Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The drama starts, as is often the case, in ANBU.

Beaver arrives with Ox to the Hokage residence at sixth shift, just past dawn. They find Stag in the plum blossom tree, flower petals in their hair, and fingers twitching on the bark.

“Report,” Beaver says.

“No abnormalities,” Stag answers, but twitches again.

It could be chalked up to their shift, Stag knows. Stag is the holdover unit from the previous shift, and night-guard at the Hokage’s residence has quickly become the most infamous domestic duty in ANBU since the Yondaime’s accession.

To distract, Stag adds, “Uzumaki-sama put pickled plums out.”

She does this often. ANBU rarely touch any of her gifts, because it’s unprofessional.

“In sympathy?” Ox’s mask smiles.

Even at the early hour the kitchen window is lit with a warm, foggy glow. Everything past the window-glass feels like an empty, unremarkable void.

Stag knows Beaver still hasn’t gotten used to it. No ANBU is keyed to be able to observe the interior of the residence. The Yondaime’s privacy seals are like nothing else. The disparity between what Beaver knows is true and what his senses tell him. The fact that when the curtains are drawn, there is nothing a single member of the ANBU guard can do but trust that the Yondaime is actually there. Unlike anyone else, after all, the Yondaime could simply be anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

It puts his ANBU guard on edge. Apparently Hound once got so tense on third-shift that he cracked a tooth clenching his jaw.

Stag is going to—Stag is going to... Two seal-masters. No one would observe anything Kushina and Minato didn’t want them to. But last night in the doorway—they heard—

Beaver and Ox are talking about the Hokage. “Hokage-sama knows,” Beaver shrugs. “He—”

“No,” Stag interrupts.

Beaver’s neck twists to look at them. The mask glints colorless white in the thin morning. “Yes, Stag?”

Ox stays silent. Both of them are staring.

A hot burning warmth crawls through them. Maybe it’s treasonous to tell anyone? Maybe the Yondaime wouldn’t want any ANBU to know? Is it outing? Last night, on the border of the privacy seals, concealed enough that Stag alone could only just barely hear—

but the Yondaime let Stag overhear.

“No—it’s just—” it’s unusual to see an ANBU hesitate, much less stumble over their words. They have a reputation to uphold. Stag steels themself. “I’m not sure we should address Hokage-sama as male. Uzumaki-sama called Hokage-sama her wife.”

This is Namikaze Minato.

If the Yondaime didn’t want any ANBU to know, they figure, then the Yondaime wouldn’t have let any ANBU overhear.

Beaver pauses. “Oh.”

“But then,” Ox says eventually, “what do we call Hokage-sama?”

-

Sometimes, when ANBU wants to keep something very covert, a genjutsu gets passed around.

Genjutsu is definitionally clandestine; although vital for fast communication, anyone can observe a hand sign, but only the subject of a genjutsu can experience its effects. There are always a few genjutsus being passed around ANBU. Yes, it becomes a bit of a game of whisper, with details of the genjutsu changing from caster to caster, but with some matters, the small details aren’t too important, just the concept.

Like the fact that Uzumaki Kushina called Namikaze Minato her wife.

The key features of this genjutsu are as follows:

• Namikaze Minato arrives to the Hokage residence at 10:47PM.

• Uzumaki Kushina swings open the door, moves past the threshold (the border of the privacy seals taking effect), and pulls Minato into the threshold.

• Her hands touching on Namikaze Minato’s face and pulling him closer.

• Uzumaki Kushina says, “My wife!” but it’s so quiet, that it’s almost imperceptible.

• As confirmed after the fact, ANBU Stag is the only guard to have overhear.

• ANBU Stag (from whom the genjutsu always takes the point-of-view of) nearly falls out of the plum tree.

Orders? Another ANBU signs, after passing through the genjutsu. Which is around the ANBU equivalent of: oh my god, tell me what to do with this information, please.

Beaver shrugs helplessly. Stand-by.

-

The unofficial stance of ANBU on the issue is to stand-by for further orders or instructions. This follows normal ANBU procedure when a mission objective has yet to be given, or parameters remain unclear.

In practice, that means that all ANBU, all at once, become extremely evasive on the subject of the Hokage.

-

Kurenai corners Genma in the Jōnin lounge, which isn’t actually the Jōnin lounge, considering how many chūnin and whoever else hang around in it. Like Genma. “Genma,” Kurenai says slowly, “Is there anything I should know?”

Genma, who prefers ANBU through-and-through, shrugs. “I dunno. What’s this about?”

“You haven’t noticed?” Kurenai smiles. “What’s going on with ANBU?”

At the word ANBU, everyone who hadn’t already been pretending not to be listening in, also start pretending not to be listening in. “I don’t know,” Genma says dryly. “Maybe you should ask ANBU.”

Anko, who’s now stalking over, snickers. “Hey ANBU,” she says to him. “What’s going on with ANBU?”

“I’m not ANBU,” he lies.

“They’ve been passing around genjutsus,” Kurenai tells Anko. “And none of them will talk about Minato.”

“ANBU is always passing around genjutsus,” Genma says. He shifts the senbon between his teeth into the divot of his canine.

“And the Hokage?”

“I’m sure,” Genma says eventually, “that ANBU is sensitive about the Hokage. It’s like, in the job description.”

“Right,” Anko says.

Genma tries to catch the eye of Tiger, who he knows is always in the leaves just outside the lounge. He fails.

“Sensitive,” Kurenai repeats.

“Uh-huh.”

“Sensitive like...”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions here,” Genma says, although he personally, doesn’t really care.

His unofficial orders are stand-by. Like with other members, though, these orders have started to bleed out of black-ops uniform, to when he’s in his leaf-greens. He—well, he fought by Minato, is the thing. Although older than him, Minato is only older than him by a few years, and Genma has seen first-hand what Minato has and can do. When Genma was an academy student, he’d sometimes see Minato training around town, walking alongside Jiraiya rather than trailing behind him. When Genma turned fifteen on the battlefield, Minato congratulated him, even though he had more important things to do, and by all means, they barely knew one another. It had taken Genma so aback, he’d said ‘you too.’

So it feels, just, really rude to get something so basic like gender wrong. The Yondaime’s gender isn’t really Genma’s business to figure out, just like it’s no ones business to assume in the first place, so. Stand-by, and all.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Anko says maliciously, “repeat after me, bitch-boy: ‘The Hokage did his work.’”

A gasp.

The metaphorical cat, Genma supposes, it totally out of the bag. Might as well get it over with, right? He spits out his senbon. “The Hokage did..” and the Jōnin lounge waits with baited breath, “the work.”

-

So, yes, if every ANBU in the village stops using pronouns for the Hokage. Shinobi are bound to notice.

-

Kushina is often spotted in markets and during other festivities. This time, she was overheard talking to a noodle seller. “I did want to be Hokage once,” Kushina laughed. Her eyes were crinkled up. “But… Minato achieved my dream for the both of us.”

Normally, this comment would go completely under the radar. Normally, however, the entire leaf village isn’t on high alert, skittishly paranoid over doing something wrong, and fervidly theorizing about their Yondaime.

“I attended the academy with them both,” one chūnin says a few hours later, when word has gone around. “Kushina specifically always said she wanted to be Konoha’s first female Hokage.”

“So Minato fulfilled that dream?” another chūnin puzzles. “By becoming transgender?”

“Transgender?” asks a third chūnin. “What’s that?”

“Like transition,” says the first chūnin, “like, from one thing to another. But with genders. I don’t know, I heard the word from Yamanaka psych evals.”

“But what if Minato was always a woman,” the third chūnin says. “I thought transgender was when you’re always the same thing. Like you were born that way, right?”

“Hm,” says the second chūnin. “Wait..maybe?”

“What if he was always secretly a girl,” a boyish genin pipes in. “Or like, a tomboy? So he just looks like that but is a girl. I’m a girl.”

“Minato did always hang out around girls,” the first chūnin ruminates. “...And boys. But...”

“Maybe he’s transgender but in a male way,” the second chūnin says.

“Fuck,” says the first chūnin. “What if you’re right? But then what about the ‘first female Hokage’ part? Minato needs to be female to be the first female Hokage!”

-

Namikaze Minato has always been incredibly pretty.

It’s not an exaggeration to consider this element as part of his political popularity.

Although born in Konoha, it’s only really his delicate features that read as distinctly native. Even his browner skin, although not uncommon around Fire with its hot, burning summers, seems more in line with the tones of sunnier, less forested parts of the continent. His appearance resembles those found Northwest of Fire, but it would be impossible to look at Minato and see anything but striking, Konohan beauty.

His wear, although militaristic and utilitarian, is considered elegant in the culture of Fire shinobi, which values efficiency above most else. After his appointment to Hokage, he began wearing ornamental earrings that glitter against the firm line of his jaw and flash brightly in the sun. Sometimes, they’re fashioned after native cherry blossoms, and other times, they pay homage to whirlpool. His blonde hair, although reminiscent in color and texture as that of Wind, is worn loose, long enough to be particular on a man, and openly, as has always been the tradition for Fire shinobi of notable skill. His eyes, although Earthern gray-blue, are kept behind long, thick lashes, rather than kohl and liner, as is in line with Fire’s prioritization of natural beauty. In combination with his clanless background, it endears him to the more mixed civilian and non-clan populations.

For Fire, which experienced the longest and bloodiest of all domestic shinobi conflicts, anything that could be compromising in battle becomes a marker of rank. That most stylistic choices a skilled shinobi might adopt are traditionally feminine is a matter of practicality. Historically, women in Fire country saw less combat, which gave them freedom to develop beyond militaristic utilitarianism, and when they did see combat, it was because they were particularly skilled, thus reinforcing the association.

Minato’s ambiguity extends beyond heritage. It is hard to call him distinctly feminine but impossible to call him distinctly masculine.

And so the question rises.

“Is he transgender... or Konohan?”

-

No one will bring it up to Kushina, much less the Hokage. Eventually, Minato’s students get approached. Honestly, Rin was kind of expecting it to happen earlier.

“You’re Hokage-sama’s students,” the genin says, shy in a way that’s almost uncertain.

Rin makes an effort to smile. “Yes! Minato-sensei was me and Obito’s Jōnin instructor. Kakashi’s too, though he isn’t here right now.”

“Right! Yes, um...”

Obito groans. He has been panickedly whispering to Rin about how he won’t know what to say if someone brings the question up for like, days now. “Cut to the chase, dude.”

The genin shuffles on her feet. “Umm… so.. like, you’ve known Hokage-sama for a long time...”

“A while,” Rin acknowledges. “We graduated at nine, and we’ve been Minato-sensei’s students ever since, even though our genin unit is officially disbanded. So...”

Obito’s eye is darting down the street, charting exits. Rin steps on his foot. He hisses, “Rin!”

“Don’t abandon me to this,” Rin whispers right back at him. “Besides, that was your plant foot.”

“It isn’t a plant foot,” Obito protests. “It’s cooler than that...”

“It grew flowers.”

“Well yeah,” Obito says. “But they were cool flowers.”

The genin is staring. “You’re a plant?”

“What? No!” Obito says. Pauses, then grimaces. Rin hasn’t quite gotten used to the Obito that came back after Kannabi bridge, even though she’s never let herself flinch. Obito scowls more, and grimaces more, and is generally just… Obito sticks his tongue out: “It’s complicated.”

“Oh,” the genin says. “Is that like, a gender?”

Obito squints. Rin steps in. “It could be,” she says kindly.

“Wow,” the genin says. “That’s awesome. You know so much about gender. Um. So like..”

It’s Obito that bites the bullet. “No, we don’t know sensei’s gender.”

“Eh?” The genin startles, alongside half the people in the street, because everyone was eavesdropping. “Oh… Wait, but, like, really? But don’t you have any hints? You’re Hokage-sama’s students, so like, maybe Hokage-sama has said something. Like—”

Rin has a brilliant idea.

“Actually,” Rin says casually, “Kakashi has known Minato-sensei longer than Obito or I have. If any of us would know, it’s probably him.”

Obito chokes on his tongue.

“Oh...” the genin says. “But Kakashi’s scary.”

Kakashi, who has never been the most sociable, has been even less so ever since Kannabi, even when Obito came back. Rin suspects this genin only approached them because, A) a genin is usually less aware of the political implications of bothering the Hokage’s students about gender theories, and B) Rin is less scary. Obito isn’t scary either, except he carries the Uchiha reputation.

But if Rin can direct all this stuff toward Kakashi...problem solved! “I can go bring you to talk to him,” Rin offers. “Here, he’s usually hanging around the library around now!”

If Kakashi runs away, then that isn’t out of character. Perfect.

Kakashi doesn’t run away.

“It’s terrible,” the genin nervously rambles, at Kakashi’s deadpan, stone-cold stare. “Err—I mean, no! No no no no no no the Hokage’s gender isn’t terrible! I don’t mean that! And like, like of course it’s not the Hokage’s responsibility to deal with this. Hokage-sama is doing really important things. Which is why I’m asking you!”

“Because I’m not doing important things?” Kakashi asks mildly. He’s picked up an inexplicable, sadistic streak recently.

