In which we learn some things of Ibara's past, Kakashi is a persistent ass with an uncooperative brain and the Hokage is too stressed to give a rat's ass.

As always, no beta in sight, so, uh... I did my best?

Btw I edited last chapter to change Naruto's age from five to seven, because yes.

Oh, no. Oh no no no no.

This wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening.

Ibara had been woken up the next morning by a stray ray of sun, having forgotten to close the blinds yesterday and- Oh God, what had she done.

For once, she wished she had blacked out drunk, because remembering her conversation with Kakashi last night was giving her anxiety, and she already had a surplus of that, thank you very much.

She had known that Kakashi didn't like her, she hadn't needed to be a genius or chakra sensitive to figure that one out. She had never met the guy, but rumours in Konoha spread like wildfire and, more importantly, they were hardly ever wrong. The thing was that Kakashi didn't like her, and that was okay with her (it stung a little, but it was fine). She had understood his distrust, after all, she just came out of nowhere and swooped the only reminder of Minato he had from under his nose.

The fact that he had been one of her favourite characters - being a goof and pretty cool to boot - didn't mean she couldn't get absolutely pissed at him if necessary though. She wasn't one of those people that coddled their faves and, more importantly, now that the world of Naruto was her new reality... She'd been too occupied trying to carve a place for herself in Tetsu no Kuni to enjoy it.

She had been born to a noble family and, thankfully, her parents had seen it fit for her to learn to write and read. Then she had fought tooth and nail to make her father take her seriously as his advisor, only succeeding thanks to the socioeconomics degree she had from her past life and her knowledge of the future. She hadn't told a soul about the second thing, but the Yuugen family had flourished economically and, after her father had bragged about his talented daughter at a party, other nobles had approached her for advice in different endeavours. It wasn't hard to tell them what to invest in or who to be friendly with when you had previous knowledge of the world and you kept a close ear to the ins and outs of the daimyo's court. It was expensive to keep spies there, but thankfully her family could now afford them. It's not like she had the same kind of spy network as Jiraiya, and she didn't use it the same way either, but gossip was valuable nonetheless, and if you happened to know when to invest in what and with which partners... Well, you could get pretty rich pretty fast.

Her parents had been displeased when she had announced her intentions of traveling and seeing the world (she hadn't told them that she wanted to go to Konoha, specifically), but she had reassured them that she would keep correspondence with them weekly and, as long as she continued answering their letters, she was free to roam anywhere she liked. Ibara liked to think that she had earned their trust by being an exemplar daughter, but the truth was that she had been a menace. The manners of a good lady had been drilled into her since she had been a child, but she had found that she had no patience for the rampaging sexism that still plagued the nobility in Iron. After a particular incident in which a noble had told her that ''pretty ladies like you should be seen and not heard" and he had seen her fist up close... well she hadn't lost clients, but her parents had been reluctant to let her loose on a party unsupervised ever since.

Besides that, the recent incident regarding the Koudou family had left them all with a bitter afteraste, and she couldn't stand being there any longer.

All in all, this agreement suited everyone better. She could be where she really wanted to be, and her parents could still brag about their genius daughter without anyone having to actually meet her or her fists of death (small but compact!). In essence: she could do her job at a distance and be herself without embarrassing anybody.

Except- she hadn't been herself ever since she came to Konoha, either.

She had been so used of pretending to have good manners that by the time she had already asserted her presence in the village, she had realized that she had kept up her persona the whole time, and now she couldn't just start acting like herself without drawing too much unwanted attention. Besides, Naruto had changed it all.

She had met the boy after a week of moving in. It had been easier than she thought, moving in, that is, she hadn't exactly been looking for him. Yet. Thankfully, commissioning a genin team to move her belongings from the caravan she had rented - she had traveled here with a group of merchants, despite her parents insisting that she should have at least one of the family's samurai traveling with her - had been cheaper than she had thought, and after a day of work they were already finished. They had even insisted in fetching the furniture she had bought that morning and putting it in place for her, which had been a bonus that they had been rewarded for in the form of snacks. She had already planned on giving them something to munch on after their hard work anyways, and they had been very grateful for the cookies and tea. Apparently not many people thought to offer them something to eat after a day of hard work.

