Chapter Text
It was dark, the sun nearly gone behind the Hokage monument, lengthening shadows and painting the cemetery in cold hues. The past weeks had been difficult, to say the least.
When Jiraiya had come back from the lab, proclaiming he’d sensed traces of Mokuton deep in the guts of Konoha, Tsunade, grim and livid, had reported that Riyo and Eikichi had found mention of Danzô in Orochimaru’s notes.
There wasn’t any doubt lingering in any of their minds as to who had helped Orochimaru, and Hiruzen’s heart was heavy with guilt at the knowledge that he had his own responsibility in this affair, if only by allowing Danzô to have free reign over his organization. It had only made another tally in the long list of why he was no longer fit to be the Hokage.
He had ordered the raid of the ROOT headquarters as soon as they had a team in place: Jiraiya of course, Fugaku’s investigation team, a Jônin team formed by Shikaku, and a special police task force all swept through headquarters behind Hiruzen.
For all their preparation, they had miscalculated the kind of rabid desperation Danzô could muster when backed into a corner. Trying to fight through his escape, he had put seven people in the hospital, almost killed one kid and really killed another.
The youngest, stupidly loyal little soldiers Danzô had brainwashed in his ROOT ranks had tried to help him, but they had been quickly stopped by Fugaku’s team with the task force, while Hiruzen took on who he had considered his closest friend, asking the Jônin backup to stick to creating a perimeter to prevent Danzô’s escape and Jiraiya to only intervene if Hiruzen lost too much ground. He didn’t.
Hiruzen had stayed outwardly calm throughout the whole ordeal, but there were not enough words that could describe the rage he felt for the man who was supposed to work for the good of the village.
He’d known, for a long time, that their visions were not aligned. But to believe he would go as far as supplying children for Orochimaru to conduct life threatening experiences, made Hiruzen of the mind that he was perhaps even more dangerous than Orochimaru. More manipulative, more cautious, a hunger for power disguised as a moral imperative and a lack of scruples that made him renounce in front of nothing.
Down in the ROOT’s headquarters, they’d found dozens of children younger than ten, already seasoned killers, and blindly loyal to Danzô. It would take time to rehabilitate them so that they didn’t pose a threat to themselves or others.
Yet again another headache to stave off. At least they’d found the missing child from Orochimaru’s labs. As healthy as a child experimented on could be, and taken by Danzô to be enrolled in ROOTS, thanks to the newly awakened Mokuton abilities his former student was responsible for resurrecting.
He halted his steps once he got to his wife’s grave. Never before had her absence been such a sharp, radiating pain in his chest, as he faced, yet another mistake.
It was a difficult realization to wrap his mind around, how so many things in his life were nothing more than shambles. Bitterness was burning in his guts like acid.
Both his student and his closest friend had turned out to be psychopaths with no respect for human life if it didn’t serve their own purpose whatsoever; Jiraiya and Tsunade were forced to accept the boy they’d grown up with couldn’t have cared less about anything but himself and his experiments, by having to stare at them day in, day out; Asuma had been a collateral damage of Hiruzen’s shortsightedness, had lost his mother who he’d adored, would lose his father who he probably hated by now.
Hiruzen looked at his wife’s tombstone, wondering if she could see him and what she’d think of him if she did.
Hiruzen was weary. The investigation might be closed for now, but what lay ahead wasn’t very promising: Orochimaru was still free, doing Kami knew what to Kami knew who, and if Kushina’s prognostic was no longer engaged, she was still panicking before they could get one coherent word out of her, sometimes panicking in her dreams too, and Tsunade could only sedate her before she could hurt herself.
Tsunade seemed to think it wasn’t a bad thing, that it meant Kushina didn’t suffer from amnesia, and that she should recuperate quickly once she did wake up without panicking. Hiruzen didn’t really have any other option than to trust her word, but it wasn’t exactly hopeful.
And of course, they still had only one solution to help Minato, that they were not even sure would work.
The helplessness that was deeply rooted in his guts ever since they had discovered Orochimaru’s hideout was taking its toll on him. It had swallowed him whole yet again upon finding out Danzô’s betrayal, and Hiruzen wanted more than ever to do something.
