Pairing: Sasuke and Sakura

Genre: Romance

Song: This I Promise You - NSYNC

Description: It's the perfect wedding, with the perfect bride and the perfect groom, in the perfect church with 300 perfect guests. But Sakura and Sasuke have never been one for perfection.

Sasuke sucked in air sharply between his teeth, and tried not to let his emotions show on his face. But he'd been engaged to Sakura Haruno for an entire year now, and was about an hour from getting married, so there were bound to be fissures in his prized self-control. And now, standing before him looking more dazzling than any woman ever had in white and laces, it took him a solid ten seconds to school his features back into his default of practiced apathy.

"Isn't it bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?" he quipped dryly, but he hesitated when he saw the terror on Sakura's face. "What's wrong?" he asked instead.

She bit her pink-painted bottom lip and looked up at him with smoky-rimmed eyes that sparkled with tears. "I…Sasuke do you think this is…"

His blood froze in his veins, his stomach dropped out beneath him like an elevator shaft, and it was only thanks to years of honed self-control that he didn't hang his head. This was it, he realized. After a three-year relationship, two years of living together, and one year of engagement, Sakura had finally come to her senses. Sakura had finally realized she was way too good for him, and she was going to leave him at the altar. With one hour to spare, she was going to do the right thing, and break his heart.

He said nothing. His tuxedo felt tight and scratchy, constricting all of a sudden, a cruel and hideous reminder that he was all dressed up with no place to go. He became hyperaware of the (expensive) plane tickets to Paris in his pocket that Sakura didn't yet know about, the honeymoon he'd secretly, quietly planned months ago, when she mentioned with stars in her eyes how much she wanted to see the City of Lights. They were supposed to leave tonight, but it looked like he would be taking that flight alone, and…

He loosened his tie and leaned against the doorframe, studying her, trying to commit this beautiful image to memory so he would have something to cling to in the wretched coming years, of how he nearly had everything he wanted, only to lose it at the last minute. Story of his life.

Sakura swallowed and tried again. "Doesn't this feel…wrong to you?"

The atmosphere in Sakura's changing room was tense, and charged. For the first time in a long time, Sasuke couldn't figure out what was going on in his fiancee's head.

"Wrong," he echoed quietly.

"This wedding," she clarified, without really clarifying. God, if she was going to dump him, she could at least have the decency not to drag it out. "Sasuke we put so much time and money in this, and everyone's here, we have 300 guests, it's like the whole city showed up. And there's an article in the paper, and there's photographers we didn't even hire, all because it's you and me and that somehow matters to Konoha. And our friends went and took over everything and made this huge, when you and I really wanted something small. And…Sasuke, this doesn't feel like us, does it?"

So…she wasn't breaking up with him? No. Relief coursed through him like oxygen, and he relaxed slightly, attempting to figure out why Sakura was so upset. It seemed like she was dissatisfied with the way their initial idea – to have a simple, no-frills wedding – had blown up into something grandiose and commercial. And Sasuke could more than agree with that; he would have been plenty happy with running down to the courthouse one afternoon, signing a paper with a judge, kissing Sakura in front of nobody in jeans and a T-shirt and giving her his mother's wedding ring. It would have taken maybe an hour. Practical, simple.

"I thought you wanted a big wedding," he said gently. Didn't every girl?

She sighed. "Everybody wanted me to have a big wedding," she said, collapsing into the burgundy cushioned chair in front of the mirror, dabbing at her damp eyes so as not to smudge the makeup Ino had artfully applied. "They wanted…you know. Us finally getting married to mean something. But I didn't need this huge, ridiculous celebrity wedding for that to mean something to me. I just want you."

"Hn," he chuckled in agreement, before stepping into the room. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, illuminating the soft pink curls that fell like water down her bare back. Her gaze was far-off and dreamy, the color in her cheeks high as he joined her at her makeup mirror. They stared at their reflections, and Sasuke suddenly saw exactly what she was talking about.

A perfect bride and a perfect groom were reflected back at him, but the circumstances – while perfect – weren't theirs anymore. His efforts to please her, and her efforts to please everyone else, brought them to this point. To enduring their own wedding, with all the photographers and all the newspapers and all their obnoxious, controlling friends calling the shots.

