KUSHINA

Kushina opens her eyes to the familiar sight of the Kyuubi crucified to a stone tablet by her chakra chains. A long, orange ear twitches at the sounds of her approaching footsteps, but the Kyuubi stays otherwise motionless.

She halts in front of him.

Eventually the Kyuubi swivels a glare towards her figure when it's evident she has no desire to leave him be. "You're not wanted here, human," he says, haughtily so, despite his pitiful imagine. He's held down by stakes through every limb, pulled impossibly tight by chakra chains. It has always been this way since Kushina had been taught to restraint the beast, but today, the sight of it makes her feel ashamed and uncomfortable because for once she's forced to consider that perhaps everything she had been taught had been wrong.

"Kurama," Kushina greets, and it's another thing history books and Mito-sama had failed to ever mention.

The reaction is instantaneous.

"Where did you hear that name?" Kurama roars.

Kushina knows he has the ability to watch the outside world through her eyes. If he looked, he would have seen Himawari and heard her impossible tale. But he hasn't. It's not that the fox respects her privacy rather than the fact that he can't care less what happens in her insignificant little life.

The feeling had always been mutual.

Except now.

"From a friend," Kushina says. His friend. His family, rather, because it sounds like her son and his family adopted the Kyuubi as their own.

It is always said that the Kyuubi is a force of destruction and hatred, a natural disaster, a demon that has to be kept in check. But Kushina trusts the man her son will become (and her granddaughter) more than "common knowledge", and no Uzumaki would label a demon Uncle unless he truly earned that place in their hearts.

Before her, Kurama snorts, snout crinkled in disgust. "Relying on another's knowledge for your own selfish needs. Heh, typical. Knowing my name hardly makes you worthy of using it."

Kushina knows it doesn't.

She'd always considered herself a kind woman with revolutionary ideals. It pains her to realise this is not the case. She'd discriminated against the Kyuubi because of hearsay rather than personal experience – in fact, she'd as much as avoided contact wherever possible. She'd chained him like a tortured animal, forgotten and ignored until she needed to borrow his chakra.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Kushina apologises. "I haven't been treating you with the respect you deserve. I've been tasked with the duty to keep you from running amok, but that is no reason for me to chain you to this state, or leave you to suffer in isolation."

Kurama gazes at her. He's quiet in his disbelief because this behaviour is unprecedented in her, and perhaps he's also already lost all faith in the kindness of humanity after being jailed for so long. The disbelief quickly makes way for doubt and suspicion. "Isolation? It's preferable to your company, human. Don't flatter yourself. Don't assume you understand me because you've found out my name," Kurama spits out a last.

Kushina doesn't let his tone bother her.

"I won't," Kushina agrees. "I don't," because she'd never taken the time to see him as anything other than a vicious beast since she'd inherited the role of jinchuuriki from Mito-sama. "But you'll find someone who will."

She's surprised to find herself feeling relived by those words.

No one should feel lonely. She can still vividly recall her early days in Konoha, taken away from family and friends, lost, confused, and everything made worse from the bullying because it only highlighted her lack of support. There was a hollow hole in her chest that only grew and grew, until it started to fill with anger and resentment and anything negative that came her way.

She doesn't wish the same for anyone else.

Perhaps she won't have the same impact as her future son will on Kurama. They might not reach the level of best friend that Naruto acquired, but Kushina is willing to try.

Her chains unfurrow from the Kyuubi's limbs and shoot vertical in successive thuds. Kurama lunges at her, teeth bared, but held back by the makeshift jail bars. Rather than the fear she might have felt days ago, Kushina only feels sorrow now, because she'd done this to him – humanity had done this to him –, this animosity he felt for her and her kind.

"I can't free you, but at least you'll have a bit more freedom this way," Kushina says into the cage of chains.

Kurama snarls.

Kushina smiles sadly and lets her consciousness return back to the world outside. There, Minato is standing vigilantly by her side with Yamanaka-san, because her husband is a protective worrywart who accepted nothing less when she informed him of her plan. Kushina flashes a smile at them both to ease their concern.

Kushina places a hand on her belly once more. "Could we have been friends as well?" Kushina wonders softly to herself. Is it too late to repair what she never allowed in the first place?

A/N: Stuff goes on behind the scenes that our cute Hima-chan doesn't know about, as you can see. The Kyuubi is now suitably intrigued.

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