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When Naruto passed away, he was alone.
He was an Uzumaki where it mattered the most, reincarnation of Ashura and Hashirama, blessed by the Sage of the Six Paths himself. Living to be a hundred and twenty wasn't expected, but it certainly wasn't a surprise.
It also meant that everyone he loved, everyone he knew and grew up and lived with, had gone before him. Some died in battle, others by injury or illness, and many by time. His family hurt the most. Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi. Tsunade, Iruka, Konohamaru. His wife... even his children were taken by Death before Naruto. Still loved by the village and admired as a hero, when Naruto passed away, was peacefully in a cold bed on an empty house.
Naruto remembered the Pure Lands, but not quite. He remembered he reunited with everyone he loved, from his parents to his children, and Sakura and Sasuke were there waiting for him, as well all of the loved ones he had lost along the path of life. But it was all just the impressions of a distant, distant memory. A dream well dreamed, to be forgotten upon waking.
And when he opened his eyes to life again, the world was a blur, the various sensations were suffocating and overwhelming, and he couldn't process anything, as if he was still lost in the haze of deep dreams. It was a few months before Naruto became aware of his surroundings. And a few more before he began to be aware of himself and who he once was, but everything was so hazy.
Then, one day, Naruto suddenly realized that he wasn't Naruto. Was when he looked at a pale woman, with hair whiter than his sensei's (先生 : Teacher), and recognized her as Mom. Was when he saw a large, muscular man, red-haired and on fire, and recognized him as Dad.
Was when he heard Touya and recognized as I.
And he realized that Mom wasn't a redhead. That Dad wasn't blond. And I wasn't Naruto.
But it was. And Naruto realized that things weren't exactly right, but he didn't know what was wrong.
Naruto looked at Touya in the mirror. He looked at his red hair, which didn't seem to be the right shade, and wasn't blonde either, and his eyes, which were cyan too much and cerulean too little. He rested his chubby fingers on the reflected surface, watching Touya stagger to follow this action with his dumpy little legs and arms. He mumbled to his reflection, bending his knees and swinging his hands, drool running down his chin.
A melodious giggle sounded behind him and Naruto forgot what he was doing, turning away from the mirror and taking slow, wobbly steps towards Mom, who was looking at him with tenderness and amusement. Naruto stumbled forward and his little legs tripped over themselves, causing him to fall and babble in annoyance, Mom going over to him, slowly, belly big, and picking him up on her arms. She wiped away his drool, checked on him, and Naruto didn't cry like he wanted to before, more interested in the brightly colored toy that Mom handed him.
His contemplations were soon put aside, and Naruto continued to live like a normal baby, sometimes a little too aware, too mature, too intelligent. Sometimes forgetting that he was Touya, too.
Naruto, as baby Touya, still had no concept of time, and didn't know when Mom's belly began to grow. Naruto knew she was pregnant, but he didn't understand what this information really meant. Touya was too young of a body, with a brain too young to process such concepts.
Then, one day, there was an intense commotion in the house. Mom was taken away in a hurry, with pain, and Touya made a weepy face when he was left alone with Nanny, but Naruto wouldn't cry over mere confusion. But the absence of such an important presence was despairing, and Dad was nowhere to be seen either. Touya, all that his baby instincts represented, wanted to cry. Naruto didn't.
But Naruto knew that he was Touya. But Touya didn't act like him, too young, too immature. But not innocent, not naive, because Touya was Naruto, and Naruto wasn't that.
When Dad came back and picked him up and took him outside, a completely different world opening to him, both as Touya and as Naruto, they met Mom and Naruto was introduced to a new person.
Fuyumi-chan, Mom called her. His little sister, she introduced her.
Suddenly, something snapped, and Naruto's mind cleared like never before. Because Naruto looked into those sleepy little eyes, opened to reveal a childish milky blue, and could only think that it was wrong.
It was supposed to be green.
Naruto was turning one year old – incorrect. Naruto was one hundred and twenty, far from one hundred and twenty one.
