Author's Notes: Short but still kind of rambling – a sort-of-not-quite stream-of-consciousness thing (in other words, it contains mostly complete sentences but possibly stumbles over itself with redundant or otherwise rehashed concepts). You can eat or drink or listen to music or pet a pet – or all of those – at the same time, though, so I imagine you'll survive the duration. See The Reasoning Behind It below for the full story.

Title: Reparations

Author: Reaper Nanashi (Lady Shinigami)

Pairing: None Intended, but I guess it could be SasuNaru if you really, really wanted it to be

Word Count: 4044

Category: Naruto

Genre: Angst/Drama/Bildungsroman (character study)

Type: One-shot (Complete)

Rating: T (teeny-tiny cursing, slightly morbid poetic imagery, long-windedness)

Spoilers: Only if you haven't read/seen the events up to and including the Valley of the End; in other words, all of Naruto Part I. And I find it hard to believe that there's anyone anywhere who doesn't at least know about it by now.

Date Submitted: 12/3/09

Disclaimer: Ultimately, the characters are all at the mercy of Kishimoto-sensei. I sneak in a visitation whenever he's not looking.

Claimer: Anything you read and don't quite understand is probably mine. And if you do understand it, then I'm not doing a good enough job.

Summary: Too late to stop Sasuke, Kakashi retrieved Naruto from the Valley of the End. Only as his delinquent student recovered did he begin to understand who the blond really was, and in the process he learned about himself as well.

The Reasoning Behind It: I was scanning the messageboards of LeafNinja for some reason – just looking, since I'm not part of the club – and saw a thread rather vaguely titled Kakashi's Feelings Toward Naruto? The thread was about whether or not Kakashi (platonically) liked Naruto because he seemed to spend so much time working with Sasuke and Sakura – but especially Sasuke – more than he ever did Naruto. Ninety-five percent of the discussion was within the realm of maturity, so I lingered and examined both sides – sides which were hard to delineate because everyone's opinion seemed to overlap everyone else's just a little bit while the rest remained relatively unique. I agreed with some things, disagreed with others – the Naruto-lovers said Kakashi probably hated him because he had learning difficulties, the Kakashi-lovers said that Sasuke was just more important because Naruto never tried, one person said Naruto was making a pansy out of Kakashi in Part II – but nothing I read, and I admit I didn't get to read all of it, resonated in my head as being right. So, of course, I wrote about it. That's what my life is like nowadays.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or to be the mirror reflecting it.

– Edith Wharton

It was an accident.

. . . No, it had never been an accident. 'Accident' implied something that had not been done intentionally, something relatively innocent that had just ended unhappily. Rather than an accident, then, it was simply half his life six inches from being flushed down the world's scuzziest toilet.

Yes, that was much better.

Behind him, Sakura was crying. She felt guilty for sending Naruto after Sasuke, but she should have let it go – he would have gone even if she had not asked, begged, wept . . . No reason to feel guilty over galvanizing a choice that Naruto would have made regardless.

"He'll be okay, won't he, Hokage-sama?" she sobbed to Tsunade, who was slowly scanning Naruto's semi-conscious form with dedicated care for every possible detail.

"He'll be fine," was the soft, relieved response, and Sakura nodded and kept quiet after that.

It was odd, how some things changed over time. In the beginning, Sakura probably would not have turned to Naruto for anything, and if she had then she would have assumed without a doubt that any injuries he incurred were a result of his own stupidity. But, with his usual volume and exuberance, Naruto had foisted his presence into her life even when he was not actually physically there, and she had gotten to a point where she could not recall him not being somewhere in the back of her head. That had spawned a newborn sibling affection which, since it had been born finally, would never completely die; Naruto would always be the little brother she had never wanted but who had grown on her like the obnoxious, harmless wart that he was. It was a good change, for both of them, and one he was relieved to see each day.

Other things, it seemed, never changed at all. Himself, for example.

He would always get it wrong.

