Chapter Text
[. . .]
"Keep on dancing until the world dissolves in laughter."
[. . .]
Chapter 1
I Know You
[. . .]
The power of the Mangekyou Sharingan is dangerous, she's found. Too dangerous in the hands of someone, especially an Uchiha, to wield, though Uchiha Sarada never deems to properly find out why the natural creator should not be its natural wearer.
In her opinion, she thinks the fear of the Uchiha is built on stupidity.
Discord, emanating from the second Hokage's scribbles that have allegedly been profoundly corrupt by a man since been erased from Konoha's history. Her mother had said the man used to be a Councilman. She never got more answers than that no matter how many times she discreetly asked her mother. Her mother had been... severely angry and hurt every time she did, so Sarada stopped questioning. Her mother had already been heartbroken enough.
(She tries not to think about her mother too much, even though everything she has done is for her.)
Many elders of this Village (those that still, regardless of time, look at her with disgust) liked to announce the name of Shimura Danzo in an approving light.
Sarada thinks it's a burden to live in a village when you're an Uchiha. Essentially she doesn't overly mind it because it's in the civilian areas that are... populated by the unfavored for her Clan, and with her father being declared traitor, it's no wonder she's been shunned at least five times now.
It still hurts.
No matter the era, the transgressions against her people proceed with unfair fervor.
(Her father had been right to feel the way he did.)
Life isn't how it used to be. It might never be the same again.
As such, she's right when there's an attack in the Village one daybreak. Her mom is busy in the hospital so they send her, one of the best of the new generation despite their hate towards her, to fight. It's fair, she thinks. She knows she's strong even if Shikidai's dad has become an asshole since he took the position (which should've belonged to her mom, seeing as Lord Seventh had enabled the job to her but couldn't take it because of her duty to the hospital that Tsunade was more than willing to take over for her).
So she fights. Her fists land and she crushes bones, face unmoving and blank. She hasn't been able to feel proper joy since Boruto got that stupid Karma.
And what a sight for sore eyes is he when he appears out of nowhere to save her from stupid, perverted Code.
Seeing him for the first time makes her feel something.
Stupid, she knows. A swelter of love and relief and something unbearably sad.
She's missed him. But with how he looked... With his once, bright cerulean eyes dulled to a resigned, sneering azure and his unmarred face burdened with new scars she's able to see with pure clarity, she doubts he's missed her. He's been busy outrunning the law, after all.
(She doesn't see her father anywhere.)
But he fights Code, trashing his words and she hears the boy she loves disgrace him for being disgusting.
And what else is Sarada to do but fight with him? It's chance, this time around. And she's more than strong enough.
Her mother's training isn't for naught. Learning the things she's read underneath the abandoned Uchiha Compound, of all the secrets her family possessed is just. The scrolls are all words of the dead. She isn't their Ghost. She's been their hope, probably more than her father used to be. She can continue a generation if she wants. She can create a new one.
Their dreams all faded to become solely hers.
(And how a tragedy it's been.)
She makes herself work.
The fight progresses and she's there for Boruto because he's back and—
To a bleeding, 13-year-old girl's aged heart, Uchiha Sarada knows it's all she's got since he disappeared three years ago. Most of her pumping organ is bruised. Not empty, not scarred. Bruised. It's been hit too many times by things she could not control. It beats just fine. It hasn't stopped, nor will it ever, even if she's matured a lot since Boruto and her father left her, Himawari, and her mother alone.
It aches.
The constricting band pulls and unravels, begging her to pour her sanity out to the boy she has given it to, but she keeps her mouth firmly shut. Her soft, yearning expression hardens to the reality of this ungrateful world, and there isn't anything else she can do but respond with her unsilent fist.
It grieves when she sees Boruto get hurt.
She sees him tumbling away from the enemy, quick and agile despite his injuries, and Sarada thinks: I just got him back.
Her love for him manifests in desperate pangs inside her cold chest, reaching out and stretching thin until her eyes burn so much that she begins to cry. It's stupid to cry, she tells herself, especially when she knows Boruto isn't weak, but she can't help it.
It's been so long since she's seen him. Too long since she has had the comfort of his idiotic laugh surrounding her as the moon does to Earth.
She loves him, she knows, and she's longing for more than just the thought of her dad protecting him.
She misses her dad, too.
Everything went wrong. All she can do is protect the boy she loves to the best of her ability now that he's back. Now that he's returned, saving her in turn.
Her eyes seethe and she knows by now that it's not from regular tears. The scent of copper regulates as they pour down her beloved orbs, recording the sight of Boruto struggling to stand. And she sees everything.
Everything, including the hand that's about to come down and crush her.
Her natural strength builds up on one of her hands as her head angles to face it head-on, her deceptive orbs forming into a determined glower.
Hate is not what manifests inside her soul.
Protection does instead, spreading, enlightening her, and scorchingly absolute—
And the being burns.
It burns, and she blinks, and she—
"Sarada!"
The world goes dark.
[. . .]
Her mouth opens in a silent scream.
Unbelievable colds pierce her body like jagged needles tearing through her pores.
It's agony.
She falls.
And falls.
And Falls.
The void calls to her, but she cannot answer.
Her eyes flutter shut.
[. . .]
A man screaming ruptures her from her eternal slumber, and she chokes out, falling and hitting the ground with an unceremonial whump.
For a moment, time is still. Her lungs labor to reconcile with the safety of oxygen, but her regenerative abilities activate, and in a few seconds she's back to normal. The aches of her torn muscles along her back persist and the pull of her chakra coils inward, but her healing continues. Her steaming head cools and though there isn't a burn behind her eyelids anymore, she dares not open them in fear of seeing absolutely nothing.
The green energy cycles through until she's stable.
And then it stops. It doesn't seem to have corrected the sudden tinnitus.
But...
Her heart leaps.
She feels her blood run cold when the ringing in her ear is not ringing at all, but—
The screaming of a man breaks her open and Sarada stands in alarm as immediately as she lands, searching for the civilian in trouble—except what she sees is a boy her age staring at her with wide eyes, lying on a futon inside the tremulous walls of a musty cave.
Time resumes.
A boy, she finds with confusing horror, that looks exactly like how her dad looked when he was her age.