The hours afterwards are spent quietly. Kakashi reads until he can't focus his eye anymore, takes a nap, and continues reading. Naruto doesn't stop reading at all, his brow furrowed but his shoulders relaxed. The emotional turmoil from the morning has died down some. Kakashi gets the sense that they're both calmer now, now that it's clear what they have to do. Naruto seems more determined than upset, at this point. He still seems pretty distracted, though; there's a few times when Kakashi catches him re-reading the same page or staring into space. Kakashi supposes he can't blame him for that.

It's late in the afternoon when Naruto closes his book and makes a face at it. "Can't read anymore," he decides, rocking back on the kitchen chair he'd dragged into his bedroom. "I already know most of what the book says. It's starting to get annoying."

Kakashi hums thoughtfully and looks up from his own book. "Well, that's good," he replies. "Did the Academy teach you a lot about henge?"

Naruto rocks back and forth on the chair a couple of times. "Yes and no," he says eventually. "I wasn't any good at doing henge during class, for some reason, so I taught myself a bunch."

That's a bit concerning for multiple reasons, and it also tells Kakashi nothing about how much Naruto actually knows. He closes his book and hides it underneath the bed with the rest of the books. He doesn't mind taking a break from reading; the pages were starting to go blurry again anyway.

"Can you show me?" he asks. "Try to change into me. Just so that I can see what your skill level is."

Naruto's face goes red, and he looks away. "I can't do that."

"You… could change into someone else, if you'd prefer that?"

He laughs nervously. "I can't do that either."

"Right." Kakashi blinks at him, confused. "So you don't know henge?" Shit, this may be more difficult than he originally thought. Living on the run with a ten-year-old who doesn't know henge… They're going to die.

Naruto scowls at that. "I know one henge. Learned it all by myself."

Maybe they won't die. "Well, we can work with that. Would you show me?"

The kid immediately over-balances on the chair and almost tips the back of his head directly into the wall. When he's managed to put all four of the chair's legs back on the floor, his face is even redder than before.

"I don't think you want to see that henge," he says, a bit out of breath. "It's for pranks."

Kakashi isn't sure what he's being so dramatic about. "Show me anyway. It'll give me an idea of what you can do."

Naruto shuffles nervously. "I really don't think you want to see, but…" He sighs and gets up. "All right, fine. If you insist."

He folds his hands into two sloppy signs, all the while staring at Kakashi with a frown. It makes Kakashi a bit nervous. He's suddenly not sure whether he wants Naruto to finish those signs.

With a third sign and a massive release of chakra, Naruto transforms into something with pigtails and lipgloss and a lot of bare skin-

Kakashi turns away with a yelp – that is not something he wants seared into his brain for the rest of his life. Naruto quickly dispels the jutsu and scowls at Kakashi. "I told you it's only good for pranks."

"I… Yeah. I get it now." He rubs a hand across his face. "Well, all of that aside… I do think we can work with this. The form you change into stands out too much as is, but at least it doesn't look like you. With some more practice, you could probably leave the village in that form without anyone knowing it's you."

Naruto looks at him like he just said something vulgar. "I'm not sure I want to leave the village as a girl."

"Well, you decided to teach yourself this jutsu," Kakashi reminds him with a grin. "Might as well make it useful, don't you agree?" At Naruto's unconvinced look, he adds in a more serious tone: "It's probably our best shot. You won't be able to master henge before we have to leave, but perfecting the one henge you already know is an achievable goal. We can work on expanding your repertoire later."

Naruto crosses his arms. "Fine," he grumbles.

"Good." Kakashi sits up straighter on the bed, leaning his back against the headboard. "Can you try to change into that form again? Try it with clothes, this time. We need to figure out how to keep you from standing out as much."

Naruto bounces in place a couple of times, thinking, before signing again. The girl he changes into is wearing clothes this time around, to Kakashi's relief.

"Pretty good," he tells Naruto. "It's a bit chilly for a summer dress, though, isn't it?"

Naruto quickly changes the henge again. This time, the girl is wearing a beige vest and blue pants. "Is this better?" Naruto demands, frowning, and Kakashi snorts.

"Well, you're convincing enough as long as you don't open your mouth," he replies. Naruto has managed to change his voice, but not the way he speaks.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. It's something we can work on later." Kakashi huffs a laugh at the face Naruto makes in response. "Anyway. Our biggest priority is to make sure you can keep up this jutsu for a long time. Do you know how long you can maintain it for?"

