Summary:

Miss Sakura Haruno doesn't believe in fairy tales . . . or happily ever after. Forced by her stepmother to attend a ball, Sakura meets a prince . . . and decides he's anything but charming. A clash of wits and wills ensues, but they both know their irresistible attraction will lead nowhere. For Sasuke is promised to another woman—a princess whose hand in marriage will fulfill his ruthless ambitions. Sasuke likes his fiancée, which is a welcome turn of events, but he doesn't love her. Obviously, he should be wooing his bride-to-be, not the witty, impoverished beauty who refuses to fawn over him. Godmothers and glass slippers notwithstanding, this is one fairy tale in which destiny conspires to destroy any chance that Sakura and Sasuke might have at happily ever after.

(A/N:) I got this off of a novel I was reading and decided to make it into a Sakura/Sasuke story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Kudos! The setting takes place where Kings and Queens still rules their country, where Prince's are still being crowned, and princesses are called forth to balls.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago…

This story begins with a carriage that was never a pumpkin, though it fled at midnight; a godmother who lost track of her charge, though she had no magic wand; and several so-called rats who secretly would have enjoyed wearing livery.

And, of course, there's a girl too, though she didn't know how to dance, nor did she want to marry a prince.

But it really begins with the rats.

They were out of control; everybody said so. Mrs. Ayumi, the housekeeper, fretted about it regulary. "I can't abide the way those little varmints chew up a pair of shoes when a body's not looking," she told the butler, a comfortable soul by the name of Mr. Yamato.

"I know just what you're saying," he told her with an edge in his voice that she didn't hear often. "I can't abide them. Those sharp noses, and the yapping at night, and –"

"The way they eat!" Mrs. Ayumi broke in. "From the table, from the very plates!"

"It is from the plates," Yamato told her. "I've seen it with my own eyes, Mrs. Ayumi, that I have! By the hand of Mrs. Haruno herself!"

Mrs. Ayumi's little shriek might have been heard all the way in the drawing room…except the rats were making such a racket that no one in that chamber could hear anything.

Haruno House

The residence of Mrs. Masako Haruno; her daughter, Hinata; and Miss Sakura Haruno

Miss Sakura Haruno got down from her horse seething with rage.

It should be said that the conditions wasn't unfamiliar with her. Before her father died seven years earlier, she found herself sometimes irritated with her new stepmother. But it wasn't until he was gone, and the new Mrs. Haruno—who had held that title for a matter of mere months—started ruling the roost, that Sakura really learned the meaning of anger.

Anger was watching tenants on the estate be forced to pay double the rent or leave cottages where they'd lived their whole lives. Anger was watching the crops wilt and the hedges overgrow because her stepmother begrudged the money needed to maintain the estate. Anger was watching her father's money be poured into new gowns and bonnets and frilly things…so numerous that her stepmother and stepsister couldn't find days enough in the year to wear them all.

It was the pitying glances she had from acquaintances who never met her at dinner anymore. It was being demoted to a chamber in the attic, with faded furnishings that advertised her relative worth in the household. It was the self-loathing of someone who can't quite bring herself to leave home and have done with it. It was fueled by humiliation, and despair, and the absolute certainty that her father must be turning in his grave.

She stomped up the front steps restraining her loins for battle, as her father himself would have said. "Hello, Yamato," she said, as their dear old butler opened the door. "Are you playing footman now?"

"Herself sent the footmen off to Konoha to fetch a medic," Yamato said. "To be exact, two medics."

"Having a spell, is she?" Sakura pulled her gloves off carefully, since the leather was separating from its lining around the wrist. Time was when she might have actually wondered if her stepmother (known to the household as Herself) was malingering, but no longer. Not after years of false alarms and voices screaming in the middle of the night about attacks…which generally turned out to be indigestion.

Though as Yamato had once commented, one can only hope.

"Not Herself, this time. It's Miss Hinata's face, I gather."

"The bite?"

He nodded. "Dragging the lip down, so her maid told us this morning. There's a swelling there as well."

