Chapter Text
Tsunade’s initial reaction to seeing her lover and oldest friend let himself into her office was simple joy. She’d been so deep into expenditure reports—her head throbbing with her attempts at cross-referencing them to previous years while accounting for inflation, which was irritatingly not consistent across different types of goods, labor, and services—she hadn’t felt him coming. When the sound of the door opening distracted her enough to lift her head and she saw Jiraiya, she was on her feet and across the room instantly, letting him envelop her in his strong arms as she clung to him fiercely, mumbling into his chest, I missed you, I missed you so much.
It was only then, just before she was going to tell him to lock the door and show her exactly how much he’d missed her, that she remembered that he wasn’t due back for months, realized his chakra was weak, spastic, and upset. Cold dread flooded her, and she jerked back, demanding as she began running diagnostic jutsu, her hands aglow in blue light as they hovered over him, “What’s happened? I haven’t felt your chakra like this in years, not since I about killed you for peeping when we were kids. Why are you back so soon? Where are—?”
Jiraiya flinched at the last question, turning his head like he couldn’t bear to face her, and just as a rush of lightheadedness and the thought gods, please, not again washed over her, he reassured her quiet and guilty, “Calm down, I don’t have any reason to think any of them are dead.”
“… Where are they, Jiraiya?” His dark eyes searched hers, pleading, like he wanted her to tell him that he didn’t have to say it. “Where are they?” Had the Akatsuki—?
“I don’t know,” he whispered, scrunching his eyes shut tight and balling up his fists, still refusing to look at her, and every time she blinked, she saw him trying to screw up the courage to tell her that their teammate had betrayed the Leaf. “I—I don’t know, Tsu.”
“Damn you, Jiraiya, stop dragging it out. What’s happened?” Tsunade was clinging to him again, so hard her knuckles ached, like maybe if she could hold on tight enough, nothing would slip away from her. She watched her lover take a long, deep breath through his nose, then his lips part, but no sound came out. His shoulders jerked—gods, she hadn’t seen him cry since Minato and Kushina—
“I got into a fight with Hatake.” The words came out uncharacteristically small as the man brushed over his eyes roughly, still refusing to look up, though he opened them a little, deep grief shining in them as he stared at the floor. Jiraiya never called Kakashi by his surname, why would—? “I tried to kill him.” What? “Naruto knocked me out—” He took in a painful, shuddering breath, and nearly whispered, “—but I-I think I burned her, first. Probably—bad. When I woke up, all three of them were…”
Reeling, she asked the only question she could think of, which was an incredulous, “What could Kakashi possibly do to make you want to—?” But then it hit her, wiped her blank. There was only one thing it could possibly be. “No,” she denied softly. “He wouldn’t.”
Jiraiya swallowed convulsively as her hands fell away, her body numb. “I didn’t think so either,” he murmured, shutting his eyes again; a tear rolled down his handsome stubbled cheek on the left side, and he swiped at it with a jerky movement. “Looking back, there were—things I brushed off, excused, ignored…”
“Naruto’s his daughter,” Tsunade argued, like if she presented her reasoning well enough, she could make it stop being true. Pain rocked her body like a physical force as she pleaded, “She’s his sister, she’s his student, she’d already been through so much, he wouldn’t— Are you sure that—?”
“He admitted it.” His lips pulled back into a snarl. “He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed, the son of a bitch.”
Tsunade swayed; her lover caught her, and she let him lead her over to her chair and sit her down, even as some muted part of her still protested showing him that weakness. He sat across from her, looking diminished and impotently furious and guilty, and she asked him as the room spun around her just a tad, “How did you…?”
“They’re close,” Jiraiya rasped, sitting forward. “Closer than I would have guessed. It was obvious she had a crush on him, but I thought—I figured it was harmless, Tsu.” He sounded ashamed, but she would have assumed the same thing. She tried to tell him that, to reassure him, but she was frozen as she listened to him confess low to the desk between them, “I would notice him watching her. And—once, she had a terrible nightmare, and… He nearly broke down the door to get to her, didn’t even put on his mask. Held her like a baby. And she—she was flinching away when I tried to touch her, but she melted into him, clung to him like a life raft. At the time, I was jealous, to be honest, that she preferred him over me as a father figure. But I should have realized…”
“That’s not proof that he—”
“Tsu,” he breathed, the syllable agonized. “I’m sorry.” Mechanically, he reached into his pocket, withdrawing a hard bound book with a plain cream fabric cover, stained with a rip in the top corner.
“Jiraiya, what—?”
“Take a deep breath,” he told her low, his eyes on the book. “Brace yourself, and open it.”
She didn’t want to. She really, really didn’t want to, and for a moment, she vividly imagined simply saying no, telling Jiraiya to get out and take everything about this with him, going back to her reports. But that wasn’t a luxury she could afford. She knew firsthand that ignoring things and drinking didn’t make them go away, so she forced herself to pull the book close, dimly noting that it smelled like woodsmoke.
There was a soft gasp when she opened it, and she almost didn’t realize it had been her. For a small eternity, there was no sound except pages turning, steady, one right after the other. Her mind was wiped clean by her total rejection of what she was looking at, and she felt nothing.
At length, she stood, and Jiraiya didn’t stop her. She rounded her desk with efficiency and pushed open her door only as far as was necessary to get Shizune’s attention, demanding without explanation, “Get me Maito Guy ASAP.”
