Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I hate her. I really, really do.”

Sarada looks up from her half-eaten plate at the declaration. “Hate her?” she echoes, her expression one of stunned surprise behind her glasses. “Boruto, you don’t mean that.”

Boruto scowls down at the burger he holds in his hands. “Yes I do! Sarada, she completely ruined my gift for Mom!”

The three of them are gathered together in their usual booth at Kaminari Burger, as they are most afternoons following training. Sometimes Konohamaru-sensei joins them, but not today. Mitsuki is sitting to the right of him in the booth, Sarada across from them, as Boruto subjects them both to his newest bad mood.

For once, his father isn’t the cause of it.

His mother’s birthday is coming up this week—only three more days. Boruto has spent the past six days working hard and diligently on her present: a personalized med-kit for when she’s away on out-of-village missions. It’s taken him so long because he’s been sewing the kit himself—with the Hyuuga Clan crest embroidered on it, as well as different seals to hide weapons. He even stitched a protective amulet into it.

He took special care in making sure each part of it was perfect. Then this morning just as he was finishing it, Himawari ran into his room without knocking and slammed into him. The med-kit flew from his hands, out the open window, and fell an entire story through the air where it caught on a tree branch; then it ripped and landed in a muddy puddle on the sidewalk.

Nearly an entire week of hard, careful work. And now because of her, it’s all destroyed.

Boruto loves his baby sister. No one who knows him would ever question him on this. Even last year during the chuunin exams, when he was behaving so horribly, Himawari was the one person he never took for granted. She was one of the main reasons behind why he did what he did—because it wasn’t just him their father was forgetting, it was her too. He bailed on her birthday, after giving his word he would be there. Hima deserved better.

Boruto once faced death at the hands of a senile old grandmother just to bring her back the perfect souvenir! There can’t be any doubt how much he cares for her!

That doesn’t mean they never fight—a certain terrifying incident with a ripped stuffed animal and a newly-awakened Byakugan comes immediately to his mind. They argue sometimes—a lot of the time—as all siblings are prone to doing. And lately, it’s been worse than ever. Boruto’s been finding it harder and harder to recall why he adores her so much.

“It was an accident,” Sarada tells him. “She didn’t mean to do it.”

“Well, she did,” Boruto snaps.

Mitsuki frowns slightly, pausing with his disgusting veggie burger halfway to his mouth. “You can’t just make another one?”

“I don’t have time! Besides, that’s not even the point—I worked hard on that kit! What am I supposed to do now?!”

Sarada rolls her dark eyes. “Boruto, grow up. Himawari adores you. I’m sure she feels awful about what happened. You’re acting like a brat.”

“Brat?!”

Boruto is so, so sick of people telling him he’s being childish when he’s angry. Maybe it’s true sometimes, but not all the time. Doesn’t he have a right to be upset about things?

“What do you know?” he says irritably. “You don’t have a younger sibling constantly messing up your life.”

“No,” says Sarada. “I have you for that.”

“Hey!”

“You better snap out of this attitude you’re in.” She leans forward to sip at the fountain drink in front of her. “If you’re training with my dad today still, you know he won’t put up with it.”

Boruto’s jaw clenches, and he crosses his arms over his chest. Not even the reminder that Sasuke is back in the village after months, that he has a training session with him in less than an hour, is enough to lift his bad mood.

Mitsuki swallows a bite of his burger before speaking. “I didn’t know your father was back home, Sarada.”

“He got back last night.” A bright, sun-lit smile spreads across her usually serious face. “He didn’t tell us he was coming home. It was a complete surprise. You should have seen Mom’s face when she saw him at the door!”

It’s nice to see Sarada so happy, Boruto thinks. Her father isn’t home very often. Sarada never complains about it, but Boruto knows she misses him. It sometimes makes Boruto feel guilty for complaining so much about Naruto in front of her—he has reasons for being upset with his father, legitimate reasons, but at least Naruto is still in Konoha. At least Boruto knows, whenever he wants to see him, all he has to do is run down the streets and barge into his office. He’ll be there, behind his desk piled with paperwork, as always.

Sasuke is off protecting the village, of course, which is super cool. Boruto hopes to be a shinobi just like him one day. But he knows it must be hard on Sarada.

“Is he staying for long this time?” Mitsuki asks.

“About two weeks.” She reaches over, stealing some of Boruto’s fries off his plate—ignoring his shout of hey! and how he attempts to slap her hand away, too slow. She dips the fry in ketchup before plopping it in her mouth, looking across the table at the blonde. “Relax, Boruto. You still have three days, right? You’ll find something else to get for your mom.”

“I don’t want something else,” the genin grumbles under his breath.

Mitsuki straightens in his seat with his usual thin-lipped smile. “You can bake her a cake,” he suggests. “That’s what my parent did for my birthday.”

Sarada snorts, slapping a hand immediately over her mouth in an attempt to cover the sound up. “Orochimaru baked you a cake? Orochimaru?”

“Yes. With snakes made out of blue icing.”

Sarada descends into laughter. That, coupled with the amusing image of Orochimaru bent over a cake and carefully drawing snakes with a tube of icing, causes Boruto to crack up as well. Mitsuki looks extremely confused by the reaction, looking between the two of them with a baffled frown.

“A cake is good, I suppose,” Boruto says, once he can speak through his laughter. Though nowhere near as good as the med-kit, he thinks defeatedly. “But I spent all my money on materials for the kit. I don’t have any left…”

“I can buy the ingredients for you,” says Mitsuki.

“Would you really? Thanks!”

His friend smiles. “Anything for you, Boruto-kun.”

★

Boruto is grateful to Mitsuki for helping him out. But a birthday cake, even personally made, can’t even begin to compare to his original gift, and he remains sour about it. All that work and effort he devoted to it, now utterly wasted.

The two of them split up from Sarada, and Mitsuki goes with him to the grocery store to pick out the ingredients for the cake. “Which flavor?” Mitsuki asks, standing in the aisleway and looking at the shelves filled with various flavored cake batters.

“Chocolate,” Boruto says, immediately grabbing the box. “You can never go wrong with chocolate.”

“I like white cake better,” says Mitsuki.

Boruto looks at him in disgust. “Freak.”

Once he takes the ingredients home and hides them up in his bedroom closet, he goes back out and walks in the direction of the training grounds.

Sasuke is already there when he arrives. “You’re late,” the man says without greeting, his hand on his hip as he glares at him. “What did I tell you about wasting my time?”

“Sorry.”

The Uchiha looks impassive and intimidating, as usual. He’s wearing his normal black cloak that hides his missing limb from sight, his jet-black hair combed over one side of his face and concealing the purple rings of his Rinnegan. His sword is in its sheath on the right side of his waist.

Sasuke has a stony, no-nonsense demeanor that Boruto finds equally inspiring and irritating. He’s so unlike Boruto’s own father—he’s so calm, so collected. He never seems to blink at anything thrown at him, ever, and everything he does, every move he makes, is always so elegant and effortless. He’s powerful, one of the most powerful shinobi in the world, and he knows this the same way he knows how to draw breath. Boruto can only dream of having that type of easy confidence one day.

If Boruto’s being honest, he’s hard to look away from. Shikadai likes to tease him that he has a crush—but Boruto has insisted over and over that it isn’t like that, he just really, really admires the man.

But for all Boruto’s admiration, Sasuke is also incredibly frustrating to him. So cold and closed off—so incredibly rare in his praise. And getting any personal information out of him? Forget about it. Pulling teeth is easier than getting the man to speak about himself. He’s been training Boruto for close to a year now, whenever he returns to Konoha between assignments—and still, Boruto can count the things he knows about him on the fingers of one hand.

Boruto collects each small scrap of knowledge he does manage to acquire—hoards them like they’re precious gems. But he wants to know so much more. He wants to know how Sasuke became rivals with his dad—he wants to know about his legendary eye, his missing arm, why the hitai-ate he passed onto Boruto has a scratch through the center.

Most of what he knows about him hasn’t even come from the man himself. It’s come from his father and Sarada.

There’s a slight blur of movement. Boruto’s eyes widen, and he barely manages to catch the kunai that comes flying at him before it hits his face.

“Hey!” he yells. “That nearly put my eye out!”

“Pay attention,” Sasuke chides him. “Let me see the trick we were practicing when I was last here.”

Boruto groans. “But I’m still horrible at that!”

He arches an eyebrow. “You haven’t been working on it while I’ve been gone?”

The tone exudes maximum judgement. Boruto shifts shamefully where he stands. What’s better, he wonders—Sasuke thinking he’s incompetent or thinking he’s lazy?

“I’ve been practicing,” he lies. “But it’s really difficult. I still can’t get it to curve correctly.”

“Show me.”

Reluctantly, Boruto moves into the proper stance and grips the kunai in his right hand. It’s a complicated trick—he’s meant to make the blade hit a tree ahead of him, forty degrees to the right, but it’s about eighty percent hidden by another tree in front of it. It requires his throw to be at an exact, precise angle to succeed in hitting the target.

He makes the throw. The kunai scrapes the side of the first tree trunk, just like all the times before, then falls into the grass.

Boruto huffs, throwing his hands into the air. “See! I can’t do it!”

Sasuke walks over to pick up the weapon. He hands it back to Boruto.

“You aren’t getting it because your stance is wrong. You need to be more to the right—no, not that far, go back. And stop leaning forward like that. You’re trying to curve a blade, not a baseball—”

After a thorough lecture on exactly where to place his feet and the exact angle to hold his wrist, Sasuke steps back and allows Boruto to practice without any further instructions or corrections. But now the genin is feeling irritated, mostly with himself but slightly with Sasuke, and the entire thing just adds to his already poor mood.

He was hoping Sasuke would teach him a cool new jutsu now that he’s back in Konoha. Instead he has Boruto doing useless kunai-throwing drills.

He still isn’t hitting the tree. Even with Sasuke’s corrections, he still can’t make the blade curve how it’s supposed to. He can feel the older man watching him, and he knows he’s being judged and found lacking. That, compounded with his bad mood from earlier, is preventing him from concentrating to his full ability.

His hand slips. The blade cuts deep across three of his fingers.

“Ah—” He pulls his hand to his chest as blood wells up, kunai falling to the ground. “Shit!”

Sasuke is by his side in a blink. “Idiot,” he says, but there’s no bite behind it. The insult seems automatic, as Sasuke reaches for his wounded hand. “Let me see.”

Boruto uncurls his fingers, allowing Sasuke to pull his hand away from his chest to examine it.

The cut is pretty deep, starting below the second inside knuckle of his ring finger. It slices diagonally across three fingers, ending at the third knuckle on his pointer finger. Boruto winces at the stinging pain, the rapid bubbling of blood as it drips down the sides of his fingers and onto the grass.

Sasuke guides him to sit down. He pulls a roll of gauze from somewhere within his cloak and presses a folded-up strip of it against the wound.

Boruto hisses, looking at him sharply. “Ow!”

“Be quiet,” Sasuke tells him. “Hold that there. Staunch the blood flow.”

Boruto does as he’s told, replacing the man’s hand with his own uninjured one.

“You’re distracted,” Sasuke accuses, looking at him sternly. “It’s making you careless. If your mind isn’t here, you should go home.”

“No!” Boruto says, a bit too loudly. He only has two weeks until Sasuke leaves the village again, and who knows the next time he’ll be back? “I’m fine—I’ll focus—”

“You slashed up your fingers. You can’t train anymore today. Unless you’ve suddenly become left-handed?”

Irritation surges in his chest. “But that’s not fair!”

“Spare me the tantrum. You should have been focused on what you were doing instead of lost in your own head.”

He motions for Boruto to stop putting pressure on his hand. Boruto pulls the gauze back slowly, the blood flow now sluggish and almost stopped. Sasuke takes the hand and begins wrapping it, weaving the cloth between his three cut-up fingers.

Sasuke’s touch is surprisingly gentle. Boruto looks up at him. “You’re not going to ask me what’s wrong?”

“What?” Sasuke asks, not glancing up from what he’s doing.

“Why I’m distracted. You’re not gonna ask me about it?”

“Should I?”

“That’s what a proper sensei would do.”

“Good thing I’m not your sensei then,” Sasuke says, tightening the bandages around his hand and tying them off. “I’ll leave the actual teaching to Konohamaru.”

“Ow,” Boruto mutters, and feels stung by more than just the injury. But Sasuke is right—technically, he isn’t Boruto’s sensei.

For a moment, as he finishes up with gently dressing the wound, some unknown emotion flashes briefly through dark eyes. It’s a softer look than Boruto’s used to from the reserved man, his fingers stilling against Boruto’s hand for a fraction of a moment. A distance to his expression.

It takes Boruto a moment to decipher. Similar to grief, but not quite, not as deep or crushing. It’s an aching, melancholic sort of remembrance.

“Have you done this before?” he asks him, taking a stab at what the look means. “Or… someone’s done this for you?”

Sasuke’s eyes immediately lose their distant look, the shutters behind them closing like bars on a prison cell. He drops Boruto’s hand.

“Wash that when you get home,” he says coldly.

Boruto sighs. His father’s rival is so frustrating.

He allows himself to fall backward, hitting the grass. He hears Sasuke stand up from his crouch, and watches his feet as they step around him. There’s sweat beading under his hitai-ate, and Boruto pulls it off. He pushes his bangs from his forehead, wiping away the sweat causing them to stick there.

He stares at the village headband—the old, worn cloth and the metal plate with the scratch through Konoha’s symbol. He glances at Sasuke and wonders, the questions dying to burst from his lips, but he bites them back.

“So,” Sasuke says. He leans against a tree trunk and looks down at him on the ground. “What’s been bothering you?”

Boruto’s head jerks up in surprise. “I thought you didn’t care.”

“Don’t let it go to your head. It’s just a question.”

Boruto attempts to smother the warmth in his chest, not wanting to embarrass himself by showing how pleased he is. Thankfully, thinking about the answer to Sasuke’s question does that quite well—he finds himself annoyed again almost instantly, recalling the events of that morning.

“My stupid sister ruined my mom’s birthday present this morning,” he complains, scowling up at the blue sky. “I worked so hard on it and now none of it matters because of her.”

“Ah,” Sasuke says, and sounds comprehending. “I see.”

Boruto angles his head so he’s looking up at him instead of the sky. “Do you?”

“Younger siblings can be rather annoying sometimes. Or so I’ve been told.”

There’s an odd half-twist to the man’s mouth as he says this. Boruto gets the impression that there’s some sort of joke in the words he isn’t in on.

“They’re the worst,” Boruto agrees. He twists and pulls at the grass beneath him, getting dirt under his nails. “Especially little sisters.” Sasuke makes a vague hn noise, and Boruto glances at him. “Do you have a sister, Sasuke-san?”

The moment the words leave his mouth, he wants to snatch them back out of the air. He knows about the Uchiha Clan, after all. Not much, but he knows they were once a big clan. He knows all of them are dead now, though he doesn’t know how—all of them gone, except for Sasuke and Sarada.

If Sasuke ever had a sister, she’s very, very dead now.

“Sorry,” Boruto says instantly, pushing himself up with wide blue eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

Sasuke’s mouth presses into a thin line. “It’s fine. No, I didn’t have a sister.”

Boruto relaxes back on the grass. “Lucky you,” he says with a sigh.

“I’ve seen you with your sister. You don’t actually mean that.”

“You sound like Sarada,” the blonde mutters in annoyance. He pauses. “Or, well, I guess she’s the one who sounds like you. I do mean it. I’m fucking sick of her.”

Sasuke’s foot knocks against his shoulder. “Language.”

Boruto scowls.

His nails bite angrily into the ground as he remembers the med-kit. It was perfect. His mom would have loved it, and Himawari ruined it—knocked it out the window and into the mud, destroyed all his great hard work.

“You’re really lucky,” Boruto says again, envy in his voice. “I wish I was an only child. Then there wouldn’t be anyone always messing up my stuff—”

He isn’t looking in Sasuke’s direction as he speaks, and he yelps in surprise as he’s suddenly being yanked up from the ground by a harsh grip on the back of his shirt. “Hey! What the hell?!”

He didn’t even hear the man move.

“Go home,” Sasuke says, his tone like a strike of lightning.

Boruto’s mouth gapes like a fish. “What?”

“You heard me. Go home. You can come back once you’ve learned some respect.”

He doesn’t move, just stands there dumbly. He doesn’t understand what happened; all he knows is that Sasuke suddenly looks more furious than Boruto has ever seen him. He’s intimidating usually, but actually angry, he’s terrifying.

He isn’t even yelling. His anger is ice-cold, and somehow that’s worse.

Sasuke realizes Boruto doesn’t plan on moving. So he leaves instead, passing the genin with his cloak swishing behind him dramatically. When Boruto snaps out of it and turns around, the man is already out of sight.

Boruto stands there for a long time before going home.

★

During the walk home, Boruto’s confusion and distress over Sasuke’s abrupt departure turns into anger. Seriously, what the hell was that about? It’s just another thing added to the terrible events of that morning. Today has absolutely sucked.

He walks through the front door, pushing his shoes off and leaving them on the mat. His mother is in the kitchen cooking dinner, a lovely aroma filling the air that makes his stomach grumble.

“What are you doing home?” Hinata asks in surprise, looking back when he enters the room behind her. “I thought you were training with Sasuke today.”

“I hurt my hand,” Boruto says. “He cut training short.” It isn’t a lie, not really, and Boruto doesn’t want to talk about it any further. He just wants to head up to his bedroom and be alone.

Hinata is stirring the sauce in the pot in front of her. Her arm stops its circular motion at his words, expression twisting in concern. “Hurt your hand? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Mom. Sasuke-san patched me up.”

Despite the reassurance, she still feels the need to walk over and examine his hand herself. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes or sigh, knowing she’ll catch it, Boruto allows her to take his right palm in hers, examining the three bandaged fingers. She lets the injured hand go after a few moments, judging the patching job to be satisfactory.

“You should go wash it off, still. You don’t want it to become infected.”

“I know, I know…”

“Let me know if you need any help re-bandaging it.”

“Is Dad coming home for dinner tonight?” Boruto asks her, his hand dropping back to his side.

