Chapter Text
ひらひらと Flutteringly,
風に流れて Floating in the breeze,
蝶一つ A single butterfly
Masaoka Shiki
It hurt to breathe. So much, Minato could feel the edges of his mind darken, ready to give in to unconsciousness. His life was forfeited the moment he formed the madras for the Shiki Fûjin, and the sudden pressure from the reaper’s contract weighing him down wouldn’t let him forget that he only had a handful of minutes left. And yet he did forget, when shadows in the corner of his eye started moving, taking his eyes away from his newborn son.
When the Kyûbi’s claw had stabbed through both his and Kushina’s back, for a blessed second he felt nothing.
What followed was the most atrocious pain imaginable. He couldn’t feel his midsection, not anymore, not where the demon’s claw was lodged firmly through their bodies. Around it, however…
Every nerve ending was frayed, raw, exposed, and all of them shook in tandem, sending waves after waves of intense, electrifying pain to his brain. Had it not been for the adrenaline coursing ferociously through his body still, despite the gaping hole in his stomach and the warm blood leaking out, Minato knew the pain would have overwhelmed him long ago.
He couldn’t afford to fall prey to unconsciousness though. Not yet. Kushina managed to hold her adamantine chains firmly around the monster, still growling behind them and unable to move further than that, but her breathing was ragged.
How could things have escalated to this point? Despite the fog drowning his brain further with every passing second, the knowledge that neither of them would survive stood out with dizzying clarity.
Things had happened so fast, the memories were blurry, as if waking up from a dream with only fragments following him to the waking world. He might even have believed it had all been a dream, had it not been for the scorching pain gutting him.
A few handfuls of hours earlier, Kushina had been smiling, almost skipping through the village in her excitement, none of Minato’s anxiety coloring her expression or voice as she spoke to Mikoto on their way to the cave, at the reprimand of Biwako-sama, or even as she screamed herself hoarse at how much it hurt. Minato had been a mess, and only his responsibility to ensure the seal held kept his mind clear and his gestures steady. It hadn’t been a surprise to discover childbirth hurt, Minato read after all. What had shaken him, had been seeing Kushina hurt so much. Kushina, who could end up with potentially fatal injuries on missions, despite her enormous quantities of chakras always working incessantly to heal her, and didn’t even so much as utter the word “ouch”, was yelling how much it did hurt.
Minato had thought his heart was going to give out, and he held no amount of respect for the composure and calm Biwako-sama demonstrated. It lasted for what felt like hours. Kushina’s skin was coated in sweat, Minato was starting to tire as he battled the demon from the outside trying to take advantage of the seal’s weakness, but Biwako-sama and Taji had not shifted out of their professional attitude.
When finally, a cry echoed against the walls of the cave, it was like the weight of the world lifted off Minato’s shoulders, and he could only stand there, shell-shocked as he listened to that powerful, strident cry, and feel it warm his chest. Tears escaped his eyes as the realization that he was a father slammed into him. He could barely glimpse at the little bundle as Biwako-sama strode past him and declared Kushina should see him first.
Minato couldn’t disagree. He had not done most of the work after all. When he had laid eyes on his son for the first time, lying crying next to his mother, something realigned itself, giving way to a new version of Minato’s world.
The happiness that had engulfed him then, had been almost too heady, his desire to hold them both close to him making him step closer.
Minato forced his consciousness to focus back on the present, as crushing as it was. Naruto, who had been bawling his eyes out, his tiny lungs expelling powerful cries, was now calm and quiet, peacefully sleeping on their battlefield.
They’d made this. The tiniest baby Minato had ever seen, Minato’s blond hair and Kushina’s face, whiskers streaking his rosy cheeks. The thought that they wouldn’t have the privilege to see him grow up, and worse, that Naruto wouldn’t have either of his parents to grow up with, threatened to make him lose focus from what he needed to do.
He couldn’t falter now, not after everything, and certainly not while being so close. Sealing that monster inside his son would have never been Minato’s choice, had he seen a more preferable alternative, but they were out of time and options.
