Chapter Text
Iruka had only been subbing at the academy for two days when he realized there was something wrong with the little blond Uzumaki boy. Not “demon-child” wrong or even “rowdy troublemaker” wrong, though Iruka had heard enough rumors that would suggest both to be true. And he might have bought into those rumors if he hadn’t seen the boy for himself: barely 5 years old with ill-fitting clothes and dirt perpetually under his fingernails, hair uncombed and unevenly sheared, no bento box to be seen at lunch time.
But the thing that really stuck out was that nobody walked with him to drop him off at school and nobody came to pick him up. Once could have been brushed off as a fluke, but two days in a row? Orphan or not, it seemed…off. In any case, Iruka had learned to trust his gut a long time ago.
So when no one came for the boy on the second day and Naruto started walking himself home with the ambivalence of someone used to doing things on his own, Iruka followed him. Into the edges of the Red-Light District. To a shitty, half-falling-apart apartment. Where the boy lived. Alone.
Which was how Iruka ended up where he was now, standing in front of the Council and the Hokage and the Clan Heads, fury boiling under his skin as the elders prattled on and on in endless bureaucratic circles.
“I’m sure everything is fine as it is. No harm has befallen the boy and the ANBU guard has done their job, have they not?”
“A five-year-old cannot live by himself,” Iruka protested for what felt like the hundredth time.
“And the issue of the matter has not changed since it was born,” Koharu said. “The jinchuuriki cannot belong to any clan; the imbalance of power is too great.”
“Naruto,” Iruka stressed, “is a child. One who desperately needs care and attention.”
The Sandaime sighed. “Perhaps if Jiraiya—”
Danzo scoffed. “If Jiraiya had any interest in raising the boy, he’d already be here. Clearly the jinchuuriki’s situation is less than acceptable. I have always held that it should fall to my care—”
“No.”
Iruka jerked at the almost-snarled word, the frigid edge in the room that indicated poorly restrained killing intent. The man who’d spoken had been leaning inconspicuously against the wall behind the Sandaime but was now an unavoidable presence in the room. Hatake Kakashi had taken one step towards Danzo, the threat clear in his posture even without a visible weapon in his hand. The infamous Copy-Nin wouldn’t need one.
The Hokage took another deep breath, fingers twitching in the way Iruka knew meant he was desperately wishing for his pipe. “A recess is necessary, I think. An hour and then we’ll reconvene.”
Iruka gritted his teeth but exited the chamber all the same. He could understand the Hokage’s point—truly they were getting nowhere with Naruto’s living situation—but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He thumped his head against the wall. Maybe some ramen…
“Umino-sensei.”
Iruka flailed away from the voice that had been far too close for comfort, only to recognize Hatake when he regained his footing.
“Hatake-san.” Iruka watched the other man warily. They didn’t know each other well—Iruka only knew Hatake by reputation and a handful of unpleasant encounters at the mission desk involving the worst handwriting he’d ever seen in his life—and he couldn’t imagine what reason Hatake would have to approach him now.
“Your concern over the jinchuuriki does your loyalty to the village credit—”
Later, Iruka would marvel that the hit landed at all, would question whether he’d truly caught a jounin ranked ninja off guard or whether Hatake had let Iruka punch him square in the jaw. Iruka would marvel over the fact that he was still, somehow, miraculously alive.
In the moment, however, Iruka could only register the slight aching in his hand, the way the Copy-Nin rolled his jaw, his one visible eye narrowed and assessing.
“Naruto is a person with a name,” Iruka snapped, already way past the limit of his patience for the day. Funny, how he could spend all day with small children, but a single council meeting wore him down to the bone. “Use it.”
“Hmm.”
For a long second, Iruka thought that he was about to die. And then Hatake’s eye curled in a friendly crinkle, an approximation of a smile.
“You’ll do,” Hatake said.
Iruka stood there for a moment, brain not processing the words. “I—what? For what?”
“I have a proposition for you. An alliance.”
“An alliance,” Iruka repeated dumbly.
“Hm.” Then Hatake turned and slouched towards the exit to the tower, stopping only when he realized Iruka wasn’t beside him. He turned his head over his shoulder, enough to peer at Iruka with one gray eye. “Maa, aren’t you coming?”
Iruka stared as his silver-haired companion somehow managed to eat without once removing his mask.
“What do you want, Hatake-san?”
“You won’t get custody of Naruto.”
