Hand Signs [A Deaf Naruto Fanfiction]

Chapter 4: Ready or Not

Two all-nighters and I managed to get both stories' chapters out on time. I'm so proud. I honestly wrote 95% of this chapter on 2 hours of sleep because I also stayed up all night yesterday to get the chapter for From Time to Time out on time and procrastinated all week. So I apologize ahead of time for any mistakes that docs doesn't catch... And for my massive inconsistency with spelling character names and ranks (and inconsistent capitalization for ranks as well) 

All that will be fixed when the story is finished and I go through to polish it.

Anyways...

On with the chapter!

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Chapter Four: Ready or Not

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Iruka wasn't a mother hen and he definitely wasn't a proud mother, okay? He wasn't.

Probably.

Naruto was practically living with him. He cooked him dinner most nights and when he didn't he treated him to ramen. Iruka taught him Shinobi Sign language (something the kid picked up astonishingly fast), and helped him with his homework. If he sounded like a proud parent when he spoke about Naruto's progress it was purely pride in his ability to teach. That was all. And if he worried more than strictly necessary when Naruto showed up at his apartment for his tutoring looking like he spent the last week fighting for his life in the forest of death after training with Lee and Gai it was only natural. Especially given his disability.

Maybe he was a bit of a mother hen, but it was only because of how similar Naruto was to himself. It had nothing to do with the fact that the kid looked at him like he'd just given him a million Ryo and the Hokage's hat. It had nothing to do with the fact that the ever-present loneliness that was always in the boys shockingly blue eyes was outweighed by how happy he seemed to be in Iruka's presence. It wasn't something he understood because Gai was a Jounin and, despite his eccentricity, a very skilled shinobi and the blond had known the Hokage since he was a toddler. Iruka was nothing compared to either, in skill or anything else. Naruto didn't seem to agree if the look in his eyes had anything to say about it whenever he even mentioned it. Part of the tan Chunin knew he didn't deserve the look of adoration Naruto graced him with. The rest, a much larger part, didn't want it to fade because he felt the same. He was his brother in all but blood, practically his own child--even despite the size gap being too small to really pass as a parent to a preteen.

Naruto, even at the tender age of twelve, was one of the strongest people Iruka had ever met. He somehow managed to live in a village that despised him, where he was alone, still able to smile. Iruka had never faced the level of scorn Naruto had and it had almost made him walk a path of self destruction. His talk with the Hokage saved him. At the very least, Iruka wanted Naruto to know that he had people who cared about him. That loved him.

Because Iruka did.

It was a startling realization, at first, because he remembered looking at the blond once and hating him. He also remembered meeting him, really meeting him and wondering how anyone, including himself ever could because he'd never met anyone more selfless and lonely in his life. But looking at a child, someone he'd really only known for a couple years, and thinking of them as his was new.

But was it really? It was only after he really thought about it that he realized it wasn't that new. He worried over Naruto's eating habits and made sure he got enough sleep. Iruka helped him study and cooked him dinners. He prepared his lunches and cared for him. Weren't those things something a parent did?