Summary: It was the duty of the Hokage to give speeches at funeral. This time, it was her turn.

Rating: K+

Character: Uchiha Sarada, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura

Word count: 1546

There were many duties that came with the position of Hokage. Giving orders to ANBU. Deciding who to send out for missions (and weathering the storm from their loved ones when they accused her of sending out their family member to die). Making appearances at important functions.

Giving speeches at funerals. Every single one of them. She had to turn up. There was no what if.

And now, here she stood, telling this crowd of people about how talented, brave and beautiful her mother had been. How she had dedicated her life serving the village. How she would be remembered through generations to come as the legendary Lady Sakura.

Because this was Sarada's duty.

Because her mother was dead.

And she just wanted to hide where no one could see her, and wept for the woman that, beyond being talented, brave and beautiful, beyond being a legend, was her mother.

But she couldn't.

They didn't notice the sign until it was too late.

"What do you mean, her body is slowly deteriorating?"

Sarada wondered if anyone else could pick up on the naked fear that crossed her father's face as he said those words. Many people made the mistake of thinking Uchiha Sasuke was fearless, but in truth, it wasn't that he was without fear, he just knew how to hide them very well. There were only a handful of things (people) that could unravel him and her mother was one of them.

And Grandma Tsunade was telling them that she was dying.

"I mean just that, Uchiha," the woman snapped, though there was no sharp edge to her voice. She sounded weary and sad, like she had accepted that there was nothing she could do to win this battle.

Sarada couldn't help but wonder if Tsunade, the legend of all medic-nins, surpassed only by Sakura, had given up, then what hope did they have?

"Repeated and prolonged use of the Seal, then that second pregnancy, then the years she spent battling her own illness…They are all taking a strain on Sakura's body," Tsunade continued, struggling to remain calm. "I have both Senju and Uzumaki blood in me…and I could barely withstand the side-effects sometimes. But Sakura…"

The woman didn't need to say anything else. The pair of father understood, probably much more than they ever wanted to.

Uchiha Sakura - her mother, his wife and life partner - was dying. Not because of an enemy that they could battle and win (losing just wasn't an option). Because of illness and life and the inevitability of death.

Everyone died at some point. Sarada had just never thought that her mother's time would come so soon.

Her mother was all those beautiful adjectives that everyone was nodding along to, but not enough. Sarada wanted to say more, to show the world that Uchiha Sakura was more than a goddess, or a legend. Because both of those things weren't real, but her mother was.

Her mother had a real temper that no one could match. She could get angry very easy and when she did, usually the entire village would know. It wasn't because of poor spending that had gotten her family into so many financial troubles during her childhood. It was because of Sakura's tendency to accidentally destroy their house whenever she got worked up.

(Monstrous strength and a temper were a bad combination)

Her mother was a horrible cook. People got better with age (and a child to take care of), but if anything, Sakura's cooking skill got worse. Sarada remembered being constantly perplexed by the conundrum that was her mother, who could concoct several antidotes to poisons she had never seen before in under minutes with perfect precision, yet struggled with making something as simple as fried rice. Sarada had learned early on to cook, and to cook well, purely out of a deeply ingrained survival instinct.

Her mother sucked at singing. Which also meant she sucked at Karaoke. Her voice wasn't horrible, and if compared with uncle Naruto's, Sarada could say that her mother had the making of an idol. It was that Sakura didn't seem to understand things like rhythm, or notes, or just about everything that made a song music instead of a collection of words put together.

No matter how much Sarada tried to explain, with every ounce of patience she had, that no, mom, you weren't supposed to belt out the lyrics like that, or common, mom, surely you can copy what I just sang, her mother never seemed to get it. She insisted on hogging the micro every time the Konoha 11 got together, and went on to sing so horribly offkey that it was a miracle anyone in the village even liked her.

"Your mother could kill with her singing," her father had whispered to her once, after turning on both his Sharingan and Rinnengan to make sure that her mother wasn't around and wouldn't catch them bad-mouthing her behind her back.

Her mother was a workaholic. While Sarada knew that it wasn't necessary a bad thing (because her mother was out there saving lives and she should be proud and really, she was), she just wished that sometimes, Sakura would spend less time at the hospital and more time with her instead. Her childhood was a constant struggle of competing with dying patients for the attention of her mother, and evil masterminds to see her father.

Sarada was jealous. Shouldn't she be more important to them?

Then, as she got older and understood a few things, that jealousy ebbed away and came a new feeling. Worry. Her mother wasn't taking care of herself the way she insisted everyone else should. She was running herself ragged directing the hospital and the children clinic and the medic corps. It fell onto her family to remind her to shower, and eat, and sleep, because those things were sort of important, too.

Her mother made her so angry at times. Many times. More than she could count. People might think that it was her and her father who would clash, but they were wrong. Sarada and Sakura fought on a constant basis, from the smallest of things to matters of life and death.

Sakura nagged at her to keep everything clean, but Sarada preferred the mess and the sort of disorganized order that was her room. Sakura glared at her first boyfriend all throughout dinner and afterwards, told her pointblank that the boy was a bad sort, which prompted a fight that last for weeks.

(The boy did turn out to be a bad sort, when he cheated on a month later)

Sakura fought with her over her flat refusal to take up shifts at the hospital unless they were extremely short-staffed. Her mother, who had spent most of her life running between the sterile corridor of the place, couldn't understand why Sarada was so reluctant to give up her time to heal people.

But it wasn't that she didn't want to heal. The hospital just scared her, because she was afraid that she wasn't strong enough to accept that she couldn't save everyone.

(Like now)

And there so many things else. A lifetime of memories, of happiness and tears and the feeling of her mother pulling her in for a hug, soothing her after her first kill.

Sarada just wished that she had had more times. Twenty-nine years seemed so short. Twenty-nine years weren't enough. It could never be enough.

She would trade anything just to see another house fall down, or to taste the horrid food that her mother made, or to hear her mother's awful singing. She wouldn't mind if her mother spent days at the hospital, just to see her walking through the front door, tired and ready to drop, but gloriously alive. She would fight with her, every day, and they would make up afterwards.

Sarada would do all of those things, and more, over and over again.

The tears felt like they were choking her. Her mother was gone. Gone. She had left Sarada behind, left her father behind, left her little brothers behind. She had left every single person that had ever loved her and would continue to love her, to go to a place that they could yet follow.

What was Sarada to do now?

"Uchiha Sakura," she said, after a long stretch of silence, "was flawed, frustrating and downright frightening at times. You wouldn't want to get on her bad side, ever."

There was a scandalous gasp in the crowd. But the snort of laughter coming from the front role was louder.

Her father was smiling, the first she had seen in days.

"She's not a goddess. She's not a legend. And that's good, because she was real. She loved us and we all love her still."

Sarada closed her eyes, and years flashed through her eyes. This was her duty, but it was also her right, because no one else could have made this speech.

"Goodbye, Mama."

It would be a long time, before everything was okay again.

End.