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Time Waits (Complete)	By : momhuey8 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1575 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
"Naruto." His eyes closed, Naruto heard his name from far away.
"Naruto?" He tried to open his eyes, recognizing Sakura's voice. Sighing he moved to rub his face, only to find that he couldn't reach it; his arms were shackled.
"Hey," he managed through the cotton ball that was his tongue. Finally he opened his eyes, which caused a stabbing pain in his head. Kyuubi. Naruto recognized a post-Kyuubi hangover when he felt one.
"What happened?" he rasped, the events leading up to this moment a temporary blank.
"Oh, Naruto," Sakura wobbled. "Sasuke…" Then she burst into tears.
It all crashed back around him and he gasped. Her look gentled and she put her hand on his cheek. "It's so…I'm so sorry…for you."
"Sakura," he whispered. "It didn't really happen, did it?"
She was silent for several moments, fresh tears washing down her already blotchy face. Finally she closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. "The service was two days ago." Naruto's heart lurched painfully. "He's a hero," she continued. "There's a monument…" She couldn't seem to continue, but he couldn't hear anymore anyway.
It was true. It had happened. And he'd missed his best friend's funeral strapped to a bed in a…he looked around…chakra blocking chamber in Konoha prison. A strange tickling in his mind pressed for dominance. Sanity suddenly felt like smoke in a basket, a hair's breadth from bleeding away.
"Get out."
"Naruto!" Sakura sobbed. "No. We need each other. Help me. Let me help you."
"Get out." His voice was dead and it matched his soul completely. She left in a fit of tears and he was finally alone with nothing to disturb his thoughts but the flies flitting at the ceiling tiles above his head.
"Okay," he thought, absently noting his own dispassion. Where did this new development leave him? Life had been a necessary evil before this. His father had seen to that.
His thoughts strayed to all the images he'd seen of the man; in Kakashi's living room, academy textbooks, the hallways of Hokage tower, Hokage Mountain. Namikazi Minato certainly seemed to be one happy son of a bitch, every image depicting a row of sparkling white teeth under those perpetually twinkling eyes. Guess he'd had no one to actively fuck up his charmed life.
Naruto hadn't fussed about it too much before now. Life sucked. You win some, you lose some. Some folks just had better lives than others. Too bad, so sad.
At least he'd had a purpose; keeping the world safe from Akatsuki's efforts concerning the demon. And there had been a second purpose, a purpose for his heart; saving Uchiha Sasuke. He'd come to suspect over the years, that this particular purpose, more so than his role as demon vessel, was going to be the nail in his coffin. Sasuke obviously hadn't wanted or needed to be saved by Naruto.
Now, with the startling clarity of hindsight, Naruto understood that Sasuke had needed to save himself, which he evidently had done. One useless, delusional purpose shattered.
As for the other, Akatsuki was now gone. So what did he have left? Not a fucking thing.
His mind once again filled with an image of the perpetually happy bastard who was his father. From his perspective, the fucker never stopped smiling and the contrast between that assholes's glittering bliss and the blackness in his own soul enraged him. He pictured the blond shuffling up to his new son, shrugging and saying, "Sorry son, nothing personal," then stuffing the demon in him, blithely turning him into Konoha's number one villain and leaving him on this earth alone, no mother, no father and no hope of happiness.
His jaw clenched, rage stiffening his muscles until the bindings holding his arms snapped. Even though he was now free, he lie there a while longer, letting black anger fill him, letting these destructive emotions destroy other feelings and memories vying for attention.
Eventually his limbs relaxed as memories of two boys, two bonded orphans, were buried, submerged in a viscous pit of dark thoughts, thoughts that seemed to be the seed of a new, final purpose.
What exactly did he want to do? He wasn't sure, but that picture in his head, the one of his jovial father was at the center of it.
Finally he sat up and undid the fastenings on his ankles. He found his shoes at the end of the bed and donned them calmly. Then he looked around and nodded; poofing directly out would be the most expedient. He didn't want to wander the halls and be forced into a confrontation.
His smile was ugly as he considered he was in a chakra limiting chamber. Pfft. Who did they think he was? They might as well have locked him in a paper bag. Two seconds later he was standing at the gates of the cemetery. Dragging the numbness to the forefront of his brain, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled in.
