Title: Secrets
Disclaimer: It's all been done before
Summary: Exploring the origins of Naruto's Birth, and why the son of the Hokage was raised as an orphan.
Important Author's Note: This story has taken on a freakin life of it's own, so it's going to be more than a two parter, and I've added on Kakashi's little tirade from Guilty so that you won't have to jump back and forth between stories.
He had offered to take the boy.
And in so much as it mattered he knew he'd turn him down. Would he have offered if there had been a real chance of the Sandaime saying yes? He didn't know, and yet he'd offered. He listened to his former Sensei tell him that the life he led was no life to give a child, and he'd agreed. The Sandaime had said the boy was to go with the Fourth's former student, the gray haired one with the sharingan.
When he'd come back to the village several months later and realized what the gray-haired teen had done to the baby he'd again offered to take the child. Again he'd been denied by the Sandaime, he'd said the kid was better off in the orphanage. He'd reminded him that a child had no place following him from town to town as he sought Orochimaru and studied for his books. He couldn't argue with that and so he left with the promise that someday he'd be allowed to take the boy with him.
He'd stop in the village every six months or so, and when the child was eight he'd anonymously donated the money to finance the apartment and an allowance. It wasn't that he didn't want the child to know where the money came from, it was just that he was ashamed that he'd let the child grow up never knowing who he was.
He always had the intention of one day coming and collecting the child when he was older, but one thing or another put the date off farther and farther into the future. So it was much to his surprise that the boy sought him out on one of his semi-annual trips to the town and demanded that he teach him. He kept waiting for the boy to demand answers about his presence in his life, and so it surprised him when he realized that the boy hadn't sought him out because of his connection, and in fact had no idea of his presence in his life. It was simply that the boy was presumptuous enough to ask a perfect stranger he perceived as strong to teach him.
And so Jiraiya taught the boy. He passed down to the child the same summoning contract he passed to his father, and yet the boy never asked any questions, never wondered why he would sometimes refer to him as the Fourth's legacy. As is want to happen in the world, tragedy occurred and he lost the only other precious person still in his life, and if that made him more attached to Naruto then he tried even harder to never let on.
He took Naruto with him to find an old friend and when she immediately recognized the boy for who he was it made Jiyara stop and wonder why no one else had ever made the connection. It occurred to him at that moment that they must have, and even seeing it had denied the child. For a moment he felt the rage for the injustice done to the child, but only for a moment because he knew he was among the guilty.
When he'd arrived back in the village he'd cornered the three who among all others knew the truth most definitely. They were the grown men who should have taken responsibility for their fallen leader's child when the teenage boy who was damaged beyond repair could not. They gave him no answers; they were ashamed and guilty and yet had no excuse. He tiraded against what they had done and warned them that they would be the ones responsible for explaining it all to the boy when he finally asked. They would have to be ones to explain their decision to him.
Eventually he took the boy and they finally left the village together as he'd planned all those years ago; and the boy grew and became more man than child.
…and yet he never asked of his origins.