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I. Physiological
Naruto got the essentials. It took a disturbing amount of effort to keep him in orphan childcare but the Hokage was not going to have the Jinchuriki die of neglect, especially after the sacrifices that Minato and Kushina had made. So, Naruto was fed and changed and taught to speak and walk and use the potty. It was just by an ever-rotating cycle of childcare workers, none of whom were particularly enthusiastic about the task.
Other children were usually only in orphan childcare for a few weeks, until one of the other families in town could take on a fallen ninja’s child. It was a social responsibility to take care of those children who were left behind after a parent died and no one in the village shirked that responsibility.
Naruto stayed there until he was six. He learned that he needed to be a loud kid. Sometimes he got yelled at if he was annoying enough. He kept pushing. Someday, someone would call him by his name.
When he was finally walking and talking, Naruto was promptly pushed out the door in the morning and allowed back in at night. The childcare people didn’t want him around the other orphans. “They’ve lost someone already,” they told each other. “It doesn’t need to happen again. If that thing’s in here, they’re in danger.”
And then the complaints were piling high on the Hokage’s desk, and it was becoming difficult to find childcare volunteers who would work in that particular orphanage, and all in all it was better to just get the kid set up somewhere on his own. There was housing for anyone who suffered the loss of a ninja family member, of course. Social welfare was a necessity in a city whose main export was ninjas trained to die in battle if they had to. A lot of ninjas did in fact die, and there were always provisions for those they left behind. They were performing a valuable service, after all. They were noble, strong people. Well, okay, they were at least ballsy, and that was more than enough reason to pull out all the stops when it came to helping those who suffered when they were killed. So Naruto got an apartment of his own when he was six.
He didn’t cry when he was moved into his new place by some unsmiling adults who wouldn’t answer his questions. They dumped the cardboard box that held everything he owned in the middle of the floor and left without glancing back. His landlord came in and explained how everything worked, but she talked to the wall the whole time. Naruto, of course, didn’t listen. He learned the hard way about how fire was hot, fridges kept things cold, and food could go bad if he forgot about it. He got a stipend for meals along with a monthly package of cans, cup of noodles, rice, and whatever local vegetables people donated. He got to raid donation boxes for clothes once every three months. He always pulled out the old, discarded fundraiser shirts, the ones with Konoha Village’s logo emblazoned on the chest or shoulders or back. Any possible way for him to assert that Konoha was his home, Naruto did it. The best possible way, of course, would be to become the leader of the entire village. The only way he’d be able to do that was by becoming a ninja.
Ninja training at the Academy started in the fall, when children from prominent ninja families turned seven. Naruto circled that day on the beat-up calendar he’d found in an alleyway. The circle was shaky and clumsy, scraped on with a broken green crayon (he’d used up the orange so fast; it was his favorite color), but it marked out something for him to get excited about as the summer dragged on.
(Somewhere else in the city, a kid who never smiled was sitting stonily in his own local orphanage, refusing to go with any of the nice families who were so kindly offering to adopt him. He wanted his real family back, his own clan, and he would settle for no substitutes. Yes, they were dead, but he was learning swear words and he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He’d become the best goddamn ninja in the whole shitting ninja world and then he’d beat ten kinds of hell out his bitch older brother, goddammit to fuck. And that would make him feel less alone, though the logic that led him to this point was still missing a crucial middle step. The calendar in his room didn’t belong to him, technically, but he’d circled a date all the same. In pen. The same date as a certain blonde pariah, although he didn’t know it at the time. He’d also demanded an apartment of his own. He was older than he looked, he knew that much. He could swear like a motherfucking boss and he was going to kill Itachi.)
II. Safety
Iruka was prepared for training, but barely. The life of a teacher was exhausting. Kids were annoying, there was no denying that. Still, he had a pathetic enough social life that his job was really all he had going for him. At the end of the day, Iruka cared about the little assholes he had to take care of. He was helping to guide them on their path to becoming ninjas, and it was a rewarding task even if it felt like he was fighting an uphill battle some days.
Then he got called in to talk to the Hokage and Uzumaki Naruto was suddenly on his class list.