Ever since the utter disaster and chaos that was last summer’s chuunin exams, his father has been trying a lot harder to make the proper time for his family. But he’s still the Hokage of the village, so unfortunately, he still misses dinner frequently due to work.

He doesn’t make false promises anymore, though. He doesn’t lie and promise he’ll be home when he knows there’s a real possibility he won’t be, and Boruto can appreciate him a lot more for that.

“He said that he would try today,” Hinata tells him, “so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Boruto nods. “Okay. I’m gonna go change out of these clothes. I’m all sweaty.”

“I’ll call you down when dinner’s done,” she tells him, turning back toward the stove. She picks up the spoon and resumes stirring the sauce in the pan.

He turns and begins trudging up the stairs. The cut on his hand is still stinging dully, even wrapped in bandages, and he holds it close to his chest. He grits his teeth, thinking about Sasuke’s abrupt dismissal of him. He doesn’t know whether he’s more annoyed or confused.

Annoyed, he decides. Definitely annoyed.

Why the hell did the man get so mad all of a sudden? Just because Boruto said he wished he was an only child? Okay, so maybe saying Sasuke was lucky to be without siblings, when the Uchiha’s whole family is dead, was slightly insensitive... but he said it himself, he never had a sister even before that!

“Jerk,” Boruto grumbles, stomping up the stairs. “What does he know…”

Thoroughly convinced now that he did nothing wrong, that Sasuke was being completely unfair by sending him home and refusing to train him, Boruto turns down the upstairs hallway and plans to go sulk in his bedroom.

And runs straight into his sister.

“Ow!” Himawari says, rubbing her forehead. Then she looks up, and her face lights up. “Nii-chan!”

Boruto glares at her. “Watch where you’re going.”

She recoils. Boruto feels an instinctive flash of guilt at the hurt on her face, the automatic need to apologize and soothe it away, before he forcefully reminds himself that he’s angry at her.

He brushes past her without saying anything else.

He goes up to his room for the next couple hours, waiting for his mother to call him down for dinner. The ruined, muddy med-kit is still sitting on his desk where he left it that morning after retrieving it from outside. He was unable to bring himself to throw it out.

He walks over to it and picks it up. Mud smears onto his hands. The threads holding it together are all snagged and twisted.

Boruto scowls down at it. It’s useless now, but something still pulls in his chest at the thought of throwing it in the garbage. Reducing all his hard work to nothing.

“Stupid sister,” he seethes, dropping it in the trash before he can think more about it.

When his mother calls him down for dinner, his mood is lifted (just slightly) when he sees his father sitting at the table. He looks unbelievably tired and worn, heavy bags beneath his eyes; but he’s smiling happily and he’s here.

“Old man,” Boruto says, pulling back the chair across from him to sit down. “You finally managed to pull yourself out of your stupid office?”

Naruto scowls. “What do you mean finally? I was just home two days ago!”

“You weren’t here yesterday.”

“I told you I wouldn’t be!”

“Whatever,” Boruto says. “You better be home for Mom’s birthday.”

Hinata looks over her shoulder with a frown, standing at the counter and filling up their dinner plates. “Boruto.”

“Of course I’ll be here for her birthday,” his father says, looking offended. “What do you think of me?”

You weren’t here for Himawari’s, he thinks bitterly.

The words are on the tip of his tongue, but Boruto bites them back. He knows they aren’t fair. The only reason he’s even feeling upset about the incident, when they’ve already worked it out months ago, is because of his bad mood.

His father hasn’t done anything wrong. Boruto’s just too used to him being the reason he’s upset, it’s easy to direct his negative feelings toward him.

Hinata brings their food over to them. Sukiyaki served in a pot, made up of noodles, beef, and several vegetables. She places a bowl in front of each of them.

“You didn’t put mushrooms in mine, did you?” Boruto asks, his nose wrinkled.

“Ugh,” Naruto says, his face screwing up in an identical expression of disgust.

Hinata smiles, amused. “No. No mushrooms for either of you.”

Himawari is sitting next to their father, unusually quiet. Boruto ignores her. He represses his feelings of annoyance, not wanting either of his parents to notice.

Normally, Boruto wouldn’t hesitate to go to his mother and complain when Himawari messed with something of his, like she did that morning. But since the thing she ruined was for their mother’s birthday, Boruto isn’t able to tell on her. So, he shoves down the irritation he’s feeling and hopes neither of his parents notice.

He settles for giving his sister the cold shoulder, rather than glaring across the table at her like he wants to.

“So what did you say to Sasuke today?” Naruto asks, turning to him with a raised eyebrow.

Boruto freezes, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Wh—he told you?!”

“No,” Naruto says. “He just said he wasn’t going to train you anymore until you stopped being an insolent brat. Whatever you said, you really pissed him off.”

“Naruto,” Hinata says, shooting a pointed look at the ten-year-old child next to him.

The jinchuuriki winces. “Sorry. Hima, don’t repeat that word.”

“Boruto,” Hinata says with a concerned frown, “I thought you said Sasuke sent you home because you hurt your hand?”

Boruto scowls. “I didn’t do anything wrong! He was just being a jerk!”

A surprised laugh escapes his father’s mouth. He covers it with his hand in a failed attempt to smother it.

“Sorry,” he says, voice cracking as he chokes down his amusement. “Sorry—it’s just, I never thought I’d here you say that. You’re always singing his praises. Like you think he hung the stars or something.”

Boruto feels his face heat up. “I do not act like that!”

“You really do.”

“I do not!”

Hinata places her hand on his arm with a small smile. “Ignore your father, Boruto. He’s just jealous you don’t talk about him like that.”

Naruto chokes on his bite of food. “Hinata!”

Himawari laughs.

★

The next morning when his parents have both left for work, Boruto prepares to bake the cake. There’s only one problem that he becomes immediately aware of: he has no idea how to bake a cake.

He dials his teammate’s number on their house phone. “Sarada, help. I don’t know how to make a cake.”

“Why are you asking me?” He can hear her scowl through the receiver. “You think I know how to cook just because I’m a girl? That’s so sexist, Boruto! Women don’t exist just to cook and clean, you know—”

Boruto rolls his eyes. “I’m calling you because Mitsuki doesn’t have a telephone.”

“Oh,” Sarada says. There’s a brief pause. “Hey! Are you saying Mitsuki is a better cook than me?”

“Yes.”

Half an hour later, Sarada has found Mitsuki and they are both standing in Boruto’s kitchen. Sarada is pulling mixing bowls out of the cupboards while Mitsuki pulls the ingredients out of the bag he bought yesterday.

“So what did you say to my dad?” Sarada asks.

Boruto snatches the flour from Mitsuki, slamming it down on the counter. “Not you too. Nothing!”

“Jeez,” Sarada says. “Calm down. I was just asking. I don’t really care.”

Baking the cake is fun. Mostly fun, at least. Sarada is a classic perfectionist, which means she’s constantly micro-managing everything—measuring each ingredient herself, snatching the measuring cup out of Boruto’s hands.

“Would you knock it off?!”

“I’m just trying to make sure you’re measuring it right—”

“I’ve got it! Back off!”

“Boruto,” Mitsuki says. “You shouldn’t be rude. Sarada’s only trying to help.”

The blonde scowls. “Well, she should try less.”

Sarada cracks an egg on his head.

“What the hell!”

By the time they finish mixing the cake and place it in the oven, all them are covered in flour. They sit down at the table to wait for it to finish baking, Sarada trying to rub the flour out of her shirt and Boruto combing the egg yolk out of his hair. Mitsuki is eating the remaining batter out of the large mixing bowl.

“You should apologize,” Sarada says.

Boruto frowns. “Huh?”

“For whatever you said to my dad.”

Boruto feels an explosion of frustration in his gut. “Oh my god! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“I believe you think you did nothing wrong. But my dad is weird,” Sarada tells him. “I’ve said things to him that have upset him without realizing. And then he won’t even tell me what I’ve said.”

“Like what?” Boruto asks curiously.

“I told him once that I wished my Sharingan would be just like his. He completely shut me down and made me go to my room.”

“That’s weird. But I didn’t say anything like that.”

Sarada sighs.

Once the cake is finished baking, the two of them help Boruto frost it. Chocolate frosting, of course. Boruto is proud when it’s done, and as his two friends both leave, Boruto thanks them both and gives Mitsuki the container of frosting that’s seven-eighths empty.

Boruto is in the bathroom, his head bend under the sink to wash out the egg yolk that has hardened in his hair, when he hears the crash.

Followed by a familiar voice crying out: “Oh no!”

Boruto freezes, the cold water running over his fingers. He already knows, with a terrible sinking in his gut, what that crash must have been. But he stays in place, as if not seeing it will make it not have happened.

The cake is on the floor, the tiles smeared with frosting. Himawari is standing over it with wide eyes, and she looks at Boruto with an expression of panic.

“Nii-chan…”

Boruto stares at the spilled cake. He’s so angry that he can’t think. He can’t form words. “You—You—”

Himawari’s pale eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry! It was an ac-accident—I didn’t m-mean to—I’ll fix it—”

“Fix it?!” Boruto yells. “How exactly can you fix it?!”

She flinches. “I’ll—It’s just a cake. I can make you another one—”

“And the med-kit you destroyed?! Can you make me another one of those, too?!”

A tear escapes and slips down the ten-year-old’s cheek. She looks down at her feet, her orange poke-a-dotted socks stained with chocolate. “I… Nii-chan, I’m sorry.”

Boruto is so angry, her tearful face doesn’t pull at his heartstrings like it normally does. It just makes him angrier. She ruined his gift for Mom—again—and now she’s crying like she’s a big baby. What right does she have to be upset?

Boruto thinks about his ruined med-kit upstairs in the trash. He looks at the mess on the floor in front of him.

“God!” he exclaims. “You ruin everything! Why can’t you just leave me alone?!”

She jerks back as if he had delivered a sharp, stinging slap to her face. Her face crumpling into a sob, she spins around and runs up the stairs. He hears the pounding of her footsteps, the echoing of her cries, the slamming of her bedroom door.

Boruto stares down at the ruined cake. With an angry sigh, he moves to get the paper towels to clean it off the floor.

★

Seething with anger, Boruto leaves the house for the rest of the day. He needs to be somewhere Himawari isn’t. He ends up at the same training field as yesterday, practicing the same stupid kunai drill over and over. Each throw pulls at the scabs on his three fingers, opening them up and causing slight blood to ooze up, but he doesn’t care.

He still can’t get the throw right. In a fit of frustration, he throws the weapon down and kicks uselessly at the tree trunk. “Dammit, dammit!”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Boruto stills at the familiar voice. He turns around to find Sasuke standing behind him, looking as he usually does. But right now his hand is at his hip, his mouth a thin, disapproving line as those dark eyes stare Boruto down.

Boruto swallows. “Practicing,” he says, almost challenging as he raises his chin.

Sasuke scowls. In brisk strides, he walks across the field and snatches the kunai from Boruto’s hand. “Go home. You’re not to train until your hand heals further—look at what you’ve done to it.”

Boruto clenches his jaw. He glances briefly down to the blood on his hand, then back up. “You’re not my sensei, remember? You can’t tell me what to do.”

The Uchiha’s mouth presses, if possible, even thinner. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll just tell your mother.”

He turns around to leave—presumably, in the direction of Boruto’s house. Boruto’s eyes widen, a burst of panic in his gut. “Wait, don’t! Okay, okay, I’ll stop! Don’t tell Mom!”

Sasuke turns back around. He looks at the boy for a long moment, then hesitantly hands back the kunai.

“What happened now?” he asks.

Boruto shuffles his feet against the grassy ground. “Got into another fight with my sister,” he admits, pocketing the weapon. When he sees the hardening of the man’s eyes, he feels anger spark in him and yells, “Don’t make that face at me! She ruined another of Mom’s gifts! She ruins absolutely everything—”

“Did you tell her that?” Sasuke asks, and the disappointment in his voice stings.

“So what if I did?! Can’t I be angry about it?! Don’t I deserve to be angry about it?!” The genin kicks at the ground, sending up patches of grass and dirt. “I’m just so sick of it!”

“Sick of what?” says the older shinobi, still with that infuriating calmness.

“Of everything! My sister, my dad—you! This entire stupid village!”

Boruto didn’t mean to yell. He expects Sasuke to smack him for such disrespect—or turn around and leave him, at least. To Boruto’s surprise, his words seem to have the opposite effect. Something in them seems to strike the man, and the hardness of his expression thaws slightly.

“I get that,” Sasuke says.

“You don’t!”

“I do. But Boruto, your sister—"

“My sister what?!”

“Made a mistake,” Sasuke tells him firmly. “But she’s still your little sister. And you’re her older brother. It’s your job to look after her—to protect her. Even when she doesn’t recognize all you’ve sacrificed for her. Even if she’s being a selfish, ungrateful brat—"

Boruto scowls at him. “You don’t know anything about being an older brother!”

“No,” Sasuke snaps harshly. “You don’t.”

Boruto opens his mouth to yell at him some more—to tell him how completely unfair he’s being—but he never gets the chance. He feels chakra surging in his eye—the familiar sensation of the unknown, mysterious doujutsu activating. He stumbles back, panicked, his hand flying up to his face.

Surprise flashes across Sasuke’s face. “Your eye—”

The world rips apart. Or that’s what it feels like. Boruto gasps as some invisible force tears at him, yanks him away, and it’s like a giant rip cleaves through the air in front of him. His insides are being squeezed. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. He can’t—

“Boruto!”

Boruto sees Sasuke lunge for him. The entire world swirls around him, becomes a kaleidoscope, and then—

Black.

Chapter Text

It happens so quickly. Within the space of a blink.

Blonde hair and blue eyes, seething at the world’s injustice with clenched hands and teeth but too young to do anything about it—Boruto is the exact image of a twelve-year-old Naruto. And just like twelve-year-old Naruto, he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand, but he assumes he does, and that—

You don’t know anything about being an older brother, he yells.

And oh, Sasuke feels nothing but rage. It feels, almost, like being seventeen again. When the blood in his veins still sparked with fire, before they stomped it out of him.

Before he let them stomp it out.

But then Boruto’s Jougan is suddenly bright in his face—the pupil and iris of his right eye glowing with an otherworldly power, the sclera darkening to the color of shadow. Sasuke’s anger turns instantly cold in his chest, into panic. The world rips open, and Sasuke lunges desperately forward—

He latches onto Boruto’s shirt just in time. The boy falls through the gaping tear—is sucked into it, like something caught in the orbit of a black hole. Sasuke is yanked forward with him, and he curses Boruto in his own head. Damn Uzumakis. Always dragging me into their messes.

The world around them goes black.

It feels like being trapped in a vacuum. He can’t tell up from down, and he’s being ripped in a dozen different directions. Wind roars in his ears, makes them ring, and it feels like the skin is peeling off his face. All he can do is squeeze his eyes closed tight, holding onto Boruto with all of his strength as gravity tries to tear him away.

The world rips open again, light invading the dark, and it throws them back out.

Trees. That’s the first thing Sasuke sees. Dozens of trees, branches sharp and painful looking, coming straight toward them as they fall from the clouds. Boruto is screaming in Sasuke’s ear, threatening to burst his eardrum, his shirt still twisted in Sasuke’s fist as the wind rushes past Sasuke’s face and stings his eyes.

The rings of Sasuke’s left eye spin around his pupil. A circular vortex opens beneath them, less than a second before they break their bones against the tree branches. They fall through it, Boruto still screeching at the top of his lungs.

The portal reopens five feet above the ground. They tumble out, Sasuke covering Boruto’s body with his own protectively as they land with a harsh thud.

He might be angry at the brat, but that doesn’t mean he wants him to crack his skull open on the hard ground. Naruto would kill him if he got his son hurt.

No, forget about Naruto. Hinata would kill him, and that prospect is so much scarier.

The breath is knocked out of him by the impact. It vibrates through all of his bones, and even his teeth. Every part of him radiates with pain, and he can only be grateful he managed to make his back take the damage.

He can feel Boruto shaking against him. Sasuke’s single arm is wrapped around him, pressing him tightly to his chest, and his hand is covering the back of the boy’s head, tucking it under his chin. He can feel the trembling breaths against the bare skin of his throat, the fists clutching his shirt in a death grip.

He waits for his head to stop spinning before opening his eyes. He prepares to be assaulted by the bright August sun, but instead the sky is a deepening purple. The sun is a blip on the line of the horizon, barely visible through the thick trees.

Wrong, his mind immediately screams at him. It was mid-afternoon mere moments ago. Now it’s evening.

Crickets chirp around them. The air is too chilled. None of this is right.

He dismisses the observations for the moment. “Boruto,” he says, looking down at the boy’s blonde head. He nudges him with the arm still wrapped around him. “Are you hurt?”

The genin raises his head from Sasuke’s chest. “N-No,” he mutters, grimacing. “I th-think I’m gonna throw up, though.”

Sasuke drops his arm. “Not on me you’re not.” He immediately shoves the brat off his aching body, leveraging himself up with a wince. Pain throbs through him.

Boruto scrambles across the grass. Sasuke grimaces at the sounds of retching from feet away.

He looks over. The thirteen-year-old looks horrible—green, shaking, as vomit dribbles past his lips. His hair falls into his face and gets stained in it, blonde strands sticking to his mouth.

Reluctantly, Sasuke ignores the excruciating ache in his back to stand up and walk over to him. He crouches down next to him, keeping his hair from his face as he continues to gag.

He sits back, shaking. Sasuke pulls a roll of gauze from inside his cloak. Gently, he uses it to wipe all traces of sickness from the boy’s face.

“Th-Thanks,” Boruto mumbles, as Sasuke is wiping it from the ends of his hair as best he can. “Sorry.”

“Whatever,” Sasuke says. “I just don’t want you ruining my cloak if you decide to cling to me like a five-year-old girl again.”

Boruto scowls, all signs of gratefulness gone and back to looking at him with the anger he was moments ago. He mutters something extremely rude under his breath that Sasuke decides not to engage with.

“What the hell was that?” the boy asks him.

Sasuke doesn’t answer. He stands back up, brushing himself off and looking around them.

They aren’t in Konoha. That becomes immediately apparent. But the terrain isn’t too unfamiliar—Sasuke suspects they’re still in the Land of Fire, at least. Somewhere to the west, most likely. The north, near the area that used to be the Sound Village, is much rockier with very few forests; the north and the east, bordering the sea, are chillier.

