AN: This came from a "one word meme" tumblr prompt: Umino Iruka + "boxes".

The prompt was probably meant more in line with the humor of my "Team Seven vs. Paperwork" series, but all I could think about was compartmentalization, Iruka's position as possibly the closest thing Naruto has to family, and what that means with Iruka's issues with the Nine-Tailed Fox. This is probably more Alternate Character/Relationship Interpretation and AU: Alternate Canon than Canon Compliant, because I am not actually well-versed in the details of canon or Iruka and Naruto's friendship. I wanted to explore Iruka as a flawed person who overcame personal conflict.

The timeline on this fic is extremely fuzzy. I don't actually know how long Naruto attended the Academy for or when Iruka started teaching him, but I decided that if Kishimoto doesn't have to have a coherent timeline, neither do I. Iruka is relatively young in canon and I'm pretty sure Naruto was at the Academy from at least 6-12. I wrote Naruto as being 8-ish here, but then the Uchiha Massacre should probably have happened with where they are right now; but since that's not the focus of the story, I didn't include it. Anyway, just ignore any timeline inconsistencies with canon as well as with Iruka and Naruto's relationship.

Anyway, flawed people in a flawed world and some character growth exploration. Thank you.

This work was originally posted to my account on AO3.

Tags on AO3: Alternate Canon, Alternate Character Interpretation, Character Study, Relationship Study, Headcanon, Child Neglect, Bigotry & Prejudice, Anger, Fear, Grief/Mourning, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Stress, Light Angst, Personal Growth, Growth, Introspection, Unreliable Narrator, Mild Language, POV Third Person Limited, POV Umino Iruka, Not As Miserable As I'm Making It Sound, Hopeful Ending, Tumblr Prompt, One Word Prompt Meme, One Shot, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Pre-Canon

oOo

WOULD YOU EAT THEM WITH A FOX?

oOo

Years later, Iruka will have preferred to say that he had laid eyes on Naruto and immediately thought of the boy as an adoptive younger brother or even simply as the lonely child in desperate need of support that he had been. Unfortunately, no matter how many years pass, if Iruka said this, he would be lying his ass off.

When Umino Iruka had first laid eyes on Uzumaki Naruto, in the middle of the school grounds, he was mostly just terrified.

A little bit angry too, but thankfully even then he knew that the anger he'd been struggling with for years was misdirected at a child who'd never done anything wrong. At a child who hadn't been the one to kill Iruka's parents. The anger was easier to mentally stuff in a box where it belonged, when faced with the eager face of a child with loud dreams and endless energy.

It was the Demon Fox, Iruka told himself, furiously internally wrestling his anger into a box so he could shove it under the mental equivalent of his bed. Not the boy. You know this, you idiot. It was the Demon Fox. Not the boy.

But the terror – on the other hand, head, and heart – was a lot harder to wrestle into a box. It was infinitely larger and stronger, and Iruka, paling in the face of it, just… didn't have a box for it. There was no room in him to tidy that amount of terror away, entirely out of sight and essentially out of mind, and he had nothing strong enough to hold it besides.

Because it was one thing to know that it was the Demon Fox – the Nine-Tailed Chakra Beast of legend – that had killed Iruka's parents and hundreds of other people and destroyed half the village. Iruka knew that it wasn't the boy in whom the demon was sealed who had done those evils. The knowledge that it wasn't the boy who was the killer let Iruka, when faced with him, stuff the unreasonable anger he'd been struggling with for years back into its box.

But it was another thing entirely to know that, at any moment, the Demon Fox could burst out of the boy – perhaps even possess or influence the boy – and lay waste to Konoha again. That knowledge made Iruka, when faced with a small child, feel numb with dread. The Demon Fox might break out of its container and that terrified him.

They all had heard the bloody whispers from Wind Country.

And even without that…

"After all," he'd overheard so many people whisper, "It's happened once already."

oOo

Sometimes it felt like it didn't matter what Iruka knew. His head might know one thing, but his heart disagreed with it, and his hands were shaking before he knew it, with anger or fear. He had spent months preparing himself for this single passing moment, and it wasn't enough.

This particular little boy, with the Demon Fox sealed inside him, ran by in the schoolyard and it took all of Iruka's self-control not to flinch. Any loud sound or sudden gesture on the boy's part in the schoolyard – of which there were many – was a threat. Supervising break after break at the Academy, Iruka often found himself watching the boy out of the corner of his eye, while doing his utmost not to make eye contact with him.

That terror that Iruka kept trying to shove into boxes, since it wouldn't go out of mind? That terror was absolutely certain, despite whatever Iruka told himself he knew, that if Iruka looked into that little boy's eyes on purpose… or for too long by accident… he would see the Demon Fox. If Iruka dared to meet that boy's eyes, he would surely see the Demon Fox inside.

Iruka would see the monster inside that little boy and, most terrifyingly, the monster would see him. Iruka would look at the monster who haunted him and the monster would look back.

Iruka's stuttering heart didn't dare risk it. The Demon Fox already stared out at Iruka, all fiery and monstrous and starving, from every angry and terrified box in Iruka's head. Every other memory seemed to hold some of that hot anger or terror. Iruka didn't dare look at the real "box" – the boy who actually held the real Demon Fox inside him.

Who knew what Iruka would see? Who knew what would see him?

"Who's to say the Demon Fox won't be released again?" Everyone said it, again and again, with frightened eyes or smug lips or bitter scowls. "Who's to say that the Demon Fox won't come out of that boy when we least expect it and kill us all? After all, it's happened once already."

oOo

Iruka wouldn't say that he didn't have faith in the old and wise Sandaime Hokage, who had personally assured each and every staff member at the Academy that there was nothing to fear from the boy with a Tailed Beast inside him. Nor would Iruka say that he didn't have faith in the abilities of the late and much beloved Yondaime Hokage, who had died to save the village and seal the Demon Fox away again.

While Iruka knew to trust in the Hokages, it really was another thing entirely to know that, at any given moment, the Demon Fox was in the schoolyard… or a classroom… or wandering the streets of Konoha. To know that the Demon Fox was sometimes standing or walking only a few feet away from Iruka, waiting inside the skin of a child and possibly looking out through the child's eyes. Iruka rarely saw the Sandaime Hokage in person, but he saw the Demon Fox boy every day.

It was all very well and good to say "trust in the village" and "trust in the Hokage", but Iruka didn't have much trust left in him to spread about. The Demon Fox had evaded the guard of two Hokages before – two of the most powerful shinobi in the entire world – and just because the monster had been locked up again afterwards, didn't mean that it hadn't gotten out. It didn't mean that the attack hadn't happened. It didn't mean all those people hadn't died.

That Iruka's parents hadn't died.

Iruka's limited, battered trust now struggled – it managed, but it struggled – with the Hokage and all the greatest shinobi in Konoha, who were apparently keeping a strict and constant watch on the boy. That fragile trust frankly refused to be placed with a young boy missing one of his front teeth. Frankly, Iruka hadn't deeply committed to forcibly placing it there.

If there was one thing that a young Iruka had come to know over the course of growing up with Konoha's legends and struggling through his shinobi training, it was that anything was possible. There was no lock, no seal, no guard, no armor, and no fortress that was truly impenetrable or infallible. Definitely not conquerable by the likes of Iruka, by any means, but there was always another "genius". Always another monster of a man, or… just another monster.

What could a little boy do against such a true monster?

He was only a boy. He stood no chance.

Whatever else Iruka knew, first and foremost, his terror knew that the Demon Fox could get out again. Iruka had nothing soothing to offer it, too busy trying to shove it into a box so he could go about his job and his daily life. The monsters out there in the world were so much easier to ignore when there wasn't a literal one sitting on the swings just outside.

oOo

If there was anger – and oh, there was anger – then it was misdirected. But where did Iruka's anger really belong then? Where was it meant to be, as it repeatedly struggled and slipped out of its box to seek a target? (Any target?) Where ought Iruka's anger go if not with the child Iruka originally had barely been able to look at and yet had barely been able to take his eyes off of?

Did it belong with his parents? For dying in service to the village and at the claws of a monster? For… just… disappearing so suddenly and so completely from Iruka's life, leaving their one son so entirely alone? Breaking every gold-tinted promise they'd made to him about the future?

With the Demon Fox for the deed? At the Demon Fox, a legendary creature that was incomprehensibly powerful and infuriatingly ancient and horrifyingly dangerous, for daring to exist? How dare something so terrifying and enormous a thing exist? Why should anything be allowed to exist when it could wipe out a village with one strike of one fiery tail? How dare even the thought of the beast make Iruka feel so helpless and frightened and inconsequential and small?

With the Hokages for allowing it to happen? All my life, I've looked up to you and listened to you and your legends. All my life, I was obedient and a believer and good. All my life I've spent in payment to the Will of Fire, and what happened? When the time came, the Will of Fire arrived far too late.

Far too late for me.

Did Iruka's anger lie with the Sandaime Hokage, not for his failure, but for forcing Iruka to confront all his terror and anger, day after day, by allowing the boy to attend the Academy? For forcing everyone to live with and tolerate the constant reminder of their terror, their anger, and their grief? To make suffering further, constantly, another part of their duty? For having come to the Academy and told them to be the better men, in the same breath he resigned their personal losses to an inevitable, necessary tragedy of duty?

There was too much anger in Iruka. Misdirected and disjointed and slippery. Confused. He tried to put it all in one box and it slithered out the sides, and then he didn't have any idea where it had gone. It hid itself in other boxes and would find him before he found it. It pounced when he opened any other box in his head, going about his day as usual, and was unexpectedly struck by the sudden heat of anger lurking where it shouldn't have been.

Sometimes Iruka wondered if his anger, at least part of it, really belonged with himself, like some sick, self-fulfilling prophecy. He couldn't make it go away. He couldn't let it go. He couldn't just stop being angry at and terrified of a little boy, to the point where he couldn't look a child in the eyes even in passing. Maybe he was angry because it couldn't just put the anger in a box, shove it away, and be done with it for good. It wasn't as ever-present as the terror, but it was always there, like he wasn't trying hard enough.

It was maddening. Iruka did try. Sometimes, he tried so hard that it hurt.

oOo

It all came to a head in Iruka's head when the Demon Fox boy was assigned to his class. Iruka had been able to get by well enough before, at most having to separate the boy from other children during particularly rowdy breaks in the schoolyard. Even then he hadn't had to really look at the boy, telling off the groups of children in general or… well… just not meeting the boy's eyes if he had ever been forced to talk at him about anything.

In Iruka's defense, he'd only been a teenager when he'd started teaching. He'd still been technically a teenager, just barely, when he started teaching the boy. As he finished teaching the boy, as much as he liked to think otherwise, he still wouldn't be much more than a teenager. His days of young, adolescent dumbassery weren't as far behind him as he liked to imagine, only a handful of years, and adulthood hadn't actually seemed to change all that much.

(Ninja lifespans were, as a rule, not very long. Iruka was already well into his middle-aged years by a great many averages, which was both a point of pride and something he hated thinking about.)

Against Iruka, there was the fact that if he'd considered himself ready to be teaching and guiding children as a teenager – which he both had and hadn't been in a variety of ways – then he frankly should have been prepared to just "suck it up" or "tap out" when he was personally compromised over teaching a child. For the child's sake generally, as well as for the sake of their education, or at least for the sake of the village and its Will of Fire or something.

"Suck it up" alongside clan politics that he didn't understand but was forced to respect, which left half the Hyuuga students indentured to the other half and would later – much to his horror – leave all his Uchiha students murdered in the streets. "Suck it up' alongside Council and other administrative demands that left him mystified and concerned and… even treacherously doubtful sometimes… late at night when he couldn't sleep.

Iruka had "sucked up" to a lot in his life. He was nothing if not stubborn about what he could and couldn't manage, at least when it came to things realistically within his capabilities. But even he couldn't initially imagine "sucking it up" to teach the boy with the damn Demon Fox inside him.

Iruka… Iruka had wanted to "tap out". Tapping out had honestly seemed like a decent option too, better than risking bitterness, even if it wasn't really a decent option at all.

The Academy was understaffed and overworked on good days, between the disasters piled onto the village one after another. If not for the Third Shinobi War and the Demon Fox Attack, Iruka likely never would have been given his own class when he still technically a teenager himself; he probably should have been a teaching assistant for far, far longer.

Iruka tried to follow this option nevertheless, but it proved to be a dead end. He couldn't "tap out", not really, when the Sandaime Hokage was specifically, personally asking this of him. That Iruka do this for the Sandaime as his Hokage, for Konoha as his village, and for "the hatred in Iruka's heart that needed forgiveness" – the last of which, to Iruka, sometimes sounded a bit like bullshit, but left too much heavy guilt in his chest not to mean something.

Iruka was loyal to his village and nothing if not stubborn, and the Hokage's requests weren't the sort of requests that could be refused. Not really. The appearance of it being a request was a courtesy for which to be grateful. Iruka didn't want to be ungrateful.

Iruka shoved his guilt into a box alongside all that terror and anger, and kicked it under a metaphorical bed to worry about later. Out of sight was almost as good as out of mind, right? It was essentially the same thing, right? It was close enough.

oOo

Upon learning that he was going to teach the Demon Fox boy and couldn't tap out, young Iruka had decided that the best course of action was lift his chin, grit his teeth, and get on with it.

He would do his best to ignore the boy and, when interaction was unavoidable, treat the boy as any other student. Treat the boy as though being close to him for too long didn't leave Iruka numb with terror and anger. Treat the boy as though nothing was wrong, despite how Iruka still couldn't look him in the eye, and shove all that anger and terror back into their useless boxes.

"So, what are you going to do if the Demon Fox breaks out in the middle of your lesson?" Mizuki asked suddenly, jokingly, in the staff room a week before the school year had started.

He had clapped Iruka on the back a few weeks ago, upon learning that Iruka was stuck with the Demon Fox boy, and simply said, "Sucks to be you. Glad it isn't me." It was a far cry from the young man who had practically been frothing at the mouth upon learning that the boy would be attending the Academy. Iruka assumed that Mizuki had, like him, unwillingly adjusted.

He couldn't say he appreciated his friend's newfound sense of humor about it.

If Iruka had been feeling petty, he might have answered, "I'm going to fucking die, that's what I'm going to do. I don't exactly have a choice about that if it finally breaks out again."

Instead, he said curtly, "That's not going to happen."

The Sandaime Hokage had now personally assured him twice that this wouldn't happen. He had also, despite Iruka not having said anything about it, pointed out that there had been no evidence of the monster influencing or possessing the boy. There had been no incidents. The boy was still under strict watch and Iruka had the skills and rudimentary sealing abilities necessary to knock out a child and call for help, in the extremely unlikely event that an incident occur.

This hadn't reassured Iruka, who had barely managed not to point out that there hadn't been anything like an "incident" before the Demon Fox Attack, yet that had still happened. It had still devastated the village, to the point where some civilians had heard the gossip and taken to avoiding Iruka for now being the boy's teacher, like Iruka was somehow tainted by association.

"It might happen," Mizuki countered, leaning back in his seat. "So, what're you going to do if it does? Give the Demon Fox detention for poor behavior?" He twisted his voice in a hushed mockery of Iruka's yelling and said, "DETENTION, DEMON FOX, FOR TRYING TO EAT A CLASSMATE!"

"That's not funny," Iruka snapped and tried to go back to his lesson plans.

Mizuki just laughed. "Come on, it's a little funny."

"It's not and it's inappropriate."

Mizuki sighed like Iruka was being difficult. "Sorry for trying to get you to lighten up."

This wasn't the first time that Mizuki had said something like that, like it was Iruka's fault for not finding him funny or for agreeing with him on everything. Like Iruka was ten years old again instead of nearly twenty. They'd been friends since Iruka had started teaching at the Academy – the couple of years between them had seemed so great and wise to a teenage student teacher – and Iruka usually looked up to his colleague.

"Well, joking about the Demon Fox breaking out and killing my other students isn't actually making me feel better," Iruka snapped. "What is wrong with you to even joke about that?"

Mizuki squinted at him, like Iruka was still the one being difficult. "People have to cope somehow, Iruka. You have the strangest sense of humor I've ever seen in a shinobi. It's like you're a civilian sometimes. What's the difference between this and any other morbid joke?"

"I don't want to hear jokes about the Demon Fox or my students dying," Iruka insisted hotly.

"Both are kind of inevitable."

"They are not!"

"The Demon Fox doesn't even have to break out to start eating your other students."

Iruka's pen snapped in his hand because what the fuck. Mizuki had initially been one of the loudest about the boy being possessed or influenced by the Demon Fox, but Iruka had thought the man had gotten over it. The Sandaime said it wasn't possible and, even if it still was a joke, it was deeply inappropriate a thought to be voicing aloud in the staff room.

Before Iruka could lose it on his friend, another teacher came into the staff room. It was Ito Hitomi, a senior teacher at the Academy, and someone who would be more than willing to write Mizuki up for a few jokes in poor taste. Iruka closed his mouth and glared at Mizuki instead.

"Boys, would you mind- Iruka, there's ink everywhere! What happened?"

"Exploding pen prank," Iruka lied. "I'll clean it up. Sorry, Mimi-sensei, what did you need?"

oOo

Iruka walked into his classroom, on the first day of school, with all his boxes in a row. All his anger painstakingly shelved, all his terror carefully boxed and pushed into corners, and all his unhappiness taped up and hidden in the back of his head. If he couldn't be rid of it, at the very least he could compartmentalize it. It wasn't the most organized job, but it was in order.

He wouldn't let any of these things stop him from doing his job to the best of his abilities. Just as he wouldn't let his desperate drive to see all his students succeed keep him from ignoring the Demon Fox boy, who would surely be better off without interaction from a person who had to box himself up – who had to, at all times, wield a tape dispenser like a murder weapon against himself and his hastily balanced boxes – just to walk into the same room without screaming.

However… Iruka should have known better.

He and many other successful shinobi (read: alive shinobi) know that most successful mission is largely preparation – reconnaissance and planning and determination. He and many other successful ninja (read: ninja still kickin'), however, also know that that small remainder of missions that are not largely preparation are largely improvisation – instinct and split-second choices and straight-up refusing to die. Iruka, for the record, prefers the first kind of missions.

It's not so much Ninja Law as it is a curse: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It may perhaps be Ninja Law that when it does go wrong, it goes as wrongly as possible because fuck you.

Iruka's decision to ignore the Demon Fox boy as much as possible was… in hindsight… absurdly unrealistic. It might have worked if the boy was a quiet and shy student, uninterested in drawing attention to himself or participating in class, but the boy was none of these things. The boy was loud, eager to participate and yet quick to complain, unashamed about his dreams and proud of his pranks, and he thrived on attention – any attention – and he was good at getting it.

Iruka's plan didn't stand a chance.

He tried to ignore the boy at first, even though he could feel the boxes tumbling off the shelves and sending rolling marbles of terror scattering over the floor of his head, but it was impossible. No matter how terrified Iruka was, he had a duty to his other students and he couldn't just let the boy continue to be such a disruptive influence. It went against everything Iruka had promised as a teacher to let the boy intrude on the education of his other students.

Alright… that's a lie.

Iruka didn't have such altruistic motives for dropping his "plan of ignorance". He wasn't thinking about his other students, when he decided to stand up to the Demon Fox boy and tell him to sit down and shut up. He wasn't thinking at all. This boy shoved another box off a shelf in Iruka's head and the anger came tumbling out, and Iruka only barely managed to reign it in in time to be relatively normal about telling his student not to be such an obnoxious annoyance.

Iruka didn't say it like this, of course. He sharply told Naruto to get back to his seat and firmly threatened detention if the boy didn't start paying attention. Iruka told the boy, straightforward and unhappily, that he would need to know these things when he was a ninja someday.

As far as Iruka could tell – while feeling like he might be having a minor heart attack because he just told off the Demon Fox boy in such a way that he'd never told the boy off before – Naruto was so surprised that he just… did. He sat down and… well, he didn't really shut up.

Naruto fidgeted through the rest of the lesson and interrupted to ask poorly phrased questions that Iruka had just said the answer to five minutes earlier – giving the immensely frustrating impression that the boy wasn't really listening to a word that Iruka was saying. Also, giving Iruka that feeling like a minor heart attack every time the Demon Fox boy spoke to him. But Naruto didn't leave his seat again until break, and that was… something.

It was something.

When the break came around and all the students bustled out of the classroom, including Naruto, Iruka bid them temporarily farewell with the shouted demand after them that they behave. Then, once his classroom was empty, Iruka went over to his desk and put his hands down, and his arms trembled under the sudden weight of him.

He somehow managed to collapse into his chair. He almost missed.

Iruka hadn't come to work this morning with the intention of yelling at the boy who had the Demon Fox inside him – or to give him terse answers to his questions or to admonish him for continuing to interrupt the lesson. He had treated the boy as he might have any other disruptive student – despite his shaking nerves, despite how he had been determined to ignore the boy, despite how the boy wasn't any other student – just as the Hokage had bid him.

Was he supposed to do this every day?

It had been too easy, Iruka thought, even though his heart was pounding in his chest. Even though Iruka felt like he might spit it up onto the desk. Even though all the boxes in Iruka's head had been ripped off the shelves into a hopeless mess. There must have been a catch somewhere.

Iruka hadn't seen the monster at all. There had only been a boy.

That could be dangerous.

oOo

Much against his will, to his cautious relief, Iruka grew used to the presence of the Demon Fox in his classroom. It was, as the weeks went by, increasingly difficult to conflate that massive, deathly monster that had breathed rage and set the air aflame… with the boy named Naruto.

It was hard to imagine that the Demon Fox would pick its nose and laugh uproariously at fart jokes.

But, though Iruka slowly came to fear the boy less, it seemed that Iruka only came to dislike him all the more. He was still obnoxious, still crude and undisciplined and immature, and he still persisted in causing trouble and loudly demanding attention and getting on every last one of Iruka's nerves.

The boy talked through lessons, slept through lessons, and sometimes skipped lessons altogether, apparently all because he was bored. He was impatient, frequently late, his appearance was near unfailingly sloppy, and his school work was often incredibly subpar when it was completed at all. Iruka could swear that his red pens screamed in despair when it came time to mark Naruto's tests. The boy also persisted in harassing the other students, in whispering to them during lectures, in poking at them and pranking them.

God, the pranks were endless. Sometimes it felt like every time Iruka turned around, he had to sidestep a bucket of paint, only to step right into a bucket of glitter that wouldn't come out of his clothes for weeks. With Naruto in his class, Iruka's hair glittered for months.

It made Iruka furious that he'd ever been afraid of this boy, even though he was still wary of the Demon Fox he could never forget waited inside. He knew the boy didn't know about the Demon Fox, but surely the boy still noticed something. Didn't he care that people startled at his loudness and flinched away when he made a sudden move? Why would the boy continue to press forward, past people's boundaries, when they shied away from his company?

The boy's lack of discipline was also infuriating because he actually had potential. He was going to get himself killed someday, if he didn't take everyone else with him first, but he had potential.

His physical endurance was impressive, even if his skills needed much more disciplined practice, such that Iruka had rarely seen a child so able to take a hit and keep on coming. Naruto's energy sometimes seemed limitless in how he didn't stop. Iruka had had to call spars simply because the boy refused to surrender, even when pinned. In fights, the boy frequently succeeded seemingly out of a combination of sheer stubbornness and genuine cleverness.

And that wasn't even getting started on the boy's chakra capacity; Iruka wasn't even sure that the boy's chakra had a limit. Naruto's control was atrocious, such that his attempts at calling on his chakra almost always ended with a minor explosion, but he could keep on failing at a chakra exercise or jutsu long past when any other child would have fainted from exhaustion.

The boy was genuinely clever – it was true, despite his refusal to just give up long past when he reasonably should have given up or been incapable of continuing – more so than Iruka would have guessed from his obnoxious behavior in the classroom. For every dozen failures to grasp even basic concepts as Iruka explained them, there was the occasional moment of insight that gave Iruka pause, if only because Naruto kept blurting it out in the middle of the lesson when Iruka was talking.

And Iruka knew that a person couldn't devise and set up all the pranks that the boy managed without some genuine cleverness and skill. Iruka had been developing a reputation as the new teacher that was extremely difficult to prank and Naruto had singlehandedly ruined that.

It made Iruka so incredibly angry. Not the ruined reputation as immune to pranks, because that was petty nonsense, but that the boy persisted in wasting his skills on petty nonsense. The boy persisted in staying in the village, in attending the Academy, in being in Iruka's class, and apparently saw fit to squander the opportunity in favor of being an obnoxious, self-centered, disrespectful, undisciplined brat. A brat wasting Iruka's time, patience, and constantly ruining his painstakingly ordered head.

Iruka's painstakingly, carefully ordered and glittering head.

It made him too frustrated for words sometimes: the easy mess the boy made of Iruka's boxes. Now it seemed that the boy took up twice as much room in Iruka's head as before. There was all the anger and fear that Iruka had for the Demon Fox, forever lingering where Iruka kept stuffing it away and creeping out at the least convenient moment, and now there was also all the anger and frustration that Iruka had for the unignorable Uzumaki Naruto.

oOo

"I see that your run-in with the school's resident prankster hasn't faded yet."

Iruka looked up from his marking to see Ito Hitomi, a senior teacher at the Academy and one of his mentors, standing in the doorway of his classroom. She had a hand over her mouth, like she was trying to be polite about still finding amusement in the glitter that had been lingering in his hair for nearly two months now.

It didn't seem to matter how many times Iruka washed it, because he just kept walking into another handful of glitter the very next day.

"Go ahead and laugh. Everyone else does," Iruka sighed.

Hitomi laughed and came in. School had ended for the day, which meant that everyone got to go home except for the teachers. So, they spent the next half-hour chatting about how the first three months of the school year had gone.

Eventually, Hitomi asked Iruka's opinion of Uzumaki Naruto.

This startled Iruka, because none of his colleagues had so outright asked him that. They gave him pitying looks and murmured condolences, if they didn't outright avoid the topic of the Demon Fox and its boy, or outright avoid Iruka himself like they were the civilians at the grocery store who were terrified of anyone who came in close contact with the Demon Fox boy. One or two of them had made sly remarks that Iruka had willfully ignored, but none of them had directly asked yet.

Iruka wasn't about to pretend that he was in any way fond of the boy, that he enjoyed having such a nuisance and the container for the Demon Fox in his classroom, but he wasn't about to rant on to his mentor about the boy either. He tried to keep his disapproval succinct and professional.

"Undisciplined," he told her. "Stubborn. Loud."

"A pain in your ass?"

Iruka looked at his mentor warily and this non-answer was answer enough for her. Hitomi burst out laughing. It annoyed Iruka somewhat that she found his suffering and frustration laughable, but she had no way of knowing all the anger and fear that peeked out at him every damn day.

She'd also taught Naruto, he knew, at least a time or two in passing.

Hitomi patted Iruka on the back and sighed fondly. "Oh, aren't they all," she said. Then, after a moment's thought, she added, "He reminded me of you."

oOo

Hitomi dismissed herself soon after that, claiming that she was meeting her husband at their favorite restaurant for their date night. She pinched his cheeks and teasingly told him that he needed to find someone to do things with, to share meals with, before he ended up bitter and lonely. Iruka fended her off and bid her a stilted farewell.

I'm already bitter and lonely, some part of him thought as she went, which startled him.

Was he really? Surely not. Iruka had friends; he went on dates occasionally; he had a job that he usually enjoyed that left him surrounded by people nearly all day long. He remembered being so bitter and lonely that he thought he could have died from the unhappiness. He'd grown out of that. It had taken hard work and some harder truths, but Iruka had determinedly grown out of the misery that had threatened to swallow him completely after his parents had died.

Had it come back? With all the anger and fear that Iruka couldn't bring himself to face?

He reminded me of you, Hitomi had said.

Iruka stayed at his desk, looking down at the red-marked papers in front of him and not really seeing them for a long time. He kept thinking of another young boy who had been undisciplined and stubborn and unforgivably loud. Another boy who had laughed too much and been clever in all the wrong places and been desperate for attention, for answers, and for awareness.

He went home with a head so much of a mess that it hurt.

oOo

It occurred to Iruka that he didn't know who was looking after the boy. He knew that Uzumaki Naruto was an orphan – a person would be hard-pressed to find someone in Konoha who didn't know that the Demon Fox's container was an orphan – but he didn't know who the boy's guardian was. It seemed to Iruka that the boy just ran around the village like a wild thing.

