This was originally posted on Tumblr to celebrate reaching 500 followers - I have a few other oneshots with different pairings I'll consider uploading in the next few days as I work through my WIPs.

Sakura does not wear a furisode to her coming-of-age day. Surrounded by her peers, flawless kunoichi adorned with the heavy, shimmering fabrics of their formal kimono, she looks out of place in her simple doctor's coat.

Though they'll never comment on it, afraid of Tsunade's quick wrath and Kakashi's slower temper, the Hyuuga are livid. After delving deep into ancient coffers for this auspicious event, where the saviour of the world and his friends become adults, the clan mutters mutinously about disrespect, and disregard, and the doubts surrounding ninja of no lineage.

From his place in the shadows, Sasuke smirks. Though they've all shared horrors beyond imagining together Sakura is the only one who looks the part while their classmates play at adulthood, clad unashamedly in the proof of her mastery. But whether it's a statement or simple necessity he cannot guess.

He's content to watch, a while, from the security of the weeping willow when she turns to him and smiles. It's brittle. Brave. He realises immediately the deliberacy of her gesture.

"Sasuke-kun," and her voice is the soft caress she kindles only for him, "you look wonderful."

He doesn't feel wonderful in his dead father's clothes. But he's outgrown Itachi, now, and no other Uchiha man was allowed to wear the heavy embossed haori that rests uneasily on his back.

"Hn," he offers. It's almost all he ever offers, but Sakura reads his shifting features with the ease of fluency and extends her hand to him, arm passing through the protective tendrils of willow that surround him.

He takes it.

"This feels ridiculous," she comments, and Sasuke is reminded of the impassioned way she decried the event the evening before, safe in the space that was theirs and theirs alone. He had taken advantage of her passion, stoking her to screaming flame, but in the cold light of the day Sakura is cool, almost collected. "As though we weren't adults the moment we stepped onto a battlefield."

I didn't become an adult until I accepted you, Sasuke thinks, releasing her hand to smooth down the pristine collar of her coat. He doesn't say it, but she reads it in the way his arm brushes down the length of her back as they join the rest of their peers.

"Is this new?" he asks instead, eyeing the expert embroidery on her breast that states her position as the head of the hospital.

"Yes," Sakura says, with a laugh that sounds demure but for the deviousness in her eyes. "Tsunade had it made for today."

Never cross a woman with two mothers; Sasuke glances to the side where the Godaime is perched in pride of place, resplendent in her own Senju clan clothing, a smirk that mirrors her apprentice's stretched across her preternatural face. Her hazel eyes meet his above the soft pink of Sakura's crowning glory and if she didn't hate him Sasuke thinks she'd wink.

He tunes out the ceremony. It's long, overly concerned with Hinata's connection to the saviour of the world, and the rest of them are afterthoughts in the Hyuuga self-congratulation. Through it all Sakura stands next to him, too close for propriety (but he doesn't care, for the only people who could tell him off are long dead) and sends sparkling smiles to people who whisper about the way the Fifth's apprentice clings to a criminal.

Afterwards, she follows him to the Uchiha compound with a spring in her step. "Well, I think I've made my point," she says, delighted, as he reaches out to help her hold her balance while she removes her shoes. "Do you have the furisode I asked to be delivered ready?"

He doesn't. Sasuke is well aware of the danger posed in blatantly disregarding Sakura's orders - requests - but this is one infraction he hopes she'll look past. Drawing back the thin paper of the door to the dressing room, his infamous eyes watch carefully as the emotions play out across Sakura's features when confronted with the sight laid in front of her.

The kimono hanging elegantly on the frame in the centre of the room is lavish, far more expensive and extravagant than the sensible affair she'd asked for, and far more meaningful.

Sasuke is not the kind of person who explains himself. But he finds himself accounting -

"There have been four hundred and ninety-nine Uchiha women…" he trails off, unsure.

Sakura turns to him, hand already reaching tentatively to stroke the opulent black silk of the sleeve, tracing wonderingly over the crimson and white flowers that wind sinuously through the pattern.

She's smiling. It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and will be until the next time she beams. "And?"

"And…" Sasuke takes a breath. According to tradition, he's a man now, though Sakura will have to be the judge of that. "And this kimono has five hundred flowers."