Sasuke was stalling. He knew that. He also knew that he should hurry because Karin hated to be late. But even knowing he would have to face the wrath of his angry wife, he couldn't help as his hands moved in slow motion to tie the deep blue silk tie around his neck.
Karin had given it to him for his twenty-seventh birthday; she had said that it made his eyes pop. He, of course, had smirked at that but only because he knew that his eyes were black and that nothing he wore could make his stupid colorless eyes pop. She had smiled, because she always seemed to know what he was thinking, and grabbed his face between her hands and kissed his eyelids.
Shaking himself from the memory, Sasuke tightened the shimmery tie, grabbed his suit jacket off the bed and dashed for his bedroom door.
"Sasuke Uchiha!"
Sasuke stopped two feet away short of the door. Just two feet from pretending that he had been ready for at least ten minutes, just two feet away from the scathing gaze he could already feel in between his shoulder blades. Now, with his shoulders slumped in defeat, Sasuke turned and looked at the flaming redhead that stood in the bathroom doorway with one hand on a black-dress clad hip and one hand on the door frame. Her eyebrow was raised in a way that made her husband shiver. Sasuke took one look at how high that eyebrow was and decided to play dumb.
"Yes, love?" He put on his 'Is Something Wrong?' look just to sell it. She wasn't buying.
"Uh-uh," Karin said, wagging her finger at him. "Why aren't you dressed yet? Sasuke, we have reservations! We cannot be late." Sasuke wanted to point out the fact that she was still in the bathroom fixing her hair but one look at the expression on her face and he relented. He didn't want to upset her; with Karin being four months into her first pregnancy and the complications they had already had, Sasuke was tiptoeing around her. If he pushed matters, he'd probably have to hear about it for the next couple of days.
With that in mind, Sasuke dropped the act and moved closer to his wife. He put his hands on her hips and gently pulled her as close to him as they could get around her swollen stomach, dropping his forehead to meet hers. Karin huffed but relented, slinging her arms around his shoulders. Sasuke hid his smirk and pouted.
"I'm sorry. I just got distracted thinking about you." Karin let out a snort of disbelief and Sasuke couldn't help the grin that formed on his face now. "But hey, at least I'm ready now," Sasuke finished. He pulled away and rubbed her stomach softly.
Karin was pouting now.
"Smooth talker," she muttered. Sasuke smirked again and kissed his way up and down her neck.
"Please, Karin, forgive me, my lady I'm sorry, oh sweet, merciful, Karin you mustn't stay angry with me," Sasuke pleaded. Karin laughed long and loud.
"Alright, alright! Stop, stop it, you silly boy." Sasuke threw his head back with relief.
"Yes! Thank the heavens; my lovely lady forgives me. Oh, thank you, thank you, mistress. My mistress is ever so kind," Sasuke cried, smiling. Karin pushed him away and smiled back.
"Hm, you bet your butt I am," she agreed, folding her arms over her chest. Sasuke looked at her and bent, putting his own chapped lips teasingly close to her lip-gloss covered ones. Just as she started to lean in he whispered,
"I'll be in the car." With the sudden absence of her husband's lips, Karin pouted and tried to look upset, knowing Sasuke could see through her. "You look lovely, Karin," Sasuke said from the doorway.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be down in five!"
Four months earlier
February 13th, Wednesday evening
He was running late for dinner. Naruto had kept him talking for a long while after her should've left. Granted it wasn't all Naruto's fault; Sasuke was awkwardly avoiding going home because of the fight he had had with Karin the night before. He wasn't even sure what the argument had started over, only that the redhead was upset and angry and (when he had been banished to the guest room) throwing things.
So after Naruto called him on it, Sasuke left, deciding to stop by the supermarket to get a dozen flowers in hopes of soothing his still-seething wife. He knew that stopping made him later, but he also knew that Karin had a soft spot for purple roses. Sasuke figured he'd go home, give Karin her purple flowers, apologize profusely, kiss her soundly and the fight would be over.
But when he got home he was confronted, not with a wife who had put her contacts in because he liked her glasses, but with a front door that was wide open and a door chain that was broken on the ground.
With purple petals forgotten on the floor, Sasuke rushed into the house, yelling for Karin. He ran into the kitchen where something on the stove was boiling over and the oven was beeping. Sasuke looked at the half-cut tomatoes on the counter and smelled the rice in the pot and felt like he had swallowed acid.
