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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
- 4
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- 6
You can thank Naomi13 for any coherence here. She is an amazing beta! (Yay! I have a beta!)

"But…" Naruto sputtered.
"No. It's enough that we even told you the plan. You don't need to be present at the birth." Minato shook his head. "I can't understand why you'd even want to be."
Naruto was panicked. No, he didn't have this huge desire to watch childbirth, but he knew that day was the day. He had to see what happened. "It's just…I…someone…in case something happens…someone should know…"
Minato just frowned at him. "Do you know something?"
Naruto flushed, knowing he wasn't a good liar. Breaking eye contact, he said, "No. It's just that so much could go wrong."
That was the absolute truth. Minato and the elders had not excluded him from the most of the plans surrounding all the precautions they were putting in place. He knew that Kushina's seal would be at its weakest at the moment of his birth and that the slightest interruption in Minato's concentration would spell disaster.
Minato's jaw clenched. "Nothing, absolutely nothing is going to happen." He grabbed Naruto's sleeve. "Do you hear me? Kushina and my son, my family…" He swallowed, threw Naruto's sleeve out of his grasp and stormed back to his desk.
It had come full circle. Naruto didn't know the details of what was going to happen, but his heart had been shredding as he watched his parents. His mother was blissfully happy with her growing family. She was so confident in your immense stores of power and rock solid determination to protect her family that her happiness never wavered.
And his father… Minato knew doom was hanging over them, a black cloud swollen with the potential for tragedy. Naruto found him pouring over old scrolls, trying to fill his arsenal with the weapons to fight any eventuality. Naruto had gotten enough glimpses to know that Minato had been delving into some scary stuff.
Naruto had wanted revenge, wanted justice from the people who had ruined his life. Now all he felt was agonizing guilt. Indeed, he felt as though it was he who had ruined these two lives. Minato and Kushina, priceless members of their larger family, their community, two people who had reached out to each other, giving and receiving happiness, risked their very lives to give him a life.
And he'd squandered it. He saw that now. Saw hands reaching toward him; Sakura, Iruka, Hinata. He'd turned from them. He saw himself, his eyes turned inward, looking into the dark, the past, never looking up at the sun, out toward bonds that could enrich more lives than just his own. Living in darkness…
Sasuke… They were the same, he and his bastard. But Sasuke had apparently grown, had taken that step out of the shadows of the past, into a today filled with sunshine, glittering with possibilities and an unwritten future. Time…
Kushina carried the demon as he had, but she never let that stand in the way of living her life to the fullest. The birth of her life as a demon vessel had, like all vessels, been bathed in death and carnage. And the residents of Konoha had welcomed her new status much as it had welcomed Naruto's; not well. Still Kushina lived her life to the fullest, determined not to try to predict the future, grabbing for Minato and a family with both hands.
Minato had been a tougher nut to crack, but Kushina was a force of nature and against the pull of her love, he'd ultimately been powerless.
It all made Naruto feel small and immature. He realized that relationships were multisided. If she had let fear and pessimism be her masters, Minato would not have had this last year of his own happiness. Naruto thought of Iruka, Sakura, Tsunade and wondered if he could have enriched others' lives by reaching out and touching them instead of thinking only of himself.
They had done it, all of them. Taken their grief and loss and used it to appreciate rather than fear. They were all going to die. Now standing here, seventeen years in his past, the notion of when seemed less important than the now. Time…
He had also come to realize that the picture in his head had been wrong. He had let his own troubles color his imagination, and placed himself in the role of victim. He assumed everything that happened this day had been a clear-headed set of decisions, with the good of the village easily trumping the good of one small boy.
Now he saw that the events marched along in spite of Minato and Kushina fighting the outcome to their very deaths.
He realized how he could honor his friend's memory and his parents' sacrifices, by taking their examples and living his life to the fullest, connected to the rest of humanity.
The day finally arrived just as the last leaves carpeted the earth in a crisp palette of browns, reds and yellows.
Minato had held his ground about Naruto's presence at the birth. If something happened, Minato argued, he didn't want to have to decide which precious person to save.
