#cherriedbloom

                                  misc inbox prompts / acc. / @cherriedbloom

               sarada thought she had already felt the transition from childhood to adolescence. with her father’s blade lifted to her and her mother cracking the literal foundations of her childhood home. she had thought, in that moment she wasn’t a kid anymore, but simply an adult trapped in a tiny body. but she’s older now, not by much by she’s a genin now. trying to be less a daughter, more a solider. it’s not working.

               when the she had been first passed the headband, her stomach had bubbled with excitement. a new journey, a new chapter, a new her. she’s already twelve. but at the smile on her mother’s face. she feels the tears she’s been holding just start to well up on her face. for the first time in a long time she’s not already twelve, she’s only twelve. 

                arms are wrapped tightly around her mother’s middle, before she even knows that they’re there. she loves her mother deeply, even if in the mixing and confusing emotions of being twelve in a world that has taught her, she’s already twelve it’s time to be less of a duaghter, more of a solider. a shudder wracks her shoulders. 

                mother wants her to be a kid. she wants her to go out and dance, because she likes it. she wants sarada to be a daughter. maybe she doesn’t know how to talk to her yet, because sarada is only twelve and the world wants her to fight. maybe she had been scared by shaking house, maybe she had a right to be. maybe, things are complicated and maybe, things need to change.

                 maybe she’ll be hokage, get a chance to change things from the top of the pile. or maybe she’ll fail, burn the ancestral home to the ground and build a place where her mother can heal from this place. maybe she’ll succeed where her father had failed so many years before, without itachi’s blood shed and naruto’s laugh to anchor her heart here, maybe she’ll have a chance. maybe she just wants to do something with her anger besides punch the floor.

                   for now though, she’s pull away from her mother. the back of her hand wiping the tears away from brown eyes. 

                                                            ❝how should i dance this time?  ❞