Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. Of course. Obviously. Whatever made you think that? (Hides stolen ownership papers and locks doors)

Another Path: Cripple, Seal Master, Demon Host

Naruto growled as Sakura was slammed into the tree, the sand constricting her until she lost consciousness. "Dammit, Gaara! If that's how you want it, so be it!" Naruto formed a complex hand sign. Sasuke, Pakkun, Temari, and Gaara were all puzzled; they had never seen a hand sign like it. The pads of his pinkie and ring fingers were touching. The pads of his middle fingers were facing away from each other, his fingers bent and the middle joints touching. The sides of his thumbs were pressed against each other, the pads of his thumbs touching the pads of his index fingers.

"You're not the only jinchuriki in this fight!" he cried as red chakra began gathering around his navel. Everyone had different reactions.

"WHAT??" Gaara bellowed in a guttural voice, his sand arm reforming from where it disconnected to imprison Sakura.

"It can't be!" Temari cried. "This village did that too?" she said in disbelief.

"What's a jinchuriki?" Sasuke asked from where he was lying on a thick tree branch, looking from Naruto to Gaara in confusion. "What's going on, Naruto?" he yelled, slightly angry and rather irritated.

Naruto ignored them all. The demonic red chakra encircled his lower torso, climbing out over his body until he was encased in its swirling power. His eyes had become red, the pupils in feline-like slits. The black marks on his cheeks had grown longer, thicker, and darker. His fingernails grew into vicious-looking claws, and his canine teeth grew into fangs. The red chakra closed in on him, seeping into his body, making him glow.

Naruto stood baring his fangs at Gaara, his blond hair and orange clothes fluttering in a nonexistent wind. "I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO HARM MY PRECIOUS PEOPLE," he growled, in a voice that was not his own. "EVEN IF I MUST KILL YOU!" he finished, leaping at the stunned Gaara.

"Naruto…?" Sasuke whispered in awe and fear. 'What are you…?' he thought, shocked. Naruto swung at Gaara, his sand coming up to protect him. The sand was not able to block him, but wrapped around the demonic boy's arm so that his claws were mere millimeters from Gaara's face. The sand ninja's eyes were still wide and his mouth open as the sand flung Naruto away. The fox boy spun in the air, landing on all fours atop a large tree branch.

"Why…?" Gaara asked, his voice sounding like his own again. "Why would you fight for anyone but yourself?" he asked quietly, his confusion evident in his voice.

"Gaara…" Naruto said, his own voice returning to normal as well. "I know your pain…" he said. "We are…so alike." Sasuke and Gaara were the only ones who could see his face, and were shocked to see the pain it held. Both knew that pain…that loneliness.

"I have felt the same loneliness as you." His face was different now, full of sympathy and understanding and begging Gaara to understand, too. "I know what it's like to have everyone in the world hate you. To have no one but yourself and the monster inside you, whispering lies in your head." Here Sasuke was puzzled. 'Monster inside you'? What was Naruto talking about? He looked to Gaara and was surprised to see that there was fear there, fear and disbelief.

"NO!" Gaara cried, hold his head in his normal hand and shaking it from side to side. "No!" he repeated. "No one knows how I feel! You can't begin to understand my pain." 'No one's like me! Mother? That's true, isn't it? Mother!'

"You're wrong, Gaara. I know what you've been through." Here, Naruto's voice was soft, softer and with more understanding and emotion and everything than Sasuke had ever heard in his voice before. "I've felt the glares. I've wondered why parents pull their children away from me and why people call me a monster. How long have you known what you are, Gaara? How long did you have to wonder why they hated you?" he asked, leaping to a branch in front of Gaara, but a with a few branches between where they both stood.

"I've always known. But…I didn't understand it fully, until my uncle tried to kill me," Gaara's mouth spoke of it's own accord. No! Why was he telling him this? Why wasn't he killing him! Mother was telling him to kill…! Why was part of him resisting?

Naruto smiled, but it was such a terribly sad smile that it should have been outright sobbing and screaming. "I guess you were luckier than me in that respect Gaara," he said, taking a step forward.

"No!" Gaara shrieked desperately, shrinking in on himself. "Don't come near me!" Naruto stopped. Sasuke and Temari looked on in wonder. What was going on?

"I didn't know until I was eight years old, Gaara. I spent the first three years of my life in an orphanage, and got kicked out of that when I got beaten up by a group of bullies about twice as big and three times as old as me. They said I was a trouble-causer. Then I lived on the streets for two years until the Sandaime was finally able to get me an apartment and put me in school. I spent eight years of my life wondering why I was treated I was. Like I wasn't even human. I didn't learn the truth until I tried to kill myself." Sasuke gasped, his eyes as wide as they could go, shock filling him. Naruto had tried to kill himself? The ever-smiling, ever-optimistic dead-last, Naruto, had tried to kill himself? He couldn't believe it. "I cut open my wrists," he continued, "in hopes that I would bleed to death. I did bleed a lot. It was…fascinating to see. But the wounds closed before my eyes.

"I tried again. I stabbed myself in the neck, and left the knife in there. I could feel the life leave me. And when I looked down, Gaara, there was so much blood. I was stunned that one small body could hold so much. It was a strange thing, looking down and seeing all that blood and realizing that all that blood was mine.

"I passed out. When I was aware of anything again, I was in this vast, cellar like space. I had thought that someone found me and thrown my body in the sewer. But there was no blood on me. I heard something behind me. I turned around." Sasuke didn't know what to think. Gaara didn't either. "And there it was, Gaara. There it was. It was just there. I didn't know what it was. To me, an eight year old who had just stuck a knife in his neck, it was like the devil. It was a demon, which is close enough. I thought it was the devil. I remember thinking that the villagers were right, and that I was a demon and a monster, and had gone to hell for it. But it wasn't hell, Gaara. It was my own head.

