Rating: T
Pairings: Kakashi/Obito (what did you expect?), one-sided Obito/Rin, Minato/Kushina
Summary: Kushina refuses to be kept out of the story, dattebane!
Notes: Yeah. It's been a long time. Coming back to this after almost two years… Please ignore the terrible use of Japanese suffixes in the early chapters. Also, this fic is also officially AU (more so than it was before, I guess?) since the Naruto manga didn't end with gay ninjas – seriously unexpected, believe me.
Kakashi isn't Hokage (yet?), they both still have the Sharingan, and Obito, well, didn't crumble into dust fighting a sudden rabbit goddess. Kaguya also doesn't exist here, because seriously, what the hell? Anything else… well, you'll just have to wait and see.
Anyhow, expect less humor from this part than feels. I'll return to it eventually, but...
As usual, Ramen Ichiraku was bustling with business.
The ramen restaurant had a long history within the village. While there were no shinobi clan infamous for noodles in the time of the founders, the initial business had been opened by a group of civilian merchants with a penchant for delectable (if artery-clogging and sodium-rich) fare. Famously, it had once been patronized by such legendary figures like the Shodaime and the Nidaime (as well as Uchiha Madara, but most tried to forget the fallout of that particular disaster.)
Jiraiya, Minato's own sensei, had treated him to ramen here once or twice. Minato had never gained the taste for Ramen Ichiraku that most elite shinobi in the village seemed to have. But there were certain side-effects of dating Uzumaki Kushina, and as it went, the occasional (read: frequent) shocks to his dietary system and wallet were small prices to pay to have her by his side.
Years of associating with the woman had taught him that there were certain things that one did not do in her presence. Insult the color of her hair, for one. Hurt children, for another. But most of all, one simply did not keep secrets from Uzumaki Kushina, at the risk of complete and utter destruction. It was here that the problem arose.
Namikaze Minato had been keeping a secret from Uzumaki Kushina, long-term girlfriend. More specifically, he had been keeping two, man-sized, time travelling secrets. While he was honestly surprised that she hadn't been told yet - especially since Mikoto was already in on it - he thanked the gods for it. It was probably the only reason he was watching Kushina stack yet another empty bowl to her side, instead of getting pummeled by a single, murderous spitfire.
He waited until she reached her eighth bowl before broaching the subject. Hopefully, the gallon of ramen broth could dampen her fiery fury enough so that he could get out of it alive. "Have you heard? Two unknown shinobi were found in the Forbidden Forest, a few days ago."
The ninth bowl of ramen stopped halfway on its journey to Kushina's lips. "Eh? Spies?"
"That's what I thought, at first." He chose his words carefully. "The Hokage vetted them personally, however. They're not spies, and apparently, they're exactly who they say they are."
"Who… they say they are?" A single thin eyebrow raised in confusion. "Oi, stop trying to be subtle. Just tell me already!"
"They said they were time travelers," Minato said quickly. "Shinobi from the future."
A pause, and the bowl of ramen of gently placed on the table, not a single drop of broth spilling from the surface. Minato followed it followed it with a nervous gaze, a single bead of sweat trickling down his face. Kushina was already planning for the future, placing her valuables in a location of relative safety.
"What the hell?" She demanded, pointing a finger at him. "You said you wouldn't bring those books up again!"
Kushina had a short but passionate obsession with romance novels. Her favorite had been about a shinobi couple destined to meet only at different points in their lives, because of a time-travelling jutsu that had been cast on one of the two. Minato had found out about it and used it as blackmail for about two days, before Kushina had threatened to give him a black eye instead.
"Ah – I'm not kidding. It really happened." Minato waved his hands in an attempt to placate her. "I was the one who found them, so it's not a trick."
She put down her finger. "So," Kushina said coyly, after a moment of thought. "Time travelers. Who is it, huh? Anyone we know?"
"Well – "
"Don't tell me!" She interrupted. "I know exactly who. I have experience with this kind of thing. It's our future son, isn't it? Him and his cute little girlfriend, dattebane!"
"No! It's – Well," Minato said weakly, "it's Kakashi and Obito."
Kushina's mouth dropped open. "What? No way, Kakashi and that little moron?"
"It's true. They've both grown up a lot in the next two decades."
"Two decades? You mean to say…" She said with horror, "…they're both older than me now? Those little pipsqueaks?"
"Yes," he said reluctantly. "Well, they're older than me too…"
"Bah. Physically, maybe. Mentally, you have the brain of an old man." She said affectionately. Minato twitched involuntarily. "Kakashi and Obito, huh? I can't imagine them as being anything other than little brats."
"They've changed a lot, both of them." Maybe not for the better, he didn't say. "They're also… together."
"Together?" Kushina parroted in a moment of confusion. "…Not like, in a relationship, together, right…?" Minato looked back at her silently. "…No way. But Obito's been chasing after Rin for years!"
"I don't know," he replied somberly. "But… Rin's not with them, and they keep on avoiding the subject of what happened to her. The future Kakashi told us that they lost a lot of people. I think… Rin was one of them."
Kushina's eyes turned serious, and her lips downturned slightly. "…Well. We just have to make sure that doesn't happen, don't we? The three of them might be brats, but they're our brats."
