Breakfast is already on the table when Sarada leaves her room, and her father thinks that a nod works as a substitute for a normal morning greeting, but Sarada doesn't mind this and nods back. Her father has opened the windows, letting in both heat and small breezes, but most prominently the chirping of birds that works as a backdrop to their quiet eating. Her father has made poached eggs served in a sauce, pickled vegetables, and a small bowl of rice topped with flaked fish for each of them. It occurs to her that he's quite traditional, but the food is hot and savory. She can't tell if he eats this way every day or if he's doing it for her, but her mother could barely make hard-boiled eggs let alone poached ones.

When they're done eating, dishes clean and put away, he walks over to the window and rests his hand on the sill as he stares outside. "Sleep well?" he asks.

"Yes," Sarada says. "Thanks."

"Of course."

This reply gets on her nerves, and she could look into why, but it's such a small thing that she decides to just let it go. "I saw the pictures in your room."

He gives her a sideways look. Sarada chews her cheek. They really hadn't helped anything. She already had so many questions to ask and all they did was give her more. Her father's face is blank, but his lowered brows give his concentration away as he waits for her to continue.

Maybe she shouldn't've brought this up, instead focusing on the questions about her mother and his relationship, on his absence. But those questions made her angry—they were specific to her life, with concrete effects on it, and the photographs were distant. Talking about them might be less… harrowing, than bringing up her mother.

"The ones of you when you were little," she elaborates. "The one with your team—we have the same one at home."

He nods. "Naruto has that one too."

"Right…" She's seen it there, on display in Boruto's house with other photos of his family. Now that she considers it, there's a lot of photos of the Seventh in Boruto's house, but not many photos of him with the rest of his family. "And the other one. With you, um. You looked really young, with three people that kind of look like you. Was that your family?"

Her father moves away from the window, watching her face carefully. "Yes, that's my family."

"What happened to them?"

He raises his eyebrows at her, like it was a stupid question to ask, and she crosses her arms. "Look, no one told me anything."

"Well, they died," he says. "You didn't know?"

"No, I didn't," Sarada says. "Mom didn't tell me, and I didn't meet her parents until three years ago when I finally got her to tell me their address and went to visit them myself. They're alive and I never knew about them, and you're alive and I never knew about you, so I—"

"You didn't meet her parents until three years ago?" he interrupts.

"Exactly," Sarada continues without pause. "And she didn't go with me."

"But… why?"

Sarada glares at him. "Why do you care? You're divorced now and you don't have the right to criticize Mom. It's none of your business what she does and doesn't do."

He looks like he wants to say something more, but nods. "You're right," he says. "But… it's still strange to me that nobody told you they died."

"Well, I mean," Sarada sighs. "Everything I know about the Uchiha clan, I know from my classmates. Adults never answer anything, and all the kids ever say is that our clan is good at everything and that it's a good thing I'm an Uchiha. They talk about the clan like it's some big thing with a reputation, but the only ones I know are me, Mom, and y—oh, I guess not Mom anymore."

She frowns, gaze dropping to the floor. Her father says nothing, the birds filling the silence once more. Sarada takes a breath. "Anyway. All I mean is that it's not my fault I don't know anything."

"I know it isn't," her father says. "I'm just… surprised, by how little you've been told."

"It's not like you were any help," she snaps and he lowers his head in resignation. She licks her lips. "Who's the other boy?" He looks up. "Your cousin? He looks like you, but not like he's part of the family."

Her father's forehead creases. "Not like he's…" he repeats, trailing off. "That's my brother. My older brother."

Her eyes widen, eyebrows raising high on her forehead. "You have a brother?" she asks indignantly. Sarada's father nods, but her mind is already elsewhere, back in her father's bedroom reimagining the photo in her mind—this boy, standing awkwardly next to his mother, like he didn't want to be in the photo, maybe he was like Boruto and thought he was too cool to stand and smile. Her father's older brother. They would have played together, the elder helping the younger with his homework, Sarada's father and him sitting around a table with their parents for dinner and talking about the kinds of things that families talked about. He was someone her father had grown up with, not a distant figure like parents or even grandparents could be. Father, mother, and the young brothers—a family, standing for a photo in different poses as one, her father and her—

"…My uncle," Sarada breathes. "You had a brother, and no one bothered to tell me? All this time, I've had an uncle, and—"

"He's dead too, Sarada," her father cuts her off with an edge in his voice she hasn't heard since she met him that first time in the forest.

