Date: October 15th, 2014
Pairing: SasuSaku, SuiKa
Prompt: Mistake
Title: Engagement Entanglement
Summary: Always check the paperwork.
Written by: ebondeath
Disclaimer: Naruto, not mine since 1999.
Author's Note: I have made myself like Karin. What have I done?! D:
"I'm sorry, Uchiha-san, but I can't grant you this marriage license."
The entire room goes silent. A dark, angry aura exudes off of the man standing before the clerk, who is suddenly sweating bullets and looking very nervous. Everyone else in the small room has taken a step or two back.
Everyone in Konoha, even the civilians, knows about the last Uchiha. They know about Haruno Sakura, and their upcoming nuptials. So when the clerk denies them a marriage license, they know he's just signed his own death warrant.
"Excuse me?" Sasuke's voice is low, velvety, and dangerous. Onyx eyes flash crimson.
The clerk swallows visibly and shuffles the papers in his hand.
"I-I can't grant you the license. I'm sorry, sir, but there seems to be a conflict here."
"And what conflict would that be?" A calloused hand rests on the hilt of Kusanagi.
"Um...itsaysherethatyou'realreadymarried."
Two minutes ago, the clerk would have told you that Uchiha Sasuke was the scariest person he'd ever met in his life. Former rogue-nin and apprentice-slash-slayer of the snake sannin Orochimaru, wielder of the Sharingan and the Rinnegan, and now an ANBU operative. There is nothing that is not intimidating or impressive about him.
And then he met Sasuke's fiancée.
The dark aura that had been threatening to choke him is suddenly completely engulfed by the rage radiating off of the petite woman standing behind the Uchiha. The clerk suddenly wishes he had an underground shelter, because he can sense the incoming bomb about to go off.
"Sasuke."
No suffix. This is how Sasuke knows Sakura is angry enough to kill.
"Our wedding is in. One. Week."
Her voice is too calm. Too controlled. He's probably going to die.
"At what point were you going to tell me that you are ALREADY MARRIED."
Sasuke licks his dry lips.
"I'm not."
Sakura is not in the mood for games, and the arms folded tightly across her chest are his last warning.
"That's not what this nice young man here says."
"Well, he's wrong."
Sakura turns to the clerk, who is trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. She flashes him a brilliant smile. "May I see those documents please?" He stammers an "of course" and she snatches them out of his shaking hands.
Sasuke watches his fiancée's face as her eyes scan the page at an unnatural speed. Her frown turns into a fierce scowl, and he can hear her grinding her teeth. Her face turns so red that Sasuke is afraid she's going to give herself an aneurysm.
When she finally looks back up at him, Sasuke knows the true meaning of fear.
"I am going to ask you one last time, and if you lie to me, I will bury you beneath Hokage Mountain."
Sasuke fully believes this threat.
She sucks in a breath between her teeth. "Are. You. Married."
Sasuke shakes his head. "I have never willfully in my conscious memory married any woman. You are the only person I have ever asked, Sakura."
The tension in her shoulders loosens, barely. She shoves the paperwork at him. He glances down at it.
"This piece of paper says that you have been legally married to one Karin for the last four years."
Sasuke blanches. He remembers the way Karin used to cling to him, begging for attention. The thought of being married to her makes his stomach churn, and he knows there is no way in the seven hells he would have ever willingly consented to any kind of relationship with her, much less marriage.
Not that a silly little thing like consent has ever stopped Karin before.
They are walking away from Konoha's court house building when Sakura stops and turns to her teammate-turned-lover. He has managed to convince her that he had no part in this sham of a marriage with Karin and that he struggles to remember how this could have happened, and she grudgingly believes him.
She is no less angry though.
"You are going to find her, and you are going to fix this. You have one week, because everything for the wedding has been paid for and is non-refundable."
Sasuke nods emphatically. There is no arguing with Sakura when she's angry. There is only obediance.
Finding Karin is not difficult using his contacts in ANBU. She is living in Konoha, having been there since the end of the Fourth Great Shinobi War. She even has a job at the Academy. Sasuke is vaguely perturbed to realize that he has not kept up at all with the goings-on of his former companions and has no idea what they're doing now.
He stands in front of the door of a small house in West Konoha and hesitates. Karin is a really disturbing girl, and he has no desire to subject himself to her obsessive attentions again. But it's either that or face Sakura's wrath.
