Archive of Our Own

Sai remembered Sakura's breath on the back of his neck. Sai remembered her saying, "Change everything. Be happy. Please," just before she shoved him with all of her strength. A lot before that hadn't come back to him yet. He could tell it was there, just beyond the edges of what he could recall, but when he tried to look directly, dozens, maybe hundreds, of images took flight like startled birds. Sai couldn't capture any of them or make them still long enough for him to remember properly.

There's a reason for that. More than one.

He had bruises from Sakura's hands, one on each shoulder blade. He had bruises from other things, too. He'd been nearly twenty feet from the ground when he'd realized that he was falling.

There was blood. So much. He'd been dying.

His clothing was ragged enough to make him frown. His appearance was part of his function, so it was like discovering that he hadn't cleaned a blade before putting it away, that he hadn't stoppered a bottle of ink, that he had--

Everyone looked like that. No one noticed, not any more.

Sai blinked and shook his head. He had no idea where he was. Finding out had to be his priority. He still had paper and ink, so he drew a bird, blurring its outline so that it wouldn't stand out against the sky.

He didn't remember learning to do that. The person who'd taught him was lost in the panicked flock of his recent memories.

He had his training and his orders. He didn't need to remember.

He couldn't bear to remember. Not yet. Only Naruto would--

The bird's eyes told Sai that he was only about an hour from Konoha. They also told him that he was a long way from home. The Godaime's face was absent from the mountain.

The conclusion was obvious-- Genjutsu.

Time travel. Naruto's gift. Sakura's gift. Unwanted.

Agents of Root didn't want anything. It wasn't an option. That meant the agent known as Sai couldn't call anything 'unwanted.'

"Take the gift," Sakura whispered. "Pass it on."

Whatever was happening, he needed to narrow down the when. He'd know what to do if he knew the when.

Except he wouldn't because this wasn't genjutsu.

Sai hadn't realized how little he knew about the history of Konoha. History had always been irrelevant to his missions because Root operatives didn't need context to obey orders.

"Context is everything." That sounded like Uchiha Sasuke.

Sai clenched his off hand until his fingernails drew blood.

Now, looking down at his village, he knew it was wrong. He was keeping a list of the differences in his head. Mostly, the configuration of the practice grounds: Trees that should be there and weren't or were there and shouldn't be. Three creeks that followed noticeably different courses. A pond he'd never seen before. Walls that should show signs of recent repairs after the damage of the chunin exams but that showed evidence of damage in completely different places.

Sai simply wasn't sure if the damage was sufficient or in the right places to have been the Kyuubi's work. The bijuu burned whatever it touched, didn't it? Surely that would be obvious.

The Kyuubi was always less dangerous than Naruto was. Naruto spoke, and even the gods--

Sai was fairly sure that a normal person ought to deny the reality of what he was seeing, but that seemed like an inefficient use of time. Either he was in a genjutsu that he couldn't break and had to deal with what was around him, or he had actually time traveled and had to deal with what was around him. Ignoring the dealing with it part wouldn't make returning to his proper place any easier.

He didn't want to disappoint Sakura. Not again. She trusted him to--

To do what? Sai's head throbbed. Controlling his construct was becoming harder. He needed to remember.

An obedient Root agent would already be on his way to report.

That's not who you are any more. It was never all you were.

No matter what he intended to do, he needed a safe way into the village. His papers wouldn't serve in a Konoha ruled by either the Fourth or the Third, and resorting to Root's paths would--

He should report in.

He really shouldn't. He didn't even want to. His orders-- Sakura outranked him; Sakura could give him orders-- were to be happy.

He had actionable intelligence.

Danzo must not know, and, if Danzo asked, Sai would have to answer. Eventually.

Sai avoided certain topics in his reports. He shaded truths and omitted emotional nuances. He was bad at nuances anyway. All of them were.

Which, now that he thought about it, was a really terrible trait in a spy. Very little of Sai's training actually made him more effective at anything.

Danzo-sama wouldn't accept partial answers from a stranger with the Root seal on his tongue.

