Chapter Text
Naruto wakes with a start the next morning, the makings of a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. He looks towards Hanami, checking if she’s still asleep. By some grace of the gods, the little whirlwind is still fast asleep on the bed.
Naruto stands quietly from his spot in the corner of the room and makes his way towards the bathroom, shutting the door softly. He takes in his own tired reflection in the bathroom mirror.
It had at least been ten years since he’d had a nightmare of any sort. At least, ones that he remembers in the morning. Hinata has mentioned to him before that sometimes he tosses himself in his sleep, but he usually doesn’t remember what his dream was even about. Hinata never presses him, and he doesn’t offer up any guesses for what it could be.
Today, however, he remembers the nightmare quite vividly.
It had been about the Fourth Great Shinobi War—the usual topic of his nightmares.
Most of the time, it’s about losing the war in all of the ways it could have gone wrong. He’s watched everyone he’s ever cared about die in his nightmares at least once.
Including Sakura. The ones about her and Sasuke were always the worst ones. And this one had been no different.
He’s had this particular nightmare before, what feels like eons ago. Sakura’s lifeless body in his arms, her blood in his hands and on his chest and just everywhere—
And he feels just as sick now as all the other times before.
Maybe seeing Sakura twenty years younger had triggered something in him. Dug up memories and feelings that now would surely destroy him inside and out—
Being here, in the past, in another timeline, wherever he is, can’t be good for his health. He hopes Hanami’s idea of checking the archives gets them finally going in the right direction. Because the sooner he gets home, the sooner he can push this entire experience from his mind forever.
But he immediately goes back to his walk with Hanami in the village. To how he’s gotten into this habit of avoiding thinking about Sakura at length. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it until ended up here, and it unsettles him.
They had been so close at one point. And then they just…stopped? For what? It was like a switch had flipped and Sakura didn’t want to be around him anymore. Had he done something wrong? Why couldn’t they at least remain friends?
Is the whole point of him being here to fix whatever mistake it was that he had made? And to what end?
Sure, something else clicked and Sakura decided Naruto could be in her life again. But what had made her shove him out to begin with?
All this thinking early in the morning is making his head hurt. Maybe this is why he avoided it for so long.
Rather than dwell on it further, Naruto washes the cold sweat off his face and it makes him feel a little better.
When Naruto exits the bathroom, he finds Hanami awake. He wants to ask her more questions about her life in her timeline. What her parents are like. How…how they got there.
He shouldn’t want to know. He shouldn’t care. He’d managed to move on—
But he cares all the same and despises himself for it.
“Seeing Mama got you riled up?” Hanami hasn’t called her mother that since she was a little kid. She just wants to see if it elicits any sort of reaction in her not-Papa.
It does. He clenches his fists and swallows thickly.
“No. Of course not.”
“It’s written all over your face,” the girl says, sitting cross-legged on the bed. She bends so that she’s leaning backwards onto her hands. “You looked like you were reevaluating your entire life last night.”
Hanami just had to go and get her smarts from her mother—
No. No. He wasn’t. Isn’t. His world totally hasn’t been turned upside down by one glance at his childhood crush.
Just a crush. He was never actually in love with her. Of course—of course not.
Even he knows it’s a lie.
“I wasn’t.”
“You definitely were.” Her grin reaches from ear to ear, blue eyes dancing with mischief. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Not particularly.” Naruto hopes Hanami drops the subject. He rolls his neck and it pops softly. “You think Kakashi and Ino have made any headway?”
“Don’t avoid the subject,” Hanami says as she sits up, her smile showing no signs of fading. “You still love her, huh?”
Yes. No. Maybe?
“No.” Naruto sighs heavily. He knows he’s not at all convincing, but he won’t give Hanami the satisfaction. “I moved on, remember?”
“To some woman you refuse to name,” Hanami says. “Why won’t you at least tell me about her?”
“We’re not supposed to give details about our lives.” Naruto sounds tired of the excuse, even to his own ears. But he soldiers on anyway. “I—I love my wife.” Of course he does. “And my kids.” Also, of course. “That’s all you really need to know.”
“I dunno,” Hanami says with a teasing lilt to her voice as she leans forward and rests her elbows on her thighs. “I doubt my Papa would stop and stare at some woman he saw in the street.”
