A/N: Based on an ask from blackkat's blog which basically suggested 'what if Kurama could recognize Ashura's incarnations and considered Ashura a brother? That means he'd recognize his brother as the one who enslaved him and all his siblings'. And just...wow anon. Talk about heartbreak.

There's an old human saying, already well-known during the Sage's time, which says that the line between love and hate is a thin one. Kurama, beyond the first few years of his creation, has never been interested in the lives of humans. Their proverbs and adages are not things that concern him.

But this one he knows intimately well. He knows it because Ashura had told him so, once upon a time, beneath the shade of their father's temple. He knows it because Ashura had also been the one who had proven it to be true.

Kurama remembers lying there, pressed to the ground, bound by thick branches of wood with Ashura's chakra pulsating through them, keeping him immobilized as easily as the Sharingan had robbed him of rational thought. Around him, Indra and Ashura –Madara and Hashirama- had continued fighting, discarding him like a broken sword once he was restrained.

And Kurama remembers the rage, blinding and intense, that had coursed through his very being. He remembers the way the chakra within him had writhed impotently. The way the humiliation had burned. The Kyuubi no Kitsune, greatest of all the Bijuu, reduced to an afterthought as the Sage's sons did battle.

But he'd thought that soon. It must end soon. Because Ashura would defeat Indra, as he always did, and then Kurama would be free. He had never longed for something more. The feel of the Sharingan's compulsion sinking into his mind, the heavy pressure of his chakra being suppressed- these are not sensations he will ever forget for the rest of his immortal life.

Kurama had been wrong. That hadn't been what had happened. The memory of what that man had said to him once the battle was over will forever be etched into his mind.

'Kyuubi, your power is too great. I'm sorry but I can't let you run around loose.'

Then came that woman, red hair wild and windswept, trembling with fear and determination. She had laid down her scrolls and formed her handseals and Kurama had barely been able to comprehend what was happening. Chains of chakra had burst forth from her and hurtled towards him and Kurama had felt himself diminishing.

No.

No, no, no. NO

'Look at me,' he'd pleaded, directing his thoughts to the beacon of Ashura's chakra. 'Stop this. Look at me.'

He'd felt eight other pinpricks of consciousness in the back of his mind, igniting with alarm, as he was slowly siphoned into the waiting body of the red-haired witch.

Trapped.

And for the first time in his immortal life, Kurama had known betrayal.

When the Bijuu had first scattered to all corners of the world, Kurama had been the one to remain closest to the Land of the Ancestors, sent by the Sage to guard a temple surrounding the borders of what would one day be the Land of Fire.

Ashura had visited him there, once or twice, a few times a year. He doesn't know if it was a courtesy extended to all the Bijuu but he'd been pleased all the same. It tended to break up the monotony.

The Ashura he remembers had been full of stories: of Ninshu and his disciples, his wife and household, the surrounding land and its people. Jovial and light-hearted, even when Kurama had made only mocking remarks in reply. Kurama had had few stories to tell.

Ashura had been the one to tell him of Indra, through the lenses of anger and regret.

"He sounds like an asshole," Kurama had offered.

"He truly was not," Ashura had laughed, voice watery with emotion. "He simply felt too deeply. From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate." A thin line, they said.

Empathy doesn't come easily to a being like him but he'd lowered his head and allowed Ashura to run a hand through his fur all the same.

"It's alright," the ridiculous man had said, as if Kurama was the one who needed any soothing. "I have hope for him yet. And it is not as though I don't have brothers left," he'd smiled.

Kurama had let the implication wash over him. It used to be one of his fonder memories.

In his quieter moments of introspection, Kurama spends his time comparing the Ashura-that-was to the Not-Ashura-that-is. The similarities are endless. The same boundless enthusiasm and cheer, the same ability to inspire loyalty and admiration in other humans. Kurama thinks that they might even have the same eyes, just as how Indra's eyes never seemed to change throughout their lifetimes. They're warm with an affection Kurama remembers whenever he sees them through the Uzumaki's eyes.

The difference is this: those eyes never look at him. They never have, not in this lifetime. And Kurama hates him for it. He thrashes, howls, resolves never to give Mito a moment's rest while he resides within her and revels in the look of guilt whenever Hashirama notices Mito's discomfort. Good. He should feel guilty. He should suffer for what he's done to all of his siblings, how he's enslaved them- and even if the reason for his remorse is misplaced, Kurama will take his victories where he can get them. He has no other options anymore.

Uzumaki Mito is a proud woman. When she deigns to answer to his fits of rage she does it with stoicism. Tries to reason with him even. "When you exert your power you draw nothing but hatred to you," she tells him. "Please stay quiet inside of me."

'What right do you have, to ask anything of me?' he demands. 'You're a slaver, the wife of a traitor. Don't you know? Don't know what your husband has done?'

I trusted him, he thinks. I thought him family.

But of course she doesn't know, and she doesn't care enough to understand. So she ignores him to the best of her ability and he does his best to make her life a living hell.

The ironic part is, he thinks, if Ashura had ever asked him, he would have razed villages for him. Would have up brewed storms and rained down fire for him. If he'd asked. Because he'd been the last link to the only father Kurama had ever known and because he'd sat and meditated and told stories next to a being people called monster. Because he'd called Kurama brother. The other Bijuu were all connected together as well but this one- this one was by choice.

