Recappy From the Last Chappy: The prodigy noticed this. "What is it?"

"Besides you and I, there are only two people breathing in this room," he responded.

Ao's eyes widened at him and she first checked the boys' room: Shouta was sound asleep, snoring obnoxiously with a puddle of drool near his mouth on the pillow. Before allowing herself to dwell on how gross the latter discovery was, she went into the girls' s room. Her teacher was sound asleep.

Chiyo's bed was empty.

Chapter Six: A Rose of Ink

Team Sakura stood in the girl's room, enveloped in a somber aura. The leader was near where she had slept, arms crossed beneath her chest as she formed conjectures in her head. Shouta stood near her, now in his street clothes, chewing on the end of a stick of licorice. He rested with an arm across his stomach, the elbow of the other on that arm, concentrating.

On the floor, leaning against the bed, Ao wore an expression of guilt. She had both of her knees up and her arms folded in front of her. Deep in her belly, she began to feel nauseous, but tried to keep her emotions out of the matter. Oto was standing near her, silent and passively scowling.

"How could this have happened?" Sakura wondered softly. "Three chuunin and a jonin protecting one little girl . . . how could someone just waltz in and take her?"

"Not to mention, leave without a trace . . .," Ao added.

Shouta faced her. "Well, you were supposed to be sharing a bed with her. You didn't feel anything? You should've felt her struggles, heard something from her; anything."

The jonin raised her head and shook it. "Not necessarily. Chiyo-sama was scared because of the storm and since she's cranky enough as it is when not fawning over her 'prince,' I thought that I'd help her sleep. I gave her a sedative that would help her sleep through anything for ten hours unless I roused her. She slept through it."

Ao's eyes went from Sakura to the ground in front of herself and closed. While what her teacher said had been true, another reason why she would not have felt anything was that, as it was going on, she had been cowering from the storm in a closet with a boy who seemed to have hated her before she even knew he existed.

"What about you, Bau? Where was your super-hearing last night?"

Oto's face tightened. "The storm masked nearly everything else. Could say it deafened me for a night. Sakura-sensei, what does this mean?"

She sighed. "The storm will have washed away any trail of theirs. We have no idea in what general direction they could even be in because we don't know what type of shinobi kidnapped her; if they were hired from another village; their base could be within the Fire Country or not—in truth, they may not even be true shinobi.

"Since they took her instead of killing her in her sleep and leaving her body to be found, she's probably been kidnapped for ransom. Or maybe they are going to kill her. Our mission is over. The next step is to return to Konoha and report her missing. The Hokage or the Daimyo will probably be contacted within the next few days."

Momentarily, everything was paused and muted. Dumbly, Ao raised her head, brow wrinkled and jaw dropped in an open frown. "Hell no!" She abruptly stood and clenched her fists, deliberately yelling. "There's no way I'm going back to Konoha to put a failed mission on my record."

"Put your vanity aside fleetingly and be realistic. Six years, you're trying to tell us that you never once failed a mission," Oto told her icily, rubbing his right ear.

She turned her head to him, leering. Her eyes were looking at his, but he was scowling in a different direction. "No. Not in the last five, at least." Her reply was curt. "I especially haven't since I became ANBU."

"Shocker."

"Shut up!" The girl turned her body toward him. "Are you saying you're okay with failing a mission? It doesn't bug you one bit? Not even that that little girl's life is on the line?"

"She was annoying. You're sore because the only person that fawns over you more than yourself is gone, 'Prince.' Don't act like you really care for her."

Shouta interjected then, hands in his pockets as he leaned in. "Come on, both of you, stop it. Dude, annoying or not, we were supposed to protect her. As shinobi, out personal feelings aren't supposed to get in the way." He turned to face Ao. "Even if the reasoning is a little selfish." Then, he looked at Sakura. "Sakura-sensei, are we absolutely sure that that's our only option?"

The pink-haired ninja opened her mouth, but quickly closed it. She looked into the determined eyes of her young students, one by one by one. Oto was even humoring her by looking in her direction. She looked down, closing her eyes, and pulled something from her pocket: Chiyo's barrette.

"Don't count on it, but she took this off before going to sleep last night. The storm probably washed away her scent, too, it'll be so faint that nin-dogs can't pick it up."

"There are animals with stronger noses than nin-dogs, if so," Ao said, taking the barrette. "We should still try."

