"Coffee?"
Naruto asked with as much venom he could seep into his sickly sweet inquiry.
Inoichi hid a smile behind his teeth and nodded slowly, taking as much time contemplating the specifics as he could.
"Yup," he finally verbalised his request for the beverage. "A shot of milk and one and a half teaspoons of sugar. Please."
The blond shot his temporary boss an acidic look before marching out of the office briskly. In the corridors of the dull T and I department, he eyed all the glass windows lining individual workspaces. For a place that guarded information so well, the transparency of the workings of each member had been astounding to him. As it turned out, the first step in securing intel as a network is trust–and what's better at inspiring it than honesty and openness?
He entered the little nook with marble countertops and irritation flared inside him on seeing the plain, pristine coffee machine. For the last two weeks, he'd been nothing more than a wet-behind-the-ears intern. From coffee runs to mundane documenting to taking Ibiki-san's pet cat out for a stroll in the green yard–Naruto had become a glorified maid.
It wasn't that he was being exploited either. It was just typical newbie reception. Shikamaru was suffering the same fate as him and though Naruto grumbled about their treatment now and then–the knowledge and skills he was being made to learn were undeniably useful. The first lecture about the inner workings of the entirety of the Intel Division had been interesting as much as it had been enlightening. He knew many facts already through his tenure as Hokage but other things–the intricate network of spies they had, the methods of communication, the five different sets of hand signs for quick messages, the retrieval and conveyance of important information–it was all new and unknown and Naruto found himself enjoying this process of being a student again.
That, though, didn't stop him from shutting the lid onto the plastic holder of the machine any less forcefully, in hopes of breaking the damn thing. But like countless times before, the stupid machine held firm, whirring a soft noise as it brewed the caffeinated concoction for Naruto's dear senpai.
"Naruto?"
The voice was hesitant, soft and old. Naruto turned around and for a moment, he considered how odd the man in front of him looked. The Third's beard was grey, as were the scarce hair that crowned his head–a grey that perfectly matched the paint of the walls, in Naruto's humble opinion. The oddness emerged from the black and red shinobi garments instead of the Hokage robes that Hiruzen now adorned with a sense of duty and pride that Naruto had always found lacking in the old man when he sat behind his desk.
"Lord Third," Naruto acknowledged with a slight nod of his head–unsure of where he stood with him any longer. The familiarity that calling him Jiji would imply just felt wrong, but so did the formality of Lord Third.
"I see Inoichi's being a hard ass to you. That man's sadism is quite entertaining to behold, isn't it?"
Naruto snorted, angling his body so he could keep an eye on both, the retired Kage and the coffee-making abomination.
"Entertaining? Please, no. It's annoying and tiresome and wholly boring. The man's got an appetite for this poop drink the size of a chimp."
"You'll get used to it," Hiruzen said with a tinge of reminiscence. "Besides, he'll start you onto more intense training next month so these measly chores will get cut short."
"Thank Kami," Naruto muttered, pouring in the thick black sludgy liquid into a tall cup and adding milk. Glancing at the various labelled containers, he purposely picked up the one with a neat script spelling out SALT and adding one and half teaspoons of the powdered stuff into the coffee. He smiled to himself and ignored the amused manner with which Hiruzen regarded him.
"Here to meet the boss?" Naruto asked, titling his head in the general direction of Inoichi's personal office.
Hiruzen joined him on his way back, easily keeping up with his fast strides.
"Yes," and Naruto wasn't surprised. He'd seen the old man once or twice before, lounging in the chair opposite Inoichi's but before today, they hadn't had the chance to interact. "How are you doing, Naruto?"
The blond didn't falter, though it was close. The question wasn't as surprising as the weary tone in Hiruzen's voice. As if under all the prim and properness, the ramrod straight back, the clipped and tidy beard, he truly felt the weight of his age old regrets–and Naruto knew he was one.
One of Hiruzen's regrets.
"'M fine." He mumbled, quickening his pace to avoid this chat, "perfectly fine."
Hiruzen seemed to notice his discomfort for he subtly stepped aside and slowed down.
"I think I need to use the bathroom real quick," he said with a low chuckle, "apparently old age can reduce bladder capacity, or so I've heard."
Naruto peeped back, the cup feeling scalding in his hand, despite the time it had gained to cool down.
"It's fine," Naruto said and Hiruzen was smart enough to read the subtext. "Let's go."
That was that.
The two made their way to Inoichi without further conversation and as Naruto nudged the door open with his foot, his eyes met Inoichi's teasing ones–vanishing all the uneasy feelings that resided within him not a minute ago. It was stupid–to still hold Hiruzen accountable for what he'd once felt in his childhood. Those bitter emotions were fleeting even when was a teenager and now, after entire decades to forgive the man, it didn't make sense to not atleast be amicable towards Hiruzen.