Karin was making his favorite.
Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut hard and turned on his heel and walked with a predatory grace across the dining room to the swinging door that separated the living room from where he stood. He watched as it swung lightly back and forth. He held his breath only to hear the faintest whimpering coming from the living room.
Without hesitation now, Sasuke burst through the door. The first thing he registered was the wood and the glass that was strewn all over the floor by the body that had broken the coffee table she had been thrown into. The second thing was the pure, unadulterated, terror that pulsed through his veins.
He ran to his wife, whose breaths were shallow and inconsistent. There was blood circling her head and blood bubbling up from her mouth and blood all over her apron. Sasuke called her name and Karin's eyes opened, the pain she was in showing on her beautifully broken face.
Sasuke countered the whispered apology that fell from her bloodstained lips with the broken apology that tore out of his. He tasted blood as he kissed her forehead. Sasuke pulled away as he heard her cry out just in time to see her eyes fill with horror before he heard glass crunch on the floor and pain exploded white-hot in the back of his head.
Sasuke woke nine days later to a bandaged Karin crying to Sakura by his hospital bed. Karin looked up as the hand that she has holding moved to hold hers back and threw her arms around his neck, practically lying on top of him.
Sasuke laughed an awkward laugh, because Karin was sobbing and, in the whole four times he had ever seen her cry, she had never cried this hard. He figured he must have a stupid look on his face because Naruto was guffawing and Sakura was laughing through her own tears. Karin pulled away from him with a wet laugh and said that he could blame it on the baby.
Present time
June 21st, Friday evening
Karin had one hand wrapped around Sasuke's and the other resting protectively on her stomach. The radio was playing softly in the background and there was a certain stillness in the car as they drove that the Uchiha couple had come to appreciate over the past four months. Their home, their safety, had been broken into and vandalized. The recovery process, physical and emotional, was hard. Karin was still jumpy sometimes and Sasuke had gotten a gun and learned how to shoot it. They both had their bad days, but the knowledge of their coming daughter helped in ways they couldn't express. The hurt but healing couple learned over again how precious the serenity of just being together was.
So it didn't matter that Sasuke hadn't planned a huge anniversary as he had the years before. It didn't matter that all they were doing was going to their favorite restaurant, because they were together. They were together and healthy and in love.
And so their eighth wedding anniversary passed with the song of a dinner filled with long looks and holding hands over the dinner table. Of Karin ordering something and eating what Sasuke had ordered. Of playing footsie underneath the table even though they were almost thirty. Of falling in love all over again.
Sasuke looked at his wife and smiled, happy.
Present time
June 21st, Friday evening
Sakura had purposefully taken a shift in her mother's restaurant tonight so she could keep an eye on Sasuke. Naruto had had to work and was feeling so guilty for not being there that he had already called her twice even though she was working and they had been texting already. The only reason she wasn't scolding him was because she had the same need to hear his voice as he had to hear hers. Sakura was barely keeping herself together as she kept glancing to where her best friend sat.
"Sakura-san?" Sakura turned at the slightly alarmed voice of Hikari, the high school student that her mother had hired.
"Hikari? What's wrong?" The brown-haired girl blinked owlishly and angled herself to the tables of people eating.
"I-isn't that your friend?" She asked, gesturing inconspicuously to where Sasuke sat. Sakura stiffened, swallowed hard, and looked Hikari with unease.
"Yeah. That's Sasuke; he's Naruto's friend," Sakura said, trying unsuccessfully to sound nonchalant. Hikari looked to the dark-haired Uchiha again and then looked back at Sakura with a hint of fear in her eyes.
"Sakura-san, he," she started, her eyes darting back and forth and lowering her voice. "H-he's talking to himself. Sakura-san, there's nobody there! He-"
"Hikari," Sakura cut off the young girl and bit her lip hard to keep the tears burning in the back of her eyes from falling. She took Hikari's hand and walked her back to the kitchen, away from the prying ears around them. Sakura motioned the girl to a chair and took a deep breath. Hikari watched the pregnant woman in front of her put her hand over her face and sigh, leaning on the counter behind her.