“Huh? No! No I just mean, I mean, I mean with the Hokage situation, everyone’s been trying not to call the Hokage anything and use any pronouns for him—” the genin goes white as a sheet. “I mean she. I mean they. I mean him. I mean—Hokageself.”

Whiter than a sheet.

Obito makes a low hacking sound of disbelief. Rin does everything not to snicker. Kakashi’s stone-cold expression hasn’t changed.

The genin trembles.

She’s probably worried about being summarily executed for treason. Part of Rin wants to reach out and reassure that, no, she is not going to get summarily executed for using pronouns. But like, who hasn’t been worried about being summarily executed for treason before? It’s a good learning experience. Rin remembers her days of worrying about being summarily executed with a warm, fond nostalgia.

It’s faded a little bit, now that she’s older, and more valuable, and further from her clanless roots. Rin misses being younger, sometimes, but only sometimes.

Kakashi tilts his head.

He makes brief eye contact with Rin. They’re probably on the same wavelength.

He says, “Go on.”

“Your teammates say you’ve known Hokage-sama the longest,” the genin blurts. “So—I can’t—everyone’s just tip-toeing around referring to Hokage-sama with a gender! But you know, right? We can’t just avoid it forever!”

“Hm,” Kakashi says.

Rin wasn’t joking when she directed this genin to Kakashi. Rin has also been awkwardly avoiding the issue. Beside her, Obito waits with baited breath. Rin leans forward.

Kakashi’s voice comes level. “Really? I’m one step ahead of you, then.”

“What?” Obito blurts. “You knew and you didn’t tell us!?”

“Avoiding it, I mean.” Kakashi smiles. It crinkles his eyes. “I’ve been doing that for years.”

Of course you have, Rin thinks, and almost droops. She thinks she’s picking up bad habits from her teammates!

-

With all the mutterings about ‘gender’ and ‘transgender’ and ‘what is a transgender,’ the Yamanakas have been getting a lot of… questions. This is because the Yamanakas are the ‘psych clan’ that ‘knows about this kind of thing.’

It’s also because every Yamanaka is transgender.

“By the Yamanaka conceptualization of gender,” Yamanaka Kaoru explains, with careful patience, “a gender is simply the facet of lived experience that is gendered. In other words, it’s a social position, and inherently flexible. Even the transition from ‘girl’ to ‘woman’ is a kind of changing gender, as it’s different gendered experiences.”

This example is in the ‘official gender pamphlet’ that was printed last week and distributed to all Yamanaka clan members. The questions are getting overwhelming.

“And all Yamanakas are transgender,” the chūnin repeats. Kaoru feels a bit bad for forgetting his name.

“Yes,” Kaoru says, again, “because it’s in our clan culture to envelop ourselves in different gendered experiences, in order to better understand the mind.” This is actually a simplification but like, whatever.

“I see...” the chūnin trails off.

Despite the Yamanakas having an off-putting, generally unnerving, avoid-if-you-don’t-want-to-be-psychoanalyzed reputation, everyone knows at least one Yamanaka. This is by design. So everyone has at least one Yamanaka they’re comfortable to ask something of.

Including gender.

Maybe this will finally be the last question of the day. Maybe.

The Jōnin speaks up. “Based on that theory,” he says, “are all ANBU nonbinary?”

“Uh,” says Kaoru, who is actually ANBU.

“Because,” says the Jōnin thoughtfully, “you’re not supposed to know an ANBU’s gender. So it’s neither a male nor female gendered experience. Doesn’t that mean all ANBU are nonbinary?” he swears. “I have to they/them the ANBU.”

This is finally getting somewhere. Kaoru, also known as ANBU Beaver, thinks about this deeply. He thinks about ANBU Stag, who started this whole mess. He misses his senpai, but hasn’t figured out who they are outside ANBU yet—he’s trying not to figure it out. He gets the feeling that Stag is most comfortable in anonymity. What would his senpai think..?

“I think it depends on what the Hokage wants,” Kaoru concludes seriously. “Because the ANBU are whatever the Hokage wants.”

“Huh,” says the chūnin.

Another Yamanaka slides over. “I think,” the Yamanaka contributes, “that the gender of ANBU is classified.”

-

The drama started in ANBU. It trickled into the Jōnin, and from the Jōnin, the chūnin, and genin, and even civilians. The Yamanakas are getting questions. Because they read as transgender. And you know who else reads as transgender?

“Anko,” Orochimaru hisses, “if another ill-fated, insistent, well-meaning fool comes in here to ask if I’m transgender and if I can talk about Namikaze Minato, throw them in the snake pit.”

Anko, sweet child, brightens. “Awesome! Fuck, dude, I love throwing people in the snake pit.”

The chūnin that they just threw out pales. Orochimaru dusts off his robe.

“We’re doing important, interesting work here,” Orochimaru tells him disdainedly. “I don’t have time to answer these, these low level, repetitive, unscientific, worthless questions.”

A pause.

“So,” says the chūnin, “if it’s a high level question, it’s okay?”

Orochimaru stares. “Anko,” he says calmly. “The snake pit, please.”

“On it, sensei!”

Blithering fools. The first time someone’s asked his pronouns in years, the first time he’s been considered like this ever, with this sickly-sweet, invasive questioning, all looking out for him and Orochimaru-sama, I’m so sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings! I didn’t know what an enby was before! And it’s because of Namikaze Minato. Because no one wants to insult Minato by maybe-insulting one of his maybe-kind. Orochimaru has been working in the shadows of the village for years, with most people going out of the way to avoid him, and now they’re approaching him and it’s for this. What a joke.

The last time Orochimaru explained any of this to anyone was to his team, when they were fourteen. Jiraiya was not normal about it. Whatever.

Orochimaru is doing more important things, now. It doesn’t matter. He’s past this. Science is so much more than this. ROOT has been taking more of his time lately; he doesn’t have time for this.

Snake pit to them all.

“Sensei, I threw him in the snake pit, but now another one’s here! Are you sure the snakes won’t get mad at me for throwing them things? Sensei!”

If he gets one more—

“Orochimaru-sama, I just heard you don’t mind high level questions. What qualifies as a high level question, if you don’t mind me asking? If pronouns are too low level, do you have to, uh—oh, oh hey, hey no snake pit please—”

-

Inevitably, it spreads outside the village.

“I see the Yellow Flash has sent his wretched pawns here, too,” the Suna shinobi spits. It’s the edge of Wind, and although Konoha didn’t war with Suna the way it did Iwa and Kumo, and they’ve been historic allies, every foreign nation gets tetchy on the subject of Minato.

And here comes the issue.

All three of them are feeling it. They’re so used to being in Konoha, where everyone is being careful, and everyone knows, that…

Kurenai hesitates. But, “Don’t call Hokage-sama that.”

“We’ll call your Kage whatever we want,” another of the foreign nin sneers. “That man killed my family.”

Kurenai glances at Genma. Genma is regretting his choice to ever take a non-ANBU, non-domestic mission.

“Don’t call Minato-sama a man,” Kurenai says coldly.

“That is not very Youthful,” Gai agrees seriously, staring down the Suna shinobi.

A beat. “What? What the hell are you on about!?”

“Don’t call Minato-sama a man. Do not use he/him pronouns for our Hokage.”

“...Uh,” says one of the foreign shinobi, the probably-genin, “Okay.” The genin looks to the team leader. “I think you should correct it.”

“That woman killed my family!” The probably-Jonin repeats.

“NO,” Kurenai says. “Don’t refer to our Hokage as a woman.”

“It is NOT very Youthful,” Gai agrees strongly.

“Uh,” says the Suna nin. “Fuck this, why the fuck should I care. That person—”

“That’s de-gendering,” Genma drawls boredly.

“De-gendering?” the foreign genin whispers, “What does that mean?”

Genma ignores this. He shifts closer to Kurenai. He whispers, “We don’t want to out Minato. Just in case.”

Bare minimum respect aside, it could compromise Minato’s international position. Genma has the responsibility to keep an eye out for this kind of thing. Once ANBU always ANBU, and all that. His fingers twitch.

Gai, who has fucking freakish hearing, nods. “You’re right. That’s certainly not youthful…”

“But we don’t want them misgendering Minato,” Kurenai replies, trailing off.

This is also true. It wouldn’t look good for a bunch of foreign nin to be getting the Hokage’s gender wrong. It’d show—a lack of international respect. And no one wants to put Minato through that. Fuck, Genma should’ve stuck to ANBU. ANBU isn’t even supposed to reveal what village they’re from.

“What do you want us to do!?” one of the Suna shinobi finally bursts. “If you don’t want us to refer to your—your Hokage as male or female!?”

Kurenai looks at Genma. Genma looks at Gai. Gai looks very deep in thought.

“Don’t refer to Hokage-sama,” Genma decides.

“By male or female!?”

“Don’t refer to Hokage-sama,” he clarifies flatly, “at all.”

-

The news spreads.

-

“I don’t get it,” says a Kiri nin, “How’d this even happen? It’s like you fuckers don’t even know the gender of your own Kage!”

The Konoha shinobi stills. “...”

Wait, no way. “Wait,” says the Kiri nin. “You fuckers don’t even know the gender of your own Kage?”

“Don’t refer to our Kage,” the Konoha shinobi says stiffly. Apparently, this is now standard Konoha procedure for interacting with all foreign nin. The shinobi lifts their chin. “Hokage-sama’s address and title doesn’t belong in the mouth of a nin like you.”

“Oh that’s crazy,” he says. “You don’t even know the gender of your own Kage!”

“Like you know the gender of yours!? What’s Yaguya supposed to be!?”

“Hey,” the Kiri nin frowns. “Yagura-sama is a man, or something. I think. Who cares?”

The Konoha nin stares, then mutters something under their breath. “Kiri…”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he says. He’s actually buying time for a back-up team to arrive. He tries, “I know a lot about genders. Maybe I’ll know,” he’s lying.

“...Hokage-sama’s wife called Hokage-sama her wife,” they answer stiffly. “So no one knows now.”

He thinks about this. “Maybe,” he offers, “she was misgendering him?”

The Konoha nin whips around so fast, with so much killing intent, that he almost doesn’t have time to dodge the kunai that flies at his head; it nicks his ear. “THEM,” the Konoha nin corrects, then, “don’t refer to our Kage! And she would never!”

“Are you like...” if he can drag out this line of questioning, it might buy more time. Wow, these tree-huggers love being off their rocker. “Sure about that? Have you asked?”

“She would never,” the Konoha shinobi reiterates. “The word of Hokage-sama’s wife is law. She wouldn’t do that. I know it in my heart.”

-

In truth, no one wants to be the one to bring it up to Kushina.

‘Just ask Kushina.’ ‘you’re all spending all this time hypothesizing about what Kushina meant but you haven’t even asked her?’ ‘Is someone going to ask Kushina?’ ‘Ask Kushina’ ‘Ask Kushina-sama’ ‘Isn’t it obvious you should just ask Kushina’ … fools.

The politics of being the one to go approach the Hokage’s wife over a comment she made in private aside, it’s just…

“Minato?” Kushina asks. “My wife?”

ANBU Ox swallows. There’s a betting pool in ANBU for who has to ask her, and Ox lost. Saying less is more, right? “...”

Ox likes to consider themself casual, easygoing, playful, and generally humorous. They like to take the tension out of a room. But here, at Uzumaki-sama’s engawa, they feel horribly tense.

Kushina sets down the tray of candied chestnuts she’d made today. Like usual, she offered some to ANBU. Unlike usual, Ox came down and accepted the invitation, as a gateway to asking the Question.

“My wife,” Kushina repeats, then puts her head in her hands. “I miss my wife.”

Ox thought this might happen.

“You miss Hokage-sama?” They check, just to make sure.

All the ANBU tense with anticipation.

“My wife,” Uzumaki Kushina repeats. She looks up to the sky, and Ox follows her line of sight to the Hokage monument. Another heavy sigh. “I miss Minato, Ox! I miss my wife, Ox! I miss my wife! I miss my wife..!”

It should, of course, be noted that Minato spends almost every spare second at Uzumaki Kushina’s side, and that currently, Minato’s last visit was two minutes and thirty four seconds ago. “I’m sure Hokage-sama will be back soon,” Ox offers, sympathetically.

Ox thought this might happen, because this also happens if anyone brings Uzumaki-sama up to Hokage-sama. Minato just goes, ‘I miss my wife, Ox.’ And then disappears on the spot, and sends half of ANBU into high alert.

“Minato better,” she replies darkly. And then, “I miss my wife.”

This clarifies, in total, absolutely nothing.

Chapter Text

Uzumaki Kushina has always been striking.

Her unbound hair is more red than blood and more lustrous than the shell of a ladybug; its silken length extends almost to her ankles, with its ends jagged and wild rather than straight-cut. Her skin, lily-white, seafoam-soft, and whitened by an adolescence spent effectively sealed indoors, marks her ancestry as Eastern of Fire, where mist and monsoons cloud out the sun. Although raised in Konoha from a young age, she’s never read as a native. She’s frequently seen in elaborately embroidered seals and draped in ornamentals; she walks around the town on bare feet, and mingles freely. Her laugh is loud and her voice like seashells. Her temper is infamous, red-hot like a coal or the coil of a stove; her disposition shifts like the sea, and her temper will radiate heat even through the dead of night, long after the storm has settled. But this slow, seeping warmth does not extend extend only to anger.

