Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At some point in their final years at the Ninja Academy, every young kunoichi took what the ladies of the village called the “real kunoichi classes”. Practically since the moment Kushina started visibly growing up, everyone from Tsume’s mom to the lady who owned the nearby weapon shop started asking if she'd had the “real classes” yet or when she'd start them, and she had no clue.

One day she finally got fed up with the weird questions and asked her ANBU guardians about it. One flickered away and the other guided her back to her room and locked the door. When she checked, she found that the windows were sealed, too. Clearly that had been one of those stupid questions she wasn't supposed to ask, but why?

One very annoying hour later, she was led back out of her room and to the fancy tatami sitting room that never got used because she never got to invite people over. The Sandaime Hokage himself waited for her, all smiles and tobacco-smoke. Kushina wrinkled her nose, but sat down properly, just like she had been taught back when Mito was still around and she still got invited to Senju clan events.

“How are you, Kushina?”

“Fine,” she grumbled. She hoped he didn't expect her to be happy after being locked up in her room so suddenly.

“Good. I was told you had some questions about your Academy classes, is that correct?”

Kushina fought the urge to roll her eyes– it wasn't like he hadn't already been told all the details by the ANBU.

“Yeah, I wanted to ask about one of the classes I’m supposed to take.”

“Ah, of course,” he said with a smile. “I would like to reassure you that the Academy curriculum is designed to cover a broad range of basic skills that most kunoichi will find useful.”

“Sure, but, what are the real kunoichi classes? Nobody's telling me! Are you going to, or did you come to give me the whole ‘pay attention in class’ lecture again?”

He chuckled. “While being attentive during class will serve you well, your question is quite understandable, and the answer is important for your future as a shinobi of Konoha.” Lord Third hummed thoughtfully. “Let's see. It's been a number of years since we updated the curriculum. I believe there were courses on floristry, tea ceremony—”

“Kinda useless,” she muttered under her breath.

“—codes and ciphers—”

She couldn’t help it, she made a face. “Boring and annoying.”

“—disguises, infiltration—”

“Less useless, but everyone keeps saying I’m frontline material so like, what's the point?”

“—first aid and introductory healing—”

“Which I got kicked out of!”

“—and advanced espionage.”

“Is that it? Is everyone bugging me about stupid sneaky spy classes?”

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “There are certain… topics discussed in that particular course which are better suited for older students, and must be taught by an Academy teacher. You will learn in due time.”

“And what's ‘due time’, huh?”

“You will know when you're ready,” he said with his unflappable grandfatherly smile. “Now, what was that about paying attention in class? Has anything happened that I should be made aware of?”

She rolled her eyes, and caught one of the Hokage’s personal ANBU guards sitting upside down on the ceiling above them, shoulders shaking as they laughed silently.

Apparently, “ready” meant after she'd woken up one morning with pain deep down in her belly, terrified that the Kyuubi was trying to break out, and even more terrified when she saw the blood because nobody had ever told her that the bijuu could escape through there—

Once she'd stopped panicking, she realized that her seal was fine, she wasn't dying, and she really needed to use the bathroom. When she returned, she found her bedroom occupied by an ANBU agent who didn't usually get assigned to her.

“Hi, uh… Gecko?”

Gecko nodded.

“Well I double-checked my seal and I'm not dying, y’know! So you can go back to sneaking around now, thank you!”

Gecko laughed, startling her. ANBU didn't laugh, at least not out loud. Also, Gecko sounded like a woman, which was fairly rare for ANBU.

“Uzumaki-san,” Gecko began— another surprise because ANBU didn't speak much either— “I have a delivery for you.” She gestured towards the violently pink shoebox on the bed. “I'm sure you must have many concerns about your body. You may be in pain, or feel sick— this is all normal. You’ve been granted a day off from school to take care of yourself, and to have your questions answered.”

Kushina nodded, and tried not to wince as her belly cramped again— the only good thing about this development was that she had the day off.

“You'll find educational material inside as well as some necessary supplies, and if you have any other questions, I'll be right outside your door. I promise nobody else will be listening today, so you can be as open with me as you'd like.”

Gecko bowed, and left the room. Kushina sat down on her bed and stared at the box for a moment, then opened the lid and stared more.

She sighed heavily. This was definite confirmation: She now had the dubious honor of joining her fellow kunoichi in complaining about their periods every month for practically forever.

Groaning, she lay down on the bed, rolled around until she found a comfortable enough position, grabbed one of the books, and started to read. Reading was slow and annoying and she had to go through everything at least twice to understand it, but she had all day and as nice as Gecko seemed, she really didn't want to talk about this with her. At least there were some pictures, even if they were really embarrassing ones.

A month passed, and it was rotation time at the Academy again. Four times per year, upon returning from the two-week quarterly break, the students were switched around between classes based on grades, skill tests, and to a small degree, student preference. Before every break, Kushina just wrote “fuuinjutsu” really big on her class request survey and turned it in. This didn't change the fact that she'd finished the Academy-level fuuinjutsu courses years ago, but sometimes it landed her with a self-study period, which was nice for catching up on homework or napping. This time, there was no study period on her schedule; just intermediate chakra control and remedial ninjutsu (like always), advanced taijutsu, and that so-called “advanced espionage” class.

