Chapter Text
When going back in time to prevent the end of mankind, there’s a lot that isn’t accounted for. No one prepares you for showing up three years sooner than you're needed with no clue how to avoid preventing the circumstances that lead to your own birth, for one thing.
Nothing prepared them to crash land in the far end of the Mountain's graveyard with the impact of an asteroid the size of Konoha either. In the grand scale of things, maybe their violent reentry into the timestream was a bit more pressing than realizing they'd overshot it by three years. At least in the moment.
Instinct protected them from being shredded into raw hamburger from the violence of the impact, shrouding them in a ball of hyper dense chakra as they broke the sound barrier and the shock wave toppled trees in every direction- Naruto was one big bruise after absorbing most of the impact. Shikamaru threw up, his insides still feeling like they were twenty seven years in the future. He was scooped up under his armpits and they were quickly shunshining away from the impact, his stomach once again left behind as he was dragged bodily mile after mile away.
They didn't stop until they had reached the border with Rice Paddy, and an abandoned shack Naruto set about making defensible while Shikamaru recovered. The trip had drained him mentally, but his sturdy nature had saved him from nausea and vomiting, at least for now.
They would have to move quietly, and quickly, before they were really detected. There was a war raging, after all, and it wouldn't do to get caught unaware. Especially with how little they knew the current landscape.
Naruto sent a henged clone to gather information from a nearby civilian village, which was ultimately how they learned they'd over juiced the jutsu that had sent them back. It was post-fall of Uzushio, but four years prior to their births, leaving them with more time to kill than they had needed, or wanted. More time wasn't the issue, however, it was getting Shikamaru to stop over analyzing his own plans to adjust them while he was still violently ill from yanking himself bodily to a time before he was born.
Naruto sat at his side, rubbing his back and trying to comfort him and care for him- not that it did all that much good since neither could produce an anti nausea medication and short of cutting out his stomach they’d just have to wait. He did eventually recover enough to wobble up and accept the change of clothes- their own had been tattered on reentry, and even if it hadn’t been they couldn’t exactly explain why they were wearing an updated Konoha flak jacket uniform with an unfamiliar headband.
Given how far away they were from a hidden village, they did fairly well, able to salvage their mesh armor shirts and pants, covering those with a set of hakama, and hanten. Shikamaru's were a plain black, but the hanten had an almost electric blue and white patchwork over the dark fabric. Naruto's were black with an orange hanten. Both carried a rucksack, though that was stuffed mostly with canteens of water, and a few creature comforts, Naruto had most of their actual supplies in scrolls tucked into body seals. It had been nerve wracking to watch him make sure those had survived the trip back and that they hadn’t lost everything- that included most of their weapons, mementos from those they had lost, rations and camping gear, all of Naruto’s sealing supplies, and a thousand other little things they’d managed to hang on to despite losing almost everything.
At the first village they crossed they did a few odd jobs to earn some ryo, when asked the two said they were mercenaries in between marks. They introduced themselves as Namikaze Haruki, for Naruto, and Iwah Inei for Shikamaru. A nod to their old lives, in a way. Sunshine, and shadow. Naruto offered up plenty of conversation but without actually saying anything about them, not really. He had a shocking talent for making people believe he was opening up when in reality they had no idea what he was really thinking.
They got paid with a bit of food for the road and got back to traveling. It was a nice break from rations.
They stopped in every village along their path, doing the same, helping out in return for a handful of ryo and sometimes a place to sleep. They didn't enter Fire during that time, dropping off the map when they would have after picking up a Bingo book in a larger village.
They had to run across the water, reaching the wreckage of Uzushio after a full day. Had Shikamaru not been used to pushing his body beyond exhaustion he would have dropped into the sea halfway, he had been forced to adapt over the years to keep up with Naruto, it was all he could do right, in the end. They set up camp in the ruins of a building, as it had a wide enough open space in it’s center and the falling walls could keep out the wind.
“Hey... you okay?” Shikamaru watched him as he picked a cracked wooden toy from under some of the rubble they’d been clearing to the side. In the next few days they would be busy with putting the bodies of the victims of the attack to sea for a final burial and hunting through the wreckage. He had been here during the last attempt to put them to rest- it had been interrupted by Kaguya, they had missed so many, and lost forever so much that couldn’t be replicated... except by going back to the past to find it he supposed.
“No. I don't think either of us are though.” Shikamaru hummed. “What are you going to do when you see him?” The ‘him’ in question was his father, that wound was somehow the rawest between the deaths of his parents, though it didn’t even rate with how he had felt losing Ino and Choji. Luckily those two wouldn’t become a concern until a few years from now, so maybe he’d be able to process their tragic and horrific deaths.
“I'll keep it together. At least until we're alone.” He squeezed his arms tightly, looking away. The though was already making him nauseous again, Naruto had been trying to fatten him back up after they safely made it through but the food so rarely agreed with him.
“Hey, Shika... when we get to the Leaf village...” he walked slowly over, sitting on a hunk of concrete beside Shikamaru, “What do you say to staying?” It was so painfully hopeful. Naruto was too kind to be considering Shikamaru like that, as if he’d ever make the blonde leave their village forever just because he couldn’t handle it.
“... maybe.” He looked over the wreckage, in the morning they would dig. Beyond paying their respects, they had one singular item to find, and they knew where it would be, the fox scroll was something they’d need to find long before they could think of leaving, even if they combed the whole island twice to do so. While looking there were a few other treasures they should keep an eye out for, namely one treasured weapon Naruto had become so accustomed to using in their time before. The spear Naruto dug out of the ruins as an adult in what would soon be a lifetime ago, Kagayakasu. It broke in their fourth hit and run against the goddess, but he'd cut one of her hands off in the conflict and had burned it in their bolt hole. It had been back when Sakura had still had all the range of motion in her arms, and Kakashi had been with them, still giving them directions and purpose... before he issued his final orders as the sixth hokage.
