Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Minato faced Death, looked up at the giant grinning skull, and dared to blink. 

Horrid, decayed purple tissue of what had been skin, stretched along its white bone like threads of fabric. Eyeballs, old as the dawn of man held his gaze. “I’ll strike you a bargain.”

From barren nostrils, Minato shivers in its warm, putrid exhale. 

“I’ll be your footman. I’ll carry souls from battlefields, reap the sickly, strike fear of Death into humanity and in return, I only ask you to watch over my son.”

I am already feared. Death whispered in his mind. A ghostly shadow behind his eyes. And i already have footsoldiers.

“But you’ve never had me ,” Minato said, “You’ve seen what I can do, I’m sure many souls have passed the doorway to your gallows on my behalf.”

The God breathed. Rumbling air filling the cavern of the spirit realm Minato stood in. 

Twenty years . That is how long I will give you to prove your worth, mortal child. Three thousand and thirty three souls. Do not make me regret it.

Minato watched in abhorrent fascination as something dark wound itself around his neck, his wrists and ankles. The tar sunk into the pores of his skin and soul. Branding its new toy.

And then the spirit cavern dropped beneath his feet and Minato was sucked under. Pushed through worlds and spat out, Minato landed in an alley. Mind and body somersaulting.  

“Oi,” a tall silver-haired man, darkly robed, shuddered out of shadows and shoved a scythe into his hands. 

Minato didn’t have time to question, seeing just as mysteriously the man disappeared. 

“Are you here for me, sir?” 

Minato turned, coming to face a weary old man in rags. Halo’d by flies and gangrene. 

“Sir?”

Hollow and muffled.

Not a foot away, the voice sounded as though it came from a metal can connected by string. The kind of telephone games and kids at the orphanage used to make before it all went to shit. 

“I believe I am,” Minato held his scythe. Weightless in his hands. 

The man cocked his head, and the bloodshot dead eyes stared. “You’re...the Fourth.” 

“I was.” 

“Is that what I’ll become now? A grim reaper?” 

“No,” Minato raised the curved blade, prepared to carve through the ghost. Body knowing what to do. “You can rest.”

“Thank you,” the man gave a last, wobbly smile before the metal cut through him head to toe. Like ink in water, the man’s spirit floated into the reincarnation cycle. 

Minato didn’t know how he knew that. 

Black residue of the ghost curled circles in the air before fading. Leaving the sight of the man’s collapsed body in the alley. 

. 

Atop the Hokage building, Minato sat and listened. Spine curling by the second. Haunching him over and over as he listened .

“ - matron isn’t comfortable with the child - “

“I don’t care,” Hiruzen said. “Naurto will remain in their care. It’s what’s best for the child.”

Without thinking, Minato tossed a sealed kunai. Metal blade flying in an aimless direction and he flashed . Appearing outside a diner, he tossed another. 

He visited three orphanages, filled to the brim, before landing outside the window of his son’s room. Alone and wailing, his child rolled in his dingy crib. Kushina had made one for their son before he was born. It was in their apartment, in the nursery Naruto will never see. 

A woman no older than Minato stormed inside. Demanding silence and tossing arms in the air. Teeth bared. 

She wanted to hit his child, strangle his child.

His Naruto.

Minato, not understanding how such a monster was allowed near his son, an entity of darkness leapt from his body and swept through the woman. Her eyes blanked, face slackened and her body fell. Leaving behind a stunned soul in place. Looking after her body in sudden terror.

“It - you monster,” she gasped. 

Blaming his son. 

An innocent babe shocked silent by the noise of a body that had been so angry hitting the ground.

“Don’t you dare,” Minato said, and the lady fell to her knees as she met his dark blue gaze. “This is what you get for messing with my son.”

“L-Lord - “

And with that his scythe swept through her spirit. Covering the distance with its massive rod and blade.

Dropping from the windowsill, he stood over his son. Wanted to feel that soft skin of innocence under his fingertips and kiss that frown of confusion off his face. 

So, very carefully, he reached down into the crib.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the gravelled voice of that grim reaper in the alley stopped him. “The Kyuubi doesn’t like Death all that much. Wouldn’t want to tick it off.”

Sighing, Minato stepped back and appraised the lithe, grey-haired figure before him. 

