Happy Birthday
Naruto was surprised to wake up. He hadn’t honestly thought it would work.
His first thought, upon opening his eyes, was how familiar everything was. It was his old apartment, the one he had lived in since he was five years old, when he entered the Academy and was deemed old enough to take care of himself. Or so Sandaime’s excuse was when he handed Naruto the keys. At that age, Naruto hadn’t known about things like rent and bills, how to check the fuse box when the lights stopped working, how to deal with the fuzzy black stuff that grew in the bathroom. Cooking was entirely beyond him, but as a child he had been thrilled at having his own space, at not fighting with other kids at the orphanage for toys, or clothes, or food. At not having to sleep in the drafty attic everyone said was haunted. It was only ever him up there. They’d lock him in at night.
His second thought was how disturbing it was to be a thirty-six-year-old man in a six-year-old’s body. That was what he and Sasuke had argued about most. Not whether or not to go back in time, if such a feat was possible. They both hated what they had become. A chance to start over was something they leapt at. They had shamelessly stolen clan scrolls and secrets, pushed fuinjutsu and the Rinnegan to their limits, and the sacrifices…well, only they had to know what those had been. Naruto would have loved to save his parents, but neither Sasuke at three months old nor a newborn Naruto would be physically capable of doing so, and their journey through space and time was annoyingly restricted to their lifetimes. There wasn’t a Naruto who existed before Naruto was born to shove his mind into.
Since saving Naruto’s parents was impossible, but saving Sasuke’s wasn’t, they had agreed to suffer through childhood again. Naruto couldn’t really remember how he acted as a child. Pranks and ramen, that was all he had.
So here he was, having effectively killed a six-year-old child, a man who had married and had children and ran a nation from the shadows in the body of a child. However much this body was biologically his, experientially it wasn’t. Someone else, some other version of him, had been living in it. And now he was.
His third thought—he was amazed to have room for so many thoughts given how exhausted he felt—was whether he was late for school.
Naruto jumped out of bed and fell on his face. The decades he had spent building his physical strength, all his training and experience, were gone. He was physically a child. He had both of his arms again. Kurama was…a casualty. He could feel the kyuubi’s chakra like flames licking at his own pool of chakra, but the seal was locked down. He’d either need to throw himself off the Hokage Rock and force the seal to weaken, or somehow summon Gerotora, the toad with the key. Haku was still alive, maybe he could pop over to Kiri and have him throw some senbon at Sasuke…
His eyes widened. Naruto had no idea if Sasuke made it through. If he hadn’t, well, the entire exercise was pointless. And there was no way back, so Naruto would be suffering through it all alone. He’d still do everything they planned on, of course, but how could he possibly relate to anyone? Who would he talk to? What was the point when the person he was doing this for was gone?
Naruto looked around for a calendar, but of course his six-year-old self could barely read, and barely understood the passage of time. He hadn’t been pragmatic enough at that age to buy something like a calendar.
Shaking his head, he searched for clothing, finding one of his few outfits on the floor. Of course it was unwashed. He hadn’t been put in charge of laundry at the orphanage—no one wanted him touching their clothes—so he hadn’t any idea how to do laundry. He could use a few handy jutsu to quickly wash and dry some things, but he was wary of watchers. Naruto didn’t know when his ANBU guard had been called off, or if it ever had been, but it would be rank stupidity for the Hokage to leave him to his own devices without someone keeping an eye on him.
Sighing, he put on the dirty clothes. Orange shorts, stained with grass and dirt. A black shirt, with a red Uzumaki spiral. He smiled wryly at that. He had been ignorantly wearing his clan symbol for years. He was a little annoyed it was red and not the blue it should have been, like the ocean blue of the whirlpools that surrounded the Land of Whirlpools. At least the shirt was black, effectively hiding any stains.
Glancing at his oddly silent alarm clock, Naruto saw he only had a few minutes to make it to the Academy. If he took time to make some kind of breakfast for himself, he would be late.
Thirty years later, in a lost future
It was Himawari’s tenth birthday and Naruto didn’t care. He’d sent a shadow clone.
