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“And because the motion had been presented to the council before being run past the elders, they are blocking it now?”
Shikadai offered her a pained half smile that however did nothing to sooth the growing throb in her head. “Looks like it.”
Her eye twitched. “I have talked to Lady Utatane a week ago! She said they’d support it!”
The man on the other side of her desk answered with an apologetic shrug. “You need a formal meeting with the elders for them to formally sign off on something.”
Sarada hardly suppressed the frustrated growl building in her chest. “They don't even have a formal right of codetermination anymore! Why do they get to sign off on things in the first place?!”
Another shrug. “Guess that’s more like a symbolic relict from earlier times.”
She ripped her glasses off her face for the sake of pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers instead. What a bureaucratic mess this was. “Can we just do it without their sign-off then?” she asked, way too tired for just five in the afternoon.
Now it was Shikadai’s turn to sigh. “This motion is effectively abolishing the position of the elders in favor of this new ethical advisory committee. And while they do seem to be on board with the general direction of it, it is still a sensitive subject for them. If we push it through without their sign-off, symbolic or not, I believe they might turn this into another headline in the papers. And you know we cannot afford any more negative publicity around this.”
Another frustrated huff made its way past her teeth. “So it’s not symbolic but indispensable,” she muttered under her breath as she put her glasses back onto her nose. If this last month was in any way a foreshadowing of what a job in the new village leadership would be like, she honestly wasn’t sure whether she still wanted the position that badly.
With the events of the last ten years, including an almost-collapse of the shinobi system they had known and grown up with, Konoha and the Fire Country had entered an era of restructuration, like most of the big nations. She had been at the forefront, both seizing the career opportunity and also knowing that such an upheaval could open the doors for forces with less than noble intentions – and she naturally had to prevent that.
But of course, wherever there was change, there was resistance.
The motion would have marked one of the milestones in shifting power more towards the people living in the village, but as so often during the last year, Konoha seemed to have maneuvered itself into a political stalemate.
“So that means we’ll have to hand in the appeal anew?” The blue-ish light of her laptop was far too bright now in her the office darkening quickly with the day ending. She had to squint for a second to make our Shikadai’s face at the door after putting her glasses back on.
He nodded. “Yup.”
“We’re being set back a whole month just because two senile and egoistic conspirators want to be ‘asked nicely’?”
“Yup.”
“Great.” Her face fell back into her hands. “Just. Fucking. Great.”
Her day did not improve when she got home. The first sound she heard as she pushed the front door open was the sound of cardboard hitting a wall.
“God dammit.” It seemed as if the tower of empty moving crates that had 'temporarily’ been stored in their entry way for the last four months had finally collapsed. She scowled at her door as if the inanimate object was at fault, then gave way to the flare of irritation with one forceful shove against the cardboard obstacle blocking her way into her own flat.
The paper folded, the door swung open, and Sarada dumped the bags carrying her belongings and the groceries next to the pile of cardboard boxes. Not really a motivating picture to start her evening with.
With a groan she shed her shoes and her coat and took up storing the groceries away, followed by rebuilding the cardboard tower in the entry way. It looked even wonkier than its predecessor now that a few building blocks had earned some new folding lines, but she did not have any nerve left to worry about that. It was just another point on the ever-growing list of unfinished construction sites in their not-so-new home.
In a fit of thriftiness she had decided to rather sell the moving boxes in their neighborhood market place than to just throw them away, but then had not even gotten around to putting them online. With every day this monument of shortcomings towered in her entry way grew the question of how she wanted to tackle all the big obstacles in the Fire Country’s shifting government landscape if she didn’t even manage to post an ad on Konoha’s neighborhood network.
Boruto and her had been so full of motivation when they had moved in seven months ago, overjoyed at having finally found a flat after searching for well over a year. Konoha’s housing market was already a tough place, and receiving rejection after rejection as soon as Boruto’s name appeared on the applications did not really prove to be encouraging, but they had not given up. They had used their stubbornness outside of the battlefield, and thus this victory had tasted even sweeter.
It had felt like a fresh start with three rooms, two baths, an open kitchen, and a balcony, and the ideas that came with it had flowed and flowed – only to be brought to a harsh halt again by their everyday lives.
