Loyalties
The Land of Eddies
The worst has indeed passed when Naruto wakes. She comes to slowly - and as always, it is her extra sense that returns first, feeling the golden embers of chakra inside her, growing, her teammates beside her, the fluttering of life around them, threads of chakra running thick and thin and slow and fast.
Then she realises that her mouth tastes absolutely foul: blood and viscera and bile coating all the way to the back of her throat.
She jerks upright, coughing. Someone presses a canteen in her hand, and she tips it back. The first swallow burns unpleasantly.
Then she cracks open her eyes to see the morning light, and feels the first flutter of hope in days.
Tenzo’s awake.
She’s grinning, so wide her face feels like it’s splitting in half, and then she’s hugging him. He returns the hug awkwardly.
“You’re awake,” she says, smiling stupidly.
“You’re awake,” he returns, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
Shisui and Kakashi are huddled together a short way away, deep in discussion. She and Tenzo make their way over, and Naruto winces with every step. Her joints always take the worst of it with Kurama’s chakra, as she’s unable to gauge how badly she’s abusing them until well after the fact, under the analgesic effect of the bijuu’s chakra.
Kakashi gives her an eye smile, equally disingenuous. They are all tense this morning, wound tighter than springs.
But Naruto has good news to deliver.
“I can take a shot at healing that,” she says, gesturing at Shisui’s leg. “Sleeping did me good.”
“Finally,” Shisui groaned. “You’ve spoilt us, Naruto. I’m not used to being injured this long.”
Naruto grins, again, and kneels to unbind his leg. It must hurt tremendously - dark blue bruises wreath the injury, outlining it even to the untrained eye. She fans the embers in her belly into flames, burning out the traces of Kurama’s acidic chakra that linger in her pathways. It’s easy to encourage bone to mend, it wants to be whole. It wants to grow, and it will - she just helps it along.
She’s tired, after it’s done, but not exhausted. The bruises have faded to yellow, and Shisui should be able to put weight on his leg again.
She stands, dusts her hands of imaginary dirt, and offers a hand to Shisui. He takes it, standing shakily, laughing.
“Does it still hurt?” she asks, through the smile threatening to split her face in two.
“Some,” he says, tentatively stepping forwards. “But I can use it now. Thank you.”
She gets her second hug that morning, and they cling to each other for a long moment. They both smell terrible, she has to admit, of blood and sweat and fear, but underneath it, she smells something like victory. They’re all here. All breathing, all conscious.
They break apart, and she turns to their captain.
“We need to take a different approach,” she says carefully. “Rushing back will do us no favours. We have to be cautious, take our time to recover.”
Kakashi knows she’s right, she can tell. It’s in the slant of his shoulders and the way his chin drops down.
“I agree,” Tenzo’s voice was dead serious. “We need time, and allies.”
Naruto thinks of her dream, then, of a city on an island, and of an old friend.
“I know what we need to do,” she says, voice soft, trembling. “We can’t be Konoha shinobi anymore - I mean, we can’t afford to travel as shinobi at all.”
It’s the cautious approach, slow and painstaking. Tenzo will support her, she knows, ever preferring caution to the bold plans she and Shisui often put forward. Likewise, Shisui will disagree, wanting to blaze ahead, to get back home to his - her throat closes up - family.
It’s down to Kakashi, then. His eyes rake over her. He’s looking at her ruined flak jacket, she realises - oh. She’s still covered in blood, the pale grey turned a deep maroon. Her face is impassive, but inwardly, she knows she’s won.
“And as for allies - I can get us allies, allies who know how to get past Konoha’s walls. Making contact will be the difficult part, we’ll need to alter our course.”
She thinks of an old friend and the scroll that she keeps tucked into her boot, always with her. She thinks of its twin, stashed away in a place only the two of them know. It could destroy her teammates’ trust in her.
“We need to go to Uzushio.”
A Plan/An Argument
They split up briefly, to gather the necessary supplies. Even after years of ANBU duty, she still finds it distasteful, jimmying the lock on a civilian home and sneaking inside. She feels less like a noble, loyal kunoichi and more like a thief in the night.
It’s as she’s rummaging through some poor woman’s drawers for a kimono that Kakashi corners her.
“You’re going to have to give me more details than that, you know. They might not say it to your face, but Tenzo and Shisui know you’re hiding something.”
Naruto doesn’t react, doesn’t look up. “Details on what?”
“This plan of yours.”
“Ah.”
She pulls out a dark green kimono - it will do for the coming winter months. Now for a headscarf and an overcoat -
“It won’t be hard for him to control internal opposition,” she says, moving to the dresser. “He’s got tried-and-true methods for that - he’ll kidnap clan children to shut them up, he’ll worm his spies into every department, every unit, every team. I think we might have - I think we might have been the last team in the ANBU that only held loyalties to the Sandaime.”
