a/n: Based on gaiden 5 and heavily inspired by konohaskunoichi's "Sasuke's letter" (tumblr). Sasuke-centric.
Iris
With an unbidden force, he hit the wall with his sword, left it there, and reached out to her, willing her name to make way through his lips, before stopping, his hand frozen along the way.
The unforgotten past and the present reality cohered in his head, and he sharply drew his hand back. She wasn't supposed to be here.
"You're...Sarada, is that you?"
She was a close-held memory, but she had never been a part of his waking reality ever since he decided to leave the village again twelve years ago.
He didn't expect their reunion to be fated in such a way – with him almost killing her the way he did years ago to her mother and with her asking him questions he had no justifiable answers for.
As she had put it, he was never there for her or for Sakura, and he couldn't – wouldn't – blame her for blowing up on him and for eventually choosing to hate him.
He knew she didn't know anything – why he decided to leave them, why he had almost forgotten her face, why he wouldn't answer her questions – and he didn't plan on telling her.
His daughter wouldn't know how he had lived his life all alone for twelve years.
Sarada wouldn't know how he'd always have a fitful sleep, dipping in and out of consciousness not because of some impending danger but because of the gnawing ache to return to the village. She wouldn't know about his perpetual dream.
He'd always dream of Sakura and how she was always there to hold him when his nightmares visited him. He'd dream of her, their daughter, a ball of blanket nestled against Sakura's bosom every waking moment. He'd always remember having tentatively touched her small outflung hands, marveling at the intensity of a new kind of feeling that filled him. He regretted having had to leave only days after Sarada was born, and he'd always remember her wails, seeming to echo from far away, and Sakura, with rain beading on her hair, her lips brief and cool on his.
Sarada wouldn't know how he'd always hope of opening his eyes to see her mother's vibrant green eyes only to see a different shade – the leaves overhead, feathered out and quivering, with the wind sweeping roughly through the networks of branches. Everywhere, he'd see variegated green but nothing came close to the hue of Sakura's eyes.
She wouldn't know how in cold nights, there was only the company of frozen, brittle grass and the razory wind. He'd create a low-slumbering fire for himself and put it out minutes after because it couldn't keep him warm. Sometimes, an owl would hoot and the crickets' noise would fill the static distance between where he was and where he actually wanted to be.
But this was never the type of cacophony he wanted to hear. What he wanted to listen to was Sakura's melodious voice uttering his name in moments of grief and passion and this same voice edged with half-truth anger whenever she'd scream Shannaro. He wanted to hear little Sarada, crying, squalling even in her crib because it gave him a thousand reasons to live.
Sometimes he would stop by a satellite village, a convenient stopover, and he'd always hear scraps of conversation about someone's family. He'd then immediately wonder if Sarada, like the daughter of some villager, had also had her first word, her first step, and her first laugh. He had longed to hear the trill of her laugh so much that it pained him to see her crying and hurting instead in this unexpected reunion – but she would never know that.
Sarada would never know how he'd always think back to that day when he had decided to leave them. The first time he had left Sakura, he needed to do it for repentance, and repentance it was because he finally realized that the world wasn't really what he wanted to see. He could no longer try being alone once more so he returned. But when he found out that Konoha might be in danger again, he instinctively felt the need to protect everything he had once been blind to. He wanted to protect the village he once betrayed, the friends he once severed ties with, the woman he once pushed away, and the family once undreamt.
But Sarada would also never know how sometimes, he'd feel the fullness of his longing to return as if leaving the village had been a misplaced step. Outside Konoha and away from home, he had lived through what passes for life – the identical days and nights of waking up and sleeping without them – and he had wanted to regret ever saying he'd be fine doing it alone, that being away from Sakura and their daughter was bearable.
She'd never know how he'd sometimes look up to see the moon glow amidst the gray post-rain skies, hoping that she and Sakura were also viewing the same moon, and she'd never know how he'd plunge himself into sleep just to see her and Sakura in a spate of dreams.
But now Sarada was no longer a mere substance of his dreams. She was now a physical reality, and she called him Papa. He could hold her just like how he had always had in his dreams and yet he could do nothing else other than to stand, withdraw his hand, disappoint her, and tell her she had nothing to do with anything.
"I've had enough of it!"
He wanted to call her back, wipe her tears away, and just enfold her in his arms but she was the infant he had left twelve years ago and he didn't know how to hold her. When she was born, he satisfied himself with a single touch to her small hands before deciding to leave days after because holding her would have made it impossible for him to leave. He knew he couldn't just embrace her now as if he deserved it, as if he deserved being called Papa by someone who hadn't seen him for so long. He wasn't there to see her first step and hear her first word and first laugh,and he thought, he couldn't just hold her.
Sarada would never know the reason why he wasn't the kind of father she had hoped to have. He would never give her answers because keeping her in the dark, holding her at arm's length was the only way he could keep her safe.
...
Fin.
(edited.)