Then, with no recollection whatsoever of having moved, she was at her desk again with her head in her hands, staring blankly down at a beautiful sketch of her sweet little Naruto, curled up asleep on her side, her lower half covered by a sheet and her torso nude, her modesty protected only by the way her arm rested across her chest. Her hair was mussed, and there was a dark spot on her shoulder that could have only been a hickey.
She turned the page with shaking fingers, her emotions a screaming crowd behind a soundproof barrier, pounding their fists to be let in, and there was her precious little girl again, bound on a bed in only her underwear, the ropes around her body intricate and elegant. The profile view showcased the way her shin was bound to thigh was bound to torso as well as the strict way her arms were tied behind her back, starting above the elbow. She was resting her cheek on her knee, her bangs in her eyes, her expression soft and warm with the sweetest little lovesick smile on her lips.
“They’re beautiful,” she heard herself say, hollow and blank with a distant note of black humor.
Jiraiya snorted, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he buried his face in his hands. “Yes,” he agreed softly.
“… How did you realize he was drawing…?”
The man shrugged one broad shoulder, but otherwise didn’t move, still as a statue. “He draws a lot, never lets anyone see any of it. A few months in, he started burning pages as he finished them, sometimes, but he’s—he’s a weird kid. I don’t know, Tsu. In hindsight I feel… Negligent.” He sighed, sounding as ancient as Tsunade felt. “We— Gods, it’s a long story, I promise I’ll tell you the rest, but let’s skip the long detour. She was crying, he was comforting her, and he called her baby.”
She didn’t know if that would have made her suspicious enough to investigate. She hoped so, but the part of her that knew what her failures were told her she wouldn’t have blinked. “So you…?”
“Dug out his sketchbook from his pack while he was distracted. Tried to kill him.”
“And Naruto…?”
“Jumped in front of him and took a powerful fire release straight on at point blank range. … Then flattened a couple dozen mature trees and almost killed me.”
“… How?”
“I have no idea.”
“… When?”
“Three days ago. I was barely able to move, when I first woke up. Barely managed to summon f*ckasaku. I—I swear I came as soon as I could, I only woke up properly yesterday evening.”
Mindlessly, Tsunade turned the page, taking in a sketch of Naruto fully dressed except her shoes, sitting on a washing machine with her palms planted just behind her hips, her eyes scrunched shut in laughter; the next depicted her visibly younger, in a jumpsuit she’d never seen before but that had been described to her, pouting up at the viewer with rather crooked pigtails and a fresh cut on her forehead, just beginning to bead with blood. The detail was stunning, the emotion and vitality depicted so real to her that some part of her itched to lick her thumb and rub the blood away. “Is this… Are these all real? Or is he just fantasizing?”
“How would I know?” The man sat up abruptly, staring out her window like maybe there were answers on the other side of the glass. “He said they were drawn with her consent. I asked him what exactly she’d given consent for… And he responded, ‘you know what.’”
The words hung in the air, stifling and awful.
“When do you think…?”
“I think he set it in motion before we got back.” He stood, as though he couldn’t stand to be still any longer despite how weak he was, and began to pace back and forth, his eyes on the ground and his shoulders slumped. “It’s my fault, Tsu, I should have been here—”
“I helped him adopt her,” Tsunade told the sketchbook blankly.
Jiraiya shot her an agonized glance. “It’s true, then? He implied that he…” She nodded, unable to quite meet his eye as his expression collapsed into pity. “Oh, pretty girl, it’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known. I wasn’t even suspicious of him until a week ago—”
“I threw her to the f*cking wolves, Jiraiya,” Tsunade heard herself interrupt, the last word tilting up into a whimper as she pictured that sweet little girl crawling half in her lap for a hug, crying baa-chan! in her ear. Gods, what had she done? “He didn’t even ask, I offered her to him, how could I have—?”
“No,” her lover snapped, reaching her desk in two overlong strides and slamming a hand down onto its surface, the loud sound startling her out of the spiral she’d just started slipping into. He glared at her, the way he always had when she was mean to herself, like he was genuinely pissed, like it had been directed at him. He dropped his gaze, his fingers steepling as he dug his nails into the wood, and confessed low, dark, and guilty, “I—I created him, Tsu.” She found herself holding her breath, stunned, the room spinning around them as he dragged his dark, haunted gaze up to her face, showing her his pain, his regret, his self-loathing. His jaw trembled for a moment. “When sensei got serious about grooming me to take the hat. He asked—” He interrupted himself to swallow hard, glancing towards the window like he might run; then he inhaled deep, looked her in the eye, and admitted in an ashamed whisper, “He asked if I thought Hatake Kakashi should be allowed to advance according to skill rather than his age.” His jaw worked, and there was ringing in her ears as her brain seemed to sway. His gaze dropped to the desk between them and stuck there. “I… knew what the right answer was.”
The right answer was the one sensei wanted to hear. It didn’t matter what was correct, or moral, or reasonable. What was ethical or good. It just mattered that it was what he wanted to hear, when it came to them. My hands, Hiruzen used to call them. Extensions of himself.
She didn’t blame Jiraiya. She didn’t. She understood; her hands were stained by their sensei’s ‘right answers,’ too. She cupped hers over his, and their gazes met; in his eyes, she saw everything she felt. The guilt. The grief. The rage. The disappointment. The self-hatred they’d been taught to use to fuel their earliest development as shinobi. Run like you’re pissed at your legs, sensei had told her on their second day of training, bending and pinching her thigh with a hard look in his eyes.
