A/N: Thanks to everyone who's reviewed! I realize this chapter doesn't have much action, but the next one definitely will. I hope you like it; please review with any comments or critiques you may have!


I am locked in my head
With what I've done
I know you tried to rescue me
Didn't let anyone get in
Left with a trace of all that was
And all that could have been

- 'And All That Could Have Been' by Nine Inch Nails
Yugito's apartment was cramped, windowless, and bare, so cold that Naruto's breath steamed in the air, and so empty that it seemed as if no one had lived there for years. There was a futon in the corner, a kitchen area in another, and a bathroom in the back, but nothing on the walls but a few weapons, no books, no plants, no posters. The room was only lit by a flickering lightbulb on a cord, throwing their shadows across the room.

"Would you like some… tea?" Yugito said reluctantly, shoulders hunched and arms folded across her chest. Naruto blinked and tore his eyes away from the ANBU katana hanging on the wall, grinning.

"That'd be awesome! Hey, Gaara, you want some?" Gaara was already seated at the tiny kitchen table on the one chair. He nodded. Yugito opened a cupboard- Naruto strained to look inside, and saw nothing but a sagging loaf of bread and a little bit of butter- and removed a pot.

She turned the stove on, crumbled the tea leaves into the water, and left it there, limping back to lean against the counter.

"Village affiliations?"

Naruto sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and watching the way Yugito moved with interest. Even in obvious pain, slowed down and tired, she still moved with a weird sort of innate, feline grace.

"Suna," Gaara said, before jerking his head at Naruto. "Konoha." Yugito blinked her slanted eyes, her stance widening and hand going to her weapons pouch. 'Wonder what got her so riled up? Konoha's never attacked Kumo,' Naruto thought, frowning, 'Well, at least not that I can remember.'

"You're foolish to come into Kumo, Uzumaki," she said, "after what happened with your Hyuuga clan." Naruto looked up. "Huh? But you guys were the ones who tried to kidnap Hinata!" Yugito shrugged, turning to take the kettle off the stove and pouring tea.

"I could care less what happens to the insects of this village," she said as she gave Gaara the one cracked cup and Naruto a bowl. "They could all die tomorrow, and I would laugh." Naruto sipped the strong dark liquid from his makeshift cup, watching Yugito cross to her futon. She sat down with a quiet groan, stretching her legs out.

"But the rest of Kumo still cares." She smiled for the first time, an expression twisted with pain and loathing, "In fact, they still have Hyuuga's tarred head mounted on the railings of the tower." She shook her head, undoing the hair ties and letting her silver-blonde hair fall free over her skinny shoulders.

'Damn, this woman's scary!'

Yugito sighed and undid the scarf, exposing the black waves twisting around her neck. "I apologize for my lack of manners, Uzumaki," she said, nodding at the bowl in his hands. "I haven't had visitors to my home since I was seven."

"It is fine," Gaara said, finishing his tea and setting the mug aside. Yugito threw the blood-speckled scarf aside and crossed her legs, tilting her head. "I know you two didn't show up at my home for a cup of tea and my scintillating-", her voice was bitter and harsh with pain, "-conversation. What do you want?"

Naruto bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Well, this sounds really stupid, but there's this group of missing-nin called Akatsuki, okay?" She was silent. "And anyway, they're going around collecting jinchuuriki and taking the demons out of them- and this kills them, by the way- to take over the world or something, and Kyuubi- he's the one in me-"

He shut up as she held up a hand. "Kyuubi, the Nine-Tails?" At his mute nod, her lips twisted into a sneer. "No wonder the cat was going berserk earlier. What's he?" She glanced at Gaara.

"Shukaku," Gaara said, apparently feeling that one word was enough to fulfill his word allotment for the day. Yugito made a small noise of interest and waved a hand for Naruto to continue.