Concealer, roughly her skin tone, red pigment for the lips and cheeks - she swipes the concealer and a brush, tucking them into her belt, and leaving everything else where it was. For a moment, she is consumed with a fierce anger. How could her jiji do this to her? Let her down again and again? Fail so badly, and so often, to control his own subordinates?
“But outside of Konoha - outside is a different story. The sannin have no love for him, we escaped - he doesn’t control half of Konoha’s most highly ranked shinobi. He doesn’t control us.”
The jinchuriki, the mokuton user, two of the most talented wielders of the sharingan since the days of Madara Uchiha. It’s a tantalising picture, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with legendary shinobi in defiance of a tyrant.
“The sannin?” Kakashi says sharply. “All three of them?”
Soap. Naruto wants soap, a bar of fucking soap -
“All three of them. Tsunade won’t fight Orochimaru. Jiraiya won’t fight Tsunade. For this, they’ll put their differences aside. And I think - Jiraiya’s still in contact with Itachi.”
In the back of the drawer is a wrapped, new bar of soap. It smells of lemon verbena - the type of scent she would never use, as a kunoichi. But she’s not supposed to be a kunoichi, anymore. Kakashi is angry with her, she thinks. That’s fine. She knew he would be. But she also thinks that he knew what she did, that he may very well have suspected since the night of the funeral.
“Nobody,” she takes a deep breath. “ Nobody loved the Sandaime more than Jiraiya, nobody hates Danzo more than Tsunade. Nobody knows Konoha’s weaknesses more than Orochimaru. And nobody has both the manpower and the willingness to help, except Orochimaru. And I can make contact with him, he owes me. He owes me,” she repeats, yanking a drawer open with more force than strictly necessary.
Behind her, Kakashi inhales sharply. She doesn’t look at him.
“The others won’t agree to this. I’m not sure I do.”
Naruto fishes out a pair of long socks from the poor woman’s drawers. They’ll need to take food as well, civilians don’t subsist on shinobi ration bars. They’ll need rice, and a pot. They’ll need to get used to making campfires again, even if it gives away their position to anyone who cares to look.
“Once we remove Danzo’s hold over the clans, they’d reject him. We just have to make sure they’re free to raise arms against him. And as for our teammates,” and as for you, she thought, “They’ll agree, if they want to survive this.”
She’ll see them home, even if they hate her for it.
Two Mothers
Naruto was carrying a load of freshly washed sheets up the stairs - Nobutoshi had insisted it was too hard on his knees - when she heard the shouting. In a flash, she had dropped the sheets and flattened herself against the wall, hand going to the handle of her kunai, tucked safely into her obi. In the next moment, she relaxed - she knew both of those voices, there was no break-in, no fight.
Still, hand on kunai, she crept closer. In the hallway, she could see Madame Yui’s silhouette, bent forwards, angry. She could hear Hirohito fussing weakly in the rooms beyond Madame Yui, and, without thinking, darted under her arm and past them both.
Something was terribly wrong with Hirohito, she was beginning to realise. Naruto didn’t get sick, not ever, and she would be willing to bet that neither did Aiko. Hirohito was similar to them in so many ways, from the density of the tiny nugget of chakra inside him to its comforting golden glow. He should be getting better. He wasn’t.
Naruto sat on the bed and tried to rock him. He went quiet, then, staring blankly at her. His eyes were the same deep purple as Aiko’s. So unlike her own.
In the next room, the shouting reached a peak. Naruto heard Aiko’s voice crack.
Naruto pressed the back of her hand to Hirohito’s forehead, a gesture she had seen mothers perform countless times. Even to her, he felt hot, too hot. And there was something - something different about him. Something that set the hair on her arms standing up and sent a shiver down her spine.
His chakra was different, she thought. Smaller, weaker, almost cracked in places.
“It’ll be okay, Hirohito-kun,” she whispered to him. He was too young to understand her, too young to know she was lying.
A door was slammed. Naruto heard sobbing. She set Hirohito down, and crept into the next room. Aiko was crumpled in front of the door, curled in on herself, hands pressed over her mouth. Before Naruto knew what she was doing, she’d knelt on the floor and wrapped her arms around Aiko.
Aiko clung to her like she was drowning, like she was dying.
“He’s going to die,” she croaked out. “He’s going to die, and I can’t - I can’t leave him like this.”
“Leave him?”
“To go - I have duties, to this place,” Aiko said, bitterly, “I’ve made promises.”
Naruto paused, for a long moment. She had duties, too.
“Could I go, in your place?”
