Chapter Twelve
The Solstice
Sai woke up that cold, cold morning of the Solstice feeling… different. It was actually very hard to explain. It felt like someone was jabbing at a certain part of his chest with a needle so, so very tiny that it couldn't possibly be causing him pain, but it was making him very, very uncomfortable.
The feeling had actually started three or four nights after baby Valu's birth day, right before he fell asleep. He had been watching Sakura comb her hair while humming to herself. This was, of course, nothing new to Sai; Sakura always had that habit of cleaning herself before going to bed. She would go to the roof where they leave open tubs of water to warm under the sun and bathe before retiring, change into her loose sleeping robes, and spend an unnecessarily long time brushing her hair, which had grown roughly over the months just enough to tickle her shoulders. Sai had not even realized until then that she had such fine hair. He blamed it on the colorful scarves she always wore over her head to avoid attention, but that was because he did not have any other explanation as to why he was starting to pay attention to trivial things concerning her. They have been together for almost a quarter of a year, yet why did it seem like he was always seeing her for the first time lately?
Sai was an artist, and so detail was something he had always kept an eye out for. That was why he wondered how he had missed the fact that Sakura's hair was not simply just bubblegum pink, but there were strands that were a few shades darker, and some were so light they could have been white. He could not explain either, the reason why he would always catch himself looking at her neck whenever she swiped her hair over her right shoulder to brush it. He had observed her neck was slender, and there was a conspicuous-looking scar, barely noticeable unless you looked really hard right below her left ear.
Sakura had caught him staring at her more than once but she did not say anything. Her body language, however, would change dramatically, and she would continue to brush her hair hurriedly before lying down on her side of the cot, her back to him.
Ah, she really amused him being that way. Everything she did seem so interesting in his eyes lately; the way she liked to gesture with her hands whenever she talked, or the way she pursed her lips when she was reading something difficult.
Or the way she would blush whenever he tried to do something nice to and for her…
He never really understood that part. Weren't women supposed to be grateful to have men do something nice to them? Or did that once again vary from female to female? It seemed that whatever Sai did, Sakura always looked disappointed in him.
Sai's eyes popped open when he heard Sakura stir beside him. He turned his head and found her blinking sleepily at him from behind the blinds separating her cot from his.
"What?" he asked dully.
"You were moaning in your sleep," Sakura said, voice still groggy from just having woken up. She reached aimlessly for the rope to raise the blinds. Her reach was a few inches too short and she used her other arm to shift on her cot. She began to pull at the rope, and the blinds slowly ascended. Sai saw a sliver of her bare shoulder from under her sleeping robes in the action, and his heart made an annoying, unfamiliar jump. He hadn't really thought shoulders to be the sexiest part of the human anatomy, but there was something so appealing having to see something accidentally. It was different having Sakura voluntarily strip down to her tank top and shorts in front of him after a day in the clinic.
He didn't realize he was staring until Sakura nervously hitched her robes over her shoulder to cover that piece of skin he was ogling. Sai turned away. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
"Ah, no. I was having a hard time sleeping to begin with," she mumbled as she fell back down on her pillow, one of her eyes peeking from behind the curtain of light hair that had fallen over her forehead. Waking up in the cold was something Sakura didn't do well. She coughed into her pillow and rubbed her cheek roughly. "What time is it?"
Sai looked over his shoulder at the closed window behind him. Judging from the absence of the usual sunlight streaming between the shutters, he supposed it was not even six in the morning. "It's still early. You should go back to sleep."
"Hm," Sakura murmured and that one exposed eye closed slightly. "Is it just me or is it extraordinarily cold today?"
"It's the Solstice," Sai said, though he wasn't sure if that had anything to do with the cold. Admittedly, it was a bit colder as compared to other days since December came in. He returned his gaze back to Sakura. "Are you all right?"
Sakura let out a snorting sound and she buried herself deeper into her blankets. "Yeah. Just… yeah, give me five more minutes."
Sai rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand and looking down at Sakura curiously. The only thing visible was the crown of her head poking from under her sheets. Sai felt an unexplainable urge to jump out of his cot and get as far away from her as possible (because a sleepy Sakura was just as bad as an angry Sakura), but he just couldn't bring his body to move. Once again, Sakura curled up like this… amused him. It was the first time they had shared the cot with the blinds up. All he needed to do was roll over a few more inches and he could practically take her into his arms and –
He shook himself. He knew that his mission was to protect this woman at all costs, and though Tsunade had been quite stingy with specifics, he had agreed to accept this job. Sakura was making it hard for him to do so, but he could not help but find moments within this mission quite… fun.
And finding a mission fun can't possibly be good.
He wanted to blame it all on Sakura for being just so… was the right word cute? There had been moments in the past days when he had purposefully tried to make her blush. All of his attempts had been successful. In fact it had been very easy to accomplish; a brush on the cheek here, a touch on the arm there. Of course, he had received a punch or two in the process, though he couldn't help but feel like she had held back, because her punches didn't hurt as much as he knew they should. She would flee from him after attacking him, and he would be left feeling strangely satisfied.
"You're cold," Sai pointed out as he saw Sakura shiver from under her blankets. He moved towards her.
Sakura's face popped out from under the sheets. Her eyes were wide open, and her cheeks were tinted faintly of pink. "Don'teven think about it," she hissed in warning.
Sai froze in mid-action, one arm hovering over Sakura's form before he slowly lowered it back on the cot. "I just thought – " Sakura's pointed stare silenced him immediately.
"Don't think. Don't talk. Don't do anything," Sakura commanded, and she hesitated approximately three seconds before she turned her back to him, pulling the blankets over her head again.
Sai realized it was one of those moments when Sakura was being just plain unsociable. He had dubbed these moments as 'Sakura moments', where she would try everything in her power to be unreasonable. He knew that it was better to leave her alone for a few minutes until the moment passed, but since he had never once tried to engage her in a conversation during her 'Sakura moment', he decided to find out what would happen if he tried to push his luck.
"Why are you angry?" Sai asked, sincerely curious why she was in such a bad mood today.
Sakura was instantly ashamed of herself. Sai could tell, because her shoulders slackened and after a few seconds rolled over to face him. She was frowning. There was that small, vertical crease between her eyebrows that only appeared when she was deep in thought. She was not blushing, which was a shame.
"I'm not angry. Not really," she said quietly, rubbing the exposed tip of her nose before coughing in her hand.
Sai searched her face a moment longer than necessary before lying on his back, focusing his eyes on the ceiling. There were many times during their stay in Gifu did he think Sakura to be a very difficult girl, but this was probably the very first time it ever bothered him. Nothing usually bothered him. He sighed. "Then why do you seem like you are this early in the morning, right before I even start to annoy you, like you say I always do?"
And she was silent. Sai didn't bother to look at her if she was thinking of an answer to his question, assuming she was just going to brush him off because she always did that as of late.
So he was surprised when he felt cool fingers press against the side of his face. He didn't move, or even say anything, deep down thinking that if he did she would pull away.
"I'm uncomfortable when you act like this," she said.
"When I act like what?"
The fingers resting on Sai's cheek twitched but they didn't leave. "Like as if you're making fun of me."
That was what made Sai turn his head to look at her. The fingers touching his cheek ended up brushing his lips, and his heart skipped another beat for an unknown reason. "I'm… not making fun of you."
Sakura was looking at her own fingers, now lingering on the corner of his mouth. She seemed quite fascinated by this because she started to brush her thumb over his lower lip experimentally. Then, as if realizing what she was doing, pulled away and tucked her hand under her pillow. "Well, it makes me feel like you are. You go around being nice when you don't have to, and just now you were about to hug me to embarrass me, like always."
Sai felt a muscle on his cheek that he'd barely used before twitch, and the corner of his mouth turned down slightly. "You looked cold. I thought maybe you needed – "
"Well, you thought wrong," Sakura interrupted, and then sneezed so violently that Sai actually felt a light spray of what could have been saliva on his face. He wiped at it unconsciously.
""I didn't – don't – intent to. Embarrass you, I mean," Sai lied. He was always a good liar. He was just a natural poker face. He wasn't about to admit to her that making her blush was a secret pleasure to him as of late.
