Author's Note: Thought; Flashback; Thought in Flashback
I don't own Naruto. But if I did, I probably could have just made Sasuke a girl instead of a boy, and the story could have been not too much different. For a quick reference, just think of Female-Gaara and Female-Sasuke wearing the similar clothes as in canon, just fitted for their different forms.
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Naruto: A Talk
A One-Shot
"SATSUKI UCHIHA!"
The Shadow presiding over the Land of Wind's ninja village, Gaara of the Sand, cried out to the missing-nin from the Land of Fire… the new world-class terrorist.
"We need to talk."
The last of the Uchiha had truly made a mess of things: leaving the Leaf Village devoid of one of its bloodlines was one thing, but attacking the brother of the Raikage, presumably for the Tailed Beast housed in his human form, was certain to cause international incident.
She was probably there to bring attention to herself, and by stepping into the Five Kage Summit with nothing but her sword and a trio of strange individuals, picking a fight with the Raikage himself, she certainly got it.
"You." The raven-haired renegade scanned her memories to tie the face to a name. "Gaara, right?"
Then she sneered, a furrowed brow spoiling her face's natural beauty.
"You're the sand rat I nearly defeated years ago, before you went wild and nearly destroyed the Leaf." She looked to Gaara's retainers in the distance: the brother Kankurō and the sister Temari—the "Sand Siblings," as the knowing public named them.
Satsuki remembered the sign above Gaara's head back in the conference room, one of the three she sliced away to make her entrance.
The symbol of her world's writing, its meaning: "Wind."
"Or should I call you… Kazekage?"
The Wind Shadow's sea-green eyes did not betray a sense of insult. A "sand rat," the Uchiha said? That was nothing. She had heard far worse things muttered behind her back in contempt and screamed to her face in horror, with no support or defense from her family, in her days as a vessel for the One-Tailed Tanuki.
"Your eyes are still as they used to be, Satsuki. Focused, but so vengeful," Gaara assessed. "And I did not expect any ounce of respect from you. Your ego practically preceded your arrival."
"My ego?" She corrected the Kage: "My pride as a warrior—as an avenger—will be vindicated. Soon, the name of the Uchiha clan will be cleansed!"
Madara had granted her this chance to make that happen, and she would be a fool not to take it.
No, she was not loyal to the masked man. A part of her doubted "Madara" was truly his name. Whoever he was, she certainly cared not for whatever dream he had for the world. The original means to his end, his "Akatsuki," was decimated; she would know, since she personally saw the deaths of two of its members, her precious brother included.
Madara could do what he wanted, as long as Satsuki could fulfill her own aims. Once her mission was over, Satsuki would part ways with the rest of the Taka, and she would finally be free.
"All I must do, is cut the Leaf to shreds…"
Her onyx eyes changed, a pair of black and red kaleidoscopic shapes taking form… the Mangekyo Sharingan, the most manifest symbol of her despair.
"…and that starts with cutting the Hokage's head from his shoulders."
Danzō was around somewhere, perhaps plotting something as a way to take control of the Summit.
Gaara was not deterred by him, nor by the Sharingan, but certainly adjusted her vision away from those ocular weapons all the same. She'd heard of what the doujutsu could do, of course—it was her business to know.
But she also wanted to know something more.
"Tell me why."
"Why I'm turning my blade on the Hokage?" Satsuki guessed. "It doesn't matter to you. What matters is that I have my revenge."
The Kazekage shook her head.
"No. I don't mean that. I care not about your goals…" she dismissed, "…because you will not reach them. If necessary, I will strike you down, and with probable little complaint from your village's leadership. You have after all, attacked one of our fellow Kage."
Due to Gaara's sand defense, the Hidden Cloud Village's leader, Ay, was spared from the eternal flame of the ability known as Amaterasu… or, at least, most of him was, his reckless fighting costing him an arm.
"But I wonder… why? Why leave all that you have known behind? Why leave his side?"
"Whose side?" She questioned, taking another guess. "The old scarecrow surely has no meaning to—oh." Her eyes narrowed, Sharingan seething at the mental image of the young man in orange and black. "You mean him, don't you?"
"Yes."
They both knew his name.
"Naruto Uzumaki."
