A/N: An important matter has occurred to me. I just turned fifteen and I still don't understand guys much… And now, I'm writing a story in which I make a girl explain existential matters to an angsty lad… I am truly weird!

Oh well, enjoy!

----------------------

"I'm sorry"

----------------------

Sakura's head shot up. Did Sasuke just apologize? Why did he do it? He had nothing to be sorry about. In her opinion, anyway. Still, as she looked at it, his face seemed to transform more and more into a mask of guilt and remorse.

"I'm sorry I made you cry. I-… I always make you cry, no matter what I do. I hate it!" He said, looking at the ground like a shy little kid.

"No, I'm the one who's sorry! I'm just a big cry-baby, I cry for anything and everything! It never stops! I'm a real fountain!" She exclaimed.

"I never brought anyone happiness! I don't deserve anyone's sympathy! I-… I don't… I don't deserve yours," he said pitifully.

"I'm way too sensible, I shouldn't even be allowed to be a shinobi!"

"Don't say that, nobody can be "too sensible"! Look at me! I don't even know how emotions work!"

Sakura grasped Sasuke's head in her hands and turned it towards her. She locked her eyes to his. He could tell she was about to cry again. Her eyes were all puffy and watery, yet he couldn't take his eyes off of hers.

"Sasuke-kun, listen to me. It is way better to have almost no emotions than to have too much. We both know that." She said, her voice trembling.

Sasuke's hands gripped hers on each side of his face. They were warm on his cold face. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, two tears had slid on her cheeks down to her chin.

"That's where you are wrong, Sakura," he said, bringing a hand to her face and wiping the water off of it. "If you've lived with emotions all your life, you'll know what to do with them when you have too much. If you haven't felt much since you were a kid, like me, you have no idea of what to do and how to react when you overflow."

Sakura leaned into his hand. Her eyes slid from his eyes to his lips. To think she had wanted to kiss those ever since she had met him at the academy. It was somewhat peculiar that she had never hated him for leaving. Oh, she had been sad. But never had she been angry.

"Still, you have no idea what I'd do to be able to hide everything I feel like you do. It truly impresses me." She brought her eyes back to his.

"Alright, let's call it a tie," he said, smiling.

"What?"

"None of us has been able to prove his point, let's call this one a tie." He said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Er, right… Oh well, thanks for breakfast."

"No problem."

"And I'm the one who's sorry."

She hopped off the bed and headed for the bathroom. She stopped just before closing the door and turned to him.

"Erm, Sasuke-kun?"

"What is it?"

"Whoa, full answer."

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Well, I was wondering if I could borrow your shirt for the day. You know, with my stained clothes and all…"

"Yeah, sure."

"Thank you."

"Anytime. And I'm the one who's sorry."

Sakura rolled her eyes and entered the bathroom.

----------------------

Sasuke had to admit, he had seen weird outfits in his life. But what Sakura was wearing was way beyond weird. She was wearing his dark blue Uchiha Clan shirt with her white skirt and her black shorts. What was weirder was that it looked a lot like what he was wearing when he was a Genin.

Strangely enough, her pink hair wasn't completely off with it. Honestly, when you thought about it, pink and navy blue were as much of a great idea together as Orochimaru and a whole class of innocent and naïve Ninja Academy boy students.

Shiver.

After getting the (rather disgusting and disturbing) thoughts out of his head, Sasuke let his mind wander over the question he'd been asking himself ever since he had met Sakura. Over the last few months of their Genin days together, he had almost been dying to ask her.

Note the almost.

He had found himself, back when they were twelve, staring at her in the simple intent of finding the answer to his question by himself, without having to ask her. It was such a mystery, always taunting him every time he saw her. He had finally given up when he accepted to go join Mr. TPFHOH (Too Pedophile For His Own Health), since he never thought he would see her again, thus never have to wonder about that almost existential enigma again either.

Now, though, the question was back in his mind, blocking his brains and burning his tongue. He felt like he had to ask her, so that his martyrdom would cease and his mind could go at peace.

And that was hardly overstating it.

He tried his best not to blurt it out and look like the most pathetically lame emo ex-avenger with something on his mind. He bit his inner cheeks, munched his tongue, balled his fists, planted his nails into his palms and closed his eyes, trying to think about other things that could change his train of thoughts.

Small furry puppies running around playfully.

Birds flying gracefully in the sky.

Butterflies drifting one way or another among the flowers and the long grass in a clear meadow.

His brother suffering like Hell while he planted his Chidori into his chest.

That's it.

Calm, peaceful thoughts.

Ahem.

