Author's Notes: This story will mostly focus on Sakura and themes from Part I of the manga. Very dark subject matter but not for the sake of being gratuitous, I promise. Extremely slow build. About 10% of Part II canon will make it into this story. The structure will be shorter installations of story arcs leading to the culmination of one consistent underlying plot thread.

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come in close a stinging in your throat

-o-

Sakura hit Sai once in the middle, unleashed a little chakra that made him double over and puke up bile, and the spar was finished.

For weeks she had let him beat her in their matches. Sakura had watched and chronicled his jutsu, his favored tactics, his style, and had let him win each time they fought. She gave away nothing of her own skill set other than the basics and allowed him to show his own hand well before he might ever realize she was playing the long game. When she beat him that morning, it was a quick affair full of calculated traps and forcing Sai to move to her advantage. She took away his safety of the mid-range attack and brought him into a taijutsu confrontation. A few quick hits augmented with medical ninjutsu and Sakura had Sai on his knees, down for the count.

Maybe it was a bit unfair to have him throwing up from her hit, but there was only so much underestimating Sakura could deal with before she wanted to show off a little. Besides, the boy had made a few too many gibes at Tsunade's expense for Sakura's pride to handle. The woman was her mentor and their Hokage, and it was time for Sai to reacquaint himself with the fact.

Like the other times they had met up, it was predawn and they were out in one of the training grounds specifically meant for nighttime use. The space was a large enclosure filled with natural and man made obstacles, wired with lights and other electronics for various uses. The two had forgone any electronics and were testing out their vision in the natural nautical sunrise. Sakura had fared better in the way she was able to use ninjutsu to enhance and stabilize her eyesight faster and more accurately.

Sai was close enough Sakura could feel the warmth of his body radiating through the morning chill and she indulged in how sparring with him was a nice excuse to be physically near someone. Any time she tried to secretly, mundanely, inch near him when they weren't sparring, he seemed too aware of her intentions. His own evident awkwardness kept them from developing a natural sort of sync that Sakura shared with other friends - mainly Ino and Naruto, with whom Sakura was effortlessly and annoyingly enough in tune.

And she wasn't even sure if she could qualify Sai as a 'friend' just yet. He was closer to a mildly polite and accommodating acquaintance. He wasn't an Ino by any means. Not yet.

"Interesting use of chakra just then," Sai said, wiping away saliva from his mouth once he was finished heaving. He was only just then catching onto her tricks, having found suddenly a new appreciation for Sakura's strengths. "What gave you the idea for that sort of application?"

Sakura thought back to the Sound nin boy she had fought in the Forest of Death, and the way he had likewise brought that man Kabuto to his knees at the start of the exams. To Sai, she said innocently, "did I do something special just then?"

"Your tactic was clever and a long ploy to stay dedicated to." The response came with Sai's characteristic smile. "I suppose my superior's assessment of you was correct after all. He told me to be cautious and to expect the unexpected."

'Look underneath the underneath.' Over a year had passed since Kakashi had first said something like that to Team Seven.

"Isn't that what every sensei tells their students?" Sakura was sat down in the grasses next to Sai, and from the ground between them she plucked a weed. She rolled the stem with her fingers and twisted at its leaf sprouts. "Don't you think the fact you have specialized ninjutsu is way more useful than a statement any person can lift from a manual?"

"Hm. Maybe."

Flipping the weed stem around, she made its end tickle a trail up Sai's arm. He caught her eye and shifted his arm a little, but did nothing else to address the teasing. Sakura pouted and went back to stripping off its appendages.

"Can you do me a favor?" Sai asked after a moment and Sakura thought he was going to admonish her about something, but instead he asked about her bruises from previous mornings. Motioning to his own neck, he said of her bruises, "they're always gone by the next day. I never thought much about it, but now I'm wondering if you did the healing yourself."

"Did you think someone else was doing it before?"

"It seemed possible," he said.

It was a habit of Sai's to not directly commit to answers, not even simple ones. And if it wasn't a question she said to him, it was often the case he had nothing to say in response.

Sakura turned to him more fully, nervous and excited. Hopeful. Sai had mentioned looking for a favor from her, so she asked, "would you like me to heal you?"

"I want to watch your technique," he said at the same time.

Her smile faltered and her shoulders lost some of their eager lift. "Oh. On myself, you mean?"

"If you weren't opposed."

That morning Sakura's most debilitating injury was a half inch long splinter on the side of her big toe. She gave the 'wound' an unimpressed face. When she had first started training with Team Seven, Kakashi had once held her foot in hand and removed a splinter with the edge of his kunai and a pair of tweezers. He had made fun of Sakura and her feet for their softness then and to her his experienced hands had felt like sand paper.

Her feet were still soft to the touch and free of callouses, but not from lack of training like those days. Now they were soft from her skilled, healing attention.

Sakura formed the required hand seals and the long splinter was pushed from her toe by the new tissue she generated underneath. It was a quick and painless process.

"Ta-da," she said of the underwhelming endeavor. She felt a little useless with the exercise.

"Huh," was Sai's similarly unaffected reaction.

"I realize that was nothing much to look at." There was so much more she could do, though. If she had the injuries on her like that time after her fight against the Oto trio, she could really show off her skills. A splinter was just that! A mere splinter of the abilities she had now. Sakura bit at her lower lip and felt frustrated as she considered her unblemished foot and Sai's blank expression.

She really could do so much more.

"Ok, watch this," she insisted after a moment. After removing her sandal, Sakura took her tanto from her lower back and unsheathed the blade. Stretching out the same sandal-less leg a little in front of her, she rested the steel at the tendon above her bared heel. From a glance, she saw Sai draw his brow to a sharp line, and she felt emboldened to follow through with the action even as her hand trembled.

She had deliberately injured herself in the past. It was for the protection of her team mates, sure, and other people had been doing the injuring, but she had technically done it before. Pressing the metal into her skin, Sakura forced her arm to stop shaking with the exerted pressure. She took a deep breath. More pressing and a countdown in her head.

Sakura wasn't the one holding the tanto to her leg. It wasn't even her leg at all. This was just another demonstration. An anonymous action.

One simple slice.

There was, in her mind's eye, a Sakura who wailed in agony, convulsed with heaves and sickness as she crashed to her side and clutched at her gushing, blazing leg. A pathetic, lamenting thing thrashing in blood. And then there was the Sakura in reality, who dropped her tanto and made more hand seals with her red and slippery fingers, who looked through watery eyes to complete her jutsu and sew together the tissue she had just cut apart.

Sakura sat back, smeared blood across her cheeks as she wiped tears from her face. An intensive surgery and eight months recovery time was the typical result of the severed tendon she had just healed in a matter of minutes. Her leg might be stiff tomorrow, but even that she could counter in another quick session.

She panted in exertion and gave Sai a bright smile. "Neat, right?"

"My superior was definitely right," Sai reiterated. His expression was still ambiguous, but his eyes were intent as he met her gaze. "I think he might be interested in meeting you."

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-o-