A/N Some minor spoilers for chap 248. Also I know I've taken some liberties with the manga timeline, sorry but it just worked out this way.

Iruka noted the pack waiting by the door as he stepped into the house. He walked past it and the randomly scattered toys and set down his papers on the low table, between a crumpled juice box and a cup half-filled with cold tea. Kakashi was hardly a neat freak but he wasn't normally so lax, this must be big. A cross breeze from the open window puffed out the curtain and lifted the top few sheets into the air before dropping them onto the floor. As Iruka turned back to close the door the tinkle of water and happy giggles rose above the rustling papers. He let them lie where they had landed in the general disorder and made his way to the bathroom.

Inside Kakashi, fully dressed and fully armed, was sitting on the puddled floor next to the tub, with the casual air of someone with nothing better to do in the whole world, blowing soap bubbles. Keshi was splashing in the water, happily destroying the pastel bubble domes as they landed on its surface. It was a game Iruka had taught them, one he remembered his mother playing with him in the bath when he was really much too old to still enjoy such silliness. He'd taught them both because Kakashi didn't know any games, other than those used to sharpen skills or to develop the finer points on a genjutsu. It was as if he'd never played, never been allowed to have fun just for the sake of it. The thought still had the power to spark a flash of anger in Iruka's heart.

He would have dearly loved to just stand and watch them for a while, but obviously now wasn't the time.

"I got your message. You have to leave right now?"

Kakashi rose to his feet while dropping the little wand into the bubble solution and screwing on the cap. "Yeah sorry. The three of us are headed for Sand, no time to loose."

The look in Iruka's eyes hoped for more, while making it plain that he didn't expect it.

For an answer Kakashi stroked his partner's cheek then folded him into a loose hug, while still keeping his uncovered eye on the bathtub. "It's no great secret, hell everyone will know soon enough." The volume and tone of his voice didn't change, but his next words felt like steel. "The Akatsuki have taken Gaara."

"Oh." Iruka stiffened and stared at a bubble that had landed in a wet patch on the floor, watching the swirls of colour on its surface change from purple to gold to silver, until the bubble self-destructed into a tiny drop of liquid. "And you're taking Sakura… and Naruto?"

"Yeah sorry." Kakashi pulled back to look at his lover at arm's length, knowing full well that he'd given himself away. That there was more than just the prospect of a dangerous mission on his mind, something so routine would never have caused Sharingan Hatake to be so visibly agitated.

"Iruka, I've been meaning to ask… is there… could I do something so bad that you would hate me for it? No, not hate. Worse than that, something that would make you not love me anymore?"

Iruka's eyes shot up. "Kakashi? …You mean like taking Naruto to the Akatsuki?"

Kakashi's unmasked lipped made an effort at a smile, but didn't seem quite up to it.

"I don't think I could stop him from going after Gaara if I tried, there's a bond between those two."

The tension dissolved from his body, as if he'd made his decision, or resigned himself to his fate. He scooped Keshi out of the water, wrapped her in a towel and pressed the squirming bundle into Iruka's arms. "But yes, in a way, something like that. On second thoughts don't tell me, I don't think I want to know. Here, take good care of her, for both of us."

Then he was gone leaving two kisses on the cheeks of the two people he loved more than life.

Iruka pulled Keshi close and just held her for a long moment. Then he blotted the tears from his eyes and the water from her skin, and rubbed the towel over her hair, combing it through his fingers into a vertical shock, like thistledown. On cue she stood, arms raised, while he got the brush and ink from a shelf over the toilet to repair the faded calligraphy over her chakra points.

"Well little Princess, did Daddy One have time to make you lunch?"

"No. He said I could have cookies?"

Iruka frowned, cookies for lunch? Keshi's wide blue eyes fairly radiated innocence, she was only two but she was already a devious little minx, and quite capable of manipulating the situation to her advantage. But he wouldn't put it past Kakashi to make such an outrageous promise either, not in the mood he'd been in. "One cookie, but real food first."

"Two cookies."

His frown softened into a smile. "Ok two, just this once, now what do you want to wear."

"Um… Ruto suit! Ruto suit!"

Iruka followed the naked toddler as she scrambled into her bedroom, and pulled orange sweats and a matching hoodie out of her closet. All her new clothes had been carefully selected to cover the seals painted on her skin, this outfit was her favourite.

