Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Do I have to do this?" Shay asked as she stared at the murky ink black waters of the lake outside of her great uncle's lake house. The one that had been abandoned for the past five years since the man had died.

"Yup. You lost the bet. Time to go skinny dipping." Her cousin Rae chirped happily as she pulled out a video camera.

Shay blanched and looked at her like she was nuts and shook her head, her curly black hair swaying a bit as she did so. She did not want another video of herself on Youtube! The last time one had been posted she'd had a pedophile stalking her for three months before coming home to an empty house one day after school and finding the freaky sick bastard in her bedroom waiting for her.

She had just barely managed to get away after he had forced her to-No! She would not think of that now. That had been three years ago, and she was'nt the same weak, sheltered little girl she had been then.

She had gotten away. She had survived the attack.

She was alive, and well, and the nightmare was far, far, far behind her. Three years and seven thousand miles behind her. Her attacker was in jail, and if there was a god in heaven justice would be served when he got a taste of his own medicine before dying horribly from being shanked in the kidney or something. Or an STD could finish him off. She wasn't picky.

"You're not posting that on You tube." She'd break the damn camera and beat her older cousin to death before she let Rae post another video of her ever again! Rae started to say something then snapped her mouth shut as she studied her baby cousin.

"You were only attacked once." She said as she rolled her eyes.

God. Try and help a girl out and she decides never to let her live it down. What was Shay's problem with men anyways? Didn't she know how much fun they were? I mean, honestly. She had been in the presence of one for a while. 

Granted that she claimed that he had raped her- but Rae wasn't buying that for one moment. She knew that her cousin had all the makings to be a good slut. She just wished that the whiny little bitch would drop the goody-goody act and finally be who and what she was.

Shay curled her fingers into a fist. Attacked, was putting the term mildly. She had been held prisoner against her will, brutilized, among other things and had spent almost three weeks in the hospital in a coma because of her injuries. So yeah, she was a bit touchy about the incident.

She didn't like being reminded of being a victim. And she didn't like the careless and insinsitive way that Rae spoke of the attack either. She always made it sound as if she had asked for what had happened. The bitch.

Rage rose up in her chest, curling it's fingers around her heart.

"Only attacked...once." She said the words very softly, hurt and disbelief colored her tone.

How could Rae be so cruel? Because of her stupidity Shay had been stripped of her innocence at a very tender age, she'd been treated as a toy. Something to play with. And when she had disobeyed, she had been beaten and tortured. She had scars on her neck, her chest, and on her stomach and inner thighs.

She'd been lucky that she hadn't bled to death before she could get away.

She growled at Rae and snapped. "Fuck you Rae!" And turned to leave, she'd bedamned if she was going to follow through with her end of the deal when Rae was being such a pain.

She wasn't risking her neck again. She got wo steps before something hard slammed into the back of her head and a kolidascope of colors and lights danced in her vision before she went down with a soft thud in the grass.

Rae stood there grinding her teeth, her hand tightly gripping what was left of her broken camera. She kicked Shay in the ribs once, twice, three times and snarled and spat on her. "God I fucking hate you."

She should have died in the attack. Really she should have.

If she had...

Rae would have been able to leave home, escape her step father and stay with her uncle and aunt.

She didn't bother taking Shay's pulse, to be perfectly honest she didn't really care if the younger girl was dead or not, though she would bet that Shay was now suffering from a skull fracture or something and might die anyways, she just couldn't bring herself to care all that much. She stripped her naked and quickly dumped her body into the frigid waters and smiled as she sank under the waters.

"Bye-bye baby." Rae said happily as she picked up Shay's clothing and carried it and the broken camera back to the car. She'd burn the shit later and just say that Shay had decided to run away or something.

 The cold was like an electric shock to his system. Jolting him awake where he lay. How long had he been asleep? He wondered groggily as he pushed himself upright and lifted his azure eyes to the grey sky above. Gods, he hated the winter. It was always so cold, and he was always so sleepy and couldn't train and had to confine himself to his apartment.

He scanned the skies for a second or so, lifting his face to the heavens and sniffed the air. It was going to snow in a little while. He could tell by the crisp, icy taste on the wind. Stinging his eyes, his ears, and his nose. He shivered in his jacket and stood up.

He'd trained enough for now. It was time to go home.

He stood up and groaned when he felt his knee's pop a little bit. Ow... That was not only annoying, but painful.

Well, that is what you get when you train outside in the dead of winter. Kyubbi said affectionately.

Shut it fur ball. Naruto thought tiredly, affection lacing his inner tone as he collected his weapons and started walking home. He was half way down the mountain over looking the village that he had grown up in when something caught his attention. He blinked, looked around. Pinched himself. Yelped and blinked again.

This had to be the oddest thing that he had ever seen before in his life, and he'd seen some really weird shit in his day.

There in the trail, right in front of him was a naked...girl? What the hell?

That's a good question. Check and see if she's alive. Kyubbi said excitedly. This was by far the coolest event that had happened in a while. But then he was sealed inside of Naruto, so it didn't take much to make him happy. His life had become so damned boring when he had been sealed away.

Yeah okay. But what was he supposed to do with her? He wondered.

Kyubbi practically rolled his golden eyes at the teen. Sixteen years old, male and healthy-Naruto was an enigma that the nine tailed demon simply couldn't solve. Not without developing the headache from hell first anyways.

So naturally it bugged the demon to know that the teen had now sexual interest in any female's at all. And if he did have such interest, he hid it very well behind his mask of ignorance. Perhaps because he wasn't sure how to action his feelings or maybe it was more to protect himself from heartache, whatever the reason the young man drove the demon nuts.

Are you really that stupid kit? Or are you just gay? You have a naked female in front of you and you don't know what to do! Cop a feel, kiss her, jack off on her stomach, just do something! Kyubbi ranted at him.

How about I just check and make sure she's alive. Naruto thought in amusement and got the impression that Kyubbi was baring his fangs at him and chuckled as he knelt down and felt for a pulse in the side of her neck and frowned when he felt how cold her skin was.

Ah right, right, she was naked in the woods in he middle of winter. And she also felt like her skin as damp. He glanced at her hair, lifted his hand and shifted his fingers through her hair, feeling the et strands as they slipped through his fingers and looked down at his palm and blinked in surprise as he noted the faint smudge of blood on his palm.

"Shit." He growled as he looked around. He had been slightly amused at finding a naked girl out this far from the village and it's people. Had thought that maybe she had ben partying and gone just a bit too far, but the fact that she was naked and suffering from an apparent head wound changed everything.

He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped her in it as he scanned the woods again. A dozen or more different scenario's running through his head. Following them was questions.

Had she been kidnapped?

Dragged from her home or work place?

And more importantly- Had she been raped? His azure eyes darkened with rage at the thought as they flickered down her body, subtly checking for blood or any other fluids. There was none that he could see, but that didn't mean that it hadn't have happened.

I'll have to get Sakura or Baa-chan to check her out. He thought as he carefully picked her up off of the ground, pausing briefly to pull the lapels of his jacket closed over her breasts, his dark eyes taking in the faint scars on her neck, chest, and stomach. He made a mental note to ask about them, just in case they were relevant in some way to how she had ended up naked in the woods and quickly shushined towards his apartment.

He'd make her comfortable, patch her up and send for Tsunade or someone to check her out.

He had to make a shadow clone to dig in his pants pocket, and pull out his key and unlock the door for him so that he could slip inside before anyone could see him.

Chapter Text

The first thing that Naruto did once he was in the apartment was kick the door closed and send his shadow clone to find one of the medical nins he could trust and summoned another one to help him by getting the first aid kit, a towel, a shirt and maybe some panties that he had bought on impulse the one time he had gone shopping as a girl.

He walked quickly through his apartment living room, down the hall to his bedroom and lay her on his bed and then moved to shut the blinds.

He did not want any of the villagers that hated him breaking into his home and hurting the girl thinking that she was his girlfriend or something. His clone walked into the room and tossed him the towel as he set down the shirt, panties, and first aid kit. Naruto caught the towel in mid air and moved away from the window after peeking through the blinds and going to the streets around the building he lived in a quick, paranoid, calculating look.

So far, so good.

It would appear that the villagers weren't aware that he was even home right now.

Fantastic. If he could manage to keep the lights out long enough, they would think that he was some place secluded and remote, like the woods, or training grounds and would go looking for him there instead of stopping by his place.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, the mattress springs creaking a bit as he leaned over his guest and started to dry her hair and skin, doing his best to make sure that she was dry while avoiding any place that could be considered awkward to touch, like her breasts, and anything south of the waist.

He steered clear of there, silently imagining giant mutant bugs or something protecting the area in a threatening way that when he accidentally brushed on of her breasts, he jerked his hand back and looked around as if expecting the giant mutant bugs to swarm all over him and rip him to pieces and eat his insides and stuff.

It creeped him out, but at the same time it kept him from copping a feel. He was a gentleman after all.

He finished drying her off, or at least dried her off as much as he could without embarrassing himself and grabbed the shirt and panties. He looked at the panties and then at the girl and flushed red. Yeah. He....wasn't putting those on her.

He'd let one of the girls do it instead.

He lifted her upper body and held it against him and slipped his jacket from her slender shoulders and slipped her small hands through the sleeves, taking the time to note just how fragile and delicate her bones and features were. She was as small and delicately boned as Sakura, but she her chest was bit closer to Hinata's size.

He was momentarily startled by the softness crushed against his chest as he pulled the shirt up over her shoulders and closed his eyes and lay her back down and buttoned the shirt without looking.

He was about to move on to the first aid when he heard a knock at his front door and jumped to his feet his right hand automatically going to the weapons pouch at his hip when he heard a familiar sounding, worried voice. "Naruto? Naruto are you in there?"

It was Iruka.

The blond sighed heavily and looked at he girl.

Maybe he could get the man to leave faster if he spoke to him and told him that he was tired and didn't want to hang out tonight. He quietly made his way down the hall to the living room and opened the door before the teacher could knock the damn thing down, and blinked when he caught sight of his first shadow clone plastered around the man's arm.

Well, so much for getting medical help for the female. He thought warily as he moved back and let the man inside.

Iruka had been scared out of his mind when one of Naruto's shadow clones had latched on to his arm and started babbling about something or someone being hurt.

He had taken off running as fast as he could towards his adoptive brother's place thinking that the teen was about to bite the big one. He reached out and grasped Naruto's shoulders, his dark eyes looking the young man over for wounds. And finally seemed to calm his rattled nerves before smacking him in the side of the head and growling at him.

"Dammit Naruto! What the hell are you trying to do? Kill me?" Naruto rubbed the side of his head and glared for a second before easily slipping his mask on. He chuckled and looked guilty.

"Maa, sorry Iruka-sensei. I was sort of panicking earlier."

Iruka stepped further into the apartment and looked around. Naruto had said that he had panicked, but Iruka couldn't see any visible reason that might have caused the teen to panic. There were no bodies or blood littering the floor. No broken glass from the window, no over turned furniture. Everything looked fine. Normal even.

So what could have made him-

He was about to ask when he heard a faint sound of distress coming from Naruto's bedroom. Naruto must have herd it too because his body suddenly went ram rod stiff, his blue eyes narrowed at the older man, a strange look crossing the young man's face as if he was silently saying. "Make a run for it. I dare you." The teen was hiding something.

Something more than usual from the looks of it.

"Naruto..." What are you hiding? Iruka thought as he heard the sound again. This time a little louder. His dark eyes flickering to the hall way, was that a moan that he had just heard?

"Don't ask, just walk away so that I can take care of it." It, was going to get him into trouble if Iruka discovered what it was. In fact he was sure that the man would freak out in typical mother hen fashion and possibly slit the girl's throat.

He didn't want that to happen until he could figure out if she was a threat or not. He doubted that she was. Her body was sorely lacking in height, muscle, and density. The palms of her hands were soft. Not callused like his own.

Nothing like his own. Meaning that she wasn't a nin. Not even a combatant.

But that didn't mean that she wasn't dangerous. "Naruto." Iruka said his name warningly and the blond gave the teacher an amused look. Like having the man speak to him like he was still a child would cause him to break down and tell everything.

Iruka might be a little bit of an idiot. But he was Naruto's idiot, and right now he needed to tried carefully. He was in Naruto's home, and he would follow Naruto's rules here or he'd throw him out and not allow him back inside his home ever again.

"Go home Iruka." Naruto said gently as he reached out and grabbed the back of he chunin's vest as the man took a dangerous step towards the hall. Iruka half twisted his body so that he could look at is adoptive brother as the boy opened the front door and not so gently pushed him outside before closing the door in his face.

"Naruto!"

"Go home brother!" Naruto called as he thumped the door with his fist and sighed. God he was tired.

Chapter Text

Naruto waited until he was sure that Iruka was gone before he pushed away from the door and walked down the hall to his bedroom to check on his guest. And stopped as the door swung open and he caught sight of the girl sitting upright in his bed holding her head and glanced at his shadow clone, whom had his back flattened against the wall just inside the door.

Naruto scowled at the clone and felt the need to roll his eyes.

What was with his clones lately? Were they malfunctioning or something? He wondered curiously.

The girl took several minutes to look around the room before spotting him. Her eyes widened and what little color her face had drained away and she let out an ungodly shriek and was across the room in a flash, her back slamming into his wall as she stood there on shaky legs staring at him, wide eyed in fright.

Not really fazed by this turn of events he took the chance to study her.

If she was up and on her feet so soon after suffering a head wound then chances were good that she was going to be fine. But she would still need rest and to be checked by a medic anyways, just in case.

"How are you feeling?" He asked curiously as he leaned his shoulder against the door frame.

She stared at him with those frightened dark green eyes and smiled in amusement. Wow. She had such pretty eyes. He was just a little surprised to see such a startling shade of green. Her eyes weren't a light green like Gaara's, or even a moss green like Sakura's. They were so dark that they could literally be mistaken for actual honest to god emerald.

She stare at him and started babbling and he frowned a little bit. He couldn't really understand what she was saying, but he caught little snippets here and there like 'oh my god' and 'dead'.

He knew fear.

As a shinobi, and as a demon container, fear was simply a part of his job and his life that he'd come to accept. Weather he liked it or not.

He knew that people were scared of him for being a trained killer, he knew that they were scared of him because of the Kyubbi, and for other things. So he was sort of used to people falling apart on him. To him it was just another day in the life. But even so, he flinched as his heart ached in his chest upon her reaction to him.

