and crazy is the forecast all week
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Uchiha Itachi & Haruno Sakura
Prompt: 025. growth & 031. sexy no jutsu & 185. his pain was like a desert/134. you can't do that
Word Count: 3214
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Notes: Non-massacre AU. Part of a mini-series. Sequels/Prequels can be found here at CHIAROSCURO. Written for lover100 & 50_shinobi & 500themes. Prompt tables are here & here.
-
Life never happened as one expected, she learned all too soon.
At a younger age, dreams of star-filled missions with motions too fast to catch, whispered jutsus and deafening explosions were the thoughts that filled her childish mind. It was a dream, at one point, and nothing more. “You’ll marry a nice young lad, and you’ll get to raise a little daughter or son just as I raised you,” her mother had once said with a smile. But as Sakura recalled the memory now, it had been a little nostalgic, and a lot more of something akin to regret-filled acceptance in that smile.
And then her mother had died, perishing alongside her father in a freak roadside accident.
It was a little bit like a fairytale after that, but the orphaned Sakura had found, perhaps by fate a box of hidden memories locked away in the furthest corner of her home. It was somewhere she would’ve never looked, had she not been forced to clean out her home to prepare it for sale. In the box she found all her now-repressed dreams of those star-filled whispered nights - but they belonged to her mother.
She couldn’t have been sure, if not for the tiny engraving on the hitai-ate, and the little markings on the mounds of scrolls, kunai and weaponry. It was perhaps fate, or simply luck that she stumbled across this locked away piece of the past, but something had been reincarnated in her at that moment. With courage that a seven year old Sakura never knew, she had marched herself straight to the Third’s office to make her demands known.
It had been a little more than intimidating once she actually made her way to the building, though. Too little to even reach the waists of the guards, a shy curve of her lips and an incandescent blush were all that she could offer with her quiet plea, asking if she could please have a moment of the Hokage-sama’s time. The young Izumo instantly recognized her as the esteemed merchant Haruno-san’s recently orphaned daughter, and taking pity from the emotions seeping out from the bold locks of Shinobi Rule #25, led the timid girl up the steps to find the aging Hokage.
Sarutobi, with his infinite knowledge it seemed, recognized her straight away. Though she did not know it at the time, he knew of her thoughts exactly, before her soprano voice had even jumped the leap of faith to ask it.
“Hokage-sama,” she bowed, face still flushed cherry from the biting cold. “I was just thinking...uhm...”
“Have you found a place to stay yet, Sakura-chan?”
She looked up in surprise at hearing her name, an unforgiving blush rising to accompany winter’s gift on her face. “....no, Hokage-sama, I have not.”
“Good,” he replied softly with a small smile. The momentary horror Sakura felt at the kind Hokage being happy at her state of homelessness melted away completely with his next words. “I hope you do not mind, Sakura-chan, if I suggest a place for you. The son of a very dear friend of mine was orphaned as well at a very young age, and has been staying at an apartment complex near here. I’m sure he would be very happy to have a new neighbour.”
“Really?” Sakura beamed, feeling hopeful for the first time since Black Monday, as she had so cleverly named it. The Hokage smiled with his lines of age, nodding along with her. Haruno Akio had been one of the most intelligent and most respected civilians in Konoha, and he had no qualms in believing that his daughter would be every bit as bright as the lately deceased man. His wife too, had been one of the brightest of her time - but tragedies are abundant amongst fairytales, and he hoped that her living legacy would be able to carry on what she was not able to accomplish.
“I am sure also, that he wouldn’t mind taking you to the Academy to study with him,” he finished, and watched as the light lit up her cherub face, knowing for certain in that moment that that was indeed why she had come.
“So I can learn to be a shinobi?” she blurted, manners flying to the wind. “So I can be a kunoichi like okaa-san?”
The tragic smile that pulled at Sarutobi’s face at the mention of her mother’s repressed potential was lost to the young girl, with only his final “yes”, a remembrance of that day.
x x x
After just one week of being put on the same genin team as her two best friends, Sakura was sure of one thing: she would die an inevitably early and painful death, because of those two absolute morons.
“BAKA!” she screeched, hand already sore from abusing the blonde’s arm excessively. “What’s the point of that? Seriously! Baka, baka, bakaaaa!”
