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Kiba wakes in the blazing heat of a sun that feels so different on his skin, under vegetation that’s far too alive that he jerks upright, panic coursing through his veins. Before he can take in anything, his vision swims alarmingly and he feels hands on his shoulders bracing him upright as he sways on the spot, and a slobbery lick right on his neck from Akamaru.
Hinata, Shino and Akamaru’s face slowly come into view and Kiba blinks slowly in their direction, his head taking far too long to catch up.
Shino clicks his tongue, shaking his head and leaning in a little closer, looking at Kiba’s face with clear suspicion. “’I’ll be fine’ you said. You’re not fine at all.” He cups Kiba’s cheeks in his hands and looks into Kiba’s eyes. “For the Eighth Hokage, you can be incredibly stupid.”
Hinata lets out an amused and yet exasperated sigh watches as Shino checks over Kiba’s head. “It’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been, there’s not even any blood and plus, Kiba is the only one who could take the brunt of that.”
Kiba blinks again and the surroundings slowly come into focus and slowly, far too slowly, Kiba realises it worked. They time travelled.
“Huh,” Kiba says, and he takes a deep breath. It doesn’t seem like he has any internal organ damage from putting himself under that much duress to get them all here, but his head is foggy. He’s probably mildly concussed.
“It worked,” Kiba hears himself say just as Shino mumbles out something that Kiba doesn’t catch through the loud pounding of his head.
He looks around again - or tries too before Shino gently tugs his face back to face him. Shino turns to Hinata, already forming seals in his hands and a soft green glow alights around them.
“He’s mildly concussed,” he says as Akamaru wines sympathetically at Hinata’s side and Shino presses his hands against Kiba’s temples.
Hinata moves around to Kiba’s back and braces him upright as Shino eases the pulsing pain away and Kiba feels the permanently tense muscles in his shoulders ease more than they have since Kiba had the Hokage role forced on him all those years ago.
Kiba takes a consciously directed breath and stops trying to pull away from her.
In their timeline, the Fourth Shinobi War had blown up in their faces. In their timeline, Sasuke died, and a part of Naruto, a part that was too big to ever replace, to ever heal, had died too.
And after that, people died, and died, and died. Under Kiba’s reign as the Eighth Hokage, he and A as the Raikage had managed to hold Konoha’s ground for longer than anyone could have hoped for, but it hadn’t paid off in the end.
Sakura had shoved the crudely finished remains of Naruto’s seals into Kiba’s hand after Naruto had killed himself - sacrificed himself to give Sakura and Sai a chance to escape - and looked at him with a ferocious kind of anger that almost made Kiba step backwards.
“Time travel,” Sai had said, his face expressionless as ever, and yet his eyes raged with more anger than Kiba had ever seen in him.
Once upon a time, Kiba would have cried, would have refused the last remnants of one of his best friends, but Kiba’s been Hokage for a while now, so he took the seals, nodded at the two of them, and hoped they would understand how Kiba felt.
Kiba hasn’t cried in years, hasn’t faltered a single inch in years. And as much as the thought of Naruto’s dead body, bleeding and broken makes him want to throw up, there’s no chance he was starting then.
Goodbyes had been short and brisk and Kiba looked the remains of his friends - Sai, Sakura and Tenten - who they were leaving behind and hated himself a little more. Kiba, the Hokage, was leaving his friends to die, and even if he was bringing Akamaru, Shino and Hinata with him, it hardly filled the hole in Kiba’s chest enough to make up for it.
Kiba had formed the seals on his scarred, beaten hands and grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as his body ignited with pain and the world he had grown up in twisted away into nothing.
Hinata has a hand in his hair, looking at him with faint concern from where she’s still perched behind him and Kiba immediately feels guilty. He pushes himself upright, rubbing at his temple where the pain still, although barely, lingers just has Shino shoves him back down.
“Exhaustion,” Hinata says, although there’s no frustration in her tone, only fondness. “Doesn’t cure its self with a 10-minute nap.”
The notion that Kiba fell asleep in the middle of nowhere in such a situation as theirs, makes Kiba want to punch himself.
“Sorry,” he finds himself saying. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep,” Shino holds up his hand holding Kiba’s words before he can say anymore.
“Relax, Eighth. We are not likely to die here. This point in time is nowhere near as dangerous.”
Hinata pulls Kiba back up against her chest and gives Shino an approving look. “Let us handle this part,” she says to Kiba, her voice soft. “Let your body rest.”
Kiba’s instincts writhe against the very notion of letting his guard down to allow for that. Before, he had the excuse of Shino’s healing and his annoying habit of knocking Kiba out for a few minutes with it, but Kiba’s body has been hardwired to always be ready, and hauling all four of them across space and time probably hasn’t helped Kiba’s head.
Akamaru rests his head on Kiba’s chest, blinking up at him with patience that Kiba has never understood how he could possess. You’re an idiot Akamaru’s gaze says.
Kiba takes a breath. Shino is right there, his charka not diminished at all, ready to protect them at a moments notice and Hinata is right behind him, her hands around his shoulders is more grounding than it should be.
He sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes. Shino, Hinata and Akamaru can handle themselves without Kiba’s help, and it would be an insult to ever think otherwise.
“I’m being stupid,” Kiba says and closes his eyes as Shino chuckles in agreeance. “wake me up in half an hour.” Hinata hums in acknowledgement and for the first time in a long, long time, Kiba falls into a dreamless, undisturbed sleep.