Idea: Answer to Caregiver Challenge, Minato takes care of a sick Kakashi. Another exert of The Life and Times of Namikaze Minato. Challenge fic, Deb's recent challenge: Caregiver. This, is my answer.
Summery: When Kakashi falls sick during training, Minato takes him home and makes him better. Daddy! Minato/son! Kakashi with maybe a little Minato x Kushina thrown in for good measure.
Disclaimer: Me? Own Naruto? Laughs No way in hell!
Title: Caregiver
"Ah-ah-choo!" Kakashi once again faltered and messed up his kata that morning. He sat down sniffing only looking up when he heard quiet footsteps behind him. "Ohaiyo Sensei…"
"Kakashi-kit, what are you doing?" Minato asked as he pulled his student's Heate-ite off to check his temperature.
"Training, Tou-san." Kakashi told him. It was rather common for Kakashi to call his sensei father when they were alone. Minato had become his father a little over a year ago now (after one Hatake Sakumo took his own life), even if the eighteen [1] year old hadn't adopted him formally yet.
Minato felt Kakashi's forehead and then pulled back. "Not today you aren't, let's get you home and back in bed. Your forehead feels rather warm and that was the ninth time in the last hour that you messed up a kata that you know by heart."
The seven year old Chuunin pouted but let Minato give him a piggy-back ride to the Namikaze estate where they both lived. "Maa, Tou-san?"
"Hmm, what's up Kakashi-kit?" Minato asked, looking over his shoulder at the child.
"Will… will the hurt ever stop?" [2]
"What hurt Kaka-kit?" Minato asked; he was pretty sure he knew what Kakashi was talking about but wanted to make sure.
"The pain… of losing him?" Kakashi looked away. "I'm sorry, I'm being silly, I shouldn't have asked…"
"Him, you mean your Otou-sama?" Minato asked. "No, but it does get easier."
"What do you mean Sensei?" Kakashi asked. "Do you speak from experience?"
"Yes, I lost my Kaa-san right around the same age you lost your Tou-san." Minato explained, "Though, I'm probably lucky."
"Why is that?" Kakashi asked as they came to the estate and Minato shifted so that he could pull out his key and let them in.
"Because, it is a tradition within my clan to have all new Academy students sign the family Fox Contract, as such, I had the Boss and one of her daughters taking care of me." Minato told him. "I still felt and feel the pain of losing my Kaa-san, but I had several people helping me deal with it. You only have me to help you." [3]
Minato settled Kakashi on the raised wooden floor and helped the boy pull off his sandals before picking him back up. Kakashi didn't really have the strength to protest so he only pouted cutely as Minato carried him to bed. The seven-year-old Chuunin was feeling rather drained and very tired.
"You stay in bed and rest ok?" Minato asked as he tucked Kakashi into the single bed. "I'll bring you some soup in a bit, did you eat breakfast?" [4]
Kakashi shook his head guiltily at the last question. "I'll stay in bed, but I do want to get some training done…"
"I'll grab a Shogi board and we can play after you eat ok?" Minato told him. [5]
Kakashi nodded tiredly, his head settling on the pillow. "Ok, Tou-san…"
Minato smiled as he left the room. His silly Deshi probably had a simple cold; it would be easy to treat at home. He found his new live-at-home girlfriend in the kitchen, munching on a packet of Instant Salt Ramen. "What are you doing back so soon, Minato-kun? Didn't you have training?"
"I did, but 'Kashi is sick so I ended it early." Minato eyed her ramen with a wary eye. "You know you shouldn't eat too much Salt Ramen right?" He asked, wrapping his arms around her in a gesture of affection, brushing his cheek lovingly against hers in greeting, something that the redheaded Kunoichi was still getting used to.
"But it's my favorite." Kushina whined as Minato pulled away. "Why shouldn't I have it?"
