Chapter Text
Naruto was scared.
She spent a lot of her life scared, but this was… This was different. She was used to being scared of punishments—those of a corporal nature, yes, but also stress positions, going without food, the cold box, spending a chemically induced preheat wave bound and painfully alone, away from the other omega—and Trainer Oro, the omniscient evaluator of whether or not she was a good girl. Things she knew. Predictable consequences for her actions.
This was an unknown. Yes, she’d known this was coming as she approached her sixteenth date, had always known that when her blood test popped, they’d organize her placement with an alpha with mere weeks leading up to her first heat, but who? Would he be cruel? Ugly? Would he find it funny, the way Trainer Oro did, to watch her suffer and scream and beg through her heat with no relief? Would he hit her? Would he feed her? Would he even like her? Would he be a loner, or would he have a wife already? She’d heard a story, once, about an omega from her government training program who’d been placed with an alpha who already had a beta wife, and the wife beat and starved her for months before strangling her. But that was just a scary story, wasn’t it? How would they have even heard it if it were true? Nobody ever came back, and there was never news about how a placement had gone, and—
“I told you creeps,” Naruto heard through the door into the other room her handler for the day, Mr. Kabuto, and her potential new alpha had gone into to leave her out of the discussion of her fate, “I don’t want a fucking omega, and especially not one that you brainwashed. It’s disgusting.” It had her fidgeting even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to, one hand anxiously tracing the edge of her blindfold while the other drug her palm across the soft, thick carpet she knelt on, trying to soothe herself. She missed the other omegas. It made her eyes burn to think about it, to think about the fact that she’d never see them again, never take comfort in Haku’s scent or his quiet, calming voice until the day she died, and her shoulders jerked as the man who held her life in the balance raised his voice in earnest. “I’m not goddamn breeding stock! Hiruzen sure as shit wasn’t worried about my bloodline when he had me on the front lines of his war, was he?”
A war? Why was there a war? And more importantly, was this man… He wasn’t a caster, was he? But who else ever talked about bloodlines? She wasn’t supposed to go to a caster. They were terrifying, powerful— She was supposed to go to someone landed, someone struggling to produce an heir for their property. Not a caster. Casters handpicked their omegas from the sons and daughters of the landed elite. They didn’t get assigned a thrown-away orphaned one.
“And why exactly should I give a shit what happens to her?” Naruto shrank into herself, curling over her lap as she rubbed her palm more vigorously against the carpet, feeling quite as though she couldn’t breathe.
She blocked out the rest, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying not to freak herself out too badly. Trying to just exist and be a good girl like Haku was so good at being a good boy, but it had never come easily to her like it did most of the others. She was bad, had that terrible, unforgivable instinct within herself to rebel, to fight, to run away that had gotten her so badly hurt so many times. They’d told her it was because she was stupid, and every night, she prayed to become smart enough to settle in to her place in life, but—
“Fine,” the stranger snapped as the door was thrown open, bouncing off of the wall and making her flinch rather badly. “I’ll take a look—” The words dripped with sarcasm. “—and then you can take the poor wretched thing to whatever sad fucker with more head of cattle than braincells is jerking his dick about needing a goddamn heir.”
“Excellent,” Mr. Kabuto responded, sounding as unfazed as always, his tone primly polite. “Thank you for indulging me, Tempest. I think you’ll find her quite pleasing. She’s been earmarked for you since she started at our facility, you know.”
There was a beat of tense silence, and she could almost feel the why? on the alpha’s tongue, same as the why? stuck in her throat. Nobody had ever once mentioned she was intended for anybody in particular, and she’d started at the facility young—when she was only six. She wasn’t anything special; she’d been told a million times she was barely worth training, that she was lucky Trainer Oro had taken pity on her. But neither of them asked, the tenseness in the room stretching as the alpha approached her, smelling like spices and rain and aggravation; she instinctively flinched back when he got close, his clothes shuffling as he crouched down in front of her and took her face in his warm, calloused palms, tilting her face up to examine her.
It seemed like nobody breathed as she felt his thumb stroke over her cheek, his nail catching in the barely-visible indent of the scars on her face—three lines on each side. It embarrassed her, having her most egregious flaw pointed out so immediately, but before she could try to find her tongue and apologize, the blindfold got pulled off, and she was staring into intense mismatched eyes—one grey, one red—set into a handsome albeit half-concealed face contorted with rage. She whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut, and he jerked her towards him, burying his nose in her neck to inhale deeply.