It had been the next week that she had found Naruto, or rather, that Naruto had practically tackled her while running away from two shinobi from the Uchiha Police Force. They had both fell down, her poor recently-bought fruits spreading everywhere. The Uchiha had made the boy bow deeply and apologize to her, and then had been so kind as to help her put all her stray fruit - or at least the undamaged ones - back into her bag. The kid had been miffed at first, immobilized by the hand of one of the shinobi gripping the back of his shirt like he was a misbehaving kitten, but this had turned to confusion when she had ruffled his hair. It had been an afterthought, really, she was just saying goodbye to the shinobi, and telling the kid to be more careful. She'd had a little brother back in Iron, and she had used to ruffle his hair all of the time, it had been habit that had moved her hand.

Naruto had flinched, and the Uchihas had tensed up, and then before she had even registered the situation, she had finished the motion and Naruto was staring at her in awe.

Only after they had parted ways had she realized that both the shinobi and Naruto had probably expected her to hit him. She had been sad, and angry, but most of all a bit terrified. If she had looked a bit more hostile, the hidden ANBU that always trailed after the boy would have probably intervened, and she wouldn't have gotten out of it unscathed, even if all she had wanted to do was ruffle the kid's hair.

This was one of the things that had kept her from ending her act, the other being... Well.

Naruto had started following her around after that. All the time. Everywhere. She didn't mind, not really, but she had ended up getting attached to the boy, and her initial plan to try to keep her distance while keeping an eye on the events yet to unfold - information was good for business, and Konoha would become the center of the future changes very soon - had been flung off the window in favour of adopting the boy. Hell, she had never even wanted children, and here she was with a seven year old trailing behind her and talking her ears off.

After deciding that she wanted the boy in her life, she hadn't been able to drop her by now cemented persona. Her being a poor, sad - if filthy rich - widow, worked on her favour. She was unassuming enough to not be a threat, and she didn't have any affiliation with a shinobi clan, so letting her adopt the child wouldn't be seen as favouring any of them and, therefore, wouldn't result in political tensions. All in all, she was the perfect candidate to adopt Naruto, and the fact that she didn't know about his jinchuriki status was just a nice bonus.

It hadn't taken too much convincing - though a bit of money had passed some hands here and there, nothing to worry about - before she had a very happy Naruto in her home, with new furniture for his own room and all. Orange, of course.

And Kakashi had wanted to take him away from her.

Admittedly, leaving the kid alone had been irresponsible, but in her defense - she had been about to snap. She had been playing a part her whole life, ever since she was born to the Yuugen family, she had worn her mask as best as she could, and it had started to feel like giving it up hadn't been a choice anymore. Like she could never take it off after all that time. She had felt constricted under her own skin, itching to just- get out. Just for one night she had wanted to be free again, to act against everything that had shaped her in this second life, and then everything had gotten out of control and Kakashi had seen her.

She hadn't even managed to be worried about that, as drunk as she was, and even when she could tell that he was angry, she had only enjoyed pushing him further. Why had she done that? That guy could kill her with a snap of his fingers. True, he probably wouldn't but... The truth was that Kakashi, as much of a goof as he seemed, had been an assassin for quite a long time. He was probably still in ANBU, if her memory served her right, though Kishimoto had done a good job making the timeline as confusing as possible.

And he hated her now. Great.

She had just been so angry. How dare he try and get Naruto away from her? Yeah, she had been irresponsible for one night, but if things had gone on like in canon, Naruto would have been left alone in an apartment and Kakashi wouldn't have done anything about it. Was leaving the poor kid alone in an empty house preferable to having her take care of him? Kakashi had renounced his right to have a say in his upbringing when he had refused to take him in as a baby. He could have raised Naruto himself, and instead had decided to leave him in an orphanage, and she was the bad one?

She wasn't even going to think about Jiraiya, that good for nothing pervert-

She wasn't.

Still, what now? What would Kakashi do now that he had seen her break character? Would he tell the Hokage? Would an ANBU team come to take her baby boy away?

No, that wasn't going to happen. If anything, it should have happened yesterday night, and nobody had showed up...

Had they?

Ibara leapt out of the bed, tangling her legs in the sheets and almost tumbling down, but she managed to keep upright and rush out of the room. Naruto's room was right beside hers, and it didn't take long for her to reach the door. She stopped right outside, it was half open, but she couldn't see the bed. Steeling herself, she carefully opened it and heaved a sigh of relief, leaning on the doorframe.

Naruto was sleeping curled up, hugging a frog plushie to his chest.

She let herself slid down until she was sitting on the ground, feeling a wave of relief wash through her. She tried to will herself to move, to get up and make breakfast like every morning, but she found herself unable to do it. Her eyes were glued to the small lump under the blankets, and she feared that if she took her eyes off of him, even for one second, someone would take him away and she would never see him again.

Finally, Naruto stirred and fixed one sleepy eye on her slumped form, still sitting at the entrance of his room.

