On the ninth day, Naruto found herself alone, Sakura and Sasuke both busy with the errands they could only do on their Monday off, like visiting the bank and going to the dentist (something Naruto was vaguely aware she should probably do at some point). She'd tried her best to make peace with being alone in the apartment, but the quiet was driving her crazy, and eventually, she gave up, making a couple of sandwiches and taking her book out to the park.

Noon found her with her back against the trunk of the tree she and her teammates often relaxed under, Icha Icha Tie Me Up! open on her lap as she absentmindedly bit into her first sandwich, blushing at the filthy words on the page. Her impression so far was the book was rather gross, but titillating all the same, and she understood what Kakashi meant about it turning off your brain. It was easy to get lost in the rising and falling tides of tension and anticipation followed by payoff in the form of another raunchy sex scene. Although the plot was patently ridiculous—it was about an unhappily married woman that enjoys getting tied up so much that she volunteers to model for a man who gives public lessons on bondage, and they have an affair—the language was often rather beautiful, and the sex scenes made her body feel pleasantly awake and warm.

Naruto was taking the last bite of her first sandwich, washed down with water from her canteen, and trying to imagine what it would be like to be suspended from the ceiling (that couldn't possibly be comfortable, could it? Why would anybody want to be that helpless, anyway? Why would anybody want to hang someone from the ceiling in the first place?) when she was interrupted by a strange older man plopping down next to her, snatching up her other sandwich, and taking a big bite.

She startled badly, enough that she was rendered speechless as she stared wide-eyed at her new companion. He was tall—incredibly tall, taller even than sensei, and broader, too, just an enormous man—with a shock of white hair and strange red lines tattooed under his eyes. The expression on his face was inordinately fond, and fear had just begun to bubble in her throat when he hummed, eyeing her stolen sandwich and saying, "Peanut butter and honey, just like your mother used to make after training. You look a lot like her, you know, but you've definitely got your father's eyes and hair. Very pretty."

The tantrum she'd been gearing up to throw concerning the stranger's proximity and theft of her lunch died on her lips, her throat going very dry as her world tilted dangerously on its axis. Blinking rapidly, she insisted in a low tone, "Look, mister, I don't know who you think I am, but I don't have parents, and I don't know you, and if you don't leave me alone, I'll attack and I'll scream, and I promise you that I'm both louder and stronger than I look."

Scoffing, the man patted her on the knee in a way that was entirely too familiar and sent a spike of adrenaline up her spine. "That's no way to talk to your godfather," he reprimanded her with a rather goofy grin, taking another bite of her sandwich.

"You aren't my godfather," she insisted, wondering if perhaps the man was simply mentally ill. He looked kinda old, though nowhere near as old as the Sandaime had been. "Is there, um… Is there someone who's supposed to be watching you, sir?"

The man had a booming laugh, a natural one that threw his head back and was objectively charming even though it made her jump and flinch away with its volume. The movement caused the book in her lap to close, revealing its title and disrupting his train of thought, as he said, "You're funny, kid, remind me of your mother—oh! What a pleasant surprise, are you a fan? I'll sign your copy if you ask pretty."

Naruto followed his gaze to the book, confused and embarrassed and flushed as she tried and failed to process what was happening. "You— what? I'm—no, I'm not a fan, I think it's gross, and the book is already signed anyway. Are you trying to say you wrote it?"

The older man snatched the book out of her lap as he took another bite, most of the sandwich now gone, and he opened the cover to examine the handwritten note there. Naruto had read it; it said, For my biggest fan. With love, Jiraiya. "It's Kakashi's copy, huh? I guess that makes sense, he mentioned that you're living together." He closed the book and pointed to the author's name. "That's me, I'm Jiraiya."

Utterly derailed by this revelation, she squeaked out a tiny, overwhelmed, "You know sensei?" which earned her a nod. Confusion reigned for a long moment. Then, abruptly, her body chose flight over fight, and she jolted upwards, trying to get to her feet and away, but so fast she didn't even see him move, the stranger closed his enormous hand around her bicep and tugged her back to the ground and against his side. She struggled, trying to pull away, but his grip was like iron, and the only thing she accomplished was hyperventilation as she began to panic in earnest.

The stranger—Jiraiya, apparently—seemed only mildly perturbed by this turn of events. Calmly, he finished her sandwich and drank deeply from her canteen, set the book aside, and then watched her as she froze up and began to shut down, terrified that she'd been caught by the man with a deviant enough mind to write the dirty books Kakashi was always reading. "Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you," he cajoled. "Why are you so scared? Breathe, sweetie."