It had been shaping up to be a great great class of students before that point. Lots of good kids from some very famous ninja families around town. Some nobodies, too, who were maybe just testing the waters of ninjahood and wouldn’t actually keep up. It was hard work, and Iruka never blamed any of the kids who decided that mending roofs was a better job. Ninjas fucked up a lot of roofs, they needed those roof-fixers. They needed metalsmiths and ramen-sellers and book-binders. Ninjas were a main export but they weren’t the only people living in Konoha.
But Uzumaki Naruto was in Iruka’s class. He was going to have to deal with that fucking kid for his entire Academy career.
People around town kept his past quiet; Naruto was anything but. He was a trouble-maker, a fighter and a loudmouth. Kids didn’t know exactly why they weren’t allowed near the weird blonde kid with whiskers on his face and old, broken welding goggles on his forehead. In that hazy way of children, they’d realized he was kind of invisible to adults, and therefore messing with him wasn’t anything they’d get in trouble for later. The kid didn’t have anyone to defend him at home, and as long as their parents didn’t see them interacting with him, it was all good.
Iruka kept up that tactic. It was the only way he’d hold on to his sanity, dealing with such a grim reminder of what had robbed him of his family. When the kid appeared in his classroom, smelling kind of funky but grinning like his face was going to explode, Iruka kept his cool as best he could through the stupid pranks Naruto arranged and then tried never to look at him again.
A couple kids went the way of their parents. They saw how loud and rude he was, how he didn’t understand how to tie shoes even though he was ten, and they decided he wasn’t worth their time. So Naruto was alone or he was getting the crap kicked out of him. Iruka took a deep breath and told himself that it wasn’t his problem, that the kid was going to wash out and so long as Iruka didn’t look at him, it would all be okay.
Some of the children in Iruka’s class were naturally fast or strong or could take hits without flinching because they were just that tough. Others could do math in their head, or plot battle strategies and maps, or perform the basic hand-to-hand forms with a grace that some chunin still had yet to master. Other genin—very few—had an eerie skill with kunai or the simple jutsu Iruka started them on.
Naruto didn’t fall into any of those categories that would have earned him some positive feedback. He was literally the last child on the class grade chart. He was fairly hopeless at everything he tried, he whined almost constantly, and he’d given far too many speeches about how much he wanted to be Hokage without actually doing any of the work that would earn him such a high honor. About the only thing he was good at was Sexy Jutsu, which was a useless and misogynistic technique that unfortunately made all the adults super uncomfortable. It was successful in a horrible way. Iruka privately wondered how a kid who didn’t seem to comprehend the purpose of porn could create such blatant sexual fantasies, but he tried not to read into it too much. It wasn’t his business.
However, Iruka grudgingly admired that, while Naruto was incredibly bad at being a ninja, he never stopped trying to be one. It was physically painful to watch him at work. The kid wouldn’t give up, even when he really, really needed to.
The other kids hurt him. That was woefully obvious. The kid had to buy band-aids in bulk. He hadn’t broken anything more serious than a finger or two, though, and Iruka reminded himself that the life of a ninja was fraught with perils and pains. It would be strange to get through a ninja training without some scrapes. Naruto didn’t lose his boisterous attitude, either. He was still yelling threats and promises with two black eyes and a split lip.
Iruka very carefully kept his mind away from the fact that allowing children to hurt other children was not part of his usual teaching regimen.
He couldn’t avoid that fact forever, though. Two of the kids in his class were practicing shuriken jutsu on Naruto and he was letting them because they insisted he was a really, really good target and that they appreciated his help.
“That’s enough,” Iruka said firmly. He plucked the shuriken out of the air before they hit their loud, orange target. “Practice on trees, not your classmates.”
Iruka wasn’t intimidating. He didn’t have illusions about that. He was an adult, though, and he put his hands on his hips and glared until the kids fucked off. Then he turned back to Naruto, who was nursing a few cuts already.
“Don’t let them do that to you anymore,” Iruka said.
“Awwww,” Naruto whined, clearly not listening. He poked a few fingers through the holes that the flying shuriken had made in his coat. “Now I have to sew this!”
“Did you hear me?” Iruka snapped.
Naruto kept bitching about the fact he’d have to do ‘girl work’ now.
“Don’t let any women hear you say that kind of thing,” Iruka said. He bit his lip. He was already overstepping his usual level of interference in Naruto’s affairs (which was zero) but he figured one more warning wouldn’t be out of place. “Stop letting those kids hit you just because they say they want to practice with you, okay?”