She was a total stranger to him, yet her reaction to his presence hurt him. Just like everyone else's.

It was entirely possible that she thought he might hurt her. Or maybe she was one of the villagers (something that he seriously doubted since he often took a head count, to keep track of his own people) and was frightened because like so many others all she saw was the demon. Finally after her melt down she seemed to get a hold of herself and finally asked him. "W-Where-"

"Kanoha village. The land of fire." Naruto said automatically. She nodded mutely and tried to collect her thoughts before asking.

"W-Who are you?"

He blinked and cocked his head. Was she being serious?

Everyone in the great shinobi nations knew his name. Everyone and their cousin knew him.

They whispered about him to anyone that would listen. They told lies, called him a demon in human flesh, hell he even knew of some that used his name in bed time stories to frighten little kids. So hearing the girl ask him who he was just sort of...weird.

He walked across the room and bent down to her level, the darker part of his side silently begging him to be let out. Just for a second. It wouldn't do much damage, just scare her a little. He ruthlessly squashed that part of his mind as she flinched pressing her back against his wall even more. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki... And who exactly might you be?" He asked curiously.

He wondered if she really hadn't ever heard his name before.

Then he wondered if maybe she had been living in a cave somewhere all her life. She didn't answer him right then, she seemed just a little bit too scared of him to think properly enough to bother replying to his inquiry anyways.

Iruka knocked on the office door of his Hokage and waited for the woman to call out before walking in.

If Tsunade seemed surprised to see him popping his head inside while she was speaking to Kakashi and Sakura and the other two members of team seven, she didn't say anything. She paused in the middle of speaking and looked at him, Kakashi and Sakura both turned their heads to look at him too.

Tsunade looked like she was about to continue when curiosity got the best of her. "Can I help you with something Iruka?"

"Uh...yeah..." He said nervously as he looked first at Kakashi, then Sakura.

"Well? What is it?"

"I-I just came from Nauto's place...and something is going on..."

Tsunade perked up in her seat. "Why would you say that?" She asked more to herself than anyone. She glanced at the members of team Kakashi and noted how quiet and tense the four nins were.

"Tell us why you think something is going on with Naruto?"

"I was walking home from school, and one of his shadow clones grabbed me and started babbling about someone being hurt, maybe dying. So I run over to his place and beat on the apartment door and he opens it and just stares at me like he hadn't expected me to come over... I look around when I hear this odd noise, it sounded like a moan or sound of distress coming from his bedroom. He stiffened and gave me a cold look. I started to go and see what was in his room when he told me to forget about it and walk away in a really mean tone. Then he threw me out!"

Chapter Text

Naruto was quiet as he set down a cup of herbal tea on his bed side table. The girl looked up at him, then looked at the drink. "You didn't put anything in that did you?" She sounded suspicious, and paranoid, and like she had far too much to hide. In fact Naruto would bet that she had something to hide. No one reacted so strongly to the mere presence of a total stranger like she had to him. He'd bet that she had been abused or something.

"No. But I don't expect you to drink it if your worried about that." Naruto said as he dropped down to the floor across from the bed as she picked up the tea and stared at the warm liquid before holding the cup out to him.

"You take a sip first. If nothing happens to you then I can at least trust you not to poison me."

Naruto studied her for a second before something seemed to click in his mind.

She didn't know him. She didn't know about his job as a ninja, or his immunity to drugs, or the Kyubbi demon. Or at least that's what he thought. He decided to try an experiment of sorts with her and took the small cup from her and took a sip of the scalding hot liquid and handed the cup back to her. She set it down and stared at him as if she expected him to drop dead or pass out right then and there.

Naruto couldn't help himself, he chuckled in amusement.

He wasn't the type to use poison on someone when he could simply snap their neck. But she didn't know that. And if she didn't know it, he certainly wasn't going to point that out to her. She might get hysterical and start crying. Then he would get a headache and try to calm her down, and when calming her down in a normal fashion didn't work, he'd knock her out and walk off.

Yeah, that could work. He had a plan. He wasn't really all that stoked about it but anything was better than having a girl cry in front of him. It made him really uncomfortable when that happened.

"Well, I guess you really didn't put anything in it..."

Naruto smiled at her. "Do you know why you were naked in the woods?" Naruto asked curiously as she took a sip of the tea, having finally figured that it was safe to do so. Her eyes went wide and she made a choking sound and quickly set the cup aside and coughed several times before rasping.

"What?"

"When I found you. You were laying unconscious, naked in the woods." Naruto said and watched her reaction. She looked both scared and mortified.

"P-Please tell me that your joking."

Naruto gave her a tight lipped smile and shook his head. Her face went pink, then completely drained of color as she stared at him. "Oh god. Oh my god-" Uh-oh, another melt down was starting. Naruto sighed. I shouldn't have asked. "You really found me in the woods? Naked?" Did that mean that he had seen her scars?

The thought of being left in such an open place in a vulnerable position made her stomach lurch dangerously.

She slapped a hand over her mouth and made a funny sound as she started to hyperventilate. Naruto was up and in her face in the blink of an eye, his hands gently brushing her dark hair back from her face. "You look like you're going to be sick." He looked away from her pale face and glanced around the room and found his waste basket across the room and quickly grabbed it and thrust it under her face just in time to stop his floor from being messed up.

She wretched violently several times, then set the basket aside when she felt a bit better. "I've never seen someone react like that to being left naked in some woods."

"Maybe because you've never been dragged out of your home kicking and screaming." The girl snapped, Naruto thinned his lips to keep from snapping back. How the fuck would you know?

He had been dragged from his home so many times growing up that he had actually started leaving his apartment at night when he was younger. He had been afraid that if he didn't leave before someone could corner him, he'd die.

Some of that same fear still lingered. Some.

But it had gotten better now that he was older. He was just paranoid that something- anything would happen and things would go back to the way that they had been before. So he was a little bit bothered by the fact that his guest thought that he had never suffered such a thing before. But it didn't bother him half as much as what she had admitted. He had thought she had been abused. Her words and her reaction had pretty much told him almost everything that he felt he should know.

He ignored the words that she had spoken, and though he could sense the warning bells going off in his head, he wasn't done asking questions.

But he was sure of one thing for certain. She wasn't a threat. She was just...odd. And maybe a little bit lost. "What's your name?"

"Shay. It was Shiloh, but I changed it a while back."

"What's the rest of your name? Or is Shay just it?"

"Uh...Shay Ann Nicole Michales."

What an odd name. The syllables and pronunciation was different from anything that he had ever heard before. Could she be a foreigner? "Well, Shay. It looks like the two of us are stuck together for now. Feel free to crash here as long as you need too, and if you need anything let me know."

"Uh...but I need to get back home. My famliy will worry."

"Sorry, but I can't help you get home until you remember how you got here to begin with." Naruto said as he stood up and stretched. It was well past ten at night. It was just a little odd that they had been talking that long when they had'nt said very much. Shay looked like she wanted to argue but stopped herself. "Try to get some sleep, Miss Michales. I'll take you around the village tomorrow and we'll see if anyone has ever seen you before-" He glanced at the shirt top that she was wearing and said a silent prayer that she never found out that he had dressed her. He didn't want her to get hysterical on him again.

"We'll grab you some clothes and stuff too." Just in case she ended up staying longer than a few days. And because he didn't want her running around his apartment naked.

Chapter Text

Shay nodded off much easier than Naruto had expected. Her body and her mind exhausted. He checked on her, using any means that he could use when he didn't want to get up off of his couch since he had finally managed to doze off. Leaving one of his shadow clones hidden outside of his bedroom window, just in case she decided to try a fast one and run or something. But strangely enough, she hadn't moved or stiffed since the first time he had gone to check on her before going to sleep himself.

He woke up the next morning to the feeling of being watched and cracked open his eyes a little bit and found Shay sitting a few inches from the couch looking at him, frowning then looking at something else. Now what is she up too? He wondered as she looked at him again and bit her lower lip and decided to try something.

He tensed and got ready to grab her as she slowly moved forward and reached over him, she paused to put her hand, palm up in front of his nose and mouth and for a second anger rose swiftly in his chest.

She was going to try and suffocate him! He was about to rip off her arm when she started to drop her hand and brushed his cheek with her finger tips and sighed the breath that he hadn't noticed that she was holding and muttered.

"Oh thank god...he's breathing."

Naruto mentally frowned and forced his body to relax as much as he could with a total stranger so close to him and reached out for Kyubbi. Oi, fur ball. Did I stop breathing for a secondor so?

One minute and thirteen seconds. Not enough to kill you, but obviously enough to worry her when she didn't see your chest moving.

So she thought that I might be dead?

Probably. Kyubbi admitted and Naruto sighed.

Okay that made sense.

Naruto sighed and opened his eyes, Shay made a startled sound and quickly backed away from him.

Naruto blinked a few times and looked at her and noted with some amusment that she had helped herself to some of his clothes. She was wearing a black sweater that was a bit too big for her in the neck and the arm area's. The neck line of the shirt was so big that it made one of the sleeves slip off of her slender shoulder, and she had the sleeves rolled up a bit so that she could use her hands.

She was also wearing a pair of his pants, an old pair of jeans that he had worn when he was thirteen.

"Well, I guess borrowing some clothes sort of fixes that one problem for a little while..." Naruto said before he looked away and noted the time on the clock hanging on the wall. It was a little after eight, and he usually didn't get up until about eleven-a little habit he had formed when he realised that Kakashi, his former sensei, would never be on time for anything. Ever.

He sighed and sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and yawned, widely. Shay watched him almost dislocate his jaw yawning and felt her eyes go wide when she saw what looked like fangs. They were big ones too. Like something you would see in a horror movie, or more adequately put, a vampire movie. The long pointy, pearly white teeth lengthened and then shrank to adjust to the blonde's mouth as he closed it and blinked at her.

"Something wrong?" He asked curiously as she stared at him wide eyed.

"Are you a vampire?" Shay blurted out without thinking. She'd always had a secret fear of undead...things. It was one of the reasons she had never visited cemetery's after dark. She had always thought that the place would turn into a large monster party. Where were-wolves, mummies, zombies, and the like would gather there and take turns dragging random people off of the streets and eating their faces.

Naruto blinked and wondered what a vampire was when Kyubbi pipped up. I think she just asked if you were a blood sucking dead thing.

Naruto was quite for a second as he mulled over Shay's question while Kyubbi told him what a vampire was then answered. "No. I'm not. Why do you ask?"

"Because when you yawned I could see your fangs." Naruto cocked his head and stared at her unblinking for several minutes. He found it just a little bit amusing that Shay would notice that he had fangs right off the bat when it had taken Iruka, Sakura and even Kakashi over three years to figure that little tid bit out.

But then again, Shay didn't know him. She didn't know anything about him, or at least that's what she claimed. So it was natural of her to look for little oddities that might escape the notice of others.

It was part of her survival instinct.

He made a humming sound and got up off of the couch and ran his fingers through his spikey blond hair. "You hungry? I can fix us something to eat if you want." He said as he walked past her and into the kitchen and started to mess around in the fridge.

"What do you have?" Shay asked curiously as Naruto pulled out a carton of eggs, some bacon, sausage, and several other things.

"Depends on what you like. I have eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, some cereal, ramen noodles..."

"You don't eat much stuff huh."

Naruto turned his head slightly to look at her. An enigmatic smile curving his lips. "Not really. I think that this is the first time in a long time that I've had a guest staying with me. So I'm a little out of practice as a host, but-" He started to tell her that he could easily fix that. But stopped when she came up behind him. It was a stupid move on her part, and he had to fight himself to keep from grabbing her, slamming her up against nearest surface and killing her.

Instead he forced himself to relax and reminded himself that she wasn't armed, or trying to attack him, she was just standing there watching him. "You don't have to try so hard. I know a fellow lone wolf when I see one."

Naruto made a humming sound but didn't comment.

Her words pretty much told him everything. She didn't really like people either.

Though he doubted that she disliked people for the same reason that he did, but then again he didn't really know her very well. So anything was possible at this point. "Tell me something about yourself." Naruto said after a second or so of digging around in one of his cabinets and pulling out two pans and setting them on the stove and turning on the eyes.

"Like what?"

"What was your family like? Where did you live? How did you grow up? What are some of the things that comfort you and help you feel better when you're down?"

Shay frowned and moved to stand next to him. "So basically you're digging for information on me and my personal affairs..." Naruto's eyes flickered to her face. Hn, he may have to rethink the way that he questioned her if she could catch onto what he was doing so quickly.

"Do you have personal affairs? Affairs...period?" He asked stupidly and she flushed pink and growled at him.

"None of your damn business." Shay snapped at him.

He snickered, knowing very well that that question was just a tad out of line and put the shell to the egg he had just cracked aside and turned his body to face her and leaned his hip against the counter top.

"First thing is first Miss Michales, your a guest in my home. I would like to be the kind of good samaritan to just stay out of your way and not ask such personal questions, but I have a job to do. To protect the village, and I can't not ask you questions because you may be a threat to me and mine. I want to trust you, and give you the benefit of the doubt, but I need something to work with first. So please...just humor me."

Chapter Text

Naruto sat across from Shay at the table his empty plate pushed to the side as he drank his coffee and studied the girl from under his lids. Ah...there was nothing like a nice piping hot cup of-

"Ew. This coffee tastes like mud." Shay said suddenly and Naruto nearly choked on the liquid in his mouth and snorted in laughter as he put his cup down. Shay gave him a dirty look and he snorted and coughed to clear his throat and looked at her. His eyes glittering like polished sapphires.

Shay cocked her head and studied him for a second.

It was funny-not the coffee thing but rather the way that he looked right now. He had smiled at her a few times since last night when she had woken up, but those smiles had been nothing compared to the grin on his face now. It literally seemed to transform his features. Changing them from handsome to stunning.

Holy wow.

The boy was a god. Shay thought as she picked up her coffee cup and took another sip and choked on the bitter bad tasting liquid.

Ew! She cringed as Naruto reached across the table and took the coffee cup from her and set it next to his own and shook his head. He gave her an amused look. "If you didn't like it the first time, you shouldn't have tried drinking it the second."

"I wasn't paying attention."

Naruto chuckled. "Stuff like that happen often?"

Shay gave him a wane smile and shrugged. "Sometimes." Like nine times out of ten. When she was walking, and chewing gum at the same time. Or something to the effect.