He could admit that he liked his daughter, far more than he liked his son. Boruto had been a mistake from start to finish. Trust that the first, and unfortunately not last, time he had slept with Hinata she had gotten pregnant. He had never slept with a woman before her, and amid the disgust he had for himself in capitulating to her advances, protection had never crossed his mind. It was a pyrrhic victory for Sasuke, having gone through basically the same thing himself. Naruto couldn’t even say it was a mistake. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew what he was doing. He was a vindictive piece of shit, and Boruto was the consequence of that. He deeply regretted letting Hinata name the kid. It was some kind of homage to her dead cousin, and some bastardization of Naruto's own name. He didn’t know what the fuck Sakura had been thinking with Sarada.
Himawari was, by default, his favorite child. Still, he had sent a shadow clone to her birthday party. No one would ever know the difference. The first time he did it was a mistake he would not repeat. No Boruto screeching at him this year. The ungrateful little shit wouldn’t get the chance.
A gloved hand wrapped around Naruto’s neck. He had been so thoroughly bored by his Hokage work that he hadn’t heard the window open. He could have died.
That would have been nice.
“What are you doing here?” Naruto asked, stamping his seal onto some kind of report. He had no idea what it was about, Shikamaru had sorted it all.
“Am I not allowed to visit?” his assailant asked. Assailant, that was a good word for the elusive Uchiha Sasuke. Still running, even after all these years.
Naruto sighed, turning slightly to look up at his…whatever the fuck they were. Friends couldn’t possibly encapsulate their relationship. Friends were people he saw on a regular basis. People who sent letters when they went away. People who didn’t play absentee husband with their old teammate. Friends certainly didn’t pick you up and slam you into a wall when you were too slow in replying to them.
“Are you going to say we shouldn’t be doing this?” Sasuke asked, lips brushing Naruto’s ear. Naruto closed his eyes. “Are you going to tell me this is the last time? That you can’t do this anymore? That you don’t want to?” Sasuke’s grip on his throat tightened. “What’s the excuse this time, Naruto?”
“I don’t have one,” Naruto whispered, choking on his words. “There’s nothing.”
“Good,” Sasuke said, letting him go.
Surprised, Naruto opened his eyes, groping at the wall for the scant support it offered. Sasuke had put distance between them, and was pulling a scroll out. In spite of himself, Naruto moved closer to see. The scroll popped into a much larger one. Sasuke pulled out a vial with a dark red liquid, then poured its contents onto the seal that bound the scroll. The seal flashed, then peeled off, allowing Sasuke to unravel the scroll.
Naruto frowned at the mon displayed prominently on the scroll, a circle inscribed with a stylized bush clover. Naruto always thought it looked more like an umbrella.
“How the hell did you get this?” he asked. “How did you get her blood? What the fuck, Sasuke?”
“We needed it,” Sasuke said, in that detached voice Naruto hated. “The Yamanaka have but scratched the surface of transmigration. We know it’s real. We’re living proof of that. We’ve pushed the boundaries of space-time jutsu as far as we can without making certain…allowances.”
“You are not destroying your eyes!”
“I’ll get new ones,” Sasuke said dismissively. “The theory we have developed is sound. This is the last step. We need this, Naruto. I need this. I can’t…”
Naruto didn’t hesitate, not with Sasuke. Not anymore. Naruto put his arm around Sasuke. He had never gotten his other one replaced. He didn’t need it. Sasuke had, but more than once Sasuke had confessed to wanting to cut the fake arm off, however miraculous a fully functional organic prosthetic was.
“Fuck it,” Naruto said, eyes roaming over the secret jutsu of the Yamanaka clan, the techniques they used to take over someone else’s mind. Their spirit. Techniques horribly similar to what Orochimaru had been doing for decades. The kind of thing that would erase the mind of a child to make room for an adult version of them. “I’m in.”
“Sasuke!”
Sasuke shot up, hand reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Puzzled, he looked around the room he was in. He recognized it, of course, though it had been decades since he had seen it. He looked down at his hands, dismayed to see how small they were. He had expected it, of course, expected the loss of his Rinnegan. The price he would have to pay to get it back wasn’t worth it. He could take one out of Nagato’s head, when he and Naruto got around to dealing with the disabled and extremely powerful man.