Really, he should have learned his lesson long before that moment; Murphy followed him everywhere. The fifth time was the charm, though, and seeing as Naruto – for what was easily the millionth time – was not dead, he was finally going to get it and see things like he had been pretending he could for so many years. The fact was that, ultimately, Naruto could die any day; if he did not want that to happen to someone else who was important to him, he needed to stop brooding and mourning and waiting for everyone around him to just keel over. He had to start doing everything he could, not merely what was satisfactory, and if Naruto still died . . .

Well, he already knew that was how things were, and he would have to accept it if it happened.

It had started innocently enough, however much that meant. He had focused on Sakura and Sasuke because they were clearly going to be, respectively, a decent kunoichi and a spectacular shinobi. They had needed some fine-tuning and a few new techniques, but both were admirably studious even if one kept trying to drape herself all over the other – that obsession could be dealt with easily enough. Had they not passed his exam he would not have trained them, of course, but he had still noticed that if they did pass they would be well worth his time.

Naruto, on the other hand, had passed the academy on nothing more grand than a convenient technicality. He was a triple-failure academy student who knew an A-class technique – dear lord, let the white flag wave already. That had been no reason to assign him to any jounin-sensei, but the chuunin-sensei were obviously too scared to deal with him anymore – or taking gleeful advantage of the circumstances – and so Sandaime had let them shove him into someone else's lap. Unlike his teammates, Naruto was neither studious nor subtle, and he was competitive to the exclusion of all else; he had drawn Sasuke into all his petty, bitter little feuds and thrown the entire team into a chaos of aggravation and self-inflicted violence with a consistency in timing that bordered on perfection.

Kakashi and his probably overrated genius had been immensely irritated with the blond at first, because at the time it had seemed perfectly acceptable to irrationally expect a miniature version of his teacher. That would have made a dream team out of his three delinquents, and for the first month or so that was all he could think about. For much longer than he really should have he had waited for Naruto to clean up his act and buckle down like Sasuke and Sakura attempted to, so he was disappointed every day when it did not happen. Frustrated and determined to not give Naruto special treatment because of the lineage he did not know he had, Kakashi had pushed the blond at his unhappy but obedient peers, who tried over and over again to teach him the Academy-level basics he had never fully learned to start with.

They had done a good job, really; they were younger, more malleable, and admittedly more knowledgeable about Naruto than Kakashi, even if none of the three realized it. So rather than repeatedly attempt to force Naruto to do things their way as Kakashi might have, Sasuke and Sakura had bent like willow saplings in a storm and adapted so they could teach Naruto what he needed to know in exactly the way the blond learned best – by doing. Sakura had given him convenient visual refreshers for each lesson and Sasuke had pushed his advancement with superior results and surprisingly effective caustic words.

Thus Kakashi had learned something as well, because he was a third-party witness to the leaps and bounds Naruto made as the three refined their methods for improving the blond's skills. It was wonderful – and somewhat comical – how they had built the foundations of their teamwork with only that one tiny push he gave and reached a point where all they needed from him was the occasional introduction of a new technique and a sporadic reminder to remember that teamwork when Naruto and Sasuke got a bit too eager to compete.

The battle on the bridge had been the first warning, but Kakashi had not paid it the proper attention. It was no secret that Naruto had anger-management issues – he just generally did things that were reparable or otherwise not permanently damaging, like deface the Monument with water-soluble paint and knock over fully-loaded garbage cans – and since Naruto had learned to turn his sadness and fear and everything but joy directly into a level of anger, anger was exactly what brought out the kyuubi. Kakashi had never considered Naruto to be the fox – at the very least he had far too much faith in his teacher to not trust the man's skill and power – but he had known the seal would eventually weaken; he should have thought about the danger out-of-control anger would present.

Instead, he made sure he spent as little time as he could looking at Naruto. By then, not only had the blond been a smaller physical representation of the jounin's dead teacher, but the idiot's antics had become more subdued and less desperate as those around him found new and interesting ways to expend his ridiculous energy reserves for him – because he had never been taught to do it himself, being an orphan everyone hated or otherwise neglected – and he had morphed into a much too accurate second-generation Obito.

