Another First Time

Chapter 14: Realizations

"Really, Mara-san, I'm fine," Sakura sighed, half-heartedly trying to evade the old woman's attempts to sit her down. "I'm fine, I really am."

"After such a fainting spell yesterday, Kanako-sama, you must at least sit yourself down!" Mara exclaimed. "Heaven knows what will happen if…"

Sakura shot Mara a look. "If what?"

Shaking her head slightly, Mara replied, "Oh, nothing, it's my age that gets me talking strangely sometimes."

Sakura dismissed Mara's behaviour as paranoia and finally conceded defeat, sitting down with a grand sigh on the large, comfy chair. She put her head in her hands when Mara left the room, thankful for some quiet time to just think.

Yesterday's crying episode had been exhausting on both her tear glands and her emotions – it had been quite a while since she had cried like that. In fact, it might have been when Sasuke had left her. But as of now, her past with Sasuke was the farthest thing from her cluttered mind.

She had received word that Ino's body had been successfully recovered from the enemy shinobi by a jounin cell, thus eliminating the risk of exposing the Yamanaka clan jutsu to other groups of shinobi. There would be a funeral in two days; she wondered how Ino's mother and father, and Izumo, were holding up. She wondered whether they would run their fingers sadly but affectionately along the section of the memorial stone where her name would undoubtedly be carved. Sakura wished desperately that she could be there for them, that she could be the strong shoulder on which they all could cry on, but as in all things, her duty as a kunoichi came first.

Sakura closed her eyes. She just wanted to run away – away from all the obligations she carried as a shinobi serving a village, away from all the hurt and sadness in the world, away from responsibility; she wanted to go to a place where she could be ignorant of suffering in general.

To know that your existence was for the survival of your village – it was a tiring thing. When Sakura signed up for the Academy at age six, this was not what she had signed up for. At that young age, she had simply not wanted to follow in her parents' seemingly boring footsteps, and had wanted to live a life full of "adventure" and "danger". She had not truly comprehended the meaning of being a living weapon.

While she didn't exactly regret her decision, she did sometimes wonder what life would have been like had she stuck to the family business instead of stepping out and becoming a kunoichi.

For one, she would probably still be living in the lap of luxury – the Haruno family business was one of the most successful in Konoha, and Sakura had grown up sheltered and pampered. This was perhaps what attributed the most to her naïve attitude about life and love when she was younger – she really had believed that love could conquer all and that the good side always won.

Now that she was older, she knew that love didn't mean promises were kept. Love didn't mean sadness wouldn't be present. Love wasn't an invincible shelter for her to wrap herself in. Sure, it felt nice at times, but love could hurt too – hurt so much that at times she wished she didn't have a heart.

Most of all, she had learned, time and time again, that the good side didnot always win. More confusingly, she found herself wondering whether if there even was a good side and a bad side. As she found herself being able to empathize more and more with other people, she discovered that she didn't necessarily disagree with her opponent's opinions. This was a huge revelation for her – weren't all her enemies "evil" people who only wanted to hurt innocents? When did they turn out to be people who only cared about their village – just like her? When did they turn out to be people who smiled, cried, laughed, hurt, and loved, just like her?

She was so tired of justifying her stance on things, so tired of realizing that the world wasn't black and white, but was actually comprised of overlapping shades of gray.

If she didn't become a kunoichi, such revelations would be non-existent. At the ripe old age of seventeen, Sakura probably would have been married four years ago. She would have been paired with a rich heir her age, and that would have been the end of that.

But she made a choice.

And then her parents had decided that a daughter – a wayward, disobedient daughter, was not essential to the livelihood of their business. Her "occupation" had been accepted but sniffed at when she became a genin, but her parents never interacted with her the same way they had before. The deal was closed when Sasuke became the disgrace of the village – she was out of the house and onto the street in a heartbeat.

To be perfectly honest, Sakura didn't mind that much – she had never been close to her father, who preferred to spend his time teaching her two elder brothers the ropes to managing a business, and her mother had been a flighty gossip whose favourite pastime had been to stroll around town, jabbering away with ladies of a similar disposition. Her two elder brothers had been good to her, but emotionally she felt as if the three of them were merely acquaintances that got along well – she never really knew her brothers the way she grew to know her team.

At twelve she was left alone by her blood relatives but got taken in by Tsunade. It was a new beginning for her – a fresh start without her previous, fanciful outlook on life.

With only seventeen years under her belt, Sakura felt incredibly tired – she had laughed, cried, seen death, become death, killed more than she could count and felt like she had been killed more times than she would care to remember. She had experienced the highs of being in love and the lows of having a broken heart.

And now she was stuck in limbo.