“It’s not my fault!” the blonde whined, eyeing his battered arm. “If Kakashi-sensei wasn’t so late every day, I wouldn’t have the time to make this jutsu!”
Sasuke scoffed from his meditative position, full of Uchiha-scorn for the Kyuubi vessel. “How unclassy,” he drawled, adding finally with a smirk, “dobe.”
“Why you teme-”
“Say, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura suddenly interrupted, eruptive anger from moments ago seemingly forgotten. Naruto turned to the girl in absolute surprise, and even Sasuke cracked open an eye at her serene voice. “Is you nii-san back from his mission yet?”
Obsidian orbs narrowed at her uncharacteristic question. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” she laughed, waving it away with a soft flick of her hand. “Just curiosity, you know. We’re still on for dinner at your place tonight, right?”
A brisk nod was all she received in reply, and she nearly let out the repressed sigh of relief as Naruto’s mouth jabbered on about Mikoto-san’s famous shrimp, effectively steering the conversation away from her question. She direly wanted to punch her dear Sasuke-kun for so skilfully avoiding the simple task of providing her with an adequate answer. Now, she was left to merely hope at catching a glimpse of the elder brother. Though optimism was at the core of her very nature, disappointment in this field had been wrought too many times in the past two years for her optimism to shine its usual light on her.
In her daydream of silky ebony locks and unmentionable grace, she missed the narrowed stare, filled with calculating scrutiny her raven haired friend shot her.
“Yo!” Kakashi materialized, the mist of smoke dissipating around him. “Sorry I’m late. An old lady was sobbing uncontrollably...Lost her wallet, you see, and-”
“Oh, cut the crap, sensei,” Sakura rolled her eyes. “What are we doing today?”
The infamous eye-crinkle they would come to know in their later years as trouble found its way onto his features, as he assured them with a wave of his orange book that it was going to be a brilliantly fun mission.
x x x
“I hate that man,” Sakura spat, running a brown finger through her mud-matted hair. “Brilliantly fun? Hah!”
“Is this even allowed? He’s trying to kill us!” Naruto chimed, dragging with difficulty his too bruised body.
For once, Sasuke was silent, having exhausted his reserve of mockery for his two best friends. He, too, was in a state so sorry he hardly looked Uchiha at all. The three, dragging their sluggish bodies down the narrow road towards the Uchiha home looked in actuality like three corpses, having dug their way from the grave in the midst of the worst summer storm.
Kakashi had managed to stay clean the entire time (mostly by sacrificing his three unfortunate pupils in the process), and when judgement time came and they were officially off the clock, he had disappeared before they could adequately punish him. Not that they could’ve achieved anything at all - unfortunately for Sasuke’s too-inflated ego, Sakura’s impossible temper, and Naruto’s never-ending fountain of eternal optimism, their dear sensei could still defeat them without taking his masked face away from his literary porn.
An appalled gasp broke them from their exhausted silence, and three mud-covered heads whipped up to meet the mortified face of one beautiful Uchiha Mikoto. “Darlings! What happened to you?”
“Kakashi-sensei,” they droned in unison, with no small amounts of disdain.
A small laugh escaped her lips, “Oh, of course. You’ve done well then.”
If they were puzzled by her sudden change in attitude, they were offered no time to ponder it as she shooed them into the house, with a teasing-but-strict order for them to please get their dirty selves into the shower.
“I smell like cow,” Sakura sniffed, hiding her relief at the apparent lack of Itachi’s presence. She would just die if he saw her like this. “And you two! You two smell like a horse and a pig reproduced!”
“Better than cow, Sakura,” Sasuke glared.
“I’ll leave clothes for you guys in the room!” Mikoto’s voice drifted from rooms away, and Sakura’s face coloured so much at being caught arguing like children that it was discernable through the layer of mud sprinkling her face. Sasuke, with a noticeably thicker crust of mud-cake on his face was spared from the embarrassment of his rosy cheeks, and Naruto’s booming laughter at his friends’ discomfort was the only noise on their short trek.
When they reached the guest room, three hopeful pairs of eyes eyed the adjoining door with no small amounts of lust. But with a glare from Sakura, the two men wordlessly yielded to her figure, walking confidently to the bathroom door. They exchanged a glance, a little defeated, but mostly wary of the years to come.