"It doesn't matter if you didn't mean to. If that's how the other party perceives it, then that means everything."
Sai blinked at her owlishly, his eyes lingering down to the pillow where she had hid her hand and his mind drifting off to the sensation her fingers had cast onto his lips. "It does?"
Sakura nodded vigorously. "God, Sai. Ever since we came here, I keep on forgetting you're emotionally retarded." She wrinkled her nose. "Look, do you see anyone else around? There's no one here. There's no reason for you to play the ever-devoted husband-to-be when it's just the two of us."
Sai blinked again, in all honesty lost at Sakura's explanation as to why she didn't want to accept his kindness, when all the books that dealt with the female psychology he had read said so otherwise. "You were cold. I wanted to give you warmth because you're bad at cold mornings. That didn't have anything to do with our disguise. I thought it to be the kind thing to do."
This silenced Sakura, as if weighing his words in her mind. She opened her mouth to say something, but seemed to decide against it when she closed it again.
Sai took this chance to sit up, but Sakura's hand instantly shot out and grabbed his wrist. He looked down at her questioningly.
"You're wasting body heat," Sakura mumbled quietly as her grip tightened, and she tried her best to avoid his stare.
Sai considered prying her vise-grip away, but instead found himself lying back down on his cot. He was quite surprised, however, when Sakura edged closer to him, pressing her body against his. He didn't know what to do. For a moment, he lay there, paralyzed, afraid that if he moved she would pull away.
The thing that bothered him was her hands. Her left hand – the one that had grabbed his wrist – never released its grip, and it was starting to cut off the circulation of blood to his fingers. Her right hand buried under her pillow had somehow managed to slither under his pillow and it was now an annoying lump located under his head. It was pressing against his cheek.
"You're… warm," she said against his neck.
"You're cold," Sai said back, and it was the truth. Her fingers were cold against his wrist, and the tip of her nose that was pressing against his neck was like an ice cube.
Sai wriggled his wrist free from her grasp and slowly, cautiously – just carefully enough to give her a chance to pull away if she wanted – he slid his arm around her waist and planted his palm flat against the small of her back. He was mildly surprised when she didn't flinch from the contact, as she always did when he tried to touch her. Taking this as a positive sign, he pulled her closer and she buried her face between Sai's pillow and his neck. Sai discovered that although her nose was cold, her cheeks were very warm.
"I hate this place," Sakura suddenly said, her voice muffled against his skin. "It's always either too cold or too hot. I can't wait to go back home where the weather's all right all the time."
"Was it really that sunny? I never noticed," Sai said, shifting his head a bit to the right to avoid the lump her hand was making on his pillow.
Sakura nodded slowly. "Yeah. I almost forgot you weren't always out in the open until you joined Team Seven. It must have sucked being underground majority of your youth."
Sai's eyebrows twitched a bit. It was probably the only facial expression that came close to amusement for him. "Just because I wasn't in Academy with you or didn't grow up with you and your batch doesn't mean I haven't been around the village myself."
"I never saw you around," Sakura said lazily. She could have been talking in her sleep.
"A good ninja doesn't haveto be seen. Working in the shadows, unnoticed, is how I was trained."
"You never did odd jobs when you were a Genin?"
"Define odd jobs."
"Working the garden. Fishing garbage out of the river. Chasing after runaway pets. That's to name a few."
Sai thought about it, trying hard to remember his Genin days. There was one vivid memory a few months after becoming a Genin. He was given a solo mission to assassinate a rich merchant's wife who was having an affair with the village locksmith. The merchant had money to spend, and a good enough reason to spend it. The Leaf – Danzo – had no reason to refuse. Sai didn't have a hard time with the mission. He had waited for the wife by the locksmith's shop. That night saw Sai having to slit the throat of the locksmith and the wife while they lay naked after love-making. Sai was ordered not to strike unless able to find proof of the affair.
Of course, it didn't matter, the very trivial detail about the locksmith and the merchant's wife being formerly engaged and the merchant threatening the woman that if she didn't marry him instead, he would throw the woman's sickly old father into jail for the debt he still owed him.
Sai had been nine years old at that time. He had felt not an iota of remorse then. He still didn't feel any of it now, but his arms tightened around Sakura's waist uneasily. "Yes. I did odd jobs back then, too."
Sakura laughed softly, her breath tickling the skin of his neck his robes exposed. "Those bring back a lot of memories. Naruto always messed it up for us. He was always getting into trouble."
Sai felt suddenly sick. He knew where this conversation was going. If he didn't change the subject, they would end up talking about Uchiha Sasuke. And conversations about Uchiha Sasuke never ended happily.
"Tomona said there would be fireworks tonight," Sai started, resting his chin on the top of her head. He marveled at the fact that Sakura didn't even try to push him away when she normally would have pummeled him to death in other circumstances involving any intimate contact whatsoever.
Sakura nodded, once again back to being lethargic once the conversation about Konoha ended. "Yeah. I didn't know they made fireworks this far south of the Wind Country."
"Tomona said they get fireworks delivered from the Sand before trade ends for the winter." And hadn't Sai frowned at the fact that Gifu and the Hidden Sand Village were actually that open for trade? Being open for trade meant being open to news. And news traveled too fast for comfort for Sai. The only thing he could do was hope that Gifu's new Healer was not a part of that news.
The arm Sai had around Sakura's waist slackened, and he suddenly felt very tired. This was probably the hardest mission he's had to date, and because this did not involve recon, assassination or espionage, he was utterly and completely lost. Those were the only things he was capable of doing good. For the love of him he was not trained to hold a woman when she was sleeping, nor was he skilled in understanding certain aspects that came close to intimacy. And that was what they were now, right? Intimate?
Sai closed his eyes and sighed. But he had to admit that out of all the missions he had taken so far, this was the mission he felt he could learn and grow as a person, and not as a Root agent. All of that could be because he was living with the girl he had wrapped in his arms right now.
Sai's eyes popped open when said girl's breathing evened out as she slipped into dreamland. This was another thing that had started worrying him ever since Sakura had begun studying the second scroll. It was as if she was always, always tired, especially in the morning. She would eventually gain momentum once the sun shone and melted the snow. Today, however, didn't look too promising. It was cold, even for Sai.
"Sai," Sakura suddenly spoke.
"Yes?"
"The patient's inventory… You'll look at it for me later, right?"
Sai nodded slowly. He had promised to help her with the quarterly inventory not a few days ago. "Of course," he said, and they fell into silence, until Sakura suddenly spoke again.
"Sai?"
Sai craned his neck to peer down at her questioningly. "What?"
"Let's watch the fireworks tonight. Okay?"
Sai blinked. It was the only reaction he could think of doing at the moment, because this was the first time Sakura had actually initiated an opportunity for them to be together. He wondered if it was an unconscious reaction for the kunoichi to spout random romantic words when she was weak and sleepy.
What surprised him more was the very, very distinct warm feeling that had started to spread from his chest to his neck to his arms, making his fingertips tingle pleasantly.
"I'd love that. Sure," he said. And he spent the next hour watching her sleep.
There was something terribly wrong with Gifu today. While it was normal for early mornings to greet them with a thin sheet of frozen precipitation before the sun rose, the snow had accumulated past knee-level that Tenten had to raise her skirts higher to keep it dry. Of course, since it never really snowed this much in Konoha, the Weapons mistress couldn't help but giggle at the coldness grazing her legs. She looked up at the dark clouds in the sky. They promised more snow. She wondered if Gifu's Solstice was always this cold, and thought that it wouldn't be so bad if Konoha had a few days like this, too.
"Tenten," she heard a voice call out to her and she looked over her shoulder to see Neji by the kitchens, who had just started a fire. "What are you doing out so early?"
Tenten squinted at her teammate. What with the whiteness of everything around them and the eerie darkness of early morning, she could hardly make out his eyes. "I should be asking you the same thing. What are you doing up?" she inquired.
Neji squatted down on his haunches in front of one of their water pots and frowned. "I had wanted a drink, but all our water's frozen," he said.