Sakura was feeling oh-so-low at Ino's death, and yet found herself puzzling over the realization that she was in love with another dark-haired teammate. Her feelings – they had to have formed over time gradually, right? So was there a specific time, a specific occasion, maybe a look, a gesture, or something that could have given her a clue that her heart was finally opening up again?

Sakura frowned as she pondered that thought. But soon her mind was flying to the memory of the night before. In truth, she couldn't remember much of what had happened the night she had first heard the news. Somewhere between her last shot of vodka and her fifth bottle of beer, things had gotten hazy. She remembered hearing Sai come in, but couldn't quite remember what they had talked about. She remembered he had opened a beer for himself too, but wasn't sure if he had gotten drunk. Amid the muddled pile of memories, she thought she remembered the feel of soft lips against hers, but then again, it could have been wishful dreaming – she found that she dreamed about him a lot lately.

Sakura gave a start when the door creaked open; she was barely able to control her instinct of jumping up before Sai came in.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asked, leaning slightly against the doorframe. Sakura nodded slowly, a blush coming up to her cheeks are she remembered how he had held her when she had cried.

He nodded, and to her surprise, turned and left. Sakura frowned – Sai was a disinterested person by nature, but not this disinterested. Even before he had gotten socially wiser, he would at least sit down silently beside her if she was upset. And Ino's death was most certainly, very upsetting for her. Sai had been so warm towards her before – why was he now so cold?

Sakura shook her head and scolded herself – it was just one tiny thing, and she was already rationalizing over it? He was probably just as tired as herself, having spent the good part of a day with her in bed as she alternated between dozing and crying. Sakura promised herself that she would give him space, just in case he really was getting tired of her presence.

Her inner ramblings were once again interrupted when Mara bustled in the room, carrying a tray. When the servant set the tray down, Sakura smiled and said, "Mara-san, I already said I wasn't hungry. You really didn't have to bring all that."

With her hands on her hips, Mara was the image of a disapproving mother. "Now, Kanako-sama, you doknow that no matter how much you don't want to, you have to eat! What happened to your appetite? Even if you're not hungry, think about the little one!"

After a beat, Sakura's mind registered what the elderly lady had just said. A wave of light-headedness washed over Sakura.

"If you don't mind, Mara-san, I think I'm going to faint again."

And down she went.

"Well, that was rather dramatic of you, wasn't it, Ugly?" Sai asked lightly. Sakura couldn't even speak – she was so shaken up by Mara's words.

"How could Junko not have told us?" Sakura whispered, her hand unconsciously touching her abdomen. "How couldshe?"

Sai shrugged. "Actually, no one else seemed to know. To be honest, I think only Mara knows about the baby."

Sakura stopped. Turning to the male beside her, she slowly said, "Wait a second. The rest of the household don't know?"

"It seems like it," he replied. "Ever since I found out, I've been observing the behaviour of the staff and Junko. They all seem very curious as to why you've been fainting so much. Junko, in particular, as been asking very often what was wrong with you. And Mara has been telling everyone that the stress of the wedding preparations have been taking a toll on you. Everyone says you should just take it easy and that you don't have to do everything personally."

"Furthermore," he continued, "don't you find it strange that the household isn't buzzing about the imminent arrival of an heir? I mean, didn't Junko say that Kanako-san wasn't able to have children? If the news of her pregnancy had gotten out, I am positive that the household would be celebrating day and night."

Sakura pondered his words. It was true that the household probably would have been a lot rowdier and excited had the Takahashi couple come clean about their impending arrival. There would probably have been many important officials and their families who would call at the residence, bearing gifts of goodwill and such.

And yet, no one seemed to know.

But why? Why on earth would they want to hide something as joyous as this?

"It doesn't make sense," Sakura murmured, her hands fisted tightly in the sheets. "Why wouldn't they tell someone? Anyone! From what you've said, that means only the two of them, Mara-san, and the doctor know!"

Sai nodded, his expression thoughtful. Standing up, he walked in the direction of the door, and sending one last look behind him, left without a word.

She just didn't get it. It was troublesome enough with the new development in their mission – did Sai have to turn his back upon her now?

He was acting normal. Just like when they had first become teammates and they still didn't know each other well. It puzzled her, to say the least, that he was being so detached. But more than anything, it hurt – things had seemed to be going nicely at first, but now…

Sakura rubbed her eyes and groaned. She couldn't believe she was in bed, in the middle of the day, when there were things to be done and information to process and a wedding to be planned. It was no wonder Sai had left – he had a million other things to do as well.

Slowly getting up and draping a shawl around her body, Sakura wondered why she was so emotionally weak.