Boruto stands up next to him. “Was it my eye?” he asks, hand coming up to briefly cover the right side of his face. “It was, wasn’t it? It did something again! What did it do?”

“How should I know?” Sasuke asks. “It’s your eye.”

“You know I don’t know how it works! It just randomly turns on!”

His eyes, looking up at him with a glare, are the same deep blue as his father’s. The Jougan has disappeared.

“Did it teleport us?” he asks. “Like your Rinnegan does?”

“My eye doesn’t teleport me. It shifts me into different dimensions and spaces.” Sasuke grimaces, fixing his bangs so they once again cover the left side of his face. “Whatever that was felt nothing like it.”

Something is wrong. Very, very wrong. He doesn’t know what, but his instincts are screaming it. And he hasn’t survived in the world this long by not listening to them.

He places his hand on the hilt of his sword. It’s a familiar, reassuring comfort.

“I don’t know what's happened. But stay close to me,” he orders.

He expects an irritated protest. But perhaps it’s something in his voice—or perhaps Boruto feels the wrongness in the air as well—because Boruto doesn’t argue. He shuffles closer to him, eyes darting around the dark forest surrounding them.

“It shouldn’t be this dark… should it?”

“No. It shouldn’t be.”

The abilities of Boruto’s right eye—the Jougan, a doujutsu not even of this planet—are still completely unknown to them. Sasuke tries to think back to the moment before it activated, sucking them through a hole in the world. What could have triggered it to activate so suddenly?

They were arguing. Sasuke tries to push down the anger when he remembers the kid’s words. A large part of him is tempted to let himself feel it—it comes to him so rarely these days, that fire, and he’s missed it.

He’s missed that spark. He wants to feel it again.

He wants to feel something. Anything.

He looks down at Boruto. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Naruto’s exact image, except for the slashed hitai-ate he wears proudly on his forehead—Sasuke’s hitai-ate, a stark reminder of the traitor status he once held.

The anger is replaced by a strange protectiveness. “We’ll figure it out,” he tells him. “You’re okay. That’s what matters most.”

Boruto blinks. His mouth parts slightly and he stares.

Uncomfortable, Sasuke turns away from him. “First, we need to figure out where we are. I’ve seen these trees before. We’re not too far—"

Sasuke stiffens, his words cutting off mid-sentence. He feels them, barely brushing against his awareness—two approaching chakra signatures, less than half a mile away. His hand on Kusanagi’s hilt tightens.

Boruto frowns. “Sasuke-san? What is it?”

“There are people approaching,” he says.

“What?”

“Two chakra signatures. They’re coming this way.”

The signatures don’t feel antagonistic or threatening. But Sasuke isn’t a sensor, so he can’t tell for sure. They’re too far away, and all he can glean from them is their presence.

“Who are they?” Boruto asks.

“I can’t tell.”

“Should we hide?”

He feels them growing closer. They seem to be walking steadily in their direction. Sasuke grabs Boruto by the collar, fisting it in his hand, and the boy yelps as he’s pulled with the Uchiha’s shunshin. They reappear in one of the trees, high up and deep in the leaves.

Boruto nearly slips from the branch and falls fifty feet. It’s only Sasuke’s hand still gripping his shirt collar that halts him.

“Be careful,” Sasuke snaps.

Boruto glares. “Give me a warning next time! And let go, you’re choking me!”

Sasuke releases his collar. The blonde rubs at his throat where the neckline was strangling him.

The Uchiha stretches his senses out, tracking the two chakras as they converge on their location. The closer they become, the better he can sense them. One of them… one of them feels familiar…

His own chakra seems drawn to it, like a magnet. The stolen eyes in his face seem to burn.

The realization—the memory of where he’s felt this chakra—clicks in his brain and makes his body go cold. No, Sasuke thinks. Impossible. It can’t be—

Two figures step into sight far below them. They’re hard to make out, but the familiar black and red cloaks are easy to recognize. And even from this far a distance, Sasuke can still make out—that dark hair, those dark eyes. A hint of those sharp, refined facial features—

But most recognizable, that chakra. The chakra that is now forever a part of his own, due to the eyes surgically implanted into his sockets sixteen years ago.

Itachi.

It feels like hitting the ground for a second time. The breath is knocked harshly out of him.

The hand around his sword tightens, trembling. Sasuke tastes blood on his lips. There’s smoke in his throat.

A cold, dead forehead pressed against his.

(I will love you always.)

The world blurs for a single moment. The past decade and a half seem to disappear.

He’s seventeen, standing in a cave as his brother’s spirit rises above his head. He’s sixteen, trapped with his back against a wall, his legs shaking beneath him, as his brother’s body crumples at his feet. He’s thirteen, his brother’s hand around his throat and falling into the cruel, bloody chasm of his eyes.

He’s seven. Standing in blood and surrounded by bodies, watching the tears fall down his brother’s face before he turns his back and walks away.

“Sasuke-san? Sasuke-san!”

The familiar irritating voice, so like Naruto’s, pulls him back. Boruto is looking at him, mouth pinched and the space between his eyebrows creased. That gentle concern—his obnoxious, loud mouth might be Naruto’s, but that genuine, soft expression is all Hinata.

“I know what your eye did to us,” Sasuke says lowly. It’s a monumental task, tearing his eyes from the dead man below him. Dead men, he corrects himself—that hulking, shark-like shape next to the lithe form of his brother is clearly Kisame Hoshigaki.

“It didn’t just teleport us, then?” Boruto asks. His eyes glance between his mentor and the two figures below, a silent question in his eyes.

“No.”

Boruto leans forward slightly on the branch, squinting. “Hey. Aren’t those the same cloaks Shin wore?”

Sasuke looks at him sharply. “How do you know about that?”

“Sarada told me. Akatsuki, right?”

The man clenches his jaw. “Out of all the things you inherited from Naruto, I see his bad memory wasn’t one of them.” He turns his gaze back to the missing-nin below. “Those two men down there? Both of them are dead in our time.”

“Our time?” the boy echoes. His eyes widen, confusion turning to shock. “No. No, no, no way. Are you saying we’ve time-traveled?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Holy shit!”

Sasuke slaps him upside the head. “Watch your fucking language.”

He’s trying to push down the panic swelling on the edges of his brain. His head is a whirlpool, thoughts spinning too fast to properly catch, a litany of Itachi Itachi Itachi trying its damnedest to drown out everything else. He packs all of it down.

Calm down. Focus.

Sasuke closes his eyes. He exhales slowly.

What now?

“That guy,” Boruto says. “The younger one, on the left. You know him, right? He looks a bit like you…”

The blonde is squinting and leaning out over the branch again, trying to get a better view to fifty feet below. He leans out too far this time, and Sasuke has to grab him by the shoulder to pull him back before he tumbles and breaks his neck.

“Watch it,” he snaps.

“You do know him,” Boruto insists, “don’t you? Who is he?”

Sasuke considers ignoring the question. Shutting it down, just as he’s done to the dozens of other queries Boruto has made into his history since becoming his student. Boruto has no right to his past. No one does. Sasuke’s past, his pain, his grief—it’s his, and they don’t get to take it from him. They’ve already taken his rage, the fire in his veins, he won’t let them take anything more.

He thinks of the boy’s earlier words: You don’t know anything about being an older brother! He grinds his back teeth.

But—

But he also remembers the boy’s other words. That explosion of frustration, of anger, at the world’s injustice. I’m just so sick of it! This entire stupid village! He likened the boy to his father in that moment. But the truth is, with that slashed headband and those hurt, angry eyes—

In that moment, Sasuke thought Boruto looked more like him than he did Naruto.

Sasuke bites the inside of his mouth. “He’s my brother,” he admits.

The words my brother feel foreign on his tongue. They shouldn’t, but they do, and it makes him ache.

Boruto blinks wide eyes at him. “You have a younger brother?”

Sasuke makes a face. “Older,” he corrects.

“Oh.” The genin peers down through the leaves again. “But he looks only a few years older than me!”

Never mind. Definitely just like Naruto, Sasuke thinks. He gives the boy the same look he gives his best friend—the one that silently but clearly communicates how moronic he finds him.

“Do I really need to explain the concept of time travel to you?”

Boruto flushes. “No.”

Down below, the two Akatsuki members have stopped. Itachi’s mouth is moving, saying something, and Kisame’s hand tightens on the handle of Samehada in response. His face turns upward, shark eyes scanning the treetops.

Sasuke swears under his breath.

“Watch your fucking language,” Boruto mimics him.

Sasuke hits him again.

“Ow! Sasuke-san—”

“Shut up. They’ve sensed us.”

“What?! How?!”

“Shut up.”

Boruto opens his mouth again to say something, despite Sasuke’s words. Before Sasuke can slap him for a third time, a kunai comes slicing through the air from the ground. Sasuke yanks Boruto out of its trajectory just in time, and the boy yelps as he falls against Sasuke’s chest.

The kunai embeds itself in the tree trunk instead of the Uzumaki’s face.

“Whoever you are, you can come out! It’s rude to spy on someone without even introducing yourself, you know!”

Kisame.

It was Boruto’s chakra, most likely, that gave them away. Sasuke knows how to pull his own close, wrap it around himself and keep it from being detected. But it’s not a proper skill that’s taught, more something that high-level shinobi pick up on and learn themselves as they progress; not something Boruto would have mastered yet.

Sasuke shoves Boruto off him—gently, so he doesn’t plummet from the tree. Blue eyes meet his dark ones. What do we do, that look silently asks.

Sasuke makes a couple hand gestures at him. When Boruto looks at him blankly, Sasuke huffs. He makes a mental note to speak to Konohamaru about adding basic signaling to Team 7’s curriculum.

Stay close to me, he mouths to him. That’s an order.

Boruto nods.

There’s no use remaining hidden now that they’ve been discovered. Sasuke realizes his heart is racing in his chest. His brother is down there. Alive, and not just a memory stuffed into someone else’s decaying corpse.

He wills his hand to stop shaking on his sword. He isn’t that lost, raging child any longer, wearing his pain on him like an exposed nerve. He’s thirty-two years old, and what was once a wound open and bleeding has become hard scar tissue.

Sasuke flickers down from the trees. He appears in front of the two missing-nin, making certain his Rinnegan remains covered.

“We weren’t spying,” Sasuke says. “We heard you coming and weren’t sure if you were a threat, so we concealed ourselves.”

Kisame tilts his head, glancing him over. “’We’?”

The air beside him fluctuates. Boruto appears at his side.

“Ah.”

“Hi,” Boruto says. Sasuke throws him a look, and he seals his mouth closed.

He can feel the familiar eyes on him before he forces himself to meet them. Before he drags his gaze from Kisame and braces himself, looking to the left of him into the face so like his own.

It's like a punch. Like, once again, smacking into the ground. He looks into that pale face, sharp features and dark eyes—

Gods, he’s young.

That’s what tries to knock him over. What he isn’t prepared for. His brother is young, seventeen at the most. Younger, probably, since he always looked older than he was—or does Sasuke only remember him that way because he was looking at him from a child’s perspective?

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Itachi Uchiha is standing in front of him now, and gods, he’s a child.

It feels like a fist squeezing his heart. He knows how young his brother was, of course. He couldn’t recognize it properly before, when he still wore his own youth in both face and mind, and the five years between them seemed an unbridgeable gap. But with age, came a different understanding. A different perspective.

His brother was only twenty-one when he died. He was thirteen when he was forced to stain his hands in the blood of his kin.

The same age Boruto is now. The same age as Sarada.

He knows this. He’s known it for a while. It’s the main reason he’s felt his anger at his brother slowly draining away over the years—as he realized with more and more clarity that Itachi was a kid.

Sasuke knows this. But seeing it, right in front of him, is different.

He forces down the rage licking at his insides and attempting to slip into his ribcage.

Itachi has the same aloof, reticent demeanor Sasuke remembers of him. His expression a careful mask that skates the line between calmness and coldness. But Sasuke can read him in a way he couldn’t before—can see the calculation and thought behind his eyes where he once saw only emptiness and solid black.

Those eyes regard him carefully, something sharp in them. Does he sense the slight familiarity of Sasuke’s chakra too, despite the numerous ways it’s been corrupted over the years?

Itachi’s eyes flick away from him, down to Boruto.

“You’re a bit young to be a missing-nin,” he says.

Kisame snorts. “You’re one to talk.”

“Missing-nin?!” Boruto yells, offended. “I am not!”

“Your hitai-ate.”

The blonde’s hand goes automatically to his forehead to touch the scratched headband. Realization crosses his face. “Oh. That’s not—this was given to me.”

Boruto’s eyes flicker tellingly to his teacher. Sasuke sees Itachi track the movement.

“Itachi Uchiha,” Sasuke says, before the topic can continue. “I think we should speak.”

The teenager’s gaze sharpens on him when he says his name. There’s a familiarity to how Sasuke’s mouth shapes the syllables of the name, despite how long it’s been since he’s spoken it out loud, that Sasuke can’t completely disguise.

“Itachi,” Kisame says, looking at his partner, “you know these guys? The little kid is from your home village.”

Boruto scowls. “Who’re you calling a little kid?”

“You, obviously.”

His face twists angrily, and he opens his mouth to yell back. Sasuke’s annoyance with him from earlier that day comes back in a rush.

“Boruto,” he says harshly, warningly.

The boy falls immediately quiet, fuming silently. In this, too, he is unfortunately his father’s son.

Sasuke turns his attention back to his brother.

“No. I don’t believe we’ve met,” Itachi says coolly, a silent question in the words.

“I don’t know how or why my student and I are here,” Sasuke tells him. Itachi is shorter than him, which is a strange feeling, and Sasuke has to angle his chin down slightly to meet his gaze. “But we are, and so are you. I’d like to take the opportunity it’s presented. Please, may we speak?”

“Speak, then. No one is prohibiting you.”

Sasuke glances briefly at Kisame. “Without your companion, preferably.”

Kisame scowls. His hand grips the handle of his weapon threateningly. “Now hold on just a second!”

Itachi ignores his partner, still looking calmly at Sasuke. “I fail to see anything you could need to say to me that—”

Sasuke’s visible eye bleeds into red, three tomoe spinning.

Itachi’s voice abruptly cuts off. He inhales a quiet, sharp breath.

There’s pure astonishment on his face. He actually staggers back a step, he’s so shocked. But it only lasts for a moment—then the familiar mask is slamming down, all emotion banished. Steel walls and doors.

Sasuke used to find that so frustrating about his brother.

Now he aches for him.

“Hey,” Kisame says. “Isn’t that—” He looks at his partner. “But I thought you killed—”

Itachi stares at Sasuke’s Sharingan, doing his best impersonation of a statue. “Kisame,” he says. “Leave us.”

“What?”

“Go.”

Kisame stares at his partner with an open mouth. After a moment, he huffs. “Fine. Fine. Keep your secrets, Itachi. But if you take too long, I’ll report back without you.”

He steps around Sasuke and Boruto, beginning to walk further into the forest ahead of him.

The moment the other man is out of sight, Itachi’s eyes flare red. His chakra turns cold, threatening. Enough to make lesser shinobi flinch and cower back, and out of the corner of his eye Sasuke can see Boruto do just that.

“Who are you,” his brother says.

A command. Not a question.

Sasuke lets his clan’s doujutsu fade from his eyes. Itachi doesn’t do the same, the Sharingan staring him down threateningly.

Sasuke takes a step forward. “I know it sounds unbelievable. But I'm Sasuke Uchiha. I’m your brother. My student and I traveled here from the future by accident.”

Whoever Itachi suspected he was—an Uchiha survivor that somehow managed to escape the culling, or perhaps a bloodline thief—this was clearly nowhere on his list. His mouth drops open, and for a moment Sasuke is witness to the rare sight of his brother shocked into speechlessness.

He recovers quickly, as always. His mouth snaps closed with an audible click. “I don’t know where you heard that name,” he says, and Sasuke can see how forced his calm is now. He doubts Boruto can—doubts even Kisame would be able to tell, were he still here. But Sasuke can.

It's funny—but in a way that’s sharp and painful to reflect on—how he only came to truly know his brother after he was dead.

“I’m him,” Sasuke tells him. He tilts his head in Boruto’s direction. “This is Boruto Uzumaki.”

Itachi stares. He shakes his head, a couple strands of his bangs falling into his eyes. “No. No.”

Gods, he looks so young. He was so young.

Sasuke walks forward. His brother’s shoulders grow stiffer the smaller the distance between them becomes, until there’s only about a foot of space between them. Boruto lingers a few paces behind.

“You’re telling me there’s nothing about me you recognize? Not a single hint of your brother in my face?”

Itachi’s eyes, blood red, dart over his face and down his body. Sasuke watches him carefully catalogue each small detail of his features. He can see his thoughts working behind his eyes, comparing the picture of the seven-year-old Sasuke he has in his head to the adult man in front of him now.

A hint of a frown flickers over those imperial features. A tightening around the mouth.

“Prove it,” Itachi says.

“What?” Boruto exclaims. Face twisting in exasperation, he throws up his arms. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

But Itachi doesn’t give him so much as a glance. His eyes are on Sasuke, unwavering.

Options flash through Sasuke’s mind. There are multiple things he could do here to prove his identity. He could activate his Mangekyou, allowing his brother to see his own shuriken pattern within the six-pointed star. He could tell his brother his own hidden truths—that Sasuke knows it was all for him, that everything was always for him.

Instead, he reaches up to the back of his neck and slips his hand beneath the collar of his shirt. He finds the familiar cord there, and he picks at the knot with his fingernails until it loosens and he can slide it off.

He holds the necklace out in his gloved palm. A thick, woven cord tied around three separate metal rings.

The same necklace Itachi is wearing now.

Sasuke barely hears the soft catch of his brother’s breath. Itachi stares down at it, and slowly, his hand comes up to take the necklace from Sasuke’s outstretched hand.

His fingers are trembling, just barely as they run over the rough threads of the cord. The cool metal of each of the rings. His other hand comes up to touch the identical one at his throat. There’s something unbearably fragile and childlike in his expression—open and bare in a way Sasuke was never able to read from his face when he was five years younger than him.

