Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 1

Against the blue afternoon sky sat a world of slate white slabs crumbling to their roots. Boruto lingered behind his team, hands shoved unceremoniously into his pockets. His feet dragged as they walked further into the ruins that made up the Village Hidden in Time. It seemed a stupid name to him; time had had its way with that place. Everything looked old and ancient and fragile. It probably was, too.

Ahead of him, his teammates walked dutifully behind their leader. Sarada seemed interested in it all, but Mitsuki… not so much. He at least pretended to be entertained, which was more than Boruto could say for himself.

Maybe he should have been happy that they were finally getting C-rank missions, but at the end of the day, wasn't a retrieval mission just glorified errand running? That was probably pessimistic of him to think. It didn't make it any less true.

“The scroll we're retrieving appears to be instructions on how to perform an imprint jutsu,” Konohamaru explained.

They stood at the foot of the World Temple—at least, that's what he'd heard it called, whatever that meant. He absently kicked about a stone as he walked. Sarada just rolled her eyes.

“So, it leaves an imprint… of what, exactly?” she asked, ignoring her teammate completely.

They passed through the front entrance of the temple where some of the excavators were hanging around on break. The first room was massive. Stained glass windows filtered in coloured light where they hadn’t been shattered and cracked by time. The core of the building was standing better than anything else outside. Polished stone walls still stood strong despite everything. But this room was for worship; there was nothing of interest to see. They took a path to the right, down a long and narrow corridor that led to a stairwell that they could use to make their descent.

“Of the caster,” Konohamaru continued, leading the way. The further they went, the more maze-like the structure became. It was… kinda cool. Felt like they were on an actual mission, now that everything wasn’t so black-and-white. But their leader knew exactly where they were going so it wasn’t much of an adventure. “With it, you can record a message and seal it on an object. Once the seal breaks, your message will play to the one who broke it, just like that!”

Sarada hummed, hand on her hip as she looked left and right at the aged engravings on the walls. “That doesn’t seem all that useful… there are better ways to leave messages for other ninjas. Sounds like it would be easy for the wrong person to get ahold of, too.”

Konohamaru rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders. “Well, you're not wrong… but this jutsu is very old . Back then, it was probably the best they had. And if we analyze it back home, it might glean some knowledge into other scrolls that the people of the Hidden Time stored here.”

“And that is why we're bringing it back.”

“You got it.”

Boruto yawned. Instructions for a messaging jutsu? That's what they came all this way for? It seemed like a pretty big waste of time… which was probably why they put a team of genin up to the task. He wasn’t surprised.

The Time Village was located in a remote part of the Land of Fire, so it was practically right in their backyard. No roads led there; to find their way, they had to rely on the coordinates left to them by the excavators. Even still, Boruto was sure he could find his way back to Konoha now that he'd made the trip once before. He had a knack for remembering directions.

As they turned down a branching hallway, Boruto's steps slowed. He didn't even realize that he was falling behind, a strange feeling pulling at him from beyond the wall to his right. He blinked, gawking openly at the stonework.

Something was telling him to walk into it. That something was stupid . Why would he do that? But it kept prodding, nudging him to do it. There were no words, just this… strange intent bleeding into his mind from somewhere beyond. Whatever it was, it must have really wanted him to break his face against the wall. He snorted. “Yeah, sure. I'm that stupid.”

Mitsuki's steps faltered. He twisted around, tilting his head when he saw his teammate lagging behind. “Did you find something?”

Boruto's head snapped forward and he stammered a moment before letting out a chuckle. “Like what? This place is empty .”

Mitsuki stared, his eyes lingering longer than perhaps they should before he faced forward and rejoined the rest of the group.

Boruto made to follow. He took a step but stopped just as soon as he started. A shudder ran through him, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his head snapped back to face the wall. Maybe he should…

He ran a hand through his hair and groaned. “Aw, damn it. Alright, already!”

His hands came together to form the familiar signs of his shadow clone jutsu and a clone popped into existence through a puff of smoke. They shared a grin before the clone dashed off after his team. At least with that, he didn't have to worry about a lecture from his sensei for wandering off. He doubted the clone would fool them for long, though. It was best to make his excursion quick.

Boruto eyed the wall critically, his fingers brushing against the smooth surface of the stone. The slightest touch caused a warm spark of chakra to bite at his fingertips and his eyes went wide, a slow grin curling his lips.

“Now that's what I'm talkin’ about.”

With a level of caution uncharacteristic of him, Boruto slipped into the wall. First his hand, then his body, as the warm tingle of chakra devoured him. He came out on the other side in a stumble. It was another hall. There was a strong smell of mildew here. Moss broke through the cracks and crevices brought on by age and the air was damp. He pulled a face and turned around, able to see the hall that he came from through the translucent images created by whatever jutsu was in place there.

“Huh. Not very hard to figure out, is it…”

He shrugged it off and followed the hall, his shoes splashing through the thin film of water pooling on the floor. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t see. It was a phantom dark. He could make out the edges of the walls and ceiling in the distance, a soft glow bleeding in from the bend at the end. He could make out the silhouette of algae and the lines of the stonework.

The further he got, the more he noticed a draft coming in from up ahead.

At the end of the hall, he turned and paused. It opened up to a chasm of branching pathways. Light filtered in from above through a stain glass ceiling three levels higher than the one Boruto was on. He looked down. There were levels below, too, fading into blackness. He swallowed his nerves and tread cautiously forward along the wall-less path.

“Where even is this place?” he muttered to himself, looking this way and that at the many openings in the walls, leading to and from one another. “Which way is it?”

There was a buzz at the back of his mind and he whirled around. His sight came to rest on a doorway two levels down and he felt… something.

“There?” he questioned, waiting for an answer that never came.

He hopped off the path he was on and landed on another, entering his chosen doorway. As he stepped off the path, he stopped. Something told him not to step forward. He couched, lowering his hand to the stone tiles, rolling his eyes when it fazed right on through. “The same trick twice? Really?”

He hopped up and concentrated his chakra on the bottoms of his feet, allowing him to easily walk along the cavern’s walls. He huffed, chin up and arms crossed. It continued like that for a while. The traps were simple, easy to see through, and a bit of a joke, compared to some of the stuff they’d had to do in the academy. Whatever they were hiding down there couldn’t have been very important.

Eventually, he came to a door. There was a hidden switch, a riddle about time engraved on the wall. He couldn’t read the text; it was foreign, ancient and, quite frankly, looked more like pictures than words to him. But there it was again—that feeling, that pull , and he was led to find the switch beneath a statue in another room. The door opened with the gravelly slide of stone, the floor quaking beneath its might, and in the centre of the room beyond stood a pedestal.

Boruto took a deep breath and strode right on up. Atop the pedestal sat a scroll, secured there by a metal holder. Unlike the rest of the hidden chambers he had traversed, this room was dry and untouched. He doubted a scroll could have lasted otherwise.

Take it .

He stepped back, looking around for the source of… whatever that had been.

It’s yours.

“...Mine?” He raised an eyebrow, observing the scroll, and let out a forced chuckle. “What would I want with some dumb scroll? What is it, anyway?”

There was no answer. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Even what he heard hadn’t really been words… They felt more like thoughts. He could glean meaning from them, but couldn’t actually hear what they were saying.

Boruto rubbed his forehead, licked his lips, and admitted to himself that he was perhaps a little unnerved.

Ah, whatever. Maybe he could take it to the excavators when he reconvened with the group, see what they had to say on the whole thing.

He snatched it off the pedestal and the moment he did his arm spiked with pain. Ink bled from the scroll onto his hand and up his arm. Markings of foreign characters coiled further and further around, to his shoulder, then his neck. He hurriedly dropped the scroll but it didn’t stop the ink from spreading.

“W-what is this?” His voice cracked and he watched as the ink staining his skin lit up in a pale blue. The light brightened like a star until all he could see was white.

And through the white, two small, pinprick eyes watching him.

When the light faded the only thing left behind was a discarded scroll in an empty room.

Konohamaru smiled, arms crossed as he listened to the story one of the excavators was telling his team. None of the kids seemed all that interested, but he knew with time these sorts of things would garner more attention. The careful art of extracting artifacts from fallen ruins was one that could be appreciated more as one got older.

The woman smiled, holding up the imprint scroll with a gloved hand. “This here is your mission. Keep it safe for us on your return to Konoha, alright?”

Sarada stepped forward. She was already wearing gloves—they’d been instructed that they needed them if they were to go to the excavation site. Everything down there was fragile and old, and the last thing they needed was for an artifact to be damaged by the oils of someone’s skin. She took the scroll carefully in her hands, holding it like glass. She, out of all of her teammates, at least showed some enthusiasm for the mission.

Boruto was dead last. He’d barely paid attention.

“So,” Sarada began as she placed the scroll in the container they’d been given, “why are we just bringing back this one? You seem to have uncovered a lot…”

Looking around, Sarada was right; what had been found was placed on this floor, carefully separated from one another on tarps that had been brought down.

The woman dusted her hands. “Well, it’s the only one safe to bring back right now.”

“Safe?”

“Artifacts like this tend to have curses placed on them,” Konohamaru supplied, figuring he could be proactive and turn their excursion into a lesson. “Countermeasures against theft and the like. Excavators can’t safely handle any items they find until they’ve been looked over by an archivist.”

The woman nodded. “Exactly right. Everything you see here has been extracted, but either hasn’t been looked at yet or hasn’t had any cursed seals removed.”

Mitsuki blinked, his eyes moving across the room, scanning everything they had unearthed. Then his eyes were back on the scroll. “This one is safe, then.”

“In fact,” she began, lowering onto the floor, “it’s the only item that’s been checked so far that doesn’t have any protective seals on it. A bit strange, don’t you think?”

Boruto rolled his eyes. “Probably ‘cause it’s nothing spec—”

The boy vanished in a puff of smoke, his last word hanging in the air.

Sarada stepped over to where her teammate had been, frowning. “A shadow clone?” She sighed. “Gosh, now where’s that idiot gone off to…”

Konohamaru swallowed back his unease as he rubbed his neck. Something about this didn’t feel right…

“Let’s go find him, then… He couldn’t have gone far.”

Konohamaru was regretting the words ‘he couldn’t have gone far’ when they were four hours into their search without a sign of the boy. He could already taste Lord Seventh’s fury when informed of his son’s unknown whereabouts. By that point, the excavators had halted their expedition to form a search party. This was the son of the Hokage they were talking about.

By the fifth hour, one of the on-site archivists relayed to him that they found a suspicious hidden room. The traps had all been activated leading up to it, the door already open. Konohamaru arrived to find a lone scroll resting on the floor. Against the wishes of the excavators, he snatched it up and opened it, revealing nothing but empty, yellowing paper.

He swallowed the newly formed lump in his throat. “I need to inform Lord Seventh of this.”

Boruto roused to a burning pain in his left arm. He hissed against the fiery heat until it cooled, and after a while, it was almost as if there’d been no pain to start. He blinked open his eyes, stared up at a stone ceiling, and then picked himself off the floor. He was in the temple—in that weird room with the scroll on the pedestal. He remembered grabbing it, and then…

The memory hit and the haze of sleep left him. He hurriedly pulled up his sleeve to see those strange markings—

They weren’t there. There was nothing, not even a hint .

A dream? No. No, he knew what he saw. But, at the same time…

It was probably best to find his team now. He couldn’t feel the clone anymore, but that was to be expected; he hadn’t yet mastered keeping them around while he slept. How long was he out for? Sensei was going to kill him… or if he didn’t, Sarada sure would.

He heaved a sigh and jumped to his feet.

The way back up was a lot quicker to traverse, now that he knew the way. Soon he was slipping through the fake wall and descending back down in the direction his team had gone. It didn’t take long to notice that something was… off, though.

There was no one around. Even as he got closer to the excavation site, no one .

Even at the bottom, no one.

Boruto’s next action was making it back to the surface. The sun was high and the ruins outside of the World Temple were just as vacant as the ones inside. He bit his lip, sitting on the steps as he mulled over what may have happened while he was asleep.

“They wouldn’t have just left me here,” he muttered to himself, tossing a rock in his hand absently. He threw it, watching it skid through the dirt. “Unless, maybe, they couldn’t find me…”

But then where was everyone else?

The sun was still high and he rationalized that the best course of action would be to return to Konoha, just as his team probably would have. He could reconveen with them there and grill them on what happened. At the very least, he could be sure it would still be sun-up when he got back.

Not to brag, but Boruto found he was very good at travelling alone. He made it back to the village in what he thought was less time than it’d taken Konohamaru to lead them to the Hidden Time. Before long, he was signing in at the front gate. The guard stationed there looked bored before noticing him, giving Boruto’s headband a narrowed look.

“Out causing trouble again?” the guard asked, looking back down at his table.

Boruto’s nose scrunched up. “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”

“Where’s your team?”

“Oh, uh…” He averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his head. There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t like to think was shame, but it just may have been. It was his fault they’d gotten separated in the first place. He knew that. And he’d own up to it. He pointed out towards the forest. “Kinda got separated. I was hoping to meet back up with them in the village, y’know?”

The guard nodded along with a gruff snort and waved him inside.

The moment he saw the village, Boruto knew something was off.

It was very apparent that this was not the Konoha that Boruto knew. The whole thing felt smaller, more cramped. The buildings didn’t reach as high. His eyes darted this way and that as he mapped out his village in his head, and nothing was where it was supposed to be.

The ramen place was there—the one that dad liked so much, Ichiraku Ramen. Same name, at least. The building as a whole was entirely different—small, humble. Old. The Ichiraku Ramen that he knew was better kept. Looking around, a lot of places were like that. Small, modest shops and housing. Hell, he couldn’t even see the rail—

As he looked up his breath caught in his throat. Hokage Rock was missing three of its seven faces. It was bizarre and almost disconcerting, not having his father’s vacant-eyed face overlooking the village. The Sixth wasn’t there, either, or the Fifth. They just ended after Grandpa Minato.

A thought buzzed around inside Boruto’s head, one that he’d spent the better half of the day trying to ignore.

His house was gone. There was no Mom or Himawari waiting for him there. He checked the school next. There was a school there, but it wasn’t the one he knew. With an air of defeat, he dropped onto a swing, staring ruefully at the building. His hands gripped tightly to the rope, his eyes dipping to the ground.

Okay, just think for a moment.

The first assumption he could make was that he was trapped in a jutsu—that this was all an illusion, created by his mind to trap him. When he picked up the scroll, something came out of it. Maybe that could offer up an explanation for what was going on. Was it a curse? Damn, it better not have been a curse… He didn’t know the first thing about breaking curses. Someone in the real world would, though, right?

...Right?

The second theory stewing in his mind made him feel a bit silly for even thinking of it in the first place. Nah, it couldn’t be.

The sun was setting, washing over him in an orange warmth. The warmth of the sun felt real. How could he tell that it wasn’t? But its warmth was cut off abruptly as a shadow cast over him.

“Hey.”

Boruto found a pair of sandaled feet set before him. He followed them up to an orange jumpsuit, the boy’s arms crossed over his chest.

It was impossible. Even he knew that.

“That’s my—er… nevermind.” The boy cleared his throat, leaning in as his narrow eyes met Boruto’s. “Hey, I haven’t seen you before… Are you new here, or somethin’?”

His eyes widened. His jaw slacked.

The boy blinked, scratching his head at the lacking response. “Uh… okay. Not much of a talker, are ya? Jeez…” He clapped his hands together, a grin splitting his face ear-to-ear, and he held out a hand. “The name’s Naruto Uzumaki. I’m gonna be the Hokage!”

Oh.

Oh no.

Before him stood a boy, likely the same age, a little on the short side with bright blue eyes and unruly blond hair. It was a face he recognized from a framed picture in his father’s office, a long-gone memory of the past.

To Boruto, his father had always been a towering, impossible figure of strength and something else, something a lot less savoury. Something a lot more bitter. So how could this small, goofy-looking kid ever be—

“Fine, jeez…” Naruto retracted his hand, throwing it behind his head. “You’re kinda weird.”

Boruto blinked. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to find his voice, his hands uncurling from the ropes to rest in his lap. “A-ah, er… sorry. Guess I spaced out there. What was that?”

Naruto raised an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to give your name when someone gives theirs, y’know.”

“Oh. Boruto.” Crap. Thinking back, if this really was—and he felt stupid for even thinking it—the past, then the last thing he should have done was give his name. Right? It just came out so easily, and…

Then again, if this was the illusion of some sort of jutsu, it probably wouldn’t matter. He wasn’t sure if he should be banking on that, though.

“Boruto, eh?” Naruto kicked the dirt, looking him over with a critical eye. “You look kinda familiar.”

“I look like you ,” he muttered in correction, regretting it as soon as he did.

“Yeah,” Naruto grinned, “sure do.”

Boruto's shoulders slumped and he averted his eyes to the ground again. He listened to the scuff of sandals, the shift of cloth as his father came to rest against the tree that the swing hung from. There was a short lived silence that he used to collect his thoughts. This kid was so different , but there was a part of him that felt the same. And he was inclined to believe it all. That didn't mean it wasn’t an illusion, or the product of some sort of jutsu, but at the very least, this kid was meant to be his father.

That also gave him a time frame for when this world was supposed to take place. He honestly didn't know much about his dad's childhood—like his time training as a genin, or how he got to where he was—but he did know some of the basics. Dad had no parents. Grandpa Minato and Grandma Kushina died soon after he was born, so he grew up alone. Sometimes that seemed like it'd be a blessing to Boruto, but the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t imagine not having his mom or Himawari with him. And Dad, well…

He peeked up, stealing a glance at the short kid standing against the tree with crossed arms and legs, grinning at him. Did Dad always smile that much? As he fought through his memories, he found he had trouble bringing anything significant to mind.

“Where you from?” Naruto asked, but answered his own question when his eyes found Boruto's headband, and the smile slid off his face. “I've never seen you ‘round here.”

He chewed his lip and thought. He shouldn’t just outright say it; he knew that much, at least. Things could change, or… something. As much as part of him wanted to challenge that he wouldn’t care, he knew it was a lie. There were things he couldn't bear to erase.

When he couldn’t think of an appropriate answer, he chose silence.

Naruto tapped his finger impatiently against his arm while awaiting a reply and when he didn't get it, he groaned. This version of Dad was very upfront about his feelings; he wore his every thought on his face. “Alright, then…” He nodded to the headband. “You're a ninja, right?”

“Genin,” he supplied awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Naruto had something to latch onto now and ran with it. “Me too. What team are you on? Who's your team leader? Got any cool jutsu to show off? Did you just come back from, like, a mission or something? Is that why I don’t recognize you? Oh, but… that still doesn’t make sense ‘cause you weren't in my class.”

Boruto raised an eyebrow. That was the most chatty he'd ever seen his dad, and it was kinda weird. As such, he followed the questions with an eloquent, “Um.” His team wouldn't exist then, and his leader… Konohamaru would have been even younger than Dad. Couldn’t use him. But there was one thing…

“Actually,” he started, his legs swinging back and forth absently. “I'm on a mission now.”

“Don’t tell me: the old lady downtown lost her cat again?”

Boruto raised an eyebrow. “Er, no? It's a retrieval mission. Outside the village. C-rank?”

“What?!” Naruto ran a hand through his hair. “Aw, man… All we ever get assigned is stupid D-rank missions. How's that fair?”

Huh. It was hard to imagine the great Hokage doing menial D-rank tasks around the village. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that his dad’s shadow clones often did just that.

“Crap!”

He looked up. The sun dipped behind Konoha’s walls and burned up the sky in a sea of fire-orange, bleeding out around the blue shadows stretching east across the village. It was later than he thought.

Naruto pushed off the tree and focused on the sunset with a slow-forming dread. “I’m supposed to meet Iruka-sensei!”

Boruto blinked, his shoulders slumping, and he stared hard at his father’s shadow. It was long, warping across the ground, and reminded him of the Naruto that he knew. “You should get going, then.”

The shadow remained.

“Hey,” Naruto called, throwing his arms behind his head. “Ya hungry?”

Ichiraku Ramen was nothing like what Boruto had come to know. He remembered his father bringing him once or twice, and that place was nothing like the unassuming hole-in-the-wall where they sat now.

The sun was down, the darkness fought off by the lantern light glowing off the ramen bar. There was a steaming bowl of ramen sitting before him untouched. His father ordered it for him—today’s special, apparently. His father, who was currently stuffing his face to the right of him.

There was a nudge to his shoulder and he shied away, eyeing the weird kid.

“Don’t just stare at it, eat ! Teuchi worked hard on that.”

He snorted but found himself complying as he broke apart his chopsticks and started picking through the bowl.

Naruto heaved a contented sigh and twisted around, looking out into the night. “Can’t believe we beat Iruka-sensei here. I wonder what’s taking him, y’know?” He rummaged through his pocket before placing down a pile of change. Teuchi readily accepted the offer. “Actually… do you know Iruka-sensei?”

Boruto swallowed his first mouthful and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Know of him.” Of course he knew Iruka. How couldn’t he? But this Iruka wouldn’t know him .

Naruto opened his mouth to reply when his attention shifted, his eyes shifting to the darkness, and his lips curled into a grin. “There you are!”

Iruka stopped at the edge of the bar’s light, arms folded one over the other. “Sorry, Naruto, I got a bit caught up—” And then he noticed Boruto, eyes narrowed. Of course he wouldn’t brush off the resemblance like Dad had. “Who’s your friend?”

“I, uh—”

“Boruto!” An arm snaked around Boruto’s shoulders, pulling him in. “Isn’t it weird?”

Iruka frowned. “Like looking in a mirror.” He took a seat, his movements careful and slow as he came to rest on the stool beside his former student. He rested his head in his palm, observing the two boys blankly. “Boruto. Where you from?”

Boruto swallowed. He felt like he was being scolded, Iruka’s tone sharp and cold. Accusatory. “Konoha,” he answered honestly. It was true, and it’s what he told Dad. The look he was getting warned him that answering carelessly would lead to bad things, though, and he knew he had to double down on his answer. “I was born here, at least. I’ve been living in—” It was a stretch, but, “—Suna for a while now. I just… thought it was time to get back to my roots, y’know?”

Iruka gave him a side-long stare. “Coming all the way from the Hidden Sand, eh? Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have parents.” He stared into his bowl, unable to meet the eyes of the two seated to his right. That felt dirty to say, even if he deemed it a necessary evil. Staring so fixedly at his half-eaten ramen, he couldn’t see the look his father wore. “They, uh… died. Long time ago.”

“Then where are you staying?”

He shrugged and ducked his head in some vain attempt to escape confrontation. “I’ll find a place.”

A loud thud interrupted the interrogation. Naruto rose, slamming his hands down on the bartop. Everyone went quiet as the boy stared fixedly at Boruto. For a moment, Boruto worried he’d offended his father—and felt equally shamed for lying about being orphaned.

Iruka was the first to break through the awkward stillness. “Naruto? Something wrong?”

“I, uh.” Naruto’s lips twitched and curled into a grin. “Hey, hey, you can stay at my place, y’know!”

Boruto blinked. “What?”

“I got plenty o’ room! C’mon, beats sleeping outside, right? Right?”

Iruka shifted, placing a hand on Naruto’s shoulder. “Naruto,” he sighed, “I don’t think—”

“Ack!” His noise of alarm startled them. Naruto combed a hand through his hair. “Everything’s a mess back there. I uh—hey, stay right here! I’ll be right back, y’know!”

Naruto never gave them a chance to respond. One moment he was there, making a scene out of himself, and the next he was running off into the shadows of night. Suddenly it was quiet. Boruto’s bowl was still half full and no longer steaming. When he took his next bite, the noodles were cold.

Iruka twisted around and faced forward when his order was set before him. He passed a word of thanks, broke his chopsticks, and blew on the noodles. “Look,” he started, swallowing back his first bite, “I don’t know who you are, nor do I pretend to understand what it is that you’re doing. What I do know is that Naruto isn’t usually like this.”

Boruto gulped, pushing away his bowl.

“He’s not one to latch onto strangers so easily,” Iruka continued softly, side-eyeing the genin by his side. “Naruto has always been alone. You’ve noticed it, too, right? The looks that he gets.”

Boruto leaned forward on the bar, maintaining a thin veil of disinterest as his stomach knotted. As they walked through the streets from the school to the ramen bar, his father yammering on about his team—about how annoying Sasuke was—he caught the stares. The whispers. Even before that, when he was making his way through Konoha alone, he was getting looks like that himself. At first, he wondered if it could be because of how confused he looked. Now he was starting to think that it was because… he looked like Naruto. Looked like his father.

“He may not realize it himself, but he’s hesitant to attach himself to others. So I’m surprised he’s taken such a shine to you.”

“Why?”

Iruka blinked. “Well, because—”

“Why’s everyone lookin’ at him like that?” Boruto clasped his hands together, trying to overlap the image of the lonely child with the one of beloved Lord Seventh.

“I can’t say,” Iruka muttered, his fingers intertwined below his chin. “What I can say is that Naruto is someone important to this village. I hope for your sake that, whoever you are, you haven’t approached him with ill intent.”

The bodies wandering the streets had thinned out considerably by the time Naruto came to retrieve him. Even still, he caught a few of those looks—curled lips, narrowed eyes, the kind of looks you’d expect to give to someone who personally wronged you. No one ever looked at the Hokage like that.

Naruto was yammering on about something unimportant, his arms cushioning his head as he walked a few steps ahead, leading Boruto to drag his feet with his hands in his pockets. He tried not to look around, tried to ignore the looks like his father seemed so practiced at doing, when his father spun around with one of those big, goofy smiles on his face.

“I mean, he’ll never beat me , but I’ll bet Konohamaru will be a great ninja one day, y’know?” There was no answer, so he just made to continue. “It’s too bad, though, ‘cause I’m the one who’s gonna be Hokage.”

Boruto’s dragging feet halted then. It took a while for his chatty companion to take notice, widening the gap between them.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

The street was empty. As they left the hub of the village and turned on to residential streets, the people started to filter out. They were alone now save for a stray dog rummaging through trash cans in the alley to the left, but what Iruka said to him was still ringing in his ears, nagging at his thoughts. “Why are you acting like it doesn’t bother you?”

“What?”

“The way people look at you,” Boruto bit out, hunching his shoulders. “How can you just—pretend you don’t see it?”

Understanding dawned on Naruto’s face and his smile slid askew. He turned back around and kept on walking, his pace slow until he heard the scuff of a second pair of footsteps following his and regained the confidence to pick up speed. “I hate it,” he confessed. “But it’s okay. When I’m the Hokage, they’ll have to respect me, y’know?”

Boruto stared at his father’s back, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“So, I’m gonna prove myself. To the whole world if I have to!”

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Stupid old man.

Hiruzen was in his office, smoking his pipe as he stared out at the pile of finished paperwork he’d set aside on his desk. The night was long and he was content in knowing that, come morning, he would be just a little ahead, rather than behind. It was so very easy to fall behind, especially on days when Naruto decided to wreak his usual havoc, sending half of Hiruzen’s staff into an unnecessary panic over his trivial mischief.

Before he could retire for the night, there was a knock at his door. Now Iruka Umino stood in his doorway, approached his desk, and he had a sinking suspicion that he wouldn’t be returning home just yet.

“You had something to report,” he prodded, his fingers intertwined atop his desk.

“Yes, Lord Third. It’s…” Iruka sighed, scratching his head. “Maybe I’m overreacting. No, maybe I’m not. It just—something feels off, and I wanted to let you know.”

“Out with it.”

Iruka took a breath. “When I went to meet Naruto tonight, he was with someone. A boy, one that looked just like him, claiming to be a Konoha genin. Boruto. That’s what he went by.”

Hiruzen’s brow furrowed, trying to put a face to the name.

“He claims that he’s just moved here from Suna,” Iruka continued. “That he was born here, but grew up there.”

He leaned back in his chair, removed the pipe from his mouth and tapped the side of it absently as he thought. “I’ll double check our records, but I don’t think we’ll find a match.”

“Neither do I.”

The Hokage sighed and closed his eyes. He understood Iruka’s fears; if this boy was lying, then who was to say he wasn’t a spy from one of the other villages, trying to get close to their jinchuuriki, or worse? Hiruzen was a cautious man, but he wasn’t fond of jumping to conclusions. Even if the boy was a liar, that didn’t necessarily mean that he was an enemy.

Caution was always a good thing to have, though.

“I’ll have Kakashi look into the matter,” he assured. “If the boy’s interest lies with Naruto then it’s best to inform his team leader.”

“Right. Thank you, Lord Third. I’m sorry for disturbing you so late at night.”

Hiruzen waved him off. “Not at all. It comes with the job.”

Iruka smiled with visible relief and bowed his head. “Goodnight, then.”

The door slid shut and Hiruzen sighed. He would be here a while longer, it seemed.

Boruto’s father lived in an apartment, some little hole-in-the-wall the Third must have shoved him in when he was old enough to be on his own. Naruto opened the door to the cramped bachelor he called home. The living space was made up of one single room. There was a bathroom off to the side, but everything else from bed to kitchen counter was shoved against one of the four walls. It was clean—he expected as much, with how his father ran off to organize his mess back at the ramen bar—but there was a distinct smell looming in the air that he couldn’t place. It wasn't bad , really, just… off. Not quite right, and a bit in-your-face.

Put like that, maybe it suited this version of Dad.

Naruto hurried him inside and shut the door behind them, moving to take a seat on the edge of the bed. “C'mon in!”

Boruto stood awkwardly in the doorway. The apartment was missing a lot of the personal effects that made a home. Sure there were a few posters on the walls, but there was nothing intimate about it. Back home, Boruto had his comics and his games. Action figures. Things that he liked.

What did Dad like?

Looking around… Ramen. He liked ramen. Some things never changed.

“Don't just stand there!”

Boruto rolled his eyes and took his shoes off at the door, even though he noticed his father clearly hadn't. He shuffled into the room with thinly veiled curiosity and lowered himself onto one of the chairs set at the kitchen table. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, perhaps from a night or two of laziness, but all-up it wasn't that bad.

Twisting back around, there was Naruto's face again, in all its grinning glory. Waiting for him to say something.

“It's,” he started, then paused as he wracked his brain for the right words, and stopped. Thought. Boruto didn’t usually put this much care into his phrasing. “You live here all by yourself?”

The grin momentarily faltered, Naruto's legs crossed beneath him. “Yeah. Don't you live alone? Your parents are gone.”

Aw, damn, he did say something like that, didn't he? And now he was just digging his grave by building up the lie. “I lived in communal housing,” he supplied, feeling the pinch of guilt as he did so. “So, it… yeah. It’s different, I guess.”

“Oh.” Naruto nodded, eyes closed and arms folded. “But now?”

“Alone,” he confirmed, and drew his leg up to his chest, resting his foot on the seat of the chair. “Same as you.”

“Why come here, then?”

“Uh…”

“You don't got anywhere to stay, right? Least there you had that… communal thing.”

Boruto mentally backpedaled and laughed, humourless and forced, running a hand through his hair. The more he built up the lie, the weaker it got, huh? Damn, he was bad at this. It was a wonder how his father was still taking what he said at face value. “I didn't really think this through, did I? I mean…” The last dregs of fading laughter left him. “I just… wanted to go home. I didn't think about the rest.”

It took a moment for him to realize that wasn't a lie. Once he had, he couldn't stop.

“I didn't think it'd matter,” he continued. “I thought I'd find them here. But… I didn't. There’s nothing here and no matter how hard I look it's not home. And now I’m here, in the middle off all… this . Probably screwing everything up.”

He pried himself out of his ball of grief to see his father staring at him from the bed. He hurriedly covered his eyes with his sleeve, scrubbing away the film of water blurring his vision.

“Damn it,” he bit out. “This is so uncool.”

Boruto continued to hide behind his arms, soaking up the silence like a sponge as he composed himself. Here he was, cracking under the pressure of being left on his own for just half a day. How lame . He thought his dad would say something, maybe pry a little deeper. He heard shuffling, the clack of sandalled feet against the floorboards, first from ahead of him and then from his side. Movement near the fridge, the scrape of chair legs against wood. Then, some time later, the whistle of steam from a kettle.

Boruto lifted his head from his arms, observing as Naruto slid a cup of steaming tea before him. Boruto was never much of a tea drinker, but Mom was.

Dad didn’t come home one night. That was nothing new; Dad rarely ever did. He was too busy being there for the rest of the village to be there for his son. Boruto stupidly thought that night would be different, though, so he waited at the kitchen table even long after Himawari was sent to bed with a slightly crumpled piece of paper set before him. The night held with it an eager energy as he doodled in his notebook, passing the hours until his dad would step through the front door, when he could present him with the letter personally.

Dad never came.

The overhead light in the kitchen broke through the blackness of the night as it creeped near and Boruto hung his head, his body crumbled over the letter. He hadn’t moved when his mother entered, or when she set a fresh cup of tea and sat down next to him.

“I’m sorry, Boruto. I know how important this was to you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Old man wouldn’t care much, anyway.”

He wanted to be the one to tell Dad that he was assigned to Konohamaru’s team, though.

Boruto stared at his reflection in the tea, smoothing his fingertip around the rim of the cup, and took a sip. The tea leaves were old; it hardly held any flavour. Something tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Stupid old man.

Naruto sat across from him, holding his head in his hand with that goofy grin Boruto was coming to find so familiar. “I dunno about all that crap you’re talking about. But you can stay here awhile, y’know. I don’t care.”

And despite it all, he still couldn’t swallow his pride long enough for a ‘thank you’.

Boruto was tired. That wasn’t surprising; it was the middle of the night and he’d travelled to and from the Hidden Time during the day. And boy, had he gotten a workout. It was hard to remember a time where he did that much running around. The latter half of the day may have been more physically subdued, but the mental strain wasn’t pretty, either. But even despite that, he shouldn’t be this tired . And yet he couldn’t sleep.

Dad was over on the bed, snoring away. He left about two hours ago with a panicked, “Crap! I forgot to ask Iruka-sensei for a spare futon! Uhh—wait here, I’ll be right back!”

And he waited. Poked around a bit, found that the fridge was empty save a carton of spoilt milk and the cupboards stocked with instant ramen. Before long, Naruto was back, they set up the futon, and the lights went out.

Boruto rolled onto his back and swept the back of his hand across his forehead. He felt hot and chilled all at once, unsure if he should pull up the blanket or kick it off. He looked to the window, the full moon bleeding down a pale light from where it hung in the sky, and then he looked down. An arm and leg were dangling off the side of the bed, leading him to snort. He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath. Held it. Then released.

I’m hungry.

His mouth twitched. A foreign thought invaded his mind, wordless yet clear with its intent, and he groaned. Eating could wait for morning; if he didn’t sleep now he’d have no energy by dawn, and he’d already made up his mind to investigate what happened once Naruto was off with his team doing missions.

So hungry .

With no will of his own, he picked himself up off the floor. Bare feet padded across the futon and came to a stop at Naruto’s bedside, looming over him.

Wait, what?

No matter what he tried, Boruto couldn’t get his body to listen to him, as though he were locked inside. His arm raised, shadowing his father’s face.

Naruto stirred with a groan and a yawn, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He blinked blearily up at his guest. “Somethin’ wrong?”

Boruto leaned in, his palm lying flat on his father’s chest.

Naruto choked.

All at once his exhaustion was swept away by an overwhelming energy, a vibrant flourish of concentrated power seeping into his core through his palm so fast that it burned . His skin lit up in a glow of blue-white markings, their shape organic and changing and achingly familiar. He watched as his father’s eyes widened and then glazed with a familiar exhaustion.

He remembered the Hokage, a figure of unrivalled strength, sitting in his office with tired eyes.

Boruto pulled away, breathless and frenzied as this strange new energy rippled beneath his skin. His right hand latched onto his left wrist in some vain attempt at quelling the quiver of his arm. From the fading glow, black ink splashed across his skin in twisting markings that coiled up to his shoulder. And then, just as quickly, they were gone.

“The heck is…” No, that wasn’t important. Not now. His attention snapped to Naruto, now lying limp on the bed with half-lidded eyes. Eyes that were looking at him .

Chakra. That energy was chakra he was feeling— his father’s chakra.

So so hungry…

Like a pulse, the feeling was back. Boruto went rigid, stumbling back and away from his father as the voice beckoned him to try again. I’m still hungry , it relayed to him. It has been so, so long .

Looking at how drained his father was, how could he?

Boruto buried the urge deep within him and ran, flinging open the door with force just short of tearing it from the hinges. He took to the streets in hope that putting distance between himself and the—the voice, or curse, or whatever it was—the thing’s target would quiet the white noise buzzing in his head. It didn’t. The moment he flung himself through the door, he felt it—dozens, hundreds of sources of chakra just waiting to be devoured. People sleeping in their homes. Shinobi guarding the village perimeter. He ran and ran and ran and ran and it wouldn’t go away .

He ran until he was no longer within the Hidden Leaf, until Konoha’s walls were nary a speck through the trees, until the voice inside faded out and the pull to collect was nothing more than a burning memory.

Lord Seventh sat at his desk with his robe hanging half off his shoulders. He yawned behind stacks of untouched paperwork and watched with shadowed eyes as his son’s team leader flung open the door and stormed inside. Konohamaru usually had more tact than that.

“Lord Seventh—”

Naruto straightened his back, forced himself to create some sense of formality. He knew Konohamaru wouldn’t care, wouldn’t even bat an eye if he were found dead asleep in there, but maintaining the image of the Hokage was also a part of his job. The least that he could do was push his exhaustion aside to hear the man out.

Naruto folded his hands, one over the other. “Konohamaru,” he breathed. “I’m surprised you’re back so soon. Did something happen with the scroll?”

“It—it’s not that, Lord Seventh,” he stated gravely, with a quavering voice. Konohamaru steadied himself, took in a breath and steeled his nerves. “It’s Boruto. He—he vanished from the excavation site. We’ve been searching for hours but—”

He licked his lips, mouth dry and throat parched.

“I… I think something happened,” he confessed in a barely audible murmur. “It’s not like him. He may be a brat at times—most times—but he would never just walk away from a mission like that. And without a word? No. That’s not Boruto.”

Naruto’s gaze fell to all of the paperwork still left at the end of the night and he rose from his seat, closing the distance between them. Konohamaru shifted beneath his stare. There was a quick, half thought out hand sign and a moment later there was a shadow clone seated at his desk in his stead.

He smiled, tired and worn, and placed a hand on Konohamaru’s shoulder. “Let’s go find him, then.”

Even in times of uncertainty, Naruto had to remain the unending symbol of confidence. He smiled, because that smile was all he could give.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 2

Kakashi Hatake was used to being called into the Hokage’s office at odd hours of the night. His days in ANBU saw more than a few sleepless nights brought on by last minute missions of grave importance, and he could count more than a few times where he’d set out with a team before the break of dawn. So when Lord Third relayed to him that he was being assigned a mission, he wasn’t surprised. Leaving ANBU didn’t change much. There were thoughts, though, of what he would do with his team of genin if he were leaving the village.

He wasn’t leaving the village, it turned out, because his mission involved one of his very own charges.

Naruto Uzumaki was a name that had carried his interests for many years now. He was the son of Minato and Kushina, the son of his sensei, and the jinchuuriki for the nine-tailed fox that terrorized Konoha twelve years before. Naruto was a magnet for chaos and it came as no surprise that trouble would follow him home, whether he liked it or not.

Even Kakashi had to admit that this trouble was very Naruto-shaped, though.

The boy was twelve, maybe thirteen, coming up a little taller than Naruto. Visually, the boys had remarkable similarities, from their faces to their eyes and hair. This kid even shared the markings Naruto had on his cheeks, which had been a trait unique to him up until then. To someone who didn’t know better, they could be mistaken for brothers. Minato and Kushina only had one son, though.

That wasn’t something Naruto would be aware of.

Kakashi sighed, fixed to the rooftop of a neighbouring building. From where he sat, he could make out both boys sitting in Naruto’s apartment through the window and decided that was as good a place as any to camp out. With the latest volume of Icha Icha , of course.

He could see were Lord Third—or, more to the point, Iruka —was coming from with his concerns. For all that he was determined to prove himself, Naruto was a gullible child. Some kid shows up out of nowhere, looking so much like their jinchuuriki, and then makes friends with him? There was something there that didn’t sit right. But from what he observed, and he could have been wrong, it didn’t feel like a scheme. At that current point in time, this Boruto kid had shown no signs of any transformative or deceptive jutsu that could cause him to look the way that he did. Behaviour-wise, he was awkward. There was something very human about that awkwardness, something that didn’t mesh well with the malicious intent that Iruka was certain the kid was hiding behind that eerily familiar face. It was like he didn't know how to act, what to do or say.

Lord Third instructed him to use his own judgement in determining the intent of this strange new variable. So far, Boruto was benign. That could change.

The night was long. Halfway through his book, Kakashi observed the new kid standing over Naruto's bed. There was a strange, far off look in his eyes as he placed a hand on Naruto's chest. Then there was light, bright and loud and blinding as the boy's arm lit up like fireworks. Kakashi shoved his book into his pocket and readied his kunai when the glow abruptly faded, the boy stumbled back.

Boruto was out the door, flying down village streets like there were demons on his heels.

As much as he'd have loved to pursue, that was not one of the main priorities of his mission. The first and most important task he was given was to assure Naruto's safety.

He dropped down to the streets and entered through the gaping doorway of the apartment. There was no need to check for a pulse; Naruto's breaths were visible in the rise and fall of his chest. Even if they weren't, the faint rasp of snoring broke the quiet. He was okay. Looked all kinds of tired, but unharmed.

With a sigh, Kakashi tapped the boy’s cheek, eliciting a groan. Soon, barely-aware blue eyes fell to him. “Naruto. Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere?”

Naruto hissed, rubbing his forehead as he tried with faltering coordination to pick himself up off the mattress. “Kakashi-sensei?” he questioned, blinking away his exhaustion. “What're you doing here…?”

Then he shot up, looking left and right and left again, his eyes wide. He patted himself down, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt where Boruto's hand once rested.

“Where's Boruto?”

Kakashi watched his panic with a critical eye, allowing it when Naruto rose to his feet and stumbled to keep steady. He may have looked recovered, but the drain on his energy was still evident.

“He left,” Kakashi said simply, anticipating it when Naruto made to pursue and grabbing the back of his shirt to prevent it. “Now, now. I think you should rest up a bit.”

Naruto didn't put up much of a fight when he was tossed gently back onto the bed. “What… What'd he do to me? I feel like I just ran a marathon or somethin’.”

Kakashi sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. From the little he saw—and it was only a little, that much was obvious—there were a few possibilities. Naruto being otherwise unharmed eliminated three of them. “By the looks of it, he drained some of your chakra. Not much, mind you. You'd be out cold if he'd taken any more.”

“My chakra?” Naruto echoed, staring vacantly down at his lap, folding his hands together. “But why?”

“Who knows?” Kakashi shrugged, getting himself up from where he was crouched by Naruto's bedside. “I need you to stay here until I can find out.”

“What? No, I gotta—”

“ I'll go look for your friend. You need to stay put.” More than anyone, Naruto was the perfect candidate for a chakra drain like that. If this boy aimed to amass chakra for something malicious then Naruto's reserves were just what he needed. “Try to behave. I'll have him back before you know it.”

Naruto's head hung low. He curled into himself with a muted nod. It was rare for the boy to be so obedient. “Make sure he's okay, would ya?”

“Of course.”

Kakashi clapped Naruto on the shoulder, offered a reassuring squeeze, and set out into the night. He stretched, letting out what must have been his third sigh, and stared at the village bathed in pale moonlight.

“Alright, then,” he breathed. From what he saw, he should avoid Boruto's open palms if they were to engage in combat. That… may make things a little troublesome.

With one final roll of his shoulders, he leapt into the air and vanished into the night.

Boruto's lungs burned with crisp, chilled autumn air as he skidded to a stop amidst the trees. He pressed back against a tree trunk, using it to keep himself upright as he caught his breath. The last time he ran like that was so far back in his memory that he couldn't recall just what it was that he was running to. Or from.

By the time he stopped, the village was a long ways back, no longer a figure in the distance. It was surprising that he covered so much ground in so little time. There was that energy, that chakra, tingling with life in his arms and legs. And now that he caught his breath, he was up to another run. Wasn't the least bit tired.

Huh.

He brought his hand up, stared at it, waited for the faintest hint of black ink still surfaced on his skin, but nothing. The voice was quiet, too—that strange, wordless voice. It kept urging him, nudging him so long as they were near people. Or, near sources of chakra, rather. Human chakra. He could sense it now, somehow . There was nothing around and it was only then when the urge died out within him.

“The hell is happening to me?” he muttered, more to himself than anything.

Boruto slid down the tree and huddled at its roots. He wrapped his arms around his knees and burrowed his head against them, and just breathed.

He wondered what Mom made for dinner tonight. He wondered if she was worried about him, or if she expected him to be away overnight for the mission. They were told they might camp in the ruins of the Hidden Time before they set out. Did he tell her that? He wasn't sure.

Dad probably wouldn't notice, even if he was gone for three, four days. He was always stuck up in his office, working for the sake of the village. Then again, maybe after a good few weeks his shadow clones would pick up on something when he didn’t catch a glimpse of his son at home or in town, or maybe it would take Mom going to him, worried and desperate, for him to finally take notice.

Boruto was fully aware of just how bitter he was. This was nothing new.

Go back .

He twitched. The voice, the so perfectly translated intent , started back up again. A slight burn blazed across his arm and he rolled up his sleeve to watch the return of black ink bleeding across his skin. The markings returned. Instead of freaking out like each time before, Boruto stared hard, analyzing the patterns of their movement, trying to place the symbols that twisted and changed as they flowed up his arm. They were characters—unfamiliar characters like pictograms, and his mind supplied him with images of engravings along the walls of the World Temple. It was a part of the Hidden Time’s culture, though that came as no surprise knowing that it was a Hidden Time scroll that did this to him.

But how did a scroll have that kind of power? No, it wasn’t the scroll itself. There was something else—something that triggered when he touched the scroll. Was it a curse mark, maybe? A seal?

Boruto sucked at this kind of thing.

I’m hungry. Go back.

He twitched again, and his face contorted into a sneer as he clenched his fist. “Yeah, well, so am I!” he exclaimed. After that run, he regretted not finishing his ramen at Ichiraku. “Suck it up. I’m not going back to the village jus’ so you can stuff your face with someone else’s chakra.”

It was in that moment that Boruto realized that maybe, just maybe , he was talking to a curse mark. He scrubbed his hands down his face and let out a drawn-out groan. There was a part of him that wondered if he was still sane. Maybe that was the curse’s aim—for him to lose it and be incapacitated by his own overwhelming insanity.

Even more insane was the fact that it listened . There was silence, and once more the markings dispersed into nothing. Boruto gawked openly at his arm. “Um.” He flexed experimentally, as though the movement would jostle the curse back into visibility. “...Thanks?”

With a steadying breath, Boruto closed his eyes and focused. Something felt… different. About himself. It was more than the strange voice he was hearing—the voice that said no words yet could still be understood—and the markings that came and went on a whim. As he focused on himself, he felt something new, something foreign within him, and latched onto it. This thing wasn’t a part of him. It wasn’t him but it was there, inside him.

Deep inhale, hold. Exhale.

Boruto retreated inward. He wasn’t sure how or why, or where to go from there, but he got a look into what he suspected was… his mind. Or something else internal, anyway. There was nothing but blackness stretching across the infinite expanse surrounding him, a void so empty and real that his curiosity faltered and he wondered just what he was trying to do. But that foreign presence was there, stronger than before, right there before him.

Through the darkness, pinprick yellow eyes stared back at him.

Boruto jumped, doubling back. I’m so lame . He broadened his stance, alert and ready for attack, but those eyes just stared, and stared, and continued to stare. So Boruto, the creative genin that he was, stared back.

The longer he stared, the easier it became to see the faint streams of chakra ebbing away from whatever was lurking in the dark. This chakra felt different from his own. It felt raw and chaotic, harder to control but oh so destructive. It seeped off the beast in waves. No wonder that thing was hungry, if its chakra was just bleeding out of it like that and it was a creature that fed off chakra.

It was then that Boruto realized that the chakra leaving the beast was flowing out into the rest of his body, so much so that he couldn’t even feel his own. The more he thought, the more he wondered if there was any of his own left.

“Hey,” he called, metaphorically puffing out his chest, his mouth drawn into a thin line and fists clenched at his sides. “Did you eat my chakra?”

His only answer was an empty stare.

Boruto stomped his foot and strode forward a few steps. “You did, didn’t you? That’s why I felt so tired before. What the hell ?” He noised his frustration in a sound that could be called a hiss and marched on. The effect was instant, the shadowed beast bristling at his advance, and he wouldn’t back down. “Who do you think you are?! You can’t just—just go around stealing chakra with my body! I’m not just gonna sit back and let you do whatever you want, y’know!”

Despite the vague threat, no matter how fast he walked it felt like he made no advance. Those eyes didn’t get any closer and Boruto felt as though they wouldn’t unless the beast wanted him to get close. So Boruto stopped, crossed his arms over his chest, and huffed. “...What are you, anyhow? Some kinda… curse, demon-thing?”

I’m hungr—

“I know that you’re hungry!” he snapped, digging his nails into his sleeve. “What am I supposed to do about that? I have my own problems to deal with right now. And—Sage, if something happened to Dad because of what you did—”

He stopped. Quiet fell as he rolled over those words, wondering just where he’d been heading. Dad would be okay… right? Boruto pulled away as fast as he could, and that thing was still hungry, so it couldn’t have gotten all of Dad’s chakra. What would have happened if it did, if it just absorbed every ounce of chakra a person had? He didn’t want to find out, but worried that one day soon he would.

Everything about him sagged. His shoulders slumped. He kicked at the formless ground and stole glances at that thing now sharing his headspace. It didn’t seem all that malicious—not towards him , at least—but it was definitely hungry. Boruto could feel it himself, this strange, hollow emptiness that needed filling. It was… confused, Boruto decided. Disoriented. Maybe angry. Angry and demanding to be fed .

Throwing a temper tantrum because Boruto told it ‘no.’

Boruto only realized he was asleep when he woke up. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, the physical exhaustion of his body catching up to him. Even with all of that chakra stored up within him, it wasn’t like it healed physical fatigue. The time he spent sleeping gave his muscles time to rest, and now they ached.

He didn’t have to wonder what roused him; a source of chakra had entered his space. He followed its presence internally, sensing it move through the trees, and pried his eyes open when he felt it enter his personal bubble.

A half-lidded eye stared back at him and there was only a moment before he felt the cool brush of a kunai’s edge to his throat.

Kakashi’s eye crinkled in a smile. “I’ll take it that you’re Boruto, then.”

Boruto swallowed and fought back the disorientation of sleep. “Kakashi.” He bit back the urge to call him ‘old man,’ but using the former ANBU’s name at all was clearly a mistake, and so was the familiarity with which it was said. “Did Naruto send you?”

“Well. Something like that.” That lazy stare searched his person in a matter of moments before the kunai was lowered, Kakashi rising from where he was crouched before the boy. “Now. You’re going to be coming with me.”

A pulse rocked his body and Boruto bit his lip, reminded of the dream he was roused from. He wasn’t so sure that it was a dream, after all. “I can’t.”

“You’re going to,” Kakashi stated with a breathy air of confidence. The kunai twirled around his finger before he set it back in its pouch. “Things may not go so smoothly for you otherwise.”

Boruto let out a frustrated noise. “Bad things will happen if I go back there. I think. I don’t know what’s going on, I—”

“Bad things will happen if you stay here, too,” Kakashi sighed. He bent down and grabbed a firm hold of Boruto’s wrist to pull him up.

The moment that he did, everything stopped. Suddenly Boruto was an observer in a body not his own. His hand twisted and his fingers coiled around Kakashi’s own wrist and then there was that burst of energy. Kakashi noticed—because of course he noticed —and tried to tug away but it was no use, the chakra leaving his body at an alarming rate. A noise escaped the jōnin that sounded like a cross between pain and surprise, his knees buckling beneath him.

