My mother always talked about how quiet I was when I was born. Green-eyed, red-faced, and silent. Quiet, like my cynical father, and all of his ancestors that came before him. I was a surprise but not unwelcome, she assured me, a blessing to all of the Uchihas that had passed on before their time, and a reminder to my mother of her union with my father.
My mother was an only child, from a civilian family of insignificant bloodline— an ideal match for my father had my grandfather been alive. She would not have staked claim to the position of the clan chieftainess, nor did she pose a threat to the chief's son leaving the clan. Not that it mattered, for they were long dead by the time my father and my mother wed, a simple ceremony under the stars, in the Nara grounds, with their teammate, sensei and the head of the Nara Clan as witnesses.
When I was born, my father did not take me from my mother's offering hands immediately. Aunt Ino would say it was stupid of my mother to expect Uchiha Sasuke to be affectionate, but I understood my mother's anticipation, the yearning for an answer to her question—Would I be the one that made her Sasuke-kun stay? Would I be the one to finally tether him to her for good?
It was not until I opened my eyes and the color of the forest registered in my father's own did he smile. It was a quick burst of surprise that could even be called a laugh. Naruto oji-san would even go on to say that was the most emotion he had ever seen from him in that entire year; the moment he looked into my eyes and realized that the Uchiha genes had lost, lost to the green eyes of a simple girl from a lineage of simpletons. For all intents and purposes, I was not an Uchiha and the curse of the Sharingan would die, die with my father.
Quickly, I became a celebration. The daughter of two of the legendary Sannin's disciples, the godchild of the third and the Saviour of this world and Hokage to be and that was just the immediate family. My father did end up putting off his journey of redemption, staying with me while my mother resumed her duties at the hospital. He had no qualms being the one to stay at home and take care of the child, while my mother had her hands busy with the ever-flowing wave of patients with radiation sickness (the most prominent aftereffect of the Great War that had ended a year prior). It was a welcome arrangement between the two of them—Sasuke had a family to nurture and Sakura could go out everyday and be useful the best way she knew to be. They named me Uchiha Saisho, a name that had not been used by an Uchiha as far back as my father could remember. I was not an Uchiha anyway, not really, without the eyes, he would say with a smile. I was the beginning of something new.
I grew up in a brightly-lit house overlooking the Konoha marketplace, far away from the former Uchiha grounds by the Naka River. The houses there had long been torn down and civilian communities built in its place, and the existence of life in the Uchiha compound probably only lived on in my father's memories. The village paid a certain amount of money to my father's credit every month as payment for renting his ancestral lands to civilians, and he finally saw a use for it, and ended up buying a house in the middle of the Village Square, in between a bakery and Ichiraku's. The place had not even been open to rent, but who were the owners to refuse not only the Golden Trio but an enormous sum of money as well?
So, we had our new home where I spent all my evenings with my godfather who was only ever happy to use me as an excuse to eat ramen every night. That was how I fell asleep every day—hoisted on my uncle's shoulders as he and my father enjoyed their dinner. It did not matter that we were in the middle of town, where the commotion and the general noise were at their loudest; it did not matter that I was not in a proper bed. My uncle's shoulder was a vast expanse of warmth that made my eyes droop like magic, and just in a few weeks, everyone in the village had learned to lower their voices when they came into Ichiraku's at night, even the rabid fans that wanted more than an autograph from the two war heroes.
I was eight months old when my father had to go on a mission, leaving me in my mother's care for three days. My mother would never admit it, but she was never comfortable with me as my father—she was loving, but distant, and still felt like an outsider whenever she touched me, despite the reassurances of Ino oba-chan or Naruto oji-san, among many others. The unadulterated joy on my face at the sight of my equally relieved father, who had completed the mission in half the allotted time, just to get back to his daughter only furthered this feeling along. Of course, I soon became my mother's child, favouring her more than anyone else, but that came later.
I remembered little more than scattered fragments from my life until the birth of my sister—the warmth of my father's cloak, the softness of his hair, sitting on my godfather's lap at the ramen shop, the flowers at Aunt Ino's and my mother kissing me on the head before she left for work. I was three years of age, almost four, and had never picked up a kunai or learned a single jutsu. I was everything my father had dreamt of being as a child, just that. He read to me every day—books by foreign authors, philosophers, and biographies; not of clan leaders or any significant participants of the war, but ordinary people with extraordinarily mundane lives, weird people. We had built a whole setup near the window overlooking the market, sitting there every sunrise and sunset, me curled in his arms as we read about the stars, the old gods, and the myths of other cultures. This soon became such a well-known fact that the Kazekage, a long-standing friend of my godfather, gifted us a set of books on Suna mythology for my third birthday.
