a/n: I don't know what I'm doing. Random plot idea, I guess, because I can't accept the fact that our favorite clan doesn't have a decent family pic!
Photograph
His nightmares are always snaps of singular event in a bloody monochrome, and he always has to drag deep breaths into his lungs upon being jolted awake. He always wakes up to the same familiar surroundings. After all, he has been used to seeing canopied trees and wild bushes because of his wanderings before as a missing-nin.
But familiarity never spells home.
Still, he wakes up, and that's what matters. Waking up despite the nightmares is a relatively new routine for him because had he still been the avenger Sasuke, he wouldn't have bothered to.
But he's someone else now. He's still alone, but somewhere else he's a father, and he always reminds himself that he is.
In every moment that he misses Sakura's caress, he looks at her photograph. Sakura doesn't know, of course. She doesn't know that Tsunade, in her drunken state, gave him a photo of her just before he left, and she doesn't know that he received it silently (gratefully). He never lets her know about unnecessary things like that.
The photo has faded through time, however much he has tried to rescue it from creases and water drops. The colors in the photo have become blotchy, but he can still make out her pink tresses and emerald orbs, and suddenly the rest of the hues no longer matter. He traces the curve of her smile, so exuberant, that it's almost as if she had never been rattled (and destroyed) by the pain he had inflicted her for years. He suddenly longs for her kisses.
Along with this photo is the one that Sakura took for him. It is little Sarada with her sleeping face, somewhat wrinkled, as if sensing that her father would leave and abandon her. The photo no longer paints Sarada's face as clearly as it used to, but he'll never forget how he gently rubbed circles against her forehead until she finally gave out a small sigh, her expression brightening up and looking more serene. He wonders what she looks like now. He longs to see her smile.
He hides them back inside his bag and makes a mental note of getting a legitimate family picture when he returns. He would probably ask the Dobe to do it. He starts to picture the scene. He'd probably slip an arm around Sakura's waist and rest his other hand on Sarada's shoulder. Before that though, he'd probably have to practice having a broader smile soon.
He then closes his eyes. He's tired of having nightmares without Sakura by his side, but he closes his eyes anyway because dreams only come in through closed eyes. In dreams, the photographs come to life. In his dreams, he is with them.
...
Fin.