He missed touching her.

He missed the sound of her voice and the way she bit her lower lip before bursting into a peal of laughter. Sakura was always too loud and too big in every way but her body.

And Sasuke was realizing that her mother was the same.

Shit, Sasuke groaned inwardly. From his desk and through his holo-screen he could see the familiar blonde hair of his fiancée’s mother. The color had caught his attention from his peripheral and when he focused on the approaching woman he wanted to hide his face in his hands.

Mebuki Haruno had been coming every day since the accidental death of her daughter. She had been sympathetic at first when she found out that Sasuke was called in for the hit and run which resulted in organic damage. The sympathy flew out the window when she discovered that Sakura’s stack had been missing.

The Harunos were grounders which meant they were too poor to afford a clone or synthetic sleeve that was a replica of their daughter. The government was to provide a free sleeve because she had been involved in an accident with a government owned vehicle.

But Sasuke didn’t want a stranger’s face. He didn’t want to hear Sakura’s thoughts and words with a stranger’s voice.

“Officer Uchiha.”

Mebuki’s eyes were two shades too dark and she had wrinkles at the corners of her eyes but it wasn’t difficult to imagine Sakura giving him the cold, accusing look.

Sasuke and Sakura weren’t married. He had no right to her cortical stack, to her coding.

But he refused to have anyone but Sakura.

So another day of cold stares and shouting was on his agenda.

Kizashi, Sakura’s father, was never present when his wife came to demand their daughter’s stack. He was only there the first time when Mebuki went on a rampage when they were told her stack was missing from her sleeve.

His eyes were dull and tears clung to his pale lashes—Sakura’s lashes—as he followed behind his wife. He didn’t seem aware of where he was until his wife started accusing Sasuke of kidnapping their daughter.

Kizashi blinked back his tears but didn’t say a word. His reactions were abnormal. Even grounders had a lack of care for the original sleeve when a secondary one was an option.

Sasuke hoped it was because Kizashi felt the same way he did.

That Kizashi didn’t want anyone unless it was his daughter.

---

Sasuke lived in Konoha and worked as a cop but it didn’t change the fact that home for him was Sora-ku, the city in the sky.

It was probably one of the reasons he hadn’t been fired for misconduct when he removed Sakura’s stack and refused to hand it over to her parents. Why no one bothered to do anything but write a short note in his file about misplaced data.

Meths, even if they lived as grounders, could still flex enough muscle to get what they wanted.

Sasuke never thought about the fact that he had multiple clones in a freezer. He was still too young to care about transferring to a new sleeve and he had been lucky so far that he hadn’t sustained organic damage even with his profession.

A profession his family humored as an eccentricity, merely a hobby.

The Uchiha were rich enough to never have to work a day in their long, long lives.

But no one really cared what the second son of the ancient Madara Uchiha’s twenty-fourth child’s did to pass the time.

They turned their noses up at his preference for the ground world, enjoying the comforts of their floating city away from the “thugs and brutes” that were jealous of their superior sleeves.

Sasuke wondered sometimes if the face Sakura loved so much was his own or genetic modifications, an altered appearance modeled after the beautiful features of his mother’s.

It was a question he never felt comfortable enough to ask. Or accuse his mother of.

Sakura was beautiful. She was beautiful in a way only a child of the ground world could be. Born in Konoha to immigrant cake shop owners, nothing about her looks was artificial.

Everything was hers and Sasuke loved her all the more for it.

---

Suspension was all they could do to appease Mebuki Haruno. Madara Uchiha funded the department and lined the pockets of the mayor and governor. No one was going to terminate employment of his favorite grandchild.

In reality it wasn’t a punishment but more like a vacation. Sasuke needed the free time to supply the data gatherers information on the clone for Sakura.

“You can make her how you like her,” his grandfather had tossed out nonchalantly. “Get rid of any pesky traits she didn’t like herself.”

It was said in such a blasé manner and Sasuke was caught off guard. Madara didn’t mean any insult and none of his other relatives had even reacted to the comment.

It was typical of them to pick out mods for their new sleeves. They could enhance their clones as they pleased. Money was never an issue.

“My forehead is huge!” Sakura used to complain. It was only slightly larger than average, nothing Sasuke would have even noticed if it weren’t for the fact that she had pointed it out.

He was too caught up in pretty jade eyes to think of something as inconsequential as a slightly wide forehead.

---

When Sakura’s sleeve had been freshly damaged, Sasuke had taken a trip down to the forensic pathologist and swiped DNA samples.

Using his access code he was able to secure swabs of saliva and blood and hair samples. He had been lucky that her body was secured by the police due to the nature of her death. It was an accident but an investigation was necessary.

Insurance companies were always trying to get out of securing free sleeves for those whose sleeves were going to die of natural causes or if the accident was preventable on the victim’s side.

His Sakura wasn’t a drunk or a junkie. She had just stepped off of the curb on her way to the bookstore and an asshole crossed the intersection when his light was red.

