Rating: T

Warnings: Bad language, snarky characters, etc.

Word Count: ~4100

Pairings mentioned: None.

Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyrights, I didn't create them, and I make no profit from this.

(Long-ass) Notes: So I was entirely stuck on this chapter for days before I realized it was lacking something. That thing? Obito. He is literally my favorite manga character period, and the vague-ish plan I had to give him a sad ending was just not working for me. So, change of direction for that scene at least, happy endings planned all around, and the muse finally relinquished her death grip on the plot! Yay!

Several anonymous reviewers have asked questions I can't answer via PM, so I want to clear up some things here. Please excuse the long note.

1) Pairings: Eventually we'll get to Kakashi/Kurama and this timeline's Naruto/Sasuke. However, the K/K won't come for a while, and the S/N will be entirely pre-slash, given that they're twelve. (It always bugs me when writers forget/don't factor in their ages. Especially in regards to things like sex. I don't have many squicks, but chan is one of them. And besides, when I was twelve, my biggest concern was how much mud I could stuff down the back of my twin brother's shirt before our au pair caught me. Not romance. I don't think that's so unusual, honestly.)

Also, no Kakashi/Iruka. Just, no. I don't know how you got that out of this, but I am personally not fond of that pairing, or even Iruka in general, so it's not happening. Sorry.

2) Kurama overlooking the fact that Naruto wears the Uzumaki spiral, which would have been a reason to start a conversation/the big reveal: Uh, maybe you're forgetting that every Konoha flak jacket also has this symbol? It's a fairly common one in Konoha, and Kurama was trying to make learning about Naruto look coincidental.

3) Itachi/Danzo/Orochimaru/Tobi/etc.:Hush. My secret. You'll find out soon enough.

backslide

Chapter Seven: Conversations

Sarutobi sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose, wondering if he's simply seeing double and that's why his desk looks like a file cabinet exploded on top of it. Team assignments are always a tedious time, and his personal investment in this particular class doesn't change that.

The damned traitorous Academy teacher hasn't helped matters any, either.

I'm too old for this, Sarutobi thinks, restraining another sigh with difficulty. He was too old when he passed his hat on to Minato, and he's too ancient for it now, when Minato is dead and his son is a genin hated and feared by the civilians, hated because he's feared. It's not fair, and while Sarutobi is never one to indulge in such thinking, has been a shinobi far too long to assume it bears any weight at all, but sometimes even his practicality is overwhelmed in the face of the bad hand Naruto drew in this life.

Right now, as it stands, the only successor who won't turn the village inside out within a month is Tsunade, and she's sworn never to come back. Maybe he'll have the hat until he dies, and that's a grim thought indeed; Danzo will doubtless use the chance to snatch up the position with haste, pry it right from his cold, dead fingers. While Sarutobi believes that Danzo believes he has Konoha's best interests at heart, he doesn't think the execution of those interests will result in anything less than tragedy. And Danzo will never see it, because as much of an old war hawk as he is, he still has an idealized notion of humanity, and it's never sat well with Sarutobi.

The sigh finally escapes, heavy and low, and Sarutobi turns back to his paperwork, berating himself for letting his mind wander. He really is too old, but there's no alternative to be had. At least for a few more years.

He's smiling to himself, picturing the reactions of the general populace to learning that their new Hokage is the demon brat, when a soft thump alerts him to a presence on his windowsill. It's common courtesy for ninja to announce their arrival in such a way; for all that he's getting on in years, the last three assassins who managed to get this far all realized very quickly indeed why Sarutobi Hiruzen is still called the God of Shinobi.

He looks up, and blinks, startled by the sight of a wealth of unmistakable red hair and those ocean-blue eyes. Uzumaki Kurama stares back at him, mouth set into a neutral line, which is…out of character, from what Sarutobi has seen of the cheerful young man. He's still in his dusty and battered mission clothes, bristling with weapons, and there are leaves in his hair. It's the work of half a second to recall Namiashi Raidou's report, and Sarutobi frowns, wondering what pressing business Kurama could have so soon after returning.

