Disclaimer; Nope, I don't own Naruto.

Title; The Hazards of Waking Up

Interlude One; The Hazards of Falling in Love


October was an awful time of the year for a party, or at least she always thought so. It seemed strange that her eternally happy cousin had been born in such a gloomy miserable month but it was far from the strangest thing she'd ever come across.

Karin Uzumaki couldn't even fathom what she was doing here, hiding out in the back garden of her cousin's house while the party raged on inside. Karin wasn't honestly sure how so few people could be so loud, her cousin just seemed to attract loud people...except maybe one.

He'd appeared through the cloud of smoke she'd struck up with her cigarette, which she really shouldn't have been smoking given the likely consequences of getting caught by Kushina smoking under age. Dark eyes regarded her quietly, tucked away in her corner where she'd thought she was out of sight, and then he turned away.

The redhead was intrigued.

"Hey." she offered stepping out a little from the corner and a little closer to the man, well boy, staring out at the rain. His dark eyes turned to her again for a moment, unreadable and he turned back to the rain without a word. She took a step closer.

"Naruto was looking for you." his voice almost made her stumble as she finally made it to his side with her tentative baby steps. He reminded her of a stray black cat, skulking about in the cold autumn air.

"Do you want one?" she asked ignoring his comment and gesturing to her still lit but unfinished cigarette. She didn't much care for the idea of returning to her cousin's side, greeting all his loud school friends as they shared old stories and in jokes. It wasn't that they were bad as such, she was just feeling alone and miserable at the moment and jubilant strange company like that would only make it feel more pronounced.

"I don't smoke." he returned still facing away from her with all the interest of a statue.

"Oh. I'm Karin." it was the first time she'd introduced herself that evening, each time before Naruto had beaten her to the punch.

"I know." he breathed back his dark eyes flickering over his shoulder to her for another brief glance. She couldn't tell if the look was disdain or intrigue, or if he hadn't decided which it was yet. She was much more used to the former than the latter.

She'd seen the pill bottles cluttered around Minato and Kushina's home, her best case possible future if she developed the family condition like the older redhead had. Kushina still managed normalcy in her life, an impressive amount given that the worst case she could imagine- Nagato Uzumaki- was locked up. She wondered which way she'd break, broke but functional or completely and obliviously, she'd stopped tricking herself into thinking she'd be fine.

"You don't do small talk do you?" she asked after too many more quiet moments passed between them. She wondered just how her cousin and this dark statue could be friends so completely opposite they were.

"No." came the one word answer, softer than she'd expected it.

"What's your name?" she asked in turn, strangely pleased at the turnabout outside compared to inside. She seemed to be the more confident one, pushing and controlling the conversation instead of just spectating. Karin Uzumaki liked control.

"Sasuke Uchiha." the bored boy staring at the rain answered.


"Uzumaki, where's your cousin." a dark voice growled drawing the soon to be married pair apart like teenagers caught kissing. There was an innocence to both of them that even at their rehearsal dinner they tended to act bashful.

"Oh hey Sasuke, um well..." the blonde filtered off scratching the back of his head, he'd been trying to sneak a kiss or two from his soon to be wife away from the scrutiny of either of their families, he hadn't expected to be quizzed on anyone's whereabouts. It certainly didn't help that the Uchiha looked completely pissed.

Sasuke simply glared at him folding his arms expectantly.

"K-Karin? I s-saw her w-with S-Sakura near t-the k-kitchens." answered Hinata drawing both men's attention as she blushed and avoided Sasuke's eyes as his still irritated gaze fell on her now instead.

"I see. Congratulations Hinata, Naruto." grunted out the dark man his voice barely audible for the last part. He left a somewhat confused Hyuuga and a grinning Uzumaki a moment later as he stomped off intent on his prey.

"Aw that's nice. I wasn't sure he actually knew your name." commented Naruto brightly drawing a squeak from his soon to be wife as she blinked her large eyes up at him.

"W-What!" the slightly panicked Hinata shot back open mouthed.

It took Sasuke over half an hour and one threatening conversation with a bus boy to find his quandary. It wasn't a surprise really, he should have checked the smoking areas first, it was always the redhead's first response when she was stressed out.

"You're avoiding me." she'd ducked behind a dumpster once she'd seen him on the prowl and now he was staring at the redhead hunkered awkwardly in her long maroon dress with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. She looked sheepish.

"I wasn't going to smoke it, really." she answered oddly drawing a raised eyebrow from the Uchiha in front of her.

"I don't care if you smoke or not." he never had, she'd been a smoker since they'd met at fourteen and while she'd been off them for points over the years he'd never judged her for it or even commented on it. And only occasionally bummed cigarettes off her when the mood struck, which could be often when the Uzumaki was in a mood.

