Setting: Konoha hospital. Boruto and Sarada, age sixteen. Boruto in hospital due to injury from a previous mission.

and no i didn't just jump ten years ahead permanently lel

Boruto knew he was going to upset her, but he really had enough. He was tired and aching and he didn't want to hear her complain about her family, see her so depressed over it. He was exhausted. "Stop being hung up over your parents! You're old enough! I'm the same as you, but I'm not complaining am I!?"

Boruto breathed heavily. A pang of regret hit him. That was too harsh, he knew it was too harsh. He wasn't her enemy. He was her friend. He stared down into his lap, afraid of seeing the expression on her face.

He...why did he do that? Didn't he swear to protect her, the day her Sharingan activated and her eyes bled and she cried? The regret grew until it was lysed. He guiltily looked up.

He wished he didn't. He wished he never said anything. How could he have said something so so horrible? Her face was pale with shame and embarrassment. He could see that all the times she had been complaining about herself were standing up and hitting her in the face. She knew she was being unreasonable all this time, yet being told by another person, by Boruto, made everywhere unbearable to look at. She had been aware that she had only been talking about herself to him lately, because of all the stress, all the negativity. Yet she was tired too, and she didn't bother, couldn't bother to correct herself. She was being immature, being insolent. They were both at extreme fault.

Boruto opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't know what to say. He could apologise, but he didn't even know how to start apologising. He could feel himself forgiving her, for he had never blamed her that much, or really at all, for she, Sarada, was impossible to blame. However with the sudden shift in the air he wonders whether he deserved to blame her at all. He knew what she was like better than she did herself, knew that she was absolutely imperfect, but he didn't mind any of that. They were still friends, perhaps best friends.

A smirk made its way onto her lips. She was looking down below Boruto's hospital bed, scarily still. The vulnerability that was herself a few seconds ago disappeared, replaced by something untouchable and violent. Untouchable in the wall that she had been building around herself since the first time she cried with him after Sasuke left the village, erected and broken again and again, erected again this time taller than before, leaving permanent damage in the ground of her heart from which the wall had its foundations. Violent in her ability of destruction, in every way possible, be it physical or mental, be it casting a genjutsu on him that leaves him unable to move for days, for he had seen her do that on an enemy before when she was pushed to breaking point at the age of thirteen, and her eyesight had never been the same since then. Or be it hurting herself inside again like the time he watched her forlornly, longingly stroke her tantou under a dark cold tree before he called her out to switch watch. Right now she was capable of anything. He had criticised her for her sensitivity to the situation she and her parents were in, for her father being rumoured to have gone to 'the side he came from' again. Regret and guilt crushed Boruto with even more weight.

"Did you know that my parents married because of me?" She said calmly.

"What? Ho—"

"They married because Mother became pregnant. They couldn't wait, to have sex, you know?"

Boruto wasn't used to Sarada talking so bluntly, with so little flair and refinement. He also didn't know what to think, what to do with this information. He didn't know if he should try to imagine it, try to understand her, try something. Everything became a muddle of uncertainty when it came to Sarada. Always, always Sarada.

Sarada's smirk widened, and Boruto suddenly remembered one of the dreams he had on the nights when Sarada stayed over when they were children: of a magnificent giant snake with red eyes, suddenly appeared in a blast of smoke in the midst of an annihilating explosion. Why was the snake there, when it would have been killed? He couldn't remember.

"Should we do that too?" She edged closer to him, cupping his face with a cold hand.

Boruto's eyes widened. In what, in horror or fear he did not know. He should have been incredulous with what she'd just suggested, but all he felt was the impending destruction she was going to place upon him as punishment for saying the one thing to her that should never be said to her. He was like a deer in headlights, as if her hand was poison giving him paralysis of the whole body by just touching him. He couldn't move, for part of him believed he deserved whatever cruelty she was going to place on him, whatever cruelty which will be the first that she places on him completely consciously. He felt like she was going to kill him, like it was a definite probability now. As if she had fallen to the darkness of her blood, the curse of the Uchiha, once again.

He couldn't move as her other hand covered his wide open eyes and she moved in to move her lips against his.

He felt pressure, a soft and cold pressure, staying on his lips. He wanted to run away, yet he didn't know if he deserved to touch her as his sin was too big, as he hurt her too much with a single outburst. He could only stay still, frozen, and then she moulded her lips around his and parted them slightly.

He couldn't move. His hands were like ice. Maybe she had poison in her mouth, poison that only she was immune to. Maybe she was giving him a patient, painful death, starting with stopping the blood to his limbs for many days until they started to rot, like they had no soul.

Then she pulled back, shaking her hand which had been covering his eyes free of the tears that had leaked from them with something akin to disgust. Her eyes switched to gaze into his bloodshot ones, cold and black, and all of a sudden Boruto felt a strange kinship to his father Naruto who he had not seen for a while. Boruto's neck moved mechanically, turning away from her, then turning back to her, as if he had not moved it in a year's length coma.

Did he have to do something? Did he have to say sorry? Did he have to breathe the audible intent in this hostile hospital room, with the amaryllis that Sarada had brought, a mixture of blood red and bone white on each petal, in a pretty flower vase, with an apple peeled and cut into pieces by Himawari on a plate next to his bed?

Amaryllis? Didn't Inojin say what its flower meaning was, not long ago? The flower of pride? The nymph who pierced her heart with arrows for thirty days, leaving a flower stained beautiful with her blood and carrying her death? What did this symbolise?

Sarada laughed. A loud, unforced sound. "Did you like that, Boruto?" She snarled. "Did you like what my mother felt? Do you know what my father is like? Do you know what I am like, with his blood in me?" She was trembling. "What is it like to find out about their shameful past? You are the same as me? Don't make me laugh!" She swung her arm, causing the vase in its pathway to smash as it hit the ground. She swooped down, grabbed a piece of the broken china and threw it towards the camera in the top corner of the room, hitting it straight on. She grabbed Boruto's collar, pulling his face centimeters to hers. "Where was your dad when your mum was deathly injured in the hospital after a mission? Right next to her." She hissed. "Don't you dare say we are the same. Don't you dare say your dad ever drugged your mum to sleep so he could leave the village. Why did I have to be with you so often back then? Why did my mother have to work overnight at the hospital so often? Because she was outside the village looking for Uchiha Sasuke that's why! She was never at the hospital! She was always looking for him! But he could never be found! And now he can't be found again, and she's looking for him again. Don't you dare say you know how I feel, you know how I feel that the person I admired the most in my life is actually a traitor!"

She stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

And Boruto pulled out his IV and ran after her, for a drop or two of blood from his arm is nothing compared to the bleeding of her eyes soon to occur from Sharingan overuse when she trains against her own body in the training grounds that had once been used by their parents' team, Team 7.