Sour as she felt, Sakura felt a pulse of sympathy. Poor Hinata didn't have much going for her outside her pretty face and prettier frocks; it would break her stepsister's heart if she were permanently disfigured.

"I have to talk to Herself about the vicar's wife," she said, handing her pelisse to Yamato. "Or rather, the former vicar's wife. After his death, I moved the family to the far cottage."

"Bad business," the butler said. "Especially in a vicar. Seems that a vicar shouldn't take his own life."

"Mind you, it's not easy for a man to get over the loss of a limb."

"Well, now his children have to get over the loss of him." She said unsympathetically. "Not to mention that my stepmother sent an eviction notice to his widow yesterday."

Yamato frowned. "Herself says you're to dine with them tonight."

Sakura stopped on her way up the stairs. "She said what?"

"You're to dine with them tonight. And Lord Inuzuka is coming."

"You must be joking."

But the butler was shaking his head. "She said that. What's more, she's decided that Miss Hinata's rats have to go, but for some reason she banished them to your chamber."

Sakura closed her eyes for a moment. A day that had started out badly was only getting worse. She disliked her stepsister's pack of little dogs, affectionately, or not affectionately, known to all as the rats. She also disliked Kiba Inuzuka, Lord Inuzuka, her stepsister's betrothed. He smiled too easily. And she loathed even more the idea of sitting down to dinner en famille.

She generally managed to forget that she had once been mistress of the household. After all, her mother had been bedridden for years before she died, and sickly most of Sakura's life. Sakura had grown up sitting opposite her father at the dining room table, going over the menus with Mrs. Ayumi, the housekeeper…She had expected to debut, and marry, and raise children of her own in the very house.

But that was before her father died, and she turned into a maid-of-all-work, living the garret.

And now she was to come to dinner, in a gown that was out-of-date, and endure the smirking pleasantries of Lord Inuzuka? Why?

She ran up the stairs with a sickening foreboding in her stomach. Sakura's stepmother was seated at her dressing table, examining her complexion. The afternoon light fell over her shoulder, lighting her hair. It had a glare to it, that hair, a fierce dark tint as if the strands were made of minerals. She was wearing a morning dress with a pleated bodice of lilac net, caught under the breasts with a trailing ribbon. It was lovely…for someone young who was about to go into society.

But Masako could not abide the fact that she was no longer in her thirties. In fact, she had never really accepted the loss of her twenties. And so she dressed herself to create an approximation of Masako-at-Twenty. One thing you had to say for Sakura's stepmother: She had a reckless bravery, a kind of fierce disregard for the conventions governing women's aging.

But of course if Masako's costumes were the outward expression of her ambition, they were also the refuge of failed. For no woman yet has appeared twenty in her forties, and a deliciously sensual gown cannot restore youth.

"I gather you finished your trips amongst your friends and bothered to come home," Masako said acidly.

Sakura took one look around her stepmother's bedchamber and decided to remove a heap of clothes from what she was almost certain was a stool. The room was mounded with piles of light cottons and spangled silks; they were thrown in heaps over the chairs. Or at least where one presumed chairs to be. The room resembled a pastel snowscape, with soft mountains of fabric here and there.

"What are you doing?" her stepmother demanded as Sakura hoisted the gowns in her arms.

"Sitting down," Sakura said, dropping the clothing on the floor.

Her stepmother bounded up with a screech. "Don't treat my gowns like that, you stupid girl! The top few were delivered only a day or two ago, and they're magnificent. I'll have you ironing them all night if there's the least wrinkle, even the least."

"I don't iron, " Sakura said flatly. "Remember? I put a scorch mark on a white gown three years ago."

"Ah, the Persian belladine!" her stepmother cried, clasping her hands together like a girlish Lady Macbeth. "I keep it…there." She pointed a long finger to a corner where a towering mound of cloth went halfway to the ceiling. "I shall have it altered one of these days." She sat back down.

Sakura carefully pushed the stack of gowns a little farther away from her foot. "I must speak to you about the Yamagachees."

"My, I hope you managed to shovel the woman out the door," Masako said, lighting a cigarillo. "You know the bloody solicitor is coming next week to assess my management of the estate. If he sees that scrap heap of a cottage, he'll make no end fuss. Last quarter he prosed on and on till I thought I'd die of boredom."