If this was Sakura five years into their friendship, at age twelve, they could only imagine in their nightmare filled evenings, what a twenty year old Sakura, thirteen years into the future would be like. Oh, they were so whipped, and even more screwed.
x x x
“Okaa-san,” Itachi nodded, inclining his head slightly in greeting.
Mikoto spared him all the warmth a motherly smile could before resuming the task of slicing her tomatoes. “Sasuke-chan doesn’t know you’re back yet, hmm?”
“I do not believe so, okaa-san,” Itachi replied, inwardly chuckling at the suffix his mother loved to frequent her youngest with.
“Oh, he’ll be in such a good mood tonight. You’re back, we’re having tomatoes, and-” she paused in her musings as voices elevated in mock-anger reached them. “-his friends are here as well.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped then, as well as the twinkling in her eye. “It’s going to be an interesting night, don’t you think, Itachi?”
Although he said nothing, Itachi couldn’t help but be inclined to silently agree.
x x x
“Okay,” she said, voice muffled from the towel and downward position of her head. Tangled pink tresses filled their vision as the bathroom door swung open, revealing a Sakura with her head downcast, rubbing furiously with a towel at her hair. “You guys can shower now.”
“Huh?” a voice drifted over, frozen with something akin to fear. “Shit!”
Knowing trouble when it was around, Sakura whipped her head up to meet the scene awaiting her. And when she did, the screech promising bloody murder that elicited from her throat was heard all throughout the vast Uchiha compound.
“You absolute morons!”
x x x
Sitting halfway around the winding hallways of their home, Itachi and Mikoto froze in their actions at the terrifying scream. But the latter laughed a second later, murmuring fond thoughts about the cerise coloured girl, and in her mirth, missed the amused smirk curling across her eldest’s face.
x x x
“Sakura-chan!” Naruto sputtered, his jutsu faltering at her sudden appearance. “That was a really fast shower! You should try doing that more oft-”
“What do you think you’re doing!?” she screeched once more, face dyed a shadowed crimson, hued to showcase her fluttering anger to the entire world at large. “What gives you the right to do that? Baka! Baka, baka, bakaaaaa!” With the last insult came a painfully hard blow to his head - and although the blonde boy didn’t know it at the time, it was a near perfect imitation of all the chakra-laden, monstrous punches he would receive from the girl through the entire course of their friendship.
“Ow!” he whined, but with the glint in her gleaming emeralds that promised bloody murder, didn’t dare press on with his protests. Instead, possibly for the first time in his twelve years of living, made his first wise choice, and started sputtering out hasty apologies to the furious pink monster huffing before him.
If it hadn’t been him in that situation, he might’ve found it amusing that the normally delicate (sometimes) and demure (again, sometimes) girl looked like the big bad wolf, trying to huff and puff the little house down. But given that he was the house, he had no more will to find a laugh in the matter. Especially since it seemed that as luck would have it, even the luxury of being the nice, sturdy stone house was out of his reach today. Given the current situation, he would be lucky if he made it through as well as the straw house.
“I’m sorry, Sakura-chan!” cried Naruto - and somewhere behind him, he thought he heard a snicker. “You see, you’re just so pretty and all - and my sexy no jutsu is so pretty too, so we thought, hey! Since they’re both super pretty-” he paused at the increased flush in her face, and made a hasty backtrack. “But you’re prettier, of course! Well we were just thinking that two positives have to equal an even better positive, right? Right...”
“So,” she said, and Naruto suddenly wished that the anger she housed from moments ago was back. For in its place was a saccharine smile that brought out the goosebumps in even Sasuke, and he was standing a good distance away. “Let me get this straight. You violated my body by hengeing your stupid sexy no jutsu into me?!”
“Er, well...when you put it that way,” Naruto scratched the back of his head, sheepish, “...Yes?”
“How dare you?” Sakura screeched, and Naruto fought back a cringe. He doubted any other girl’s vocal chords could rival Sakura’s. Not even Ino, the other notorious loudmouth of Konoha. “How dare you just...just...violate me like that?”