Tenten's eyebrows rose up her forehead and she carefully tread through the garden, making sure to step into the holes in the snow where Neji's feet had already left deep footprints. "It's especially cold today. Sakura and Sai aren't awake yet?" Once she reached the kitchens, she stomped her feet to shake off the snow that had seeped under her toes.
Neji flipped open the top of the pot and peered in it. "They're still in bed, but they're awake."
Tenten stared at her teammate's back for a few seconds before understanding what he meant, and her eyes narrowed at him. "You weren't spying on them with your eyes, were you? Because that's just plain creepy."
Neji met her gaze head on. In the light of the fire that crackled happily in the clay stove, the serious lines set on the corners of the Hyuuga's mouth said everything. "I always check on them when I can. Always."
Tenten was disgruntled. "Well, you should stop. You should leave them alone."
Neji shook his head and he slipped a kunai from a secret pocket of his sleeping robes. He started hacking at the ice inside the water pot. "We can't leave Sakura alone with Sai. We don't know if we can trust a Root agent who could be waiting for Sakura to lower her guard."
The annoyance left Tenten, immediately being replaced by a trace of amusement. Lower her guard, he says? Sakura had been practically rolling around the colony without a care in the world. Her guard, as far as Tenten was concerned, was already down. She may be denying it, but she had already surrendered her trust to Sai fully. Tenten decided not to say anything to Neji, and instead crossed the kitchens to retrieve one of the low hanging kettles in the pantry. She placed it on the ground next to her teammate.
"Thank you," Neji said quietly and he deposited several shards of ice into the kettle.
Tenten wordlessly hung the kettle on the hook over the fire and wrapped her arms around herself.
Neji, after replacing the top cover of the pot back, straightened and mimicked her. The two of them stared into the fire for a few wordless moments. Tenten, once in a while, would rub her arms briskly with her palms. Neji, despite the thin robes he had on, didn't even bat an eyelash. Tenten could only grin as she watched him. He had always been serious about many things, though he had relatively lightened as compared to how he was back in his Genin days. Oh, and hadn't he been the stiff little Hyuuga back then? Tenten reached out and poked at his arm gently.
Neji looked down at the spot where she had touched him, then shifted his gaze to Tenten's face. "What?"
Tenten flashed him a toothy smile. "It's cold."
Neji returned his gaze back to the kettle. "You should go back inside. I'll bring the hot water when it's ready."
Tenten nodded. "All right. I'll wake Lee up and maybe get some breakfast on the table. You don't mind eating in the clinic, right?"
Neji shrugged. "No. Besides, I don't think Lee would want to eat upstairs."
Tenten snorted. "And why would – " The obvious hit Tenten like a dart between the eyes, and she reached out with both her hands, grabbing Neji's sleeve anxiously. "Don't tell me Sai and Sakura… They weren't… doing stuff, were they?"
Neji pulled his sleeve from her grasp roughly and stepped away from Tenten, straightening his robes self-consciously. "Now who's being nosy? It's the first time they're sleeping with the blinds rolled up."
Tenten felt her eyes bulge from their sockets. She had always known Sakura and Sai had their cots pressed against each other with wooden blinds to separate them when they sleep. For the past weeks they were there, those blinds were always drawn down. The news that Sai and Sakura had actually removed that thin boundary between them was not the one that shocked the Weapons mistress. It was the fact that Neji actually had the nerve to spy on the two even when they were asleep. She reached out again and grabbed at his ear, pulling hard. "You pervert!"
"Ow! What the – !" Neji cried as he swatted Tenten's hand away and took refuge behind their stack of firewood.
Tenten shook a fist at him threateningly. "This isn't the first time you've spied on them, is it?"
Neji crossed his arms over his chest, and the look on his face made Tenten lower her fist and back away a step. It was the look Neji reserved for those occasions when Tenten or Lee started to forget who the Jounin was in the team. "You of all people should know this has to stop. I don't trust Sai. I don't think Sakura – or you, for that matter – should trust him, either."
Tenten bit her lower lip and looked away. She knew what Neji was trying to say, and she knew he was right. But they didn't have the right to tell Sakura who she should trust. But… was there really a reason to worry about Sakura's safety? Even if Sai were – by any chance, however slim those chances could be – to betray Sakura, Tenten doubted Sakura would take the betrayal lying down.
Neji glanced over his shoulder when the kettle started to whistle angrily, spouting out steam into the cool morning air. He flashed Tenten a look and said, "Let's not forget that Sakura is being hunted down by the people whose Sai's loyalties belong to. What do you think would happen to Gifu if Root decides to look for Sakura here?"
Tenten hurried over to the kettle and used her robe's sleeves to grab the hot handle. She slowly removed it from the fire. She was starting to get upset with Neji. It was not that she did not agree with him; she knew that they were risking the lives of people who could not defend themselves if anything short of an invasion of the colony broke out. But… where would they go if they left Gifu? She shifted the kettle into one hand and rubbed her nose with the back of her free one, her mood sinking. "I'm making tea," she said shortly as she moved to return to the Healer's hut.
She was surprised when she felt Neji's hand grabbing her free wrist loosely.
"Tenten, wait," the Hyuuga said. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to sound too morbid. I don't like this as much as you do, but we have to be vigilant about everything. We've disobeyed orders of the Sixth. He wants Sakura, who conveniently happens to have escaped Konoha with a Root agent. I can't help but doubt him."
Tenten lowered her chin to her chest. "I know. But… he's their teammate." She closed her eyes sadly. "I don't want to think of Sakura being betrayed again by a member of Team Kakashi. She's had enough of that already, you know?"
Neji dropped her wrist, and after a pregnant silence, he too nodded his head. "I know.All too well. Let's just hope that everything turns out for the best. We shouldn't lower our guard, all right?"
Tenten nodded. "All right. I understand." And she slowly made her way back to the house with the kettle in her hand. Neji followed her wake, and she felt those eyes of his burning holes at the back of her head.
"And one more thing," Neji said.
Tenten looked over her shoulder curiously. It was not everyday Hyuuga Neji had an afterthought. He was usually efficient and to the point. "What?"
Neji paused a bit, then said, "Forget the tea for a minute. Come with me?" He leaned his head, gesturing with his chin towards the gates leading outside the garden.
Tenten suspiciously stared at her teammate a few seconds "Where to?"
"I think there's something you have to know about," Neji said.
Tenten took her time to think it over. It was not like Neji to ask her to accompany him out of the blue. "Sure. Let me, yeah, let me just put this inside."
Of course she was surprised to where he had to take her.
It wasn't hard to spot them. What had supposedly been a huge group of men in caravans and camels had now divided themselves into three groups and were now going their separate ways around the colony. It seemed like it had been Sai who had told Neji of the group's presence. Apparently, the suspicious group had been watching Gifu for over two weeks now, but since the Root Agent could not pinpoint their motives, he had left them alone.
Neji deactivated his Byakugan and Tenten lowered the small binoculars she had unsealed from one of the compact scrolls she had within her robes. They had taken to laying low on a slope to the west a few miles west away from Gifu.
"What are they? Nomads?" Tenten asked, frowning.
"I doubt it. Nomads – or any traveling group for that matter – wouldn't linger around idly and waste water and food in the middle of harsh terrain," Neji said, lowering himself further down the slope and turning his back from the group. "At least they're not from the Leaf under Danzo's orders."
But one could never be sure. Tenten did not know how Root worked. It wasn't until Akatsuki became active that she had heard there was such an organization, and everything was basically a mystery to her. Gai sensei never spoke of it to them, or at least he never got the chance to do so.
Tenten crouched down beside her teammate, the binoculars disappearing under her robes. "But they've been there for two weeks already." She looked over the slope again at the group. "And truthfully, I don't see them capable of doing harm to the colony. The people of Gifu have no money or anything that would interest common vagabonds."
"They may not be after money."
"What would they want, then?"
"Water, maybe?" Neji moved away from the slope. "They're moving funny today. I'm not sure if they're friend or foe, but I just wanted you to be aware of them, especially since Sakura has not been feeling well lately."
Tenten followed him, gathering her skirts around her knees to be able to move faster. The sand was cool against her sandaled feet. Neji reached out a hand at her and she took it to stand up. She was surprised to find the muscles of his hands, his arms, all hard and tense.
