This is a variation on the end of a chapter 15 of lord of the land of fire's story "A Mother's Love: Fire and Blood that I thought would be a bit more exciting and cute, I do not own the idea for the story, nor do I claim to own it, nor do I wish to, as I really respect and admire this author for his work. For any fanfiction story to be considered for a type of reward when there are so many out there is a huge honor in my eyes and he has achieved said honor and won the award for his story "A Mother's Love." I only hope I can be as good as him at some point in my life. So now without further ado, I present to you the end of the chapter, in which Jiraya is visiting a widowed Kushina, and helping to fix the seal on Gaara so it was no longer unstable. Although the way I'm writing it, it makes him seem much younger.
About an hour after he was told the truth about Gaara and the Shukaku, he kept his word to Kushina and told him to bring him close to night time to fix it. At about 9:00 that evening, she came into her room holding Gaara's small hand. Despite being ten years old now, he was still nervous around strangers and clung close to his mother as they came in, the small pile of sand following after him as usual like a puppy. He had actually brought his teddy bear along and was hugging it as he came in.
"Gaara honey, I want you to meet an old friend of lady Tsunade, this is Jiraya."
The white haired toad sage grinned his trademark grin as he kneeled to Gaara's eye level, the little red head automatically moving behind his mother's leg.
"Well heya little fella! It's nice to meet ya, your mother has told me all about you."
Shyly the little tanuki container stepped out and spoke quietly, "H-hello, I'm Gaara."
Kushina smiled as she sat him on the bed of the room they were in, which happened to be her's.
"Dear, Jiraya here is going to help us and the clan by helping you get rid of that voice you told me about earlier."
She said as she smiled and brushed her fingers through her red-headed son's hair, making him cuddle his teddy bear a bit tighter and sat closer to his adoptive mother.
"Y-yes…I want it gone," he frowned some and almost looked like he was going to cry, "it makes me sad when it speaks…aniki and me were out earlier today and I saw Kankaro…it told me to kill him that second…it even yelled at me to do it…that it really wanted it to happen."
He was on the verge of tears, his mother's eyes wide at this shocking news. Jiraya's eyes thinned some as he only imagined what was telling this boy to kill fellow Sand shinobi. Kushina hugged her son tightly.
"It's ok dear, I'm not going to let this voice stay a minute longer…Jiraya," she stood up as she helped Gaara take off his shirt, revealing the strange seal on his back, that seemed somewhat crooked to the seal master, "do it now please."
She said with a look of concern and utter seriousness as she looked at the Toad Sannin.
"Hai! No need to worry kid, the gallant Jiraya is here to save the day!" he said in his usually brand of goofiness, trying to at least make the kid not cry as he bent down again to his backside.
Gaara didn't smile any but he did look up at him with a small amount of curiosity in his eyes before turning his head to face forward.
After a few minutes of studying the seal he began to pull out a brush and some ink from his ninja pouch.
"This has got to be one of the worse sealing jobs I've ever seen, it's amazing this kid isn't…mwwffggh" he was forced to mumble out something unheard as Kushina had swiftly covered his mouth.
"Watch what you say around my son Jiraya…or the threat I made earlier will come to pass much quickly than anticipated…" she said as killer intent was directed straight at the sage.
Jiraya shuddered as he nodded, after which she removed her hand. "Fine, fine….this kid is lucky, the person who sealed him didn't know the first thing about high level pentagonal seals."
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Somewhere else in the village, Elder Chiyo sneezed once. "Oh? Is someone talking about me I wonder?"
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Back at the Uzumaki compound in Gaara's room he calmly dipped the ink and began brushing sealing strokes on to his back. Gaara squirmed a little.
"Ahh! It's cold and feels weird Mother!"
At his feet the sand bristled some as he sat on the bed.
"It's ok dear, it's ink and that's how it's supposed to feel," she said giving him a comforting smile, with which he nodded and put his head back down, trying not to squirm at how ticklish it felt.
Finally Jiraya finished marking the new seals on his back, and then put his right hand palm on Gaara's back, his other hand in a handsign.
"I'm going to have to straighten out the seal to make it complete and stable; I'm not sure what will happen in the few minutes it will take…just be ready for anything."
Kushina nodded, unsure of what he meant by his words, but stood nearby. Jiraya began the jutsu and chakra poured into the seal. Almost immediately the sand spiked up and leapt around the three in the room wildly and uncontrollably, and Gaara gripped his head and ears as he winced, Kushina near his side in a second despite the sand leaping around.
"Ahhhh! Please stop screaming! I don't want to kill my kaa-san! I love her!" Kushina felt helpless as all she could do was cradle her child's head praying to Kami it worked.
Jiraya was almost done but had to invest a portion of his chakra to make the sure the seal held once he was gone. To do so he had to take a glimpse his mindscape to do so. At first it was all was dark for Jiraya, and then things began to clear. Inside Gaara's mind was a desert, plain and simple, and standing a few hundred yards away was a massive beast, screaming and pulling as hard as he could on a strained chain tied to a giant iron tea kettle that wouldn't move. Then he heard it speak.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! YOU LITTLE PIECE OF TRASH! KILL THEM ALL RIGHT NOW! LET ME OUT WHILE THE SEAL IS WEAKENED! LET ME BE FREEEEE!"
Jiraya was stunned. Even here in Gaara's mind he could hear him outside begging the beast to stop but to no avail.
"So this is the One- tailed Shukaku." He grinned some as he looked at the beast, unsure if it could see him or not. "Time to put you back in your teapot you sick beast."
