Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto or any of the characters or concepts within it. I don't own Onimeno-sensei either; he's from another series entirely, and is merely twisted around to fit the premise of this story.
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The Eyes Have It
Chapter 14: Awkward
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"So, writing to your friends already?" Kiba asked, when Sakura was too far away to discretely discourage him. She closed her eyes and banged her forehead lightly against Shino's shoulder as they brushed down the horses.
"I've never had any friends before," Minoru told the ninja with a horrible sincerity. "So no. And Mother says that until father is rid of his current wife and marries her, I am not allowed to contact her. These are merely for calligraphy practice."
"…oh." Kiba cleared his throat uncomfortably, aware of how big a blunder he had made, even if the younger boy seemed blissfully unaware. "Uh, well, that's good too." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked around the rather empty campsite. Their teacher and her partner were somewhere out in the woods, but the main force of guards had left to hunt for game.
A stilted silence settled.
"I cheated at Jan-Ken-Pon," Kiba suddenly blurted. "The guilt is killing me, so I'm going to take over for the animals. You stay with the client Sakura." And then he scurried over, tail between his legs as he accepted the angry cuff that was his due.
After one last glare Sakura handed him the brush and made her way over to where Minoru was seated in his now open carriage, a portable desk set before him. "My teammate is an idiot," she said, half in apology and half because it was, as she and Shino agreed, essentially fact.
"He's honest, at least," Minoru said politely, as though Kiba hadn't come up with the most bald-faced lie to escape the awkwardness he had caused by putting his foot in his mouth. All ninja cheated at Jan-Ken-Pon.
"Mm," Sakura said neutrally, sitting down beside him. "Are you and your mom…close?"
"…I would not say so," Minoru said, frowning thoughtfully at the character he had just drawn. "She cherished me, as I was an undeniable connection to Father, but it was always…"
"Distantly smothering?" Sakura finished for him, lightly running her finger across the rich paper to show him where one of his strokes wasn't quite slanted enough. "Impersonally selfish?"
"…yes." Minoru blinked up at her, his blue eyes wide and amazed. "Exactly so. I…even before Father wanted me, Mother was obsessed with making me into the perfect heir. I was not permitted to play with other children. She told me that they were not my peers—they were below me." His grip tightened on the ornamented brush before he wet it and tried again on a fresh sheet of paper. "They were fit to be servants, she said. But I could not lower myself. Father might disapprove."
"In my experience," Sakura said slowly, dangling her legs from the carriage. "Most noblemen do spend their youths playing around with servant boys. That's how they choose their vassals."
"Mother always had these thoughts in her head," Minoru said quietly, his hand and voice steady. "Of what I should be, and what would happen in the future. Not 'should' happen—would. There were no other options, to her."
"You think otherwise?" Sakura asked, glancing at him with unseen sympathy.
"…Father's wife is very healthy," Minoru said. "And the rumor that she was barren has been floating around since she was a girl. He had to have known. But he married her. He's been married to her for years. I…I think Mother is going to be waiting alone for a very long time."
Before she knew what she was doing, Sakura's arm was raised to draw him into a hug, the way she might for one of Akemi or Tubaki's children if they had gotten scared in the middle of the night. Her brain caught up with the unprofessional move, though, and her arm returned to her side just as she heard the guards return. No matter what her personal feelings might be, no matter how she might identify with him, she couldn't blatantly breech protocol to comfort him.
Her fingers curled into a loose fist as she rose to give one of the guards her spot and moved to rejoin her teammates, who had since moved on to tending to the oxen.
Minoru's eyes followed her for a moment, thoughtful.
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Days later, they ended up stopping at a nice, flourishing hot springs resort.
"Can every mission be like this from now on?" Sakura asked wistfully as Kurenai gently washed her back. "Please? I haven't gotten this much of a vacation since Tsutomu-oniisama got officially declared clan heir two years ago."
