Who Is Responsible When It Becomes a Triangle (NaruSakuSasu, T, 1/?)
@senju-sandwich I am your fic exchange secret Santa in July-ish type person!
Your prompt: "Soulmate AU where just cause you’re soulmates, that doesn’t mean things will be perfect and easy. Maybe Sasuke or Kakashi as anti-soulmate stuff but gradually being okay with it. BAMF Sakura, team 7 friendship & family or romance if you’re going with NaruSakuSasu, but I’d love a happy Team 7 no matter the ship."
I have always wanted to read a NaruSakuSasu with a one-sided soulmate triangle (Naruto -> Sakura -> Sasuke -> Naruto). So I took this as the universe telling me to write it myself.
I know it’s supposed to be a finished one-shot fic for the fic exchange--but even though I was really trying hard to get it finished, I just couldn’t manage it, and it was really messy at the end. So I’m publishing it as a chaptered fic instead, starting with the prelude, which I am fairly pleased with. I hope to get the entire story finished ASAP, final word count maybe 4 or 5k.
Available on AO3 or below!
Sakura started believing in soulmates at nine years old.
"Why can't we learn something interesting in kunoichi class," Ino said that day, nice and loud so that Suzume-sensei could hear from the other end of the table.
Suzume-sensei, mid-sentence about table manners, paused, looked at Ino, shut her mouth, and opened it again, and shut it again. Someone giggled. The swots and good girls, like Sakura, held back smiles.
Emboldened, Ino added, even louder, "I mean, what's the use of learning about how to drink soup? Don't we all know that already from our families?"
The orphans and the low-class students in the class nodded and laughed even harder at this, so as not to give themselves away.
"Well, what do you think is interesting, Yamanaka Ino?" Suzume-sensei suddenly barked, her curls swaying in stark contrast to the rigidity of the rest of her body.
Ino was not so easily daunted. "Something we haven't learned elsewhere—something exciting! Seduction technique or, or... or soulmates!"
The mention of "soulmates" set a hum and chatter among the girls.
"Yes please do teach us about soulmates!"
"Course they do; my big sister's got one."
"Girls!" Suzume-sensei shrilly cut through the chorus. "We are here to learn useful etiquette for disguising yourself in your future missions! Soulmates are not useful for kunoichi!"
The teacher never really got it together after that, and the class ended with the bell, but Sakura learned that soulmates were real. And when she filed back into the the classroom and eyed the dark, sharp hair of Sasuke-kun, she knew who hers must be.
Sasuke started believing in soulmates at seven years old.
"Mama," he said, as his mother tucked him into bed, "what is Ayako?"
His mother nearly stumbled, first in her movements--an impossible thing for the effortlessly graceful kunoichi--and then in her words: "Nobody. Who told you...? Nobody."
"But Father has it written on him," Sasuke protested, interally hoping for a praise on how clever he was to be able to work out the kana he had seen written on his father's chest.
"Nobody," repeated Mikoto, distressed. "I think you're old enough to bathe without your father from now on. Goodnight."
"Nii-san," he managed to say to his brother's disappearing back some days later, "wait, Nii-san!"
To his delight, Itachi paused and looked back.
"Do you know what is Ayako?"
Itachi looked down at him. "You saw it written...?"
"On Father," Sasuke agreed eagerly.
"No.. Father doesn't... I asked Mama, but she was unhappy..."
Itachi also looked unhappy, in the very slight downturn of his mouth. "You'll learn when you're older how an Uchiha earns their eyes."
"But I want to know NOW," Sasuke protested as Itachi started to turn to go. "Why do you always say later, later, later, Nii-san! If you tell me now, I can practice for later!"
All he got were fingers to the forehead, until a horrible night sometime later.
"Foolish little brother," his parents' murderer said, "you want to know how to get eyes like mine? By killing the one whose name appears on your chest—your soulmate."
Naruto started believing in soulmates at four years old.
"What?! Why ya gotta choose HIM?" Naruto screamed at the new parents leading the toddler away at the orphanage. "He still pees in a diaper -ttebayo! He's not a big boy like me! I wouldn't make any mess or... well, some mess, but I'd help clean up..."
The two new parents only rushed away faster. The blond's shoulders slumped.
"Naruto-chan," creaked the tremulous voice of his foster mother, Kaede-baa-chan. "Shall I tell you a secret?"
The little jinchuuriki clambered up into the ancient woman's lap. She only smiled, despite the pain of the cancer in her bones.
"You're soon to age out of the orphanage, my boy," she said. "But don't worry about that. Whether you get parents or not, one day, a name will appear here." She traced a line over his heart. "And that will be the one who will be your heart's joy, the only one who can make you truly happy in this world. And once their name is on your chest, when you touch them..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Your fingers will glow."
"Really?" Naruto whispered back enthralled.
"It isn't real for everyone," Kaede-baa-chan conceded, "but I believe it will be for you. There will be someone out there who is special—oh, but VERY special!"
"And I'll be special for them too dattebayo!"
Kakashi was twenty-six when he told his three cute little genin that soulmates were a lot of bullshit.
"Ninja don't get soulmates," he said brutally. "Ninja can't find happiness in another person, and ninja don't get happy endings."
"Didn't any of the Hokage have soulmates?" Naruto asked, or more challenged. Sakura looked destroyed. Sasuke wasn't looking at any of them.
Kakashi thought of Minato-sensei, whose flame-haired bride somehow unleashed the beast that killed them both.
He thought of Lord Third, who lost his wife in the same attack.
He thought of Lord Second, who died alone, and Lord First, whom they said was dead inside from the moment Uchiha Madara left the village.
"None of them," Kakashi lied.
Naruto huffed. "Well! I'm gonna be the first Hokage with a soulmate then 'ttebayo!"
Sakura's fingers glowed first, wrapped around a cursed boy in the Forest of Death.
Sasuke's fingers glowed second, as his face hovered over an unconscious boy in the Final Valley.
As for Naruto's fingers, they didn't glow until a pink-haired girl embraced him in the hospital and told him that next time they'd rescue Sasuke together.
Kakashi, sitting outside on the hospital windowsill, let out an unheard breath.
Well, he thought to himself, this is another fucking disaster.
Kakashi as Team 7 sensei:
