Naruto's first assessment of her godfather was that she didn't much like him. He was loud, and rudely flirtatious to every woman he met, and he commented on her appearance a lot. Sure, plenty of it was casual praise—calling her pretty, mostly—but he was also quick to criticize, and say things like You know, Naruto, you'll get more attention from boys if you wear something a little more low cut or Sweetie, you should wear your hair down more, it's sexier than those messy pigtails.

It felt so different from receiving compliments from Kakashi—which always made her feel sort of hot and squishy inside—or Iruka. It made her feel exposed and pinned down like a butterfly in a shadow box. She quickly found herself longing for her orange jumpsuit, for the first time in weeks and weeks. She didn't want to be observed the way Jiraiya observed her. Overall, she thought that Kakashi had clocked it—the old pervert didn't seem to be interested in her, and didn't hit on her the way he did the other women and girls who crossed his path, but he seemed to feel a strange sense of ownership over her body.

He was a good teacher, though. On the second day, having discussed her training at length on their walk out of the Leaf, he'd had her practice the chakra control exercise of walking on water, taking her to the nearby river to do so. She thought she'd really improved, but she still wobbled quite a bit, and her new teacher had been singularly unimpressed with her performance, recalling her to the shore almost immediately.

"Your chakra is being interfered with," he'd said, staring at her midriff with an intensity that made her arms cross over her chest protectively. "Tuck your shirt up into your bra so I can see your stomach."

She had startled, and taken two steps back, flushing. "No! You're just a pervert, aren't you? You're not going to trick me into—"

He'd snatched her by the arm again, apparently sensing the idea developing in her head that maybe she should run, but his voice had been patient and gentle even as she struggled against his hold, kicking at his shins. "Hush, sweetie, it's not like that," he'd practically crooned, with that indulgent smile he so often wore for her. "I need to take a look at your seal."

That had frozen her struggling. "The nine-tail's seal?" she'd clarified, and at his nod, she'd hesitated. "You have to look…?" He nodded again with an expectant look on his face, and nausea flooded her. Nobody hardly ever saw her stomach or her back. The last person had been Ino, checking to make sure her bra fit correctly, and she'd hated every second of it. Before that… probably a doctor at one of her physicals. "I don't let people see my body," she'd stalled awkwardly. "As a general rule. Not a fan. Like to keep it to myself."

"A little never-nude, how cute," Jiraiya had teased. "Not at all like your mother. She used to take her shirt off during training to distract her male teammates. She was wearing a sports bra, of course, but she used to argue that it was stupid that she had to, that nipples were nipples." Hearing about her mother had lulled her, distracted her from her distress, and she'd known even then that Jiraiya had realized he could control her with information about her parents. She was starving for it, to the point that she had let him lift her shirt as the man kept talking, even as the exposure of her abdomen elicited a little scared cry from her lips and her eyes slammed shut. "She was a real firecracker, that Kushina. Used to beat the crap out of any boy that hit on her, except your father, of course. She always had a soft spot for him. Now, concentrate your chakra, babydoll, just like if you were out on the water."

Squeezing her eyes further shut, Naruto had obeyed, and asked quietly after a moment, "Like that?"

"Yeah. Here, keep it up, but take a look." It had been hard to keep up with the chakra as she opened her eyes and looked down past where Jiraiya's hand was holding up her shirt, stunned to see black ink on her skin, a spiral out from her belly button with symbology she didn't understand arranged in a starburst pattern around it. Did that happen every time, and she'd had no idea? It had faded as she lost her concentration, so she'd shut her eyes and focused on her chakra again. It always sort of felt like trying to grapple a fish, frustratingly difficult, but it must have worked, because Jiraiya hummed thoughtfully as he examined the seal. "Definitely your father's work, I'd recognize it anywhere. I taught him everything he knew about sealing, of course, but he had raw talent for it, that's for sure. This one is configurable, a concept he'd been working on around the time you were born, but I had no idea he'd felt ready to put it to practice."

Naruto had nearly lost her concentration, her eyes popping open as she asked, "Dad did the seal?"

"He had to, he was the only person qualified to do it." There had been a silence, and when Jiraiya spoke again, his voice had been wistful. "It feels like I'm reading a letter he left for me... I know what it says. It says that if I think you can handle it, I should release the barrier to the flow of your chakra and the fox's. But do I think you can handle it…?"

Naruto hadn't been given any chance to weigh in on this matter. Her eyes had popped open wide as her new teacher knocked the breath out of her lungs with a hard blow to her unprotected abdomen, sending her flying backwards into a sprawl. "Hey!" she'd yelled the moment she caught her breath, dirty and furious on the ground. "What gives, ero-sennin?"

But the man had seemed entirely too pleased with himself, and merely pointed out to the water. And he'd been beaming at her when she took her first steps onto the ever-changing surface of the water, her head jerking up to stare at him when it felt as sturdy as the bank she'd just stepped off of.

It was like she'd been disabled and never knew it until she was fixed. Her chakra stopped feeling like a fish fighting against her and started feeling like it was a part of her. The first thing she'd done to celebrate was make shadow clones, first a dozen as she marveled at how easily they came, then fifty, and fifty more. Jiraiya had hugged the closest clone, roundly ignoring its struggling, and said, "You're gonna be great, sweetie." And even if he was a massive pervert, she'd always be grateful that he'd fixed her seal and her chakra.

…

Kakashi had lived alone for thirteen years, and it had never bothered him. Now it felt like torture, like he was trapped in an awful, endless genjutsu that made him feel every ounce of loneliness he'd ever ignored. He spent the whole first day his girl was gone nearly catatonic; when he finally mustered the strength of will to at least move to his bedroom, he was struck a killing blow in the form of finding Naruto's Pochi in his bed along with a kunai under his pillow and realizing she'd been sleeping there.

She really had missed him. And she'd left him. Explicitly to punish him.

He had to hand it to her, he felt punished. Her absence was an excellent motivator to avoid future deception of any kind. He'd never lie to her again.

Except… the journal. He had no idea how he was going to resolve that issue. He knew himself too well to think he'd be able to stop himself from reading it, though of course he would try. But he wouldn't lie if she asked. That had to count for something, right?

… Probably not.

He spent most of his time wondering how she was, even as he dragged himself to training the next day an hour late with a flimsy excuse about helping an old lady with her groceries. It was the first time he'd been late in months; he could tell Sasuke and Sakura saw straight through him as he briefly explained where Naruto was, and couldn't stand the pity in their eyes. With his mind firmly on memories of Naruto's laughter and her hair between his fingers, he'd dully suggested that Sakura finally go take that two week medical jutsu training course she'd been interested in.

He'd teach the boy his chidori. He was ready for it.

…

The first time Naruto caught Jiraiya peeping on girls who were just trying to enjoy a nice swim, she was struck speechless, and faded back into the background, unable to process how she felt about it at all. She barely spoke to him as they ate the fish she'd grilled over their campfire, and then laid awake later that night wracked with guilt that she hadn't said anything, or at least warned those poor girls.

The second time, Jiraiya had a camera in his hands as he looked through a crack in the wall of the onsen they were staying at, and Naruto had decided that what she felt about it was rage. She didn't show it, though; she'd observed first hand that physical consequences or yelling were of no relevance to him. She'd have to make him feel ashamed, which was a tall order, but she'd give it her best shot. Instead of screaming and hitting him like she wanted to, Naruto slid down into a cross-legged position next to him, and stated simply and clearly, "You know, someone took pictures of me without my permission."

Jiraiya startled as though he hadn't realized she was there, but after a disinterested glance, looked back through his camera, murmuring with a lecherous grin, "Be quiet, they'll hear you... Yeah, boys can be a little creepy, and you're awfully pretty. I'm not surprised you've had some try to take a picture and make you last longer."

"No, ero-sennin, you complete waste of space. Someone came into my apartment when I was eight years old, held a knife to my throat, made me take my clothes off, and took pictures of me." Watching Jiraiya tense all over, fingers going tight on the camera as his awful grin froze in place, made her feel… Powerful, she guessed. As much as she'd enjoyed the simple fact of being around someone that didn't know she'd been dirtied, it was satisfying to tell what happened to her in her own words, on her own time, because she wanted to.

