A/N: Nasc3nt, you don't know how welcome your words of encouragement were. Here I was quailing at my comp, wondering if I could write something so foreign to my abilities and you steadied my nerves with a few well-chosen phrases. Thank you. I humbly thank you.


Chapter 2

"You are a weapon! You are not some kid who can run off to meet other idiots! You are crucial to the invasion of Konoha and you are to obey me in all things!" Baki screamed himself hoarse at a stoic Gaara for most of the night when the redhead deigned to walk back into the motel. There was more. Baki continued the rest in a slightly softer yet by no means kinder tone. "You know how you get when you lose control. The full moon is nearly upon us. I don't want to have to clean up any of your 'messes', Gaara. Keep yourself here, away from people before you hurt someone."

Baki gave Gaara a look tinged with fear and mild revulsion. Gaara had never seen his teacher look at him any other way. He cut his pale eyes toward where his brother and sister where standing and caught the same look. The only person who'd looked at him differently had been Yashamaru…but that had been a lie.

Gaara could end them all where they stood. He liked killing. It was the only thing that afforded him any pleasure, the only thing that made his unbearable life a bit more bearable.

Well, that had been the case until a few hours ago.

Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto. He didn't look at Gaara with anything but open interest. He also doesn't know the truth about me. Gaara concluded that it was the thought of Naruto that prevented him from killing Baki outright. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the blond boy. He hugged the memory of his meeting with him close as his teacher reamed him.

Baki locked Gaara in his room and remained outside the door himself. Gaara wasn't worried. He intended to see Naruto again and nothing was going to stop him.


For Naruto, the day started with him waking up from a nightmare and just kept getting worse from there.

Actually it wasn't so much a nightmare as it was the knowledge that he was supposed to be fighting Neji in a month. The realization hit him like a thunderclap in his sleep and Naruto was catapulted from slumber with all the force of an avalanche. He sat there on his bed, his breathing all ragged and his heart pounding. I don't have a chance against him, Naruto thought. I need help.

He'd gotten out of bed to pad barefoot to the kitchen and see what could be found in the way of breakfast. The answer was a bunch of scurrying roaches and not much else. He made a half-hearted attempt to clean his filthy kitchen then decided to just screw it. He'd eat later.

***

He located Ebisu-sensei running drills with his young team. The bespectacled Jounin eyed Naruto neutrally as the blonde bowed deeply.

"I'm sorry for running away from you yesterday, senpai. Please forgive me and accept me as your student." Naruto kept his head bowed.

It gave Ebisu a certain amount of pleasure to have the Kyuubi vessel begging him. His anus tightened with the sensation of power denying the young boy gave him. He did it casually, letting the little monster know he didn't have a chance in hell of convincing Ebisu to change his mind.

Naruto straightened and gazed at Ebisu's thin face. A wayward ray of sunlight slanted across the thin visage in such a way that one eye was illuminated behind the dark lenses. Naruto could see the hatred clearly. He swallowed, turned and walked away with as much dignity as he could manage.

***

He wandered, walking the village streets and thinking. Okay. Who could help him? Kakashi was off with Supreme Buttface. Ebisu was a lost cause. Every other Jounin was off training his or her students. Naruto truly regretted running away from the closet pervert yesterday. He was seldom handed opportunities and here he'd gone and shat all over one. Dammit!

The sun was blazing, the day torturously hot. Naruto found himself by a small waterfall that emptied into a stream. He sat on the narrow bank and absently skipped rocks as he considered his options.

I have a match against one of the strongest-no, scratch that. Against THE strongest Genin in Konoha in exactly a month. I have no sensei and looks like no one's going to teach me. Sasuke and Gaara are right. I am weak and I do suck. I'm not forfeiting that match, so what to do?"

Seemed he'd have to train himself. He thought of asking Iruka-sensei to help him. The idea was tempting. If only Iruka-sensei himself wasn't so weak!

The sad truth was that Naruto didn't even know where to begin. How does one train themselves? Naruto figured that if it were possible, he wouldn't be a Genin. He needed a teacher, didn't have one and that was that. A sudden urge to lay his head in someone's lap and cry at the unfairness of life descended on him.

Then he clenched his jaw and forced himself to get over it. Life sucked, big deal. He had a match to train for.


Gaara sat listening to the faint snores of his siblings and sensei in the other room of the motel. When dawn arrived he Shunshin-ed and disappeared in a blast of sand.

