Kurama is a good teacher. He's patient and he listens and he doesn't mind explaining things in different ways when Naruto doesn't quite understand. He praises him when he deserves it and berates him when he lets it go to his head even for a second, but he's a good teacher.

In training? He's a goddamn tyrant.

~Remember about resonance, brat. We talked about this.~

Naruto wobbles precariously on the water, the surface flexing and rolling underneath him like a funhouse mirror. This was so much easier in the trees; at least up there nothing was moving.

Kurama says that his chakra stamina is fantastic but his control is shit, so he's spent the last half hour learning to walk on trees and rocks with chakra. There are craters all over as a result of his screw ups. The sun is starting to set, and he's already exhausted from training his balance and strength and endurance and all sorts of things he didn't know he should train. But he'd gotten the tree climbing mostly down, so next had been water.

"I know already you grumpy old fox, but the water's rhythm keeps changing." he grouches, glaring daggers at the bijuu's shade, which is sitting calmly on the surface of the water like it's the easiest thing in the world, which for him I might as well be.

~Then change the frequency to match.~

Naruto tries to do as he's told, but his water chakra is still unwieldy and tends shift either too far or not far enough, which so far has left him very frustrated and very wet. "What do you think I've been doing–" but he doesn't finish the sentence because his energy sways one way and the water sways abruptly in the other and all the windmilling of his arms in the universe doesn't keep him from going down.

He plunges into cold water–again–sinking though blue in a cloud of bubbles. But before he can even register the fact or get his bearings, fangs nip into the back of his shirt and Kurama pulls him from the water like disgruntled puppy by its scruff.

He deposits Naruto back down on the water's surface, and he automatically reaches for yang chakra instead of water when he lands– which is easy by the way. Yang chakra makes him feel like he's standing on a pane of thick glass instead of shifting gelatin, and the water flows around his feet instead of underneath them, taking the path of least resistance.

"Why do I have to learn it this way again?"

~Because moving with the natural resonance around you will attune you to the flow in things. Mastering it will allow you to slide with or push against the water in a way you wouldn't be able to do normally. The strongest Kiri-nin can ride tsunamis using this method. Now again, and this time monitor both rhythms, not just your own.~

And that's the thing about training with Kurama. The fox demon knows what he's doing wrong before he does, knows when he's actually tired and when he's faking it to get a few more breaths of rest. But he can also sense when Naruto is wavering, sense when he's about to go through the water or faceplant off the rock he's been using for balance training. When he does, he's always there to yank him out of the cold water of the basin, or nudge him back in the right direction before he tips over. Even though he pushes relentlessly, his corrections are gentle, not reprimanding, and whatever frustration Naruto feels doesn't last long before he gets back up and tries again.

Naruto stumbles back into his apartment physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, and all kinds of chakra exhausted. Earth chakra makes his bones hurt, water chakra makes his muscles hurt, fire chakra makes his throat hurt, wind chakra makes his chest hurt, and lightning chakra makes his hurt hurt.

He's also soaked, and filthy, and cold.

Freaking slave driver fox.

~I heard that.~

"Good!"

But even if his limbs are sort of tingly numb and he can't really see straight, he's secretly glad of every torturous minute. Not that he'll tell that to Kurama.

The sun is dipping low and red over the fire country forests, dusting the streets in orange and yellow. He casts a look at the bloody sun, remembering what Kurama said about his mother, about her hair being as red as a Konoha sunset, and wonders if he can make her proud if he never knew her. He shakes the thought from his head and shoulders through his door.

Long way to go.

He heads straight for the shower, first thing, casting a stray glance at the clock on his microwave as he breezes past it.

Five hours.

He's never spent that long on any one thing before in his life. Granted, it hadn't felt like just one thing. There had been at least six different kinds of everything, and Naruto hadn't known there were so many ways he could be stronger.

