Cornflake Girl

He's gone to the other side…

Dear Colleague,

Re: Sasuke Uchiha

D.O.B. 23rd July

Academy No. 012606

Diagnosis Post-traumatic stress disorder

I attended the patient today with his wife. Since his last appointment, he feels that the medication has only helped to a small extent.

There were many times when Sarada Uchiha wished she had a normal family.

No ninja family was normal, her mother had laughed when Sarada had said this to her, it goes with the territory, especially when that family happens to contain one of the most powerful shinobi in the village. Two, if you counted Sakura Uchiha herself, though Sakura said she couldn't hold a candle to her husband or the Seventh. "They were always miles ahead of me. Still are." Though Sarada knew that her mum had done better in school than the Seventh, the first Hokage to assume the position without becoming a chuunin or jounin. Her dad was also a top student. Popular with girls, but rarely spoke to anyone. Sakura believed Sarada took after Sasuke more than her, and not just because she had the same black hair and dark eyes.

Every ninja family had its problems. Inojin's mum still got sad about his grandad sometimes, as did Shikadai's dad, and Chouchou's grandfather had come back from the battlefield so traumatised he had stopped speaking for almost a year, while her mother had been made a refugee after her village was reduced to dust. The Seventh's wife had lost her cousin Neji in the last war; Sarada's team mate Boruto had been named for him, sort of. Every year they still laid sunflowers on his grave. Konohamaru-sensei had lost his uncle Asuma as a little kid, and his cousin Mirai had never known her dad. And on and on it went.

But Sarada had spent large parts of her life going without seeing her dad, and even though he was home more than he used to be, she sometimes wondered if it was a good thing. Sometimes he'd have good days, where he'd actually be quite friendly and they'd talk about Boruto, the Seventh, the Academy, other stuff going on in the village (he wasn't on any social media), her mum's job at the hospital. He'd make the tea and give her mum a rest. Then there were the OK days, where he didn't talk much, and he'd come downstairs looking exhausted. And then there were the bad days, where Sarada would be woken up by her dad screaming and her mum comforting him, or he'd jump at the slightest noise and ask sharply, "What was that?" or he'd find fault with everything she did, or – even worse - he'd just sit there and stare into space, oblivious to what anyone was saying.

Sarada hated the bad days.

The patient reports several nights of disturbed sleep, coupled with night sweats, teeth grinding, irritability, hyper-vigilance, and flashbacks.

Then there were the stares. The comments. The whispers. The word 'traitor' bandied about. The Sixth had officially pardoned her dad, and he had momentarily left the village, but although most of the anti-Uchiha sentiment had died down and most people certainly weren't stupid enough to say anything in front of her mum or the Seventh, there were still murmurs of it here and there. Like the time when Sarada had been out shopping with Boruto, and they'd heard two kunoichi talking.

"How much d'you think it took?" the first one had asked.

"How much what?" said the second. "What are you on about?"

"The Uchiha. You know, the traitor. Think he got bribed, back then?"

"Shut up," hissed the second. "You don't know who might be listening and anyway, it was ages ago."

"They must have paid him a nice price…" the first woman began, but stopped abruptly as the wall behind her shattered, just inches from her ear.

Sakura had heard.

"Talk about my husband like that again," said Sakura with an icy calm, "and I swear, I am not kidding, I will do to your face what I did to the wall just now."

Both women stared at her, as did Sarada. Sakura turned around, caught her daughter staring at her, and smiled as though nothing had happened. Then she left, leaving the women silently staring after her.

"Wow," Boruto breathed. "Dad wasn't kidding. Your mum really is scary."

But not as scary as my dad, thought Sarada.

In the past, he has tried sleeping pills, but these have not worked.

One of the best things about Chouchou Akimichi, Sarada thought, was that she understood, sort of. Her grandad was in the same support group that her dad, Boruto's mum and a few other ninja attended, a group for people who'd lost loved ones and families in various wars or missions, and had ended up, in Mizuki's words, 'damaged'. Sasuke was sceptical about whether it would help, but he'd promised to attend, for Sarada's sake.

"Did your dad ever do that thing where they just stop talking?" asked Chouchou, as the two of them walked home from Yakiniku Q, the Akimichi clan's favourite restaurant. "My grandad was a bit like that until Uncle Shikamaru went to visit him."

"Not that I know of," said Sarada. "But then he's not much of a talker."

They stopped at Chouchou's house. Chouji, her father and the head of the Akimichi clan, and Chouza, her grandfather, were sitting on the porch, Chouza plucking a chicken and Chouji trying doggedly to make conversation with him about a football match he'd seen on TV. The old man barely responded. Sarada shivered.

"Hi Sarada," said Chouji, smiling. "You staying for tea?"

