Chapter Text
Growing up in the orphanage in the middle of a war was… cramped.
Too many kids, not enough attendants, it quickly forced the older kids to step up to take care of the younger ones. Since everyone was expected to take the Academy test and be filtered into the ninja ranks, the oldest ones were the ones who had yet to become genin. Which normally put them at nine or ten.
Minato had tried to petition to be allowed to live alone. They didn’t let him, citing resource shortages.
This was fine, he decided to himself. He could wait for a few years. Suffer through the orphanage for a little bit longer.
It was probably a little selfish of him, to not want to offer support to the little toddlers who had just lost their parents to horrific circumstances, but consider: Minato wasn’t very good at dealing with kids. They freaked him out. He never quite knew what to say to them.
So, he avoided them all as much as possible, sneaking in only to grab meals and reluctantly sleeping in the bunk that he was assigned.
Despite how little he knew the other kids, Minato could still probably pick out Suzumiya Aki.
Simply put, the boy was weird.
Trauma made them all act out, so the orphanage had their fair share of… curious characters. But Suzumiya was especially so.
Once, when he was seven, Minato had wandered into the kitchen, trying to grab his share of dinner slightly earlier.
Suzumiya was standing at the countertop, chopping a stack of carrots. The boy was so short, he had to stand on a stool to be able to reach the chopping board at all. But that wasn’t the strange part; plenty of kids were asked to help out with chores.
The startling part was how quickly he was chopping. Quick, precise movements that made click-click-clicks echo on the wooden block with a dexterity way beyond the league of most regular five-year-olds. Minato moved over to look over his shoulder, “You’re good at knives.”
Suzumiya cringed, missing his finger by a hair’s breadth as he dropped the knife, “What?”
“Sorry.” Minato backed away, “Just wondering how long you’ve been in the Academy. Because my bladework wasn’t that good even last year.”
“Uh… a few months.” Suzumiya replied, frowning slightly, “I’m not very good at kunai. This was just…” He frowned at his hands, “Muscle memory?”
There was something weird about the way he was reacting to his own – markedly impressive feat – that freaked Minato out for a few seconds. They stood in an increasingly awkward silence until Minato finally rushed over to the stack of clean plates waiting to be dirtied by a horde of starving children. Except he was getting to it first.
“See you around.” He nodded quietly, taking a scant portion of rice and slipping out of the window.
When he came back at night, he was braced for the caretakers to be told about him taking his meal earlier than usual.
But none of them mentioned anything. Seems that Suzumiya had kept quiet about it.
Minato would generally keep people’s secrets too, but mostly because he wasn’t brave enough to rat people out. Most other kids wouldn’t hesitate.
It was one of the things that made memories of Suzumiya linger in Minato’s mind for a little longer than the fleeting impressions most of the other orphans left on him.
He didn’t think of Suzumiya much outside of the first time Minato saw him chopping vegetables.
But the kid was still in the orphanage, still being… just a little off.
He moved with an odd stance, back completely straight without any correction. Always up at sunrise, always clean, always dressed as well as he could manage with the fifth-hand clothes provided for the orphanage. Suzumiya had a sense of self-discipline that wasn’t cultivated by anyone but himself. Which was weird.
If Minato really thought about it, Suzumiya had been at the orphanage for as long as he himself had been. Where these idiosyncrasies were being picked up, he had no idea.
But whatever demons Suzumiya was dealing with, at least he wasn’t breaking things or making a mess of the house. Minato ended up being conscripted into repainting the ceiling after one of the brats managed to throw ink on the rafters. Compared to that, he was completely willing to let Suzumiya’s oddness go uncommented on.
Not that the others allowed him that grace. Children fell upon perceived differences like sharks in a bloodbath. The sooner Minato was out of that place, the better.
Thankfully, he graduated from the Academy when he was ten, got assigned to a genin squad, moved out of the orphanage for good, and left that life behind him.
Until he got a field promotion to chunin a few months in, and the orphanage caretakers invited him over to give a speech to spread morale amongst the new recruits.
Minato almost rejected the offer, but it was his duty as a shinobi to cultivate pride for their Village, right?