He knew that there wouldn’t be any other remedies for Minato; he wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it seemed clear as day to him. There couldn’t be a plethora of solutions for such a rare jutsu. They were lucky that there was a solution at all, and Hiruzen wouldn’t let anyone else sacrifice their lives for this.
He sensed their approach without needing to turn.
“He’s still not talking.” Jiraiya, voice hard and forlorn.
“We expected that,” he answered calmly, not in the least surprised. “And I am guessing the T&I cannot get anything out of him either?”
Jiraiya’s silence was more vocal than if he’d screamed his answer. Of course they wouldn’t. Considering how long Danzô had flown under the radar, and how long he’d managed to hide such an operation, it was a matter of fact that he’d have thought of something to prevent them from learning anything.
“No matter. I would have preferred to learn more about his operations, but it is not imperative.”
The punishment for such a large scale treason was death. Hiruzen had never been pointlessly cruel, and never taken lives that did not need to be taken. He had the uncomfortable suspicion he might not have been able to put Orochimaru to death, had the decision been in his hands. As it was, the Snake Sage had escaped, taking that choice out of reach.
Danzô, however. Danzô he couldn’t be lenient with. Orochimaru may have conducted those experiments, but he would have never been able to do so in such capacity, without Danzô’s implicit approval, funding and sourcing. Danzô was equally responsible for those children’ deaths, and the sole culprit for the indoctrination - and near-slavery, considering the seals on those kids tongues and despicable training methods - of countless ROOT children.
The little Mokuton user had already been released from the hospital, and enrolled at the Academy. He was not nearly as affected by Danzô’s teachings as the others were, since he had only been in Danzô’s “care” for the better part of two weeks, and after a brief psych evaluation, it was deemed that putting him with children his age would help him far more than isolating him in fear what he’d gone through would be too much. He still had therapy once a week, but the general opinion was that he would be fine.
Which was a relief in more sense than one, for all the clan heads, with whom the news had been shared, had looked downright murderous. It was sometimes easy to forget they all had young children, but in the face of their fury, learning all the details of the affair, had been a painful reminder.
Behind him, Tsunade and Jiraiya had come closer, and not spoken a word in view of his contemplative mood. If anything, Hiruzen was glad this was finally over. They would be able to take the time to mourn and hopefully, move past it. Hiruzen wasn’t worried, even if he was heartbroken. They would be there for each other, even more so than they used to have when they were younger adults fighting in that war.
“I will issue the execution order tomorrow.”
Neither piped a word. Hiruzen turned, looking up to their hard, grim expressions.
“I also have a favor to ask of you.” Jiraiya frowned, Tsunade tensed. “I will need you to act as interim Hokage while Minato recovers.”
He’d spoken softly, but Tsunade flinched so hard, one would have thought he’d slapped her. Jiraiya paled but otherwise didn’t react.
“What the fuck, sensei,” she hissed, scowling. Next to her, Jiraiya let out a breath, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.
Hiruzen knew he was pushing more weight on their shoulders, but he didn’t have a choice. He trusted them, with his life, with the village, with everything, and he knew they were up to the task. He’d always believed so, in a way he had not been able to believe in Orochimaru, even if neither of them had ever wanted the hat. It would go a long way in reassuring him, to know that they would hold the fort after he was gone.
“Tsunade.”
She froze immediately, wind taken out of her sails, but the scowl didn’t lessen. Hiruzen sighed deeply.
“I am tired.” He could tell they understood he wasn’t talking about needing a good night sleep tired, and their gaze just looked sad now. “You and I both know the deadline I gave you is approaching, and I’m sorry,” he added more forcefully, speaking over the objection already bubbling on her lips. “I know we didn’t expect to have to deal with this.” They both winced, looking like they’d rather be beaten to a pulp than to think about what all “this” was. “But we can’t change that, and we can’t take that time back -”
“Then you should-”
“I shouldn’t do anything,” he interrupted, already knowing that she was going to ask for more time. He hated the hurt she couldn’t fully hide, but he didn’t back off. “I will not extend the deadline I gave you. Promise me you’ll take the hat just to give Minato the time he needs to recover.”
He knew it made him look heartless. He knew she must resent him, hate him for that, but Hiruzen didn’t see anything else. This was the end of the line for him, and that was it. Biwako’s tombstone seemed to radiate warmth instead of the usual cold and Hiruzen was tired.