“You are able to alter anything,” the technician explained as he filled out Sakura’s entry into his holo-screen. “You can change her features to look more Terran. Or if you prefer the exotic features of a different Outerworld. We can alter her body fluids to produce Empathin or even get rid of her freckles. Increase her bust size maybe? It’s not often the original isn’t here to select their own mods.”

Sasuke’s neck heated up at the thought of Empathin. Sakura would probably push him over the railing of their apartment veranda if he gave her a perverted mod without her consent.

But the idea of feeling what she felt and her feeling what he felt when they made love was tempting.

Maybe for the next clone when he could talk to her face to face and they could discuss it. He refused to have her spun in a temporary body to have the conversation.

“Exactly the same.”

---

It took a month for the sleeve to be complete.

The life cycle was accelerated when it came to making clones for those that had already reached adulthood. Technology was only so advanced. If Sasuke had it his way he would have had Sakura’s sleeve ready the same day he placed his order.

Sakura’s clone looked almost exactly like her. The sleeve lacked the scars that littered her body, given to her from life. Her forearm no longer had the burn mark from her accident in her family’s bakery. There was no nick at her left eyebrow.

But it was Sakura. Her same rose gold hair and jade eyes. Even all of her freckles were the same, trailing down her sternum and dusting her breasts.

“We need the cortical stack.”

The technician broke Sasuke’s focus away from examining Sakura’s clone.

“Once we upload Sakura Haruno’s Digital Human Freight she can be needlecasted to her new sleeves from here on out. A total safeguard from Real Death.”

Sasuke slipped off the necklace he was prone to wearing around when he knew he wasn’t working. Only where he knew he was safe.

He wanted Sakura’s stack with him at all times but he wasn’t always the safest option.

When he wasn’t wearing her stack around his neck, he hid it in his mother’s private rooms.

Making her clones and needlecasting Sakura made his mother giddy.

“Now we’ll really be family,” Mikoto had gushed at the idea of Sakura’s clones residing in the Uchiha vault.

It was a tad morbid but not an unexpected reaction.

Sasuke handed the stack to the technician and within moments Sakura’s D.H.F. was uploaded.

“She’ll respawn in a few seconds.”

Sasuke watched as the sleeve’s eyes blinked into focus. It’s nose twitched and it smiled softly at him.

“Good morning, Sasuke.”

Sakura rubbed the back of her neck and rolled it, letting out a moan of relief. She couldn’t wait until her shift was over and she could go home. She loved her job but even she could get tired and weary having to tend to patients for twelve hours.

Especially when she forgot her supplements at home.

Sakura had never been fond of drinking blood. It went against everything she had worked for in her previous life when she had been studying to be a doctor.

She worked as a nurse now, always taking the overnight shifts so that no one would question her about not going out to socialize with coworkers. She never stayed at a hospital long, five years was her maximum, ready to leave and work somewhere far away so that no one questioned why she never aged or why her life was so stagnant.

In the beginning it had been hard. She wasn’t meant for a solitary life but it hurt her to see everyone she cared about move on with their lives while it seemed hers had stopped a long time ago.

“We can move to a different place and tell everyone you’re my oldest,” Ino, her best friend, had joked. In her early fifties she was still a head turner and with her fair complexion and blue-green eyes she could pass for Sakura’s mother. “And then when Inojin looks older than you we can move away again and you’ll be my youngest.”

But when Sakura saw her own face, forever twenty-three, she couldn’t help the ache that settled deep in her chest.

Ino, her husband Sai, and their child were the only ones of Sakura’s old life that knew about her condition. Sakura mostly kept her distance from them but she remained in contact, letting them know where she settled next.

There was no telling Ino that she couldn’t speak to her. Twenty-five years back when Sakura had broken off contact, Ino had hired a P.I. and Sakura reluctantly came back home.

Sai hadn’t bat an eye when he caught her with a rabbit in her mouth, tears and blood running down her face. He never explained why he was so nonchalant about the way he had found her but Ino had explained that it wasn’t his first time tracking down a loved one that had a peculiar ailment.

“If I never ran off you would have never found the love of your life,” Sakura had once teased her.

“Shut up! Don’t you ever do that again,” Ino snapped back.

So Sakura kept in touch but she also kept her distance. One day Ino and her family would die and she would look as she did the day she had been turned, forever twenty-three.

---

Sakura gagged but drained the entire vial. The supplements were disgusting but they replaced the need for blood.

Karin, an older vampire, had created the alternative to blood drinking. She was an acquaintance of Sai’s from his days as an investigator. She had an uncanny gift for knowing where everyone was at any given moment.

Her tracking was much more enhanced than a typical vampire and once she knew a scent she never forgot it.

She was an odd one, at first not wanting compensation for the supplements, but Sai warned Sakura to make sure Karin received monetary payment.

“She likes to collect nice scents and pretty things. Don’t ever be indebted to her.”

Sakura wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and placed the glass vial in her kitchen sink.

Some days, Sakura could understand why Karin had become twisted over time and seeked out companionship as a means of payment.

Life could get lonely when trying to keep their secret.

