Characters: Minato, Kushina
Summary: "What do you see in the desert?"
Pairings: MinaKushi
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

"There's nothing gold out here."

It's the way she says it, that gleam in her eye and uneven note in her voice that makes Minato both grimace and smile, that gets his attention. Kushina is sitting on top of the wall, her long legs swinging back and forth like some pendulum, the mockery of a child at a swing set. The rising sun is outshone in brightness only by her hair, pulled into some haphazard knot with wisps snaking all the way to her waist because Kushina can't be bothered to care about her hair on missions.

Leaning on the wall, arms folded around his chest, Minato looks up at her and frowns. "What do you mean by that?"

Kushina snorts and tosses her head the way a restive horse would. "Come over here and sit beside me and you'll see my point."

When Minato clambers up on the wall, all he sees is sand. Well, that and small dark spots—Suna nin, no doubt—on the horizon. Personally, he doesn't really get Kushina's point. "You know, Kushina, I think most people tend to categorize sand like this as golden." His tone is always mild like that but this morning—perhaps because of the excruciatingly early hours—there's an impatient bite there as well.

She scoffs and looks at Minato with eyebrows raised, the dreaded "You are such an idiot" look that cuts Minato to the very depths of his soul. Or, something like that. Kushina knows how to make her glances sear and burn. "Yes, yes, the sand is gold, the walls are gold, your hair is gold. But why don't you do a little of your vaunted looking "underneath the underneath" and tell me what you see out there when you get past the sand, hmm?"

A bony elbow is digging into his ribs so Minato takes his eyes off of Kushina and focuses them on a far less attractive sight: the desert beyond.

He's never been able to understand how the natives of Kaze no Kuni can love this place or even stand to live here. Of course, Minato's met Sand nin who say the same thing about Hi no Kuni but that's beside the point.

Minato sees sand and rock and Suna nin approaching at a steady pace—is that an alarm being fired downstairs? He thinks it is. A kunai is taken from the pouch and Minato rolls it in his hands as he does when he's having trouble thinking.

"Death?" he tries hopefully; that's what most Hi no Kuni natives say they see in the desert and Kushina, given where she was raised, will likely see the same thing.

The red-haired kunoichi nods briskly. "Yes, death. What else do you see?"

There must be something in the age difference, Minato concludes sourly, that contributes to their seeing different things in the desert sands. Kushina is sixteen to Minato's nineteen and the difference shows in the way she blazes into battle. It's beautiful but at times terrifying as well; Minato's been hit over the head with that "I'm game for anything they've got" smile more times than he can count but it's still just as breathtaking every time. Minato can't remember a time when he ran into battle with her sort of reckless enthusiasm. It only stands that Kushina's comparable youth might play a role to her seeing something different in the desert before them.

When Minato doesn't answer, Kushina sighs exasperatedly and points, not in any particular direction, just out into the desert. "You want to know what I see, Minato? Yes, I see death. It's hard not to see death in the desert; after all, there's so little that can survive here, at least to my untrained eyes. But you want to know what else I see? I see the destruction of dreams."

This is the part where Minato raises his eyebrows. Usually it's him or Jiraiya waxing poetic over things like this, not blunt-as-a-sledgehammer and tough-as-nails Uzumaki Kushina. When Kushina starts to use metaphors, it means… Well, Minato doesn't know what it means. Kushina's never really done this before.

Kushina tilts her head downwards and her rough expression softens to reveal an awkward beauty, pale and trying as hard as it can not to bloom. "The wind and the sand wears away at everything out here, but the erosion works on people too. It destroys their dreams because they're too busy trying to stay alive for dreams to survive. There's no room for dreams out here. That's why there's nothing gold. There's just dirt—" Kushina's tone tightens "—and all this wretched sand." She pries her shoe off and dumps sand out of it for emphasis.

Minato soaks in her words like a sponge and he smiles. Kushina stiffens slightly. "What are you smiling about?" The defensive note in her voice only makes Minato's smile grow.

"Do you just get these random bursts of insight, or do you plan them all out?" he asks, and Minato, ever the idiot when it comes to women in general and Kushina in particular doesn't notice the way a storm starts to roil over the track of her now-freckled (the desert sun will do that) face.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Kushina asks dangerously.

Unfortunately, this time Kushina has chosen her "dangerous" voice to be laden down with honey; Minato doesn't realize the potential peril he's just placed himself in. "Well, no offense to you Kushina but you're not known for being the most eloquent woman around. People expect punches from you, not Shakespearean monologues."

Scarlet eyebrows rise. "And do you expect me to punch you at any given moment, Minato?" Kushina asks tartly, smoothing down her plain brown—it's too dull for Kushina; Minato thinks she should wear bright colors, not something as dull and plain as brown—shirt.

Finally, Minato gets it, and his smile goes just a little nervous. "Only when I've done something stupid, Kushina."

Crisis averted; Kushina smiles graciously as she must have been taught to do in high class life in Uzushiogakure. A princess, a queen, the empress of the world, none of them have smiles quite as regal as the one Kushina can adopt at will. Funny, considering Minato doesn't think he's ever met anyone less regal than the spitfire beside him.

The alarm rings more insistently down below and Kushina swings around and back onto the battlements. Minato joins her. "Time to go." Minato has his kunai at the ready and though she has a pack on her hip all Kushina really needs in a situation like this is ninjutsu and her fists.

"I'll watch your back if you watch mine," Kushina remarks absently. "And no monologuing this time; you just barely missed the kunai aimed at the back of your neck the last time you did that."

It's because even love that doesn't quite know what it is yet is still love that Minato can give a jaunty "Sure, so long as one of your bunshin doesn't hit me with stray kunai" and Kushina can twitch a smile at this and not shout. Golden moments are still golden moments, even with sand wearing around at them, just like love is love even if it doesn't have a name.

There's nothing gold here but them.