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(teamwork) another scene from chapter 4
It actually comes before the kissies, but i wanted to copy the kissies first because, well, kissies versus awkward dad/sakura conversation... heh.
I need a name for daddy Haruno. Mom's name is Hana (flower). Dad has a bad limp, is really quiet and thinks too much, and his hair is silvery white -- he was born like that. I was thinking Yuki at first, so his name could mean spring snow XD but i'm not sure. I mean, for me Yuki is the prettyboy in fruits baskets. ._.; I need an old, distinguished man's name. *siigh* suggestions plz?
edit: dad's name is now Yukihiro. *purrpurr*
She reached the building where her father worked as an accountant, and asked for him, hoping that as always during stressing times he was working overtime -- it was a Sunday, but that never stopped him -- and that he hadn't taken his lunch break yet. To her surprise the secretary had been warned to expect her and two minutes later she could hear her father limping down the stairs, the muffled thump of his cane echoing his steps. He still moved fairly quietly for a civilian, even with his old war injury stiffening his leg, but he hadn't been quiet enough to surprise Sakura for years now.
"Hi, dad," she greeted him with an uneasy smile. He wasn't smiling. She thought that he looked stern, worried and reproving at once -- but then he was always hard to read. Maybe he was just worried. Or maybe just reproving.
"Sakura. I was about to get some breakfast. Come along."
His voice didn't tell her anything. She followed, composing her expression to appear appropriately serious yet confident. She didn't want to look like she could be influenced into dumping Naruto. She didn't have a clue how to approach her father, though. They didn't have the closeness that she shared with her mother.
They only exchanged a few polite words as they chose a restaurant, as he asked if she had eaten, as she asked when he needed to go back to work. Apparently he'd guessed that she would come find him today, because he'd already cleared his calendar.
They sat face to face, waiting for the waiter to come back, hiding behind their menus. Sakura let the things she wanted to say build up as they tried to organize themselves into coherence, until she knew what she would say first. But she still waited, for their orders to be taken, for them to be alone again, until the silence was so heavy that they slipped out on their own.
"It was an accident, but it wasn't a mistake. I am not sorry, and I will only apologize for the way I handled the situation with you and mom."
She would have said more, but his lack of reaction was making her feel more confrontational and she didn't want a fight. She fell silent, waiting for his reply.
"... Tell me what happened first."
She couldn't help but shoot back, "I'm sure you heard everything already."
"I heard her side of the story. I want yours."
It was starting to get annoying to tell it again and again, especially since she had to tailor it to each of her audiences. But he seemed more open to dialogue now than he'd seemed when he'd sent back her unopened letter. Maybe the length of time she had gone without coming back had convinced him that it wasn't a simple tantrum.
"I was out with my team. We drank -- probably more than we should have. Kyuubi..." She paused. Her father had twitched. He recomposed himself quickly, but his jaws were slightly clenched. "Kyuubi was, apparently, in heat. Or something similar."
Her father's eyebrow twitched again. She decided to attack the core of the problem directly.
"The ... pregnancy was confirmed in the following day, and is closely monitored by the Hokage. There is no way the Kyuubi can leave his host and possess the baby, and as Naruto himself is no less human than any of the advanced bloodlines, the child shouldn't have any genes that neither Naruto nor I possess."
"But you can't be sure."
"...No, I can't. But no expecting mother can be a hundred percent sure that her child will be born normal. There's always a risk."
There was still a forced lack of expression on his face as he replied. "There is a difference between having a deaf or malformed child, and having a demon."
"If I bear a demon, I will be the first to put it down. And if they notice when it's still in my womb, I will give myself over to the ANBU so they can terminate us both."
Finally, her father reacted openly, staring in horror. "Surely there is no need to go that far..."
"It's binding itself to my chakra pathways. If I abort, I'll die."
Even the waiter putting plates down in front of them couldn't manage to stop them staring bleakly at each other. Finally, he took off his glasses and looked down, starting to clean them insistently.
