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Coming back to Konoha is always hard. Facing the walls of the Uchiha district that were once painted red with the blood of his brethren, near impossible. It is a giant reminder of Sasuke’s greatest trauma, of his greatest loss.
Uchiha died here.
But the Uchiha are not dead.
This is now truer than it has ever been since the massacre.
Sasuke returns home to a full house, nowhere near that old district, to his wife and daughter keeping his culture alive.
"Dad!" Sarada's tongue curls around Uchiha so well, but her soft vowels are accented because she practiced it with her mother, who is not a native speaker. It makes Sasuke's heart swell in his chest every time, to hear it, his language — and Sakura's inflection.
There are only three people left on this earth who speak Uchiha.
Sakura made sure their daughter was one of them, even when Sasuke could not be there.
It is a relief, to come home, drop a kiss on Sarada’s forehead, and ask her, in his own language, the words of his heart, "Is your mother home yet?"
Sarada shakes her head as he puts his shopping bags down on the kitchen counter. "She won’t be home from the hospital until seven."
The corner of Sasuke’s mouth quirks up. "Good. I got ume as a side dish."
Sarada beams. "And ochazuke for the main one?"
Sasuke nods as he puts rice in a bowl, his daughter eagerly getting a cutting board to help. "How was your day?"
Sarada wrinkles her nose. "Sensei says I have to focus on defensive skills, instead of just offensive."
Sasuke frowns. "Did your mother not…"
Sarada shakes her head as she throws her pitted umeboshi into a bowl while Sasuke busies himself with washing the rice. "She taught me some techniques, but mostly fire jutsu."
Uchiha jutsu. Even this lives on his daughter. It fills him with pride. But still — something about this feels… off. No defensive maneuvers when Sakura herself had excelled at those, even when she had lacked firepower at Sarada’s age?
Sarada’s beautiful Uchiha with Sakura’s non-native inflection, her high Uchiha collars, her fire-natured ninjutsu that Sakura made sure Sarada knew inside out. But no defensive techniques?
…surely she knows of her mother’s heritage too. She couldn’t not, right?
"Sarada," he says, "What is the going rate for ume these days?"
Sarada shrugs. "I don’t know. 400 ryõ or something?"
That’s almost four times the asking price. He stares askance at her.
Sarada’s confidence wavers. "...Dad?"
He shakes his head, smoothing a hand over her hair. "Nevermind."
She cannot help it, after all, that her mother is a hard-working woman who only had so much time and chose Sasuke’s dying culture above her own to give to their daughter.
It’s a labor of love that makes Sasuke’s heart spill over to the point of hurt because he's been given so much he can scarcely believe it. That he can only be grateful and love his girls so much, that he would not only set the world on fire but build it up again to become one deserving of them.
Of those two tasks, the second is harder. Of those two tasks, Sasuke makes sure to pick the right one every day. No matter how hard it is sometimes when faced with a thousand injustices found in every corner, another grief hidden in aged floorboards that reminds him of the home of his youth.
He wants to give them a good world to live in. And Sakura's culture is also part of that.
The umeboshi goes into the fridge and the rice cooker is doing what it is best at when they leave the house. Konoha’s streets are warm with the muggy weather, the heat bearing down on them like a heavy blanket.
Sarada’s eyes flick from him to the passing shops. "Did you forget to buy something?"
She’s putting the stress on the wrong vowel. It’s too cute.
He shakes his head.
Sarada blinks. "Are we going to grandma and grandpa, then?"
He smiles. She knows the way well, then. But Mebuki and Kizashi have always been busy people as well. He doesn’t know if they’re home. "The merchant quarter, yes."’ he says quietly in the common tongue.
Sarada frowns. He speaks Common with her so rarely, but it is important to him that today he does. Common is hard for him, has always been, the language never quite having the same nuance as Uchiha does. But it is Sakura’s language, and if he is going to show their daughter where she came from, then he must do it on her terms.
Sarada is bilingual, a child of two cultures, even if one is dying and the other, a family heritage so easily swallowed up in Konoha’s general culture. But Konoha is made up of clans, out of families, and each one has its own unique history and traits.
