Minato was thrilled when he found out.
Well, thrilled and terrified. But mostly thrilled.
He had been making dinner when his wife walked into the living room and said they were having a baby, that it was most definitely going to be a boy, and he was going to look like Minato and act like both of them but mostly Kushina, and he had better be excited about it or a pregnant Red Hot Habanero was going to kick the Yellow Flash's ass.
"Of course I'm excited," he exclaimed, kissing her again, "but how do you know what he'll be like?" Kushina just rolled her eyes.
"Because I'm his mother, baka! And besides, why would he act like you? I'm way cooler!"
And for a while he absolutely couldn't breathe for happiness, because the thought of a kid like that just seemed so right, so perfect, that he could feel something tight building in his chest. A sort of weird combination of anticipation and joy and nerves maybe. Either way, they didn't have dinner that night, and made excellent use of Kushina's pregnancy hormones.
The Uzumaki clan was known for their ridiculous stamina, and when you added in the pregnancy hormones and the shinobi training they both had, it made for a very healthy sex life. Minato just hoped Jiraiya never put two and two together and used it in one of his books, or the man might find himself castrated courtesy of Kushina.
For the first week everything was fine. The normal anxieties about parenthood came about, but that was overshadowed by his pervasive feeling of joy. Minato, he knew, was a lucky, lucky man.
Then the nightmares started.
Minato was not particularly fond of the more brutal aspects of his shinobi career. He detested killing, but loved Konoha more, so he had done it, and with great skill. He did not get a Flee on Sight order in the bingo books for nothing, and he hadn't ever truly regretted his actions in the war. He would always protect Konoha, and the people within, no matter the cost. Besides, he was a shinobi, and while the majority of them didn't exactly deal in death as the more ignorant civilians liked to think (1), he was a soldier and death was part of the job. And he was one of the best.
That was why the nightmares were so confusing.
He'd had them before, after particularly horrific missions where the deaths of the enemy weighed on him more than he would ever admit, or where a comrade didn't make it home. They'd grown more infrequent as he got older, as he developed the mental callouses needed to do his job. And on the nights where it got to be too much, Kushina held him silently, and giving her support in that uncharacteristically gentle way she had that somehow still betrayed her strength, and reminded him that he was still alive, still had something to live for. He returned the favor when she had her bad nights.
But truthfully, this didn't make any sense. He hadn't actually been on a mission since being named Hokage, and he had long since absorbed the mental trauma of the war into a numb fog that wouldn't be forgotten—war was never forgotten—but wasn't crippling either. He hadn't had a nightmare about Iwa-nin killing Kushina or for years.
The old dream was so familiar Minato could recall every detail, down to the kind of clothing, the time of day and the dialogue. He and Kushina would be walking down the streets of Konoha, when Iwa-nin would leap out of the shadows and slit her throat before he could move. It always ended with laughter, and the Iwa nin fading away as he knelt over Kushina's body. In the new and improved version, Kushina held a blond haired blue-eyed baby in her arms, and Minato was made to watch as Iwa-nin drowned his son.
It was horrific, and he uncharacteristically worried that the dreams meant he wasn't supposed to be a father, or that he would be a crappy one.
Inadequacy was an unfamiliar fear for him. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.
He had always been taught, it seemed. He learned how to be a shinobi and a teacher from Jiraiya, how to be a Hokage from Hiruzen, and how to be a man from Kushina. She was very adept at hitting him when he was acting like a bad husband, and so he learned very quickly. No one was there to teach him how to be a father. Not even his own, since the old man walked out on him and his mother when he was three.
Minato wanted more than anything to be a good father. The kind of father who seemed to know everything, who laughed with his child, who could teach him everything the kid needed to know in order to deal with the shinobi world. But he had no idea how to do it.
He suffered through the nightmares and worries for a few weeks, with Kushina growing increasingly worried. She tried to help him overcome it, always held him through the nightmares, tried to assure him in that tough-love way of hers that he was going to be a great father.
It didn't really work.
He was thrilled of course. He already felt so much love for this child, his son. It was nigh-soul crushing, and it even surpassed the love he held for his wife. But that only made his anxiety worse, his fears grew, and he was having trouble sleeping even on nights where the nightmares didn't come.
Then one day, Kushina came running to the tower, demanding to see him and despite the possible upcoming crisis with Suna he dragged his wife halfway to the hospital—he wasn't going to try and hiraishin a pregnant woman anywhere—before she managed to tell him she and the baby were fine.
He was kicking.
It was with great reverence that Minato placed his hand on her ballooning belly. Within seconds, the baby started pushing against him, straining through Kushina's skin to kick his hand. He smiled, and very carefully, used a basic medical ninjutsu to connect his chakra system with his child's and his wife's.
It was something like the sun.
Kushina had a ridiculous amount of chakra, and due to the special nature of it that allowed her to cage the Kyuubi properly, it had a sharp edge. Though usually warm and inviting, her chakra felt something like a falsely benign sea that could turn to corrosive acid at any moment.
Naruto, he could tell, would not be the same.
He had deep reserves already, nearly equal to that of the average three-year-old, which was absolutely unheard of to find in an unborn child. But this chakra network was bright, was so deep and warm, and felt a little like a summer wind, carrying the light of the sun in gentle breezes. It was like being pulled into something so genuine, so inherently likable, that he couldn't help but grin and feel content.
His little baby. His child, his little sun.
