Description: It was happening again. He was barely alive and Kushina was dying. But he might as well be completely dead because his son was going to go the same way she did. "The last time I saw him physically was when he was just born," Minato said, "And now how can it be fair that the final time I see him, he's going to die?" Spoilers for 660 and up.

Genre: Family/Drama (Semi-bildungsroman)

Characters: Minato, Naruto, and Kakashi

Pairings?: Minakushi.

Reasoning: This was partly inspired by lyrics in "Run" by Snow Patrol in which they sing, "To think I might not see those eyes…" etc. Plus it is inspired by some thinking I did while reading some of the most recent Naruto manga chapters. This is also a short fic to tide myself and others over until I am finally able and ready to update Upside-Down Hourglass. College is not a friendly monster.

Disclaimer: Naruto and everything related does not belong to me.

The Spark of Blue
In darkness there shines the light of hope…

Ray of Light
"I want to become stronger than I am today
To be able to reach you with this voice someday
Even if the wind does not stop, I will continue walking
I'll look skyward
At the end of the sunrise, a ray of light shines..."

- Shoko Nakagawa

"The last time I saw him physically was when he was just born," Minato said, "And now how can it be fair that the final time I see him, he's going to die?"

Fire raged around them in swirls of red and orange fury. Bubbling in malformed cloaks were the remnants of Kurama's yang half of chakra protecting the remaining Shinobi Alliance like armor would, and there were crumbling boulders and dust floating about in massive circles.

But despite the fighting and turmoil that seemed to engulf the world, despite the screams of terror or of triumph, despite the countless other casualties that were sure to be happening at that very same moment, there was no one else on the battlefield that could possibly be suffering just as much as Naruto—and that was only because Minato deemed it so in his heart.

One of his arms was gone and he was an Edo Tensei, brought back unceremoniously from the dead, and that was all he thought of.

His former students were nearby, one pinned as a traitor, and the other with a sad look in his eye. The traitor, Obito, was just clinging onto life as he lay on the ground, and the other had a tentative hand on his teacher's shoulder.

"I don't know," Kakashi murmured to his sensei, "but nothing in this seems fair."

The pink-haired chuunin that had come to him in a rush of color and devastating worry held trembling hands over his son's chest as if they were an almost desperate plea for something good to happen. "I—I'm trying the best I can, Hokage-sama," her green eyes filled with the wetness of tears, "S—so please…please don't worry anymore. Please," she ended with a whisper.

The light jade hue of her healing chakra was steadily fading.

There was a stillness in the air as branches of sand seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but Minato could sense the chakra beat beneath the ground as the newly minted Fifth Kazekage, Gaara finally let his power drop completely and for the prone form of Naruto to land carefully upon the earth.

"It's alright, Sakura," Minato heard the young man voice behind him, "Just…" and the former Hokage could almost feel the crack in the leader's voice, "…just do the best you can. Whatever happens…"

For some reason only known to the gods above and to those present at that site, the sentence was not finished. It was not as if there was much to say anyway. The unbound silence seemed to thicken uncomfortably as there was less and less breath that could be heard from Naruto.

Minato stared at his son's eyelids, willing them to open so that he could see the color of his eyes. He had forgotten how they looked like, but he was not so sure if he ever truly took a look at them anymore.

For a few seconds he could hear Kushina shouting at him, yelling at him on that day, asking him, "Why does it have to be our son? I don't understand!" Of course, she out of all people would know the suffering a fellow jinchuuriki had to go through in their lifetime, no matter how short it was.

A short lifetime.

How he knew how that felt. There was too little time to accomplish what he wanted, too little time to cope, too little time to say goodbye or raise a family. Yet how in the world did he manage it before?

But he supposed that his own son would have an even shorter lifetime.