"Are you all right?" she asked him, watching the back of his head intently. There was sand in his long, black hair, sand on his shoulders, and she had to control the urge to brush it away.
"Be vigilant, Tenten." Neji looked at her sideways, and those pale eyes showed that he was serious. The way his hand tightened around hers before letting go was what convinced Tenten that he was not, the very least, all right.
It was not rare for Sai's head to hurt when he was tired. He blamed it on his eyes. The truth was, he was terribly far-sighted. While he could hit a small, moving target as well as the next ninja, the village's ophthalmologist had prescribed glasses for him especially for reading for long periods of time.
Those glasses happen to be in the third drawer of his nightstand in his apartment. Unfortunately, that nightstand – and his apartment and everything along with it – had been blown to bits along with the rest of Konoha during the invasion.
Just thinking about it made Sai frown and he pinched the bridge of his nose to ward away the foreboding migraine. Sitting solemnly on the wooden table in the waiting area of the clinic, scroll upon scroll of patient's inventory spread before him, it was that rare moment when he wished he hadn't taken those pair of glasses for granted. Tonight was going to be a long, long day. It was barely noon and he already felt like lying down.
Lowering his head slightly into his hand, he shoved the scrolls to the side with his elbow and groaned. When he looked back up, he nearly fell off his chair when he found Rock Lee sitting across from him, his mouth set on his face like an upside-down 'W' and his round eyes determinedly staring at him passionately. Slowly sitting straighter on his chair, Sai warily rolled the scrolls and put them away in the wicker box where they would be safe in case Lee tried something eccentric. After making sure anything that mattered was out of harm's way, Sai returned his hands on top of the wooden table and waited for Lee to state his business. Much to Sai's discomfort, the Taijutsu master didn't move – or blink – for the past minutes since he had magically materialized before him. Lee reminded him of the first time he had joined Team Seven for a mission. Naruto and Sakura had looked at him weird, and he had threatened to spank them for it. It had not yielded good results, so he assumed that threatening Lee wouldn't, either.
Sai gestured at Lee instead and asked, "What is it?"
Lee jumped slightly, but his eyes never left his face. If anything, his stare got even sharper, and he started fidgeting in his chair, as if not sure what to do next.
Sai cleared his throat and asked again, "Is there anything I can help you with?"
That was when Lee finally opened his mouth. It took a while before the words tumbled out. "I challenge you!" he said, and much to Sai's displeasure, Lee had to shout it out to him when he was merely two feet away. His voice echoed through his skull, making him wince.
Sai cocked his head to the side, wrinkled his nose in pain. "You… challenge me? To what?"
"A duel, of course!" Lee said earnestly, planting his palms on the table in front of him and standing up so abruptly he nearly toppled his seat back. He sounded so enthusiastic that Sai could have thought that suddenly challenging someone out of the blue was nothing out of the ordinary to Lee. Of course, Sai couldn't have possibly known that it wasn't out of the ordinary for Lee at all.
Sai leaned back on his chair, as if subconsciously preparing himself to make a necessary escape when given that window of opportunity. "A duel?" he repeated flatly. "What ever for?"
Lee shook his head feverishly and he settled back down on his chair. Sai could see the boy was trying to control himself. It was not the first time he had been able to share personal space with the over-energetic boy, and once or twice he had come across his name when Danzo had ordered him to mingle with Team Seven. During those times Sai could say he had been relatively in good terms with him. However, come to think of it, ever since Team Gai had found them in Gifu, the Taijutsu master had been nothing but unsociable, competitive and downright annoying towards him.
"For Sakura's honor, of course!" Lee said.
Sai raised his eyebrows in disbelief. No, he didn't think he was required to have such a stupid conversation with this person when his head was hurting so much his ears were ringing. He stood up, gathered the wicker basket full of scrolls under his arm and made to leave.
"Wait! Where are you going?" Lee demanded. The boy was up on his feet as well and had blocked Sai's path quickly. "You cannot leave when I just challenged you."
Sai narrowed his eyes at him. "There will be no challenge. The one who will be defending Sakura – and her honor, if you want to put it that way – is I. End of conversation."
Lee, for a moment looked like he was about to back down, but recovered quickly and he puffed up his chest, as if to make himself appear bigger. "I cannot accept that answer. I have as much right to protect her as you."
Sai pinched the bridge of his nose again and placed the wicker basket back down on the table. "It's not a matter of right. It's a matter of duty. It's my mission to protect her. If you want to somehow be her self-proclaimed bodyguard, I don't care. But challenging me for the sole position is a waste of time, because whether I win or lose, it's my life before hers. Now, if there's nothing important you want to say to me, I'm going to get some pain relievers, so please move out of my way."
Lee miraculously stepped aside and Sai stalked towards the cabinets containing the over-the-counter medical herbs. Much to Sai's disapproval, Lee trailed after him.
"You like her," Lee suddenly said in an angry and somewhat accusatory tone.
Sai pulled open the lower drawers and rummaged through it in search for that brown clay pot containing a stack of dried feverfew. "I don't hate her, if that's what you're pointing out. She was my teammate, after all." He paused a bit when he realized he had used the past tense. Was she still a teammate now? Brushing away the thought, he continued his search of the herb.
Lee started to get restless. He hovered so close to Sai's shoulder that it made the hairs at the back of Sai's neck stand on end. "That's it. I think you are in love with her, which is why you greedily claim the title of her protector."
The absurdity of the statement made Sai's hand pause in mid-search again and he looked up to meet Lee's gaze from over his shoulder. What a ridiculous comment. Not only was it untrue, but it was highly improbable. He was not capable of containing such emotions. And even if he were, he wouldn't have been able to notice otherwise. "I don't love her," Sai drawled blandly. "She is violent, most of the time cranky, and is more often than not a crybaby. I can't even keep count on the times she's cried over Sasuke. She's clingy and over-dependent on the people around her – Naruto, mostly – and she never appreciates the good things I do for her." He resumed his search for the pot, slightly getting a bit irritated because it looked like someone had taken it from its usual place and never bothered to put it back. "I personally don't understand why youlike her so much."
And that seemed to have caught Lee unsuspectingly. The Taijutsu master backed away a step, face reddening all over, even his ears. "H-how dare you speak about Sakura that way. I will not forgive you for it!"
"Do I look like I care? I think you're just being bitter about this because Sakura and I have to pose as a couple, and you're jealous. That's it, isn't it?" He might as well tell it how he sees it. Being blunt had always worked for him.
Lee's mouth opened and closed like a fish as he backed away even further. "That has absolutely nothing to do with it!"
Sai, in a rare moment of pure frustration, abandoned his search for the pot of herbs and whirled around to face Lee. "Then what is it?"
"I can feel it!" Lee blurted out, "It's the way you look at her. You talk about her faults but your eyes say differently."
Another thing Sai didn't understand. His eyes don't say anything, whatever thatmeant. Sai stuffed his hand back into the drawer and wildly started tossing out jars and jars of herbs that were not feverfew. He did not like the state he was in right now. In fact, this has got to be the closest thing he had come to being what other people may call as 'being angry'. He was not comfortable with the feeling. He knew he was making a mess of Sakura's medicine cabinet, but seeing everything scattered on the floor somehow made the feeling more tolerable. "I don't look at her like that. Stop putting weird meanings in what I do."
Lee didn't seem to want to listen to him. "Be a man and admit that you have feelings for her! If you do not admit it, how can I consider you as my rival?"
Sai grabbed the final jar inside the drawer and, realizing that he had just emptied Sakura's stock onto the floor, sighed in resignation and dropped the jar back into the drawer. He ran his hands through his hair. "I don't want to be your rival. Please leave me alone." He added a 'please' there. Maybe that would make him go away.
Sai swore that he came close to hating Lee at that moment, because the boy had suddenly moved a step forward and was now sizing him up.
"If you do not have any sort of attachment to her, then it is fine if I ask her to watch the fireworks tonight," Lee said slowly, and as Sai looked back at the boy, he knew that he was dead serious about it. Lee turned away jerkily, as if he too lost the wind that was driving him earlier.