She wasn't stupid; after she’d had her first period she started dropping hints about it to the older women. From the little bits of information she'd gleaned, Kushina had mostly pieced together what this type of “espionage” involved, but she was still curious about how the class itself would go.

What she hadn't expected was for the handful of girls selected from her homeroom class to be split into two: one group mostly from big clans, and another mostly from minor clans and smaller shinobi or civilian families. There were exceptions: Tsume and the female Yamanaka twin in her year, Yuri, ended up with the latter group; Kushina and the really timid civilian girl whose name she could never remember ended up with the former. She followed along behind the group of rich girls, trying not to be noticed, and found the shy girl doing the same.

“Hey!” She made sure not to be too loud, but the girl jumped in surprise anyway— and decently high, too. Kushina was impressed.

“H-hi, um.” Warm brown eyes peeked at her through long bangs, then disappeared again.

“It’s Kushina, nice to meet you!”

The girl bowed, and Kushina blinked at the very fast string of mumbled syllables.

“...Can I call you Risa?”

The girl nodded.

“Wanna sit with me?”

Risa looked terrified, but she also didn't say no, so Kushina tugged her gently onto the bench she’d chosen, near the back but not all the way to avoid attracting attention. Risa settled in and pulled out her notebook and pencil case. She glanced over nervously at Kushina a few times but didn’t say anything, so Kushina decided she may as well try to make conversation.

“You're in remedial ninjutsu too, huh?”

A nod.

“It's such a drag, right? I was just two points from passing last time! This time for sure!”

A stronger nod. A little thumbs-up, even. This was working; she wouldn't be all alone in a class of snobby rich girls now.

“How about you?”

Another barely-intelligible mumble.

“Sorry, what?”

Three fingers.

“Huh, wow! You're right up there with me!” She grinned, turning to face Risa. “How about we practice together sometime?”

Risa froze for a moment, then gave a tiny little shrug.

…Maybe this wasn't working.

“Well, invite’s always open, y'know.” Kushina managed to at least not sound sad about it. Since Mito’s death and her sort-of-banishment to the old guest house, she'd gotten really good at not showing when she was sad about things.

She was, however, really bad at hiding her anger, and as she flipped through the little pink workbook that they'd been given, she reached her boiling point really fast. Her hand shot up, and she shouted so the teacher would hear her above the noise of dumb rich girl gossip.

“Hey Toshie-sensei!”

“Yes, Miss Uzumaki?” Councilman Danzo's sister already sounded like she was annoyed with Kushina, which generally didn't bode well but Kushina really didn’t care at the moment. Based on what she remembered from the real books she’d been given, the pink booklet was full of things that were either useless, or what Mito would have called “irresponsibly obfuscatory”.

“What the hell is this? ‘Abstinence is the Only Acceptable Birth Control’? And ‘Preparation to Serve One’s Husband’?” She flipped through the booklet again, scowling. “Oh, oh, and here’s a whole chapter on how males experience pleasure, followed by exactly nothing about how we can—”

“UZUMAKI!”

Kushina hadn't expected a roar like that to come out of the petite instructor’s mouth. She stopped talking, but mostly because all the snobby girls were looking at her now. She glanced over at Risa hopefully, and immediately wished she hadn't– even she wore a look of disgust, and she slid down the bench away from Kushina.

It felt ugly.

“Hallway, now.”

She was used to getting chewed out by her teachers, but this was different because Toshie-sensei had a particular way of driving shame into her with every word. Kushina hadn't just spoken out of turn, she had dirtied the minds of her peers, she had gone against the wishes of the clan heads, she had endangered the future of the village that she didn't even really belong to and never would.

Really, the woman was confirming what she should've known all along: more than being overzealous in taijutsu and terrible at reading, more than the actual monster sealed inside her, there was something truly wrong with Kushina. She could see the disgust behind the hatred in Toshie-sensei’s eyes. Fear twisted in her stomach— did other people see that something was wrong with her, too? She was filthy and she was stupid and she was ugly and she was and would always be unwanted

and she was crying, then she was being yelled at even more for crying so hard she couldn't breathe right and

oh, there was the floor, coming up sideways—

—and there was the ceiling of a sunlit room. As Kushina woke, her last miserable memories floated up like dead fish in a stagnant pond. She groaned and covered her face with her pillow. This totally reeked.

“Um, Uzumaki-san…” The hesitant voice belonged to a boy, maybe. She didn't care.

“What,” she said into the fluffy down, halfway hoping she would suffocate before those light footsteps reached her.

“Nurse Yamanaka told me to make sure you drink water after you wake up.”

“Yeah, and?”

“I have water for you…”

Clearly, because there was the hollow sound of a plastic cup being set down nearby, and the soft music of liquid being poured.

“Cool.”

“And you should… drink it?” The kid’s voice sounded annoyingly hopeful.