Her vision and thoughts had narrowed down in her panic, so much so that she simply obeyed, beginning to count out her breaths the way her sensei had taught her to, and gradually, the black spots in her vision faded, and she was able to say clearly if shakily, "I'm—I'm telling you, you have the wrong person. Let me go. P-please."

Poking her on the nose with a big grin, Jiraiya told her jovially, "You, my pretty girl, are Uzumaki Naruto, and your father named you after the main character of my first book. Here, I've been carrying this around for thirteen years, I had planned to give it to you when you were born, but it didn't seem like something the foster system would help you keep up with. I'm not even sure if they let you keep that little stuffed puppy I got you."

Naruto stared blankly down at the book that was set in her lap, and as she moved to take it, he released her arm. Tales of a Gutsy Ninja was the title, and sure enough, opening it up revealed that the first line was, Naruto melted from the shadows, weapon in hand, and knew battle was upon him. The words in front of her blurred as she thought about Pochi, who'd been sleeping in Kakashi's bed with her and was currently sitting on his pillow. "What color was the stuffed animal?" she asked, feeling distant from her body and her words.

"It was a little blue dog with spots, if I remember right. I picked it up in the Mist."

Slowly, she tilted her head up to look at the mountain of a man sitting next to her, their arms pushed together, far too close for comfort. "You knew my parents?" she asked in a tiny, vulnerable voice, and at his nod, her eyes welled up with tears.

Jiraiya tucked her under his arm, and she didn't want him to, didn't want him to touch her like that, but she needed to hear what he had to say, so she merely wiped at her eyes as he crooned down at her, "Oh, don't cry, sweetie. Yes, I knew them. Everybody knew them, of course… But I was your father's teacher."

Brain buzzing, she asked mindlessly, "What… what were their names?" only for the answer to send her into a downward spiral.

"Your father was Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime, and your mother was his wife, Kushina. You bear her maiden name."

…

That Jiraiya didn't want to be Hokage was unpleasant if expected news. Kakashi was much, much happier to hear that he would retrieve Tsunade as the next candidate himself, having both no desire to be separated from Naruto for another second and no desire to try to make the great Lady Tsunade do anything she didn't want to do.

The post-mission debrief and paperwork were unusually grueling and unpleasant, and Kakashi was utterly unable to concentrate on it, too fixated on Naruto and their unfinished conversation about what it was that they had between them. He might kiss her by the end of the night, and that possibility, albeit slim, was enough to make him stare blankly down at the injury report form he'd filled out hundreds of times before. One of his men had made contact with an unknown allergen, nobody's fault and she was okay, but it added to the paperwork, and he didn't have any time for that, couldn't make himself concentrate on it.

His girl was waiting for him, after all. He needed to get home.

It was hard not to run. If it had been nighttime, Kakashi probably would have, but civilians got antsy when shinobi ran for no apparent reason, and with the recent death of the Sandaime, he was likely to upset some of those with more delicate nerves. So he walked, one foot in front of the other, agonizingly slow, his entire being drawn up tense like he was marching into battle rather through the calm streets to his apartment.

He was so busy running through possible things Naruto might say to him and how he'd respond to them that he didn't recognize that there was an extra chakra signature in his apartment until his key was in the lock. He froze for a moment, gearing up for a fight, but then realized it was just Jiraiya and sighed, shaky with nerves. But it was okay, it was all going to be okay, because his girl was on the other side of the door, and everything was okay when they were together. His searching eye found her immediately, looking small and diminished on the couch where she sat with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, her bright blue gaze vulnerable, wet, and pleading as it flickered from Jiraiya's face to Kakashi's over his shoulder. He'd been running lines in his head, rehearsing what he was going to say—something like I've missed you terribly, how have you been?—but his mind went blank in the face of her distress, demanding gruffly as he shut the door behind himself, "What's wrong?"

Her desperate eyes searched his, her words tilting up into a whine as she begged, "Tell me it's not true, that you didn't really know who my parents were this whole time."

His stomach dropped and his temper flared as he strode into the living area to confront Jiraiya, ignoring Naruto altogether in the face of how profoundly he did not know what to say to her. "You told her?" he nearly snarled, and Naruto flinched badly at the confirmation as Jiraiya took his time lifting his gaze to Kakashi's face, clearly unimpressed with his anger.

"Of course I did. Why did you think I was waiting for the Sandaime to die before I came to see her? I couldn't stand the thought of lying to her. But sweetie," the sage turned his attention to the girl on the couch, wiping at her eyes and blinking back her betrayed tears, and Kakashi didn't like him using a pet name for her at all. "Your sensei was under strict orders not to tell you. Everyone was. Blame the Sandaime, not him."

