title: wafer cones
author: sweeter-ion
summary: for sasusaku month. AU It doesn't matter what shape or form, because love knows no bounds and follows no logic.
prompt: conversation
dedication: to my really supportive roommates and awesome impromptu Cha Dao experience. Thank you, Mots and Jamie~!XD
wafer cones
. . .
She was seven, he was eight, and their parents were talking about weddings and contracts and money and the only thing that Sakura could think of was how the adults could go from the topic of fairytale weddings to boring money matters in the span of three minutes.
For the whole luncheon, the adults had practically given leave for the kids to play around the garden. She had to admit, though, that the Uchiha Gardens are really the best place in the world. Ever. She so loves going here, running around the neatly trimmed grass and sometimes, picking flowers whenever Ino is around.
Today, Mommy dressed her up specially. She said she must look very presentable to Aunt Mikoto and Uncle Fugaku, and Sakura must really behave herself around Sasuke-kun.
"Try not to annoy him so much today, baby."
Hmf. Sasuke-kun is the annoying one, not her. Sasuke-kun is always talking about Itachi-niichan and how cool he is. Well one day, she's going to marry Itachi-niichan because he's Prince Charming.
"How could he be Prince Charming?" Sasuke-kun asked mockingly.
"Because he's so tall and he has long hair and h-he rides in a white horse and-and-and he's really very pretty. Like Prince Charming. So he is Prince Charming. And Daddy says I'm a Princess. So one day, I'm going to marry him and we'll live happily ever after!" Sakura exclaimed, lifting her arms in the air before twirling around Sasuke-kun.
Sasuke-kun will forever remember this conversation. Maybe because one of the things that ran through his head was how stupid and annoying Sakura's idea was. Itachi-niichan is so not pretty. Boys are not pretty. Boys are cool. Itachi-niichan is not pretty; he is cool.
But he would also remember the carefree way Sakura twirled and danced around him, like a little princess, dancing at the music of her laughter.
It was one of the best melodies he will ever hear in his entire life.
He was nine, and Itachi-niichan was in the backseat of their family car with him. Chichi-ue and Haha-ue were in the front, chatting idly. They just came from the amusement park and it was awesome. Itachi-nii came with him to ride the carousel and the roller coasters. See there, plural. Roller Coasterssss. Itachi-nii told him he's a big man now because he survived that many roller coasters. It was the test of true manliness.
Chichi-ue doesn't look so proud though.
Itachi-nii told him Chichi-ue was proud deep inside and he just doesn't want to show it because he has a stick up his butt.
Sasuke doesn't know what that really means, but he thinks it's funny.
His giggles were the last thing he heard before the squealing of the tires, loud and hurts his ears. He covers his ears, or tries to, because the last thing he would remember would be Itachi's widened eyes and the feel of him leaving him behind the back seat and flying and the air hugging him before it rips him forward.
And then there was darkness.
He was ten when he heard the word for the first time.
Clone.
He thought that was what you call the crispy wafer thing you eat ice cream with. But apparently, Mother was referring to something else. She was talking to people in white lab coats and you sit there in a hard plastic chair, wonder when you could go home because you still have homework and basketball with Itachi-niisan and Naruto asked him the other day if they could hang out by the arcades.
"—there shouldn't be any complication. In fact, he is the first perfect specimen we ever had to date. No memory relapses, perfect motor coordination. Aesthetics are very, very accurate. Even the implanted data in his mind, those your husband requested us, fit perfectly in his timeline. Absolutely wonderful!"
"Okay, enough. He's my son, not your lab rat."
He really is bored. He just wants to go home and go straight to bed.
And forget everything he had heard. Everything. Everything.Everything.
She was sixteen, he was seventeen and they were in their long-awaited engagement party.
(Long-awaited by their parents, not them. Because he still thinks Sakura is still infatuated with his idiot brother. What does she see in him anyway? Eyebags?)
She looks pretty in her red dress, like a princess.
He's pretty sure he has used that analogy before. In his other lifetime. And then he feels cheated.
She fiddles with her bracelets, a nervous habit she had developed through her god awful middle school years. It was bad enough that Ino turned into this goddess while she was wasting away, basking in the grace of puberty. Just because she became beautiful doesn't mean she can't be friends with her anymore. What's wrong with her?
Her head, that's what.
Because apparently, undergoing puberty doesn't give you the right to even think about Uchiha Sasuke-sama and being a middle school goddess does. She could only shudder at how Ino would react when she learns that Forehead Girl is engaged to be married to her precious Sasuke-sama.
If she were to be honest, marrying Sasuke-sama in the near future wouldn't be so bad. Okay fine, it would be the icing on the cake. He is gorgeous, athletic, smart, popular, rich—although that last adjective doesn't stand because everyone in the Academy is considered rich. It's just that the Uchihas are insanely rich. They own practically everything.
And soon enough, she will inherit a portion of everything because she'll be marrying Sasuke. Pure joy.
The time came for them to share the obligatory first dance. It isn't even their wedding, and they are already following traditions for an entirely different binding ceremony.
She shook her head to clear away such thoughts. Marrying Sasuke is not so bad. And she had to remind herself that Sasuke is kind of cute when he's in a tailored suit that fit him like glove. Not so bad, indeed. She should really stop her stalking ways. She had left that ship a long time ago, and obsessively liking one's betrothed doesn't give one plus points.