He reopened his eyes. Bad idea. His matter came back flowing in his head with such strength, he wasn't able to keep the oh-so disturbing question inside his (perfectly kissable) mouth.

"Why is your hair pink?" He blurted out.

Oh how he wanted to slap himself.

Sakura stopped abruptly. She didn't move for a moment. In his head, Sasuke was imagining what she was going to do. She would turn around slowly, a dark glare on her face, scare him out of his pants, set said pants on fire, and then play Squash-and-Pull with his balls. He was about to quietly back away when he saw her shoulders shake.

Wait. She wasn't crying, was she, now? Suddenly, he could see how hurtful that question could have been upon her. He was just about to hug her and apologize when he heard her produce a sound that wasn't quite a strangled sob.

She was laughing. Hard.

Just as he predicted, she turned around, but she didn't seem to have any ripping intent over his family jewels. Her face was crossed by a gigantic smile, her eyes were glistening with laughter and her cheeks were as red as the red part of the Uchiha fan.

He stared at her laughing face, unsure of what to think about her sanity, as she tried to control her laughter and regain a composed face. When she finally succeeded, she approached him, a huge smile still on her face and placed a hand on his left shoulder.

Oh how he was scared.

"Sasuke-kun, you have no idea how long I've been waiting for someone to ask me that!"

Okay. That wasn't scary anymore. That was downright terrifying!

"W-What do you mean?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

"Well, ever since I was a little girl, everybody made fun of my hair. Everyone always said the same thing; my hair is not natural, it's ugly, no one will ever want to be my friend because I'm such a freak, bla bla bla. No one's ever asked me why it is so weird, though."

"Nobody could know why, since nobody asked. I was the only one to know. It felt like I had to be the only one, anyway. I didn't want anybody to make fun of that part of my life."

"What part?"

"Well, first of all, my hair colour is a mix of my mum and my dad's hair colours. Anyone intelligent enough would have figured that."

Sasuke felt one of the only remaining parts of his dignity crumble at the accusation. Yes. Of course he had thought of that. He was intelligent.

Ahem.

"So, my mum has red hair. You know that, right?"

"Yes, of course. Wait… That would mean your father has white hair?"

"Yes, that's it."

"But, that's impossible."

Sakura shot him a questioning look. Was he really meaning to tell her it was impossible her own father had the hair colour she knew he had?

"How is that impossible?"

"I saw your father, on our first day at the Academy!" He sounded so convinced. "He was with you, you were with him, I saw it! You came to me on our first day, screaming "Look, Daddy, look! It's him! It's the wonderfullest boy in the world!" and pulling him towards my Dad and me. I can still remember the look of embarrassment your Dad gave mine when you reached us! I remember his face and I remember his hair! His hair was black!"

Sakura was dead silent. Doesn't happen a lot, but at that moment, she was dumbstruck, gob smacked, completely speechless. He remembered. He remembered everything. Everything she had said, everything she had done. He even remembered the day it happened!

"You-… You remember?"

"Of course, I remember! How could I forget! My brother teased me about for a whole year! But that still doesn't explain why you're saying your dad has white hair. I saw him. You called him Daddy."

"That's because he isn't my real father. I got used to call him Dad because he was the only one to whom I could say it."

"Why?"

"Nah, you don't want to hear it. It's a long boring story, useless to hear, time-consuming also, and I just might start to cry again."

"Sakura, please. I do want to hear it. Tell me?"

She looked at him for a moment, suspicious. Was he trying to find a way to make fun of her or did he really want to hear her story?

"What tells me you won't use it to blackmail me?"

"I won't, I promise."

"Oh, don't pull the promise trick on me, Uchiha. I'm not in love with you enough to actually believe one of your promises."

Sasuke ignored the insult and the insinuation to the fact that she was still in love with him. It didn't matter to him at the moment. Well, a little, but still, he really wanted to know the secret part of Sakura's life. After all, if she had a sad past too, she could join the We-Are-Angsty-And-Proud-Of-It Club he was holding with Naruto and Gaara.

Instead of voicing his thoughts, and getting her mad at him like a cow at Kimimaro's too strong bones to drink milk for them, he gave her his best puppy eyes and got down of his knees, almost begging her to tell him.

"Okay, okay," she groaned. "But if you tell it to anybody, I'll make sure the Uchiha Clan is never able to be restored, got it?"

He rose on his feet, gulped and nodded. She seemed to calm down a little bit and started to walk again.

