Chapter Text
Jiraiya’s been experimenting with a new seal. Well, experimenting might be a stretch. If it doesn’t work, it’ll kill him, so he’s been saving testing his theory for a time like this.
It’s a light way to put it, but Pain has bested him, and as many scrapes as he’s made it out of miraculously... well, this was his last. There isn’t much time, possibly not even enough. Fukasaku jumps from his shoulder, and he burns a message for Naruto into the old toad's back, then begins his seal. He's in no shape to reach his ink and scrolls, but he's got the ground, and he's got the blood that pours from his missing arm. He writes as quickly as he can, before Pa is no longer a distraction.
Jiraiya had never pictured a long life, prepared to die for the village by age six, but he’s been granted the longevity so many shinobi are kept from. He’s 54. That’s over double of some of his friends.
If he fails, Naruto will get his message, and Naruto will save Konoha. It’s clear to him now that it was never Minato, or Nagato, but the orange-clad, hyperactive, thorn-in-his-side kid he’d been saddled with that is the child of the prophecy. Naruto can save them all. If Jiraiya leaves this world for good, if he dies here today, he’s leaving it in good hands.
Sparing one last thought to his godson, Jiraiya bites his thumb, and everything goes black.
If the afterlife is real, he must have been punished for his worldly sins. Groaning, Jiraiya rolls onto his side. He feels like he’s been drugged. His limbs are heavy, his head aches, and the scar on his chest is-
Wait a minute. The scar on his chest is gone. He snaps to alertness, running a hand down where the gnarled, raised skin should be, only to find that besides a few perpetual bruises and small lines, there’s nothing.
It worked. The seal worked!
Now all he’s got to do is figure out where the hell he’s ended up. Or rather, when he’s ended up.
It’s not Konoha, he can tell that much. The scratchy linens beneath him guarantee that it’s probably some rat-infested inn, probably in the middle of nowhere. And if this is a disgusting, rat-infested inn in the middle of nowhere he must be far enough in the past that Icha Icha has not become a bestseller (it won’t until book three) and he’s not rolling in money. His joints popping as he gets up tell him he’s at least written a few at this point. There’s no doubt that he’s not 25 again as he stretches his back.
He quickly packs his things and clambers downstairs to ask for the date. The girl at the front desk looks at him like he’s grown another head when he asks for the year, but happily gives the day.
"Oh, it’s October 10th."
Jiraiya glances over her shoulder at the calendar on the wall, and feels the life drain from his face.
He’d known the seal would send him back several years- that was the whole point- but he hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to specify the day.
He’s out the door, sprinting, all thoughts of getting his bearings gone. It’s still light out. Is he close enough to make it to Konoha in time? The Kyuubi had attacked at night, he's sure of it. Jiraiya curses having been out of the village.
He recognizes the small border town he's frequented often in his travels. The inn is above one of his favorite information-gathering brothels and as he runs away he hears one of the girls call his name. He ignores her- e’s not sure what he’s doing here, but it can’t be as important as stopping the nine tails. If he can save somebody, kami, let it be Minato. Dealing with waking up in the past can wait until later, dizzying as that thought might be.
He runs, flying through the trees as fast as his body will let him. He'll be dancing with chakra exhaustion keeping this pace, but it's faster than summoning his toads. He runs until his legs burn, and he’s tired down to the bone and the sun sets, and he has the sinking realization that he’s not going to make it.
The sky is long dark by the time he reaches the outskirts of Konoha, and the Kyuubi has rampaged. He skids to a stop, remembering that Minato and Kushina weren’t found in the village. He searches for his next steps, literally pacing like a madman, when Gerotora appears, a hastily-scrawled seal on his belly. Naruto's eight trigrams. The feeling of dread that had filled him when he’d seen Gerotora the first time washes over him, and he knows without a doubt he is too late.
“Take me to him,” Jiraiya demands. The pit in his stomach grows, and he tries to keep the feeling from taking him over. He can’t go through this again.
Jiraiya follows Gerotora to an outcropping in the woods, next to the wreckage of one of the Hokage’s safehouses. The smell of blood and death is heavy in the air, and it’s not just the scattering of ANBU corpses.
He scans the scene, and finds what he’s looking for, a flash of blonde, a beacon he’s used to navigate battlefields many, many times.
He sinks to his knees next to his student. Minato probably has minutes left, if that. The Reaper Death seal has left him broken beyond repair, if the wound through his middle wasn’t enough. Kushina is already dead next to him, a matching hole through her torso he knows is not from the baby. There’s so much blood. Too much.
