Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
"He won't last a year," I had laughed, when Jiraiya tracked me down to the restaurant on the border of Hi no Kuni to tell me. I even bet money on it; Jiraiya, not exactly incensed, but angry at the way I was acting, took me up on that offer and told me that in a year's time he was going to be fifty thousand ryo richer.
Namikaze Minato. I remembered him, most strongly from watching him get swatted against the ground by a Sand kunoichi when he was fourteen during the Chunin Exams. He was Jiraiya's prized protégée, but his defeat against an undersized kunoichi was what I remembered best about him. That and his smile. I hadn't seen him since he was seventeen; he was twenty two and a half when he was confirmed as Yondaime Hokage.
I didn't think Minato was the best choice for Yondaime; there were many others who would have done much better. Yes, I thought he was good Hokage material, but not at twenty-two. No one was good kage material at twenty-two, and that they became good kage material later on and that their village didn't fall to pieces in the interim was only a sign that they had potential and that there wasn't anything wrong with the village foundations. Later, maybe, no, certainly, but not then. Minato needed more experience; he was too young, far too young, for such a weight upon his shoulders.
The weight of the kage's hat was a burden that had bowed far older and wiser men than Minato. He had no idea what was in store for him, the pain, the worry, the cares and the heartaches that came with running a village and being the effective military governor and general of an entire nation. Minato had little experience with leadership; he was young enough that unless he was the senior officer present, which was rare, leadership of a mission or a squad was usually deferred to an older, more seasoned shinobi.
He was too idealistic. Minato thought he could change the world, and few men truly survive their disillusionments. He would discover, in time, that there were a million obstacles standing in his path, and that everyone he met would oppose change when he proposed it.
And in truth, Minato himself hit a little too close to home. He was the same age as my brother would have been had he lived, and from what I recalled of him he fit Dan's personality almost to a tee. They had wanted to become Hokage, and had perished; Minato was Hokage, and there was still a war going on.
There were some fates that all the battle skill and political dissemination in the world couldn't prevent. Minato couldn't stop Death if it wanted him badly enough; it would come whether he liked it or not. I accepted it; why could others not?
He was too young, too green, too romantic, and too much like an older version of Nawaki and a younger version of Dan for his own good.
"He won't last a year." I was fond of Minato and in most circumstances I wouldn't have been so willing to bet on his life. My luck had always been horrendous. When I said something was going to happen, the moment the words "bet" or "I think" came out of my mouth it was almost certain the exact opposite would happen instead; I'd used that sort of psychology to save some of my patients' lives on more than one occasion.
Even while I was nay-saying him I was hoping he would last, because deep down I wanted to be able to see that not all men who wanted to be Hokage had to die young, that not all men who wanted to be Hokage had to die grisly deaths. If Minato didn't' burn out, didn't return to the ranks or didn't retire and run off to the mountains, I would almost be glad to hand over the fifty thousand ryo to Jiraiya at the turn of the year. If I still had fifty thousand ryo.
.x.X.x.
On the night of October the ninth, the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked Konoha. A week earlier, I received a message from Jiraiya, warning me of the Kyuubi's progress south and asking me to return to Konoha to help defend the village if it came to Konoha's gates.
I didn't. Out of apathy, out of selfishness, out of a momentary cruel desire to spite the village I had come to despise so much and its cursed ground, just to see what would happen, I didn't. I didn't think about Minato or the bet until later. Nor did I think about the possibility that Minato, being his reckless, selfless, passionate self, would do something we would all regret.
.x.X.x.
When I came back to Konoha, I found a smoking shell, buildings on the north end destroyed down to the infrastructure. My apprentice Shizune hung close to my side, uneasy and nervous; I couldn't blame her. The people stared at me with eyes that were all at once hopeful, distrusting and accusatory. Where were you? Where were you?
I wondered if I had doomed Minato when I had refused to come to his aid or when I had laid down that bet.
The spectral words, 'Where were you?' were soon being screamed at me by Jiraiya. I had failed Minato, and he had a strong desire to make sure I and all of Konoha knew it. I said nothing to him; what could I say? We weren't on civil terms for years afterwards; to this day, I'm not sure he's fully forgiven me for it. I haven't myself.
I would have left after that, were it not for the fact that I learned that Minato had an infant son. I looked at his sleeping face, realized what had been done to him, and the state of desperation Minato must have been in slapped me in the face. I should have been there.
