A/N: Because I stan Mikoto Uchiha.

There were five love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch.

Mikoto liked to think she knew her friends and family well enough that she could tell what their love language was if she wanted to. Kushina's was physical touch, Mebuki's was words of affirmation, and her father's was receiving gifts.

Kushina liked to joke that Minato was all five at once - a storm of love. Mebuki informed her that Kizashi's was acts of service.

Mikoto's own love language... well, that wasn't too difficult. Quality time was of course her primary, physical touch her secondary, and acts of service was the third runner up (perhaps she had put too much thought into it, but no matter). She did not need words to tell her fiance she loved him, or bring him little trinkets to let him know she thought of him. Her love was spoken through the time she spent making dinner while he rambled on about how well the police force was doing. Her love was spoken through how she'd hold him close to her in the dead of night, when she was so sure he was asleep, and her love was shown when she would care for him when he got sick, no matter if she felt a bit unwell herself.

It had always been much harder to tell with him - exactly what he felt at all. He was not so devoid of emotion, he was always proud of his trainees and how hard they worked. Fugaku could smile and feel things, but whether he smiled for her was up for debate.

While Mebuki had always been the most serious out of the trio, Mikoto was not a silly little girl. Quite far from it, in fact. She had fallen in love with her fiance when he saved her life, so many years before. She was only twelve then, and he seventeen. They'd spoken only out of necessity before, but suddenly she began to make up excuses to her mother and father to see the older boy, whether it was to engage in polite conversation or just to watch him train.

His focus on whatever task was at hand always managed to astound her. It was mesmerizing, really, to see him so proficient in... well, everything, honestly. There was not a thing Fugaku Uchiha wasn't good at.

"You know I'm much older than you," he remarked one day, after she'd turn thirteen.

"Not really," she huffed. "Five years is hardly much a difference."

He quirked an eyebrow and, decidedly ignoring her, took a long drink from his water. They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Is it that obvious I come out here just to see you?" she finally asked, bashfully turning away and fiddling with her shirt.

"There are plenty of girls who do the same," he snorted. "Or try to, anyway. So, yes. It just so happens that I don't really mind with you. You're not as annoying as the rest of them."

And deeper in love she fell.

After that, she began to tend to his wounds whenever he came back from a mission or pushed himself particularly hard. Mikoto loved to see his cold eyes go ever-so-slightly wide with admiration when she used her healing chakra (she wasn't an amazing medic nin by any means - she just so happened to know the basics). It made her feel important, like she was someone worth gawking at.

When she was fourteen, she met Kushina (who was only ten at the time). The girl had scraped her knee, and Mikoto found her angrily pouring ice water on it, and offered to clean it up for her. The redhead just scoffed and said, "I could clean it myself, if I wanted to, 'ttebane! I just don't feel like it, so . . . yes, please."

And so began a beautiful friendship. Kushina told her all about some blond boy who she believed to have some sort of crush on her, and in turn, Mikoto told her about Fugaku. Kushina told the Uchiha that some boy shouldn't make her feel so special (what was he worth?) but Mikoto merely shrugged her off and told her she just didn't know what love was like, and that she'd understand when she was older.

"Ne, Mikoto-chan," Kushina said, one night when the older girl, then fifteen, had snuck out of the house again to spend time with her friend. "Do you really love Fugaku?"

Mikoto blinked, then smiled to herself. "Yes," she answered without hesitation. "I believe I always will."

Kushina bit her lip. "But, y'know, don't you guys have those nasty traditions, dattebane?"

"What do you mean?"

"Won't the entire clan plan out who you guys marry?" she said.

Mikoto laughed, sadness welling up in her chest despite the happy sound. "I suppose you're right, but that doesn't mean I can't love him from afar, right? I mean, at the academy, isn't there someone you know who prefers to love from a distance?"

Kushina turned her head to look at Mikoto and made a face. "No one prefers to love from a distance, you weirdo."

They shared a laugh before Kushina continued. "Mebuki-chan really likes Kizashi, dattebane, but he's got a new girlfriend every week. I try telling her it's never gonna work but she still likes him. I don't know why." She scrunched up her nose in distaste. "She's so serious and quiet, and he's... not."

"Opposites attract," Mikoto said. "I don't think Fugaku-san and I are anything alike, really. If we had children, they'd probably be all over the place, personality-wise." She sighed, content in her daydream of one day having kids with the boy- no, that wasn't quite right. He'd grown, was going to soon be the head of the clan. He was a man now.

Kushina raised an eyebrow. "So... you're already planning on having kids, then?"