Now, though, as he approached it, he was regretting it all over again.
They had all tried their best. The kids, the caretakers, the guards, everyone. They were still trying to make things work. And yet it didn’t. He didn’t see it changing much in the year he had been away.
Cracking the door open, and it seemed that things had certainly changed a bit since he had been gone.
Instead of the common clutter that took up the entryway, with muddy shoes thrown around the steps and discarded, broken toys, the entire place was spotless. The shoes were all clean and perfectly arranged in a row on one side of the hall. Home shoes were set up on the other side, though there were only a few pairs of them.
The caretakers had gotten sick of maintaining the entryway ages ago and had given up the battle in favor of making sure they at least took regular baths and had on clean clothes. Had there been a change in staffing to bring about this change?
He stepped inside, looking up at the ceiling to marvel at the spotless corners. The only way he could tell that it was the same place was the light splotch of ink that stubbornly remained after so long.
“Take your shoes off please, Shinobi-san.” A stern, yet high-pitched voice announced beside him.
Minato flinched, blinking down at the kid with shoulder-length brown hair and intense eyes. It took him a second to recognize Suzumiya, beyond the fog of confusion of not having sensed his chakra.
“Maa, Aki-kun, we grew up together, you know.” He laughed uncertainly, “I didn’t feel you there. Has the Academy been teaching chakra suppression now?”
“I make it a point to go unnoticed until needed.” Suzumiya intoned, “And apparently you need to be told to take your shoes off when I just finished clearing the floor. Guest shoes are over there.”
“Uhh…” Minato blanked, “Is that even supposed to be your responsibility?”
“Let Aki have his fun, Minato!” Nobara, one of the caretakers who had been here before him, called out cheerfully, “He’s very particular about things. And the place has never been more spotless.”
Suzumiya didn’t glare, but his lips pressed together tighter in an even more severe expression, “It is simply the proper, polite way to do things.”
Minato took off his sandals and picked up the guest shoes, just to stop Suzumiya from looking at him like that.
His chakra was barely a blip, even at such close range to a well-trained sensor like Minato. It was fascinating. Minato would have asked him what was up with that, but Suzumiya had spaced out again, curling a finger around his hair absently as he drifted back into the main room.
A couple years passed. Minato was promoted to jonin. Perfected a few jutsu. Took up the sealing arts. Got assigned to the front lines.
It was bleak, miserable work. He met plenty of familiar faces – way too many cold and dead and about to be sealed into body scrolls. The few moments of comfort that could be gleaned were huddled around small fires, alongside peers whose names you hoped to never see on a casualty list, despite knowing it was inevitable.
It was across one such fire when he found the strange maroon eyes of Suzumiya staring at him.
He must be eleven now, Minato noted the too-large weapons pack wrapped around his body. Yet still had not grown out of the peculiar stare that had set off most of the mockery. It wasn’t the eyes that were the problem, but more of the dead-eyed daydreaming stare that rankled everyone.
“Aki-kun.” He found himself blurting out before he could think better.
Suzumiya’s eyes blanked further before focusing on him, “…Namikaze-san.” He replied finally.
Oof. Guess they weren’t close enough for that yet. Even if they had had neighboring beds for a short while. The sharp placement of boundaries made him want to shrivel up inside.
“You knew each other?” One of the other shinobi at the fire pit asked curiously.
Minato would have initially agreed, and commented upon their shared history at the orphanage, but experience had taught him to stay quiet about that stuff. No one liked talking about the orphanage.
“We are acquaintances.” Suzumiya replied in a posh accent. Minato had never heard anyone speak like that before, and he certainly didn’t speak like that as a kid. It had grown in as he aged somehow. Which also wasn’t good. Outsiders to the village, no matter how loyal, were never a good sign.
“You’re a genin still, right?” Minato checked, because this type of stuff didn’t happen. Clanless, civilian orphans didn’t make it out alive on the frontlines this long. They were cannon fodder at best. Minato was a once in a lifetime occurrence, and he knew that and he accepted it, but that didn’t make it right.
