Summary: Ice cream doesn't solve all of the world's problems but Sakura is pretty sure it solves most of them. Or - Sai's having a bad day and has never had ice cream before. Sakura fixes both.
Sometimes, Sai has days where he hates.
Hates Danzou. Hates what he turned him into. Hates himself for becoming so inhuman. Hates Shin for telling him to abandon his emotions. Hates Shin for that advice that kicked Sai into his downward spiral of murder, blood, deceit and Sai stripping himself of everything that mattered.
Losing everything was the easy part. Finding it all again is the hardest. He doesn't even know what he's looking for. He doesn't even know if it's still there to find.
This day, when Sai hates himself more than usual, it is an ordinary day. The sun still rose that morning. The clouds are still drifting across the sky. He still woke that morning at the same time he has woken every morning.
(despite all other emotions being so hard to grasp – falling through his fingers like water, flowing away with the wind and blown away with the breeze – anger and hatred are like magnets. It sticks to his fingers, his face and his heart and festers and grows with each passing day. Finding other emotions has been like trying to find the tiny pebble in desert, but finding anger has been as easy as breathing.)
"Sleep in, Sai," Sakura tells him on this day.
"I cannot," he replies and wonders why he can't. Danzou won't rise from the dead to punish him.
Sakura turns to face him then, her face scrunched up.
Sai doesn't think Sakura is ugly. He doesn't think of her as pretty either. He doesn't think of anyone as pretty, really.
"What do you mean?" she asks.
Sai doesn't really know what he means, so he has no real answer. He could try to sleep in, try to rest instead of training as he does every morning for once. But he can't.
(Danzou's rules are so ingrained into his head, he wonders if he'll ever be able to move on from them.)
"Habits." is what he settles with, in the end, and hopes Sakura can understand.
She nods and lets out a little hum. She grabs his arm and pulls him down the street at a jog, which is unnecessary. Sai can run fast all on his own.
Sakura stops next to an ice cream parlour. The red sign long since faded down to pink, the paint peeling and cracking. The large ice cream out the front of the store on a stand is turning slowly and has peeled and weathered under the conditions turning a pale green.
"Maybe you could try to start new habits, like 'coming with Sakura to get ice cream', and that way your old habits might fade away," Sakura says, grinning. Sai likes that smile. It's uneven, some teeth showing and others hidden by her lips and her left eye crinkles more than her right. But Sai knows now she only does that when she's really happy.
Sai tries to smile back and it feels wrong on his face. Like he's twisting his mouth the wrong way, crinkling his eyes too much or maybe not enough.
Sakura's smile falters and Sai wipes his face clean. He probably needs to apologise here. He was likely in the wrong - causing her lovely smile to falter like that, hurting her happiness.
"It's okay," Sakura says like she means it, like it is okay. But it's not and Sai wouldn't be surprised if she was lying to him. How can it be okay when Sai can't even do the one thing that every other human can do as naturally as breathing.
"My apologies," Sai says anyway because Sakura deserves that at the very least for keeping him company when no one else in their right mind would.
Sakura just shakes her head and carefully tugs on his arm, beckoning him into the shop.
Sai has no memory of ice cream. He can't remember going to an ice cream shop, can't remember what flavours there are or who might have accompanied him.
Everything before Danzou is a misty haze and Sai can tell there are memories there. But he can't reach them.
He stops in the doorway and Sakura tugs him further into the building. It's small enough that Sai's instincts are screaming at him to get out, his muscles coil and he has to take several deep breathes to force himself not to reach for the kunai in his belt. A fight won't end well for anyone on here.
Sakura leads him to a seat that's right by the door and sits them both down.
He takes a moment to look around and spots civilians and not a shinobi in sight. There's no need to overthink it then, he tells himself.
"What flavour do you want?" Sakura asks.
Sai draws up a blank. He doesn't know what he wants because he has no memory of eating ice cream. He can't even remember what it feels like on his tongue aside from what's obvious from the title - ice cream.
Sakura snaps her fingers in front of his face, and his attention is jolted back to the present. She looks over at him, "we can leave, if you want." She keeps her voice quiet and the stares of the civilians make his hair stand up on his neck.
It's just ice cream. Why does he have to end up making it into a big deal?
Sakura manhandles him upright, shuffling them both outside. "It's awfully small in there," she says, looking carefully at his face.
Sai doesn't know what to say. He felt... scared. But at what? The small space? The cruel, judgemental eyes of strangers? Of Sakura? Of disappointing Sakura?
"Oi, Sai!" Sakura's face is inches from his, and the familiar quiet roar of anger settles in his stomach again. Not at Sakura, that he immediately knows, but at himself possibly. At his uselessness. His fragility.