Gaara held that name, every syllable leaving her lips, in the highest regard, with the greatest fondness her heart could give. She had not held such a feeling for anyone before, even for her uncle Yashamaru before his betrayal.
The wild sunflower hair, the cerulean eyes, those whiskers that looked—she did not know the right word for it—perhaps that word "cute" used rarely by Temari sufficed. Whatever it was about him, the youngest Sand Sibling burned every feature of him into her memory, ever since their first battle in the forests of the Hidden Leaf.
A few years later, Gaara could finally replace the face of the twelve-year-old Leaf ninja in her mind with a new one: older, a bit slimmer, still giving that sympathetic gaze. It was her first sight when she awoke from her near-death upon rescue, and praised the wind itself for such a precious gift bestowed upon her eyes.
He carried her on his back all the way to the Sand, and she cherished every second of contact she had. Even now, several months since her body was finally allowed to sleep without the fear of Shukaku's reemergence, no bed in the entire Kazekage Estate could provide such comfort; no other place in all the Five Great Elemental Nations could grant her such peace.
Of course, Satsuki remembered him too.
"Yes, Naruto, my old teammate. I can hardly wait to meet him again." A tight smile, one of twisted glee came. "So I can crush him, with the rest of the Village."
"You have already left your home. You seek to destroy your own friend too?"
"HE IS NO FRIEND OF MINE!" Her voice echoed off the building's stone walls. "That fool, that weakling, only drags you down."
"Yet you hold such anger at the sound of his name, the mere thought of your connection to him." She almost smirked at the small victory. Perhaps there was the smallest chance… "He affects you. It is his greatest strength, I believe." Once again, she admired him, even if her voice did not show it. "He changes people."
"He changes nothing."
"He changed me." Every day, Gaara learned, was a new chance to prove that. "He, what he represents, could change you."
"You think I'm the same as you?" Satsuki could only gawk at this sand witch's gall. "You think you know my pain?"
"Yes." She could see it as plainly as the stone beneath her feet. "You and I are alike, Satsuki Uchiha. We both have drowned in loneliness, in darkness. The pain of bearing the One-Tail forced me to strike against the world that forced me to bear it… just as you appear to do now.
"You claim to act for your clan? Your fallen family, yes?"
"Yes," the last Uchiha replied. "And I will do it, even if it means cutting a path through everyone in this building. You will get out of my way, and you will give me Danzō," she bared a bit of her blade, "or you will fall right with him."
The former jinchuuriki ignored the threat. "But there is another way to move on from such a past, and I am living proof." She saw his face again. "There once was a way out of that darkness for you. The guiding light was right there, right beside you, in your grasp. If Naruto was there, the light surely touched you, showed you that a life with others to fill the void inside is far better than a life of pain alone.
"Yet you shun the light. You shun him. You slap away the hand he reaches out to you. You push away your comrades, your home, for a goal that would end them and you… and certainly him!"
"I do." Satsuki told her straight.
"WHY?" Gaara could not understand. "Why bear the burden alone? Why stay away? Why shun a bond that some would envy," she admitted, "something a person with such loneliness would cross an entire desert to cherish for herself?"
She did not even realize that her anger escaped.
"If I were in your place, I would have never left his light! I would have never left his side!" She declared. "I would have never let him go!"
"Hmph." A tiny, snide smirk. "You almost sound like you're in love with that loser."
Gaara's face remained still.
Satsuki could hardly believe it. "Ha! The tailed beast vessels together!" She almost laughed at such a dream. "You think you'll even see him again? You think that you'll even smash those feelings of yours through that thick blonde head of his?"
Her Sharingan returned.
"You think I won't cut out his heart before you ever get the chance?"
Gaara's anger only reignited, exemplified by a twitch of the finger, a mere ripple of the sand in her gourd. Were Shukaku still whispering into her thoughts, she would certainly have heard a suggestion to unleash every grain of sand against the one who would harm him, of all people.
It would certainly benefit her. A bit of revenge for making her shed blood three years ago, and a way to silence that little jealous voice telling her to rid herself of a rival for his attention, and with the perfectly valid justification of protecting the fragile balance of the Elemental Nations.
He would mourn, certainly, but then perhaps, in time, he would—
NO. She would never do such a drastic thing, not for such petty reasons.
