#PLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS THE WAY THIS MADE ME SMILE??????????????????????

[latejulys]

hi i luv u so much mwah

[sun-summoning]

More of that time travel fic you wrote for basama plsssssssssssssssssss... please???

continuation of this

naruto is ready to tell sasuke that the ghost of one of his deceased relatives is haunting them, looking for its mother, when sakura elbows him in the stomach to shut him up. the little girl stands at sasuke’s feet and reaches up, asking him to pick her up. he assesses her briefly before bending forward and complying.

“what just happened?” naruto whispers to her.

“i have no idea,” sakura replies. she smiles at the little girl – this strange child that, honestly, could very well be a ghost like naruto insists – and the girl smiles back.

“i love you, mama,” she declares, reaching out for sakura. she squirms wildly until she’s mostly leaping out of sasuke’s embrace, forcing sakura to catch her.

“she thinks you’re her mother,” naruto says. he walks around sakura to stand in the hall with sasuke. he doesn’t even looked ashamed as he slowly backs away, tugging sasuke along with him. “sakura-chan, i know you’d want us to survive without being cursed or made into ghosts as well, so–”

“naruto, you ass!”

the girl giggles and pokes sakura’s chin. “mama said a bad word,” she whispers conspiratorially. she wraps her arms around sakura’s neck and leans into her. “i’m sleepy, mama.”

sakura laughs awkwardly and tries explaining that she isn’t this little girl’s mama. but the child laughs as well and shakes her head and just calls sakura “mama” another time. then she yawns widely, exhausted from the day’s events, and closes her eyes to rest in sakura’s embrace.

-

naturally, team seven is at a loss.

naruto paces through sasuke’s living room, one of the few rooms in the house that they’ve managed to clean so far. or well, that sakura has managed to clean so far. really, he and sasuke were just in her way. the little girl sleeps on the couch while sakura sits beside her. sasuke leans against the opposite wall, trying to look disinterested but still watching the child like a hawk.

“you shouldn’t sit so close to her, sakura,” sasuke says.

sakura frowns. “you literally picked her up.”

“to ensure she had no weapons on her.”

naruto holds up the plastic kunai she’d thrown at him. “this was the extent of it.”

on the table between them is the fanny pack the girl was wearing, a few other toy weapons, a porcelain mask that definitely could not have been hers, and a suspicious-looking scroll.

“so like, just to be clear, she is not the ghost of a vengeful uchiha child looking for her mother?”

“naruto!”

“what?! i need to be sure. i’ve watched a ton of horror movies and this is all really suspicious.”

sasuke rolls his eyes. there is certainly reason to be suspicious, but the girl certainly isn’t the ghost of one of his fallen kin. when he says this aloud, naruto doesn’t look particularly convinced.

“but are you sure?”

“well…yes.”

“you’re not actually sure!”

“i’m sure, you idiot.”

sighing, sasuke looks back at sarada. he considers the contents of her pack and picks up the scroll she had on her. “we need to figure out what this is,” he says. he doesn’t recognize the characters on it, and judging by naruto and sakura’s own confused stares, they don’t either.

sakura nods. “we should go to kakashi-sensei,” she suggests. “maybe he’s seen something like it before?”

“yeah,” naruto agrees. he picks up the scroll and nods to sasuke. “last one there is a rotten egg.”

sasuke shakes his head. “are you really that immature?”

still, both of them are scrambling to get their shoes at the door.

“wait!”

naruto and sasuke pause and turn back to sakura. 

“what?”

“are you guys leaving me?!” sakura hisses. she doesn’t mention the fact that although she doesn’t agree with naruto’s ridiculous idea of the girl being some kind of ghost demon whatever child, the thought does have some merit to it. also why did she have to be the one to stay behind? 

“you’ll be fine,” naruto says.

“screw you!”

“well what do you want us to do, sakura-chan?”

“stay here! one of you, at least!”

“no way. you’ve got this.”

“ugh!”

“also,” naruto adds, “you’re the only one out of the three of us that doesn’t make children cry.”

“naruto, you ass–”

“sakura,” sasuke interrupts, silencing them both. they look at him expectantly, sakura a tad bit more frazzled. “you punched a god before, remember?” he looks at the sleeping child. “you’ll be fine.”

-

not too long after sakura’s left alone with the girl, she wakes up. she yawns widely and rubs her eyes. her clothes are twisted and her hair is a mess. there’s no way she can be evil, sakura thinks, taking in how utterly adorable she is.

“mama,” the girl calls. she doesn’t even open her eyes as she sits up. “mama, i’m thirsty.”

sakura says nothing so the girl blinks until she’s adjusted to the light. she grins when she sees sakura and all but crawls across the couch to sit in her lap. 

“mama, can i have juice?”