"It's your responsibility to keep the cottages in good repair," Sakura said, getting up to open a window.

Masako waved her cigarillo disdainfully. "Nonsense. Those people live on my land for practically nothing. The least they can do is keep their own houses in good nick. The Yamagachee woman is living in a pigsty. I happened by the other day and I was positively horrified."

Sakura sat back down and let her eyes wander around the room. The pigsty of a room. But after a moment she realized that Masako hadn't noticed her silent insult, since she had opened a little jar and was painting her lips a dark shade of copper.

"Since her husband died," Sakura said, "Mrs. Yamagachee is both exhausted and afraid. The house is not a pigsty; it is simply disorganized. You can't evict her. She has nowhere to go."

"Nonsense," Masako said, leaning closer to the glass to examine her lips. "I'm sure she has a bolt-hole all planned. Another man, most like. It's been over a year since Yamagachee topped himself; she'll have a new one lined up by now. You'll see."

Talking to her stepmother, in Sakura's mind, was like peeing in a coal-black outhouse. You have no idea what might come up, but you knew you wouldn't like it.

"That is cruel," she said, trying to pitch her words so that she sounded like the voice of authority.

"They have to go," Masako stated. "I can't abide sluggards. I made a special trip over the house, you know, the morning after her husband jumped from the bridge. Bringing my condolences."

Masako preferred to avoid all the people working on the estate or in the village, except on the rare occasions when she developed a sudden taste for playing the lady of the manor. Then she would put on an ensemble extravagantly calculated to offend country folk, descend from her carriage, and decipher in her tenants' startles expressions their shiftless and foolish natures. Finally she would instruct Sakura to discard them from their homes.

Luckily she generally forget about the demand after a week or so.

"That woman, Yamagachee, was lying on the sofa crying. Children all over the room, a disgusting number of children, and there she was, shoulder shaking like a bad actress. Crying. Maybe she should join a traveling theater," Masako said. "She's not unattractive."

"She—"

Masako interrupted. "I can't abide idlers. Do you think I lay around and wept after my first husband, the colonial, died? Did you see me shed a tear when your father died, though we had enjoyed but a few month of matrimonial bliss?"

Sakura had seen no tears, but Masako needed no confirmation from her.

"Although Mrs. Yamagachee may not have your fortitude, she has four small children and we have some responsibility to them—"

"I'm bored with the subject and besides, I need to speak to you about something important. Tonight Lord Inuzuka is coming to dinner and you shall join us." Masako blew out a puff of smoke. It looked like fog escaping from a small copper pipe.

"So Yamato said. Why?" She and her stepmother had long ago dispensed with pleasantries. They loathed each other, and Sakura couldn't imagine why her presence was required at the table.

"You're going to be meeting Inuzuka's relative in a few days." Masako took another pull on her cigarillo. "Thank Goodness you're slimmer than Hinata. We can have her gowns taken in quite easily. It would be harder to go the other way."

"What are you talking about? I can't imagine that Lord Inuzuka has the faintest interest in eating a meal with me, nor in introducing me to his relatives, and the feeling is mutual."

Before Masako could clarify her demand, the door flung open. "The cream isn't working," Hinata wailed, hurtling toward her mother. She didn't even see Sakura, just fell to her knees and buried her face in her mother's lap.

Instantly Masako put down her cigarillo and wrapped her arms around her daughter's shoulders. "Hush, babykins," she crooned. "Of course the cream will work. We just need to give it a little time. I promise you, Mother promises you, that it will work. Your face will be as beautiful as ever. And just in case, I sent off to Konoha for two of the very best medics."

Sakura was beginning to feel a faint interest in the matter. "What kind of cream are you using?"

Masako threw her an unfriendly glance. "Nothing you would have heard of. It's made from crushed pearls, among other things. It works like a charm on all sorts of facial imperfections. I use it myself, daily."

"Just look at my lip, Sakura!" Hinata said, popping her head back up. "I'm ruined for life. " Her eyes glistened with tears.