Now in normal circumstances, Sai would have just let the other boy walk away because it would be too bothersome to do otherwise. Plus, not only did Lee have nothing to do with whatever mission he had to perform, but it was the perfect way to end a conversation he had been happy to drop from the very beginning.
That was why he surprised himself when he grabbed Lee by the collar of his stupid green suit, yanked him back towards him and nearly snarled in his face. "Sakura's watching the fireworks with me."
Lee, those round eyes sharp and determined but not the least bit surprised, examined Sai's face intently. "Let me go. Violence is not tolerated here."
And of course, Sakura had to pick that perfect, perfect timing to suddenly walk into the clinic. She was wrapped in layer after layer of robes, and the hem of her skirt was a bit wet from the snow outside. Standing right behind her was Riho, looking absolutely excited as her eyes went from Sai to Lee then back again. In her arms was a bundle of thick sheets that was unmistakably baby Valu.
Sakura nearly dropped the small clay kettle she carried with her when she saw Sai half-strangling Lee.
"What on earth is going on here?" she demanded as she hurried over to where the two boys were. "Are you two fighting?"
Riho moved towards the hearth and shifted Valu from one arm to another. "Is this what they call a fight? I had thought it would be more… exciting. Of course, I've never witnessed a fight before, but I have heard men do it sometimes when they stake their claim on their properties." She paused a bit then nodded. "They remind me of wolves, really. Or dogs. Which ever."
Sai instantly let go of Lee and stepped back, but his gaze never left the Taijutsu master. "We were just talking," he said, his hand unconsciously rubbing his temple roughly.
"Yes. We were talking," Lee seconded, crossing his arms over his chest.
Sakura suspiciously looked from Sai to Lee, then back again. "O… kay? Well, I hope you have a better excuse as to why my floor is littered with my herbs."
Sai made his way to the table, having a sudden urge to sit down. He buried his head in one hand. "I was looking for – "
"Feverfew for your migraine?" Sakura finished for him.
Sai looked up at her, surprised. "How – ?"
Sakura sat down beside him on the table, reached out for one of the clay mugs on the center of the table and sighed as she poured the kettle she had been carrying since she came into the clinic. "You always get migraines when you read for too long. Or so I've noticed for the past months. I made you your feverfew tea."
Sai's eyes traveled down to the steaming mug sitting before him and he blinked at it in awe. He hadn't realized that Sakura was actually aware of his routine of pouring himself a cup of the concoction when he was feeling under the weather, and this was the first time, actually, that she had voluntarily made him his dose of painkillers. He gingerly took the mug between his hands and slowly raised it to his lips for a sip. The taste surprised him even more. It was unmistakably the same herb she had used, but for some reason, this batch tasted different. He doubted she put anything else other than that herb, but it still tasted… better.
Sakura stood from her seat and went to Lee. "I was wondering where you were, Lee. Do you have the time?"
Lee stood up straighter, his crossed arms suddenly rigid on either side of him. "Y-yes! Is there anything you need me to do?"
"Ah, yeah. Riho needs help with the shoveling of the snow in her garden. Do you think you can lend her a hand?"
Riho grinned over from the hearth. "I would do it myself, if it weren't for Valu."
Sai's head shot up and immediately stood, abandoning his drink. "I'll do it."
Sakura was at his side in a flash, her hands on either shoulder, firmly pushing him back into his seat. "You'll be staying here until you get better."
Lee pumped a fist into the air and did a little victory dance. "Hah! Take that, Sai! It is Iwho would do Sakura's chores for today." And in a hurry, the boy excitedly exited the clinic through the front door, looking over his shoulder one last time at Sai to give him a thumbs-up sign before disappearing into the whiteness of the garden outside.
Riho gathered Valu once again towards her and shook her head ruefully. "Oh… Oh, dear." She looked over to Sai. "I'm sure Lee would be able to handle the task as well as you, Sai. I suggest you follow the Healer's orders. You look paler than usual. And to think you are already paler than the average male. I heard from Tenten that it has something to do with the air from where you came from. I shall take my leave, if it pleases you." She lowered her head an angle and disappeared through the door after Lee.
Sai felt something that others could have called 'irritation' bubble up his gut. He waited for the door to close after Riho before he pushed his tea away and dropped his head onto the table with a groan. He couldn't wait to end this mission and have the usual 'go-fetch' ones. This was taking its toll on him. He could not even remember having been this miserable in a very long time.
He felt a gentle pressure squeezing his shoulders and he made an effort to raise his face. He ended up nose to nose with a worried-looking Sakura. He immediately looked away. He soon found out that this was not a good idea as it made his temple throb painfully. He reached out and downed his tea in one gulp.
"You should lie down. I'll get you a hot towel," Sakura said and she tried to pick him up under his elbow.
Sai tried to shrug her away, but Sakura was strong and her grip was firm. A few minutes passed and he found himself being wrestled into one of the collapsible cots Sakura had positioned right next to the hearth where she fed the fire more wood.
"I really don't want to lie down," Sai argued weakly as he tried to sit up on the cot.
Sakura shoved him back into his pillow and, to make sure he would not get back up, pressed down on his chest with the palm of one chakra-enhanced hand. "Men. You don't even know half of what you want, more so need. Now just stay still."
"I don't – " He was silenced when she draped the hot towel she had in one hand over his eyes. Sai could only groan in pleasure as the warmth did wonders to his aching head.
He felt Sakura sit down on the cot next to him. "You're as annoying as ever. Why don't you just listen to me until your head stops hurting?"
"It's just a migraine."
"No, it isn't just about that." He felt the hand on his chest move to his arm, Sakura's fingers lightly ironing out the folds of his robes. "You didn't seem like yourself earlier. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you just lost your patience back there with Lee."
Sai tilted his head away from her. She was not far from the truth. Though he could not explain what had just happened with his conversation with Lee, he hadn't liked the feeling. "He was being pushy," he said in resignation and he draped his arm over the towel covering his eyes. "I guess I didn't know that I don't like being pushed."
Sakura laughed so quietly Sai could barely hear it over the crackling fire of the hearth. "Lee's just being Lee. He's always been that way since we were Genin."
Sai peeked from beneath the towel, shifting it out of the way with a finger, one eye watching Sakura as she picked on the lint on his robes. "You seem to know a lot about him."
Another laugh. "He's caused me a few of my worries back when we first met."
Sai felt a muscle twitch under his eye and he rubbed at it with the back of his hand before covering his eyes with the towel and his arm again. "I don't trust him."
"You don't trust anybody," Sakura said dryly and her fingers resumed their lint-picking. "Not even me."
Sai did not know what to say to her. The warmth of the fire was making him drowsy, and now that the medicine was kicking in, he was afraid he would fall asleep. "It's a mutual feeling. You don't trust me, either, right?"
"That's not true. It's not that I don't trust you." Her voice was hesitant. Sai couldn't help but once again peek from under his arm, and he found her faintly blushing. She met his gaze head on. "Old habits are just hard to break, and deep down inside I still feel like as if you're hiding something from me."
Sai blinked up at her and he slowly pushed himself to a sitting position, letting the towel slide down to his shoulder. This time Sakura did not stop him. "There's nothing to hide. Literally. When we left the Leaf, there wasn't much we had going on. Everything was in chaos, and the only instructions I got were to get you out and keep you safe. And then Team Gai comes into the picture with pretty much nothing with them as well. They think I'm here under Danzo's orders, and I think they're here under Danzo's orders." He scratched the side of his neck, a bit restless. "It's natural for us to doubt each other when we're practically running around in circles, lacking orders. Ninja don't loiter. We usually have someone telling us what to do."
Sakura pursed her lips, and Sai knew she understood what he had just said to her. Then she shook her head. "That doesn't give you an excuse to be rude to them, or to fight with them." She gave her littered floor a sad look. "Or to put it out on my stuff."
Sai gave her a blank look. "It won't happen again. I'm sorry. Let me clean that up for you."
Sakura stopped him. "It's fine. I can do it myself. You don't have to do odd jobs for me all the time. You don't have to take your job too seriously."
"But," Sai started, he too looking down at the clutter of bottles and jars on the otherwise spotless floor. "I don't mind doing odd jobs for you."
