Chapter Text
I didn’t cry when Mama died. The numbness settled into my bones, leaving me as an empty husk of a person. I knew a part of me had died along with her. I had sat at her side, watching the life fade out of her once lively celery-green eyes. The eyes that had watched me with so much love and pride as I started on as a shinobi. Despite her hectic work schedule, I’d never once felt neglected. Why would no tears fall? She deserved the world, and I couldn’t even afford a few tears as penance for all she had done for me. Instead, I had scared my Mama’s nurse half to death, with my blood red eyes, a scourge, a wraith.
I didn’t know much about my eyes, my mom had told me only the most minimal information. It was the sharingan, something passed through my dad’s blood. It was mine too apparently. As much as I tried to take it on as a part of myself, it had felt so foreign, parasitic almost. However, the day my Mama died was the first time I vehemently hated my birthright.
I had no family to take me in. My dad had been gone as long as I could remember, so he was out of the picture. There were no relatives to pass me around like an unwanted hackysack, not a beloved grandmother or a doting aunt or uncle. My Mama had been an only child, and her parents had died when I was a toddler, and my father had no family to speak of, scores of uncles and aunts and cousins supposedly wiped away.
So I was brought to the next best family, the Seventh’s family- or as my Mama used to tell me, Uncle Naruto’s family.
It felt more normal than I had ever expected. Of course I was no stranger to their home, when my Mama had been away on missions or took days long shifts at the hospital, I’d been relocated here. Little Himawari had been like a surrogate sister to me for as long as I could remember, and although Boruto drives me crazy, he was like a brother. The only difference was that I’d never go back to my life the way it was, and the way all four of them stared at me with concerned eyes, offering me comfort but with the delicacy that one would use with a wounded wild animal.
I got a bedroom on the second floor, in between the hall from Boruto and Himawari. The room had been a study before, now with a small bed tucked into the wall between a window and a bookshelf. There’d been a desk there too, probably where my bed now stood. I felt like I couldn’t thank them enough.
-
The click of the front door brought the three of us to life. I kept my relaxed posture on the sofa, tilting my head up to the noise.
“I’m back,” Boruto said. I didn’t need to see his grin to hear it. Even though I’ve been placed on indefinite hiatus from missions, Team 7 has still been sent off without me. I’d felt awful about it. I was a member of the team, and while I know they’re perfectly capable of handling anything themselves, I can’t get the thick feeling of guilt and shame pooling in my stomach to leave.
“How was it?” Hima asks as she and Aunt Hinata make it to the doorway, down the steps, gathering him up in a hug.
“Good, how’ve you been while I’ve been gone? Get into any trouble?” He winks and sticks out a tongue.
“What do you think?”
Laughter pops and explodes around them, so organic and genuine. Without thinking I pull myself from the couch and take a few hesitant steps towards them. They’ve been so warm to me, but I know it’s been hard to have added a new member to the family. I recall the first dinner after I moved in. Their dinner table had housed four matching chairs, a warm brown with yellow cushions, but they’d brought in another white chair for me. As much as we’re all trying to get used to life now, I still inexplicably feel like an outsider.
“How about you Sarada?”
“I’m trying to keep busy,” I used to be so talkative, but I guess I’ve lost my voice, “I want to get back to missions as soon as possible, how are Mitsuki and the sensei?”
He stoops over a second, taking off his sandals before bounding up the steps to me.
“Doing well. They miss you too,” even Boruto’s treating me with some care. He used to grate on my nerves like mad, and yet since his home has become mine, he’s been pleasant. A confidant. The maybe-not-so-annoying friend and team member.
“And?”
“And… you know I can’t just force Dad to put you back on missions.”
I snort, “I mean… it’s not beneath you.”
Boruto narrows his eyes playfully, but it quickly mellows out into something softer, sadder.
My light mood fizzles out too, and the emptiness returns to fill my insides.
“Hey, I’m going to start dinner, you three- Hima, go and help your brother unpack, and Sarada?” I perk up, “Why don’t you go too?”
There’s an echo of yes’ as we pad up the stairs.
Dying sunlight peers through the windows as our three-man caravan turns off the hallway and into Boruto’s room.
He catches my wrist on the way inside, and I snap my eyes to him.
“What?” I ask, maybe more aggressively than I’d intended.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” His blue eyes widen, gauging my reaction I suppose.
I nod, although it’s impossible to ignore the trouble brewing in my stomach. Boruto wants to talk about something serious? Either this is a sick prank or more bad news.
“We’ll be right back Hima!”
He leads me down the hallway, to the sliding glass doors and out onto the small balcony. I wait, my arm resting on the stucco ledge.
What’s so important to tell me and only me that not even his mother or Himawari can hear? I’m suddenly reminded of that horrible day at the hospital.
The day before I’d gotten back from a two-week long mission, so it was an off day. Normally I was an early riser, but I remember my eyes snapping open to the sound of the landline.