She presses on, "For how long? Before I was born or after? Did he exist and you just never—"

"He's been dead since years before your birth," her father answers. "He never could have been an uncle to you, Sarada."

"What happened to them?" Sarada tugs at her hair. "Why are they all dead? I get that you were a shinobi family, but aren't the Uchiha supposed to be great and talented?"

Her father's face is very pale, pointed toward the window with distant eyes that tell Sarada he's not really looking anything.

"Why were they so famous, anyway? Was your family the entire clan?"

He shakes his head quickly, his lips pressed tightly together, looking so drained that Sarada almost feels a twinge of guilt for asking about it, for asking him to recall details of a family that he lost.

But it's her family too. As much as she wishes to cut her father from her life, he is her father. They share a surname, and a clan. She carries around that reputation, and people immediately single her out for her dark hair and eyes, for the crest her mother had sent to seamstresses to sew into her clothes. She has to deal with the questions, with the expectations, and her father got to wander around in a forest for years far away from all of it, from the whispering and the accusations that started at him as soon as he stepped back in. She is just as much a part of the clan as he is, she has to deal with what comes with being part of the clan like he does, and she shouldn't have to feel guilty for her curiosity about a subject that really does affect her.

"… are they all dead?"

He nods, and grips the windowsill, still not looking at her, his knuckles white.

"I… I don't understand…" Sarada shakes her head. She always thought the Uchiha were just… a really small clan, that for some reason everyone was obsessed with. But no one would ever tell her the history, her mother saying that her father was better equipped to explain it to her, and here she is talking to her father and he looks like he might actually pass out.

"How did no one tell you," he says in a shaky voice. "No one. Not Sakura, not Naruto, not—"

"Why were you relying on them to tell me about your family?" she exclaims, tiring of his apparent inability to take responsibility for his own actions. "They're your—"

"But everybody knows," he exclaims. "Everyone! And they never stop talking about it, and not a single one thought to tell you? They left it to me? So I'd have to—?"

Her father clamps his mouth shut and Sarada clenches her fist, "If you were here you could've explained everything to me a long time ago! Instead you went off messing around and leaving important things that you should be telling me about to everyone else! You promised you were gonna answer my questions, and now I'm asking them to you and you're just complaining about how no one else—"

"I'm not complaining, I just…" He falls silent.

"Just…?" Sarada prompts.

"Nothing. I'm sorry."

She pushes air hard out through her nose, and he doesn't look at her.

"How many were there?" Sarada asks. "In the clan?"

"… over two hundred."

Sarada's eyes widen, lips parting involuntarily. "T—two…"

Her father is quiet.

"What the hell?" is the only thing that Sarada can think to say. "Over two hundred?!"

"Yes."

"That's bigger than Chouchou's!"

He nods.

She stares, wanting to grab her father by the front of his cloak and shake him. "Are you lying?"

"Why would I lie to you about that?" he asks. "I already promised you that I wouldn't, and it'd do me far better for you not to know about it."

"Why?" She slams her fist into the wall beside the window, white dust falling from where it connects to the ceiling. Her father jumps. She rips her hand out from the hole she's made. "Why is it so bad for you if I actually know things!"

"It's not bad if you know things!" he insists, his voice raised too now. "It's bad that you don't already know this! And it's not your fault that you don't!"

"Yeah, because it's yours!" she shouts back. "Why can't you just tell me? Was it that bad?"

Surely they weren't all wiped out at once, right? How could something like that happen in this Village?

"They… don't even teach you this at school?" he asks weakly.

"No!"

Why would they? Was it really so monumental, such a big part of the Leaf Village's history, that her father—best friend of the Hokage, who could just tell him that they don't even learn about the Village's history in much detail at all— expected it would be part of their school's curriculum?