"Well, Kyuubi told me that I had to leave Konoha-" he was somehow proud of himself for being able to say the name without his voice breaking, even though his throat hurt whenever he thought about the village he would never see again, "-and collect all the jinchuuriki so we could go to a village in the jungle and hide from Akatsuki there or something." He laughed, high-pitched with nervousness under her piercing gaze, "I guess when you say it like that, it really does sound stupid."

"No, it sounds like the ramblings of a deranged madman," Yugito said. Naruto blinked.

"Well, I'm not deranged. What's your demon?"

Yugito glanced down, rubbing at her fingernails, which had been bitten down so far that they seeped blood. She finally answered in a weary voice,

"The Nekomata, the two-tailed cat."

"What's it do?" She coughed, rubbing at her mouth. Her hand came away smeared with black-tinged blood. "Breathes fire, mostly." Her tone said that the avenue of conversation was closed, locked, and the key thrown into a lake somewhere. "Have you two come all the way from Konoha and Suna in your normal appearances?"

"Well, we didn't exactly have time to go home and change clothes, you know," he snapped, "and I spent the last of my money buying these crappy outfits." Yugito sighed. "Fine. I'll get you two some clothes tomorrow from the ANBU quartermaster." Naruto leaned forward.

"That mean you're coming with us?"

"No."

"Huh? Why not? This village sucks, and it's not like the villagers like you all that much- sorry for saying that, but it is true- and at least with us you're not going to be treated like dirt."

Her pale eyes narrowed, and she bit out each word with crushing finality.

"My mother and my younger brother still live here. And even though they don't want me and would rather see me dead and rotting in the ground, I will not abandon them to their fates. All my money goes to them, to keep them alive. Or did you think my family escaped unscathed from giving birth to the girl who would become a demon?"

Naruto glanced over his shoulder at Gaara, who met his gaze helplessly, shoulders twitching in a shrug. 'There is nothing we can do,' his eyes seemed to say.

Yugito's voice flattened, became tired. "I would only slow you down," she said. "After a seal reinforcing, I'm useless for a week."

"But we can deal with that," he said, leaning forward, hands palm-up, trying to make her see-

But she only shook her head and said tonelessly, "I will get you both better clothing, masks, and as many weapons and rations as I can requisition, but that is all I will do."

Naruto fell back against the wall, teeth grinding in frustration. Yugito lay down, wincing with every movement, and pulled the sheets over her.

"There's an empty apartment two floors up," she said, her voice raspy and slurred with exhaustion, "You can sleep there." And then she reached for the string attached to the light switch, and turned the flickering bulb off.


Gaara watched Naruto pace back and forth across the empty apartment, bare feet making almost no sound against the worn carpet. The apartment was in even worse condition than Nii's; there was black mold in the corners, water damage on the ceiling, and the tiles above the kitchen were cracked and falling out.

The other genin had been ranting about Nii's refusal to come with them without cease for the past hour, hands waving in the air and voice getting hoarser with each word. He had listened at first, but as Naruto's complaints had degenerated into repetitious whining, he stopped, looking out the window instead at the darkening night.

Naruto finally ran out of energy and sat down, scowling at the floor. "Hey, Gaara, you have any ideas?" Gaara looked away from the window and back at Naruto.

"We could contact the family. It appears that her misplaced love for them is all that holds her here; if they find some way to secure an alternate source of income, there will be nothing binding her here, and she can come with us."

"Okay, but-" he held up a hand, forestalling Naruto's imminent objections,

"Alternatively, we could infiltrate the Raikage's office, defeat him and his guards in combat, and extract a promise from the Raikage, in writing, to provide and care for Nii's family until the family line is destroyed."

"Gaara, you're talking about going up against a Kage! Do you have any idea how hard we'd get our asses kicked?!"

Gaara stared into Naruto's eyes, holding his attention as he said,

"You are a jinchuuriki, Naruto. Not only that, you are jinchuuriki to the most powerful creature that has ever walked the continent. The Nine-Tail's chakra is limitless. As long as you are in no physical danger of unconsciousness, you can utilize that chakra, and with enough of it, you can defeat him. I think-" he took a breath, "that it is time you stop avoiding the gift that has been given to you, and start using it instead."

