We're Different. | The Other Uchiha ✓ (Boruto)

Sands of Memory

The sky was a low-burning gold, the kind that made everything seem suspended in time, heat warping the horizon into trembling illusions.

The air was already heavy with grit, the faint metallic scent of a coming sandstorm curling in the back of Y/n's throat as she trudged alongside Sasuke across the endless dunes.

They had been walking for hours, the wind sharpening against their exposed skin with each passing minute.

The village was still nowhere in sight, a blur on the edge of the desert if it even existed at all.

Then it changed.

The breeze stiffened into sharp gusts, whipping up thin streams of sand that stung her cheeks and sliced at her clothes.

She froze instinctively, one hand lifting to shield her face. The air grew dense, harder to breathe, the grit thickening into veils.

Sasuke stopped too, glancing back at her, reading the tension in the way she had gone rigid.

"There's a sandstorm coming," Y/n said, her voice rough and low from the dry air.

He nodded once, unsurprised. "I feel it too. We have twenty minutes, maybe less."

She glanced around, nothing but empty dunes and a sky collapsing into ochre darkness. "The Sand Village is back that way?"

"If we run," Sasuke confirmed, already adjusting his cloak to shield more of his face.

There was no more discussion.

They ran.

Y/n pushed her legs harder than she ever had before, ignoring the way the burning sand cut across her calves, how her throat felt scraped raw with every breath.

The wind screamed around them now, whipping into a frenzy, hurling entire sheets of sand into the air until the landscape blurred into moving walls of dust.

Sasuke moved like a shadow ahead of her, effortless and silent.

Y/n fought to keep up, her sandals slipping on the unstable dunes, her hands burning from chakra surges she barely had time to control.

"Why can't you use your Rinnegan?" she shouted over the storm as they ran, frustration seeping through her cracking voice.

"I don't have enough chakra," he shot back without slowing.

She scowled, adrenaline and fear sharpening her tone. "You had enough to take on the Five Kage and Danzo in one day?"

Sasuke turned his head just enough for her to catch the faintest glint of his narrowed eye. "How do you know that?"

"Karin told me, "She gritted out, lungs aching. "When you almost killed her too."

He didn't respond this time. Only faced forward again, running faster.

Y/n could have laughed if she wasn't too busy choking on sand and rage and panic.

The Kazekage's village finally broke through the storm haze, towers of sculpted stone rising like exhausted sentinels against the death that rolled behind them.

Ten more minutes and they wouldn't have made it.

They stumbled through the front gates as the guards swung them open just wide enough, slamming them shut the moment they crossed the threshold.

Inside, the world muted, only the howling roar of the storm against the high village walls told them how close they had come to being swallowed.

Y/n doubled over, coughing hard into her sleeve, sand pouring from her clothes, her hair, her lungs.