She looked ready to refuse out of spite, a child-like, mulish expression on her face, hiding the grief of someone who’d seen hell.
Jiraiya on the other hand, true to what he had told Hiruzen a few weeks ago, on top of the Hokage monument, seemed, if not accepting, to be resigned to the outcome of the pointless debate she was trying to have.
His eyes, as cold as ice and hard as metal, bored into him for a long moment, before he sighed once more, body slumping minutely. “Fine.”
Tsunade whipped her head at him, betrayal and outrage battling on her face. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘fine’?” she snapped, looking ready to deck him. She did not, however, just like Jiraiya had said. She looked hurt instead, so hurt, Hiruzen’s chest was painfully tight at the sight.
Jiraiya looked at her, head a bit cocked to the side and eyes grieved. “Tsuna, we both know he won’t change his mind.”
She was breathing hard, eyes wild. “You-, how can you be ok with this?” she yelled, voice hoarse and Jiraiya winced, as if pained.
“I’m not ok with it, but that’s sensei’s decision,” he replied softly, like he was desperately trying to appease her, to make her understand, to comfort her the only way he could.
Hiruzen noted the use of his title for the first time in… he didn’t remember, and it struck him then, that Jiraiya was as affected by his decision than Tsunade was. He had just learnt to hide it better.
He nearly looked away then, their exchange was something Hiruzen felt guilty for watching.
“The fuck it is,” she yelled, pounding her fists with each word on his chest without her usual humongous strength. “The fuck it is, we could find something else!”
“Tsuna-”
“We could!” She whirled around to Hiruzen, face flushed and eyes red. “After everything we’ve just been through, you’re just giving up?”
Perhaps he was. He didn’t say a word, and Tsunade’s face contorted in anger. “What about Asuma, huh?”
Hiruzen felt nauseous. “You’re abandoning him too, right after his mother died! Have you even thought about that?” she yelled. Tsunade had always known what words would cut deepest, and she’d never been shy about using them when she felt it was necessary, or when she was too angry and hurt to stop herself.
“Answer me!”
“Tsunade!” Jiraiya intervened, taking her roughly by her shoulders and engulfing her in a tight embrace.
“Let me go!” Her voice was muffled, breaking as she flayed in his arms for a few seconds. “Let me go!”
Jiraiya just held on, not speaking, until all the fight left her and her knees buckled, only staying upright because Jiraiya supported her.
It broke Hiruzen’s heart, even more so because even this display couldn’t make him change his mind. He knew in his guts that this was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, as hard as it was for them.
She fisted Jiraiya’s haori, her sobs muffled in his chest while he simply held her close, eyes shut and her head tucked under his chin.
He knew how much they had bottled up, for the sake of the investigation. How much they had risen above their own heart and did what needed to be done. They had been a team, friends, family. They had known each other since they were four years old, been genin together since six, and fought together until the end of the war.
Hiruzen could feel the pain of losing Orochimaru, the little boy he had loved so much for his bright curiosity, before it was tainted by the death of his parents, and before he had slowly rolled down an infernal hill Hiruzen could have never imagined the end to. It was a suffocating kind of distress, to lose someone for such reasons.
Dan, Nawaki, Biwako, they had died protecting the people they cared about, died doing their duties as shinobi. Orochimaru was alive, but dead in becoming a monster who had ripped apart their hearts carelessly; not wilfully, only in that he had not cared enough to understand what his actions would do to them.
But nothing they could do, would ever change any of that. So Hiruzen looked back to his wife’s tombstone, while behind him, Tsunade cried in Jiraiya’s arms, their hearts bleeding.
*
Kakashi sat in a corner of the room, Sasuke and Naruto huddled around Mikoto as she read them a story they kept interrupting to comment.
The morning’s meeting, held in order to take stock of the situation, had been as awkward as it could get.
Tsunade-sama had been glaring at the ground the entire time, and Shizune had to speak for her to update them all on the final results of the autopsies. No one had missed the exhausted lines on her forehead, or the puffiness and redness of her eyes, but no one commented on it. Jiraiya-sama had been subdued, even more so than after Orochimaru’s defection and the discovery of what he had done, when the investigation had kept him busy. Asuma had been there too, his glare directed at his father rivaling that of the medic-nin towards the ground.
