a/n: inspired by fanofthisfiction's story, Regret. submission for ssmonth day 22 prompt, baby shoes. 500-word story challenge for myself. flash fiction (maybe). reviews/PMs would be lovely.
splinters
Her hand was on the knob; the other, forming the gesture of a knock. Only a door was separating Uchiha Sarada from her father.
Father.
Her tongue was so used to curling away from the word that its involuntary release from her lips prompted distant memories: those vacant looks and threadbare phrases that had passed between them.
She felt a sudden knot of anger, wondering why she was still standing there, so she dropped her hands and turned away.
She walked down the white-lit, sterile hall filled with tired and grim expressions, and laments deprived of consonants – a forlorn attempt to retrieve a permanent loss.
Her face remained blank, held high: I'm okay. My father is dying. But I'm okay.
...
Uchiha Sakura looked at her husband of thirty years: his coal hair, now flecked with ashes, and his muscles, now swathed in wrinkled flesh.
The emotionless beeping of the machine and the tubes, cold against his pale skin, are an excess, a reminder.
"I'll call her."
"Don't."
"You've got to fix things, Sasuke. She has to – "
"I cannot blame her."
"But it was never your fault."
"That will never change the fact that I left her, you."
She shook her head furiously. "You're still her father, Sasuke-kun. And you're ... you're..."
Sasuke slowly raised his hand, touching his fingers to her forehead. She met his smile then, placing his hand lovingly against her cheek, giving a firm nod despite her tears spilling. "I'll see you."
...
Sarada hesitantly walked to where he was lying, her steps, clinical: a match to the unerring beep, beep of the machine. A branch was softly rapping against the window, and she turned to see the raindrops running down gently, a lone leaf swaying in place, then – a drumming, leaf snapping.
A final intake of breath:
"Mother told me to come."
There was a smile behind his eyes when he opened them.
"Sarada."
She stood there ill at ease, feeling the familiar surge of anger.
"Sarada..." he breathed, his voice strained yet full of warmth.
"Don't be so familiar with me."
With an enormous effort, he reached for something on the table – a quick shuffle then a resounding heap on the floor.
Sarada instinctively picked up the package wrapped in time-stained paper, giving it to him. Sasuke held her hands in place.
"Open it, Sarada."
She had looked at her father for a brief haunting moment before doing as she was told.
She let out a choked sob, tears rising in her eyes, the object dissolving into her hand.
"I bought them from a store in a village," his weak voice, thunderous to her ears, "For your first birthday. But I never made it back in time, did I?"
"Pa...pa," her wavering voice, echoing elsewhere, filled and hollowed at the same time.
"Please forgive me, Sarada."
"Papa."
Through tears, she saw him smile with effort, his face, falling.
In the next breath, there was the final beep, the baby shoes on the floor.
...
Fin.