“Sakura-chan isn’t just some woman—“ he starts before he can stop himself. He quickly clamps his mouth shut, but Hanami grins like she’s just won a contest.
“Then what is she?” the pink-haired troublemaker goads. “Especially if you refuse to drop that suffix that my Papa uses for his wife.”
“She was my best friend,” Naruto finally gives, and he feels everything he’s ever felt over the last twenty years come bubbling to the surface. “And to this day I don’t know what happened. What I did. To make her outright avoid me and not talk to me unless absolutely necessary for years.”
Oh, Hanami touched a sore spot. Now she’s getting somewhere.
“Listen, kid.” Naruto rubs his face in disbelief in what he’s about to say. “I don’t know that I ever stopped having feelings towards your mother. And whenever we get back—I have no idea what that’ll mean for me.” He looks to Hanami then. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“No, I wanted to know what your wife’s name is,” Hanami says, crossing her arms and not missing a beat.
Riled to the point of not giving a shit anymore, Naruto finally sighs out her name. “Hyuuga Hinata. Her name is Hyuuga Hinata.”
And to Naruto’s absolute surprise, Hanami just stares at him blankly.
“Who?”
“What do you mean who?”
“Like, who’s that?” Hanami lets out a laugh. “So she’s a Hyuuga—“
“She was heir to her clan at one point—“
Hanami’s laugh stops abruptly then. Now she knows who this mystery woman is.
“Hanabi-sama’s sister?” Hanami hides a giggle behind her hand. “Really?”
Naruto huffs, indignant. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Well—isn’t she exiled from her clan?”
Naruto has no idea where this is going. “…Yes?”
“Okay—so—“
Hanami explains that in her timeline, Hyuuga Hanabi took over the clan when her father stepped down, her older sister having been exiled. She doesn’t know about the inner workings of said clan, but she does know that Hyuuga Hinata was later accepted back to work alongside her younger sister. And her Papa talks about her sometimes, but it really only has to do with clan stuff that Hanami doesn’t entirely understand.
In her world, her Papa and Hinata are professional acquaintances at best.
“And that’s funny?”
“It’s hilarious! Cuz Papa would never look her way in a million years!”
Is…is it really that hard to believe?
Now that he thinks about it, even Iruka was surprised when he’d announced his engagement—
“I needed that laugh, thanks old man,” Hanami says, the mirth returning to her eyes. “And thanks for proving my point.”
Naruto decides to admit defeat. For now, if it means she’ll drop the subject.
“Fine. You win.”
“What’d you win, baby blossom?”
Hanami blinks. A new nickname.
Ino walks in the door then, Kakashi close behind her. Naruto is immediately hopeful for news on a way home.
“Oh, nothing, Auntie Ino,” Hanami says with an innocent smile. Ino can see right through it, but there are more pressing matters at hand.
“If there’s a time jutsu out there, it’s not in our archives,” Ino starts with a soft sigh. Hanami’s smile immediately drops, but somehow, Naruto isn’t at all surprised. Of course this wouldn’t be easy. Why did he ever think it could be? “All we found was a tome that explains the theory of time-travel.”
“So, technically, a dead end,” Naruto says, folding his arms over his chest. “Now what do we do?”
“We’ll have to see if we can dig up leads elsewhere,” Kakashi says. “Maybe that tome at least has clues.”
“Maybe you just missed something,” Hanami says with a small huff. “Let me look.”
“Hanami…” Ino knows the girl just wants to go home. She doesn’t think she’d be any less desperate if she had been in a similar situation. “I promise we searched top to bottom for anything else.”
Something is tugging at Hanami, telling her to press. Insist, even. So she does. “If there’s really nothing there, what’s the harm in me trying?”
Ino looks to Naruto then, who gives her an uneasy smile. “I can think of at least one reason to not let you.”
“Hanami’s right,” Kakashi says, hands in his pockets. Ino blinks rapidly at him in surprise. “If there’s truly nothing else there, there’s no harm in letting her try. And we can keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t follow in her father’s footsteps.”
Ino can’t help but laugh a little at that. Hanami just grins and scrunches her nose.
“Fine,” Ino says with a half smile and a sigh. “But don’t get any ideas, you hear me, baby blossom?”