"… Were they all taken out at once?" she asks at last. It's the most probable explanation, going off of her father's cues. For so many people to have died during her father's lifetime and before her birth… even though she didn't want to think about something so horrific…

Her father heaves a long sigh, giving one last look out the window before he drops his hand from the ledge, shaking, and turns to the sofa. Sarada follows him slowly, her stomach sinking with the realization that she punched a hole in her father's wall. He'd probably have to pay for that.

Well, he could just use the money he got from the twelve-year mission that he went on. She's sure it was worth the money, since it wasn't worth the time.

"Yes," he says, sitting down, giving a weary glance to his wall before looking back at Sarada. She sits too, expecting a long story. All taken out at once…

"Wait, then…" she stares at him. "But… then…"

His lips don't move.

"Then…"

All taken out at once.

Her father, the only one still standing, her father, a threat to the village—

"Did—did you—" she stammers, and suddenly she's overcome with tremors, and the door—the door, it's locked, isn't it? She knew she didn't feel right about it being locked—

"What?"

"Well, why else are you alive then?" she demands, watching as any remaining colour in his face drains completely.

"I didn't— Sarada, no, absolutely not, I—" His eyes are so wide they look like they might drop from his head. "I did not kill the Uchiha!"

"Then how come no one ever talks about it?" she retorts. "Not because the Seventh likes you? You've raised your sword at me before—"

"Sarada, stop it."

She looks at him, still shaking, and there are lines creased on his face that Sarada didn't even know could be creased, his fist clenched tightly, and he's shaking even harder than she is.

Sarada brings her fingers to her lips, the weight of her accusation sinking in. Her father… his entire clan was terminated at once for whatever reason, by whatever force, and she just accused him of killing them all single-handedly. She knows for a fact that he is capable of it, his powers are close to on par with the Seventh's and the Seventh's are on par with the gods', but if it really wasn't her father who did it and he'd lost his entire clan sometime before she was born…

"I'm so sorry."

"It's— I…" he trails off.

"It's okay. You don't have to say it's okay."

…Maybe she should just leave him alone. Ask about this another time. She still doesn't know what actually happened, but right now it doesn't really seem like the most important thing anymore.

She hates that she's taking her father's feelings so seriously right now because she doesn't want to extend him any empathy, but she did cross a rather serious line, no matter how angry she is with him.

"You can tell me what actually happened later, if that's better," she says, glancing over to the wall where the hole is.

"I can't," he says.

"… so you'll tell me now?" she looks back at him, eyebrow raised quizzically.

"No, I mean. I can't tell you what actually happened."

"Today?"

"At all."

She stares at him. "Why the hell not?"

No matter how she makes him feel he still owes her answers, he promised her answers—

"It's my… my family," he stammers.

"I'm your family too."

He freezes, and Sarada folds her arms. "Did you forget?"

Her father shakes his head. "That isn't what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

"I can't…" he hesitates, his eyes focusing on a point behind her for a few moments before he continues. "I can't talk about the annihilation of my clan."

She thinks of the photograph, the smiling mother, the stern father, the lost looking brother—all dead, all at once, just like that, her father the only one left… for some reason.

"… too sensitive?" she guesses.

Sarada didn't really think her father was the type, but then, she had no idea what type of person her father was.

His head hangs low, bangs covering his eyes completely as they point toward the floor, and he looks so… guilty, and distraught, and human, and Sarada wants to push him up by the shoulders so he's looking straight at her, she feels almost sorry but some part of her wants to know why he never bows his head for her, for her mother, why the divorce and his failure at parenting her isn't as hard for him to talk about as this.

But maybe that just means it's particularly horrific.

"… Okay. That's fine," she says, hoping that this is the last time she has to show him leniency. "I'll just… ask someone else, I guess."

He said that everybody knows… someone in this Village besides himself would just have to be willing to give her some answers.

She looks back at him, who's sat up, eyes still lowered to the floor.

It occurs to her that, so far, this is the only time that he's denied her.

A/N: I sat here mulling over what to write as an Author's Note for fifteen minutes, but for once, I don't really have anything to add. Thank you for reading, reviews are always appreciated!