The leaves above him rustle as a pair of sandaled feet land on the branch above his head. Always so loud for a shinobi, even a young one.

The genin is lucky that Sasuke is always aware of his surroundings. Otherwise, he might have ended up with a sword for his chest for the interruption. Instead of acknowledging the young intruder, he takes another bite of his onigiri and chews.

“Yo! Sasuke-san!” He cheerfully shouts, landing beside him in a crouch that sends a grasshopper jumping into the older shinobi’s bento box. “I heard you were back!”

Sasuke shoos the bug off his lunch, wondering if Boruto is aware that he’s also lucky that the elite shinobi has a high tolerance level for loudmouth blonds. “Sorry to disappoint you but there’s going to be no training today. I just needed to personally deliver a scroll to Sai.”

Well, that and give his daughter the fuma shuriken he’d picked up for her in Amegakure. Strange, how often he felt compelled to bring little gifts home to Sarada ever since he’d begun to return to the village more often. Parenting is still a mystery to the man who’d traversed most of the known world during his travels as are his own feelings on the topic. Every time he returns home, the village is a little different, his daughter a little taller. The things that should be most familiar are always growing and changing, whether he is present or not. Should he feel wistful? Sad? Proud? Protective? There’s not one emotion that encompasses everything he feels towards his growing child.

The nice thing about loudmouth blonds are they don’t leave him alone with his thoughts.

“Oooooh, I know.” Boruto squats down by his side, twiddling his thumbs as though some part of him must always remain in motion. “Sarada said you were only around for the day. I just wanted to… talk.”

He blinks, wondering what it would have been like to have a bond throughout his childhood like the one had by the young Uzumaki and his daughter. Someone who was just there… even when other important people are absent. His dark eyes flick over to Boruto’s hands, the black diamond slightly visible in the center of his palm. “You stopped wearing the glove I gave you.”

The youth quickly fists his hand, hiding the karma mark. “Well, after Sarada and Mitsuki I saw it, I figured everyone else would see it and—”

“You lost it, didn’t you?” Sasuke says, taking another bite of his onigiri without looking at the boy.

“Ah… yes,” he admits, scratching the back of his head. “But, I figured I couldn’t hide it forever, you know. I have to wash my hands and—”

Sasuke’s eyes drift up to the leaves overhead, sunlight filtering through the trees he loves so much while his student makes up a ridiculous list of excuses. He finally runs out of words as Sasuke finishes his second rice ball.

“Is there something you actually wanted to talk about?” Sasuke asks, unfolding one knee so it wouldn’t get stiff. No matter how talented a medical ninja his wife was, she couldn’t stop his joints from aging.

“Oh… uh… yeah. I guess there was.” Boruto finally relaxes from his squatted position and sits on the ground beside Sasuke, his fisted hand still shut tight. “Maybe you won’t understand, but… Have you ever felt as though your body is changing?”

The usually stoic shinobi raises his eyebrows at a conversation he was hardly prepared to have with his own daughter, much less someone else’s child. “Don’t you think you should be talking to your own father about this?”

His response is met with a flurry of waving hands as Boruto’s face turns red. “No, no! I didn’t mean THAT. I know all about… Uh, never mind. It’s not important.” 

“If you came to bother me, you must have thought it was important,” Sasuke tells the young man hiding behind the hands over his face.

With a sigh, Boruto pulls one hand away, gazing at the Karma on his hand. “I meant THIS. I know the pills have stopped the Otsutsufication process, but… Am I still me? Maybe I’m just being stupid.”

The spot where his neck meets his shoulder suddenly itches. Sasuke takes a deep breath, pushing back the urge to scratch the spot where Orochimaru’s curse mark used to be. “I don’t think it’s stupid.”

He’d spent his entire adulthood learning to control his emotions, tamping down a childhood of anger into something productive rather than destructive, but a shadow of darkness bubbles up in the back of his mind.

“It’s not stupid,” he says again, trying to make every word count without saying too much. “Something was done to you that you had no control over and you’ll forever be changed by it.”

Boruto laughs, eyes creased into little slits hiding his expressive blue eyes. “Well, it was kind of my fault for killing Momoshiki, right?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sasuke says so sharply the boy’s eyes go wide. “None of this was your fault.”

“But, I—”

Sasuke cuts him off. “Something was DONE to you, Boruto. And, no, you’ll never be the same person you would have been otherwise, but what you do now is up to you.”

“Sasuke-san.” His voice is quiet, unsure how he’s supposed to react to his teacher’s angry outburst.

The older man unfolds his tall frame, sweeping his hair to the side, covering his missing eye. “You should train more,” he says, not because it’s the answer to Boruto’s question, but it’s the only thing that ever brought him solace.

“Yes, sir,” Boruto says, jumping up with a broad smile on his face.

How could they always smile like that, those Uzumaki boys? Even when facing the darkest of fates?

He holds out his bento box, wrapped in blue cloth embroidered with the Uchiha symbol. “Could you please take this back to my house for me?”

Boruto nods eagerly, grabbing the empty container. “Yes, Sasuke-san!”

Sasuke watches Boruto disappear into the trees, a single leaf with its center chewed out by a caterpillar floating down in his wake. Maybe the boy would run into Sarada or Mitsuki, providing some distraction to his troubled mind. After all, a distraction was the only thing Sasuke had to offer him.

With a sigh, he brushes a few blades of grass off the back of his cape and walks away.