Naruto.
Sasuke was out of his bed in an instant, mind reeling in panic. If Naruto wasn’t here…
He took a few steadying breaths, flinching when he heard his name called again. He had forgotten the sound of his mother’s voice.
Sasuke didn’t bother finding his clothes for the day, or making his bed. He stumbled out of his room, feeling something like a newborn lamb. He was small and weak, and while that hadn’t bothered him as a child, living in the heart of the Uchiha compound, in the most powerful village in the Elemental Nations, at that moment it was a terrifying realization. It would be years until he was anywhere near the same power he held as an adult. Years of acting like a child. Of being a child. Thinking of it as an act would be too suspicious. He had to remember how he was at this age. Happy. Loved. Proud and envious of his genius older brother. A brother he had killed twenty years prior.
Steeling himself, Sasuke wandered towards the kitchen, dredging up long dead instincts that guided him through his family’s home.
“Sasuke!”
“I’m awake,” he said, wincing at how small and childish his voice was. Years of this. He and Naruto had plenty of time to think through the repercussions of their choice. Whatever their relationship was, it would be a long, arduous time trapped in their child bodies. It was repulsive thinking about it, so he avoided those thoughts. The freedom he had as an adult was long gone, and there was no way to get it back. He just had to suffer. Happily, Sasuke was an expert in suffering.
“Good morning,” his mother said.
Sasuke froze, hand clenching the doorframe. His mother was in the kitchen, as she had been every morning, spooning rice into bowls and setting them on the table. Sasuke noticed there were only two places set, and he was grateful he wouldn’t have to confront his father and brother just yet. If they had gotten the timing right, Itachi was already in ANBU. As baffling as it was for an eleven-year-old to be in ANBU, particularly when there wasn’t an ongoing war, Sasuke couldn’t dispute the validity of it. He had seen the proof himself, the old mission reports Naruto had used his Hokage privilege to retrieve.
“Good morning,” Sasuke said, taking a seat. It was easier for him to focus on his food. That’s what he did whenever he was pressured into having a family dinner with Sakura and Sarada.
Sarada. Sasuke didn’t know what to think of her. He barely knew the girl. Letting Sakura raise her was a mistake, she took far too much after her mother. He wasn’t stupid enough to question her paternity, he had been there, even though he barely remembered it. He made sure to send a shadow clone every time Sakura wanted to be intimate after that. If it accidentally popped, well, that was what genjutsu was for.
“Are you feeling alright?” his mother asked, sitting down across from him. Sasuke chanced looking up at her.
Uchiha Mikoto was exactly how he remembered her. As he had gotten older, he had seen more and more of her in his face. She was his mother. He had only ever known her as a young child. He never got to learn who she was, not really, not outside of her role as his mother. Now he would have that chance. Naruto wouldn’t.
Sasuke closed his eyes. He hadn’t cried in years, not since he killed his brother, not since he thought Naruto was truly, irrevocably done with him, looking at his newborn son and making decisions about his future. Their future. Sasuke hadn’t been there when Sarada was born. He didn’t care. Extended missions were always a great excuse, and Sasuke was such an important shinobi of Konoha. Kakashi, then Naruto, would dole them out.
“I’m fine,” Sasuke mumbled, unnerved by how overwhelmed his six-year-old body was by the whirlwind of emotions he was experiencing. They had discussed briefly how a child’s brain was not fully developed, how that might impact them. Neither Sasuke nor Naruto were well-versed in medicine or psychology. Neither really cared to be, and now thirty-six years of memories were flooding a child-sized brain. He gave up his pretense of self-control and started crying.
His mother hurried around the table and pulled him into a hug, which made him cry harder. Naruto wouldn’t have this. He would never know who Uzumaki Kushina really was. He was alone in a broken down apartment in the poor side of Konoha. Sasuke knew his Naruto would cope, but he had been that six-year-old, waking up cold, alone, and unloved. There were so many things Sasuke regretted, so many cruel and petty things he had screamed in Naruto’s face over the years. Acting like Sasuke’s loss had been the bigger one, when Naruto was also an orphan, when Naruto also walked in the shadows of a massacred clan, was something he didn’t know he could forgive himself for. One of the many things.