"I'm not saying that you shouldn't have it ever… By all means, don't stop eating it, but," Minato told her as he pulled out the Family Cookbook to look up soup recipes for healthy soups that would help Kakashi bet better faster. "I am saying that you just have to watch how much you eat, everything in moderation remember?" He tossed her an apple as he bustled around the kitchen, having found the soup recipe he wanted.
"Right, right…" Kushina muttered as she caught and grudgingly bit into the sweet fruit. This was why she loved him, he didn't try to make her stop, (they'd already had that argument) he only reminded her to eat something healthy to offset the Ramen. "What are you making?"
"Miso broth and Chicken noodle soup." Minato answered as he pulled out the pots he'd need. He set the vegetables on the cutting board along with the knife after putting the chicken in the microwave to defrost. He checked the recipe once more before he began chopping the vegetables. "After that he should probably take a nap, sleep the bug off."
Kushina nodded. "I see. So, Mr. Mom…" She teased gently. [6]
Minato blushed. "Don't call me that!" He spluttered; Minato was just glad she never called him that in public; Fugaku would never let him hear the end of it! He smirked, "Uzu-hime."
Kushina pouted. "Stop calling me that! You know that my parents forbid me from telling anyone that… and it was totally an accident that you found out anyway! Only the Hokage was supposed to know!" [7]
Minato laughed at her little tantrum. "I know that, everyone else thinks that it's an endearment, which it is." He pulled out the noodles after getting the chicken and slicing it up, having added chicken broth to one of the pots already. He poured the noodles into the liquid and then carefully added the chicken and the vegetables as he stirred. Then he started on the Miso broth. "So, do you have anything planned? I seem to find myself with nothing to do today."
"No actually, I don't." She gave him a suggestive look. "But I'm sure we can think of something…" [8] It reminded Minato of the way that Kybi-sama, the Fox Boss, had looked at Kyuubi all those years ago when he was still an Academy student.
Minato looked away, a slight blush tinting his cheeks a pale rose. "I thought that we had agreed…" He trailed off.
She grinned; they actually hadn't talked about it yet. And she was a girl with needs. If he didn't want to though, she wouldn't push, Civilian males weren't the only ones capable of Rape after all, and she didn't want to frighten him off. She hadn't wanted to tell anyone that she was a Princess, much less the princess of the Uzumaki Clan and Uzu no Kuni… but, once they had gotten back from her kidnapping attempt by Kumo, It had… come out… or at least, Minato had been told. That had been almost eight years ago.
They had been told to enter the Hokage's office, only to find that he was in the middle of a meeting with someone Kushina knew, one of her minders from when she was younger. The woman's parents had looked up to Mito-sama, the first Jinjuuriki of the Kyuubi so much that their daughter had been named after her. Mito [9] was actually one of her older cousins, one of the ones that had made it out of Uzushiogakure before the village had been destroyed. Sandaime-sama and Jiraiya-sama seemed to be talking to her before she and Minato had entered.
Minato's eyes had widened, why would one of the few remaining retainers of the Uzu Daimyo be here? "Um, if you're busy Hokage-sama, Kushina-chan and I can always come back…"
"No, that's alright Minato; we were waiting for you to get here to begin." Jiraiya told his favorite student. "Besides, I promised to tell you why they took her." He shot his old sensei and the Uzu representative a look, asking if he could tell them. He received nods in return.
"You know what Jinjuuriki means?" Jiraiya asked.
"Yes Jiraiya-sensei, it means 'Power of Human Sacrifice' Kybi-okaa-sama [10] told me." Minato answered.
Jiraiya nodded. "Kumo has two of the Bijuu; the prisoner Shina helped us catch has divulged a few facts for us. The important one is that they wanted to seal the Niibi no Nekomata into Kushina-chan."
"Kushina-hime, your father wants you to come home, he sent me to be your escort." Mito bowed lowly as she spoke. "He and your mother are both very worried."
"What? No!" Minato and Kushina shouted at the same time. They blinked, looking at each other before looking away, both blushing.
