Favored by fate

Chapter 12

No matter how hard he tried, the guilt he was feeling would never truly disappear. Minato knew this as he went about his day within his office. He looked down at the photos that decorated his table: Kushina, the twins and himself when they were still babies, Kushina and the twins sleeping peacefully, and Minato holding the twins with a wide smile on his face. However, as he stood up, he looked about the other photos that were behind him and he felt worse once more when they were all Kushina, himself, and Nuriko. No Naruto.

Minato knew there was no one else to blame but himself as it was his fault for being too self-reliant on prophecies.

Now, his decisions many years ago had come back to bite him hard. The world, as he knew it, was hanging in a balance as he had yet to even gain his son's favor.

He knew of course that his wife was doing a better job as Kushina didn't have to leave the house every day. Minato had to admit it, even if only to himself, that he wouldn't be as favored as Kushina since he wasn't there as much as his wife was.

Which brought him to his sudden idea.

"Iruka-san! Please cancel everything I have for the whole weekend. I will be going home for lunch and will return on Monday." He said and didn't even wait for the chuunin to say anything else before flashing out the office.

Iruka sighed as he rubbed his temple in annoyance. Just because the man was Hokage didn't mean he could skive off work. The scarred man just shook his head and went to push back all the Hokage's schedule to next week as it was already clear that the man wasn't going to be working the whole weekend.

[I am a line… Ignore me…]

Naruto was reading a book in his room as his mother had gone out to shop for dinner. They had an early lunch so the woman could do her tasks and return home early and spend an hour or two with him before having to prepare for dinner.

He was still confined to his bed but it was getting better as the days went by. It had been three weeks since he had been returned to the Hokage's manor and both his medics (Tsunade and Orochimaru) had been pleased with his progress. With not using his chakra and having plenty of rest, they had told him that he was healing faster than he did when he was staying at the hospital.

Naruto had snorted then and explained that staying there would have made recovering longer as it reminded him that he needed medical help due to his last mission that could have been his last.

He was lost in his thoughts that he almost didn't hear the Yondaime knock on his door. Naruto looked up from the book he had in his hands and blinked.

"Yes?"

Minato shifted on the spot and sighed.

"I came by to see how you are doing today. I took the weekend off as well. I thought, why not use it to stay at home from time to time. It isn't like the end of the world, right?" he tried to joke to ease the tension.

The man didn't know how to act around his own son as he and his wife had missed a lot of years thanks to their stupidity in believing that pouring their attention to the one that needed them most would be understandable since they thought that Nuriko was the prophecy child. Orochimaru's findings that it wasn't Nuriko but Naruto, it had made all those years of neglect look like intentional and now useless. Add the fact that during said years, Naruto was higher in rank that Nuriko, had more skill than her, more intelligent, and had the respect and admiration of his fellow shinobi as well.

Minato didn't like to compare but it couldn't be helped since there was so much difference between the two that it was practically a sin to mistake Nuriko for Naruto.

"I am doing well, thank you. Orochimaru-sama and Tsunade-baa-chan are doing everything they can to get me back on my feet." Naruto had told the man that he once thought as his father.