Walking around Konoha was markedly better than walking around Suna, Gaara found. Here, no one knew who he was. There were no cold looks of hate and disgust. A few people even threw a smile his way on occasion. He arrived at Naruto's building in time to see the blonde leaving. He followed him.

He witnessed the scene with the Jounin who wore sunglasses with a frown. Gaara knew who Naruto was paired against for the final matches. The Hyuuga was a strong fighter, Naruto would need all the help he could get. It tightened Gaara's stomach in an odd way to see the earnest boy turned down so rudely. Why was he treated like that?

Gaara observed Naruto's clumsy attempts at self-training from the cover of some bushes for more than an hour. He finally stepped forward from sheer horror that someone so inept was to face Hyuuga Neji. Naruto watched Gaara approach from where he'd collapsed in a sweaty heap, breathing heavily as he blinked perspiration out of his eyes.

To Naruto, Gaara seemed to shimmer in the waves of heat baking up from the ground. He squinted for a second; he'd completely forgotten about yesterday's encounter, his mind abuzz with the fact that he had only a short time before Neji creamed him. He remembered quick enough once he saw the kid. "What are you doing here?" Naruto asked.

Gaara replied with the truth. "You're the only person I've ever felt really comfortable around."

Ignorant of social graces as Naruto was, he thought this a particularly profound statement for someone to be making to a kid they'd met only the day before. Gaara further floored him by saying, "And it looks like you don't have any friends either."

Naruto got up cautiously, not quite believing his ears. "And…what. You want to be my friend?"

Gaara blinked expressionlessly as he turned this new thought over in his mind. The very alien-ness of it gave him a shiver that it took him a while to interpret as pleasant. Friend. Well, he was drawn to the guy, wasn't he? "Yes," he said carefully. Naruto would never know what it cost him to put himself out there like that after all the rejections he'd endured in his life.

But there Gaara was wrong. Naruto would have understood perfectly. "Yeah?" the blonde grinned. "You mean it?" Gaara was utterly powerless against that smile, a smile that lit Naruto from within. How could such light exist in him when he lives in such darkness, Gaara wondered. He nodded once in answer to Naruto's question.

Naruto did a small leap, absurdly happy at this acceptance. Then he calmed. "Why? Why do you want to be my friend?"

"Why wouldn't I want to be?" Gaara countered smoothly.

"Either," Naruto said just as smoothly.

"What?"

"You said 'either'. That I don't have any friends either. Does that mean you also don't have friends?"

Gaara turned, unfolded his arms and bent to retrieve a kunai that was stuck in the stream bank. He ignored the question. "I can help you train, if you like."

Naruto was unwilling to let the matter drop so easily. He felt righteous entitlement to the details of Gaara's life now that he had a friend at last. "Why do people hate you?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same question," Gaara replied as he tested the blade against a fingertip. "I see the way people look at you."

A minor staring match ensued. This time Gaara looked away first. Naruto walked to him and took the kunai. "I'd be really grateful for whatever training help you give me," he told the redhead.

The tension that had been building between them ghosted away as they each became absorbed in what, for Naruto, was the best pastime on earth.


If the boisterous blond had any doubts about a fellow Genin teaching him they were quickly and rudely dispelled. Naruto was handed his ass again and again, unable to get past that armor of sand. Gaara merely stood with his arms folded, one hip slightly cocked as his green eyes moved in analytical observation. Finally, he told Naruto to stop.

"Your chakra control is a mess," the redhead said. "What-"

Whatever Gaara had been about to say was drowned out by a hoarse bellow of outrage.

"There you are," hollered Baki. "I swear, you want your father The Fourth to feed my eyes to the ravens, don't you?!" He latched onto Gaara's arm and began dragging him forcefully away, completely ignoring Naruto. "If I have to bind you with chakra I will do it!" Baki continued to rant. "You know how important you are to this mission and here you are wasting your-"

Naruto didn't at first understand what he was seeing. He heard Gaara roar, saw his sand merge with his arm to form some…thing…that smacked Baki all the way across the stream. Naruto didn't look to see where the Jounin landed. His eyes were glued to what was happening to Gaara.

