Chapter Text
It wasn’t as gradual as waking up. It wasn’t a sudden moment of realization either.
Naruto is keeping his hands and mind busy by packing his bag. He isn’t thinking about Sasuke, he isn’t thinking about leaving the only home he has ever known for an undetermined amount of time, and he definitely isn’t thinking about his headache. It’s a gentle pressure, like he had his hair tied back too tight.
That was the first sign. The next, is when he went over and closed his blinds, just in case someone was looking in. He shut the lights off, so no one could track his shadow under the front door. He stood taller as he thought about which of his first aid kits to bring.
This gauze would be better for packing bullet hole wounds. Oh right, there aren’t any guns here.
That’s the first thing that made Naruto pause. How did I know that?
Memories of hot-white pain, deafening shots that grazed his arm, putting firm pressure to stop the bleeding on someone's stomach. Oh, yeah.
Jason Todd. He thinks it’s a much better name than Naruto. Jason Uzumaki. Naruto Todd. Jason Todd-Wayne. Wayne. Bruce.
He shakes his head, unpacking his entire bag and repacking it again. Military precision, instead of the jumbled mess he had before. Organized. Food, weapons, and medical supplies are easy to access. Clothes, bed roll, tent, and other survival gear were sealed into a scroll.
Do I acknowledge this?
Two voices answer in sync, one young and raspy, the other old and tired, both eerily similar. Nope.
Naruto slings the bag around his back with a huff, and takes one long look at his apartment. He doesn’t know when he’ll be back, or if his landlord will even keep the space vacant. Jason grabs a black jacket on the way out.
—------
Jiriaya hasn’t spent a lot of time with his godson. It fills him with immense guilt. The kind of guilt that sits in your chest and presses in, that doesn’t go away. He thought that teaching the kid a few things, finding Tsunade, then being on his way would lessen the strain these emotions are putting on his body.
It didn’t help. It made it so much worse. No amount of time spent with the kid will remove the guilt he feels. Every smile, every determined frown, every time Naruto tilts his head when trying to solve a problem. He sees Minato in everything. Minato, Minato, Minato.
If he tried, he would probably be able to see Kushina too, but he doesn’t look for her in the boy's face. Doesn’t want to see her mischievous eyes, her anger, her happiness in Naruto. (He can only think about how angry she would be. Minato would be disappointed, mouth flat and eyebrows furrowed, but Kushina… She would spit and scream like the way he has seen mothers do when their children are in danger. Violent and protective.)
So, he knows that with Sasuke… gone, the Akatsuki after the Bijuus, Kakashi needed to take on more missions after the loss the village suffered during the invasion, and everything that happened during the Chunin exams, Jiraiya knows he needs to take the kid. He knows.
But he mourns. Jiraiya is in a constant state of mourning for things that could have been. If Minato had lived, if Jiraiya stayed in the village, if he pushed for Sensei to let Kakashi take care of Naruto, if he had been here to prevent the Uchiha Massacre, if he would’ve just manned up and taken care of Minato’s kid.
He is constantly grieving.
Jiraiya likes to think that for the small amount of time he has been around Naruto, he has gotten to know the kid pretty okay. Favorite color is probably orange, he likes ramen and practically worships the broth like a deity, he is a hardworker, doesn’t seem very book smart, and is probably abysmal at being stealthy. He has a strong set of lungs, that’s for sure.
So, despite not knowing the kid for very long, he feels like there is something… different right now. He’s sure that if Kakashi were here, the masked Jonin would be able to figure it out, but as it is there isn’t enough time to say goodbye so he won’t get any help there.
Naruto walks up with quiet steps, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders tensed and muscles coiled, eyes shifting around to the other people around the village gate, from the guards to the merchants to the Genin team leaving on a mission, until his gaze lands on Jiraiya.
A blonde eyebrow raises, “Sup, old man?”
Naruto’s voice is a little more raspy, a little deeper, like he’d been crying. Probably still reeling with the loss of his teammate, and leaving behind the village. He is probably scared and wary, which honestly bodes for an easier time training than if the kid was overexcited.