When she put it in those terms, guilt that he didn’t know he could feel flushed through him. “But Sakura-chan!” he gasped, momentary fear forgotten. “I promise that’s not what we were trying to do! It’s just that you’re so pretty and everything!”
If it weren’t for the barely perceptible sniff that signalled to them the calm after the storm was here, Sasuke wouldn’t have dared put in a syllable. “Sakura. The dobe is right.”
“Sasuke-kun?” she blinked, having momentarily forgotten his existence. “You! Don’t think you can escape the blame either!”
Well, shit, he thought, and a quick glare in Naruto’s direction was the best defence he could muster at the moment. In a second, as if a light had suddenly gone off in the blonde’s head, his face shone with the notion that he had just gotten a ‘bright idea’. Sasuke, knowing from the years of their acquaintance that no idea from Naruto was a bright idea, opened his mouth to stop Naruto from digging them a deeper hole, but was beaten by Naruto’s “-Hey, Sakura-chan! I’ll show you! When you see how pretty you are, you won’t be so mad anymore!”
Before anyone’s jaw could drop at Naruto’s stupidity, his muddied boyish body was replaced by the fully nude body of one eighteen year old Haruno Sakura. The said girl’s lips dropped to form an o, too shocked to scream bloody murder once more, and perhaps even a bit inwardly pleased at how good she, it, whatever looked. Had she twisted her head a fraction of an inch, she might’ve caught sight of the growing rosy hue in the younger Uchiha’s pale cheeks, but she was too busy being thankful that a hazy smoke covered her delicate areas.
“Am I interrupting?” a deep baritone called from the door. Three heads whipped towards the door that had slid open in their inattentive shock, and revelling in the last bath of sunshine seeping through the door was none other than Uchiha Itachi. If Sakura had been mortified about a minute ago, when she first spotted a Sakura-sexy-no-jutsu, there was simply no word in her mind that could describe what she felt now. There, standing casually, as if he were without a care in the world, with a deliciously amused smirk curling around his lips was the object of her childish affection.
“Aniki!” Sasuke sputtered, face contorting into something indescribable as he digested the situation. When his mind finally wrapped around the bizarreness of the whole, he turned his face away, and Sakura caught a glimpse of the expression splattered across his boyish patrician features that could only be described as I’m going to hurl all over the place right fucking now.
And then Naruto had to open his mouth again, making an unsalvageable situation even worse. Why his two best friends ever expected differently was a mystery, but the frozen look of absolute shock plastered across both faces when his next words escaped were evidence enough of their hopeless optimism.
“You!” Naruto beamed up at their new audience member. “Tell Sakura-chan that she’s so pretty like this!” When Itachi made no reply, with the only indication that he’d heard anything at all the deepening of the already thoroughly amused smirk on his face, Naruto took that stupidly as an invitation to continue. Turning to Sakura, he proceeded to mortify her even further. “See, Sakura-chan?” he said, the eagerness nearly pouring from his words. “Even the teme’s brother thinks you’re super pretty!”
“Eh? Sakura-chan? Are you alright?” he blinked, looking properly flabbergasted. “Do you have a fever? Your face is so red!”
“Shut up,” Sasuke hissed, unconsciously inching closer to the embarrassed girl who now cradled her ‘feverish’ face within the palms of her hands. It was the sort of brotherly love that would manifest much more in their later years, the one she would often reprimand them for, for being too overly protective. But right now, the faint tugging within Sasuke willed him to move so that he shielded her from the source of her agony. He had guessed as much recently, with her often coy questions about his aniki. Still, even now, it could’ve been just a coincidence - but right now, he had to get Itachi out of there, for her sake.
“Nii-san,” Sasuke turned, schooling his voice to be as level as humanely possible. “Please tell okaa-san that we will be down to dinner shortly.”
Itachi nodded in compliance, and moved to turn away from the unconventional trio. When his back was fully turned, and they’d fully expected him to just move on with a few inner laughs, he paused to leave them with yet another nugget of surprise.
“To answer your question, Naruto-kun,” his voice drifted over, and Sakura, who had finally regained the will to lift her head, froze once more. “She is indeed, very pretty.”
With a small smirk to himself, Itachi disappeared into the shadows of their winding halls, leaving in his wake three gobsmacked twelve year olds.