"... And when it's born?"
Sakura blinked. She hadn't thought that far yet. "We'll deal with it when it happens. I have faith that the Hokage will not let anything happen to me if she can help it."
"If."
"If."
There was another silence, during which Sakura politely started poking at her food so as not to stare at her father's face as he digested the information.
"That's... Rather. Serious. Rather..."
"It sounds awful, doesn't it," she replied to what he'd meant rather than what he'd said. "But it's not all horrible. There's a good chance that the baby will be as normal as they come, all cute and pink and bawling at ungodly hours of the morning. Maybe it will have mom's eyes and your nose and Naruto's smile, and then it will be the most perfect baby of the world," she added with a brave smile, blinking away the moisture in her eyes when her father conjured up a rather shaken smile.
And then she took a deep breath and continued. "... and maybe it will have your nose and mom's eyes and Sasuke's hair, and it will still be just as perfect. But probably prettier, all things considered."
She didn't look up. She couldn't. she was scared to death of what she would see.
"... Sasuke's...?" he finally asked, carefully, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard well.
"Uchiha Sasuke. My other teammate," she confirmed, as she finished tearing her napkin into shreds. "He -- they were both there. I don't know which one... Well. That's... something I didn't tell mom yet. I wanted her to accept that it's probably Naruto's child first, you see, or else she would pin all her hopes onto it being Sasuke's, and I don't want my child to be loved or hated because of its father. It's my child and I don't care to which of them it belongs, I just don't, and I don't care either --"
"Sakura. Don't shout."
The gentle admonition was enough to stop her babbling before she panicked totally and she downed her glass of water to calm her nerves, eyes closed.
"I wasn't involved with either of them. I haven't actively chased Sasuke in years and I'm sure Naruto never thought his flirting would ever lead him anywhere. I do have strong feelings for them both, but up until last week, they weren't..." She stopped there, unable to push the detachment far enough to actually use the word "sex" with her father.
"I... understand. It wasn't an easy situation, but -- Kyuubi no Youko, the alcohol -- you didn't choose to be placed in it. I won't judge you for... not knowing."
She was so relieved that she could have cried. She took a stuttering breath and nodded, relaxing marginally.
"But... will you judge me for choosing to stay in it?"
"Pardon?"
"We've decided -- the three of us, that -- we're a team. We'll deal with it as a team. We won't let it pull us apart. We got into it together, and they're not going to abandon me."
The silence seemed a lot heavier suddenly. Her father's glasses had never been cleaner.
"Ah. Honorable sentiment. Concretely, what does this mean?"
She fidgeted, twisting the shreds of her napkin together. "We're going to live together. The three of us. Sasuke offered to marry me, so I don't pass for a whore. And if it's his, I will be the matriarch of the reborn Uchiha clan. Not so bad, eh?" she added with a grin that she couldn't make look anything but pained.
"If it isn't?"
"Then my second child will be his," she declared as if it was obvious, as if she hadn't just decided that it would happen this way two seconds ago. "... We might wait a bit for that one, though."
"The abnormalities in your pregnancy point to... Naruto, though."
She smiled as he made himself use Naruto's first name instead of one of the numerous epithets he was known as.
"Well, yes, it looks like it at first glance, but it only indicates that.. that his tenant is involved. Besides it might be an Uchiha thing, though that's not as likely."
"Perhaps," he replied diplomatically.
Yet another awkward silence passed. Sakura started poking at her food halfheartedly.
"Is there anything else?"
"... None that I can think of. I'm still at Ino's. I'll stay there until I can talk things out with mom. I don't want her to..." she shrugged, trusting her father to understand what she meant. "But eventually we plan on moving in together. We're still hammering out the details though."
He nodded, and started to move his food around, cutting it into little bite-sized chunks.
"You will bring home your... teammates for dinner one of these days," he said stiffly.
