Dawn
The Four of Us
They arrive at the border town two weeks later. It’s almost embarrassingly slow, but it had been - good, in a way. Naruto has always excelled in undercover work, where her teammates struggle, too recognizable, too well-bred, or just too much of a shinobi to pass for anything else.
On the last night, Naruto catches Shisui’s eye and finger-spells K-A-N-T-O. On the last night, she trades an unused ink-stick to Hanako in exchange for a bag of boiled sweets. On the last night, she wishes fiercely that she really was Ume, a serving girl in a brothel. Ume, a street urchin, a new bride from Fire Country, a courtesan, an apothecary’s apprentice, a merchant’s daughter. She’s worn a thousand roles and loved each one.
The next morning, Ume and Yori check into a room on the ground floor of the Kanto Inn. Two hours later, friends join them for dinner.
“You enjoyed all that a little too much, I’m just sayin’,” Shisui grumbles.
Naruto laughs, stretched languidly across a futon. “Not my fault you suck at undercover.”
“I don’t suck, I’m just not nearly as into it as you are, Ume.”
“Children, children,” says Kakashi, eye crinkling in a smile, “Don’t fight. We all agree that Tenzo is the worst at infiltration. Remember that time in Waterfall?”
A chorus of groans goes around the room.
“Senpai, you refuse to take off your mask,” Tenzo protests, cheeks pink. “Half of our prep is always coming up with reasons you won’t show your face.”
Naruto smothers another giggle behind her hand, then snorts. Shisui crumbles the very second after, and then they’re all laughing.
“I told - I told the women back at the caravan that he had buck teeth,” Naruto wheezes. “I’m sorry, senpai, I panicked.”
“I told half the men he was missing a nose,” says Shisui. Then, “And I told the other half it was because he was so pretty, he would be taken for a woman.”
“I don’t know why I even bother,” Kakashi mumbles.
Naruto sits upright. “That explains it!” she exclaims, then slaps a hand over her mouth.
“Explains what?” Kakashi’s eye narrows.
“Hibiki-chan asked me,” Naruto hiccups, steels herself, and plows ahead, “Hibiki-asked-me-if-I-preferred-women.”
A pause.
“Well? What did you answer?”
Naruto screeches with mock-anger and lunges at Shisui. They tussle for a moment, but Naruto has him - he twists half-heartedly as she pins him to the ground.
“Come on, you two,” Tenzo’s tone brokers no argument, and they break apart obediently.
“We can’t cross the border without papers,” it’s a sharp turn in focus, but they all snap to attention at Kakashi’s words.
Shinobi use backroads and illicit crossings, holes in border security kept open by perilous terrain or healthy bribes - they had used one such crossing to enter Earth Country, jammed in the back of a cattle wagon for eight hours straight, for an exorbitant fee. Konoha had paid for their safe passage, and no doubt Ne had sealed the route shut behind them.
“It’s a border town. No doubt someone is in the business of forgery, or smuggling,” says Tenzo. It’s true enough, but they will be difficult to find, if they are able to operate under the watchful eye of the Daimyo’s guards and Iwa’s patrols.
Naruto bites her lip. “I think Hibiki’s husband is a mule,” she says.
“As good a place as any to start,” says Kakashi. “Shisui, Naruto - you two chase down that lead, see if it goes anywhere. Tenzo - you and I will see if we can’t find out more. There must be word on Konoha here, somewhere.”
Mad Dog
“You shouldn’t sleep out here, it’s too exposed,” said Kakashi, and Naruto stretched. She was on the balcony, she remembered. She had had the strangest dream, the taste of iron lingering in her mouth.
“I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He gave her a withering look. Naruto flushed.
“I mean, clearly I could sleep, I just didn’t mean to fall asleep out here -” she was babbling, she realised.
“I think we’ve established the facts,” he said dryly. “I need your help with a - team-building exercise. Come on.”
Naruto scrambled to her feet, dragging her duvet behind her as she did. For a dizzying moment, it felt odd - she had too few feet, and swayed, struggling to find her balance. But then the moment passed, and she was as steady as ever.