And then a shock of sunshine-yellow hair peeks over Kurama's shoulder as arms tighten around his neck, and Naruto pulls himself into view. His eyes, a sky blue several shades brighter than Kurama's ocean blue, are confused and perhaps a little hurt, wide with uncertainty but also a bewildered sort of stubbornness. He doesn't say anything, and that's perhaps the biggest clue of all that something has happened.

Silently, Kurama slides off the sill and drops into a crouch, letting Naruto down. The boy wavers, clearly torn between staying with his newly found cousin and running up to the Hokage like he usually does. Finally, after a long moment, he settles on giving Sarutobi a fairly weak smile and twisting his fingers into the hem of Kurama's shirt.

Clearly, this is not going to be an easy conversation.

"Why don't you sit, Naruto, Kurama-kun?" Sarutobi suggests at length, indicating the chairs in front of his desk. There's another pause where he wonders if he'll be obeyed, and then Kurama tips his head in acknowledgement and steps forward, wary and graceful. Sarutobi has thought quite a bit about his options in regards to the two of them, and while he can safely say he's considered nearly every angle, his heart still gives a pang at the sight of shuttered eyes and a blank face. From everything he has been told, has observed himself, Kurama is given to smiling, to cheer. But he's deprived this lost young man of knowing his little cousin, did it willingly and with full realization of his actions, and even though Sarutobi can't quite bring himself to regret it he does hate to put Kurama through any more pain.

And Naruto…

Well.

With a weary sigh, Sarutobi steeples his fingers in front of him and regards the two, wondering how to start.

Perhaps predictably, Naruto steals the chance before he can come to a decision. He sits bolt-upright in his chair, blue eyes sparking with sudden, pigheaded determination, and cries, "You didn't tell me I had a cousin, jiji!"

Sarutobi studies the blond for a moment before he inclines his head. "No," he agrees. "I did not. Kurama-kun has been in the village less than a month, and before that I was entirely unaware he existed."

At that, Kurama's blank look softens slightly, flickers into something that might be understanding or simply relief, and he reaches out to drop a hand on Naruto's head. "The Hokage wanted to make sure he could trust me," he explains softly. "If I was an enemy trying to get into the village or something, that would be a good way in, and it would hurt you if I really was an enemy. Hokage-sama was just trying to protect you."

The mulish set of Naruto's face doesn't change. "But—!"

"But I believe Kurama-kun has proved to be all he says he is," Sarutobi cut in, though that's not entirely true. But it's enough for now, and the sudden, burgeoning hope in Naruto's expression is more than sufficient to convince him that this is the right thing to do. He smiles with all the warmth he feels towards this unpredictable, unnervingly bright boy, so very much a mix of his charismatic father and vivacious mother. "Uzumaki Naruto, meet Uzumaki Kurama, your cousin."

Naruto hovers in one corner of the room, almost afraid to take even a step. The redheaded man—Kurama, his cousin, and that's still equally amazing and terrifying and impossible to believe—is on the other side, next to the tall and overflowing bookshelf, tucking scrolls back into their places. He wonders what he should do—walk in and make himself at home? Kick back on the comfy-looking sofa and see if it lives up to its appearance? Sneak back out the window and hope Kurama, clearly a skilled jounin, can't track him down?

Vaguely, still half-dazed, Naruto wonders if there's a shinobi rule for dealing with this kind of situation. Sakura-chan would know, but Naruto's clueless.

He's felt that way so often these last few days, and it's really starting to get on his nerves.