He wanted Suzumiya to make it out. The same way he wanted all the kids back there to have made it. But it was an impossible dream.
“I will be getting tested for chunin soon after I am sent home from this front.” He replied, before adding on, “I plan to specialize in infiltration.”
Minato didn’t want to say that Suzumiya wouldn’t be good at it but… he had always been effortlessly picked out as the weird one in the group. Which wasn’t a good sign for an infiltration specialist. Still, he appreciated someone having dreams and working towards them.
“Good luck with that, then.” He tried to insert as much good cheer as he could. It wasn’t much. He was tired of war.
Suzumiya looked at him witheringly, telling him just how much stock he put in Minato’s encouragement, but then smiled slightly and nodded.
For most shinobi, that was enough to base an entire friendship on.
Whether or not he considered Suzumiya Aki to be a friend was a moot point, as nearly half a year later, Minato was handed a file at his debriefing right before leaving for the front lines again.
The stern maroon eyes of Suzumiya stared at him, framed by corkscrew curls with a new reddish hue that Minato had never seen on him. On the side of the file, it was sternly marked in bright red ink: Missing-nin.
He had defected.
Minato wished to say that he was surprised. That he was angered by this betrayal. But he really wasn’t. Even in the few moments he had spent around Suzumiya, he had seen the faraway look in his eyes. The way he stared at his reflection as if it was an alien form. The squeamish way he held kunai and shuriken yet was able to drain and skin animals with an efficiency few could match.
Suzumiya had defected. And Minato felt nothing but grim understanding.
Still, orders were orders, so he bowed to the Sandaime and awaited further instructions.
“His threat level is C-Rank at best, so there’s no need to be concerned.” The Hokage told him, “But deserters cannot be allowed to go unchecked. Target him if you see him.”
Minato nodded. Orders were orders.
He didn’t run into the boy anytime soon after that. Maybe months had passed, really, before he had an opportunity to carry out his assignment.
Funnily enough, this only happened because he doubled back to a battlefield to fetch his Hiraishin kunai. They were hard to make, and while in theory they would make good moles if the enemy were to pick them up and recycle them, few people were dumb enough to miss the obvious fuinjustu on the handles. So, to save costs, Minato went back to fetch them if he had used a bit too many in a particular battle, after waiting out the enemy.
All that was left on the backdrop of the rising sun were scattered bodies and craters. Smoke was still drifting about, and if Minato wasn’t careful, he would accidentally step into a deceptively deep mud swamp.
Picking out the custom three-pronged kunai out of the sand and people’s necks, he was more focused on his inventory than anything else.
But he still noted the figure approaching from the treeline, and tensed accordingly.
Looters, was his first guess. Plenty of people had had their lives uprooted by the war, and the only way to recover from that was to take from the dead left behind. He was content to let them be. But then he noticed the auburn corkscrewed hair.
Suzumiya was different now. Barely recognizable really, wearing a slightly loose dark blue suit, with a blazer and ascot and everything. The buttons on it gleamed, out of place in the gritty aftermath of a brutal skirmish.
Minato watched carefully as he moved around the battlefield, making a beeline for one particular corpse, who he leaned down in front of, to place hand on their forehead.
The body twitched, and Minato realized with a jolt that it was alive.
Of course, some people were so fatally injured that bringing them back would be a waste of resources, but it was still startling how Minato hadn’t realized that there were people like that here.
He found his eyes wandering over the scattered dead, wondering how many were still possibly alive, before he fixed his gaze back on Suzumiya, and what he planned to do.
The young man – as laughable as it was to call him that. He must be, what? Thirteen now? – helped the shinobi up, bringing him over to a nearby tree to lean against, while the bloody stumps of their arm and both their legs hemorrhaged blood.
From this angle, he could clearly see the Iwa symbol on his hitai-ate.
Minato concealed himself and his chakra as he crept closer and listened into the conversation between the two.
“-just wanted my kids to sleep safely, you know?” The shinobi mumbled, perhaps delirious from the pain.
