Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.

“You ready?”

"Yes."

"You've done everything I told you? Enough rest? Good diet for the week?"

"I have."

Haruno Sakura fidgeted, turning her hands this way and that, letting medical chakra spark and snap angrily from her fingertips before disappearing again. She glared at her patient, who stared back with calm black eyes and obviously didn't grasp the enormity of the situation at hand.

"You obviously don't grasp the enormity of the situation at hand," she said, planting an adamant fist against her hip, "Once I start this, I really don't know what's going to happen, so if you want to, you know, not do this, then-"

Sai put a finger against his pale temple in a strange parody of aggravation and glanced at his teammate. She'd come to him two months ago talking about "selective neuro-stimulation" and telling him that maybe, maybe she could reproduce some of the personality he'd lost Konoha's ruthless, backbiting politics. She'd shown him a published study about chakra stimulation on lobotomized prisoners of war, pointed out how aggression had come back in spite of the handicap. She'd done research, made preparations, and, now that she had him under the knife...

"Shishou will kill me when she finds out about this."

...the worrying set in.

"I agreed to this, didn't I?” he asked, methodically tracing the finger up and down the side of his face.

She ignored him and twisted her hands together in distress. "This could merit exile or water boarding or..."

"Sakura," he said.

"What?" she snapped.

"You're stalling."

She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at the grass, her lips quirked in worried grimace. "It's really iffy, Sai. Like S-class iffy. You get that, right?"

"I've had it for a while."

"If this helps you recover emotive capacity...it's the least I can do for you, as a teammate. But if I turn you into a vegetable, then-"

"I appreciate it," he cut in quickly (mechanically). "I understand, I agree, and I am your disposal. Get on with it."

She snorted, resigned, and finally placed her hands on either of the young man’s head, her fingertips barely brushing his temples. He watched her calmly, his flat black gaze showing no trace of fear or hesitation. But, then again, it never did.

"I'm going in, Sai," she said. "Last chance to back out. Otherwise, it's consensual."

"It doesn't matter; there's nothing to see," he said, leaning forward to rest his chin in his hands. "There's nothing in there."

Sakura nodded once, closed her eyes, and focused, extending her chakra to find the dulled nerve endings and unused connections in his brain. She let herself snake in between folds and divots, worming her way towards the center of the cerebrum and then out the other side. "Well this is weird," she said, diving in between hemispheres and digging around in his parietal lobe. "Most people's brains light up like - I don't know - fireworks or something when they're stimulated with chakra. Yours..." She poked at the cerebellum and moved on. "Yours is sort of foggy and gray. It's like walking through spiderwebs." She felt the command go to Sai's lungs and leg muscles a millisecond before he sighed and shifted.

"Do you normally talk during surgery?"

She opened her eyes in surprise when she felt the impulses form in his head and translate into speech. "No," she admitted, jumping over the corpus callosum and moving towards the frontal lobe. "They're usually out cold on the table." She bumped into something in the cortex, making his leg jump slightly.

"I suggest you do the same in this case as well. Otherwise, I may not walk again."

Sakura turned bright red. "I do not-" The leg jumped a second time, and she decided that telling him off could wait until her medical chakra was safely outside of his brain cavity. She skimmed over the medulla oblongata, feeling his heart beat slowly, steadily, and completely unafraid. She felt a little sad, sitting there and listening to a heart that had never done anything but pump blood to nerveless limbs, and had never quickened for anything but exercise and adrenaline. The idea that she might be able to undo something that had been wrong for so many years made her feel morally obligated and suddenly bold. “Are we still going with the order we agreed on?" she asked, spreading out over the cortex again with reckless abandon. There was a lag in response time, then Sakura felt and saw the fake smile that always unsettled her light up the lower half of his face.

"Of course," he said.

Sakura set her lips in a firm line and moved quickly, planting small nodules of chakra in his parieto-insular cortex and anterior cingulate, then retreating to hover over the frontal lobe. "Set," she said.

Sai jerked his head in understanding. "Do it."

