STILL no logistics, only plot devices

Third person pov

Minato balances on a line pulled taut.

Have you ever been so scared you can't breathe? Have you ever been so angry, that your lungs expand and contract with all the force of a huffing bull?

Minato has, but never at the same time like now. It feels like two unstoppable forces pulling against one another. Opposite sides of the same coin, and each wants to be flipped right-side up. It leaves his breaths coming out in a stuttering, uneven pattern. The ones that do escape him are great, heaving gusts. The ones that don't strangle up in his throat.

There is no information. Someone thinks they saw his son. They think he was alive, they think he was just unconscious. Minato wants to put hope in that, but the simple fact of the matter is that thinking is not knowing. Nobody has any idea of Minato's son is still breathing, and that drives through his middle like a stake.

Minato cannot tell whether or not fatherhood is abstract or not. In some ways he thinks it is. It's different for everyone, yet the same in so many ways. It does not follow any strict guidelines that Minato can see. It's wild in its abandon, constantly yanking him every which way and giving him no time to even think about getting himself steadied on his own two feet.

He knows a few things for certain. He knows he loves Naruto more than he's ever loved anything. He knows he would do anything for him at the drop of a hat. He knows he fears for him every day, fears for the instability of the village and the world his son will grow up in. He knows he is proud of him, of everything he does no matter how big or small. 

He knows he will break into something unrecognizable if Naruto is not alive. He knows he will become someone else. He knows that, once his rage subsides and the full force of his grief hits, it will shatter him entirely.

(He hopes, begs, it will not come to that.)

The forest his halfway burned through by the time Minato gets there. Considering that his reputation is based around the fact that he's probably the fastest man alive, it's a real testament to the ferocity of the flames. They reflect his anger in their boundlessness, in the way they eat away at everything around them. 

Chakra saturates the air. It's so heavy he can almost taste it. It's like a layer of sticky humidity, and his skin buzzes at the feel of it. It's like pins and needles all over, but Minato doesn't so much as bat an eye at it. All he does is gulp and steel himself, sensing about for any sign of his son as he traverses the burning forest.

The chakra that surrounds him as he does is angry. At first he fears it might be the Kyuubi's. That maybe Naruto did die and this is the nine tails releasing, dissipating to reform miles upon miles away who knows how far in the future. He considers that perhaps the seal was tampered with, that this is what leaked out. But no... no, that doesn't feel right.

Something about this charka is familiar, but it does not bring the same fear the Kyuubi's would. Minato has always been sensitive to different signatures. He's felt the latent energy of more tailed beasts in his time than most have thanks to his active role in the war. He knows what they feel like, knows the heady power they have and the spikes they dig in right to a person's marrow when their aggression starts to leak out.

This is not that. But this is-- almost close. In a rounder sense. Just as angry, maybe even just as dangerous, but it's not... it's not directed at him. He's not sure it's directed at anything at all, the way it's bleeding out in every direction uncontrollably. An automatic response of a sort. It scratches at the back of his mind like a dog wanting in the back door, but Minato can't get the knob to turn no matter how much he pulls.

Minato veers left, trying to follow the chakra to its source. The air is sweltering hot, heat licking at his skin and leaving him drenched with sweat and flushing. He feels Kakashi arrive and sees him somewhere in his peripheral, but he doubts he'll be able to do much better than Minato in terms of tracking. There's too much smoke blinding his nose here.

There's a sort of single-minded focus that takes control of Minato. His fear drives one foot in front of the other. His anger pushes him forward from the back, and his hope-- however hesitant it is to exist at a time like this-- pulls from the front. 

He feels a bit like a drifting ghost. The flames sometimes get too close for comfort, but Minato hardly registers it. He feels as though he is moving under water. He thinks he's past drowning now. The water has filled his lungs and his head, weighing him down and clouding his mind. His thoughts reflect in fractals, and he recognizes this distantly as all-consuming panic of a type he has only felt a few times in his life.

