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She finds him standing alone – uncharacteristically quiet and still, with the moon lighting the open ground around him. He has never been the whirlwind (or maybe whirlpool) of motion and feeling that she is, and normally the contrast makes her feel safe, but tonight it strikes her as wrong.
Her footsteps falter, because he has his hands shoved in his pockets and the flak jacket looks too big on him and that doesn’t seem right. He has always filled that jacket the same way he fills a room with surety and quiet content. The jacket fits him the way the headband does, and it makes her feel small and alone to see it dwarf him this way.
But it’s not right, and that means she has to do something to fix it, so she forces herself forward and calls softly, “Minato?”
He turns, and his eyes are sparkling but she pretends not to notice. “Kushina,” he says, and he sounds surprised. His voice is slightly choked and he quickly rubs his sleeves at his eyes while she diverts her gaze long enough for him to compose himself. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says a moment later.
She keeps her eyes on the ground while she steps forward slowly, hands wrapped around the bouquet of flowers that Inoichi helped her pick out. Purple shion for remembrance, pink sweet pea for goodbye, and white edelweiss for courage – the colors brush against each other softly, gently, and they remind her of the two people they had been brought together to honor.
“I just heard,” she says softly, and bends to place the flowers by the simple nameplate set into the ground – Namikaze , is all it says. No given names, just the family. She slowly straightens.
“I didn’t want it to be a big thing, you know?” Minato murmurs. “Not too many people knew Father, and Mother… She wouldn’t have wanted people to cry over her.”
“I’m so sorry, Minato,” Kushina says quietly, and wishes she could take his hand, but he’s shoved it back into his pocket. “If there’s anything I can do…”
He smiles at her and it makes her heart skip a beat just like it always has. Yes, there’s a small swirl of sadness mixed in with the rest, but it’s the same beautiful smile she’s used to, and she loves it.
“I wouldn’t ask you to do anything,” he says sincerely. “Just being here is more than I would ever have asked.” He looks back to the grave and falls silent.
Kushina watches him for a moment and then kneels gently and closes her eyes, silently offering a prayer to any spirit that might be listening. In the back of her mind, the Kyuubi snorts and brushes against the bars to his cage. Her prayers irritate him, but it’s never stopped her.
She prays for the safety of Minato’s parents, for peace and good health and an eternal rest. The words are hard to convey – it’s more of a feeling that builds in her belly the way that the Kyuubi’s chakra does when she calls upon it, and then expands through her body to her fingertips and her toes and seems to emanate into the earth and air around her.
She doesn’t know where it’s going. She vaguely remembers the teachings of Uzushiogakure, and some brief lessons with Mito-san when she was young, before the Kyuubi passed to her, that spoke of spirits and vague deities without names, or whose names simply shouldn’t be spoken, and while she’s not completely sure what they’re supposed to do, she likes to think that they’re watching anyway, and that at least one of them will be willing to help the dead.
Afterwards, when the feeling dissipates, she stays kneeling for a moment and glances back at Minato to see that he’s crying again, except that this time he’s not trying to hide it. The tears on his cheeks glint with the moonlight and his eyes are shining and bright. He looks so intensely sad that it jolts her, because she’s seen almost every emotion cross that face before (he’s so expressive, so open , and he’s never hid a thing from her), but never that one.
“Oh, Minato…” she murmurs, barely more than a breath, and she gets to her feet in a swift, fluid movement and pulls him into a hug.
Her arms come up to wrap around his chest and his own rest around her waist, light but snug. He’s almost perfectly still except for his slow, labored breathing, but she can still feel the warmth where his face presses into her shoulder.
When he finally pulls away, his face is pale and his eyes are red and he looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. His face comes away from her shoulder but he doesn’t break their embrace, just gives her a small smile and mumbles, “Sorry, thanks,” with a quiet, weak laugh.
She wipes away the tear tracks on his cheeks with her thumb and murmurs, “For what?”
He laughs again, and it’s a bit stronger, and then he kisses her forehead and she thinks her heart is going to stop. When he pulls back he smiles and this time it reaches his eyes and he says, “For that, I guess.”