“Loud and clear!”
When they arrive at the archives, Hanami isn’t sure where to start. Or if she’ll remember how to get here and cause trouble in her own timeline.
Not that she plans to, anyway.
The large room is musty-smelling and covered in dust. There’s markings and fingerprints from where Ino and Kakashi had been taking scrolls and tomes on and off shelves, but other than that, the archives remain mostly untouched. Her papa had told her the archives were in a fairly secure location with strict access, but for some reason she had expected the upkeep to be better.
Her not-Papa—obviously transformed for their little field trip—Ino, and Kakashi are keeping an eye on her from the door.
Naruto hopes against all logic Hanami is able to find something. Even if it’s something small, as long as it gets things going in the right direction. He’s already tired of his heart and his head feeling so completely scrambled.
He also hopes he will have forgotten all about this whenever he makes it home.
Hanami walks further into the large room, looking for anything out of place. She twirls the red hair of her wig absently around her finger as she makes her way through the shelves.
Something tugs at her again, telling her to go to her left. She follows the sensation without hesitation.
Kakashi can see this from his vantage point at the door. “Find anything?”
“Maybe,” Hanami calls from between the shelves. She feels drawn towards one in particular and makes a beeline for it.
When she touches the scroll, it emits a bright white light, which somehow tells her she’s found what she’s been looking for. She looks back towards the door, curious as to if her companions had seen the light too.
They clearly had because their eyes are wide as saucers.
She places the scroll under her arm and makes her way towards the door, grinning triumphantly. “Told ya you missed something.”
Kakashi blinks rapidly and wordlessly sticks out his hand for Hanami to give him the scroll. She does so without argument.
When he unravels it, he finds it blank.
“There’s…nothing here,” he says in disbelief, and Hanami slumps in disappointment.
“But—there has to be something—“ Hanami reaches for the scroll, “Let me see—“
Naruto takes it from Kakashi’s hands first, however, and the light returns. Naruto almost drops the damn thing in his shock.
All four of them look at the scroll—and there is a clear script written on the parchment that hadn’t been there before.
“It’s—“ Ino starts.
“It’s a damn riddle,” Naruto finishes for her, in disbelief.
Where lightning strikes dandelions
Hidden by pictures in frames
Of kisses on cheeks
“What?” Hanami says, blinking. “What does that even mean?”
Ino reaches for the scroll to examine it further, but the light fades and the text disappears entirely. She looks to Kakashi then hands the scroll to Hanami. The scroll lights up again and the text reappears.
What?
“Can scrolls…recognize chakra signatures?” Ino asks her Hokage, who shrugs. “Cuz I think this one does.” She knows that seals can be constructed to recognize a specific chakra signature, but this scroll shows no signs of a seal anywhere.
“Meaning it’ll only respond to me or Hanami,” Naruto says, his arms crossed. “Apparently.”
“Yes, apparently so,” Kakashi says as he rubs his chin in thought.
Was the riddle supposed to reveal the location of a jutsu to send them home? Or was this somehow meant to set them off track?
There’s only one way to find out.
“Let’s talk about this in my office.”
“I think we have to go to Kumo,” Hanami says the instant the door to Kakashi’s office shuts behind them. All three adults look at her in surprise.
“What makes you so sure?” Ino asks, and she’s trying really hard not to smile at how much of Sakura she sees in Hanami. It makes her hope against hope that Hanami, or some version of her, is in their future somehow.
The still-redheaded girl shrugs. “The riddle mentioned lightning. Isn’t Kumo in the Land of Lightning?”
“It is,” Kakashi says slowly, “but who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about?”
“Me and not-Papa,” Hanami says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Naruto nearly chokes on his own spit.
“Hanami, we can’t even be seen in the village, what makes you think we can just go wherever we please?”
“Well, who else is gonna go?”
“That’s why I wanted to talk about this here,” Kakashi says as he folds his hands together and rests his chin on his fingers. “The answer’s quite obvious, I think.”
Ino blinks once, twice, before it clicks. “No—“
“If anyone is going to be going anywhere, it’ll be our Naruto and Sakura. And Ino, you’ll be their third teammate.”
“But why—“
“We should go with them!” Hanami interrupts, and she knows what the answer is, but something tells her to try it anyway. “What if they can’t read the scroll? And what are you gonna tell them about what they’re looking for?”
