Hi everyone! Sorry for the sudden long absence after I'd gotten you all accustomed to weekly updates. "Real life" (although I actually dislike that term; fanfiction is part of my real life too, after all!) got a little crazy in April and I just didn't have the time or concentration to spare for this fic. But I'm back now and hoping to return to a faster posting schedule again. Thank you for all the continued support!

Also, WARNING: This chapter contains an act of violence. I don't think it's particularly extreme or graphic compared to some of the things we've seen in Naruto, but I realize it's probably not the kind of thing anyone is expecting from a fic like this, so just a heads-up. (PM me if you would prefer to get a summary of the chapter rather than reading it in full.) This also means that this chapter is somewhat less light-hearted than you may have come to expect, but don't worry, the story won't stay too sombre for too long.

In happier news, I was really encouraged and delighted by your responses to the last chapter (and the kiss!), which I was nervous about. Thank you so much :)


CHAPTER 9

Sarada stared at her phone where it rested on the table in front of her, feeling both irresistibly drawn to and strongly repelled from it. Despite the promise she'd made at the Gala to call Boruto, it had been a full day since then and she still hadn't been able to bring herself to do it. Of course, he hadn't tried to call or contact her in any way either, and she wasn't sure how to feel about that, or what to do next. Maybe she could call him but just not say anything about the—the kiss? Then again, if she avoided the subject so obviously, that might just make it more awkward. Whatever was between her and Boruto now (or had been before The Kiss), it was easy and relaxing and just fun. Did she really want to risk messing that up?

"Sarada."

She jumped in her seat, breaking out of her thoughts to find her father watching her from across the table with one eyebrow impatiently raised. She straightened, surprised at herself, and quickly flipped over her phone so she couldn't see the screen. She'd been waiting for this moment, for her father to take her out one-on-one and give her his full attention away from work, and yet now that it had come, she was too distracted to really appreciate it. It wasn't like her.

Sasuke eyed the phone disapprovingly. "Are you waiting to hear from your…"

Sarada couldn't tell if he'd trailed off because he just couldn't bear to speak the words "your boyfriend" in reference to Boruto, or because he was hoping to draw some sort of new information out of her by forcing her to fill in the blank.

Either way, she found a ruthless satisfaction in leaving him hanging. "My what?" she asked innocently.

His eyes narrowed. "Boruto," he snapped.

"My...Boruto?" Unable to resist baiting him, she held back a smile as his eyes narrowed even further.

"What exactly is he to you." Her father had always had a talent for firing off a question in such a commanding, unyielding manner that it somehow sounded more like an order.

She thought she'd made the answer to that pretty clear by announcing "We're dating" at the Gala, but maybe it hadn't fully sunk in for him yet. "My boyfriend," she replied, trying not to show how weird the word felt in her own mouth. (Or how it made her flash back to The Kiss yet again.)

Sasuke was forced to put the interrogation on pause as the waiter came over. Her father barely glanced at the man as he took their orders, staying fully focused on her. Once the waiter had left, looking a little intimidated even though none of the Uchiha's intensity had been directed at him, Sasuke pressed, "Are you certain?"

It took Sarada a moment to link the question with her earlier "boyfriend" statement. "Yes, Dad, I'm certain," she confirmed dryly. "I think I would know whether Boruto is or isn't my boyfriend."

But her common-sense claim wasn't quite as true as it should have been. She knew that Boruto wasn't her real boyfriend, of course...but she didn't entirely know what he was, at the moment.

"What, precisely, do you see in him?" The audible derision in her father's question set her on edge. He didn't even know Boruto, not really; it was arrogant and ignorant to insult him like this.

Still, she fought to keep her tone even as she replied, "Well, he's funny, and creative, and he doesn't take life too seriously. I can relax when I'm with him. We...we have fun together." It was all true, she realized with some surprise.

"You expect me to believe that you and Naruto's son are...compatible."

The unconcealed distaste in Sasuke's tone this time was too much for her. "I expect you to believe me," she retorted, almost snapping. "I know you're not particularly interested in my life. But I'm your daughter. Don't you even trust me?"

