I made them and i was going to run a poll on who should get to explore the lands between, but there is just something Compelling about Scrimbly in the warrior garb, so i do believe Scrimbles and I are going to have a lil adventure now.
reblog this and tag with a food you no longer have access to (closed restaurant, state you moved away from, ex’s mom’s cooking, etc) that will haunt you until your dying day, mine are the spicy chicken sandwich on the employee menu at the fine dining restaurant I was a prep cook at, and the onion bagel from the kosher place down the street from my house when I lived in the city
All I wanted from Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, was a scene where character played by Bruce Campbell, gets comically and violently pummeled for absolutely no good reason.. Preferably in the “why are you hitting yourself” way, that he excels in so much…
They really are back! Here’s our first glimpse of David Tennant, Catherine Tate and a familiar looking blue box out filming for the 60th Anniversary! ❤️❤️➕️️
WOOOOOOWWWW I haven’t posted in forever whoopsies…. anyway I managed to re listen to all of wolf 359 in between my last post and the start of the pockets
Naruto’s body gets better with time, but it is a slow process. His father doesn’t show it in front of others, but whenever they are alone, his worry seeps out of him in waves that make Naruto feel guilty.
But saying sorry only makes his father look more anguished, so he stops soon after.
“Jiraiya should be arriving soon. The last time he contacted me he was two weeks away from here… that was a while ago, though.”
Naruto nods as his father presses his hand along his bare torso, and thinks of his godfather hurrying but getting distracted along the way. He smirks. His grandfather loves him and cares about him, but he also trusts Minato’s ability and his own research.
Naruto has long stopped believing an answer will arrive with Jiraiya, nevermind a cure. His father has always been the one with hope, so he always gets disappointed when Jiraiya arrives with research and information that’s helpful but not the end-it-all kind of panacea his father still believes to be out there… waiting to be found.
Naruto trusts his body and his training and the hours he has spent honing his every fiber and being into being resilient. He trusts the hours his father has spent reading every book available and his godfather travelling far and wide to get his hands on any type of knowledge that looks promising. If he has made it this far, it has been thanks to them.
But there is no cure for him. Because he’s not sick.
And although it has been hard for him to come to terms with it, he understands where he stands in all of this now. What he can and can not do. He wakes and meditates, then meditates again before sleeping, and each time he reminds himself of who he is, of what being himself means.
He has a duty and a purpose and a debt with his father, with his family, with his clan and with his people. And he will see it through.
But nowadays, at night, when Hinata makes sure that Neji goes through with the releasing of his chakras and then they cuddle before they go to sleep. Naruto is able to feel a new kind of desperation sitting at the pit of his stomach.
“Does Hinata know about Neji and… her father?”
“Yes.”
And yet she says nothing. He owes her another apology, and somehow he thinks that she won’t like to hear it.
“Grandma Mito…”
“Working herself ragged… as well as Shikamaru and everyone else, really.”
“Have they been able to share what I told you about?”
“Yes. Lord Gaara said the same thing, but you know… not much to go off with.”
Naruto remembers the red eyes staring back at him and the black dots around the pupil. The sharingan. A technique unique to the Uchiha, a terribly powerful clan that threatened the world with their ability to control the Beasts without the need for a vessel… which meant their demise at the hands of every other clan alive that saw them as a threat.
A murdered clan that had been lost to history. A power that meant their complete destruction… or so they thought.
What do you look for when the records have no more information about their abilities or their history?
The only thing they can know for sure is that they have a motive for wanting the Beast Tamers dead. But now they can only wait for whatever these remnants of the past have planned for them.
At least until they regain their footing and start the hunt back.
So a truce is in place and like never before, the Beast Tamers’ clans seem to be working together. And this seeming camaraderie only makes Naruto shudder with unease.
Minato rises before the door opens and Hinata stands there, looking at Naruto like he could be gone any second now. He smiles.
His father walks to Hinata and whispers things Naruto can’t catch, but by the time he has put his kimono back on Hinata is by his side.
Neji is not with her today and Sai sits outside their room, Minato exchanges whispers with him, too.
“Ready for our walk?” Naruto asks with a tone dripping with energy, but his body is slow, and although he is now able to move on his own, he still has to mask the pain that courses through him.
“Yes.” And Hinata is next to him, supporting him as he stands.
He has been regaining his strength and he has been adamant on moving his muscles on his own. Sakura shrugged at his request and told everyone that Naruto had always been the person that knew himself best. Everyone still worries over him, and having Hinata by his side, anxiously glancing towards him does make him feel somewhat guilty of forcing himself to get better at an accelerated rate, but…
Shikamaru has shared with him the current state of affairs and now is the prime time for the Beast Tamers’ clans to be attacked. Naruto and Shikamaru can only hope that the first clans to be targeted are those worse than them, but there are little guarantees of anything at this point.
So he bites down the pain. He has felt worse, that’s for sure, and that’s the energy he tries to channel through him. He hasn’t tried to use the Beast’s chakra yet, but he knows his body wouldn’t be able to channel the energy correctly anyways. He needs to reach a point in which using that is an option, an option that will not leave him on the ground gasping for air and writhing in pain.
Hinata always accompanies him with the calmest of airs, although her eyes washing over Naruto every once in a while are enough to give her away. What else has Naruto lost thinking that her body language is enough of a tell tale?