The hands holding the camera fell limply to the sage's lap, and his frozen smile melted into a blank forward-facing mask as he denied softly, "This is different, Naruto."

"It's a different shade of the same color," she countered, cold. "You're violating them. You're taking their ownership of their body away from them. They didn't consent to you seeing them naked, and you're hurting them."

"I'm not hurting—"

"It hurts. I know firsthand that it hurts." They made eye contact, then, Jiraiya's gaze dark and pained. Naruto just stared back for a moment, with the understanding that her judgment and observation of him was what was going to win her this argument. Then, she added viciously, "I don't see that much of a difference between men like you and men like him."

There was a tiny, pained gasp, and she knew she'd won. She didn't bother looking at him as she took the camera from his hands, fiddled with it until she found the film compartment, then tore it all out, crumpling it in her fists. "Naruto…" he began pleadingly, reaching for her wrist, but she flinched back, scrabbling to her feet and letting the camera tumble from her lap.

"No," she told him firmly, like she was talking to a dog. He looked up at her with devastation plain in his eyes as she explained cruelly, "I don't let men like you touch me anymore."

Naruto left Jiraiya sitting on the ground, staring after her like a lost child, and she didn't let herself look back.

…

His girl's bedsheets smelled just like her. Tangerines and sunshine filled his nose the moment Kakashi collapsed facedown onto her bed, unable to stomach another second alone in his own; his sheets had smelled a bit like Naruto, too, at first, but it had faded after a few days. This was much stronger, and it flooded Kakashi with thoughts of her—her sweet laughter, the devious little smirk on her face when she got her way, her captivating eyes, the feel of her hair against his fingers, his lips, his neck…

In the dark, he dug his face further into her quilt and clenched his hands in his hair, trying to ignore the arousal that pooled low in his abdomen. Missing Naruto was like losing a leg, and he was going crazy trying to cope with it. It had been easier when he'd been on his mission, but now he was just alone, unoccupied, and surrounded by things that reminded him of her. It was driving him mad, making him do and feel insane things, because really, this was a new low—smelling her made him hard? When had he become so desperate, so far gone?

Kakashi didn't particularly want to jerk off in Naruto's bed, hadn't planned on it in the slightest, but as he laid there facedown with his head full of thoughts of her, he found himself thinking about the things he usually did when he touched himself. He'd tried hard not to, when she'd first moved in and broken the dam holding back his interest, but being pent up around her was worse and he couldn't stop the thoughts in the middle of it, so he'd learned to just accept them.

He thought about the delicate curve of her breast, seared into his brain from the day they'd painted together. He thought about the languid way she'd lounge in the living room in the evenings when left to her own devices, one leg up on the back of the couch and the other foot planted on the floor, her arms stretched up above her head, drawing his attention to her chest, her flat stomach, the apex of her spread thighs. It was ignorable when she did it in her training gear, but once, she'd done it in those tiny blue shorts, and he'd had to excuse himself to stop staring before he scared her. He thought about the first time he'd seen her wearing lipgloss, fresh from Sakura's house with her mouth wet and shining and strawberry-scented and so damn tempting.

He thought about that final stretch she'd do after a particularly grueling training session. It was all delicious, the entire routine of touching her toes and pulling her muscles loose, but she always ended with her cute little butt settled down on her feet as she reached out as far as she could in front of her, cheek against the ground. It was so—so innocent, and so filthy, the way her waist clipped in and her hips and ass rounded out, like she was waiting for him to grab her and pull her back onto him… Who could blame him, really, for sneaking a glimpse with his sharingan?