He is the static of a broken television. He walks through a storm of epic proportions, feels every pelting drop hit him and leave a bruise. His son is somewhere in this. Naruto is so small. As strong as he is, as resourceful, as smart-- he is still young, and more than that, he is hurt. And if Minato is barely making it through, barely able to weave through--

No. Minato can't do that. He has to see for himself. He has to keep going. Kakashi mirrors his steps behind him, and Minato thinks that more must follow. Tree branches crack, brittle and burnt black as they crash down around them precariously. The ground is ash beneath his feet. It reminds him of the Kyuubi. It reminds him of his death.

The chakra grows stronger. He plays a game of hot and cold in a world on fire. A few water droplets hit him. People, allies, trying to combat the flames. All it does is produce steam that billows up in an obscuring manner, but Minato thinks he's been blind from the moment he first stepped foot in this forest. 

It is a small eternity before they make it to the eye of it all. Minato hadn't thought there was one, but he supposes any respectable storm would have a center. It's calm here. Minato feels like he breaks through a tangible barrier when he steps into the untouched clearing. The fire does not reach here, spreading out and away instead of tinging within. His breath catches. He stares.

His world falls apart. It comes back together. He feels Kakashi stop at his back, frozen in place. Minato feels strangely lax, standing there with his arms hanging limply at his sides. A sense of helpless disbelief comes over him. He doesn't want to be confused, but there's very little else he could be in a situation like this. 

He'd thought... well. He'd known Danzo would be at the root of this. When he was informed Naruto was still in Konoha, that's where his mind had immediately gone. Orochimaru is a bit more of a surprise. Not a big one-- he supposes he should've suspected, really. He seemed like the type to want a Jinchuriki. 

Naruto his here. His chakra is weak, almost like its been sucked into itself somehow, but it's alive. The boy's bloody and limp, pale as a bone. Minato can see the rise and fall of his chest from where he lingers, unable to move and hardly able to think. He blinks rapidly a few times, trying to clear the illusion. His blue eyes meet a pair of confused indigo. 

He recognizes the chakra now.

"K...Kushina?" He rasps out, throat sore and scratchy from the smoke in the air. He takes in her maternity dress, the same one she wore giving birth to their son. Traces the flow of her fiery hair, starkly red even against the flames. She blinks at him a few times, as though she too thinks he's an illusion.

It's surreal. She stands there, a vision of the past. She looks exactly as she did the night of the Kyuubi attack, right down to her missing shoes and the dirt staining the bottom of her dress. Minato can't look away, his eyes stinging as they exist in a stand-still. It feels like it's just the two of them in a bubble.

His wife. That's... That's his wife. 

"Oh. There you are." She says back, sounding a little lost as she cradled Naruto closer. She squints, and now that he's closer, Minato can feel her carefully feeding her chakra into their son. "...You didn't seal yourself into Naruto too, did you? Because me doing it was an accident, ya know. Also, can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?"

