20. Kushina is eight when Uzushiogakure falls and she drags herself to Konohagakure's gates on sheer stubbornness, her father's last order to go and never look back, make us proud, Kushina-chan and the memory of her family's defiant expressions as they bring down a hundred or more shinobi for every single Uzumaki that falls.
It is their memory that drives her more than anything else could, past every challenge that presents itself to her- past her own grief, past becoming the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, past death.
Few realized this: Kushina strove, somewhat unconsciously, to become her clan.
And she succeeded to a far greater degree than Uchiha Sasuke ever would.
19. "There's so much more I want to teach you," she tells her son as she dies, thinking through the cloudy sensation ensnaring her senses. She thinks of Uzumaki fuuinjutsu, of the best way to cook ramen, how much fun fishing can be and just how to use those blue eyes to get his papa to do anything he wants. Of all the little things and maybe the big things, too, things like clan headship and maybe even visiting the ruins of Uzushio and play-dates with little Sasuke when they're old enough. "I want to stay with you."
But her time's running out and she knows it.
"I love you." She tells her son this, voice rough and thick through the blood in her mouth but utterly assured. There is nothing and no one that could ever diminish her love for the baby she just finished giving birth to, and her only regret- only- is that she will not see him grow up.
And Uzumaki Kushina, the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero, the embodiment of the whirlpool, dies just as her clansmen did: protecting someone precious to them.
18. "Minato-" she says, and when he turns around to greet her with a smile, the mud clone explodes in his face and Kushina falls out of the nearby trees laughing.
"You know this means war," Minato tells her, grinning despite himself.
Naruto didn't get his propensity for pranking from only one parent.
17. It's Uchiha Mikoto who introduces Kushina to Ichiraku's ramen stand. It's a sunny day and the afternoon is a little too hot even by Konohan standards, and with the hazy, lurid heat she doesn't think that Kushina will go for it. But Kushina perks up at the mention of ramen and Mikoto's every attempt to gently divert her new friend from ramen ramen ramen ramen 'ttebane is met with stout resistance, so they end up at the lonely stand that the Uchiha occasionally stops by during the colder months.
This is where Uzumaki Kushina first meets Namikaze Minato, two days before the start of the Academy and the official beginnings of a legend. He blurts out your hair is pretty, she mistakes his meaning and punches him, and the stand owner (with his young son clinging to his legs with wide eyes) places a bowl of ramen each in front of both children. They dig in and somewhere in the midst of guzzling noodles like there's no tomorrow they begin a conversation inflamed with the passion of the truly obsessed.
Mikoto shivers, pushing her own bowl aside. Who wouldn't, watching two ramen blockheads babble on about their meals as they consumed them at Shunshin speed? She'd always thought that Minato was the only one. That there are two bodes ill indeed.
Then Kushina drags her into the conversation and she realizes with growing horror that she, Uchiha Mikoto, will never escape ramen.
(She learns to like it eventually.)
16. Kushina loves Jiraiya's first book more than Minato does, and their house- left lonely and untouched and dusty after they're gone- contains a copy of The Tale of the Gutsy Ninja that has the majority of its pages just barely clinging onto the binding and notes scribbled in every margin.
15. She adores chocolate mochi for the scrumptious taste, her genin team for familiarity borne of sweating and bleeding and crying together, and the Third Hokage for watching out for her in those terrible days when the specters of her family haunted her every step and nobody would look at her.
14. The first person who knows that Kushina has maybe sort of definitely not fallen for spiky blond hair and blue eyes and absolutely atrocious jutsu-naming skills is not her best friend, her other best friend, or even anyone close to her.
It's Uchiha Fugaku who figures it out during a chance encounter with the red-headed kunoichi on the training grounds.
He spends all of five solid minutes laughing aloud, completely shattering the image of stolid emotionless bastard, while Kushina swears vociferously at him and all his ancestors.
13. Kushina teaches Minato (and, by extension, a peeping Jiraiya) everything she knows about Uzumaki fuuinjutsu- which isn't much, by her own claim, but it still takes them two years and five months to cover everything she can remember.
12. Kushina returned to the ruins of Uzushiogakure once, with permission from the Hokage. She spent three days in the ruins of her old house and ate fish for every meal, explored her childhood haunts, and salvaged a few mementos of her family. On the last day she left an offering at the little shrine she built, and when she returned to Konoha, it was with her head held high and fearless and free of the invisible weight that had always seemed to drag her shoulders down.
11. She never finds the Uzushio headband made specially with extra-durable cloth that her father had intended for her graduation day.