“I also,” the man said, leaning against his own scythe like a walking stick, “wouldn’t make a habit of killing humans before their time.”

“Why not?” Minato asked, staring distastefully at the woman who dared wish to strike his son. Hiruzen had promised to look after his child yet he willingly let such beasts near Naruto. The boy who carries the weight of the village’s sacrifice on his tiny shoulders. If Hiruzen was letting this happen, Minato dreaded what the future held in store.

Jiraiya, where are you?

You promised.

“For one,” the grim reaper stated, “The whole thing is improper practice. You’re new here. So it can be forgiven. She wasn’t anyone important considering the grand scheme of fate-lines, however,” he straightened, grim-faced. “It’s still improper. Souls that haven’t finished their line of fate tend to be a headache for the guys upstairs.” He jutted a thumb upwards. “They don’t like it.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself from now on,” Minato said but held no promises. The grim reaper sighed, seeing this and shrugged.

“Your head, not mine.”

. 

Minato discovers three weeks had passed since his and his wife had orphaned their son. Being the previous host of a kyuubi and the last ‘pure’ Uzumaki, her body was burnt. Mysteries erased. Ashes spread to air beyond Konohagakure’s walls, in hope of her reuniting with Uz ushiogakure. Her lost village.

The only piece left of Minato’s wife was her name on the memorial stone. 

Minato stood under the rain he couldn’t touch, the cold he couldn’t feel, and traced her name engraved into metal.

“I’ll protect him,” he promised. By now the orphanage matron’s body had been found, and Naruto had been moved to a new location. A new lonely environment filled with hate and distrust. 

Minato had watched it all, watched the broken promises Hiruzen and Jiraiya had made, watched his friends mourn, unable to intervene due to a screwed law of silence, and vowed no more. 

The babe will not be harmed.

A baritone of Death whispered beneath the dark sky. 

“I’ll be watching,” Minato warned. 

A chuckle. Amused by the human.

Your list.

In-between the fingers tracing his wife’s name, a scroll slips. Catching it, Minato read the list of names. 

“These are all in Sunagakure.” He knew as well as he knew the matron lady was called Suki and she had passed through the reincarnation cycle not seconds ago. “Naruto - “

Will be watched over.

That was Jiraiya’s job. The job he had sworn to as Godfather.

In the span of a night, Minato had lost his wife, his students, the man he looked up to as a father-figure, and the man he had respected his entire life. 

From an orphaned child to the Fourth Hokage, Minato had bled, lost, sacrificed students and sacrificed himself countless times over.  

And the Village he had risked it all for, had turned on his only child.  

“What a lousy life I made for myself,” Minato rolled up the scroll and slipped it into a pouch on his flak jacket. “I’m going to say goodbye to my son, if that’s alright with you.”

Sunagakure will be waiting. When your human world duties are finished, the shadows will aid in travel.

. 

Death is literal with words. 

Minado crouched to the bottom of Naruto’s crib, held out a hand and felt something caress his palms. Same in fashion not moments ago as he bid his son a goodnight. 

“You’re Shadow?”

A black, snake-like creature ticked his pinky. Just as Minato began to laugh at the absurdity of conversing with a shadow entity like some regular Nara, it double looped his forearm and tugged. Minato, halting his fighting instincts, went stumbling headfirst into the shadow beneath his son’s crib. 

Where the floorboard should have been, Minato sank into a bottomless pit. Tumbling until the black teathers brace his back and shove him upwards with a gentle ‘oof’.

Out behind some little girl’s closet, Minato popped. Stunned. 

If Minato could feel his heartbeat, it would have been racing.

“...Thank you, Shadow.”

Minato got the distinct feeling Shadow patted his head with an inky tendril as he strode from the little blonde girl’s room. 

. 

Minato stays longer than he would have liked to witness a child, not much older than Naruto, bear the weight of a Jinchūriki brand. 

He witnessed the sealing, reaping a man during the rickety process, and found himself unable to fix the crumbling child’s soul. 

“One day,” he promised the toddler. Broken and tainted by a seal too weak for its own good, teal eyes met his blue ones. Chubby hand reaching for blonde hair framing his face. “I’ll come back and fix you. And maybe then, you can meet my little Naruto.” 