The Yamanaka Flower Shop was a beautiful place, with a sensuous fragrance that left this little boy gazing at all of the flowers and arrangements in wonder. In his opinion, nearly everything smelled the same and looked to be of the same elegance.

He sighed. The types of flowers had different numbers of petals, leaves, shapes of the petals and leaves; the arrays of colors were different; a flower could have thorns or no thorns; the shape of the flower itself, and how it grew classified plants as different, but to him, everything looked the same.

Scratching the back of his blond, spiked hair, he lowered his head, a hint of red flushing his slightly chubby cheeks. His eyes were cerulean blue and pupiless, with a loose lock of hair hovering over his left eye. He wore a long-sleeved shirt that was dark blue on one side and cerulean on the other and grey shorts. Blue zori completed the rig.

Now, while everything looked the same and pretty to him, he realized that did not matter as much as it did that the person he wanted to obtain it for liked it.

A woman with long blonde hair, the same light color as his and sharing his eyes, came up on his left, bending so her face was level beside his; her bangs were mostly swept back, but a part of it hung in front of her face, near her right eye. She let her hair run across a purple dress-clad back. It was a turtleneck that bared her shoulders and the trim of the dress reached toward the end of her thigh. Fishnet tights covered from there to just below her knees. She was also donned in normal ninja equipment, her hitaiate around her stomach, but it was covered by a yellow apron.

"Something I can help you with, Taro-kun?" Ino asked.

Akimichi Taro lifted his head and turned it to look her in the face. She was smiling cheerfully, but he was a little embarrassed. "Mom. . . ."

"You've never really spared the flowers much of a glance, before," she prodded. Gently, she nudged him with her elbow and winked. "Does my wittle boy have his fiwst cwush?"

The blush on Taro's face deepened. "M-mom! Don't say it like that!"

She pouted. "Aww, because you turned seven I can't baby-talk you anymore?" He shook his head vigorously, turning it into a red and blonde blur. "Okay, okay. . . ." Smiling, she kneeled, more at his level, and put her hands on his shoulders from behind, leaning into him lightly. "So, who is it? Someone from your class?"

"Mooooom," he groaned, leaning away from her and shrugging his shoulders from her grip.

She frowned. "Why not? I can keep a secret!"

"Me too, that's why I'm not tellin'."

The older blonde twitched. Where the heck did that come from? He's hanging around Shikamaru's kid too much. "But Taro—" She paused and blinked when a little bell on the door tinkled with a customer's entrance. Over her shoulder, she saw Sai standing in the doorway, and smiled. Quickly, she rose, but stayed bent in order to keep her words exclusive to Taro."Try a yellow daffodil. They're over there." She stood fully. "Take it slow. The daffodil, especially when yellow, symbolizes friendship."

Taro had grinned and looked in the direction she had indicated, but then looked back at her, raising a brow. "Cymbal-eyes-es?"

"The yellow daffodil means friendship."

"Oh!" He proceeded with hastened excitement toward the named flower. "Thanks Mom!"

Ino smiled in return and then twisted to face Sai, who was near the sales counter, appearing to be regarding the packets of seed assorted on the wall. Walking toward his back, she greeted, "Hi, something on your mind?"

The black-haired man turned toward her. There was no smile, real nor fabricated, on his face, but a look of solemnity. If she looked even closer, she would see a dash of fear and apprehension. These emotions, however, were as concealed as ink on black paper, so she did not detect them. "Close . . . someone."

The corners of Ino's mouth slid down. "Who?"

"Uchiha Sasuke," he replied. Her eyes averted from his face. In continuation, he said, "He's back, you know."

"Of course I know," she said, picking up a watering can. Silently, she walked over to the sink and filled it up, staring at it with eyes more serious than necessary.

Sai followed a little, taking only a step. When the can was full, she turned off the faucet, and there was a pause. "You want to know how this will affect you and Krystal."

He nodded. "Yes."

"Well . . . it should bother you. She hasn't been very eager to marry you as it is and her son really doesn't like you, at all. Technically, since he never died, she's still married to him, too. The bond between them . . . she stayed in love with him even after he abandoned Konoha in our teen years." She blushed. "Back then, I remember my feelings wavering between Sasuke, you, Chouji . . . for teen hormones, and for it to be carried on into womanhood, that's commitment."

Placing a hand on her cheek, she realized warmth filled them and turned away from Sai, picking up the watering can. Acting like the blush had not appeared, she watered plants. "It took her awhile to begin looking for someone else after she learned about Sasuke's death. Three or four years. You and Krystal have been together for almost one. It's always hardest, letting go of your first."

