Work Text:
Mitsuki had spent much of his life observing humans.
At first because they fascinated him. Later because he cared.
The distinction had taken years to understand.
🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
Humans were strange.
They laughed when they were happy. They cried when they were sad. They smiled when they were neither. They said one thing and meant another.
They hid pain. They hid love. They hid fear. And somehow expected everyone else to notice.
It was deeply inefficient.
Mitsuki loved them.
Especially Team 7.
That realization had arrived quietly. No dramatic moment. No grand revelation. No sudden understanding.
One day he had simply looked around and discovered he belonged.
Boruto arguing with Sarada. Sarada arguing with Boruto. Konohamaru pretending not to be exhausted... and Mitsuki standing beside them.
Naturally. Effortlessly. As though he had always been there. As though there had never been a version of reality where he wasn't.
That feeling remained one of the most precious things he possessed.
Belonging. The word itself still felt fragile.
Artificial humans were not supposed to care about such things. Yet Mitsuki did. Very much.
Especially when it came to Boruto.
Boruto Uzumaki was the sun. The conclusion had not changed despite years of observation. The evidence only continued accumulating.
Boruto smiled. People smiled back. Boruto laughed. People laughed too. Boruto hurt. People worried. Boruto disappeared. And suddenly entire rooms felt emptier.
The phenomenon fascinated Mitsuki.
The explanation remained simple.
The sun touched everything around it. And life naturally turned toward warmth.
Sarada did. Not obviously. Sarada Uchiha was far too stubborn for obvious things.
Yet Mitsuki noticed. He always noticed.
The way Boruto searched for her after missions. The way Sarada immediately checked whether Boruto was injured. The way concern traveled between them faster than words.
Humans called this friendship. Mitsuki suspected friendship alone was an insufficient explanation.
Still.
If Boruto was the sun-
Then Sarada was the North Star.
Steady. Constant. A fixed point against an ever-changing sky.
No matter how chaotic things became, Sarada remained herself. Determined. Reliable. Brilliant.
Boruto moved constantly. Sarada endured. And somehow they always found each other. Like celestial bodies following rules older than memory.
Mitsuki found the pattern comforting.
Perhaps because he knew exactly where he belonged within it.
The moon reflected sunlight. The moon navigated by stars. The moon belonged to both.
Simple. Elegant. Correct.
For the first time in his life, Mitsuki felt complete.
Not because of Boruto alone. Not because of Sarada alone. Because of Team 7. Boruto. Sarada. Mitsuki. Sun. Star. Moon.
Three lights occupying the same sky. Three people choosing each other again and again.
Mitsuki had never expected happiness to feel so ordinary. Or so precious.
Perhaps that was why Boruto fascinated him so much.
Boruto never treated him differently. Not once.
Not when they first met. Not after learning who his parent was. Not after discovering what Mitsuki was.
Humans spent a great deal of time deciding who belonged. Boruto simply decided everyone did. The simplicity of it remained baffling.
Mitsuki had spent years wondering what he was. An experiment. A synthetic human. Orochimaru's child. Something unfinished. Something artificial.
Boruto had looked at him and seemed completely uninterested in the question.
"You’re Mitsuki."
That had been enough.
Somehow, it still was.
Which was perhaps why he noticed Boruto's self-destructive tendencies long before everyone else.
The way Boruto smiled through injuries. The way Boruto volunteered first. The way Boruto seemed willing to sacrifice himself whenever necessary. As though his own wellbeing occupied the bottom of every priority list.
Humans called this heroic. Mitsuki found it alarming.
The concern only worsened after Momoshiki.
Because suddenly Boruto began speaking about death too casually. As though his own disappearance were inevitable. Acceptable. Necessary.
As though the sun could simply stop rising.
The thought terrified him. Though it took several years to recognize the feeling as fear.
That was the day Mitsuki quietly made a decision.
If Boruto protected everyone-
Then Mitsuki would protect Boruto. The moon followed the sun. That was its purpose.
🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
Then Omnipotence happened.
And the sky broke.
🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
Boruto had killed Lord Seventh. Boruto had destroyed a family. Boruto had taken away the village's brightest light.
The facts were obvious. The facts were undeniable. The facts made Mitsuki furious.
How dare he?
The question repeated endlessly. How dare he hurt Himawari? How dare he hurt Kawaki? How dare he hurt everyone who loved him? How dare he hurt-
The thought stopped there every time.
Because something felt wrong.
Boruto wasn't the sun. Kawaki was. Obviously.
Everyone knew that. His memories knew that. His mind knew that.
So why did the answer feel incomplete?
Kawaki's light wasn't wrong. It simply wasn't familiar. Mitsuki kept waiting for warmth he couldn't remember losing. Kept waiting for recognition that never arrived.
Yet every memory insisted it should already be there.
The realization unsettled him. So he ignored it.
Humans did that surprisingly often. Apparently Mitsuki had become very human. The irony would have amused him under different circumstances.
Then there was Sarada. Stubborn. Impossible. Wonderful Sarada.
Sarada continued defending. Continued believing. Relentlessly. Fiercely. Painfully.
She heard Boruto's name and her gaze changed. She saw his wanted posters and her expression changed. She stared at the horizon and her expression changed.
The pattern repeated too consistently to ignore.
Mitsuki catalogued the evidence. Then deliberately avoided reaching conclusions. Because the conclusions were impossible. And because Sarada looked lonely enough already.
Sometimes he caught her staring at the seat beside her. The place Kawaki should have occupied. The place Mitsuki should have occupied too.
And something tightened painfully inside his chest.
Because Sarada missed Kawaki. At least, she was supposed to. Every memory insisted she did.
Yet whenever Mitsuki observed her, she looked like someone grieving someone else. Someone absent. Someone she refused to stop believing in.
The discrepancy bothered him. He tried not to think about it.
What surprised him was realizing she missed him too. The moon. Her teammate. Her friend.
Mitsuki remembered mission reports. Training sessions. Arguments. Shared meals.
The way Sarada checked his injuries after battles. The way Kawaki used to immediately drag him into ridiculous plans (or was it Boruto?). The way both of them instinctively made room for him.
Not because he needed accommodating. Simply because they wanted him there.
The realization hurt. More than he expected.
Because even through jumbled memories, even through anger, even through confusion-
Part of him still remembered what belonging felt like. Part of him still remembered Team 7. Not correctly. Not completely.
But enough.
Enough to miss it. Enough to feel the absence. Enough to stare at a sky full of familiar stars and somehow feel alone.
Sometimes, late at night, Mitsuki found himself looking toward the horizon. Waiting. Watching.
As though expecting something. Someone.
The feeling made no sense. Yet it remained. Persistent. Quiet. Stubborn.
Like moonlight.
Perhaps that was the strangest thing of all.
His memories insisted Boruto Otsutsuki was an enemy. His anger insisted Boruto Otsutsuki deserved punishment. His world insisted Boruto Otsutsuki had stolen the light from everyone he loved.
But...
Mitsuki had spent years believing the moon existed because of the sun.
Lately he found himself wondering if the opposite was also true. If perhaps a sun needed someone to witness its light.
Someone to reflect it. Someone to follow. Someone to come home to.
The thought lingered longer than it should have.
Yet somewhere deep beneath those certainties, beneath rewritten memories, beneath false truths, beneath an artificial sky-
The moon still turned toward the sun. And somewhere beyond the horizon-
A star continued believing.
Waiting for both of them to come home.
💫🌙☀️💫🌙☀️💫🌙☀️💫🌙☀️💫🌙☀️💫🌙☀️💫🌙