They find a corner of a small restaurant that’s still open and sit across from each other, eating quietly and making little conversation. The quiet should be oppressive, but instead it’s comfortable and welcoming. Minato feels safer than he has in days.
He is intensely aware of the fact that they look like they’re on a date. Inuzuka Tsume is sitting with Akimichi Chouza and Yamanaka Inoichi and Nara Shikaku in another booth closer to the door and he feels himself turning bright red every time he feels their eyes on him. His infatuation with Kushina is no secret, but he still wishes the rest of the village would pretend it was, for Kushina’s sake if nothing else.
He’s deeply grateful for her tonight, more than usual, even. Even just her presence makes him feel better – she doesn’t have to say a word, she doesn’t have to actively try to comfort him. All she has to do is exist and be near him and be safe and he feels better.
Still. In the back of his mind float his parents’ faces, drifting between expressions of concern and love and pride and every other emotion he can imagine. The idea that he will literally never see those faces again is hard to comprehend. He keeps catching himself, thinking that he has to go home and report in, looking forward to Mother’s weekend cooking. Those things won’t happen again. It’s hard to process.
He sets down his chopsticks, appetite suddenly gone, and Kushina looks up, concern in her eyes. “What is it?”
There’s no point in lying to her – if it were anyone else, maybe he would try to hide it, but she’s always been able to see through him with a clarity that astounds him. He laughs quietly, tries not to let it sound too sad. “I keep forgetting. I’ll be fine for a while, and then… It just hits you every now and then.”
She looks sad, and quietly she reaches across the table and takes his hand. “What happened?” she asks. “All I heard was that… that they were gone. Nobody told me what actually…”
Minato shakes his head. “It was… An accident, really. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Father was headed to a settlement in the north of the country to negotiate a trade agreement with ambassadors from one of the smaller villages. Mother went along as security. Apparently there were Iwagakure hunter-nin watching the supply line, waiting for someone else – the Hokage suspects they were looking for the White Fang or Jiraiya-sensei, but he’s not sure. Either way, they were caught off guard. They weren’t expecting an attack inside the country. They tell me it was quick, though, so at least there’s that.”
The sadness in her eyes deepens, her fingers tightening around his. “You don’t have to be so optimistic about it, you know,” she murmurs. “You’re allowed to be sad.”
Minato doesn’t answer her, mostly because he doesn’t know how. What good will being sad do? His parents are dead. He’s not going to pretend that’s not true. And they died for the village. He’s not going to say that he’s glad, because he isn’t. But if it had to happen, at least it happened the way it did. At least they went out fighting, at least it was for Konoha, at least they were brave in their last moments, at least they were together … Minato has a lot to be thankful for. That his parents were able to give their lives for the village, that they were able to live and die the way they wanted, is one of those things.
So it won’t do him any good to be sad. It’s better to celebrate their lives, who they were and what they did, than to mourn their deaths. But Kushina won’t understand that, and that’s all right. Kushina has lost far more than he has, and he has no place to judge her. She’s allowed to mourn however she wants.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he says, because as soon as the thought pops into his head it seems like the right thing to do. Kushina looks surprised and a bit confused, but he tries to reassure her with a smile, and though the look on her face tells him she still doesn’t understand, she follows his lead all the same, and Minato thinks he’s lucky to have earned that from her.
That’s another one of those things he has to be thankful for.
They don’t hold hands, even though some instinct deep down inside Kushina tells her that they should. Other than that, though, it’s somehow intensely more comfortable walking the late night streets of Konoha with him than it is to stare at him over unfinished plates of food.
Minato, she thinks, is the embodiment of Konoha, if there is such a thing. Minato is peaceful and smiling even when he should be breaking apart, he is the soft warmth of the words “welcome home” that she hasn’t had the chance to say in a long time. For a long time, Kushina couldn’t call Konoha her home. But now, when she can feel Minato in the woodwork of every building, in the bottom of every bowl, in the laugh of every easygoing shopkeeper, she can’t imagine home being anywhere else.