“Thank you, Kushina,” he forced out, his voice far steadier than it ought to be. There were not enough words to express how grateful he was to her, how happy she had made him, by being at his side all this time, for being his family, and for giving him Naruto.
He brushed the blood dripping from his mouth with his thumb, painting his palm and forcing his heavy arms to cooperate to sign the mudras of the Kuchiyose no jutsu. Gerotora appeared in a puff of smoke next to them, and Minato didn’t waste time entrusting the Hakke Fûin key to him, instructing him to find Jiraiya.
His head was spinning, and short gasps escaped him as the inevitability of his death loomed closer.
“Kushina, I can feel my life slipping away,” he gritted out, voice tremulous despite his best effort. “I have to start affixing the Hakke Fûin. I will put some of my chakra in him too.”
His eyes didn’t stray away from the sleeping boy, his heart constricting further at the thought that this may very well be the last time he could ever lay eyes on his son. He didn’t have the courage to say it as such, though, and instead he said, “We might not see him for a while. Tell him everything you want him to hear.”
Kushina exhaled shakily, but when she spoke, her voice was steady, even if trembling slightly.
Minato smiled at the laundry list of advice, eyes prickling and heavy-lidded. Kushina’s breathing grew heavier with every word that left her mouth, her strength leaving her too.
“Naruto, you will have to face difficult moments in your life. But always remember who you are. Believe in your dreams, and more importantly, believe in yourself and in your ability to make those dreams happen.” Tears thickened her voice, and Minato could only listen, powerless to do anything more as Kushina mourned the time they would never get with their son. “There are so, so, so many things I’d like to teach you; I want to spend more time with you. I love you so much, Naruto.”
Minato’s heart had been ripped out of his chest. It was a different kind of pain. Knowing they were robbed of the time that had been meant to be theirs, the time they should have had to tell Naruto all these things when he could understand them, to teach him what they had learned and to learn beside him, to get to know their son, the little boy they had made and would never see grow up. The pain fraying his body meant nothing, in light of the terror and grief Minato felt pulsing in his chest, at those thoughts.
“Minato, I’m sorry, I used up all your time,” Kushina breathed out through her tears, and Minato could only shake his head, only feeling warmth and love for this amazing, kind, loving woman.
“Naruto, my advice as your father, is everything your chatty mother just said,” he added, putting his chin on Kushina’s shoulder, for the last time.
They were out of time, and Minato’s heart bled, bled, bled. At the price of incommensurable effort, he raised his hand over their newborn son’s belly, and used his remaining chakra left in him to finish this.
“Hakke fûin.”
The words were shards of glass in his throat, signing their very last moments, the three of them together. The last drops of chakra in his body fought the unavoidable end only a hair’s breadth away, and despite the deep-seated exhaustion weighing his body, despite the reaper’s seal pulling him away, Minato oh so wanted them to succeed. Arms around Kushina, vision already black and heart so slow, he wondered if it was still beating, Minato wanted, wanted, wanted.
Something stirred deep inside him, something familiar and yet not, answering his voiceless pleas. He felt something tug at his chest.
Minato lost consciousness before he could even wonder what had happened.
*
“Did I thank you for coming?”
Tsunade fought the urge to scowl, and her lips thinned instead. “At least twenty times in the past two hours,” she gritted out, shortly.
She did not want a reminder that she had voluntarily come back to that blasted village, and the blasted memories that assaulted her at each street corner. But what else could she do, when it was Jiraiya who asked her to come back, after his favorite student and his wife died protecting the village from the Kyûbi? As annoying as Jiraiya could be, he was also one of her closest friends, and she knew him well enough to see the grief blatantly painted on his face, despite his best attempts to hide it.
She couldn’t fully repress waves of that same poison to reach her. She’d known both Minato and Kushina when they were still at the Academy and in their first years of active duty. A bright, curious child who soaked up knowledge like a sponge, polite to a fault, gentle and caring with everyone around him, and another, hard-working, spirited and mischievous with big dreams and bigger heart, walking through the village together, thick as thieves as if they were not drastically opposites.