Kakashi leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. “If the scroll recognizes your and this Naruto’s chakra signatures, it might recognize theirs.” Kakashi sighs heavily. He needs to tread this whole situation so carefully, but he’s starting to not know where to step. “I’ll tell them it’s part of Naruto’s Hokage training and he’ll have to go into this with as little information as possible.”
“I don’t know if you can pull Sakura from that job of hers,” Ino says. She glances at Naruto for a brief moment. “The girl is practically married to it. It seems like she works nonstop.”
So this version of Sakura is making similar decisions to Naruto’s back home.
Well, again, not his his—
“Then maybe it’s time someone’s forced her to take a break.” Kakashi then looks to Hanami, even though he’s referring to both her and thirty-nine-year-old Naruto. “You’re not going with them.”
“But—“
“No, and that’s final.”
Actually, maybe it isn’t so final.
After sending Naruto and Hanami off, and telling Hanami in particular to stay out of trouble, he’d asked Ino to stay for a minute. He’d asked her to get their Naruto and Sakura down to his office as soon as she could.
He’d needed to test if the scroll would in fact respond to their chakra signatures. He thought it would at least work for Naruto since it had for his older counterpart.
But it didn’t work for either of them, and both Naruto and Sakura just gave him incredulous looks.
And Kakashi could sense the very palpable tension between them. Ino had been watching them like she’d figure out what their issue is eventually.
Kakashi had ended up dismissing them without further explanation. So now he sits here at his desk, eyes shut and arms folded, frustrated.
“I don’t understand,” he says without moving from his position. Ino just watches him quietly, hand on her hip. “It should have at least worked for Naruto.” He finally opens his eyes and looks at the blonde. “Right?”
“Maybe,” Ino says with a sigh. “We really don’t know that much about any of this.”
“No. We don’t. And it seems our only real lead is dependent on the last two people we should really be sending on a mission.”
Several moments of thoughtful silence pass between them.
Kakashi speaks first. “I don’t have much of a choice but to send them with you. They’re probably your only chance of finding anything. But we’ll need to come up with a cover story for them. And Hanami can’t wear that disguise you got her forever.”
“Too bad the girl can’t hold a transformation for more than a few minutes,” Ino says. “Would certainly make things easier.”
Kakashi nods. “Guess we better figure something out.”
“Not-Papa?”
“Hm?”
“Can we go get ramen?”
They’d only been back in their room for a few minutes. Naruto had at least been hoping to drop his transformation for a bit and relax. It’d already been such a long day.
But then his stomach grumbles, and Hanami grins, knowing he’s been had.
“I’ll behave, promise.” Naruto doesn’t believe her for a second. “I won’t ask you anymore questions about your wife.” She plays with the edges of her red wig and bats her eyelashes, and Naruto gets the feeling she’s tried that on her father before. And it probably worked.
Because it works with him.
“I wouldn’t tell you anything else anyway,” he says as he motions for her to lead the way after transforming once more. She gives him a big smile and he thinks to himself she really is the spitting image of his mother. And that neither of his kids have ever smiled at him quite like that.
Himawari, maybe, on occasion. But he hasn’t given her much to smile about as of late.
After all, he’d missed her birthday a couple of months ago—
“Oi, old man,” Hanami says from the doorway. “I’ll go without you if you want to stay here and sulk—“
“NO, no,” Naruto says quickly as he makes his way towards the door. He could only guess what Hanami would do if left to walk the village alone, even in her disguise. “I’m good. Let’s go.”
Their walk to the ramen shop is largely uneventful, and Naruto has to admit it’s nice to be out in the village in the daytime. Even back home, he doesn’t spend that much time just walking Konoha’s streets. He’s usually holed up in his office most of the day or trying to snuff out some threat to the precarious peace he’s managed in his tenure as Hokage.
He’s wondered at times if there’s more he could have done. He glances at Hanami, who is humming softly to herself, probably just as happy as he is to be out in the sunlight. He doubts she’d know much about the ins and outs of the politics of her world. But just like that morning, he wants to ask even though he feels like he shouldn’t even want to.