Itachi’s fingers close around the necklace. “This is mine,” he says quietly.

“Yes,” Sasuke replies.

He says nothing more—nothing of how he got it, sixteen years ago, off his brother’s cold, broken corpse. From the teenager’s expression, Sasuke thinks he’s already guessed.

Itachi looks up, meeting the other Uchiha’s eyes.

“Sasuke?” he whispers.

Sasuke smiles, like hearing his name in his brother’s voice doesn’t crack open his ribcage. Like hearing how utterly young his brother sounds when he says it doesn’t twist something up in his chest, sharp and aching.

“Hello, Nii-san.”

★

Itachi grants Sasuke’s request to speak. He suggests they move somewhere more private to do so, less out in the open, and Sasuke agrees. He can see the way Itachi is attempting to gather his shaken composure, to stitch his masks back together and slide back into his projected apathy. Sasuke says nothing—allows him to slip the blankness back over his face, even knowing how false it is.

“There’s an old clan hideout,” Itachi says. “From before the founding of Konoha. It’s not too far from here.”

Sasuke feels cold. He knows the place his brother is speaking of. Even after fifteen years, he remembers vividly the force of them colliding—the heat against his face, the stone walls collapsing.

“No,” he says firmly. “Not there.”

Itachi looks at him. After a moment, something shifts in his eyes. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Somewhere else, then. There are a few caves nearby.”

Does he understand why Sasuke wouldn’t want to go there? Does he already have it all planned out—the exact scene where he intends for their battle to take place, where he intends to die? Sasuke wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

Sasuke could have chosen the location for them to talk himself, now that Itachi has mentioned the old clan hideout and given him a better awareness of their current location. But he can see his brother is in need of the control—is struggling in this situation where he suddenly feels like he has none of it. So Sasuke allows him to take the lead and direct them, rather than speaking up and taking the lead himself, as the only adult voice present.

Itachi starts walking in the direction of the thick trees surrounding him. Boruto looks at Sasuke uncertainly.

“Come on,” Sasuke tells him.

The genin scrambles over to his side to follow.

“What about your partner?” Boruto asks Itachi, staring at the older shinobi’s back as they walk. “Won’t he wonder where you went?”

“It’s fine,” Itachi says, and offers no more.

Boruto huffs. He looks up at Sasuke. “Your brother is as frustrating as you.”

Sasuke says nothing.

Even with his back to them, he can tell Itachi is observing them closely. It’s very subtle, but Sasuke’s learned to read body language even from those expertly trained in hiding themselves. His hand, the one which was clutching the future version of his necklace, is now buried deeply in the pocket of his cloak.

Compared to Itachi, Boruto is far too obvious in his observation. Sasuke has to resist the urge to smack him upside the head when he notices the boy’s blatant staring in Itachi’s direction. Shinobi are meant to be trained in the art of discretion, but like his father, Boruto hasn’t heard of the word. He stares at Itachi, then at Sasuke, as if he’s placing the two of them on a side-by-side comparison chart and seeing how each bullet point lines up.

His body is also listing to the side, Sasuke realizes. His shoulders slumped like there’s a heavy weight on his back, his feet dragging instead of stepping.

“What’s wrong?” Sasuke asks.

“Nothing,” the boy says. Sasuke narrows his eyes, and he sighs. “I’m just tired. Whatever my eye did, I think it used up a lot of my chakra.”

He reaches up with his injured hand, the white bandages stained in dirt and blood. Sasuke grabs it and pulls it down before he can rub at his eyes with it. “You can rest once we stop.”

It isn’t much longer until they reach the caves. Carved into a large, old outcropping of rock, grass and weeds growing so tall around it that the opening is almost obscured. The sky has darkened to a deep purple, nearly black, the stars beginning to become visible and a waxing moon shining over them.

Itachi remains outside the cave’s entrance. Sasuke enters with Boruto, the thirteen-year-old immediately slumping against the hard rock wall.

Sasuke crouches down next to him. “Can you make yourself a fire?”

“I’m not stupid,” Boruto says.

“Could have fooled me.”

The blonde glares at him with familiar blue eyes.

The air within the cavern is chilly. Boruto is shivering in his t-shirt and shorts, goosebumps visible on his skin. Sasuke hesitates a moment, then undoes the clasp of his cloak. He takes it off and shoves it at him.

“Here.”

His missing left limb is on display without it. The lower half of his sleeve empty. It makes him feel uncomfortably exposed, and he rarely ever takes the cloak off around anyone who isn’t Team 7 or his family. He hides the feeling now as those blue eyes widen, darting first to his arm, breath catching, then to his face.

“Sasuke-san, I can’t take that—”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. He ignores the protests, wrapping the heavy fabric around the boy’s shoulders.

Boruto’s fingers curl into the cloak, in a way that’s almost reverent. He bites his lip, hesitating before he says quietly, “Thanks.”

Sasuke nods.

“What are we gonna do?” Boruto asks him. “We’re gonna be able to get back, right?”

I don’t know, Sasuke thinks. But he refuses to let the worry cloud his mind or show on his face. “We’ll fix this,” he says, hoping the boy doesn’t notice he doesn’t actually answer his question. “We’ll get back home. I just need some time to work it out.”

There’s a moment of silence between them in the dim space. Boruto looks down at his fingers running over Sasuke’s cloak.

“Your brother,” he says with a slight frown. “Can we trust him?”

Sasuke wishes he could instantly say yes, no hesitation. But he’s fully aware of the type of person his brother was—the cruel lengths he was willing to go through to keep Sasuke alive, to ensure Sasuke had what he decided was his best future.

He's not angry at him for it anymore. That anger passed a long time ago—willing, amicably, as he made peace with his brother’s choices, not like his anger at Konoha which was leeched forcefully out of him—but still, even if he no longer blames Itachi, even he now sees him as the kid he was, he still acknowledges the horror of his actions. He still acknowledges them as terribly, terribly wrong.

“You can trust me,” Sasuke tells Boruto instead.

He stands from his crouch, preparing to return to his brother outside. He has no doubt Itachi is listening to them.

“Sasuke-san?” Boruto says.

Sasuke looks down at him.

“I’m sorry.”

He frowns, then places a hand on the young boy’s shoulder. “Just get some rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

The genin nods, curling deeper into the cloak that dwarfs his small frame. “Okay.”

Sasuke leaves the cave. Itachi, to Sasuke’s slight surprise, isn’t lingering close to listen in on them. Instead his brother stands meters away, back against a tree and chin tilted up toward the sky. Moonlight slants across his face through the trees’ leaves, allowing Sasuke to see his expression as he draws closer. Hundreds of thoughts swirl behind those dark eyes.

“Itachi,” Sasuke says.

Doubtless the missing-nin heard his approach. Still, he waits until Sasuke speaks to turn his head. Those inscrutable eyes catch immediately on Sasuke’s empty left sleeve—widening just a fraction, shock flashing through them, before it’s hidden and his expression is once again expertly schooled. When he glances up to meet Sasuke’s gaze, his face is blank.

He holds his hand out to Sasuke. “Here. You can have this back.”

Into Sasuke’s gloved palm, Itachi drops the necklace. Sasuke’s hand closes around it. “Inspected it thoroughly?” he asks, a small quirk to his mouth. “Did it pass your authentication?”

“It’s definitely mine.”

With years of practice, Sasuke reties the cord around his neck with his one hand. He tucks it back underneath his shirt, hidden from sight.

Itachi is observing him. He makes no secret of it this time. Sasuke lets him, doesn’t say anything as the younger shinobi takes him in—his eyes flickering to his missing limb, to his sword at his belt, to the fall of his hair over one side of his face.

Then Sasuke’s eyes. Recognition flashes over Itachi’s face.

“They’re yours,” Sasuke confirms, predicting his thoughts.

“I thought so,” Itachi says, a somber air seeping through the blank mask. He knows what it means, Sasuke having his eyes, and his gaze briefly lowers to the ground before returning to Sasuke’s face. “By the lack of hatred you’re displaying, I assume you know the truth?”

“You assume right.”

Itachi’s mouth thins. “You were never supposed to.”

Sasuke ignores the anger that threatens to surface at the reminder. It’s surprisingly easy, when standing in front of this version of his brother—looking so terribly uncertain and young.

“I’m sorry,” Itachi says quietly.

Sasuke doesn’t tell him it’s okay. It isn’t. “I’ve forgiven you,” he tells him instead.

His eyes go wide. “What?”

He looks dumbfounded, mask once again slapped from his face and replaced by pure shock. He looks like he’s certain he’s misheard, and Sasuke can’t recall ever seeing him look so wrong-footed.

“I’ve forgiven you,” Sasuke repeats.

The missing-nin shakes his head. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

“It’s been a long time for me, Itachi. I’ve had a long time to think and come to terms with everything you did. I don’t hate you anymore. I haven’t hated you for a long time.”

Itachi stares. All the work he’s done on the walk here to piece his mask back together is becoming undone again. “I don’t deserve—”

“It’s not about deserve,” Sasuke says. “It’s about choice. I’ve chosen to forgive you. Whether you deserve it or not is irrelevant.”

 “But—”

“How old are you?” Sasuke asks, cutting him off.

He frowns. “…Sixteen.”

Only three years older than Sarada.

Sasuke’s mouth thins. “I’m not angry at you,” he says.

“How?” Itachi demands. And oh—are those tears in his eyes? It feels like a punch in his chest to witness, the way his brother’s words tumble out of him, so absent of his usual control. “How can you—how can you ever—What I did to you, I can’t—I can’t—"

Sasuke places a hand on his shoulder. He pulls Itachi forward, and the flood of words is immediately cut off as he falls against Sasuke’s chest.

It might have been comical, if it wasn’t so heartbreaking—the stunned, wide-eyed look on the young boy’s face. The way, when Sasuke’s arm circles him, he stands there in the embrace stiffly, as if he’s never received one before and doesn’t understand what it is.

“You were a kid,” Sasuke tells him. “You are a kid. They all failed you. This never should have been your responsibility. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”

Itachi gasps softly. His face hidden against Sasuke’s vest.

His brother is trembling. He’s fragile in Sasuke’s arms, small and delicate and breakable where he always seemed so made of steel. But there are fracture lines beneath Sasuke’s hand, held together by nothing more than skin and desperate will.

Sasuke isn’t good at this. He’s never had to do it for his own daughter. But he thinks of an eleven-year-old Itachi, in a blurry memory he can barely recall now, soothing him after a nightmare. Sasuke attempts to mimic his words, his tone, his touch.

He places his gloved hand on the back of Itachi’s head. He draws his fingers through his hair.

“It’s okay. It’s all okay,” he says quietly. “You can let it go, Itachi. Let me carry it for a little while.”

He can feel Itachi’s fingers twisting into his cloak. A small, broken noise escapes him—less a sob, more a wounded cry of a dying animal. It sounds torn from his chest against his will, pain escaping its self-made prison, and once it’s released the entire wave comes bursting out.

Itachi gasps against Sasuke’s chest like he’s dying. He sobs, pressing himself closer, as close as possible, as if willing himself to sink into Sasuke’s chest and disappear.

Sasuke says nothing else. He just holds him as he falls apart, the way he wishes someone did for him.

Chapter Text

Itachi hasn’t let himself cry since the night he killed them.

Tears slipping down his cheeks and repressed sobs shaking his frame. The sword in his hand and their bodies at his feet, blood spreading across the floor and soaking into the soles of his shoes. Wiping his face clean, composing it from blankness and turning his eyes cold as the door opened—

After. Stopping with Madara by a stream as they made their way to the Akatsuki’s base, scrubbing his nails clean of the red still trapped beneath them. Wanting nothing more than to cry, to scream, to curl up in a ball and never move again—but refusing to let himself.

He didn’t deserve to cry. He didn’t have the right to.

But now, he can’t stop the sobs. They tear out of him with the vicious strength of all the years he’s spent caging them. Sasuke’s body is solid against him, and being held by him feels similar to how Itachi imagines being held by his father would feel—though Itachi has no memory of Fugaku ever doing such a thing. The only memory that comes to his mind when he thinks of him now is the image of him kneeling on the wood floor.

Though our philosophies may differ, I’m still proud of you.

Take care of Sasuke.

Sasuke is warm and immovable against him. His single arm is wrapped around him, pressing him close as Itachi buries his face against his chest and twists his fingers in his shirt. He smells like earth, like smoke, like home.

“It’s okay,” Sasuke murmurs. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”

Itachi presses himself closer and shakes.

He doesn’t know how long he sobs for. But eventually he exhausts himself. His throat burns, his eyes itch, as he forces his fingers to uncurl from the fabric they’re clenched in. He feels drained, weak, as he steps out of the older man’s embrace, forcing the arm at his back to fall away.

He burns with shame, with complete humiliation. He wipes the tears from his cheeks, eyes low and refusing to meet the other shinobi’s gaze.

“Forgive me,” he mutters, his voice hoarse.

There’s a quiet huff in response. “Don’t start that,” Sasuke says.

The dark night hangs over them, the moon and stars above the trees shining down on the forest. Crickets fill the silence with their chirping, and the cool air stings against Itachi’s face, bitingly cold due to his previous tears.

“It’s alright,” Sasuke adds, when Itachi remains silent and says nothing else. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Perhaps for him, it is perfectly alright. But Itachi doesn’t make a habit of falling apart.

He’s never learnt how to put himself back together after.

Itachi can feel the eyes on him. Reluctantly, he raises his gaze to finally look at the man standing in front of him.

Because that’s what he is. A man. Not the small, eleven-year-old child he should be. Itachi would estimate him to be around his early thirties, broad-shouldered and holding himself with a careful precision possessed by those who have been on a battlefield. Dark hair falls in a curtain over one of his eyes, a gloved hand that has returned to the hilt of his sword.

Sasuke. This man is his little brother.

Twice Itachi’s age. Only slightly younger than their parents were, when Itachi killed them.

He resembles Fugaku, Itachi thinks. Not in many of his facial features—in that regard, the both of them have always taken more after their mother. It’s the way he holds himself that causes Itachi to draw the comparison. The way he stands, with a commander’s presence, confident and in control of his surroundings. A certainty and self-assurance that the young brother Itachi knows has never had.

And even if there is uncertainty in those eyes, as they struggle to comprehend what has happened and how it can be fixed, the older Uchiha holds firm to his iron composure.

Unlike Itachi, who is still scavenging for the pieces of his.

Itachi takes a breath and pulls himself together with as much dignity as he can muster. He shoves down at the emotion swirling wildly in his chest. “This time travel,” he says. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Sasuke leans back against one of the trees behind him and begins talking. Itachi tries not to look at the man’s empty left sleeve as he does.

He explained the basics earlier when the three of them were still standing in the clearing. But he goes deeper in depth now, describing the sudden flare of Boruto Uzumaki’s mysterious doujutsu—the black hole that opened up in the air and sucked them in, spitting them out in a completely different space and time.

“And this Jougan,” Itachi says. “What is known about it?”

Sasuke grimaces. “Not much. It detects chakra the same way the Sharingan and the Byakugan can. To an even greater degree than they can, actually. It can see through the spaces between other dimensions—”

Itachi arches an eyebrow. “Other dimensions?”

“Long story. It’s not relevant.”

Though he makes no outward indication of it, a flash of irritation goes through him at the answer. It is not the first of his questions to be answered this way. This future version of his brother, despite how upfront he was about his identity and circumstances, is clearly keeping certain information locked behind his teeth.

It’s hypocritical of him to be upset by it. Yet still, he doesn’t like it.

It’s still a struggle to fully comprehend—that this shinobi standing just across from him, battle scars written in his body and reflected in his eyes, is his younger brother. The same broken, devastated seven-year-old he left behind on that bloody street three years ago. It’s undeniable it’s him—Itachi can see hints of that child in his face. He sees Mikoto in the slope and shape of his nose, in the thin fingers curved around the hilt of his blade.

He sees himself in the man’s eyes. In the cord around the man’s neck, barely peeking out from the collar of his shirt.

He’s alive, Itachi thinks. He’s going to live.

A part of him sings inside—relieved and ecstatic beyond belief at the assurance his brother will get to reach this age, that everything he’s done to keep him safe and alive will be worth it. But he looks at the man’s missing limb, the shadows that haunt dark eyes and the remnants of a battlefield present in the way he moves—and another part of him feels cold, recognizing him as someone irreversibly damaged.

How much of that damage is from him? And yet, when the man looks at him with Itachi’s own eyes—it’s with a gaze heavy with grief, not sharp with hatred.

Sasuke was never meant to mourn him. He was never meant to know.

“Barely anything is known of the Jougan,” Sasuke says, mouth set in a displeased line. “Boruto has no control over it most of the time. Without understanding how it works, it’ll be difficult to figure out how to get us back to our time. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before.”

“Neither have I,” Itachi tells him. “Still, something must have triggered the doujutsu’s activation. It couldn’t have been random.”

Sasuke and his student (Boruto Uzumaki, Itachi thinks, but stops his mind before it can fall into the rabbit hole of questions provoked by that name) were in Konoha when this occurred, after all. Not on the very outskirts of the Land of Fire, only miles away from crossing into the Land of Waterfalls. It can hardly be a coincidence that the two of them were transported not just through time, but to the near-exact location Itachi happened to be traveling through.

Sasuke has made this connection as well, because he agrees with the words. “No. It wasn’t random. It brought us to you intentionally, though I don’t know how or why.”

“What were the two of you doing when it happened? Did either of you say something—think something?”

The other shinobi’s face is unreadable at the question. Nothing of the seven-year-old that Itachi knows—eleven years old now, but still seven in Itachi’s mind—who has always worn his emotions so transparently.

“We were arguing,” the man says after a pause. “Boruto injured his hand yesterday. I caught him training and making it worse, even though I told him not to.”

Sounds familiar, Itachi thinks, recalling the multiple times Sasuke did the same—the multiple times Itachi lectured him, forcing him to put down the kunai and come back into the house.

The memory twists his heart. He shoves it away.

“Could it be something that was said?” Itachi asks.

“Possibly,” Sasuke says, in a tone that implies the answer is actually yes. There’s another slight pause before he adds, “He was upset with his sister. Accused me of not knowing anything about being an older brother.”

