Disclaimer: Naruto Shippuuden does not belong to me.

The sound of running water and gentle, steady breathing woke Sai up with a start, his head still aching dully. Somewhere down his chest was… something awfully warm, something that smelled pleasantly of cherry blossoms, pressed against him. He closed his eyes groggily at the thought of going back to sleep, until the events of that day crashed down on him like an avalanche; the passages exploding, the river going wild, Sakura being dragged down by the rapids, and him reaching out to her desperately.

And failing.

His eyes popped back open and looked down only to see Sakura, her face buried into his chest, eyes closed and lashes flickering like a dreaming child. Her arms, he soon realized, were draped loosely around his torso, and her legs, under the cloak that was covering both of them, were somehow tangled with his.

Using his free arm – the one that Sakura was not using as a pillow – he raised the cloak a few centimeters, peeked in and discovered that both of them were unclothed.

Unsure of what to do, and pretty much unsure of what to feel, he tucked the cloak back around Sakura's naked form and blinked.

This was the very first time ever in his life did he get into such a situation, and he hadn't a single clue on how to react to it. But one thing was for sure; as he watched Sakura sleeping in his arms soundly, her breathing deep and slow, he realized that the bad feeling that had been gripping his throat when he saw her being dragged into the river, had disappeared as if it had not been there at all. Instead, it was replaced by something that was very warm that started from his chest to his head to his arms. Was this what they call relief?

But at that moment, something that Captain Yamato said to Naruto when the new Team Seven had embarked on their first mission, rang inside his head like a gong. They had been treated to a night in the hot spring hotel by their captain, and Naruto had attempted to take a peek at the ladies' bath where Sakura had been bathing. The captain said that Master Jiraya of the legendary Sannin had faced life-threatening situations only twice, and one of which was when he was caught by Tsunade trying to have a look at her naked. Master Jiraya had both his arms broken, and a couple of ribs fractured when Tsunade was done with him.

Swallowing hard, he analyzed his present situation, and could not help but think that women who were naked should not be looked at by men, else the man wishes to die. It was then did his body start to act on self-preservation; he decided to get up.

Slowly, gently, he pried his arm from under Sakura's head of tousled pink hair, careful not to wake her, sat up and looked around. They appear to be inside a narrow cave, to the far right was a concentration of stagnant water, to the left was a barren wall. The ceiling was low, but probably just enough for him to stand straight. Situated near him was a weathered tree branch where he saw his clothes as well as Sakura's neatly hung out to dry. By the foot of the branch were their pouches.

Sai looked down at Sakura again. She stirred a bit when he had gotten up, but still remained fast asleep. Sai picked up his pants, which were still a bit damp, put them on and sat with his back to Sakura. He reached for his pouch and looked for something that would prove useful to them. He then discovered that his ink jar had spilled inside his pouch, making him feel slightly… what was the word for it…? Annoyed? Yes, that was it. Plucking the now empty ink jar and throwing it on the ground, he examined the place again as he replaced his pouch beside Sakura's.

Nodding a bit to himself, he crawled to one side of the cave and started to gather some stones and placed them on the cold floor in a circle, then piled a few dead, somewhat wet branches in the middle of them. He reached for his shirt hanging from the splintered branch, used his flat dagger to cut the longer sleeve of his top, and wrapped a promising branch with it. Then with his dagger and a sharp stone, he was able to start a fire after several feeble sparks and a few failed attempts. The cave was bathed in warm light and Sai felt content – yes, that has to be the right feeling – as he stood up, his head slightly brushing the ceiling, and walked over to Sakura to whom he threw his shirt over. He studied her for a few seconds, then decided to drape her clothes on her too to keep her warmer. After this task, he sat himself again in front of the fire, his thoughts swimming aimlessly inside his aching head.

He wondered what time it was, and wondered even more how Naruto was with the kid and the mission. He frowned. He had not expected this to happen, and he discovered that he did not like the feeling that was brought about by failure. He was not trained for failure, and he did not know how to react to it if he ever did fail at anything.