Characters: Uchiha Itachi & Haruno Sakura
Prompt: 025. growth & 031. sexy no jutsu & 185. his pain was like a desert/134. you can't do that
Word Count: 3214
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Notes: Non-massacre AU. Part of a mini-series. Sequels/Prequels can be found here at CHIAROSCURO. Written for lover100 & 50_shinobi & 500themes. Prompt tables are here & here.
-
Life never happened as one expected, she learned all too soon.
At a younger age, dreams of star-filled missions with motions too fast to catch, whispered jutsus and deafening explosions were the thoughts that filled her childish mind. It was a dream, at one point, and nothing more. “You’ll marry a nice young lad, and you’ll get to raise a little daughter or son just as I raised you,” her mother had once said with a smile. But as Sakura recalled the memory now, it had been a little nostalgic, and a lot more of something akin to regret-filled acceptance in that smile.
And then her mother had died, perishing alongside her father in a freak roadside accident.
It was a little bit like a fairytale after that, but the orphaned Sakura had found, perhaps by fate a box of hidden memories locked away in the furthest corner of her home. It was somewhere she would’ve never looked, had she not been forced to clean out her home to prepare it for sale. In the box she found all her now-repressed dreams of those star-filled whispered nights - but they belonged to her mother.
She couldn’t have been sure, if not for the tiny engraving on the hitai-ate, and the little markings on the mounds of scrolls, kunai and weaponry. It was perhaps fate, or simply luck that she stumbled across this locked away piece of the past, but something had been reincarnated in her at that moment. With courage that a seven year old Sakura never knew, she had marched herself straight to the Third’s office to make her demands known.
It had been a little more than intimidating once she actually made her way to the building, though. Too little to even reach the waists of the guards, a shy curve of her lips and an incandescent blush were all that she could offer with her quiet plea, asking if she could please have a moment of the Hokage-sama’s time. The young Izumo instantly recognized her as the esteemed merchant Haruno-san’s recently orphaned daughter, and taking pity from the emotions seeping out from the bold locks of Shinobi Rule #25, led the timid girl up the steps to find the aging Hokage.
Sarutobi, with his infinite knowledge it seemed, recognized her straight away. Though she did not know it at the time, he knew of her thoughts exactly, before her soprano voice had even jumped the leap of faith to ask it.
“Hokage-sama,” she bowed, face still flushed cherry from the biting cold. “I was just thinking...uhm...”
“Have you found a place to stay yet, Sakura-chan?”
She looked up in surprise at hearing her name, an unforgiving blush rising to accompany winter’s gift on her face. “....no, Hokage-sama, I have not.”
“Good,” he replied softly with a small smile. The momentary horror Sakura felt at the kind Hokage being happy at her state of homelessness melted away completely with his next words. “I hope you do not mind, Sakura-chan, if I suggest a place for you. The son of a very dear friend of mine was orphaned as well at a very young age, and has been staying at an apartment complex near here. I’m sure he would be very happy to have a new neighbour.”
“Really?” Sakura beamed, feeling hopeful for the first time since Black Monday, as she had so cleverly named it. The Hokage smiled with his lines of age, nodding along with her. Haruno Akio had been one of the most intelligent and most respected civilians in Konoha, and he had no qualms in believing that his daughter would be every bit as bright as the lately deceased man. His wife too, had been one of the brightest of her time - but tragedies are abundant amongst fairytales, and he hoped that her living legacy would be able to carry on what she was not able to accomplish.
“I am sure also, that he wouldn’t mind taking you to the Academy to study with him,” he finished, and watched as the light lit up her cherub face, knowing for certain in that moment that that was indeed why she had come.
“So I can learn to be a shinobi?” she blurted, manners flying to the wind. “So I can be a kunoichi like okaa-san?”
The tragic smile that pulled at Sarutobi’s face at the mention of her mother’s repressed potential was lost to the young girl, with only his final “yes”, a remembrance of that day.
x x x
After just one week of being put on the same genin team as her two best friends, Sakura was sure of one thing: she would die an inevitably early and painful death, because of those two absolute morons.
“BAKA!” she screeched, hand already sore from abusing the blonde’s arm excessively. “What’s the point of that? Seriously! Baka, baka, bakaaaa!”
