Sakura patently refused to tell him where they were going for their Valentine's Day weekend trip.

She'd spent the next few days leading up to the weekend on her laptop, making plans she stubbornly excluded him from, or speaking on the phone in a very hushed tone, presumably to someone at the train station. Whenever he entered the room while she was making her arrangements, he was greeted with a merciless glare, sometimes accompanied by an obscene finger gesture that told him exactly what she thought of his prying.

Sasuke finally just threw up his hands and left her to it.

Friday morning found them both at the train station, both laden down with backpacks full of everything they'd need for three days (God knows where), and with one rather annoying addition:

The blindfold around his eyes that Sakura made him wear.

"This is so fucking unnecessary," he snapped, as she guided him patiently through the early morning crowds. He despised this new vulnerability, and the fact that his girlfriend could easily push him in the path of an oncoming train and he would never even know it was coming.

"Do I need to remind you that I could easily push you into the path of an oncoming train and you would never even know it was coming?" she snapped right back, once again convincing him that she could read minds.

He entertained a brief, vivid, graphic fantasy of him strangling her with his bare hands, and hoped she could read that, too.

"I'll let you take it off when we get on the train. I told you I want this to be a surprise!"

He bit his tongue to keep from cussing her out.

Naturally, he was curious as to where she was taking him, and wondered at the secrecy behind it. But she'd also paid for his ticket, which meant he was essentially at her mercy. Neither one of them had much money at the moment despite countless hours at the diner and grocery store respectively; if Sakura thought this trip was worth coughing up her hard-earned cash, then he'd go along with it. Not like he was in any position to turn down a free vacation.

"Our train's coming in now, Sasuke!" Sakura informed him excitedly, squeezing the hand she was holding.

He felt the wind rush by him and knew the train had pulled into the station. Jostled on all sides by passengers shuffling onboard along with him, he gripped Sakura's hand back nearly hard enough to break the bones so she wouldn't leave him behind by mistake.

It was only when she'd gotten them both onboard and sat him down next to the window that she reached up and removed his blindfold. He blinked, adjusting to the bright lights of the train, and threw a glare her way to show his displeasure.

She beamed up at him, clearly delighted that they'd gotten this far without Sasuke figuring out where she was taking him.

"Looks like it's on time," she said, checking her watch. "We should be there around noon."

Sasuke did the math in his head quickly, and calculated that wherever they were going was three-to-four hours' distance from Konoha. This was the only clue he had, apart from Sakura snidely informing him that this was a place she knew he wanted to go.

Sasuke didn't really have anywhere in particular he wanted to go, and couldn't remember telling Sakura otherwise. Obviously, he figured, this was just another one of her ploys to go someplace she really wanted to go, and she was dragging him along against his will under the guise of a romantic Valentine's Day excursion.

If she was taking him to the Museum of Medical Abnormalities in Kiri, he would steal her wallet and leave her to wander the streets penniless and destitute while he enjoyed the weekend to himself at home.

"You'd better not be taking me to that fucking creepshow museum," he said rudely, as the train pulled out of the station.

"Oh please!" Sakura rolled her eyes at him as she loosened her scarf. "I wouldn't waste the museum on the likes of you. I'll go with someone who actually gives a shit about…"

"…babies suspended in jars of vinegar?" he interjected.

"Vinegar? Oh my God Sasuke if your ass said vinegar when you meant formaldehyde, they should revoke your scholarships. We're not going to Kiri so just shut your hole."

"Then where are we going?"

"I'm not telling you. You'll find out in approximately three hours and twenty minutes."

Sasuke decided he'd had enough, and turned around to face the passenger behind him, a middle-aged man paying more attention to his crossword puzzle than to anything else around him.

"Where's this train going?" he asked.

"Sasuke don't you dare…"

"Oto," replied the man absently, without looking up from his puzzle.

"You're taking me to Oto?" Sasuke demanded of Sakura, who looked scandalized at how he'd bypassed her rules and spoiled the surprise.

He was taken aback by her anger. Yes, he'd gone ahead and ruined the mystery, but what was it in his hometown exactly that she was so determined to visit? She could have just said she wanted to go there, and he would have been all for it. It had been awhile since he'd been to his family's mausoleum anyway, he could do with a little time with his lost loved ones. He wouldn't have tried to talk her out of it. Why all the secrecy?

