Title: LoveHateTragedy
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: FugakuKushina. Yeah, you read that right.
Summary: Between the two of them, they’ve built so many lies and broken so many promises that they don’t even bother accusing each other anymore.
Disclaimer: Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto.
Notes: For ohwhatsherface, who wanted FugakuKushina, which is actually non-existant in fandom, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. But now, I wish it was canon and that I did this pairing justice, and Pina, just look at the monster you have created. DX
Her prompts were “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon5 and weeds, which make even less sense together than Kushina and Fugaku do.
LoveHateTragedy
by: allurement
Uchiha Fugaku never liked Namikaze Minato.
Sure, the other man is a brilliant shinobi. In fact, he is one of the strongest the village had ever produced, and Fugaku thinks highly of his abilities even if he isn’t the blonde’s biggest fan, but—
(“Say that again,” he orders.
“He’s going to be made Hokage,” she whispers, her hands shaking)
—at that moment, Fugaku loathes Minato.
Fugaku may have the respectable family name, the elegant dark looks, and the admiration of more than a few female hearts, but Minato is the one who will end up winning the biggest prize of all. Now he will have both the village and her, and Fugaku can’t help but be envious of him.
When Fugaku first began seeing Kushina — because what they were doing could hardly be called courting — he knew that she was dating ‘that hopeless, blonde romantic’, and he was all right with that. Besides, he could hardly tell her to leave Minato when he himself was too cowardly to present the redhead to his parents, for fear of their criticisms against her.
He thinks he will be a hypocrite just this once.
“Leave him,” he says suddenly.
“I—I can’t, Fugaku,” Kushina replies hopelessly, wringing her hands in frustration. “He’s the Hokage now, for pity’s sake! And he’s done so much for me, I can’t hurt him. You know I don’t love him — you know I’ve never loved him, don’t you?”
She had always told Fugaku that she never loved Minato, and Fugaku believed her every single time. Now, however, he questions it.
“So you’re just going to stay with him, stringing both of us along?”
“No!” Kushina cries. “It’s not like that, and you know it, Fugaku. He’s helped me so much, I can’t leave him. He loves me—”
“And you think I don’t?” Fugaku demands.
An inexplicable look flashed across Kushina’s face.
“You have… no right to talk to me like that,” she hisses. “You won’t even show me to your parents because you’re ashamed of me—”
“That’s not true—”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Kushina challenges.
“For once in your life, use your bloody brain, Kushina,” Fugaku says, not lying to her, but not telling her the whole truth. “How can I present you to my family if you’re supposed to be dating that goddamn Namikaze? How do you think that would make me look? Like you said, he’s our Hokage now. Having an affair with his girlfriend wouldn’t exactly raise my clan’s social status.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
Fugaku is a cautious man—
(boy)
—and he chooses his next few words carefully.
“You’re supposed to choose one of us,” he says eventually. “I won’t play second-fiddle to that bastard anymore, Kushina.”
“But you won’t be!” Kushina protests. “I told you, he means nothing to me.”
“Then prove it. Leave him.”
“Fugaku,” she says, stepping towards him and closing the space between them, “I love you. And Minato’s sweet and funny, but he doesn’t — I don’t—”
She pauses, and Fugaku waits for her to continue.
“I love you, Fugaku, and I love who I am when I’m with you,” Kushina says. “The way you look at me… it makes me feel like I’m actually worth something. I don’t deserve you, but then again, I don’t deserve a lot of things.”
It begins to rain.
“You make me feel loved. And you’re the only person that makes me feel truly alive.”
“I’m getting married,” he says.
Kushina freezes, and takes her hands out of Fugaku’s hair. She places them in her lap and looks at him with a hurt and confused expression on her face.
“I—My parents,” he explains, looking away from her. “I’m already eighteen, yet I don’t have a wife. They want me to have a family before they pass on the clan’s legacy to me. Since I haven’t found a potential candidate on my own…” he trails off.
When he receives no reply, Fugaku looks back up at Kushina. Her hands are curled into fists and she is staring at him with angry tears in her eyes, and Fugaku just wishes he could take her away from all of this, to a place where nobody knew them, where all of these expectations weren’t heaved on his shoulders, where Kushina wasn’t a nameless girl-woman who had no manners whatsoever and where they could be happy. Together.
“So,” she says in a low voice. She speaks softly, and there are birds chirping loudly in the distance, but Fugaku can hear every word — every syllable — that she is saying, clear as day, and her voice is like a melody, with their hearts beating as one accompanying it to play a song too beautiful for words.
“Kushina—”
“Where does that leave us?”
Fugaku has no words, and he pauses and tears his eyes away from her once again. He thinks about his parents, about his clan, about what’s best for all of them. Then he hears Kushina exhale and he thinks about what is best for him, for them.
