Disclaimer: Don't own shit.
A/N: This series of drabbles is supposed to be a companion piece to the Sage Wisdom saga (Sage's Wisdom, Life Anew, When Worlds Collide). Its drabbles bring more insight to the characters personalities and motives in those stories, a deeper view that doesn't fit much inside the saga, which focuses more on the overall changes brought to ninjadom and Naruto and Sasuke's family by the events portrayed there. As always, PLEASE REVIEW, authors need love too :D
Btw, the songs used as titles all do exist (except for this first drabble, it's a line from The Rythm of The Night). This is also the only drabble where the song is not entirely fitting with the theme, so feel free to listen to the other songs while reading their chapters, it adds to the mood I wanted each to have.
This first is dedicated to wikedsinn from Y!Gal, who loved Sai and Kankurou before I even knew other people actually shipped them as a couple, and to everyone who loves Sai and agrees with me he's one of the best developed characters in the whole Naruto series. He's just fucking AWESOME like that.
Sai sat back in his ANBU Commander chair and put his feet up on his desk.
He wondered if Tsunade was fully aware of what she was doing when she had accepted his suggestions about changing the ANBU structure, which lead to his current position.
If she didn't, tough titty. Sai had worked hard as hell to start his own little revolution, and nothing would get in the way of it after he started.
Sai had been serious when he said he'd accompany Naruto to learn about bonds, and now that he did have enough intellectual baggage to begin understanding normal people's minds, he felt ready to begin pushing them to where he wanted.
This was a place he had been once before, with his Root brother. A place where emotions helped instead of fucking things up further, where bonds were acknowledged and worked to serve as tools to achieve the peace necessary to free people so they could pursue other things besides war, politics and basic survival.
Because Sai had realized, by reading and interacting with people, that the human experience was a thrilling, wondrous thing when people weren't reduced to their deeper animal instincts by necessity.
People could create marvelous things when they weren't consumed by fear. They could learn so much, and love so much, and share so much beyond violence and hate. They could laugh, and cry for other reasons than sadness. They could, if they put their minds into it, reach the stars and amaze the gods themselves.
Much of what lie in the human mind beyond war Sai had learned from his liaison with Kankurou. The puppet-master had shown him the love he had for his constructs, especially the ones no ninja saw, the puppets he had made to help disabled children – of which Sand had a large number – to overcome their physical, mental and emotional issues.
It was Sai, who had learned about sexuality with Kankurou, who suggested the puppet-master to develop a series of puppets to help people who had been sexually traumatized to recover, and who convinced Gaara, after showing him Kankurou's secret work with the children (for which he got a mouthful from his friend with benefits/lover/boyfriend/thingy first, and a heartfelt thank you later), to let Kankurou train other puppeteer ninja as therapists instead of warriors. And begin working in re-programming ANBU operatives back to a more normal frame of mind, better suited for times of peace.
That included a partnership between all villages to seed what would become the Rescue and Retrieval Special Units, who prized in using non-violent (except in the Uchiha-Uzumaki twins' team, but no one in the ninja nations had been able to decide if what they did was actual violence, since there was no pain and no death involved in their extremely unorthodox tactics) methods to complete their missions.
And right afterwards Sai and Shikamaru, who was working steadily on the political front with other politic councilors from the capital cities of the other countries to balance political power around a less volatile structure than the ninja villages had proven to be, had managed to convince Sasuke through Naruto to crack down the former Torture and Interrogation Unit of Konoha and rebuild it from within with better methods of intelligence acquisition.
Naruto went through with his old promise to Itachi, despite his own fears for Sasuke's well-being in working so closely with Ibiki and his jealousy over not having had that idea first (as what held him back from turning into an obnoxious little shit of a tyrant back then was pretty much the fact that Tsunade had flipped him the finger after he asked her when was she going to retire), and torture was quickly becoming a thing of the past, despite Ibiki's protests.
As Konoha ANBU Commander, the first act Sai had signed was an order to all ANBU to abandon the masks they had used since the beginning of the organization. Those masks would now be displayed in a museum, to remind the population of the dark times before peace.
This measure had almost led to rebellion from over half the ANBU personnel, a rebellion he had defused by stating that anyone had the right to see the expression of the person who was about to kill them, even if under a henge. And hiding behind a mask was dishonorable. That had been enough to trick the personnel into going with the idea.
Sai's secret objective was to rebuild the notion of human life being too worthy to be disposed of unless absolutely necessary to prevent further deaths, through re-sensitizing and reconnecting the operatives with their own humanity.
He had vowed not to ever have any of his men take the path Uchiha Itachi did. No matter how difficult solving problems such as rebellions and coup d'états through other means could be, he would never have anyone become as broken as was necessary to view slaughtering whole families, or their own loved ones, ever again.
He played with the tiny puppet Kankurou had made for him. It looked like a mini-Kankurou, and had a tiny seal inside that would activate with a bit of Sai's chakra and make the puppet blow him a kiss. Sai smiled at it, wondering why Kankurou still loved him even though they weren't exclusive, Sai had admittedly and publicly turned into a slut (he snorted when remembering Kankurou had asked him if he wanted to get rid of the "relief puppet" he had given him, after Sai told him he had hosted his first "sexy party", and had just given him a knowing smirk when he had adamantly refused to do it), and they lived such separate daily lives. Maybe the man was more like Temari than his brother (though Shikamaru's entire routine was held on a tight leash by her and his other lovers had to pass her scrutiny before he'd even consider anything more intimate then a friendship).
Well, he had no qualms with that, Sai thought as he put the doll on his desk and blew a little kiss to it.