#I read “a decade is more than half my life and immediately withered into dust

[durinsheir]

I’ve done it you guys I’ve finally felt the “holy shit I’m fucking old” emotion that seems to strike without warning on this website

[random-tinies]

Crowza - 1

I’ve had this AU idea sitting in my brain for a while and I’m going to turn it into a full-on fanfiction series. I’ll be tagging it as Crowza AU Here is Chapter 1 💙 No trigger warnings for this one. ^^ just good fluff. ft. Mumza as Lady Death, 1.6k words

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There truly is no proper comparison to flying. Sure you can describe the feeling, you can say it's like swimming in freedom, but it will never compare to actually flying.

Philza thinks about this as he soars through the air, wind blowing through his primary feathers. Occasionally he flaps, defying the gravity that tries to pull him back down to earth. He takes a breath of fresh air, relishing the way it chills his lungs. If it weren't for his cloak and his feathers, he would be quite cold this high above the ground. Especially in early spring.

Although it's early April, occasional drifts of snow still dot the landscape below him as the birdman flies north for the summer. Twice a year, he makes this migration, and although it may be warmer in the southern areas, Phil enjoys the northern pine forest he calls his summer home. It's special to him for three reasons.

Kristin, his home, and his boys.

First things first, however. He needs to stop by his cache and see if it had been raided by squirrels while he was gone. Or if anything fresh is caught in his traps. Nasty buggers, always giving him grief. Troublesome creatures. Phil banks left and dives down towards a thick old oak tree with winding and twisted branches. He lands on one, bird feet gripping with sharp claws, and hops down to where his stash should be.

Near the center of the tree, the branches arch and wind themselves together in such a way that it forms the perfect shelter for someone his size. It had taken him a good century to help the young tree grow in such a way, but it gives him the perfect shelter year after year so every painstaking day of tying young branches was worth it.

Phil looks around to make sure he's not being watched before hopping inside. One can never be too careful when your cache is involved. His wings fold behind him as he walks forward, ducks under a large branch, and enters his storage room. A quick scan confirms that nothing found his home this winter and he relaxes, breathing a sigh of relief and grabbing some squirrel jerky to munch on.

It had been a long flight and he wants nothing more than to just flop on his bed and take a short nap, but he has two homes to visit first. His wings seem to ache in protest but he steps back outside and takes off into the sky once more.

A few strong flaps put him in the air and he soars the short distance it takes to get to his boys' cabin. He can see it from the top of his tree, it is an easy flight. He notices the youngest of the three outside chopping firewood and decides to land on the roof some ways above him. The sky is overcast enough that his silhouette looks just like a rather large crow.

The movement catches the boy's eye and he looks up, putting a gloved hand up to his face to try and shield his eyes from the bright white cloudshine. He squints and yells up at what he assumes is the same bird he's been seeing for years now, "Oi! Good to see you! Took your sweet time this year!"

Phil shuffles his wings and scoffs quietly. He's right on time. He always shows up to his Lady's forest on the same day every year. He watches his boy fondly as he continues to talk to himself, quieter now as he hefts the axe to chop another log in half. "Y'know, Wilbur thinks you're a crow but I think you're too big to be a crow. Plus I don't think crows can live as long as you have."

Phil sits down on the peak of the roof, legs still under him in case he needs a speedy escape. He listens to the peaceful sounds of a quiet life. A cold chill on the breeze, shadows crossing the ground as clouds moved through the sky, the occasional birdsong reaching their ears, the thunk of the axe as it chops through the wood.

The door to the cabin opens and Phil tenses, ready to fly off if attention is directed to him. He’s a little close to it and it could be a risk if whoever steps out decides to look up at him. While he loves these boys, if they find out he isn’t a crow then he’d never be able to return and watch them again.

A tall brunette steps out and calls to the blonde, “Hey, Tommy, when you’re done out here, could you come inside? Techno got a letter and we need to discuss it together, as a family.”

Tommy nods and sets down the axe. He nods towards the roof. “Hey, Wilbur, your crow friend is back. Silent as always.”

Whelp! Time to get out of there! Phil immediately takes off, flapping hard and flying over the boys’ heads. His silhouette is even harder to recognize as anything other than a crow as he soared away. Wilbur says, “Oh yeah, there it is, just like every year. You reckon he likes us?”

