Great Lakes & Expectations chp 18

She sat on her father’s shoulders and watched a kid swing alone on a playground. 

‘Has a playground ever been this depressing? I think the fuck not.’

This was after their riveting day watching Naruto have no friends and get the piss beat out of him by a very violent Hyuuga. 

That kid got no breaks, to be honest. 

No one seemed to feed him. He ate instant ramen or cereal when he didn’t have the time or money for the ramen stand. No wonder he was nutritionally stunted. 

No one cleaned up after him, either. He was surprisingly tidy for a baby… Regina looked down at the notes Jiraiya had written her. Shit, he was seven? Eight? 

He was definitely small. 

He had trouble focusing in class, and seemed to react to that by being a class clown. It didn’t net him any friends, though. Even though it should have. 

And people walking down the street looked at him like he was actual garbage.

‘I will take this small child, and after I teach him how to do arson, we will leave this place.’ she thought darkly. 

Jiraiya nudged her leg with his arm, and set her down on the ground. 

Ah, yes. No killing intent around infants. That was bad bad bad. 

Regina thought about puppies. Big, fluffy ones with soft ears. Like a direwolf. A cuddlewolf.

A bell rang, recess ended, and Naruto walked stiffly back into the building. 

‘I know that feeling, buddy.’ she sympathized, looking over at her father. 

“Otousan.” She said, finally bestowing upon him a title (he perked up- and his hair lifted). “Someone should take him to get a checkup after that beating, yeah?”

“Probably.” He agreed, with a small smile. “But I have a very important appointment-”

“With the hole outside the onsen?” She asked, showing a bit too much of her teeth when she smiled. 

He went white. 

“Don’t do that anymore.” She commanded imperiously. “It makes me look bad. Also, it’s gross. You obviously know how to compliment women enough that some of them will get naked for you on purpose. No more.”

She put enough emphasis on the last two words that it vaguely sounded like a dog command. Regina stood by it. 

He nodded, slowly. 

“You’re a good dad.” She said, attempting to reward positive behavior. If she did enough carrot and stick, maybe he wouldn’t immediately wreck the house that was currently being built by very sad genin and contractors. “I just need you to be a better…”

She couldn’t quite think of the words. Pervert? 

“Just stop violating people’s consent.” She amended. “You need to be a good role model.”

“For what?” he grouched. “You’re an adult.”

That was news. 

“Oh really?” Regina countered sweetly. “Not four days ago, you called me a little baby.”

He slouched so far that his fingertips almost touched the ground. Really, he was missing his calling as an actor. He emoted for the back row.

“And that is definitely a child in there.” She gestured to the Academy class where Naruto was evidently struggling through a writing class. “Unless he’s just a very short adult.”

“Fine.” Jiraiya bit out. “I will endeavor to be more respectable. Do you want me to stop writing my literary triumphs as well?”

He was trying to be bitchy, but it made her stop and think. “Only if they’re actually gross.” She said thoughtfully. “Most of them only go so far as light petting.” Regina shrugged. “Except for writing about me. I do not care for that shit at all.”

He pursed his lips. “The one about you isn’t really an Icha Icha…” he explained. “It’s just an action and romance series. You don’t even have a love interest.”

She glared at him. 

“That’s somehow worse. You could give me legions of not-gross admirers, you know.” 

“Next book.” He promised. He turned back to the Academy. 

“What are we going to do about him?” He pointed his thumb at the window. 

She huffed. “What’s this about we? Don’t pretend you’re going to be staying here that often.”

Jiraiya looked ashamed. 

“I’ll come back when I can.” He said, quietly. “Once a year.”

“At least twice a year.” She countered. “This place is ridiculous. And you need to teach me the fine arts.”

“And also how to make matcha.” Regina added, remembering how that was doubtless going to pop up in her life. 

“Take a class, Reji.” 

They stared at each other. He gave up first- she was noting that he did that easier and easier every time. 

“At least twice a year.” He agreed. 

Her father flitted off, doubtless to torment someone else, and Regina waited. And watched. Naruto obviously got too far behind at some point, and then he stopped trying and started goofing off. 

‘Material is too advanced, or being taught badly?’ she wondered, looking around the room. To be honest, none of the kids looked confident. They looked like they were in the throes of varying degrees of panic, frantically taking notes. 

Possibly both things, then. They all looked a lot bigger than Naruto, too- they were losing some of that baby fat around their faces and fingers. 

Okay, it was boring watching children fail at learning. 

Regina walked inside, dared the secretary to say boo when she obviously looked like Jiraiya and had had an incredibly public introduction by the Hokage, and knocked on the door to the classroom she was after. 

A man with white, shoulder-length hair and a very ugly hitai-ite hat answered the door, looking cross. 

“I’m here for Uzumaki-kun.” Regina stated plainly, feeling more than a bit bored. The kids in the room were obviously straining to see her. 

She stepped forward, which forced the man to step back. He looked absolutely livid about it. His jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed.