(Danzou wanted to create puppet soldiers - invincible soldiers, unperturbed by the horrors of the darkest missions Konoha had to offer, but all of Danzou's work has been undone in a few weeks. Sai's unstable. He feels now, feels everything that Danzou wanted to erase.
Sai is nothing but a broken, bleeding product of an old man's ideals. But Sai wants to be more.)
"Sorry," he says, the amount of sincerity behind it surprising him.
Sakura hesitates, looking over at the parlour and back at Sai before she presses her lips into a thin line and grasps Sai by the shoulders. She shuffles him over to the other side of the twirling ice cream cone and gently pushes him to the ground.
"Wait here," she taps his nose and runs off into the store.
She comes back not a moment later, bumping the door open with her hip. She carefully makes her way over to him and crouches down, holding out a little cup of white ice cream with bits of brown mixed through it.
"I think you're more of a cookies and cream kind of guy," she sits down on the ground next to him, closest to the shop door and shuffles around to get in a better position. "Plus, ice cream always makes me feel better when I'm sad."
Sakura grins at him with the smile Sai likes the best and scoops a piece of pink ice cream from her cup into her mouth.
"Thank you, Sakura." Sai says. Sakura's name rolls nicely off his tongue in a neat yet pretty way that he can't describe. Similar to the way his paintings are slowly – so, so slowly - becoming less of a weapon and more of an activity he actually enjoys.
Sakura is watching him out of the corner of her eye and not trying to be subtle about it. Sai scoops up a portion of the ice cream, making sure to get one of the brown bits, the cookies, on the spoon and eats it.
It's cold like he expected and pleasantly sweet. It melts in his mouth, the sweetness of the ice cream and the cookies coming together
Sakura leans in close so their knees are touching and her whole upper body is tilted so she can see his face. "What do you think?"
Sai stops and takes a moment to really consider that. He swallows the taste and thinks, its sweet and unhealthy, therefore not something he'd usually eat since it's not beneficial to him but it's… enjoyable. He carefully scoops another piece into his mouth.
It's smooth and creamy and he can't think of anything to compare to it. Shin would've liked ice cream.
"I…I like it," he says, and oh how Danzou would be disappointed him. Sitting with a person for no other reason than the fact she doesn't seem to mind his presence and eating confectionaries that will no doubt end in Sai having to train a little bit harder to burn off those calories. How angry he would be because for the first time Sai feels the anger ease.
He's not sure how to describe the feeling that replaces it – warm and bubbling in his chest. It lightens the crushing oppression of the hate that lurks, it doesn't erase it, but it… eases it.
But Danzou is no longer here, it is just him and Sakura.
Sakura cheers, fist pumping the air and nearly spills her own ice cream over both of them. She curses and catches the spoon before it hits the ground.
"I can get you ice cream whenever you want, and you won't have to go inside either." She nods to herself like the plan is already all coming together in her head. "Next time, you can try the spearmint flavour. I think you'll like that one too."
Sakura glances up at him and pauses, her face lights up like nothing Sai has ever seen before and she points frantically his face, "you're – you're smiling Sai!"
His hands fly up to his mouth, feeling the quirk of his lips and the creases of his skin. He can never get it right when he tries but he got it right just then. He smiled and it actually made Sakura happy.
"No, no," Sakura says and gently pulls his hands from his mouth. "You have a lovely smile, Sai, and you smiled genuinely without thinking about it!"
Sakura lets go of his hands and her eyes are warm and alive and not dead like the eyes at ROOT were. They're kind and Sai never wants to forget how they look.
"Can…" Sai says and stops because Sakura is the only one who seems prepared to put up him and what if he oversteps the line and she leaves, realises he's not worth her time.
But Sakura is looking at him, not smiling, but Sai is pretty sure that face means she's curious. He's almost sure she's not angry or annoyed.
Sai swallows the sudden tightness in his throat and asks anyway, "Can we come back tomorrow? The spearmint sounds nice."
"Of course, Sai," she says like it's the simplest request in the world. Only it's not. Because Sai's never done this with anyone that he can remember. It's always been about the mission and nothing more, nothing less.
But he's going out for ice cream with another person for enjoyment.
Sakura eats the rest of her ice cream and Sai scoops the last few mouthfuls.
He isn't sure if he can call Sakura a friend yet, but maybe after this becomes a habit, maybe then he can call Sakura a friend. And maybe she'll call him a friend too.
I ship Sai with basically anyone I think will make him happy tbh
I got the most lovely comments from SoulOfFangirl684 on and IceBreeze on Ao3 on my last Sai fic "Paint Splattered Teardrops" and felt super inspired to write more Sai!
(pls comment, I will love you forever)