"Okay Miss Michales, I have some stuff that I need to ask you-"

"Okay. But I have questions myself...and please don't ask anything to personal." Shay said with a wary look and Naruto nodded his head in understanding and decided to test the waters a bit to see just how personal was too personal.

"Alright. Define personal."

"No questions about my love life or lack there of. No questions about sex. Nothing like that." Again Naruto nodded his head in understanding. Asking about those things would be a bit out of line, especially since he wasn't interested in her that way.

"Okay. Where did you grow up?"

"Tombstone. Arizona."

"Where is that located?" Naruto asked curiously. He couldn't remember a country by that name. Shay shrugged her shoulders.

"Dunno. You got a map?"

"Country? Or world?" Naruto asked curiously.

Shay thought for a second. "Maybe both just to be on the safe side." Naruto nodded and stood up abruptly and picked up her coffee cup and walked into the kitchen. He'd get the damn maps in a second but first he wanted to get her something that didn't taste like mud to drink. He poured out the coffee, rinsed out the cup and poured some juice for her and carried the cup to her and set it down in front of her before walking over to a small pack of some kind sitting on a little table next to the door and pulled out two sets of folded papers and walked back over to her and sat back down in his seat and pushed the papers across the table to her.

Kakashi dodged the kick that Sakura aimed at his head and flipped himself back away from her and got ready to attack when Sakura asked. "Where do you think Naruto is?" He blinked and was about to respond when the girl got up in his face, he growled in annoyance and silently kicked himself for taking his eyes off of the konoichi even for a second.

But to be perfectly honest he was starting to worry about Naruto too. The boy hadn't shown up for training today, and usually he was the first one at the training grounds waiting on the rest of them, and ready to go.

And after what Iruka had said the night before he was starting to think that something was going on with the boy. Sakura was apparently worried too or she wouldn't have said anything to him in the first place. She started to swing her fist and he suffered a bizarre moment of clarity.

He was about to have his skull crushed open by Sakura. And all he could think about was Naruto and why he was so damn late.

Sakura's fist stopped just a hairs breadth from his face. Not enough to hurt him but enough to let him feel the violent way that the air stirred around him. Sweat rolled down his temple as he stared at her fist and then glanced at her face. Sakura smirked at him, evilly and he made a humming sound. Damn. She got him, he was dead.

"Looks like our training is over for today." Sakura said happily as she dropped her hands back to her sides and relaxed her body. Kakashi scratched his cheek and tried not to give in to the urge to cry as his heart thudded in his chest. Dear god, if he had had any doubts about his former students before he didn't now.

The two were either going to drive him insane or kill him. "Yeah, looks like." Kakashi said as they picked up the weapons that littered the ground. Once that was done Sakura turned to him and asked curiously.

"Kakashi-sensei. Are you going to go check on Naruto now?" Kakashi looked at her as he stuffed his weapons back in the pouch at his hip and shook his head no.

He was lying of course. But Sakura didn't know that. He didn't like everyone to know what a softy he had become once he had taken team seven as his students. Just like he chose not to bear his heart and soul, or show how worried and anxious he was whenever Naruto wasn't around.

He thought of the boy as his own younger brother, in his oddly skewered way.

Much like he thought of Sakura as a little sister. He simply didn't know what to do with himself when either of them was gone. There had been many times during their training under Tsunade and Jiraiya that he had walked around their homes for hours and hours at a time, even though they hadn't been there, he had just wanted to try and catch a glimpse of them.

To see them even for a second to sooth his fraying nerves. And when that hadn't worked he had begged Tsunade to send him on as many S class missions as possible. Not because he had wanted to die, but because he had wanted to distract himself and an S class mission or thirty was a good way to distract himself from their absence. It had worked, but only as long as he had been outside of the village.

Once he was back and realized that they were still gone he had felt an overwhelmingly oppressive feeling of loss and had spent several weeks camped out at Gai's place to mope around. He had nearly driven Gai up the wall with his odd habits and the way he had come and gone all hours of the night, but all in all Gai had helped him as much as he could.

Something that he was loath to admit, but he was thankful to the man for not leaving him alone for too long.

"I just remembered that I have...stuff to do. Later Sakura." Kakashi said as he stuffed the last of his weapons in his pouch and started walking in the direction of Naruto's place. Sakura watched him for several seconds and shook her head in amusement. When was that man going to learn that he could lie all he wanted, but she knew his heart too well for him to be able to pull something past her.

"I've never seen a map like these before." Shay said after several seconds or so of studying it.

She had been staring at both maps for the past thirty minutes trying to make heads or tails of the layout, the country names, the marked area's, and everything else. But none of it looked familiar, and none of the names made sense.

"Oh?" Naruto asked as he watched her look back and forth, a puzzled frown on her pretty face.

"The land masses look strange, I've never heard of any of these countries, and everything looks so....different-" Naruto propped himself up, resting his chin in his palm as he watched her sort through the maps before pushing them aside and sitting back in her seat and rubbing her eyes tiredly as she sighed.

"I'm sorry Naruto. I just don't see anything familiar." Shay said apologetically. Naruto reached out and took his maps and refolded them then stood up.

"Don't worry about it right now. Come on, I promised to take you out shopping today remember."

Shay stared at him for a second or so and then nodded her head and stood up. Part of her was sort of curious to see what kind of place she had been dumped in, and part of her was feeling more than a little apprehensive about going out into public. If Rae had tried to kill her then it only made sense that she would find out that she was still alive and try to kill her again.

But then again if she was in a strange place with strange people, maybe Rae wouldn't find out that she was alive after all.

Maybe.

Chapter Text

Naruto studied Shay's expression and smiled a little bit as she looked around. "Holy-What the-" Several Anbu appeared on the roof tops and vanished a second later and Shay made a choking sound and turned wide eyes to look at him and pointed. "Huh?"

Naruto chuckled and reached out and forced her hand down just in case a nin with a short temper came by and decided to take offense at being pointed at like a museum display. "Something wrong?" He asked in amusement and Shay looked at him and made a weird little sound.

"Why are people running across roof tops and disappearing into thin air?"

"Because they're ninja's." Naruto said without thinking and was a little startled when Shay grabbed his jacket sleeve and pulled on it slightly, he glanced down at her pale face.

"Ninja's? That's what you said right? Ninja's?" Shay babbled for a second. Naruto cocked his head and nodded his head slightly wondering what was wrong with her. The woman hadn't been at a loss for words since she had woken up last night.

"Yeah. Ninja's." Naruto said as he nodded his head slowly.

"Huh? B-But- They- You- Ohhhh...I think I need to sit down." Shay said as she rubbed her temples, her face suddenly very pale.

Naruto reached out and grasped her elbow in a firm yet gentle grasp and manuvered her over to the nearest building with an out door cafe and gently pushed her down in one of the seats and knelt down in front of her and studied her. She didn't look too good. What little bit of color that she had had before was completely gone, leaving her skin a scary ghostly white.

"I...should take you to the hospital." He said after a second or so. If he could explain things to Tsunade before she killed him then Shay might be allowed to live in the village. Provided that she agreed to be checked out by Ibiki and Inoichi and assigned an Anbu or two to watch her.

"N-No thanks, Naruto. I don't want to go to the hospital."

He frowned. "You should. Your head wound might have seriously damaged something." He said gently and she shook her head no. She didn't want to go to the hospital, she wanted to hide somewhere where the trained weapon weilding ninja's could'nt find her. This was a normal reaction to something like this. Was'nt it? After all ninja's had supposedly died out hundreds of years ago along with the samerai!

And if they were ninja's and she really was a stranger in their land...her chances of survival were practically nill. She looked up at him after a second or so, a stricken look on her pretty face and she said very softly. "Naruto you're...a nice guy. Really you are, but-" He cocked his head and waited for her to finish what she was saying. "But I want to go home now. I just can't stay here..." She reached out with a shaky hand and grasped his own and he could feel her trying to calm herself, trying to keep herself from panicking.

"Please. Please take me home." She pleaded.

He stared at her with a sad expression on his face. He would take her home if he knew where her home was, but he didn't and he could sense the fear churning inside of her, threatening to over whelm and suffocate her. Such an oppressive feeling wasn't easy to shake.

"I'm sorry Shay, but I don't know where you're home is. You couldn't show me on the map. Remember?" Naruto said gently, coaxingly. He was subconsciously monitoring her breathing and could feel that she was dangerously close to a panic attack and trying his best not to upset her further. But it was a difficult thing to do since he didn't know what had set her off to begin with.

She doubled over and hugged herself, letting her black hair fall into her face and tried to breath. But for some reason couldn't seem to pull any air into her lungs. All she knew was that she was in a village full of ninja's.

Trained assassins and killers who would see her as a threat and kill her without a second thought to how she must be feeling or thinking. Without a second thought to her family back home or what they must be going through right now, not knowing where she was or if she was even alive. Everything started to blur and she felt Naruto's hands on either sides of her face, pushing her hair back as tears slipped down her face.

He looked anxious as he tipped her head back a little bit and snarled something as he grabbed her and pulled her up out of the chair, wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her against him when her legs gave out and picked her up. He didn't know what to do to help her, and that fact was freaking him out a little bit as he turned and started running. Carrying Shay in his arms bridal style, a worried expression on his face.

Tsunade.

Tsunade would know what to do.

Chapter Text

Kakashi was thinking about the recent years and his student's development and couldn't help but smile. Naruto had come so far. He had gone from a knuckle head to a sanin level nin in just a few years. Kakashi was so damn proud of the boy. And equally proud of his other student Sakura. They had both been such amazing kids from the beginning.

They were still amazing kids, but...

He shook his head and tried to squash the sudden feeling of envy and jealousy.

They made him feel so inadequate. So weak by comparison.

And often times he found himself wondering what he could do just to keep up. It had taken a while- years actually, for him to figure out that he was feeling these things because he was lonely and afraid that one day they would look at him and start acting like he wasn't good enough to be close to them.

These thoughts were painful to a loner like him. They were maddening even. But he took it all in stride, hoping, and praying that they wouldn't leave him in one way or another.

Kakashi was almost to Naruto's place when he caught a whiff of the teens scent and could tell that he was quickly coming his way. Stepping out of the way, he stood there wedged between two shops looking really, really out of place and sort of creepy and felt the need to hide his face and pulled out his Itcha-Itcha book, the red one and pretended to read it as Naruto came running by carrying a young woman in his arms and looking anxious.

Uh-oh. If there was trouble of some kind and a girl involved then chances were fairly good that Naruto was involved too. The teen just couldn't seem to help himself when it came to the opposite sex. He was just too nice.

But if Naruto had found the girl wounded or something while training then it was understandable that the teen wouldn't have showed up for training. Now to follow him and see where he was heading and to find out what he could about his adorable student's new friend.

Naruto was sort of panicking.

It was an unusual occurrence, and one that he didn't particularly like since he normally didn't panic. Ever.

Still, the sliver of fear and the tightness in his chest drove him to run faster. It was difficult to explain, but for some reason his instincts were screaming at him, warning him that Shay was a very important person, and it felt to him like she was slipping away right before his very eyes. Without blood shed. Or a wound of any kind.

Like he had thought, it was difficult to explain.

But that didn't mean that he liked this feeling of helplessness. It scared him too much. Made his baser, more primitive protective instincts roar to life in ways that he hadn't realized that they could. He tightened his arms around Shay a fraction, painfully aware that if he squeezed her body any tighter he'd shatter her fragile bones and rupture her organs. So he forced himself to loosen his grip, just a little bit as he ran.

It took several minutes longer than he would have liked, twenty to be exact, before the tower came into view and he realized that he was being followed and tightened his grip on Shay again as he let out a low feral sound that had been known to make even the most savage shinobi piss his pants and shifted his hold on Shay and reached for his kunai, his mind going a mile a minute as he tried to figure out who was tailing him.

So far only one thing came to mind.

The possibility that the person following him, was the same person who had left Shay naked in the woods, waiting to die from exposure or an animal attack. He pulled the kunai, intending to kill the sorry bastard that would do such a thing to such a sweet girl, and stopped cold when he saw a blur of black and silver. His mind kicked into overdrive and he jumped back several feet, needing to put space between himself and his attacker when he realized that the other wasn't attacking.

He blinked and shook his head as he saw the distinctive features of his former sensei.

Kakashi stood several feet away from Naruto wondering why the boy looked so tense as he stood in a defensive position with the dark haired female held tightly against his body. He looked like he expected him to attack him. This made Kakashi frown since he had never at any time (other than the bell test) harmed his students, nor had he ever really threatened any of them aside from Sasuke, but that had been back before he had defected from the village.

"Naruto?"

Naruto took several deep breaths and hung his head for a second as he put his weapon away, Kakashi studied him for a second and frowned even more when he realized that Naruto's hand was shaking slightly. Had he really scared Naruto that much? He wondered curiously as Naruto shifted his hold on the girl again until he held her bridal style in his arms and scowled at Kakashi. "I wish you hadn't come up behind me like that-"

Because he wasn't calm, and when he wasn't calm...people died. And the last thing he needed on his conscience was to accidentally kill his former sensei.

Kakashi raised a brow at him, not disturbed in the least with how close he had come to having his throat slit. The bastard. Naruto thought darkly as he glanced down at Shay, his expression shuttered. "Kakashi-sensei, what are you doing?" Naruto asked as he looked back up at the jounin.

Kakashi smiled at the teen. "I was just out walking around when I saw you running past me and wondered what had you running like the hounds of hell were nipping at you're heels."

"And naturally you came running to see if I was okay."

Kakashi nodded then asked. "Are you?"

Naruto sighed tiredly, this wasn't helping Shay any- He perked up instantly as that thought crossed his mind. Could Kakashi help Shay, maybe? "Hey sensei, what do you know about panic attacks?"

"I've had a few of them in my time-" Kakashi said without thinking, then flinched. Why had he said that? Naruto and Sakura might think he was something other than an emotional rock. Naruto didn't smile, didn't do as he usually would and laugh. But then Kakashi, like everyone else in the village had noticed that Naruto was doing that less and less in these past months since returning to the village.

It was worrying because no one knew what the boy was thinking anymore. And someone had made a comment about how if Naruto had finally been broken by the abuse he had suffered, then they wouldn't know anything was wrong until they found his body.

That guy was in the hospital now, sucking down chicken with a straw. Anko, Kotetsu, Ebisu, and Ibiki had done a real number on him.

