when i gave you my umbrella on that rainy day Part Two
Part One Here
Title: when i gave you my umbrella on that rainy day
Prompt Used: 5. Umbrella (AU)
Medium: Fanfiction
Rating: T
Warning: Swearing.
Comment: Updated (coughfinallycough).
Note that there will be a chapter after this, though it’s more of an epilogue than anything.
WARNING: heavily dialogue oriented.
ADDITIONAL WARNING: I tried to keep loner!Sakura as realistic as possible. There is nothing I hate more than self-fulfillments, but . . . you’ll be the judge.
AND YET ANOTHER WARNING: The ending is rushed, but I wanted to keep it realistic. Sort of.
-Part Two-
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Sasuke glared at the clock, as if his glare would force that minute needle to spin faster. It was increasingly hard for him to not strangle that pink (because, really, that basically summed up her whole appearance) girl when the clock was . . . annoying him like this.
Especially when she was also drumming her fingers along.
“Will you stop that?” he snarled after ten seconds.
She flinched. The fucking pink girl who dared to knee him flinched. So much for being brave and mighty in front of everyone else.
He repressed a sadistic smirk at her expression, which was a pale as a sheet. Sasuke supposed that she had every right to be afraid. After all, he was Sasuke Uchiha, and they were alone in the classroom without supervision (Kakashi had left five minutes into detention, and was never seen since). Sure, beating a girl up was low, a law that every guy obeyed without question, but how would she know? She was that loner who never socialized, who slinked away to the back of the room whenever other fan-girls crowed with his arrival. How did she know what he would do?
Though this stupid little girl did succeed in kneeing him in the groin.
Underneath the desk, he crossed his legs. He sent her another murderous glare, and almost laughed (laughed!) when she let out a little whimper.
Fucking pink girl with monstrous strength.
Outside, the rain fell still with a patpatpat. Sasuke stared out and watched the raindrops slide down the dusty window. This was such a waste of time. If he didn’t know Kakashi was watching somewhere in the staff lounge through the school monitor system, he would’ve ditched by now.
From his view at the window, Sasuke could see the distant gray waves rolling closer to their school. That was when he remembered that he had forgotten his umbrella at his apartment again.
He couldn’t believe it. How could he have forgotten? It had been raining for the past few days. Surely he should’ve remembered?
Briefly he wondered about this. What had distracted him that morn-Oh.
Of course.
Sasuke’s mood darkened abruptly.
It made sense now. No wonder Kakashi-
“Look, I’m sorry, alright?” a scared voice said in the peripheral of his mind. “I really didn’t mean it-and, really, you didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry that I kicked you. I’m sorry that I got you into detention. I’m sorry for everything that happened earlier. It was entirely uncalled of me.” By the end of the declarations, her voice grew marginally quieter.
Sasuke blinked away his thoughts and turned to stare at her, which only seemed to serve to terrify her even more. Even though she proudly held his gaze, Sasuke could tell-by the tense shoulders, white knuckles, tightly set jaws, and the way that she just kept on sinking further into her seat-that this girl was afraid. And, perhaps more to keep his mind off of his previous thought than anything, he found himself asking, “What did you say?”
Her chair screeched against the floor when she tried to move back. “I-I said I’m sorry for-”
“No. Before that. After you-” attacked me, he thought “-after I came into the classroom.”
For a moment her face was a complete blank. She didn’t understand what he was talking about.
Then it clicked.
“I said that-” She paused and took in a shaky breath. “I said, ‘This is for your fan-girls.’”
Fan-girls . . .
He narrowed his eyes. “You brutally assaulted me . . . for my fan-girls? When, personally, I did nothing to you?”
She winced. “You made it sound so ridiculous . . .”
“Because it is.”
The girl did nothing to retaliate, which surprised Sasuke considering how defensive she was just a few moments ago.
Fan-girls? She must be lying. What kind of reason was that?
What can a bunch of skimpy-clad girls with dreadful tastes in perfume do?
It was only when the pink-haired girl started laughing that Sasuke realized he had said the question out loud.
“Now you’re laughing,” he said blankly.
“It’s not-I’m not-” she huffed for breath, looked at him, and then laughed again “-I mean, I-you said-like an old man-” she got out before bursting into a giggling fit once more.
“You . . .” Sasuke looked for something to say, “. . . are the strangest person I’ve ever met-actually, you can give the dead-last a run for his money.”
“I would like to meet this ‘dead-last,’ then.” Sakura wiped away a tear from her eyes. “And really, I’m not really that strange. I just-”
“Have pink hair, like to hurt other people, and not to mention the dramatically bipolar personality,” Sasuke stated.
“Hey-I’ll admit the others, but the pink hair is totally from the genes!” Sakura protested.