Sakura looked up, startled. "You want to meet them? For dinner?" She beamed at her father, blinking back tears quickly. Sasuke and Naruto at her parents' was a scary thought, but the mere fact that her father had offered made her breath catch in her throat. "Sure! I'll bring them," she agreed enthusiastically. /Even if I have to knock them out and tie them up first,/ Inner Sakura added with feral determination.
Her father smiled, just a tiny bit, just enough, and she had to blink quickly and look away for a second. "Mom will have to be talked into it, though. Otherwise..." She winced, imagining how excruciating it would be.
"I'll talk with her. if these boys are going to share your life, I want to know them. If only so I know which kind of drink to slip the poison in," he added, nodding wisely, perfectly deadpan.
"Dad!" she protested, and then laughed, though she wasn't sure he was entirely joking. "I'll bring them," she repeated firmly, nodding.
"Even if you have to drag them by their feet?" her father asked, still blankly polite.
"Dad! How --"
"I remember being their age. A dinner with any of my lady-friends' parents would have made me squirm rather badly."
Sakura grinned. Her father had been a heartbreaker before he settled down with her mom. "Heh. This is true. But they'll come, and I'll beat them into behaving if need be." She flinched as she heard herself; it sounded as if they were savages. "I mean, I'm sure that they will anyway, but ... well..."
Her father looked over his glasses, arching a white eyebrow. "Well?"
"Sasuke has been alone for a long time," she began cautiously.
He nodded. "That's right, but I'm sure his parents taught him excellent manners, when they were still amongst us."
/The problem isn't so much him knowing good manners from bad as it is him deliberately pissing people off by totally ignoring them./ Bah, she'd beat him into behaving if needed. She usually couldn't stand the very idea of hitting her Sasuke-kun, but giving her parents a bad impression was one thing he wouldn't do without receiving a swift beating for his trouble.
"Naruto... well. He never wants to be bad, but the fact is that he more or less raised himself. He always has the best of intentions, but he doesn't know a lot of social conventions. I'd trust him to execute a high-level jutsu, but not to know to put his napkin on his lap, or use the wrong fork or things like that." /Or piss in presence of a young lady,/ Inner Sakura reminded her, flashing back to their first Chuunin exam and the few times it had happened afterwards.
Her father nodded seriously, though she could feel his amusement. "You will give him a crash course, I'm sure."
She nodded. She would give him several.
She was surprised to notice that she was done with her starter, and that the waiter was coming with the next course. She realized that the man must have waited, seeing that they were talking of unpleasant things, and gave him an embarrassed but grateful smile. Now, though, now she was ready to eat a horse.
edit: dad's name is now Yukihiro. *purrpurr*
She reached the building where her father worked as an accountant, and asked for him, hoping that as always during stressing times he was working overtime -- it was a Sunday, but that never stopped him -- and that he hadn't taken his lunch break yet. To her surprise the secretary had been warned to expect her and two minutes later she could hear her father limping down the stairs, the muffled thump of his cane echoing his steps. He still moved fairly quietly for a civilian, even with his old war injury stiffening his leg, but he hadn't been quiet enough to surprise Sakura for years now.
"Hi, dad," she greeted him with an uneasy smile. He wasn't smiling. She thought that he looked stern, worried and reproving at once -- but then he was always hard to read. Maybe he was just worried. Or maybe just reproving.
"Sakura. I was about to get some breakfast. Come along."
His voice didn't tell her anything. She followed, composing her expression to appear appropriately serious yet confident. She didn't want to look like she could be influenced into dumping Naruto. She didn't have a clue how to approach her father, though. They didn't have the closeness that she shared with her mother.
They only exchanged a few polite words as they chose a restaurant, as he asked if she had eaten, as she asked when he needed to go back to work. Apparently he'd guessed that she would come find him today, because he'd already cleared his calendar.