His gaze softened, growing wet. “It’s not your fault, pretty girl,” he murmured mournfully, and she felt a painful smile quirk up the corners of her mouth.
“It’s not your fault, either,” she whispered back, knowing neither of them were lying and neither of them would ever believe the other.
A knock sounded at the door; they parted, each taking deep breaths to reorient themselves. She shut down her feelings until she was ready to face someone, boxing them up and refusing to look too closely at them. They exchanged a glance; she rose a questioning eyebrow, and, sighing as he scrubbed his palm over his unshaven face, her lover nodded.
Tsunade called for entry, and Guy stepped inside, offering them both a bow. “It’s lovely to see you looking youthful as always, Godaime-sama,” he greeted her brightly, only for his eyes to flicker to Jiraiya and widen. “Oh, Jiraiya-sama, you’re home. Does that mean Kakashi has—” They both flinched at the man’s name, and Guy froze up, going pale. “Oh, gods,” he whispered, blinking rapidly as he took a step back like he might flee. “Gods, please—please don’t tell me he’s—”
“He’s not dead, Guy,” Tsunade assured the man, watching the way the assurance washed over him just the same way it had washed over her. She watched him sag, visibly shaken as he tried to recover, and chose that moment of vulnerability to push for what she wanted to know. “He’s taken Naruto and vanished. What do you know about that?”
Guy jerked as though he’d been struck, his lips bloodless and his dark eyes wide with pain and shock. Fists curling at his sides, he glanced at the window, like he was considering that he might like to vanish, too, then answered carefully, “I’m only hearing about it now.”
He knew.
“When did it start?”
Guy licked his lips, slowly moving forward and sinking into the chair Jiraiya had vacated at her commanding gesture to do so. He looked conflicted, painfully so, and she knew he was confronting whether his loyalty to Kakashi superseded his loyalty to the Leaf.
They both know it didn’t.
“What, exactly, Godaime-sama?” She shoved the sketchbook at him, watching him pick it up and flip through a few pages, his brow scrunching up in torment, but no surprise registering. He didn’t look up as he asserted evasively, “Think he started drawing again a bit after we brought Naruto home from the Rain.”
“What is their relationship?”
Guy looked up at her, his expression pleading, none of his usual joy on his face. He looked older, and hurt, and regretful. “Ask me a question I can’t avoid, Godaime-sama,” he requested after a moment, carefully shutting the book and replacing it on the desk. He never took his gaze off of it as he tacked on more quietly, “Please.”
“Is Kakashi’s relationship with Naruto inappropriate?”
“… Yes.”
Somehow, the confirmation still hurt, like a kick to the chest. Tsunade sucked in a pained breath, vaguely noting Jiraiya’s return to pacing, the movement taking on new fury as his lips curled back into a snarl, glaring at the back of the jōnin’s head. “Is it physical? Sexual?”
Guy interlaced his fingers on his lap and stared at them, clearly in agony, his lips drawn down deep and ashamed. “And romantic,” he confessed low.
That hadn’t fully clicked for her, somehow. She hadn’t considered that perhaps he wasn’t simply molesting the girl, but manipulating her into something that looked like a relationship. But of course he’d gotten into her head. She wouldn’t jump into the line of fire to protect someone she considered to be her abuser, would she? (… Would she?)
Jiraiya turned, the motion violent, and grabbed Guy’s chair from behind, jerking it back onto two legs to glare down at the man, causing him to flinch and cower. “Stop yanking us around, Maito. Cooperate fully or you can choose between me cutting you in half or being declared a missing-nin.”
Neither of those things would happen, and Guy probably knew that, but he still nodded his agreement, catching himself as the chair was dropped, then asking the floor like a scolded schoolboy, “… What do you want to know?”
“When did it start, Guy?” Tsunade asked again.
“When did what start?” Jiraiya shifted towards him with murder in his eyes and he flinched, going on quickly, “When their relationship started, when he fell in love with her, when he became obsessed with her…? What part are you asking me about?”
Oh. So Guy knew. He didn’t suspect, he didn’t have concerns, he knew, and it went deeper than they thought it did. “All of those, in that order.”
The man crossed his arms over his stomach, leaning over his lap a little to tell it to his feet, looking as though he’d rather die than do so. “Just after you both returned… Sometime between when she was put on his team and when she moved in with him…” He took a deep, shuddery breath. “And… when she was born, apparently.” Sitting up straighter, he hurried to tack on protectively, “He described his emotions as being intense but brotherly or paternal towards her until maybe two years ago. It—it hurts him, that he feels that way about her.”
“Attracted?”
“Obsessively so.”
“When did you find out?”
“I had… Suspicions about his feelings… by the time the Sandaime died. That he’d acted on them was confirmed for me the night of Sasuke’s fourteenth birthday party.”
Tsunade and Jiraiya exchanged a look. “Elaborate,” her lover demanded.
“Kakashi… He’s not well,” Guy whispered, hunching over his lap. Distantly, she felt bad that she was making him betray his best friend, but she pushed it down—it didn’t matter, just then. “I noticed on my run that he was lurking outside the party, observing it. So I— … I was worried, so I stayed to observe him. He didn’t bust it because of the alcohol or—or the fraternization. He busted it because Naruto did something to make him jealous.” He shifted a little away from them both, breathing out a pained, “He’s… possessive of her.”
“Why didn’t you report this immediately?”
