Time Flows Like Ink
Summary: After a fuinjutsu experiment gone wrong, Minato is yanked into a future where his family is dead, his team fell apart and the Uchiha were slaughtered. With the defective seal burning in his palm, Minato struggles to stay afloat in a Konoha that isn't his.
Chapter 11
Minato let Kushina and Naruto go only reluctantly. He'd much rather go with them than stay behind in the Uchiha compound on his own. He wanted to find his team, hoping that this time fate had treated them somewhat more kindly.
Unfortunately, somebody had to stay and listen. Somebody needed to hear the Uchiha's story, needed to know what they had gone through in this new version of the future that somehow didn't seem an inkling better than the last.
"Please," he said, his voice gentle but insistent. The oppressive silence in the room was making him depressed. "I need to know what happened. Anything you can tell me might help."
"You know nothing?" the woman who'd brought him – Kiku – asked bluntly.
Minato didn't react to her harsh tone. "I know that when I left Konoha twelve years in the past, the Uchiha clan was powerful and striving. My friend Mikoto was its matriarch."
Various reactions flickered through the group. Some expressions tightened. Others twitched in irritation. One person caught Minato's glance and looked away just as quickly.
"I've already heard that she's no longer with us," Minato finished, quietly. "What happened?"
"The Uchiha were slaughtered. That's what happened," Kiku spat out. Her face was pinched with years worth of pain and worry. Minato wondered if she was as old as she looked, or whether grief had carved lines on her face that exceeded her age. "A single person murdered everybody but the few people you see right now."
Please don't be Itachi. Please don't be Itachi. "Do you know who did it?" Minato asked, trying not to dread the answer.
"Yes and no." She paused, staring ahead with grim, bloodshot eyes. "We've seen them. Most of us have. But we've never been able to capture or identify them."
Another difference. Minato's brows knit in a frown. It didn't necessarily mean that Itachi was innocent. Just that he hadn't been recognized during the act. "Mikoto had two children," he continued, his voice subdued. "Are they–?"
Muffled muttering broke out between several of the elders. They all fell silent with a pointed glare from Kiku.
"Alive," she said, her voice – if possible – even more exhausted than before. Under her breath, she added, "For the most part."
Minato blinked. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. The rising tension in the room forced him to pick his priorities, and he decided to focus on the assassin, rather than Itachi's fate. He doubted he would be welcome with the Uchiha for much longer, and if it came to it, he wanted to have gotten the most important information out of the way.
Besides, he'd gotten the answer to his biggest question. In this version of the future, Itachi had not been responsible for the Uchiha massacre. He hadn't killed the Uchiha.
The knowledge didn't make Minato as happy as he'd hoped. The massacre had happened regardless, which meant that in the future before this one, the mystery person had been involved just the same. Except they had succeeded in slaughtering every single Uchiha, then. Every one of them, except Sasuke. They hadn't succeeded, now.
The most logical conclusion Minato could draw was one he much rather wanted to violently deny: Itachi hadn't caused the massacre in either future, although he'd been involved in the first. He hadn't decided to kill the Uchiha, but he had helped. He'd made the difference between a clan reduced to a fraction of its members and one wiped out entirely.
Minato tried to force down the nauseous feeling in his gut by reminding himself that Itachi hadn't killed anyone from his clan, this time. Minato hoped that he hadn't.
He didn't know whether to anticipate or to dread the conversation he'd have with Itachi once he was through with the rest of the Uchiha.
"Tell me more about the culprit," he said, forcing Itachi to the back of his mind with effort. "Tell me everything you know about them."
'Everything they knew' didn't turn out to be much at all. Even after pooling their memories of the night together – begrudgingly, reluctant to relive what must have been the worst day of all their lives – Minato had only a rough idea about what sort of person had stood behind it.
"They wore a cloak," one of the Uchiha said, his voice barely loud enough to understand. "A long, black one. And they had a mask."
"There was something red on it, as well," another said.
"No. Those were blood stains," yet another.