“And you should stop bugging me,” Kushina growled, untangling herself from the bedding so she could properly beat the nosy kid up–

Oh. It was that nosy kid.

“Dandelion Hair?”

The blond boy smiled brightly at the nickname– Kushina remembered that nobody else had dared to give him one because nobody else was willing to risk taking him in a fight. He'd become a Genin a few months after she’d entered the Academy, and then he’d disappeared with his mentor. Nobody had heard anything about the budding genius since then, but there he was, standing in the nurse's office holding a pitcher of water like he was the most normal kid in the world– he didn’t even have his headband on him, even if he did have that obvious tan-line. Weird.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter so she could really look at him. “Didn't you graduate, like, ages ago?”

“I… well…” he scratched the back of his head with a sheepish smile. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

“So you’re still a dweeb,” Kushina said as she rolled her eyes. “Do I even want to know?”

“Do you?” His expression turned a tiny bit playful. “If you drink water I'll tell you.”

She grumbled but took the cup he offered anyway. Being stuck bored in the nurse’s office with Dandelion-Hair Kid wouldn’t be too bad.

In fact, she decided when she walked into her new assigned classroom the next day, he was maybe kind of interesting. The Hokage himself sat at the front of the small room, and gestured towards the empty seat in front of him, right next to Dandelion-Hair Kid.

“We seem to have a unique situation on our hands,” The Sandaime said once she'd settled down next to the blond. His eyes, jet-black and set deep beneath furrowed brows, were fixed on her. “Kushina, you have been dismissed from the Advanced Espionage class. That display of poor behavior was something that you would rather not repeat, I'm sure.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” she muttered under her breath. She could feel Dandelion Kid staring at her. She hadn't really gotten around to why she'd ended up at the nurse's office yesterday. He hadn't seemed to actually want to give a lot of details about his adventures either, so she’d just kept up a light conversation about nothing in particular because it was easier than explaining that whole embarrassing thing. She looked up as Lord Third continued.

“Minato, you have returned to the village to study while you recover from your injuries, until you are cleared for duty and can train for the Chuunin exams next spring.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.” He said it strong and sharp and it startled her. It was her turn to stare– three years and this kid was a real soldier; he would probably make Chuunin before she even graduated.

“You two are also the only students in the village who are currently studying fuuinjutsu,” the Hokage continued.

“Really? She is?” Minato exclaimed, right back to that starry-eyed smile from yesterday.

“This kid?” Kushina looked at him doubtfully. Senior Genin or not, his head was still full of dandelion fluff.

The Hokage smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling more. “Yes. Now, I am by no means a true master of the art, nor is anyone else in the village, as you both know. However, what I can do is make arrangements so that, as resources permit, the most advanced fuuinjutsu users that we have will come to the village for a few weeks at a time to teach you based on their particular area of expertise. This will not be a complete instruction in fuuinjutsu, but–”

“I'm totally in!” Kushina jumped to her feet– then quickly plopped herself back down, clasping her hands in her lap and crossing her ankles so she wouldn’t flail around and annoy everyone. “I've wanted this for ages, y’know!”

“So have I,” Minato said a lot more politely. Kushina was barely a sensor at all, but this close she could tell that he was also trying really hard not to vibrate out of his seat with excitement; he was just better at hiding it. “Thank you, Hokage-sama.”

“Yeah, thank you!”

She looked over at her new classmate, and he looked back, eyes sparkling blue like the distant sea she remembered. Dandelion Kid and his stupid sunny smile… Kushina didn't mind seeing more of that.

Chapter Text

Months passed, and blushing spring unfurled into a long, flourishing summer as Kushina and Minato’s lessons began. As promised, Lord Third worked to secure lessons for them from various fuuinjutsu specialists. Although the ongoing war meant active shinobi couldn’t always be called back to the village, there was still a lot to learn. The Hokage himself taught them every once in a while, when no other fuuinjutsu specialists were available. He was overly friendly as always, and encouraged them to just call him Hiruzen-sensei, which Kushina found totally awkward. He didn’t act like a real teacher anyway: instead of looking annoyed like most teachers would, he just looked amused when Minato and Kushina informed him that they’d both read nearly everything on fuuinjutsu that was available to them in Konoha’s libraries. The next day, they were delighted to find that he’d brought in some of the Nidaime’s unpublished work from his own personal collection, and spent the class period gleefully devouring the new material.

Not all of their lessons happened in the classroom. Thanks to Konoha's former alliance with Uzushio, bits and pieces of fuuinjutsu were still involved in many parts of daily life. Seals weren’t used nearly as often as Kushina remembered from her early days in Uzu, but they were still way more common than most villagers would ever guess. As a result, Kushina and Minato got a taste of everything: they scaled the village walls to help renew the barrier seals, they spent time observing surgeries, they spoke with priests and construction workers and a half-blind old man who made his living writing storage scrolls. This confirmed for Kushina that a lot of the seal-work used in Konoha was just copied, but seeing all the different applications was still really interesting. Even learning from the different craftspeople who made paper, brushes, and ink gave insight to the art. She and Minato often spent time after class discussing it all, sometimes into the evening— more than once, one of her ANBU guardians had made themselves known to her to remind her not to stay out late on a school night.