The line Minato has been so precariously teetering on snaps, but he doesn't fall. Instead, he soars.

~~~

Um.

Kushina had only meant to seal some of her chakra in her baby. A last ditch attempt to leave a part of herself behind for him, ya know? If she'd known she'd somehow manage to seal herself-- as in, herself as a person-- in him... well, she still would've done it. No regrets there. She's just a little shocked is all.

There is no awareness in being sealed, she's found. One moment she's protecting her baby from a giant demon fox. Then she's sealing said giant demon fox in said baby to protect said baby and adjoining village. Then she's thinking something along the lines of "Wait a second, I don't think I did that seal right. Did I just--", and then her world goes dark.

It's like blinking but with a little more information, ya know? One moment she's there, the next she's not. Insert a little base knowledge there. She knows she was sealed. She knows where she was sealed. She knows that the whole sealing thing was her fault. She knows... okay, not much more than that, but what more is there to say?

Sealing people wasn't supposed to be possible. Maybe it had something to do with her being an Uzumaki, or maybe it was because she was a former jinchuuriki. Maybe when she sealed the Kyuubi, her fuck up in the seal had just taken her along for the ride in some weird sense. She doesn't know and quite frankly doesn't really care at the moment. She has bigger fish to fry.

The orange flash of light she comes from is disorienting. It's jarring, going from standing in front of your infant son to suddenly standing over the six year old version of him. Kushina recognizes him immediately. Suddenly being snapped forward, having just looked her baby, it's easy to pick out the slope of his nose and the spiking of his hair. 

She likes to think that maybe it has something to do with her being a mother, too. Kushina thinks she'd recognize her son anywhere, at any time and at any age. She thinks she'd feel this overwhelming amount of crushing love no matter what.

The sight of him should warm her. It should bring tears to her eyes. He looks just like her-- but just like Minato too, and it fills her heart to the brim. In any other circumstance, Kushina is sure she would break down and simply sit and hold him. Introduce herself and just-- watch him. Trace the whisker marks on his face and smile so wide it hurts.

But Kushina can't do that right now. Because right now, Naruto's face is far paler than it should be, the unnatural pallor making him look washed out and sickly. He's covered in blood and lays entirely limp, the rise and fall of his chest being the only physical signs of life he shows. His chakra reaches out to her tentatively, familiar and so warm she could drown in it. 

That's where she's spent the last-- however long its been. She may not remember it, but her body does. Her chakra reaches back, seeking to intertwine in a way it no longer can now that it's been pushed out. And how did it get pushed out, anyway? How is she here?

His chakra is large, and the very same as it was when he was born-- if not higher capacity. Kushina has always been chakra sensitive. It makes the switch into the future a little less rattling she thinks. Naruto's in front of her and the forest is burning around her. Naruto is in front of her and the forest is not burning, and he's also bigger, and-- yeah, she doesn't know. You get it, right?

He's so big now. Little, but... bigger. The memories of his birth are fresh, and the terror of having the nine tails free only just now starts to fade. There is no fox running rampant here. She can feel it, like a raging maelstrom, locked away deep in her son. Sealed. At least she and Minato had done that much right.

She stands there for a moment, opening and closing her mouth in search of words. Kushina thinks maybe there were some flashes that don't fit in. The smell of ramen, only it wasn't her smelling it. The color orange. Some flowers, maybe. She doesn't know, doesn't try to understand. Kushina's not stupid, but she's not super smart either. That's Minato's job.

Speaking of Minato, Kushina blinks a bit and stares some more. Realizes that something is obviously not right here if her son-who-is-no-longer-a-baby is bleeding and pale and sort of looks like he may be dying. Which is not good. Kushina doesn't like that at all, actually.

If Kushina is free, something is wrong. Very wrong. Something had to have triggered her release. Originally, she'd wanted to place a part of herself in her son to protect against tampering with his seal. A sort of failsafe. If something from the outside got too close to the release, it was supposed to activate and allow a piece of herself to intervene.

Sure, she'd given a little more than she bargained for, but she's willing to bet that she didn't fuck up the rest of it. And if she didn't fuck up the rest of it... that means something got close to Kyuubi's cell. Or tried to, at least. 

Kushina blinks a few more times. Feels fear settle in her chest when she realizes how shallow her son's breathing actually is, even if it is steady. She looks up.

She's not sure what she expects to see, but it's definitely not Orochimaru. He's in an ugly cloak, black with red clouds. There's a council member with him too. The one Minato hates and constantly whines about-- Denzo, or something like that. She doesn't know, doesn't really care about the specifics.

She's not caring about much of anything right now aside from the fact that her son-- her baby, her child-- is currently injured, bleeding out, pallid, hardly breathing, chakra fluctuating, laying on a disgusting slab of stone between a known rogue ninja and the slimiest member of Konoha's inner circle.

"What." Orochimaru more says than asks. Kushina's rage lights like a firecracker.

Minato's rage is pretty quiet. He lets it build until it bursts. It slowly spreads, like ice climbing across the surface of a pond. The frost speeds up the further the temperature drops, the more of it forms, and soon everything's frozen solid. The ice cracks into place, solid and growing harder and harder to break the more time passes.

If his anger is cold, Kushina's is boiling hot. Beyond boiling, even. It is volcanic, explosive, meteors falling and setting things aflame, crushing buildings and ruining lives. It blazes, flames arching higher, destruction spreading wider. Her anger is like a chili pepper, red and furious. 

It does not fail her here. She doesn't need the full story. She can get that later. What she needs right now is for these two to get the fuck away from her son. 

Yeah, she's still in her birthing dress. Yeah, she has no shoes on. Yeah, her hair is a mess, her body is sore from having the Kyuubi ripped out of her, and she's also pretty sure she may've gotten impaled at some point. At least that part didn't stick. The pain did, still stabbing through her middle. A phantom of an injury she's lucky to no longer have.

But even despite all that, Naruto is in clear danger. And no matter how old or young he is-- it doesn't fucking matter. Because Kushina is his mom no matter what. No matter when. No matter where.

She fought the Kyuubi. She sacrificed herself without a second of hesitation. She threw herself into the direct line of the Nine Tail's malice over and over again, even when it seemed hopeless. She got up on her two feet after giving birth to an entire human being and she sealed a tailed beast. 

A tailed beast that had been ripped out of her. And after that? Orochimaru and Dengo really don't look all that intimidating. 

"You." Kushina hissed out, eyes narrowing. Her chakra flared. Even if her physical body had been sealed and unable to full recover, her chakra was back tenfold. Orochimaru and Danbo (Probably his name?) stared at her with blatant shock. "Get the fuck away from my son."

Despite her affinities for water and wind, fire sure does have a habit of following her wherever she goes.