As he gave in and wrapped his hand around himself, hissing at the contact, Kakashi thought about the exhilarated look on her face when he'd let her pin him while they sparred a few weeks back, almost straddling him with her knee dug painfully into his thigh, her hands pressing his wrists into the grass next to his head. Thought about the adorable little sound she'd made when he flipped her, slammed her back against the ground, and knelt over her, teasing through his thundering heartbeat, You didn't really think I was that easy, did you? Naruto had been so pretty like that, under him with her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, her chest heaving and her face flushed from exertion. Would she look like that when he finally took her? Or would she be too shy to look at him that way, her heavy-lidded blue eyes dark and intense above her flaming cheeks in that split second before she started to laugh and shove him off of her?

His hand quickened as his release approached, and he muffled a groan into the quilt. The question of whether she ever touched herself, alone at night in her bed, right where Kakashi was laying, made him hear static in his ears and his vision blank out as he imagined it, imagined her soft sighs and moans as her fingers worked between her legs—

… He'd wash her sheets. Even though most of the mess ended up in his sleep pants, sticking them uncomfortably to his spent flesh, he'd wash them. It might make him feel a little less guilty for getting off in her bed.

…

The next morning, Jiraiya still looked shame-faced when he got Naruto from her room at the onsen and told her, "I've got a lead on Tsunade, she's supposedly recently been seen gambling a few towns over. We might be able to get there by tomorrow afternoon if we walk all day today."

Naruto had agreed, they'd eaten miso for breakfast, and then they'd hit the road, walking beside each other in silence for hours. She roundly ignored every single attempt at communication, even managing not to reveal her interest when her godfather tried to bribe her with stories about what her father had been like when he was her age. She had to make sure the lesson stuck; forgiving him too easily was the same as giving him permission in his eyes, she just knew it. She had to make him squirm for it.

They set up their campsite in silence as well, now practiced enough at working together to do so that no communication was required. She swept off a bit of ground, surrounded it with rocks, and gathered firewood while Jiraiya placed protective jutsu around them, finishing with a genjutsu that apparently made the campsite seem empty, quiet, and aggressively uninteresting to passerby. She hadn't quite gotten the hang of starting the fire, and that night, she didn't bother trying, just waited for Jiraiya to breathe flames onto the wood like Sasuke or Kakashi did when they camped together.

She'd been doing all the cooking, but Jiraiya didn't seem surprised when she made no move to do so that night, only sighing as he withdrew some protein bars from his pack and tossed a couple at her feet where she sat looking into the fire. They ate in silence, too, and just before she was going to go get her sleeping bag ready, her attention was caught by the man rustling through his pack, withdrawing handfuls upon handfuls of—

Photographs. Naruto scrunched her nose up in distaste as the large stack was gathered into the man's hands, and she turned her head away as he moved to sit next to her, so close their knees almost touched. She heard the photos hit the ground by her feet, and in spite of herself, curiosity about other women's bodies made her crack her eyes open, taking in the creep shots spread out in front of her. The vast majority were of women in bathing gear, but some were of topless women enjoying the onsen and some were of fully clothed women bending over or accidentally showcasing their cleavage—

Very, very quietly, she pointed at one near her foot, examining the pretty girl's tiny white bathing suit, her narrow hips, her flat chest, her girlish smile. "She looks young," she pointed out, words flat and barbed, clearing her throat when her voice came out rough from disuse.

"Yes," Jiraiya agreed, taking the photo into his hands. He didn't pause at all before tossing it onto the flames. Then the one of the mother breastfeeding in the park, and a pretty redhead naked apart from the towel around her waist, smiling down at her friend as she wrung out her hair. Naruto watched, wordless, as countless girls in bathing suits burned. When all the photos were gone, Jiraiya set his elbows on his knees, leaned closer to the fire, shut his eyes, and said, "You're right."

"I know," she told the side of his face, breaking his serious look for just a second as the corner of his lip turned up.

"You don't have to be a sore winner."

"I'm not playing a game, ero-sennin."

The man sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face, pressing his fingers hard into his shut eyes. "I think I genuinely believed that what those girls didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I wasn't putting myself in the same category as a sexual predator. I was wrong on both accounts." There was a stretch of quiet, filled only by the wind in the leaves and crackling fire, before he said quietly, "I want to be a man you can look up to."

