Chapter Text
“Jiji!”
Hiruzen’s eyes widened at the voice. His hands slowed for half a breath, but no more. He could not falter. Not now. The First and Second were sealed. Their souls were beyond Orochimaru’s reach. He had only one last task before him, one final duty.
And he could not fail.
Not again.
His old student sneered at him from across the ruined roof, a new expression twisting across his pale face. Hiruzen did not like it.
He had to finish this.
Quickly.
He locked eyes with Orochimaru and forced himself to ignore the child shouting on the other side of the barrier. Naruto could not interfere. Not with the Four Violet Flames still standing between them. Not with ANBU locked outside. Not with death itself already breathing down Hiruzen’s neck.
His hands flashed faster.
Orochimaru’s did the same.
Hiruzen’s eyes narrowed. The seals were unfamiliar, sharp and ugly in their rhythm, and for one sick instant, he realized this was no defense.
It was not a counterattack.
And Hiruzen did not know what it was.
“Jiji!”
Naruto’s voice cracked across the rooftop.
The Four Violet Flames shuddered. For one impossible second, the wall between the battlefield and the world beyond thinned and peeled open.
Hiruzen’s breath caught.
No.
Orochimaru’s eyes slid past him.
To Naruto.
The boy was already running toward them, battered and wide-eyed and determined, as if determination had ever been enough to stop a god.
“Naruto!” Hiruzen shouted in warning.
He slammed his hand against the ground.
Orochimaru mirrored him.
The Shinigami’s hand passed through Hiruzen’s chest.
Orochimaru screamed. His arms fell limp at his sides. Useless, empty things. Yet even through the pain his mouth twisted into something like triumph.
Light flared around Naruto.
“Jiji!” Naruto stumbled to a halt, fear cutting through his voice as the light closed around him.
Hiruzen lunged for him, fingers grasping desperately for the smaller hand stretching back toward him.
For one impossible heartbeat, their fingers nearly touched.
Then the light vanished.
Naruto was gone.
Orochimaru remained, his arms limp and dead at his sides as he laughed.
Hiruzen turned on him, feeling something sick twisting in his gut.
“What have you done?” he demanded.
Orochimaru laughed, low and breathless. “You always did love your sacrifices, sensei.”
Hiruzen’s breath caught.
Orochimaru’s eyes slid to the empty stretch of roof where Naruto had been.
“This one should keep you company for the rest of your life.”
Then chakra gathered around him, sharp and unstable, and he disappeared in a swirl of leaves just as shinobi flooded the rooftop.
“No,” Hiruzen whispered.
His knees struck the tile before he noticed they had given out on him.
It couldn’t be.
He had been the sacrifice. He had made the choice. He had summoned the Shinigami and offered his own soul, his own life, in exchange for stopping Orochimaru.
Not Naruto.
Voices rose around him. ANBU and shinobi moved in a blur, checking him over, asking questions, calling for medics, investigating where Orochimaru could have gone.
Hiruzen barely heard any of it. His eyes remained fixed on the empty patch of roof where Naruto had stood only moments before.
“Hokage-sama! Hokage-sama! Tou-san!”
Hiruzen jerked, blinking at the shinobi kneeling in front of him with one hand braced on his shoulder.
Asuma’s face was tight with alarm.
“Asuma,” Hiruzen whispered.
Asuma’s grip tightened. “What happened? Where is Orochimaru?”
“Escaped.” The word tasted like bile. Hiruzen swallowed hard, but it did nothing to clear the sickness rising in his throat. “He’s gone.”
Asuma nodded once, jaw tight, and opened his mouth to ask something else.
Another figure burst onto the rooftop.
“Where is he?”
Hiruzen’s heart clenched.
Kakashi stood at the edge of the wreckage, breath sharp, single visible eye already sweeping the rooftop.
“Orochimaru escaped,” Asuma said.