Naruto suddenly looked up at him. “Okay, Iruka-sensei.”
Iruka hadn’t expected the kid to start listening to him, now of all times. He was left to clear his throat and add, “All right, go home. Class is over for the day.”
Naruto jogged off, still spitting complaints about sewing. Iruka rubbed the scar across his nose and tried to ignore the persistent feeling of guilt in his chest. If it had been any other student, he’d have done more. Even he could admit that to himself. It was Naruto, though. The kid was dumb as a sack of hammers but he’d be okay in the end. He was durable. He had to be, since the kind of ninja he was shaping up to be was the dumb, slow, easily-outwitted kind. At least Iruka had done something to try and save Naruto from himself.
III. Love/Belonging
Because Konoha bred some seriously stubborn ninjas, it took a literal life-or-death situation (a trek into the forest a la Stand By Me that ended with an assault by enemy ninjas) for Iruka to finally started acknowledging Naruto. He had to acknowledge Naruto as a little shit though, most of the time. After all, 1) Naruto was a little shit and 2) Iruka still had dark, empty nightmares about the last time he’d seen his family, and he still woke up wheezing and leaking tears from how heavy that weighed on him. But Naruto seemed to be okay with any kind of interaction. He was happy if Iruka was yelling or if Iruka was asking whether Naruto needed a No. 2 pencil to fill out his test paper. He was just glad that an adult was calling him by his name and correcting his fuck-ups.
And then, because Naruto was Naruto, he went and put himself in more life-threatening situations. Some of those situations were more stupid and pointless than others.
He didn’t show up to class two days in a row. Iruka went by the orphanage and found that Naruto didn’t live there, hadn’t lived there in years in fact. He then had to go digging through city records to find where he did live. It was dark by the time he knocked on Naruto’s door.
Because there was no answer, and because Iruka was a ninja (he was only a little rusty, thank you very much), he then knocked on the window. No response there either. He broke in.
It smelled like sickness in the little one-room apartment. The air was close and heavy. Naruto was grumbling in his sleep, shuddering every now and then even though he was wrapped in every blanket and towel he owned. Iruka discovered when he went to check his pulse that he was even wearing his beat-up orange jacket over his pajamas.
“Ah, Naruto,” Iruka sighed. He dug through Naruto’s cabinets for medicine, winced at how frat-boy the kid’s pantry was (minus the booze), and ducked to the pharmacy around the corner for antipyretics and cold medicine. He also picked up some OJ and a few bottles of vitamins. That boy was going to get scurvy if he wasn’t careful.
Naruto was semi-conscious by the time Iruka let himself in through the window again. “Hey, Iruka-sensei,” he said.
“Naruto,” Iruka sighed, “what are you doing to yourself?”
Naruto blinked at him. “Why’re you here?”
“You were absent from school for two days,” Iruka said. “The most you’ve ever missed is half of one day because you had the stomach flu, and that time when, um. When I was being a poor teacher.”
“Yeah,” Naruto said, “but why’re you here?” And then his eyes slid shut and he let out a snore so loud, Iruka had to wonder if it was fake.
Apparently not, because he didn’t stir as Iruka made tea and soup, packed the latter away in Naruto’s fridge so that it could be heated up later, and then cleaned up some of the mess Naruto had made in his trips to get water and either throw up or pee. Naruto woke up to Iruka’s prodding, whined incoherently, took the medication Iruka gave him, and fell back asleep again.
There wasn’t anything else Iruka could really do for the kid after that, so he went home to the bunkhouse that chunin and jonin could live in if they didn’t care about having personal space. Iruka didn’t have the capacity for a life outside his work, really, so it suited him fine.
Kakashi was sitting in the common room with his latest erotic novel spread open on his head like a hat. He was staring at a cup of water with his one uncovered eye.
“Evening,” Iruka said.
Kakashi hummed. He didn’t look away from his staring contest with the water.
They weren’t friends. Iruka wasn’t exactly sure if he wanted to be Kakashi’s friend, frankly. The guy was unsettling. He’d fought in the Third Great Ninja War when he was barely older than Iruka’s pupils, then he’d spent a decade in ANBU, and now he didn’t seem to do anything unless he felt like it. He was a fucking great ninja, of course, but weird as hell. Sometimes Iruka thought of him simply as a collection of weird quirks and facts, but then Kakashi would go and do something so completely unexpected, so out-of-character, that there had to be some kind of conscience holding all those traits together. Like the time a few months ago when he’d saved Iruka and Naruto from those enemy ninjas, seemingly out of nowhere.