Guy buried his face in his hands. “There was no crime, they had all the right paperwork… And I didn’t think it was the best thing for her.” Rage spiked through her, swirled through with the feedback loop of Jiraiya’s furious chakra, and the man rushed to add defensively as he raised his head, “You two weren’t around before. Naruto—she was such a nervous, insecure, skittish girl before him. She was an awful student and a mediocre kunoichi, hid everything from everyone and flinched when her peers tried to touch her. The Naruto you met last summer—vibrant and youthful and alive and confident—she’s a product of Kakashi loving her.”
Tsunade felt like she was going to be sick. “Tell Shizune that I need Iruka,” she commanded Jiraiya, who turned to obey without question. She needed to confirm the claims of the shamefaced jōnin across from her immediately. “Do you approve of their relationship, Guy?”
“Not at all,” he corrected her softly. “But I think separating them will only cause violence and heartbreak. Neither of them will recover. It’s too late, Godaime-sama.”
Too late. It was one of Tsunade’s least favorite phrases. It shivered over her like venom working through her body. “Who knows?”
Guy hesitated again, seemingly unwilling to betray more of his friends, but after a moment, forced out a strangled, “It—… Everyone on the extraction team to the Rain. The only person on that mission who didn’t find out was Sasuke.”
Sakura knew. Her star apprentice knew. Had kept this from her. Choking down her disappointment, Tsunade only had to glance at Jiraiya before he was opening the door to request Kurenai, Asuma, and Sakura as well.
“In love with her, you said?” she prompted after a moment, her words quiet and resigned.
Guy met her eye straight on, and there was no doubt in her mind that he believed what he was saying as he insisted, “Head over heels. He’s not—not a pedophile. For him, this is about who Naruto is, not how old she happens to be. You wouldn’t believe how he is around her. He relaxes, smiles, laughs, and he—”
“How does he treat her?” Jiraiya demanded, wondering the same thing she was.
Guy’s lips worked with no sound coming out, and she felt it in her bones that they weren’t getting the full story when he murmured without eye contact, “Like a princess,” even as the words themselves rang true. “He’s sweet to her. Gentle.”
“What do you know about their sexual relationship?”
Guy glanced nervously between them. “Ah, well. Not much, except that they both insist it’s on Naruto’s terms entirely.”
“Do you believe that?”
The man looked stricken, his gaze dropping back to the desk. “Kakashi isn’t… stable,” he whispered. “I don’t think he forces her—genuinely, I would be shocked to my core—but I think sometimes he doesn’t realize how far she’d go to please him.”
“But you’ve spoken to Naruto, too? Alone?” Tsunade demanded. It would be downright irresponsible of the man across from her, to not—
“Of course. Multiple times over the course of months.”
Jiraiya seemed to have reached the end of his limited energy, collapsing into the other chair, which creaked under his weight. “And she’s head over heels for him, too,” he guessed in a dead tone.
The jōnin hesitated, glancing between them. “Well…” he stalled. “I… wouldn’t give her an ultimatum, were I you. I don’t think you’ll like her answer. They’re… passionate.”
“Passionate,” she echoed. She snatched the book back, turning pages until she returned to the one that depicted the sweet little girl she loved so dearly in strict bondage, holding it up to force the man to look at it, taking in the way he cringed away from the image, clearly disturbed as well. “This what you mean by passionate?”
Guy shook his head, brushing a hand through his thick black hair. “No, I mean—devoted, frequently with high emotions. He adores her, and she adores him. I— … The night before the chūnin exams, he got roaring drunk, and I witnessed him cling to her, cry into her shoulder, and beg her to run away with him and start a family instead of being shinobi.”
… What? Jiraiya voiced her confusion out loud, but she barely heard him. “Kakashi, you mean,” she clarified slowly, trying to picture the man crying without also picturing him as the wide-eyed little boy she’d met more than twenty years before, the one that had guilted her into feeding the scrawny tom hanging around her old apartment. (Chobi, her brain supplied, with an errant stab of old grief. She’d never thanked Kakashi for pushing her to—)
The jōnin across from her clenched his fists on his lap, tightening his jaw. “There’s more to him,” he insisted, quiet but firm. “Naruto has been digging parts of him back up. He isn’t—”
Tsunade cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I don’t want to hear it right now, Maito,” she said, trying to keep her voice level and mostly succeeding. “Do you know where he is?”
Guy gazed at her a moment, unreadable. “… No,” he told her, dropping his gaze to his lap.
It felt like there was more there, but Tsunsde was distracted by another knock; Guy quailed, burying his face in his hands, and Tsunade tried to orient herself. It was Iruka and his pretty young husband with the name she could never remember, by the chakra signature. “Get out of my sight,” she told the jōnin across from her coldly, the part of her that felt bad when he flinched and curled in on himself distant. “Don’t go far. You’re suspended until further notice.”
The young man inhaled, long and slow through his nose, and rose to his feet. He didn’t meet her eye as he bowed deeply, murmuring to the ground, “Yes, Godaime-sama. I apologize that I kept this from you.”
…
It was vividly apparent that Iruka hadn’t had any idea. To get unbiased answers from him, Tsunade hadn’t told him what was happening at first, instead simply asking the open ended question, how has Kakashi’s influence impacted Naruto?
The chūnin had offered her a handsome, genuine smile, earning affectionate eyes fixed on the side of his face from his groom. “He’s been wonderful for her,” he’d asserted confidently. “Really brought her out of her shell, helped her come into her own. Massively positive influence on her behavior and performance.” His eyes had nearly scrunched shut with his joy as he sat forward, finishing warmly, “Seems like he was exactly what she needed to feel secure. She’s so much happier than she used to be, Godaime-sama. I’m grateful to Kakashi for taking her in.”