Kakashi shook his head, gaze moving over broken tiles, gathered shinobi, ANBU, blood, and scorch marks. Searching.
Not for Orochimaru.
Hiruzen knew who he was looking for.
“He’s gone,” Hiruzen said.
Kakashi’s eye snapped to him. Only then did Hiruzen realize he was still on his knees. He forced himself to stand, one aching movement at a time, and gathered the shattered pieces of himself behind the mask of Hokage.
Kakashi stared at him, suddenly very still.
Afraid.
“Naruto?” His voice was barely more than a breath.
“What?” Asuma looked between them, confusion cutting through his alarm. “The jinchuriki? What does he—”
“He’s gone,” Hiruzen repeated.
He was not sure he could say more. Could keep standing if he did.
But he was the Hokage. He had to stand.
Kakashi shook his head once, then again, as if denial alone could drag the boy back. His eye was wide and pleading, begging Hiruzen to take the words back. Hiruzen could not.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Kakashi did not move.
Hiruzen met that blue-grey eye and watched anguish bloom there, raw and silent and terrible.
“I’m sorry.”
~NARUTO~
“Kakashi-sensei!”
Kakashi stiffened at the sound of his pink-haired student’s voice.
For one wild, selfish heartbeat, he thought about pretending he had not heard her. Thought about simply running away.
Then he swallowed hard, reined in what little remained of himself, and turned.
Sakura was running toward him with the others close behind her. All of them looked battered and bruised. Dirt streaked their faces. Blood marked clothes and bandages. Sasuke was leaning heavily against Shikamaru, his jaw tight with the kind of stubbornness that was probably the only thing keeping him upright.
But they were alive.
Alive and safe and standing in front of him with questions in their eyes.
All of them were there.
All but one.
“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura repeated, pushing a stray strand of hair from her face. “Did you find him?”
“He really shouldn’t have been running around after his fight with Gaara-san,” Shikamaru muttered. His voice was flat with exhaustion, but his eyes remained sharp. “Troublesome.”
“Shikamaru,” Ino chided, though there was no real heat in it.
“His flames of youth truly burn brightly!” Lee declared, one fist raised despite the bruises mottling his skin.
“So, where is he?”
Kakashi blinked at Sasuke. His dark-haired student stared back at him, pale beneath the dirt and blood. His eyes fixed on Kakashi’s face with a terrible intensity. Around him, the others fell quiet. Eleven pairs of eyes turned to Kakashi, expectant and worried and far too young.
All waiting for news he could not give them.
“Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura’s voice softened. Her eyes searched his face, and whatever she found there made the color drain from her cheeks. “He’s alright, isn’t he?”
Kakashi’s mouth went dry.
“Naruto,” she said, as if saying his name could make the answer change. “He’s okay, right?”
He wanted to leave.
The thought came so suddenly that it nearly stole the air from his lungs. He wanted to turn away from them, from the ruined village, from the smoke still rising into the sky. Wanted to run from the grief spreading through him. To hide away in his apartment behind a locked door. To grieve in silence and darkness.
He wanted anything but this.
“Sensei.”
Sakura’s voice had changed.
Kakashi looked at her and saw the exact moment she understood. Her bright green eyes widened in horror. She took one step back, shaking her head slowly, already denying words he had not managed to speak.
“He’s gone,” Kakashi finally managed to croak out. The words emerged rough and broken.
For one moment, no one moved.
“Where?” Kiba demanded.
Kakashi closed his eye against the sting burning there.
“Kakashi,” Sasuke said, and there was something dangerous beneath his voice. “How?”
Of course Sasuke had heard what Kakashi had not said.
Kakashi opened his eye again.
They deserved the truth. Naruto’s friends deserved that much, even if Kakashi wanted to choke on every word.
“He died protecting the Hokage,” Kakashi said.
Sakura made a small sound, wounded and disbelieving.
Kakashi forced himself to continue.
“Killed by Orochimaru.”
“No!”
The cry tore through the group.