---

Sakura preferred the night shift because of the quiet. It had nothing to do with a myth that vampires couldn’t be in sunlight. Sure her eyes were more sensitive to light now but it had more to do with the fact that there would be less people to run into.

Besides the few overnight guests, Sakura only had to deal with her coworkers and the poor patients that had difficulty sleeping

So far she had been lucky and no one from her old life had crossed her path anywhere that she moved to. She had to make sure she was prepared just in case.

“Oh, I’m sorry you must be mistaken.”

“You know what’s funny? I get that all of the time. I must have one of those faces.”

“Sakura? I’m sorry my name is Saya. No not Haruno, Yamanaka.”

But she didn’t know if she would really be able to hold her composure if she saw someone she once held dear.

---

Sakura wasn’t able to attend her mother’s funeral but she was able to attend her father’s.

She knew if she saw her father weeping over her mother’s casket, lowering her into the plot right next to the empty one that had her name on the headstone she would blow her cover.

When all of the mourners had left she made her way over to his grave. Luckily, Ino had a hand in arranging the funeral and burial proceedings. Kizashi had given up his plot to bury her and her mother side by side. Ino had convinced the person that purchased the plot on the other side of Mebuki to let Kizashi have it.

They deserved to be next to each other. Sakura knew her mother had never been the same since she had “died” and that her mother’s passing had broken her father’s heart.

Sakura was officially the last of the Haruno family. But no one would ever know her name. Not until it was safe enough to use her real name again.

But she would be waiting a while to do that.

Good thing she had nothing but time.

---

Disgusting. There was nothing Sakura found more disgusting than drinking human blood.

Correction, there was something she found more disgusting.

Sakura yanked on the tall porter’s scrubs and dragged him into a supply closet. She slammed him into a wall and pressed her elbow into his throat.

“We don’t take from the hospital,” she hissed.

“I’m doing my job,” the porter responded coolly, not even flinching at the fact that she was attempting to crush his throat. “You’ll have to try harder than that by the way.”

“Uh..” Sakura’s face scrunched up in confusion but she pressed harder.

“See,” he gasped out, “now you’re actually doing some damage. As fun as this is, there’s a patient in ED that needs a blood transfusion.”

“Wait. What?”

A ringing sound came from the porter’s pocket. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the hospital portables.

“Yeah, I’m on my way. A nurse just had a question.” He looked down his nose at her and raised an eyebrow. “Can I go do my job?”

The porter brushed her off, much more easily than she expected him to.

He pushed past her and left the closet.

“Hey!”

“Can you not make a scene?” He asked without turning around.

And then under his breath, only loud enough for someone with her ears, “Annoying.”

---

“Figures that the first time you gossip with us it’s about Otonashi.”

Sakura chewed on her straw and cocked her head to the side. The more movements she made, made it easier to distract her companions from the fact she wasn’t really eating her dinner.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t eat the food. It just made her feel like a glutton when she ate food and took her supplements which were much more necessary for her to consume.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s the best looking guy that works here and I think all of the single porters and nurses have made a pass at him but he never wants to go out for drinks or hang out on off days in our rotations. Kind of like you.”

Her coworker tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and sighed.

“He’s just a porter but damn.”

“Keep dreaming, Hannah,” a different nurse mocked as she strolled by the nurses’ station.

Sakura spun around in her computer chair and hopped up to dump out her trash from her “dinner.” She was still on her break and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to get far in her questioning.

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Yeah, yeah I’ll keep an eye on your rooms.” Hannah waved her off but grinned at her slyly.”Say hi to Sousuke for me.”

Sakura shook her head but didn’t deny it. She hoped to run into this “Sousuke Otonashi” on her walk. It wasn’t often that she met one of her own kind and it was even rarer that they would take a job that would have them near such easy access to blood but not attempt to steal it.

He had been working at the hospital longer than she had and when she had researched places to move to and work at there were no incidents surrounding the area or the hospital.

She wanted a peaceful place to live in, no drama, and it looked like her vampire coworker wasn’t going to ruin that for her.

---

“What’s your name?”

Otonashi scoffed and tapped on his ID badge.

“No, I mean,” Sakura moistened her lips, “your real name.”

“What makes you think Sousuke Otonashi isn’t my real name?”

The corners of his lips twitched upwards. Once upon a time that would have been too miniscule a movement for her to notice but now nothing escaped her.

“Like you believe Saya is my real name.”

He leaned back on his hands and sighed. They had been sharing their break times with each other and chatting whenever they ran into each other but he still didn’t let Sakura in.

“It’s Sakura by the way.” Sakura cleared her throat. “My real name is Sakura.”

Otonashi stared at her impassively before turning his eyes back to the night sky.

“I didn’t need to know that.”

“But now you do.”

They sat there in silence for a beat.

“Sasuke.”

Sakura burst out laughing and Sasuke clucked his tongue at her.

“It’s so similar to your alias. Did you even try?” Sakura relaxed and flopped her head onto his shoulder. “Sasuke suits you more.”

---

“How old are you?”