Her foreign-identity exists without friction in the Yondaime’s Konoha.

Kushina dips her bare feet into every aspect and circle of life in the village. Shinobi, civilians, merchants, craft makers, childcare, festivities. She is always first to arrive and last to leave a summer festival. She’ll lead her husband out to dance and pass him into circle dances, and not let anyone feel unsure-footed. Her apologies are frequent and sincere, and his mis-steps rarely serious. Children call out ‘Uzumaki-sama!’ and she passes little seals on one-ryo coins as ‘good luck charm’ into their eager, reverent hands.

Everyone knows this.

The faith she’s given has been earned in full. Uzumaki Kushina expects to be offered in return what she’s given, and she’s given her heart.

-

Fuji meets Uzumaki Kushina two weeks into her covert… infiltration into Konoha.

“Uzumaki-sama,” Fuji returns the greeting, cautiously.

“Oh gosh,” Uzumaki Kushina, the rumored nine-tails Jinchuuriki and wife of the Yondaime says. “Don’t call me that—just Kushina is fine!”

“Kushina-sama,” Fuji corrects.

Inexplicably, Uzumaki Kushina’s eyes crinkle up with laughter. “New around here? And talk to me face to face! I don’t like talking to a henge, y’know!”

Fuji’s luck is so bad. She’s not trying to get attention. She’s not even trying to steal village secrets or commit bloodline theft, this time! She’s just trying to scope the village out! Why’s she getting caught so quickly!?

Well, she knows.

A full body henge always catches attention, and dark-skinned Kumo nin like her are rarely ever selected for infiltration, because of how much they stand out everywhere but in Wind even without a henge. Had this scoping been a sanctioned mission, Fuji never would’ve been chosen for it. Look on the bright side though, right?

“Sorry,” she says, “it’s a bit embarrassing underneath.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Kushina says, then winks. Fuji doesn’t have time to dodge before a thin strip of shinobi paper is being pressed to her neck, and its seal activates.

The skin burns. Her whole body burns coldly, like mint. Fuji feels like a live wire.

“There,” Kushina says simply. “I’ll be the only one to see through your henge, okay? Not even all those pesky ANBU over in that peach,” she gestures to a nearby tree, “will see.” Then, like she’s sharing a childish secret, “They’ll all throw a fit over this, you know. They get so tense around foreign nin!”

“Aren’t you worried?” Fuji blurts.

“Nah,” Kushina says. “How are you liking Konoha? You keep walking around the market like you don’t know what to do, y’know!”

“Uh,” Fuji says. “You aren’t going to bring me to the Kage, or…?”

Kushina wilts. “I miss my wife. But no, Minato doesn’t need to be bothered with something like this.”

“Your wife?” Fuji echoes. Somehow she hadn’t—but this is definitely Konoha, and definitely Uzuamki Kushina, and definitely the Yellow Flash’s..

“How’re you liking Konoha, y’know?”

Fuji can’t pay attention to that. Her tongue trips. “If she’s—I mean, if the Yellow Flash is your wife, are you the husband?”

Kushina blinks. Fuji stares. Heat rises in her cheeks.

“Oh no no,” Uzumaki Kushina says, and then smiles softly. “I’m Minato’s wife, through and through.”

So Konoha is okay with transgenders and homosexuals.

It’s not that Kumo isn’t. But Kumo has—strict standards, for what a person should and shouldn’t be, and the most important thing to be is strong. Fuji loves Kumo with all her heart, but her heart is dying. Fuji…

“Oh,” she says.

“Hey hey,” Kushina says. “I asked you a question, y’know?”

This is perhaps one of the highest ranking shinobi in all of Konoha. Their only jinchuuriki, the Uzumaki clan head, and the Kage’s wife. Uzumaki Kushina’s hair sheens vermillion like blood. There is no choice.

Uzumaki Kushina says, “Drop the henge.”

Fuji drops the henge.

The exterior of an average Fire civilian falls away to reveal the Kumo nin underneath. Her skin’s dark tone makes her feel perfectly out of place this deep in Fire.

Uzumaki Kushina scans her—brushes over her firm jaw, awkwardly flat chest, edges hard where she wants them soft. For just a moment, though, they linger on the hitai-ate, tucked in Fuji’s pocket, where the symbol doesn’t show. More than anything, that makes her feel exposed.

The intense scrutiny is over in an instant. “You look so pretty!” Kushina says. “I wouldn’t worry, you know. The immigration process here is pretty streamlined, even for nin like you. If you have nothing to hide, you’ll be fine!”

Because of the Yamanakas.

“How did you—”

“I can just tell,” Kushina says, and laughs. She looks lounging, dangerous as a lionfish. “If you live in Konoha, you belong to her, and you are part of her; Minato has always been very, very firm on this. Even as a child, there was no hesitation.”

If the Hokage is a trans woman, and this woman is the Hokage’s wife…

Well, Fuji has made her decision already, hasn’t she?

Orochimaru, the Yellow Flash—here will be estrogen. Fuji’s heart belongs to Kumo, but her heart is dying; if becoming Konoha will save her life, then she will owe her life to Konoha.

“Just flag a Yamanaka,” Kushina says. “Off you go!”

-

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern.

When the fourth foreign nin comes to Konoha, allegedly to defect from their former village…

-

TO: [REDACTED], KONOHAGAKURE IMMIGRATION CONTROL, KONOHAGAKURE LABOR RESOURCES COMMITTEE, KONOHAGAKURE INTELLIGENCE DIVISION

URGENCY: NON-URGENT, TIME-SENSITIVE.

SORTING: B-RANK Access, Need-to-Know basis for redacted material.

Hi, [REDACTED]. [REDACTED]. I would ask what you’ve all been up to, but I think that’s better asked in person. [REDACTED].

In light of recent events, intelligence indicates a 470% percent increase in skilled-labor immigration to Konohagakure. These PREDICTED increases come primarily from LIGHTNING (200% increase), WATER (300% increase), and WIND (32% increase). Also included are increases from minor nations, including RICE, TEA, and HOTSPRINGS (Missing Nin immigration predicted to rise 80%). The largest labor categories that will see immigration request increases are: SEX WORK (640%), SHINOBI-SERVICES (230%), ACADEMIC SCIENCES (80%), and SOCIOLOGICAL* ACADEMICS (9%). Together, this means a predicted 2000-2800 prospect migrants plausible to be accepted into Konohagakure before the end of the year, including an estimated 300-400 for shinobi-services.

Migrant demographics skew disproportionately QUEER, particularly BINARY TRANSGENDER and TRANSFEMININE. By percentage, sex work (70%) and shinobi-services (95%) migrants have the most queer individuals. Scaling of our healthcare sector, particularly gender affirming care, hormonal treatment, and estrogen production is RECOMMENDED.

An increase in weapons and smuggling activity on the border of Earth has indicates agitation and subterfuge on part of IWAGAKURE. All recent arrivals, including non-shinobi migrants, should be thoroughly searched (MENTAL, PHYSICAL, ECONOMIC, YAMANAKA) for knowing or unknowing Iwa ties. KUMOGAKURE shows similar unrest, particularly in the upper echelons, and particularly over potential loss of shinobi and shinobi-prospect individuals.

*Although not LARGEST increase, NOTABLE for a historic lack of sociological-labor migration into hidden villages, including Konohagakure. Sociological circles show signs of a potential cultural shift on their view of Konoha, and should be targeted for propaganda.

By the time this letter is received, I imagine the influx will have already started.

P.S. [REDACTED].

Signed,

Jiraiya.

-

Inoichi,

Congrats on the promotion! I remember when you were teeny-tiny. Anyway, details on the immigration issue can be found [REDACTED]. Including methodology, raw data, [REDACTED], and in-depth [REDACTED]. Rice Country should be targeted for diplomatic, collaborative relations, given their experience with transgender affairs.

Please give Minato my best regards.

Thank you,

Jiraiya.

-

Hime,

I’m visiting Konoha soon. This is my obligatory, “pretty please come with me?” :(

Jiraiya.

-

Jiraiya,

Fuck off.

P.S. Frankly, it’s a miracle I’m not considered a missing-nin, now that Sensei no longer has the hat. And frankly, maybe I SHOULD be considered a missing-nin, just so that you wouldn’t be able to bother me with this shit without committing treason.

Tsunade.

-

Hime,

Minato wouldn’t mark you a missing nin unless you did something drastic. That kid loved you. Besides, Minato wouldn’t be able to prosecute me for treason.

Jiraiya.

-

Jiraiya,

Yes, ‘that kid’ the Hokage would be able to prosecute you for treason. Minato isn’t your student anymore.

Tsunade.

-

Well.

When Jiraiya hears about Minato’s rumored transgenderism, he’s halfway across the continent and it’s through the grapevine. Hundreds, probably thousands of people have heard about it before Jiraiya did, and even though he doesn’t want it to, it stings.

He wasn’t in Konoha when either war ended. He wasn’t in Konoha when Minato was appointed Yondaime. Last he was home, he had given belated congratulations on Minato and Kushina’s wedding. That’s fine. They’re shinobi. His student understands that Jiraiya must keep his ear out to the world, for the world and for Konoha. Jiraiya has wandered between nature and spirit dimensions and across the hop-stones of fate ever since he was a boy with two teammates that were so much better than him in every way he thought it mattered, and he realized he needed to be something more than a man.

He thought, at least, that he had imparted some of that onto Minato. Maybe he did, and maybe Minato decided to be something else than a man.

Jiraiya wouldn’t know.

-

Orochimaru enters the Hokage’s office silently, and on the dot.

“Thank you for the timedlyness,” Minato greets with an amiable smile.

The Hokage hat is hung on the far wall, with the robes that Minato never wears. Orochimaru remembers him at eleven, hung at Jiraiya’s hip. What a joke.

Orochimaru has no patience for these pleasantries. He didn’t have it with sensei, and he’ll never have it with Minato. “You’re reassigning me from ROOT.”

A beat.

Minato tilts his head slightly leftward, and his earrings tilt with him. “That’s what we’re here to talk about,” he answers, which is neither a yes nor a no. “I understand you’ve been doing rigorous scientific research assigned under my predecessor, but our national security needs have shifted.”

“Cut to the point.”

“Orochimaru,” Minato says. “I want you to handle our HRT.”

There’s a kind of weight to him, however much Orochimaru hates to admit it. Steel-sharp, eyes like the sky through a storm, whirlpool hanging from his ears and brushing at his neck, flames in red on his cloak. He’s serious.

“Why.”

“You’re the best we have in biological sciences,” Minato answers. “We don’t adequately understand how HRT will interact with chakra systems, nor how chakra systems fully interact with sex characteristics. We don’t understand how they can be utilized, or the interaction between dysphoria and chakra manipulation.”

“And you want me alone working on this?” Not that Orochimaru hasn’t done larger projects on his own, but it’s been tedious, and in more specialized fields.

“No.” Minato sets down his pen. “You’ll have a division under you and will be working with the Yamanakas, and whatever resources they’re willing to provide.”

A division of his own.

Not even Sensei gave Orochimaru a division of his own.

“Fine.”

“For what it’s worth,” Minato says. “I contacted Tsunade-hime, but I don’t think the letter reached her.”

Orochimaru makes a sound that is unbecoming. But he doesn’t want to talk about that. “What do you want us to prioritize?”

“Feminizing treatments,” Minato answers promptly.

Orochimaru can’t help it. He says dryly, “And I’m sure there’s no personal motive behind that at all.”

“Well, the personal is political, as they say,” Minato laughs. His fingertips brush his earrings, and Orochimaru is sure that it’s deliberate.

‘He’ because Minato has yet to make any official or even private statement of his preferred terms, and Orochimaru of all people won’t act like another of these blithering fools with their presumptuous assumptions. Honestly, the whole lot of this village is acting so inanely, when it isn’t a big deal at all.

“Sure is,” Orochimaru mutters.

“But in seriousness,” Minato says, “most of our influx has been transfeminine, thus the priority. I suppose that’s to be expected with the male-female sex disparity across most shinobi forces, but…” he trails off.

Orochimaru, frustratingly, cannot tell if Minato is being entirely, honest-to-sage, genuine.

-

Obito can’t believe Kakashi. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing this for years,” he says, not for the first or last time. “Years, Kakashi. Years!”

Kakashi’s been avoiding referring to Minato by gendered terms for years. Before anyone else started doing it. He’s always ahead!

They’re in the Jōnin lounge, even though Obito is still a chūnin. He shouldn’t feel so behind, because Rin is also still a chūnin, but Kakashi is Kakashi and Rin is Rin and Obito is half made out of plant. Anyway, like usual the Jōnin louge is full of eavesdroppers, but it doesn’t really matter.

They’re talking about Sensei’s gender.

“What would you rather I do,” Kakashi says flatly.

“I don’t know!”

Kakashi makes a low whistling tone that Obito’s pretty sure he picked up from like some fucker in ANBU. “Well, if you have a better way to refer to Sensei, just keep me updated.”

“Just—just—” Obito thinks really hard. How to solve. This. Wait... “Just ask!?”

Kakashi looks up slowly. “Ask…?”