Maybe part of it is just that Uzushiogakure is so far gone, now. It’s been a long time since she left, and though she can always feel that sense of home calling to her, there’s also something here now, something that grounds her. And it’s not just Minato – to say that she was only here because of a boy would be stupid. It’s what Minato stands for, what he believes in – what all of Konoha’s shinobi believe in, though few as strongly as Minato believes it. Family, friends, teammates, the strength of a group of people who work together to achieve a goal that will better not just themselves, but everyone around them, everyone in the whole village. And they do it well .
Kushina’s, ah, friend has always isolated her. The Kyuubi does not take kindly to strangers, doesn’t even tolerate her. He burns with anger every time she makes a new friend or lends her chakra to another’s jutsu. When they told her the Kyuubi was the embodiment of hatred – well. She believed them. She just didn’t completely understand what it meant. The point is, he’s not a fan of her working with others, and her relationship with him is largely give and take. As in, she does what she can to put him in a giving mood and then takes as much as she can while he’s distracted. So it means she’s had to give up a lot, like the safety of working with a team, like the comfort of having someone she trusts implicitly at her side. The only person the Kyuubi will let her trust is herself, and even then, he gets testy.
But Minato, and Konoha, have given her a chance to see something that she doesn’t always have a chance to see. Maybe this is how it works in every village, maybe this is how it worked in Uzushiogakure, but she’s only seen it in action here , and the strength of the bonds here, the power of the love that these people feel for each other… If she ever has a chance to thank Minato for all he’s done for her, the first thing on her list will be that he gave her the chance to see that.
On a related note, the Kyuubi is also very much not a fan of Minato. Kushina doesn’t particularly care. This is one thing she’s not willing to give up.
“Kushina, look at this!” Minato’s words pull her away from her thoughts, and she turns to see him bent over a display in one of the storefronts. Konoha at night is always interesting, especially on a weekend. Many of the stores will close up during the day but come out at night, when the shopkeepers know most of the people walking the streets will have loosened their wallets with alcohol and good company, and they always put out their best wares under the light of the stars. Minato’s eyes reflect the sparkles of the moonlight bouncing off something shiny in a display case. Kushina doesn’t know how to tell him that she couldn’t tear her eyes away to actually look at the item even if she wanted to.
He laughs easily after a moment though, and straightens, hands still tucked in his pockets, and heads for the next stand. Kushina jogs a little to catch up with him, and they stroll the streets of Konoha at a leisurely pace, elbows bumping as they walk. Kushina doesn’t ask to hold his hand, and he doesn’t ask to hold hers, but every now and then she does catch him glancing at her, and when their eyes meet he blushes and looks away.
Kushina’s not sure when she fell in love with Minato, or if it’s even really a point in time that she can define at all. It would be easiest to say that the time he saved her after the incident with the Kumo-nin was when it all really fell in place, but she also doesn’t know if she’s ever loved him more than when she pinned him during their chuunin exam, both of them drained of chakra. His hiraishin could only help him dodge her Kyuubi-strengthened attacks for so long, and she had the extra push, the little bit of advantage that let her pin him, and they stared into each other’s eyes in surprise for a long time before Minato’s lack of movement convinced the judges that the battle was won, and Kushina was granted the victory.
Although, she thinks, as the night grows later and their interactions grow easier, more comfortable, this moment, right now, could compete.
“It’s getting late,” Minato observes as many of the stores begin to close again and the drunks start to empty out of the streets, heading home or back to the bars for another round. “Let me walk you home?”
He’s not doing it out of chivalry, she knows, because he’s not stupid enough to think she’d accept something like that. But she also knows that his main motivation is probably just to spend more time with her, and that… Well, the Kyuubi growls at her, but she can’t turn that down.
“Sure,” she murmurs, and he smiles at her and she feels like she’s twelve years old again.
“It’s too bad we don’t see each other more,” he says as they turn down a side street and head back to Kushina’s apartment. “We’d make a good team on missions, I think. And. Well.” He’s blushing again, and not meeting her eyes.
She elbows him in the side playfully, grinning. “Well, what?”
“Ah. Well.” He’s still not looking at her. “We make a good team in general. You know. Just. As friends.”