Sasuke stared. “You mean . . . that is your natural hair color?”
“Yes,” she retorted hotly. “It’s from my dad, and has been in the family for ages! I’m serious-all of my uncles from my father’s side have pink hair!”
He gave it one last look, before sinking back into his chair.
“Whatever. It still doesn’t change the fact that you kicked me between the legs for something that was never my fault to begin with.”
For a moment, he thought she would revert back to her cowardly form again, which would sort of be a pity. He hadn’t talked with a girl his age in a long while without rejecting an offer for a date. It was nice to know that not all females out there became brainless idiots in his presence.
But god damn it, this girl kicked him between the legs. For his fan-girls. What had he ever done to deserve this? Since when had popularity include such a pain to his groins? Weren’t the crowds of worshipping girls enough already?
To his surprise, Sakura sighed instead.
“Sasuke-san, it’s not that I expected anything from you, but . . .” She took a deep breath in, and looked at him straight in the eye. “I said I’m sorry over a thousand times today. I swallowed my pride to act like a fool, hoping submission is the key. I tried to offer you an ice pack, a trip to the nurse’s office, a call home, my sushi at lunch, my sandwich at lunch, my homemade cookies at lunch, my juice box at lunch, my napkin when your face got dirty, my PE shirt and shorts when yours were missing, my arms to carry your books, my shoulders to carry your backpack, my hands to write down class notes, my homework for you to copy, and heck knows what else! I even tried to get you out of detention by bribing Hatake with porn books, and he didn’t even budge! Do you know what kind of money I had to give to Uzumaki for those? Do you know how humiliating it was?”
She was standing up now, her fists curled tight with anger.
“I surrendered myself to your fans’ abuse after class, because I know I deserve it for losing my cool. I even thought that we could have a normal conversation, but you had to go and ruin it. Just what more do you want, Sasuke? Me making more of an idiot out of myself than I already am? Me being the subject of jeers and taunts from the whole student body? What?”
Once she finished the speech, as if realizing what she’d done, Sakura’s eyes widened in horror. She sank back into her chair in silence.
In the near-empty classroom, the clock ticked by time.
“What did they do?”
“Who?” she asked stiffly. She was afraid of him.
He swallowed. “The fan-girls. What did they do?”
“Nothing much,” she said, turning her head away.
“What is it?”
She glared at him, and Sasuke felt that Sakura, the one who kneed him in the nuts, come back. “Why would you care, Uchiha Sasuke? What can a bunch of skimpy-clad girls with dreadful tastes in perfume do?”
“Just tell me, Sakura.”
There was a pause.
“They used the typical strategy: intimidation. Called me a few names, threatened me a few times. Said I didn’t deserve to be in your presence. Told me to back off, or else. Laughed in my face afterwards. Ridiculing me. It’s more bark than bite, to be honest. Nothing much. And . . . actually. You know what’s the strange thing? They never mentioned your physical condition. It was always ‘don’t do this with Sasuke-kun’ or ‘don’t do that with Sasuke-kun.’ They probably cared more about the time I tried chasing you around the school afterwards.” She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. “Those bitches.”
“What did you say to them?” Sasuke asked quietly.
She gave him a look that questioned his sanity.
“Do you really think I would talk back to them?”
“You kneed me,” he pointed out, “in the groin.”
She blushed. “That’s different. I told you, I snapped that time. Plus, you’re a guy. The worst you can do to me is gather up a few other boys and beat me up, but that’s not really that likely. With girls . . . they can literally ruin your life.”
“Ruin . . . your life?”
“Have you ever had the school turned against you?” she asked. He shook his head no. “Well, me neither, but-”
“Then how should you know what it’s like?”
Her face flushed red. “It wasn’t me. I had a friend named Ino in middle school-” She paused.
He waited for her to go on.
She glanced at him uncertainly and then swallowed.
“Well,” Sakura said, “I had a friend named Ino in middle school before I was transferred to this school district. She was my best friend, and we were extremely close, like sisters.”
Sasuke nodded, noting her use of past tense.
Her eyes took on a faraway, misty sort of look, and her pink eyebrows scrunched together as if she was in pain.
“It was . . . in middle school. Not Konoha Middle, but at the district where I came from.” She hesitated for just one second before beginning her speech:
“During eighth grade, Ino got involved in this really big fiasco with a group of girls. It was over one guy, and his name was Sai, who was also my friend. He-Sai-was the boyfriend of another girl in this particular group. And . . . Things went well for the couple, but then they had a fight. It was over something really stupid, actually. Sai not hanging out with her long enough, Sai being too feminine for that girl’s taste. He liked to draw a lot, you know.”
Sasuke didn’t know at all, but he nodded anyway.