Boruto stood and stared down at Kakashi with cool indifference. The markings were there, glowing a path of blue-white light up his arm and to his neck. That emptiness inside filled quickly but unlike last time, there was no abrupt stop. It just kept going and going and going and everything was burning —

He snatched away his hand, shaking from the sheer surge of power , and stared down with horrified eyes at the crumbled form of the Sixth Hokage lying motionless at his feet.

“K—” He choked on the name and tried again, “Kakashi?”

Boruto knelt down, nudging Kakashi’s shoulder with no response. He pressed his fingers to the man’s jugular and breathed his relief. There was a pulse, steady and strong. For a moment there, he thought he killed his father’s teacher.

He stood back up and came to find that the voice was quiet. The foreign entity within him felt content, and everything was right with the world, save the unconscious man at his feet.

He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. “...Sorry ‘bout this.”

With reluctance and a new surge of power that he didn’t know what to do with, Boruto started walking. If he stayed, Kakashi would try once more to take him back to the village. Or, worse yet, he would see what happened as an attack on the village. And then what? Would ANBU be sent after him? Where would he go if he couldn’t return to Konoha?

The Village Hidden in Time. He needed to get back there, to get answers, or find his way back to his time, or to figure out if all of this was real or—or something . He didn’t know. But he couldn’t be there. Couldn’t stay there.

Boruto’s walking stride picked up, the crunch of dry grass beneath his feet shifting into the muddy splat of saturated dirt as the river neared, and then he was running.

The Seventh Hokage was familiar with the World Temple only through pictures that the archivists brought to his office when requesting he send a team to assist them. In person, it held a far more withered look to it, as though the roof could collapse at the slightest bristle.

Of course, if it so happened that Boruto fell victim to a collapse they certainly would have found the kid beneath fallen rubble by then, so he wasn't too concerned.

Konohamaru came on as his lead, with the other two members of their squad left at home for this particular misadventure. They couldn't risk Sarada or Mitsuki disappearing, too. If anything happened to Sarada, Naruto wasn't sure whether he feared Sakura or Sasuke's wrath more.

“Right this way, Lord Seventh,” Konohamaru muttered as they turned through a fake wall, lacking his usual energy as they descended what had been a hidden passage. “We have reason to suspect that he came this way. The traps left by the ancients had been triggered.”

“I see.”

Triggered with nothing trapped. Well, at least his son had good reflexes. Maybe he could take pride in that while mercilessly scolding the brat for worrying them sick.

The journey was long. The temple's underground catacombs were far more vast than its main body on the surface implied, stretching beneath the surrounding ground, beneath even the crumbling, weakened figures of residential housing that encircled it. Eventually, their walk came to an end before the already opened stone door of a guarded room. Within it stood an empty pedestal. Then, on the ground atop a cloth tarp rested an opened, blank scroll. Two archivists hovered over it, muttering to one another, their gloved fingers finding fixed points on the empty, yellowing paper.

The moment he entered, Naruto could already feel the small, fading traces of his son's chakra. He tensed as it billowed about the room, dispersing, and very soon it would no longer be recognizable.

Naruto clenched his fist but managed to keep the frustration off his face.

“We think he was here,” Konohamaru stated, his eyes averted to the scroll. “When I entered, I found that on the ground. I thought it may provide us with some clues to what happened here, but… there's nothing on it. Right now the archivists are trying to find out if something used to be written there.”

He nodded and his steps echoed through the room as he strode in further. His son's chakra was there, yes, so achingly familiar. But there was something else, something old and weathered with time but still standing tall and firm against age and decay.

There was another source here, coming from the pedestal.

Naruto crouched before it, his eyes looming over ancient stone markings until they settled on a small, sloppy seal. His mouth twitched. There was a moment where he hesitated but that moment was short and unimportant. Fingers came up to brush along the seal's lines, and with one fell swoop he smudged it with his hand.

The seal broke and the moment that it did, everything lit up.

From behind the pedestal, Naruto could see familiar black pants bleeding through the still-fading light. He rose to his feet and before him stood a boy half his height, shuffling his feet, looking no one in the eye. His hands were together, forming the sign of the ram.

“Boruto—” Konohamaru stepped forward but Naruto held up a hand, halting him, and they waited.

“Is this—” Boruto ducked his head, his eyes finding the spot where the smudged seal resided. “Is this even working?”

He wasn't seeing them, and this wasn't Boruto. Not really.

Boruto rubbed the back of his neck and his sleeve slid down his arm. Glowing blue markings peeked out from underneath. Giving the boy a thorough glance-over, Naruto could see the same markings climbing up his neck. It looked similar to a curse mark. Similar, but not quite, and the symbols weren't any that he recognized.

Boruto's hand slid down from his neck and he stared at it. “You'd better not be pulling anything, y'hear? Here goes.” Boruto faced forward, staring at a space above the pedestal, a space that ended up being Naruto's chest. “My name is Boruto Uzumaki,” he stated. “I'm a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage. I'm not… really sure who's gonna find this, so I thought I should get that out of the way first.”

It was pre-recorded. Naruto figured as much.

“That's,” one of the archivists looked up from the scroll with a raised eyebrow, “that's the imprint jutsu. The one we sent to Konoha. How did he…”

Naruto twitched but said nothing, a slow-growing understanding upsetting his stomach.

“I was on a mission with my squad—I hope you're the ones finding this. Don't tell Dad.”

Naruto sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

Boruto shoved his free hand into his pocket. Apparently, he had to keep the other still to keep the recording going.

“Sorry for, um. Going off on my own. If it is you, I mean.” Boruto kicked the ground. His movements made no sound, and it was eerie. “I found this place. Or I was led here… by this thing inside of me. It's… I don't know what it is—that's not the point.”

Boruto’s eyes had shifted downward with time, drawn to the ground at his feet. They snapped back up, straight ahead, and for a moment it felt like his son was seeing him . “I grabbed a scroll. It was stupid, I know , but nothing to do about it now. When I did, it…” A frustrated growl rose up from his throat. “I'm not sure if this is an illusion, or if I really ended up in the past. Right now I'm banking on time travel because this ain't going to be any help otherwise.”

Naruto shifted his weight, watching his son with crossed arms and a hard stare. Time travel, huh? Only his son would make such a fantastic mess out of a C-rank mission.

“In my current time, the Seventh Hokage is twelve years old.”

Oh.

“That's the best landmark I've been able to find,” he confessed. “I know it’s not much to go on. Sorry.”

The boy didn't know how lucky he was that the very same man he used as a landmark was the one listening to this message. For Boruto to know his father's age, they must have met up. That meant they either met on a mission or, more likely, the boy made his way back to Konoha. That was good. That meant that he knew his way, knew how to get around.

It also meant that he found Konoha and left again, and that set off a few alarm bells. Naruto wondered about that.

“I don't think there's much I can do where I am,” Boruto said softly, and for a moment the image of him flickered. The glow of the markings on his arm blackened briefly before lighting back up. “I'm hoping someone back home can do… something. I think I found a good place to ride this out. There’s a cave past the trees.” Another flicker. “The coordinates—”

The image of Boruto froze mid-sentence, his markings now an inky black, and it stayed like that for a moment before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

Naruto closed his eyes and focused on breathing. He had to stay calm. He knew there were eyes on him, watching him, waiting for him to grieve his son, but he wouldn't let it end like that. He wouldn't because this wasn't a time for grieving, it was progress. Any progress was good progress.

He opened his eyes, lingering on the empty space where Boruto once stood, and turned around in a flourish. “You two,” he called to the archivists, who jumped at his voice. “Have you found anything?”

One jumped to attention, rising to her feet. She almost tripped over her partner in her haste. “It appears there was writing on the scroll before. There are faint impressions left behind,” she explained. “We can try to recover what's missing, Lord Seventh, but it's going to take time.”

“Thanks. Do that.” He looked over his shoulder at the rather distressed jōnin lurking by the pedestal. “Konohamaru,” he called, and the man jumped to attention.

“Yes, Lord Seventh?”

Naruto smiled. It was tired, and a little forced, but it was warm and assuring and necessary . “We'll find him. Stay strong.”

He meant every word.

Only twelve hours gone and he was already missing the kid's stupid, indignant face.

Like hell the future Hokage was going to sit back and wait . Naruto was a man of many things, but sitting on his arse waiting for someone else to get answers wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t his style. No, he was the type to do things for himself, whether anyone liked it or not. It didn’t matter if he was disobeying his squad leader’s orders, or that he didn’t know just what had happened earlier that night. Nothing changed.

A friend fled into the night after a brief confrontation. Naruto wasn’t about to let him leave like that.

Despite what many people thought, Naruto wasn’t stupid. He knew that if he followed after Kakashi, he would be caught. Then Kakashi would throw him in the direction of Old Man Hokage, or otherwise incapacitate him, and he’d have no choice but to wait out the night. So, Naruto held back. He filled his stomach with instant ramen, chugged two cups of water, and did a lot of fidgeting.

A lot of fidgeting.

Naruto sprang up from bed with an impatient growl, deciding that enough was enough and he was going to set out, whether Kakashi liked it or not!

He hesitated at the wall. This was to be his first time outside of the village; so far his only experience as a genin was running stupid D-rank errands around town with his squad. But he wasn’t about to chicken out now, halfway there!

Naruto couldn’t climb walls yet, he hadn’t learned how, but he knew this village like the back of his hand. It wasn’t hard for him to find a way over, even lacking such abilities; he was used to climbing Hokage Rock and used it to get around the wall. Simple. Honestly, it was a little too simple. Unsettlingly so. But that was a problem for another time because Naruto had a friend to find!

He knew that Boruto couldn’t have stayed in the village, that much was obvious. Sure, it was a possibility if Boruto wanted to keep snatching up chakra from people, but it’d be super dangerous, too. Konoha was the strongest of the Hidden Villages, after all. There were plenty of strong ninja around, and if Boruto went around attacking a whole bunch of civilians, he’d get ANBU on his trail in no time. So, at least to Naruto, leaving the village made the most sense.

The problem came after that. Konoha itself was a fixed point. Walls marked its edges, separating it from the rest of the forest, and searching through such a contained area would have been so much easier. Unfortunately for Naruto, the understanding that his friend would have left just made everything three times tougher. Now, instead of the small space of the village, he was tasked with searching a whole damn forest and then some with no real tracking skills or hints as to which direction Boruto took off in.

Point-blank, it was hopeless.

Naruto’s blind trek through the trees slowed to a halt and he groaned, hanging his head low. “Damn it! Why couldn’t Kakashi-sensei take me with him? This would be so much easier!” He pulled at his hair in visible frustration, just to let something out before he started his journey up again.

All hope was not lost, though, because Naruto had something powerful on his side, something that had never failed him before, not even once.

Dumb luck.

It was maybe an hour or so into his search that, through the overgrowth at his feet, Naruto made out the prone body of a uniformed Konoha nin. Kakashi was lying motionless in the brush, his body still and limp, and Naruto weaved his way through the trees to get to his instructor with a pit of dread settling uncomfortably in his stomach.

“Kakashi-sen—”

He stopped when he saw movement, the slightest twitch, and hurriedly ducked behind a tree even though he knew there was no way the jōnin wouldn’t sense him. Kakashi groaned, sounding tired and worn in a way that he never had before. The lazy, dismissive tone was gone from his voice, replaced by something closely resembling remorse as he picked himself up off the ground and ran a hand over his masked face and through his hair. His movements were jerky, his body stiff and sore, and he was slouching a lot more than usual.

Then, with all the resignation of an underappreciated teacher, Kakashi sighed.

“It’s hard to believe,” he breathed, “that after all these years, I can still be so careless.”

Kakashi swayed slightly on his feet but pressed on anyway. Instead of jumping into the trees with a blink of an eye, he pressed on by food, on the ground, at a dragging pace.

Naruto watched from his hiding spot, blinking confusedly when he wasn’t immediately found out by his teacher. His brows scrunched together and for a while he just observed. Kakashi was not only unaware of his presence but also didn’t seem to be holding up all that well for a guy who, an hour before, was perfectly fine. He wasn’t hurt anywhere; there was no blood and no visible signs of injury. He was tired, though. Naruto thought he understood that particular brand of tired.

He grabbed at the front of his shirt, where he could still feel the fantom hand sucking away his chakra.

Shaking the thought away, Naruto followed as carefully and cautiously as he could. Kakashi, even in his weakened stated, would definitely have a lot better luck locating Boruto than he would. This was just the stroke of luck he needed to get to where he needed to be, and when he got there, er, well… Well, he’d just have to figure that out when he got there, wouldn’t he?

This wasn’t so hard, after all.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 3

Boruto staggered to a halt as he stood before the falling gates of the Hidden Time. He breathed in, faced eastward, and breathed out. The very beginnings of sunrise were poking out on the horizon, a slow and steady wash of orange just barely cresting the black silhouettes of the world. He felt strange. There was all of this power built up inside him with nowhere to go, a power so much greater than what he was used to and just itching to be used but, despite all of that energy, his physical body was begging for rest. He wondered if he could sleep, even now, even with everything that had happened in just one night.

Shoving all his uncertainties into the darkest corner of his mind, Boruto stepped through the gates and made straight for the World Temple.

The Hidden Time was located just beyond the dense forest encircling Konoha, through the furthest reaches of brush right where mountains and rivers cropped up on the edges of Fire Country. On his journey there, Boruto found more than one cave structure while hiking along a cliffside and made a mental note of them for later. If he couldn’t figure out a way back to his own time—or a way to break the jutsu, if it was all a farce—then those would be half-decent areas to camp out at. If nothing else, caves provided shelter and dark clouds were looming to the south.

The ruins were still… well, ruined , but now that he knew what to look for, Boruto could see that the landscape was undoubtedly different than it was the day before when he arrived with his team. In the future, there were tents set up, rest points for the excavators and archivists, even a camping ground. Excavations like those could take weeks or even months , or at least that’s what Konohamaru had gone on about during their travels. The excavators would stay there, away from their families for who knows how long, until every bit of history had been uncovered. Personally, Boruto didn’t see the appeal.

After the excavators were done with the artifacts, the archivists would step in. A big part of their job was to analyze, record and report the teams findings, hence their job title, but just as important was the handling of the artifacts themselves. He heard through his shadow clone what that one lady had said about curses and seals—the one who was talking to Sarada and the others—and how they would have to be removed before they could really look into whatever it was they found. Thinking about that now was a bit of a kick to the knee, a clear warning against picking up unchecked artifacts. He wished that lecture hadn’t been going on as he was picking up the scroll .

Lastly, an archivist’s duty was to recover artifacts to their former quality. Maybe that wasn’t always possible, but they did their best to assure everything was as well-kept as it could be, and no information was missing. If it was, they did what they could to get it back.

Boruto frowned, kicking a rock into the side of one of the smaller residential buildings around the temple.

“Now what?” he asked, waiting for an answer.

Nothing. Not a damn thing. The thing inside him had been perfectly silent ever since absorbing Kakashi’s chakra. It seemed pretty pleased with itself, which annoyed Boruto to no end. It used him like a puppet. He didn’t take kindly to being used.

He took a seat on the front steps of the World Temple and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, just thinking. Going back down to the level where he grabbed the scroll was a start. The scroll, at that point in time, should have been untouched. Of course, that meant that a past copy of that thing that latched onto him would be there, too… so he couldn’t touch the scroll. Couldn’t use the scroll.

He groaned with all of the remorse of a defeated man.

Boruto had very little experience dealing with crises on his own. Konoha, in his time, was a pretty cool place. It was safe and there hadn’t been a war since, well—since his dad was young. Though, in this time, maybe that war hadn’t happened yet. In this time, that war was imminent . There was a chilling thought, but one that he could safely ignore if only for the fact that it wasn’t his problem . Hell, he wouldn’t even be born for a long time to come. It wasn’t his place. So he boxed up any looming concerns of fire and brimstone and focused on the problem at hand.

Boruto had a strong support system back home, even if his dad was rarely suited to hold the title of ‘supportive’. He had his mom and sister, and aunt and grandpa that meant the world to him. At school, he was surrounded by friends, people who could help him if something too big to deal with himself was standing in his way, people who he could help in turn . Sometimes things were repetitive, a bit boring, but at the end of the day the Konoha he knew was a warm and vibrant place and if he went to anyone with as messed of an issue as what he had on his plate now, they would step up to bat and give him the help he needed. Boruto was sure of that.

For the first time, Boruto had nowhere to turn. He had to find his answers on his own, with no one there to back him up. No Sarada to tell him that his plan was a bad idea. No Mitsuki to bail him out when that plan turned south. No Konohamaru to show him where everything went wrong.

But what did that matter, when there wasn’t even a plan to start?

With a groan, he hung his head and closed his eyes. Well, he was here. This was where everything started. There were no chakra signals in the area, no presence in the trees or mountains or even the big pile of dust that now made up the Hidden Time. He was all alone.

He let out a strangled noise of frustration and denial and scratched through his hair.

“Aw, damn it! When did I get so sentimental?!”

He was starting to feel like his old man. That was never good.

Boruto jumped to his feet and turned sharply to face the towering temple doors. Being all mopey wasn’t his thing. That moment was over, and now he needed to get this show on the road. He marched in, mirroring the path he and his team took down into the catacombs below, his hand gliding along the stonework wall. It wasn’t long before a spark of chakra buzzed at his hand, his fingers sliding through the skillfully crafted illusion of a wall, and he made to turn. He didn’t. A thought nagged at the back of his head, pulling his face into a frown.

No. What good would it do, going to a scroll that he couldn’t touch? He didn’t know the first thing about breaking seals or curses, and he couldn’t imagine trying with no mentor, no instructional scrolls and no second chances to be a wise plan.

A thought prickled at the back of his mind.

“Everything you see here has been extracted, but either hasn’t been looked at yet or hasn’t had any cursed seals removed.”

“This one is safe, then?”

“In fact, it’s the only item that’s been checked so far that doesn’t have any protective seals on it.”

Oh. Oh, no, there is something that he can do.

Boruto never thought that the imprint jutsu his clone mocked right before he fell backwards in time would be the one thing that had the potential to get him backup.

His first roadblock, then, was figuring out where that damn scroll had been extracted from. Recalling the shared memories of his clone, Boruto followed the path his team had into the expansive room of tarps and collected artifacts several levels below. Except, of course, the room was empty in this time. The air was stagnant. It was before, too, but now even more so. He wondered how many hundreds of years it had been since the people of Time abandoned their village, how long ago a human last set foot down there.

The wondering ceased, because he realized that he didn’t care all that much. Relics of the past mattered little to him, who was stuck in it.

“Shadow Clone Jutsu,” he called out, his voice echoing in the dark expanse of the cavern, and he wished that he’d thought to bring a light.

A clone appeared through a puff of smoke and grinned at him. Then another, and another.

Four Borutos stood in a circle surrounding the original, and he nodded his approval. Something seemed different about them, though. Something more solid, more real, more tangible than usual.

As much as everyone around him liked to go on about how little effort he put into his training, lately there was a fire lit beneath him where the shadow clone jutsu came into play. He was tired of seeing his father’s, seeing them walking around town, watching them poof away the moment they ended a conversation. And he was tired of being compared to him, to the Seventh Hokage who could create a thousand to his mere four. For the longest time, Boruto was content with those four. They did what they needed to do even if they could only stay within eyesight, and in spars at the academy, they were a vital asset in his arsenal. But now he was a genin. Now he was starting to take short, easy missions out of town. Now the stakes were rising, slowly but surely, and the pressure from the world and for his team was starting to crush him. Even if it wasn’t meant to. Even if they didn’t realize.

After the stunt he pulled yesterday, he supposed they would be well acquainted with the fact that he could now hold a clone a good distance from himself, well out of eyesight. There was a limit to how far his clone could get still; he wasn’t crazy skilled the way that his dad was. Yet. He also only had enough control over his chakra to get one clone to go such a distance; the last time he tried it with two, they both poofed away in a billow of smoke and shame.

But, well. If there was any circumstance that called for expedited growth, this was it.

His eyes shifted momentarily to the light coming from his arms. Glowing markings back in sight. It figured. He glared dully at them and remembered then that his own chakra had been devoured, replaced by that thing’s chakra, and wondered how much of a difference that would make if any at all. What did it mean?

At the very least, that thing had a hell of a lot more reserves than he did, all nice and filled up with stolen chakra that doused him in more guilt.

He sighed and straightened.

“Alright!” he exclaimed with some faint tone of authority, his hands on his hips. “We don’t know where the scroll was excavated from, so we’re going to have to split up.”

“We’re just gonna vanish the moment you take your eyes off us,” the first sighed, throwing his hands behind his head, watching the original with some faint show of boredom.

“Even if we find it,” the second countered, kicking at the rubble, “it won’t make a difference. How the hell are we supposed to understand what’s written? They wrote in a different language, smartass.”

Boruto narrowed his eyes. Why was it always like this? He bet that Dad never had to deal with in-fighting amongst his own damn clones. Knowing that might have tugged at his own inferiority, but he brushed it aside. “Don’t give me that!” They had a point, though, and he knew it. They were his thoughts. He knew them well . “Look—”

“What’s the harm in trying?” the third interrupted, hands shoved into his pockets as he leaned back against the wall. “If we disappear, it’ll just slow us down a bit. Not like we have anywhere to be. Bickering like this is wasting time, too. Let’s just do it.”

The first made to open his mouth but the fourth beat him to it. “Come on. We’re Boruto Uzumaki. We can do anything , got it? And we’re not about to give up before we try.”

Boruto’s eyes widened. That may have been the first time his own clones stood up for him, and he may have been feeling a touch sentimental, and that was stupid because they were clones but he’d spent the last twenty hours with no one to rely on but himself so—

It was nice to know that he had his own back, if no one else did.

“You guys…”

The second clone made a choking noise. “Gross. Aren’t you too old for waterworks? Jeez.”

“Shut up,” he spat, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “The air’s dusty. I got sand in my eye—shut up.”

The first clone rolled his eyes and sighed, twisting around to look down one of the multiple caverns. “In any case,” he started, the mildest of the clones, lacking the familiar bite of the rest of Boruto’s insecurities, “if we’re doing this, let’s get it over with. We’re going to need light. Three?”

Three grinned. “On it.” He ran up the stairs.

The rest waited with bated breath, the original following his mental link as the clone went all the way back to the surface without disappearing. Oh thank the Sage that worked, because if it hadn’t he was going to be so many levels of frustrated.

There was a stretch of time as they waited for Three’s return where the rest just hung around. There was at least some light filtering in through the cracks in the ceiling in that room, but the halls beyond were pitch black. Without a light source, they wouldn’t be getting very far. Boruto didn’t know any jutsu that could provide light and even if he did, he wasn’t confident in having his clones try to use anything. This whole experiment, allowing four clones out of sight, was risky enough as it was without them pulling even more chakra from him for that crap.

Three returned with a few makeshift torches. At the very least, he was glad they taught basic survival in the academy; firemaking wasn’t so hard with a little practice.

The search took a while, but not as long as it could have if he were working on his own. Which he was , technically speaking, but the clones definitely expedited the process. There were five main halls leading from that room and each had their own branching paths to follow. He wasn’t sure how long it was before Four stopped before what could only be described as a room of sealing where several texts were kept and, among them, a scroll tied closed with a red thread. He recognised it, the same thread with a golden clip that sealed the scroll shut, the same one that was handed to Sarada for safekeeping.

Four grinned. “Found you.”

He disappeared into smoke along with the rest, and Boruto doubled back around to find the room for himself.

Boruto wasted no time in snatching the scroll out of the relief in the wall, knowing that it shouldn’t have had a curse or seal protecting it. He realized his mistake when an inky-black mist lifted off the paper and dispersed into the air, his eyes wide and panicked as he tossed the scroll at the wall. It bounded off and rolled along the stone by his feet.

With a small yelp of surprise, Boruto patted himself down, threw off his jacket and lifted up his shirt in horrified search of any new markings across his skin, thankful to find nothing but the ones already on his arm.

On his arm.

They were back again. They were there, glowing the whole time that his clones were activated, and left the moment they did. Boruto wasn’t stupid; even he could see the pattern of how those markings made themselves visible whenever he used his chakra, and whenever the thing inside him made its move in the outside world. He put that together fairly quickly. And they were there again, the short-lived glow flickering out into ordinary black ink. He wasn’t using his chakra, though, which meant…

I ate it .

Boruto swallowed, looking between his hand and the scroll. There was a round, seal-like marking on his palm, its rings coiling around one another, and it seemed to stare back at him.

This was just the paranoia talking. He hoped.

“There,” he tried, momentarily losing his voice, “there was a seal, wasn’t there?”

I ate it.

“A curse?”

It is gone.

Well, he thought with impressive levels of false optimism, that’s one mystery solved.

“Um,” he said, stupidly. “Thank… you?”

The seal on his hand swirled and shrunk, and while all of the other markings faded away it remained, little more than a small black dot at the centre of his palm.

With a hesitance not usually seen in the son of the Seventh Hokage, Boruto gingerly picked the scroll up between his thumb and forefinger, dropped cross-legged on the stone and unclasped the thread holding the scroll closed. It opened to a yellowing but surprisingly well-kept paper with foreign black characters drawn across it. Those damn pictograms again. Boruto sighed, about to mark the mission as a ‘failure’ when he looked a little closer.

“Imprint… jutsu,” he read, licking his lips. His eyes shifted across the page right to left, scrolling each line with frightening understanding as his jaw went slack. “You—”

He looked at his arm, but the markings hadn’t returned. There was a moment where he warred between scared and excited, unsure of just how he was supposed to react.

“You’re doing this, aren’t you?” he asked, turning his hand over to stare at the dot of black ink. It didn’t answer, so he tried again. “You ate the curse, and now you’re helping me read this. I’m right. Don’t tell me that I’m not.”

I won’t.

Boruto blinked, his shoulders slumped, and he could feel a faint tug at the corner of his mouth as he fought back an unneeded smile. Ultimately, he didn’t know what or how to feel about this whole thing. The beast—he had taken to call it a chakra beast, because for all that it ate chakra, it also seemed to be made of chakra—had forced its way inside him and leeched off his energy like a parasite, used him to feed off of Dad and Kakashi like a damn vampire —

And now there it was, eating curses and translating a foreign language all in his head.

“Okay,” he nodded, “alright, now we’re getting somewhere!”

Diving headlong into the scroll’s instructions, Boruto muttered the words beneath his breath, his hands moving in lazy, half-formed signs as he worked through the jutsu, and practiced.

This was the first time something had gone right since he first landed here.

“Curses use chakra, right?” Boruto asked absently as he made his way through the fake wall, down a path he felt that he was starting to know a little too intimately. “Even when they’re sealed. Is that how you ate it?”

Yes.

He offered up an acknowledging hum as he waded through the water and hopped off one path and down onto another, effortlessly avoiding the traps left behind that were starting to feel a bit stale. The chakra beast had been strangely responsive, and it was thankfully keeping its interests to itself and allowing Boruto to do what he needed to do. Like that, having that thing within him wasn’t… well, wasn’t the worst thing in the world, even if he still hoped that they could extract it from him if he ever returned to his time.

There was a grim thought—never returning home. It was a good thing that Boruto had gotten so good at suppressing his insecurities.

He came up to an open door with a pedestal centered in the room beyond, but before he entered he looked around at the pictures on the wall. Now that he could read them, maybe he should offer them more than just a quick glance. There was indeed a riddle, as he expected—something about the answer he sought buried in the depth of true fear. He wasn’t so sure about that; the switch was in another room, in the mouth of a fox statue. Foxes weren’t all that bad. Pests, mainly. The people of Time were so melodramatic.

When he stepped in he saw more writing on the far wall, along the ceiling.

“Time is an ever-flowing current,” it read, also very dramatically. “Learn from the mistakes of our great nation and move forward. Never look back.”

Boruto pulled a face, rubbing the back of his neck. “What if I can’t help it?” he muttered, feeling somewhat insulted that a bunch of foreign pictograms thought they could give him a lecture. “It’s your fault I’m here, y’know.”

That time the chakra beast kept its thoughts to itself.

That was enough of a distraction. Boruto walked into the centre of the room and hovered over the pedestal, brows furrowed as he stared hard at the damn scroll responsible for this whole mess. He felt the beast within him stir and his stomach turned, a wave of nausea overtaking him that was hard to ignore.

“Guess this is your home,” he muttered, keeping the unpleasant weight of his stomach from distorting his features. “I take it you don’t miss it.”

After thinking about it, Boruto determined that if he was going to leave an imprint anywhere, it had to be here. This was where they would look for him. This was where he disappeared. As much as he wanted to leave it in Konoha where people would have easy access to it, he knew that line of logic was all kinds of stupid. It likely would have been found many years before he needed it to be found, before anyone who cared enough to try to get him back would ever get the chance. Then there was the knowledge that between this time and his own, Konoha was destroyed at least once. The imprint seal could very likely be destroyed too. And who was the current Hokage? It certainly wasn’t Dad. Grandpa Third, right? So leaving it in the Hokage office—not that he’d even be able to get in there , with him being an unknown—would only screw up the past more when Grandpa Third inevitably found it. He couldn’t leave it at home; his home wasn’t his yet. The academy—

There were so, so many reasons not to leave it in the academy.

Above all, he attacked both Dad and Kakashi. He didn’t mean to… but that didn’t matter, did it? As far as they would be concerned, he would be labelled an enemy to Konoha and a danger to its people. There were no two ways around it.

At the end of the day, this was his first option. He had faith that Sarada, at least, would notice a strange seal left in the room her teammate vanished from. She was… good at that sort of thing.

With nothing to write with, Boruto crouched down and bit his thumb. A pinprick of blood oozed from the wound, and he used that to trace out the seal depicted in the scroll on the side of the pedestal. It was crude, but recognizable enough, and he stepped back to give himself some room, and took a breath.

He formed the first hand sign, his eyes facing forward. “Hey,” he called. He knew full-well that he was using the beast’s chakra now, that he didn’t have much other choice without his own. “I’m going to be using more energy. Don’t start throwing fits if you get hungry, got it?”

There was no answer, but he didn’t need one. Boruto motioned through the hand signs before settling on the ram and immediately a seal of light formed circles at his feet. That was the start, then. It was recording. At least, he thought it was.

“Is this—” His confidence faltered as he eyed the corner of the fresh seal that he could make out from where he stood. “Is this even working?”

The seal called for his right hand to remain still, but not his left. He unfolded his left and rubbed the back of his neck, perhaps a little too telling of his insecurities, then brought it down to stare at the dot of ink on his palm. “You’d better not be pulling anything, y’hear?”

“Here goes.” He clenched his fist and faced forward, imagining his squad standing right there in front of him. “My name is Boruto Uzumaki. I’m a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage.” He bit his lip. “I’m not… really sure who’s going to find this, so I thought I should get that out of the way first.”

Boruto said his piece, reciting his situation to the best of his abilities. He explained it all—all except the chakra beast because, in all honesty, he wasn’t sure how much he knew about that thing, and right now his biggest concern was getting home.

Before he closed it off, he recalled the caves he’d come across on his journey there. He could wait out there for anyone to find that message, he supposed. At the very least, he’d be away from any major chakra sources, out of the rain and away from any major events where he could cause a big change to the future.

Well, it was probably too late for that.

“I think I found a good place to ride this out. There’s a cave past the trees.” He felt his hand twitched; he wasn’t used to holding signs for so long. “The coordinates… are…”

Boruto’s voice failed him, his hand falling to his side when he saw a lazy grey eye staring back at him from the entranceway.

Kakashi leaned against the wall of the door, his arms folded across his chest, and he looked so completely, utterly tired .

Boruto stilled, his mouth gaping open, trying to form words that just weren’t there. He hadn’t even felt the man’s presence, with how depleted Kakashi’s chakra was and how absorbed he was in the message that he was leaving. A swell of relief filled his chest knowing that the Sixth was still okay, but it was quashed by the overwhelming worry of what did he hear?

Kakashi’s eye crinkled into a smile, perhaps none too genuine, as he lifted a hand to wave at the blond. “Hey,” he greeted casually. “After the night I’ve had, I could use some fun, and you seem to be having a lot of it. Let’s chat.”

Boruto stepped back and the recording seal at his feet broke. He cursed under his breath, dreading the fact that his message was left incomplete. He could try a second time, were it not for the Copy-nin looming ominously across the room, but decided that what he said was good enough.

With Kakashi there now, who’s to say whether those coordinates would be accurate?

“Old man,” he whispered and hated himself for it, his throat dry and hoarse. “I—what did you hear?”

Kakashi pushed off the wall, still smiling behind that mask, a smile that Boruto knew better than to trust. After all, this was the man that was to be the Sixth Hokage. This was the man who headed the village back when Boruto was just a boy. Boruto knew the man well—he was not happy.

Well. Of course he wasn’t happy. Boruto wouldn’t have been happy in his position, either.

“Now, now,” Kakashi eased and closed the gap between them. “No need to get upset. I just want to have a little talk with you, Boruto Uzumaki.”

Oh. Oh no, oh no he heard it.

His eyes darted frantically around the room and he pressed his back to the wall, scrabbling his hands along the stone in search of another secret passage that could save him from this man’s interrogation. There was nothing, at least nothing immediately obvious, and he balled his fist and slammed it back into the stone with a low growl of frustration.

He regretted it. Now his hand hurt.

Kakashi stopped at the pedestal, a hand in his pocket, and the smile fell. “That’s quite the name you’re carrying. I’m inclined to ask where you picked it up—”

"It’s mine,” he shot back, because his name was the one thing he wouldn’t part with. He didn’t give a damn what it would change. “I didn’t steal it, I—”

Kakashi held up a hand in pause and Boruto swallowed his words. “But,” the jōnin continued, “I’m starting to paint a pretty good picture on my own. What you said in that message, how much of it was true?”

Boruto swallowed back his worries and grinned. He shoved down any thoughts that he should confess and hoped that a little more deception could keep him from screwing up the whole timeline, if he hadn’t already. “What, that?” he asked with an easy tone, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I was just practicing my jutsu. Just saying whatever, y’know? To see how well it records.”

“Of course.” There was no belief in his voice but his smile was back as he bent down, his hand hovering over the still-drying blood seal. “So you wouldn’t mind if I broke the seal and watched it over, then?”

“Don’t—” He lurched forward, wide-eyed with his hand outstretched, and he hated himself for how helpless it sounded. Kakashi’s hand stopped just before the seal and he bit his lip and averted his eyes. He’d walked right into that.

“I thought as much.”

Kakashi sighed, hefting himself back up. Boruto thought he saw Kakashi sway, but maybe he imagined it.

“You’re going to be taking a trip back to Konoha with me,” the jōnin stated, offering his hand. “We’ll chat there.”

Boruto stared wide-eyed at the offered hand, and in his mind there was forest and darkness and a prone body lifeless on the grass. He remembered what got him there. “I can’t,” he stated definitively, shaking his head. “You saw what I did, Old Man Kakashi. I can’t.” He pressed his lips together, his head hanging forward, and he stared at his feet. “There’s… something inside me,” he tried, unsure how else to phrase it. “It eats chakra. If I get too close to people, it takes control of my arm and drains them dry. You saw.”

The echo of footsteps reverberated against the walls and Boruto looked up, his eyes wide, the jōnin standing just two feet ahead of him with a cool gaze.

“Well?” Kakashi prompted. “I’m waiting.”

“I—” He ran a hand through his hair, searching his mind for remnants of the chakra beast. It was there, but content. “It’s…” There was no urge, no rush to dive in and leech away the last of Kakashi’s chakra reserves, and he let out a broken, disbelieving chuckle. “It’s not hungry.”

“There, see? It—”

Boruto broke out into a wry grin and launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around the jōnin in a fit of slightly manic laughter. “It’s not hungry!”

Kakashi cringed, stumbling back from the boy’s weight and his own failing stamina, and stood there with his arms awkwardly hovering over the child. “That’s… good,” he tried, but it lacked his former cool indifference.

Boruto pushed himself off the Kage-to-be with a grin, putting some distance between them. It was pretty clear that this Kakashi wasn’t all too fond of invasions of his personal space. Boruto could respect that, if only because he was too elated to care. “I just have to keep it fed. Somehow. And—and then, if I do that, maybe it won’t—you know. Thanks, Old Man!”

“...Right.” Kakashi cleared his throat and recomposed. “That’s all well and good, but as it stands I still have to return with you. Understand?”

His smile faded and he looked away, “But…” He still needed to figure out how to amass chakra in order to feed the thing. Before he did that, how could he return to the village, a place surrounded by morsels of human chakra? It seemed… a bit stupid, really.

“Relax,” Kakashi said smoothly.

Boruto took a deep breath and looked back up, and—

He paled, seeing a familiar mess of blond hair poking through the doorway. Naruto was leaning into the room, eyes narrowed, and the moment he saw that Boruto was looking, he placed a finger over his lips.

Kakashi didn’t seem to notice. With how drained he was, maybe he was too tired. Too distracted. That seemed to be just what Naruto wanted, because he slipped quietly into the room.

It came as a shock that this version of Naruto could be any sort of quiet.

“I’m well aware that there’s more going on here than you stealing people’s chakra,” Kakashi continued. “I’m not blaming you. But that doesn’t matter right now. My first priority is getting you to the Hokage.”

“...Right,” he answered absently, his eyes locked on the awkward sneaking that his father was doing in the background. It looked so… clumsy.

Naruto’s grin did little to reassure him.

“Once there, we can—”

Naruto lunged at Kakashi, wrapping around him like a monkey, one hand covering his visible eye. Caught off-guard and already weakened, Kakashi stumbled back, leaning to try to keep balance.

Boruto was so confused. So confused, but there Dad was, grinning ear-to-ear like an idiot—

“Do it!”

Do what?!

Boruto flailed internally for a bit before raising his hand to his forehead, making a sign and—

This was his first time using the paralysis jutsu outside of training. Kakashi went down, his body stiff and immobile as through restrained with ropes, and Naruto leapt triumphantly into the air.

“Alright!” Dad cheered and instantly ran over to Boruto, grabbed hold of his hand, and pulled him from the room. Before he was given any time to think, he was being dragged through the passages, up the stairs and out of the temple, his dad giddy and laughing like they were having the time of their lives.

Boruto gawked openly at his father’s back with owlish eyes, at a loss for words. He didn’t know why they were running; he just listened to his dad, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do because his dad was currently the same age as him, living in a cramped apartment, eating junk food all day.

“Naruto?” he called, looking back. The temple was shrinking behind them. “Where are we going?”

“Away from Kakashi-sensei! Duh!”

Boruto’s mouth twitched. “I—I get that, but—”

“We gotta hurry!” Naruto exclaimed, his smile fading as he looked left then right, then ducked further into the brush. “Kakashi-sensei won’t stay down for long. Crap, crap! Which way—”

Boruto watched his father’s flailing. It was weird, seeing him like that, all panicked and flustered. He shot forward, dragging his father along as he recreated the path to the caves in his head. “I know just the place!”

Naruto never questioned it, grinning, allowing himself to be pulled.

“Kakashi’s a tracking ninja, right?” Boruto asked, mulling that over in his head. He bit his lip. Those nin-dogs of his would be a problem… “We’ll detour towards the river—lose our scent there, y’know?”

“Got it!” Naruto laughed, no questions asked.

Boruto may have not known why they were running, but he was starting to realize that he didn’t care.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 4

One thing that nagged at Kakashi was the location. From what he knew, there was little public knowledge of the Hidden Time. It was doubtful that Boruto just happened upon it, even if that could be true, were he travelling cross-country. Boruto’s business lied within Konoha. Kakashi didn’t miss the way that his face contorted with something more complex and contradicting than uncertainty whenever the village was brought up. It was important to him. It meant something to him.

He grew up there.

Kakashi brushed the dust and rubble off of his pants and flak jacket, his eye shifting warily from one wall to the other, and he shuddered. Everything was cracked and crumbling and aged. This room held up better than most of what he saw on his descent, but it wasn’t enough to quell the bubbling uncertainty sloshing around in his gut. Thoughts of the roof coming down on him were enough to turn him on his heel and make his way back out the front of the temple, and he was only relieved when there was no longer a roof over his head.

Kakashi eyed his summoning hand, mulling over the idea of bringing Pakkun to his aid. For how little chakra he required, Pakkun was an exceptionally useful summon. But Kakashi’s chakra reserves had been so depleted that he lost consciousness, and while he had a pair of boys to find—one being a jinchuuriki with amazing chakra reserves, and the other—

The other carrying a creature that fed off of chakra.

His eye widened slightly, and then his shoulders sloped and he rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to give his chakra more time to recover, figuring there was no rush because, for all that he was troublesome, Boruto didn’t seem all that malicious. But now that he made the grim connection that the parasite just ran off with its ideal victim, it didn’t seem he had that luxury.

Kakashi bit his thumb and pressed his fingers to the ground. In a billow of smoke appeared a small pug, staring up at Kakashi with half-lidded eyes.

Kakashi sighed, offering the hand Boruto had used to leech his chakra. “I have a scent for you to track.”

“What, no hello?”

“I’m in a bit of a rush, if you don’t mind.”

Boruto was very wet.

In the grand scheme of things, following through the river for an extended period of time was a great way to keep the tracker nin from catching up with them. That didn’t mean he had to like being drenched from the waist down—or the waist up, in fact, as his loving father took his first notable moment of distraction to shove him off his foothold and into the ice-cold water. When he surfaced, Naruto was rolling around in the dirt laughing—getting his scent everywhere .

That was his excuse when he dragged his old man right down into the river with him.

Boruto wrung out his jacket at the mouth of the cave and then tossed it aside, scrunching up his face at the splat it made as it hit the ground. His shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his skin and the white fabric was now a translucent beige that made him grimace. He felt gross, caked in mud and grime and whatever else might have washed onto him in the river.

He took one last look at the high-noon sky and all its picturesque blueness and clouds, mocking him for his lack of sleep and wish for it to just be night , and then turned back into the cave with his hands on his hips.

Dad was sitting cross-legged by the fire, the top of his orange jumpsuit shoved in the corner as he held up his hands to the open flame. And for all that they may as well have been fugitives at that point, he was smiling.

Boruto shook his head, but there was a tug at the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t fully suppress. He sauntered over and dropped down across from Naruto, sitting as close to the fire as he could without the risk of a spark setting his hair alight.

“So,” he started, lifting his own hands to feel the heat. “What’s all this about?”

Naruto looked at him, raising a brow. “What’d’ya mean?”

Boruto rolled his eyes. “Don’t gimme that. Why’d you come after me?”

“‘Cause we’re friends,” Naruto stated, as though it were the dumbest question in the world. “And you looked scared.”

Boruto pulled his mouth taut and averted his eyes to the flames. He buried the twinge of embarrassment he felt beneath a layer of who-cares-it’s-only-Dad. The crackle and pop of fire filled the silence as he collected his thoughts. “I attacked you.”

Naruto shrugged. “It’s gonna take more than that to take out the future Hokage, y’know.”

He twitched, stealing a glance at his father. He thought… but the more that he thought, the more he wanted to kick himself. Dad was never the type to hold a grudge. Dad had a temper, sure—like father, like son—but it was quickly abated and rarely lingered. How could he ever expect differently?

A soft chuckle rose up from Boruto’s throat and he leaned back, propping himself up with his arms. “Figures,” he muttered. “I, uh… I’m sorry. ‘Bout what happened. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know,” Naruto stated simply. “That’s why I came to rescue you.”

Boruto tilted his head. “Since when do I need rescuing?”

“No one ever gets away from Kakashi-sensei, y’know!” Naruto laughed, crossing his hands over his chest, his eyes closed and squinted. He looked weirdly fox-like. Mischievous. “No one but us!”

A slow grin stretched across Boruto’s face. “Did you see the look on his face?”

“I was too busy runnin’.”

“Old Man Kakashi was so surprised,” Boruto stated, lowering further onto his elbows. “He didn’t see you coming at all . And then, when I used the paralysis jutsu—”

“That was so cool! You gotta teach me that!”

He raised a brow. “The paralysis jutsu? What, you don’t know it yet?”

“Nu-uh. I, er… I mean…” It was Naruto’s turn to look away as he reached around to rub the back of his neck. “I don’t know much. I’ve got my sexy jutsu—”

“Your what?”

“—and my shadow clones. I didn’t… do well in the academy, I guess.”

Boruto stared in open disbelief. How could the future Hokage not know such a simple jutsu? It was D-rank. Shouldn’t he have been a child prodigy or something? One of those people who was born skilled, learned fast, and outclassed everyone around them? Though, the image of someone like that didn’t mesh well with the image he had of Dad, young or old. This kid was all over the place, a bit of a mystery, with a thought process that only he could understand. And the old man? Well. He was a good-for-nothing who still had trouble getting himself out of bed in the morning. At least, Boruto thought that he still had trouble getting out of bed. The last time he went to wake his father up… when was that, exactly? It had to have been a while back; his father rarely ever came home anymore.

Boruto never asked to know much about his father’s past. What did it matter to him what Dad was like growing up? Who cared if he was a prodigy or a good-for-nothing back then when he wasn’t even there for them now? In a way, his lacking interest was a statement. Maybe his father never saw it that way. Maybe Dad didn’t even notice. It didn’t matter.

Dad was the Hokage first and a father second.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he saw that grin on him, leaning in, and he leaned away. “...What?”

That look on Naruto’s face did not scream ‘benevolent Hokage.’ That look promised trouble.

“Teach me,” Naruto demanded, scooting closer. “You owe me for the rescue.”

“I’m not—” He frowned and pushed himself back up. “Why did we run, anyway?”

“Kakashi-sensei was gonna take you back to Konoha, right?” Naruto answered the question with one of his own. He leaned over, snatching a branch off the cavern floor to roll the logs and stoke the fire. “You didn’t want to go, so you shouldn’t have to.”

“Oh.”

Simple logic. It suited Dad. In the moment, he’d been beyond confused. Kakashi seemed to understand the situation, to some extent. He was, at the very least, aware that the attacks were not of Boruto’s own will and that he had little control in the moment. That was… good. It felt good . That whole time, he’d been worried they’d all see it as an attack on the village, see him as some sort of enemy to be dealt with accordingly. Kakashi showed him differently.

With that sort of support, he’d wondered why Dad rushed the old man and had them high-tail it out of there. Then again, Dad probably hadn’t known what was going on—just saw a chance to help and took it.

Boruto lowered his head, shadowed his face behind his bangs and hid a smile.

Stupid old man.

He sucked in a breath, steeled himself, and faced forward. Naruto was in his direct line of sight. He held up his hand, palm facing out, to show the pin-prick dot of black ink ever-present on his palm. Naruto leaned in for a closer look, squinting, and he didn’t need to say anything for his questions to be understood. Boruto figured that, after everything, Dad deserved at least some level of honesty. Especially as a victim. “This,” he said, and hesitated, “is a curse mark. I think. I’m not sure.”

Naruto made a sound of feigned understanding and reached out, poking the dot and eliciting an eyeroll. “From what?”

“I—” Boruto cleared his throat to suppress his embarrassment. There was no way that he was telling his father that he waltzed up to an ancient scroll and snatched it off its pedestal without a second thought like some sort of idiot. “That’s not important! Point is, ever since I got it there’s been this… thing sealed inside me, eating my chakra. A chakra beast.”

“Chakra beast?” Naruto leaned back and crossed his arms again, his face scrunched up as he mulled that over in his head. “What’s that?”

“Hell if I know!” His arm dropped to his side, fist balled and white-knuckled. “Problem is, it’s not happy with just my chakra, so it tries to get it from other places. Like you and old man Kakashi. It uses me for that. What happened last night—I didn’t want that. I promise.”

Naruto hummed as though he was thinking it over, then nodded. “I believe you.”

Well, that was easy.

It was like a weight was lifted from his shoulders and Boruto fell back, his back meeting the cool rock beneath him, and he watched the flickering flames light up the roof of the cave in an orange hue. It was hard to keep his eyes open. Suddenly he was reminded of how little sleep he’d gotten ever since arriving in this time, something that his body was all too eager to remind him of as his every limb melted into the ground like jelly.

“Hey, hey,” Naruto’s voice sounded far away, but Boruto wasn’t out yet. He acknowledged Naruto with a short grunt. “I get why you left. But…”

“Mm?”

Naruto scooted closer, hovering above his half-asleep companion. “But Kakashi-sensei and old man Third’ll listen if you explain things. They’re not like the rest. And you can stay at my place. No strings attached.”

Boruto let out a soft snort. “I don’t need your pity.” He said that, repressing the soft bubble of emotions that came with Dad’s support.

“It’s not pity,” Naruto pouted, nudging the prone body with his foot and eliciting an annoyed groan. “I can relate, is all.”

Boruto had half a mind to ask what he meant, but as he slipped away into sleep he just couldn’t be bothered.

“Guys like us gotta stick together, y’know?”

A long shadow cast across Naruto’s sleeping body, his son hovering over him with a mischievous grin.

Boruto woke to the bright hues of sunset as they leeched their way into the cave. As his stomach twisted and complained, the last time he ate being at the ramen bar, he gathered his sleep-laden thoughts and checked their clothes. Dry as a bone. He was grateful for that as he slipped on his jacket, but his nose scrunched up at the feel of it. Dry, but not clean. Even after the little river dive they took, he stunk to high heaven.

All he wanted was a bath, a meal, and a day in bed playing video games.

Naruto was snoring, sprawled out unceremoniously across the cave floor, lying on his back. Some things never changed; Naruto then was a mirror image of the Naruto of decades later. It brought Boruto back to the good ol’ days and he wanted nothing more than to be vindictive. But this wasn’t Dad—not entirely—and he knew well enough to hold back any ideas of an unsavoury awakening. Even if the look on Naruto’s face would have been worth it.

“Rise an’ shine, Sunshine,” he greeted loudly, tossing the top of Naruto’s orange jumpsuit down onto the lump of sleeping genin. Naruto stirred and groaned, the fabric covering his face, and patted around until he found the end of it, pulling it off his head and glaring through squinted eyes. “Let’s get a move on, Princess.”

Naruto looked much too tired to care for the taunting, lurching upright like a zombie and staring vacantly at nothing. He blinked, slow and uncomprehending, and then scratched his head with a yawn.

Boruto rolled his eyes, nudging Naruto with his foot. “Up, up, up. We’re burning daylight. I wanna be out and moving before we’re left walking through the dark with a tracker nin on our trail.”

“Mm?” Naruto’s head turned slowly, finally registering the one talking to him. Dark circles made him look older than he was, tired in a way that confirmed for Boruto that this really was the Seventh Hokage that he knew. His old man always looked like he’d gone three weeks straight on caffeine and no sleep. “Where we goin’ now?”

Boruto turned around in a flourish and wandered over to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the warm evening colours swathing the forest. He took a deep breath, if only to fill himself with some false sense of certainty. “Konoha.”

Naruto blinked, finally awake enough to lift his arms, and he worked his hands around his jacket, fumbling to pull it over his arms. “I thought you didn’t wanna go back.”

“Yeah, well.” Boruto leaned his forearm against the cave wall and smiled. He wouldn’t say aloud that Naruto’s support gave him courage, or that Kakashi’s reaction gave him hope. He wouldn’t, because both admissions held implications he rather not deal with at the moment. “Things change. I’m hungry.”

The mention of food had Naruto whining as he wrapped his hands around his middle. “I could go for some Ichiraku…”

Boruto snickered. “You can’t just eat ramen every day, y’know.”

“But—”

“Tell you what,” he interjected, spinning around to face Naruto, hands on his hips. “When we get back, I’ll make us food. How’s that sound?”

“You can cook?” Naruto looked skeptical.

Boruto stuck up his nose. “Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty awesome at whatever I do.” Of course, he couldn’t say that he helped his mom with dinner sometimes, because as far as Naruto knew, he had no parents. Even Dad could cook—in the future, at least—and Boruto may or may not have picked a few things up from side-eyeing him on the occasions where he cooked for Mom, rare as they were in later years.

“Uh-huh.” There was very loud disbelief in Naruto’s voice. He dropped it there, though, and finally picked himself off the ground, looking just as much asleep as he was ten minutes ago. “Alright, ‘m up…”

Boruto threw his fist into the air and marched forward. “Hell ya! Let’s go!”