Sai's presence might doom his younger self for the crime of future disloyalty because Danzo couldn't possibly miss that part.

Sai was glad that he had been assigned a long term mission with orders to conceal his loyalties. Without that, the urge to return to the tunnels and report would be overwhelming because it was familiar, because it made someone else responsible for deciding what to do.

It would also be wrong. It would hurt his friends. Which was why he wasn't supposed to have friends and why he wanted them.

Wait. He closed his eyes and considered.

As long as this might be a genjutsu, he couldn't report to Danzo-sama without risking operational security and without revealing Root secrets to whatever enemy had ensnared him. That... That made sense. Sai could work with that. It gave him parameters and deniability.

If it was a genjutsu, Sai could explore it to see what the enemy knew. Sai could approach compromised agents to test the boundaries. Sai could--

Now, the only question Sai really had was whether or not his brother was still alive.

He considered what he knew of Konoha's past and decided that he needed to find Hatake Kakashi. Naruto and Sakura's sensei was the only person-- apart from Danzo-sama and the Sandaime-- who had been around for all of the years when the mountain only had four faces.

For some of that time, Kakashi had even known about Root.

Sai could certainly find Kakashi because he had a profound and long established weakness. If Kakashi was in Konoha, all Sai had to do was to watch the Memorial. Sai had never decided whether or not that habit was Kakashi's deliberate lure for potential assassins. Kakashi couldn't actually think that standing there for long periods, over and over and over, was safe.

He could. He had. Somehow, he'd survived years of being predictably vulnerable.

Either way, Kakashi was an asshole. Sai wouldn't feel at all bad about ruining his life.
___________

The bad news was that Kakashi was currently younger than Sai and had almost certainly not yet heard of Root. That made approaching him harder.

The good news was that Namikaze Minato was still alive; Shin might not even be in training yet.

The Yondaime was a seal master. If anyone could free Sai to act against Danzo, Namikaze Minato could.

Sai had been ordered not to let Tsunade-sama see his seal. Never once had anyone mentioned not letting the Yondaime take a look.

Convincing him to help might be hard. No one became Hokage by being altruistic. Could Naruto have managed it?

Presumably because Minato-sama had died well before Sai had been inducted into Root. Danzo-sama had forbidden a lot of things and compelled many others, but nothing time travel related had ever been on the list.

The list also hadn't included-- No. That was still too much to look at now.

Sai knew he was forgetting a lot of impossible things that had actually happened. He put those aside as outside of mission parameters. The Agent needed to focus on the Mission.

The Agent might as well contribute something. Usually, he was an arsonist who burned parts of Sai's life.

Forbidding ridiculous or impossible things would have wasted training time. Thinking about them definitely wasted operational time.

Sai dared Root's territory just long enough to reach one of the heavily wooded training grounds. At that point, he drew half a dozen chipmunks and sent them to watch the Memorial.

Now, three of those chipmunks were watching Minato-sama put an arm around Kakashi's shoulders and tug him over to sit.

Sai didn't remember anyone but Shin ever touching him that way. Why was Kakashi so lucky?

Sai hoped that Kakashi's teacher was about to tell him how inutterably stupid it was to stand for hours, looking at a rock. The dead weren't there, and the Memorial offered nothing that helped a person survive. Sai had stood there, twice, and wondered about all of the Root agents whose names weren't ever going to be etched on the stone surface.

All he'd wanted then was to smash something, so he'd reported himself for inappropriate reactions. It had been a safer confession than saying that he liked Naruto and would happily follow him into Hell.

Naruto hadn't even been born yet. Had Sakura?

Sai shook his head in an effort to clear it of irrelevancies.

His other three chipmunks were trying to spot the Hokage's guards. Sai didn't know if any of them were Root or if any of them were being watched by Root.

Danzo-sama never had enough agents to watch everything, so Sai thought this moment might be predictable enough and public enough for Danzo's eyes to blink.

Danzo's eye. Singular. Sai wasn't sure why he'd used the plural. He was usually more precise.