Whatever Tommy replies, Phil doesn’t hear it. He’s too far away, heading towards where Kristin lives in the forest. The landscape below him becomes denser and darker, the pines twisting and behaving oddly. Branches bend lower and often twist together. Crow caws are more frequent and a few join him as he flies towards his destination.

“Dadza!”

“Philza! It’s been so long!”

“Return of Dadza! Dadza! We missed you!”

Phil chuckles, striking up casual conversation with them, telling them stories of his travels. He does this every year when he returns from migration. Some of the murder follow him south during the winter but let him visit his boys alone. They prefer to stay with their lady, and Phil doesn’t blame them. He’d stay with her all the time if he was allowed.

At last they reach Kristin’s home. The murder descends and a few part ways to fly in through the open window. Phil smiles as he lands on a doormat that reads “On Death’s Door” and chuckles at the inside joke as he uses the tiny knocker built at the bottom just for him. The door opens and the most beautiful woman in all of history looks down at him with a fond smile. “And who would this be, knocking at my door?”

She wears a long black dress that graces her curves breathtakingly. Dark brown hair flows off her shoulders like a waterfall of shadows. Her voice is like the sound of windchimes in a gentle breeze, enveloping Phil in its peace. Even if his feet are rooted to the ground, his heart soars with joy. She is his everything and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Phil takes his hat off and bows to her, wings spread. When he looks up, she leans down and extends a hand towards him to step up onto. “You know I’d never miss an opportunity to have a brush with Death.”

His grin widens as she gives him a withering look. “You’ve said the same joke for the last five decades.”

“And you’ve said the same response for the last four decades.”

He laughs and balances himself as she lifts her hand. He bows his head as she presses a kiss to the top of his head, blush dusting his cheeks. The kiss of Death, if you will. Even if they’ve been together for forever, he’ll never get over these little moments. Coming back from his winter migration is his favorite part of the year.

Phil’s feathers ruffle and he places his hat back on his head. Nobody can make him feel as light as she can. She strokes his feathers and asks him about his flight, letting him perch on her hand. He tells her about the herd of deer he passed who had two fawns among them and the pack of wolves he heard while roosting one night.

She listens attentively to his words and pours him a small cup of tea. Phil could never express his love for her in the right way but he knows she understands. Their mob settles around them and drinks in every word, occasionally adding their own and squabbling amongst themselves. This is his family as much as his boys in their cabin are. He feels peace, drinking the bittersweet tea in his tiny cup. 

A younger crow hops up and leans against Phil and preens his wings.

“Mumza! Mumza and Dadza!”

“Puppies! We love to see it!”

“Can we go visit them? I want to hear them!”

“Shiny ring… Phil, what about your boys?”

Phil hums and Kristin snaps her fingers. “I almost forgot! I meant to warn you, but the air is different this year. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but I’ve felt more death in these areas than before. A few of my crows have gone missing.” She pets down his back, smoothing his feathers. “Be careful. I don’t want you to be among them, okay?”

He gives her his best reassuring smile and says, “You know me, Kristin. I never let anything happen to me. How many years have I managed to escape death?”

She chuckles. “Many times, though there have been some close calls. Just watch out. There are fates worse than death, my love.”

He bows his head. “Of course, my lady. I’ll keep an eye out.”

The rest of the night goes smoothly. New crows that followed Phil there introduce themselves to Lady Death and join their flock. By the time the fire in the fireplace dies down, the two are fast asleep in her bed, snuggled together and dreaming of a happy future.

[raendown]

@letliv3 chapter 4!

Pairing: none Word count: 3035 Summary: A coup hidden in the shadows for decades, a scroll with a seal he didn't mean to activate; Naruto finds himself whisked away from Konoha to a destination unknown and meets a little girl who appears to be - his mom?

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Chapter 4

Shizuko found him an hour later, still plastered to Kushina’s side. The Uzukage came to find him herself rather than sending someone to fetch him, which was rather surprising, and her face was more serious than its usual pinched expression. Naruto followed her back to her surprisingly spacious office, built in to the same rocky knoll from which she addressed the public whenever necessary. Kushina trotted at his heels with a smug smile for being included.