Frankly, he's not sure which one he's more afraid of at the moment.
He eventually decides that Sakura's happiness is more important than his trepidation, and quickly knocks on the door before he can change his mind.
He hears a lot of banging and yelling coming from inside the house, followed by a "Just a minute!" A few minutes later, the door opens and Karin's eyes widen in surprise at the sight of her visitor.
Sasuke is confused.
Sasuke being confused is not a phenomenon that happens very often, as he's a prodigy with a sharp intellect.
But in this case, he can't figure out what's going on. Everything Sasuke knows tells him that Karin should have jumped him like a horny sailor who's been out to sea for ten years. She didn't. She greeted him politely and invited him into her home without so much as an "I love you!" or any kind of bodily contact.
His second point of confusion lies with the other occupant of the house. Unless Sasuke's memory fails him (and it seems to be doing that with alarming frequency these days), Karin and Suigetsu do not get along. They do not speak to each other civilly and send each other little smiles from across the room. And yet they are.
Sasuke's head hurts.
"So, Sasuke, what brings you here? We haven't seen much of you in the last three years."
Karin offers him a cup of tea, which he declines. It could be laced with some kind of knock-out drug for all he knows. He doesn't trust this boundary-respecting Karin.
"Aa. I have a problem."
Karin sits down at the kitchen table across from him and folds a leg beneath her. She looks at him curiously. "What's the problem?"
"I'm getting married."
Suigetsu lets out a loud bark of laughter. "So you really do like girly bits, eh? I was always betting on it being Naruto."
Glare.
Karin throws a dirty napkin and a glare at her roommate before turning back to their guest. "So what's the problem? I can't see you getting married unless you wanted to."
"...I seem to be married to you."
The room goes very, very quiet.
"Oh. Um..."
"What the fuck, Karin?" Suigetsu launches himself off of the couch and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
"Shit." Karin's face is in her hands, and she seems mortified and genuinely upset.
"You and him?"
"Yeah."
Minutes pass in painfully awkward silence.
Finally, "I'm really sorry, Sasuke. God, I was such a crazy psychobitch. I bet your girl wants to rip me apart." Karin looks miserable.
"Something like that," he replies mildly. Gone is the psychobitch that Karin used to be, and with her Sasuke's contempt and disdain. "I really need to fix this."
"Of course," she says, a tear sliding down her cheek. "I'll head over to the courthouse this afternoon and have it annulled straight away."
"Karin," he says, without his usual gruffness. "How did we...?"
She smiles ruefully. "You were drunk one day, totally smashed, after...after Itachi. I got you to sign the marriage license. God, I'm so sorry."
Sasuke shakes his head. "It's-"
"Don't say it's fine, because it's not. I know that. But I'm gonna do everything I can to make it right."
He nods. "Thank you."
They both get up from the table, and she shows him to the door.
"And Karin," she looks up at the man she used to obsess over, "you guys should come to the wedding."
She's quite pretty when she smiles.
"And now it's time for the bride to toss the bouquet. Gather round, ladies!"
Sakura is stunning in her traditional white bridal kimono. The overlying handmade uchikake is a deep scarlet with embroidered cherry blossoms, and her hair is twisted elegantly and held up with beautiful jade combs.
She blushes and smiles proudly, glancing over at her stoic (but smiling for once) husband. She is beyond glad that everything worked out in time for their wedding, and she is not even annoyed at him for inviting his "ex-wife."
Karin has apologized to her profusely many times, and Sakura can not find it in her to hate the girl after she has changed so much. They might even become friends, she thinks.
Sakura launches her bouquet (specially arranged by Ino) over her head, and the crowd of single kunoichi behind her goes wild.
"It's mine!"
"Get out of my way!"
"Move it!"
A catfight breaks out, and the bouquet lands in the hands of an unsuspecting Karin. She looks down at the flowers in her hands in surprise.
"What-hey! Mmph-"
Suigetsu wastes no time in letting everybody know that he knows exactly what the catching of the bouquet means by grabbing his girlfriend and dipping her into a deep kiss.
She flails for a minute before giving in, and the crowd cheers.
Author's Note: I really wanted to end this with "and they lived happily ever after" but I didn't think anybody else would appreciate that level of ridiculous cheesiness. So today I learned that I can reply to reviews and now I feel dumb for not knowing. Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed, favorited and followed. May all your OTPs become canon.
