The trick to staying awake was to keep herself busy.

Tonight this meant making an egg sandwich at an ungodly hour. Naruto watched the yolk sizzle. It hissed as it burned. Still she could just faintly make out the sound of raindrops hitting the roof.

Thinking about the rain was asking for a downward spiral she would never be ready for. So Naruto thought about the boy in the cage. The boy who didn't sleep and the girl who didn't want to. What a pair they were.

She wondered what he did in these in between hours where time stretched and things became either very quiet or too loud. Naruto could ask. He might even answer.

"What are you running away from?"

Nothing. Everything. Could it even be called running to begin with? Naruto was frozen here. The things she had done, and the thing she hadn't told anyone yet rooted her in this spot. Close to home yet so far away. It made her very tired.

Naruto closed her eyes. The rain pattered. The egg burned. The boy waited downstairs in a cage her father had made for her.

"What are you doing?" murmured a low voice in her ear.

Naruto swung the pan around to clock the intruder in the head but watched it pass through harmlessly. He grinned insufferably.

"Obito- what the hell?"

Obito laughed. "You're the one who let me sneak up on you."

"You used your swirly eye magic jutsu!" She glared at the mess that was her meal splattered across the floor. "Look at what you made me do."

"Oh that? I did you a favor. It's basically inedible at this point." He took the pan from her, "Let me do it and stop moping ok?"

"I'm not moping." Naruto said, moving to lean on the counter. Obito gave her a look that said they both knew better.

He puttered about the small kitchen. Mismatched hands added bacon and cracked open eggs. It was a familiar scene played out throughout her childhood. It wasn't that her and Minato were bad cooks, but rather that Obito spun every meal with his own brand of magic. It was comforting to smell the delicious aroma drifting from the pan and see his easy smile. Many mornings in Naruto's childhood passed like this. She went three years without this.

Obito squawked when Naruto suddenly hugged him. She buried her face into his back and squeezed hard.

"Naruto?"

" I missed you, you know?" she mumbled.

A hand fell upon her hair and ruffled it affectionately. "I missed you too kid."

"Ero-sennin-" She started.

"I know." The smile faded making his scars more prominent. Obito always insisted they made him ruggedly handsome. Naruto thought they made him look old and weary. They lined his face like pages of a story no one ever told.

"I have to tell Dad." She let go and her arms dropped to her sides. "It was my fault, you know. If I had just-"

If Naruto had just listened to Jiraiya. If she had been strong enough. If she could control the burning anger in her gut then maybe everything would be different.

If her dad had never sent her away in the first place, then maybe Jiraiya would be alive.

Obito set down a plate on table. "Eat first. We'll worry about everything else later ok?"

"You're not eating?" You're already leaving?

"I was only stopping in to check on you. Everyone's been working double time since the Kazekage was murdered." He sighed. "If we're not careful we could go to war."

"Dad won't let that happen."

"I won't let it happen." Obito said. "Especially not because of some brat who lost control and killed his own father."

Her fingers clenched. "Gaara didn't lose control. He planned this. He's here because he wants to be."

Obito frowned. "You think that he chose to assassinate the Kazekage during the Chunin Exam, an event ,mind you, with our heaviest security protocols. He chose to attack with Sensei and his guard standing right next to them."

It would have been so much easier to kill the Kazekage in Sunagakure. So why here? Why now? Why at all in fact?

"You don't understand," Naruto said pacing. "Just because we don't know why doesn't mean he's crazy. Or that he lost control. I'm telling you, Gaara wanted this."

"Then he should be over the moon with joy. His fate remains the same."

She looked away from him. "Are they going to kill him?"

Obito was quiet for a long moment. Every second of silence stretched between them. They stood in a replica of the home she loved. Same layout of the kitchen. All the shelves stocked with spices in all the same places. Her room was virtually identical to the one in Konoha. One of various safe houses scattered around the country. It should be warm and comforting, but it felt like being trapped on the wrong side of a mirror.

Obito watched her cautiously. Something he had never bothered with before.

"He's not like you Naruto. You two are different." he said.

"That's bulllshit Obito, and you know it."

"Would you kill Minato?" he asked.

"I would never have to!" Naruto shouted. " I was lucky. I've got you, Dad, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi-sensei and loads of other people. I don't think he had anyone. That's the only difference. Me and him, we're exactly the same."

She straightened and looked Obito dead in the eye. "I won't let you kill him."

