Disclaimer: I own neither Naruto nor Fairy Tail. Naruto is written by Masashi Kishimoto. Fairy Tail is written by Hiro Mashima.

Chapter 2

. . .

Waking up was a... disorienting experience, for lack of a better word.

The light, despite it's meager brightness, was much too intense for his recently opened eyes. His stomach complained of hunger, which was a strange experience in itself because he was sure he had died. With his chakra, what little time had replinished for him, he was able to pick out a few small sources in his immediate area.

Like any shinobi worth his training, Gaara stretched his awareness as far he could, which, in his current weakened condition, wasn't anywhere near as far as he would have liked. The light sounds of breathing, the occasional soft scuff of shoes against stone. Little murmurs and whispers that were impossible for him to make out over the ringing in his ears. His inability to focus and the coming migraine was comparable to that of a bad hangover, except for the fact that he hadn't the pleasure of having consumed enough alcohol to account for this damning situation.

Wherever he was, he was not in a hospital nor was he in a field medic's tent, of that he was absolutely certain. It was cold, but not unbearably so, and the draft, that would have never been allowed by a medic, carried with it the acrid stench of salt. The stone flooring was uncomfortable against his back, and his wound seemed to pulse in pain with his heartbeat.

Bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub, bu-dub...

He was fighting to stay awake. Even through the pain, his heartbeat, like some morbid lullaby, was lulling him to sleep.

No! I have to stay awake! I have people depending on me!

Naruto!

Where's-? I-, I'm missing-!

Where's my armor? Panic at having lost his primary weapon cut through the dark haze of weariness. Nkg-! Just barely, he managed to swallow back a strangled noise. Where's my sand?! That sand was his! It was a part of him! Who could have- Who would- Who dared?! It was possible that the sand he would normally carry had been left on the battlefield when he was moved to safer ground. However, he found it increasingly distressing that his sand armor was gone too. It was disgusting. An intense feeling of violation clung to him, leaving him feeling exposed and vulnerable. In a sense, he felt naked.

His internal breakdown, however, was interrupted by a feather-light touch against his forehead, carefully and clumsily tracing the character that he had scarred on his own brow. His heart shuddered in his chest at the unexpected contact and, for just a moment, he didn't dare breathe.

Finally, his jade eyes opened, revealing red. Red, like the hair Uzumaki were known for, like Naruto's mother, Kushina, had. Red like his own hair. The same color as fresh blood.

It seemed that a young girl had been tasked with watching over him. Her family must be experiencing hard times, for her to be dressed in such rags."Sie sind wach!" The girl had finally noticed him. "Rob! Er ist wach!" The only problem was that the language she spoke was unfamiliar to him, which was worrying as every country he knew spoke the same language. It was given that dialects would differ between regions and countries, and of course there were remnants of ancient languages that many a scholar had spent countless hours studying. Even the ninja art of sealing was suspected to have been based out of language! However, the fact remained that everyone in the Elemental Countries spoke the same language.

The bitter taste of bile bubbled up from the back of his throat. A lead brick sank deep into his gut.

Where exactly have I ended up?

. . .

Many days have passed since Red, the crimson-haired stranger, first woke. He hasn't spoken once since then, so we know little about the mysterious stranger that now shares our cell.

He's silent, even when he walks, and he keeps mostly to himself. He's a hard worker, and even though his injury has yet to heal, he never complains or shows any indication that he's in pain. Occasionally he lets Rob tend to his wound, but there isn't much he can do without medical supplies. We gather around them and watch Rob work while he tells us stories of his adventures as a mage, partially to entertain us, but also, I think, for Red's sake.

Red is... different from the rest of us. He never speaks and he's always on guard. He watches everyone's actions so shrewdly with those dark eyes of his, that it's almost disturbingly attentive... How it often feels as if nothing can escape him, like he's a predator hiding beneath that small, injured frame.

Sometimes at night, me or one of the others will catch him watching the moon from our small window. During the day, if we're not working, he sits in the far corner, absolutely still with his eyes closed. We thought he might be sleeping then, but Rob said he was doing something called meditation, whatever that is. It looks alot like sleep though, except the dark marks around his eyes never seem to lighten or go away. When he meditates at night, a noise, like scraping, can be heard throughout the walls and floor. It fills up the entire room and makes it difficult for some of us to sleep.

If I had to use one word to describe him, it would be scary. He doesn't seem that terrifying on the surface, although the fact the nothing seems to phase him makes most of us uneasy. However, even when tending to his wound, Rob watches him closely from the corner of his eye-

"Hey! Earthland to Erza!" Being forced from her thoughts, Erza quickly noticed the concerned face invading her own personal space. "Are you even listening to me? Geez!"