Iruka’s hand clenched around the disposable chopsticks. “I—”
Hatake continued in that same annoyingly bland voice, “The Hokage would support you, but the elders will never agree. You don’t have the money to support a child, and you’re not strong enough to protect this one in particular.”
Iruka wanted to argue. He’d been underestimated most of his life—partially because it had taken him so long to make chuunin, partially because he was happy with his work at the academy and the mission desk while others sought out glory in the field—and he was sick of it. How many times did he have to prove that he wasn’t useless?
But he stamped down the flare of anger because in this case, at least, Hatake was right. Naruto would have dangerous enemies and Iruka had no chance of keeping them at bay on his own.
“You had a point, I assume,” he said, and suddenly Hatake’s attention was entirely focused on him.
“Anyone petitioning for Naruto’s custody needs to be above reproach.”
Iruka snorted. “Good luck with that.”
Hatake tilted his head. “Or any two people combined would need to supplement each other’s faults well.”
I have a proposition for you, Hatake had said, and Iruka could only stare as the pieces fell into place. Iruka lacked adequate funds and raw power, but he stayed in the village most of the time, was notably good with children, and had the Hokage’s support. Kakashi couldn’t put his own name forward as Naruto’s guardian—and why he would even consider it was a mystery Iruka didn’t understand in the slightest—because he was active in the field and was rumored to be emotionally unstable, but he was the last Hatake and the Copy-Nin, and that meant he had what Iruka didn’t.
“You can’t be serious,” Iruka said, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew that Kakashi was. Equally, he knew what his answer would be.
He had known Naruto for less than 72 hours, but one look at the boy’s sad, empty apartment, the pitiful contents of his fridge, the disdain and sometimes outright hatred the villagers treated him with, and Iruka had known he couldn’t leave the boy alone. No matter what Naruto had sealed inside him.
And Iruka remembered all too clearly the vehemence with which Kakashi had shut down Danzo’s attempt to take Naruto for himself. There was something else going on there, something that pinged every one of Iruka’s instincts as bad news. What would happen to Naruto if Iruka trusted the elders with boy’s care?
Look what’s already happened. Hokage-sama was supposed to take care of him and instead Naruto’s been neglected.
“What do we need to do?” Iruka asked a moment later and enjoyed the brief flash of surprise that flickered across the limited visible portion of the Copy-Nin’s face.
Then Kakashi leaned into Iruka’s space and said in a low voice, “Oh, sensei, I hoped you’d say that.”
One headache-inducing council meeting, a twinkle-eyed Sandaime, a rushed marriage ceremony featuring a suitably threatening Anko and an overjoyed Gai later, and Iruka was a married man with an adopted child.
Naruto stared up at his new guardians—and that was a brain-melting thought—with large, watery, blue eyes and asked, “Are you sure you want me?”
He looked for all the world like he expected the answer to be a firm no, like he thought Iruka would reveal that this was some sort of cruel prank and Naruto would have to go back to his shitty apartment. Like the promise of a family couldn’t possibly be real.
An unconventional family, Iruka thought with a side-glance at Kakashi. But the other man seemed serious enough in his commitment to raising Naruto well, and it wasn’t like either of them had the usual expectations of their marriage. They would learn to tolerate each other.
Iruka crouched down to be at Naruto’s eye level. “Very much so.”
Naruto chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t think we’re all gon’ fit in my house.”
Given that Naruto’s shit-hole apartment could barely qualify as a livable structure, that was a fair assessment.
“We’ll have a new house,” Iruka assured him. Apparently Gai had volunteered to search for one while Iruka and Kakashi finished up the paperwork, and though Kakashi had been very specific that their new home should be near the academy and have three bedrooms and a yard, Iruka couldn’t help but have some doubts as to what kind of house they’d end up with. Gai was very…enthusiastic.
There was something like hope in the little boy’s eyes, but it was wary, hesitant. “I heard’ed that sometimes fam’ies walk to school together. And have bedtime stories. And…and hugs.”
Iruka’s heart ached for the boy. Only five, and yet he clearly already knew that his life was different, that he didn’t have what other kids took for granted. Worse, the fact that Naruto’s ANBU guard had to know about it, which meant the Hokage had to know about it, and nothing had been done.
Iruka buried his anger for now and instead wrapped up Naruto in a hug that the boy returned just as tightly.
“We’ll do those things too,” he promised.