Itachi blinks as the words settle between them. “Oh.”

Sasuke’s lips quirk in slight amusement. “Yes. Oh.”

“I mean—he wasn’t wrong.”

“I know more about it than you might think,” says Sasuke.

Itachi frowns, question in his eyes.

“You taught me what it means,” Sasuke tells him. “You gave up everything to keep me safe. Even if some of your decisions were wrong, I’ll always be grateful for all that you sacrificed for me. I’ll always love you.”

Itachi feels a small spark of defensiveness, at his decisions being called wrong—Sasuke is standing in front of him, alive, which to him is everything needed to prove them right, if still unforgivably cruel. But the feeling is forgotten by the words that follow, the honest and open declaration rendering him mute.

I’ll always love you.

Those words seem to hold a significance Itachi doesn’t understand. They pierce him all the same, with just as much weight.

Itachi doesn’t understand how they could possibly be true. Not with everything he has done, all the hurt he has inflicted. The blood he has soaked his hands in. Yet the way they are spoken, they can’t be anything but sincere.

“I don’t deserve—”

Sasuke cuts him off, stern but still kind. “We’re talking in circles now. I already told you, it’s not about deserve.”

It’s about choice.

Itachi has never had much of that. Or maybe that’s just what he tells himself to excuse it.

Uncomfortable with the vulnerability of the conversation, Itachi steers it in a different direction. Hoping to get some answers to the other questions circling in his head and longing for explanation. “Your student. Boruto Uzumaki.”

“He’s not my student,” Sasuke says immediately.

Itachi raises an eyebrow. “Did you not call him your student earlier when you introduced him?”

For a fraction of a second, Itachi swears that the man looks embarrassed. “It seemed like the simplest explanation, and I didn’t want us to linger out in the open for any longer than we had to. Kid’s never going to let me live it down now, though.”

“And the longer explanation?” Itachi asks.

“He has an official sensei. I just train him sometimes, whenever I’m back in the village.”

Back in the village. The words ring in Itachi’s head, along with the memory of Boruto Uzumaki’s scratched hitai-ate. Given to him, he said, blue eyes darting to Sasuke. It’s easy to work out.

His little brother, at some point, becomes a rogue ninja.

Is he still a rogue ninja, in the current time he comes from? He’s mentioned being in Konoha—and he spends his spare time training Naruto Uzumaki’s son, both things that strongly suggest the answer is no.

But Itachi’s never heard of a missing-nin being pardoned. And the man in front of him now isn’t wearing a hitai-ate.

“Boruto,” Itachi says. “He’s Naruto’s son.”

It’s more of a statement than a question, but Sasuke answers anyway. “Yes.”

Even without the last name, Itachi would have figured it out. With his blonde hair and blue eyes, the inherited marks on his cheeks, the young boy is Naruto’s carbon copy. Whoever his mother is, few of his features seem to come from her.

There’s a lot of information that can be extrapolated from this. If Naruto Uzumaki has a child in the future, then that means the young jinchuuriki is going to survive—meaning, the Akatsuki’s plans are going to fail. Madara, or whoever the actual Uchiha masquerading as him is, will be defeated.

Still, Itachi won’t let himself feel too relieved. All of this is still just conjecture, even if he feels rather confident about his conclusions. And he hasn’t forgotten the shadow of war in his brother’s eyes—his own eyes. If the future is a time of peace, then it was one that was doubtless only achieved through much bloodshed and suffering.

Itachi’s gaze drops from Sasuke’s face to the stump of his left arm. Sasuke is left-handed, Itachi thinks. How difficult must it have been, how debilitating, to lose the limb?

His eyes glance back up. “Was it worth it?” he asks.

The man’s eyebrows furrow slightly, at what seems like a complete non-sequitur to their current conversation. Itachi watches as the older Uchiha attempts to follow his train of thought, his expression smoothing out as the confusion is replaced by understanding.

“Yes,” Sasuke says, “and no. There are some things I’d do a thousand times over the exact same, if I had to in order to reach this point. And there are others I would give almost anything to change. I think that’s something, maybe, you can understand.”

Itachi says nothing, something heavy in his chest. He can understand it—all too well.

“And you’re living in Konoha now?” he asks. “You’ve been pardoned?”

A faint smile curves Sasuke’s lips. He doesn’t even pretend to be surprised that Itachi has worked out his former missing-nin status. “I’m frequently away, but yes. I live in Konoha. My wife and my daughter—”

Itachi’s chest does something that vaguely resembles having a heart attack. “Daughter?”

Up until now, all of Sasuke’s small smiles have retained a haunted quality. Grief and sorrow, an ache like pressing on an old bruise—and weighted with the knowledge that, whatever time the two of them have together now, it won’t last.

But for the first time since they’ve started speaking, Sasuke smiles without a shadow passing behind his eyes.

“Her name is Sarada,” Sasuke tells him, “and she’s beautiful.”

★

Sasuke talks about his daughter. From the mundane things, such as her favorite color and foods, to impressive accomplishments such as her early awakening of the Sharingan, her promotion to chuunin at only thirteen—he tells Itachi all about her, and Itachi latches onto every word.

At some point, the two of them have transitioned from standing to sitting, cross-legged across from each other on the forest ground. The air has grown more frigid, as the night wears on, but Itachi is well protected in his Akatsuki cloak. Sasuke seems unbothered by the temperature as well, despite giving his own cloak up to his student.

As Sasuke speaks of his daughter, pride in his eyes, Itachi realizes that perhaps this is another reason Sasuke reminds him of Fugaku. Not just because of his commanding presence, his leader-like qualities.

He's also a father.

Because Fugaku did love them. Itachi couldn’t see it at thirteen, but he does now. He’s forever haunted by the man’s last words—reassuring Itachi he was proud, that he understood, even as his own son prepared to bring his katana down.

(Take care of Sasuke, Fugaku asked him. Itachi wonders if his father would still be proud of him now.)

“We named her partially after you, you know,” Sasuke tells him.

Itachi blinks against the memory, cool steel cutting into the skin of his palms. “What?”

Sasuke reaches over and picks up a fallen stick from the base of the tree he’s sitting against. Between them, he begins to write something in the dirt—his daughter’s name. The stick stays beneath the last symbol as he finishes it.

“The da in her name,” he says. “It was taken from the ta in yours.”

Itachi’s throat feels oddly tight, as he stares down at the symbol. Indeed, it’s the same katakana as the one in his own name, just with the additional dakuten to indicate the consonant is pronounced differently.

Sarada.

His niece.

Itachi swallows. Once he’s certain his voice will not break embarrassingly over his own words, he tells Sasuke quietly, “I wish I could meet her.”

“I wish you could have, too.”

The tense Sasuke uses—could have instead of just could—settles in Itachi’s chest like a weight. To Itachi, everything the man is describing seems so far away and unreal. But to Sasuke, it’s a reality. His reality. To this thirty-year-old Sasuke, Itachi is already dead. Has been dead for years. The sixteen-year-old boy sitting across from him now is nothing more than a memory.

Itachi is prepared for the inevitable eventuality of his own death—longs for it, even. But he thinks of the young girl his brother described with such pride and such love, his niece, of never getting the chance to meet her. And for just a fraction of a moment, the yearning thought slices through his mind and steals his breath—

I don’t want to die.

It’s only for half a second. But it shakes him to his bones.

Itachi forces the emotions away. “I’m glad you could find a family again,” he tells his brother. “That you were able to rebuild something from the ashes of everything I burnt down… create a future for yourself… it’s all I ever wanted for you, after my death.”

“It wasn’t you who burnt it down,” Sasuke says. “Konoha, the elders—they’re the ones who did that. You were just the match they chose to use.”

Itachi's instinct is to protest that. But doesn’t it fall perfectly in line with what a shinobi is supposed to be?

“Shinobi exist to serve as tools,” he murmurs.

“No,” Sasuke says. Itachi blinks, surprised by the strength held in the word as he looks over to him. “Shinobi are those who endure. For themselves, for the people they love—for the world.”

Itachi contemplates that for a moment. It’s a much more inspiring philosophy than simply shinobi exist as tools. “That’s very wise.”

“Well, I can’t take the credit. That’s what the First Hokage said to me when I asked him about it.”

Itachi’s brain short-circuits.

“…What?”

★

Judging by the height of the moon and the color of the sky, it’s slightly past midnight by the time the two of them stand back up. Sasuke offers Itachi a hand to help pull him to his feet, which the teenager gladly accepts. His palm is warm and alive against Sasuke's, blood flowing beneath the skin, nothing like the cold flesh when his reanimated body pressed their foreheads together over fifteen years ago.

He wonders if Itachi is already sick, but can’t bring himself to ask. He looks perfectly healthy to Sasuke’s eyes—but he always did, not a strand of his hair out of place, until the very end.

The night air is harsh and stinging, without his cloak, but it’s barely a bother. He’s endured far worse conditions. “I’m going to go make us a fire,” he says.

Itachi nods, but doesn’t move to follow him. “You go. I’ll join you in a while.”

Itachi, much like Sasuke, always was one to need his solitude—especially considering everything he’s just learned. Sasuke turns toward the cave without him, but definitely plans to force him out of the cold if he’s longer than half an hour.

He can still feel the way the boy’s frame shook against him. The tears that soaked through the fabric of his shirt.

He can’t believe his brother was ever so young. He thinks of him even younger, trembling with his sword in his hand moments before he brought it down. He wants to be angry, but once again, he finds the feeling absent—flames and fury burnt out of him since that moment years ago at the Valley of the End, surrendering the fight.

Instead, he’s just sad.

I’m so sorry. I’d take the weight from you if I could.

Sasuke ducks in from the chilly night air, the cave walls surrounding him. He walks deeper inside, until he spots a familiar head of blonde hair in the dark. Boruto is in the same place Sasuke left him, up against the stone wall and bundled in Sasuke’s heavy cloak.

He isn’t sleeping as Sasuke expected he would be. Instead, wide-awake blue eyes meet his own in the darkness.

“I thought I told you to rest,” Sasuke reprimands him.

Boruto shrugs his shoulders. “Can’t. My head’s too loud.”

“Tell it to shut up.”

The blonde gives him an annoyed look, as Sasuke bends down to settle onto the dirt ground across from him. He pulls out the same stick he used to write Sarada’s name with, and begins grinding it in the dirt, gathering old pieces of leaves around it.

“What are you doing?” Boruto asks.

“Starting a fire,” says Sasuke, with a silent obviously on the end. “Didn’t you learn anything at the Academy?”

The genin’s face heats up. “Shut up. I know how to start a fire.”

“Then why haven’t you done it yet?”

“I’m not cold.” This is clearly a lie. Sasuke can see the boy is shivering, even with the large cloak cocooning his small body. “Besides, couldn’t someone spot us if we start a fire? We’re in the Land of Waterfalls, right? Foreign shinobi aren’t allowed.”

Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “I stand corrected. Apparently you did pay attention in your classes.”

A blush heats his cheeks again, though this time it seems more pleased. “I like history,” he says defensively.

It’s a shame, Sasuke thinks, that the history the Academy teaches is just a bunch of omissions and indoctrinated lies.

Boruto is right, however, that foreign shinobi weren’t allowed in the Land of Waterfalls twenty years ago. After the end of the Third Shinobi World War, the country committed to a policy of non-interference and refused to be involved in the affairs of other shinobi villages; this didn’t change until the Fourth Shinobi World War, when the nations allied together.

“Don’t worry about the fire,” Sasuke tells him. “It’s fine.”

Fire sparks and ignites beneath his fingers. Sasuke withdraws his hand before he can be burnt by it, as the flames catch and leap up between the two of them. They illuminate the darkness of the cave in a dim orange-yellow glow, playing across Boruto’s face and reflecting in his bright blue eyes.

The genin shifts forward, closer to the new source of heat. “What about your brother?” he asks, glancing in the direction of the cave’s entrance.

“He wanted a moment alone.”

Uncertainty flickers across Boruto’s face. Sasuke doesn’t blame him for his distrust. Caution is an important trait for a shinobi to have, in all situations but especially in unknown ones. Boruto is in a time and place that are completely unfamiliar to him, and Itachi is another thing completely unknown—even Sasuke wasn’t able to reassure him, with certainty, that he could be trusted.

Sasuke is a bit more certain now, after their talk outside. But still, he’ll make no reassurances.

Silence falls between them for a few moments, the crackling of the fire the only sound. Boruto stares into the flames, biting his bottom lip, and appears to be debating with himself. He glances up to hesitantly look at him on the other side of the fire.

“He’s dead now,” Boruto says quietly. Close to a whisper, but not quite. “Your brother.”

It isn’t a question, so Sasuke deigns not to respond. His silence, the slight clench of his jaw, is answer enough. Boruto lowers his eyes back down to the flames.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“How long?” Boruto asks him.

Sasuke hesitates before replying. “He was twenty-one, when he died.” When I killed him. “I was sixteen.”

“And right now, he’s—?”

“Sixteen.”

“He died after the rest of your clan,” Boruto says. “Didn’t he?”

Sasuke tenses at the question. The young boy winces, looking at him with more wariness for his own question. It’s daring of him, considering their previous argument just a couple days ago—a direct result of Boruto being too curious for his own good, prying without any sense of care into his personal business.

Still, Sasuke has gotten some distance from it now. He knows he overreacted.

You’re really lucky, Boruto told him. I wish I was an only child. It was an extremely careless, insensitive thing to say when he knew Sasuke’s entire clan was slaughtered; but it wasn’t entirely his fault. Boruto knew nothing of Itachi—he couldn’t have known that in a single sentence, he was bulldozing over nearly every single one of Sasuke’s triggers.

“What makes you think that?” Sasuke asks.

“You showed him your Sharingan earlier—to prove your identity.”

Reluctantly, Sasuke inclines his head. “You’re correct. In this time, he and I are the only two Uchiha left alive.” Not actually true, but Obito is a whole other can of worms he doesn’t plan on opening. “The massacre happened three years ago.”

Boruto’s eyes widen. “Three years?! But that means you were—” He stops a moment to be certain he has the math right “—eight!”

“Seven,” Sasuke corrects. Less than two weeks from his birthday. “Itachi was thirteen.”

Boruto looks horrified. Itachi was the same age as he is now, Sasuke thinks. And Sasuke was even younger than Himawari. What a contrast it must be to Boruto’s own life—peaceful and carefree, death a foreign concept. How unimaginable it must be to him, to live through something so tragic and horrific and life-altering at such a young age.

Sasuke hates a lot of things about the current Konoha. But one thing he can be grateful for, is at least it no longer mass-produces orphans.

“It was a different time,” Sasuke tells him, by way of explanation.

“Yeah,” Boruto says. “But…”

The boy trails off and doesn’t complete his sentence. Perhaps he doesn’t even know what he was going to say. His fists tighten in Sasuke’s black cloak, and he burrows deeper into it. The silence is just beginning to settle over them when Boruto breaks it again.

“Um. Sasuke-san, can I ask…?”

“You can ask,” Sasuke says, impatient.

“And you’ll actually answer?”

“I never said that.”

Boruto stays silent for a few moments longer, not meeting the older shinobi’s eyes. “Uh, how did… how did he die, then? Your brother.”

Sasuke stiffens.

Blue eyes widen at the reaction. “You don’t have to tell me, obviously!” He waves his hands in front of him, as if he could physically knock the question he just spoke out of the air. “Forget I asked! It’s none of my business, I’m sorry—”

“I killed him.”

Sasuke doesn’t know who’s more shocked by the words—himself or Boruto. The young boy stares at him, mouth open and eyes wide. Utterly speechless. The expression would have been highly comical, were they discussing a topic of less weight.

Boruto’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he manages to get any words out. “You what?”

He’s answered the question. There’s no taking it back now, no denying. “I killed him,” Sasuke repeats, and makes a visible effort not to remember Itachi’s last smile. The way the smoke and blood choked in his throat.

There are other answers he could have given. How did Itachi die? Sickness, he could have said. He killed himself, he could have said. Neither answer would have been a lie. But they wouldn’t have been the most truthful, either—not in Sasuke’s opinion.

He killed his brother. That has always been a burden he has accepted, rather than attempted to pass off.

You would think after so long—seventeen years—he would stop feeling the grief so viscerally in his chest. But that’s one of the consequences of burying the past and forbidding it from being spoken about. On the rare occasion that it is voiced out loud, Sasuke is so unused to it that it’s like a punch in the throat each time.

“You killed him?” Boruto repeats, his eyes still wide. “But—why?”

Sasuke doesn’t answer, his fingers curling into the fabric of his pants against his thigh.

“I can’t imagine you just killing someone for no reason,” the blonde says.

Sasuke huffs. “Then you really know nothing about me,” he tells him, thinking of all the meaningless blood he has shed. The lives he has taken so carelessly and unflinchingly. “But no. Itachi—it wasn’t for no reason.”

“Sasuke-san, what happened? He—you clearly love him. I don’t understand.”

Sasuke’s clenched fingers loosen, and they begin tapping against his thigh instead as he contemplates the question—as he considers actually answering it. Reasons why he shouldn’t, why it’s a terrible idea, immediate spring up. No one is allowed to know about it. It wouldn’t be fair for Boruto to know, when even Sarada doesn’t—it’s her family, and she deserves to know the most. It would confuse the kid needlessly, might make him doubt the sanctity of the village he’s sworn to serve.

Itachi wouldn’t want him to tell.

But Itachi is currently half his age. He doesn’t get to decide what Sasuke does.

“Okay,” Sasuke says, voice quiet as the fire crackles between them. “I’ll tell you, if you really want to know. But it’s a long story. And it isn’t an easy one.”

Boruto straightens up. “I want to know. Please.”

Sasuke opens his mouth. And for the first time in over fifteen years, he speaks the truth he was forbidden from ever uttering out loud.

Chapter Text

Noise.

Sasuke’s words are nothing but noise. Noise that crackles like static in Boruto’s ears and refuses to make any sense.

Feet away from them, the fire is down to its final breaths. Dying embers flicker, orange flames sputtering, in the darkness of the small cave; which currently feels like an entirely separate world from the one outside. Sasuke’s brother is out there somewhere among the trees—his older brother, who is also younger, who he killed seventeen years ago. Killed, because he slaughtered the entire Uchiha Clan in cold blood. Only it wasn’t in cold blood, it was because he was ordered, by Konoha—

Denial burns in Boruto’s chest.