“huh?”

the girl pouts. “can i have juice please?”

sakura nods gingerly. “uh. sure. yeah, sure.” sakura lifts the girl off of her lap and leaves her on the couch. she walks over to sasuke’s fridge and finds nothing but soy milk, tomatoes, and the beer naruto likes. great. she turns around to break the bad news, only to bump into the little girl. “oh!” 

after sakura steadies her, she grins. “i snuck up on you,” she whispers smugly, making sakura reconsider the ghost demon child theory all over again.

“yes, you did.”

“i’m going to be a super amazing ninja just like you and papa.”

“yes, you are.” 

you and papa. because she is, apparently, her mama. sakura can’t even wrap her head around the girl’s claims. and she doesn’t even look like she could be this girl’s mama. not unless she was fathered by someone with some incredibly dominant genes, that’s for sure. but then again, sakura thinks, the girl has her nose and her mouth and–

“mama!”

sakura blinks. “hm? oh. right.” she looks back at the fridge and smiles. “well, kiddo, we only have soy milk, beer, and water, so i guess i’m pouring you a cold one!” she winks and the girl giggles even if she doesn’t comprehend the teasing. sakura doesn’t trust sasuke’s maintenance of his groceries though so she opts for pouring the girl a glass of water while she prepares some tea for them.

the girl gulps down the water greedily and sakura watches her.

“so,” sakura begins, “what’s your name?”

“huh?” the girl’s eyebrows furrow. “i’m sarada. duh.”

“right. duh. and do you know my name?”

sarada nods. “you’re mama!”

“um.”

“sakura – the bestest medical ninja in the whole universe.”

sakura blushes. “well, no, not really. i still have a lot to learn, but thank you.”

sarada shrugs and begins running her finger around the rim of her glass. “that’s not what papa says. papa says you’re the greatest medical ninja that ever existed.”

“is that so?”

“yep!”

“and,” sarada continues, “he says that you’re also super duper strong and that you can shatter a mountain with one punch and one time – one time, mama – you even punched a god! that’s so, so cool.” suddenly sarada is pouting, her chin tucked into her chest as her voice loses its joy. “he said he would tell me that story when he got back from his mission but that was so long ago!” then she raises her head and smiles. “but that’s okay since he’s back now!”

“that’s right,” sakura says slowly as she stands to return to the couch. sarada lifts her arms telling sakura to carry her and, without thinking, sakura complies. 

sakura puts her down on one cushion so they may sit side-by-side, but sarada is quick to crawl into her lap and begin playing with sakura’s growing hair.

she’s incredibly touchy, sakura has come to notice. and clingy. and she’s always smiling and looking at her with such adoration in her eyes. sakura isn’t her mother, but she knows that whoever this girl belongs to, that woman and this girl love each other very much.

sakura asks sarada little questions and slowly learns that she’s from konoha, is four-years-old, dislikes tomatoes, doesn’t have the best vision, likes to sneak desserts before dinner, loves her mama, and really misses her papa. or, at least, she did miss him. he has, after all, returned.

“and what’s your papa’s name?” sakura finally asks.

“mama, you’re so silly,” she replies, shaking her head fondly. "sasuke uchiha.”

-

so the kid isn’t a ghost demon looking for its mother, they come to learn. 

“that’s no fun,” naruto whines when kakashi points this out.

sasuke rolls his eyes. “were you hoping for a ghost demon child?”

“i mean…i wasn’t not hoping for a ghost demon child. we haven’t fought one of those yet! it could’ve been fun!”

“your definition of fun is messed up.”

“your definition of fun is eating a tomato and staring out the window. screw you.”

“screw you!”

“children,” kakashi interrupts, waving around the scroll they had brought to him. kakashi smiles thinly and, for a quick moment, wonders why they worked so hard to bring their team back together when this was the kind of shit naruto and sasuke pulled whenever they were around each other. and where the heck was sakura?

“oh, we left her,” naruto answers when kakashi voices that question.

he raises an eyebrow at them. “with the child that you thought was a monster?”

“a ghost demon. and yes.”

“sakura can handle herself,” sasuke mutters, feeling a bit ashamed under kakashi’s unimpressed stare. “the kid likes her. keeps calling her ‘mama’ for whatever reason.”

“mama?” kakashi echoes. 

his students nod and kakashi looks at the scroll contemplatively. he hasn’t yet told them about this sort of scrolls time-travelling properties, only confirming that it has nothing to do with ghost demon children. kakashi catches the inch of blood along the edge of one part of the scroll and the little drops on the page. if this was that girl’s blood and she came from somewhere else in time and called sakura ‘mama’–

kakashi feels his shipper heart skip a beat. “i need to see this child,” he declares, standing up and struggling to stay calm.

“are you going to tell us what this scroll is?” sasuke asks. “you haven’t said anything of value since we got here.”

“i will. after. once i’ve seen this child.”

naruto groans. “but why?”

