Author's Notes: It's been a while since I last finished a fic. I have a lot of them on the backburner, and this one has actually been written months ago but was left unfinished due to, uh, the lack of plot… but today I finally found out how best to end the story… or well, anyway, at least I hope so. Hope you guys like it. ^^
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chores
Uchiha Sasuke's life was a string of death and destruction punctuated by inane chores.
Back when he was still young and when his mother and father were still in charge, Sasuke had taken for granted all the logistics of keeping the household afloat. He took for granted the food on the breakfast table, the clean towels in the bathroom, the clean dishes always ready for use, the properly trimmed lawn, the working light bulb in the lamp, the ease by which he lived his everyday life, everything.
His only responsibility was to scrub the floor, and when that was done, he was free to go outside and play.
But when his parents died, all these little problems started cropping up one by one.
The first and most obvious matters were the daily chores. He learned at an early age that some things just could not be ignored, no matter how angry of grief-stricken he got. He was all alone in the world and yet he still had to wash the dishes, do the laundry, cook his food – or perhaps it was exactly because he was alone that he had to do them.
Things were okay the first few months, and he had even settled into a routine that allowed him to balance the time spent for his chores and for his studies. But eventually, new problems started to arise.
Light bulbs would fizzle and die, the grass would get too tall, attracting snakes, the tatami mats would get too dirty, dry leaves would get caught in the gutter, the piping would get clogged—
Some of these problems he fixed, some of them, he ignored.
He could live with a dead light bulb or two, especially on those parts of the house that he did not really frequent. Itachi's room, for example, could rot and Sasuke would not lift a finger to save it.
The snakes on the lawn – well, they were good training.
If something broke down and he did not immediately have the need to fix it, then he would ignore the matter and move on.
The plumbing was a prime problem, however, and one that he couldn't quite ignore.
The trouble was, Uchiha usually turned to other Uchiha for matters such as this. They were a reclusive, exclusive clan, and they tended to turn inwards for their problems, even for simple things.
Their plumber, he remembered, was a second cousin on his mother's side; and Sasuke knew for a fact that that guy, along with the rest of the clan, already perished in Itachi's hands.
So he was in a dilemma, for he did not know where to start if he was looking for a plumber in the city proper. Pride had prevented him from asking for help from the chuunins that were tasked to check on him from time to time and he had eventually come to the decision that maybe, surely, he could figure out the plumbing himself.
What he had gotten in the end was a broken pipe and a big leak, and lots of frustration.
That was when he decided to damn all sentimentality and move to a smaller apartment.
Life was easier after that decision, but the chores still followed him around. He still had to do the dishes, still had to cook his own food, still had to clean the house, and he still had to do the laundry. But at least he could manage.
Also, he finally gained some extra time for training, and that was the most important thing.
This continued well after he graduated from the academy and into his genin years. He would go to school, go home, do his chores, sleep, and so on. When he finally became qualified to go on missions, the routine was still the same, except that he had to pack them into the days when he had nothing to do.
There were also times when he did the chores in order to escape from training. Doing anything else made him feel guilty. But those days were few and far between.
It was a tedious, tiring life, but eventually he got used to it. He even developed his own shortcuts and techniques, though he had to admit that they caused his clothes to become a little less neat and a little more prone to wear and tear. Still, he was still better groomed than Naruto by several degrees, so he wasn't too worried. Sakura, who still had her parents, was always impeccable, but that was to be expected.
It all finally came to a stop, though, when he left the village.
Orochimaru was a very autocratic master, and all his subordinates had specific tasks.
Sasuke's task was only to train, to get stronger, and this suited him well.
Of course, when the time came for him to leave Orochimaru's lair, the tasks were back, albeit still to a lesser degree than when he still had his own apartment in Konoha. His new team did not bother with the delegation of tasks, however, and they each did their own chores at their own pace. He did them at fairly regular intervals, same with Juugo, Suigetsu hardly did them at all, and Karin did them most frequently. She even offered to wash his clothes for him, but something in him told him to decline.
When he abandoned Team Taka and joined Akatsuki, the routine was more or less the same. Madara was not one to let just anybody into the hideout, and so there were no servants like in Orochimaru's lair.
He did the chores in between bouts of bloodshed.
Madara put him on the task of subduing the remaining Amegakure's Resistance Force. They were many, but with their leaders gone, they were disorganized.
Those were, in retrospect, the darkest years of his entire life. Being the villain, he would find out, could be much, much harder than being the victim.
