This story really helped me let off some steam and I'm really happy with it. Please, tell me what you think and be critical. I'm slightly worried that I put too much detail in.

Please read, review, have a nice day. Thank you.

The dark haired boy shoved through the door to his house, collapsing in a nearby jade colored armchair of a generally uncomfortable material as he slammed the door in an equally rough fashion. He looked down and focused on the flaws in the chestnut floor, looking for something to distract him from the pure exhaustion he felt. When he was tired, that was when his mind betrayed him and broke through those barriers that he kept up for good reasons.

Sai knew that he was fighting a losing battle. He allowed a single tear to stream down his face. Yes, he allowed it. That sounded about right. Allowing himself to cry was so much better, so less human, so less contradictory to everything he had ever been taught. He was in control of this; this wasn't some torrent of emotion that he couldn't comprehend, couldn't fight, couldn't suppress. This was him allowing himself to break down. It was stress relief, something that he could do to relieve the anxiousness and pressure. That had to be what this was.

A soft rustling broke the silence as he knelt onto the bed, getting down on all fours and pressing his face to the maroon comforter. It was so soft and warm; it comforted him, living up to its name. It seemed that the storm had passed and he had regained himself, but as he glanced towards his easel, catching a glimpse of Kakashi's ashy hair, the excited expression on Naruto's face, and the lovingness in Sakura's eyes caused his resolve to falter, and he soon began to tear up again. He quietly cursed himself and his talents. Were he like any of the other artists in this village, if he hadn't been his best like his brother had always told him to be, he would've overlooked those qualities; the qualities that made his teammates and friends, just like his brother.

He didn't feel that moving was necessary. He knew that nothing would work and nothing would calm him down. He decided that if it would happen, if this blasphemy of shinobi ways would take place, he wouldn't be helpless. He would allow this. Sai finally let it all loose, thinking of his brother, the family he never had, and the new family that he had been given.

He was allowing the silent cries to turn into violent, deafening sobs that caused his whole body to shake as he supported himself on his bed, causing a dull ache to form in his head as he slowly drained the water from his body through his dark eyes.

He was so tired of disallowing emotion even though it went against his training as a shinobi, as a member of Root, to cry. Yet, here he was, unable to move, hardly able to breathe as he allowed all of the emotionless couple years of his life, which had built up since his last breakdown, to hit him full force. He finally crumpled under his own weight, his shaking arms giving up in their struggle against gravity and forcing him onto the bedding. He laid there for hours, sobbing loudly and uncontrollably, and breathing heavily when he finally cried himself out.

He spared a glance at the mirror across the room, ignoring the nearby window that revealed the dark emptiness outside. His raven bangs looked wild plastered to his pasty face with tears and sweat, so differently from the prim and proper way he usually looked. His dark irises were surrounded by the distinctive red of broken blood vessels, revealing just how aggressively he had let his emotions get the better of him. He was ashamed of himself for doing this. This wasn't what he had been trained by Konoha, by Root, by Lord Danzō, to do.

He lifted himself up and sat cross-legged, listening to the crickets chirp for a second, doing his best to avert the gaze of that unfamiliar reflection.

He soon glared at the mirror, wishing for nothing more than to be able to destroy who it showed within it, the weakling whom he had been told never to let out. It had taken advantage of his moment of weakness and convinced him that if he had some sort of control over his unraveling, if he permitted it to happen, it wouldn't be as shameful. But it was a lie, a lie that he had fallen for in his unstable state. It was just proof that he couldn't trust himself, not that emotional idiot that lied to him and tried to destroy all of his ideals.

"It's okay to show emotion, Sai. It's who you truly are. Your true self. You can't lose that."

Those words were so taunting now. Their jagged meaning stabbed at him, tearing him apart. How could his brother say something like that about him, when his supposed true self was the one who lied to him and sobbed over trivial matters that he had been told not to worry over since he was small? Shin had to have lied, but he would never do that.