He yanks his sopping uniform off and turns the shower on full blast, which to be honest, is still pretty shitty. But it's hot, and that's really all Naruto cares about right now. He spends only enough time under the spray to warm his bones and strip the dirt and leaf matter from his hair, because he starts dozing standing up and he really should be horizontal before he actually passes out.

He steps out and towels off, scrubbing his face hard with the rough cotton to try and force energy into his limbs he doesn't have, just enough to move him out of the bathroom and into sleeping clothes. He manages sweats and sleeveless top, but that's apparently as far as his dying brain is willing to go before he collapses face first on top of his covers and is snoring in under a minute.

It's the best sleep he's had in months.

He wakes up at some ungodly hour of the morning. The sun isn't even a thought in the sky yet, just a feathered grey idea beyond the edge of the eastern horizon, and oh god he's starving.

He rolls off his quilt with about as much grace as a cat in a tube sock, because his muscles aren't all that sure what moving is anymore, and they clearly need to relearn how to hold his weight from scratch. He sways to his feet, which is a challenge all itself, because he feels like his legs consist of red bean mochi instead of the stuff they're usually made of.

But his stomach is cramping like it's been tied in triple knots so he makes his jelly-legs move and stumbles into the kitchen. Healthy food be damned, he goes right for the electric kettle and instant ramen. Kurama can yell at him later– he'll make some real food when he can think around the pit in his gut. Four minutes later he's through not just one but three instant ramen meals, empty styrofoam cups and his burnt tongue the only evidence they were there at all.

~Well good morning sleeping beauty.~ Kurama jeers with a yawn as Naruto heads for the fridge to dig up something more to scarf down.

"Ugh, what time is it?"

~A few hours before dawn.~

Which means he only slept about six hours. Crap.

But now he has food in his stomach and sleep is a far away concept, so he whispers "Screw it." to himself and starts making breakfast. He ends up making three omelets and a massive pot of miso, because he knows he's going to be hungry later, dammit, so he's planning ahead. He really needs to figure out how to make curry soon, so he can just make a giant thing of it and not have to cook six times a day. Ramen was so much easier.

He's most of his way through the first omelets and a mango, because he'd felt like something sweet, when Kurama snags his attention.

~Is there some place you can get jutsu scrolls from?~ He asks, tapping his claws against his maw pensively.

Naruto swallows his tongue against his immediate response of not really, because that's not quite true. He knows where he can find a ton of scrolls on jutsu, he's just not exactly supposed to know that.

"There's a jutsu library at the back of the academy, on the other side of the Hokage's office. But no one under Chunin is allowed in."

He'd spied it on accident when he was visiting Jiji, and he'd been staking it out before the whole training thing with Kurama. He hadn't actually been planning to break in, he'd just wanted to understand what it was and if it was important to being a ninja. But now…

~You know how to get in.~

It's not even accented like a question, because Kurama knows him well enough by now. Naruto runs through what he knows about the archives in his head.

"Hardly anybody uses it, and the only people I ever see go in there are Jiji and the teachers, maybe a Jounin or two. There's a Chunin librarian, but just one, and he locks up and goes home around midnight, and gets in about an hour before classes with the rest of the teachers. There might be chakra alarms though, I think some of the stuff back there is classified."

~I can sense the traps. Will they notice if things go missing?~

Naruto grimaces around a mouthful of egg. "I think so. The librarian does an inventory every morning and night. I can't take anything without him figuring it out within twelve hours."

Kurama growls something unpleasant. ~I can't teach you shinobi jutsu, I just don't know any. Bijuu don't need things like hand signs to focus chakra. I can only teach you if we both have something to go off of.~

A light goes off somewhere in Naruto's head and he swallows the last of his omelet in one go before shoving back from his little table and rolling to his feet. He digs through his bags of shinobi supplies, still sitting by his closet where he left them. It's not an ideal solution exactly, but…

~Kit?~

Naruto pulls out the triangle shaped package from the bottom of the second bag. Six blank scrolls, strapped together by a band of waxed paper. He dips back into the sack and comes up with a small set of calligraphy pens and ink.

