Finally back to the "home" time period. Saori is three years old. Naruto and Sakura are around 25. Their second child, Haruki, is now five months old.
Rain or Shine
Chapter 12
Naruto jabbed his kunai into the desk and began to carve the Konoha village symbol into it in frustration at the latest ridiculous and irritating note from the council. He was certain that the majority of them got together and came up with more of this nasty and useless crap that neither helped him or the citizens of Konoha. They spent their days closeted away from everyone and the only thing they produced were these pointless demands. How the Third put up with them for so many years was amazing. He knew Tsunade baasama went into rages over this stuff. Naruto glanced up at the much patched walls, a testament to her way of dealing with it.
Naruto felt his sleeve being pulled on, and glanced down to see his daughter looking up at him
"Daddy mad at me?" She looked ready to burst into tears. She'd been playing with her father's hat and had accidentally torn part of the fabric hanging from it. She was afraid her daddy was angry because she messed up the hat.
"Ah, Saori chan, I'm not mad at you." He picked up his daughter and cuddled her; she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged back. He patted her on the back gently. Then he let her sit in his lap.
"You see this?" He pointed to a piece of paper on his desk.
"Uh huh."
"This is what made daddy angry. It's something from the council. They are saying things in it that make me mad."
"Yesterday, when I was with mommy, mommy had to read something. It made mommy angry. Mommy yelled a bad word and called council letters garbage."
Naruto laughed. "They are garbage!" He crumpled up the letter and tossed it in the trash can. "Break time!"
Lifting Saori up to his shoulders, he climbed out the window. Then he bounded across rooftops, Saori holding on tight, squealing with delight.
Saori starting singing a nonsense song about ramen. It was a regular game between them, coming up with bizarre ingredients. Naruto was singing along with her and they were trading off ingredients each verse.
"My ramen has hedgehog in it, hedgehog in it, hedgehog in it, and it's yum yum yum!"
Once they got to the hospital Naruto jumped down to street level and walked in the front door.
One of the nurses bowed low and said, "I'll tell Sakura sama you have arrived Hokage sama."
Naruto smiled at the teenage girl and she lightly blushed, before bowing low again before she left.
Naruto had tried to get the girl to quit with the bowing, but to no avail. Sakura had sighed the first time this happened and told Naruto that the girl had a crush on him. "You are a handsome man, the Hokage, and the girls her age have all read Kitomi's romance story that everyone knows is really about us. You are a young teenage girl's dream man."
It was flattering but also made him uncomfortable. Now he knew what it had been like for Sasuke when they were kids. Except he was a grown man, married and a parent besides. His fangirls were young teenage girls, not so much interested in having him for themselves, but as some sort of awe inspiring ideal man. If this had happened when he was twelve or even fifteen it might have thrilled him, but at twenty-five it felt weird.
Sakura came out of her office cradling their baby boy in her arms. Haruki was a redhead, like his paternal grandmother. He was an adorable boy and seemed to have a happy nature. He didn't seem to mind lots of attention from crowds of people like Saori had as a baby. Although, she had grown used to it now, and liked to show off, just like her daddy. Sakura smiled as her daughter expertly jumped from her daddy's shoulders to the floor then ran pell-mell into her legs and hugged her tight. "Love you, mommy!"
Naruto took Haruki from Sakura's arms so she could pick up Saori. Sakura kissed her daughter on her forehead."Love you too, Saori chan." Saori then pulled herself up to her mother's shoulders. Sakura patiently endured being climbed on, giving her daughter only minimal assistance. Sakura wanted to encourage her daughter's muscle development, and letting her attempt to do minor things like this would do that. Saori probably would have taijutsu as her strongest point as a ninja. It was something she was already showing some aptitude for, so muscle development was where the core of her earliest training went.
Saori had a bright mix of colors in her long straight hair and had inherited her mother's broad forehead, to Sakura's dismay. Her nature though wasn't like Sakura's as a young child, she was a daddy's girl through and through. Her "adoptive" grandparents said she was just like Naruto's mom in her personality.
Sakura wished she could have known Kushina Uzumaki. If his mother had been alive when he was growing up it might have made Naruto's earliest years less painful. But through Tsunade shishou and Jiraiya sama, it was almost as if Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki were a presence in their lives. Jiraiya sama often talked of Fourth Hokage as a boy, and Tsunade would speak of the young Kushina Uzumaki.
