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Inojin smiles all the time.
It's all teeth and dimples and scrunched up eyes, and it’s genuine. It takes Sai's breath away every time.
He laughs loudly, along with Ino. There is no hesitation, nothing fake or cautious about the interaction - it's real and they both mean it.
Ino wants to go on a picnic, wants to go out and have fun with their tiny son while he plays in the grass, and they have a basket full of fruit and sweets and cheese and whatever else that Ino deems is a picnic sort of food.
Sai has read about picnics in books, he has seen civilians have picnics. He understands the concept of them and understands that people do have picnics and that people sometimes do things that hold no purpose beyond having fun, but sometimes, at times like this, it will wipe him out the rest of the day.
He's been to enough therapy sessions to know that sometimes you do go a little backwards, and that's normal and that's just what happens because nothing is linear, but it doesn't make it any less terrifying, to find himself falling back when things are too much. Sometimes he doesn't realise he's doing it, closing in on himself, shutting down until Ino has a hand on his shoulder, then his cheek, and he is left with the notion that no matter how many years Danzou is dead, no matter that there's nothing left of him to haunt Sai, he does it anyway.
Danzou had said, when he first thought Sai was slipping that it was useless. That he could run forever and that it didn't matter, because he'd be with Sai now, then, and everywhere.
Sai had believed him then. Sai believes him now.
Sometimes, when he realises how much he's missing, how there's just a gaping, unfilled hole in his life that just dark and empty and how he was content, and it scares him. Because Danzou offered him a home and gave him a curse mark and a head full of things he didn't understand.
Danzou carved him into a weapon, not a person.
Sometimes, he realises that he will never escape that. It doesn't matter how far he runs, how many connections he makes, he was Danzou's weapon, and he will always be Danzou's weapon.
Sometimes, when Inojin sits in his lap and smiles at him, grinning with his whole face, laughing as he tugs on Sai's fringe, he thinks that he cannot be a father, because a father cannot be a weapon like he is.
Sometimes he wants to be nothing else but a father, that the only way to escape Danzou is if leaves everything else behind, but he's been climbing the ranks of ANBU, and he likes working in the black ops. He likes the missions, and he likes being a shinobi.
If he likes it, what does that make him?
Ino drags him out for a picnic. Sai holds onto Inojin, and that way he doesn’t have to pretend he knows what to do with his hands, and Inojin doesn't mind sitting in his lap.
Inojin giggles, waving his hands to grab anything within reach, and Ino's eyes are so bright as she looks over the two of them, he almost wants to cry. It's only happened once before since Shin died, when Kabuto resurrected him in the war. The heat that builds behind his eyes is as alien as the calm breeze that washes over them, as the soft laughter of Inojin.
It's a bad day.
Danzou destroyed his records in front of him when he knew he'd lost his grip on Sai.
He knows conceptually, that Danzou is not all there ever was. That there was something before Danzou. He had a place he came from, a mother and a father and maybe even a sibling. Maybe they’re still alive. Maybe they miss him.
He wasn't born a weapon; he wasn't born with sharp edges and a hollow heart.
It doesn't matter now. Danzou took one last thing from him when he realised Sai would no longer be his to take.
He’ll never know who he is. Who he was.
Ino reads him like an open book enough that it both terrifies him and makes him deeply thankful that he is not unknowable.
She shuffles across the picnic mat, one hand on Inojin's tummy as he reaches for her, the other hand on the back of Sai's neck, and she pulls him down until his head is resting on her shoulder.
She says something, but it's lost in the raw of his ears.
"I love you," Ino whispers to him, like a mantra.
He wants to reply, to tell her she and Inojin are the best fucking thing that's ever happened to him, that they mean everything to him, that he loves her so much, but his throat is raw, like someone is trying to tear the muscles out.
He's only cried once before since Shin died. Maybe this will be the second time.
Ino tightens her hold on him, shifting Inojin to sit more comfortably on the mat with the toys as she drags him bodily against her.
"I love you, Sai," she repeats, she puts all the emphasis on his name like he is a person and runs a careful hand through his hair.
"We'll get through this," she says, and Sai thinks she believes it, and he wants too as well. He wants to be a dad and a husband, and he wants this to work more than anything.
Ino is stronger than Danzou anyway. Maybe if Ino thinks he can be a father, a person, maybe he can. No matter what Danzou did to him. No matter what Danzou is doing to him.
Maybe.