“I’m fine,” he repeated, not convincing anyone. “What day is it?”
“October 10th,” his mother said. “You have school today. Did you sleep well?”
Sasuke nodded, pulling away. There was no chance he was missing school, however much he disliked the thought of sitting in the Academy for six years. He had to make sure Naruto had made it too. It was his birthday, after all.
“The kyuubi attacked today, right?” Sasuke asked. Since he couldn’t pull off an innocent tone, he settled for depressed. “How long ago was it?”
“Six years,” his mother said. Sasuke looked up at her, saw the grief in her eyes.
Sasuke looked away, returning to his food. The rice was like glue in his mouth. He wasn’t very hungry, but he had a long and boring day ahead of him. If he was lucky, whoever the teacher was would let them throw a few blunt kunai around. It wasn’t quite ripping the earth apart with the divine power of his eye and creating a small moon, but it would take the edge off.
“Where are tou-san and nii-san?” Sasuke asked.
“Tou-san is at the station, and Itachi is on a mission. He’ll be back soon. I know he promised to play with you.”
“It’s not playing,” Sasuke said mulishly. He could always default to acting like Sarada if he had too. “It’s training.”
His mother smiled indulgently. “I’m sorry. Training. Is there anything you want in your bento?”
Sasuke looked up at her, then away, as if embarrassed. “Tomatoes…but, can you make two?”
“Two?”
Sasuke nodded. “There’s a boy in my class who never has a lunch. I wanted to share.”
“Oh?” his mother asked, leaning forward. “What’s his name?”
“Uzumaki Naruto,” Sasuke said.
He watched the smile freeze on his mother’s face. Sasuke knew she had known Uzumaki Kushina, and there wasn’t a single adult ninja in the village who didn’t know who Naruto was, if only for being a jinchuuriki.
“I think he’s an orphan,” Sasuke went on. “He’s always alone. People make fun of him a lot, even the adults. He’s really funny though, he always does pranks and almost always gets away with them. I think class makes him bored. Who teaches orphans to read? Who takes care of him?”
His mother recovered. “Is this the same Naruto you were complaining about for being too loud? The one you beat in a spar last week?”
Sasuke grimaced. To be fair, Naruto was obnoxiously loud. Not so much as an adult, but definitely well into their twenties. Naruto just felt things so strongly. His emotions were too big, too complex for him to regulate as a child, the same issue Sasuke was worried his growing headache was an indicator of.
He picked up his tea as an excuse not to answer right away. “I want to be his friend now.”
"Is that so?" his mother said, gathering their dishes.
"Yes," Sasuke said. "Is there a problem with that?"
His mother looked at him searchingly, hands tightening on the bowls she held.
"No," she finally said. "There won't be."
Naruto was late.
He climbed in through the classroom window. He spotted Sasuke immediately, but sadly he was flanked by girls. Iruka hadn't noticed him yet, so Naruto crept to the back of the classroom where Shikamaru was sleeping, Choji was hiding a bag of chips under his desk, and Shino quietly buzzed.
It was weird seeing everyone so young. Sakura and Ino both had cropped hair. Sakura had a red ribbon, and Ino had purple clips. Kiba didn't have Akamaru. The dog hadn't been born yet, and wouldn't be for several years. Iruka looked incredibly young too, only sixteen and already the best teacher in the Academy. Naruto couldn't imagine teaching a room full of six-year-olds at sixteen. Then again, he'd had much more important things to deal with, like saving the world and not having his soul torn apart.
He had no school supplies whatsoever, so he laid his head down and decided to take a nap until it was lunch. He could run around the village and pull a few pranks, for old time's sake.
Naruto has just started to nod off when he was pelted with a piece of chalk.
"Naruto!"
He sat upright, wiping his mouth. When had he started to drool?
"Yeah?"
Iruka glared at him. "What are the two components of chakra?"