Iruka pulled some of his leftover soba noodles out of the joint refrigerator and stuck them in the microwave.
“Coulda jutsu’d that for you,” Kakashi said.
“It’s no trouble,” Iruka said after taking a moment to get over the shock that Kakashi had even thought to offer performing such a mundane jutsu.
“You coulda jutsu’d it,” Kakashi added. He sounded a bit pissed off that he hadn’t thought of this solution first.
“I’m not that great at reheating food,” Iruka said.
“Practice makes perfect.”
Iruka made a noncommittal noise that he hoped would shut this exchange down. It didn’t.
“You’re one of those guys with a schedule, right?” Kakashi continued. He made it sound as if Iruka was some kind of sheep rapist for sticking to a timetable.
“Yes,” Iruka had to admit.
“You’re pretty late, then,” Kakashi said. “School let out hours ago.”
“Yes.”
“Checking on Naruto?”
Iruka’s noodles were warm enough. He popped the microwave open and yanked them out. They were cold in the middle but he could use a jutsu on that. Good practice and all that. “I was,” he said, digging through the cutlery drawer for some decent hashi that weren’t too chipped.
“He all right?”
Iruka paused at the unexpected question. “…He’s sick. He’ll be fine, though.”
Kakashi hummed and pulled his book off his head. “I see.” He opened it to a page and smoothed out the dog-ear he’d made to keep his place. “You care about him now? That loud little shit?”
Iruka left with his noodles but without answering. He was barely a step outside the common kitchen when Kakashi added, seemingly to himself, “He needs it.”
IV. Esteem
Of all the ninjas could could end up leading a team with Naruto, it was probably for the best that such a task ended up falling to Kakashi. Iruka couldn’t hide a smile when Naruto told him. “I see. Interesting. Well, how is that going?”
“He’s weird,” Naruto said, taking a breather between bowls of ramen. “He’s always late and he says stupid things and he reads dirty stories and I don’t think he’s a really good jonin at all.”
Iruka’s smile faltered. “You realize that’s pretty insensitive, right, Naruto?”
Naruto blinked at him. “What is?”
It was times like these that Iruka remembered Naruto had not had a normal upbringing that included lessons in manners and tact. “Well, okay. You wouldn’t say any of that stuff to Kakashi, right?”
“I did, though,” Naruto said, bewildered. “Like, a couple hours ago.”
Iruka rubbed his eyes and groaned, “Oh my god.”
“What?”
“Kakashi is a very good ninja, Naruto.” Iruka took a breath, trying to find the words to explain how much of a colossal idiot Naruto was for talking this way to a fellow ninja. “Look, the fact that he made jonin was not a fluke. He made jonin rank when he was about your age.”
“What?!” Naruto gasped. He sounded horrified. “That’s unbelievable!”
“Yes,” Iruka said, pleased that Naruto seemed to understand.
Naruto’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why didn’t Kakashi-sensei tell us that?”
“He doesn’t need to advertise that he’s a good ninja, Naruto. Much less to a pack of kids he’s leading. Which, by the way, hasn’t happened ever.”
“What?”
“He’s failed every team he was ever assigned,” Iruka said.
“Oh, I know that. But we got him to take us!” Naruto stuck his chest out proudly.
Iruka smiled. “I can imagine.”
“Really?” Naruto deflated and looked up at Iruka, head cocked to one side. “Why do you say that, Iruka-sensei?”
“Well, you’re—”
“You think it’s because Sasuke’s on my team?” Naruto yelled, suddenly furious. “Everyone thinks that! They think he’s the coolest thing ever and he’s the only reason our team made it and that he’s gonna be the best ninja ever but they’re wrong! He’s just a stupid jerk who’s a, okay he’s good ninja! But he’s not a good kisser like all the girls think he’d be! And he’s a meanie and I’m gonna defeat him and show the whole village that they’re wrong about him!” He slammed his fists on the counter so hard, the stack of his discarded ramen bowls jumped slightly. Then he whispered, almost as an afterthought, “And they’re wrong about me.”