"Do I havta eat vegibles?"

Iruka froze halfway through pulling on her pants. He swatted the tip of her nose gently with the tip of his index finger. "For two cookies? You betcha sweetheart."

Over the course of the next two weeks tiny details of the disaster in Suna filtered over the desert and across the forest to Hidden Leaf. It was whispered that team Gai had interrupted their current mission to join the search. That Gaara's older brother had run foul of the Akatsuki and was lying close to death, and that an ancient Suna witch was involved too. Although no one knew exactly how or why.

Iruka heard them all, he made sure of it, but he didn't have the luxury of dwelling on them. He had problems of his own at home.

Keshi looked like nothing so much as a china doll. Her skin was the colour and texture of white rose petals, with a pink rosebud for her mouth and two pink petal cheeks. Blue eyes cut from the fabric of the sky watched Iruka and his guest from her fuda enclosed playpen. She stretched her chubby arms as if in supplication.

"Daddy Two pick me up pickmeup."

Her voice was a thin plaintive wail as the last of her plastic alphabet blocks combusted in a flash of white and a little mushroom cloud of grey smoke.

Iruka tore his eyes away from her as he forced down the lump forming in his throat and bowed deeply to the bulky man sprawled on the couch. "I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help Jiraiya-sama. I feel terrible letting you be her baby-sitter like this but there's really no one else…"

The sannin waved a notebook at him dismissively. "Glad to help out Sensei, glad to help out. Now get yourself off to your classroom already. Actually it takes me back a few years, although Kakashi was never quite so destructive. Got quite a temper hasn't she?"

Iruka blushed, despite Kakashi's lectures about nature and nurture he couldn't help thinking that Keshi had picked that up from him.

"Yes… um, it's a bad combination, with her chakra abilities and her age. You know terrible twos. It's getting so that I'm afraid to take her out in public… on my own. If she got it in her head to throw a tantrum…"

The temperature of the room seemed to cool by several degrees. "Just when did the seals start to fail?"

Iruka focused on one of the parchment wards attached to Keshi's old playpen, it had recently been pressed back into service, but this time as a gaol. "Three days ago, before the weekend, at least that's when it became obvious. Our old neighbour Kemora-san was watching her for us. She's taken care of her from time to time since she was a baby, almost like an unofficial grandmother. Keshi made a new passway hatch between the kitchen and living room of her apartment."

"Whoa, hole-in-the-wall no jutsu! I'm surprised I didn't hear about it, you know how Tsunade and her cronies like to gossip."

"She didn't tell anyone, thank goodness. Not that we'd sworn her to secrecy or anything, in fact she seemed to think it was all rather amusing. I saw the hole when I went over there after school to pick her up. Kemora-san treated it as if it was an impressive joke. But then again she's known Naruto since he was my student so she's hardly new to chakra damage."

The white-haired sage tapped his notebook. His looked grim, wrong somehow without his usual manic grin.

"Well I'm working on it, got some new stuff from the Hyuugas. Pity this all came up before Kakashi got back, I could use his help. The kid's got a decent brain on him, it would be a better use for it than most of the stuff he wastes his time on. Do you know he once spent six weeks working on summoning just the right accessories for one of his dogs?"

Iruka laughed out loud for the first time since Kakashi had left them. "I could say the same for you Jiraiya-sama, but somehow I don't think Kakashi would agree. He seems to think the stuff you waste your time on is very worthwhile indeed."

"Daddy Two HOLD ME!"

Iruka turned his attention back to his daughter. He leaned over the warded barrier and pulled her into the circle of his arms.

"I'm sorry Princess I have to go to school now. But be a good girl for Jiraiya-sama and maybe we'll all go out and get ramen for dinner." He pulled back and ruffled his fingers through her hair, so much like that other hair that he was missing so much. "Daddy One will be home soon, then we can go out whenever we want to. We'll go to the park and feed the ducks, and you can go to Sué's house and play with her puppy again, you'll like that won't you?"

The little girl let herself fall back onto her bottom with an air of resignation and defeat. "Jira-sama smells funny. Keshi wants Daddy One to come home."

"We all do sweetheart, we all do."