(Kushina was pretty sure that Turtle and Cat had a competition going based on how close they could get to Minato without him noticing.)

Perhaps the most unexpected thing Kushina learned that summer was that she actually liked hanging out with Minato, dandelion fluff and all, and she especially liked the way he wrote seals. He saw it as a science where she saw it as an art, and even if they argued about that every once in a while, Kushina had to admit that his work was still beautiful in its own way. Minato liked to use neat strokes and precise angles that were as pleasing to the eye as the meticulous embroidery Mito used to do years before Kushina met her, before age made her hands stiff and painful. Even for seal-work that required the less rigid techniques that Kushina preferred, he somehow managed to keep things neat and orderly, and she had to figure it out. Plus, there was just something weirdly interesting about the way Minato drew his brush across the page, and also the way his brow furrowed and his tongue stuck out a little as he concentrated…

So Kushina watched him a lot as they studied fuuinjutsu together. She watched him, and when he was wearing wider sleeves and pulled them back to avoid getting ink on his clothes, she noticed the scars on the insides of his forearms. Some were faint and others new, but nothing looked newer than the big long one which seemed to be a few months old by now.

It made sense for her somewhat absent-minded friend, she decided. Poorly-fitting or worn out armor could totally rub or scratch at the wrists like that if you weren't careful, and of course the one time you got fed up and decided not to wear it at all…

“I have arm guards I outgrew that you can have,” she mentioned one afternoon.

“Huh?” As Minato glanced over, confused, his brush bounced and left a big ink blot on the paper. He let out a little cry of dismay when the stain started to spread across the whole page— seals filled with water-type chakra were tricky like that. Kushina giggled.

“Dummy! You've got scratches here—” she gestured towards her own arm. “Your arm guards were digging into your skin, right?”

He just stared blankly. Kushina shrugged.

“Well, I have old ones that stopped fitting before they got too worn out, and you're real skinny, so they probably fit you. You can have them if they do.”

“Oh— that's…” he trailed off and looked away, clearly shy about something, but it didn’t seem like he was going to say more. She sighed. Guys were weird about getting gifts from girls sometimes.

“Well, I'm bringing them tomorrow, and—” He still wasn’t even looking at her, which was so annoying. “And if you don't want ‘em I'm just gonna donate ‘em, y’know! So… deal with it.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, and gave her the briefest of smiles before he got up to get a new sheet of paper and a towel to wipe his desk with.

Minato had two smiles: the sparkling, overflowingly happy one, and the polite one that seemed hollow if you really knew him. Kushina understood this, of course; there was an art to the perfect smile and she sucked at it. He didn't, though, and that perfect, polite smile was the one she got when she gave him the arm guards the next day, too.

It was definitely fake, and he was weird and silent, no matter how much she prodded him. She even showed him the one seal she'd accidentally created that produced a spectacular fart noise when activated. That brought a little bit of light back to his eyes, but it didn't last long. He didn't say a single word to her the rest of that class, and literally body-flickered out of the room at the end.

Kushina glared at the wisps of chakra-smoke he left behind. She was going to figure this Minato kid out.

She figured it out eventually.

She figured it out and for a moment she almost wished she hadn't.

That day, Kushina had sliced her hand pretty badly while practicing shurikenjutsu in class. The wound would heal within an hour or so thanks to the nine-tailed fox’s power, but it was in an annoying spot and kept reopening and bleeding a bunch, so she went to the nurse to get patched up. The door had been left cracked open just enough to let quiet conversation drift out into the hallway. Kushina was bored, so she decided to be a bit nosy and listen in before entering the nurse’s office. *

“...having those thoughts again, what do you think brought it on?” She recognized Nurse Yamanaka’s “troubled kid” voice. It was the voice she had spoken to Kushina with until she figured out that Kushina wasn't troubled, she was trouble.

“Sorry, I don't know, it just… happens, it…” That quiet, stammering voice was Minato, and he sounded close to tears. Frowning, Kushina crept closer.

“Let's try another mind-walk then,” the nurse said gently, “and see if we can—”

“I can't, I—” His voice rose before he cut himself off, and she could practically see him curl up like a polite little pillbug the way he always did after he lost his temper. “Sorry, I need some fresh air.”

“Minato, please—”

“No!” Chair legs scraped across the floor. “No, sorry, I shouldn’t— I'm sorry— I just—”

She heard a muffled scream of frustration, and Nurse Yamanaka started to say something that Kushina couldn’t hear above the footsteps that thudded towards the door. Kushina yelped and jumped back as Minato ran out and slammed the door behind him. Lightning sparked as he branded the wood with a quick seal, the kind used to help hold the frame of a house together through an earthquake. He whirled around and then stopped in his tracks when he nearly ran into Kushina.

“Uzumaki-san,” he said, breathless with a torn and wild look in his eyes. “I'm sorry. I need to—Sorry, I— You're— bleeding…”

“Yeah, haha… I sorta slipped during practice. Clumsy me!”

