Disclaimer: Why the hell would I be writing fan fiction if I owned Naruto?

Moving On

Chapter Five

By Michiru's Mirror

Sasuke was having trouble waking up. This was unusual for a man like him, a creature of discipline who regulated his life down to the tiniest detail. His routine was all laid out: he awoke at five a.m. every morning without even an alarm and did an hour of morning exercises before sitting down to breakfast. In his opinion this discipline encouraged correct thinking; if you got lazy and let your schedule vary it was the first step towards becoming someone with a pointless life like Akimichi Chouji.

That he would feel so unusually exhausted today of all days was shameful: It was the day he would go with Momoko to find out his test results from Sakura. Sasuke did not see the point of bringing Momoko, but Sakura had insisted on her presence and he had promised to do things her way.

He had awoken at 5:30 a.m. and been too tired to do even basic exercises. Dragging himself into the kitchen, he almost fell into a chair and fought to keep himself awake while Momoko bustled around him like a distended shadow fixing his breakfast. What was wrong with him? Was he sick?

Even more annoying was how obsessed he had become with the words Sakura had spoken to him in her office. He couldn't get them out of his head—another disgusting crack in his self-control.

"In the end everything you do is because you're miserable, and you can't be satisfied until everyone is as miserable as you."

What was Sakura talking about? What had she meant? Sasuke's mind kept returning to those words, and when they did he would feel as exhausted as he had after his final battle with Itachi.

He told himself again and again that she had been speaking nonsense, that she didn't know what she was talking about. But really, who knew him better than Sakura? Only Naruto, and if Sasuke was being honest with himself that was why he'd spent the last few years avoiding the blond after moving back to Konoha. He didn't want to hear things like that, things that somehow struck his heart as uncomfortably true.

Momoko quietly put down dishes of miso soup, fish, and rice: healthy food that he always insisted upon so that he could train at his maximum potential. He had never considered whether or not he liked the food, and had only seen eating as a necessity to become strong. Today, though, the sight of it made him ill.

Sasuke stared down at the same meal he'd been eating for thirty years and suddenly had such a strong desire for pancakes that he almost told Momoko to make them. That wouldn't have done any good, though; they had nothing like that in the house.

He thought they didn't have anything like that in the house, anyway. He could ask his wife…

But no! Pancakes today would be the first step towards moving his thinking away from the correct path. The next thing he knew he'd be sleeping in at all hours and turning into some useless lump. Sasuke grabbed his chopsticks and began to aggressively stab at his fish.

As Sasuke wasn't going to be meeting with Sakura until evening, and had no missions to occupy his time, he decided to train the day away. Maybe he could make up for his laziness this morning by beating his body into obeying once breakfast was finished.

He had just slipped his boots on when he heard Momoko shrieking from the kitchen. Cursing, he jumped up and ran back into the house without bothering to take his boots off again, nursing images of attacking ninja and blood-spattered walls.

He got to the kitchen to see Momoko squatting on the squeaky-clean counter beside the cabinets. She was pulling their best dishes out and hurtling them at some spot he couldn't see.

"Those are heirlooms!" Sasuke yelled over the crashes. "What are you doing?"

"IT'S A RAT!"

"It's a—what?"

"A RAT!" Another priceless dish went flying, breaking and scattering all over the kitchen floor.

The floor was covered in sharp shards of porcelain and china. As Sasuke was wearing his boots, he took more care to stop Momoko then to avoid the ruined dishware, and failed to notice another tiny white shard that appeared without fanfare amongst the mess on the floor. It looked exactly like the rest of the shattered dish pieces and no light or sound heralded its emergence.

Sasuke knew when he stepped on it, though; the almighty bang it made would have alerted a deaf man.

At once something wet, slimy and heavy splattered over his whole body. Was it blood?

Before the smoke could clear, Sasuke was passing his gaping wife with all the speed expected of a Konoha jounin. He entered the bathroom and reached for the first aid kit but he'd need more bandages then he could find in this little thing.