The dinner table was still the old two-seater from their previous two-square-meter kitchen, now looking lost in the open dining space connecting their kitchen with the living room. The coffee table in front of their couch was a beer crate with a table cloth draped over it. Their bedroom armoire did not have any doors. The shoe rack was still waiting for its assembly in its carton packaging, hidden somewhere behind the pile of moving boxes. The office was lined in painter’s fleece and tarp, the paint buckets unopened in the middle of the room, and the room that everyone just called ‘guest room’ with a heavy wink did not even have tarp spread out over the bare concrete flooring. The towel rack in the main bathroom was not mounted to the wall yet. Half of the living room cabinets’ contents was still packed in boxes. The naked light bulbs dangling from almost all ceilings had quietly been accepted as status quo, and the balcony was still a bare space, save for one sad planter whose inhabitant had – who would’ve thought – not survived the summer months.
On most days, she was able to push the unfinished business in her private life to the back of her head for the sake of focusing on the real problems at her job. On days like this one though, all those mental construction sites just added to the pressure, constantly reminding her that she was not the picture-perfect Miss Organized that everybody painted her as – a picture that she wanted to do justice to so badly, but obviously couldn’t.
Picture-perfect Miss Organized would not have put off posting her used moving crates for sale for half a year.
She bestowed one last despising glare on the squared embodiments of her disappointments and then dug her laptop out of her bag. She would have liked to set her mobile work station up in the room that was supposed to function as an office, but given that said room did not harbor any furnishing except for a step ladder so far, she settled on the too-small-for-the-space dinner table instead.
Not that the place of work would have made the tasks on her to-do list any more enjoyable. Explaining the delay of the proposal and its implications to the entire project working group in a way that depicted neither the elders nor her and Shikadai as total idiots was not how she had envisioned to spend her evening.
She was halfway through a first e-mail draft as well as a disenchanting microwave supper when a key was jammed into the front door. It turned, the lock clicking open with familiar sound – and the door promptly bumped into the cardboard boxes.
Sarada’s eyes fell shut as the moving boxes tumbled through the hallway again. She was just one further deep breath away from flipping the table with everything on it.
Boruto’s quiet curses sounded through their entry way as he squeezed through the opening and restacked the crates, building yet another version of the cardboard tower that was even wonkier than hers. She could almost see it swaying when he eventually entered the living room.
“Fucking moving boxes,” he mumbled with a nod to the scene behind him. “Didn’t we want to sell them?”
His tone did not harbor even the slightest accusation towards her, and yet the question went to work on her nerves like a cheese grater on a fresh block of parmesan. “Yes,” she just answered pointedly calm through her teeth, stapling her gaze to the computer screen.
“Why didn’t we?”
Her fingers stretched and curled again above the keyboard. “Didn’t get to it yet,” was her more-than-concise answer.
“Hn.”
She saw him shrug his shoulders out of the corner of her eyes, and then he walked out of her field of vision. The stench of sweat and singed cotton and skin reached her nose as he entered the kitchen behind her, and even though she knew that was simply the smell of active duty it soured her mood even more. The migraine was already gaining grounds, and the stink was its catalyst.
The fridge door opened. “Did you make any dinner?”
Her index finger hit the space bar a bit more forcefully than necessary. “No.” There was a tiny bit of guilt bubbling up in her mind about not having warmed anything up for him, but she hadn’t known when exactly he’d be home. It was overshadowed by annoyance though.
“Oh. OK.” The fridge door closed again. Then a shadow fell on her laptop. The smell of burnt clothing intensified. “Is everything alright?”
No, it was not. Everything sucked immensely, and she rather felt like hammering her head onto the keyboard, but that would not solve anything. Even less would it write anything useful into the stupid e-mail draft on her screen. Or get rid of the boxes in her entry way. Or paint the office. Or put the shoe rack together. Or get rid of her headache. “You reek,” she answered instead, as if that was an answer to his question.
“Well, yeah, that sometimes happens with excessive use of a lighting jutsu.” Now there was a bit of his typical defiance in his voice. Not unwarranted, and predictable, but not at all helping in soothing her irritation at anything and everything right now. “You out of all people should know that even better than I do.”
She did.
Her head started throbbing. Her eyes fell closed in one last attempt to not see the thread of her patience tearing. “I can’t do this right now, Boruto,” she said – whatever ‘this’ was.
Existing probably.
“Do what?” came the prompt return question, and her mental fuse caught on fire.
Her teenage self would have lashed out at him, but she was self-aware enough to know that her irritation was not really directed at him. He’d just be the poor soul at the receiving end – wrong place, wrong time, as he was so often. So before this could evolve in a pre-marital dispute ending their engagement once and for all, she opted to remove herself from the situation.
“I’ll take a shower.” She ripped her glasses off her face to slam them a bit too forcefully onto their kitchen table, snapped her laptop shut with entirely too much faith in the saving settings of the e-mail program, and marched out of the kitchen.
He let her.
She did not feel the slightest bit better as she closed the bathroom door behind herself. Much rather the opposite.