But Kakashi knew that something was going on. He just knew Naruto too well not to see that something was going on. The only real problem was that he didn't know what it was. None of them did. Which might be the reason why some of the kids panicked when they couldn't find Naruto or he didn't stick to his usual daily schedule.

Naruto walked a little closer and looked down at the girl in his arms, an almost worried expression on his face. "Do you think you could look at her? She had a panic attack and I'm not sure if she just needs rest or medical treatment."

"Rest." Kakashi said automatically, Naruto looked at him and arched a brow at him before saying.

"You didn't even look at her."

"I don't really need too. All panic attacks are pretty much the same." Kakashi said with a shrug. Naruto made a humming sound and sighed. Well it looked like his little outing with Shay was being cut short. Now he just had to ditch Kakashi and get Shay back to his place without anyone seeing him.

He didn't want his activities questioned, nor did he want any unwanted attention drawn to Shay's presence in his home. "Alright, I'll take her home and let her rest." Naruto said quickly as he turned and started to walk away when he felt Kakashi's hand on his shoulder, pulling him to a stop. He turned and looked at the man blankly.

Crap, Kakashi was going to suggest walking with him. He just knew it.

"How about I help you get the young lady home." It wasn't a normal request, Naruto could tell by the man's tone. Naruto studied Kakashi's face for a second, he was tempted to say no. To tell his former sensei to buzz off, but that would only make the man more curious and Naruto knew that a curious Kakashi, was a dangerous one.

And that was one of the two reasons that he finally gave in.

The other reason was that he knew that whatever Kakashi learned about Shay would be between himself, Naruto, and Tsunade. Everyone else would be shut out so that Shay wouldn't be shunned or excluded from making friends.

So maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

Maybe.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Two hours later Naruto closed his front door and locked it and waited until he heard Kakashi's foot steps walking away before he stepped away from the door and walked down the hall, intending to check on Shay when his bedroom door opened a little bit and she peeked out. He stopped and cocked his head, a curious expression on his face. How long had she-

"I've been up for the past twenty minutes-" Shay said softly as he pushed the door open a little more so that he could see her better.

"Are you okay? Do you need anything?" He asked gently. Shay shook her head no as he reached out and framed her face like he had last night when she had gotten really scared, and she stood there as he looked her over before letting her go. Naruto must be a very worried person to look her over when she wasn't hurt, but part of the reason for his behavior might have something to do with the fact that she was wounded yesterday when he brought her here.

"I'm okay... Sorry about freaking out." She mumbled as she pushed her long dark hair back away from her face.

Naruto nodded his head and stepped back so that she could slip past him if she wanted out of the room. She slipped by him, her body brushing up against his own slightly, and he got an uncomfortable look on his face as she blushed and ducked her head and walked down the hall to the living room.

He followed her. A mite curious/worried about her as she walked over to his couch and sat down.

"Are you hungry?" Naruto asked from the hallway. He felt just a little bit awkward now that he was alone with Shay again. She looked at him and shook her head no. She had a bad headache and was worried that if she tried to eat something now, she'd get sick.

"Alright. So no food..." Naruto said as he tried to think of what to do.

They might need to try going out again since Shay had freaked out before they could hit any of the stores and get her some clothes. He might have to coax her into agreeing to go out again, and he'd have to make their trip short, but hopefully he could avoid any more mishaps, and while they were out he might be able to track down Shika or Neji or even Kiba and ask them to swing by the park in a day or so and meet Shay.

He figured since nins freaked her out that he would have to warn them to come dressed as civilians and not say anything about what they did for work. "Look Shay, I know that you're freaked out by the whole-"

"Ninja's thing."

He nodded his head. "Yeah. The ninja's thing. But we never got you any clothes and stuff earlier-"

"So you want to go out again." Shay said weakly and Naruto walked over to her and dropped down to one knee in front of her and grasped her hands and frowned, god her fingers felt like ice.

Either she had very poor circulation, she was utterly terrified to go outside. Or he'd have to make a note of getting her some mittens so that her pretty little fingers didn't get frost bite.

"I know that you're scared Shay, but trust me. The big bad ninja's won't hurt you." Naruto said gently, trying to make her feel better but was sort of at a loss as to what to do to help her feel better.

Shay squeezed his fingers and gave him a nervous smile, acknowledging his words, even if she was having trouble believing them. She was silent for several moments, trying to think of a way out of this, but after turning it over in her mind several times she sighed and nodded her head, there was no way out of this trip.

That's all there was to it.

She was the only person who knew what size she wore, and what she liked. "Okay Naruto... I give." She said tiredly and Naruto brushed her dark hair back away from her face and kissed her cheek and whispered.

"We'll keep the trip short."

A few minutes later Naruto was leading Shay through the crowded streets of Konoha village by the hand. Ignoring the angry stares of the villagers as they passed them. The shop is just up ahead- Naruto said loudly, hoping that the villagers would simply think that he was trying to help someone who didn't know their way around the village, instead of thinking that he was out on a date or something.

Shay said nothing as she tried to keep up with him, something that was difficult to do since Naruto seemed to pick up his pace every few minutes or so.

Whenever she felt herself starting to be dragged along behind him she would pull on his arm in an effort to remind him that she was there and couldn't keep up at such a fast pace. She tugged on his arm again when she stumbled and started to fall, Naruto took a step back towards her and turned around and caught her before she could get half way down, his arms easily slipping around her waist as she slammed into him.

She wasn't sure how long they were like that before she heard someone call out Naruto's name and felt his arms tighten around her for a fraction of a second as he abruptly let her go and pushed her away a little bit as he was tackled to the ground by a very large, monstrous white and brown dog.

"Naruto!" Shay cried in horror as Naruto rolled around the ground as the dog snapped and snarled and bit him on the arm.

Shay looked around for a second wondering why no one was rushing to save him before she reached out and grabbed the large dog by the scruff of the neck and tried to pull him off of the teen when she heard a short, loud, high pitched whistle and jumped as someone called out, "Akamaru, get off of Naruto. You're scaring his girlfriend."

The large dog jerked itself from her grasp and shook it's large head and ran away. Shayera blinked and looked towards the direction the massive beast had run off too when Naruto let out a loud angry sounding growl and flipped himself up onto his feet looking pissed. He reached out and put his hand on Shay's shoulder and gently pushed her behind him and snarled at the grinning dog nin standing at least thirty feet away.

Oh he could just cheerfully murder Kiba for saying the words 'Naruto's' and 'girlfriend' together in the same sentance in that loud and obnoxious voice of his. He could already see at least thirty nins or more checking Shay out.

Goddammit Kiba.

"Hows it going Naruto?" Kiba asked happily, totally oblivious to what he had just done.

"I'm going to beat your ass." Naruto growled angrily as Kiba walked up to them. Kiba blinked at the blond and wondered what he had done to set him off. He had just been playing. Naruto's eyes flashed scarlet and Kiba held up his hands palm out and looked more than a little bit nervous.

"Whoa, calm down there Naruto. I was just messing with you." He said as Naruto took a few dangerous steps forward and grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him in close and snarled.

"You baka, do you have any idea what you've just done?"

"Obviously not or I'd be a bit more remorseful." Kiba said half jokingly, hoping to defuse Naruto's anger.

It didn't work. If anything his word seemed to upset Naruto further. Naruto bared his teeth at his friend and was about to say something else when several other people came walking up.

"Naruto! How are you my friend?" Naruto flinched and let go of Kiba and tried to reign in his temper as Lee came running up. Neji, Shino and Hinata walked behind him.

Oh dear god. Naruto thought tiredly. This was not what he had had in mind when he had brought Shay out to get her some things. Well okay, it was close. But still not what he had really wanted. Turning around he checked to see where Shay was, suddenly feeling just a bit paranoid that someone might try to grab her or separate her from him.

He grasped her hand again and pulled her around to his side and forced himself to smile for his friends. "H-Hey guys. What's up?"

"Training." Lee said happily.

"Nothing."

"Was bored and couldn't find anything to amuse myself." Shino said.

Chapter Text

Naruto had an almost pained expression on his face when everyone's attention turned to Shay. And so to quickly get her away from the others scrutiny he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out his I.D. and handed it to her.

She gave him a puzzled look for a second and he leaned down a bit and whispered. "Go get your things. And let me know if someone is mean to you or if you need more money." Shay blushed a bright red and started to stutter.

"N-Naruto! I-I can't take- You might need- Oh god this is embarrassing..." She finally groaned and hid her face in her hands, Naruto looked puzzled for a moment before realizing that despite how quiet and shy Shay seemed she was in fact a very independent person, having a total stranger assume the role of provider was a tad bit embarrassing to her.

It made her feel weak and helpless.

He chuckled and reached out, brushing her dark hair back from her face.

"Alright lets make a deal-" He said softly as he cast a glance at his very silent, very amused looking friends. Gods they were going to ride his ass for acting as if he were Shay's lover, but they were simply reading too much into things. Again, he wasn't interested in her that way.

And thus the kit's brain died a slow and horrible death from lack of good lovin. Kyubbi growled in irritation. When was it's kit going to get with the program and live a little.

Shut it fur ball. Naruto said affectionately.

Never! You need a mate! That girl would make a good one-

How the hell would you know?

I can smell her soul, kit. She's all warmth and sweetness. Kyubbi said wistfully and Naruto had to suppress a shiver of longing. Damn stupid fox. Maybe if he went out and got laid it would shut up, but until Shay was settled in and protected enough, he was stuck.

Ew. Stop smelling her.

Can't. You're smelling her.

Then I'll stop.

And die from lack of air, I think not.

Naruto mentally rolled his eyes and ignored the demon as he whispered in Shay's ear. "Let me treat you for now, and when you're settled and have a job, you can treat me to dinner. And I'll call it even."

Shay didn't say anything for a second or so then nodded her head and quickly stood up on her tip toes and gave him a quick kiss on the lips then pulled back and ran into the store leaving a stunned Naruto standing there in the street looking like lightning had stuck him...five times.

Everything tingled. His lips, his scalp, his whole body just seemed to be one big electrified...whatever. Lee snickered, drawing his attention back to the small group of friends standing several feet from him. "How youthful of you to finally get a nice friend Naruto."

Naruto growled low in his throat and walked over to the store and leaned his back against the front window, it would be easier to keep an eye on Shay from here, and monitor the streets for hidden threats to her health too. "I have nice friends galore, Lee." It was a female companion that he lacked.

"So when did you and..."

"Her name is Shay Ann Nicole Michales. She goes by Shay."

"So when did the two of you get together?" Neji asked curiously.

The girls name was odd. Sounding almost as if it were foreign. Naruto ignored the question and simply shrugged his shoulders. There was no way in hell that he was telling his friends that he had found her left to die in her birthday suite. Kiba might use the information as blackmail. And god knew what Neji and Shino would do with the information.

Not that he didn't trust the guys but...well, he didn't trust them.

And on top of it all Sakura would inevitably find out about Shay and then all hell would break loose. Especially since she might feel the need to rescue Shay from him. And that would cause problems because Kyubbi had taken a liking to the girl for all the wrong reasons and might take over him and attack Sakura.

"She seems nice." Hinata said softly and Naruto felt himself smile.

"She is."

Shay was very nice, in his opinion. And that was why he worried about her. He may not know much about her but he knew enough to know that she was a very kind, some what shy, strong, independent, and very sweet girl.

Kyubbi stirred in the back of his mind. You like her! You like- like her!

No. I do not.

Yes you do! I can sense it when you think of her!

Stop reading my mind stupid. Naruto snapped at the demon in irritation. The others were quiet for several seconds before Lee asked, "Naruto, does she know that you're-"

Naruto cut him off, his blood boiling a little bit at the stupid question. "No. But she knows something is off with me. She saw my fangs this morning when I woke up and all she asked was if I was a vampire."

"A vampire? What's that?"

"Kyubbi told me it was an undead creature that lives off of human blood."

"Ew."

"Yeah." Naruto agreed as he peeked over his shoulder into the shop and saw Shay standing in front of a mirror looking over the outfit that she was trying on. The off the shoulder white sweater and the ankle length flowing black skirt. She looked really cute in it.

Kiba came over to him and peeked in the window. "See something that you like Naruto?"

"I see a pretty girl and a dead man walking." Naruto deadpanned before looking at Kiba, his anger from earlier not yet forgotten.

Kiba looked at Naruto and wondered what it was that he had done to upset the blond and mentally went over everything that he had done and said since seeing the blond and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach in utter horror once he realized his mistake.

Shit. He had opened his big mouth and drawn attention to Naruto's girlfriend. He banged his head on the window and Naruto turned his head slightly when he caught sight of several men who had been eyeing Shay a few minutes ago, heading towards the shop and bared his teeth in a silent snarl.

Fuck. The fools were actually going to do something stupid like trying to hurt Shay in broad day light. In front of people. It shouldn't have surprised him so much but for some odd reason it did.

"Neji. Lee. Do me a favor and get Hinata and Shay out of here. Go find Shikamaru. I'll meet up with you once Kiba, Shino and I are done with the fools." Naruto said as he pushed away form the building as Shay was walking out of the shop with several bags.

She smiled at Naruto as he looked at her and was startled when one of Naruto's friends grabbed her and picked her up, nearly causing her to drop her things. The tall young man with the long dark hair and pale eyes gave her an apologetic look and muttered a soft "sorry" before he took off running away from the store. Shay screamed out Naruto's name her mind going numb with shock and horror.

She didn't know what was going on.

But she was pretty sure that Naruto had just stood by and watched her get kidnapped...

Chapter Text

Naruto watched Neji, Lee and Hinata run off with Shay, guilt tugging at his heart. He'd have to end this quickly or Neji would have a serious fight on his hands. Oh kit, you have no idea how badly Shay is going to hurt you for this.

Your right. But there was nothing that I could do about the circumstances Kyubbi. It was either get her out of here or sit back and let them do something horrible to her.

Let them. Let them. Are you still hung up on those damned laws.

I can't defend myself, and someone else. It's either one or the other.

Your human laws be damned. Let me out.

I can't.

I won't kill them kit!

No. But you'd like too-

Hell yes I'd like too! They are targeting your mate!

She's not my-

"Where did the Hyuga take your little bitch, demon?" One of the men, a shinobi from the looks of him asked as he stepped up.

