Spirited Away
A shell of a man.
That was what Minato was. The once proud Yellow Flash of Konoha, the pride of the Hidden Leaf, the one whose name made shinobi from all over the land turn tail and run. Here he was, drinking away his sorrows with his third bottle of sake. The fourth Hokage, a run on sight in the Bingo book, the hero who sealed the Kyuubi, that was who Minato Namikaze is.
But he is also a grieving father, a widowed husband, and a failure of a protector. The village was nothing short of destroyed, buildings collapsed, families separated, and the ground torn up from the Kyuubi's attack. Kushina, he remembered, had stepped up, trying to re-seal the Kyuubi into her after giving birth, but failed. She was still clutching Naruto, his small body letting out loud wails. It sounded like heaven to him, and he had fallen to hell when those loud cries stopped and that tiny body had gone cold. A masked ANBU shinobi had taken the child from Kushina's arms and disappeared before Minato could do anything. To Minato's best guess, he knew that Naruto was no longer with him
Minato holds his face in his hands and sobs, hands caressing the photo of Kushina on his nightstand. He had considered joining her in the pure lands, taking many suicide missions to drive away the pain, but he was the hokage, and that came with obligations and responsibilities. He could not fail in protecting the village, protecting the people close to him again. And Kakashi, oh god, Kakashi. After Obito's and Rin's death, he had never been the same. His snarky remarks, the way he touted about following the rules, the way his eyes softened looking at his team. If Minato left, he would break. Break and nothing could glue him back. He had responsibilities, obligations and people here he could not yet abandon just yet. He had to move on, even though all he wanted to do was sit in front of Kushina's memorial stone and pretend he was in the Earth with her. Pretend that he could hear her exuberant shouts, pretend he could still feel her violent hits, pretend she still smiled brightly up at him. But she was gone, And so was their bundle of joy, Naruto. What good was having that fox gone if he had lost everything important to him in the process.
All this time, preparing Kushina for childbirth, researching seals to ensure they could make it through together, come out as a new family, yet here he was all alone. He had researched his hirashin, to try to make it better, to have a better chance at defeating the Kyuubi.
He had played around with space-time seals and engraved them on his kunai. Jiraiya, his master, praised him as the God of Fuuinjutsu for coming up with such a seal. But. He. Was. Still, Alone. No one. He had no one, He thought back to his younger days, living as an orphan. He was lonely, but it was never too bad. After all, he never felt any type of love to be able to miss it. But now, he had Kushina, felt her love disguised in violence, felt her care, felt her warmth, and he knew he could not go back to those days of being all alone. Not when he tasted the warmth of someone's love, the excitement of having a family.
He felt more tears trickle slowly down his cheek. He could not afford to keep wallowing in his self-pity. He had things to do. MInato took a deep breath, hands trembling as he put on his hokage hat. He chuckled wryly, hoping it would cover his red eyes. What wouldn't he give to be able to hold Naruto's small body just once more, to see Kushina smile at him once more, to see them as the happy family they should have been.
Shakily, Minato got to his feet, letting his legs take him to Kakashi's house by muscle memory, Although not by blood, he and Kushina had considered Kakashi their son, and Minato knew that Kakashi was also distraught after losing his adoptive mother and newly born brother. He cursed as he stumbled, cursing himself for being so useless. He couldn't even walk straight.
Giving up on the notion of walking, he grabbed haphazardly at his ninja pouch, taking out his familiar three-pronged kunai, and performing hand signs sloppily. He felt his chakra being drained rapidly. Strange, he thought. A simple hiraishin jutsu shouldn't be taking this much chakra.
Glancing down at the kunai he wrenched out of his pouch, Minato felt his face pale seeing the incompleted space-time seal. He snapped back to sobriety, desperately trying to pull back his chakra but to no avail. In a flash of golden light, he felt his body lighten, and his stomach turn.
Minato landed on the ground of where-ever-this-was heavily. His stomach felt like it had just done several flips in quick succession and had taken his head along for the ride too. His body ached desperately, calling out for dear life.
