Prologue: At the Feet of Those He Couldn't Save

{Three Months After Shukaku's Extraction}

Gaara started awake to find himself drenched in cold sweat. He gasped and flung back his cobalt silk sheets, stumbling for the window. His fingers fumbled with the curtains, then the latch, but he lost patience and shattered the panes, the frigid desert air hitting him with the subtlety of a brick wall. It shocked him back from his sleep instantly.

There were few who knew of the whole and true nature of the bond Gaara had shared with the demon Shukaku, and even fewer who knew of the effects the beast's removal had caused.

Removal. Hah! Such a clean word for such a grueling and torturous process.

The seal that had 'bound' Shukaku within him had been shitty at best; to this day, Gaara did not understand why Chiyo had used a seal meant for tea kettles on a baby- an unborn baby, of all things. The seal withered and weakened, and was as effective as keeping the demon at bay as a paper wall is at blocking sound within days of his birth. Truly, it was not the seal that withheld the demon... Gaara's consciousness and physical being that became the only defense the world had against the beast.

And so Gaara remained in a permanent waking state. Even so, the demon's presence altered his body permanently; he became a child attuned to the desert, bound to it. The demon mutated his structure and marked the boy with pale moons for eyes, cloaked in black skin.

Their minds had remained unmeshed until Gaara came to believe that he and Shukaku were all but one and the same. When he first came to view himself in this light, Gaara fell into sleep with a smile upon his lips.

He was seven.

Shukaku unleashed his fury upon Suna, and feasted upon both the flesh of his enemies and the mind of his medium. As Gaara continued to use Shukaku's power over the years, the fine line of consciousness that separated his thoughts from the demon's blurred. Soon, their minds were entwined, and when Gaara killed, the blood he spilled was as a drug to his tainted psyche.

So when the elders of Suna dubbed the incident as 'Shukaku's removal,' Gaara had to reel in his rage. The Akatsuki had not pruned Shukaku from him like some bud on a bush; they'd torn him in twain. Pain such as he had never known had wracked his body and mind as the demon was ripped away and pulled out, and he'd faded into terrible, blissful whiteness.

The pain had not ended with his death, for the wounds in his mangled psyche remained.

Over the past few months Gaara had come to three conclusions about himself and the world around him. He loathed sleep and the nightmares that came with it, he could not tolerate quiet, nor could he stand White.

The first came as no surprise, but the others were-- for lack of a better word-- troublesome. Indeed, his distaste for sleep was expected, and so he usually took drugs to induce dreamless rest, but his village had endured a rough season weather-wise, and the drug that he used was now ridiculously difficult to come by, so he had cut his dosage in two to set an example.

Few cared to know what dreams Sabaku no Gaara experienced that drove him to doping up on two pills a night.

The second issue, which he was adjusting to more easily than the first, stemmed from the constant murmurs that had once dwelt in the deep recesses of his mind. The complete quietness of his mind was both a blessing and a curse. All the effort and willpower it had taken to suppress Shukaku's suggestions was now no longer being expended, and so Gaara found that he was unable to relax; the lack of sound made him jumpy while the absent need for the mental strength he'd built up left him restless. And it reminded him of the White.

This third little problem caused both he and his siblings quite a bit of worry. Within the first week of his return, he'd had their home emptied of white, save for the white of his robes, which he avoided wearing whenever he could. The White, as he called it, had taken root in his other little problems as well; it haunted his dreams and thoughts of it crept in on him when the air was soft and still and silent.

He hated it. He knew, now, that it was not the darkness one should fear, but the White. That gleaming, empty abyss that sucked you deep into despair even as your body convulses and shrieks of agony spill from your gaping mouth and at some point you become half aware that you're dying...

That hideous, clinical White...

Gaara told no one about it. He had more important things to do than waste his time with the psychological prodding of medics who would shiver behind their clipboards, wondering if he would snap. He was the Godaime Kazekage, ally to Konohagakure, and his friends' lives would be hard enough even with Suna's aid if Akatsuki planned to acquire the Kyubi. No, he could not show any sign of weakness now, not with his own Council pestering him to stealthily abandon the Leaf. Again.

Bastards.

'I am in a very foul mood,' he mused. It was not quiet now; the winds of Suna howled, rushing southwest towards treacherous cliffs- the sheer drop that separated Suna's land from the sea.

He often took solace in the biting breath of his desert's wind.

His desert.

{Much Later}

Had circumstances been different, this day might have been a happy occasion. The storm had passed; things were calm once more. But the calm was a curse. Now there was nothing to do but pick up the pieces, which meant that there was no way one avoid the bitterness of reality.