Sasuke dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his shoe. Sakura watched him pick it up and throw it into the closest trash bin, waiting.

“Twenty-six.”

“No! I mean how old are you really?”

“I thought you would be able to figure that out with my name.”

“It is a pretty old name. No one names their kids that anymore.”

Sasuke frowned but Sakura kept smiling up at him expectantly. She knew he would answer her question. He was a quiet man but there was something so liberating about being able to speak so freely to someone, to someone who would understand.

“I was turned in nineteen sixty-three at the age of twenty-six.”

“You died three years before I was born,” Sakura giggled. “You’re such an old man.”

She looped her arm in his and led him away from the bar they had visited. It was strange drinking alcohol. It was mostly for show. The only way to really get drunk was to drink the blood of an intoxicated person.

But it was nice to go out with someone and not have to think about how one day she would have to leave them.

“Hey,” she called out, bringing his attention to her.

Sakura stood on her toes and pressed a kiss against his cheek. His skin was cold, just like hers.

She hoped one day she wouldn’t have to leave him.

---

Sakura was glad her back was to him. Her sob was disguised as a whine for release as Sasuke gripped her waist roughly and thrust into her from behind.

It had been so long since anyone touched her in such a way.

It had been so long since anyone called out her name the way he did.

“Sakura…”

His moan was muffled into the back of her neck.

Sakura was so sure that one day she would forget her own name. When Ino was dead and no one knew her from when she was Sakura she was sure she was going to forget her own name.

But with Sasuke she was Sakura. In his bed with their bodies pressed together, she was Sakura.

And she wasn’t ever going to forget the way he panted her name into her ear and branded it on her skin with his mouth.

---

She loved him.

It was terrifying but she did, she loved him.

Sakura loved him but there was no way to know if he loved her back. Because sometimes she wondered to herself about her own feelings.

Did she love him or did she love the way she was no longer lonely when she was with him?

---

Sasuke shifted under her fingers. His brows furrowed and he looked at her quizzically as she traced her finger down his nose and over his cupid’s bow. She pulled gently down on his lower lip and then continued to trace down his chin and then stopped when her finger reached his chest, right over where his heart should have been beating but wasn’t.

“If we never died I wouldn’t have met you,” Sakura murmured. “I wonder what your family would have thought of me. If we were alive at the same time that is.”

“Too American,” Sasuke teased her. “We were immigrants. You were born here.”

“We could have met still if we never turned,” Sakura curled up closer to his body. “You would have been old though.”

“I’m not a cradle robber.”

“No, just a grave robber, huh?” Sakura giggled at her own joke. She sighed and wrapped her arm around his waist.

It was so easy to get comfortable like this. It was so easy to get close, to get hurt.

Sakura had picked the area she did because it was peaceful, drama free.

She just had to go and find some anyway.

---

“Next time I relocate I’m going to use my real name,” Sasuke muttered, drawing on her back with his finger. His finger went in a circle and then down in a line underneath it over and over again. “Uchiha. It’s been a while since I used it.”

“That sounds nice,” Sakura replied. The corners of her eyes began to blur, tears lining her lashes.

He was leaving. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to get comfortable.

Sakura couldn’t help but think about Karin and how she sometimes took payment in the form of companionship. It was probably one too many heartbreaks that had her yearning for more, even if it wasn’t real.

“You should use it too.”

Sakura blinked back her tears and tilted her chin up so she could see his face. He never stopped tracing his finger on her back in the same pattern, round in a circle and then a line underneath.

“You could be Uchiha if you want.”

“And could I go with you?” Sakura whispered, scared to voice the question even though Sasuke would be able to hear it perfectly no matter the volume.

“That would be the only condition if you want to use my name.”

“Couldn’t you just ask me like a normal person?” Sakura rolled her eyes but her lips turned up in a smile. “Or you could have asked me to make you miso soup everyday, you know, like the old man that you are.”

“That is going to get old one day.”

“Oh, like you?”

“You’re not exactly young yourself.”

“How dare you?” Sakura feigned insult at his words before bursting into a fit of giggles. “I have a condition then too.”

Sasuke frowned, looking unsure.

“What is it?”

“Always call me by my name. My real name.”

She wasn’t mad. She really wasn’t.

But the more he made it seem like she was and then acted like he didn’t care when he obviously did, she couldn’t help but get mad.

Which was why she was, yet again, at his house baking with his mother.

If she had been mad at him this was the best way to get irritate him. Simply making herself a constant in his life and acting as if he wasn’t the one she cared to see was slowly grinding at him and Sakura knew it.

Sasuke could act as aloof as he wanted but after being his teammate for over a year she knew him better than that.

It bugged him that she was so nonchalant about being in his house after months of asking him out and wanting to spend time with him.

Sakura didn’t believe it at first that any action of hers could frustrate Sasuke but his older brother had insisted that what she did meant more to him than she realized.

But the presence she felt behind her as she sifted flour was enough to reassure her.

---

It was his house. He shouldn’t have to tiptoe around it.