Once they were all tucked away in the office, however, it was obvious that she became bored rather quickly as the two adults immediately began to speak about ‘boring adult stuff’. They talked about casualties and village defenses, property damage and body disposal, funeral costs and the implications of war. All very important things but nothing that seemed cool or fun to a child who didn’t yet understand their true weight.

Until he was allowed to fall back in to it, Naruto hadn’t realized how much he missed his role as Hokage. After spending his entire life chasing the dream it had felt so good to finally achieve his goal. Then before he could blink he was here in the past and there had been too many things to adjust to for him to spare a thought for the responsibilities that came with running a village. It felt good to speak with Shizuko as one Kage to another; it felt like getting back to who he knew he was supposed to be. He couldn’t say he had slacked off in his efforts to find his way back home but Naruto had to admit that the longer he spent in Uzushio, the more reluctant he was to leave.

Just as it seemed Kushina was about to fall asleep in her chair, Shizuko finally got around to the point she had actually brought him here to talk about.

“Uzushio owes you a great debt. When you first arrived here you spoke of the destruction of our village; without your presence with us today those events would surely have come to pass yet again. However, this creates a new problem.”

“Huh?” Naruto scratched at his head. “What new problem?”

“I’m aware of how uneducated you are about the nature of fūinjutsu, let alone time travel and it’s wide ranging effects on the continuum, so I will keep this as simple as possible.”

“Good ‘cause you’re already losing me here.”

Shizuko gaze him a withering stare before continuing. “By stopping the destruction of our village you have impacted the events of your own history in a rather exceptional manner. It is imperative that we send you back to your own time as quickly as possible to avoid any further changes. We have no way of knowing whether the impact of your influence will be positive or negative. You must go, and soon.”

Her words were like sharp pins callously popping the bubble he had allowed himself to sink in to over the past month. Of course he knew that he had to go home. When he left his entire home had been in danger, the lives of everyone he loved at risk, but over the past few weeks he hadn’t allowed the panic to get to him because he figured he could traipse back through the ‘time channels’ whenever he wanted and be right back where he started. It hadn’t occurred to him that it would ever matter how long he stayed or even why. As much as he knew he had to go-

Looking to the side, Naruto met Kushina’s curious eyes. He didn’t want to go. In his own time he had a wife and children and an entire village of people to take care of. But here, in the past, he had a mother.

“So, what then?” he asked eventually, dragging his eyes away from the redhead beside him to look at the one across instead. “We step up the training or something?”

“Actually, I’ve thought of a faster way but it will take time for the woman I have contacted to arrive here. You have one week to wrap up any business you have entangled yourself in here. If everything goes as planned you shall be gone seven days from now.”

“Seven days!?” Naruto’s jaw nearly unhinged it dropped so fast. “How am I supposed to learn how to use high-level sealing techniques in seven days!? Who did you contact, some super awesome master sage?”

Shizuko sniffed and waved him towards the door, a clear dismissal. “Of course not. I called upon an old friend of mine from another clan. Don’t fret too much about it.”

“You don’t really have any good reason for not telling me do you? I’m not a child whether I’ve gone through your rite of whatever or not and you told me everything else. You’re just being stingy now, aren’t you?” Naruto narrowed his eyes as her, grinning a little as he felt Kushina giggle in to his side. Shizuko huffed and turned up her nose and that was all the answer he needed to that.

Then a new thought occurred to him which hadn’t before and Naruto leaned forward, both hands planted on the Uzukage’s desk.

“Hey! If I changed the past then that means when I go back to the future then I’ll still have my mom right? Yeah! Yeah! Because I saved Uzushio and made everything different! Right?”

“Wrong.” One sharply spoken word from her froze him in place. “I’ve already told you: you understand nothing about the time channels or what it means to use them. What you did when you changed a major event was create an entirely separate timeline and when you return to when you came from you will be returning to your original timeline. Nothing will have changed in your world, just as we shall never know what would have been different in ours.”

“Oh.”

Naruto sank back down in to his chair feeling as though his entire body had been submerged in ice cold water, dreams he’d only just conceived of already swirling down the drain before he’d even had a chance to really reach for them. White noise filled his thoughts until all he was left with was a sense of loss and longing he thought he’d put behind him many years ago.