“Of course.” Suzumiya replied, and that posh accent remained. Still unplaceable. He was rooting about in his bag, finally pulling out a canteen, “I- I don’t have the medical expertise to help stop the bleeding.” He explained, in way of apology, “But is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable? Anything you would perhaps like to eat? I have bouillabaisse right now, but I will try to make whatever you wish.”
Bouillabaisse??? Minato couldn’t even begin to try and pronounce that.
It seemed that the Iwa shinobi was similarly confused, because Suzumiya elaborated, “Fish soup.”
Minato lingered over them as he watched Suzumiya painstakingly help them take a deep sip from the canteen. The shinobi leaned away, eyes watering slightly as they smiled, broken and desperate, “It’s good.”
“Thank you.” Suzumiya replied somberly.
He helped the man take a few more sips, and after that, they talked. Minato listened intently in case this was a code. In case Suzumiya had joined Iwa’s side. But it really did seem to be a conversation between two strangers. Small talk about nothing.
Until the shinobi finally lay still.
Suzumiya hesitated, before reaching forward to close their eyes, and laid them on their back.
“Konoha Shinobi-san.” He whispered lightly, “I do not wish to have an altercation with you.”
Caught, Minato slid out from the trees. Suzumiya’s eyes widened slightly as they recognized him, but only for a millisecond before his composure was slipping right back into place and they settled for a neutral, “Namikaze-san. I believe you are here to kill me for desertion?”
“Those are my orders.” He agreed, unable to reply with anything else.
Suzumiya nodded blithely and stood up, “Get it over with then.”
Minato hesitated, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with this, “What were you planning to do with that Iwa shinobi?”
“Give him a burial.” Suzumiya replied smoothly, “Everyone deserves to die with dignity. Meant to put up markers for everyone here, but I suppose I’ll be too dead for it to matter.”
Minato’s skin was crawling. The kunai in his hand felt heavier than usual. He had killed plenty of times before. What made this instance different? This was a deserter he had only known tangentially. Of all the people he had killed, this was the type who most deserved it.
But there was no malice in Suzumiya’s actions, from the beginning. He was just not fit to be a shinobi, and had been put in an impossible position.
Minato had loved Jiraiya-sensei’s novels, because the protagonists were always kind. He had never been that kind. Had always chosen Konoha over the decency that he had aspired to.
What right did he have to kill someone who was braver than him?
“Do you always feed people who’re going to die?” He decided to ask instead, while building up the willpower to just go through with it.
Suzumiya shrugged, “Most of the time, it’s people who live. But I thought… it would be the polite thing to do. Now, are you planning on killing me or not?”
Fuck it. What was Suzumiya going to do, anyway? He was tiny, never showed any exceptional promise in anything except for a slight talent for picking up the social cues of the rich and powerful that could be translated as a boon to infiltration. There was no harm in letting one preteen live.
He put away his kunai, “I’m trusting you.” He warned, “If you do anything against Konoha, I will find out. And I will stop you.”
Suzumiya didn’t seem to have expected that, but there was nothing but a slight widening of the eyes and a too-quick bow to show his surprise, “I am grateful.”
They didn’t meet each other for a very long time after that. But in the next battle where he had ended up having to go back for his Hiraishin kunai, he found one left on top of a bento box, pinning a note underneath its largest prong.
Namikaze-san, as a token of my thanks: Stollen bread made with goat’s milk.
He had tested the package for any traps or seals, and finding none, had put it inside a carrier pouch.
Now, the bento was open, and sitting in the middle of his dining table. There was bread inside, just as promised. But it looked like no bread he had ever seen before. Shaped like a cylinder, dusted with sugar on the outside until it was practically white, and the cut open slices on the side showed off the fruit stuffed inside.
“I don’t get why you’re being such a scaredy cat about this.” Kushina pointed out, after he had stared at the bread for several long minutes, trying to identify any poisonous berries inside it, “You said that it was a gift from a civilian, yeah?”
Minato fidgeted, unsure of how to explain the thing about Suzumiya the missing-nin and the orders he had defied, and instead settled on saying: “It could be a ruse from an enemy ninja. Maybe it’s poisonous. What’s su-ta-rran, anyway?”