He has a burnt orange undershirt on, but a sturdy looking black jacket that could zip up to cover it up. Maybe the kid wasn’t as clueless as he thought.
Jiraiya nods and gestures the kid to follow him, “Let’s go, kid.”
—------
Naruto is still getting used to his voice. It’s clear to him now that he is going through puberty, remembering when he was getting growing pains and hoping he would one day be taller than Bruce, if only to rub it in the man's face. (He swallows the heaviness in his throat as he thinks of how small he was when he died, how he was told that he would never grow too tall because of malnourishment from childhood, and how the only reason he towered over his brothers was because of the pit remaking him.)
He probably sounds like he smokes a pack a day, with the natural raspiness and gravel sounding undertones as he tries to talk how he used to. His vowels sit weird in his mouth, sometimes wanting to slip into a more Jersey accent, which he knows would sound insanely fucking weird with the old timey, feudal Japanese he speaks.
Naruto touches his own jaw, moving it a bit, running his tongue along his canines. He never noticed that they were pretty sharp compared to other people. Naruto didn’t notice a lot of things.
As a street kid in both lives, there are things you learn when you’re hungry and desperate that he wishes no kid would have to learn. As Jason, he got a well rounded education. He had access to the library, a preppy school paid for by Bruce, and some of the best teachers in the world when he was with the League.
Naruto in this life, however, didn’t have that same experience. He’s street smart, people smart, in a way other shinobi kids weren’t. He couldn’t calculate the trajectory of a kunai like Sasuke, but he could count money and make a budget better than even Sakura, he couldn’t hit hard and fast like Lee, but he could spit, bite, and fight dirty in a back alley like any street kid could.
The same had been said for Jason too. Then Bruce taught him how to knock someone out quickly, Dick taught him how to fly between buildings, and Alfred taught him how to keep his hands steady while making tea even though your knuckles were split and swollen. Talia taught him how to look away from someone's eyes as you killed them, so the light leaving doesn’t replay over and over when you went to sleep next.
Naruto couldn’t read the undertones of conversations when it dealt with politics, he didn’t understand how history could be considered helpful for someone wanting to be a shinobi, and thought anything that wasn’t fighting, jutsu, getting stronger, was a waste of time.
But now he can see how stupid that was. It was stupid of him to not cultivate relationships with the clan heirs while he shared a class with them, it was stupid of him to not pay attention to every scrap of information the academy could’ve given him and gone to the library to do his own research, it was stupid of him to trust those academy instructors when it’s so clear now they were sabotaging him. It was so clear now, the propaganda that’s been shoved down his throat from the moment he could begin to understand the world around him.
The political state of this world, of the village, read like an Orwell novel. A surveillance system that bordered on omnipotent, fear mongering to promote their own agenda, child soldiers, subterfuge, murder, conspiracies, genocides.
He resists the urge to clutch the front of his shirt over his heart as he thinks about Sasuke. His teammate that left for power, yes, but now he sees more of the situation. A scared, terrified, boy that saw his brother murder hundreds, was psychologically and mentally tortured by someone he trusted and loved. (Itachi is Sasuke’s older brother, and that makes Jason's stomach hurt. All he can think about for a moment is Tim’s bloody body crawling on the floor away from him, the rage he felt and still sometimes feels when he thinks of his siblings, of the Robin mantle.
But beyond those memories, before all of that, he thinks of Dick. His first brother. What would drive Dick to murder their entire family? There is nothing. Dick would sooner die than do that. Jason, for all the times he heavily injured and almost killed his little siblings, couldn’t see a situation where he would actually kill all of them anymore. But maybe Itachi didn’t see the clan as his family, or his parents. Maybe he only saw Sasuke as his family. Could he see Dick murdering a bunch of people and leaving a sibling alive, just to traumatize them, to get stronger? No. No, the only time he could see Dick killing anyone, is if there is no other choice if it is to protect. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he secretly wonders if Dick would’ve killed the Joker that night, if it was him instead of Bruce that found his body in that warehouse.
