Absolution

I like to say I am my mother's daughter in all things, but this is not the truth. I am pieced together in parts built from the people who love me. Mama says I have my father's smile—just as precious, if just as rare—although I don't see it. No, if I have inherited anything from Uchiha Sasuke, it is this: the inability to forgive those who have wronged me.

"You have to invite him," Mama says, and she's looking at me with such sad, green eyes that I almost break. Almost.

"No. I don't want him at my wedding."

"He's your father."

"I don't care," I say. But really, if I didn't care, this wouldn't matter to me so much.

My mother says my name in the same tone she has always used when I behave or speak disrespectfully. It curbs my tongue, as it usually does. Not because I'm afraid of her anger; I simply can't stand to see her disappointment.

"I'm sorry," I say, now more gently, because the last thing in the world I want is to hurt her. "But I only want family there—my real family."

"Half the village is invited," Mama says, and her voice is so small and tired that I feel cruel for not conceding.

"Half the village helped you raise me. You made sure I was never lonely, never unloved, and now I want all of those people to see me become an Uzumaki."

My mother glances down, away from me, and I don't have to ask why. She hasn't questioned my decision to take my husband's name, but it pains her just the same. Even so, keeping Uchiha was never an option. And after asking just the once if I was sure, Boruto knows better than to ask again.

"If you're certain," Mama says, "then I understand. I want you to be happy, Sarada. That has always been my first priority."

I love you, Mama. I would tell her so, but if I do, my voice will break and betray me. So instead I say, "Thank you."

She gives me an odd look, one I can't interpret, and says, "I love you, too, sweetheart."

I have heard my father's reasons, but they're not good enough. Nothing could ever be good enough to excuse ten years of absence. Missed holidays and birthdays and firsts. Season after season of silence, bought and paid for with my mother's tears.

There was a time when Mama cried often. I remember catching her at it late at night, when she thought I was asleep. Or hearing the sink water running for so long in the bathroom that I knew she was using the rushing noise to cover the sound of her sobs. My first eight years were punctuated by moments like this. Moments when my small world shifted on its axis because my mother, the strongest person I have ever known, could not contain her grief.

Until days and weeks and months passed without any such glimpses into the slow, sure breaking of my beautiful Mama's heart. And I remember asking her, the weekend after I turned nine, why it is she didn't cry anymore.

She smiled at me—she smiled, and I have never seen an expression half so sad—as she said, "Because I've stopped waiting for your father. He will come home, Sarada, and when he does, I'll be here. But until that day comes, I'm living for you and for me. For us, not him."

That, maybe, was the moment when I learned that the only difference in pain and love is that you are quick to end the suffering caused by one, if you can, and slow to free yourself of the other.

Mama offered to talk to my father, to explain that I don't want him at the wedding, but she doesn't deserve to go through that conversation, and I have never been one to shy away from difficult things. So here I am, knocking on my parents' front door, feeling a stranger in the shadow of a house that by all rights belongs more to me than to him. Then again, I suppose I forfeited any claim on my own childhood home the day I left it for good, nine years ago. (I was a hot-headed girl of sixteen, so dead-set on escaping my father that I didn't stop to consider what it would do to Mama, and now I wonder if I'm making the same sort of mistake all over again.)

I chose an hour when I knew my mother would be at the hospital. I'm half-hoping he'll be gone. Perhaps out to the market, or training, or pestering Boruto's father. Whatever it is Uchiha Sasuke does to fill his days; I wouldn't know.

My father answers just as I raise my fist to knock for a third time. He might be surprised to see me, but there's so little change in his expression that it's difficult to tell.

"Sarada," he says. "You look well."

You don't, I think, but can't verbalize. No matter how much I may resent him, saying such a thing is so unspeakably rude that if I dared, I can just imagine my mother appearing on this doorstep to reprimand me. Besides, it would be a lie. He is a handsome man, my father. Even now, with grey strands beginning to streak his black hair, and fine lines creasing the corners of his infamous, mismatched eyes.

