Title: "Clueless"
Author: Rot_chan
Rating: High K/Low T
Pairing: Sasu/Saku
Prompt: #48 - I used to remember you.
Genre: Humor/Romance/Drama
Words: 2077
Summary: Sasuke says, "You lost your memory after giving blood, getting dizzy, and falling down the stairs." Sakura fidgets. "Yeah, I think so". Sasuke sighs; shakes his head. "Except you're not really sure...because you can't remember." Getting blood drawn - and getting head trauma after fainting - right before your wedding? Always a good idea.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

(Notes: inspired by a true story of one of my mom's friends. Unbelievable but true. I decided to write a long OS about it. Funny how life is so unpredictable. But I never knew what possessed that woman to get blood drawn right before her wedding. Oh well. Enjoy.)

Sasuke can feel his patience slipping.

Rather, he can feel - he can sense that everything is absolutely, positively going to hell.

Sakura is sitting in the hospital bed, surrounded by an obnoxious, unnecessary balloon, and a ridiculously oversized plant given as a get-well gift by the sympathetic hospital staff.

Sasuke asks her, "do you know my name?"

"Uh...no." She's growing uncomfortable now, that's obvious. Because she's biting her nails - since when does Sakura bite her nails?

"OK," Sasuke says, deep in thought. Then, despite preparing himself before entering this room almost a dozen times not to do this - he's smirking, shaking his head, cynical.

"So. You lost your memory, after giving blood, getting dizzy, then falling down the stairs."

She shakes her head, nervous; fidgets a little in the bed. "Yeah, I think so."

Sasuke blinks. "Except you're not really sure, because...you can't remember."

Sakura smiles awkwardly. "Well...yes."

"...Dammit."

000

"Oh, Poptarts...If only, if only I had the cash to get you," Naruto sighs, pressing his cheek against the snack machine, lusting after those two delicious fudge shoppe Poptarts -

"Naruto."

Sasuke's voice snaps the boy out of his rather silly reverie.

"Oh. Hey," Naruto grins - then frowns, remembering their current predicament. "How is she? Remembering anything yet?"

The two have been there for over an hour. Ever since Sakura has been hospitalized yesterday (a 'level 2 concussion', some scrapes and memory loss apparently required an over-night stay) the state of their lives had been switched from Relatively Peaceful to Utterly Chaotic.

Sasuke glowers. "No," he mutters bitterly, taking a seat on a waiting room chair by the vending machine.

Naruto glares and starts to root around in his coat pockets in hope of finding a few quarters or a crumpled dollar bill. "Geez, Sasuke, relax. I'm sure Sakura will, like, you know -"

"No, I don't know, and the doctors don't know, and no one is going to know any time soon," Sasuke grits out.

Naruto sighs, defeated in his quest for change. He sits beside his friend, drumming his fingers on the plastic chair. " So...how many days left, exactly?"

It takes Sasuke a moment to recall. Because it's so suddenly, terrifyingly close. "Seven."

"Only a week till the wedding? Well...I mean, hey, look on the bright side: if you had cold feet before, now's your chance to get out!"

000

When Naruto goes in to visit Sakura for the first time, and when Sakura grins, Sasuke's stomach sinks to his feet in subtle horror.

"Naruto!" Sakura says through her easy smile.

And here is where Naruto turns to stare at Sasuke, then at Sakura, and back at Sasuke again - very, very confused - then chuckling sheepishly, shrugging, "Well, I guess she remembers me!"

And this simply cannot do - because, Sasuke thinks, leaning against the door in well-concealed shock, and even hurt: Am I actually that forgettable?

000

When Sasuke first brings her home, Sakura is breathless: because this is her house? Surely this can't be her house.

It's a palace.

Beautiful oriental carpeting, a twinkling chandelier in the parlor, a wood burning fireplace in the sitting room, and the most beautiful dining set she has ever seen.

It's all hers (?)

"Oh...I mean, wow!" Sakura laughs, and it echoes off the spacious walls. It's a laugh that returns her to Sasuke, makes him forget that she forgets.

