4 Chapter 4

'Now, if I'm the matriarch of a clan, where exactly would I be…'

He hadn't a clue.

He'd never been able to interact much with the clad heads of his time so he didn't know where they'd likely be on a day to day basis. He suspected that they were in their clan compounds, doing their various administrative duties for their clans. The only thing was that he hadn't asked the team 10 trio where he could find the Uzumaki residence, thinking it too intrusive and suspicious of a question.

So he was doing nothing other than a bit of exploring, as well as checking that everything was where he remembered it should be geographically. So far, other than the fact that his former apartment was turned into a red-light district, nothing too drastic has changed from previous memory. Perhaps there were slight inconsistencies here and there but he could barely tell between the Konoha now and the one that was in his memories years ago (when it was still intact).

Then again, there were some parts of Konoha that he had never frequented as often. Take the clan district for example. Everytime he set foot here when he was young, he was immediately escorted out by one of the associate members. Most of the time, forcefully. With scowls on their faces and threats of punishment should he ever show his face there again. During his days as a hero, it was like they couldn't help but invite him back every time they saw him.

Naruto didn't blame them. Such was the nature of his existence.

Thus, his current exploration now gave him new discoveries. Like the fact that the Nara compound had a ginormous back yard, leading all the way to a forest that was filled with deer of all things. Naruto wasn't sure if it was just a coincidence that their namesake happened to be related to the animal or whether it was the other way around but he couldn't deny the appeal in taking care of the majestic creatures.

He also discovered the fact that the Uchiha compound was as empty as a ghost town. Naruto remembered that back in the day, the Uchiha compound was located in the outskirts of the village due to their policing duties. Was their clan compound location different in this world or was it just something that came out of the Uchiha clan massacre?

Sasuke had moved to his own apartment so Naruto had never noticed.

Regardless, that wasn't really what his mission entailed so he paid it no mind.

Using multiple shadow clones, he scouted many sections of the village at the same time. All of them had one thing in mind: Look for bright red hair like he remembered from the vision of his mom all those months ago. He wasn't even sure whether she did have red hair in this world but from how similar the team 10 trio looked to their counterparts–along with Teuchi and Ayame–he had high hopes that he wasn't wrong. So, he searched for that particular feature.

It would be easy to find her in a crowd and should one of his clones find her, they were expected to make another copy of themselves and have one of them pop whilst the other continued to track her.

Y'know, standard shadow clone scouting procedure.

Even without Kurama's chakra, Naruto had far more than enough to create hundreds if not thousands. Though, he dialled it back in case having too many increased the chance of being detected.

Suddenly, as he was perched on top of the Hokage monument overlooking the village, he felt the rush of memory as one of his clones popped, though it wasn't what he expected to see.

Instead of red hair and pale violet eyes, he saw an image of a young teenage girl at one of the training grounds practising by herself. She had silky, dark blue hair that went down to the small of her back, pale pupil-less eyes and soft, creamy skin.

It was none other than Hyuuga Hinata, the heir to the Hyuugan clan.

What Naruto saw from his memories that was noted important enough for the clone to pop, was the fact that she looked distraught in her training. She had an expression of anger, frustration, and a combination of other negative emotions that he knew all too well.

Disappointment, sorrow, bitterness.

Naruto made his way there. This was far too important to ignore. One of his friends was in distress and he'd be ashamed of himself if he did nothing to help her.

It didn't take long for him to reach the preconceived destination. It was at one of the many unmarked training grounds open for anyone to visit. A small pond formed from the Naka river adorned its edge to the side.

Hinata was doing her best to turn that log in front of her into wood chips as she was pummelling it with fierce juuken strikes.

He wasn't too sure about how to approach the girl. He wasn't as close as he'd like to be with her. During the tumultuous years prior, she'd confessed that she'd liked him during his battle with pain. It was something that came out of left field at the time, and he didn't know what exactly she saw in him. He would have liked to find out if it were not for his constantly busy schedule during that volatile period.

He felt that the chance had slipped through his fingers back in his old world.

Now. he finally had the opportunity and the time to get to know her.

He decided to introduce himself just as he always had: straightforwardly.

"Hey there!" He called out.

"Eep!" Hinata cried, not expecting anyone to be there. She must have been incredibly distracted by her training because Hyuugas always had an elite sense of awareness. Now that he thought about it, he didn't see her train with her byakugan activated. Perhaps she was just venting her frustrations rather than thinking of having a quality training session. She was crying, he saw, and it made him beyond angry at whatever could have done this to her.

…Then Naruto also realised that byakugan's could likely see through henges.

Naruto internally swore, having not thought that far ahead. Now, he just hoped that Hinata would follow the Hyuuga etiquette and not activate her Byakugan when interacting with someone outside of combat situations.

Thankfully, she'd done exactly that.

"W–who are you?" She asked, voice quivering with both suspicion and exhaustion.

Naruto waved his hand at her, swallowing his nervousness.

"Yo! I'm new in town. The name's Yuki Naru, dattebayo," He replied enthusiastically. Even from his limited time interacting with her, she'd always been kind to him, especially during his childhood years. "I was just walking around exploring the village and saw that you seemed quite distressed over here so I decided to step in."