Minato sat up and looked around, head pounding but still remaining vigilant. He could be anywhere, in the Leaf, in Iwa or even in the middle of an ocean. Through his bleary eyes, he made out green grass that stretched further than his eyes could see, large Konoha-styled buildings, and the village gates. Konoha’s gates. He was right outside Konoha. Had the space-time seal really just sent him out of the village? Whatever it was, he was glad he wasn’t too far. He had to find Kakashi, establish a new ANBU force and find a way to rebuild the village after it had been decimated.
Despite the scream of his limbs, Minato pulled himself to stand up. Channeling his inner hokage, Minato made his hand signs quickly, feeling the familiar feel of his hiraishin seal in the village pulling at him. He stopped at the front of the gates, finding two unfamiliar shinobi guarding them.
“Halt!” One of them, with a piece of bandage stretched awkwardly over his nose, cried out. “State your business!” The other guard, who had been staring off into the blank, seemingly came to attention. His head snapped up to Minato’s face, to his hair and down to his face, before trailing back to the wall of hokages, where his head sat firmly atop the mountain. “Y- Yondaime?!” The shinobi cried out.
“Huh?” His partner started. “The Yondaime is already dead, you id-...” He turned towards Minato, and let out a scream similar to his partner’s, “GHOST!” They turned towards each other, loudly discussing what the fuck was going on, clearly surprised to see Minato. Minato, in turn, sighed loudly. He had no time for this. He would accept his scoldings later, but now, he was tired, hurt and aching in all different ways. All he wanted was to get into the village, complete his tasks and go to sleep. Away from this mess.
Ignoring the two quarreling shinobi, he pushed his legs to run past them, and towards the hokage tower. Almost running into a roadblock he could have sworn was not there previously, he looked around him.
The destruction from the battle with the Kyuubi was completely missing. The craters and destroyed buildings created were nowhere to be seen. Businesses and buildings he didn't remember were placed sporadically between what was familiar. Even those places he knew and recognized didn't look quite right. Certain storefronts had signs that looked newer-- more updated, more trees were put around the roads, and there were new shops he did not recognize.
Minato felt stares landing on him, some curious and some hostile. Hostile? He would have to get back to that one later, but his first priority was to find his way to Kakashi. Whispers of "dead man walking" and "demon child" was all that he could hear, but as curious as he was, he could not stop to hear more.
Minato looked around, clueless, looking for any hints that could explain why this Konoha was so different from the one in his memories. Instead, he felt even more suspiscous. Where was this? Was this really the same Konoha as the one in his memories?
But there he saw it. Bright yellow hair flashed in front of his eyes, shade identical to his own. Minato stopped dead in his tracks, heart thumping heavily. Was it his vision going bad, or did he just see a kid, with bright blue eyes identical to his, hair the exact same shade as his, with a face so similar to Kushina's a few feet ahead of him? Minato gulped, trying to not get his hopes up and failing miserably, before running as fast as he could to that child.
A shopkeeper, one Minato didn't recognize, had his had lifted, ready to hit Naru- that kid, Minato corrected himself. Without even thinking about it, Minato's body moved in to block that punch, gripping the shopkeepers hand as tightly as he could. Like MInato was meant to do that, meant to protect that child. Minato blinked in shock, he had moved completely on instinct. Had he startled that child?
He looked down tentatively, down to the watering blue eyes of the kid below him, and picked him up desperately. His face even closer now, he could see Kushina on this kid, the arch of his nose bridge, the tilt of his eyes. He was a splitting image of Kushina. How-?
"STOP!" Called out a shinobi from behind him, a voice he found vaguely similar. Minato strained to remember where he had heard such a voice before. An ANBU wearing the mask of the hound, all of a sudden came up behind him, and before he could react, landed a quick chop to his neck.
As Minato's vision faded to black, all he could make out was the frightened stare of the kid, and his own hand reaching out to him. The ache in his body finally caught up to him, the pounding in his head finally to painful to ignore