Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The glowing light of the daylight seemed to bring both a sense of peace and foreboding across the village. Yet, the more time that passed from the village's invasion the more people seemed at ease, all save one.

Soma's glimmering azure gaze swam with anxiety as the days drifted past. Naruto was getting promoted today and though normally in the Uzumaki household that would be glorious news, it also meant Soma's time was up.

Other than pride the all consuming anxiety of his secrets were weighing him down. His promise to tell all to Naruto and a select others was coming.

It meant it was time to come clean after all these years of secrecy.

To finally pass along the burden to the few Soma knew would be integral to the future to come. His information going forward might be useless now since most of the threats to the leaf, to Naruto, were practically handled.

Danzo had been ruined and finally executed before the village. Soma was dissatisfied he had lived as long as he had and how soft the third had treated Danzo until he had been finally forced to deal out punishment.

Orochimaru had been taken down along with Soma bringing Tsunade back into the leaf. Hiruzen forced out of the hat, the Akatsuki almost entirely dismantled. It was all going to be a gamble with all the changes he made and he needed them all prepared for the possibilities to come.

Itachi and Kakashi were sitting in his office with him figuring out how to break the news without breaking the kids. Or worse Nagato who Soma knew needed to know the information before he agreed to be part of their mess. Kakashi and Itachi has reached out to Soma to both help him plan out the next step and ease his mind over the stress of it all.

Kakashi spoke up the least helpful in their plans since he had been nose deep in his perverted book. "You know, I've been thinking-"

"Don't hurt yourself, I know how difficult that is for you." Soma spoke sarcastically leaning on Itachi's back who had been sitting at the low table in the study organizing Soma's notes for their plans in dropping the back in time news. Itachi was ignoring their bantering as it had been going on for the last few hours.

The way they flirted was confusing to the Uchiha. Soma and he has a different pace to their romance.

Kakashi snorted at the jab far used to Soma's snark and enjoying it. "Why not just lay it all out in one go instead of pulling them separately to tell them all. They will need to know everything anyways." Soma hummed in thought acknowledging it. It was smart to just put then all together to talk it out that way if they had questions or needed verification they could do so as a unit. Or if one has a question others had not thought of it could be laid out easily.

Things weren't going to be easy to explain and Soma didn't want the boys in particular to miss any details, that was why Shikaku was being invited into the conversation as well.

Nagato had to join in last minute since Soma and him had finally expressed their feelings and Soma needed him to know everything before he addressed what they were to each other.

Just like with Kakashi and Itachi he was to receive all Soma had hidden and be given space to make a choice but not without Soma making sure he would be alright emotionally after hearing all of Soma's past.

It was only right that he got the choice to go into this with everything laid out. Now it was time to deliver it as well.

T.D.O.T.

The privacy seals settled into the walls of the small tea room like a second skin. The warm hum of power was like breathing to Soma just another extension to his power and familiar in the room he favored.

Soma had chosen this particular room for a reason. It was not the largest space the Uzumaki compound could offer. It was not the most comfortable. It was the most sealed that he had created for chatting with his friends who were clan heads. He made it specifically to ensure their words were safe in this room.

No sound in or out, no chakra signatures readable from the outside, nothing leaking through the walls that his people had reinforced three times over since their arrival in the leaf, and Soma had put his own personal complex seals over it as well.

He had gone through considerable trouble arranging this.

Shikaku sat to the left near the door, his long dark hair pulled back in his signature ponytail, face set in that usual stillness that made most people nervous and made Soma quietly grateful. The man did not perform being calm. He simply was it and that helped ground Soma. He was glad Shikaku was his friend it helped to stabilize him in these moments.

Kakashi stood behind and to the right of Soma's seat facing the sliding door, his single visible eye trained on the far wall rather than the door itself, his posture loose but deliberately placed between where the younger occupants of the room would sit and Soma.

Itachi sat at the table spine stiff the only sign of his own nervousness, directly across from where the others would settle. He had not looked at Soma since entering as he focused on the fabric of Soma's soft grey Kimono, clothing far more simple than he had seen previously.

Everyone of the three men had tied up all the details of this meeting, Shikaku coming and going under the guise of forcing Soma into shoji matches had been one of the ones to finalize the details itself.

So Soma's companions in this conversation marched in without any anxiety for how this meeting may go. Soma only gestured for each man to settle into the room.

He had not allowed himself reprieve so Soma's stomachs twisted in worry.

Soma saw the first of his guest arrive.

Nagato came first.

He moved through the door with the quiet deliberateness he had perfected since Rain, the kind of composure that looked effortless to most people and was something that had been earned by trial and effort.

Nagato took his seat near Itachi and settled his hands on the table and his eyes moved over Shikaku and Kakashi, noted their positioning in the room the way any capable shinobi would, he could feel the weight of the room in that instance.

Then his gaze found Soma.

It stayed on him a moment longer than it needed to. Just a moment his gaze warmed in away that made Soma flush under the attention. The kind of thing that would mean nothing to anyone not paying attention and meant something specific to Soma and his two men watching the exchange. Nagato eyed the simple kimono Soma wore almost surprised by the minimalism of it.

Nagato truly couldn't recall a time he had seen Soma unadorned in the Uzumaki style of clothing, even among his friends.

Soma folded his hands on top of the table. He said nothing despite being flustered by the attention.

Soma noticed things far too easily for most people's comfort. He did his best to not use that skill in that moment as he knew how unsettling it could be.

Shikamaru came in next looking like he had already debated on several theories on why he has been called into this room with these people. He sat, glanced around the table at the faces present, let his eyes pass over the three older shinobi along the wall without comment, and the line of his mouth shifted almost imperceptibly.

He did not say anything either but eyed his father contemplatively in the end.

He noticed the tense atmosphere but kept silent on it. Shikamaru noticed most things and said very few of them, which was one of the reasons Soma had to include him as there would be no way he could let Naruto or Sasuke move about freely without him being involved.

Sasuke arrived without preamble and with the immediate instinctive frown all Uchiha's seem to be born with. His dark eyes moved across the faces in sequence, brief and precise, before he crossed to the table and took the seat directly across from his brother. Not because anyone had assigned it, generally Sasuke had spent enough years in Soma's proximity to understand that he could really only read his brother since the red head had a pleasantly blank poker face.

Kakashi sensei had his face covered and was impossible to read of all of them.

He looked at the three older shinobi. Then at Itachi, which was a different kind of look entirely, a specific complicated emotion that existed only between the brother's when one knew more than the other.

Then Sasuke looked at Soma and waited.

Naruto arrived last because he had stopped to bring food no one had asked for. He set a wrapped bundle of rice cakes and cookies on the table with the cheerful efficiency of someone utterly unaware he was about to have the ground shifted beneath him.

"I didn't know how long this was going to be." Naruto offered by way of explanation, dropping into his seat beside Shikamaru. He looked around at the faces and felt the tense atmosphere and faced it with brightness he had never fully managed to dim even after all these years in Soma's orbit. Then his blue eyes landed on the two older shinobi along the wall.

"Okay. So it's going to be a long meeting cause if Shikaku San is here that means we're going to have a lot questions he is either gonna answer or confirm for us." Naruto spoke chipper eyes landing on the calm focus of Soma.

"Astute as always." Kakashi said condescendingly.

Naruto pouted at him. "Your tone says I should be offended."

"Naruto." Soma's voice was not loud. It did not need to be, they could see Soma was tense about what was to be discussed.

Naruto settled.