Perhaps it was true what they said, and opposite did truly attract. Tsunade didn’t have the patience or the heart to contemplate the idea, when all she could think about was “what good it did them”. Now both of them were dead before they reached 25, their baby boy was alone and a jinchûriki, and would likely grow up with the resentment of the villagers.
She could already hear mumbled curses and vehement protests around the people they were passing by as the topic came up. If Sarutobi-sensei heard them, he showed no recognition. It somehow infuriated Tsunade further, and she clenched her teeth to stifle any of the well-chosen words that she could lash out with.
Her restraint was poor at best, and she did not have the energy to engage in a shouting match with her old teacher. For all his faults, the man was wise, and in all the decisions he took, he explored the pros and cons at length, often trying to make the best out of being caught between a rock and hard place. It was not a position she envied him in the least, and she was at least grateful Sarutobi-sensei had been considering Jiraiya, and not herself, when he decided to step down, before the hat became Minato’s at Jiraiya’s insistence.
It was easy, in her position, to resent those decisions when she hadn’t been the one making them. But rationality weighed little in view of everything she had lost, and seeing the ordinarily spirited Jiraiya mute with grief over his former student did not put her in a particularly charitable mood.
They had been en route to Konoha when the Kyubi had attacked, because Shizune desperately wanted to visit her uncle’s grave. Tsunade hadn’t had the heart to deny her. The news had gotten to them a handful of hours after, when they’d been close enough that pushing the pace would land them in Konoha in a fraction of the time it would have normally.
She had come straight to the hospital, in the wee hours in the morning after the monster had been sealed once more, its walls crawling with terrified villagers, civilians and shinobi alike, traumatized if not badly injured, in varying degrees of shock. Tsunade had almost gone into a panic attack herself at the mere sight, but Shizune had reacted with all the professionality of a hardened frontline medic and led her to a room where injured, but not covered in blood, patients had been directed to her while Shizune busied herself with the others.
They had worked hours without break until dusk the next day of the attack, when they were able to pace themselves. It had been nearly a week, and things were slowly coming back to normal, leaving Tsunade the joy of walking through the village with her old teacher and reminiscing of the time before Tsunade swore never to return. She should have known better than to bet on it.
Everyone was busy trying to get their bearings in the wake of the attacks, many buildings still half destroyed, but people made do with what they had while Sarutobi and the council worked on a plan to rebuild the village.
“That’s because I truly appreciate your help. We would have never been able to save as many people as we did, had you not been here,” Sarutobi-sensei said earnestly. Tsunade sighed, feeling like the worst of scoundrels to keep a one-sided feud against that man.
“I won’t be staying long,” was all she could find in herself to say, and she didn’t miss how something dimmed in her old teacher’s eyes. His face has aged considerably since the last time she had seen him, lines winding paths on his cheeks and forehead, hair streaked gray and age spots dotting his skin.
It was eerie; as if Tsunade had closed her eyes too long and reopened them to a different era. At least the village half-destroyed as it was, was a familiar sight, seeing as it had been more or less in this state of disrepair during the war, and no one had the time or the resources to spend time fixing something that had such a high chance of getting destroyed again in the near future.
“I know.” He sounded resigned and Tsunade fought the urge to punch something. “Have you seen Jiraiya?”
The reminder was unwelcome. “Not since I first arrived.” It had been enough, and his expression would permanently stay etched in her memory.
They had lost a lot during the war; too much to stay sane, if anyone asked her; but she had never seen her former teammate as dejected and defeated as he had when she’d stepped foot in the village, a week ago. It had been like that fire that used to burn so ardently inside of him had been smothered mercilessly, and all that left were cold ashes.
