A FATHER'S LAKE
The twilight was defined by the birds and the sound of quiet murmuring. Minato's father was careful to lift his four-year-old son with enough care so that he would not wake up fully. The rest of the morning and journey had passed in a haze and comfortable warmth, to the sling his father used to carry him to the man's warm arms when he switched to carry him at his front.
Today was the day that Father was going to show him how to fish. However, for a good portion of the daybreak, Minato was lost to random dreams, gripping the fabric of his father's shirt to make sense of it all. In and out. Shuriken and lily pads.
Fugaku had been focusing on teaching him how to throw shuriken lately. It was growing increasingly harder to hide his sore wrists and fingers from his parents.
Falling in and out of sleep had led to his dreams becoming unknown twisting. Eventually, about an hour out of the village, Minato realized where he was and what they were doing.
Oh, this was his first time out of the village. Father was walking with various other men, who were escorted by a team of genin and their jounin sensei. He remembered his father telling Kaasan that he had to wait a couple of weeks for the mission to be approved for the land beyond the village, which required specific protocols for civilians anyway. So they had to wait on the paperwork side of things rather than the importance of them.
There was no room for a lake in the village, not yet, and even with the Nara River running through the clan grounds they did not have any water big enough for fish. This is why Konoha was near a lake, but not built directly around it. That would be far too obvious of a placement for a village, anyhow.
The path wound away from the familiar outlines of the village, where the day’s rigid routine had yet to break. Instead, they traversed a quiet stretch of countryside, where dew still clung to wild frilly grasses and the scent of damp earth mingled with the faint aroma of distant flowers and oak trees, that according to Baba-san the first Hokage grew. In the cool hush of dawn, every sound-the soft crunch of gravel underfoot, the whisper of a breeze through low-hanging branches.
They walked and Minato was silent. Even though he grew bored, he was content with watching the scenery pass by and memorizing the feeling of his father's body heat through both of their sets of clothes.
His father taught him how to fish with bamboo, which he pulled from the bank before they left on their boat. It was not his father's; instead, it was a boat that stayed at the lake, and his father had only brought lines and an iron hook. Minato had never thought about such a simple fishing technique before, but it made sense.
His father explained to him that for coastal fishing, they used large nets. His father mainly worked on cleaning and moving fish brought to the village. Akin to a butcher.
He showed him how to tie the stick and sinew together- with patient guidance, Minato was not sure how to deal with him. Sure, his father was always a quiet, thoughtful man, but he did not know his every move like he did with Kaasan.
They spent the whole day like that, in silence, in confidence, in some sort of space of that world; eventually, his father set down the pole in the weathered wood of that small boat and looked at his son with a face he could not even begin to read.
"Do you know why you were born with the ability to use chakra, Minato?"
Minato swallowed and looked at the sun reflecting on the water. They were far enough from shore that the trees no longer cast shade on the water. Minato was sure he was going to be sunburned after this, and that fact had little to do with how cold his body felt for a brief moment.
"No, Otousan," Minato whispered to his father.
His father's rough hands brushed Minato's choppy hair off his forehead before continuing to speak. "You were born to protect others. You were also born for your Kaasan and me, but you will one day be one of the greatest shinobi this village has ever seen."
The man's voice was sure and steady, and Minato was at a loss for words. How was he supposed to respond to that?
"No matter what happens, Minato, I will always be proud of you." Then, his father snapped out to catch the bamboo stick before it fell into the water. "Seems like the fish are finally starting to bite. I thought we were going to be here all day."
His father rarely joked, so Minato was even more at a loss, and it must have shown on his face because his father ruffled his hair. The man sighed at him.
"You are too young to know what I mean, anyhow."
However, Minato could only feel conflicting emotions for the rest of that day. As they spent a couple more hours on that boat, to walking back to the village, to eating carp for dinner that night.
It was raining and Fugaku had forced Minato to repeat the actions of throwing a shuriken without actually throwing it. The dull motions had left his arm cramping, but he persisted.
"Is this really necessary, Fugaku?" Minato could not help but ask.
"Be quiet and continue." The child snapped at him. Then Minato saw his gaze wander, little hypocrite, to the rain outside.
Minato sighed and listened to him. Unfortunately, Baba-san had left him for Fugaku's training that day. She had once again left them alone to do some random clan errand. It was strange that Fugaku was seen as responsible enough to watch him.
The longer he knew the other boy, and Baba-san curbed the boy's angry responses, the more he realized that Fugaku was not exactly... normal. Minato had assumed the severity to be from clan conditioning and nurturing, but now he was slowly realizing that Fugaku was probably a prodigy to some degree.
Cultivated or natural, he was not entirely sure. It did not matter, however, because Fugaku had a set of expectations for him that filled Minato with pity and empathy.
If he could give the boy one thing he could control in his life, even if it was himself, that was something he was willing to provide.
"Focus, you have to learn to not let your mind wander." Fugaku interrupted his thoughts.
"Yes, Fugaku-sensei," he sarcastically replied. The other boy scowled at his words slightly before remembering to not react so easily.
"Keep going." the boy said, and he jerked Minato's arm up to position. Little bastard. Then, as Minato did as he said, he saw the other boy look outside the window again.
"Do you want to go outside?" Minato asked.
The other boy looked at him quickly. "It is raining."
Minato smiled at his bluntness. "Yes, but do you want to go outside?"
"Are you slow? Why would we go outside when it is raining?" Fugaku replied, his expression growing annoyed. However, his eyes did flash to the window again.
Minato carefully looked at Fugaku's outfit. A dark blue shirt with the Uchiha crest on the sleeve. Cargo pants. Huh, it looked like it could be wet without ruining.
Minato tossed the shuriken at Fugaku, who caught it easily. It gave Minato enough time to snatch Fugaku by his arm and start dragging him to Baba-san's back door.
Fugaku, surprisingly, gave him no resistance and Minato could not help but giggle as he threw the door open. He pushed Fugaku into the rain, and the other boy stumbled, but blinked up at him owlishly, caught unguarded by these sudden actions. It was almost as if he had not expected Minato to be so foolish.
But they were children, or they should be, so Minato tackled him to prevent him from going back inside. Or he tried to, he barely pushed Fugaku back, and the other boy just held him still as the rain poured down on them both. Then the other boy let him go and looked up at the sky, briefly.
Minato watched him blink rapidly and then shook his head to try to get the water out of his eyes. When Fugaku's dark eyes met his, the boy's expression closed down once again.
"Why- why are we-"
"Do you like the rain?" Minato asked. He held his rain out to feel the drops hit his bare forearms and wrists. Man, Kaasan was going to be annoyed when he got his clothes soaking wet. It was raining that hard, hard enough that if they were speaking in normal conversational tones the rain's sound would swallow it up like a whisper. He wished in that brief moment that they were both just children, standing in the rain like wet cats, and that he did not have all these memories at all. That Fugaku was not a little boy being sharpened into some iron weapon.
"You are an idiot, who likes the rain?" Fugaku said, and his voice was almost lost in the pouring water around them. The other boy mimicked him, slowly and shyly unfurling his arms, and Minato saw a small smile cross his face. Almost so small you could miss it if you were not looking for it.