Kanami heard the uncharacteristic knock on her door and set her lip brush down gently. Seems he was finally able to use the door rather than the window. She looked at her reflection in the mirror: curled violet hair, shocking teal eyes accented with a wing of black, succulent lips stained with pink. She'd picked out a pastel yellow shirt that wrapped around to hug her bountiful chest and slim waist, then paired it with blue pants that hugged her hips just as well and ended tastefully above her knees with delicate white ruffles on the hem. The yellow brought out both the vibrant colors of her hair and eyes without overpowering them. She looked good. Of course, she looked good; she needed to—Sasuke was here to end everything.

She'd received a message from him via one of his hawks asking when she'd be home midday so they could end things. She'd replied that the day after next would be her day off, and that she had planned to be home for a bit before going out if he chose to stop by or not; she wouldn't rearrange her schedule to be broken up with. She also wouldn't be broken up with while looking like a tired wretch. Kanami had decided that she would look her absolute best, as if however the conversation was going to go, she wouldn't be affected in the slightest. He was going to look her in the eye, see her resounding beauty, and knife her in the heart with his words; shouldn't be too difficult for a murdering shinobi. Part of her hoped that he would see her and change his mind, ask her to marry him on the spot; his clan symbol wouldn't look good with the cut of this particular shirt, but she had other clothing items where it would fit nicely. The other part of her laughed at the futility of her sentimental heart. Sasuke hadn't been swayed once by her beauty. His missive had been very clear that they were over and that ending things in person rather than through a message was just decency. And so, she'd picked out one of her best outfits and had done her makeup; her appearance would be her shield against the heartbreak. She refused to cry in front of him with a fresh face.

Double checking that not a hair or thread was out of place, Kanami rose from her vanity and made her way slowly down the hall to her front door. For how he had dashed her dreams, he could wait at the door for as long as she felt like making him. She opened to see Sasuke standing there as regal as ever in his civilian clothing of a high collared blue shirt with his family crest emblazoned proudly on the back and black shinobi pants. His hair stood at its familiar angles, bangs accentuating the chiseled cut of his cheekbones and jaw. It was almost insulting that he managed to look so good with no effort. It was infuriating that he had put little effort into his appearance when coming to see her, as if breaking a woman's heart was an everyday occurrence. But more importantly, as if breaking her heart was as trivial as shopping in the marketplace.

"Kanami," His strong baritone filled her ear. Whereas it usually cultivated desire, today his smooth voice was like the fabled snake whispering lies before it struck with its deadly venom.

"Sasuke," She replied flippantly. She turned, leaving him at the doorway with no actual permission to enter her home, and walked to her kitchen. She grabbed a teapot and a measured-out packet of tea leaves while listening to the almost inaudible shuffle of him removing his shoes at the entrance. When he appeared in her living room, she held up the teapot.

"Should we continue with pleasantries?" Her lips tipped in a haughty display. Sasuke shook his head; he wanted to get this over with as quickly as she did.

Setting the teapot down, Kanami walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, squaring off against him as she'd seen shinobi do in the exam arena. Sasuke watched as she set her shoulders in a show of strength. As she prepared herself now, he had already prepared for what he should have done months ago. Letting this drag on for so long was his fault.

"I was given my list and my clan expects me to be formally engaged in 2 months. Our arrangement ends here." Sasuke waited for her to speak. He could admit that he could have some sympathy for her. He had formed no attachment to her, but she clearly had an attachment to him. He wondered if her heart would be more bruised or her ego. Would she be more upset about losing him, or having to start over in her goal of having a shinobi husband with clout in the village?

"So your clan speaks, and you're going to bow down to them. How well trained you are," She taunted, hoping that her words would wound him. She cursed herself for sounding more scathing than nonchalant, but she kept her face as pleasant as she could. As usual, he gave her nothing. No remorse. No guilt. No anger. Not even the barest raise of his eyebrow. Just the blank emotionless gaze she knew was characteristic of the Uchiha clan. But she knew he couldn't be as emotionless as he portrayed himself. She needed to switch tactics, and she knew just what to attack.

"You never had any intention of marrying me, did you?" She continued, faking sadness, though she knew the real hurt would come after he left.

Sasuke prevented the frown from showing on his lips. Now began the rehashing of everything. "You knew this was temporary and that I would follow my clan's wishes."

"Right. Of course." Kanami blinked back the fake tears she could command on cue. She'd perfected crying at the drop of a hat at a young age, after having realized that her parents were more moved by her tears than her fits of rage. Inwardly, Kanami smirked and delivered her chosen blow. "So you're ending things with Sakura then."