“What do you need me to do?” she called out, throwing the blanket over her bed.
“You’ll see. And wear something nice, and not your ANBU uniform.”
My hoodie IS nice, she thought rebelliously. A lovely, bright colour, cheerful, neither too girly nor too boyish. She liked orange, and green, and all the other in-between colours. Still, as Kakashi waited in her kitchen, she changed into her green-and-white yukata and trousers and put her hair up. She could still only style it in the way Kasumi had showed her.
She fumbled with her kanzashi for a moment, holding one in her mouth - by the blunt end - as she twisted half her hair up.
Do you understand, now? They think us no better than a mad dog.
Naruto froze, kanzashi tumbling from between her teeth. It hit the ground with a clatter. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t. Hound did not think that. Shisui did not think that. Her jiji -
With shaking fingers, she finished pinning her hair.
A Trade
“Before we go,” said Kakashi, “We have a few things left to talk about.”
He sat at her kitchen table and motioned for her to take the other chair. He had taken the side closest to her bedroom door, she noticed.
“Can you tell me,” he continued, “part 17-b of the ninja code of conduct?”
Naruto’s eyes flickered from Kakashi to the door behind him. Her mouth went dry.
“A shinobi must never lie to their commander, on or off duty. To lie to any commander is tantamount to lying to the Hokage.”
Kakashi had made her memorise those laws himself. She had spent long hours repeating them back to him until she had every word carved into her brain.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow and leaned back in the chair. Naruto squeezed her eyes shut, recalling, perhaps far too late, the final moments before Shun had discovered them. The way Kakashi’s shoulders had stiffened. How he had looked at her.
Ah, fuck, she thought.
Her mind raced. She had lied to Kakashi. There was no way to conceal what she had done, not anymore. There was no way to escape.
She had committed treason, and he wanted to talk about it in her kitchen. There was some other goal here. But what, what?
She’d been silent for far too long, she thought. Kakashi was still looking at her, expression completely unreadable.
“What do you want?” she blurted, then winced. Hardly subtle.
“You know what I want,” he said. But she didn’t, she didn’t.
And then, “Did you know my father?”
Whatever he had expected, it was not that. His chair scraped back several inches, his single visible eye widening almost comically.
“It was my father, I think. I got the Uzumaki name from him, and my hair. Did he have the -” Naruto searched for the word, Shisui had said it - “Adamantine Chains, too?”
Silence descended on them again. Naruto remembered how Hound had looked, being escorted from the Hokage’s office. The day he had told her about the kyubi. Naruto’s eyes flickered from the floor to Kakashi’s face.
“No, I didn’t know him,” said Kakashi.
“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about, either.”
Kakashi looked very much as if he wanted to insult her, or maybe punch her, eye narrowed to a slit. Naruto’s fingers dug grooves into the side of her chair.
“A trade, then,” he said at length.
“A trade,” she repeated dubiously.
“Yes,” he said, “A trade. A question for a question. I won’t tell the Hokage if you won’t.”
“You go first.”
“Why did you lie about the extent of your contact with the enemy?”
Naruto squeezed her eyes shut, took a shuddering breath. “I met another one. An Uzumaki, I mean - two of them. She asked me to do things for her and I - I wanted to help her. And I didn’t know how to explain it because if there are more people like me and we were a clan - it meant that everyone had been lying. To me. All of the time.”
It came out in an unfiltered rush. Her throat closed up. But still - “Did you know my father?” she croaked.
“Yes.”
He didn’t say anything else. “Who -” she started -
“You only get one question. Don’t lie to me again.”
He stood, and offered her a hand. “If you find out, sometime in the future, that you have been lied to,” he said, tone soft and measured, “You must not allow it to affect the team. Not again.”
Naruto took his hand and Kakashi pulled her to her feet. “Okay,” she said. It was as good as admitting it, she thought privately. That there were other things, other inconvenient truths that she might one day know.