That seemed to genuinely throw him off, and he actually sat back, eyes widening slightly and losing their judgmental squint. "Not particularly interested in your life?" he repeated tonelessly.

"Not only do you not know Boruto, you barely know me," she forged on. "You're not in a position to judge who I'm truly compatible with, Dad. And don't you think it's a bit presumptuous of you to just assume that I even care what you think, when you've essentially ignored me for so long?"

She stopped, breathing harder than before, a little shocked at the boldness of her own remark. She had actually intended to keep playing it cool at this meeting, not let her temper talk. But her raw feelings had somehow wrested control over the situation away from her strategic mind.

"Your display of emotion suggests that you do, in fact, care what I think," Sasuke pointed out, but his tone was cautious, wary, lacking some of his usual cool self-assurance.

The truth in that struck her sharply, and she slumped in her seat, painfully confused. She did care what he thought, of course; that was the whole point of all this. The goal from the start had been to piss him off, which meant that she should have been thrilled that he was displeased with her choice of boyfriends, that he was taking time out of his day just to criticize Boruto. But instead it was genuinely angering her to hear him make negative assumptions about someone whose company she enjoyed, someone who had supported her and rushed fearlessly into rebellion along with her.

"I...I don't even know what I feel anymore," she admitted quietly, looking down at the table. It was the most emotionally honest thing she'd said to her father in a long time.

"Sarada..." Her father had a lot of ways of saying her name, most of them some variation of stern or expectant. She didn't think she'd ever heard him pronounce it so...hesitantly before, like he was at a loss, like he didn't know what to say, what order to give. Like he was as confused as she was.

A shadow fell over them as someone approached, presumably the waiter arriving with their food. Sarada was hesitant to look up from the table, afraid of what her father might be able to read in her eyes, but Sasuke's head snapped up toward the newcomer with an expression of irritation at being interrupted. Then he paused and said impatiently, "Yes? Can I help you?"

That seemed like a strange thing to say to a waiter, so Sarada glanced over curiously to see that the man who'd interrupted definitely wasn't the smartly dressed restaurant employee who had addressed them before; in fact, going by the clothing—a wrinkled brown button-up shirt and faded jeans—he wasn't a waiter at all. He was a moderately heavyset middle-aged man, probably around her father's age but not in quite as good shape, somewhat balding, with an unhealthy pallor under his stubble. Sweat was beading on his forehead despite the air conditioning inside the restaurant. Sarada would have guessed he was a work associate of her father's, one of the more laid-back ones who didn't pay much attention to their appearance when not on official business, if not for the fact that her father clearly didn't recognize him.

"Sasuke Uchiha," the stranger said. His voice was low, and trembled slightly.

"Yes?" Sasuke repeated, openly annoyed now.

"You've never cared about people for anything besides the profit they can bring you. You've only achieved everything you have by treating the people around you like trash and discarding them the moment they stop being useful," the man stated. His tone was oddly, creepily emotionless, when the words themselves sounded like they should have been spoken in anger. "You haven't earned your success or happiness."

Sasuke had gone rigid in his seat, his eyes flashing with a mix of outrage and shock. "What did you just say to me?" he hissed.

"Dad…" Sarada spoke up tentatively, a feeling of tremendous unease suddenly washing over her. She was aware that not everyone in town thought well of her high-profile father—a few times she herself had been confronted by people who just wanted to rant insultingly about him—but there was something really wrong with this man, she could sense it.

The stranger's gaze swivelled to her, sending a blaze of horror down her spine. However emotionless his speech might be, his eyes were the opposite; she could see pure, hot loathing churning darkly inside them. She'd never felt anything so malevolent directed at her before.

"It's your turn to feel what it's like to lose everything, just like I did thanks to you, Uchiha. It's what you deserve."

With that chilling statement, the man pulled something out of his pocket. There was a quiet clicking sound, and suddenly a blade flashed brightly in his hand.

He lunged at her, brandishing his knife wildly, and she leaped away on reflex, only to feel her back slam into the window next to their table. She had no means of retreat. But then, with a sharp exclamation of "Sarada!"—the most panicked sound she'd ever heard Sasuke Uchiha make—her father dove over the table, frantically grabbing for the man.