They sat face to face, waiting for the waiter to come back, hiding behind their menus. Sakura let the things she wanted to say build up as they tried to organize themselves into coherence, until she knew what she would say first. But she still waited, for their orders to be taken, for them to be alone again, until the silence was so heavy that they slipped out on their own.
"It was an accident, but it wasn't a mistake. I am not sorry, and I will only apologize for the way I handled the situation with you and mom."
She would have said more, but his lack of reaction was making her feel more confrontational and she didn't want a fight. She fell silent, waiting for his reply.
"... Tell me what happened first."
She couldn't help but shoot back, "I'm sure you heard everything already."
"I heard her side of the story. I want yours."
It was starting to get annoying to tell it again and again, especially since she had to tailor it to each of her audiences. But he seemed more open to dialogue now than he'd seemed when he'd sent back her unopened letter. Maybe the length of time she had gone without coming back had convinced him that it wasn't a simple tantrum.
"I was out with my team. We drank -- probably more than we should have. Kyuubi..." She paused. Her father had twitched. He recomposed himself quickly, but his jaws were slightly clenched. "Kyuubi was, apparently, in heat. Or something similar."
Her father's eyebrow twitched again. She decided to attack the core of the problem directly.
"The ... pregnancy was confirmed in the following day, and is closely monitored by the Hokage. There is no way the Kyuubi can leave his host and possess the baby, and as Naruto himself is no less human than any of the advanced bloodlines, the child shouldn't have any genes that neither Naruto nor I possess."
"But you can't be sure."
"...No, I can't. But no expecting mother can be a hundred percent sure that her child will be born normal. There's always a risk."
There was still a forced lack of expression on his face as he replied. "There is a difference between having a deaf or malformed child, and having a demon."
"If I bear a demon, I will be the first to put it down. And if they notice when it's still in my womb, I will give myself over to the ANBU so they can terminate us both."
Finally, her father reacted openly, staring in horror. "Surely there is no need to go that far..."
"It's binding itself to my chakra pathways. If I abort, I'll die."
Even the waiter putting plates down in front of them couldn't manage to stop them staring bleakly at each other. Finally, he took off his glasses and looked down, starting to clean them insistently.
"... And when it's born?"
Sakura blinked. She hadn't thought that far yet. "We'll deal with it when it happens. I have faith that the Hokage will not let anything happen to me if she can help it."
"If."
"If."
There was another silence, during which Sakura politely started poking at her food so as not to stare at her father's face as he digested the information.
"That's... Rather. Serious. Rather..."
"It sounds awful, doesn't it," she replied to what he'd meant rather than what he'd said. "But it's not all horrible. There's a good chance that the baby will be as normal as they come, all cute and pink and bawling at ungodly hours of the morning. Maybe it will have mom's eyes and your nose and Naruto's smile, and then it will be the most perfect baby of the world," she added with a brave smile, blinking away the moisture in her eyes when her father conjured up a rather shaken smile.
And then she took a deep breath and continued. "... and maybe it will have your nose and mom's eyes and Sasuke's hair, and it will still be just as perfect. But probably prettier, all things considered."
She didn't look up. She couldn't. she was scared to death of what she would see.
"... Sasuke's...?" he finally asked, carefully, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard well.
"Uchiha Sasuke. My other teammate," she confirmed, as she finished tearing her napkin into shreds. "He -- they were both there. I don't know which one... Well. That's... something I didn't tell mom yet. I wanted her to accept that it's probably Naruto's child first, you see, or else she would pin all her hopes onto it being Sasuke's, and I don't want my child to be loved or hated because of its father. It's my child and I don't care to which of them it belongs, I just don't, and I don't care either --"
"Sakura. Don't shout."
The gentle admonition was enough to stop her babbling before she panicked totally and she downed her glass of water to calm her nerves, eyes closed.