"Iba-nee? Why're you sitting there?" he asked, confused. "The floor is cold."

"Ah, I just had a nightmare, is all."

Naruto nodded sagely, nightmares were very scary. "Next time you should stay in bed with me, nee-san. You always let me sleep with you when I have nightmares, and they never bother me again, so you should do that too."

Ibara smiled weakly, she really didn't deserve this kid, did she? But he deserved all the love in the world, and it seemed that she was the only one up to the task, so she would persevere.

"Yeah," she said, quietly. "Yeah you're right, Naruto, next time I'll do that."

He beamed at her like clouds parting to reveal the sun, and she found that she couldn't afford to feel scared anymore.

Kakashi had a nebulous understanding of the benefits of having a good reputation. He had never bothered having one, mind you, but as socially inept as he was, he could still tell that people treated you differently when they had a better image of you. Nevermind that they probably hadn't had even one conversation with the real you, what mattered was the version they had created in their heads, and that was it.

Ibara was a master of creating those, he had realized. She had made a mask so perfect that insinuating that she was anything like the woman he had witnessed entering a brothel would be like insisting that the Nara were naturally dumb people.

He was impressed. And also really fucking annoyed.

She hadn't come up with the perfect story, one that left no room to poke holes in, no, but she hadn't needed to. Instead, she had woven a story that people wanted to believe. It is one thing to be presented with a logical argument and find it irrefutable, and another one altogether when you want to believe in this argument, as imposible as it might sound. And the truth was that, after the war, after the attack of the Kyuubi, people needed to believe that the world was good. That good things would happen to people who had suffered, because that meant that they would happen to them too. As such, the story of a young widow, who had found her happiness again in the form of a little orphan, was one that the people of Konoha ate up like starving dogs.

He, on the other hand, was known as friend-killer Kakashi, and that said enough about his position in the public eye. So not only would the Hokage not believe him if he came at him with his concerns about Ibara, but his hands would be tied even if he did. There was no way to extrincate Naruto from the claws of the woman without causing public outrage. Under the care of the woman, Naruto, so hated before, had grown to be one of the most polite kids in the village. One wouldn't think that such a thing mattered, but the lack of pranks, which had been perceived as hostility from the fox's vessel, had worked wonders for the general perception of their resident jinchuriki. It wasn't that the people loved him now, but they seemed to think that she had managed to tame the demon fox with 'a mother's love', or some utter stupidity like that. Civilians.

Nevertheless, trying to sepparate the woman from Naruto wouldn't be so easy as he had hoped.

…Did he even want to, anyways? True, her behaviour that night had been- lacking, but that had been a week ago, and as far as he knew, she hadn't done it again. He honestly wouldn't have had a problem with it if she had left him with a babysitter… (Who would want to be the babysitter of the demon fox. though?) Nevermind that, the heart of the matter was that he still hadn't managed to figure her out. There was something odd about her, though he couldn't put a finger on what, exactly that was. He couldn't explain it, she just felt other, like she didn't quite belong. And to top it all off, she seemed to have information that she shouldn't have. He didn't know what her intentions were, and until then, he wouldn't be able to relax knowing that his sensei's son was with her. How did she know so much about other hidden villages? They weren't exactly a vacation spot. And how had she known about the kyuubi attack? What else did she know?

The fact that he didn't know wether she was a very strange civilian or a spy frustrated him to no end, and he had found himself thinking about her too much as of lately. He had never been good leaving things he couldn't understand alone, though that focus had usually been reserved to the academy books when he was younger, and his work at ANBU later. Never a person, before. He supposed it was because she was an outsider. He knew almost every jōnin and chūnin in the village, and could probably answer any questions about them. He had shared his childhood and experiences growing up with most of them, but whatever had shaped Ibara Yuugen was a mystery to him. He knew she had come from Tetsu no Kuni, that was practically public knowledge, as she'd had to fill some forms before settling in the village. The fact that she was a widow was also true, if one were to believe what she had written. Furthermore, they always made thorough checks on the people that came to live in Konoha, and she had passed them without a hitch. Aside from the suspicions of a few, of course, but that was normal. Ninjas were a distrustful sort.

But still, he was certain that there was something more that she was hiding, even if all her paperwork checked out.

Kakashi sighed, sprawled on his sofa after a week long mission, and opened his Icha Icha book to read one of his favourite parts again. He had been assigned a new mission after a month of reporting his target having the same routine every day. Nevermind that that had been the case all days except for one; he'd had to leave that out or otherwise he would risk sounding like a paranoid lunatic. He would report it once he had tangible proof, and no sooner than that.

