Hohaiyee: Here's the sequel!

pantpant

It took me forever, to get this up.... And I think there might be a third chapter to! So, stay tuned!

kylee: Thanks!

The Fox of burden: I don't think the movie played a real big part in the "abuse." I think it was the part when the Emperor was a little baby and he was playing with the bunnies that it came.... Anyway, what does, "onegai," mean?

Anybody know...?

Sausweet: You don't like Gai pairings?! How can you say such a thing.... Hah hah, I'm only kidding.

I can see why you wouldn't like pairings with Gai in them. But he's really a very sweet guy. (He and Rock Lee are some of my favorite characters, they're both so sweet!)

I'm so glad you like the movie!

Chisaii Shinobi: hugs you back

Yay! I'll write! I'll write!

And... how did you find me?!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! And please, review! Flames shall be used to burn the soul of Kakashi's evil, evil father.... hisses

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An Explanation

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"Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi looked up at the sound of Sakura's voice. He was sitting in the Hokage monument, reading the second volume of Icha Icha Paradise, sunning himself in the fading light of the sunset. "Yes, Sakura?"

Sakura fidgeted. Talking to Kakashi could be very nerve wracking, especially if you didn't know him very well. And Kakashi hadn't exactly made himself known to his genins. It seemed that he preferred for them to find things out on their own, as had just happened a few hours ago.

"Kakashi-sensei, Gai-sensei just told us a story about you. About when you were a kid."

"Was it about the time I kicked his butt six times in a row?"

Sakura hesitated before blurting, "When your father beat you. When he found out."

Kakashi was silent for a moment. "Why?"

"Naruto was complaining again, so Gai-sensei got mad, and -- and he just started telling us all about it--"

"And it all started when I was five, right? And I started to cry at the end, right?"

"Well -- yes."

"That's just like him." At Sakura's glance, he explained. "The thing you have to remember about Gai, Sakura, is that he's a romantic. He tends to blow things out of proportion -- which explains his behavior." The jounin sighed. "But when it comes to this particular situation, he makes things so fantastic that they shouldn't be believed."

"So -- your father -- he didn't--"

"No, he did. But he started beating me when I was fourteen – about a month after the Kyuubi attacked. I pretty much had my thinking set in stone by then, so there wasn't that much affect on my mind." He paused. "No, that's not right."

"What did it change?"

"I don't become drunk very easily for one thing." The albino shuddered. "I don't want to turn out like my father. That would be the absolute worst."

Sakura nodded slowly, assimilating the information. Her turquoise eyes narrowed slightly as a new thought occurred to her. "Kakashi-sensei, why didn't you go for help? You were old enough to know...."

"Sakura, my father's beating me wasn't the only abuse he dished out. It was pretty bad, even before the attack. Nothing I did was ever good enough and I was too much of a freak to amount to anything. It was absolute hell."

"Didn't your mother do anything?" The question was out before she could stop it, and she immediately felt ashamed. What was she doing, inquiring about her sensei's private life? It was very rude, none of her business!

But Kakashi didn't seem to mind. "What could she have done? She couldn't fight him off, and she was too scared to go to the Hokage. My father had the both of us completely cowed."

While his father had never dared to raise a hand against him, he hadn't been happy that his only son was an albino. He liked even less the amount of money it took to keep Kakashi's eyes from deteriorating -- a condition common in people like Kakashi.

What happens is the surface inside the eye that receives light -- the retina -- doesn't develop normally both before birth and in infancy. The nerve signals from the retina to the brain don't follow the "right" routes. The colored part of the eye -- the iris -- doesn't have the pigment to screen out stray rays of light (normally light only enters through the pupils). So normally, albinos have "low vision."

Despite common belief, albinos DON'T have red or pink eyes. Generally, their eyes are blue or slate gray, and even green or hazel. They only appear reddish in certain types of light.

Kakashi couldn't remember how many medical jutsus had been used him to make up for that lack of pigment. But he did remember that they had been expensive -- and that his father had not paid for it out of any love for him. Even now, with his eyesight improving with age (another typical trait) he still had to go to the hospital every month to have a jutsu performed so that he didn't go blind.

Kakashi's albinism had been, ironically enough, an involuntary "gift" from his parents. To be an albino, you had to inherit it genetically from your parents. In "Oculocutaneous" (it's a real word) albinism -- the type Kakashi had -- the parents have to be carriers of albinism.

The parents have to have one recessive albino gene each. Then, when they have a child, those recessive genes will pair, and that child will have a one in four chance of having Oculocutaneous albinism.

Kakashi had the bad luck to be slapped in the face with that one in four.

If his father had had his way, he would have requested that his child be handed over to another family. But Kakashi's mother would have none of it. That was the only issue on which she put her foot down, even going as far as to threaten to have an operation insuring she was barren, and have her eggs donated to those without.

Kakashi's father might have been a drunkard, but he wasn't a fool (at least not at first). He knew the woman's love for the boy would drive her to do it; she recognized that her husband wanted an heir more than all else, and held that over the man's head in exchange for Kakashi's physical safety.

In the end though, it didn't matter; Kakashi's mother was found to be indeed barren the year following Kakashi's third birthday. Kakashi never had any brother or sisters.

"Is that why you never went for help?"

"He held me in complete terror, Sakura. I would start shaking every time he entered the room, and I was too frightened to do anything. God, he still gives me nightmares. I don't think I'd be able to fight him even now."

"Gai-sensei said that you still loved him...."

"I told you, Gai is a romantic. He told that story more to impress you then anything else." Kakashi let out a dry chuckle. "It's his way of protecting me."

Several suspicions that had been planted in Sakura's mind began to sprout at that point. "Kakashi-sensei...are you and Gai-sensei....?"

"Are we what?"

Sakura stared at him. Then she shook her head. "Never mind."

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5/11/04: Man, it took me forever to get this up.... Anyway, I hope you guys like it. And by the way, that info about albinos is true! Just go to:

http:

They have lots of info!

5/13/04: I just found out that the link won't work--so I'm sorry to everybody who wanted to go to the site. sob You'll just have to take my word that it's true......