"O–oh," Hinata said, making an effort to clean up her tears with her sleeves. "How unseemly of me."

After a moment to regain her composure, she straightened up and introduced herself. "I'm Hyuuga Hinata. It's nice to meet you."

Naruto smiled. "It's nice to meet you too, dattebayo."

He cringed as the tic slipped out again–almost redundantly–but at this point, he might as well give up on suppressing it. Curse his habit of speaking like someone from the countryside.

Hinata gave a soft smile that didn't particularly reach her ears. "Well, forgive the impression I gave off, but I'm doing just fine, I assure you. I was just…a bit frustrated and wanted to vent out my anger." She gestured to the training log.

Naruto nodded in understanding. "I get you. I do that a lot as well…Say, I know we just met and all, but I wouldn't mind lending an ear if you want to air your grievances. Take it from me, it's sometimes freeing to get things off your chest to someone who's completely impartial to the whole thing."

"I…" Hinata hesitated. She wasn't sure why exactly this stranger approached her nor did she trust him, but she'd been through so much in her life with no form of support that she was…actually rather desperate. So her reluctance didn't really last too long at all. "I guess…"

Before she could change her mind with her timid nature Naruto interjected.

"Great!" he said, making his way over there in a flash.

Hinata was surprised by the enthusiasm he showed. Perhaps it was because he wanted to get to know new people in a foreign place that he was willing to go to such lengths to talk to her. She didn't know. Yet, she sort of appreciated the act of kindness and the attention that was so rarely given to her.

"A–alright…" Hinata muttered.

Naruto walked over to the field of grass and gestured beside him for her to sit. She blushed a bit before taking up the spot, unused to speaking with boys.

"So? What's bothering you, Hyuuga-san?" Naruto enquired, playing it cool, though he was excited over this opportunity to speak with her.

"Well…I don't really know where to start…" Hinata responded.

"Start with anything you want."

"S-sure," she said, before taking a moment to contemplate, "well, how much do you know about the Hyuuga clan?"

"Not much at all, really," Naruto responded. He wasn't lying. He truly didn't know much other than the fact that they had branded their branch members from his fight against Neji years ago. You'd think that that information in particular would suggest that he knew more about the Hyuugas than others but he truly didn't. He didn't know their customs, their traditions, their beliefs, their values. "Like I said, I'm new here."

"Well, th–the Hyuuga clan is made up of two houses. The Main house and the Branch house. I'm part of the main house, the ruling house of the clan, whereas my cousin is part of the branch house, which supports and serves the main house," She said. "We occasionally have spars and it's just…so frustrating."

"How so?" Naruto asked.

"Well, they all know how much better my cousin is than me and they keep acting all surprised when a member of the main house loses even though they've seen it happen a thousand times before," She said, an expression of frustration showing on her face. "It's humiliating! I wish they would all just…go away and leave me alone."

Naruto had never seen this side of Hinata before. She'd always been so shy around him. It was refreshing in a sense to be able to have her confide in him without holding anything back. He never knew that she could be even slightly vindictive.

"That's not even the worst of it," She continued, shaking her head. "They always pit me against my twin sister, and she always wins. I love her but it just makes me feel so…useless."

'Twins?! Yet another thing that's different in this world…Hinata and Hanabi are twins…weird.'

She emphasised the word 'useless' like it was etched into her very soul. A word that she thought described her existence.

Then, as if just reminded that she was saying all this to a stranger, she blushed and palmed her face. "I'm sorry, I must sound like a basket case."

Naruto shook his head, denying her worries and gave her an understanding smile.

"Trust me, compared to the problems I've been confided in over the years, yours sounded pretty tame," Naruto said, smiling, "I'm glad you told me all this."

"R–right," Hinata responded, still embarrassed at dumping all her problems on him. With the sense of being back in the current moment, she felt like she wanted to curl up into a ball and let the earth swallow her whole.

All these years, she had trouble making friends due to her low self-esteem and here came an opportunity that was dropped on her lap perhaps by luck, chance, fate or even the heavens above, and what had she done?

She probably made him think she was a person who was far too loaded with problems to be friends with…which in all fairness, was probably not a terrible assessment.

'Oh Kami. He must think I'm definitely not worth the trouble. He must have regretted coming over and talking to me–Why did I have to come out and immediately spill all my little problems?'

"Hey," Naruto called, pulling her out of her internal monologue. "You don't have to be ashamed of confiding in me with this, dattebayo. Remember that this is what I asked for."

"You probably didn't expect me to start off by dumping my problems all at once, did you?" She muttered, "especially since we don't even know each other very well."

To her surprise, that made him laugh. "I like cutting right to the thick of it. It's honestly fine."

He then thought over his next words. "You know, I've had problems similar to yours as well."

Hinata arched her eyebrows in surprise. "R–really?"

"Yeah," Naruto said somberly, looking to the distance, "I had a friend once. I compared myself to him all the time. In my…village, he was always the centre of attention, which was something I never had. I was jealous, in some ways, because I always came up short when competing against him, whether it was through exams or tests or, like in your experience, spars."