~~~~ 

Minato does briefly wonder if he's perhaps hallucinating. Maybe he died in that forest, when Naruto was taken from him, and this is the after. A reunion surrounded by a wall of fire on all sides, with his wife standing in the dead center of the chaos. She is the personification of the destruction surrounding them, piping hot and with hair so red it blends with the flames behind her.

Kushina's chakra is alive. Proof she is not an illusion, for an illusion would not pulse with such ingrained energy. Kushina has always been a walking powerhouse, her signature larger than life itself, all-encompassing in its sheer volume. 

It is an Uzumaki trait she has always worn with pride, even if it has meant stealth has never been her strong suit. You don't need to be a sensor to know she's coming. Minato had not realized how much he missed it until right this very moment. Of course he'd ached for her desperately, but the burn of her chakra against his skin and in his throat was a sensation you didn't realize you yearned for until you had it back.

Minato's emotions whip around him like a war banner. Kushina does not look nearly as devastated to see him here, more confused than anything. But then, she hadn't gone all this time thinking he was dead, either. It's obvious what's happened. Impossible to think about, but clear all the same.

Dressed in what she wore the night of the Kyuubi attack, and with her peculiar question asking if Minato had somehow sealed himself in Naruto too... some variation of what happened to Minato must've happened to her as well. She must've been suspended in time, dropped here six years later in Naruto's time of need.

If she was here, if she had somehow achieved what was thought to be an impossible feat-- her sealing herself, a living being, into another in stasis-- then that meant someone must've tampered with Naruto's seal. Minato had known Kushina'd studied a failsafe to put some of her chakra into their son in case something happened, in case the worst case scenario came to pass and they died and had to seal the fox in him.

They'd prepared. Hoped for the best, braced for the worst. Kushina must've done her part a little too well. In a situation like that, where emotions were high, he can't blame her. He'd clearly messed something up too if he was here. They'd fumbled the ball and overshot their goal, but that wasn't a bad thing. 

If she was here... If she'd saved their son, if she was getting the chance to hold him... that could never be a bad thing. And neither could Minato scooping him up and giving the loving home he deserved. 

Kushina doesn't so much as flinch when he appears in front of her, his arms wrapping around her hard and his breath escaping in a shuddering gasp. She can't hug back holding Naruto the way she so carefully is, but she does tilt her head into his shoulder, nose warm against the crook of his neck. Minato breathes in deeply despite the smoke in the air and gives himself five seconds to drown in her chakra.

One. She still smells like the burnt char of the Kyuubi's vitriolic chakra, which had rolled over them in thick waves after Naruto's birth. It was a smell that reminded Minato of war times, of the times Kushina would get so mad the nine tails' power would leak out and leave her skin and clothes stained with the scent for days after. 

Two. Her hair is just as soft as he remembers, and it's almost like she was never gone at all. Like she was just off on a long mission and is back now. In some ways, it is a blessing she has appeared now and not sooner. If she'd seen the way the village treated Naruto before, she'd have... well. She'd have burned it down.

