I don't own Naruto.
She was aware before her eyes had opened or her body moved.
She recognized the feeling of a breathing mask over her mouth and nose, the IV in her only arm, and the starchy sheets that were draped over her lower half as she rested in a bed that she would have never owned.
She heard the beeping of a heart monitor, strong and steady, and her breathing was unhurried, relaxed.
Naruto Uzumaki was in a hospital, of this she was certain. Her eyes opened slowly, and she saw light. She had been saved.
She burst into tears.
Naruto hadn't moved.
She didn't know how long she'd been awake, nor how long she'd been asleep before awakening. It didn't seem like decades though, because Naruto knew quite well what those felt like.
Naruto had outlived all of her loved ones. She hadn't been the last person left on earth in her time, but she'd been the last Konoha ninja. The last ninja period. And she had been incredibly old when she had managed to "save the world" from those freaks. The Ōtsutsuki clan. It hadn't stopped with the invasion of Momoshiki and his lackey in the form of a father. Once they were defeated, it only attracted more, and it had only been a matter of time before they took over. Naruto would admit that the memories had gotten scrambled in her head, it had been so long ago, but she did remember their request. Their, them being her team. "If you can fix it, fix it."
And Naruto had. She lived longer than anyone should ever have to simply because they had no other choice until something was done. She cleansed the world of the monsters with horns, that wretched clan.
But the victory was empty.
There was no more Konoha, no more family, no more comrades. No more anything. But because Naruto had been so old, she'd known things. Learned things over the decades. So with the urgings of the three ghosts that she could never let go of… the ones that lived in her brain after years of being gone from her life… she'd gone back.
Naruto had gone back in time, and did what was necessary to insure that the future she had seen never came about. There was no more Ōtsutsuki clan. She'd taken care of them right away, and fallen from above after she was done. But still, the ghosts wouldn't let Naruto sleep.
No matter how hard she cried, how profusely she bled, how steadily without her say she inched towards eternal slumber… the ghosts urged her on. "Madara" they said. "Zetsu" they reminded.
And so Naruto had gotten up again, and she left the crater that would have been her grave from when she'd fallen from the clouds.
Naruto hunted down the plant man first, and even near death he was no match for her. And then she found Madara, a feeble old man who only had hatred going for him. Though he had managed to destroy the prosthetic Naruto had in the stead of her right arm, he was no longer alive at the end of their skirmish.
Finally, the ghosts told her that it was okay to sleep. More relieved than she had been in a pitifully long time, Naruto set out to a place that was quiet. Somewhere that she could rest and stay asleep. Not wanting to risk someone stumbling across her body and becoming too curious, she used a jutsu that she had created all on her own during her many previous years as an old vagabond plotting the demise of her alien adversaries. Naruto had transformed herself into a small child.
She was certain no one would have too many questions about a dead child. Being in the time frame she was in, she knew there was absolutely nothing uncommon about dead children, however tragic that was.
So she'd changed, physically and completely into a young girl, and then she'd flown off in search of a suitable grave, using the gift of flight granted by her Six Paths Sage mode.
But even Naruto had a limit.
She lost consciousness without any warning, and fell, hair caught in a cluster of branches in a tree apart of a large and strangely familiar forest.
Naruto had been in and out of consciousness quite a bit, but she decided that a tree was just as good as anything else.
She had been beyond tired. And so she closed her eyes and gave up.
But nothing was that simple. Not for Naruto. It never was. She remembered feeling someone near, and then they were moving, the night blurring past them.
Naruto informed the person of her one true desire, and then she went back towards the peaceful abyss that had been beckoning her for years.
But Naruto had woken up again.
The abyss was nowhere in sight. She felt healthy again, if a little malnourished, in a hospital room, and very much alive.
It wasn't fair.
"You promised." Naruto whispered, more tears welling up in her eyes. "You promised that if I did what you said, that I could sleep."
The ghosts were ever present in her mind, but they didn't show themselves. They didn't speak. All Naruto could do was cry.
The tears eventually ran their course, and Naruto calmed down, reminding herself that this was not the first time things didn't go as planned, and with her luck nor would it be the last.
Honestly, Naruto could off herself right now, but she ran the risk of alerting the staff of whatever facility she was in rushing in to save her. Besides, she didn't want to go out like that.
Now that the blonde was calmer, she told herself that she could thank those responsible for saving her, and then when all was said and done, she could leave quietly to find a place where she could sleep.
Naruto didn't want anyone to have to clean up after her when she did manage to get her much desired sleep, so she would just bide her time.
