Heeee: YES! Happy ending! Well, technically we've got a chapter/epilogue left that I know you guys will like. :D I'm so excited! I have to go do moar homework now and bake cookies with my mommy, but you'll prolly get the last chapter by the end of the day.

Fate's Garden

Part 4 - Hysteria

Chapter 7 - Home

Fate has knowledge of everything, and control of everything. He knows, sees, and hears…everything. Everything has its place and time, and even chaos suits his purpose because he ultimately knows how things will end.

Naruto turned, the man still in his grip, hanging ever so limply. He stared at the small pool of water surrounding the ever smaller island. Reflected in that water Naruto saw millions of lives, of worlds; all of them unique and wonderful and horrible in their own way. It was an elaborate menagerie, and Naruto found that he cared for all of it. People he was sure he'd never met in his lifetimes, worlds he'd never been to, unforgiveable crimes, unparalleled beauty, he loved all of it. They may be mortals, and inherently foolish, innately ignorant, but they were still beautiful creations. To wipe them all away to suit one's fancy was a crime in itself. Naruto wasn't going to let it happen.

At first he thought that he'd picked the world at random, but then perhaps Fate himself had led him to it. A world where all was good, and knowledge was trivial, confined in that world, with his omnipotence stripped from him, Fate would suffer. Naruto set the man down on the island, and he knelt on the soft grass, sweeping his hand through the cool water, the worlds looking like stars. He reached for the one he needed and when he scooped it out of the water it was a soft white glow resting in his palm. All this time, Naruto thought, here we were, drifting in a pond at Fate's feet.

As he stood, Naruto willed the light of this world in his palm to grow. Eventually it leapt from his hand and rested above the pond. The family was entering the garden in a steady trickle, curious about this awkward revolution. Naruto turned on his grandfather and found him where he'd dropped him. He was staring at the pond, expressionless. He picked him up again, and found him limp and unresisting.

"So this is your idea of a punishment?" Fate asked.

"You want mortals to be poison; you want them to be unclean. All you want is an endless cycle of destruction. Tell me, in your omnipotence, what I'm going to do to you?"

Fate opened his mouth to speak, and nothing came out. Naruto set his hand on the man's bald head and slowly lifted it up. Out came a dark shadow that twisted and twined around Naruto's wrist, and after it had been removed from his grandfather's head the man changed. He grew older somehow, his roundness turned to sharp angles, jutting out bones, and a skeletal frame. The illusion surrounding him disappeared all together and all that was left was his true disposition. A god without his powers.

"What am I going to do to you, grandfather?"

"…I…don't know. I don't know. I don't know!"

Naruto tossed him toward the light of the good world and he vanished, absorbed into the dimension. He took the world and let it shrink in his hands. At the moment it was disconnected from the others, there was no way that his grandpa could try and flee to another world. Holding the light of such an innately good collection of mortals and creatures and earth was an intense feeling. Though it was a good one, Naruto wasn't sure how much longer he could hold it.

"Childe, come with me," said an unfamiliar voice.

A tall man with long white rabbit ears, eight spindly white tails, and a strong jaw stood before him. His eyes held more wisdom than Naruto could tell Fate would have ever had, if he'd retained his powers.

"My name is Yuuta, I am your uncle," the man said.

Naruto smiled, "It's good to finally meet you."

"Son, there will be time for further introduction later, right now, you shall come with your Uncle and I," Kyuubi intoned, gesturing towards the gate leading out of the garden.

Naruto nodded, though his eyes couldn't help themselves, flying over the faces of his family. He saw Gaara, and Haku, and Zabuza, just like Sasuke had said. There were plenty of other people, well over twenty, but he didn't recognize them. He had the rest of eternity to know them. He followed his Uncle Yuuta and his father out of the garden and into a vast plain. They walked in silence, Naruto holding the good world, and Fate's power twining around his wrist, crawling and twisting constantly.

They passed through an invisible barrier and entered a jungle, and on they walked. They passed through another wall and found salt plains and bog lands. They found a cave filled with magma and a heat more powerful than any Naruto had experienced. They walked through a river filled with dams expertly constructed out of sticks, larger than any he'd ever seen. They walked through a dusky swamp, past a deep dark cave. An endless meadow with a soft fog and tall grass and flowers, and even after they passed through another barrier it continued though with a noticeably tall tree stump. Then they were in a forest that reminded Naruto of his fox life, of his den and his mate and kits. But they moved past that even, and now the three of them stood on a cliff, looking out at a gaping chasm filled with the overwhelming grey that had taken over Sasuke's and his last life.