Naruto squinted at the board. Iruka sidestepped to block the picture he had drawn. "Spiritual and physical energy? Yin and yang?"
He realized he’d made a mistake when Shikamaru cracked an eye open to look at him. Everyone else in class had also turned around to gape.
Naruto crossed his arms and stuck his lip out. He was Naruto, the petulant idiot. "Is it wrong? That's what chatora is made up of, right?"
Iruka sighed. "Chakra. And yes, chakra is composed of yin and yang energy. Can someone tell me how those two things are made? Yes, Sakura?"
Naruto leaned back in his seat, somewhat annoyed that the napping boy next to him hadn't been targeted. It was a childish thought, but fuck it, he was a child. He was allowed to be whiny. And it really wasn't fair. Iruka was nicer to him than the other teachers, especially ones like Mizuki, but it has taken years for him to warm up to Naruto enough to start doling out free bowls of ramen. Naruto didn’t have any money. He didn’t have his trusty wallet, Gama-chan. Come to think of it, he didn’t know where Gama-chan had come from. It was a mystery.
Lunch had finally come around, which was almost a relief since all Naruto could find in his apartment was a half carton of almost expired milk and a can of red bean soup. He had no idea what he had done for food at this age. He assumed someone was providing it for him, but whoever it was must have forgotten. Or simply hadn’t cared enough.
Someone grabbed his hand, and he was surprised to see it was Sasuke. Naruto glared at him. “What? You wanna fight or something?”
Sasuke huffed, then dragged Naruto out of the room, leaving a gaggle of tittering girls behind. Even at this age, rumors of older Uchiha prodigies had bolstered Sasuke’s reputation. Itachi had graduated at seven, after all, and made chuunin at ten. It wasn’t even war time, there was no need to push kids through the Academy that quickly. Then again, Itachi was far from a typical person. Even decades later, Naruto couldn’t figure out the logic Sasuke’s brother operated on.
Ninja weren’t the most well-adjusted of people—ninjas weren’t considered criminals only by the thin veneer of legitimacy granted by being incorporated with a given nation—but even your run-of-the-mill jounin was stable when compared to Itachi. Killing his entire clan, torturing his little brother, watching his best friend throw himself off a cliff, shoving crows down throats. Naruto didn’t want to know what Itachi did in his free time.
He probably trained.
Sasuke hauled Naruto all the way to the roof, not letting go of his hand.
“What’s gotten into you?” Naruto asked.
“It’s me, you idiot,” Sasuke said, depositing Naruto under one of the trees on the roof. A row of arches made lines of shadows on them and the trees. The foliage had begun to turn, and Naruto pushed a pile of fallen leaves together to sit on. All of the other students were in the yard below, laughing and shrieking as they played. Sasuke sounded like a little kid. He was a little kid. They both were.
Naruto hadn’t come to terms with it yet. It was insane. They had killed their younger selves, and had no idea what happened to the time they had come from. Perhaps it had continued on, Naruto and Sasuke, Sasuke and Naruto, vanishing into the night, never to be seen again. Anyone who knew them couldn’t be too surprised. Even after fifteen years of marriage, Naruto didn’t know if Hinata was simply blind or wilfully ignorant. It was the same in the end.
Sasuke sat next to him, setting something wrapped in cloth in front of them.
“Kaa-san made lunch for us,” Sasuke explained, unwrapping it. Stunned, Naruto silently took a bento from Sasuke. “I didn’t ask her for ramen. That would have been hard to explain.”
“Yeah,” Naruto said, numbly accepting a pair of chopsticks from his friend. Knowing Sasuke was watching, he carefully removed the lid. He helplessly laughed at it. Rice cooked with red beans, molded into the rough shape of a fox’s head, complete with three whiskers made of seaweed on each cheek. Cherry tomatoes, tamagoyaki, grilled fish, a peeled tangerine.
“Happy birthday,” Sasuke said, opening his own lunch. Naruto snickered when he saw Sasuke’s rice was shaped like a grumpy cat.
“Thanks,” Naruto said, picking up a slice of tamagoyaki. He bit into it. “It’s sweet.”