Kushina knew she was bad at fake smiles, but the one that Minato gave her in return didn't even manage to look like a smile. She couldn't tell how much he knew she'd heard, but it was obvious that she would've heard the last thing that the nurse said. There weren't many injuries that were healed by a mind-walk— only the ones that people didn't talk about.

So his other injuries, then… grief for him sunk to the bottom of her stomach.

“Please, please be more careful,” he said, strained and shaky. “I don't want you to get hurt.” He glanced back at the nurse's office when the door rattled. “Gotta go.”

 She liked this kid, she realized. She didn't want to let him go, not if he was alone, not if he was like this. Nobody really talked about it, but she knew what happened to shinobi like him.

Kushina grabbed his arm before he could slip past her.

“No,” she said, a lot more forcefully than she meant to— he was scared so she knew she was supposed to keep calm, but it came out sounding angry when she said, “I don't want you to get hurt.”

“I'm not— I—” He looked down at her hand and froze, pale, shaking. She realized she was bleeding on him, all over that arm with the long scar. He gagged and his knees gave out completely; she halfway caught him and helped him down to the floor. At least he didn’t actually puke, but he was still definitely not okay.

* “I'm taking you back to—” Kushina cut herself off when Minato shook his head, muffling a sob with his hand. “Okay, I'm not taking you back to the nurse's office. How about…” The rattling of the door got louder. “How about I show you my favorite secret place? It's not far.”

He nodded, and that was all the permission she needed to pull him to his feet and start running. Behind her, sandaled steps stumbled then started to follow.

There was a hole in the back fence of the schoolyard, basically invisible— it helped that she'd put up seals to make attention slide away, which was tricky to do, but more subtle and therefore so much cooler than a true invisibility seal. She crawled through first, then helped Minato. He sat there for a moment, dazed, chest heaving.

As far as Kushina knew, nobody else was aware of this place. Bushes and vines grew thickly around the little clearing, so it could only be accessed from the fence. Sunlight trickled through the autumn foliage, golden even at midday, and there was a nice, fresh breeze. Big smooth rocks made a convenient place to sit or lie down on, and the wall on the other side was covered in seals and drawings she’d made over the years.

“This is it! I found this my first year at the Academy, when…” She looked away. She didn't want to admit she'd run away crying after getting in a fight with some older kids. “When I was hanging out after school or something, probably. I forget! Anyway, it's super comfy and quiet, and nice and cool in the summer but sheltered in the winter, so it's my favorite place to— well, relax and stuff, y'know! So make yourself comfortable.”

He was still sitting there nervously, so Kushina led him to sit on the rocks, and reached over to tap the storage seal she'd carved. She always kept a backpack of spare supplies there, which included bandages— she wrapped up her hand quickly, and it was messy but it would last as long as she needed it to. Once she’d finished, Kushina looked up and found Minato watching her. He turned away quickly when they made eye contact; his arm was still smeared with blood that he was also very carefully not looking at. Kushina pulled out her extra water bottle and a washcloth, holding them up for him to see.

“Sorry I got… stuff on you, back there. I'll help you clean up, yeah?”

A long and tremulous moment passed, but eventually Minato nodded, so she wet the cloth and gently pressed it against his arm. He flinched away, then seemed to realize what she was doing— but he was still all tense and weird.

“Here, if it's easier.” Kushina held the damp cloth out towards him instead.

Minato nodded and took it, looking away from her as he methodically scrubbed his arm clean. While he did that, Kushina pulled a scroll out of the bag, and found him staring at her again as she started to unroll it.

“Provisions,” she said with a grin. She looked through it until she found where she’d stored a drink he'd mentioned liking before, and gave its seal a tap with her chakra. “Here ya go.”

She held the bottle of cherry cola out towards him and his eyes went wide when the cold glass touched his hand. She giggled— her ‘fridge’ seal was one of her favorites. Hesitantly, he leaned forward to look at the scroll more closely.

“You can play with it if you'd like. Just try not to blow anything up, y'know.”

Minato gave her a little smile— shy and sad, but real. She smiled back, then unsealed a can of juice for herself.

Kushina watched as he ran his fingers over the inked paths, pausing here and there. She knew he was testing the chakra flow within different sections of the seal, just like they'd learned in class, but apparently he'd been hiding just how good he was at that. The fact that he could casually do it with two fingers on the same hand, and quickly, without accidentally burning anything up spoke to a truly bonkers level of chakra control. Like, probably Jounin or even Kage-level chakra control.

Dandelion Kid just got more and more interesting.

“I like…”

She looked up, a bit surprised to hear his voice. He hadn't really said much until then, had he?

“I like the way you linked the secondary power transfer point to the, um…” he tapped at a spot on the outer band and she leaned in closer to take a look.

“You mean the section I borrowed from one of Tobi-chan’s seals that the Hokage showed us?”

“Mm-hm.” He said absentmindedly as he went back to poking at the seal, then turned towards her again, just realizing what she'd said. “To… Tobi-chan?”

