Title: make-believe
Prompt: July 6 / skin deep
A/N: Sarada is always going to be a momma's girl.
Summary: Her mother tells her a tale of a man she never knew and she thinks he's just a legend, a story, a ghost.
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"And that is how we completed our first mission." Sarada's mother smiled, still perched on the edge of the bed. "A little scary, wasn't it?"
"I guess." Sarada pulled the blankets up higher, frowning. "Dad activated his sharingan when he was 12?"
"Yeah." Her mom got up now, adjusting the blankets and tucking them in around Sarada's body. "I didn't get to see it myself exactly—Naruto would know better."
"Huh. Then maybe in a few years I will?"
Her mom ruffled Sarada's hair. "Maybe. You are your father's daughter."
"I guess." Sarada covered an eye with her hand. Her father's daughter.
"Anyways, I'll tell you another story tomorrow—it's late now." Her mom tickled her belly lightly and Sarada couldn't stifle the giggles.
"No fair," she gasped, between her laughs.
"Alright." Her mother winked before kissing her on the forehead. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
The lights turned off and Sarada shifted to her side.
Her father's daughter. Was she really that?
Or maybe they were just that. Just words, just lines on a paper, a birth certificate that marked them as kin. Their bond was skin deep, just the bones and blood and the markers of DNA that showed the connection between father and daughter.
And her mother, her mother was trying to make that bond something more, something deeper. Every night she told Sarada tales of their youth.
Though she knew better, though she knew her father was more than just a tale, a photo, a memory, she couldn't tell her mom it wasn't working. That these stories did nothing.
Her father could walk in that door and Sarada would still think he was just a legend, a story, a ghost.
He was just a man who was more fantasy than fact.