"So, here goes. When my mum was eighteen years old, she fell in love with a fellow ninja. He had bright white hair and the most gorgeous black eyes she had ever seen. He fell in love with her too, and a few months after meeting each other, he asked her to marry him. He was twenty and she had just turned nineteen. However, before getting married, he got her pregnant."

"She was thrilled. A baby, that was wonderful! But he didn't think so. Unfortunately, he loved her so much he decided not to tell her. So she had the baby, but only wanted to get married after it turned one. Blinded by love, he accepted. But when he saw she gave more attention to the baby than to him, the love blindness went away and was replaced by the hatred blindness."

"He got distant, angry. She couldn't recognise him anymore. He became violent, he beat her and beat the baby. He even tried to kill it. She left him. She couldn't take it anymore. She ran away with her best friend. He loved the baby and he loved my mother. She eventually fell in love with him. They got married on the baby's birthday. They were so happy. The baby's actual first word was "Daddy". He had come to give her food and she had just popped it out of her mouth. Mum was so thrilled. A few months after the wedding, though, she was told the baby's biological father killed himself upon hearing of her marriage."

"She never thought of him again. The baby grew up surrounded by happiness and love, and even after learning about her real father, she never once changed the way she felt about the man she had grown up to call "Daddy". End of the story. To put it short, the first man was my biological father, the second was the one you saw at the Academy and the baby was me."

Sasuke, until then silent, couldn't think of anything to say or to do. Did he have to comfort her, or to insult the memory of her asshole of a father? Instead of any of the two, he simply asked the question that had floated in his head for a while now.

"Did you ask your mum about it or did she just came to you and told you?"

"I asked her. I actually asked her why my hair was pink." She laughed soflty.

"And what did she tell you?"

"This exact story. She even said something, a sentence, that, when you think about it just once, it makes perfect sense, and then when you analyse it, it just sounds weird."

"What is it?"

"There's a difference between being the father and being the father figure. I guess what she was trying to say was that, even if my biological father was the one to conceive me with her, he wasn't there for me like a father should."

"Hn."

"Oh, no! You are not speaking in one syllable words again, you hear me!"

"It's hard to ignore," he grumbled.

She suddenly shot him an amused side look. He looked at her, silently questioning her about the face she was making. She turned her eyes back on the road and smiled to herself. No need to say Sasuke was getting annoyed by it.

"What?" He asked.

"Hm. Nothing." She sounded way too innocent for it to be true.

"What?"

"I said nothing!" She chuckled.

"Don't bother, I know you're lying."

"Alright, alright. I was just wondering where you got your hair from."

"Dad had browner hair, Mum had blacker hair, he passed his on to Itachi, she passed hers on to me."

Well that was brief. Unlike a certain blabbermouth girl we know who invented a whole fairytale. Said blabbermouth chuckled again.

"No, I mean, why does your hair stick out on the back of your head? It looks like a mix between a chicken's bum and a cockatoo's head."

Ouch. That hit hard.

He winced a little, trying to ignore the fact that she had been insulting him all day.

"I never really thought about it, actually. I'm not one to worry about how I look."

"Can I touch it?"

"What!?"

"Can I touch your hair?"

"Hum, I guess."

She raised a hand to his head and combed her fingers through his spiky hair. Her eyes widened a little, showing she obviously didn't think it would be so soft. She honestly had figured his hair would have been full of gel or hairspray. However, it was rather soft and silky. She fiddled a little bit more with it, but let her hand drop when she felt he had enough.

She fixed her eyes in front of her again. She was surprised to see they were at the gates of a village. The came to a halt, and looked past the doors. The town seemed to be in the middle of a festival. They turned their heads toward, sending a glance to each other, as if trying to find out what the other was thinking.

They stared at each other for a moment, not even bothering to talk. They were now trying to convince the other about doing what they wanted both to do. Finally, Sasuke sighed, admitting defeat and let his eyes drop to the ground, half amused, half annoyed.

"Are you sure you want to go to the festival?"

"Mm hmm," she said, nodding.

"And I guess after I'll have to pay for the room?"

"Yup." A wide grin spread across her face. He sighed again, grasped her hand and pulled her towards the gates.

What had he gotten himself into now?

----------------------

A/N: Whew! That was long! I'm sorry I could update any faster, my tenth-grade student schedule is a bit crazy. Oh well, hope you enjoyed it. You better have, because it's currently five minutes to one a.m., I have one hell of a headache and I know I won't be able to wake up tomorrow! I might as well be PMSing, so beware of what you write in those reviews! Actually, sending one would help very much in getting me not to rip your eyeballs out of their sockets.

I know I'm a nice girl.

Ahem

Ja!

Queen of Pascalities