4. Younger Years
“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.”
-Khaled Hosseini, ‘And the Mountains Echoed’.
Learning to re-adopt the hell his life had once been, having already tasted the heaven it could be, was among the hardest things Naruto had ever had to do. Where once his people had smiled and greeted him respectfully as he passed, they now only glared back at him in the best of cases. Regularly, on the rare times he was allowed out and about under the half-assed supervision of a short tempered orphanage caretaker, he found himself constantly on the lookout for wads of spit and attempts to trip him up by passers by.
If ever he came too close to vendors or store fronts he was quickly chased away with raised fists and broom handles. If he happened to catch someone's gaze, he was called out for staring, often emphasized by small objects or dirt clumps hurled at him. He let some hit him on occasion, slowed his reaction time and turned a blind eye. He was not a shinobi, Naruto reminded himself. He was weak. He could not dodge. The caretaker watched coldly from a distance, sometimes ignoring him completely.
However bad it was outside the orphanage, inside was worse. It was common knowledge that children learned by example, and the caretakers sure weren't setting good ones where Naruto was concerned. He remembered how a small amount of maturity had made Hiruzen open up to him, even if just a bit, and he hoped that maybe if he applied the same attitude here, things would be different. He was wrong, of course, but that had never stopped him before.
Having been a father, grandfather, and great grandfather himself, he was unable to escape truly caring about the other children, no matter how horrible they were to him. This only made the bullying worse. Who was he, a five year old outcast, to even remotely act as a father figure would? Naruto couldn't seem to help it. It was just ingrained. Once a father, always a father, no matter what crazy thing the universe decided to do to you next.
That didn't stop him from harshly chastising himself when once he had said to another boy, “Now why don't you go to your room and think about what you've done!” The older child had laughed in his face and shoved him to the ground. And that had been one of the more mild reactions to his slip ups.
No matter how bad it got, Naruto never raised a hand to any of them, not even in self defense. They were all just children, after all. They were only doing what they knew and had been taught and it was no one's fault but intolerance for what the adults couldn't understand and feared. He recognized many of them as trusted allies, comrades, and friends from his time as Hokage. He was optimistic that they would end up alright in the end. He had to be.
Even nights proved torturous for Naruto, and as a result, he often found it difficult to sleep. He lay there awake every night, staring out his window at a quiet silver moon. Sometimes, thoughts of the future ran through his head. Sometimes, memories of the past. Sometimes he managed to drift off, and both twisted themselves into one horrible nightmare, leaving him quivering and gasping into his pillow. Sometimes, everything turned out alright. Most times, Naruto’s dreams made him watch everyone he loved and cared about die horribly before his eyes.
And every day, no matter what pains and sorrows were thrown his way, Naruto never stopped trying to reach Kurama. Over and over, he exhausted himself in the attempt to reach into the seal, draining almost every bit of chakra he possessed. It was only because of his Uzumaki heritage that he possessed any at all without training, and much like physical strength, he would have to work to build up his tolerance and stamina before he would be able to do anything with it. It would take years to get where he once was. In the meantime, he missed his friend terribly, and the feeling of loneliness only grew worse with every day that passed without him.
And friends tortured Naruto, too. Every now and then, out and about in the streets somewhere avoiding wrath and humiliation, Naruto would catch a glimpse of someone so achingly familiar that he would freeze in his tracks and just… stare. He saw Sakura once, bright and cheerful and so young, being gently guided by the hands of an amused yet exasperated mother. He saw Shikamaru, too, someone he once counted among his best friends and the fiercest, most loyal, most amazing damn right hand adviser he had ever had the fortune of working with. And then… he had seen her.
Summer had given way to autumn, and autumn to winter, and the morning was cold. The snowflakes drifted slowly, soft and lazy, like from a long lost memory of a different life. The blankets of white muted most sound until the only noise left was faint and haunting. Naruto had managed to escape the confines of the orphanage, though he rarely did - at least, not as much as his former self had done. He traced a familiar snow covered path through the wooded area beyond, watching the snow swallow his feet and most of his legs with every step.
Time passed, and there were several points where Naruto thought he should maybe turn back, abandon his little adventure and return to his caretakers before someone alerted the ANBU again. He didn't. Something kept urging him forward, forcing him to keep going. Something pushed him. Something wouldn't let him go.
And then he heard it - faint laughter drifting out of the misty trees, accompanied by the heavy crunching of snow under bodies and a soft, distressed sound like a sigh, quiet and feminine and so familiar. Suddenly, all at once, it hits him. Naruto knows what this memory is. This was perhaps the most important memory he had stumbled across yet in this strange new life. And then, just as suddenly as the realization had hit him, the old man turned boy knew that he didn't want to be there. He didn't want this memory.
But whatever was pushing him refused to let him turn around. He rounded a bend in the path and came across the scene from his past. The group of young boys, laughing and jeering and pushing each other around, and the tiny girl with pale eyes and ebony hair shrinking inwards in front of them, staring up at them with tears in her eyes.