“Answer me, Fugaku,” she says coldly.
“I don’t know, Kushina,” he admits. He is a man of few words, and rarely ever says what he thinks, but as he sees Kushina hastily wipe away a tear as it falls from her eye, he wishes he could tell her how much she means to him, how much she had changed him, how glad he is that he has met her.
But he can’t.
He is an Uchiha.
“I see,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Fugaku.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Kushina slowly raises a hand and touches his cheek with such a tenderness he knows he will never find anywhere else. She is uncouth, scruffy, rude, and impolite, but he thinks she is perfect anyway.
“So am I,” she whispers. “I’m sorry for not being good enough. But I’ve tried Fugaku, I have.”
This is a lie and Fugaku knows it, but it is a comforting lie, so he lets it slide.
“When is the wedding?” Kushina asks.
“Next month. I haven’t met her before.”
Kushina chuckles.
“She’s a lucky girl,” she says. “Where will it be held?”
Fugaku can see where she’s going — he may not be as strong as Minato, but he’s still a genius of a genius clan.
“I don’t want you to come to the wedding.”
“Why not?” she demands.
It will be harder for him to go through with the wedding if Kushina was present. Of course, he couldn’t let her know that, so he settles on a, “I don’t want to see you there.”
Kushina narrows her eyes dangerously and takes her hand away from his face.
“Well then,” she sneers, rising to her feet. “You might as well not see me anywhere else from now on, Fugaku.”
With that, she storms off, leaving him—
(forever).
It is Fugaku’s wedding day today. He is marrying a girl from one of the branch families; Mikoto, he thinks her name is. She is a distant cousin of his, distant enough for it not to repel him, but close enough to ensure that the Sharingan will be passed on to any children they should have.
The thought of being with anyone else besides Kushina makes Fugaku’s heart ache more than a little.
Presiding over the ceremony is none other than Minato himself, and Fugaku resists the urge to slay the man where he stands.
Not that he has a chance against him, Fugaku thinks bitterly to himself. The man is the bloody Hokage for God’s sake, and even if Fugaku was as strong as him, the ANBU surrounding them would have him dead before he could say “I do”.
So he waits by the altar, standing next to the man he despises more than anything else in the world, the man that is his fearless leader, and waits for his bride to walk down the aisle.
Fugaku throws a brief glance towards the young Hokage and sees him smiling at someone in the gathering of people. The soon-to-be Uchiha patriarch scans the crowd for who Minato could be looking at, and sees none other than Kushina.
She came, Fugaku thinks, his heart skipping a beat.
He forgets to be angry at how she disobeyed his orders, and is instead relieved that she has forgiven him.
Mikoto appears at the end of the aisle. It is the first time Fugaku’s ever seen her, and she looks like something from a dream. Any other man would be thrilled to have a bride as lovely as her, but all Fugaku sees as his soon-to-be wife walks closer to him is brilliant red and a flash of turquoise.
As Minato begins to speak, Fugaku looks over at Kushina once more. She smiles at him from her seat in the crowd, but it is a sad smile, and Fugaku hates himself for being the one who placed it on her face.
She is beautiful. Not beautiful in the way Mikoto is, and many would say that the latter was the better-looking one of the pair, but the never-ending hope in Kushina’s eyes, the lack of restraint in her smile and the happiness that practically emanates from her make everyone else pale in comparison.
She is like a sunflower—
(so bright and effervescent, but not poised enough to be a rose)
—amongst weeds, and Fugaku wishes she were his.
“Of course I still love you, you moron,” she says.
The corners of Fugaku’s mouth lift up into a small smile. He knows that he is shaming his family by his actions, but he finds that he doesn’t really care.
She loves him, and to him, that is a perfectly justifiable excuse for going against his principles.
He’d go against the world for her happiness.
“Mikoto gave birth yesterday,” he says.
“Oh?” Kushina says disinterestedly, plucking a few weeds from the flower-bed. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a boy. His name is Itachi.”
Kushina snorts and sits up straight.
“Weasel? You called your kid that?” she asks incredulously. “God, Fugaku, how much do you hate the poor boy?”
“The clan has already arranged for the names of all children Mikoto shall bear.”
“So you and your wife don’t get a say in it?”
“No.”
“Let me get this straight,” Kushina says. “So if you wanted to call your next son Naruto, for example, they wouldn’t allow you to?”
Fugaku eyes her warily.
“… Why would I ever want to call my child that?” he asks.
“Because it’s the best name ever. I would call my kid Naruto.”
“Namikaze Naruto,” Fugaku says out loud, snorting. “Yes, I can already imagine the mere name striking fear into enemy-nins’ hearts everywhere.”
“Shut up!” Kushina laughs and swats Fugaku lightly. “Besides, who ever said it would be Minato’s?”