It had been hard, to watch the news sink in. To watch that joy vanish into a blank abyss, then cycle rapidly between rage and disbelief. To watch him hit his knees once he’d let out the initial rush of adrenaline screaming and pacing, fist his hands in his hair, and curl into himself, gasping in a tone of utter heartbreak as he began to cry, “Gods, it’s—it’s my fault, it’s all my fault—”
No, it’s my fault, she’d thought miserably, seeing the sentiment reflected in Jiraiya’s eyes as they watched a stunned Fumihito (she needed to remember that name) gather his husband up, try to comfort him over his insistence that if he hadn’t been so caught up in his romantic life if she hadn’t been so busy learning to be Hokage, she might have noticed this, prevented it, taken her in.
The meeting hadn’t lasted long after that. Iruka had been escorted out under his husband’s arm, ordered to report to Psych, and it was only a few moments later that there was another knock on the door. To her surprise, though, it was Fumihito again, the young man looking hesitant and haunted and unsure as he shut the door behind himself, leaving his palm pressed against it as he offered her a shallow bow and suggested softly, “You need to talk to a woman named Ume. If—if there is anything to be known about Kakashi that Maito can’t tell you, she knows it.” His fists curled up and his gaze hit his feet, color blooming along his cheekbones as he instructed her to look for the woman in question on a certain corner in the red light district that night after seven, tacking on in an ashamed whisper, “Please be discrete. Our— Their livelihoods depend on the perception that they’ll keep shinobi secrets.”
Then he was gone, and Jiraiya was setting his arms on her desk, burying his face in them as he mumbled, “So it wasn’t just a rumor, that Kakashi frequents the Geisha Lounge.” He buried a hand in his hair, twisting it up in his thick, calloused fingers like he had done to soothe himself since they were kids. “… I know of an Ume in the red light distract. She’s been around forever if it’s the woman I’m thinking of.”
“You sleep with her?” Tsunade asked idly, feeling a migraine coming on as she opened her drawers, finding an empty bottle of whiskey and a flask with barely a sip of gin before locating a mostly-full bottle of sake, which she took a long pull of before setting it down within reaching distance of her lover, who was waving her off.
“Twenty years ago,” Jiraiya sighed. “When she was new to it. I’m impressed she’s still working.”
“I’m impressed you convinced me to sleep with you.” Jiraiya snorted. Realizing she needed it, she took the sake back for another gulp, and another. “Go find her, then.”
…
The next few meetings were painful and largely unhelpful. Asuma and Kurenai had come in together, the former obnoxiously asserting over and over again that he had wanted to report it until Tsunade had lost her patience and snapped, “But you didn’t, did you, Sarutobi?”
Asuma had grown up under her feet, had called her nee-chan as a boy. Her admonishment had clearly put him right back there, his expression like nothing so much as it had been the time she’d caught him pulling a chair to over to the bookshelf to get into the books and scrolls his father kept out of his reach; his eyes were wide and ashamed, and his shoulders curled in when holding her gaze became too difficult.
Kurenai had been quiet and serious up to that point, her stare at the desk never wavering, but in the silence that followed, she’d said blankly, “I don’t know if we did the right thing, ‘suma. I didn’t think he’d disappear with her. Do you think she’s…?”
Asuma had hit her with a horrified glance. “He wouldn’t,” he’d argued. “He wouldn’t, K. This—” He gestured broadly, as though to encapsulate the entire situation. “—is in character. He’s not going to bring her back until he’s sure he can keep her. But he wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?” Tsunade had demanded, running out of patience.
There had been a pause in which it seemed none of them even breathed, and then he’d turned his head away, crossed his arms over his chest, and murmured, “Knock her up.”
The thought had hit her like a punch to the gut, nauseated her. She’d viscerally imagined Kakashi showing back up in the Leaf with a heavily pregnant Naruto under his arm and that look of satisfaction he always got in his eye when he solved a difficult problem, ever since he was a boy.
Very little of what they said was new; they’d both observed Kakashi treating her well and had spoken to Naruto, who’d defended her relationship with her sensei vigorously. In some ways, Tsunade was a little more sympathetic to these two, knowing they’d made the decision to stay quiet in the aftermath of such a traumatic event… She understood the impulse to not want to destabilize a hurting little girl in that delicate moment. They reiterated what Guy had said about Kakashi being possessive, relating that he was jealous over her, even towards her peers; when their information dried up, she dismissed them, suspending them as well.
Her conversation with Sakura had been even less productive. She wasn’t sure who’d told her what was happening, but she’d been crying and apologizing before she even entered the room, her shoulders heaving and her eyes red. Tsunade was reminded viscerally that she was a child, watching her mop at her eyes with her sleeves, her lower lip trembling as she insisted tearfully, “They’re in love, Tsunade-sensei, I swear they are. He’s good to her, he’d never hurt her—”
In the end, she hadn’t had the heart to dole out any of the punishments she’d thought up. She’d told her I understand why you kept your team’s secret and sent her to Psych. She would set the girl on a week straight of fourteen hour shifts at the walk-in clinic for the shinobi force once she’d recovered a little from the shock. She didn’t want to be the kind of master that was scary to displease, no matter how hurt and disappointed she was.