He was about to yell for Momoko to go fetch whatever she could find when he heard a snicker from the kitchen. Oh great, he was bleeding to death and probably losing limbs and she was laughing.

Sasuke fumbled for the light switch and flipped it upwards. Blinking at the spots that appeared before his eyes, he squinted into the mirror to see how bad the damage was.

He was greeted by an odd sight. Since when had his blood been white?

Outside of the Uchihas' kitchen window Naruto surreptitiously watched Momoko covering her mouth with both hands to suppress her laughter. Now that she could see that the "rat" was just a genjutsu, she should let the laughter out. He would have. Laughing at Sasuke was one of the highlights of his life.

Of course he only had a moment before Sasuke figured out that whipped cream and blood were not the same thing, and then—

"NARUTO!" came Sasuke's thundering voice from the bathroom. Naruto cackled and ran. Funny as it would be to see Sasuke bathed in whipped cream, Naruto didn't come here looking for a fight, and given his friend's tone that was what he'd get if he stuck around.

Still, he couldn't help but regret that he couldn't stay. Naruto really wanted to see Sasuke's face when he realized that the cream didn't wash off!

Naruto had carefully thought through who the day's victims were going to be before he'd gone to sleep the night before. Sakura's face came to his mind, but he squashed that idea as quickly as possible.

First of all, the one time he'd pulled a practical joke on Sakura successfully he'd paid with worse than a simple beating. It had been a straightforward joke, just slipping a pill into her dessert that turned her mouth blue for a couple of days.

Boy had she let him have it.

You moron! You insufferable, incorrigible idiot! What's the matter with you? Were you born this insensitive? I have a meeting tomorrow you jackass! I'm going to go into my meeting with a blue mouth and no one is ever going to take me seriously again! You've ruined my career and my life and I swear it'll be too soon if I never see you again!

Naruto did not help his case by laughing while she yelled, but she just looked so funny with steam almost pouring out of her ears and blue spittle flying all over the place. He tried to point out that a simple genjutsu would cover it up. To Sakura, this was not the point.

Since the yelling didn't get through to him, Sakura made her displeasure very plain by refusing to sleep with him for a month. Going for a month without sex was bad enough at thirty-five; at twenty-two it was murderous. She told him later that she hadn't done it to punish him, that she had just been so mad that she didn't want to touch him. Naruto told her that argument would have fooled him if she hadn't gone around in skirts hiked up to her crotch and shirts down to her navel during that month. She might as well have worn a sign that said SUFFER, NARUTO on her forehead.

Naruto never tried to pull a prank on her again.

Besides, now was probably the worst possible time to piss Sakura off. The shock of last night had made her cry but once she woke up in the morning she was going to be a lot angrier then hurt. It would be best for him to not be in the same apartment with her for awhile, and forget about pulling pranks.

Sasuke had been an obvious choice for a prank that day for a couple of reasons. First and foremost Naruto hadn't seen the guy in months. Couldn't let ol' stick-up-his-ass Uchiha forget about the great Uzumaki Naruto, right?

Second of all, Sasuke was just such a great target for mischief. He got so beautifully riled and indignant that Naruto just couldn't help himself sometimes.

For his next target Naruto picked another man that he enjoyed pulling pranks on, one that he loved nearly as much as Sasuke and had just as perfect a reaction. Grinning again, Naruto tapped the thermos of water he had strapped to his leg and imagined what was to come.

Umino Iruka shared a small house with his wife Shizune on the eastern outskirts of Konoha village. He always said that he hadn't built it so far away from Naruto's apartment on purpose, but Naruto had trouble believing him sometimes.

In Naruto's opinion, Iruka and Shizune were an example of how wrong a marriage could go. There was no passion in their relationship, no romance of any kind—they had all the chemistry of two dead animals. Iruka said he didn't mind, that Shizune was his best friend and he loved her even if he hadn't been in love with her for years. Naruto couldn't understand that at all. What the hell was the point of marrying someone if you didn't have sex, or cuddles during late nights watching horror movies with popcorn on the sofa, or someone to hold you when you were at your lowest and highest points?