There were no smiling faces for the newly appointed Hokage, no congratulations. There were no shouts of laughter from the children in the village. The people staggered as if the gods had reached down and back-handed Konoha in punishment for some unknown crime.

Loss had a hold of them all. It hung over their heads like a great, gangly vulture, and none were lost deeper in the scavenger's shadow than their lost leader.

"Damn it!" Shikamaru snarled, bashing his fist upon the Hokage's desk and adding yet another crack to its rudely abused surface. "You wanted people to look to you! Well, they're looking to you now to lead them! Do something!"

"Go away."

The strategist's lip curled back in disgust. "What's wrong with you? You're so caught up bemoaning what you've lost that you've forgotten all about what you still have," he said.

The office door slammed, and a second crack appeared, running from the lower hinge to the base.

The Hokage did not react.

...

Yet, Nara Shikamaru would be damned before he let his village fade away into dust like tinder in a fire. He had promises to keep and responsibilities to uphold, the most important of which lay in a crib beside its mother's cot.

The strategist plodded towards the- his lip curled in anger- encampment set up at the foot of the great rock that bore the likenesses of the noble Hokages who'd died for a village which was all but non-existent now. True, the vast majority of the populace had survived, but many of Konoha's best had not and almost none of their homes remained standing.

Konoha was financially bankrupt and emotionally wrung-out.

If their newest Hokage was not wallowing in some abnormal depression, this would not be so great a concern. It was as if there was some great weight pushing down on the man.

Bah. Shikamaru had other things to worry about.

"Oi," he droned, halting in front of a sleeping bag. "Oi- tch, troublesome- oi!"

"Having a nice discussion with my bedding, Baka-sama?"

Women.

"Well?" Temari said.

This had better be worth it. "I want you to send word to the Kazekage. I don't care what you tell him, just get him here. I don't know what's wrong with the Hokage, but it's not medical and nothing's snapped him out of it- not even stimulants- so there must be something wrong with, um, It," he finished lamely. Why did she have to look at him like that?

The blonde crooked an eyebrow. "Well, I'll tell him something, but you Konoha shinobi are even more pathetic than I thought if you can't even clean up this mess with the help we're already giving you."

"Quit being difficult. Switch places with him in Suna for all I care, but we need him here. He's the only living person with some amount of experience with demons we can trust with something like this." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Another headache coming. Wonderful.

"Fine, fine," she sneered at him. "I'll leave tonight, but I doubt he'll be able to do anything. You don't even know if that's what's wrong with the little bundle of not so sunny sunshine."

The woman was intolerable. He bit his tongue to keep back foul speech.

She held his eyes for a while longer, then snorted, and went to gather her things. "He'll come. There's no way he won't. But if you poor little babies here in Konoha get in over your head, Suna will not be dragged down with you. My brother may feel obligated towards you guys, but Suna is not."

"No need to tell us that."

...

Suna shinobi- and those of the variety that wielded wind in particular- were very speedy, and so it was two days later that Sabaku no Gaara arrived at the ruin that had been Konohagakure, his sister having arrived the night she left. Arrangements for his absence were made and he carried himself across the land like no other could, spending less than a day's journey sprinting through forest.

It was still difficult to believe that this mess of wood and cloth and metal and stone had been a village. Only the walls and a few unsound buildings still remained, with a few new structures having been erected.

Horrible. It was the fate that might have befallen his own village, had he not put his people's lives above his own and used every ounce of strength to shield his home from that bomb.

Gaara could not remember that fight very well. The blast from the Akatsuki terrorist's sneak attack knocked him senseless, and he had forgotten much of what he'd done that week.

No matter. He wasn't here to think about that, though he was here because of that. The redhead did not like feeling indebted to others.

"Gaara-sama!"

The Kazekage peered out over the rubble and spotted a pink thing hailing him. He put forth a burst of speed and appeared by the thing's side. "Haruno-san. And I would prefer it if you would call me 'Gaara.'"

"Psh," she waggled her finger at him as she rocked on the balls of her feet. "Only if you call me 'Sakura' or 'Sakura-chan.'"

"'Gaara-sama' is fine," he muttered, and she giggled and gestured for him to sit on a rock.

"I'll get right to the point. Not too long ago, Naruto shut himself up in one of the surviving rooms. At first, we thought it was some extreme reaction to Sa- Uchiha Sasuke's death. But it became apparent about a week ago that there was something else going on. I tried giving him stimulants to boost his mood, but he seems almost lethargic, and then shortly after Temari-san left to fetch you, he attacked Shikamaru."

Gaara's eyes narrowed, and then his face went carefully blank. "Attacked?"