The Haruno do too.
The merchant quarter does not come so much into view as into scent — the spices can be smelled from afar, the air full of cinnamon, kurkuma, paprika, and a thousand other types. The sound cannot be discounted either, for before the brightly colored stalls are seen, you can hear the merchants hawk their wares — voices booming and loud as they call out — "A hundred ryõ for a box of persimmons! Get it before we run out!"
"This deal is only for today!"
The many voices overlap each other. And though Sarada surely must have been there before, her eyes widen as she cranes her neck to catch a glimpse of all the wares laid out in the stalls as they approach.
The merchant quarter is crowded, and Sasuke longs to take to the roof like any ninja would, uneasy to be within the crowd itself, the lack of even a disguise to hide behind leaving him feeling naked. But Sakura never took the roof, not when she was a child, and not even once they learned how to stick to upright surfaces as genin. She loved this place too much, could not bear to rush past it.
Sarada looks so much like her, like this. Almost everything about her is Uchiha, but her expressions are all her mother’s when she lets them slip.
He wants to tell her about a little girl who couldn’t win a spar with him in her wildest dreams, but who knew how to defend Tazuna perfectly, who prioritized the safety of a client like it was second nature to her, who knew what mattered on an escort mission when he and Naruto did not. About the thousand things her mother did over the years that harken back to this. This lively, colorful place and people.
But the words stick in his throat. He wants to speak, but his voice is so quiet, and this place is so loud.
Then Sarada slips her hand into his, so neither of them gets swept away by the crowd, and somehow, it settles him. Her eyes gleam as she looks around, but she never lets go as he guides them through the crowd.
If it is too loud for him to speak, he must find a quieter place. Three streets over, closer to where her grandparents live, is the perfect place to sit down and watch the hubbub around them.
"I never knew the market here could get so busy!" Sarada says, a little breathless. "Usually, we go in the evening, there’s so little stuff left then!"
Sasuke nods. "I like less people better, but less produce is a disadvantage of the late hour."
Sarada frowns again. "Why are you speaking Common?"
"This is the place where your mother comes from. And this is her language."
Sarada blinks, surprise crossing her face. "...I guess I never thought of it like that. She only ever speaks Uchiha to me."
Sasuke smiles, a small thing that feels like a thousand suns in warmth. "She does that for you and me." He swallows. "It is a gift."
Uchiha has two words for ‘gift.’ One is meant for things purchased to be given. The other, for things made, gifts given of utter devotion and made by one’s own two hands — in the physical or spiritual sense. He means the latter, though Common does not differentiate.
By the look on her face, he thinks Sarada is starting to understand that. She squeezes his hand. "So today is a gift too? From you to me and her?"
He nods, unable to voice it out loud. This is little, compared to what Sakura has gifted him. This is little, but oh, he wants to give her everything every day.
He’ll just have to take it one day at a time, for his beautiful wife and daughter.
"Your mother grew up here," he says, turning back to watch the market from their little bench. "That is no coincidence. The Haruno are a merchant family."
Sarada’s mouth falls open. "But grandma and grandpa are ninja too!"
Sasuke’s eyes crinkle as he nods. "They started to produce ninja to have their own guards instead of having to hire them." People dealing with money know that it is best, after all, to cut costs as much as possible. Not having to deal with the mark-up of a mercenary is ideal. "Both aspects of finance, as well as defense play a prominent role in the Haruno clan. And though your mother is very much an outlier when it comes to firepower, there are many chunin in the family, including your own grandparents."
His daughter watches him with wide eyes, listening intently.
There is so much he doesn’t know, so much he can’t tell Sarada, because this is not his culture, for all he has lived around it for the majority of his life. How many times his wife must have felt like this, trying to tell their daughter about the Uchiha so she would not miss out, so she would not forget, so she would know where she came from, even if that place, those people, are mostly gone now.