These disturbing thoughts were not from Shukaku. These were her own, and she silenced them. She would fight to follow his example.
Yet no matter how hopeful the Sand kunoichi was, there was also the fear, the constant fear. It existed for all ninja with people they cared about, ninja who had forged bonds on and off the field of battle. Years of time spent, of caresses earned and bidden feelings spoken, could vanish in an instant from a silent blade across the neck, or from a jutsu forcing its target to scream out his last breath in pain. Naruto was always a target due to the burden he carried, like she once did, and she knew that… her heart would not let her forget.
Gaara buried any spark of that fear into the recesses of her mind with the rest of the dark thoughts, but Satsuki could still tell.
"Don't you get it? All those bonds, those emotions…"
Satsuki could see him, feel the right hand, the hand once clutching lightning as it pierced his chest, quake. She could see his betrayal, covered in fangs and whiskers and vermillion chakra, but still as clear as her brother's blood on her hands—no, that was months ago! She had to focus!
"Friendship, rivalry…"
But she could still see Naruto's face.
His smile.
His contemptible smile.
"Love…"
Her hand clenched shut, and she shook her head to clear the visions away.
"They only distract you from the painful truths of this broken world."
"Yet, even now, in this world, there are those who persist, hoping to guide you down a brighter path. Why will you not take it?"
"Because I was never meant to be in the light. The death of my family, the bonds I had to leave behind, the things I've done… they all proved that. If I were to leave this place right now, try to turn back, what would I have left?"
Satsuki's raven hair veiled her mournful eyes.
"The only path I can take, the only way forward…"
A ghostly being, a warrior of purple chakra given mass and shape, loomed over her body. Its eyes housed no intelligence, only a haunting light.
"…is further into the darkness."
Gaara drank in the sight, and her anger ceased. All of Satsuki's hatred, pointed against the entire world, seemed to be channeled into that spectre.
She was wrong, she realized.
There was something in the eyes of the Susano'o, after all…
Pain.
"You really are consumed by the shadows, aren't you?"
Despite what Satsuki wanted to do, Gaara pitied her. Despite her own dispositions, her own emotional restraint…
"Naruto Uzumaki…"
…a tear ran down the face of the unmovable Gaara of the Sand.
She changed her mind.
She did not want to do this, to hurt the Uchiha, and hurt him.
But she would do her duty, for her village, for the Nations, and for the world.
She would do it for his sake too.
"I'm sorry."
And with those words, Gaara and Satsuki clashed.
END
This took me four hours. I've never finished an idea like this in one sitting before… If only law school homework went by so easily.
After playing Ultimate Ninja Storm 4's ending and looking back through the Naruto story, I've found that Masashi Kishimoto, the author who supposedly suffers from chronic embarrassment and even shut his eyes upon the big kiss scene in Naruto: THE LAST, is able to make complex male-to-male relationships of many kinds (rivals, father/son, teacher/student, blood brothers and brothers-in-arms), but just can't seem to give women the same due when it comes to the men they love. Even so, I've shipped characters all the same (ShikamaruXTemari's a favorite pairing of mine, because it's one of the few normal and realistic pairings, and of course NarutoXHinata is adorable).
I'd always thought that if Sasuke was "Satsuki" instead (or Naruto a "Naruko"), the story could go nearly the same way and nothing regarding relationships would change much.
You folks have to admit, Naruto chasing after Satsuki would have made for a decent tragic love story.
Oh, right, Sakura… yeah, she can marry, I dunno, Lee or Choji.
My work with Female-Gaara here is a tangent to this conclusion (I didn't change the name because it's too on-point). Gaara has always had this incredible admiration of Naruto (bordering on idol worship), and there's definitely no stretch to say Female-Gaara would likely be a less emotional version of pre-war Hinata: a girl with a tragic past changed by Naruto to be a better kunoichi, idolizing him and wanting to be with him.
This short clip is a combo of these thoughts, acted out verbally in the attic... and the hallway… and the living room. Hope you enjoyed it.
I'm still working on my Teen Titans fic, "The Titans of Tomorrow," just to remind folks. Keep an eye out for Ep IV Part 2!
Until next time.
