Chapter One

                                    

                                          
Chapter Beta: Sakura's Unicorn

                          
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うちは
                          
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"You're getting married?"
                          
Sakura Haruno sighs at the incredulous, sharp tone of her mother's voice as she tries to rein in the temptation to grab Sasuke's hand and squeeze. In part, because she knows he doesn't like displays of affection around strangers, but also because, as nervous as she is, she might crush his fingers by accident.
                          
"Yes. That's what I said," she tells her mother in a patient tone, hoping the strain of irritation in her voice isn't coming through too much.
                          
Sakura and Sasuke sit in her family's immaculate living room, separated from her parents only by a small coffee table laden with tea no one intends to drink. Kizashi Haruno looks a little shell-shocked, frowning like he's wondering if he's heard right.
                          
And her mother, well...
                          
Mebuki stares at Sasuke with an expression eerily similar to the one Sakura saw on a certain ancient chakra-eating deity. Sasuke appears to recognise it too, because his own chakra flares as if expecting an attack. At this, Sakura does reach out, wrapping her hand around his wrist and giving a quick warning squeeze.
                          
Mebuki, of course, notices this gesture and her eyes home in on it with senbon-sharp precision.
                          
"You're pregnant, aren't you?"
                          
"Mom!" Sakura cries, cheeks flaming. Sasuke makes a noise in his throat like he swallowed his tongue and jerks his hand away from her. "You can't just ask that!"
                          
"It's a valid concern these days," Mebuki sniffs. "Do you know how many nice girls have gotten pregnant since the end of this wartime nonsense? I'm surprised no one in your graduating class has yet, especially considering how fast they're all pairing off..."
                          
"We're not pregnant," Sakura insists. We'd need to have sex first, and considering we barely had our first kiss, that's a long way off. She doesn't say that out loud, though, knowing her mother might pounce on any aspect of her relationship she doesn't think is normal. The thing about it is, none of Sakura's relationship with Sasuke has ever been normal, and she doubts the future will be either.
                          
She's felt connected to him since childhood and he recently admitted to her that he felt the same, although it took a while before he understood that. They've been spending more time together recently—not in the exact manner that Sakura or her inner romantic would call real dates, but private moments when it's just the two of them, catching up over dinner or a long walk. Over the past weeks, those moments seemed to stretch, tinged with a tentative intimacy—which both surprises and thrills Sakura, because they've never even held hands before. And yet, despite this reality, somehow every second they've spent together has further cemented a shared but unspoken knowledge.
                          
That they're wasting their time waiting.
                          
And so Sasuke, being as practical as ever, proposed the obvious solution based on rather simple criteria: since neither of them can picture a future without the other in it, the obvious resolution is not to try.
                          
In other words: get married.
                          
Laying it out like that might seem coldly logical and dispassionate, but Sakura knows it's hard to articulate to other people the exact extent of her feelings for the last remaining Uchiha without sounding like a besotted little girl. In fact, she's pretty sure only Naruto actually understands it, and even he has told her repeatedly that she deserves better than Sasuke (sometimes joking, sometimes not, depending on how heartbroken she's been at the time of the conversation). And so, she has to be rational about it.