____________//FANFICTION ♥

 
The Uchiha Restoraionn: chapter 4 - Before The Storm
By Kristen

There was that feeling in the pit of her stomach, not like butterflies, but more like fear. It was a winding, tightening knot of nervousness that had settled into Sakura’s abdomen when she awoke Saturday morning. The lovely feeling that was the afterglow of sex was gone and now she was just nervous. She assumed things would slow down now…yesterday, the surprises and shocks rolled over her, one after another, colliding into one another, making everything just a jumbled mess.

Now Sakura’s mind was clear enough for her to wonder what she would say to her husband, her husband, today, tomorrow and for the rest of their lives. The last thing she wanted was for the air between them to be awkward. It had taken her such a long time before she learned how to talk to him without feeling disappointed at his response, so many months before she could read him, years before she could just be comfortable around him. The back of her mind didn’t cheer when he smiled at her or scream when he pulled away. He stopped being Sasuke, the beautiful, brooding boy and she finally saw that he was Sasuke, her friend and teammate, her important comrade.

She stopped doing things in a vain attempt to impress him and started doing as she believed; more often then not, Sakura still found herself by his side, because that was where she saw she was needed. Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto…they weren’t Team 7 anymore, but they were still a team. Sakura was suddenly very sure, and rather afraid, that the team dynamic was about to go to hell.

Sasuke was wearing his personal uniform; a variation of the normal chuunin outfit that was blue, wide collared and sported a fan rather than a spiral on the vest. His expression wasn’t readable to Sakura—it usually was—but she thought it might have to do with the angle. He was standing up, looking down at her in the futon, still.

“How long are your students going to wait for you?”

Sakura looked at the clock on the wall and swore, violently. She pulled her clothes on as quickly as she could, thankful that she had changed since Friday’s class. She didn’t much want her students suspecting their teacher was getting lucky, at least, not before her marriage was made public.

Dressed, Sakura dashed out the door, trying to think of a better excuse for her tardiness than an exercise in patience. She was quite fond of her students, but didn’t think most of them had the maturity to accept that answer, anyway. There was probably going to be, at the very least, an eraser wedged in the doorway, waiting to fall on her head.

But there was no eraser, no students still waiting either, except for one girl, ten years old, worriedly wringing her hands. The girl burst into a diatribe of how none of the other students wanted to wait because it was just a half-day of school anyway and she tried to stop them, but no one would listen. The girl would have reminded Sakura of herself in her younger days, but this one was very sincere. There was no voice in the back of her head laughing at the stupid teacher who couldn’t even control her own class and for that, Sakura was thankful.

“Thank you for staying,” Sakura smiled, “but it looks like class is dismissed. Go on home.”

“But—“

“Don’t worry, I’ll punish everyone else on Monday. A ninja can’t just abandon a mission if he doesn’t like to wait.”

“A shinobi needs the patience to know to wait for the right time to act.”

“Exactly.”

The student hurried away and Sakura sat down at her desk, looking at the rows of empty tables and chairs. Her students had a long way to go if they couldn’t even wait for a tardy teacher. It was a simple thing to do that even the freshest cadet should have been able to realize was right. What if she had been testing them? They didn’t know what was really going on in the life of their teacher. No one did anymore, not really.

She didn’t.

~*~*~

If asked, Yamanaka Ino would have denied being jealous of Naruto and Sasuke for being Sakura’s closest friends. But no one did ask. They probably just assumed Ino was her best friend, if they even thought about it at all. Which isn’t to say that Shikamaru and Chouji weren’t close friends to Ino, they were, but it wasn’t the same as having a girl to confide in. A lot of the time, Sakura didn’t seem to need another girl as much as Ino did. Maybe it was because she’d never been very good at being girly, maybe it was because you could say whatever was on your mind to Naruto, he’d listen to the girl stuff if you wanted to tell him, or maybe it was because Sakura had worked so hard at being a ninja first and a woman second that she refused to let herself need silly feminine outlets.

Ino wasn’t the same way. She needed pretty flowers and to powder her nose. She always needed to look and feel sexy. She needed someone to watch chick flicks and do make-up with, to gossip about boys and complain about her period. She wanted to play the politics of the female subculture.

If Sakura wanted any of that, she stopped showing it the day she cut her hair off with a kunai.

If asked, Yamanaka Ino would have denied that any part of her, no matter how small or how guilty was thrilled when a tearful Sakura lunged at her one Saturday afternoon, throwing her arms around the other girl’s waist and burying her head in her shoulder, crying. Turning of a dime from comforting to ruthless—this was female friendship and what it meant to be a kunoichi. Sakura had never understood that.

Ino hugged Sakura and asked her kindly, “Do you want to talk about it?” Sakura pulled away enough to nod. Ino calmed her friend down long enough to settle them both into a booth in a favorite café of hers. Not the Ichiraku, which was like a second home to their entire generation, but a nice restaurant where they could sit down with fattening, sweet desserts and just talk.