To Sai, things clicked in place pretty quickly – the daimyo had originally planned to bring Junko along with him and his wife. And then he had somehow found out about her secret trysts with her man and coincidentally, they found out about Kanako's pregnancy at the same time. For Hideki, it would have been pretty much a blessing – given an heir and an opportunity to wash his hands of his sister, the woman in his household who he paid next to no attention to.

Sai didn't consider himself very kind or caring, but it was clear even to him that the daimyo's actions weren't something that anyone should be proud of. He didn't have any younger siblings, but he had once had an elder brother who wasn't even related by blood, and his brother had never turned his back on him, no matter what the situation.

Flipping through the household accounts that Sakura had left on the desk, he mentally checked off all the clues that had hinted to this revelation – the hastily crossed out fees, the strange doctor's fees that kept popping up every month and sometimes every week. Thinking back, he realized that Mara-san had always instructed the kitchen staff to prepare a larger portion of Sakura – the two of them had never really commented on it because of the fact that Sakura could finish the entire thing.

Leaning back in his chair, Sai suppressed a sigh – since when had such a simple mission become so not simple?

First of all, there was all this mystery about the daimyo and his intentions, and then there's the whole drama about the covered-up pregnancy as well as Junko's outside affair, and even his own relationship with Sakura was…

He closed his eyes as soon as he hit that train of thought. When Sai had left Sakura to her own devices earlier on, he hadn't turned around because he hadn't wanted to see the hurt expression that was undoubtedly on her face. He knew he wasn't exactly being fair to her – he didn't know how much she remembered from what they done the night before, but at the same time, he had kissed her and had meant it, at least at the time.

It wasn't that he didn't mean it now – that was the exact problem. The fact that he meant it, and the fact that there was a dormant part of him that wanted a repeat of the night before, scared him to no end. Sai had never, in his whole life, felt something as strong as he did for Sakura.

Sure, he felt protective towards his teammates, no matter how annoying they were, and he felt loyalty to his village, something that had been ingrained into his mind since a young age, and he felt amusement whenever Naruto did stupid things back in Konoha. But what he felt for Sakura – the sheer intensity of the feelings – scared him enormously.

And things didn't scare Sai very easily.

He wasn't ANBU for nothing – there was just about nothing in the physical world that could scare him. Emotionally, he was just as strong, being part of Root until a couple years ago. But his – dare he say it? – love, for Sakura was something he had never experienced before. For him, if he were to acknowledge and act upon his desires, it would be walking straight into completely uncharted territory.

Sai hated to admit it, but he liked the comfort of the friendship he had with Sakura. He liked the way they bantered, playfully or otherwise, and the easy conversations he sometimes had with her. He liked how he could just stand back and admire, and not have to actually be in the forefront with her.

Additionally, in regards to Sakura, Sai was slightly ashamed to admit that he wasn't sure whether Sakura thought she loved him, or the shadow of Sasuke that he was known as.

She had said a long time ago that she really was over Sasuke, but he knew Sakura well, and knew that she was a committed and loyal woman – she may have said that she was over him, and believe it herself, but Sai was more hesitant.

Deep down inside himself, Sai knew that he was afraid, more than anything, of stepping out and being with her and ending up with hurt feelings and broken hearts. She had so much more experience than he had with relationships, no matter how twisted her relationships tended to be.

Things would be fine if we just went back to what we used to be, Sai thought, as he silently closed the heavy book and placed it into the drawer that is usually rested in.

What Sai never realized was that Sakura was just as vulnerable as he was. Perhaps even more so. Experience didn't make you immune to heartbreak, after all.

a/n: Finally an update, eh? I'm sorry. Things called midterms just love to mess with my life.

Anyhow...well, now you guys know what's up. And I'll tell you that there is major foreshadowing in this chapter ;) And there'll be more action coming up...please be nice to my action scenes - I know they're not the best, but that's the reason why I continue writing, right? To improve :D And...I realize that Sakura and Sai are both rather OOC at this point, but for Sakura, I'll attribute that to the fact that 1) she's emotionally strained due to Ino's death and 2) she's found herself in love again, and is confused. For Sai...well, throughout the whole story, I've been trying to get his character to open up more and such...so I guess he's OOC in terms of canon but not for the purposes for the story.

On a side note, this story and Of Copycats and Cherry Blossoms (KakaSaku) will be the only things I will ever post in this account again. I feel that as a writer, my writing style has changed significantly from when I first made this account - enough for me to want to make a new account. So yes, I have created a new account under the name inkclone. There's nothing up yet, but I'll be posting a lot of Bleach stuff that I've written in the past while, as well as any new Naruto stuff I might come up with. So if you guys want, please check that account from time to time - I'll start posting on that account as soon as I've amassed enough drabbles to start a collection.

Enjoy!