Her lower lip did look rather alarming. There was an odd violet colored puffiness around the side that suggested infection, and her mouth had a slight, but distinct, list to the side.

Sakura got to her feet and came over for a closer look. "Has Dr. Shizune seen it yet?"

"She came yesterday, but she's an old fool," Masako said. "She couldn't be expected to understand how important this is. She hadn't a single helpful potion or cream to offer. Nothing!"

Sakura turned Hinata's head to the side so that the light fell on it. "I think the bite is infected," she said. "Are you sure this cream is hygienic?"

"Are you questioning my judgment?" Masako shouted, standing up.

"Absolutely," Sakura retorted. "If Hinata ends up with a deformed mouth because you sloshed on some quack remedy you were swindle into buying in Konoha, I want it clear that it's your fault."

"You insolent toad!" Masako said, stepping forward.

But Hinata put out an arm. "Mother, Stop. Sakura, do you think there's something wrong with the cream? My lip throbs terribly." Hinata was a tremendously pretty girl, with a beautiful complexion and wide, tender eyes that always looked a bit dewy, as if she had just shed a sentimental tear, or was just about to. Since she shed tears, sentimental and otherwise, throughout the day, this made sense. Now two tears rolled down her face.

"I think that there might be some infection inside the wound," Sakura said, frowning. "Your lip mended quickly, but…" She pushed gently and Hinata cried out. "It's going to have to be cut."

"Never!" Masako roared.

"I couldn't allow my face to be cut," Hinata said, trembling all over.

"But you don't want to have a disfigurement," Sakura said, schooling her tone to patience.

Hinata blinked while she thought about that.

"Nothing will happen until the Konoha medics arrive," Masako announced, sitting back down. She had a wild enthusiasm for anyone, and anything, from Konoha. Sakura suspected it was the result of a childhood spent in the Mist, but since Masako never let slip even a hint about her past, it was hard to know.

"Well, let's hope they arrive soon," Sakura said, wondering whether an infected lip created any risk of blood infection. Presumably not… "Why do you want me to join you for dinner, Masako?"

"Because of my lip, of course," Hinata said, snuffling like a small mouse.

"Your lip," Sakura repeated.

"I can't go on the visit, can I?" Hinata added, with a characteristic, if maddening, lack of clarity.

"Your sister was to pay a very important visit to a member of Lord Inuzuka's family in just a few days," Masako put in. "If you weren't so busy traipsing around the estate listening to the sob stories of feckless women, you'd remember that. He's a prince. A prince!"

Sakura dropped onto her stool again and looked at her two relatives. Masako was as hard and bright as a new ha' penny. In contrast, Hinata's features were blurred and indistinct. Her hair was a delightful dark violet color, somewhere between indigo and blue, and curled winsomely around her face. Masako's house had the sharp-edge perfection of someone whose maid spent three hours with a curling iron achieving precisely the look she wanted.

"I failed to see what the postponed visit has to do with me," Sakura said, "though I am very sympathetic about your disappointment, Hinata." And she was, too. Though she loathed her stepmother, she had never felt the same hatred for her stepsister. For one thing, Hinata was too soft-natured for anyone to dislike. And for another, Sakura couldn't help being fond of her. If Sakura had taken a great deal of abuse from Masako, the kind affection that her stepmother lavished on her daughter was, in Sakura's mind, almost worse.

"Well," Hinata said heavily, sitting down on a pile of gowns about the approximate height of a stool, "you have to be me. It took me a while to understand it, but Mother has it all cleverly planned out. And I'm sure my darling Kibii will agree."

"I couldn't possibly be you, whatever that means," Sakura said flatly.

"Yes, you can," Masako said. She had finished her cigarillo and was lighting a second from the first. "And you will," she added.

"No, I won't. Not that I have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Be Hinata in what context? And with whom?"

"With Lord Inuzuka's prince, of course," Masako said, regarding her through a faint haze of smoke. "Haven't you been listening?"

"You want me to pretend to be Hinata? In front of a prince? Which prince?"

"I didn't understand at first either," Hinata said, running her finger over her injured lip. "you see, before Kibii can marry me, we need the approval of some distant relative of his."

