Just for today, he thought, he'd put away his really cool hat and his robes, and head up to a hillside in Konoha.
He'd kind of always imagined how the other Hokages relaxed. Tsunade drank, an' probably gambled, Sarutobi smoked a pipe and urk, probably used that crystal ball a lot, Minato'd probably trained. Well, he trained too, but not so much to relax. He didn't even want to think of what the Second and the First Hokages did. Really. He didn't want to think about it.
But for him, by now, his energy turned towards the things that a Hokage should do best, with the politic struggles and the things that he could accomplish, going out on missions while leaving a clone behind to do his work, a one-man army, he was more quiet, more reserved. He went out drinking some of the time with Tsunade, sometimes with Sakura-chan or Hinata or even Ino, Neji and Shikamaru and Chouji, not so much with Lee. Lee was dangerous when he was drunk.
The Hokage sighed, bunshin'd, and left another slumped clone waiting for an arrival, while Naruto himself took a little stroll -- okay, a little leap, out of the office and began strolling purposefully away. With luck, the people or the council of Konoha would assume he was a clone and leave him alone.
Luck was with him, and he arrived at the hillside, the verdant grasses swaying stalk by stalk in the light breeze. It helped that unlike Suna Konoha ninja and people tended to be polite and not bother even their Hokage.
Naruto sank down onto the soft grass and lay back, not bothering to cushion his head with his arms, not even splaying out -- silent, half-asleep. He froze his entire body, as if he were on a stealth mission and hidden in the leaves, only allowing his eyes to roam above the horizon of his Konoha to stare at the vagrant sky.
No cloudwatching. Not to misunderstand him -- he understood perfectly why Shikamaru watched clouds, or at least why he used to, but he wasn't here to try to make sense of anything outside of him. That was what the rest of the year was for. But just for today, he'd try to look at himself and see how he'd changed over the past year.
This year was the fourth year he had been Hokage, and there had been many changes, most of them happy rather than sad. But he'd always been the sort of person to focus on the good times first, and leave out the bad. As a ninja that was ideal. As a Hokage...
Who had he lost this year? Kiba's death still haunted him, of course, though not in a ghostly sort of way. And that had been six months before he'd become Hokage. Who? Thankfully none of the Rookie Twelve -- now Ten, he supposed, had died this year, though the losses of his ninja he could still name, one by one by one, and he was almost thankful that he'd sent a clone with almost every A-class and higher mission, unwatchable, so that at least he could attempt to save those that had sacrificed themselves for the success of the mission.
He thought about the recent Akatsuki attack and winced; four separate ninja had died in one raid alone, all recently-graduated jounin. That had almost scorched his ranks of new jounin sensei.
Ichiraku was being restarted after the invasion, Ayame taking over for her father, their ramen getting better and better as they began to add recipes that Naruto ad gathered on his travels to other Countries, while pursuing the objectives of his own missions.
Iruka was still alive, still teaching at the Academy, still getting frustrated with class after class after class, but not to worry because he'd done it so many times before, and he was higher than chuunin but lower than jounin and no one protested his promotion from long service to Konoha. Most of the jounin'd been trained y him, after all.
ANBU was thriving, information gatherers, assassins, and spies making their way throughout all the countries, and he grinned. It was thanks to Rat and Rooster that he'd managed to close an alliance with Iwa after they'd, through a hell of a lot of hard work, found out that Iwa was being blackmailed by Oto.
Oto... Naruto's face closed, Oto was still--
He shrugged that away, thinking of other things, almost desperately.
Through all the things he'd learned that year, his mind wandered; through the familiar rocky paths and twists, until it ended up at the Kyuubi's cage. The Kyuubi still roared and battered at the cage, less its subtlety of his younger years. He liked to think that the loss of subtlety was due to his gain of it, but he knew otherwise, and small tears gathered at his eyes as he thought of seals, and Jiraiya alongside them. But only small ones, and after all the Icha Icha series, continued by Jiraiya's own pupil, continued with great success.
Ohhh yes, great success.
Feeling his muscles begin to grow still and completely relax, a strange almost-peace rising out of them, Naruto bade several clones come out of the city where he'd placed them before to watch over the preparations for the fifteen-day turn of the year, to keep an eye on his body. It wouldn't do for the Hokage to be assassinated when he was meditating, right? He might've been energetic but he had some shred of dignity left, thank you very much.
Lying back, he closed his eyes, closed his physical eyes and his mind's eyes near the Kyuubi's cage, closed further eyes to his memory, and fell deeper. Gaara had rarely talked about it, the time when before his grandmother rewoke him with her jutsu, but he had talked about it -- once -- and Naruto remembered. Every year, on this day, he tried to get to it.