I realize I have been staring at him for a full minute without saying a word. So I clear my throat, and ask, "Can I come in?"

He nods and says, "Of course."

I follow him inside, to the kitchen, where he washes his hands and makes a pot of tea. It's then that I notice he's wearing a canvas apron, covered in dirt. "What were you doing?" I ask.

He looks down at himself, then at me, and says, "Gardening."

I laugh. I can't help it. This is a man who fought his brother to the death, who left his wife and child, who lost an arm in battle with the Seventh Hokage. "I'm sorry," I say. "I just didn't know you liked to… garden."

"I don't," he says blandly, "but I do like tomatoes, and your mother kills anything green that she touches."

Quite suddenly, I recall planting a maple sapling in the backyard with Mama. One of many such projects she undertook with me throughout my childhood, but unlike baking cookies or building a treehouse, this one ended in spectacular failure. We must have watered that damn tree ten times a day, but it still shriveled up and died, and when I cried over it, my mother promised that we would get Auntie Ino to help us raise some pretty flowers instead.

"...and anyway, I have to find new ways to spend my time," my father says. "I can't afford to take as many missions as I used to."

"Why not?" I ask. Something like fear is blooming in my stomach. "You're not sick are you?"

He places two cups of hot tea on the table and sits down in the chair across from me. "No. Just getting old. I'll be fifty next summer."

He's only a few short months younger than my mother, and her own fiftieth birthday is approaching in the spring. Still, it's a shock to hear that this man I have loved and hated, yet barely known, has aged so much.

I do not acknowledge how relieved I am that he isn't ill, while I sip the tea my father made (mint, my favorite, and for some reason it irks me that he remembers this).

Better to just say it, so I can get out of here.

"You're not invited to the wedding."

"Hn," he says. "I didn't expect to be. Although I'm sure Sakura has tried her damnedest to convince you to change your mind."

I feel myself blush, because it's embarrassing that he reads both of us so well, my mother and I. And while Mama has made an art of interpreting his every expression and turn of phrase, of sifting through his stubborn silences for the words unsaid, I have never had the patience where he is concerned to try. So I can't begin to guess how my father will react when I tell him, "I'm taking the Uzumaki name. I hope that doesn't upset you."

He's quiet for a long moment. Then he laces his fingers together in a familiar gesture that, until I was twelve years old, I never knew was anything besides my own. "Long before you were born, I used to think that the name Uchiha was the most important thing I could ever give my children," he says. "Once I had you, I realized how foolish that was. My name was the very least of what you needed, of what you deserved from a father. But in the end, it's the only thing you got from me. So no, Sarada, I am not upset that you don't wish to keep it."

"I should go," I say, because if I don't leave now, I might change my mind.

He walks me to the door, as calm and collected as ever, but when I say goodbye, he catches me in an unexpected hug. Steals it from me, almost certainly because he knows I would have denied this if he had given me the chance. And maybe it's a selfish thing to do, this desperate theft of my affection, but in this moment, even if I don't return the embrace, I can't push him away. I just can't.

That is, until he says, "Sarada," and I have to face the brokenness of his voice. How it cracks on the last syllable of my name. Then I pull myself out of his arms and hurry away. I pretend not to hear him sob, but the sound follows me home. Haunts every step from my old house to the apartment I share with Boruto.

And it hurts, worse even than ten years without a father, but I can't cry. Because I am my mother's daughter, and I do not shed tears over him. Not anymore.

Is it any wonder, given what I have seen love do to my mother, that it took Boruto ten years and three proposals before I could be convinced to marry him? I am still scared, terrified even, that there will come a day when he leaves for a mission and does not come back. Or meets a girl less wary of accepting the affection he gives as naturally and freely as breathing. But what I know now at the age of twenty-five that I didn't quite grasp at fifteen (the first time he asked me to be his wife) is that, even if the doubt and the fear never fully go away, the love of a good man is worth the risk of heartbreak.

