Characters: Sai, Karin
Summary: Complete opposites, in almost every way.
Pairings: SaiKarin
Author's Note: Another SaiKarin; I hope you all like it, or at least find something to say about it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
They are opposites in every way, down to their starkly different color schemes: one is black and white and the other red, white, lavender and black. That there is black and white in Karin's color scheme ought to be the first thing telling Sai that there are some points in which they are similar, but somehow, he misses it.
Karin is everything that is vividly bright and noticeable, to the extent that any and every encounter with her leaves Sai slightly winded (It's an odd feeling; he can't decide whether he likes it or not). She blazes in and out of life like a scarlet whirlwind. No one can help but notice her, let alone Sai. If Karin is ignored, she takes it as an insult and Sai, who is earnestly trying not to insult people anymore, makes it a point to notice her. On the other hand, Sai isn't very noticeable. He never has been; being trained to be nothing more than a moving shadow had its effect on him. Sai finds himself now a shadow to Karin's sun.
Karin isn't overly concerned with being polite. She doesn't seek to please people ("Life's too short to spend it making everyone else happy!"), nor does she waste time sucking up to others to perhaps make her lot an easier one. And somehow, this works for her; her fire draws people to her and keeps them there. It doesn't work for Sai, and he labors on as much as he can at being as polite as possible, making his toneless apologies where she frames none and hoping that it will make up for his innate eeriness.
And she is colorful. She has personality, some spark that Sai absently wishes he possessed. He can not tell where it comes from—sometimes, he almost thinks he can see the spark floating lazily like a firefly, but he can't catch it in his hand. Why? Sai wonders. I can see it, so why can't I touch it?
Sai is not colorful. Sai is just plain black and white. Those stark shades, on opposite ends of the spectrum, are the blindness and the utter absence of color and light. The color's been bled out of him, drained away by Danzo for the master spider's use.
But this, Sai realizes, brings up a point of resemblance between himself, and Karin.
They have both spent the majority of their lives in a snake's nest (In Karin's case, almost literally). They have both been taken from their homes, torn from everything they knew, and made to become something else.
When they look into a mirror, they see the stranger who has stolen their skin and plucked their eyes out of their head, and grafted it on to their flesh. Karin wears her red and her lavender to cover up the black and white, to cover up how someone has bled her dry, too.
"There." Karin smirks at him, cheeks oddly flushed and eyes sparking with something that it takes Sai a moment to recognize—satisfaction, and humor. "We are alike, somehow. As you were saying?"
Sai stares out at the sun, sinking and half-hidden behind cloud. He has to concede defeat.
They are the antithesis of each other, in almost every way. Karin is the anti-Sai; Sai is the anti-Karin.
It's how they're alike that keeps them coming back.