Nagato's gaze had shifted to Naruto at his entrance with something that felt like relief, the particular emotion a man grateful for the disruption of his own internal whirlwind. He almost smiled at the rice cakes and cookies.

Almost. Nagato caught it before it fully hit and smoothed back the emotion and returned his eyes to Soma cause he could taste the underlined tension and it worried him.

Soma looked at all of them in turn. Nagato, Shikamaru, Sasuke, Naruto, still half-reaching toward the rice cakes and cookies the only one at ease.

"I'm going to tell you all something unbelievable and tough to swallow." Soma said. "All of it. I am not going to soften what I tell you and I am not going to give you the version I think you can handle. You will have questions. You can ask them when I am finished."

A prickly silence descended the room.

"Kakashi, Shikaku-san and Itachi are here to confirm what I tell you. They are not here to explain it for me. They are here because some of you will need to hear it out have it confirmed from someone other than me and I understand that."

Shikamaru's eyes moved to Shikaku with a look that was so precisely like his own father's that Shikaku had to redirect his gaze to the wall. He was trying not to snicker at his son's copycat glare.

"Begin when you're ready, My King." Nagato said.

"I came back in time." Soma spoke and Naruto paused, Shikamaru even looked as if he was rebooting. Sasuke's jaw dropped in visible surprise while Nagato froze entirely.

His voice was even. His hands on the table were still. Under the table, where no one could see, his fingers had pressed together once and then released.

So Soma continued.

He did not sugarcoat anything.

He told then if the end first because he had not wanted them to dwell on his past before what was to come. He needed them focused on what the future could be should something go wrong.

He had been young in body and control when sealing black and white Zetsu, the looming powers of the other Kage were still volatile against the leaf as well, those facts alone changed what their future looked like. He gave them the threat of Zetsu, the war, the names of people who would die and the names of people who had driven them there. Spoke of Obito and the ancestors of the Uchiha that held a grudge.

He told them about Akatsuki's true purpose and that Soma has already drastically diverted the powers of those within. How his hands had already molded a new pathway to the future.

He told them what the tailed beasts were truly meant to become and what happened to the past containers including himself. That drew a soft gasp from Naruto who realized the bijuu he encountered within was Soma's. Or rather his, a different version of his inner fuzzball in a different version of who he could have been.

Soma did not spare Nagato his own role in it all. He explained the truth that the original fight the Ame trio faced was his original truth that drowned Nagato in hate, anger, grief and made him want to cause that suffering onto others.

The shift was immediate and Soma watched it happen to Nagato, peripherally and without turning his head. The ease that had settled into Nagato's shoulders at Soma's proximity drained out of him like water from a cracked vase. His hands on the table went rigid. The particular softness that had been in his expression since he sat down small and barely visible had shifted into horror.

He told them about himself last. Who he had been as the former Naruto Uzumaki.

He told them where Soma Uzumaki had actually come from. How he once held the name of Naruto and how his life is isolation had led him to a lifetime of different heartbreak.

The room was very quiet when he finished.

Shikamaru had not moved for the last third of it. His dark eyes were focusing on something private, some internal confliction itself with the quiet efficiency how he had always suspected Soma was more than he seemed and proved that things had been entirely different from his imagination. Things were clicking into place behind his expression like a lock opened correctly for the first time. Bile threatened to rise making him dizzy.

Naruto looked stunned. Not disbelieving Naruto had never been particularly built for disbelief when it was Soma speaking. But stunned from the information itself and trying to digest it.

He had stopped reaching for his snacks entirely.

Sasuke had been watching Soma's face throughout. His dark eyes had not shifted far from it.

When Soma finished and the silence extended long enough that it could be called deliberate, Sasuke spoke.

"Why are you telling us this now."

It was not quite a question. With Sasuke it rarely was.

"You've been promoted." Soma said simply in the silenced room. No one was surprised Soma knew before they did, the promotions had been unspoken since Tsunade was still transitioning into the seat for the hat of the Hokage.

"All three of you. The protection I was running on your behalf ends with your rank because I and my reputation cannot follow you where you're going and I will not insult you by trying to continue it past the point where it becomes a liability to your futures." Soma looked at each of them in turn.

"You are going to be directly involved in what comes. You cannot be going into it blind. You deserved to know what you're facing before you are asked to look into the eye of this particular storm." Soma had been calm in his explanation and that seemed to make it all feel more real.

Sasuke stared at him. "You've been manipulating everything all this time you've trained us in this path." He had been ready for a denial.

"Yes." Soma said simply. They were shinobi, manipulation was part of their system. They knew that and Soma did not deliver platitudes in favor of honesty.

"Since before the academy." Shikamaru spoke understanding the necessity of Soma having had control of their training and paths they were led through. Necessary evils were part of the system but this one made them stronger and more prepared for an unstable future.

"Yes." Soma spoke still unruffled in the tense room.

A muscle in Sasuke's jaw moved. "You could have told us sooner when we started the academy. We could have trained more." Sasuke spoke almost bitter in his tone.

"I could have." Soma agreed without flinching. "And you would have been eight years old carrying the knowledge of a war that hadn't happened yet with no rank and no recourse and enemies you couldn't yet identify. Growing up paranoid and angry and scared of what may or may not happen. I made a choice about what protection and growth looked like for each of you." He met Sasuke's gaze directly. "I'm not asking you to thank me for it or to riot against my choices. I'm telling you the reasoning was deliberate and I stand by it."

Sasuke held his gaze for a long moment trying to read Soma's impassive expression and seemed to accept what he could see there.

Then he leaned back and looked away, which from Sasuke was approximately the same as accepting the argument.

Shikamaru exhaled through his nose. "The false invasion during our first cross training was to prepare us for the actual invasion we had." he said, not loudly but still needing the answer confirmed. "The specialized training, you going on all our first C rank missions. You already knew what was to occur."

"I had a reasonable expectation of what might still happen." Soma said.

"How many times have you known and said nothing." It was Shikamaru's turn to search Soma's expression.

"More than you would be comfortable with." Soma said. "Less than you might fear."

Shikamaru made a sound that was not quite a laugh. He pressed two fingers to his temple and stared at the table. "Troublesome." It was said exasperated, which in Shikamaru's language translated roughly to 'This requires too much energy to deal with.'

Shikaku, against all odds and his own better judgment, almost smiled.

Nagato had not spoken.

He was still sitting with his hands flat on the table and Soma had been tracking him with his peripheral the same way one tracked a seal with uncontrolled line placement. Nagato's violet eyes had gone somewhere distant and internal. The expression of a man sinking in emotions he didn't know how to handle.

All those small things he had allowed himself in the hour before Soma began speaking made his world feel tainted. He has been the reason Soma had experienced so much sadness and isolation. It was in effect his group and abuse of power over Soma that lead to the Uzumaki head needing to return to fix everything.

He had not looked at Soma directly since the words had been spoken, Nagato's role in Soma's past time had changed so much.

"Nagato." Soma said, quietly. Without pressure.

The violet-eyed man's breath came out unsteady.

Nagato stood unsteady.

He did not say anything. His chair scraped the floor falling over and he walked to the door of the sealed room with the careful deliberate movement of someone in shock. His hand pressed flat to the seal on the door and Soma released it without comment.

Nagato left the room.

The door shut behind him.

No one spoke immediately. Itachi looked at the closed door and then back to Soma placing his hand on the red heads shoulder. Kakashi shifted slightly closer to Soma trying to show he's there for him as well.