Although she couldn't see it, Erza could definitely feel the heat from her now flushed face as it crawled up her neck to her cheeks, even reaching as far up as the tips of her ears. "I-I'm sorry! Would you mind to repeat that? I was just lost in thought..." The sentence was quick, just barely stuttered past her lips before she turned her face to hide the bright red staining her cheeks the color of her hair.

"Huh...?" He followed her gaze to the only other occupant of their cell that shared Erza's scarlet hair. "Geez... Even the new guy's been getting more attention than me!" Although the tone of his voice was teasing, obvious notes of jealousy interlaced his words.

"Don't tell me you're jealous, Eiwen?!" Sawyer called out from across the cell as he made his way over to join their group. "Haven't you seen the way the guards look at him? That's not the kind of attention I'd wanna' deal with. How about you, Erza?"

"No, b-but I-"

"Feh-!" The other boy crossed his arms over his chest and scoffed as Sawyer continued, "I'm more interested in whatever he's doing that keeps the rest of us up at night." Giving in to his excitement, his arms moved to accentuate his words, "I mean, that's got to be some kind of magic, right? That would make him a mage! He could be our way outta' this dump!"

The other boy turned to watch Red, "Tch! What kind of hero gets himself captured?" Anger colored his words as he turned quickly to face the other two, "He's gonna' die in here just like the rest of us!"

A series of sharp, slow claps froze the activity of everyone in the cell. A group a guards had waltzed in without so much as announcing their presence. This deviation from the norm stank of trouble, causing Rob stiffen by Red's side. Noticing Rob's unease, Gaara watched the group closely. "What a wonderful speech! In fact, it looks like we've found our first volunteer!" Whatever they had planned, it couldn't be good.

"Damn you!" Rob, who had been busy tending to Red's wound, leapt forward, trying desperately to grab hold of Eiwen, only to be intercepted by another guard and thrown to the floor. Red, whose injury was just beginning to close, rushed forward to tend to him, his wound severely limiting his movement, causing him obvious strain. "Now, now... Don't be like that! You'll get your turn soon enough old man!" The guard turned to leave with the struggling boy, pausing only to call back over his shoulder, "We promise he'll stay in one piece!" His dark laughter lingering long after he had gone.

. . .

Soon it was night, and night turned to day. The cycle repeating itself three times in what felt like no time at all, but also seemed to stretch for an eternity. The somber mood that had decended onto the group the first night had not left. Instead becoming more sour as time passed without any knowledge of what terrible tragedy had befallen their cellmate. Each wondering who could be taken next. The children had taken to sleeplessness until their bodies gave out, one by one, from exhaustion. The sound of scraping within the walls had returned tenfold and lasted well into the daylight hours. A chilling aura now surrounding the silent stranger known as Red.

On the night of the fourth day, long after the children had passed out, Red continued to meditate as Rob vainly kept watch. The soft clunk of the guard's steps neared and the scraping in the walls stilled. A single guard appeared outside of their cell. Red's eyes sharpened at the guard's presence, taking every move, every twitch and micromannerism into account. Looking for every weakness that could be exploited and turned against whatever group held them prisoner. An air of suspense settled about the room, causing Rob to shift uneasily in his spot.

It was easy for Red to read the man. His eyes, which had been flitting about the occupants of the cell, finally settled on one of the small exhausted figures. Reaching for the lock, his eyes never left his chosen target, except for the single second it took to spell open the door. That second was all Red needed. With a single hand sign, the floor opened, swallowing the guard whole, almost as if he had never been there. It happened so fast, the guard hadn't even the chance to call out or scream. The guard never knew what hit him. A tiny smirk painted itself across Red's face. Only he knew the fate of the man devoured by his sand. Only he knew the man had been ground into dust, his bones only helping to strengthen his sand.

Immediately he was reminded of the cost of using more chakra than he could spare. Dark spots invaded his vision, the world turned on its side. The last thing he saw before passing out was Rob's concerned face.

. . .

By the time Gaara next woke, the guards had already returned and left twice, taking two more children with them. Still there was no word on the three who had been taken, and while the others waited in terrified suspence, poisonous feelings of anger, hatred, lothing- he wasn't quite sure, stirred in his gut. Being a shinobi, death was well-known to him. They may have kept their promise to keep the children in one piece, but that never meant they would be returned to them alive. He was furious. Children were sacred, they were meant to be protected, like the king on a shogi board, because they were the next generation! They were the future!