~You sure that'll work? Don't they have safeguards against that kind of thing?~

Naruto looks at the clock. Less than three hours before the teachers get in. If he wants to go, he has to go now. "Only if I use chakra to try and copy the stuff down, I'm pretty sure." he sighs. "It means I have to take everything down by hand though."

~That'll take a while.~ Kurama grumbles. ~But better than nothing. Best move your ass then.~

Naruto is already pressing the stuff into his pack as he says it though, because he needs those scrolls to get stronger, and if he's going to do this he needs to do it before his nerves get the better of him.

He's almost out his front door when Kurama stops him.

~Windows.~

Naruto stops, does a 180, because if he takes the streets someone will see him, duh, and he won't be able to avoid the nighttime patrols if he doesn't know where they are. He has plenty of practice with that at least– most of his pranks involved slipping around the night watch. So he leaves his door locked and goes out his bedroom window instead.

The whole running on vertical surfaces is still hard, especially when he's trying to be quiet and not accidentally channel too much chakra into his feet and leave craters in the plaster. But he's been running on rooftops since before he had any idea how to do it with chakra, so, piece of cake really, in comparison to most of the crap he's done today. Or yesterday. Whatever.

He slips through the window into Jiji's office, because he knows the old man always leaves it open in case of Jounin sized emergencies. Thankfully even the Hokage isn't enough of a workaholic to be in his office this late (or early, whatever) and the chakra traps on the walls recognize Naruto, so they don't go off. He slips to the door, pulling on Kurama's burning power to sharpen his senses.

There's no one in the hallway, but there are two people in one of the rooms off of it. It's in the opposite direction of where Naruto needs to go though, and one of the ninja is snoring anyways. He ducks into the correct corridor and comes to a stop at the inconspicuous double doors. There are a couple of potted plants hanging from the ceiling, and Naruto carefully climbs the wall to get at the one on the left. He finds the spare key at the base of it, covered in soil and moss. The Chunin who is the librarian isn't supposed to have it, he knows. The spare keys for all the rooms that connect to the Hokage's office are supposed to be locked in a case in one of Jiji's desk drawers.

He hops down, using chakra to make the landing silent. He dampens the click the lock makes as he turns the key with the same method–it was one of the first things Kurama taught him. He slips inside and locks the door behind him, just in case.

The archive is one big, low ceilinged room with long shelves that run the entire length of it. The librarian's desk is tucked into one corner, but the rest of the space is all shelf, barely far enough apart for two people to walk side by side between them. He scans the kanji labels on the short ends–he hadn't bothered turning on the lights, too risky– but the moonlight coming through the windows combined with his night vision is more than enough to read by.

The sections go by level, and then by type, so he heads for the cases labeled D-Rank. There's only one full shelf, divided into nin-, gen-, and taijutsu, with the ninjutsu section is further divided by element. He starts there, since he clearly doesn't have enough scroll space for everything, and he only has so much time to copy.

He spends the early hours of his morning like that, several small scrolls unrolled in front of him, one of his own larger ones draped across his lap like a snake skin as he pens in jutsu after jutsu. It's boring, but the info in the scrolls actually sticks– the more he writes the more he gets the phases involved, and the more he understands the complex hand signs and what they're really used for. He notices patterns he otherwise would never have cared to see; almost all Katon jutsus have a rat sign in them somewhere, the Fuuton use a lot of bird and ram signs, and the dragon sign is almost exclusively used in Raiton, at least in the low level jutsu.

He gets so into looking for patterns in hand signs that Kurama has to snap at him to get moving when the sun starts to creep up on the horizon, and he barely makes it out before the building starts to come to life with sluggish morning activities.

He has a test later that day on chakric properties. He fails it spectacularly.

The weird thing is he actually knows about the properties now, more or less, but the questions are worded funny and he second guesses himself, and it doesn't help that he's so exhausted by the end of the test he's not even sure if he finished it or not. Kurama sleeps through more of class than Naruto does.

