it's late, and sakura's had her head against his shoulder for the entirety of their conversation. sai's voice has grown softer as the hours pass, telling stories and jokes he's read from books, and after a while, sakura just has to look at him. he's too pretty not to. when she lifts her head, taking in all of his features as he continues speaking, there's a flash of something too pink in his mouth. brow furrowing, sakura's back straightens, and she raises her hand to curl gently against sai's jaw. "wait— wait, hold on, sai. stick out your tongue for me?" his lashes lower a bit, barely there flush coloring his cheeks, making sakura chuckle. "no, not like that, just. just do it." he does, because sai always does what she asks, and... there's nothing there. no dark marks sealed into the muscle. "sai," she breathes, slow smile curling across her cheeks. "the seal is gone."
It felt like a fever had broken in the night-- a fever that lasted so long he'd forgotten what it was like to live without it, waking up without something that had crept into his throat and lungs with brambles that kept him drowning in blood since before he could remember. Something that had kept him quiet for so long that some days it seemed as if he'd forgotten just how to speak at all.
Sakura picks up on his good mood. She's good like that, reading the looseness of his shoulders and the small curve of his lips as something meaning he'd like to share it, and she sticks close to him all afternoon. She invites him back to her apartment as their training winds down, a place that smells faintly of the hospital, but also like her perfume, and he accepts easily.
It's movie night, she insists.
He doesn't argue with her, even though he doesn't find himself familiar with the tradition. Sai follows her back to her place like a lost lamb, politely toes his shoes off in her entry and slinks inside. She left her window open, the place is breezy and cool in the fading afternoon light, and he finds himself regretting that he can't pick up the familiar comfort of her perfume.
Sai makes himself at home, because she always insists he does. While she hunts around for blankets and pulls the window to almost-closed, he rummages in her cabinets for snacks, and opens a bottle of wine for them to share. The small smile on his face remains, even though no one is watching.
Sakura puts on a movie he's never heard of that she insists is a classic, though it doesn't seem she cares much about at all. They take little sips of their too-sweet wine and flick olives at into each other's mouths, shins pressed together. They talk. They shift on the couch until their thighs brush, and Sakura takes his right hand and traces his tenketsu points until it drives him to distraction-- he's doing all the talking, now, and she's smiling softly and she won't stop looking at him and--
Her head falls onto his shoulder with a soft sigh. He pauses, uncertain, and she instructs him softly: "Don't stop talking, Sai, I like your voice."
Well, that's alright, he thinks to himself. He chatters at her until his voice starts to go hoarse, tells her about the neighbors beneath him with the screaming children and the neighbors above him that have bad sex, he tells her about the graveyard he saw in the land of Grass, and the old man that used to ask him for help on his way home from training every day. He tells her about a dream he has, where he's walking on softwet sand on a foggy beach, and nothing ever happens. He tells her, as her muscles begin to relax in half-sleep, that he's not sure if he can dream anything else, or if it's the only one he can remember. She lifts her head, blinking sleepily at him, probably to tell him something astute about the psychological science behind dreams, but instead of saying anything at first her eyes narrow sharply, and she sits up, leaning close to his face.
"Wait—" He pauses immediately, obedient, "Wait, hold on, Sai. Stick out your tongue for me?"
Ah. He feels a bit flustered, blinking stupidly at her for a half-second before something sly creeps into his expression.
"No, not like that, just..." She's exasperated, but she doesn't roll her eyes, focused as she is on his mouth. "Just do it."
Sai does as she asks, because he always does as she asks, because she only ever asks. His tongue slips out of his mouth, he even gives a little 'ahhh' for her, holding still as she prods at his tongue with her index and middle finger. They're salty, from the olives. He doesn't get to suck on her fingers, or even ask her what's wrong, because she's drawing her hand away with excitement plain on her face when she tells him: "Sai. The seal is gone."