“Sakura-chan, what’s wrong?”

Sakura’s head was pillowed on her arms, folded across the table. Her reply was a muffled, “I don’t know.” Ino smiled in the way people do when they are too tactful to frown. Sakura raised her head just a bit and elaborated. “I feel like I’m going to explode. I just want a good cry.”

“Did something happen?” Stupid question, but Ino wasn’t sure how far she could get with the direct approach. She would have to do as much probing as she could.

“A lot,” Sakura sniffed.

“What?” Ino prompted. For someone so eager to pour everything out, Sakura was not being very informative.

“If Shikamaru-san or Chouji-san asked you for a favor, what would you tell them?” In fact, she was being down right evasive. She could have been brilliant out in the field, instead of locking herself in a classroom, teaching hopeless candidates.

“That would depend on what it was,” Ino replied, hoping the conversation was going down the path that would let Sakura get it all out.

“What if they didn’t tell you?”

“They’d have to. How could I do anyone a favor without knowing what it was? It’s stupid.”

“But ..what if you could tell it was really important to him? Too important to say no.”

Ino chuckled. “Anything that important to Chouji would be about food and I’d still say no.”

“Well, I said yes.”

“What’d Naruto ask you to do?” Ino asked, figuring she knew where this conversation was going. In her thinking, having to do Naruto a favor was more then enough to make anyone cry.

“Not Naruto,” Sakura replied, “Sasuke-kun.”

Ino dropped the spoon she had been eating parfait with between questions. “What would he ever ask anyone for?” And why didn’t he ask me? Not that Ino didn’t realize Sakura was closer to Sasuke than she would likely ever be, but she would have leapt at the chance to get into his good graces. All he ever had for her were disgusted glances, and those were few and far between.

“I just wanted to help him so much,” Sakura said, “I didn’t even think about what he would want. I know Naruto and I are important to him, but sometimes he’s still so distant. I just get so worried about him. When he asked for my help yesterday, I just couldn’t say no.”

“Yeah,” Ino said finally, “I know what you mean. Shikamaru and Chouji were the biggest pains imaginable, but who doesn’t love their genin cellmates?”

Sakura sniffed. “I’m so glad you understand. I just need someone who does so much. I haven’t even told my parents yet.”

“So,” Ino said, leaning across the table in anticipation of what Sakura would say, “what’d he want?”

“You know how he wants to restore his clan?” Ino didn’t, but said she did, anyway, just to speed things along, really having no idea how much better her understanding was making Sakura feel. “Well, he wants me to help him with that. We got married last night, and now he’d trying to get me pregnant.”

Falling out of a booth is not as simple as falling off a chair, but Ino managed to anyway.

“What?! But I thought you..him… What?!” Ino clawed her way back into the booth, not even caring that her spoon was on the floor and the tall dish her parfait had come in was lying shattered on the table, knocked over when she fell.

For a long time, Sasuke had been the goal Ino measured her worth against. He was gorgeous, talented, wanted by everyone and most importantly, unattainable. Was there any other test of being a woman than to capture the heart of a man like that? Even when the other girls had grown up and moved on to boys that noticed them, Ino stuck by her goal. Goals are for reaching, not giving up on.

“He needed me, Ino-chan.” There was a silence as Sakura’s words sunk in. She settled her arms on the table again, and rested her chin on them. She didn’t look so frantic or near tears anymore, but…content. “I was so mad at him yesterday. He had me swearing I’d do things before I even knew what they were. He didn’t give me a say in anything. He needed me that much. I’ve never been needed before, Ino-chan. I’ve always been so useless. No matter how many times I tell myself what’s going on, it still sounds weird and I know things are going to change so much, but I’m needed.”

“That’s the fact that you got laid talking.”

“No, I’m glad I’m doing this, I really am. Being needed is all I’ve ever really wanted.” Sakura sighed, “Sasuke-kun has so much need. I want to give this to him.”

“Then how come you were crying, hm?” Ino asked skeptically. “You can’t lie to yourself, Sakura-chan. Not about something this big.”

Sakura shook her head. “I just needed to get it all out. Besides, how do you know I wasn’t crying because I was happy?” Ino raised her eyebrows. Sakura laughed inwardly. She seemed to be getting that a lot lately. “Naruto says it’s only all right to cry when you’re happy.”

“No one takes Naruto seriously,” Ino countered.

“Anyone who’s smart does,” Sakura said with good cheer, rising from the table. “Thanks so much for letting me get all of this off my chest, Ino-chan. You’re the best friend a girl could have, really.”

As Sakura walked away, Ino bent down to retrieve her spoon from the floor. Looking dejectedly at her smashed glass of parfait, she pursed her lips. She tapped the spoon against the table in a quick, successive rhythm. “Sakura-chan,” she muttered into the air, “how can you be happy if you don’t love him?”

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