So, almost a month ago my very first ship became canon. Like, legit canon. Married with a kid canon. My 12 year old self would be foaming at the mouth right now. So, in order to celebrate, a little ficlet suggested by an anon on my tumblr! Bask in the canonness that is the ssfamily. Also, papasuke is just too adorable.

Read and enjoy, my lovelies...

Title: Ambition

Rating: K+

Set: Post canon (references ep. 189)

Summary: His daughter might be a little…too ambitious.

Warnings: cute ssfam, papasuke, salad being a cutie, itachi feels

Word count: 1,485

It's the hasty slamming of the front door and the pitter-patter of small feet that makes Sasuke smile while helping Sakura make dinner in the kitchen. Sakura, too, smiles and laughs quietly at the scrambling sound of their daughter racing through the halls, no doubt with her shoes still on.

And then she's there, bursting through the kitchen's doorway. Downy hair askew, glasses slipping down her nose, dirt smudges on her pink sweater, little scratches covering her hands and her face—and despite all this, she's beaming with pride as she holds out a piece of paper with a smeared paw-print on it.

Her chest puffs out as she proudly proclaims, "I got it, Papa! See?" and holds out the paper for his inspection.

Sakura, her eyes glowing with humor, never pauses in dicing vegetables for the stew simmering on the stove. "Sarada, your shoes," she reminds the five-year-old gently.

The little girl pauses, whipping her head down to stare at her muddy baby doll shoes, before grinning sheepishly at her mother. "Sorry, Mama. But I got it!"

"Yes, you did." Sasuke's chuckle is low in his throat as he abandons his job of chopping potatoes to kneel on the kitchen floor and take the paper. Even on his knees, he's taller than his daughter, who undoubtedly received her height from her mother. "But you're also covered in scratches, Sarada," he says, setting the paper aside and leaning close, using his hand to tilt her chin up into the light.

Were it not for the smile on her face, Sasuke would be concerned about the red lines raking across his daughter's round cheeks.

"I'm okay, Papa," she assures him. Her dark eyes are alight with pride as she points to the paper on the floor, next to his knee. "I caught the cat and got its paw-print; it put up a fight, but I still got the print. That makes ten!"

He knows; he's been keeping track. "Aa, that's right." Placing his palm on her head, he ruffles her hair, secretly delighting in her squeaking protest.

"Papa!" Sarada's laugh is like the tinkle of a bell, so pure that it makes his heart ache. Brushing her papa's large hand aside, Sarada then tries to give him a serious look. But it fails, and she ends up peeking at him almost shyly. "Since I got ten paw-prints…that means I can train with Papa tomorrow, right?"

He hasn't forgotten his promise, of course, and he knows that what she wants, more than anything, is to learn from her papa. "Aa, we'll train together tomorrow," he says as he rises back up to his full height, paper clutched in his right hand like a treasure. "Like you asked, I will teach you katon no jutsu."

Sarada, who can't contain her excitement, punches a fist into the air and exclaims, "Yes!"

…

When she completes her next ten prints, it's faster than the first time and she comes back with less scratches. The amount of improvement in such a short time would have shocked most parents, but not Sasuke—she is his and Sakura's daughter, after all. She does, however, still track mud into the house in her hastiness to show him the paw-prints.

Over the next few months, Sarada continues to add more paw-prints to her collection. Each time beaming with pride and eager to show her papa what a good cat-catcher she's becoming. And much like both her father and mother, she beings to grow ambitious, making "the hunt", as she begins to refer to it, harder for herself.

At first, Sasuke doesn't notice. He is only impressed by the fact that his daughter is bringing in double the amount of prints as before—and he begins to run out of rewards and age-appropriate jutsu to teach because of this. But, that doesn't matter to Sarada, as she does it for the sheer fun of it, and to show her papa her improving skills. Then, however, when the prints come trickling to a slow, his curiosity is tickled.

It's only when Sarada hands him another print weeks later, an unrepentant grin on her rosy face, that he realizes why—the print she hands him is almost as large as his own fist. Over the next few months, the prints get bigger, and bigger, sometimes taking up nearly a whole page.

