A/N: Day eleven. I made it! Haha! Only a few more minutes before the day's over for me, but I fucking made it!
There's an internal debate on whether or not she should walk away now or wait for the approaching presence of a creepy child. With a slightly heavy heart, she decides to wait, because the image of him pursuing after her is a rather discomforting one. Even if she's fairly sure that she could lose him.
"Sakura." Sasuke greets after stopping a little too close to her. She takes a step back and pokes his forehead so he forcefully mimics her action, rather than stepping forward to keep the close proximity as he planned. Poking his forehead seems to be something that he likes, strangely enough, if she's to go by the somewhat unhinged smile forming on his face. "Sakura…"
This is why she doesn't like to be near him when alone, or even in a group but at least the latter option is more bearable. "Is there something you need, Sasuke?" she sighs, attempting to forcefully calm the unsettled mess in her stomach.
The Uchiha blinks, the smile thankfully falling away soon after. "Yes. I need you to help me with Naruto. He says he forgives me ̶ though I still don't understand why he was upset with me ̶ but he continues to remain distant. I don't understand the reasoning, as he refuses to discuss the matter with me. As my future wife, I wish to employ your help." he explains to her, his monotonous voice and words something she hasn't missed all that much. Oh, and the staring. She can't forget the staring.
"I'd appreciate if you wouldn't refer to me as your future wife." she responds with a slight frown, because whilst the future isn't exactly set in stone… it's both far too soon to consider marriage with anyone and rather rude since her opinion on the matter doesn't seem to be relevant.
Sasuke's brow furrows, though it's really a mere twitch of a facial muscle. "Your relationship with Shikamaru is a dalliance that I'll overlook, but it's not something you should expect to be permanent. You don't understand that we're meant together." is his reply, which is actually enough to make her insides itch with irritation.
"Why, Sasuke?" Sakura almost hisses, stepping forward and invading his personal space ̶ if he even has one ̶ in an act of intimidation and annoyance. His reaction is more positive than she would like it to be. "Why is it meant to be us?"
The year had started out relatively well, considering. She became an ANBU operative with her team, Neji moved in and team missions have been smooth so far. Group outings with Naruto and the others have been pleasant for the most part, with only light annoyances such as the inclusion of Ino. The Yamanaka heiress is trying to establish a friendship where the dynamics would be more of a posse than on equal standing. Sakura refuses to be ordered and dragged around by her, which appears to only be seen as a challenge.
If she ignores that among other nuisances, it has been a quiet year so far. Sasuke has to ruin it with his insistence on their future relationship, of course. Why can't he just stop? Why can't anyone in the Uchiha just stop?
He shifts, leaning close and staring with those damn eerie eyes of his again. There are whispers of passing civilians, but they're ignored.
"That's just how it is. When Shion-nee is ̶ " he cuts himself off, leaning back with a frown of confliction. "What's so wrong with me that you reject me so readily?" and it somewhat terrifies her that he's beginning to sound hurt… human, even.
Sakura blinks, mimicking his previous action of leaning back as a tight sensation grips her chest. She stares at the boy whom she always considered to be barely human, who in turn stares at her with a gaze that isn't entirely freakish. It's strange, to think that even Sasuke has feelings that can be hurt. She doesn't like it all that much, because it's too different than what she's spent years dealing with.
Her paranoia acts up, thinking that perhaps he's just acting. Then she wonders if he's even capable of acting human. "You're creepy, you stare too much and you're so adamant to be with me because of something your brother has told you. There's just… You make me uncomfortable in an unpleasant way." she answers without much thought, her straightforwardness making its appearance once more. There's more, if she really thinks about it, but it's a good enough summary as it is.
The Uchiha boy blinks. "Then mould me into someone you can be comfortable with in a pleasant way." is his confident reply, eliciting a surprise blink from her. "As long as it ends with you and me."
How horribly ominous, she thinks, feeling her face fall lax to reflect how done she feels. "I don't understand…" she murmurs with an aggravated sigh, internally repeating how much she wants to be done with the Uchiha in general. She's glad that she's only really known three so far. Others that have been spared from the massacre are around, but to her luck they're not aware of her existence. Not yet, anyway.
With less than a decade of experience under her belt, there's already so much drama and absurdity in her life to last at least two lifetimes. It's honestly quite tiring, really.
"Fine." Sakura concedes, a certain edge to her tone. "I have no plans of being with you in a romantic fashion anytime soon, but I could at least try to make you more of a human. I'm sure Naruto would appreciate the help."
That's right, she also has to deal with Naruto as well. He's been a little strange of late, even towards everyone in the group. Not as noticeably as how he's been treating Sasuke, but enough.
Sasuke's eyes widen, making him look more like a child rather than a horrific but pretty doll. Then his smile reverts him right back into the horrific but pretty doll, what a shame. "You'll learn to love me." he promises, much to her irritation.
Sakura clicks her tongue, already feeling the niggle of regret. "I doubt in the way you want me to, if ever." she sighs, poking him in the forehead hard enough to send him to the ground.
No matter how many times she enters the Uchiha compound, she can't get rid of the perpetual unease from the atmosphere surrounding the place. It's a mix of eeriness along with her general distaste of the way the residents stare and act towards her.
"Sakura-sama." a male, adult and familiar Uchiha greets her by the gate with a three-quarter bow. She blinks, attempting to put the name back onto the face. "It pleases us to see you visit so frequently. We do not get many visitors."
"I wonder why…" she replies with a deadpan, before the name of the Uchiha before her pops up in the surface of her mind. "Isamu-san." the same Uchiha that she met the first time Sasuke dragged her to this forsaken place. He had stared for minutes, as if surprised by her existence more than anything.
Isamu's dark, previously blank eyes liven up the slightest. "You remembered." he murmurs, before a smile slithers onto his face. It's a much smoother transition than Sasuke's, at the very least. "I am pleased that you do."
Her gut clenches just a little, but she returns the smile with one of her own. "It took me a while." she admits, beginning to walk with him as he escorts her to the main house. The Uchiha compound is like a small village within a village, though near the centre is where the majority of the massacre took place. No one has bothered to clean the blood up, so it's stained the pavement and the walls like a grim reminder.
Other Uchiha tend to pause in their sometimes questionable activities, drawn to the unusual pop of colour since they're all dark and gloomy in colour schemes and personality. They follow her with their intense, odd eyes until she can no longer be seen.
It does feel a little like an experience when on drugs, like Shion had once said. Shion's been sleeping longer of late, waking up for a few minutes to see what's up before going back to sleep. It's been a gradual process, but some part of Sakura feels uncomfortable with the development.
Shion has always been there, from the beginning. If that suddenly changed… what would happen then? She feels like the silence would probably consume her.
"It is Sasuke-sama's birthday today." Isamu reveals once the main house is in view. It's still a ways away, though. "Though we seldom celebrate birthdays, I have come upon information that entails the customs of friendship. If you would like, I could retrieve a suitable gift for him."
Isamu stares down at her, and for some reason she thinks he's like a particularly unnerving butler. He gives a slow blink, drawing her attention to the long eyelashes that seems to be common among the Uchiha. It's almost upsetting, how pretty they are.
"Ah… I'll just make him something." she answers, because she doesn't know what his definition of a suitable gift would be. "But thank you for offering."
The Uchiha nods and gives a slight bow, before resuming their journey. "You are welcome, Sakura-sama. Though we are seen in a negative light for our questionable personality traits, we do our best to cherish those whom accept us without going too far." he informs her, with a twitch of a smile. "It does not always work out, but at least we try."
Isamu's a little different from his clansmen, she thinks. They're all bizarre, but there is a sense of serenity from the man beside her. Like she could sit down with him and only feel a little uncomfortable.
"Do all Uchiha have an obsession?" she questions him, because it's something that's been noted but not exactly expanded upon. If she remembers what Shisui said, they could be rid of the obsession with some serious conditioning. Although Shion's methods sort of messed Shisui up even more. At least he functions.
"Not all. We are just more susceptible to becoming consumed by our affections to a troubling scale. It is often an irreversible effect, but those like Shisui-sama have been known to move past it. Most of us understand that it is a regrettable trait to possess, but it is something hardwired into our genes. You could say that is our curse." Isamu stares ahead, appearing to be contemplative. "It is dangerous to destroy the obsession of an Uchiha, as they will only descend further into the pit of madness that looms over us all."
She hums, finding the information helpful and something to think on. "The obsession could be anything, couldn't it? Even an ideal?" she queries, just to be sure.
He nods in confirmation. "It could be a book, a house or whatever takes their fancy. Of course, the common obsessions are other people and the Sharingan. Both are considered dangerous, as it can often escalate to devastating effects. Itachi-sama is an example. I believe that his obsession is freedom and the very same person who taught it to him, but the Elders and his father were attempting to tie him down. I assume that is what led him to committing the massacre that night."
Sakura tilts her head in thought, as it does make sense if she thinks about it. Their first meeting did consist of his monologue of freedom and Shion, after all. Her attention and gaze then shifts over to Isamu, deciding to examine him further.
His hair is waist-length, tied in a loose ponytail with his bangs concealing nearly the entirety of the right side of his face. With those long eyelashes, he could pass off as a tall and beautiful woman if it weren't for the masculinity in his long face. His eyes slide down to meet hers, probably having felt her staring.
She doesn't feel all that remorseful, considering how much the Uchiha stare at her. "You're still eerie like the rest of your clansmen, but there's something less intense about you." Sakura briefly explains. Well, the ones she's most informed about are all insane but she had been in the mind that insanity was just a natural phenomenon with all Uchiha. She may have been wrong.
Isamu gives her a soft smile and it's only a little disconcerting, thankfully. "I find myself pleased with your honesty. You may think me different to the main family as they are all of a pure heritage, whilst myself among others of the branch family are considered impure. Though the Uchiha genes are aggressively predominant, foreign genes can lessen the negativities of our clan's blood. As you would expect, inbreeding has only led to the strengthening of our genetic defects."
"That makes so much sense now." she laughs, finding herself at the entrance to the main house. "You've been helpful in expanding my knowledge of the Uchiha, Isamu-san. Thank you for that."
The man himself bows, humble almost. "You are welcome, Sakura-sama. I wish you good luck with your continued association of our clan." when he straightens back up, his smile is one laced with ominous knowing and perhaps a small bit of pity.
Sakura lets out a tired sigh. "Yeah," she replies as she sees Sasuke staring at her from the entrance of his house, "me too."
If he were looking at her through a window, he could pass off as a ghost child from a horror movie.
"I swear to all things awesome that you're sneaking in tomatoes and I'm not cool with that, you damn bastard!" Naruto exclaims from the kitchen, with the sounds of clattering kitchenware following soon after. "You don't put cherry tomatoes in ramen!"
"I'm telling you that they were already there, Naruto. You need to stop accusing me for mistakes of the manufacturers." Sasuke retorts with his no-nonsense monotone, even though he's 'talking shit' as Shion would say. "You can pick them out, can't you?"
She stands by the entrance of the unnecessarily large kitchen belonging to the Namikaze house, finding pans and spoons and whatever else scattered everywhere with forks and knives embedded in the walls. Naruto and Sasuke are staring down one another in the midst of the chaos whilst the ramen continues to cook on the stove.
"You understand nothing about the finer details of ramen." Naruto seethes, because whilst he's generally a charismatic ball of fun… she's learnt that ramen is sacred and some like tomatoes in ramen is blasphemy to him. "Nothing, you hear me?"
Whilst one part of her is tired of their constant bickering, another part is just so triumphant that she's even managed to get them to this point. It's taken nearly the entirety of the past few months so far, with so much time and effort put into dealing with Sasuke and his friendship problems.
Then there's the fact that the lounge room is tense, because Neji and Hinata are in the same space and Ino's begun flirting ̶ if whatever she's been doing can be considered flirting ̶ with Sai who's really just not interested. What happened to Chouji and Ino again? She doesn't know.
Relationships are so tiring, but at least Shikamaru's presence doesn't actively drain her energy.
"How did you get to this point?" she queries with a sigh as she dares to enter the warzone, looking up at the ceiling to see a spoon with some stray noodle hanging up there. "I suppose I can guess, though…"
The two boys turn to her, and the way each of their eyes light up is unsettling in their own special ways. She's starting to think that Sasuke's eyes are a starting to become a little like Kakashi's, which is really a terrifying thought because Sasuke would be the kind of puppy you'd find surrounded by dead rabbits.
She needs to fix that real soon, she decides. Naruto, on the other hand, just seems to gain energy from simply looking upon her form. It's probably because of the resemblance to his deceased aunt, which is somewhat disturbing but it's… better if she's to compare.
"Sakura-chan! This turd snuck cherry tomatoes into the ramen and that just completely ruins the taste of the broth, but he's denying it like the liar he is." Naruto steps forward, draping an arm around her shoulders as he's prone to do. "This is a great personal offence, you know?"
Sasuke tilts his head a certain way, which really says that Naruto is an inferior species. It's awkward and rigid, with nothing signifying that it's a natural movement. Trying to have him develop an actual personality with his body language reflecting said personality is really, really difficult.
"I refuse to repeat myself. You'll just have to deal with it, Naruto." then he smirks, though it's also strange because there's barely any other expression on his face. How socially stunted can one person be?
The boy leaning on her blinks, then turns to her with a slight frown of concern and something else. "God, he's such a social retard." he sighs dramatically, eliciting abrupt laughter to burst out of her mouth.
She bumps against him in her amused momentum, before she manages to calm herself. "Yeah, but we're making progress. Albeit slowly." Sakura sighs, almost fondly.
Sasuke throws a fork, which she catches on reflex before it hits Naruto's face. The Uchiha heir twitches, meaning he's somewhat irritated with the outcome. She flicks the fork back at him, but he doesn't flinch as it just misses his face. "Kindly remove yourself from Sakura, as the sight of you together is something I find to be immensely displeasing."
Naruto's immediate reaction is to contort his expression into a smug, mocking grin. "Good." he cackles, before actually managing to pick her up and flee from the kitchen in one swift movement. "Suffer, you bastard! Suffer!"