A Team-Building Exercise
It turned out they were going to Kakashi’s apartment, although she hadn't realised until they were traipsing up the stairs of the building. Located in one of the more upscale shinobi neighbourhoods, Naruto was sure they had passed fifteen of the most deadly people in the village on their way up. The apartment itself was relatively small - it was easier to secure a smaller area than a large one. Since entering active duty, she’d come to understand the ninja preference for entering through windows and never turning one’s back to the door.
It was when Kakashi thrust a box of colourful banners into her arms and told her to put them up that she realised -
“Am I helping you decorate for a party?” she asked, incredulous.
“No,” he said, almost sullen. “It’s a team-building exercise.”
Naruto didn’t press further, and set to hanging the streamers around the apartment, securing them to the wall with senbon. In the next hour, she vacuumed the living room while Kakashi cleaned between couch cushions, chopped fruit in his kitchen, and stocked a basket full of slippers for guests by the front door, and another by the window.
It was midafternoon when a shinobi Naruto didn’t know slid through the window, clad head to toe in green. Kakashi barely looked up from where he was arranging melon cubes in perfect concentric circles.
“Rival!” the man boomed, and practically vaulted across the room to the kitchen.
“Gai,” Kakashi returned, voice flat.
“This morning, as I was running laps through Konoha, I spied an old woman weaving baskets by the Naka River. I was inspired! I challenge you to a basket-weaving competition!”
“I’m a bit busy here,” said Kakashi, gesturing around the apartment.
The man - Gai - surveyed the immaculately tidy and decorated apartment with a thoughtful expression. When his eyes landed on Naruto, who had stopped washing dishes to stare dumbly at him, his expression changed to suspicion.
“Rival,” he said, tone suddenly serious, “Do you have this young lady preparing for her own birthday party?”
“No.”
Naruto nearly dropped the spoon she was holding. Birthday party?
She flushed and turned her attention back to the sink. She hadn’t considered that this might be - for her. Naruto had never had a birthday party before. Usually, her jiji would take her to the theatre and treat her to ramen, sometime in October after her actual birthday.
Birthdays were only really celebrated by ninja - for once, Naruto wasn’t missing out on something her peers (at least, the civilian-born ones) had. Civilians marked age by the new years, but shinobi life was brutish, nasty, and short. There was real cause to celebrate making it through another year.
For a moment, Naruto let herself hope that there might even be presents.
“But was the young lady’s birthday not yesterday? And are you not preparing to entertain guests?”
Kakashi let out a long-suffering sigh, then said, through gritted teeth, “It’s Shisui’s birthday in a week. We’re combining it into a team building event.”
“Understood! I shall return at dawn on the morrow, to challenge you again!”
Gai disappeared back out of the window as quickly as he had come. Kakashi turned to Naruto.
“You’ll be resuming training with me tomorrow, at our usual training ground. Before dawn.”
“Of course,” she said, grinning. Then, feeling small, almost shy, “I didn’t know it was Shisui’s birthday. I didn’t get him a present.”
Shisui brought guests.
His grandmother, Kasumi, and another Uchiha - a boy so pretty that Naruto had taken him for a girl, until he spoke. Kakashi had protested, nominally, that this was a team matter. Shisui countered that it was a birthday party, and he had invited his family, and wasn’t Itachi part of the team, once?
That was certainly new information to her - that she was someone’s replacement. Itachi was maybe five years older than her, quiet almost to the point of rudeness. The others didn’t seem to mind.
Still, Naruto was glad of it. She couldn’t shake the jolt of fear that raced up her spine when she had laid eyes on Shisui. His eyes were dark, dark brown, nearly black. But she could recall, all too vividly, how his eyes had burned red, red, red. How they had taken her senses, taken her power, taken her will.
Shisui could feel it too, she thought. His hand had hovered awkwardly in the air above her shoulder when he greeted her, not quite making contact. It was good that he didn’t, she thought. She thought she might have taken his hand off if he did.
Or at least, she would have tried.
