Chapter Two: NaruSaku - You're A Disappointment

'I've been thinking lately,' Naruto said as he ran his fingers idly up and down Sakura's arm, the comfortable weight of her body against his soothing him. Making it easier to voice the thought that had been keeping him up through the night all week.

'That's dangerous,' Sakura teased lightly, pressing a gentle kiss against his jaw. 'Did it hurt?'

'I'm serious,' Naruto said, his fingers coming to a stop as Sakura turned in his arms to look at him properly. 'What are people going to say if they find out about us?'

Sakura's smiled slipped off her face as she looked down at his chest. 'Oh.'

'I mean … Sasuke and Hinata know,' Naruto continued on as the image of their faces swam into his mind. It had been months since the divorce and it still destroyed him to remember the deep despair in Hinata's face.

Sasuke on the other hand had seemed not to care, like he'd known it had been happening and couldn't care less. Naruto knew the apathy was part of what broke Sakura's heart the most. Sakura had given him the child he said he'd wanted, then left her to go through her pregnancy and early years of Sarada's life without him. So he could go off galivanting on a mission he'd given himself.

The lie that it had been given to him by Kakashi was so paper thin, both Naruto and Sakura had seen through it. So when they'd asked their old sensei about it and the Rokudaime had looked perplexed … they knew. Sasuke had used Sakura like a broodmare and fucked off.

Their marriage had been a sham for the next five years until Sakura had finally had enough and filed for divorce. Sasuke hadn't even hesitated, the divorce papers had appeared back signed within a day.

'Yeah,' Sakura said quietly, her back turned to him. 'But what if other people find out about how we started?'

'Yeah,' Naruto whispered, his fingers stroking up and down her back, wishing he'd never opened his damn mouth as Sakura curled in on herself. But it needed discussing so they could prepare. 'The kids will understand when they're older, they're too young to really get what's happening.'

'Yeah,' Sakura's voice was so small. 'Which is a small mercy really.'

It really was, Boruto and Sarada were barely eight and Harawami … she wasn't even three. They'd understand in time.

'But other people …' Naruto said, wrapping his arm around Sakura, or at least trying to as she pulled away from him. 'Your parents … Tsunade and Iruka …'

Sakura covered herself in the thin sheet of the bed, balling around herself and her shoulders shaking lightly. 'I know what my parents would say. They've already said it.'

Naruto stared transfixed at her ruffled pink hair. 'What?'

'They found out, Sarada told them Uncle Naruto slept in Mommy's room.' Sakura's head dipped lower, as if she was pressing them into her drawn up knees. Her voice muffled. 'You're a disappointment. That's what they said.'

Naruto reached out to touch her and Sakura flinched away at first but as he started to rub at her back she hitched a sob and relaxed back into his touch. 'You're not a disappointment. We married Hinata and Sasuke because that was what was expected of us. We had to continue clans and form alliances if we were going to change things in any meaningful way.'

Because it was expected of them, they'd done what they were meant to and the reasons they'd stayed in loveless marriages instead of being together from the beginning were hollow and unfair. They'd been lied to and misled by people they'd trusted and it wasn't fair.

Because when it came down to it, they had sacrificed true happiness for the village's well-being, and what change had they really managed? Nothing. Not a damn thing. And they'd been miserable for years because of it.

Sakura rolled over in his arms at long last, tears streaming down her face as she buried herself into his chest.

'We are allowed to be happy,' Naruto murmured into the sobbing woman's hair. 'Your parents are being unfair and you are the most amazing woman I have ever known.'

The pinkette wrapped around him and cried into his chest some more. He shushed her gently, kissing the top of her head and rubbing her back in slow circles. He suspected Iruka and Tsunade wouldn't be angry with him and he'd kinda hoped Sakura's parents would have put their daughter's happiness ahead of her marriage. It must have broke Sakura's heart when they hadn't.

Mebuki and Kizashi's disapproval stung him too, he'd thought they were good people, loving parents. Their judgement of their daughter for leaving a bad marriage made his heart scream and he hugged the crying woman in his arms closer. Hiding his own tears in her hair, Naruto let the old thought he'd spent ten years, and had two children with a woman he didn't love to silence, run through his head.

The thought that had come on the worst nights of their respective marriages. The one's where Sakura went to an empty bed because Sasuke had abandoned his responsibilities as a father and husband and Naruto to the sofa in his study to get away from Hinata's attempt for another child to make him finally love her … The thought that had taunted him his entire married life.

You should have married Sakura instead.