Regina smized. Eventually he seemed to think she was some sort of well-meaning idiot, and backed off. 

“Jiraiya-hime.” Another man’s voice said, farther in the room. 

“Sou desu.” She smized harder. Any second now, she’d get away with it. “May I please borrow your student?”

White hair, bad hat moved enough that she could see the other man was actually pretty cute. 

‘Ooh.’ Her eyes traced him up and down. ‘Yes, yes, and yes. And a teacher. Probably not a lunatic.’ 

Good call, her. Eye candy that wasn’t twitchy with their kunai. It seemed like barging into this unsuspecting elementary classroom was going even better than expected. 

Cutie Sensei coughed awkwardly. Regina cocked her head, just a little. 

“Is now ok?” She asked, knowing damn well he was in the middle of teaching a verb form. 

Naruto would just have to learn the past subjunctive another day, when his brain probably wasn’t bleeding. 

He started, and turned back to his class. “Uzumaki Naruto- please go with Jiraiya-hime.” He barked. 

Naruto got up, and snickers erupted all over class. 

Regina narrowed her eyes at the group in general. They ceased. 

It was dead quiet as Naruto gathered up his books and supplies and put them into his backpack. 

She restrained a twitch as he shoved all the papers in and crumpled them hopelessly. Regina thought more adorable animal thoughts. 

Naruto walked to the front slowly, as if he was about to get yelled at.  Regina just held out her hand. He took it, and looked down at the floor. 

“Thank you.” She smiled at Cutie Sensei and Bad Hat, before bowing a little bit. Not too much. “I am sorry for disturbing your class time. Thank you for your kindness.”

They bowed back, low and kind of frantic. Regina wondered whether people just wandered in here to check out kids like library books. Probably not.

Then she led Naruto out of the room, down the hallway, and out the front door. 

“Am I in trouble?” He asked, really quietly. He wasn’t looking at her. 

She blinked rapidly. Oh. Yeah. He probably thought he was gonna get an ass chewing for being rude to her or something. 

“Nope.” She reassured him. “You just looked really bored in there.” She poked the top of his head. “Plus, that Hyuuga kid launched you across the playground like a rocket. I wanted to take you to the hospital, maybe get some ice cream?”

Children liked ice cream, right?

He seemed hesitant about this kind of attention, but gripped her hand a little bit tighter. 

She took that as a yes. 

‘Take that, Mom. I’m fucking great with kids.’

The hospital staff were absolutely unbothered with her in general, which was a nice change of pace. There was no stuttering or obvious hopes for a princessy introduction, no vague threatening gestures, and no stares. 

Regina found that she liked the hospital. 

Naruto did not. 

“Nee-chan,” he whined. 

He really did go from 0-1000 in terms of casualness, didn’t he? Regina let it blow past her like the breeze. “How long do we have to wait? It’s been forever.”

“It’s been ten minutes.” She corrected absently. 

He was bouncing in his chair. It looked comically oversized- juxtaposed with his tiny, scrawny body. 

So cute. So smol. 

“Foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…” he whined, directly into her ear. She resisted the urge to swat him away, because that reminded her of her own parents. 

Instead, she snaked her arms around him and hoisted him onto her lap. 

He seemed stunned. 

It kept him quiet and still for a good minute, before his sticky little hands were around her neck and in her hair. 

How? When? She hadn’t given him anything. Were all children just sticky?

Luckily, he seemed mostly appeased. He gradually relaxed into her grip, and stuck his pointy little chin on her shoulder. 

It hurt. 

Regina sighed, but tried to keep it quiet. She’d been bony like that when she was little- all elbows and knees and sharp chin. Unfortunately, she had never thought about what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that kind of affection.

The nurse called Naruto’s name, and Regina stood up. He immediately hooked his legs around her waist like a little koala. 

Okay, so this was how she lived now. 

Regina followed the nurse into an exam room and peeled her found child off of her and stuck him onto the table. 

The doctor pronounced him perfectly healthy, but cautioned about any head injuries. Regina nodded dully, agreeing to vaccinate him for rabies and the flu or whatever.

‘I mean, he’s in training to be a shinobi. I can’t imagine that concussion is actually the worst of the things he has to worry about.’

Not when he could plausibly be lit on fire or something. 

Regina eyed her sticky child. He was watching her intently. Like he was waiting for something. 

She thanked the doctor and followed the next nurse down the hallway, towards the vaccination area. Naruto was clinging to her hand like a drowning sailor. It kind of hurt. 

He stopped dead at a door, which jerked her to a stop. Regina barely braced herself from the fall. 

“What is it?” She asked, trying not to sound too irritated. Landing on her ass in public was not dignified. 

He pointed to the sign. 

Uh. She squinted. Obviously it was a name. But it wasn’t a name kanji she knew. The first part was probably ‘uchi’. Probably. 

“Who is it? Do you know them?” 

He nodded. “Sasuke-teme.”

“Rude word.” She chided him, looking at the nurse for any sign. 