Several of the children jumped as Hinata dropped to her knees, both hands pressed over her mouth, tears brimming in her eyes. Kiba was beside her in an instant, one hand hovering uselessly before settling on her shoulder. Shino stood over them both, silent and rigid, his head bowed.
Kakashi shifted where he stood.
He did not know what to do.
He had half a mind to run. He should run. He had never been any good at this. Comfort had always felt like a language everyone else had been taught while he was out learning how to bury bodies and follow orders.
He would only make it worse.
But he could not leave them.
Not here.
Not after telling them their friend was dead.
Sakura was crying now, tears cutting clean lines through the dirt on her cheeks. She still looked at Kakashi like she was waiting for him to take it back.
The other teams drew closer to each other in small, stunned movements. Choji had gone pale. Ino’s hands were clenched in front of her mouth. Tenten’s eyes shone as Neji stared past Kakashi with a blankness too controlled to be calm.
And Sasuke stood very still.
Too still.
His hands curled into fists, tighter and tighter, until blood welled where his nails bit into his palms.
“I’ll kill him,” Sasuke said softly.
Kakashi’s breath caught.
Sasuke’s eyes burned red, tomoe spinning through grief and fury.
“I’ll kill that snake for what he’s done.”
“You won’t be alone,” Shikamaru said.
Kakashi looked at him, startled by the quiet vehemence in his voice.
Sasuke’s head snapped toward him. “Back off.”
“No.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Well, you’re getting it.”
That came from Sakura.
Her tears were still falling, but her eyes had hardened into something bright and terrible. She stepped forward, shoulders trembling, hands clenched at her sides.
Kiba looked up from where he crouched beside Hinata. “Yeah. Whether you want it or not.”
“My friend is right!” Lee declared, his voice thick but fierce. “Naruto-kun was our friend as well, and his flames of youth burned brightly! We shall all avenge him!”
One by one, the others nodded.
Even Shino.
Even Neji.
Sasuke bared his teeth, but he did not argue again.
Kakashi stared at the eleven children in front of him and wondered, distantly, when Naruto had made so many friends.
He remembered shadowing the boy when he was small. Remembered watching Naruto trail after other children with too-wide smiles and too-loud laughter, trying so hard to be noticed, trying so hard to be wanted. Remembered doors closing. Parents pulling their children away. The boy left standing alone in streets that had never been kind to him.
And now he had this.
Friends who cried for him.
Friends who wanted vengeance for him.
Friends who would have stood beside him, if only there had still been time.
Kakashi shoved the thought into the deepest corner of himself and locked it there.
More shinobi were arriving now. Medic-nin, ANBU, jōnin, chūnin, all moving through the wreckage in urgent, overlapping waves. Voices rose around them. Orders. Questions. Reports. Somewhere nearby, someone said Naruto’s name.
Then someone else repeated it.
And just like that, the news began to spread.
Naruto Uzumaki was dead.
~NARUTO~
Jiraiya stood before the black stone with his head bowed.
The memorial was quiet that morning. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that settled over the village after too many names had been carved into stone and too many people had pretended they knew what sacrifice meant.
His eyes found the newest addition.
Uzumaki Naruto.
“Stupid kid,” Jiraiya muttered, the words rough.
He ignored the tear that slipped down his cheek.
Sarutobi-sensei had named Naruto a hero. Of course he had. If the kid had not shown up when he did, if he had not run straight toward danger like his feet had never learned any other direction, Sarutobi would probably be dead.
Jiraiya’s jaw clenched.
He hated himself for the thought that followed.
Because Sarutobi-sensei had lived a long life.
Naruto’s had barely started.
He had blamed Sarutobi at first. Raged at him. Spat ugly words about duty and children and old men who should know better. It had been easy to be furious with his sensei. Easier than being furious with himself. Easier than admitting the truth.
Naruto had been there because Jiraiya had let him be there.