"Oh, shush!" she exclaimed, throwing grass on her friend. They giggled together before Mikoto said that they should both probably head home. Kushina groaned but relented. Mikoto figured, that night, she might as well have just stayed out. She couldn't sleep anyway.

Mikoto got a letter about a week after her late night conversation with Kushina. The envelope didn't say much, only Mikoto, but she knew his handwriting well enough to know who the letter belonged to. She carefully opened it, doing her best to not tear the paper.

I am leaving for a mission. I don't know when I'll be back. Arigatou.

Fugaku

It wasn't the letter she read over and over. It was not the delicate curve of his perfectly written a's she focused on. Instead, it was the simple thank you. Mikoto tried to recall if she could remember Fugaku thanking anyone, and found she could not. It was such a simple, silly thing, really. But it gave her a tiny sliver of hope to hold onto, and she clung to it like a child to their favorite stuffed dinosaur. Holding the letter that held so few words close to her heart, she looked at the sky and let a single tear slide down her face.

She didn't know why he'd thank her, and she didn't know what she would do if she weren't able to go watch him train in the afternoons. It had become somewhat of a routine for her, one she knew she'd miss. Although, she supposed she would be busy. She was skilled enough to be a jounin, and was expecting to take the exams in just a week. By that logic, she wouldn't have time for boys and would instead be training to become an elite kunoichi, and after that, working on high-ranked missions all the time. Still, even with these thoughts, for the rest of the day, only one stuck out like a sore thumb.

Will he miss me?

A year later, he came home, twice the man he was before. She was still only sixteen, hardly a woman. As expected, he didn't give her a second glance when he walked through the village gates.

Of course he didn't. There were much prettier girls in Suna, where his father had informed her he was. To think he was only three days away - she could have gone to see him at any given time! But of course she wouldn't. She didn't think she could bare the rejection that would surely come.

She came home one day, not long after his lengthy mission, to find him sitting on her doorstep.

"Fugaku-san?" she said, disbelief overtaking her emotions.

"Aa," he greeted. "I wanted to say thank you."

There it was - the thank you that seemed so out of character of the twenty-one year old. It was the second time he'd said it, and a year had passed since the first. Still, it felt like only yesterday she received the seemingly insignificant letter that now lay in the drawer in the dresser by her bedside.

"For what?" she asked, dropping down next to him.

"You are..." He seemed to struggle for a word. "You're kind, Mikoto."

Mikoto blinked and, after a minute of awkward silence of her staring at him while he glared at the ground, began to giggle.

"Oh, Fugaku-san," she said teasingly. "You are much older than me."

He blinked, looking at her, and then appeared to realize that she was quoting what he'd said three years before. "Ha ha," he said. "You're really annoying, you know that?"

Mikoto only smiled when he stood up and left. Perhaps he had a strange way of showing affection... but it was still affection nonetheless.

She wondered how he truly felt. Of course he probably didn't love her, but maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that she held a place in his heart, no matter how small.

When she told Kushina, who'd recently graduated from the academy, the younger girl said, "I wanna meet him, dattebane! I mean, if you talk about him so much, he must be good for something." Mikoto just laughed.

When she was seventeen, her father died.

They were on a mission together to capture a rogue ninja. It was an A-rank mission, and he'd told her it was likely one of them would not make it out alive. Mikoto found the thought concerning, and told him, "Of course we'll both make it out okay, Papa. You have nothing to worry about."

He merely smiled and pat her head.

There was a time when Mikoto would not have taken the mission at all, knowing she could die and never have the chance to be with and marry her beloved Fugaku. However, when he'd started showing interest in her cousin, who'd became a jounin at fourteen and already awakened her Sharingan long ago and was everything Mikoto was not, she began to fall apart.

Kushina and Mebuki both tried to tell her that it was not worth it - to completely throw her life away over a boy.

"You don't understand!" Mikoto had sobbed. "I love him! I have for years!"

The two younger girls just shared pitying looks and a sigh.

Mikoto was ready to accept her fate. She was seventeen, and yet so accomplished. There was, perhaps, nothing more she could have gotten out of her life save for a child or two, but what would it matter? She could love them and give them the whole world, and still wish they were Fugaku's.

It was not as if she had only spent her years pining after him, chasing only to fall and get hurt. She had done incredible things, some only an elite and experienced shinobi could.

One hit. It was all it took for both Mikoto and the rogue to fall.

"Mikoto!" her father cried out, but he would not make it in time. He could not make it in time. She would not allow it.

But he did.

It was a single kunai, lodged deep inside of his chest, right above his heart. It seemed like he didn't even acknowledge the pain at first, like the weapon that had never seemed very deadly during her training hadn't even hit him. He fell to the ground with a grunt and a loud thud, and Mikoto felt panic rising in her chest. The rogue was dead, she wasn't sure how, she couldn't remember, but he was dead. There was no danger. She was safe. But her father was not.