She didn’t have a right to judge, and she did not. She knew how it felt; well enough to bring another unwelcome reminder: Jiraiya had been there for her, when Nawaki, then Dan had lost their life to that wretched war. Orochimaru had almost dismissed it like normalcy, complacency in the face of death having been one of his prominent coping mechanisms since his parents had died, but Jiraiya hadn’t. He’d held her, let her cry and not once had downplayed the grief she felt. But there she was, not making any effort to go check up on him.
What kind of teammate was she? What kind of person did that make her? A selfish one, is what it makes you.
“He should be at the memorial stone, if you’d like to see him.” She glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at her, as if giving her space to decide for herself what she wanted to do, without the judgment she was passing on herself.
“I probably should.” What else could she say and do? She was selfish, not heartless. Furious whispers derailed her train of thoughts.
“– they say the boy is the reincarnation of the demon.”
“Where did he even come from? Have you seen those whiskers?”
“That’s right, we should stay away–”
Tsunade gritted her teeth hard enough the three slanderers heard it and snapped their mouths shut. Good. They were lucky that alone had stopped them, she wasn’t above punching common-sense into others. The boy was a week old, for fuck’s sake. She had yet to see him, but Tsunade had never once in her life ever seen a threatening-looking baby, whiskers or not.
“You should have done more.” She had not meant for her tone to be so abrasive, but her anger was too strong for her to fully put a lead on it.
Sarutobi-sensei let out a long-suffering sigh, and Tsunade thought he looked even older. It only served to make her angrier.
“You didn’t want to tell anyone about his parents, I understand that; but you should have followed that line of thought to the end and ensured no one knew his being a jinchûriki.”
“There were a dozen shinobis in that clearing, Tsunade, all witnessing Minato sealing the Kyûbi in his son,” he said calmly. “I swore them all to secrecy.”
She laughed, something cold and flat. “And how’d that work out, huh?”
Rarely did the man get angry, but she could see it then, the tell-tale bunching of his jaw, pursed lips, and nostrils flaring. She forced herself to calm down.
“I know you want to believe the best in people, but what precisely did you expect they’d do, after seeing the monster that destroyed their village and their families be sealed in a boy they had no loyalty to?”
“He is their Hokage’s son,” Sarutobi said through gritted teeth.
“And how does that compare to their partners, children, siblings?”
“May I remind you that I am conducting an investigation?” It was rhetorical, Tsunade knew, and perhaps she should have stopped nagging him then, at the sight of real anger flashing in his eyes.
“Yes, and with stellar results so far.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Tsunade.”
She blinked at him, only to meet the icy, unyielding gaze of the battle hardened shinobi who’d led the entire village through years of war. He needn't say anything else. She lowered her gaze, sighing.
He started walking again, his stance open enough that Tsunade knew she was free to follow.
She supposed there wasn’t anything else to say. It was too late, the cat was out of the bag, and the investigation wouldn’t change any of it. It wasn’t like Sarutobi could order all the shinobis who’d been there that night to go through the Yamanaka clan’s jutsu. Not being the village’s heroes, all for the sake of a child that, surprisingly enough, no one knew, but everyone believed to have the same monstrous soul as its prisoner.
Everyone knew that the boy had the fox sealed inside him, they couldn’t tell them he was the former Hokage’s son, or they’d take the risk of Naruto having an even bigger target painted on his back, and they couldn’t forbid anyone not to gossip or to magically stop fearing the demon that ravaged their homes.
What a waste.
The sooner she left this place, the better.
*
Jiraiya did not look at the figure, small enough to still be a child, sliding next to him. He had been standing in front of that stone for the better part of the week, looking for something that wasn’t there.
He hadn’t been able to go see Naruto yet. It was eating him up inside, but he couldn’t bring himself to even take one step in the direction of the hospital, where the new-born was still staying, in the maternity ward.
Instead he came here, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Minato and Kushina were dead, and Jiraiya hadn’t been there to prevent it. He had been traveling again, writing mindless novels when his former student was being torn apart. It was not a pleasant feeling. It made his limbs feel heavy, his guts churn, and his chest hurt.