"Childe, you have done a remarkable thing," Yuuta said.

Naruto blushed, feeling as though this compliment, though ordinary, meant far more coming from his uncle.

"The power on your wrist," Yuuta snatched it off of him and held it still despite its want to writhe, "is a horrible power, and it was never meant to be used."

"What do you mean?"

"Originally the garden was all that existed in our realm, and it was filled with spirits, some more potent than others."

"One such spirit grew and grew and eventually became Time, he gathered the other spirits and sent them into the sacred pool from which you so easily plucked that world. So the worlds were created."

"But when the worlds were created they were all the same, all good, none bad," Yuuta's eyes were riveted on the strand of darkness held taught between his clenched fists, "so Time put poison in the pool, he called his poison freedom, and when he knew that all the worlds were no longer only good he wept. His tears being from him created Time in the worlds and as they were sporadic some worlds sped up and some slowed down, not all were even."

"Time realized that he would need to enter the worlds himself to put his nature fully into all of the worlds. So he took a part of himself and created our father, and gave him his power of creation and destruction, of knowledge. He told our father to watch over the worlds for him in his absence."

"But the power he'd been given corrupted him and gave him an idealistic sense of the filth of mortals, he believed that the pools should have never been corrupted. He destroyed so many worlds that eventually there were only what is left now and so Time himself, his nature became diluted and not as strong in the worlds as he was. Eventually he was only an illusion that the mortals, not knowing any other way, continued to function under. Time was all that kept the worlds completely separate."

"When our father destroyed so many worlds, and the sense of Time, the worlds lost most of their uniqueness. Though they are split and different in ways, all of the mortals are now duplicates of each other. This is why you could leap from world to world and find yourself in the body of another version of yourself."

Yuuta kept a firm grip on the darkness as he lifted it over his head and threw it down into the grey, far out of sight. The grey became tangible, it shook and groaned, a rumble growing beneath their feet. Then it went bursting into the air like a geyser of water, soon spiraling down, and down, disappearing into a drain hole of matter. All that was left beyond the cliff was a pure white, an endless plain of pure energy.

"Uncle how did you know all of this?" Naruto asked, staring at the vastly changed canyon. Though he couldn't see another side to it, he felt as if there was one, it was just teasingly beyond his vision.

"The story itself is ingrained in the garden, we have always known it, but our father suppressed the knowledge with his illusions," Kyuubi explained in his brother's stead.

"Childe, give me the world, please," Yuuta held out his hands reverently, and Naruto was glad to be relieved of it, its feeling of good was so strong.

Yuuta approached the edge and let it world slip from his hands, tumbling down into the white. Naruto gasped, hurrying to his uncle's side and gaping down, trying to find the world but he couldn't, his eyes couldn't focus with the bright energy that flooded his vision.

"What did you do with it?"

"I sealed it shut and returned it to its source, it isn't dead. It is out of our hands so that we may not unleash its prisoner by some foolish folly."

Naruto felt himself calm down as his Uncle's hand settled on his shoulder and pulled him away from the edge. His father and his uncle draped their arms around his shoulders and led him back through the different homes of his cousins and aunts and uncles. Once they'd reached the garden again, Naruto was welcomed by his family…and his mate.

Sasuke was sitting on the grass, laughing, and talking eagerly with his cousins. He looked just as he had in their very first life, before they'd died, but now he was dressed in elegant black robes with a crimson sash tied around his waist. When he saw Naruto he smiled, sincerely, genuinely smiled, and waved him over. All of his cousins grinned and greeted him with jovial shouts of 'Hey cousin!'

Naruto hurried over, careening onto the ground and into Sasuke's arms, holding him tight. He was pulled into a conversation easily, finding himself comfortable, his cousins offering their names as they put forth points here and there. Their parents were gathered on another side of the garden, speaking happily about something, though a little more subdued then their children. Naruto knew he'd made the right choice. Now, now he was home.