"There's some stuff I need to explain to you, Naruto."
After that, a silence falls. Kakashi turns away rather abruptly, his hand curling into a fist a couple of times. He seems oddly nervous, Naruto notes – Kakashi had seemed pretty determined just now, but now it looks like he's hesitating. The scary look on his face, the spark of anger in his eye, has faded into uncertainty. Maybe he's having trouble finding the right words. Naruto can sympathize with that; he decides to give Kakashi some time to figure it out.
Naruto's patience can only last so long, though, and before he knows it, he's blurting out: "What kind of stuff do you need to explain to me?"
Kakashi gives an absent "hm" in response, his fist tightening so much that his knuckles go white. His shoulders tense up; he looks like he's bracing himself for something. "I, uhm- I wanted to- There's something you should know-" He sighs, the tension dropping from his shoulders again. "Actually, I think I should probably eat something first. And drink some water."
Naruto wants to be mad at him for stalling, but Kakashi did spend the past two days knocked out, so it's actually probably good if he gets something into his stomach. As curious as Naruto is, he doesn't want Kakashi to starve to death.
He turns around to grab his thermos flask and holds it out to Kakashi. "I don't have any water, but there's tea," he offers. "Don't know if it's still warm, though."
"Doesn't matter," Kakashi replies, seeming grateful that Naruto has accepted his change of topic. He takes the thermos flask, cracks it open and takes a long sip – Naruto automatically looks away when he pulls down his mask, and busies himself with finding a ramen cup and rolling it in Kakashi's direction.
They both eat a cup's worth of dry ramen; Kakashi finishes his portion much sooner than Naruto does, both because he's a fast eater and because Naruto has to figure out how to chew around a missing tooth. Kakashi drinks the last of the tea and then sits back with a sigh.
"So…" Naruto says, mouth filled with ramen. "Are you gonna tell me what you're being so mysterious about, or what?"
"Yeah," Kakashi replies. The tension in his shoulders has returned. "It's… about those names that I asked you about."
When he hesitates again, Naruto says: "You seemed pretty freaked out about that, yeah."
"Yeah," Kakashi says again. "So, uh- Well- Those names are-"
And he's back to stammering, and Naruto's patience is starting to run sort of thin, and he exclaims: "Would you spit it out already?"
"It's your parents' names," Kakashi blurts out, and the intensity of the words immediately launches him into a violent coughing fit.
Naruto frowns at him. "What?"
Kakashi muffles the last few coughs behind his teeth. His hand absently rubs his chest, like he's trying to get rid of tension there. "Minato and Kushina," he says, slowly. "Those are your parents' names. They would've wanted you to know that."
Naruto chews thoughtfully, the ramen crunching in his mouth. "Very funny, Kakashi-san," he eventually decides. "You had me going for a second there, but you'll have to think up something better to fool me."
He's only reacting so calmly because he's heard this before; his classmates used to tell him all sorts of stuff about his parents, when he was still young and gullible enough to believe them. He's heard it all before: "Hey Naruto, did you know your dad was the Hokage? Hahaha – holy shit, look at his face, he actually believed that!"
He used to get really mad about it – once, his classmates kept insisting that his dad was a loser and his mom was a weirdo, and Naruto ended up biting the worst bully so hard it left a scar – but he realized at some point that his anger didn't matter. His classmates don't know any more about his parents than Naruto does; all they know is that he doesn't know, and they like to be jerks about that.
For a brief, awful moment, he's terrified that Kakashi is the same kind of jerk as everyone else. But then he looks up and sees how serious Kakashi is, and his fear subsides a little bit.
"I wasn't lying," Kakashi says softly, belatedly.
"But…" Naruto begins, grappling for questions to ask, because he refuses to be naïve about this. "How do you know that? No one else seems to know."
Kakashi is quiet for a few seconds, the way he always is when he's trying to decide what information to trust Naruto with. "I used to be a Konoha shinobi," he replies eventually, "long ago. I worked with your parents." After another long pause and a long, long sigh, he adds: "They were… important to me."
There's so much emotion hidden underneath the carefully-steady surface of Kakashi's voice. Naruto can feel it, the words hanging heavy in the air. It's almost enough to distract him from the content of the words – almost, but not entirely.
Kakashi knew Naruto's parents. He knows their names. He used to work with them.
It feels like someone has plucked Naruto's brain out of his skull and replaced it with a swarm of bees.
Eyes almost impossibly wide, he stares at Kakashi. "How many questions do I get to ask today?" he asks, his voice sounding relatively calm compared to the overwhelming buzzing inside his head.
Kakashi huffs a laugh, the sound followed by a cough. He's looking away, but not in a dishonest way; instead, it looks like he's trying to calm himself down, his breaths deep and exaggerated.
"As many as you need," he replies, still not looking Naruto in the eye. "You went through a lot of trouble to get me medicine, after all. Letting you ask your questions is the least I can do." He clears his throat, visibly trying to shake off that layer of anxiety that hangs over him. "So, fire away, kid. What do you want to know?"