Sai drew a dog that looked as much like Pakkun as he could manage. The color was off, but, once he gave the dog life, it said, "My paws are very soft," and offered one to him. Sai shook the dog's paw then scratched the dog's ears as he tried to settle on an approach.

He knew he wasn't good with words. He also knew that neither Minato-sama nor Kakashi would trust his message. He didn't need them to; he just needed them to talk to him without giving him away or sending him to T&I.

Danzo could pluck anyone out of T&I. Sai didn't want that personal attention.

Sai looked down at the dog that wasn't Pakkun and wondered if Kakashi had even met Pakkun yet. The likeness might be wasted. Sai put his arms around the dog and wished for the real thing.

The real Pakkun was clever; he would know how to make Kakashi believe.

Sai wasn't-- couldn't be-- afraid. He merely didn't want to fail his mission.
________

Kakashi wanted to talk to Rin, so he wished that Minato-sensei hadn't joined him. He was also deeply grateful for the company. The trees smelled of the day Rin's name had been carved on the Memorial. The mulberries were blooming, and little fluffs from the cottonwoods drifted through the air.

Even the frogs were singing the same song as they looked for mates.

If Kakashi were alone, he might lose his self-control enough to cry.

"You shouldn't spend the night out here," Minato-sensei said. "It won't make you feel better."

Kakashi heard the unspoken, It won't make her feel better.. He knew that both were true. Nothing would make him feel better, and nothing could make Rin feel better.

Maybe letting Minato-sensei take him home would let Minato-sensei feel better. Kakashi really, really shouldn't be taking this much of the Hokage's time. What if Minato-sensei was too tired to do his job tomorrow?

That seemed unlikely, but Kakashi was pretty sure that someone would frown and blame 'that Hatake boy' for whatever happened tomorrow.

He felt Minato-sensei go very still. "Look up," he said in the barest whisper. "Right from the Memorial, about 90 degrees."

Kakashi didn't turn but rather relied on his peripheral vision. At least it was on the side of his body that had peripheral vision. For a moment, he wondered what Pakkun was doing. Kakashi hadn't summoned him, after all.

The dog's color was wrong. The dog had seated himself where he could be seen, where he was sure to be seen. The dog looked at Kakashi and gave a happy wriggle, but, apart from panting, he didn't move otherwise. After a few seconds, he raised a paw as if offering it for a shake.

The movement was exactly the way that Pakkun would have done it.

"That's not Pakkun." Kakashi was glad that he didn't need to worry about anyone reading his lips. Well, not anyone but a Hyuuga. "I... I don't see how anyone would expect me to fall for it."

"If they expected you to, it would have trotted right up to us." Minato-sensei hadn't relaxed. "And, given today, I don't think it's a prank."

The dog stood and circled as if settling into position for a nap. Then he flopped down with his head on his paws. He fixed his eyes on Kakashi.

"Assassination?" Kakashi thought the dog was too cute not to be a trap. "Proximity activated?"

Minato-sensei hesitated. "Then why not have it just walk up to us?"

"Because we'd notice?" Kakashi couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"Not today," Minato-sensei said.

Kakashi felt Minato-sensei's muscles tense as he prepared to stand, so he put a hand on his teacher's arm. "Let me, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said.

After half a second, Minato-sensei relaxed a little. "You're not expendable, Kakashi-kun, no matter what ridiculous hat I'm wearing."

Minato-sensei wasn't wearing the hat, and Kakashi was expendable, but Kakashi didn't think he was supposed to argue when he was being allowed to take point.

As Kakashi got close, he realized that the symbol on the dog's vest read 'Root.' He stopped because that unexpected deviation told him that he wasn't supposed to believe this dog was Pakkun. The wind shifted, and Kakashi inhaled, expecting to smell dog.

He smelled mulberries and ink. Not a trace of dog but what was already on his clothing. The odds of some sort of seal had gone up.

Kakashi went down on one knee and extended a hand toward the dog as if offering it to sniff. He was still at least two meters away from the not-Pakkun not-dog.