But Iruka seemed to be content with a partnership, and wasn't going to go to all the trouble of a divorce when he didn't really have any complaints.

Naruto thought he was crazy, but what could he do? Except tease Iruka every time he saw him, of course…

Naruto got to Iruka's house and let himself in quietly with the key Iruka had entrusted him with. He walked down the short hallway with its tasteful (and boring) pictures lining the wall until he reached the house's small, tiled kitchen. He didn't bother to hide his footsteps or chakra signature. Shizune was a talented jounin and if he tried anything like that she'd feel it and assume it was an enemy trying to sneak in.

As expected at this time of the morning Iruka was sitting at his kitchen table just as Sasuke had been earlier. Chewing on a piece of dry toast and reading a newspaper, he would have looked like every other teacher in Hi no Kuni getting ready for another day of school, save for the sharp objects hidden all over his body.

So common were Naruto's appearances in his house—Naruto had taken the distance Iruka had put between them as a challenge and visited often—that Iruka didn't even look up from his newspaper as his former student entered the room.

"Naruto, hey. What's up?"

"I want to show you something really cool!" said Naruto, pulling out the thermos and unscrewing the cap.

Iruka swallowed his last bite of toast and put down his newspaper. "Sure, but I hope it's nothing that'll take too long. I have to go soon."

Naruto almost didn't hear him. When Iruka had looked up, Naruto found himself really looking at Iruka for the first time in years. Iruka's hair was going gray and his constant exposure to the sun had left wrinkles all around his eyes. Thirteen years separated Naruto from him; when Naruto was twelve those thirteen years had seemed like a huge, unbridgeable gap. Now he knew what a short time it would be until he reached Iruka's age. He would go gray, his face would sag, and his reflexes would slow.

Old age was something Naruto tried not to dwell on. It was the one opponent he'd never beat no matter how hard he trained or how many jutsu he learned. To a man who had spent his life determined to the point of obsession to control his destiny and make his own choices, it was the most frightening idea in the world.

Naruto scowled briefly. He was here to erase gloomy thoughts like that, and he wasn't going to allow abstract concepts that he could do nothing about ruin his morning.

"Naruto?" Iruka's voice was worried, and Naruto snapped his attention back to his former teacher.

"Oh—sorry, Iruka-sensei. Just watch this!"

Naruto pulled his arm back before flinging it up and forward. He held the thermos tight so that the water flew out of it and hit the ceiling.

From there, the water bounced off like a solid object. Naruto had thrown at roughly a 45 degree angle, and so the water came down at a 90 degree angle…

…Straight towards Iruka's head.

Naruto was grinning ear to ear, good mood restored at the sight of Iruka spluttering like a wet cat and trying to rub water out of his eyes.

"Isn't that cool?" said Naruto before turning to leave.

Naruto didn't think twice about turning his back because knew what was going to happen next. Iruka was dull as dishwater, predictable as the sunrise in the morning; he would yell at Naruto's retreating back and scold him until he was out of earshot. He would never go running over to the sink, grab the bucket underneath it, fill it, and aim it at Naruto's back. Not Umino Iruka. Never in a million years.

"Oh Naruto?" said Iruka.

Naruto was curious enough to turn around again. Iruka's tone was somehow different from the norm.

Icy water crashed over Naruto's body, soaking him from head to foot. For a moment he just stood in the kitchen doorway, gaping like a fish out of water. That hadn't just happened. Iruka hadn't just gotten him that thoroughly. It wasn't possible.

Iruka looked so pleased with himself it was sickening. Putting the bucket down on top of the sink, Iruka leaned against it and crossed his legs. He radiated smug satisfaction. "Go ahead, Naruto, I think you were talking about how cool this sort of thing is."

Well hell, Naruto couldn't just let that insult lie, could he?