Now she was sitting down for her last meeting of the day, the sun getting low and her head swimming with unspent emotion and little bits of information that all seemed like it added up to something, but she couldn’t figure out how they pieced together. Jiraiya had dragged a chair over to her side of the desk, gesturing for the woman—Ume, presumably—to sit in the unoccupied seat across from them.
Tsunade eyed her up and down as she settled. She was an elegant woman, with long brown hair—dyed, most likely, to have no spare greys, she must have been in her forties—and a sensual, long build, graceful like a cat with eye-catching red lips and mysterious, smoky eyes. Frankly, she was much closer to what Tsunade might have expected out of a lover of the great and terrible Copy Ninja, even if it was odd she was so much older than him. She was dressed for work, in a tight black dress and heels, but wrapped in a cardigan with a purse on her lap, she could have been any random civilian woman ready to go out on a date.
“What’s this about, Godaime-sama?” Ume asked without any preamble, her voice pleasantly husky.
“A man named Hatake Kakashi,” Jiraiya informed her. “Can you tell us how you know him, please?”
Ume hit him with a blank-eyed look. “I’m not familiar,” she answered primly. “I don’t exactly check my clients’ IDs.”
Her face betrayed nothing as, frustrated because who the f*ck doesn’t know who Hatake Kakashi is?, Tsunade rifled through the documents she’d accumulated and pulled out the personnel photo she’d dug up of Kakashi, refusing to look again at his youthful, half-covered face or his mismatched eyes. It was an old picture—probably dated to when he was around twenty—but he wasn’t exactly indistinct. She slid the print across the desk, watching Ume pluck it up with manicured fingers and study it a moment before replacing it on the table, clasping her hands demurely in her lap, and asserting evenly, “Never seen this man before in my life.”
Irritation bubbled up in Tsunade’s throat and she swallowed it viciously. “Of course you haven’t,” she ground out, ready to tear into her, but Jiraiya cut her off, leaning forward with a charming smile and a cheerful tone but with his depleted, exhausted chakra writhing with black rage.
“We understand how important it is that no one knows you disclosed anything,” the man assured her. “I’m offering you two deals, alright, beautiful? The first is you tell us what we want to know, and we can arrange for you to stay in a holding cell for a day or two, put a misdemeanor noncooperation charge on your record. It’ll be expunged within a year, and I’ll pay you for lost income.” He sat back, his smile never wavering as he offered jovially, “Or the second one, which is the one where we prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law for obstruction, which I believe is four weeks in holding and six months on probation minimum, including a strict eight PM curfew.”
Tsunade swallowed her surprise whole; Jiraiya usually wasn’t willing to be so rough with what he errantly believed to be the gentler sex (he especially tended to be delicate with sex workers of all stripes), and he’d essentially just threatened the woman across from them with financial ruin. She wouldn’t be able to work with a curfew, and she clearly understood that. She straightened up, squared her shoulders, inclined her head, and relented, “Very well. I know what he’d have me choose.”
“Good,” Tsunade heard herself say as she glanced down at the chicken scratch of her notes, trying to gather her thoughts on what she wanted to ask; beside her, Jiraiya sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, tapping his foot like he did when he was trying to keep himself awake. “Good, good. What—is the nature of your relationship with that man?”
Ume met her eye, her face somehow rather expressive for being completely unreadable. “Professional,” she answered shortly, only to flash a shadow of a weak smile down at her lap when this earned an unimpressed glare. “Can you be more specific, Godaime-sama?”
“Outline your relationship,” she elaborated. “Explain it to me.” Please, she thought but didn’t add, instead posing as though she’d take notes even though she knew full well that she always waited until everyone was gone before she jotted her thoughts down to debrief.
Ume’s gaze flickered to the pen in her hand, then back up. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, clasped her hands in her lap, and told her bluntly, “I met him when he hired me to divest him of his virginity when he was a teenager.”
Tsunade’s jaw dropped. Jiraiya let out a sound that was within striking distance of ‘amused snort’ but was too firmly rooted in ‘surprised cough’ to translate properly. They exchanged a glance, both of them probably thinking about the same thing; the veritable line of pretty young girls that used to hang around looking for the attention of the Copy Ninja. Why in the world had he sought a professional when he’d had his pick of free, willing puss*? “I… see,” she managed, trying to reconfigure, trying to see why Fumihito had found this to be important. “And this is the extent of your relationship?”
“Before I answer,” Ume inquired after a beat of silence, “Can I ask what happened?”
She glanced at Jiraiya, who shrugged one shoulder, looking singularly exhausted. “He’s… absconded with two of his students, both minors,” she exposited, the words still feeling distant, unreal as she added quieter, “We have reason to believe his relationship with one of them is inappropriate.”
Finally, Ume emoted, but there was no surprise, or disgust, or disapproval. She merely rolled her eyes, pinching her nose and squeezing her eyes shut as she sighed under her breath, “Gods, he’s such a f*cking mess…” followed by a tired, “Ran off with Naruto, huh? Can’t say I’m surprised. First time I passed them on the street together after she was in the news, I could tell he was head over heels. And he’s always been a bit of a drama queen…”
Tsunade tried to connect the phrases ‘Hatake Kakashi’ and ‘drama queen,’ to virtually zero success, and it really started to sink in that being familiar with someone in no way meant you knew them. That was clear through all the interviews—there was more to Kakashi than met the eye. Which parts are real?
Ume gathered herself with a deep breath, then raised her head, unreadable once more. She lowered her long, dark eyelashes, gaze on the desk, and elaborated, “I saw Kakashi as a client with varying degrees of frequency for about a decade, Godaime-sama.”