So Naruto had been waiting at his parents' home pacing, frantically trying to think of some way to find the cave where they were. In that way, this body he'd borrowed had been useless. He'd give just about anything for even a fraction of his sage abilities.
He was sitting lotus style, his palms over his stomach, striving unsuccessfully to generate enough chakra to find his parents when Minato appeared with a loud pop.
"Taisuke!" Minato rushed to Naruto and handed him a baby, naked and still slippery with afterbirth. "Hold him!"
"What?"
"Kyuubi…" Minato stepped back ready to leave. "I'm counting on you to keep my son safe. No matter what happens."
"But I…"
"Taisuke," Minato interrupted. "This is the most important…" His armor fell away for a scant few seconds during which Naruto saw is profound agony.
Minato stepped forward once again and reached out a finger to touch a downy, bewhiskered cheek. He leaned over and pressed his lips to a fist wrapped around his finger. "I love you, Naruto."
Naruto gasped to an empty room. "I love you, Naruto…" "I love you…" "I love you?" His father had said, "I love you."
A large space inside him, one he hadn't known he had, filled to the brim. And he suddenly knew why he had come back to the past. Someone loved him, loved him enough to die for him. That one declaration could, he knew, sustain him through however his life unfolded.
He was scared now, more afraid than he'd ever been. Initially he'd come here to change or eliminate his own past. Here now, alone in this room, holding himself, a singular opportunity presented itself. It would be so easy…
Then he had an image of his parents' monuments. "Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, two of the world's finest shinobi. Noble, courageous, loving, they died for….nothing!
He couldn't do it. As he heard screams floating through the windows, he once again felt helpless, hopeless.
Just then another loud pop signaled an arrival. He turned and found Minato holding a shuddering, sweating Kushina.
"My baby. My son." She reached toward Naruto. "Give him to me."
Minato laid her on a pallet and Naruto gave the baby to her. Even though she was weak and in obvious pain, she muttered soothing syllables and bared a breast for baby's first feeding.
"I have to get back right away. I'm counting on you, Taisuke." He grabbed a kunai hanging on the wall and was gone that fast.
Naruto knelt by his mother. Kyuubi wasn't entirely gone from her. He could feel a mixture of her chakra and the demon's stretching beyond the walls of their home. She was still trying to contain the demon and mother her new baby at the same time. He wondered if this was the end. She was fading more as the minutes ticked by. Was he going to watch her die right here?
"Can I…" Naruto whispered. "Can I hold you?"
She blinked up at him in surprise. Then she smiled and touched his cheek with her free hand. "Of course, it would comfort me greatly." He knew she was doing this for him, but scooped her into his arms and held her and the baby to his chest. He stroked her hair and listened to the cacophony coming from outside. He'd been holding her for a short while when one last pop signaled Minato's arrival one final time.
"Kushina, I need you. I need both of you." Minato squatted and touched her cheek.
She nodded. "I can help you, but let's leave Naruto…"
"No. We need him, too." Minato couldn't make eye contact with her. "I… He touched the baby's lips where they were latched onto a swollen breast. "I will protect you, Naruto. Always. From beyond the grave."
"Minato! No!" Kushina struggled to sit up.
"Tell me," he interrupted. "The truth. Was it a terrible life?"
"You mean the demon?" He nodded.
She frowned and then her face fell. "No. He is an arrogant pest, but he was no trouble."
Naruto realized the truth of those words. Kyuubi had not impacted him directly. In fact, the demon had probably given him advantages and protection. It was the reactions of others and his responses that had caused him grief.
Minato picked her and the baby up and Naruto panicked. He had to see this through. Just as Minato was beginning to shimmer out of existence, Naruto grabbed his cloak. It worked; seconds later, all four were standing in the shadow of the nine-tails demon.
"Taisuke! I told you…" Minato paused then sighed. "Get over there with Sarutobi. Stay with him." The blond Hokage laid Kushina on the ground and turned to grip Naruto's shoulders before he could leave. "Watch. Listen. Make a record so my son understands…understands that we love him."
