Uchiha Sasuke; 6 Years Later

Age 18

-Survive the Night-

It was a very odd period of time right now. I had been dating Ino for a while, exactly how long, I'm not quite sure but it had been a couple of years.

However, we weren't allowed to let her parents know that we were dating so we had to keep it a secret until she turned eighteen. Now that she WAS eighteen, we had to pretend as though we had just started dating.

I dismissed that as weird but not too hard. I'd be able to pull it off reasonably easy as long as I didn't see them very often.

That was only until her parents insisted on having me over for dinner.

Not only that, but they scheduled it the day before an important mission.

"We should be getting ready for our mission tomorrow." I told Ino as we got all dressed up to go. The shirt I was wearing had been sitting in the back of my closet and I didn't have time to clean it so I hope no one notices. "We don't have time to do this…"

Ino brushed my shirt of, making sure it was entirely presentable.

"Oh Sasuke, don't worry about it." She said with a smile. She grabbed my collar and messed it all up. She has a habit of doing that a lot and it's sort of turning into one of my pet peeves.

She went over to the mirror to check her hair, leaving me to fix the collar that USED to be just the way I liked it.

"Do you remember the story?" she asked me as she turned around.

"Yeah…" I responded. She wrote out a little script for me to follow for her parents to humor them. She made sure to go over it many times just in case I slipped up.

"Okay." she said. "Just remember, if my dad found out that I've been dating you for all this time without telling him then he's going to immediately make assumptions."

Assumptions? What kind of assumptions? That I've done something to her? I suddenly became slightly nervous. The last thing I needed was someone thinking about me that way. I need to revive the clan but I'm not that desperate.

"Everything has to be absolutely perfect!" she repeated again and again. It was beginning to get frustrating but I guess it was important to her for her parents to believe everything we were going to lie about tonight.

"I still don't know how you possibly kept this a secret for three years." I told her.

She smiled casually.

"It's hard sometimes. But we won't have to keep it a secret anymore."

Even if we kept it a secret this long and as of yet they didn't know, it's not like it'll be a secret forever.

But then again, in the future it didn't matter.

"You know…" I started, walking over to her and grabbing her hand. "It'll come out sooner or later."

"Hopefully, we'll all be older and be able to look back at that and laugh." She sighed. There was a short lull so I moved in front of her and pulled her in close. She looked kind of peaceful for the first time today.

"So…?" I said quietly, not wanting to ruin the calm atmosphere. "Is it time to go?"

She looked to the side of me at the clock. Her eyes suddenly bugged out.

"Oh no!" she yelled. She yelled as she suddenly brought her arm up and smacked me right in the nose.

I hate getting hit in the nose. I grabbed it out of shock and looked down at my hand.

"Oh, Sasuke, I'm sorry!" Ino yelled excitedly. "I didn't mean to! Are you all right?"

Is that blood in my hand?

"I think my nose is bleeding—" I said, stating the obvious. I let go of my nose and looked at her.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, running into the other room. I grabbed my nose and tried to keep as little blood as possible from getting on the ground. I didn't want to have to spend too long cleaning later.

Ino returned a minute later with a napkin and practically clamped her hand over my nose as hard as she could, napkin in had.

"Ow, ow, ow…" I said, instinctively trying to pull away from her grasp.

"Don't be such a baby, Sasuke!" she told me. Then she changed the subject. "We're late!"

I didn't like her grabbing so hard onto my nose. It already hurt a lot from her hitting me there.

"I'll take that." I said as I took the napkin from her and held it on myself. I could feel the napkin getting wet from all the blood. "I think we're going to need more napkins."

"Oooh…" Ino said as she ran back into the other room, returning a few seconds later with practically all the napkins I had in my house. Then she threw them up in the air and let them rain down on top of me.

"Has it stopped yet?" she asked.

"What do you think?" I asked her as I switched to a new napkin.

"Sasuke…I'm so sorry!" she said, sadly. "Are you angry at me?"

I paused for a second. I wasn't mad, of course. But, naturally, I was frustrated.

"Sasuke?" she repeated.

I guess I had forgotten to answer her out loud.

"No, I'm not angry." I pulled the napkin away from my nose and waited to see if it was done bleeding. Nothing came out for a second and I was mildly relieved. The, out of absolutely nowhere, it started bleeding again as fast as ever.

"Are you a hemophiliac or something!" Ino demanded as she stuffed about twelve wadded up napkins in my face. "Sasuke, you'll have to stop the bleeding on the way there! We're way too late!"

"All right all right…" I said as she grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the door. She opened the door.

Right into my face.

I fell to the ground, in shock once again.

It didn't hurt that much but I guess I wasn't ready for the door to open right into my face.

I lied there for a second, not wanting to get up.

"Oh my god!" I heard Ino's voice as she bent over. "Sasuke! Are you all right!"

"I don't think I'm going to survive the night." I said as I sat up. I looked down and saw that I had gotten a little bit of blood on my shirt.

Ino disappeared into my bedroom and returned a minute later with a new shirt.

"Come on, come on!" she said. "We'll just tell my dad you got those from a mission we were just on!"

She ripped my shirt off for me even though I was perfectly capable of doing it myself. Then she began forcing me into the new one.