He was no longer there to fight against the Juubi. Instead, he woke to find himself gravely injured and having been taken prisoner to work as a slave on some god-damned tower in some god-forsaken country that spoke a completely different fucking language, all while having been stripped of his weaponry! He couldn't even fucking protect the children he found himself imprisioned with! He may have been the absolute picture of calm and collected on the outside, but everything about this situation piqued his ire in a way that he hadn't quite encountered since he was a child with the one-tailed Shukaku sealed within him. It seemed there just weren't enough words to describe how he was feeling. A deep dark part of himself desperately longed for Shukaku, longed to be able to give control over to the unstable beast, to just be able to let the demon rampage and destroy this place. The thought made his blood sing in anticipation.

Despite his turbulent feelings on the matter, his forced rest also did him quite a bit of good. Without his conscious mind to impede his body from directing his replenishing chakra to heal his wound, much progress was made. That is, without him conscious to expend what little chakra he could replenish on remaking his sand, his reserves quickly refilled. His wound, on the other hand, had been caused by the Juubi, and due to the corrosive nature of the beast's chakra, it did not want to heal. Since waking, however, he found that the wound had managed to seal itself up enough that, although it would still hinder his movement, strenuous activity would be unlikely to reopen it. It was so frustrating, but all he could do was sit and wait for an opening.

His fist clenched and he brought it back in abuse of the wall behind him. The stone gave way spider-webbing out under the force of wrath. God damn it! He hated being helpless! I'm a ninja damn it! Why? Heh... Who would have guessed... The Kaze-fucking-kage and I'm trapped here, as helpless as a civilian... "Damn it... I'm not supposed to be so useless..."

Day crept into night, and night to day. Gaara had long lost count of the number of days that had passed. Too many, and yet so few. Through listening to other's speech, and also to the story-telling old man, he was beginning to understand the new language that surrounded him. He was not confident enough that he could speak without giving himself away as a foreigner, opting instead to stay silent, but he could understand the gist of the conversations around him.

The old man, Rob, claimed he was once a Magier, but had since retired. From what he could understand with his limited vocabulary, the man claimed to have the ability to use magic, like a wizard or a magician. At first he was hesitant to believe the old man's claims. If it wasn't for the fact that he could feel a power seperate from chakra flowing through the world around him, he would have dismissed his claims in entirety.

The biggest difference, he found, was that this magical energy, Etherno, was not tied to the user's lifeforce like chakra was, but instead existed seperately in the air and in nature. Where chakra was produced naturally by the body and stored within the chakra coils, Etherno was absorbed from the world around the wizard and could be easily replenished in a relatively short space of time. These wizards, although seemingly ignorant to it's existence, had the capability to use chakra but left their coils unused. This had the adverse affect of giving many of them the signature of a civilian, even if in reality they were practiced wizards.

A light tug at the hem of his sleeve freed him from his thoughts. Looking down, his attention was brought to the small, emaciated figure of a child that could be no older than nine. Though average in appearance, the little girl seemed to exude an innocence that should never have survived a place such as this. He could almost feel her anxiety just by looking at her. It was understandable, that by this point, she would seek comfort from any source. Her fear of the unknown outweighing her distrust for a stranger.

Amber colored eyes met his own jade. "They're not coming back are they?" That one question, so quietly uttered, echoed loudly throughout the minds and bodies of the cell's occupants. Time itself seemed to still around them. Every little eye watched the exchange closely while holding a collective breath. "The taken ones, they're not coming back..." Eyes so innocent, that should never have attained such wisdom, were heavy and sullen. He wished he could answer her silent plea, to be able to tell her she was wrong, that everyone would be okay. No matter how much he wanted to preserve what little bit of innocence had survived this all-consuming, nightmarish hell-hole, he was never, or rather, he would never be one to deceitfully give false hope.

With an agonized smile and woeful, guilty eyes, Gaara knelt down beside the girl, knowing her heart was as heavy and weary as his own, and slowly shook his head. The girl, now far more withdrawn, seemed to wilt. She gave a stiff nod of understanding, her darkened eyes downcast. What might have been silent tears trailed her cheek. Shuffling closer to his larger, slightly warmer form, she grabbed tightly to his arm, "I'm so scared, Red..." The wobble in her voice betrayed her, "I'm scared I'm going to be next. I don't want to be next!"

Hesitantly, he drew his other arm around her in a weak embrace, meant to be protective and comforting. The world froze around him, and he saw through the eyes of his younger self. Reliving the moment his childhood was stolen away from him, the night he truly lost his innocence.

"She died resenting and cursing this world, leaving you as a reminder... So that the world would remember her hatred. You were never loved, Gaara. Never."