"He'll come back, if he doesn't I'll go to him." Soma said, more to himself than the room. He believed it needed to be spoken aloud which mattered, because Soma had learned a long time ago there was no use in saying things he did not believe needed to be said.

Naruto had been very quiet.

Soma had noticed with his own nervousness to his reaction most. Naruto was not built for quiet and the silence coming off him had an energy to it, dense and heavy, the feel of someone processing and shifting information around.

"Naruto." Soma said hesitantly prepared for the anger to come.

He expected immediate questions. He expected the bright desperate energy of someone trying to find information around an impossible thing, the way Naruto had always reached for understanding through motion and noise and the sheer force of caring loudly enough to make the world respond.

What he did not entirely expect was for Naruto's face to crumple and for tears to form, before the blonde Uzumaki stood and crossed the short distance between them and wrapped both arms around Soma's shoulders from behind.

He was not a small person anymore now taller than Soma standing since in both lifetimes Soma starved a bit in his younger years until the age of seven changing him further from his Naruto. The arms were those of a shinobi, of someone who had been running harder than his age required for years. The grip was firm and comforting.

"Thank you," Naruto said. His voice was thick and uneven. "You gave everything up. Before I was even able to walk, before any of us could be of any help to your burden, you already gave it all up for us. You changed my path and let me experience love and kindness and family."

Soma did not move immediately still shocked, but he spoke.

"Don't Naru, you of all people don't need to say anything." Soma said willing away the guilt for having had a hand at turning them all into the lethal shinobi they were.

"I'm going to say it anyways." Naruto smiled despite his tears, which was so characteristically, insufferably Naruto that Shikamaru made a noise into his hand that was either grief or strangled laughter or possibly both.

Soma let out a breath through his nose. He did not pull away from Naruto's hug.

"I know it's a lot," Naruto said into his shoulder. "I know how much it is. I know." He pulled back enough, moved to look at Soma's face properly, and whatever he found there he stared without flinching from it.

"I was going back and forth about the training mission with Jiraiya. I kept thinking what's the point, what good does me being away do anyone. I have Soma here that can just keep teaching me, it's fine so long as I can learn from Soma. I didn't want to be separated from my home and family." Naruto's gaze shifted slightly.

He straightened looking determined.

Something had settled in Naruto's expression. Not the manic brightness. Nothing so unstable at least. Something quieter and considerably more dangerous in the way that a whirlwind was dangerous while crossing a bridge.

"I'm going," Naruto said. "I'm going and I'm coming back better. If this is what's coming then you need us to be ready and I'm not going to be the part of this that slows you down. That's not happening."

Soma looked at him.

"Even if you didn't I would lay down my life for each and every single one is you before you faced what I had to." Soma said. Shikamaru huffed, Sasuke himself frowned at the words.

"You're going to live to be a old wrinkled man, believe it!." Naruto said simply and that comment seemed to ease both Sasuke and Shikamaru.

Soma missed it since Naruto looked like his father when he said his comment, which Soma had the private good grace not to mention.

Shikamaru was rubbing his eyes. "So we've all just been walking around in an environment of cultivation this entire time."

"Guided." Soma and Shikaku said at the same time. That alone proved Shikaku had some help in how Soma trained the rookie nine.

"Right. Guided." Shikamaru dropped his hand. He looked at Shikaku across the table with an expression that said a great deal about what it was like to discover your father had known considerably more than he let on. "You knew."

"I suspected, then confirmed my theory with Soma." Shikaku said, which was technically accurate.

"For how long."

A pause. "Long enough."

"Right." Shikamaru said again, staring at the ceiling now. "Troublesome."

Kakashi coughed. "In fairness to everyone involved"

"Hatake-san." Shikamaru said pleasantly. "With my deepest respect, do not."

Kakashi closed his visible eye and appeared to reconsider his words.

Sasuke was looking at Soma. He had been looking at Soma since Nagato left and had not stopped. There was something thought working through behind the dark eyes, that particular Uchiha method appearing detached and apathetic.

Sasuke did not ask his question.

But he did not leave either, that counted for something, right?

Soma understood and felt he'd likely ask Itachi confirmation in private.

Outside the sealed room, somewhere in the Uzumaki compound, Nagato stood in an empty corridor with his back to the wall and the truth arranged around him like wreckage, and all those small careful things he had allowed himself that evening sat in his chest like stones, and he stood very still and tried to learn how to breathe with the weight of all of it.

Inside, Naruto was back to his side of the table eating rice cakes and cookies shoving some into his stunned friends palms.

"Okay," Naruto said, distributing them with the solemn focus of a young man on important ceremonial duty. "We're going to need these."

"We really are." Kakashi agreed, taking one with an air of profound relief.

Soma looked at the cookie placed in front of him.

He looked at the room. At Shikamaru staring at his father with the expression of a young boy unsure on how to interact with someone they thought they knew everything about.

At Sasuke who would not leave only eyeing his older brother with an intensity that Itachi ignored.

Soma eyed Itachi who had not needed to say a word all evening and had communicated everything regardless. At Kakashi eating a rice cake with enthusiasm despite wading through long tension.

He picked up his own cookie

"We have a great deal of work ahead." Itachi said looking over his brother who was staring back at him.

"Obviously." Shikamaru replied back to sounding bored.

"Yep." said Naruto.

Sasuke said nothing, which from Sasuke meant agreement usually.

The seals on the walls held steady. Outside, Nagato breathed somewhere and that made Soma still anxious.

The room did not feel light. It was not meant to. But it felt, for the first time in a long time, less heavy.

That would have to be enough.

For now, it was.

T.D.O.T.

Nagato had not moved far from the room, in fact he moved further into Soma's private halls.

That was the first thing Soma noticed when he found him. Nagato had not fled the compound, had not pushed past the outer gates into the village the way someone truly running would have. He had stopped in the corridor two turns from the sealed room, the one that ran along the east wall where the paper screens let in the last pale wash of evening light, and he was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up and his face turned away.

Soma stood at the end of the corridor a moment before he moved closer.

He had changed after leaving the boys to Shikaku the man had been the one to suggest he change before going to Nagato. The practical layers he wore to the meeting had been exchanged for something refined, a soft kimono in a deep sage green that fell clean and glossy to his ankle, the sash loose and a soft gold. His long red hair freed from its braid and settling over one shoulder in a river of deep glimmering garnet.

Soma had not done it for any particular reason. He had done it because Shikaku mentioned he should and had gone into his study a door down to change into a different outfit he kept there.

Nagato heard the soft purposeful fall of footfall on the wood floor and turned.

His breath caught at the sight he felt he didn't deserve.

The evening light came through the paper screens and caught the red of Soma's hair and turned it into something that did not have a practical word attached to it. Breathtaking colors of shimmering stone of reds and purples cascaded from his hair. The green of the kimono made his skin look warmer, made the sharp lines of his face look less like a weapon and more like something someone carved by careful hands. He walked without hurry and without performance, the way Soma always moved, like a person who had decided long ago that the world could adjust his pace as he would not bend to the changes it made.

Devastatingly beautiful even in just that.

The words formed and sat in Nagato's chest like something he had no right to and he turned his face away again sharply. His eyes burned. His hands in his lap were still faintly unsteady and he pressed them flat against his knees and focused on the grain of the floorboards instead.

He heard Soma stop beside him.

A moment passed between them.

Then Soma sat down on the floor next to him, which was not what Nagato had expected, and settled the fall of his kimono around him with the same unhurried ease he did everything and said nothing.

The silence between them was not comfortable. Yet it wasn't suffocating, just tense.

"You didn't have to come." Nagato said. His voice was not steady.