Sarada screamed.


"Boruto, is everything all right?"

At his mother's question, he looked up from his dinner to find not just Hinata but also his father and sister giving him concerned looks. He suddenly realized that more of his food had been scraped along his plate in chaotic patterns than actually consumed. Also, although Naruto had been half-staring, half-glowering at him across the table for the entire length of the meal in what was no doubt a silent demand that he explain his actions from the Gala (something that would ordinarily have goaded Boruto into obnoxiously talking about everything except that), he'd barely noticed, and barely spoken at all. All in all, it had been a very calm, civil meal. This was a rare—to the extent of being actually worrisome—occurrence when all the Uzumakis dined together, as they were doing tonight to make up for Naruto's absence from their traditional pre-Gala family dinner yesterday.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he hastened to assure them, trying to force a grin. "Just, uh, thinking."

Himawari nodded with a knowing air. "Oh, is it about Sara-"

"It's about school!" Boruto blurted out before she could finish the word, jerking upright and smacking the table so hard with his knee that he almost tipped over everyone's glasses. "Yeah, school. I'm thinking about school."

He was thinking about Sarada, of course—Sarada, and her lips, and the way they'd felt on top of his...he gave himself a mental slap as he felt his mind drifting down that road again. To be honest, after the Gala, The Kiss, and then a day of radio silence from her (not that a day was that long, not long enough to really mean anything—was it?), he was starting to go a little crazy, to the point where he might be willing to discuss the matter with Mitsuki, or maybe even Shikadai, not that either of them had a lot of great firsthand experience with women as far as he knew. But with his little sister and his parents, at the dinner table? No way.

Himawari and Hinata both had the tact to let it go at that, but Naruto had never had very good instincts when it came to knowing when to back off. "School?" he echoed, aggressively chewing the last of his own meal. "What about it? It's the summer, you aren't even in school right now." Not to mention that everyone in the family knew that Boruto, to whom good grades had always come easily, never worried about school even when it was in session.

"Well, yeah," Boruto continued lamely, "but it's starting up again in just, uh…"

"Two and a half months?" his father supplied skeptically.

Swearing internally at his total failure of a lie, Boruto stood up quickly. "Hey look, I'm done eating! Who else is done? I can take the dishes to the kitchen!" He grabbed a few plates and practically ran out of the room.

He proceeded to do the dishes with Himawari in a sort of fog; a couple of times she had to nudge him so he'd keep going after he'd paused with the soapy sponge dripping down his wrist. When they'd finally gotten through that, he poured himself a glass of cold water—every time he thought about how Sarada's mouth had felt pressed against his, which was around once every thirty seconds, he got uncomfortably warm all over—and returned to the living room in hopes of finding a distraction.

His parents were still there, now watching the evening news, and he took up a perch on the arm of the sofa next to where his mother was sitting. After studying him carefully for a minute, she stroked his forearm soothingly and leaned up to briefly whisper in his ear, "If you want to talk about anything, you know I'm here."

He nodded and tried to smile reassuringly at her, seriously considering the offer for a second. He wasn't used to talking to his mother about his love life problems (and wait, could Sarada even be considered part of his love life? They weren't really dating—but they had really kissed, or at least it had felt a heck of a lot like a real kiss to him), but she was a woman after all, and she'd proven she could be a rational adult about his relationship with Sarada, unlike his dad. Then again, it would be hard to get good advice from someone who didn't know about the whole fake-dating situation. Maybe he was better off starting with Mitsuki.

Suddenly the sound of a familiar name drew his attention to the TV screen, which was currently showing some sort of incident outside an upscale restaurant downtown. Footage of a police car and an ambulance at the scene was playing.

"It appears that prominent Konoha businessman Sasuke Uchiha, owner of the Uchiha Corporation, was dining here tonight with his daughter," a reporter was announcing in the cool, carefully enunciated tone typical of the news. Boruto tensed in surprise. "The details of the attack on the Uchiha family are currently unclear, but at least one person has apparently been taken to the hospital with serious injuries."