The blonde sat up, using her only remaining hand to pull the breathing mask off of her face and set it aside. Her stump still had traces of her old prosthetic clinging to it, but she wasn't concerned about that. She plucked the IV from her flesh without so much as a twitch, and then she swung her legs over the side of the bed she was in, so that her little feet dangled above the floor.
Naruto wasn't as unfamiliar with being so small as one would think, had they known how old she truly was. This was because Naruto's jutsu was very special. She could essentially rewind or fast forward her own age. It was a full transformation each time, and there was no limit to how many times she could do this. She could even change her own gender, a complete and fully anatomically correct change.
Truthfully, Naruto had been doing so for so long, that she could no longer remember whether she had been born a female, or born a male. It was another one of the things in her head that had become scrambled with both insanity and age. But anyway, when she changed into a boy or a man, she was a boy or a man. When she was a girl or a woman, she was a girl or a woman.
Naruto was Naruto, and she could at least remember that.
The little blonde slid off the bed and landed a little shakily on the floor, her legs trembling with disuse. Wide blue eyes took in the soft yellow walls of the hospital room she was in, the white polished floors, and the large window overlooking a grand and prosperous village beyond it.
Naruto couldn't tell you how she immediately recognized the architecture, even if it wasn't as updated as it had been in her own time. She just… she just knew.
"No…" Naruto breathed, taking a step towards the window. "No it can't be…!"
She rushed over, ignoring the way her knees popped and protested at the abuse. Naruto stood on her tiptoes, unlatching the lock on the window and sliding it open, shoving her head out and looking about with eyes that steadily filmed over with manic pain.
Her eyes drank in the village, and the people milling about below the afternoon sky, enjoying the lazy rays of the sun. She recognized the uniform on the shinobi that could be spotted every so often among the crowds.
The dark blue clothing, the forest green vest, the red spiral emblazoned on their backs…!
And then-
A red moonless sky, a deep barren trench in the place of people, their laughter, their hope, their lives. No shinobi, no villagers, no family. No anything. Death. Destruction. Loneliness. Failure.
"NO!"
Naruto didn't know what happened, but suddenly she wasn't hanging halfway out of the second floor window of Konoha's Hospital and omigodomigodomigodomigodomigod she was back and they were alive and-
She was being crushed against someone's chest, they were on their knees, their arms wrapped around her and rocking them both back and forth.
Naruto was limp in the stranger's grasp, coming back to herself enough to scent the forest after rain, the smell of a thunderstorm. It was a strangely appealing scent, and she got the feeling that someone associated it with 'home'.
The way this person held her, Naruto felt as if they knew what it meant to be someone's home, someone that others depended on.
'Calm.' She told herself. 'That's there. That's gone, and you're here.'
The blonde took in a shuddering breath, and then her ears were freed of the dead silence in her memories, the sound of nothingness after everything had been ripped away.
She could hear the stranger, whispering, assuring and promising.
"You're okay." They said. "Wherever you were, you're not there anymore, and you're okay."
Naruto pulled back slightly, and the stranger allowed her to. She looked up into the stranger's face, and she saw features before her that belonged to someone in her own time that had been long dead.
'Sensei…'
The silver ghost leaned over the stranger's shoulder from behind, peering at Naruto, close enough to touch.
"I'm here." The silver ghost said.
As usual, his face was covered. It was right beside the stranger's, and Naruto was facing them both.
"B-but…" The blonde stuttered.
Naruto's ghost smiled, she could tell because of the way his eyes arched closed.
"Tread carefully Naruto." He warned good naturedly. "I'm here. Right here."
Blue eyes traveled between the two dark gray pair that held a startling resemblance. The stranger looked to his side, bare nose brushing the masked one of Naruto's silver ghost.
"Maa, a little close there, ne?" The ghost chuckled, leaning back slightly and poking the stranger in the nose.
After a long moment, the strangers brows furrowed, looking back to Naruto in confusion. The blonde blinked.
"What are you looking at?" The stranger asked her, in a voice that was most definitely not the same as her ghost's.
Come to think of it, the stranger looked like Naruto's dear friend, but he was without a doubt his own person. The stranger's silver hair was much longer, framing a pale face that had subtle hints of age and stress, pulled into a spiking ponytail at the nape of his neck.
"Who are you?" Naruto asked, tiny hand unclenching from the fabric of the stranger's shirt. When had she latched onto him?
The stranger blinked, seeming to be surprised. But then he just sat back, releasing the little blonde from his hold.