It was true that, after the fight against his father, the wounds created that night were finally healing, however, knowing the truth of that night, knowing that his mother had so dearly loved him, it did little to erase the deep scars that had been left behind. It didn't matter to him how different their situations were, Gaara saw a part of himself in this girl.

"Listen to me, little one," His words were spoken at a slow pace, all his fears on the matter obsolete as his slight accent was barely detectable, "there's nothing anyone can say that will make this right. Just hold on a little bit longer for me and you'll be fine..." His voice was raspy and quiet after such a long time of disuse. So quiet, it was likely only the girl heard.

Fresh tears gathered in her eyes and threatened to spill over, "But I'm so scared, Red." Stubbornly she buried her face against his arm, as if hiding herself within his more formidable presence. With a few quick handsigns, that made Rob incredibly nervous, Gaara held a delicate oleander blossom, which he lightly threaded into her hair and let rest just on top of her ear.

"Just a bit longer... I promise." Shy eyes peaked up at him from the face partially buried in his sleeve. His words seemed to have eased her fears, if only for the moment, as a bright smile lit across her face in happiness. With a genuine smile on her face, she gave hum of appreciation and slightly tightened her hold on him, before releasing him to run back to the other children.

After she had left, Gaara gave a wistful sigh and relaxed back into the wall, managing to catch the mysterious smile on Rob's obviously pleased face. Huffing, he looked away, only to have the old man chuckle at his antics and return to entertaining a group of little ones.

A wave of nausea passed through him and knocked the breath from his lungs. The chakra spent on crafting the sandstone flower taking it's toll. As he steadied himself against the wall, he hoped it would be nothing to worry about. Unfortunately his disregard lead to his own collapse, catching the attention of his cellmates. Rob, having already been designated his caretaker, moved forward to examine him. Red's pale features, now darkly flushed, were indicative of a high fever. The wound that was the source of his infirmity, though now in its last stages of healing, had begun to turn a foreboding inky black.

If he had held any doubt that the young man in his care was a mage, it had been thrown to the wind the moment his injury had taken the damning characteristics of a curse scar. It certainly explained why it had taken so long to heal. At this point, there was little he could do for the boy, so he changed the bandages as best he could, and prayed that the boy would make it through.

. . .

It was nearing daybreak when Gaara finally woke. His muddled mind aware enough to know that his wound had become infected due to a form chakra poisoning. The sweat from his fever left him uncomfortably sticky. "How are you feeling, young man?" The old man sat beside him, checking him over like a mother hen, before helping him sit up. "Here we go, easy does it." The cool stone felt heavenly against his back. He hadn't even realized he'd closed his eyes until he was being shaken awake, "Don't fall asleep just yet, boy. You've lost a lot of fluids from the fever." A flask was dropped into his lap. "Go ahead and drink. It's just water, don't be getting any funny ideas into that thick skull of yours."

Unsure of what Rob meant, Gaara decided to ignore the old man's comment and greatfully accepted the water. It didn't really matter to him either way, he was seventeen, not to mention Kazekage, and had been of legal drinking age for quite some time. He wondered if the laws were different here, but quickly brushed the thought away as inconsequential.

Rob waited patiently for the kid to finish drinking, wanting desperately to ask about the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of such a scar. However, he found that he had already come to a decision about Red. He could tell the kid had a rough past, had done things he wasn't proud of. Yet, it seemed that someone had stepped in and saved him, shown him a better way, so he decided to let it go. "Careful now, don't drink so fast. You'll just puke it up in the end."

But Gaara was done listening.

Quickly he finished the water, turning his attention to take role of his cell-mates instead. A feeling in his gut told him somethig was terribly wrong. He was quick to determine the source of his unease- Someone's missing! Rob felt the turbulent change in atmosphere before he saw the thunderous rage that flashed across his face. No, damn it! Damn it all! It was like an icey hand had reached into his chest, threatening to stop his heart. It was only Rob's hand coming to rest on his sholder that caused him to still, take a deep breath, and count again- one short, and again- still one short, and one last time- someone's missing, only to be forced to accept the horrible truth.

Frosty feelings of guilt and bloodlust crawled up his spine, slowly entrapping his mind. They would regret messing with him and his.

I never even asked her name...

He would make sure of it.

. . .

AN: 16 July, 2017, edit 11 May, 2019

Love it? Hate it?

I am in the process of learning German, but I'm not that great. Please let me know if the wording is wrong or if there is a better way to say something.

I would also like to give a special thanks to my beta-reader, StarCire716! Thank you for all the time and work you've put in to this chapter! I look forward to continuing writing with you.

Until next time!

Alewar