Three. His mind struggles to wrap around the fact that she is here at all, even with her in his arms and her chakra pulsing around them like a separate, living beast with a mind of its own. His relief is like the ocean, vast and full of crashing waves and riptides that pull him under into the endless abyss of his own overwhelming love for someone he thought was gone.

Four. Kushina lets out a breath of air, and he lets one out with her. She's back. It's okay. It's all going to be okay. She is a missing puzzle piece he feels slot back into place. A chunk of his soul returned, sliding back where it belongs and leaving him complete and able to breathe for what feels like the first time in forever.

Five. She came back. Minato never should've doubted she would. Because if Minato had, it only made sense that Kushina would find a way to follow. His family was complete with her here to help him raise Naruto, to help him cradle Kakashi the way he deserved to be after having to stand on his own so long. Now, they could be together. Now, Naruto would know his mother through more than just stories of her mischief and bright grin.

But all of that can wait. As hard as it is, Minato can put that on pause. Because Naruto is small and hot to the touch, and though his wounds are no longer bleeding, his face remains pale and slack. And that simply won't do.

Naruto's chakra does not feel right. Yes, he's breathing. Yes, his heart is beating. Yes, he's alive. But he's not... awake. His chakra feels strangely buried. Not as though it has depleted, but rather like it has sunk into him so far that it can barely be felt. Occasional spurts of it escape, but he feels unnaturally empty as Minato pokes and prods at him.

Fear fills him. Kushina is alive and here, and that's wonderful. It is something he will break down over. He will hold her and sob into her hair, and his relief will radiate out from his every pore. He'll wear it like a cloak, and he'll let the weight her absence brought lift and dissipate into the air. He knows this all to be true, but all of that-- it is for later. Not now.

"It's a long story." Minato chokes out, pulling away from his wife. It feels like ripping he's himself in half as he does. His shaky hands drop from where they'd come to rest on her upper arms, his eyes coming down to glue onto Naruto's face. "They... They took him. I-I need to get him help. I need--"

Kushina's face goes grim, a scowl twisting her face. Her grip on Naruto tightens just so, a show of protectiveness that makes Minato's heart sing. Like him, she had recognized him right away. She probably had even faster than Minato had knowing her. Because if Minato's love for Naruto had been a steady and unending stream even before he was born, hers had been a perpetual storm of pelting rain and intense wind that would tear through anything in its way.

Naruto is everything. Kushina being back does not change that in any way, in any shape or any form. Minato would still give anything for him, and he knows his wife would too. That's why he has to be the main concern right now. That's why he's most important, above any and all else.

"Kakashi-kun can give me the details." Kushina shoved Naruto into his arms, gently as to not jostle him, and Minato received him with a shaky breath of relief. "Take him and go, Minato. H-He's okay, but his Chakra, it-- it's sinking deeper. Something is drowning it out. I think they-- something touched the seal. Something let me out."

The implications of what that could mean, for them, for Naruto, for the village-- they are terrifying. Minato nods. Having Naruto in his arms again makes it easier to breathe and think. He's not lost now. Minato has him, and that means he can do things. He can protect him, can get him help, can see him and have him. That's everything.

Holding Naruto close, Minato twirls one of his three pronged kunai in hand. He meets Kushina's eyes one last time. Indigo against blue. Parting so soon after finding her again feels viscerally wrong, but Naruto needs help that Minato doesn't know how to give. He has no idea what's wrong, and not knowing is one of the most dangerous things of all.

So he smiles at her, as reassuringly as he can, and he's gone in a flash.

Kushina watches him go, heart pounding hard in her chest. She feels cold without Naruto in her arms. Which is a bit ironic considering the world feels like it's quite literally burning around her, the fire close but not so close that it scalds her skin. Minato's a yellow blur that vanishes back into the towering flames she caused. 

She feels... a little lost. Out of the frying pan and into the not even proverbial fire, because like she said, the entire forest is-- you get it. Anyway. She just sort of... spawned into all this. What the hell is going on? The only things she knows for certain is that she sealed herself in Naruto, someone messed with the seal and sprung her, and she's been in there at least five years. Probably closer to six, maybe seven.

Maybe it was out of the fire and into another fire. After all, the last thing she remembered was the Kyuubi's rage surrounding them. The desperation she'd wielded like a sword back then is still somewhat raised, though in uncertain hesitation. She has no idea what happened while she was gone, or why Naruto was here.