He blinks at her stupidly for a moment. His voice is significantly weaker when he manages to ask: "Gone...?" Like she would have any idea why it might randomly vanish. Sai does know. He knows exactly what it means.
Sai forces himself to breathe. Danzo is dead. None of the others had come for him in the night, he's been cut out and left untethered, no home to go back to except-- no, that's not right. He's here, with Sakura. She is a home, soft hair and hard hands and the little crinkle in the corner of her eye when she smiles, pulling more to one side like she's unconsciously mimicking her sensei. She's holding his hands now, she's happy for him. He digs around within himself. Is he happy?
Danzo had seemed so big before, when Sai was only Sparrow. His palm had been very large on the rare occasion it settled on Sparrow's narrow shoulders, a rare and brief moment of affection coming as a reward for an assignment well done. The severe, serious look on his face when he'd assigned it a new mission-- you should be Chameleon, he used to mutter to himself. Sparrow had tucked that away as praise too, excelling in taking on identities for infiltrations and honeypots, names and genders assigned to best suit the role it had been expected to play. Sparrow used to try and keep the names he'd bestowed upon it like they were gifts, inking them into its skin so it could never forget, but it had been punished severely when it had been caught doing that. Danzo had been disappointed. He had not touched or looked at it for several months. It had thought at the time that it might die from such a punishment, wasting away into nothing until it could be swept away with dust.
Sparrow had wanted nothing more than to please Danzo. That was its entire purpose in life, and Sai--
Sai is Sparrow. Was Sparrow, maybe. He wonders if once ROOT comes to decommission him, they will take Sai from it-- from him, take Sai from him. He isn't an it. The thought makes his skull pound, and his heart turn over in his chest like a writhing, rotting mass. He grips the thought harder, so it doesn't slip away. He is Sai. There is no more Sparrow, he lost Sparrow the first time he felt Sakura's warm healing hand on a bleeding, poisoned wound, watched her sweat and swear at him and-- There is no more 'it', no more begging and crawling and dragging himself on his belly through the mud to try and please an old man that cared for nothing but his own twisted power, and if ROOT comes to tie up loose ends, he resolves, he will die bloody and messy before he allows them to take him and make him into Sparrow again.
"Sai," Sakura calls, her brows drawn down in concern. Sai looks at her, realizes his breath is too fast. He opens his mouth, closes it, and looks down at where she's grabbed both of his hands and started to gently squeeze.
Her smile has faded, concern creeping in at the edges. He can't quite look her in the eye. She doesn't press, but he can tell she's being careful to keep her breathing even, watching him with the kind of battle-calm she gets when she's saving someone. Is she saving him? He tries to match his too-fast breaths to hers. She waits.
"D--My handler is dead," he stumbles over the name, habit stealing the ability to say it aloud as much as the seal had. "He has to be. There's no other..." He sounds lost, bewildered. Pathetic. There's something vicious within him trying to cut its way out. He swallows it. "Sakura, I think I might be... afraid."
Her gaze sharpens further, and her hands squeeze him once more before she releases him, reaching out to take his face between her warm, square palms and her fingers feel like ten hot little brands on his face. He imagines each of them stamping his name into his skin, so that even if they did take him back, he could never be anything but Sai. She tells him, firmly: "I won't let anything happen to you, Sai."
He knows. He wishes he could tell her he knows, and that he believes her. There's something stuck in his throat. He watches her, wide eyed, lips pressed into a thin line, and she watches him back. He nods. She pulls him into a hug, his face tucked against her collarbone. His shoulders shake.
He's Sai. His home is here, with Sakura. With Naruto, and the Captain, and Kakashi-sensei. Here, in Sakura's apartment, smelling her perfume and drinking her wine and eating her snacks. Here, curled in her lap like a child that never was. Danzo wasn't ever going to take this away from him, and now Sai knows for sure that he can't.
I was so sure that / I'd be cured as I got older / But it's been three hundred years / And I still feel bitter, scared / And inconsiderate
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