Hehe, well, here is a quick oneshot about Kushina and Minato! Greatly inspired after having decided to watch a few Naruto Shippuuden episodes about Kushina's past! So it kind of plays around that time, with my intentions laying in conveying Minato's thoughts and actions.

Enjoy!

He was mesmerized.

From the first moment on where his eyes fell upon her delicate form, something stirred within him. It was inexplicable to him, however, and upon further pondering he still could not understand what had caused this tickling sensation within his stomach, the heaviness with which his heart now pounded.

And even though it was only a split second, his breath hitched when her wolf-tainted eyes landed on him, deepest blue scanning his face wondrously. The slight heat in his cheeks were unnoticed by all, even her. He inspected her cherry-red hair in an awestruck manner, eyeing it down as it tumbled behind her back, framed her face perfectly and smoothed out at all edges. Automatically the corners of his lips curled upwards, presenting her with the most sincere smile he could muster, noting how this friendly act had usually helped him to create a positive impression.

"What are you looking at!?" Her roaring voice, fearless yet smooth, shook him out of his reverie, and he turned his head to conceal his treacherous eyes from her sight.

He could tell by her tone of voice that she had deep pride, and patience. She was trying to prove herself to the others, she was trying to leave an impression that would shake everyone to their bones and leave them dumbfounded behind, mocking them for their doubts and words. She wanted to free herself from the corner everyone tried to push her in.

"Look at her hair! What kind of colour is that? You look like a tomato! I hate tomatoes!"

Ocean blue eyes reverted back to watch how the cruel bullies disgustingly touched her strands, pulling and tearing heartlessly whilst their mockeries and insults were poured all over her, leaving her no breathing space, no time to counter-attack.

She seemed plagued, no, she was plagued. Her failing glee sent waves around the room that even attacked his consciousness. She was hurt, very hurt at that. They had stabbed her honour and that of her clan, they had made it clear she was an outcast, not desired just one second within the confined walls of this village. She should never allow herself to call this place a home, because sincerely, they saw her with less respect than the rigid dirty earth underneath their feet.

He felt a sudden impulse submerge from within him to act, a slight frown being caused by the creasing of his eyebrows as he watched the scenario taking its path. Just as he prepared his feet to haul him up, and his hands to fight, she erupted.

And she burnt like fire, passionately defending her pride, her honour, her very dignity in front of these boys, by proving herself to be even stronger. At first he was dismayed, yet watching how she sorrowfully punched the boy underneath her, claiming how one day she would become Hokage and prove everyone wrong, understanding spread within him.

She might have been fighting for herself in the most inappropriate, manly way she could muster, but he knew for sure, for someone to be treated as an outcast straight off, to not have even been given the chance to prove oneself, there was no other way but to battle the rough way.

And he admired her for it.

He kept on watching her, unknown to her at first. He couldn't quite comprehend how such delicate features as herself could fight like a boy. Her cheeks flamed rosy when one of the bullies disregarded her terrible attire. Her eyes burnt with the passion to prove him otherwise, no matter what it took, but deeply hidden, hidden to most people who ever dared look, Minato could see pain writhing within her, and how she struggled so hard not to let it slip and betray her true thoughts.

And just as she raised her delicate fist to dislocate whatever bone in that child's face that came into contact, her eyes scrapped the sight of his sun-blessed hair from behind the leaves of the tall tree on which he stood.

Yet it never stopped her from her intended deed. The boys ran off in fear, crying and screaming as if the devil personally was after them.

"Habanero!"

He eyed her unshaken form never wavering as they continued to cry further derogatory terms without halt, before dissolving into the shadows of the village and hence, no longer being visible to her.

"Are you here to mock me too?!" Her voice echoed throughout the whole compound sourly, yet her eyes were still glued to the spot where just mere minutes their classmates had stood.

Minato nearly jumped, realising he had been noticed, yet no words managed to slip past his lips. He felt endlessly paralysed at that moment.

"You see me the same way they do!" She cried, trying so hard not to let the salty liquids slide down her soft cheeks and thus give way to the impression of her being a weak and beaten lamb.

He never responded, never intended to change her aspect, because he knew for sure arguing with a hot-headed woman as she was one would never end good. And he equally knew that involving himself in her lonesome battles would also be pointless. Not because she might turn to him to throw some punches at his face, to show him that she feared him not one second, no. Neither because it would be the duty of a man to protect a woman in any given circumstances, never, she was a kunoichi, she wasn't expected to be protected.

