To Sarada, home was Konoha.

Not a specific place within the village—a house like the Uzumaki family home or an apartment like the one in which her parents lived—but the entirety of the village itself.

Perhaps it was because her childhood home had been demolished soon after it was built, or perhaps it was because the rental her mother had leased afterwards was supposed to be a temporary arrangement that dragged on into unspoken permanence.

Perhaps it was because there were always three chairs at their dining room table, no matter where the table was located, but there were rarely more than two place settings laid out during mealtimes.

Whatever the reason, she feels like an intruder, standing outside of the red sliding door to her family’s apartment, spare key clutched in her sweaty hand and mission bag over her shoulder.

It’d been weeks since she’d last visited, months since she’d slept in her childhood bed. The observation mission she’d been on for the past three years kept her in the vast modern house up on the hill, big windows and white walls and open spaces, too vast for comfort.

Yet, after unlocking the door and pushing it to the side, the entryway into the apartment seems tight, cramped, and dim, like neither place fits the person she was in the process of becoming. In the dark, the empty hall smells like the ghost of her mother—floral soap and hospital antiseptic.

Sarada flicks on the light and hurries through the living area, keeping her eyes averted from the dining room where Sakura probably sat so many evenings, two empty chairs across the table from her while she ate alone, an empty vase in front of her with no reason for flowers.

The large television across from the couch has a thin layer of dust clinging to the darkened screen, but the framed photographs by its side have been kept meticulously clean. She doesn’t have to look at the pictures to know them; they’re branded in her memory, an indelible record of her family’s past: one is of her parents’ Team 7—Lord Sixth, a young Lord Seventh, her mother and father as genin. The other picture was taken during her academy days, Sarada in red between her mother with proud jade eyes and her father with the small, soft smile he always brought home with him.

Her hand tightens on the straps of her bag, reminding herself that she has a mission, that she can’t get lost in her memories of the monster that wore her father’s face, the shape of his shoulders, the size of his hand, and had used those hands to harm her.

She feels like a shaken up soda bottle, a million little fizzing bubbles agitating inside of her. Her dad. Boruto. The words Sumire had said only hours earlier. She clenches her jaw like a hand over the bottle’s mouth, keeping everything inside lest it explode in a mess of emotions she didn’t have time to clean up.

Sarada heads to her bedroom at the end of the hallway, opening the door into the cramped space. Everything is as she left it the last time she slept at home after coming down with the flu the previous winter and being put on sick leave for a long weekend. There are two mismatched pillows on her bed, pink curtains covering the windows, and her green chunin vest on a stand in the corner; The Hokage’s Office hadn’t asked for it back when she’d been demoted, having as little use of it as they had for her.

When she looks at it, it's as though that soda bottle inside of her gets shaken up all over again.

Tightening her bottom lip, Sarada heads over to her dusty desk and pulls open the drawer. Scrolls. Shuriken. Stacks of paper bombs. All things she hadn’t needed since Team 7 was put on leave almost three years ago. Some items go in her belt pouches. Others in her bag, along with an extra change of clothing and sunscreen to combat the brutal desert sun.

The last thing she grabs that she hasn’t needed over the past three years is her hitai-ate, relegated to the bottom of the drawer just as Sarada herself had been relegated to the village. She awkwardly ties it around her head, then glances in the mirror.

The red headband doesn’t look quite right with her pixie cut. Sarada fluffs her short bangs this way and that, trying to get her hair and headband in agreement with one another, but quickly gives up when she glances at the alarm clock next to her bed. Only thirty minutes before she was supposed to meet Master Konohmaru and Mitsuki at the An Gate. Forty-five minutes before they left for the Land of Wind. Definitely not enough time to be worrying about her hair.

She turns off the light and closes the door, hoping to leave no trace of herself that might bother her mother. Surely, Sakura had enough on her plate at the hospital with the recent Claw Grime attack and Shinju invasion. And even if she doesn't, Sarada’s mother had done an excellent job of keeping herself constantly occupied for the past three years. Not giving herself time to think about the death of her blonde teammate, the lawlessness of her rogue husband, not giving anyone else time to ask her about it, either.

Sarada is reaching for the front door, fingers grazing the latch, when it’s violently flung open by her pink-haired mother, still wearing a white lab coat, her jade eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

“Mama?”

Sarada knows she should say something else. Something about the Shinju. Something about her father. Something about her mission. Something about everything that had happened over the course of the past few days. But no other words come out. And no other words need to. Before the awkward pause can become an awkward silence, Sakura reaches out and wraps her arms around her daughter, pulling her into a hug.

Her mother’s hand strokes the back of her head as she releases a choked sob into the shoulder of Sakura’s lab coat. “I know,” her mother says softly, her daughter’s damp cheek pressed against her own.

But her mother doesn’t know, she can’t know; she doesn’t even perceive reality in the same way Sarada does. “Mama,” Sarada tries again between ragged breaths, thinking of her father and the monster who stole his face.

Sakura shushes her daughter, pulling her tighter against her. “Ino told me you’re leaving for a mission. I don’t want you to worry about anything else other than coming home to me. That’s the only thing I need of you. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Sarada manages, the tension draining out of her body as she gives herself over to her mother’s embrace.

By the time Sarada is wiping the tears away from beneath her glasses with a handkerchief her mother had produced from one of her pockets, she only has twenty minutes to meet her team at the An Gate.

“So, you’re going to the Sand to save Gaara,” her mother says, repeating what Sarada told her about the mission.

Sarada folds the handkerchief into quarters and tucks it in her jacket pocket for future use before shouldering her pack. “Yeah, me and Mitsuki and Konohamaru.”

When she glances back at her mother, there’s a distant look in her eyes as she examines her daughter, her gaze caught somewhere between the girl in front of her and something long past. Then, Sakura motions for her daughter to come closer.

A moment later, Sakura is untying her daughter’s hitai-ate from behind her head, parting her bangs with skillful fingers, and retying the ends of it beneath her hair like a headband.

“Okay, now you’re ready,” her mother says, a wistful yet proud smile ghosting across her lips.