"You mentioned something like that," Kurenai noted, finishing up and gathering their towels as they made their way to the ladies' pools. "Is he one of the cousins older than you, or younger?"
"He's the eldest of our generation," Sakura explained. "Only a few years older than me. It was a bit weird, actually…but recently, I'm wondering if the reason Sofu-sama waited so long was to see if I would stick with being a ninja or contest the claim."
Kurenai stared. "I…wasn't aware that was a possibility."
"Well, I'm the firstborn's firstborn. In Iron, as long as you have the right blood, an 'honorable' nature, and marry well, you can definitely inherit." Sakura shrugged as she slipped into the water. "I never really thought I was in the running, or wanted to be, but I could have probably claimed precedence, if I had Sofu-sama's backing." She had plenty of time on the road, and had done a lot of thinking recently on her family and things she might have missed. Thinking of herself as a possible heir-candidate—and Hideki's supposed 'favorite', though she still wasn't entirely certain that was true—cast an entirely new light on her childhood.
It was a bitter feeling, but all Yutaka's support, all his subtle and not-so-subtle methods to nudge her and his sons together, painted a rather different picture. Even his at the time innocuous questions about her love life, questions he had brushed off as teasing, took a darker tone. A marriage to one of his sons would give Yutaka much more political sway and prestige as the father-in-law of the current Clan Head than he currently had as merely the third son of the current Head.
Sakura blew out a sigh, which frothed the hot water as it bubbled to the surface. Then she sat up, so her head and shoulders were out. "I don't really enjoy talking about it," Sakura admitted, looking over at her relaxed teacher.
"Then don't," Kurenai told her, smiling kindly. Sakura fidgeted and looked away. The loss of her sunglasses made her feel more naked than the loss of her clothes. It was irrational, since Kurenai had been with her to almost every single appointment she had ever scheduled with Onimeno, but she couldn't help it.
Kurenai seemed to sense some of her discomfort and the source, and placed a hand on the younger girl's shoulder. "You shouldn't let your uncle's words weigh on you like this. We both know you're better than that. Than him."
"I just…" Sakura sighed. "My mom was brought up the same way as him, you know? Him calling me…that might not matter twenty years from now, but…but if she does too? I…I don't know if I could handle it, Sensei."
"If I recall correctly," Kurenai said, "And I believe I do, as I did ask Asuma, your mother essentially ran away from home to marry a ninja. And she managed to wrangle out your grandfather's blessing sometime before the wedding, to the point where he could actually be adopted into the clan. And you can't forget, Sakura; she's lived in Konoha for even longer than you have; she remembers a time when the Uchiha clan ran the police force, and more likely than not saw them in action and saw the prestige they had."
"She might have found it a bit too close to what she had left behind," Sakura tried, though it was merely an attempt to grasp at her last few pessimistic straws. Haruno Mebuki was a stubborn, forthright woman, a woman who stuck to her morals and didn't judge anyone on anything other than their choices and actions. She had even been nice to Naruto in a casual sort of way when he was younger, though she had grown cooler and sterner towards him since he had begun unleashing village-wide pranks.
Yutaka had always been fixated on appearance; he always told Sakura how pretty she was, how much prettier she would become, bought her pretty things and so on. His honeyed words had been a balm to her, during the years when she had been tormented for her hair color and her forehead. Ino had never seemed to like him very much, and it had been one of the first things they had ever quarreled about, long before Sasuke had ever entered the picture.
Hindsight was 20-20, she supposed, and she leaned back against the rocks surrounding the spring with a rueful smile. "You're right," she admitted. "Mom probably won't take issue with it. And if it can be carried on, Dad will be thrilled to have something better than bizarrely dominant pink hair to tag on to the family name."
"I did wonder about that," Kurenai murmured, ducking her head sheepishly. "You really got it from your father?"