Sai was torn, injured, and broken from the inside out. He steeled his resolve and swallowed hard, pushing it all into the back of his mind. He stood up from his sitting spot on the burgundy quilt and moved towards his dresser. He would sleep now.

"Sakura-chan, wait up!"

"Naruto, for once, we're late, so we have no time to spare. If Kakashi-sensei is already there, we're dead!"

The kunoichi ran for the team's designated meeting point for the day's mission, nearly crashing into her pale teammate.

"Gah! Sorry about that, Sai," she said in a rush as she stopped directly in front of his face, "but Naruto decided that eleven bowls of ramen at Ichiraku is a balanced breakfast that takes very little time to eat and doesn't slow you down at all." She glared at the blonde, fighting a laugh as he fell to the ground once he reached the bridge.

"Is Kakashi-sensei here yet, Sakura-chan?" he asked worriedly, not bothering to open his eyes as he rubbed his protruding stomach.

The exasperated girl kicked the lazy ninja, eliciting a groan from the boy as he rolled on his side.

She turned her head back to Sai, who focused intently on one of the azure birds perched on a nearby branch as he leaned on the crimson guardrail of the bridge. Sakura decided to take in the nature as well, appreciating the steady babbling of the stream underneath them and how the warm spring breeze that was neither hot like the summer winds or freezing like the whipping gusts of the winter, but a lukewarm median, moved her rosey hair, brushing it against her skin.

"Why is it so quiet?" Naruto asked, still not bothering to open his eyes. Instead of harming the boy again for ruining the beautiful moment, Sakura decided to turn her attention to her quieter teammate once again.

As the bird flew away at the loud disturbance that was Naruto, Sai noticed his teammate looking at him, as if she wanted him to speak.

Before he could think of something to say, or utter a quick 'Good morning', Sakura looked at him with an expression of shock. "Sai, what happened to your eyes? You look like you've been up all night!" There were those caring eyes. Those eyes that were too green, too unprofessional, too carefree to be Shin's, still portrayed that same genuine love that Sai had been without for so long.

Naruto stood up now, finally opening his eyes to see what Sakura had been getting so worked up about.

"Wow, they really are red, Sai. But we were all dog tired yesterday after training. You didn't seriously stay up all night, did you?"

Lie. Don't let them know how truly weak you are. Don't let them know about that "true self" you saw in the mirror.

There was that Root training that had failed to arrive last night and tell him that what he was doing was wrong, but here it was now. If it couldn't stop the disaster, at least it was there for damage control. "I was up a little later than usual working on something," he told them with a smile that was almost too convincing. "Sorry to worry you."

"You idiot!" Sakura exclaimed as she hit him over the head. "Sleep well tonight, okay?" she asked with a sincere concern that gave reason to her sudden burst of rage. He nodded, glad that she had bought it. He was also thankful that Kakashi wasn't there for that. A veteran like him would know he was lying, and he didn't want to get caught in it.

Just as the three had started chatting about how rigorous yesterday's mission had been, Kakashi casually strolled towards the trio, whistling lazily as he read his pornography. Sakura glared at their sensei and berated him for being there after they had been, even though they were late.

Sai listened to the briefing on the mission, glancing around momentarily to take in Naruto's excitement and Sakura's eagerness to do something. They were so immature, so emotional, so much like Shin, yet so different from him at the same time. Sai could've easily thrown together a team of Root recruits that would behave more professionally than they did any time other than on a B rank mission or higher, but Sai couldn't imagine leaving them. Leaving this team would be like leaving his brother.

The way that they were was how Sai imagined how Shin's true self would've been like, had he ever had the chance to fully meet him before their emotional suppression training. He wished that his supposed true self wouldn't be the weakling in the mirror, that person that even Shin would be ashamed of.

No matter what his true self was, Sai wouldn't allow himself to be overwhelmed by it again. He wouldn't permit that sort of weakness to take him over.

He would never allow it, again.

Thank you for reading. Please review with what you thought, even if it's negative, I would really love to hear it.