Chapter Text
Sakura is four years old when she is introduced to Sasuke. He’s four too, with lively dark eyes and a head of fluffy dark hair, where Sakura is neatly combed pink hair and jewel green eyes. Haruno Kizashi leans over the children, Sakura clinging to his leg and Sasuke standing an independent three steps away from Fugaku’s feet, and claps a shoulder to Fugaku’s shoulder.
“Told you they’d get along.” Mebuki brags, even though the children have not even interacted. “She’ll be Sasuke’s Haruno, when she’s old enough for the secrecy seal.” It’s fitting, after all. The younger daughter of the Haruno clan head, and the younger son of the Uchiha clan head. After today, they’ll spend more time together, and learn to trust each other, like how Mikoto trusts Mebuki, and Mebuki trusts Mikoto. “Now tell me, how’s the family? Yuuka is so worried about Itachi, you know.”
Shooing Sasuke away and towards the little park inside the Uchiha’s isolated district, while Mebuki does the same with Sakura, Mikoto and Mebuki find a bench to sit on, as they catch up. The blooming roses at the base of Mebuki’s throat mean she’s sworn to keep Mikoto’s secrets, just like the nettles circling her oldest daughter’s bicep mean she’s sworn to keep Itachi’s. One day Sakura will pick her own seal design, and it will tie her to Sasuke and his secrets in a way that mere friendship or verbal oaths will not.
“I’m Sasuke,” Sasuke says, much bolder than Sakura, mindful that Itachi will be disappointed if he upsets Yuuka-nee-chan’s little sister. “Do you know how to play ninja?” Sakura shakes her head, bangs slipping into her face and obscuring most of her vision. Sasuke wrinkles his nose, but accepts this. “Well, I’ll teach you.” He promises, reaching out a hand for Sakura to take.
She stares at it, and him, for a long moment, before taking his hand with a tiny smile. Sasuke tugs her along, and begins to explain how to play. Mebuki looks over from where she’d been frowning, and her expression melts into a smile. “They’re getting along just fine.” Like she’d never been worried that Sakura’s shyness would interfere with her destined friendship with Sasuke.
“Sasuke is a warm child,” Mikoto says, lines in her face giving away his continued frown, though her mouth never turns down. “He probably puts her at ease.” They both watch the two children, seeing all the reason for the discussion they’re having in a simple, ancient code from their girlhoods in the laughter of Sasuke and the shy smiles Sakura gives back, as she chases after Sasuke, threatening him with her “kenjutsu.”
The silence between them sits for a moment, heavy and brooding. Treason is a heavy topic, but they both know that, for these children, for the children of both their clans, it is a necessity. The Sandaime and his council had sentenced both their families to a cramped, walled compound on the opposite side of the village from their ancestral homes, sprawling and old as the Senju’s, for suspicions of tampering with the Kyuubi, on suspicion of killing the Fourth. Or on suspicion of aiding the one who’d murdered both Namikaze and Uzumaki.
As if Mikoto hadn’t been Kushina’s best friend, as if a dozen Uchiha hadn’t died battling the beast. As if a score and more of Haruno hadn’t died while ushering other civilians into the shelters. It was infuriating, it was devastating, it was enough for Mikoto, Fugaku and the Uchiha elders to decide it was enough . It was enough that Mebuki and the Haruno had brought all their civilian influence to bear, to back their Uchiha.
They were doing this so their children wouldn’t have to grow up knowing they weren’t trusted by the village the lived and died for, that they would live and die in.
“The Haruno will follow, Mikoto.” Kizashi promises. “Just like we always have, we’ll have your backs.”
When Yuuka dies suddenly, drowned in the river and fished out like so much trash, Shishui stands at Itachi’s side. Both Uchiha are dry eyed, but Sasuke is teary and Sakura is bawling. Kizashi tries to comfort the children, but his efforts seem hollow. It is rare that an Uchiha outlives their Haruno. As ninja, their lives are short and violent, but Haruno...are civilians.
It’s unnatural, and in its unnaturalness lies the tragedy, and eventually, the suspicion. Yuuka had been sworn to hold Itachi’s secrets. The nettle ring around her arm had been the proof. Itachi was...odd, after her death. And then Shishui dies the same way. Drowned in the river, and fished out by a wild-eyed Itachi. There was the suspicion, sparked to life by the deaths of his closest companions, and his nonreactions.
And then, well.
Sakura comes back from the park and the training fields, pulling Sasuke with her on her way home. Chattering easily about her playdate with Ino, who is kind and wonderful and “going to be a ninja just like you, Sasuke!” Sasuke goes into the compound proper, his house inside the walls, and Sakura backtracks to the sprawling ring of homes and apartments that surround the compound. The Haruno complexes that act as a buffer from the rest of the village.
And comes face to face with bloody carnage. She screams and screams and screams, but no Uchiha come to save her. None of the police force can hear her. The people who rush Sasuke to the hospital, struck down by Itachi’s mangekyo, don’t even think to check on the Haruno. They’re just civilians, so of course they survived. Why would Itachi have killed the Haruno?
Except, they didn’t. Except, he did.