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Namikaze Minato has always known he was going to be a shinobi. He wasn’t born into a family of them, was born to two perfectly normal parents who would have rather had nothing to do with any of it. But Namikaze Minato had always known he was going to be a shinobi, and they would have to learn to accept that.
They were dissapointed, of course, but they acquiesed when they realized he wasn’t going to budge on this, and had him entered into the academy.
Namikaze Minato has always wanted to be a shinobi, and it shows in his grades, in the excellence he brings to every skill. He graduates top of his class, two years early, and he feels a sort of pride as he ties his hitai-ate on his head. He’s not ecstatic, like some of the other kids are, but he’s… happy. It’s a quiet happiness, the feeling of something settling into place. Namikaze Minato has always known he was going to be a shinobi, and now he is.
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Namikaze Minato is ten when he watches his first teammate die. It is their first out-of-village mission, and Jiraiya-sensei is not enough. Namikaze Minato does not cry, can only look down at the cooling body of his teammate and feel a cool, numb sort of acceptance. It is a hollow feeling, one that only widens the yawning chasm within him. It wells in his chest at the funeral, filling him with melancholia, but he does not cry. He sits politely with newly-bloodied hands, murmers reassurances and bows politely and does everything that is expected of him. When he sees his once-teammate laid out in the casket, barely twelve and weak for it, he sees the faces of the men who had done it, sees their expressions as they’d died. He steps quietly away, politely excuses himself, and goes home. He loses everything in his stomach to his kitchen floor, quietly gets the cleaning supplies, and does not cry.
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Namikaze Minato is twelve when the village’s jinchuuriki is kidnapped, twelve when he goes to save her. She was a classmate, once, a fuzzy memory of another person he had surpassed . He picks her up and carries her away and something warm lodges itself in his chest when she smiles at him.
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Namikaze Minato is thirteen when the glow around his sensei begins to fade. Jiraiya has always been a golden standard, one of the legendary sannin and perfect for it, and it takes Namikaze Minato’s second teammate dying to understand that Jiraiya is only a man.
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Namikaze Minato is fourteen when Uzumaki Kushina takes a blow to save him, fights through the pain and kills the remaining enemy-nin, and he feels something breathless and strange rising in his chest. He is fourteen when Kushina saves him just as he once had, and something shifts in him, makes room for someone for the first time.
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Namikaze Minato is fifteen when he meets Hatake Kakashi, and he should, by all logic, hate the kid. He is fifteen and he has a five year old trying to bite him and he feels light, heart just a bit fuller as it makes room for a second person. (And he goes to ask, and finds that little Kakashi is graduating soon, far ahead of his peers. It’s easy to go to his sensei, to ask Jiraiya how he should go about getting Kakashi as a student. Jiraiya insinuates that he’s trying to seduce Kushina by displaying his childcare prowess, and Minato flushes red and strange. Kakashi’s first act when he finds out who his sensei will be is to try to stab Minato, and it is wholly worth it.)
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Minato is sixteen when Hatake Sakumo dies. He goes to bug Kakashi and finds him curled up next to his father, gripping tightly to his shirt as if it will change what has been done. Minato is sixteen and Kakashi is six, and Kakashi has lost everything. Minato is sixteen when he carries little Kakashi home with him, sits patiently and tries to get Kakashi to eat something, to at least drink some water. Kakashi is six and he stares blankly ahead, and his eyes are deader than the ones Minato sees in the mirror. He gently brings Kakashi to bed, pulls the covers up over him and sits by its base. He sits with his back to the bedframe, thinks of six-year-old Kakashi all alone in the world, and he cries.
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Minato is seventeen and Kakashi is antisocial and horrible at teamwork. He is seventeen and he is the only one left to help Kakashi, and he applies for a genin team the next day. A kid runs into him on the way to the admissions office, recognizes him as Kakashi’s sensei, grumbles about Kakashi being stuck up and leaving them all behind, and Uchiha Obito is added for request in Minato’s application. It will be good for Kakashi, Minato thinks, and it is a satisfying feeling.
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Minato is eighteen when he realizes his mistakes with team assignment. He is eighteen and he had no idea two children could fight so much, and he would be thankful for the calmness of Rin if she hadn’t blown up his favorite mug. They’ve weasled their way into his heart, though, and there is nothing he can do but train his team and hope they get more reasonable with age.
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He is nineteen and he is needed on the front lines. He is nineteen and has perfected Hiraishin and killed so much he thinks little more of it than breathing. He is nineteen and they want his kids out there too, and Kakashi is the only one who has seen a warzone before. Rin handles it fine as she always does, adjusts with an ease that feels far too familiar, but Obito is young and bright and horrified at the realities of the war. He finds himself wishing he could wrap Obito up in his arms and keep him safe, somewhere far away from the violence and terror of the front lines.
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He is twenty and he wishes more than anything that he could protect them, keep them away from the horrors that await them every time they cross Konoha’s gates.
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Minato is twenty-one. Uchiha Obito has been killed.
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Minato is twenty-two and it is all he can do to keep Kakashi alive. Minato is twenty-two and Kakashi is the only one left. Minato is twenty-two and Kakashi is antisocial and horrible at teamwork and has a look in his eyes that says he wants to die.
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Namikaze Minato is twenty-three when Kakashi tries to kill himself. Namikaze Minato is twenty-three and he is the only one left to pick up the pieces.
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Namikaze Minato is twenty-four when Kushina dies. Namikaze Minato is twenty-four, and he stands across the battlefield from a boy who was once like a son to him. Namikaze Minato is twenty-four and Uchiha Obito is alive, and Uzumaki Kushina is not. He is twenty-four and Uchiha Obito runs away, and even now Namikaze Minato wants nothing more than to chase after him, to make sure he’s okay and to ask him why . But Namikaze Minato is twenty-four and Hokage to the village, and if he chases after Uchiha Obito he will leave the village and the sons he has left to destruction.
And Namikaze Minato is twenty-four when he dies.