Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.)

Summery

ONE SHOT – Right from the start, through to the very end, he alone saw it all. He was the only one who could tell their story. But, after all, isn't that what big brothers are for? (Sasuke/Ino)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished and persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

These are the contents of my head,
And these are the years that we have spent,
And this is what they represent,
And this is how I feel,
Do you know how I feel?
Because I don't think you know how I feel,

Perfect Pair

Brats, they were nothing more than a pair of brats.

He was arrogant and had too much confidence in his own abilities. She was stubborn, prideful and seemed to think that the rest of the world had been put there for her to walk all over.

They brought out both the best and the worst in each other, which meant that they nearly always brought on a headache for him. If they weren't rough housing and braking every fragile thing in a fifty-yard radius, then they were laughing and joking around and making enough noise to wake the dead. They only time the pair was quite were when they were plotting pranks, normally with him as their main target.

They were a pair of stupid kids just entered into the academy and he was an ANBU captain. Their traps were easy for him to avoid but the noise they made when he did so was not. It was like living with a foghorn and a siren and it was slowly driving him insane.

There were certain things that came as standard to anyone born into the Uchiha clan and respect was meant to be one of them. It was just a pity that no one had every explained it to the blonde haired menace. Also it didn't help that his baby brother treated the girl with a combination of love and loathing.

The fact that his sparring partner was an eight-year-old girl was one his brother seemed oblivious to as the pair rolled around the Uchiha privet-training yard. Each trying to get a grip on the other while not allowing themselves to be caught. They weren't fighting as such; there was no grace or style, no single move or action that he could put a name to. The pair were simply brawling.

He now knew better than to get involved, even when things got out of hand and they started inflicting real pain on each other. His brother had had a cut above his right eye and blood flowing freely from his noise when he had stepped in. The blonde girl's lip had been badly split and a vivid bruise had already been starting to form across her cheek.

He had pulled them apart, but before he could even draw breath his little brother had punched him hard in the ribs, while the girl's elbow had caught him on the other side of his torso. Pausing only long enough to yell at him for interrupting them just when things were starting to get interesting then had dived right back into their fight. The girl had kicked him in the shin by way of goodbye.

After that he decided he didn't care if the pair tried to kill each other, except it would mean half the double act would be gone if one of them managed to pull it off. And that in turn would there for make his life a lot easier. Or the best case they would somehow be able to kill one another and he would be free to enjoy the rest of his life with what little of his sanity remained.

XXXXX

Idiots, they were nothing more than a pair of idiots.

She was screeching and screaming and he was just standing there acting for all the world as if he couldn't hear her.

Personally he thought it was stupid, how many years had past and they were still acting like the silly kids they had once been. They were older, but it seemed no wiser and they still drove him crazy when he was with them for more than five minuets.

He was still just as arrogant as ever, though now he was right to put so much faith in his skills. But he was also reclusive and expected people to know what he was thinking without him telling them. He treated the girl as if she was his but gave her no reason to think that he really cared about her. Yet he huffed and growled like a bear when any male got too close to her.

She was still just as prideful. Her skill base had grown immensely over the years and she never missed a chance to show them off. Especially when it came to the girls that got too close to his brother. She never missed a chance to show off in general. Her outfit was barely street legal, her body amazing, and she never missed the chance to flirt with anyone.

The only difference time had really made was that now he could laugh freely at them. As eight-year-olds they had been trying to find their way in the world and to mock them would have been cruel. Even if they were going about their journey of discovery in the most ridicules way he had ever seen.

But now there was no restriction upon him. As sixteen-year-olds the world still made no sense to either of them and the more time they spent together the less sense anything made. Seeing it from the outside it was easy for him to see what was going on and the fact that they were both completely blind to it only made it more idiotic.

Right from the start he had seen where the pair were headed even if no else had spotted it. As children they brought out the best and the worst in each other, and as teens they still did only now all those changes that they wrought in each other were hormonally charged. The only problem that they faced was that neither of them knew what to do about it and they were both too stubborn to ask.

He would have told them because, for all that they daily threatened to have him sent to a mental asylum, he knew in his heart of hearts that they belonged together. Also he couldn't think of anyone else who could have put up with either of them.

XXXXX

Fools, they were nothing more than a pair of fools.

But he supposed that was what happened. They said that love could make fools of anyone, but even so it had had its work cut out with the pair in question. Even now he doubted that love would have had it all its own way if it hadn't been for a great deal of outside interference. A lot of which, against his better judgement and silence promise to stay out of harms way, had come from him.

But seeing the end results somehow made all that hard work and effort seemed worth it. As a shinobi he had spent his whole life, taking things apart. Plots and plans. Villages and lives. So seeing something being given life was an experience the like of which he had never known and knowing that it was partly because of him…

Well that only made it taste all the sweeter.

It was an important thing to try and remember when some of the things they did left him scared for life. He didn't think he would ever be able to forget the slight of them half-naked, rolling around the Uchiha privet training ground. Though he would periodically try to, normally around half three in the morning when he awoke drenched in ice cold sweat and shaking in the after effects of the nightmare.

Some days he wasn't sure that he hadn't preferred it when they were constantly fighting. The soundtrack wasn't all that different, there were still plenty of moans and groans, not to mention a fair amount of screaming that had him instinctively reaching for a pair of ear plugs. In fact not much about them had changed, turn a corner suddenly and he'd quite often stumble upon them with their hands wrapped around each other. It's was just that it was no longer each others throats they went for. He also now tended to avoid the training ground like the plague.

The pair were at least getting plenty of exercise and staying in tiptop physical condition. And, truth be told, in spite of all his grumbling and grouching, be didn't begrudge them a single moment of the happiness they had found.

XXXXX

Dreamers, they were nothing more than a pair of dreamers.

He shifted his weight and resettled the four-year-old child that was perched on his hip. She was quite for her age, but even as a baby she had been so. Hardly every crying, just watching and taking in the whole world through a pair of impossibly large blue eyes. A light breeze caught in her hair and the ebony strands fluttered against his cheek.

A soft sigh escaped his lips as he looked down at the single gravestone upon which their names were engraved. People had been against it, but he had fought for this as he had never fought for anything before in his life. He alone knew what they had gone through, what they had meant to one another. They had been together through every phase of their lives and he would be damned if he would allow them to be separate in death.

They said that the good died young and he supposed that for all they faults and flaws that in their own insane way that they had tried to be good. They had almost driven him out of his mind more times then he could count and both had threatened to kill him on more than one occasion. But he had known that both of them would kill for him all of the time. The world had been a slightly better place because of the, and that he supposed was what mattered the most.

Ninja stood on the fine line between the dark and the light, at the point were choices had to be made and their consequences lived with. All shinobi were half way to being bad before they even started, they had to be to live the lives that they did. Every day was a fight to remain in the light, to hold onto your soul and not to reach the point were right and wrong became optional.

When all things were balanced out he thought he had just about managed to keep on the side of good. His heart was not pure white but neither was it wholly black and twisted, with luck it was just tinged with grey and perhaps a little tattered around the edges. And as for them…

He looked down at the up turned face of the child, their child, in his arms if she wasn't good then he didn't know what was.

Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth