A/N: YAY!! I GOT MY COMPUTER BACK!! SORRY FOR THE WAIT!!

13

Sasuke swallowed hard at the thought of what awaited him outside his bedroom door, in the kitchen. Namely: dinner.

"Oh, shut up!" He snapped down the phone line. "You'd be nervous too if you had my dad!"

Neji continued to laugh hartily. "I thought you said your dad's cooking is delicious?"

"It is when it's edible."

" . . . Sorry, you lost me there."

Sasuke sighed. "Dad's a great cook when the food is edinble. He likes to experiment a lot, so sometmes he could be trying a recipe for, I don't know, a seafood platter or something and it turns into gravy."

" . . ."

"Thick gravy. The kind that's hard to swallow."

"SASUKE!! DINNER!"

"Well, I'm off to meet my doom. I'll talk to you later if I'm still alive." And he hung up on Neji as the long-haired boy continued to laugh at him.

Seven minutes later, Sasuke found out that his father had indeed, attempted to make something and ended up with thick gravy.

"Um, Sasuke?"

Sasuke looked up from attempting to shovel a pathway out of his food to look at his father. "Yeah, what's up?"

"Well, um . . . if you don't like the food, I can make you something else; we've got lots of leftovers in the fridge . . ."

The fourteen year old leant back in his seat aa he put down his cutlery and looked the older man in the eye. "That's not what you were going to say. Spit it out, Dad, it can't be that bad."

Kakashi sighed, pushed away his meal and his knife and fork, slouching back into his seat with his eyes closed, as if he was thinking deeply. Seeming to come to a decision, he leant over the table with his forearms resting on it and looked his son in the eyes.

Lots of people were creeped out by Kakahsi's eyes, the right one liquid onyx black, exactly like Sasukes', the left one a bright blood red. Sasuke didn't mind, his dad was unique through and through, from his mismatched eyes, to his lazy and carefree attitude, to his eccentric cooking and Sasuke never once wished he could be raised by someone else. He just wished a few other people would realise that.

"Well . . . God, how do I start this . . . ? Well, Sasuke, do you remember much about your grandfather?"

Sasuke frowned as he thought. A few hazy memories played in his mind, he wasn't even sure if those were real or not. The only ones that were solid were the day of Sakumo's funeral and when they visited him in hospital the day he died, when he gave Sasuke the white teddy bear that was currently sitting on his bed. Yes, he still had that teddy bear and no, he was not embarrassed by it.

Realising his father was waiting for an answer, Sasuke shook his head and said, "No, not besides when he gave me Sakumo." Yes, he named the thing after his grandfather.

Kakashi knew Sasuke must have remembered more than that, but he wouldn't say because that was a touchy subject with him and Sasuke didn't want to upset him.

"But you do know how he wasn't . . . uh . . . you know," he struggled to find a way to say this diplomatically, but no way was apparent so he just said it anyway. "He wasn't happy when you were born. He thought I'd screwed up my life basically."

Sasuke shrugged. Yeah, he knew it.

"Well . . . after that happened, because you were illegitimate and everything, he wanted me to get married as soon as I turned eighteen. Obviously, that didn't happen, but I was talking to Zabuza, and he thought that if we-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Sasuke yelled, holding his hands up in a halting gesture. "Hold on a second, slow down and continue."

Kakashi took a deep breath and did as his son asked. "All right. Because you're fourteen years old, you have the right to choose who you want to live with, right? So the only way you'll end up with Mikoto is if the court finds me to be an unfit parent. With me so far?"

Sasuke nodded, with a frown on his face, still unsure of exactly where this was going.

"You see, Zabuza's been looking at past cases and found out that the courts tend to favour sending a child to a home with two parents. In custody battles like this, oh, say, a father and a stepmother over an unmarried mother. So . . ."

Sasukes' jaw dropped. NOW he knew what this was all about.

Kakashi carried on talking, totally oblivious to the expression on the teenage boy's face. "So, we both thought, to make the case stronger, I should . . . you know . . . get married."

When Kakashi looked up, Sasuke had already slumped back into his seat and had begun to shovel the gooey stuff that was his dinner. "So? What do you think?"

Sasuke held out a spoon of said gooey stuff for his father to observe. "I think you shouldn't experiment with your cooking for her anytime soon." (1)

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Sasuke dialled the number quickly and put the mobile to his ear, waiting impatiently for his friend to answer.

"Yo, the Jokers little sis is on the line."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "For Christs Sake, Shitumi quit saying that every time you answer your phone."

"Dude, have you seen The Dark Night? I swear to God, I thought someone had been stalking my brother."

"Does your brother wear make-up?"

"No. Not unless Nojiko's uncle gets to him. Then he's powerless to defend himself."

". . . Wonderful. And yes, you know I saw that movie, Shitumi, we went to the movies to see it together. You started shrieking about your brother and the Joker as soon as he stabbed that pencil into the other guys' eye."

"Dimitri would do that. You admitted it yourself. I am the Jokers little sister."

"Right, right, now shut up and listen. My plan worked, Dad says he wants to get married."

". . . "

"Shitumi? You okay?"

". . . Hmm? Oh, yeah, that's great. Well done."

". . . What happened?"

Sasuke heard a quiet rasping sound and started. "Shitumi, are you actually crying?"

"No, I was choking."

"You didn't answer the first question. What's wrong?"

". . . Kiba and I broke up."

". . . Shit, really?"

"Yeah. Ever since the dance . . . well, he was acting weird and I realised Hinata was the one he really wanted. He didn't cheat on me or anything, but he wasn't as happy with me as he would've been with her."

". . . Geez, I'm sorry, Shitumi."

"It's okay, he's still my Kiba-baka. Anyway, I'll be o- AH! WHAT THE HELL?! DIMITRI!!! DID YOU FORGET TO PAY THE ELECTRIC BILL?!!"

"What happened?"

"All the freaking powers out!! Oh, no, wait a light's still on in the- backyard?!"

"I didn't know you had a light in your back garden. I didn't even know you had a back garden."

"I don't have a light in my- OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!! DIMITRI!! ARE YOU INSAANE?!!"

Over the phone, Sasuke could here Shitumi's older brother say in his monotone, "You said I was the Joker. And he burnt a pile of money so-"

"YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD?!!!!"

"Yeah. Isn't it pretty?"

"AS IF WE AREN'T BROKE ALREADY!!! ...It is pretty though."

Sasuke chuckled lightly. Those two . . . each one of a kind and perfectly suited as brother and sister. Even if Sasuke sometimes thinks Shitumi should have been born first.

"Is that the little emo kid?"

Sasuke jumped as he heard Dimitri on the phone, addressing him. Shitumi must have given it to him as she admired the "pretty" fire. "It's Sasuke." He answered.

"Good. Tell the little dog boy if I ever catch him making Shitumi cry again, I'll go over to his house and chop off his limbs and send them to his pretty sister. Understand?"

". . . Kiba's "pretty" sister."

"Yeah. Hana's hot."

And he hung up. Sasuke stared at the wall for a minute or too as he debated with himself on whether or not he should tell Gaara. He decided that yes he should.

So, four minutes later . . .

"YESSS!!"

"Oh, God, my ears!!"

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A/N: I tried to make it long. Or, longer, than usual.

(1) Yes, I am a W.I.T.C.H fan.