Her words came out plaintive, childish, and naïve, and they made his joints ache and his throat seize with regret. "But there's not supposed to be secrets when it's just us," she argued weakly, her eyes still begging him to tell her it was all a mean joke.

But he couldn't. And he couldn't get down on his knees and beg for her forgiveness, either, not in front of Jiraiya. He couldn't wrap her up in his arms and hold her until it didn't hurt so much. He had to stand there with his hands in his pockets and the blankest look he could manage on his face as he returned neutrally, "I wanted to tell you."

Suddenly, Naruto's eyes went wide and stricken, and she realized out loud in a whisper, "Oh, gods, that's why you feel so guilty that you didn't know what was going on before I knew you. You knew who I was, you could have been there for me. And it's why you were so mean to me when I first became your student, too, isn't it? You were trying to keep your distance, just like this guy was."

She looked like her entire world had been inverted, and Kakashi wanted desperately to fix it, to deny her accusations, to do damage control, but even though she was missing the key detail that he kept away because of his irrational attachment to her, she was still, in broad strokes, correct. So, inhaling through his nose and averting his gaze to the floor, he jerked his head in a nod, prompting a little hurt gasp from his girl that felt like senbon between his ribs. But it was Jiraiya who spoke, asking sharply, "What do you mean? What was going on before you met Kakashi?"

For a moment, he and his girl just looked at the older man, before their gazes met. He shrugged and dropped his eye once more, leaving it up to her whether she wanted to explain herself or have him do it. But in a heartbreakingly small voice, all she said was, "You didn't tell him?" He shook his head, and she let out a little shaky sigh that made him want desperately to hold her, to smell her hair, to curl up with her in their bed and exist as close to her as he possibly could. "Don't, then, I don't want him to know."

"Know what?"

"Everyone in the village knows," Kakashi argued as gently as he possibly could, ignoring Jiraiya's interjection. "He's going to find out."

Frustrated, Naruto stood, and pointed at Jiraiya, her jaw set in that stubborn look that was so familiar on her face, demanding with full eye contact, "Am I safe with this guy? Do you trust him?" Kakashi only hesitated for a second before he nodded. "Okay, then I'm going with him to find this Tsunade person—" No, no, no, no… "—I guess we'll be back in a couple weeks or whatever. I'm gonna go pack, you—fuck it, Kakashi, just tell him." She threw her hands up, turning on her heel, sounding like she wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or yell. "The gods know I'm not allowed any fucking privacy."

An icy glare over her shoulder made him wonder for the hundredth time if she knew he was reading her journal, but that was a passing thought; he was more preoccupied with trying to figure out how to keep her from going, but there were no ploys that would both work and not tip Jiraiya off that there was something weird going on between them. He had to let her go, because any jōnin sensei in their right mind would be delighted to give their student a chance to train with one of the sannin. His hands were tied, and he was furious, but he couldn't show that, either. He flinched when her bedroom door slammed shut, hyperaware of Jiraiya's accusing gaze as he slouched onto his futon with a groan.

"What have you neglected to tell me about my goddaughter?" Jiraiya asked instantly, sounding rather peeved, and it swelled up inside him all over again how much he didn't like how the sage was acting as though he'd been here the whole time, like he had a real claim over his girl.

Kakashi pushed it down forcefully, sighing, "Are you sure you want to know? It'll put up a wall between you and her. She hates that people know. And… you're going to feel a lot more guilty than I do." He paused, staring down at his hands in his lap as he chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I was only fourteen, I couldn't have taken her in. But you were a grown man. You could have stayed, and raised her, and then it would never have happened."

Jiraiya was unnaturally still and unreadable, his dark eyes intent and flinty when Kakashi chanced a glance up at them. "What happened to my goddaughter while I was gone?" he asked, in a low, dangerous tone.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Kakashi reasoned, "Really, she'll warm up to you faster if you don't know. It might mean a lot to her, to be around someone who doesn't know for a while. She's never had the opportunity to have control over who hears about it…"

The sage's massive hands clenched in the fabric of his pants, killing intent rolling off him in waves as he ducked his head, staring hard at the floor between his feet. "Someone touched her," he guessed flatly. "Because the Sandaime made it clear no one would be checking on her. She was an easy target."

"Let her tell you what happened at her own pace," Kakashi suggested, numb. He hated everything about what was happening, but that wouldn't stop him from giving her the best opportunity to heal. "Treat her normally."