In lieu of anything else, he occupies himself with looking around. He's seen Kurama's apartment before, if only briefly while he was laying traps, but it's still rather startling how…bare it is, especially compared to Naruto's own cluttered rooms. About the only thing present in the apartment is paper, reams of it, pieces in all shapes and sizes covered with strange, complicated symbols. Some of them are finished, tacked up on walls and glittering strangely here and there where the light hits them. Others are stacked in teetering piles in the corners, precarious and listing. They're vaguely familiar, something Naruto is probably supposed to know about, but he's spent half his time at the Academy skipping class and the other half goofing off during it, so his knowledge of the basics is rather lacking.

Still, they look neat, and from the tattoos covering Kurama's arms they're apparently important to him. Naruto has heard people talking about what a good shinobi the new jounin is, and he wonders if those drawings have something to do with it.

"Would you like something to drink, Naruto-kun?"

The soft voice jolts Naruto out of his preoccupation, and he twists around to see that the redhead has finished putting away his gear and is hovering at the doorway of the kitchen, one finger nervously twisting around the thin braid in his hair. He meets the man's eyes, and it's weird how off-balance he feels, like some giant rug just got wrenched out from under his feet, and he's still spinning in the air, waiting to come crashing down. But one glance at Kurama is enough to see that he feels just as uncertain about all of this.

That alone gives Naruto the courage to offer up a wide grin. "Milk?" he suggests hopefully.

Kurama hesitates, then pulls a face. "Only if you like the sour type," he says wryly. "I just returned from a week-long mission, and I'm afraid I didn't quite manage to clean everything out of my fridge before I left. I have tea, though, if you don't mind it."

While he's never been overly fond of the bitter stuff Hokage-jiji drinks, Naruto agrees, just for something to say, and Kurama flashes him a quick smile—almost like he knows what he's thinking—before he retreats into the kitchen. Naruto follows him, steps stupidly hesitant even though he can't bring himself to walk more confidently. In the space of two hours, he's gone from being an orphan outcast to having a cousin who smiles at him and offers to make tea. It's…

Weird.

"You know," Kurama says, voice muffled as he rummages through the cupboards, "Technically, as long as you're a genin you're also a legal adult. I'm your cousin, Naruto-kun, but that doesn't have to mean anything more or less than you'd like it to."

Naruto pulls a face of his own. Adults always have to say things in the most complicated ways possible. It's like they're trying to be misunderstood. "You mean—"

There's a soft huff of bright laughter, and Kurama casts him an amused look over one shoulder. "I mean that, even though I'd like to have you live with me, Naruto-kun, you're under no obligation to. We're family, but we're also strangers, and as much as I'd like to be a family to you, it's entirely your decision." His smile turns sad, and he looks away, back to the cupboard, with a faint sigh that Naruto likely wasn't supposed to hear. "I'm also not sure how well I'd do being any sort of mentor," he adds bluntly. "My village was destroyed a long time ago, and I've been mostly on my own since then."

That's the answer to another question Naruto has been trying not to contemplate. He swallows, suddenly feeling very small, and asks, "You mean you're not from Konoha?"

In half a heartbeat, Kurama is right in front of him, crouched down so that they're at eye-level. His blue eyes are sharp and fierce, and seem to pick up the meaning behind the question without Naruto having to clarify any further. "No," the jounin says, an edge of fire and tempered steel to his words. "No, Naruto, or I would never have left you to grow up alone. I didn't know that Kushina had had a son, or believe me, I would have been here the day after I found out, demanding to raise you myself."

Naruto looks at him and he believes. No one's ever looked at him the way this man is, except for maybe Iruka-sensei the other night, when that shuriken was lodged in his back and he still managed to smile at Naruto, the reason for it.

He believes, and before he can stop himself, he blurts, "Can I?" Kurama blinks, and Naruto quickly clarifies, "Can I live with you?"

He's never had a family beyond Iruka and the Sandaime, but he's always wanted one. And with Kurama here in front of him, his cousin offering a new life entirely different from his old one—

Well, Naruto's never been the type to hesitate over anything, and when it's something he wants this much, he'll do everything in his power to grab it.