“Sensei,” Minato grits out, looking up at him and trying to smile. “You got my toad?”
Jiraiya nods, fighting tears, because out of all his students, Minato had been the one he’d seen like a son, the one he was most proud of. He’d met the kid as an orphaned nobody and now he’d say goodbye to him as his Hokage.
“This… is your godson,” Minato coughs. He’s fighting for every breath, and there’s very little color left in his face. The shining blue eyes that he’s known for are dull, and that sight alone would be enough to break him down. Minato hadn't been his weak little genin looking to him for help in a long, long time. “Naruto, this is… Jiraiya.”
A familiar presence begins to approach behind him, but Jiraiya ignores it. He’s going to spend every second Minato has left by his side, undistracted.
“You’ll… watch over him?”
In his last life, he’d thought about it a lot. Replayed Minato and Kushina at the kitchen table, giddy with excitement. He’d known as soon as he’d walked through the door what their big news was, but he’d been surprised they’d asked him of all people to be the godfather to their unborn baby. It was a huge responsibility. Hokage or not, two shinobi with no living relatives extending this to him was more than just a formality; it was a backup plan should the worst happen.
And he’d asked Minato, privately, to reconsider. Begged, even. Jiraiya was not godfather material. He was hardly fit as a goofy uncle or weird grandpa. He could barely keep up with himself most days and the thought of being confined to the village made him want to crawl out of his skin. Yes, Jiraiya had believed it better Naruto was without him.
That had been before he’d known Naruto. He’d absolved himself of any guilt by convincing himself that Sarutobi-sensei had been right, that Naruto was safer anonymous, but had he ever really believed that? In the wisdom of his old age, could he finally understand that he had run away?
He ruffles Minato’s blood-matted hair and puts on the best smile he can manage. “Of course! Of course I will. There is no one better for your son than the Great Toad Sage Jiraiya!”
Minato coughs again in answer, blood dribbling out of his mouth. Jiraiya wipes it with his sleeve futilely. These last moments are passing quickly, and in an eternity at the same time.
He's not sure anyone had been with Minato when he died the first time. He was too afraid to ask for any details. He imagined Sensei had arrived, that Minato had not been alone, but perhaps that was only to quell his own guilt. The thought of Minato's death was impossible and unbearable at the time. He was the strongest Konoha shinobi in a generation, he was untouchable. If Jiraiya had heard the news from anyone but the summons he shared with his student he wouldn't have believed it.
It still feels like a bad dream even as it unfolds in front of him.
Minato stares up at him, voice trembling. “Jiraiya-sensei?”
Jiraiya sees his genin instead of a grown man, or the Yellow Flash, or the Yondaime, and squeezes his young student’s hand. “I’m here, Minato. I’ll be here to the end.”
He’s not sure how long he sits there, but it’s enough time that Minato’s hand is cold and limp inside his. Bleakly, he registers the screams of a baby behind him, and the voice of the old man, shushing and cooing.
Sensei had always been good with kids.
“Jiraiya,” Sarutobi says, finally, when he makes no move to get up from his place beside his dead student. Years of training, of being told that he must listen when Sensei calls for him, snaps him to attention.
It’s startling, seeing Sarutobi-sensei mostly unmarred with age, without the stress of the village weighing down his face. It’s nostalgic in a way that hurts, like if he closes his eyes all of this could be a dream.
If this is real, Jiraiya supposes he should get used to seeing ghosts.
“I was too late,” he whispers.
“The village has been attacked. We need you.”
His grief obscures any thoughts of the village, and he only has eyes for the newborn baby in Sensei's arms. Naruto.
“Give me the child,” he tells Sarutobi, rising to his feet. “I’m his godfather.”
Sarutobi narrows his eyes at him, brief defiance flashing over his features, but concedes, passing the baby over carefully.
Jiraiya had never once held the infant Naruto. When he’d returned the last time after Minato’s death, he’d refused to even look at the boy. They'd all agreed it was safer that no one know Naruto's true parentage, and what was the point getting attached?
He feels the regret like a kunai in his side as he cradles his godson now. Naruto is so small, with a scrunched-up red fac, and a dusting of fine blonde hair. He feels the comforting hum of Naruto’s chakra that he’s grown used to these last few years. It amplifies when the baby opens his eyes, revealing the bright blue of his father’s.
He swears then he won't let either of them down.
ANBU descends upon them quickly after that, the time for comfort gone, and he and Sensei hurry back to the village, which is on fire, burning in stark contrast against the night sky.