"The life of a shinobi is unpredictable, Kushina," he said quietly. "We can't follow them around forever. Kakashi's going to be promoted to jounin in two days. After that, there's not much I can do to protect the three of them."
"They're strong," she said resolutely. "All of them, even if Obito's a moron who brags all the time and doesn't know that he become Hokage on an empty stomach. They can handle themselves, but first they have to grow up. If something's going to happen to them – any of them – before then…" Kushina grinned. "It will have to get past me first! Now, where can I find the grown up Obito and Kakashi?"
"Kushina, they don't want to tell us about the future for a reason –"
"Bah. As if they can stand up to the great Uzumaki Kushina!"
Obito had seen the fiery red hair from fifty meters away, a small but distinctive dot in the midst of the afternoon crowd. He froze, a crushing wave of guilt gluing him to the spot. He had made what little amends he could to Sensei, when the latter had still been under the influence of the Edo Tensei. But Kushina-nee…
He remembered the bright visage of her grinning face, after Obito had finally gotten down a technique after practicing it for weeks on end. He remembered the lunches she would bring to team practices, which were delicious and brought tears to his eyes because he had never had anyone do that for him before.
And, barreling through those sweet, happy memories like a battering ram, he saw her pale, tear-stained face, panic and fear turning her expression into something truly alien. Naruto! She had cried then, as Obito had thrown up the blonde infant, a kunai ready in his hand. The sheer murderous hatred that he had seen in her eyes, the promise of deathdeathdeath even as she wavered on her feet, weak from childbirth and from having the demon ripped from her body. The hatred directed at him, because it was him who had taken her child, destroyed her village, ruined her life.
He did the only thing he could, under the circumstances. Obito ran, as if the hounds of hell were upon his heels – and perhaps, they were, the damning guilt and shame and self-hatred that had plagued him since Kakashi had dragged him forcibly back to some semblance of sanity, forced him to live life without Madara's comforting fantasy.
Not for the first time since arriving in this strange dream that was the past, he regretted not killing the boy before he became a monster, to hell with the consequences. It would be so much better for the world overall if he had broken that boy's neck last night, instead of altering his memories to eliminate his memories of what he had witmessed. A permanent solution.
But Kakashi had always held more hope for him than he himself ever did.
Of course, she sees him. Even if she was retired (technically!), Kushina still had senses honed from years of being an elite jounin of Konoha. Whoever it was, he wasn't been very conspicuous, really. Not the stealthy slip into shadows that any real shinobi had perfected, but the mindless, panicked escape of someone who could not be bothered to think clearly.
The guy might not be either of the two she was looking for, but he was suspicious, all the same. Kushina pushed through the crowd, squinting into the distance to catch that head of black hair zigzagging through the crowd with an ease that was almost unbelievable. She huffed indignantly, and took to the rooftops. The civilians around her passed by unconcerned; they had seen too much shenanigans in the shinobi village to really be surprised anymore.
She grinned as the guy slowed down, obviously thinking that he had gotten far away enough from his original location. Hah, as if! Kushina is quiet as she moved a bit closer, peering down at the man with curiosity.
Scars, she thought. They were severe, more so than any Kushina had ever seen, and covered completely the right half of his face, lending him a somewhat sinister look. He was wearing baggy civilian clothing which, nonetheless, did nothing to belie his muscular physique. One black eye open, the other closed – a missing eye. A former shinobi?
Kushina jumped down from the roof, her landing cushioned by chakra. The man whipped around, but the only sign of surprise he shows is a subtle shift in breathing. Instead, he looked almost… resigned? Weird.
"Yo," she called out to him, body language deliberately nonviolent. "I'm Uzumaki Kushina. I don't think I've seen you around the village before." She wasn't wearing her hiti-ate or jounin vest. Hopefully, if the man turned violent, he would underestimate her. Not that she needed it (she was Uzumaki Kushina, the Red Hot Habenero!) but if helped her take him down without getting any civilians involved…
"I know who you are," the man said cryptically, his voice deep. "…I think there's a misunderstanding here."
"…Oi, cut it out," she said, annoyed, dropping all pretenses of amiability. "If you know who I am, then you know that I will take you down if you do anything to harm the village, suspicious guy."
A brief quirk of lips. "I'm not planning to hurt the village."
"Well – good! That's good." Kushina had no idea what to say at this point. Any enemies of Konoha usually attacked at this point. Civilian criminals went to their knees to beg for mercy, knowing there was no point in fighting a shinobi. "Uh, who are you, suspicious guy? Because I know I've never seen you in the village before, dattebane!"
"I grew up in this village, but I haven't been back for a long time," he said. "I only got here a few days ago."
"That… doesn't exactly tell me anything, ya know."
He smiles at that. "You really can't recognize me, Kushina-nee?" The epithet sounded strange, being said in such a different voice than she was used to hearing it in. "Sensei did."
Kushina blinked, what Minato had told her earlier coming back to her in a rush of information. No way. No freaking way. "Obito?" She demanded, searching futilely for that perpetually cheerful brat within the veteran shinobi in front of her. Something with the hair, maybe, and the shape of the face – and that was what was bugging her, he looked Uchiha –
"It's me," he said. "Sorry, Kushina-nee. I never did become Hokage."