Sakura wrinkled her nose. "Why?"
Sai shrugged. "Because if I don't, Lee will insist on doing it. And I don't like it when he does it."
More nose-wrinkling. "Again, why?"
Sai thought for a moment. He thought really hard, and in that split second it was like he had an epiphany. Eyes wide, he turned to Sakura and said, "I don't know."
Sakura frowned at him. "You don't know?"
Sai nodded excitedly. "Yes. I don't know."
"You don't know?" Sakura asked again.
Sai smiled at her. Now that his migraine was dulled down by the medicine, his mood was relatively getting better, and he hopped down the cot, abandoned the towel he had on his shoulder, hurried across the clinic and grabbed the cloak he had hanging on the peg by the door. "Yeah. But I'm going to find out. I'll be back in an hour or so." He threw the cloak over his shoulders happily.
Sakura was on her feet as well, absolutely lost. "Wait, what? Where are you going? Are you feeling better?"
"Absolutely. See you later," he said with a wave and he dashed out of the clinic and into the snow, Sakura protesting loudly behind him.
He knew exactly where to look. Noa lived by herself in the outskirts of the colony in a small house made of rock and clay. He had been to the place several times last month to ask the girl to keep Sakura company when he went to patrol outside colony grounds, and he had to admit, the place was neat and clean, as opposed to the first impression Noa had made on him with all the camel droppings she liked burying around their property. The garden was small, but Noa tended to the herbs and plants properly. At the moment there was a makeshift vinyl greenhouse propped up to keep the herbs safe from the cold.
Sai looked down at the snow-covered ground and found tiny footprints all around the house, as if the girl had been running around it in frenzy. He could tell the latest of the footprints were the ones that led inside and so he was sure Noa was present. Making his way to the door, he examined the small greenhouse curiously and saw tiny little sprouts coming out of the soil. He didn't know what they were called, but they did not look too healthy to him. Turning away from the dying sprouts, Sai raised a fist and knocked on the door twice. No one answered. Sai tried the doorknob. It turned easily and the door quietly opened.
The heat hit his face like a wave, and his instant reaction was to raise his sleeve to his nose. It seemed like Noa wasn't at all stingy with her firewood; it may easily have been forty degrees inside her house. Along with the heat came a distinct smell of chamomile. Sai coughed into his sleeve and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
The house was, unmistakably, a Healer's house. And though Noa's workplace was a lot messier and very compact as compared to Sakura's, Sai thought that it had a certain air that said Noa was just as serious with the medical arts as the next Healer.
Her desk, which was too big for the house itself, was situated right in the middle of the room dividing her workplace from her living space. On top of it was an assortment of dried plants in jars, stone mortars and, much to Sai's surprise, a small vanity mirror with the tiny drawers overflowing with colorful hair pins and sparkly headbands. Even though Sai had been here many times before, it was actually the first time he had stepped inside and taken in the detail of the place.
He had to admit, it was very uninspiring.
Aside from the vanity that could possibly be the only sign that indicated a girl was actually living in the house, everything else had little to no evidence of Noa's personality. A small round table was sitting out of place in the corner by the door, where an abandoned bowl of pickled plum and gruel was left forgotten. A small chair here, an old exotic-looking oil lamp there, shelves containing more and more jars and bottles – not books – pushed against the left wall, the right wall bare and lonely except for a hearth where a blazing fire was crackling lively. Noa's clinic didn't have any cots, or a waiting area for that matter. It was obvious she was studying medicine, not to heal people, but because she just liked to do so, like a hobby.
At the other end of the room was a door that most probably led to the rest of Noa's house. He could hear a lot of shuffling from that end of the room. Assuming that Noa must be busy, he crossed the clinic to the hearth and used the poker to knock away some of the burning logs into the stone pavement surrounding the fireplace. The girl was obviously unaware that she was going to get herself steamed alive with this heat. Once he had extinguished the fire into a reasonable size, he propped his hip against the desk and fingered the vanity mirror curiously. It was a fine thing, if it weren't for the chipped edges.
Sai's hand traveled down to the half open drawers and plucked a hair pin with green stones on it. Flipping it on the palm of his hand, he examined the tiny accessory thinking it would look pretty on Sakura's hair. Perhaps if he asked nicely, Noa would give it to him. Making sure not to forget about it, he placed it on the edge of the desk and stood up to see what was taking Noa so long. He turned just in time to see the tiny girl emerge from the other side of the room, wearing nothing but a thin, white slip that clung to her lithe body on the right places.
It was strange. Her body was not how he had imagined it would be. Through the slip she was wearing, he could tell she had small but nicely shaped breasts, a narrow waist.
When she saw that she was not alone, she jumped a bit, stopped in her tracks.
With one hand, she grabbed a discarded robe on the floor by her feet and hugged it to her chest. Her other hand was instantly around a frying pan that was conveniently hanging on the peg on the wall right next to her. She thrust it forward between her and Sai. Of course, the fifteen-foot distance between them couldn't possibly have been enough to protect her from Sai, who looked as stoic as ever. "What the hell are you doing here, you pervert!"
"Hello," Sai greeted her. "I knocked on your door, but you didn't answer. It wasn't locked so I let myself in." He had to raise his eyebrows in amusement as the girl backed away a bit, the frying pan still threateningly raised between them. He had taken her by surprise, it seemed. For someone who had shown great potential as a sensor, he was mildly disappointed. He wasn't even trying to be stealthy. He tilted his head to the side. "You didn't sense I was here?"
Noa scowled at him, as if he had just said something lewd to her. "I can never sense you. You're this one big black hole in my life," she said crankily. When she was sure Sai was not going to approach her, she hung the frying pan back on its peg and pulled her robe over her shoulders.
Sai crossed his arms over his chest, watching Noa struggle with her robe. "How strange," he said.
Noa glared at him evilly as she circled the desk, making sure to avoid getting within a two-feet radius from him. "What is?"
Sai shrugged. "The way you covered your body instead of covering your hands."
Noa stopped dead on her tracks and she instantly shoved her bare hands inside the sleeves of her robe. "Th-that's because I know how male outsiders like you find ogling women's bodies a naughty past time." She stressed on the word 'outsider'.
Sai blinked at her. "Oh, don't worry. I didn't find your body sexually stimulating. At all."
"Why you – !" Noa's hand shot out of her sleeve, grabbed the nearest thing she could – which was a heavy-looking clay pot – and threw it at Sai.
It would have been easier to just dodge it, but that would mean he would have to help Noa clean up later if he just let that pot crash into the shelf behind him. He caught it easily and put it down on the desk. "Ah. I forgot women don't like to be told the truth about their looks. Sorry." He caught another clay pot that came his way again and placed it on the desk next to the one Noa threw earlier. "Stop that."
Noa bared her teeth and looked as if she was about to snap something to him. A moment of silence and she still hadn't spoken. Instead she pulled at her sleeves to cover her hands. "What do you want? You want me to watch over that girl again for you? I can't. I'm busy."
"That's not what I came here for. I don't really intend to stay that long. I just wanted to ask you something very important."
Noa rolled her eyes. "And what on this planet could be more important than Princess Sakura?"
"Absolutely nothing. I wanted to ask you if you think I could be in love with her."
A long, very, very uncomfortable silence followed that sentence. Noa stared at him in disbelief, one eyebrow slowly rising, disappearing under her disheveled bangs. She was frozen in her place, once in a while her fingers clenching and unclenching themselves from under her sleeves.
Sai did not understand her reaction. He had asked a straight question. He was expecting a straight answer. "What?"
Noa grabbed a potted cactus from the floor by her feet. She raised it over her head and Sai braced himself for her prickly attack. He was surprised when she wilted in her place and she lowered the cactus. "Why are you asking me that?" she asked in a near whisper.
"I thought you knew the answer. It had taken me to think you can sense emotions people felt. A curious skill, really." He eyed her steadily. "Of course, that was just an assumption. I could be wrong."
"No."
"I'm right then?"
She shook her head.
Sai narrowed his eyes at her. Now she was starting to contradict herself.
"I can sense your feelings because I can sense how your chakra fluctuates through your body."