(It's also ironic, really, that Kurama now feels most like the brother he has never personally met: Indra. His hatred had consumed him, Ashura had claimed and nowadays Kurama feels as though he is made of nothing but hatred).

Sometimes Kurama considers that he is the one who has always been wrong. Indra-Madara had used him but he'd never been a deceiver about it. Mad with power and ambition but that's how all humans were. Besides, he has only Ashura's words against him. Perhaps this, too, was Ashura's fault: a betrayal on Ashura's part that had turned Indra from brother to enemy and stupid, stupid Ashura had never realized because he thought he knew best. Ashura had could have always been this way and Kurama might have just never realized.

Or maybe, despite the similar turns their lives always seemed to take, despite how achingly familiar the feel of his chakra is, maybe this is not Ashura after all but someone else entirely. A stranger who simply happens to feel the same through a quirk of fate. Someone who has never known Kurama enough to betray him, who behaved the same as all humans always do, those power-hungry creatures.

(If either of that is true though, then why does it still ache when one day that man doesn't return from battle? Whatever he is, he will be back soon enough. The Sage's sons never truly die. Mito bears the news with fortitude until she is in her own rooms at which point the woman weeps through clenched fingers. It is the first time he has ever witnessed her do such a thing. It must be her grief that's bleeding through the seal. Humans feel with so little provocation.)

Kurama is millennia old but he has never been particularly patient. He waits now. They can't keep him trapped forever, he is immortal. Sooner or later, he will get out. He waits.

Kurama wonders if he will always keep being so wrong when it comes to these humans. When Mito grows too weak to hold him at bay, they find another one, female and red-haired and a teenager. He watches as Mito coaches the younger one on love and hate and how to hold him at bay and Kurama-

He despairs.

There will be no getting out, he realizes. They will never let him out.

The new one is marginally more entertaining than the older Uzumaki had been if only because he actually speaks. Quite a lot, in fact. Some days she never shuts up. And it's always the same preachy sermons, about love and duty and how she's his watcher and gatekeeper. Self-important brat. As if Kurama hasn't existed for ages, witnessed hundreds of human lifetimes before she was ever even conceived.

He responds sometimes but if Mito was too indifferent, this one is too ignorant and self-assured to understand his words. So Kurama acts exactly as she expects him to. It's pointless otherwise.

And he still waits. Humans put a lot of stock in hope. Hope for the future, for their children (for peace, for redemption, for Indra). He has missed an opportunity this time but another will come. It must.

Kushina struggles with childbirth, and Kurama's heart soars when he feels the chains around him slacken. He thinks yes, yes, yes, just a little more, finally-

For a brief blessed moment, he is free. Until he feels that same heinous power overtake his mind, the compulsion to just do as he's told overtaking him. The Sharingan. The fucking Sharingan. But of course.

He's wielded as a weapon fucking again, and once more it is against the same village (that Ashura, Hashirama built) but he fights tooth and nail against it. He will not be used again. If he can just- for one moment if he could just escape- he's in his own body for the first time in decades and if he can't make use of this now he feels like he never might again-

Once, the concept of losing would have been a foreign one to Kurama. Over the last few decades he's grown to know it intimately. He loses this time as well. Fucking again.

When he comes back to himself, it's in another human body and it's worse because he is half of what he used to be. As if wasn't enough that they've trapped him again, why must these humans always find new ways to make him less than what he is?

Kurama's chakra flares through the infant's coils and he…stalls. It's familiar, excruciatingly so. Kurama knows this chakra. Knows exactly who this is. Ashura.

The burning anger returns full force because of course he's back to be Kurama's jailer once more. The hate that had simmered down to resentment while within Kushina returns full force because how dare he? How dare he return like this?

He despises this child. Hates what he represents. Hates that he knows exactly what he'll grow into. A leader of men, a precious guide for the masses and a traitor, a slaver.

Given half the chance, Kurama will end this version of Ashura before he ever has the time to flourish. It doesn't matter how. He will.

In the end Kurama will be wrong about this one as well.

He will end up saving the little brat. Once. Or twice. And he will try to convince himself that it's only because he doesn't want to go through the trouble of reforming over the years. A weak lie even to his own ears.

Naruto will keep surprising him, with his tenacity, his conviction, his complete stupidity in the face of everything ever. Kurama will think, a thin line. A thin line. He has spent so long on one side of that line that it will feel impossible to cross over. Yet, the feeling inside him will grow just as Naruto does, into something familiar that Kurama has long kept buried.

Kurama will know by then, from experience, that Naruto will never take no for an answer. Ever. This brat simply will not give up. And he will be tired, so tired, of holding onto Ashura's poison in his heart. So.

He will lower his head and let Naruto-with-the-familiar-chakra come forward.

One day…if that idiot will listen, one day Kurama will tell him exactly what he is, who he meant to the Bijuu. Will let him know every single horrible thing he's done to Kurama; that he was at one time no different from all those monsters he claims to fight against. Oh wouldn't that kill the preachy bastard? Wouldn't that cut him apart? He'd like to think so.

But before that day, he will extend a clawed hand and let Naruto hold on.

A/N: I haven't posted anything in almost a year because I've been facing a pretty bad bout of writer's block. This was just a little something to get me going again, and even so, I'm not particularly happy with the ending.

Nevertheless, here it is. I hope you guys liked it!