He takes Naruto to the hospital and tries hard not to dwell on the thought that Tsunade might be in there (or has she also abandoned the village by now?) and how good it would feel to see her.
Sensei relays the last conversation he had with Minato in-between directing the remaining shinobi around the village, taking back the mantle of Hokage easily, and Jiraiya’s reminded again that Minato had only had the hat for less than two years. Just enough time for his student’s face to look down on him from the mountain.
Sensei has nothing for him he doesn’t already know, so he joins the rescue efforts for the night, which ends up being long, the destruction widespread. Jiraiya’s not good at this part. He rarely cleans up the messes he leaves behind and somehow this feels like his mess.
Why couldn’t he have arrived in the past a day earlier? A week? He could have saved all of them.
Well then, what had he expected? His many failures hadn’t disappeared, nor would most of them at this point. Already, so many things had been set into motion. He can’t be so blind to think otherwise. If he starts getting caught in the what-ifs there will be nothing stopping him from making things even worse.
By the time he gets back to the hospital, woozy with chakra exhaustion, the sun is rising. In the daylight the village looks terrible. Selfishly, Jiraiya hopes his little house is still standing. He needs rest if he’s going to be of use to anybody.
The hospital is in chaos, and if he takes advantage of his status in the village to waltz directly to the nursery and all but steal his godson, who’s going to tell? The medics have bigger problems. He thinks briefly about leaving Naruto here, but he can’t bear to after he’d promised Minato, and surely one baby can’t best him. He’s not that dense.
A frazzled nurse does stop him on his way out, hurrying after him with a bag filled with newborn essentials and scolding him for not asking for help. She’s a pretty young thing, just his type, but he doesn’t have the energy to be particularly charming. It’s with a little glee he realizes he is young and charming again.
Ah, he’ll take advantage of that later.
Now that he’s all cleaned up, Naruto looks much more content, wrapped in a hospital blanket and peacefully sleeping. Jiraiya adjusts him in the crook of his arm, still in awe of how small he is.
The baby doesn’t stir as they walk through the village even though Konoha hasn’t exactly quieted over the long night. People crisscross the streets in distress, shouting for loved ones or hauling debris away from their homes. The Uchiha police force has taken heavy losses, just like the last time, and it’ll be chaos for days.
As his luck would have it, his little house is no more than rubble when he arrives, but Jiraiya sighs and moves on, it’s not like he’d really lived there anyway. Anything important is on his person or sealed away. He’ll dig through the ruins later.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to take this to your place,” he tells Naruto, laughing humorlessly. He'd frequented the Uzumaki-Namikaze residence in the past, at least he had any time he was back in the village. Kushina would bustle about in the kitchen while he sat with Minato, whispering warnings about his wife’s cooking.
Now, the house is a memorial, frozen in time. It’s only when he goes to open the front door does he realize his hand is shaking.
The kitchen light is on. There are dishes in the sink and one of Kushina’s poorly-knitted throw blankets is haphazardly thrown across the couch.
They were just here.
It’s the little frog onesie that does it, though. Kushina must have picked it out to put her new baby into the minute they got home because it’s sitting right on top of the dressing table in the nursery.
Jiraiya can’t help it but to cry at the sight, landing in the rocking chair and sobbing as the day catches up to him. The grief feels so fresh, all over again, and he feels hopeless. He missed his chance to save Minato. He couldn't save Nagato. Maybe he’d been better off dying when he was meant to. How is he supposed to fix anything?
He’s such an idiot. Not once during all his research had he thought of how he'd change the past. Simply showing up was no good; there was a reason time-travel seals were forbidden, and now he'll get to live through his worst memories again in real time. He thinks of his Ame orphans, and his genin students, and Sensei, and his teammates, and all the friends he's ever made and lost, and bawls his eyes out in the nursery of the baby he’s just ensured will stay an orphan.
Naruto, ever the perceptive little bastard, chooses this moment to wake, blinking up at him with Minato’s blue eyes.
If this were his Naruto, years in the future, the kid would say something off-the-wall and at too loud a volume but it would work and he’d feel better. This version can only scrunch his little face up and wail alongside him.
In a way, it has the same effect. Jiraiya pulls himself together to hush Naruto, like he’d heard Sensei do and it works to quiet them both a little.
He reads over the nurse's checklist before he tries to get some sleep. Naruto is probably hungry, so carefully following the instructions he makes a bottle, making sure to burp him afterwards and change his diaper so they can hopefully both catch a few hours of much-needed rest.
He puts Naruto in the frog onesie, reads over how to let the baby sleep, and knocks out on the nursery floor next to the crib, just in case he’s needed.