Kurama smiles, bright and soft and clearly, honestly happy, and dips his head. "Of course," he murmurs, and rises gracefully to his feet, dropping a firm, steadying hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Come on, Naruto-kun, you can have the second bedroom. I'll help you move your stuff in tomorrow, hm?"

Naruto thinks of his cluttered, messy, lonely apartment, only a few scattered mementoes to give it any kind of life, and reaches out to wrap his fingers around Kurama's larger hand. This apartment is even emptier than Naruto's in regards to stuff, but regardless, it feels warm and cozy as Kurama grips his hand in return and beams down at him.

"Thanks, Kurama-nii!" Naruto cries, and he's never meant anything more.

Kurama lies on his bed, flat on his back as he stares up at the ceiling above him. Naruto's breathing is soft and deep across the hall, comforting and unsettling all at once. He's still wavering, still wondering if this is truly the right path to take, but then he remembers the look on Naruto's face outside the ramen stand, and then again in the kitchen, as though day had just broken for the first time, confusion washing into stunned comprehension as he stared at Kurama as though the jounin had just handed him the Hokage's hat without any strings attached.

With a soft sigh, Kurama drapes his arm over his eyes, trying to imagine what this change will bring. He and Sasuke had long ago discarded the notion of keeping events as close to those of their timeline as possible; it didn't work the first time, and the small edge that knowing how things would turn out gave them wasn't worth the chance of failing again. But this, this is a change just as massive as wiping Akatsuki off the map. With a mentor, an immediate family to guide and care for him, how will Naruto change?

Kurama never wanted this Naruto to become him—it's one of the many reasons he went back in time in the first place—but the thought that they might not even be similar is entirely disquieting.

Something stirs beneath his skin, shifts and surges and then recedes again as soon as it's gotten his attention. Kurama blinks his eyes open, sitting up and dropping his arm. One of the seals on his right arm, directly over the pulse point, is glowing black, somehow managing to be brilliant even in the moonlit darkness. Cautiously, Kurama lays a hand over it, judging the feel of the chakra, and then snorts at what he finds.

"Finally decided to wake up, bastard?" he asks. Even though it's rhetorical, the force in the seal shifts again, somehow projecting smug/Iknowsomethingyoudon't/payattentionbrat/getdownhere/annoyed.

Rolling his eyes, Kurama settles cross-legged on the bed and drops his hands onto his knees. "All right, all right, I heard you the first time. I'm coming." Releasing a long, slow breath, he lets his eyes fall shut, concentrates on everything and nothing at all until white light blossoms behind closed lids. There's the scent of green on the air, something warm and growing, with an undertone of damp earth and old, dry leaves.

"You've been redecorating," Kurama drawls, opening his eyes again and arching a brow at the dark-haired man seated across from him on a fallen tree.

"Sorry to break it to you, brat, but your mindscape is hardly the most interesting place to languish, even when it doesn't look like the inside of a sewer," Uchiha Obito informs him sardonically.

Kurama grins, surveying the lush Fire Country forest surrounding them, a pool of perfectly still, clear water to one side and a full moon hanging above them. "No, no, I like it. Very…peaceful. Very green."

Obito rolls his one remaining eye. "Shut up. If I'm going to be stuck in a fucking seal I'd at least like it to have pretty scenery."

"It's not like anything would change if I did let you out," Kurama points out, managing to strangle his amusement with difficulty. "You're pretty much a chakra impression right now, idiot."

"Oh, like you've got even half a leg to stand on calling somebody else that, brat. As soon as I'm out of here, I'm going to—"

"Kick my ass, subject me to the cruelest of tortures imaginable, raze the village to the ground, make my life a living, breathing hell—should I stop now, or did I miss one?"

Obito blows out a long, heavy sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose, as though Kurama is the hard one to deal with here. "Shut up. Just—I don't even know what I did in my life to deserve this."