“I don’t believe you,” he whispers.

His quiet voice is loud in the small space. Sasuke’s mouth clacks shut, his words cutting abruptly off.

Boruto doesn’t look at him. Can’t look at him. His hands are shaking in his lap, fisted tight in the black fabric of Sasuke’s cloak, and he shakes his head back and forth as if he can somehow shake the newly acquired knowledge back out of his brain. His world is rewriting itself.

“I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you.”

His voice cracks on the words, trembling with the sob he holds back.

It’s too awful. It’s too horrible.

It can’t be true.

A pause. The only sounds are the sputtering fire and the chirping crickets.

“I shouldn’t have told you.” Sasuke’s voice is harsh, like it was that afternoon at the training ground when he told Boruto off for his thoughtless comment. Boruto flinches. “You’re too young to understand. Too naïve—”

“That’s not true,” Boruto mumbles, the words inaudible.

“What?”

“I said that’s not true!” Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s jumped to his feet. He glares down at the man, anger surging through him.

If there’s one thing that Boruto hates more than anything, it’s condescending grown-ups who use ‘you’re too young’ as an excuse not to tell him things and keep him in the dark. It’s nothing more than a cheap cop-out—a way to slam the door in his face,  just because they don’t feel like taking the time to explain. But he’s always too young, no matter how old he gets.

Sasuke’s jaw clenches. “Look how you’re reacting,” he says, like Boruto’s behaving unreasonably. Like he’s a child throwing a tantrum.

“You just told me that Konoha had your family killed! Sarada’s family! How am I meant to be reacting?!”

A flicker of something undefinable passes over his face at his daughter’s name. “Keep your voice down.”

“No! Shut up!”

The back of Boruto’s throat burns. His eyes sting with tears he fights not to shed. It’s not true, he thinks to himself. It’s not. The village wouldn’t do that. Sasuke-san wouldn’t protect it, if it did. My dad wouldn’t protect it—

Sasuke laughs, short and bitter. And Boruto realizes he was speaking his thoughts out loud.

“Like I said,” Sasuke tells him, “you’re too naïve.”

Boruto feels sick to his stomach. “I don’t believe you,” he whispers again, but this time it sounds much more like a plea. His voice cracks over the words, and he pulls the over-large cloak tighter around his trembling body.

Sasuke’s face is sharp, illuminated by the faint glow of the dying fire. Harsh lines and angles that tell of difficult years. Difficult decades. Boruto has stared at that face so many times, trying to guess at the stories that might have shaped it—the events that might have left such visible scars. Now that he knows, his mentor should feel clearer to him—should be easier to understand. Instead, Boruto looks at him and finds him to be even more of a mystery.

“Why did you tell me this?” Boruto asks.

“You asked me,” Sasuke reminds him. “You wanted to know. Don’t go blaming me because you’ve decided you don’t like the answer.”

“But—Konoha wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t. Maybe you misunderstood something. Maybe—”

Sasuke’s expression goes cold. “You’re just like your father.” Boruto flinches at the sheer amount of ice in his tone, blue eyes widening. “No. You’re just like Itachi. Dig up the black roots in Konoha’s soil and hold them up for you to see, you avert your eyes to the sun and choose to blind yourself instead.”

He doesn’t understand the words. He feels them though, their scorn sharp as a kunai sliding up between his ribs.

A whirlwind in his chest, he snarls, “I hate you!”

Without waiting to see Sasuke’s expression, he spins around and runs from the cave—determined the man not see it when the tears spill down his cheeks.

“Boruto! Get back here—”

The genin ignores him. Vision blurry, going in no direction other than away, he runs out into the trees. He runs and runs and runs, the night air stinging against his wet cheeks, then he collapses onto the ground at the foot of a tree. Hyperventilating, gasping on breaths that are coming too fast, the air thin and static cutting across his eyes—

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe—

“Boruto? Boruto, look at me.”

A face is in front of him, blurry and swimming. Dark hair and sharp facial features. For a moment, Boruto thinks it’s Sasuke—that the man has chased after him in the dark—but then the image focuses, and he registers that the face is much younger. Two dark eyes looking back at him, rather than the Rinnegan’s purple rings.

Sasuke’s brother.

“Dying,” Boruto wheezes out, terrified.

“You’re not dying. You’re having a panic attack.”

A what?!

Steady hands reach out to settle on his shoulders. “Calm your breathing. Here. Put your head down.”

Itachi’s voice is calm and composed, much like Sasuke’s; but there’s a soothing lull to it that Sasuke’s lacked, like the still waters of a lake. It helps to quell the panic in Boruto’s chest, the icy fear that has seized his lungs.

Itachi guides his head between his knees. For the moment, Boruto shoves aside the confusing mix of feelings he has for his mentor’s older-younger brother, and simply focuses on following his instructions.

A hand rubs small circles into his back. The movement is practiced, if a bit stiff—like muscle memory, but one that hasn’t been used in a while.

Boruto wonders if Itachi ever comforted Sasuke like this.

Eventually, his breathing evens out and returns to normal. He feels the band constricting his lungs gradually loosen, then disappear. Boruto raises his head up from his knees, using the sleeve of Sasuke’s cloak to wipe the tears from his face.

“S-Sorry,” he mutters, eyes averted to the ground. “Thanks, I guess.”

Itachi sits back, putting a more comfortable distance between them. “You’re welcome.”

He’s not much older than Boruto is. Only sixteen. But the expression he wears is one of someone much older, and he moves with a careful precision that Boruto has only ever seen in experienced shinobi like Sasuke—and his father, when the man has decided to actually get serious. It sets off alarm bells in Boruto’s head. Instincts that scream danger, get away.

This is the shinobi who murdered the elite Uchiha Clan. An S-Rank criminal, and a member of a terrorist organization.

Fear flashes through him as he remembers this. Sasuke told him Itachi’s reasons, of course—the words Konoha ordered it still ringing in his head like a terrible, reverberating drum—but even so, he can’t help the way his breath catches. The way his body instinctively presses itself back against the trunk of the tree.

Sharp eyes observe his change in demeanor. “Sasuke told you. Didn’t he?”

Boruto doesn’t answer. His heartbeat races in his ears.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” says Itachi.

Boruto feels himself bristle. Itachi’s voice gives off a subtle hint of superiority, not unlike Sasuke’s tone earlier when he told Boruto that he was too young to understand. Defensive anger overrides his fear, and before his brain can warn his mouth to shut up, he blurts out, “That’s not up to you. He can do whatever he wants—haven’t you made enough of his choices for him?”

Itachi blinks.

Boruto’s eyes go wide. His heart kickstarts behind his ribcage. Ah, I’m so dead!

But he bites the inside of his cheek, refusing to take the words back. They’re the truth, after all.

Anger has been burning in his chest ever since Sasuke told him the truth. Ever since his words sent him running away from him, into the quiet dark of the forest. It wrestles in the space behind his ribs, awful and searing; and it’s only now that Boruto realizes some of the anger is for Sasuke, not just at Sasuke.

It’s hard to imagine the man that he knows—strong, composed, practically untouchable—as once being a helpless child. But Boruto thinks of a small seven-year-old boy, coming home from school one evening to find his entire clan brutally slaughtered.

His elder brother, the one standing over their bodies.

But it isn’t true, remember? It can’t be true.

It’s starting to sound less and less convincing, even in Boruto’s own head.

Itachi’s expression is blank, but there’s something sharp to his eyes after the genin's accusatory words. “I would watch your words,” he says, tone even but with an edge of threat.

“Or what?” Boruto asks. “You’ll kill me?”

There’s a tick in Itachi’s jaw. A flash of something in his eyes.

“No,” he says quietly, the dangerous aura seeming to fall away in an instant. It’s replaced by the boy who, just moments ago, talked him patiently and gently through his panic. “Of course not. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

Jeez. Whiplash much? Boruto thinks.

He doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Itachi. Conversation between them dries up, the silence stretching awkwardly. Cicadas fill the night air with their song.

The weight of everything Sasuke revealed to him bears down on Boruto’s shoulders. The dawning realization, slow but merciless, that everything he told him was the truth. Boruto wants to continue to deny it—but the honesty was in the pain in Sasuke’s face, the way each word escaped him like reopening a poisoned wound; and it’s mirrored in Itachi’s now too, a heavy weight in place of Sasuke’s sharp edges.

Boruto’s world is changed. His home repaints itself in colors of dark red, bleeding from the sky and the streets.

A tragedy, the history books say about the Uchiha Clan.

Nothing else. Just that.

With hands that are once again shaking, Boruto pulls the hitai-ate off his head. He stares down at it—the metal plate old and dented, a line bisecting the Leaf Village’s symbol that finally, for the first time, makes horrifying sense.

He traces over the line with his thumb. Thin, made with something other than a kunai.

Sasuke’s words echo in his head. Konoha ordered them killed. Every single one, even the children. I should have been killed too, but Itachi wouldn’t let them—

Boruto’s jaw clenches. Grip tightening on the headband, he throws it suddenly, with all his strength, into the trees blanketed by the dark. He hears a faint thud somewhere in the distance as it lands.

Itachi turns his head, his eyes following the action. His head turns back and he asks, “Did that make you feel better?”

Boruto’s shoulders slump. “No.”

A rough wind chooses that moment to blow through the trees. Leaves rustle violently around them, the wind howling, and Boruto twists his limbs further into the warmth of Sasuke’s cloak with a shiver. Itachi shoves his hair back as it blows into his face, but looks unaffected—as if trivial human sensations such as cold are beyond him.

“Sasuke gave you that headband?” Itachi asks.

“How’d you know?”

“He doesn’t carry one on him. And by the amount of wear, I estimated yours to be close to twenty years old.”

Boruto gives him a wide-eyed look. “How the hell did you—that’s just freaky.”

A few seconds of quiet fall between them again.

“You shouldn’t blame Konoha for what happened. It wasn’t their fault,” says Itachi.

Boruto frowns. “Huh?” He looks at the boy across from him in confusion, eyes drawn to his own slashed hitai-ate.

Itachi Uchiha, more than anyone else—more even than Sasuke, arguably—has reason to blame the village for what happened. He was forced to stain his hands in his own clan’s blood, ordered to fulfill his duty as a Leaf shinobi by turning his sword on those that he loved; his younger brother alive only because he drew a line in the sand and refused to be moved, protecting the one thing he still could.

Not Konoha’s fault? Whose fault is it, then?

Boruto shakes his head. “They manipulated you! Forced you into killing your own family! And you don’t blame them? Why the fuck not?”

“Watch your language,” Itachi tells him with a frown, in a perfect mimicry of his brother.

“Fuck off,” Boruto says. “You’re barely older than me.”

His forehead is already starting to feel strange without his hitai-ate. He regrets throwing it. Now he’s going to have to stomp around blindly in the dark to find it.

“They didn’t force me to do anything,” says Itachi. “I chose to do it. I couldn’t see another option.”

“Was there another option?”

“No.” He gives the answer with utter certainty, no doubts or hesitation. “At least, not one where I could be certain Sasuke would be safe.”

“But he wasn’t safe,” Boruto says, eyebrows furrowing.

A frown pulls at the corner of Itachi’s mouth. “Of course he was.”

“You left him alone in a place that ordered his clan dead. A place that wanted him dead.”

“I made sure no one would touch him. If Danzo so much as went near him—”

“Okay, maybe.” Boruto cuts the sixteen-year-old off, unable to conceal the frustration and anger in his voice. “But keeping someone safe isn’t just about keeping them alive. You’re alive, aren’t you? Are you safe? Are you happy?”

Itachi’s jaw clenches. He says nothing.

Boruto shakes his head. “You’re so dumb,” he says.

Itachi’s mouth actually drops open at the words—speechless, as if no one has ever dared to call him such a thing before.

Boruto can’t imagine why. He seems plenty dumb to him.

Irritation flashes across the other boy’s face. He appears to be struggling with finding the proper words to argue back. Cool eloquence has been replaced with fumbling silence, and Boruto gets the impression that Itachi Uchiha isn’t used to other people challenging his viewpoints and decisions.

Probably because, up until now, there was no one who even knew about those decisions.

It sounds incredibly lonely and isolating. After his massive screw-up at last year’s Chuunin Exams, Boruto knows the importance of having your friends around you to stop you from making bad decisions. He can’t imagine what it must have been like for Itachi, forced into making the choices he did—relying only on his own judgement, on what he thought to be best, because there was no one around to tell him otherwise.

Boruto isn’t sure he can completely blame him, in that case. Still, he thinks about everything Sasuke told him—and the things he’s certain the man didn’t tell him, details he no doubt held back—

There must have been some other way, Boruto thinks.

A way that didn’t require the Uchiha Clan to die—for a seven-year-old Sasuke to stumble into a room and find his parents’ bodies, his brother standing over them with a sword. A way that didn’t require leaving that seven-year-old child abandoned and alone, in the same house where they died, in a village that would have seen him dead. A way that didn’t require Itachi to hone that boy’s hatred like a blade, and then use that blade to end himself.

Boruto thinks of his own little sister. Her bright eyes, her wide smile. He tries to imagine putting her through even a fraction of what Sasuke’s older brother put him through—

It makes him feel sick to his stomach.

His hands clench in his lap, balling up and fisting in Sasuke’s black cloak. “You know, Itachi-san, I have a little sister. Her name is Himawari.”

It feels strange to call a boy only three years his senior by the honorific of -san. But at the same time, Itachi Uchiha gives off an aura of someone who is much older—to call him anything more familiar would feel even stranger.

The Akatsuki member blinks at the change of subject. His defensive expression shifts to puzzled curiosity, as he gives Boruto his attention.

“We had a fight recently.” A mix of anger and guilt wells up in his chest as he recalls it. The smashed birthday cake, his sister’s teary eyes. It feels much longer than a day ago—and it feels so petty, so small, now that he’s been faced with Sasuke’s own grievances. How do Boruto’s problems even compare?

Itachi nods. “Yes. Sasuke mentioned it to me.”

“He did?” Boruto fights down a spark of irritation.

“It only came up because we were discussing how the two of you might have gotten here.”

“By my Jougan,” the genin says.

“Yes. But what triggered it? Why send you back to here—now?”

Boruto frowns. He doesn’t have an answer for any of those questions. He doesn’t think Itachi expects him to, though.

“The best we can figure,” says Itachi, “is one of the Jougan’s latent abilities was triggered by something you thought or said at the time. Can you think of what it might have been?”

Boruto’s insides go cold. His own voice, filled with anger as he shouted up at Sasuke, echoes in his head. You don’t know anything about being an older brother!

“No,” he mutters, staring at the ground.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I am not!”

“Sasuke already told me what you said.”

“What?” Boruto exclaims. “Jerk! Then why did you ask?!”

A faint smile brushes the corner of the missing-nin’s mouth.

Boruto feels a deep sense of shame settle in his chest, as he recalls the full argument he had with Sasuke. The older man’s words to him about Himawari—how he should forgive his sister her mistakes, because it was his responsibility, as the elder sibling, to look after her. In retrospect, it’s obvious how personal the entire thing was. Not that Boruto had any way of knowing that then. Not that Sasuke ever told him anything about himself.

Until he finally did, and Boruto immediately demanded he take his answers back.

I don’t want them anymore.

“The two of you will make it back home,” Itachi reassures him.

Boruto slumps against the tree trunk at his back, unable to help the note of defeat in his voice. “How’re you so sure?”

“You have a little sister to get back to, don’t you? You’ll figure it out.”

Boruto huffs, trying to disguise the painful squeeze his heart gives. “Me? Why is it my job to figure it out?”

“It’s your eye.”

“It’s not like I asked for it, dattebasa!”

A flicker of amusement goes through the Uchiha’s dark eyes.

“What?” Boruto snaps.

He shakes his head slightly. “Nothing. Just, you really are Naruto’s son.”

Boruto can’t tell by the tone if the words are meant to be a compliment or an insult. So he simply huffs, crossing his arms over his chest as he throws the older boy a disgruntled look. “You know, Itachi-san, I don’t think I like you very much.”

Itachi smiles. “That’s okay. Not many people do these days.”

“Wow, how surprising.”

Itachi makes an odd noise. Boruto realizes after a moment that it’s a laugh—small and awkward-sounding, Itachi’s own eyes widening a fraction when he hears it.

And quite suddenly, Boruto’s heart aches for this boy in front of him. This boy who isn’t much older than him, who’s long dead in Boruto’s time, who responds to his own laughter like it’s a foreign sound to his ears. His heart aches for Sasuke, too—the broken child he once was, and the man he grew up to become. A blueprint of grief and betrayal, written into every line of his body.

It's wrong. It’s all wrong. It shouldn’t have to be like this.

Boruto bites the inside of his cheek. He looks across him, to Itachi, and says, “Sasuke-san does, though. You know that, right?”

“What?”

“He likes you. Loves you, even after everything.”

A complicated expression, too intricate and personal for Boruto to be able to read, settles on the sixteen-year-old's face. “He shouldn’t.”

Boruto shrugs. “I think that’s his decision.”

“So he’s told me.”

Boruto remembers the lecture that Sasuke was in the middle of giving him, right before the Jougan decided to suck them abruptly into the past. His words to him about Himawari—so clearly a projection, now. So full of guilt and self-loathing. It’s your job to look after her. To protect her. Even when she doesn’t recognize all you’ve sacrificed for her. Even if she’s being a selfish, ungrateful brat—

Those words weren’t about Himawari, Boruto realizes. They were about himself.

Sasuke hates himself. He hates himself for killing his brother. For being unable to see the truth through the lies. For being alive, while everyone else is gone. While Itachi is gone—

He finds himself blinking back tears once again. “It’s not fair,” he says quietly.

Itachi looks at him with a frown.

“Why does he have to kill you?” Boruto asks. “Just—go back home and tell him the truth. You don’t have to die.”

“I do,” says Itachi.

“Why?”

Itachi doesn’t immediately reply. The silence stretches, broken only by the wind and the cicadas’ song, when he finally says, “I’m sick. I doubt I’ll live longer than five more years anyway.”