The rest of them, had been stuck in the figurative middle, sharing uneasy glances or awkward coughs. It had been awkward to go through, but at least there was some good news.
Inoichi-san and Shikukau-san had deconstructed the entire now compromised security system of the village, and conceived a new one that wouldn’t be as vulnerable to outside attacks. The past weeks had been particularly tense because of the threat of having Orochimaru on the loose with all Konoha’s secrets. Which meant all hands on deck, and this was the first time in close to three weeks that Kakashi was seeing Naruto.
The mission load should decrease and go back to normal level now that the village was safe again, but if Kakashi was honest, it was a meager comfort considering the fractures that this entire affair had brought upon the Sandaime, his students and his son.
There was barely a month and a half left before the deadline imposed by the Sandaime was upon them. Kakashi felt disgusting, for being excited at the prospect of seeing his teacher again, even though it would mean the Sandaime’s death. It was only made worse by the inordinately large amount of time he spent with Asuma, who had started avoiding their friends too. Kakashi could tell Kurenai was upset the most at this new development, but she hid it admirably well.
“I’m starting to get why you used to avoid us.” he’d told him after declining an offer for yakiniku with the rest of their peers. “It’s like we’re from different worlds.” He was sad as he said it too, and Kakashi could just nod, unable to find the words that could make that any better. He’d been searching for three years to no avail, after all.
Now, in the calm and relative quiet of the room reserved for meeting with Naruto, Kakashi was glad he could breathe a little, forgetting ever so slightly everything going on outside these walls.
He was pulled out of his musings when Itachi sat next to him. He had yet another book in his hands, and Kakashi blinked at the author’s name.
“Tales of a Gutsy ninja, huh,” he said under his breath. Itachi beamed at him.
“Jiraiya-sama gave it to me.”
Kakashi raised an eyebrow, wondering when the hell Jiraiya-sama had found the time to give the boy a book, with everything happening. Itachi didn’t look traumatized either, so Kakashi supposed that particular one was tame compared to the one Jiraiya-sama had been writing before Orochimaru’s defection, and for which he had been using Kakashi as a beta reader. Kakashi wasn’t going to admit he didn’t mind. At all.
“Maa, as long as that’s the only book of his he recommended.”
Itachi cocked his head, looking more like the child he was than Kakashi had seen since meeting the boy. “He has written more?”
“Nope, slip of the tongue,” he replied easily. Itachi nodded, seemingly taking his answer at face value, and gazed back down at his book.
“It’s a really good one,” he told him with a smile. “The hero’s name is Naruto.”
“Oh?” He looked over at the little blond cuddled next to Mikoto, and it dawned on him that that must be the book Naruto’s name had been inspired from. He’d never really understood where such a name could have possibly come from, and all his teacher had ever said to him on the topic – despite the fact that Kakashi had not asked – was that they had picked it from a book.
“Maybe I should read it then.”
Itachi smiled at him. “You should.”
Kakashi couldn't help but snort at being advised by an eight-year-old. As mature as that eight-year-old was. Itachi had graduated from the Academy after barely five months attending the year before, and Kakashi knew he’d been placed in a team with genin twice his age.
Kakashi hadn’t experienced that. Not really. Despite graduating so much earlier than his peers, Kakashi only became part of an actual genin team a few years later, when his peers finally graduated too. He had to go on missions with grown ups before then, but there was a difference between being paired up with adult shinobis who tended to regard skills more than age, and children who couldn’t make the difference, especially when Minato-sensei had been one of his most frequent partner on missions.
“How’s your team?”
The boy shrugged, like he had no opinion whatsoever. “Shinko is nice, I think, but I don’t think Tenma likes me very much.”
Of course he wouldn’t. Itachi was a prodigy. Everything came easily to him – ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, you name it, Itachi only needed to observe once and he would get it on his next try. Having a teammate twice younger than you, who could out-skill you so easily, was never not a sore spot for teenage boys.
Now that he thought about it, Gai had been, when they were younger, one of the rare people who didn’t take it as a personal offense, and instead worked twice as hard to catch up without a hint of jealousy. Kakashi couldn’t help but admire that, and he thought he should give his ‘eternal rival’ more credit.
“Don’t worry about him, then,” Kakashi said, earning the boy’s attention. “Protect him as your teammate, like he should protect you as his teammate, but you don’t have to be friends.”