Because Jiraiya had gotten involved just enough to matter, just enough to give him hope, and not enough to save him.
“Sorry, kid,” Jiraiya whispered.
He reached out and ran his fingers over the carved name.
“I knew I never should’ve gotten involved with you.”
His throat tightened.
“All my students die young.”
His hand dropped from the stone and curled into a fist at his side.
For a moment, he could still see the kid grinning at him, all sharp confidence and orange cloth and too much faith in people who had not earned it. Jiraiya had thought there would be time. Time to teach him. Time to complain about him. Time to watch him grow into the kind of trouble that made legends sweat.
“I just thought…” Jiraiya stopped.
The words would not come. Useless and heavy.
He let out a long, slow breath and turned away from the stone.
“Sorry.”
The walk back to the Hokage Tower took longer than it should have.
Sarutobi-sensei had requested he come by that afternoon. Jiraiya was already late, but he could not bring himself to hurry. The village moved around him in uneasy pieces, still bruised from the invasion, still rebuilding, still pretending it knew how to survive itself.
Then he heard the voices.
“Did you hear?”
“Yes. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“I suppose the demon was good for something after all.”
“At least we’re finally rid of that brat.”
Jiraiya stopped.
Slowly, he turned his head toward the villagers gathered near the edge of the street.
They did not notice him at first. Of course they didn’t. People rarely noticed or acknowledged what was right in front of them.
His scowl darkened.
The conversation died as soon as one of them looked up and recognized him.
Good.
For one ugly second, Jiraiya wanted to cross the street. Wanted to grab them by their collars and shake them until their teeth rattled. Wanted to make them understand exactly whose name they were spitting on.
But they did not know Naruto.
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
They had never known him. Not the boy. Not the grin. Not the stubborn, ridiculous heart of him. They knew a story they had been told and a fear they had been allowed to keep, and now they were celebrating the death of a child who had saved them in more ways than one.
Jiraiya’s hands curled at his sides.
He forced himself to keep walking.
By the time he reached the Hokage’s office, the anger had settled low in his chest, hot and useless.
“Thank you for joining us, Jiraiya,” Sarutobi-sensei said as he entered.
Jiraiya blinked.
He had expected his sensei. He had not expected the two genin standing stiffly in the middle of the office.
One was unmistakably an Uchiha, dark-haired and rigid, with a bandage visible beneath the edge of his collar. The other was a girl with short pink hair, her hands clasped tightly in front of her and her green eyes red-rimmed from too little sleep or too much crying. Most likely both.
Naruto’s teammates.
“Now we’re just waiting on—”
“Sorry I’m late.”
Kakashi appeared in a swirl of leaves.
For once, the Hatake brat was not reading one of Jiraiya’s books. He stood very still after he arrived, his visible eye moving from the Hokage to Jiraiya to the two genin. Curiosity flickered there, muted beneath something much heavier.
“Kakashi,” Sarutobi finished.
He sighed and looked over the shinobi gathered before him.
Jiraiya crossed his arms. “What’s this about, sensei?”
Sarutobi took a long draw from his pipe.
For a moment, he only studied them, old eyes lingering on each face in turn. When his gaze passed over Naruto’s teammates, something in his expression cracked before he sealed it away again.
“I am assigning the four of you a special mission,” he said.
“What?” the pink-haired girl blurted.
She seemed to realize who she had interrupted a heartbeat later and stiffened. “I mean—Hokage-sama?”
Sarutobi smiled at her.
The expression was gentle, but grief sat inside it like smoke trapped beneath glass.
“The events of a month ago have made one thing very clear to me,” he said. “I am no longer fit to hold this position.”
Kakashi jerked. “Hokage-sama, that’s not—”
Sarutobi held up a hand.
Silence fell.
Jiraiya looked away first.
He hated that he agreed.
“I will remain until a successor is secured,” Sarutobi continued. “But Konoha needs someone stronger than I can be now. Someone who can rebuild what was broken. Someone who can protect this village from threats.”