"They were silent."
"They didn't speak a single word."
"They made no sound. None at all. It was like they weren't even a person."
"A ghost story," a disgruntled looking elderly Uchiha said. "That's what they are. People kept seeing them, afterwards. Watching us. Like they were waiting for something."
"There's nothing supernatural about them," Kiku spat, in a voice that suggested she'd had this argument many, many times. To Minato, she said, "Even if we wanted to, we couldn't tell you anything accurate about them. They used genjutsu to warp our memories."
Minato swallowed against the dry feeling in his throat. "How so?"
"... I only remember flashes of that night. Fragments. And the feeling of dread in my bones when I even just think of that person."
"It's the same for me," a girl below genin-age whispered.
"Me too."
"I'm still having nightmares."
"They were gone by the time ANBU showed up. Maybe they didn't feel like taking on the rest of the village, as well."
"Maybe they just got bored." The man's eyes sparked cynically.
"They went for the strongest of us, first." A woman, older than the all the others, had her eyes fixed on the ground. She made no attempt to hide the grief in either her expression or her voice. "We are all that are left."
Nobody else spoke. The silence around them was heavy and thick, and Minato felt like he was reliving memories of suffering and death despite not having been present himself.
Eventually, Kiku broke the silence with a whisper. "There's nothing more for you to find out, here. Please go."
Minato easily agreed. He'd torn open enough old wounds for one day and desperately welcomed the break.
He hoped Kushina and Naruto were having an easier time, wherever it was they'd gotten sidetracked with.
The buzzing in her head was growing loud enough to get irritating. Kushina frowned, shaking her head as if she was shooing off an annoying fly. She had more important things to worry about. Like finding someone – anyone – she knew who had survived this twisted parody of Konoha they'd landed in.
"Where are we going?" Naruto asked, keeping up with Kushina's pace beside her.
"What Minato said." Kushina rubbed at her temples. "To find his team. Or anyone else who can tell us something."
At one point they had left the rooftops and taken to walk through the village. In Kushina's peripheral vision, something shattered on the ground as whoever was carrying it froze in their tracks at spotting her. She ignored them.
The noise wasn't letting up.
"Do you know where to find them? Mom?"
Kushina grumbled under her breath, squeezing her eyes shut. The buzz grew into an insistent pounding inside her head. At the same time, her jinchūriki seal started to itch.
Kushina froze in her tracks, her eyes snapping open. What did the bastard fox have to do with anything?!
"Mom? Are you alright?"
Now that Kushina concentrated, the pounding subsided. The buzzing cleared and revealed something else, something that sounded almost like a voice, like–
–ina? Kushina!
She knew that voice. The hair at the back of her neck stood up and Kushina whirled around to find–
"Kushina-san!" Rin landed in front of them, breathless and her face flushed a bright red. Her eyes flickered up and down frantically. As if she expected Kushina to disappear any second and tried taking in as much as she could in the meantime.
Kushina could relate.
"It's you," Rin said, that same air of disbelief and fragile hope hovering around her voice. "Minato brought you with him?"
"Kushina-san." Another figure landed beside her, one eye widened and the other one covered.
Kushina's heart clenched at the sight of it. According to Minato, Kakashi had kept his eye in the version before this. Did this mean they had actually taken a step back trying to change the future?
Her crestfallen expression did not go by unnoticed. Kakashi fidgeted under her gaze, seemingly weighing his options of making a swift retreat. "Kushina-san? Is something wrong?"
Kushina desperately tried to grasp for the right words. Or any. "... We saw the Uchiha." Her voice failed her, and Kushina gave into the urge to leap forwards and pull Rin and Kakashi into a hug.
Both of them went stiff under her touch, but they didn't struggle.
Kakashi was the first to speak, once she let go. "I know this must be difficult. It was for us, back when it happened."
"That's not it." Rin's brows were knit in concern. "Minato would have told you. You're shocked, so he clearly didn't." She paused. "Did something change? Again?"
"Change?" Kakashi asked. "What do you mean, change?"