Boruto's whole body went numb all at once. He didn't even notice when his glass slipped through his fingers, or hear it shatter on the floor.


Sarada paced up and down the waiting room, occasionally stopping to lean against the wall when her legs got too shaky. She had washed her bloodstained hands in a daze in a hospital bathroom some time ago, but every time she looked down at them she still saw flashes of red and felt the thick, warm wetness seeping over her skin as she tried to halt its flow from her father's frighteningly still body. She couldn't stop thinking about that man, the look on his face, and the knife, sliding with such sickening ease into her father's stomach. For a crazy moment she seriously considered banging her head against the wall until she lost consciousness—anything to put an end to this torture.

"Sarada!"

The shout made her turn, and she saw Boruto barrelling across the room at high speed. For an instant of bewildered panic she thought he was going to body-slam her into the wall, but then she felt his arms encircle her and he pulled her into a tight embrace. She was pressed fully against his warm body, her lips smushed into his collarbone, his mouth moving against her hair as he questioned her urgently.

"Sarada! Are you okay? Are you hurt? What the hell happened? Why didn't you answer your phone?!"

Stunned by the outpouring of genuine concern, and a little alarmed to find that he was shaking against her, she patted his back tentatively. "I'm—I'm fine," she assured him. "I wasn't hurt. My...my dad, he protected me." Her voice trembled as she replayed the awful moment in her mind for the millionth time.

Still gripping her shoulders, he pulled back to look into her face. His usually clear blue eyes were stormy with emotion. "Your dad? Is he all right?"

"I...I don't know yet." She swallowed hard, sort of wishing he would hug her again. It had been unexpected but oddly comforting.

A noise made her look over Boruto's shoulder, and she saw his father standing there, waiting a couple of metres away. Naruto was watching her with a funny look on his face, like he wasn't sure what to make of her.

Boruto twisted to see what had grabbed her attention, letting her go for a moment as he turned around to face his father. But just as quickly he put an arm over her shoulders, drawing her into his side again. She had to stifle the uncharacteristic urge to turn her face into his chest and just block out the world, block out everything that had happened tonight.

"Sarada," Naruto spoke first, looking uncharacteristically grim. "We heard on the news there was an attack. I'm glad you're okay. How is Sasuke, do you know?"

"He's in surgery. He was...stabbed." Nausea rose up in her as she said the words, and for a second she thought she was going to have to make a run for the bathroom, but Boruto gave her a gentle one-armed squeeze, and the warm pressure steadied her. She took a deep breath.

Naruto looked rather sick as well, but he just asked, "Is there anything you need? Someone who needs to be called?"

She shook her head. "My mom already knows—she was working a shift here when he was brought in. She's in the OR with him now."

"He's in good hands then," Naruto said with a firm nod. "Sarada, your dad and I may not always get along, but I mean it when I say he's the toughest bastard I know. He'll be okay."

She caught Boruto shooting his dad a glare for his less than sensitive choice of phrasing, but she felt strangely grateful for his words. Maybe she should have been offended that Naruto was still calling her father a bastard in these circumstances, but she actually found it reassuring, a glimpse of routine among the chaos. Now if only her dad would wake up so he could call Naruto a moron in return.

"Want to sit down?" Boruto asked her. She didn't really, but it wasn't like standing up was any better, so she let him lead her to a chair in the waiting room. He sat next to her and took her fingers in his, resting their clasped hands on his leg. Naruto took out his cell phone and moved into a corner, talking in a low voice.

"What actually happened?" Boruto asked quietly, leaning his head in close to hers. "I mean, if you feel like talking about it."

She steeled herself and gave him an abbreviated summary, achieving a weak, shaky imitation of the professional, detached monotone her father specialized in. Boruto's grip on her hand tightened considerably during the account, and her fingers were starting to go numb, but somehow she didn't want his hold to loosen. "Did they get the guy?" was all he asked when she finished.

She nodded. "I knocked him down, and security came and grabbed him."

"You knocked him down?"

On any other occasion, she would have been quite pleased by how impressed he sounded. "My dad made me take self-defense classes in high school."