“Shit,” she cursed under her breath. Jamming the heels of her hands against her temples and squeezing her eyes shut didn’t do much against the creeping feeling of guilt now settling in next to the annoyance at herself, the irritation about all the unfinished tasks, and the crushing disappointment in the current state of everything.
On days like these, she wondered how she had even gotten this far. What even granted her the right to work towards Konoha’s most prestigious leadership roles when it only took some setbacks and a few cardboard crates to throw her this far off the rails?
Ridiculous. She should be better than this.
The only resort that came to her mind was her bed. Better to get this shower behind her quickly, brush her teeth, and then bury herself beneath her blanket in hopes that tomorrow would magically present her with a solution to all her problems.
Even though she had not been to the training pitch in days her muscles ached as she fought herself out of her clothes. Another thing to add to the list of her shortcomings: training.
One would think a former shinobi to be in peak physical health, only to receive a harsh reality check from a desk job. One day, sitting in that damn swivel chair for ten hours would break her back. And not in a good way.
With another huff she finally stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut behind her. The slightly darker tint towards the bottom of the ugly yellow plastic reminded her that they had wanted to pick out a glass door at some point, but that discussion felt so far away and deeply buried under different, more pressing issues that it didn’t get anything else out of her than yet another tired grimace.
The water took a few seconds to heat up, but soon after she stepped into the stream that managed to walk the fine line between warm enough and melting her skin off.
She groaned. If only hot water was the solution to not just her soreness but all her other problems as well...
Then her utility bill would skyrocket. Also not a great solution. Jobs at the end of a changing government’s food chain did unfortunately not pay as much as she would have liked them to.
Her hand was reaching for shampoo when the sound of the curtain’s eyelets scraping along the rod had her spinning around, just in time to see her fiancé entering the very same shower.
Oh, you can’t be fucking serious.
“No.” She lifted a warning finger into his direction. "I’m really not in the mood.”
But instead of a sharp retort, she was met with appeasing hands held up in the space between them. “I’m just here for a shower. Just like you.” And instead of an arrogant smirk there was just a peaceful smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “You said I reek, didn’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. For a few moments, the water pattering against the enamel was the only sound in their bathroom. Then she sighed. Yet again. At least he didn’t seem to take her beasty attitude personally today. “OK. Stay then.”
She wanted to shuffle out of the way to grant him some access to her magma-like stream of water, but he preempted her again with a shake of his head. “Stay. It’s OK,” he just said, still with that calm almost-smile on his features, and reached past her.
He wet his hands under the stream of water and then plucked her shampoo bottle off the small shower shelf. A dollop of silky white liquid landed in his palm. “May I?” he then asked with a nod to the drenched hair on her head, and the seething thing inside her halted in confusion.
She had forgotten to prepare anything to eat for him, all she had said to him today had been curt snaps of annoyance, and he... wanted to give her a shampoo treatment?
Her stomach sunk.
He had been the one out in the field today; he had been the one that had been burdened with the fate of the world in the last decade more than she would ever be. And yet he offered to take on her load as well.
A great fiancée she was.
Something guilty pricked at her eyes, but she quickly blinked it away. “OK,” she just mumbled instead, glad that turning her back to him gave her an excuse to hide her face from his view.
A few moments later, a pair of hands lathered a heap of foamy shampoo onto her head, and her eyes instantly fell shut. Firm fingers drew circles on her temples and the crown of her head, then slowly wandered backwards, lower to the edge of her jaw, and eventually as far down as the base of her neck.
She stifled yet another sigh, just this time it would have been a good one.
Two fingers dug into the tendons at the base of her skull, and the pressure inside her head momentarily receded. That alone was worth shedding a tear, and together with the hot water now pelting down the front of her torso she felt as if she was about to release a sob of relief.
She did not deserve him. She didn’t deserve any of this.
The little circles of his finger pads moved further up again, finding a new temporary home behind her ears. “Shitty day?” he just asked quietly, and Sarada grimaced as the heat behind her eyes stung yet again.
“The elders blocked the motion again, this time because we – or I – failed to present it to them in a formal appointment before presenting it to the council.” It was accompanied by a helpless toss of her hands.
“Hn.” The circles on her head wandered inwards, to the back of her head. Her head bobbed in rhythm with the careful pressure of his hands. “Didn’t you talk to Lady Utatane last week?”
“Exactly!” Exasperation drew yet another sigh from her lungs, only to be immediately quieted by a pair of thumbs pressing yet again down onto the junction of her neck and head.
Gods, she had forgotten just how much of the Hyuga heritage had been instilled within him during his upbringing.