There was simply no need for his intervention. She was strong, she had proven herself to be. Not only her physical strength was shattering, but her will-power was overwhelming. She had a spirit to never give up, to never back down, no matter how futile a situation may seem, and she always managed to bail herself out successfully. He was never needed.

She never needed him.

Minato couldn't help but adore her hair more and more as time stroke by rapidly. It began pulling itself in length, gliding down the sides of her hearty face. The hues started to deepen even further, tainting her hair even more the colour of bleeding roses. Silky tresses sweet with an aroma only she possessed, he concluded.

She was just so mesmerizing. Curves began to build and allowed for her body to sway with feline movement.

She sat enthusiastically next to her raven-haired best friend, Mikoto he remembered she was called, boasting proudly about her Genin-exam, pointing a slender finger towards the shining metallic evidence upon her forehead.

Mikoto smiled amusedly, nodding and claiming her own joy as to also being an acknowledged Genin.

"I fear nothing!" Holding a fist proudly in front of her chest as she spoke those words, letting her hair sway erratically with the impact, she stood up.

Minato followed as the low glowers and threatening glares were turned to the poor girl, criticizing her bliss to be a simple lie, because no way, not even if she were a Genin now, would they see her as one of them. And although she had found sympathy with the very few people she could call her friends, she knew, for sure, she would never be accepted.

They would never treat her as one of them.

"Stop mocking me!" Her shrilled voice bounces off all walls and resounded through his ears piercingly, "I don't care if you hate me! You hate my hair? I hate my hair!"

He did not retaliate with words, once again. He watched, consumed by so many emotions, yet empty all the more, as she screamed at him, as the tears filled her eyes and burnt down her face.

"Stop mocking me..." she sulked, her words slurred and unclear, dark-blue eyes blurred.

But he didn't move, didn't intend on bringing her comfort. What use would it be? Would she understand what he felt? Not even he understood this over-powerful attraction he suffered from. He wanted to touch her, to wipe away those horrid tears from her perfected face, but he knew such action would be wrong at this very moment.

And although it pained him to watch her suffer so miserably, he simply watched, and waited.

Waited for the moment he could tell her what he really thought.

Cerulean blue eyes widened fractionally, eyes enlarged to a size not even he knew they could withhold. Shock spread across his limbs, he couldn't think, breathe, act at that very moment.

He held her blooming hair in his hands, studying the discarded strands which had been evidently pulled out from her scalp and scattered purposefully on the ground. Minato couldn't comprehend how it came he felt her apprehension, and her hopelessness.

Her spirits were down, below earth, rotten and destroyed. She hoped not for someone to come save her out of her misery, because she knew no one cared for her absence. She was a frayed and tattered flower in middle of a blossoming field. And although instincts told her to try and pray for rescue, it never occurred to her that it would truthfully be able to happen.

She was no longer strong and wilful, she was waiting for her abductors to finish with her, and then leave her devastated and destroyed on the ground, until she rotted away, until she was already so completely forgotten that it did not matter.

Anger filled his system. Wrath boiled in his blood. So foreign and despicable these emotions felt, he could not get over them. He would not lose her. He would not lose her!

Instincts activated, his senses ranged around, his eyes detected the heart-filling colour of her hair from the high tree-tops. He grasped for every strand, holding onto it tight, relishing the silken feeling, so smooth he feared it could slip away with every speeding jolt he took. But he held on tight.

And when he reached the men, his body was turned to lightning, striking precisely at them, knocking the last air out of their lungs until they fell uselessly to the ground, utterly beaten.

And when his raged eyes turned to her, seeing her solemn figure, the emptiness which consumed her stare, monotonous, dejected, lonely, they softened noticeably.

They softened.

"Are you alright?" He spoke and tried to calm his apprehension.

But she only ever stared, shocked, incredulous. He actually stood in front of her, he was there, he saved her. Her energies faltered. But it did not matter, because he was there to catch her, he was there to carry her, he was there to take her home.

"Why would you bother to rescue an outcast?" She clamoured to the hope of affection, but her words were spoken with a broken voice.

"You are no outcast." His tone softened more and a smile graced his lips, "You are as much as anyone else a shinobi and citizen of Konoha. You are my comrade."

Her bewildered glance fell onto the tresses in his hands which she had left behind as a meaningful trail. He noticed her query-filled eyes and responded, "You hair is beautiful. I've always found it beautiful." He gave her another reassuring smile as he watched her delicate blush.