They started the long trek back to the village with a lot of one-sided chatter on Boruto’s end—Naruto was still too tired to form coherent sentences, apparently. That was fine. Boruto was fine with filling the silence. He was used to it. More than that, though, was the desire to keep his father from thinking.

If Naruto thought too much, he’d want them to go back.

Boruto wasn’t stupid. He knew that returning to Konoha wouldn’t be as easy as walking unhindered through the front gates and signing in. He was well aware that Kakashi was tailing him long before the first chakra-draining incident, that important people had taken note of his presence in the village and gotten wary, and that he would have a lot of questions to answer if he planned on going back. He suspected that Kakashi witnessed the incident with Naruto, that he was watching all-the-while, and that he was reporting directly to the Hokage.

Boruto knew that when they made it to Konoha, he wouldn’t be allowed to just go right back to Dad’s apartment. But if he didn’t return to Konoha, where would he go?

Konoha was his . His one-and-only, precious home. Time could never change that.

Being dragged back home by nin-dogs felt too much like losing so, at the very least, Boruto was going to go back on his own terms. Boruto Uzumaki didn’t just lose. Not without a fight.

If nothing else, the kid was tenacious.

Kakashi was impressed, if a little annoyed, when they lost Boruto’s scent at the river. It was hardly enough to shake him and Pakkun, of course, but it pained him to admit that it slowed them down. By noon, he was unamused. By evening, he was all sorts of done with the whole ordeal. On the brightside, his chakra made a full recovery. But this little game of cat and mouse was drawing on too long for his liking. They were catching up, though. Steadily.

It occurred to him that he was being led in a circle. After the ruins, the boys put more distance between themselves and Konoha, but later dipped back around and were headed straight for it. He found their campground off the cliffs at the edge of the forest. Kakashi wasn’t sure what their goals were, heading back to Konoha after sending him on a Sagedamn forest-wide scavenger hunt, but he wasn’t complaining. If they wanted to make it that much easier for him to bring them home, so be it.

There was one concern that cropped up when he thought of bringing them back, though, and that was what to do about Boruto’s little issue. The kid was right; it would be dangerous to keep him around people when he had no control over his curse. He was sure that something could be done about it, though. If they could seal the nine-tails, they could seal a parasite.

He just hoped this particular seal didn’t claim lives.

“Boss,” Pakkun called.

Kakashi’s eye lifted lazily to the trees ahead of him. “I know.”

They were close enough that he could scent them. This was good, but he made the mistake of being too trusting and sympathetic twice now and he wasn’t about to go in with the same proffered hand he had before. He knew now how stupid that show of trust had been. Maybe he was getting soft over the years, because his time in ANBU taught him that even a child could be used as a weapon, that it didn’t matter the age of his target and that he should never underestimate them. He let his guard down because one was Naruto, and the other looked like Naruto, and looked scared.

Minato, your son is turning out to be a real pain.

Kakashi observed from the trees. Below, two blond genin walked leisurely through the brush, looking similar enough that they could have been mistaken for twins. Boruto was leading the way, his hands behind his head and a grin on his face, no longer with that forlorn look he held onto all last night. Behind him, Naruto was dragging through the grass with a yawn.

“How much longer?” Naruto whined.

“A while ,” Boruto replied, rolling his eyes. “You asked like ten minutes ago.”

“But I’m hungry, y’know.”

“And I haven’t eaten since Ichiraku. We’re genin—suck it up.”

Kakashi withheld a sigh. Of course they were bickering. Naruto’s complaints were nothing of a surprise. Naruto was Naruto. But Boruto seemed different, more sure-footed. Grounded. Last night, he’d been so worried and anxious that he may as well have curled up into a ball and shut out the world.

“Hey,” Naruto called after some time, unaware of the shinobi hiding within the canopy of trees, “how’s the thing?”

Automatically Boruto looked down at his hand, the same one he used to leech chakra, and wiggled his fingers. “Quiet. Hasn’t said a damn word to me all day. Not hungry yet.”

“And when it is? What’s your plan?”

Boruto hummed, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow. “Mm… we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Well. That was a very different approach from the one he took last night. A lot more reserved, a lot more confident. Were that his attitude before, they may have gotten somewhere. Somewhere that didn't include a cross-country trek across the Land of Fire.

Kakashi was not bitter.

“I'm not letting it do whatever it wants,” Boruto continued, his fist clenched shut as he twisted to face Naruto, grinning. “Not without a fight.”

That was a lot of certainty directed Naruto's way. He wondered where it came from, but seeing the way the kid was looking at Naruto, it wasn’t hard to figure out. There was a distinct possibility that the boys were related in the future. No, Kakashi would place it closer to certainty. They looked alike, uncannily so. This wasn't a henge, at least that much was clear, and the similarities they shared were the kind only seen through family ties. Looks like that were no coincidence.

‘Son’ crossed his mind, but he quashed it. The Naruto he knew was twelve years old and he didn't want to think of that kid having kids of his own. It made Kakashi feel his age and then some.

He sighed, and for a moment Boruto's eyes met his. There was a discreet wave, one unknown to Naruto who was too busy being tired and miserable to take notice, and then the moment was over and Kakashi was left faintly amused.

Perceptive kid. If he knew that they were being watched that whole time and hadn't tried to retaliate, that meant Boruto had accepted what would happen when they arrived in Konoha. Naruto was a different matter entirely. Naruto was unaware. Undoubtedly.

This was a mess just waiting to happen.

It was dark by the time they arrived at Konoha's walls. The guard stationed there looked confusedly between the boys, his eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“Uh—” He tried to find his voice, pointing between them. “Two Narutos?”

“Boruto,” the fugitive corrected with a grin, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Boru…” The guard snapped his fingers. “The kid from the other day!”

“You got it, Old Man.”

“But how—”

The guard swallowed his words when met with the smiling eye of Kakashi Hatake as he arrived behind them in a whirl of wind and leaves. Rather than question it, he shut his mouth and allowed them entry without any interrogation. By that point, most of the villagers were aware of Kakashi's former ANBU status. They didn't question it when strange things happened around him. Even after his retirement from ANBU, his position close to the Hokage had people expecting those same sort of strange, secret missions to still be his domain. Two Narutos was hardly the strangest thing their minds could come up with.

Naruto followed the guard's eyes and jumped away when he spotted his instructor looming behind them. “Kakashi-sensei?!”

Boruto twisted around, met Kakashi's eye evenly and waved over his shoulder as he walked through the gates. “Yo. Guess it's about that time.”

Kakashi followed behind, his hands in his pockets, and Naruto hurried to keep up. Once inside the village, he caught Boruto staring up at Hokage Tower.

“This way,” Naruto directed, nodding left towards his apartment. “Hurry, I'm hungry!”

Boruto looked over with a smile and Naruto's face fell. He turned to Kakashi and sighed. “We should get going, huh?”

Naruto's shoulders slumped. “What'd'ya mean?” He looked from Boruto to his instructor and back again. “Kakashi-sensei? What's going on?”

Kakashi sighed and stretched. He placed a firm hand on Boruto's shoulder—there was hesitance there, a mild concern that there would be a repeat of the last time they came into contact, but nothing happened. “Your friend here has some business with Lord Third,” he said simply, heavily, with all that implied.

“What?” Naruto fidgeted and forced a smile. “O-oh, um. He's just gonna to talk to old man Hokage?”

It was Boruto’s time to sigh. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and poked Naruto’s forehead. “I'll be back when I'm back, ‘kay? Let's take a raincheck on dinner.”

“...Fine.”

Despite the word of agreement, it was pretty clear that Naruto felt anything but okay as he watched the jōnin walk off with his buddy. He stood there in the shrinking distance, his body stiff and hands white-knuckled at his sides. Kakashi caught the way Boruto glanced back, too, even if it came off a lot more concerned.

Boruto made his own way to the Hokage's office, headed straight for it. Kakashi didn’t have to say a word. It was quiet as they walked and Kakashi almost pulled out the copy of Icha Icha that he had in his pocket but thought better of it.

“He's still standing there,” Boruto observed, and Kakashi craned his neck around to see an orange and yellow speck shrinking into the distance. Boruto chuckled, the sound broken with uncertainty, his face lowered to the ground. “That stupid old man. This whole time he's been complaining ‘bout how hungry he is. He should go eat already.”

Kakashi hummed in acknowledgement, distinctly recalling the bell test and the way Naruto tried to steal lunch for himself. That was a selfish, dishonourable move if ever there was one. But there was more to it than that, and Naruto wasn’t as selfish as he first appeared. He had grown since then, too, even if only a little.

“He's not going to, though, is he?”

Kakashi let out a soft snort. “It's doubtful.”

“Really…” Boruto scratched his head, his steps slow and dragging as they came to stand before administration. His tone was somber and soft and Kakashi would have been fooled, had he not seen the ghost of a smile behind the kid’s bangs. “What a stupid old man.”

Hiruzen leaned back in his chair and twisted around to look out the window at the blackened sky. Night fell once again. In all honesty, he was surprised that Kakashi had yet to return with the unknown child that so resembled their young jinchuuriki. In his last report, Kakashi explained that Naruto had been assaulted during his watch and, in that time, this Boruto Uzumaki child fled the village. Actions like those spelled guilt, unfortunate as that may have been, and it seemed Iruka’s suspicions were right on the mark.

According to Kakashi, Naruto was uninjured. This unknown child had drained his chakra—some, but not all. He stopped partway through of his own accord. It was relieving to hear, knowing just how large Naruto’s chakra reserves were because of the nine-tails.

He shifted where he stood and sucked in a deep breath of smoke from his pipe as he stared out at the stars, mulling over this strange little mishap. If this were some poor attempt at enemy infiltration, he was going to have a new headache to deal with. They would have to interrogate him and Hiruzen very much hoped the boy’s appearance was a henge, that they wouldn’t have to subject a child to the Torture and Interrogation Force. Ibiki wouldn’t be swayed to go easy on him just because of his age.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. From the window, his eyes caught a blond head of hair below, washed out into a muted grey in the darkness. Kakashi stood to the boy’s side and soon they disappeared behind the wall of the building. It was good to see that the boy wasn’t bound or tied, though he had to question Kakashi’s leniency.

The Third Hokage blew out a ring of smoke and grumbled to himself as he lowered into his chair. He retrieved his hat from where it had been discarded atop the desk and put it on. The moments of freedom he’d had in his thirty years of service always seemed so sparse. He looked forward to the day when someone else would take up the chair, when all of this would be their problem, and he could retire for good.

There was a knock at the door, cutting through his tranquil quiet, but before he could answer the door was flung open and on the other side stood a grinning blond, strutting in like he owned the place.

Hiruzen was getting to be too old for this.

Boruto Uzumaki looked left then right, his eyes following the pictures of previous Hokage framed on the wall, then reading the kanji on the desk. His hands were in his pockets, mirroring Kakashi who was looking very unimpressed behind him. Then, finally, he noticed Hiruzen. His eyes were large and wondering, something akin to confusion settling on his face, and then he grinned.

When Boruto ran close, Kakashi’s arm shot out to hold the boy at a distance. Boruto pouted but didn’t fight the hand on his shoulder, and then his grin was back, and he looked so much like Naruto in that moment that it was damn-near unsettling. “Hey, Grandpa Third.”

That, even more so.

Hiruzen’s eyes narrowed and he propped his elbows atop his desk, his fingers interlocking as he considered the child that stood before him. After surviving three world wars and heading Konoha for somewhere over three decades (at some point, the years started to blend together, and he could only hope that this wouldn’t still be going on at the end of his days), it took a lot to surprise him, and even more to get him to show that surprise on his face. This wasn’t enough—not for the latter—but the same could not be said for young Kakashi.

“I’ll assume you’re Boruto Uzumaki,” he breathed, and his eyes flickered down to his pipe but he resisted the urge to grab it. “You’ve been causing quite a stir these past few days.”

“I got that impression,” Boruto stated, and there was something smug to his voice that set him apart from young Naruto. Not that Naruto wasn’t overconfident in his own right, but Naruto’s confidence compensated for his own insecurities. Boruto’s felt genuine. “Sorry about that. Really. Didn’t mean to have your guys all throwing a fit over me.”

“I’ve been hearing things,” Hiruzen stated, analyzing, catching it when Boruto’s grin wavered. “A little bird told me that your left hand absorbs chakra.”

There it was. The grin was gone and Boruto wrenched his shoulder free of Kakashi’s hand. He closed the distance between them with slow, even strides this time, rather than rushing over again and setting everyone on edge. He held up his hand, his palm facing outwards, and Hiruzen studied the black mark that he found there.

“It’s this,” he said. “A curse. I think. Or some sort of seal. There are more markings like this when I use my chakra. They spread.”

Hiruzen looked past the boy to Kakashi, who nodded.

“I’ve seen it,” Kakashi confirmed.

“Look: I’ll answer all your questions.” Boruto pulled his hand back, shoving it into his pocket and scuffing his shoe against the floorboards. “I’ll tell you. But only you.”

The implication was far from subtle and Hiruzen was amused, if nothing else. He cast his gaze to the jōnin on standby and nodded. Kakashi didn’t hesitate to bow and step out of the room, leaving the Hokage and the boy alone in the office. Kakashi would no doubt be waiting there on the other side of the door. That was fine. He trusted Kakashi not to eavesdrop; that man was nothing if not loyal.

Boruto was less trusting. He cast a wary gaze at the door, eyeing it, but seemed satisfied as minutes of silence passed. His eyes went back to the Hokage portraits, softening a little. “We have the same one at my house,” he said simply, “of Grandpa Fourth.”

Hiruzen followed his eyes to the portraits. Minato was the last one, the Hokage with the shortest run. Hiruzen had lived long enough to know that the Hokage seat had a high turnover rate and low mortality. Knowing that, it was tiring to know just how long he’d held his position for. Never a day went by where he didn’t wish it was Minato there instead of him, but he was an old fool for holding on to a long-dead dream.

“You seem very familiar with the Fourth Hokage,” he observed, if only to get the boy talking. Boruto seemed hesitant.

“Well, not like I ever met him. But he’s always been there, y’know?”

Boruto’s head swivelled around, pouting when he didn’t see a chair in sight, and he moved over to lean against the wall. His clothes were caked with mud and stained by grass. There was a tear in his jacket, his hair was a mess, and he looked like he hadn’t seen a shower in weeks. Moreover, he looked tired. Kakashi’s hunt must have taken its toll on him.

“Enough,” Hiruzen stated, closing his eyes. “I would like answers.”

Boruto snorted. “Where to start?”

“Your name, for one,” Hiruzen pressed. “And why you’re currying favour with Konoha’s jinchuuriki.”

“Jinchuuriki?” Boruto echoed, his brow raised. “That’s… I know I’ve heard that word. Wait, hold on. I got this.”

Hiruzen sighed and leaned back into his chair, finally giving in and grabbing hold of his pipe. This was turning into a very long, unhelpful conversation. “The human container for which a tailed beast is sealed.”

Boruto’s face lit up. He hit his fist against his palm as understanding hit. “Oh! You mean Dad!”

Hiruzen stared at the boy a long while before taking a very long, warranted drag from his pipe.

“Er…” The boy rubbed the back of his neck. “Naruto. You mean Naruto, right? Crap, okay. I really gotta start from the beginning. Okay.”

At the very least, Hiruzen was optimistic. Surely they were getting somewhere. That there confirmed that this Boruto child was indeed well aware of what Naruto was. He would consider it progress, if not for that one, horrible word that sat heavy on the Hokage’s mind, a prelude into the mess that was about to spill from this boy’s lips. He braced himself.

“You won’t believe me,” Boruto assured. “But I’m going to say it anyway. I’m from the future.”

“You’re correct,” Hiruzen affirmed, not skipping a beat, “I don’t. Convince me.”

Boruto pouted and crossed his arms, looking around the room as though there were answers hidden in plain sight. When that failed, he pushed off the wall and stood, back straight and eyes forward, and recited like a mantra, “My name is Boruto Uzumaki. I’m a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage. C’mon, Gramps. I know you see it. Who do I look like to you?”

The Hokage sized the boy up, even though he didn’t really need to in order to know what Boruto was getting at. The face was all Naruto, a face of trouble hidden beneath bright blue eyes. “It could be a henge.”

“You know it’s not.” Boruto rolled his eyes and sauntered up to the desk, shaking free of his jacket. The material crumpled to the floor in a heap, revealing a not-so-white short sleeved shirt and bare arms. “If I were using chakra, the mark would light up.”

“Show me.” It was a formality; Boruto was obviously planning to do just that.

Three hand signs later and a Boruto clone appeared through a puff of smoke. The clone remained unchanged, but the effect on the original was instantaneous; glowing white-blue markings spread across Boruto’s left arm, up to and around to the back of his neck, and the brat stuck up his nose.

“See?” He huffed, folding his arms one over the other and standing tall, daring the Hokage to challenge him. “And the moment I stop,” the cloned poofed away, the markings faded into a dull black, and then receded, “they go away. This is me, Gramps. Like it or not.”

Hiruzen remained mildly unconvinced, partially because of his own inflexibility and partially because he presumed that if this was a ploy by one of the other hidden villages to get to the jinchuuriki, they would have thought of every angle to make the story the most convincing that it could be.

Boruto noticed, if the scowl was anything to go by. “Look,” he said, placing a hand atop the desk, “you don’t have to believe me. But I said I’d be upfront with you so I will. You’re the Hokage, after all… If I can’t tell you, then I can’t tell anybody. I know I ran, but… man, you know, it’s been a really confusing few days and I can’t keep doing everything by myself. I’m getting nowhere . I can swallow my pride and admit when I need help.”

They locked eyes, Hiruzen waited for the boy to look away, to flinch, to give some tell that he was lying, but when there were none, he nodded and motioned for Boruto to continue.

“Naruto’s my old man,” he stated bluntly, and even though Hiruzen knew that was what he had been insinuating, it still floored him. “The Seventh Hokage. Don’t get me wrong—he’s still a good-for-nothing layabout. I always catch him eating ramen in his office.”

Seventh. Hiruzen sucked in a breath and turned to the four portraits lined on the wall. “Seventh,” he repeated, rasping out a chuckle and shaking his head. “And who are you insinuating is the Fifth?”

“You can probably answer that yourself.”

Tsunade.

“And the Sixth?”

Boruto hunched his shoulders conspiratorially and pressed one finger to his lips, pointing to the door with his other hand. “Shhh.”

The Hokage stared, a little dumbfounded as he looked past the child to the door where Kakashi was undoubtedly keeping guard on the other side. He could see it; the boy was sharp and skilled, a genius in his own right, but perhaps lacking the ambition needed to carry out the job—ambition that Naruto held in spades, even now at twelve years old.

Hiruzen hated himself for considering that the child may have been telling the truth.

Boruto frowned. The lighthearted amusement was gone from his face. “I messed up,” he confessed. His voice was soft, quiet, betraying the self-assured nature he’d displayed up until that point. There was something else there, something edging on self-reproach. “Put simply, I did something stupid on a mission. My team was sent to retrieve a scroll from an excavation site, and I, um…”

Those words were laced with remorse, the kind that could not be faked.

“I’m so stupid ,” he hissed, scuffing his shoe against the floor. Then the words just started flowing from his lips like water. “I grabbed an artifact. A scroll. I didn’t think it could have countermeasures against theft on it. I don’t know what I was thinking. But then I grab it, and the ink just—it just leeches onto me —and suddenly I’m in the past, Dad’s shorter than me, and—and the village is entirely different. I mean, even the damn ramen bar! My house isn’t even built yet. Dad’s living in this little hole-in-the-wall and he’s so stupid sometimes but he’s there, and that’s enough, even when it isn’t, and—”

Hiruzen held up a hand and instantly Boruto clammed up.

He heaved a sigh and rubbed his temple in a vague attempt at offsetting the headache bleeding into his brain from the fast-talking time traveller standing there in his office. That was a lot to take in, whether he believed it or not, and it was becoming apparent that Boruto was trying to confide in him. He wondered if they happened to be close in the future, or if he was even still kicking by then. Likely not; he was getting on in years and even if he survived every war that he faced, he wasn’t immortal. That meant that this boy was confiding in a stranger. He had nowhere else to turn.

“Let’s say I take your word for it,” Hiruzen started, fiddling with the pipe in his hand. “Why go to Naruto? Any interaction you make will likely impact the future you claim you’re from.”

“He came to me ,” Boruto defended. It sounded about as childish as expected. “He was just there, suddenly, and he dragged me to get ramen, then Iruka was there… Then when I left he followed me . Like an idiot. After I took his chakra.”

“Which brings me to my next point of concern.” He let the words hang there and waited expectantly.

“It’s the seal,” Boruto grumbled, raising his hand to back up his words. “Or… curse. Or whatever. Jinchuuriki contain tailed beasts inside their bodies, right? With seals.”

“Correct,” Hiruzen nodded.

Boruto rubbed the back of his neck. “Well… it’s like that. But instead of a tailed beast, it’s this thing that eats chakra. When it’s hungry it takes control of me. Then it takes chakra from wherever it can get it. Dad, then Kakashi. It’s quiet now, but I don’t know when it’ll wake up again. That’s… why I wanted to come to you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“If anyone would know what to do, it would be the Hokage, right?”

Hiruzen snorted and shook his head. Simple logic. The situation surrounding that logic was anything but, though. He tapped his fingers against the side of his pipe as he thought. If, by chance, Boruto was being honest with him, it wouldn’t change the fact that he was a threat. But an unwilling chakra drain was very different from a willing one. If it was something he couldn’t help, they could work with it.

“Chakra is everywhere,” he muttered after a time, meeting the boy’s eyes. “Most living things carry it, to some degree. Humans are far from the only source. Nature chakra is plentiful, for example.”

Boruto blinked and then his face lit up and he was practically vibrating in place. “Then—”

“Senjutsu is not so simple to learn. It takes years to master. There are steep prerequisites to learning it, and it comes with a lot of risks,” he sighed. “Furthermore, you’re young. A genin. You don’t have the experience necessary to take that step. You’re untrained and untested and in your current state, the likelihood of you succeeding in becoming a senjutsu practitioner is slim. It’s not a short-term solution.”

Boruto visibly deflated with a level of despair that was damn near palpable. He crumpled inward and lowered himself, picking his dirt-covered jacket up off the floor. “Oh,” he said simply, sliding his arms into his sleeves. “Well that… sucks.” He chuckled but there was no humour to it. “Guess I won’t be allowed to go back to Dad’s place, huh?”

Hiruzen closed his eyes and cursed himself, cursed the fact that he was still Hokage in a world where he was coming to believe claims that a cursed time traveller had come from the future with a chakra-eating beast sealed within him, and cursed the fact that a part of him genuinely wanted to help.

If for no other reason than to get this problem out of his office.

“It so happens that I’m well acquainted with a seal master,” he continued. “I’ll send word to him. At the very least, he may be able to break down the seal already placed on you to give us a starting point towards understanding just what this is.”

Boruto lifted his head, the corners of his mouth curling upward. “You think he could change the seal?”

“Who’s to say?”

It was times like those that he wished Minato were still around. That boy would have had a field day with a problem like this. The problem was more complex than Boruto seemed to realize. Ordinarily, curses did one thing . Chakra drain was very much something that Hiruzen could see a curse being rigged up to do. If the opponent—or in this case, the thief—had no chakra to work with, it neutralized the threat. But according to Boruto, there was more to it than that; it wasn’t just a curse mark draining his chakra, but a living thing, perhaps a manifestation of chakra similar to the tailed beasts, feeding off chakra. That sounded less like a curse and more like the kind of fuinjutsu used to seal the nine-tails. Then, to top it all off, time travel . The whole story was falling apart, yet the absurdity just made it feel more believable. If this were another village’s attempt at infiltrating Konoha, it was horribly thought out. He thought better of the other villages’ intellect.

Beyond it all, Boruto had Naruto’s eyes. Honest eyes. Hiruzen had known those eyes for twelve years now and no matter what form they took, they were always sincere.

“Grandpa Third?”

He snorted. Even Naruto didn’t call him that. “Is there more?”

“Until the seal guy comes… I mean, how do we deal…” Boruto’s eyes were downcast to the floor. “I can’t go back to Dad’s place, can I?”

Hiruzen placed his pipe atop the desk and his hands came together, musing the thought. A chakra-eater staying alone with a jinchuuriki was probably the worst possible situation they could put themselves in. “What would you do if the beast got ‘hungry,’ as you put it?”

“I dunno, I just…” He balled his hands into fists. “I promised to make him dinner.”

He stared at the boy, long and hard, and shook his head. He was getting too old for this. “Extreme chakra exhaustion can be lethal,” he stated firmly. “Until you can convince me that you have the situation under control, I can’t allow you to go around unsupervised.”

Boruto’s brow furrowed, but he was resigned. He came here knowing that was the likely result. In that way, perhaps that was how he differed from Naruto. Naruto wouldn’t have accepted it so easily. “I understand.”

Hiruzen was getting way too old for this nonsense.

“Kakashi,” he called, his voice loud and carrying over the room. The door opened.

“You called, Lord Third?”

“Send word to Tenzō,” he commanded, watching the way Boruto looked at him then, with a slow-forming realization. “I have an assignment for him.”

He expected the surprise, but not the way Boruto jumped the desk and wrapped him up in a tight hug.

“You are the best Grandpa ever and I dare anyone to say otherwise.”

Hiruzen sighed, rolled his eyes and waved off the confusion Kakashi sent his way. He awkwardly patted the child’s back, far too tired to push Boruto off of him.

He was getting soft in his old age.

Chapter Text

The Seventh Hokage had taken to waiting for progress in the hidden room out of some useless sense of closeness to his son. Out of everywhere, that was the one place he knew that Boruto had been, could see the unpracticed blood seal still dried onto the side of the pedestal, and that was enough. It had to be, because there was nothing else, nothing to latch onto until the archivists got done with the scroll.

Back in Konoha, his cover had already been blown. Shikamaru walked in and it took a whole three seconds to realize that he was talking to a shadow clone. Three seconds and he was being lectured for his irresponsibility, even though he was pretty sure his right hand used clones to do his paperwork, too. He explained the situation as thoroughly as he was able. Shikamaru understood. Any parent would.

Naruto sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, wishing that he could do more than just sit there and wait, but archiving was a foreign skill. As much as he trusted the pair who'd relocated the scroll, he was getting impatient. Boruto was missing, had been for well over a day, almost two. They knew where the kid was now— when —but that did nothing to abate his concern.

Those were dangerous years. Dangerous, and his young self was not up to the task of protecting a stranger, even if he was pretty sure twelve-year-old Naruto would have taken a shine to the kid.

Something tugged at his thoughts, something important, but he quashed it when the pair of archivists entered the room, one holding the scroll carefully within gloved hands.

Naruto rose to his full height, his cloak masking his form, and he smiled. “Found something for me?”

The girl nodded curtly, meeting his eyes levelly as she handed him the scroll. He took it and was surprised that they weren’t chastising him for touching it without gloves. He released the clip on the string that held it closed and unrolled it, met with stark-black ink that previously just wasn't there, and he whistled.

“You two sure know your stuff,” he commended. “This looks perfect.”

“We're still working on it,” she corrected, and as his eyes followed to the end of the scroll he found a portion still blank. “But we wanted to show you our progress, at least.”

“We know it can't be easy waiting while your son is missing,” the man continued, looking all too sympathetic.

“Thanks,” he breathed, his lips curled upward as his eyes darted across the characters. They were readable—the pair had translated them when they replaced the ink. That made him think that this was likely a replica they made and not the original. It would explain why they weren't making a fuss over his handling of it. “What have you found?”

“It's an instructional scroll,” the woman started, leaning forward to point to the part she was referencing, “but we have reason to suspect that it was imbued with the technique as well. At some point, sealed within it was a massive amount of chakra.”

Naruto frowned, already reading the instructions. This technique required a massive store of chakra. He would be able to perform it, with his reserves, but it would be difficult for just one ordinary shinobi. “You think something could have triggered its release?”

“We do,” affirmed the man, rubbing the back of his head. “We're just not sure what .”

“There was another seal placed on it, too.” She turned the scroll over and pointed to the six pointed pictogram found there, her face grim. “It seals chakra so that the afflicted can no longer access it. We've recreated it as best as we could, but it appears that the ink ran on the original, so some parts may have been misconstrued.”

Naruto hummed, then flipped it back to the instructions and read. According to what they were saying, his son should have had no access to his chakra. But he did. He very obviously did, because Boruto would not have been able to leave that imprint for them to find otherwise.

Eventually his eyes fell to the blank space at the end of the scroll. “And what's missing?”

The archivists looked between one another, their faces grim. “How to manipulated it,” the man supplied. “We uncovered how to perform the jutsu, but not how to control it. As it is now, using it could mean that you don't end up where you want to, or don't have a way back. Without that, what we have is essentially useless. It’s too dangerous to perform.”

“We'll keep working,” his partner assured. “And we will help retrieve your son. We promise, Lord Seventh. I swear on my life.”

But Naruto wasn't listening. Naruto was smiling, reading the scroll again and again, memorizing it again and again , a small chuckle edging on relief rising up from his throat. “What, is that all?”

He missed the way the pair paled with total understanding.

“He never gave us a date anyway, the brat,” he laughed. Sure, he was twelve years old in that time. But there were twelve months worth of days in between all of that and no way of knowing just which was the one where his son landed.

“No,” the woman protested, shaking her hands in utter refusal of his implication, “No, no, no, Lord Seventh. You can't. You may not have the control necessary to come back. Or—you may not even land in the same year—”

Naruto rolled up the scroll and slipped it into his belt with a grin on his face. His hands came together in a strange, foreign hand sign, and both archivists stilled.

“Time manipulation jutsu, eh?”

“Lord Seventh, please reconsider—”

There was a quick succession of hand signs, a pool of chakra in his gut, and he was gone. It made no sound, no movement. Like a ghost, he simply… wasn’t.

Across the Land of Fire, there was a puff of smoke and the shadow clone seated on the Hokage’s chair was no longer there to hear Shikamaru’s reprimands.

Looking away from the ghoulish eyes of the man they called Tenzō was unnaturally hard. They were bottomless black pools and the moment he looked into them, they had him right where they wanted him. He stared, stiff and anxious, and they stared right back, right into his very soul .

Then Tenzō looked away and all was right with the world.

Tenzō held an old jōnin uniform up to him, measuring with his eyes. Those empty, haunting eyes. He hummed, pressing the fabric to Boruto’s shoulders. “It may fit,” he mused. “Though it is a bit old. We can find something more suited to your tastes in town, if you’d like.”

Boruto was making a face, wearing his uncertainty on his sleeve even as he snatched the uniform from the ANBU’s grasp. It did look old, but was in better shape than his own clothes, and smelled a lot less like sweat and pointless misadventure, so it was good enough for him.

“I’ll live,” he assured as he slipped into the bathroom to bathe. His hair was flat against his  head from weather and unneeded dips into the river, and as the bathroom filled up with steam he wondered when the last time he felt that disgusting had been. It seemed that ever since arriving in the past, he was doing a lot of things he normally wouldn’t. Case in point, Boruto wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty, or to over-exert himself. He never put his all into a mission because he never felt that he needed to.

He overheard Dad say something to that effect once. ‘His clothes always look brand new.’ Boruto was coming to understand that he should maybe take offense to that, even if it happened to be true.

“These were yours?” Boruto called through the door, where he just knew that creepy bastard was keeping watch. That was fine. If being monitored like a convict was the only way for him to retain his freedom, then that was fine by him.

“When I was younger,” Tenzō supplied from the common room.

“You must have been a really young jōnin.”

“Well, yes.”

Boruto wasn’t sure he liked that matter-of-fact attitude, and it wasn’t just the smidge of jealousy talking, knowing that the man acting as his warden was already an elite shinobi by his age.

His hair soaked in bath water, he both looked and felt like a drowned rat. Scrubbing out the dirt and mud and whatever else had gotten caked onto him in his escape from the Copy-nin was a welcomed relief, though, and he allowed himself to indulge in the warmth of the room, keeping the crisp chill of autumn at bay.

Through the frosted glass of the bathroom door he could make out the vague impression of Tenzō on the other side. He wasn’t sure if he was ever formally introduced to the Wood Release user—if he was, he had to have been pretty young—but he knew of Tenzō, more for the name he would later go by, Yamato. Dad mentioned him in passing now and then. Apparently Yamato was off on a long-term mission and had been for quite some time. He could use Wood Release, something not seen since the First Hokage, and one of the skills it provided him with was chakra suppression.

It made sense that Tenzō was chosen to guard him.

Boruto sank down into the water, hesitant to get out. It’d been a solid few hours since he parted with Naruto in the streets and he’d be shocked if he went back to the apartment and didn’t find the kid already dead of starvation. He was about at that point himself; Grandpa Third offered him food but if he ate when his father refrained he’d feel all sorts of guilt, so he declined.

After some time, Boruto sucked in a breath and rose out of the bath. Water dripped from his hair into his eyes as he felt around for a towel to pat himself down, then reached over to the uniform neatly folded on the counter beside the sink.

He grimaced as he slipped the faded black uniform on. “Could we go tomorrow?” he tried, pulling a face as he stared at himself in the mirror. The uniform looked horrible on him. It was too long in some places, too short in others. And it was tight. Well, uniforms usually were. Boruto was used to baggy clothing, though— breathing room . This felt too restricting. “For clothes.”

“If you’d like,” Tenzō chimed from the door.

“Great,” he grinned and pulled the flak jacket straight. The door swung open and a billow of steam fogged out around him. He went to shove his hands into his pockets and pulled a face when he realized that the only pockets he had were the ones in his pants. It was different. Boruto didn’t like different. He tried very hard not to dwell on it, or to take notice of the fact that he was adopting Kakashi’s usual stance. “Ready?”

“If you are.”

“ Always .”

Boruto effortlessly memorized the way to his father’s apartment. It was easy to retrace their steps from the other night as the Hokage office was located in the administrative section of the academy, which he’d already visited. Tenzō was content to let him lead the way; the Hokage’s instructions were not to restrict his freedom, but to prevent any unfortunate incidents that may be incited by what Grandpa Third called ‘vampirism.’

Never was there a more fitting word.

Boruto had his own instructions, too: he was to inform Tenzō the moment that he felt anything change with the duly-named chakra beast, especially if hunger were involved. His cooperation would help stop any incidents before they started, or that was the hope.

He looked over at Tenzō, wondering just how much of the truth the Hokage shared. He knew better than to ask a freakin’ ANBU about a mission.

“Sorry you got dragged into all of this,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck when the silence got a little too stifling. “Must be a pain, having to babysit some kid when you could be off doing something important.”

Tenzō raised an eyebrow, the faintest traces of a smile on his lips as he followed half a pace behind his charge. “Every mission is important,” he answered simply. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been assigned it.”

“Not a bad way of looking at it, I guess.”

Tenzō nodded to the building a short ways down the road and Boruto followed the gesture to his father’s apartment, letting out a sigh. The lights were still on, and through the window he could make out Naruto’s silhouette.

“Look at him,” he laughed, shaking his head, “all sad and dejected. What a loser. Hey, you met him before? Naruto?”

“Not formally.” Tenzō was staring through the window, too, a hard look on his face. There was something going on behind those ghostly eyes that went unsaid. “I know of him. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Konoha who doesn’t.”

“I’ve gotten that impression,” Boruto sighed. “Alright. Let’s go. Come on, before his hunger eats a hole through his seal.”

“That’s highly unlikely. Bordering on impossible.”

Boruto rolled his eyes. His sense of humour was ahead of his time. Or, well, this time. One day he would get the recognition that he so deserved.

Admittedly, even he thought that particular joke was a bit stale.

“This is where we part,” Tenzō continued. His arm lifted, and he pointed to the roof of the apartment. “I’ll be keeping guard out here for the duration of the night. If anything happens, just walk outside and I’ll come over immediately. Understood?”

“Crystal clear.” He half expected Tenzō to join them inside, but instead it was the same as what Kakashi had done that first night. All those ANBU types thought the same. “Stay warm, ‘kay? It’s gettin’ cold.”

Tenzō smiled. Tenzō should never smile. Even at its sincerest, it came off as a bad omen.

“G’night, creepy old man!”

Tenzō gave a look caught between horrified and despairing. “That’s not my name. You know that’s not my name. Why can’t you just use my name ?”

Boruto grinned and waved back at the ANBU as he climbed the stairs to his father’s flat. The grin faltered when he came to the door and he swallowed. It felt like there was a knot in his throat and he hesitated, his hand looming just above the door, halfway to a knock, never quite following through.

There was worry there, buried deep beneath the layers of certainty he fed himself, that there would be a repeat of that first night.

He was Boruto Uzumaki. Like hell that would stop him.

With a swift kick, the door jutted open and he marched inside with his hands on his hips, back straight and chin up. It didn’t last and he crumpled over with laughter when Naruto yelped and fell off the bed.

The boys stared at one another. Naruto rubbed his side. Boruto caught his breath.

“A little warning never hurt, y’know!” Naruto shouted. The reprimand held no bite to it. It might have had something to do with how hard he was trying to repress a smile.

“Spontaneity is the lifeblood of the soul.”

“What horoscope did you get that off of?”

“Fortune cookie, actually,” he said matter-of-factly.

The tension that built up while he was ruminating in the doorway abated and he closed the distance between them, offered a hand and helped Naruto to his feet. Before he could ask, Naruto’s stomach answered for him, a loud, strangled noise filling the air.

Boruto crossed his arms much like a scolding parent, even though he expected as much. “You didn’t eat.”

Naruto mimicked his stance, his eyes narrowed shut in that weird, fox-like way of his. “You said not to eat ramen,” he defended, as though he’d already recited it in his head, “and that’s all I got.”

Boruto rolled his eyes and sighed. He pivoted around and opened the fridge. For a while he just stared into the empty box of spoiled milk and nothing else. Dad wasn’t lying. When was the last time the idiot actually filled his fridge?

He slammed the fridge door shut and turned to pin his father beneath a heavy glare.

Naruto stuck up his nose and dropped back onto his bed with a huff. “There’s nothing left from my allowance, y’know!”

“That’s cause you wasted it on ramen.” He held his tongue and managed to keep from adding a spiteful ‘old man’ label at the end of that. There was nothing to be done about it, and he was in no position to give lectures. He wasted his last allowance on a new video game. Boruto was by no means the responsible one. So, instead of bickering, he headed back to the open door.

Naruto fisted the bedsheets. “You’re going?”

“To get food ,” Boruto droled. “The hell am I supposed to cook without ingredients? I’ll be right back.”

He waved over his shoulder and the door clicked shut behind him. He could feel a smile tug at the corners of his lips and leaned back against the door, soaking up the moment.

“Hungry?”

He tensed, closed his eyes, and retreated inward. Not now was a thought he repeated like a mantra, but it was different. The pull wasn’t there, the urge that overcame him both times before. Knowing that eased him. He still needed to know for sure.

Boruto was in that dark, unending void again, pinprick eyes floating ominously through the piercing black. He stood tall before it, shifting his weight as he sized it up.

“You’re hungry?” he asked it, and waited. Nothing. “You’d better not be. I won’t let you screw this up for me, y’hear?”

“You.”

Oh. Huh.

“...Yeah. Damn straight I’m hungry. But I don’t go around attacking people when I am. You could learn a thing or two, ya shitty bastard.”

There was nothing again, just a lot of staring and a dead-end conversation, and he deemed all was well for the moment.

When he returned to his senses, Tenzō was staring at him with with vacant-eyed concern. He jumped, a small noise escaping him that he would refuse to acknowledge if anyone ever brought it up ever , and edged away.

“Has something happened?” Tenzō prompted, ignoring Boruto’s clear unease.

“ No , Sage, stop looking at me like that—” He went to duck out from under the ANBU’s gaze but stopped himself, considered the man, and snapped his fingers. “Hey, how much cash you got on ya?”

Tenzō looked deeply, wholly concerned.

Boruto was at the point of hunger where he didn’t care that the roast was half raw, he was ready to tear the meat off the bones anyway. It didn’t help that his father was practically drooling over his shoulder, or that he was running around the little flat like a headless chicken as he tried to keep the pot on the stove from bubbling over, the roast in the oven from burning , and the tea in the kettle from over steeping.

In his desire to show off, Boruto may have gone the tiniest bit overboard, especially considering that he’d never made dinner without his mother’s aid. He kept it simple. A harvest soup—because he could never mess up something as easy as soup—and a roast because he’d marinated them enough to have some vague clue as to what he was doing. There was a learning curve to overcome with how dated everything was (an unfortunate effect of travelling back in time) but he was managing. Barely, but he was.

He should have made them sandwiches. Or dumplings.

The food came close to done, and the smell brought his thoughts back to the family left waiting for him in the future. He missed Mom’s cooking. With her around, he never went hungry. Himawari had taken to setting the table at dinner. She took some sense of pride in it, in helping out Mom. It was the cutest thing to watch.

He set two plates down at the four-seat table and took his place across from his father, stealing nervous glances now and then as he poured their tea. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if this was a typical meal for Konoha families back in the day. Times had changed, and now he was worried his father wasn’t going to like it, and that he’d went through all of that trouble for nothing. Maybe it was stupid, but Boruto wore his fare share of insecurities beneath all that confidence, especially where Dad was concerned.

He glanced up to see that Naruto hadn’t touched the utensils.

“Here I thought you were starving to death,” Boruto murmured between bites as he tried to mask his own uncertainty. “It’s not that bad, y’know.”

“Oh.” Naruto shook himself and pulled his plate closer, vibrating in his seat. “I just…”

The words hung there as Naruto devoured his portion and got up for seconds. He took his time with his second helping, actually bothering to taste the food, which was nice. There was a laugh, then, a soft little chuckle beneath the sound of scraping plates.

Boruto tipped his bowl to pour the last of the soup broth into his mouth and set it back down with a solid clink. He eyed his father. “You’re being creepy over there by yourself.”

Naruto’s shoulders hunched as his laughter devolved into a long string of muffled giggling. “Sorry,” he breathed, which must have been hard with the fit he was having.

Mildly concerned, Boruto escaped to start on dishes. Back home he’d whine and moan about cleaning up after dinner, if only because he liked to make life difficult for those around him, but here it kept him busy. A welcomed distraction.

The steady flow of water from the tap did little to break up the sounds behind him. Boruto couldn’t remember the last time he saw his old man so… giddy. What was he acting so stupid over, it was just—

It occured to Boruto that his father wouldn’t have had a family dinner before. He peeked back at Naruto, who was making his way through a second bowl of soup.

...Stupid old man.

The quiet was killing him, though.

“They’re bringing a seal master in to take a look at my chakra beast problem,” he said simply, trying to cram some dialogue in, now that he was regretting the awkward silence he let hang when he was eating. “Grandpa Third’s the best Hokage.”

“Only ‘til I become Hokage,” Naruto supplied matter-of-factly.

Boruto’s hands stilled and he suppressed the unsavoury remarks settled at the back of his throat.

“I’ll be the greatest Hokage Konoha’s ever seen.” There was so much certainty behind his words that it was honestly ridiculous.

Boruto twisted around to meet his father’s stare and thought to counter it. ‘Why do you want to be Hokage so bad?’ He thought to ask but never followed through, pressing his lips into a thin line.

Naruto finished and brought his dishes over to the sink, nudging Boruto out of the way. Boruto allowed it and went to sit over on the bed, staring through the window at the dark. He wondered absently if Tenzō got bored out there. Or cold. Maybe they should bring him up a blanket. Or tea.

Then again, the tea wasn’t all that great.

“I’ve been thinking,” Naruto started.

Boruto looked over to see Naruto rubbing the back of his neck and glared dully. “That’s never good.”

When Naruto shot him a look that closely resembled a grumpy old man, he decided it was worth it.

“ I’ve been thinking ,” he repeated firmly, “that I—”

There was a pause. He tried again.

“I mean…”

“What?”

Naruto kicked the ground and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The tap shut off, all of their dishes now drying in the rack, and the ensuing stillness made the moment feel heavier than it probably needed to.

“Forget it,” Naruto dismissed. He dropped onto one of the wooden chairs and propped one foot onto his opposing knee, tapping his finger restlessly against his shin. “Hey, hey—you gonna be joining a squad now that you’re stayin’ here?”

“Dunno,” Boruto blinked. “Hadn’t thought of it.”

“What about that mission you were on?”

“Right. That.” He’d completely forgotten that he told his father about that. “Let’s say I’ve been reassigned.”

Naruto looked skeptical but let it pass, scooting closer to the edge of the seat. “Kakashi-sensei is my jōnin instructor, y’know. But he’s always showing up late.”

Naruto’s words turned to rambling, but Boruto wasn’t bothered. He listened. Listened to complaints about Sasuke, stories about how Sasuke was the worst student in the academy—something that Boruto very much doubted —and words of praise for Sakura. It was the first time he actually sat to listen to his father’s stories. It was hard to look away, Naruto’s arms flailing expressively as an extension of his words.

Boruto sat with his chin his hand, his elbow on the windowsill, and his eyes on his father. For the first time in days, he pushed his fears and stress aside and just listened.

That was enough.

Boruto may have hated the jōnin uniform on principle, but it did have its uses.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror. His henge was perfect—because of course it was, he got the highest score in the class when they were learning the transformation jutsu—and as he turned his face to examine it at all angles, he grinned. There was no recognizing him, between his straight black hair and brown eyes. The long sleeves of the uniform helped cover up most, but not all, of the glowing markings down his arm—nothing a pair of gloves couldn’t fix.

He spun on his heel to face Tenzō, smug with every reason to be so. “How do I look?”

“Inconspicuous enough, I suppose,” Tenzō nodded, handing over a pair of gloves. They were a little large but tolerable.

“Good enough for me! Let’s go, Tenzō, my man!”

Tenzō sighed.

The first thing on their list was to get Boruto a few outfits. A genin wearing a jōnin uniform was hardly practical, especially in the event of an incident in the village. Boruto couldn’t remember any attacks on the village at this particular time—not until the chunin exams—but he also had a tendency to sleep through history back at the academy. They didn’t tell him that he had to maintain a henge, but it was heavily implied and he could see their reasoning. He recalled the looks that he got when he first arrived, wandering around on his own. People mistook him for Naruto. A part of him resented that. Another part knew that if they didn’t mistake him, they would see the similarities and question it. That was somehow worse.

Avoiding it all with a henge felt like the most practical solution.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and they started out into town. “I can probably maintain it for a good three hours.”

“We’ll try to finish up before you reach your limit,” Tenzō assured.

The first stop was a clothing stall. With his loyal guard monitoring from a distance, Boruto sifted through the racks for something that fit in well with his wardrobe back home. To his dismay, there wasn’t much; everything was old fashioned and a bit tacky. This was the past, he reminded himself, and ‘old fashioned’ was about the best he was going to get. He held up a long-sleeved black shirt, pressing it flush with his chest, and frowned. It didn’t look right.

He spun around, presenting it to his guard with a raised eyebrow. “Well?”

Tenzō smiled, leaning back against the wall. He blended in a lot better in the standard jōnin uniform than in his ANBU gear, sure. But something still looked off about him. Boruto suspected something always would. “It's good.”

He pouted. “But not great .”

“I think it suits you,” Tenzō added placatingly.

Boruto sighed and tossed it at the ANBU, who caught it easily enough, and went back to searching. Tenzō would be agreeable about whatever he was showed, so it wasn't like he was actually any help . But this wasn't an ANBU's field of expertise by any means and Boruto couldn't fault him for that.

It would have been nice to have someone with a real opinion, though.

Clothes shopping took longer than he cared to admit. Two hours later, they were wandering the streets, Tenzō carrying two bags worth of slightly tolerable attire. He found out that Grandpa Third had allocated funds to Tenzō just for things like that, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let that go to waste.

His next goal was food, because he doubted the leftovers in the fridge were going to last them any appreciable length of time. The market was bustling at that time of day, much unlike their visit the night before, and he was suddenly very glad for the henge. Very glad. The thought of that many pairs of eyes looking at him the way they did Dad was enough to sour his mood.

He never did get a straight answer about the reason behind those stares.

Boruto dragged himself down the street with his hands in his pockets, eyeing the food stalls. He knew how to tell good ingredients from bad—the basics, anyway—but that didn't help much when he didn’t know what to make for dinner. He stopped at a fish stall and leaned close to a large bass they had up for sale, then raised an eyebrow at Tenzō. “You know how to fillet a fish?”

“I've had some experience,” Tenzō said simply, shifting the bags between hands. “Why?”

Boruto shrugged. “I don't think Naruto would care if you joined. Doesn't it get cold out there? And boring?”

The ANBU smiled. It was sincere—or, Boruto thought it was supposed to be, but it came off a little too unsettling. “You don't have to worry about me. I'm well adept at missions like these. The cold doesn't bother me one bit.”

He rolled his eyes. “That doesn't mean you can't share a meal with us. Hey, Old Lady. I'll take this one, please.”

The middle-aged woman running the stall turned to him and took the offered ryo, bagging the fish. Her eyes scanned Boruto with mild confusion and gave pause, a tiny smile on her face. “Oh, my. How rare, to see such a little jōnin.” He resented the ‘little’ part. “Your parents must be so proud.”

He laughed, the sound forced and awkward, because laughing was about the only thing he could do. He took the bag and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Y-yeah. Definitely. Prodigy son and all that. Take care, Old Lady.”

“You'd do well to mind your manners, little jōnin.”

“Sorry!”

Boruto turned on his heel and headed away from that conversation as fast as he could. Tenzō looked mildly amused, and Boruto resented him for it.

Grocery shopping took up the remainder of his last hour. Tenzō was all too happy to remind him of his limit and urge him to return home, and he had no qualms about doing so. In the end, they made good headway on food for the week. He picked up ingredients for udon for another night, because he was pretty sure he knew most of the recipe and was confident he could get by with a little guesswork. He'd grabbed some fruits and vegetables to eat throughout the day—stuff that would at least be better than Dad's junk food and instant ramen. And he did get stuff for sandwiches and dumplings. He was no slave, and if Naruto wanted a hot meal every night then he could damn well make it himself.

This was probably going to be the healthiest he'd ever eaten by his own will. Back home, he was just as bad as his father—though if anyone said it aloud he would vehemently deny it.

The path back to the apartment took him down a lot of side streets. He hummed an absent tune as they walked, veering off the main path. He looked around at the small, humble buildings of the Konoha of decades before his time with a soft, amused smile. Its aesthetics definitely meshed well with the image of the useless old man he had of future Naruto. Of course someone like Dad would grow up in a place like this.

“ Damn it!”

The words were growled out and other, less savory terms were subsequently bitten back. Boruto followed the familiar sound to the trees that bled into his periphery. There was a fork in the road ahead, one of the paths following the sound into the trees, and he considered it momentarily.

That was definitely Naruto’s voice cursing the world. He wasn’t surprised.

Tenzō came to a halt beside him, following his eyes.

“Hey,” he called, turning to face the noise. He could hear movement far into the distance, the sound of metal scraping together. They were still a long ways from the apartment so he knew he shouldn’t get sidetracked, but curiosity was one of his greatest weaknesses. “What’s over there?”

“The Third Training Ground,” Tenzō supplied easily enough. “I believe it’s being used by a team of genin at the moment.”

“Naruto’s team,” Boruto continued. Truth be told, he never saw his father train, or even fight, for that matter. He’d seen Sage Mode in the past, but not his father going all out using it against an opponent. It was pretty clear that even if he sat in on their training, that wouldn’t change. Still…

He took a step towards the training ground when a hand caught his shoulder, unyielding as he tried to jerk free.

“You know that you shouldn’t,” Tenzō warned. “That henge is a constant leech off your chakra. We should head back before we risk it breaking because of your low reserves.”

“Lay off,” Boruto grumbled, but his words had no bite. “It’s still solid. Not like I’m jumping head-first into a fight.”

That time when he tugged, Tenzō let go. He stumbled forward and caught himself, sticking up his nose as he walked.