Naruto heard Kyubbi let out a loud angry roar and felt his chakra flair, the red surrounding him slowly. The man took the time to strike out while Naruto was distracted, hoping to hurt the teen. Naruto acted on instinct and grabbed the man's hand, the kunai (when the hell had he pulled that damn thing?) cutting into his palm, laying the skin open almost to the bone as Naruto struck out with his foot and brought it down on the inside of the man's knee with enough force to shatter the bone.

The man screamed in pain and started to go down as another man came running up behind Naruto and tackled him to the ground. Naruto barely had time to register that someone was on top of him hitting him before he felt the need to lash out and knocked the person punching him off of him and jumped back up.

Neji hadn't been able to find Shikamaru, not surprising since the shadow nin usually made himself scarce so that he could take long naps. So instead of taking Shay to Shika, he took her to the Hyuga compound and climbed up the steps, ignoring the strange look that he got from his uncle as he passed him, shay squirmed and hit his shoulder and stomach like she had been doing every few minutes of so.

Her fear of him was a nearly tangible thing, he could feel it pressing down on her like a heavy weight. Threatening to overwhelm and crush her. This wasn't normal fear. Neji had been on a few missions that had delved into human trafficking, and forced prostitution to know that Shay apparently thought that he was going to hurt her in the most damning way.

Why hadn't Naruto taken the time to explain to her what was going on? Neji thought in irritation.

At least if he had, Shay wouldn't be acting like he was a monster who was going to eat her alive. He opened the door to Hinata's room and glanced over his shoulder to see her and Lee right behind him and slipped inside and set Shay down just a few feet from a chair, hoping that maybe if he didn't put her any where near the bed, she might feel a little less scared. The instant that he let her go she made for the door.

He made a soft huffing sound and reached out and grabbed her and dragged her back. She screamed and lashed out with her fist, nailing him in the chest hard enough to force the air from his lungs and double him over. His grip loosened and she jerked herself free and ran for the door again. Neji growled when he finally managed to suck some air into his lungs again and went after her. Shay was more than half way to the door when she realized that the big guy was mobile again and looked over her shoulder at him and squeaked and started to run when he caught her again.

One hand gripped her shirt and his other one slipped between her legs as he lifted her up off of the floor and threw her back down hard enough to rattle her nerves badly when she hit. "Stay there." He growled in irritation as he glared down at her. His pale eyes narrowed in anger.

He was starting to think that Naruto might have some explaining to do.

Chapter Text

Naruto took the hand that Shino offered him and let the taller male pull him to his feet. "Are you alright Naruto?" Shino asked as he stared at the blood on the blonds face and clothes. Naruto licked at the corner of his mouth and nodded his head.

"Yeah...I'm good. Thanks man." Naruto said as he lifted his arm and wiped at the blood on his face, totally ignoring the stab wound in his side, and how it burned and throbbed in protest of the movement.

"Are you sure that your okay Naruto? Your sort of bleeding all over the place." Kiba pointed out.

Naruto turned his head and looked down at his side and made an irritated sound as he took stock of his wound. So far he had just been bloodied up really good, the bruises on his face were already fading and the wound in his side, while painful, wasn't life threatening. So he wasn't worried about it. He'd just have to take it easy for the next few days.

Which meant skipping training for a day or so. He could maybe use that time to get to know Shay a little more so he supposed that it wasn't a total mess. "I'm fine. It's already closing. Lets go find Neji and the others."

"Worried about your girl?" Kiba asked softly.

Naruto gave him an angry look and put his index finger against his lips and looked around, secretly hoping that Kiba would stop calling Shay his girl in public. It wasn't good for Shay's health. It wasn't good for his health either. But Kiba did sort of have a point.

He was worried about her, but not for the reasons that Kiba or anyone else might think. The look on her face when she had screamed his name had been one of absolute terror, and he didn't like feeling responsible for that look.

He needed to find her and put her fears to rest, and apologize to Neji for the damage that he might have suffered.

Neji was at his wits end. Really he was.

It had been almost an hour since Naruto had asked him to take the girl some place safe and he was starting to get worried. About Naruto and the girl. So far she had broken three lamps, one over his head in an effort to escape, and now he had her laying on the bed, her hands and ankles bound, an old rag stuffed in her mouth. He knew that this wasn't the best way to alleviate her fears, but dammit, this was the only thing that he could think of to keep her from hurting herself and someone else.

And while he hadn't exactly wanted to bind and gag the frightened girl, he had felt that he simply didn't have a choice.

No doubt Naruto would beat his ass for this, but Naruto had wanted her safe and now she was.

He lifted her up a little bit off of the bed and stuffed a couple of pillows under her head, wanting to make her as comfortable as possible then lowered her back down onto them and then grabbed a few more and used them to prop up her feet and grabbed a knitted quilt and covered her legs with it.

Once that was done he walked over to the door and stuck his head out and called for Hinata. His cousin was sitting on one of the steps watching Lee spar with her father when he called her. She looked towards him then stood up and dusted her pants off and walked over to him. "Is something wrong?" Hinata asked curiously. Neji gave her a tight lipped smile. Where to start?

"No-" Yes, everything was wrong. "Would you mind sitting with her until Naruto comes to get her? I need to have a word with him when he gets here." Neji said gently, Hinata looked into the room and paled slightly when she saw Shay tied up and gagged.

Oh my. "Hinata, please pay attention." Neji said as he used his hand to turn Hinata's head so that she was looking at him again. She flushed red with embarrassment as he continued speaking.

"Don't untie her until Naruto is in the room. I don't want her to hurt you in an effort to run away." Hinata nodded her head in understanding. Neji smiled at her and kissed her forehead and then left the room.

Hinata stood there in the door way wondering what she was supposed to do with the bound and gagged girl. And finally decided to just talk to her and try to calm her. She knew that Naruto would be very upset if Shay sustained any sort of damage while in Neji's care. "U-Um, h-hi." Hinata said meekly as she dragged the chair over to the bed and sat down in it.

She looked at her through wide frightened teary eyes and Hinata felt the nearly over whelming urge to smack Neji for waiting so long to have her sit with the girl.

This is not the way that Naruto had wanted her taken care of. "My n-name is Hinata. Umm, I-I'm sorry about m-my cousin. He's n-not a bad guy. Just a little r-rough around t-the edges." Although to her, Neji might look more than a little rough around the edges.

"He's not a bad guy." Hinata said again, almost nervously. Shay gave her a pointed look and Hinata sighed. God who was she trying to convince? Shay obviously didn't believe her or she wouldn't be giving her the, 'Please run that by me again' look.

"You look very uncomfortable...would you promise not to be too loud if I remove the gag?" Hinata asked as she reached for the piece of cloth and removed it, then waited to see if Shay would scream, just in case. Shay took several deep breaths, dragging air into her lungs as if she had been deprived of air and Hinata's heart went out to the girl. It must be horrible to be so scared.

"Let me go...Please let me go..." Shay begged after several seconds, Hinata gave her a sad look.

"I can't. If I let you go you might hurt me and run away."

Shay made a soft whimpering sound and tried to convince the girl that she wouldn't run away. Of course she was lying, but she had too so surely the girl wouldn't think badly of her.

Hinata knew what Shay was doing before she even opened her mouth, this was her survival instinct kicking in. Pretend to go with whatever your captor had planned for you and get them to drop their guard and attack them and run. Hadn't Neji bothered at all to tell Shay why they had brought her here? Hadn't he tried to calm her by telling her that Naruto would come here as soon as he dealt with the threat?

"I can't let you go Shay. If I do Naruto won't be able to find you."

"Naruto..." Shay's mind latched on to the boys name like a life line and she instantly seemed to calm a little bit. Hinata felt a pang of jealousy but smiled anyways.

"That's right. Naruto will be coming to get you soon. Do you think that you can be good until he gets here?" Hinata asked as she reached out and brushed Shay's dark hair away from her tear streaked face. She was quiet as she mulled over the strange girl's words and finally nodded her head.

Yes. She could behave until Naruto came for her.

And then she was going to give him hell.

Chapter Text

Kakashi walked around the village to clear his head. He wasn't sure what to make of Naruto's new situation, but he knew getting upset about it and begrudging the boy a little companionship was just plain...selfish, among other things.

He could understand where Naruto was coming from. Really he could.

Because like him, Naruto had grown up alone in a world that couldn't care less if he lived or died. Like Kakashi; Naruto had been used, abused, and thrown aside and left to die by many people.

That's why the chance for something more was simply too good to pass up.

Naruto wanted to be close to someone. He needed to be close to someone. He had grown up alone, without the warmth and affection of a family. And because of who he was, he had to hide his affection for others or he would be forced to make a painful choice between keeping someone with him, and possibly watching them get hurt or killed. Or to let them go and still watch them get hurt of killed.

It was a lose, lose situation. And that was something that Naruto understood. And yet he had still taken that poor girl home with him. Kakashi was in awe of the kid for pulling such a gutsy move. He rounded the corner and stopped when he realized that he was close to the jounin apartments. Naruto had finally found someone, and that was good.

But the boy would need all the help he could get to take on the villagers and win.

Maybe it's time I called a meeting with others who care for him.

If he could get some of the other jounin to help out, then Naruto's chances of having a happy ending would be much higher. And it was technically his duty as Naruto's superior, to watch his back. He smiled and put his book away and started walking again.

Naruto landed in front of the Hyuga compound and looked around as Shino and Kiba and Akamaru landed on either side of him.

What the hell were they doing here? Naruto wondered before Kyubbi said, They probably couldn't find Shikamaru.

Ah, yeah, that could be why they were here instead of with Shika. Naruto thought as he tipped his head back and took a deep breath, his tracking instincts demanding that he check the air for Shay's scent one more time just to be sure. His eyes opened a second later as he took another deep breath, inwardly purring as his sharp sense of smell caught Shay's distinctly feminine scent.

"Are they here?" Kiba asked.

Naruto nodded his head and walked forward, ignoring the few Hyuga that had paused in their tracks to stare at him. He glanced at them and gave them a cold smile, amused at the way they all paled and scurried in different directions as fast as they could and ran away.

Not that he could blame them any. His predatory instincts still riding him hard after that fight twenty minutes ago. It would take a day in a half at least to reign them in since Kyubbi had gotten involved.

Naruto walked up the steps and followed his nose to Hinata's room and opened the door and peeked inside. Hinata nearly jumped out of her skin when he whistled to let her know that he was there, and turned around her chair to look at him, her eyes wide in shock. "Naruto-kun!"

There was dried blood on his face, and fresh blood on his side, soaking through his shirt, jacket and running down his pants leg. He looked like he was in pain. Like he had been beaten really badly, but he stood there saying nothing as he looked at Shay, his blank expression changing, the cold air around him warming.

"Shay, are you okay?" He asked curiously as he walked across the room and stopped next to the bed and reached out to touch her, her face looked so pale that he wondered just what Neji had done to frighten her so badly.

But that wasn't what really caught his attention. What really caught his attention were the ropes around her wrists and ankles. He sat down on the edge of the bed, completely forgetting that he was bleeding all over Hinata's things and hooked his index finger through the small space between her wrists and turned cold azure eyes to Hinata and asked in a cold tone. "Why is she bound?"

"Neji said something about her possibly hurting herself or someone else." Hinata said, not in the least bit phased by the icy cold stare he leveled her way.

Naruto nodded his head slightly and pulled out a kunai and slipped it between the ropes and cut them off of her. Shay didn't say anything, she just sat there shaking and trying not to cry as he cut the ropes away and grasped her wrists, one at a time and massaged them to get the blood flowing through her numb hands again before he reached for her, intending to pick her up and hug her when she growled warningly and punched him in the side where he had been stabbed.

Naruto yelped and flung himself away from her and the bed as fast as he could, needing to avoid having his wound reopened by her blow and looked at her in shock. What the hell?

"YOU JERK." She shrieked. 

"Huh?"

"WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?"

Naruto got a nervous look on his face and looked around as Shay got off of the bed and walked towards him, looking like she could easily and cheerfully murder him. Problem? Problem, he didn't have a problem aside from the homicidal female who was making her way over to him.

"Huh?"

"YOU JUST STOOD THERE AND LET THAT STRANGE MAN GRAB ME AND RUN AWAY! WHY?" Shay cried as fresh tears welled up and slipped down her cheeks. Naruto blinked at her and then looked at Hinata. Was that why she was so pissed? Because a strange man had grabbed her and run? Or was she upset because she had thought that Neji was going to hurt her and she had been really scared?

Had anyone even bothered to explain anything to her? Naruto wondered as he inched a little close to her. Apparently forgetting that she had almost felled him with that punch to his side. "Shay listen to me. You were never in any danger. Neji wouldn't hurt you. I'd kill him if he did."

"I don't believe you." Shay sobbed as she wiped her face with her hands. Naruto was about to say something else when Neji came walking into the room.

"Naruto, good to see that you still know your way here. I need to speak with you."

"Not now Neji." Naruto gritted out from between clenched teeth. He needed to smooth things over with Shay before he went anywhere.

"It's about you're little bird." Neji said, using code to refer to Shay. Naruto looked at him. What could Neji know about Shay that he didn't?

"Alright. Hina, would you mind sitting with her for a little bit longer?"

"No. I-I don't mind." Hinata said softly. Naruto nodded his head and reached out and ran his knuckles along the curve of Shay's cheek, causing her to raise her head and look at him. Her pale, tear streaked face causing his chest to tighten painfully. This was what he had been trying to avoid. The fear and pain in her expression was almost unbearable to him, though he didn't understand why.

"We'll talk more about this in a little bit okay." Naruto said gently as the let his hand drop to his side and walked out of the room with the long haired male that had scared her so much.

Chapter Text

"Okay Neji. What did you want?" Naruto asked when they were out of ear shot of Hinata's bedroom. Neji didn't say anything at first, he just grabbed Naruto and slammed him into the nearest wall and growled at him.

"First off, I don't appreciate not being told that your girlfriend spent time as someones toy." Neji snarled. Naruto blinked and cocked his head, his mind whirling with questions. Oh he hoped that Neji didn't mean what he thought he meant. And yet he needed to know, so he asked.

"What do you mean?"

The look on Neji's face was one of disbelief. "What I mean is- That she was- Don't you know Naruto?"

Naruto closed his eyes for a second and mentally went over some things, the trust issues, the fear of everything unknown. Jesus Christ. Why hadn't he realized Shay had been...