He wondered if the boy would have wind or water chakra, if he would take after him or Kushina. Wind was rare in Konoha, and he was one of three that had it. Water was more common, but not by much. It was too soon to tell, but either way, his boy would be a surprise on any battlefield.
And it was a boy, he realized. He could feel that through the light diagnostic jutsu he was using here. Kushina had been right, he noted with little surprise. It was, as he'd long since learned, futile to argue with Kushina once she got these little inklings, and more frustrating to him was that she was always right about them. He had a feeling now that she might be right about the rest as well.
What was he going to be like? Would he share more traits with Kushina or him? Would he be able to learn Hiraishin? What were his dreams going to be? Who would he hang out with? What would he like to eat?
The questions went on, and blazed through his mind. He had always loved his son, but now he wanted to get to know him, and see him open his eyes and learn everything about him in the space of a second.
It was, though Minato didn't realize it, the moment that taught him what fatherhood was.
That night he did not sleep. He stayed at the tower with Kushina, because she refused to leave until he did, and drafted a treaty with Iwa that was a helluva lot stronger than the cease-fire that ended the war. With it, Iwa would become a potential ally down the road—way down the road—and would be unable to attack Konoha for at least as long as the current Tsuchikage was alive. Both countries would return the remaining POWs and Konoha, having been very prosperous thanks to their win, would give small financial packages to the families that lost people in the war, as an exchange for the restrictive peace clauses.
It wouldn't, of course, replace the people they lost, but it would at least show Konoha's willingness to help others, even those she bested, and display their overall strength. Other villages may not hold the ideology of the Shodaime, but the Will of Fire could be felt by anyone. Hopefully, it would even begin to foster ties to Iwa, and maybe prevent a future war.
Traditionally, it was the loser of a war that came to the winner with treaties, as a sacrifice to their pride. Minato did not particularly care, thought it was an utterly stupid practice, and completely ignored Danzo when he suggested that Minato cared nothing for Konoha's image.
Minato told him that if he thought hurting the weak was strength, he could get the hell out of Konoha.
And all the while, he thought of his son, his little sun, his Naruto. He was going to make the world a safer place for him until he was strong enough to defend himself and the village if it was the last thing he did.
Iwa and Konoha's ambassador squads met on neutral ground—tea country. Neither Kage came, as that might actually be detrimental to the peace talks, but the ninja sent knew exactly what each of their respective nations was willing to give up for peace, and what they had to go home accomplishing.
The talks went well. Iwa was in bad shape physically, as a lot of the fighting had taken place inside or just outside their borders. Money was tight, and any influx in cash was highly appreciated, especially because welfare benefits for shinobi families now without a provider ate up a good forty percent of their budget. With the treaty, they could focus more effort on rebuilding their infrastructure and stimulating trade. It really was a very good solution, one they had been searching fruitlessly for.
However, they did reject a few of the clauses in the treaty.
They did not dissolve their alliances with Kumo and Kiri. They did not agree to aid Konoha in the case of war. They did not agree to take Konoha nin out of their bingo books.
They did, however, agree to stop actively hunting them, agreed not to attack them in case of another war, and agreed, of course, to never instigate war with Konoha, so long as the current Tsuchikage was in power.
Konoha found these terms perfectly acceptable. The parties returned to their respective homes five days later and delivered the good news to the Kage.
There were celebrations in both villages that night. Minato did not take part in them. He was too busy drafting a treaty with Kumo.
The process was repeated, and ended in a very similar manner. Minato would have sent one to Kiri, but there was too much internal strife there to expect anything to come from any proposed treaty. He would wait until things settled down there before he asked anything of them.
Suna was already an ally, having sided with them against the other two in the war, and none of the smaller nations held any threat against Konoha at the moment.
Minato went to sleep the night Kumo replied with a smile on his face. The nightmares never bothered him again.
Later, many would whisper about how auspicious it was, how fateful, that Minato's love for Naruto had inspired him to look for peace, like so many who came after. When mentioned, Naruto would only stare at them blankly before loudly proclaiming that his "old man" was just being what he always was: an excellent hokage.
His friends looked at him, saw him bear the weight of nations on his shoulders, and couldn't help but wonder if there was something to all that destiny nonsense after all.
Of course, they valued their sanity enough to never say such things around Naruto. The baka would chase them until they acquiesced to the power of individual choice over circumstance or they distracted him with ramen.
A/N
(1) Many speculate that all the ninja in the series regularly carry out assassination missions and the like. We know that the ANBU certainly do this, seeing as it's in the name, but it does not seem likely that the general ninja population regularly does so, especially against random civilians who have angered someone to the point of putting a hit out on them. Frankly I don't see how it would be possible for a society like that to exist. I think it far more likely that assassination missions are carried out by ANBU at the behest of the Daimyo. Minato's comment here refers to this. There's no denying that ninja kill, but in general it seems to be constrained to fights between other shinobi. If I were a Daimyo, I'd only allow a village to form if they agreed to refuse civilian assassination missions without my stamp of approval. It would be a good way to earn public support and military strength.
So that's Minato's chapter. Like Kushina, Minato needed no convincing to love Naruto. Unlike Kushina, I could tie his actions to some of the overarching themes of Naruto.
Love inspires peace. I don't know how much I can agree with this in practice, but it's a nice thought.
Anyway. Next up is Sarutobi Hiruzen. Review if you liked it, and especially if you didn't! Constructive criticism is always appreciated.
Peace Out guys.