The not-dog raised its head. "It might be a genjutsu, but I have to try," it said, speaking speaking at a frequency that only certain animals, Hatake, and small children could hear. "When the root rots, what happens to the tree?"

Kakashi supposed that the odds of any creature being nearby that both could hear the words and understood human speech approached zero. Whoever made this thing knew a lot about Kakashi and the Hatake. It made him feel naked.

The not-dog yipped, leapt into the air, then wriggled and wagged its tail as if expecting Kakashi to throw a ball or a stick.

Kakashi felt in his pocket and hoped that the real Pakkun wouldn't be too annoyed about Kakashi throwing the blue ball for another dog. Well, a not-dog. Would Pakkun consider that any better? He tossed the ball into the trees, and the not-dog barked and gave chase.

Kakashi glanced back at Minato-sensei and drummed his fingers against his thigh. "I think the rest of my pack would like to play, too," he called. The words were loud enough that Minato-sensei's bodyguards were certain to hear.

Minato-sensei smiled then laughed. "Am I allowed to play, too?"

"If you want." Kakashi bit his finger then pressed his hand to the ground.

Because Minato-sensei enjoyed being a troll, he ruffled Kakashi's hair as the pack appeared. The tiny pulse of chakra passed between teacher and student would be hidden from any watchers but was still enough to disrupt any sort of subtle genjutsu.

Kakashi's scowl was hidden, but all of them knew it was there.

Minato-sensei laughed again. "You're too young to be so stodgy," he told Kakashi. Minato-sensei came down to Kakashi's level and worked both hands into Shiba's fur exactly the way that the ninken liked best.

The pack stood down from combat readiness.
__________

Sai wasn't relieved when Kakashi and Minato-sama started playing with the dogs. He didn't relax when three dogs nosed into the woods where his pseudo-Pakkun had vanished while chasing the ball. Either would have meant that he was treating this genjutsu (not a genjutsu) as if it were real.

It couldn't possibly be. Sai was a loyal Root agent.

It was. He hoped it was.

He wished he knew more about this era, so he could spot the inconsistencies.

The more he knew, the more likely he was to see Shin again. His brother protected him over and over; now, Sai could give Shin everything life outside of Root had to offer.

He'd trade Naruto and every one of Naruto's friends for a chance to save Shin. This was so obviously a trap.

A genjutsu intent on ensnaring him deeply enough that he never wanted to come out would have given him Shin immediately. This is-- could be-- real.

When the trio of dogs entered the clearing where Sai waited, he dispelled his pseudo-Pakkun. He was sitting cross legged on the ground. He had removed his gloves and tucked them into a pouch. He had rolled up his sleeves, and he kept his hands, palms upward, on his knees. He wasn't sure he looked non-threatening, and he tried not to think about all of the things he wouldn't be able to do if he died here after being savaged by Kakashi's dogs.

They didn't usually kill, but he didn't doubt that they could. He'd even made himself easier prey. He raised his chin and closed his eyes. He'd very much rather not see it coming.

"I'm caught in a flawless genjutsu," he told them. "It must be a genjutsu because, otherwise, my choice to make contact contradicts my standing orders." He opened his eyes again. "This appears to be sixteen or seventeen years in the past. The Yondaime still being alive narrows it down a lot. Even the Roots of the Tree know the date when the Kyuubi killed him."

The dog with sunglasses had tilted his head and straightened his tail.

Sai thought that that meant the dog couldn't believe the steaming heap of bullshit that Sai had just dropped in front of them. He was better with dogs and other animals than he was with people.

Studying animals so that he could make convincing facsimiles had increased his value as an agent. He simply hadn't had a chance to study ninken in the same depth.

Sai gambled. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. He gave them a good long look at the seal. Then he said, "Roots grow in the darkness and die unseen." That was safe enough; it was simple botanical truth. He hoped that the ninken would understand enough to let him talk to Kakashi.

Sai might be able to contort his thoughts enough to talk freely to Root candidate Hatake Kakashi. He wouldn't know until he tried.