Mm, just as friends, she thinks. Not likely that was what he was actually thinking, but she lets him get away with it just this once. She knows Minato likes her. It’s one thing that comes with the territory of having an entire village be your family – gossip starts fast and spreads faster, and really, Minato should have known better than to tell anyone , even those he’d sworn to secrecy.
The thing is, well… Actually, forget that, Kushina thinks. It’s all fine and well to play coy and act like a schoolgirl with your childhood best friend turned lover or something else if that’s what you prefer, but Kushina has never been the shy one, and she’s not about to start that now. Maybe it’s not the best timing in the world, but every new death reminds Kushina that they’re creeping closer to war, and if that comes, there’s no telling who will die and how and when.
Mito-san once told her about the man she’d loved, and how Konoha only existed because he’d seized the opportunities he’d seen, taken the opportunities that had been handed to him and made the most of them. Kushina never met the man, but she has him to thank for the fact that she’s standing here now, in a village she loves fresh off a mission with people she loves and staring at the man she loves. In the wake of all this recent death, it would be a poor way to honor the memories of all those who brought her here if she didn’t take the opportunity standing in front of her right now.
“Come inside,” she says when they reach her front door.
Minato looks surprised, and his face flushes. “Ah, it’s late, and I think the Hokage wants me in the morning…”
“So we’ll wake up early,” she says, and his face goes even redder as he realizes that she intends for him to stay the night. “We’re not children anymore, Minato.”
“I-I wouldn’t want to… to impose,” he stutters, utterly losing his composure in the face of an adult decision that doesn’t involve the lives of all his comrades.
“I can promise you, Minato,” Kushina says, pulling his hand from his pocket and holding it in both of hers, “that you will not be imposing on anyone. Maybe the neighbors.”
He looks like a scandalized schoolboy, but his protests grow weaker as she backs towards her apartment, and once they’re both inside, well. He gives up easily enough at that point.
Minato wakes up warm and slow. Funny – the bed seems awfully large to be the one in his own apartment, and he doesn’t remember going over to his parents’ for dinner, but apparently he did. Father’s been awfully free with the alcohol ever since Minato came of age, but at least he’s not hungover.
He flops onto his back and stretches lazily, trying to remember what day it is, what he had planned and where he was supposed to go or what he was supposed to do… And then his fingers brush someone else’s skin in his bed, and his head jerks around and he remembers.
Ah. Right. He couldn’t have gone over to Mother and Father’s for dinner, he thinks, as he surveys the red hair spread out over the pillow, because Mother and Father are dead.
The sight of Kushina sprawled naked under the sheets does nothing to calm him. He suddenly feels nauseous and he sits up abruptly, rubbing at his stomach. His head hurts, but not from a hangover. He didn’t even have anything to drink last night, there’s no reason he should feel like this right now. He climbs out of the bed as quietly but quickly as he can and snatches his boxers and shirt off the floor as he flees to the bathroom.
The shower is easy enough to figure out, and he stands under the hot spray for a long time, trying not to think about the fact that he’s using all of Kushina’s hot water. He still feels nauseous, still feels like he’s betrayed something or someone, though he can’t say who or what. He braces his arm against the wall and leans heavily on it, feeling like he could fall over at any minute.
Mother and Father are dead. They’re gone. The people who raised him, who gave him life, who stood at his side and guided him and protected him and taught him and gave him the world. When he was little, Father was the first person he ever told that he wanted to be Hokage, and Father didn’t laugh, he just smiled and picked Minato up so he could drop him on his shoulders and said, “If that’s what you want, then your mother and I will make sure you get there.”
Minato bites down on his bottom lip hard and drops his head onto his arm, breathing labored as he tries to keep his cool. Mother and Father are dead, yes, he tells himself, but it’s not the end of the world. They gave their lives for the village, they fought for Konoha right up until their last moments. What kind of memory would he be honoring if he cried over that, again ?
And yet. Father promised they would watch him become Hokage, but now they’re gone and that will never happen. The childish part of Minato thinks that it’s unfair, that he lied and parents can’t do that to their children. They can’t promise to be there and then just leave and not even say they’re sorry, not even come back …
“Minato?”