Boruto blinks at this new information. Sasuke didn’t mention it when telling his story. He wonders if the man even knows—knew—of it. “You don’t seem sick.”

“It’s not that bad yet. But it’ll kill me eventually.”

“Can’t it be treated? If it’s not that bad yet—”

“There’s no point.”

Boruto feels a spark of anger at the response. “No point? What about your brother, huh? Do you have any idea how much you’re going to hurt him?”

Itachi shakes his head. “I’ve already hurt him. I can hardly do any worse.”

“You can always do worse.”

Itachi says nothing, his face resigned but firm, like weathered stone. It strikes a chord in Boruto’s memory, unnervingly familiar, as he’s hit with a strong sense of déjà vu. So sure of the role he has to play. So certain it’s his only option. But still, hating every step he takes.

Kagura, Boruto realizes. He reminds Boruto of Kagura.

Boruto remembers his friend from the Hidden Mist, who once laughed with him during a game of Shinobi Bout. Who had darkness written in his blood, and thought the path laid out for him was the only way—but who secretly wished for someone to show him a different one.

Itachi’s resigned himself to dying in disgrace—likely believes he deserves to—but that doesn’t mean he wants to.

He wants to live. He just won’t let himself admit it.

“It’s what I have to do,” the missing-nin says. He doesn’t look at Boruto, but past him, in the direction of the cave where Sasuke has taken shelter. “It’s too late for me to change my plans now. For your sensei, I’ve already been dead for almost two decades. The past is the past. It can’t be changed.”

Boruto doesn’t bother protesting that Sasuke isn’t his sensei. “His past. Not yours. You can still change it for your Sasuke.”

“No,” Itachi tells him. “I’ve seen a future where he lives. Where he has a family, a daughter. I won’t risk that. I never needed him to forgive me. I never needed him to understand. But he has, and that’s more than I ever dared hope for. I’m okay with the rest.”

It’s so unfair—everything about it. It burns in Boruto’s chest, an aching need to somehow do something to fix this. To make Sasuke’s brother see.

The genin scowls at him. “So then, you’re just gonna leave him behind again?”

“He’s better off without me.”

“No he isn’t! He’s miserable! He loves his family, yeah—but he hates it in the village! He does everything he can to stay away!” Boruto didn’t connect it until now—Sasuke’s long absences from Konoha. His sharp and caged demeanor whenever he is there. Do you have to give Sasuke-san so many missions? he asked his father once. Naruto looked sad for a moment before replying, I don’t. He asks for them. “He can’t stand the village after what it did to you. He can’t stand himself—"

“Enough,” Itachi says. His face is blank, but there’s a note of strain to his voice.

“He thinks it’s his fault. That he wasn’t worth everything you sacrificed.”

Itachi briefly closes his eyes. His mouth becomes a hard line. “It’s my job to keep him safe. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Your job is to be there,” Boruto declares fiercely. “And if you choose to leave him behind, then you’ve failed.”

The other boy looks stricken by his words.

Boruto remembers once again, quite suddenly, who it is he’s speaking to. Who it is he’s lecturing, like he has some sort of authority here, when in reality he has none. He’s in an unfamiliar time, sitting across from a dead boy who is an utter stranger—who he only knows by the jagged pieces of him he’s seen reflected in Sasuke’s hard eyes.

But—

But I do know what it means to be an older brother. He thinks of Himawari’s adoring eyes, the smile he’ll do anything to protect. He thinks of the devastation on her face on her birthday last year, when their father’s clone popped out of existence and the cake fell to the floor. And it’s not this.

Boruto’s expression softens, while still remaining firm. “That's my advice, I mean. One older brother to another. Take it or leave it.”

Itachi’s stricken expression turns slightly pensive. He doesn’t reply, dark eyes unreadable but contemplative.

“Itachi, don’t listen to a single thing he says to you.”

Boruto startles, an embarrassing squawk escaping his mouth and his head snapping up, as the voice cuts suddenly through the quiet bubble he and Itachi have found themselves in. Sasuke’s figure is slightly indistinct as he steps up to them with soundless footsteps, hair and clothing blending into the black of the night. But Boruto can still make out the judgmental raise of his eyebrow.

Itachi hasn’t startled at all. “Sasuke,” he greets.

“Sasuke-san!” Boruto exclaims. “Make noise, jeez!”

“Or you could be more aware of your surroundings.”

Boruto flushes at the reprimand. Then he properly registers Sasuke’s previous words and he scowls at him. “Hey! What do you mean don’t listen to a single thing I say? I’ll have you know, I was just giving your brother really great advice!”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

“I was!”

Sasuke turns to Itachi. “Was he?”

“I have yet to come to a consensus,” says Itachi.

“Hm.” He turns back to Boruto. “Here. I think this belongs to you.” An object is tossed at him. Boruto barely manages to free his arms from the cloak in time to catch it and avoid being smacked in the face.

It's the hitai-ate that he threw into the trees. Sasuke must have stumbled upon it while on his way over to them.

“Technically, it belongs to you,” Boruto says.

“You’re giving it back, then?”

Boruto blinks. He doesn’t answer immediately, his response getting caught in his throat. He looks down at the headband in his hands, Konoha’s symbol engraved on the metal plate—stricken cleanly and decisively through the center, to denote its original owner’s previous status of missing-nin.

What does the headband mean to him now? Can he really continue to wear it with pride, now that he knows what he does?

Boruto’s hands shake as he tries to work it out.

He glances up at Sasuke. The man’s face is shuddered, locked up tight behind closed doors; the way it only is when there’s something behind them that he doesn’t want to be seen. Is he angry at Boruto for tossing the hitai-ate away? Upset by the notion that Boruto might not want it anymore? Why? He doesn’t wear one either—for reasons that are now glaringly obvious. He cast his own off and handed it to Boruto, replacing the shameful sting of his father’s public rejection with a silent show of support. I believe in you. I have faith in you—

Oh, Boruto realizes.

His hands tighten on the hitai-ate, grip changing from something uncertain to holding the object like it’s a precious thing—because it is.

“I’m keeping it,” he declares. “Someone I really admire gave it to me. I’m proud to wear it.”

Sasuke blinks. “Brat,” he murmurs, but there’s something almost touched in his voice.

Itachi’s mouth curves slightly, watching them. But then his face settles into something more serious, and he looks up at his older-younger brother from the ground. “You told him the truth about the massacre,” he says, tone unreadable.

“I did.”

Sasuke matches his tone, and Itachi frowns in response. “That wasn’t your decision.”

“Tell me, Itachi. What is my decision?” The words aren’t accusing, just bluntly honest. Itachi says nothing and Sasuke tells him, “I told him the truth. Deal with it. You’re over a decade too young to lecture me.”

Boruto has to stifle a laugh at the look on Itachi’s face.

And apparently that’s that, conversation over with. “Nii-san,” Sasuke says, unconcerned with how strange it looks for him to address the teenager by the title, “would you mind giving my student and I a moment alone to talk?”

Boruto looks up at the man as he returns the slashed hitai-ate to his forehead, centering the metal plate. My student. It’s the second time Sasuke has called him that in less than a day. Unfortunately, the thrill Boruto feels at the acknowledgement is bellied by his nerves.

Is Sasuke still mad at him?

Of course he is. He opened up about himself for the first time ever, and Boruto responded by calling him a liar.

Once again, Boruto feels a sinking feeling of shame in his stomach.

Itachi hesitates—obviously still unhappy with his brother’s decision to tell Boruto the truth, wary of anything else he might choose to divulge—but he nods and stands up, brushing the dirt off his clothes.

“Hey,” Boruto calls after him.

Itachi stops and looks back.

“Think about what I said. He needs you.”

The Akatsuki member looks at him for a moment, expressionless. “I will,” he says finally. “I promise.” Then he turns and resumes walking away from them.

Sasuke watches his retreating back until it disappears within the trees. He looks back to Boruto. “Itachi isn't the best at keeping his promises,” he warns.

“Maybe not. But I think he’ll keep this one.”

“What did the two of you talk about?”

Boruto tries not to shift or avert his eyes when he responds. He has a feeling that Sasuke will not appreciate Boruto’s advice to his brother—not when it has the potential to change history. “Nothing important. Big brother stuff.”

“Hn.” Sasuke looks doubtful, but he doesn’t press.

Boruto twists his hands in Sasuke’s cloak, waiting. Sasuke moves, stepping closer and lowering himself to the ground where his brother was just sitting. He folds his legs under him, each movement graceful and elegant, even with his empty sleeve fluttering in the night breeze. Boruto is unused to seeing the missing limb so obviously displayed, and tries to keep himself from staring at it.

“I reacted harshly earlier,” Sasuke says.

Boruto blinks. The man says nothing else.

As far as apologies go, it’s a rather poor one. It’s also more than Boruto ever expected to get.

The genin shakes his head. “No. Sasuke-san, you were right. I should have believed you. You wouldn’t lie about something like that.” He swallows, feeling his previous nausea resurface in his gut. “It’s just. What you told me. It’s so horrible, and…”

He can’t finish. He feels too sick.

“And Konoha is your home,” Sasuke says. “You didn’t want to believe it.”

There’s a quiet understanding on his face. It softens his sharp edges. Boruto blinks away the sting in his eyes, a lump in his throat.

“…Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to believe it once either, when it was first revealed to me. It broke everything I thought that I knew about the world.” Sasuke doesn’t look at Boruto as he speaks, and instead aims his gaze slightly to the right, as if to detach himself from his own words. “A revelation like that—a complete shift in your reality—takes time to come to terms with. Nobody should be expected to hear it and immediately accept it as truth.”

“I believe you now,” Boruto repeats. “I do.”

“I know. Thank you.”

You shouldn’t have to thank me for that, Boruto thinks.

He pulls his knees up to his chest, the heavy cloak draped over them. “How am I supposed to feel now?” he asks.

He looks to the older shinobi, hoping—praying—for some sort of answer. Some sort of direction, path forward, now that he knows what he knows. Tell me what to do with all this awfulness you handed to me. Tell me where I’m supposed to put it.

But Sasuke only tells him, “I don’t know. That’s up to you.”

Boruto huffs. “But how—how do you do it? How do continue to protect the village, give your life for it, after everything it took from you?”

Sasuke’s  mouth tightens. He considers the answer for a long moment before he replies.

“Konoha didn’t take my family from me. It didn’t place a sword in my brother’s hand and order him to kill with it. The people in charge of Konoha did that.” For a brief second, Sasuke’s visible eye darkens with a deep hatred, the air around him growing heavy, as he says, “The main conspirator is dead. By my own hand.”

Boruto shivers, suddenly understanding why he’s heard the name Sasuke Uchiha whispered in fearful tones. If he sounds like this when he faces off against his enemies…

“The other two—” Sasuke grimaces. “They’re still alive, unfortunately. Still clutching at their seats of power. I was told that to remove them or to go against them in any way would threaten Konoha’s hard-won stability—and make Itachi’s sacrifice meaningless.”

Boruto scowls. “That’s emotional manipulation!”

“I didn’t know you knew words that big.”

“Oh, shut up!” An awful possibility occurs to him, and he asks, “It wasn’t my dad who told you that, was it?”

“No,” says Sasuke.

Boruto’s chest loosens with his relief, but it’s a brief respite. “That’s still awful.”

“Maybe. But it’s not wrong, either.”

“And that’s enough? You’re okay with that?”

“Sometimes.”

They both fall quiet, the air around them heavy and somber. The cicadas hum a haunting melody. Boruto presses his face into the borrowed cloak, hiding from the chilly night breeze.

“I want to go back home,” he mutters. Tears prick at his eyes.

“I’m working on it,” Sasuke tells him.

“I want to see Himawari. I want to tell her I’m sorry.”

Sasuke arches an eyebrow at him. “You’re not angry at her anymore? What changed?”

Boruto thinks of everything that’s happened in the brief time since he’s arrived in the past. He thinks about Sasuke and his brother, and everything that they’ve been through—all the ways that they’ve hurt each other, all the ways that they still love—and suddenly, his fighting with Himawari seems so childish. So stupid.

Boruto shrugs his shoulders. “I told you. Me and Itachi-san talked about big brothers.”

“And he taught you something about it?”

“Yeah. But I think I taught him a few things too.”

Sasuke opens his mouth to say something else. But then—

Just like the first time, it happens without warning.

Boruto feels a flare of chakra in his left eye, shooting through his body’s pathways. Light bursts across his vision. “Your eye—” he hears Sasuke exclaim, but he can’t see him. His hand snaps up to his face. There’s a roaring in his ears, so loud he feels his eardrums pop; the ground is gone from his feet.

A hand snaps out to wrap around his arm. “Bor—”

Blindly, Boruto is falling.

Chapter Text

The inky night sky and forest of trees is torn away, ripping into bright day. Boruto is crashing down from the sky, flailing as he screams. His limbs are caught in Sasuke’s cloak. His stomach lurches and the wind smacks against his face, and the buildings and houses below him are growing rapidly closer. He recognizes Konoha—Hokage Tower, the Academy building, the green training fields. He has no time to process anything as he plummets, broken fragments of thought tumbling and tripping over each other.

How—gonna die—what a lame way to go—

“Sasuke-san! Help—!”

The wind steals his words away.

Something yanks him, hard, nearly pulling his arm from its socket. He collides with a solid chest, a pair of arms wrapping around him and holding him tight as he continues to fall. Blind and panicked, Boruto kicks and strikes out with his elbows.

“Ow! Knock it off,” Sasuke snaps right next to his ear.

Sasuke-san? Boruto stops struggling immediately.

A familiar purple portal opens up below them. Boruto feels relief fill his chest. He closes his eyes, clutching tight to Sasuke and bracing himself as they fall through it.

There’s the discomforting sensation of teleporting—or traveling through space, as Sasuke would correct him. He hits the ground roughly, the impact rattling through his teeth, as Sasuke once again tries to take the brunt of their landing. Boruto feels like his insides have been rearranged, and he probably would have vomited if he had anything in his stomach to throw up.

Once the world stops spinning, Boruto shoves himself up. It takes him a moment to orient himself with his surroundings, the moon and the stars from seconds ago replaced by the sun and a clear blue sky.

“We’re back? What the hell?”

He spins around to face Sasuke, as the jounin also rises up to his feet. He opens his mouth to ask if the man has any idea what just happened, but then stops in shock. Blue eyes go wide.

“Sasuke-san! Your arm! It’s—"

Where there should be a dangling, empty sleeve, instead there’s a flesh-and-blood arm.

Sasuke’s left arm, which he’s been missing for as long as Boruto has known him.

The Uchiha fixes him with a deadpan stare. “I noticed,” he says flatly, which—of course he has, it’s his arm.

It’s almost enough to fool Boruto into thinking he’s unphased. But beneath the calm tone, there’s a hint of something deeply unsettled. His left fingers twitch slightly, and Sasuke glances briefly down at them—an expression on his face, like they’re something separate from himself.

He raises his eyes back up. “Your headband too,” he says with a frown.

“What?!” Boruto’s hands snap up, panicked, thinking he lost it in their abrupt transportation—thinking it’s lying on the ground of a forest now, twenty years in the past. But he finds it in place, and breathes a sigh of relief—until he feels something missing. He yanks the hitai-ate off, and Konoha’s symbol stares back at him. The unblemished symbol, jagged scratch through the center nowhere to be seen.

The material is worn with age, so it’s still Sasuke’s headband. It’s just—

Sasuke grabs him by the collar of the black cloak he’s still wearing, yanking him off the ground. “What did you do?” he demands, his knuckles white.

“Me? Nothing!” Boruto chokes, his feet kicking inches above the sidewalk. “Sasuke-san, let go—”

“You changed something.”

“I didn’t! I swear!”

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not!” the genin yells, even as the suspicion takes root inside him. “How do you know it was me, huh? You’re the one who decided to walk right up to your brother and tell him who we were! It was probably you!”

Sasuke goes quiet for a moment, like he’s actually considering it. His grip on the cloak collar loosens enough for the blonde to get his feet back on the ground.

“No,” Sasuke decides. “It was definitely you.”

“You don’t know that—”

The Uchiha throws him a sharp look that has Boruto’s mouth snapping closed, his protests falling immediately silent. “You said something to Itachi. Right before we got pulled back. You made him promise to think about something.”

Something heavy sits in Boruto’s chest. “…Yes,” he reluctantly admits, trying not to look guilty.

He fails, judging by the way Sasuke’s visible eye narrows. “What was it?”

Boruto shifts his feet and doesn’t meet the man’s eyes.

“Boruto.”

The thirteen-year-old takes a steadying breath—preparing for the anger that he’s sure is going to come. “I was just trying to help you.”

“Meaning?”

It’s not certain that this was his doing, Boruto tries to convince himself. It definitely could have been Sasuke’s—what does he know about time travel? Nothing! And sure, the Jougan yanked them back not long after Itachi made his promise to think about what Boruto said. But that could easily be coincidence!

And even if it’s not, Boruto thinks, even if I did change something… Sasuke-san has an arm back now! And maybe even…

Maybe even a brother.

“I told Itachi-san that he should tell you the truth. That he should go back to Konoha and be by your side.” The Uzumaki clenches his jaw, a determined glint in his blue eyes. “That’s a big brother’s real job—to be there when their younger sibling needs them. Not to leave them alone by throwing your own life away.”

For a moment, Sasuke looks at him and says nothing. Then—

“You stupid brat.”

Boruto stumbles in surprise as Sasuke shoves him away, releasing his grip on him. Boruto’s feet get twisted up in the overly-long cloak, and he nearly trips onto the ground.

“Wh—” He regains his balance, and with an indignant glare yells, “I was just trying to give you your brother back! You can’t tell me you don’t want that!”

“Of course I do,” Sasuke snaps. “You think I wasn’t tempted to save him? That the possibility didn’t occur to me?”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I had no idea what it might change! It wasn’t worth the risk!”

Boruto stills at the words, as he finally recognizes the emotion cracking through the man’s usual stone composure. It isn’t anger, like the genin first thought; but rather fear, masquerading as anger.

Wasn’t worth the risk.