"I know." Soma said.

Another moment.

"I would have come back." Nagato said. "Eventually. I wasn't" Nagato stopped. His jaw worked. "I wasn't going to make you come find me again."

"I know that too." Soma said. "I came because I wanted to."

Nagato's breath came out uneven.

It started quietly, the way things sometimes go when someone hold back enjoying got too long. Not loudly do the tears fall, just a slow crumble of something intangible and raw. Nagato's shoulders drew in. His face turned further away.

"I'm a monster." The words came out rough and stripped of everything but the bare harshness of the word. "The things I did. The people I could have." He stopped again. His hand came up to press his hand against his mouth briefly. "How could you, how could you kiss me knowing what I did. What I am."

Soma did not move immediately he needed to process the words for a moment.

He looked at the side of Nagato's face. At the line of his shoulder. At the way he was holding himself looking to Soma as if he would fall apart from his gaze alone. Soma returned his fragile stare with warmth, like Soma saw the good in him despite it all. Nagato looked away unable to bear the softness in that gaze. Not feeling worth that look.

"Look at me." Soma said.

Nagato did not look at him.

"Nagato."

The violet eyes glanced for a moment. They were wet and Nagato made no move to hide it, which felt as if it both took away and gave him something, Soma could see that clearly, and he held the eye contact anyway because Nagato had always needed to be met directly or he would convince himself he was being managed it worse coddled.

"What you did was real in my past." Soma said. He did not soften it. "I am not going to sit here and tell you it wasn't. The people who were hurt were real. The damage was real. I know that and you know that and neither of us pretending otherwise would do anything except make you trust me less."

Nagato's breath hitched.

"But that is not the only true thing." Soma said. "It is not even the most important true thing about who you are right now in this moment." Soma's voice did not rise, it did not need to. "I knew. I knew all of it before I ever let you close enough to matter to me. I knew what your hands had done and I knew what your name could mean in a future we are both standing in front of now. I chose to help you with that knowledge. Not despite it." A pause. "Because I could save you this time. Because you were worth saving and you are worth the choosing and I am not going to apologize for knowing that before you did. You did not do those things this time you know."

Nagato looked at him.

Something behind his eyes was crumbling in a different way now. Not cleanly but it was like Nagato was breathing new air.

"You can't" His voice broke a moment but Nagato pressed on. "You can't just say that. You can't just" He exhaled. "Itachi. Kakashi. They are" He stopped and laughed, brief and humorless and painful. "They are good men, Soma. They are good men and I stood across from everything they stood for and I"

"Nagato."

"I don't deserve to be in the same breath as them. I don't deserve to be" His voice dropped to something very small. "I don't deserve to be at your side. Not with blood like this on my hands. You should let me go. You should let me"

The door at the far end of the corridor opened.

Nagato stopped.

Itachi stepped through first, which was not a coincidence. Itachi did very few things that were coincidences or even for teasing. He looked at the two of them on the floor and his expression did not change appreciably but he crossed the corridor and sat down against the opposite wall without being invited, folding himself into that precise stillness he carried everywhere.

Kakashi came through behind him and leaned against the wall nearby, hands in his pockets, the single visible eye moving over Nagato's face with something that was not pity and was not distance.

Nagato looked at them both.

"You heard." He said.

"We were nearby." Kakashi said, which confirmed it.

Nagato turned his face away again. "Then you know I'm right."

Itachi looked at him for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was even and quiet and carried the weight of him choosing words he had spent considerable time thinking over himself fighting, struggling to express himself.

"I killed my clan in Soma's past." Itachi said bluntly.

Simple. Straight to the point. The words someone who understood what they meant said without preamble.

"Not soldiers." Itachi continued. "Not enemies. My kin. My mother and my father and every person who carried the name I was born into. I did it with my own hands and I likely told myself it was mercy and Soma said I carried it alone for years because I believed I did not deserve to be known for anything beyond what I had done. Soma saved me from that fate, from that version of me that killed my kin." He paused. "I know what it is to look at someone who is good and feel that you are something that should not be near them. When Soma told me logically I knew I had to have been pushed into it again, yet I would have done it again had my path lead me that way. I was still capable of such a decision but was saved from making that mistake because Soma felt I earned my salvation."

Nagato was very still.

"Soma knew." Itachi said. "He knew before I did. He knew what I had done and what I had been and he reached into the shape of that and found something worth pulling forward anyway. He helped push me away from that path." The dark eyes were steady. "To run from that. To insist on defining yourself only by the worst thing your hands have ever done. That is not humility, Nagato." A pause. "That is wasting what he bled to give you. That would be spitting in the face of every choice he made to reach you before the future consumed you entirely."

The corridor was very quiet.

Kakashi shifted against the wall. He looked at the ceiling briefly, then back down.

"I was here in the village." Kakashi said. "The first time around, I mean. I would have known things from Soma's account of his past. I saw things that I could have" Kakashi stopped. Started again more carefully. "My inaction in his past caused damage I will not be finished accounting for. People I was responsible for. Chances I didn't take. Wounds I let happen because I told myself the situation was out of my hands when the truth was I was afraid. That's always been the same song and dance I've performed since my sensei died." He looked at Nagato directly. "I am not without sin either. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that he found me anyway. Looked at all of it and found me and decided I was worth the trouble." Something shifted in his visible eye. "I spend every day trying to prove him right. That's all I've got. That's all any of us have got, isn't it. To be worthy of what he carved out for us. To be worthy of the fact that he loved us before we'd earned it."

He let that sit.

"Can you not just want that." Kakashi said quietly. "Can you not just want the peace he spent everything building. Can you not just want to be someone who deserved to be loved by him."

Nagato's whole being came apart entirely.

Not loudly. Not in pieces. All at once, the way things do when they have been held past their limit, and his face dropped into his hands and the sound he made was small and wrecked and completely unguarded and nothing like the composed and careful man who had walked into the sealed room two hours ago.

"I'm sorry." The words came muffled through his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm being stupid. I know I'm being"

"You're not being stupid." Soma said.

Soma moved.

He crossed the small distance between them and his arms went around Nagato and pulled him in for a hug and that was when Nagato realized.

Soma was shaking.

Not visibly. Not in any way that would have been legible from across a room. But Nagato was pressed against him now and he could feel it, the fine tremor running through the arms holding him, the way Soma's breath against his hair was not quite even, the way Soma's grip was not the measured, careful embrace of someone performing comfort but something considerably more desperate than that.

Nagato went still.

"Soma." He said.

Soma did not answer immediately. His arms tightened.

"I thought you were going to leave." Soma's voice was very quiet. The voice of someone saying something they had not fully planned to say. "I thought you were going to decide that the truth was too much and I was going to lose you." A breath. "I have lost enough. I have given enough away. I could not" He stopped. "I could not watch you walk away from me with your mind made up without trying to reach you first."

Nagato felt the wet press of it then. Against his hair. Soma's face turned in, Soma's breath unsteady against him, and Nagato's hands came up slowly and held on.

"I love you." Soma said. Barely above a whisper. "You and Itachi and Kakashi. All of you. I have carried this for so long without any of you and I cannot keep" Another breath, fractured at the edges. "I cannot keep doing it alone. Being without you is like trying to breathe air while drowning. It does nothing. It is just the shell of surviving and I am so tired of only surviving."

The corridor was entirely silent.

Nagato held him and felt the full weight of what Soma Uzumaki did not say in front of people, of what it cost this particular man to say it now, and he pressed his face into the red hair and breathed.