"Smells a bit... weird, don't you think?" Inoichi commented, grapsing the stryofoam cup in his hand.
"Oh yes?" Naruto asked with a raised brow. "If your sense of smell is so great, why don't you join the pack of our tracking ninken, senpai?"
"Ever irritable you are," Inoichi sighed despondently before turning his attention towards Hiruzen.
"Take a seat, Lord Third," he shifted the heap of papers to the side of his desk, placing his cup on the polished wood carefully. "We've got a lot to discuss."
"I've gotta leave?" Naruto asked, already making his way towards the door.
"Nope," Inoichi's reply surprised the blond who stopped mid-step to turn his questioning gaze at the man. "This concerns you, to an extent. You made that paralysing seal, didn't you?"
"Jiraiya-san did," Naruto corrected, "I just provided the basic idea and a few key arrays."
"Potato, po-tah-to," the Yamanaka flourished his hand dismissively, beckoning his employee to sit down. Naruto followed the instruction, not bothering with futile protests. He was curious about this afterall.
"You know about the raid that'll be held at Danzo's base next month," Naruto rolled his eyes, not surprised that the the T and I head knew that he knew, "and you also know how that seal is going to be used extensively to take hold of the root nin non-lethally."
"Ofcourse," the blond said, turning his head towards Hiruzen. "What's this about, again? Why's Lord Third here?"
"He's joining them on the mission," Inoichi informed, lips twitching up at Naruto's parted lips–a gesture of surprise. "Infact, he's got the pack of seals with him at his residence to have a final look. I'm sending you to collect them later. Right now, we need your help with something else. Usually, we'd ask Jiraiya-san but he's back on the road for the next month or two. So, asking you is worth a shot, we figured."
Naruto nodded, guessing correctly that they need his assistance for the formation of another seal.
"Blindness?" Naruto repeated. "So that's the strategy?"
Hiruzen nodded in confirmation, an uncharacteristic smirk on his face.
"Our Jounin commander is fond of such backhanded tactics."
"I'm aware," Naruto stole a page from Inoichi's folder and begins a basic seal matrix–one he remembered from his timeline's Jiraiya's notes. "It'll take some time. And silence. Think you two can manage shutting up for an hour or several?"
Inoichi knocked his knuckles on Naruto's head in a strangely affectionate manner,
"Brat. I'm really getting tired of all your demands. Might cut down on your salary too."
"You won't," Naruto said with confidence, "you're too much of a decent man to do such a thing."
Inoichi laughed, short and muffled, "You've got a unique way of complimenting people."
" Shut up."
"Okay okay," Inoichi acquiesced, darting his gaze to Hiruzen–who was once again immensely entertained by the scene before him. "Shall we head out for a walk then?"
"I don't mind," the older of the two men said, heading towards the door.
Naruto continued on with the seal for the next sixty minutes, before getting bored by the tedium of sitting on the chair. He changed locations, and perched comfortably on the ottoman by the window–brush in hand and parchment on the knee. When the two adults walked in again, he was almost done with the very basic matrix of the seal and before going any further, he had decided to wait to get it checked. Maybe he could send it with a toad to Jiraiya and the man could look it over and maybe make it for him. It's not like correspondence was a problem when the two shared the same summons. He told Inoichi as much and the man agreed with the plan. He'd been skeptical about sending the Sannin a hawk with the request for a seal when they can be easily intercepted but toad summons are infinitely safer for communication.
"That's done then," the Yamanaka clan head declared, stretching his shoulders. "You get going with Lord Third. Stack all the seal packages in our storage room, did you get that?"
"Yes, sir," Naruto threw him a salute. "Oh, you forgot to drink your coffee by the way."
"Shit," Inoichi lunged for his drink like it'd fall over if he wasn't clutching it tightly to his chest. "It's cold now, but it's still coffee," he consoled himself.
Naruto shrugged, following Hiruzen out the door and both of them broke out into a fit of laughter, however contained, when Inoichi's shout of Why the fuck does my coffee taste like the soles of my feet dammit! reached their ears.
Walking to Hiruzen's modestly sized three-storey house was a novel experience for Naruto. He didn't remember ever being to the man's home before. It was very practical, just like the person who lived in it. Plain brown floorboards and light orange door panels made most of the living room where Naruto spotted the piles of sealing papers. He was intent on getting to work as soon as possible so he could head home early and have a nice, quiet night to himself for once.
Hiruzen had other plans though.
Stepping on the sturdy flooring of the hall, the man immediately shoved Naruto under the kotatsu and pulled steaming cups of tea out of absolutely nowhere.
"A shinobi should always be prepared," is all the answer Naruto got when he questioned Hiruzen about it.
"It's a unique blend," the man supplied, himself relaxed under the thick blanket of the centre table. "Herbal, Jasmine, Green–I like to mix them up and drink whatever comes of it."