The kid was on his knees, holding his head and screaming. His eyes looked haunted. That sand appendage seemed to grow and then Gaara looked up to see Naruto looking at him with nothing more than alarmed curiosity. Curiosity for him, his friend. There was no hate or repugnance, just that open look. Gaara couldn't take this, not after he'd shown what he truly was. No one accepted him once they knew. No one!

Naruto saw the tail grow from sand and lash out at him. He dodged, but the tip caught him anyway. Ground switched places with sky as he turned uncontrollably in the air. From the corner of his eye, Naruto saw Baki running across the water. By the time he'd landed in a bush, extracted himself and run back to where Gaara had been, they were both gone. Naruto stood looking around in bewilderment.

"What…the hell?" But there was no one there to answer his sudden multitude of questions.


Back at the hotel, Gaara didn't need the screaming lecture Baki crammed in between laments that his secret was out. He'd blown it. The first, the very first, person ever to treat him as ordinary and accept him and Gaara had attacked him. Worse, he'd shown him the truth of his existence. Naruto had gotten an eyeful of the monster inside Gaara. Not all of it, not the whole thing by any means, but more than enough to be going on with, thank you very much. He should have known better. Friendship, acceptance, these were terms used by people who lived lives full of light and happiness. Gaara's life was one of darkness and pain.

Ruined. His budding friendship was ruined.

Gaara willingly locked himself in his room and further encased himself in his sand sphere for additional solitude. No one could see his tears then, or hear the measure of his aching regret in the sobs he tried to muffle with his hands.


Naruto went home in a daze. It was still shy of noon. He closed his door, looked at his squalid living space and absently began cleaning it up. While he worked, his mind rang with thoughts. These thoughts fed themselves, grew, took shape. Naruto finished with the main room and moved to the kitchen nook, distractedly killing roaches with the flat of his palm and wiping the crushed carcasses off on his pants legs. He swept, washed, scrubbed and all the while the thoughts continued to take shape until, by the time Naruto stood in a spotless apartment, the shape was complete.

It was a shining, fantastical construct that perhaps he should have been afraid to look upon. Instead, seeing it, Naruto rejoiced:

Gaara was like him. Just like him.

And that meant he was more than a friend. What, Naruto didn't know, but he intended to find out. And to do that he needed to find Gaara and speak to him right away.

An eager, toothy smile slashed Naruto's face as he left his building.


The first sign of trouble came in a distant scream from the reception area downstairs. Temari only had time to glance up from polishing her fan before an ominous rumbling sound was heard. Kankurou felt the floor beneath his feet tremble slightly. Baki was in the room with them. His one eye showed puzzlement as a sound, like hundreds upon hundreds of running feet, reached his ears. As one, the three turned with dawning suspicion to their motel door.

That simple piece of wood exploded into a thousand splinters (causing the occupants of the living room to scatter swiftly) as an army of Narutos came stampeding through. They filled the hall beyond the motel room to the ceiling, swarming over each other like a deadly school of piranha. Indeed, they displayed a mass of carnivorous grins as they flooded the motel room from wall to wall. Temari shrieked. Baki cursed. Kankurou saw the head of one of his puppets crushed beneath a blue-sandaled foot and was thankful it wasn't his own head.

Unseen, the real Naruto made his way toward Gaara's room via the window. He slipped inside and found a huge, rock hard ball of sand. He presumed Gaara was inside.


Of all things, Gaara heard knocking on his sphere. Actual knocking. He could sense the chakra signature and grimaced. "Go away."

"No. Gaara, I want to talk to you. I…I think I understand. About you." Naruto's voice sounded inappropriately cheerful.

Gaara's stomach cramped; he wanted so desperately to believe that…"You don't know anything, understand nothing. Leave me alone."

Naruto could hear Baki and the other two starting to fight back now. His clones wouldn't last long. "Oh. So you don't have a monster living inside you? My mistake then, I must have been seeing things. It's cool, you know, I get it. You're shy and all, don't want people looking at you funny. And you're right, what would I know? I mean, I only have a monster living inside me too, but of course I wouldn't know anyth-"

A hole appeared in the ball of sand in front of Naruto's face. A pair of wide green eyes peered out at him. "What did you say?" Gaara's voice shook. Naruto couldn't have said that just now…he hadn't heard right…

"If you really want to know, I suggest we get out of here." Naruto cocked his ear to the din outside Gaara's room. "Yup, sounds like they're doing away with the last of my clones so I'd say we have about ten seconds to split."

