Dirty Little Secret

A/N: To all the people who reviewed: Thank you so very much! You warm my soul with your awesome reviews and inspire me to write more of this fic! Feedback is like food for an author, it's essential! So, once again, thank you VERY MUCH!



CHAPTER 9



The night before the first day at his new job was sleepless for Kakashi, as he spent his time between trying to groom his wild hair in some semblance of order – which he didn’t succeed – and trying to pick suitable clothes to wear, since the jounin uniform was now out of the question. As it was, he possessed very little clothes other than his uniforms and most had been stolen or torn to pieces by the marauders. Since he had believed that he would be reinstated, he hadn’t bothered to try and replace them – not to mention that he hardly had the money to buy a new wardrobe at the moment. Finally, he settled for simple dark gray pants and a paler shirt which in the morning he buttoned under his mask and made an attempt to comb his hair again before the cracked bathroom mirror.



As he limped towards his destination in the early morning hours he wondered if Naruto would order him to uncover his face – he was pretty sure that people grew nervous around a masked assistant – and while that wasn’t such a bad thing if one wanted to intimidate someone, in other cases it was bad for business. And Konoha desperately needed money.



His whole apprehension evaporated however when he finally arrived only to discover that Naruto wasn’t there – he had gone off to check on one of the many construction sites in the village and to return in the afternoon.



Still, he was a bit nervous when he sat down behind his desk next to the Hokage’s and then began to leaf through the various paperwork. Kakashi had always been so bad at this, often making the chuunins at the mission desk so angry at his scrawling and doodling on his reports that they actually chucked the folders at his head. It had happened more than once.



How to deal with this mountain of files without disappointing Naruto?



Kakashi looked at them for a while, a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach, but then he frowned determinedly, closed his eyes and reached, pulling out a random folder of the stack.



He opened it and saw a report from one of the chuunins, saying that the client no longer required their services and had refused to pay for what had already been done – namely, chasing a pair of poachers off his property. Apparently lately everyone thought that they could mooch off Konoha and not pay, no longer fearing its retribution in its weakened state.



Kakashi scrawled a note and stuck it to the report, then put it aside. Afterwards, he pulled the next folder and continued in the same fashion.



It was late afternoon when Naruto finally returned, looking sweaty and thirsty and tired, but with a pleased look on his face. Kakashi caught sight of him and wordlessly got up to get him the tea and biscuits he had seen in the adjacent kitchen.

The Hokage took the meager offering gratefully and grinned at Kakashi.



“They’ve almost fixed the northern road. Soon we’d be able to import cattle from Waterfall once again.” He stated and stuck a pair of biscuits in his mouth, chasing them with a mouthful of tea.



Kakashi smiled back.



“I started on the reports. I hope you don’t mind.”



“Not at all.” Naruto moved to Kakashi’s desk, grabbed a folder from the stack of solutions and opened it.



“Contact the poachers and tell them they can return to the property? Then contact a few more and send them as well?” he read out loud and raised an eyebrow.



Kakashi shrugged.



“If WE beat up clients, that’s bad for business.” Kakashi drawled.



“Indeed it is.” Naruto grinned back at him. “But, if they spread the rumour we’re not doing our job well?”



“What job? There was no transaction. He can never prove that he even hired us to begin with.” The jounin shrugged.



“I knew it was a good idea to give you this job.”



Kakashi smiled tentatively back at him with gratitude.



“Thank you, Hokage-sama. I won’t disappoint you.”



And so he began his new job. He discovered that it was quite pleasant, really, even if he didn’t enjoy doing paperwork at all. The pleased expression on Naruto’s face made up for it more than enough. All of it would have been perfect if not for one small problem – the way some of the people and especially the nin who came to visit Naruto looked at him. Apparently, rumours of his failure at the convoy mission had circulated the village more than enough and now everyone looked at him with some underlining expression of disappointment. No one ever said anything, especially in Naruto’s presence – in that case they were terribly polite – too polite, even - but the looks lingered. And frankly, they made him want to crawl back in his apartment and not leave it any time soon.



Still, he forgot about them completely when Naruto grinned at him when he suggested a viable solution to a problem they had, which he did pretty often. The blond himself was a pretty crafty and inventive ruler, what with his ability to think outside the box – but he was also completely swamped with work and just couldn’t pay attention to everything. So Kakashi picked up the slack and did so with delight.