His last moment in Sunagakure was spent poking the child’s forehead and having a babysitter shriek as the child rocked back from an unknown force.  

. 

Out amongst Sunagakure dunes, tucked away beneath mounds of sand, hid an underground cavern. Not many would notice or dare venture beyond the cracked opening in the ground. Minato however, was Death’s soldier. He had nothing to fear. 

Over the course of months of work, Minato had set up a rudimentary workshop. Benches from yard sales, scrolls and pots of ink he snatched from houses of souls long passed, Minato had begun an exploration into something that would defy the laws of nature.

“What’s that you got there?”

Minato draped a towel in a useless effort to cover his sealing work and turned to glare at the visitor. 

The man who handed the very Scythe that now lay beside his bench, strolled around his cavern workshop. Hung from chains secured into the stone enclosures were candles. 

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“That does absolutely nothing to wane my concern,” and quicker than Minato could track, the silver-haired reaper was at his side and pulling away the cloth. Curiosity dimmed his brow, hand tracing the intrinsic patterns scrolled to fine paper. 

The reaper looked at Minato. 

“These seals, you can’t possibly be thinking - you’re a madman.”

“I’m practical,” Minato stood. Barring the reaper from the rest of his work. “If all goes well, these seals will help my son.”

“You can help from Shadow.”

“I want my son to see me. Know who he’s talking to and to be proud of his lineage. Being an invisible hand isn’t good enough.”

The reaper scoffed. Head shaking beyond disbelief. “Don’t pretend you’re doing this for your son, you're doing this for yourself. You’re dead, Minato. With a capital D. ”

“Are you going to stop me, reaper?” 

The man looked away. Grim-faced. “You’re unfortunately under our Lord’s protection.”

“Leave then, if you’re of no use.”

“You’ll regret this, Minato. The Dead aren’t allowed to speak.”

Minato sat and stared at his work and started to slowly reorganise the mess that had been made. At the subtle gust of cold air, Minato paused and glanced at the space where the silver-haired reaper once stood.

In the darkness, Shadow slithered across crevasses of rock and circled under his table-light candle.

“I’m doing the right thing,” he said. “For Naruto.”

His child.

. 

Chapter Text

Minato scrawled the final outline on the paper seal and lifted it up to candlelight. 

Beneath, a dark entity curled around his ankles. Rippling in what Minato assumed to be interest. 

“Right. Worst case scenario I get transported to a pocket universe. Best case scenario, this damned thing actually works.”  said Minato. Checked the clock on his desk. “10 am. Let’s see how long this baby lasts. If you would be so kind, please take me somewhere with people.”

Shadow opened up. 

Minato dropped through the cave’s floor as though it were six feet deep. Rising to find sunlight and loud excitement of a street fair. A displaced town on the outskirts of - Minato took in the slight smog and rocky mountains - Yugakure. Nobody above the rank of a high Chūnin should recognise him on sight were this paper tag functional.

“Here goes nothing,” Minato muttered to himself. Curled chakra into his palm and slapped the tag onto his chest. It sank into him. Disappearing and swarming his body. 

For a moment there was ringing silence. Faint hum of chakra flooding all around him, the muffled conversations and bargaining, and then as though slapped Minato stumbled. Bracing a hand against a cart of the stand and nearly toppling the apples it displayed. 

“Oi!” the old man working it slapped his palm. Minato stared. Nobody had touched in months. 

“Uh,” He looked to the man’s shadow that waved at him and huffed in delight. “Please excuse me, sorry.”

The man grumbled. Eyeing him walk off to join the fair. 

Minato had long ago discarded his Hokage uniform and hitai-ate. No longer belonging to the living world and village that so easily turned on his son. Minato now walked the streets wearing dark floppy pants, tight at the ankles and breezy on the legs and a thin beige jacket. The only eye-popping thing about him was his blonde hair. 

Taking in the sights and smells he nicked food as he went. Golfing it down and wondering when something simplistic as bread tasted like a delicacy. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Minato sensed Shadow close behind. Hopping from one dark spot to the next. Awaiting to be called on once the seal burnt out. 

.

Minato had considered the factor of how the sealing’s cancelation would feel. He had not thought of it to be painful.