"How do you know?" Naruto asked after a moment or two, his curiosity getting the better of him. How was it that Neji was the first to realise such a thing had happened to her when he hadn't had her for more than two hours.

"It was her fear Naruto. Her fear of me was unnatural. Most people that I carry off get pissed and demand answers. They don't scream and cry and hit and kick. They don't fight and try to escape." And they certainly didn't break a lamp over his head. His head still ached from that.

"Have you seen many victims like her before?"

Neji nodded his head. "Yes. A time or two. Things never really ended well for them. They have a tendency to self destruct. Their sorrow and shame is so great that often times they act out in certain way and it builds up until they destroy themselves."

Naruto took a deep breath as Neji let him go. "Fuck. I wish that you hadn't told me that." Naruto said as he ran his hand through his hair. What was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to help her?

Love heals all things. Kyubbi said gently. For once he wasn't going on about mates and shit.

And what exactly does that mean Kyubbi?

If you want her to get past this, let her know that you're here for her. Help her regain her confidence, and control. Let her know that it wasn't her fault and that she has nothing to be ashamed of. Besides kit, no one else in the village would understand her pain as much as you.

True. But I was never really raped.

No he had never really been raped, but he had been molested to a degree. And while he would prefer that no one ever be told about those times, he understood that maybe it was finally time to say something about it. And maybe Shay would be able to open up about hers and confront it too. "Thanks Neji...but I need to get Shay and go home. Where are her bags?"

"I sent them to your place via Lee about an hour ago." Neji said as Naruto nodded his head and quietly thanked him before walking away looking stricken and a little shaken.

Naruto walked back into Hinata's room and looked at Shay as Hinata stood up and walked over to him. "I explained what you asked Neji to do when you sent her away. And why you sent her away. She's still a mite upset with you. But she's much calmer now." Naruto forced himself to smile.

"Thanks Hina." She smiled at him and left the room, leaving him and Shay alone for the time being.

"Are you okay now?" He asked awkwardly as she stood up and walked over to him. He stood there, his body tense, expecting her to strike him again. Instead she just wrapped her arms around him and leaned into him. Confusing him further.

"S-Shay?"

"I'm sorry I hit you Naruto..." Shay said softly as she hugged him. He couldn't have been any more bowled over if she had kicked his head in. Were girls always so weird?

He wrapped his arms around her, noting with some wary amusement that his wounded side was hurting five times worse than it had before. Jeez she had one hell of a punch. He thought warily as he hugged her back. "That's okay sweetheart. I didn't really need to use my side anytime soon anyways." He said half jokingly and she giggled softly and pinched him on the leg. He smiled against her hair even as his heart ached in his chest.

He wasn't sure that he could help her over come her attack. But he wanted to be there for her, to protect her from such pain again. Since she had no one else to protect her.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat and let her go. "Come on Shay. Lets go back to my place. I'll fix our dinner and we'll play a few hands of poker." Naruto said gently as he took her hand. Shay nodded and smiled at him and let him lead her out of the room and back outside where the sky was starting to turn dark.

Chapter Text

Naruto slipped into his apartment behind Shay and flicked on the light closest to the door so that she could see. Since she wasn't a shinobi and he doubted that she had very good night vision. And since she was afraid of shinobi, he would have to act like a normal person for a while. At least until he could ease her into the mind set that shinobi weren't all bad. He unzipped his ruined jacket and shrugged it off and groaned when his side burned like fire.

Ow. Ow, that hurts.

And your mate didn't help things much when she hit you. Kyubbi snickered in amusement.

Naruto sighed tiredly. Again with the mate stuff. Why was Kyubbi so hung up on him getting a girlfriend?

Not a girlfriend kit. A mate. A life long companion. The female that will one day bear your young.

Not. Going. To. Happen. Naruto mentally growled at the fox demon. He would not condemn a girl-any girl to that fate.

Not Shay.

Not Hinata.

Nor Sakura.

None of them.

"Do you need a first aid kit?" Shay asked as she looked him over. Funny how she hadn't noticed all of the blood until now. Maybe she was a little more air headed than she had initially thought. God wouldn't her friends back home have a good laugh about that if they knew.

Naruto looked at her and smiled. "Nah. Blood isn't mine." He lied. There was no point in telling her that he was hurt because his wounds were already more or less healed. Even the one on his side had closed up. It just hurt because she had hit him hard enough to nearly cripple him.

Shay blinked at him and cocked her head. If the blood wasn't his, then who did it belong too? "Uh... I hate to ask-"

"Then don't." Naruto said as he walked past her and threw his ruined jacket into the trash and walked into the kitchen and opened one of the drawers and pulled out a clean wash cloth and turned on the tap and ran the water over the cloth to wet it then turned off the tap and wrung out the rag and used it to clean his face off.

"But I really feel the need-" Shay said after a minute long pause.

"Alright. Then do." Naruto said as he used the wet rag to scrub his face.

"But I don't really want to seem nosey-" Shay said as she fidgeted with her shirt sleeve, Naruto lowered the rag a little bit and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and snorted in amusement. Silly girl. If something was on her mind she should just say so.

"I'm not a yo-yo Shay. Either ask or don't. It's that simple." Naruto said as he set the dirty bloody wet rag aside for a second and started to peel off his shirt then stopped, remembering that he was in the presence of a lady and having him strip in front of her might cause some issues.

He lowered the hem of his shirt back in place and decided that it might be better to ask Shay if she would mind turning around for a second or waiting to ask him whatever when he came back into the room. "Shay. Would you mind if I took off my shirt?" Because he needed to clean the blood off of his side and in a little bit he'd have to clean the blood off of his leg too.

But first he'd take care of the blood on his side, then he'd cook some dinner for them, then he'd play a few hands of poker and talk with Shay for a little bit. Then he'd take a shower and settle in for the night.

Priorities.

Priorities meant everything to a guy like him. Especially when another person was involved.

Shay looked a little surprised by his question but shook her head no. She didn't mind as long as he kept his pants on. He gave her a peculiar look then pulled his shirt off and grabbed the wet rag and rubbed it along his ribs where the blood had dried and noted the faint purplish bruise there from where Shay had punched him. I wonder why that's still there.

Kyubbi snickered. It's to serve as a warning to you kit. Never upset your female.

She's not my female Kyu.

Liar. I can sense you're growing interest in her.

Shut up. Naruto hissed at the demon, refusing to admit to himself that he was getting interested in her as he set the bloody rag aside again grabbed a frying pan. He really needed to stop talking to Kyubbi, it was distracting him from his priorities and Shay needed to eat something as much as he did. "Do you mind eating stir fried chicken and noodles?" Naruto asked as he glanced at Shay over his shoulder.

"No. I don't mind. If you want I'll help." Shay offered as she walked towards the kitchen. He looked at her again and nodded as he pulled out a sharp knife and a cutting board and set them in front of her then pulled out some vegetables. If Kakashi had been here he would have died of shock. Naruto mused as he set the vegetables aside after washing them. He picked up the knife and held it up in front of her eyes and said very softly.

"I'm assuming that you know how to handle one of these. Remember to cut away from yourself. And to watch your fingers." Shay nodded her head and he smiled and flipped the blade over in his hand and held it out to her. She took the blade and grabbed one of the vegetables and cut it in half as he turned his back to her and listened to the soft clicking sound of the knife against the cutting board.

Shay cut up some of the vegetable in her hand and set it aside before asking curiously. "Sooo, what's a guy like you do for fun?"

"I sit on my roof and listen to the radio." Naruto said automatically before asking.

"What do you usually do for fun?"

"I visit with my best friend. And I like to mess with her mind a bit."

"She's really excitable?"

"Excitable is a little bit of an understatement." Shay said in wary amusement as she thought about her child hood friend. Naruto gave her a quick look and snickered. He'd just bet.

"What kind of music do you listen too?" Shay asked curiously. Naruto glanced at her over his shoulder again as he heated up some olive oil in a medium sized pan to get it ready for the noodles and the vegetables.

"I'll listen to just about anything."

"Does anyone ever sit and listen to it with you?"

"No. I wouldn't usually dare to bring another person here." Naruto said gently as he turned around to face her. She frowned but didn't ask him to elaborate. Which was good since he'd just lie to her anyways. She picked up another vegetable and started cutting it up and for a long time they didn't start talking again.

"Naruto has a what?" The group of Jounin crammed into Anko's house of horrors yelled in shock.

"Naruto has a girlfriend." Kakashi said again, this time a little louder since several of the Jounin were having panic attacks. Genma, Kotetsu and Radiou all sat off to the side looking thoughtful while Anko fairly squealed with delight and clapped her hands excitedly.

Her little toy-er Naru-chan had a girlfriend now! Ekk! She was so excited that she ran over to the fridge in her kitchen and pulled out a bottle of wine that she had been saving and popped the cork and took a long drink right from the bottle.

"I think I need a drink too! Anko share dammit!" Ebisu called out half jokingly.

"Then get your own." Anko said cheerfully. Kakashi rolled his eyes at the lot of them.

He tells them potentially bad news and they act like a bunch of wine drinking morons. How had Naruto managed to stay alive up till now with these people running around watching him? Really, he wanted to know.

Tenzou and Sai stood against the wall across the room with blank expressions on their faces. Why had Kakashi asked them to come to this bizarre place again? Sai looked at Kakashi and asked. "Why does Naruto having a girlfriend seem to be such news that you have to tell all of us?"

Kakashi looked at Sai. "Because this situation has the potential to be the one that ends us as a village." Kakashi said seriously. Sai cocked his head and looked puzzled for a moment.

"Because Naruto is the Kyubbi vessel?" Sai asked after a moment or two. Kakashi nodded his head.

"Yes. And because of what the villagers could and would do to the girl if they get their hands on her. The possibility that the villager who hate Naruto, getting their hands on her and hurting her or worse...is staggering. That's why Naruto has always kept himself away from the village women and girls. He didn't want any of them to get hurt or killed because of him."

"I see. But what does it mean that he's finally decided to change his mind about staying away from them?" Sai said.

"It means that he's finally reach a certain point where he's been so lonely that he simply may not care any more. Although...the fact that he took her home with him and is letting her stay there means that he's still painfully aware of the dangers and is trying to keep her safe in his own way. But that will be difficult for him to do because of the village laws that apply to him."

"Village laws?" Genma asked as he leaned forward in his seat. Which village laws was Kakashi talking about?

Surprisingly it was Anko that answered Genma.

"Law 1) The Kyubbi vessel is not allowed to raise his hand in violence to protect himself if he has a companion. If his companion is close by and the villagers attack him or her, he has no choice but to stand by and watch them harm her. If he tries to stop them by any means, it's grounds for immediate imprisonment and possibly execution. There is a loop hole however, stating that if he can send his companion away from him before an attack, he can defend himself. But unless he leaves his companion in the care of someone that he can trust to protect her while he's gone, the villagers can pull a fast one and hurt her while he's busy fighting one group."

Genma whistled and sat back in his seat against the wall.

"Law 2) The Kyubbi vessel is not allowed to become sexually active or the council reserved the right to turn him off of sex through torture. Apparently they didn't want him to sire any children anytime soon."

"But Naruto is a teenager, sex is more or less the only thing on his mind at this stage in life." Ebisu said with a dark expression on his face. Kakashi shook his head.

"Naruto isn't a normal person. Or at least he isn't as normal as he appears to be. He suppresses his desire for things to the point where he can function on a level above the rest of us. It doesn't stop him from longing, or wanting, or from feeling cheated and jealous of the rest of us. But he manages not to let any of those things show. He feels that he simply can't let those things show. That it would give the villagers the opening that they need to destroy him."

"But that's crazy! Why should Naruto be the only one who has to live like this? He's a hero dammit!"

"Yes. But most people still see him as nothing more than an animal that needs to be put down. That's why I asked all of you here. Naruto has finally found something that he wants to keep for himself, something that means more to him than laws and rules. And as his comrades, we should help him protect that something precious. And give him the happiness that he's been denied for so long." Kakashi said.

Gai jumped up to his feet and yelled, "YOSH! We will be the protectors of Naruto's happiness!"

The person next to Gai hissed and clapped his hands to his ears and hissed at the man. "Inside voice! Inside voice!"

Dinner had been quiet and cozy.

Just the way Naruto liked it.

And now that the dishes had been cleared, they were both getting ready to play poker. Naruto pulled a deck of cards from his secret hiding place, a hidden vault behind one of the shelves in his spare room and moved the shelf back into place and walked back out of the room and closed the door and pulled the cards from their box and started to shuffle them as he walked back into the living room and sat down at the small coffee table in his living room where Shay was sitting and started to deal the cards.

"Okay. This is a game that I call truth or dare poker. If you lose a hand you have the choice of answering a truth or dare question. If I lose you can ask me a truth or dare question. Sound good?" Naruto asked as he finished dealing and started to pick up his cards when Shay ask.

"Are there any wild cards?"

"No."

"Okay." Shay said as she picked up her cards and started to go through them as Naruto bit his bottom lip to keep from letting his amusement show. Shay wasn't aware of it, but then not many people ever played cards with him, but he was a card sharp of the highest caliber and had just set Shay's cards up so that she would lose. It was simply easier to get the ball rolling this way.

He shuffled his hand and pretended not to notice the frown that appeared on Shay's face as she discarded three cards and picked up three new ones from the deck as he discarded two and picked up two more. "Okay. Dealer calls." He said as he set his cards down. He had a pair of sixes. Shay smiled at him and set her cards down and his eyes nearly popped out of his head as his jaw went slack. What the hell?

Shay had three kings. "Truth or dare?" She said cheerfully as he stared at her cards in shock and wondered how that had happened.

"Huh? Oh...um, truth." Naruto said stupidly.

"Have you ever had a girlfriend?" Shay asked curiously, she had noticed that Naruto was a very affectionate person, yet he held himself apart from everyone that he had run into earlier which is what had made her curious enough to ask.

"No. Never really wanted one." Naruto said awkwardly as he gathered the cards up and started shuffling them again.

"Why?"

He looked at her and scowled for a second. "That's two questions, Shay. You only get one per hand." He said gently.

"Oh. Sorry."

"S'okay." Naruto said as he dealt her another hand and picked up his own and shuffled them around a bit. He had two nines and a jack. It wasn't much to work with but it was something. He discarded two cards from his hand and pulled two more. Crap. He had a whole lot of nothing.