“because i’m the hokage, naruto, and i do what i want.”

-

sarada is pleased with herself for knowing all the answers to mama’s questions. mama used to quiz her like this when she was younger, making sure she knew her parents’ names and her grandparents’ names and their phone numbers and addresses. it was silly for her to be asking the questions now though. she’s a big girl now, after all.

“where did papa go?” sarada asks.

“sasuke-kun – i mean, er, papa…he went to speak to the hokage.”

sarada nods. that makes sense. papa always has to talk to the hokage after a mission. 

“now…sarada, there’s something i, mama, need to tell you.” 

mama smiles when she pauses and sarada smiles back. she straddles mama’s lap and begins playing with the ends of mama’s hair. it’s so pretty and it’s pink and that’s her favourite colour. sarada holds the locks of pink closer to her face and wonders what she look like if she had pink hair too. 

“papa…was…injured.”

“what?!”

“but just a little! a very, very small injury. in his head. small. super small.”

sarada doesn’t look convinced but she awaits the rest of mama’s explanation.

“right. yes. sarada, papa was injured on his mission. nothing serious, of course,” mama promises, “but he’s forgotten a few things.”

sarada frowns, afraid for her papa. “what kinds of things?”

“papa has lost his memories and thinks he’s eighteen again. this means he doesn’t remember me, his….wife? or…” mama bites her lip and looks so, so sad, “or you, sweetheart.”

“oh.”

“ah, fuck,” mama curses, but sarada feels too sad to point out the bad word. papa forgot them? but how?

“it was a jutsu,” mama clarifies, “by his enemy. but the effects will wear off soon enough, okay? there’s nothing to worry about!”

“s–so papa is going to be okay?”

“yes! yes he will be!” mama assures her. “in fact, he’s already okay. mostly. you don’t even have to worry about him, sarada.”

she wraps her arms around sarada and kisses her forehead and sarada buries her face in mama’s neck. she doesn’t cry because crying would be silly since mama just told her papa would be okay. still, sarada kind of wants to cry. so she does. 

“it’s okay, it’s okay, sweetheart…”

“it’s okay,” sarada says as well. she smiles a wobbly grin. “mama is the bestest medical ninja in the whole universe. you can fix papa sooner, right?”

“i…yes! yes, i can!” mama wipes away sarada’s tears. “all i ask is in the next few days, sarada, you just call papa ‘sasuke’. can you do that for me?”

sarada sighs because that’ll be annoying, but she can do it. “yes, mama.”

“great. we just don’t want to confuse him while he’s recovering.”

that makes sense. sarada nods and considers what she’ll call papa in the meantime. 

-

so she lied. she also made the child cry, but honestly…how was sakura supposed to know this kid wasn’t a ghost demon? and that she wasn’t, for whatever reason, manipulating her and sasuke into thinking they were her parents so she could do…whatever. 

okay, she probably isn’t a ghost demon – she’s too damn cute for that – but what other options did she have? let the girl run around calling her ‘mama’ and sasuke ‘papa’ as if they were her real parents? 

sakura watches the little girl play and tries not to feel too guilty for her fib from an hour ago. she’s captain kitten, she explains, putting on her mask and jumping around between pieces of furniture because apparently the floor is lava.

“uh, by the way, am i in trouble?” sarada suddenly asks.

“for what?”

sarada holds her porcelain mask and grins crookedly. “you told me not to touch your mask but i took it because it just really goes with my ninja costume, mama!” 

“you’re not in trouble,” sakura tells her. 

and why would she be? that isn’t her mask. and judging by the fact that that must’ve belonged to a former member of the black ops, that definitely isn’t her mask.

“okay,” sarada says, twiddling her thumbs, “but i also went into the study. and i picked the lock on papa’s cabinet.”

“oh.” sarada looks like she’s waiting for some sort of scolding so sakura aims for stern. “how…dare you?”

sarada chews her lip. “i’m sorry, mama.”

“um.” sakura scratches her head. “well…did you…learn your lesson?”

sarada looks equally as unsure as sakura feels. “yes?”

“then that’s fine. i guess.”

“okay!” the girl is back to grinning and sakura breathes a sigh of relief because after having to lie to her and then having to discipline her – albeit very, very weakly – sakura can’t bear to see her looking sad. “mama, can we play outside?”

sakura glances at the backyard they – or well, she – haven’t been able to clear out. the grass is overgrown and it’s kind of just a huge mess. she and naruto had come over to help sasuke make his home liveable again but so far the two had done nothing and all sakura had managed to clean up was the kitchen and living room. 

“why don’t we go for a walk?” sakura suggests instead.

sarada beams at the suggestion. “oooh, okay! can we go to the lake so i can practice my fireball jutsu?”

sakura nods and they walk to the front door. “lead the way.”

-

part iii