“Ask Sensei’s pronouns,” Obito says again, more confident now, nodding. “You know, like. Like for example, ‘Kakashi, what are your pronouns?’ Or like, ‘Kakashi, what gendered terms do you want?’”

“...” Kakashi looks considering, and slightly taken off guard.

Not to be discouraged, Obito emphasizes: “Like that, but with Sensei!”

Kakashi’s been picking up a habit of reading a book so that no one talks to him. Unfortunately, it’s kind of effective. But now Kakashi is tucking that book away, and tucking some strands of hair out of his face. It’s so silvery and moonlight-ish. He’s been growing his hair out recently, and…

“Obito,” Kakashi says, not looking at him. “Let’s make a bet.”

“What? Over what? I mean sure but over what?”

Kakashi hums. With his sharp gray eye showing more clearly now, he tilts up his chin and sweeps his eyes over the lounge.

That’s another thing. Kakashi’s been starting to wear ANBU-authority with him.

What is he—

“Alright,” Kakashi drawls loudly. “Who wants to know Minato’s pronouns? Raise your hands.”

Every single person in the lounge raises their hands. When they see everyone else doing it, the few stragglers who didn’t also join in.

Total quiet.

Kakashi clears his throat.

“Hands down.”

Hands go down.

It might seem silly. Now that Obito’s older, he’s realizing how young Kakashi was for much of his and Rin’s genin years, even if he never seemed it back then. But Kakashi is older now, solidly into his teens, possibly-maybe and ANBU Captain, and the Yondaime’s most famous student. Obito’s eye in his head is in the Bingo Book.

“Now,” Kakashi says. “Who wants to ask Minato these pronouns?”

No hands.

Kakashi looks at Obito, like, see or I told you so. Flatly, Kakashi says, “Oh snappers.”

“Oh snappers?” Obito echoes. “Oh snappers?”

Like oh snap but more...more…??? Maybe? Is this slang? Is Kakashi using slang? Obito hasn’t heard this slang. Is Kakashi making up slang?

“I won the bet,” Kakashi says, even though they didn’t make a bet. “Oh snappers, I won the bet.”

-

Orochimaru has mainly been working with Yamanakas, as of late.

It’s natural, of course. The Yamanakas have been profoundly busy dealing with screening shinobi immigration applicants, and their mastery of the mind is… better than Orochimaru’s, admittedly, no matter how distasteful he finds the admission.

The minds of others has not historically been his best point. But.

“We’ve been getting so many questions,” this Yamanaka complains, droopingly. “Orochimaru-sama, we have gotten so many. We have so much work to do, and not enough time to deal with all these questions about transgenderism!”

“I know what you mean,” Orochimaru says, with feeling.

“Oh I shouldn’t complain,” the Yamanaka says. “It’s...it’s... answering the questions is our work too. We can’t turn them away. It’s our job to be a shoulder to lean on for counsel.”

“That sounds awful,” Orochimaru says, honestly.

“It isn’t too bad,” she says. Then amends, “Well, it isn’t too bad usually. It’s just...”

“I know what you mean,” he says.

The Yamanaka sighs, then brightens. “Oh! But we’ve made a pamphlet. Would you like some copies of the pamphlet? It’s to give people if they ask basic questions.”

He thinks about that, but only for a split second. “No,” he says derisively. “That’ll just encourage them.”

“Oh.”

“But,” he finds himself saying, and even meaning it, “I appreciate the offer.”

Admittedly, he hasn’t truly worked with a team since—his former team. He is, he realizes clinically, perhaps a bit under-socialized. Anko is his student, not an equal. It’s...different, coming out from ROOT.

He is almost even enjoying it. So of course that’s when Jiraiya comes back. 

Chapter Text

“Minato,” Jiraiya starts. Then stops. Swallows around the hot coal in his stomach. Tries again. “Minato,” he says more firmly, “I know it’s been a while.”

“Too long,” Minato agrees.

They’re in the Hokage’s office—Minato’s office. Minato had greeted him with a warm smile, and a hint of childish enthusiasm that Jiraiya had almost been worried he wouldn’t be met with.

It’s—strange, still, to see his student behind that desk, instead of his teacher.

“Minato,” Jiraiya says, because he isn’t a coward, no matter what people think of him, “I wanted to apologize for my absence.”

“No need,” Minato brushes it aside. “I know why you were gone, Sensei. Albeit, I’m surprised you’re back so soon.”

“I know that,” Jiraiya says. “But I still would have wanted to be here. You know you can lean on me, right?”

“I always do.”

That isn’t quite true, Jiraiya thinks.

Minato has always been—independent is one word for it. Protective might be another. That child was terrified of losing what couldn’t be held with strength. Worrying, or maybe obsessive. ‘I like Kushina because she’s stronger than me.’

“I accept you,” Jiraiya declares. He wants to be very clear on this. “Say the word. The war is over. I’ll be there.”

“I know,” Minato says. Then, “I’m glad. I… It’s a transitionary period in my life.”

“Right,” Jiraiya says. “I..” the hot coal in his stomach, the slug in his throat. Tsunade didn’t come with him, but he wishes she did. “I support your transition.”

Minato smiles softly. “Ever since I was a small child…”

“I would have supported you back then, too,” Jiraiya says.

Minato laughs. “Well, maybe not then.”

Jiraiya goes cold.

“I always knew I wanted to...” Minato trails off, then continues, “I was certain from the start, that I wanted to be the Hokage. but now that it’s actually happened... of course I am deeply happy, but it’s certainly been a change.”

Wait.

“Wait.” Jiraiya holds out a hand. Almost says, What? But he’s enough of an intelligence officer not to actually put his foot in his mouth that badly. “I mean...yeah.”

“The Sandaime leaves large robes to fill.” Minato’s eyes twinkle. “But your support has been invaluable. Your recent intelligence reports related to the immigration situation in particular… I think it would have been much, much more difficult without them.”

Okay, what are they talking about?

Jiraiya thought, maybe Minato was being too shy to say it explicitly. But... Minato isn’t shy, and Minato is no longer talking about.. gender identity.

At least, not explicitly.

Jiraiya is an intelligence officer at heart, is the thing. He’s used to finding patterns—patterns in the soil, patterns in rumors, patterns in dry, economic statistics. How many order of what have gone where, and what does that mean? He’s used to finding patterns in mysticism, too, in prophecies and fate and natural chakra, the souls of living beings and the world’s breath. If Jiraiya can do anything, it’s reading between lines.

Transitionary period in my life. Like gender transition. Your support has been invaluable.

But within the same breath, Minato refuses to acknowledge the topic explicitely.

‘Well, maybe not then’?

Maybe Jiraiya wouldn’t have supported Minato when Minato was younger. Minato really thinks that? Minato thinks that? Of him? So now Minato won’t acknowledge the topic now? Won’t give Jiraiya personal insight at all, will keep Jiraiya at arms length?

“Orochimaru has been reassigned from ROOT, in part due to your recent information,” Minato tells him quietly. “You should visit him.”

The whiplash of it almost makes Jiraiya miss the hidden meaning. That being: you should consult another transgender before you talk to me.

Did Jiraiya really...

...What did Jiraiya do so badly wrong?

-

“Orochimaru!” Jiraiya turns up at the entrance to Orochimaru’s lab looking every bit like a sad, kicked animal. His eyes are actually wet. What in the world? “What did I do wrong?”

“You’ll have to narrow it down a little,” Orochimaru replies, with more vitriolic bitterness than he meant to let slip.

“Minato hates me,” Jiraiya says. “What if Minato thinks I’m homophobic?”

Never mind. Whatever glimmer of a lotus petal was catching light in a swamp between his ribs has burgeoned into knotweed, and he’s not sure what he expected. Of course Jiraiya is here for Minato. It’s always some random, world-blessed orphan with him.

Orochimaru almost doesn’t register the absurdity of what Jiraiya actually said.

“Excuse me?”

“Fuck,” Jiraiya says. “Minato thinks I’m homophobic.”

“Hm,” says Orochimaru.

“It’s just pattern recognition,” Jiraiya bemoans. “Minato didn’t say it to my face, but that was the coded message. My student thinks I’ll hate—them.”

“Him,” Orochimaru says, which is the first and last time he’ll correct someone no this.

Jiraiya blinks wetly. “Him? But what about her?”

“Is this,” Orochimaru says, very slowly, “about the whole gender thing?”

“My student doesn’t trust me enough to tell me,” Jiraiya says. “Orochimaru, what should I do? What did I do?”

“Why are you asking me,” Orochimaru says flatly. “Don’t you know any other transgenders.”

“Of course I know other transgenders.” Jiraiya pulls himself up to full stature, looking almost offended. His hair is long and wild, and he’s always been by far the tallest of the three of them; a giant of a man, that can always be spotted in a crowd, unless he’s trying not to be found. “I know someone of everyone from anywhere.”

This is, unfortunately, true.

Which still leaves the question of why he’s talking to him. Surely he has less creepy, weird, ‘ethically unmoored’, offputting, unnerving, whatever transgenders to talk to.

But as Orochimaru is contemplating this, Jiraiya’s eyes go wide.

“Orochimaru,” he says, “what if Minato thinks I’m misogynistic?”

That’s enough. “Surely,” Orochimaru says, harshly, “you know other women.”

“Well yes… But—”

“No,” Orochimaru says. “Leave, you blithering fool.”

“I have a question,” Jiraiya says.

Once, as a child, Orochimaru tried to explain what it meant to live forever.

He didn’t know how to articulate it as anything but a snake shedding skin. I won’t be a boy forever, he said. I’m already not one. When a snake grows, their skin does not; it doesn’t fit anymore, too old, or too small, too constraining, or already worn out. Orochimaru would collect their skins in April, would find them in pieces by the stream, or if he was lucky, would find a whole husk in the dirt. He would, he thought, be a garden snake, or a viper in the grass, shedding his skin into a new self, and a new time, again and again and again and again, forever. Like reincarnation, without having to die for it.

He once imaged collecting snakeskins of himself. He would pin them to a board like a scientific sample with engraves plates for each one: OROCHIMARU, NINE YEARS OLD. He imagined walking people through them like it was a museum.

Childish.

“Ask someone else.”

“Tsunade won’t talk to me.”

If either of them knew even half of what Orochimaru has done in the years since their absence, neither would they.

“Don’t care.”

“Maybe she’d talk to you though,” Jiraiya says.

And Jiraiya continues, “It’s been a while. Maybe we should get together.”

Orochimaru stopped reaching out to Tsunade, because there was nothing to say. He could not talk about his sciences, but there was nothing else he wanted to share. Even the sanctioned projects would be enough to make her flip a table, never mind the unsanctioned ones. Her and Jiraiya were always…

“Come on,” Jiraiya says. “Don’t you wanna get out of this evil lab?”

“This lab is doing HRT research.”

Jiraiya freezes. “Oh, uh. Not-evil! I don’t think HRT is evil, by the way.”

Orochimaru tries to keep his face straight. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jiraiya echoes.

“...”

“Sooo, about Tsunade...”

“I don’t know where she is,” Orochimaru says, instead of anything about how how little Tsunade would want to talk to someone that’s been having a dandy time doing human experimentation.

“Well,” Jiraiya says, “I do.”

-

Kumogakure has not been… happy.

“That is IT!” Ay, the Fourth Raikage, yells. “EVEN ONE KUMO NIN LOST TO KONOHA WOULD BE ONE TOO MANY! MINATO, THAT BASTARD!”

“I think you mean that bitch,” Bee comments. “Because the Hokage’s made a switch, yeah.”

“Konoha has nothing we don’t,” Ay growls. “Who cares if the Yellow Flash is a woman! We have transgenders too! You’re transgender!”

“I think it’s because she’s transgender while also being the Hokage,” Darui says. “It indicates like, that there’ll be support, and healthcare, or something.”

“WE HAVE SUPPORT AND HEALTHCARE!”

Bee shrugs. “Health-care, or health-scare?”

“No one will be scared to seek trans healthcare under my watch,” Ay says darkly. “We need more publicity? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Publicity would do a lot for this-city,” Bee says.

“Everyone already knows you’re a trans man,” Ay says, trailing off. Then, with a stiff line to his lips: “But they think it’s just favoritism, or an exception. Maybe they need to know I’m a trans man, too.”

“But Ay,” Darui says. “You were born male.”

Ay rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“No I mean like, biologically. The Third Raikage said so.”

“Intersex,” Bee explains, on behalf of his brother. Then, thoughtfully, “It could be be a flex, prove our specs.”

-

BREAKING: FOURTH RAIKAGE ANNOUNCES GENDER, INTERSEX STATUS, NATIONAL HEALTHCARE

The Shinobi Times.

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Amid growing sentiment that Konohagakure is the most queer-friendly of all hidden villages, Kumogakure has come out with an opposing narrative. According to a recent public announcement, the two highest ranking officials of the village, that being Ay, the recently appointed Fourth Raikage, and Killer Bee, the Eight-Tails jinchuuriki, are both binary trans men, having been receiving consistent and high quality testosterone treatment since adolescence. Something far more surprising, however, was the revelation that the new Raikage is not just transgendered, but intersex.

‘I decided to take testosterone, and I decided all medical treatment I was given, even before attaining rank,’ the Raikage boasts. ‘We are not cowardly enough to reject the natural body of a person, nor to reject their decision on its course.’