She smirked. “You forget, I knew Lady Mito. That's how her husband called his brother, and I think it's cute, so that's what I call him in my head.”

For a moment she thought he was crying again— but he was giggling.

“Th-the… fearsome White Demon… Tobi-chan…”

Kushina grinned— there was that stupid cute smile of his.

“Oh, he was still fearsome,” she said, and took another sip of mango juice— her favorite, sweet and sunshine-yellow. “See, Hashirama was a morning person, but Tobirama was not. Apparently, one morning…”

Chapter Text

Winter blew in, sharp and stinging at Kushina's cheeks as she jogged from her house to the Academy– not because she was late, for once, but because she was cold. Winter in Konoha was supposedly short, and even then she wished it were shorter. Frost crunched under her boots as she cut through grass and fallen leaves; the low, heavy clouds promised some sort of precipitation and Kushina really didn't want to stick around to find out what kind it was.

“Good morning!”

The shout echoed down the main street of the Senju district, and she turned to see someone jogging down the street towards her, fluffy golden locks stirring in the chilly wind.

“Minato? Why are you out here?”

“Training!” he shouted, and broke into a full sprint. He skidded to a stop right in front of her– or tried to. Kushina dodged easily, then caught him by the back of his jacket before he could slide face-first into a bush.

“Training for what, ice skating?” Kushina joked as she helped him regain his footing.

He laughed. “No, the Chuunin exams! I have one hundred and twenty-six days left.”

Kushina snorted. “You and your date thing– it's freaky, y'know!”

“It's basic math,” he said, crossing his arms and frowning playfully.

“You want some basic math?” She looked down and smirked when she found exactly what she expected. “Dandelion Boy, plus sandals in December, equals frostbite! You're gonna end up subtracting your toes soon if you're not careful, y'know.”

“You're the one standing around in the cold,” he retorted, and started running backwards as he yelled, “To-ma-to!”

“Hey! You’d better run!”

Their laughter echoed through the chilly streets and silent patches of forest as she chased after him. It was a little frustrating– she knew he was holding back and she was still practically dying after a few minutes– but he never did anything mean to her on purpose, and that wasn't something she could say about most people in the village. He even helped her, catching her when she slipped, letting her drink from his water bottle when she realized she didn't have hers.

They reached the Academy long before the first class started, so they huddled together in the hall, chatting. Kushina's skin burned as she warmed back up– especially her cheeks, once she realized how close together they were sitting. It was super embarrassing but she didn't think he'd noticed yet, so she had to find something, anything else to think about, like…

“Hey, when's your birthday? You said you were born in the winter.”

“Hmm, let’s see…” He looked at her; mischief in his eyes. “It's one hundred and ninety-four days after yours.”

“Hey! No fair! Really, when is it?”

“Figure it out.”

She pretended to start counting on her fingers and he giggled, then laughed out loud when she scrunched up her face and acted like she was having a lot of trouble with it. Just then people started wandering in, and Kushina quickly stopped playing around. Anyone other than Minato would actually make fun of her, and she didn't want to be made fun of in front of him, since that would totally be more embarrassing than… whatever this was.

She grabbed her backpack. “I should get going, y'know.”

“Of course!” Minato stood, and helped her to her feet. “Sorry for keeping you,” he added.

“Oh, no,” she said, nervously tugging at her hair with her other hand. “You can keep me forever if you want, haha, ha…”

The noise of the other students entering the building faded into a foggy murmur, and the only things that seemed really real were his hand wrapped around hers, and the way his mouth hung open a little bit like he wasn't sure what to say– honestly, Kushina wasn’t sure why she'd said that in the first place. The dandelion-fluff-brain thing was contagious, apparently. She pulled her hand away quickly, and placed both of them on her hips.

“Also, you should really wear gloves, y'know! Your hands feel like ice!”

“Oh! Do they?” His eyebrows scrunched up in concern. “I'm… sorry?”

“I mean, you don’t need to apologize,” she said quickly, “just, like, be careful, y’know. Cause you’re really good at fuuinjutsu, and throwing kunai, and stuff, and you need your– your hands. That’s all.”

“Thank you…”

He looked really confused. Kushina was really, really confused.

The bell rang just then, and they both jumped.

“I have class! See ya later!” Kushina said as she ran off.

Kushina frowned at the scrap paper in front of her. She'd worked it out once, twice, just to be absolutely sure.

January twenty-fifth.

That gave her about six weeks to figure out something for Minato's birthday… but what? It wasn't like he needed writing supplies, since the Hokage had made sure they'd have everything they needed. Gear was iffy– almost from one week to the next he'd grown taller than her, and even though she’d mostly caught up, it would probably happen again. Plus he was really particular about his gear and weapons anyway– even his practice weapons were in good shape, so that was another possibility gone.

Snacks, maybe? He was a snacky person. Could she just… get him a giant fancy basket of snacks? Write up a few food storage scrolls for him? But he knew how to do that himself now…

“Uzumaki,” Takumi-sensei called. He sounded more bored than angry, because he'd scolded her nearly every day for the past four years. “No distractions during class. Go to the board and demonstrate the Twelve Classic Hand Seals.”