If he got tangible proof. It woud get harder, now that he wasn't tasked with shadowing her, and harder still considering that, as an ANBU captain, he would have to take missions out of Konoha more often than not. Being one of the Hokage's personal ANBU was out of the question though, he would have to follow him around everywhere and then he would be right where he started, with no time to keep an eye on Yuugen. Not to mention that his standing as a shinobi wasn't quite stable enough for that as of lately.

Kakashi sighed yet again and turned his attention back towards the book, overthinking would do him no good, and the problematic woman would still be there when he was finished. The scene was mild enough, considering the book it was in. Okami was an ANBU agent that pushed everyone away in fear of hurting them, but his efforts were useless in the face of Amai, a kind young woman that worked as an attendant for the Lord he had been tasked to protect. The book had its fair share of political intruigue, but if you asked Kakashi, the best part was the love triangle between Okami, Amai and the Lord. On this scene in particular, Okami had been injured while investigating an assasination atempt on the Lord, and disoriented by the blood loss, had stumbled into Amai's room. The young woman had immediately fallen to her knees beside him, overcame with worry, not to mention that she had just taken a bath, and Jiraiya described – in great detail, and for more paragraphs that was probably necessary – her suggestive state of undress, wearing only a towel around her 'generous curves'. Kakashi himself was more into the whole hurt/comfort thing, but he had to admit that the gratuitous descriptions of wet heaving bossoms weren't unwelcome.

He had been reading a very interesting description of how Amai had helped Okami limp to the bed, only to fall on top of him when she managed to get him to lay down, when it happened. He wasn't ashamed to admit that he projected himself on the protagonist. Everyone did that. He had, however, never tried to imagine someone specific as Amai. She had always changed faces everytime he read the book. Sometimes she looked like that one pretty girl he had seen that morning, sometimes that other one he had crossed paths with on his way to the Hokage Tower, and sometimes nobody in particular, but she had never looked like anyone he knew personally. This time, as he had been picturing the scene in his head, the image of Amai had morped. Brown straight hair had turned into wild black locks that curled playfully down her shoulders and into the dip of her breasts, her tanned skin had become paler, with a single mole over the right breast substituting all her previous freckles. And her soft face – surprised at falling on top of Okami – had morphed into one he knew all too well. He caught himself before he, as Okami, could flip positions and pin the conjured image of Yuugen Ibara against the bed.

Kakashi sat on his couch, eyes lost at some point in the distance, and snapped his book shut.

Well. That was- a thing. That had happened.

It probably had been due to the exhaustion of coming back from a mission. He hadn't slept yet, after all. And he had been thinking an awful lot about her lately – not in a romantic way, of course. Just- in a target kind of way – so it was normal that his brain would drift there naturally.

Or maybe he was going insane.

Huh. Now that was a thought. How many times had the Hokage insisted on him 'taking time to heal his mind'? After the death of his team, Sarutobi-sama had been the first one to suggest that he took some time off for himself, and Minato had thought it had been a fantastic idea. Kakashi had been offended then, and later, after Minato's death, he had only stared dispassionately at the Hokage when he had suggested it yet again. The thought of having all that time, with nothing but his thoughts to fight, had been less than pleasant. But now... Now he had a project- No, a mission. Even if everyone else refused to see the truth behind Yuugen Ibara, he would.

Sarutobi Hiruzen wasn't a fool. This was a fact that people around him tended to forget, as his days of being the God of shinobi blended into the background, but he was still a ninja nonetheless.

So, of course, when Hatake had come to him asking for an excused absence to finally let himself heal after all the trauma, Sarutobi knew that he was full of bullshit. Hatake Kakashi had never given even the slightless of shits for his health, much less if it wasn't an actual tangible wound, and he wasn't going to start now.

However.

The fact that Hatake was willing to stay in the village, doing absolutely nothing, for an extended period of time, was nothing short of a miracle, and he would be a fool to pass up this kind of opportunity. He could actually try to find out what was going on inside the boy's head but, in all honestly, who had the time for that? Hiruzen didn't, that's for sure. What he had in spades was a handful of displeased clan heads to juggle after letting a civilian – and a foreign one at that – adopt the container of the nine tails. The civilian council had been delighted by this turn of events, thinking that the woman had been a good influence on the boy, the shinobi one... not so much.

He had killed two birds with one stone by assigning Hatake to shadow her. On one hand, Hatake's protectiveness of the boy, bordering on an unhealthy obsession, would be assuaged. Hiruzen had even included him in the decision – out of respect for Minato, and because that way he would avoid future disagreements – and he had been pleasantly surprised when Hatake hadn't vetoed the adoption - though with the condition of keeping the woman under surveillance himself, which had gone along with Hiruzen's plans quite well.