“Uchiha-kun isn’t ready for visitors, Jiraiya-hime.” The nurse said, with an apologetic tone. 

Oh. Ooooooh. 

She had wondered where that family went. 

Regina peeked in. A little body was under a white blanket. He definitely had a catheter and an iv. The beeps of the machines signalled that his heart rate was kinda fast.

Regina didn’t know much about medicine. But she supposed that people who were sleeping or in a coma tended not to do that.

There was no one else in the room. There were no flowers. No cards. No balloons. Not even a chair by the bed.

Regina stepped back into the hallway, pulling Naruto with her. A feeling she couldn’t explain crept into her gut and lodged there.

Something was very, very wrong with this place. 

She left Naruto with the nicest nurse she could find, with the promise that she’d be back. Then she came back around to the nurse’s desk and asked for information. She had to produce her work contract, but eventually they caved and gave her the paperwork she asked for. 

Regina took them and tucked them under her arm, before coming back for a band-aid covered Naruto. Evidently he really liked the frog ones. 

‘Buddy, have I got great news for you.’ She thought with a grim smile. Maybe he, at least, would appreciate Jiraiya’s elaborate toad choreography.

She fed him his promised ice cream and then unleashed him upon the Academy. He knocked over two trash cans and a training dummy rushing back in, maybe to show off his new bandaid swag?

She shrugged, but didn’t bother thinking too much about it. Children were a mystery. 

Sarutobi Hiruzen, first of his name, Third Hokage of the Land of Fire, was surprised to begin his Monday morning with his new, supposedly-illiterate assistant smacking a pile of papers on his desk. 

“Good morning!” She chirped with aggressive cheerfulness. He suspected it. 

“Are these… my usual papers?” He leaned over to inspect them. Oddly enough, they did not seem to contain anything about mission reports, spy reports, or diplomatic letters. 

Something in his heart began to sink. 

“Sorry, no.” Jiraiya Rejina-hime said, not sounding even remotely sorry. He had flashbacks to his little genin team. 

Hiruzen blinked. 

“They’re my personal business, I’m afraid.” She flipped through the stack, pulling out certain pieces. “I need you to hanko here, here, here, on this one… and over here.”

He blearily read something about clan adoption, and had some idea what this was about. 

“Oh, we didn’t file that paperwork for you to be officially listed, did we.” He said. It wasn’t a question. His student was absolute shit at paperwork. And the one time Jiraiya had actually done any, he’d wrecked the clan system so badly that the other clans petitioned to make it impossible for a one-man clan to be formed. 

He pitied anyone who waded into that mess. 

“All right.” It was part and parcel of bringing little Rejina in, after all. He actually respected her initiative in getting it filed. Otherwise, she couldn’t be considered a real citizen of Fire Country. She’d have been in some very iffy legal territory. 

He stamped and stamped. It was only about ten minutes before he was finished, and he looked up at her. 

She was watching him. No. Watching implied that she had some sort of goal in mind. She was observing. 

“Thank you,” she said, and bowed very low. “I appreciate your trust in me.”

He hummed. That was a nice thing to hear. But he hadn’t really trusted her with anything yet. Mostly, he’d tried to use mild genjutsu and psychological warfare on a twenty year old civilian girl, and she hadn’t either outed herself as a murderous fraud or cracked under the pressure. 

“When can Uchiha-kun be released into my care?” Rejina asked, after she whisked the paperwork away. “I feel that he needs extra medical care immediately.”

Hiruzen blinked. 

Uchiha…

What the hell. 

He wracked his blurry, age-addled mind. Damn it. 

She cocked her head and looked at him with big eyes. Like a barn owl. Hiruzen did not shudder. 

“You just stamped my petition for legal guardianship, Hokage-sama.” She said, eyebrows furling. 

He said nothing. It was 5 am. 

“For Uchiha-kun and Uzumaki-kun.” 

He didn’t respond. She slumped a bit. 

“Anou, Hokage-sama…” she rubbed the back of her head with a sheepish smile (like Jiraiya, so much like her father) “was that a mistake?”

“No.” He said, fairly quickly. Naruto-kun… well. That was entirely fitting. Jiraiya was her father and Naruto-kun’s guardian. That made sense. 

Uchiha Sasuke was another matter. But, try as he may, no one else was beating down his door for the job. He silently cursed Danzo to hell, and then smiled. “I am merely surprised to see you taking on so much responsibility, so early.”

She blinked, a childish affectation on an adult’s features. It was disarming and odd. 

Hiruzen then wondered if he just didn’t spend enough time around civilians. Shinobi were trained out of that kind of expressiveness at a young age. 

Then she smiled. Or smirked. It danced along razor-thin lines. 

“Thank you, Hokage-sama.” She bowed again. “My apologies, but I have a desperate message I need to run before I come back during office hours.” Then she swept out, holding the door open for Keiko-chan, who was struggling with a stack of papers that covered her head. 

What an odd little duck.