“Yes, Sensei,” she replied flatly, walking towards the front. She turned around and stood up straight, staring at that one stain on the wall at the back of the room like she’d done nearly every day for the past four years.

“Rat,” she announced dully, stacking her hands together. She counted to ten in her head, then switched, lacing her fingers at precise right angles. “Ox.” Palms apart, fingers shifted, then pressed together for “Tiger…”

The first time she took the class, she learned to ignore the instructions and not practice channeling her chakra while she did this type of exercise, because her mind would wander off during the annoying pause between each sign and then she'd actually do things with her chakra and be disruptive. And then she'd get yelled at, and have to do it again.

As if she didn't already have to do it again every single day.

“Hare…”

“Incorrect,” Takumi-sensei droned. “From the beginning, Uzumaki.”

“Yes, Sensei.”

And that was how it always went: she'd get a second try, and once she made a mistake she'd be sent back to her seat. If it happened somewhere between “Hare” and “Horse”, the exercise would be over quickly but it wouldn't be super obvious that she wanted to go back to her seat already. Today felt like a “Snake” kind of day, so she messed up that sign, and returned to her desk to continue planning.

Snacks… Drinks? Or maybe…

Yes, maybe that.

Minato actually liked instant ramen, more than real ramen, even– this was completely mind-boggling to Kushina, but it wasn't the worst opinion she’d heard about noodles, so she could excuse it.

“It's just reliable,” he'd explained as they sat around one day waiting for the noodles to rehydrate. “All you need is water, heat, and time. As long as it's not some strange novelty flavor, I'll probably like it, and even if–” he’d looked a little uneasy then, tapping his fingers on the table like he was nervous or thinking or both– then he shook his head and smiled at her. “Even if I can barely get out of bed, it's something, right?”

Remembering his smile solidified her decision. It would be really cool if she could put a seal together to make instant ramen even easier. The rare times she’d been sick enough to have to stay in bed she’d at least had her ANBU guardians, but from what she'd gathered, Minato really didn't have anyone.

Water, heat, and time, all in a seal. That was something she could probably figure out, and he'd probably smile even brighter when she gave it to him. She allowed herself one happy wiggle. Okay, maybe she could have two. But she was happy and her happiness needed to be out there and–

“UZUMAKI!”

“Ow!”

She touched the stinging spot on her forehead, and some of the other kids tittered at her like the ten- and eleven-year-old brats they were.

“Would you like to share your joke with the class?”

Kushina stared silently at the broken stick of chalk that sat in front of her on the desk, face carefully blank as she bit the inside of her cheek until she stopped feeling like she was going to cry. At this point, anything she said or did would get her in more trouble, so why bother?

“Hallway, now!”

Crap. Now she wouldn't even be able to write down her ideas for the seal. She stood and walked towards the front of the room.

“And return that chalk! You are not going out there to do graffiti!”

“Graffiti’s also a verb, y'know,” she muttered when she dropped the two pieces of chalk in the tray below the chalkboard. Her ploy worked just as intended: Takumi-sensei was so focused on shouting at her for that comment that he didn't notice her pick up a different nub of chalk as she headed for the door.

Kushina didn't even flinch when the door slammed shut behind her; she was already focused on her project. She took a quick look up and down the hall, then sat on the floor and started to draw.

The seal ended up being way more complicated than Kushina had expected. What she wanted was a seal that would collect water from the air, heat it, put it inside the ramen cup, and then give off some sort of signal when the noodles were ready. What she got were dozens of burnt papers, melted plastic cups, and some sort of strange sludge that stuck to everything it touched, but smelled like a really good broth, at least.

One rainy afternoon, she opened her bedroom window to let out the smoke from another failed experiment, and heard someone call out her name from the street. She got a little closer, aware of the ANBU agent who was perching above her somewhere, like they always did when she peeked outside.

“Kushina, are you okay?”

She sighed. Of course it was Minato– and of course he was standing in the chilly rain like an idiot. At least he was wearing rain boots.

“Yeah! Just uh… a little experiment gone wrong, no worries!”

“Okay! Well I'm just passing by, so–” A sharp gust of wind whipped the rain around, and he tried in vain to cover his face. “I’ll get going before this gets any worse!”

Kushina frowned. She'd been listening to the rain all day, and even if she couldn't read the weather like her dad had been able to, in the last hour or so the wind had started picking up in a certain way that told her that something was coming. She signed comrade enter shelter? behind her back for the ANBU agent to see– at least she thought she got it right; either way she heard the little tapping signal for affirmative up on the roof.

“You wanna come in?” she shouted over the wind. “Or would you rather catch pneumonia and die?”

He laughed, then winced and ducked down as the wind and rain lashed at him again. She could barely hear him when he shouted back, “I'd like to come in if that's okay with you!”

“Get under the porch, stupid! Gimme a minute and I'll let you in.”

She left the window open and shoved everything under her bed, except for the latest failed seal, which she put out on the balcony since she wasn't sure the chakra had discharged completely yet and she didn't feel like setting her room on fire today. Satisfied with her work, she ran downstairs and grabbed a few towels from the bathroom, then went to open the front door.