He watched Shay discard one card and felt the urge to growl at her.

Crap. She was going to get him again. He could feel it in his bones. "Okay. I call." Naruto said as he laid his cards down.

Shay got an amused look on her face and he got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was not going to end well for him, he could tell by the look on her face as she laid down her cards. She had a strait royal flush.

Naruto groaned and banged his head on the table. What the hell was going on here? He had stacked the deck against her, so how was it that she was kicking his- He lifted his head and looked at her from narrowed eyes. "Your cheating." He said very calmly as he stared at her. Shay gave him an innocent look and smiled.

"Am I? Can you prove it?"

"No."

"Well then what makes you think that I'm cheating? Weren't you the one who stacked the deck against me?" He opened his mouth to deny what she had just said then realized what she was doing and abruptly shut his mouth and thinned his lips.

Damn. It figured that this sweet girl was another card sharp like him. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"Why have you never really wanted a girlfriend?"

"Does it really matter why?"

"Not really. But I can't help but be curious. I mean you are a guy. In your teens. And you live alone from what I can see. Most guys would have turned this place into party central. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of guy you are."

"I'm not the love em and leave em type, Shay." Naruto said honestly.

She studied him for a second as if trying to determine what he meant then nodded her head and picked up the cards and shuffled them. Naruto watched her hands, he couldn't seem to help himself, she had such small, but elegant looking hands. Very graceful, and nimble hands. She finished shuffling the deck and started dealing. Five to him and five to her.

"Aces, duces and suicide kings are wild."

Naruto's azure eyes practically sparkled when he realized what she was doing. She was trying to give him a better chance to beat her at cards. How thoughtful of her. He thought as he checked his cards and discarded two. "Naruto...is this game your way of trying to get more information on me?" Shay asked as she discarded three. Naruto looked at her and not for the first time cursed her for being so quick to catch on to him.

"Yeah." He said after a second or so. Shay sighed and set her cards down and leaned back until she was against the couch.

"What is it that you want to know?"

"Everything. Medical conditions, personality disorders, criminal records and what may be on them, past injuries, jobs, education exct." Naruto said as he set his cards down and propped himself up on his coffee table and waited for her to respond.

"No medical conditions. No personality disorders. No criminal records, I've never stepped out of line in any way that might cause trouble with the law." Shay said after a second or so. Naruto smiled. He had already known that she wouldn't have a criminal record. She was just too nice.

"I had a few different jobs... I have some past injuries but-" Shay stopped speaking and picked up her cards and started to fidget with them. She didn't want to talk about what had happened to her after the attack, hell she didn't even want to talk about the attack period.

Naruto could sense her hesitation and sighed. He guessed that he would be the first one to open up.

"When I was seven, I was walking home from school like I always did-" Shay looked at him. A guarded expression on her pretty face. "I was grabbed by a group of drunks and dragged into an old abandoned building. There I was beaten and told that if I was a good boy and did whatever they said that they would let me go."

Shay paled a little and he laid his head on the table and stared blankly ahead as he recalled that incident as well as the other incidents that followed. "They forced me to suck them off. All of them. All six of them took turns using me, one after the other, over and over until they decided that they were done. I remember going home crying, and getting sick, trying to get every little bit of cum that they had forced me to swallow out of my body. And after a month or so I started to get over it when the same men grabbed me again while I was out grocery shopping. And they had some new friends with them. Again I was forced to do the same things, to all of the men present and I was allowed to go home. And after another month passed they grabbed me again, only this time they decided that it would be more interesting to make me cum too."

Shay had a horrified expression on her face as he continued to speak.

"They stripped me, and touched me, and I remember feeling sick as they told me what a pretty little whore I was. I cried and begged them to let me go, even as my body started to respond, and I remember puking on one of them, I was just so sickened by the whole thing, and so utterly disgusted by myself and my body. The guy hit me a few times then grabbed my hand and made me touch myself. I cried harder. And everything just seemed to freeze when I came. I felt so dirty and betrayed by my own body that my mind shut down."

"They made me masturbate while I sucked them off and just when I thought that it couldn't get any worse-Jiji, he was the old man that ran the village when I was a kid. I guess that you could call him our king. He found out what they had been doing to me because I was supposed to have gone to his office as soon as I was done shopping and I was late, so he came looking for me and found us all. I don't remember much of what happened once he found us. But I remember begging him to kill me, because I wasn't sure that I could get past it this time."

"But you did get past it. Didn't you?" Shay asked in a shaky tone. Naruto snorted and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Well yes. I suppose. I reached the point where I got pissed and decided that no one would ever touch me like that again, and the old man helped by teaching me..." He paused for a second. Not really wanting to tell her that Sarutobi-jiji had trained him to kill a person instantly if they touched him in the same way as his abusers. "He taught me how to take care of myself and how to spot people like those men and how to avoid them." He had also taught him how to rip their insides out with his bare hands, but he doubted that Shay wanted to know that since she thought of him as a 'nice guy' and he wanted to uphold her mental image of him for as long as he could.

Shay said nothing for the longest time and Naruto didn't mind, all it meant was that she wasn't ready to talk about her attack just yet. "Do you know that I was-" Shay started to say then stopped and thinned her lips together as Naruto nodded his head curtly.

"Yeah. I know-" Thanks to Neji.

"And I want you to know that I understand how hard it is to get over, and to establish intimate relationships, and how sometimes you can be out with someone that you feel safe with and still fall apart when they touch you. And how hard it is to trust others after such a thing happens, because you see the warning signs everywhere. In every face and every smile, even in the most unlikely places and people. And I want you to know that I'm here, if you need to talk, or fall apart. I won't hold it against you, blame you or judge you. Because I know how much it hurts...to be used like that. And to scream for someone, anyone to help you, and have no one come." Naruto said as he looked at her.

Shay didn't say anything, she just nodded her head mutely. Naruto was quiet as he got up and moved around the coffee table and sat down on the floor next to her and grasped her hand and squeezed it.

And for the first time in a long time Shay honestly believed she could genuinely feel safe with someone again. It was such an overwhelming feeling that she didn't know what to do or say to him. So she just squeezed his hand back and leaned against his shoulder.

They sat like that for an hour or so, neither one of them speaking. They just sat there holding hands and drawing on the other for emotional support and Naruto finally acknowledged that he just might be falling for Shay. Maybe. Finally Naruto let go of her hand and shifted. "It's getting late and I have work in the morning. Go take a shower. I can wait until your done." Shay sat up strait and rubbed her eyes, she felt like she was about to doze off.

"But what if I take all of the hot water?" Naruto snickered at her question. Even if she did take all of the warm water he could just use his chakra to warm up the cold water, so he wasn't worried.

"Don't worry about that. I'm used to cold showers." He said as he stood up and offered his hand to help her up, she smiled at him and took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. She thanked him and started to walk by him when she stopped and turned around and reached up and hooked her hand around his nape and pulled him down until they were face to face, suprising him, and pressed her houth against his cheek then let him go and walked off.

Leaving him standing there with his hand pressed against his cheek, blushing like mad. Jesus. He felt like she had just knocked the air from his lungs, and his heart was thudding madly against his ribs. This sensation was just like earlier when she had kissed him. And in the back of his mind he heard Kyubbi snicker and repeat his earlier words.

See kit. Love heals all things.

Chapter Text

The next morning Naruto accidentally woke Shay up when he tripped in his effort to pull on one of his shoes. He was already going to be twenty minutes late for training and to top his morning off, he peeked out his living room window and found some villagers watching his place and knew that he couldn't leave Shay alone while he went to train with team seven. Shay wandered into the room wearing an knee length violet purple silk night shirt and rubbing her eyes tiredly.

"Naruto? What are you doing?"

He backed away from the window before the villagers could spot him and gave her a quick look. "Getting ready for work. Go get dressed Shay." He said gently as he grabbed his weapon's pouch and buckled the belt around his hips. Shay frowned and looked around the living room with a puzzled look on her face, despite her still being sleepy she could sense Naruto's anxiousness and wondered what would cause him to be so anxious so early in the morning.

"Why?" She finally asked as he wound something that looked like bandages around his upper right leg and picked up a little brown pouch and buckled it into place. He looked like he was getting ready to go hunting or something.

"Because I'm taking you to work with me."

She frowned and cocked her head to the side. Wouldn't she just be in the way if she went with him? She wondered and before she could ask he grabbed his jacket and walked over to her and said very softly. "Do you remember the reason why I sent you away yesterday?" She nodded her head, still just a little bit puzzled.

"Well there are some bad people outside waiting for me to leave you alone-" He didn't have to say any more than that before Shay's eyes went wide and her face drained of color and she turned and ran down the hall to his room and slammed the door closed.

Naruto gave a dry laugh, god he loved it when something clicked in her mind.

He never had to say much for her to get the point. He gave her ten minutes plus an extra five just in case she needed to use the bathroom and brush her teeth and was a little startled when she ran back out of his bedroom in less than five minutes completely dressed, her teeth and hair brushed and only lacking her shoes.

He let out a low whistle, more than a little impressed.

Sakura took forever to get dressed and such, and that was even with a time limit. "You've done things like this before huh?" He asked in mild amusement as he grabbed a clean, new looking jacket from the closet next to the front door. Shay shrugged and slipped her new shoes on.

"What now?" She asked as he shrugged on the jacket. He looked at her and pulled out a folded fluffy folded blanket from the closet before closing it.

"Do you trust me?" Naruto asked, he needed to know if she at least trusted him enough to know that he wasn't going to let her get hurt. And not to elbow him in the ribs or something when they took the back door out of his apartment, which was about a good thirty to forty foot drop to the ground.

And that was only after he checked to make sure that no one was watching his back door for them.

Shay considered his words and nodded her head, of course she trusted him. He'd done nothing to earn her mistrust, hadn't threatened or hurt her in any way. "Yes."

He gave her a tight lipped smile and handed her the blanket. "Good. Wait here. Don't ask any questions. And when I blind fold you just hold on to me and don't let go. Understand?"

Again she nodded and he walked past her and into the other room at the back of his apartment and opened the door and stepped inside and blinked at the dust floating in the air. He waved his hand in front of his face and walked through the room, idly scanning the papers and scrolls littering the floor.

He'd really needed to clean this place up. He thought as he walked over to the back door and peeked out from between the blinds. No one was watching the back door, at least no one that he could see. Someone could have hidden themselves somewhere on one of the roofs of the other buildings, but Naruto doubted that they would be able to ambush them once they left, if they were.

Walking back through the apartment he tugged off his headband and stopped in front of Shay and slipped it over her eyes and tied it into place and picked her up bridal style as he created several shadow clones of them both and sent the clones out the front door, two windows, while he and Shay slipped out of the back.

Once he was a good enough distance away from his apartment and he was sure that they weren't being followed he stopped and set Shay on her feet and tugged his headband off of her. Shay looked up at him and blinked and he grinned. "What just happened?" She asked curiously, there for a second or two her stomach had lurched violently giving her the impression that they had been falling. But she hadn't really been able to tell since Naruto hadn't really give any indication that they had been falling.

He hadn't grunted, or shown any indication of hitting the ground, all she had really felt was his jacket rubbing up against her and that was it. "Magic." Naruto said after a second or so as he grasped her hand and started to lead her down the street. Weaving them in and out of dark alleys, behind buildings, avoiding places with a lot of people and after a while Shay started to get the impression that he did things like this every day.

Naruto had them almost to the training ground when two familiar figures dropped down from a roof a few feet in front of them and he slowed his pace to a stop. "Captain Yamoto! Sai!"

"Good morning Naruto." Sai greeted with a friendly smile. Yamoto grinned at the blond.

"Hey." Yamoto said as he raised his hand in greeting and waved at Naruto as his eyes shifted to the girl half hidden behind the blond Jinchirikii. So this girl was Naruto's girlfriend. She was a pretty little thing with pretty dark green eyes and long curly black hair that slipped over her slender shoulders as she peeked around Naruto and looked at them curiously as Naruto asked them what they were doing so far from the training grounds.

Yamoto smiled at the boy. "We thought we'd see if we should walk you to the training grounds since we missed you there not once but twice now." Naruto scowled at him, all the tension draining away along with his worry. Yamoto was a sucky liar. Naruto mused as he pulled Shay out from behind him, and noticed the way that both shinobi looked at her curiously and decided that he should introduce them.

"Captian Yamoto. Sai. This is Shay Michales. She goes by Shay."

"Hello beautiful." Sai said as he tried to think up a good nickname for her.

"Hello. Nice to meet you." Yamoto said politely as he reached out to shake her hand. She gave him a nervous smile and muttered a polite 'nice to meet you too' and shook his hand. She had a surprisingly strong grip for such a fragile looking girl.

"You have a very pretty name. Does it have a special meaning?" Yamoto asked as they started walking, noting the way that Naruto stayed close to her. Shay blushed and shook her head no.

"My real name was Shiloh up until several years ago. I merely took the name Shay because it was my great, great, great grandmother's name." And because she had gotten tired of her attacker tracking her down and calling her and sending her letters, telling her every sick thing he was going to do to her once he was free.

Again, if there was any justice in the world he'd be gang raped and die from AIDS or something.

"Oh. Most people change their names to reinvent themselves, or to make themselves harder to find because their running from something-" He looked at her and smiled then asked. "Are you running from something?"

Shay looked as if she had been struck and Naruto gave him a not so playful shove and hissed at him.

"Stop. That. Now."

Yamoto looked at Naruto and cocked his head slightly as the teen put his arm around the girl's shoulders and pulled her up against his side and scanned the crowd ahead.

So far he saw ten nins that he knew held a very strong dislike of him. All of them were watching him, and some were eyeing Shay like she was a steak.

He ignored them and tried to squash the sudden bout of panic that rose up in his chest and might have given in to his feelings of fear and panic if Shay hadn't grasped his hand and laced her fingers together with his, causing him to turn his head to look at her.

She tipped her head back to look at him and smiled and he felt himself smiling back even as she tripped over a rock and fell face first in the dirt in front of him. Both Yamoto and Sai stopped walking and looked back at them as Naruto busted out laughing as he grabbed Shay's arm and pulled her to her feet. She growled at him and snapped something along the lines of 'don't judge me' and dusted herself off as Naruto continued to laugh while holding his sides and Yamoto and Sai exchanged a look and smiled.

It was good to see Naruto laughing again, it had been months since he had last laughed about anything. So anything that could make him laugh like this was definately welcome.