Boruto thinks of the way Sasuke spoke his older brother’s name, like uttering the syllables together was the equivalent of opening up a wound with a blade. He thinks of the way the man looked at the sixteen-year-old, a ghost given form, like he was both a miracle and a tragedy at once. Cracks spider-webbing across his stone-like countenance, love and grief spilling out like something uncontainable.

What could ever mean more to Sasuke than that? What could ever be not worth the risk, if it meant having Itachi back?

The answer occurs to Boruto almost immediately.

Sarada.

His lungs seize with fear as the possibility strikes him. As the enormity of what he has done, has risked, crashes over his head. What could mean more to Sasuke than the family he lost? The family he has now. The one that he managed to build, out of all the blood and the ashes.

No, Boruto tries to convince himself. Why would Itachi’s survival affect Sarada’s existence? It wouldn’t. It shouldn’t.

Why would it affect Sasuke’s missing arm? The scratch on his hitai-ate?

A life that was meant to end, continued on. A ripple effect, dozens of tiny changes, all interacting with and affecting each other in ways that are impossible to predict.

Boruto’s heart has leaped to his throat.

“Sarada’s fine,” he says, the slight shake in his voice betraying him. “You’ll see. She’s fine.”

Sasuke’s jaw clenches, his face pale.

His body blurs and he shunshins away.

Boruto jolts. “Wh—Hey! Sasuke-san, wait!”

The genin runs after him—nearly tripping, once again, on the man’s cloak that’s still wrapped around him. He throws it off him and onto the ground, bolting desperately after him.

Where would he go? Boruto thinks, speeding down the street and ignoring the people he passes. The village speeds past him in a rush of bright color. Home? If he’s checking on Sarada and Sakura-san…

Boruto’s feet turn in the direction of Sarada’s house. His heart pounds behind his ribcage as he imagines what he might find when he gets there.

Please be the same, please be the same, please be the same…

He pictures Sarada in his mind. What she looked like just yesterday morning—or just hours ago? Has time passed while they’ve been gone?—sitting at his kitchen table, combing flour out of her hair with a scowl. He imagines never seeing her again. He imagines a world where she never existed—

It feels like he can’t breathe. Please.

From what Boruto observes of the village streets as he runs, nothing else seems to have changed. Everything looks the same as it always has.

When he reaches Sarada’s house, his feet skid to a stop and kick up dirt into the air. He looks up at it. Everything about the house, too, looks exactly the same. The same perfectly cut grass, courtesy of the Haruno-Uchiha perfectionism combined. Orange flowers in the garden. A paper fan, the same one Sarada wears on her back, painted on either side of the sliding front door.

Sasuke is nowhere in sight—unsurprising. He’s much, much faster than Boruto is.

Boruto runs across the grass and pounds on the door.

“Sarada! Sarada, are you in there?! I need to talk to you—”

The door slides abruptly open. Boruto stumbles as his fist meets air, nearly falling flat on his face.

“Boruto-kun! What on earth? Are you trying to break my door?”

It’s Sakura who answers the door, not Sarada. She looks slightly frazzled, as if Boruto interrupted her in the middle of doing something, her pink hair pulled back out of her face with a rubber band. Hands on her hips, her green eyes look down on him with disapproval.

She used to babysit Boruto as a kid. He knows the look well, and it’s no less intimidating now than it was when he was six.

“S-Sorry, Sakura-san!” He’s still slightly out of breath from running, placing his hands on his knees to combat the pain in his side. “I need to see Sarada. Is she here right now?”

“No.” Sakura frowns. “Is something wrong?”

“Huh? No, ‘course not!”

“Are you sure? Then why was Sasuke just here asking me the same question?”

“Sasuke-san was here?” Boruto asks.

“Yes, just a few minutes ago.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Boruto-kun, if something’s happened to my daughter—”

“No! Sarada’s fine, I swear! I just need to talk to her about something. Sasuke-san, too.”

She still looks doubtful of his words, but she tells him, “She’s at the training grounds. Sasuke is probably there by now, too. But if I find you’re up to something again and have involved Sarada in it—”

“I’m not!”

“—I’ll go straight to your mother, understand?”

Honestly, Boruto thinks irritably. You get involved in a fight with beings from another dimension one time… and suddenly everyone thinks you’re always up to no good! How is that fair?

He’s about to turn away from her and take off again when something else occurs to him. Halfway through turning, he pauses and asks, “By the way, Sakura-san—you and Sasuke-san are still married, right?”

“Wh—” Her expression lands somewhere between bafflement and offense. “Of course we’re still married! What kind of question is that?!”

“Forget it! Thanks, Sakura-san! See ya!”

He runs before he can be subjected to the woman’s famous temper.

“Boruto-kun! Get back here! What are you talking about?!”

Relief is rushing through Boruto’s chest as he runs toward the training grounds. Sarada is okay. He didn’t mess anything up. He didn’t accidentally erase his teammate from existence. In fact, he gave Sasuke his arm back! And maybe more than that, too! Maybe—

He stops when he reaches the training ground. The same one that he and Sasuke were using to train, just a couple days ago.

Sasuke is standing on the edge of the field, his back facing him. Boruto can’t see his face, but he can tell the man is standing completely still. Boruto runs up to him and stops when he reaches his side.

“Sasuke-san!”

Sasuke doesn’t look at him when he says his name. He doesn’t react to Boruto’s presence at all, his gaze forward and fixed on something ahead of him.

No, not just fixed. Fixated, as if looking away were physically impossible.

“Sasuke-san?” Boruto asks.

Again, no reaction. Boruto follows the Uchiha's gaze.

At first, he doesn’t understand. All he sees is Sarada, standing in the middle of the training field. She’s gripping a pair of shuriken in each hand, targets positioned in various places around her—and Boruto feels a rush of relief when he sees her. He really had let his fear get to him. She leaps in the air, executing a sharp and graceful spin as she aims her weapons. A maneuver that Boruto could never pull off in his wildest dreams, and normally he would feel fiercely jealous of her—but not now.

She’s here. She’s okay.

The shuriken hit each target in a perfect bullseye. A half second later, Sarada’s feet land back on the grass.

A quiet clap cuts through the air. “Nice going,” a voice says. “Your stance was flawless—I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Sarada’s head turns toward its direction with a proud smile.

It’s an unfamiliar voice. But at the same time, it’s not. Slightly deeper, older—lighter—

“Really, Ji-san? Better than you?”

Itachi.

It’s not Sarada that Sasuke is fixated by. Boruto feels his own eyes widen, staring. It isn’t the sixteen-year-old boy they left behind in the forest less than thirty minutes ago. It’s a man, late thirties, with aged lines under his eyes. Small hints of gray in dark hair. But it’s undeniably Itachi Uchiha—twenty years older and alive.

He leans down and pulls a couple of the shuriken from a target as he passes it. “Hang on. I didn’t say you were better,” he corrects. “Just equal.”

Sarada sticks her tongue out at him as she takes the shuriken from his hand. “Sure, equal. If that makes you feel better.”

Itachi jabs her in the forehead with two of his fingers. “Watch it.”

“Ow!”

Beside him, Boruto hears Sasuke’s breath catch.

He forces his gaze away from the scene in front of him, back to his teacher. Sasuke still hasn’t moved, and Boruto would doubt he was even breathing if not for the hitched inhale he just heard. His gloved hand—the right one, not the newly-reappeared one—is gripping tight to the top of his sword. His eyes still glued to the ghost in front of him.

Only it isn’t a ghost. It’s real.

Itachi Uchiha is alive.

“—promised you’d teach me. And don’t say ‘next time’! That’s what you said the last two times!”

“I promised your mother that I would get you back by dinner.”

“Ugh.”

Boruto’s attention swivels back to the conversation happening feet away.

“Next time,” Itachi says. “I mean it.”

Sarada rolls her eyes. “Liar.”

“I never lie,” he tells her, straight-faced. Sarada bursts into laughter at the claim.

He’s wearing a high-collared shirt with the Uchiha Clan’s crest on the back, just like Sarada. It looks much more natural on him than the black-and-red Akatsuki cloak did. Everything about him looks more natural, more at ease—from the way he holds himself to the smile on his lips. The open fondness on his face when he looks down at his brother’s child. Physically, he’s two decades older than when Boruto last saw him; but in other ways, he seems so much younger than that sixteen-year-old boy who was counting down the days, waiting to die.

“Besides,” says Itachi, “it appears we’ve acquired an audience.”

Sarada follows his gaze, and the two of them are finally noticed. “Papa! Boruto! What are you doing here?”

Sasuke is still staring at Itachi. Boruto sees a slight frown pull at the corner of Itachi’s mouth, a glint of concern entering his eyes, and Boruto elbows Sasuke in the side to snap him out of it. “Sasuke-san,” he hisses, at a volume he hopes can only be heard by him.

Sasuke blinks. Usual demeanor of unbothered composure settling over him in an instant, he turns his gaze to his daughter. “Boruto and I were going to train for a bit. I see someone else had the same idea.”

“Itachi-jii has been refusing me for ages,” says Sarada. She shoots her uncle an irritated look. “I finally got him to agree today. Of course, I still had to practically drag him.”

“I’ve been busy,” Itachi defends.

“For four months? Because that’s how long I’ve been asking you to train with me.”

“You’re exaggerating. It’s been two months at most.”

“Nope, four. I think your old age is making you forgetful.”

Itachi gives her a look of offense that seems mostly put on. Amusement lurks beneath it—so much more open and free than it was on the sixteen-year-old boy from twenty years ago.

Sasuke stares at the two of them, his brother and his daughter—like his entire world is standing right there, mere feet away.

“Come on,” Itachi says. “I should be getting you home to your mother before dinner, or she’ll skin me.”

Sarada arches an eyebrow. “You’re scared of my mom?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Smart choice.”

Itachi looks over at Sasuke. “Are you going to come?” His gaze drops down to Boruto. “You can stay over for dinner too, Boruto. I’m sure Sakura wouldn’t mind.”

“I would,” says Sarada.

Boruto makes a face at her. He tells Itachi, “Thanks, but Mom’s expecting me later.”

Itachi nods. He turns back to Sasuke.

“Go ahead,” the man says, remarkably composed. “I promised Boruto to train with him—and unlike someone, I keep my promises.”

The light-hearted jab is unexpected, at least to Boruto. But Sarada snickers, hand covering her mouth. Itachi sighs, looking exasperated but accepting, not bothering with attempting to protest.

“See you at home,” Itachi tells him.

He speaks the words so casually. See you at home.

Sasuke looks like someone who’s had the air knocked from their lungs.

Luckily, Itachi has already turned away—because if Boruto is able to read his expression, then Itachi will definitely be able to. Sarada moves to follow him, tugging on her uncle’s arm and ordering him, “Carry me back.” Itachi responds by asking, “What, are you five? I thought you were chuunin now, but you can’t walk on your own?” However, he ends up caving to her anyway and bending down. He hoists the thirteen-year-old onto his back, the movement effortless and practiced.

Boruto laughs, turning to Sasuke. “Wow. She clearly has your brother wrapped completely around her finger.”

Sasuke doesn’t respond. He stares after his brother and his daughter, as they walk across the training field and grow farther away. As if the image is a mirage, and the moment he looks away from it will be the moment it disappears—the moment it proves itself a lie.

Boruto frowns. “Sasuke-san, it’s real. It worked. Your brother is—”

“Alive,” Sasuke says, the two syllables exhaled with quiet disbelief.

“Yes! He’s alive! And Sarada is okay!”

Sasuke takes a quiet breath. Then, to Boruto’s shock, he bends his knees and lowers himself onto the ground at Boruto’s feet. He lays his sword down on the grass beside him, the fingers of his left hand clenching and unclenching in his lap.

“Sasuke-san?” Boruto asks.

Still standing, he’s looking down on the man now instead of up at him. It's not a position he’s ever been in, and Sasuke seems far less intimidating and unreachable to him at this angle. He looks overwhelmingly human.

“He’s alive,” Sasuke echoes again, in a tone that sounds a bit closer to belief. “You did it. How?”

“Itachi-san wanted to live,” Boruto tells him. “He wouldn’t admit that he did. But I could see it in his eyes. All he needed was for someone to tell him he was allowed to.”

Sasuke is silent for a moment, contemplating that. He looks over to him. “But why did you do it?”

“You deserve to be happy, Sensei.”

The Uchiha blinks at the words, a strange look passing over his face. Despite having been training with Boruto for nearly half a year now, Boruto has never called him sensei before. Sasuke has always refused the title, claiming it belongs to Konohamaru.

He doesn’t refuse it now.

“I.. don’t know what to say,” he says after a pause.

Boruto shrugs. “That’s fine. Don’t say anything, then.”

And so, that’s what he does for the next few moments. He sits there in the grass, in silence, as he processes. Boruto lowers himself down onto the grass too and sits next to him. Neither of them speaks for at least ten minutes, and it’s a comforting, reassuring sort of quiet.

“Ah, no fair!” Boruto exclaims, as something occurs to him.

The break in peaceful silence is sudden and abrupt, but Sasuke doesn’t startle at all. He turns his head to look at him. “What?”

“If your brother is alive and living in the village now… then that means the truth about your clan’s massacre must be known, right?”

“I suppose so.” The Uchiha looks troubled for a moment as he considers the possibility, mulling over what it would mean for his life and how he would feel about it. His mouth pulls into a frown. “That upsets you?”

“Well, no. But if we’ve changed things so that you were never forced to keep quiet about it, then that means I can’t yell at my dad anymore!”

“You were going to yell at your father?”

“Yeah, obviously! But now I can’t!”

Sasuke stares at him for a moment, like he doesn’t know what to make of him. Then a small huff of breath escapes his lips, followed by an honest-to-god laugh. Boruto stares, eyes wide, as he tries to remember if he’s ever heard the man laugh before. He doesn’t think he has.

And if the laugh has a slightly hysterical edge to it? If Boruto spots the glint of tears in Sasuke’s visible eye?

Well, Boruto does him the courtesy of not mentioning it.

★

Boruto knows it will hit him sometime later—the enormity of what he’s just been through, of what he’s just done. He changed the past. He changed their lives. Blocks away, there’s a man that shouldn’t be alive dropping his niece off in front of her porch. His sister-in-law is probably inviting him inside, speaking to him in familiar tones, as if they’ve known each other for years. He’s probably slipping his shoes off at the door, navigating the house as if it’s his own—he called it home, after all.

Boruto’s head spins, but he can’t process it all right now. Later, he tells himself, as he makes his way back home. The streets look the same. So does his house. He pushes the door open and steps inside, greeted with the same sight he’s always been.

“I’m home!” he calls out. He shoves his shoes off onto the mat, like he does on any normal day.

“In the kitchen!” his mother responds, like she also does on any normal day.

It’s disorienting. Some things have changed, but for the most part everything is exactly as it’s always been. Boruto is tempted to reach up to his hitai-ate and feel the lack of a scratch on the metal plate—to prove to himself that the scene he just witnessed on the training field wasn’t a strange dream.

His mother is setting out plates on the table when he enters. She looks up at him, then straightens up. An apron is wrapped around her waist, and she has a smudge of sauce on her chin. Dinner is boiling on the stove.

“Back already? You just left. Dinner won’t be ready for another hour.”

Boruto blinks. He tries to remember where he was supposed to be. Sasuke forbid him from training with him, after he injured his hand. He looks down at it now. Clear skin, no injury or bandage in sight.

“Sasuke-san had to be back home,” the genin says.

“Well in that case, you can finish setting the table for me.”

Boruto watches her, something swelling behind his ribs. He thinks of a young Sasuke, no longer getting to have something like this. Warmth and familiarity replaced by silent halls and empty rooms.

“Okay.”

Hinata pauses in surprise. “Really? You aren’t going to complain?”

“No. Not this time.”

After Boruto helps his mother set the table for dinner, he goes upstairs. Walking past his own bedroom, he stops at the second bedroom in the hallway. The door is halfway open, but he still raises his fist to knock before coming inside. “Hima? I’m home. Can I come in?”

There’s no answer for a moment. Boruto can’t see her from the partial view he has into the room.

“Yes.”

Boruto pushes the door the rest of the way open. He circles around to the other side of the bed, where Himawari is sitting. She has one of her sketchbooks open on her knees, a purple crayon in her hand. Other colored crayons are scattered around her on the floor.

She doesn’t look at him.

“Hey,” Boruto says.

His previous words to her just a day ago—what he thinks was a day ago—ring in his head. Harsh and mean, he recalls the way the tears welled up in her eyes. Her poke-a-dotted socks against the kitchen floor, stained in chocolate frosting.

“Can I sit down?” he asks her.

She shrugs her shoulders. Still not looking at him.

Swallowing past his pang of hurt, he lowers himself down in front of her and crosses his legs. “What are you working on?”

She hesitates before answering. “Present for Momma. For her birthday.”

“It’s pretty. She’ll really like it.”

Himawari doesn’t say anything in response. Boruto fights not to shift at the awkwardness in the air between them—a feeling that’s never, ever been present between them. Boruto has had his issues and differences with both of his parents, multiple times—his dad much more often than his mom—but never with Himawari. His relationship with her has always been natural, like breathing. Reflex, not something that needed to ever be learned.

But Itachi showed him otherwise, didn’t he? Being an older brother is ingrained in both of their bones—but that didn’t stop either of them from hurting the person they would give anything to protect.

Boruto swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Himawari looks up at him, eyes wide.

“I was a real jerk to you before. You didn’t mean to ruin Mom’s gift—it was an accident.”

Her shoulders curve inward, making herself small. “Which time? I r-ruined it twice—”

“Both times.”

Himawari blinks. Her bottom lip trembles. “R-Really?”

“Really,” Boruto says with a smile. “Mom’s birthday isn’t until tomorrow. We still have time. How about you and I bake her another cake? Together this time? It can be a present from the both of us.”

His sister lights up at the words. “Yes! Nii-chan, right now?”

He laughs at her eagerness. “Mom’s right downstairs right now. Tomorrow morning, once she leaves.”

Himawari nods.

Boruto’s heart swells with love for the young girl in front of him. Her smile is one of the most precious, valuable things he’s ever seen. He leans forward, putting his arms around her. Himawari hugs him back, her chin digging into his shoulder and her hair tickling his cheek.

“I’m sorry I forgot what you meant to me,” he says. “I promise, I never will again.”