Chapter 581: It's Over
The reunion that followed was nearly identical to the one in the original story, except that every tear shed carried something extra inside it -- an incredulous, barely-believable relief at having something back that should have been lost forever.
Young Naruto didn't believe it at first. Then Minato and Kushina began to explain. One sentence at a time. Patiently. Gently. Pouring out everything they knew, everything they remembered, everything they could say -- as though they were afraid that if they spoke too slowly, he might disappear.
They told him he was their child. That he had been born on the night of the Nine-Tails attack. That they had been torn away before they could look at him properly, hold him properly, say his name to him properly.
They told him they loved him. That they had never stopped. That even after death, even through those long and lightless years, he had lived inside them -- constantly present, constantly thought of, constantly missed.
Young Naruto finally understood.
The two people standing in front of him. The golden-haired Fourth Hokage. The beautiful red-haired woman. These were his father and mother.
The father and mother whose faces he had never been able to picture no matter how hard he tried. Young Naruto, who had believed from childhood that the word "parents" would simply never apply to him, felt the tears break through in that moment -- a dam giving way, nothing that could stop them.
He was not someone who cried easily. From the time he was small, he had learned to swallow the loneliness and the hurt, to cover those unseen wounds with loud laughter and reckless mischief.
But right now, he didn't want to hold back. And he couldn't have if he'd tried.
He threw himself into the red-haired woman's arms and cried. Cried the way a real child cries -- a child who has parents, a child who is loved.
Two children holding their parents who had come back from death, tears running down their faces, both of them saying things, fragments of everything that had been waiting too long.
Satsuki stood a short distance away and watched. Her chest ached. At the same time she felt a profound gratitude.
Compared to the young Sasuke in front of her, she had been genuinely fortunate. Her own parents had not died. She had experienced the terror of nearly losing them, had wept over it, had been afraid -- but the ending had been good. Her parents had accompanied her through her entire childhood safely, present in every moment she had needed them.
And adult Naruto's own Minato and Kushina had been restored many years ago as well. The piece of him that had been missing -- the piece that carried the name "family" -- had long since healed, filled in gradually by parents who had arrived far too late but had arrived nonetheless.
Adult Naruto turned his thoughts over quietly. He had done about as much here as he was going to do.
Young Sasuke's near-defection resolved. The Fourth Hokage and his wife restored, along with the Uchiha parents. The power given to both young Sasuke and young Naruto. And with Danzo removed from the picture, everything else that had been tangled around that knot was untying itself.
Out in the clearing, Kushina was still holding her son -- already a teenager -- her arms locked around him just as tightly as before.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Naruto... It's our fault... leaving you alone for so long..."
She didn't want to think about any of it. Didn't want to think about how she had come back to life when she had been dead, didn't want to engage with anything complicated or effortful that would pull her away from this moment. She only wanted to hold her son. Only wanted to hear his voice and feel his warmth. Only wanted to return, one by one, all the embraces she had never been able to give him -- every single one, leaving nothing out.
As long as she could have this child she had believed she would never be able to watch grow up, Kushina didn't want to think about anything else at all.
Minato was different. After the initial wave of emotion, after the first joy had slowly settled, his reasoning and his feeling found their balance again.
He weighed it for a moment. Then he spoke.
"Naruto... I'm sorry."
His voice carried the specific weight of a responsibility he could not set aside even now -- the responsibility that came with being Hokage, with being the kind of person who faced things clearly.
"You didn't seem surprised that we came back. Do you know -- what happened?"
Minato had barely finished before Kushina gave him a look.
But young Naruto wiped at his face with the back of his sleeve -- an imprecise swipe that didn't accomplish much -- and then his voice came out with something in it he couldn't hide: excitement that was equal parts pride and emotion.
"Dad! You are not going to believe this! My future self did it!"
"And -- there's a Sasuke from another world! A really beautiful older sister! Way better than Sasuke! She was so nice to me! The only thing is..."
Young Sasuke, still tucked against his mother in the clearing, went slightly stiff.
"The only thing is what?" Kushina's voice drifted down from above young Naruto's head, carrying a curious, briefly distracted warmth.
"She's already married..."
Young Naruto gestured in the direction they had come from, finger pointing straight at the edge of the clearing.
"They were right over there -- "
His voice cut off.
Where he was pointing was empty.
A few trees moving in the evening wind. A stretch of grass turned gold and red by the lowering sun. Long, lonesome shadows stretching out with no figures attached to them.
The sun had gone down.
Under the darkening sky, adult Naruto and Satsuki had already left.
They had slipped quietly into the deepening dusk and disappeared -- leaving behind only young Naruto's index finger, still extended, hovering awkwardly in the air, not quite sure whether to stay there or come back down, and a wind blowing in from somewhere far away.