The new construction and recent disturbance in the earth were not hard to find.
"Nice," Naruto nodded as he studied the gleaming marble monument.
"Last Uchiha, pride of Leaf, now held in the arms of his esteemed ancestors," it read. "Uchiha Sasuke, hero, willingly embracing death to save humanity. Your friends love you and you will be missed until we meet again in the unknown beyond."
"Fucking idiot. It was none of your business. I could have beaten them without your help. What the fuck was your point in that shit you pulled?"
An image floated through his mind. Sasuke pressing their lips together. The wind rustled through the stiff leaves of the newly planted foliage and Naruto heard two syllables…
"…love you…"
Rage welled in Naruto and the next thing he realized, marble dust floated through the air and the monument was in a million pieces. Shaking and struggling to find that dead place that was always just out of reach, he turned, stalked out of the cemetery and didn't stop walking until Konoha was many miles behind him.
He walked and walked, trying to empty his mind of thought, his soul of emotion, his life of meaning. Since all the goals that had sustained him were gone now, one would think that would be easy. But humans didn't work like that. Hard as he tried, a couple of things nagged at him.
He wanted answers. Why him? Why had his father hated him?
And he wanted revenge. Revenge for all the pain in his life. Revenge for Sasuke.
As his mind sorted and processed against his will, frustration filled him. Once again, his wants and needs would go unfulfilled, because both the answers and the revenge could only be obtained from one source, his father. His dead, fucking father.
As he walked though, something else tugged at his mind, something old, nearly forgotten…until now. He stopped in his tracks and gasped. He remembered. Information that had been useless rushed back into his mind and instead of useless, was now absolutely vital.
Purpose swept through him once again. It was likely his last purpose, but that was enough. Good, in fact. Steel filled him and he nodded.
Time to go see the toads.
Naruto placed his forehead on the bamboo dojo floor in a gesture that was pretext only; he was long passed emotions like respect. These toads were a means to an end and he had no problem bowing and scraping in order to get what he came here for.
"We know why you are here, Uzumaki-san."
"Don't try to talk me out of this," he growled, sitting up.
"No, we are not going to try to stop you."
Naruto looked at them skeptically, having expected to wage a protracted campaign to get what he wanted.
"Our role in your life has always been that of teacher. You have learned much, but we see that you have yet to learn the most important things in life. There are truths that have been denied you and you have our full support as you seek them out."
"Well then…" Naruto slumped at the anti-climax. "Okay." He scratched his head. "So what do I need to do?"
"We will teach you this forbidden jutsu and ask that you not pass it along to anyone else." That was easy enough. Naruto didn't expect he'd be around long enough to share the information.
"We will write out the process and explain the components of the jutsu. You will need to memorize it in order to return. When you have accomplished that, you will need to fast and meditate for three days to open all of your gates. Then you will be free to go."
A frizzle of anxiety filled Naruto. This had been easy and it made him uncomfortable; nothing in his life had been easy. He suspected a setup. Then he shrugged. So what if it was a setup? What was the worst that could happen? His death? Che. As if he cared about that. So he nodded in agreement and the toads went to work.
Because Naruto was going back in time to see his father.
"All those hand signs?" Naruto gaped at the dojo floor. It had enough unrolled scrolls to cover it entirely and those scrolls looked to have hundreds of symbols.
"Stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish, boy. You are going to manipulate time and chakra and the very foundations of matter and energy. While you will be in a different place and time, your body will also still be here, meditating in the temple.
"Also, you cannot take Kyuubi back with you. He is housed in another jinchuuriki. It would be dire if a second Kyuubi appeared. The fox is skilled and cunning enough to use that opportunity to give himself an ally and possibly become unstoppable. So we must assign a portion of the cosmos to guard the seal while your will goes back in time with your consciousness."
It took three full weeks for Naruto to memorize and understand the jutsu. And the toads needed to break the jutsu down into various components, the most important of which was the time component. By thoroughly understanding how that portion worked, Naruto could tweak how far back he went and how far forward to dial in when he was ready to come back.
"Do I have to be careful not to change the past so I don't mess up the present?" He asked the toads.
"You've heard the phrase, 'you can't change the past?'"