Gaara reached out a pale arm and yanked Naruto through the hole that widened briefly to admit him. Baki crashed through Gaara's door in time to see Naruto's feet disappearing into the sphere. He yelled, but by then the sphere had levitated, hovered for a second as if deciding what to do and then crashed through the wall. Baki ran to the ragged opening and saw the sphere zooming away through the sky, heading for the outskirts of the village.

"Damn!" Baki swore. He slammed his hand against the wall by the hole.


Naruto felt oddly as if he were in an elevator. One that was going sickeningly fast and high. He couldn't see a thing in the dark interior of the sphere, but his ears began popping with the change in air pressure. He moaned softly and felt a warm, dry hand grope for his. Naruto grasped it as it dawned on him that he must be up in the sky. His stomach rolled with the realization and he moaned a little harder. Gaara dragged him by his hand until they were sitting pressed side by side. He put an arm around Naruto.

Gaara could feel Naruto trembling violently. He slowed his sphere and lowered it until he knew they were just grazing the forest treetops outside Konoha. Naruto seemed to calm down. His tremors subsided then stopped altogether. He lifted his head from where it had lain against Gaara's shoulder.

"I can't see a thing," Naruto complained. "It's pitch black in here."

Gaara sensed Naruto waving a hand frantically in front of his own face. He concentrated and opened a small skylight in the top portion of the sphere, directly over their heads. Late afternoon light streamed in. It cast a yellow beam down through the inside of the sphere. Naruto could feel the sphere spinning slowly on this ethereal axis as his eyes adjusted. Gaara regarded him from the other side of the sunbeam.

Naruto had been unconsciously hyperventilating. When his breathing returned to normal, Gaara decided he could wait no longer. "You said-"

Naruto cut him off. "You first. You tell me your story first and I'll tell you mine."

Gaara noted the continued lack of revulsion on Naruto's part and was silent a few moments. At last, when the blue eyes only looked at him unflinchingly, Gaara gathered his courage and took a deep breath.

He told everything. He left nothing out.

He told of his birth, his mother, his uncle, the children in the village. He told of wanting to know what love was. Of the assassination attempts.

He told of Shukaku in hushed, frightening, frightened tones.

Gaara touched the tattoo on his forehead. "I try to love myself, but I can't. I'm a monster. Even if I wasn't, I don't know how. I…still don't even really know what love is, how it feels." He did not raise his eyes to Naruto's. He couldn't. He couldn't risk seeing a change in the expression at last. Surely the change would be there now.

Naruto sat in the slowly revolving sphere. A feeling of such sweeping gladness overcame him that he was ashamed; the things Gaara had revealed shouldn't make him happy, but they did. He really is just like me. More than I thought.

"For a long time, I didn't know why everyone hated me," Naruto began. The rest came out easier than he thought it would. Gaara raised his head and listened intently. He was quiet until Naruto told what was inside of him.

"But," Gaara said in a low, tense voice. "But that would mean that you're like me…a Jinchuuriki like me."

"Is that what they call it?" Naruto shrugged.

Gaara was dumbfounded. How had he lived his life not knowing this boy who could be him, their lives were so alike?

Naruto tilted his head to the side, studying Gaara through that one hazy beam of light. "When I look at you," the blond said thoughtfully, "it's like I'm looking into a mirror. We're the same, Gaara. Do you feel it?"

Gaara nodded mutely. He felt a lot more than that as something in him broke open, flooded with Naruto's light and began to take root. Abruptly, he remembered a conversation Yashamaru had had with him. About love healing the pain in his heart. Gaara had lived with that pain for as long as he could remember…but now it was lessening. He felt it gradually burning away under the fathomless blue of Naruto's eyes and that rooted thing that was growing in his chest.

Naruto leaned forward on his hands. His hair was suddenly blinding as it passed through the sunbeam. Then Naruto's face was right in front of Gaara's as he crouched on all fours. His expression was shadowed as he said clearly, "We're more than friends, Gaara. We're brothers."

Heart thudding with ever-increasing speed and agitation, that thing growing until he was filled with a new pain, a sweet pain, Gaara studied the eyes so close to his own. His own eyes dropped lower. 'No. I have a brother. You're nothing like him. I don't know what we are, Naruto, but it's not brothers."

Gaara's hand slid up the side of Naruto's face as he brought his head to the blonde's.