She hesitated, checking that her face was no longer hot and twisted to look at him. "Sorry, Sai, but . . . the odds aren't in your favor."

Sai brooded, dipping his gaze to the flower shop's floor. "Right. . . ." Not offering another word, he swivelled and quickly made for the exit of the store. The bell on the door tinkled when he opened it and rang with extreme violence when he threw the door closed.

"Sai!" Ino called, turning swiftly; water swished out of the watering can, spilling onto the floor and her feet. She set the can down and moved to chase after him when she glanced over at Taro, seeing a compilation of daffodils the size of his torso collected in his arms. "Taro! Take one—less is more! Watch the shop while I'm gone!"

"Okay, Mom," replied the bundle of joy carrying a bundle of flowers as his mother ran from the shop.

Her touch on his face was tender, tracing beneath his eyes with a cool ointment. She was silent, wearing a hard expression; from what he could depict, it was Hyuuga eyes that belonged to the person whom had not taken very kindly to their first meeting.

While she wiped the stuff on a bruise or two that she had caused, Sai lowered his eyes a little, taking in the sight of her body. A mint green hoodie covered over voluptuous breasts, ending mid-ribcage and had three-quarter sleeves with white clouds surrounded by silver circles on either arm. Toned abs were covered by fishnets. She had hips, but they were not quite wide enough to match her bust, and were covered by dark blue capris.

He looked back up to her face and gave a smile. "Your breasts are well-endowed. But it's likely your hips are too small for sex appeal. Seems the genetic pool cheated you."

Krystal frowned. "Do you want another bruise to match your other ones?"

"I'm still wondering what I did to deserve the other ones," Sai replied. He had a black Konoha hitaiate tied around his forehead, and the shirt he wore bared his stomach. One sleeve was long and the other was short. Black, fingerless gloves covered his hands, and he wore dark capris.

The kunoichi withdrew her hand for a moment, looking away. "You didn't. It was a mistake. I . . . thought you were someone else . . . someone I used to know." She dipped her finger into the ointment and applied it with more force than before on a different bruise on his other cheek. He winced and bit his tongue. "It's your own fault for looking like him. Seems the genetic pool cheated you."

"You wouldn't think so if you saw it—"

A red hand print now adorned his shocked countenance. He had a hand over that spot and wide eyes. Krystal glowered, hands on her hips, and asked, "Do you have to be so vulgar?" There was no response, and she crossed her arms. "Look—Sai?—sorry for the mistake, hitting you in the face and all, but if you're going to be like this, you're not going to survive being on Team Kakashi."

Outside of the Yamanaka Flower Shop, Ino checked both directions Sai could have taken and ran when she caught sight of his back. She had seen him just in time, for he did not stay on the streets long, and vaulted onto a roof. She followed, picking up her pace to close the distance.

"Sai! Don't do anything rash!" the blonde called. "Get back here!"

He continued to run. From the roof a small restaurant, he hopped onto the wall of a tall building—quite possibly apartments—and scaled up the side. Ino exerted more chakra than needed to follow; it boosted her speed, since she worked it correctly. By the time he had jumped over a white railing that surrounded the roof, she was almost right behind him.

In the center of the wide, flat surface, he stopped abruptly. She halted a few steps behind, intently staring at his back whereas the wind softly disturbed their loose features. Complete and utter silence, until Ino cautiously spoke Sai's name.

The frown on his face fabricated into a smile, and he faced her. "Yes, Ino?"

She spoke as if he were still frowning. "There's still a chance that she might pick you. The story is different now than it was when we were teenagers. You're not the same guy, you've experienced emotions and have an unempty smile. TWICE, he's disappeared, then come back, but this time, she's with you. She was never with someone before Sasuke—he's pretty much the only one. But now . . . it's different.

"If you try fighting Sasuke right now for the right to be with her, especially when she's not here and doesn't know he's ALIVE, you'd be dropped automatically. She'll see it like you don't trust her to make a decision, herself. . . . Don't do it."

She eyed him warily, still, almost pleading with him. There was no great urgency in her tone, very little desperation. Sai, for a long time, did not respond; he was quite frozen in that stance, smiling with that infamously fake smile.

"Is that what you thought I was going to do?" he asked. "I was only going to the library."

Ino's lack of relief was evident in the shape of her non-existent grin. "I know you haven't dealt with something this complicated, but . . . you're not going to find the answer in a book. You have to see it play out."