Years later, with the war over, and having earned the title of hero thanks to his intervention on the final battle, he returned to Konoha with the hopes of rebuilding his life – and his clan too, but in the right way this time.
He was saddened to note that much of the Uchiha District had suffered during Pain's attack, but he supposed it was for the best. Some secrets were better off left buried under the rubble, and he certainly had no intention of casting a shadow upon the possible new members of his clan.
So it was with this mindset that he began to look for a new home, eventually buying one at the Western end of the town.
He was quite pleased to find out that the Bank of Konoha had respected his account despite the fact that he had turned missing nin, so he could still manage to live comfortably upon his return.
Of course, the chores were back, and they were back with a vengeance.
His life was similar to when he was still a genin, except that his new house was bigger than his old apartment, and there was no landlady to inform whenever something needed fixing.
The fact that he had too many missions also made the task of running his household quite a bit more difficult for him.
When he wasn't on an important S-class mission, Sasuke often found himself delivering relief goods to those villages that suffered heavily during the war, and the task of distributing them was also laden on him. Kakashi said that it was good for his image; but Sasuke suspected that his old sensei, now the Hokage, just derived sadistic pleasure from assigning the most tedious missions to him.
Of course, his old team plus Sai would always be sent on these missions alongside him, so he had no right to cry injustice. Kakashi had given Naruto the same reason, said it was good for the future Hokage to build relations with the smaller villages.
Sasuke had very little time between missions, and he would often come home to find his furniture covered with a film of dust. Before he could finish half of his chores, he would be sent out yet again on another mission. The fact that Sasuke was overworked wasn't Kakashi's fault, though. The war had killed half of Konoha's nin population, and they now had to work double time just to catch up with the work orders.
And yet, in between all the chores and the missions, Sasuke found time to fall in love.
He supposed it was in the way she smiled at him.
No matter how cliché that sounded like, it really was true.
There was so much warmth in it, so much appreciation. Her smile was like an affirmation saying "yes, Sasuke, you're worth it."
He loved her smile.
Although as much as he would have liked to say that it was her that she loved, he knew that it was still just infatuation.
Sakura was pretty; and she loved him – that much was obvious (though still incomprehensible) to him.
He liked having her beside him, so the decision to ask for her hand in marriage was not really far from his mind.
But love, love was something that scared him. Some wounds were still too raw for him to open up completely to the thought of love.
So even as he led her to his house after their wedding, he was still closed to the idea of 'loving' her – which was cruel, he admitted. But then again, when had he ever been kind?
Besides, Sakura's 'love' was something he couldn't quite believe. It was, simply put, too good to be true. After all, why would she love him when he did nothing good for her? Sometimes, the idea baffled him too much that, though he had accepted her love as true for some time now, he still had episodes of doubt. This was mostly where his fear stemmed from, his hesitation…
In fact, on the first days of their marriage, he felt certain that she would no longer be there when he woke up, which made falling asleep extremely difficult.
But then, days went by, and Sakura never did disappear.
Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to years.
They eventually settled into a routine where they would split the chores between them; Sakura would do the laundry and he would do the dishes. Cleaning the house was a joint effort, usually reserved for days when they both were free of missions. At night, they would fall asleep together, and Sakura would not disappear and falling asleep gradually became easier.
Sakura, he found out, was a helpless cook and, with his years of independence backing him, Sasuke found that he actually had something good to offer her. In fact, he found that he had a lot of good things to offer her, and that his superb Teppanyaki was but one of them.
One day, somewhere between scrubbing the floor and washing the windows, Sasuke had the realization that things – him, Sakura, their chores – would probably stay the same for many more years to come and. The thought filled him with so much gladness that he deemed it right to share it with Sakura.
So imagine his horror when she said "no".
Then imagine his utter happiness when she told him that in about nine months' time, they would have to add 'changing diapers' to their long list of chores.
He told her how much he loved her after that, and she told him that she already knew, though the tears in her eyes when she said it told him that she still appreciated hearing those three words come straight from his mouth.
Fifteen years later, it could be said that Uchiha Sasuke's life was still a string of death and destruction punctuated by inane chores…
It was still frustrating, and tiring, monotonous, and downright tedious…
But with Sakura doing the laundry, himself washing the dishes, Takumi buying the groceries, Ayumi doing the cooking, and little Shun scrubbing the floors, Sasuke found the load much easier to bear.
And he was, all things considered, happy.
Fin.