"Treating women and girls like people would be a good start," Naruto hinted, and the man nodded, looking rather serious as his eyes finally opened and fixed on her face, dark and sad and shadowed.

"Kakashi was right," he said next, sounding pained, and she had no clue what he was talking about. "I do feel guilty. I should have stayed and taken care of you."

Naruto didn't know what to say, really, as she looked up at the man who might have filled in as her father, in another life. She couldn't imagine what that would have been like, to have a home and someone she loved in it while she was growing up, and quickly found the idea to be painful, so she shrugged, forcing those thoughts away. "The only thing I like about you is that you don't lie to me," she told him at length. "So I'm sort of glad you didn't stick around, if it would have meant lying to me about who my parents were the whole time."

"Still," Jiraiya countered, and failed to elaborate. She watched his massive hands curl into fists as he ventured with artificial gentleness, "Who was this man, who broke into your apartment? Where is he now?"

"He was my landlord," Naruto heard herself say, feeling very distant from her body, their conversation, and the warmth of the fire. "I killed him a couple months ago. That's when I moved in with sensei."

She kept her gaze fixed on the fire as Jiraiya processed this. "You said it started when you were eight," he thought out loud, words slow. "This went on for five years?"

"It wasn't all the time," she answered numbly, digging her nails into her palms. "Just every couple of months."

A glance at the man out of the corner of her eye revealed that this was of little comfort to him. His next question was blunt and ragged around the edges, and it tilted up into a plea towards the end. "Did he rape you?"

"Tried to." Naruto swallowed around the lump in her throat, drawing her knees up to her chest. "S'why I killed him."

"Good girl." A broad palm stroked the back of her head, just once. Then, clearly giving her an out, he groaned, straightened up, and said, "You know, there's this powerful jutsu your father invented, called the rasengan. We have an hour or so of daylight left, do you want to start on the basics?"

Naruto couldn't stop the shy smile that twisted the corners of her mouth, and couldn't stop it from widening when Jiraiya smiled back at her, so sincerely that she started to really believe that he cared about her. "Yeah. Yeah! Let's do it, ero-sennin."

…

"Hey," Kakashi told the black memorial stone as he slumped against it, closing his eye against its warmth under the midday sun. "Been a while." It really had been quite a long time since he'd visited the stone. His days off had been so full with Naruto around, his apartment so inviting with his girl sprawled out on his couch… But now Naruto had been gone nearly a week, and he had nothing at all to do on his Sunday off.

He raised his lukewarm bottle of whiskey to his lips and took another drink through his genjutsu mask, shivering at the taste as his empty stomach rebelled against it. Eye shut, he tilted his face back, enjoying the sunlight warming it, and drifted for a while, only to be startled awake by a shadow being cast over him.

Cracking his eye open, he saw an expanse of green spandex and groaned. "Go away, Guy," he tried, knowing even as he did that it wasn't going to work.

Sure enough, his self-declared greatest rival merely sat down in front of him, legs crossed with his palms planted on his knees. "It was not very honorable of you to skip out after your lecture yesterday." Kakashi had no answer to that, could not possibly explain that he'd left to spend hours in an unbearably hot shower that gradually grew unbearably cold. "You have not been your usual vibrant and youthful self, my friend."

"I don't think anyone would describe me as 'vibrant,' even on my best day," Kakashi droned back, exhausted and tipsy as his eye fell back shut and he took another careless pull from the bottle.

"Not true, honorable rival. Your forbidden young paramour makes you vibrant."

That woke him up. Kakashi sat bolt upright, eye snapping open to fix on Guy's serious face, and the bottle nearly tipped over with the sudden movement. His words came out in a low hiss. "That's a serious accusation, Guy," he warned. "Watch it."

The other jōnin didn't seem to register the implied threat at all. "I've known you many years," he said, resolute. "I have never seen you smile or laugh so freely, or love so fiercely. I don't know if you've made your intentions clear to young Naruto, but I know what your intentions are."

Glaring, he snapped back, "Oh? And what exactly are my intentions?"