Naruto chewed on his lips, thinking back to his memories, unaware that he had the complete attention of Hinata who was staring at him like she'd found a kindred soul. "What I found that helped me was to stop setting him as a benchmark to compare myself to. To not let the expectations of others get to me. I focused on improving by comparing myself to how I was the day before rather than where everyone else is and as time passed...I'd surpassed him."

He turned towards Hinata and was surprised by how intensely she was staring at him.

For her part, it seemed that she was completely unaware of it, so absorbed she was by his story. "And what happened to him?"

With that, Naruto's eyes dimmed. "He grew bitter and angry…He fell to the wrong path and I…I couldn't save him."

Bitterness and sorrow accompanied Naruto's words, so fresh the memory was of his friend's death. "He was corrupted by the will of another and slowly but surely, he became less of the friend I knew and more of a…monster."

Naruto no longer held any illusions that Sasuke was a good person. He was too blinded by vengeance and was capable of destroying the lives of any who stood in his path…and he did, without remorse.

Hinata gulped at those words but to Naruto's surprise, she reached her hand out to grasp his own. "Th-thank you for sharing your experience with me. I–I can see that you are distraught from your memories and I just want to say that you shouldn't have to carry that burden. Sometimes our influence over our friend's choices weighs less than we think. He chose whatever path he walked from his own judgement. You shouldn't carry the burden of his wrongdoings."

Naruto looked at her stunned. From just a few sentences she knew about his story, she spoke words that she had no idea how much they meant to him. Everytime he had closed his eyes, he could see Sasuke's desecrated corpse as Sakura had finished him off. He kept seeing what his friend had become, always thinking what he could have done to stop it…

…Yet here he was, with a person so kindhearted and insightful that she'd guessed the root of his problems and told him something that he needed to hear. She was just like the Hinata he remembered, though she stuttered a lot less now than what he remembered from their limited interactions–as in, every two or three words.

He couldn't help but let out a sudden laugh, before he chuckled to himself in disbelief.

Upon realising what she'd done, Hinata blushed and drew her hand back.

"W–was that too much?" She reeled, "I'm sorry–"

"Don't," Naruto interrupted. "You have nothing to apologise for. I…I really need to hear that. More than you'd ever know. Thank you."

Hinata blushed, becoming flustered. "Of–of course. Thank you for–for coming over to–to speak to me. I feel much better now."

Naruto beamed at her. "Hey, you scratch my back and I scratch yours, right? Then we'll both be stronger together."

"R–Right."

Upon seeing the end of the brief problems–confiding session, Naruto decided to take a leap of faith. "Say…you want to be friends?"

Hinata's jaw fell open, almost as if she'd heard the most ridiculous thing coming out of his mouth."Y–you want to be friends with me?"

"Well, we sort of just shared a bit of ourselves with each other hadn't we?" Naruto said, "I think that's enough grounds for a budding friendship, don't 'cha think?"

Hinata's face became so flushed that she could almost qualify as doing a human impersonation of a tomato.

"I–I would like that!" she said. Then, she jumped up almost as she was jolted into action…almost like she was fleeing from imminent death. "I just thought of something I had to do. I gottagonowsobye!"

And with that, she was off.

Naruto just looked on, astonished at her disappearing form over the distance.

'How had she managed to run away so quickly?'

'…huh, guess she's faster than she realises…'

Then, as if designed by fate, a shadow clone popped, informing him with the visage of his target.

There she was with all her glory…

'Mom…'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Naruto had found her.

She was…grocery shopping?

He'd observed from a far for now, perched on the rooftops on one of the adjacent buildings.

He didn't know how to feel about the situation he found himself in. First a new world and now…someone who's supposed to be dead was alive. That someone being his mother, a person who he wished he had gotten to know since forever.

What was she like?

Does–did she care for him?

Naruto had to remind himself that to her, he was dead. Yet…he wasn't anymore. He also wasn't even the Naruto she knew.

What would she say if he met her?

Naruto's heart was pounding in his chest. His ears were ringing. He felt like he was at war again, waiting for the next battle, preparing for the next assault.

But this was just his mom…

…Was she even his mom?

Or was she just…the mother of this world's version of him?

Naruto snapped out of his musings when she started moving again. She went from stall to stall, purchasing basic necessities.

He'd watched her every movement, trying to memorise every detail he could of her. He felt like he was in a dream. That this moment was finite and would be taken away from him the moment he began to hope. Just as everything had been. From his dreams of becoming Hokage to his promise to bring Sasuke home to his crush on Sakura.

Now…

Could he dare hope once more?

He clutched at his necklace. A precious gift from lady Tsunade. She had been as close of a mother–figure he had in his life. She had entrusted this necklace to him, to hope one last time.

If she had not fallen during the war, would she be disappointed that he wasn't able to become Hokage back in his old world?

Naruto sighed.

He knew what he had to do.

He just wasn't brave enough to do it.

He could face down the entirety of the Akatsuki. Face down Madara. Face down even a goddess.

But his mother or…sort–of–mother?

It was something that truly intimidated him.

'Well, here goes nothing.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-