Sasuke’s face did not change, but his hands tightened at his sides.
Sarutobi’s gaze shifted to him briefly, then to Sakura, then back to Jiraiya and Kakashi.
“I am asking you four to find Tsunade and convince her to return to Konoha.”
The silence that followed was immediate and heavy.
Jiraiya let out a humorless breath. “That’ll be near impossible.”
Sarutobi nodded. “Perhaps.”
“She won’t come back just because we ask.”
“No,” Sarutobi agreed. “She will not.”
Jiraiya narrowed his eyes.
There was more here. He could hear it in the old man’s voice.
Sarutobi looked at the two genin again.
Sakura stood straighter beneath the attention, though her fingers twisted in the hem of her shirt. Sasuke stared back with a dark, focused intensity that made something cold settle in Jiraiya’s stomach.
“You will need the best chance I can give you,” Sarutobi said. “And they need to be away from the village for a time.”
Sasuke’s eyes sharpened.
Kakashi went very still.
Jiraiya understood then.
Orochimaru had marked the Uchiha. Naruto was dead. Sakura had lost a teammate and nearly lost another. Kakashi was standing like a man held together by wire. None of them were going to heal by being left in the ruins with nothing but grief and anger for company.
And if Tsunade could be convinced…
Jiraiya looked at Naruto’s teammates again.
The girl with red-rimmed eyes.
The boy with vengeance already sinking hooks into his bones.
He did not like it.
He understood it anyway.
“You think dragging them across the country to chase Tsunade is going to help?” Jiraiya asked quietly.
Sarutobi’s expression did not change.
“I think standing still will destroy them.”
No one spoke.
Jiraiya closed his eyes for a moment.
Stupid old man.
Stupid village.
Stupid kids who died too young and left everyone else trying to find meaning in the hole left behind.
Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at Sasuke and Sakura.
“Well,” he said, voice rougher than he wanted it to be. “Hope you brats packed good shoes.”
Sakura blinked.
Sasuke scowled.
Kakashi’s eye curved faintly, but there was no humor in it.
Sarutobi looked down at his pipe, smoke curling between his fingers.
“Bring her home,” he said.
Jiraiya looked away.
He could read between the lines well enough.
Find Tsunade.
Keep the Uchiha away from Orochimaru.
Give Sakura something to do with her grief.
Give Kakashi a mission before he disappeared into ANBU and never quite came back out.
Give Jiraiya one more student-shaped mistake to make.
He hated it.
He understood it anyway.
~NARUTO~
Three years.
Jiraiya let out a quiet breath as the gates of Konoha rose ahead of him, familiar and unchanged in a way that made something painful twist beneath his ribs.
Three years since the invasion.
Three years since Sarutobi-sensei had lived.
Three years since Naruto had not.
Beside him, Sasuke walked with his hands shoved into his pockets and a scowl fixed firmly on his face, as if he could intimidate the village itself into pretending nothing about this mattered.
Jiraiya glanced at him and snorted.
The brat had grown. Taller now, sharper, all hard edges and tightly leashed anger. Still too young to carry the kind of vengeance he had sworn, but old enough to have shaped himself around it anyway. But most surprisingly of all, beneath all that anger and desire for revenge sat a firm belief in teamwork. In friendships and bonds. In helping each other.
It had been almost three years since Jiraiya had left Konoha with Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke in search of Tsunade.
They had found her.
Eventually.
It had taken a ridiculous amount of alcohol, several well-placed bets, one spectacularly ill-advised argument about duty, and a battle against Orochimaru that had nearly gotten both genin killed. But they had brought her home. They had convinced her that Konoha needed a Fifth Hokage.
Or maybe they had convinced her that the dead deserved better from the living.
Jiraiya had never asked which argument had worked.
It had been two and a half years since he had taken Sasuke with him after that, promising to make him stronger.