“Naruto, I wasn’t going to say anything about Sasuke,” Iruka said. He patted Naruto’s shoulder carefully, still not entirely comfortable touching the kid who contained the demon fox (even though the past thirteen years suggested it was pretty tightly caged up). “I was going to say that it didn’t surprise me because you’re a very determined person.”
Naruto sniffed. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Iruka said. “It’s one of your best qualities, I think.”
Naruto peeked up at him from under his headband. “Really?”
“You’re stubbornly optimistic. I think it’s admirable.”
Naruto smiled down at his hands. “Oh.”
Iruka cleared his throat. “But, uh.”
Naruto glanced up at him again. “What?”
“You said Sasuke’s a bad kisser? Um. It’s all fine, of course, but do you have—”
“Forget it!” Naruto was bright red and twitching in a matter of seconds.
“Well, Naruto, if no one’s talked with you about certain, uh, feelings that you might experience as you grow to adulthood—”
“I’m fine, Iruka-sensei!”
“—I would like you to know that you can always talk to me about anything you’re concerned or curious about.”
“YES OKAY YES THANKS,” Naruto yelled, desperate.
“I don’t want you to be ashamed about it,” Iruka added. He was starting to enjoy how uncomfortable Naruto was with this situation. It wasn’t a conversation he really wanted to be having with his ex-student, but it was almost painfully easy to make him squirm. “Anything at all you want to know about. Your emotions, any changes that will happen in your body—”
“Please stop,” Naruto whispered, clamping on to the lapels of Iruka’s vest. His eyes were wide and pained. “I’m begging you, Iruka-sensei.”
Iruka threw back his head and laughed. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Just know I’m here for you, all right?”
There were arms wrapped around him for a second. It was a very bad hug; Iruka could feel Naruto’s nose mashed into his sternum, and Naruto’s hands remained tight fists that locked behind Iruka’s ribs, hung on, and then let go quickly. Naruto was grinning up at him when Iruka looked down, though.
“Thanks, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto said happily. “You can pay for ramen, right?”
Iruka, fool that he was, nodded. With a parting wave and “Thanks, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto rushed off to do whatever Naruto did when he was not training or eating. Iruka was left behind with the substantial food bill and a dawning realization that every single citizen of Konoha should be held responsible for ignoring Naruto all this time.
It took another three years for Iruka to see his student held up on the shoulders of Konoha village. Everyone was shouting his name. The sun was shining down bright enough to blind, which was Iruka’s excuse for why he was maybe kind of a little bit tearing up. Konoha was starting to see Naruto the way Iruka saw him. In the silence of his own heart, though, Iruka only hoped that Naruto saw himself the way Iruka saw him; a good-hearted boy with a whole lot of empathy, resolve, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice.
The crowd had to put him down eventually. Iruka wasn’t sure when they did because after ten minutes, he went to go sit down. He woke up two hours later with his heart pounding from that old nightmare of his. It wasn’t surprising it had shown up again. The fox demon had made an appearance today and the whole village had been blown up; it was a little bit of deja vu that would of course conjure up bad memories. This time, though, he woke up to a finger poking his cheek.
“Hrf?” Iruka grunted. He squinted along the finger, following it to a face. “Oh, Naruto!” He sat up from the rubble he’d been leaning on and wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. “Congratulations!”
Naruto smiled in the way that took over his entire face. “Iruka-sensei!” And he tackled Iruka in a tight hug.
“Oh!” Iruka managed, before he started to realize that he was rapidly losing the ability to breathe. “Uh, Naruto? Uh.”
But Naruto was talking a mile a minute about how scared he’d been about the whole village dying, about how happy he was that everyone was okay, about how awesome it felt for everyone to be yelling “Naruto! Naruto! Naruto!”
Iruka gave up trying to tell Naruto to ease off his ribcage and just smushed Naruto’s head against his chest and sighed happily. “I’m glad you’re okay, Naruto. You did such a wonderful job today.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Naruto said.
Iruka held on to that quiet instant before Naruto realized what he’d said and started apologizing furiously. It was a peaceful, shocked moment in time when he realized, Shit, I’m a single mom and I’m still in my 20s, and then felt an overwhelming surge of pride that he’d gotten a kid like Naruto.
THE END