Naruto shrugs. "I usually only use it for a couple of seconds at a time," he says thoughtfully. "Though I once kept up the jutsu for, like, half an hour while I was playing a prank on one of my teachers, and I wasn't tired afterwards or anything. I can probably keep it up for longer."

It's a relief to hear that Naruto at least has good stamina going for him, though Kakashi supposes he shouldn't be surprised. "I want you to try and maintain this form for as long as you can," Kakashi tells him. "We need to figure out what your limit is."

Naruto grumbles a bit about it at first, but he settles down eventually and picks up his book again. Kakashi continues reading as well, watching him over the edge of his book.

Naruto keeps up his henge very consistently, though it seems to be taking up a lot of his concentration. He's got his book in his hands but he's just staring at the page, frowning deeply.

Kakashi observes him for about twenty minutes, then clears his throat. "You're not reading," he says, and Naruto jumps. "You should try doing something else."

Naruto gives an embarrassed laugh. "Sorry about that, I'll just try harder-"

"No, I meant that it'd be better to practice your henge while you're doing something that you find easy," Kakashi says. Kakashi himself had practiced his henge while reading when he was young, but that was because reading was easy for him – he could do just about anything while reading. That doesn't seem to be the case for Naruto, though. "You seem to be doing fine with your henge while you're focusing on it really hard, but ideally you'd try to make it something you can do subconsciously. It'll take up less of your energy and chakra that way. If trying to read only makes you focus on the jutsu harder, then try something else." He gestures with his book towards the kitchen. "Go do that mountain of dishes or something."

Naruto scrunches up his nose at him. "Why? I'll be leaving soon anyway."

"For training purposes. Just do it."

Naruto gives him a skeptical look, but gets up with a sigh and walks over to the kitchen. Kakashi keeps an eye on him through the doorway as he turns on the faucet and looks for the dishsoap. He seems to be keeping up his henge okay, so Kakashi picks up his book again.

He's been reading for about ten minutes when the ever-present itch in his throat increases, and he puts down his book to cough into his hand. Immediately, something sticky blocks his airway – he doubles over, coughing harder. His side protests fiercely.

He registers Naruto at his side before whatever is in his throat dislodges with a wet noise. Turning away, he pulls down his scarf, spits into the empty teacup that'd been on the nightstand, and covers his face again. He takes a quick glance at what he just coughed up – just mucus, though more of it than he's ever seen in one place before – and immediately covers the cup with his hand because that's disgusting.

Too late; Naruto already saw. He wrinkles his nose at Kakashi. "Ew," he says.

"Yeah," Kakashi agrees. He's struggling to catch his breath. "It's not a bad thing, though, I think. Either the meds are doing this, or my body's getting rid of the crud in my lungs by itself. At any rate, it'll be great to get all of this grossness out of my lungs. Then maybe there'll finally be some room for air in there again."

Naruto studies him, automatically frowning when he sees the tension between Kakashi's eyebrows. "You don't seem very happy about it," he observes.

Kakashi shrugs, his shoulders hunching further. "Well, I do look forward to breathing again," he says. "It's just that my side already hurts when I'm sitting still – coughing makes it hurt more. So I'm not all that excited about coughing more, no. I guess I'll just have to deal with it, though." He gestures with the cup and starts to get up. "Anyway, I'll go and clean this, now."

Naruto quickly takes the cup from him. "I'm doing the dishes anyway," he explains, and he's off to the kitchen again.

Kakashi idly stares into the kitchen as he lowers himself onto his back and rests his hand on his side. The wound is throbbing deeply; he has to breathe shallowly, high up in his chest, to avoid aggravating it more. It makes him feel a bit lightheaded. Naruto probably made the right call by not letting him get up.

He waits for the pain to ebb away a bit before he clears his throat. "Hey. Naruto."

"Yeah?"

"You forgot about your henge."

Naruto stills, startled, and looks down at himself. "Hey, that's not fair!" he exclaims, turning to scowl at Kakashi. "You distracted me!"

"Not on purpose," Kakashi shoots back, also scowling. "It's good that you got distracted, though. There's a lesson in that." He gives Naruto a serious look. "Unexpected things will happen when we're out there. They happen all the time. You'll have to learn to keep up the henge anyway."

Naruto stares at him for a moment, mulling that over, before signing and activating the henge again. Kakashi feels like the kid understands.

It turns out that Naruto is able to keep up his henge for far longer than Kakashi anticipated. He makes it well into the evening before he changes back into himself – and then he promptly falls asleep in the middle of dinner, almost spilling his half-empty cup of ramen all over the kitchen table. Kakashi quickly checks his temperature, worried about chakra exhaustion, but his temperature is normal. Naruto's just tired, and Kakashi can't blame him at all. It's been quite the day.

