Just a little ssfamily drabble in which five year old Sarada Mikoto Uchiha asks about her grandmother.
My personal head canon is that Sarada has a middle name and she was named after Sasuke's mother. In this universe, Sasuke came home at various intervals during Sarada’s childhood.
Sarada and Sakura were pouring over family photo albums.
“And that's my cousin Himeko, remember you met her last year?”
“Yeah, she has pink hair like you, right mama?”
“Mm-hmm,” Sakura hummed while turning the plastic covered pages of the album. She nursed a small cup of green tea while Sarada had her face pressed against her mothers arm, eyes flicking between the photos. Sarada sneaked a sip of the tea before twisting her face in disgust. Sasuke was home, reading in the corner and gave input to the girls' discussion from time to time.
“Can we look at the Uchiha albums now?”
“Of course,” Sakura said as she tipped back her chair slightly to reach for the bookcase.
The clan albums had been salvaged by Sasuke and kept safe in storage until he had returned to the village. They take up their rightful place on the shelves of their apartment, surrounded by trinkets and books brought home by Sasuke from his travels.
The first photo is a formal group shot of Sasuke’s family. “That is your grandmother,” Sakura says quietly, “you are named after her. Wasn’t she pretty?”
“Yeah, she looks a lot like papa doesn't she?”
“Yes she does.” Sakura smiled at her mother-in-law’s soft eyes and then looked at Sasuke’s face in the family photo, young and boyish. A face she remembers falling in love with.
“Did you ever meet her, mama?”
Sakura sighed, “No honey, I never had that pleasure.” She felt Sasuke shift in his chair across the room.
Ever inquisitive, Sarada bounced from her chair and approached her father.
“Papa, do you think grandma would have liked me having her name?”
“She would have been honoured, Sarada.”
Sharing a small smile with her father, she climbed onto his knee. He moved to make room for her. “What was your mama like?”
“My mother...she was kind and gentle. She made excellent dumplings. She wore vanilla perfume and she could sing really well but that was a secret. She would sing me to sleep most nights. Her hair was soft but her hands were slightly rough from years of handling weapons.”
Sarada frowned sadly at him, “You miss her a lot don't you papa?”
Sasuke nodded, “Every day.”
Sakura’s heart throbbed painfully in her chest for Sasuke. Separating his pain from her pain had grown more difficult as their years together passed.
“Like the way mama and me miss you when you go away? And how you miss us?” She blinked at him, naive but with her mind always working.
“Almost, but not quite the same. When I miss you,” Sasuke explained in the theoretical way that he does, as if he was teaching her to throw a shuriken at just the right angle. “I know that you and your mother are always here waiting for me.” Sarada curled into his chest with a smile, her fingers plucking at the fabric of his shirt. “And you and mama know, I will always come back to you.”
As he finished, he met Sakura’s eyes across the room. The moment filled with thoughts of all she had given him and what he tries to give in return. The weight of their child on his knee, her palpable love warming his chest.
From across the room, Sakura felt connected and disconnected from the scene, shared by the dark haired father and daughter. Both connected by blood to such tragedy and hatred and yet so full of a future of light and hope.
“But with grandma, grandpa and uncle Itachi,” Sasuke paused to search for the right words, “I...can't see them anymore, but I have you and mama here to stop me from being lonely. You have little pieces of all of them inside you, Sarada. So, I don't need to miss them all the time anymore, because I have you.”
“And mama,” Sarada said, grinning as her mother moved across the room towards them.
Sasuke nodded, and turned to watch Sakura reach his side.
“And your mother,” he repeated quietly, locking eyes with her as she bent to kiss the crown of his head.
Not for the first time did he wish for his other arm to hold Sakura closer.
Closing his eyes and with the warmth of his family on either side of him, Sasuke wondered when his whole world had begun to exist in one room.
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