Boruto followed the path into the brush and slowed to a halt at the end where the sunshade of trees opened up to a large grassland. Three stumps stood side-by-side in the centre before a large stone memorial, one that he recognized from the version of Konoha that he was familiar with. It helped him orientate himself as one of the few landmarks that stood unchanged in time. This training ground was vast—most were—and he’d only been able to hear Naruto’s voice because Naruto was so close to the path at the time. When he arrived, Naruto had rushed back into the clearing and leapt into the air with half a dozen shadow clones right there alongside him.

A blow to his pride, that. His father could already produce more than him at his age.

The clones descended upon their instructor with kunai in hand, but the moment they hit the target, Kakashi vanished in a puff of smoke. A log clattered to the ground and rolled across the grass, the clones looking this way and that.

“Crap, where’d he go?”

“He’s gotta be hiding around here somewhere…”

“Naruto!” That voice was distinctly feminine. A Very young, very small Aunt Sakura marched out of the wilderness with fury in her eyes. “What happened to waiting for my signal?!”

The clones retreated to the safety of non-existence, leaving their original to rub his neck in nervous laughter. “I got excited, y’know?”

“You’re impossible!”

“Aw, don’t be mad! I’ll get it right this time!”

“It doesn’t matter if you get it right now because Kakashi-sensei knows what our plan is,” she hissed, running a hand through her long hair in visible show of her stress. “Now we’re going to have to start all over again. No thanks to you.”

“But Sakura, I—”

Boruto’s head snapped around to face the dark-eyed figure looming over him. Through the trees, he could make out a face he knew from a photograph Dad kept in the Hokage office, the face of a very young Uncle Sasuke. He knew of Sasuke, knew plenty about him from the stories he’d mostly tuned out of his father’s history, but he had never met the man face-to-face. Now that figure was there, looking at him, watching him . Sasuke must have sensed his presence while he was walking; if he had then there was no doubt Kakashi noticed, too.

He glanced at Tenzō and regretted it as the black, soulless pits of Tenzō’s eyes stared right back. There was an I-told-you-so hidden in there somewhere.

Sasuke stepped forward, kunai in hand as his attention switched between Boruto and Tenzō, keeping both somewhere within his periphery at all times. “You’re interrupting our training.”

Boruto grinned, hands on his hips with an upright posture that he hoped conveyed the fact that he wasn’t going to be intimidated by some little punk. Then again, this little punk was said to be Dad’s greatest rival. Maybe he should be intimidated.

A glance to Naruto had him dismissing that thought, the poor kid getting pumeled into the ground by his teammate. Aunt Sakura could be scary when she was angry.

“Sorry,” he said, but didn’t sound very apologetic. “Didn’t mean to mess up your timing.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

What a suspicious little punk.

“Alright, I’ve seen enough.”

The two in the clearing stopped their tiff and even Sasuke turned to the voice. Kakashi was seated on a low tree branch, a book held lazily in one hand, opened to a page halfway through. He hopped off the branch and landed with a soft thud, blades of grass crushed beneath his shoes. He looked so incredibly unimpressed, and that was a look that Boruto knew all too well from the old man of his time.

Then Kakashi’s attention was on him, on the partially visible glowing markings of his arm, and he anxiously pulled down his sleeve; no doubt Kakashi knew who he was, henge be damned. Not that he was really trying to hide it. Not from Kakashi.

Then it was gone, back to his students, and he felt a small relief. There was something about having the Sixth Hokage look at him and then dismiss him that pissed him off, though.

Kakashi sighed. “Naruto, the point of a plan is to follow through . If you’re just going to disregard it at the last second, why bother with it at all?”

Naruto looked somewhat shamed. It was a nice look on him.

“And Sasuke,” he chastised, “going off on your own in the middle of a mission is just as reckless as Naruto’s actions. Teamwork is the very core of a shinobi squad. Without it, you may as well be dead. That goes for all of you.”

The team took the reprimands to heart, wearing their internal frustrations on their sleeves. This training method felt very different from the one Konohamaru was using with Boruto’s team. He heard that Kakashi used to be ruthless as a jōnin instructor, but had never been on the receiving end of one of the old man’s lectures to know for himself.

“Take a break,” Kakashi commanded with a wave of his hand. “Then we’re trying this again. No lunch until we get it right.”

There was a collective groan from the pair in the clearing as they sunk into the grass. Sasuke gave one last look before joining his teammates.

“Naruto,” the instructor called, pointing in Boruto’s direction with the corner of his book. “I believe you have a visitor. Don’t take too long.”

Naruto followed the gesture, but when he finally noticed Boruto his face twisted, head tilted, as he tried to call to mind a name that matched the face. Of course Dad wouldn’t be able to see through the henge. It was so like him. He scrunched up his brow and thought.

Boruto lifted his arm and waved. He hadn’t intended to interrupt their training, but he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to speak with someone whose eyes reflected light . Something about Tenzō’s made him feel a bit hopeless. “Hey!”

His sleeve slid down as he waved and revealed the branded glow coiling across his skin.

Naruto snapped his fingers and ran over with a grin, skidding to a halt before he knocked them both over. “What’re you doing here?” Then he noticed Tenzō. “Who’s he?”

“Tenzō’s just Tenzō,” he said matter-of-factly, as though it answered any questions his father could possibly have. Right, they wouldn’t have met. Tenzō confirmed that last night. “We were just running some errands. Get back to work before the old man lectures you again.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Naruto pouted. He moved to leave but his eyes caught on the bag of food in Tenzō’s hand and his eyes lit up. “Hey, hey—”

“No,” Boruto chastised. “I heard what Kakashi said. No lunch til you do your… whatever,” he tried. He hadn’t seen enough of their training to know what, exactly, they were focusing on.

Naruto shot him a sour, betrayed look, kicked the dirt, and returned to his team with a dejected grumble.

The squad took another several minutes to collect themselves, huddling together with hushed voices, shooting their instructor the occasional wary glance. For all that Sasuke looked like he didn’t want to be involved in his teammates’ stupid plans, he was listening pretty intently. They looked serious, very serious. Naruto’s clothes were covered in dirt and grass stains and there was a tear in his sleeve. He’d been at this all morning, if Boruto had to guess, and for all that he was apparently no good at following direction, he was giving it his all.

Boruto exchanged looks with Tenzō, pleading with him.

“Just for a bit?”

Tenzō held his stare for a good half minute before sighing. “You really want to watch your brother train that badly?”

Brother?

Boruto hunkered down to sit cross-legged at the base of one of the trees lining the clearing. He said nothing when Tenzō lowered down next to him, turning the word around in his head, mulling over it perhaps a little longer than necessary. Ahead, the team was back at it. They vanished from sight, but he knew they were there, hiding within the trees as Kakashi loitered out in the open with all the confidence of a well-practiced jōnin. There was that book in one hand, the other in his pocket, as he lazily shifted his weight and awaited the attack.

Brother, huh? That must have been what the Hokage told Tenzō. It was more believable than ‘time travelling son from the future’ and raised a hell of a lot less questions, some of which could be answered by the off-the-cusp cover story he shared about being brought up in Suna. The reasons behind being shipped off to another village would be a little harder to think up, but he doubted Tenzō, at least, would start asking questions.

Brother. Not his father, but his brother.

The groceries were set between them and Boruto rifled through one of the bags, his attention tearing away from the full-frontal assault Team 7 was making against their instructor. Near twenty shadow clones were pushing Kakashi back—not that the man looked the least bit phased until one hooked itself around his waist and brought him a moment of pause. Two others rushed in to hang off his arms, Icha Icha falling into the grass, and a fourth stood before him, palm-to-fist with a confident smirk.

The clone’s form bled away to reveal pink hair and grinning eyes and she lurched forward—

All at once, Kakashi’s body disappeared, another piece of wood and mix of leaves falling to the ground in another substitution, and a kunai shot out of the trees and pinned one of the Naruto clone’s sleeves to one of the three posts centerfield. The clone stared wide-eyed at the kunai’s origin through the brush to a narrow-eyed Sasuke, then dulled.

“Much better,” it said, and the henge bled away to reveal the true form of Kakashi. “Better, but not good enough. Sakura, your transformation was top-notch, but it means little when you don’t act the part. And Naruto—”

Kakashi’s eye lifted to see the boy in question already in the air, fist pulled back and waiting. Naruto launched it forward but Kakashi was already twisting out of the way.

A shuriken cut through the air from Sasuke’s place in the trees but Kakashi was long gone before it made its target. It sailed past and sunk its blade into a tree with a crack of bark.

Boruto slowly turned his head to face the shuriken that just narrowly avoided stabbing him in the eye. It took him a moment to register. He'd just pulled a pear out of the bag and it rolled out of his hand and onto the ground as he blinked back at the three students staring at him from the clearing.

He gulped down the small bit of terror that the near-hit bubbled to the surface and waved, his mouth drawn into a tight smile. It was his own fault for being so relaxed while observing a genin training session, he knew. He also knew that Tenzō wouldn’t have sat back and watched him lose an eye if there was actually a threat of that shuriken making contact. “Don't mind me!”

They were minding. Sakura's confusion wasn't exactly hidden behind her wide-eyed stare and gaping mouth, and Sasuke looked even more suspicious now than before, but Dad was—

Naruto was pale.

Boruto stopped waving, his hand coming down, and his eyes found that his sleeve had shifted place again, revealing the slight tan of his skin. Unmarked. He shot up and patted himself down. The build of his body was a familiar one and the jōnin uniform was too big in some areas and too small in others and he cursed himself.

The henge was gone. Like a damn amateur , he let his surprise shake his focus and he broke concentration long enough to lose the image he had of the henge. Now in place of black hair was a striking blond, brown eyes a bright blue, and he was anything but inconspicuous.

Naruto’s teammates turned to him, then to Naruto and back again.

Dad looked so small under those accusatory glances.

“Hey,” Sakura started, their training now forgotten as she scrunched up her brow and scrutinized Boruto. “Who is that guy, Naruto? He looks just like you.”

“Uh—”

Boruto took offence to that, reaching down to pick up the pear and polish away the dirt against his flak jacket. He knew it was true, but he still resented it.

“His brother.”

The squad of genin spun around to see Kakashi appearing through a gentle cyclone of wind and leaves. He bent forward to pick his book off the ground, brushed away the dirt, and flipped through the pages to find his place. Boruto made a mental note to get him a bookmark as an apology for their little road trip the other day. It seemed like a useful gift.

“His name is Boruto Uzumaki, and he’s visiting from Suna,” Kakashi continued, feeding their curiosity because he knew there was no way the kids would get anything done otherwise.

Naruto’s eyes widened on his instructor. Apparently he’d been unaware of their cover story, too.

Boruto took a deep breath and his hand shot back up in a second wave, grabbing his father’s attention before Naruto could question their new label. “Hey, little brother! Get your ass back in gear and give me something to brag about!”

‘Little,’ because Boruto stood just a few centimetres taller than his father and for him, that was enough.

Naruto stilled, swallowed, and nodded his head as he pushed whatever he wanted to say behind a smile. “I’ll do better than that, y’know!”

Sasuke remained unconvinced, but Aunt Sakura looked like she believed it.

Kakashi clapped his hands and drew back their attention and the lesson resumed with a few words of praise for their progress followed by a detailed breakdown of where exactly they went wrong and then they tried again. There were bells at his hip, familiar bells that Boruto recognized from his own graduation exam, though looking a lot less dented and weathered than the ones he came so close to snatching by his own power, and he concluded that this was a  continuation of the standard bell test, just to give the students a goal as they practiced their teamwork.

Boruto pulled a second pear out of the bag and held it up to Tenzō, who accepted it with a sigh.

“This is why I suggested we return, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” He shrugged it off, amused as the team’s plan fell apart again and ended with Naruto and Sakura bickering for, what, the third time? “I’ll have the henge up when we head back. Just—gimme a few? I want to watch.”

Tenzō looked at him then, but this time his eyes didn’t look so empty. There was a soft, patient understanding, the faint upward turn of his lips.

“I’ll be counting the minutes,” he said simply.

Boruto snorted. “I figured as much.”

Chapter Text

Hiruzen thought that, with Naruto being out on a C-rank escort mission to the Land of Waves, he would finally have a few days of peace to collect his thoughts and deal with the matter of his ‘time travelling grandson’—the boy’s own words and not his own—with careful consideration and input from the ANBU assigned to monitor the boy. So, when Tenzō stood before him in his office, why did he feel a knot in the pit of his stomach?

Before he could ask, Tenzō breathed, “My wood clone is watching him, rest assured. They’re out currently, but Boruto tends to stick to the same few areas so I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

Hiruzen nodded, but that didn’t quite put him at ease. “Never underestimate the will of an Uzumaki. If he wants to cause trouble he will, with or without your supervision.”

“Lord Third?”

Hiruzen simply sighed as thoughts of the two other Uzumakis warned him against getting too comfortable. Kushina and Naruto always managed to keep him on his toes and if this boy really was their grandson and son respectively, then he had no doubt that Boruto would take the first opportunity to wreak his own sort of havoc, now that the distraction of Naruto was no longer there to keep his restlessness contained. Tenzō didn’t need to know about that, though.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Hiruzen leaned forward, his hands clasped together and his elbows firm on his desk as he put on his best Hokage face and washed away thoughts of everything else but the issue at hand. “You’ve been Boruto’s shadow for two weeks now. In that time, have you seen evidence of this ‘chakra beast’ he spoke of?”

“Yes, Sir,” Tenzō answered softly. “I have.”

The Hokage narrowed his eyes and considered the man before him. It wasn’t as though he thought Boruto lied, or that the boy was keeping things from them even though he promised to be upfront and honest—though that was always a distinct possibility. But if something major had happened, Hiruzen expected that the ANBU assigned to the mission would have reported straight to him once the matter resolved itself. They touched base every few days, but no major reports had been brought up.

“There have been two separate occasions,” Tenzō continued. “Each took place after Boruto expelled a significant amount of chakra. The first occurred shortly after the mission was assigned to me and Boruto overused his henge. He overlooked the persistent drain on his chakra and kept the henge going for a solid eight hours, then came to me that night after his brother had fallen asleep.”

“Came to you?” Hiruzen pressed, his mouth twitching. He had been under the impression that Boruto had no control once the parasite made its move, especially after hearing Kakashi’s debriefing upon their return.

“I told him to step outside if something were to happen,” he confirmed, and his eyes looked distant—more so than usual—as he recalled the memory. “He said that he could hear it demanding to be fed, that it wanted to feed on Naruto and would not let him sleep, so I invited him to remain with me during the night. I notice the black curse mark spreading an hour or so later and managed to suppress him before he could make any moves against me.”

“I see.”

There were instances of warning, then, and it wasn’t just a sudden, spontaneous attack. Warning was good. Warning made the whole thing a little less worrisome. It meant that they could take measures against it the way that Tenzō had that night.

It also meant that Tenzō was the perfect man for the job. Chakra suppression was an expert subsection of wood release.

“Boruto was able to regain control of his own accord once his chakra reserves replenished, but he confided that the parasite was still restless.”

Hiruzen nodded. “And the second?”

Tenzō pressed his lips together and averted his eyes. “I wanted to speak with you about that, Lord Third. I meant to report to you sooner, but I didn’t feel confident leaving Boruto with my clone until Team 7 left for their mission this morning.”

“Oh?” His frown was hard-set, and he dreaded where this was going. It was naive to think that the entirety of Tenzō’s debriefing would be positive but a part of him did, because he really didn’t want to have more of a mess on his hand than he already did. This little ‘chakra drain’ issue was just the first in a long string of headaches he had to make sense of involving Boruto’s appearance, not the least of which being how the boy wound up there, whether he was placed under a curse or some other sort of seal, and how to get him back.

Tenzō took a steading breath, closed his eyes, and said, “He attacked Naruto again last night, Lord Third.”

The Hokage twitched. “You put a stop to it, I presume?”

“Of course,” he affirmed, “but not before he drained away some of Naruto’s chakra. Naruto was fine this morning, but I did want to discuss this matter with you. I’ve made some observations.”

“Go on.”

“To start, I—”

Tenzō frowned and his hand lifted to his ear. His clone was contacting him. Hiruzen worried as Tenzō’s face fell to a look of abject horror and meant to ask when the ANBU rushed past him to the window.

His fingers pressed against the windowpane and his eyes widened.

Hiruzen twisted around and sighed, smoothing circles against his temple. Through the window, he could see Hokage Rock defaced by splatters of black ink and rather colourful words to go along with it. Hanging from the mouth of the Fourth was a tiny speck of yellow and black. He should have expected as much.

“You have my sincerest apologies, Lord Third. It must be a shadow clone—”

“Save your breath,” he grumbled, waving away the man’s concerns. “I’m all too familiar with the Uzumaki line of thought.”

Like father, like son.

“The boy wants attention. Let’s give it to him.”

Back home, Boruto got scolded a lot. He was used to it, and the frustrated lectures of his father hardly fazed him. It was worth it to see the look on his old man’s face when the Seventh's stone counterpart was covered in crass words and insults on Hokage Rock and nothing was ever as thrilling as the chase that followed, the hiding from his father and the escape from potential reprimand. He couldn’t run forever and eventually he’d have to return home to find the ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’ face that his father would pull there waiting for him. That was fine. He wasn’t bothered by the punishment because, as much as he loathed to admit it, it was enough to know that on those days his father would actually be there when he opened the door.

This was not that. This was very different.

Boruto squirmed beneath the unrelenting gaze of the Third Hokage and hated the fact that he couldn’t help but break eye contact. Then again, he rather challenge those eyes than Tenzō’s.

Tenzō, who was also there, and was also staring.

“Wh-what?” he bit out, scuffing the floor with his shoe. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t sit still. It was different when it was them. Different, because it wasn’t them that he needed recognition from. Different because it meant something other than desperately sought after attention.

He didn’t need them to dote after him. He just wanted to keep busy, keep his mind occupied from everything stewing within it.

He was anxiously waiting out the duration of Naruto’s mission and couldn’t bear to do so in that empty apartment all by himself.

“You miss him. That boy. You’re worried.”

Boruto twitched, brought out of his reverie, and stomped his foot. “And who the hell do you think is to blame for that?!”

It wasn’t entirely the chakra beast’s fault, he knew. But he was projecting. He was good at projecting.

Grandpa Third and Tenzō were confused by the outburst, so much so that the disappointment had fallen away and left them in still silence.

Boruto fidgeted, shrinking under their gaze. “...Sorry. Um. Forget I said anything.”

“Why do they look at us so?”

He bit back the urge to reply.

Grandpa Third sighed, picked his pipe up off the desk and leaned back in his chair. His fingers drummed along the armrest consideringly. “This isn’t about the grafiti,” he assured. “I have enough experience with Naruto to know that a lecture won’t mean anything to you.”

Boruto blinked. “Naruto?” Wait, did Dad used to do that, too?

The old man always berated him for it, too, the hypocrite.

Hiruzen ignored the implied question in favour of addressing more important matters. “Tenzō tells me there was a development with your chakra beast. I’d like to hear what’s happened for myself.”

“Oh. That.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wall. Then he shook his head, indecisively pushed back off, and closed the distance between them. With his mouth drawn into a thin line, he held up the open palm of his left hand for the Hokage to see. “Yeah, there has.”

The black dot that was there in the centre of his hand had spread into a series of winding circles enclosed by a vaguely shaped star. At the centre, in place of the dot, was a foreign character he knew they wouldn’t be able to read.

“It reads ‘open time’, in case you’re wondering,” he supplied, closing his fist and shoving it back into his pocket. “It took chakra from D—” His eyes flickered over to Tenzō, “—Naruto again. It waited until I fell asleep.”

Grandpa Third clasped his hands together and hummed. “Tenzō stopped you.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “He’s fine, but… it pisses me off a little that it happened again. It shouldn’t have.”

“Well, our seal master should be arriving tomorrow,” the Hokage stated, taking a long toke from his pipe. “With any luck, this will be resolved before Team 7 completes their mission.”

“Where has that child gone?”

Boruto wanted to be excited about that, about finally having someone there to take a look at this thing, but that voice just wouldn’t stop and every time he tried to think or feel anything, it distracted him.

“Could we extract it?” he asked because, at that point, he wanted nothing more than the chakra beast gone . Now that it knew words, it just wouldn’t shut up.

Tenzō stepped over, placing a reassuring hand on Boruto’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. He was smiling. His smile felt a lot more comforting now than it had two weeks before. “Let’s just wait and see what he says, okay? I’m sure there’s something that Master Jiraiya can do for you.”

Jiraiya? Wasn’t that Dad’s mentor?

He looked to Grandpa Third and kicked the ground when he was given a nod.

“He better get his ass here soon, then.”

Hiruzen watched the sulking form of young Boruto through the windows of his office as the boy headed back home with Tenzō’s clone. He turned attention to the pipe in his hand, realized that he’d been smoking for the entirety of their confrontation and put it down with reluctance.

He was very much looking forward to his retirement.

Turning back into the room, he looked between the ANBU who stood at attention and the towering form of the sannin leaning against the office door. Jiraiya had arrived earlier in that day, perhaps a few hours after Team 7 left on their mission.

“So he’s the one you called me back for, is he?” Jiraiya mused, his lips curling upward as he folded his arms one over the other. “Cute kid. Reminds me of a blond Kushina. But more brooding.”

Hiruzen groaned, and damn it, if he didn’t see it, too. He decided to ignore the comment. “Tenzō. Continue your report.”

“Of course, Lord Third.” Tenzō nodded to the window. His clone was currently trying to comfort the brooding child, by the look of it. “Since the attack on Naruto Uzumaki last night, it appears that something has changed about the relationship he has with the parasite.”

“How so?”

“Well,” he paused, hesitant, “you must have noticed for yourself. He talks to it. Out loud. It’s been near constant since I suppressed his chakra last night, and even times when he’s quiet you can tell by his face that he’s holding back.”

That was indeed something he noticed. He grunted his affirmation and turned again to the sannin, his gaze expectant and brow raised.

Jiraiya pulled a face, tapping his chin. “It could be the seal loosening, or the curse spreading if it is a curse. I can’t tell much without taking a proper look at it.” There was a pause. “ Or … it could be a side-effect from absorbing such a massive amount of chakra. It might have a boost to its control because of that. Keep careful watch on the kid.”

Tenzō nodded. “Of course.”

“In any case,” Jiraiya breathed, rolling his shoulders and yawning, “I don’t think it’s all that much of a threat. It hasn’t managed to bring anyone to full chakra exhaustion yet. More of a nuisance than anything. Well, for anyone but the kid.”

Tenzō sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I got the same impression. Naruto’s chakra reserves are vast enough that he didn’t feel anything by the time he woke up in the morning, but Boruto has been beating himself up about it ever since.”

Hiruzen was starting to see how this mess could very easily snowball into a tidal wave of unending trouble and reached again for his pipe, but thought better of it.

“Noon tomorrow,” he commanded in a sigh. “We’ll settle this matter then. If there are any changes, report to me immediately .”

“Yes, Lord Hokage.”

“You got it.”

He closed his eyes. “You’re dismissed.”

They were gone in a flash and Hiruzen was left to his quiet, wondering who he angered in his past life to get saddled with so much nonsense in this one.

Boruto opened his eyes to sunrise casting an orange hue across the whitewashed ceiling from the window. He laid there for several minutes as his mind buzzed back to life, his head lulling to the side to stare vacantly into the empty apartment. The futon was still lying out across the floor, the blanket atop it still unfolded and scattered. He used the bed last night, which felt weird. That was Naruto’s bed. Not his. Naruto told him to use it, though…

He forced himself upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he yawned, and dragged himself straight into the bathroom for a morning shower. He tried to ignore the way that his arms and legs felt like weights tying him to the floor. They burdened him like lead, and he tried not to dwell, not to give that burden a foothold. The steam from the shower helped him set his head on straight.

He changed into one of the few clean sets of clothing he had lying atop the dresser in the main room and stared at himself in the mirror. They looked a little grungy, a little too dated, but were the closest he could find to his usual black, white and red wardrobe so he settled.

Water dripped into his eyes from his bangs; he hadn’t bothered to dry his hair properly.

“You look miserable.”

“Shut up,” he grouched, rubbing a hand over his face. “It’s too early in the morning to be dealing with you.”

“Are we going to see that boy again?”

Boruto stiffened and fought back threatening words, because he really couldn’t back them up. He spun around, turned to the kitchen counter, poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat down for breakfast. He was coming to learn that silence spoke volumes. It had a choking hold on his meal, one that couldn’t be so easily ignored.

He was coming to realize that he’d grown accustomed to having long, boisterous conversation at every meal. He and his father lived together long enough to form a routine. Boruto was always the first to wake, not that he was by any means a morning person. Sometimes he would make breakfast and sometimes he would feel too lazy and nudge his father with his foot until the old bastard got annoyed enough to rise from the dead. By the time they were eating, Naruto would be loud and chatty and would droll on and on and on about all the cool stuff he and his team were supposed to do that day.

Boruto lowered his spoon into his bowl, staring pointedly at the vacant chair across from him. “It’s quiet.”

“Then fill the silence with empty words. You’re good at that.”

“Stuff it,” he shot, but it came off a bit weak. He’d been dealing with this internal dialogue ever since Team 7 left for Wave and he had about all that he could take of it. Or, well, he wanted to say that, but this weird thing he had going with the chakra beast was just about the only thing keeping him from admitting how alone he was. “Where did you pick up all this backtalk?”

“You’re a good teacher in that regard.”

He huffed but couldn’t argue the point, which made him even angrier , so he just chugged the milk left at the bottom of the bowl and slammed it hard back down on the table. He stood suddenly, his chair clattering but not quite tipping over, and went over to the door to slip on his shoes.

Naruto had been so stupidly excited for that mission. He went on and on about the details of it—though he probably shouldn’t have shared that information with anyone, but Boruto wouldn’t tell if he didn’t—and about how this was going to be his chance to prove himself to his teammates. Really, what a loser, getting all giddy over a damn C-rank mission… Boruto would have bet a lot of money on his Dad coming back disappointed.

Before leaving, he took one last look at the empty apartment. So that was what Naruto felt like, living all alone like that? Taking a deep breath, he shut the door. This was no time to be sad and mope; today he was getting his issue looked at.

He made down the steps but paused. Right. Henge. He went out without a henge yesterday and got an earful from Tenzō that he really didn’t want again today.

A hand sign later and he was looking a lot more inconspicuous.

On cue, Tenzō leapt down from the roof with an easy smile on his face and hands on his hips. “Good morning,” he greeted. “Ready to go?”

Boruto raised a brow. “What, is he here already?”

“He arrived ahead of schedule,” Tenzō affirmed as they cleared the stairs and veered towards the main path. “Lord Third is allowing us to use the Hokage Residence.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“To give us some privacy,” he stated simply. “And to keep you out of trouble.”

Boruto rolled his eyes. Tenzō was never going to forgive him for the graffiti incident.

“So you’re our little curse victim, eh?”

Boruto didn’t know what he expected when he heard Jiraiya’s name, but this man certainly wasn’t it.

Jiraiya grinned, crossing his arms as he inspected the young blond with vaguely veiled amusement. He looked over his shoulder to where Tenzō was waiting by the door. “You can wait outside. I’ll call you in when we’re done here.”

“Right.” Tenzō slipped out into the hall, not before saddling Boruto with a reluctant glance, and the two were left alone.

Jiraiya waited out the quieting steps until they were left in silence before he turned his attention back to the boy sat in front of him. He raised an eyebrow, his eyes crinkled in a soft gaze. “You look so much like your parents,” he breathed. “Sure takes me back.”

Boruto blinked, leaning back against the wall. They were using one of the guest bedrooms within the Hokage Residence to guarantee their privacy, but he couldn’t get comfortable in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar man. The last tie he had to any shred of his normal day-to-day life in that time had just been sent outside. Add to that the fact that the legendary sannin came to the same assumption that he was Naruto’s brother and, well. It put him on edge.

“Well,” Jiraiya started, pulling a wooden chair over from the desk in the corner. Its legs scraped across the floorboards until it halted at the bedside and Jiraiya hunkered down onto it, resting his elbows on his knees. “I suppose they’re actually your grandparents.”

Boruto stared long and hard, fisting the sheets beneath him. “Grandpa Third told you?”

“More or less.” When he held that weary gaze, Jiraiya chuckled. “You’ve got the old man believing some pretty interesting stuff, kid. Relax; I’m not here to test the validity of your story. The Hokage needed to be upfront with me if I’m going to be looking into that seal you’ve been saddled with. I needed to know the circumstances behind how you got it.”

Boruto relaxed but not fully. Having the truth spread by someone else’s will was a little nerve-wracking, but there was no helping it. “And?”

“So far it sounds like a curse mark,” Jiraiya affirmed, gesturing Boruto closer. Boruto was reluctant but held out his left arm, suppressing a flinch as his wrist was grabbed by a much larger hand. “But I’m not convinced.”

“Why not?”

Jiraiya hummed, turning Boruto’s arm palm-up to inspect the now permanent symbol there. “Well, for one, curses don’t tend to seal manifestations of chakra within their victims.”

“So then—”

“This was the point of contact?”

Boruto shifted, crossing his legs beneath him as Jiraiya tapped his palm with the tips of two fingers. “Um. Yeah. I grabbed the scroll.”

Jiraiya’s fingers followed up his forearm, tapping a path from wrist to the crook of his elbow. To Boruto, the sage was a massive, broad figure, a bit intimidating at first glance. But Jiraiya had kind eyes and a soft face that offset everything about his hulking form. The longer they sat there and soaked in the quiet of the room, the more it eased Boruto’s uncertainties. This was Dad’s mentor, right? If he couldn’t trust the man who taught the Seventh Hokage, then who could he trust?

Jiraiya’s eyes flickered up from the marking to him. “I was told the seal expands when you use chakra. Mind showing me?”

“Oh. Right.”

He forgot that he dropped the henge when they entered the Hokage Residence. Bringing his hands up into a seal, he put the henge back in place and shrugged off his jacket to reveal the glow of the newly spread markings. Jiraiya whistled. He wasn’t sure if that was good, bad, or just Jiraiya being Jiraiya.

“Quite the light show, kid.”

He suspected the latter.

Boruto was told to keep absolutely still as his arm was inspected. He watched, Jiraiya’s eyes reading and examining every speck of ink that had flown out of his palm with a strangely stern look on his face.

Eventually, Jiraiya let go, leaned back, and placed his hands on his knees as he considered what he found. The corner of his mouth curled up into a halfhearted smirk. “You know,” he laughed, “your Grandpa Minato would have had a field day with a seal like this. Any way you can dip a little further back and have him take a look at it for ya?”

Boruto rolled his eyes and dropped the henge, watching the ink recede. “If I could do that I would’ve gone back to my own time by now, y’know.”

“Just a joke,” he placated, and then the smile was gone and the air felt heavy. Jiraiya’s eyes were back on the mark. “That character…”

“It means ‘open time,’” he affirmed, rubbing his wrist.

“You can read that?”

“Thanks to the chakra beast. I think. It’s…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I dunno. Ever since I got this mark, my mind just… translates it.”

“Huh.”

Jiraiya clapped his hands, resolutely dropping that train of thought with a grin. “Well. I got nothing.”

Boruto felt deeply, horribly disappointed.

But Jiraiya was grinning. “Relax. What I mean is, I can’t exactly say how this seal came to be. From what you’ve said, its trigger was definitely a staple of a curse. The mark remains on the point of contact, it drains chakra. If that were it, this would fall somewhere within my area of expertise.”

Boruto groaned, hanging his head as he felt the small bit of hope he let grow in his stomach shrivel up and die. If a seal master couldn’t do anything about it, then what hope was there for anyone else? He was going to be stuck with this annoying, taunting thing in his head for the rest of his life. There went his chance to ever hold up a henge without hiding his arm, or being inconspicuous at all ever . Or, hell, even being able to sleep soundly without the threat of waking up to his body being used like a damn puppet.

“Juinjutsu is usually used to bring the victim under the user’s control,” the Sannin continued unperturbed, easily ignoring the boy’s obvious sulking. “But that’s not really the case with you. Though, there is some loss of control going on with that thing inside you, isn’t there?”

“...Yeah,” Boruto hesitated, flexing his hand open and closed.

Jiraiya took his hand again gently and traced the inner circles of the ink with his finger. “This here resembles some of the curse marks I’m familiar with. These symbols, right here. But,” his finger shifted to the outer edges of the seal, “this part looks to me like what you’d find on a paper seal. A scroll imbued with chakra or a technique, for example.”

Boruto followed his finger and then looked up quizzically, his mind falling back to the musty catacombs of the World Temple. “...Like the scroll I grabbed.”

Jiraiya nodded. “Like the scroll and curse combined somehow. Perhaps that imbued chakra was this chakra beast. The secret to the Hidden Time’s four hundred year reign.”

There was a moment where Boruto was nodding along, listening to the Sannin’s observations intently, but then he stopped. Thought. He tried to recall if he ever mentioned the Hidden Time to anyone since he arrived there, but… no, no he hadn’t. There was that brief encounter with Kakashi in the ruins, though, and he suspected that the jōnin would have made mention of it in his report. Word travelled fast when the Hokage was involved… Well, he already knew that much, being the son of the Seventh.

Boruto gathered his thoughts, pressing his palms to the bed sheets as he leaned back. “So you think the chakra beast can time travel?”

“Maybe,” Jiraiya shrugged. “Maybe not. As it stands, we don’t know much about the Hidden Time. They kept themselves pretty closed off; there was a seal placed over the city that acted like a barrier against time. It was said that nothing within the seal ever aged. They lived outside of time, and because of that their village was near impossible to find.”

He raised an eyebrow. It hadn’t been very hard for him to find. Then again, the village wasn’t exactly intact anymore. “What happened?”

“The seal broke, apparently,” Jiraiya shrugged, hefting himself up out of the chair to stretch his cracking limbs. He yawned, scratched his neck and moved over to the desk. Atop it were some papers, and he started recording his findings. “When that happened, time caught up with them. Whole city crumbled into nothing. Most of the people inside were so far beyond their lifespans that they were nothing but bones and dust by the time anyone realized what was happening.”

Boruto paled, thinking back to the dusting of sands that took residence in the rubble he’d walked through with his team.

“Oh, how they screamed.”

That made him shiver.

Jiraiya looked over his notes, folding the papers together before rolling them up and tucking them into his sash. He clapped his hands and closed the distance between them, patting Boruto on the head with an easy grin. “I think I’ve seen enough. Let me brush up on the Hidden Time’s seals and see what I can do for ya.”

He blinked. “You think—”

“I won’t promise anything,” Jiraiya stated firmly. He flicked Boruto’s forehead, eliciting a groan. “I’m not sure about extracting it, but I think I can get the whole thing better under your control.”

A slow-forming grin stretched across Boruto’s face and finally there was relief, however small, blooming in his chest. “I’m counting on you, Pervy-Sage!”

He wasn’t sure why Jiraiya made such a horrified look at the name. That was what Dad called him.

It was late, the world cast in a blue-grey hue beyond his door as Boruto put the last of the dishes to dry in the rack. He twisted around, casting a long, thoughtful glance at the full moon through the window, his lips twitching. It had been over a week now since Team 7 left on their mission, almost two, and he held onto hope that those days would be short-lived.

He made it a point to check with Grandpa Third every day to see if Kakashi sent word on there status, but there’d been nothing so far. He knew his father couldn’t have died or anything—because, well, he existed —but that didn’t mean that there weren’t other things to worry about.

One of those other things was the possibility that he screwed up the timeline and that everything that happened from the point of his arrival onward was now happening in an alternate reality. If that were the case, maybe Naruto did die. Maybe he could have, all because his good-for-nothing son fucked up.

Boruto was coming to understand what self-loathing meant.

His eyes fell to the four-seat table, casting over the tasseled bookmark lying there, wrapped in paper. During his last foray into the marketplace it had caught his eye. Perhaps it was a little lame, shaped like a kunai with a charm that tied the tassel shaped like Konoha’s leaf. But then again, old man Kakashi was lame. It suited him perfectly, right?

He’d have to remember to bring it along when Team 7 returned.

He cast his gaze across the apartment and heaved a sigh, slipping out the front door. The longer he stayed in there, cooped up all by his lonesome, the more he felt like he was going insane . And maybe a little stir-crazy. Without much thought, he crouched low, then shot up into the air and landed deftly on the roof tiles. He swayed in the wind, the chakra pooled at his feet allowing him to keep steady, and shivered.

Damn it was cold. Tenzō better have actually put that blanket they gave him to use. ‘It’s fine, I’m used to the cold,’ he’d said. He was a good-for-nothing liar, sitting up there in the approaching winter winds with that thin-ass jōnin uniform.

Boruto crouched down, steadying himself as he sat on the edge of the roof tiles and overlooked the village. He knew where everything was now, knew his way around old Konoha like the back of his hand. It still wasn’t his Konoha, but… he didn’t hate it.

Honestly, that had probably been the most he’d seen of Dad in months despite living in the same house in the future.

“So sullen.”

“Shut up,” he said without bite. He was starting to get used to the beast's constant pestering. It didn't rile him up the way it did before because, at the end of the day, it was company. No matter how unwanted.

He heard the soft, subtle brush of movement behind him and it eased his nerves. He shifted, draping his arm over his knee. “Liar,” he muttered. “You said it wasn’t cold.”

“I said I was used to it,” Tenzō corrected, lowering himself next to Boruto with an easy smile.

Boruto rolled his eyes. “Same thing,”

There was a pause between them, a comfortable silence broken only by the howl of the breeze, and finally Tenzō glanced over at him. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing,” he tried, making a face when Tenzō’s deep, unending black pits saw right through him, “or everything. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s anything you can help with.”

“Try me.”

He considered the ANBU carefully then, sizing him up. For an ANBU on a mission, Tenzō was surprisingly considerate of Boruto, especially since he was the subject of that mission. He’d been a strange, vacant-eyed pillar of support those past three weeks, and Boruto intended to pay his kindness forward if there ever came the chance.

Boruto hummed, leaned back and supported himself with his hands on the tiles behind him. “I’m starting to think that no one’s going to come for me,” he said simply. “Or that no one can. I wonder if this is an alternate timeline, if I changed so much that my message didn’t go to my future, and instead went to this future.”

Tenzō’s eyes flickered at that, and Boruto cursed internally. He didn’t know about all of that time travel bullshit. He thought that Naruto and Boruto were brothers .

Boruto flashed a wavering smile and attempted a weak salvage. “Kidding. It’s a joke—”

“I’ve spent enough time with you to know that it wasn’t,” Tenzō countered quickly, his face hard-set and brow furrowed. “Go on.”

Go on? How was he supposed to go on from that? But Tenzō wasn’t asking, and Boruto didn’t really want to lose his chance, so he bit his lip and shoved his worries into a deep corner of his mind. “I’m scared,” he confessed, and the words spilling from his mouth were a surprise even to himself, “that the person that comes back for me isn’t going to be the person that I remember.”

Quiet again. He ducked when he felt a hand on his head, ruffling his hair, his shoulders hunched and head down.

He liked Tenzō. He may not have had the outward compassion of Kakashi, or the unconditional support of Iruka, but there was something about him that made everything feel calm.

“Look,” Tenzō said softly after a time, pointing up to the sky. “A shooting star.”

Boruto followed his hand up to the midnight sky, squinting as he searched the stars for movement. Then he saw it, the smallest stream of light cutting through the dark.

“Huh,” he said, simply. “It is.”

It looked off. It was the angle it was moving, the downwards drop of the tail that was plummeting toward the earth. He thought nothing of it until it came closer, burned brighter.

His eyes widened when the comet shot down into the forest and the world burned white.

Boruto jumped to his feet, shielding his face with his sleeve as the light dispersed, the line if its radius thinning before trickling out altogether. “The hell was—”

It hit like a cold splash of water. A massive chakra impossible to ignore bubbled up from behind Konoha’s walls, so strong and powerful and unrelenting that he didn’t doubt any shinobi worth a damn could sense it. Tenzō sure as hell did—Tenzō looked like a piece of petrified wood.

“What is that?”

The overwhelming pull of the chakra had him taking an unplanned step forward and almost falling off the roof but he reorientated himself before he did. The chakra took shape, and something felt so familiar about it, so nostalgic that he—

Boruto licked his lips and swallowed. “...Dad?”

“What is this? I don’t like it.”

“It’s…”

“I don’t like it, I don’t like it, what is this?!”

A strangled noise escaped him and he doubled over, cradling his left arm to his chest. Blue markings flared to life and burned a path across his skin. It hurt. It never hurt before. He squeezed his eyes shut against the white hot pain and bit back a cry.

Tenzō knelt next to him, placing a gentle hand on his back. “Boruto?” he called, his voice shaken. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t think. The markings stretched and bled all the way up to his neck and across his chest, further than they ever went before. He forced an eye open to assess the damage. There was steam rising up from the markings. No wonder it burned.

Tenzō looked him over, maintaining his calm, somehow, despite everything. “The chakra beast again? I’ll—” His hand came up in a familiar seal.

A broken sound escaped Boruto’s throat as the curse peeled away at his skin. His body felt like a volcano ready to erupt. He tried to tell it to calm down, ask it what the hell it thought it was doing to his body, but the words wouldn’t come.

The light burned away his body into ash and he was gone.

Tenzō stood alone atop the roof of a small apartment complex, swaying unsteadily against the wind, and everything felt wrong.

Naruto yawned, curled up by the flickering campfire, holding up his wind-chilled hands to the heat. Sakura sat next to him, packing up for the night, and Kakashi was leaning back against the tree across from him with that ever-present book in hand.

Sasuke was off being Sasuke in the dark.

He watched the flames coil and crackle through the air, unable to repress a smile. They were on their way back home and Kakashi told them he expected to reach the village by tomorrow afternoon. He hadn’t expected the mission to take so long to complete, or for to it to turn into the mess that it was. It was over now, though. Over and done with, and they could move on.

He left a lot of pain back in the Land of Waves.

Naruto rubbed his hands together, the friction producing a comfortable warmth, and looked past their camp into the darkness. Home was in that direction. Just a few more hours. The thought had him giggling. He felt his teammates’ stares but couldn’t be bothered to care.

The adventure was great, but it was… nice, having someone waiting for him at home.

Having a brother waiting for him.

Sakura shot him a wary glance as she zipped up her bag. “What are you laughing about?” she asked, folding her legs beneath her. “How do you still have so much energy? Honestly…”

“Nothin’,” he answered simply, but it was obvious from his grin that there was something. The horrors of his mission were weighing heavy on his mind, but it wasn’t all-consuming. It gave him a lot to think about. Beyond that, though, he was able to push it aside and look forward to tomorrow. “Just lookin’ forward to seein’ my brother again, y’know?”

Sakura frowned, looking to their instructor for guidance. When she found none, she ran a stressed hand through her hair. “So, um,” she tried, hopelessly. “Who is that guy? I mean, is he really…”

“Of course he is,” Naruto said matter-of-factly, crossing his arms over his chest and squirming in place. He felt restless. He probably wouldn’t sleep because it was already late and he just couldn’t sit still. Okay, so maybe there was a lie in there somewhere, but as far as Naruto was concerned, they were as close to brothers as they could get. That was enough.

They hadn’t known each other long. Naruto knew that. But he also knew that they didn’t need to. Time strengthened bonds, sure. But time wasn’t the only factor.

Naruto accepted him. And, for all of his faults, he accepted Naruto.

Too antsy to sit still any longer, Naruto hopped to his feet and spun on his heel, wandering over to where his bag leaned against the tree Kakashi was seated at. He started setting up for the night, doubtful he’d actually use his sleeping bag for longer than five seconds. It gave him something to do, though.

“But I thought you didn’t…”

Naruto stilled, his fingers twitching just over his opened bag. He sucked in a breath and pulled out his sleeping bag, letting it unravel just a little ways away from the campfire. “I didn’t,” he said simply. “I didn’t think that…”

He could feel Sasuke watching him, even if the jerk wouldn’t ever actually say anything.

With his sleeping bag laid out flat, Naruto plopped down atop it, legs crossed and grinning. “He’s pretty cool, y’know? He said he’d teach me the paralysis jutsu when I get back!”

Kakashi twiched. Naruto caught it, saw the way his eye widened slightly, and suddenly Naruto was hunched over with poorly-repressed laughter as he relived the memory of their time running away from his instructor. That’d been a strange, unnerving time, but it was also… fun. Weirdly fun.

“Hey, hey,” he called, scooching closer to his instructor with bright eyes and a pleading smile. “Can we bring Boruto on our next mission, Kakashi-sensei?”

Kakashi sighed and flipped the page of his book. “You know that we can’t, Naruto.”

Naruto pouted but he wasn’t all that upset; he knew the answer before he asked. Worth a shot! “I wanna see him fight, though…”

Sakura raised an eyebrow. “He’s your brother but you’ve never seen him fight?”

“I—”

“Boruto is from Suna,” Kakashi supplied simply, probably trying to save Naruto from messing the story up. Even Naruto was well aware that he would. “He grew up there. They only met recently.”

“Oh,” Sakura nodded, “I get it. So, why not spar with him when you get back?”

Naruto snapped his fingers. “That! I’ll do that!”

He heard a soft snort from Sasuke, but it didn’t bother him. Sasuke may have been an annoying pain in the ass, but… Naruto was having trouble hating the guy. Something changed after their training back in Wave. Something good.

The rest of his team packed in for the night. Naruto offered to be the first on watch, his mind bright with thoughts of what tomorrow would bring. He stoked the fire and looked up, watching a star shoot across the sky. A good omen.

He had so many stories to share.

Chapter Text

Jiraiya sat at his desk with a patchwork of paper and ink laid out before him. Secured to the wall was the copy of Boruto's seal he had drawn out just under two weeks earlier. He hummed as he looked it over, ran a hand through his hair, then brought it down to scratch his chin.

He had come up with… something . He wasn’t entirely sure how well it would pan out, but damn if he wasn't ready to try. With any luck, this would be enough to keep the poor kid from losing control of his body. That would essentially solve most of his problems, really—at least the ones that didn't pertain to time travel.

The kid better have been grateful. Jiraiya hadn’t seen the inside of a bathhouse in weeks .

That was enough for the night. Come morning, he'd head on over to Boruto's place and surprise him with it. The thought had him grinning. He leaned back in his chair and reached for the ceiling in a stretch, feeling the satisfied pull on his tense muscles.

“All in a night's work,” he said, and his eyes turned towards his manuscript. It would feel good to unwind a bit. “Now, then…”

Before his hands could reach for the inkpot, there was a bright beam of light from the window. For a second, everything was bathed in the crisp, clean white of what he could only fear was a bomb. It faded quickly but the burn on his eyes remained, the afterimage floating across his vision, and he blinked away black spots.

Jiraiya leapt off his chair and stuck his head out the window. The world was dark, the silhouettes of village architecture a welcome comfort. Like nothing ever happened.

All at once everything started up again. There was a pull on his thoughts, a long, unending stream of chakra flowing out of nothing far off past the village and well into the forest. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, just raw, unending power.

And then, just like that, it was gone.

Jiraiya stood there vacantly, his jaw slack with wordless confusion, and he took a deep breath as he tried to work out just what that could have been. Nothing good.

He cast one more look into the little inn room he'd been paying for and sighed, hopping through the open window to float down into the street.

“Well,” he grinned, crouching low, “never a dull moment, eh?”

As one of the three legendary sannin, and the only one anywhere near Konoha at the moment, he felt a bit obliged to go check out whatever could have caused a massive burst of chakra. That decided, he leapt up, across the roofs of houses to the edge of the village, and then over the village wall. The trees were still buzzing from the sudden surge of energy that just swept out across the forest.

Whoever produced that was worth meeting. Jiraiya looked forward to it.

Tenzō stared at the vacant space beside him. He could still feel the warmth from Boruto's back pressed against his arm, could still see where the boy's crumpled form once was, face contorted in pain.

He shook himself and looked out at the forest beyond the walls. Whatever that influx of chakra was, it had been the trigger. He took a step forward but knew that he shouldn't, biting back the urge as he instead faced the Hokage Residence. Before he could think about investigating, he needed to report what happened. Lord Third needed to know about this, before anything else.

He shot a wary glance in the direction of the falling star, feeling helpless and useless and all kinds of horrible with his fists secured in a white-knuckled grip.

“Don't be dead, Boruto,” he said, his voice small. “We'll figure this out. I promise.”

He left in a swirl of wind and leaves and hoped that they weren't just empty words.

The Seventh Hokage rolled his shoulders with a satisfied sigh, his muscles feeling weird and tingly after his travel. He looked around at the temple room so similar to where he'd been moments before, yet distinctly different. There was a scroll atop the pedestal, untouched and undisturbed even as billows of sand dusted the air, stirred by his arrival. And, beneath the scroll, a freshly marked blood seal.

His son was there, at some point or another. Good. He worried he'd overshot it. It was honestly a miracle that he'd been able to manipulate the technique to land somewhere near where he wanted to; he really hadn't a clue what he was doing.

He grinned, wiping nervous sweat from his brow. “Well, that's a relief.”

“You're as reckless now as you were at sixteen.”

“Oh, come on, Kurama,” he laughed, brushing off his pant legs as he made his way back to the surface. “It all worked out in the end.”

“Dumb luck shouldn't be this persistent.”

“I take pride in that dumb luck, y'know.”

Naruto trailed his hand along the wall in his ascent. It wasn't long before he was standing at the front entrance of the World Temple, looking out at the crumbling remains of a village long destroyed by time. This really was the past; he knew that now, from the absent tents and campgrounds that the excavation team had set up when their job first began. Everything was more or less untouched.

Before he could go further, he needed to decide where to go next. He recalled Boruto making mention of caves; there was a cliffside not far from there that had some cavernous tunnels. Starting there might work, if Plan A failed.

“It's too early to celebrate.”

Naruto rolled his eyes and descended the front steps to the path that led out of the village. “You really need to learn to be more optimistic.”

“The boy could have arrived months ago or longer. We still don't know if we landed precisely where you intended.”

Naruto stilled. His grin fell into a hard frown as the winds disturbed the sands of the ruins and fluttered his Hokage cloak. “I know,” he muttered softly. “That's why I'm hurrying.”

The thought of Boruto being stuck there for months or years knotted his stomach. He fought back against those fears, though, because he knew there was no use dwelling before they knew the truth.

The village ruins came to an end at the front gate and he sucked in a breath. Before he could continue, though, he had to do something about his Hokage cloak. He frowned, slipping it from his shoulders and holding the fabric out before him. It felt strange to part with it, past be damned, but he knew that if anyone saw him wearing that it could cause a lot of problems.

“Where to put this…” He smiled. “Any ideas, you grumpy old man?”

He could hear Kurama huff from within his mindscape. “You should have thought this through, brat.”

“I got excited!”

Naruto made a face at the robe, turning it over in his hand. A part of him thought to leave it in the ruins, doubtful that anyone would be poking around in there any time soon, but he thought better of it. It was the Hokage cloak, and it meant something to him; he didn't want to just leave it discarded in any old place until he tracked down his son and could go back to it.

With a sigh, he slipped the cloak back onto his shoulders. It could stay there until he found someplace more suited to keep it safe. He could feel Kurama's amusement, but the old fox kept his comments to himself in that regard.

“What's the plan? A henge?”

“Mmm… nah. I doubt anyone'll recognize me,” he said simply.

“I'm sure there were plenty of blond fox children running amok.”

Naruto huffed, hands on his hips, and he retreated to his mindscape to personally deliver his glare to the tailed beast. “Hey,” he called, trying to stare up at the massive fox without making himself look small. “Are you going to be like this the whole trip or are you gonna help me find my son?”

Kurama let out a loud snort, closing his eyes and resting his head on his paws as though ready for a nap.

“Even if they did recognize me,” Naruto continued, “I could seal their memories of me. If it really was a problem. So don't worry so much.”

There was another huff, a lot of scolding silence, and Kurama peeked open a red eye, staring dully at the Hokage. “Sage mode, ” he stated cryptically.

Naruto grinned, nudging the giant paw in front of him. “That was the plan, ya old bastard.”