The fury in his scent bloomed, suffocating at close range, and the moment he dropped her and stood up, she collapsed forward, pressing her palms and her forehead to the floor in a show of submission and apology, her whole body trembling with how sorry she was for being a disappointment.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
The words were dangerous, full of malice; Naruto twitched with desire to comply, but before she could, Kabuto chirped cheerfully, “So you’ll take her, then? Leader Sarutobi will be delighted. We should celebrate, toast to the continuation of the Hatake clan and the—
“Tell Leader Sarutobi—” the alpha hissed, the words dripping with disdain, “—that if I see him or any of his fucking lackeys in the next three months, I’ll kill them on the spot. Tell him that any further interference with my life or hers will make me an enemy of the state and that I’ll burn this whole country down around him, consequences be damned.”
What the fuck.
“Just claim her as your bonded!” Kabuto sounded completely unfazed, still apparently delighted by whatever was happening. “And then you’re a free man. All your pacts resolved, all your contracts nullified. Easy peasy. Here’s her paperwork.” Something thudded to the floor. “Congratulations on your new omega! I’m sure you’ll find her well-trained and agreeable.”
There was a snarl, the sounds of a brief but brutal struggle, and then the front door slammed shut, leaving Naruto alone with an alpha bleeding fury, utterly at his mercy.
…
Son of a bitch.
Kakashi was pacing and raking his hands through his hair, his eyes glued to the pitiful girl on the floor of his living room, feeling as though he couldn’t breathe. Fucking Sarutobi, fucking Tomorrow Party, fucking government omega facilities. He’d been had. His entire adult life, he’d been serving Sarutobi goddamn Hiruzen in exchange for the resources and freedom to investigate omega trafficking circuits, trying to track down the one quivering on the floor, clearly convinced he was going to kill her. He’d signed away his soul in blood for permission to look for her and the rotted old bastard had known where she was the entire time, had been torturing her to the end of subjecting Kakashi to reproductive slavery for his precious tomorrow.
All your pacts resolved, all your contracts nullified.
He needed that shit in writing. If it was true, then…
Right. Right, first things first, he needed a list of action items. Ripping through the pad of his thumb with far too much force in his agitation, he sent off a dog to his dear, prized student Sakura, asking her to come immediately with her omega, then another to Guy asking him to cover for him the next day at work and take over his active projects for the next week. With each rush of chakra, the omega flinched, which—okay, confirmation that she was a caster was good, even if the confused whimpers she was making made him want to kill something because she clearly wasn’t aware of that fact, and now he needed… He needed to address her.
His stomach churned. His eyes stung, his throat closing up. He stepped over to the binder Orochimaru’s lapdog had dropped, toeing it open to see what he already knew based on the Uzumaki clan scars and the distinctive, shimmering Namikazi eyes. It was printed in block letters at the top of the page: UZUMAKI-NAMIKAZI NARUTO.
Minato and Kushina’s daughter. She even smelled like Kushina, under the milky scent of her fading adolescence, the warm honey of pre-heat, and the acrid sting of her fear. Most omegas smelled like sweets. Kushina had always smelled like flowers. The omega huddled against the floor awaiting his judgment smelled like the countryside as cherry blossom season gave way to wisteria.
“Fuck me,” he bit out, the words an exclamation of stress and dismay, but to his horror, the terrified omega on the floor immediately sat up—her eyes shut and her face screwed into an expression of terror—to begin unbuttoning the simple cotton dress she wore, and he was quick to correct himself with a brusque, “That’s not what I meant. That wasn’t directed at you. Stop—” Stop what? Being scared? What in the fresh hell was she supposed to do with a command like that? He shook his head, starting over in the gentlest tone he could manage through his tight rage. “Sit on the couch and make yourself comfortable. You aren’t in trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
He’d dealt with plenty of frightened, traumatized omegas over the years, but he’d never been good at it. Sufficient to get them to a beta officer, a woman who could be gentle with them and make them feel safe. Nothing more. But he knew enough to emphasize those points. You aren’t in trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong. It worked on Naruto as well as it worked on any omega, which was to say, it worked enough. Some of the fear left her face, her shoulders relaxing from bunched up around her ears to merely tense, and her eyes opened, regarding him warily as she slowly moved to obey, perching herself on the very edge of the couch like she was afraid of getting it dirty as she redid her top two buttons with shaking, clumsy hands.
He fucking abhorred the government omega programs. Their line was that it was a better fate than one an omega faced in the street, and to be sure, things could get much worse in illegal operations, but he’d seen his fair share of black market omegas who acted virtually the same as a government omega, and a significant handful that were calmer and less traumatized. He didn’t know in detail what went on in Orochimaru’s facilities, but he guessed it wasn’t exactly humane.