And today – rightfully – was supposed to be about them.

It was time to take control of his own wedding.

"We don't have to do this," he said quietly.

She looked up at him with fear on her face again. "You…you don't want to get married?" she asked, looking petrified, and he realized he was not alone in fearing that his significant other was going to bolt. The thought both frustrated and amused him, and he shook his head.

"Not like this," he murmured, offering her his hand. "Let's go."

"Go where?" she asked, a confused smile unfolding on her face as she let him pull her to her feet. "Sasuke they're waiting for us."

"Let them wait."

"But…"

"We've got an hour."

The courthouse was packed that day, but Sasuke had connections, and he highly doubted that anybody who saw Sakura that day dolled up like the perfect bride she never would be wanted to refuse her anything. So they pulled a few strings, and found a judge available who could run through the wedding ceremony with them.

They sat together in the wooden aisle seats in the courtroom with six other anxious, would-be couples, and the look on Sakura's face was breathtaking, between her elation at getting married and her amusement at how things were happening.

"My mother's gonna kill me," she giggled.

"That's nothing," Sasuke scoffed. "Think of what Tsunade's gonna do to you."

"I'd be more worried about what she's gonna do to you," she teased, elbowing him gently in the side.

"Nobody needs to know about this," she added. "It can be…you know. Our little secret. If they don't know about what we're doing, then they can't get mad at us. I think this was one of your better ideas, actually."

The more Sasuke thought about it, the more his own actions made sense. Marriage was about staying true to yourselves, and Sasuke and Sakura, at their very core, were not the type of people to have an enormous, publicized, talked-about wedding like the one that had been planned for them. They were practical, and they kept their romantic life largely private; reciting romantic, heartfelt vows in front of a crowd of people who barely knew them, and wanted to be there only for the appeal of watching Sasuke and Sakura finally get married simply wasn't them.

Doing this – eloping before the big ceremony – was exactly the right move. Now, they could share their most important moment together, with nobody else significant to watch them. Just between them, the way their love had always been. He'd loved her forever in secret stares and subtle, drifting touches and quiet gestures, gentle promises exchanged in kisses and smiles, and always between them, and nobody else.

And they could go through the motions with the actual wedding afterwards, suffer through the pictures and the crying and the applause and the celebrity after their secret nuptials had taken place. And nobody besides the judge, the handful of nervous couples, and them would ever know that they would be officially married at 1:00 pm in a busy courtroom, when they showed up to their 1:30 wedding in Konoha's grandest church.

Secret. Clandestine. Private. Practical. And them.

"Uchiha, Sasuke and Haruno, Sakura," the judge called out from his roster, and Sakura let out a stifled squeal of excitement as she hopped up to her feet, dragging him along with her. Amused at her sudden enthusiasm for this dressed-down ceremony, when she'd been full of nothing but consternation and worry at the princess fairy tale wedding thrown in her honor, he followed her up through the courtroom while the bailiff opened the little wooden door for them to pass through.

It took five minutes.

"Where are they?" Ino moaned, peeking through the door at all the guests already assembled in the church. People were growing restless, milling about, chatting amongst themselves, all of them caught up in this newest scandal. Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno, both mysteriously vanishing minutes before their own wedding. "I'm gonna kill her for doing this to me!"

"It's…it's n-not your w-w-wedding, Ino," Hinata reminded her gently. Both of them were dressed in apricot chiffon, their hair in elegant updos, waiting impatiently to begin their procession down the aisle ahead of a bride, who didn't look like she was coming.

"I threw it together, didn't I?" Ino snapped, dialing her best friend's number on her cell phone for the fortieth time. "She owes me."

"Sorry we're late!" a feminine voice sang out happily from behind them, and Ino whipped around to find a happy, flushed-looking Sakura rushing in the back door of the church, a smirking Sasuke in tow.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Ino thundered, flying at her best friend's throat, only to be restrained by the other bridesmaids. "We were supposed to start an hour ago! Where the hell have you been? Why are you trying to ruin this perfect day?"

"I was just making this perfect day a little more perfect," Sakura insisted, with a secret glance at Sasuke, whose smirk only widened. He looked so irritatingly pleased with himself that Ino just knew she'd been had, somehow. But the guests were getting impatient, and it was time to rock and roll. She would be the maid of honor at the best wedding in the universe, come hell or highwater.

