Excerpts of Life
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto became the Hokage and Uchiha Sasuke married Haruno Sakura. Life had gone on as everyone had predicted, except for those moments where everyone knows that something went wrong along the way.
Masashi Kishimoto owns Naruto. I was completely dissatisfied with how Naruto ended as far as the pairings, so I decided to voice my dislike for it. Enjoy.
Chapter One: Uchiha Sarada
She didn't know that seeing her father for the first time would cause her to activate her Sharingan. She didn't know her mother was not actually her mother. In fact, now that she thought about it, she didn't know a lot of things, which irked her. But she knew absolutely nothing about Uchiha Sasuke. He was her father and that was it.
He was handsome; he was in fact more handsome than she thought he was going to be. And powerful, he almost radiated with it. And Sarada was scared for a second, her father was powerful, she knew, powerful enough to match the Hokage, but he was her father. And she loved him despite all the years of absence.
Once at home, after the fight and tears and exhaustion, she thought back to a moment, which she had put out of her mind. Her father and the look he gave the Hokage. Sarada was observant and even though it might have been an emotional moment her Sharingan eyes had captured everything. The moment her father saw the Hokage, he had visibly looked startled and then his eyes went back to normal. It was a look Sarada had always imagined her father would give to her mother.
Happiness, understanding and something that Sarada could not understand.
Her father had relaxed and looked as if he had been waiting for that moment for a long time, as if he had always been waiting for the Hokage. And then her father approached the Hokage and gently, almost reverently, carded his fingers through blonde hair until he lovingly traced a scarred cheek and tentatively touched the corner of light pink lips.
Sarada thought at the moment nothing of it; the Hokage and her father were friends, the best as she had heard from her mother and the village. They must have missed each other very much, and seeing the other again must have been emotional.
But Sarada wasn't an idiot. The look the Hokage gave her father, the smile that was wide and happy. Blue eyes sparkling and shining with emotions before the Hokage had pulled her father into a hug and he had held onto her father as if he might disappear. His hands trembling as they pulled her father closer to himself.
They looked like lovers who had not seen each other for a long time. Like men starved for water and finally getting a single drop.
But… Sarada had seen her father care for her mother. Had seen him look at her with tenderness in his eyes. And somehow it had been lacking despite the fact that they were married. It had not been the same kind of look her father had given the Hokage.
Through her window, Sarada watched as her father walked out of their house and met with another person, blonde hair brilliant even in the night. She thought she had imagined it, but she thought for a second that their hands came together and held onto each other.