I don't own anything Naruto.

Kakashi was an honest man, but he was never a straightforward one.

"Oi, Kaka-sensei, why do you always wear that mask?"

He was staring off into the distance when Naruto's question brought him crashing back. 'I look like my father,' was his first thought. 'The village looks at me like a ghost.' Instead, he shrugged and replied, "I got used to it while in ANBU."

Sakura, fidgeting with her jounin vest, interjected. "But I thought you wore it as a child, too?"

"Did I?" the elder ninja feigned. "Acne, then."

Both teenagers scoffed. "You're such a bad liar, sensei."

.

Several weeks later he was lazing in a tree with a tattered Ichi Ichi novel when Kiba's rough bark interrupted him. "Damn, Kakashi-sensei, why do you read these books, and in public?"

'I was alone through puberty. Jiraya's sense of humor related to mine and it was the first man I could relate to, not just respect, after my father died,' his mind supplied. But, he kept his thoughts to himself and responded, "It is classier than the magazines."

A smile bloomed beneath his mask when Kiba blushed at the implications. "I hear you are as bad as Jiriya was."

"One can only hope." Then he turned the page.

.

"Why do you always cover up your sharingan?"

That was a question he received a lot. 'It was never meant to be mine. It does not turn off and wastes chakra. Obito should have lived. He would have controlled it, improved it… used it to protect.'

Stretching the truth, he would give a pointed glare and threaten, "Because then I would just see everyone with their clothes off."

That usually shut them up, but for some odd reason the Third had laughed until he was in tears.

.

With a puff of smoke Kakashi was perched on a random fencepost, waving down at the team he was supposed to be in charge of.

The irate blonde brow was wrinkled. "Damn, Kaka-sensei, why are you always so late?"

Kakashi looked into the power of Naruto's eyes then the potential in Sakura's, and before he could stop himself he thought, 'I'm not in a hurry to have you die in my care, as well.'

They were waiting for an answer, so he sighed and gave them one he could live with. "Maybe you are just early."