"Hikari, you remember my friend Karin, right?" Unsure of where this was going, Hikari nodded. It was hard to forget the sarcastic, bespeckled, redhead that came into the restaurant frequently enough that Hikari knew her as Karin Uchiha.
"Yeah, I remember her. She was funny," Hikari said, regretting her words but not knowing why as Sakura seemed to wince. She pulled up a chair and carefully lowered herself down.
"She was," Sakura breathed. "She was funny and she was sweet and…she was my best friend." There were many things about what Sakura had just said that were wrong, Hikari noted. One was the crack in her friend's voice and the tear that fell from her eye. Another was the past tense the green-eyed woman had used. Hikari couldn't stop her lips from forming the word and it slipped from her mouth, scared of the answer she would get.
"Was?" Sakura sighed a sigh so filled with grief that it stabbed Hikari in the gut.
"Was." She shifted forward to the edge of her seat, took Hikari's hands in her own and met her gaze.
"You know that Karin was Sasuke's wife." Hikari started at the mention of the man. She had forgotten about her concerns in light of her friend's grief. Sakura either didn't notice Hikari jump or didn't care. "Four months ago, something happened."
Hikari didn't understand. She looked at the tears now falling unashamed down Sakura's face.
"Wait, Sakura-san," she said, struggling for the right thing to say. "If… You said that Karin lived. Why then- what's wrong with Sasuke?" She looked at Sakura with concern and an awful lot of confusion. Sakura looked down and without lifting her head, she spoke.
"That's the way Sasuke remembers it." Hikari froze and then found her lungs burning as she hadn't taken a breath since she had finished taking.
"H-how… how he remembers it," Hikari breathed the words quietly. "Oh. Oh." Sakura watched as the young girl understood. "He was hit in the back of the head. So… memory loss?" Hikari looked Sakura in the eye.
"Partial memory loss, yes. The doctor is unsure how much of it is actual memory loss or how much of it is the grief refusing to let her go and using his injury to keep her. We know that he sees her and he feels her as if she's still there. His official diagnosis is situational schizophrenia.
"Karin and I found out that we were pregnant around the same time, so she was pregnant when she died, and Sasuke has progressed that. He believes that his wife survived and that they're about to have a little girl."
Sakura untangled their hands and covered her face. She took a deep, albeit shaky, breath.
"He called up Naruto the other day and went on and on about how they had decided to name her after his mother. Naruto could barely hang up the phone he was shaking so hard," Sakura cried, her voice muffled by the hands still covering her face.
Hikari knew Sakura's boyfriend well and she couldn't imagine the spunky blonde sad, let alone crying. She had never seen him with anything but a smile on. Hikari opened her mouth to say something, anything, but Sakura's mother saved her from having to say something she knew wouldn't help.
"Sakura, sweetie, Sasuke would like to say goodbye," the kind-eyed woman said, sympathy for her daughter bleeding into her words. Sakura nodded and wiped her face. Hikari shot to her feet and helped her friend up.
Sakura straightened out her skirt and smoothed her shirt over her stomach and then, with Hikari trailing behind her, walked out of the kitchen and across the restaurant to where Sasuke was standing, unabashedly talking to someone no one else could see.
"Hey Sasuke," Sakura said, her voice so happy that Hikari did a double take. "Your dinner alright?" Sasuke smiled.
"Amazing, as always. Our compliments to the chef. We just wanted to say hi before we took off," Sasuke said, looking to his right. Hikari saw Sakura's hands clench where they rest on her stomach and knew Sasuke was looking at Karin.
"Aw, that's sweet you guys. Well it was nice to see you two and happy anniversary, by the way." Sakura's smile was radiant and see-through. Sasuke furrowed his brow a little, but threw a glance towards Hikari and left it alone. He settled for squeezing his friend's shoulder, and waving at her as he held the door open for his dead wife.
Sakura and Hikari stood there and watched through the glass front doors as Sasuke stood alone and waited for the valet, held the passenger door open for a minute, got in the car and left. Sakura's shoulders slumped and Hikari put her arm around her friend.
"Sometimes it's just easier to pretend," Sakura answered an unasked question. Hikari nodded sympathetically and looked away, her arm still around the pink-haired girl. She hesitated, wondering if she would like the answer, but asked anyway.
"Sakura-san. Is Sasuke going to be okay?"
Sakura didn't answer.