He'd managed to say more to Kakashi's ninken than he'd expected. He still choked on every word he tried to speak that would tell them what he wanted. Some of that was keeping Root's secrets, some of that was knowing that he couldn't be obedient and still want anything at all.

Most of it was fear that Danzo-sama would use Shin against him.

Sai would tell Danzo-sama everything, really everything, if Danzo-sama let him remove his brother from training and place Shin with a family.

Danzo would lie about that the way he lied about everything.

The dogs pulled back and conferred. A few minutes later, one of them took off through the trees, toward Kakashi and the Hokage.

Sai's chipmunks reported that the Hokage's bodyguards were watching the Hokage play with his student's pack. Either they hadn't noticed that some of the dogs were gone or they were discreet enough to assume that Minato-sama had it all well in hand.

The Yondaime played with Kakashi's ninken exactly the way that Naruto would.

Sai shouldn't trust a stranger simply because he resembled someone Sai would die for.

There was never any chance that Sai would approach Danzo, not after Sai saw the Yondaime. Naruto would have helped, so this man who looked so much like Naruto would help.

Sai could talk about his teammate, Uzumaki Naruto. He could draw Naruto clearly enough that anyone would see the relationship. He looked at the two remaining dogs. "I would like to draw something," he told them. "I will not animate it." He offered a smile to seal the promise and knew that it looked as false as his smiles always did.

He drew Naruto and Sakura and the Last Uchiha. He labeled the drawings with their names. He drew a tree at the top of a page and let the roots take half the page. Underneath that, he drew faces he remembered. Only Shin and Sai had names. He labeled some of the others as 'graduated,' but he stopped breathing when he tried to label any of the dead.

He wasn't sure if that was the seal or if that was grief.

Once he recovered, he went back to his picture of Naruto and added his birth date underneath the name. For balance, he added birth dates for Sakura and Sasuke as well. None of that was secret.

Sai knew that Kakashi had crept up behind him while he was drawing. He hadn't let his pen hesitate for even an instant. He drew Tsunade-sama's face on the mountain along with the date of her ascension. He drew Itachi, making the line that renounced his connection to the Leaf as pronounced as he could. He drew Team 7 eating ramen after a mission. He drew Jiraiya with a toad on his shoulder.

All of it was intelligence that Konoha's enemies already had. None of it was secret.

He drew Ino and Hinata and Shikamaru. He drew Kiba and Akamaru. He drew Shino in a cloud of insects. He drew Maito Gai and Rock Lee twice because the first attempt didn't quite capture their energy.

Underneath Lee's image, Sai wrote, 'Not Gai-sensei's son,' and underlined it four times.

At that point, Kakashi choked. Audibly.

Sai put down his pen and pad and turned to look. "You will become more skilled in stealth," he assured the boy who would become the man he knew. "It's inconvenient how much you don't know, but--" He stuck out his tongue so that Kakashi could see the seal. "Some things are beyond you anyway."

"That's nasty," the Yondaime said.

Sai nodded agreement. He wasn't sure if the Hokage had been there the instant before or if he'd simply teleported to Kakashi's location to get a better look. He supposed that either was possible. Sai picked up his pad and hesitated for a moment before offering it to Kakashi.

Kakashi ought not let his Hokage be the first to touch anything that came from the hands of a stranger who'd been lurking in the woods.

"You want that off, right?" the Yondaime asked. He was giving Sai all of his attention.

Sai smiled. "That would be against my orders and my training."

Kakashi flinched, and Sai knew that he hadn't missed the fact that Sai hadn't actually said no.

"Right," the Yondaime said.

Sai closed his eyes. He wouldn't have seen the knockout tag coming anyway, but he didn't want to look like he was resisting.
______

Sai woke in a room that smelled like dust, mildew, and wet dog. His right cheek was pressed to a tatami mat. His throat felt like he'd drunk acid, and his mouth tasted like he'd gargled acetone afterward. He pushed his tongue against each cheek in turn and then against the roof of his mouth.

Nothing felt different, but Sai knew.

