Chapter 6: Meeting and reunion

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Kishimoto-sensei in any way and form, and I do not own the few Latin quotes that will pop out here and there. I however own the plot and the Ocs, as well as the description of some places and the characterization of some less-known characters in the original anime/manga.

So, now let's talk about Naru's traumatic childhood!

EDITED AUGUST 23 2016 - I've successfully controlled the word count. How awesome is that? I jumped from 3K+ to a bit over 5K+. Isn't that an improvement from last chapter?

October 10.

The village was ablaze, lanterns lit a bright red among stalls and shops. The festival was at its peak, music and dancers parading the streets, yet the atmosphere was somber.

It's been 6 years since the Kyubi attack, and even as the village was completely rebuilt the people's hatred and fear had only grown.

'Demon,' they whispered.

It was no secret as to the identity of the supposed 'Devil's child', yet it always seemed to remain unnamed. The people, all too willing to disregard its existence, constantly refused to acknowledge the child's identity, as if afraid of the weight it carried. They were simply content to hate and hate alone, never asking any questions because there was no need to. The demon child will always be a demon, nothing more and nothing less.

Only the ANBU ever paid attention to him on the Hokage's orders, and even that is restricted to shadowing the child and ensuring his continued existence.

However, once every year on the day the child was born, even they would turn their eyes away.

In the darkness of the night, a young child was running. Scrawny legs carried him far faster than their malnourished state should allow, scraped and bruised with mud drying on the bare feet. He seemed to avoid the richly decorated main streets at all costs, instead lurking in back-alleys, resting at times yet never lingering.

Suddenly, a cry resounded behind him, followed by the sound of thundering footsteps. "Found the demon!"

The young boy didn't pause to tense as he jumped out of his hiding place and darted down another street, clinging to the shadows.

It was October 10, and as it had been for the last two years, the demon hunt was beginning.

A clock rumbled. Midnight has come.

Naruto took another sharp turn, not haltering even as the sound of glass breaking where his head was seconds ago reached his sensitive ears. There was nothing else to do other than run, no time to pause and think or to calm down his frantically beating heart, no time to wipe the sweat on his brow or to scrape off the filth caking his legs.

He rarely came to this part of the town, richer with buildings at least three-story tall and well-dressed people loitering about the streets. It was unusual, too unlike the hasty, drunken pace he was used to on the outskirts of Konoha where the orphanage was, a part of town that had never fully recovered from the devastation the Kyubi had left behind.

But again, he no longer lived there, having left on his own volition about a month ago after the hundredth time the matron had threatened to throw him out.

Now, Naruto wondered if it had been such a good idea to leave the closest thing he had to a safe place, at a time so close to his birthday.

A sharp rock suddenly made its way under his foot and the boy stumbled, nearly falling down but catching himself at the last second. As he took another step, pain stinging his legs even if they'd been mostly numb for the last half an hour, he made sure to kick the rock back with as much force as he dared. By the curse resounding behind him, it had at least hit one of his pursuers.

It wasn't much of a distraction, but at least it gave him a few precious seconds to decide his next destination.

A quick look around told him that he was in the area where he usually foraged for food, a few streets away from the main marketplace but still close enough to be able to find large-sized dumpsters and relatively edible fruits without the trouble of avoiding people.

Running down an alley he was vaguely familiar with, Naruto dodged swiftly around a draining pipe, jumped over a few empty cardboard boxes and rounded a corner, mindful of his footfall.

The next turn will come to a dead-end, but the few seconds he had over his pursuers should be enough for him to climb up the slim pipe leading up to a rooftop where they wouldn't be able to reach him. At least this time they were all civilians.

Naruto winced as shards of glass dug into his bare soles, but his goal was only another corner away.

He sped up, ignoring the pain and his aching muscles, closed his eyes momentarily before charging into the dead-end.

Only to be met with absolutely nothing.