"Yes." Kushina swallowed past the dryness in her throat. "Yes, it changed. It... it was worse before."
Rin stiffened. The look in her eyes grew hard and unfeeling. "How could it have been worse?"
"It was." Kushina's eyes lowered to the ground as she remembered the haunted look in Minato's eyes and the many times his voice had threatened to break during his retelling of the future. Shamefully, she was glad for not having been there herself. This version was already bad enough.
Next to her, Naruto started to grow restless. Rin blinked as if she'd only just noticed him. Seeing as she'd just reunited with a previously dead Kushina, Kushina found it in herself to forgive her for it.
"Naruto! You're alright." Rin's voice was soft with relief and she reached out to briefly touch Naruto's shoulder.
Naruto squirmed, unsure what to do in response to the touch. "Hello, Rin-san."
Rin offered a small, hesitant smile. "We didn't know what to do when Jiraiya-san told us you'd gone with Minato. I'm glad you're alright." Her smile widened. "And that you got to meet your mother."
Finally, Naruto's mouth pulled into a genuine smile. It dimmed quickly as his eyes focused on something standing further behind them. On someone. "Um. Sensei?"
Kushina couldn't blame her son for his insecurity. Kakashi stared at him without speaking, his visible eye wide with bemusement. When he finally got his voice to work, he only said, "... Naruto."
Kushina wasn't in the mood for any more surprises. She definitely wouldn't tolerate another secret. "Why are you being weird?"
"Yeah." Naruto frowned. "What's wrong?"
"I just..." Kakashi shook his head, the frown still plastered on his face. "I feel... odd."
Kakashi took a step towards Naruto, crouching down slightly. He narrowed his eye as if seeing Naruto for the first time – as if he wanted to take in every detail he had so far missed. "I remember meeting you when I was a child," he said, slowly. "But why did I... I didn't..."
Kushina's eyes widened. "What else do you remember?"
"Nothing!" Kakashi burst out, his voice rising in volume. "That's the issue. I've known him since I was a teenager. Why don't I have any other memories of him until a few weeks ago?"
Rin let out a groan. "This happened before," she muttered, rubbing her temples as if fighting a headache. "This feeling, I... I remember it."
"What do you mean?" Kakashi frowned. "What feeling?"
Rin stole a glance at Naruto. Kushina couldn't decipher it in time. "Look, Kakashi." She hesitated and continued in a slow, careful tone of voice. "Last time Minato came here, you hadn't introduced yourself to Naruto. He didn't know you. At all."
Kushina attempted to swallow down the bitterness the sentence caused. She didn't succeed.
"I didn't even know Dad had a genin team until he told me himself," Naruto muttered.
Kakashi's eye narrowed in disbelief. "What? No, that's not– That doesn't make any–" His eye closed with a groan. "... I don't understand."
"Me neither. Not entirely," Rin admitted.
Kakashi sent a helpless glance towards Kushina. "If it was different before, that means it has changed. Minato changed it. Right? So why do I remember these... Why do my memories contradict each other? How can I forget some of what used to be, but not everything?"
Kushina took her time answering. Minato and she had asked themselves the same questions and they'd done their best to figure out an explanation. Or at least a theory.
"I don't think you're forgetting those things so much as that you're suppressing them," she said eventually. "The future isn't rewriting itself. I– We think that the two versions – what it was like before, and what we changed – are merging, and your mind glosses over the details that make no sense anymore. It's like," she struggled to decide how to phrase the sentence, "It's like reality is trying to smooth over the differences."
Hence Rin forgetting her own death, but reliving it in her nightmares. Hence Kakashi remembering Naruto from when he was a kid, despite not having known him at that age Before.
"It's like remembering something from your childhood," Kushina went on, "but your memory is crap, so you don't remember most of it. Your mind wants to have the full picture. It likes when everything makes sense, so it's filling in the blanks in between the things you do remember. Except here, it's filling them in badly."
