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Sometimes, when she has a day off from the hospital, Sakura ties her hair up and puts on an apron and plays housewife. She washes the dishes and dusts the bookshelves and mops the floors, and Sasuke watches her complacently, lifting his feet up to let her mop under the kitchen table. “Thank you,” she tells him brightly. “Not at all,” he says.
Then Sara-chan gets home from school, and housework is promptly forgotten. “I’m home, papa!” Sara-chan greets, before disappearing upstairs with her mother, probably to braid each other's hair and talk about classes or periods or fatal spots in male chakra pathways. Sasuke never asks.
Instead, he puts down the mission summary he had been reading, and goes to scrub the pans that Sakura had overlooked, and put the books back on their shelves, and squeeze out the mop and dry the floor. Sakura does housework with the enthusiasm but also skill of an amateur hobbyist; Sasuke wouldn’t call it charming, but he never complains either.
Most of the time, Sara-chan asks her mother for help: to tie a bow; to solve a difficult homework question; which shirt looks better; where Wave country is; why the sky is blue. The world is such a large place the way Sakura explains it — bright and full of wonder.
Sasuke gets more mundane questions: what they are having for dinner; if it is going to rain tomorrow; directions to the post office. Sakura laughs at him about it, late at night when they are in bed together. Sara-chan must think her father such an untraveled bumpkin.
“It’s fine,” says Sasuke. “I wouldn’t mind if my world were that small — just you and her and the weather tomorrow.”
“Sasuke-kun,” says Sakura, the way she did when they were fifteen, and when they were twelve, and when they were eight.
The miracle is the unchanging nature of some things, thinks Sasuke. The world may be tiny, but the heart’s enormous.
“Mama,” says Sara-chan one afternoon, on the walk home from the academy. “Chouchou says Boruto’s parents are swapping him for a newer model. Like how Chouchou’s mom did with their oven.”
Sakura chokes back a laugh. “Boruto-kun is getting a little sister,” she says. “He’s not getting replaced.”
Sara-chan frowns a little, thinking hard. She says, “Why does—”, but they turn the corner onto their street and she sees the rustling of sunflowers over their garden fence. Someone is in the garden.
“Papa!” yells Sara-chan, and a moment later, Sasuke’s tall frame straightens. He waves at them over the fence, and behind him, the sunflowers wave a little too.
“Sara-chan,” he says, a bowl of freshly picked summer vegetables in one hand. “Welcome home.”
“Welcome home,” Sara-chan parrots back. “Papa, you’re home early.”
“I am home exactly on time,” says Sasuke, leaning against the fence and peering down at Sara-chan with a smile more in the curve of his eyes than the curve of his mouth.
“Noooo,” says Sara-chan, shaking her head. “Because you made five boxes of food for mama and me before you left, which is for five days, and there are still two boxes left, so you’re home early.”
“We don’t always eat papa’s food,” protests Sakura. “Didn’t mama cook last night?”
Sara-chan looks doubtful. “But we still ate papa’s food anyway.”
“Well,” says Sakura, and scowls when Sasuke turns to look at her. He’s laughing silently.
“Papa hasn’t eaten mama’s food in a long time,” he says. “Mama should cook again.”
“I hate you,” says Sakura.
“That’s a lie,” says Sasuke.
“I’ll poison your food,” says Sakura.
“That might be true,” agrees Sasuke.
In the end, Sasuke cooks anyway. Sakura says, “I’ll wash the dishes” and Sara-chan says “Papa, I want okonomiyaki!” and Sakura says, “Okonomiyaki! Okonomiyaki!” Sasuke makes okonomiyaki.
Over dinner, Sara-chan says, “Papa, why does Boruto’s mama want two ovens?”
“Is she getting two ovens?” asks Sasuke. There is something in his tone that suggests he would not be averse to getting two ovens himself.
“The baby,” says Sakura, and Sara-chan explains what Chouchou had said about newer models.
“Oh,” says Sasuke. He thinks for a little bit. “Well, you know how they have a microwave and an oven?”
“Yes,” says Sara-chan.
“Boruto-kun is the oven. Baby-chan is the microwave,” says Sasuke.
“I can’t believe you just—” says Sakura, staring.
“Are we going to get a microwave, papa?” says Sara-chan.
“Mama would burn down the kitchen if we got a microwave,” says Sasuke.
“I would not burn down the kitchen,” says Sakura. “That happened like — one time.”
“Mm,” agrees Sasuke.
“Fine. Fine. Like, three times, but—”
Sasuke smiles at her. But he takes the dishes from Sakura and puts them in the sink and washes them himself.
Sakura sits at the dinner table. She looks at the broad expanse of her husband’s back. She asks, “Do you want a microwave?”
Sasuke’s hands still, but he doesn’t turn around. He looks out the window over the kitchen sink, at their backyard, golden lit in the summer duskfall. He thinks about his brother.
At length, he says, “Do you think my brother ever regretted it? Letting me—”
“No,” says Sakura, certain.
“You don’t even know what he might have regretted,” says Sasuke.
“Any of it,” says Sakura.
Sasuke turns and looks at her. “How do you know?”
“I never did,” she answers.
Sasuke’s is a small heart: it has just room enough for Sakura and Sara-chan and the weather tomorrow.
(“And Naruto,” says Sakura, “and Kakashi-sensei. And Lee-kun, though it’s super weird how you two get along so well—”
“You know what I mean,” says Sasuke.)
“One day,” says Sasuke. “Maybe. We’ll work up to it.”
“Mm,” says Sakura, squirming closer to him under the bedsheets. She says, “All right,” and “There’s time,” and “Then—will it rain tomorrow?”
“Sunny all week,” he tells her.
“We could go for a picnic,” says Sakura. “Take Sara-chan to see the Hokage cliffs.”
“We could,” says Sasuke.
“Can you pack us bento?” Sakura smiles winningly.
Outside their window, the cicadas are chirping, jiiiiii—, the call of late summer. Later, he will take Sara-chan hunting for cicada shells. There are bento to pack and later still, when the leaves turn red, soba to make.
The heart may be tiny, but the world’s enormous.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”