Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto?

Words: 1,072

Summary: Sometimes it's just like pouring water into a cracked vase, huh Sakura?

Sai lay there, his wound mortally fatal and slipping faster by the second. To make things worse it was raining, which was thoroughly uncomfortable. If he was capable of emotion right now he figured he'd be feeling fear right now. People with emotion always fear death - or so the books always told him.

No one understood Sai. Nobody understood his curiosity of emotions. Everyone always took them for granted, never even noticed how lucky they were to possess such a thing, never understood the luxury. Sai was always pulling emotions out of people, always wanted to see how different things made different facial expressions. Over the years he began to realize which emotion was the easiest to grab a hold of – anger. All he had to do was insult, or even better, insult a loved one. And everyone reacted in different ways, may it be to retort back or to cause physical harm.

But as Sai lay there, pink hair kunochi above him pumping chakra to his wound, he still couldn't fathom what it would be like to have emotions. He had gotten the occasional question of 'what is it like to live without emotions?' Sai always wanted to reply with something like 'What does it feel like to have emotions?'

Sai watched in amazement of the tears falling down Sakura's cheeks as she refused to give up on his failing body. He didn't know how the hell he could distinguish those tears in the rain, perhaps it was in how glassy her eyes seemed right now. Nobody had cried over him before, not that he'd know of. It was… nice. He had no other way of explaining it than that.

"Ugly, stop wasting your chakra on me, you're just wasting it." Sakura looked at Sai and glared at his smiling features. Even on the verge of death that boy was smiling falsely, always pretending that a false smile would make a situation better somehow. She hated that false smile; she wanted something real from him. She figured that she'd never be able to see something real now.

"Damnit Sai, stop smiling like that! Why the hell do you always have to be smiling like that?" She tore at him verbally through her tears, her throat hurting from holding back as much as she had. But she did what he told her to. She leaned back to look at him, wondering how long he had left.

"I guess… I never was able to perfect my facial expressions, was I?" He murmured up to her, smile gone with a blank expression in its wake. Sakura looked down into his empty eyes, and she could feel herself being sucked into them. Why did she kill herself on boys like these? She knew they would never care for her, and yet she always found herself wanting to be close to them. There was always something alluring about a man who was incapable of loving her back. Maybe there was something wrong with her, maybe she had something twisted about her that loved to feel unloved.

Knowing that she would never be able to do something like this again Sakura leaned forward and buried her face into Sai's neck. Any man with emotion would have tensed in how uncomforting it was at that moment, even the almost-emotionless Sasuke, but not Sai. Sai always took everything with a calm and cool demeanor. Sai just lay there wondering what had posses the kunochi to show him this sudden bust of affection.

"Sai, this is it, I'll never see you again after this. I'll never hear your stupid condescending words again. I'll never look over our shoulder as you paint again. I'll never punch you for insulting Sasuke again. This is it, Sai." Sakura cried into Sai's cold neck. And he thought about it. That was a lot of never agains. This was the end of the end. There was no more after this. Something grabbed his chest, and it wasn't Sakura. It reached inside and it clamped down, and it hurt. It hurt like something unreal. Anything real never felt like this, physical pain was never like this. Physical pain was easy. This was not. "I don't want you to die, Sai."

Sakura looked at him with those teary eyes, and the pain in his chest left him alone. His face was blank again. But his chest didn't leave him alone. Whatever was happening now was much harder to explain, and he understood why all those stupid books could never describe what was happening to him right now. He understood why whenever he finished reading one he was left even more confused that before.

He liked her tears in her eyes, so long as they were directed at him. They meant she cared, even if she was hurting. He didn't even care that she was hurting, to be fully truthful. He was greedy for proof of her affection, and he didn't care that her pain was the only way to get it. "Your tears, I like them. They make you a little less ugly." And he smiled at her, except it wasn't that hideous fake smile that made her want to rip it off his face. It was a smile that made the edge of his eyes crinkle to make little crows feet at the corners.

And it was those little crows feet that compelled Sakura to do what she did next. She leaned forward and placed her lips on his. They were cold, just like he was, but they were soft too. Kissing was softer than she had imagined it would ever be. And Sai lay there still. Though, she had doubted that he would have reacted even if he was able to. Even with a real smile it didn't mean the boy was about to open up his world to her.

And when she pulled away he looked up to ear with lifeless crinkled eyes. And no one would notice the difference from his fake smile if they hadn't known Sai and hadn't known the detail of that fake smile. She panicked and began trying to heal Sai again; pumping all the chakra she could into his body. Doing everything she could until she slipped from life herself. She fell unconscious on top of his chest. Chakra depleted and soul broken Sakura died in the cold arms of a boy who could never love her.