‘We didn’t have any issues,’ Killer Bee said, about his and the Raikage’s hormone treatment. ‘No need for any tissues.’

This was an unveiled attack against other villages, and the traditional treatment of intersex individuals across the elemental nations. Some experts have theorized that this is a clear bid on Kumo’s part for cultural supremacy on the issue, pointing toward[…]. Although clearly representing a boiling-over of frustration with Konoha on part of all the hidden villages, Kumo undoubtedly promotes only its own interests in this announcement. Other Kage[…].

‘We aren’t into that weak pussy-shit,’ Killer Bee finished, speaking on behalf of Kumogakure. ‘But we can definitely give you a strong pussy-kit.’

-

Tsunade is laying around a farmshed half tipsy and brushing Ponpon’s hair with a dense bristle brush when Jiraiya stoops in the door, followed by an Orochimaru that won’t meet her in the eyes.

For a second, Tsunade wonders if she drank way more than she thought. This is quickly followed by the realization that no, she hasn’t, and yes, they’re here.

“Leave me alone,” she says miserably.

Ponpon buts her fingers gently. She’s such a sweet pig. “Oink.”

“But Ponpon,” Tsunade tells her, “that tall one is that asshole I’ve told you about.”

“Oink oink.”

“The dark haired one is also an asshole.”

“Oink…”

“Hold on,” Jiraiya says. “Why are you trash talking us to a pig!? We just got here!?”

“Her name’s Ponpon,” Tsunade says.

She met Ponpon when she was sleeping in an abandoned henhouse outside a bar, after being kicked out sometime in the dead of night. Ponpon, who was far from a wild hog, but clearly also not a local resident - an escaped farm animal, maybe -, had nudged her awake. Tsunade, who had grown more used to nonhuman communication during her years as a shinobi, had told her to ‘fuck off and leave her to her misery.’ Ponpon stuck around out of..pity, maybe, or concern. Frankly, whatever!

“Maybe Ponpon should leave us some time alone,” Orochimaru suggests diplomatically.

Oh, she’s so not getting out of this if they’re both here. What did she do? “Ponpon,” Tsunade says, “can you leave me a moment to talk to my old teammates? Shizune’s in town. Maybe you can find her?”

To emphasize the point, she tucks away the bristle-brush and nudges Ponpon up. Ponpon makes alittle huff, but up and off she goes.

Now that someone who actually cares about Tsunade’s wellbeing isn’t here: “Did that asshole Fourth Hokage finally put me out for treason?”

“What?” Jiraiya says. “No!”

“You wish.” For all he’s trying to sound casual, Orochimaru still isn’t looking her in the goddamn eye! His gaze is sliding to Jiraiya, instead. “No, it’s something far worse than that.”

“Worse?” she grouses. “Worse?”

This is how they all end up sitting in a kiddy circle in the farmshed. The walls are hung with like… shovels, and rakes, and whatever other shit you need to plant vegetables. Jiraiya is folded up with crossed legs, uncomfortably squeezed between pottery, and Orochimaru pulls off more or less the same pose but with more poise. Tsunade doesn’t bother to move from her sprawl on the floor.

It was, as Orochimaru said, worse than having her old teammates sent to execute her for treason. Instead, her teammates are here, unsanctioned, to…

“What if Minato thinks I won’t support him,” Jiraiya says awfully. “What if…Tsunade, Minato thinks I’m misogynistic! Minato won’t tell me he’s a trans woman because he thinks I’m misogynistic!”

“Well,” says Tsunade, pointedly, even though it isn’t serious.

“What if Minato thinks I’ll treat him different,” Jiaiya mopes. “I won’t! Minato will always be my student!”

“You did start hitting on me when you found out I wasn’t a boy,” Orochimaru muses.

“Oh god don’t remind me,” Jiraiya says. Then, “But you’re so pretty. And I don’t like men. I can’t help it. I don’t like men!”

Tsunade snorts. “Don’t you think you’re over thinking this? What did Minato even say?”

“I am not,” Jiraiya hisses. “It was deliberate. Who here is the spymaster, again? That’s right. Me.”

It’s true that Jiraiya has a skill that neither she nor Orochimaru have, not really. Orochimaru may be a scientist, and Tsunade might’ve been a medical researcher once, but Jiraiya works one of the largest intelligence networks in the continent. He’s used to deciphering things between humans in a way Tsunade never has.

And then Jiraiya recites the entire conversation with Minato, that he apparently had, word-for-word.

“Word for word?” Tsunade says. “Memorizing that is frankly the kind of insane shit I’d expect from Orochimaru.”

“I can’t help it,” Jiraiya says, which is probably true. Then, “Maybe when Minato said ‘transition of power’ he meant, ‘transition of power from male to female.’”

Tsunade promptly throws a bottle of alcohol at his head. It doesn’t actually hit him, because it hits his head-guard, but it shatters all over him and douses him in… whatever it was. Barley wine? It’s only at this point that Tsunade realizes his forehead guard doesn’t even have a Konoha Leaf, it has the character for ‘Oil’ - and Tsunade wonders what any of them are doing with their lives. But it makes her feel more at ease, that Jiraiya isn’t wearing a Leaf, and that when she looks, she can’t find one on Orochimaru, either.

Tsunade mumps her knee with Orochimaru’s. It’s supposed to be casual, but Orochimaru recoils, and only now does his eyes passingly latch with hers.

“Hime… I just - ” Jiraiya droops. “Why won’t Minato tell me directly!?”

“Dude I don’t fucking know,” Tsunade says. “Just ask.”

“I can’t just ask,” Jiraiya says. “I won’t pry a direct answer out if Minato doesn’t want to give one. Even I’m not that tactless.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Orochimaru says, but he’s still looking at Tsunade, with those bright, sharp, wild eyes, and Tsunade realizes she’s missed it. She crooks a smile, and he doesn’t smile back, but she wasn’t expecting him to.

Jiraiya says, “I need moral support.”

“For what?”

“Expressing my support again,” Jiraiya says.

“No fucking way. I’m not going back there.”

“You don’t have to really come back,” Jiraiya reasons. “Just come back for moral support.”

“What? Just to stand there?”

“Yeah! And then you back me up when I say something,” he says.

She snorts, and leans closer to him. “Yeah, fat fucking chance.”

But it’s hot in here with three bodies and four walls hung with metal. Her top is loose. Her boobs are half showing. Jiraiya looks caught between horny and sad, and Orochimaru looks pretty as ever, and it makes Tsunade want to make a bad decision.

“I wouldn’t mind the visit,” Orochimaru says. “I’ve been doing HRT research. There’s no blood, so you might be interested to take a look.”

“Nerd,” she mutters.

“Is that a yes?”

“Mm.”

Tsunade likes having bad sex, making bad decisions, gambling, and drinking. She’s spent the last however the fuck long wandering around, sleeping in bad places, rethinking her life, and trying not to think or rethink anything. She doesn’t eat animals anymore, now; she fell asleep in a henhouse four months after her effective defection, and that time it wasn’t empty. She woke up, skin itchy from the straw and sore from the hard dirt, and there was a hen beside her head. She looked the hen in the eye and saw her own eye reflected back at her. But she could leave he henhouse and they could not, and she couldn’t imagine, if she could never leave a place. All Tsunade ever wants to do is leave and not look back. So no animals, no eggs, no dairy, no whatever. Whatever!

Two months after that, she met Ponpon, and in that at least, all her doubts went away. Tsunade wonders what she and Shizune are doing in town.

“I’ll tell Minato again when he’s back in Konoha,” Jiraiya decides.

Tsunade blinks. She doesn’t really keep up with the news. “Back? Back from what?”

-

Meanwhile, in a boarder village between Iron and Rice:

“There, right there!”

The Fourth Hokage is passing through, on way to a rather important political meeting in Iron. The Kage is, of course, being tailed by many ANBU guards, of many countries, trying their very best to be subtle, even under the assumption that the Fourth has most certainly noticed, and is just humoring their presence in interest of not starting another international incident. These gossips are a mix of smaller nation shinobi.

“Look at that tanned, well tended skin,” one ANBU whispers, “look at the killer shape she’s in. Oh please, she’s trans. Totally trans!”

“I’m not about to celebrate,” the other ANBU whispers back. “Every trait could indicate a totally cis sissy. That guy’s not trans, I say, no way.”

“Well,” says another ANBU, from a totally other village, “is it relevant to assume that a man who wears perfume is automatically, radically fem?”

“That’s the eternal paradox of what we’re seeing,” says another ANBU.

Usually, ANBU would be communicating all this with silent handsigns, but considering the ANBU in this case are from several different villages, and none of them know one another’s ANBU codes, well. Speech it is.

“What are we seeing?”

“Is he trans - ”

“Of course she’s trans!”

“ - or Konohan?”

“...Ohhh,” the ANBU chorus.

“Trans or Konohan.. It’s hard to guarantee.”

“They bring their boys up different there,” one ANBU muses. “They grow long hair. It’s culturally diverse. Trans or Konohan? So many shades of grey.”

“Trans or just exotic,” another ANBU says, “I still can’t crack the code…”

-

BREAKING: FOURTH RAIKAGE CALLS FIVE KAGE SUMMIT TO ADDRESS, QUOTE “THE SITUATION.”

The Shinobi Times.

Chapter Text

After the initial statement from Kumo, there was a domino.

BREAKING: FOURTH MIZUKAGE YAGURA ON GENDER POLITICS

The Shinobi Times

In wake of what some academics in the Capital have called “the beginnings of a mass exodus from Kiri,” a new Mizikage has taken power. Their gender, age, and general profile is unknown, but Kiri shinobi show a general irreverence toward their personal characteristics. The rare few shinobi that have been able to approach Yagura on the latest continental issue have reported their comments as this:

‘I’m probably nonbinary,’ Yagura answered, ‘but I have a rebellion to suppress, so I don’t really care about that right now.’

BREAKING: FOUTH RAIKAGE SAYS KUMO ‘ALSO HAS ENBYS’

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‘We’re not like that fucking rock country,’ the Raikage says, apparently expressing frustration over their working relationship in the recent war. [...]

BREAKING: THIRD TSUCHIKAGE IS ‘NOT TRANSPHOBIC’

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Both Earth Country and its hidden village, Iwagakure, have stayed largely silent on the recent intersection of labor and gender politics between the hidden villages. Despite some reports and growing sentiment that they’re working behind the scenes to exploit the situation for their gain, a move which Kumo calls ‘cowardly,’ there has apparently been growing frustration within the Iwagakure top officials.

Some theorists have suggested that Iwa’s consistent hatred of the Fourth Hokage has stemmed from the Kage’s rumored trans identity. Yesterday, the Tsuchikage expressed, ‘I am NOT transphobic! You useless, young ingrates! Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m transphobic. That stupid, deplorable Yellow Flash killed one thousand of my men! No one could forgive him for that!’

Later, the Tsuchikage said, ‘I meant her.’

KONOHA STILL SILENT: IS THE FOURTH HOKAGE QUEERBAITING?

The Shinobi Times

Some groups, particularly in Kiri, have called into question the validity of the Fourth Hokage’s rumored identity. It’s true, that the Fourth Hokage and other Konoha shinobi are persistently silent on the truth of the Kage’s identity and labeling. Despite the rumors benefitting Konoha along the axes of queer and gender politics, as their reputation across the continent changes, nothing has been made official.

This is different from Iwa, which has rejected association of specific figures with queer identities, or Kumo, which has straightforwardly declared members of its upper echelon queer and reiterated its national goals surrounding the topic. It differs, too, from Kiri, which has offered brief commentary, and Suna, which has yet to become involved in the continental discourse at all, and simultaneously boasts the smallest number of defectors and smallest rate of people leaving the city-state.

Some anonymous parties in Kiri have called into question the Hokage’s strategy: ‘It’s queerbaiting,’ they said. ‘Konoha is baiting queer people and shinobi from all over the elemental nations to come into Konoha, while simultaneously pandering to less accepting parts of the continent by avoiding explicit confirmations. It’s very problematic. Konoha has always perhaps been the most insidious of all the hidden villages. Frankly, they should be cancelled.’

The anonymous Kiri contacts also offered an analysis of labor rights in the hidden villages. ‘If something like this can so publicly change the national policies of shinobi villages on a matter,’ they said, ‘then this is yet another example of the power we hold as collective bargainers within a violent, mercenary labor force. Kumo doesn’t want you to know this but[...]’[THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO VIOLATION OF THE CONTINENTAL SHINOBI MATERIAL DISTRIBUTION CODE SECTION C SUBSECTION B. ANY COPIES WILL BE LOCATED AND DISPOSED OF.]

BREAKING: TSUCHIKAGE IS, ‘NOT MISOGYNISTIC, EITHER’

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‘Just because we hate Minato doesn’t mean we hate women,’ the Tsuchikage said,[...]. He further expressed frustration with Konoha shinobi telling other shinobi not to ‘refer’ to the Hokage at all. He also did not know the word ‘transmisogyny.’

BREAKING: SUNA COMMENT

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‘I think we’re a bit old to be bickering like children,’ said the Suna official, breaking the city-state’s stone-silence. ‘What a fuss over nothing.’[...]