But she stands there, almost awkward, almost tense; she doesn't know him now. Sasuke is, for the first time in quite a while, unsure of how to act, what to say. What to do.

Because Sakura forgets all the times she told Sasuke that she really "really loved him"; how she made him cakes for birthdays he didn't even care much about; the notes she had slipped to him during class lectures; how they used to go to the old barn outside of school and smoke cigarettes - all lost. Somewhere, in some place, in her mind.

It stung.

Now two strangers stand, unsure, in their own home. It's painfully funny. Almost sad.

"Well...I guess I'll -"

"You can -"

"I'll go upstairs..."

"Then I'll stay down here. Give you...some space."

"Yeah. Space. I guess that would be...nice," Sakura smiles tightly.

Sasuke walks into to the living room while Sakura walks up to the bedroom and falls in love with her house for the second time. Now, if only she can do so with her fiance.

000

After using the computer in the dining room for hours on amnesia, the affects of memory loss, and how to regain lost memory, Sasuke has convinced himself he can can get her memory back, somehow.

Sasuke confronts her, D-day (or rather, W-day) only five days away now, as Sakura sits in the living room watching a sitcom and eating a Hostess cherry pie.

Sakura looks up at him, blinks, wary. "Um...hi." She sets down the cherry pie on the coffee table and fumbles to turn the volume down on the remote. He's handsome - too handsome, just too pretty - and can he really be her husband?(Ever?)

"...Can you just look at these pictures? Please?" Sasuke manages, because as an egoist naturally he finds it a bit difficult to say his pleases and thank-you's.

Sakura takes the album from his hand.

She flips through the pages and scans through pictures of them, of herself:

Naruto and Sakura playing in the snow together during one of the worst blizzards of the decade. Sakura tugging Sasuke along the beach, the sky and sea dark black.

And then, Sasuke sees the one picture he didn't mind taking: it was on the night he actually asked her to marry him. Naruto snapped and it's almost out of focus, and he's sitting beside her and they're both staring off in the distance together, and Sakura's the one holding his hand, and it's not "candid".

But she hands it back and apologizes, sort of, and it's just not going to work.

So they go about their business and they eat dinner at different times, and Sasuke lets Sakura have some money for take-out; and they barely talk when they happen to be eating at the same time. Because Sasuke is sullen, almost frozen, from turning it over and over in his head - canceling the wedding. The wedding she begged for, planned, talked about again and again. And that's quite the distraction.

000

The bridesmaids - Tenten, Hinata, Temari - have taken over Sasuke's kitchen. They are in the kitchen sipping margaritas and trying to reconnect with their best friend who knows them, though barely. The best man is opting to eat a pie that Sakura baked, because she remembers him. And how is it again that she so clearly remembers Naruto Uzumaki of all people?

So there they all stand in the kitchen, because Sasuke has called an Emergency Meeting in hopes of getting the bride's memory to return.

Hinata nervously twirls her own engagement ring around her finger. "Sakura - S-Sasuke? Don't you remember him? Y-you two have been together f-for almost a year."

Sakura shrugs, rather nonchalant. Nonchalant - the perfect word to describe her ever since "the incident".

"The incident really changed everything," Tenten whispers to an almost disinterested Temari as the two girls stand by the fridge and sip their drinks.

"The incident" being, the day that Sakura - just a little over a week before she planned to say 'I do' to Sasuke, the 'big love of her life' - donated blood at the hospital where she works, then in a sudden spell of dizziness, fell down a flight of stairs, hit her head - and suffered from memory loss. And most of that loss being: her job, her wedding, and her fiance.

For the past few days, Sakura has been avoiding said fiance she's only just met (by technicalities) and Sasuke hasn't done much to...befriend his future wife. And isn't it painfully ridiculous that Sasuke can't win over the girl he never even had to win over in the first place?

But the best man is here to try to do what Sasuke can't - and that is, restoring the bride's memory, which seems impossible. The bridesmaids can't do it; the love of her life can't do it, obviously. So Naruto, whose inhaling the peach pie with the fancy lattice crust, is left to do it.