“It’s not my fault!” the blonde whined, eyeing his battered arm. “If Kakashi-sensei wasn’t so late every day, I wouldn’t have the time to make this jutsu!”
Sasuke scoffed from his meditative position, full of Uchiha-scorn for the Kyuubi vessel. “How unclassy,” he drawled, adding finally with a smirk, “dobe.”
“Why you teme-”
“Say, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura suddenly interrupted, eruptive anger from moments ago seemingly forgotten. Naruto turned to the girl in absolute surprise, and even Sasuke cracked open an eye at her serene voice. “Is you nii-san back from his mission yet?”
Obsidian orbs narrowed at her uncharacteristic question. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” she laughed, waving it away with a soft flick of her hand. “Just curiosity, you know. We’re still on for dinner at your place tonight, right?”
A brisk nod was all she received in reply, and she nearly let out the repressed sigh of relief as Naruto’s mouth jabbered on about Mikoto-san’s famous shrimp, effectively steering the conversation away from her question. She direly wanted to punch her dear Sasuke-kun for so skilfully avoiding the simple task of providing her with an adequate answer. Now, she was left to merely hope at catching a glimpse of the elder brother. Though optimism was at the core of her very nature, disappointment in this field had been wrought too many times in the past two years for her optimism to shine its usual light on her.
In her daydream of silky ebony locks and unmentionable grace, she missed the narrowed stare, filled with calculating scrutiny her raven haired friend shot her.
“Yo!” Kakashi materialized, the mist of smoke dissipating around him. “Sorry I’m late. An old lady was sobbing uncontrollably...Lost her wallet, you see, and-”
“Oh, cut the crap, sensei,” Sakura rolled her eyes. “What are we doing today?”
The infamous eye-crinkle they would come to know in their later years as trouble found its way onto his features, as he assured them with a wave of his orange book that it was going to be a brilliantly fun mission.
x x x
“I hate that man,” Sakura spat, running a brown finger through her mud-matted hair. “Brilliantly fun? Hah!”
“Is this even allowed? He’s trying to kill us!” Naruto chimed, dragging with difficulty his too bruised body.
For once, Sasuke was silent, having exhausted his reserve of mockery for his two best friends. He, too, was in a state so sorry he hardly looked Uchiha at all. The three, dragging their sluggish bodies down the narrow road towards the Uchiha home looked in actuality like three corpses, having dug their way from the grave in the midst of the worst summer storm.
Kakashi had managed to stay clean the entire time (mostly by sacrificing his three unfortunate pupils in the process), and when judgement time came and they were officially off the clock, he had disappeared before they could adequately punish him. Not that they could’ve achieved anything at all - unfortunately for Sasuke’s too-inflated ego, Sakura’s impossible temper, and Naruto’s never-ending fountain of eternal optimism, their dear sensei could still defeat them without taking his masked face away from his literary porn.
An appalled gasp broke them from their exhausted silence, and three mud-covered heads whipped up to meet the mortified face of one beautiful Uchiha Mikoto. “Darlings! What happened to you?”
“Kakashi-sensei,” they droned in unison, with no small amounts of disdain.
A small laugh escaped her lips, “Oh, of course. You’ve done well then.”
If they were puzzled by her sudden change in attitude, they were offered no time to ponder it as she shooed them into the house, with a teasing-but-strict order for them to please get their dirty selves into the shower.
“I smell like cow,” Sakura sniffed, hiding her relief at the apparent lack of Itachi’s presence. She would just die if he saw her like this. “And you two! You two smell like a horse and a pig reproduced!”
“Better than cow, Sakura,” Sasuke glared.
“I’ll leave clothes for you guys in the room!” Mikoto’s voice drifted from rooms away, and Sakura’s face coloured so much at being caught arguing like children that it was discernable through the layer of mud sprinkling her face. Sasuke, with a noticeably thicker crust of mud-cake on his face was spared from the embarrassment of his rosy cheeks, and Naruto’s booming laughter at his friends’ discomfort was the only noise on their short trek.
When they reached the guest room, three hopeful pairs of eyes eyed the adjoining door with no small amounts of lust. But with a glare from Sakura, the two men wordlessly yielded to her figure, walking confidently to the bathroom door. They exchanged a glance, a little defeated, but mostly wary of the years to come.