"I can't smoke it. But I really want to." she was pouting and he wondered what in the world any of it had to do with why she was avoiding him. But it was better to just let the redheaded Uzumaki ramble when she got in a mood, then apologize or agree with her at the end. Or duck, if she was really angry.

"Why can't you smoke?" he asked after a brief moment when Karin paused to withdraw the white stick from between her painted lips to glare at it and then redeposit it in it's resting place.

"I'm late." a long silence followed the Uzumaki woman's declaration. Sasuke took the cigarette off her.

"You're pregnant." he thought he'd meant it as a question but between Karin's nervous fidgety shrug and just a certain feeling in the back of his own mind Sasuke knew for certain that she was.

"I've gotten a doctor's appointment, but I took a home test and...yeah." The Uzumaki had already ruined her hair with her constant tugging at it, only ever on the one side leaving her asymmetrical and tried to snatch back her cigarette to complete her semi-deranged look. Sasuke crushed the cigarette between his fingers.

"That explains why you can't smoke, but why are you avoiding me?" the Uchiha asked folding his arms and quietly awaiting an answer.

"You don't like kids." she answered tightly after a moment glaring down at her shoes, she was still hunkered down and rubbing her knees.

"So?" he didn't remember ever saying that he disliked kids as such, he just wasn't sure how exactly to deal with them. They were excitable, innocent and several other things that he didn't quite deal well with...in fact they were basically Naruto, but he had to be nice to them.

"I overheard you talking with Minato too." she shot glaring up at him after a moment, why she was angry with him though he couldn't fathom. He hadn't really talked to Naruto's father so much as he was talked at, the blonde man having had maybe one too many cocktails as he decided to give Sasuke a talk about the complexities of being involved with an Uzumaki woman. Kushina had taken a downturn over the last year and it showed on the ageing man.

"He thinks I'm crazy." the Uzumaki continued bitterness clear in her voice. There was probably something upsetting about hearing a member of your family warning a partner away.

"So?" he asked again as casually as before as Karin shot up flushed and upset at him simply brushing off her concerns without care.

"Because I am crazy Sasuke, or I might...all of this is umm..." she was cut of as Sasuke curled his left hand beneath her chin and stole whatever else she was going to say away with a kiss sending the redhead's amber eyes wide for a moment before she shut them and leaned into the kiss busying her fingers with messing up his already unruly hair instead. When he pulled away his eyes were blank and calm and Karin felt all the nervous energy that had been pulling at her all week vanish leaving her pleasantly drained and leaning against her taciturn boyfriend aiming up for another kiss.

"It'll be fine Karin." he spoke simply and she believed him.


Ash, Sasuke decided, made a decent enough allegory for his life gone past now. It tapered away from the end of his lit cigarette as he released another breath of coiling painful smoke into the wet night air, the smoke danced around rain drops as the ash fell like dirty snow to the balcony floor. He felt used up and burnt out, and like the fallen ash he knew there was no way to put it back to how it had been before.

There was never any going back, not for him.

He hadn't slept in longer than he cared to think about, held up by coffee and some buzzing behind his eyes that had him shooting up stock straight every time he even tried to settle down, or maybe it was by Karin's shouting as she forgot her medication for the third time this week.

A sound, something like scratching and growling, had him flicking the cigarette away and returning inside the warm apartment glassy eyed and dead on his feet. He found them in their bedroom, his and Karin's and that annoyed him.

"You moved her?" he'd expected to sound angry but only sounded dead instead as he moved to his infant daughter on their bed. His bespectacled partner didn't offer him any kind of real answer, after a blank empty look of her own she returned to routing around in their closet making a mess that the Uchiha didn't have it in himself to care about. Everything was already a mess anyway.

Or almost everything he amended internally as the baby girl on the bed gave a coo up at him in excitement as he bent over to check on her.

"What are you doing Karin?" he tried again in his same dead tone shooting her back a look as she dug through old possessions and letters, emptying boxes onto the carpeted floor and shoving the contents aside in her frantic search.

"It's not here." the redhead hissed finally pulling her head out of the closet long enough to glare at him, she'd lost her glasses in there somehow not that he was completely surprised but it never ceased to bother him how much less like herself she seemed without them.

"What's not here?" The Uchiha asked running a hand through his unkempt hair as he made his way over to his partner hunkering down to her level as she twisted around on herself to clinging her knees and shaking. He should have known not to, would have realized it if he'd slept an hour in the last two days.

The sound of the slap echoed in his ears far sooner than his mind caught up to the actual stinging pain and he gingerly touched his swollen lip before Sarada's soft wail brought him back to life.