Naruto's mouth opened and closed several times. He seemed too stunned to speak, finally settling for, "But how am I supposed to keep him from hitting me and blowing me up?"

Gaara flexed his hand, feeling the millions of grains of sand on his skin grate against each other.

"I will take out the guards, destroy the locks, and cover the windows to prevent reinforcements arriving before we can take out the Kage."

Naruto moved closer, his eyes shining at the prospect of combat. "And what'll I be doing?"

"Fighting the Kage. Once I am done, we will join forces against the Kage. Of course, that method is loud, obnoxious, and will no doubt broadcast our presence here to everyone on the continent, so I would prefer to talk to Nii's family first."

Naruto looked out the window, grinned, and bounced to his feet. "It's still light outside- well, kind of- so we can go now!" He grabbed Gaara by the wrist and hauled him upright, opening the door with his other hand. Gaara tried to dig his heels in- he didn't want to be dragged anywhere- but failed, forced to give in to Naruto's overwhelming excitement.

"I shouldn't have gone with you," he muttered as Naruto pulled him out of the room and down the stairs.


Nii's family lived in a ramshackle house on the edge of Kumogakure, near the white walls and the stream that encircled the village, with a carefully tended front garden and a roof with holes. Getting inside the high, menacing fence had been exceedingly difficult in the first place; Gaara had been forced to just foul the lock up completely with his sand just to get them in. Naruto finally let go of Gaara's hand and went to the door, knocking. There was the sound of several locks and a few chains being undone before the door cracked open a little and a tired eye squinted from the musty gloom within the house.

"What do you want?" The voice was familiar; it was Nii's mother.

"Can we talk to you about your daughter?" Naruto said, sounding- for once- like a well-mannered civilian. The pale blue eye- so much like Nii's- narrowed, and the door opened a bit further, exposing her face, lined from years of stress.

"Why?"

"We want to take her from the village," Naruto said. Gaara wanted to smash Naruto over the head with a rock at his ridiculous honesty. As it was, he settled for jabbing him in the back. Naruto followed that up with, "We're jinchuuriki, and we want to give her some sort of a better life. Can we come in?" The lone eye blinked, and Nii's mother reached up and undid the last three chains, opening the door wide.

Naruto stepped over the threshold, and Gaara followed, looking around as much as he could without being noticed. The house was as cold as Nii's apartment had been, but more lived-in in appearance; there were faded textiles covering the splintered chairs and a few wall scrolls hanging on the peeling wallpaper. A few children's toys were scattered about the floor, scarcely-used; most had a coating of dust a few inches thick on them, as if no one had touched them or moved them for years.

The air was full of dust, and an old, black-and-white television set played softly from a corner. All of the old pictures, hanging in warped frames, had been cut and pasted together to remove Nii, leaving gaps in the photographs.

"Have a seat," the woman said, gesturing at the chairs in the living room, before she went into the kitchen. There was the sound of dishes clattering, a refrigerator opening, and a child's voice. Then the woman came back, a plate of pickled vegetables in one hand and her son on her hip.

The child was sickly and pale in appearance, his dark eyes too large for his face, and he stared at them listlessly, without any interest as to the strange people who had invaded his home. Gaara wondered what was wrong with him, what sort of unspecified illness had produced the translucent quality of his skin and the bruising around his eyes, but did not ask, watching the woman hitch the child further up her hip.

She put the plate between them and sat on one of the creaking chairs, watching Naruto eat.

"What are your names?"

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and he's Gaara," Naruto said brightly, finishing off the plate in record time. "What's the little guy's name?"

"Daichi," she said. "I am Hiroko."