That was true enough. As long as that boy, Tenma, could put aside his wounded pride and work with Itachi to make sure their mission didn’t suffer… Well. That was already good enough. They couldn’t get along perfectly with everyone, after all.
Itachi seemed to mule that over, before he nodded. They fell into a companionable silence, only interrupted by the soft voice of Itachi’s mother, reading to the boys who were clearly starting to flag.
Sasuke’s eyes were half-lidded, making visible effort to keep them open, while Naruto’s thumb was in his mouth, a sure sign he would fall asleep in the next five to ten minutes (that depended on how much he’d eaten at lunch.)
“Do you like being ANBU?”
Kakashi glanced at Itachi at that, a bit taken aback by the question. He sounded genuinely interested, and not just asking for the sake of asking a question in return to Kakashi’s own.
He sighed, letting his head rest against the wall. Difficult question, that. He’d joined after he’d killed Rin because he couldn’t bear the looks he kept getting in the streets, and he needed a change of pace. It had been a mixture of pity and disgust. The ‘friend killer’. Kakashi really hadn’t needed their help to hate himself.
When Minato-sensei, then Hokage, had suggested he joined another team – at 13, it was common – Kakashi had declined. He couldn’t bear the thought of being put into another team that wouldn’t be the one he hadn’t known to cherish while he had time; the one he’d been too stupid to appreciate before it was too late.
ANBU had been perfect. Four man squad sure, but plenty of solo missions too, and more than anything, anonymity. Kakashi wasn’t Kakashi, he was Hound. He was respected for his skills, and that was it.
He remembered Minato-sensei’s worried looks, though. They were ingrained in his head like the rest of everything he would rather forget. He’d known that he was reckless, and careless of his own life then. But the grief of losing both Obito and Rin, and more than anything, knowing his hand in it, had been overpowering. The danger allowed all his thoughts to quieten, and Kakashi had relished in it.
Until he came back to Konoha, until he changed into his civilian clothes and it all rushed back with a vengeance. Death was never far away on those missions, and Kakashi knew he’d been close to meeting it early more than once. He remembered not caring about that. He remembered being almost glad.
It seemed so long ago now… Three years that he hadn’t escaped his own reality through bloodier and more dangerous missions. The first year he had barely gone on any at all, launching himself with abandon into more research than he had ever done in his life. After Naruto’s first birthday, he’d gone back, but sporadically, and only the bare minimum to keep his skills sharp and not look like he’d completely deserted. He had the Sandaime to thank for that freedom.
Now though… Kakashi was starting to wonder if he really wanted to continue as an ANBU. It was lonely, and he’d grown attached to sharing more than missions secrets with other people. He still had issues connecting with his peers, but Shizune was easy to get along with, and Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama were like those crazy family members everyone secretly loved at family gatherings, even if both were currently not themselves. Not that Kakashi had much experience with many family members besides his father, or at all, but their chaotic energy gave him that feeling. It was comforting, and Kakashi wondered if his time at ANBU shouldn’t come to an end.
“Kakashi-san?”
Ah. He’d been in his head too long. He looked back to Itachi who didn’t look impatient, only curious.
“It’s an important job.” That was true enough. “But it’s a lonely and thankless one.”
Itachi frowned minutely, like he hadn’t been expecting that answer. “Father says ANBU protects Konoha from the outside.”
That made Kakashi pause.
He wondered if Uchiha Fugaku wanted his eldest son to join ANBU. With Itachi’s skills, it was certainly possible. More than, in fact, and Kakashi wouldn’t be surprised if Itachi did join, and excelled at it. And of course, it would be a great accomplishment to boast about for the Uchiha clan head.
Clan politics had never interested Kakashi, but he could easily understand the trends.
To be fair though, Kakashi had seen first hand that Orochimaru’s experiments had shaken the man enough that he had seen him spending time with both his boys without mentioning Itachi’s training and need to excel a single time.
“He’s not wrong,” he said, thinking of all the assaults he’d led to make sure valuable information arrived to Konoha; or didn’t get out, for that matter. Assassinations were the highest type of mission, and ANBU members on a mission would be sure to kill or be killed whenever they left the village.
Itachi was looking up at him, drinking in his words but analyzing each one precisely.