“So . . . one day they broke up-or Sai thought they broke up, him being emotionally clueless or her being not clear enough. The breakup fight didn’t end very well, and . . . well. Sai isn’t really good with relationships. Sai told Ino he was single, and they started dating. Neither Ino nor I knew that Sai’s girlfriend still considered herself as such. It was a huge misunderstanding either way.
“When the girl found out, she became very angry. So she tried to get Ino back. That girl rallied up her merry band of fucking bitches and . . .” She inhaled a lungful of air, and exhaled. “They spread word that Ino was a whore, a slut, and a stripper-without talking once to Sai about it.”
There was a spark of anger in Sakura’s eyes, the same spark he’d seen before he got kicked and when she shouted at him. Sakura’s next words were said with some forced calm.
“The girl used her influence in the school against Ino, and soon Ino couldn’t walk down the hall without getting some sort of name-calling. It was to the point where she had to throw away her cell phone because of all the . . . sexual harassing texts.
“Sai and I tried to tell the principal at our school . . . but no one was willing to testimony against the girl. Even worse, they began to spread rumors of me and Sai being together. Ino didn’t believe them at first. As time went on, though, she became increasingly paranoid. She couldn’t trust anyone anymore. So we had a big fight, and everything just broke apart.
“Eventually Ino’s father came back from his business trip and found out about the girls. The bullies I told you about are in juvenile hall now. But the damage was done. Ino and I are no longer friends, and we no longer talk to each other once she moved out of the district as I moved out of mine.”
Sakura averted her gaze. Her eyes focused on a distant point in the rain outside the classroom. Sasuke wondered what she was seeing.
“Is that why you read books so much?” he asked. His voice came out strange, almost hoarse. “Because you’re afraid people will do what they did to Ino, and that they’ll abandon you like how Ino did?”
“No!” she said, a little too quickly.
“That’s the reason you don’t talk, isn’t it?”
She whipped around in her seat, glaring at him angrily.
“Do you know what your problem is?” she asked. “Your problem is your attitude to everything and everyone in the world. You look at people like-like you want to peel out their guts or something. You hate everyone for no reason at all, and you walk around like you are better than all of us underneath your-your-your big fat head! And now you are pretending to understand me like some kind of interesting game! You-you-” She seemed to run out of insults again “-you-you are the most infuriating individual I ever had the misfortune to converse with!”
Sasuke stared at her, wanting to retort. But all he could focus on was her face, which was dark pink again with anger.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was Sakura’s rapid breaths in and out.
And this time Sasuke was the one to break the silence.
“Today would be my brother’s twenty-second birthday.” The words came out without any thought.
“Your brother’s . . . ?” Sakura seemed confused the sudden change of topic.
“Today,” he repeated, “would be my brother’s twenty-second birthday.”
Under normal circumstances, Sasuke would immediately wish he had shut up-and to think, he had just told this girl about Itachi of all things.
But strangely, instead of wanting to stuff what he said back to his mouth, Sasuke felt relief. Relief. Like he had been crushed underneath a gigantic boulder for a long time without even noticing, and it was removed only now.
Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of their acquaintance, or maybe what Sakura had willingly shared about herself, or heck. Maybe he even felt sorry to have analyzed her like that.
Whatever reason, what was spoken was spoken.
It took her a while before she realized what the “would be” meant. Realization dawned and she looked at him, almost horrified.
“Your brother-”
“He’s dead, yes.” Now he was surprised by how little pain he felt with those words.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her head was bowed.
He was bewildered, though not upset. Not upset.
“Why are you sorry? You barely know me.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter-I still yelled at you on your dead brother’s birthday.”
Then she covered her mouth, knowing she said something wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she squeaked again.
Sasuke had the most bizarre urge to smile. “You’re a strange one, Haruno. You never met my brother and you hate me, yet you feel sorry.”
“It’s called being normal. Most people should feel sorry.”
“Perhaps. . . . My brother and I weren’t really close.”
“Really?”
“Yeah . . .” He murdered my entire family when I was ten. “Looks like we both have something to whine about after all.”
“I’m sorry . . .”
“Don’t pity me,” he said immediately, mood changing faster than a thunderstorm. “I don’t want it.”
Her face changed into anger. “Then don’t pity me either! Don’t pretend you know what I’m going through, and I’ll stay out of your business.”
Silence ensued.
“I guess,” Sasuke said after a while, chewing his words carefully, “we’re not as different as we thought we were.”
Sakura sighed. “Us two, we both have have issues, huh . . . ?”
-
Additional comments: Disappointing? Sorry. I think Sasuke’s issue was resolved too quickly, but . . .
The fluff will be in the next chapter. So. Tune in for that.