Kakashi isn't strong enough to carry him to his bed, and Naruto only grumbles instead of waking up when Kakashi shakes his shoulder, so Kakashi just leaves him at the kitchen table, putting the ramen away and draping the orange blanket over him.

With nothing else to do, Kakashi resigns himself to some more reading. He's starting to get tired as well, but he's not that tired yet, so he supposes he should use his precious energy for something useful. As he gets up from the kitchen table, he coughs wetly into his sleeve – after some consideration, he ends up emptying the bucket Naruto was using for trash and taking it with him.

He settles back down on the bed, on his good side, and flips open the book he was reading. It's the fifth book he's skimmed through, and it's looking like it's going to be the fifth book he doesn't have any use for. He hadn't been expecting to easily find a solution – most of the techniques are either only for short-term use or incredibly ridiculously advanced with horrific drawbacks, and Kakashi knew that beforehand – but he'd hoped he'd at least find some techniques he hadn't considered yet.

He's already halfway through the seventh book when his breath catches in his throat again. Quickly, he tosses the book aside and curls in on himself, trying to take the strain of the coughing fit off his injured side.

With a grunt, he leans over the side of the mattress and spits into the bucket. One of the books has fallen off the bed in the commotion, he notices. It's the book about seals, the one Naruto brought by accident. Kakashi picks it up again.

More out of habit than anything else, he flips through it as he catches his breath. As expected, there isn't much of use in there – it's a dry book about the history of fuuinjutsu – and Kakashi is just considering putting it away when he flips into a section called "A Brief History of Imperfect Fuuinjutsu", and his curiosity is promptly piqued.

Naruto pads into the bedroom while he reads, rubbing at his neck. Kakashi's coughing fit must've woken him up. "You alive?" he asks, his voice crackly with sleep. At Kakashi's distracted nod, Naruto narrows his eyes at the cover of the book and huffs a laugh. "I think you should probably go to sleep, Kakashi-san. You're reading entirely the wrong book."

Kakashi gives an absent-minded hum, his eye still zipping across the text. "I don't think I am."

Naruto frowns at him. "You don't think you're alive?"

"No," he replies, "I don't think I'm reading the wrong book."

Naruto looks down at the cover of the book, then back at Kakashi, and walks over to put his hand against Kakashi's forehead.

Kakashi lets him, then swats his hand away. "Yeah, I know, the fever meds wore off, but I'm serious anyway," he says. "I think I might've found something. At the very least, it's something to consider." He holds up the book at Naruto, to show him an illustration of a seal. "This seal was developed by the Uzumaki clan, and apparently it can hide a person's chakra permanently."

Naruto scrunches his nose at the illustration. "Yeah, no way it can actually do that. If it was that easy to hide your chakra, everyone would do it."

"You're not wrong. I'm skeptical, too. The thing is, it's not easy to use this seal to hide your chakra. Apparently it uses up so much chakra that it sends any normal person to the ICU. That's why it was never used in the field."

Naruto's eyes widen. "You said I had much more chakra than the average person," he says. "Do you think-"

"Maybe." Kakashi closes the book. "But I refuse to apply a dangerous seal to you based on two paragraphs' worth of information. I'd have to read up on it more, which will take time. Time that might be wasted, because I could just find out that it won't work anyway."

Naruto gives that some thought. "Do you think you'll find an easier jutsu in one of those books?" he asks, nodding at the pile of books Kakashi hasn't read yet.

"Not sure." Kakashi stares at the books. "So there's two things we can do: either I read those books to see what else I can find, or we focus on the solution we already have. Either way, we could be wasting our time." He shrugs. "I don't dislike the idea of using a seal. Once the seal is activated, it stays activated until it's deactivated. Which means you wouldn't have to focus on keeping the jutsu active all the time, and you'd be able to hide your chakra without having to learn new ninjutsu. I just need more information about it to decide if it'd be safe enough."

Naruto sits down on the edge of the bed, looking thoughtful. "I'll stop by the library again tomorrow morning," he replies. "To pick up some books about seals. And if you think the seal's too dangerous, we'll have to think up some other plan." He yawns loudly and flops onto his back at the foot of the bed. "For now, let's go to sleep. I'm tired."

Kakashi can't disagree with that. He puts all of his stuff away underneath the bed, hides a kunai underneath his pillow, and closes his eye. They'll need their rest; they have a bunch of work ahead of them. They have a lot of things to figure out before they're ready to leave.

Kakashi feels like they've made pretty good progress today, though.

With that thought, he falls asleep.