It had hurt too much to pay him attention, so when it came down to further refining Naruto's chakra control he had passed the job to Ebisu, who was a tutor and had been trained to teach that kind of thing effectively to anyone or anything capable of it. And, more than that, Sasuke had actually legitimately needed his complete focus for once; Kakashi, who had felt a variation of it himself and therefore knew what to look for, had seen the last Uchiha's fealty to Konoha flagging as he became more and more discouraged by Naruto's progress.

Explaining that the blond's growth was only so dramatic because no one had given enough of a damn to work with him while he was still in the academy had made sense to Sasuke, but it had not convinced him that his own steadier growth was satisfactory. And that was really all that Kakashi was allowed to say because the only other form of consolation he could offer was to point out that like Sasuke, Naruto owed the basis for his power to his parents. But that would require revealing who Naruto's parents were, and that would have done absolutely nothing but open a big, fat, shiny new can of worms. On the positive side, Sasuke might have been offended on the blond's behalf that no one had said anything and solidified his ties to Naruto; on the negative, Sasuke might have become even more resentful even though the blond's heritage was nobody's fault except his dead parents'.

So Kakashi had given the Uchiha a full month's special attention, in the hope that teaching Sasuke better control over and better utilization of his Sharingan as well as instructing him in the finer points of the Chidori would have a calming effect on the genius's easily bruised ego, which it had.

For a pathetically short while.

"Here."

He took the mug without really paying it or the bearer any attention – he had no idea why the chuunin kept bringing him coffee and tea that he never actually drank. Maybe it was simply some routine task that comforted the teacher in some way, and since there were two of them it would have been rude to not at least offer him any. Naruto had always scoffed cheerfully at Iruka's firm dedication to common courtesy – as though it were a bad thing – and seeing as how Naruto was quite often a law unto himself, maybe there was some truth in the assertion. But the mug did, at least, warm Kakashi's hands.

Iruka was at the other side of the bed, nearer the door, where all of the temporary visitors sat. They each had things to do – Tsunade was Hokage, Iruka was an academy teacher, Sakura had begun her iryounin training, and the other rookies were helping their superiors deal with assignments after the decimation caused by Orochimaru's attack on the village. None of them could stay for longer than an hour or so, but Kakashi had confessed to Tsunade that he was in no fit mental state to do anything for anyone, and that left him no real duty of import except to sit by Naruto's bedside and wait for the blond to wake up.

He had to make sure he would not lose someone else.

To have done that most effectively, he should have taken the hint from that whole farce up on the hospital roof. He could not entirely blame himself for not knowing that Naruto had learned the Rasengan; only he or Jiraiya could have taught the blond, and he had not realized until after the fact that the Toad Sage was in the village. But he had heard the story from Sakura – who had been frightened by the whole thing and was actually fair to Naruto when he was not around to attempt to twist it to his advantage – so Kakashi was aware that Sasuke had goaded him into a pointless fight, which Naruto had thought was all in good fun at first and agreed to without hesitation. Only when Sasuke had been so hard on him had Naruto recognized that the battle was a serious one and, though he had not understood why that was so, he had tried to help Sasuke cool off by not backing down.

Or, at least, that was what Kakashi assumed his reason was, although he could very easily have been too stubborn to back down. It could also have been a combination of the two, if Naruto had figured out that Sasuke was upset and so wanted to help but been too bullheaded to let Sasuke win merely for the sake of stress relief. Which still would have had the exact opposite effect anyway, since Sasuke had been viewing Naruto himself as the problem and would have been unsatisfied with the outcome whether he had lost or won.

Kakashi had never seemed to be able to impress on Sasuke that Naruto's entire insistence on picking fights with him – or, in general, jumping with both feet into fights he would not necessarily win – had been nothing more than an admittedly backhanded admiration for Sasuke's abilities and reputation and a fervent desire to equal them purely for personal reasons. But Sasuke had refused to see it as anything more than the blond making every effort to rub his face in whatever Naruto had achieved in so short a time, which made anything the blond did an offensive and unheralded slap to Sasuke's pretty little face.

After his clan's annihilation, Sasuke had deliberately set himself up for everything that he perceived to have gone wrong; he had, in hindsight, obviously not meant to stay in Konoha any longer than he needed to. Without the insidious influence of Orochimaru he might have actually been able to find the strength he wanted in Konoha, but the snake's easy power had drawn Sasuke in like a fly to honey and he had refused to see any other way to get what he thought he needed.