She's going to find out.

"Well. This is terrible." Kushina decides, because it is. She feels raw, like an exposed nerve, and still lost. It's disorienting. She turns to look at Kakashi, who stands there gawking at her. "You're bigger. Bring it in and tell me what happened?" 

It's crass and blunt the way she says it, but that's just how Kushina is. Straight to the point, cutting every corner to ever exist and not bothering to beat around the bush, leaping straight over it instead. She opens her arms to the Hatake the same way she always used to when he'd get back from missions.

He didn't shy away from it or grumble this time. Didn't try to dodge and take off running, didn't make her chase him and tackle him to the ground. Instead his shoulders slouched out of their tense rise. He let out a vague choking noise-- a keen half caught in his throat. Kushina's expression twisted at the way tears welled in the younger ninja's visible eye.

She had no idea what had been going on while she was gone. She didn't know what she'd missed, or what she'd left behind. She had no idea if Minato had been here the whole time and just hadn't visibly aged or if he'd been gone too. She had no idea if Kakashi had been left alone, or where life had taken him in her time gone. But clearly... clearly he'd missed her.

And even though Kushina doesn't remember being gone, even though she blinked and was here... she missed him too. Not in the traditional sense, but in the sense that she wasn't there for all the growth he obviously went through. She wasn't there to see who he became. She wasn't there to force hugs on him or meals, to drag him around whenever she could get a hand around his arm.

She descends upon him the same way she always had. He's taller than she is now, so Kushina can't quite hug him hard enough to lift him off his feet anymore. She tries anyway, and he hugs back just as firm.

Neither pay any mind to the jonin and chunin who watch with varying degrees of shock. Neither react to the efforts to fight back the blaze of flames, water jutsu splashing about and sending droplets flying. Neither react to the manner in which Jiraiya trembles at the tree line of the clearing, staring at Kushina's bright hair like he's seeing a ghost.

They just stand there and hug for as long as they need to. And after a moment, that seems to be enough. Kakashi swallows and he braces himself. His voice comes out scratchy and low, his hands curling into the fabric of Kushina's dress as she rubs up and down his back.

He starts at the beginning. He starts six years ago, when two empty caskets were buried side by side and a blonde baby was left in a cold, empty room at an orphanage. When Kakashi came back from his mission to find Konoha in shambles, his sensei gone and Naruto barred from him, hidden away from the public and Kakashi included.

Kushina does not interrupt, but her chakra pipes hot and thick all over again. She shakes as her rage rises and rises. Because if Kushina is not going to beat around the bush, Kakashi won't either. He tells her everything, hugging her all the while, like his arms can contain the force of nature she will become as soon as he's finally done.

