Murphy's Law of Love

Summary: Where fate – or Sasuke's overweening, pretentious family – drove them apart, but years later, their daughter brings them together again. SasuSaku. BoruSara. AU.

Sakura has always known that guilt can eat a person alive, but right then, sitting across from the daughter she'd given up seventeen years ago and right next to the man she loves – loved – all that time ago, she'd never truly understood the extent of it.

She can feel it now, gnawing at her from the inside out as Sarada studies her from behind her cat-eye glasses. Feels it coursing through her bloodstream as Sasuke sits immobile in absolute disbelief. Maybe she's always known that this day might come, but even so, she feels severely underprepared for it.

"So," says Sarada. "I suppose it's nice to meet you."

The moment Sarada had laid eyes on Haruno Sakura, she'd instinctively known. The way that you know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The way you know that night falls after the day. The way you know water only flows in one direction. Sarada had immediately known that this was it – this was her birth mother.

She was a chic looking woman of 35 years with Sarada's face and the shape of her eyes, and right at the moment, she was looking as if the ground had fallen from under her feet.

In contrast, Uchiha Sasuke was imitating a rock - silent, stock-still, and motionless; as if all he'd ever known was a lie.

Sarada has seen him in the news before – always calm, always composed, always blunt and to-the-point. But today feels like an exception because as he looks at Sakura (because Sarada refuses, absolutely refuses, to call this woman her mother) he looks just as queasy and lost as she herself had felt not so long ago.

She watches as Sakura steels herself, turns to him, and says, "I can explain."

Immediately, his face transforms from silent disbelief to dark fury. His voice is sharp as he echoes, "You can explain," looking directly at Sakura, intimidating and thunderous.

Sarada feels impressed with his darkly menacing demeanor and refrains from politely interrupting because she, too, wants to hear this explanation.

But she feels even more impressed with Sakura as she says, "Yes, I can explain," in a surprisingly level tone. Sarada feels like this lady sounds deceptively resolute for a woman who gave away her baby – and it seems like: without ever telling the father about it.

Distantly, Sarada feels like both of them are over-dramatizing the situation. They do feel a bit theatrical, and she's not quite in the mood to indulge their melodrama.

Needless to say, she's not at all impressed.

She's worked hard to get these two very important, notoriously busy, and virtually unreachable people here because – well, she was curious and she wants answers. Kakashi and Shizune had never made a secret out of her adoption. They felt proud to have raised a successful, intelligent, and well-adjusted kid and Sarada had loved them enough not to overreach or offend by asking too many questions.

But the thing was, the curiosity never quite went away for an adopted kid. No matter how loved or well-adjusted you became, there was always a tiny, niggling, annoying part of your brain that was constantly running like a hamster on its wheel, going: why'd they let you go? Why'd they let you go? Why the fuck did they let you go?

And now that Sarada was entering university, she'd decided that she wanted to start the next chapter of her life by never, ever, having to think that question again. She wants a clean slate. She wants to start fresh.

Her parents were pragmatic. They weren't overly emotional. When she'd asked, they had smiled their easy smiles and given her exactly what she'd wanted: two birth certificates. The first one that she'd known her entire life. The second one folded in neat quarters that were saggy and greyed with age and felt like they'd never really been opened throughout her life.

"Frankly, I want to hear it too," she says, successfully catching their attention.

Sakura looks a little heartsick while Sasuke still looks skeptical and disbelieving.

"Look," she starts, trying to coax them into letting their guards down. "I know this is totally out of the blue, but I just want to know why you decided to give me up. That's it. Can you do that for me?"

Both of them look absolutely out of their depth, which makes Sarada feel slightly annoyed. "Well?" she prompts.

Sakura has the audacity to guiltily wring her hands and look at her lap.

Sasuke can't stop staring at her.

Sarada can tell that this can go on forever, and she doesn't really have that much time. She has a date with Boruto in an hour, and honestly, just a single look at these people is starting to make her irrationally angry. What the heck, she thinks. Maybe clean slates are overrated.

"You know what," she tells them, gathering her backpack, grabbing her phone, and getting up from her chair. "I guess I actually don't want to know."

Walking around the table, she tries her best to sound flippant. "Let's never see each other again."

She walks away, feeling just the tiniest bit satisfied when they both look completely startled, then dismayed.

Sasuke feels like he's always drawn the short stick in life, but whatever curves life has thrown at him in the past bear no torch to what is happening now.

"You – we – we had – a daughter?" he sputters, the moment Sarada has walked out the restaurant door. All his eloquence, all his decorum, a lifetime worth of etiquette - completely vanishes.

His dignity is out the window and his emotional range is reduced to a very thin thread that is stretched to its limits. He feels like he's going to snap and there's nothing but a giant void of nothingness when the two ends of his intellect finally collide together. It's like his mind has been peeled opened, diced, and scattered into tiny little fragments.

"Yes," Sakura whispers brokenly.