"I'm not in a genjutsu," he said. He tried to whisper it, but it came out as a sharp edged croak. The words hurt as he said them, but he could say them without feeling any compulsion to Danzo-sama.

Hating Danzo still felt too big and too terrible a thing to admit to.

He opened his eyes and found Pakkun staring at him.

"You drew me," Pakkun said.

Sai wasn't sure what that tone of voice meant. Was Pakkun angry? Or pleased? Or flattered? Or something else entirely? Sai struggled to make his voice work. "Gamble," he said. "Might not have met you yet." He started coughing which clawed at his raw throat.

Pakkun kept staring at him. "Oi, Kakashi! Time for that glass of water!" He lowered his voice and went on, "Go easy. Being back in this house is hard on him. He wouldn't be here if they didn't believe that some part of what you're selling is true."

Sai tried to say that he wanted to make it all not be true, but every time he inhaled, his throat complained. He desperately wanted the promised water. He considered trying to sit up, but he thought that that would require more breath than talking did.

Also, he assumed they'd at least bound his hands. Even if they thought he had told them the truth, trust was-- No one got to be a jounin while still trusting the good will of strangers.

That was probably why Naruto would be Hokage some day but never a jounin.

Sai listened as the door to the room complained about being opened. He didn't think Kakashi was trying to walk silently.

Kakashi stopped just short of stepping on Sai. Kakashi was behind Sai, but Sai trusted his own ability to judge proximity. Kakashi gave a put-upon sigh that would have done credit to Ino.

A moment later, Sai felt Kakashi's hand and Kakashi's arms pulling his body upright.

"The tatami doesn't need the water," Kakashi said.

Sai giggled because the odor of mildew told him that the tatami had already had plenty of water. Sai flinched because he'd never giggled-- No, he had. He'd also been punished for it.

Kakashi held the glass to Sai's lips, and Sai sipped, trying to let the moisture coat his throat. "Sensei said you'd feel like pounded shit and that I should tell you it'll pass. Probably."

"I'm not supposed to laugh," Sai confided. He doubted Kakashi could understand a word because Sai was swallowing half of the consonants. "Emotions make agents weak." He wondered if this was a side effect of the seal removal process or if they'd drugged him.

If they'd drugged him, the Yondaime was probably watching and listening.

"Nobody'd let you run an interrogation." The words were still probably not intelligible, but Sai thought the idea was hysterically funny. He couldn't decide whether it would be funnier to cooperate or to quote all of Naruto's speeches about friendship verbatim.

Once he could talk properly, he'd probably do both. That would be satisfying.

"He is sooo wasted," Pakkun observed. "Is that supposed to happen?"

Kakashi tipped the glass a little further and drops spattered Sai's chest. "New seal. Who knows?"

"Am I naked?" Wet cloth didn't feel at all the same as water on skin, so Sai probably was. Well, shirtless. He might not be entirely naked. This Kakashi was way too young to be alone with a naked anybody. "Pakkun can't chaperone."

"I can," Pakkun replied firmly. "And you're too young to think about that."

"Root doesn't do that sort of mission." Sai suddenly felt sad about that. "Seductions, I mean. We're all terrible, no good, very bad--"

"Drink your water," Kakashi said. "Then I'll get you something hot."

"Hurts," Sai said. He wasn't talking about his throat. He wasn't talking about any part of his body. He didn't have any other word for the soul deep ache that he'd always kept walled away and hidden even from himself.

Kakashi made another sound that reminded Sai of Ino. This time, it was overplayed revulsion. His arm tightened slightly around Sai's shoulders.

Had Kakashi always been so... overly emotional?

Sai tried to move a hand to pat Kakashi's arm, found he couldn't, and remembered that he was probably physically restrained. "It's all right. I won't tell."

Pakkun sighed and let his head drop to his paws. "Maybe, before tea, you should let the lovebirds know that your guest's awake."

Sai was almost certain he heard Pakkun mutter, "And then he's not our problem."

Kakashi lowered Sai back to the tatami and vanished in a swirl of leaves.

"Dramatic," Sai observed.

