Wild Flower
SSS Family/SasuSaku. Sarada always thought her mother looked pretty, but unfortunately so did all of the awkward boys of the village.

As a child, Sarada had always felt a swell of pride whenever the other kids would comment on her mother's beautiful face, but as she got older, she felt nothing but annoyance as she suffered through the awkward gawking of smitten teenage boys with hearts in their eyes, and the taste of bile was one that she quickly found herself familiar with.

"She can decimate this whole village if she wanted to," Sarada threatened a lovestruck boy once in the hospital. She'd been waiting for her mother to get off work, having just come back from a mission herself. "Your face, too, if she wanted to. With her pinky."

"I know," the boy had replied, sighing dreamily. "That's what makes her even more beautiful."

Sarada looked at him in disgust. "Stay away from my mother."

Her mother, on the other hand, would cackle into her face whenever Sarada complained about them, griping at the way her peers would goggle at her and yammer away idiotically at the sight of her pretty face, and then she would snap at her mother to stop laughing before she would start laughing too - if only because she adored the sound of her mother's laughter, the way it always sounded so cheerful whenever she thought Sarada said something particularly funny.

"You're just like your father," her mother told her one day, her cheeks flushed from laughing so much. They had just finished their bi-weekly mother-daughter sparring sessions, the training field completely destroyed - Sakura had been teaching Sarada the importance of evading attacks effectively, with Sarada fearing for her life in the process as the earth broke all around her - and Sarada had spied several of the boys she had graduated with lurking in the trees, undoubtedly swooning at the sight of her mother berserking all over the training grounds with her pink hair flying wildly around her face. Sarada had pointed them out disdainfully, fighting the urge to throw rocks in their direction, or perhaps even a kunai to scare them away.

Sarada blushed at her mother's words, looking away when her mother gazed at her fondly, her green eyes twinkling merrily. "Stop looking at me like that, mom," Sarada finally said in exasperation when her mother playfully tried to stick her face in front of Sarada's, forcing her to face her. When she wouldn't stop, Sarada tried pushing her face away with an open palm, and she felt her traitorous lips curl into a smile at the sound of her mother's giggle and soon she was laughing too.

Once at home with the both of them washed of dirt and grime from their day of sparring in the fields, Sarada talked to her mother from the kitchen table, watching as her mother flit around the kitchen to prepare dinner. Sometimes Sarada got up to help, never once halting their conversation. She was also unwilling to stop talking - after she had been promoted to a chuunin, she was often away from home, away from her mother, and sometimes her mother was away too, and every time the both of them were home, together, Sarada was always determined to make the most out of their time with each other.

Then her father came home after a week-long mission in the Cloud country, and their dinner was a talkative one, courtesy of Sarada and her mother, with her father occasionally interjecting here and there. He mostly smiled at the sight of the two most important women in his life talking animatedly, tired but happy and graciously answered whatever question Sarada or her mother asked of him.

Sarada left her parents to clean up afterwards when Boruto stopped by to deliver a mission scroll with a long-suffering look on his face, though he decided that it would be funny to tease Sarada and asked with a mischievous glint in his eyes if her mother was around. Sarada snatched the scroll from his hands and shut the door after shooting him a bemused glare. Boys were stupid, but Boruto was the dumbest of the lot, and Sarada rolled her eyes when she heard her friend laugh to himself as he walked away.

But when she came back to the kitchen, ready to tell her parents that she would be off on a two-day mission in Suna come morning, she stopped and hastily backed out of the kitchen and peeked around the corner to watch her parents. It was stupid - they probably knew she was there, watching them, but they didn't seem to care. Her mother was saying something to her father softly, looking up at him with a small grin, and Sarada fought the urge to look away, her ears burning, when her father stroked the side of her mother's face before brushing his thumb across her bottom lip. Sarada marveled at the sight of her mother's blush and the pretty smile that painted her lips.

This is too much for me, Sarada thought to herself when she saw her father smile in response. Her face was on fire by the time she reached her room and she threw herself on her bed, fighting the urge to groan loudly into her pillow. They were so embarrassing, they had been married for a thousand years - it just wasn't right.

But Sarada eventually stopped thrashing around in her bed, and she briefly wondered why her face was aching so much when she realized she was smiling. Smiling, because she knew that the smile her mother had given her father was a special one, one that she didn't give to anyone other than her family, and smiling because her father, stoic and cool to others, never could seem to help himself when that special smile was directed at him and him alone.

At least no one else ever sees that smile, Sarada thought to herself as she got up to leave her room, hopeful that her parents were finished being embarrassing. Sarada would never hear the end of it from her peers, and she didn't want to spend more time than she already did kicking away everyone who annoyed her with their soppy besotted looks whenever her mother either waltzed down the streets or mended their cuts and broken bones.