can either be a prequel to "just take 'em" or a completely another work! take it however you like :)

dango and puzzles

Uchiha Itachi and Haruno Sakura hated each other ‒ it was known throughout the whole of Konoha. So why were they chatting over a shared plate of dangos and cups of tea? [au, non-massacre. itasaku.]

Uchiha Itachi and Haruno Sakura hated each other. It was a mutual feeling, a sensation that brimmed after years of exchanged glares and a mute battle over the heart of one Uchiha Sasuke. Itachi would have died before he let his brother's teammate have her way and Sakura wouldn't stop at anything to put some sense into her brooding best friend.

They disliked the other, made sure to have at least a few meters dividing them in all occasions (with the exception of the very few mission they had to work together) and never exchanged greetings unless they were under the watchful eyes of either of their parents.

The animosity was so high that even Tsunade, Fifth Hokage of Konoha and Sakura's mentor, had decided to keep the two as distant as possible. If Itachi happened to stumble to the hospital in an emergency, Sakura would be the last choice; if Sakura needed a skilled ninja by her side for a mission, Itachi would be at the bottom of the list.

For all the hostility between them, however, the two had a few things in common. They both loved sweets, dangos their preferred go-to candy, and they were perfectionists. Their absolute common ground, yet, had to be Sasuke himself.

It was when Sasuke acted like a little brat, when he made stupid decisions that their eyes would sometimes meet in fond exasperation, a sense of understanding enveloping them. But those moments were few and in-between ‒ not because Sasuke wasn't one to act out, but because most of the times the two couldn't even be found in the same place.

On one of those occasion, on Sasuke's eighteenth birthday, emerald green met onyx black. The two of them sighed, in a show of synchrony that would've made uncomfortable the strongest man, and a connection was made.

Sasuke had just (accidentally, they hoped) brushed off all the teachings he had received on common sense and proper behavior. Not that Sakura could blame him or understand what was going through his head half of the time (clan politics, while interesting, had never concerned her), but she was positive throwing up a wine cellar and more on the shoes of one your clan elders wasn't proper.

Actually, she was positive it had never happened before in the history of Konoha's clans.

She was quick on her feet, shamelessly grabbing another glass of white wine before speedily walking towards her best friend. He was still retching and the sight would've been more pitiful and less amusing, if he didn't have a firm hand grasping at the Elder's shoulder, making sure he didn't move.

With damned Itachi on her side, Sakura unclasped the pale hand of her friend from the now ruined kimono of the man and redirected him towards the back of the house (mansion, her mind supplied. The Uchihas lived in a damn mansion) and out in the garden.

If she grinned at the thought of her dear enemy having to quelch the shrilly screams of a puked-over elder clansman for the whole night and, most likely, the whole summer, well; no one could attest to that and Sakura had no place in clans politics anyway.

The next time Sakura and Itachi saw each other, the prodigy made sure to glare at her.

Itachi considered himself a very calm man, a pacifist at heart and with a level head on his shoulders. Sakura, however, was the worst person he had ever met. If you didn't have his keen eye for danger, you could easily be overcome by the angelic look her slightly tanned skin and long pink hair gave off. But Itachi was a seasoned-shinobi already at the age of twenty-three, and sharingan user or not, he could see right through her.

He had never been one for the paranormal, the folklore tales told to civilian children were nothing more than tales to him ‒ until he met the Wicked Witch of the East himself.

Sakura, Itachi was convinced, was nothing but a monster in a pretty girl's skin. Proof came to him over the few interactions they had, but the stunt she had pulled on Sasuke's birthday (because Itachi knew she had something to do with that) only cemented his idea.

So, Itachi glared at her like she killed his favorite kitten. And he thought it was completely justifiable too, because she wasn't the one who had to calm one of the elders' down, nor was she the one who had to make it up in the stead of Sasuke. He was positive she had been enjoying it too, if the amused glint in her eyes from that night was anything to go by.

His mother sighed when she saw the look he was sending the pinkette, but for once Itachi couldn't really find it in himself to care.

He didn't care if she was his brother's trusted teammate and best friend, he had just returned from a strenuous mission and she wasn't the first thing he wanted to see when he set foot in his home. Not, especially, when she was wearing some hand-me-downs from his little brother ‒ the sight just made him shudder.

The thought that someday, somehow, she could be a lover for Sasuke and she would become part of the family and he would have to see her on the daily… Itachi was feeling faint. He was tired, had blood on his clothes and was pretty sure his mother was yelling something at him, Sakura watching all the while in amusement ‒ but all he had running through his head where ridiculous pink-haired children calling him uncle while Sakura led the clan to their end.

Itachi fainted.

Sakura often wondered what had led her to become a medic-nin. She liked her job, she adored helping people and having found her own place in the world ‒ somewhere where she could be useful and at the top of her game, no questions asked.