Between his ragged breaths and the panic bubbling under his skin, Naruto registered the fact that he had gone wrong somewhere in his planning, because now he distinctively remembered the fact that the house the pipe had been leaning against had been scheduled to go under minor renovation before the beginning of winter, and that it was all too possible that the useless and mostly broken pipe would have been removed for easier access to the walls.

A triumphant cry rang in the ally.

Even as rough hands grabbed his bony arms he struggled, weakened by hunger and fatigue but still attempting to escape. A drunken laughter and the sting of fingernails digging into his skin was his answer.

Naruto wanted to yell.

He wanted to cry.

Wanted to rage and the unfairness of it all, because all he had wanted to do was to make use of the festival to find a few abandoned dango sticks, some thrown away candy, something that he could use to celebrate his own birthday.

He remained silent, because what purpose it would serve other than to fan the twisted pleasure of those who wished him dead?

Then the pain came, and he screamed.

He was still conscious at dawn, his fingernails missing and knives buried in his arms and legs, a good portion of his skin burned to an ashen black.

He wondered if the nice old man dressed in flowing white robes will come to see him this year too, if like the last times he'd yell at the nurses and doctors and shout curses that made them pale. He wondered if the old man will ever hold him close again and ruffle his hair and let him play with his large hat colored red.

It was Kiba who found him after returning from a mission, no longer bleeding and looking dead to the world except for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, blue eyes wide open staring at the rising sun with a hopelessness that almost spelled 'Just kill me already'.

It was with despair and self-loathing and a scorching kind of hated for the world that Kakashi had thrown his mask to the ground where it shattered into millions of pieces, and picked up the little brother he had never dared to touch again after Minato's death.

It was with the taste of bile at the back of his throat that Kakashi stared into Naruto's unblinking eyes as he ripped out blades from his unresponsive body. He bandaged the boy as well as he could with a broken arm and blood seeping from the gash on his thigh, post-mission stress mingling with horror and anger at himself and the fate that dictated this world.

And then, when Naruto finally turned his gaze to him after what felt like an eternity, Kakashi broke all over again, because the time he had held Naruto as a newborn and stared into a pair of sky-blue eyes will be the first and the last.

Even if Kyubi had healed the damages it wasn't a human, intelligent with experience collected over thousand of years but not in the way of medic-nin and their knowledge of human anatomy. It could not do the fine work of reconnecting severed nerves and chakra pathways, and so Naruto looked at Kakashi with a grey eye born from a storm and another, milky white and unseeing but alight with the realization of a truth that was entirely cruel.

With his injuries sizzling as Kyubi began to close the gaping wounds, Naruto stared into a pair of mismatched eyes.

"...Kiba." His voice was barely above a whisper, but the ANBU heard him. Kakashi pulled the boy closer, pressing his face into the space where Naruto's neck met his shoulder.

"Hmm?" He didn't question how the boy knew. Kakashi had always been in hiding, not so much as avoiding the boy as keeping an eye on him from far away. But perhaps he'd been seen anyway, somewhere along the line, because Naruto was nothing if intelligent in a way that most people wouldn't understand.

There was a gentle tug on his hair, and Kakashi leaned back to study the face of a boy he'd never dared to look at properly. Naruto, for all he had his father's coloring, was still much more like Kushina, the teen realized. He had the roundness of her eyes and the stubborn tilt of her jaw, a bone structure that promised to grow slightly broader and shorter than Minato's yet still delicate with a beautiful kind of strength.

"It's weird."

Kakashi's Sharingan spun lazily.

"Yeah," he agreed softly.

Naruto turned his head slightly and grasped a strand of silvery hair, like spun moonlight, with a trembling hand. "My vision is off-center."

"Yeah."

"Does it get better with time?"

Kakashi's lips tightened into a resemblance of a wistful smile. "It does take some time to get used to."

Naruto limply snuggled closer to his chest, and the ANBU shifted to cradle the 6 years old better without hindering his broken arm.

