Archive of Our Own ^beta

Patience is a virtue.

Sakura had heard that expression countless times. Her mother would say it when she came home starving after hours of training and dinner wasn’t ready yet. She would hear it earlier that same day, from Lady Tsunade, when she failed to land a strike with the same force as her master. We are just starting. Wait and you’ll see progress. She would say it to herself when she looked in the mirror, just fifteen years old, and saw a girl with a childish, round face and a small, lithe body instead of a woman in development. It’s okay, I’m just a late bloomer.

Patience is a virtue. Until it’s not.

Three pieces of clothing lay on the living room sofa. Sasuke-kun’s cloak, Sarada’s arm warmers, and her own red qipao. All three had something in common. Only time and patience could fix them, patch them up, and restore them to their original state. Filling the holes with pieces of fabric in similar colors until the stitches from her needle and thread became nothing more than a scar in the fabric. Present. Visible. But no longer bleeding.

You shouldn’t wait for him, Ino had told her multiple times years ago. Sasuke-kun had just left the village once again, but this time, it was to find himself and his place in the world rather than blindly chasing what he once thought was his destiny. That fact alone had alleviated the weight on Sakura’s heart, though it had done very little to appease Ino’s doubts.

Sakura had learned to ignore the sympathetic sighs, the disapproving gestures, the condescending words that tried to convince her that the love she felt for Sasuke wasn’t worth the wait. You deserve better, they said, as if loving someone broken was a punishment.

But love wasn’t about deserving or not. 

Needle in hand, Sakura threaded it with precision. Sasuke’s cloak had a tear near the hem. It wasn’t the first time she had mended it, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. The frayed fibers came together again with each careful stitch, each tiny loop securing the fabric with a thread strong enough to hold but delicate enough to keep the cloth from stiffening. A slow process. A meticulous one. One that required persistence.

Her mother had taught her to sew when she was a child. She had told her that a good mend didn’t try to erase the damage but to reinforce it. That scars were proof that something had been used, loved, lived in.

Sakura understood that now more than ever.

Sasuke had scars on his body and his soul, and she had never tried to pretend they didn’t exist. Never tried to forget them. Instead, she accepted them. As part of him. As part of them.

" Patience will bring these clothes back," she said out loud to no one in particular.

She was home alone, both her husband and daughter away on their respective missions. She worried about them both, each one with their own obstacles, but such was the life of a shinobi. One on a routine mission with her teammates and her sensei, and the other alone, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, burdened with the responsibility of uncovering clues that only he could find.

She would need to have patience again. It has served me well for over twenty years. It will serve me for another couple of weeks.

That was a key difference between her and Naruto; the only person who had never questioned the unwavering loyalty that no one else seemed to understand. He was determination. Action. He did not wait. He lived his life and let life live him. He searched for Sasuke when he was lost and let him go when he wasn’t. He married, had kids, and achieved his dream of becoming Hokage, wishing Sasuke had been there to see him reach his milestones, but never once waiting for it to happen.

Her feelings were more complicated.

She had waited. Through the years of absence, through the loneliness, through the whispers that told her to move on. She had waited because her love was not passive, nor was it naïve. It was forged in fire, tested by time.

Patience was not a burden but a choice; an act of defiance against those who believed love should be easy, convenient.

She picked up the needle again, her fingers steady as she pushed the thread through the fabric. Sasuke’s cloak needed reinforcement along the edges where wear and tear had frayed the seams. A familiar task, one she had done countless times before. Her hands knew the rhythm, the small, precise motions. It was a meditation of sorts, a quiet ritual.

Perhaps that was why she never resented the waiting. It was not just longing; it was faith. Faith in him, in them. Every stitch she wove into the fabric was a promise, a reminder. He will come back. And when he did, she would be here, as she always had been.

He came home more and more often these days. Stayed for longer. No longer arriving after she had fallen asleep, slipping quietly into bed, hugging her from behind, only to leave before dawn, and Sarada, could see him. He was used to saying goodbye to her . Saying it to his daughter was infinitely more difficult. Especially when she looked up at him with hopeful eyes, and he had to repeat the words that had been said to him again and again. Next time.

With Sasuke’s cloak mended, she set down the needle and fabric. She moved on to Sarada’s arm warmers, their edges worn and frayed from endless training sessions. Her daughter was persistent, determined. Impatient, at times. Many told her how much Sarada resembled her in temperament, but when Sakura looked at her, she only saw Sasuke-kun; more whole, less haunted. 

With the same patience she had used to mend Sasuke’s cloak, Sakura began reinforcing Sarada’s arm warmers. Her daughter had a natural talent, growing strength, and a will as unbreakable as her father’s and dare she say it, hers. Sometimes, when she watched her train with an almost obsessive intensity, she worried. How much of that fire was inherited, and how much was born from the need to prove herself? To live up to the expectation of being the daughter of two-thirds of the legendary Team Seven. To live up to being an Uchiha. The tragic nature of a clan that only grew stronger through hardship.

The first time Sarada had asked why her father left so often, Sakura had chosen her words carefully.

" Because there are things only he can do, " she had said, hoping it would be enough. " He works hard to keep the world, us, safe. "

But as time passed, simple answers were no longer enough.

" It’s not fair, " Sarada had said one night recently, arms crossed, brow furrowed. " He should be able to stay for a few days and rest. The Otsutsuki were just defeated at the Chunin Exams. What else is there to do? "

Sakura, who had spent her entire life understanding, waiting, justifying, felt a knot form in her throat. Because it was true. Sasuke could stay. And yet, he still left.

" You’re right ," she had told her honestly. " It’s not fair ."

Sarada seemed taken aback by the response, as if she had expected her mother to offer a reason that would make everything make sense. But sometimes, there were no reasons that made sense. And that, too, was part of loving someone. Sometimes, the reasons were not enough.

" But that doesn’t mean he wants to,” Sakura had continued, taking her daughter’s hand. " And it doesn’t mean he won’t come back. "

Sarada had turned her gaze away, but hadn’t  pulled her hand back. Her fingers were firm, like her father’s, and in that act of resistance, Sakura had seen the reflection of the years she herself had spent trying to understand what it meant to love someone like Sasuke.

She returned to the present and the work in her hands. The thread slid with precision between the fibers of the fabric, reconstructing what had been worn down over time. She liked to sew. It was a reminder that what was broken wasn’t lost.

When she finished with the arm warmers, she set them aside next to the cloak and picked up her own qipao. It was simpler to repair, just some frayed edges and a small tear in the shoulder. With each stitch, her mind wandered back to her own scars; those that couldn’t be seen but could be felt in the spaces between the waiting and the reunion.

She had learned that patience wasn’t just passive waiting. It was an active choice, an act of love and faith. She knew her family wasn’t like other families; that their time together was sometimes fleeting, that goodbyes always carried weight. But she also knew that, no matter how much time passed, Sasuke always came back. And Sarada, in her own way, was learning that lesson too, but now from the other side. With time, it would be her daughter who would leave on long, complicated missions, and it would be Sasuke-kun and herself who would wait for her, holding their breaths, until Sarada made her own life, and someone else waited for her at her own home.

When she finished, she gathered the clothes and folded them carefully, leaving everything ready for when her family returned. It didn’t matter how long it took. She would always be there, sewing the threads of their life together, making sure that, despite everything, nothing unraveled completely.

She disagreed, somehow. Patience wasn’t a virtue. For her, it was love.