Shout It Out

Summary: Sakura and Sasuke are caught in a stalemate. How Sakura came to wear the Uchiwa.

She stares at the patch and considers.

How does one go about asking such a thing?

She's a married woman, happy and secure in her love. Her husband (she'll never be too old to giggle at the thought!) is not the man she expected as a girl. He's more. He's better. He's soft in ways she never could have expected.

She doesn't know how to talk to him about this.

They were married on the road. Their blissful early days of floating from village to village on a cloud of bliss are not yet behind them, but Sakura thought it would be wise to visit home. If their first anniversary arrived before they even announced the happy event to her parents and their friends, she knew the havoc that would reign down upon them.

Especially from a certain loudmouth.

So, home they went, for a pit stop, just a week darling, I promise! And all the things they hadn't thought about reared up in front of her like a great tsunami of bureaucratic bullshit. A license had to be begot. An announcement made. Modification to their wills. The certification of her rights as a representative of the Uchiha clan. A formal name change.

It was the name that struck her.

Haruno Sakura is no more. She's Uchiha Sakura now.

It shouldn't surprise her, how much that entails, but it does.

There's a lot of baggage in a name.

Old, ancient names like this one, come with a fleet.

They're a family. They've always been a family. Making it official between them makes it no more or less so.

Sakura and Sasuke are a unit. Indivisible, unassailable, unsinkable. They are solid. And she knows it. She feels his love in her bones at night, with his heat seeping into her and the press of his hand at her hip and his lips on her face and-

It's still hard.

It's a sore subject.

.
.

Despite himself, he wonders about it.

Sasuke knows very well what sort of woman he married. She is independent, as fierce as she is loving. There is a mask in their closet with a lioness' face, it's an apt familiar.

He knows what he is and where he comes from. His upbringing was not what he would call warm. The family unit that he remembers would be unrecognizable to his wife. On some level, she must know that. He wonders what he'll be like when they have children, if she'll even want children with him, what role model in healthy parenting does he have-

Sasuke has no doubts when it comes to their relationship, but he has plenty of fears.

Standing beside her in the market, dragging her to an actual vegetable cart and trying to get her to eat something green, the domesticity of the moment strikes him and he wonders:

Does she want to be a part of his family?

And more honestly:

Should she?

.
.

Not even he wears the uchiwa all the time.

There are days when he sincerely wishes it didn't exist. The insignia makes him so much more than just a man. It aligns him with great and terrible deeds. It swallows him up in ancient history.

Sometime he wishes he were just a man. Who stayed in one place. Who kept home and garden. Who had a family and loved one woman all his life.

He can do that. He can be that. He knows he can. Someday.

.
.

Sakura is the type to let things fester. Like all doctors, she's a terrible patient. She does not check up on her own health. All the while, she's consumed with the wellbeing of her husband.

She lets her worries spoil in her gut until, eventually, her body has no choice but to expel them.

Like most steps she takes, this is a decided one.

.
.

One morning, not long before they're set to leave again, Sasuke wakes up to breakfast cooking.

It's unusual for Sakura to rise first.

The smell of dark coffee and the promise of a warm woman waiting drags him from bed.

Still half-asleep, still wholely off-kilter, he leans against the door jamb.

Blearily, he looks around the dim room. The sun hasn't fully risen yet.

He stops.

Sakura's back is to him, her focus on the sizzling bacon in the frying pan. She's dressed for the day, her hair up in a red clip.

On her back, the Uchiha crest.

She looks over her shoulder at his sharp intake of breath. Her sweet smile drops and she takes a step towards him. "Oh no, Darling, I'm so sorry. Please don't cry, I-"

He's not is he? Oh. He supposes he is.

He didn't expect this, but there she is: his wife. My wife, my wife, my wife.

His wife holds him, wrapping the strongest arms he's ever known around him with such gentleness. "Don't apologise," he orders, wetly. "Don't."

He couldn't have known how this would affect him.

They're partners. They've always been partners. But this-

Sakura is his family.

He never thought he'd have that again.

Not my fave fic of mine, it's kind of sloppy but whatever. Listen. I have a lot of feelings about crybaby Sasuke and his WANT vs NEED. He wants vengeance but needs family ok? And I'm just... THIS LOST CHILD. My son. But also #me.

Nanowrimo day 1 word count: 854