Initially, he gave her nothing, only staring back with his deep black eyes, but she'd been expecting that. To hurt him, she'd need to keep picking at it.

"No."

"And why is that?" She pressed, already beginning to hear the irritation in his voice.

"We have a different agreement. This isn't news to you either." Sasuke crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed dangerously.

Good. He was reacting much faster than even she would have guessed. Kanami twisted faux confusion with haughty smugness into her next words: "If you're preparing to court another woman, I don't understand why you aren't ending things with Sakura too. Seems like it would make the most sense to purge your premarital affairs at the same time. I would think—"

"You don't need to think. It's no longer any of your business what I do or don't do," Sasuke cut off her words sharply. Whatever Kanami believed he should or shouldn't do wasn't any of his concern. The only reason he'd come to the civilian district was because it would have been rude to end their arrangement through one of his hawks or to never see her again; that was the only courtesy he was giving her. He turned and began walking towards the door, done with the conversation that had easily worn thin as trick wire.

Fury heated her entire body. How dare he turn his back on her?! Kanami scoffed in disbelief and tossed her hair over her shoulder. The violet curls bounced down the length of her back. "I pity the poor girl who has to compete with Haruno Sakura for your attention."

Sasuke stopped and turned back to her. 'Bingo,' Kanami's mind congratulated her on getting some reaction from him. She'd lament about the pink-haired hag being the one thing to draw such a response from him later. Now, she'd celebrate her victory.

"My wife will have my fidelity," Sasuke's voice cut through the air like the lethal steel of a katana. He'd tolerate her hurt; he could understand that. But he refused to allow her to pretend that she had entered into their agreement ignorant of the terms. He was always clear that there was no future in any time he spent with a woman bearing any family name besides Uchiha. 'Civilian women,' his inner voice nearly growled. Luckily, he wouldn't have to deal with them again.

"Oh, she'll have your body, but Sakura will have your heart. You should tell that to your little Uchiha wife," she spit in a waspish rasp. Some signal flashed in her head, whispered a warning not to cut too deep and risk slicing her own heart to ribbons. As much as she was yelling at Sasuke, when she had time to reflect, she would realize that she was cursing her own stupidity at falling for a man so clearly in love with someone else. She wondered if all of the women who had ever loved Uchiha Sasuke felt as stupid as she did now when he ended things. Had they also so foolishly ignored the standard by which they were measured, thinking that if they just held on long enough, they could dethrone Sakura for his affection?

She pitied his future wife, this woman she didn't even know. While she had only wasted a year of her life, that woman was bound to live the rest of hers miserably, wanting a man who could never love her, always trying to measure up to the great Haruno Sakura—and always failing. No woman would ever affect Uchiha Sasuke like that pink-haired harpy. They were all fooling themselves to believe otherwise.

Worst of all, Sakura didn't even see the carnage she wreaked on others.

Sasuke's frigid tone pulled her out of her thoughts. "My responsibilities to my clan will always come first."

His patience had run out. He turned and walked towards the door.

Kanami watched him walk away, walk right out of her life without so much as a backward glance. The Uchiha emblem mocking her torment the entire time she couldn't take her eyes away from his back. It was finally over. Tears started to slip slowly down her cheek like the early sprinkles before a pouring rainstorm. They'd ruin her makeup, she vaguely acknowledged but didn't have enough energy to care how she would look with streams of black mixing with the tears. She let them fall unimpeded because he never turned around to see.

Her muscles felt weary. The sun streaming through her windows was much too bright. The happy tune of bird caws mocked her despair. Kanami stripped her clothing as she walked towards her bedroom; she'd care later about the mess of each garment lying scattered about. She closed her bedroom door and drew her curtains tight, blocking out the cheery sunlight. She slipped into the cool sheets and pulled them up to her nose. Finally, she let herself cry out her broken heart.

As she cried, her mind flashed through memory after memory of their time together. Her grip on the blankets tightened as she recalled how his hands had felt running through her thick hair. How serenely handsome he was in the moonlight as he slept. The beautiful tip of his lips when he found something amusing. She cried as if the streams of tears would wash away the aching hole in her heart or the barbed wire tightening around her stomach. She sniffed to fight the mucus running down her nose. Her sheets didn't smell like him, her mind registered, as if he was never there, and that hurt even more; the fact that she had nothing physical to remind her that he had ever been there in the first place, though he had dominated her thoughts as surely as if it had been a physical space.