"I had a nice little chat with Kyuubi, asked who he was and where I was and whatnot, and finally found out why it seemed like the whole world hated me for just being alive. And they did. They still do. They hate my very existence, as they hate yours. We're just reminders of a past they wish desperately to forget. And they've tried to forget, Gaara. They've tried to forget us both."

Gaara took a step back as Naruto took a step forward, his red eyes boring into Gaara's mismatched own. "You know I'm right. They've ignored us. They pushed us into the dark of loneliness, trying as hard as they could to forget. But they couldn't. We were still here. They tried harder. They tried to kill us, and the very monsters that made them want to forget us saved us from death.

"But to you and me, death didn't seem too bad, did it?" he said, stepping forward again. Gaara was trembling. "In fact, it seemed downright inviting." He took another step. "That's why I tried. I wanted to find peace in death, to feel nothing. You tried too, didn't you? Even if you didn't, there were plenty of other people to try for you, weren't there?"

"No!" Gaara screamed. "NO!!"

"Weren't there?" Naruto repeated, walking steadily towards Gaara. The other boy stumbled back, shaking his head with tears running down his face.

"No…no…no…" he sobbed, the sand falling off him to pool on the wood below him. His appearance was as it was before, save for the horrified expression on his face and the tears on his cheeks.

"Yes!" Naruto cried, grabbing the front of Gaara's shirt with both hands. "But there is one difference between us." His voice was almost a whisper. Gaara couldn't make himself answer. "I clawed my way out of that loneliness. I have found people who are precious to me. They acknowledge my existence, and I will protect them with my life. Two of them are here right now." Sasuke was confused. 'I'm one of his precious people?'

"You could have the same thing." Naruto continued. "You can fight your way out of that darkness. Your brother and sister care about you; I can see it in their eyes. And I have become very good about seeing that sort of thing. They would help you if you let them in! You don't have to be alone!

"You have a family, something I have never known. Don't throw it away! You can still live, Gaara, you can have a true existence! Not this mockery of life when you need to take the lives of others to confirm your own existence!" Naruto had pushed Gaara into the trunk of the tree whose branch they stood on. The gourd pressed against his back uncomfortably, but Gaara didn't notice. He was absorbed by Naruto's words.

Naruto hadn't let the fox's chakra dissipate in the time he was talking in fear that Gaara would make a surprise attack; the nature of his demon and his flawed seal made him unpredictable. However, he was starting to feel the strain the demon's chakra put on his body. It was becoming harder to breath, and darkness was creeping ever so slowly at the edges of his eyes. He could feel pressure in his head, and pain spreading through his body.

"Your seal is flawed." He let go of Gaara, and took a step back. "I know someone who can help you – " he was cut off as Gaara lunged at him, madness in his eyes. He leaped out of the way, standing lightly on a leafy branch as he watched Gaara's sand form around him again. This time, it transformed him entirely, pushing the gourd off his back where it landed with a thump on the old tree. The sand formed around his whole body, and the last thing Naruto saw of Gaara's human face was a look of desperate madness.

Naruto lunged toward Gaara, their palms slamming together and fingers interlocking, Gaara's oversized sand form dwarfing Naruto. He tried to crush the other boy's hands, but found himself blocked by a thin layer of red chakra coating the fox container's hands. Their arms jerked erratically as they pushed against each other with their demonic might. Naruto's arms bent at the elbows but didn't yield, and he leaned in towards Gaara. His nose was almost touching Gaara's own, his glowing red eyes meeting Gaara's yellow and black ones. They stood that way for what seeming like an eternity, neither saying a word, baring their fangs at each other.

Sasuke and Temari watched in awe as suddenly, more red chakra began pouring out of Naruto. It gathered to his arms, traveling down them into his hands, where Naruto started forcing his own chakra into Gaara. The two bystanders looked on as Gaara started twitching, then tried to pull away from Naruto. The smaller boy's grip kept him in place, where he writhed and continued his efforts to escape. The sand on him was becoming loose, small streams of it falling off him at the rate of an hourglass. The flow of chakra being forced into him increased, and he let loose a panicked cry. Temari started to get up, wanting to help her little brother but too frightened to do so. Sand was pouring off Gaara in greater and greater amounts, his screams increasing in volume and frequency.

Blood trickled from Naruto's mouth as he took a step forward, forcing Gaara to stagger back. He fell to his knees, sand pooled on the tree underneath the two chakra-enveloped jinchuriki. A complex, glowing, spiraling design appeared in the air between Naruto and Gaara. It had six outer points that formed the invisible boundary of the design between each point. Gaara watched in horror as it drifted closer to his now fully human form, struggling even harder against Naruto's vice-like grip. He screamed as it touched his torso, glowing brighter as it began to sink through his clothes and into his skin. He stopped struggling as its brightness faded, and slumped even as his hands were held in the air by Naruto's.

Naruto stood that way for a few moments, his red eyes wide and intense. Then suddenly, he, too, dropped to his knees. His limp hands slid from Gaara's to rest by his sides, the two panting and exhausted jinchuriki kneeling across from each other on the thick, sand covered branch. Both were breathing heavily.

Then, to Sasuke and Temari's great surprise, Naruto suddenly coughed. It was rough and unpleasant, the kind that tears at your throat and leaves it raw. The cough was followed by several others just like it; Naruto's thin, hunched over frame was shaking with the force of them. Blood spewed from his mouth with each cough, staining the front of his orange jacket and coloring spots of the sand. Gaara remained still, slumped over and un-reacting. It was like he was asleep…