Runner
Seals and scrolls tucked into her sleeves, Naruto ran. If she paused, if she told Hound or Cat or Crow - they would want to act, and Hirohito would die. It wasn’t that Naruto was disloyal, or that she didn’t think the mission was important.
But Hirohito was her blood. Her family.
Naruto knelt in the dirt and felt the hollow space underneath, the void that chakra vanished into. The seals tucked into her sleeves let her fingers find purchase, and she struggled to lift the heavy trapdoor. The drop down was at least ten feet - not difficult, for a shinobi.
She landed lightly on her feet, revelling at getting to use her chakra properly after nearly a week of pretending to be a civilian.
She darted down the tunnel, feet flying underneath her. Naruto loved to run, more than almost anything. In the Academy, it was the one area where she outshone her peers - her aim was (had been, she reminded herself) average, her taijutsu had beenpoor, her ninjutsu, non-existent. But she outran every classmate, even the ones about to graduate, and most of the senseis as well. When she ran, she felt weightless, free, like her body was propelled away from the earth. She’d come to recognize this as the first stages of elemental chakra manipulation, Hound’s fancy words for a process she found entirely instinctive.
Naruto didn’t feel weightless, anymore. Her stomach, her heart, her head - she’d been filled up and emptied out.
All too soon, she sensed she was getting closer to a hub of activity, she slowed, and stepped loudly, deliberately. It wouldn’t do to spook them - they probably wouldn’t be as restrained as Shisui. She’d better announce herself, she thought. Best to approach as if she had nothing to hide and nothing to fear.
“Hello?” she called out. “Aiko-nee sent me, to talk to Shun.”
In a flash she was surrounded, and it began to dawn on her that all of this had been a horrible idea.
There was no escape, not surrounded by five men in such cramped quarters. Naruto swallowed.
“Aiko sent me,” she repeated. “I need to talk to Shun.”
“Who’re you?” one of them stepped forward. He had a scar on his nose, Naruto noticed.
“I’m Ume, I’m Aiko’s cousin.”
“Aiko doesn’t have family, come up with a better lie,” scar-nose said, nastily. “Who are you, really?”
Naruto brought her hands up, palms turned upward, placating. Slowly, slowly, she brought her hands up to the knot of her headscarf. Scar-nose tensed, drawing a kunai.
There, Naruto thought bitterly, have your proof.
Her hair fell down over her shoulders, and she moved, instinctively. The kunai whipped through her hair. She felt the breeze in its wake curl over her neck.
She held up her hands again, as if to say, look, I’m just a harmless little girl.
“Hold out your hands in front of you,” scar-nose instructed. “You want to talk to Shun? Fine.”
Naruto’s hands were tied in front of her, and her own headscarf was wrapped around her eyes. She kept her face blank, but inwardly - she didn’t need her eyes to see. As they walked, Naruto counted. Forty-three was the number she came to, forty-three people, almost all ninja, chakra that ranged from the blank stillness of the undifferentiated to strong earth and water and fire natures. She could hear, as well - low murmurs, the clink of glass, the dull ringing of metal on metal, the whir of machinery - and, at times, heat washed over her, made sweat drip down the groove of her spine.
After what felt like an age - but was, in all likelihood, about fifteen minutes, Naruto felt Shun drawing close.
“It’s Ume,” she heard him say. “Some Uzumaki girl Aiko found - she trusts her.”
Then the scarf was lifted, and Shun cut through the rope binding her hands. Naruto took a deep breath to steady herself, eyes wide.
“Shun-san,” she said, “Hirohito-kun is getting worse, and quickly. Aiko said you could help, and that I could move this week’s goods -”
“I brought antibiotics, three nights ago. They’re not helping?”
Naruto shook her head, mutely. “I think there’s something wrong with his chakra,” she whispered. Something fundamentally wrong, something sucking the life from him slowly, slowly, then all at once. It felt unspeakable, impossible, that something could go that wrong with the life that flows inside them all. Naruto didn’t want to think about it.
Shun swore, and took her by the arm. “Come on, I’ll take you to the pharmacy. You’ve got the scrolls?”
“Yes.”
The pharmacy turned out to be the source of the glass she’d heard earlier, a few shinobi darting back and forth, mixing substances she couldn’t name with instruments she’d never seen before. Her nose itched with the smell of chemicals and herbs.
Shun motioned for one of them to come over. “Ume, describe Hirohito’s symptoms,” he commanded, his fingers digging into her shoulder.
“He’s been coughing for weeks, he’s had a low-grade fever that spiked this morning, he’s lethargic, and - and - there’s something wrong with his chakra.”
“His grandmother was an Uzumaki,” Shun added.
“He’s an Uzumaki,” Naruto protested.