Touya was turning one year old. Correct. It was January 18th, his birthday. Incorrect – his birthday was October 10th.
Naruto's mind cleared again, seeing the cake adorned with a large candle in the shape of the number one, his mother gently drawing him over to blow its flame together. Naruto, following his instincts to imitate his adult role model, tried to blow out the candle too, but it came out faltering and full of droplets of spit, and was his mother who did all the work in the end, even as she applauded and celebrated Naruto's success.
In her arms, Fuyumi was sleepy, eyes barely open. She was tiny, just a month old, and little white tufts with sprays of red began growing on her tiny head. His father was overjoyed when he saw the sparks of red, but Naruto was not. Not with the white hair, not even with the red, a color he liked so much (they were the wrong color).
Fuyumi's eyes gradually turned gray, a shade only slightly bluer than their mother's.
It was still the wrong color.
Over the next year, learning to talk and walk and names and meanings and much more, Naruto finally gained true awareness of himself, of who he once was, who he was, and what his life had become.
One day he simply woke up with the conscience. It wasn't a climatic or special occasion. It was just an ordinary morning.
Oh, I reincarnated.
And that's it. Uzumaki Naruto died, went to the Pure Lands and entered the cycle of reincarnation like any other mortal soul. The difference was that his soul carried a millennial burden in the name of Ashura. The difference was, now that the cycle of hatred and the millennial conflict had been resolved, his soul was supposed to have been completely washed clean before reincarnation. And it wasn't.
And now, Uzumaki Naruto had to learn to truly live as Todoroki Touya.
His hair began to turn white.
It was hard to stay focused at times. Naruto was struggling to balance his new life with his old one, and now that he was fully aware of who he was – or at least who he once was – it was also difficult at times to act like the little child his (new) parents had named Todoroki Touya, and feeling like an imposter in his own body wasn't a pleasant feeling.
Of course, he knew he was Touya and could recognize that to the people around him. Whether his memories had been wiped clean or not – his soul would always be Touya's.
But Naruto lived over a century as Naruto and he doubted he would be recognizing himself as Touya in any near future. Not when being Uzumaki Naruto meant so much to him, much more than the little more than a year and a half he had lived as Todoroki Touya.
But he wouldn't let it bother him. If Naruto was anything, it was being adaptable to the possible and the impossible, and most of all, to the unpredictable.
And, as said and reiterated, Uzumaki Naruto had more than a century of years and experiences behind him. A retired shinobi (忍 : Japanese Ninja), student and son of a Hokage (火影 : Fire's Shadow), Hokage himself, someone who lived to see many others rise and fall and the world change at a faster and faster rate.
Who lived through a Konoha with a few tens of thousands of inhabitants, a village ruled by a shinobi dictatorship at its worst, to a metropolis of millions and named the second capital of its nation, the world's geopolitical and economic center. And he was there every step of the way, at the forefront of the changes himself, guiding future generations.
Acting like a child, a baby, would be a challenge, but nothing close to what Naruto faced.
And when he finally recognized the familiarity in Fuyumi's eyes... it almost seemed like the world became easier to breathe in.
Touya was almost two, and it was Fuyumi's one-year birthday. The party was simple, private, and very similar to what little Naruto could still remember of his own – including the absence of his father.
Pro-hero number 2, away on a mission. Whatever that meant.
But that didn't matter in the moment, no. (That Hero was something so trivialized in this very different world). Because Naruto had a family now – even more than the parents he couldn't connect with, he had a little sister.
She was so precious, and Naruto loved her so, so much, that it was no surprise to stare into those stormy gray eyes and find them familiar in a completely different way. More than that – those eyes held a glimmer of awareness that really shouldn't exist in a baby.
Suspicion grew. But Naruto couldn't be that lucky.
So he stood back, watched, and hoped.
It was no surprise, not really, that his sister was the first to approach him – Sakura-chan has always been the smartest of the three, after all.