"I'm not going!" Kushina growled.
"But Hime-"
"NO!"
"Hime, be reasonable, you would be safer in Uzu-"
"I believe my Uzu-hime said no." Minato interjected coldly. "If she is your Princess you should obey her wishes. And she has expressed her desire to stay here." The air around Minato wavered, the control he usually had over his concealment jutsu faltering, the jutsu wavered exactly thee times before falling. Revealing his slit pupils, fangs and claws, he was not happy. His chakra flared around him and Kushina, (his Vixen, his!) before condensing into one beautiful, golden, white tipped tail which wrapped itself around Kushina's waist. [11]
The room froze, staring at the visibly displeased Minato who now stood in between Kushina and her old retainer. In their lives, the adults had never seen a member of the Fox Demon Clan visibly displeased in a civilian setting before.
Kushina blinked, looking at Minato's back. "…Mina-kun…" She put her hands on his shoulders and gripped the material of his jacket tightly. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of his neck.
Minato felt this and easily slid into the base stance of the Demon Fox Clan's family style, ready to use all of his abilities, claws and fangs included, to keep her in Konoha…
She had almost been forced to go back to her lonely life in Uzu, but thankfully Sarutobi-sama stopped that. It was against the law to separate a member of the Fox Clan from their chosen partner. Uzumaki Mito-sama had made sure that the law was recorded before the Namikaze had moved from Uzushio to Konoha, to cement the alliance between the two Villages.
If Kushina had been removed from Konoha, Minato would have done everything in his power to bring her back, just like with the 'Kumo Incident'.
"Ku-chan, can you check on Kakashi-kit for me?" Minato asked as he tasted the soup and broth and judged them finished.
"Sure, I'll be right back." She got up, still munching on her apple as she made her way up the stairs. When she poked her head into the seven-year-old's room he was napping. "Awe…" She giggled, closing the door quietly behind her as she left, trying to let him sleep. So cute!
Minato looked at her as she came back into the kitchen. "Well?"
"He's sleeping, he looked so cute… I should go get my camera…" She grinned.
"You do that," Minato told her with a pleased smile. "I'll seal the soup so that it doesn't get cold." His Vixen would be a wonderful mother.
She dashed back up the stairs to her, their, room to get her camera while Minato pulled out a sealing scroll and two containers. He carefully spooned out the soups into their separate containers before sealing them. Kakashi would probably be awake in an hour or so. Minato brought the scrolls with him up the stairs with some chopsticks; he'd leave the scroll with Kakashi.
He walked up the stairs quietly, heading to Kakashi's room. He leaned against the doorway; a tiny self satisfied smirk curved the fullness of his lips as he watched Kushina take pictures of his sleeping student. This was almost perfect. Minato could already visualize in his head, his Ku-chan doing this for their own biological kit in several years time. He didn't want to raise his child in the middle of a war.
Minato made his way to her side and placed the scroll and chopsticks on the bedside table before pulling her out of the room.
(End One-Shot)
Raise your hands if you love chibi!Kakashi and Doting Parents! Kushina and Minato!
The flashback might seem a bit awkward, but that's on purpose, I'm trying to show just how much different Minato's mentality is from a 'normal' ninja. As I have shown in the other exerts, which you don't need to read to understand this one, (though feel free to read them anyway) Minato is from a clan that has certain traditions on how to raise kids, choosing life partners and how to train ninja. This is demonstrated by the fact that Minato actually gets between Kushina and her old guardian.
As we don't know where Minato's family originated, I just picked a place, it was either Uzu on Kuni of Mizu on Kuni, and I haven't seen any where the Namikaze are from Uzu, except for maybe one one-shot so I figured why not. I thought that one of the ways that villages could create and strengthen alliances (such as ShikaTema in canon) is to use political marriages or exchange of families, in this case sending one of the most loyal clans they have to the allied village.