"We're the same now," Naruto muttered, and Kakashi glanced down. The tone held a sense of longing and a quiet inquiry that tore at the teen's heart. Driven by an impulse he couldn't explain, he closed his Sharingan and racked his hand through his silver tresses, letting his hair fall and cover the eye that wasn't fully his.

"Yeah, we are aren't we?"

Then Naruto smiled, a beautiful smile with the softness that reached the eyes, and it was all of Minato's dimples that spoke of eagerness and unspoken joy, and the full curve of Kushina's lips and the way it caught the light without being overbearing.

But the cerulean of his iris, the barely visible crinkle at the corner of his eyes and the depth of his gaze that reflected pain and a grim acceptance laced with deep-rooted relief was all Naruto, and for that Kakashi was hooked all over again.

He nuzzled the boy's hair, the dirtied blond bringing back painful memories of summer crops and a sea of blood-red and the haze of malicious chakra weighting down the air. Kakashi inhaled the scent of mud and the undertone of sunshine and warm fur, like an unique mix of Kushina's fruity aroma that carried a bit of warmth from the coast of Uzu and Minato's windy smell, with an undertone of wilderness that couldn't be tamed.

"You and I both, huh? Then I guess we gotta stick together now, pup."

Because Naruto was undeniably Minato and Kushina's son, just as cheerful and brilliant but holding something broken deep down, something that was the result of being lonely without being alone, something born out of the fear of losing something precious and the disappointment that follows.

In that they were similar, Kakashi and Naruto who had both lost their parents, who had both lost their lives to the Kyubi attack while still living on, a kinship that extended well beyond their shared half-blindness and the fact that they were brothers even as they'd met all of twice.

And if years later, a lazy Jonin's 'first meeting' with an orange-loving Genin consisted of receiving a chalkboard eraser to the head, then it would be because the smile that they hid from everyone but each other was for them and them alone.

Hiruzen dug his pipe out of a pocket in his sleeve and lit it with a chakra-infused breath. The tobacco burned steadily while he smoked, nothing showing on his expression except the silent, calculated poise that unnerved Naruto to no end.

"...Hokage-sama?" The Sandaime fixed her with a pensive look, his gaze drifting from the broken cup still clutched in one of her hands and the wet blankets by her feet, to the blond, tangled hair streaked with red brushing her forearms, then back to her face. His eyes held a comprehension and a sort of kindness that was guarded yet still very present, with the backing of a steel-bending determination, and Naruto, for all her vast powers that surpassed the Biju, couldn't help but to bow before the qualities that made Sarutobi Hiruzen one of the handful of men who bore the name of 'God of Shinobi'.

"While your seal is undoubtedly authentic, I cannot acknowledge your claim as Rokudaime, as I am currently the Sandaime and have not yet determined a successor. However your chakra feel like an Uzumaki's and your looks are close enough, but aside from the blond hair and blue eyes, which are common traits in the regions north of the Fire Country, I cannot link you to the Namikaze clan, which has few members as it is, I may add. That, and I doubt that there had been any union between the two clans in the last few decades."

Naruto grimaced. "In this world and time, certainly."

Sarutobi's eyes narrowed in thought. "In this world, you say? Then I am to understand that you come from... elsewhere? It isn't impossible, but I find it hard to believe without any concrete proof."

Naruto inclined her head in agreement. "I understand, Hokage-sama." She eyed the opened windows warily.

"If you would, Hokage-sama, can you please erect a silencing barrier? I'm afraid that we're about to discuss... sensitive matters, and my chakra levels are rather low for such a task."

The Sandaime obliged with a wave of his hand, the glowing blue walls raising in a dome above them and meeting at the corners of the room. The distinct lack of hesitation spoke volumes about the man's eagerness, unspoken as it was.

"Satisfied?"

Naruto answered with a smile. "Of course, thank you very much."

"Then I believe we can start?" He asked.

"Of course." She doesn't voice her reluctance nor how flabbergasted she was at the Hokage's apparent calm. Then again, he could be hiding all that and she wouldn't know because she hadn't know this man, because her own jiji had been dead long before she'd learned how to read underneath the visible.