Small fingers slipped in to his own and he looked up to find Kushina staring back at him, more understanding in those eyes than any six year old should be capable of. No one so young should be able to look up at him with such sadness. He half thought she should be throwing a tantrum, screaming and crying about how unfair it all was. Or maybe that was just what he wanted to do despite knowing he was just a little too old for such antics.

But it was all so unfair! He’d fallen through time and fixed something bad! Shouldn’t he get some kind of reward for it all?

Leaning forward to bow his head down low, Naruto clutched at a fistful of hair with his free hand and gave himself a few moments to just breathe through it all. He wished he could think of a way to put his feelings in to words but they were just so jumbled up inside his chest that it all became one big ball of confusion he had no idea how to sort through.

“Damn,” was all he came up with eventually. “I don’t know what to say. Shikamaru would though. My friend, he’s a Nara and he’s really smart. He’d say something really brainy like…’all we are is dust in the wind’. I remember him saying that once.”

“What does it mean?” Kushina tugged on his fingers and gave him that look she always gave him when she thought he’d said something stupid. It brought a smile to his face for a moment as he admitted his own folly.

“I don’t know but it sounded cool when he said it.”

“It means,” Shizuko spoke up again at last, “that no matter what we do, nothing ever really matters. That our dreams and passions are as meaningless as the dust that floats upon the wind. You may chase after them as long as you like and in the end you will have accomplished nothing.” Naruto shuddered at the chill in her words, wondering if the Uzukage had ever had her own dreams shattered to speak so coldly.

“That’s stupid!”

Both of the adults startled and looked over to find Kushina rolling her eyes, taking back her hand so she could prop both of them on her hips with all the tiny irritation a kid her age could muster.

“You didn’t do nothing! You saved the whole village! Your mom – me – I’m already gone where you come from so you don’t lose anything. Isn’t it good that this me from now gets to live? You did something! So whatever to your stupid dust thing. If dust on the wind means it’s pointless then…then…then we burn the dust!”

“Uh…burn it?” Naruto asked. Kushina flushed a little.

“I don’t know. I thought it would sound cooler.”

He stared at her for a long moment before bursting in to unrestrained laughter, truly not having expected any of that. Suddenly he had a lot more respect for Kakashi-sensei and all that poor man had to deal with when Team 7 were young little sprites feeding him exactly that same kind of nonsense. Yet he couldn’t deny that he felt oddly uplifted after her ridiculous little speech. She barely even knew what she was talking about, all she had to keep her going was a will to fight and the refusal to take a hit lying down, and Naruto wondered when he would stop being amazed at how much of himself he saw in her.

She was definitely right about one thing though. He had gotten some amazing gifts out of this experience, memories he would keep with him for the rest of his days. Even if nothing changed when he returned home nothing could ever take these moments away from him when he had laughed with his mother, cried with his mother, held her in his arms and loved her almost more than his heart knew how to.

“Alright.” Rubbing his right side as the laughter faded, Naruto threw his other arm over Kushina’s shoulders and pulled her in close. “We burn the dust,” he declared. “Whatever that means!”

Kushina laughed and leaned in to him and really that was all he could ask for.

-

Later, once they’d finally vacated Shizuko’s office as they’d been asked to and squirreled themselves away in one of the small coves ringing the island’s edges, she asked him a question he’d been waiting for – and dreading – since the day that he arrived here. She asked him about how she died.

Digging his toes in to the sand, Naruto tilted his head back to stare at the stars just starting to come out above them. Peeking out the corner of his eye, he could see Kushina watching him with her thumbnail caught between her teeth and her long hair pulled in all sorts of directions by the wind. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before answering. Strange, how so many pains from so long ago kept opening after he thought they had already healed over.

Over the past month he had gone back and forth between so many different plans on how he was going to answer this question when she asked him but after the meeting in Shizuko’s office he had finally come to a solid decision. Even if it changed the course of events, even if he wasn’t supposed to, there was no way he could send his mother to her death a second time without any sort of warning. And that was supposing she even went to Konoha at all now that her home hadn’t been demolished, leaving her with nowhere to go. Hopefully the truth wouldn’t keep her away. Naruto couldn’t imagine a world in which his mom and dad didn’t get married; they belonged together!