All of that was to say that Kakashi had no real idea of what to do beyond those basics. He had never wanted an omega and had never spent time around any that hadn’t had at least some say in who their bonded would be, with one notable exception. Omegas were rare. That was the whole damn point of this screwed up system.
And underneath his racing thoughts, his uncertainty, the frantic energy that drove him to continue pacing and yanking at his hair, everything inside him screamed to pull her close and sob into her chest. It was really her. She wasn’t dead. His sensei’s final directive—find her for me, Kakashi, please, I promised Kushina that you’d find her—wasn’t a failure, not completely. His life’s mission had just been dropped off at his doorstep and it felt so unreal he could barely function, leave alone reassure her and make her feel safe.
So even though he should have said more, he didn’t. Even though he had a million questions, he asked none. Even though all he wanted in the world was to drink her in, to hold her, he didn’t even let himself look at her. And when it didn’t take long for a knock to come at the door, his whole body sagged with relief, grateful beyond words that this particular pair of idiots put up with him enough to answer a nondescript summons after dinner on a work night.
He crossed to the door, pushing it open and stepping outside before anyone could see in, relieved to breathe Sasuke and Sakura in, the latter of which demanded instantly, “What is it, sensei?”
But Sasuke had already clocked it, his eyes wide from the moment the door had swung open. “Your apartment smells like upset omega,” he observed blankly, dumbstruck. “Did you really finally give in and let—?”
“It’s Naruto,” he interrupted, too impatient to once again hash out his students’ opinion that he probably ought to go ahead and take an omega just to put one in a safe situation (and, to a lesser extent, be less of a recluse), and everything went still and silent. “It’s—it’s Naruto,” he said again, realizing his voice was shaking but unable to do anything about it. “It’s Naruto, Sarutobi had her this whole time in a government facility, and he just—he just dropped her off like—”
Sakura stepped forward, enveloping him in a hug, and normally he’d had shoved her away, but he felt so ragged and fucked up that he just let it happen, let his hardwired biology breathe in the familiar scent and breathe out stress just a tad. “Shh,” she hushed him. “Calm down, sensei. This is good news.”
It was good news. It was. Except that— “I need help,” he managed roughly, trying and failing to wipe his voice blank as he gave Sasuke a pleading look. “She’s terrified of me and I need help.”
…
Naruto did not understand what was going on at all.
Confirmation that her new alpha was a caster—because what else could those pulses of what felt like static electricity have been? What else could cause his presence to feel like that?—was even more terrifying than the fact that she’d evidently done something to upset him before she’d even learned his name. Then he’d told her to service him, then he’d taken it back and told her to sit on the couch, and then he’d fully left the house, and Naruto—
She’d never been alone before unless she was being punished, and she couldn’t breathe.
She tried to stay put, she really did, but as the silence and isolation stretched on, it suffocated her, and she collapsed under its weight until she was on the floor, her instincts screaming at her to hide, and that’s why when the door opened back up, she was huddled under the coffee table with her face hidden against the rug and her hands knotted in her hair, hyperventilating.
“I was only gone a few minutes,” she heard her alpha insist, and she only had a moment to wonder who he was talking to before other scents hit her—alpha and omega both—and she gasped.
“Okay, okay,” a male voice said, sounding a little harried but in control. “Okay. Alphas out. Go feed Kakashi—god knows he probably hasn’t eaten today—” This assertion was met with a plaintive, hey, come on. “—and come back in an hour, alright? I’ve got this.”
“Should we bring anything?” a female voice asked, high with worry. “She’ll need nesting materials, right? Maybe some of your things?”
“S’good idea,” the male voice answered, growing impatient. “Now come on, get out. I’ve got her.” Fear clutched high in her throat—not for herself, but for the omega speaking so brazenly to his alpha, he was going to get hurt and she wasn’t worth that, not at all—but to her cold shock, both of the alphas simply obeyed, closing the door and leaving her alone with the strange omega putting off warm-comfort pheromones like it was his job. “We’re alone now,” he called out, his voice raising in volume but smoothing out into something gentle and soothing. “You came from one of the facilities, right? I bet you’re scared out of your mind…” She was, she really was, had he also…? “Here’s what’s going to happen, alright? I’m going over there, and I’m going to take you out from under that table and put you on the couch, yeah? I’m going to hold you and we’re going to talk until you feel better. And nobody is going to hurt you, I swear.”
How could he swear? He wasn’t in charge, that—that caster was in charge. The one that was so angry with her that he couldn’t even stand to be in the same house as her without pacing in his rage. But she didn’t say that, obviously—she knew better than to piss her new alpha off more by speaking to someone other than him without permission—and when she didn’t answer, the other omega sighed and followed through on exactly what he’d said he was going to do.