He held his hands up in mock surrender, "It's not me you'll have to stop. This whole thing is a mess spiraling out of control. All the missing Jinchuuriki, the Akatsuki and now a Kage dead." He placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You know you can't save him." Obito said gently, "You don't need to waste your time picking apart his motivations. You said it yourself, he wanted this. Go home. See your team. Pick up where you left off."

Two and a half weeks ago, she would have jumped at the chance. Naruto never wanted to leave in the first place. Being away from home split her heart in two and the eventual return did nothing to soothe the ache.

Here was Obito, her big brother in all but blood doing his best to close the distance between them.

Somewhere Kakashi sensei lounged, idly flicking through his book. She wanted to show him how much better she'd gotten.

Somewhere Sakura and Sasuke were still waiting for her. Maybe they had even forgiven her.

Somewhere her dad was doing his best to keep them from war, even if that meant only seeing her once since she had returned.

Below her, Gaara remained in the cage. Both jinchuuriki. Both the children of Kage. Both even around the same age. The same cage made for her used for him. On one side of a mirror she could see herself and on the other-

Naruto knocked Obito's hand away. "You know I don't go back on my word."

Naruto was going to find out why. She had to. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she let him slip away.

Obito smiled tightly and backed away. Chakra swirled and distorted the space around him. "You're wrong," He said as he vanished. "I do understand. The difference is I know what happens next."

She stared at the spot where he stood before glancing at the food he left behind. Her stomach gurgled. Naruto left the plate where it lay and made her way into her room.

Nine pictures embedded in poster board greeted her. Six men. Three women. All of them hosts of a demon. In the three years since she'd left Konoha, seven had gone missing. Only Naruto and Killer B of Kumogakure were left. But then one reappeared.

Two years ago, Jiraiya and her had trekked to Sunagakure to warn them about Akatsuki. Gaara had already disappeared a mere two days before their arrival and no one knew where he had gone.

Twelve years ago, she was a small wild thing hanging off of Obito's shoulders on a diplomatic voyage to the desert. Twelve years ago, a boy showed up on the other side of the door and she was the one who listened.

It had to be him.

She turned on the tv and inserted a tape. The picture flickered into existence. It was already rewound back to the part she's been rewatching over and over. Gaara stood at attention next to his father, the duo looking down at the fight below them. Her dad and several anbu stood to their left.

Played in real time, there is almost no indication of what is about to happen. For one second Gaara stands, arms crossed, as disinterested as he could be. In the next he is covered in blood, sand raging throughout the box, the Kazekage nothing more than a stain beneath him.

Naruto rewound again and pressed play. The smallest movement of his eyes is what gave Gaara away. She paused the video and there he was. Green eyes stared directly into the camera. His father murmured something to him, but Gaara did not look away. Five seconds he looked into the camera. Five seconds before he began his carnage.

The first time Naruto saw it, she thought about how lonely his eyes looked. How angry.

Now she saw something different. Determination. A fire smoldered there. Steady and unyielding. Gaara was a perfect picture of control. No rampaging monster stared like that. No, those five seconds were a moment to rethink and change his mind. Gaara rose his head to his would be observer and made a choice and no one but him knew exactly what that was.

Twelve years ago, he warned her. Two years ago, he disappeared. Two weeks ago, he reappeared and murdered his own father and then let himself be captured.

"I'm not letting you get away this time." Naruto said to the frozen boy on screen. "I'm going to figure out everything. I swear it."

There in the dim glow of the television, her shadow shifted. Tenebrous shapes grew large and unfathomable. A sinister outline that vanished the second she turned around. A presence that hung around her neck like a noose.

Down below in the cage, the boy lifted his head.

xXx

Sometimes keeping herself busy meant flipping through bingo books. Minato had held it open the first time, large gentle hands next to her grubby ones.

"Mom's in here?"

"Here." Minato turned to her page. " Uzumaki Kushina."

Kushina grinned at the photographer with a ferocity so tangible it made Naruto quirk her own lips. Her mom has got long red hair, so different from Naruto's short spiky blonde. But she thought- she hoped- that they had the same smile.

"She's so pretty Dad." Naruto gushed. "And awesome, and happy, and amazing."

Minato agreed softly, "She was."

Naruto pointed to the next entry, his entry. "You're here too! Not as cool as Mom but you got a nickname. Why doesn't she have one? Am I in the book? Can I be in here?"