“When Uzushio was destroyed,” he began in a steady voice, “you came to live in Konoha and after a few years you became the new jinchūriki of the nine-tailed fox, the one I have inside me right now. You married my dad and eventually you guys got pregnant with me. Only, it’s dangerous for a jinchūriki to get pregnant and there was someone that wanted to hurt my dad and the village.”

“But who?”

“Are you sure you want me to go in to everything? It gets kind of complicated.”

“Everything, Naruto-kun.”

She gave him a decisive nod and Naruto nodded slowly. Then he backed up and began with a story he had first heard from a woman with bright red hair who had helped him take the first steps towards taming the beast inside his belly. It was heavy stuff to put on someone so young, heavy enough that he was sure it would have scarred a civilian child of double her age for life. Kushina, however, was descended from shinobi and already begun her training to follow in those same footsteps, had snuck away from safety to witness a battle just that afternoon. As much as he wanted her to be able to enjoy her childhood for as long as she could it was sort of impossible for the children of warriors to enjoy the same innocence that the children of civilians did.

Things in the time she lived in were different from where he was from. In the Konoha Naruto presided over there were already many changes to the shinobi system that he’d begun to challenge. As he went through the complicated events leading up to his own mother’s death, a terribly laundry list of one system failure after another, example after example of the way that shinobi were raised only to be broken, Naruto could feel a fire rekindling in his gut which hadn’t burned so brightly since the day he put on his very first shinobi headband.

At the end of his tale Kushina remained silent, hugging her knees to her chest and watching the tumultuous waves crashing against the rocks below without really appearing the see them. Instead her eyes seemed distant, almost as though if she looked hard enough she could see in to her own future and witness the events of which she’d been told.

Rather than sit there in silence and let her work through her thoughts – although he knew that would probably have been the nicer thing to do – Naruto dealt with the awkward silence the same way he always had. He talked. With no clear theme in mind he yammered on about whatever came to mind first until he found himself stuck on the topic of his father. Naruto didn’t know anywhere near as much as he would have liked to about either of his parents but he knew enough to describe what he looked like and what kind of good man he was, how willingly he sacrificed himself for the good of the village. He talked about how strong Namikaze Minato was and how much the man had loved his wife and everyone around him.

“Stop.” Naruto’s jaw snapped shut at one quiet word from Kushina. He peeked at her a second time and found her sniffling but with a very small, wistful kind of smile. “He sounds really nice, so you can stop selling him now.”

“He’s not a horse,” Naruto chuckled weakly.

“Did he really love me? You promise?”

“More than anything in the whole world.” Reaching over, he chucked Kushina under the chin. “Except me of course. I’m pretty awesome, you know?”

Her smile widened and she smothered a giggle in her knees before scrambling to her feet and making her way to the edge of their little cove. When her bare toes stood just out of reach of the tumbling waves, she balled her fists and shook one of them at the sky as she hurled her surprisingly loud voice up towards the stars.

“I’m gonna marry Namikaze Minato and he’s gonna love me, dattebane!”

Naruto almost fell over backwards, unsure if he was shocked or amused.

“What are you doing?” he called over to her. When she spun around to look at him she was wearing such a look of determination he thought for a moment he’d seen a ghost, a woman grown standing on the rocks and weary from battle. Then he blinked and she was only a little girl again.

“I’m telling the universe what’s gonna happen. And the universe is gonna listen! You’ve gotta put it out there, ‘ttebane!”

“Well if that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.” Springing to his feet, he hopped down to stand beside her and cupped both hands around his mouth, raising his voice to scream up in to the night. “I’m gonna be the best Hokage EVER!”

“Hey! We’re supposed to be telling the universe to do good things for me!” Kushina reached over to shove his hip, probably hoping to knock him over sideways although she didn’t manage to so much as budge his stance.

Naruto chuckled and ruffled her hair.

“Alright then. Only good things for you.”

Her self-satisfied grin was so smug he very nearly lost his composure but he managed to keep it together long enough for her to spin back to the water and shriek her dreams out across the ocean. Then his mirth tapered off in to a fond, gentle smile.

It might have sounded like a placating sentence to her but Naruto had meant those words more than any he had ever spoken in his entire life. They were his one true wish for her and for her future, the one dream he hoped the universe would hear from him. Because as much as he loved her simply because she was his mother, Naruto was certain that no one could spend a month at this little girl’s side and not learn to love her just for herself.

And he wanted only good things for her always.