There were also countless priceless artifacts, scrolls of both funinjutsu, and history of the late clan. They were protected from those without Uzumaki blood, but Naruto could get to them, and they'd be kept much safer this time, many had been damaged by the elements when they had been found, as Naruto had kept trying to go back to finish what he started despite it always ending in failure.
“Shika...” he grumbled, looking away even as he was pulled against a firm chest. “We need to rest.” They hadn’t taken a break since the day before when they had prepared to run across the sea to get here, he felt the pull of bone deep exhaustion and yet he still fought it, not wanting to face the nightmares he often had since the war truly began all those years ago.
“I know...” when he closed his eyes he still saw the faces of the people he loved that were gone- many of whom died long before they even knew they might get a chance to fix things. It didn't stop the pain in his chest thinking about how he had memories of his own father dying, but now he would have to see him eventually, younger than he'd ever been in Shikamaru's eyes, and risk a run in with a baby version of himself. How could he ever hope to explain? To hide? His father could always tell when he was lying, after all.
What if he saw baby Ino? If he saw the baby version of both himself and Ino, he'd definitely see baby Choji. The thought clawed at his insides painfully.
“You're overthinking things, dummy.” Naruto had made a pillow out of his hanten, pulling Shikamaru onto his chest to use him like a mattress, and had tugged the band out of his black hair, placing it around Shikamaru's wrist. “While we're here, just think about what we need to do here. One step at a time. Don't panic about the future just yet.”
Maybe he should be grateful that he came back with Naruto, he couldn't have handled this on his own. He also knew that despite how he was acting, Naruto wasn't actually handling this better than he was. His smile was fake, and he paced agitatedly when he thought Shikamaru wasn’t watching him. He was so on edge that he was loosing sleep, but Kurama was keeping the dark circles at bay, but for how long? This sickly dance where they both pretended to be fine, how long could they keep it up, just the two of them.
They should have brought more people- they had wanted to, but...
He should just be glad that they made it back at all. The extra time might be enough to actually process the toll the war had taken on both of them. Just in time to fight in another war if things went the way he thought they might.
“I'm sorry.” Shikamaru couldn't help it. “It should have been-!”
“I'm glad you're here. I want you here. Just because I wanted more people to have come back with us doesn't change the fact that I'm happy to have you here, Shika.”
But it should have been Sasuke, or Sakura, or Kakashi, Sai, maybe even Yamato would have been better. He didn't complain when Naruto began to lazily play with his hair, letting the sensation of fingers against his scalp put him to sleep. Even knowing the blonde would lay awake long into the night unable to do the same.
It was late afternoon two days later, long after they had found what they thought to be last of the victims and sent them out on rafts to burn on the water, when a sweaty, dirty, bruised Naruto popped back up out of a hole. Above his head, held quite triumphantly, was a massive summoning scroll. The scroll was red, white, and black, looking a lot like the toad scroll. Naruto ran to the space Shikamaru had cleared on the ground, opening it. Inside were empty columns for names to add, only two were filled, the border had foxes drawn minimalistically in mid step with a pattern of wavy lines behind them. He was glad to see the blonde smiling given how somber and quiet he’d been during the last few days.
He wrote his real name in the first open blank of the scroll, but the blood began to bubble and evaporate.
“Oh...” he frowned, looking up at Shikamaru, alarmed.
“Think about it, Naruto. You know the foxes. The elder Vixen would probably make you change your name since there isn't an Uzumaki Naruto in this world.” So the blonde hesitated, gnawed his finger a bit more, and tried Namikaze Haruki instead. That name took, settling into the paper and absorbing where the other one had been rejected. He’d never actually seen a name be rejected before, keeping it in mind if he ever signed his name into the Nara scroll, not that anyone had managed to summon a deer in over a century. He watched as Naruto ran through the hand signs to summon the first fox they’d see in the past.
He summoned a fox, hoping to get one he was familiar with, and one the size of horse was soon knocking him over. She had mint green fur and was wearing an oversized black sweatshirt with the characters for ‘sweet’ written in Kanji on the back in white. She had goggles around her neck like a collar, reminiscent of the ones Naruto had once wore as a child.
“You did it, bew!”
“Ichika! You remember?” She pounded on his chest with her paws, the action would have broken Shikamaru’s ribs if she’d done it to him instead. “Do all the summoning lands-
“Nope! Just the foxes! It's because you and Kurama channeled the natural energy for the jutsu through the Akarui shinpi-tekina valley! So we hitched a ride.” She looked pleased, finally sitting back. Shikamaru wanted to ask how bad the damage was there, but didn’t feel it was the right time yet to bring that up.
“I'm glad you came with us!” He got up and hugged her properly around her massive fuzzy neck. When he started to cry, Shikamaru looked away, it was the closest he would be able to give them to privacy in Uzushio.
Once he had decided they had been crying into one another long enough he cleared his throat.“You should summon a few more vixen, we need to make a plan for integrating.”
“Oh, right!” Ichika was staring at him with a smug expression on her face as he tried not to make eye contact. She was more than enough to disseminate tasks to, and he'd been forming a plan for the two weeks they'd been on the road- he wouldn't admit he was having Naruto summon more foxes just because it curbed the haunted look in his eyes. Of course Ichika noticed, clever little brat. To her credit she didn’t rat him out.