And when Sakura finally approaches him, a large tiger-sized paw-print in her hands and a bewildered look on her face, Sasuke can't contain it any longer.

He laughs.

…

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura says later that night as they climb into bed, "you never did tell me about this paw-print hunt of yours. Does this have something to do with that mission when we were kids? The one where we had to sneak into Nekomata's fortress?" Her tone is questioning, voice soft as she presses into his side and begins to draw nonsensical, feather-light patterns across his scarred chest.

Sasuke, chuckling at the reminder, drapes his arm over her waist. "No, this was a game…that Itachi and I used to play as kids."

She stills at that, knowing that this, talking about his past and his childhood, is never easy for Sasuke. It's something he very rarely, if ever, brings up on his own, and it should be treated with delicacy.

So, despite the fact that she's inadvertently curious, Sakura settles for saying, "I see…"

There's a small pause and she continues to doodle with her fingertips.

"I was…a rambunctious child," Sasuke begins, startling her again into stillness. "My brother would often take me along to buy weapons and supplies, but I would grow bored and throw tantrums. So Itachi created this game to keep me occupied. He gave me a list of the swiftest cats and told me to catch them and get their paw-prints…"

The tenderness in Sasuke's voice, the obvious affection that he speaks with after so many years, is enough to warm Sakura's heart, while at the same time making it want to break. "Is that why you laughed earlier, when I showed you that huge paw-print Sarada collected?" she asks.

"No." Sasuke shakes his head, and it takes a second for Sakura to realize that the shaking of his shoulders is because he's chuckling. "It was because…I did the same exact thing. I got much more ambitious and started trapping ninja cats, ones my brother assigned half-jokingly. He even put Matatabi on that list."

"The Nibi?" Sakura gasps, sitting up with a disbelieving laugh and gazing down into her husband's midnight eyes that were, despite their color, so very clear tonight. "No," she says, "he didn't."

"He did." Sasuke tugs her back down into his waiting arms with a small smile, resting his chin on the top of her head.

"Well," Sakura huffs into the hollow of his collar bone, "all I can say is that you better not give Sarada any ideas. At least not yet. Wait until she's a bit older before sending her on crazy missions to get paw-prints from tailed-beasts."

Sasuke's laugh is throaty as he finds his wife's fingers and squeezes them gently. "Hn, at the rate she's going, she might attempt that without me even saying a word. Our daughter is twice as ambitious as I was," he murmurs teasingly.

"And whose fault is that?" Sakura, without warning, flicks Sasuke's side.

He snorts. "Both of ours."

There's another small pause, and then, both parents begin to laugh quietly. The serenity and perfection of this moment is almost too precious, too sacred to break… So they lie there together, entangled, neither saying a word and neither needing to. For once, the silence is comfortable and void of dismal ambiguity after speaking of past times.

"Thanks for sharing that with me, Sasuke-kun," she whispers after a while, snuggling into his warmth.

"You're welcome. It was surprisingly…easy," he admits, a little dazed with the truth of it. It had been fairly easy to speak about his past, about the times with his older brother. Even now, many years later, it is sometimes difficult for him to even think Itachi's name…and yet…

"She's having fun." Sakura's voice is breathy, sleepy. She presses a soft kiss onto his chest, an action of love and comfort that never ceases to take him by surprise.

Sasuke blinks and then buries his nose in Sakura's floral-scented hair. "Aa."

His daughter is an Uchiha through and through; ambition flows through her veins like blood. She's so much like himself when he'd been a child, it's like he's looking in a mirror sometimes.

Perhaps that's why…this game is so fulfilling.

…

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura begins months later, "I think we should have a talk with Sarada about her collection…"

"…Aa," he agrees, staring down at her most recent addition—a very large, very obvious kyuubi print with Uncle Naruto scrawled beneath.

His daughter might be a little…too ambitious.

Ah, it's been so long since I've written for SasuSaku. Hopefully it turned out fine!