At night, just before we go to sleep, I kiss him and say, "I talked to my father today."

"Really?" he asks, and he looks at me with concerned, blue eyes, so beautiful that they remind me exactly how he captured such a hard-won heart as my own. "How did that go?"

"About as well as it ever does," I say.

Boruto can't fully understand—he had an often-absent father, not one who was missing entirely—but he can come closer than most, and maybe this, too, is a reason why I fell in love with him. He hums his sympathy and runs his fingers through my hair. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I know that had to be difficult."

Before I can think better of it, I ask, "Do you think I'm making a mistake? Telling him he can't come to our wedding?"

"I think it's not my choice to make," Boruto says.

"But if it was your father, and your choice, what would you do?"

"I don't know, Sarada. My father…" He doesn't need to finish the thought, though. Boruto's father would never have left, could never have left, no matter the circumstances. Whether that makes Uzumaki Naruto weaker or stronger than my own father, I don't know.

"I can't give you the answer," Boruto says gently. "This is up to you."

He's right, and I know it. I kiss him again and say goodnight, but even after my husband-to-be is asleep and breathing evenly beside me, I lie awake, unsure and undecided. I trace one of the lines on his left cheek, illuminated in the moonlight: the mark of a monster that wasn't even his to tame. Of course, I suppose I carry the legacy of my father's demons just as surely as Boruto does, if not quite as visibly.

The wedding is only a week away the next time I stop by my old house. No one answers when I knock, but I remember where the spare key is hidden (and even if I didn't, I am, after all, the daughter of Uchiha Sakura, and a locked door is no great obstacle to me).

I find my parents slow-dancing in the living room. In the moment before they see me, I can imagine that this is something they have done many times before in the privacy of their home, for no reason at all besides that they desire to be close to one another. Mama's arms are wrapped around my father's neck, and she is looking up at him with a kind of soft affection that makes her look seventeen again.

"Um, hello," I say, and it speaks to the sheer unguardedness of the moment I interrupted that I am able to take the two of them by surprise. My mother even jumps a little, but she quickly recovers, turns down the music they had been dancing to, and says, "Sarada! I didn't hear you knock."

"I'm sorry I just barged in. I probably should have come back later." My remorse has little to do with the rudeness of my choice, and more because I have spoiled a moment of sweetness between my parents. So much has been stolen from them already that I hate to take more.

"Don't be silly," my mother says. "We were just about to start making lunch. You should join us."

"I can't," I lie. "I only have a few minutes."

Mama always knows when I'm not telling the truth, but she lets this pass without remark anyway. My father is staring steadily at a point over my right shoulder, as if, like the sun, I am too difficult to look at directly.

"Can we talk?" I ask him.

His dark eyes finally flicker to my face. Judging the danger, assessing the likelihood of getting hurt. I know exactly what he's thinking because it's the same process I go through when I sense imminent heartbreak. After our last conversation, I half-expect him to refuse to speak to me, but instead, my father nods. Diplomatic as ever, Mama squeezes his hand and says she needs to water the lilies anyway, because they seem to be dying (so surprising).

After she has left us alone together, I ask, "How are your tomatoes?" Which might be the stupidest question I've ever uttered to anyone.

"Much better than the lilies," he says. "How are you and Boruto?"

"We're doing very well. Thanks for asking," I say.

An uncomfortable silence settles in after these pleasantries are exchanged, but I am determined not to run away again. "I'm sorry about the other day. I was unkind to you, and I shouldn't have—"

"It's fine," he interrupts. "You have nothing to apologize for. Not to me, not ever."

"Oh." My conscience has been eating at me, insisting that, no matter his mistakes, this man has suffered enough without me adding to his burdens. And now, with a few curt words, he has dismissed my purpose in coming here.

