Kakashi didn't really think he was the best choice for this. He'd tried to explain this to the official who'd summoned him out of bed just before midnight, tried to explain that they ought to wake Iruka, or the Sandaime, or literally anyone else, tried to explain that Naruto had only been his genin for a few months and that really, he didn't know her that well. All to no avail, and now he was standing in the office of the shinobi headquarters that had been converted to the new police station after the Uchiha law enforcement regime was wiped out, watching through one-way glass as the student he was desperately trying not to get too close to rocked herself, arms wrapped around her knees with a shell-shocked expression and wide, distant eyes.
The impulse to hold her swelled up on the tide of what he'd felt for her parents, and was briefly sustained by how he knew her, how Kakashi had seen her be brave, self-sacrificing, kind and fair to a fault and willing to fight anyone who wasn't. Then he crushed it down, refusing to feel anything at all, and turned an impassive eye to the official who had summoned him, a chūnin he'd seen around from time to time but never spoken to. "You said she killed someone?" he asked a little hesitantly, sure he must have misunderstood, but the other man nodded gravely, watching her through the glass.
"She won't tell us what happened," the man explained, voice pitched low and sympathetic. "But it was a man in his fifties in her apartment in the middle of the night, with a high post-mortem blood alcohol content. I can only imagine it was justifiable self-defense, but she needs to tell us that or we'll be forced to book her. So we thought maybe if we called in her superior officer to try to get her to—"
Something in his stomach lurched into a free-fall that made him dizzy, and rage poured off of him with such intensity he was briefly blinded, chakra popping between his fingers as his killing intent silenced the chūnin and caused him to take several steps backward. Even Naruto, oblivious as she tended to be, was distracted from her rocking, fixing a frightened gaze on what would be to her a mirror. "I wasn't the right person to call," Kakashi repeated, looking into her wide, beautiful blue eyes, words flat and dangerous, feeling his self control threatening to crumble away. "You should have called her guardian."
The chūnin briefly choked on trying to respond. "She—she doesn't have one. Orphaned genin are legally independent, but she—technically she no longer has the Sandaime as her guardian."
Kakashi turned his impassive gaze on the official, who flinched back another step. "You should have called someone else," he repeated. "You're recording her? If she explains to me, I can take her home?" The man nodded minutely, and before he could stop to think that he should compose himself, stop to think that maybe having one of the most dangerous men in the village approach her radiating killing intent would scare her, he was pushing into the little room they held her in, eyes locked on the way her head whipped towards him, her mussed pigtails flicking with the movement.
He wasn't prepared for her to sag with relief, letting her feet fall to the floor as trust and tears welled up in those beautiful, beautiful eyes, so much like Minato's in a face so much like Kushina's. "Sensei," she gasped, and the breath was let out as a little sob as the first tears tracked down her cheeks. "He—he came back. I-I-I thought—I thought he'd stop, now that I was a ninja, he hadn't come since before—"
Mind racing, all he could think was to demand in a hard tone, "He'd broken in before? Who is this man?"
More fat tears, each one stoking something inside him he usually steadfastly ignored the existence of. "My landlord." She sniffled, wiping miserably at her wet face. "He has a key, he doesn't have to—doesn't have to break in."
Kakashi found himself crouching next to her chair, bringing him to a bit below her eye level, though he had no recollection of moving, would have kept his distance if he'd thought about it. She stank like blood and sweat and fear, though her outer clothes looked clean. Nausea swelled in his gut as his voice came out soft, the voice he used on the pups of his summons, not on his sensei's daughter, for gods' sake. "Naruto… You have to say why he was there, what he was trying to do. They'll call it self defense if you explain, but they have to call it murder if you don't."
The word murder sucked all the blood from Naruto's face, turning her trembling lips white. She looked at Kakashi desperately, begging him for something—maybe not to make her, but he held her eye, knowing that this was unavoidable, not anything he could protect her from, no matter how he burned with the need to do so. Then she broke eye contact for the first time since he'd entered the room, her eyes falling to her lap as she hunched her shaking shoulders in, trying to hide.