He hated himself because it was happening again. He was barely alive and Kushina was dying. But he might as well be completely dead because his son was going to go the same way she did. There was fire and the imminent thought of death and the danger was very real. He was holding his boy in his arms and trying to protect him from an unstoppable force of nature. He was fighting his student—but now, Obito was down.

What was going on again?

Where was he? What was that?

There was a man other than the formerly masked one, marching about the battlefield like he believed himself a monarch. His hair was the same pitch black, and his eyes the same hue of vengeance, but he radiated that much more malice, and suddenly his beautiful red-headed wife was pushing him on the shoulder.

"What are you doing, Minato?" she was questioning, "Get up! GET UP, 'ttebane! We don't have time for this!" Her eyes were violet with determination and he saw the desperation easily in them. "I thought you were the Hokage! So get to work and LEAD, idiot!"

Another shove to his bicep. "Sensei!" But this time it was Kakashi moving him out of his self-induced stupor.

The blond man peered upward and noticed quite abruptly, that everyone was staring at him.

Kakashi repeated his title and gave him a meaningful and surprisingly emotion-filled look in his single visible eye. Minato could not help but think briefly back to a time when his student would look at anyone and anything lacking all feeling whatsoever, and how even if his time stopped a long time ago when he gave up his life, everybody left behind went on with their own lives.

He blinked and replied with, "I have a plan," and things came rushing back together in a jumbled mess, no matter how awful his heart felt at the moment. "I don't know if it will work, but I am not about to give up on Naruto…"

Kakashi lifted an eyebrow when he trailed off.

"…or on Kushina." He finished with a solemn face and rapidly a look of understanding seemed to settle upon the former student's shoulders like an invisible burden that collapsed on him. Though Sakura and Gaara looked slightly lost at the predicament, the former focused most of her attention on healing her patient and neither of them bothered for an elaboration.

"The last time the Kyuubi was extracted was seventeen years ago," said the Fourth, much to the surprise of the two younger ninja, "and that time the jinchuuriki not only was weak from the extraction, but she was also weak from childbirth." He saw the red of his wife's hair in his mind's eye, swaying gracefully in the wind, "but she was able to survive, at least a while longer, because she was an Uzumaki.

"And maybe, because Naruto has some of her blood in him, he will be able to last a little longer so that it can buy us more time," he added, "So this is what we'll do…"

In the next minute, Minato did not waste any time. He watched his son's condition steadily failing with what felt like a fist constricting his chest. He quickly affirmed that simply transferring his half of Kurama's yin chakra would do absolutely nothing for the boy, a fact to which the Kazekage confirmed: once a jinchuuriki has their bijuu removed, replacing it with the same chakra is equivalent to adding water to an empty paper bag and watching as the contents slowly seep out again because the container was too weak to hold it anymore.

After every extraction, regardless of the jichuuriki, his or her body would be destroying itself from the severe loss of embedded chakra that they have grown accustomed to. It would be like cutting off a vital organ, and the only way to coax the person back to life, if at all possible, was to give them back their own chakra, not the tailed-beast's.

And that was what made an extraction a death sentence. It was impossible to give new, normal chakra to an essentially dead being without transferring it from someone else.

"So in the end, someone must die after all," Gaara murmured. "Then I will—"

Minato held up a hand. "There is no need for that. I will do it." At the devastated look in Kakashi's eye, he continued, "I'm already dead. What would be the difference?"

The Fourth Hokage took one last look at his son, noting his slackening features, and his resolve strengthened. He instructed Sakura to add a bit of her healing chakra right over Naruto's stomach while it simultaneously tried to heal, and he nodded at Kakashi to do the same. He gave a smile to the Kazekage who returned it with a respectful bow of his head in thanks.

Then, true to his prowess as a man of legend who possessed numerous talents in his prime, Minato began to tamper with the seal of his own creation and the swirl that enveloped Naruto's bellybutton in an intricate design began to move elegantly as a snake slithering on sand would, the edges blackened, new strokes extended outward from the central radius like a sun.