His teacher had been so right – that any destination could be reached by more than one path, and that it was a necessary thing to walk through the night to reach the morning. Naruto had passed his night and had begun to find his way to his destination along a sun-lit path, but it seemed as though Sasuke had turned away from the sun he had found and chosen to walk deeper into the night.

Kakashi could not say what it did to Sasuke – he no longer felt a connection to the Uchiha heir – but Naruto was doubtless in great pain because of his pseudo-brother's departure. The blond was so scared of losing the people around him – he loved them all so much merely for recognizing his existence – that he clung to each of them with a frightening tenacity, and Sasuke's leaving must have carved bloody gouges in Naruto's heart. It was a strange thing to Kakashi, that Naruto would willingly put himself in that position of pain; he had long ago thought Naruto foolish for being that dedicated to others – teamwork was one thing, but the silent worship was something else – but he was beginning to wonder.

Naruto was . . . a magnet. For everything, unfortunately. Trouble always seemed to find him, and at the same time he had friends in some of the highest places in the known world. Without really trying, he made people believe in him, perhaps because he made no secret of what he believed in himself; he had begun to give shinobi a face again, and humanity as well. He was easily as subtle as a yellow and orange brick to the face, but that was one of his more endearing traits and his blunt honesty was likely one of his major selling points. He did not trust blindly – though maybe he forgave too easily – and once a person had let him know that his message had been heard and accepted, he was a friend for life no matter the past. And unless he admitted beforehand that it was something he had not quite achieved yet, he never told anyone to do something he was not willing to do himself.

Naruto threw himself into fights because he did not want his precious people hurt, a list of names that grew longer by the hour. Thanks to his pedigree he had always been built of sterner stuff, possibly the one thing Sasuke's fine Uchiha breeding would never be able to beat him in, and the kyuubi's presence on top of that made him nearly invincible. Without realizing it, he was doing exactly what his father had always hoped he would – using the fox to protect Konoha and those dear to him.

Still, unlike Kakashi he was not protecting those people merely to keep himself from being hurt; he was also doing it so that they could continue living. Naruto had taken everything about himself that others pitied him for – the fox, his bad chakra control, and his orphanhood particularly – and made them some of the most dangerous weapons he had at his disposal. As the vessel of the kyuubi he had an incredible, if volatile, strength at hand; with a vast chakra reserve, his bad chakra control became a wide sea of shadow clones whose individual power were forces to be reckoned with; as an orphan, he recognized and accepted that he would not be missed forever if he died – there would be some mourning, but he did not have the type of family who valued him quite the same as the families of his friends valued each of them, and after years of being jealous of them he was finally okay with that.

He did not want to die, for he always seemed to have so much left to do, but he was not afraid to die.

That, then, was what Kakashi was missing more than anything. He had no fox, but he did have a reputation he could have been taking advantage of; he did not have near-limitless chakra, but he had control and experience and a gift from his friend-brother that he could have been doing more with; he was, however, an orphan himself and of no more interest than a circus exhibit to most of the people around him. Like Naruto, he could use what he had to truly benefit others for their sake, not just benefit others as a byproduct of him benefiting himself. And, naturally, there was always a chance that the people he helped might not be grateful for whatever the reason, but he would no longer allow that to be his problem; he would choose to live with himself as opposed to for himself.

He had gotten to know death so intimately that he had given up trying to fight it and simply let it come and go as it pleased. And perhaps he was afraid of it, because it had killed everyone around him one by one, and though he generally thought death would be a relief he was nevertheless not to a point where he did not care. While he may not have fought death he evaded it when and where he could – which probably only increased the anxiety, in the end – but even that answer was one he could look to Naruto for. Because for Naruto, any day was a good day to die as long as he was doing something he considered meaningful.

". . . Kakashi-sensei?"

He looked across Naruto's bed, in which the blond was lying so painfully quiet and motionless. Iruka was back. Or still there. Whichever. "Yes?"