Naruto coughed after the first sip–clearly the method didn't work so well for his mild palate.
"Tastes good," he remarked nonetheless.
"How are you doing?" Hiruzen asked again, less weary and more determined this time. Determined for what–Naruto's hadn't the faintest clue.
"I'm fine, old man," and oh, there was the familiar name again and something in Hiruzen's eyes just melted. "How are you?"
"Same old, same old." Hiruzen said with a smile, the friendly grandfather aura shrouding his hardened shinobi instincts naturally, easily. "Back pains and joint aches are quite bothersome but I think I've got a good few years before any senility starts creeping in."
Naruto shook his head, sipping some tea again.
"Don't fool me," he said, looking out into the open courtyard with trimmed grass, "The only reason you're going on this mission is because you're senile."
"Or smart," Hiruzen mildly retorted, "Danzo's not a foe to be taken on by mere jounin."
"Mere jounin? That's what you call the best crop of your shinobi?"
"Not mine, anymore," the once-kage said with a sad smile. "But yes, the difference between a Kage-level nin and a jounin is the difference between a bonfire and a forest fire."
"That's just something to inflate your ego with," Naruto looked at Hiruzen. "Give a bonfire enough time to catch onto a tree and what you have is forest fire anyway."
"Exactly," Hiruzen said, approving of Naruto's thought process. "Time is a valuable resource Naruto. Not many shinobi live to my age and boast of decades upon decades of field experience. I have that, and Danzo does too. Besides, I hardly think it necessary to justify my choices to a chunin who hasn't seen the hardships of a Kage."
It was... strange wording–strange because despite saying so, Hiruzen was definitely justifying himself and his decisions to Naruto. The blond wanted to react, to bite back and say something that would shut Hiruzen up–to say that he had no idea of the hardships, the struggles Naruto had had to go through and overcome but the assessing look of the old man stopped him in his tracks. The retired shinobi wasn't having the same conversation that Naruto thought they were having. This was... weird, the gauging quality to Hiruzen's eyes. Looking into Naruto, waiting, watching, probing him to trip or slip.
"What are you doing?" he asked, straightforward as usual.
"Deciding," Hiruzen simply said.
"Deciding what?" And Naruto was definitely getting antsy now.
"Whether my suspicions are right or not."
"And what might those be?"
Hiruzen turned his gaze away, pointedly staring at a lone crack in one of the cemeted walls.
"I got a peculiar report during the chunin finals," he began, voice burning like a low simmer over a stove, purposeful and sharp. "At first, I was just a little bit alarmed. Not much, I'll be honest. Just a tiny amount of...c uriosity too. It was a civilian messenger, from one of the small settlements a little ways from Suna's border. You want to know what he brought me?"
Naruto shifted, an edge of something about Hiruzen feeling immensely uncomfortable. He felt... exposed. Irrational as the feeling was, Naruto couldn't shake it off. He didn't know how this conversation had gone downhill so fast, but he had to keep up, lest he lose track of it altogether.
"Yes," he replied, sweat trickling down his neck of its own volition, "What did you receive?"
Hiruzen turned around, looking into Naruto's eyes with faint traces of a smile.
"Ashes," he said. "Ashes of some unnamed, unknown shinobi, supposedly. That wouldn't have raised any questions–countless ninjas die each day, sometimes in brutal ways that not even their bodies remain. What caught my attention though was something else he brought along–a ring."
Naruto's eyes widened just a tad, and cursed when he realised what this meant. Hiruzen caught his momentary deer-caught-under-spotlight look and chuckled, bewildered and so so disbelieving.
"I was right," the man said, "I am right."
"Right about what?"
Hiruzen leaned forward, urgent and quick,
"You fought Itachi Uchiha to a standstill on your first C-rank."
Naruto narrowed his eyes, "Yes. So what?"
"And you fought Kisame till you almost defeated him–s a chunin." Hiruzen continued, as if Naruto hadn't spoken at all with eyes focused onto the blond yet looking at something intangible, something far far away. "You also assisted Jiraiya in the defeat and capture of Itachi."
"You won the chunin exams, granted everyone was only genin level so it's not as astonishing as your other feats." Hiruzen frowned in thought, and Naruto could practically see the cobwebs detangling themselves in the old man's head.
"Seals, too. Those–that array you drew today. That was the final nail in the coffin. That base–it's never been used before. That's knowledge yet unknown. And somehow, you, without any education about sealing arts managed to draw it. Which means, you're either an unprecedented genius or–or someone already taught you that base."
Naruto tried to remain calm even as Hiruzen kept uncovering trails the blond didn't even know he'd left behind.