If this was Sakura five years into their friendship, at age twelve, they could only imagine in their nightmare filled evenings, what a twenty year old Sakura, thirteen years into the future would be like. Oh, they were so whipped, and even more screwed.
x x x
“Okaa-san,” Itachi nodded, inclining his head slightly in greeting.
Mikoto spared him all the warmth a motherly smile could before resuming the task of slicing her tomatoes. “Sasuke-chan doesn’t know you’re back yet, hmm?”
“I do not believe so, okaa-san,” Itachi replied, inwardly chuckling at the suffix his mother loved to frequent her youngest with.
“Oh, he’ll be in such a good mood tonight. You’re back, we’re having tomatoes, and-” she paused in her musings as voices elevated in mock-anger reached them. “-his friends are here as well.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped then, as well as the twinkling in her eye. “It’s going to be an interesting night, don’t you think, Itachi?”
Although he said nothing, Itachi couldn’t help but be inclined to silently agree.
x x x
“Okay,” she said, voice muffled from the towel and downward position of her head. Tangled pink tresses filled their vision as the bathroom door swung open, revealing a Sakura with her head downcast, rubbing furiously with a towel at her hair. “You guys can shower now.”
“Huh?” a voice drifted over, frozen with something akin to fear. “Shit!”
Knowing trouble when it was around, Sakura whipped her head up to meet the scene awaiting her. And when she did, the screech promising bloody murder that elicited from her throat was heard all throughout the vast Uchiha compound.
“You absolute morons!”
x x x
Sitting halfway around the winding hallways of their home, Itachi and Mikoto froze in their actions at the terrifying scream. But the latter laughed a second later, murmuring fond thoughts about the cerise coloured girl, and in her mirth, missed the amused smirk curling across her eldest’s face.
x x x
“Sakura-chan!” Naruto sputtered, his jutsu faltering at her sudden appearance. “That was a really fast shower! You should try doing that more oft-”
“What do you think you’re doing!?” she screeched once more, face dyed a shadowed crimson, hued to showcase her fluttering anger to the entire world at large. “What gives you the right to do that? Baka! Baka, baka, bakaaaaa!” With the last insult came a painfully hard blow to his head - and although the blonde boy didn’t know it at the time, it was a near perfect imitation of all the chakra-laden, monstrous punches he would receive from the girl through the entire course of their friendship.
“Ow!” he whined, but with the glint in her gleaming emeralds that promised bloody murder, didn’t dare press on with his protests. Instead, possibly for the first time in his twelve years of living, made his first wise choice, and started sputtering out hasty apologies to the furious pink monster huffing before him.
If it hadn’t been him in that situation, he might’ve found it amusing that the normally delicate (sometimes) and demure (again, sometimes) girl looked like the big bad wolf, trying to huff and puff the little house down. But given that he was the house, he had no more will to find a laugh in the matter. Especially since it seemed that as luck would have it, even the luxury of being the nice, sturdy stone house was out of his reach today. Given the current situation, he would be lucky if he made it through as well as the straw house.
“I’m sorry, Sakura-chan!” cried Naruto - and somewhere behind him, he thought he heard a snicker. “You see, you’re just so pretty and all - and my sexy no jutsu is so pretty too, so we thought, hey! Since they’re both super pretty-” he paused at the increased flush in her face, and made a hasty backtrack. “But you’re prettier, of course! Well we were just thinking that two positives have to equal an even better positive, right? Right...”
“So,” she said, and Naruto suddenly wished that the anger she housed from moments ago was back. For in its place was a saccharine smile that brought out the goosebumps in even Sasuke, and he was standing a good distance away. “Let me get this straight. You violated my body by hengeing your stupid sexy no jutsu into me?!”
“Er, well...when you put it that way,” Naruto scratched the back of his head, sheepish, “...Yes?”
“How dare you?” Sakura screeched, and Naruto fought back a cringe. He doubted any other girl’s vocal chords could rival Sakura’s. Not even Ino, the other notorious loudmouth of Konoha. “How dare you just...just...violate me like that?”