"I'm sure you will be in here one day." Minato pressed a kiss on her forehead. "But not yet. This is for famous shinobi. It's a collection of them and who you ought to know if you ever come across them."

"So all the cool people are in here? Yeah I'm definitely gonna get in here. Just watch me!"

He pulled the book out of her hands. "It's not a book of 'cool people' Naruto. It is a book of dangerous people."

But Naruto wasn't listening to him.

And in the present moment, the book she held wasn't the one he showed her long ago.

This was a very recent book and someone had written the entry on one of the blank pages in back along with an artist's drawing of the ninja.

Red eyes glowed malevolently from the page. Hair whipped around their shoulders and they bared their teeth. Three vicious streaks cut into both sides of the face. Maybe, if looked at from far away this was what they looked like. No one could have gotten closer.

This was what it looked like to lose control.

At the bottom of the entry lay her moniker.

Godslayer.

xXx

Sometimes there was no way to keep herself busy. Naruto could pace. She could rewatch the tape again. She could look through the books. She could argue over and over with herself about going back home to see if it was still home.

Still, Naruto always found herself descending the stairway, questions burning on her tongue.

" Uzumaki Naruto." Gaara said by way of greeting.

Gaara was in the bingo book of course. This thing between them had always been dangerous. And she had told him her name.

"Gaara."

"I still don't remember you." he said. His voice grew quieter. "I might never remember you."

'You're not like them and you never will be.' said the memory.

"You will." Naruto insisted.

He didn't argue with her. She heard him settle against the door, they sat back to back again.

"Uzumaki Naruto," he repeated in that peculiar way of his. "Say it. Ask me."

Naruto stared ahead. The wood behind her steadily drained away chakra.

"Did you always know you were…" her mouth twisted around the hated word, "a jinchuuriki?"

The answer came quickly, in a snarl. "No."

Yeah, me either.

"My father told me when I was old enough to become his tool." A quiet menace lurked behind his words. "He spoiled me. He gave me whatever I wanted and taught me high level ninjutsu. However I was...unstable. He has tried to kill me since I was six. I am his failure and all he has ever wanted was for me to disappear.

"I stole the life of my mother and now I've stolen my father's. I was born a monster. Is that enough reason for you Uzumaki Naruto?"

She imagined him. A small boy alone in the desert, curled in upon himself. A boy who decided that it was best for him to vanish from a world that didn't want him. A boy who against all expectations returned home.

Between them lay doors, cages, bodies, and mirrors. Always a constant barrage of 'what-ifs' every time she considered his situation. She understood it so much it actually hurt.

"Do you regret it? Killing your father?"

Gaara stopped and considered. "He wouldn't have."

"I'm not asking him. I'm asking you." Naruto said, " So do you?"

He went quiet and unlike when Obito stood in silence earlier, it only served to remind her how close together they were. Obito said she couldn't save him, but she couldn't just give up on people. That was stupid. She always, always had to try.

Especially now. Especially for Gaara.

"Yes." he murmured as one does with secrets. "I do."

"Then-"

"I would regret letting him live more." The confession made his voice low, but not any nicer than usual. "There are things that I couldn't allow him to do. If I ran away then I would have been attacked by a greater sadness. I will not run away anymore."

Her hands balled up involuntarily. "And not running away got you here."

"As running away got you here." Gaara retorted.

"So what then? What's the solution? Because here we both are. Does it matter what we choose if we end up in the same spot?"

"You can leave."

"You think it's that simple?"

Chains rustled, but he did not reply.

"Because it's not the easy ok? I can't just pretend like stuff never happened. Everything is different now. I'm different."

"Do you regret it?" Gaara asked.

Always, always. "Of course."

"I've got one last mission for you kid."

"Then do what you have to. You are not a prisoner Naruto. You have a choice."

And disagreeing meant giving up. Maybe she got a little lost between Amegakure and home but she was still terrible at giving up. Maybe Naruto couldn't make things right. But she had to try.

"Yeah." she said, "Neither are you."

"No," he agreed. "I am not."

Naruto stood. Sleep still terrified her. She still needed to figure Gaara out. Everyone was still waiting for her. She refused to be still any longer. A small step was all it took to start running.

"Just because I'm leaving for a bit doesn't mean I'm gone for good you know. I'll come back."

"I know." Gaara said softly, "You always do."