It was as though a layer of skin was pulling away. Forcibly shedding itself off Minato’s body.

Curled up. Nervous system flooding in sharp agony, Minato mentally dotted down the warning signs. 

Smell of pepper, fingertips tingling and a sudden rash-like sensitivity on the spot he had planted the seal.

“ - he just fell!” somebody. A lady shouted from where she knelt. Hands dithering over him, not sure whether she’d cause harm or comfort. 

When he opened his eyes next, there were audible gasps. Body and chakra throbbing in dull painful echoes, Minato twitched at wrinkly old hands phasing through his skull. Patting the earth he laid. 

“Where did he go!?”

“ Shadow ,” Minato croaked. 

The crowd’s shadow swallowed him whole. 

. 

“I take it the disappearing blonde man in Yugakure was you,” The sliver reaper was there when Shadow popped him out. Dark tendrils gently placing him on his feet and patting his head. The reaper’s head cocked in slight perplexion. He stood reclined against his work bench, hand fiddling on a notepad. “How odd.”

“It worked,” Minato chuckled. The area he had slapped the seal was as tender as a cracked ribcage. 

Instead of pain, all Minato felt was triumph. Inflating him from the inside out. 

“For…” His eyes caught the analogue clock, “two hours, I was back in the world of the living.”

“I see,” the reaper dropped the notepad back. Hand on chin, gaze inspecting. “I admit, I didn’t think you’d figure it out so soon. Still not willing to back down and let the living keep on living?”

Minato thought of his son and that god forsaken village he left him in. Alone and helpless under the blaming eyes of citizens he vowed to protect. 

He had loved.

“Like Hell I am.”

“Right,” the reaper’s tongue clicked. “I’ll be on my way, just popped by to check whether or not you entangled yourself in some other dimensional gateway.”

“Uh huh,” Minato said, not bothering to bid adieu. Shadow waded him off, leaving Minato in his candle-lit abode. 

Revising the seal shutters on hold as a slip of paper floats down in front of him. He snatches it mid-way, reading the names. Location and knowledge tickling the front of his consciousness. 

“Kirigakure?”

. 

“Mother of Gods!” the ghost stumbled from the tiles Minato stepped out of. Robed sleeves reaching for the weapons his body once hid. The severe looking older man froze in his tracks. Eyes popping behind glasses, “My word, the Yellow Flash. Here to reap my soul.”

Minato was seriously considering a cloak of some kind. The amount of foreign shinobi who refused to rest simply out of spite was bothersome.

“Good evening, sir,” Minato bowed. 

“Ju-just a second now, young man!” the ghost scrambled back from Minato’s approach. “Don’t I get any final words?”

“You’re dead.”

“Surely, though, we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

Like Minato said. Cloak.

Minato kept his professionalism intact.

“No.”

“Not even for a jinchūriki?”

Naruto .

Minato finally took in the wooded land. Stone pillars stood tall. Seals burnt into the earth, circumferencing the center of the wreckage. 

Torn ropes. 

The metal scythe went cool in his burning palm. 

“You attempted to transfer a bijū - - by yourself ?”

“I was a foolish old man,” the ghost sagged to the ground. Head in his hands. “My student is the Jinchūriki for the six tails. Such a heavy burden for a young man to carry. He was too soft for it. Nobody in the village could see the weight it was putting on him. The nightmares. The isolation and bigotry - I tried to…” His shoulders tensed. “Not that any of my excuses matter now. The damage is done to poor Utakata-kun.”

“Is the kid alright ?” Minato demanded. Tampering seals holding a Bijū was cataclysmic. Utakata may be alright now, going by the lack of Bijū energy Minato could sense in the air, however that didn’t mean the kid wasn’t feeling the effects taking place. 

Seals could be popping off one by one right now like fucking bubble wrap. 

“I don’t know, that’s what I’m hoping you will find out,” the ghost peered up at him. Flashing a final, sad smile. “Please take care of my student. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Shadow,” Minato lets his scythe fall and turned to the barren forest. Scanned for signs of tracks in the foliage. “Help me find the child.”

Naruto’s sibling in everything but blood.

Darkness ripples beneath Minato’s foot as he steps. Sinking and rising into a separate part of the forest. A figure dashes past him. Manic gaze belonging to a dark-haired child bursting to the side as he spots Minato. 