But currently, he was in no position to complain. He could have just left the boy to die, and the mission of destroying the first fifteen passages would have gone smoothly. But he did not. Or even if he did decide to save the boy, he could have left Sakura to drown in the river and continue with locating and destroying the remaining eight staircases with Naruto. But he did not. If he had done everything according to plan, he would not be trapped in this cave with no water or food and no means of communication to his other teammate. If he had not let his emotions get the better of him, the mission could be over by now.

But what surprised him about these ifs, was that he did not care. He was glad they decided to save the boy. And he was more than glad to have Sakura sleeping soundly not too far away from him. He knew that if he did not do what he just did, he would be faced right now with one of his most hated emotions to date: regret.

Something near the water caught his attention. Ragged and looking very forlorn was a teddy bear, the one that Sakura was all too willing to risk her life for. He did not know what made him stand and pick the toy up, but he did. Settling back near the fire, he propped the teddy bear against the cave wall and rested his chin on one hand, once again getting lost in his own thoughts, one of which was something simple; Sakura's bare feet. That final thought made him smile for some unexplainable reason.

The first thing that Sakura noticed when she opened her eyes slowly was that it was warm and bright. Quiet shadows played on the low ceiling she was presently looking at as she lied down on her back, her body feeling light as a feather. While the events of the last few hours were left unforgotten for the kunoichi, for a second she wondered where she was again. When she finally remembered, her hand darted to her side and started to panic when she did not find Sai there.

"Good morning," came Sai's voice, as usual devoid of emotion, from somewhere to her right. She saw him sitting in front of a fire she could only wonder how he started, his back to her.

She sat up and gasped as the cloak and several layers of clothing dropped to her lap, reminding her that she had taken off her clothes to tend to Sai. She instantly grabbed the cloak and pressed it against her bare chest. "Good morning. It is morning, right?" she croaked back, rubbing her eyes. "How are you feeling?"

Sai, whose face appeared different with the light of the fire, did not turn to her at all. "I'd appreciate it if you get dressed. I don't feel like dying yet until we finish this mission."

Sakura had no idea what the heck he meant by that, but was taken aback with him commanding her to do something, as he had not done so even once in the past. Sai was normally never assertive. She complied, however, pulling on her chain mail and shorts. It was then did she notice her knee was wounded, and the skin around it was already swollen an ugly shade of purple. She remembered having scraped it on a nail when she rescued the child from that house.

"Are you decent?" Sai asked, still not budging from his spot.

Sakura sighed, exasperated. "Why are you being weirder than usual?"

"Are you decent?"

"Yes, Sai, I'm decent," Sakura said as she crawled towards him and dropped down by the fire facing her teammate.

Sai looked at her with those stoic eyes of his, and his face broke into one of his fake smiles. "I need you to explain something to me."

This was not what she expected from him. "What is it?" She asked cautiously. God, she prayed he was not going to ask why they were sleeping together naked.

"Why were we sleeping together naked?"

Damn you, Sai.

Sakura shook a fist at him threateningly. "Don't you go getting ideas."

He blinked. "Ideas?"

"Yeah. Ideas."

Sai blinked again. "Am I supposed to get ideas at times like those? What kind of ideas?"

Sakura wanted to kill him for having to make her explain such embarrassing things. How was she to tell him what a boy would usually do to a girl if they were sleeping together naked? She frowned, suddenly feeling stupid. She shook her head. "Forget it."

Sai blinked yet again for the third time. "Okay," he said slowly, his stare returning to the fire. And then they were silent.

And now Sakura felt really bad. As she started to heal her knee with chakra, she turned to Sai. There was no reason for her not to answer a genuine question. And she knew she was obligated to answer because it was her mission to make Sai understand these things. "When we got washed away in here, you began to suffer hypothermia. You started to shiver so much and the only thing I could do was stabilize your body temperature using mine."