The door opens before he can respond, and a second later Kushina is pushing back the shower curtain, frowning at him.
He squeaks in protest and tries to grab the shower curtain back, startled out of his thoughts by her sudden appearance. “Kushina!” he whines.
She looks irritated. “Oh, Minato, please, we’re not children. We’ve been on missions together and patched each other up more times than I can remember. Last night wasn’t even the first time we’d seen each other naked.”
Minato tells himself that the blush creeping up his cheeks is just from the heat of the shower, and not from embarrassment at the thought of sleeping with the woman he loved after all this time. “That’s not the point, I—” His throat is still tight, though, and his voice breaks ever so slightly before he can finish the sentence, and he looks away quickly.
“Minato?” Kushina sounds concerned, but he ignores her as he shuts off the water and pushes the curtain back all the way. “What’s wrong? This isn’t about what happened between us, is it? Look, it doesn’t have to change anything, it was just one night, we can still just be friends if that’s what you—”
“It’s not about that!” Minato hurriedly assures her. “I promise. It’s nothing.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Could you get me a towel?” he asks uncomfortably.
“ Tell me .”
“I told you, it’s nothing!”
“If it’s nothing, then there’s no reason you can’t tell me!”
“Look, I just don’t wanna bother you with things that aren’t important—”
“Tell me, or you’re never getting a towel!”
“They’re gone !” The words burst from Minato’s chest before he can stop them, before he can grab hold of them and shove them back into cages where no one can see them. “They’re gone, and they said they would be there when I became Hokage, and now that’s never going to happen, and what good am I if I can’t even protect my own family? But it doesn’t make sense to be upset over that, because I wasn’t even there and I couldn’t have done anything to save them, but it still feels like I should have, and I just...” He slams his fist into the tile on the wall, has to hold himself back so he doesn’t break it, confusion and anxiety and anger and frustration and fear burning in his stomach and lungs. “I need to protect everyone. I have to. If I can’t protect everyone, then what’s… What’s the point of… Of anything —”
He isn’t even aware of the fact that he’s crying until his breath hitches in the middle of a sentence. He doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know how to make her understand how he feels and why he feels it and his chest feels tight. Kushina stares at him for a long time, silently, and then she disappears and when she comes back she’s wearing an old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and she gently wraps a towel around his waist and hands him another one for his hair.
“Come on,” she says gently. “Get dressed. I’ll make breakfast, yeah?”
He watches her leave, and then slowly climbs out of the shower. He spends a long few moments trying to collect himself, breathing long and slow, and then finally dresses himself and heads into the kitchen.
Kushina is just pushing eggs onto plates as he walks in. She smiles when she looks up and sees him, and quickly sits down and starts eating. He follows suit quietly, and neither says anything for a long time after they’ve finished eating.
He can feel her feet bumping his under the table, but still they stay quiet. It feels right , sitting here like this with her, not saying a word, just being comfortable with the other’s presence. He could get used to this, he thinks.
But at the same time, it’s not right, because he knows that they both have things to say, they just don’t know how to say them. He likes the feel of their bare feet brushing against each other, but his whole body is so tense that it doesn’t even matter, because he feels like a live wire about to explode.
“Minato,” Kushina says finally, and she reaches out a hand across the table. “Can I say something?”
“Of course,” he says immediately, taking her hand, almost offended that she thinks he wouldn’t let her speak, but then… Well. He hasn’t listened to much of what she’s said since last night.
“Look.” She meets his eyes, violet on blue, and he bites the inside of his cheek. “And listen to me, okay? When I say this I mean it, with all my heart. You are allowed to be sad. You are allowed to be frustrated, and angry, and you’re allowed to feel things that don’t make sense. You don’t need my permission for that, you don’t need your parents’ permission, you don’t need the Hokage’s permission or anyone else’s except your own. You’re not dishonoring them by mourning their deaths or by not understanding how you feel right now. That’s normal! People feel like that all the time!”