He had rescued her because he had considered her one of them. He had never disregarded her, he had never despised her, mocked her, no, he had watched her in order to make sure she was fine, which she seemingly always had been. And the one moment she seemed lost, demotivated, that one incident she seemed helpless, he took action to remind her that he would hold her back free. At any time.

He had reminded her that he would not lose her. Because he had whispered it into her ear.

He had always accepted her.

She was broken again when he saw her next. Laying on the ground helplessly, her hair scattered and messed up, her leg turning a dangerous blue, and her eyes obscured by endless tears.

Her chest flew up and down with her hiccups and desperate tries to calm herself, but the tears increased, the movement became more erratic and uncontrolled.

He knelt down next to her, his hands carefully stroking away a few of her strands and his thumb running along her eyes and down her cheeks, wiping away the tears each time they returned. He did not know what possessed him, but he felt the urge to touch her.

It was the first time he intended comfort. He knew why she was in such a shocked state, and he made it his duty to calm her fear.

Because indeed, for the first time she feared something.

"You don't have to cry." He intended to reassure her, "I'll by beside you, I'll help you through this."

But she seemed not to hear him.

"Uzumaki-san." He picked her up with great caution, treating her like a porcelain figurine, "You must be strong now. You've proven to everyone before that you are strong."

Her fists grasped his shirt in an aggravated manor, "You do not know..." she began to whisper harshly, "You do not know how it feels...they are using me...I am only a tool. All this time I fought for them to accept me, but all they need me for is to be their stupid new Jinchuuriki!" Her hold was turning more forceful, "They do not care what I feel!"

"I do."

She sharply inhaled a breath, eyes enlarged greatly.

"I always do. I want to help you. Let's go through this, together."

Her hands loosened, her eyes began to close, more tears streaked free, and she cried out when she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing into his chest.

He held her in his arms, soothing her with words of comfort. He held onto her the whole night long.

Faint red rushed to heat his cheeks as his eyes fixated onto her own, sparkling ones.

She smiled.

She smiled at him.

And he had never seen anything more angelic than that. She glowed brighter than all the stars that glimmered in the night sky.

Thank you she mouthed. He could not tear his eyes off of her.

So to decrease the awkwardness, he smiled, too.

She had let it grow, still. Being the sweet age of 16, it now reached just bellow her bum, held back at the side by a small clip, radiating the cherry deep red it always possessed.

"Minato!" She called, halting in front of him, hands playfully behind her back.

He had gotten used to her smiles. He had gotten addicted to be honest. Every day he would wait in anticipation for her lips to curve upwards. Never did she quite realise how much these gestures counted to him. But that didn't matter, because she did smile, each time he wished from his heart's depth that she would.

"Uzumaki-san." he responded, acknowledging her presence. He saw how her face rushed red, eyes sparkling up at him, before sweet laughter erupted from her lungs.

She sounded so melodic when she laughed, when she talked the way she adapted to talk to him whenever they met. He loved it.

"You still call me that!" more giggles filled his ears, "Kushina. I'm called Kushina, and I'd prefer you call me that, too."

Expectant, hazy eyes bored into his. Minato's astounded expression remained, before he relaxed, "Kushina." He repeated, savouring it on his tongue like milky chocolate, speaking it as if he were calling an angel.

It caused her to blush some more.

"Here." He handed her the towel, worried eyes scanning her up and down, checking for any wounds, for anything out of order, but he found nothing.

"Thank you." she whispered, eyes averted elsewhere, her hands clamouring the soft fabric in her hands as if her life depended on it, "And sorry..."

He shook his head, eyes softening, "It is not your fault those rogue-ninja's attacked us. I'm just glad the poisoned kunai did not hit you in the end."

"Only because you pushed me away in the right moment." Her voice sounded bitter, hurt, ashamed. She was ashamed of having been a burden instead of a help, for it was her fault he nearly got killed out there. He was so much stronger without her.

"You should have left me."

"I would never leave you." His soothing voice heated her skin, letting her forget the ice cold water that covered her body due to the winter's rain, "You know I would never leave someone dear to me behind."

Kushina hoped he could not decipher the fact that the blush in her face was due to his affectionate words and not due to the upcoming cold which crawled into her system.

She followed his movements with her eyes, seeing how he stood up, disappearing behind a door, returning with a steaming mug in his hands before setting it aside. He then turned and walked towards her, and her eyes widened when he picked her up, holding her close to himself, placing her with utmost precaution onto the sofa and then taking the mug just to place it between her numbed hands.