That brought her to the realization of what had always been there, so obvious that she'd been completely oblivious—Sasuke had desire, lust, but lacked any true passion and yearning for her. There was always a hesitancy, not physically but emotionally. She had believed that was just how he made love or that it would change the more time they spent together—that with all the women clamoring for his attention, he was careful with giving away his heart so early. But now, she knew that she had never felt his passion because he had never loved her. She'd never felt Sasuke's need or fear of losing her. He was going through the motions the whole time, pleasurable motions, but void of any true love. How had she not sensed all of this before now?

Some twisted part of her mind desired to pour on more misery and she wondered how he touched Sakura. Did he make love to her? Did he kiss her as if he needed the breath from her very lungs to survive? Did he hold her as if she was his only tether to Earth? Was she the only woman to know Uchiha Sasuke's true passion? Could he even feel love?

Every thought and moment settled like bitter charcoal on her tongue, but she couldn't cast off the memories. She couldn't let go of him, even if she now knew that their love hadn't been that at all for him. Her eyelids began to feel incredibly heavy, even as she already had them closed. She could feel the pull of drowsiness and welcomed the call to avoid all of this pain through sleep. She let her body drift towards sleep, but her foolish thoughts wandered to how she'd even becoming ensnared in his web in the first place.

Irritation rode high on his shoulders; only his shinobi training kept him from showing his emotions, but people stayed clear of him anyway. It was as if his emotions were projecting a field through his chakra. His fingers itched to expel the energy, so he shoved them in his pockets and walked back towards his home to gather his training gear.

Being on a mission would have given him more peace. His chakra wouldn't be a dark, swirling, fire in his gut similar to that of his and his brother's Amaterasu. He could have completely compartmentalized Kanami's jibes from his mind and focused on his objective. He would have donned his Hebi mask and emersed himself in the shadows of the hunt, the kill or be killed reality that left no room for thinking of anything besides his target. A mission would have been just what he needed. But no, he was stuck in the village until he picked a suitable woman. Why they couldn't just assign him one like any other clan was beyond him. Heir protocol seemed a flimsy excuse to drive him stir crazy and force him into marriage just to get out of the village again. He technically wasn't even the clan heir, so the Hokage shouldn't have been able to initiate the protocol until after Itachi officially took over. All of it was utterly annoying.

He thought of the infuriating scroll sitting on his dresser, taunting him with one form of escape, only to trap him with another. It wasn't like he would propose and then immediately be sent on missions again; even he wasn't that boorish to leave his fiancée so soon. He would have to spend time with her, get to know her likes and dislikes, and discuss how they would build a companionable marriage together. They'd need to discuss their ambitions and how they could work together to achieve them. He was prepared for that; he just didn't want to be so restricted and out of practice when he did enter active duty. Training was the best substitute, but it paled in comparison to the actual demands of a mission, especially at his caliber.

Sasuke looked up and realized that in his irritation, he'd walked much faster than he thought. He expected to pass the village marketplace soon, and yet he was already at the lake where every Uchiha learned to master Fireball jutsu. He walked down to the dock and stared out over the water. When he was younger, he'd spent hours at the lake, trying to match Itachi's speed with learning and performing the jutsu. It was his first taste of failure, and of his secret rivalry and motivation to be stronger than his brother. When he'd finally mastered the technique, at the same age, Itachi had graduated the Academy. 'Itachi was a natural. Your path will be a little harder,' his father had told him. The comment wasn't meant to discourage him, only to point out that he would be different from his brother. It put a chip on Sasuke's shoulder nonetheless. He'd practiced for hours, days, until finally he was able to perform the jutsu; the prideful look on his father's face had been worth it.

How fitting that now, when his mind was troubled and he had a goal concerning his jutsu, his feet would take him to the lake.

He stepped onto the still water, feeling the chill of late autumn seep into his bones though his feet stayed dry. Perfect. He could practice staying warm while simultaneously gathering his chakra smoother for increasing the speed of his hand seals and jutsu. The challenge of focusing on his chakra would help him clear his mind in meditation, and he could leave his irritation in the water. He sat cross-legged, feeling the water move and shift under his weight, sending ripples to the far shores. He balanced his hands on his knees and closed his eyes for concentration. His chakra swirled in the center of his belly, Mind and Body revolving around each other in an eternal dance. He heated his chakra and expanded it from the center to warm his legs, arms, and head. Then he practiced summoning different amounts to break off from the main flow and come to his lungs and throat as he would for a fire technique. He took deep breaths to fill his lungs with the chakra and forced his body to gather it faster but still keep his breaths as deep.

The repetitive movement of the chakra flowing through his body lulled his mind into an eased enough state that he slipped into the meditative trance he was waiting for.