(They will not. But standing there, speaking in that low tone, it's easy to pretend.)

~~~

The world is quiet, and he will not wake. No matter what Kurama murmurs to him, no matter how he gently shifts his chakra, no matter how he pulls him closer and curls his body around the child. He is still as a corpse, and it is only a small solace that he is not as cold as one too.

Kurama knows how to be patient. As old as he is, as much time as he has spent doing nothing whilst sealed away, he must be. Patience is waiting. It is having nothing but your thoughts. It is forcing yourself to occupy yourself, to fill the silence, because you may go crazy if you do not.

Mostly, Kurama has slept in these quiet moment. It's easy to drift. Being sealed takes a lot out of him. He is the equivalent to a malnourished, neglected animal like this. Contained in such a way, there is no room for him to spread out and stretch the way he is meant to. His fur is flat and dull, and he holds a skinny, wiry frame where he should have fat and muscle on his bones.

He cannot sleep now. Cannot even fathom the thought. He feels if he so much as blinks, Naruto's chest will stop its steady rise and fall. He has repaired what he can, but there's only so much he can do with the seal as strong as it is. Though Naruto is in here with him and Kurama can reach him as a result, his inner body is not the same as his physical one. It is more of a... door. One Kurama can barely fit through.

The seal is a barrier that prevents him from fixing this. And Kurama wants to do that. He wants to open the windows back up so he can know what's going on outside. Naruto could be ripped away from him at any moment, at any time. What would he do if someone decided to plant a kunai right through the boy's temple? 

The uncertainty makes him nervous. It makes his tails and chakra thrash, hitting against the sides of the cage and precariously leaking out. He tries to slowly count backwards to calm himself, tries to take deep breaths. It is to no avail. 

Naruto's expression does not change. Kurama wills it to. Wills him to scrunch his nose, or frown, or smile, or twitch, or-- or give any indication that he is still in there. What if this is fruitless? What if he is gone, and all Kurama is doing is keeping his body alive? 

The thought scares him more than he thought possible, making him bare his teeth and squint teary eyes. It itches him down to his core, agitates him more than anything has in a while. How has this child wormed his way so deeply into Kurama's sense of being? How has he made existence itself seem impossible if he is not a part of it?

No. No, he has to believe he's going to be okay. Kurama will fall apart otherwise-- and who will hold Naruto if he does that? The boy's impudent father will find him. Maybe he even already has. Maybe Naruto is resting in a soft hospital bed right now. 

Maybe he will wake up soon and pop right out Kurama's paws and back into reality, complaining loudly about how he's hurt, and hungry, and how the hospital blanket "sucks" and is too scratchy. Maybe he'll remember some, and maybe he'll talk about how Kurama is his friend and held him while he was under. 

Maybe after that he'll fall asleep later, when he's been fed and checked over. He'll appear. He'll thank Kurama for saving him, and complain about how "uncool" the whole thing was, and relate it back to some other abhorrent incident he experienced before his father reappeared. Maybe he'll call Kurama his best friend ever, like he always seems so keen to. Maybe he'll hug Kurama's nose and tell him he loves him.

And maybe Kurama will say it back. 

"I've got you." Kurama breathed out. He could do this. He is the nine tailed fox. He can do anything. He has Naruto, he's got his chakra healing him, holding him. He will wake up. He just needs time. Kurama can do time. "I've got you. Just-- Just wake up, you little brat. That's all you've got to do."

Kurama curled deeper into his cage, deeper around Naruto. He ducked his head into the corner, eyes trained on the young boy. If anything in Naruto changed, he was going to see it. No matter how small it was. This is what best friends are for, isn't it? His focus was unshaking. 

So unshaking that he didn't notice the seal beginning to glow with a soft, orange light-- one that is lost in the sea of his frothing red chakra. 

~~~

Waadajkdks

Read up to chapter 31 on Patreon's Early Access, and participate in talks of a possible book 2! And the inbetween series that will bridge the gap between them! The Link is in my bio, or right here: https://www.patreon.com/strawhatpirate

There's also been some Naruto story drafts pitched on there (Naruto being a soul seer, Shikamaru saving everyone from the infinite whatever genjutsu, Naruto seeing ghosts, etc, etc, stuff) if you're interested in thoseeee

I also started ANOTHER Naruto series on there (so far it's only two parts) idk if I'll ever post it on wattpad but um here's the description--

Title: Backwards March

Summary:
He doesn't know how it happened. All he knows is that someone had dared try to attack Naruto, and as his acting ANBU guard, Kakashi had obviously dove right into the middle of it. Just his luck that it would hit the both of them anyway. And just his luck that, of all places, it would send him here.

Or: Kakashi is sent into the past, his older body melding with his past one and leaving him twelve years old. And that's all good and dandy, sure. The only issue is that Naruto came too. And with no past body to go into, Kakashi now has a nine month old jinchuuriki to lug around.

Oh well. At least Kakashi's finally allowed to hold him.

To put it simply: Time traveler Kakashi is running around doting over baby Naruto. Minato, Obito, and Rin just want to know where this baby came from and why Kakashi's being so nice all of a sudden. And why he's bringing said baby literally everywhere he goes.

Also idk if literally ANYONE here remembers The Things She's Seen or if you were readers of that (if you are holy shit, hi? You're so old? We're so old? I can't believe you've stuck around this long) but,,, as I get back into Naruto, because I have been circling back into it HARD, I am really thinking of bringing it back. I miss Hollow man. And if I do, it'll start on there! 

I say this wholeheartedly, cringing violently as I do but knowing it must be done and sort of not caring, but UCHIHA, BITCH