Kakashi had paled to a worrying degree, his brow furrowed in alarm. "How do I know which memory is the original and which has changed?"
Kushina felt her expression grow strained. "I don't think there is a way."
She didn't particularly want to think about what it would feel like, finding out about someone else meddling with time and changing her future as they saw it fit.
In a way, Kushina was in an incredibly lucky position. She was the one to make the changes – she and Minato – so obviously from her point of view, she was making the best choices she could possibly make. But standing on the sidelines, being forced to let other people decide about her fate? About the fate of all of Konoha, of her friends, her family? Kushina would never be able to accept it.
Kushina's hand rose to absent-mindedly scratch an itch on her belly before freezing halfway to her jinchūriki seal, realizing what she was doing. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten about it, tear-jerking reunion or not.
"Kushina-san?" Kakashi asked, noting her rigid posture immediately. "Is everything alright?"
She decided she would talk to Minato about it before worrying anybody else. "Yeah." She forced her hand to keep still and twisted her mouth into a smile. "All good. I mean. Besides the obvious." And also the minor fact that the time hopping might have permanently messed with her jinchūriki seal. Oh joy.
"If you say so." Kakashi didn't sound convinced.
"I do say so. Let's go and see if Minato's done yet," Kushina said, brusquely changing the topic despite feeling far from ready to return to the depressing sight of the few remaining members of the Uchiha clan.
You're not fine.
Kushina did a full-body flinch. Immediately afterwards, Rin froze.
Kushina, I– The voice fell silent. Rin's voice did. Rin, whose mouth most definitely hadn't moved. Rin, who'd somehow spoken directly into Kushina's mind.
Rin, who now looked like she was seconds away from bolting.
"What was that?!"
"I'm sorry!" Rin took a step back, her eyes wide. Kushina debated grabbing her arm to prevent her from making a run for it. "It's incredibly intuitive. I didn't mean to."
Kushina made an effort to make herself look calmer.
"Didn't mean to do what? What is," she made a vague hand gesture, "this?"
Rin didn't answer. Kushina debated asking Kakashi, but one look at his puzzled glance quickly made her give up on that plan.
Instead, Kushina concentrated. She reached out to the feeling she'd felt before – that buzzing, pounding feeling inside of her head, a weight in her mind that told her there was more, something trying to reach her. Rather than trying to ignore it, Kushina followed through.
She felt a bond guiding her, pulling her mind towards one direction, pulling her through a sort of tunnel. Pulling her towards Rin. Connecting. Kushina did the one thing she could think of doing. She reached out.
What... What is this?
She wasn't talking through her mouth. Kushina knew, because she didn't feel it moving.
A low, displeased growl vibrated somewhere behind her belly button. Kushina was yanked back as her concentration shattered, and she reemerged next to Rin and Kakashi, a hand flying down to clutch at her stomach and her eyes wide with panic.
The sensation was already gone.
"Your seal's fine," Rin said, quietly.
Kushina didn't like the look in her eyes. "How did you know?" she whispered, keeping her hand exactly where it was.
Naruto latched onto her other arm and Kushina didn't have the heart to nudge him away.
Rin didn't answer immediately. Kakashi no longer looked confused by what was going on and avoided Kushina's gaze.
"Rin," Kushina said, her voice sharp. "How did you know?"
"I know," Rin said simply, her hand pausing on its way to gripping the hem of her shirt. Slowly, inch by inch as if she was fighting against a physical resistance, Rin pulled it up.
By the time her hand came to a halt, Kushina was staring. Her eyes were fixed on the patch of skin that Rin had revealed. As well as the ink decorating it. Kushina's chest hollowed out as the realization left her breathless.
Rin looked like she fought the urge to take a step back. Or maybe to flee, altogether. "Kushina-san, I– I'm–"
"You're a jinchūriki," Kushina said. Her own seal prickled on her skin and she couldn't shake the thought that the fox was laughing at her.
A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful To Mockingbird, PyrothTenka and Igornerd!
Be a dear and let me know what you think!
~Gwen