Belonging to no one. No one belonging to him.

Iruka had met plenty of his students' parents by now. They came around to introduce themselves, when dropping their kids off or picking them up, or Iruka went over to introduce himself. Iruka had had to call a few of them in to talk about their child's performance.

But Iruka reported Naruto's progress to the Sandaime Hokage – once a month in an awkward meeting that left Iruka feeling like the disobedient child – who seemed to accept Iruka's stilted observations with nothing more than a thoughtful nod. Sometimes a considering hum. The most Iruka had ever gotten out of the old man was a laugh, when he first showed up to their meetings with glittering hair and an unhappy confirmation as to the culprit.

Iruka knew that the Sandaime Hokage was not the boy's day-to-day caretaker. Someone would have noticed if the Hokage was performing parenthood for the Demon Fox boy – looking after a child required constant work and presence – and Iruka couldn't picture the old man helping the boy learn how to make lunches and do laundry and keep a house clean. The Sandaime just didn't have the time. And Iruka couldn't picture it of the guards supposedly constantly watching the boy either, fairly certain that that was strictly against the rules of such a position.

Iruka had always assumed that the boy had someone, and that that pitiful someone was either doing a very poor job or performing a useless endeavor in trying to teach such a wild boy some manners. Iruka had put the idea of some ghostly caretaker onto a shelf as a done fact.

A done fact that he had no proof of.

There were some parts of a student's home life that Iruka wasn't privy to – clan kids could be a nightmare of hurdles and obstacles, if a teacher wanted to know about their home life and the training they received there – but Iruka was privy to the identities of his students' guardians, should he need to speak to them. Iruka told himself he was just doing his job – perhaps, embarrassingly, extremely belatedly – as he sought out the boy's paperwork for some answers.

There had to be someone out there who could actually do something about Naruto's behavior.

Someone else.

oOo

Iruka wasn't happy to learn that the boy didn't have a caretaker.

The boy had used to live in an orphanage until fairly recently, but now he seemed to live on his own, on an allowance provided by the village. The boy's rent and utilities were apparently paid for, but things like grocery shopping, laundry, and all other housekeeping elements were already his own responsibility. Apparently, the boy had been more than adamant that he could do all these things for himself, and no one had truly argued against the Demon Fox boy leaving their responsibility.

Which explained why Iruka had just this week seen the boy eating a pack of uncooked instant ramen as his lunch. Naruto's claim to one of the other children was that he had woken up late and not had the time to make himself a real lunch, before licking at the flavor packet and declaring that ramen was the best food there was anyway.

This was… uncomfortable, because that was not a proper meal and it was also intensely familiar. Iruka had had a friend, with a working single parent who hadn't the time to make their child's lunches, who had regularly done the exact same thing. Their argument had been that any food to keep the body's energy up was better than no food at all, which had been true enough.

The closest thing the boy seemed to have to guardian was the Sandaime Hokage after all. The boy had regular meetings with the Sandaime at Hokage Tower, to report his school progress and check in on his home life, and casually, disrespectfully, continually referred to the honorable leader of their village as "Jiji". But Iruka doubted they truly discussed the boy's home life, beyond that the Demon Fox boy had a roof over his head and was feeding himself.

Not every space in Iruka's head was full of anger and fear, but not all the rest of it was happy.

When Iruka had lost his parents, he hadn't had any other relatives to take him in. He'd gone to an orphanage for a while, as shelter, but it had been crowded and miserable, and Iruka had moved out as soon as possible to live on his own. He'd refused the half-hearted offer of a home from one of his parents' friends, determined that no one would or ever could replace his beloved parents.

Iruka remembered what it was like to learn how to make a household budget by himself, instead of helping his mother and having her indulgently correct his mistakes. Iruka remembered what it was like to open empty cupboards, then to recall that his father wasn't there to go haggle at the market every other morning anymore. Iruka remembered what it was like to come home to an empty house, with chores piling up that he didn't want to do, with the furious thought that human beings weren't meant to live alone and that the world was cruelly unfair to ever make it possible.

It was hard to imagine the Demon Fox boy suffering through those same things... or similar things. Was it different without a beloved mother and father to remember? Was it even possible to miss what the Demon Fox boy had never known?

He reminded me of you.

Perhaps what Iruka liked least about finding out that the boy didn't truly have a caretaker or guardian is that it meant that, as the boy's teacher, Iruka was actually the closest thing the boy had to a caretaker or guardian. Iruka. Of all people. And while Iruka already felt he was partially responsible for the wellbeing for his students, the idea of being wholly responsible for the wellbeing of a child left him with the urge to jump out the nearest window or quit on the spot. Or both.

The idea of being wholly responsible for the wellbeing of the Demon Fox boy…

Well.

It was almost like being responsible for the Demon Fox itself, wasn't it?

Iruka felt many things at that idea, but if he was to be truly honest about it, he probably would have said that he was mostly just terrified. Scared or uncertain didn't even begin to describe the mindless fear Iruka felt at the idea. Every time he thought about it, he tried desperately to avoid opening memories that spilled out all the anger, fire, loneliness, and grief he wanted nothing more than to shove under a bed and forget about forever.

oOo

About a month after Iruka had been told by his mentor that the boy who held the monster that had killed Iruka's parents reminded her of Iruka… after Iruka had slowly been coming to realize he didn't know nearly as much about the boy as he thought he did… he went out to drinks with some of his colleagues at the Academy.

Most of them had noticed how Iruka's frustration had turned pensive, and Iruka was grateful at how their solution seemed to be to push drinks at him instead of talking about it.

At least, most of them didn't talk about it. About an hour into the night out, Iruka was pleasantly buzzed and still smiling at a story about a sparring mishap, when Mizuki sat down next to him and decided to interrupt the lull with a comment about another student who needed special consideration by his teachers.

"I hope you've been treating the Demon Boy rightly," Mizuki said wryly.

When he said this, he made "rightly" sound like an antonym to its usual self. Like a joke.

"I treat all of my students fairly," Iruka answered stiffly.

Mizuki just laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Sure. We all have favorites, Iruka." Then he winked. "And least favorites. You don't need to pretend with that thing."

When he said this, it wasn't clear whether he was referring to the Demon Fox or the boy.

Iruka didn't like it either way.

"I'm not pretending anything," Iruka said.

It was true about Uzumaki Naruto – at least, it was getting truer. Iruka's dislike of the boy had become complicated and, even then, Iruka had endeavored to treat the boy fairly. Misbehavior earned admonishment and detentions, no matter who it was and no matter how badly Iruka didn't want to spend more time with the boy to supervise a punishment.

It was a lie on the count that Iruka had been pretending to be all in order and alright for months.

Mizuki just laughed at him again. Like this was another terribly funny joke.

"Sure," he said. "Let me buy you another drink."

oOo

The months went by and many of Iruka's previous observations were given new perspectives. It was, in hindsight, embarrassing on many counts – especially Iruka's abilities as an intelligence operative – to see how much of Iruka's dislike had been tainted by his anger and fear. It had been as though Iruka had been spitefully seeking out any reason, no matter how petty or irrational or unfair, not to have to tolerate the boy's presence.