So, is Itachi really a psychopath that no one saw coming before it was too late, or is there something we don’t know? That even Sasuke doesn’t know? Naruto never questioned it before, never having a sibling relationship, or ever looking ‘underneath the underneath’, but now? Now, he has questions, and he knows if he asks them, it’s a one way ticket into getting killed. Again.)
Naruto, privately, thinks that it was Kakashi being injured that pushed Sasuke over the edge.
Here was this strong and capable Jonin, with his own Sharingan, taken out of commission by his brother. This Jonin that was supposed to teach them everything they need to know to get stronger, but only ever taught them the meaning of teamwork and how to walk on trees.
Naruto thought Kakashi was cool, capable, if a lazy and lousy teacher. But now he has so many other teachers to compare Kakashi to, and it has tainted his view on the man.
It’s clear he was carrying ghosts. Numerous and violent. The way his eyes glazed over as he watched them spar, how his body tensed with the need to run every time they talked to him. Naruto remembered how Bruce trained everyday. He never allowed his body to fall behind, to lag. Even while in a coma he had a list of stimulations and physiotherapy he expected whoever was taking care of his body to follow. Dick never went a day without making sure his body could contort and stretch the same way it did when he was in the circus. Tim pushed himself everyday to make sure his intellect and skills could rival any other Robin, not wanting to be the weakest link.
Naruto doesn’t think Damian knew what the word ‘rest’ meant.
So to spend all that time with Kakashi, and not see the man train once? Not even to spar with them, or show them an exercise. The only time he has seen the man sweaty was during the Wave Mission, where the supposed ‘strong and skilled’ Jonin was taken out of commission for days.
So, was Kakashi really all that strong, or were they lied to? Who was Kakashi, really? Why exactly did he have a Sharingan that Sasuke hadn’t known about, was that the only reason he was their sensei?
Questions threatened to cloud his head as he walked side by side with Jiraiya. Conspiracies, the Uchiha Massacre, the Sannin, the Fourth Hokage sealing the fox into a ‘random baby’? So many thoughts that Naruto never had, but that Jason sure as hell does.
And maybe he let these questions overwhelm him for a bit. He allowed it to happen, just so that he couldn’t think about the biggest question in the back of his mind right now.
How in the hell did Jason get here?
—------
The first few hours was spent mostly walking. Jiraiya chatted about his book, pointing things out that he thought Naruto should know. They stayed on the ground, sticking to civilian roads, apparently to send a message. That Naruto wasn’t in Konoha, that the Jinchuriki was under the protection of the Legendary Sannin, Jiraiya.
Then they veered off into the woods, the large trees that defined Fire Country towered over them, and while once Naruto found their size imposing and intimidating in a beautiful way, now all he could think about was how much he missed the city.
His lungs didn’t hurt from heavy smog at all. The sun shone on tan skin, there was no smell of piss, only dirt and the scent of ink from the man next to him. Everything was so green.
They bound up some bark and start to move along the tree tops. It’s similar but also different to jumping over alleys and across rooftops. There isn’t rain pelting his back, he doesn’t need a grappling hook to leap large distances, he doesn’t do any flips he used to copy from Nightwing. He uses his Chakra to stick to the tree, uses his Chakra to push off a branch and onto another. There isn’t any strain on his muscles, he probably wouldn’t even get a workout from this.
Now that they’re away from any civilian, and the only other ears nearby are a small herd of doe three hundred feet to his left behind them, and various small animals they pass in the trees, (wow, his sense of smell is crazy, how did he never notice that other people couldn’t smell like he could?), he asks, “So, what’s the plan?”
—------
A plan. That’s something Jiraiya severely lacks right now. Really, his only plan is to keep the kid away from the village, teach him the Rasengan, finish his next book, and then put the kid back into the village. But from the side eye he is receiving from the blonde at his thoughtful silence, that plan would definitely not be accepted. Tsunade sure gave him an unimpressed look when he told her of that plan.