"Then I would like to know why I sense Tsunade's chakra in your seal. As far as I'm aware, she doesn't have the authority nor the knowledge to apply such a mark," Hiruzen started.

Naruto pondered for a moment. "Well, the Tsunade here, I suppose. But the Tsunade as I know her was... more experienced, and aware, of such a thing." Naruto thinks of the woman who had left her room an hour ago, with Uzumaki blood in her and lively despite having already lost Nawaki and Dan. All the same willingness to love unconditionally yet so different from how the Godaime Hokage had been, stricken with grief and the passing of time and drowning herself in alcohol far more than she ever should.

"That wasn't much of an answer, kit." The Nine-tails interjected, projecting the thought and leaving Naruto's outer conversation uninterrupted.

'I know, Kurama, I'm just trying to decide how to break the news, and Jiji's fully capable of understanding even if I don't explain it in full.'

"Do it your way then, but don't mess up." The Kyubi flickered one of her white-tipped tails in a gesture of dismissal.

"She must have been Godaime then, I suppose," The Sandaime stated with a hint of wonder.

"For a few years, yes. Since I was thirteen, in fact."

Sarutobi glanced at her, taking in her features, and hummed in understanding.

"So she couldn't have reigned more than 10 years, judging by your physical age. Assuming that you are indeed what you appear to be, that is. Does her rather... short reign have anything to do with what you said? Si vis pacem, para bellum? From what I understand of the language of old, that particular saying is rather... foreboding," he deduced.

"Yes. The Fourth Shinobi war, in fact."

From the tightness around his eyes and the grim set of his mouth, Naruto realized that the lack of surprise must be because the Hokage had already spoken with someone.

'Sasuke,' she thought, and the relief of knowing that her friend was well and awake made her slump back into her pillows.

"Then the future ahead of us will not be peaceful, as what I suspect to be the Third War has barely been more than a few skirmishes along the borders."

"You seem to know more than you let on, Hokage-sama." One corner of Naruto's lips lifted in a small smirk.

Hiruzen took a long drag of his pipe and pondered for a few moments. "It isn't much more than a brief glimpse into 'what could have been', but yes. It seems that there will be quite a few... interesting Genjutsu in the future."

Naruto blinked, then turned back that sentence a few times in her mind. Well, it looked like Sasuke had already made her move.

"So you know."

Sasuke and the word Genjutsu go hand-in-hand, after all.

She didn't ask about what he'd been shown, but from the deep stress lines and the lack of horror on his features, it likely wasn't the entire story yet enough to just explain the barest of essentials.

Shifting so to place a hand on her bandaged abdomen, gently tracing the outline of what she knew to be an opened seal sketched in black lines and precise strokes on her tanned skin, Naruto sucked in a deep breath.

"Are you informed of what I contain?"

The Sandaime eyed her gesture carefully. "I am not entirely sure, but I would assume some kind of demonic entity. The Uzumaki clan had been known for their seals after all, and even with you as a half, your chakra still has the special properties of your clan." There was a pause, as if he hesitated on disclosing that particular detail. "The Sharingan is said to be able to control the Biju, and you have an Uchiha with you, don't you?"

"Sasuke must have shown you, then." Naruto rubbed her abdomen gently, the close bond between Kurama and her allowing her to feel the Kyubi's unspoken support. "You are right, Hokage-sama. I am a Jinchuuriki. The Jinchuuriki of the Kyubi, to be precise, since the day I was born."

She spoke without fear, almost proud, even. There was no need to be afraid, the Kyubi now a legacy of her parents and a friend after surviving the end of the world together. A year since her hair had turned streaked with red, and Naruto was as much of Kurama as she was of Konoha.

The Sandaime had always cared little for such things anyway, and she was sure it wouldn't have changed even two decades and a world away.

"I... see. The Kyubi from where you come from, is it? We already have a Jinchuuriki of the Kyubi here in Konoha. I'm sure someone would have noticed if the beast had gone missing."

