The Man from the Picture

Chapter 1

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The young Uchiha Sarada spent her road back home after the lessons at the Academy in a sour mood. She was a talented child, some might even throw in the word "prodigy", and the classes didn't challenge her as much as she would have liked. From what her father told her that was to be expected. Members of their clan had ninja arts in their blood and Sarada was no exception to that rule. She had shown a great aptitude for ninja techniques from a young age.

However, her disappointment with the village-provided education wasn't a reason for her disquiet. No, what was bothering her was something much different, something intangible. It shouldn't have affected her. To miss someone she had never known was a height of foolishness, but still, when she looked at what her peers had, she couldn't help but yearn for the same.

A mother.

During the years she had attended the Konoha Academy, she had witnessed her classmates with their mothers, who first walked them to school and picked them up later, then at the various events like festivals. She had seen her friend Chouchou shopping with her mother in the market for food or clothes or sometimes both. She'd seen Inojin's mother drag him off to train together. She'd been invited many times to birthday parties that Boruto's mother had thrown for him or his little sister.

Sarada had no mother.

Once when she'd been much younger, she'd dared ask her father about it.

"Papa?" Little Sarada fidgeted with the edge of her blue shirt as they walked back from the dinner with Uzumaki family. Her other hand was safely held within her father's big palm.

"Yes?"

"Why don't we have a shrine for Mama?"

Her father abruptly stopped. Sarada looked up at him. He seemed surprised, not angry, a wrinkle creased his forehead as he tried to figure her out.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Aunt Hinata has a shrine for her cousin Neji in the living room. She showed it to me today. He died in the war and Boruto is named in his honour."

Her father took a deep breath in. Then he kneeled down to look her straight in the eye.

"Sarada," he said very, very seriously. "Your mother isn't dead."

"Then where is she? Why is she never around?" she asked.

When her father didn't answer, she started to fret. Did that mean that he didn't know anything? The young girl carefully observed his blank face for any sort of clue.

He sighed. "Your mother is alive and she will come back," he said with absolute certainty and poked her on the forehead. Sarada made a pouty face. "Now come, it's getting late."

Sarada wanted to pester him about it some more, but she sensed that she wouldn't get anything more out of him.

Over the years, Sarada learned that any mention of her mother put her father in a strange mood. He didn't react outwardly, but rather became more silent and isolated, often disappearing for hours to the private training grounds. It scared her, so she stopped asking. Only Uncle Naruto or Uncle Kakashi could bring him out of this state.

Sarada entered her house. It was a nice, modern place in the quieter part of the village. No one was home, as her father was on a mission, so without saying a word she went directly to her bedroom and threw her schoolbag on the floor by the desk. After she freshened up, she decided to grab something to bite, but on the way through the living room her attention was snagged by the framed picture on the shelf. Sarada came closer and picked up the frame. It was split into three sections. The one on the left side contained photos of her younger self, her father's picture was on the right side and mother's was in the center. She scrutinized the younger faces of her parents.

This pink-haired, unfamiliar woman on the central photograph was supposed to be her mother. Sarada traced the frozen smile with a fingertip as she looked at the woman's features, picking out similarities to herself. She wasn't sure they were even real or just in her head. Many times she was told how much she resembled her father. She possessed the dark, aristocratic looks of the Uchiha.

Sarada stared at the stranger, at this colourful, vivacious woman with bright green eyes and a cheery smile, then glanced at her own reflection in the glass cabinet. She couldn't fathom how a dull-looking, bespectacled person like her could possibly be related to someone this beautiful.

The front door opened, startling her out of her musings.

"I'm home," she heard her father say. She only had a few seconds when he was taking off his shoes, so she quickly put the picture frame down and rushed to sit on the couch.

"Welcome home, Dad," she greeted when he came in. She was trying to look nonchalant, like she'd been just lounging before the TV for a while. Except the TV wasn't even turned on. "You're early. Sorry I haven't prepared anything to eat yet," she said.

He shrugged as he unclasped his cloak and hang it on the back of the chair. "We can go out for dinner."