He was hidden away in his room, using a laptop computer to try and learn more about this world. He was almost three years old, should barely be able to read kanji (Japanese writing system) yet, but that didn't matter when the construction of the language was so similar to his past.
Then Fuyumi entered the room, when she was supposedly playing in the living room with their mother, and wasted no time.
"Naruto?" She asked, sure and unsure, and he froze.
Staring at her with wide eyes, Naruto couldn't hide the emotion in his voice, coming out embattled.
"Sakura-chan?" It was a whisper, a prayer almost.
"Ah." Little Fuyumi-chan, white and red hair and gray eyes, teared up. "It's been a few decades since you called me like that."
Yes, it's been. The habit of calling her so childishly didn't last much beyond adolescence, when they became responsible adults with families of their own.
Naruto jumped up from his futon, almost knocking over the computer, and hugged her.
Sakura-chan hugged back with the same intensity.
They both collapsed on the floor and Naruto's heart broke a bit at how small they were, and how Sakura no longer had that overwhelming strength to give the tightest of hugs.
A sob echoed in the enclosed space and Naruto couldn't tell if it was his or hers. Theirs, more likely.
He just held her closer and she desperately responded with her small, weak and fragile arms. Just like baby's.
Naruto couldn't say how long they'd been like this, on the floor and crying, but he knew that it had to end soon. Their father might be away working, but their mother was there – and it wouldn't be very good to explain why her two children were crying so desperately.
"Mom should open the door any minute." Naruto managed to get far enough back from Fuyumi (from Sakura), looking regretfully at the door, only wishing to return to the warmth so familiar yet not of his beloved teammate.
"She fell asleep before I left." Sakura shook her head. "I think we're safe." She spoke softly, then noticed the computer lying on the sheets. "So... what were you doing?" She asked, sniffling a tiny bit and wiping her nose on the sleeve of her cardigan.
Naruto didn't judge, feeling his own stuffy nose just one step away from dripping.
"Oh, that?" He got up from Sakura's arms and walked over to the abandoned device. "I was trying to discover a bit more about our... new world. It's so different." He spoke, his voice raspy.
He sat back down on the futon, Sakura settling next to him as close as physically possible, and Naruto picked up the computer and put it on his lap, which was still open to the page of a news portal.
The internet was a surprise, really. Something so global and widespread didn't exist in his world, although similar systems had been invented there, and it was very useful in its apparent infinity.
The path of technological evolution was very different in both worlds, it seemed. Smartphones were something that sounded brilliant and Naruto wondered why it hadn't been invented in his world, even though they were at similar – but completely unfamiliar – stages of technological advancement, with chakra so closely linked to technology.
"What do you mean? Different?" Sakura asked, frowning in an adorably way.
It was so strange, truly knowing now, and not seeing the byakugou (From 百豪の印 : Strength of a Hundred Seal) up there on her forehead.
"It's not just that the world changed while we were in the Pure Lands, but... it's simply a different world. I don't know if it's a different dimension or a different planet, but it's nothing like we knew."
"Oh." Sakura whispered, approaching over and holding his hand. "Is that why... there's no chakra?"
Naruto tensed.
The truth was ever since he'd been able to think coherently again, remembering his past life, Naruto noticed he couldn't feel or manipulate chakra. Perhaps it was no big deal.
But never, at any time, did it seem to be because his body was young and his chakra pathways underdeveloped.
"If... if it's a different dimension, it could be because there are no Ootsutsuki here. Maybe they haven't opened a portal to our coordinate yet or even can't, like Kamui (神威 : Authority of the Gods)." Naruto spoke up, for the first time voicing the theories that were bubbling in the back of his mind. "If it's a different planet? A shinju (神樹 : Divine Tree) seed has never fallen on this planet, or any other nearby for trillions of kilometers, and the Ootsutsuki never looked at this corner of the universe. We may still be some kind of human, but it doesn't look like... it doesn't look like there's a chakra pathway in our bodies."
Sakura hummed in her childish voice, her eyes too intelligent for a child who wasn't even two years old.
