Chapter Text
Sakura is used to seeing the cats Sasuke sends to look after Sarada—they rarely stay long, nor much in sight—usually at best she sees the flicker of a tail or a rustle in the bushes. They do come out around Sarada though, and she loves them—loves playing, cuddling and carrying them. But they always manage to escape before she can bring them into the house.
Which means that when Sarada sidles through the back door with her arms around a cat almost as large as she is, Sakura takes notice.
“Where did you get that cat, Sweetie?” she asks, laying down the knife she was using to slice bell peppers.
This particular cat is skinny, with short black fur and yellow eyes. It does not wear anything that would indicate that it is a ninneko, nor any collars that would suggest that it belongs to one of her neighbors. However, it is obligingly limp in Sarada’s hold, not seeming to mind that half of its body is dragging on the ground.
“It came into the yard,” says Sarada happily, setting the cat down on the hardwood.
The cat, surprisingly, shows no inclination to bolt upon being released from Sarada’s hold. Instead, he flops down right where Sarada set him. Sarada crouches down to pet him, from head to tail.
“Gently, Sarada,” scolds Sakura, because Sarada’s pats are a little too forceful the way young children’s are. The cat however, does not seem to mind, its tail coming up and flicking at her nose. She falls heavily on her bottom, giggling.
Sakura comes around the kitchen counter to also crouch by the cat, inspecting it. He doesn’t look like a stray: too well-groomed. He sits up at her approach, and she could swear he was studying her face as intently as she studies him.
“Sa-chan, you shouldn’t have brought the cat inside. What if it belongs to someone?”
“No he doesn’t,” says Sarada indignantly. “He belongs to me!”
“Sa-chan—”
“But he said.”
Sakura pauses.
“Who said?” she asks.
Sarada points at the cat, who blinks up innocently at Sakura. “He talks. He says he can’t stay forever, because he needs to live outside and hunt scary things and he doesn’t want to scare me. But he says I can call him mine and that he’ll come and play with me as much as he can.”
Sakura stares, reconsiders her previous thought. Perhaps it is one of Sasuke’s cats. Maybe it let itself be brought inside because it has a message for her from Sasuke.
Sarada looks pleadingly up at her. “Can he stay with me tonight?”
“Let me talk to him first,” says Sakura. “Before we decide anything. Okay?”
Sarada brightens, because it’s not a no and already better than what she was expecting.
“Don’t get too excited,” Sakura warns. “Now go clean your room and let us talk.”
“Mama.”
But Sarada obeys, giving the cat a final pat on the head before pattering down the hall to her room. Sakura listens for the sound of her door opening and closing before turning her attention back to the cat.
She does not think that his stare has wavered from her once. Definitely a ninneko.
“Thank you for being so patient with her,” she says to the cat. “I know it can’t have been very comfortable, being carried like that. She’s strong for such a little girl.”
“Just like her mother,” says the cat in Sasuke’s voice.
Sakura freezes, because it has been too long since she has heard his voice and because why is he a cat?
“Sasuke-kun?” she whispers, partly to prevent Sarada from overhearing but mostly because she does not expect to be answered.
The-cat-that-sounds-like-Sasuke puts his front paws on her knees and stretches, gently knocking his soft-furred head against her forehead.
“Hello, Sakura.”
Sakura gapes, having lost the capacity to function in any meaningful way.
“What are you—did you tell—why?”
Sasuke makes a deep trilling noise that makes his whole body vibrate, gently headbutting against her shoulder again before returning to a seated position.
“I visited Neko Baa a few days ago to ask her for this trick. I know she’s been hiding it for a while now.” His whiskers twitch. “As far as Sarada is concerned, I have no proper name.”
“You should tell her.”
He ducks his head in refusal. “Sakura, she is nearly seven. She is intelligent. She will either dismiss my claim outright or demand proof by asking me to turn back to a human. And I cannot make my presence known.”
Sakura purses her lips in disapproval but does not pursue the argument.
“But then why are you here, Sasuke-kun?”
His mission isn’t over, if he’s sneaking around wearing a cat’s form. That much is obvious.