Before, he would cross his arms in front of his chest and lean against the doorframe and watch Sakura as she moved around the kitchen. He would wait for her to acknowledge his presence but she would just go about her business until his mother or his brother came in.

Sasuke wasn’t sure which was worse, his mother coming or Itachi.

His mother would send him away from the kitchen, simply waving him off and the treatment was shocking. But on the other hand when Itachi came in, attracted by the smell of sweets, Sakura would greet his brother after ignoring him the entire time he stood there and offer him a piece of whatever she had been helping his mother make.

Now he just let himself into the kitchen and would grab a drink and a snack and sit at the low table. He didn’t wait for Sakura to acknowledge his presence nor did he expect it.

But it was strange how the two of them moved around each other without issue.

Almost as if they weren’t in the middle of the strangest fight.

With Naruto they fought head on and got physical. Sasuke couldn’t do the same with Sakura. No matter how irritated he got with her, he never wanted to hurt her.

But that’s what he ended up doing wasn’t it? It may not have been physical but he still intentionally hurt her feelings.

And he wasn’t even sure why he did it in the first place.

Sasuke was blunt and it was usually a good thing. People needed to hear blunt truths at times. But his comment about the flowers was just mean.

He knew that the cursed seal put him on edge. Every time something irritated him in the slightest he would react stronger than he usually would.

“It doesn’t help that he’s going through puberty as well,” Lady Tsunade had explained to his parents. “He will be a lot more volatile. Until we can find a way to release Sasuke from the seal he will have to take measures to keep his anger in check.”

Sasuke grit his teeth, the curse seal stung as he got frustrated with the memory that even a sannin such as Lady Tsunade couldn’t remove the damn thing.

He rubbed at the spot and looked over at Sakura when he realized that the sound of her handling ingredients had stopped.

He opened his mouth to demand her reason for staring at him when she beat him to the punch.

“You need tea.”

Sasuke shut his mouth and he narrowed his eyes at her. She rummaged through her bag that was on the floor by her feet and pulled out a tin.

“I, uh, brought something for you.” Sakura opened the tin to reveal a bundle of satchels. “Lavender tea. It’s good for relaxation.”

Lavender. Another flower. But unlike a random stem the tea had a practical use. Sasuke nodded and a smile spread on Sakura’s face. It had seemed like forever since she had turned that smile his way.

Sasuke watched Sakura as she busied herself making his tea. She hummed pleasantly to herself as she moved around his kitchen. Just the sound of her happy noises and the smell of lavender was calming him down.

“Here you go,” Sakura chirped as she poured him a cup. Almost bashfully, she offered it to him. She averted her gaze but the apples of her cheeks were flushed with a pink that could rival her hair.

Pleased at the shy gesture, one he was sure Itachi never got, Sasuke took the tea from her.

“Thanks.”

Sakura’s eyes momentarily went wide but then her lips spread into a wide grin.

“You’re welcome!”

She went back to her task at hand, turning her back to him once again. Although she wasn’t looking at him her muscles were no longer tense and she carried on with her humming.

It was strange how easily she drifted between emotions, so easily expressing them as she felt them.

He did that quite often as of late but it wasn’t a good thing. It was something he had to reign in and refuse to let it consume him.

And maybe the warm and pleasant smelling tea made by someone always by his side could be a start.

Sighing to herself, Sakura dragged the potted potted yucca plants to the store front and arranged them to block out the window. Satisfied that she couldn’t see out into the street she dusted her hands on her apron and was about to turn back around when her best friend and coworker hissed at her from the back room.

“Put. The. Plants. Back. Where. They. Belong.”

“But Ino━”

“No one can look into the shop idiot!” Ino crossed her arms in front of her chest, careful not to drop the spool of ribbon she had been fetching for an arrangement. “And yucca need minimal light, you’re blasting them with it by putting them in the window!”

“It’s cloudy out━”

“Put. It. Back.”

Sakura arranged everything back to the way they were and the slumped onto the barstool behind the cash register. No one could see her unless they walked into the shop and moved around the potted plants carefully set up to make the shop look like a rainforest.

She drummed her fingers on the countertop and then rest her arms on it and lay her head on the glass. She wanted to go out and get her hot chocolate and pastry from the corner bakery but that would mean possibly running into someone she was avoiding.

And today wasn’t the day she would be brave enough to face him.

---

The temperature outside was dropping as it was slipping into late autumn, early winter. Sakura’s exhales came out like thin clouds and disappeared into the white sky.

Like cigarette smoke when it hits.

As soon as the thought entered her mind Sakura regretted it. Her chest throbbed with a dull ache

Great.

Sakura stuffed her face into her pea coat and kicked at a random pebble on the sidewalk. She didn’t have time to mope around. There was an exam to get to.

---

The corner bakery offered discounts on beverages to all the shops on the street, even the ones on the other side across 4 lanes of traffic.

It was always weird to see a tattoo parlor in the north east part of the city. All the shops were high end in the more expensive neighborhood.

Sakura and Ino had walked in for a a consultation and were shocked by how classy the parlor looked. It really blended in with all of the other stores and restaurants in the area despite the service that was provided. It was one of those instances where they shouldn’t have judged before visiting.

