The Bride

By TwinEnigma

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, obviously, nor do I own any of the characters therein. Done for fun and such.

Warnings/Codes: Post-series, thinly veiled NaruSaku.

There was once a great warrior, with golden hair like a lion's mane. He wandered from village to village, doing great deeds to please the daimyo, and restore peace to the lands. He fought many, many battles.

In his mind, the warrior has a familiar face with blond hair and whiskers slashing along the cheekbones. His orange yukata is well-worn, the traveler's bundle resting easily on the black-dyed shoulders, and the katana hanging at deceptive readiness. He moves down the dirt road on threadbare sandals.

One day, the warrior came to a village troubled by bandits. In this village, a great sakura tree grew near the shrine. It was much loved by the villagers and had been there for many generations.

The tree is huge, overshadowing the village from the hilltop on which it stands. Thousands of pale pink blossoms drape the branches on the border between ephemeral and substance, some hanging like a curtain of a thousand tears.

The warrior defeated the bandits. That night, after he said his prayers, the warrior noticed a beautiful woman sitting beneath the great tree. He asked her name, but she did not answer except to smile at him. Each night, he returned and she was waiting for him with a smile, yet still she would not speak. But the warrior did not care, for he had fallen deeply in love with her and desired her hand in marriage.

The woman, too, has a familiar face framed in familiar long pink hair. Her blind eyes are an eerie green, devoid of pupils, and she wears a kimono of pale white and dark pink. In his mind, she sits beneath the tree like a doll with its strings cut, unmoving legs sprawled in an ungainly pose as she mouths a name she cannot intone.

The warrior called her Sakura, for it had been under the sakura tree that they had met.

But when the blossoms of the tree at last faded, the warrior's bride vanished. He searched for her everywhere, but none knew of her, save one. The old shrine maiden explained that his mysterious bride was truly the spirit of the ancient tree, fallen in love with the handsome mortal.

After all, a tree cannot talk, no more than it can see or walk.

The warrior at once vowed never to be apart from her again and cast away his human shape, transforming into a fox and making his den between roots of the great sakura tree.

It is said his mother was a fox and he shared in her powers.

He is still there, to this day.

Sasuke closes the book of legends, careful not to wake his now-slumbering son, and looks towards the window. In his mind, he can see a golden fox with nine tails baring his teeth at him from between the roots of an ancient sakura tree.

His eyes drift to a photograph on the wall, moonlight slashing through the glass and obscuring the familiar faces of the blond man and the pink-haired woman standing behind him.

It is, he thinks, not so far from the truth of things.