Then she stood up and tentatively opened the door, looking at me as if I was the opened who practically THREW the door into the other one.

She walked reasonably quickly to her house, a little bit ahead of me. I walked fast but I wasn't power walking like she was. She occasionally glanced over her shoulder at me but continued going fast.

By the time we reached Ino's house, my nose had stopped bleeding. Which was fortunate for me because I didn't want my nose to be bleeding AND have to deal with huge lump I now had on my forehead.

"Okay, are you ready?" she said to me, looking more nervous than she really needed to be.

"I guess…" I said as I pulled out a clean napkin and wiped my hands off. A lot of the blood had dried to my hands so I'd have to clean them in the bathroom.

Ino opened the door and walked in.

"Mom?" she yelled. "Dad? I'm home!"

We walked around, within view of the door when her mother suddenly came over.

"Ino!" Her mother said coming over. Her mother kind of looked like her. "We were wondering where you were! And this must be—"

She looked at my face. Or more specifically the lump I had just gotten at my forehead. It was pretty obvious she was staring.

"—and this must be the famous Uchiha Sasuke that we've heard endless stories about! Won't you come in?"

"Hi Mrs. Yamanaka." I said. I could now officially not breath out of my nose anymore.

Ino took my arm and we walked further into the house.

"Hey mom, sorry we're late." She said. "We uh…were running behind schedule."

We were running behind schedule to begin with. But we were only REALLY late because Ino had subconsciously become abusive.

"It's all right!" said her mother with a smile.

We went into what looked like a dining room where I saw Ino's father standing up. He reached his hand out to shake mine but I was reluctant to do so because I hadn't washed them yet. I wanted to make a good impression though so I stuck my hand out and turned it at an angle so maybe he wouldn't notice.

Unfortunately, they were bloodier than I thought and I think he noticed anyway.

"We were getting ready to send out a search party!" her father said with a chuckle.

"Haha…yeah…" Ino said. I hope I wasn't embarrassing her.

We sat down at a table set for six people. Ino's eyes wandered to the two extra place settings.

"Mom…Dad…are you expecting someone else tonight?" she asked.

"Oh well…we figured that Sasuke's parents were coming along." Ino's mother said.

My parents?

Ino spit her water across the table just as I could feel my nose bleeding again. I brought both of my hands up to my face.

MY parents?

The ones that Itachi killed over ten years ago?

They wouldn't be coming.

"Oh, Sasuke!" Ino said, shoving a napkin up my nose.

"Is something the matter, Sasuke, dear?" Ino's mother asked.

I didn't want to be rude to her but you'd think my last name would have clued her in on why my parents wouldn't be showing up.

Then again, it was an awfully long time ago so maybe she forgot.

But then AGAIN, that's not something people should easily forget.

"No, nothing's wrong." I told her. I didn't want to make the mood morbid so I thought up a lie. "My parents were unavailable tonight."

"Oh…that's too bad." Said Ino's mother. "Well, I'd sure like to see them sometime."

"I would too." Said Ino's father.

I didn't know what to say about that. Neither of them knew or remembered anything about my clan getting killed.

I guess that's how much everyone cares to remember about it.

The meal was very awkward after that. My nose stopped bleeding again and I felt bad about bleeding all over a cloth napkin.

I think it's ridiculous to say that I lost a lot of blood that day because of a bloody nose but I was beginning to feel a little light-headed.

Or maybe that was because I got hit in the head with a door.

"So…what made you have interest in my daughter?" I suddenly heard myself being asked. I turned to Ino's father.

"Her tenacious ambition as a ninja." I answer honestly. I had thought about that a lot actually. "She impressed me because she wasn't like all the other girls who only became ninjas so I would notice them."

"Yes…Ino is a very gifted ninja." Her father said with a nod. "I myself wasn't a jounin until I was twenty-four. Ino?"

"Oh…yes?" said Ino, looking as though she was slightly out of it.

"Could you give Sasuke and I a few minutes to talk?" Ino's father said out of nowhere. "Man to man?"

"Um…sure!" Ino said as she stood up to leave. I didn't know what was going to be asked of me but I think as long as I said exactly how I felt… and didn't tell that we've been going out for years, it would be okay. I nodded to her just as she and her mother left.

Ino's father turned to me like he was interrogate me.

"Sasuke, I have to admit, you're a pretty weird kid." Said her father suddenly.

I didn't know what to say about that.

"Okay…" I said.

"And I know my daughter likes you." He continued. I nodded. "So I'll allow her to date you."

Should I thank him or something?

"Thank you?" I said.

"But I'll have you know…" he continued. "I've only got one daughter."

I nodded.

"She's my little girl. My princess. My pride and joy." He gave me a suspicious look. "And I'm her overprotective father."

I continued nodding. That'd make him happy.

"Not just one of those normal overprotective fathers either." He kept going. "I'm one of those unrealistically overprotective fathers. And if you do anything to my little Ino that makes her unhappy…"

He turned to me with most sinister glare I had ever seen.

"Well, you get the picture, right?"

Was he threatening me?

Though I was offended, I didn't show it. I just nodded and the two of us stood up.

"I would shake your hand but…I think you need to wash them first." He told me as he pat me firmly on the back.

Ha ha…I'm kind of glad I didn't try to go through this when I was fifteen.