"So you're ready, then?" Karin asked, letting Ino go when she'd finally calmed down. "I think Tsunade's gonna blow a gasket."

"Yes, we're ready," Sakura said, kissing Sasuke on the cheek. "See you at the altar!"

"Annoying," he murmured, with so much sickening fondness that Ino nearly contracted diabetes. With that, he strode casually through the doors of the church and made his way carelessly, unhurriedly down the aisle like nothing was wrong.

"Let's go, people!" called out Kurenai, the wedding planner. "All right, start with the bridesmaids. Single file, ladies, first Hinata…all right, good. Tenten, you're up next, great, great, looking good…go on in, Karin, keep it evenly spaced!"

"I know something happened," Ino hissed to Sakura, hastily fixing her best friend's veil so it partially concealed her features. "I know you did something, and you're going to tell me what it is. Why the hell did you let Sasuke see you before the wedding? It's bad luck!"

"You talk too much," Sakura said back, laughing. "Thank you, Ino. Thank you for this perfect wedding."

Ino softened. Her best friend looked way too pretty to harass at the moment. "Whatever, Forehead." Then, with a winning smile, knowing she was being held out on but determined to see this through to the end, Ino Yamanaka, the glorious maid of honor, began her trek down the aisle to Canon in D.

Full house, gorgeous groom, handsome groomsmen, lovely bridesmaids, and a beautiful bride: Sakura would be thanking her for years to come.

The church really was beautiful, Sakura had to admit. Any girl would be lucky to have a wedding like this one. The lights were low, the music soft and subtle as she made her way down the aisle on her father's arm, a bouquet of lilies in her hands, candles lit in every window, flowers hung from every pew and threshold. Ino had great taste, she really did.

I'm getting the wedding of every little girl's dreams, she thought, unable to fight the satisfied smile on her face at the irony of it all, and it's the LAST THING I want.

Sasuke stood up at the altar waiting for her, looking as casual and careless as ever, smirking as he watched her approach him. His tie was loose, his shirt untucked, his hair tousled by the wind since they'd run over here from the courthouse, and nobody in the church knew that he was already hers.

Nobody knew that when Kizashi Haruno placed her hand in that of Sasuke's and quietly joined her mother in the front pew, that when the vows were recited, that when nobody dared to protest their marriage thanks to her maid of honor's terrifying influence, that Sasuke and Sakura were already married. Nobody knew that the kiss they shared in front of a busy church was not their first, but their second as husband and wife.

So she would let everyone have this perfect wedding. She would let them cheer and whoop and holler and take pictures and blow it up into a big deal if it made them happy, and it certainly seemed to. Because nobody would ever knew that Sasuke and Sakura Uchiha were married in a busy, overcrowded courtroom minutes before the enormous church ceremony took place, in a practical, no-frills ceremony as down-to-earth as they were.

The wedding march played like a victory tune while all of their guests applauded in a standing ovation that would have made any bride blush; her bridesmaids were crying, Naruto was crying, her mother was crying, her father was crying, but Sakura was way too happy to cry as Sasuke's fingers threaded through hers, and he gave an arrogant smirk to the entire congregation that suggested he knew a secret, and wasn't telling.

She'd never been more in love than at this moment, in a beautiful wedding gown she hated, in too-expensive shoes, the imperfect bride in the fairy tale wedding she never wanted.

note.. thanks for all the reviews and favorites and alerts for chapter one! it's definitely a challenge, this anthology, but i'm having a good time with it and i'm glad to see you guys are, too.

secret: "this i promise you" was my wedding song. my husband made a huge deal about it like he always does, but he saw it my way eventually, like he always does if he knows what's good for him.

and yeah, i never saw sakura and sasuke as the type to have a grandiose wedding. they seem too practical for that. so i wanted to let them get married in a way that was uniquely them, kind of like thumbing their noses at everyone who insists they have this huge elaborate ceremony even if it's ridiculously out of character for sasuke to behave like a disney prince. this way, everyone in konoha can think that they saw THE MOMENT sasuke and sakura were married, all while they secretly kept that moment to themselves, the way it should have been. make sense?

let me know if you liked it ;) love you, guys.

xoxo daisy :)