Naruto pokes his tongue against the gap between his teeth, trying to put the buzzing questions in his head into words. "So…" he starts, slowly. "You said that my dad's name was Minato, right? Was he the Fourth Hokage? Or was he some other guy named Minato?"
"He was the Fourth Hokage," Kakashi affirms, though by the time he finishes his sentence, Naruto is already talking over him.
"My dad was the Fourth Hokage?" he shouts. They both wince at the sudden volume – in his excitement, Naruto forgot about his own headache – and Naruto continues slightly less loudly: "You're definitely messing with me this time."
"I'm not." At Naruto's grin, Kakashi continues: "Your dad was the Fourth Hokage, and your mom was the Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki."
"What's that?" Naruto asks. "I mean, I know what the Nine-Tails is, but what does that other word mean? Jinchu- Jinchuiri- Whatever you said."
That spark of anger from before has returned to Kakashi's gaze. "Jinchuuriki," he says. "I shouldn't be surprised that you don't know. It's probably an S-rank secret." He chews on the inside of his cheek underneath his mask. "I'll explain it to you someday. It's a whole other conversation. For now, you should know that it means your mom was a very strong jounin, and that she had to overcome more obstacles than most to get there. Especially when she was young."
"Oh," Naruto says. It's weird to figure out how to feel about the fact that one of his parents had a difficult childhood, just like him. He'd never considered that he might be like his parents. That they might've struggled, just like he's doing. "Was she bullied, too?" he asks, almost automatically.
Something complicated enters Kakashi's expression, and Naruto realizes that the question might've come completely out of the blue for him. "Yeah," he replies. "She told me about it, once. When she was still in the Academy, her classmates were mean to her because she was different. She didn't let it get to her, though."
Naruto hums thoughtfully, and he finds that the sound bumps into a lump in his throat and comes out crackly. He's not sure what he's being emotional for. The fact that his mom was bullied too shouldn't matter, it won't help him – but it feels important anyway. It suddenly feels like he's a little less alone.
He clears his throat. "What about my dad? Was he…" …like me, is how Naruto had planned to finish that sentence, but that would be impossible for Kakashi to answer, so he rephrases: "Did he have a difficult life, too?" Naruto remembers bits and pieces from history class, but the lessons were always about the stuff that the Fourth had accomplished during the Third War and as Hokage. The history books always pretended that he just sprang into existence as a cool and successful adult.
Kakashi's shoulders tense up; he raises a hand to rub at his neck in an attempt at playing it off as thoughtfulness. "I'm not sure what his life was like before I met him," he says. "Kushina-san said that he was a good student – a "goody two shoes", I think were her words – so I don't think he struggled at the Academy all that much." He looks away. "But, a lot happened during the war… He was put in charge of a genin team, and, well, things went wrong. Not his fault. It can't have been easy for him, but he never complained."
"Oh," Naruto murmurs. "I didn't know he was a jounin-sensei."
Kakashi huffs a wry laugh. "That figures. I can't imagine that Konoha would write about that period of his life in the history books. They'd have to talk about me, and Konoha doesn't like talking about me."
"What would they need to talk about you for-" Naruto starts, before turning to Kakashi with horrified eyes. "Did you kill his genin team?"
Kakashi gives him an equally horrified look back. "What? No, no, that's not what I meant. I meant that I was- I was one of his students. Konoha probably doesn't want anyone to know that their legendary Fourth Hokage raised a missing-nin. It wouldn't be very good for his reputation, even if it's not his fault that I turned out this way." The startled look on his face fades into something that's less easy to read; more distant, more guarded. "Though, you're not entirely wrong. Minato-sensei's genin team- I didn't kill them on purpose, but I was responsible- I was responsible for keeping them alive, and I failed. His other two students- They are dead because of me. If that answers your question."
His words are oddly hurried, his sentences punctuated with quick gasps for breath. His left hand plucks at the fabric of his mask underneath his chin, as if it's too tight around his throat.
Naruto studies him worriedly. "You okay?" he asks. "You seem kinda pale – are you going to pass out again?"
Kakashi closes his eye for a moment, pushing his back against the wall behind him; it seems like he's trying to ground himself. "I'm all right," he says, after a while. "Physically, I mean. I'm just- not used to talking about this. At all." He sucks in a breath through his teeth, the sound whistling a little. "I just need a moment to catch my breath."
Naruto nods at him, recognizing that this isn't the moment to ask more questions. It comes so naturally to him to be considerate of Kakashi's feelings, even though a part of him is impatient, impatient, impatient – Kakashi is the only person Naruto has ever met who could tell him stuff about his parents, and a part of Naruto wants to fire all the questions in the world at him, no matter how hard it is for Kakashi to talk about.
But on the other hand, Kakashi is a friend, and he's also really sick, and he also seems a bit like he's trying not to cry. Naruto does not want to make Kakashi cry.
