Figured I should end it now, otherwise it'll never get finished completely. Here's the final chapter to 'The Banished' installment.

~:~

When Kagura buried her father, he was ninety-seven and her mother maybe looked twenty. Actually twenty. But there was a sadness in her eyes that lasted for years afterwards.

Kagura was given the throne at age seventy-two, where she looked maybe fifteen.

Delicate and careful.

It was only then that Kagura realized what an awful burden lay on her shoulders.

The royal family would live for centuries; there was no telling how long Naruto would live.

"I'm leaving," Naruto announced to her daughter one day, her red hair chopped short. "I'm not going to give you any siblings and I'll see you in a decade or so."

She'd given Kagura her trusty sword, too.

Kagura swallowed.

Keeping the peace… Naruto had lectured how she'd kept the peace between nations. She was an idiot, they listened to an idiot's plan and it usually worked out.

Kagura, though… Kagura started two wars with just her words on accident, and it'd taken everything for her not to beg her mother to come home.

Two centuries in and her mother did visit, looking younger than Kagura did.

It had taken Kagura almost a hundred years to realize her mother hadn't left her because she thought Kagura was capable, it was for Naruto to mourn. Kagura had lost plenty of good friends, but –

Not quite near the sheer amount Naruto in her first century, not that many were extremely good friends like Uchiha Saki had been.

Naruto left without warning, without notice.

It was always like that. Without notice, without saying a word…

Except the last time. Last time, she'd looked forty and been well into her seventh century. Fucking old, yet her hair still gleamed a deep blood red and she always had stories to tell them all.

Last time, she'd said she loved them.

Then the new humans, the ones without chakra (because the ages in between chakra expansion were without chakra, Kurama had said) had walked up to their doorstep.

Uzumaki Naruto's body was laid to rest quite similarly as she had been near the time Kagura had been born; as with all shinobi, they laid her to rest in a sealed tomb, next to Hyuuga Neji's. Her hair floated around her, a beautiful dress similar to what she'd sketched into her journal on her body… What kind of broke their hearts was the lavender in her hair.

Few got the reference.

Kagura's bones ached. Her mother still looked quite young, younger then Kagura; she'd died of a mortal wound dealt to her.

Non-chakra humans clustered around her burial site, but there was seemingly no grave to dig up.

~:~

Kurama knelt at the gravesite, only his mate and Kikiya with him. He set a foxglove plant on her grave, then a tied bunch of lavender on her husband's.

(For her other husband, Gaara, he did nothing. He'd let Shukaku do whatever he wanted.)

On their shared headstone, it said their names and dates of birth and death.

Below, it also said:

A grave of two lovers: One, a wise peasant, the other, an idiot Queen. Somehow, they made it work.

"She's going to be pissed when she sees that in the Pure World," Kikiya snorted.

Kurama rumbled.

"Oh, we'll see her again," he said, a grin on his face. "Her soul was never the 'settling for anything less than a perfect ending' type."

"Fuckin' great," Kikiya groaned. "I've gotta deal with her again in a few centuries."

But the hidden smile Kagome saw only made the ravenette grin to herself.

FIN