Hanami is just glad to be out of that stuffy room. Or—it isn’t really stuffy, but she’s grateful for some semblance of freedom, even if she has to wear this dumb disguise. The way it still manages to make her not-Papa squirm makes it worth the trouble.
When they get to the ramen shop, neither is surprised to see who is behind the counter. If the circumstances are the same, Teuchi retired shortly after rebuilding the shop. His daughter Ayame had taken his place, and she greets them both with a smile.
“Newcomers,” she says as she motions for them to sit. “Welcome to Ichiraku! What can I get for you?”
Hanami stifles a giggle behind her hand, and Naruto lightly bonks the top of her head in admonishment. She sits at the bar without another word, with Naruto following suit.
It’s just so silly. Ayame and Teuchi know her entire family by name, as they stop by quite often. She and her brothers will often drop by after training (after making sure their mother didn’t have dinner planned, of course), and on nights her mother worked late or couldn’t be bothered to cook, or just as a little treat. They had already celebrated two graduations here—hers and Shinachiku’s—and it would likely be the same for Arashi in a couple of years.
So obviously Hanami giggles a bit at the thought of being a complete stranger to the owners of Ichiraku ramen.
Before ordering, Naruto double checks his jacket pocket for his trusty Gama-chan. He assumes the currency here is the same, and it should be just as good, right?
Maybe he should have thought of that before they’d made their way over here. But he’d been too distracted by his own thoughts.
“Something the matter?” Ayame says, smile unwavering.
“Just making sure I have my wallet and I don’t waste your time,” Naruto says with a sheepish smile of his own. “But we’re good.” Without thinking, he shows her his frog-shaped wallet for emphasis. The brunette giggles softly.
“I have a regular with a wallet just like that,” she says, “but here I’d thought his was one of a kind.”
Naruto’s cheeks tinge red and he quickly stuffs his wallet back into his pocket. It is, as far as he’s aware, which is why he’s never replaced it despite it more than showing its age.
“I’ll just take a miso,” he says through his embarrassment. Hanami, unsurprisingly, is giggling quietly next to him. He has half a mind to bonk her again. But he settles for gently nudging her shoulder with his elbow.
“Shio, please,” she says through stifled giggles as she rubs her shoulder. Ayame just shrugs and turns to make their order.
They eat their meal in comfortable silence.
It occurs to Naruto briefly that he doesn’t really take his kids to Ichiraku much. If at all. One instance with his son comes to mind, and it hadn’t even gone well.
The boy was rude and standoffish. Always complaining about something. A bit of a brat, honestly.
And maybe that’s why he’d never tried again—even with Himawari. She’d probably be more willing than her older brother, but it isn’t like Naruto has had the time much these days anyway.
Or, rather, the willingness to make the time. He realizes he’s not dissimilar to the Sakura of this timeline—married to his work.
“You’re spacing again,” Hanami says before taking another bite of her ramen. She’s mostly swallowed when she speaks again. “Do you and the missus come here a lot?”
No. It’s usually just him these days. “You said you wouldn’t ask about her again.”
“Oh, c’mon, it’s just a yes or no. I’m behaving.”
Naruto can hear Ayame laughing quietly to herself, trying to pretend she can’t hear their conversation as she helps other customers. His cheeks tinge red again.
“Hanami,” Naruto says pointedly, but he doesn’t elaborate further. He just pointedly looks towards Ayame’s direction, and Hanami rolls her eyes. Ayame clearly is no longer paying attention.
“Just a yes or no and I’ll drop it,” she says as she bats her eyelashes, again, and he caves. Again.
This soft spot for her that is slowly but surely developing will definitely be the death of him.
“No,” he says, and the girl shrugs.
“Was that so hard?”
“Excruciating,” he says with an eye roll of his own.
Hanami does indeed leave him alone after that, at least for now.
Naruto pays and sighs inwardly in relief that his gyo count the same here as it does back home, because Ayame doesn’t raise a fuss and bids them off with a smile.
“Ya know, I didn’t even think about our money being any good here,” Hanami says once they’ve returned to that stuffy room for the evening. “You even have the same wallet that Papa refuses to get rid of.”
One of the few similarities they seem to share.
“It does its job just fine,” Naruto says as he settles in his corner of the room for the night. Hanami scoffs like she’s heard that a million times.