Every year he got a little deeper.
He could feel the light, red-orange against the back of his eyelids, wear blacker from the inside-most point, spreading out oil-slick. Past the green-orange negative light that jaggedly scarred red-blood, Kiba's death, past the blood-black-flames dancing, Sasuke's betrayal and blinding, past the bubbling, choking devastation marring the eastern side of Konoha, Akatsuki's invasion, down into and past the wounds of this year.
Rejection. Rejection on both sides; he saw again the way he turned Hinata away, her eyes mistier than before, saw how Sakura-chan'd turned him out after another night of drunken revelry. Sure, whatever, he was Hokage. That didn't give him the right to hurt anyone...or to be hurt, as if he were still another stupid idiiot with big dreams.
But he forgave them much much more and easier than he forgave himself, and kept on going.
Never gonna give in, never gonna give up, that's my ninja way!
Down down past the fewest tuning spirals, lazy spinning, lazy singing, the harsher deaths of those that he could not forget, the sacrifices made by those now lying in the hospital being cared for, the broken bones and wounds and cuts that he should have cured. Or at least, been able to prevent, as their Hokage and their friend. In some way it was much harder to be their Hokage, having grown up as their peer, and sometimes it was not. Kakashi, he was doing well as Ibiki had done befoe him, except that he absolutely insisted on reading aloud the Icha Icha to prisoners. Naruto had to laugh at that, though his outside body moved not a muscle. The Kyuubi quavered and roared and rang, and jutsus filled this deeper part. He saw the Kawarimis he was taught, the very basic Bunshins they were taught at the Academy, the illusion spell and his Oiroke no Jutsu, progressing through all the jutsus that he'd used, through Sage Mode and even Ero-sennin's ones. Through the Rasengan and Raikiri, all the way through to even the simplest of the combined jutsus that he'd learned from Suna and Kusa and Iwa; having illusioned clones greatly helped in learning spells.
People, his relationships, were deeper, deeper than that, and his love for his Konoha and the people within it, added to the Rookie Twelve and their senseis, that they worked together as genin to chuunin to jounin alongside others who graduated after and before them, low-rank to high-rank, D-grade to S-class missions, again and again and again. The Rookie Twelve, elite ninja of the village. He always half-laughed when someone asked for the Rookie Twelve especially, but charged them extra for it. The Bingo book, and he couldn't help laughing at this, listed them all separately but under one whole, with orders for chuunin and even low-ranking jounin to flee on sight of them. That knowledge, deeper than memory, lay here, winking and glowing. Below his relationships, as he went deeper, he knew each of these intimate.
His dreams.
His often-spoken dream had changed, Naruto knew; as soon as he'd become Hokage, he'd wanted to be the best Hokage of them all, and to be remembered and maybe honored as the best Hokage of every one after him to come.
Maybe he'd grow older next year and the year after next and be the last ninja from the Rookie Ten or Nine or Eight or however many they were by the end, and he'd be remembered as Uzumaki Naruto, Number One Unpredictable Hokage, or something.
To be honest, he just wanted to live well and live easy, and then he reached the deepest he could go this year and fell asleep.
---
Rambling thoughts and an explosion, several explosions, filled his sleeping mind, the deepest he'd slept in a long time, probably the first this year and Naruto plunged upwards with a Rasengan in his hand. He thrust it upwards, leaping lucid unconsciously. He broke through the floor outside the Kyuubi's cage and burst upwards, smashing through the ceiling as the Kyuubi stopped howling for an instant to stare at the flying orange figure before beginning to rattle its cage again.
Ahead explosions burst and his people were shouting with strong emotion and Naruto snapped upwards and awake and faced several of the Rookie Ten and quite a few of the council, staring down at him with great intensity.
He sprang upwards and landed on a branch of the tree overhead of where he'd been sleeping, his muscles slow to respond to his commands. His clones had already dissipated, and his mind worked slowly, gearing up to speed.
Ahead a dizzy burst of explosion shattered the night and his 'minions' looked grim, several of the old, disapproving council-people glaring at him.
"What's happened?" he demanded, his body finally paying attention. "Who's attacked?"
Silence, angry from the councillors. In response, Hinata facefaulted and Neji simply pointed upwards silently.
Naruto looked up.
A firework, bursting with the sigil of the Hokage, burst into red, silent flames, and Naruto thwacked his palm against his head.
"Ohshi-- I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
A burst of speed later, the greatly dignified Hokage raced down to the ceremony being held in his honor, as the ninja behind him began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
Still the same Naruto; and they were glad for it, Hokage or no.