He'd been quiet since his return. The kage agreed his contributions to saving the world paired with the offenses that led to his original actions were enough to pardon him his involvement in the Akatsuki, and of course ignore his missing-nin status entirely on the condition he return peacefully to Konoha.
While he wasn't a prisoner, the…scuffle he had with Naruto on the battlefield endeared him to no one in the village, and his goal of becoming hokage seemed a long way off yet. Much of his time seemed to be taken up with whatever it was he was planning to get people to accept him as hokage for.
He would never admit any such thing, but she thought he might also be wrestling with guilt. And…perhaps a touch of loneliness, given the uneasiness the villagers accepted him with. It wasn't terribly unlike the ways they used to treat Naruto.
Of course, he had Naruto who spent much of Sasuke's free time dragging him around the village or out to training. No one was surprised at all, really, that he took Sasuke almost attempting to 'cleanse' him from the world on the battlefield in stride and completely ignored it now. Even if it weren't Sasuke, she suspected Naruto would have reacted the same now, though. Apparently, in taming the nine tails he found a way to overcome and conquer all of the hatred and darkness in his heart.
She'd heard some people calling him the new Sage of Six Paths, despite the lack of the Rinnegan. She wasn't sure yet if that would stick, but…
She did wonder what it would be like to live a life without any hatred, bitterness, or darkness in a heart. Some days she wondered if she'd even be the same person at all without that darkness to nurture inside her. She wondered sometimes if that's what Sasuke spent his days thinking of instead: how to live a life without being consumed by all of the darkness he'd embraced before.
She liked to think it was an answer they could both find if they worked together. Maybe they couldn't do whatever Naruto had done, maybe normal people couldn't banish all the darkness in their hearts the way Naruto could…but it probably wouldn't hurt to strive to emulate the light he shone.
That way, at least, neither one of them would be alone while they tried.
She smiled faintly as she sat down on the bench next to him, and held out a stick of dango. "Hungry? I know it's a little bit sweet, but he insisted on giving me three sticks, and now I can't finish it…so I thought…maybe we could if we worked together."