Kakashi sensei also talked about Minato sensei fairly often. After Saori was born Kakashi sensei would stop by some evenings and talk about what the Fourth had been like as his sensei and what he had witnessed about the romance of Naruto's parents.
The first time it happened was the day Sakura and Naruto had both finally got out the hospital after the attack on Konoha and the birth of Saori. They had just settled down for their first night at home with their baby. There was a knock on the door and when Naruto answered there was Kakashi sensei standing in the hallway. He looked sort of abashed, and apologized for not visiting them in the hospital.
"I didn't want to interfere with your meetings or with your friends visits, and didn't want to disturb you when you needed rest."
Sakura and Naruto were relieved that something had prompted their former teacher to want to see them. As they had grown up a sort of strain developed, distancing them. After Naruto and she married, they had made an attempt to invite Kakashi sensei out to dinner or over to the house, but every time he had politely demurred. It made them sad, but they accepted that until Kakashi sensei was ready to transverse that, things would remain that way. That night they enthusiastically invited him inside their home.
As soon as they sat down in the living room Kakashi sighed and said , "I wish I could told you about your parents when you were younger" He looked at Naruto. "I neglected saying anything for too long."
"No, it turned out okay. I wondered about my parents, but I'm glad I didn't find out who my dad was until I was almost a grown up."
"I thought it might be too intimidating if you knew before that time."
"Yeah, it probably would have been."
"And if I had talked about what I knew of your mother, Sakura might have gotten curious and investigated who she was and found out your father, then told you."
Sakura blushed. She had been curious who Naruto's parents were, almost from the time their team had formed. She couldn't find any leads though, and no one would give her any clues.
That night had been the first of many visits from their former sensei. He often arrived around supper time, Sakura smirked. He would watch curiously as Sakura orchestrated the creation of the evening meal, telling Naruto what he needed to do to help her; Naruto dutifully following her orders. If Sasuke happened to be there he'd usually get "enlisted " too. That was the most amazing thing to Sakura- both guys following her orders cheerfully. Sometimes Naruto would whine, but it was a playful whine. She knew what that meant and playfully scolded him back. Later, after any visitors had gone home, they'd play in other ways. Sakura grinned mischievously
Kakashi saw the family group heading toward Ichiraku Ramen for lunch, and joined them.
"I'll give you my official report later Naruto, but the outlook is good." Kakashi had just returned from a mission to the restored Whirlpool village.
It was called Whirlpool in honor of the country it had been in. It had been in Fire Country ever since it had been destroyed by invaders, back when Kushina Uzumaki was a ten year old Genin. The Whirlpool refugees had made it to Konoha and were taken in, but they had been treated as outsiders by many. The surviving refugees remembered those bad old days. The response was enthusiastic when Naruto proposed the restoration of Whirlpool village, in his first proclamation after becoming Hokage. Now six years later, Whirlpool was a thriving tourist village with a ninja training outpost.
Naruto grinned at Kakashi words. They would have to take the kids there for a vacation soon. He and Sakura had been there once, on the first anniversary of the restoration project. They walked the streets imagining what his mom's life might have been like in her childhood. They had found out where her home had been and had used their own funds for it's restoration. That home would be a vacation place for them.
Once he handed off the Hokage position to Konohamaru, they could go there a lot. He'd wait until Saori passed the Chunnin exams. He wanted to be in office as Hokage when she took the exam. With all the teachers she'd have, she'd probably pass easily the first time. So in about ten years he could retire.
He smiled inwardly, his 12 year old self would think he was nuts, thinking fondly of retirement. In ten years, Sakura's most promising apprentices would be ready to take on much of the workload, and she could retire if she wanted to. They could time the vacations to when Saori was home from missions and Haruki was on school holidays. They'd still be pretty young and could go back to going on missions, when needed. Konohamaru would probably want him as an advisor as well, so there'd be plenty they'd be doing, but they'd have more free time than they did now.
To think someday they'd really be completely retired, and their kids would be grown up ninjas... It seemed both soon and long time away at the same time. He grinned thinking about Sakura and himself as old, it would be wonderful. They'd spend all year in Whirlpool then.