Characters: Sai, Danzo, others
Summary: This is what he waits for.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: I can imagine Sai thinking this way about Danzo.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
The seal is broken; the one who put it on him is dead. No one knows where Shimura Danzo's body can be found, and the only reason they know he is dead is that all of those he counted as his servants are no longer bound to silence. Now that they no longer have their lives held as insurance against speech, their words fly into the air. Those once of Root say all that their throats can tell of Shimura Danzo.
Sai is little different. He tells Kakashi and later Tsunade everything they want to hear, calm expression never breaking. They ask such things as where funds were gotten, where Danzo got his men, what the nature of the seal was. The answers are simple: threats masquerading as investments; children stolen from orphanages, the battlefield and even from their parents' homes; kinjutsu. Neither seem to be at all surprised and this makes Sai wonder just why they asked him in the first place if they already knew.
Finally, he is left alone. Finally, Sai is given a moment's rest, a moment to truly register what has happened. He hadn't thought much of it at first; there had been entirely too much to do for Sai to devote too much thought to anything.
It's nearly dusk. The shadows fall with the mist over the trees, and Sai sits perched in a remote branch, twisting a pen in his hands for comfort and staring at the setting sun. He's always been told not to in order to protect his eyes, but the dusky violet and dull crimson shades are more beautiful than anything he thinks he's ever seen.
Sai has never seen a world in color as long as Danzo has been alive—with Danzo, it's always been See the world as nothing but black, white and gray. Red has been dull, orange lackluster, yellow jaundiced, green dead, blue diseased, purple necrotic. There has been no color in the world dominated by Danzo.
Now, everything is new again. Everything is like seeing it for the first time, and Sai just can't look away. To himself, he wonders how he never noticed all this before, how he could never look up and see the trees.
Danzo always told him not to look at the trees. Danzo always told him to keep his eyes on his target. It was sound advice, Sai will admit; it's just that he's never lived because of it.
The seal is gone and dissolved; Sai can no longer see it if he stretches out his tongue to its full length. He has to keep telling himself, over and over again Danzo-sama is dead, Danzo-sama is dead, and eventually, Sai can bring himself to believe it.
He doesn't know what to think about that.
This world of black, white and gray Danzo has been all Sai has ever known—lusterless and confining, but the only reality possible to his mind. Color is riotous and beautiful but it is in its own way completely overwhelming.
Naruto is the color of summer—too hot and vivid to ignore, and Sai doesn't know how even his previously colorblind eyes could have missed it. All yellow and blue and orange, for some reason he can't fathom, Sai almost wants to smile when he sees him.
Sakura is spring; even her name brings to mind images of spring. Haruno Sakura; sound it out and split "Haruno" into "Haru no" and it becomes something like "spring of the cherry blossom". Pale green and delicate pink all over; Sai wonders if she isn't a walking tapestry.
Yamato is autumn, is the fall before the long death. With those brown shades, he can't be anything else.
And Kakashi, quite plainly, is winter. White, the color of death, from hair to skin. Lightning jutsus split the sky with white flame, and Sai looks at him and all he can see is death.
Sai registers all this at once and his mind is nearly overwhelmed; he retreats backwards, closes his eyes and can still see all the colors, burnt beneath his eyelids. It is beautiful and maddening, wonderful and terrifying.
He wonders how he could have possibly not noticed all this before.
Danzo has kept him from all this, but Sai can not hate him. Sai doesn't know what to think of Danzo, his parent, his teacher, his prison warden. What he does know, without doubt, that hate does not even begin to factor into it.
Naruto and Sakura both tell Sai that he should hate Danzo, and stare uncomprehendingly when he says that he doesn't think he can. They don't protest, they don't condemn, they don't even ask why; they just stare with their mouths open like fish, and Sai just barely manages to keep from telling them that his next drawing will be of two fish with Naruto and Sakura heads.
Kakashi and Yamato are less surprised. They are older, far more experienced, and they have a far greater understanding of human nature and how Sai might be incapable of hating Danzo. Kakashi's face is too casual and Yamato doesn't bother hiding his grimness, but they say nothing.
Danzo is not a figure of hate.
Though the seal is gone, Sai still fingers his tongue at night and wonders just what would have happened if he had spoken up while it was still there. They're always promised death but they don't know exactly how they would die. Would it be instantaneous? Would it hurt? Would it be hot or cold? Would it be the worst agony they had ever felt or would it be like falling asleep?
Sai doesn't know how he would die if he'd spoken up while the seal was still stamped on his tongue. This bothers him more than anything.
When he returns to the place that he now goes to sleep and eat and rest before missions (nowhere can ever be home to Sai), Sai still expects to wake up in the middle of the night and find one of his brothers perched on the windowsill. There will be a summons, and he is expected to come to Danzo to receive the next mission.
This is what he waits for.
This is what keeps him from sleeping deeply every night.
But it isn't coming, and Sai just can't stop.