Kakashi was talking with Sakura when Naruto and the others finally reached the training ground. They looked up as Sai walked over to them. "Hello friends." He said cheerfully. Sakura smiled at him and waved to Yamoto and then looked for Naruto and spotted him standing across the training grounds with his back turned to her.

"Naruto! Hey!" She called out and waved. Naruto turned his head and smiled at her then turned back away from her and she frowned. What was he doing? She wondered as she started to take a step forward when Kakashi stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Leave him alone for now. He's busy." Kakashi said as he watched Naruto spread a blanket out on the grass so that the girl with him could sit down and watch them train.

"But what could he be busy with?" Sakura asked stupidly.

She didn't know what was going on with her teammate but she was starting to get worried. Kakashi didn't say anything, he was too busy watching Naruto talk to the girl for a second before he leaned in and seemed to be kissing her before he straitened his spine and turned and ran over to them finally giving Kakashi a good view of the girl.

My. My. She was a pretty little thing with her pale skin, glossy curly black hair and her dark green eyes.

Well, Naruto is partially sticking to his type. Kakashi thought as the girl sat down and drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on her knees and cocked her head as Kakashi paired the kids off with each other and himself with Yamoto. "Okay guys, it's three against two. Show us older generation what you can do!"

Shay watched the group pair off, the kids against the adults and couldn't help but feel that there was some stuff that Naruto hadn't told her about himself as she saw him charge the man with the silver hair and gasped in shock and horror as the man grabbed the front of Naruto's jacket and flung him into the air like a rag doll.

She tracked Naruto's flight through the air, and nearly fainted from shock when he twisted himself around in mid air and let his feet connect with a tree trunk, it only lasted for a second, but to Shay that second was long enough for Naruto to bend his legs, to keep them from breaking from the impact and launch himself at the man again.

The silver haired man said something as Naruto threw a punch at the man and had his wrist grabbed as the man lifted his leg to kick the teen, Naruto lifted his leg and countered the kick with his own. His knee connecting with Kakashi's as they grappled with each other for a second before leaping apart.

The group continued like this for what seemed like forever to Shay and after a while she got tired of watching and decided to explore the woods away from the group a little ways. She stood up and started walking, weaving her way in and out of the wooded area, trying to keep Naruto and the others in sight as she went and finally after a while she couldn't see them anymore and started to turn back when she heard a twig snap and turned around to see where the noise was coming from.

Silently berating herself for doing something so stupid as exploring in the woods when she had no idea what sort of dangerous wild animals were running around wild and free and hungry.

She'd bet Naruto would be pissed if he found her mangled half eaten body under a bear's paw or something.

There was nothing behind her. No hungry bears, no mountain lions, no panthers, or snakes. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that could hurt or kill her. Nothing that she could see anyways.

But there was a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, and warning bells blaring in her head, screaming out that there was something there. Hidden where she couldn't see it. Watching her. Please don't let it be a bear. Please don't let it be a bear.

Shay repeated in her head over and over again as she started walking, slowly back the way that she had come, hoping that whatever was there wouldn't jump out at her. She got ten feet before she heard a set of heavy foot falls behind her. She stopped and felt a sliver of fear make its way down her spine and shivered as the foot steps stopped.

They sounded like they were just a few feet behind her.

She turned her head slightly and peeked over her shoulder at the same exact second a large dark haired man ran at her. She screamed and started to run but he was too fast and had her around the waist and threw her to the ground with bone jarring force. "Well, well look what I've found." She looked at him and tried to scramble away but he grabbed her and jerked her back towards him and she had to bite back a whimper when he pressed his face against her neck and breathed deep.

"Mmm, you smell nice girl. Too good for the likes of him-"

Naruto dodged a blow to the face and flipped himself back several feet and froze. His heart thudding madly in his chest, his lungs suddenly seemed incapable of breathing the air and a strange feeling of overwhelming fear rose up and caused everything to go black for a second. What was going on? What was wrong with him? He wondered as Kyubbi stirred in his mind.

Kit! Where is your mate?

Huh? Shay was over by the trees sitting. Watching them train. Wasn't she?

No. She isn't. She is gone.

"What?" Naruto all but yelled as his vision cleared and he turned his head to look towards the trees and saw that she was gone.

Oh shit...

Chapter Text

Shay was gone. Where? Where did she go? Naruto wondered as he ran away from the others, his senses kicking into overdrive as he ran over to the deserted blanket and yelled her name. Hoping that she would call back and let him know that his fears were unfounded, but he knew that the chances of that happening were very slim since there was any number of things that could have happened to her.

Someone could have snuck up on her while she was taking a nap and dragged her away to do god knows what, and unless he found her-

He started to hyperventilate as Kyubbi called out to him. Calm down kit. She's alive and unhurt. I can't smell her blood anywhere.

So she's fine? Naruto thought hopefully.

I never said that. I merely said that she was alive and unhurt. The words 'for now' slithered through his mind and set his teeth on edge as the others came running up curious to see what was wrong.

"Naruto, what's wrong?" Kakashi asked as he came up behind the teen. Naruto stood there staring blankly ahead trying to calm himself down so that he could think when he heard a scream coming form somewhere in the depths of the woods and felt his heart stop for a second before he started running again.

His mind zeroing in on the sound and automatically gauging the distance that it had come from. Half a mile. She was just a lousy half a mile. He thought as he ran through the woods, weaving his way in and out from between the trees, Kakashi and the others following closely behind.

Shay had never been so scared in her life as she was now. although the other time she had been attacked stood out in her mind, for now the only thing that she knew was the sadistically smiling man sitting on top of her. She opened her mouth to scream and just barely got any sound out before he hit her hard across the face with his palm. The sickening crack of flesh against flesh followed by the searing pain in her cheek cutting off her scream abruptly.

"Shut up bitch. I'm not going to touch you. I just want to have a little chat." The man growled at her as he leaned over her. She blinked back tears as he grabbed a hand full of her hair and yanked her head back painfully. She cried out and he slapped her again and snarled.

"I told you to shut up... Now I'm a curious sort of guy, and I usually wouldn't raise my hand to a lady but I don't really think your a lady because you let that thing touch you. So all I want to know is...what is it about him that you like? Is it that damned dark passion you can sense under his skin? Do you enjoy letting that thing plow you like a cheap whore? Is it because human men just don't do it for you? Tell me!"  He snarled at her.

Shay blinked back tears and stared at him. She didn't understand. What was he saying? What did he want to hear? What could she say to get him to go away? "I-I don't k-know w-what-"

He hit her again, once, twice, three times and she put her hands up and tried to stop him. But it was no good, he kept pushing her hands aside and slapping her until dark spots danced in her eyes and she knew that she was about to lose consciousness.

She could taste blood in her mouth and her cheek was numb. She put her hands out to stop him as he raised his hand again tears slipped down her face as she opened her mouth and rasped. "Stop. Please..." He hit her again and her head snapped to the side so violently that it felt as if her neck had just been broken and she knew no more.

Naruto heard Shay crying before he saw her.

His mind went blank and he drove himself forward faster, praying that she wasn't hurt too badly as Kyubbi told him that he smelled blood and his blood lust rose, pulsing through his blood as he broke through the dense under brush and stopped for a second to access the situation.

There was a large man sitting on top of Shay, his hand raised, and Naruto could hear Shay begging him to stop.

Begging. He let out a low feral sound and walked forward quietly and grabbed the man be the back of the shirt and jerked him up off of Shay as she fainted and threw the offender across the small clearing where he hit a tree trunk, side first and crashed to the ground. Naruto stared at the man through scarlet eyes and pointed and growled.

"Bad dog." Before turning back to Shay and kneeling down and lightly touching her bruised cheek then wiped the blood away from her mouth as the others ran into the clearing and stopped.

"Sakura, help her." Kakashi said as he pushed Sakura gently towards Naruto and the girl laying so still on the ground. Sakura looked confused for a second then went over to Naruto and dropped down to her knees beside the girl and started to heal her wounds as Kakashi, Yamoto and Sai secured the man that Naruto had knocked nearly senseless to the tree behind him.

"How badly is she hurt?" Naruto asked as he gave the man a cold apathetic look. If he had hurt Shay badly he would kill him. As it was now, he was just going to skin the sick fucker alive and amputate his arm the good old fashioned way. He was going to rip it off at the shoulder.

"She's just a little bruised. Nothing to worry about. She hasn't got any concussions or any lasting damage." Sakura said as she finished healing the strange girl and looked at Naruto. Wondering why Naruto had such a strange look on his face when he looked at the girl. Naruto's eyes slowly turned back to azure blue and he nodded his head and turned to look at the who had seemed to regain his senses and was suddenly straining against the ropes binding him, growling like an animal.

Naruto walked up to the man and planted his foot on the man's chest and slammed him back against the tree and held him in place as he pulled out a kunai. "Now, why did you hurt-"

"Snow." Sai said all of a sudden and Naruto frowned and looked over at the dark haired teen and wondered what the hell Sai was talking about. Sai just smiled happily and pointed to Shay.

"Snow. It's a nice nickname for such a pretty girl with pale skin." Naruto snorted and turned back to the man and smiled at him.

"So why did you hurt...Snow? Mind you that if I don't like you're answer, I'll bury you in this clearing." Naruto said as he placed the tip of his kunai against the man's neck, drawing a thin scarlet drop from his skin.

Chapter Text

"So why did you hurt...Snow? Mind you that if I don't like you're answer, I'll bury you in this clearing." Naruto said as he placed the tip of his kunai against the man's neck, drawing a thin scarlet drop from his skin.

The man started to open his mouth to speak when Shay made a sound indicating that she was waking up and Naruto quickly elbowed the man in the mouth, there was an audible sickening crack and the man's eyes widened a second before Kakashi pinched a nerve in the back of his neck silencing the scream of pain that had been about to work itself out of the man's throat. As Naruto put his kunai away and moved back to the Shay's side all in the blink of an eye and dropped down to his knees beside her.

Shay moaned again and stirred a bit. Her eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes a little bit and Naruto leaned over her and gave her a dazzling smile. "Hey beautiful." Nauto said in a husky sounding voice.

She looked at him then looked around, her body felt sore, and she could feel herself shaking a little bit. She wanted to ask what had happened since all she recalled was a big guy calling her names and smacking her, but everything seemed fuzzy.

Almost as if she had been watching a movie or dreaming. "N-Naruto? What are you doing here?" She asked as Naruto reached out and slipped an arm under her shoulders and lifted her up a little bit and dragged her into his lap and hugged her. He ran his hands through her hair, trying to comb out the leaves and twigs that had gotten tangled there and then ran his hands along her spine, pressing her against his body a little more tightly than felt comfortable to her, but she allowed it because she couldn't stop shaking.

"Where else would I be you silly girl?" Naruto rasped in a shaky tone that no one else could hear as he buried his face in her hair to hide the fact that he was dangerously close to tears.

He hadn't expected one of the village shinobi to come to training ground seven and try something. Not with him, Sakura, Sai, Kakashi and Yamoto there. But obviously he would have to rethink bringing Shay with him to work from now on.

"Naruto. You're friends are staring at us in a strange way..." Shay said tiredly as she noticed the two men from earlier plus the other two. The silver haired man and the strange pink haired girl.

Naruto lifted his head slightly and smiled.

"Are they? It's because they don't see me hug someone often-" Naruto said as he loosened his grip on her little bit and slipped his other arm under her knees and stood up, taking her with him. "Hold on to me Shay." Naruto said softly as soon as he was standing, she looked at him curiously and slipped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder to hide her face.

Well they were a pretty pair, weren't they? Kakashi mused as Naruto walked by him carrying the girl bridal style in his arms.

The fragile girl being protected by the demon containing boy.

Kyubbi must have been having a field day with this. Kakashi knew that Anko and the others from the meeting last night were going to have a field day with this. And as for the man that had attacked the girl, well Naruto hadn't killed him. But then he hadn't needed too.

He had broken the guys jaw, and in a second Yamoto and Sai were going to take the misguided man to Ibiki, who would bury the man for Naruto. Sakura walked over to him and poked him in the side with her index finger to get his attention. He looked at her a curious expression on his masked face. "Yes Sakura."

"What's going on? Who's that girl? Why is she with Naruto?"

Kakashi looked at her strangely a small smile curving his lips under his mask. Sakura sounded like a jealous ex-girlfriend. "She's Naruto's..." He wasn't exactly sure how to answer the question since he hadn't been able to smell any signs of sex on the girl or Naruto, so obviously Naruto wasn't fucking her. So maybe the teen was keeping her with him to have someone to curl up on the couch with or to talk too? Still that little fact was no ones business so he didn't bother saying anything about it to Sakura or the others as he started walking. Completely forgetting that he hadn't answered Sakura's question.

Sakura glared at his back, waiting for him to answer her before huffing and growling something along the lines of 'damn Naruto and his little hussy' before brushing past him and stomping off. Well, that was unexpected. Kakashi thought as he watched Sakura disappear into the sea of trees. Well, looks like his thoughts on the jealous ex-girlfriend had been right on the money. But if Sakura had liked Naruto, she should have said something before this.

Really it wasn't Naruto's fault.

He had tried to get her to date him.

He had tried for years, though there was no telling if he had been serious or not. They made it back to the training ground just as Naruto was wrapping the girl in the blanket that he had brought with him and looked up at Kakashi as he emerged from the tree's and glanced down at the girl. She looked as if she had fallen asleep while Naruto had been carrying. Maybe because she was still in shock or because the attack had drained her of all of her energy.

Whatever the reason, Naruto wrapped the blanket around her and picked her back up. "I think I'm going to call it a day." He said as he stood up and shifted the girl in his arms to get a better grip on her. Kakashi nodded his head in understanding. He supposed that Naruto wanted some time alone, to himself.

"I'll drop by later and check on the two of you. Do you want me to bring something for the two of you to eat?"

"If you do you have to stay for dinner." Naruto said soberly. Kakashi nodded again and smiled at his emotionally fragile ex student. That sounded like it might be nice. He hadn't eaten dinner with Naruto since team seven had had their prank war. And that hadn't been so much eating dinner with the blond as it had been wearing it.

And now that Naruto had a girl to worry about it might be nice to get to know her too since he'd be seeing a lot more of her from now on. "Alright. It's a deal."

"See you then Kakashi-sensei." Naruto said as he vanished in a swirl of leaves.