144Date: October 8th, 2014
Pairing: SasuSaku
Prompt: Back Then
Title: Uchiha Ubiquity
Summary: Sasuke just wants a little peace and quiet.
Written by: ebondeath
Disclaimer: Naruto, not mine since 1999.
There are days, and he will never tell this to his wife, when Uchiha Sasuke longs for the good old days. The days when he was free to brood and angst and nobody knew where he kept his tomato stash. It isn't that he wants to go back to being a seething ball of bitterness and rage, no, that isn't what he misses. He wouldn't trade his life now for anything.
What he misses is the silence.
"OTOU-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
Is it possible to smirk and groan at the same time? Sasuke manages to achieve this as the front door to the Uchiha manor slides open abruptly and three tiny hellions spew forth and tackle him to the ground. Sasuke drowns under a sea of pink and uchiwa fans and hugs and kisses until the laughing voice of Uchiha Sakura calls off their daughters.
There are momentary pouts as the girls scoot away from their father, but these are soon wiped away as they all try to tell him about their day at the same time:
"Otou-san, guess what! I learned how to walk on water today!"
"Well, I hit all the targets right in the middle with my shuriken!"
"I saved you the biggestest tomato!"
Sakura smiles at him as their daughters relate the day's adventures, that soft, easy smile that comes from loving someone for so long and bearing children together. Sasuke smirks back at her, knowing that for all their annoying chatter, the girls will be unrivaled kunoichi one day. How could they not be, given their parentage?
The chatter and the tugging of his clothes continues as he steps inside the house and removes his sandles. The Uchiha patriarch's mind once again wanders back to his days in solitude. Back then, the Uchiha manor was silent as the grave, the only sounds had been his breathing and the echo of his footsteps. There had been no screaming children or trigger-hair tempered wife to holler at him.
For a person such as Sasuke, who had been used to near-constant solitude and quiet for the majority of his life, raising a family is a difficult transition. He does not and can not regret it, of course. His second goal in life is to restore his clan, and with four children, he has made a good start.
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.
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Sasuke and Sakura had married at twenty-one years old. The former missing-nin had returned to Konoha following the Fourth Great Shinobi War, at seventeen, and upon completion of his probation, had demanded in typical Sasuke-like fashion that the Godaime reinstate the Konoha Military Police Force and allow him to rebuild it. Tsunade had narrowed her eyes at him and told him that if he wanted to be a part of it, he would have to marry and put roots down in Konoha as a show of good faith that he planned to remain there and give his loyalty to the village. If he could prove to her that he was legitimately engaged to a woman, she told him, then she would honor his request. In the mean time, she would be busy finding a solution to their corrupted council.
Sasuke had thought that convincing Sakura to marry him would be easy. The first time he asked (in the middle of a spar), she punched him clear across the training ground and wouldn't speak to him for three weeks. After some soul searching (and odd heart-to-heart talks with Naruto over ramen), he decided that he would take it slow. He had time now.
So he spent the next two years re-earning her trust. At nineteen, he asked her out on a date and she acquiesed. They'd had a picnic dinner in the gardens behind Uchiha manor and he kissed her for the first time under the just-blooming sakura trees. They spend the next year going out on sporadic dates and dancing around the idea of a relationship. At twenty, Sasuke finally asked Sakura to be his girlfriend. Later that week, Ino collected a large sum of money from their friends among the Rookie Nine. Sakura later learns that there had been a running bet on how long it would take she and Sasuke to get together.
A year later, Sasuke proposed again and received another punch for his troubles. Sakura asked him what took him so long before answering with a resounding yes and a kiss to seal the deal. Sasuke swears she will be the death of him.
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.
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Almost nine years later, nearing his thirties, Sasuke decides he was wrong. Sakura isn't going to be the death of him, their triplet daughters are. Uchiha Suzuki, Suzuno, and Shizuka are four years old and Naruto refers to them as the Uchiha Pain Train. They are the joy of Sakura's life and the terror of Sasuke's. They are not identical, but each of them bears Sakura's petal-pink hair and Sasuke's coal-black eyes. With their black and red Uchiha clothing, they could be on an advert for Hot Topic.
Unfortunately for their parents, their personalities at four years old are the spitting image of Inner Sakura. They are loud, they are rowdy, and fight each other over everything. Sasuke's death glares, which could make a grown man wet himself, have no effect on his daughters. He has absolutely no control over them, yet they hang on Sakura's every word. That's not to say that they don't love him, far from it. They adore their father with all the fervor that a young child is capable of. His greeting every day when he returns home from the Police Force is proof of that. And he loves them in return, but he is also more terrified of them than he is of Sakura with all of her chakra-enhanced strength.
As much as he loves his daughters, the child that makes his chest swell with fatherly pride is his firstborn, his son Akira.
Uchiha Akira is nearly the spitting image of his father, though he lucked out of whatever gene that makes Sasuke's hair spike like a chicken butt. At eight years old, Akira is quiet and introverted, but undoubtedly a prodigy. Just like his father, but without all of the anger and bitterness that young Sasuke carried in his heart. He is in his fledgling years at the Ninja Academy, but already he is top of his class and lightyears ahead of his classmates. This boy is the future of the Uchiha clan that Sasuke has hoped for.
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Dinner in their household is always an interesting affair. Sasuke and Akira eat silently, Akira dutifully eating his vegetables and rice while Sasuke picks from a bowl of tomatoes. The triplets run around the table chasing each other, pots and pans are invariably being thrown about the room, and Sakura declares that her children are perfect angels. Sasuke is not stupid enough to tell her otherwise.
Afterwards, Sasuke does the dishes while Sakura attemps to bathe the girls and put them to bed (Sasuke does not envy her this task). She tells them stories of their genin days and how their father is the strongest, handsomest jounin ever. They don't need to know about ANBU yet.
Sasuke helps Akira with his homework and his training in the backyard before the oldest, too, is sent off to bed.
Twilight is Sasuke's favorite time of day. Back then, it had been morning, when he saw the whole day ahead of him and its opportunities for his training for revenge. Now, it is twilight, when he sees the innocent sleeping faces of his children as he slides the shoji door to their rooms shut. When he retreats to the garden with Sakura, to hold her and bury his face in her neck and she tells him that she loves him (he hopes she will never stop telling him). He 'hn's in response, and she knows that she, too, is loved in return.
Back then, the silence was filled with his pain and unhappiness.
Now, it is filled with the peace that his wife and his family bring him.
a/n: Prompt number two. This one gave me all the fuzzy feelings while writing it. I want to write a next gen fic one day. Hope you enjoyed!