"Kakashi," Hiruzen said abruptly, "then Jiraiya, then Shikaku–and now Inoichi. They've all been suspicious of your prodigious talent Naruto. And had it been anyone else, anyone I hadn't monitored during their childhood, I would've be elated to have such a versatile shinobi in our forces. But you Naruto–" Hiruzen's eyes blazed with accusations and anger and rage and controlled fury that came completely out of left field, "–you never had the chance and the time to grow into such a balanced and adjusted individual that you are now. When Jiraiya raised his suspicions–I dismissed them but that was before Orochimaru's death. And it's confirmed–you knew about it already, when the news hasn't even been made public knowledge. You knew it because you were the one who took him down."
Naruto sat there, eyeing Hiruzen with stiffened shoulders and a tensed body. It was out then–Hiruzen knew too much, given the information he had access to as a Kage. He'd got all the pieces already and Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Hiruzen figured out the time travel part too. He wasn't going to sit there and act ignorant, act like he didn't infact kill Orochimaru. There was no shame, no guilt, no remorse–only wariness behind Naruto hiding what he'd done. So he shrugged, genuinely unbothered by Hiruzen's epiphany.
"Yes," he repeated. "So what?"
Hiruzen stared at Naruto for a good few seconds before laughing hard, landing his head on the table with a soft thud. Naruto felt an unfamiliar brand of amusement, watching the usually uptight shinobi dissolve into a fit of hilarity–momentarily forgetting his mortification about the fact that this man probably knew most of things Naruto had sought so hard to keep secret.
"How?"
The question was muffled into the kotatsu table, spoken between huffs of genuine laughter and Naruto hesitated to say some bullshit, to craft a half-truth, half-lie answer and not reveal his side of things. The prior feeling of being exposed had evaporated into the floaty relief of finally letting go of something he'd held onto for so long.
"I've got experience," Naruto finally settled for that.
"Experience which I'm assuming you got before you were genin?"
Naruto smiled as Hiruzen looked up again,
"You can say that."
"Future," Hiruzen said, nodding to himself. "My sensei always thought that if things weren't changed for the better, our future would be doomed. You... you're from the future, aren't you?"
"How?"
And Hiruzen understood what Naruto meant. How did he know this? This truth that no one in their right mind would accept as is.
"I was Tobirama Senju's student, don't forget. An experimenter more than he was man–that guy. He was looking into spacetime jutsu you know. Time-travel, to be precise. He never reached any breakthroughs but I'm assuming you did."
"Someone else did," Naruto said truthfully, "I just took advantage of it."
"Fair enough," Hiruzen replied, "Why?"
"Why did I come back?" Naruto asked and smiled thinly when the other man gave him a nod.
"Circumstances," he admitted softly. "I might've been foolish, and more than a bit selfish but I don't regret it. I didn't come back to save the world from certain doom, I just came back to... save my future, my happiness, I guess."
Hiruzen picked up his tea again, somehow looking unruffled despite the revelations he'd had that day,
"You're wrong," he smiled inside his cup. "You're saving the happiness of many others, Naruto. Whether you may realise it or not."
Naruto didn't ponder over it. He never really liked shining a heroic light on his actions. Instead, he casted a nervous look at Hiruzen.
"You won't tell anyone, I assume."
"I won't. I see no point. So far, you've only done things in favour of Konoha and you show no inclination to do the contrary any soon."
"I didn't think you'd be so... cool-headed about it."
Hiruzen winked, he actually fucking winked.
"I wasn't Hokage the longest for nothing."
Naruto sat himself more comfortably, a vague sense of mystification lingering in his mind–because how in the actual fuck did Hiruzen deduce his time travelling secret and how is Naruto's head not on a spike already?
"Still," he said, "If I knew you'd be so agreeable, I would've come out about it sooner."
"Well now I know," Hiruzen said, "and you can't do shit about it. So might as well tell me how the future looked like for you."
Naruto sighed, resigned to the fact that one alive person now knew his actual story before looking at the pyramid of seals he had yet to transport.
"Who will take care of those?"
Hiruzen threw the packages a thoughtful glance before honest to Sage–grinning at Naruto.
"Monkeys and toads might make a good team, don't you think?"
Naruto grinned back, fox-like with just the tiniest edge of craziness, already building up chakra to summon Gamakichi.
"Let's exchange stories of our time as Kages, then, shall we?"
Now, of all times, Hiruzen sputtered out tea from his mouth.
Author's Note:
Honestly, I thought hard about going with this direction. Like, real fucking hard. And I wanted to write Hiruzen knowing this secret, and so I wrote it. It might be a poor decision but well, I've made several of those already and look, I'm still alive. So woo-hoo for Hiruzen being a smart cookie and figuring out shit that even a Nara couldn't - given Shikamaru and Shikaku didn't have all the relevant information.
Hope you enjoyed! :D
And have a great day y'all! Thank you so much for reading.