“What do you think the plan is?” He asks instead, trying to pull off the ‘wise shinobi that knows more than you and will never answer direct questions and sometimes speaks in riddles’ vibe that his sensei always had.
The kid definitely doesn’t see right through it, and answers. “Well, I need strength and endurance training, but nothing will change if I don’t get a healthy diet. I’m smaller than everyone in my grade still, probably from starving all the time, whatever. I know my affinity is Wind, but even after finding that out I was never taught any Wind Jutsus, so it would be smart to learn some of those,” he starts. Jiraiya has to hold in a wince at the words. Starvation, lackluster teachings, all the ways he has failed Minato’s child.
Naruto keeps going, “I know fuck all about the other villages or anything about the culture outside of Konoha, so you’ll need to get me up to speed on all that so I don’t offend anyone or some shit like that. I should probably learn about the other Jinchuriki and Bijuu too.”
The kid gives him an uncertain look, like he’s asking ‘Will you let me learn about them? Do I have the clearance? What will you allow me to know, or is this another secret that pertains to me that you won’t allow me to be let in on?’
Jiraiya just gives him a nod, hoping that conveys his sincerity as he thinks, ‘Yeah, kid, I’ll tell you what I can.’
Naruto accepts this and keeps going. “And, what is it that you specialize in? All they really told us in the academy was that you’re strong and the third’s student.”
Jiraiya rolls his eyes upward, “That academy has fallen quite a bit since my time. Whatever. I trade in secrets, kid. Information, spying, networking. There isn’t much that goes on in the nations that I don’t know about. If a war is brewing, I have to catch it before it can start to simmer. I need to know the bingo book front cover to back cover, everyone on it, and who should be on the next issue, and who should be taken off. Ya get me?”
The kid nods, a sharp look in his eyes that makes him feel ill, because he sees another pair of blue eyes layered on top of those ones. And surprisingly, the kid replies, “Yeah, I get you. So, you gonna teach me the ropes or what?”
Minato grunts in agreement before his brain fully catches the last part of that sentence. ‘Teach me the ropes’, that’s not a term you hear regularly in Fire Country. Whirlpool, Wave, any other coastal or island places, where sailors and large sail boats are common. He probably heard it on that C Rank mission turned almost-slaughter, that took place in Wave, or from some travellers in Konoha. Maybe Naruto would fit right into his spy network, if he could pick up things like that.
He would have to teach the kid subtlety, disguise, the shadows. How to talk to people, who to talk to, where to find them. Shit most shinobi don’t even bother to learn if they aren’t infiltration or spy specialists.
“Yeah, sure. Long as you don’t interrupt my writing, ya hear?”
The kid scoffs, “I won’t interrupt your writing as long as your ‘research’ isn’t just borderline sexual harrassment, fuckin’ peeper.”
Jiraiya laughs, some birds fly away at the loud and sudden noise, “Oh ho ho, I see how you are. Don’t worry, I don’t do anything that the women don’t love,” he reassures teasingly.
The kid looks a little disgusted, and Jiraiya has to hold back his chuckles, “We’ll see, freak.”
He chortles and stops them in a secure place to camp out for the night.
“We’ll set up here, make fire and dinner, then sleep up in the trees. There’s a river that way where we can wash in the morning, where we will enter River Country.” Jiraiya digs through his pack and grabs a scroll, unsealing a book, ‘The River Reader: History, Culture, Politics’ and throws it at the kid, who catches it gently and reads over the cover, flipping it over to read the back too. “Read that, since you wanna learn about the other countries or whatever, you’ll actually pay attention too, if you know what’s good for you.”
If he’s anything like Kushina, which first impressions suggested he was, he will read the first and last paragraph of every chapter and call it good. If he’s anything like Minato, which he sees poking through the more he talks with him, he’ll read it twice and take extensive notes, and make a list of questions to ask later.
