Disclaimer: Naruto is owned by its creator, writer, and illustrator, Masashi Kishimoto, and I am not attempting to make any money off this fanwork.
Pre-series to the beginning of the Naruto manga. Four times that Iruka took one step closer to being a father.
Naruto: 5
Iruka: 17
Iruka never imagined his first year as a chuunin flash-stepping after paint-blotched adolescents or genjutsu-ing away from irate parents, but then, even with the lousy pay and lousy hours, being a teaching assistant at the Academy was the best he could hope for in peacetime. The shock in the students' eyes just as he caught them celebrating their escapes, or when their answer books (stolen) exploded in a flood of spiders (illusioned): this was Iruka in his element.
His one problem stood shortest in the class and interrupted it daily. There wasn't much to be done about that, not when even Nakamura-sensei wouldn't yell at Naruto. No one ever yelled at Naruto, the Nine-tails vessel with a contingent of ANBU at his back, not when they weren't sure what he might do. Not while they remembered what he could do.
It wasn't as though Iruka didn't feel the same cold stone in his gut when he looked at Naruto, but Iruka still forgot, sometimes, to go tight-lipped and sour like everyone else. He had never been good with silence.
"Naruto, you can practice on the roof after class!"
"Naruto, if you call that a seal, I'm chakra-binding your fingers!"
"Naruto, the next time you climb in through the window, just remember that I'm waiting on the other side."
"Naruto," Iruka scolded, "Nakamura-sensei said to turn to the full diagram in your book and follow along."
"I did. It wasn't there," Naruto answered, not bothering to keep his voice down.
Iruka grabbed the book himself. "If you don't even try, how can you expect-" he began, but broke off in shock. The page had been ripped out. He flipped through the rest, quickly. More pages were missing, and some in chunks. Nearly shaking with fury, he dragged the boy out of the room. He didn't need to distract the class of naturally-inattentive children.
"Why?" he demanded, shaking the text in front of Naruto's face. "Why would you destroy this book? It belongs to the Academy."
"It was like that."
"I've used this book before," Iruka snapped, "when I couldn't afford my own. And now you've stolen that chance from another student."
"I didn't! Just because you never believe me, doesn't mean I'm a liar!"
"If it wasn't you, then who? Who else had this book?"
"Nakamura-sensei gave it to me. He hates me."
Iruka opened and shut his mouth, speechless for the second time in as many minutes. "Are you accusing your teacher of defacing a class book?"
"I don't know," Naruto muttered. "Maybe you did it."
Iruka didn't so much as take a deep breath as gulp it. Would anyone even care if-?
"Who cares?" Naruto cried, so close to Iruka's thoughts that he flinched. "I remember what it looked like last time and I still don't get it."
Iruka pushed the gutted book into the boy's chest. "Right. Sure. Just-just get inside." Iruka stayed in the hallway, breathing hard. How Mizuki could want to be an Academy instructor was beyond him.
It was only on the way home that Naruto's words struck him. The five-year-old remembered what the chakra diagram looked like from a year ago. Had he been lying? Or had he been paying attention after all, and the fault lay elsewhere? The possibility gnawed at him. A few conflicting days after, he found himself dropping a detailed chakra diagram onto Naruto's desk when Nakamura-sensei wasn't looking.
One week later, Naruto failed the chapter exam with his usual totality. Either he hadn't read Iruka's notes, or they hadn't helped him. Iruka wasn't sure if he felt disappointed or relieved, but he tried not to think about it.