"Which one do you think it is?" She asked quietly.
"I find it doubtful the Shinigami (死神 : Death God) has control of the Pure Lands gate across dimensions. So..." Naruto took a deep breath, glancing down at the computer, opened in an anonymous page after his history had been discovered by his confused mother with the long list of such obvious and nonsensical questions. "A different planet, most likely."
"Does that mean..." Sakura's voice faded away, but Naruto knew her well, and didn't need to listen to nothing more.
Does this mean that our home was out there, somewhere?
Moving on without us?
"Probably, yes." Naruto replied, simply and succinctly.
It was a strange, uncomfortable perspective and one Naruto didn't like to think about. And neither did Sakura, which was why she remained silent.
Naruto carried on reading the news, just as silently, researching each new term and piece of knowledge that appeared, Sakura watching quietly beside him, exploring together the abundance of information this world had at their disposal.
For another two years, it was just the two of them. They always knew, from the moment they recognized each other, it wouldn't stay like this.
And so Todoroki Rei became pregnant again.
But their younger brother wasn't born until tragedy struck.
Naruto was four years old when he woke up with the world burning, flames aching inside him.
His skin was burnt.
Rei was consumed by concern, but put on a brave facade.
Enji... grinned proudly, but dissatisfied.
Sakura cried. She didn't have chakra to heal him.
When Rei went into labor, was premature. The situation with his son's quirk being too powerful for his body and the training he was put through to control it being quite severe was... stressful. To say the least.
Todoroki Natsuo was still born with a good chance of living. And so he did.
His hair grew in little tufts as white as snow, his eyes opened milky gray, and Enji's disappointment was clear.
"Do you think it's Sasuke?" Naruto asked softly over little Natsuo's crib, giving voice to thoughts that neither he nor Sakura would want to raise too many hopes too soon.
"I... I think so." Sakura whispered, leaning over the crib and gently brushing her hand through his soft white tufts. "Holding him was almost like holding Sarada." The contemplation and admiration in her voice was heartwarming.
"Hey, you tiny little bastard." Naruto whispered to the baby who was sleeping as peacefully as Uchiha Sasuke never could, grabbing his hand. "Don't take too long, ok? You can't keep us waiting like this."
"Have sweet dreams, Sasuke-kun." Sakura inclined to place a kiss as light as a bird's feather on his left temple. "We'll be waiting for you."
It almost seemed like little baby Natsuo slept more peacefully after that.
"You're too young to train like that." Sakura whispered in the dead of night, hidden under the futon in Touya's room after a turn that made the training even more brutal.
Naruto listened and tightened his grip on her hand, trying to reassure her.
"I don't have the strength to face Enji." Not dad anymore, not even for the sake of connecting with this new reality. That man didn't deserve to be called that (Naruto couldn't, being a father himself, as bad as he was). "At least it didn't take long to get my flames under enough control not to give me severe burns, even if I still burn easily."
These quirks could be some sort of kekkei genkai (血継限界 : Bloodline limit) with an extreme chance of mutation by generation, one which had nothing to do with chakra, but was the one Naruto was born with. His body might be incompatible – but he couldn't just let it lie dormant inside him, to explode at the worst moment.
"I hate it. These quirks Enji and this world are so obsessed with." Sakura closed her eyes, a frost forming on her skin and making Naruto let go of her hand. "Why couldn't I have at least gotten a quirk of healing?"
Today marked one month since Fuyumi's fourth birthday.
Today was the day Sakura awakened her quirk.
"Our parents have Hellflame and Frost as quirks. Even though healing quirks usually are the result of major mutations, we already knew that the chances were... small."
Because they searched. Sakura was fascinated by the countless scientific platforms where people published all types of studies, a huge global collection of medical data, written in countless different scientific terms that Naruto couldn't begin to understand and sometimes neither could Sakura.
Learning english was a struggle, as they went from a world with only one common language to other with hundreds, but Sakura did it with flying colors and the help of very useful virtual translators.