It still didn’t make it any less hilarious to see the artists and piercers lined up at the bakery in their cut up clothing and wild hair and arms marked up with beautiful masterpieces standing next to businessmen in their suits and Stepford Wives women with their expensive hair styles from the over priced salon next door.

Sakura eyed the tattoo parlor across the street and kept watch for anyone coming out of the shop. When it looked like the close was clear she called out to Ino and Mrs. Yamanaka that she was making a coffee run.

Ah. I fucked up.

The spiky hair of the person she was avoiding was easy to make out as she approached the corner the bakery stood at. He dropped the cigarette from his hand and squashed it under his foot before picking it up and tossing it into the closest trash bin.

He stuffed a hand into his hoodie pocket and yanked open the bakery door. Sakura was close enough to hear the tinkling of the bell attached to the door.

He was going to come out with a coffee in hand, the only thing he would ever buy for himself. That and the scones he would drop off at the florist.

Used to drop off at the florist.

After coming out of the bakery he would smell like fresh bread and coffee with a kick of mind and cigarette smoke.

The same smell of the sweater Sakura kept bundled up in a corner of her room. Although the scent on the fabric was fading and taking on the smell of her home.

---

“Just go talk to him.”

“It’s not that simple Ino.”

“You’re being stupid.” Ino popped her gum bubble and snipped another stalk of sunflowers to adjust the height for her current order. “I bet he would take you back if you just bought him a coffee.”

Sakura scoffed and slammed the fridge door closed, harder than she meant to. She cringed and examined the glass for any damage. Everything was fine and there were no cracks to ruin the display of arrangements inside.

She didn’t need Ino to point out how ridiculous she had been acting. The longer she avoided Sasuke the worse she felt and the dumber she felt she was.

---

No matter how much she avoided him, eventually she was going to run into him at the bakery. It was the center of the shifts and the place they had first met.

“I shouldn’t have said the things I said,” Sakura rushed out the words in lieu of a greeting. “Before I mean. It’s not your fault I have classes and tests and that we both work and━”

“How were exams?”

“What?” Sakura gaped up at him. Sasuke stood there, as composed as usual.

As composed as he always was except for when she yelled at him the week before her exam period.

“How were your exams? Aced everything?”

“Y-yeah, I did.”

“Knew you would.” Sasuke nodded his head in the direction of the bakery. “It’s cold. Buy me a coffee?”

“That’s it?” Sakura asked, baffled. “You’re making this too easy.”

Sasuke raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders.

“So?” He asked, opening the door for her.

Sakura ran a hand down her face and shuffled inside.

No way was she telling Ino that she was right the entire time.

Sarada never paid  any mind to the guests. She would sigh and look a little annoyed if they were in her way but she would go about her day.

She ignored any cooing and the hands that reached out to her. She used to let them fawn over her but over the past few months she had withdrawn in herself.

Most days Sasuke struggled to get any words out of her. She communicated with him nonverbally and would only speak out when she was adamant about something.

“We’re supposed to go now.”

Sasuke looked around the house at all the dark haired guests. He doubted that they would mind if he left but it was only the first day.

“The festival, Papa,” Sarada insisted, frowning. When her eyebrows drew down a wrinkle would appear between them in the same manner it did on her mother, “We left out food. They’ll be fine.”

“Did we miss any of the lanterns?”

Sarada nodded and pointed to the empty  engawa. Sasuke scanned the veranda and not a single one was left. They had lit them all earlier and took them to the family plot right before their guests had arrived. Their home was packed but someone was still missing.

Sasuke was forced to look back down at his daughter who was tugging at the hem of his shirt.

She was giving him that look again. It was the one his wife insisted made her look even more like him but all he saw was Sakura’s features.

---

It was two days and not all of the guests had arrived yet.

Sasuke wondered if something was wrong. They had made sure everything went as smoothly as possible. Sarada had made sure they followed all of the traditions to a tee.

“Mama says we have to do it like this,” she scolded him whenever he deviated from them a little. Sarada had even slapped his hand once when he didn’t do the cleaning in the exact same method as his wife.

Sarada would frown at him and show him how Mama does everything. He had to hide the way the corners of his lips twitched upwards at her behavior.

It reminded him so much of another bossy girl.

---

Sasuke would have believed he was seeing things if it weren’t for how easy it was to spot her, how easy it had always been to spot her.

His daughter was chatting animatedly, a smile bright on her face at last.

“He always burns the rice a little,” Sasuke heard her complain. “But Papa makes decent miso as long as he isn’t trying anything with tomatoes.”

Sasuke hung back until Sarada scampered off to find something she needed to share.

“You’re late,” he teased, taking her seat on the engawa by their guest. “And I thought I was supposed the be the one that was directionally challenged.”

“I was just a little lost,” Sakura grumbled.

Sasuke slid his hand across the floorboards, resting his pinky on hers.

“At least you’re here now.”