Naruto's obnoxiousness and crudeness were little more than those of any other little boy, only to be expected of someone who had been raised in an orphanage by wary caretakers, and who had never had a parent to tell him to mind his manners or even to explain what manners to mind. All children were undisciplined and immature – that was just how children were, as they slowly grew and learned and gained better control over themselves – and they needed adults to guide them and teach them things they had no way of knowing by themselves.

It was unfair of Iruka to expect better of a boy who had no better examples.

It was incredibly daunting and humiliating to think that the boy's best and perhaps only example for discipline and manners was now Iruka himself, who was hardly a paragon of either virtue.

Naruto's seemingly absurd questions weren't willful misunderstanding, but the result of a genuine lack of knowledge to support Iruka's lessons and explanations. The boy had no one to tell him stories of Konoha's founding, no one to explain clan politics or the traditional role of shinobi, and no one to explain the things that Iruka and many others understood as the basic facts of living in the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

The boy couldn't go home to someone and ask for a second explanation, or for help with reading or other homework, from someone who understood him and his way of thinking and his gaps in knowledge. All he had for his education in this world were what he could seek out for himself, what he could ask in his occasional meetings with the Sandaime Hokage, what he could learn from his peers whose parents had warned away from him, and what he could get out of Iruka. Continually interrupting Iruka during class might very well be the boy's only method of asking for help.

Just as his pranks and persistence in interacting with his peers might very well be the boy's only method of asking for attention. For praise and recognition. For human connection. Iruka, who had been a well-known prankster when he was a child, now recognized that cry for attention all too well. Hitomi had been right. The similarities there were… striking.

Everything else had similar explanations. Naruto was frequently late, but Iruka remembered occasionally having to be dragged out of bed by his feet by his determined mother, and the mess of having to learn how to manage his time without her and his father. Naruto's appearance was unfailingly sloppy and sometimes ragged, but Iruka remembered having to learn how to do laundry by himself and ruining his favorite shirt in the process. Iruka remembered having to learn how to buy his own clothes and how to look after them, pricking his fingers as he stubbornly taught himself how to sew a button back onto a shirt and how to darn a sock.

Iruka was an adult now, a chuunin finally, and he was still learning how to look after himself. He didn't know a single one of his friends or colleagues who didn't have some horribly embarrassing story about learning how to be a functional person… and another one about learning how to be a functional shinobi on top of that. Some of these stories were embarrassingly recent.

Who was the boy supposed to go to? The Hokage? …The Demon Fox?

oOo

It made Iruka incredibly angry, although half of the burning feeling was probably shame, that the boy be left to his own devices and the village simply be left to cope with the Demon Fox's presence among them. Shouldn't they all have someone to guide them through this?

Iruka knew that his anger towards the boy was misdirected and unfair – he had needed to learn this twice, which shamed him. He now also knew that this new anger, after coming to learn more about Uzumaki Naruto, wasn't his old hateful fear of the Demon Fox for simply existing and for destroying his life and so much of the village.

So, what was this anger? Where did Iruka's new anger really belong then? Where was it trying to go, as it repeatedly struggled and slipped out of its box to seek a target? Where ought Iruka's new anger go if not with the child Iruka originally had barely been able to look at and yet had barely been able to take his eyes off of? Where ought this new anger go, if it wasn't for the monster Iruka had not seen fire nor tail of since it had been sealed away into this orphan boy?

Iruka knew the history of the jinchuuriki. Most people did. The story of Uzumaki Mito, the first jinchuuriki and the wife of the Shodaime Hokage for whom the boy was ostensibly named, and her human sacrifice was a staple of Konoha's history. The Shodaime's treaties with the other Hidden Villages to scatter the powers across the Elemental Countries, in the hopes to create a balance of power through the potential of mutually assured destruction, was also well-known. The importance of keeping the Demon Fox within the village and in a human container had been reiterated when the Sandaime had visited the Academy to assuage its teachers, just before Naruto had begun to attend.

Did Iruka's anger belong with the Sandaime then? For leaving such an important and dangerous person with such distant care? For leaving such an important and dangerous person in Iruka's care? If the Demon Fox and its jinchuuriki were so valuable, why was Iruka apparently the boy's only teacher and closest thing to a caretaker? It didn't make any reasonable sense.

Did Iruka's anger belong with the boy's previous caretakers and his own colleagues at the Academy? At the civilians who shied away from the boy in the streets? At the parents who told their children to steer clear of their jinchuuriki classmate, without giving a reason why? The boy didn't even know that he had the Demon Fox sealed inside him. Uzumaki Naruto was only an ignorant, innocent child. Yet some people strove to avoid even Iruka simply for being the boy's teacher.

As though the Demon Fox would possess the boy, infect Iruka, and then infect them as well. As though they were see the Demon Fox if they so much as looked at the boy. As though the Demon Fox would open its mouth and swallow them whole if they dared try to speak with the boy.

It was ridiculous.

Did Iruka's anger lie with himself? For still being unable to approach the boy and offer sympathy or a more direct helping hand? For still being afraid of the monster that was sealed away inside the boy? For still being angry, unreasonably and irrationally and much against his will, with the boy for being alone and having to make his own way in the world? For being angry at the boy for demanding attention?

Yes, it did. Iruka's anger lay partly with himself in layers upon layers of humiliation and shame and grieving fear. The boy had done nothing to deserve such raging anger from Iruka.

But it was not only that. There was too much anger in Iruka for it to be only shame at his own behavior. The anger was misdirected and disjointed and slippery, confused and restless and without direction. If Iruka tried to put it all in one box, it only slithered out the sides and then he didn't know where it had gone or where it was going. It hid itself in other boxes and would find him before he found it. It was always there, new or old, like Iruka would never be rid of it.

Like Iruka would never be rid of things to be angry at. Like he wasn't trying hard enough.

oOo

The methods of dealing with Naruto became clearer as the months went by. Some of the boy's pranks became predictable and easier to avoid, Iruka actually forcing himself to call on the boy during class could help keep the boy's attention, and the boy was highly motivated by his desire to gain the skills to become "the greatest ninja who has ever lived".

The boy was determined to be Hokage someday. It was mind-boggling.

It didn't necessarily become easier to deal with Naruto, but it became manageable. Iruka no longer secretly collapsed to hyperventilate after telling him off for disrupting class. Iruka might have still avoided eye contact but he was no longer under the impression that the Demon Fox was looking out of the boy's eyes, judging everyone, waiting for the opportunity to break out and devour them all. Iruka could go about his day and his job without feeling overwhelming terror and anger every time he looked at the boy, though the newfound shame and low key anger weren't exactly pleasant.

Nor was the guilt, which also refused to be boxed away.

Iruka didn't have the courage to call the boy back after class to talk to him personally about his school work and his home life. Naruto was always so eager to leave school at the end of the day. Iruka could hold the boy back for detentions and stiltedly admonish him for his behavior, but he didn't know how to begin the conversation he knew needed to be had. He forced himself to write corrections and advice in the margins of the boy's work, but he didn't know if Naruto read them or understood what Iruka was trying to say if he did.

It wasn't as though the boy was doing that badly. He was clearly managing to dress and feed himself – messy lunches had appeared and Iruka had seen the boy at the grocery store a time or two, scowling at vegetables like he wasn't sure what they were but still determined to conquer them – and his schoolwork and ninja skills were both slowly improving. If the boy ever learned how to focus and apply himself, if he learned some time management and found proper guidance for his skillsets, he'd probably be a fine ninja someday.