"I'm not going anywhere." Nagato said. His voice was rough and certain and nothing like the wrecked thing it had been a few minutes ago. "I'm not going anywhere, Soma."

Soma's grip did not loosen.

Across the corridor Itachi looked at the wall. His expression was very still and his jaw was set he was holding back his emotion as well not wanting to taint the moment.

Kakashi had turned his face away entirely. His visible eye was suspiciously bright and he appeared to be finding the paper screen on the far wall extremely interesting.

"Hatake." Soma said, without lifting his face.

"Mm." Kakashi said, still studying the wall.

"Come here."

A pause.

Kakashi pushed off the wall and crossed over and sat down on Soma's other side and said nothing, and after a moment his shoulder pressed against Soma's in the way of someone who had also been pretending for too long that they were fine and had simply been waiting for permission to stop.

"Itachi." Soma said.

Itachi moved without further prompting and settled close and the corridor that had held only grief and wreckage a short time ago held something else now. Not lighter. Not resolved. The weight of it was still there and would be for a long time.

But it was shared so Itachi held Soma's hand in his.

Nagato turned his face into Soma's hair and closed his eyes.

"Devastatingly unfair." He said softly. Without meaning to.

Soma made a small sound against him that was almost a laugh. "What is."

"You." Nagato said. "Sitting in the corridor in that kimono looking like that while I'm trying to fall apart properly."

Kakashi made a muffled sound that sounded suspiciously like agreement.

"He does it on purpose." Itachi said conspiritorily, which made this moment the most words he had contributed to any non-strategic conversation with Nagato to date.

"I do not." Soma said.

No one believed him.

The evening light came through the paper screens and the seals on the walls held steady and outside the compound the village moved on knowing nothing of what had cracked open and carefully, painstakingly begun to mend itself in this small corridor.

It was enough for them for now.

T.D.O.T.

The privacy seals were still active.

No one had thought to take them down and no one had moved to do it. The rice cakes were mostly gone, a few scattered cookies remained. The tea that someone had brought at some point and no one remembered requesting had gone cold in the pot and Naruto had drunk two cups of it anyway because Naruto had never once in his life let the temperature of food or drink keep him from enjoying it.

Shikaku had not left after encouraging Soma to chase after his future third husband.

He had not been asked to stay either but didn't want the kids to intrude on Soma's moment. He of all people knew Soma needed to work on these bonds of love so he would have something for himself beyond these kids. Besides his son was going to ask questions and Sasuke was still coming out of his upset and Shikaku was of all of the adults in the room, the most neutral of them all. Soma and he had planned it in such a way long ago when Soma confessed his past to him. Kakashi, Soma and Itachi had each been active as mentors for the boys, so no matter what they would need a reliable neutral adult who knew of the situation to inform them while things were still raw.

So Shikaku had simply remained in his seat near the door after the others filtered out and Kakashi and Itachi had followed after Soma and the room settled into a settled space of quiet that had held something significant that teetered on heavy and light in atmosphere. Shikaku had his arms folded and his eyes half-lidded and to anyone who did not know him he looked like a man considering sleep.

Shikamaru knew better. he always had as he himself used the same ability to seem disinterested.

Naruto was not sitting anymore.

He had been sitting a moment ago. He had sat through the end of the meeting and through Nagato leaving and through Soma going after him and through the gradual departure of everyone else and then approximately four minutes into the silence he had stood up and begun moving. Not pacing exactly. More like a hurried shuffle of graceful dancing. Shikamaru immediately recognized the Uzumaki kata in Naruto's flowing movement.

Sasuke was sitting with both arms on the table and his chin resting on one hand, watching Naruto move with the expression of someone who found this predictable and had decided not to comment on it. Sasuke knew this is how Naruto liked to think as he did the same when they needed to strategize unless they were on a mission.

Shikamaru had one knee up and his elbow on it and his head tilted back slightly, eyes on the ceiling, doing what Shikamaru did when he was reorganizing his thoughts and questions.

The silence had stretched long enough to mean something.

Naruto broke it first because Naruto always broke it first of the three of them, far more willing to ask questions and seek answers for information he was lacking on.

"How old was Soma when he started it all." He said.

It was not directed at anyone specifically. It landed in the middle of the room and sat there.

Shikaku's eyes opened fully.

"When he came back." Naruto stopped moving for a moment. "How old was Soma when he came back."

Shikaku looked at his son briefly. Shikamaru did not look back. He was still looking at the ceiling.

"Young in body old in mind." Shikaku said.

Naruto turned to look at him directly. "How young had he regressed to?"

A pause as Shikaku gave thought to the question.

"If you mean physically he was a child." Shikaku said. "Mentally he was an adult though living with the memories of his past life. And he came back carrying the full weight of that life haunting him. His loved ones gone paths wrong at every turn and a village that had burned to the ground." He said it plainly, the way Shikaku spoke hinted it was a heavy subject and to not push. "He came back into a body that could not yet do what he needed it to do, with knowledge of every mistake and every disaster and every person who would be in danger, and he began working. Immediately, quietly, alone."

The room was very still.

Naruto had stopped moving entirely.

"He came back and was barely older than we were when we started the academy, that's what I could recall when I asked about him years ago." Shikamaru said to the ceiling. Not a question. Just a fact being laid flat.

"Younger, he said it had to have been his body when he had been a toddler, he woke up trapped within the lands of Uzushio " Shikaku said.

Sasuke's jaw was tight. He was looking at the table now, the hand under his chin was tense his eyes filled with a complicated emotion. "And he told no one." Naruto could taste the static anger in the air. Sasuke felt a little betrayed that Soma had not told them, had not prepared them more and had carried it all alone for so long. Did he not think they could handle it, were they that unworthy to help him carry this burden.

"He told the people he needed to tell in the order he needed to tell them." Shikaku said simply breaking Sasuke from his thought pattern. "Soma does not do things without sequencing them and the consequences first. Everything he has done has been in an order that serves a specific outcome or he would risk losing control over situations that he needed changed from his past." He let that remark settle eyeing Sasuke in particular. "But no Soma didn't truly outright tell anyone on his own accord. For the years that mattered most he carried the weight of it alone. Built the clan back up. Established the compound. Set the groundwork. Handled the political infrastructure of integrating his people into a village that was not entirely certain it wanted them. Kept track of every moving piece that could become a problem. Kept watch over every one of you without any of you knowing you were being watched over."

Naruto sat down finally.

He did not do it gracefully. He dropped into the chair like the weight of it had caught up with him all at once and he sat there with his elbows on the table and his hands pushed into his hair.

"He was looking out for me for us all." Naruto said. "Before I even knew who he was truly was. Before any of us could see him as someone other than our mentor." Naruto stopped. His voice had a waver to it that was not easy to hide. "He already knew what was coming and he just, started fixing it all alone. So we wouldn't have to go through it. So we wouldn't have to carry the burden that comes with making those choices and regretting losing something in return."

"Yes." Shikaku said a soft warmth in his tone.

"That's." Naruto looked up. His eyes were bright. Not crying. It was just dusty in the room that's all. "That's an insane amount of weight for one person to carry."

"It is." Shikaku agreed, without softening it.

Sasuke looked up from the table. "The people he relied on." He said. His voice was even but there was something running underneath it, the particular current of someone asking questions they need answered more than they are letting on. "You were one of them."

Shikaku inclined his head and snickered. "I did bulldoze my way into that position since I figured out some bits and pieces."

"Who else." Sasuke said.

"You know the others."

"I want to hear it stated outright."