… Huh.
“And you stopped because…?”
Ume smiled, the expression sincere but—not quite dark, not dark like dark humor, more dark like dark chocolate. “The best reason to stop seeing a regular,” she murmured. “He fell in love.”
Jiraiya scoffed, turning his face away. Tsunade’s head throbbed; her knuckles were white on the pen, she noticed distantly as he spoke again, shifting his weight as he interrogated brusquely, “He ever ask for anything weird?”
Ume’s finely penciled eyebrows rose. “Weird by whose standards?”
Frustrated, the man snapped back, “Anything that suggested an attraction to children or any other potentially dangerous predilections.”
“Ah,” Ume hummed, nodding sagely. “Yes. I find that pedophiles tend to prefer older workers over the new girls. I’m sure I reminded him of a teenager much more than the teenagers working downtown.”
It was everything Tsunade could do not to bare her teeth, and in a fit of destructive rage, she leaned forward and demanded, “Characterize the nature of what Kakashi asked you to do with him,” only to come within a hair’s breadth of finally completely f*cking losing it when the woman across from her shrugged and said sexual. “Don’t play at obtuse, Ume. Trust me, we can do worse than keeping you out of work for a few months.”
There was something contemptuous in the brunette’s eyes as she obediently and in a clipped tone began to spill the Copy Ninja’s secrets. “First he wanted me to teach him how to be good at sex,” she recited coldly, her gaze narrowed. “I humored him even though he was a little young for my comfort. Glad I did, honestly; he was easily the client I enjoyed seeing most. I’ve never had another one that cared so deeply about their whor*’s pleasure and comfort.” Tsunade’s ears were ringing and her stomach was churning, but the satisfaction of knowing things Kakashi didn’t want her to know—hurting him, violating him—kept her silent as the woman continued, “He wanted to try everything until he was good at it. I think he saw me as a teacher. I won’t lie, sometimes I fed him my own fantasies and preferences. He was always happy to go along, always respectful and gentle. Then…”
“Then?” Jiraiya prompted impatiently, earning a hard look that wavered on a glare.
Ume coolly averted her gaze to the side. “Something traumatic related to sex and his work,” she continued plainly. “I want to be clear, it didn’t impact how he treated me, nor his concern for my consent and wellbeing. But he became increasingly unable to handle lack of control during sex. It’s common, with shinobi, you know— They’re paranoid. Traumatized.” The last word was nearly a hiss, rage glancing off of her face and fading fast as she breathed deep and went on in an increasingly angry tone, “So I suppose that the answer to the question you’ve inexplicably asked me—because I cannot imagine how this is relevant to the fact that he’s disappeared with your precious ‘container’—is that what gets Kakashi’s rocks off these days is extreme bondage and complete obedience, but since he trusts her not to stab him, Naruto says he doesn’t expect either one from her.” She sniffed, turning her nose up a little as she recrossed her long legs. “Satisfied?”
The bondage tracked. Tsunade saw Naruto in it on the backs of her eyelids every time she blinked, bound into a little ball, in a chest harness, dangling from the ceiling on her tiptoes with a shy, intrigued look on her face… And she’d slept with enough shinobi to know her issues with relaxing and trusting a sex partner were endemic. She catalogued and understood Ume’s anger; it was easy to imagine that the village’s red light district workers had their fingers on the pulse of the shinobi force, understood the impact of and had likely suffered for the vision the Sandaime had pushed upon the men and women who served in it. But—
“Wait,” Jiraiya burst out, sitting up straight. “You’ve spoken to Naruto about this?”
“Sweet girl,” Ume bit back, which didn’t help that the man next to her was swelling up with anger, fists clenching and his brow drawing together.
His words came out dark and dangerous. “He was still seeing you while he was—?”
“He stopped when he took on his team,” Ume interrupted. “It’s been two years at the least; from what I’ve heard, he hasn’t seen anyone else, either. I met Naruto when I needed help with a situation with my landlord and Kakashi left us alone together while he went to handle it.” She took another deep breath, reclaiming more calm before she tacked on carelessly, “She was worried he’d get bored of her, since they were moving so slowly.”
Ume… approved.
Disgust flooded Tsunade, and she suddenly was impatient to get the other woman out of her sight, out of her office, out of her building. “Do you have any idea where he might have taken her?” she asked just to cover her bases, unsurprised when Ume shook her head.
She paused, though, her gaze growing distant, thoughtful. “He… I asked him about a scar, once, and he told me that a few years before I met him, he nearly died. Spent time in a little village in the Lightning recovering, if I remember right. On the coast.” She shrugged, looking away. “Seemed really fond of the place. The people there. Like he missed it. Enough that it stood out to me over the years.”
Tsunade and Jiraiya exchanged a sharp glance, both clearly thinking the same thing. Maybe he hasn’t gone far. She had barely parted her lips before he was nodding, heaving himself to his feet with a near-silent groan and assuring her with a brief squeeze to the shoulder, “I’ll get started organizing search missions. Where’s—?” Grateful, she pulled open the top drawer of her desk, the shallow one, and removed the small bronze coin there among her general office detritus to hand to him; for something like this, it’d qualify him to make decisions on her behalf, though the final plan would likely land on her desk with a blank line demanding her signature before searchers left the next day. “Great. Do you want me to…?” His gaze trailed towards Ume, and Tsunade grimaced.
“Yes,” she answered stiffly. “Unless she has anything she’d like to add.”