Sai stared at her for a few moments before looking away. "So you saved me." It was not a question. "I'm grateful." His face did not show any signs of gratitude. But that was to be expected of Sai.

"And those ideas I was supposed to be having?"

He just wouldn't let it drop. That, too, was to be expected of Sai. "People who aren't… uh… intimate with each other usually don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Get naked together, dammit," Sakura snapped, somewhat losing patience. She was starting to hate her Master for giving her such a tough mission.

"Oh," was Sai's only reply. He paused a bit before asking again. "What do you mean by intimate?"

Sakura dropped her head into an open palm. This was going to be much harder than she thought. Though Sai is familiar with certain emotional terms, his real problem was putting them into practice. And though he had matched certain emotions to circumstances he could react to, like regret, confusion, worry and happiness – which he had breezed through with utmost speed – he could not seem to jump the hurdle when it came to emotions used to express in relationships with the opposite sex. "It's when you get along with someone really well," Sakura answered his question feebly.

"Like how I get along well with Naruto?"

"NO!" Sakura blurted out louder than she intended. A picture of Naruto and Sai being intimate flashed through her mind's eye and she shivered unpleasantly. "Intimacy is normally expressed to the opposite sex, unless you have other preferences..." She was not making herself look good at explaining this.

"So are you and Naruto intimate?"

"Oh, God Noooooo!" The mere thought made her shiver even more.

"But you and Naruto get along really well…?"

Sakura wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. "Let me rephrase that then: Intimacy is a term used for expressing your feelings to someone you love."

"Don't you love Naruto?"

"I love him like the stupid brother that he is," Sakura seethed.

"Hinata loves Naruto, so does that mean…?"

"It has to be a two-way street!" Sakura snapped again, honestly frustrated. "That's it, I'm ending the conversation. We can continue it when we are out of this cave, in higher ground where we could call ourselves safe. Until then, can't we just drop it?" The last sentence was more of a desperate plea than a request.

Sai, who settled with the promise of getting his questions answered after they get out of there, nodded and once again started to stare at the fire.

By then Sakura had finished healing her wound and started examining the cave they were in. Tiny droplets of water beaded the ceiling, making her assume that if she did try to smash their way out of there, they would only end up flooding themselves in. Her eyes made their way to the concentration of water at one end of the cave. She supposed that the place they were in really was connected to the river, and they could try to swim through the channel, but then that would lead them into the river, and who knows where they would be swept into next? She started to make her brain work faster. They had already lost so much time.

Unfortunately, her train of thought was interrupted by Sai asking a question she never thought he would ask her in a million year.

"Were you and Sasuke intimate?"

She stared at him, breath caught in throat. Flashes of Sasuke's face, or at least how she remembered him, paraded in her head, making her brows furrow. How many times had she tried to suppress herself from thinking these thoughts? How many times had she tried to forget?

What a hypocrite. The picture of the original Team Seven proudly displayed on her dresser was the living proof that deep down, she did not want to forget. Not yet.

But if not now, then when? It's been five years. Five long years. They felt like five eternities to Sakura. She wondered where Sasuke was right now?

Leaning back on the cave wall, Sakura closed her eyes. "We were thirteen when he left. We had barely a year to get to know each other… We were young. I was young. What did I know about intimacy then?" She felt sad about the fact that they never got to grow up together. She never found out what could have been, between them, had he stayed.

Sai's dark eyes looked dully at her, the fire making them seem deeper than they usually are. "I can't understand… what you ever saw in him…"

Sakura's eyes snapped wide open. She found Sai now looking back at the fire. She felt anger bubble from her chest, making her sit forward. "You can never understand what Sasuke and I had, what Sasuke, Naruto and I had. Never."

"Then make me understand. Make me understand what makes you think about a person who has abandoned his village, abandoned his friends, for a shot at revenge he's already fulfilled, and still keeps going with his twisted thinking. What makes him special, so different from any other rouge ninja, that you think you can bring him back and think that everything is going to be all right after?"