Flashing his hands in a number of seals, he quickly called a minor suiton jutsu and spit a stream of water into Iruka's face. It was immensely satisfying to watch Iruka's smirk fade into a look of shock just before the water knocked him back onto his ass.

There was a second where Iruka stared up at Naruto from his puddle of water, and Naruto looked back with his hair and hitai-ate so saturated with wetness that it dripped into his eyes.

Then it was war.

By the time Shizune walked in a moment later to see what all the commotion was, the kitchen was a wreck. Water was up to her ankles, utensils were floating around the room, and her soaked husband was in the process of grabbing the nozzle attached to the sink and aiming it at the face of Naruto, who was making hand seals to perform a water jutsu of some kind.

"HEY!" she yelled so loudly that three houses away an elderly retired chuunin shut her window in irritation while mumbling about inconsiderate youngsters.

Naruto was so intent on blasting Iruka with his suiton that he hadn't felt Shizune enter the room. He swiveled his head in surprise, and the result was Shizune being blasted back into the hallway.

She let out a squawk that was so indignant it had Iruka muffling his laughter even as he went to help her up.

"This is—" Shizune paused to spit out a mouthful of water. "—Not at all funny!"

"No, dear, of course not." Iruka was going to have a bruise on his lip later from biting it so hard, he just knew it.

"This would be cute if you two were thirty years younger, but as it is—! Oh, and I have to meet Tsunade-shishou in twenty minutes!"

Naruto began to make his way quietly towards the door, but was pulled to a halt by Shizune's sharp, "Not so fast!" He had rarely heard her so irritated. He wondered if she knew how much she reminded him of Sakura at the moment.

Shizune sighed. "I needed to talk to you anyway, Naruto-san." Pausing, she grimaced and wrung her hair out. "Tsunade-shishou is leaving for Sunagakure tomorrow, so while she's gone someone will have to take care of her daily tasks."

Naruto felt his heart clench. "…Me?"

Shizune shook her head. "Me. She could be gone for weeks, and there's no guarantee that you won't be called away on ANBU business during that time. So what I really wanted to say was that your apprenticeship will have to be put on hold for a bit. I've got a new apprentice to train and on top of that Hokage duty will keep me too busy to teach you anything myself. Would you mind taking a few weeks off?"

Shizune had no sooner finished speaking before she was tackled by Naruto and pulled into a bear hug that swept her off of her feet.

It was perfect! He had a reprieve, time to figure out how to make last night up to Sakura and to decide just what to do about his decision not to become Hokage. He'd be able to figure out just what to tell Tsunade and the others.

"Naruto," Shizune squeaked. "Please put me down."

She was rigid in his arms and fire-engine red. Next to them Iruka's eyes were wide as dinner plates.

Naruto gently set Shizune on her feet. "Sorry," he said. But he was feeling too good to be sorry for real.

Unfortunately, his good mood only lasted about half an hour. He got home just in time to catch Sakura leaving for work. She took a second to glare at him as though he was a particularly loathsome minion of Orochimaru's before deliberately bumping him out of her way as she walked by.

Naruto sighed. Oh yeah. He had a lot of work to do, and no idea of how to go about it.

He needed a woman's advice. Ino? She knew Sakura well and was a good friend to him now that he was going over to the Akimichi household so often. But as Sakura's best friend she'd be as angry at him as Sakura was for the way he'd acted last night. She'd be just as likely to kick him out as look at him.

After a moment's deliberation, Naruto settled on Hinata. She gave good, honest advice and she knew what it was like to be hurt by someone you loved. If anyone could help him, she could.

Just as he turned towards the Hyuuga compound, a chuunin messenger came running towards him, waving a scroll in his hand. "NARUTO-TAICHO!"

Naruto sighed. Or not. "Yeah?"

"You're being called out into the field! Emergency retrieval mission." The chuunin said, panting. His hitai-ate was sliding down his sweaty forehead, and his brown hair was damp with moisture.