He opened his eyes to the outside world and activated sage mode. After the outpouring of chakra he expended for the time manipulation jutsu, even he was feeling a bit spent. He would be fine, though; he may have been out of practice but he'd gone through far worse than this, come far closer to chakra exhaustion during the war. Compared to that, this may as well have been an evening jog.

Sage mode enveloped him in a golden light that burned up the dark.

Naruto took a deep breath and sensed the chakra around him, searching for his son's signature. It should work, so long as the kid currently existed in that time. He searched the forests and the cliffs that Boruto had mentioned, then further, all the way to the distant walls of Konoha.

Nothing. There were traces here and there, though—remnants of used chakra. But nothing as whole and complete as the body of his son.

“What?” He blinked, as though sage mode would answer and explain just where his son's chakra was. “That's strange. Let's try again.”

Naruto took another steadying breath and started his search anew. He wound up with a whole lot of nothing and he opened his eyes, staring blankly ahead.

“Huh?”

“His chakra tasted different on the message that he left,” Kurama pointed. “Search for that.”

“Oh. Right.”

Naruto may have been a little embarrassed that the chakra signature on the imprint escaped his thoughts, but he reasoned that he had a lot on his mind. Besides, that was what he had Kurama for. They had been together so long that he had trouble remembering what it was like when they were at odds, when he didn't have Kurama's constant support to lean on when things got hard.

Well, some things he remembered. Some things he could never forget.

It was harder to track a signature that he was less familiar with, took a higher level of concentration than it usually would, and he focused in on the vague feeling he remembered from before—the chakra that he could still feel coming from the unactivated seal in the ruins behind him, and spread his search through the forest.

Traces. He could feel traces all around Konoha, and some vague remnants from the cliffs. But he couldn’t pinpoint the source.

With a frustrated hiss, Naruto raised his arms and ran his fingers through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Damn it all, now what?!”

“A good, old-fashioned search.”

“Do we even have time for that?”

“Time is the one thing we have a lot of right now.”

Naruto twitched, lowering his arms to hang limply at his sides. Kurama had a point; they could spend a day or ten years there and it wouldn’t make a difference so long as they travelled back to the correct time. Naruto was more worried about time for his son’s sake, though. Each minute that passed while there was another minute Boruto was dealing with this whole mess on his own.

There was a whistle from the trees and his head snapped up to find a shinobi half-masked by leaves, standing atop a branch with sandaled feet. Naruto pulled his mouth taut and turned in a flourish to face the man. He’d noticed the approaching chakra signature but thought little of it. It was only natural for Konoha shinobi to notice his arrival and investigate; it’d taken a moment for his chakra suppression to kick in so he didn’t doubt he’d landed with a bang.

“That was quite the entrance,” the man mused, leaping down onto the overgrown vegetation that littered the forest floor. “You don’t mess around, huh, kid?”

Oh no.

Sage mode was gone the moment Naruto laid eyes on the man, leaving the forest dark and shadowed by the canopy of trees. It took a moment for him to really register what he was seeing and another to remind himself that this was the past, that he would no doubt see people that he really shouldn’t see if it took time to locate his son.

Even still, for Jiraiya to be there…

Jiraiya wasn’t anywhere near the village in the time frame that he’d aimed for. Had he not gone back far enough? Had they already brought Tsunade back to the village? When were they?

But, in the end, Naruto didn’t care about all that.

Jiraiya was there, just out of reach.

The sannin raised an eyebrow, sauntering over with a lazy gait. He looked wary, but not hostile. Of anyone who could have possibly investigated Naruto’s landing, Jiraiya was probably the best to be saddled with; he wasn’t quick to make assumptions and, despite his carefree demeanour, was amazingly perceptive. He was the kind of guy who didn’t need to act hostile if faced with a potential threat, the kind who judged first and then acted. But—but he was just so…

“What happened to the light show?” he asked, sizing Naruto up. “And here I thought you were out lookin’ for a fight.”

Naruto laughed and it broke in the middle. He opened his mouth but said nothing, untrusting of his voice, and let out a deep, shuddering breath. “Nothing like that,” he assured as he tried to dispel the quavering of his voice.

Jiraiya stopped an arm’s reach away and, from that close, Naruto could make out every crease in his skin, every laugh line faded from his memory with age, and he looked so much more real now than he ever had before. “Then what are you looking for?” he pressed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His voice was level, calm, with an unreadable edge to it. “You’re here for something. No one comes out of the blue with that much chakra on a whim.”

“My son,” Naruto murmured, hiding his hands beneath his robe in his best effort to resist pulling the old bastard in for a hug. His mind fell away to that day so many years ago, standing in the Hokage’s office, hearing but not listening as the adults discussed the death of his mentor, his teacher, his friend . All he could do was stand there as words were thrown around that he wasn’t comprehending. He could remember yelling, lashing out at Tsunade, but not what he said.

Jiraiya placed his hands on his hips, blinking curiously ahead, and then took another step forward. “You wouldn’t happen to be Naruto Uzumaki, by chance, would you?”

Naruto stiffened and he lifted a hand to grip his cloak. Suddenly he was very regretful that he hadn’t left the thing in the damned ruins. “I—” he tried, and failed, swallowing back a knot in his throat. “I, uh…”

“And here I thought nobody would recognize the blond fox child.”

That was not the time and Kurama damn-well knew it but he’d said it anyway.

Jiraiya waited it out. He was patient, to a point, before taking another step forward.

Naruto stepped back.

The sannin made a face, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll take that as confirmation. Your boy’s with us. Took your sweet time getting here, did you?”

That was enough to snap him out of his stupor and he frowned, watching his old mentor turn back into the forest with an over-the-shoulder wave. He quickened his pace to catch up, mind reeling with a thousand thoughts on the whole exchange. Something about it felt… disappointing. It wasn’t his teacher, himself; Jiraiya was larger than life in a way that felt almost too real. At the same time, Naruto worried that if he reached out, his mentor might fade with the the next strong breeze like a phantom.

That wasn’t what bothered him, though.

They walked in silence for what seemed like forever. A part of him wondered why they didn’t just shunshin to the village like his mentor had to reach him (Naruto noticed the sudden flicker of Jiraiya’s chakra while in sage mode) but couldn’t bring himself to question Jiraiya out loud. So they walked. And walked.

And walked.

And the entire time, neither uttered so much as a word.

Jiraiya looked over his shoulder at Naruto now and then. Finally, when the village was in sight, he huffed out a breath and scratched his head. “You—” There was a pause. The sannin shook his head, letting out an uncertain noise. “You look a lot like her,” he finally settled on. There was an awkward edge to his voice, so out of character yet somehow fitting of the situation. “Your mother.”

Naruto’s steps slowed to a halt, his eyes on Jiraiya’s retreating back. In all their time together, he never heard the old sage even mention her. Why now, all of a sudden?

“That hair’s all Minato, though,” he continued in a laugh. He didn’t notice that he wasn’t being followed, too caught up in his own thoughts, lost in a sea of long-faded memories. “He was—your father, I mean—he was like a son to me.”

Naruto swallowed and forced his wavering self forward, one step at a time. Pieces were fitting together in his head now. This Jiraiya had a distance about him that the one Naruto knew never did. He needed confirmation, though, something to latch onto.

“Hey,” he called. This time he managed to keep his voice level. “Have we met?”

Jiraiya hummed as though he were thinking on it when he clearly wasn’t, stepping onto the main road that led directly to Konoha’s gates.

“I assume you know me,” Jiraiya diverted. “You have that way about you. That familiarity.”

Naruto frowned. “You’re back early.”

“Well, when the Hokage calls,” he mused, leaving the words to hang there.

The gates were in sight now and Naruto bit back the urge to keep talking. He slipped off his Hokage robe and folded it beneath his arm, hiding the embroidery on the back before anyone could read what it said, and braced himself.

He could worry about that later. Right now, he just needed to focus on his son.

Jiraiya knew a bad situation when he saw one, and this right here? This was definitely one of them.

He tried and failed to keep his eyes to himself and not examine the time traveller all too closely. It was hard. This was Minato and Kushina’s boy, all grown up and looking like a fine shinobi, and he’d be damned if he didn’t stare.

Jiraiya could see Boruto in the man the moment that they met. He had to be sure, though. Didn’t want to go around assuming random strangers to be related to the kid. It was good, knowing this was Naruto; it diffused the unease that lingered from the massive light that lit up the forest like fireworks and the pool of chakra that went along with it. But he’d be lying if he didn’t feel some guilt, seeing his student’s son for the first time when he was all grown up.

Naruto knew him, though; they’d met in the future. Maybe there was some hope, after all.

“I suspended my mission because of a missive from the Third,” Jiraiya explained as he ascended the stairs to the Uzumaki apartment, “asking for my immediate return.”

Jiraiya knew his way to the apartment because Boruto had him drop in once over the past few weeks to ‘examine’ the seal once more. Boruto wasn’t fooling anyone; the kid was lonely, in need of some company. Who was Jiraiya to deny him that?

“Had a seal he wanted me to look at. Your kid’s.”

Naruto’s brow furrowed. “What sort of seal?”

Jiraiya made to answer but stopped himself as they reached the platform to the front door. It was quiet but the lights were still on inside, and he saw something shift on Naruto’s face. Suddenly the kid didn’t seem so interested in hearing his explanation and he let it drop, knocking once on the door, twice.

No answer.

He scratched his chin, eyebrow raised. “Huh. That’s strange. The ANBU doesn’t usually let him out this late. Maybe he’s on the can?”

Naruto nudged him out of the way and twisted the knob. The door gave way with a long, solemn creak and beyond was an empty apartment. Every light was on but no one was inside. There were dishes in the drying rack, a futon folded up in the corner and a bed of scattered sheets.

The kid sucked in a breath and stepped in, placing the white robe he’d been carrying atop the bed. It looked suspiciously like the Hokage robe, but Jiraiya thought better of making assumptions.

There was a light in Naruto’s eyes that was previously lacking, his lips curling upward in the ghost of a smile that suited him a lot better than the hard-set frown he’d been wearing since they met.

“Sure takes me back,” Naruto laughed, twisting around to gaze over every small, minute detail of the tiny room with unrivalled fondness. “Boruto’s been staying here?”

“Seems like it,” Jiraiya affirmed, leaning back against the wall to observe. There was something almost sweet about the sight; Naruto picked up a photograph of his squad and reminisced.

“How long?”

“I arrived a little under two weeks ago, so probably about three.”

Naruto sighed, his whole body deflating as he lowered himself onto the mattress next to where his robe was laid out. His head dropped into his hands and, for a while, he just… breathed. “I was worried I’d land and he’d have been here for years. Kurama scared the crap outta me.”

“Kurama?” he echoed, but Naruto just waved him off.

“I’ll wait for him here, I guess.”

Jiraiya nodded. “I’ll let Lord Third know you’re here.”

“Thanks, Pervy-Sage. Really.”

The name took him off-guard. He knew to expect it, knew that Boruto had to have gotten it from someone in the future, but to hear a grown-ass man from the goddamn future call him that was a new level of insult. “ Pervy-Sage ?”

Naruto grinned, a hearty laugh escaping him, but no explanation followed.

Well, Jiraiya was pretty sure he knew where it came from. That did not make it okay .

He expressed his goodbyes with the utmost insult and slammed the door behind him. The moment he was alone, he allowed his expression to fall and cast a meaningful look across the streets of Konoha. Something wasn’t sitting well with him. That ANBU, Tenzō, was Boruto’s shadow, had been since before Jiraiya even arrived there, and from what Hiruzen shared, he didn’t allow Boruto out past a certain time. It wasn’t a strict rule, but was one that Boruto complied with easily enough.

Where would he go?

Jiraiya rolled his shoulders and made his way to the Hokage office. If anyone could offer an explanation, it was Hiruzen. Tenzō would have gone to the Hokage first and foremost.

He thought better of telling the time traveller currently reminiscing in the apartment.

Naruto looked out into the empty, semi-tidy state of his old flat. There was no doubt in his mind that Boruto was at fault for its strangely organized chaos; it was cluttered but not dirty  in a way that so reflected the boy's room back home. When he was that age, he admitted that he was a slob. Boruto's mess was more controlled.

Naruto drummed his fingers along his knees impatiently before rising off the bed and sauntering over to the table. Something atop it caught his eye. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. A bookmark, still in its packaging. Boruto's? He never noticed the boy reading in leisure back home. It sure as hell wasn't his , especially at that age.

He carefully placed it back down and let out a breath. “Sure takes me back. It feels like this was the start of everything, y'know?”

Kurama huffed. “You humans and your sentimentality.”

Naruto grinned. “Oh, yeah. You were usually asleep by this point, weren't you?”

“I had no need to live through the life of a hopeless kit like you at twelve years old.”

“Grumpy ol’ geezer,” Naruto muttered, something teasing in the light of his eyes.

He stopped before the dresser. There were clothes folded atop it, all monochrome and red, and he knew just whose they were the moment he laid eyes on them. He pulled one off, unfolding a shirt and sizing it up. A confident black, dark and strong and looking brand new. No attention-seeking orange in sight. He looked down at himself and laughed; maybe he could learn a thing or two from his boy. Then again, he doubted he'd ever change.

“Your plan is to wait?”

“Not much choice there,” he sighed and folded the shirt back up to return it to its place. He moved into the bathroom, unsurprised to find a pile of dirty clothes shoved into the corner. “If we leave, we risk missing him. At least if wait here, he's bound to return at some point.”

“And if he doesn't?”

“Good ol’ by-the-books search, just like you wanted.” He shut the bathroom door and went rummaging through the fridge. The funny thing was that there was actually food inside. “I'm confident that Pervy-Sage will let us know if something happens, too. We need to be here if he does.”

“You think something's happened to the brat?”

Naruto's eyes fell to the framed picture of his squad. “He mentioned a seal and ANBU. Tell me, Kurama: why would ANBU be put in charge of a twelve-year-old boy?”

There was no answer, but then, it hadn't really been a question. They both knew what it meant, or what it could mean. But Naruto wasn't going to let persistent fears about what may have been get to his head.

Forever the optimist, he smiled away the dark ‘what ifs’ looming over his head and snatched the robe off the bed to fold it up and put it away in the dresser next to his younger self's mesh shirts.

His younger self, huh?

“There is one thing I'm worried about.”

Tenzō knelt before the Hokage, his face cast downward to the floor, and it was quiet. He just explained what took place on the roof and was now awaiting further instructions.

Hiruzen tapped a nail against his pipe, counting the seconds. “I don't believe the beast would kill its host,” he said after a time. “If anything, it did what it did to protect the boy.”

Tenzō was quiet but his mind was cluttered. Of course, he remembered what Boruto confided in him, but he wasn't sure how easily he could believe it. Time travel, huh? How was that even possible? It couldn't—

No. It was not his place to make that call. Whatever Lord Hokage deemed the truth, he would follow. The primary aim for an ANBU was to protect the Leaf and carry out the will of the Hokage. He had the utmost trust in Hiruzen and always would.

“Investigate the source of that chakra,” Hiruzen commanded, the pipe now coiled in his grasp. “Perhaps we could glean some meaning from the beast's actions.”

“Yes, Lord—”

The door behind him flung open and his head snapped up to find the large, hulking form of one of the sannin looming in the doorway. Jiraiya's eyes met his, a smirk to follow.

“Perfect. Just the man I wanted to see,” Jiraiya mused, clapping his hands together.

Tenzō cast an uncertain glance at the Hokage, who gestured him to rise. He hefted himself up and turned on the sannin, eyebrow raised. “You were looking for me, Master Jiraiya?”

“Damn straight I was.” Jiraiya's smile fell and he looked into the room, crossing his arms and leaning back against the doorframe. “The kid's not here, I see.”

Tenzō twitched, his eyes drifting to the floorboards. He couldn't rid himself of the image of Boruto's body burning away into red-hot ash. When he closed his eyes, it was there, a crisp image burned into his retinas that he felt helpless to escape.

He liked that boy.

“There was,” he hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “an unforeseen incident.”

“Unforeseen incident,” Jiraiya echoed with a snort, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “Well, I've got a brooding father waiting in a dumpy apartment for his son. You wanna tell me what I should say to him?”

Tenzō blinked, catching the gaze of the sannin as he raised his head. The boy’s father was there? From the little intel he’d managed to collect in his time observing the Uzumaki brothers, he understood them to be orphans separated at an early age. One was sent off to Suna due to undisclosed circumstances while the other remained in Konoha, having been saddled with the burden of being the nine-tails jinchuuriki from birth. Of course, if that was all a ruse meant to bury the much less believable truth…

Tenzō liked to think of himself as a logical man, but those two kids were bringing a lot of his truths into question.

Focus . Whether they were estranged brothers or one was a time travelling fairy was irrelevant. What mattered was the problem at hand. “The Uzumaki boy is gone,” he stated firmly, in his best ANBU voice. “It appears that his seal activated.”

“Gone?” Jiraiya twitched. “What do you mean, gone ? Gone where ?”

He faltered and remained quiet because he didn’t really have an answer. “I don’t know.”

“Enough,” the Hokage bellowed from behind his desk. A steady plume of smoke billowed about the room from the pipe in his hand, the paperwork he’d been sorting through now lost to the wayside as he steepled his fingers and leaned forward. His attention was on Jiraiya, an unreadable tightness around his eyes. “You said that the boy’s father is here. Is that true?”

Jiraiya nodded. “I don’t doubt it for a second.”

“I see.”

Tenzō was deeply, wholly confused. There seemed to be something deeper behind their exchange, untold meaning beyond their words, but it was lost to him.

“Bring him here,” Hiruzen said after a time, a soft tug at the corner of his lips. “I’d like to see our boy Naruto for myself.”

Wait, what?

The shadow clone of the Seventh Hokage opened the door to what would one day be his office. Today was not that day. Today, that was the office of the Third. Hiruzen’s decor reflected his overall demeanour, empty and minimalistic. There was certainly less paperwork scattered about, a testament to just how bad Naruto was at the legal work his job entailed in comparison to his predecessor.

To the left were four framed portraits on the wall. Four, and not seven.

Naruto pulled attention from the portraits and stepped inside. Before him sat a figure of immovable nostalgia. His chest felt tight, gazing over the worn, aged face of the old man who raised him.

Man, did Naruto ever miss the bastard.

He suppressed the urge to run over and hug the man in a sobbing mess of tears and snot, and grinned. “Hey, old man.”

Hiruzen’s eyes narrowed, his hat casting long shadows across his face. “Naruto.”

“No one will recognize the—”

“Shut the hell up, Kurama!”

So the old man already knew, huh? That made things easier. It was strange that so many people were privy to his identity, though. The more he thought, the more he wondered just how loose-lipped his son had been over his stay. He was seeing a long, unending pit of problems arising from this but refused to acknowledge them until his first problem was resolved.

“Pervy-Sage said you wanted to see me.”

“And you send over a shadow clone.”

Crap, the old man noticed. Naruto rubbed his neck, a small, wavering chuckle bubbling up from his throat. “Old habits, y’know? I’m waiting for Boruto at the apartment.”

He caught the way Hiruzen’s eyes tightened and back slouched forward. “The boy is—”

“I know,” he cut in, holding up a hand in pause. “Jiraiya told me. I’m trying figure out where to go from here. Thought it best to do that there, in case he does come back.”

Jiraiya had skimped on the details but gave him the basics. He knew about the seal, about the seal activating upon his arrival, and that they hadn’t a clue as to what happened after Boruto disappeared. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; they knew there was a good chance that Boruto’s disappearance was related to time travel. Then again, there was a chance that it wasn’t. What if he left for another time only to just miss the kid? He couldn’t bear the thought.

In the worst-case scenario, Boruto was sent to another time. The most glaring problem Naruto faced, then, was how to figure out just what time the kid was in. That was easier said than done; he only knew where to travel to the first time because of the imprint Boruto left in the ruins. He hadn’t sensed any others, so Boruto hadn’t used the same trick twice.

The whole thing was giving him a headache.

“You don’t seem all too worried,” Hiruzen observed, breaking him of his thoughts.

“I’m not,” he said matter-of-factly, cheeky as ever, and he fixated on the portrait of the Fourth with fond eyes and a soft smile. “He’ll be okay no matter where he is. He’s my son, and I believe in him completely.”

A young Naruto jogged in place, his eyes darting from the village walls ahead to his lagging squad and back again, an impatient hiss rattling the back of his throat. They were so close and he wanted to just sprint all the way there, but Kakashi told him to keep to the group, but they were being so slow and he swore Sasuke was babying his injuries just to mess with Naruto and—

Naruto took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and calmed his mind.

It lasted all of five seconds before he was whining his frustrations.

“C’mon! C’mon, c’mon! Hurry up !”

Sakura rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Can’t you think of someone else for a change? Sasuke’s injured . We can’t rush him.”

Naruto grumbled under his breath. Sasuke didn’t seem all that injured anymore. They had their wounds looked at already, damn it. And Naruto was pretty torn up in the fight, too! He’d had those needle-looking things jutting out of his skin like a freaking pin cushion and he was fine.

Huh. Come to think of it, why was he fine?

That wasn’t important! What mattered now was getting to Konoha, grabbing some ramen at Ichiraku and telling his brother all about the Land of Waves, the bridge builder, Zabuza and Haku, and everything in between. He wondered if Boruto had ever been to Wave. Boruto was from Suna, so he’d travelled, but Suna was a good ways off from Wave… Ah, whatever. He’d just have to ask when they got back.

“But Kakashi-sensei’s lagging even further behind! C’mon, Kakashi-sensei, stop dragging your feet!”

Under Sakura’s glare, he shrank, ducking his head and kicking the dirt as he gripped tightly to the straps of his bag and continued on at a reluctantly reserved pace. To keep time from dragging on, he let his mind wander. He was excited to show Boruto his new-found tree-walking skills. Did Boruto know how to walk up trees already? Probably. As much as he hated to admit it, Boruto seemed to be a lot further along with his training.

That just meant that he needed to train harder . There was no way that he was going to let Boruto beat him to the Hokage’s seat.

Finally, they were at the village gates. They signed in and Naruto made a beeline for his apartment only to be stopped by a tug at the back of his collar. Kakashi-sensei held him there and he pouted.

“Now, now,” Kakashi sighed, watching him with a dull eye. “No running off until we report to Lord Hokage, you got me? The mission comes first.”

Naruto groaned. Right. That. The lamest part of the job.

The meeting passed quickly, even if it didn’t feel like it did. He felt old man Hokage’s eyes on him the whole time, watching him, and he fidgeted beneath the stare. What the hell was the old man’s problem, anyway?

The Hokage wasn’t usually like that.

Ah, whatever. Freedom at last.

The moment they were dismissed, Naruto was down the stairs and out of the building. He recalled the Hokage shouting back at him to wait a bloody second because they needed to have words , but he wasn’t about to sit through another lecture from the geezer when he hadn’t even been in the village long enough to do anything . Whatever old man Hokage wanted to pin on him this time, he didn’t do it!

Naruto took long, impatient strides through the streets, his pace steadily rising the closer that he got, biting back excited laughter that had been persistently scratching the back of his throat ever since he woke up that morning.

There it was. Home sweet home. He climbed the stairs two at a time, flung open the door, and on the bed—

His grin faltered. He started uncomprehendingly at the tall figure slouched over his mattress, his picture of Team 7 placed carefully between the stranger’s hands.

There was a moment where he couldn’t think to say anything, tried to work out just who this man was and what the heck he was doing there, but nothing came to mind. After freeing himself from his stupor, he pointed an accusatory finger the stranger’s way.

“Hey!” he shouted, and blue eyes lifted to meet his. “Who the hell are you and what’re you doing in my apartment?!”

The stranger blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment, his eyes widening with slow-forming realization, and he set the picture down carefully atop the bed sheets. “Oh.”

Oh? That was all he had to say for himself?

Naruto stomped over, chest puffed and back straight as he could get it, trying to look as big as he could even though this old guy had a lot of height on him. He looked down on the man who was still hunched forward on the bed with the most intimidating glare he could muster, his hands together as he readied to summon his shadow clones and pummel this guy into the ground if he made so much as one wrong move .

The stranger stared up at Naruto with large, pooling blue eyes and then laughed --full on, doubled-over in laughter with his arms around his middle and his brow creased and eyes squeezed shut. Naruto had a vague moment where he registered the strange wrappings on the man’s arm, covering his skin from the start of his fingertips and continuing up to disappear beneath his sleeve. He had markings on his cheeks, distinctly familiar markings, and a head of bright blond hair that caught the overhead light.

“Man,” the stranger breathed through his fit, “that’s rich. He’s like an orange Boruto.”

Naruto twitched and his hand seal faltered. He let his arms hang at his sides, and the vague familiarity of the man clicked. But it didn’t make sense-- why ? Why did he look like…

The man hefted himself off the mattress, the springs screeching beneath the release of his weight, and he rose to his full height. He looked a lot taller now without the low-sitting height of the bed to dwarf him, and Naruto couldn’t help taking an automatic step back. There was nothing but fondness in the man’s smile, but it did little to erase Naruto’s unease.

Especially considering that this guy broke into his apartment.

“Sorry,” the man said. His tone was softer then, smoother than the rich laughter that had just settled and the amusement of his last words. “I was just waiting for my son.”

Naruto shook himself free of the stupor he’d fallen into and steadied his stance. “What the hell are you talkin’ about, ya old—”

“Boruto.”

Naruto flinched. The man was watching him, unyielding in his gaze. There was no doubt in that stare and no hesitance in those words, spoken like the obvious truth they were so meant to convey. And damn it all, if Naruto didn’t see it. But it was a lie. Obviously it was a lie. “Say again?”

The man raised an eyebrow, head cocked to the side with a mischievous grin. “Call me Shichi,” he said simply and never repeated, casting a long gaze across the room. “I thought I’d wait for him here, but it looks like I missed him. Just my luck, y’know?”

Naruto’s face scrunched up in confusion. No, that wasn’t right. None of that was right. He pointed a finger at that Shichi guy with a hiss. “You’re a dirty liar,” he exclaimed with a huff.

Shichi blinked, the grin sliding from his face. “Liar?”

Naruto heard enough, grabbing the man and dragging him by the arm out of the apartment and onto the platform where he belonged, slamming the door in his face. Naruto washed his hands of the whole thing then, even if there was a distinct pull of concern forming somewhere in his mind, even if he could still feel that Shichi-guy’s presence looming beyond the door.

He gave the room a proper look for the first time. The futon was put away, so it was safe to assume Boruto was using the bed. The dishes were done, whole place looked a lot cleaner than it usually did when Naruto was left to his own devices, but there was still a lot of clutter, a lot more clutter than he could ever produce on his own. It was weird, how lived-in it felt.

He noticed something on the table and picked it up, his confusion only growing as he inspected it. “A bookmark?” What would they ever need that for?

Oh, right. Boruto mentioned something about getting one for Kakashi before Team 7 left on its mission. A ‘sorry for being a pain in the ass and eating your chakra’ gift. Kind of a mouthful, in Naruto’s opinion. He made to put it back down on the table but thought better of it, moving it instead to one of the shelves where it wouldn’t risk getting damaged by… well, anything, really. He just hoped that he remembered to tell Boruto where they put it, or that he remembered where it was at all … He could be a bit scattered at times.

Finally, he felt the old guy move away from the door. He padded over to the window and climbed atop the bed to watch the man’s figure shrink into Konoha’s streets, and he snorted.

“Good riddance!”

Naruto turned his back to the window in some meaningless rejection of the stranger, legs crossed and hands on his knees. What an idiot, thinking he’d believe a stupid line like that. Boruto was his son, eh? Like hell. Boruto didn’t have a dad. He was an orphan, just like Naruto. That was what Boruto told him and he believed every word.

He believed it all, even when something in his chest tightened and ached.

He believed it when he turned back to stare at the orange-clad man, now a speck on the horizon.

He believed it because he didn’t want to think about the alternative.

What did he know about Boruto, really?

Naruto shook himself of that downward spiral, jumped off the bed and hurried back out onto the platform of his front door. He didn’t know where Boruto was, but he knew someone who would. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he made a sharp inhale.

“Tenzō!” He shouted the name to the rooftops, his voice carrying in an echo across the wind. Truth be told, he didn’t know much about the guy that’d been stalking them over the past few weeks. He was pretty sure the Hokage put Tenzō up to the task, and it probably had something to do with the seal-thing living inside Boruto, but the details escaped him. He never asked; if Boruto wanted to tell him, then he’d find out sooner or later. “Hey, hey Tenzō! Come out!”

Silence greeted him. It felt like the rustling trees were laughing at him, and his hands fell limp at his sides. Huh. That was weird. When Boruto wanted to summon the guard, all he had to do was step outside the apartment and Tenzō would appear there like a ghost.

A ghost, huh? He shuddered.

Tenzō was meant to guard Boruto and not him , he reasoned, so if Boruto wasn’t there then maybe Tenzō wasn’t, either. It was still early in the day; they could have taken a trip down to the marketplace like they were so prone to doing when Naruto was off training with his team.

Alright, he’d search there.

Naruto made no qualms about leaving his dingy, old apartment so soon after arriving. He felt so boxed in with nothing to distract from its cramped walls. It wasn’t like he was ever excited to go home; he was looking forward to the person waiting for him, not the place.

His stomach made a pained growl but he forced his hunger to the back of his mind, stuck up his nose, and marched on. Food could wait. He was craving Ichiraku something bad, but there was something about his brother’s home-cooked meals that he was sorely lacking right now.

The Seventh Hokage sighed.

“Shichi?”

“Lay off, Kurama. I panicked. It was all I could think of.” He rolled his eyes at the growls of laughter echoing from within his mind and resented the bastard fox for getting so much amusement out of something so simple. “I somehow think introducing myself as Lord Seventh would have gone worse.”

“From where you stand, you can only go up .”

Naruto decided to ignore his tailed beast’s amusement for the time and focused on the world around him. He was sifting through Konoha’s main streets, assaulted by the wafting scents of nostalgic food stalls beckoning him to go over and reminding him so very persistently of the fact that he hadn’t eaten since arriving in the past. The shops were busy enough, with people milling in and out, a few stopped on a bench. There was a pair of children playing on the roof tiles of a noodle house with the owner, an old lady with an I’m-ready-for-retirement look on her face, berating them from the ground. Shouted demands for them to get down before they fell off and snap their damn necks cut through the usual bustle and commotions of the streets.

Oh, yeah. Felt like home, alright.

The atmosphere sent Naruto into a pool of warm nostalgia and thoughts of simpler times, but there was something strange about being in the Konoha of his childhood after coming from the Konoha of his Hokage reign. It was so much smaller and he could see the sky so much clearer. There was something nice about that, about the crowds being thinner and the shops being humbler, but Naruto was no fool. He knew what this was, and knew that it wasn’t his Konoha.

His mind drifted to his son, who undoubtedly would have found that place jarring, and Boruto had his sympathy.

“We’ve determined he’s no longer here.”

Naruto nodded, his steps slowing to a halt as the food at one of the vendors caught his eye, and his stomach gave a pleading lurch. “Yeah. We need to figure out where he’s gone next if we’re going to make our move, though. That jutsu’s exhausting . My chakra’s still recovering.”

Kurama snorted, and he could see the old fox in his mind curling up for another nap. “We need to determine if he travelled forward or went further back.”

“Right.”

Naruto was confident that Boruto would leave another message once he got his bearings. The problem was where, and when ; if he went further back, they would be able to locate it in this time and just needed to determine where it was to figure out where to go next. The biggest wrench was the possibility of Boruto skipping further on in the timeline, to a time closer to their own. There would be no way of locating a message here and their only choice would be to return to the present and comb through there instead.

The problem was, the time manipulation jutsu took up an insane amount of chakra. There would be no casting it just yet; he’d need to wait until his reserves replenished. Then again, he could use shadow clones to collect nature chakra and speed up the process… but it would mean nothing if he couldn’t figure out when Boruto was. In the instance of time travel, time wasn’t the issue. He could spend six months there and, so long as he aimed well enough, he could go back to the exact moment when he left like nothing ever happened. There was no need to rush; it was better to think things through.

At the same time, he was just itching to see his son.

Naruto blinked away spiralling thoughts to look around. There were eyes on him; whether it was because he stood out or because he’d essentially been talking to himself in public, he wasn’t sure. He hoped nobody recognized him but was too stubborn to put on a henge because he had a point to make to Kurama.

“Don’t worry,” Kurama started, and Naruto could hear the toothy grin behind each inflection, “no one will rec—”

“Kurama, if you say that again, I swear—”

And Kurama didn’t say it, not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t get the words past his laughter.

Naruto buried his face in his hands and groaned. He wished he had a partner who would damn-well take this mess seriously.

Morning fell away to noon and, as Naruto’s stomach made its final cry for help, he gave in. Fasting would get him nowhere; the fact that he hadn’t eaten at all just made him touchy and ineffective, and it wasn’t like he was doing anything important that he couldn’t tear himself away from; there was no work for the Seventh Hokage when this world hadn’t even named the Fifth.

A sucker for nostalgia, Naruto’s first instinct was to head down a few streets to a familiar ramen bar. He smiled, hearing the sounds of Teuchi in the back and smelling the complex aroma of the best damn ramen the Land of Fire had ever seen. He approached Ichiraku with a thinly-suppressed eagerness and brushed the noren aside.

He stilled, the small, hunched back of his younger self wiping the smile off his face.

The genin was sitting down with drooping shoulders, staring into an empty wallet that Naruto hadn’t seen in years, looking about as dejected as one could get.

Naruto swallowed and took the seat next to the child. He muttered an order to Teuchi, but his younger self never looked up, never seemed to notice. Naruto was pretty sure he knew what this was about.

It was admittedly… weird, seeing himself from an outsider’s perspective. He knew, logically, everything that happened in his life, recalled every misstep, every loss and every triumph. He could recall the countless times he sat at that very ramen bar, by himself or with Iruka and then, eventually, with the friends that he made throughout his life. He remembered Teuchi’s kindness, there when no one else was.

He didn’t remember this.

The soft clink of china brought the genin out of his ruminating and he looked up to see a bowl of steaming ramen set before him. Then his eyes turned right, coming to rest on the Seventh Hokage. His whole body went rigid as he looked between Naruto and the food and, eventually, he muttered out a soft, reluctant, “Thanks, Mister.”

Naruto smiled, thanking Teuchi when his own bowl was placed before him, and he stirred the noodles with his chopsticks absently even as his younger self was devouring the other serving. Naruto tried to enjoy his meals as he got older, especially now that he was Hokage. Work kept him away from home a lot, so the times that he could be there with his family were times that he tried to enjoy. He’d stretch those moments out as long as he could.

They didn’t speak, not at first. They just ate in silence, Teuchi’s back to them, the noren blocking the sun from reaching their eyes. It was only when his younger self had finished his third bowl that Naruto was acknowledged, and that started out as just a few flickering glances.

The boy let out a contented sigh, slumping forward on the bar to rest his head on his arms.

“Hey,” the boy called quietly. “Are you really, er… y’know?”

“‘Course I am,” came the reply.

“He told me he had no parents.”

Oh.

Oh, well. That stung.

Logically, Naruto could see his son’s reasoning for saying what he did. That didn’t make it any easier to swallow, and he felt a bit sick hearing that. He tried not to show that on his face. “I see.”

His younger self turned his head, staring up at him with far off eyes. “Where is he?”

“I dunno.”

“Don’t just—”

“No,” Naruto cut in, staring into his empty bowl. “I really don’t know. I would tell you if I did, but I don’t.”

“Oh.”

They didn’t bother to fill the silence and sat there with nothing between them and no crossing words. But somehow, some way, the company made the chaos surrounding them a little easier to bear.

Chapter Text

Boruto felt the burn on his skin before he even felt skin at all. His body flickered and swayed and lashed out like a kindled flame until everything felt solid enough for him to register the cool ground beneath his fevered body. He panted and cringed, his every muscle aching and screaming at him not to move. He couldn't move even if he wanted to.

Every breath he took felt like he was breathing in smoke.

“Shit,” he rasped out with an unused voice, because ‘shit’ was about the only accurate representation of how he felt. He didn't know what the hell that had been about. It hurt. No, ‘hurt’ was an understatement and usually it didn't hurt when the curse mark spread across his skin.

No, wait, it had. It hurt when he travelled back in time. But that pain didn't linger the way that this one was and he didn't know what that meant.

Groaning his aches, Boruto dug his fingers into the ground. Loose dirt burrowed beneath his fingernails and he knew then that he was outside. The smell of soil reaffirmed his observation, followed by the distinct rustle of an oncoming wind. The forest? The smell and sound and feeling closely resembled the forest around the village. How he ended up there, he hadn’t the faintest, but he needed to get back home soon. Tenzō must be worried sick. Or, at the very least, going into full ANBU panic mode.

He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. The light hit him fast and hard like a runaway train and he squeezed them shut again with regret, hissing as he blinked away black spots from his vision. It took a while to adjust, the world around him far too bright and far too morning for his sleep-addled mind. Last he remembered, it was the middle of the night. The world was dark and there were stars, a shooting star and then—

Dad. He felt Dad's chakra. Or… what he thought was Dad's chakra. With the chakra beast sealed within him, the way he sensed chakra was different and he still hadn't gotten the hang of it. It could have been a mistake.

No. It was Dad. Dad came for him.

He bit his lip and scrambled tiredly for a support, finding it in the solid something near where he lay, and used it to raise his battered body up. Sentimentality aside, he was worried--that it wasn't his Dad, that it was the Dad of the new timeline he had created, and that the future he was brought back to would never be his .

The pain faded into a dull, simmering burn and he released a breath, looking out into the world.

He couldn't think. The ringing in his ears fizzled out and everything around him started all at once. There was shouting and screaming and fighting and pleading —

Across a pile of rubble and dust sat a twelve-year-old boy with his arms at his sides and the world dead around him.

He thought that it had to have been the forest but he wasn't in the trees. Scattered remains of familiar buildings crumbled into the dirt at his feet and he breathed in sharply.

“What…”

Boruto sat atop a wreckage of stone and wood carved out of the dirt. Broken boards clawed into the earth at his feet. Shattered rock created a bedwork of destruction that climbed high into the sky. The longer he searched the bleak, grey world, the more he could make sense of it. Between large chunks of battered rubble, he spotted the splintered remains of a wardrobe. Clothes spilled out from the hanging door, and he recognized those clothes. Orange and in-your-face.

His mouth was dry as he swallowed.

Tearing his attention from the wardrobe, he found more. Furniture, shattered glass windows. Children's toys--a stuffed bear like the one Himawari kept back home--ripped and abused by a titlewave of dirt.

What was this?

Boruto twisted around. Behind him stood the familiar village wall that he knew so well and his heart sank. No. No, it couldn't be. He shot to his feet then, the dull ache in his joints forgotten as he scrambled up the piled stone and wood. With painful effort, he took purchase on the topmost point of the wall of destruction, staring down into the giant chasm below.

From there, he could see the five standing faces of Hokage Rock.

He stumbled back as reality hit, catching himself on the edge of the rock, and braced himself. This was Konoha. Somehow, some way , this pile of nothing was all that remained of village that he loved.

A hand swiped across his forehead, his eyes unfocused on the crater at his feet where two specks shifted at the centre. He couldn't make them out--blurs of red and yellow and orange. He didn’t care, mind still reeling from the understanding of just what this was.

Focus. Five. Five Hokage.

That was… Tsunade’s era. There were a good few years of rule between Hiruzen's rule and Kakashi's, starting somewhere around the time Boruto had been staying in, when Hiruzen died.

Oh.

He bit his lip, shoved his hands into his pockets, and retreated inwards.

It was that place again, dark and cold with water at his feet, an echo that bounced around a room no walls and no end. All he could see were pinprick eyes through inescapable shadow, quivering beneath his glare.

He stepped forward, the film of water splashing against his leg. “What the hell did you do!?”

The chakra beast blinked slowly, drawing out the seconds. “I protected us. There was danger.”

Danger? Danger ? Boruto clenched his fist and marched close and, to his mute surprise, it worked. When he stopped he was close enough to make out the faintest silhouette marked by the reflection of the water. It wasn’t enough to make out the body of the beast, but it was the closest he’d gotten so far without maintaining an inescapable distance.

“That wasn’t danger , that was--he was—” Boruto choked on his words and lowered his eyes to the water. His shoulders sloped as breath filled his lungs. “Send us back.”

“No.”

“Send us back ,” he said again and his words held bite. Everything was left so unresolved. He never got to wait around long enough for the old perve to come up with a solution to his seal problem, or to see Naruto come home. And his dad was there, looking for him, found him, and now he was…

Gone.

“I can’t,” the beast stated calmly, staring levelly at Boruto. “I don’t have the chakra needed for something of that level. You do not let me feed.”

“Because you—” Boruto bit back his words when he felt just how depleted his reserves were. That--that whatever the beast did took everything he had. He could feel even his stamina depleted and as the adrenaline wore off, he found himself wanting to sleep. “...Why? It didn’t--I wasn’t… tired like this the first time.”

“My own strength was enough. But you’ve not let me fully replenish once since I got stuck in here with you. Even in a desperate situation I was only able to send us forward a short distance.”

“That was hardly desperate,” he murmured, looking down at his trembling hands. His whole body tingled, down to the tips of his fingers. “That was my dad. He came to get me, and because of you we’re back to square one.”

“I did what I thought was best at the time.”

“Stop doing things,” he hissed. “Every time you do something, it’s like I’ve got a dozen new problems to sort out.”

There was no response. Boruto closed his eyes to quell the bubbling rage within him and retreated from his mindscape. Immediately he was met with words--shouts between the few survivors, asking if they were alright. In his blind shock, the people there had escaped him, his ears blocking out the sounds of their voices. All he saw were the broken remains of his village, not the people who managed to survive all of that devastation.

Boruto sucked in a breath and headed back down, hurrying towards the loudest voices. Now that he’d come down from his stupor, he recalled mention of a time where the village was destroyed in class but couldn’t place the year. He didn’t pay all that much attention, all things considered, but he at least remembered that it happened. This wasn’t some alternate future caused by his carelessness in the past.

“Lady Hinata!”

Boruto came to an abrupt stop and turned on the voice to see a uniformed member of the Hyuga clan resting a level lower. He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but the ones next to him were a little easier--bright pink hair was undoubtedly a sign of Aunt Sakura, and there was a summoning toad with them that he thought looked like one of Dad’s.

Beyond those perched on the sidelines was a racing figure of long, dark hair making its descent.

He swallowed. “Mom?”

Before he knew what he was doing, he was racing down after her, but she had a speed that he lacked and the distance grew. He skidded down the side of the crater, the heel of his shoe scraping a path through the earth, but Mom was already there, already at the centre with the other shapeless figures he saw before. He wasn’t fast enough. The closer he got, the more he could make out--a redhead clothed in black stood over the subdued body of Naruto, a Naruto who he couldn’t fully discern.

Boruto reached the bottom and sprinted towards the middle without even knowing what he was going to do when he got there, what he could do, or what was going on--he didn’t know, but that wouldn’t stop him.

He approached the figures only to freeze in place. Hinata’s battered body was flung bonelessly into the air and crumpled to the ground in a heap of paralyzed limbs. The redhead held a rod over her, looked down upon her with a face that held nothing, and plunged it into her chest.

“Wh—” His stomach turned and he sprang forward, forming hand signs as he ran blindly at the man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing to my mom?!”

The man caught his eyes, uncaring as three shadow clones burst to life around him. They ran at the man, throwing blind punches and kicks as Boruto rushed to his mother’s side.

“Mom?” he tried. His voice cracked. “M-Mom, are you—”

His hands loomed over her, afraid to touch her, afraid that if he moved her she’d bleed out. A thick pool of blood was forming beneath her, spreading out from the wound. No. No no no . This wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t--and she wasn’t—

A blast from his left tore away his footing and he rolled across the ground like a sack of flour as a massive wind sent everything flying to the sides of the crater. A strangled cry escaped Boruto as a rock hit his side. He curled in on himself, babying the throbbing skin of his abdomen, and opened his eyes against the dust and debris still floating through the air. He coughed and scrambled up on shaking limbs, his eyes finding his mother, and he wanted nothing more than to rush over, to help her, to do something .

A beam of black chakra sparked the air and his eyes followed it to the still body of his father. It swirled and thrashed, bringing with it a second assault of wind. Boruto brought up his arm to shield his eyes, squinting, trying to make out the figure beyond the wall of visible chakra.

“This is bad, this is bad, bad bad bad—”

He couldn’t bring himself to care about the beast, intently watching his father through the chaos.

Naruto’s skin peeled off his body bit by bit, burned up by the corrosive chakra around him, leaving a mass of blood and chakra bleeding out beneath. He choked, covering his mouth.

Naruto slowly stumbled upwards, the metal rods in his back shattering as though they were nothing. Within moments, his body was nothing but a mass of raging energy, a clawed, tailed thing with empty, white eyes and a framework skeleton encasing it. The bones creaked as it lowered itself down and then it launched forward at the stranger and everything was a blur of movement. They fled the crater--the redhead was retreating beyond the village walls--and suddenly the world was quiet and still save the distant echoes of an impossible fight.

Boruto watched the path of destruction, unable to look away, unable to get the image of his father covered in blood out of his head. That… was Dad. That--that thing , that—

He peeled himself away from the destruction and cast a glance towards his mother. She hadn’t moved, not even after his father’s horrifying display. Wincing, he stood back up and hobbled to her side, dropping to his knees beside her body. Her face was hidden away by long streams of hair that he carefully brushed aside. Her eyes were open, vacant, and slowly they lifted to him.

Hinata opened her mouth, sucked in a breath, and coughed before she could get any words out.

“Shhh,” Boruto cooed, placing a careful hand on her shoulder. His eyes stung but he refused to let any tears fall in front of her. There was relief there, though--immense relief, knowing that she was alive, that she was still breathing. He thought, when that man… No. He couldn’t let himself spiral with thoughts like that. “Save your strength, ‘kay? I’ll see if there’re any medic-nin left around.”

He didn’t want to leave her, though, and was reluctant to rise. He knew that he had to, knew that he didn't’ have the knowledge or skills to treat such terrible injuries, and got to his feet. Before he could leave, a hand latched onto his wrist and he stilled, casting a soft gaze down at his mother.

“Naruto?” she choked out, her voice a broken, worn-out whisper.

Boruto watched her for a moment, swallowed his words, and grinned. “C’mon, I’m ten times cooler than that loser.”

With careful tenderness, he uncurled her fingers from his wrist and backed away.

There was a shout from above. He looked up, wide eyes cast on the freefalling figures of the group he saw earlier. They landed deftly on the crater floor and Sakura rushed to Hinata’s side, taking a knee as she assessed the damage. Boruto watched from a distance as she and the Hyuga carefully removed the obstruction in Hinata’s chest and the cool healing glow of Sakura’s chakra filled the chasm with calm relief.

Boruto blinked and touched his face, his fingers finding wet trails on his cheeks. He furiously scrubbed them away with his sleeve. How uncool. Sage, he was worse than his father.

“Sakura,” Hinata breathed, her pale eyes finally registering the people standing above her.

Sakura smiled. It was that reassuring smile that Boruto grew up with, the one that made everything feel like it was going to be alright. He remembered Aunt Sakura treating him a few times when he was young and stupid and took a few too many risks. Well, not much had changed. But it was enough for him to know that everything was going to turn out okay, enough for him to feel the tension in the air melt into nothing, and he took a breath.

“You’ll be fine,” Sakura assured, and then her eyes lifted, they fell on Boruto, and the smile was gone. She watched him narrowly. “You’re…”

Boruto jumped. He opened and closed his mouth, searching for the explanation he knew she was demanding, but nothing came. Nothing came, her face turned hard, and he stumbled back.

Sakura reached out with her free hand. “Hey—”

That was his cue to take off. He ran to the edge of the crater and climbed the imbedded rocks and devastation back up to surface level. Once he was there, he could make out the light show going on beyond the village--all explosions and blasts of water and earth shooting into the air. He blocked the sun with his arm, trying to pinpoint just what was going on from so far away. There was a red ball of hatred-filled chakra, a mere speck from so far. He wanted to go there--to go see Dad, to make sure Naruto would be okay , but—

What could he do?

“That’s Dad, huh?” He licked his lips. That was Dad. That was the nine-tails. But that was a far cry from the display of power that Boruto saw from his time--the steady, warm yellow heat of the father he knew. This was more chaotic, less controlled. Wild. He feared he would never get the image of his father’s bloody body dragging itself up as skin burned away like paper.

“It’s the demon fox,” the beast rasped out in awe. “This raw, destructive power… It’s terrifying.”

“Hey,” he chastised, glowering daggers at the seal on his palm, “that’s my old man you’re talkin’ about. Watch your mouth.”

“That thing is your father?”

His brow twitched. “The heck did I just say, you overgrown parasite?!”

“Overgrown what-now?!”

Boruto growled his frustration and scratched at his head. “Damn it, I don’t have time to fight with you! Dad is—”

He lost his words as a giant ball of rock and earth slammed together to form a crushing sphere in the air. The fighting stopped. His heart sank. Was Naruto… Boruto hopped onto the village wall and tried to search for any visible sign of the corrosive red chakra his father was bathed in, but nothing.

“Idiot,” the beast chastised. “Don’t use your eyes.”

“Oh,” he noised, his voice far away, “right.”

Boruto took a breath and the markings spread up his arm as he used the chakra beast’s ability.  Immediately he felt the pull of pure, unfiltered power from the thing in the sky and his heart sank. “Dad’s trapped in that thing. We have to—”

“Don’t rush. Wait.”

And he did. He didn’t know why , but he did.

Eight tails ruptured through the side of the sphere and with them burst forth the skinless body of a giant fox. Its growl echoed through the air like the haunting words of the tragedy to come as it clawed effortlessly through the stone and ground feebly trying to trap it.

“That’s…” He swallowed. “That’s the nine-tails.”

“The seal will break.”

“What does that mean?”

“The nine-tails will be unleashed again upon this pitiful world. Nothing can stop it.”

Boruto swayed on the edge of the wall, lips pressed into a thin line, and he jumped down into the forest. He leapt deftly between the trees, towards the giant hell-spawn in the sky, without even a ghost of an idea what he’d do once he got there. He couldn’t just sit back and watch as the world went to shit because he messed up. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t have happened, because in the future that he knew, in the future that he came from , he never heard of his father’s seal breaking. Hell, no one even talked about jinchuuriki all that much, not to him.

He loomed on the edge of a copse of trees where the path of destruction bled into an open valley and watched the giant fox vanish into a plume of smoke.

Wait. What? Where was the fox, why did it just—

“The seal has been restored.”

“How?!”

“Your guess is as good as mine, kid.”

Boruto gaped openly at the crumbling ball of rock, able to make out a small fleck of orange along its rim. His knees buckled and he dropped down on the branch he took purchase on, steading himself with the trunk. The barely visible body of his father dropped down and faded from sight altogether, and he let out a breath. This was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? All of this--everything with his mother, with Dad and the seal, all of it was preordained. He hadn’t screwed up. Or, well, this at least wasn’t the result of his screw up.

He caught his breath and closed his eyes, leaning sideways against the trunk, and chuckled. “Man,” he rasped out, hitting his head lightly against the bark, “you scared the shit outta me, you shitty old man.”

Lying there, Boruto almost fell asleep. To him it was still the night of the shooting star, still that unending day of years before, and he hadn’t slept. He was still waiting for Team 7 to return from the Wave mission so that he could give Kakashi that bookmark.

“Hey,” he breathed, his voice laden with exhaustion. “Lend me your power again for a sec.”

“Go ahead. Humour yourself.”

Without opening his eyes he sensed the area around him and then fanned it out like a wave as far as he could stretch it. He searched for chakra signatures--in part to keep an eye on his father, and in part to try to figure out how many survivors there were. He could sense Mom and Sakura, the Hyuja guy from before. There were many scattered about, some hanging on better than others--shinobi he knew from his time who survived this ordeal. He couldn’t sense Uncle Sasuke, though--or Kakashi. Were they away at the time? Well, it didn’t matter. He already knew they both survived.

He relinquished his search and thought maybe he could rest a moment while Dad was fighting. Maybe that would be okay.

