Chapter Text
The Land of Fire was supposed to be peaceful in the spring, but Team 7 had a knack for finding trouble or rather, trouble had a knack for falling right into their laps.
It was a standard C rank escort mission on their way back to Konoha. The sun was dipping below the horizon, casting long, bleeding shadows through the dense canopy of the forest. The rush of a nearby river filled the silence, a soothing sound that was abruptly shattered by Naruto’s sharp intake of breath.
"Hey! Kakashi sensei, look!"
Naruto didn’t wait for an order. He vaulted over a fallen log, his bright orange jumpsuit a blur against the greenery.
"Naruto, wait! Idiotic dork, don't just run off!" Sakura yelled, her fist shaking in the air, though she quickly zipped up her weapon pouch and hurried after him. Sasuke gave a quiet, irritated click of his tongue, but his hand instinctively drifted to his kunai holster as he followed, his dark eyes scanning the tree line for an ambush.
Kakashi sighed behind his mask, his slouching posture radiating exhaustion. "And there they go," he muttered, though his lone visible eye sharpened instantly. He flickered forward, appearing on a high branch overlooking the riverbank just as Naruto skidded to a halt.
Down by the rocky edge of the water, half submerged in the shallows, lay two figures.
"Whoa, they’re totally wrecked!" Naruto shouted, his voice echoing over the roar of the river.
He scrambled down the embankment, his boots splashing into the cold water. The two bodies looked as though they had been spit out by the river itself, or perhaps by the heavens. One was a man with spiky, sun bleached blonde hair, wearing a tattered, high collared dark blue shirt. Next to him, tangled in the river weeds, was a woman with vibrant, blood red hair that fanned out like a halo in the water, wearing a torn green dress. Both were deathly pale, unconscious, but breathing in shallow, ragged gasps.
From his perch on the branch, Kakashi froze.
The air in his lungs vanished. The casual, lazy slouch evaporated, replaced by a rigid, terrifying tension that none of his students had ever seen before. His breath hitched hard against the fabric of his mask. His left eye hidden beneath his forehead protector ached with a phantom burn.
No. It’s a genjutsu. It has to be.
He knew those faces. He knew them better than he knew his own mirror reflection. He had seen them in his nightmares for twelve years. He had stared at their names carved into the cold stone of the Memorial Stone every single morning.
Minato sensei. Kushina sama.
They were dead. The Reaper’s Seal was absolute. It swallowed the soul whole, locking it away in eternal combat within the stomach of the death god. No one came back from that. No one.
Yet, as Kakashi dropped silently from the branch, his boots hitting the gravel, his tracking senses told him the impossible: their chakra signatures, though incredibly faint, fractured, and waking up from a deep slumber, were completely authentic. The warm, overwhelming sun like pulse of his master. The fierce, terrifyingly vast, spicy undertone of the Uzumaki matriarch.
Kakashi’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. His mind screamed at him to draw a kunai, to demand answers, to freak out. But the mask of the ANBU captain the stoic, unbothered Kakashi sensei slammed down over his features. His eye narrowed, hiding the sheer, unadulterated shock threatening to break him apart.
"Kakashi sensei, don't just stand there!" Naruto’s loud, frantic voice broke through the ringing in Kakashi’s ears.
Naruto was already on his knees in the wet gravel, grabbing the blonde man by the shoulders to pull his face out of the water. An intense, inexplicable wave of panic had seized the blonde genin. Naruto didn’t know these people. He had never seen them before in his life. But the moment his blue eyes landed on them, a strange, burning ache had flared up in his chest. It was an overwhelming, fiercely protective instinct that roared louder than the Nine Tails ever could.
"We gotta move 'em! They're freezing!" Naruto yelled, his voice cracking with an urgency that startled both Sakura and Sasuke. "Hey! Hey, mister, wake up! Come on!"
"Naruto, be careful, we don't know who they are!" Sakura warned, stepping down to the bank, her medical chakra already sparking at her fingertips. "They could be enemy ninja, or a trap"
"I don't care! They're dying!" Naruto snapped back, a raw, defensive snarl in his voice that made Sasuke’s eyebrows shoot up. Naruto hoisted the blonde man's upper body onto his lap, desperately rubbing the man's freezing arms. "Look at them! They don't even have forehead protectors! We can't just leave 'em here to drown! Kakashi sensei, tell her! We need to make a shelter, right now!"
Sasuke walked closer, crouching beside the red haired woman. He reached out, checking her pulse. "They're alive," he reported, his voice tight. "But their chakra network is completely chaotic. It’s like it’s trying to rebuild itself from scratch. If we leave them here, they won't last the night."
"See?! Sasuke gets it!" Naruto shouted, tears of pure, unexplainable frustration pricking the corners of his eyes. He looked down at the blonde man in his arms, his chest tightening. Why did he feel like his whole world would end if this stranger didn't open his eyes? "We're saving them! I'm not leaving them!"
Kakashi stepped forward, his movements stiff, almost mechanical. He looked at Naruto bright eyed, loud, wearing the face of the man he was currently holding. Then he looked down at Minato.
The resemblance was dizzying. It was a cruel joke of the universe that Naruto was holding his own father, yelling at the world to save him, without having a single clue who he was.
"Calm down, Naruto," Kakashi said, his voice dropping into a dangerously flat, professional register. It was the tone he used on high stakes assassinations. "Sakura, check the woman. Sasuke, keep watch on the perimeter."
"What about me?!" Naruto demanded, gripping the blonde man's tattered shirt.
"Help me move him to the clearing up ahead," Kakashi said quietly. He knelt down, his hands trembling slightly as he reached out to lift his former master. The moment his hands touched Minato’s shoulders, the reality of it hit him. The skin was warm. There was a heartbeat.
He's real. They're both real.
They set up a hasty camp in a hollow beneath a massive oak tree, shielded from the wind. Sasuke set up tripwires and sensory seals around the perimeter, his dark eyes occasionally darting back to the camp with quiet suspicion. Sakura was kneeling beside the red haired woman, her hands glowing with a soft green light as she stabilized her breathing.
Naruto hadn't left the blonde man's side. He had helped Kakashi wrap him in a dry blanket and was currently sitting cross-legged next to him, poking the campfire with a stick, his eyes glued to the stranger’s pale face.
"It’s weird," Naruto muttered, his usual boisterous energy replaced by a heavy, contemplative silence. "I don't know why, Kakashi sensei... but when I saw them, my stomach just went totally crazy. Like, I felt like I knew them. That's stupid, right?"
Kakashi sat on a log across from them, his back straight, his orange book nowhere to be seen. His hands were clasped in his lap, tightly clenched to keep them from shaking.
"The world is full of strange coincidences, Naruto," Kakashi murmured softly, his eye shadowed.
"She's stable," Sakura called out, wiping sweat from her brow as she stood up from the red haired woman. "Her vitals are returning to normal, but her body has suffered some kind of massive spiritual shock. It’s like... like her soul was forcibly crammed back into her body. I’ve never seen anything like it. What about him?"
"Same," Kakashi lied smoothly. "His chakra is stabilizing. They just need rest."