"You have no idea," Pakkun told him. "We're hoping he grows out of it."

Sai snickered. Then he laughed. "You have no idea."

Sai closed his eyes. Maybe, if he slept again, everything would be better when he woke. It didn't usually work that way, but Sakura recommended it sometimes.

She was a medic. She knew things.

He opened his eyes again and said very seriously, "Make a note. Sakura will be born in the spring. It's very important. Sakura is my friend." He could have friends. He didn't understand why that made him want to cry. "Please take care of her!" Suddenly, the possibility that they wouldn't became an urgent threat. "It's not her fault!"

"What isn't?"

"Um..." Sai knew there was something. Oh, right. "The Uchiha thing," he said firmly. "Not her fault. He's an asshole with ugly eyes."

"That's a problem with Uchiha," Pakkun told him. "Both parts."

"I only know one Uchiha-- the Last One." Sai hesitated because that count didn't seem right. "Oh, and the Kin Killer. He's in the bingo book. And..."

There were Uchiha eyes on Danzo's arm. Sai didn't think anyone had chosen to give them to him, though, so Danzo didn't count even as much as Kakashi did.

Danzo also wasn't the Uchiha Sai was thinking of. "I'll remember later," he announced. He tried to move his hands again to make a vague gesture at his head. "I keep getting pieces falling through the roof."

"Kid, the roof in this room is sound. No leaks, I promise."

"Not that roof." Sai was irritated that Pakkun didn't appreciate the beauty of his metaphor. He was also reassured because he didn't think a genjutsu would argue with him about roofing. As he passed out again, his smile looked very near to genuine.
__________

He dreamed of small children playing in sunlight. They all had names. Some of them, he knew and some not. All of them laughed. Sai stood near the swings with the other teenagers and watched.

"You've got this," Naruto said, putting a hand on Sai's shoulder and squeezing. "You'll remember the rest when it's safe to; it's all a little too crazy and a little too distracting to lead with." Naruto laughed. "Shikamaru told me to say that exactly. He didn't trust me to tell you right."

Sai tried to turn to look at Naruto, but he couldn't. "I don't understand."

"Eh, I misread the seal. It wasn't the place where the past touched the future; it was the place where the past touched many futures. You're gonna find good things here. Believe it!"

"Bad things, too." Sakura sounded both grim and happy. "You know-- Life."

Sai felt her face press against the back of his head. He leaned back a little to let her know that he cared, too.

"If our blessings count for anything," she added.

"You're dying." Sai considered that an unacceptable price.

"Only kinda," Naruto told him. "I don't think we can."

"Naruto yelled at the sky," Sakura said with some exasperation. "Three gods came out to tell him to shut up, and he didn't."

Oh, well, that probably explained a lot. "Talked them into something stupid?"

"Hey!"

Sakura laughed. "Be happy, Sai, if you can. The others have their own histories to repair. Our timelines are splitting. Even Naruto can't force multiple universes to cooperate."

The snort Sai heard had to come from the asshole Last Uchiha. "Just whichever one we're in at the time," he said, his voice sounded strained and exhausted. "The dobe made us the Gods of Fixing Shitty Timelines. It's going to be an eternity of D ranks. All the work, none of the danger, and we never feel clean when we finish."

Sai didn't understand any of this. "So it's really not a genjutsu."

"No." Sakura sounded like she'd answered the question a hundred times. It was an obvious question for a shinobi, so she probably had.

"And you're gods."

"Sort of." Naruto's tone really said 'yes, but...' "We're gonna make a lot of better worlds, and everyone's gonna respect us, and--"

Sai heard Sakura's fist smashing into Naruto. "We don't know how it works yet," she said, "but we'll try to come by again, maybe figure out how to let you send letters to each other."

"And you're gods." Sai still didn't manage to believe it.

Danzo would be so very, very jealous.

When he woke, Sai only remembered the children playing. He wasn't ready to think about the rest.

Not yet. Remembering wouldn't change his options or his decisions. Sai would remember the blood and the fire when he needed to.