Itachi was brilliant, and incredibly skilled, but he was gentle. Kind to a fault with everyone, protective of his little brother, and by now, Naruto too, and was wise beyond his years. ANBU would destroy him from the inside.
Kakashi was getting tired of seeing good people being destroyed from the inside, especially people he cared about. He’d grown fond of the eldest Uchiha, thanks to all the times Itachi came along Sasuke and his mother when Naruto was at the tower.
Which meant, Kakashi wasn’t about to let ANBU, as important as the work was, destroy that kind-hearted boy. Maybe he could make that curiosity latch onto something else.
“But you know, there are many other ways to protect the village.”
“Like being part of the police force,” Itachi replied without missing a beat, and was Kakashi seeing things or was the boy not entirely enthused about that perspective?
“Sure; or being a Jônin instructor or Hokage,” he retorted with an easy smile, even if both perspectives gave Kakashi hives. Although to be fair, after spending so much time with Naruto, children didn’t seem all as bad as they used to.
Kakashi had never really been a child, and they used to scare the shit out of him. Naruto was probably one of the best crash courses possible though – being both close to hyperactive, but a very kind-hearted boy around whom it was a pleasure to be around.
Glancing over, he saw that the boys had finally succumbed to sleep, and Mikoto-san kept them close to her, even as she’d taken out her own book. If she was listening to them, she was doing a very good job at feigning she wasn’t.
“Hokage,” Itachi repeated faintly, his dark eyes landing on Naruto. With how many times a day the boy repeated he wanted to be the next Hokage, it was difficult not to think of him automatically at the mere mention. “I don’t think I could.”
To be fair, it was one position, for hundreds of shinobis, and each new Hokage had to be named by the current one, without any major objections from the council. The odds were low, but imagining a grownup Itachi with the hat wasn’t particularly jarring.
He shrugged. “Who knows? And look at the Yondaime: he protected the village on the night of the attack.”
Itachi glanced up at him with a gleam in his eyes that couldn’t be called anything but knowing, before he looked back at Naruto.
Kakashi huffed a laugh. Smart kid.
Yeah. Not jarring at all.
*
When light danced over her closed eyes again, Kushina didn’t make the same mistake of opening them right away. She remembered panicking every single time that light had danced, and how it blinked out like a candle-flame with a short breath when she ended up sedated.
This time, she wanted to see more, and she knew that Tsunade-hime, as insane as her presence was in Kushina’s mind, would not hesitate to sedate her yet again if she worked herself up.
Like the previous times, Kushina was graced with a brief period of blank memory, but she knew it would be unlocked at some point, opening up the floodgates of memories unpleasant enough that it had made her hyperventilate each and every time she’d been close to wake up before.
Kushina stayed as still as she could, decided not to alert anyone, until slowly, the flashes started.
The excitement and the pain of meeting Naruto, the taunting voice stealing her baby boy, Minato saving him but Kushina falling in the man’s clutches, the intense pain of the Kyûbi being wrenched from her, the tainted joy of lying close to Naruto, before everything got destroyed again, and both she and Minato were teared from the inside out by the monster’s claw.
Her eyes stung but she maintained them closed. She knew her breathing was heavier, she could hear it herself, rasping and painful in her chest, but she didn’t move.
Minato was dead. Naruto might be dead. She should have been dead.
But she wasn’t, and if anything, she wanted to know why. She wanted to know if Naruto was alive, she wanted to see her son, and she wanted to know where Minato was buried. Grief washed over her like a tidal wave, and she couldn’t fully repress the sob that tore through her throat again.
“Kushina-san?” A different voice.
Kushina steeled herself, exhaled deeply and swallowed around the lump in her throat before she dared open her eyes.
A young woman was next to her bed: short, black hair and kind dark eyes. She was also absurdly young; she couldn’t have been older than her late teens, but those eyes spoke of harsh times.
“My name is Shizune,” she introduced herself with a soft voice, before she grabbed what Kushina guessed must be her file. “How are you feeling?”
Usually, when Kushina landed her ass in the hospital, she went postal with that question. If she were anything but stellar, did they really think she’d stay in here? But Shizune seemed kind and didn’t inspire Kushina with the same annoyance as most medics she’d encountered here, and her usual snark didn’t even stir.
