AN: Kinda feeling weird about this. I haven't watched or read Naruto in about two years, but after watching the Boruto movie on a whim, I felt compelled to write this! Also read some of Sarada's Gaiden, and so the idea of filling the blank years with my own thoughts seriously has stuck with me! Thankfully Finals are over, and so I'll have quite a bit of time to write!

Please feel free to send me PMs on any mistakes I've made! Definitely open to critique! I'm definitely hoping to improve and made this into something worthwhile.

UPDATE: This chapter has been improved with the help of my fantastic beta reader, Littlepocky! I am deeply grateful for the work she's doing on this fic.

Prologue

Coming home early was now a strange habit that Sarada had developed. Though the house felt smaller, having her father around was a highlight that she'd never actually admit to out loud. Strangely, she was drawn to the man whose path she denounced, and his lack of openness about the full contents of his life made him a target of curiosity.

Today, she had been taken to a store by him to pick up a small gift. Sarada knew her mother's birthday was coming up, but she didn't realise that her father himself knew until he had presented her with a small porcelain figure. It was in shape of a slug. "Do you think this is acceptable?" He asked this with no tone of emotion, nor any visible sign of contemplation. This expression broke the moment that Sarada herself grimaced.

"I think maybe...we're talking about the same person, right? Mom?"

The man furrowed his eyebrows, his lips twitching once in hesitation before placing back the object just as he had found it. "There are a great many deal of baubles here. It's difficult to discern what she'd like."

"How would you know what she likes? You haven't exactly been here to find out, have you?"

This comment, biting as it sounded coming out of Sarada's mouth, simply left a thoughtful silence behind it. Fully turning to his daughter, the Uchiha patriarch leaned down slightly, and she in turn moved a step back, then took another one. No words were spoken between them as he watched her, and though in the end he finally shut his eyes and turned his attention back to the statues. He remained generally unfazed by her words, leaving her with a rather curt response instead.

"I know my wife."

"Do you?"

"People say that they can change, but in truth only their inner nature is revealed." He picked up the slug again from the shelf and inspected it carefully before literally taking every single one off the shelf, much to the Uchiha child's utter horror. The purchase was quiet and with few words, with Sarada hesitantly following behind his footsteps until they started making their way towards another shop. She frowned at the way that her father spoke, but said nothing about it. It was clear that he had his reasons (no matter how ridiculous) and there was no convincing him otherwise that her mom might not like the idea of receiving a statue of a mollusk for her birthday—or a hundred for that matter.

Sarada rushed up to the man, but before she was able to get a single word out, half of the small boxes that carried the small figurines were given to her, a load that more than covered half of her face from him before he'd begin walking once again. She struggled and fumbled to and fro to keep the boxes from falling out of her grip. It was enough to give Sasuke a twinge of a smile when he looked back momentarily. His own boxes were neatly in his folded arm without much effort, and it wasn't long until the man decided it was probably for the best if he held all of them. Walking back to the struggling Sarada, he knelt down and placed all the boxes on the floor, before taking the ones his daughter had into his own arms and gently pouring them onto the floor. With his knees in the dirt, he started to stack the small boxes into a column.

When his daughter attempted to help, her hand was met with the Sasuke's stub, which was raised up to halt her from approaching. "C-Can't you at least use shadow clones?" The guilt and thoughts of ineptitude were bubbling in her core.

"Please take my cloak and hold it open."

"But-..." She trailed off as she watched her father make a stack that nearly topped off over her arm's highest reach. As he knelt once more to pick up the column from it's base, he threw them up into the air, only to see a suddenly panicked Sarada rush with the cloak to catch the whole load- which for the most part, she did. The single one that managed to drop out of her reach was caught by the man himself before placing it along with the others in what was now a makeshift sack.

It was really all worth absolutely nothing in the end, and Sarada begrudgingly tied together the cloth that held their purchases. "Couldn't you have just asked the man in the store for a few bags? I could have carried those."

"No."

"Do you always make things more difficult than they need to be?"

Sasuke looked back at her, looking her over carefully before bending down to her level. "I am capable." He placed his hand on her shoulder and patted it before brushing up and through her hair. The moment they made eye contact, Sarada grew slightly more tense, but as fast as Sasuke noticed, he broke it, furrowing his eyebrows. "I know you don't understand… and I'm not upset you're asking these questions. The fact that I did not walk a beaten path means I may have to do things differently now, but I want to make sure you're a part of that."

Those words caught her attention, and at this, he smiled, as he saw a slight shimmer in her eyes. It was familiar, and a ghost of a smile flickered on his face as quickly as it went: barely noticeable, but noticed. It captivated his daughter that there was some sense of joy in a man who had difficulty expressing anything, and although she was still frustrated, in a way, she found his mannerisms fascinating.

The door slammed open. Sarada had run home all on her own, leaving her father to his devices.

"I NEED TO UNDERSTAND DAD," Sarada shouted into the house, a comment that was immediately received with a pink head slowly rising from the sofa. The corners of her eyes were creased as she wiped away the sleep from them. What had she said? What was Sarada going on about?

"Understand your dad?" She sat up at this moment to see that Sarada herself was peeking into the house.

The young Uchiha walked in, alone and with nothing in hand before slipping off her shoes at the door. "How could you fall in love with a guy like that? He's so...strange."

"Not to insult your question, but you wouldn't exactly be here if we didn't fall in love." Her question had touched a nerve, and trying to even out her voice was probably as important to her as sitting up to make room for her. From the look on her face, Sarada knew she was invited to sit beside her mother, and she did so, seeming as tense as ever in face of the question. "He's your father, Sarada. And he's no more strange than Naruto is."

"Uncle Naruto is the Lord Seventh! He's not the same thing! He's always there...for everyone and it isn't awkward or frustrating or just...weird." The concentration on her face was familiar to Sakura, and the searching eyes that she saw stirred something within her that somehow made the woman feel at ease. She understood it, and with that, she simply wrapped an arm around her child and held her close. "It's not as difficult as you think it is. If you want to know why your dad is as he is, you shouldn't ask why, but how."

"How?" She looked up at her mom with curiosity.

She nodded at this and offered a smile. "How he changed. How he became a better person. How he opened up and let love come into his life where there was none before."

Sarada had caught onto the context quickly and hesitated for a moment. "Wait… you're saying that things were worse before you two got together?"

Pulling her hand away from Sarada, she made an odd face. "Don't take it like my love saved him or anything like that! But for the most part, things were difficult before, yes. It's not a story that I should be telling you though. At least not now."

"Could you at least tell me everything else?"

"Alright." Sakura leaned forward and hung her head to the floor. Whilst her eyes were hidden from view by shadows, she furrowed her eyebrows before taking a deep sigh. Her head then tilted up, towards the roof, as she begun to recall the story, cobbling as many pieces of memories together to spin into a tale for her wide-eyed child.

"It all began after the war when he came back to us and left again, but this time with a promise and a journey..."