Chapter Text
Sai was just on the verge of waking when he heard the voice in his head.
Or maybe it should be 'When he heard The Voice in his head.' He kind of thought it rated capital letters.
The Daughter of the Garden, the Shikabane-Hime, needs you. Pack quickly for a long mission with no resupply. No one will notice you've gone, and, assuming you survive, you'll return to exactly this moment.
Sai suspected that Shikako would tell him that he ought to ask a lot more questions before obeying strange voices reverberating inside his skull, but he also knew that either she actually did need his help or she'd probably never know what he'd done. In the former case, he'd never regret going. In the latter...
He supposed it depended on what sort of trap he was walking into. It being a trap wouldn't necessarily mean that Shikako wasn't there, just that bringing Sai in wasn't meant to help her.
Not meant to was not the same as wouldn't be able to.
When he sat up in his bunk and realized that everything around him was frozen in time, even dust motes hanging unmoving in the air, Sai decided that The Voice meant business. "You could just have taken me," he said because he didn't see how that couldn't be true. "Or impersonated someone authorized to give me orders."
There are rules. The Voice sounded a little offended.
"Are there?" Sai packed his ink and paper first, then his weapons. "Time for a shower?" He didn't particularly enjoy showers in the barracks, but being clean was generally preferable at the start of a mission.
And Shikako might look unhappy if Sai turned up scruffy. She made assumptions about what that sort of thing meant. She was usually right in those assumptions, too.
It meant the world that she cared enough to notice, but Sai preferred not to upset her.
If you must.
"If you can bring me back here at exactly this second," Sai said, "you can get me there at the right instant, too." He wasn't actually sure it worked that way because the same second part was impossible. Still, he could only deal with the rules he was given.
After his shower, Sai stole soap to add to his pack. Since everything and everyone else was frozen, he decided to appropriate other controlled resources-- food, extra socks, several different kinds of poison, some bandages, a mending kit, a whetstone.
'No resupply' sounded so very ominous, and nobody could stop him. Besides, the quartermaster was an asshole who deserved all of the unpleasantness that might come from Sai's thefts.
Sai considered taking extra ink and paper, but he decided against it. If either of those were unaccounted for during inventory, he'd be at the top of the list of suspects.
There will be ink. Close enough to ink, The Voice said with a little irritation. It will be adequate. Paper will require more resourcefulness.
Sai shrugged. Then he stopped to consider. If he was taking The Voice's word about Shikako needing him and about no time passing here, he might as well take The Voice's word about the ink. It was a much smaller thing.
Sai hesitated again over uniforms and masks. Did he need extra? Would Shikako need a disguise? "How many of these will I need?"
Need? None. Want might be something else again. The Voice sounded amused, as if it knew something Sai didn't and felt smug.
Well, The Voice definitely knew things Sai didn't, so the smugness was only to be expected.
"Is there anything we'll need that I haven't packed?"
I can't tell you that. There are rules.
Sai wondered if The Voice's can't was anything like his own can't. An I want to, but I can't rather than a that's for me to know and you to find out.
A little, The Voice said. Not a compulsion, just too high a cost.. The Voice sighed. If you take a dozen, that will be adequate.
Sai suspected that that edged dangerously close to The Voice's boundaries of what could be spoken, so he didn't push. He just packed the masks and uniforms into an awkward bundle.
You will not need to carry anything very far.
Sai shrugged. If The Voice was lying about that part, Sai could hide the uniforms and go back for them later. Or not. If he ended up in an immediate fight, he could drop them.
He straightened. "I'm ready." He wasn't. He never was.
He just had to be. Root never offered choices.