"The prince," Masako put in.

"He's a prince from some little country in the back of beyond, that's what Kibbi says. But he's the only representative of Kibii's mother's family who lives in Suna, and she won't release his inheritance without the prince's approval. His father's will," Hinata confided, "is most dreadfully unfair. If Kibii marries before thirty years of age, without his mother's approval, he loses part of his inheritance—and he's not even twenty yet!"

Very smart of Papa Inuzuka, in Sakura's mind. From what she'd seen, Inuzuka Junior was about as ready to manage an estate as the rats were to learn choral music. Not that it was her business. "The medics will take a look at you tomorrow morning," she told Hinata, "and then you'll be off to see the prince. Rather like cat looking at the queen."

"She can't go like that!" Masako snapped. It was the first time that Sakura had ever heard that edge of disgust applied to her daughter.

Hinata turned her head and looked at her mother, but she said nothing.

"Of course she can," Sakura stated. "This sounds like a fool's game to me. No one will believe for a moment that I'm Hinata. And even if they did, don't you think they'd remember later? What happened when this prince stands up in the church and stops the ceremony, on the grounds that the bride isn't the bride he met?"

"That won't happen, if only because Hinata will be married directly afterwards, by parish license," Masako said. "This is the first time that Lord Inuzuka has been invited to the castle, and we can't miss it. His Highness is throwing a ball to celebrate his betrothal, and you're going as Hinata."

"Why not just postpone your visit and go after the ball is over?"

"Because I have to get married," Hinata piped up.

Sakura's heart sank. "You have to get married?"

Hinata nodded. Sakura looked at her stepmother, who shrugged.

"She's compromised. Three months' worth."

"For goodness sake," Sakura exclaimed. "You hardly know Kiba, Hinata!"

"I love Kibii," Hinata said, her big eyes earnest. "I didn't even want to debut, not after I saw him at Konge Abbey that Sunday back in March, but Mother made me."

"March," Sakura said. "You met him in March and now it's June. Tell me that darling Kibii proposed, oh, say three months ago, just after you fell in love, and you've kept it a secret?"

Hinata giggled at that. "You know exactly when he proposed, Sakura! I told you first, after Mother. It was just two weeks ago."

The lines between Masako's nose and mouth couldn't be plumped by a miracle cream made of crushed pearls. "Lord Inuzuka was slightly tardy in his attentions."

"Not tardy in his attentions," Sakura said. "He's seems to have been remarkably forward in that department."

Masako threw her a look of disdain. "Lord Inuzuka very properly proposed marriage once he understood the situation."

"I would have killed the man, were I you," Sakura told her.

"Would you?" She gave an odd smile. "You always were a fool. The viscount has a title and a snug fortune, once he gets his hands on it. He's utterly infatuated with your sister, and he's set on marrying her."

"Fortunate," Sakura commented. She looked back at Hinata. She was delicately patting her lip over and over again. "I told you to hire a chaperone, Masako. She could have anyone."

Masako turned back to her glass without a comment. In truth, Hinata probably wasn't for just any man. She was too soft, too much like a soggy pudding. She cried too much.

Though she was terribly pretty and, apparently, fertile. Fertility was always a good thing in a woman. Look how much her own father has despaired over his lack of son. Her mother's inability to have more children apparently led to his marriage a mere fortnight after his wife's death…he must have been that anxious to start a new family.

Presumably he thought Masako was as fertile as her daughter had now proved to be. At any rate, he died without testing the premise.

"So you're asking me to visit the prince and pretend to be Hinata," Sakura said.

"I'm not asking you," Masako said instantly. "I'm commanding you."

"Oh, Mother," Hinata said. "Please, Sakura. Please. I want to marry Kibii. And, really, I rather need to…I didn't quite understand, and well…" she smoothed her gown. "I don't want everyone to know about the baby. And Kibii doesn't either."

Of course Hinata hadn't understood that she was carrying a child. Sakura would be amazed to think that he stepsister had even understood the act of conception, let alone its consequences.