Naruto sits a little awkwardly as Kakashi tries to get his breathing under control, his chest heaving and occasionally stuttering with coughs. He seems really upset, and it's scary. Kakashi seems to always put a lot of effort into hiding any emotion underneath layers of sarcasm and difficult-to-read expressions, but now, all of those layers have been yanked away.
"I'm sorry I asked you about your teammates," Naruto says quietly. "I'm sorry I assumed you killed them. I bet that kinda sucked to hear."
Kakashi shakes his head, his eyes still closed. "I don't blame you. I am a missing-nin, after all, though I wasn't one at the time. There's definitely missing-nin out there who would jump at the chance to murder the Yellow Flash's twelve-year-old students. It's a logical assumption to make."
"You were only twelve?"
"Yeah."
Only two years older than Naruto is. "That… That must've really sucked."
"Yeah. You can say that."
There's a bit of quiet unsteadiness in Kakashi's voice, and he's still not breathing right, and wow, Naruto hadn't considered that he could've had such a difficult past – and Naruto decides that he can't just stand by awkwardly like this. He needs to do something to help.
He scoots closer to Kakashi, making sure that his movements are predictable and audible. Kakashi cracks his eye open and watches him idly, still out of breath. Naruto looks up at him for approval, before quietly settling against Kakashi's left side. He remembers quite abruptly that Kakashi got stabbed in one of his sides – but Kakashi doesn't seem to be in pain, so it's probably his other side that's injured.
Naruto had meant to hug Kakashi, though he realizes now that Kakashi probably wouldn't appreciate that, hurt as he is. Instead, Naruto just squishes himself against Kakashi's side and hopes that it has the same effect as a hug.
Kakashi doesn't really react at first; just closes his eye again, which Naruto takes as a sign that Kakashi doesn't mind his presence. Naruto closes his eyes as well. He can feel Kakashi breathe, quickly and shallowly, and he can hear the thundering sound of his heartbeat. Naruto finds himself instinctively breathing really slowly, hoping that that'll help Kakashi slow down his breathing as well.
Naruto isn't sure whether he's of any help at all, but eventually, Kakashi manages to slow down his breathing somewhat. Naruto feels him sigh, and then, a warm hand ruffles his hair.
"Feeling a bit better, now," Kakashi says quietly. "Sorry about that. It just… happens sometimes." Before Naruto has the chance to reply that that's nothing he needs to apologize for, Kakashi continues: "But, anyway… We were talking about your parents. If you have any more questions about them, ask away."
Naruto chews on the inside of his cheek. "I don't know," he admits eventually. "There's so much I want to know that I don't even know what to ask." He draws his knees up to his chest. "And, also, I'm tired."
It feels like some sort of betrayal, to not want to know more about his parents right now at this very moment – but even with the few things that he's learned about them today, Naruto already feels like his head is overflowing. He needs time to process all of this. His brain is full, and if he tried to jam even more information into it right now, he'd forget some of it and that'd be awful.
"I suppose I get that," Kakashi replies. He rests his hand on Naruto's head, and Naruto leans into the touch. "We can talk about it later, if you'd prefer that."
Naruto nods. "Yeah. Please."
They sit like that for a while, not saying anything as Naruto tries to wrap his head around everything. All in all, he's feeling happier than he could put into words, but there's something nagging at him despite his gratefulness.
"Hey, Kakashi-san?" he asks.
"Yeah?"
"Say… You know a lot about my parents." Naruto's voice sounds small to his own ears. "All this time, I assumed they were just… mysterious, I guess. Because nobody ever seemed to know anything about them. Hokage-jiji said that they were shinobi, and that they died right after I was born, and I assumed that that was all there was to know." His eyes sting furiously. He blinks a couple of times; it doesn't help. "Why didn't anyone ever tell me anything?"
"I don't know." Kakashi's voice is hoarse and somber. "My guess is that the Third didn't want anyone to know you're the Fourth's son because Konoha's enemies might think that you're important. It's never a good thing if your enemies think you're important. They might try to kill you, or kidnap you for ransom." He sighs. "But, still… The fact that no one ever told you… It's cruel. It's a cruel thing to do to a kid."
Naruto nods, a sob catching in his throat. "Yeah. It really is." He sniffles. "So, uhm. Thank you. So much."
Kakashi huffs a laugh. After a long moment of hesitation, he loops his good arm around Naruto and pulls him tighter against his side. Naruto hugs his knees against his chest and buries his face against Kakashi's side, and cries.
It's been a long and turbulent and difficult day, and it's also been a day filled with relief and gratefulness and excitement. Naruto isn't sure whether he cries out of gratitude or bitterness or pure exhaustion. He doesn't really have any words yet for the overwhelming emotion that fills the spaces around his heart.
In the end, he falls asleep like that, tucked underneath Kakashi's arm – and even though he's still really upset, even though the remnants of his concussion still haunt his brain, even though they're in the middle of the woods at night and shinobi or worse could find them at any moment-
The last thought he has before he falls asleep, is that he's never felt this safe before.