It was when Naruto went to the kitchen to refill Kasumi’s cup of tea that he cornered her, sliding silently into the room behind her.
“Naruto,” he said, and his voice sounded so small, so broken that all her anger fizzled out, all at once. “I didn’t know - what would happen. How they would treat you. I’m sorry.”
Naruto’s heart dropped, a sickening, swooping emotion. Because that meant Kakashi had told them.
“It’s over now,” she said, trying to keep the lump in her throat from swallowing her words. Not it’s okay or I forgive you. It’s over now. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t. She imagined the tunnels below them, a warren of activity, winding down, down, down. She imagined the cell sitting empty, waiting. Her ankle ached.
“It won’t happen again,” he said. “I won’t let it.”
Naruto didn’t have to believe in people, or trust them. She only needed to reach out with her extra sense to know that he was sincere.
“I didn’t get you a present,” she blurted. “I’m sorry too.”
“I don’t mind,” he said fiercely, face scrunching up. Naruto’s face scrunched, too, her eyes burning without her permission.
When he moved to hug her, she threw her arms around his neck and held on tight.
Both Naruto and Shisui were suspiciously red-eyed when they returned to the living room. No doubt the nosy, ever-vigilant shinobi had heard every word exchanged in the kitchen - still, they pretended that they didn’t. It was only polite, after all.
Naruto sat at Kasumi’s feet and listened intently to a long-winded story about the second shinobi war - fought long before her own birth, but Kasumi had fought in it as a young chunin. As it wound to a close, Kakashi stood.
“Right,” he said, “Time for presents.”
They took turns. Shisui insisted Naruto go first, and, feeling horribly embarrassed under the eyes of five people, she unwrapped a box Tenzo had pressed into her hands.
It was a tea set - a proper one, with a measuring spoon, coasters, everything. Naruto had never owned anything like it. She remembered, very suddenly, the day she had had tea with him in her kitchen.
After a moment, Shisui nudged her with his foot. She jumped, looking up from the box with wide eyes.
“Thank you!” she said, her voice coming out louder than she had intended. Kakashi winced, visibly. Naruto felt her face heat up. This was quite possibly the most awkward experience of her life, but at least she now had a tea set.
On complete impulse, she set the box aside and threw her arms around him. Tenzo remained stiff as a board, so she let him go just as quickly, whispering, “Thank you,” again.
“You’re welcome,” he said stiffly, but she thought he really meant it.
More gifts followed - Shisui got a new set of shuriken from Tenzo, and whispered to her that he thought she was Tenzo’s favourite. Naruto stopped trying to hide her sniffles after unwrapping a whole bonsai tree from Kakashi. Shisui’s gift was even worse - a whole kimono. She was holding things worth more than the contents of her entire apartment, probably including her custom ANBU uniform, and they were gifts - just gifts, for her birthday.
That, of course, was when their party had an unexpected guest.
Naruto: Tales of a Gutsy Kunoichi
Jiraiya slid through the window before any of them really had time to say anything. She recognised his long white hair at once.
“Mind if I drop in?” he asked with a wide grin. Naruto did not think he was really asking.
“It’s getting crowded in here,” Kakashi muttered under his breath.
“Now, now, Kakashi-kun,” he said, “I’m only here to give a gift to the birthday girl, I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
He handed her a small, rectangular package - clearly a book, wrapped hastily. “I’ll take you for ice cream later if you want, kid,” and winked at her.
“Um, okay,” said Naruto. She wasn’t sure she could really refuse, or that she wanted to. And he had been kind to her, before -
“Don’t overstay your welcome,” Kasumi rapped out, uncharacteristically harsh. Jiraiya held up his hands.
“I know when I’m not wanted,” he said cheerfully. “And Naruto? Happy birthday.”
Naruto didn’t open her present from Jiraiya. She thought the room might have exploded into a fistfight if she did - the tension could be cut with a knife.
At some point, not so late in the afternoon, Naruto fell asleep. Kasumi and Itachi left, at some point, and Shisui had produced a bottle of foul-smelling liquid she wasn’t allowed to have.