"Great!" Sarada injected as much enthusiasm as she could into her tone. She must have overdone it, because Dad gave her a curious look. She smiled innocently, but he already swept his gaze around the room and unerringly zeroed in on the family picture. Her heart plummeted when he strode over to the shelf and corrected the frame's position to the center.

"You were looking at this." His voice didn't betray anything, but it was too blank.

"Dad..." Suddenly, she felt surging anger. Why did he make her all embarrassed and guilty about this? She had a right to look at her family! "When will Mom come back?" she blurted out.

He said nothing, which only spurned her on.

"Why don't you tell me anything about her? She's my mother and I don't know anything about her!"

"What do you want to know?"

"Did she wear glasses?"

He looked surprised at the question, but to her amazement, still answered. "Not that I remember. But I wasn't in the village much when I was younger."

"So you don't know?" she asked, getting even more incensed. "What is your relationship to her? Are you really her husband? I don't see any wedding photos. And I checked the village records for marriage certificate and guess what? It wasn't there," she said with accusation.

"We weren't married in Konoha," he replied, still calm, but she could see from the narrowing of his eyes that he was holding back his irritation.

But this time she didn't care and she was not intending to back down.

"Then where?" she pressed on with another question.

"That's classified, " he said stiffly.

"Then what about my birth? Was I born in Konoha? Who was there when I was born?"

Sasuke shook his head. "What does it matter? You're here now."

"So you don't know this too? You weren't there, were you?" From his reaction she knew that she'd guessed it correctly. Sarada looked down at her feet, hiding the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes."Then how do you even know that she's really my mother?"

"Sarada..." her father started, but a frantic knocking on the door cut him off.

"Uchiha-san! Urgent summons! You need to go to the Hokage Tower!" a messenger yelled.

Sarada watched how her father hesitated. She also noted, somewhat bitterly, that he had a perfect excuse to leave without telling her anything. Like always.

"Go on. It's probably important," she said. More important than me.

"The Hokage can wait," he replied. "Sarada, I have no doubt that Sakura is your mother..."

But she didn't get to learn what evidence he based this belief on, because the messenger called impatiently again.

"Uchiha-san! It's about your wife!"

Sasuke's whole demeanor changed. His posture sharpened in full alert and he strode to the door.

"I need to go. We'll talk later. Go get something to eat," he ordered as he slipped on his shoes.

"Yes, dad," Sarada replied drolly as she watched him go.

Then she made a mad dash to her room and jumped out of the window. If the Hokage had news about her mother, she sure as heck was going to be there, invited or not!

Sarada sped through the village, keeping to the shadows and taking as many shortcuts as she could. She still didn't graduate, so she wasn't allowed to take to the rooftops, but she was the fastest in her class so she made it to the Tower in a good time. She saw her father entering, waited a moment, catching her breath, then completely composed walked confidently inside. The way to the Hokage's office was well-known to her thanks to the visits first to Uncle Kakashi, then Uncle Naruto. For the same reason no one stopped her.

The young girl stealthily approached the door and leaned against it casually. Her right ear was pressed to the wooden, gleaming surface.

"She was alone?" Sarada caught her father's question.

"The sources say yes," The Seventh replied. "But you can't go there, Sasuke."

"And why is that? Maybe she left some clue. The nin-dogs know her scent."

"It's been two weeks since the sighting and several rains. There's no trace with which she can be tracked and you know it," Nara-san said lazily.

"Then why did you summon me?" Her father sounded frustrated.

"You know how my Tailed Beast Sage Mode has a huge chakra sensing range?" The Seventh asked.

There was no answer, but Sarada could imagine the others in the room nodding.

"I was just practicing this afternoon, when I sensed something unusual at the edges of my perception. To the north."

"The old Uchiha outpost," her father guessed.

"Yeah."

"Naruto, you said the chakra was unusual. Why?" Nara-san inquired.

"It was muted, like a distant echo, but I'm sure it was Uchiha." Sarada put a hand to her mouth to muffle a gasp. She didn't hear about any other Uchihas? She and her father were supposed to be the last of the clan!

"You mean... it was him?" Nara-san was resigned.

"Who else?"

"What a drag."

"Guys, concentrate. This is our chance to take him down and get back Sakura-chan."