"I wasn't involved with either of them. I haven't actively chased Sasuke in years and I'm sure Naruto never thought his flirting would ever lead him anywhere. I do have strong feelings for them both, but up until last week, they weren't..." She stopped there, unable to push the detachment far enough to actually use the word "sex" with her father.
"I... understand. It wasn't an easy situation, but -- Kyuubi no Youko, the alcohol -- you didn't choose to be placed in it. I won't judge you for... not knowing."
She was so relieved that she could have cried. She took a stuttering breath and nodded, relaxing marginally.
"But... will you judge me for choosing to stay in it?"
"Pardon?"
"We've decided -- the three of us, that -- we're a team. We'll deal with it as a team. We won't let it pull us apart. We got into it together, and they're not going to abandon me."
The silence seemed a lot heavier suddenly. Her father's glasses had never been cleaner.
"Ah. Honorable sentiment. Concretely, what does this mean?"
She fidgeted, twisting the shreds of her napkin together. "We're going to live together. The three of us. Sasuke offered to marry me, so I don't pass for a whore. And if it's his, I will be the matriarch of the reborn Uchiha clan. Not so bad, eh?" she added with a grin that she couldn't make look anything but pained.
"If it isn't?"
"Then my second child will be his," she declared as if it was obvious, as if she hadn't just decided that it would happen this way two seconds ago. "... We might wait a bit for that one, though."
"The abnormalities in your pregnancy point to... Naruto, though."
She smiled as he made himself use Naruto's first name instead of one of the numerous epithets he was known as.
"Well, yes, it looks like it at first glance, but it only indicates that.. that his tenant is involved. Besides it might be an Uchiha thing, though that's not as likely."
"Perhaps," he replied diplomatically.
Yet another awkward silence passed. Sakura started poking at her food halfheartedly.
"Is there anything else?"
"... None that I can think of. I'm still at Ino's. I'll stay there until I can talk things out with mom. I don't want her to..." she shrugged, trusting her father to understand what she meant. "But eventually we plan on moving in together. We're still hammering out the details though."
He nodded, and started to move his food around, cutting it into little bite-sized chunks.
"You will bring home your... teammates for dinner one of these days," he said stiffly.
Sakura looked up, startled. "You want to meet them? For dinner?" She beamed at her father, blinking back tears quickly. Sasuke and Naruto at her parents' was a scary thought, but the mere fact that her father had offered made her breath catch in her throat. "Sure! I'll bring them," she agreed enthusiastically. /Even if I have to knock them out and tie them up first,/ Inner Sakura added with feral determination.
Her father smiled, just a tiny bit, just enough, and she had to blink quickly and look away for a second. "Mom will have to be talked into it, though. Otherwise..." She winced, imagining how excruciating it would be.
"I'll talk with her. if these boys are going to share your life, I want to know them. If only so I know which kind of drink to slip the poison in," he added, nodding wisely, perfectly deadpan.
"Dad!" she protested, and then laughed, though she wasn't sure he was entirely joking. "I'll bring them," she repeated firmly, nodding.
"Even if you have to drag them by their feet?" her father asked, still blankly polite.
"Dad! How --"
"I remember being their age. A dinner with any of my lady-friends' parents would have made me squirm rather badly."
Sakura grinned. Her father had been a heartbreaker before he settled down with her mom. "Heh. This is true. But they'll come, and I'll beat them into behaving if need be." She flinched as she heard herself; it sounded as if they were savages. "I mean, I'm sure that they will anyway, but ... well..."
Her father looked over his glasses, arching a white eyebrow. "Well?"
"Sasuke has been alone for a long time," she began cautiously.
He nodded. "That's right, but I'm sure his parents taught him excellent manners, when they were still amongst us."
/The problem isn't so much him knowing good manners from bad as it is him deliberately pissing people off by totally ignoring them./ Bah, she'd beat him into behaving if needed. She usually couldn't stand the very idea of hitting her Sasuke-kun, but giving her parents a bad impression was one thing he wouldn't do without receiving a swift beating for his trouble.