---

The scent of senko incense clung to their clothing as they walked the path to the river, Sarada insisted that she would be the one to carry her mother’s lantern and Sasuke allowed it.

“You can carry it next year.”

But he wouldn’t mind if she forgot. He just needed to see the flickering flame dancing within the paper lantern.

“Have a safe trip,” Sarada whispered to the flame, gently placing the lantern down on the water.

Sarada stood by her father on the river bank and they watched all of their lanterns painted with their uchiwa float away into the night.

Sasuke kept his eyes on one in particular, tracking its path as it bobbed along with the lanterns that belonged to the rest of their family.

“We have to go watch the fireworks,” Sarada continued to boss him, her little face drawn into a frown once more. “It’s━”

“Mama’s favorite part,” he finished with her. “After the lanterns disappear. We still have time.”

“Okay.” She nodded, agreeing with him.

Sarada took his hand in hers, leaning slightly on his arm as they watched the drifting lights.

“After the lanterns disappear.”

She didn’t have the space in her time table for another course. In order to become a Healer she didn’t need to take Care of Magical Creatures.

But here she was offering milk to a bowtruckle during one of her free periods.

“You should be taking this time to do work for courses you’re enrolled in, Haruno.”

“I can’t leave Honeysuckle to you Professor,” Sakura teased. “He needs me.”

“You spoil him,” Professor Uchiha muttered, reaching for the bowtruckle. Honeysuckle raised its claws at him and whined before scampering to hide in Sakura’s long pink hair.

Sakura giggled, Honeysuckle’s leaf antennas tickling her neck.  At first she was insulted that the little thing had confused her with a tree but the bowtruckle was awfully sweet.

And it gave her an excuse to see Professor Uchiha more often.

---

When the headmistress, Tsunade Senju, announced that Sasuke Uchiha would be taking up the post of Care of Magical Creatures professor after the former professor retired it had caused quite the scandal.

Sasuke Uchiha had always had top marks and seemed to be on the path to becoming an auror but after graduation he had vanished only to be found months later taking care of dragons and then moving on to other projects.

It was disappointing to the general populace of Hogwarts━both the students and faculty alike━that such a promising student had returned to his alma mater to teach an elective course. They were completely blindsided.

All except for one seventh year student.

Sakura remembered Sasuke Uchiha as more than just the top mark Head Boy.

She had met him when she was just a first year, trying to send an owl to her muggle parents about how she was sorted into Ravenclaw and how the first week had gone.

There was a fifth year Slytherin student tending to an owl with a damaged wing. She had stammered her reasoning for being there and he had just pressed a single finger to his lips asking for silence. He gestured to the injured bird and shushed her.

Silently as she could, avoiding the owl droppings that littered the floor, Sakura made her way over to him and the owl.

“Will it be okay?” She whispered.

“She’ll be fine,” he assured her with a soft a voice. “She likes the top of her head to be stroked.”

Taking the suggestion, Sakura carefully stroked the owl with her index finger. The owl cooed and shut her eyes.

“Your owl?”

“School owl.”

Sakura’s brows furrowed. Why would he go out of his way to care for an owl that wasn’t his own?

---

Sakura saw Sasuke Uchiha often after that.

He was always with three friends, two fellow Slytherins and one extremely tall Hufflepuff rumored to be half giant. His two Slytherin friends were loud and drew attention with their noise but it was the quiet Sasuke that everyone sought out.

A couple of younger students had tried to give him sweets from home and he turned them down.

“He hates candy,” his redheaded friend had whispered in passing. She had caught her eye when Sakura peered over one of her school books.

Sakura’s face flushed, embarrassed to have been caught staring.

“What are you doing messing with a first year, Karin?” The white haired boy asked.

“I’m not messing with her!” She snapped at him, face turning almost as red as her hair. “I just thought she was kind of cute. Lay off Suigetsu!”

Sasuke had turned his head to see what they were causing a commotion over. He stared at Sakura impassively and Sakura swallowed, not sure what to make of his staring.

A small pink ball of fluff poked out from his collar and he patted it back down. Sakura’s jaw dropped at the random appearance of a pygmy puff.

Sasuke just lifted his finger to his lips and gestured for her to stay silent on the matter.

---

“Still chasing after Uchiha?”

Sakura blinked in confusion at her best friend Ino. She had been minding her own business, studying in the common room when the blonde girl flounced over to her.

“He’s a professor, Ino!” Sakura hissed, looking around the common room. No one seemed to pay any mind, already used to the way the Head Girl and her best friend behaved when they were together.

“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s Sasuke Uchiha and you’re Sakura Haruno the girl that has had a crush on him since she was eleven.”

Ino collapsed sideways so that she was sitting on Sakura’s lap with her legs thrown over one of the arms of the plush armchair Sakura was sitting in to get her reading done.

“And him coming back hasn’t helped a single bit.”

“He’s a professor,” Sakura reminded her, making sure her voice didn’t waver. “And I’m a student. That’s all.”

---

Sakura bowed low, waiting for a response. The tawny hippogriff before her bowed back and she ran up and stroked it’s face near its beak.