Sakura holds onto the blonde, feeling quite used to this scenario. It says something, no doubt. "What about your ramen?" she inquires, looking over his shoulder to find the discomforting image of Sasuke running after them with a look of intense concentration.
"One of the caretakers will handle it!" he assures her, bursting into the lounge room where all the others are. "Shikamaru! I demand you smother your girlfriend with all the affection you've got!"
Shikamaru cracks an eye open, his body laid out over one of the many couches. "Is it to piss Sasuke off?" is his first sleepy question. Typical. When Naruto grins as a nonverbal answer of confirmation, the Nara sits up and holds his arms out. "Give her to me."
"I don't appreciate any of this." she comments in mid-air, having just been thrown to someone. There's a split-second where she can see Shikamaru's eyes widen with panic, but she lands on the couch without touching him with ease since she would be a disgrace as a ninja if she couldn't do that. Their faces are closer than she expected, prompting them both to blink before they smile at one another. "Hey, there."
"Fancy seeing you here." is his amused reply.
"Entirely inappropriate." Neji sneers as Sasuke bursts into the room and slams into Naruto, beginning a spontaneous brawl on the floor of the lounge. "What is this? It's chaotic."
Sakura sits down on the couch beside the lazy Nara heir. "Just go with it, otouto." she advises, tracing the slight cut above her couch companion's eyebrow. When did he get that, she wonders? "To fight against the absurdity is something that only ends in pain."
She smiles when she hears Neji's frustrated sigh, since he doesn't enjoy being referred to as a little brother in public. It amuses her, for both that reason and because she's actually the youngest of her siblings.
"So this is fun." says Sai with that pleasant tone to his voice, with a feminine giggle responding to his words. "You are too close, Ino-san, it is upsetting to both myself and to Chouji-san. Do you not feel his suffering stare burning into your back?"
Shikamaru sighs, leaning back against the couch. "It just gets more and more troublesome, doesn't it?" he drawls, looking up at the ceiling.
Sakura hums, feeling the small tug of a smile. "It's… lively at least."
"I win, ha! Suck it, Uchiha!"
She notes that the end of the year is near, which makes her realise just how busy it's been. Not as intensive as last year during ANBU training, but certainly draining nonetheless. If she thinks back on the year, she also notes how inactive Shion has been.
"I'm still around, sugar plum." Shion's scratchy voice startles her. "I've just been content to chill, you know, like the dead and all. I don't think I've ever really had the time to relax and just be content to exist without worry, since I was in ANBU and it was during a war, yeah. Besides, you don't need me to experience your entire life with you, right?"
Sakura supposes that she can agree. It would be rather tiring to live multiple lives without having ever experienced the peace of death, she'd think.
The caw of a crow draws her attention, prompting her to turn and see the dark avian flying towards her. She watches as it lands beside her on the roof, before it hops onto her leg and proceeds to give her a beady stare.
There's a note attached to its leg, which she grabs and slowly unfurls it to see its contents. Her stomach clenches in discomfort, though she hopes her expression is wiped of emotion. Who knows if he's using the crow's eyes to see her.
I should hope that you still think of me as I often think of you. Until we meet again.
That would sound romantic if it wasn't from a terrifying teenaged psychopath whom she doesn't really want to be seen associating with. There's a storage seal at the bottom of the paper that she supposes she should activate, though apprehension pulls at her. She doesn't know what she'll be greeted with, but she decides that she might as well find out so she pushes some chakra into the seal.
It glows for a moment, shifting into a different alignment before its contents pops into existence. She automatically catches it, then blinks when she realises it's a bouquet of shions with a peculiar garnet shade to their petals.
"He's in Kirigakure, yeah." Shion yawns, apparently familiar with the origins of garnet shions. "They dye the flowers red in remembrance of all the lives lost there, or some shit like that. Can't remember that much, you know?"
The crow caws, pecking at the paper and probably reminding her to burn it. She does so, before struggling with indecision to thank the crow or not.
"I… like the flowers…" she forces out, with a pained expression and a knotted stomach. Really, she doesn't want to appreciate any gesture that Itachi makes. It's strange and uncomfortable. It also probably encourages him with his ways and that's just unacceptable. "Thank you…"
With a caw of farewell, the bird pushes off to return to its master. Sakura watches it fly away, then shifts her gaze to the moon. It'll be a new moon soon.
"I think it's time I went to sleep." Sakura sighs, hoping for a few hours of reprieve from all the drama in her life.
Chapter Word Count: 3,943
Total Word Count: 36,021
Targeted Word Count: 1,667
A/N: Dear Jesus, I nearly died. Writing every day is slowly killing me and my sleep. So each segment were a few months apart, which will probably be the format for the next few chapters until canon. Maybe. Who knows. Let me die now.
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