"Wow. Remind me not to get on your bad side." He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. "Maybe I should get Himawari to take a class too."

Boruto's clear concern for his sister was something she'd liked about him from the start, and Sarada found herself offering impulsively, "I could teach her a few moves."

"Really? You'd do that?" he said, surprised.

She took a deep, quavering breath and groped for the normalcy of their usual exchanges. "Your sister seems smart; I'm sure teaching her won't be hard. If you wanted me to teach you, on the other hand…" As far as jibes went, it wasn't her best, but Boruto had relaxed her enough to at least try. With him next to her, her grip on sanity suddenly felt considerably more secure.

"Hey!" he protested, playing along, but there was no real complaint in his voice. And a moment later he sobered completely, all humour fading from his features.

"Sarada...you really scared me tonight. When I heard there had been an attack on Sasuke Uchiha and his daughter…I was just...I mean, I..." He searched for the words to describe his reaction for a few moments before simply giving up, running his free hand through his hair with a sigh. "Try not to do that to me again, huh?"

"It's not like it was my fault," she said, but there was no sting in it, her tone softened by his sincere confession. It had been obvious that he'd been worried from the way he'd held onto her earlier, but she was touched to hear him say it out loud.

"I know. I didn't mean it like that!" he exclaimed, appalled. "Of course it wasn't your fault. That guy's obviously a total psycho. I just…"

She leaned over and pressed a light, quick kiss to his cheek, effectively silencing him. "I know what you meant," she said. "Thank you, Boruto."

"Uh...y-yeah...no, no problem," he stammered, totally caught off guard by the gesture. He blushed faintly.

There was movement in her peripheral vision, and she glanced up to see Naruto taking the seat on Boruto's other side. If he'd witnessed that last exchange, he didn't comment.

"I called Hinata," he informed Boruto. "Let her know we'd probably be here a while." He leaned over so he could see past his son, making eye contact with Sarada. "She wanted me to tell you she's thinking of you and sending her best wishes. And if you or your mom need anything, we'd be happy to help."

"Thank you," Sarada said quietly, meaning it. She still wasn't quite sure what to make of Naruto himself—he seemed like a good man, but he tended to come on a little strong, and his constant ridiculous exchange of insults with her father was rather off-putting—but there was no denying that his wife was a lovely woman, generous and thoughtful to a fault.

As Sasuke's surgery wore on into the wee hours of the night, the three of them continued to wait. Boruto tried to distract her by telling her stories about his dumb childhood antics (with occasional input from Naruto, generally to emphasize just how spectacularly dumb the antic in question had been), but she only half-listened, her worry increasing with every passing minute. She and her father had been arguing at that ill-fated dinner. What if that had been their last conversation ever? There was so much she hadn't told him: how much she loved and respected him, how badly she wanted to hear from him that he loved and respected her too. Not to mention that if he...if the worst happened, it would be because of her. He'd been protecting her. How was she supposed to live with that?

It felt like an eternity later when the doors to the waiting room swung open and Sakura walked in, still in green medical scrubs, her gait tired but steady. Sarada shot to her feet, the two Uzumakis close behind, but she was afraid to advance further, not sure if she wanted to hear the news.

Then her mother met her eyes and smiled—only slightly, and very exhaustedly, but it was still a smile. And Sarada knew everything was going to be okay.

She all but flew across the room, burying herself in her mother's open arms, the terrified tears she'd been holding in spilling out all at once. When she finally stepped away again, her vision was so blurred from crying that she could barely see, but she could feel Boruto's warm hand on her back, steadying her.


A/N: A chapter that certainly brings out my flair for the melodramatic. I feel somewhat guilty about using the rather cheap "random act of violence" device, but the attacker's motives will turn out to have some not-completely-random significance, and since I didn't want to commit to a very lengthy fic, I felt I needed the help of some external pressure to give Sasuke his necessary wake-up call within a reasonable time frame. I hope no one was too worried, anyway; despite this dip into seriousness, I promise this is not the kind of fic in which anyone suffers permanent damage (unless falling in love qualifies as permanent damage?). As always, thank you for reading!