But as with everything in life, things were about to change. This particular memory was perhaps the least vivid of all, though growing up, I tried so hard to remember it, to retroactively look for signs. It occurred two months before my sister was born. I did not remember bumbling over to my mother and kissing her belly, or asking my father if it was time for me to meet the baby yet. Neither did I remember my mother picking me up and explaining how long it took for babies to be ready to be out in the world while my father looked on at us from the entrance of the room. I did not know that then but he had not wanted a second child; not wanted a second gamble with the divine powers, for he had won the first time with me, and I was enough. But as fates would have it, I was not to be an only child, and he was not to stay with us as we grew into adulthood. That was the year my sister was born, and my father decided he would go on that journey of redemption after all.
For my sister, the beautiful Sarada, named after the Southern Goddess, who looked so much like my mother, had the ink-black eyes of an Uchiha.
Nara Shikadai
With the seemingly limitless amount of repairs underway in all five nations, the chuunin exams had been low on the priority list for everyone. The Kages were committed to keep the peace for as long as they possibly could; only a rogue missing-nin was encountered every now and then and the need for shinobis had reduced greatly. So, most people started enrolling their kids in the Academy to get their genin level education before moving to traditional schools. It was not until the year Shikadai turned five that the Kages decided to start recruiting again, and the first chuunin exams since the war was to be hosted by the Suna . Since they did not require a lot of people, a collective decision was made to make the process tougher to discourage participation and increase the standard for the existing shinobis.
The Chunins and Jounins currently in employment, along with outsourced help and the local Sunagakure populace worked on building the arena in six weeks. Five hundred people leveled the ground and erected the structure, the Kazekage determined to have the finest grounds for the first match since the war. Naturally, Shikadai had tagged along with his mother—who was still a consulting liaison to the Sunagakure nation—on all her excursions to her homeland to the point where his Uncle Gaara, the Kazekage had asked him to stay with him until the Games ended.
The week leading up to the games was mainly spent napping on his uncle's lap, even during meetings and it was in a similar position Shikadai found himself now—in the Kage's box on his Uncle Gaara's lap as the matches began, surrounded by the prizes the winners were to be bestowed with. The opening ceremony had been grand, with an intricate sand dance display by Suna warriors. The Gods were prayed to, and the sun was shining in full force, a good omen, if anything. But Shikadai looked forward to the one-on-one matches the most, having listened to the story of his own parents' meeting in the arena. For all the laziness of his father that Shikadai had seemingly inherited, spars were one time that his mother's personality shone through in him. He watched with eager eyes as the announcer declared the end of yet another match, the winner from Mizigakure advancing to the next round. The match had dragged on for quite a bit, both the opponents equally matched in terms of strength and intellect. It was a slight sliver of chance and luck that had lead to Mizugakure's victory.
The crowd's cheers cut through Shikadai's head interrupting his play-by-play post-match analysis, as the next set of players entered the fighting area. Shikadai's eyes caught on a dark head, the only unarmed figure in the line of participants. He could not put a finger on it, but something about her made him squirm. Not uncomfortably, but he could not really look away. As he leaned forward to get a better view, he noticed jet-black hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and a Konoha hitai-ate glinting in the sunlight. Where the others were drowning up to their necks in weapons and armor, the girl had nothing but the pouch on her skirt. Her face reminded Shikadai of his father, an unnerving calm that hid layers and layers of intelligence, practice and skill.
"Uchiha Saisho," he heard the Hokage mutter to the Mizukage just as the announcer announced the first match of the round. When the gong rang, she was the first to move, slipping past the bigger and heavier bodies of the others, slithering through narrow gaps like water through the fingers. She was unmatched in her ability to defend, not one of the opponents managing to actually land a blow on her. She moved like she calculated every step before she took it, Shikadai thought, as the crowd roared seeing her dodge a Suna kid's sand wall. She landed on top of the wall, and stopped, the first time she had stopped since the game began. He instinctively leaned further, and would have fallen onto the ground if not for his uncle catching and putting a preventive arm around him and watched the girl jump again, dodging a dozen more strikes from her fellow participants before making a singular offensive attack, a punch to the ground that cracked into an immeasurable number of fragments, trapping the others upto their necks. A single hand seal followed, solidifying the ground around them, making them immobile. She'd won in a single move.
Shikadai had never heard a crowd as loud as then."What monster strength," remarked the Hokage, "just like her mother." He was still in awe of her skill when she came up to the podium later, having set the record for the time she took to defeat her six opponents. She had been one of the youngest players and had still managed to whisk the trophy away. Shikadai stared as Uncle Gaara and the others congratulated her on winning, shaking her hand as he smiled at her. He watched as the metal of the trophy cast incandescent shadows on her skin, lighting them up; he watched as her mother filtered in first through the throng of people, followed by her sister, both of them smiling and cheering. He watched as the younger girl flew into her arms screeching, rejoicing in her victory.
He watched and watched, until she was no longer in sight, and from then, he tried to will his mind to play this moment over and over again.
Shikadai did not remember many days from his life before he went to the Academy, but he remembered this day, for even at five-years old, his brain saw the significance of the moment you saw someone you were going to fall in love with. People would later argue the possibility of this with him, but he knew. It was what it was. Shikadai remembered the world when it came to Uchiha Saisho.