“I’ve been better,” she croaked, wincing at that lacerated-vocal-chords sound. Shizune didn’t seem surprised. She nodded and before Kushina could blink, her bed was slowly leveling up and she was handed a glass of water, which she swallowed down quickly.
“I’ll do a quick check up, and then I’ll bring in Tsunade-sama. We can answer all the questions you may have. Is that alright?”
Kushina nodded. There was something soothing about Shizune that put her at ease, so she let herself be checked out again. From the lack of crease in Shizune’s brow, Kushina guessed she was alright. The “how in the hell” was still unanswered, but if shutting up now could lead to having that question answered in a few minutes, she’d take it.
After a while, Shizune straightened back up, and told her she’d come back in a second. The creepiest part was, she actually did come back in a second. Whether Tsunade-hime had been waiting right outside the door, Kushina didn’t know, but it was creepy regardless.
The medic-nin swept in like she owned the place – and let’s be honest, if she was in Konoha, and treating patients in the hospital, she probably did – and smiled at her. But it was small and frayed, and Kushina wondered what could have made her hazel eyes so clouded despite the genuine happiness of, apparently, seeing Kushina awake.
Kushina swallowed. She was uncomfortable for too many reasons to parse out. As terrible as she felt, weak and vulnerable physically, drained mentally and gutted emotionally, she was alive without knowing how and why, against all possible odds while Tsunade-hime, known for having essentially deserted the village years prior was here, smiled down at her like she’d been waiting just for that for too long.
She was missing pieces of the story, and Kushina didn’t like it. “I am very happy to see you awake Kushina,” she declared. Kushina didn’t relax.
The woman grabbed a chair and sat down with the air of someone who knew this was going to take a while. It didn’t reassure her.
“You must have a lot of questions.” Understatement. “Ask me anything, and I’ll answer everything I know.”
Well. If that wasn’t yet another surprise. Kushina had found that truth was a relative concept in the shinobi world. These were bold words, but she didn’t have the will to exercise more caution than the minute pause between the question, and Kushina’s decision to take her up on that offer.
She had more questions than she could count, but before she could formulate any of them, she needed another to be answered, first.
“Is Naruto alive?” She almost choked out the words, irrepressible hope facing off nauseating fear at what the answer could be.
Whether Tsunade-hime had expected that question, Kushina didn’t know, but her whole demeanor softened considerably, and a small smile bloomed, and Kushina’s heart jumped in her mouth.
“Naruto is perfectly healthy, and the seal is perfectly balanced.” Kushina’s eyes prickled, and she thought like she could pass out from relief at any second.
“Oh, thank Kami,” she sobbed, tears falling freely as she dropped her face in her hand. Naruto was alive, and he was healthy, and well, and… oh kami. Some of the taut strings of anxiety that had been pulling at her ever since she woke up seemed to finally snap, and Kushina was more grateful than she had words for.
“We’re not exactly sure what transpired, only that both you and Minato saved him” the princess continued, her thumb brushing over Kushina’s hand in a soothing motion. “Gerotora said he found you both between Kyûbi and Naruto, presumably when he tried to kill Naruto, and that was enough to give Minato the time to finish the Hakke Fûin.”
Kushina was so relieved she was dizzy. She couldn’t have been sure… The world had gone black before she could be absolutely certain that Naruto was alright, and was going to stay this way. To hear that he was healthy, and well… The news about the seal wasn’t unwelcome, had it not been balanced, Naruto could have been in terrible danger, but it implied an unpleasant, undesired truth.
Kushina couldn’t fully suppress the bitter taste in her mouth at the thought that they had forced their newborn son to become the Kyûbi’s jinchûriki. She knew how heavy a burden that was, and she knew that there was no going back; once the seal was formed and applied, it was too late, and Naruto would die if they extracted the Kyûbi out of him.
Which reminded her.
“How am I here ?” she asked, interrupting Tsunade-sama’s next question she hadn’t caught a word of.
This single question had plagued her ever since the very first time she had woken up. She was supposed to be dead. The Kyûbi had been extracted out of her, and it had then stabbed her with its claw. There was no way in hell she could be alive, and certainly not feeling physically as good, relatively speaking, as she was now.
Tsunade-hime sighed heavily, and Kushina braced herself for the answer.
“We don’t know.”
Ah.
Wait, what?