Naruto nodded, half of her mind trying to gauge the Hokage's reactions. "Of course. The seal is on my stomach, but with my wounds I cannot show you yet. All I can do currently is a small flare."

Mindful of the silencing barrier's ability to stifle small chakra outputs to a certain extent, the Uzumaki reached into her cores, not going as deep as she used to now that years have gone by with her seal open and Kyubi's presence just under her skin, and pulled out the tiniest sliver of the vixen's chakra.

But then, with her control shaky and her body healing, that amounted to a sonic boom to the fragile barrier and it shook under the strain, barely managing to not crack. From the corner of her eyes Naruto registered movement as Sarutobi tensed, hypersensitive to chakra as he was after years on the battlefield in his youth, and her eyes softened at the startled but entirely fond look on his face.

She waited a few moments before withdrawing the chakra.

"Well," the Hokage began dryly, "That is the Kyubi alright. By Kami, I would swear that it felt like either Kushina or Mito-sama going on one of their rampages."

The humour wasn't lost on Naruto as both Uzumaki were especially known for their quick temper. She was slightly tempted to comment on how the older man had yet to see her go all out on a somewhat-controlled Kyubi rampage.

Especially against Madara.

The chuckle bubbling in her chest quickly died down as she was reminded of how she used to throw those around uselessly against the Uchiha that really should have died a century ago. It had saved no one, not those who truly matted like Kakashi or Obito or Sakura, not even - not even Hinata and that was one of her greatest failures.

In the end it hadn't saved anything except drag on the pain, and Naruto can't say if it was a blessing or a curse.

She managed a weak smile at last, but she knew that it wasn't going to fool the Sandaime in any way.

Sarutobi took a lazy drag of his pipe. "So, Minato and Kushina, huh? God knows they've been running in circles long enough."

The declaration startled her, enough for her to turn her gaze sharply towards the Hokage. Her parentage definitely wasn't hard to figure out, what with her claiming the names of two clans that were down to two accounted survivors, but then it had been so long since anyone had mentioned both of her parents in the same sentence it was almost odd.

"Ero-sennin and Kakashi-sensei said just as much. It seems like they've been walking on eggshells around each other since forever."

Sarutobi's gaze turned curious. "Ero-sennin?"

Naruto grinned. "Jiraiya-sensei."

A low chuckle escaped the Sandaime. "Couldn't be truer. So you had both Jiraiya and Kakashi as your sensei? You're one lucky kunoichi, I would say. Kakashi-kun is a child now, but still a prodigy much like your father had been at that age. You must have been a terror growing up."

"I don't know about being lucky. Ero-sennin didn't do much else than spy on the women's section of the bathhouses, great shinobi or not. I certainly filled the 'terror child' part, though."

Sarutobi caught the moment Naruto's expression turned from weary to a soft, reminiscing fondness before being swiped away by the usual shinobi poker-face. While he knew that the Uzumaki wasn't speaking the entire truth, that devoted love she just showed wasn't a lie, covered as it was by years of grief but still shining through with bits of joy and pain.

Hiruzen knew right then that even if her and the Uchiha's loyalties didn't lie with him or Konoha it was on the side of his people, and perhaps that was enough to believe.

"That does sound like something Jiraiya would do. And you being an Uzumaki, I guess pranking is pretty much part of the genetics. It does wonders to bring some freshness to this village, as young Kushina had been prone to a few years back."

The admission was as good as an outright invitation, Naruto realized, and with that a weight inside her chest had been suddenly lifted with a whoosh of gratitude.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." And it was entirely true.

The Sandaime offered her a smile that spoke of a thousand thoughts, about the beginning of a trust that hadn't fully taken root, about the empathy and an understanding that can only come from someone who'd survived through similar battles and impossible odds, and it was all Naruto could ask for and more.

Because the Hokage looked at her with the same glint in his eyes as he used to when she had been young, before he had died, and while it was just remotely similar it was still achingly familiar.

Naruto smiled back, and she must have done something right because Sarutobi looked smugly satisfied.