Sarada was tempted, but then remembered her dad was home that night, and besides, although she didn't want to tell Chouchou this, she preferred it when Chouza wasn't there. She was a little nervous around him, even though Chouchou had insisted that he wasn't as scary as he looked and that he wasn't going to snap and hurt her. "Most of the time, he just eats and sleeps a lot," she had said.

One particularly frequent flashback, which the patient says disturbs him the most, involves the massacre of his clan by his older brother, which happened when the patient was six years old. He states that his brother forced him to relive the massacre, twice, and that he suffered major setbacks as a result. In his words, 'sometimes when I close my eyes, it plays over and over'.

Sarada wondered if it really was a good thing that her dad was spending more time at home. On the plus side, he'd been giving her extra Sharingan training, and her mum seemed like almost a different person when he was around. She was happier, more full of energy, she laughed more. Sometimes Sarada almost felt like they were a normal family.

But then there were the nights. You could never tell when it was going to be a good night or a bad night. Like that time when they'd had to get rid of the cat, because he had woken Sarada's dad up one too many times, culminating in him thinking the animal was an enemy come to kill him and grabbing his katana, and if her mum hadn't grabbed the cat in time, he probably would have stabbed him to death.

Her dad had been sad about that. He liked cats.

(…) The patient and his wife are very concerned about the impact this may have on their daughter, who is a pupil at Konoha Academy..

Sarada knew it was rude to listen at doors, but on the other hand, she was a shinobi, and an Uchiha to boot, and you never knew when you might pick up something important, Konohamaru-sensei had said. It wasn't just her eyes she had to keep active at all times.

Her parents were arguing again. She could hear snatches of the argument. "We've got to tell her. She's not stupid. Remember the photograph?" (Mum.) "Sarada is innocent." (Dad.) "This is bullshit." (Mum.) "She doesn't need to know." (Dad.) And so on.

Sarada hated it when her parents argued. She slunk off to bed.

When asked if he had ever considered suicide, the patient stated that he had occasionally thought about it, though he had never attempted it. Indeed, when he had encountered his undead brother in the last war, he had asked him why his brother had let him live, and that 'he should have killed me too'.

"Sarada," Sasuke said at the dinner table one day, "your mum and I have decided. We need to come clean."

"About what?" Sarada asked.

"Well," said Sakura, "you remember when you were little and you kept asking me where Daddy was? I…wasn't as honest with you as I should have been." She tapped a chopstick against her hand. "It wasn't just because of missions, Sarada. It was because…ah, you tell her, Sasuke. You can explain better than me."

And Sasuke did explain. Sarada listened in growing disbelief, then horror, then anger, then sadness, as Sasuke told her how when he'd first come back to Konoha after his self-imposed exile, he'd faced constant abuse off villagers who'd heard about his betrayal of Konoha aged fourteen. The graffiti on the walls of the house, the broken windows that Sakura was constantly having to have repaired, the silences when Sasuke walked into a shop or a pub, even from some of his former classmates (it had taken Kiba Inuzuka a while to forgive him, for instance, and Kiba's old dog continued to growl at him even now). It had calmed down after the Seventh had put his foot down, but people have long memories in Konoha. Those trips to the woods were an escape, and then there was the guilt, the fear that Sakura and Sarada would be attacked, though Sakura had ensured Sasuke that she could handle herself and Sarada was getting stronger in time.

But the one thing Sasuke couldn't run away from were the horrors in his head. And he had had enough of running away. He had spoken to the Seventh and said as much, and the Seventh had sat him down and told him in no uncertain terms that he would do everything in his power to make sure Sasuke got better, or at least got some kind of help.

"I didn't want to drag either of you into this," said Sasuke, wearily. "I know you're going to be angry with me. I don't blame you. But sometimes, I just had to get out. This village was where my family were murdered, where I saw an invasion. I had to live in the house where they were killed for years."

Sarada had known about the massacre. Sasuke had told her about it, although he had left out some of the more gruesome details. But she had not known this.

"Why didn't you just take me and Mum with you?" she asked. "Why did you just leave us?"

"Your mum had to work," said Sasuke. "You had school. It wouldn't have been fair to keep uprooting you every time I needed to get out of Konoha."

"But why did you come back?"

Sasuke put his arm around Sakura, and smiled sadly.

"Because I knew your mother would be waiting for me."

Deep within her memory, it was as though a plant was being uprooted from the ground.

She must have been about six or seven. She was supposed to be in bed, but the front door had opened, waking her up, and she'd tiptoed out onto the landing, watching her mother answer it.

It was her father. He picked her mother up and swung her around. Her mother had laughed, and shushed him, and they'd exchanged a few words, and then he did the special gesture, the secret gesture that belonged to the three of them and no-one else.

He touched her on the forehead, on the purple diamond seal.

She heard a sharp intake of breath, and did a double take.

She had never seen her father cry before, until now.

"I love you, Dad," said Sarada. She reached across the table and gently touched Sasuke on the forehead.

…We will continue to monitor the patient's progress.