Ev’s bowl of soba nearly slides out of his hand. It’s cold, and the sesame seeds that stick behind his teeth are annoying enough to keep his tongue pressing against them, yet he’s with seconds, nearing thirds. Saved from what short demise it almost had with the floor, noodles fall from his mouth mid-slurp and cascade into remaining droplets of soy sauce. “ What? ” Ev asks, glancing upward. His mouth is slightly open and loose, eyes fixed as if he's looking at something a yard behind Sai’s head for an answer on just what he meant by that question.
How, not why? Does he know too much already? Did Haku enlighten him before they even shared names? His mind was a surging firestorm of perplexity trying to figure out what Sai’s deal was as is, but to strike conversation with a round of twenty-questions.. A headrush is a sore understatement as to what Ev is experiencing right now.
“ What,” He repeats, blinking, refocusing. He doesn’t even realize his lips are pulled back into a broken smile like a dog trying to fend itself. “ ---The fuck? ”
I love writing on Sai because whenever I plot with people Sai is like “oh a new friend for me to be in love with 🥰❤️☺️🥰” And I think that’s so wonderful of him. He will kiss anyone and hold their hands and shit.
Kakashi sucks because he is legitimately going to throw up if someone has the audacity to have a crush on him. Don’t even look at him. Don’t think about him.
Sai doesn’t drink coffee or tea in the morning— or rather, if he does, it’s because someone else made it for him. He drinks a nice big eight ounce glass of lukewarm water and goes about his day.
This is not because he doesn’t enjoy coffee or tea, because he does. Drinking warm stuff makes him feel good. However, he’s a little bit. Maybe caffeine sensitive? It just makes him really jittery. The only time he really buckles down and drinks a non-herbal tea is when he has to stay up studying all night
Cheerfully, like he isn't being horrifying: "Every day is a lie, Lee. But you will die some day. That is not a lie."
WHAT’S HIS DEAL ?? the great nekomata had this look in her eyes , something lee only saw in HER , only a little condenscending , mixed with motherly affection && worry . before she closed illuminating hues , great maw opened wide in a growl the leaf’s jonin learned to recognize as a yawn . you know how root ninjas can be . it’s not their fault . he’s been used to GLOOMY words ; he’s been with neji for long enough . and the near constant contact with the black ops didn’t help either . and the leaf’s tiger ALMOST got used to it , his heart almost numbed to the pessimistic outlook of the future , the last shred of kindhearted nature left in him ; withstanding abuse , empowered by gai - sensei and friends , kept lee from adapting to this mindset . much to danzo’s dismay . THAT OLD OAF . VIGOROUS FLAMES OF YOUTH withstood any darkness trying to suffocate it .
❛ i spent the whole day sparring with gai - sensei , we went to a sushi bar afterwards . that wasn’t a lie . ❜ and tomorrow , at dawn’s rise , lee had to face yet another dangerous S rank . that wasn’t a lie either . nothing in his life , as insignificant as it may appear , had ever been a lie ; and never would he deny his effort . every drop of blood and tear he shed fell for a reason . ❛ i’ll die happily , sai - kun , knowing that i lived . ❜ he smiles , as if trying to outshine the sun itself . his last thought , evident only in worried eyes , remained unsaid . . . . can you say the same ??
After Sparrow-became-Sai but before he’d been completely cut from Danzo’s influence he’d been temporarily pulled from the Team Seven assignment and sent here-- some backwater little town just southwest of the border of Frost country. He remembers very little of the assignment itself: a courier mission, he believes, delivering some secret report with information that may or may not be helping to fuck them during the war. He hadn’t been bold enough to check back then, even with his heart growing like a living thing.
The mission doesn’t matter. What he’d found in these massive, ancient trees on that mission does. Sai tips his head and considers the path through the forest, the fading afternoon light fading through the tall jack-pine branches far overhead. It’s beautiful. Peaceful. As beautiful and peaceful as it was in the beginning, he imagines, as beautiful and peaceful as it will be in the end. He can’t quite believe he’s back here.