Iruka has never been the most patient of people. He knows this, his colleagues know this, and his students definitely know this. What most people don't know is that Iruka's true patience, which knows few limits, is reserved almost exclusively for those he holds dear. So when he's bolting down for the night, getting ready to lock up his classroom and head home to grade papers only to turn to find all three stacks of them missing from his desk– well. He stares at the corner of his workspace next to his empty coffee mug, where the smart stacks of tests had been resting seconds ago, and only sighs. He goes back to collecting his things and dropping them into his bag, pulling it closed and throwing it over his shoulder.

He strides easily towards the door, stopping once to tap a sandal back into place and rub tiredly at the back of his neck with one hand. When he pushes through into the hallway, he levels a ready glare on the Jounin waiting outside, leaning carelessly against the wall with Iruka's tests folded carefully under one arm. He doesn't make a move to take them back– not that he could, dammit. He knows from experience that Kakashi Hatake won't do anything to make him mad directly, and only stole his papers as a convoluted way to get his attention, but he also knows Kakashi won't relinquish them until he's gotten what he wants.

Iruka ignores him for a moment as he turns his back to lock his classroom door, and wonders absently how often such a moment has meant someone's death. Few dare turn their backs on someone like The Hound.

But Iruka has no fear of such things, not even in what could be considered healthy amounts.

When he turns back again Kakashi has moved, is leaning against the wall next to him instead of across from him, and is holding out a pen that had nearly fallen from his bag. He doesn't speak, but Iruka isn't really expecting him to. He just takes the pen without a word, slips it more securely into his pack, and starts his meander down the hallway like it's any other night. Kakashi follows him, a few steps behind him to his right, an unconscious move that allows him to view all the exits even with his visual handicap.

He'd never say so, but Kakashi is one of the main reasons Iruka chose not to pursue a Jounin rank. He prefers being able to walk down a street in his own village without a biological imperative to map out a tactical vantage point every third step, thank you very much.

Once they're out of the building and Iruka is fairly sure no one is looking their way, much less listening, he sighs. "I heard about the little 'incident' in the marketplace. That was you, wasn't it?"

Kakashi doesn't answer right away– for whatever reason his usual devil may care attitude seems difficult to pull to the surface. Even when he does manage, it's weak at best.

"Maa, Iruka-sensei, I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." His voice is low and entirely too steady for the strange veil of unease the Jounin is projecting, and Iruka stops suddenly in the middle of the street, turning to look Kakashi in the eye. The silver haired ninja stops as well, meeting Iruka's gaze levelly, but the uncomfortable air around him doesn't shift. If anything the atmosphere thickens.

"You're going to catch hell from the Hokage, you realize." he says bluntly, because Kakashi hadn't expected him to buy the hedging words in the first place, and the strange aura around the Jounin is starting to make him uncomfortable.

Kakashi doesn't answer, because he knows, but he'd done it anyway. Iruka looks at his single silver eye and sighs again, giving in. He keeps walking, Kakashi keeps following, and when Iruka passes through his apartment door, he leaves it ajar behind him.

He puts his bag down as he hears the door close, waits until the sound of the test papers hitting his coffee table reaches his ears, and then turns. He hooks an arm around Kakashi's neck, the closest thing the Jounin will allow to a hug, and pulls the idiot towards him, pressing Kakashi's masked face into his shoulder.

"Thank you."

Kakashi doesn't return the embrace, Iruka doesn't expect him to, but he feels the brush of Kakashi's eyelashes against his neck as they close, and knows he needed this, needed to know that what he'd done had not been wrong in any way.

"I almost killed him…" Kakashi confesses, so softly Iruka can barely hear him. And Iruka knows, has felt the same impulse enough times he's familiar with the dark urge, and can't imagine what it must have been like for Kakashi, who isn't used to needing to suppress those instincts.

Because for all that Iruka loves Naruto like a brother, it is Kakashi who knew the boy's parents so dearly; it is Kakashi who is not allowed near the only thing that remains of the last people on earth he ever loved.