"You've been here for . . . quite some time . . ." the academy teacher said delicately.

Kakashi smiled. It was a slightly less fake example of the ones he had been offering others for the past two decades. When he thought about it, he had never really found his path out of the night; he had simply come across a twilit variation that he had contented himself with because a path that led fully into the morning would only have illuminated his flaws brightly enough for others to see. But maybe the time had come for him to really look at them, recognize them, and accept them. And if he could manage it, either take advantage of them like he would his good traits or rip them up by the roots, hold them out to the world, and dare everyone to ridicule him for them. For those things that made him as unique as any bloodline, nickname, or accomplishment would have.

"Just cleaning house, as it were," he explained, and then clarified, "With an orange vacuum."

It was reassuring that Iruka – and others, later – seemed to understand exactly what he meant. The academy teacher was even the one to say, "That kind does seem to be most effective," while Tsunade had offered a noticeably less reverent, "You can't help it, can you? It's such a gaudy piece of work, and it'll sit at the bottom of the stairs and whine about the dust until you do something."

His conclusions were strangely galvanizing. For so long, it seemed, he had simply been hanging in limbo – or perhaps freefalling into nowhere – and over the years he had merely become used to the unpleasant sensation of weightlessness, of being out of control and directionless. To abruptly decide to do something with himself had been like crawling out of a bottomless lake; the weightlessness was gone, there were directions in which he could go, and while he felt as though his muscles had atrophied almost to the point of being unable to support him, he was able to feel each and every one and know that they were his.

His muscles, his weight, his life.

He was alive. For the first time in twenty years, he recalled that he was a human being. And it felt good. He suddenly could not wait for Naruto to regain consciousness – because of course the blond would – so that they could get started training. Pride was not going to let him confess that Naruto had actually taught him something – it would be a little too emasculating at that moment, but maybe in the future, way in the future, he could hint at it – but he got it finally and he was ready to show his friend-teacher-student that he was done neglecting his favorite idiot. Because Sasuke had wasted everything that Kakashi had taught him, and Naruto had been showing all along that he had the makings of someone worth Kakashi's time and energy.

"Naruto's gone to train with Jiraiya-sama."

For an instant – just a flash of a second – he fell back on his old thought pattern; that he was not obligated to teach the blond anything since someone else was willing to do it. But he realized he had to wait until Naruto had returned, until he had seen what his teacher's son was capable of, before he could make that decision. And he would not let a vast improvement wow him into thinking Naruto would be all right without his guidance. At least in his own mind, he would not let his teacher's shadow loom over that of his student; he would be as unswervingly critical as he had been known for being before he had become Team Seven's jounin-sensei, and he would grade the blond harshly on whatever errors he found. And if there was still something – anything – he could teach Naruto, he would do it, no matter how long it took his favorite idiot to learn.

It meant he could no longer turn away if the blond seemed to be an unfortunately and painfully accurate cross between his teacher and his best friend, but that was okay. Because he finally understood that even though it would hurt him to take the time to teach Naruto and thus be forced to look at him every day and see those he had lost, it would only hurt worse if Naruto died without the knowledge of everything the son of the White Fang could teach him. He knew he could not prevent the blond from doing something brashly heroic and getting himself killed, but at least there would be no doubt – regardless of how comforting that realization would not be – that he had done everything he could to make sure Naruto lived.

It was time to make reparations.

Finis

Answers To Questions You Didn't Even Know You Wanted To Ask:

Murphy followed him everywhere.

Most of you probably recognized this as a reference to "Murphy's Law", a Law of Nature that – despite not having official recognition in the science world (though the Murphy in question was an engineer) – has nevertheless found its place in the lives of exasperated, impatient, and downright klutzy people everywhere. If there is anyone not familiar with this law, it is essentially as follows: "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

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Kakashi was my first love in Naruto, and the old stuff I wrote two computers ago that featured him prominently is all crap compared to my current caliber of writing, so I feel I kind of owe him something for old time's sake. And unlike a certain dark-haired someone I could name, at least his angst doesn't make me want to roll my eyes and vomit theatrically. Kakashi has class.

~RN (LS)