Minato stumbled in, accompanied by a frigid wave of what was definitely more sleet than rain now. His teeth were chattering, and he fumbled with the zipper on his jacket until Kushina took over, rolling her eyes.

“You didn't listen to me about the gloves, huh?”

“No, I did, I p-promise,” he said, looking like the world's most miserable drowned cat. “It's just th-that they got wet and I c-c-couldn't stand it… I'm sor– mmf!”

Kushina threw a fluffy towel at his head, and started drying his hair as he tried to squirm away.

“Not your fault, Dandelion Hair. Hand ‘em over so I can hang them up to dry.”

He obeyed, and bit by bit she coaxed him out of his sodden clothes until he was wearing just a long-sleeved undershirt and leggings. She’d always known he was scrawny, but he really did look like a sad wet cat like this; the soaked towel wrapped around his shoulders was probably not doing much in terms of warming him up either. Kushina handed him a dry towel and realized she wasn't exactly sure where to go from there. She noticed movement in one of the side rooms out of the corner of her eye– Turtle had pulled out the kotatsu and was pointing toward it. She smiled and Turtle gave her a thumbs-up before disappearing.

“Come on,” Kushina said, and pulled him along. To her surprise he clung really close to her. She was glad that it was dark enough in the hallway that he probably couldn't see her blush. “What's up?”

“There's three– no, four ninja inside your house,” He breathed urgently, one hand tense against her arm. “They're hiding their signatures.”

Kushina panicked for a moment; had the ANBU let someone slip by? Or…

She wanted to groan out loud. As always, the real situation was more simple, and more stupid.

“It’s fine! They’re, um…” She thought fast. “I have, uh, bodyguards! Because I’m the– the last Uzumaki…” Saying it aloud hurt. “So, uh, yeah. Totally normal clan heir stuff! Just cause I'm still a kid and supposedly I can't protect myself,” she said, rolling her eyes– Cat crouched on the ceiling above her and signed a quick good job, clearly laughing silently as she faded into the shadows. “I don't like making a big deal about it though, cause what if the stupid rich girls start thinking I'm one of them, y'know?” She sat down and wiggled under the futon, happy to find that the heat was already going.

“Ah, that makes sense. Those girls do get, um, annoying sometimes.”

“Right? I've seen Yuri all over you lately!” She pouted and batted her eyelashes. “Oh, Minato-kun, you're so smart, could you help me with my ninjutsu?”

“It's really embarrassing,” he muttered. “But I feel bad not helping her, because her aunt helps me, and I have a lot of free time anyways…”

“That's how she’ll get you!” She did some random hand signs, then imitated one of the weird Yamanaka signs. “Whoo! You're her puppet!”

He chuckled. “You're really good at that, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Performing hand seals accurately without actually manipulating your chakra. That's an impressive skill– you must have excellent chakra control.”

Crap. She'd been caught.

“It's a secret Uzumaki technique,” she said very seriously, “and now that you know, I'm gonna have to kill you.”

He grinned, scooting in a bit closer.

“You'll have to catch me first.”

Kushina snuck her hand under the kotatsu and grabbed his foot.

“Ha! Caught you!”

He giggled, and squirmed around when she started to tickle him. She shrieked and laughed when he wiggled free and grabbed her foot to do the same. Once they agreed to a truce and calmed down a bit, he lay his head down on the table, pillowed on his too-bony arms.

“You can keep me forever, if you want,” he said softly, but it startled her all the same.

“What do you mean?”

“Like you said, a few weeks ago.” He looked up at her for a moment, eyes shining with emotion. “You're a really good friend, and I like being around you.”

“Oh.” Something felt weird about that, but she wasn't sure why. She liked him, didn't she?

“I don't think I've ever been such good friends with anyone before,” Minato continued. He smiled and sat up all the way. “Yes, I think that's it. You're a really good friend, Kushina– you're my best friend!”

He was smiling that sparkly overflowing smile, but something inside her felt empty all of a sudden, like the endless depths where the whirlpools ended and the underworld began. Like with his words, he'd taken the little boat that carried her heart and swallowed it whole.

He was still looking at her expectantly, maybe a little worried now. She had to say something, because he couldn't know he’d hurt her, especially if she couldn't really explain why. She couldn't smash that smile to little pieces.

“You’re fun to hang out with too, even if you are a dweeb.”

He giggled, clearly pleased with that answer, and she stood up because looking at him, looking at her new best friend was too much.

“I'm gonna go get tea and snacks,” she said. “Want anything?”

“Yes, please! Those shrimp chips, if you have them. And I really liked the fruity candy you gave me last week– oh, oh, and the spicy hot chocolate you make is so good…”

“Take it easy!” At least she could still able to laugh, sort of. “You're gonna give yourself a stomachache, y'know!”

He smiled, all sunshine even as the icy rain fell harder. “I don't care!”

Kushina shook her head and walked towards the kitchen.

She'd do her best not to care either.