BREAKING: KILLER BEE CALLS SUNAGAKURE: ‘A BUNCH OF SCARED MICE, YO. THEY NEED SOME RICE. WHO’S GONNA BREAK THE ICE?’

The Shinobi Times

Kumo holds to its track record of provocative comments[...]. It seems like Kumo might be gearing up for something big. Keep eye on anything out of Kumogakure!

-

BREAKING: IWAGAKURE ACCEPTS FIVE-KAGE SUMMIT INVITE

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BREAKING: KIRIGAKURE ACCEPTS FIVE-KAGE SUMMIT INVITE

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KONOHAGAKURE SILENT ON FIVE-KAGE SUMMIT INVITE, EVAN AS TENSIONS RISE

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BREAKING: SUNAGAKURE ACCEPTS FIVE-KAGE SUMMIT INVITE

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BREAKING: KONOHAKAGURE ACCEPTS FIVE-KAGE SUMMIT INVITE

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-

Minato arrives to the summit last.

She touches down in a bright, golden flash, her hair catching the lantern-light in a way that makes Ay want to get a headache. Ay had arrived first, having been the one to call the summit in the first place, and he is very nearly regretting the choice to do things respectably.

Annoyingly, Minato hadn’t even arrived late; her appearance is on-the-dot, down to the second. There isn’t another shinobi in the whole world who could time with such precision.

“Look who’s finally here,” Onoki drawls gruffly.

Minato sets her Kage hat down gently on the table, pulling out her seat and sliding in. “I hope I didn’t keep anyone waiting.” Minato’s eyes slide to Onoki, then to Ay, slipping past Yagura before inclining her head to Rasa. Her lips quirk, “I’m beyond joyous to see us together in peacetime.”

Minato already knows she hasn’t kept anyone waiting. All Kage, even Ay, arrived within minutes of one another.

Minato hasn’t changed a bit.

The cloak is new. The earrings are new. But those lightless, storm-dark eyes are just the same as ever. She is still the most dangerous person in every room she enters. The way she walks, the way she talks, the quiet, dangerous edge of a half hidden blade; the effortless draw of all attention to herself, to spare it from her ANBU tucked away in the shadows. That same, ruthless protection of those under her seal.

Ay isn’t sure what he was expecting.

“...And,” Minato continues, “to meet my contemporaries for the first time in full.”

Of the five Kage present, four are fourth generation. Ay succeeded his father as Kage toward the tail end of the war, after his father’s death; Minato was appointed, after the Third Hokage abdicated his position following the war, and Ay suspects the same was true for Rasa. Onoki remains the sole Kage not to have switched out. Ay suspects this is the first time he and Minato have met face to face.

This is the first any of them have met Yagura, who remains the largest unknown.

“Mm,” Yagura hums noncommittally.

“Likewise,” Rasa says.

“It’s loathsome,” Onoki says. “I hoped not to see any of you for a very long time!”

Ay can’t stand this. “Enough!” He presses his lips pale. “We all have villages to run. We have no time for small talk.”

Minato, the true root of the issue that drew this meeting in the first place, looks sharply back at him. “Right to it, then?” she murmurs softly. “Very well.”

Today, the Hokage is wearing Uzu-whirlpool earrings. The message, in a meeting like this, is clear: the Hokage will not not forget Kiri, Kumo, and Iwa’s joint attack against Uzushiogakure, no matter how long ago it was. It’s a simple communication of standing.

In that case, Konoha and Suna are likely forming a coalition in this meeting. Rasa as back-up? They probably cut a private deal to the side.

“So?”

“Konohagakure refuses to give up a single defector that we’ve taken in.”

The room erupts. There’s a muttering in the viewing area, where all their guards are hiding.

“You monger war,” Onoki says.

Yagura tilts their head. “On threat of anything?”

“They’re not YOURS!” Ay thunders. “You have no claim to our people!”

Minato says nothing. Her hands, folded in front of her, don’t so much as twitch.

Eventually, the room quiets.

“Don’t I?” Minato finally speaks, voice laying dangerously soft. “They left you for me, and your village for mine. They are in my processing systems, being cleared to work under my canopy. Konohagakure… I will not hand over shinobi under my protection.”

“Your protection?” Ay sneers. “They were our shinobi mere months ago.”

“That no other village has the capability to clear foreign shinobi for integration like Konoha does is no concern of mine,” Minato answers calmly.

Damn those Yamanaka. There is a reason Konoha’s torture, interrogation, and intelligence units are more infamous across the hidden villages than any other city-states’. And because they are not even a bloodline limit, they cannot even be stolen.

“And if they’re found unfit after being cleared?”

“Then they’ll be handled as Konoha shinobi.”

That isn’t fair. Far be it from Ay to speak on fairness, but it’s cruelty.

If a Kumo shinobi left Kumo under the impression that they would die there, for lack of support, and then realized only in retrospect that they could access support in Kumo, too, and that they want now to return home, then it isn’t fair for them to die under treason to the Leaf. Ay will not pretend that Minato handing over any of the defectors now under her seal would be anything but handing them back to a likely execution, but if so, then so be it. If they are to live, then let them live where they were born. If are to die of treason to someone, then let it be under treason to their true home, then let them be put down in the mountains, among the clouds, high enough to touch the sun, as is tradition.

Fire has fireflies and Lightning has lightning bugs. Ay used to sit on the cliffside with his brother and call them fallen stars. Nostalgia bathes the memory.

Ay never would have left Kumo for hormones. But if he did, if he had, if there was a world where that was a calculation he had made, then there could be no worse fate than the hand Minato seems ready to deal.

“They belong to Kumogakure,” Ay growls, unsure how to express the crushing, mountainslide of a feeling crashing through his ribs.

“And mine to Kiri,” Yagura offers, mildly.

Minato’s eyes flash. “If you are to hunt them down, then you may do so even into Fire Country. You can drag them back dead alive or screaming, willing or broken, just so long as they have yet to enter Konoha’s walls. I will give it a pass. And if a single shinobi does not pass our process in torture and interrogation, then any one of you may collect and reclaim their thrown-out corpses from fertilizing our strawberry fields. I will give this a pass, too.”

Ay stands before half the room has registered his movement. His knuckles hit the table. His chakra sparks. “Bullshit,” he says. “Return them alive.”

“I will give it all a pass,” Minato repeats, softly, and does not reply to Ay’s demand at all; it’s neither a yes, nor, Ay thinks, a complete no. “But the moment,” Minato’s nail tails down a black seal on the table, that has bloomed from her fingertips, “that a shinobi passes the walls of my village, and crosses my barrier seals, they are under my purview alone. You cannot claim a single one of them for so long as they are in our roots and under our bark.”

Yagura remains impassive, misty purple eyes soft-lidded. They repeat, “Return them.”

“No.” Minato collapses the seal at her fingertips. “If they’re on my soil, then they’re mine.”

The worst thing is that Ay can tell Minato means it genuinely.

It’s a stone-cold, unfaltering declaration of sheer loyalty that’s rare even among shinobi born and raised together. For this loyalty to be extended to a stranger, and a former enemy at that, is unhead of, unprecedented.

Onoki glares at Minato. “You test what you know nothing of, boy.”

Oh that’s it. “Shut up you old man,” Ay says.

Onoki is going pink in the face. Stiffy, “Force of habit.”

But Minatoto herself remains porcelain-faced, even every Konoha ANBU in the viewing area is tight as a stretched coil. “I’m an equal in standing as a Kage at this summit,” she finally says. “Address me as such.”

Which is way more diplomatic than Ay would be. He didn’t become one of the most powerful people in this continent just to let misgendering slide to his face.

Silence.

It’s Yagura that breaks it. “Mm,” they say quietly, and then, with an air of definitive authority, like a conclusion has been drawn: “The Yondaime Hokage is queerbaiting.”

For a second time, the table erupts with noise.

“Are you fourteen years old,” Ay says incredulously.

Yagura frowns, “It’s a simple conclusion to draw.” Which isn’t actually a denial.

“I don’t know that word,” says Onoki.

“Must we,” Rasa sighs.

“But it is queerbaiting,” Yagura holds. “I wasn’t sure before, but I am now.”

“You’re like fourteen, shut up,” Ay snaps. “This is a theatre show. We have actual important things to be talking about. Minato is the same as either one of us. ”

Everyone looks at Minato.

It’s true, that the Hokage, far as Kumo intelligence has gathered, has never so much as addressed the rumors headfirst, much less confirmed them. But the writing is on the wall, stark as any of her sealwork. Ay won’t allow someone he truly, deeply respects as a shinobi to be disrespected so gratingly. He doesn’t expect her to confirm the rumors, but if there were a place to clarify things one way or another, it would be here.

Eventually, Minato smiles. “I’m glad you consider me on equal footing.”

This, of course, clarifies nothing, but nobody should demand it to.

“You told me me once that when we met again we’d be at equal standing,” Ay says simply. “Now that is simply true in more ways than one.”

“I’ve always respected you, regardless of our differences and opposing sides,” she returns. “I suppose this is good a time as any to acknowledge that Konoha is willing to cooperative and collaborate in other ways. To my understanding…Kumo might need a little help with the scientific and economic infrastructure for wide-spread HRT?”

So that’s her angle.

“Queerbaiting,” Yagura mutters.

-

The summit lasts three days in total.

Although Konoha kicked things off with a hard-line position, Minato proved more flexible on other issues, and Konoha was not the only village with issues to discuss. Iwa is still doing all kinds of duplicitous things, and Ay faced accusations of much the same, and Yagura was seeking economic support and concessions related to whatever shitshow is going on in Kiri. Apparently, Kiri politics are such that queer discourse is fun, Yagura said, to which Ay replied: Yikes. Minato addressed the queerbaiting allegations, explicitly saying that Konoha has high-ranking queer shinobi, queer-run systems, and clans with cultural gender and sexual diversity, including Orochimaru of the Sannin and a founding clan. Tensions ease over time.

By the end of day one, Ay had spent more time in proximity to Minato than in all of their battlefield encounters combined; by the end of day two, they’re almost on friendly terms; by the closing of the third day, they are having a private dinner with their guards dismissed.

“Last we met I was wrong in part,” Minato admits.

Ay, lounging on a bed of cushions, crooks a brow. “About?”

“I thought that next we met it would be in battle as fellow Kage,” Minato says. “I was right in our even standing, but wrong on the context. For that I could not be more glad.”

“Yeah sure I guess,” Ay says without much thought.

His mind is in the past. He remembers that day very well, the deep Fire woodland, the trees spiring up around them like cliffsides - the future Fouth Hokage’s blue eyes under the sunless canopy, dark and lightless as the wet forest floor. His brother; the seal-marked kunai at his brother’s neck. The fact that Ay was not fast enough. The sight burned in his retina, heart, lungs, electric and dropping, air too thick in his mouth. Every sense attuned, every nerve on end. The cold, certain set in Minato’s face. He knew then: he will never forget it.

It’s never mattered, and it never will matter, but admittedly, Ay thinks sometimes he fell a bit in love with Konoha’s Yellow Flash during their battlefield encounters. He’s never been able to look at another person the same.

He wonders if Minato knew she was trans back then, too. Her chest is just as flat, and her jaw just as firm as it had been back then. Her voice just as masculine.

What had Minato said back then..?

Ay, you have a very fine family, as do I.

“Bee’s doing well,” he thinks to say.

Minato blinks once, then exhales a quiet sigh. Her eyes slide down to her miso bowl, delicate fingers lax around her chopsticks, the poise of a calligrapher. “I’m glad to hear,” she says, maybe even genuinely. “I have a soft spot, admittedly, for jinchuuriki.”

Right, his Uzumaki wife. “Were you married back then?”

“Freshly.”

Ay thinks about this. “How is it to be a wife?”

Because he’s curious, admittedly, and he is as comfortable as he can be, outside his own country, own homeland, own family. Minato had had her meal poison checked, but Ay had eaten his own without care. His stomach is full, now, warm and satiated, and like always, his chest is out, breast tissue and all. He’s thought about it, once or twice, how it would have been to allow his body to develop into something more feminine than it is - to take that role, instead of the one he chose, and the one he was born into. A prepubspescent boy into a teenage not-girl into an adult man. He’s at the age now where even Kumo men are expected to start courting marriage, but he knows they marry far younger in Konoha.

He expects - a diplomatic answer, maybe. Something personal but reserved, or intelligent and clinical, as he’s always found the Yellow Flash to be.

He is not expecting Minato to droop like a wilted flower and get very nearly teary-eyed. “Wife,” she repeats. “I miss my wife.”

“...” Ay pulls himself up. “Is this a sensitive subject?”

“No,” Minato says. “It’s my favorite subject. I miss my wife. I miss my wife. I miss my wife. I miss my wife. I miss my wife. It’s been three days away from home. The days away from my wife. I miss my wife, Ay!”

“...I see.” And then, "Only three days?"

"I usually go no longer than three hours."

Sage. "There's something wrong with you."

“Ay,” Minato repeats, “I miss my wife.”

Within fire, the Yellow Flash is often called friendly, soft, and warm. Sometimes, she is even called strikingly normal.

Ay always thought this was bullshit. This is the shinobi that could kill hundreds in an hour's work. If the Yellow Flash was soft, it was only in the way poison could be gentle.

