Between the Trees

Himawari glances up from the brownies she’s making, blinking at her older brother. Boruto leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, frowning. It still surprises her how time has shaped him, scraped off the roundness of his cheeks and tummy to leave sharp edges barbed and cutting behind. The fine line of his jaw juts out petulantly, something Himawari is familiar enough with to know something is bothering him, but he refuses to say it.

She wipes her powder-covered hands on her apron, away from the frills, and studies his expression a moment longer. The long tail of her hair grazes the exposed skin of her tailbone, where her crop top doesn’t quite reach. She lifts the pan full of nearly-done brownies and twirls it idly on a fingertip, not taking her eyes from Boruto’s expression.

Boruto isn’t particularly sly when it comes to his feelings; Himawari shares that trait with him, though she is far more cunning.

“Why do you ask?” She watches the way his eyebrows tilt, frustrated with her deflection, and the way he nearly rolls his eyes to look away from her critical expression.

“I don’t know,” he says, uncrossing his arms to run his fingers through his hair. He completely messes up his ponytail and doesn’t seem to mind, and Himawari finds the way the hairs stick up and out of place amusing, so she doesn’t say a word. She studies his posture, casually unattached, and the way he taps his fingers idly against his thigh. “He trains with me a lot but I never…I don’t usually see…does he ask to train with you? Do you ask him to?”

The bombardment of questions has Himawari raising her eyebrows, the corner of her lips quirking in amusement.

“I do,” she says honestly, stopping the pan from spinning on her fingertip with chakra alone. She turns to the oven and slides it in, setting the timer for just another few minutes and moving back towards the sink to wash her hands. She hums while she does so, cleaning under her finger nails in the same way she would if there was blood there, and the silence between the two of them is not uncomfortable. In just the same way that Himawari is used to Boruto’s stunted pouting, he is used to her exhaustive contemplation. The thought makes her smile, even as she grabs a kunai from the counter and twirls it around her finger once, then twice, before hurling it blindly over her shoulder.

Boruto catches it easily, not even looking at her. He traces the handle of it and the kunai disappears in a puff of smoke, and the tip of a real kunai presses against his throat. Boruto sighs, shoulders sagging a little in abject boredom. He disappears a moment later in his own cloud of smoke, and Himawari’s clone feels a blade pressed to her throat instead.

“Yeah,” Boruto says, “He taught me that too. When I was five.”

“I’m just playing,” Himawari laughs from the sink, wiping her hands on a towel. She tilts her head at Boruto, her expression shifting with the seriousness of his own. It’s evident, then, that whatever it is exactly that has been bothering him, it’s not trivial in his mind. It’s important.

“Sometimes,” she finally answers truthfully, tiling her head. “Sometimes it bugs me that he’s not around a lot. Never home. But I know why he’s busy; we have an entire village of kids to contend with.”

“But we’re his kids,” Boruto insists, with no real dragging irritation. Himawari picks out the concern in his tone and she can’t help but to smile when recognition pools and settles within her. He’s worried about her.

Boruto pulls himself away from the doorway with a sigh, straightening his wide shoulders. He’s in his jonin vest, and Himawari knows he has a mission he should be heading out for, but he purses his lips and he stays a little longer with her just to ensure that she’s okay.

It’s true that Naruto is rarely home with them, but Himawari doesn’t fault him for it. Naruto has a trifecta of homes, and only one of them is unmovable—Hinata, Himawari and Boruto, and Konoha.

But she also understands Boruto’s point, and his concern. Naruto is not perfect and Himawari doesn’t allow him to get away with everything. The way he treats Boruto is nothing like how he treats her, and that’s okay, usually. But sometimes it’s not.

It doesn’t surprise Himawari that Boruto has been sulking over this for who knows how long—he has always, always been protective of her. Even and especially where Naruto is concerned. Himawari grins, flitting suddenly across the kitchen to leap into Boruto’s arms. She ignores his startled complaints and the way he stands awkwardly for a moment wrapped up in her arms as she laughs against him and lightly head-butts him, almost like a kitten; gentle and innocent, as though she hadn’t just thrown a kunai with lethal accuracy straight at his heart a moment earlier.

“You’re silly, bro.” She pulls back and beams up at him, says, “I’m okay. I’m saving real training with dad for when I’m sure I can make him sweat. We have many aunts and uncles looking after me, you know.”

Boruto rolls his eyes, but his smile is a slow acceptance, and his shoulders settle from their tensed perch by his ears. “I know.”

“Besides,” Himawari says, fluttering back and away from him to pull her brownies from the oven a few seconds before the timer was to sound. She pulls two kunais seemingly out of thin air and slices the brownies into perfectly even cuts, before removing the largest piece from the tray. She lets it cool for only a few seconds and wraps it up in a knapsack, neat and tidy. She turns back to Boruto and her grin falls away to something a little less wholesome and a lot more devious and Boruto groans. She throws the brownie to him and the kunai at him, and in the span of time through which he easily deflects the kunai and the brownie falls into his hands, she flickers across the room and takes him out at the knees.

He leaps a moment before she can, but she already has a hand on his waist and she pushes, chakra-laced and intent, and Boruto stumbles. She doesn’t stand above a crouch once, and gets her legs around him with enough momentum to throw him to the ground. He lands with an oof, nothing too dangerous—she’s pleased to see that he protected the brownie against his chest the entire time—and she stands over him with her hands on her hips, smug as the devil.

“Uncle Sasuke has been teaching me well.”

And then a moment later, with Boruto still looking up at her in exasperation, she smiles and says, “Enjoy your brownie, brother.”