Sakura then did a lot of research into quirk and genetics after Naruto awakened Blueflame.
The research was not fruitful. Not for what they wanted.
"You never told me, you know." Sakura spoke and Naruto looked curiously at her, watching the thin layer of frost on her skin melt away. "About how you feel with being trained to be a hero."
"Pro-hero." Naruto gently corrected. Being a Hero himself, earning that title with hardship and sacrifice, he didn't like this glorified shinobi profession getting called professional heroism. "Being a pro-hero is the closest thing I have to our past life to work with. And... I don't think I could get used to working formally anyway."
Because Uzumaki Naruto was a shinobi, a Hokage, and a Hero above all.
A job completely focused on helping and saving people was nothing but the best thing he could have wished for in this new world.
"It suits you, doesn't it?" Sakura smiled tenderly, her gray eyes glancing up to his head. "Your hair was red before, wasn't it? I remember it... vaguely."
"Yes." Naruto smiled mournfully.
With red hair and blue eyes... it almost seemed like he was still his parents' son. Minato's and Kushina's.
But Todoroki Touya wasn't and never could be.
Rei was happy, between relieved and afraid, when Fuyumi demonstrated her quirk to their parents, no fire to be seen.
Enji was disappointed. The speed with which he ignored her after that left a bitter taste in Naruto – but an acid one in Sakura.
She would not accept being looked down on.
And so Todoroki Fuyumi joined Todoroki Touya's training uninvited – unwanted. But Enji couldn't handle the impetus of the two of them like that and the training became more bearable for Naruto. Sakura infiltrated more eagerly into each and every session after that.
Ah, Naruto loved her. The woman who always has been his sister in every way, and now, even blood.
Over the next few months, now they knew where to look... it wasn't hard to notice how Natsuo became more and more aware, more serious, acting less like a baby despite not being much more than a year old.
Rei became increasingly worried the more Natsuo seemed to withdraw. Becoming more reserved, more private, less talkative and infinitely less curious and affectionate. Everything babies shouldn't be – but Uchiha Sasuke certainly was.
Then one day, suddenly and for no apparent reason, Natsuo began to stare at them. Almost confused at first, then with increasing suspicion and wariness.
For Enji and Rei this might not have been so noticeable – but Naruto and Sakura saw the hesitant hope in his gray eyes, darker than Fuyumi's and Rei's, and plenty of other conflicting feelings for someone who had gone from having a very dead older brother to two older siblings so different from Itachi.
And yet so familiar nonetheless.
Their reunion wasn't on a particularly good day. Enji had gone overboard with his training and burned Sakura to second degree with his fire, narrowly missing third. The argument between Rei and Enji was full of yelling, heard through multiple walls, and Naruto, only six years old and covered in his own collection of self-inflicted first-degree burns, quietly treated Fuyumi in the bathroom under the enervating gaze of an almost two-year-old Natsuo.
"You need to treat your burns too." Natsuo said to Touya with much more eloquence than a young, antisocial child was supposed to have. "Naruto."
"I know." Naruto replied, adrenaline pumping through his heart under a falsely calm facade. "Sakura's right hand was burned... have your hands developed enough motor coordination to help me instead, Sasuke?"
Naruto turned away from Sakura and looked at his younger brother.
"Of course, you idiot. I'm not a real baby." Sasuke immediately replied, approaching with much more anxiety than he probably wanted to show in his steps.
"Guys." Sakura sighed, scolding them for their behavior and inspecting her almost completely bandaged right arm. "Not as good as my work, but good enough for an occlusive bandage." Naruto rolled his eyes, leaning back so Sasuke could treat him. "Welcome home, Sasuke-kun." Sakura murmured, looking at them.
Sasuke froze, hands clenching the wet towel under the water tap. Naruto smiled indulgently.
"I'm back home... Sakura, Naruto."
Team seven was united once again and this world was nowhere near ready for the hurricane they would bring, shaking the structures of society as they once did.
But for now... Naruto was satisfied with just having his teammates alongside him again.