Now Sai was seldom caught off-guard by anything. This was one of those rare circumstances. He doubled over, leaning back on the desk for support. "Chakra? Did you say chakra?" How and why a civilian like Noa would know anything that concerned chakra was beyond him. Or was it?
Noa raised her eyes at him in wonder. "There. Just now, I sensed you reacting to what I just said. There are moments when you give me windows of opportunities to know what you feel. Majority of the time, you're just… this blackhole. Why is that?"
Sai felt his jaw set stiffly as he felt the surprise from earlier slide off him. She must be talking about his training with Root. "You must be mistaken. There are no 'windows of opportunities' for you to see through me. That's not how I work."
"You're the one who's mistaken. Humans don't 'work'. They just 'are'."
"You can't read my feelings because I don't have the capacity to feel."
"That's bullshit!" Noa spat, and she edged towards him hastily. "You seem so convinced that you can't feel, but all you're really doing is schooling your chakra to buffer physiological arousal, suppress normal expressive behavior and ignore what would normally be a conscious experience. I've never met anyone like you before. And it bothers the hell out of me."
Sai, still reeling a bit from the revelation that Noa was starting to give him lessons about what was going on in his brain, pushed away from the desk and stepped towards the tiny girl. "And why does it bother you?"
Noa backed away a bit. "Because denying the fundamentals of emotions is the same as denying you're human. And what's more disturbing, is that you seem to be doing it out of your own free will." She gave him a frightened, almost pitiful look. "You're human, aren't you?"
Sai felt an uncomfortable sensation spread at the back of his neck, and he rubbed at it with a sweaty hand. He had heard about people like Noa. This certain shinobi skill was an in-born trait to some, but even if one was born with the skill, harnessing it would not have been possible outside guidance from a hidden village. So right now, Sai was convinced that Noa had, in fact, been to a hidden village and could possibly have studied there for a period of time. Now the mystery of why she was in a colony in the middle of nowhere egged his curiosity. The way she was looking at him now, as if looking for more holes in his façade, was not helping any.
He had understood what she was trying to say. And she was right. The training he had with Root did not wipe out human emotions completely; human emotion is an experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental experiences. It was not something any amount of training could erase so long as that individual was alive. What Sai was capable of doing, along with everyone in Root, was to alter the affective component to motivation that emotions provided.
Meaning, he had defined himself as 'emotionless' because he had chosen to simply suck it in. He can 'choose' not to be angry. He can 'choose' not to be guilty. Root's training had been without fault that he was even capable of using his chakra to control bodily responses, like not smiling, or not frowning.
Or not kissing back…
Sai shook himself. The thought had passed his mind's eye for a split second before it was gone. He ran his hand through his hair.
Noa warily took half a step towards him. "You… What are you?"
Of course, there was no way he was going to tell her. He let his hand drop to his side. "That," he said, "is a secret. Or come to think of it, I'd rather ask what you are."
In response to this, the Noa girl roughly grabbed his face on either side with her tiny hands, and, much to Sai's horror, pressed her lips firmly against his. He did not know how to describe it. He had been kissed by Sakura once before, and this kiss did not feel at all different than that time when Sakura had tackled him in front of the whole colony and smooched him passionately. But for some reason, having Noa's mouth against his has got to be one of the most uncomfortable things he had ever experienced in his life. Not to mention that it felt so very wrong.
Now, in all honesty, if he were to simply abide by the rules of the training he's had with Root, he would have just sat back and alter the affective component to motivation emotions provided with his chakra. He could have just allowed Noa to kiss him until she was satisfied, and then go his merry way without embarrassing her.
But for the love of him, he did not know what made him grab the girl's wrists and pry her away from him. Noa pulled back and searched his face with those big green eyes of hers. Sai looked down at her mouth. Those lips had tasted of pickled plum. He remembered Sakura tasted of wine. "Why did you do that?" His grip slackened around her wrists and Noa moved a step away from him.
Then she slapped him across the face. "Ask me that after you kiss her. Now get the hell out of here."
The smack on his cheek stung as it should, but it was dulled by the bubbling curiosity the girl had planted in him. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. "I'll keep that in mind, then."
"Yeah. You do that." Noa touched her fingers to her lips and wiped at it unconsciously. "I'm sure that if you hang around her as you always do, you'll find the answer." She turned her back to him. He took this as the dismissal that it was, and so he made his way to the door to leave. He was once again caught off-guard when he felt something small and hard hit the back of his head. It dropped onto the floor.
It was the hair accessory he had meant to ask from Noa. Sai bent down to retrieve it. He slipped it inside his pocket, turned to Noa one final time and said, "Thanks."
Noa turned her back to him, not saying anything.
And he left for home, where Sakura would be waiting for him. He could not say his head was clearer after talking to Noa – which was disappointing. He had expected enlightenment, but instead the girl had planted more confusing possibilities in his head. He hated that.
It had been dark all day, and the only sign that night time had really arrived was the amount of activity in the colony. Sakura had been busy with moving the plants from the second story veranda into the clinic where it was warm, and while she would have appreciated to have Sai around to help with the task, for some reason the Root agent had buried himself under his blankets in his cot ever since he got back from his little excursion.
Sakura could not understand him. She had been cleaning up her clinic – of the mess Sai himself had made – when he had come back. When she asked him where he had been, he simply stared at her, patted her on the shoulder and proceeded upstairs to lie down on his cot. At first Sakura thought that his head was still aching…
But that had been four hours ago…
"Sakura, this is the last of your Aloe Vera," Tenten said as she stomped the snow off her sandals and hurried inside the clinic with three brown planters in her arms.
Sakura hurriedly descended the stairs and took two of the planters from the Weapons mistress. "Thanks. I wish they had told me it snows like this during the Solstice. Then I could have at least done this yesterday…"
Tenten was watching her as they placed the planters on the corner with the rest of Sakura's herbs. "Tomona stopped by last night to tell you about it, but you were already asleep."
"Wait, what? Then why didn't you just wake me up and tell me about it?" Sakura asked in disbelief.
Tenten grinned slyly. "Because Sai wouldn't let us wake you up. Or better yet, he just doesn't allow anyone to come near you when you're resting." Her expression changed from slyness to worry. "You're always early to bed. We're starting to wonder what you're doing everyday that tires you this much."
Sakura rubbed her forehead uncomfortably. She could not even begin to tell Tenten about the scroll Tsunade-sama had entrusted her, more so talk about how much chakra she spends every day just trying to learn the theory behind the Creation Rebirth. "I'm fine, really. I'm sorry if I make you worry because of it."
"If you say so. I don't plan to push too hard when it concerns your husband."
"He's not my husband."
"Your fiancée then? Whatever." Tenten laughed. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to tease you. It's just that Sai acts like – "
"I know, I know," Sakura interrupted. She did not have to be reminded that Sai was acting the way he was acting.
"Speaking of Sai, he's here, isn't he?" Tenten asked as she threw a few pieces of firewood into the hearth before the two of them settled onto the couch in the waiting area of the clinic.
"Yeah. He's in his cot, either sleeping, or dead." Sakura said, pulling her legs up onto the couch and folding them under her skirt. "He left earlier after taking his medicine, then came back acting like a zombie. I'm not saying I'm not worried because I am. But when I tried to ask him something, he pretended not to hear me. It took everything I had not to drag him out of his blankets by his ear." She nestled her chin on her palm. "And here I thought we were going to watch the fireworks together."
Tenten leaned back on the couch and let her head loll on the backrest. "A date?"
"Get out of my case," Sakura said dully. She had sort of gotten used to Tenten's teasing. Sort of.
"Well, let's just hope he decides to get up before the festival starts. It looks like it's getting livelier out there as we speak."
Tenten was not wrong. They could here the hustle and bustle of the people all the way from the clearing.
Sakura grabbed the long, colorful scarf she had draped over the backrest of the couch and wrapped it around her head out of habit. Well, it was not as if she had been looking forward to watching those fireworks with Sai. If the guy did not want to get up from his bed and join the happening outside, she could always find something else to do with her time.
Sakura turned to Tenten. "Want to go together?"
"Huh? You and me?"
Sakura nodded.
