7. Waking to the Wind

Character(s): Iruka-sensei, Naruto
Summary: Naruto doesn't like his new apartment. It smells funny.


Iruka woke to fingers prying up his eyelids.

Warm, small fingers that were blearily familiar, followed by a stream of air blowing against his irises. Disoriented, he felt the weight straddling his chest, a bright flicker of untrained charka. It was constricting his breathing, hard on his sore ribs.

Rolling over on the mattress, Iruka moaned quietly, a sound barely heard over the louder squeak of protest when the movement tumbled off his seated guest. Iruka blinking owlishly at the tiny boy now ensconced in the tangle of blankets.

"Naruto?" he wondered. Mussing his hair sleepily, he slurred, "Why aren't you at your new apartment?"

He had dropped off the child there hours ago, just before finding a secluded part of the woods to punish away his frustration, and just after arguing furiously with his Hokage one last time over having to leave the child to begin with.

The child's posture drooped, his flashing hair sallow and unspectacular in the shadowy light. "Don't like it," he murmured his protest. "It's smelly."

"It will start smelling like you in no time," Iruka comforted him.

Naruto looked helplessly around the familiar room before dragging up an armful of soft blanket to cover his face. His mumbled answer was muffled, but Iruka understood anyway. "But not like Ruka-sensei."

Iruka sighed, propping his chin against his hand. "Ah, Naruto. You know that you can't stay with me anymore."

"Why not?" came the pitiable whisper.

He tried to explain, again. "I'm going to be one of your real teachers now. And teachers aren't allowed to live with their students."

A plaintive wail. "Why?"

How could he explain something like that to a four-year-old? Firmly, he said, "They just can't, Naruto."

Naruto's face scrunched with misery. "It's not fair."

It wasn't, but it was out of Iruka's hands. The decision had been made in spite of his reasoning or his temper. And certainly not for lack of trying.

Pouting, Naruto continued, "Why did you have to be my sensei, then?"

Iruka wasn't sure himself. Something to do with his reluctance to kill things that supposedly deserved it. That had been one of the Sandaime's more wry remarks, trying to lower the tension during their rather jagged audience. The old man had argued that, because of Iruka's inhuman-compassion-for-things-that-breathe-no-juts u, Naruto's class would stand a higher chance of surviving until graduation.

When the subject had turned to Naruto himself, his mentor had spoken very reasonably. "Aside from everything else, you're too young, Iruka."

He remembered his returning argument, snapped somewhat less respectfully than the old man deserved: "I have been taking care of children since I was ten years old."

He might have deserved the Sandaime's answer, a reminder that tore him wide enough to seep old blood. "Yes. And that did not turn out well."

Barely anyone remembered the massacre of a small group of orphans during the Reconstruction, caught in the wake of a roving, maddened shinobi. Almost no one knew that the oldest had survived.

Iruka was brought back to the present by Naruto, his penitence, rubbing pitiful tears into his shirt. "Wanna stay with you," he begged.

Iruka stroked the roots of his hair, his own eyes burning traitorously. By the gods, this was so unnecessary. He cursed the Hokage again for his mercilessness.

Then Naruto's voice suddenly changed tenor, the plea subtly different. "I don't wanna go."

"To school?" Iruka was surprised when the boy nodded. "But you were so excited to go to the academy."

It hadn't been a sure thing. Iruka had argued strenuously to ensure that "the demon" had a place among his peers. They called him a demon, this diminutive, clinging child burying himself in the blankets, afraid of the first day of school. And Naruto was the monster.

"Why don't you want to go?"

Suddenly, Naruto's blue eyes were decades old. He spoke with damaged certainty. "No one will like me."

The admission stirred something in Iruka that he thought had been left behind in his own academy days. Sitting upright in the bed, he shifted so Naruto was sitting on his lap. He held the small chin so that they were looking directly at one another. "I need you to listen to me," he said. "Are you listening?"

When Naruto nodded, he continued, "Sometimes you just have to be strong by yourself. Sometimes people just aren't fair. And while they aren't fair, you have to forgive them and go on being strong."

It was a deep insight, maybe too deep for such an undeveloped, unspoiled mind. Yet, Naruto already knew all about the world not being fair. Now, as he faced this new part of his life, he needed to know something more.

Iruka smiled a little sadly at the child he had fostered. "You are so special, Naruto. You have a special purpose. I just know you're going to do great things. It's okay to be afraid," he told him, wiping away the drying streaks with the pads of his thumbs. "Just don't let it or anyone stop you."

Naruto looked up at him for a long moment before he crumpled, pressing his face into Iruka's chest. Mumbling into his night shirt, he asked, "But if I get tired, I can still come back?"

Iruka felt a thrill of fear, thinking of the Hokage and the disapproving faces of everyone he knew. Still he clutched the child, face set with defiance. "Yes, Naruto. There will always be a place for you with me."

Even if everyone else said no. Even if Naruto was never allowed to become a shinobi.

He finished, "You will always have a place here."

Iruka wasn't a parent, but Naruto was his most precious person, the only remnant he had of something like a family. As for Naruto, he'd never known anything else.

"I'll take you to school tomorrow," he soothed, and felt Naruto relax in his arms, his clenched muscles loosening as his worry dispersed. "I'll take you too school, and then afterwards we can move some things into your new apartment to make it feel more like home."

The feeling of a nose being rubbed against his nightshirt. "C-can I take the picture – the one of us?"

"Alright," he acquiesced.

"And Geoffrey?"

Geoffrey was a house plant in an electric green mop bucket. Iruka thought of the corner it would leave empty, right next to the vacant floorboards were a small futon would no longer be unfolded, and felt a wave of loneliness. "Yes. Geoffrey too."

The sniffles had turned into a wide yawn. Warm and content, his small problems solved, Naruto buried himself further into Iruka's arms. He said, "Okay."

Iruka settled back against the pillows, savoring this moment for just a while longer. Storing up the memory for when he was left with cold absence. He pulled the blankets back over them both.

A far away voice reached him on the edge of sleep, imparting a shy admission. "Love you," Naruto said.

Misery and happiness made war in Iruka. It must have shown in the way he stiffened, and in the burning wetness on his cheeks, because suddenly someone was rubbing his eyes with the heel of small fists. "Don't cry, Sensei," Naruto cooed, using his very best comforting voice. "I'll see you a lot."

"But I'll be lonely," Iruka played along, blinking now in dramatized sorrow.

"I'll come see you," the child promised.

"Everyday?"

There was a fervent nod, followed by a question. "You'll make ramens?"

"We'll go out tomorrow night," Iruka agreed, and Naruto wiggled before wrapping small arms as far around his guardian as they could go.

His request was barely audible: "I-I can stay?"

Tonight. Just for one more night. Iruka tucked Naruto's head under his chin, feeling the hum of blood and charka. "Love you," he whispered in the little ear, and drew a protective circle around him with his arms.

For one more night.