He noticed her shake her head just as the first notes of the waltz started. At the back of his mind, a green-eyed monster live, whispering thoughts like, "She's only marrying you because Itachi was snagged too early in the game."
It eats him away, slowly and in bits and chunks until there is nothing but ill-contempt occupying the heart that was once so loyal to Itachi. Itachi will never know how lucky he was to have this little pixie princess love her. And that kills him more because even after being modified into the perfect specimen, he would still place lower than Itachi in her heart.
"You don't have to appear so sullen. The song lasts only three minutes. Surely, you can wait that long before you find off your Prince Charming." He said in a tone dripping with acid.
Sakura lets out a gasp. "You still remember?"
Remember how much you worship him? "Remember what, exactly?"
Sakura hung her head in defeat. Of course, it is also too much to hope that Uchiha Sasuke would remember a childhood he shared with some nobody like her. The Popular class will only remember the Popular ones. She should have known.
She was twenty, he was twenty-one and they are married for a year now.
Time had been kind with Sakura. Her once-ridiculed forehead was now one of her charming features. For Sasuke, she still looks the same, the same Sakura he used to argue with when they were kids. Or when his other self and Sakura were kids.
Because he had to remind his self that he is just a replacement rope for another which was cut short abruptly.
Sometimes, he wonders if the feelings he has for Sakura were ingrained to his very core because his other self held a crush on her or because this new Sasuke really fell in love—the whole nine yards of it—with her. Was it a data programmed into his new mind, or was it something that was waiting to happen?
There are times when Sakura would try to cuddle with him while watching the evening run of her dramas, and he would feel something a-flutter inside his chest, something warm creeping behind his sternum, crawling into his every limb until all he could think of was SakuraSakuraSakura. But then, he would remember how this is not his Sakura. He does not deserve this. Not when he was just a replacement, a product of human intelligence and not of nature. And Sakura is the epitome of nature. Then he would freeze up, not withdraw because he may be a clone, but he is not heartless nor strong enough to fight the desire coursing through every filament of his body.
Sakura knows that her husband is not the same Sasuke she has grown up with. She knew the day of their marriage, when they were naked as the day they were born and he was missing a small scar upon his nape. She asked her how he found the courage to remove it, remembering the time he acquired it by saving her. He told her it was his battle scar when they were kids. Maybe that was little Sasuke's pride speaking, but he knows little Sasuke's pride and older Sasuke's pride was still the same in its humongous size, and nothing will change it.
"It's a different body, a different past."
That night, they didn't consummate their marriage. Instead, they talked about bitter and ugly truths that bore the beautiful shell of a forever seven-year-old boy.
She was twenty-one, he was twenty-two and she's sick and tired of the unnecessary distance between them just because he's a clone of someone else and she's as normal as any pink-haired girl there ever was and he just can't get it through his thick skull that they were both genetically-modified, what's so wrong with that?
Shit hits the fan when he insists not to have babies. Forever. His twisted principles just won't let him produce an offspring God forbid is another modified freak of nature.
"I thought you wanted to have many kids? I don't understand. How can being a clone inhibit you from helping me conceive a child?" Sakura asked.
"It's not that I'm infertile. It's a choice, Sakura. My choice."
"Well, it's also my choice to have a baby. So it's either you give me that chance or I'll find another willing partner. Maybe Lee's up for the challenge. He's been trying to get in the list for years now."
"The hell you're doing that!"
"Well then, man up, Sasuke!"
He rakes a hand through his already messy locks. "I'm a clone, Sakura. It's bad enough that I'm programmed to love you."
Green eyes widened, hurt flashing through them before he could even have the chance to retract what he said. "Is that what you really think? That… I—I'm some sort of data added in your virtual list of people to feel love?"
"Yes! We've talked about this for—"
"No, Sasuke, it's not like that!" Sakura interrupted. "You're your own person! What your seven year old self felt was all his, and the moment you felt something else for me, that's all you! Why don't you take responsibility for what you're feeling, and stop chalking it up to the fucking fact that you're a fucking clone!
"Because I don't give a damn. The person I married is not that boy. The person I know, the person I came to love, the person I want to be with for the rest of my genetically-engineered-pink-haired existence is the one right in front of me. And that's the only thing that matters to me."
He could only stare at her heaving form, as the torrent of emotions—self-relief, the feeling of being liberated, and a million other euphoric feeling he can't even identify—courses through him, rattling the very foundation of his self. All the things he had made himself believe that chained him to a standstill, and the guilt that had gnawed upon his soul, was suddenly lifted.
Later, he would wonder if it was him who pulled Sakura in an embrace that said more than what words could offer. It wouldn't matter though, because her arms were around him, welcoming him into a future he had so hardly denied to himself. Much later, as their tangled legs lay beneath the thick covers of their shared bed, he would wonder if there would be a landmark that would symbolize this historic event for them.
(There would be. But they would only know about this a month and three days after.)
fin.
"What were you saying about genetically-engineered pink hair?"
"Well, yeah. Why else would I have pink hair? My mother specifically requested it from my geneticist aunt, who is probably your doctor as well. She's really amaz—hmph!"
Author's Note: The aunt referred to is Tsunade.