Sharing The Sky

Chapter 3: Keep your face to the sunshine

The girl's legs gave out and she plopped on her butt, the adrenaline zapped from her system as the exhaustion re-entered her body.

Safe. She was finally safe.

The tension that had kept Naruto hyper-alert and battle-ready started to seep out. Her body was unwinding now and her thoughts started to slow down.

The emergency had passed. She was safe.

Naruto rubbed her face, vainly trying to scrub the dizziness away and lessen the headache that was building as an uncomfortable pressure behind her eyeballs. After a moment, she decided that it wouldn't go away and wasn't worth using so much energy on it.

Minato was now in a crouched position, his hands hanging awkwardly half-way towards the girl. Wanting to reach, but not taking a chance at spooking her again. Noticing her looking at him, he motioned at her leg and asked, "May I?"

Naruto blinked. For a second, she couldn't quite comprehend the question. May he what? She looked down at her leg.

Oh. So that was where the pain came from. A kunai sticking out of her thigh. Buried so deep in her flesh, it might have grazed an artery or something, because the blood continued to ooze out freely, pooling on the ground below.

Naruto grabbed the handle and was about to simply yank the kunai out—

"No!"

In an instant, her head whipped up to look at her father, eyes wide.

"No, you can't... You can't pull it out like that. Such force might make it worse," the blond said, hands hovering just shy of touching.

Naruto stared. It sounded like a reprimand. As if she had done something stupid.

Ah. Maybe she did. No, not maybe. She did something stupid. Normal people shouldn't be pulling weapons out of their bodies like they were mere splinters stuck in their skin. Not everyone was an Uzumaki powered by the Kyuubi's chakra. This Minato didn't know that wound like this for her was equivalent to a light bruise.

"May I?" the blond asked again.

Naruto withdrew her arm, giving the man access to the injury.

Having her consent, Minato immediately leaned closer to examine the wound. He turned towards the Uchiha when the latter let out a short, sharp whistle, and caught a med-kit thrown to him. "It'll hurt," he warned, as he carefully curled his fingers around the handle of the kunai. "Bear with it, please."

Naruto almost laughed hearing her dad say the same thing here in the past as he did in the future. She didn't, of course, because that would be weird.

Minato pulled the blade with practiced ease and pressed on the wound to staunch the flow of blood.

Warm. His hands were warm.

Edo Tensei reincarnations felt no hunger and no thirst. They couldn't get cold or hot. They required no sleep. And their bodies always were unnaturally icy. Like machines. Or walking corpses.

As the war continued, Naruto came to hate it. Detested it to the point where she began avoiding her own father's touches. And no matter how much guilt coiled inside her chest, no matter how much it pained her to see the hurt mixed with understanding in Minato's eyes, she just... couldn't.

But this Minato was warm and breathing and alive. He smelled like earth, like freshly cut grass, like sunshine. Even if Naruto couldn't imagine how sunshine would smell, her father definitely smelled like one.

Naruto's throat closed around the giant lump of Dad is alive. His tender touch was pushing the line too far, her eyes burned.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Minato?" the Uchiha's skeptical voice broke the silence. "You made her cry."