Sai didn't hear the announcement, didn't hear his nurse as she shook him to wake him. He moved mechanically, rolling to the side to view his roommate's bed, free of blood and with no sign of his fellow ninja. He stood and followed his nurse without a word, not responding to her increasingly worried questions and stopping only in the sun room to check the bulletin.

Shikamaru might still be alive, Kakashi told him, and Sai regained some sense of himself - realized where he was and what he'd been doing. He asked the nurse for breakfast and she was at once all smiles. How tired he must have been, she said, for him to only be waking up now.

He took a while to find his seat once he had a tray, scanning the area for familiar faces. For one familiar face in particular. The ninja knew he couldn't continue to be this way.

[for Shikamaru]