Sai had taken the path through this forest, see. It hadn’t been on the map, this path, but it had pointed south and he’d thought maybe he could cut a few hours from his trip and make it back to the village and his friends just a little bit sooner. The path did not make sense once he was on it, left and right turns through a forest of trees not made for running the way the redwoods were and underbrush that made it just a little bit treacherous to wander. He stuck to it, not turning around. He thinks perhaps it was the first time he’d felt honest curiosity.
The daylight had turned to late afternoon almost without him noticing, the sun hanging low in the western sky and peeking down at him from those dense branches. Pine needles had muffled his footsteps to almost nothing and the ground had felt spongy, dense, rich. He’d noticed immediately with the birds stopped singing, but pausing and feeling for life around him had revealed nothing-- not even deer, not even foxes, not even rabbits. Sai had continued on the winding, nonsensical path.
He’d smelled death first: that particular mixture of fear-blood and torn stomach, and keeping his course had led him right to the source. A pool of blood soaked into the hungry dirt between two massive trees, staining the rust-colored pine needles red and black and when he’d lifted his head he finally saw her. Her, long dark hair spilling over her shoulders and falling into her face. Her, with dull and sightless eyes staring right at him, head tipped down until her chin rested against what remained of her sternum. Her, impaled on the branches several meters above him, her ribcage split open and her entrails hanging out of her, still slowly dripping blood onto the forest floor. Her Kumo headband remained snug around her forehead.
Strange, he’d thought to himself. There were no signs of a struggle-- no broken branches, no tang in the air that spoke to any jutsu being used. And other than the obvious she hadn’t been injured as far as he could tell. Just caked with loamy dirt on her hands and the tattered remains of her uniform, like she’d been rolling around in the dirt before someone had placed her up here and then ripped her open.
He’d peered up at her for a few minutes, probably, except he thinks maybe it had been longer than that because when he heard the twig snap behind him the sun was far closer to the horizon than it should have been. Part of him had wanted to cut her down, though he’d not been sure why at the time. The muffled four-beat footsteps behind him were animal, probably a deer or one of those massive elk or moose that hang around these woods he’d thought, though it was strange that a prey animal would stray so close to another dead thing.
Sai turned around.
The thing’s lack of fear made sense, then, because it was clearly no prey animal. Four massive cloven hooves connected to brown-black furry legs that were too-long and too-lean and too-strong. It was almost twice his height at the shoulder, big-bodied on those spindly legs, its rear hunched but its front straight and proud. He had to tilt his head back to look it in the face, looming over him as it was, even though its head was leaned down on its massive neck as far as it could go.
Its head didn’t make sense either. There was a sense of a massive rack of antlers, of a cervid jaw and a nose of exposed bone. Human arms sprouted where there should have been ears, and from underneath the jaw where it met neck, long and pale things blackened with soot like the antlers and tipped with long and broken nails. Upon its forehead sat a blank mask of a human face with too many glowing golden eyes, and the hands reached down for him with the fingers outstretched.
“Oh,” Sai said, and the thing had stilled. “Hello.”
Its fingers curled into fists but it stayed frozen for a moment, peering down at him with too-many-golden-eyes, and then slowly the head had cocked to the side curiously. Sai mimicked the gesture, and finally the thing had rumbled a curt “hello” in return.
He blinked at it, and then a polite smile fixed itself firmly on his face. His heart beat evenly and his voice was as smooth as glass when he tucked his still hands behind his back and he observed, “it’s quite rude to go around grabbing people without permission, you know.”
The thing gave a massive incredulous snort and crossed the one pair of arms under its chin and the other up near its horns like a fleshy crown, and its voice rumbled like thunder when it replied, “by your standards or mine?”
Sai had tilted his head and conceded the point silently-- after all, he was trespassing on another predator’s territory. That was certainly rude of him, too. The thing watched him for another moment before stepping forward and uncrossing its arms, reaching down to settle two hands on his jaw and one on his forehead, tilting his head this way and that. Its skin felt restless, like if Sai cut it only maggots or poorly packed dirt or a great wall of static might fall instead of blood. He stood still.
“You will do,” the thing had murmured then, absent and nearly fond as it stroked a five-jointed-thumb over his cheek. Its breath was musty and damp against his skin.
“No,” Sai had said, sounding almost apologetic for some reason as he reached up to settle his own hand on its wrist. “I will not.”
The thing had squeezed his head then until he thought his skull might crack, snarling something unintelligible at him that turned into a howl when he’d swiped his tanto across its wrists and lopped off one of the hands completely. When it landed in the dirt at his feet it had dissolved into a hundred moths that scattered frantically into the air between them. The thing had reeled back and he’d taken the opportunity to dart away, far enough to shape three ink clones and drop below the surface of the earth.
It had taken off after the clone heading north with a bellow that shook every branch, and Sai had waited a long while before he’d finally crawled back out of the ground with a sigh. It had caught one of his clones moments after the sun had finally set below the horizon but the other two were still running around out there. He glanced at the woman hanging from the branches, sighed, and started walking south once more, careful to keep his footsteps quiet and light and his senses alert. The forest around him was completely empty of life.
By the time he made it to the edge, the sun had been coming back up. The thing had caught both of his remaining clones in the night, and the less said about the things it did to them in the brief moments before they dissolved the better. He’d been exhausted, and a dozen or so meters from the treeline he’d turned around just to see and there it had been, lingering just in the shade of the trees and watching him. One hand was clasped around the still-bleeding stump he’d made of one of the arms, and the blood was black, and when it dripped to the ground little raspberry vines sprouted from the ground.
Sai had raised his hand in farewell, and the thing had turned its back to him and wandered back into the trees silently, either unwilling or unable to leave its trees behind. He’d gone home, and Naruto had laughed about the perfect hand-shaped bruises on his face and asked what he’d said to piss someone off bad enough to slap him on the forehead, and Sakura had just sighed and settled a glowing green hand to his cheek and he hadn’t flinched because not for one moment was he afraid.
He just didn’t think he had any business killing something he hadn’t set out to kill in the first place.
It’s the same deal now, he thinks. The thing will not be happy to see him again. But the story is long and he doesn’t feel like telling it, even if he knows Hayate has to be curious-- he’d just spent the last few minutes standing perfectly still and staring blankly into the space between the tall-straight tree trunks.
“The path is not actually a shortcut,” he finally says, gesturing to the worn and inviting dirt track that leads weary travelers to their doom. “It is still faster to go around the forest.”
And as for what’s in there? Sai just pats Hayate on the shoulder and starts walking again, tucking his hands into his pockets and keeping an eye out for flashes of movement in the trees. One of the other jounin with them scoffs, but no argument comes. “We should keep moving. There is a lot of ground to cover by dawn.”
@moonsdying /// the flames rose hundreds of feet into the air we stood on the shore watching them burn we stood
Sai doesn’t drink coffee or tea in the morning— or rather, if he does, it’s because someone else made it for him. He drinks a nice big eight ounce glass of lukewarm water and goes about his day.
This is not because he doesn’t enjoy coffee or tea, because he does. Drinking warm stuff makes him feel good. However, he’s a little bit. Maybe caffeine sensitive? It just makes him really jittery. The only time he really buckles down and drinks a non-herbal tea is when he has to stay up studying all night
“Yeah….I guess the guy’s got a point.” Sure sounds like something Kakashi would say. “maybe you should get a fake plant? It won’t die and you don’t have to thank it for oxygen….or apologize for letting it die a slow and painful death.”
“I painted plants on my walls,” He folds his hands together in front of his stomach. “ZZ plants and some grass, and cattails. My landlord will be upset but chances are I will not be leaving until I am dead, so I do not care.”
Shifting his weight and tilting his head, Sai continues, “But no fresh oxygen-- so I just open my window. What are you going to name your plants?”
“Clarity can be sterile, while tumult can be fertile. Some things are created in upheaval, at high temperatures, which the frozen eye of clarity can’t take. There are things you understand with your blood or not at all.”
— Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years (trans. Philip Ó Ceallaigh)
titsay
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
origamiaround
kianamaiart