The kid nods without protest and puts it in his own pack, before helping make the fire. They eat some food, rest their bodies if not their minds, and put the fire out before it could draw any attention. He shows Naruto how to make it look like they were never there, so there is no trace of a fire at all, and they find two sturdy branches to hold them up while they rest.
Naruto zips up his jacket, puts his hood up, and leans back with the book open between his hands.
—------
‘For a very short time, River Country was considered ‘one of the most ostentatious cities in the nations.’ The discovery of rubber in rubber trees put the small country and its people into high society, with every country wanting to buy the new resource. River Country met those demands, and spent their newfound riches on the creation of a Rainforest Research Institution, and their beloved Grand Opera House.
Their hubris became their downfall. With no shinobi to protect their precious rubber trees, undetected forces from nearly every country came and stole their own rubber tree seeds. Of course, the only successful cultivation of these crops happened in Whirlpool.
The Grand Opera House draws in lovers of fine art from all over. It is said that the original owners were Puppeteers from Sunagakure. Since the loss of the rubber monopoly, the theatre has been the country's main source of income, funding everything from their schools to their research institutes. Every year, they celebrate their culture with film festivals and live music.
Their second source of income, the Katabami Gold Mine…
Naruto hummed to himself. “Have you been to the film festival?”
The blonde looks to Jiraiya on the branch across from him, a little confused at how it got dark so fast. He must’ve been more absorbed in the book than he thought. That isn’t a rare occurrence, remembering spending hours on the couch in the Wayne library, only stopping when interrupted or the sun no longer gave him enough light to see the words on the paper.
He looks to the moon, a sliver crescent in waning, offering no moonlight at all. Then how is he seeing the forest so clearly? Naruto had never noticed this apparent night vision, but now that he has these memories, he is discovering things about himself that are decidedly not normal.
Jiraiya nods, “Yeah, not too long ago. They should be playing some right as we get there, outside that Opera House of theirs.”
Naruto gives a little eye smile, pursing his lips and tilting his head in question. Jiraiya gives a heavy sigh.
“Yeah, whatever, we’ll stop and check it out. But don’t think you can slack on training,” he grumbles, going back to writing and giggling to himself.
“Wouldn’t dream of it…” He drawls and lays back, letting his eyes shut as he slips into that ‘sleep, but not sleep’ state to let his body rest.
Unfortunately, his brain didn’t get the memo, and he dreams. He almost wishes it was a nightmare, but instead it’s something nice. A good memory. The fireplace in the study is warm, and the window he leans against is cold, and Bruce’s voice is a soft rumble to his side. The dream doesn’t tell him what the book is, just the feeling of safety and happiness.
He wakes feeling homesick.
—------
Jiraiya watches as the kid wakes with the birds as the sun barely peaks up over the horizon. “What’s your usual morning routine?”
Naruto thinks for a moment. As Naruto, mornings meant sparring with Sasuke, waiting for Kakashi to show up, and eating whatever food was available.
As Jason, it was a lot more intense. For starters, all the Bats were nocturnal. On normal days, they were up during the night and slept during the day, so his mornings started when the sun was already high in the sky and threatening to dip behind the buildings. He always started with stretching hard muscles so he wouldn’t tear anything, and then did a shit ton of pushups, pullups, situps, and squats. All weighted. Just until he worked up a good sweat and burn, nothing that could debilitate him during work.
Then, he methodically went through all his weapons, making sure there were no wears or tears, that everything was working properly, that nothing would fail him when he needed it.
As Robin, he remembers his morning routine including intense meditation, but after emerging from the Pit, sitting down and reflecting of any sort was made impossible.
So, he answers as truthfully as he can. “I stretch, then meditate, work out, and then make sure all my weapons are taken care of.”
Jiraiya nods, smoothing his hair out. “Did Kakashi have you doing any Chakra exercises?”
Naruto shakes his head. Kakashi didn’t have him do much of anything. “Just said my reserves were huge, cause of my roommate.”
The man sighs and nods. “Okay. Go through your regular routine, as quickly as possible. You’re going to have to get used to doing things on the road, sometimes we’ll need to pack and go as soon as our eyes open, get it?”