The confrontation with Orochimaru had infuriated the boy. Not just because of the curse seal. Not just because Orochimaru wanted him. But because Naruto’s killer had stood in front of him, breathing and smiling and still out of reach.
Jiraiya had seen the look in Sasuke’s eyes that day and understood two things very clearly.
Orochimaru would not stop hunting him.
And Sasuke would not stop hunting Orochimaru. Not completely.
So Jiraiya had taken him.
He had told himself it was practical. He knew enough about seals to help stabilize the curse mark. He knew Orochimaru well enough to predict some of his moves. He was strong enough to keep the brat alive and irritating enough to keep him from brooding himself into a grave.
Mostly.
He only hoped it had been enough.
Jiraiya was not sure he could stand to lose another student, even one as grumpy and revenge-minded as the Uchiha brat.
Especially not that one.
Two figures waited near the gates.
Jiraiya felt relief hit him so hard and so unexpectedly that he almost missed a step.
Kakashi was still alive.
The Hatake brat stood beside Sakura with one hand tucked in his pocket, his visible eye curved into that lazy one-eyed smile, Jiraiya’s newest book open in his other hand as if he had not noticed their approach at all.
Jiraiya knew better.
He also knew Kakashi had thrown himself back into ANBU almost the minute Sasuke had left with him and Sakura had started training under Tsunade. Knew he had taken the ugliest missions available, the ones with survival odds that made sane shinobi develop sudden illnesses and scheduling conflicts.
The same thing he had done after Minato died.
But Kakashi was there.
Standing.
Breathing.
Reading smut in public like an emotionally constipated scarecrow.
Jiraiya would take it.
“Sasuke-kun! Jiraiya-sama!” Sakura called, waving as they approached.
She had grown too. Her hair was long again, falling well past her shoulders now, soft pink strands shifting in the breeze as she waved. Kakashi had mentioned it once in a letter, almost offhandedly, which meant it had mattered more than he wanted to admit. Naruto had loved her long hair. Sakura had never said that was why she was growing it out again.
She had not needed to.
Like Sasuke taking on Naruto’s belief of teamwork and bonds, Sakura grew her hair out to remember him.
“Yo,” Kakashi said, lifting one hand without looking up from the page. “Welcome back.”
Sasuke grunted.
Then Sakura reached him and pulled him into a hug.
For one priceless second, Sasuke looked personally betrayed by the concept of affection.
Then his shoulders eased.
Only a little.
Only enough for someone watching closely to notice.
Jiraiya noticed.
So did Kakashi, judging by the faint curve of his eye.
Sasuke did not hug Sakura back, exactly, but he did not shove her away either. His mouth twitched, small and reluctant, before he smothered it beneath a scowl.
Glad to be home, then.
Brat.
The four of them made their way toward the Hokage Tower together.
Sakura filled the walk with chatter, updating them on everything that had happened since her last letter. Hospital gossip. Training complaints. Tsunade’s temper. Shizune’s attempts to control said temper. Repairs to the eastern district. A new dumpling stand near the market. Ino’s latest argument with her father. Kiba’s latest argument with everyone.
Kakashi kept his nose in the little orange book.
Sasuke adopted a bored expression and pretended not to listen.
Jiraiya walked behind them and let the noise wash over him.
For a moment, he almost believed it.
That they had survived the worst of it.
That grief had not healed, exactly, but scarred over. That Sakura had found purpose, Sasuke had found discipline, Kakashi had not managed to get himself killed, and Jiraiya had not ruined another student beyond repair.
That the tragedy from three years ago had not broken them.
Only changed them.
He should have known better than to trust a peaceful thought.
They entered the Hokage Tower, climbed the familiar stairs, and stepped into the office.
Tsunade stood by the open window, sunlight catching in her blonde hair as she turned to face them. For a moment, her gaze lingered on Sasuke, then Sakura, then Kakashi, then Jiraiya.
Her smile was small.
Tired.
But real.
“Welcome back,” she said.