Iruka was even coming to admire – perhaps a little out of disbelief – how the boy remained determined to chase his enormous dreams. Iruka had never met anyone who so willfully refused to recognize his limits – which in many ways was a very bad thing for the boy's survival and health, but still oddly inspiring when watching the boy take a hit and keep on coming with spiteful, cheerful determination. And then keep on coming. And keep on coming.

Despite how Naruto struggled with concepts that were basic to his classmates, despite how he struggled to look after himself, despite how he struggled with the dislike and disdain of many of his peers, teachers, neighbors, and fellow citizens of Konoha… the boy stubbornly refused to give up.

But Iruka still didn't have the courage to approach the boy. He didn't know how to begin the conversations that needed to be had or how to handle the consequences that reaching out would entail. If Iruka decided to help the boy, to reach out, it wouldn't be something done lightly or once, and Iruka was afraid of taking on that responsibility. Sometimes it felt like Iruka could barely look after himself. How was Iruka supposed to take responsibility for a child who still – unintentionally – gave him nightmares? How was Iruka supposed to be the boy's caretaker and guide when he still occasionally choked on his own anger and fear and shame?

Besides, Iruka had so many other students who needed attention. He didn't have the time to become a fulltime parent. Sometimes it felt like Iruka barely had the time to be a fulltime teacher. Would it even be fair for Iruka to pay so much more attention to the wellbeing and progress of one students above the others? Would Iruka be accused of favoritism towards the Demon Fox boy if he gave more of his limited energy to Naruto? Would it be favoritism?

The boy needed someone better than Iruka and there were plenty of people better than Iruka out there. Iruka had never imagined that there was anything he could do that couldn't be better done by someone else. Iruka didn't know what to do and didn't really want to do it, whatever "it" was.

But… there didn't seem to be anyone else stepping forward.

Iruka definitely didn't have the courage to march up to the Sandaime Hokage and demand that something be done. Every time that Iruka went to report on Uzumaki Naruto's progress to the leader of the village, it was all Iruka could do not to say, "What the hell do you want from me?"

oOo

The best that Iruka managed to do was pull together a collection of pamphlets and books on housekeeping, training, and time management. A pocket guide on how to do laundry and look after clothing. A small book on the extreme basics of cooking and some very simple recipes. A leaflet on how to budget for dummies. The Academy's pamphlet on workouts and physical training for their students to do at home. A list of ways to improve focus. Another list of suggestions on how to get along with other people. That sort of thing.

Iruka left them in the boy's desk and felt… cautious courage when they disappeared.

He'd wished he'd had resources like that when he'd lived alone, after the Demon Fox attack, and this wasn't the first time he'd had to pull together those resources for someone else. There were a lot of orphans after the Demon Fox attack… and the life of a shinobi could be very short even without monsters destroying large swaths of the village. Iruka knew other students and fellow adult shinobi alike who needed a nudge in the right direction when it came to looking after themselves. None of them with situations quite so dire as Naruto's, but still needing help.

Still, this wasn't Iruka's best and he knew it.

oOo

You don't deserve this, Iruka might have thought to the boy, if the boxes in his head were in order and he had the time to examine them all. God, I wish I was brave. All I can seem to do is blame other people for my cowardice. I don't want to go through life blaming other people for why I'm not brave. I don't know if I'm brave enough to stop.

He was too busy, however, to think this properly.

Perhaps this was why his mind was such a mess. He never seemed to have the time to do anything more than shove everything into boxes. At this point, it didn't really matter that the boxes weren't labelled, because he'd just been shoving memories and emotions anywhere they'd fit while he went on his missions, went to work, and tried not to let himself be petty and mean and furious.

He'd been meaning to unpack himself for a very long time, it seemed, but at this point Iruka was scared of what he'd find. Getting rid of clutter and getting everything into a proper order usually meant pulling everything out into a horrible mess first, and Iruka frankly just didn't have the time to do anything like that. He had class tomorrow.

Coward, he thought to himself.

oOo

The school year ended sooner than Iruka had been expecting. The year had felt far too long at the same time that it had flown by, and exams were upon the Academy with only a tidal wave of last minute assignments to mark as warning. Iruka's first year with his own class was over.

He was proud of his students. They had done very well on average. They were really too young to be taking the graduation exam, but some of them had tried anyway and come closer to passing than Iruka might have expected. He assured them all that there was always next year and that life was not made of successes on the first attempt, and they had gone off with thanks and bows and determination to see him for the next school year. They had also gone with perhaps a few tears, but that was ordinary enough and it was good for his students to let their frustrations out.

Oddly enough, Naruto was one of the students to attempt the graduation exam. The boy hadn't even been close to ready and he had failed somewhat miserably. There wasn't a limit on the number of times a student could take the exams or an age requirement for taking them, but Iruka thought perhaps there was some harm in letting anyone try. Iruka felt horrible when Naruto's face crumpled at his failure, even having already warned the boy it was unlikely that he'd pass.

Iruka had assured his other students that there would be more chances and that success was worth failing for, and he couldn't do any less for Naruto. He put his hand, carefully, on Naruto's shoulder and made those assurances. There was always next year. It was common not to make genin on the first attempt and very uncommon to make genin so young.

Naruto looked up at Iruka with wide eyes, like he hadn't expected this basic kindness of his teacher, and Iruka felt even worse as he tried to smile for the boy. As he tried to keep his hand from trembling on the boy's shoulder.

For so long, Iruka had been so certain that if he looked into this little boy's eyes on purpose… or for too long by accident… he would see the Demon Fox inside. Iruka had been so terrified that he would see the monster inside that little boy… and that that monster would see him. The Demon Fox already peeked out of so many of the boxes in Iruka's head, so much so that Iruka usually hadn't been able to look at the real box – the boy who actually, unknowingly, held the real Demon Fox inside him - and meet his eyes.

But Uzumaki Naruto's eyes were just blue.

There was no fire in them, no burning rage, no heart-quaking roar and starving hatred. There was no Demon Fox in the boy's eyes. Iruka looked directly into the boy's eyes and no monster looked back out at him. The eyes were just blue. There was nothing in them but a boy.

Seeing this, Iruka felt surprised, and then embarrassed and ashamed.

The only person who looked back at Iruka was Naruto.

Suddenly, Iruka had just realized that as he was seeing the boy, the boy was seeing him too. As he had been watching the boy, the boy had been watching him too. As Iruka had been thinking over the boy and forming his opinions, the boy had been thinking about him and forming his own opinions of Iruka. And who knew what the boy saw? Who knew what the boy thought?

Iruka let go of the boy's shoulder. He drew back and looked away.

The awkward moment ended sooner than Iruka had been expecting; he didn't need to say anything else. Naruto was quick to break away and made grand, loud, enthusiastic exclamations about how he would pass with flying colors next year, about how he would soon prove himself the greatest ninja to ever live, and about how he would send all his enemies fleeing on sight.

Naruto bragged that he would be Hokage in no time!

"Believe it!" he cried.