"His name is Namikaze…?" I asked Kakashi, who was almost jealously holding the baby. His hitai-ate was pulled down over his left eye; I wondered if he had injured it, but didn't ask. If Kakashi was well enough to be walking (and he was one of the few in the village who was) and taking care of a baby, then there was probably nothing seriously wrong with his eye. Kakashi's uncovered eye was visibly bloodshot.
"His name is Uzumaki Naruto," Kakashi corrected me, his voice heavy with meaning and dull with tiredness and grief.
"May I hold him?" The boy handed Naruto over to me with extreme reluctance, and as I stared down at his face, a thought occurred to me. Uzumaki…Kushina's name. "Where is Kushina?" I asked curiously.
"Dead." And the cold, flat way he said it made me flinch. I gave Naruto back to Kakashi and left quickly; I knew I wasn't welcome in that apartment.
.x.X.x.
After that, I went to the Hokage's tower, hoping I would find Sarutobi there, but to no avail; I had sent Shizune to the Academy to take the graduation exams so she could become a genin, and I only then remembered that Sarutobi almost always officiated over the exams. I caught sight of him later, dressed again in the kage's robes and the kage's hat, looking older and grayer and gaunter than ever.
I found myself alone in what had been Minato's office and was now again Sarutobi's, and discovered that most of Minato's effects, however few, were still there. There was a picture on his desk that made me smile and bite my lip at the same time.
The picture had most likely been taken on the day of Minato's confirmation; since he wasn't in the picture I could only assume that Jiraiya was the one operating the tripod. The camera had clearly been off-center, since everything was tilted at a haphazard angle.
Minato stood with the conical kage's hat rammed over his head. He had his fingers on it to keep it from falling over his face. His eyes were crinkled in a smile, his mouth split in a huge grin. Sarutobi stood in the background, plainly relieved that he didn't have the hat and everything that went with it anymore. I wondered how he was feeling now. Kakashi was in the picture too, standing near the corner of the photograph, again with his hitai-ate down over one eye, his visible eye tilted upwards. And Kushina (I could hardly believe it was her; she had grown tall and stunningly pretty) was standing behind Minato, laughing, trying to hold her index and middle finer up over the kage hat.
I remembered Minato as he had been at seventeen. A tall, slender teenager with an ingenuous smile and a kindly nature, not prone to dissemination. And looking at that picture, I thought that he hadn't changed a bit.
But then my eyes were drawn to the hall. The four pictures of the Hokages hung there, and Minato's picture was at the end. He was not smiling, his boyish charm eclipsed by the solemnity and gravity of his station. He looked different from what I remembered. The slightly profile view of him showed that his eyes had narrowed, his nose grown sharper, his still messy golden hair longer. He had changed.
My eyes ran the length of the row. My grandfather, dead. My grand uncle, dead. Sarutobi, aged before he grew old. Minato, dead. I looked at them, each of them, and knew the truth.
Konoha eats its leaders. Konoha devours everything in its path.
I plucked up my grandfather's necklace and looked at it. Despite its lauded value, the Shodai Hokage's necklace is actually close to worthless. The stone is a type of quartz found very commonly in the mountains in the northwest of Hi no Kuni, the cord made of tanned horsehide. The only way it could be considered even remotely valuable would be to take into account its original owner and that the quartz is a good conductor of chakra.
I thought of Minato's sleeping son, and my throat swelled shut.
The sound of heavy footsteps drew my attention. Jiraiya glared at me with cold anger, slapping a heavy brown pouch into my hand. My stomach roiled. He started to walk off, with the almost shuffling steps of an old man, but paused, half-looking at me, caught between rage and sorrow. "You were right." He licked his lips. "He didn't last."
Namikaze Minato had had the shortest tenure of any Hokage to date. He reigned for less than a year.
I turned over the pouch in my hands, all of my strength not enough to make it feel like anything but a lead weight. My eyes stung as I looked at my ill-gotten gains.
"He sure didn't," I whispered, knowing that I didn't need a hunk of quartz on a leather cord to curse someone anymore.
50,000 ryo—5000 yen or about $53.68. Yeah, I find it a little macabre that Tsunade and Jiraiya are betting fifty three dollars and sixty eight cents on somebody's life too, but it's a plot element. I figured it would be better to include an exact figure than just say a general word like money or ryo.