On the other hand, by putting her under constant observation, he would reassure the clan heads that they had nothing to fear from the woman. Hatake's reports, always thorough, if brief, had worked wonders for that, though there were still some shinobi that thought that putting Konoha's most dangerous weapon in the hands of a civilian woman would soften it.

And by 'some shinobi' he meant Danzō.

His old friend was being, even though Hiruzen was loathe to admit it, a pain in his wrinkly ass. Therefore, when Hatake came to him – not 'was dragged to him' or 'reluctantly walked into his office', no, willingly came to him – asking for an undefined excused absence, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever it was that had made the boy change his opinion was a blessing, and Hiruzen would forever be grateful. Now that he didn't have to worry about Hatake getting his whole team killed – not that the kid wasn't a professional, but he was mentally unstable – he could direct that energy into something more productive, maybe even spend more time with his friends and family. He had been neglecting them, and seeing Naruto finally find a family of his own, and Hatake giving himself a much needed break, had made him sentimental.

Yes, perhaps it was time to pay more attention to the people important to him. These were times of peace, after all, and he should enjoy it while it lasted.

The week after what she had called the 'so, hey, I'm terrible' incident or 'shit' for short, had been nerve wracking. She had spent it in a constant state of paranoia, thinking that everyone she crossed in the street knew her secret and was pretending not to know for some horrible reason, or that everytime someone had a whispered conversation near her it was about her escapade the other night. Her levels of anxiety had reached new and exciting heights, and hiding it all from Naruto so that he wouldn't worry, and from the public eye so that no one thought she was acting suspicious, had left her so exhausted that she hadn't even been able to muster enough energy to have nightmares.

All in all, this sucked, and if she ever had the opportunity, she was going to punch Kakashi in the dick.

Thankfully, she had seen hide nor hair of the copy nin the whole week, and that had allowed her to push the panic into a tiny little corner of her mind and leave it there to hopefully die a slow and painful death. Meanwhile, as she waited for this to happen, she busied herself cooking and overanalyzing the socioeconomical state of every country that sparked her interest. Her notes on future events and how they would shape the economy had become so extensive that she had managed to fill an entire notebook, which she had stashed in a safe hidden place, and had to start on the second. No one could say that she couldn't make paranoid be productive.

"What are you cooking?" A pause, followed by a tiny, hopeful, gasp. "Ramen?!"

Ibara almost felt bad for saying no. Almost. He couldn't survive only on ramen, little boys needed a balanced diet. "We're having tempura and grilled mackerel today."

"Awwww, but I don't like tempura. The squash ones are yucky..."

Hearing Naruto fall silent mid-sentence, Ibara turned around and waited, still peeling a carrot. Naruto's eyes had glazed over, and he was staring at the table with a dopey vacant expression. It had been scary the first time it had happened, but by now it was such a common ocurrence that she had gotten used to it. Finally, Naruto came back to himself and pouted, still looking at the table.

"Kurama wants to know if there'll be red pepper, he likes it because it's sorta sweet," he said, looking up. Ibara laughed, picking up one of the vegetables from the paper bag to show it to the boy and, by extension, Kurama. It was odd to not be able to talk directly to the third occupant of the house, even if he didn't communicate often, but they managed.

It had taken some time to coax the fox to acknowledge Naruto, much less give him his name, but the boy was nothing but stubborn and, in the end, the fox had lost that battle. She was happy to see that, even if she couldn't help in the fights that loomed over Naruto's future, she still could lend a hand somehow. Knowing that she had the power to at least keep the loneliness at bay for him and Kurama a little sooner made her feel useful in a way that being, by all intents and purposes, an information broker, didn't.

The sound of three, evenly distanced, knocks pulled her from her thoughts, and she cleaned her hands on her apron as she went to see who it could be. It wasn't so late in the evening that visiting someone without previously letting them know would be too impolite, but it was odd for her to recieve visits. For all her 'popularity', people's fear of the demon fox was still too present for them to try and get close, even if most people had stopped being openly hostile towards Naruto.

She hadn't known what to expect, but certainly seeing Kakashi at the other side of the door, hand poised as if to knock again, wasn't it. "No, thanks," she said, as he lowered his arm and blinked lazily at her, and for the second time, she closed the door on his face.

Sometimes, when destiny comes knocking on your door, it's better to say 'no, thanks', and nope the hell out.

Comments keep the writing fire going, just sayin'... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