When she put it in those terms, guilt that he didn’t know he could feel flushed through him. “But Sakura-chan!” he gasped, momentary fear forgotten. “I promise that’s not what we were trying to do! It’s just that you’re so pretty and everything!”
If it weren’t for the barely perceptible sniff that signalled to them the calm after the storm was here, Sasuke wouldn’t have dared put in a syllable. “Sakura. The dobe is right.”
“Sasuke-kun?” she blinked, having momentarily forgotten his existence. “You! Don’t think you can escape the blame either!”
Well, shit, he thought, and a quick glare in Naruto’s direction was the best defence he could muster at the moment. In a second, as if a light had suddenly gone off in the blonde’s head, his face shone with the notion that he had just gotten a ‘bright idea’. Sasuke, knowing from the years of their acquaintance that no idea from Naruto was a bright idea, opened his mouth to stop Naruto from digging them a deeper hole, but was beaten by Naruto’s “-Hey, Sakura-chan! I’ll show you! When you see how pretty you are, you won’t be so mad anymore!”
Before anyone’s jaw could drop at Naruto’s stupidity, his muddied boyish body was replaced by the fully nude body of one eighteen year old Haruno Sakura. The said girl’s lips dropped to form an o, too shocked to scream bloody murder once more, and perhaps even a bit inwardly pleased at how good she, it, whatever looked. Had she twisted her head a fraction of an inch, she might’ve caught sight of the growing rosy hue in the younger Uchiha’s pale cheeks, but she was too busy being thankful that a hazy smoke covered her delicate areas.
“Am I interrupting?” a deep baritone called from the door. Three heads whipped towards the door that had slid open in their inattentive shock, and revelling in the last bath of sunshine seeping through the door was none other than Uchiha Itachi. If Sakura had been mortified about a minute ago, when she first spotted a Sakura-sexy-no-jutsu, there was simply no word in her mind that could describe what she felt now. There, standing casually, as if he were without a care in the world, with a deliciously amused smirk curling around his lips was the object of her childish affection.
“Aniki!” Sasuke sputtered, face contorting into something indescribable as he digested the situation. When his mind finally wrapped around the bizarreness of the whole, he turned his face away, and Sakura caught a glimpse of the expression splattered across his boyish patrician features that could only be described as I’m going to hurl all over the place right fucking now.
And then Naruto had to open his mouth again, making an unsalvageable situation even worse. Why his two best friends ever expected differently was a mystery, but the frozen look of absolute shock plastered across both faces when his next words escaped were evidence enough of their hopeless optimism.
“You!” Naruto beamed up at their new audience member. “Tell Sakura-chan that she’s so pretty like this!” When Itachi made no reply, with the only indication that he’d heard anything at all the deepening of the already thoroughly amused smirk on his face, Naruto took that stupidly as an invitation to continue. Turning to Sakura, he proceeded to mortify her even further. “See, Sakura-chan?” he said, the eagerness nearly pouring from his words. “Even the teme’s brother thinks you’re super pretty!”
“Eh? Sakura-chan? Are you alright?” he blinked, looking properly flabbergasted. “Do you have a fever? Your face is so red!”
“Shut up,” Sasuke hissed, unconsciously inching closer to the embarrassed girl who now cradled her ‘feverish’ face within the palms of her hands. It was the sort of brotherly love that would manifest much more in their later years, the one she would often reprimand them for, for being too overly protective. But right now, the faint tugging within Sasuke willed him to move so that he shielded her from the source of her agony. He had guessed as much recently, with her often coy questions about his aniki. Still, even now, it could’ve been just a coincidence - but right now, he had to get Itachi out of there, for her sake.
“Nii-san,” Sasuke turned, schooling his voice to be as level as humanely possible. “Please tell okaa-san that we will be down to dinner shortly.”
Itachi nodded in compliance, and moved to turn away from the unconventional trio. When his back was fully turned, and they’d fully expected him to just move on with a few inner laughs, he paused to leave them with yet another nugget of surprise.
“To answer your question, Naruto-kun,” his voice drifted over, and Sakura, who had finally regained the will to lift her head, froze once more. “She is indeed, very pretty.”
With a small smirk to himself, Itachi disappeared into the shadows of their winding halls, leaving in his wake three gobsmacked twelve year olds.