Fugaku’s smile fades.
“Anyway, shouldn’t you be with your weasel now?”
“Hn?”
“Your son,” Kushina says. “He was just born yesterday. Shouldn’t you be showing him to your clan or whatever it is you snooty people do?”
“Mikoto can handle him,” he says offhandedly. “She and the maids are fussing over him now. We’re presenting him to the clan elders tomorrow, anyway.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“In your garden?”
“No, idiot,” Kushina snaps. “In La-la Land. With me, of course. Does she know you’re with me?”
Fugaku ponders over that question. He’s never told Mikoto and, being an elite shinobi, he has never been caught, but Fugaku has to give his wife some credit. She’s a Jounin, and a highly capable one at that, so she must have noticed him disappearing now and again.
But he doesn’t want to worry Kushina, so he says, “No. She has no idea.”
“I must have been a very special kind of stupid to fall in love with you,” she says.
Fugaku himself doesn’t know why he continues to see Kushina behind closed doors. He doesn’t know whether it is love or not, because he is only twenty and still a boy in more ways than one. He’s always been a good boy, an obedient boy, so he thinks that he must love her to be going against his parents’ orders like this.
He wonders what would happen if they ever found out.
One glance to the redhead besides him tells him that it doesn’t matter anyway.
Mikoto would be heartbroken, he knows, but would still carry out her duty as his wife faithfully, regardless. If Kushina were in her place, she would beat the crap out of him and attempt to poison his food the following evening.
That is the difference between them. He knows for a fact that he does not love Mikoto, even if his feelings for Kushina are uncertain.
He feels sorry for Mikoto sometimes. She is a good wife, Fugaku thinks, but she does not complete him the way Kushina does. Mikoto is polite, respectful and well-mannered — everything that Kushina isn’t.
But Kushina is everything that Mikoto isn’t and so much more.
Mikoto is loyal and she loves Fugaku despite his detachment from her, but she is also too submissive for Fugaku’s liking. He knows it isn’t her fault — it is the way she was brought up, and if she weren’t obedient, she wouldn’t have been betrothed to him in the first place.
He looks at Kushina once more. She is loud and brash, and isn’t afraid to hit Fugaku if he deserves a beating. She isn’t afraid to stand up to him.
And it is these flaws—
(perfections, Fugaku corrects himself)
—that draws her to him; the reasons why she would not be a good match for him are why he adores her so.
Fugaku is very narrow-minded and old-fashioned, but even he can appreciate the irony of the situation.
“Not really. You’re just a very annoying type of stupid,” he replies with a smirk.
“Hey!”
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
Fugaku understands the implications of her words, even if she doesn’t.
“… Hn.”
“It’s Minato’s,” Kushina says unnecessarily. Fugaku already knew it was his.
“Have you told him?”
“Yeah. He’s over the moon. He’s already planning the wedding,” she says, looking everywhere but at Fugaku. “He wants it to be before I’m due, but with the war going on… Well, it’s complicated. The council want us to wait, since they think it wouldn’t look good for their leader to be focusing on anything but protecting the village, yet they don’t want their Hokage to have a son out of wedlock, so the shit’s been constantly hitting the fan, and there’s crap strewn just about everywhere at the moment. Bloody idiots.”
Fugaku doesn’t reply.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” she asks tentatively.
He does. He looks at Kushina’s stomach, which shows a faint bulge already, and finds he already hates her unborn baby that has come between them. For although she doesn’t love Minato, she will love her child unrequitedly, Fugaku knows this, and will try to do right by it.
“Hn,” he says. “Maybe it’s time we both grew up and stopped this childish behaviour.”
Kushina narrows her eyes.
“Is that what you think this is? Childish behaviour?” she demands. “Is that what you think we are?”
“Why does what I think matter all of a sudden?” Fugaku throws back. “It’s never seemed to matter before.”
“You—” Kushina begins, but halts mid-sentence. Instead, she glares at Fugaku and rises to her feet. “I hate you,” she says before stalking off.
Fugaku sighs and shakes his head wearily.
He knows she is bluffing. Between the two of them, they’ve built so many lies and broken so many promises that they don’t even bother accusing each other anymore.
But now, they’ll never have the chance to.
“I’m sorry,” the note says.
Fugaku can’t recognise the handwriting, but he knows who it is from. He folds the piece of paper and keeps it close to his heart.
“The Demon Nine-Tailed Fox has fallen!” someone says.
Everyone else on the battlefield looks to where the shinobi is pointing to, and they see no monster in sight.
As one, they rejoice.
“But where is Yondaime-sama?” another asks once the celebration has quietened, and before some can register it, dozens of shinobi are fleeing to where they last saw the Kyuubi to search for their leader.