Sakura nodded, lowering her voice as she elaborated. "Shikamaru hypothesized that the Kyubi is responsible for whatever it is that's wrong with Naruto. He's been going to see Naruto several times a day. He said that he was trying to convince Naruto to snap out of it, but really, that idiot was actually trying to provoke a reaction from Naruto. Apparently he went too far, and Naruto went berserk. The building Naruto had holed up in? It's not there anymore."

Well, shit. Gaara floundered, searching for something to say. "That's not good."

"So," the medic hesitated. "How much do you know about demons?"

"More than most, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to do anything. If this is the result of Kyubi's influence, then the root of the problem might lie with the seal that is binding the demon. And I'm not an expert on seals."

"Well, yes, but you're probably one of the few who can determine exactly what is wrong," she pointed out. "And one of the few we in Konoha can trust with the Hokage's well-being. We're vulnerable enough as it is without asking foreign shinobi to come in and fix up our leader. They'd attack us as soon as they got wind that something's wrong with him." She sighed, and then glared up at him. "You will help, right?"

Gaara shrugged. "I'll do what I can, of course. If you have any information on his seal or the demon itself, I'd like to learn anything I can before seeing Naruto."

...

The toads blinked at him.

"We're not supposed to give anyone information about it."

"Be reasonable," Gaara argued quietly. "This is an emergency. It's not like I'm skilled enough with sealing jutsu to actually do anything with the information. Nor would I want to; Naruto is my friend and in my opinion the world would be better off without such jutsu."

Gaara was at the edge of a pond, talking to a group of very large toads. They were each so different in appearance that looking at them together was almost too much for the eyes.

After much deliberation, the toads finally acquiesced.

"Sealing the Demon Fox was no walk in the park," one of the toads began.

"It took three separate jutsu, but only the first causes death."

"You don't need to know about that one."

"Well, it might help."

"No, he should--"

"Could just one of you speak?" Gaara snapped. The toads were starting to remind him of his Council.

One of the toads hopped forward; Fukasaku, he recalled. "The one who should really be talking to you isn't here. Gerotora-chan bears the key to the seals that trap the demon in Naru-chan. But we'll tell you how the seals work." The toad paused for a moment, apparently having a penchant for the dramatic. "The jutsu that made sealing the Fox even remotely possible was the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, and that jutsu was lost when Sarutobi-chan perished. It was that jutsu which sealed Orochimaru's arms away and killed Sarutobi-chan. At any rate, after this was performed, two Four Symbols Seals were used to trap the bijuu inside Naruto. Now, this is important; Namikaze-chan created these seals so that only the Kyubi's Yin chakra is inaccessible to Naru-chan. This means that the Kyubi's Yang chakra is supposed to be all that Naru-chan can access. Some time ago, Jiraiya-chan tampered with the seal with Gerotora-chan's help."

Gaara's eyes widened in disbelief. "Did he have a death wish?"

"Well, it did very nearly result in his death. And it was rough on Naru-chan, as you can imagine. But Jiraiya-chan believed that Namikaze-chan meant for Naruto to take control of the Kyubi's chakra to complete; that, and it sort of worked, but in the end Naru-chan lost complete control and the seals broke altogether. The seals were renewed, but you can imagine the chaos caused before that."

"If the seals are renewed, why would Naruto have trouble at this point?"

"Beats me," the toad said.

The Kazekage's lips tightened. He stood, bowed politely, and strode off towards the encampment near the Hokage Monument.

...

Gaara sat and thought carefully, but could come up with nothing. There was absolutely no reason why the seals shouldn't work, unless...

Gaara had never had an easy time keeping Shukaku at bay. During the full moon, the demon's voice had resounded in his head like a gong, demanding blood.

Shukaku had been sealed, but every aspect of the sealing seemed different, save upon one or two points. The sealing jutsu used upon Gaara had killed Karura, while the sealing jutsu used upon Naruto had killed the 4th Hokage- but the Hokage had used two other seals to finish his work.

Had Gaara been so unstable because he lacked proper seals? If that was the case, what would cause Naruto similar problems? Was it the tampering of the seal? Maybe.

Gaara was starting to wonder, though, if the initial weakening of the seals had anything to do with this strange behaviour of Naruto's. From what he gathered, the Kyubi was very, very clever-- especially when compared to some of Its relatives-- and if the 4th Hokage could split the Kyubi's chakra and seal it in different ways...

What if the Kyubi had waited for the seals to be weakened or removed, then split some part of Itself and hidden that part away? Then, when the rest of it was resealed...

If that were the case, the gods knew what it was doing to Naruto.

Well, it was possible. But whether or not that was the case, Gaara couldn't do anything about it. He sighed and then called out to the nearest shinobi. Rock Lee.

"I don't suppose you have any messenger birds about?"

The chunin shook his head. "Sorry."

"Well, then. I have a mission for you."