Unperturbed, Guy answered resolutely with steady eye contact, "I think you intend to make an honest woman of her. I think you intend to take excellent care of her and give her what she needs to heal."

"Fuck you, Guy."

"I'm not attacking you, Kakashi. I'm simply observing that your student causes you to glow with joy and vitality, and that you are clearly in love with her and unable to manage your emotions concerning her absence."

For a moment, Kakashi glared while Guy stared passively back at him. Self-destructively, unable to handle the man's observation, he snarled, "Then go tell it from the rooftops. Tell everyone about my sick attachment to a thirteen year old girl. Why are you even here? I didn't think you'd want to be around someone so dishonorable."

"You're correct that I disapprove," Guy responded evenly, refusing to rise to his bait. "Naruto is far, far too young for you. But the blossom of tenderest affection knows no age, and I have watched you both flourish with each other to rely upon." He cleared his throat, at last averting his gaze. "At the least, I can't bring myself to try to stop you, because I fear that losing you might damage vulnerable young Naruto even more than your ill-timed affections."

The lesser of two evils. Kakashi had been called worse for more minor offenses. Miserable, he took another drink from the bottle, throat feeling a bit tight as his eyes burned, and confided quietly and unexpectedly, "She went with Jiraiya because she found out that I knew who her parents were and didn't tell her."

"Ah," Guy acknowledged, uncomfortable, sounding like he wasn't sure what to say. "Quite a serious secret between lovers."

"We aren't lovers," Kakashi corrected the bottle he was turning over in his hands, feeling rather dizzy and lightheaded. "If you thought we were, why are you still talking to me like we're friends?"

"Because we are friends." Guy was quiet for a moment, watching with sadness in the tilt of his mouth as Kakashi took another drink. "Contingent on the continuation of your affections creating security and happiness for young Naruto. She's… a very sweet girl, and if you break her heart, or use her and throw her away, I will deliver justice myself, but somehow, I don't believe that will be necessary. She's it for you, isn't she?"

Feeling rather like he was pinned down with his throat exposed to the enemy, he gave a jerky nod. "Who else knows?"

"No one, as far as I'm able to determine. They don't know you well enough. I knew from the moment you became defensive of your relationship with her. You never defend yourself if you believe that what you're doing is right."

So Guy had known practically the whole time, had probably figured it out by the time he'd shoved his girl into the booth between them. His comments about fatherhood must have been a guilt tactic.

Kakashi's words came out as a desperate rasp. "I hate that she's young," he confessed. "It disgusts me how much I want her. She's—gods, I wasn't even into teenagers when I was one. I don't—it doesn't even feel like I'm attracted to her body, necessarily, I think I just want her because it's her."

"You're in love with her," Guy mused, making him flinch. "And you crave intimacy with the one you love. Tragic."

It felt tragic. Kakashi felt tragic. "I wish I could shut it off until she's old enough," he murmured. "I don't want to hurt her."

"Then don't," Guy said as he pushed himself to his feet, like it was simple. "Or I'll kill you." He offered Kakashi his hand. "Come on, then. You need to eat something and lay down. You haven't even noticed your genjutsu dropped, have you?"

Oh, fuck, no, he hadn't. Rather than take Guy's hand, he scrambled with unsteady fingers to pull his real mask back over the lower half of his face, shutting his eye against the wave of regret that washed over him, knowing he'd shared his face with someone other than his girl. He wanted to sit there until the earth swallowed him whole, but Guy grabbed him by the arms and yanked him up into his feet like he weighed nothing. He'd barely recovered from the change in locale before he caught a vicious punch to the gut, one that sent him doubling over, coughing and wheezing to catch his breath.

"It was going to be a hit to the nose," Guy explained jovially, with a deadly smile on his lips as he tucked himself under Kakashi's arm to keep him upright as he swayed in place upon straightening up, valiantly fighting back the urge to vomit. "But you're so handsome, I couldn't bear to mess up your pretty face if it might upset dear little Naruto."

See, that was much closer to what Kakashi deserved. Not—sympathy, or someone to confide his awful, sinful desires in. He deserved hurt.