Naruto sighed and snatched the scroll out of the messenger's hands. Scanning it, he felt relief as it wasn't a job that would take more than a few days. Hell, if he had a few weeks free like Shizune had said then this mission might well be a blessing; he'd leave Konoha for a few days and let Sakura calm dawn before coming back with a proper make-up tactic.

Besides, if he was out of town Sasuke couldn't come looking for revenge.

Running inside his apartment he scribbled a note for Sakura so she wouldn't think he'd left out of anger. He rolled up the scroll with his mission on it, locked his door, and then nodded to the anxious messenger who was now bouncing from foot to foot.

"Let's go."

Sakura was not to find out that Naruto was gone until much later, for she was very busy at Konoha Hospital. She had managed to convince Tsunade and Shizune to each take on an apprentice, and now it was time for her to choose her own.

She hadn't been putting off deciding on purpose. She'd come to work in the morning and immediately be called into surgery, after which she'd try to finish some paperwork. This would turn out to be an impossible task because every five minutes there was a medic banging on her door begging for help. Just another average day…at the end of which she would meet with Sasuke, who would push her stress levels up even higher.

Sakura sighed. Maybe she had been too hard on Naruto last night and this morning. She had promised herself she'd be understanding about whatever he was going through after all, and he wasn't obligated to feel romantic just because she did.

But she had been so frustrated! Didn't he know how little free time she had, and how much work it had been to get those few hours off? It was humiliating to have been prancing around in see-through lingerie and be brushed off. Even worse was being made to feel like someone untrustworthy and burdensome. When had she gone from being Naruto's support to being a pain in his neck? And why wouldn't he tell her what was wrong?

Maybe that wasn't fair. It probably wasn't about her at all, and if it wasn't it wasn't really her business. It hurt her to admit this to herself, but it wasn't like she was telling him about her problems with Sasuke, was she?

Well, after today she'd lower her stress levels a little bit anyway. The tests were finished and Sakura planned to give Sasuke and Momoko the answers they had come to her to find this very evening. Getting that off of her plate would hopefully lower the amount of tasks she had to do to the point where she could devote time to finding the apprentice she'd agreed to look for. Hopefully that apprentice would be able to help out around the Hospital, and that might bring her workload down to a manageable level.

God willing.

Sakura was putting her signature on a release form for a jounin named Ana when there was a loud knock on her door.

She knew that knock. "Come in, Sasuke-kun," she called.

He entered, tailed by Momoko who had her head meekly lowered just like last time. Sakura would have been depressed just watching it, but she was drawn to Sasuke's odd appearance.

"Sasuke-kun, why are you all red? You look like you've been scrubbing your skin for hours—"

Sasuke pulled out his chair with a loud thump and gave Sakura glare that let her know that that subject was not to be broached. "So," he said. "What did you find out, then?"

Sakura supposed she couldn't blame him for being impatient. This was a big deal, after all.

She pulled the file she'd collected all of her data in out of her top desk drawer where she'd been holding it. "Okay. Simply put, there's nothing wrong with you."

Sasuke frowned and looked as though he couldn't understand what she was saying. Light from the window behind Sakura's head threw his features into sharp relief and made him look angular and harsh, like a weapon.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "There's obviously something wrong with me."

Obviously, thought Sakura snidely though she kept that thought to herself. "Nothing physical. Everything works as it should."

"That isn't possible," Sasuke said, clearly impatient with what he considered to be nonsense. "Why can't I…" A look of almost physical pain crossed his face, "Can't I…if there's nothing wrong?"

Sakura took a deep breath. Here went nothing. "Sasuke-kun…if there's nothing physically wrong…that means the problem must be psychological."

Sasuke waved his hand as though chasing away an irritating insect. "Ridiculous. I'm perfectly stable…what?"

Not only was Sakura staring at him as though he'd grown an extra head, so was Momoko.