". . . ."

"Okay. I've got to go back to my shop."

She saw Sai sitting on the stone bench with his notebook and pen. Behind him was green shrubbery and trees that were separated from the road and Sai's bench by a stone column surrounding it; the bench was just in front of that column, close enough to be a backrest, should he so have chosen.

Krystal smiled a little; the light touched his skin provocatively, leaving a light shadow under his concentrated brow. He did not appear to break concentration even when she proceeded to sit by him.

The drawing in his notebook was a rose, one of impossible beauty, with perfectly curled petals. It looked so real, one would expect a soft caress, yet so delicate, that one was wary of breaking it. Krystal momentarily took her eyes away, looking in the area before them, but there was no flower in sight. She looked back at the drawing again.

"You've drawn a rose that well from memory?" she asked softly.

Her sudden vocalization did not startle him; his hand was still steady and smooth as he brushed the pen's tip down the page for the stem of the rose. At one point on the right, he interrupted the line and continued after a small space, left open for a leaf to be drawn.

"Not all roses look the same," he replied. "And the steps to drawing them are quite simple, once you know them. I'm not drawing a particular rose from memory, and I've been a bit loose with the steps."

"All the same, I think it's very pretty."

A smile tugged at his porcelain lips. "I hope so. You were my muse."

Krystal's smile disappeared, slightly taken aback, as her eyes went from his drawing to his profile. Her lips were slightly parted. It was moments before she spoke again, and her tone seemed to be near annoyance. "Sai . . . for the last time, I'm not going out with you."

"I didn't ask you, yet," he said lightly.

She frowned. "Keyword: 'yet.' But you are, aren't you? Sai—"

He turned his head toward her, silently gazing at her in such a way that Krystal stopped talking, but allowed her mouth to stay open slightly, forgetting her words. She had stared into his eyes, and beneath the plain blackness, which she had expected, she saw something. This man, who when she met as a teen had not the slightest clue of true emotions or relationships of human kind.

She was perplexed. When she had first been coming to know him as he joined Team Kakashi, he was someone with an abrasive lack of personality and understanding of people. All of his emotions were false, fabrications from literature he read on sociology, and had not helped him in making friends.

Then, once he gained incentive, he read more and tried harder, despite that Sakura and Krystal told him that he could not learn about such things from books, that he had to experience them for himself. He would take the things he learned from books and apply them to situations in his real life, not quite gaining a favorable outcome, but through that experience, he did learn.

Now, years and years later, she could swear that there was something real in his eyes, but she could not translate what it was. His eyes used to be empty, pools of ink, but there was definitely some mystery within them, presently. Like they were now just part of the marking on a page.

". . . why me?" she finally asked, feeling the slightest warmth rush to her face.

He smiled. "I heard roses were your favorite. And now, I can see that it's the perfect flower for you." In regard to the picture, he added, "This one in particular."

Krystal looked down from his face to the drawing again. Her right hand fidgeted with the wedding band on her left hand, finger next to the pinky. That one had a few slivers of ruby made into the design of a rose, like it was etched into the ring. "Don't say because I'm beautiful, it wouldn't be very original. More like something read in a book."

His eyes widened a little and blinked in mild shock. Quickly, he regained composure. "That was going to be one reason, but not the only one." He pointed to the curve of the bud. "This represents the curve of your smile, two cusps of succulence to which no man could resist succumbing." Then, the curl of the petals, at which some parts point. "This is you . . . soft, delicate, tender . . . but then you become defensive, appearing sharp, dangerous, yet in reality, still fragile." Next, he went to the center. "You heart is surrounded by walls—"

"Poems, I bet." There was a harder blush on her face. "You've been reading poems, lately, and that's how you can come up with this." She stood. "Well let me tell you . . . my husband died a few years ago, so I am hesitant about dating. I have two kids. And everything you're saying can be pretty much found in one book or another. My son can draw pictures, too. I'm unimpressed."

"But it's not from a book," he stated calmly. "I looked. Nothing fit right. Nothing was 'you.'" He stood next to her, close enough that his chest nearly touched the back of her shoulder. "But for this rose, I didn't need to find the flower itself." His mouth moved toward her earlobe, gently breathing warm air onto it. "All I needed . . . was to think of you."