"I didn't mean to kill him," she whispered, and he watched her tears drop and soak into her ridiculous orange sweatpants, feeling as though he were having an out of body experience. Seriously, who in their right mind would call Kakashi in to comfort an abused child? "Just—I just had thought it was over." Her voice broke, and every word after that was coated in layers and layers of shame, too thick to ever carve through. "Since I was eight, he occasionally would get drunk, come to my apartment, and—and—"
Something possessed him to touch her, and he bit it down harshly as he tried to find the right words, the right way to say them. "It's okay," he soothed her stiffly. "It's not your fault. It's his fault, okay? Look at me." She wouldn't, but he didn't press the issue, instead fighting back the itching in his joints that told him to wipe her tears away, to pull her against his chest. "This doesn't say anything about you," he tried. "What would you tell Sakura, if this had happened to her?"
"I'd kill whoever hurt her," Naruto answered instantly, resolutely.
Kakashi hushed her, uncertain if those words would be held against her. "Of course. And you'd tell her..?"
Naruto slowly pulled her knees back up to her chest, and set her forehead on them. "S'not her fault," she admitted miserably. "S'not her fault, and she shouldn't be ashamed."
Something in Kakashi short-circuited, and his hand was stroking down her back before he'd realized he was moving. He stared at the contact for a moment, at the way that his hand spanned over half of her ribcage. "I'd say the same thing," he coaxed her, thoughts far away from his words. "So just say it, and I won't think any differently of you, and then we can go home. Okay?"
Naruto nodded against her knees. "Okay," she agreed. But silence stretched after those words, long enough that Kakashi began to rub little circles into her back with his thumb. Then she took a big, deep breath, lifted her head, and stared straight and unseeing, her watery eyes focused and determined as she explained shortly and resolutely, "My landlord likes—liked, I guess—to get drunk, come to my apartment, touch me, and take pictures of me. Sometimes he left me money. He said it was from selling the pictures he took."
He was proud of her, in the distant part of his brain that was capable of rational thought. Most of his brain was fixated on the remembered feeling of his fist punching through ribs, imagining doing so to every single man who'd ever seen his student, his puppy, his Naruto naked, every single man who'd found pleasure in her pain and humiliation. His vision had gone black around the edges, but he still registered Naruto's survival instincts kicking in at last as she flinched away from him, whimpering.
Complete the mission. Kakashi couldn't stand it if he told her they could leave but she wasn't really done. He imagined himself spooling his anger like thread, pulling it out of himself until he could see straight again. He took a few steadying breaths, and she incrementally relaxed into his touch as rage drained away and left him dizzy. "Not your fault," he reminded her when he had control of his throat again. "Not your fault. Today, when he came into your apartment, what happened, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart? Where the hell had that come from? Kakashi didn't do pet names. Kakashi didn't show affection in any way that was unguarded and vulnerable. And he sure as shit didn't treat his sensei's daughter like he was deeply, irrationally, possessively attached. No, that was something he kept in a box with a poisoned lock surrounded by traps and guards. But Naruto leaned into him, so damned desperate for affection, for touch, for comfort. She was always begging him for it, her big blue eyes swimming with the transparency of her longing for his approval, his affection.
"I woke up to him coming into my apartment," she said slowly, with little pauses between most of her words, but continued a little more forcefully as he made a little encouraging noise in his throat. "I tried to pretend I was asleep, but he got on top—he got on top of me, and—" Her shoulders jerked in a sob and she covered her face with her hands. "I said, I'm a ninja now, you can't keep doing this. And he said that if I was such a big girl now, I must be ready for—" She paused, her whole body shrinking into itself as she tried to make herself as small as possible. "Must be ready for cock," she finished in a mortified whisper.
Kakashi bit his tongue in an effort to keep himself from reacting with violence, and the copper and salt taste of blood flooded his mouth.
"He—he pulled some of my clothes off," she continued, still trying so hard to be brave, even as little hiccupping sobs interrupted her words. "And he put his thing on my—on my stomach, and said—he said—well, he said something really awful, sensei, I don't want to repeat it. And that's when I remembered the kunai under my pillow." She lowered her hands, turned pleading red-rimmed eyes on Kakashi, and skewered him through with her words. "Between the ribs and up, just like you taught me."
The door opened, giving Kakashi time to try and fail to compose himself against the black hole of hatred gathering mass behind his sternum. The chūnin entered the room, and studiously avoided looking at Kakashi as he spoke gently to the crying girl on the other side of the table. "That was perfect," he soothed her. "You did great, kiddo. This is all we need for now. You're free to go, there won't be any charges unless we find some evidence that—well, I don't think there will be any charges, let's leave it at that." He didn't quite meet Kakashi's eye as he continued, "Will you stay here just a moment while I speak to your superior officer?"