Shikaku looked at him for a moment. There was something in the boy's dark eyes that the elder Nara recognized. Not suspicion. Not challenge. The particular sharpness of someone needing information because they are quietly terrified of what is to come and needs reassurance on who to rely on.

"Itachi." Shikaku said. "Kakashi, Myself, at different times though from what Soma said Kakashi and Itachi found out together." He paused. "We all kind of forced him to tell us and seek us out for help."

Sasuke absorbed this information and seemed to settle the unjustified anger seeping out of him.

"He kept it short on purpose." Shikamaru said, still looking at the ceiling. "The fewer people who know information of something, the fewer points of failure. The fewer chances for someone to leak in the wrong direction." A pause as Shikamaru thought something over. "He's been running this like a long game since before any of us were old enough to be pieces in it. And the whole time he was also running the clan and the political side and the missions and" He stopped. "And being twelve. And then thirteen. And then dealing with loss, trauma and just helping us all get better, without making us face the fragments of life that would have numbed us."

Shikamaru did not want to add more to his thoughts.

Naruto was back on his feet. The stillness had lasted only so long as he could contain himself.

"Okay." He said. He was not loud. That was the thing. Naruto at his loudest was easy to track and easy to prepare for but Naruto at this particular tone, the one that had brightness but was something different not as warm. "Okay so he's been doing all of this. Building all of this. For years. Alone. And he only just told us because we got promoted and he couldn't cover for us anymore where we're going." He turned to look at Shikaku. "What exactly is coming. You know. You've known. What are we actually walking into, I don't want to make him remember things right now. He has sacrificed enough for me and I'm not stepping in to his moment just because I need answers."

Shikaku looked at the boy who had grown up in front of him and under his village's considerable neglect into something none of them had entirely deserved and said, without ceremony:

"A war. Not a border conflict. Not a skirmish. A war with roots that go back further than any current living political tension and a scope that would touch every major nation if it runs its full course." He let that land. "Soma has been working to cut it off at points before it reaches that point again. He has been partially successful if we are to be honest. There are things he could not prevent and things he has already changed, and things he is unsure of since he had not been at full power when he was in his younger form. But what is coming still has teeth and has been building longer than any of us have been alive, it won't just stop with the intentional blockades Soma has set up before them."

Sasuke had both hands on the table now. "Our people specifically is who these people are after." His words were a statement not a question.

"You three specifically." Shikaku said. "Yes."

Sasuke's eyes moved to Naruto. Brief. Almost invisible. Then back to Shikaku. "Why us."

"Because of what you are and who you are to become." Shikaku said. "Which brings me to something else."

The room shifted slightly. Shikamaru lowered his gaze from the ceiling.

Shikaku looked at Naruto first, then at Sasuke.

"You are not only who you are in this life, Sasuke and Naruto. The bonds you two share transcends time and breathes it's own recurring life." He said. "Both of you carry something different as Soma described it. Power. Potential. The shape of who you were before not just in Soma's past but in all the pasts that have come before you both, Soma ensured that bond lay different in this lifetime." He did not elaborate into mysticism. He stated it the way he stated tactical facts. "It is not fully accessible to you yet. It requires development, specific to each of you, and it will not come simply from wanting it. But it is there and it is real and you need to know it exists."

Naruto had gone very still again.

Sasuke said nothing. His expression had tensed and then smoothed itself out.

"How exactly." Naruto said breaking the silence.

"For you." Shikaku said. "The toads and Jiraiya. There is a reason your godfather exists in your life and a reason Soma has not interfered with that connection. What you need to unlock cannot come from Soma's guidance alone. Jiraiya has pieces of it and the toads have the rest and in the end Soma will be there to tie what you build into the framework of everything else. But you need to go." He looked at Naruto directly. "The training mission will be the beginning and long, you will have to go through it alone yourself before Soma is to step in to help in your growth."

Naruto's mouth closed.

He nodded knowing that being alone was going to be difficult but necessary.

Shikaku turned to Sasuke.

"For you it is different." He said. "The Sharingan is not only what it appears to be and what you are capable of has not yet reached the peak. Soma knows the shape of what you can become. Itachi knows part of its formation. Kakashi knows another part of your lethality. You will need all three of them and you will need to be willing to be pushed past what is comfortable to get results." He paused. "And you will need to trust that what is uncomfortable is not the same as what is wrong."

Sasuke met his gaze steadily and nodded once.

"I know the difference." Sasuke said.

"I hope you do." Shikaku said, and meant it.

He turned last to Shikamaru, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of a man already several steps into the implications.

"And me." Shikamaru said. Not asking for reassurance, asking for information.

"You are not a weapon in the typical sense of the word." Shikaku said. "You were never meant to be. What Soma needs from you is what I have been for Soma all these long years. The information you gather and use to position ourselves well when stuck at an impasse. The internal web of the leaf that holds everything standing while the visible pieces do what they need to do. The web of information Soma handles, retains and controls is part of the job as I too oversee his own network when he has other duties taking over for him." He looked at his son with an evenness that was its own form of deep feeling.

"Naruto and Sasuke go into the field and face what comes and they need someone behind them who can see the full board. Who can anticipate, adjust, hold the pieces in place. That is you. That has always been you." Shikaku paused a beat. "You will need me to guide you and you will need Soma in ways that are different from how the others need him. He will be showing you how he thinks. How he has been managing it. Because eventually he will need you to be capable of carrying part of that thinking for yourself."

Shikamaru was quiet for a long moment.

"So I'm not going anywhere." He said.

"Not yet." Shikaku said. "And when you do it will be specifically targeted. Nothing unnecessary."

Shikamaru's mouth did something that was not quite a smile. "Least troublesome outcome."

"I thought you'd appreciate that." Shikaku said mirthfully.

Naruto had been listening to all of it with the particular focused silence of someone committing things to memory rather than just hearing them. He looked at Sasuke now. Sasuke looked back.

There was a conversation in it that did not need words. The kind that only existed between people who had been next to each other long enough that the words were mostly just formality anyway.

Sasuke looked away first. Back to the table. His hand had unclenched.

"He's been doing this alone." Sasuke said, quietly. "For all of it. He knew what we were, what we could be, what was coming for all of us, and he just." He stopped. "He just let us be kids and silly and play instead of making us train constantly."

"Yes." Shikaku said.

Another moment passed but it was no longer heavy or accusatory.

"Then we can't waste the life he gave us." Sasuke said. It was not loud. It was not a speech. It was the voice of an Uchiha who said something he believed, spoke of it before others meaning every single word of it.

Shikamaru looked at his father. Something passed between them that had no name but had existed in various forms between Nara men for generations, the quiet mutual acknowledgment of two people who understood the same kind of weight.

"Agreed." Shikamaru said simply standing. "We don't get to sit by watching the clouds pass us anymore."

Naruto stood up fully almost vibrating in the spot.

He was not bouncing. He was not loud. He stood with his shoulders squared and his blue eyes clear and steady in the way they got when something had passed from overwhelming into decided, when the thing that had been too big had been looked at long enough to become something he could walk toward instead.

"Okay." He said.

Just that.

Okay.

Like it was simple. Like it had always been going to be this. Like every piece of what had been laid in front of them tonight had always been pointing toward this room and this moment and these three people standing on the edge of understanding what it actually meant to be trusted with someone's life's work.

Shikaku looked at the three of them and thought, not for the first time, that Soma Uzumaki had known exactly what he was doing when he had built them up the way he had.