Next to him, the figure sniffed and Jiraiya finally stole a glance at him, recognizing him instantly. Hatake Kakashi, son of Hatake Sakumo and prized pupil of Minato. Jiraiya knew the story well enough.
His generation’s prodigy – lost his father to suicide as a child, made jônin at 12 in the peak of the war, but confined to a team he barely respected, until his teammate sacrificed himself for him. He’d been forced to kill his other teammate after a despicable ploy of Kirigakure to destroy Konoha, and now the boy lost the last remaining family he had.
His cheeks were dry but his visible eye was red, and his hands were trembling. Jiraiya considered comforting him, but he suspected any gesture he made in that sense would be unwelcome.
“You left too soon, Minato,” he said instead, noticing the boy stiffen next to him, eyes riveted to the stone still. “You left a lot of people behind, you know? You could have at least said goodbye, I taught you better than that. And now you can count on me to tell all your most embarrassing stories to Naruto, and you won’t be able to stop me! See, you should have stayed a bit longer to reduce me to silence.”
The Hatake boy’s eyes were downcast, but he had relaxed, and Jiraiya could distinguish the ghost of a smile behind his mask. Mission accomplished.
He found it made him feel better too, so Jiraiya continued babbling nonsense to that stupid rock, hoping, praying, that perhaps Minato and Kushina would hear and know that at least, the people they left behind might not have been as alone as they’d initially thought.
They stayed there a long time, until the sun painted the sky shades of orange and red and lowered enough behind the hills that they truly felt the fall wind in their bones.
“I could tell you all his embarrassing stories too, if you wanted,” Jiraiya casually said when he didn’t care to bear the cold any longer, not even looking at the boy in fear he would spook like a wild cat and scamper off.
He did neither of those things, and stayed silent for a few minutes longer, during which Jiraiya did not move either.
Eventually though, the boy slumped like a loose-stringed puppet, and gave a short nod that Jiraiya would have missed, had he not watched the boy like a hawk.
So that was exactly what they did, walking through the village his student, and Kakashi’s teacher, had died protecting. Jiraiya’s heart felt a little less heavy when he finally went to sleep properly, for the first time in a week.
*
“Hadn’t expected you to stay this long,” he commented between two sips of his drink. Tsunade’s cheeks were red, and her eyes heavy-lidded, but she was surprisingly coherent still. She snorted, derisive mask on her face that made Jiraiya miss his old teammate more ferociously than when she had actually been out of the village.
The Tsunade in front of him wasn’t the Tsunade he’d known before the war, and he wondered if having one’s loved ones change so much was not one of the worst casualties of this dreadful war.
“Can’t. Promised to help, and there are still patients in intensive care,” she retorted, barely slurring her words.
It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, to hear that she didn’t stay for any other reason than to uphold the oath she’d taken as a medi-ninja.
She’d left without a word back then, without looking back. They’d only known she was still alive because the letters Jiraiya never came back with the bird.
Orochimaru had refused to go look for her, stating she wouldn’t have left if she wanted either of them with her. As much as Jiraiya hadn’t been able to fault that logic, he hadn’t been able to sit it out.
He couldn’t see her though, despite his effort. Shizune had transmitted in no uncertain words that Orochimaru had been right and that Jiraiya shouldn’t have bothered.
Now that she was here, Jiraiya didn’t know whether to feel relieved, angry, or resentful. Relieved to see her again, angry that she had left in the first place, and resentful that she was planning on leaving again. He could barely feel grateful that she’d chosen to come when he’d asked, clouded as it was by all those poisonous feelings he didn’t have the courage, or the strength, to fully dispel.
“It’s been a month,” he noted, eyes trailing over her form, slumped over the table, her hands nursing a glass double the size of his own drink. She was at her third when he hadn’t finished his first.
“Some injuries were critical,” she retorted with a wry look that instantly reminded Jiraiya of the times she used to look down on him during their genin years. The look that used to make him feel inferior to both his teammates. But Jiraiya wasn’t a genin anymore, and he knew how Tsunade’s mind worked. She looked down on herself more than she’d ever look down on anyone else, even if it was a hopeless pervert like him.