Boruto fell asleep there, against the tree, as the world changed around him.

He opened his eyes to a burning sky. Morning gave way to night and the clouds were lit in a wash of pinks and purples. With a big yawn he rubbed his eyes, blinking black the blur of sleep, and stretched.

“Always so heavy a sleeper.”

“Shut up,” he grumbled. The memories of what happened were flooding back and he winced. Just what the hell time was he in? It was like war times. Everything was gone, and terrible, and he just wanted to curl up under his blankets back home and play video games until he passed all of the terrible and the world was right again.

But he wasn’t a kid anymore--no matter what Dad said--and he wasn’t going to run and hide away from all of the chaos. The problem was that he wasn’t supposed to be there, not by a long shot. This was still a time before he was born. So, really, what was there for him to do other than cause even more trouble than he already had? This was far from the surface-level peace of the Third’s era. There was no apartment to lurk within, no ANBU guard to keep a watchful eye on his actions.

He was starting over again.

“It finished.”

“Hm?”

“The fight. Your father won.”

“Oh.” He blinked and grinned, hopping down from the tree to land quietly on the grass below. “‘Course he did. He’s the Seventh Hokage, y’know.”

Boruto hated himself for the amount of pride he felt in saying that.

“Let’s see…”

He surveyed his options. First and foremost, he could go back to the village. Konoha was all he knew and it being a pile of rubble didn’t change that. There was also the option of going back to the Hidden Timeto sort something out there, but he didn’t have faith that anything would come of it. He would also need to get a message to Dad, tell him what time he’d landed in… But Dad was in the past now, in a time before this one. He couldn’t just send a message to the past.

If that were the case, his only option was to send one to the future. That he could do.

With an empty stomach and sore body, Boruto wasn’t going anywhere fast. He dragged his feet through the brush, making tired strides back towards the village. A part of him wondered if he could find something in the forest to stuff his face with, but he wasn’t quite desperate enough to rely on the potentially-poisonous species of berries and mushrooms that were commonplace in the forests around Konoha. He could hunt, but hunting seemed like an outpouring of effort that he just wasn’t up to committing to at the moment.

There were no clear paths in that part of the forest. Boruto dug his way through bushes and shrubs in between clearings, muttering curses beneath his breath as twigs poked and jabbed at his sore side. Ordinarily he’d leap through the trees and avoid all of that, but he felt really drained.

Likely the fault of that damned chakra beast.

“I’m hungry, Boruto.”

He paused mid-step, brow twitching. “If you try anything,” he breathed, repressing the sudden spike of anger in his gut, “anything at all, I will personally seal the both of us in the World Temple until we starve to death.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

When met with silence, Boruto made a triumphant huff and marched on. He stumbled his way through to another clearing and wobbled forward when his foot caught on a branch, and steadied himself. This whole mess was souring his already pretty bitter mood and he realized that he took the comfort of the apartment for granted.

“Ah.”

Boruto blinked at the voice, so strangely familiar, and craned his neck to the side. He followed it to Kakashi, the man standing in the middle of the clearing with a limp-limbed Naruto half asleep on Kakashi’s back. Boruto righted himself and straightened his back, raising his hand in an awkward half-greeting.

“...Yo.”

Naruto’s eyes widened. His head shot up off his sensei’s shoulder and suddenly he was launching himself off Kakashi’s back. Boruto backed away but his reflexes couldn’t match the weight of the ninja free-falling his way and he fell back, hitting the ground with a muttered curse. The arms wrapped around him made him feel small, an embarrassed heat rising to his head, and he burrowed his face against Naruto’s shoulder to hide from the amused eye of the jounin looming overhead.

Boruto awkwardly returned the hug, Naruto’s shoulders quivered beneath his touch, and he breathed out. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted to present himself to Naruto again, hadn’t really had time to think about it. But Naruto always seemed to find him. There were going to be a lot of questions later.

“...You’ve gotten big,” he muttered beneath his breath. Now he was even more embarrassed and tried to pull away, but those arms were like iron around his back, and he patted Naruto’s shoulder. “C’mon. Get off before you crush me.”

A broken, wet laugh bubbled up from Naruto but he held steadfast. “You’re back,” he said, reaching around to scrub at his eyes. “It’s been four years, y’know.”

Boruto twitched and his arms dropped to his sides. “Sorry.” He left the word hanging there a while, trying to rummage through excuses to explain away his absence, but all of them felt cheap. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t wanna go.”

“I know.”

Naruto sniffed and reluctantly pried himself away. He knelt there in front of Boruto with a tired smile. His clothes were covered in dirt and tears, and after the nine-tails incident it was a wonder how he had any clothes left at all. Then he just stared--stared long and hard, his eyes roving over Boruto’s face with purpose.

“You’re tiny,” Naruto grinned. “Haven’t changed a bit.”

Boruto rolled his eyes and hefted himself up with a groan, brushing the dust off his pant legs. It wasn’t like there was anything he could say to that without giving his identity away, so he ignored it. There would be time for answers later. Naruto looked utterly exhausted and they needed to get to the village. Then everyone could rest.

He nodded to Kakashi. “Hey.”

“Well. I never thought we would be seeing you again,” Kakashi sighed. He padded over to sling Naruto onto his back again, shifting the boy in place before he continued to walk, Boruto in tow.

“A ‘welcome back’ would have been nice, old man.”

Naruto laughed. He was boneless on his sensei’s back, completely content.

There was an unusual quiet that surrounded them as they cleared the forest. It was a comfortable sort of silence, warm and inviting, and Boruto soaked up every second.

When they came to the evacuation zone, Boruto halted, met with crowds of thousands awaiting their return just beyond the trees. He ducked back, kept his distance as Kakashi pressed on, watched from the safety of the forest as villagers swarmed his father with exclamations of praise so starkly contrasting the treatment he had four years ago. He watched and smiled as everything fell into place.

Ah , he thought, so that’s what happened.

He leaned against a tree trunk, arms crossed. Soon Kakashi retreated to join him and he raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Thanks,” he said, simply. “For taking care of him.”

Kakashi shoved a hand into his pocket, retrieving a thoroughly read book, and cracked it open. Between the pages rested a metal bookmark shaped like a kunai. “Naruto’s come a long way.” He flipped the page and marked his place. “You’re acting more like a brother than a son.”

“You think?” Boruto grinned but it faltered. He tore his eyes away from the village cheers to watch the old man carefully. He knew. How did he--oh, right. The message. “Word travels fast.”

“Well, four years is a long time.”

“Is it?” He snorted and lifted his palm. The seal spread further, foreign characters wrapped around his fingers. “Feels like just yesterday.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi was late. Kakashi was not the only one late, he found, when he was met with only two unimpressed genin instead of three.

“Sorry,” he began, the excuse practiced and on the tip of his tongue, “it seems that fate didn’t want me here at the appointed time.”

Sakura rolled her eyes, seated precariously on the support of the bridge. “Kakashi-sensei, that isn’t even an excuse.”

He knew. He didn’t much care.

“Where’s Naruto?”

“Who knows?” Sakura huffed, brushing her hair over her shoulder. “Probably skipping. He was all excited about seeing his brother again yesterday, so maybe they’re spending time together.”

No. Naruto was a lot of things and not all of them good, but he’d never been one to skip training. If anything, that kid was more eager to learn than anyone, even if his learning curve was a bit… steep. Kakashi turned instead to Sasuke, the ever-sharp, silent observer when Naruto wasn’t present. The kid knew something, that was for sure; there was a tell to the way he averted his eyes.

“Sasuke?” The boy didn’t look like he appreciated being called out. “Do you have something to share?”

Sasuke crossed his arms and closed his eyes, leaning his weight on the arm of the bridge. “I saw him running around last night. I don’t think he’s coming.”

“That so?” Kakashi hummed and closed his eye, as though he was contemplating something. He couldn’t exactly work on their teamwork if the whole team wasn’t there . “Then for now we’re going to do individual exercises.”

And once this training session was over and done with, he could see to the matter personally.

Jiraiya’s room at the inn brought with it a surge of nostalgia within the Seventh Hokage. He remembered the years he spent travelling with his teacher from town to town, staying in rooms mirroring the one they were in now. He remembered Jiraiya coming in late after spending all night out on the town ‘doing research’ for his novels. So many mornings where he would wake up early to find his teacher hung over on days when they were meant to train together.

But he wasn’t there to reminisce. So he put on his best Hokage face and buried those thoughts as far down as he could get them.

Jiraiya pulled the desk to the centre of the room and laid a paper flat on top.

“This it?”

“Yeah.”

On the page was what looked to Naruto like a seal. No, more than that, it resembled the smudged seal on the back of the scroll replica given to him by the archivists. This was the marking placed on his son’s hand, eh? The one absorbing people’s chakra in the middle of the night. He snatched it off the desk and dropped down onto the bed as he looked it over. The characters were unreadable to him, but he could at least recognize their shape. Definitely from the Hidden Time, definitely sourced from the very same place where Boruto first disappeared. He was a bit surprised by how accurately Jiraiya copied the brush strokes, seeing as it was doubtful Jiraiya actively studied the language. Then again, Naruto was no seal master; that level of detail might be necessary in that field.

Suddenly, the paper was snatched away and he was left pouting up at the old pervert.

Jiraiya returned the seal to its proper place atop the desk and leaned over it. “Listen closely, kid, because I don’t like repeating myself.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Naruto rolled his eyes. Once the novelty of seeing the dead up and walking around wore off, he was better able to insert himself back into the role he used to play, interact with them in a way that felt organic. It was hard, but at least the wounds were no longer fresh. “Out with it, Pervy Sage. You’ve been studying up on it, haven’t you?”

“I told you not to—” Jiraiya stopped himself, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. “I have. And I’ll be honest, no matter what way I tried to spin it, none of these characters are enough to account for everything he’s experiencing. To me, the bulk of it looks like a curse mark. I think that’s what it’s meant to be.”

“A curse?” Naruto crossed his legs and tapped his chin as he stared at the symbols and thought. Well, a curse had always been their first guess, based on circumstance; curses abounded within the relics of the Hidden Time.

“Right. But it doesn’t add up.” Jiraiya plopped down on the desk chair and circled each symbol with his finger. “None of these indicate the sealing of a creature within the victim’s body. Which, when you think about it, would be a pretty weird trait for a curse to have anyway. So, either our boy Boruto’s lost it, or this isn’t the whole picture.”

Naruto nodded. With what Boruto said backed up by the victim’s report, it wasn’t likely that he’d lost touch with reality. And Naruto knew that face he was getting, that face that said Jiraiya had it all figured out. “What’re you thinking?”

“Combined seals,” Jiraiya said flatly. “Unintended. I’m thinking Boruto’s chakra beast friend may have been sealed within the scroll. Then there was a curse placed on the scroll and something happened when Boruto activated the curse that triggered the chakra beast to latch onto Boruto along with it.”

Naruto nodded. He wasn’t sure how much sense that made, but he also wasn’t a seal master. And, well… he trusted the old sage unflinchingly. If Jiraiya said it was the work of two seals, then so be it. He believed it. And he only believed it more when he noticed the scattered papers everywhere, each one dawning a different symbol or design in harsh black ink. Some were crossed out in fits of passionate anger. Jiraiya really was trying his best. “Then what do you suppose we do about it?”

“Amend the seal.” Jiraiya shuffled through thin piles of paper until he came to an ‘a-ha!’ moment and snatched one up. It looked very similar to the seal already on Boruto’s hand but a lot more intrinsique, a lot more thought-out. “If it wasn’t meant to contain a manifestation of chakra then of course he’s gonna have a hard time controlling it! I took some inspiration from Minato’s eight trigram seal, since it seems to have held up pretty damn well. Ain’t no getting out of this one, I’ll tell ya.”

Naruto leaned in and ran a hand across the paper, a slow-forming grin stretching across his face. “Think it’ll work?”

“To be honest,” Jiraiya muttered, scratching his chin, “I wish Minato was here to take a look at it. This kinda stuff was right up that kid’s alley.”

Naruto scooped up the paper—much to the protests of the sage—and gave it a long, hard look. This new seal took all of the Hidden Time’s characters and changed them into ones more closely resembling Naruto’s own seal. Jiraiya translated them. Maybe he knew something about the Hidden Time, after all. “For what it’s worth, it’ll work. I know it will.”

“Oh?” Jiraiya raised a brow. “Why’s that?”

“‘Because you made it.”

There was a moment of pause between those words and Jiraiya’s hearty laugh. He slapped his knee and leaned in, every line of his face radiating curiosity. Naruto leaned back and away out of instinct. “You know, I think I’m gonna like training you.”

Huh?

“That’s what happens, isn’t it?” Jiraiya was already nodding along with himself, a sly grin in place. “Oh yeah. I can read you like a book.”

Naruto didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know whether to confirm or deny, or to just laugh. So he smiled, wide and proud, and folded up the etched out seal to tuck away for later. He swallowed back the desire to reminisce once more and focused on the issue at hand.

“Extracting it is out of the question, I’m guessing?”

“Well,” Jiraiya huffed, slumping back in his chair and rubbing his neck. His curiosity fell away to more concerned matters and he shook his head. “Extraction puts strain on the body. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but there are better options out there. Until you can figure out exactly what happened, you’re better off not trying. But that leaves one issue.”

“And what’s that?”

“Altering the seal.” Jiraiya shifted to grab his pen off the desk, sliding a blank sheet of paper out in front of him. He drew out the original curse mark effortlessly, then circled the marks around the edges. “Generally, markers like these don’t undergo changes. They’re what tell the seal what to do—you don’t want to change these, unless of course you’re us, and the seal just isn’t working how you want it to.”

Naruto nodded along as he followed Jiraiya’s gestures. The simple characters marking the edges of the seal were going to be replaced by the much more intrinsic trigrams drawn out on the paper he’d tucked away. He had experience with his own seal now, of course; he’d had to do his fair share of tinkering. But nothing like this. And Boruto was gone. Boruto wasn’t here with the seal master, and their only hope in utilising Jiraiya’s expertise was if Boruto hadn’t travelled past his death. That… was only a few years. It wasn’t likely.

“So I’m going to teach it to you,” Jiraiya said. “Fuinjutsu. To the younger you, for whenever you next meet Boruto.”

Naruto’s lips parted and he didn’t know what to say. But Jiraiya was there, and Jiraiya was smiling, and he pressed his hand to his head and looked inward.

He did not remember fuinjutsu. He did not remember and that was a problem. But the more he thought, the more he wondered if maybe this really could work.

He grinned. “Looking forward to it.”

Kakashi was used to getting summons. He was not used to getting them outside of missions, and he was even less used to them being delivered by ANBU in broad daylight. ‘The Hokage requests your immediate presence,’ they said, which usually meant that there was something very serious lurking around the corner. He braced himself and stood before the Hokage Office with an iron-clad constitution, and knocked.

The door opened to the warm high-noon sun casting brightly through the windows, framing the desk with white. Lord Third sat in his chair with his pipe and books and interlocked fingers, and all of that was understood and expected and exactly what he knew he would find when he stepped inside.

What he did not expect to see was the tall blond sitting atop the desk with an impossible grin and a white cloak draped carelessly over his shoulders. He did not expect the way the man’s eyes smiled at him or the confidence washing off him in waves that followed a soft fondness. There was something unmistakable about this man. Something that Kakashi felt down in the pit of his stomach. By all intents and purposes, he should have been a stranger. He should have, and yet there was something about his sunshine hair and the markings on his cheeks—

No. He was stopping that thought there, because no.

Kakashi's eye lazily switched between the two men, a hand in his pocket and his posture hunched and leaning to hide within it all of his uncertainty.

The blond laughed. Kakashi wasn’t sure he appreciated that laugh. But hearing it reaffirmed a ridiculous theory that he was ready to dismiss. But that ridiculous theory was also making a lot of sense, because this whole month had been ridiculous and this man was ridiculous and everything was so stupid that it had to be true.

“You never change, Kakashi-sensei.”

This was Naruto. That was the Hokage robe.

Nothing showed on his face, because he wasn't the type to let it. But Naruto knew, Naruto could see. This was not the Naruto that he was familiar with; this was a man who carried with him a familiarity of years, not months. This was a veteran of war, not a genin fresh out of the academy.

This man was older than him.

Naruto's laughter settled and he leaned, cupping his chin in his palm as he watched Kakashi with amusement.

“Sure brings back memories,” said Naruto, with light in his eyes and thinly restrained excitement. “Sorry. I didn't want to call you here if I didn't have to, but the old man told me—”

Hiruzen cleared his throat.

“ Lord Third told me that you had a close encounter with my son, is that right?”

Kakashi shifted, his eyes flickering to the wrapped arm holding Naruto’s head up. If Naruto noticed the staring, he didn't say. That was fine. All of this was fine. He suspected time travel right from the start, even if it sounded like an impossible theory. No one better than Naruto to bend the laws of reality.

From what Naruto was saying, it was he who summoned Kakashi, not Lord Third.

A summons from the Hokage, eh?

“Naruto,” Lord Hiruzen warned, watching with tired, amused eyes from beneath the veil of his hat, the end of his pipe tucked between the corner of his lips. “Don't you think you should introduce yourself before you go off interrogating my men?”

Naruto snickered, his eyes squeezed shut against a smile. “Nah. Kakashi-sensei knows me. Isn't that right, Kaka-sensei?”

Kakashi closed his eye and shoved his other hand into pocket as well, for good measure. “You're here for Boruto, then?”

The smile fell, just a bit, and the lingering amusement was pushed away by something else. “Apparently I just missed him.”

He wasn't there, then. That explained the younger Naruto's absence from morning training. Did he run out of the village again, or was there something else going on?

Naruto sat up, his hands on his knees and feet dangling just a bit off the ground. He never reached Kakashi's height, huh? “I have some time to kill before I can pursue. For right now, I’m looking into that seal of his. The real me is with Pervy Sage right now, getting briefed. But you've experienced the power firsthand.”

A shadow clone, then. So, he learned to fully utilize them.

“And you want me to share my experience.”

“Right.”

Kakashi switched his lean from one foot to the other, casting a glance to the Third, who nodded. Alright, then. He would play along. “I was put in charge of observing Boruto when he first entered the village. He absorbed Naruto's chakra and ran, and so I assured Naruto's—your—safety before pursuing.”

Naruto nodded. The smile was gone. He was focused, listening. And this would be his Hokage face. “And then he got you, too.”

“Yes.” Kakashi looked down at his hand and wrist. If he focused long enough, he could still feel the phantom pull of a hand wrapped around it, sucking chakra from him like a leech. “I was careless. Boruto is not at fault for that.”

The corner of Naruto’s lip tugged upward, his eyes crinkling fondly. But then it was gone. “How much chakra did he manage to absorb?”

“Most,” he recalled easily. “Enough that he had me out cold. I’m certain he could have taken more. He stopped himself.”

There was a nod, a hum, but nothing came. Nothing came and there were eyes on him, waiting. Expectant.

“I followed his track when I woke up,” he continued, because he felt like he needed to. “He appears to have moments of lucidity when these attacks occur. I believe that was how he was able to pull away from both you and I before inducing severe chakra exhaustion. When the seal activates, it's not a perfect control.”

“Thanks. Maybe I can use that.”

Lord Hiruzen blew out a puff of smoke. It coiled in the air, twisting patterns as the silence lingered. He set his pipe down and knitted his fingers together, elbows on the desk. “I believe,” he stated with a heavy breath, “his sudden absence has to do with you, Naruto.”

Naruto frowned, twisting back around to stare at the Hokage. “What do you mean?”

“When you arrived, you expelled a significant wave of chakra.”

Kakashi twitched. He remembered a few nights back, a ripple across the land as he sat beneath a tree, listening to his young genin talk around the campfire. It went unnoticed by his pupils, and they were too far away to see its effects. By the time a light flashed upon the horizon, Sakura and Sasuke were long asleep and Naruto was too absorbed with his own thoughts to pay it any mind. Then the wave hit, a chilling excess of raw energy, and Kakashi was left to wonder about it alone.

That was Naruto, huh?

Naruto’s face scrunched up, the thumb and forefinger of a bandaged hand pressed to his chin, and he hummed. Then, like a switch, understanding dawned. “Ah. I get it,” he said, simply. “It absorbs chakra, but mine was a lot in one place. It saw me as too tough an opponent, took that chance to flee before I could present a nuisance.”

Lord Hiruzen grunted affirmation. “This creature is opportunistic, not foolish.”

“In any case,” Naruto slipped off the desk, rising to his full height. Kakashi was right; Naruto was still shorter. He closed the distance between them, placing a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder with an unreadable expression. “Thanks, Kakashi-sensei. For looking after my idiot son.”

This Naruto was all grown up, wasn’t he?

“And for looking after me,” he continued softly.

Naruto Uzumaki. All grown up and acting Hokage. He really did it.

Naruto spun on his heel to face Lord Hiruzen, hands on his sides, and grinned. “I’ve decided. I’m returning to my time.”

The back of his cloak read ‘Seventh Hokage.’ Seventh, huh? And he didn’t look that old.

Lord Hiruzen snorted, shaking his head fondly. “Then it’s about time you seal our memories.”

“No.” Both men frowned, but Naruto went unfazed, head held high and firm in his decision. “If no one remembers him, it’ll be hard for Boruto to start over wherever he’s landed. I’m counting on all of you to be there for him until I locate him. Tell him to leave another message if he hasn’t already.”

“Naruto—”

The Seventh was already holding a hand up in pause, cutting off Lord Hiruzen’s protests before they could be made, and he was smiling. “This was always supposed to happen,” he stated, his voice holding within it the kind of certainty that couldn’t be faked. “This is a part of my timeline. His message would never have reached me otherwise.”

Lord Hiruzen leaned back, considering this.

Then Naruto was back to Kakashi, his cape following his path with a flourish. “Sorry. Little-me is probably going to be difficult for a while.”

“I’ll manage,” Kakashi assured.

Naruto laughed, easy and light, and cast his eyes to Hiruzen. “Hey, old man. For everything you’ve done for me. And for everything you will do.” He closed his eyes and inclined his head. “Thank you.”

A puff of smoke and he was gone. They were left to stare at the vacant space between them.

Hiruzen laughed, easy and calm. “I have quite the successor, don’t you think?”

Kakashi sighed. He could still feel Naruto’s right hand on his shoulder, cool to the touch and feeling nothing of skin. “The most unpredictable loudmouth around.”

The apartment felt a lot bigger now.

Naruto stood in the doorway, backlit by the high noon sun leaking through around him, lighting up the dark, cold expanse of the room. A paper bag hung limply between his fingers, stained with grease from the takeout left within. With the money received for the Wave mission, he got two servings from Ichiraku on autopilot, only to realize his mistake when he came home to silence. There were still dishes in the drying rack, clothes on the bathroom floor. The bed hadn’t been made. He hadn’t slept last night, either, and the futon was still rolled up against the wall.

When Naruto got home, it was easy to expect Boruto rolling his eyes with annoyance and the lecture that would follow—chastising remarks about how ‘You shouldn’t eat garbage like that every night, y’know!’ Then further complaints. A pot boiling on the stovetop, the sizzling of meat in a pan. Boruto would scold him for spoiling his dinner, and then tell him to take the blanket up to Tenzō because it was going to be another cold night.

And he would listen. And Ichiraku would go into the fridge for another time. They would have dinner. It’d taste amazing, because Boruto knew something-or-other about cooking.

Why did he leave?

Naruto swayed as he walked, kicking off his shoes and depositing the paper bag atop the table. He thought about filling the space with a shadow clone, maybe playing a game with it, but thought better of it. No. That wouldn’t be enough to snap him free of this slump he was in. He knew that. But he was starting to remember how he kept occupied before he had a brother. Boruto was just always there . Always waiting when Naruto got home from missions or training or just about anything else. And Tenzō was always there. And now Tenzō was gone. Boruto left.

Boruto lied. Boruto had a father.

Why would he lie? Why about that?

“You’ll see him again.” When he and that Shichi guy parted after sharing ramen, that was what the man said. You’ll see him again. There was so much certainty behind those words, unflinching, a grin on that man’s face as he turned in a flourish and Naruto was left alone. You’ll see him again , but Boruto left without so much as a word, or a note, or letter. He left the apartment like that, dishes in the drying rack. Clothes on the floor. The bookmark on the table still in its packaging. The bed unmade. Frozen in time.

“You’ll see him again.”

Naruto flopped backwards onto his bed, staring up at the white ceiling. His hand found the place on his chest where he could still sometimes feel the phantom pull of chakra from a cursed hand and he gripped the front of his shirt.

That Shichi guy looked so eerily like Boruto, like an older copy. Same hair, same eyes. Maybe that was what it was like, having a father. Maybe Naruto’s dad looked just like him, too. He tried not to pay too much attention to the parents of his classmates back at the academy. Their looks always turned heavy when eyes found him and he hated it, hated that they looked at him in contempt for a choice that was made for him. So when they turned away from him, he turned away from them. He didn’t know how many of the children looked just like their parents. He’d never met Sakura’s parents, and Sasuke… Sasuke was like him. Sasuke was alone.

Maybe he could ask Iruka-sensei. It was bothering him, more than a little, the resemblance between Shichi and Boruto, and he didn’t know why.

A soft tap tap tap against his window pane sent him shooting up. He twisted around, wide-eyed and frantic for all of ten seconds until he looked through the window to find the smiling eye of his instructor crouched on the other side.

“K—” He choked on his words, blinking owlish eyes at the man. “Kakashi-sensei?!”

Kakashi waited there patiently, holding up a basket with one hand and knocking again with the other. Oh no, crap, he—he forgot about training! Kakashi was probably there to punish him for it, or something. Because of that, he really, wholeheartedly did not want to let the man in.

Somehow, he didn’t think that Kakashi would leave if ignored, no matter how long it went on.

With great trepidation, Naruto unlocked the window latch and pushed it open, shifting away enough to allow his instructor to slip inside. Kakashi hopped off the bed and stood, rounded on Naruto, and held out the basket.

Naruto blinked. “Um.” He held out his hands and the bundle was dropped onto them. He tensed under the weight. “What’s all this about?”

Kakashi shoved a hand into his pocket, taking a cursory glance around the apartment with a lazy eye. “Tenzō tells me that Boruto’s been making your meals,” he said, simply. “Knowing you as well as I think I do, you’re going straight back to ramen, aren’t you?”

Both of them stared at the bag on the table and suddenly Naruto felt very guilty.

“U-um.” He shifted uncomfortably and set the basket down on the mattress, pulling off the cover. There was food inside—fruits and vegetables and bread. It reminded him of the ‘get well’ package Iruka put together the last time that he got sick. Something warm fluttered to life in the pit of his stomach and he cast a glance upward, to the still-roaming eye of his instructor. “Thank… you.”

“It’s not much.” Kakashi shifted his weight, looking all kinds of awkward despite his poker face. “How are you holding up?”

So he knew. Everyone knew. Everyone except for him, it seemed, and he drew his knees up to his chest to indulge in his self-made pity party. He choked out a laugh, smile bitter and eyes fixed to the gift basket by his feet. “I feel stupid,” he said. “You must’ve known that he was lyin’ all along, right, Kakashi-sensei?”

He winced, knuckles rapping against his head in a firm but careful gesture, and he raised his head. Kakashi was staring down at him with hard lines in the creases of his eye.

“Are you going to sit around feeling sorry for yourself?” he asked. “Or are you going to pick yourself up, dust off, and move forward?”

Naruto swallowed, his mouth opening and closing to form silent words as he reached up to touch the fading feeling of the hand on his head.

“Boruto is going to continue to move,” he continued. “The longer you mope, the further away he’ll get.”

It hit hard, and he knew that his instructor was right. He bit his lip and furrowed his brows, draping his legs over the side of the bed. With careful thought, he pulled an apple from the basket. That warm, fuzzy feeling was back again, and he relished it.

“I’ll—” He smiled. “I’ll see him again. One day.”

Kakashi’s eye crinkled into an approving smile. “Good.”

He would. He would see Boruto again. Shichi said that he would. Shichi, who looked just like his son, who looked so familiar—

“You look familiar.”

Wait.

“I look like you.”

Wait, what?

Naruto dropped the apple before he could bite into it. It landed with a thump that broke the silence and rolled across the floor, settling by the leg of the table. He wasn’t seeing that, though. He was seeing that man. And that boy. Familiar, so familiar. Blond hair, blue eyes. Markings on their cheeks.

He touched his cheek. Touched his markings. Swallowed back the dawning realization and laughed, loud and full and so very near hysterical.

Kakashi tensed, leaning over him. “What is it?”

The laughter faded, leaving behind an aching burn in his chest and throat, and he breathed in deep. His eyes found Kakashi and he grinned.

“I’ll keep moving,” he said, nodding in agreement with himself. “I won’t let you down, Kakashi-sensei.”

Keep moving forward. See him again. He could do it.

The future was bright and he was not alone.

Chapter Text

The haphazardly strung together tents were a far cry from the warmth of solid walls and a bed, but they brought with them their own sort of comfort. Boruto rested atop a dusty blanket within one, peeking out at the campfire the shinobi prepared for this quadrant. It took the rest of the evening for the shelters to be set up, an effort that extended to every able-bodied civilian in their haste. It was warm in the mornings, but night carried with it a brisk chill and strong wind. Beyond the walls of the tent, bodies milled about. Most were headed away from the lines of people seeking their rations. All in all, the village shinobi got their act together pretty damn quickly.

Boruto felt helpless, stuck hiding away in a damn tent. He hadn’t been able to help at all, which just pissed him off. Walking around the village looking like a Naruto clone was bad enough before, when the villagers tried their darndest to shove thoughts of the fox boy as far back in their minds as possible. Now, with them praising the ground his father walked on, it was bordering on insane. He had enough people expecting answers, and not enough answers to go around.

Why did he bother hiding himself at all? By that point, if he messed up the timeline then it was already too late.

Naruto was surprisingly compliant when he asked to be snuck into the village, grabbing him a hooded robe to hide his very distinguishable blond hair. There were no questions, no suspicion. It didn’t sit right. There should have been all of that—all of that and then some.

The front of the tent parted and in came the larger body of Naruto, two bags of rations in hand and a grin on his face. He slunk in, shifting around the cramped space until he sat against the opposing wall, and placed the bags between the two of them.

“Sorry,” Naruto greeted, digging a hand around the first bag, “the line out there is crazy, y’know?”

“Figured as much.” Boruto was hungry. Very, very hungry. As was the chakra beast, who had not let him forget the fact at all over the past few hours. Despite that, he didn’t eat. He stared at the bag, leaning back to rest his weight on his palms, his mind a mess of whirling thoughts. This time period was insane. He never bore witness to destruction like that in his own time—never anything close .

Naruto stared down at the food pills he’d been given, a pout on his face. He didn’t complain, though, shoving them into his mouth in quick succession.

Boruto snickered. Stupid kid grew up some, apparently. He leaned forward and slid the other bag Naruto’s way. “Take mine.”

“What?”

“You need it more than I do.”

Naruto frowned, arms crossed as he contemplated it, and then shook his head. “Nu-uh. Eat. This is all we get today; you’ll make yourself sick if you skip out.”

Boruto raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask twice. He snatched up the bag and rifled through to grab out a food pill. Unlike dear ol’ Dad, he took his time, at least pretending that it was a normal meal.

He felt eyes on him the whole time but said nothing in the hopes that it would pass. It didn’t, and he should have known. “You’re exactly like I remember ya.”

Boruto wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stared into his lap with a hard-set frown. “You think?”

Naruto let the moment pass, searching Boruto absently as he slumped against the wall of the tent. “That was the last outfit you bought with Tenzō before I left for Wave.”

Boruto flinched. He remembered in that amount of detail, huh? “Really?” he tried, feigning innocence. “You think?”

It was quiet. From beyond the walls, he could hear far-off laughter, wishing that he could just go out there to escape the awkward tension building up within the tent. Then, Naruto sighed and everything felt wrong. “I’ll play your brother. I-if you want, I mean.” He looked away, rubbing his neck. His foot ticked back and forth impatiently. “I mean, what do I know about being a dad, y’know? I never had one!”

Oh.

Boruto fisted the blanket falling around his shoulders, pulling it tightly to his chest. The old man knew. It left a bitter taste in his mouth and he wasn't sure why. His silence was getting to Naruto; it was painfully obvious with all of that fidgeting.

Boruto sighed, resigning himself to it. “You knew.”

Naruto blinked, rocking back and forth in his fidgeting. “Yeah. I mean, er… yeah. I figured it out. Or I, uh…” He groaned and scratched his head and searched internally for some better explanation. Finally, he crossed his arms and stared hard at Boruto. “I told me.”

Boruto crossed his legs, hands wrapped around his ankles. “You?”

“Kinda?” Naruto laughed, grin bright and wide. “‘You'll see him again.’ That's what he said, y'know?”

He lifted his head, eyes wide. “Dad did?”

Naruto stilled and his eyes darted around awkwardly, looking for something other than Boruto to focus on. “Y—” He scrambled for a voice. “Yeah?”

Boruto sprung to his feet, just barely able to stand without his head hitting the roof of the tent. “Aw man, what the heck?! Here I am, tryin’ to be all stealthy and discreet, and that shitty old man goes and says whatever the hell he wants?!”

Naruto blinked up at him with wide eyes. The shock faded quickly into a narrow-eyed pout. “Who’re you calling a shitty old man?!”

Boruto stuck up his chin and looked down his nose, hands on his hips. “You, obviously!”

Naruto twitched. “I’m sixteen !”

“I’m not even born yet!”

They glared each other down in a fit of sheer stubbornness and wills until Naruto squeezed his eyes shut and laughed. Suddenly, the tension was gone, Boruto’s prickly irritation smoothed out into a calm ocean, and he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away.

That wasn’t the reaction he was used to. Dad was scolding, stern. He wouldn’t have so easily laughed off the defiance of his son. The old man wasn’t strict, not compared to most, but he tried the whole ‘parenting’ thing—well, when he was actually around to try.

And there was Naruto, his voice crescendoing in a mimic of his son, diffusing it all with a laugh.

Boruto drew his mouth into a thin line and looked outside. The crowds were thinning into scattered wanderers. He bent down, snatched the cloak off the ground, and drew the hood over his face.

Naruto’s smile left. “You goin’ someplace?”

“Out,” he muttered.

“Where?”

“Just out.”

Naruto’s mouth twitched. He shifted his legs underneath himself and hefted up. “Then I’ll—”

“No,” Boruto cut in sharply, cursing himself, and dialed his tone back a bit. “I uh,” he sighed, staring out at the fire that crackled in the dirt path ahead, “I just need some air. Be right back. Get some rest, ‘kay?”

Naruto watched him before hesitantly complying, lowering himself back to the tent floor with thinly restrained defiance. “...Yeah. Sure. Um—” He cut himself off, fisted the sheet beneath him, and doubled back. “Keep warm.”

“Mm.”

Boruto took a deep breath and ducked through the open front of the tent. The muffled sounds of scuffling and shifting he heard before were crisp and clear and very real now. The smell of pine and smoke dispersed through the air and reached him. The heat of the fire did not. It hissed against the all-consuming chill of midnight air. Survivors sat around it. One looked up at his arrival but didn’t comment. No one thought anything of him, and that was okay.

He looked down at the seal on his palm and closed his fist.

Through all the chaos and destruction, through the merciless assault of that man with swirling eyes and orange hair, the village wall still stood. It was a bitter truth, a humourless joke that Boruto pondered across small hours while perched atop it, staring out at the vast expanse of the world beyond Konoha, a world so similar yet frighteningly different from everything he knew.

It looked the same. Same trees, same paths, stretching on into infinity. It looked the same because it was, for all intents and purposes. Even the path of devastation laid out by the nine-tails held within it a small bit of nostalgia and the more he looked, the longer he considered. It wouldn’t be barren like that forever. In his time, it was green and overgrown just like everything else, a carved out world of bizzare patterns and designs where life continued to grow. This really was… well. His . His world, his future. The one that he remembered. Surface-level, at least.

Boruto noticed himself brooding too much in this time. If he had to wait out being sent to the future, then he rather wait it out in the world of four years ago. At least there, he built up connections. There was an apartment, and it was small and shitty but it had four walls and a working shower and housed a stupid dork who dreamed big and ate too much ramen. At least there, the Hokage was awake and understanding and ruled with hard eyes and a soft heart. There was a seal master, a legendary sannin, there to help him understand the chakra beast. There was Tenzō, the ever-watchful guard to keep him safe.

There was Dad, there to bring him home.

Now he was starting from the ground up. No support, no Hokage, no Pervy-Sage. No ANBU. No apartment. No village.

Well. There was Naruto. That was a small comfort. No matter where or when, he was always there. He was around and real and happy and cared . Naruto was there, would always be there, whether Boruto liked it or not.

He hated the ever-present thoughts of how one day, Naruto became Dad, and that ever-there presence burned up like paper over an open flame.

“Were you always so brooding?” The internal echo of the beast filled his head and he sighed. “No, wait. You were.”

“We gotta work on your tact.”

“Right. Because you know all about tact, don’t you?”

“Die in a fire.”

“After you.”

Boruto rolled his eyes and that short exchange was enough to break his spiralling thoughts. He rose up to full height, hands in his pockets as he assessed the situation. He needed to leave a message for Dad—a message that the old man could pick up from their time. Looking at the pile of rocks and broken furniture that made up Konoha, though, the village was not the place to do that. That was fine. That was fine, but he needed a place to leave the message . The World Temple? No, the excavators may disrupt it, and if Dad didn’t see a second message left there right from the get-go then he wouldn’t think to check again. Or, wait, that wasn’t how time travel worked. If Dad didn’t see one there, then that meant Boruto hadn’t left it there. He needed someplace that wouldn’t be disturbed, somewhere the imprint seal wasn’t likely to break.

There was one other option if he couldn’t find a good place to leave a message. He stared hard at his palm and flexed his fingers. The seal was growing more prominent with time, or with usage. He couldn’t tell—it wasn’t like he knew a damn thing about fuinjutsu.

“Hey,” he called, tone flat. “If you ate, could you send us back to my time?”

“Of course.” He sensed a ‘but’ and frowned. “But I would need enough chakra to support it.”

Boruto narrowed his eyes. He felt like he was being conned. “How much is enough?”

“Four times what I’ve already received.”

“Absolutely not.”

“The nine-tails brat could support at least half of that.”

“Absolutely not. ”

“Remember: you asked.”

He snorted and leapt down off the wall, landing deftly within the leaves of the forest below. Four times, huh? They’d taken some of Naruto’s chakra twice, most of old man Kakashi’s once. That, times four. What, did it want to kill someone? It wasn’t like he could trust the damn thing to stop before it took too much. It’d been a bit more bearable, though, at least compared to when it was first sealed.

He cast his eyes in the direction of the Hidden Time. There was one place he could probably leave a message without it breaking before it made it to the future. One place, but there was the risk of his father never coming across it. Worth a shot. Boruto bent his knees, tensed his muscles and took off.

The moment that he did, he noticed the oncoming chakra signature. It flickered and swayed anxiously some distance away. He recognized that chakra, recognized it well. A constant flow of warmth and security.

There was a smile in the curve of his lips when he changed direction and headed straight for it. It was close. In no time at all, he was right on top of it. His eyes darted this way and that through the darkness, trying to find the faded silhouette that he knew was there, somewhere.

A flying kunai embedded itself in the tree on which he stood and he yelped, arms pinwheeling as he fought for purchase on the branch and when he had it he sighed relief.

A block of wood shot up from the ground like a tree. He flipped off the branch just before it snapped in half, but the wood followed his descent, twisting and coiling as it tracked his every move.

The moment he landed, he sprung back up, the stock of wood crashing into the ground fast and hard enough to break through the earth. A second stock sprouted from the looped wood and pursued and Boruto let out a small noise that he would later deny.

“H-hey, just wait a—” He spun mid-air and pooled the feeble amount of chakra still bubbling within him to his feet, securing him sideways to a trunk. Finally, he found the shadowed body through the brush, arms together in a persistent hand seal. “Tenzō!”

Tenzō tensed and the stock of wood halted inches from Boruto’s face. He looked the boy over carefully before dropping the seal and stepping out into the moonlight. “You’re…”

Boruto swallowed and carefully avoided the wood as he dispersed the chakra at his feet and dropped back to the forest floor. He closed the distance between them, but his eyes were on the weird wooden sculptures that hung around after Tenzō’s released jutsu, an ever-present remnant of what just occurred. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Tenzō hadn’t recognized him.

The tension in Tenzō’s shoulders dissipated and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You didn’t die. That’s a relief.”

Boruto made a face as he recalled his last moments in the time four years ago, burning away like paper in the wind. Damn. That must have been quite the show from the outside. He was too absorbed in the ouch pain what the Sage is happening to me part to really panic over the way his body was breaking down. “You thought I died?”

“Well, no,” Tenzō mused, and then his head bobbed left and right and there was an indecisive frown. “It was a possibility, but Lord Third and Master Jiraiya thought otherwise.”

“Ah.”

“And then there was what you said,” Tenzō continued. “I put the pieces together myself.”

Boruto kicked the ground. “Seems a lot of people have been doing that.”

Tenzō laughed. It was a strangely light sound, a comfort against the cold and the destruction. Boruto expected him to continue from there but he didn’t. He walked on with Boruto in tow, making steady strides towards the village. “I’m headed back to Konoha right now. Naruto’s seal—”

“He’s fine,” Boruto assured. “Everyone is. Somehow.”

“That’s a relief,” Tenzō sighed.

Boruto opened his mouth but the words stuck. He wanted to warn Tenzō of what was up ahead but couldn’t. How do you tell someone that their village is in ruins?

“Oh,” Tenzō turned back to him, the village walls in sight, “and it’s Yamato now, okay?”

Boruto remembered sitting on the couch, watching cartoons with his kid sister as his father polished off the last of his breakfast at the kitchen table. Mom was there with him, clearing the table with a smile on her face as Dad told her that he’d be away late, that he would be paying a visit to Captain Yamato. She told him to wait—that she would pack a lunch, that Yamato deserved a good meal for all the work that he did. Dad agreed. Dad looked over at Boruto, caught his son’s eavesdropping, and smiled.

“Gotcha."

Naruto woke to light snoring to his left. Whatever time it was, it was too damn early. He groaned and yawned and his head fell to the side, eyes open to stare at the small body across the tent. Boruto was still asleep, still there, and the part of him that was awake enough to realize that the kid hadn’t up and left in the middle of the night was relieved. The other part—the part still very much asleep—thought Boruto’s bangs looked like an unripened apple.

He picked himself up off the ground and for a while he just stared at the wall of the tent, blinking zombie eyes at its very green, very there… wall.

It really was too early.

Stretching his aching limbs, Naruto sifted through his bag of things recovered from the wreckage and pulled out a clean shirt. The pants hadn’t survived the devastation of Pein’s attack. Once that was on and the old shirt was off, he started moving a bit more. Rolling his shoulders. Cracking his neck. Lingering fatigue from his fight was already burned away by the nine-tails chakra, like nothing ever happened.

Yesterday was surreal. His village was destroyed, but the people were safe. He fought the man who killed Pervy-Sage but somehow managed… something . He didn’t know. But Pein was gone, and Pein was forgiven. Or, no, forgiven was too generous. Naruto hadn’t forgiven him, so much as understood. He understood, and was able to let go.

His attention cast downward. Boruto rolled over onto his back, his shirt hiked up and blanket kicked off. Naruto reached over and pulled the blanket back up to the kid’s shoulders. For a while, he just sat there. Did Boruto always look that small?

And then there was this kid, this little monster, this knucklehead brat. His son . His son, who was good at cooking and bad at lies. His son, who brooded a lot but also knew a lot, who was overconfident from his talent but considerate enough to buy their sensei a bookmark. His son, who was small and young and unchanged after four years.

Boruto kicked the blanket off again and Naruto laughed.

“Alright,” he stage whispered, in some fool attempt at not disturbing the kid. From what he remembered, Boruto was a light sleeper. Maybe? It was hard to discern because Boruto always woke up before him. Always, but not today.

How exhausting was time travel, anyhow?

Naruto’s first goal for the day was food. Obviously . His stomach sank last night when they ate their empty meal of food pills and he came to the realization that there would be no Ichiraku for a long time to come. There was no market left, either, and the food pills and other rations were the best they were going to get for now.

Breakfast rations consisted of food pills and one ration bar. Naruto was understanding of just how bleak existence in Konoha was going to be for the next few months. That was okay. He was a shinobi; he’d been through a hell of a lot worse!

That didn’t mean that he liked it, though.

When he searched for a place to sit, he noticed wooden benches scattered about that weren’t there before. Huh. He wandered over to one, catching the smiling faces of the villagers and exchanging the occasional greeting as he walked.

It was still weird, people treating him like that. He didn’t know how he was supposed to react. It was nice— obviously it was nice—but there was something so foreign about it that set him off-balance.

Naruto frowned down at the empty bag in his hands, peeking through the opening in the hopes of finding a food pill that he missed. Nothing. Not a damn thing, and he was still hungry. But that was okay because it was like that for everyone right now. Next to him sat a second bag, Boruto’s, and he thought to the night before when Boruto tried to give up his portion. It bothered him. Which was stupid, because Boruto ended up eating it anyway, but it did.

A body lowered down next to his and he blinked, his head snapping up with a grin. “Captain Yamato!”

“Hey there.” Yamato waved, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his legs and a tired look about him, like he’d been up all night. The more he looked, the more Naruto recognized that fatigue.

The benches.

Naruto blinked. “You did all this?”

“Well,” Yamato huffed, diverted, and made a vague hand gesture. “Couldn’t sleep. I got in pretty late last night. Then I saw the village… It’s the least I can do.”

“Oh yeah, your jutsu’s super useful for stuff like this.”

“You got it.” Yamato rubbed the back of his neck. “Takes a lot out of me, though, that’s for sure.”

That much was obvious; Yamato’s eyes were dark and bloodshot and his skin flushed pale. He looked damn-near sickly. The gears in Naruto’s head were turning and he grinned, leaning close. “Hey hey—could you rebuild Ichiraku?”

Yamato leaned back and away from the short blond ball of energy invading his personal bubble. “I—yes? I mean, I guess I—”

“Great!” Naruto laughed, feeling quite pleased with himself as he hopped to his feet. “Nice talkin’ with ya, Cap’n!”

Naruto made to leave but there was a tug on his sleeve and he froze, looking down at his team leader. Yamato was making one of those faces, the ones that were hard-set with concern. “Hold on a sec, Naruto. I want to ask you something.”

Naruto tightened his grip on the ration bag and lowered himself back to the bench, not liking this tone Yamato was taking with him. He knew that tone, and when that tone was used it was almost always the nine-tails that cropped up as the topic of conversation. And honestly, after what happened yesterday, he rather forget the bastard for a while.

“What happened to your seal?”

And there it was. Naruto hummed and scrabbled for the right words to say, scratched a mark on his cheek. He wondered if Yamato would believe that he met his Dad when the nine-tails pressed him to break the seal. He wondered who else knew that he was the Fourth Hokage’s son.

Son, huh?

He chuckled, lost in a cloud of warm thoughts. “It’s fine, y’know?”

Yamato’s exasperation was palpable. “I can see that. But you went eight-tails yesterday, how did—” He caught his words, looked at the giggling mess of blond shinobi, and knew when to count his losses. “Well, so long as it turned out alright in the end. Don’t scare me like that.”

“I won’t.”

Yamato patted his shoulder and rose first, stretching his arms. “Alright. Ichiraku, right?”

“Thanks a bunch, Captain Yamato!”

Naruto caught the tail end of a smile and Yamato was gone, he was left alone, and he wandered. At first, he planned on dropping the food pills off at the tent for Boruto but thought better of it. The more rustling around there was, the more likely Boruto was to wake up if he wasn’t already, and kids needed their sleep. Or something.

This whole ‘being a dad’ thing was complicated and confusing and a bit weird because he was sixteen and his son was only four years younger and it was hurting his head.

Repairs were coming along slowly. It would take a very, very long time before Konoha stood tall and proud the way it had just two days prior, but there was progress. The first step was to clear away the endless debris from the fight—all crushed houses and splintered wood and demolished stone. Naruto watched from Hokage Rock. Dozens of ninja stood on the edge of the crater and below them, earth style jutsus were tediously filling it bit by bit, inch by inch. Aw, man, that was going to take forever . He didn’t envy them.

He could see Sai’s animals in all their painted glory carrying out pieces of rubble, trying to clean the place up in a slightly more efficient way than everyone else. The man in question perched upon a jutting wooden plank. Black eyes lifted to Naruto and Naruto waved.

“Hey!” he yelled down. “Be down there soon!”

Sai smiled and brought up his brush, back to work.

Huh. Naruto never realized the ability could be used like that. Come to think of it, wasn’t Sai off with Yamato for something? Oh, right. Yamato was back. They must’ve come back together last night… maybe. He didn’t know. He wasn’t going to dwell on it.

“Hey.”

Naruto looked up to find cool eyes and pink hair blowing this way and that in the early morning wind. Sakura lowered herself down next to him, their legs dangling off the Third’s head. “Sakura,” he greeted. “How’s Hinata?”

“She’ll be fine thanks to you.” Sakura shifted, drawing her knees up to her chest as she looked out at the village. “I think she’ll just need to rest up to regain her strength. Like you should be doing, Naruto.”

Naruto pouted and crossed his legs, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. He felt fine. Or, well enough, anyway. Fights didn’t leave him down for long, even if he was tired and battered and broken and bruised. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not doin’ nothin’.”

Sakura rolled her eyes exaggeratedly and nodded down to the village remains. “Your shadow clone,” she sighed. “I get you want to help, and it’s nice what you’re doing, but you were in a major fight yesterday. Your body needs time to recover. So—”

“Shadow clone?”

She lifted a finger and pointed a little ways away from Sai. “Don’t play dumb. How am I supposed to miss the orange jumpsuit?”

Naruto squinted, followed her finger, and sure enough at the end of it was a carbon copy of himself hauling off an armful of wooden planks. A shadow clone? When did he make a shadow clone? Had he done it in his sleep? But no, that didn’t make sense, or maybe it did , but…

“Nobody’s going to fault you for taking a day off,” Sakura continued. A hand on his shoulder jolted him, but he kept his eyes on the clone, his brain churning. “You’re a hero, Naruto. You saved this village. So please, just take some time to heal up, alright? You’re not going to be any good to anyone if you collapse.”

Naruto finally pried his eyes away to look at Sakura. She was worried, and he got that, and he tried to focus on the conversation but the mystery clone was bothering him and it was hard . He smiled through it. “I’ll be okay, Sakura. I’m already healin’ up, y’know?”

“I know. You’ve always healed fast.” Her smile fell and her eyes went back down to the clone. She wrapped her arms around her knees and held them there. “Hey. Do you remember that kid from a few years ago—your brother?”

“Boruto?”

“Yeah. Him. I thought…” Her brows knitted together. “I thought I saw him yesterday, when I went to treat Hinata. But…”

“But what?”

“He looked—you said he went back to Suna, right? While we were off on the Wave mission.”

Naruto nodded and the fidgeting started. He wasn’t a good liar. If Boruto was a bad liar than he was colossally impossibly bad . “Y—” He averted his eyes. “Yeah. Why?”

Sakura hummed. Her chin tipped back, eyes on the bluebird sky and the clouds and the wash of the sun as it poked out from behind one. “He looked—the same. Twelve. Exactly the same, and I know I wasn’t imagining it. Hinata may have been out of it, but Ko saw him, too.”

“O-oh, uh…”

She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her chin, head cocked to the side. “Could it be from one of Suna’s jutsu? But why would he want to…”

Naruto felt very, very underprepared to have this conversation right now. He hopped to his feet and at her quizzical look, he grinned. “I’m gonna check in on my clone, see if I can help.”

Sakura frown. “Naruto, what did I just—”

But he’d already hopped off the third’s head and started free-falling down to the rubble. “Later, Sakura!”

Air rushed by him and he breathed in his relief. Man, that was close. He didn’t know how he would have gotten out of that conversation without spilling the whole thing. Naruto wasn’t even supposed to know, if Boruto’s reaction was anything to go by.