Tenten smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry. Neji and I are busy tonight."
Sakura had to gasp. It was actually the first time Tenten had put into words that she and Neji had things 'planned'. When Tenten saw the look on her face, she immediately laughed, waving her hand in front of her face.
"Oh no, no! Don't get me wrong. It's not like anything you're thinking," the Weapons mistress said, but nonetheless did not elaborate on what they were doing tonight that was so important that Tenten had turned Sakura down especially when she was usually so keen on being with her.
Sakura sighed in resignation. "Okay. I understand. It's not like I can't watch fireworks by myself or anything."
"I'm really sorry."
Sakura looked up when the door of the clinic admitted Lee and Neji. The two had been hauled away by Tomona a few hours ago for the final preparations of the clearing and the setting up of the fireworks on a low slope a quarter of a mile away from the outskirts of Gifu. There, the traders and a few of the men of the colony were preparing for the lighting.
"Welcome home," Tenten greeted her teammates as she stood up from her place on the couch to receive the two boys' rucksacks. She deposited them on the side table on the other side of the room.
Lee shook the snow from the legs of his green body suit. "We are back. It is not as cold as I had thought it would be outside." His eyes shifted from the floor to Sakura then back again. "It would be a perfect night to watch the fireworks."
Neji approached the hearth where a few sets of cloaks and mufflers were hanging out to dry on the makeshift hangers Sai had set for them earlier. "Not as cold, but cold nonetheless. Tenten, dress warmly."
Tenten rolled her eyes as she went to Neji's side and took a muffler from the hangers. She started wrapping the object around her neck. When she raised her arms over her head, Sakura caught a glimpse of her feet. Sakura was surprised to find the Weapons mistress wearing her shinobi sandals, not the mesh sandals Gifu had provided them. She could see the ruffles of the ends of her usual loose pants tucked under her footwear.
"Yes, father. Now, don't youforget to dress warmly," Tenten said and had no sooner grabbed another muffler and was now hurriedly twisting it around a protesting Neji's head.
"What are you trying to do?" Neji demanded, his voice strangled from within the muffler. He tore at it with his hands and Sakura saw those Hyuuga eyes peeking from under layers of scarf.
"Making sure you don't catch cold, dear leader."
Neji poked his head out of the top of the muffler, pulling his long hair free and letting it fall down his shoulders. "I appreciate the thought," he said dryly. "But we have to go."
"Of course," Tenten said, mimicking his dull voice while pulling her hood over her head.
Neji turned to look around the clinic. "Where's Sai?"
Sakura jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Up there."
"He's been in bed for hours," Tenten added in a stage whisper.
Neji paused, then said worriedly, "Is he all right?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Because he isn't glued to your side?" Tenten offered.
"Tenten and I have to leave for a while. We should call him down," Neji suggested, hesitating a bit by the door with Tenten.
"It is all right. I will watch over Sakura while you are gone," Lee said, rolling the sleeves of his suit and sitting down by the hearth. He was wriggling his toes near the fire, his back to Sakura.
Neji relaxed evidently. "Ah, then at least we can rest assured someone's here to protect her."
Sakura felt the annoyance bubble up within her at the way they were talking.. It was as if they didn't think she could hearthem talk about her. "No need to worry about me," she muttered sarcastically. "Don't forget I'm a kunoichi of the Hidden Leaf. You know, don't let the pink hair fool you or anything."
Neji seemed not to hear her as he gently tucked the loose strands of Tenten's hair into her hood. "Very well. Let's go."
Tenten nodded and she patted her pockets, as if to make sure she had everything she needed. "Yep, let's go. We're counting on you, Lee."
And the two disappeared through the clinic door, letting in a gust of cold wind until they shut it behind them.
Sakura sniffed loudly into the silence Neji and Tenten left her in and turned to Lee. She had not seen the Taijutsu master ever since his 'fight' with Sai, but it did not look like his mood had improved much since then.
She thought it better to try to start a civil conversation. "Would you like some tea?"
Lee visibly jumped from his place by the hearth. "I – I – I… !" He took a deep breath then said, "I would love that," in a huff.
Sakura got up from the couch, gathered the tea set from the center table and brought it near the hearth next to Lee. "I'll get a kettle boiling quick."
"Thank you," Lee said nervously. He had withdrawn his feet under him, like a frightened turtle, and his hands were placed palms down on his lap.
Sakura hung the small kettle on the hook over the fire and she leaned back on her arm as she looked over at Lee. "So…" she started. "The preparations went well?"
Lee nodded slowly, putting an extra effort not to meet her eye for some reason. She had to frown at this. The boy had admittedly had a crush on her back in their Genin days, and she had always thought it to be quite creepy. But their relationship as batch mates had improved quite well over time in the last two years. She hoped to the gods that he was not about to revive those creepy feelings for her anytime soon.
Lee cleared her throat. "Ah, since we do not have anything else to do, and the celebration is about to start for the Solstice, perhaps you would not mind if I accompanied you to watch the firewo – "
There was a loud stamping from the second floor, and before Sakura knew it, Sai was pummeling down the stairs so fast she was not able to react when the Root agent had grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet in one swift move. Lee was also on his feet, and had moved away from Sai as he held Sakura by the waist and pressed her to his side firmly.
"Well, good morning to you to?" Sakura started, hoping to lighten the sudden darkening mood between her teammate and Rock Lee. She pressed a hand on his chest gently when she saw he was giving Lee that usual blank stare he always had on his face. "Are you feeling all right?"
Sai looked down at her for a brief moment before that eerie smile appeared on his mouth. "Yes. I'm fine."
Sakura frowned at him, her eyes scanning his face to be sure he was telling the truth. Of course, she did not believe him. Someone who'd stay in bed for four hours straight was simply notall right in her book. "Maybe you should let me have a look at you – "
"I'm fine," he repeated as he let go of her waist and once again grabbed her wrist gently. "Let's go."
Sakura's eyes widened. "Go? Go where?" she asked, confused.
Lee backed away from them a few steps, his mouth set in that upside down 'W' again, but did not say anything. He kept on sending some unknown message to Sai with his eyes, however.
Sai pulled her along towards the door after throwing a robe over her shoulders with one hand. His other hand did not let go of her wrist. "Out," he answered her as he led her outside into the garden.
"Wait! The water - ! Lee, sorry! Can you remove the kettle from the heat when – What are you doing?" Sakura demanded when Sai closed the door in Lee's face when she was still not finished talking. This did not amuse her. She turned to face Sai to give her a piece of her mind when she felt him push her back against the door then trap her with both his hands on either side of her head. The door was cold against her skin and the snow in her garden had managed to wriggle its way between her toes.
Sakura resisted the urge to knee him between the legs. She crossed her arms over her chest, not the least bit intimidated. "What do you want?" she asked bluntly.
"I need to tell you something," Sai said, his dark eyes reflecting the dim lights of the fire coming from the far clearing. "I just found out about it earlier, so I'm going to say sorry in advance for this."
Sakura was not impressed. She cocked one eyebrow up. "Well?"
Sai lowered his head a moment before once again looking up. And the words that popped out of his mouth had Sakura reeling. "I think I may have fallen in love with you without me noticing it."
Sakura blinked. He may as well have told her the snow around them was on fire. "Excuseme?"
"I think I'm in love with you. So yes, I'm apologizing in advance, because from now on you might find me more annoyingly clingy and overprotective, and I understand women find that either totally adorable or unbelievably aggravating."
Sakura blinked again. How was one supposed to answer to this sort of conversation when you were in the cold, dark garden with your supposed fiancée telling you he was in love with you? By then, she did not even know what to think; her surroundings suddenly felt searing hot, and at first she thought it was just her.
Until an explosion erupted somewhere from the East, followed by distant screaming.
And the next thing Sakura knew was that Sai had her wrapped in his arms as the world around her erupted into flames.
A/N: Sorry for the late update. Sorry for the too long chapter. For some reason, Fanfiction's document manager deletes the spaces between strings of words that are in italics. Am I the only one with this problem, I wonder. Anyway, I edited it again, but there could have been some that I missed within the chapter. Feel free to point it out if it bothers you, and I'll correct it once I get the chance. ^^