“And you think you’ll save them with alcohol replacing your blood?” Ah. He had not meant to snap.
She must have not been expecting it either, for she seemed to sober up enough to look at him seriously behind her hooded eyes. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t want to, and he felt somewhat entitled to his anger, even if it made him feel selfish.
They could only do what was best for themselves in those situations. For all the friends he had lost, Jiraiya never had to watch siblings and lovers die in his arms. She did what she could, like Jiraiya was doing what he could now.
“If I don’t drink, I can’t sleep here. Too many memories.”
He looked down at his drink, unable to hold the sharp intensity of her gaze, and the broken edge of her voice. He hadn’t expected that kind of honesty. Perhaps that was what made him follow the same policy.
“I went to visit Naruto,” he said when he found his voice again.
He was so tiny, dwarfed in that hospital bassinet. He had not been the only baby without his parents there, the Kyûbi had orphaned more than one child, but he was the only one so thoroughly alone. Close or distant relative, it was always better than being left entirely alone, but it seemed that would be Uzumaki Naruto’s lot in life.
He had been unable to muster any anger at the old man when he had learnt Naruto couldn’t take his father’s name. Jiraiya agreed that his protection depended on it, even if he couldn’t understand the reasoning behind not having done more to prevent the rumors from spreading regarding Naruto being the Kyûbi’s host.
With no one to fend for him, Naruto was not going to be spared the hatred aimed at the monster. Minato’s parents were dead, Kushina’s entire clan was dead, and neither had siblings. It left very few people to care for the boy, people who actually knew where the child came from.
He didn’t doubt Uchiha Mikoto knew, like most of the young couple’s peers.
He had seen the young woman pass in front of the nursery window from afar nearly every day, while Jiraiya himself had not been able to muster the courage to get close before a few days ago. He didn’t believe for one second she was simply “around”, as the Uchiha compound, as destroyed as it was, was diametrically opposite to the hospital and one only needed to go to the hospital so much when their entire family were perfectly healthy.
But Uchiha Mikoto had two children of her own, clan responsibilities on her shoulders, and more than that, the express prohibition from the Hokage to risk outing Naruto’s identity. Kushina and Mikoto’s friendship had been as famous as it was feared, their impeccable teamwork making them terrifyingly efficient in the field. If she suddenly took an interest in a random child that looked like the spitting image of the late Yondaime, gossip would be the least of their problems.
Because Naruto could not be anyone else’s child, with a flock of blond hair, such a peculiar color that had contributed to Minato’s nickname of Yellow Flash, and big, bright blue eyes. Jiraiya had felt his heart stop at the sight.
It would be difficult enough on its own, to explain where this uncanny resemblance came from, without adding more suspicious clues in the mix. Sarutobi had yet to say anything to him, but Jiraiya wondered if the same prohibition was going to apply to him as well. That perspective scared him less than wondering what he would do if it, indeed, came to apply to him. Would he fight it? Be complacent? So far he had repressed the thought as much as he could.
He was a hypocrite. He resented Tsunade for having left the village, but he hadn’t stayed very long either, following breadcrumbs for a prophecy he couldn’t be sure was even real.
“He looks just like him. Maybe he’ll have inherited his mother’s personality.”
Tsunade hummed and Jiraiya didn’t pause to decide whether she was really listening or being polite.
“It would be entertaining to watch; Minato’s looks and Kushina’s flamboyant personality. You’ll have your work cut out for you healing him if you stay,” he added without thinking. He had not meant to say that. Perhaps he had thought it too much.
Tsunade’s eyes snapped to him and she fixed him with a cold, pointed stare. “I’m not staying.”
He blinked slowly, giving himself time to swallow the disappointment he had no right to feel. “I know.”
And he did. But at least she’d stayed a bit, even if it was under false pretenses. There were no intensive care patients at the hospital; none that required Tsunade to stay, at least. He had checked himself after she’d come to find him following that first week or so of avoiding him.