His body twisted mid-air and he landed with a tap along the broken roof tiles of a very sorry excuse for a house. The whole thing was dilapidated but still half standing, which was more than what could be said for most of the buildings. He hopped off it to the ground where the clone had just dumped the load of wood, grabbed the clone’s sleeve and dragged him away. He could tell from the chakra that this was not his clone. But the signature was similar enough.

They stopped near the wall in a section that the crew hadn’t reached, masked by towering stone, and Naruto held firm to the copy’s shirt, staring hard into familiar blue eyes with a jutting lip and furrowed brow. They stayed like that, the copy blinking rapidly.

“Boruto?”

The copy’s slow-forming grin confirmed it and Naruto let go, taking a step back. Naruto was very, very baffled.

Boruto’s grin turned smug as he gestured down at himself, pulling at the front of clothes as if to emphasize their accuracy. “Pretty good, eh?”

“Er, I mean, yeah, but…” It was a good transformation, definitely. Solid like a henge. Naruto remembered Boruto taking on a lot of henges back in the day, like it was his favourite jutsu. Looking back, it was probably to draw less attention to himself. He always wore gloves, too, to mask the curse mark. But looking down, Naruto didn’t see any gloves or markings. “How?”

Boruto blinked and lifted his unmarked arm. “Oh. I’m a clone, duh. Shadow clone. The seal doesn’t copy to us. Which means that shadow clones would be really ineffective in a fight right now ‘cause they would always be able to tell where the original was really easily, but, you know.”

Naruto felt strangely warm and tingly and he didn’t know why but it was kinda gross and he wished it would stop. Despite this he found himself saying a short, “You can make shadow clones?”

“Of course,” Boruto grinned, chin up and hands on his hips and looking very much not Naruto .

“Did—” He shifted his weight and felt restless. “Did I teach you?”

The grin was gone. Boruto made to shove his hands into his pockets only to realize that he didn’t have pockets and so his hands awkwardly returned to sides and he met Naruto levelly. “I taught myself.”

“Oh.”

“I wanna help,” Boruto continued before he had a chance to dwell on it, “but this is the only way I could come up with to do so. You mind?”

Naruto blinked and then smiled. He reached out to ruffle his son’s hair only for Boruto to duck out from under his hand with protests and groans and it felt amusing and right and so much better than the flat tone he had just moments before. “‘Course not. Careful, though. There’re some people who’ll be able to tell it’s a henge.”

Boruto rolled his eyes dramatically. “I know , D—”

Everything felt awkward again. Boruto scuffed his shoe against the rock and looked down. Naruto scratched his cheek and faced the sky.

They both cleared their throats.

“Anyway—” There was a tug at the corners of his lips. “Be careful, y’know.”

“Yessir!” Boruto saluted, his face totally and utterly serious, and he vanished into a puff of smoke.

Naruto stared at the space where the clone had been and then pouted, kicking the dirt as he joining the workers. He’d go back up to hand over Boruto’s food pills, but Sakura was still up there and he wasn’t about to tackle that. Heads turned at his approach and he waved.

“Hey! Any work left for me?”

Boruto twitched, his clone’s memories flooding into him, and he sighed. The stupid old man was trying to be a dad now, huh? Or maybe not trying , but he was thinking. Naruto and thinking were not synonymous things.

The cloak was enough to keep eyes off him. So long as he kept his head down and his back hunched. The generic henge he wore helped, too, with the cloak covering his arms.

Then again, maybe doing all of this was making him more suspicious. Whatever.

He needed to leave.

Last night he’d gotten distracted by Yamato’s chakra signature, but today he needed to focus . Step 1: Get a message to dad. The imprint method worked well last time, even if Dad got there a few weeks too late. This time he would be more specific about the date. He didn’t even need the actual date; saying something like ‘the village was destroyed yesterday’ was pretty hard to mistake, especially for the Seventh, who was allergic to numbers.

Boruto passed the line between the evacuation site and the forest and stilled.

“You told him where you’re going, I take it.”

Old man Kakashi was there, leaning against a tree, one hand in his pocket and the other on a book. His eye scrolled lazily across the page, never once acknowledging Boruto with anything other than his words.

Boruto shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah.”

Kakashi’s eye crinkled. “You’re just as bad a liar as he is.”

“Yeah,” he snorted, acknowledging that much, “considering pretty much everyone I came into contact with seems to know what’s up with me. You, too?”

“More or less.”

“Figures.”

“Go back,” said Kakashi, and it was not a suggestion. “Tell him. You’re not leaving unless you do.”

“He’ll want to come with me.”

“Then let him.”

“I can’t —”

The book slammed shut. Kakashi closed the distance between them and Boruto felt very small. There was something hard about Kakashi’s face, something that bled away the dull haze of his eye into something harder to look away from. “You’re not leaving him without a word. Not again.”

Boruto twitched. His hunched shoulders loosened and he craned his neck up to look at Kakashi directly, the hood slipping onto his shoulders. “You worried about him?”

“He’s your father,” said Kakashi, cool and level and all sorts of threatening. “Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it means the world to him.”

Boruto pressed his lips together and lifted an arm to scratch at his head. Now he was feeling guilty, damn it. Guilty over the dad that sends shadow clones to greet him and doesn’t come home to eat the dinner that mom prepared and is more a ghost than a father. And he knew, he knew that the Naruto of this time hadn’t done any of that—that this Naruto was guiltless and blameless and hadn’t done a damn thing wrong since they met. But that was just the thing that bothered him. He wondered how Naruto became Dad, how Naruto was always there whether he liked it or not when his father was more a village figurehead than family at all.

He cursed it all and kicked the ground and spun on his heel and glared at the stupid Sixth standing there all smiles and thinly veiled threats.

“ Fine, jeez,” and he made himself sound so put out by that. “You’re the worst, old man. You know that?”

Kakashi just smiled.

Boruto sat atop Grandpa Minato’s rock face because Grandpa Minato was about as close as he could get to his dad’s. It wasn’t a conscious thing, it was automatic—as natural as running.

What he intended to do was march right down to where his father was working on village repairs, tell him that he was going to find a way home, turn on his heel, and march right back out. What he actually did was a lot of wandering. With the henge up and the cloak keeping his arm from garnering attention, he felt confident to do that much. At some point he got roped in by one of the civilian volunteers to hand out rations to the medic-nin tending to the wounded, because even if no one died, many were injured. With that done, he started down to the village and then met Yamato, who looked about ninety percent dead and one hundred percent done with this place. They sat on a bench for a while, talking. Yamato caught him up on what happened—that he was the temporary captain of Team Kakashi, that he was there to pacify the nine-tails and that he and Kakashi helped Dad train. They talked a lot. Some things were light and happy. Most weren’t.

The old perv was dead. So was Grandpa Third. Boruto already knew.

It was a bittersweet afternoon.

Now, he was on Hokage Rock, the first dregs of sunset pulling pinks into the sky. He ate food pills when he was handing out rations but he still felt hungry. Everyone did. He missed Mom’s cooking, missed his sister carefully and meticulously setting the table. He missed sitting down as a family, telling stories about the day. He even missed the empty chair and covered bowl next to him, always there, prepared just incase the old bastard decided to show up.

Boruto didn’t want to tell his father anything. It wasn’t out of spite, not this time. Now he had a new face to the name ‘Naruto,’ a face with a smile and a lot of years behind it, a lot of time behind it. It was the face of the nine-tails jinchuuriki who protected the village, and the little brother that didn’t know many jutsu, and the good-for-nothing genin who snored too loud and ate too much ramen and served tasteless tea because he never used up the tea leaves the Hokage gave him however long ago.

It was a face he didn’t want to see crushed when he said ‘I’m going to find a way home.’

Boruto hugged his knees to his chest as the wind picked up. He awaited internal jabs from the chakra beast, telling him how meaningless his sentimentality was, or that if he would just let it feed this whole ordeal would be over. They never came. It was quiet. Sometimes, he wondered if he hated the quiet more.

He heard the steps behind him but, even before that, he felt the unwavering flicker of his father’s chakra. He followed it from the construction site below, up the side of the mountain to where it stood now. And he followed it still, to its place beside him, heels dug into the rock.

Naruto stared out at the sunset with his weight on his palms and a smile on his face.

Boruto waited for him to speak, because Sage knew that Naruto loved the sound of his own voice, but there was nothing. Nothing, and that was an opening, and he did not want that opening because he just got there yesterday and that wasn’t enough time, not to Naruto, not to him . Not after a four year wait.

It remained, that opening. It waited when he didn’t want it to wait.

He sucked in a breath, braced himself, and—

He couldn’t. Not yet. Something needed to be said, but not that.

“You taught me,” Boruto confessed, and then he backbeddled. “You started to, with the shadow clone jutsu. It was really cool and you were always using it all the time everywhere and I wanted to be like you. So I begged and begged and you acted like you were so put out by it but you were just as excited as I was. I thought you were.”

Naruto laughed with some weird eagerness only Naruto could understand, his eyes prying away from the golden bath of sunlight to Boruto, all careful looks and searching eyes. “Then what happened?”

Boruto shrugged, and there was reluctance there, and he wanted to leave it at that. But that didn’t make for much of a story. “You stopped. When you became Hokage.”

Naruto went very, very still. Boruto didn’t know that he could be that still. There were questions there and they were demanding and Boruto was having none of it.

He swallowed. His arms tightened around his legs. “We don’t have a good relationship, you an’ me. You’re never around, and it pisses me off, and half the time I don’t even know if I want you around, and that pisses me off. And then when you’re actually there you—”

Boruto shook his head. No. That wasn’t the point. That wasn’t what this was about.

“So I taught myself. Shadow clone 101, all on my own,” he muttered. “I thought that if I showed off how good I was, that I could learn all by myself , you’d pay attention to me, y’know? That I’d get some recognition outta it. Lotta good that did me.”

Naruto broke away to push off his palms and stare down at the rubble at their feet, his back hunched and face drawn. There was quiet. He clasped his hands together, fingers intertwined, and smiled. “I met my dad yesterday. When the seal almost broke.”

Boruto raised an eyebrow, then rapped his knuckles against the stone head. “Grandpa Minato?”

Naruto nodded. There was a fondness in his eyes, a softness to his face as he separated his hands. “He restored the seal. Told me that I’m his son. I never knew. They didn’t tell me. No one told me. No one was there.” He slammed his fist into his open palm and the smile stretched into a victorious grin. “So I punched him!”

Boruto blinked and then laughed, running a hand through his hair. “You would.”

“He deserved it,” Naruto defended. “Maybe I do, too.”

Boruto dropped his legs and they dangled over the Fourth’s face. He twisted to get a better look at his father, confusion dawning understanding. “You—”

“When you go back,” Naruto laughed, repeating the motion, hand to palm, “try it. Right in the gut!”

Boruto’s mouth twitched and he furiously faced forward, his head hanging low to hide his stinging eyes and flushed face. His shoulders shook, and he was laughing.

“Stupid old man.”

Boruto bit his finger, drawing a practiced seal on the cave wall. It was a clean, fluid motion, all perfectly etched symbols around a neatly marked seal. His hands came together. Chakra pooled at his fingertips. The seal glowed and it was recording.

“My name,” he started, his voice reverberating off the cavern walls, “Is Boruto Uzumaki. I’m a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage.”

His eyes drifted to a consistent drip drip beside the seal, a puddle on the ground below. The cave was moist and the air was thick, and when he sucked in a breath it felt like he could drown in it.

“Dad.” He swallowed. “In my current time, the village has been destroyed in the Pein attack. It’s the day after. I’m… gonna stay here, ‘kay?” His eyes found the floor. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Boruto’s hands fell limp at his sides. The glow of the seal faded out, leaving him in the dark, final lights of dusk as they bled out of the sky. He closed his eyes and turned around.

“Well.”

He froze mid-step and looked up. A tall figure blocked the mouth of the cave, a blackened silhouette against dusky pinks. A white robe draped over his shoulders, swaying as he stepped inside, every sound a mess of echoes that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Dad was there with his short hair and his blue eyes and tired smile.

“Were you waiting long?”

Boruto opened his mouth but all that came was air. He tried once, twice, before his head downcast to the floor and his hands disappeared into his pockets. His shoe hit a rock as he closed the distance between them and it rolled across the cavern floor, coming to a stop at Dad’s feet. “You know that I wasn’t.”

Dad laughed, low and raspy and quiet. Then he was on his knees, arms wrapped tightly around his son, a hand on the back of Boruto’s head, the other across his back. His breath shuddered.

“Sorry.”

Boruto stiffened. He squirmed and fought and then stopped and leaned in and closed his eyes. For a moment, nothing mattered.

“Stupid old man.”

Chapter Text

When night fell, they sat around an open fire. Boruto held his hands up to the heat, rubbing them together in the hope that friction could help fight off the biting chill, stealing glances now and then at the father seated across from him.

Dad’s eyes were closed. He leaned back against a tree, dark circles rimming his eyes, looking just as exhausted as he always did. Hell, he looked like he’d fallen asleep.

There were fish skewered over the fire and Boruto turned their sticks every now and then, trying to cook them evenly while his father rested. He thought that the moment he saw his dad, they would head off back to the future. Apparently, nothing was ever that simple; the jutsu Dad used to get there mercilessly ate up a significant portion of his chakra and they’d need to wait for it to replenish before they went back. Which was fine. What did it matter how long they spent there when they could just go back to the time they went missing regardless?

Other than that, they hadn’t really spoken. Boruto didn’t know why, but he just… couldn’t gather the words. Being there with Dad—the dad he’d always known —felt so foreign after spending so much time with Naruto, with the younger version, the one who went around yammering on and on about how he was going to be the greatest Hokage, the one that everyone in the world would have to acknowledge. The younger Naruto, who dreamed big and hated being alone. The awkward jinchuuriki that didn’t know how to be a dad but was trying anyway.

With a Naruto so bright and vibrant and full of life, how was he supposed to act around the Dad who rarely made it home for dinner?

Dad could see it, too. He’d made some attempts to talk to Boruto while setting up camp, but nothing ever made it that far. Maybe that was Boruto’s fault for being inflexible. Maybe, but he didn’t care.

The smell of roasting fish floated in the air and he pulled them off the fire, gave them a cursory glance, nodded, and took one with him as he padded over to the tree. He nudged his old man with his toes, earning a groan, and his mind flashed back to the mornings with little Naruto, waking his ‘brother’ up for breakfast.

Dad’s eyes fluttered open in a far-off haze, settled on the flicker and pop of the fire before, eventually, lifting up to see Boruto. He blinked a few times, barely coherent.

Boruto scowled down at him, face pulled taut, and shoved the skewer in his face. “Here.”

Dad stared a while longer, his eyes shifting between his son and the fish with a tired smile. “Ah. Thanks.”

Boruto stuck up his nose and walked back to his place on the far side of the camp, ripping into the fish with his teeth in a bitter show of emotions too complex and embarrassing to relay. He caught his father watching him and tried his damnedest to ignore it, however futile his efforts may have been.

The smoke carried west with the strong autumn breezes and rose up, blocking the high moon out behind a murky haze of ash. They had nothing. When it came time to sleep, it would be on the cold, hard, merciless ground. He would have been better off sticking with mini-Dad in the village. At least they had blankets. Tents. Good company.

He glared sourly at his old man as he swallowed the last of his fish.

Dad smiled awkwardly, very obviously catching the subtle meanings behind Boruto’s looks as he ate slowly and fought to keep his eyes open.

“You were cool back then,” Boruto stated matter-of-factly, huffing.

Dad blinked slowly at him, uncomprehending for all of ten seconds before he understood and raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Been spending a lot of time with me, haven’t you?”

Boruto looked away to hide the embarrassing red of his cheeks. Of course the old bastard would take it that way.

Dad laughed, raspy and quiet, and swallowed a mouthful of fish. The ever-present smile wasn’t as soft as it once was, the lines on his face hard and distant as he turned his attention to the hiss and pop of the logs in the fire. “I keep forgetting that for you, it’s been a month. Only a few days have passed for me, y’know.” He looked up and forced a grin. “Being around your old man must feel all kinds of wrong.”

Boruto’s eyes widened, his mouth twitched, and he picked at the grass at his feet. Dad already knew, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. Spare his feelings and say ‘no, it’s nothing like that?’ That’d be a lie. He’d gotten used to the twelve-year-old ball of energy, to living in that tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment. And then, being thrown into that future, with the Naruto that saved the village, felt right . Awkward, sure. So, so awkward, because that kid was trying to be a dad, was trying to build up a connection without any idea what he was doing when they already had a connection from four years ago. That Naruto remembered.

This one… Boruto wasn’t sure. He was scared to ask. This was the Dad that he’d known all his life, after all. A short jump into the past shouldn’t matter in the face of their life-long history.

It shouldn’t. It did.

“I see that boy’s grown up well. Just a fountain of chakra, isn’t he?”

“Shut up,” Boruto hissed, and then jolted. Dad was watching him, confused, and he hid his cursed arm behind his back as though it would erase what he just said.

“Oh, come on. You felt it, too. Another explosion of chakra like before. It startled me, but I didn’t have the reserves to escape to another time.”

That was good. Boruto didn’t know how much more time jumping he could take.

“I knew you wouldn’t appreciate it, either. As you’ve so kindly pointed out.”

Boruto’s brows knitted together and he pulled his arm back out in front of him, staring at the seal. He wanted to ask just what it meant, but Dad was watching him, looking at him, and he didn’t want to freak his old man out. He remembered how jarring it was to the few people who noticed in the past. They probably all thought he was crazy. Maybe he was.

“It's talking to you, isn't it?”

Boruto tensed. His eyes found his father, found a warm smile where he expected a scornful frown, and he gawked openly, unsure of what to say or why his father was just… accepting it like that.

“That chakra beast of yours,” Dad elaborated when given no answer. He set down the remnants of his skewer and crossed his legs, resting his elbows on his knees. “You can talk back, Boruto. It's okay. That doesn't bother me.”

“But…” He swallowed down the lump in his throat and scooted just a bit closer, eyes bright and wondrous as he searched for any half-truths in his father's words where there were none. “But—why? Why doesn’t it? I mean…”

Dad grinned and it brought him back to the stupid, awkward teen he left behind in the village. “Well, I can't say I’ve never done it. Kurama can be pretty distracting at times.”

“Kurama?” he echoed, head cocked to the side as he tried to place the name. “Who the heck is that?”

The grin faltered and Dad reached up, scratching the markings on his cheek. Suddenly, he was the one looking nervous, like this was the greatest tell to his greatest secret. “A-ah. I never told you about him, huh?” Dad winced and rubbed his forehead, as though someone was yelling into his ear. Then it smoothed back out and he took a breath. An easy smile followed. “Kurama is the nine-tails. The tailed beast sealed inside of me.”

Boruto stared. That… that thing had a name? Like, an actual, honest-to-Sage name?

“I’m a jinchuuriki,” Dad continued, as though he felt the need to explain himself. “You know that much, at least. Right?”

“Um—” Boruto jerked, clawing at the dirt. “Yeah. I… heard about it in class.”

“In class, huh…” Dad closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, and pressed back against the trunk of the tree. When he opened them again, they were on the stars. “I can’t blame you for calling me a stupid old man.”

Boruto ducked his head and plucked blades of grass one by one from the space before his feet, dropping them and watching as they floated back to the ground. This change in mood was… unsettling. He thought they were onto something—that he was hearing something important. But then Dad suddenly shut down. Now what? Was he supposed to say something to bring back the mood, or just let them stew in the tension? Boruto wasn’t good at stuff like this. Not with him. Not with Dad. Dad was the one man he just couldn’t bring himself to understand.

He was grateful when Dad laughed. It eased away the tension like music, and Boruto could finally cast his eyes away from the ground.

“Come here a sec.”

Dad was beckoning him over, waving a hand, and he complied if only to keep the tension from making an unnecessary comeback. The moment he was within arm’s length, Dad grabbed his wrist and turned his arm, palm facing upwards. The bandaged fingers of Dad’s right arm flitted over the seal there. Dad didn’t look worried or concerned, confused. His eyes were soft and kind and understanding in a way that Boruto didn’t get.

“This is it, huh?” he asked, smoothing the inked skin beneath his thumb. “Your seal.”

“Y—” Boruto averted his eyes, his arm limp in his father’s hold. “Yeah.”

Dad let go and shifted to sit up again, unzipping the front of his shirt. The two sides parted, revealing skin beneath and, seconds later, a swirl of black ink bled itself visible on the skin of Dad’s abdomen. “Well,” he said simply, “this is mine.”

Boruto made a small noise of confusion and scuttled forward, taking a close, long look at his father’s seal. He’d never seen it before. Why would he have? When? Dad never—

Oh.

He lifted his head to meet his father’s stare. “You’re like me.”

Dad nodded, reaching out to pat his head. He quickly ducked out of it, pouting, earning a low chuckle. “Yeah,” he affirmed. “I was about your age when I found out I was a jinchuuriki. It’s a lot at once. I know that. What you’re going through is normal. Well. For guys like us.”

Boruto blinked, shifting his legs beneath himself. Guys like us, huh? “Then, this er… Kurama guy, he talks to you?”

“All the time.”

“And no one else can hear?”

“Mm.”

“But—” He scrunched up his brow and crossed his arms. “But I’ve never seen you talk to yourself.”

“Sometimes I do,” Dad confessed, tapping the side of his head with his finger. “But mostly, it’s all up here.”

Oh. Huh. Boruto hadn’t realized he could talk to it that way. But the more he thought, the more he started to understand that the chakra beast read his thoughts, to some extent. It replied to thoughts that went unspoken, having one-sided conversations with him when he really didn’t want it to.

“What’s its name?”

“Huh?”

Naruto tapped the curse mark. “This guy.”

“Name?” Boruto echoed, holding up his palm in front of his face, watching the mark with a level of intensity that was probably unwarranted, as though staring long and hard enough would make the beast spill all of its dirty little secrets. “...I dunno. I didn’t… think it had one.”

“I don’t.”

“It doesn’t,” he echoed.

Dad hummed and stretched, his neck cracked. “Strange,” he yawned. “Alright. Bedtime. We’re going to need to keep up our strength, so get some sleep.”

Boruto pouted, closing his fist. That seemed like the most abrupt way to end that conversation, and right as they were getting somewhere interesting. But he knew better than to complain when his father had travelled through literal time and space to meet him, so he sucked back his complaints and found a place to settle on the ground. It was cold, hard— cold, he couldn’t stress that enough —and all sorts of miserable. There wasn’t any other option, though, so he sucked back his complaints and closed his eyes.

“Goodnight, Boruto,” a soft voice called from across the fire.

Boruto curled in on himself, trying to protect against the bite of the wind, and let out a small, slightly embarrassed, “Night, Old Man.”

Sleep was not in his future, apparently. No matter how hard he tried, he just ended up tossing and turning and aching because the ground was hard and cold and all sorts of terrible and he hated it. The old man wasn’t having this problem; Dad started snoring away about twenty minutes after settling in. Well, the old bastard looked exhausted. But Boruto had energy to burn. His mind was a jumbled mess of too-fast thoughts, still fixated on the conversation he had with his father. With nowhere else to turn, he retreated inward.

It was that dark, damp place again. Water dripped from an impossible ceiling. Pinprick eyes in the distance. He didn’t move to them, didn’t threaten or cuss or glare like he was prone to whenever they came face-to-face. Instead, he crossed his arms and focused, trying to make out the faint silhouette that made up the chakra beast’s body. It proved futile, but he tried.

“You look like a boy with a lot on his mind.”

“Do I?” He snorted, kicking the ground and watching as water splashed across the pools at his feet. This was the first time he entered that place with no stress, and he was starting to wonder about the worrying state of his mind if it looked all dingy and dark like that. He wondered what it would take to redecorate. “What Dad said has got me thinking, I guess.”

“What about?”

“You,” said Boruto, shoving his hands into his pockets, kicking again, watching the droplets ripple across the water’s surface. “I don’t really know a thing about you. You’re always just… I dunno, there. Causing problems for me to clean up.”

Yellow eyes blinked through the dark. “There is not much to tell. I’m learning through observing you. I don’t have a name and my past is of little consequence.”

Boruto looked away and rubbed his neck, fidgeting, his lip jutting out into a miserable pout. “Not having a name is sad, don’tcha think?”

“No, because I’ve never had one. You humans and your useless sentimentality.”

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Fine. See if I ever try to be nice to you again, ya overgrown parasite.”

“I told you not t—”

“Well maybe if you had a name I wouldn’t have to!”

“Fine then!”

The pout fell away and Boruto blinked, listening to the echoes of the beast’s last words as they rippled off invisible walls and trailed through the unending void. His back straightened, head cocked to the side. “Huh?”

“Name me, if it bothers you so much.”

“O-oh. Um.” He hadn’t expected that, and now he was left with nothing to say and no ideas and everything felt weird and awkward. Why did he broach that topic in the first place? Why was he so persistent?

Dad. It was because of Dad, who seemed to have a strangely fond relationship with the fox demon sealed within him. Maybe Boruto was a little jealous. Maybe he wanted to see what he could do for himself. He didn’t know.

The creature snorted. “Look at you. Got what you want, and now you don’t know what to do. You’re such a weird kid.”

“Hibiki,” Boruto blurted out, just to be contrary. It came to mind only because of the way the chakra beast’s voice bounced around in that bizarre, echoing way that it did, but now that he said it he was going to support it. He nodded to himself. “Yeah. That’s your name. Hibiki.”

“What a poor choice.”

“Well, you’re stuck with it because now I’m committed.”

“Fine, you stupid child. Humour yourself.”

“Damn straight I will.”

The beast huffed its complaints and Boruto smiled, a bubbling satisfaction pooling in his stomach. He retreated from his mindscape feeling light and fulfilled. Suddenly, sleep didn’t feel that far off.

The Hokage squeezed his eyes shut against the early morning sun, wincing as it burned its way through his eyelids, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His head was pounding, a testament to his exhaustion and, for a while, he sat against the tree and refused to get up. It was only through a lot of mental prodding that he finally got up the will to move.

He opened his eyes and gawked dumbly at the remnants of the campfire. It had been smothered out at some point or another while he slept and right now his brain wasn’t working well enough for him to register what that could mean.

“Wake up, Brat.”

“I’m up,” he slurred, rubbing his eyes with his prosthetic. He yawned, loud and wide, his eyes tearing up against the burn of the open air.

“Sure you are.” There was a snort from somewhere within his mind but he couldn’t be bothered to locate it. “Your boy’s gone.”

“Hm?”

Naruto blinked his eyes open against early morning tears and scanned the campground like a comatose zombie. It took a lot longer than it probably should have for understanding to dawn on him when he found that he was the only one there, and even longer still for the implications to really hammer themselves home as the rusty gears in his head started to rattle themselves awake.

He shot up and hit his head on a low branch, wincing and cursing and ducking and hating the start of this day. Kurama’s laughter ringing in his ears only made everything that much worse.

“Boruto,” he called pointlessly. The kid was gone; there were no two ways around that. He knew he should be worried but, for the life of him, he couldn’t get his brain to switch on fast enough for him to actively feel that worry. Naruto was far from a morning person and he needed at least half an hour up to function as a normal adult.

He steadied himself on the tree by his side and immediately felt the ripple of chakra buzzing beneath his fingertips. His head snapped to face it and he moved his hand to find a familiar seal etched into the bark, his fingers following the lines carefully.

“Your boy’s gotten fond of that jutsu, I’m noticing.”

“Well,” Naruto sighed, rubbing his forehead, “in this situation, it’s practical. For him. He knows that I know what it is, anyway.”

“He’s lucky that he was able to teach it to himself.”

Naruto snickered, fighting back against the fog of sleep. “Dumb luck runs in the family, I guess.”

With a short hand seal and release, the seal broke and before him stood the image of his son, grin in place, looking far less grave than he had in his previous two messages. Naruto was getting strangely used to seeing imprints like these.

“Hey, Old Man,” the Boruto projection greeted. “You’re dead to the world right now, so I’m headed to the village. Don’t feel like sitting on my hands waitin’ for you to rise from the dead.”

Naruto sighed. “Impatient as ever.”

“Reminds me of someone I used to know.”

“Your input is not appreciated so early in the morning, Kurama.”

With the hand not stuck recording the message, Boruto pointed towards the tree. “Eat before you get moving. It’s not ramen , you shitty old man, but it’s not poisonous, either. I checked.”

A mock salute and Boruto’s image fizzled out.

Naruto blinked tiredly and craned his neck in the direction Boruto pointed. At the base of the tree, between its winding roots, was a pile of berries and mushrooms commonplace to those forests resting atop Boruto’s jacket. He was so out of it that he hadn’t really registered that Boruto wasn’t wearing the jacket in the imprint that was left behind. He tilted his head as sleep finally left him and laughed.

“That kid is something else.”

“I know,” Naruto breathed, kneeling beside the pile of food, a soft fondness in his smile. “I’ve really missed that kid.”

Repairs to the village were well underway, but it would be a long time still before their decimated land could be in any way called a home. Kakashi sat during his break with a book hanging limply from his hand and watched as people milled about, carrying materials this way and that, doing whatever they could to press forward in the face of this daunting task. He drew distinct parallels between this and the fallout of the nine-tails attack. That was not the first time the village was destroyed, and he feared that it may not even be the last. The silver lining to it all was just how well their community came together in a crisis. They'd do it. Eventually, their village would find a new normal. It was a matter of time.

Poor Tenzo was being worked to the bone as the village's only Mokuton user which, while entirely expected, was a bit hard to watch. His old friend was looking rather wilted; he at the very least deserved extra rations for the way that he was pushing himself near chakra exhaustion to make headway in the repairs. Kakashi also noticed that the outer structure of Ichiraku had been rebuilt and he had no illusions about who put in that particular request. It would be a long while before the ramen shop could be reopened, but it was the thought that mattered.

It was as he was cracking open the cover of his book that Kakashi's uncovered eye found a shock of blond flitting about the crowds. He followed it automatically, thoughts of calling out to the new village hero running through his head, but they fell away when his attention lingered for longer than a short few seconds. Poorly hidden markings glowed beneath a sleeve and he sighed.

He thought that particular troublemaker had been dealt with.

Disparaging the loss of his first reading break of the day (second, but who was counting?), Kakashi slipped the novel back into his pocket and weaved through the wandering bodies of the villagers until he came up behind the poorly-done henge and hooked a finger around the boy’s collar. Before the sputtering protests could draw the attention of those uninvolved around them, Kakashi drew them away with a quick body flicker, back towards the tents and further still, to the wall. There was no one around here; repairs were focused on the other side of the village right now, which granted them some semblance of privacy. To the blue-eyed glare that he received, Kakashi tilted his head.

“I thought you’d be home by now.”

“Nice to see you, too, Old Man,” Boruto grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. He wouldn’t drop the henge; they were still out in the open and the last thing either of them wanted was more questions to be raised. “Dad came.”

Oh, he knew. He felt that nostalgic burst of chakra last evening and he didn’t even think twice. A four-year-old memory prodded at Kakashi and he wasn’t sure if he looked back on it with fondness or uncertainty. It was a memory that he shouldn’t have, all things considered, but it was one that the future Hokage left with him even still. For the sake of a son that Kakashi may never have met again. But, well. Naruto’s hunches were pretty accurate, nine times out of ten.

“And yet here you are.”

Boruto huffed and shifted his weight, pouting in a way that didn’t look quite right on Naruto’s face. “He’s gotta replenish his chakra before we can leave,” he muttered. “The jutsu he used to get here took everything he had. I’m guessing he went back to my time to find my message and then travelled here after that… And that’s after using it to follow me to the time I arrived four years ago. I think he’s spent.”

Considering how much chakra was expelled every time Naruto arrived in their timeline, Kakashi would have been surprised to find him perfectly fit after all of that. Even Uzumakis had their limit.

Boruto threw his hands behind his head and scuffed his shoe in the dirt. “He’ll probably use Sage Mode to gather nature chakra, so I’d give it a few hours. Maybe a day, max?”

Kakashi hummed, lowering himself down onto some rubble. If he was completely honest with himself, he rather not run into the other time traveller if he could help it. It felt like they were playing with knives, dipping their toes into the past—their present—like this. There was a foreboding sense of wrong that lingered on the father-son duo and Kakashi couldn’t wait to put this all behind him.

“I said goodbye,” Boruto rushed to add, “before you start lecturing me again.”

And that would be why Boruto was wandering around the village like a lost thing instead of waiting out the timer with his favourite person.

The boy threw a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to the workers busying themselves with half-made structures still barely visible from their position by the wall. “Figured I could at least help out while I wait, y’know? That okay by you?”

Kakashi smiled. “Cover your arm first.”

Boruto rolled his eyes dramatically as his hands came together in a familiar seal and, with a short burst of chakra, the henge morphed until the skin of his hands was covered beneath a thick pair of gloves. He gestured to himself, brow raised.

“Better.”

The kid took off and Kakashi watched him go, heaving a sigh, wondering if this time their parting would mark an end to this four-year journey. Oh, how he hoped.

Naruto wasn’t used to all of the praise. He didn’t know how to react to the smiling faces of the villagers who once shunned him or what to do when faced with the excitement they wore as he walked by. It was all so foreign to him, odd and strange and bizarre. It was everything he hoped for and yet there he stood, lost and confused, anytime someone stopped him for idle chat. What a weird world they lived in now, huh? Local pariah to local hero overnight, like a switch was flipped.

It wasn’t affecting him as much as he first expected it to, though, and he thought that was, at least in part, due to the absent thoughts falling to a boy he’d known for four years and a future he both dreaded and couldn’t wait to find. Boruto left after their chat last night. They didn’t really say much of a goodbye—neither of them knew how, so it went unsaid between them—but they knew, then, that they wouldn’t be seeing each other until everyone was back where they belonged. And, well, that was… okay. It had to be. Maybe he was a little bitter, knowing that he wouldn’t get to see the kid for years and years after just finally reuniting. But knowing Boruto was in his future, he would get through it. They would meet again.

He waited four years, and he could wait for however many more.

One thing nagged at him, though.

Hokage.

Boruto let the word slip casually, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, like it didn’t hold within it all of Naruto’s hopes and aspirations. Like his whole world hadn’t shifted one degree to the right at that moment. And Naruto couldn’t even be happy about it. With that revelation came the bitterness that Boruto said it with, as though it were the worst thing to ever happen to their family. Maybe it was. All Naruto knew was what Boruto told him, that the two of them drifted apart after he became acting Hokage, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Noon had long since passed and Naruto stared down at his ration of food pills with a carefully withheld sigh. He was sitting out front of the new Ichiraku, if only so that he could be reminded of better days. Captain Yamato worked quickly, despite everything else that he had on his plate, and it looked great! But with no plumbing or power, it would be some time before the village would once more be able to taste Teuchi’s cooking. Whatever. Baby steps. They’d get there eventually.

Today, he ate alone. Well, if it could be called eating. Without Boruto around, he’d need to find a new buddy to enjoy his free time with. Captain Yamato was dead asleep in his tent after depleting his chakra reserves. A small smile tugged at his lips as he wondered if the two of them met before Boruto left. He hoped so. Naruto thought back to his first time meeting Tenzo in four years, suddenly going by a new name with a new identity. It was still weird to think about knowing that, without Boruto, that may have been their first meeting. There would have been no bringing the ANBU on the roof a blanket on chilly nights or cooking an extra portion for dinner.

Naruto shook his head. Either way, Captain Yamato was out. Sakura was working with the medical staff and tending to Granny Tsunade, so he didn’t want to bother her. Kakashi-sensei was… somewhere , probably. He checked in on Naruto last night, but Naruto hadn’t seen even a glimpse of him since. And Sai was helping with construction. Naruto needed to go back to help, too. For all that Sakura told him to rest, he was feeling pretty good. Better than a lot of the villagers, he was sure. Besides, a little manual labour never hurt any—

A sudden hand on his shoulder had him jumping to his feet with a yelp. He spun around to face a clone. A clone of himself. But he hadn’t made any clones today. Immediately, his eyes went to the stranger's arm in search of the familiar, white-blue glow of Boruto’s seal, but nothing. No gloves, either. But after yesterday, Boruto proved that the seal didn’t replicate to clones. A slow-forming grin stretched across Naruto’s face at the thought of getting to see him for a little while longer.

He opened his mouth to say the kid’s name only for a hand to be pressed over it, cutting off his words before they could begin. He blinked, confused, as the clone smiled at him.

“Think you and I need to have a chat, y’know?”

The clone pushed and prodded Naruto down the path of tents and soon he was shoved through the entrance of the one he’d been using. It was only when he’d fumbled onto the floor, blinking up at the now-crouching clone, that his mouth was finally free.

He shifted until his legs were beneath him, watching as the clone zipped up the entrance of the tent. “What’s going on?”

No answer. Instead, the body of his double poofed away and in its place was someone a little taller, a little more broad-shouldered, and endlessly tired. Naruto swallowed, staring at his own back, another memory of four years prior drawn up out of the depths of his subconscious. This was weird. Way too weird. It wasn’t bad last time because, er… Naruto didn’t know who this guy was. Now that he did, though, it was all sorts of strange.

Why was his hair so short? He looked like an old man. No wonder Boruto picked on him.

“You’re…” When the older man turned on him, Naruto pointed questioningly at himself.

The man snorted. “Yeah. You. Pretty cool, huh?”

Naruto made a face. “Not really…”

“You, too?!”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” Unable to stand up straight under the low-hanging ceiling, the Naruto—the older Naruto?—the Hokage took a seat right in front of the entrance to the tent, as though preventing escape, and crossed his legs. “I have some questions for ya. Got a minute?”

“Me?” Naruto made a face and crossed his arms. “Shouldn’t you already, like… know everything that I do?”

“Not quite,” the Hokage answered. Gosh. Hokage. Imagine that? “Actually, that’s why I need to talk to you. Jiraiya wouldn’t have happened to have taught you sealing, would he?”

“Um—” Naruto tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, wondering if this was some sort of trick. That , of all things, should be pretty obvious to his future self, shouldn’t it? Was this someone else, maybe? Someone pretending to be his future self? But their chakra signatures matched. He hadn’t trained all that much as a sensor, but he could tell that, at least. And it wasn’t like many people knew about this whole time travel fiasco, anyhow. “Yeah. A little bit. Why—”

Naruto paled as the old, familiar characters of a modified seal burned their way to the forefront of his mind. He shot to his feet only to hit his head off one of the tent’s metal supports and fall back down, gripping his throbbing skull. He blinked tears from his eyes and made to get up again, but thought better of it.

“Boruto’s seal,” he said in a hurry. “Where is he? I was—Pervy Sage told me to fix it if I saw him again—”

The Hokage held up a hand in pause, an easy smile on his face. “Let me worry about that. He did teach it to you, though, right?”

“But you should know,” Naruto echoed, rubbing the swollen point of impact. “You’re me, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to think that I am.”

This was so confusing. Even as his newly-formed wound healed, he was trying to make sense of the way his older self was just dancing around the question, but it was just hurting his head more. It was a simple yes-or-no answer.

“That actually all depends on you.”

“What do you mean?”

The Hokage sat up straight, tangling his fingers together in front of him as he looked Naruto over. The smile was gone and it left nothing behind but dark eyes and exhaustion. He looked worse off than Naruto. It was a bit sad, and he wondered if chakra exhaustion was the only thing at play. “I don’t remember any of this.”

Something sank in Naruto’s stomach and he pressed his lips into a thin line, knowing how wrong that was and the implications of those words the moment that he heard them. Naruto would remember this. Naruto would always remember. But if he did, and if the Hokage didn’t, then that meant that Boruto’s future was not his own.

For the first time in four years, it occurred to him that he may not ever meet his son.

As though reading Naruto’s thoughts from the look on his face, the Hokage raised a hand in pause, stopping him there before the stress of the situation could make him spiral. “I don’t remember this, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.”

Oh.

“It all comes down to you, Naruto,” the Hokage said. “We’ll do it your way. What’ll it be?”

He was never good at vague questions like that, but he thought that he understood. It was a lot at once, though, and he balled his hands into fists as he took every word to heart and poured over his thoughts.

Naruto didn’t really know what ‘family’ meant. He could define it with common sense, but it was always something that belonged to other people. It was not his. He was alone. Then he met Boruto and, for the first time, he thought maybe. Maybe that was it. Maybe it felt like that. He remembered agonizing over it every night, wondering what he was supposed to say and if he was playing well at the new role he’d been given. Being a brother, or a father. Belonging to someone. How did siblings act around each other, or a parent and child? Should he prod Boruto more or less? Should he give him space? Keep him close? It was so damn confusing, but—

But he loved every minute of it, and he didn’t want to leave it behind.

Naruto sat there with the future at his fingertips, right there within reach, and he had a choice to make. And he hated to make it. He hated and hated and hated some more, but here he was, making it anyway.

Because losing it in the moment was better than losing it forever.

“Alright. Let’s do it.”

Boruto rolled his shoulders as he stood and waited at the mouth of the cave. His whole body was stiff from carrying things around all day and he was pretty sure he’d have bruises in the morning, but whatever, it was worth it. Maybe he could say now that he had a hand in building Konoha. Pretty awesome bragging rights, huh?

It was sunset, about a whole twenty-four hours after his reunion with Dad, and they were about to head back. He steeled himself against finding Little Naruto for one final goodbye because they already played that game and how lame would it have been to go back on their first goodbye just to make a second?

“He’s replenished his chakra,” Hibiki said—weird, having a name for it, now. “Are we taking it for ourselves?”

Boruto rolled his eyes, staring at his father’s back. Dad was just waiting on his clones to gather the last bit of nature chakra that they’d need to make it home—or maybe it was enough extra to make sure he didn’t collapse afterwards. “Not a chance.”

“I could return us to your time, just as you wanted.”

“I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”

“You can’t throw me. I’m a chakra construct, and we share—”

“Oh, Sage—that’s the point, Hibiki. You can be so dense sometimes.”

Dad stretched, letting out a small, satisfied noise as something cracked in his back. He was looking significantly less dead now, even if he was still a bit withered. “Almost ready,” he promised, hands on his hips. “Give it another five minutes, maybe.”

Boruto kicked a rock and watched it roll out the mouth of the cave, tumbling down the gentle slope of the hill and into the valley below. It was kind of funny how his feelings towards this place morphed and changed across his journey. He thought back to his first time going there with Little Naruto, spending the night, bonding in a way that he never thought that he could with the Dad he’d grown up with. Then yesterday, leaving his message, the imprint still untouched on the wall where it would remain for well over a decade until Dad found it in the future. He thought—

He eyed his Dad, worried to ask. But Boruto was no coward. Well. Not all of the time. “Hey, Old Man?”

Dad arched a brow, pulling his attention back to Boruto as he dismissed the last clone, topping off the last of his reserves. “Hm?”

“Remember your first time coming here?” He needed to be vague, to not give any hints, if he wanted a completely open and honest answer.

Dad hummed, scratching at his chin as he thought. “I came across it a few times while travelling on missions,” he said absently. “My first time entering the cave was after finding the first imprint you left, though, when I arrived here four years ago.”

Boruto tried not to show his disappointment, but all he could manage was to withhold a sigh; he hunched and shoved his hands in his pockets despite himself. “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds about right.”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. Oh well. He knew it’d be this way from the start. No use crying over it. “You about ready to go? It’s been like a million years since I last saw Mom and Himawari, y’know.”

Dad laughed, ruffling his hair. He wasn’t fast enough to duck out from under the hand this time and sulked beneath it instead. “I guess I have to be, then, don’t I? You have everything you need?”

“I didn’t come here with anything, so, yeah. I think.”

“Alright. If you’re sure.” Dad held out his hand. “Hold on, okay? And make sure that chakra beast stays calm. Let’s not go through this again.”

“Yeah,” he groaned, inwardly cursing Hibiki with every fibre of his being, “let’s not. ”

Dad squeezed his hand and pulled him in close until they were pressed against one another and Boruto was holding fast to orange fabric. Once they were secure, their hands separated as the old man weaved through a fast-paced but lengthy series of hand signs, and all of that stored-up chakra burst out around them. Boruto felt the seal burn and Hibiki stir. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, retreating inward to that dark, dank space, spotting the silhouette of webbed feet against the blackness.

“Stay calm. You expected this,” he told it.

“I know,” it said. The burn slowly receded. “I’m hungry.”

It’d been a hot minute since he heard that one…

Dad’s method of travel didn’t hurt the way that Hibiki’s did. Boruto didn’t feel his skin burning away, or his body breaking apart. He didn’t feel it as his every cell broke away from one another. Instead, he felt chakra, warm and soothing against his skin, burning bright around him. He felt the cool security of Dad’s prosthetic as it wrapped around his shoulders and the air shifted and changed, but he refused to open his eyes, to take his attention away from the chakra beast, until everything had passed.

The warmth of the chakra faded. He could hear the rustle of trees and the bubble of distant water, but he didn’t move.

Dad laughed at him. Which was totally uncalled for. “You can open your eyes,” he said. “We’re here.”

Hesitantly, he listened. It was night, a later hour than the past they were just in, but they were in the very same spot at the mouth of the cave that opened to the forest, the top of a gently sloping hill that gave way to a small, shallow valley. Boruto pulled away from his father and made a face, wondering if something went wrong, if they were still in the past and if Dad was just too embarrassed to admit it.

Then he saw the imprint on the wall, no longer intact, and he took a deep breath.

“Huh,” he noised, “we’re back.”

“We’re back.”

That was it. No fanfare, no drama. They were just… home, and everything was over, like it was all some really long dream. It took him a moment to remember where he left off in his original time, what he was doing—the courier mission with his team that he never got to finish. He should probably get back to them, right? Or, no, maybe that mission was already dealt with. He didn’t know what day it was, after all—if it was the day he triggered the curse within which Hibiki resided, or if it was a day later, a month, a year—

Well, no. Dad wouldn’t have sent them a whole year into the future. That’d just be silly.

“C’mon,” Dad called, holding out his hand. “You miss your mother’s cooking, don’t you?”

Huh. So that’s why it was later in the day.

Clearing his throat and sticking up his nose, Boruto formed his own hand sign, just to be contrary. “Meet you there, Old Man.”

He flashed through a succession of seals and he was gone, using his own meagre body flickers to carry him through the Fire Country forests. Just to be difficult. He could practically hear his father’s sigh, even when they were apart.

Maybe this time, when he sat down for dinner, there wouldn’t be a vacant space next to his. Maybe the four of them could sit at the table and eat together like they did when he was little, and they could tell Mom and Himawari all about their journey together—or, er, maybe Dad wouldn’t want that. They did maybe possibly fuck up the timeline, or… inadvertently created an off-shoot of their own dimension. Maybe it’d stay their little secret.

Then again, maybe he was just getting his hopes up.

Naruto opened his eyes to the dull, shadowed ceiling of the tent. He was laying on his back, the top of his sleeping bag kicked off of him and his shirt hiked halfway up his stomach in whatever fitful sleep he managed to have last night. As he started at his distorted reflection in one of the metal supports, he found himself automatically rubbing his head and he didn’t know why. Maybe he bumped against it in the night or something; there was a phantom pain pressed up against his skull.

He yawned and stretched, but it was a while before he actually got up and moved around. Naruto was by no means a morning person and it took several long, painful minutes for his brain to boot up. When he was finally ready to be a normal human person, he rummaged through his small bag of luggage rescued from the debris of his old apartment, pulled on a fresh set of clothes, and ducked out of the tent.

It was still early, so the crowds were thin. He wandered like a zombie to get his rations for the day and made himself comfortable on the bench outside of the new Ichiraku for breakfast, squinting at the pills that he was growing to hate more and more with the passing of each day. Maybe after working today, he could go fishing. If it went well, he could bring back some food to share. Hey, maybe someone would want to join him. They could make a thing out of it. Sure a lot was going on right now with Lady Tsunade still being unconscious, and he heard whisperings about a new Hokage being chosen by the Daimyo or something… but that had nothing to do with him and there was nothing he could do about it. There was that thing his dad mentioned about that masked guy—Tobi, or whatever—being involved in the nine-tails attack all those years ago, too… But, well, couldn’t do anything about that right now, either. So, Naruto decided to focus on what he could do. He could use his clones to help speed up repairs on the village, and he could try to get some food to share by fishing. That was enough for now.

He finished the food pills in one swallow and groaned. These rations were soul-crushing.

“Naruto!”

He blinked, following the sound of his name to the left, further down the dirt path to Captain Yamato’s smiling face, and he grinned and waved. Captain Yamato was looking infinitely better than he had been the night before; the colour was back in his cheeks and he stood straight and tall like his energy had been returned to him.

“How are you feeling,” Yamato asked as he came to a stop before the blond, rubbing the back of his neck.

“About what?”

“Boruto,” he answered, placing a firm hand on Naruto’s shoulder. “I heard from Kakashi-senpai. I didn’t think he would leave so quickly, but, well. I suppose it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Naruto blinked slowly. “Who’s Boruto?”

Instead of another readily-supplied answer like he expected, Captain Yamato crossed his arms and sighed. “I know you’re upset, but I don’t think pretending that you don’t know him is going to do you any good.” Before Naruto could prod further, there was a call from one of the construction sites up ahead and Yamato shouted back at them. He looked reluctant, knowing exactly where another day of work would find him. “Chin up,” Yamato said, nudging him. “You’ll see him again.”

With those words, Naruto was left sitting alone in front of Ichiraku, confused and unsure, but he decided not to dwell on it. Maybe he heard the name wrong, or maybe it was the name of one of the villagers that just didn’t stick in his mind, or—something. He didn’t know. Either way, he wouldn’t let it bother him.

But it kept happening.

By the time lunch rolled around, Sakura was asking him questions about his brother—a brother that, at least to his knowledge, he did not have. When he asked her who the heck she was going on about, she looked at him like he had three heads and said, “Boruto, obviously.” Like that answered every question in the damn world. It didn’t, by the way. He didn’t ask again, assuming he’d be met with the same answer, and maybe even more suspicion. Then, that night, Kakashi-sensei—

Well, Kakashi-sensei didn’t mention that name to him. It wasn’t that. But even he was acting just the tiniest bit… weirder than usual. He stumbled across Naruto’s fishing spot sometime around sunset and took a seat nearby, reading his book. He didn’t really say much and kept Naruto company until the sun was long gone and the stars were out. Then, before he left, he squeezed Naruto’s shoulder and said, “It won’t be that long.”

What did that even mean ?!

At the end of the day, with fish skewered over an open flame and half a dozen bodies all cozied up around the campfire with him, Naruto put it out of his mind. He didn’t know what he’d forgotten or how important it was, or if everyone else was crazy and he was the only sane one. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, if he needed to know, he’d find out eventually. Instead, he shared good food with good company and smiled at how warm it made him feel.

Like he found something important.

Chapter Text

It was a hard year. The hardest year that there was, maybe.

Naruto stood across from his father for the second time, knowing that it would be his last, the Fourth Hokage’s body broken and cracked from a war that felt like it would never end. Even then, in their brief moments of respite, all of the nerves in his body were singing, telling him to move, to act, to do something. So when Edo Tensei was released and he saw his father standing there, smiling at him, he ran. He leapt across the dead roots of the Divine Tree until he came to stand just before Minato’s shell of dirt and stared, a thousand words on his tongue that he couldn’t get out all at once, and his father smiled.

“Happy Birthday,” he had said.

Today, Naruto was seventeen.

It all came rushing forth, everything that he ever wanted to say and all of the things that he wanted the parents that he never knew to hear, and it wouldn’t stop. By the end of it, he wasn’t even sure what he was saying, or what had been said. He couldn’t remember. There was nothing but urgency there, the panic to get it all out, to say what needed to be said before he lost his chance forever. Dad wouldn’t be coming back again. There was no residual chakra laying in wait within the eight-trigram seal that would activate when he was desperate enough, and there would be no Edo Tensei to resurrect the dead Hokage again. All he could give was an outpouring of everything that he held inside until his father’s body crumbled into dirt and his voice would no longer reach.

