Grasping at the Sky

Chapter 29: Intruder

It was weird. The Nara didn't live in a compound or anything like that, but she soon found out that all the houses near the one she'd been to before where also owned by Nara clan members for the most part. With two extra guest rooms, the large main home had plenty of space for her, but she often found herself tripping over visiting clan members during the day. Kira realized after a while that they were keeping the newly widowed clan matriarch company and thought that maybe that was why she'd been invited, at least partly.

Rounding a bend in the road, she passed the training area she had often used during her recovery with the help of Team Gai. She'd asked Lee personally for the help and he'd been all too willing to do so. As a fellow ninja who'd come so close to losing that title, he'd understood what she was going through and how to help on a more personal level. She was so busy muddling through her memories of the last few weeks she didn't realize that the small stone bridge over the river was occupied.

Kira paused, tilting her head as she recognised Sai leaning on the railing of the bridge, his head tilted down and his hand moving over a page of his sketchbook. He was rather far out of the main village for just some sketching. Curiosity getting the better of her Kira shifted her stance and quieted her feet to a near soundless hush. Creeping over Kira carefully peaked over the boy's shoulder, eyeing his current project and felt her brows raise in surprise – well okay, not really that much of a surprise.

"You've got her smile down to a tee I see," she mused quietly, taking a small step to the side as he tensed and nearly dropped his book into the water below. Kira reached out and clasped a hand to one side of it just as his fingers lost their hold for a moment. Sai's gaze flicked to hers, surprise and slightly annoyance in it. She just gave him a small smile and let go once she was sure he had a firm hold once again. "How's it going?" she greeted, as if she hadn't just peeked on his private work. He sighed after another moment of eyeing her.

"I often forget that with you here and your leg back to normal that there are more than just two people that can sneak up on me," he murmured flatly, his eyes flicking back to the page he'd been working on. "Things are fine," he answered after a moment longer. Kira pressed her lips together and eased herself up onto the stone railing, the river behind her, legs dangling.

"Somehow I doubt that," she commented quietly, meeting his dark gaze once again. Her eyes flickered away for a moment, before she tore them back and shrugged slightly. "You're on the edge of town drawing the girl you've been pining over for, well... as long as I've known you? Longer?" she pondered her own inquiry for a moment, and to her surprise Sai hardly seemed ruffled by her acquisition, as if he'd expected it.

"I didn't think it was that easy to tell," he relented finally, his gaze turning back to the sketchbook, and Kira did the same, eyes tracing the careful linework and shading, the way the light hit the subject's eyes.

"It's not really. I only saw it because in a lot of ways we're similar when it comes to our own emotions, our own... complications," she explained. After all, they'd both been ANBU for nearly half their lives and hadn't been taught by the best of people in any regard. Kira had her mother and that had kept her from falling over the edge, kept her from making a mask that she couldn't take off easily. Sai hadn't had that, but she still felt a certain kinship with him, saw herself in him, even if he was only a year younger than her.

"How'd you do it?" his question surprised her, drawing her to look at him again, a sense of confusion lingering in his dark eyes. She hummed, pressing her lips into a thin line. She turned her head away from him to give them both some semblance of comfort and placed her hand in her lap.

"Some days, I still don't know," she admitted, letting her eyes lose focus on a half dozen stones on the far railing. "It's complicated. I've known Gaara for years; so much longer than he even knew that I existed." A life in his shadow, quiet literally.