Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Pairing: SasuNaru, past mentions of JiOro.
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The Fool-
Upright: New beginnings, new adventures, new opportunities, unlimited possibilities, pleasure, passion, thoughtlessness, rashness
Reverse: A bad decision, indecision, apathy, hesitation, a faulty choice
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Ever since Kakashi brought Naruto back from the fight in the Valley of the Ends, Jiraiya had appointed himself as Naruto's protector as the boy healed from the Uchiha's wounds.
He told himself that he was just watching out for the boy, after all he had no other protectors and he obviously couldn't count on his sensei for protection, if Kakashi's lapse in judgment in teaching the Uchiha boy the Chidori was the norm.
This wasn't necessarily a lie but only a half of the truth.
With the same sick fascination of a bystander watching a car wreck, Jiraiya found that he couldn't look at the boy without remembering the betrayal of his most precious person.
'Damn it Oro.'
To this day, Jiraiya felt a dull ache in his chest at the thought of the other man and in that moment was given a brief flash of clarity. He called Naruto a fool for believing that he could bring back the Uchiha heir, in reality he called himself a fool for not chasing after Orochimaru enough.
'Maybe if I was a little more like the brat…'
Jiraiya shook his head, as if it would rid him of his troublesome past and bad choices. There was no need to go down those trains of thought, at least not when the whole village seemed content to do it for him.
As Jiraiya observed the current crisis in Konoha, he could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise.
It truly was eerie how the past seemed to repeat itself. All Jiraiya had to do was close his eyes and everything around him would be the same as it was when Oro defected.
He peered into the window and saw that Naruto was asleep as well as strapped down to the bed.
'Must've tried to escape again,' the sennin mused.
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Jiraiya had asked Naruto why he was risking so much to bring back a traitor, someone who forsook the village of his birth and the village he swore to protect.
The boy had told him that he was bringing the Uchiha back for his other teammate; that he was trying to bring back his friend.
Jiraiya was certain that Naruto didn't just see the Uchiha as just a friend. He had watched them fight on top of the hospital. The looks they exchanged, the body language, the level of pain inflicted by the betrayal, spoke to the fact that there was much more between the two than perhaps they realized. While both were shinobi, they were still children and were still naïve to how deeply they were connected.
Jiraiya recognized everything between them. How could he not? It was as thought fate saw fit to create copies of him and Orochimaru.
He sighed, 'Running from this place didn't do me a bit of good.'
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Naruto's wounds had taken a long while to heal, which didn't really surprise Jiraiya. From what Jiraiya had seen while training the boy, he theorized that the healing ability bestowed to the boy from the Kyuubi was dependent on his emotional state.
Jiraiya had learned from Shizune that while Naruto was learning the rasengen, he had burned himself badly when learning to control the flow of chakra in his hands. The chakra induced burns should have taken weeks to heal properly but Naruto wanted to train again. That motivation, the willpower stimulated the healing ability and all the wounds healed in one night.
The moment that he told the boy that he was going to train him for three years, he had to hold back a chuckle as he saw the proverbial light bulb go off.
Jiraiya called him a fool but inwardly he prayed that the kid would save the Uchiha from the self-imposed hell that destroyed Oro.
As Naruto's spirits rose, his healing ability kicked in and the boy healed in the matter of a few hours.
Soon they would leave for three years.
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Jiraiya thought on it for a while and then conceded that maybe a fool was the only person who fate permitted the power to alter destiny.