"You're off your medication again." he still didn't sound alive, not even to himself as he stood mechanically and retrieved the container of the little pills from their bedside locker. He shushed his daughter and lifted her to his chest before he tossed the Uzumaki woman her drugs. They wouldn't make her better, not really, just lessen her spells of mania, leave her exhausted when she had a spell but closer to functional.

Karin stared at the bottle she'd snatched up for a few minutes. Then she snarled and flung it at them the bottle snapping open when it collided with the wall and sending bright ugly pills raining over the carpet.

"That's not it! Not it! Not it!" she shrieked curling back around herself as the Uchiha tried to soothe the baby in his arms. He really didn't need this now, but Sarada needed to be there for it far less so he moved for the door.

"Where are you going!?" she'd stood back up now, her amber eyes wide and panicked and for a moment she looked like Karin again.

"Where do you think I'm going Karin." he shot out offended but still dead sounding as Sarada began to quiet a little in his arms, he failed to notice the glare the redhead offered her daughter at first but once he did he began to feel an old familiar bubbling in the pit of his stomach.

"You can go, but leave it here." the Uzumaki woman ordered flipping her hair back as she stared at the father and daughter stone faced. There was a moment of silence as the rain outside picked up and Sasuke tried to control his breathing if only for his daughter's sake.

"What did you say." he hissed sharply feeling the muscles in his back and shoulders coil tight as vices as all the built up anger and resentment he'd been ignoring tunnelled out unbound. Karin didn't seem to mind any of that though as she crossed her arms appearing almost smug.

"That belongs to me. Leave it here if you're going." she repeated her order her eyes flickering down to the quiet Sarada in something unreadable. Something was rumbling in the older Uchiha's chest though and he could feel it begin to crack.

"Take your fu...just take the pills Karin, and then we'll talk." he growled catching himself as his voice threatened to raise and profanity attempted to infiltrate his point. The redhead shook her head though, snarling at the prospect.

"I don't want the damn pills Sasuke, I don't want any of this!" her eyes had begun to water and for once Sasuke really didn't know who he was talking to any more. There wasn't a line any more it seemed, between Karin and not-Karin, there was just the thing he was staring in the face right now, that he'd been ignoring for too long.

"W-where are you going, I said-" he cut her off with a look, tired and resolved in a way she instantly misread as he adjusted the girl in his arms.

"Sarada needs to be changed." he spoke dead voiced again quieting the Uzumaki woman's ire for the briefest of moments as he softly opened the hall door and made for the baby's room. He clicked the lock shut on the door, for the first time since they'd moved in.

"I'm sorry." Sarada didn't offer him an answer, or at least not a verbal one as one of her hand's chubby fingers gripped his bangs tightly as pulled softly, refusing to let go even as Sasuke settled her onto the soft red blanket Naruto had given him. His wife had apparently knit it herself, the blonde had all the luck.

"Papa's going to make things better okay? You just need to let go of my hair." at another time he would have felt silly for negotiating with a baby, but right now it felt so unlike himself that it was a relief, he was tired of himself right now. The girl's giggles seemed to drown out the anger Karin had managed to stir up but left him feeling empty instead, or maybe more sad than empty. The older Uchiha managed to fish out his cell phone as his daughter finally released him.

There was only one person to call.

"Hey, I'm not available right now. So you know how it is, leave a beep after the message and I'll-" whatever else the recorded Naruto Uzumaki was going to say was cut off as Sasuke ended the call and resisted the urge to thrown the phone in frustration. Only one person and they weren't answering, he didn't exactly have a lot more options. An old pervert or a woman he'd cruelly rejected and hadn't spoken with since Naruto's wedding.

"The hell Sasuke, do you know what time it is? This better not be some drunk booty call, I'll have you know I-" he should have called Kakashi he realized belatedly as he groaned into the phone none too subtly and leaned back over Sarada's cot. The girl used the opportunity to yank his hair again...and that comforted him.

"Sakura. I...need your help." the rambling girl had been silenced by his withering groan and remained quiet for a couple of more seconds. Then her voice returned steady and serious.

"What's wrong Sasuke?" so he told her, starting from the middle and jumping around as his scrambled mind tried to order the story somewhat coherently. He didn't do that well but Sakura was clever enough to put it altogether.

She was there within the hour and for the first time in too many days he passed out asleep in Sakura's car uncaring that he looked a like a broken down mess and completely content in the sight of Sarada safe in his friend's arms.


Flashback episode...em well chapter. I thought it was unfair to only leave Karin as a quick cameo in the last chapter so I thought an interlude was called for. Flesh out her and Sasuke a bit.

Sorry about the severe amount of smoking here. I wanted to use something to highlight her self destructive tendencies with the worries of turning out like the rest of her family hanging over her from an early age and I thought it fit better than something like drinking. It's a bad habit and should be avoided if possible...no matter how cool it may be.

Hope you enjoyed.

R&R