hey, let’s play round robin:)
she reminds him of someone. he can’t pinpoint who, but logically it should be his mother. she doesn’t quite look like her though, with her rounder eyes and her wider forehead, and her wild temper is completely wrong. he doesn’t know how they’re related, but her sharingan – underdeveloped as it may be – seems to glow in the darkness of madara’s hideout, and sasuke finds himself strangely protective of this lost, little girl.
“i want to go home,” she whines.
madara doesn’t imprison her per se, but it’s clear she isn’t allowed to leave. not until they know who she is and where she came from.
sasuke crosses his arms and leans against the wall. he watches as she paces, muttering under her breath and then running a hand through her cropped black hair. he hears a sniffle and almost sighs. he doubts she’d actually cry in front of him, but then she shifts her glasses and quickly swipes at her eyes and her cheeks and whimpers for her mother.
it’s clear she’s talking to herself, because she slips down to the floor and draws in her knees and begins to weep softly.
“stop that,” sasuke orders, uncomfortable and almost a little embarrassed for her.
“no!” she tries to yell. she aims for fierce but only ends up sounding like the child she is.
he’s not really sure how old she is, but he thinks she might be eleven – twelve, at most. he thinks back to himself five years ago. he never would have cried in front of a stranger for his mother like this.
sasuke nears her like she’s a wounded animal that may lash out. she watches him, wary that he might hurt her, but instead he finds himself patting her shoulder much like itachi used to do for him when he was a boy. it doesn’t seem to help her, but it certainly doesn’t make her cry more, so sasuke continues until she finally shuts up.
“how annoying,” he mutters.
she sniffs and manages a half-hearted scowl. “you’re annoying!”
her sharingan is different
this is the first thing that madara had relayed to him when they interrogated the child. she seems immune to any manipulation and mind extraction done by their doujutsu.
(sasuke couldn’t explain the sudden burst of relief that he woke up to her soft cries of kaachan, than to her screams )
madara treats her fairly, even if she’s their current prisoner in the lair. she’s a genin-level ninja, and it’s very apparent that she recently graduated from konoha.
but war is imminent, and he heard that nations and villages have been dissolved to unite against madara. surely, academy trainings and qualifying exams have been dissolved.
it’s the third day, when he sits again besides her desk, where blank scrolls and mid-level shuriken trajectory notes were scattered along with brushes and pens, the candle light lights up the dark of her hair, playing shadows across her face, and the realization hits him like a punch.
the reason for his need to protect this girl.
(sarada, he commits her name to memory, the only thing that they have gotten out from her)
“duh.” she continues to scribble her equations, rolling her eyes at this monumental truth. "we are family, sa-“ she breathes deeply, bracing herself. "sasuke-san.”
he slowly scrutinizes her, small and defiant, mouth in that familiar frown, returns his gaze without any fear at all.
the girl huffs impatiently, and turns back to her paper, striking a harsh line on a wrong equation. she’s obviously bored.
“who doesn’t?” she tries to sound petulant, but she’s smiling like she knows a funny, little secret.
sasuke hates secrets. he deeply hates not knowing anything. but when she ignores him in frustration for not getting the answer right, he silently points the variable she missed.
she glares, and tries to wave him out of the room.
what disturbs him is how casual this is to her; sarada doesn’t hesitate to prod and sass back to him.
he’s not sure how to handle this.
i’m tagging @ohsasukes :))))
