i.

Sakura is watching Naruto sleep with sad eyes, tired eyes- she is sore in her bones, exhausted, but she still manages a wistful smile. Yamato looks at her, watches her as she loves Naruto with a look. Her eyes tell all of it: her guilt, because she was cruel when they were younger, because she only cared for Sasuke, who has deserted them; her affection, because Naruto has somehow fumbled himself irrevocably into her heart; her adoration, because he saves people, and then he saves them again; and then, last, her eyes look at him with a kind of longing, an almost-dejection. She wonders if this was how Naruto looked at her when she was the one who only had eyes for Sasuke.

ii.

It's a different kind of anger that rushes through his veins, a kind of blood-hot heat that thickens in his pulse because Sai is infuriating in a way that no one else is. With Sasuke - the arguments, the sparring matches, beating the crap out of each other and calling it rivalry when really they were closer than brothers - his insults were an affirmation. They said, Naruto, I acknowledge you. When Sai speaks, with every word it is always only, Naruto, you are beneath me. But it is more than that; it is seeing Sasuke's face and Sasuke's isolation, but not that give and take that is so familiar. It is Sai smiling softly in that false way that Sasuke never did, and speaking words Sasuke never spoke with a voice that has the same quiet hollows. Most of all, it is seeing someone who desperately needs an honest to god friend and leaving not a single opening in his heart for one to come in; even Naruto, the king of saving people's hearts, can find no purchase there; Sai's smile locks out everything.

iii.

The first person Sai sees when he enters the room with Orochimaru and Kabuto, the person that causes his breath to hitch only slightly, because everyone in Konoha got chills when his name was mentioned?the first person Sai sees is Uchiha Itachi. The second person Sai sees is really just a closer look at the first, and it is Uchiha Sasuke with older eyes and longer hair and an expression so cold and so cruel that Sai knows Naruto would break to see his friend like this, or at least break his face to wipe the emptiness out of those eyes that have become everything the Uchiha hated.

END

team seven
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