To put it mildly, Naruto found himself at a loss for words. The Third had never seemed to ask for his input in anything before. Let alone asking for his input and help in a plan like this, 'tricking' two of the Sannin into sharing him as sensei.
"Naruto-Kun, I've obviously made some mistakes in the past regarding my approach to you." The Hokage looked more tired than Naruto had ever seen him. He doubted that the Third had even looked this haggard after his somewhat secret battle with the traitor Danzo and the resurrected First and Second Hokage's.
The mistakes of his past were evident in his features. Not in the old scars and battle wounds, mind you. They were visible in the deep bags under his eyes, and stone etched wrinkles around his mouth and eyes indicative of deep frowning and worries in the past. Even his general demeanor looked worn down, his posture slipping even if only minutely with age.
"It was… difficult, to say the least. Trying to both anchor you in reality, and to your home. Balancing that with my responsibilities as Hokage after the fourths passing." A deep sigh seemed to escape him, but no sound was heard. "It seems I lost sight of your thoughts and feelings in all of it. You seemed like such a bright personality, like you could weather the storms to come…"
He took another pause, gathering himself in a rare display of true un-moderated humanity, even if only a small one. Even if only slight, it was a look into the real person under the banner of Hokage and God of Shinobi. "But I realize now that not only was I wrong in believing that you had the mental faculties to deal with the stress so young, but I was wrong in thinking that you could simply accept the path that had been pre-determined for you." The Hokage let a soft chuckle escape his lips, "And yet look what you accomplished. Seemingly out of spite, no less." He said, gesturing to the Jishaku on Naruto's lap, having removed it from his belt-strap when sitting down.
Naruto had no idea how to respond to his elder's words. He didn't really have the social adaptations to process it, he was only just really catching up to his peers when it comes to healthy relationships. Having had only Masamune-Jiji when he was younger after the rift grew between Hiruzen and himself. His original team had been his first time really interacting with his peers in any extended way, and that hadn't ended great for him. Their loss had quite possibly caused him to backslide on all of his progress. He grew despondent and reclusive, rarely leaving his forge other than for the occasional mission filling in for shorthanded teams.
Team Kakashi was slowly bringing him up to speed, but there was only so much he could make up for. He didn't have parents or caretakers to observe and learn from, so his baseline was set rather low. The Uzumaki simply tightened his grip on the blade. Fighting the emotions threatening to come to the top. Shinobi do not cry.
"I guess, I got too engulfed in being Hokage. I've done it so long I just became used to the social hierarchy. I spoke, ninja listen. But you were not one of my shinobi, you were a child. Desperate for contact and interaction, and you ended up filling that void with your weapons, and research, and thankfully you found a mentor of sorts who could fill my shoes." At this a smile graced Hiruzen's aged lips. A somber note was definitely visible in his countenance, but it was a smile none-the-less.
Naruto all but choked back on his emotions, his throat felt too raw to properly speak up. He had spent far too long seeing Hiruzen as his Kage, a stone-faced visage carved into the top of the mountain. He didn't hate Hiruzen for the past, he really didn't, Naruto just wasn't the kind of person that could really hate just about anyone. But he certainly resented the man for it, even if it was deeply internalized.
His early hate for the villagers as they ignored him soon turned to apathy. They decided that they didn't need him, so he soon came to the same conclusion. Of course it still hurt, what human, let alone a child, would enjoy being ostracized? But he soon discovered that not everyone was the same, he found solace in the Ichiraku's and Masamune-Jiji, and eventually in his first Genin team.
He decided soon after he became a Genin that he didn't care for the villagers, as long as he had people who saw past it all, saw past his tenant as the Hokage finally informed him when he graduated, he could be happy. He had a home, and he had people around him that made it feel full enough. But he would be lying if he said these things didn't sit in him, like a weight on his chest. Sometimes it could get so overwhelming it felt hard for him to breath. He had gotten so used to it that he only noticed now, when he felt the weight get a little lighter.
Naruto took a few calming and quiet deep breaths before looking back up at the Third Hokage, only just now realizing he had looked away from the man. He searched for the words he wanted to speak, eventually deciding on a simple and somber "Thank you…". The rest of his sentence going unsaid between the two, Hiruzen able to grasp the meaning from tone alone.
"No Naruto-Kun… thank you." The two sat in silence for a little while longer, eventually exchanging a few more quiet words and sentiments. The mending strands of their fractured relationship drawing closer as they both visibly grew more comfortable.
"So…" the blonde eventually said aloud. "How are we supposed to get them to agree to this?"
A puff of smoke billowed from Hiruzen's lips as he spoke. "That's the ingenious part. They'll do all the work my boy." He paused to take another drag before continuing. "Once they've each spent time training and mentoring you, even for a relatively short period, they'll have no choice but to agree or lose out entirely." Hell, with the way Jiraiya has been pushing him to just go ahead and approve the paperwork for his apprenticeship of the boy, he would only really need to get Orochimaru interested.
Possibly allow them to officially work together before he sent her to Suna, it wouldn't be out of the question that Naruto would accompany her. And Naruto wouldn't even really need to do anything unusual, at least not in comparison to the stuff he normally does, as long as he was in on the plan and willing to receive top notch instruction. His natural genius had already attracted the snake solely through information reports and Hiruzen's own reports, imagine what he can do in three weeks and a foreign diplomacy mission. And if she wasn't already pressing him to make Naruto her student Hiruzen would eat his own hat.
The Kage was so certain of Naruto's ability being enough to subdue Orochimaru's ego into agreeing to share Naruto, that he was already mentally drawing notes of the documents his secretary would need to arrange for it to go through in time for their trip to Suna. If either of his students can't see the raw potential oozing from every pore in Naruto's body within a week of training, he might have failed them as a teacher.
Then maybe he'll send all three of them on a mission only they could possibly succeed in. His wayward blonde student would not be convinced easily, she is too mired in her past. Hiruzen thought to himself, taking relaxing drags from his pipe while he sat in his office with Naruto.
So this is a weird one. I won't say I didn't plan this interaction at all, I definitely did. Only it was completely different in my head and on paper, and a lot more time had passed from the conversation in the previous chapter. But once I started writing it I just sort went in a completely different direction, which will also make it fit in with next chapter a lot more. Then it felt wrong to just go back and randomly tac it on to last chapter, so I just added a little bit to chapter 7 to transition directly to this. So no time had passed and its the same conversation. Basically, I just took the most convoluted route to transition from the Chuunin exams to Naruto travelling to Suna.
TL;DR : I'm a jackass who can't properly plan story timelines, and ended up splitting what probably should have been one moderately sized chapter, into two small ones and made you wait for it. And now I'm going to make you wait on the next chapter as well, although hopefully not very long seeing as I already have it written.