She’d fought a little on instinct—not much, just enough that her body went tense and she had to be dragged out from under the table rather than coming willingly—and then she was being hefted off of her feet by the scruff, deposited unceremoniously onto the man’s lap as he collapsed onto the couch with her with a brusque, “Alright, alright, settle down, I’ve got you,” as he arranged her sitting sideways, locked one arm around her waist, and began to stroke her hair, urging her to lay her head against his shoulder. He sounded annoyed, but he smelled… He smelled like you’re safe and everything’s okay and I’m here. It made her eyes water, and before she knew it, she was clinging to him, burying tears in his chest with her hands fisted in his shirt, breathing in the comforting smell of another omega as deeply as she could. “There you go. Catch your breath, alright?”
They weren’t allowed to do this at the facility. They could sit close—touching, even, from ankle to shoulder—but they weren’t allowed to hold each other, to rub each other’s scalps, to pet each other’s hair. She’d always figured that this must be one of their biological imperatives, the things they were wired to do that were wrong, that needed to be trained out of them so that they could be good, because the instincts had always been so strong for all of them (to the point that it was one of the most common things they got punished for), but experiencing it firsthand, she was absolutely sure that it was natural, and increasingly less sure—as she melted into this stranger’s arms, purring for the first time in ages—that it was wrong.
She’d been soothed into a state of near sleep by the time he spoke, his words a little gruff and disinterested even as he played with a lock of her hair then tucked it behind her ear so gently it almost made her want to cry all over again. “I’m Sasuke,” he said. “Uchiha Sasuke. That means something to most people, but probably not to you, huh? You’re from a facility?” Hesitantly, Naruto nodded, just the tiniest jerk of her chin. “So was my mom. Terrible places. This won’t be like that. You’re Naruto, aren’t you?” Another nod, small in case her new alpha was watching and would consider this talking without permission. “I bet your new alpha didn’t introduce himself. His name is Kakashi, and—” He huffed a sigh, and she didn’t get the impression that he was lying so much as it seemed like he wished he didn’t have to say it. “—he’s a very good man. A good alpha.”
Shyly, terrified of being caught, she did something that she’d learned to do in the facility during quiet hours, tracing a word into the omega’s shoulder with slow, careful letters. C-A-S-S-T-E-R.
There was a pause, and then a careful, “Do that again.”
C-A-S-S-T-E-R.
“Caster?” the man—Sasuke—checked, sounding half amused and half sad. “Yeah, he’s—he’s a caster. Was your trainer a caster?” She jerked her chin in the tiniest possible nod. “That does make him more dangerous than a typical alpha, I suppose, but not more dangerous to you. He won’t cast to hurt you, I swear. Casters aren’t all bad.” Naruto, frankly, didn’t believe him. He’d just said it himself that casters were dangerous, besides, and— “I’m a caster.”
Naruto jerked back, and for the first time, looked properly at the omega holding her. He was pretty; pale, with voluminous, healthy dark hair and rather hypnotic eyes, and as she stared at him, terrified, he quirked a fine eyebrow at her in question.
“You’re wondering how I’m a caster.” Forgetting herself, she nodded, and he smirked back at her, settling the hand that had been stroking her hair on her knee, over her long, plain skirt. “My alpha is a caster. She’s—” Something that she didn’t understand entered his expression, and his smirk melted into a small but sincere smile as he averted his gaze and told her, “She’s incredible. She’s very kind. I wasn’t allowed to choose her, but I’m glad she chose me. When she realized I had aptitude for casting, she brought me to her teacher right away. Your alpha.”
Her alpha… Had taught an omega to cast? Her hand flew to his, tracing out on the back of it, I-L-L-E—
“I know, it’s illegal,” he murmured, partially amused and partially pitying. “I can read anything that I want, too, even books. And I’m allowed to write whenever I want, I have my own notebooks and pencils and everything. And I have to wear a collar and carry a letter from her so I don’t get into trouble for it, but my alpha lets me go out into town on my own whenever I want.” Then, leaning in close, he told her in a secretive whisper, “She even gets me birth control from the black market.”
Holy shit.
This guy was going to get her killed.
He was entrapping her, that had to be it. This was a test, and if she let herself hope for even a second that it wasn’t, she was going to be in for a world of pain. So she went still. She said nothing, did not trace any more letters, and refused to even nod or shake her head as the boy—because he wasn’t that much older than her, really, now that she’d gotten a good look at him—kept trying to draw her into a conversation. She ignored him the best she could, taking in her surroundings instead.