Naruto nodded and his eyes burned. "Goodbye. I…I love you."
Minato raised an eyebrow and his lip twitched. "I love you, too, Taisuke. I'd like to think my boy will grow up to be a fine young man like you." Then he turned Naruto around and sent him off with a gentle shove.
Just as he reached the Third Hokage's side, a red haze surrounded the little family facing off with the fiery fox demon.
The barrier swelled with a giant tsunami of chakra. It was Kushina! As she knelt shivering on the rocky soil, chains of pure, potent chakra extended from her body to wrap around the defiant demon.
"Minato," Kushina said. "Make sure Naruto knows I love him."
He knelt and cupped her face. "What?"
"I'll drag him back into my body and take him with me to the grave." She coughed a spray of blood onto the sandy ground under her palms.
"No, not like that. There has to be balance in the spirit world or mankind won't survive. We can use our last bit of chakra to make sure we see Naruto again." He pushed her hair back off her forehead. "We can protect him from beyond the grave."
"Who will take care of him? Who will love our little baby?"
"He will be a hero. Everyone in Konoha will love him," Minato said. "I can use the eight trigrams seal to put your remaining chakra in him. And we can reseal the demon. We'll put half of him into Naruto and I'll take half with me into the dead demon realm. I should be able to put my remaining chakra into him as well."
"We'll still be a family?" She was shuddering and sweating and blood dribbled from the corners of her mouth. She didn't have much time left.
"Yes. Did I tell you?" He smiled sadly at her. "Our son is the child of prophesy. This is the right thing to do." His smile faltered. "I'm sure of it."
"I'll be damned," the Third Hokage murmured. "The Dead Demon Seal."
Naruto's arms fell limp, numb at his side at the sight before him. Floating in a ghostly shimmer was the most horrifying being he'd ever seen. The very air smelled, sounded, tasted like death. A horrible, soul sucking oppression descended over the occupants of the clearing.
As a small rock pedestal appeared from nowhere, the demon railed, tossing its head back and forth. Minato placed his sleeping son on it. "Seal!" Minato yelled to the skies.
"No!" Kyuubi growled as the dead demon shot a bony arm through Minato's chest to the fox demon, grabbing and holding him in place. "You will not place me in that…in any human again."
Defiant to the end, the demon raised his arm to swipe at baby Naruto. Both parents moved and seconds later were hunched over their son, both impaled by a bloody claw.
They were at the end now. Blood poured from gaping wounds and his parents sagged, held in place by a fiery claw. Naruto, tears running in rivers down his cheeks, watched as they gazed lovingly at their son. Then Minato raised his hands and performed one last seal.
And then it was over. The demon had been split, pulled kicking and screaming into two new hosts, the dead demon and baby Naruto. Minato and Kushina lay side by side wrapped in each others' arms, their spirits departed to another kingdom. Their son slept on in peaceful oblivion.
Later, Naruto sat in his rooms, listening to the dissonance of sounds coming in his window from the streets. The sounds of mourners singing bittersweet songs for their dead and for their fallen leader contrasted with the cheering and celebrating over the demon's failure.
He should go back. He'd learned what he needed to know. He hadn't sorted it all out in his head and heart yet, but he would in time. Time…
Half his brain idly stepped through the seals to return home. Location component; check. Chakra binding component; check. Matter splitting component; check. Time component… Time… Time…
Naruto shot up out of his chair. What had the toads said? "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."
Could he? Was it truly possible? And if he did this, how did he decide when? There was much he could try to change. Could he accomplish it? Should he?
He paced and thought all night long. Finally as the sun crested his window sill, he smiled; he'd made his decision. He had no idea if the cosmos would approve of his tampering, but he didn't care. He had an opportunity to, like his mother and father, reach out and take life with both fists. He wasn't about to let something like the natural order of the universe stand in his way.
Content with his decision and more at peace than he'd ever been in his life, he crouched into a lotus position and started the long process that would take him home.
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Time Waits (Complete)