Goose bumps chilled her skin. She felt her eyes had grown wide, staring ahead of her, and there was a profound awareness of the intimacy of his presence. No sound would produce itself from her, even as she felt and heard movement of hands. The next thing she knew, the rose from Sai's notebook had appeared into reality, an outline of black against the scene as he placed it into her hand to hold.

As the bloom had blossomed from the page, she realized the one blossomed in her heart, as well. She looked at it with normal eyes, gently narrowed in a pleasant way as they were shadowed by her eyelashes. A tiny smile hinted her visage and she took her hand to gently brush her fingertips against the ink petals.

"Careful," he said. "She's fragile. Touch to hard, she'll just be a pool of ink."

Krystal closed her mouth in a smile and twisted, lifting her chin so she was angled to meet Sai. He was closer than anticipation had led her to believe. Instead of breaking into a blush of a million hues, like she might have in her teen years, there was only one, and her heart was all aflutter. She smiled a little and raised her hand to cup his cheek.

"Okay. I'll go out with you."

In present Britain, Krystal sat on the grand, refined, unbelievably comfortable bed she had been given as a personal guest to the charming Lord of the castle. Her back rested against a collection of plush pillows, and she was dressed down for bed in a lavendar nightgown. She had her legs drawn up beneath the blankets.

"Do I love him enough to . . . marry him . . .?" she softly wondered aloud. Sai's engagement ring was held between her thumb and index finger, a silver band with one simple diamond. She was eyeing it with mixed emotions. The extent of how mixed they were became more evident as she took the ring and slipped it onto the special finger of her left hand.

She raised her hand in front of her, watching the diamond sparkled in the lamp light. It was a beautiful jewel, one not too modest and not too ornate, that any woman would be proud to wear. Krystal sighed and removed it from her finger, leaning over to set it on the bedside table. She rummaged into her kunai pouch, momentarily, and then leaned into the bed, changing her position to lay as her hand slipped on the ring she had been given the day she married Sasuke.

Looking at it, she wondered, "Six years . . . is that too fast to marry someone else . . . ?" In frustration, she lifted her other hand in a fist, and brought it straight back down to punch the bed; it only absorbed the shock, did not distribute it. "Dammit Sai! Why did you have to ask me to marry you?"

She leaned back over the table and shut off the lamp before laying on her side, bringing the blankets over her shoulder. It also hid her face, partially, only showing pained eyes. Sliding her hand out from beneath the blanket, she looked at Sasuke's ring again, sadly. "What if . . . Sasuke didn't want me to move on . . .?"

A group of three people traveled through the thicket, jumping on the branches. Two appeared to have female figures whereas the third, by its build, was almost certainly male. Him and the female with a braid were behind a woman with thick, short hair, forming a triangle. All wore masks.

The female with the braid slipped on a branch, falling forward until the man caught her wrist, mustering enough chakra to stay on the slippery, damp wood. He helped her to stand.

The leader of the masked trio stopped and turned. "Be careful, Washi. These branches are still wet from last night's storm," she warned in a deep voice.

Washi's eyes frowned. "Why did we have to spread the storm so far, anyway? It'd be some miracle that they find a way to track us. No scent, no footprints. . . . Was it necessary for you to be so thorough?"

The man spoke up. "Yes. We'll reach the end of what was the storm's radius soon enough, however. Let's move. We need to take the target back to Yuri-sama."

The leader nodded. "I think Yuri-sama will be very pleased, the sooner we get there." She took off, hopping amongst the branches with Washi and the unnamed male not far behind. On the leader's waist, tied by a red string, was a small wooden knick-knack of a young girl in a blue kimono, wearing an expression of serene sleep, with black hair and orange eyes.

End of Chapter Six

Next Time on .:Violets are Blue:.!! Chapter Seven: Boy With a Crush

He was short, for a village leader, mostly because he was quite young. At the age of eleven, his hair was colorless, scruffy as it shaped around his head and over his brow. His eyebrows were just as white, since it was not a matter of bleach, but natural. Stoic lilac eyes blended significantly with his pale skin.

Over a black turtleneck with long-sleeves, he wore an elegant, green, kimono-style shirt, loose enough in the collar that a lot of his chest would have been exposed. The sleeves were also loose, ending on the biceps, and lined with a lighter green. His obi was silver, the same as his pants, which were tucked into the black zori on his shins. The sleeves of his turtleneck were long, ending at his wrist, and there were light blue prayer beads hanging around his neck.

Thanks for reading, everybody!! Please, leave a review! Also, I have a poll on my profile :) SaiXKrystal? Or SasukeXKrystal?