When she woke up, curled tightly in a ball, it was dark outside. Someone had thrown a blanket over her, and the lights were turned down. A single lamp lit Tenzo and Kakashi from behind, heads bent together over the low living room table. She couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about.
Shisui, on the other hand, was sitting right next to her, a comforting weight. His hand came up to ruffle Naruto’s hair, and she uncurled, sitting up.
“What time is it?” she asked Shisui, yawning.
“Just past eleven at night,” he replied. “It’s late, but nobody had the heart to wake you.”
“I can walk her home,” Tenzo offered. “I think I live closest to her place.”
“She’s got training with me early tomorrow. I’ll make up the guest bed for tonight,” said Kakashi, and rose.
“I ought to get back before obaa-san worries,” said Shisui, and with that, he was gone out the window, leaving her alone with Tenzo.
He was watching her intently, dark eyes reflecting the yellow lamplight back at her.
“Do you remember the advice I gave, about Bear?”
“You told me to focus on what I could do about it. That I shouldn’t run,” it was contrary to her nature, she thought. She had always preferred to outrun her opponents, from children at the Academy to ANBU soldiers.
“You can’t change what happened, only move forwards, plan, and adapt,” he said. “I don’t know the specifics, but the generalities are easy enough to guess.”
“Kakashi didn’t tell you?” she asked, feeling all of a sudden very small and stupid.
“Naruto,” he said, corners of his mouth upturned, “We’re shinobi. We look underneath the underneath - Kakashi didn’t say a word. But I know a thing or two about captivity.”
“Oh,” said Naruto. She stared at her lap for a long moment.
“I think I want to become a medic-nin,” she said. “This - none of it would have happened if I had been able to help. I tried to help - but -”
But there was so much blood. But I was so frightened. But I didn’t know what to do.
“You can try, if you want. But -” he hesitated, “It wouldn’t be my first recommendation for you. It’s a difficult specialty, and frankly, your chakra control is poor.”
“I heal so quickly, though,” she argued back. “What if I could figure out how to use that ability on others? I want -”
I want to never feel like that again. I want to be able to protect you all. I want to make up for all the lives I took.
“- to be able to help,” she finished, quiet and subdued.
Kakashi returned, then, leaning against the doorframe leading to the hallway. “Bed’s all made up,” he said.
A Clan of One's Own
Naruto didn’t get to sleep for a long time, that night. Maybe it was her impromptu nap, maybe it was the unfamiliar chakra signatures pulsing around her, maybe it was her conversation with Tenzo.
For the first time in many years, she found herself actively thinking about her parents. Not in the usual vagaries, wondering what it would be like to live in a family, what it would be like to eat dinner with them and train with them and love them, but specific things.
Had her mother had blue eyes? Had her father been a shinobi? Had they been short, like her? What would they think of her? Would they be proud?
Adamantine chains, she thought to herself, recalling the golden energy inside her solidifying into something she could see and touch and use. Logically, Naruto understood that she must have inherited things from her parents - the shape of her eyes, the colour of her hair. But kekkei genkai were more than a simple matter of genetics, they were an inheritance, a gift.
And - for the first time, in just as many years, Naruto wanted to know more about them. Mama, she mouthed into the darkness of Kakashi’s guest room, the word alien in her mouth. Dad. She had assumed - that they were dead. Or that they did not want her. Either way, they had left her with nothing and no one, not a single grandparent or cousin or family friend. Except, there was Kakashi, now, who had known her father. Maybe more than known him, from the look in his eyes when he'd bit out yes in her kitchen that morning. Maybe they had been friends. Maybe Kakashi knew what had happened to him, if he was still alive.
There was no-one in the cemetery with the name Uzumaki, after all.
The first thing, she thought, as sleep finally overtook her, would be to find out more about her clan. Surely there were more Uzumaki in the world, some immigrant family who had come to Konoha and died there, leaving only her behind.
She would look for them, now that she knew to look. She would find them.