Still, weeks passed and people didn’t stop looking at him like that – if anything, the looks, especially when Naruto was absent, got worse and worse, the tone which they used became more and more derisive, even if the actual words that came out of their mouths were civil. Kakashi didn’t really understand what the reason was behind this and it began to worry him more and more so he started avoiding looking at the visitors whenever he could, burying his nose in his work and pretending he didn’t notice the rest of the world. It worked for a while, but then Naruto commented on his behavior and told him to pay attention to their clients and visitors, chiding him for being impolite. Helpless to refuse his Hokage and too ashamed to say why he’d been acting like that, Kakashi apologized and once again began to attend to guests, as painful as that was.



It all came to a head one day - surprisingly enough not in Naruto’s office or nowhere near it - rather at the newly opened market where Kakashi went to get some food for dinner. He had just been buying fish and miso when he felt a presence behind him. Kakashi turned around only to find himself face to face with a tiny woman with dark eyes and dark hair, face puffy and red from crying, eyes blazing with hatred, dressed in a long, simple green dress.



“Murderer.” She hissed.



He was so surprised that he didn’t even react when the woman swung her hand and slapped him with an open palm across the face. Now, he was used to much more painful blows than that, but the sheer action was shocking and confusing.

“Wha..?” he began, still too confused to form a coherent thought.



“You killed my son!” she shrieked and the tears in her eyes spilled onto her reddened cheeks.



He looked at her sadly.



“I have killed many sons, Ma’am.”



If anything, that made her even angrier.



“You… all of you ninja, you think yourselves to be so high and mighty, you do not care about the lives of ordinary people, you do not care who suffers when you decide to wage your little wars to boost your self-confidence.” She yelled, small hands fisted at her sides. “And this is especially true for you, Hatake Kakashi. YOUR FAILURE KILLED MY SON! Why did you agree to guard the convoy if you knew that you couldn’t do it? To make yourself feel like the big, scary man you used to be? He was only seven! He needed his medicine! MURDERER!”



By now a crowd had gathered around them and looked on the scene with utmost curiosity, some faces grinning and mocking, others downright angry and accusing. Kakashi felt sick.



The woman slapped him again and again and he allowed it for a while, then tried to reach for her and hug her, but she jerked out of his arms with a hiss.



“Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touching me!” She screamed, turned around and suddenly ran away, disappearing into the crowd as fast as she had appeared. A long, heavy silence descended on the market, people still staring at him.



“Show’s over, people!” Kakashi said sharply and loud enough for everyone to hear. “Go about your business!”



They slowly followed the order, muttering amongst themselves, casting cold looks towards the jounin.



For his part, Kakashi forgot all about the dinner and went home empty-handed and with a sick feeling in his stomach.



The next morning he sat down behind his desk and began to read reports, Naruto doing the same next to him. Suddenly, the blond said:



“I heard what happened at the market, Kakashi.”



The jounin stifled and slowly looked up.



“Hokage-sama?”



“Don’t play dumb, please, we both know you’re not.” Naruto snapped and turned in his chair to look at him. Kakashi frowned back at his boss.



“How many?” he finally asked softly.



“How many what?”



“How many people died because of the stolen medicines?”



Naruto looked down at the reports sadly and rubbed his forehead.



“Fifteen. Nine of them children. There was a typhoid fever outbreak in one of the neighbourhoods that suffered the worst during the war – people drank polluted water. That is why it was so urgent that we got those medicines.” Naruto finished mournfully.



Kakashi nodded and looked down at his hands. ‘She was right’ he thought sadly. ‘I killed those people. I killed her son. I did.’



Naruto got up and moved next to him, putting his hand on his shoulder.



“I didn’t tell you anything because I knew you’d blame yourself – when the blame is only mine - I was biased towards you and allowed you to go on that mission.”



Kakashi smiled bitterly at those words.



“I wish it were that simple, Hokage-sama.”



It was pointless to argue whose blame it was – the result was one and the same – fifteen dead people. They both knew that.



“I won’t disappoint you like that again, Hokage-sama.” Kakashi said softly and looked up to the blond. The hand on his shoulder squeezed it a little, then slowly moved to his mask-covered cheek in a surprisingly intimate gesture.



“I know.” Naruto said, looking down at him strangely. Kakashi could feel himself blushing and resisted the urge to squirm in his seat.



Then Naruto withdrew his hand and stepped back to his desk.



“Let’s go back to work.”