Kakashi's head was spinning as they exited the room, adrenaline pumping through his veins, so much so he didn't realize the other man had been speaking until he gave him an expectant look. "… What?"
"I said, we'll send cleaners to her apartment, but her mattress is soaked with blood. She's going to need someplace to stay tonight. Is there someone we should call, or will you take her?"
The words Umino Iruka were on the tip of his tongue, but instead Kakashi heard himself say, "I'll take her," and wasn't that just the dumbest thing he'd said in years? But the mere idea of letting her out of his sight, after learning she'd been getting hurt right under his nose for years… it was unacceptable.
He'd had no idea he intended to pick her up until he was snaking an arm under her knees, the other braced around her back, utterly ignoring the little confused, surprised noises she made as he lifted her and held her protectively to his chest, hunching his shoulders around her defensively like they were under threat of attack. "Sensei?" she asked hesitantly, and he roundly ignored her, refusing to stop until he had her out from under that awful fluorescent lighting, away from the surveillance of that chūnin and the rest of the law enforcement department, until he was the one with all the control. Until they were walking along the dark sidewalk, alone in the privacy of a quiet night, the cool air helping Kakashi remain sharp and focused on the present.
"You're coming home with me," Kakashi told her, and something awful and ugly, something long-repressed inside him purred at the way she just accepted this, accepted being carried, pressed her face into his chest and nodded as she wound her delicate arms around his neck. She weighed practically nothing, and he felt like he could carry her forever.
"Thank you," was all she said, and for a twisted moment, as the rush of giving in to his possessive impulses was still making his fingertips tingle, he wondered if she was safe with him. If she was safe from him. Safe from his need to possess her, to keep her somewhere that no one else could touch her. Distantly, he thought of his sensei, how jealous he'd been when the man paid attention to anyone else. How he'd guarded Kushina throughout her pregnancy as though she carried his own flesh and blood. What he felt for Naruto was even more powerful, always had been, from the moment he'd found her as an infant, crying in the burning wreckage of their village. That's why he'd kept his distance, why he'd put up a fight to have her put on a different team.
It was easier not to drink if you didn't keep any alcohol around, after all. You had to think about it on the walk to the liquor store. You had the opportunity to turn around when Naruto's apartment came into view, had the opportunity to think She really doesn't need me to check on her and go back home.
That wasn't an option anymore, not as Kakashi carried her into his spartan, tidy apartment and set her down on his futon. Not as he paused a moment to admire how right it felt to have her there, how she looked like she belonged in his space, despite the fact that he usually chafed unbearably against its invasion. Not as he followed his nose and unzipped her jacket on a hunch, revealing her tank top soaked with blood that was smeared and dried across the exposed part of her chest. Not as he started the shower for her, steered her into his bathroom with a hand on her lower back, her arms full of fresh towels and his own clothes for her to wear to bed.
It was too late. Kakashi was closing around her like she was an insect caught in a Venus fly trap, and just like he'd known she would when he let himself think about it, in his dark private moments, Naruto was letting him. She was basking in his attention, her eyes laser-focused on him like she was afraid that if she looked away, the spell would be broken and he'd disappear.
Just before he managed to make himself close the bathroom door behind her, Naruto's eyes flickered to the small window above the shower. "It's locked?" she asked in that small voice that made him want to squirrel her away like a secret treasure.
He caught her wrist, and his hand covered a satisfying amount of her forearm as he coaxed her to make eye contact. "You're safe here," Kakashi insisted, more gently than he'd thought he was capable of. "Nothing—nothing—can hurt you here."
And Naruto, sweet, beautiful Naruto, standing four foot eleven and weighing less than half what he did, so waifish and delicate he was certain he could snap her in half without any real effort, so pretty with her left pigtail coming loose and her lower lip pushed out in a cute little pout, she believed him. Didn't register him as a threat. The marrow-deep need to prove her right, to treat her well, to spoil her and keep her safe… he could feel it consuming him, could feel himself becoming helpless in its wake.
She blinked her doe-like blue eyes up at him, once, twice, searching his face as though if she concentrated, she could see behind all of his masks. "Okay, sensei," she agreed.
A/N: A better edited version of this story is available on AO3: /works/47422666/chapters/119501020 This is part one of a 5 part series that is posted as one long story on AO3. Arcs 1-3 are completed and published, Arc 4 starts going up on Jan 1st