There's a part of me that's angry, not at him, but for him. Because he shouldn't excuse my behavior with impunity. Shouldn't allow me to say whatever I please, no matter how petty or hurtful, because he feels guilty. By all accounts Uchiha Sasuke is a retaliatory sort of man, but I've never been a witness to this particular quality of his.

"Is that all you wanted?" he asks.

All I wanted? No. All I want is to turn back a clock, tick off its hours in reverse until I have the escaped time back. Maybe he's responsible for missing my childhood, but the loss of the last thirteen years has been my doing.

We have to live with our choices, the bad even more than the good. You sleep beside your regrets, he once told me, when I was too young and stubborn to listen.

I take a seat on the sofa, rest my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.

"I didn't love you," I say. "I couldn't love what I never knew. Until the day you returned to Konoha, I didn't have a father. What I had were stories and promises and one precious photograph. And half of those things turned out to be lies."

I can't look at him, can't stand to see his face right now. "Sarada, I wish—"

"Let me talk. I haven't talked to you since you came home. Not really, anyway."

My father settles beside me on the couch. He leaves plenty of space between us, so that I don't feel smothered, but remains close enough that I know he's attentive, nearby and listening.

"I'm still angry at you, mostly because of the kind of man you turned out to be." I can feel him stiffen, hurt by that maybe, but I need to say this. I have to. "In the year before you returned to Konoha, I told myself I didn't need you anyway, that you must be no-good to leave your family behind. And Mama made sure I never went without anything, so I didn't know, until I met you, what I had been missing. You're patient. Funny in a strange sort of way. Strong, but so gentle with Mama. You pet scrawny stray cats just because you can't stand to see something wandering around, so alone and unloved."

I sit up and face my father. Too scared to reach for his hand, but wanting to anyway, so I lace my fingers together, just as he so often does. "You're a good man," I say. "I could have had a good man raise me, play with me, love me. Except I didn't. And it's so unfair it takes my breath away."

"You really think that of me?" he asks.

"Yes," I say. "I do."

For thirteen years, I've been punishing him, but the only reason I don't know my father now is that I wouldn't let him get close to me. If he's still a stranger, I have nobody to blame but myself for that.

Without permission, my left hand and his right catch each other. They cling together, almost tight enough to hurt, but not quite.

Mama wasn't wrong: half of Konoha turns out for the wedding. All the people who supported me in the years my father was missing, and then later too. ChouChou most of all, and today she remains every bit the best friend I know her to be.

The ceremony is beautiful. Somehow, I manage not to cry, but Boruto does, and he has never been more handsome.

When it comes time to sign the marriage license, I stare at the fragile, black line where my married name belongs. Just a few new characters, nothing so difficult to write, but I find myself frozen, unable to place pen to paper. For months I've been determined to shed the name my father gave me, to finally let go of the last of his hold on my life. But now that the moment has come, I find that this isn't what I want at all.

"I'm sorry," I say to Boruto. "I need to go. Someone isn't here, and it's my fault that he's not."

My husband smiles at me and says, "I understand."

The inn where we're having our reception is only three blocks from my parents' house, and I get there in an impressively short amount of time for a woman in geta and a formal kimono. My father opens the door after my second knock, and when he sees me, he says, "Sarada, what are you doing here?"

I steal a hug, not unlike the one he took from me weeks ago, but this time it's my arms wrapped around him.

Absolution isn't simple or easy, but this is. Maybe all we need is to start somewhere.

"Come on, Papa," I say. "You're missing my wedding."

Author's Notes: This is far from the route I hope Kishimoto takes with Sarada and Sasuke, but it's something I felt I needed to write. Full disclosure: my dad died when I was three, and I was raised by a single mother who did her best with what she had. Now I'm getting married in less than two weeks. I thought I was fine with not having a father at my wedding, but as I worked on this piece, I realized maybe I'm not. That's okay though, because I'll be okay. Anyway, even if you didn't quite enjoy this particular fic, I hope you appreciate it. And many thanks to the incredible and lovely uchihasass, my beta, for her continued support and thoughtful critiques.