Disclaimer: Yeah, I still don't own it.

Japanese Terms: I broke my own rules. Sorry.

Okaeri nasai: Welcome home.

Tadaima: I’m home.

--

The Uchiha Compound quickly became more comfortable for me.

During the day, I no longer jumped at the smallest of sounds. I no longer saw ghosts around every corner. I grew to know the hallways and rooms well, or at least well enough to know that a looming shape in the dim light was nothing more than a vase and not something more sinister.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. I was afraid most often during the night. But those were the nights when Sasuke slept beside me, so near I could reach out and touch him. His presence, in a way, abated the fear.

I often wished that he would hold me, reach out for me, like he had done on the night I heard him dreaming. But he never did. He seemed… cautious around me. I don’t want to say it seemed like he didn’t want to hurt me — after all, it seemed like he didn’t quite care.

But this new dynamic in our relationship, being married, added something between us.

It often seemed like he was trying to fill a role he was unsure of how to fill.

He spent his days off alone, I always assumed. Walking around the village, most likely. I never knew where he went, nor did he share any of his day with me. In fact, when he returned home from wherever he had been, and I returned from the hospital, we often didn’t speak at all.

Of course, when it comes to speech with Sasuke, less is always more.

Work at the hospital took up most of my days, but the time I didn’t spend either there or in the company of Naruto, Hinata, Kakashi-sensei, Sai, or all four, I spent in the Uchiha Compound.

Usually, the picture of Uchiha Mikoto was with me. Her soft smile, her laughter, as she worked in the garden that lie just outside, comforted me. It kept the haunting thoughts at bay. I tried to imagine what she had been like, all those years ago.

I imagined her as a kind, strong woman. One who was a gentle mother, but a fierce protector of her children — both of them, I had to remind myself. She would have even loved Itachi, and the monster he became. After all, she was a mother and would love both of them equally, no matter what they did.

I suppose I have to admit, that I hoped this mostly for Sasuke’s sake. He, too, was not completely cleansed of the blood that stained the Uchiha Clan. He, too, had committed crimes. I had to believe that she would forgive him for those crimes, just as I had forgiven him.

I oftentimes imagined her with her family. Her husband, tall, strong, dark and proud. Uchiha Fugaku, in the pictures I found of him, looked like the very embodiment of stone. The embodiment of strength and pride and power.

Sasuke I often imagined as a young boy, untroubled by what was yet to come. Precocious, perhaps, looking up to and loving his older brother. But still so imbued with all the innocence he had lost over the years.

Itachi was harder to fit into this picture of a perfect family that I had set into my mind. My musings were often tainted by what I knew Itachi would become. I often wondered if he had been a loving older brother, whether he had helped Sasuke with his training and protected him and picked him up when he was hurt. Or if he was too preoccupied with being a ninja, with gaining power, much like Sasuke had been….

Somehow, the second image came much more readily to mind.

Mikoto was the type of woman, in my imagination, who would bandage the wounds of her family. Who would give them a soft smile and a kind word, and everything would be better. Who, even after all the rigors of the day, even after all the hardships that being a ninja brought, even after everything, she would welcome them home with a smile.

I wondered, if ever since his mother had died, if Sasuke had ever been welcomed home.

Surely by now, he considered Konoha home again. He had left, said that it was no longer his home, that he no longer held any ties to the place. But surely now, married, living here, with Itachi gone, he called the village home again.

I wondered if anyone had welcomed him to it.

Always, I’d thought that Sasuke was too cold for those type of sentiments. They would just wash off him like water, and would make no difference to him. All of my affection, it seemed, had always made no difference to him — so why would a sentiment?

But in some ways, I had learned a lot about Sasuke. Just by sharing his house, sharing his bed, I had learned so much that I didn’t know before.

Maybe, even if pride did not allow him to show it, he did appreciate sentiment. He appreciated gestures, small acts, and kind words.

If Uchiha Mikoto was the type of woman I imagined she had been, then I was sure that he would appreciate them.

On the day that I realized this, it was raining outside. As it got darker, I lit the lights in the house, to keep the darkness at bay. Sasuke was not yet home, and he was later than usual. I wondered what he was doing, but didn’t worry about it too much. Sasuke was Sasuke, and he would do what he would.

As I heard him open the door, I set down the long stirring sticks with which I was making tempura, and headed to meet him at the door. He looked tired, weary, and a little bit sad, as the rain dripped off of his coat as he removed it.

I gave him my warmest smile, though he looked unhappy and sad. I don’t know what he had been doing that day, but I was determined not to let his melancholy mood affect me.

I took his coat, moving to hang it up in the closet. As I did so, I continued to smile at him, hoping that it was the warm, serene smile I’d been trying to give to him. I was hoping that his mood would lift, from the melancholy I knew he fell into sometimes.

Sasuke was Sasuke after all.

“Okaeri nasai,” I said, quietly but still warm, as I turned back from hanging up his coat. Welcoming him home, like a wife would do for a husband, like my mother had often done for my father, like I imagined Uchiha Mikoto would have done….

He gave me a look of surprised, that quickly faded, under so many layers and masks of pride. He did not smile, but he did not look unhappy either, and just that thought alone made me happy.

Sasuke was Sasuke, after all.

And, for the first time in my life, I think I was able to accept it. Pride and all, the arrogance, the silence, the hurt and the sadness, along with all the strength, and everything I had always admired in him.

In that moment, I loved Sasuke. Not the ideal, or the ninja, or the husband, the steady dream I had built up for myself. And, just like welcoming him home, I had to give him — the real Sasuke, not the ideal — acceptance in my heart.

I gave him another soft smile, turning and leaving him in the hallway — he could follow or he could not, that was his choice. I recognized that I could not hold sway over him, that he would make his own decisions, and that I would love him in spite of them.

And my heart filled with warmth, as — when he thought I was too far away to hear — he uttered a soft, “Tadaima.”

I smiled.

--

Authors Note: Not exactly fluff, but I hope it makes up for the time I've been gone. Really no explanation, except... laziness, really.