Kurama snorts. "The near-destruction of our entire world ring a bell?"

"Oh, go to hell. Even that's not enough to be forced to deal with you." But there's humor in the Uchiha-dark gaze, reluctant as it is, and Kurama smiles back at him. Obito rolls his eye again, then hesitates. After several seconds of silence, he says, "You know, I'll never be able to go back to being the idiotic, loudmouthed brat from Team 7. But no matter how far I go, whether it's rise or fall, that brat is still me."

Kurama blinks at the other man. "You heard my thoughts—"

"I felt your angst," Obito corrects with another eye-roll. In the four years that Obito's been (willingly) trapped in the seal, Kurama's gotten that expression from him more times than he's gotten it from Jiraiya, Tsunade, Sakura, and Iruka. Combined. "There's so much of it, brat, it wasn't hard. And it's not that hard to guess why you're twisted up in knots. The kid's still you. He'll always be you. He's just…a different possibility."

There's another long moment of silence, and then Kurama huffs out a reluctant laugh. "You know, for someone who's a megalomaniacal mass-murdering psychopath, you're unnervingly good at reading people."

"WAS. Was a megalomaniacal mass-murdering psychopath, thank you. I'm reformed."

"Last time I came for a visit you threatened to string me up from the ceiling by my own intestines."

"It's a work in progress. Surely you of all people don't expect everyone to get things right on the very first try." Regardless of the caustic tone, Obito is smiling again, the deep scars on his right side pulling the expression into something that's dangerously close to endearing.

"Ugh," Kurama mutters, pressing his hands over his eyes. "Could you not do that, please? It gives me hives to see the scourge of the Elemental Nations looking cute."

A derisive snort is his only answer, and there's another pause. It's comfortable, though, both of them enjoying the gentle night breeze as it carries the scent of lilies past them. Naruto basks in the peace of this place, even as he appreciates the irony that Uchiha Obito, one of the least peaceful souls he's ever met—in all possible meanings of the phrase "least peaceful"—was the one to create it.

"I have a sealing question for you," Obito says finally, humor fully absent from his voice now.

Kurama cracks an eye open to study him, but the Uchiha is far too good at holding his poker face to let anything slip. "My favorite kind," the redhead responds cheerfully. "Maybe I'll even answer it if you're polite."

That earns him another huff, this one indignant, but Obito says without pause, "Minato-sensei was able to transfer his Hiraishin seal to other people or places with a touch, and then use it as though it was the original. Could you do that? With any seal?"

"Hm." Kurama tilts his head, studying the other man curiously. "I'm…not entirely sure, actually. In theory, it's as simple as fine-tuning your chakra control in regards to a seal that's present on your body and then visualizing its replication with enough clarity and focus that it recreates itself with as little as a touch. I've never tried it, but it's likely I could do it with enough practice."

"Then start practicing," Obito tells him bluntly. "As soon as you're competent, let me know." Eye going dark with distance and preoccupation, he subsides back into his seat on the log, lacing his fingers in his lap. Kurama knows that expression, especially after four years of witnessing it close-up. Obito is scheming, mind whirling through plots and plans and possible outcomes, considering and discarding options more quickly than anyone but a Nara could manage. It's futile to interrupt him when he gets like this, as Kurama has long since learned. Instead of trying, he flops back to the ground, stretching out on his back and twisting into a long, spine-popping arch.

Silence falls, and the moon inches across the sky.

Finally, after what is likely hours, Obito sighs and unfolds himself, rising to his feet. "You were drooling over that Katon jutsu I showed you last week," he says. "Still want to learn it?"

Kurama bolts to his feet without hesitation, languidness forgotten and his smile bordering on a grin. "The Fire Dragon Flame Bullet? Yes, please."

Obito rolls his eye again, sighing grumpily like he's about to undergo a terrible ordeal, but there's a reluctant smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, too. Kurama's willing to count that as a win.