He feels utterly speechless. The world seems to be crashing down around him. Finally, after swallowing a thousand negative reactions and fishing for a calm he doesn't quite feel, he manages to ask, "And you never told me?"

Honestly, he feels like those four little words are a little inadequate, considering that he feels as if a level 8 earthquake is shaking up his entire world at the moment and Sakura's deer-caught-in-headlights look is doing nothing to abate the rising tide of anger inside his chest. He's having difficulty reconciling seventeen years' worth of separation into – into – what – a daughter!? God, he thought, positively reeling from the shock.

It's been seventeen years since him and Sakura were together. He's moved on. He's carved a life for himself. It wasn't supposed to go this way. He tries to hold back, but the rage is right on the heels of the confused consternation he feels. So he finds himself saying, "Did you think so little of me as to believe I'd have left you? That I'd judge you? That I'd – what? Abandon you?"

"No, Sasuke-kun, no!" Sakura immediately assures him, looking deeply anguished. He's disgusted to note that even after all these years, his heart still squeezes painfully to see her in distress.

"Then why?" he thunders, barely aware that the café patrons were now observing the two of them nervously. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

We could have figured it out together, he wants to say, but doesn't.

Sakura's hesitant expression makes him even more furious and he has to close his eyes and take deep breaths to calm himself down. He's deeply annoyed with himself because behind the fury, there's a soft little bud of ardor buried deep within his heart that even the long years apart haven't quite managed to squish away and he wants to stomp on it because right now, she's not Sakura the love of his life, but she's Sakura who'd suddenly, completely vanished from his life without a word and apparently gave away their daughter.

His heart painfully clenches at the last thought. Feeling lightheaded and completely wrong-footed, he pushes her once more because god, suddenly he just wants to know, wants to understand, and just…

"Why?" he asks again, voice cracking at the end, not used to being so defeated and vulnerable and open.

Sakura knows that Sasuke-kun never really loses enough control to let others see him crumble, but he's doing that right now and it's devastating her heart because she knows – she's always known – that she loves him and will always love him.

Her heart has been breaking steadily since she's seen Sarada and looking at him now – it just immediately shatters into a million little pieces and there's nothing she can do about the tears that prick her eyes. It's been seventeen years. She decides it's beyond time to come clean.

"I – " she starts, stops, sniffles. "You – " she says, floundering for the right words and wiping the tears now steadily falling down her cheeks. She takes a deep breath, feeling humiliated and her throat is working painfully and she, too, is starting to feel angry as she admits the truth. "It was your family," she admits in a thick voice, not willing to sugar-coat it.

It's the most cliché excuse in the world. She knows. But it's her truth. It's the truth that she's lived with for the past seventeen fucking years, and she feels so totally frustrated as he just sits there and looks uncomprehending – as if he couldn't believe her!

So she clamps on to her rage, getting louder and louder as she repeats, "It was your family! Your family! They said they'd never accept – "

"How did they end up knowing when even I didn't?" he asks lowly, cutting her off, looking dark and menacing and she knows that he doesn't believe her at all.

It effectively takes the wind out of her sails and she feels as helpless as a baby as she tells him, "They put a tail on me."

His gaze bores into her for one long infinite moment and she holds it as steadfastly as she can, but she can tell that he still doesn't believe her because he looks away, scoffs, and gets up to stalk out of the café.

She feels absolutely destitute, then exasperated as she follows him. "You were interning at the company!" she calls after him, adamant about making him listen because god, after all these years he owed her at least that. She felt ridiculous trying to keep up with his long strides in her heels – all while yelling her heart out, desperate for him to listen, to believe in her. "I came to tell you! I was taken to your father instead – "

He whirls around and she stumbles back, almost falling on her back before catching herself.

"And you got scared?" he snaps. "You?" he repeats, looking her up and down, almost disdainful.

She feels compelled to defend herself, but she also understands where he's coming from. She'd had – still has – a bit of a volatile personality. But she wants Sasuke to know that Uchiha Fugaku had been an undeterred demon who'd gaslighted his way past her defenses.

"I was eighteen years old and piss poor!" she retaliates, feeling all the more enraged on behalf of her younger self. "My parents ran a street shop! He said he'd take away my scholarship! He said he'd disown you – "

"Don't you dare bring me into it now!" he rages at her.

Her eyes glass over. She swallows. "You're right," she says, forcing herself to be calmer. "But you need to understand – I couldn't have possibly raised her on my own. So I took the best course of action for all of us."

"You should have told me – "

"I know," she agrees, barely holding back the urge to bury her head in her hands and indulge in a crying jag right then and there on the street. "I know, and I'm sorry. But," she continues, "I didn't want her to live through your family's vitriol. I hated them then. I hate them now. They're terrible people. You should know."

To that, he has nothing to say.

And because she has nothing to say either, she walks away.

Of course, he doesn't follow.

tbc

gah, i love being so silly with this trope. i love it!