He thought of the boy who looked barely past childhood who had walked back into a life already burning and started laying down a foundation for his precious people.

He thought the least they could do was make sure the building held fast.

"Get some rest." Shikaku said. "All of you. Tomorrow it begins in earnest."

Naruto looked at Sasuke. Sasuke looked at Naruto.

"Yeah." Naruto said.

Naruto smiled brightly. Sasuke almost smiled back.

Shikamaru was already at the door walking out knowing they would follow. "Guys it's time to go."

T.D.O.T.

Soma sighed flinching at the cinching of the sash on his waist. The seamstress of the Uchiha clan was not happy to be fitting someone out of their clan in wedding garb.

Soma held back a snort as it wasn't like he wanted to go through the elaborate fuss of a wedding with the Uchiha clan watching him but Soma could not say no to Mikoto's pleading eyes.

Kakashi just wanted them to write Soma, Itachi and Nagato into his family registry but Guy almost burst out in tears at not being Kakashi's best man.

So now Soma was forced into another ceremonial wedding. Naruto made his first overrule of Soma as his heir, they were going to hold Nagato's wedding in traditional Uzumaki fashion since he deserved to be celebrated as a husband as well and that was how Soma was roped into three separate wedding ceremonies. Itachi was given a house on Uchiha property as their 'marital' home Soma gave Nagato, Kakashi and Itachi their own rooms in his pavilion. Nagato had been adamantly against having a separate home build on their lands for him. Konan, Azumi and Karin have been each overly excited for the wedding as it was the first royal wedding to a guard in their long history.

Kakashi said he'd rather not bring his new family to the home his father died in and that made Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura gather their friends to build him a new home on his clan lands promising to make it cozy for his dogs, and them cause they would make that their base of operations for family stuff. Naruto's clones helped make up for the extra hands to finish things in a flash.

It was all so sweet but Soma was feeling overwhelmed. Three weddings in a month all for different clans and all with different rites to follow. All being done because Naruto wanted to be here for the weddings and The Uchiha refused to wait three years for him to return for said weddings. Kakashi just wanted an excuse to sleep next to Soma.

Soma himself ignored the seamstress's tug on the sash again and this time it was Mikoto who stepped in glaring harshly at the woman. Soma was surprised to see Mikoto look so stern.

Mikoto loosened the fabric and Soma eyed the kimono. The fabric was a deep black with a stark white sash. The back of the kimono has the Uchiha clan insignia it was very stark and only softened by his glimmering hair.

Soma eyed Mikoto in the mirror and she was softly smiling. "You look perfect, you're going to make Itachi so happy. Thank you so much." Mikoto let a tear fall and Soma pulled out a tissue internally panicked cause he wasn't the best around women crying. He still turned into a mess with Karin or Konan crying and was lucky he had an amused Azumi to help him in those moments. He didn't know what they wanted most times and just wanted the tears to stop.

Mikoto took the cloth and dabbed her tears daintily. "Let's go get you changed we still have some details to go over for the ceremony."

The door slid open without warning and Sasuke poked his head in, clearly searching for something else entirely. "Mom, have you seen" His words died in his throat the moment his eyes landed on Soma.

Sasuke blinked once, then twice, his sharp Uchiha eyes doing a slow sweep from the high collar down to the trailing hem of the kimono. "Why are you wearing an Uchiha wedding dress and not Uzumaki style wedding garb?"

It was a fair question, Sasuke knew well enough that Soma already favored clothing that ran androgynous in nature, elaborate kimonos in vivid, deliberate colors that never quite settled into one side or the other, soft fabrics and loose layering paired with bold patterns. Seeing Soma dressed in something so purely feminine, cut traditionally for an Uchiha bride and nothing else, was clearly throwing him off more than the idea of a wedding dress itself ever could.

Soma felt the heat crawl up his neck instantly, blooming across his cheeks in a way he had no hope of hiding. He knew exactly what he looked like right now and being looked at like that by anyone, let alone Itachi's little brother, was mortifying.

The black fabric clung soft against his frame, cut to flatter a figure that had never quite settled into anything traditionally masculine or feminine. His waist was cinched delicate beneath the sash, his shoulders narrow and unassuming under the heavy fall of fabric, and his pale skin practically glowed against the stark black of the kimono. His features, soft where Itachi's were sharp, lashes long enough to cast shadows against his cheeks when he blinked, his lips a touch too full to read as purely masculine, made the wedding garb look less like a costume and more like it had been made for him specifically, which Soma supposed it had been.

His hair, still glimmering even in the dim light of the room, framed his face in a way that softened every hard edge the kimono didn't already smooth over, loose strands catching against his cheekbones every time he turned his head. He was, without trying, the very picture of someone dressed to be adored, and he hated how plainly that showed in tight wrapped fabric.

Soma opened his mouth to explain himself, fumbling slightly. "I wanted to do it their way. Properly." He swallowed before continuing, "Your clan is giving up a lot to let Itachi marry into mine, giving up his right as clan heir, and they didn't even ask anything of him in exchange, not even his eyes. The least I could do was follow their customs the way they're meant to be followed instead of forcing my own onto it."

Before Sasuke could press further, the door slid open again, Fugaku stepping through with his usual measured calm, the question already half formed on his tongue. "How much longer are" He stopped mid sentence, his eyes catching on Soma the same way Sasuke's had, though his reaction settled into something far more pleased than confused.

A slow smirk crept across Fugaku's face as he looked his future son in law over. "Don't ruin the surprise for Itachi. I want to see him blush or better faint when he sees you like this." There was no missing the smugness in his tone, the satisfaction of a man who had waited a long time to finally claim the red haired Uzumaki as family, even knowing full well Soma would be coming with two other husbands attached.

Mikoto huffed and waved both her husband and son toward the door without ceremony. "Out, both of you, we still have work to do." Once the door slid shut behind them she turned back to Soma, her expression softening into something gentler, more private. "Thank you, truly, for doing this for Itachi. I know how much you're giving up to make this easier on him, taking on rites that aren't even yours, wearing things that aren't yours, all so the clan didn't feel like they're losing anything by marrying Itachi to you." She reached out and smoothed a wrinkle from his sleeve that wasn't really there, an excuse to touch him, to ground the moment. "Not many would do that so willingly."

Soma felt his face heat all over again, the praise sitting somewhere he didn't quite know how to hold, warm and unfamiliar in his chest. He ducked his head slightly, murmuring something about it being the least he could do, though Mikoto only smiled wider at the deflection like she'd expected nothing less.

T.D.O.T.

Soma had barely made it two steps out of the fitting room, changed back into a kimono of his own choosing, a deep red that mirrored the exact shade of Itachi's sharingan, the fabric falling in soft layers around him with none of the stiff formality of the wedding garb he'd just shed, when a hand caught his elbow gently. Itachi stood there, having clearly been waiting, his sharp eyes immediately eyeing the color before they ever reached Soma's face, something quietly pleased flickering across his expression at the sight of it, before he smoothed a stray strand of hair back from Soma's forehead with a touch so light it barely registered as touch at all.

"You didn't have to let my mother fuss over you for so long," Itachi murmured, though there was no real complaint in it, just quiet concern dressed up as mild scolding.

Soma huffed, leaning into the touch despite himself. "Your mother's fussing is terrifying to refuse. I value my life." He let the comment sit a moment before tilting his head curiously. "How's Shisui doing, by the way? I haven't seen him since Konan and Yahiko announced the pregnancy."

Itachi's expression shifted at that, something fond and exasperated crossing his features all at once. "Panicking. Loudly. He's spent the better part of a week pacing instead of sleeping, convinced he isn't ready, or that he'll mess this up somehow."