The boy’s standard uniform had been ripped open from the inside. Tender red chest alight with smudged brush work meant for transferring.

Minato scowled at the shoddy sealing.

Utakata whirled back. The kid looked a bit deranged. Breathing heavily and trembling all over. The Kirigakure hitai-ate dangled around his neck, loose and freshly slashed. 

“Calm yourself, little one,” Minato raised his hands, letting the Scythe disappear into the air. “I’m not going to take you back.”

“Yeah,” Utakata snorted. Kunai raised in deftly still fingers. “That’s why you tracked me down - to say you’re not tracking me down. Super. Wanna try that again?”

“The seal holding your Bijū,” Minato wants to grip the sad-looking kid in a hug at the way he flinched. Twisting himself slightly to keep his chest far from prying eyes. “I need to look over and see if there was any damage done. I promise, after that you can run as far as you want.”

“Were you in on this with sen-sensei?” Utakata looks pained . “Were you just watching, doing nothing as I - “

“Utakata-san, I was here for your sensei’s soul.”

The boy took a real good look at him, swallowed and said, “Oh.” Chill visibly crawling down his spine, “If you’re talking to me then I’m dead too.”

“The Bijū is what enables you to see me. You’re not dead, you would know.”

“Oh yeah? Neat,” Utakata flinched again when Minato cleared the space between them in a blink. “So,” the boy seemed to be more shocked by a helpful Shinigami than horrified one was speaking to him. “You’re going to have a look at the seal, then.”

“To make sure everything is in ship-shape.”

“That would be nice,” Utakata stayed tense and still, allowing Minato to pull back his frayed, open shirt. Bending slight at the waist to see better. “..why are you checking, though? Wouldn’t you…like more people to die?”

“That’s kind of rude.”

“Sorry,” Utakata mumbled.

“I couldn’t in good conscience let a potential threat run loose. I might be a Shinigami but I don’t like people dying unnecessarily.”

Utakata seemed as though he couldn’t quite wrap his head around that. 

“I’m going to check the seals now, you might feel a slight discomfort,” he said. Slow and even as he pumped a small amount of chakra into the seals hidden beneath skin. “Can I clean the fresh ink to get a better look, Utakata-san?”

Utakata avoided his gaze and nodded. 

Swiping his sleeve over the work of a broken old man, Minato ran a finger over every sigil. Freezing over a part on the inner layer.

“There is one part that needs fixing. If it is alright, I’ll need to take you with me somewhere?”

Utakata’s eyelids refused to shut, almost afraid if they did they wouldn’t pop back up. 

“ Somewhere , as in…”

Minato took a breath and tried not to laugh, patting Utakata’s shoulder in a friendly fashion. “I have a cave near Suna where I keep my sealing kit. Don’t worry.”

Having Death itself tell him to ‘not worry’ , made Utakata stare at him some more. 

“Shinigami’s…have caves?”

“Only the cool ones,” Minato conspitorily told Utakata, hoping to put the boy at some ease. Utakata nodded. Unsure. “Shadow,” he called. 

At once they are engulfed.

. 

Minato is able to patch up the sealing before anything too nasty were to befall his cave. Utakata’s hand idled on his chest once they were done. 

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Utakata said, head lowered. Relief of having his Bijū safe behind seals wearing off. He sat, energy withering on the lonely chair Minato had plucked from a yard. Minato didn’t have food, but he did keep tea. Enjoying the delight during every corporealing seal test.

A mug Minato kept stored away for Naruto warmed the boy’s hands.

“No need to, just keep that Bijū safe.”

“Do you help every Jinchūriki you come by?” Utakata teased. 

Minato turned from packing away his gear to half-smile at the boy, “Only if they need it.”

Utakata’s joking facade slid away to reveal brimming curiosity, “You know of others?”

…Should he?

Minato thought of Naruto and how alone he was - and immediately squashed the idea. Hoping Konoha would treat Utakata kind was false hope. He knew now how those councils viewed Jinchūriki. 

Utakata deserved better now he was free. 

“I know they are safe as they can be,” Minato offered, and said nothing else about it. “Now,” he smiled, “Where would you like me to drop you off?”

.