She needn't have looked far, he was on the roof of the next building over with his book laying over his face as he napped in the mid-morning sun. From his waking vantage point he would easily be able to see the hospital doors. With a wry smile at his neurotic tendencies, Sakura sat down next to him with her knees adjacent to his hip. She picked his hand up and held it, taking off his glove and lacing her fingers through his. She knew he was feigning sleep—nothing gave him away other than how asleep he really seemed—but that didn't stop her from speaking her mind.

"You can't protect all of us all the time, Kakashi. I know you've lost people because you couldn't protect them—a person doesn't act like you do if they haven't lost someone. With that said, you inadvertently did a great thing for Sai on that mission." The hand she held squeezed her fingers a little in response to that, and eventually Kakashi opened his eye to look at her. He saw enough in her face to know that he had done more than save his teammate's life.

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