But.

There’s not really another word for the way Minato looks right now, shoulders slack, hand coming up to touch at her earrings. In the summit room, those Uzu-whirlpools are a political warning, but now she seems to touch them in pure reminiscence. Her long golden lashes, the pull of her lips into a pout - her head shifts, and her blue eyes reflect warm lantern light.

Strikingly normal.

“Are you actually crying!?”

Minato doesn’t even attempt to hide her tears, or wipe them away, which is, frankly, second-hand mortifying. But Minato wears it shamelessly. “I spent so much of my life away from her,” she reasons. “And now I have to spend time away from her again. I miss my wife…!”

Apparently having been summoned back by the Fourth Hokage’s wallowing mood, an ANBU appears in a breeze of green leaves. “Oh,” the ANBU says, porcelain fixing on Ay, “Oh no. Did you bring up Hokage-sama’s wife?”

“I miss my wife,” Minato says again, sadly.

Most shinobi of high rank have a quirk. Something totally fucking insane. Maybe Minato’s trait is being strikingly normal, which is, indeed, totally fucking insane for a shinobi of his rank.

“There’s something deeply and fundamentally wrong with you,” Ay says seriously.

Minato sighs and leans back on her palm. “Well,” the Fourth Hokage answers, “tell me something I don’t already know.”

-

TSUCHIKAGE IS ‘JUST A BIT OLD’ BUT ‘MEANS WELL’ ACCORDING TO ADVISORS

The Shinobi Times

‘He really does mean well’ one high-ranking Iwa official expressed, going on to explain how although the girl’s identity is anonymous for privacy, the Tsuchikage has been very supportive of a young family member’s prepubescent transition. ‘He’s just a bit old, and not very well up-to-date with these things.’

Apparently, the ‘large’ amount of ‘queer terminology’ and ‘youth slang’ during the recent Kage summit has left the Tsuchikage Onoki a bit down, and feeling left out. He might consider abdicating in favor of another candidate sometime in the next few decades[...]. ‘Queerbaiting? Alphabet mafia? Passionfruit? The Mizikage was talking about demigirl xenogender nonbinary cupioromantic mspecs,’ the Tsuchikage said. ‘I just can’t keep up with it all. And they’re still calling me homophobic. What even is a transexual bottom?’

Chapter Text

Hound senses the moment Minato re-enters the village.

Everyone in ANBU does. The signal flares sharply through every on-duty shinobi in the whole of Konoha that’s keyed into ANBU chakra-sign, and in a shinobi village, everyone that isn’t dead is on-duty. Hound perks up, and on the rafter’s across from him, Stag’s shoulders raise.

Below them, Kushina’s pen freezes.

The interim Hokage stands up so fast her chair clatters. Her face splits into a beaming, bright-eyed smile, and her canines catch the light through the shadow that the Kage hat casts over her face.

Hound’s toes curl.

Estimated one hundred twenty seconds till Minato’s arrival.

It puts Hound on edge, the way the Kyuubi has been shining through Kushina in recent months, more and more, her teeth sharpening, nails lengthening, pupils thinning. It’s put the whole of ANBU on edge, but Hound—maybe it’s because he, he knows her, can’t help the worry that curls up inside of him, even though Minato hasn’t ever indicated it to be an issue.

And Hound trusts Minato. No ANBU wouldn’t.

Below the Hokage office’s beams, Kushina whips around and presses up against the wide windows, toward the distant gates. Her skin presses white on the glass.

“ANBU!” The sound of their interim Kage’s laughing, delighted voice startles through the room. She’s swinging back around and looking up to face them just so quick as she pressed herself against the glass. “How do I look!”

Ninety seconds...

Everyone looks at Hound. Ugh.

They always rely on him to talk to Kushina. Even though they don’t know he’s Kakashi, they’re like bloodhounds with sensing who’s most comfortable talking to Kushina, or god forbid, Minato, in situations like this.

He signs fine but tries to make it come with as much as an eye roll as possible.

Sixty five seconds...

“You look fine,” he says flatly.

“Fine?” Kushina repeats. “Just fine? Oh no...”

“...You look beautiful,” Hound corrects.

Kushina beams.

She does look beautiful.

With Konoha at her back, the sun casts her in darkened silhouette.

It’s rare to see Kushina in shinobi wear these days, but she’s forgone the soft apron of a housewife in favor of what’s almost a hakama, but Hound suspects is something more Uzushio-specific. Every centimeter of its fabric is embroidered in bright, scintillating seals, reds and oranges and coral-pinks, lines twisting into one, overlapping. Her shadowed face. Her brown eyes dark like the charred aftermath of a forest fire.

Scarlet hair spilling like blood over her shoulders, dripping ruggedly down to her ankles. The veil of the Kage hat has been lengthened and layered to cover Kushina more completely, falling over her in waves:

FIRE 火 in stark vermilion.

Forty six seconds…

Kushina is always interim-Hokage when Minato leaves the village. Hound has seen their respective hats hung together on the wall.

Forty two seconds…

Kushina sets her brush down to the desk. Her pupils dilate.

Thirty—

The air shatters. Space folds in on itself.

Minato.

The Hokage touches soundlessly onto the floor.

“Kushina,” Minato breathes.

It’s always strange, to hear his own teacher like this. Hound is so used to Minato being… he doesn’t know. Hound didn’t used to understand the breathless awe that would unfailingly enter his sensei’s voice around Kushina. Now, Hound thinks it’s something similar to the way he feels at sight of Rin and Obito together.

Minato sweeps across the room: YONDAIME in stark vermilion, veil fluttering; the Hokage’s hands slide past the interim-Hokage’s veil, grasping her jaw, cupping her cheek.

“Minato!” Kushina laughs back, voice like a spirit.

Her chakra floods the room in rough, coral pinks—it permeates the air, fills up lungs, seeps through his skin and into the bone. Dark and corrosive like seawater, rough as an eddy, salt and shells. Minato’s own chakra floods out to fold around hers, silk smooth, mint-cool and mild. Protective, focus-honed.

Their hats knocks together and push aside.

They’re shameless.

Minato’s hands at her back, her nails digging claws, veils curtaining one another. With his heightened senses, Hound hears their teeth clack together. Something wild and primal and unbearably soft.

New ANBU filter in, following after their Hokage, a step behind. Hound knows without looking that most of the ANBU present have found a different place to look: checking the perimeter, patrolling the ceiling beams.

But Hound can never look away.

Kissing or making out or some word that he hasn’t learned yet. He’s never been able to look away when he sees affection like this.

It feels perverse, in a way. Wrong in a way that’s hard to articulate, like stealing glimpses through a warm-lit window in the dead of night: something he shouldn’t see, even though it’s being shown to him. Like something from the other side of a looking glass: a whole other world. Something he never had. Brighter than Hound used to think he could ever have. He watches them like a thief counting window-displays.

Maybe it’s because Kakashi’s mother has been dead so long as he remembers. Sakumo never had anyone to kiss, so long as Kakashi remembered.

Hound is okay in the shadows.

He’s comfortable in them, even. He’s so glad sensei put him in ANBU, where he could get away from the limelight, be Hound instead of Hatake Kakashi for the first time in his life.

Ageless, genderless, identityless.

Historyless.

ANBU through-and-through. A weapon in the hands of someone he wants to be wielded by. It’s new, and Hound likes it.

They give me secondhand embarrassment Ox signs.

Beaver makes the ANBU equivalent of a snort.

Shut up you two, Stag replies.

Don’t be embarrassed on their behalf Hound jumps in. It’s more credit than they deserve. They’re both shameless.

I guess you’ve seen it a lot, Beaver idles. You get guard duty a lot.

I’m going to request an out of village mission now that the Hokage’s back, Hound shrugs.

Beaver looks to Stag. Stag shrugs. Beaver brightens. Oooo, Beaver says. Take me, take me! I’m a Yamanaka, I need OUT of this village for a week.

“Mm,” Hound says. Maybe.

That’s the other thing.

Hound’s been making...friends. As Hound, not Kakashi. He hasn’t even told Obito and Rin about it. Stag, who seems almost as comfortable in ANBU’s anonymity as Hound; Beaver, who looks to Stag as a senpai for everything; Ox, who’s good at bridging people.

Below them, Minato hums.

Sometimes Hound forgets that Minato’s hands drenched in more blood over the course of a day than even Hound spilled over the course of years. Rin’s blood around him. Her beating heart. Things he will never deserve. But there are more bodies at his sensei’s feet than Hound has ever felled.

A strange, feather-like feeling brushes at his fingertips.

Hound…

Identityless. Histoyless.

“My wife,” Kushina giggles, knuckles brushing whirlpools.

He looks at Kushina and Minato sometimes and thinks it’s something he’d like to have. Maybe, Hound sometimes thinks, it’s even something he’d like to be.

-

“Dude you’re so fucking pathetic,” Tsunade tells Jiraiya.

“Shut up,” Jiraiya hisses.

It’s the day of the Hokage’s return to Konoha from the summit. There’s a festival outside, with lots of gambling.

They’ve been standing outside the Hokage’s office for almost ten minutes.

At least two desk shinobi fainted seeing all three of them together.

Orochimaru shares an unimpressed glance with her. Tsunade snickers, and he flashes teeth, and it makes something heavy in her chest, like a thick drop of hot, molten gold. It lights energy through her, gives her the confidence to get this shit over with.

It’s not possible for the Hokage on the other side of the door to not know they’re there. It makes her skin crawl.

“Come on baby,” Tsunade says to Jiraiya, passing him swiftly.

Tsunade sees the exactly moment Jiraiya realizes what she’s going to do, but she’s always been faster than him, and Jiraiya doesn’t really want to stop her.

Tsunade kicks open the office door with a jarring, cracking slam. “Yo,” she says, and because she got over herself enough to open first, she’ll deal with her shit first. “I’m not coming back. Don’t get your hopes up big guy. I’m only here on personal business.”

The ANBU in the rafters pull tight as a music string. The animosity floods just short of killing intent.

But Minato tilts his head mildly, pacifying, scintillating gold, and all of it fades away. “Tsunade-hime,” he says acknowledgingly. And then, “Orochimaru. Jiraiya-sensei. It’s unusual to see you all together.”

Leaving her in suspense on purpose. Tsunade’s lips thin. “Personal business,” she emphasizes.

Minato’s gaze draws across the three of them slowly. Tsunade left Shizune and Tonton outside, because she didn’t want them involved, but she misses Tonton’s wait on her shoulder, the way Tonton’s bristled skin feels against her jaw.

“Tsunade-hime,” Minato says shortly.

Tsunade presses her heel into the back of her sandal. “Minato.”

Impressively, the ANBU, still quelled by Minato’s early warning, don’t raise a fuss over her choice of address.

Minato’s lips quirk, but his eyes remain firm. “Konoha hasn’t asked anything of you,” he says simply. A quiet, unspoken: we haven’t revoked the right to ask anything of you. But, “I’m sorry it’s been so difficult,” he continues. “I know transitions of power in Konoha can be rough. Sarutobi allowed you a lot of freedom. I didn’t plan to change that. And I didn’t mean to leave you uncertain about whether I would.”

Sage.

Tsunade looks at Orochimaru. He glances back at her, twitches the corner of his mouth. Tsunade looks at Jiraiya. Jiraiya has an expression on his face that she doesn’t want to read.

It’s so fucking annoying. Walking in here was like a fucking death sentence, but now all she feels is warm-stone jitters, or maybe disbelief.

She scowls at the young Kage, but there’s no heat. “When did you get such a diplomat’s mouth?”

He laughs. “I wouldn’t call it diplomacy.”

Minato has always been like that.

Blunt and unsubtle when needed, openly considerate and honest in a way that’s rare for shinobi. He defused her tension in less than a minute.

“Whatever,” Tsunade says. “Anyway, Jiraiya wants to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“Eek,” Jiraiya says. A pale snake curls around Orochimaru’s wrist and he pushes Jiraiya forward at the same time that Tsunade steps in to trip Jiraiya’s ankle. He side steps her. He hisses, “You two are so—”

“Jiraiya wanted to re-iterate his support,” Orochimaru says flatly.

Jiraiya stands straight with stiff shoulders. “I’m an ally!”

Minato blinks. “Of course,” Minato says. “I appreciate having an ally across the elemental nations… I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve been sewing allies with the other villages.”

The twitch of Jiraiya’s jaw almost certainly means something along the lines of: Tsunade, Orochimaru, did you fucking see that? Is ‘an ally across the elemental nations’ a jab at me being absent!?

“It’s good to come into peacetime,” Jiraiya agrees. “But I mean… peacetime has given us all more room to breathe, you know? And settle into what we want to be.”

This might be the worst speech Tsunade has ever seen Jiraiya pull out, which is impressive, considering he’s been reciting a totally different one for like more than a week now.

“Definitely,” Minato agrees. “It’s been a big transition in my personal life, too.”

Oh-ho?

Jiraiya stops. Starts. “Right! Transition. And you know I...”

“I know you weren’t there for my wedding,” Minato says. “But that’s alright. I always understood why. It’s...”

“I wanted to be there,” Jiraiya says. Tsunade thinks: story of our goddamn lives. Jiraiya says. “I know things have changed since then and I’m okay with that. When I heard wife through the rumor mill...”