"You need to rest." His fingers lingered on top of hers, making sure she did not foolishly spill the liquids and burn herself.

Gazing wondrously into his eyes once more, she nodded in understanding and lay back comfortably.

She could rest now, she knew she could, because he was there to watch over her. He would make sure she was alright.

He would protect her.

Because he cared.

He did not know how they both ended up in this position. He was utterly lost in her eyes, and he knew for a fact she was not doing better. Her greyish orbs were tinged with darkened blue, meddled with his sapphire ones, interlocked non-physically as they lost themselves within each other.

He had asked to escort her to Konoha's annual festival in the centre of the village. He had reached her house punctually that evening, yet a not-yet prepared Kushina opened the door, playing with one ear as she intended to place on one of her dangling earrings.

She bid him to come inside, telling him how her parents weren't there. He gazed in awe at her colourful kimono, patterned with lovely blossoms of all kind and sewn with golden threads over emerald fabric.

"I'll just go get my shoes." She told him, stepping backwards, not noticing how exact items lay discarded on the floor, causing her to trip and stumble, crashing towards the floor.

In his desperate intention to catch her, he found himself falling along with her, and thus ending up right on top of her, his face mere millimetres away from hers.

Her hair was now sprawled chaotically all over the floor. He could see the light glimmering of lipstick and smell her unmistakable pungent scent.

"S-Sorry!" He pushed himself off urgently, trying to give her space, but his foot hooked onto the still scattered shoes on the floor, causing him to lose his balance once more.

And then it happened. His lips tinged with a sudden rush of blissful warmth. He felt soft skin pressed against his, and watched as her eyes widened even more.

This time he jumped up successfully, a blush creeping onto his face as he offered her a hand to pull her up.

Kushina's fingers flew to her own lips, her face turning redder than her hair.

He had kissed her.

She hadn't spoken to him for quite a while. Their usual get-together's wherein she would blabber him full with endless stories had not happened anymore.

Each time her eyes fell onto his, each time she saw or smelt his golden hair or noticed his masculine body, heat consumed her and she would avoid his gaze, hiding her blush, fingertips grazing her lips.

She could still feel the pulsation of the accidental kiss on them. She felt so different all of a sudden around him. She had been utterly in love from the moment on he had rescued her, he hat told her that her hair was beautiful, because it had been the moment he changed everything about her.

She began to love her hair too, she began to love him, but she dared not speak her words. She was simply too embarrassed.

Her hair truly felt silken in his touch. He had caught her off guard when he held a few strands in between his fingers and kissed them passionately.

Her face was startled, she herself completely overwhelmed by his words. And when he stepped closer, minimizing the distance between them, she could hear the rushing of blood in her ears and feel the pulsation of heartbeats in her head.

He had confessed his utmost feelings, after having withheld them for so long, after having fought to understand them fully, he now released them to her.

His head lowered, his eyes hooded. She mimicked his actions, staying still, spreading her lips slightly, waited for him.

And when it came, it felt like heaven exploded inside her heart and mind into millions of exotic colours. His lips moved softly above hers, made her feel blissful.

He loved her taste, feeling himself growing fond of it as her sweet scent buffeted his mind, her soft skin being so familiar in his touch.

She was indescribable with words.

To her, his actions meant so much, they dwelt in her heart and allowed for it to grow.

She discovered then.

She finally had found a home.

His fingers trailed over her skin sensually. He tried to memorize everything about her, every curve and corner, every bump and dent, everything.

They had been together for quite a while by now, so long that all sense of time gradually died, because with every day that passed, he noticed how much he needed her by his side, and how much she needed him, too.

He turned the kiss to be more passionate, deepening it to explore every single corner that existed of her. And she responded blissfully, wanting more with every second that struck by.

And when he entered, she landed in paradise.

He knew now, from the very moment he first saw her, took in her majestic form; from the moment on he saw those sparkling eyes, felt her soft lips on his, her sensual skin, her whole being, that he loved her.

He loved her with so much passion and adoration. He felt every pain and every happiness of hers within himself, and got addicted to her presence next to him.

Because at that moment when she entered his life, when she became a part of his, he realised, he had loved her all along.

The end! I hope you have enjoyed my little oneshot! Was editing it late at night, so sorry for any mistakes!

Please don't forget to write a review! I'd appreciate it greatly! You know they mean a lot to me!

Continuing with another chapter of Meet Heaven soon!