Kakashi watched his teacher's teacher shut his eyes and breathe steadily, tension slowly leaking out of the set of his shoulders and jaw, and vaguely, he wondered if the man was visualizing his anger like a thread being spooled. Minato had taught him that; had Jiraiya taught it to Minato? He didn't ask, instead watching the serious, deadly toad sage melt into the goofy erotica author. Kakashi could see the tension in the lines around the man's eyes, but it would fool Naruto, who wasn't in the habit of looking for deception in the people around her. It was just in time, too, because Naruto's door opened, and Kakashi took the opportunity to throw Jiraiya to the wolves, raising his voice to announce, "I told you, it's not my business to tell, Naruto will tell you if she wants you to know. Just drop it."

Jiraiya shot him an amused, knowing look, but played along, making a show out of raising his hands defensively and conceding, "Fine, fine, don't yell at an old man for being nosy, gossip is the most valuable currency available to us, after all. Ah, there's my pretty girl. Are you ready to go?"

"I'm not your pretty anything," Naruto bit back, hefting her field bag higher on her shoulders where she stood behind the couch. "I'm ready. Start walking, I'll catch up. I've gotta say something to sensei before I go."

With raised eyebrows and an indulgent smile, Jiraiya left them alone, Kakashi having walked him to the door for the sole reason that he wanted to be standing and looking down at Naruto when they had whatever this conversation was about to be. He'd never wanted this badly to run away from his girl, but as he stood in between her furious glare and the door, all he could think about was that if he ran, she'd never catch him. His heart was so loud in his ears that he couldn't keep his thoughts straight, but he managed a quiet, "What are you thinking?"

The little blonde chewed on his question for a moment, scanning his face. "Take your mask off," she demanded, and he obeyed without any argument. She studied him for another moment, then said, "I'm thinking that I'm pissed at you. And that I know you don't want me to go, I can see it in your eye, you look like a kicked puppy. But I'm going anyway."

She seemed expectant, so Kakashi breathed deep and said, "Okay."

This seemed to satisfy her. She nodded once, with a little hmph noise, and then admitted begrudgingly and without eye contact, "I'm probably going to forgive you by the time I get back, but you still gotta grovel and make it up to me. Okay?"

Naruto's pigtails were crooked and all he wanted in the world was to fix them for her as he croaked out another broken, "Okay," choking back the relief and affection and love that flooded him upon hearing that he was practically already forgiven. She was so sweet and pure and kind, and he didn't even deserve to be the ground she walked on.

On instinct, Kakashi removed his hands from his pockets, and it was the most subtle possible way he could have offered a hug, but his girl read him perfectly and stepped into his embrace, stepping up on her toes and winding her arms around his neck as she buried her face in his throat. She always felt so fragile in his arms, like a strong grip might break her, but he held her tight anyway, desperate for every touch of her body against his. "I missed you," he whispered at last, lips pressed into her hair. "I'm going to miss you."

"I missed and will miss you, too, you jerk," Naruto mumbled back against his skin, making him shiver. "You're sure that weird dude isn't going to try to cop a feel, right? He's a little… friendly."

In spite of everything, in spite of his grief, his anxiety over her absence, his burning need to finish the conversation they'd started over a week ago on the Hokage monument, he laughed, and squeezed her tighter. "You really don't know who he is, do you?" he realized. "He's a student of the Sandaime, one of the three legendary sannin of the Leaf, the feared toad sage, the teacher of the Yondaime, the top choice for Godaime… any of that ringing a bell?"

"No," she admitted easily. She would bluster for other people, but with him, she always just was honest when she didn't know something, and he loved her for it. "He's a pervert. Kinda touchy, too."

Kakashi hummed, swaying her just a little, and advised, "Just slap him. That's how the other women in his life enforce their boundaries. I swear he won't hurt you, though, and I'd bet everything I own that he's not sincerely interested in you physically. He's just… like that."

"I'll beat it out of him," Naruto vowed as she stepped back, and he didn't bother hiding how hopelessly fond his smile was, nor the sadness in his eye. She had no idea that she'd just described something impossible, and he didn't correct her.

"Be good," he commanded her instead. "Be safe."

"No promises," she threw back over her shoulder with a smile. "Tell Iruka-sensei where I went, okay? And water my plants. And don't forget that I'm mad at you." Then she was gone, and he was left alone in his quiet, empty apartment, staring at the door. Moving slow, as though through molasses, Kakashi curled up on his couch and didn't move for a long, long time.