It is important to note that Naruto had loved his wife as well as anyone could whilst spending the majority of his time more married to his work than he was to her. The rare moments he had been able to spend at home, he spent at her side, basking in the warmth of her love and devotion. He would die for her - almost had a few times. He would kill for her, and had done just so on a handful of occasions. Yes, he loved her fiercely, deeply, dearly. But the difference was that that had been his Hinata.
This tiny, frightened little girl… this was not his Hinata.
Naruto slipped back behind the trees out of sight and took a moment to imagine the outcome of his next action. In his previous life, unable to condone someone treating someone else the way they treated him, he had rushed in to take the brunt of the bullying and had paid the price with his dignity and a particularly nasty bloodied nose. This action had been what sparked her love for him (though it had just been innocent admiration at the time). This morning had been what started it all. They would go through their lives, and she would pine silently for years, and he would be oblivious. They would go to war. He would save her, and she would save him. He would fall in love with her, they would marry, have two beautiful children… then, in the first few years of true retirement, she would get sick.
Naruto's breath hitched as those memories came rushing forth, despite his efforts to resist. Hinata, her once beautiful ebony hair thinned and grayed, falling out in handfuls. Hinata, with a smile which had once been a blessing from the gods themselves, become bloodied from coughing away the lining in her lungs. Hinata, her once strong and capable hands grown pale, bony, and wasting away like the rest of her. His sweet Hinata, his beloved wife, crumbling right in front of him before she was ever supposed to. Long before he would ever be ready to let her go.
It was an assault on her life from the very genes which gave her so much strength, like so many Dojutsu users before her, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“I'm sorry,” she had whispered in those final hours of their life together.
Naruto had had a perpetual lump in his throat since the moment they had been told she was dying. He had taken her hands, limp and trembling, in his own. “Don't be sorry, love. It's not your fault.”
“If… If you…” Hinata gasped for breath, eyes searching in vain for him through the darkness her lungs struggled against. “If you could go back and change things… If you could choose not to love me… would you do it? Would you walk away?”
“No,” he rasped. “No, Hinata, please… I could never… why would you…?” His voice broke and he paused, pressing her hand to his cheek, unable to hold back his tears seeping into her near-translucent skin. He took a breath that was meant to calm him. It didn't work. “The years I spent loving you are the years I will cherish for the rest of my days. I couldn't ever change it. Not for the world.”
He looked up at her, watching through blurred vision as tears fell from her dimmed gray eyes - once an opalescent lavender, now tired. Weary. Dying. “I wish you had,” she had sobbed, squeezing his hand with as much strength as she could muster. It was hardly enough. “I wish you hadn't ever loved me. If you hadn't, I wouldn't be hurting you so much.”
In that moment, Naruto could have sworn the shattering of his heart was almost audible. “No,” he said again, shaking his head and closing his eyes tightly against the pain. “You could never hurt me,” he lied.
“But I am,” she had said, her eyes beginning to droop noticeably beneath the weight of an impending sleep from which she would never wake. “I'm doing it right now.”
It had been no less than excruciating, and much more than just that, to lose his wife the way he had. Even now, standing stiff in a frozen wood, some of her last words to him rang in his ears as clear as day. Naruto knew he had a choice to make.
‘If you could choose not to love me, would you do it?’
‘I couldn't ever.’
He had loved his Hinata. Tragic as their ending was, they had had a lifetime of memories together. Every second was a part of him just as much as his village and his children. So many bright, beautiful years, so much warmth and life and love to hold onto and remember.
‘I wouldn't change it. Not for the world.’
Whatever Naruto was sent back for, whatever he was supposed to do, things were going to change. Either they would do so on their own, or he would do it himself. Even if he stepped forward now, out of the trees and into her life, her heart… even if he planted that seed, even if he cultivated those thoughts and feelings and desires… everything would still be different in the end. He had loved her in all the ways he knew how the first time around. He had promised her he wouldn't change it, and he had meant it. Naruto always kept his promises, most of all to the people he loved most.
‘I wish you had chosen not to love me.’
All at once, Naruto knew what he would choose. He peered out from the trees one last time, and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. He ached to stand beside her. To touch her face, to hold her hand… to know that she was there. Real. Alive. He could do it. He could let her love him again. She was right there… Right there…!
Slowly, he turned around and started back the way he came. With each step he took, the ache in his chest grew, a numbness settling over him, thick and cold and unyielding. The image of that last look… her beautiful, sorrowful eyes glancing his way, catching his gaze. The heartbroken acceptance when he did nothing. The sound of what could have been, what had been once in another life, fading between them, drifting away with the wind and the snow until it was lost. Gone.
Naruto went to bed that night feeling as if he had watched Hinata die all over again, as if he had killed her himself, knowing that his one seemingly simple choice had set into motion the first major change. The complete lack of the only woman who had ever truly loved and supported him all their lives. He didn't know where he went from here. He couldn't see his future clearly without her at his side.
He doubted, in that moment, that he could ever love another as completely, as deeply, as truly. He doubted, in that moment, that he had ever felt so hollow, or that he had ever wanted - no, needed - one of his precious people. To hold, talk to, cry with. But he had no one. Nothing. Again, he felt completely, utterly alone.
Naruto went to bed that night and dreamed of something which no longer was, dreading what other changes his actions might bring.