As you can probably tell, Kushina's crush is slowly developing into something more, as is shown when she trusts Minato over her old retainer (an OC that I couldn't be bothered with an original name, and that scene from the flashback is probably the only time you will see her.
Now for the footnotes:
[1] Do we ever learn how old Minato was when he died? I'm sure it's in the data books and on the Wiki somewhere… But I've decided that Minato is only going to be eleven years older than Kakashi. I have him being a new Jounin when he is chosen to tutor Kakashi, and then train him with Obito and Rin later on.
[2] The loss of any family member is hard, probably even harder for ninja and Academy students that only have one ninja parent like Kakashi, and in this case Minato. For a child it must be even harder, which is why Kakashi is asking. He's seven.
[3] Minato, as he explains here is rather lucky in that he had already signed a Summons Contract and had at least two minders as he was growing up before he signs the Toad contract.
[4] This is Minato acting like a dad, this would usually be the parent's job, but since Sakumo is dead and teams become something of a family as time goes by, especially with a student as young as Kakashi is here.
[5] Who says that Nara and Asuma have to be the only ones who like the game? As the Japanese version of chess I would suspect that the game would be an excellent way to train genin in shinobi tactics.
[6] This actually arose from a discussion I had with Reaper Nanashi, from the tiny glimpses we see in the manga and anime, and the thing in the fourth Shippuden movie, he comes across a guy a lot like Iruka. He just seems like the mothering type to us so I decided to add that, it's evident in the way he makes sure that Kushina eats healthy. She's just teasing him.
[7] In my fics the Uzumaki clan has two sides: Civilian, who are actually the Daimyo's family that lives in the capital city and Ninja, who lived in Uzushio before it was destroyed. Kushina's parents are the Daimyo and the head of the Ninja half of the clan. I'll leave it up to you to decide which parent was the ninja and which wasn't.
[8] Jiraiya is Minato's teacher, I'd figure that with Minato looking up to the pervert as a father figure that he'd spend a lot of time with him, and thus, if Kushina wanted to spend any time with her crush and later boyfriend, she'd have to put up with the guy. The way I've characterized her shows that Jiraiya rubbed off on her, maybe just a bit; but can you really blame her? Minato is a kind and caring person, he's a powerful ninja and he's loyal… not to mention he's very easy on the eyes…
[9] This is an OC that will probably only be seen twice, once in this flashback and once when the scene actually plays out in the actual fic, but I needed someone to hint at who Kushina was so that Minato would connect the dots. I know that readers don't like OCs much, I don't either, but I needed someone there, and other than Kushina Mito and technically Tsunade, we never learn about any other Uzumaki.
[10] This OC is actually important to the story line, she will act as Minato's mother, but as a minor character she won't be showing up too often, and even less after a certain point (where Minato signs the Toad Contract out of desperation to protect himself from his Clan's enemies, why will be explained in the actual fic so you'll have to wait, sorry) But she is a very important character. Along with her daughter who is also mentioned here.
[11] This is what I call a 'Tail of Power'; I got the idea from Naruto's Kyuubi cloak actually, except the tail is real and not made of chakra. The tails represent how powerful the Namikaze is. So far I've worked out that one tail is equivalent to Academy-Genin level ability, two tails is as powerful as a high Genin to low Chuunin, three is high Chuunin to low Jounin, level four would be high Jounin to special Jounin ability, five would be ANBU level, six would be Elite Jounin/Jounin-sensei, Seven would be roughly equivalent to Jiraiya, Tsunade or Orochimaru's level and eight tails would be as powerful as a Kage. Just because a Namikaze has a certain number of tails does not mean that they are of the equivalent ninja rank.
For example, the night he dies, Minato will have enough power to produce eight tails, while Naruto (even with his horrible control problem) would be able to produce at least six right after he graduates. (Which is probably Kyuubi's fault….)
Please review And as always, feedback on the OCs is welcome!
Neph