She hadn’t said anything at first, simply stayed with him as both of them sat in silence on a random bench in front of a 24/7 conbini in the dead of night. And then later, they had fallen back into familiar, if awkward, routine of hanging out with few words spoken between them, but the knowledge that they would listen. They went to izakayas where Tsunade promptly drank for three, went on walks outside the perimeter of the village where her demons were not as strong, and sat quietly on that sad bench. Orochimaru had not joined them once, constantly holed up in his lab, doing Kami knew what.
He had sought Jiraiya precisely once. Stood next to him in front of the memorial statue, in a very similar manner to the Hatake boy, completely silent, and not offering any gesture but his presence in support. But that was Orochimaru, so Jiraiya had not minded. Especially when he considered the fact that Tsunade had been the one avoiding him for a week, and their emotionally and socially stunted former teammate had been the one to reach out first.
What a bunch of hopeless mess they were. The Legendary Sannin… What a joke. One of them probably didn’t know what having feelings meant anymore, the other was a medic who couldn’t bear the sight of blood and kept running away, and the last had left his student to die, too busy looking for the child of prophecy that might have been right in front of him and writing erotic novels, days of travel away from where he was really needed.
He was starting to understand the gray streaks in their teacher’s hair.
Tsunade took another large swing of her pint, some of it leaking out of the corner of her mouth and went crashing in small droplets on the wooden table. Jiraiya wondered how long her being here was going to last.
As shinobi, they were taught from a young age that change was inevitable. That nothing was permanent and they couldn’t get distracted from it when on a mission. They needed to have one objective, one only, and stay focused on it. And as much as they were humans, and death-shaped change would never not hurt and beat them down, it was still a deeply ingrained lesson that Jiraiya couldn’t hope to forget.
When Tsunade left, and she would, it would hurt. There wouldn’t be anything he could to stop it. So he wouldn’t.
*
Kushina felt her body floating. Death had finally come, then. She had not expected it to feel this way. It was weightless and yet heavy. Like something was pulling her back still.
She didn’t feel pain any longer. She was aware of her body, where everything was, but she couldn’t feel it per se. It was dark, and Kushina did not know whether it was because her eyes were closed or whether she was in a dark place.
Minato was there too. She couldn’t see him, hear him, feel him, but she knew he was there regardless.
She was taken by a dizzy spell suddenly, but unable to stop it, this feeling of turning, turning, turning. Just when it was too much, it stopped.
And with it, that blissful pain-free existence. Her back collided with something hard and unyielding, as if she had fallen a great height and was not able to slow the descent. Her insides were all but gone, smashed together and she finally understood the meaning of the word gutted. How could she be nauseous?
She could see now, too; vast expense of blue stretching above her, white in her periphery, and light pooling around her. She managed to stretch her neck to the side. Minato was lying unconscious, eyes closed and so pale Kushina was sure he was dead. Her mind was too numb from the pain and the exhaustion for her to panic.
Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and some trailed down the bridge of her nose joining the rest down their path on her cheek as she stared at her lifeless husband. In a loop, echoing in her head, was a single word. Why, why, why, why, why, why, why.
Only for the cruel voice of the masked stranger to taunt – why not?.
Kushina couldn’t move, so she didn’t, but her heart screamed. The happiness of meeting their son had been snuffed out, and she would never see him again.
Distantly, she heard someone gasp. Someone yelled, terrified and desperate notes coloring the sound. Kushina didn’t look in that direction. She kept watching Minato, as long as she was allowed.
She blinked sluggishly every now and then, ignoring the pain each breath brought.
Was that her name being called? Kushina didn’t look.
Something warm against her icy skin touched her face. She didn’t look.
Someone screamed they needed to do something. Another voice yelled orders like a military commander. She didn’t look.
That voice was familiar. It brought warmth to her chest. But it didn’t last long. It was squashed by the intense, dizzying pain surging up when she was suddenly lifted in the arms of the voice. It was too much, and Kushina’s vision turned black once more.