He saw his student make a tiny jolt in astonishment as his energy began to react. He felt the movement and tingle between his fingertips. Sakura made no noticeable moves. The ground seemed to rumble. Light appeared in flashes before his eyes, like random bursts of little white stars that flickered. Then, the lights grew bigger and bigger and eventually the surroundings were taken over by a blinding white sheet of nothingness…

Blank…brightness…

The white sheet peeled away like millions of pieces of paper falling in irregular patterns. They were the snow of the warm expanse.

And there in that expanse, Minato saw the stunned expression and body of Kakashi Hatake materialize. He saw as his hands, and not just one of them, somehow crumbled into view. It was then that he realized that he was not in his revived form, but rather in the one he was when he was alive.

His skin had lost its pale hue and it was no longer cracked. He felt more alive than he had in over a decade, and yet he knew why he was there in the strange whiteness, apparently floating on a nonentity.

"What's going on?" asked Kakashi worriedly. "Where are we?"

"I am not sure," responded the Hokage, "but I might have an idea where." He gestured over to the jounin and said, "Follow me."

So he did and their footsteps echoed in a place that should have been silent, which made the situation all the more bewildering. They continued for what felt like minutes until Minato's foot hit something soft and his sandal caused an object to squeak rather loudly. Removing his foot, he discovered a beat up stuffed dog with a dark green patch over one of its eyes as if it had been chewed multiple times.

He opened his mouth and was about to say something when he was interrupted.

"That's," and he saw the Hatake turn a wild façade on him, "that's the dog I gave Naruto when he was an infant!"

Minato blinked. "What?"

"I gave that to him after…" the man's dark gaze lowered, "Well. It doesn't matter why. But what is it doing here? None of this makes any sense."

Minato clenched his fist and forced his head to look forward and ignore the sad piece of his son's past that he would probably never understand and took another step, continuing on. A few more steps and he found scattered homework papers from the Academy, all signed messily on top with a bold Naruto Uzumaki. Chewed pencils were strewn everywhere, an empty green frog wallet sat somewhere to the right, and sprouting upward a few meters was an oak tree, and attached to that oak tree was a swaying wooden swing, and attached to that swing was…

"Naruto!" he heard Kakashi say, startled.

But it was not the normal, teenaged Naruto. Instead it was a little boy in a pair of khaki shorts and a white shirt with an orange swirl sewn onto it. He appeared to be about five years old and his cheeks still retained their baby fat. However, the largest problem was that he did not look happy at all.

"I know this scene," Kakashi whispered almost reverently, "I was so sure he would not remember this, but I was watching him because I was part of his guard."

"His guard?" questioned Minato.

The jounin nodded in agreement. "Yes. It was right after his fifth birthday. He was upset because some old lady yelled at him for no reason that he could understand…but everyone else did."

Eyebrows knitting together, the Hokage watched the scene more closely and watched at the boy swung slowly, a blank expression on his face. He noticed for the first time how dull his boy's eyes appeared. He thought for sure that they would not be so gray, but rather azure.

So why?

"What's demon?" he heard little Naruto mumble to himself. "Demon, demon, demon, demon…"

A horrified feeling settled in his gut.

"Alone, alone," little Naruto sang, "Naruto is alone. But it's okay. I have fur ball, fur ball, fur ball…"

His stepped forward and watched as Kakashi did the same thing.

"Kurama," the boy popped out of his lips and the duo was stunned into utter silence. They were definitely not expecting that. "Kurama. Kurama is there. But why is he gone? I thought we're friends now…"

His son closed his eyes shut and the scene shimmered and the tree stayed, but instead of a young boy sitting on the swing there was a wailing newborn baby and Minato could only see him, could only see his little Naruto crying and sobbing and his cheeks were wet and why was everything so white instead of dark?

No, no, no. He was in the odd in-between world, trying to save his son. Not with Kushina on that night. No, no, no. Get it together. Keep together. C'mon, keep it together.

