Chapter Text
Being so attuned to his moods she strikes into the heart of the matter, like always. Her whisper breaks through the gloom of his thoughts. “What is it that you fear, Sasuke-kun?”
He adjusts his hold on their newborn infant, tucking the blanket around her more snugly. Sasuke considers his wife’s question in silence, choosing to fix his gaze on Sarada. The firelight in their makeshift camp paints soft shadows across his sleeping daughter’s cheeks. She’s perfect, he thinks. He feels the strangest urge to cry.
“Sakura, I-“ he begins, scrambling for the words to express himself. It takes him a moment before he could go on. “Sarada… I want for her inheritance to be hope, and happiness, but…” He hesitates. The past flashes through his mind’s eye, and bone-deep sorrow overwhelms him, stealing away the words he was going to say.
Sakura reaches out to caress his face, the action an unspoken demand to meet her eyes. He does, and he is floored by the emotion he sees shining back at him from her emerald gaze. She speaks the words he couldn’t say. “You are afraid, then, that you won’t be able to give her that which you didn’t have?”
“I have you,” he protests, softly. Again, he wills her to understand she has nothing to do with his darkness, with his sins.
“Yes, my darling, and you always will,” she says lightly, and he knows she understood. Gently, she pulls him closer, and touches her lips to his forehead. She then leans her head on his shoulder. “But you have to know this, too: you’re already doing so well.”
“Hope and happiness are things that can be learned, my love,” she continues. “And that fact that you’re here—isn’t that proof of how far you’ve come?”
What an incredible woman, he marvels. With a touch and a few words she has once again shattered his insecurities and set his world back on its proper axis.
He kisses the top of her head. “If I have learned much, it’s because I have an excellent teacher.”
She laughs. “You see, you have nothing to worry about. We can do this.”
“Aa," he agrees. He finds that he believes in this, completely. "Together.”