She cried and cried at his side, begged for him to stay with her, and through the hyperventilation, through her shaking hands, used her limited knowledge on medical ninjutsu to try and heal him, but he only cupped her face - he wasn't shaking, but she was, she couldn't stop - and smiled. It scared her, to see the blood that was so dark and dirty, dribble out of his mouth, and she involuntarily let out an inhuman noise, resembling that of a frightened wild animal.

"You have much to live for," he whispered, his voice hoarse, his eyes ever so slowly losing the precious light that illuminated them when he bounced her on his knee as a child. "You are so young, Mikoto-chan. The Will of Fire burns within you. I..." He coughed, and she let out a choked sob, but through her trembling lips, could not feel it escape her mouth.

"Papa, no, you can't-" Her mouth felt thick, and she had a hard time talking.

"I love you, little one."

His eyes glazed over, crimson blood trickling out of his smiling mouth still. His hand dropped to his side. Mikoto stared for what seemed like forever, not wanting it to be real, not wanting to believe he was really dead, before letting out a guttural scream.

Mikoto knew she had finally activated her Sharingan after all these years, but at what cost? The life of the one she held so dear to her? Her bloodline was never something to be proud of, she realized as she tried to shake her father awake, his body still warm. It was a curse.

She passed out from chakra exhaustion, but did not know when. When she awoke, she was met with the blinding white of Konoha's hospital.

"Oh, dear," she heard someone say. "Aiko, if you would retrieve Uchiha-sama and inform him she's awake?"

The nurse named Aiko scurried away as Mikoto sat up in the almost disgustingly bright room. "A-ah, excuse me?" She licked her dry, cracked lips and tried to ignore her pounding headache as she looked for the person who'd spoken.

"Shush, child, you'll injure yourself even furthe4r."

Mikoto's eyes landed on the doctor, and saw it to be Tsunade. "I guess my injuries were pretty bad, huh?" she said, letting out a rough, bittersweet laugh that turned to raw sobs as she recalled what had happened. Tsunade said nothing, only patiently waiting until the last of Mikoto's tears had dried up. She found she was so dehydrated that although she wanted to cry more, to grieve over her deceased father, she could not.

The woman's eyes looked over her clipboard and clashed with Mikoto's bloodshot ones. "When the Uchiha found you, you were half-dead."

The Uchiha...?

As it turned out, Fugaku had once again saved her life, like he did five years prior. He was no longer in the hospital when they went to fetch him, and Mikoto didn't see him again for months, much less speak to him.

There was a big, grand funeral to honor her father, who'd honorably died in combat. If Fugaku had not come when he did, the funeral would have been hers, as well.

She didn't go.

When she was eighteen, Kushina and Mebuki were promoted to chuunin and she found herself sometimes taking regular C-rank missions with them. It was fun, nothing ever serious. It was genuinely nice to just relax and escort people from one place to another, never worrying about dying or the like.

Much to everyone's surprise, Mebuki had finally worked up the courage to win over Kizashi's heart, and it appeared that Minato had been showing special interest in Kushina as of late. She was happy, ridiculously so, for the younger girls, but couldn't help wishing that she could have fallen in love with someone more in her league.

"Hey, what's your love language?" Mebuki said one day, as they lied in the bright green grass, not caring about the stains that would surely end up on their clothes.

Mikoto blinked at her. "My what?"

"Your love language. There are five: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch."

"Oh, I don't know, I'll have to look into it, I guess," Mikoto answered, feeling a little silly, and like maybe she should know.

She knew, after reading the descriptions for each in a book at the local library, what hers was immediately, as well as everyone else she knew. That is, except for Fugaku, but he didn't really count (honestly, it was always hard to tell what he was thinking at all).

When she was nineteen, he took her out for dinner, because apparently he felt they had a lot of catching up to do.

She wore a nice dress and did her hair up, but found herself wishing she hadn't, while he stood there in all his glory with his dirty Konoha Police Force uniform and messy hair. It was awkward at first, the silence seemingly suffocating her and leading her to her own thoughts.

"My friends don't like you," she blurted after they'd gotten their drinks. "They think you're a pompous ass, and quite frankly I've found myself agreeing with them lately."

He had next to no reaction and instead nodded. "Is that so?"

Oh gods, she was an idiot.

"Yup, that's right," she said. "They're angry at you because all you've done these last seven years is break my heart into a million pieces and then stomp on it like your life depends on it. And, to be honest, can you really blame them? I mean, you don't even spare me a passing glance when you walk by, and then all of a sudden, you're inviting me to dinner and telling me you want to catch up-" Oh, boy, she was rambling now. "-and, you know, you're really giving me mixed signals here, Mr. Cool Guy."