It might have been cute, if it wasn't completely unlike the life that most ninja knew. Iruka shooed Naruto out of his classroom with the excuse that he was busy. Also, with the admonishment that Naruto would have to practice more and study harder and pay attention in class if he wanted to graduate next year and be a great ninja someday!

"You'll need my lessons when you're a ninja someday!" Iruka said. "Believe that!"

Naruto stuck out his tongue and scampered off before Iruka could admonish him for that too. Iruka just sighed and pinched his nose, above the scar, at the disrespect. Then he went and put his trembling hands on his desk and sat down.

God, you're only a boy, he thought. You were only ever just a child.

oOo

Iruka was one of the last to leave the Academy that day, besides the caretakers. His low seniority at the Academy and part-time position with the Mission Assignment Desk made him a favorite for the brunt of the paperwork that could be shoved off on other people. It was nearing sunset by the time Iruka stepped out of the building, with the sky slowly turning a pleasant orange.

The Academy teachers weren't planning to go out for a meal and then drinks until tomorrow, so Iruka didn't know what he was going to do for dinner. He thought about calling on one of his friends, to see if they wanted to hang out or do something to celebrate the end of his first year.

As he was thinking about this, he noticed that he wasn't alone on the school grounds. Across from the building was a thick, shady tree with a single swing, and there was a child sitting on the swing with hunched and shaking shoulders. Curious to know why a student was still at the Academy and what they might be waiting for, Iruka went over to see what was wrong. It was hardly the first time he'd seen a student upset after exams were over.

He paused, initially, upon realizing that it was Naruto.

Oh, no.

Iruka was in no way prepared to face Naruto genuinely upset, but… he was the only person here. If he turned around and left now, there was no way the boy wouldn't notice, and Iruka would be a terrible person besides. Reluctantly, Iruka put his foot down and kept walking forward.

"Naruto," he said awkwardly. "I thought you went home."

It was a stupid thing to say, Iruka realized as soon as he'd said it, when the boy didn't have much of a home to go back to. Oh, the boy had an empty house, but that wasn't the same as a home.

Naruto wiped his arm over his teary, snotty face. "I'll leave now, Iruka-sensei."

Iruka had had to kick students off school grounds before, but he wasn't trying to do it now.

"No, that's not…" Iruka took a breath. "What's wrong?"

Naruto wiped his face on his other arm and stubbornly said, "Nuthin'."

It was clear that Iruka wasn't going to get a straight answer out of the boy. Not that this mattered, because it was clear what was wrong, a failed test could easily get anyone down. It took failures to succeed, but that didn't mean failing felt good. Iruka had left some failed tests behind feeling like he might break apart from the disappointment and shame of it.

And going home to an empty house afterwards had never made him feel better.

When Iruka's parents were still alive, they would make a huge dinner to celebrate the end of a school year. It was the trying that was important, his mother said. Iruka had missed these dinners more than anything, in the years after his parents had died. All the little traditions of their family had vanished in one terrible night of fire and death.

Iruka couldn't imagine not having family traditions to miss.

"I was going to go out to eat tonight," he said, and took a deep breath to quell the pounding in his chest. "To celebrate the end of the school year. But I don't know where to go and I don't have anyone to eat with. How about you pick for me and come with me? I'll buy."

One of Iruka's neighbors had only just started talking to him again, after a year without him being possessed by the Demon Fox. Iruka hadn't bothered to tell her that wasn't how anything worked, especially since he'd felt the same irrational fear for years. If Iruka went out to dinner with Naruto now, she probably wouldn't talk to him for another year… or ever again.

Not that that was much of a loss, but she probably wouldn't be the only one.

But Naruto looked up at him with wide, gleaming eyes, and Iruka refused to take the invitation back for people like that. He'd been such a coward for the past year and the least he could do now was comfort a kid who didn't have anyone to go home to. He could swallow his fear for a single decent meal. It wouldn't make up for the past years of avoidance and resentment, but… Iruka didn't know that anything would… and that didn't mean it wasn't worth trying.

Iruka could take the snubbing of a few people who probably weren't worth talking to anyway. He could take a few accusations of favoritism, if anyone wanted to dare go through the Academy Headmistress or the Sandaime Hokage about a simple meal.

"Getting through another year is something to celebrate, isn't it?" Iruka said awkwardly. "How about it? There's a good barbecue place near here that's still open…"

He trailed off, recalling that the restaurant had been rebuilt within the past five years, after their original building and some of the owner's family had been killed in the Demon Fox attack. Iruka had never been kicked out of a business before, but… he'd overheard Naruto bragging about getting banned from several businesses to a fellow student. Iruka couldn't be sure that the restaurant would serve Naruto, which would be… not good.

"Unless you know a good place?" Iruka suggested.

"…Ichiraku," Naruto said finally, sniffling loudly. "Ramen Ichiraku."

Iruka thought he had heard of it before, in passing, as a pretty good ramen restaurant. "Sounds like a good choice." It was the boy's favorite, wasn't it? "I haven't had ramen in months. I don't think I know where it is, though, so you'll have to lead us there."

Naruto blinked, then gaped at him. "…Months?"

It might have been more recently, but Iruka honestly couldn't remember. It was probably more recently than the several months Naruto was probably imagining with great horror.

"Maybe a year," Iruka said instead. "Is it good ramen?"

"It's the best!" Naruto insisted.

"Then I'll buy you some, for introducing me to the best ramen in Konoha," Iruka said.

Naruto hopped to his feet. "It's the best in the world," he declared, as someone who had never left the village before in his life. "Old man Teuchi travelled all over the world to learn how to make every kind of ramen… so he could turn it into the best ramen ever."

"Oh?" Iruka said, pulling away in the hopes Naruto would follow. "Did he now?"

Naruto hurried after Iruka, falling into step a little ahead of him, so he could stare Iruka in the face and imperiously continue, "He told me so! He went to the Secret Temple of a Thousand Hundred Dishes, hidden in the mountains, and learned how to make ramen from the Noodle Monks! He had to beg them on his knees and do all these quests to get them to teach him, too! And he's sworn to secrets about their l- about where the temple is! So no one else can learn too!"

It was all Iruka could do not to burst out laughing. "That's very impressive," he said instead. "I didn't know that there was a… secret ramen temple with Noodle Monks."

You're just a boy, he thought again. You were only ever just a child.

Naruto nodded smugly. "No one does! So Old Man Teuchi's the best ramen chef in the world now!"

And you've got no one except me.

And I'm still terrified of you.

What a mess.

"Well, I'm looking forward to trying it," Iruka said firmly. "Lead the way."

oOo

THE END

oOo

AN: Thank you for reading.

The title of this fic was originally going to be from a quote from Sir Terry Pratchett's Jingo, but then I realized that the words "fox" and "box" rhyme, and I couldn't ignore that. So, the title of this fic is from Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham, because that's also a story about blind prejudice and the rhyme was too good to give up. (Jingo is a very good book, but the bigotry and prejudice there are different to the situation here, more about war between countries and irrationally hating foreigners, so that was another reason to drop that title.)

"'Would you eat them in a box?

Would you eat them with a fox?'

'Not in a box. Not with a fox.

Not in a house, not with a mouse.

I would not eat them here or there.

I would not eat them anywhere.

I would not eat green eggs and ham.

I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.'"

- Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham

"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."

― Terry Pratchett, Jingo