“I’m gonna find out, dattebane!” Kushina volunteered, picking up a slice of the bread and taking a bite. Minato cringed, waiting for something to happen.
If it was poisonous, then at least Kushina wouldn’t be hurt too badly. The Kyuubi would process all the toxins without harming her. But she’d still taste the poison most likely.
Instead of any outright disgust or retching, Kushina’s eyes lit up.
“This is so good, ‘ttebane!!!” She gushed, already getting another, “Minato, Minato, you can’t let this go. Find whoever made it and get them asylum to Konoha. I need more.”
“Uh… that’s going to be difficult.” Minato could feel cold sweat building up on his forehead. He highly doubted Konoha would let a former deserter come back in as a civilian because of how good their baking was. How had Suzumiya even gotten an oven out there?
He took a bite out of the stollen, because Kushina didn’t get so excited about food that wasn’t ramen often. And…
“Wow.” It really was just that good.
“We should… probably save this up.” He reasoned, “I don’t think we’ll get more soon. Or ever.”
Kushina nodded softly, the joy in her eyes extinguished quickly. This was war. People got lost very easily. It was just a fact of life.
The last time he met Suzumiya Aki, Minato also hadn’t meant to find him.
It was two years and a little bit after the stollen incident.
He was looking for a comrade of his, who had been working guard detail on a courier mission, and had to be left behind after a kunai had taken out his tendon.
The scroll now in safe hands, Minato was free to double back and search for him.
When he found him, the shinobi wasn’t alone. There was a young woman in a white coat crouched over his leg, hands outstretched and emitting the green chakra that signified medical ninjutsu.
Minato stood by, letting her work, and then nodded once she backed away, “Who’re you, miss?” He asked, taking note of the lack of hitai-ate on her person.
She met his eyes with squared shoulders and a set jaw, “A doctor who swore an oath to help those who need it.”
“She and her friend stopped a Suna-nin from getting to me.” Minato’s comrade informed him as he stood up, testing the previously ruined leg against the ground.
Friend…?
As if summoned by their gossip, Suzumiya landed on a branch a few feet above Minato. He walked down quickly, holding a small paper bag in his hands, which he put into the previously injured shinobi’s hands, “Have a cinnamon roll for your troubles.”
“Uh, thanks…?” The man took it from him, visibly confused, but all too willing to dart away after Minato signaled that he would follow soon after.
“Picking up friends now, Suzumiya-kun?” He asked tiredly. Friends meant the possibility of collusion. Of secrets being told. And an iryo-nin no less. There was power in that. It was suspicious.
Suzumiya met his gaze defiantly, “I was getting tired of only having food to offer those who were injured.” He said, “And I would appreciate it if you stopped calling me that. Suzumiya Aki was never a name I could stand.”
Hm. Alright then. Minato glanced at the iryo-nin, who didn’t look a bit surprised at this conversation. If anything, she had reacted oddly to Minato’s usage of the name, though at the time he had chalked it up to Minato knowing the missing-nin baker’s name at all.
“What do you want to be called then?” He asked.
“How does… Francois sound?” The word flowed like water in his voice, though Minato couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Unpronounceable.” He said truthfully.
Amusement and sadness flickered through his face as he turned away, “I suppose so, yeah.”
“Thanks for the storran though… Fu-ran-saw.” Minato called after him, stumbling through the syllables slightly, “My girlfriend liked it a lot.”
The smile on Francois’ face was more real this time as he promised, “Then I shall endeavor to send more your way.”
“Actually, the less I see you, the better.”
Francois launched himself through the trees, likely not hearing a word.
The iryo-nin he left behind laughed sheepishly, “Sorry about them, Konoha-nin-san. I swear they’re the epitome of manners in all other instances.”
They, huh?
Minato watched the iryo-nin follow Francois up through the trees, and then decided that that was the last he was going to have deal with them anyway.
Suzu- Francois had a friend now. And if she was a good one, she would keep them away from ninjas with orders to kill them.
Besides, he was going to be assigned a genin team soon. That would keep him away from enemy territory for a while. And far away from them.