“Hey,” she knows and she hasn’t talked to him about her father, and he wonders… whether she would rather not talk about it to spare him the worry. Much like himself when he tried to deal with this without her knowledge. “I’m sorry about the letters with your father.”
Hinata stops for a second and then keeps on walking as if nothing happened, “Please, d-don’t worry about it.”
But he does. “I wanted to tell you, but… have you read them?”
Hinata nods her head once, a short movement that Naruto can tell comes from her being embarrassed about the contents of said letters. It’s not like she wrote them, though.
Hiashi just wanted a source of information and since his own daughter was in the heart of a clan that prized privacy over many other things… it stood to reason that he would want to get something out of this. But Naruto couldn’t bring himself to put Hinata in such a position, even less as he got to know her and realized that she was not like her father at all.
So Neji took over with only a nod. Nothing ever got out of that room and Neji listened and shared all he knew without reservation. Naruto had to say he had been surprised at his attitude.
“I know it would put you in a tight spot, so that’s why… well, I got help from Neji. He wrote the letters in your stead, the same way you would with your own penmanship. I… wavered about this whole thing once, shared with him my insecurities about hiding this from you, but he told me that I was right in doing this and that he thought you would be better off without contacting your father again, and well, seeing as he never contacted you to know about… you, made it feel like he was right. If he would have ever asked about you or made an attempt to talk to you, I would have told you immediately, I want you to know that.”
Hinata stares at their intertwined arms and then looks up at him. “I know,” she whispers. She also knows her father wouldn’t do that. Neji was right- is right, she is better off not knowing about her father, and if Neji is the one writing the letters, then at least, “Neji d-doesn’t give him any v-vital i-information, right?”
“No. He does a pretty good job with the reports Shikamaru gives him regarding the clan’s standing with the outside, so- well, no, there is nothing in the letters that your father couldn’t know just poking his nose around.”
“Good.”
“I don’t want to lie to you ever again- rather, I don’t want to hide things from you ever again. I promise that. I owe you that.”
There is a strained silence before Hinata asks, with a tremble in her voice, “Will you be a-all right?”
And Naruto’s first reaction is to smile and nod, reassure her that he will be fine and this is only temporary. But he senses her question is a little more nuanced than that. “I will. I will recover from this, it hurts and it sucks but it has improved greatly and we are already making preparations to prevent this from ever happening again, so yes, I will be all right.”
“H-how will this a-affect you?”
“We don’t know yet. It most likely had an impact on my body. None of the seals and training I go through are made to withstand a forceful tearing of the Beast, but they did help me withstand this whole thing. If I am here now it’s because of my dad and my training… as for what comes after this, well, we are waiting for me to recover and be able to perform as usual before my dad performs a deeper check on the seal. He’s actually hoping my godfather brings some sort of help that will enhance my seal or whatever, but…” Naruto sighs and battles with himself whether he should even share this with Hinata, seeing as he can’t even bring himself to discuss this sort of thing with his own father. But he did just tell her he didn’t want to hide anything from her, so. “I don’t think my godfather will bring anything that could change my current situation, Hinata. I don’t think there is anything out there that can give me a normal life span.”
Naruto feels himself be dragged to a stop, and Hinata doesn’t look him in the eyes, “What does th-that mean?”
“It means… I don’t think there is a cure to having the Nine-Tails inside of me.”
She says nothing, but this time her eyes find his and she stares, something bubbling up inside her.
And somehow Naruto panics, “That- That doesn’t mean I will give up on trying any new thing that comes to my attention. Nor does it mean I will, I don’t know, stop undergoing my chakra release sessions, or doing my meditations or anything like that, okay? I will still try to-”
“I’m pregnant.”
It takes him a moment to process the words that leave his wife’s mouth. His eyes seem unable to tear themselves from her face, trying to make sense of her words.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m p-pregnant.”
There is a rush of feelings Naruto can’t seem to recognize. There is the strangled feeling of desperation first, overwhelmed after by anxiousness and worry, but they all disappear in an instant as he realizes that he is going to be a father.
A father. Him.
His child.
His arms find Hinata’s waist and he envelops her in a tight hug, buries his face in her hair and breathes her in.
Their child.
“Congratulations,” he says, voice full of emotion, and Hinata’s arms find his body and slowly hugs him back.
“Congratulations,” he says again, and his chest starts to rumble, as a laugh starts to find its way outside. He puts distance between them and cups Hinata’s face with his hands. Her eyes shine under the setting sun and Naruto can’t control the smile on his face.
He forgets everything in that moment.
His struggles, the future, his anxiousness, his role as clan leader, his role as vessel. For the first time in forever, his brain forgets to remind him that his body hurts, the pain fog that floats around him disappears.
He is just a soon to be father with the woman he loves in his arms and the news of a baby coming is all he can think about.
And this moment he treasures. Even after they reach their room, even after he presses his ear to Hinata’s stomach -who laughs at his antics-, even after they go to sleep and Hinata’s soft breath washes over his chest.
The room gets dark and his mind reels everything he dared to forget in a rush. His smile doesn’t falter, and his heart still feels full of happiness. But he cries.
He is euphoric at the news, and can now gather what all those whispered conversations were about. He brings Hinata closer to him, kisses the top of her head.
He smiles still, but his eyes are wide open, and he just stares into the darkness of their room.
