Vows

"I swear I won't let you regret it."

She swallows, feeling the familiar sting of tears as they well up and blur her vision, until all she sees is a vague, Sasuke-shaped blob.

"We'll live happily every day. We'll definitely find happiness together."

Already, the tears she has fought so hard to keep at bay are spilling forth, and there is nothing she can do to hide them any longer, not from him, not from herself, not from anyone.

"I will do anything for you. I'd kill for you. Anything you want me to do, I'll do it for you."

The guests are silent, then. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see some of them turning and raising eyebrows at each other. Nobody should be surprised that Sasuke's choice of vows is short and not conventionally romantic. The real issue is probably how earnest and downright childish his words sound. She can see Ino's eyes narrowing into skeptical slits on her behalf: she clearly had higher expectations from the boy she would have declared the most eligible bachelor in Konoha if he hadn't gone "batshit crazy" for a few years. One row over, her mother seems mildly perturbed that her new son has chosen to bring up manslaughter at his own wedding. Tsunade merely looks pensive, and studies Sakura's face intently.

Sakura is the only one who hears his vows, recognizes the desperate promises of her 12-year-old self, and understands the truth he intends to convey to her alone.

He has loved her all along.

(When she whispers "thank you," Sasuke leans in to cup her face in his hands and brush away her tears with his thumbs. Then the room erupts in titters, because only Team 7 ever knew he was capable of such tenderness.)

A/N: If I fleshed out all the things I wanted to write about, I'd probably flunk out of school, something I really can't afford to do right now-my only options are to drop dead or pass. So, a compromise: ficlets! I suppose these will all be Gravitation-verse, more or less. And if you've read that and gotten concerned, I promise Sakura won't cry every single time! They're going to find happiness together, after all.

In this one, I ended up using an unofficial translation of 181 that happened to use the future tense rather than the conditional, just because it made for better wedding vows that way.