She watched as he arched up beneath her hands, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth open in a soundless scream, mouthing words, pleading with her. She saw his whole brain shudder, darken, and then explode in a dizzying display of pain, the areas around the nodules glowing with a harsh green light, snapping and growling at her chakra as their underused neurons worked furiously to register and process the new, horrible sensation she was providing, overloading, and sending up sparks. There were agonized tears streaming down his face as he nearly bent himself double, bones creaking and dangerously close to fracturing a vertebrae. She jerked away when she felt his brain begin to shut down and caught him in her arms as he slumped to the ground.

Strangled sobs finally worked their way free of his constricted throat and into the open air. His heart was beating frantically in his chest and his arms were shaking, but she decided to let his body calm down naturally, wary of putting any more of her chakra into his overwrought system. So, she held him to her with one arm and ran her free hand through his hair instead, stroking and comforting him the best she could, patting his back when he coughed and struggled to take shaky breaths.

"You all right?" she asked. He tapped her hand with one finger, an old ANBU signal for "affirmative", then pitched to one side and began retching violently. She moved behind him, supporting his body against her own and allowing him to tilt over the ground so that, if he vomited, it would not get on either of them. Her worried expression became thunderous when nothing came up.

"You didn't eat breakfast this morning, did you?" she snapped, pulling his head back sharply by the hair so that she could glare at him.

He gave her a nonchalant look out of the corner of one bloodshot eye, gave a hacking cough, and began pushing himself upright with unsteady arms. They crumpled within five seconds, and Sai's mask of annoyance faltered as he began a renewed struggle against gravity and lax muscles. It was interesting to watch how hard he tried to keep the superimposed expression in place for her benefit, but eventually let it slide when his focus was redirected, letting his face settle back into its smooth, blank natural state, unmarred by laugh lines or wrinkles of frustration.

Sakura tsk'd disapprovingly when he fell to the ground again. "I told you to eat before we went through with this!" she grumbled, gripping him by the shoulders and steadying him while he struggled with uncooperative biceps that continually gave out on him. He finally managed to heave himself into a sitting position, but he lost his balance and ended up toppling backwards into her chest.

"Son of a bitch," he groaned and ran a slender hand over his face. It was exactly the way Yamato did when Kakashi was late, or Naruto did something spectacularly stupid. Sakura wondered how many times Sai had practiced it in front of a mirror, obsessively refining it until it looked smooth and natural. He'd gotten so good at mimicking expressions and gestures that, these days, you could almost believe they were genuine. Sakura sighed and hauled him over to a tree, helping him into a sitting position and propping him against the trunk.

"How'd you like the stimulus?" she asked, settling back on her heels.

He quirked his head to one side and blinked vacantly at her. "I did not like it at all."

Sakura smiled at him as he rearranged his recovering arms and legs into more unobtrusive arrangements. "Incapacitated by three seconds of chakra stimulation to your pain centers," she said and shrugged. "You've got absolutely no tolerance for it."

"I've gone without it for twenty-three years," he retorted in a voice that would have been snarky if it wasn't so flat.

The corners of Sakura’s mouth tugged upwards in a little smile, and she crouched in front of him, cheek resting in the palm of her hand. “Want to keep going?"

"Yes."

"You're being uncharacteristically adventurous today, Sai," she teased, leaning forward to take hold of his temples again.

"I know," he replied and closed his eyes as her chakra washed soothing over his abused brain.

His cortex recoiled a little when she prodded it again, but it soon sank back into its serene, rhythmic pulsations. Sakura could have sworn that everything felt a little...brighter? cleaner? than before. It was as if she had opened the windows and doors of an old house that hadn't been lived in for decades. The pain centers now snapped angrily at her as she passed over them, and the rest of the brain was humming quietly. She smiled and opened her eyes.

"Sai, your brain's awake."

A/N: I was planning to leave this as a one-shot. But hey, if you guys want another chapter or two, I am all for it! Drop me a line and let me know what you would like to happen.

Edit (Sept. 22, 2009): Went back and added a lot more neuroscience and AWESOME to this chapter. That is all.