The man raised his eyebrows, an expression of contempt colouring his face. “There aren’t any more Uzumakis.”
I’m right here, thought Naruto. I’m right here.
“Like I said, his grandmother was one.”
“Give me a few hours,” said the man, and then Shun was guiding her away. Pre-empting him, Naruto fished several scrolls out of her obi, and fiddled with the twine keeping them closed. It was then that the real work began - Aiko had prepared the bulk of the seal, Naruto knew she couldn’t have done it on her own, not yet.
Naruto gathered her chakra, again, and again, and again, completing seal after seal, as Shun directed pallets of - well. Naruto wasn’t always sure. She recognized the black, sticky stuff she’d seen countless aunties put into their pipes, recognized its smell. She didn’t know what half the pills she’d sealed were, but she recognised some of them as pills the aunties back in Konoha would use. Then there were other things - bolts of fabric, from cotton to silk to heavy wool, knives, shuriken, exploding tags. She didn’t understand why half of these things needed to be smuggled across the border, what could possibly be illegal about a roll of linen?
It was really a very smart system, Naruto thought. Huge amounts of goods could be moved, tucked into the sleeves and obis of the aunties, of their clients. Most people couldn’t even extract items from seals, not even some shinobi. They could travel far, and wide, and quickly, and never be caught.
Then Shun was pressing a final thing into her hands, a vial of liquid and a syringe for Hirohito, and she was escorted back to the tunnel. Alone again, she took off, hoping that she would make it in time.
Needle
Hirohito was still alive when she made it back, but only just. She couldn’t feel his chakra until she was at the door, couldn’t tell he was breathing until she pressed an ear to his chest.
“Shun said to inject him with this, in his thigh,” she said, pressing the vial and syringe into Aiko’s hands.
Aiko stared dumbly at the vial for a long moment, then moved, slow as molasses, like she was barely conscious. Her eyes were glazed over and her hands were shaking.
She couldn’t inject the baby, Naruto realised, not like this.
And Naruto hated needles, but she forced her hands to be steady as she took the syringe back. He needed three of the little markers by the side, Shun had said. She tipped the vial upside down, uncapped the syringe, and plunged it into the rubber seal like she’d seen the nurses in Konoha’s hospital do, on the rare occasions her jiji took her to see the doctor.
She tapped the barrel, and watched the tiny bubbles float to the top. She had to make sure there were no bubbles, she remembered. A nurse hadn’t been careful, once, and she remembered how much it hurt - how angry jiji had been, by her bedside. She rid the syringe of the air that had floated to the top, and then there was no putting it off any longer.
Jiji had had to hold her down the last time, she remembered, because they wanted her blood for something she didn’t understand and she’d been too scared to sit still.
Hirohito wouldn’t need to be held down, deathly still as he was. At least it would be easier, that way. She felt the muscle with unsure fingers, and, before she could think for a second longer, slid the needle deep into his tiny muscles.
She remembered she had to inject the liquid slowly, and, agonising seconds later, it was over. She pulled the needle out of Hirohito’s tiny body and watched a drop of blood well up.
She was done, here, in this inn. Aiko was too upset to notice if she stole off with the seal-key. There was no more cause to stay, no obligations to fulfil. Still, she lifted Hirohito off the bed and pressed him close to her chest, listening to the way his breathing was steadying, the way his heart beat fast and strong.
“Aiko-nee,” she said, voice soft, “He’s okay now. He’s gonna be okay.”
And then Aiko’s arms were around them both, and Naruto’s face face was wet with tears. She stayed until the sun went down, until Hirohito opened his violet eyes and gurgled.
Then, and only then, did Naruto tear herself away from them - standing up, rubbing her sore, red eyes.
“I’ll be back soon, with dinner,” she said. And then she walked down the stairs, out past the back porch, and into the woods.
In the Dead of Night
Naruto slipped back behind her Fox mask with ease. Hound was terribly pleased with her, she could tell, when she handed him the paper tags and explained in the most blank tone she could manage that she had stolen them from Madame Yui.
“You saved us quite a bit of time, Fox-chan,” he’d said. It was praise. It was a complement. It made Naruto feel sick to her stomach.
She’d told them that she’d figured there were around forty shinobi down there, risking doing some reconnaissance before she’d reported back to him. Hound had been less pleased by that - unhappy she’d run off by herself.
“We can’t risk getting trapped down there just for the sake of more intel,” he’d said. “It sounds like we’d only have one shot - if they discovered us, even if we escaped, they’d change the key-seals.”
And they have to take that shot, he’d added, before Madame Yui realised the seals had been stolen.
In the dead of night, they dropped down into the tunnel, one by one. Naruto’s heart beat wildly, the darkness of the tunnel indistinguishable from the pitch-black night.