Outside of his mind, Jiraya opened his eyes and focused harder, finally turning the pentagonal shaped seal straight and even instead of the crooked way it had been. At that instant the jutsu ceased, Gaara's sand fell to the floor, lifeless, and the red head himself fell forward into his mother's arms.
"Mo… mother? What's wrong with me? I feel so weak."
"There's nothing wrong with you Gaara-kun." Kushina assured him as she hugged him tight, laying him in her bed.
"The weakness you feel is from being exhausted from never having slept. Jiraiya has fixed what was wrong, that means you'll be able to sleep now, and you shouldn't hear that voice anymore."
His eyes widened and he looked up at her and seemed to panic.
"I'm going to fall asleep?"
She nodded. "That's right Gaara-kun."
He reached out and took a hold of her hand.
"Is it safe? Mother I'm scared!" Smiling she held his small hand in hers and slid into the bed beside him.
"There's nothing to be scared of Gaara-kun," she said to him gently and held him close to.
"You've seen me and Naruto and everyone else sleep. It's as natural as breathing or eating. It will be fine I promise."
Her gentle words and the feeling of being held calmed him.
"Will… will you stay with me mother?"
Smiling she planted a tender kiss on his forehead.
"Yes, I'll stay with you as you sleep my dear one. And when you wake up I will be right here."
"Really?"
"Yes, I promise."
As she held him she began to rock him slowly back and forth as she sang a lullaby. Gaara's eyes began to grow heavy. Before he knew it, they were closed and he was fast asleep. Seeing that Kushina placed another kiss upon his forehead.
"Sleep well my dear one, and dream of wonders."
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Jiraya with a smile left the mother and child to sleep with each other, while he pulled out his notebook, suddenly coming up with an idea for his book. (I'll leave to the audience to decide what, as I understand Jiraya's feelings of finding inspiration when it hits him or finds it *anime tears of emotional joy*)
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That night as Gaara lay cuddled with his mother, both sound asleep; he dreamt new things…for once in his life he wasn't having a daydream about a giant raccoon thing screaming at him to kill. He was in a quiet peaceful desert with a bright blue sky, and with fluffy white clouds blowing lazily by. Walking around for a minute he saw an oasis seem to come up out of nowhere. He went over to it and played in the refreshing water and marveled at the greenery that grew around it. Suddenly he had a visitor. Through the thin greenery he saw a small tan animal with blue streaks in its fur. As it approached he noticed it looked like a raccoon with some dog like features. He smiled as it looked really cute and got up and went out a ways from the oasis to pet it, even noticing it had a little collar on around its neck.
"Hello little guy, are you my pet?"
He was surprised when it calmly spoke back.
"My name is Shukaku, thank you for asking."
Now as it goes with kids and dreams, when they wake up they hardly remember it, and when they did they couldn't make any sense of them. Surprisingly, even if it was a dream, Gaara didn't seem surprised at all.
"Ok, do you want to play with me in the oasis?"
The furry little tanuki tilted its head and wiggled its ears at him.
"Will you take this collar off me first? It's keeping me from being truly free. Earlier it was hurting me a lot and all the time so I got mad but I didn't want to."
It didn't sound menacing at all…but when Gaara heard him say that and got a good look at the creature's eyes, he seemed to remember another pair of menacing eyes with an evil voice.
"I-I better not…kaa-san would get mad at me if you belonged to someone else and thought I took you."
The raccoon-dog sighed and looked up at him.
"Ok…I'll play with only you then in your dreams...for now."
And as the dream went on he played with his new little friend.
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The next morning, as she had promised, Kushina had stayed with him all night and didn't leave his side as even now he continued to sleep. So it was when Shinzou came in that she turned her head quietly and put a finger to her lips and quietly motioned him in, not moving from her spot next to her darling son.
"Wow…Jiraya really must have done a good job…he's sleeping for once. Thank goodness…I was getting weirded out by going into the kitchen at night to get a drink and just have him sitting there at the table doing nothing but watching me."
Kushina wanted to smack her brother but resisted for fear of waking Gaara up.
"Hush Urusai…I want him to know what it feels like to have a really good night's sleep for once before we have to start waking him up for early training sessions….I promised I wouldn't leave his side since it was his first time to sleep, so could you take over training today? I'll let him join later on."
Her brother nodded as he went out to start training the other children. A few minutes later, Gaara stirred in his mother's arms as he looked up at her.
"Mother?" "Hai, my little Gaara-kun?" she said as she smiled down at him with that sweet smile she always gave to her sons.
He smiled as he hugged her tight.
"I had my first dream Mother…I was playing in the desert with a cute little raccoon dog thing, he wants to be my friend!" he said sleepily as he closed his eyes once again, not asleep but trying to wake up.
Kushina pondered this new little dream, but decided to indulge him before getting worried that the One Tail was still talking to him, yet now in a seemingly friendly matter.
"I'm so happy for you my dear one, I'm sure you'll have many more nice dreams to come."
Gaara is soooo cute with Kushina as his mother. I think I may try and write some more fanfics with them becoming mother and son from now on. And now he has a fuzzy pet to play with :) in keeping with the rest of the story, the beast itself has not revealed to Gaara yet that he is the One Tail, as none of the rest of the family as told him yet, which he does find out about later on. I once again must iterate what I said earlier. This possible alternate ending in no way reflects my thoughts that the author should in any way change the ending of his story, this is simply an idea that spawned from my head and I wrote down for others to enjoy and that I do Not own any part of this story. I hope that all of you read lord of the land of fire's "A Mother's Love" series and many of his other great stories.