"Naruto... well. He never wants to be bad, but the fact is that he more or less raised himself. He always has the best of intentions, but he doesn't know a lot of social conventions. I'd trust him to execute a high-level jutsu, but not to know to put his napkin on his lap, or use the wrong fork or things like that." /Or piss in presence of a young lady,/ Inner Sakura reminded her, flashing back to their first Chuunin exam and the few times it had happened afterwards.
Her father nodded seriously, though she could feel his amusement. "You will give him a crash course, I'm sure."
She nodded. She would give him several.
She was surprised to notice that she was done with her starter, and that the waiter was coming with the next course. She realized that the man must have waited, seeing that they were talking of unpleasant things, and gave him an embarrassed but grateful smile. Now, though, now she was ready to eat a horse.
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hmm. male's name, huh? how about Mitsubachi? (honeybee)
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Hmmmmmm. *thinks* makes me think of mitsubishi XDD
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*eats food.*
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As for names -- how about Yukihiro? -hiro is a common male name suffix and that kind of combination sounds like an older/more dignified character. (There are other suffixes you could use for the same general "tag onto a word to make it a masculine name" effect, but there are already too many -marus running around Konoha and both -to and -suke have a tendency to be associated with kids/teens in anime. kind of like how Jason/Scott/Jennifer are young-people-names in American stuff and how William/Roger/Alfred are adult-people-names.)
"Yukihiko" is also structurally possible but it doesn't sound quite right for him, too many sharp sounds for the character who's seen in that scene... anyway, I'd vote for "Yukihiro"...
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Ohhhh yukihiro -- I like!! *loves on* yeah, it fits him *purrs and cuddles* thank you thank you thank you!
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yeah, that's gonna be a fun chapter. XD
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I like the way Sakura brings up Sasuke's involvement after she's already hit her father with the alcohol and the way the baby is tied into her chakra pathways, and the knowledge that yes, she's considered all the worst-case scenarios. I also like the way they banter a little about the dinner invitation. She may not be as close to her father as she is to her mother, but sometime a little bit of emotional distance lets you get along better in trying circumstances.
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heh, well, she wants them to accept naruto first. she figures sasuke being so respectable and rich and all won't be that hard to swallow. comparatively. threesomes not as bad as demons and whatnot. XD
She may not be as close to her father as she is to her mother, but sometime a little bit of emotional distance lets you get along better in trying circumstances.
yes!yes! X3 besides her mom and her are a bit too close sometimes anyway.
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"You will bring home your... teammates for dinner one of these days," he said stiffly.
Her poor father, I don't think he can wrap his brain around the fact that his baby girl is all grown up. XD
Just go with Yuki as a name, I don't think many people would care that a lot of other anime character is named that.
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nah, yuki sounds too young to me. ;_; i don'tknow why. but yukihiro works, so yay ^___^
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Wish I had a dad that understanding.The fact that Sakura doesn't care who the father of her child is makes me love her more. D:
Glad you didn't call him Yukiko, cause ko is the character for girl. So that would equal snowgirl... XD
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*petpetloves* yeah, me too.hey, well, some part of her does care, but in the end it'll be her child and that's the most important thing. ^__^
XD thank god I actually know just enough japanese to avoid that. *snickers* "man of the spring snow". heh.
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PS. Yukihiro is a fucking awesome name.
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#^_________^# whee! thanks! <3<3 dialogues are a lot easier than action scenes though. x_x action scenes KILL me. I'll try to put some in the next chapter, but hmm.
PS yay! glad you like it. *pets*
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Ce chapitre commence vraiment très bien (+ the kisses *_*). Que d'émotions.X3
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marchii
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Heh, I like how she hits him with all the heavy stuff first, and then once he's absorbed that, gives him some light to clutch at. Very clever tactic that.
But the dinner... would be interesting, to say the least. Poor Naruto's going to have to go to a finishing school, I think :p