“I think that’s been the easiest transition of all,” Minato says.

“Oh. Well I’m—glad.”

“As I said,” Minato says, “there are somethings I knew since a very young age. I feel like I’ve known this forever. But it just hadn’t been the right time for so long.”

Jiraiya nods. “Story of a shinobi’s life.”

“In a way it’s barely felt like a transition at all,” Minato says. “Getting married changed almost nothing. Kushina and I always spent whatever time we could spare together. I’m sure you remember. But it’s still different, being able to openly put a label on it.”

Minato is…

Tsunade blinks incredulously. Watches Minato tilt his head, the glimmer of his eyes, a sideways glance with Orochimaru that almost seems like a quiet laugh.

Jiraiya stares.

Tsunade knows exactly what he’s thinking: Minato’s talking around it again. And, Why?

“I’ve always had a lot of respect for wives,” Jiraiya says. Ah-hah. That is to say: I’m not misogynistic by the way.

“I know,” Minato says. “Me too. Kushina really does a lot.”

Even as a teenager, when Tsunade actually, vaguely knew Minato, it was hard to pivot a conversation away from him talking about Kushina.

In other words, Jiraiya can’t reject that line of conversation without offending Minato’s sensibilities around Kushina. “Yeah,” Jiraiya says. “Definitely!”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“I used to crush on Orochimaru,” Jiraiya blurts.

Wow.

Tsunade’s pretty sure she feels an ANBU in the ceiling beams cringe.

Orochimaru hums, “It was embarrassing. Tsunade too.”

“That’s interesting,” Minato says. “I didn’t know that. I’m glad you’re all back together, then.”

“They both rejected me,” Jiraiya wilts.

“Ah.”

“But!” Jiraiya says. “That’s okay. Everyone’s entitled to autonomy.”

“Of course.”

“And,” Jiraiya emphasizes, “If Hime rejected me again that’d also be fine. I’ve been waiting for her to make a move for years, but kunai’s in her court, you know.” He glances at her. He’s pink in the face. “Because I respect women.”

“Right.”

“And to be honest I don’t know what in the world is up with Orochimaru,” Jiraiya says. “About anything. Including gender. But that’s also, uh, okay. I actually only started crushing on him after I found out he wasn’t a man. Because I’m not into men. And I don’t view him as a man. Which is okay.”

“I’m always glad to know our queer elders had support.”

“Because I respect women. And others.”

A long, long pause.

Tsunade looks at Orochimaru. Orochimaru is staring at Jiraiya, incredulously. Jiraiya is still standing in place.

Eventually,

“Sensei,” Minato says gently. “I think it’d be very hard to have your job if you didn’t.”

It’s clear a dismissal as any.

The three of them end up outside. Jiraiya dragging his feet, but looking thoughtful; Orochimaru looking everywhere but Jiraiya.

“That went embarrassingly,” Tsunade says.

“Minato was right though,” Jiraiya says.

He was.

It was a mitigation of Jiraiya’s fears, too. Because it’s true—it would be very hard to do what Jiraiya does, creating networks everywhere, but especially in red light districts and alienated communities, if Jiraiya didn’t.

In a way, Minato was considerate.

She couldn’t fucking stand it back when Minato was a deadly genin at Jiraiya’s hip, his sharp, precise perception: the insider look he managed to dig up on both her and Orochimaru, his delicate side-stepping of sensitivities. Consideration like that could just so easily be pivoted into a targeted blade. Jiraiya thought even back then that Minato was fate-touched; Tsunade couldn’t stand it, that he was raising the next Hokage, and Tsunade’s lover was dead, and Tsunade’s little brother was dead, and she didn’t have anyone to raise like her own.

But god, that side-stepping the subject. All with plausible deniability of whether there’s any side-stepping happening at all.

“That was embarrassing,” Tsunade repeats. “You know what we should do?”

“Don’t say gambling.”

“Gambling!”

“No! My student just—I don’t wanna go gambling!”

“Woo!” Tsunade cheers. “Gambling! Gambling! Gambling!”

“I have a better idea,” Orochimaru says.

“Oooo,” Tsunade leads. “Crossdressing. While gambling.”

“I want to show you my lab,” Orochimaru says flatly.

A pause.

It’s been a long time since Orochimaru’s shown her any of his research. It’s been even longer since he’s shown her around a lab.

What a way to take the wind from her sails. “Oh,” Tsunade says. “Okay, sure.”

It’s dusk in Konoha. The village is dark, blacks and blues and purples like a fresh bruise, strung with festival lanterns like clotted blood. Tsunade scans the skyline, the carved cliff-side with her family’s faces, the leaves, listens to their rustling. It feels like home, and it makes her nauseous. She twists on her heel, and behind her, the Hokage tower rings tall.

The windows are orange with the dying sun. Minato’s still up there.

“Minato put Orochimaru up to developing HRT treatments,” Jiraiya provides.

Tsunade looks at Orochimaru. “And you fucking accepted?”

He shrugs.

“I can’t believe you work for that kid,” Tsunade says. Thinks about what just happened, every kind, gentle, defusing word; every side step. Jiraiya, Orochimaru. “What an asshole.”

But Orochimaru’s mouth quirks. “I know right?”

-

Hound becomes Kakashi again at midnight.

Kushina offered to take him off ANBU guard for the evening festival, celebrating Minato’s return to Konoha, and successful negotiations, but Kakashi wanted to be Hound. He wanted to celebrate the way ANBU do.

He’s been watching over Rin and Obito for hours, without having to be perceived by them in return at all. It’s so awesome.

But,

“Hey.” He drops in.

Obito screams and nearly spears him through with a morbidly mutating sunflower. Rin sidesteps the mess of overgrown flowers. “Kakashi!”

“Bakashi! Where have you been!?”

Rin waves a bag of candied nuts. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Mm,” the awesome thing about ANBU is that you get summarily executed if you talk too much about it, so no one pushes too hard. Awesome. “Here and there.”

“I bet you’ve been with Sensei,” Obito huffs.

He’s not technically wrong, kind of. He sells the lie with, “And Minato-sensei’s wife.”

“That’s not fair!” Rin throws the bag of candied nuts at him, then grabs his hand and pulls him closer. “What about my wife!?”

Kakashi blinks. “Your wife?”

“You have a wife?” Obito’s jaw drops. “No, fuck, really?”

“Yes,” Rin says, pulling Kakashi in front of her, hooking her jaw in the crook of his neck. He can feel her at his back. “I have a wife, and I’ve been kept from him. Kakashi!”

“What?” Obito stares. “Kakashi?”

“Uh,” Kakashi says weakly. This is new to him, too.

But Obito’s eye gets wide. “No! That’s not fair! Why does Kakashi get to be your wife!? What about me?”

Obito’s been getting jealous since he came back, in a way he never used to be. Maybe it’s because he’ll never make up the time he lost, because Kakashi almost killed Rin, because any number of things that are probably Kakashi’s fault. Classified files.

“Um,” Kakashi says, even weaker.

Obito scowls at Rin. “Is he even a wife?” Then, “She?”

Okay, wow.

“Kakashi didn’t tell me anything that he hasn’t told you,” Rin says, still behind him. She looks at Kakashi apologetically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to...”

“It’s fine,” Kakashi mutters.

They sit down. It’s a leaf-strewn roof, and the lantern light is red on Kakashi’s hands and Obito’s eye. It’s a trick of the light, Kakashi almost thinks, before a pinwheel spins in Obito’s socket. What’s Obito inscribing to memory? What does he see?

Kakashi thinks about being perceived. “Call me your wife again.”

“What,” says Obito.

Rin says, “My wife!”

“My wife!” Obito corrects quickly. Then, “Wait, then like—what’s your—uhh.”

“Gender,” Rin says.

Kakashi has started to think recently that there must be something deeply wrong with Rin to be friends with him. Obito is Obito. Kakashi wonders what he can say here.

What would an ANBU do…?

An idea comes to him. He shifts a leg to his chest. “Oh snappers. Well...”

They both lean forward. Kakashi doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Wait,” Rin realizes.

Obito finishes, “Are you pulling our leg!?”

Kakashi smiles with his eye and doesn’t answer.

-

They come home in the early morning hours.

Kushina passes the privacy seals first. Minato slides the door shut behind them.

He’s up against its wood in an instant. Kushina’s hand against his shoulder, neck, the side of his face, the divot of his hip. Her nails growing into claws, her teeth in his lip. Skin hot like roof tiles left under the unclouded sun, scalding—he’s always liked it, the way he felt he could burn into ash under her touch, inside her chakra.

He bites back, a little nip at her lip, and Kushina pulls back, laughing.

“How’s the Kyūbi?” Minato asks, because it’s important, for gauging how Kushina feels.

“Mm...” Kushina’s deep brown eyes look almost amber when the Kyūbi’s chakra boils into hers. “Complicated.”

Minato accepts that. “I talked to Ay at the Kage summit.”

“Oh?”

Minato slips past her on light feet, following the scent of something sweet to the kitchen. It’s warm, in the house, like it always is. Quiet, and golden, reddened as rust. Their footsteps are soundless. Minato would know her blind.

“Yeah,” he says. “Apparently Bee is doing well.”

“That guy you met that one time?”

“I’m always glad to hear for the health of another jinchuriki,” Minato answers. “It’s reassuring. He and the Eight-Tails are still on good terms. What do you want for dinner?”

“You,” Kushina replies instantly.

“Oh gosh,” Minato says. “It’s been a long day.”

He wants to make it a longer night, in truth. He wants to stay here forever, in the dark hours of morning before the sun has risen, cloaked from the world, twin shadows in the dark. But he will need at least an hour’s sleep.

“You enjoyed the festival though…?”

Kushina had arranged it in advance. Minato smiles and kisses her temple. “Yes. Thank you.”

They drift from the kitchen through the sealing room to their bedroom. Kushina is still wearing Fire-reds, oranges, teals, aquamarines and seaweed-greens—seals over every centimeter of fabric. The veil of her Kage hat. Her hair like spilled blood. Minato’s still dressed for wearing the hat, too.

There’s no words for how breathtaking she is as his interim.

Kushina slides closed the door behind them, this time. Her hands at his neck, again.

“My pretty wife,” Kushina sighs. Their hats knock. “Let’s talk about you?”

Minato digs through himself, leafs through pages of an internal catalog, but can’t come up with anything substantial. “The Sannin visited today,” he says.

Kushina takes their hats and hangs them on the wall with his cloak and her layered fabrics. She eyes him. “Kakashi says you were mean.”

“Really? I could’ve been worse.”

“You can always be worse,” Kushina says.

“Jiraiya will understand,” Minato says. “Once he sets aside his personal feelings, he’ll get to the politics of it.”

“He already gets the politics of it,” Kushina snorts. “I’m going to start thinking its unfair.”

Minato considers what Jiraiya had taught him as a genin. “Oh well,” he says idly. “That’s how shinobi play.”

“You think he’ll start she/hering you?”

He shakes his head. “He’ll follow Orochimaru’s lead.”

“Maybe I should start she/hering you,” Kushina snickers.

Minato laughs. “My ANBU have had a hard enough time already. Don’t add to their mental plate. There’s only so much they can compartmentalize. I think someone will cry.”

“Minato, they already cry trying to figure out how to talk about you.”

“Well, I know that.”

“You really live up to your academy reputation...” referencing their academy days again. Teasing him for watching her get bullied for months, again. It was a favorite past time of his, and—in his defense.

“They can handle themselves,” Minato agrees.

Kushina joins him on the side of the bed with a side eye. She likes to poke and prod at where Minato will and won’t step in front of someone. He likes watching people handle themselves. It’s reassuring, in a sense.

She covers his eyes with her palm. He pauses uncomprehendingly.

“Minato,” Kushina says warningly.

Ah.

Minato breaths out, decompartmentalizes, relaxes his muscles one by one, and recompartmentalizes.

He’s still adjusting to being home, instead of at the summit. “Ay was an unexpected ally,” he tells her listingly—it’s odd, to no longer have anyone to report to. He adds humor, “He was absolutely convinced I’m a trans woman.”

“Well,” Kushina says happily, “you are my wife.”

“I should tell Yagura they’re right on the money.”

“Oh?”

“You know how Kiri’s been leveraging queerbaiting accusations at Konoha?”

“No way,” she breathes delightedly. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m dead-serious.”

“At the summit?”

“I’m pretty sure Yagura’s like, fourteen,” Minato says. Then, conversationally, “Maybe I should be ousted. Queerbaiting, really, how dastardly.”

“Konoha’s Queerbaiting Flash...”

“Kushina.” Then, “I’m Konohan through and through.”

The first shinobi village. The most duplicitous and underhanded. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but he’s been going through council records. Minato is Konoha through and through; he knows how to play dirty and dress it up.

She settles around him, arms resting on his shoulders. He leans back. “In fairness,” Kushina plays delicately with his earrings, “you are my wife.”

That’s true, Minato supposes. He sometimes thinks Kushina knows more of him than he does himself.

There’s politics and there’s privacy. Some things are private even from himself.

“Well,”Minato agrees, “as you’ve said… any guy can be a babygirl, but it takes a real man to be a wife.”