One Small Kindness

"Uchiha Mikoto takes the hand of an outcast child, and with it rewrites the destiny of her clan."

--The Author's summary.

Ever notice that the great Masashi Kishimoto has a bit of a problem getting a handle on his female characters? If you've spent any time looking at Naruto fanfics, you've noted one trend is to try to fix this. Fan authors will with varying degrees of success attempt to flesh them out a bit. This has led to a great deal of the series' vast Fanon, quite a few forgetable fics, and a few gems.

One Small Kindness by Digital Tart is one of the gems.

Over the course of nineteen chapters, Digital Tart transforms Mikoto Uchiha from the the blank smile and the apron we see in Canon, to a former jounin who one day sees her best friend's son playing with hers... and ends up being ashamed of her first reaction. This changes the course of history, at first adding simple things like Mikoto training the genin of one of her students for the chuunin exams and having Naruto over for dinner. It slowly spirals to the point where her husband's attempted coup gets a very different reaction.

Well written and laced with vivid original characters that fit right in to Naruto's melieu, the fic is completed and DT is apparently working on a sequel.