They were… so nice that they made her uncomfortable to look at. The couch they sat on was made of a fine, soft pattern fabric patterned beautifully in cream and grey, and similar collars could be found in other parts of the room—the rug, the lampshades, the little decorative pillows, the armchair—and the walls were covered in paintings, all of them beautiful and fine, landscapes and portraits and towns and people going about their day and sailboats, all in beautiful frames carved and lined with gold. The table she’d hidden under was beautifully carved as well, the chandelier overhead luxurious, and—
And the realization that if she broke, stained, or damaged anything, the consequences would be unimaginable turned her stomach to stone. She dove back against the omega’s chest, trembling, and didn’t answer him as his gentle urging to know what was going on trailed off into a patient silence, returning his attentions to stroking her back and her hair, quietly soothing her.
…
“I can’t,” Kakashi murmured into his hands, curled over his lap on Sakura’s settee. “I can’t do it, Sakura. I’m going to have to find someone else to take her.”
The leftovers she’d reheated for him had tasted like ash and settled in his stomach like lead. His whole body was numb, and his heartbeat was so irregular he was entertaining the idea of calling his physician. He was not okay, not in the slightest, no matter how insistent Sakura was that—
“You’re okay, sensei, calm down.” The young alpha sighed long-sufferingly, carefully rearranging the materials she’d collected from Sasuke into a bundle that was easy to carry, including a quilt, a couple of throw blankets, a pillowcase, and a few shirts she’d fished out of the laundry. “It’s not that hard to take care of an omega.” She paused. “Well, it’s hard, but it’s not complicated.” Kakashi shot her a witheringly unimpressed look. “… And probably a bit harder with a traumatized one than a spoiled one like mine, granted. But be realistic about this, Kakashi. Who would you be able to trust her to and sleep well at night?”
Briefly, Kakashi considered Guy. He was a relentlessly sweet and gentle man, the type of alpha that made omegas feel safe just by walking into the room. He was an easy, obvious choice, aside from the fact that he was queer. It wouldn’t be a big deal for him to be with an omega anyway, of course, but if the Tomorrow Party caught wind of his proclivities towards other alphas, past or present, they could seize Naruto, break their bond, and assign her somewhere he wouldn’t even be able to track her down. It was too risky, far too risky. Was there anyone else…?
“No,” he realized out loud when the mere idea of Naruto leaving his place without him made him feel a tad like he was dying. “No, I—I need to keep her with… But I can’t bond…”
“And why not?”
“If I had a kid who was an omega and my dying breath was asking you to protect them, would you want to bond them?”
Sakura blinked at him, then shrugged, conceding the point. “Would your sensei forgive you if you handed her off and hoped somebody else took good care of her?”
“That isn’t—”
“Who would he choose for her, given the current political climate?”
Kakashi would really, really like to think that the answer to that question was what Sakura clearly thought it was. “But I’m not cut out for it, Sakura. And she’s terrified of me.”
“Even coming from a much better background, Sasuke was pretty wary of me at first, too.” She flicked her hair back when the bundled fabrics had satisfied her, straightening up and putting her fists on her hips to regard him with an infuriatingly empathetic look on her kind face. “All you have to do is be quiet, gentle, and nonthreatening,” she urged him, and when he rolled his eyes, she rolled hers right back. “Oh, come the fuck on, sensei. I’ve seen under your little ice queen act too many times to not know what a damned softie you are under all the—” She wiggled her fingers at him. “—prickliness.”
Prickliness was a word for it. His current supervisor preferred the term obstinate unfriendliness. “She needs…” Her terrified eyes flashed through his mind’s eye, so blue and beautiful they made him want to hurt himself. “… so much more than I can give her.”
“I might give you deserves,” his old student teased him, extending her hand out to him to help him up. “But needs? I’ve spent time with facility omegas. They’re trained to thrive on harsh discipline and scraps of affection. Your best will be more than she ever dreamed up, I swear to you.” She thrust her hand closer to him, into his face. “Now, come on. She probably thinks you hate her. We need to go over there, get her settled in, and you have to explain why you reacted like that, okay, sensei?”
Cautiously, feeling oddly as though if he took the young alpha’s hand, he’d be resigning himself to something he wasn’t ready for, Kakashi got to his feet without touching her, offering her a stiff nod. “Yeah, okay,” he heard himself murmur, still feeling a million miles away from the reality that Minato’s daughter was three blocks down the street, safe and his. Fuck, maybe he was going to throw up after all. “… Okay. Let’s go.”