“Hello Garuda,” she chirped. Garuda nuzzled her face the way she often saw him nuzzle Professor Uchiha’s hand.

Garuda was Professor Uchiha’s hippogriff, one that he had found injured in the wild and nursed back to health. Garuda had grown attached to him and refused to be left behind on the reserve Professor Uchiha had been working at.

“Are you going to spoil him too?”

Professor Uchiha stood in muggle clothing and a pair of galoshes at the other end of the paddock.

“Sometimes a little spoiling is needed,” Sakura grinned at him mischievously, “just to show how much you care.”

Professor Uchiha went quiet for a moment. Sakura’s grin slid from her face and she distracted herself with brushing Garuda’s fur.

Sakura reached for an apple to offer the hippogriff when a larger hand, slightly tanner than hers, wrapped it’s fingers around her wrist.

“Is that your way of asking to be spoiled?”

He was close enough for her to smell the scent of mint come off of his clothes and the smell of woodsmoke.

“I would never ask that of you,” Sakura swallowed, “Professor.”

Professor Uchiha dropped his hold of her wrist and took the apple from her hand.

“You should head back to the castle. It’s almost dinner time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sakura marched back to the castle, only stopping once to look back when she reached the top of the hill. Stopping once to sneak another glance at him.

She hadn’t expected to catch Professor Uchiha staring in her direction.

---

He was too old for her. She knew that much.

Sakura scrunched up her nose and pulled out another book from the shelf. She wasn’t going to entertain any fantasies of a seventh year being interested in a third year but she had still wanted to give him something for Valentine’s Day. Which was why there was a barn owl with a brown paper package just for him━from her━at the Slytherin table at breakfast.

Her feelings didn’t need to reciprocated but it still hurt to know that he was on the trip to Hogsmeade on this holiday.

It only made her feel a little bit better that it was thundering and raining buckets. But it also made her feel guilty for wishing poor weather on celebrating couples.

She checked out her books and told herself that she didn’t need a date, that what she needed to focus on was her studies.

Sakura was on her way back to the Ravenclaw common room when someone called out to her.

“Oi!”

It was rude and not even her name but it still made her heart race.

Sasuke was soaked to the bone, his usual feathery and disheveled hair laying flat from all of the rain. From under his cloak he pulled out a package from Honeydukes and handed it to her.

“Iced Mice?” Sakura’s brows pulled down in confusion. Then it dawned on her. “For the tomatoes?”

Sasuke’s lips twitched up at the corners. He just pressed his index finger to his lips and then turned and headed toward the dungeons.

---

“You have been avoiding me.”

Sakura never expected Professor Uchiha to be the confrontational type. She had expected that he would just forget about her if she stopped coming around to the paddock and creature shelter.

“Did you need something, Professor?”

She tried so hard to strengthen her resolve. Tried so hard to look at the smokey gray of his eyes and not feel the ache in her chest.

“Just came to do some spoiling,” he answered, in that same soft voice that she loved so much.

He handed her a book on herbalism, one having only been printed in its original Mandarin, the native tongue of Sakura’s family.

“I was supposed to give it to you on your birthday but you never came around.”

Seventeen. The age she was trying so hard to forget. The age that made her officially an adult.

The age that gave her hope.

“This must have been hard to find. I can’t accept━”

There was only the sound of cooing owls in the tower as Sasuke pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss. Sakura barely had time to respond before he was pulling away, pressing a finger to his lips and asking for silence.

---

“You’re bleeding!”

It was just a scratch, one that Sasuke could easily patch up with a spell. He deserved the scratch for not respecting the bowtruckle’s boundaries and holding it too tight.

“Here we go,” the first year Ravenclaw chirped as she patched up his hand with a muggle contraption. “I’m kind of clumsy so I always carry around bandages. Better, huh?”

He knew she was muggleborn which was odd considering her coloring. He would have assumed she was a metamorphmagus with a fondness for the color pink. Did muggles give birth to metamorphmagus witches?

“Thank you,” he muttered finding it hard to explain how unnecessary the bandage was when she looked at him expectantly with vivid jade eyes.

“Um, I was wondering,” Sakura Haruno averted her gaze, wringing the front of her school robes with her hands, “do you mind pulling out that book for me? It’s kind of high up and I’m, well, short.”

Sasuke snorted and she pouted at him. Short was putting it mildly. The first years were always small but she seemed shorter than average.

He pulled down the book she was pointing at and held it above her head out of arm’s reach.

“Hey!”

He shushed her with a finger to his lips.

“Quiet in the library,” he scolded her, pointing to his prefect’s badge.

Sakura clammed up but continued to glare at him. Done having his fun he handed her the heavy book she needed. Almost instantly the glare wiped away from her face and replaced with a wide smile.

“Thank you!” She chirped before skipping away.

What an interesting kid…

With a soft smile on his face he shook his head and looked for the book on creatures of the forests he was supposed to be looking for. His gaze dropped to the bandage on his hand and he chuckled to himself.

What a very interesting kid.