"My name is Sakumo." He said, eyeing her in a way that she thought should make her uncomfortable. He had a perceptive gaze, and Naruto wasn't sure exactly what he was perceiving, but it was probably of no consequence. It was only a matter of time before she got her much deserved sleep, after all.
"Sakumo Hatake."
The silver ghost stood up to his full height, and Naruto's eyes fled to him. He simply waved her away, reaching into his vest and pulling out his favorite little book.
His dark eyes were sad in a nostalgic sort of way, but also quietly loving. He flipped his book open, gaze already beginning to trail across the text before it.
"You're in good hands Naruto." Her ghost murmured.
Naruto watched him turn towards the door, lifting his hand over his shoulder for a lazy wave. His form faded away, leaving the blonde alone with the stranger.
The newly revealed Sakumo glanced to where Naruto was looking, but her ghost was already gone, so he looked back at her with that same shrewd gaze, cocking his head to the side slightly.
"What's your name?" Sakumo asked gently.
Naruto looked back at him, slouching and folding her legs beneath her more comfortably on the floor.
"My name is Naruto." The blonde admitted. "Were you the one that saved me?"
No use beating around the bush. She was by no means a little girl and honestly saw no reason to behave as if she was. Now that she had gotten ahold of herself somewhat, the disheveled haze that had been filmed over her mind for who knows how long peeled back slightly. She still desired nothing more than peaceful sleep for her tired soul, but she wasn't so far gone that she couldn't behave like a normal person.
Sakumo looked at her again with that studying gaze, and then the side of his mouth hitched up ever so slightly.
"Yes, that was me." He said. "I'm glad to see you're alright, Naruto-chan. You were in very bad shape when I found you. Actually, you've only been here for a week, the doctor says that your recovery is moving oddly fast."
"Oh yeah, I've always healed fast." The blonde explained. "I'm just not so good at growing back certain things."
She lifted her stump, waving it around slightly with a small smirk. Sakumo gaped, obviously not expecting such blatant gallows humor to have come from her mouth.
Naruto cocked her head to the side, blinking her wide eyes.
"Your appearance sweetheart." Her pink ghost reminded, poking the blonde in the side before leaving again to do whatever it is pink ghosts did when they weren't needed.
"Hm?" Naruto hummed, and then she paused. "Oh, right."
Her black ghost snorted under his breath, suddenly sitting on the hospital bed that she had vacated, watching the happenings with two different eyes.
Ignoring him because he was always that way, Naruto said, "That stuff probably seems odd coming from me. I apologize, it's been a long time since I've interacted with others in a… friendly manner."
The last person she remembered interacting with was the Madara Uchiha of the timeframe she currently found herself in, and the expression on his severed head would be burned into her retinas until her own imminent demise.
"You… are a very strange child." Sakumo finally settled on.
"Well of course you might think so." Naruto said honestly. "That's because I'm not a child. Though it was very kind of you to save me anyway. And I'll also have to thank you for comforting me."
"Think, Naruto." The black ghost hissed. "Why don't you ever think?"
Naruto absentmindedly waved the black ghost away, and with a huff he dispersed.
The blonde watched as Sakumo was on his feet and across the room in a nanosecond, back to the door.
"What do you mean you're not a child?" He demanded quietly, eyes narrowing.
Instead of answering, Naruto slowly got on her knees, her flesh rippling with power, bones detaching beneath her skin and lengthening. She leaned forward on her one hand and her knees, swelling like a balloon. Her hair fell forward to hide the gruesome sight, englogating and spilling from her skull in a shimmering gold flood. Her form distended so far and so quickly that it seemed as if she may pop, but then her skin snapped in tight, compacting against her skeleton.
"What are yo-"
When Naruto slowly stood to her full height, she was a startling five foot ten, and very much not a child. It all happened in a matter of seconds. One moment she was perhaps around five years old, and the next, perhaps in her mid twenties.
"Who are you?" Sakumo asked, his tone dangerously low.
"I told you." The woman returned, blinking. "I'm Naruto."
Sakumo stared.
Naruto stared back.
She looked down when she noticed an odd breeze. Hm. She seemed to be quite naked. After several long beats, she blinked.
"Oops."
Her silver ghost placed his chin on her shoulder from behind, shaking his head ever so slightly.
"Didn't I tell you to tread carefully?"
I dunno, I feel like it should've been more dramatic. But then again, I'm trying something a little different with this story. It's not all deep dark sadness and violence.