"I want you to marry me."

Mikoto stared at him in shock, her dark eyes wide with disbelief. Did he just- no way. This was a joke. But... Fugaku didn't do jokes. "No way," she murmured.

He arched an eyebrow. "You don't want to marry me?"

She gaped at him before realizing what he said. "N-no, that's not it!" Her hands cupped her face, trying to hide the embarrassment clearly shown on her pale cheeks.

"My cousin," she said at last, when she was sure the blush had died down as much as it was going to (which wasn't a lot - he just proposed.) "You were talking to her so much, I just thought . . ."

"She told me you were close," he said. "She was helping me more than anything. Sorry I had to ask this way. It wasn't supposed to be like this, and I certainly didn't expect you to insult me." Seeing the humiliation written on her face, he added, "Not that I didn't deserve it. Your friends are right. I have been a pompous ass."

Mikoto clenched her fists, her hands shaking. The shock had finally settled in, and she could feel the tears coming to her eyes. For so long, she had cried. Cried over him, cried over father, cried over all the darkness and hatred in the world.

But none of that was why she cried. She cried because she was happy, which seemed like a silly thing when she thought about it, but she didn't care.

She let the tears roll down her face as she reached across the table and threw her arms around him. He let out a yelp of surprise, but didn't push her away, and she found that she was the happiest she felt in a long time, albeit the fact that it was a pretty bad proposal. She didn't care - he finally felt something for her, at least, and that was the only thing she ever wished for.

Mikoto was twenty now, and as she looked a framed photo from the day he'd proposed to her, she smiled softly. She was getting married in a matter of minutes to the man she loved, with Kushina as her maid of honor, and her cousins and Mebuki as her bridesmaids. Minato had managed to convince Fugaku that he should be the best man, and Mikoto chuckled to herself. Boys.

"Psst, Mikoto!" Kushina said, popping her head in the doorway. "You ready, dattebane?"

The older woman held back tears as she stood from her vanity and nodded. "Y-yeah, I just..." She sniffed, refusing to cry and ruin her makeup in the process. "I wish my dad was here."

"Oh, Mikoto-chan . . ." The redhead made her way across the room and hugged her best friend. She did not need to speak to get her meaning across. It's okay, you're strong, and he loves you.

Obito, her cousin's son, frowned and put his hands on his hips. "Hey, I'm here to walk you down the awiel!"

"Aisle," she corrected gently, pulling away from Kushina

"Awiel."

She laughed and took his hand. "Awiel it is then."

The maid of honor came first, followed by her bridesmaids, then Mikoto, led by Obito. Mikoto watched Fugaku - how nervous he seemed was honestly adorable, and- was his bottom lip actually trembling?

As they said their vows, it seemed that for the very first time, Fugaku looked at her with love in his eyes - as if she were the only girl in the world.

And suddenly, Mikoto realized, she didn't need to know his love language. He was love all by himself, and that was good enough for her.

"That's how she always told it, anyway," Sasuke said. "I don't know if any of it is actually true. My father wasn't really an open person."

Sakura smiled softly, taking his hand in hers. "Sasuke-kun... thank you so much for sharing this with me."

He shrugged. "I thought you ought to know. It can be a good bedtime story for our future kids, too."

"It's more than that, though, isn't it?" she said. "It's a piece of your parents that will always be with you, and I think that's so beautiful, honestly."

Sasuke poked her forehead. "You're beautiful."

"And you're a sap."

They shared a laugh as she snuggled up to him. "We're twenty now," she said. "It's crazy that we already have one on the way." She lovingly rubbed her tummy.

"Aa," he agreed. "You know, I think our love story was significantly cooler than my parents'."

"Love isn't a competition, Sasuke-kun," she mockingly scolded. "It's something to be feared and respected!"

He chuckled and kissed the top of her head. "If you say so."

"What should we name her?"

"Hm?"

"Our baby," she said.

Sasuke thought for a moment. "Sarada?" he suggested. "It's a combination of our names, and my brother's."

"Okay," she said softly. "I like Sarada Uchiha."

"My mother would, too," he said. "She would've loved you. You're strong and independent."

Sakura laughed. "Yeah, but how long did it take me?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. "Just take the compliment, you annoying girl."

"I love you with all my heart."

"And I you."

A/N: I'm sorry but y'all should know how much I love my beloved Uchihas. Hey, I should totally write a companion for Fugaku! That would be fun and excruciating all at once. Thanks so much for reading, and you should totally check out Sunlight if you haven't already!

Kisses,

Cherry