Then the Hokage shuffled closer and she let him, guard down but still aware of the man who she had let closer to her than anyone else in mere minutes. He pulled on her wrist without any warning, not so much as yanking than simply taking, and pressed down two fingers firmly on the silver seal with a delicately precise flare of chakra.

There was a jolt, sinking from the warm touch right down to her bone, following her pulse and spreading through all of her body and anchoring into her chakra system.

It was a familiar feeling, the weight of seals driven by foreign chakra mingling with her being, and Naruto welcomed the gesture. Only a handful of people had ever come so close to holding her life in their hands, because with their chakra tangling deep within her body, a single, sharpened chakra spike could very well jolt her system into a full halt.

She trusted Sarutobi Hiruzen, Naruto had come to realized long before. With her life, different from how she trusted Kakashi or Sakura with her back but not yet how she was connected with Sasuke, somewhere in-between that filled something that couldn't quite be described. Because even if you don't need blood connections for a family it still isn't the same, but that was alright.

Then her wrist tingled, a prickling that came as the seal's color faded into her skin and revealing the seal's bare-bones hidden underneath. Naruto stared curiously as the seal matrices rearranged themselves into a new pattern. Tsunade's original design still remained, the silvery blue that came of her green healing chakra and Naruto's own melting out of the inky black, carved into the kanji of Wind on her pulse. But what used to be swirls and crossing strokes, a careless elegance born from their Uzumaki heritage, was now a deep green the shape of trailing vines and touches of red, like crimson flowers blooming on her skin.

The seal was bigger than the previous, circling her wrist like a bracelet, brushing the start of her thumb and knotting at her pulse, but it was beautiful.

No longer the sliver of wind and moon, no longer linked to the tides and excluding dignity and a balance between white and black. Instead it was green and red, stability and rebirth with the danger of violence and fire and blood, like a field of bloody lilies on a windy day.

Mesmerized and slightly bemused by the turn of events, she stroked the mark with a careful touch.

"Beautiful, isn't it? It's just like you."

Naruto didn't know what to answer, so she just nodded, dumbfounded.

She felt the Sandaime's chakra bubbling under her skin, still fresh and not yet settled into her core like Tsunade's, and it felt like Earth, the the forest surrounding Konoha, all giant trees and rivers with the distinctive smell of Senju and Sarutobi.

The seal had shifted easily, not battling the change like it usually would, but maybe it was because this kind of seal always carried over parts of the one who created it, chakra residues being transferred over and over again and never bleeding out.

It had been Uzumaki Mito's idea, to brand each Hokage with a seal that never forgets, to tie them down with bits and pieces of the ones that they succeeded, and it was both a blessing and a curse.

The seal could not be forged, yet it could not be removed either. And so when you became Hokage it was for all eternity, even through death and reincarnations because chakra was very much half of your soul, and it was said that those whose chakra had been linked by this seal all share a part of the same destiny.

This succession of seals had been interrupted once back in her world, between the Yondaime and the Godaime, the previous dead a decade before the latter's coronation. But Naruto had Minato and Kushina's blood, related to Tsunade and the Senju through Mito and Hashirama, and perhaps the tiny bit of Tobirama's chakra in the Sandaime's seal had recognized the part of Senju and Uzumaki that she carried.

It was a bit of a stretch, but the knowledge of being connected like that to these people calmed a hunger within her, and Naruto chuckled at it all.

The irony of it was laughable. She had been Rokudaime with only the Godaime's chakra at her back, and now a dimension away, no longer Hokage but in her memories, she carried the lineage of the Hokage through the seal the Sandaime modified, and Naruto cradled her arm to her chest with a tenderness that was bittersweet.

"...It's a honor, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi Hiruzen smiled. "No need. I expect great things from you, Rokudaime. Or should I say, Yondaime."

So, how was it? I'm messing with the timeline again, and the 'Naruto is blind' part will be developed upon in... a few chapters... I think. And please REVIEW! *bow*