"Dad likes to say that all the really dangerous things in life are brightly colored," Sakura said with a shrug. "Also that people only ever make the mistake of underestimating you because of it once on the battlefield. And just once."
"Your father sounds like a very interesting man," Kurenai noted.
"Did Asuma-san tell you that too?" Sakura teased, before her grin grew fond and bashful. "But yeah…he's the best. Well, when he's not telling horrible jokes, but I think most dads are like that, in Konoha at least. We love him anyways."
"I'm sure you do," Kurenai agreed, sitting back as a companionable silence descended.
"…do you think Genma's let Shino kill Kiba yet?"
"I'm certain he would do no such thing, but it's…"
"Quiet."
"Yes."
"Too quiet?"
"For their continued health and well-being, I pray that is not the case."
"Oh, they won't peep," Sakura said with confidence. "I'm absolutely certain of that."
"Oh?" Kurenai raised an eyebrow. "And why, exactly, would that be?"
"Simple." Sakura raised her hand and extended a single finger. "One, Shino knows very well what my common response to perverts is, and not even his colony can take that sort of beating. The costs aren't worth the benefits." A second finger went up. "Two, Kiba knows that I wouldn't hesitate to rat him out to his sister and mom. And then he would be killed or neutered in his sleep or something equally unpleasant." A third finger went up. "And that brings us to three, which is that if anyone else over on that side tries to peep, Shino and Kiba will destroy them."
"…you raise some very good points," Kurenai conceded.
A moment later they heard a door slide open and the expected chatter of the boys, marked here and there by a low grumble from one of the guards, a sigh from Genma, and the soft, high inquiries of Minoru. Sakura and Kurenai shared a look, then laughed.
"Am I going to be like this all the time?" Sakura asked, rubbing a hand over her face but still grinning despite herself. "Pessimistic and assuming the worst when things are peaceful?"
"No," Kurenai shook her head, a strange undertone tagging on to her smile. "No, you think of the worst, prepare for the best, and then you do your best to handle anything and everything that comes in between."
Though she had a sneaking suspicion that, in the years to come, Sakura and her teammates would be the cause for that feeling for many, many unfortunate enemy shinobi. They were a potent, volatile mix, but Kurenai knew they would go far.
She was warming to the idea more and more each day, but knowing that someday they would be thrust into a position where the village would neither support nor save them if they got caught was a difficult pill for any teacher to swallow.
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Chapter Word Count: 2,038
Total Word Count: 26,467
Targeted Word Count: 23,334
Another slightly late update…sorry! Also, for readers who are just now catching up and haven't looked at the earlier author's note, this story is updated once a day, everyday, for this entire month.That means all of this is posted as soon as I write it, with no editing, and when November ends, so will this story. Timeline wise, it won't really hit the Chuunin Exams. There isn't really going to be a 'pairing'; this is a story about Sakura dealing with a twist in her life. Also, she will be twelve throughout the story. I'd rather not write out a romance for a twelve-year-old, killer-in-training or otherwise.
I probably will write a sequel, or a sidefic, or drabbles from this universe that I didn't have time to put in the main story. And I will definitely be going back to rewrite and edit this story. But I don't know when; I still have quite a while to go with Where the Heart is, so who knows when I'll get around to everything. But I promise, I will. There's just too much backstory to go through to clarify everything for me not to.
And we're still not to the halfway point yet!
Anyways, thanks once again to Aaron Nowack, Guest, Lazalie, Ace Clover, eirame, sumiku agaishi, Haze Be It, blacKStreek, Ynnah, Wandering the Arid Sea, InARealPickle, Chandagnac, MoonShadow396, Angurvddel, Guest(#2), musicmiss18, romantiscue, Nothing Gold, Andelevion, Toreh, mir, Higanbana.4 for the reviews. And especially thank you all for the feedback and mistakes you guys find the time to tell me. When the Era of Editing rolls around, these will definitely be taken into consideration.
Well, see you all next time, when we hit the halfway point!