Naruto stared up at the sky, crisp and blue as dawn’s light passed into day and soft, cottony clouds floated on by. Sakura was crying over him, her tears dropping onto his skin and the mesh of his shirt, mingling with the fast-drying blood that stemmed from his right arm. The warm, green glow of her medical ninjutsu brought with it the comfort of knowing that they, at the very least, wouldn’t bleed to death. He listened to her insults and her curses and her sobbing as he felt the hole where his arm should have been slowly healing over. While he waited, he found his thoughts falling back to his seventeenth birthday, to the last vestiges of his father breaking apart and smiling at him, so soft and warm and everything that he always hoped that it would be.

Naruto didn’t feel bitter anymore. Not really. He still remembered the longing that he grew up with as he walked the streets alone in the years before his graduation, seeing the other kids his age taken home by the hand of the mothers and fathers who were still around to welcome them. There were times when he thought that maybe he resented his parents for leaving him alone, and hated them even without knowing their names and faces. It was their fault that he was isolated and that he grew up in an apartment by himself, drinking sour milk and eating cup ramen and being rejected by the world around him without ever knowing why. 

Now, Naruto wasn’t sure what he felt, but it wasn’t bitterness or hatred. Maybe there still lingered the thought that all of this could have been avoided, and after the novelty of meeting his father wore off, he started to think that a lot of his childhood burden could have been mitigated if the Fourth Hokage made different choices. But he wasn’t mad about it, really. It was just a part of his past, just like anything. He wanted to say that he would miss his father… but he wouldn’t. Or didn’t. Because, at the end of the day, they may as well have been strangers.

As much as he wished that he got to know the Minato Namikaze who was alive, that just wasn’t the case. This was their reality.

Naruto’s head fell to his right where Sasuke lay peacefully next to him, equally burdened by Sakura’s reprimands. None of it felt real. Saying goodbye to Dad, or reuniting with Sasuke like this—it all felt like a really long, really tiring dream. But Dad was gone and Sasuke was here. Finally. After years of chasing and yelling and fighting, threatening to drag the Uchiha back kicking and screaming, here they were. Together. Bloodied and tired with no chakra to speak of, collapsed across stone stained red with their efforts, but together.

They talked. Sort of. In a way that only they could. They talked, and it felt like they came to an understanding.

Naruto didn’t really know what a family was. He met his parents and he thought that he loved them, but he couldn’t be sure because he didn’t know them. They just weren’t much of a factor in his life. But when he thought about all of the things he was told that families were, he could bring up names and faces. There was Iruka-sensei who had been there for him right from the start, the first to reach out a hand to Naruto when the rest of the village shunned him. He took Naruto to Ichiraku for his birthday, and on holidays, and just—just whenever they wanted to eat together. He was scolding and mean, but in a way that meant something, that showed that he cared. Maybe they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and maybe they fought because Iruka-sensei still saw him as a little kid, but maybe that was okay.

There was his team, the ones there with him now, Sakura crying for them and berating them because she was worried and Sasuke, someone he hated more than anything and loved just the same, one of the few people that related to him in a way that most never could. Kakashi-sensei, who was the weirdest instructor that he’d ever met but the best he could ever ask for, who seemed to know him better than he knew himself and fought with everything he had to keep their team safe. The sensei with the best intentions who was always late but never too late, and who loved them more than he would ever admit. There was Sai, who was still learning what it meant to be human but cared deeper than he probably ever thought that he would, and Captain Yamato who was like an unmovable rock in the face of any challenge.

Naruto had so many people. His team, his friends, his comrades. People from within Konoha and people from outside of it. He made so many connections that as he lay there, the bloodloss clouding his head, he started to laugh. Sakura and Sasuke both stared at him, wondering if he was okay, and he didn’t know how to answer because he wasn’t sure.

Today felt so meaningful to him and he didn’t know why. It felt like his whole world shifted one degree to the right.

He was waiting to tell someone all of this, everything, every thought that flitted through his head that day. Until then, he would wait.

Kakashi-sensei was acting Hokage before they even had a proper coronation. Heck, he was Hokage before Naruto even knew that he was Hokage, back when Naruto was first being treated after his fight with Sasuke. He still couldn’t believe it.

When that long-awaited coronation finally did come around, Naruto stood in the crowds with a grin, staring up at the ceremony with excitement that he knew their new Hokage didn’t share. The moment Naruto was able, he was shoved into a vacant classroom where Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei drilled anything and everything he could possibly need to know into his head endlessly. Kakashi-sensei already wanted to retire. It was funny, if a bit sad.

The Sixth Hokage’s eyes caught him in the crowds and he waved with both hands, his grin impossibly wide. He was pretty sure most of the villagers missed the Hokage’s sigh. It was probably for the best.

They celebrated all night, much to Kakashi-sensei’s dismay, and through all of the cheering and screeching and several rounds of bad singing, Naruto felt it as the dream that he’d always grasped for drew just a little bit closer. He wasn’t ready yet. Not yet, but one day. Maybe not this year or the next, or even the one after that. Maybe it would take a long time. But one day, it would be him in that seat, wearing the funny hat that he was teasing Kakashi-sensei about. When that day came, he would take up the mantle and use his power not for the recognition that he once craved, but to protect his village and its people.

To keep his family safe.

Naruto worried that he didn’t know the first thing about what marriage meant. He knew that it was a big deal and that, by proposing, he’d asked Hinata to be his family, but his definition of ‘family’ was so skewered from everyone else’s that he worried he wouldn’t live up to her expectations. When he told her as much, she laughed and told him not to worry. That it was okay. That they would both be okay, and that there was nothing wrong with how he defined family or not knowing what it would be like to be married because she didn’t know, either.

It was hard to ask Iruka-sensei to stand as his father at his wedding, not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know what to say. It was embarrassing, and he kept worrying that Iruka would berate him for not asking sooner, or for asking in a weird way, or—something. He should’ve known better. Iruka even cried and then Naruto felt silly for ever worrying in the first place.

There was no one else to ask. No one better or more suited. Sure, Iruka was his mentor, but he… He raised Naruto, didn’t he? Maybe not from the start, and maybe they had a few obstacles to face first, but growing up, Naruto didn’t feel like any other connections he had were quite the same as the one that they shared.

When he listened to the speech that Iruka-sensei tearfully gave at his wedding, he thought back to the father that he would never get to see again, the blond hair and soft eyes and a fond smile that were little more to him now than long-faded memories. There was something so ethereal about Minato Namikaze, something larger than life and impossible to quantify. Whenever Naruto thought about him, he thought, “Oh yeah, that’s Dad.”

Iruka-sensei was not that. Iruka was grounded and real. Naruto could trace the outlines of his face from memory. He could draw up expressions of anger and sadness and worry and joy, all from his mind at the drop of a pin. He didn’t want to be weird about it, so he never said it out loud, but he started to think that maybe Iruka-sensei was more of a father to him. One that was there, one that was around when his parents were not. A father who shared no blood with him but cared more than the rest of the world ever could.

Naruto smiled and laughed as Iruka-sensei scrubbed at his eyes and earned the fondness of everyone present. He hoped that one day, he could be the sort of father that Iruka was to him.

He took it all back. Naruto was not ready to be a father.

He was doing a lot of pacing today. Or, no, not just today. He’d been doing a lot of pacing for days, now, all across the village. The last time he was this nervous was before finding out about his promotion to jonin, but at least back then he had Hinata there, holding his hand and waiting right alongside him. Now, if he waited this out with Hinata, he worried he’d just stress her out, too.

The moment he heard the news, he’d been elated. He screamed and cheered and told everyone that he saw, starting with Shikamaru, then Iruka-sensei, then Sakura and Sai, Kiba and Shino and—

And then, some point after hearing his eighth round of congratulations, dread curled in his gut and all of his excitement withered and died within him. Now that the pacing was getting to be a bit much, he settled atop Hokage Rock, on Dad’s head, feeling some weird nostalgia that he never used to feel, like there was a long-buried memory trying to pry its way to the surface in his head. If there was, it never succeeded, remaining just as a vague familiarity that never bore fruit, and he sighed.

It was after twenty minutes of sitting up there that he felt the arrival of a familiar chakra signature behind him, silent as ever, but he didn’t look up. Kakashi-sensei dropped down beside him on the stone, one leg dangling over the edge of the Fourth’s face, the other bent and gripping the monument with the sole of his sandal. He was sporting his jonin fatigues, as though allergic to the Hokage robes. He never seemed to age. Even so many years later, he was the picture of the man who fought through the Fourth Shinobi War, looking not a day older.

When Kakashi-sensei didn’t ask, Naruto dared to look at him. He always looked so much more at ease these days than he used to. Must’ve been nice. As Naruto got older, all he seemed to do was worry. He missed being a kid and just going head-first at every problem that he faced. Now that he was older, he felt the need to think. Which was stupid and terrible, and he wouldn’t recommend it.

“You look like a man with a lot on his mind,” Kakashi-sensei said, finally, when both of them spent way too long not saying anything at all.

“Did you sneak out of Hokage Tower again, Kaka-sensei?” The old man twitched and Naruto grinned. “You did, too.”

Kakashi cleared his throat and decidedly did not look Naruto’s way. “What’s on your mind? You’re not usually this quiet.”

Reminded of his inner turmoil, Naruto hung his head and groaned, running the fingers of his prosthetic through his hair. He didn’t know what to say or how to word it, or even if Kakashi-sensei could help him with this particular problem. But if anyone had an answer for everything, it was their Hokage, much as Kakashi resented that title, and Naruto supposed that he should try. It took a while for him to scrounge up the words, and before he could say them, he realized that he hadn’t even told his sensei anything about this in the first place. “I, um. I’m gonna be a dad.”

Like he was acknowledging the weather, Kakashi hummed and nodded. “I suppose it’s about that time.”

“What?”

“Congratulations,” the Hokage said, “is what I would like to say, but you don’t seem too happy about it.”

“I am,” he hurried to correct, flailing his arms, desperate to show that he really did want the kid. “Really, I am ! I just—I don’t… know what I’m doing.”

“Does anybody?”

“Do they?”

Kakashi only shrugged.

Naruto stared down at his hands, one bandaged and the other unmarred, and flexed his fingers absently as he thought. “I’m excited, but I’m kinda scared, too, y’know? I guess I don’t really have a point of reference for what a dad’s supposed to be, and I’m worried I’ll mess it up, and then mess the kid up, and just… ruin everything.”

“That’s not very Naruto of you.”

He laughed, a small grin tugging at a corner of his mouth. “It’s not, is it?”

The Hokage shifted and stretched only to lean back against the rock with his arms cushioning his head, eyes closed in preparation for what would likely be a very long nap until his assistant came looking for him. “I don’t think that’s something you’ll have to worry about, Naruto,” he said. “Well. Maybe a little. But I also don’t believe that there’s one way to be a good parent. Just try your best.”

Naruto groaned. Somehow, that advice gave him absolutely no confidence. It may have even made him feel worse to find that there was, in fact, something that their Hokage wasn’t well-versed in, and that something happened to be just what Naruto needed at that moment. “That doesn’t really help me.”

Kakashi peeked an eye open. “What do you think about Minato-sensei, then?”

“About Dad?”

He nodded. “Would you say that Minato-sensei was a bad father to you?”

“I—” Naruto lifted his head. Hearing it put like that didn’t sit well with him, for some reason or another, and he frowned. “I wouldn’t say he was bad . He just… never got to be my dad. So how could I know?”

“You don’t blame him for that?”

“No, of course not, I—” He stopped, crossed his arms, and thought about it as he stared down at the sprawling village below. It had twisted and changed over the years, booming with life and bigger than ever. He wondered how much it had changed since the era of the Fourth Hokage, and what it looked like back then, when Kakashi-sensei was young. “I think… maybe he could have lived a little longer, and maybe he could have spent time with me if he did, but I’m not mad that he wasn’t around. That’s just how things ended up.”

“Then why not give yourself the same leeway?”

Oh.

Kakashi opened his eyes, staring out at the very same Konoha that Naruto was, looking soft and fond in a way that grew much more common as he aged. “You’ll have time to figure things out, so don’t panic yet. If you start to worry, try reminding yourself that you’ll at least be there, and that you’re doing your best.”

“I—” Naruto blinked, looked up at the clouds in the sky, and nodded. “I guess I could do that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Naruto laughed. “Thanks, Kaka-sensei.”

The Hokage fell asleep and Naruto stayed up there just a little longer, if only to guard him against the crew fanning out below to drag him back to the office. It was the least that he could do.

The day that his son was born, Naruto was a nervous wreck.

He didn't know why he was nervous; he trusted the medic-nin would deliver the baby safely, and that nothing bad would happen to his wife or son, but still he just—felt it. Nervous energy rose up from some deep, primal part of him. It was silly when he thought about it; the kid would just be a tiny, noisy little ball of hunger and tears. It wasn't like he was meeting with some important, well-established name or even the five Kage (who he already knew quite well, actually). But still, there he was, pacing back and forth with a lot more stress and anxiety than was necessary.

Hinata got to hold him first. Naruto sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at him with something fuzzy and warm in the pit of his stomach. He looked a bit… shrivelled, honestly. And red. Hinata insisted that it was normal, so he took her word for it. He had pale air that they were warned might darken as he aged, but Naruto doubted that, for some reason. And man, that kid had a set of lungs. Naruto had a feeling that he'd be regretting his life choices every time they went to sleep at night.

When Hinata offered the baby to him, he immediately shrank back and insisted that he was fine. It was small and weak and fragile, and his prosthetic was great but it wasn't that great; sometimes it would grip things just a bit too tightly or hold on too loosely, and he did not need that happening as he held onto the small child that had just fought nine months to be born. But the baby was in his arms soon, anyway, against his protests, and all he could do was stare.

"Um," he said, his first word to his son ever so profound, "hi."

Hinata laughed at him. When the kid started crying, Naruto immediately shoved him back into his mother's arms and asked worriedly what was wrong. She rolled her eyes at him.

Whenever the baby slept, Naruto would crouch by the cradle and watch, poking his cheek or hand, waiting for him to stir. He felt like he had a million things to say, even when the baby wouldn't understand any of it for years to come, and he kept biting his tongue not to say it all at once.

"Hey there, Boruto," he whispered when big, tired eyes blinked up at him. He kept smiling, finding that he couldn't stop. The kid had the same markings on his cheeks that Naruto did, and it was the first time he ever met someone who looked so similar to him. Even if the boy was a bit shrivelled. "You hungry?"

The name wasn't his idea. Really, it wasn't. It felt a bit like a cosmic joke, honestly. Any time someone asked after his unborn son, they asked how 'Boruto' was doing. At first, it was just Captain Yamato. Then Kakashi-sensei. It seemed to spread from there. Soon, that was the name that everyone was using, and it just sort of grew on them, like an impossible blessing, or fate. Naruto thought it sounded a bit funny, but it also sounded right.

He was still a bit scared about the whole 'parenting' thing, but he'd get through it. It would just take time like Kakashi-sensei said.

Naruto yawned, barely able to keep his eyes open as he fed his newborn daughter, his son hanging off of his arm, saying the same words over and over again just to be a brat, and he was regretting his life choices.

He was not regretting his children. He loved them, even if the magic of the eldest had long since died and Naruto often wanted to strangle him for being a menace. He was regretting that he underestimated them, though, and just how monumental a task raising both of them would be.

He practically cried tears of gratitude when Hinata took Himawari from him and told him to go play with their son after several hours of being at their mercy all on his own while his wife was out. One, he could handle. Two was a bit much.

He didn't understand how Hinata still had so much energy in her, or how she could smile so easily when they hadn't had proper sleep in months. Boruto was never this bad, was he?

No, Boruto was worse. But now that it was in the past, he could look back on it with rose-coloured glasses.

Naruto took the kid into the backyard to play pirates—Boruto's current obsession—until he was swaying and rubbing at his eyes every twelve seconds. That was his favourite thing to see. Reinvigorated, Naruto washed him up for the night, got him into his little blue pyjamas, and settled him in bed with a storybook.

Boruto made sure to interrupt after every sentence to ask a question, of course.

When the boy’s eyes finally slipped shut, Naruto pulled the blankets up to his chest and tucked him in nice and snug. He was still small, round-faced and clumsy. Naruto wasn’t all that great with kids, both before and after having his own, and he still felt this weird, awkward pull every now and then, like there was something he needed to do that he couldn’t recall.

As he switched on the nightlight and turned off the lamp, he stared down at the small little hellion who was already kicking off the sheets. He wondered what it felt like for Boruto and Himawari, having parents in their lives in a way that he never did. Were they doing an okay job? Were the kids happy, and was it normal to feel so exhausted while raising them? Every time Naruto left for a mission, he was scared he’d disappoint them. That he wasn’t around enough, or that they would grow up while he was gone, or… something. Hinata laughed and told him that kids grew up fast but not that fast and that, as much as they would miss him while he was gone, they would look forward to him coming home.

Balancing his duties as a shinobi of the village and his responsibilities to his family was a lot, but they’d be okay. He was doing his best and whenever he started to worry, he remembered Kakashi-sensei’s words, and it eased his mind.

If nothing else, he would always be there.

Naruto walked through the house undisturbed as his two little gremlins latched themselves to him, one wrapped around each of his legs. They made for ineffective shackles; their father was a jonin who fought Kaguya in the war and he could easily handle the weight of a four-year-old and a six-year-old. He didn't even blink as he flitted about the kitchen, sealing provisions into an inventory scroll and checking the expiration dates on everything as he went.

"Daaaaaaad," Boruto whined loudly and dramatically as he gripped Naruto's pant leg like a very desperate koala, "stay hooooome."

Naruto eyed the instant noodles in the cupboard. Hinata would lecture him if she saw, but he stole a few for the trip. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt him and he could only handle so many days of ration bars before his taste buds started to die. And sure, he knew how to cook. Hinata taught him over the years. But, well, he only ever did cooking at home for the kids, never for himself and certainly not on the road. "I have a mission."

"Then don't have a mission," Boruto said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Naruto echoed, rolling his eyes. His eldest was such a mouthy brat. Everyone kept saying that Boruto was just like he was when he was growing up, but he highly doubted that. Sure, Naruto was a bit of a troublemaker, but this kid was a whole other level of intense. See, what no one realized was that Boruto had something that Naruto never did that made him a hell of a bigger problem: overflowing confidence and ingenuity. The fact that he was sassing his dad at six years old was proof of that.

“I wanna go, too!” Himawari whined next, egged on by her elder brother’s protests. If they weren’t careful, Boruto’s bad habits would make their way into their daughter’s behaviour, as well. Naruto already had to do enough apologizing around Konoha on his son’s behalf. Iruka-sensei said that he deserved it, but that was entirely unfair.

Naruto smiled down at his daughter, raising an eyebrow. "I think it's a bit too early for you to go on missions, Hima."

"I can go," Boruto insisted.

"Not happening. You’re six.”

"But Dad. "

Naruto sighed. It was like this every time. The exact same pattern. Honestly, he was flattered by the way the kids stuck to him like glue and charmed that they treasured his presence so much. It was the reassurance he needed to know he wasn’t failing them as a parent, and that even growing up an orphan, he could teach himself what it was to be part of a family. Sage, but they were his world.

The only problem was that he and Hinata may have spoiled them. Mostly him. And now, when they didn’t get their way, they made it his problem. Well, they would grow out of it eventually… Probably. By the time they both entered the academy.

Or when Naruto retired.

He let his children pull at his clothes and allowed it when Boruto climbed onto his back, watching from over his shoulder as Naruto sealed away his supplies. He called across the house to his Hinata, asking if she knew what happened to his med kit after his last venture out of town. The mission would be over in a few days, he promised his kids. He’d bring back a souvenir and he’d play with them when he got home.

When they continued to sulk, he pulled them in for a big, tight hug and laughed at their protests.

“See you soon, okay?”

He felt someone shaking his arm but just groaned and rolled over onto his side to face away from it, exhaustion winning out. It had been a long night and an even longer day with his coronation right around the corner and he still had so much to plan. Kakashi-sensei was going over the endless list of things that Naruto had to know before the hand-off and the moment that Naruto got home, all he craved was sleep.

Sleep was not a luxury afforded to the Hokage-to-be, though. Sleep was not in his future at all.

A heavy weight crashed hard into his waist, a knee in his gut, and he jerked up as the air left his lungs, coughing and sputtering until his breath returned and he slumped back down, melting into the couch, no more awake now than he was five minutes ago, but now impossibly bitter. In the face of his ire, Boruto sat on his stomach with a big, dopey grin, nudging Naruto every time he threatened to fall back asleep

“Teach me the Shadow Clone jutsu!”

Naruto groaned, loud and tired, and followed it up with a yawn. He covered his face with a throw pillow to block out the light from the windows and that sunshine-bright smile plastered onto his son’s face. “Tomorrow,” he muttered through the fabric.

Boruto rolled his eyes dramatically and shook Naruto’s shoulder again, persistent as ever. “That’s what you said yesterday. C’mon, Dad! You promised.”

Damn it. Boruto was old enough now to know just what to say and how to push to guilt-trip his father. And damn Naruto’s lack of foresight for agreeing to it all in the first place, assuming that ‘tomorrow’ would somehow leave him less exhausted despite drawing ever closer to the coronation.

With a sigh and a lot of complaining, Naruto allowed his son to pull him up off the couch and into the backyard. There was a little training area off to the side that they built (or, well, that Captain Yamato built) after Boruto insisted that he wanted one, and a few practice dummies stood in a row by the trees. Boruto bounced in place, practically vibrating, stars in his eyes and looking like the world belonged to him.

Naruto yawned again. His brain was a fog of much-needed sleep and he knew that this wouldn’t go as smoothly as his son hoped.

Naruto wasn’t the best of teachers. He first tried explaining the feeling that he got whenever he made a shadow clone, but Boruto stared at him like he was nuts, so he offered up a demonstration. Without a moment of thought, a shadow clone popped into existence next to him, making its seamless entrance with a grin.

“You want to divide up your chakra evenly between yourself and your clone,” Naruto said, paraphrasing something-or-other that he heard from somewhere, at some point. He’d long forgotten what was written on the scroll that he stole all those years ago and the jutsu was second-nature to him by now, so trying to break it down in a way that a pre-genin kid could easily understand was a bit… impossible. But he was trying. “With each extra clone that you make, your chakra will divide again. So if you make two then each of you will have, like… a third, I guess?”

Naruto sensed his son’s reserves, bigger than most his age but too small still for anything too fancy, and he sighed. “Just make one, okay? One clone.” The last thing he wanted was for the kid to induce chakra exhaustion while Hinata was out.

“But how ?”

“Oh, right!”

Naruto bent down and took the kid’s hands into his own, positioning them nice and neatly until they formed the hand sign, and grinned. “Like this.”

The boy just stared at him.

“You just—you use your chakra, and you make a clone.”

“...Dad. What?”

“I dunno!” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated by his inability to turn active thought into words. There was a reason that he was never offered up the mantle of jonin instructor. “It’s like a feeling you get that’s different from normal clones. I guess.”

Boruto groaned. “That doesn’t help at all, Old Man.”

“I’m not old ,” he grumbled, knowing that maybe he kind of was but refusing to admit it. “It’s like—a whoosh, y’know?”

With the look that he was giving, Boruto did not know.

They went back and forth for an hour until his son got fed up with his bad explanations and stormed off with promises of, “I’ll figure it out myself!”

Naruto fell back onto the grass with a sigh, his arms on his knees and a pout on his face. He really was trying, for all that his exhaustion and the headache brewing behind his eyes made it difficult to think. It was—he wanted Boruto to learn, and he wanted to be there every step of the way to watch his son grow and succeed, but right now—

Right now was not the best time. So much was happening, things were changing, and Naruto’s dream was just within reach.

But as he tried to dismiss the kid’s attitude and put it to the back of his mind, he found that he couldn’t. He sat there in the backyard by himself, pouting as he tried to work out his own thoughts. When that didn’t work, he dragged himself into the living room, found some scrap pieces of paper, and started writing them all down. Eventually, he’d have something. He could help. Boruto probably could figure it out all by himself in time, but…

But he shouldn’t have to.

As Naruto scribbled a crude drawing of chakra networks on the paper, trying to figure out how best to explain how the jutsu worked, he had the thought that Boruto was probably way too young to be learning the Shadow Clone jutsu responsibly.

What did he know? He stole a scroll when he was a kid. It’d be fine.

Naruto slumped down over his desk and stared between piles of documents at the clock tauntingly marking his twelfth hour in his office. He wondered if he’d ever be able to get home tonight. He understood now why Kakashi-sensei used to always disappear and why the staff was always frantically searching the streets for their Hokage. There was always so much to do, a never-ending overflow of boring work that needed to be done but was impossibly mind-numbing, and it no longer felt like his life was his own. He belonged to the village. He was its protector and its figurehead and whatever else it needed him to be. Naruto understood that going into it. He knew the face of the burden that would fall on his shoulders and he accepted that with grace and reverie.

Accepting it and living through it were two different things, though. It was times like these when he was up to his neck in work that he missed the simple days of his kids dragging him around the house.

When the clock marked hour thirteen, Naruto had enough. He summoned a shadow clone, saluted it, and allowed it to take his spot at his desk. It was just paperwork, he reasoned, and the clone would make the same decisions that he would. This wasn’t the first time he shirked his duties onto one of his clones and it would be nowhere near the last, either.

Sneaking out of the office wasn’t so hard when Shikamaru wasn’t breathing down his neck. As he walked down the streets from his office, he occasionally spotted flashes of orange and yellow out of the corner of his eye, his clones scurrying about the village as they always did, leaving his reserves depleted and his mind regularly filling with memories that he never personally lived through. It was disorienting at times. Back when he was a kid, using his jutsu to speed up his training, it wasn’t so bad; all of the clones were focused on the very same task, so the individuality of the memories was limited.

This was something altogether different. These were hundreds of unique experiences all crammed together in his head.

It took a few months—six, actually, because he just didn’t have the free time that he used to—for Naruto to work out a proper way to explain just what the Shadow Clone jutsu was and how to use it to his son. He’d drawn up a little booklet with visual guides during his lunch breaks, and he was finally ready.

It was at the front gates of his house that he spotted his son and he grinned and waved, about to call out, when the boy dispersed into a cloud of smoke and air. Naruto’s eyes widened and his heart sank.

Oh. He was too late, huh?

In the wake of the clone’s dispersal lay a few scattered grocery bags. Naruto approached them, head tilted, and picked them up by their handles. Boruto must not have the greatest control over them if one dispelled so easily. Naruto must have just missed him, huh?

“You’re home, Old Man?”

Naruto cast his eyes towards the voice and the kid to whom it belonged, smiling tiredly. Boruto stood there with more bags in his hands, scowling like he so often did these days. He must’ve been helping Hinata.

“Looks like it,” Naruto said, nodding the boy inside. There was a lot of awkward silence passing between them as they slipped their shoes off at the door. Eventually, when it got to be too much, he cleared his throat. “Your shadow clone—”

“Oh, um. Yeah.” Boruto averted his eyes and shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“It dispelled suddenly, didn’t it?”

Naruto placed the bags on the kitchen counter and sifted through them as he started putting everything away. Things had been moved around in the cupboards a bit and he sighed as he made a mental note of where Hinata was keeping everything these days. It was just another reminder that he hadn’t been home much, and of the isolation brewing within him under the weight of his new responsibilities.

He almost missed his son’s narrowed eyes.

“I got it, alright?” Boruto hissed. “It was just a slip-up. That like never happens. You just surprised me, okay?”

Naruto blinked, unsure where the sudden hostility came from. “Yeah. Sure.”

As his son begrudgingly assisted him, Naruto mulled it over and figured that he could, at the very least, try to help with Boruto’s control. That would take a bit more thought on his part… but maybe it wouldn’t be a six-month-long venture. Maybe this time, he wouldn’t be too late.

The moment the groceries were put away, Boruto stomped up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door shut. Naruto flinched beneath the anger. Well. He fucked up somewhere else, didn’t he?

The guilt was heavy. It was like despite being right there, his family was a world apart,  just like the parents that he only met in death, and he knew it was no one’s fault but his own.

When Hinata came in with Himawari, they shared a hug and he let his daughter sit on his shoulders as they all worked on dinner together. He grinned sheepishly as his wife laughed when he couldn’t locate the pot that they needed and showed him around the kitchen. He started mixing ingredients, letting Himawari add in the spices, concentrating carefully on matching her mother’s measurements exactly.

“You seem down,” Hinata noted from the cutting board. “Is it Boruto?”

“No, of course not—” One look her way, though, and he was deflating. “I think I messed up. Again.”

Hinata sighed and leaned over to nudge his arm. “You’re dealing with a lot, Naruto. You can’t always be here and we understand that. Boruto is just—give him time. You’re his world, you know? And now that you’re busy, he’s been lonely. It’s hard on him.”

Lonely, huh?

As they heated the pan on the stove and Himawari regaled him with stories about her friends from the academy and all of the trouble Boruto’s been getting into, he looked around at their home—this big, cozy space that they’d built for themselves. As he scanned over every impression of his family, he thought back to the small, ramshackle apartment that kept him warm throughout his childhood and the piles of garbage shoved into corners and tossed to the floor that told the story of a depression that he was too young to understand. There were so many things here that he never had growing up, so many changes and the impressions of the family that he cherished scattered all throughout the house. They worked hard to build that home. They painstakingly crafted it themselves through blood, sweat and tears to give their children more than they ever had, an environment that was safe and warm, free of the Hyuga’s obligations and Naruto’s isolation.

They did all that, but Naruto was coming to understand that there was so much more needed to support their family than what they had given.

All he could do was try. He would try and, at the very least, he would be there.

With an endless jumble of impossible memories all crammed into his head, Naruto knocked on his front door. He fiddled with his Hokage cloak as he glanced at the light coming from the living room window, chasing away the dark with its warm glow. It had been something of a week since he last saw his wife and daughter and he could hardly contain himself, fidgeting in place like some twelve-year-old kid. A week and he was already missing them. It was like this back when he went on missions, too; when the kids would beg him not to leave, he would console them and tell them that he’d be back before they knew it. But, upon his return, it was always him clinging to them and telling them how much he missed them.

The mantle of Hokage kept him away from his family with more duties than one man could ever handle, but it also kept him in the village. Even if he was a bit of an absentee father and husband at times, he stopped in whenever he could and at least spent the night with them. He tried to.

Boruto had been gone for over a month, though. He’d never been away from home that long. He must have been desperate to see them again.

When Hinata opened the door, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her shoulders. She blinked rapidly, confused about his desperate affection because, at least to her, only two days had passed.

“Naruto?”

“I missed you,” he breathed against her ear, earning a very confused embrace.

The moment he saw little Himawari, he picked her up off her feet and spun her around, her smile lifting every battered burden off of his heart.

“Dad, you’re alive!”

Naruto scrubbed at his eyes and laughed as he held her close. “What d’ya mean, Hima? It’s been two days…”

Over a week. It’d been over a week for him. That conversation could wait until later, though, when he’d go over all of the happenings in detail with Hinata. Naruto’s chakra reserves were spent, his body was sore from their night in the forest, and all he wanted was a hot meal with his family and a bath.

“Well it felt like forever,” she muttered against his hair.

Naruto looked at the dining table as he passed into the kitchen, his eyes falling on only three places set, and he felt guilt anew as he helped carry out the food. “I guess you didn’t expect me back tonight,” he observed.

Hinata shook her head. “Boruto’s on a mission, remember? So he won’t be joining us.”

Oh. Right. As he thought back on it, he realized that Boruto’s mission should have lasted another day, maybe two, as his team made it back to the village with the scroll that they were meant to fetch.

“He’ll be home tonight,” Naruto said vaguely, deciding that explanations can wait until morning. “I’m gonna set a place for him, alright?”

“He’s not supposed to be back for another few days…”

Naruto grinned. “Just trust me on this.”

It’d been a while since he last ate with his family. A lot longer than he cared to admit. They spent an hour telling stories across the table, Himawari filling their meal with her adventures at the academy and giving dramatic retellings of her first kunai training session—which was eventful, to say the least—but throughout it all, Naruto didn’t eat. Hinata chided him for it. He reasoned that when Boruto returned and no one was left to eat with him, he’d sulk. To that end, Naruto would make sure that at least he was there waiting for the kid. It wasn’t much, but it was something, right?

They covered his and Boruto’s untouched portions when the girls finished eating and Himawari stood next to him on a stool, drying the dishes that he washed. He brought her upstairs, tucked her in and read to her until she fell asleep. Sage, how he missed that.

Then he was back downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for his boy. He started falling asleep only to be startled awake by the dispersion of the clone he sent to the Hokage office, a flood of memories rushing through his head. His clone discussed everything that happened with Shikamaru, more or less, and started catching up on all the work that he missed. He knew he should make an in-person visit in the days to come, but for now, maybe he would just send more clones. Shikamaru would keep his secret.

He had a lot to think about.

When he heard the creak of the front door, he lifted his head and listened. It clicked shut and shuffling soon followed, so Naruto rose up out of his seat and wandered over to the foyer. Sure enough, the boy was there, smelling like a forest and covered in grime. It took him a while to get there and his chakra reserves were low, so Naruto suspected that he had to walk partway home. Everything about the kid exuded fatigue from the drooping posture of his back to the way his arms hung limply at his sides. A smile tugged at the corner of Naruto’s mouth. Right now, Boruto was the spitting image of him. What a sad thought.

Boruto only noticed his father after taking off his shoes and looking around. He blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes and squinted, disbelieving that his father was actually there.

“What’re you doing here, Old Man?” Wow, it’s like Boruto didn’t miss him at all. “Shouldn’t you be doing your homework or something?”

Naruto rolled his eyes and nodded him into the kitchen. “Take a seat. Food’s cold.”

Boruto huffed but followed him to the dining table anyway. Instead of putting the food back onto the stove, Naruto used a weak Katon to reheat their plates and they sat down next to each other. It was quiet as they ate, the awkwardness of their modern world careening over them like an avalanche. Already, it was like their venture into the past never happened. The girls were asleep so it was just the two of them now and the sounds of cutlery as they cleared their plates.

It’s towards the tail end of the meal that Boruto slumped back in his seat, his eyes fluttering closed, and only a few minutes later that he fell forward. Naruto reached over, caught the boy’s head before it hit the table and sighed. Fast asleep like that, he looked years younger, reminding Naruto of a time that, to him, felt not so long ago.

“The brat’s quite a handful,” Kurama remarked as Naruto gathered the small body into his arms.

“That’s nothing new, though, is it?”

“He’s no worse than you were at his age.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

Kurama just laughed, the bastard.

Naruto carried his son upstairs and put him to bed. Through the darkness of the bedroom, his eyes found old photos on the shelf and he smiled, an old sentimentality rising up within him.

Tomorrow, things would be different, no doubt. But for the night, Naruto was just a tired father and an exasperated Hokage.

He sent a clone to take his place in the Hokage office, having already informed Shikamaru of his plan to do so the previous night. They’d already sent someone down to the Hidden Time to inform Boruto’s team of their return, so that was all well and good. 

It was late morning heading into early afternoon and already he could see his son sulking, something that Naruto didn’t quite understand weighing on his chest. Naruto was sure that soon he would have context, though, whether he liked it or not. He was bracing himself for whatever it was he’d find.

Boruto was out in the backyard playing with Himawari. The two had been inseparable since they woke up. Naruto glanced out the window at them, a soft smile on his face as he watched the boy tease and run from his little sister. Things were back to normal. On the surface.

Naruto stood in his bedroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror, his lips pursed and eyes focused. Now that he knew what to look for, it seemed obvious to him. As he retreated inward, beyond Kurama to the nondescript seal in his mind, he took a curious look at the product of his efforts.

That seal was placed just yesterday and yet there he was, staring at a piece of handiwork spanning decades of his life. He let out a snort, Kurama looming around him, as he pressed a hand to the ink. Beyond it were memories. He’d been longing for those, even if he never knew.

“You know,” he said, feeling the paper below his fingertips, “I found it funny that I knew how to place this seal when I had no memory of fuinjutsu. It kinda makes sense now, doesn’t it, Furball?”

Kurama huffed. “The Toad Sage taught you.”

“So it doesn’t even affect you. You’ve known this whole time.”

“They’re not my memories. They’re yours.”

“You can be so difficult sometimes, you know that?” He laughed and hesitated, pulling his hand back to his side. “I guess it was too closely intertwined to my memories of Boruto, so all of that was blocked off, too.” The whole point of learning fuinjutsu was so that he could amend the kid’s seal, after all.

“You’re hesitating.”

“Shut up, I know. Just give me a sec, alright? Jeez…”

Naruto took a deep breath and held it there for a while, his whole body tense and rigid as he once more laid a hand on the seal and held it there. It wasn’t all that big of a deal and he knew, more or less, what he’d find beyond that wall. But knowing and experiencing were two different things and what lay behind that seal was more than just a month of memories. All of his thoughts in between Boruto’s appearances, parts of his training with Pervy Sage, and all of the influences they had on him—everything was there, blocked off and invisible to him for years and decades.

Ah, whatever. Overthinking wasn’t his forte.

Naruto made a succession of hand signs and pressed his chakra through the seal until the paper lit up in flames. It burned wildly, the fire heatless and unreal as the last vestiges charred into ash and vanished.

Like a whirlwind, he was thrown back into conscious thought as every blocked thought and promise flooded him in an instant. He gawked at himself in the mirror, his reflection betraying every complex emotion that he wore on his face, and he fell back to sit on the edge of the bed, trying to process it all.

It wasn’t as all-encompassing as he thought. The initial rush was a lot to process but, once it passed, he felt like he always had those memories—like having them was as natural to him as breathing. Recalling them brought with it not a new perspective but nostalgia.

Naruto covered his face with his hand and groaned. “I’m an idiot,” he muttered to himself, the image shared between him and his son so many years prior now a sore spot in his mind. “I’m so stupid. ”

“Is this news to you, Kit?”

“Oh, shut up, Rama!”

With a loud, angry groan, Naruto flopped back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling. He could still hear the kids playing outside, their muffled voices just loud enough to breach the closed window. For a while, he just thought. The memories acted as though he’d always known them, so he drudged them up from the depths of his mind one by one. He had to reteach himself facts, now, that were so obvious to him before.

Boruto was his friend—someone he latched onto as family long ago, well before he even knew who the boy was. They ate homecooked meals and drank old tea together and Tenzo— Captain Yamato —was first introduced to him when he was acting as Boruto’s ANBU guard, meaning that they met years earlier, and—

This was a lot. It also told him that there were a few people in his life that were left with their memories unsealed, which was a decision he made knowingly, at some point or another. But experiencing it from the other end, as the only person whose memories were sealed, left a bitter taste in his mouth that could only be blamed on himself.

Kakashi’s reaction to Naruto’s declaration of parenthood made so much more sense now.

Boruto’s question from before made sense, too—about the cave. Naruto could look back now and recall being twelve years old, burning a fire through the night as they dried their sopping clothes, contented to be with his new precious person. How could he forget? That was—that whole night was so important to him that he could never—

Naruto shook himself and pushed all of that nostalgia crap to the back of his mind Beyond those cute, heartwarming moments was knowledge of sealing that he did not have just a few scant minutes ago. As he mulled everything over in his head, recalling lesson upon lesson of seal theory, he was pleased to find that he remembered with perfect clarity the modified design for Boruto’s seal. It was beaten into his head again and again by Jiraiya until it almost became second nature to him—which was lost later, anyway, but whatever. He had that knowledge now. That’s all that mattered.

The heart-to-heart could wait. That seal needed to be amended before Boruto’s chakra beast decided to take them on another tour through history.

Naruto went downstairs and hovered inside the back door, watching his kids play in the backyard. He didn’t want to interrupt them; it’d been a month since Boruto last saw his sister and so the last thing that he wanted to do was take this reunion away from them. Amending the seal was important, though…

“Did something happen?”

Naruto ducked beneath the accusation and turned a smile on Hinata, her arms crossed and head tilted. She was a little too perceptive at times. “No, of course not,” he lied with immediate regret. Naruto didn’t lie to his wife. He just wasn’t good at it. Backpedalling, he instead tried, “It’s a long story. I’ll explain tonight?”

“You will,” she confirmed with narrowed eyes. When he nodded, she smiled. “What is it you need?”

“Oh, I just—” He turned back to the children only to find his son was using shadow clones to play an unfair round of tag with his sister, which was… a very Boruto thing to do, honestly. “I don’t want to interrupt, y’know? Boruto’s been missing her.”

Hinata hummed. “I can see that. But if there’s something you need to do, I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Yeah…” That didn’t make him feel any better about it.

When he didn’t act, Hinata stepped passed him and opened the door. The kid’s heads turned to them and Naruto felt the guilt. His wife, however, did not.

“Hima!” she called with a smile. “Would you like to help me with lunch today?”

Himawari blinked, looking between her brother and mother as though weighing her options. After a little deliberation, she ran to the door. “Coming!”

Their daughter came inside, greeting her parents as she hurried to go wash her hands, and Hinata gave him a knowing look.

“Don’t fight, now,” she cautioned.

“I won’t, I won’t…”

With the two of them gone, Naruto had no more excuses left to make. Boruto’s clones dispelled, leaving the boy to eye him suspiciously from the lawn. He rubbed the back of his neck and stepped outside, a storm of conflicting emotions curling up within him that he just couldn’t shake.

They closed the distance between them and stared for a while. There was a strange duality in the image of his son because, for Naruto, it felt almost like seeing an old friend, one who hadn’t aged over all their years apart, remaining the picture of his memory. But then, above all that, what he saw was just—his kid. His son. The one growing and changing and becoming something more every time Naruto looked away.

“What is it?” Boruto asked, eyeing him when nothing passed but silence. He crossed his arms, shifted his weight, and tensed beneath his father’s stare. “Need something, Old Man?”

Naruto’s shoulders slumped and he pressed his lips into a thin line as he fought back everything that he wanted to say and focused. “There’s a lot we need to talk about,” he confessed, “but there’s something that I have to do first.”

“Um, sure, I guess…”

“Give me your arm.” Awkwardly, the kid complied, holding out his right hand. “I need you to use your chakra. Can you make the seal visible for me?”

“Yeah, sure…”

Naruto felt the boy’s chakra flicker and wave and, before long, the pinprick dot on Boruto’s palm fanned out and stretched, black blooming into a white-blue glow as the intricate symbols wove their way along his fingers and up his arm. This wasn’t his first time seeing it, but this was his first time giving it a detailed examination and he was shocked at how closely it resembled Jiraiya’s old sketches. Seal work was detailed stuff, he knew, and just the slightest mistake could mess with a seal’s effectiveness. That was drilled into his head early on in his training. More than that, though, Naruto could read it. He could see the markers for ‘contain’ and ‘absorb’ so clearly splayed across his son’s fingers and could see the exact moment where the curse mark ended and the seal containing the chakra construct began. That was where the bulk of the amendments would be.

They sat cross-legged on the grass as he worked, a heavy stillness in the air as he carved new symbols from the old, one by one, replacing the characters along the edge of the seal with the far more intricate trigrams that Jiraiya taught him. It required a lot of concentration and, between every one, he paused. He needed to assess each and make sure they were formed exactly as he needed them before he could move on. If mistakes kept piling up, there was no telling how it would affect the functionality of the seal.

To Boruto’s staring, he gave a smile and hoped that it was reassuring. “I’m amending the seal. When I’m done, you won’t have to worry about the chakra beast taking control anymore.”

Boruto hummed in thought, watching absently as another symbol was twisted and changed. “Their name is Hibiki.”

“Oh yeah? Thought they didn’t have a name.”

The boy shrugged. “They didn’t. So I named them. They’re an asshole, though.”

Naruto laughed, easy and light, and kept his eyes on the seal.

Boruto leaned to the side, trying to look past his father’s hand. “What’ll that do?”

“This?” Naruto pointed at the most recent alteration. “This one will alter its function. The character that was here before was—”

“Contain,” Boruto finished offhandedly, apparently able to read the Hidden Time’s characters all on his own.

“Right. Contain. The character for ‘contain’ that was used was specifically designed for a curse, though, which is what’s been limiting your control. I’m changing it to a trigram—something like the eight points on my own seal. This one means ‘contain, control, confine.’ It’s specifically designed to act like a seal and not a curse, so it should give you your autonomy back.”

“Huh. I didn’t know you knew any sealing stuff.”

“I didn’t, either.”

To the look Boruto gave him, Naruto just smiled and focused on the task at hand. It took over forty minutes to make every alteration and, even then, he scanned through it carefully for any mistakes. Satisfied, he leaned back and nodded his approval.

“Alright. Why don’t you ask Hibiki to try taking chakra from me?”

“What?”

Naruto shrugged. “It’s the best way for us to see how well the alterations are holding up. It’s better for us to find out there’s a mistake when I’m here to fix it than when you’re on a mission.”

Boruto remained unconvinced. He went quiet, though, and Naruto was pretty sure that there was a conversation happening that he couldn’t hear.

While that was happening, Naruto dipped inside for a brief moment and came back with tea. They sat on the the back porch with warm cups in their hands, looking out at the training equipment, and Naruto was amused to find that the tea they were drinking now was the same brand as the one they shared back when he was twelve.

There was so much that he had to say. On the plus side, Hibiki wasn’t trying to drain his chakra. The amendments must’ve worked.

“I’ve never really talked to you about my past, have I?”

The boy eyed him, then stared down at his reflection in the tea. “Not really. But, like, you’re literally in our history books. It’s not like I don’t know anything about you.”

Naruto hummed. What a slap in the face that was. For so long he was worried he’d do a bad job parenting, and here he was, wondering if that was exactly what happened. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the kid to know. Of course , he did. But when he thought back to the days when he had no one and nothing, where he spent years curled up on a bed surrounded by garbage that he never bothered to pick up and instant meals that were the only foods he knew how to prepare, he drew back and kept his mouth shut. What kid wants to hear their parent’s sob story?

Maybe that was the wrong approach, though. Boruto was right there along with him in that small, dank apartment with its dirty dishes and shelves stocked with nothing but ramen and junk food, the chipped cups and the scratched up plates and only a little sunlight that came in from the windows.

Naruto stared up at the sky, a small smile on his face as nostalgia tightened its grip on his heart. “You know a little about the kyuubi attack, right?”

Boruto blinked. “Yeah. That’s taught in class, too. It attacked the village and Grandpa Minato—” He froze, his eyes wide and knowing.

Naruto sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that was Rama. It’s, er… a little more complicated than that, but that can wait. Grandma Kushina was the jinchuuriki before me, y’know. But bijuu extraction kills its host, so um… Grandpa sealed Kurama in me to protect the village. He used the Reaper Death Seal. Because of that, he passed, too.”

Boruto wasn’t saying anything and Naruto felt far too awkward talking about all of this to his twelve-year-old son to actually take a look at his face, so he decided that rambling on was the best course of action.

“‘Cause of that, I was made into the village pariah, y’know? That’s why, when you met me, people would—”

“You remember?”

Oh, yeah. That. He laughed because, honestly, what else could he do? It only occurred to him in that moment that Boruto thought that, well, that he—

That he wasn’t the one that was with Boruto back then.

“What’s so funny?!”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“You’d better talk, Old Man.”

“You’re not very threatening when you’re half my height, Kid.” He mulled it over in his head. “And I’m not that old, okay? You cheated. You’re the one who skipped through time. It’s not my fault I had to get here the old-fashioned way, y’know.”

He finally stole a peak at his son, seeing the open-mouth stupor that he fell to, and grinned.

“I remember,” he answered finally, averting his eyes. Behind them, the kitchen window opened and the clatter of metal against metal filled the open air. “And I’m sorry. Really, I am. I know it’s been hard on you not to have me around, and I—I’m really not good at balancing my responsibilities, am I?”

Behind them, the running water of the tap met his ears. He focused on it, on anything, to keep Boruto’s wordless thoughts from causing him stress.

“I’ll try harder,” he sighed, scratching his head. “The village is important, but so is my family. I haven’t been there for you the way that you needed me to be. I’m an idiot.”

Naruto doubled over when a sudden small fist jabbed its way through his organs in a punch fast enough for him not to see. He folded in half, wrapping his arm around his stomach and coughing around the impact, and—and he couldn’t even say anything because he’s the one who told Boruto to punch him.

Boruto stood up, his hands on his hips and his nose in the air, looking like the smug little brat that he was. “Oh, huh,” he started mockingly. “You’re not a shadow clone, after all.”

“I—” He choked out another cough. “I… deserved that.”

“Damn straight, you shitty Old Man.” The brat huffed and sat back down, the tea cold and untouched between them, and leaned back on the wooden porch with his hands behind his head, staring up at the sky. “I’m not… I mean, not really …”

Naruto blinked.

The boy groaned and rolled over onto his side, facing away from his father. “I’m not mad, okay? I saw how much it means to you, and—it’s just hard. Because you were always there and then, overnight, you were just… gone. I guess I just miss you.”

Naruto reached over and ruffled the kid’s hair, earning a lot of sputtering protest and red-faced embarrassment that just had him laughing. When Boruto sat up to complain, he was pulled into a hug, tight and long and endlessly awkward. Naruto didn’t care.

“You’re a good kid, you brat.”

He missed that kid.

The house was louder than usual. Boruto rolled his eyes as Mom and Dad stood next to each other in the kitchen, fussing endlessly over the details of the birthday cake that they were decorating. It was his cake. Why did it matter what it looked like? They were just going to eat it, anyway. Besides, Dad’s writing was the worst.

Being the perfect, responsible son that he was, Boruto was cleaning. On his birthday. Unprompted.

Well, he felt kind of bad that he’d been away for so long, leaving Hima and Mom to do all the chores… even if, for them, he’d only been out of the timeline for two days. So while Hima did her homework at the table and their parents did all the prep for his birthday party, Boruto vacuumed and dusted and did all those wonderfully menial tasks that no one actually ever wanted to do.

When he reached the bookshelves, he sighed. Whether he was twelve or thirty-two, Dad was forever a disorganized mess of a person. There were papers shoved in amongst the books, some of which were probably important documents that would be needed at some point or another. Since he was playing the role of the good son today, Boruto carefully pried all the little papers and booklets shoved in there free and stacked them all. He intended to hand them off to Mom sometime before dinner. She was actually responsible. One of the little booklets caught his eye, though, with big inked letters on the front in Dad’s handwriting.

Shadow Clone Jutsu.

Boruto leaned back and peeked behind the wall at his parents who were now laughing and covered in frosting. He scrunched up his nose and made a face, disgusted by their weird, gross displays of affection and deciding that he would never be like them when he grew up. He was going to ask what these notes were for but, er… The grown-ups were being weird and affectionate. He’d leave them be.

Curious, Boruto set his cloth down and picked the papers up, flipping the first page open. Inside were endless, messy explanations about how chakra networks worked and how it translated to the Shadow Clone jutsu. More than a few lines were angrily crossed out and illegible beneath streaks of black ink, and as he flipped through more, he saw really crude, ugly drawings of chakra pathways and even uglier clone demonstrations, and he laughed. Dad was the worst artist. Couldn’t he have, like, taken a diagram from a textbook, or asked Uncle Sai for help?

The pages were yellowing a bit, all wrinkled and poorly kept. Boruto smoothed them out over the flat surface of the shelf and, giving his parents one last little peek, carried them upstairs as he read through them thoroughly.

He thought back to that day a few years ago when Dad saw his first crude Shadow Clone. It was unstable and hastily made, and it poofed out of existence the moment it tripped at the front gate. He was so embarrassed that Dad saw that.

Boruto wanted to surprise his father. Show off what he could do, the clones that he could make and say, “Hey, Old Man, I did it!” Then Dad came home early for the first time in what felt like centuries and his plans blew up in his face.

In Dad’s hands was a crude little booklet that Boruto never got to see.

When he got to his bedroom, Boruto opened the top drawer of his desk and slid the booklet inside. He grinned, his eyes catching on the photos displayed in his room and pausing on one.

A twelve-year-old boy with a stupid, infectious grin and a gaudy orange jumpsuit.

It didn’t matter when or where.

Dad was so lame.