"Don't talk to me," she said icily, jamming her headphones in her ears and turning her body away from him. Sensing the futility in pursuing a conversation (argument), Sasuke merely sighed, bad-tempered already, and ignored her.

When they arrived in Oto, the awkwardness sat between them like a third passenger, and accompanied them off the train. Sakura shed her coat, and didn't even look his way as she flagged down a passing taxicab. Sasuke silently slid in beside her and was again surprised to hear her say, "Sharingan Cemetery, please," to the cabbie.

All the pieces slowly fell into place, and Sasuke felt like a proper asshole. Sakura had gone against the grain, and instead of demanding that he celebrate a gawdy, heart-filled pink-and-red Valentine's Day the way he would have thought she'd want to, she'd spent all her money to bring him back home, to see his family. Even with her frigid silence towards him that betrayed how angry she was with him at the moment, her primary motivation was to give him something he hadn't told her he needed, something she'd known intuitively all along.

He felt his eyes burn for the briefest of seconds with what he thought might be tears, but he blinked them back, and smiled instead.

When the cabbie pulled up to the old cemetery, Sakura finally spoke.

"I'll wait here for you," she said quietly. "I wanted you to see your family again. I found out from Naruto where they were buried, and I wanted it to be a surprise. So go 'head, I'll be here when you're done."

Sasuke's smile widened, and he unbuckled her seatbelt for her. She looked up in confusion and he grabbed her hand.

"Like hell," he said coolly. "You made me sit through Christmas with your family. The least you can do is meet mine."

He watched Sakura's anger bleed out of her eyes as a heart-warming smile tilted her lips. She let him pull her out of the cab, and they set off to an austere-looking mausoleum nestled in a grove of shady willow trees.

"It's beautiful," she said softly, taking in the sights of the roses blooming and the heavy leaves interrupting the noontime sunlight, as he tugged her along inside.

He'd spent hours in this marble tomb, hours talking to his parents, his brother, his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all of the Uchihas interred within. In his opinion, it was much nicer than a grave, even if he was always a little unsettled by the two empty slots set aside for him and his future wife. His name and birth year were already emblazoned in bronze on one of the empty slots, just waiting for him someday.

"Mom, Dad, Itachi, this is Sakura," Sasuke said, without further preamble. He sat down on the floor and gestured for Sakura to do the same.

She looked a little unsure, before she took a seat beside him and inclined her head respectfully.

"So nice to meet you all," she said.

If she was perturbed by this morbid meet-the-parents, she didn't show it. Sasuke, for once, felt no sadness when visiting his deceased family; only Naruto had been here with him before, when they were first buried. This was the first time he'd brought someone along to pay his respects, and she wasn't the slightest bit turned off by the fact that they were talking to people who would never talk back to them.

She'd known this was what he needed even before he did. Some time with his family.

He looked at her, unable to banish the fondness from his gaze, and wished that they could have met her for real. She was unlike anything they'd ever encountered, he knew, and just as fervently, he knew they would have loved her. Mikoto would have welcomed her in immediately, delighted with her surly son's attachment to someone so lively, pretty, and kind; Fugaku would have approved of her intelligence, ambition, and work ethic; Itachi would have been ecstatic to know he'd found someone who would keep his grumbly little brother in line, someone funny and unpredictable…

Someone who loved him as much as Itachi had.

He didn't need to hear Sakura's next words to know that they were true.

"I love your son," she murmured to Mikoto and Fugaku's tombs. "I can't believe it and he might think I'm this crazy creepy stalker to say something like that when we've only been dating for like a month, but I've known him for six months and I think I've loved him the whole time. He's a real piece of work, though I'm sure you guys know that. I've got all the sympathy in the world for you knowing you were with him when he was a kid, he must have been a monster."

Sasuke watched her, listened to her speak so easily to his dead relatives, completely unruffled by the macabre of it all, and wondered what he'd done to deserve someone like her. No doubt his family wondered the same thing.

"But he's pretty outstanding, all things considered," she finished, turning away from them to fix Sasuke with the brightest, most dazzling smile he'd ever seen. "And I can't thank you guys enough for having him, because I just can't imagine my life without him anymore."

With that, she reached into her backpack and withdrew a small, but gorgeous wreath of flowers; she set it on the floor before their tombs in offering.