Sarada pressed herself harder to the door, holding her breath in anticipation. Finally something about her mother! She had to hear every word.

"And what are you doing here?" someone behind her asked.

She jumped a bit from the scare and whirled around. "Uncle Kakashi!" she gasped. "I'm just waiting for my dad. We were supposed to go to dinner after his meeting," she quickly provided the ready-made excuse to cover up her spying.

Kakashi gave her a lazy once-over and she understood that he didn't believe her for a second.

"Alright, let's check it with Sasuke." He made to open the door, but Sarada put herself in his way.

"No!" she almost cried out. She lowered her volume only out of her good sense, so those inside the office wouldn't hear. "Please, Uncle, don't tell my dad I was here. He doesn't want me to know anything about my mother, but I have to know... I have to!" she explained herself. Her eyes were pleading with him.

Kakashi considered, but she was his favourite for a reason, and his gaze softened.

"Well, I suppose this can stay between us, right, Sarada-chan?" he said and patted her head affectionately. Sarada nodded vigorously. "Now, run along. You probably have to study for tomorrow and this old man is already late to the meeting. Shoo."

Sarada understood that he would know if she tried to eavesdrop again, so she thanked him and left. Even if Kakashi caught her, he had no idea that she'd already learned something important – the location.

The young girl returned home and went straight to her father's study to get a map. She heard about the Uchiha outpost from the old times when Konoha hadn't even been built, but she didn't know the way. Logically, her first priority was to get an accurate map.

Long ago she'd observed the secret way to open the drawers in her father's desk. Without a pause to consider the consequences of breaking into it, she applied her chakra to the right place and released the seal. As she was rifling through the papers looking for a map, she came across an innocuous brown folder. She wouldn't have taken interest in it if not for the name written on it in her father's crisp lettering.

Sakura.

The girl opened the folder and several photos slipped out. Only one of them was in colour and showed her mother in her early twenties. Others were grainy or unfocused or taken at a bad angle. All pictures had a date and place written on their back.

Sarada examined them curiously. The dates spanned the years since before her birth. The newest was on top of the pile and it was from two years ago in the Land of Wind. Sarada remembered that her father had an emergency mission there around the same time.

Could it be... all this time... Dad was looking for Mom?

Sarada flipped to the last photo and stopped. It was taken at a poor angle, as if someone held the camera just above the ground – and it showed her mother walking around some village, accompanied by a strange man. Sarada wrinkled her brow as she tried to make sense of the picture – the figures were a bit distanced from the secret photographer. The man looked so much like her father that if not for the unusually long hair, she would have thought it was really him. And the man had his arm around her mother's waist.

It's him! He's the other Uchiha they talked about! Sarada realized.

She checked the back and the date was over twelve years old, from the time before her birth. But in the photo her mother wasn't even pregnant, at least she didn't look like it.

Sarada stared at the photo again, analyzing it. If it was taken before she was born, why her mother was with another man that looked so much like Dad? Why was he holding her so close? Sarada was once again struck by the intimacy of the man's gesture and the lack of any similar pictures of her parents. Honestly, her father didn't belong to the most affectionate people in the world on the best of days and she could hardly imagine him in the same position with anyone.

A bizarre thought entered her mind and even though she tried to dismiss it as too ludicrous, the more she regarded the picture, the more she was accepting of the possibility.

Was this man... her real father?

A loud noise in the street broke her out of the reverie and Sarada decided not to linger in the study anymore as she didn't know when Dad—Sasuke—would come back. She closed the folder and placed it back in the drawer, but on the impulse she kept the last picture. After this she quickly found the map of the Land of Fire. The outpost and several other places were marked on it with a pen. She rolled up the scroll and put it in her pocket along with the photo.

She returned everything to its exact place with an extra care and resealed the drawers. She didn't want her father to find anything was amiss as easily as he had noticed her messing with family pictures earlier.

When he didn't return for dinner, but instead sent a hawk with a short message that he was going on a mission, Sarada was ready to follow.

And to find out the truth, whatever it may be.

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AN: This story idea has been on my mind ever since I read the manga about Sarada. My writing may be rusty, but I just have to get back into practice. Anyway, please let me know if you like and if I should continue.