Naruto nodded.
"Actually, that's not completely true. The past has already happened and as such is fairly stable. It resides in every rock and shrub, in every living creature so is protected from too much tampering. But it can be done.
"The question one faces is whether it should be done. Aside from the amount of effort it would take, one must also consider the future. The future is completely unwritten, thus the potential, the possibilities are unlimited." The toads lost Naruto at this point. He didn't give a flying fuck about the future.
But he listened to the instructions carefully anyway. At the end of three weeks, he had the jutsu memorized and went to the temple to begin the purification ritual. After three days the toads joined him.
"You are ready Uzumaki-san."
"More than you know." He scratched his head, unable to stop his innate curiosity. "How will time pass here? And what if…what if something happens to my past self?"
"Time will pass normally for us and for your body. The length of time depends on your manipulation of the time component. You could conceivably leave, spend years in the past and because you chose it, return here after the passage of only moments, or indeed, before you even left.
"As for your second question, you are a pioneer here. This is a forbidden jutsu, and as such, is largely unexplored. Should your birth never occur, it is impossible to say what the ramifications would be. You have touched more lives than you know, some for good, some for ill. Of course that would all change. The question is how." Naruto didn't really believe that.
He had studied the time component and had questioned the toads about how far back he should go to ensure he met his father before he was born. They settled on a day eighteen years in the past and Naruto began the hand signs.
About three fourths the way through, Naruto felt odd. His surroundings shifted and morphed and it became difficult to concentrate on the signs. But he closed his eyes and persevered. Pressure built in and around him. He felt his skin squeezed between internal and external pressure and then the external pressure doubled and he felt his lungs compress and his eyeballs bulge.
Just as he completed the last sign, his consciousness faded and he fell over.
Naruto woke slowly and moved even more slowly. Every inch of his body hurt. After several minutes of testing his muscles, he opened his eyes.
Shit! It didn't work. He was still sitting in the temple, the toads sitting in a line at the foot of the platform.
"Did I do it wrong?"
"No, it was perfect."
"But…" He looked around. Nothing had changed.
"This temple has remained unchanged for 400 years. Do not judge based on the tapestries before you."
Naruto sat up in a rush, his mouth and eyes wide. "So…"
"You have arrived one year before your birth. At this precise moment, you father is training with Jiraiya-sensei, learning some truths of his own.
"We understand your initial purpose here, but would like to recommend that you spend some time. You have a singular opportunity that only one or two in the history of humanity has had."
Naruto shrugged. "I came here for answers, too."
"We suggest a henge to alter your appearance." They handed him a photo of his father and a young brown haired man. "This young man is a trusted associate of your father. We can assist in giving him a comfortable stasis while you assume his life for a time."
"Okay, just tell me what to do." Naruto felt a bit betrayed by the tiny bubbles of excitement bursting in his chest. He wanted numbness, not anticipation.
"We will take care of the boy. Just go to Jiraiya's dojo and let your instincts be your guide." Naruto henged into the mousy brown haired youth and turned to begin the trip back to Konoha. Before he got out of the temple, the toads stopped him.
"Before you leave, we would like to warn you about changing pasts that don't belong to you. Also, you must know that there are some pasts that can't be changed. You might be able to change some details of an outcome, but the final outcome remains unchanged."
"Huh?" Naruto scratched his head.
"For example, consider the runt of a litter of fox kits. There are many forces working toward its death; the harsh nature of its mother withholding a teat, its own physical weakness, predators looking for the easiest prey. You might step in and eliminate one, say, bottle feed the kit, but in the end, the poor health and the predators are still lying in wait ready to deliver the predetermined fate."
Naruto still just stared at the toads.
"You will be tempted to stop certain events but if you don't understand what truly caused them, if you don't get at the absolute root of those events, you won't change them."
Naruto just shrugged and said, "Ok."
"Just promise us that you will stop and try to remember this before you attempt to change someone's past besides your own."
Naruto blinked. Someone's past besides his own? He hadn't stopped to think that there might be younger versions of other villagers here. He didn't care about that though. He'd have nothing to say to a teenage Kakashi or Iruka.
"Sure. No problem." He shrugged. After all, he was here to see his father.
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Time Waits (Complete)