AN: A few people on Tumblr requested that I upload my AU prompts in one place for easy rereading. Hope you enjoy! I take suggestions over on my tumblr, which has the same name as here.

"Sakura-sama, this is Sasuke - he'll be your blade in the dark, your right hand man, your confidante."

The Slug Princess looks to her adopted daughter to gauge her reaction; from the corner of her eye, Sakura notices the way Tsunade frowns at her unhappy expression.

"What's wrong?" Tsunade asks, sounding annoyed. It's rare that people show displeasure in her presence and the sight of it makes her agitated.

"I wanted…" Sakura starts, fingers curling into one another as she looks down at the little boy kneeling in front of her, his shaggy black hair brushing his knees as he sits motionless. "I wanted someone older. Like Itachi, or Izumi."

The adults in the room sigh knowingly, but Sakura watches the way Sasuke's hair tenses along with his slight shoulders. Almost immediately it endears him to her, but she's learned in the months since her new mother picked her up that a princess doesn't go back on her word. So she sits in her still-unfamiliar kimono and watches as he tries to remain the picture of stillness on the luxurious mahogany floor.

"It's important that you're the same age," Tsunade's shadow explains, and Sakura recalls that she is Sasuke's own mother, Mikoto. "Because then you can talk to one another about anything at all."

"Hmm," Sakura muses, unconvinced, and in that moment Sasuke meets her eyes and she sees his are as black as the fur of the newborn kitten in her room. "I guess he'll do," she pronounces, and pretends not to see the visible sigh of relief his mother emits from her position behind Tsunade's throne.

He more than does, although it takes Sakura a year and a half to admit it. They're curled up like the kittens they still are, basking in the warmth of the sun when there's a crash and the stout wood of the fence falls in front of her. Three men erupt through the opening and she knows immediately that they have come to kill her, large brutes with the sigil of Oto on their forehead and death in their hearts. Sasuke paints it across their faces, leaping to life with a ferocity that surprises her and then frightens her when he turns around with adult blood staining his childish cheeks.

But he's alive, and she's alive, and then Sakura is crying into his bloodied shoulder while Tsunade pats him on the head and his mother promises tomatoes for dinner.

"Sasuke," she wails, reaching out for him when Mikoto tries to whisk him away. "Let me see to Sasuke."

Both women shrug, and so the young princess cleans her shadow's wounds while he frowns and tries to stay silent when it hurts. And because he's saved her life, Sakura doesn't say anything about the fat tears pooling in the corners of his black, black eyes.

The care becomes something of a routine, one they perform for years and years without incident. Though she's never felt the need to confide in Sasuke for anything - for what problems does a fourteen year old princess really have? - Sakura makes liberal use of the Uchiha as her right hand man. Mostly this involves sneaking extra servings of dango and giving her a seat on his shoulders when she wants to watch the festivals but Tsunade forbids it, but occasionally Sakura sends him on serious errands. The kind where he comes back sullen, and surly, and sometimes tinged with blood that is not his own. Such is life for the youngest Senju Princess, and neither of them question it until she sends him out to finish off one Uzumaki Naruto and he freezes like she's doused him in ice.

"What?" she barks, hands on hips that are just beginning to round out. The kimonos sit easily on her now, but there's a little of the rebellious child still inside when her chin juts out and she stands in his way.

"Nothing," Sasuke replies, but she hears the lie.

"Tell me," Sakura commands. And orders don't often work on him, but this time Sasuke's eyes are fire as he retorts,

"Tell me," he begins, "why you want me to kill him."

Sasuke has never cared before.

"There are rumours," Sakura hedges, "that some of the elders are setting him up as a contender for my mother's throne."

"Rumours," Sasuke repeats, and he takes a half-step closer to her under the plum tree. Unlike when they were five, or nine, or eleven, he's taller than her now and his shadow falls across her face, blocking her view of his expression.

She stands her ground until he runs a hand through his hair and sighs heavily, the kind of sound she's never heard a servant make in her presence. Heartfelt, heartsick, and Sakura feels a sliver of jealousy for the boy who provoked such emotions in her blade.

"Why don't you try and make an ally of him instead of an enemy?" Sasuke suggests, and she almost acquises based solely on the fact it's the first real advice he's ever given her.

"He wouldn't be an enemy," she says, frowning, "because he'd be dead." The princess is that confident in Sasuke's skills. And her shadow knows it, if the way he holds back a smirk is any indication.

"Try it," he prompts, gently, and so she does. And the Uzumaki family fall gladly into line with the Senju, and Naruto becomes one of her very greatest friends, but it's still five years before she discovers that he and Sasuke played together by the river on their rare days of solitude.

The day after she finds out is the day when Tsunade first trots a prospective suitor in front of her small throne. Sakura eyes the man up and down, noticing the way that he's already showing a paunch at twenty-two, and the way he is trying and failing to keep the lecherous twist from his eyes. Still, his father is an important warlord to the east and it's clear that Tsunade is considering a political match, so Sakura cannot dismiss him out of hand.

"What do you think?" she whispers to Sasuke instead, fan in front of her face. Her shadow leans from his position behind her and doesn't say anything, just raises a fine black eyebrow in his own disapproving way.

No, Sakura thinks in agreement. She couldn't see herself with this nameless young lord. From the way Tsunade's mouth has turned down at the corners and Mikoto's closed-off expression, the way the room will fall out is clear. The next lord is similar, and the one after that insults Tsunade so fiercely that there's a minor war to distract them all for a few months. Eventually, though, Sakura knows someone will appear with the right attitude and the right credentials and her mother will accept him with open arms.

She doesn't expect it to be Naruto. From the way Sasuke stands as though carved from salt beside her Sakura knows that he did not expect it either. And the discussion proceeds well enough; Naruto looks friendly if not keen (she knows he loves a girl from the Hyuuga province) and though it is truly a plausible match but she'll do nothing without hearing Sasuke's rare opinion.

Cornering him in her room at the end of the day, the youngest Senju tells her shadow this, watching the flames from her brazier lick at the blank hollows of his face.

"I don't have an opinion," Sasuke replies mutinously.

"You're supposed to," she retorts, and they stare at one another with hackles raised before all the fight leaves him.

"He's a good man," he says eventually.

"He's in love with someone else," Sakura whispers back.

"Isn't everyone?" Sasuke fires at her, and then snaps his teeth shut with his midnight eyes wide.

"What?" Sakura says, although the fingers of suspicion thread through her chest as Sasuke takes a step back and looks like he might run from the room. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," Sasuke says quickly. Too quickly.

"You have to tell me," she chances, invoking her position of superiority of him.

"My thoughts are my own," Sasuke says, and he looks angry, now, his fists tight against his side and his beautiful black eyes narrowed on her face.

She watches the way he shifts from foot to foot; agitated, uncomfortable, this man she has grown up alongside and knows better than anyone, even herself. Sakura feels as though she is balancing on the edge of his well-honed blade.

"Is your heart?"

The words leave her painted lips before her mind cautions otherwise. The room is their own but she feels as though a thousand eyes are upon her with the force of Sasuke's black gaze.

When he speaks, it's only to whisper no; and she sees what he means, what he's not saying, what he cannot.

"Then," Sakura pronounces with the same fervour of her childhood commands, "Naruto will remain my dearest friend. And you…" feeling bold, she places a pale hand on his cheek, the pads of her fingers twitching when Sasuke leans into the touch. "You are my blade in the dark. My right hand man. My confidante."

After that, only the night can tell who leaned into the other's lips first.

AN: Please let me know your thoughts! I'm very tempted to turn this into a larger story.