“Mom’s tried to find him something similar before,” she says, and Naruto doesn’t stop her from sharing more details of her life with her parents. He wants to know more but doesn’t want to admit to it out loud.
Because he should be content with his life as it is.
“I’m guessing she hasn’t been able to,” Naruto says. Hanami tosses her wig onto the bed, then herself with a huff.
“She says it’s never quite right, but she thinks Papa’s is past the point of repair. She’s tried.”
That’s…awfully thoughtful of her.
“They like to do stuff like that for each other all the time,” Hanami says with a slight head tilt. “You and the missus don’t?”
Oh, shit. He’d said that out loud.
Well—no, they don’t. Beyond that scarf Hinata had made him forever ago.
Come to think of it, couldn’t she fix his decrepit old wallet if she wanted to? Should he even ask that of her?
“Hey, old man, you’re spacing again.”
Gods. Can he go home yet?
“She gave me this scarf once,” he says. “To replace one my mother had apparently made for me.”
Hanami blinks rapidly. Her father still has that scarf somewhere, if she recalls correctly, in a box of memories he keeps in their coat closet. Her mother had patched it up for him, and on occasion he’ll wear it in the winter. But he’s very careful to put it back in its spot when he’s done with it.
“Replace it?” Hanami says, not hiding her surprise.
Is that weird? Should Hinata not have done that?
“Yeah, the one Ma made had started to fall apart,” Naruto says, watching Hanami with a raised brow. “Don’t tell me even that’s weird.”
“I mean, if you’re happy with it,” Hanami says with a shrug.
Of course he’s happy with it.
A few beats of silence pass between them. He has to know.
“Does your father have something like it?”
Hanami smiles, eyes glinting. She wants to tell him these details. To make him squirm, no doubt.
He’d have to do his best to look unaffected, but he knows he’s been doing a piss-poor job of that. But it won’t stop him from trying.
“He does,” she says, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She rests her chin on one of her knees. “Mom taught herself how to sew so she could fix it.”
Fix it. Not replace it. Does he even have the original? He can’t remember. The thought of not having it makes his stomach flip.
“Oh,” is all Naruto can think to say in response.
“Anyways,” Hanami says, making a show of sighing and stretching, giving Naruto the opportunity to ask more questions if he wants. He opens his mouth to ask something else, but clamps it shut quickly.
That’s enough for one day, Naruto thinks.
When her not-Papa doesn’t ask any more questions about her parents, Hanami grabs the one of the changes of clothes she’d brought on her original mission and heads for the bathroom. “I’m gonna get ready for bed. Oh, and thanks for dinner!”
Naruto nods quietly, and the bathroom door shuts with a soft click.
The longer he’s here, the more he questions his life back home.
Ino gets home that night later than she’d hoped. It’s seemed to have become the trend since this whole universe-hopping fiasco started.
After hashing out a believable—or, okay, somewhat believable—cover story for their universe jumpers for three hours, Ino had asked Kakashi about the tome they’d found. If she could take it home and look for any clues or leads beyond the strange scroll Hanami found.
Kakashi had been hesitant at first—and rightfully so. The information is classified and top secret. But if Ino is to be the glue that holds everything together on this mission, she’d need to be well prepared. She needs to know what the rules actually are. And maybe she’d find some clues how to get them home while she’s at it.
And it’s not like she has anyone at home to look over her shoulder.
Ino hasn’t been able to move out of her father’s house since he passed. It holds so many memories of him and her mother. If she moves—
If she moves, it’s finally acknowledging she’s lost them both. And the thought always leaves her with a hollowed-out feeling in her chest.
Ino tosses off her shoes at the entrance and brings the book, placed in a bag Kakashi had provided, over to the sofa in the middle of the family room. Well, it isn’t really much of a family room if it’s just her—.
She shakes her head to stop her own train of thought. It’s been a long time since she’d spiraled all alone on this very sofa—and she would really like to keep it away.
It’s probably just the stress of the situation that’s got her like this. Some light reading would be a good distraction.
After dusting off the thick, leather-bound book, she examines the cover for a title or an author. When she’d first found it, she’d just skimmed the inside without really looking. And she finds there’s neither title nor author etched anywhere.
Strange.
She figures she’ll start from the beginning.