10. Her full name is Uzumaki Kushinada, but she'd never know that because the last person that could've told her never thought to.
9. Kushina's greatest prank involved the Naka River, gumdrops, and a truly alarming amount of tar. It was the sole reason why every Uchiha- save Fugaku and Mikoto- was terrified of being stuck alone in a room with her. For years, Uchiha parents kept their unruly children in line by telling them that the Bloody Habanero would creep in in the middle of the night and repeat the deed if they didn't do what they were told.
8. There are days where she looks at her empty, lonely apartment and wants to scream as loud as she can, because even if she isn't alone she'll never forget the hole in her heart that Uzushio created and silence makes it that much harder to avoid.
7. She considers dying her hair once in the first year she's in the Academy- when she's heard one too many jeers of Tomato! Hahaha! Tomatoooo and garnered one too many bruises beating down the classmates who gave her such a mocking moniker- but she hears her father's voice, as if far away, whispering to her.
Make us proud, Kushina-chan.
She decides to grow her hair out rather than dye it. Then she grins evilly, because she knows exactly what to do to the bullies.
The very next day, every single classmate who had tormented her with their words find their clothes incredibly itchy, but they hardly think much of it. The moment one of them touches someone else, they all slowly begin to turn bright purple. It's Nara Shikaku who notices the purple splotches creeping up their arms first, which in turn leads to Yamanaka Inoichi noticing- and then loudly pointing it out.
A girl squeals in terror. Then the room explodes into noise.
As chaos reigns in the classroom and the sensei tries to restore order and get the children to the medic all at once, a tired Kushina sits in the back and is (for once) quiet as she revels in her victory.
Nobody ever proves it, but every child in the classroom knows that she did something.
6. She mothers Kakashi and Rin incessantly, and although he makes a fuss about it in the presence of others, Kakashi doesn't actually mind all that much.
The laundry list of things he needs to do in order for her consider him to be "properly taking care of himself", pinned onto the front of his shirt and stuck there with a seal, is a little bit much, though. He ignores his sensei's laughter and fixes the blond man with a narrow one-eyed glare because Minato-sensei's clearly been brainwashed by Kushina-nee.
No matter how much Kakashi likes the red-haired woman, or how much she sees him like the little brother she might've never had, nothing is worth sitting here being laughed at by Sensei because he, a jonin, couldn't avoid one insane redhead who is currently dead-set on making him learn how to care for himself even though he already knows how.
Coincidentally, this is why Kakashi is late to a mission briefing for the first time.
"Kakashi," the Sandaime Hokage says, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes. He glances pointedly at the henge-covered list sealed to Kakashi's shirt. "You're late."
Kakashi thinks about this for a little while- then his hand habitually twitches toward his left eye and he hits jackpot. "I got lost on the road of life," he says with complete honesty. "It was very persistent."
5. "K'shina," Minato mumbles sleepily, burying his face in her hair and nudging the back of her head with his nose insistently. "I'm sorry. Please let me hold you?"
"Fine," Kushina grumbles, turning around and letting him wrap his arms around her. She's glad that the darkness of night hides her pink face. "If you teach our child to break walls when he or she trains, you can be the one to pay for the damages, 'ttebane."
Silence.
"Our what?!" Minato yelps, suddenly wide awake. When she raises an eyebrow at him, he grins in equal parts embarrassment and dawning awe. The Yellow Flash nearly gets out of bed to dance, but his wife curls her own arms around him to keep him in place as she tries and fails to conceal a smile. "A child," he breathes, holding Kushina's arms. "We're going to have a child."
In that moment he looks so happy that she lets herself forget about the concerns and considerations that will have to be made.
Something worth celebrating, she thinks, well aware that Minato has had precious little to celebrate.
4. Kushina babysat a young Itachi, and the day Mikoto came home to find her home laden with traps that Fugaku would've been caught in and her scarily intelligent three-year-old engaged in tactical warfare over the last of the salt ramen with his eight-year-old cousin Shisui was the day she realized that some people did, in fact, consider Kushina a bad influence.
3. One time she's stuck in the hospital on bedrest due to a particularly nasty mission gone south and the next time the nurses visit her she's somehow gotten ahold of a brush, ink, and paper. They never did repair the water damage in that particular room.
2. She can cook food that isn't ramen. Minato only believes this when she cooks for the both of them and shoves the results into his mouth.
1. Uzumaki Kushina finishes the Shiki Fujin her clan created as a purely theoretical exercise.
She never expects it to be used.