Iruka hadn't known Kakashi, not before, has never seen the kind of man he used to be. But Iruka alone knows even the faintest part of Kakashi's heart, knows how much of it is dead already. He alone knows the full extent of Kakashi's fury when something he holds even remotely dear is threatened. And he doesn't even know Naruto, the Hokage had made sure of that, made it an order, because Hiruzen, perhaps justly, believes that Kakashi and the others who knew Minato and Kushina would not be able to keep the secrets they need to around the boy if given any leeway at all.

Iruka has no idea how bad a reaction might be if something truly dear to Kakashi was ever put to harm.

They'd bonded over it, this urge to hurt those who hurt what was close to them, and now Kakashi comes here when there is nowhere for that impulse to go, when he needs some place to let down the mask and breathe.

Naomi-san down the street thinks they're lovers. Iruka sometimes wishes the truth were so simple.

He's not sure exactly what their relationship is. They're not friends, that's not intimate enough a word, but lovers implies something is happening that isn't, and that there are emotions here that Kakashi is no longer capable of. Iruka has never been capable of them, not in that context anyway, but it's easier to let people believe what they want than it is to try to explain what's actually going on.

What's actually going on is far too simple and far too complicated to explain in any words.

Kakashi breathes.

He leans into Iruka and takes one breath after another, a hand gripped around his upper arm, not to restrain, just to anchor. Iruka doesn't speak, just breathes as well, a steady base tempo for Kakashi to pace his own breathing against, one inhale for Iruka's every two.

Because Iruka has something Kakashi can't touch through barriers of duty and loyalty and rules rules rules, and it's killing him inside in all the ways he's not already dead. To watch the people of this village mistreat the gift Kakashi's mentor and surrogate mother died for.

"You need to see Genma." Iruka tells him maybe an hour later, when Kakashi can breathe like a human being and not the animal he suddenly wants to be. Kakashi nods against his shoulder. Genma knows about Kakashi's animosity in a way that Iruka doesn't, the same way Iruka knows about his humanity in a way Genma does not. The human part of Kakashi needs calm, but the animal part has always needed blood, and Genma knows how to deal with those monsters better than most, in ways Iruka is incapable of.

Anbu squads tend to be well acquainted with their collective demons, and know how to draw strength from them in a way no stable ninja could understand.

No matter how hard Iruka tries to convince him to do otherwise, Kakashi sleeps on the floor. On nights like this he seems incapable of allowing himself comfort in any form, and so he lies on the tatami past the foot of Iruka's futon, facing the window, and doesn't move for the rest of the night.

In the morning he's long gone, off bowing before a carved stone and praying to phantoms. Iruka wonders, of all the ghosts he speaks to, which specter is the one that took Kakashi's soul with it.

He shakes his head, clears it of questions he'll never know the answer to, and gets up to grade the tests he'd abandoned on the coffee table. As he flicks through the papers with a red pen and the ease of long practice, he comes across Naruto's name in the stack. With a soft cringe he starts marking, wincing with every X he has to cross. When he gets to the end, something catches him off guard.

The last three questions on Naruto's test… are correct. Normally this wouldn't surprise him, Naruto isn't a complete F student, and he knows that, but these questions… They were trick questions he'd drawn from advanced material and put on the test in an effort to trip up his more know-it-all students, kids like Shikamaru and Shino and Sakura. He'd planned to make them extra credit when he calculated the grades. So far none of the tests he'd graded have had any correct answers, (he always sets Shikamaru's tests aside so they don't screw with his grading curve) so he'd been prepared to cross them out when he came to them.

But… they're right. The questions on chakra resonance and antiresonance that he'd stolen from a sensory jutsu journal, the one on the physical manifestations of Yang chakra in taijutsu vs. Yin in genjutsu… all correct. The responses aren't thought out– some of the words are spelled wrong and most of the sentences are stream of consciousness, but they're the right answers.