It makes his heart hurt to think of how difficult it must have been for her, raising their daughter alone for so many years, keeping the Uchiha alive for him and their daughter in her own way, even when there was so much she did not know.
It makes his heart sing, that she tried for him.
The culture of the Haruno is still alive. But that, too, must be imparted to their daughter. He must try for Sakura and Sarada too.
He wants to tell Sarada this, to make clear how much her mother has sacrificed for the both of them, how this is his way of making it up to her, his way of reciprocating that bone-deep affection.
He loves them so.
He has no words for that in Common.
Sarada watches him struggle in silence, then squeezes his hand. "It’s okay, Dad," she says in the language of her mother. "If you can’t speak, then show me."
Sasuke does.
He shows her everything he cannot say.
It’s getting dark by the time they get back, but the lights at home are on, warm and inviting.
The door opens with a click as Sasuke turns the key. Sarada sits down properly to take off her dusty shoes, but Sasuke just toes off his sandals and makes a beeline for the kitchen. He wants his wife.
And there she is, seated at the kitchen table, rubbing her temples after a long, hard day of work, her bag and coat abandoned on the floor next to her, the bowl of ume open and already half-empty in front of her on the table. Sasuke pads over the cold kitchen tiles as she blinks up at him. "Sasuke?"
He leans over the table and kisses her on the forehead, his fingers sliding into her hair. "Had to show Sarada something."
Sakura grumbles, reaching up to his chest. "I don’t care where you were, give me a proper kiss."
He does.
She tastes like ume — must have grabbed it directly out of the fridge when she came in. So predictable when it comes to the things she loves, his wife. He smiles against her lips.
He can hear the kitchen door open behind them, but ignores it until Sarada audibly protests. "Ew, gross!"
Sakura and Sasuke’s lips separate. Foreheads still against each other, eyes closed, Sasuke murmurs to her, "It’s just her parents kissing the kitchen. With the noises she’s making, you would think the world was ending instead."
Sakura laughs, busses another kiss onto his cheek, and turns to their daughter. "Hello, darling. Did you do anything other than proclaim your disgust today?"
Sarada’s nose wrinkle relaxes as her expression shifts to excitement. "Did I ever! You’ll never believe where Dad took me today!"
Sasuke puts on the kettle for the ochazuke as Sakura sits down and Sarada recounts a thousand things from her day. "And Mom, you gotta tell me more about defensive techniques. Dad kept mentioning you were so good at them!"
Sakura laughs as she reaches out for the bowl of ume again. "Of course, sweetheart. We’ll take some time for that this weekend."
No graveyard shifts on Friday, then. Good.
By the time Sasuke has portioned out the rice and poured the tea over it, the ume on the table are already almost gone and Sarada has interrogated her mother on her clan’s martial prowess, as well as wrangled a promise out of her to visit her grandparents too. Sakura is beaming at her, and Sasuke’s heart warms at the sight as he slides their bowls in front of them on the table.
Sarada barely takes the time to say "Itadakimasu!" before tucking in — she opens her mouth as if to continue talking with her mouth full, only for her eyes to go wide at the taste and diving into her bowl with renewed vigor. Sasuke shakes his head, but doesn’t actually admonish her. She’s a hungry girl after a long day, and it’s good to hear her this happy.
Sakura hasn’t picked up her chopsticks yet when Sasuke puts down his own bowl and sits down, simply listening to the clinks of Sarada’s chopsticks against her bowl and watching Sasuke with such a soft expression he almost feels like he has to look away.
But he doesn’t. This is the home they built, this is the love they share. And if it feels too good to be true, something so precious he is afraid to hold it, it only means he should cradle it and care for all they’ve built over the years.
The blood is behind them. So is the pain.
They’re allowed to have this now.
They’re also allowed to preserve the parts of the past that are precious to them.
Sakura reaches her hand out to him, as she has done millions of times over the years, stubbornly until he dared to reach back. He dares once more and takes her hand.
"Thank you," she says, tears in her beautiful green eyes as she squeezes his hand.
All Sasuke can do is squeeze back.
"To preserving the past," he says. "And raising the future."