The boy nods and jumps down to the forest floor. He does stretches he remembers starting off with as Robin, nothing crazy that Dick was doing, but a good start so that he could eventually get to that point.
Once he does a good amount of working out, while Jiraiya goes over his mental map of the nations, deciding on possible routes they would take on this ‘training trip’, they eat a filling breakfast before heading toward the river.
They run for a while. When Jiraiya had said, ‘river that way,’ he had assumed it would be pretty close. Not hours of running across tree tops, skirting around bluffs, and watching the terrain around them change as they kept going.
How big were the elemental nations compared to the seven continents he was used to? If you overlaid the landmasses, would it be the size of Japan? Australia? Africa? It confused him, and he had to adjust his perception on how far everything is away from each other. In just hours the scenery has changed considerably, and it catches him off guard.
The smell is what hits him first. Long before he can see the water. River water is pretty distinct. Algae, fish, wet grass, mud. Then he heard the rushing water, the buzzing insects, and the trees started to turn greener. The leaves are more neon than forest, vines hanging down, larger plants, brighter birds. Humidity makes his hair frizz and curl at the spiky ends, and he has to make sure to control his breathing so he doesn’t choke on the thick air.
Jiraiya gives him a scentless salve to keep blood sucking mosquitoes and other bugs from latching onto his skin, apparently an Aburame specialty. “Mosquitoes are the number one killer of this country. They carry some nasty diseases that can knock even the strongest shinobi off their feet.”
They finally go through a thick line of trees and past some vines, and in front of him stretches a long river. Dark water, a thick canopy that shades the banks, and a fast current that doesn’t quite make whitecaps yet.
Jiraiya starts to point, “That way is Suna, dry and hot deserts. Ame is over that way, past that is Earth,” he turns to point in the other direction, “Then the ocean, and the Land of Tea peninsula.”
Naruto nods and makes sure to note the position of the sun as he says this, orienting himself properly so that if he ever gets lost, he knows which way Konoha is at least. “Got it. You carry a map?”
Jiraiya shakes his head. “No. Keep everything up here, then no one can steal it.” He points to his head, tapping lightly with his index finger.
Then the man crouches down and presses his hand to a protruding tree root that runs into the water, and an invisible seal reveals itself with a glow. A boat unseals itself off the bank, and Jiraiya grabs the deck of a canoe before it can float away.
“Okay, you’ve got to show me how to do that.” Naruto says, trying to get a glimpse at the fading seal.
Jiraiya laughs, “All in due time, kid.”
—------
Jiraiya directs the boat with ease, giving gruff orders on when to paddle, which side, and when to let the current carry them. Soon, he orders them to paddle hard to the side, long enough that his arms and back start to burn with strain, and the canoe careens into a tributary. The banks get closer, the width smaller so the trees cover them in shade, casting unsettling shadows onto the already dark water.
He tries not to think of the various reptiles, fish, and other underwater creatures he read about in the book last night. Jason would always be a city kid, through and through. The only reason he isn’t making a fuss is because his life as Naruto has given him a better appreciation of nature.
After a few more hours, the sun starts to go down, and it starts to darken. His eyes adjust accordingly, and the stars seem even brighter beyond the tree canopy than they did in Konoha. Definitely brighter than the nonexistent stars in Gotham, where smog and clouds cover the tops of skyscrapers, where the sun doesn’t even dare peek through.
Frogs, owls, and monkeys start to wake up and sing together. To his amusement, he can see bats flying above them, sometimes circling the boat and landing in trees they pass. He relaxes ever so slightly at their chirping, the same noises he heard most of his childhood. Naruto - Jason - watches as the bats emerge from their shelters in the hollows of trees surrounding them.
He snaps back into focus when he sees light up ahead. Naruto narrows his eyes, squinting as he sees a small doc with a lantern on the end.
“We’re here,” Jiraiya says, and guides him on how to maneuver the boat to their destination.