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him. "I thought you understood that he's a friend of ours. We've had this conversation two years ago, and you were content with that back then."

When the new Team Seven had an encounter with Sasuke, Sai had been more than willing to bring him back to the Leaf, in hopes to figure out what Naruto meant with bonds. Sakura had been more than happy to know that Sai was a part of their goal at getting Sasuke back then. And after two years, why all of a sudden…?

"Two years ago, I hadn't really given it much thought, that bonds came in different varieties." The light of the fire flickered in his eyes. "It wasn't until today that I've decided… that I hate anything one-sided."

Sakura's expression softened at that instant. Sai had just told her he hated something. He hated something…! She was not expecting him to master such a strong, complex emotion by himself. She lowered her eyes. "It didn't matter to me, how one-sided it was…"

"It matters to me." With this, Sai plucked a burned out branch from the fire, stood up and walked over to the water's edge where an abandoned ink jar was carelessly discarded. "How you knew Sasuke then is different from how I perceive him now. You and Naruto… deserve better than betrayal. And I would appreciate it a lot if you respect my opinion on the matter." Scooping a very small amount of water with the ink jar, he started to crush the black parts of the branch into it. When he was done, he returned to the fire, sat down and grabbed his flat dagger. "I admire you for your optimism, but sometimes I worry that your faith is greatly misplaced." He used the dagger to cut his palm swiftly, and used the ink bottle to contain the blood that immediately started dripping down his forearm.

Sakura did not find anything to reply to Sai's words. And even if she did, she knew she would be saying those things out of denial. Wordlessly, somewhat a bit shameful for having lost her temper on Sai because he merely expressed his thoughts, she crawled towards their pouches and retrieved a very soggy scroll from her pouch. She did not know why she had one free scroll with her, but still she felt lucky because she somehow understood what Sai was trying to do.

Sai was a bit taken aback when Sakura handed him the scroll but nonetheless accepted it without saying anything. Unrolling it in front of him, he dipped his index finger into the ink bottle, and started to draw a crude painting of a tiny bird.

Sakura frowned. "A bird? How will it find its way out of here?" She was expecting something more useful…

Sai pointed at the fire. "Look." His hand moved towards the smoke.

And Sakura's eyes widened in realization. The smoke, as Sai pointed out, was going up, going somewhere… She squinted at the ceiling, at the end where the wall met the ceiling, was a crack about two centimeters wide. The smoke coming from the fire was seeping into it, vanishing in its narrowness.

"Ninpo! Choji Giga!"

The tiny bird, not with Sai's usual meticulous pattern, sprang to life and fluttered aimlessly against the ceiling like a moth. After a second, it disappeared within the crack.

Sakura sat down beside Sai, and gently took the hand that he had cut to draw blood. Turning his palm up over hers, she placed her other hand on it, and started to heal him. "All right, Sai."

Sai looked down at her, somewhat confused. "All right what?"

"I'll respect your opinion. But," she looked into his eyes, smiling sadly. "I hope you respect mine."

And the conversation ended with that as Sakura healed Sai's wound wordlessly as her eyes found a teddy bear leaning on the wall, and Sai continued to stare at the fire.

Ooooh! An update! XD

I had never really liked Sasuke in Shippuuden. He seemed to have lost whatever redeeming quality in the manga, but I'm not going to tell you why, because that would be a spoiler for those who don't read the manga. I doubt a SasuSaku fan would be reading this story, so I guess I don't have to apologize for making Sai badmouth Sasuke.

Thank you for those who reviewed and added this story to their favorites. Now, I'm not going to ask all those who read this fic to leave a review, because I know that that's purely your free will, but I would be very grateful if you at least let me know what you think once in a while. It's an author's one wish to hear from their readers, ya know!

Come on! Make my day, people! Keep me motivated! XD