But in situations like these, she wished she had taken a different path.

Because for all Sakura actively enjoyed her career and the gratification that came with it, the discourse changed completely when the older brother of her best friend was involved. She didn't want to help Itachi, especially because there was no need to. The man had probably thought himself to hell when he saw her having breakfast with his mother, or he simply had overdone himself on a mission.

(Again, she thought. Because Itachi was always working too hard and thinking too hard, and she always had too much free time in the hospital when he came back from a mission and Tsunade refused to let her operate on him. And Sakura thought it was stupid, because she had never slipped when she was in the operating room and she sure as hell wouldn't start with the worst of the Uchihas.)

"Do you think he'll be ok?" asked Mikoto, dark eyes wide and Sakura couldn't find the strength for a snarky comment. She also, however, didn't want to sing praises to her oldest son, so she simply nodded.

Sasuke wasn't as worried as his mother; he wasn't worried at all. He sat with his back resting on the wall, knees bent and the book he had tried to get out of her hands the night before now in his own. Much to Sakura's chagrin, he seemed to like it too.

When Mikoto left the room, ironically enough, Itachi grunted and opened his eyes ‒ only to find a pair of green ones already staring at him.

"Ah, the princess has woken up," she grinned, quickly running a scan on his chest with her medical chakra. She stilled slightly, but gave no sign to anyone else but herself that something was wrong with the heir's body.

"Well, everything's good. I'm taking my leave now," she muttered, before sending a scathing look to her best friend. "Sasuke, I want that back in my house by tomorrow."

As she left the room and Sasuke kept reading, Itachi couldn't help but feel like he had just lost some ground in their ongoing battle.

Itachi was sat in one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs, his legs bent weirdly to leave as much space as he could in the hallway. It was time for the trimestral check-up for shinobis, something that Tsunade had fought tooth and nail with the council about. She had proposed a monthly evaluation, but had settled down for one taken every three-months instead of the easily skippable annual one.

When his name was called and he looked up at the door, he was pretty sure his heart stopped beating. And, unfortunately, not in the good way either.

Because Sakura was looking at him with the most threatening smile he had ever seen on anyone, shoulders leaning to the wall and arms crossed. Itachi prided himself an observer and he noticed how she looked under the led lights of the hospital, the white doctor coat hugging her shoulders ‒ she looked good. (A traitorous part of his brain reminded him that she always looked good, even when she wore one of the jinchuuriki's stained shirts.)

The evaluation was easy and Sakura kept her professional facade for the whole of twenty minutes it lasted. Itachi felt the need to sigh in relief, because it was done and he could walk (because he did not run, not in front of a woman with pink hair) away from the hospital.

Then she stopped him, her smile showing too many teeth, and rested a hand on his chest.

"Itachi," she said and the complete lack of suffix was easy to ignore, when she looked at him like a woman on a mission. "You're going to book an appointment with me for your lungs."

"No."

She arched one of her brows (pink! Even those!) and gripped at his shoulder with her other hand. "No?" she asked, head tilting.

Itachi was sure many people would have found the sight almost cute, but he also knew that Sakura was anything but cute. She was a demon, a very dangerous woman and most importantly his archenemy.

"Why would I?" he rebutted, swiftly escaping her hold.

Sakura blinked, humming softly. That was it, he thought ‒ she only wanted to be a menace and he could actually escape this quickly.

"Because whoever operated on you a few months ago did a bad job and there's no way you're walking with one of your ribs pressing on your left lung under my watch," she shrugged, as if his health wasn't anything more than an afterthought.

And Itachi realized it probably was, because even if they were usually glaring at each other, they didn't really spend enough time together. For whatever reason, that left a bad taste on his tongue.

Then he coughed and a few droplets of blood met his hand and he realized that maybe he should book that appointment. He nodded, relieved that the bad taste had been the blood clogging his lungs and not him wanting to be Sakura's focus.

Never that.

Less than a week later from his evaluation, Itachi met Sakura again. He watched as she cleaned her hands in the sink in her office, slim fingers resting on his chest as green chakra (a colder shade than the color of her eyes, he noted) entered his system.

Her chakra felt different than the one of the other medics; he wondered if it was because he trusted her on some level (a very distant one) or maybe it was just her. It was too soon when her chakra stopped flowing and he could breathe easier, her face inches from his as she smiled in satisfaction. He could see the glint in her eyes, so close to his own, the way they were warm and contented, as if she had solved the most difficult riddle on Earth.

He could breathe easier, but there was a strange weight on his chest when she took a step back and walked towards her desk, handing him off papers to sign.

Itachi didn't like it, when he didn't understand things. He was smart, a genius really, and he had a keen eye for puzzles. On this day, he was missing a piece.

And whatever the missing piece was, that was the reason his next words escaped his mouth before he could think them over and throw them in a forgotten part of his brain.

"Would you like to get dango together?"