Soma raised an eyebrow. "Isn't ready? They've all been married a year already, and the baby's his just as much as it's Yahiko's, biologically or not. It's a little late to start panicking now."

"That's exactly what I told him," Itachi said, the corner of his mouth curving in clear amusement. "He didn't appreciate the reminder. Apparently it's different now that there's an actual due date attached to it instead of just the idea of it."

Soma laughed quietly at that, shaking his head. "He spent a solid month rubbing it in both our faces that he married into his happiness before either of us managed to. Now he can't even handle being a father to a baby he already agreed to help raise and likely had a hand in creating."

"He deserves every bit of that irony," Itachi agreed easily. "Though I imagine you'd have been just as smug in his position, married a year early and lording it over the rest of the village shinobi."

"Absolutely," Soma admitted without shame, and Itachi's quiet laugh at that was worth every bit of the teasing. He stepped in closer, resting his forehead lightly against Soma's, the two of them simply breathing the same air for a moment, no urgency to it, just the comfort of being close after a day that had asked so much of both of them in different ways. Itachi's hand found Soma's, fingers lacing together loosely, and neither of them moved to pull away.

It was Soma who broke the quiet eventually, murmuring against Itachi's skin. "I have to go, your father's waiting on me to join him for the council meeting." Itachi nodded against him, pressing one last unhurried kiss to his cheek before finally letting him go, watching him leave with the same soft fondness he always seemed to carry where Soma was concerned.

T.D.O.T.

Kakashi sat slumped against the wall of Soma's room when he finally arrived, arms crossed and bottom lip set in a pout, visable through the mask, that didn't suit a jounin of his reputation at all, though the moment Soma stepped through the door his single visible eye lifted, tracking the new kimono with open interest. The fabric was a soft purple, the color muted and gentle in a way that suited Soma's coloring almost unfairly well, delicate embroidery of violets stitched carefully along both sleeves, small clusters of blooms that caught the light faintly whenever Soma moved.

"That's new," Kakashi said, the words coming out quieter than his usual teasing drawl, his gaze lingering on the embroidery a beat too long for it to be idle curiosity.

Soma glanced down at himself before settling beside him, close enough their shoulders brushed. "It's been a favorite of mine for a while now, just haven't had much reason to wear it." He didn't elaborate further, simply tucking the detail away as Kakashi exhaled slowly beside him, something unreadable passing behind his eye.

"You really don't have to do all this for me," Kakashi said after a moment, circling back to the conversation he'd clearly been sitting with before Soma arrived. "It's not like I even want to go back there."

Soma didn't answer right away, letting the silence sit a moment before reaching over to rest a hand against Kakashi's knee. "I want to. It's your clan, Kakashi. You deserve to be honored the same as the others." He hummed quietly, watching the way Kakashi's jaw tightened at the words, watching him war with himself over whether to accept the sentiment or argue it away like he usually did.

"I don't deserve the honor." Kakashi muttered, the words coming out smaller than he probably intended, more confession than complaint.

Soma didn't argue the point outright, knowing better than to push when Kakashi got like this, knowing the words would only bounce off if he tried to contradict them directly. Instead he asked, gently, "Where are the rites and the documents kept?"

Kakashi went quiet for a long moment before answering, his voice flatter than usual, carefully empty in the way it only got when he was trying very hard not to feel something. "There's an album. Behind a panel in the wall. It's in the same room my father died in." He said it plainly, like it cost him nothing, though Soma could see exactly how much it cost him, the way his hand had curled slightly into the fabric of his own pants.

Soma hummed again, low and thoughtful, before forming a single hand sign. A clone popped into existence beside them, identical down to the last detail, and Soma gave it quiet, careful instructions, retrieve the album, nothing else, no need for either of them to set foot in that room themselves, not today. Kakashi watched the clone disappear with something unreadable in his eye, something that looked almost like disbelief.

"You didn't have to do that either," Kakashi said quietly, voice rougher than before.

"I know," Soma answered simply, shifting closer until their shoulders weren't just brushing but pressed fully together, his head tilting to rest against Kakashi's, the violet sleeve falling soft against Kakashi's arm. "I wanted to stay here, with you. You shouldn't have to be alone with that, even through a clone."

Kakashi was quiet again, longer this time, the kind of quiet that usually meant he was choosing his next words very carefully. His gaze drifted back down to the embroidered violets one more time before he finally spoke.

"My father loved violets. They were his favorite, the color too. I haven't told anyone that in years." He swallowed before continuing, voice dropping further. "I'm glad you want to honor my clan. I didn't think anyone would care enough to bother, not really, not when there's barely anyone left to remember the rites in the first place." His voice caught slightly on the last part, and Soma turned to look at him properly, reaching up to gently tug the mask down just enough to see his face fully. Kakashi met him halfway, the kiss that followed soft and unhurried, gentle in a way that said more than either of them were managing with words, lingering long after it should have ended, neither of them in any hurry to be the one who pulled away first.

T.D.O.T.

Naruto sat cross legged on the floor of Nagato's room, far too invested in the conversation for someone who had no actual say in the matter. "I'm telling you, orange. Soma would look amazing in orange."

Karin shot him a flat look from across the room, arms crossed over her chest. "Absolutely not. He's our clan king, he needs gold, jewels, something that actually looks the part, not whatever color you happen to be obsessed with."

Azumi waved a hand between them, unbothered by either argument, lounging back against a cushion. "Honestly he'd look lovely in anything, so I don't see why we're fighting about it at all."

Konan sat off to the side, one hand resting against the curve of her pregnant belly, clearly entertained by the whole debate, a small smile tugging at her mouth as she watched the chaos unfold, while Yahiko hovered beside her, fussing over whether she was sitting comfortably enough, whether she needed water, whether the room was too warm for her, his attention splitting constantly between the argument and her without ever fully landing on either.

Nagato sat slightly apart from the noise, his attention drifting helplessly toward Soma instead of the debate raging around him. Soma's kimono today was white, soft lace layered delicately over the fabric, intricate embroidery tracing along the collar and hem, simple and elegant in a way that made something in Nagato's chest ache quietly. He found himself caught somewhere between the argument in the room and the unbidden thought of what Soma might look like dressed exactly like that, in white, on the day he married him, the thought arriving uninvited and refusing to leave.

"Nagato? Nagato, you've gone somewhere," Karin said, snapping her fingers lightly in his direction, and Nagato startled, the words tumbling out before he'd fully gathered them. "Blue. He should wear blue, the same color as his eyes." His voice came out steadier than he felt, though the truth of it sat plain underneath, he had always loved the particular glitter of Soma's blue eyes, had thought about that color more than he probably should have, and it slipped free before he could stop it.

The room erupted in soft gushing the moment the words left him, Karin cooing loudly, Azumi grinning wide, even Konan letting out an amused laugh that had Yahiko immediately checking if she was alright, and Nagato's face went red almost instantly, the praise clearly not something he'd accounted for when he spoke, stuttering out something incoherent in response to the sudden attention turned fully on him.

Soma, perched nearby, simply smiled and leaned into him slightly, pressing a brief kiss to his temple that only made Nagato flush deeper. "Blue it is." That settled it, the argument dissolving the moment Soma agreed, leaving no room for further debate, Karin throwing up her hands in good natured defeat while Naruto grumbled quietly about orange being a perfectly respectable color that nobody appreciated enough.

Soma was pleased he could be surrounded by his loved ones now.