"You…" Momoko hesitated before plowing on. "You think that you're…uh…mentally healthy?"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at her, and she flinched. "Are you suggesting I'm not?"

Momoko lowered her gaze but she didn't deny it, much to Sakura's surprise. She admired the girl's gumption, though judging by the look on his face Sasuke didn't.

Quickly, she went on. "Anyway, that being the case, there is no physical way to cure you. I can't just give you a pill."

Sasuke looked like he was going to interrupt, so Sakura jumped forward. "But. If you're set on children, like I know you are, there are still ways to give them to you."

"Not adoption?" Sasuke said as though the very idea was repugnant.

Sakura couldn't help but feel indignant, but again she kept her mouth shut. Given what a bad mood she was in, though, it was getting more difficult to do that with every push Sasuke gave her.

"No," she said. "I'm talking about artificial insemination. Have you heard of it? Basically I'd have to pull the semen out of your body since you can't do it on your own—" Sasuke winced at the jab and Sakura felt a moment of petty satisfaction at his discomfort. "And I'd place it with your ovules, Momoko-chan, and that would be that."

Sasuke leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtful. "So we'd get children without the mess and hassle of sex."

"Sometimes it takes a few tries to take. But yes, in the end that would be the result."

Sasuke looked almost pleased. In his eyes it seemed science had become a beautiful thing. "All right. Tell me more about this procedure."

Momoko broke in then. Her face had gone a pasty color and her eyes were wide. Her hair hung over her face and hid her expression from her husband—who wasn't really paying attention anyway—but Sakura could see the negative emotions as they flittered across the girl's face: anger, fear, shock, depression.

"Excuse me, Sakura-sensei…you mean that there would be no physical contact at all, but I would get pregnant?"

"Once I implant the fertilized egg back into your body, yes."

"You said it might take a few tries before the procedure takes," said Sasuke. "What are the chances of it working, and is there any way to increase those chances?"

Sasuke asked questions and Sakura answered them as best she could. She kept her voice level and calm, and kept her eyes on her friend, but from the corner of her eye she watched Momoko. The girl had begun to tremble slightly, and had wrapped her arms around herself as though trying to protect her body from harm.

Sakura didn't have to have Ino's mind reading jutsu to know what the girl was thinking and feeling. Here was the collapse of all of her dreams. With this procedure Sasuke would never have a reason to touch or even look at her ever again, and by now Momoko knew that Sasuke had no interest in being around her more than was absolutely necessary.

Momoko would spend her life a virgin, never knowing the touch of a man from desire or even affection. Once the first children were born she would be trapped in her huge, lavish prison even more than she already was. She would raise little Uchiha clones to be as miserable as their parents and watch as the life was drained out of them by their robotic father and neurotic mother.

"I want a divorce."

Sasuke and Sakura stopped talking at once, Momoko's quiet words cutting across their conversation as clearly as if she had shouted. Sakura was surprised, but she could see that her shock was nothing compared to Momoko's own. She clearly hadn't planned to say what she had, and her face showed it.

Sasuke slowly turned to face her, his eyes narrowing and his face hardening into his most intimidating expression.

"What?" he said in a low and dangerous voice.

Sakura expected Momoko to back down. She would hang her head and mumble apologies, or say she didn't mean it.

But it seemed that Sakura did not know Momoko very well. Just because Momoko had surprised herself by speaking the truth didn't mean that she wasn't planning to stick by it.

She took a deep breath, looked into Sasuke's eyes, and said, "I want a divorce."

A/N

The prank with the exploding tags was my idea, but the water fight was a true story about my father and his friends in college. Apparently by the time they'd finished their dorm rooms were ankle-deep in water.

If y'all like prank fics, try HokageNaruto's "Immature for Life." It's really funny.

Love to all who've reviewed so far, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your ideas, compliments and criticisms. Please drop me a line for this chapter also, I'm happy to hear whatever you have to say.

Next: Momoko and Sasuke face off, Tsunade heads for Sunagakure, and Naruto plays poker. Heh heh.