She moves her other hand to close on top of his, so she’s holding just his one hand in between both of hers. He can feel the gentle callouses brushing his knuckles, and with a flash, he remembers suddenly other places that those callouses have touched, and he forces down the heat rising in his face again as she meets his eyes again. “You’re allowed to feel what you feel. You don’t have to pretend to be happy or content just because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do. Because, first of all, it’s not fair to you, and second of all, it’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be upset, you’re supposed to be confused and afraid and lonely right now.”
She sighs heavily. “I’m sorry for the timing of what happened last night. Maybe I could have waited but…” She brushes her thumb along the top of his wrist. “I’m not sorry that it happened. I’m just sorry that it happened so soon after everything else.”
“Oh god,” Minato whispers, and she frowns heavily. “No, I—You don’t have to be sorry about that! Kushina, please, that’s… There’s no reason for you to be sorry about last night. I…” And this time he can’t stop the blush, and he feels like a child but he doesn’t care. “I’d been waiting for that for a long time. Just because it happened now doesn’t… make it any less . Kushina, I—”
He stops himself before he can say it, but he might as well have, because he can feel how red he is now, probably nearing the shade of Kushina’s hair, and even she’s blushing slightly, and god , he wants to punch himself in the face for acting like such a child (even worse, like such a teenager ), but she’s so beautiful and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
People talk about the time Minato saved her from Kumogakure like he’s some kind of hero, but he was only doing what needed to be done. Kushina was his friend (or… sort of) and, more importantly, a part of Konoha. It was his duty to protect the village, and if no one else was going to save her then it was up to him. He didn’t plan on swooping in and saving her and stealing her heart in the process, and he’s fairly certain the reverse was what ended up happening. He’s been in love with her for a very long time. He can’t imagine a more perfect being even if he tried.
Kushina’s not looking at him now, but she’s smiling, and that gentle blush is still touching her cheeks and he wants to kiss her so bad that all he can think about is last night, and that makes him feel even worse and he just wants to curl up in a ball and pretend he’s not such an incredibly terrible loser.
But then she glances up at him and mumbles, “I love you, too, you idiot,” and he thinks his chest is going to explode.
Suddenly she sits up straighter, looking slightly concerned, and he follows her line of sight to see she’s staring at the clock, which very clearly reads almost noon. “Didn’t you say you had to meet the Hokage today?”
“Oh. Oh .” Minato stands up so quickly he nearly knocks over the chair, and he nervously pushes it in. He quickly checks his pockets, but he’s fairly certain he already has everything with him, he just… has to leave…
He wrings his hands nervously, glancing over at Kushina, who gives him a sour look. “Don’t just stand around, go! Don’t keep the Hokage waiting!”
“Right, sorry!” He hurries for the door, pulling his headband from one of his vest pockets and quickly tying it while simultaneously trying to open the door. It doesn’t work.
“Oh, for the love of…” Kushina strides across the room and ties his headband for him and then turns and opens the door. “Go.”
He’s blushing, and he’s not sure if that’s still or again , but with Kushina, it’s really a bit of a toss-up. He steps through the door and then turns back. “Ah. Um. Maybe, if we both have a bit of free time soon…” He hesitates.
“If you’re trying to ask me to go out with you,” Kushina says, raising an eyebrow at him, “then the answer is yes.” And then she leans up and kisses him, and it’s everything Minato has ever wanted and more. She still smells like sleep and food and sex, and god, he never thought too much about how that would smell on her, but now he’s glad he knows.
Then she pulls back and immediately punches him in the stomach and he reels back a couple of steps, confused, because he’d thought the kiss had gone decently, but if not—
“Stop stalling and get out of here,” she snaps. “You can’t dream of being Hokage at the same time that you’re keeping the Hokage waiting!”
“Ah, right!” He hurries away, and then pauses again, glances over his shoulder. “Ah, Kushina, thank—”
“ Go! ”
“Right, sorry!” And then with a flicker he’s gone, teleported somewhere much closer that will get him to the Hokage’s office in seconds.
Kushina watches him disappear, and when he’s gone, she shakes her head and turns back to her apartment, but she’s smiling, and under her breath she murmurs, “You’re welcome.”