Naruto hiccups into his napkin, terribly full. "C'mon, Sakura-chan," he says, using that old high school nickname. "You guys have always been kinda tight, y'know? I can remember in high school, you ALWAYS had a crush on Teme...I mean, you could never stop talking about him! Sasuke's always been 'The One', or whatever you wanna call it. And dontcha wanna get married? I saw your dress - it's pre-eet-ttt-y," Naruto says, in a sing-song voice, persuading her, as if this will make her remember.

Sakura stares, and laughs. Sasuke twitches.

"Uh-huh. Sure. And let me just say this," Sakura narrows her eyes, and she's suddenly angry - that kind of pissed-off where you're almost bitterly humorous about everything because it's all falling apart and there's no way of salvaging it.

"Let me just tell you all," Sakura circles her arms around, referring to the wedding party - Tenten and Temari, polishing off those margaritas, Naruto who looks about ready to ralph, and Sasuke, whose sitting on the kitchen island, moping like hell - "I just want to mention, oh, in case you've forgotten: I CAN'T REMEMBER ANYTHING."

"Don't you think, it's maybe a little FREAKY, just finding out YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED? And you can't even remember the guy's NAME?" Sakura exclaims, and Hinata is stuttering, trying to calm her down -

"S-Sakura, p-please -"

Sakura turns to face the Fiance, livid; but she's sad too. Because really, the wedding party is starting realize - now that the thought of calling off the wedding is pushed aside for the moment - it must be a tough time, a very hard time, for the bride. The bride who doesn't know how or why she got to be a bride.

"And you - I don't even know why I would ever want to marry you in the first place. You're weird. A - a freak! I mean, you shove those pictures in my face, and hope I'll just magically wake up like me again? Get real. Get real! I-I mean, you're moody, and mopey, and, and you're not very nice."

Sakura is staring at Sasuke and he knows it's the truth: not very nice. They barely register, but they hang there, in the air, all the same.

000

The next morning, Sasuke wakes up too early. At eight-thirty AM he walks down stairs to the kitchen. When he sees Sakura there he automatically bristles.

Sakura is yawning, covering her mouth with her shirtsleeve, looking almost vulnerable.Tired.

"What's up?" She asks him; Sasuke is confused, and slowly takes a seat at the kitchen table. He notices that she's using the stove, and a stick of butter is out on the counter beside a mixing bowl and a Bisquick box.

"I made pancakes. I don't like pancakes that much but I was sort of hungry," Sakura shrugs, and pours herself a glass of cranberry juice.

"Where did you sleep last night?" Sasuke asks, curious. Naturally there was an unspoken agreement between them when she first came back that they would not be sharing the king bed in the master bedroom together. He took the guest room, next door to his - their room. But when he got up earlier, Sakura had not been in bed.

"Oh. I got up early and went out for a run," Sakura says quietly, flipping the pancake. It sizzles.

Sasuke unexpectedly feels a pang in his chest, because Sakura looks strangely tiny in the blouse she has on, and he feels like she would shatter if he were to touch her arm.

He clears his throat. "...I'm...I'm sorry. About what's been going on."

She looks over her shoulder, pausing before flipping off the burner and putting the slightly blackened pancake onto her plate. It smells a bit burnt in the kitchen. Neither notice.

"It's OK...I guess," she sniffs.

Sasuke stares at her back. "Sakura...the wedding. It's -"

"Don't worry. I mean, I'm not worried."

"In fact," Sakura says, taking the pancake to the kitchen island, setting it down and jumping up to sit there, "I think I'll see you there." She grins, slow and wide. Familiar.

When Sasuke throws the plastic apple from the fruit dish at her, she laughs.

000

End note: yes, she got her memory back, and played a mean little trick. With Sakura's kind of memory loss, retrograde, I believe you can regain your memory at any random time. Pretty sure that's what happened with our family friend - thankfully, she got her memory back and they were able to get married. I haven't penned a OS in a LONG time, so I made this one a bit longer to make up for my absence. Comments/reviews are always appreciated! Thanks for reading.