Peace was not silence.
Naruto learned that slowly, in the moments between council meetings and patrol reports, when the village hummed instead of screamed. Konoha breathed now. It exhaled children's laughter, merchants' calls, the scrape of sandals against stone. It lived.
He stood at the wide window of the Hokage office long after sunset, hands braced against the sill, cloak discarded on the chair behind him. The reflection staring back was still strange—older eyes, steadier shoulders, a weight that had nothing to do with chakra.
"You're brooding again."
Sakura's voice was gentle, familiar enough to cut through the fog in his head. She crossed the room with unhurried steps, sliding her arms around his waist from behind. Her cheek rested between his shoulder blades, warm and real.
"I was just thinking," Naruto said.
"That's what worries me."
He laughed softly and turned, pulling her into his chest. For a long moment they simply stood there, forehead to forehead, breathing each other in.
"This is the part no one warned me about," he admitted. "The quiet. The responsibility that doesn't end when the fighting does."
Sakura tilted her head, studying him with the same careful attention she once gave wounded bodies on the battlefield. "You don't have to carry it alone," she said. "You never have."
Her fingers slid beneath the edge of his shirt, not urgent—just grounding. Naruto closed his eyes, anchoring himself in the feel of her, in the certainty that whatever the world demanded of him during the day, the night still belonged to them.