Before kicking the sheets off and going to catch the phone, I glanced at the clock. 12:03. I’d overslept.
The landline is on the kitchen counter, at the far end of the hall from my room. I padded across the hallway, still half-asleep.
“Coming,” I called out to nobody, force of habit, I guess.
I should have noticed the absence of my mama’s usual note telling me she was at work, she loved me, and she’d see me later. Should have noticed the mess of the coffee table, the counters, the usually neat lineup of our shoes by the door.
Instead, I was too engrossed in the phone’s shrill tone as I picked up the cherry-red receiver. Yeah, I didn’t understand her preoccupation with red either. I mean… a bright red phone?
“Hello?”
The other end of the line was silent save for quiet breathing.
“Um…” I didn’t know what to say. “This is Sarada Uchiha speaking.”
“You’re needed at the Konoha Hospital, your mother-“
I was ready to brush off the urgency of the receptionist, but there was something about the way they’d phrased it. An intense dread starting gnawing at my insides.
“...I’ll be right there.” I replied quietly. My voice puttered itself out.
I heard the click and then the dial tone. I dropped the phone, running back to my room.
I barely remember what I put on, maybe black shorts and a red shirt. I threw a comb through my hair and ran my toothbrush across my teeth. I was in a daze.
I even packed an overnight bag just in case, but I learned soon enough that it wouldn’t be needed.
On the way to the hospital, I ran into Ms. Shizune.
She’d been Lady Fifth’s advisor when she’d been Hokage, meaning she was also close with my Mama.
“Sarada! There you are,” She looked relieved to see me for a split second, before I saw the pain on her face.
“Were you coming to get me?” I’d asked stupidly.
She nodded before shaking off any further questions, “No time,” she explained.
I had been only a few blocks away from the Konoha General Hospital anyway, so we made the trek in a few minutes. Even though the walk hadn’t been physically exerting, my heart was pounding in my ears.
The reception didn’t even bother to check us in, they just gestured down the left-most hallway.
The worst sorts of thoughts started bombarding me.
Was there an accident? Who died?
When we made it to the door, Ms. Shizune opened and held it for me, “I’m so sorry Sarada.”
I stepped past her.
There she was, my loving and beautiful mama, looking pale against the stark white sheets. IV drips and monitors surrounded the bed.
I was dying to say something, anything, bombard her with questions, sob out apologies that I hadn’t known the state of her, but my tongue was a lifeless lump of tissues. Limp against the bottom of my mouth.
It never dawned on me this was where she was. I’d gotten home from my mission late. Later than usual, and I had slept half the day. Mom’s work has weird hours- I assumed she was either already asleep when I got home or still working and gone by the time I got up.
“Come here,”
I dropped onto my knees at the bedside, ignorant of the stool right behind me. I made sure she knew I was listening attentively.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart I-“
“Mama,” I interrupt, “Don’t apologize for anything, what happened?” My words mush together, and my throat feels heavy, choked with stones.
She’d been overworking herself at the hospital, of course, and apparently she’d been caught up defending an attack in Konoha.
I sat, her hand clutched in mine as the life faded out of my mother’s eyes.
The night air returns, enveloping me in an attempt to comfort me, but I feel goosebumps prick on my arms.
“I don’t know how to say this exactly…” Boruto begins, “but at our mission report Dad brought up contacting Sasuke about what happened.”
Sasuke Uchiha. My dad.
In this moment, I feel nothing for him, no conviction to one of my own blood.
I both feel a sense of guilt and sick pride at the lack of emotion for my father. The two mix together inside of me, and I start to feel sick with nerves. Why does this revelation- one that isn’t even very shocking- make my insides twist?
Of course I know of him, the Seventh and my Mama (and an alarming amount of their peers and even the Sixth) have made comments referring to him, either how much I look like him or that he’s off on an important mission or memories of him when he was my age. I know I have his hair and his eyes, but I have no memories of him. No love. I always loved him for Mama’s sake, but now that she’s gone the forced feelings of affection are gone. It’s impossible to love someone who’s been missing from most of your life.
And now, of all times, after I’ve been uprooted and replanted in a new home will he finally return to my life.
I try to keep my face still and not betray the messy array of emotions under my skin. It’s harder than I would have thought, even after my time learning to be a shinobi.
“Oh, alright.” I finally say, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “Was that all you had to say?”
I flick my eyes to his when he nods.
I go back to staring out at the village, a myriad of lights in the encroaching blackness. I hardly notice the soft slide of the door as Boruto excuses himself, lost in my feelings and the landscape.
A small part of me is happy, the childlike me who still longs for dad and hopes and hopes that one day he will return. But the rest of me is skeptical, distant, and as much as I hate to admit it- scared. He is the only blood-related family I have left. It is just him and me, and I realize I do want to meet him.