Sasuke’s tail flicks back and forth and he looks down at his paws.
“I missed you,” he says. “And…I’ve heard from my scouts about how much she likes cats. I wanted to play with her.”
Sakura is silent, because what is there to say?
“And you couldn’t come back human?” she asks, knowing that it is futile even to ask.
He shakes his head. “Too many eyes. But no one suspects a cat. Especially not one prowling the grass around the neighborhood.”
“They might suspect a talking cat.”
“Meow,” he says. It is utterly unconvincing.
Sakura sighs.
“How long?”
“Just for a few days. I’m not sure I could last much longer. I think I underestimated how active Sarada is.” There’s a rueful note in Sasuke’s voice that makes Sakura smile, despite her sorrow and frustration.
“She doesn’t really stop,” she agrees. Then, she holds her arms open, and Sasuke climbs into them. She cuddles him close, feeling the rapid too-light heartbeat of a cat, so unlike her husband’s. It is not what she wants, but it is close enough for now.
She hears Sarada coming back down the hall, despite her daughter’s best efforts to be soundless from the halting pauses every two steps, and releases him. Sets him back down and stands to return to her vegetables, rubbing at her eyes.
“Mama?” Sarada sticks her head back around the door. “My room’s clean. Did you and Mr. Kitty talk? Can he stay?”
Sakura looks at him, raising her eyebrows at the moniker. Sasuke looks skywards but does not respond.
“He can stay,” says Sakura, resuming her slicing. “But only because I got to have a little talk with him. I can’t promise about any other animals you find.”
She gives Sasuke a stern look, to convey the fact that if Sarada starts bringing in strays, she knows exactly who to blame.
Sasuke’s ears flicker and his eyes narrow, as if to say please, like I would influence her to such bad habits, so Sakura knows he gets the picture.
“Yes!” Sarada punches the air, face flushed and smiling so brightly that Sakura’s answering smile is only a little strained by the secret she has to keep.
Sasuke rises and pads over to Sarada. She picks him up and kisses him on the forehead; he nuzzles her cheek and purrs, which makes her giggle.
“Can he sleep in my room?” She asks Sakura, turning to face her, arms around Sasuke’s middle, squeezing him a little too tightly.
“Sure, honey. But put him down, I don’t think he likes being carried like that.”
–
Sakura has moved from the living room to the bedroom, reading before she turns in for the night, when she hears movement coming from within the house. She put Sarada to bed hours ago, and a quick chakra reading indicates that there is no foreign presence that would cause concern.
Which leaves only one other individual.
Her door is not entirely closed and she watches as Sasuke squeeze through the gap. He comes closer to the bed, so that she can see nothing of him but the tip of his tail, and then he jumps and is up on the bed, molding himself against her thigh.
“Did it take Sarada long to fall asleep?” she asks, fighting down an impulse to scratch him behind his ears, especially when they keep twitching.
“No. She was tired,” he says, yawning, revealing sharp white teeth. “But she is a very light sleeper. I thought I woke her up every time I so much as stretched.”
Sakura nods. “She has been for a while.”
Sasuke does not immediately respond. Sakura knows he won’t ask when the change between the baby and the child occurs. She almost tells him, anyways, but bites the answer back.
“I’ll go back in the morning,” he says. “So I can be there when she wakes up.”
“That would be good.”
He rests his head on her lap. Sakura gives in to the whim and pets him on the head. He blinks, but otherwise shows no signs of annoyance.
“It would be unwise of me to turn back into a human right now.”
Sakura raises her eyebrows. “I’m not asking you.”
“I know. But I want to.”
Sakura’s silence is her only concession to her own wish. She turns off the lamp and settles in, turning down the covers on his side of the bed, so that Sasuke might curl up there. He obliges, though he does so in such a way that he fits against her as she lies on her side, warm against her stomach.
“Are you comfortable like that?” she asks.
“As a cat? Not very. But it is manageable. If you mean the bed, very. Thank you.”
This is not right—wrong shape, strange timing, one of the more farcical moments in her life thus far.
But it is something, at least.