He shook his arms out just as the scene shimmered again.

And there before him stood whom both men knew as the current Naruto, the almost seventeen-year-old Naruto of the present.

Though the teen's face was uncharacteristically calm, almost devoid of emotion.

"Naruto," the father alleged with conviction. "Come back to us."

There was no response, only a blank stare.

"I'll give you the rest of my chakra and your sensei will guide your consciousness back," he went on, "please."

The teen moved his head to the side infinitesimally as if asking a question. "But I don't want to go back. You'll go away if I do. You can't. I won't let you."

The response gave him a slight pause, but he did not let something like that faze him. "I have already died for you once. I would gladly do it again."

Naruto bowed his head as if severely hurt, but made absolutely no more attempts to speak again.

What seemed like moments passed and both Kakashi and Minato tried to coax him to talk again and again, but to no avail. Instead Naruto stood there as if he was a porcelain doll, an empty puppet with no life to it. Hope was dwindling as time went on. Eternity felt more plausible than naught and the silence was all the more disheartening.

Minato began to despise the horrid nothingness of white. He saw nothing and it appeared his son also felt nothing.

Despair surfaced like tendrils of dark smoke that threatened to encase his heart and the grayer and grayer his son's irises looked the less faith and optimism he felt within himself. If he could not move his son to speak or to make some sort of gesture to get out and live, there was no point in existing in the strangeness of the in-between world because his son would most surely die.

And maybe, just maybe, he had failed.

A nonexistent wind ruffled the leaves in the single tree and a few rustled into view, and he thought that it could be a deceiving instant but his son's lips may have quirked up in fascination at the simple and natural dance of nature.

The ethereal, in-between version of that world's Naruto widened his eyes in a kind of wonder that could only be seen in someone who was immensely curious.

But it was then that Minato finally realized that he hadn't really seen his son's eyes until much, much, later than expected. Not even on the day of his birth.

Babies sleep often and cry often. They are born with a slick residue over them that causes them to keep their eyes closed for at least a few minutes after they appear into the living world, but they can slide their eyelids open and begin to see what is out there. Compared to when they are older, though, it is rare and not for long periods.

So he felt yet again how much of an impact this was. It was as if he was seeing his son for the first time all over again.

In his mind a meaning clicked because they say that blue is of a color intermediate between green and violet, as of the sky or sea on a sunny day. They say it symbolizes peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, security, order, loyalty—all those things all at once.

Blue was birth. Blue was life. Blue was new beginnings. Blue was Naruto.

Then came the light and for the first time, Minato thought he truly understood what hope was. It wasn't a confused entity that threw itself at anyone that was willing to have it. It wasn't some term used loosely to bring life to fallen warriors.

No, hope was something you gave yourself, or rather, it was something you let yourself have. And though he was still floating in a mass of an otherworldly white and yellow space, still trying to persuade his son to come back to the plane of the living and not to stick to where he himself had been for the past sixteen years, Minato realized that his son had let him have his hope.

Naruto blinked once, twice, and then he opened his eyes to look at the floating form of his father across from him. Minato noticed the spark of blue right away—just like his, just like Kushina's. They were the blue that were full of life.

And he was determined to pull his son back.

"Naruto," the father breathed, "I'll save you no matter what."

Though Naruto remained akin to a mute person, barely moving as if he could not see nor hear anything beyond what he believed, Minato felt as if he had struck a chord. For a second, his son's pupils moved toward his direction, but it was for that second that ignited a fire of an even greater hope.

Minato smiled even though he knew he was unheard and his mind was filled with a singular, peculiar, disembodied thought: They were blue. His son's eyes were blue. Not the color of the ocean blue. Not the color of the heavens blue. No, they were the kind of blue that was peace.

"…Sometimes this heart seems
It was meant to be shut
Now I feel as if
I understand a little more now."

Fin.