Fugaku stays where he is, blood dripping off of his Jounin vest. He doesn’t bother going with the others to see whether Minato had survived or not.
Minutes later, those who had rushed off return to their comrades who were too severely wounded to follow, and they say with regret in their voices and mourning in their hearts that their Hokage has died.
“He sacrificed himself for the village,” one kunoichi says, unabashed by the tears that are streaming down her cheeks.
Everyone stops whispering at her words, and a hushed silence falls over them.
They all silently mourn the death of the hero who had saved their homes, but Fugaku is the only one amongst them that sheds no tears for his death.
“Uzumaki Kushina is dead,” one of his clansmen says.
It takes all his years of being a shinobi put into practice to pretend that that information doesn’t have some sort of effect on him.
“How?”
“We don’t know, Fugaku-sama. They’ve found her body in a hut on the outskirts of the village, near where the Yondaime-sama defeated the Kyuubi. There was a baby with her.”
“A boy, if I’m not mistaken? What is his name?”
“The boy is Uzumaki Naruto, Uzumaki Kushina’s son. They say that the Yondaime-sama has sealed the Kyuubi inside of the boy, but we don’t know why he of all people was picked. They haven’t located the boy’s father yet, so he’s being looked after temporarily by the Sandaime-sama.”
“Very well. You may go now.”
“As you wish, Fugaku-sama.”
That arrogant bastard, Fugaku thinks once he is alone. It’s one thing to sacrifice himself, but to ruin her son’s life?
He conveniently leaves out the fact that the boy was Minato’s son too. He might as well not be. That sonofabitch didn’t even have the decency to let the boy take his own name, and few villagers knew that he was courting Kushina before they had died.
Was he too ashamed to besmirch his status with someone like her? Fugaku wonders. Then, he chuckles sardonically to himself, as maybe he and Minato have something in common after all. Stupid, stuck-up piece of shit.
But he is the only one who will see it that way. The village will continue to praise him for getting rid of the demon and they’ll shun her son for containing it.
The woman he loved and the man he hated are gone now. And in the end, their story was just one of the many tragedies told in the life of a shinobi.
As Fugaku contemplates what he has left to live for, Mikoto slides open the door of his room and excitedly tells him that she thinks she saw a flash of red in Sasuke’s eyes when she was feeding the boy and, won’t you come and see, Fugaku?
Fugaku stares at his wife for a few seconds before he slowly stands up and follows her out of the room. As they are walking to the West Wing of their mansion, he finds his answer.
He will live for his wife, his sons and his clan. For his family.
And for her memory.
“I’m home!” his son says.
When Sasuke comes home from his first day at the Academy, he chatters away in the kitchen to Mikoto, who is preparing dinner. He talks of his teachers and how they say he is a genius and how powerful he will be one day, but Okaa-san, does that mean I’ll be stronger than Aniki? Mikoto merely smiles gently and goes along with what he says, and Fugaku thinks that she is the perfect mother for his children.
His traitorous heart tells him otherwise.
Sasuke talks about his classmates and how weak and untalented they are, how he is better than them. He speaks of one boy in particular, Uzumaki Naruto, and how all the others shun him, even though he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t take the lessons seriously at all, Sasuke says, contemptibly. He always shows up late for classes and makes a joke of the whole thing, and he shouldn’t have been allowed to be a ninja in the first place.
Fugaku silences him immediately and sends him to his room.
They call Uzumaki Naruto a demon and that may be true, but he will hear no evil of her son.
Fugaku has never attended any of Sasuke’s parents’ evenings at the Academy, Mikoto having always gone in his place, so he had never seen Naruto in person until one day, when he is walking with Sasuke back from the lake where he was teaching the Katon to his son. They walk through the village centre, past shops and restaurants, when he hears a little boy’s obnoxious voice asking for more ramen.
Sasuke looks at Ichiraku, a ramen bar, and Fugaku follows his son’s line of vision until he sees a small blonde boy practically inhaling a bowl of ramen.
The boy — Naruto — seems to feel the two pairs of eyes on his back, and he whirls around on his stool to look at Fugaku and Sasuke.
There is nothing of Kushina in this boy. He is the spitting image of his father, and Fugaku is disgusted with himself for feeling relieved at that fact.
But then Naruto grins and calls out to Sasuke, sticking a hand in the air and waving it enthusiastically. Sasuke, unsure of how to reply to that, simply waves back uncertainly.
Fugaku sees Sasuke’s hesitance and tells him to hurry up; they have no time to dawdle around, and he quickens his pace, forcing his son to jog to keep up with his strides.
He has witnessed the exchange between the two boys and that is all he needs to see.
Uzumaki Naruto has his mother’s smile.
Fugaku pretends that that doesn’t hurt.
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