"So I'll try and take care of him now, for you," she promised them. "I mean, I don't eat meat so he'll have to figure out some way around that but I'll make sure he stays in school, and gets a good job, and works on maintaining good credit. And I won't let him embarrass me this baseball season by losing. And I'll be as proud of him forever as I know you guys are. So thank you, and it was wonderful to finally meet the people Sasuke loves so much."

Sasuke didn't need to say anything else, to Sakura or to his family. He merely stood, offered her his hand, and pulled her to her feet before guiding her back outside. The weather was balmy and gorgeous, but he privately felt that no sun could outshine the light in Sakura's eyes at how happy she knew she'd made him.

They didn't say anything until they reached the street, when Sasuke pulled her to a stop and stared hard into her eyes.

"I don't think you're creepy," he said firmly.

She caught where he was going, and smiled.

"Yes you do."

"Well, yeah, when you talk to yourself but I don't think you're creepy for saying you…you l…"

"For saying I love you?" she finished, fearlessly. There was no hesitation anymore, no nervous little glance behind half-lidded eyes. She spoke frankly, as if commenting on the weather, instead of revealing the innermost secrets of her heart. "Well, I mean, it's true. I'm tired of pretending like I don't because it's supposed to be too early to say so. I spent entirely too much time denying my feelings or hiding them or underplaying them and frankly I'm over that, because I know you love me right back, so why are we even having this conversation?"

Sasuke couldn't help it. He laughed.

"They would've fucking loved you," he said, referring to his family, and he was rewarded with the sight of her eyes welling up with tears of happiness. "They would've loved everything about you, because I do, too."

Sunday came too quickly.

Sasuke showed her everything. He took her back to his family's house, then to the amusement park with the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the world. They attended one of the countless music festivals Oto hosted each year and saw four movies at the old movie theater his mother had so loved; they took to their bikes on the trail that ran by his house and fell asleep under the stars, wrapped in a picnic blanket and each other.

He couldn't believe it, but it was the best weekend of his life. The superficial, superfluous holiday neither one of them had even wanted to acknowledge, and it had turned into the most relentlessly romantic time he'd ever spent. Confessing their love to each other in a graveyard, and an hour later laughing together on top of a roller coaster…

That was who they were. They simply weren't suited to Valentine's Day, so they'd taken it, flipped it around, and suited it to themselves instead. No matter what happened next – another fight, another brush with the law, another agonizing shift at the grocery store, another grueling economics exam, another holiday with her crazy parents – he'd always have this weekend, this perfect weekend, when his old family met his new family and for those three days, everything was right with the world.

"I swear it's not what it looks like!" Naruto groaned.

"We didn't think you'd be home this early!" Ino chimed in.

"Well..i mean okay it's exactly what it looks like, we wanted to have a party and you guys bailed so we thought we could just…sort of…borrow your apartment while you were gone, right?"

"We were supposed to have everything cleaned up before you got back, I swear!"

"If you're mad about the throw-up in your bad, Sasuke, it was all Kiba, I saw it with my own two eyes…"

"And we'll replace the curtains, Sakura! Ugh, damn it, Naruto, why'd you even make guacamole in the blender?"

"NO ONE TOLD ME YOU HAD TO PUT A LID ON THE BLENDER, INO. THIS COULD'VE BEEN PREVENTED. I NOTICE YOU CONVENIENTLY LEFT OUT THE PART WHERE YOU SPILLED MILK BEHIND THE COUNTER AND JUST LEFT IT AND THAT'S WHY THE KITCHEN SMELLS WEIRD."

"You fucking troll, I swear to God I'll…"

Sasuke let out a contented sigh, and seized his best friend by his hair, throwing him out of the window that Sakura hastily scrambled to open. Ino and the others required no such ejection; seeing Naruto sailing out of the window was all the incentive they needed to file quickly and efficiently out of the apartment they'd broken into for the weekend.

Sasuke caught Sakura's eye when they were finally alone, and smiled when she giggled.

Home sweet home.

note.. hey guys. i'm almost done with this story and it seemed kind of a waste not to see it through. but please please please if you have the urge to be an asshole, can you just keep it to yourself? let me know if you liked it, thanks for keeping up with me.

xoxo daisy