“Hn.” A ruminative sound this time. “I’m sorry they’re being difficult.”
It would have sent her into another raging fit five minutes ago. Now it just dragged a tired exhale out of her chest. “I should’ve seen it coming. It’s just frustrating that things are moving so slow when they could move so much faster. And it feels like it’s all my fault.”
“I’m sure Shikadai would debate you on that.” The circles turned into languid rakes across her head, from her hairline all the way to the base of her neck. The soft scratch of his fingernails against her scalp sent a comfortable chill down her spine. “You’re working a system that does not really want to be worked. It’s not your fault when others are being difficult. And you’re still making progress, even if it is not as fast as you’d like it to be.”
Rationally speaking, she knew he was right. It just didn’t feel like that.
“I know, I know,” she mumbled. “It all just feels like running in circles on some days. And then I get home, and see all those unfinished things I still need to get done, and feel even worse about... everything.”
Another understanding hum sounded through the shower as his fingers combed their way across her head once more, leaving an almost tickling sensation in their wake. “The moving crates.”
“The moving crates,” she repeated, not even attempting to hide her subdued mood. “And the shoe-rack. And the coffee table. The kitchen furniture. The unfinished paint jobs. This goddamn shower curtain. The-”
“OK, OK, stop.” A quiet chuckle lightened his words. “Don't drag yourself down with that. Can you tip your head a bit back for me?”
She did as she was told, and a moment later warm water ran down her head and back. Boruto’s one free hand scrubbed through her hair as his other guided the shower head, always angling the stream away from her face and shielding her ears. It felt like heaven.
For the first time in what felt like days her muscles seemed to loosen.
“Also you don’t have to tackle stuff in our flat on your own, y’know? That’s on both of us.”
She just barely resisted the urge to lean back against him. “Of course I know that. But I also know your schedule. We both don't really have an abundance of free time...” She couldn’t really remember when either of them had a day off, let alone at the same time. Something had always popped up and hampered those plans, one way or the other.
“True.” Two fingers wandered down her neck, tracing up and down her spine from her shoulders to the back of her head in little circles. “But I might have Tuesday off. I’ll see that I can get the paintjob in our office room done then.”
“No, you don’t.” Speaking of hampered plans. She gave in and leaned back against him, tired of standing on her own two feet. “I’ve seen the mission plan for the next few days. They’ll ask you to investigate a lead in the Land of Sound.” For a government that still did not officially acknowledge him as a fully redeemed shinobi, it surely made good use of his skillset.
Another thing that bugged her.
Now it was Boruto’s turn to sigh. His head came to rest on top of hers, and the massage of her neck evolved into soft scratches on the side of her head. Her head leaned into it. “Alright, then no paintjob next week. But we’ll find something else to get done. I promise.”
He pressed a quick caress onto the crown of her head, and Sarada opted to not let her thoughts stray to tomorrow and the days after. Instead, she focused on the here and now, on the stream of warmth pelting down her body, on Boruto’s hold around her, on the smell of fresh shampoo.
It wasn’t all bad. In moments like these, it were the little things that mattered.
“I don’t deserve you,” she mumbled, hoping he’d understand.
Another quiet chuckle indicated that he did. “I could say the same thing and you’d argue with me to hell and back, so how do you think this conversation is gonna go?”
She pouted to herself. Damn him and all his clever arguments.
Woefully she shifted her weight back onto her own two legs and opened her leaden eyelids. The water pooling around their feet splashed as she turned around to look at him. “You know what I mean. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, and I’m sorry that I did.”
The smile on his face shifted to a grin. “I’ve been snapped at by a grumpy Uchiha often enough to tell the serious incidents from the ones that can be solved with food, sleep, or a good massage. So, apology is accepted.” Then the grin crumbled. “Please don’t think I ever gave your Dad a massage. That would be weird, and I genuinely believe he would resurrect himself if he knew I spread that rumor.”
It was that last part that eventually managed to lure a giggle out of her mouth. A short one, and a tired one, but for the first time that day she could feel herself smile. It felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders.
Her fingers flicked his forehead. “Silly idiot, you,” she whispered and took the shower head out of his grasp. Then it was her turn to nod to the – still dry – mess of hair on his head. She gestured for him to turn around. “My turn.”
A slightly worried frown appeared on his forehead. “Don’t you rather want to go to bed? I’ll be with you in a minute.”
But she shook her head. Was she tired? Yes. Did she want to go to bed? Yes. Was there still a slight ache throbbing behind her eyes? Also yes.
But in the midst of the mess that her life currently was, those little islands of bliss had to be cherished. And as usual, it had been Boruto to remind her of that.