Ume stood, gracefully straightening out her dress and arranging her hair as she prepared to be escorted into law enforcement custody. She met Tsunade’s eye, looking down her aristocratic nose at her to assert with cold confidence, “Hatake Kakashi is a good man.”
Tsunade’s pen creaked in her hand. “Get her out of here,” she hissed, and Jiraiya wasted no time in obeying her, shuffling the woman out with a concerned backwards glance. She hated herself for it, but the moment the door clicked closed for the last time that day, she laid her head down on her desk, crossed her arms over it, and finally let herself cry.
…
That evening, on her couch with her lover curled up and snoring beside her with his enormous head slowly cutting off her blood circulation below the thigh, Tsunade sat with the sketchbook, going through every page one at a time, and finally let herself think about Dan.
Dan, who’d put her pieces back together after what had happened to her.
Dan, who’d been so patient teaching her about her body, letting her explore sex and sexuality at her own pace.
Dan, who’d made her feel so safe and loved and whole and good. Who’d loved her enough to hold her hand through the agony of her recovery. Who’d let her kick the sh*t out of him for enjoying sex with her and then forgiven her and let her heal him and cry into his chest when her rage collapsed into tears.
Dan, who’d been twenty-two to her fourteen when he started paying special attention to her and twenty-four to her freshly sixteen the first time he took her to bed.
She brushed a tear from her face, feeling the wrinkles and the thinning skin hiding under her genjutsu; she petted that hand over Jiraiya’s hair, briefly distracted by her gratitude that every time he saw her with her genjutsu dropped, he grinned wide and kissed her and said pleased to meet you, gorgeous. Then she turned the page to see a rough sketch of Naruto perched on Sasuke’s back in the dirt, grinning ear to ear with her fist raised in victory while her teammate glared at her over his shoulder. She traced her fingertip across the page, then turned it. The next drawing—in charcoal—depicted her in striking profile with a lacy collar around her neck, her expression shy and her cheeks flushed. The one after that showed her in an intricately patterned kimono, hands clasped behind her back and rolled up onto the balls of her feet in her geta, looking shy and hopeful up at the viewer.
They were all so alive. So honest, yet reverent. Like Naruto was a religious figure rather than a normal little girl.
The pages ran blank not long after that, but Tsunade kept turning them, her mind far away and her body mechanical. She almost didn’t notice the writing when she reached the last page, almost simply closed the sketchbook on instinct, but at the last second, she realized it was there and flipped the back cover back open.
At the top was a note, written in messy but legible print. You have to destroy it after if there’s nudity. Also I love you and the drawings were pretty. So he’d had her permission, Tsunade thought vaguely. And he’d clearly respected her directive, given the high number of torn out pages she’d noticed; she’d been assuming they represented drafts he’d given up on. But she barely registered these things, as she traced her gaze over the rest of the page, every last inch of which was coated in neatly sketched hearts, none larger than her pinky nail. A hundred of them, easily; they became smaller and more crowded around the words I love you, and left space only for a very tidy, cursive I love you, too.
She tried to picture Hatake Kakashi drawing hearts in his notebook like a schoolgirl with a crush and failed. She tried to picture him being a good enough boyfriend to earn the way Naruto looked at him in some of these drawings and failed. She tried to picture him laughing with her, crying with her, drunkenly begging her to elope and have a baby. Braiding her hair, as Jiraiya had told her he was wont to do. Handling her like glass, the way Sakura insisted he always had.
When they sparred, the girl had sniffled, and she went down, he would almost cradle her. He’d go down with her to make sure she wasn’t hurt. Protect her head and her back, especially. She used to complain about him thinking she was weak, but it was that he couldn’t stand to hurt her, I just know it.
Tsunade set the book aside, burying both hands in Jiraiya’s unruly white mop of wild hair as a repressed sob shook her frame, stirring the man in her lap. He made a questioning sound, and as she clenched her fingers in his hair, she whispered, “I think they’re really in love, Jiraiya.”
The man breathed in deep and let it out on a sigh, his massive form swelling and deflating with it. “I… think so too,” he admitted, just as quiet. “… You thinking about Dan?”
Always. “Yeah.”
“Me, too,” Jiraiya murmured, turning his head to press his brow against her numbing thigh. “Remembering how I thought he was a really good guy.”
“Do you think he f*cked me up?” Tsunade heard herself ask, feeling far away and adrift.
Her best and oldest friend shrugged. “What lover doesn’t, when you’re young?” He pushed himself up into a sitting position, causing pins and needles to shoot down her leg; she tried to be discrete about it, not wanting to discourage him from cuddling her like that. “Let me make you something to eat, pretty girl, I’m sure you haven’t.”
She hadn’t. “Neither have you,” she argued petulantly as she watched him stand with a groan and an audible pop, probably from his hip. His chakra still felt frail and weak. “And you’re hurt. I should be the one cooking.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, offering her a weak grin. “I know,” he agreed. “I must be a really great boyfriend, because I’m gonna do it anyway, and bring you a glass of wine while you wait.” He yawned, rubbing at his eyes and turning to go. “Might stay awake long enough to draw you a bath, if you’re lucky. … Don’t worry, Tsu, it’ll be easier tomorrow.”
It’ll be easier tomorrow. How many times had he said that to her? At first, it had been about training, about struggling with new skills, but over time, it had come to mean everything. And he was rarely wrong. “It’ll be easier tomorrow,” she echoed, resting her temple against her propped-up fist and shutting her eyes.