"You're asking me," Sakura said to her stepmother, ignoring Hinata for the moment. "Because although you could force me into the carriage with Lord Inuzuka, you certainly couldn't control what I said once I met this prince."

Masako showed her teeth.

"Even more relevant," Sakura continue, "is the fact that Hinata made a very prominent debut just a few months ago. Surely people at the ball will have met her—or even just have seen her?"

"That's why I'm sending you rather than any girl I could find on the street," Masako said with her usual courtesy.

"You'll have my little doggies with you," Hinata said. "They made me famous, so everyone will think you're me." And then, as if she just remembered, another tear rolled down her cheek. "Though Mother says that I must give them up."

"Apparently they are in my bedchamber," Sakura said.

"They're yours now," Masako said. "At least for the visit. After that we'll—" She broke off with a glance at her daughter. "We'll give them to some deserving orphans."

"The poor tots will love them," Hinata said mistily, ignoring the fact that the said orphans might not like being nipped by their new pets.

"Who would accompany me as chaperone?" Sakura asked, putting the question of Hinata's rats aside for the moment.

"You don't need one," Masako said with a hard edge of scorn, "the way you travel about the countryside on your own."

"A pity I didn't keep Hinata with me," Sakura retorted. "I would have ensured that Inuzuka didn't treat her like a common trollop."

"Oh, I suppose that you preserved your virtue," Masako snapped. "Much good may it do you. You needn't worry about Lord Inuzuka making an attempt at that dusty asset; he's in love with Hinata."

"Yes, he is," Hinata said, sniffing. "And I love him too." Another tear slid down her cheek.

Sakura sighed. "If I am pretending to be Hinata, it will create a scandal if I appear in a carriage alone with Lord Inuzuka, and the scandal will not attach to me, but to Hinata. In short, no one will be surprised when her child appears on an abbreviated schedule after the wedding."

There was a moment of silence. "All right," Masako said. "I would have accompanied Hinata, of course, but I can't leave her, given her poor state of health. You can take Riku with you."

"A maid? You're giving me a maid as a chaperone?"

"What's the matter with that?" Masako demanded. "She can sit between you in case you lose your head and lunge at Lord Inuzuka. You'll have the rats' maid as well, of course."

"Hinata's dogs have their own maid?"

"Meka-Downstairs," Hinata said. "She cleans the fireplaces, but she also gives them a bath every day, and brushes them. Pets," Hinata added, "are a responsibility."

"I shall not take Meka with me," Sakura stated. "How on earth do you expect Mrs. Ayumi to manage without her?"

Masako just shrugged.

"This won't work," Sakura said, trying to drag the conversation back into some sort of sensible channel. "We don't even look alike."

"Of course you do!" Masako snapped.

"Well, actually, we don't," Hinata said. "I—well, I look like me and Sakura, well…"She floundered to a halt.

"What Hinata is trying to say is that she is remarkably beautiful," Sakura said, feeling her heart like a little stone in her chest, "and I am not. Put together with the fact that we are stepsisters related only by marriage, and there's no more resemblance between us than any pair of Konohawomen seen together."

Hinata's hair was short with a little wavy at the end, in the very newest style, and fixed with a delicate bandeau. Sakura brushed hers out in the morning, twisted it about, and pinned it flat to her head. She had no time for meticulous grooming. More accurately, she had no time for grooming at all.

"You're cracked," Sakura said, staring at her stepmother. "You can't pass me off as your daughter."

Hinata was frowning now. "I'm afraid she's right, Mother. I wasn't thinking."

Masako had a kind of tight look about her eyes that Sakura knew from long experience signaled true rage. But for once, she was rather perplexed about why.

"Sakura is taller than I am," Hinata said, counting her fingers. "Her hair is pink whereas mine is a dark shade of purple and we don't have the same sort of look at all. Even if she put on my clothing—"

"She's your sister," Masako said, her mouth tight, as if the copper pipe had been hammered flat.

"She's my stepsister," Sakura said patiently. "The fact that you married my father does not make us blood relatives, and your first husband—"

"She's your sister."

So, what do you think so far? You like it? Did it catch your attention yet? :) Please review and comments.