"Great to meet you," Naruto said. Daichi made a soft sound and Hiroko comforted him, brushing his sparse hair with her fingers. The radiator in the corner hummed softly, doing nothing to heat the small room. Hiroko pulled Daichi closer to her and leaned forward. She had once been beautiful, if Gaara was any judge of such things, but pain and stress had ruined her appearance, bleaching her hair gray and leaving her face gaunt and sagging with resignation.

"What did you mean by taking my daughter away?"

"Well," Naruto scratched his head, "what it sounds like, I guess. We'd take her away from the village to a place in the south that's safer." Hiroko leaned back, shoulders slumping as she let out a sigh.

There was a long pause. The radiator droned on into infinity, and the dust specks danced in the darkening room.

"I'm sorry, Uzumaki-san, but I can't let you do that." She looked down at her son with weary affection. "She supports us, you see; she pays for Daichi to go to a nursery while I work cleaning houses. If she left-" she glanced around at the squalid surroundings, "we would have even less than we do now."

"Umm…" Naruto said, looking around at the edited pictures, "why did you cut her out of all your photos?" Hiroko's face froze into a mask of pain. Daichi whimpered.

"I couldn't bear to look at her," Hiroko said in a tiny voice, each word cracking like ice in spring, "I couldn't look at what my daughter- my first child, my little girl- had become. She killed my husband, don't you see?"

"The Nekomata is the Nekomata," Naruto said earnestly, leaning forward as if to force his philosophy into her, "but Yugito's still herself."

"No!" Hiroko snarled, "No, she's not. I looked at her- after Kensuke tore her from my arms and held her down inside that tower and forced that demon inside of her- and she had the blood of my husband, Kensuke, all over her little hands. The demon took her over, and killed the ones who sealed it." Her voice shuddered. "They gave her back to me, just pushed her into my arms, with her neck still seeping ink, and said 'This is your daughter. She is jinchuuriki. Thank you, ma'am, for making this sacrifice for Kumogakure.' And her eyes- her blue eyes, so beautiful- they were black. They were black, and when I looked deep enough, I could see the demon, see how much it hated us, and I knew-"

Her voice broke,

"I could never love her the same way again." She was dry-eyed, as if all the tears for the loss of her daughter had been shed long ago, as she said, "I lost my daughter, and I lost my husband. I had to stand there as the Raikage gave me this little-" her smile was watery, sketching a box the size of a toddler's hand with her finger, "-pine box and told me that all that was left of Kensuke was in there, that they had to scour the room just to- just to find enough of him to bury."

Daichi keened softly. "And Yugito- my little Yugito-chan- didn't even remember that she killed her father. Didn't know what she was. And sometimes at night, she would crawl into my bed, and curl up beside me like she used to, and I could still see the demon in her eyes." Hiroko's head fell forward, as she said, with the air of someone who had tried to explain this to herself a thousand times before,

"I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't sit at the kitchen table with her and watch this mockery of my daughter laugh, couldn't look at her hurt eyes, couldn't listen to her crying because the other children wouldn't play with her, couldn't listen to her whispering in my ear at night, 'Why don't you love me anymore, mama?' because she wasn't my daughter. She would never be my daughter again.

They took her at my request, two months after she became jinchuuriki, and moved her into an apartment on the far side of town." Hiroko stroked Daichi's back. "And I couldn't escape her, even then, even now." Hiroko's voice was soft now, drained of all emotion. "I tried to cut her out of my life. I destroyed her belongings. I removed her from all the photographs. I burned her drawings. And she still wouldn't go away; I kept finding more photos of her, more of her toys stashed in every nook and cranny, as if she was punishing me for my failure to love her."

Hiroko raised her head and stared at them with burning eyes. "I'm not an evil woman, Uzumaki-san. I'm not bad, or cruel, or mean. I just- I just can't forget. And I've tried- god, I've tried- to forgive her, to love her again, but I can't. And even though I abandoned my daughter, the only good thing I had on this earth, don't I-" her voice became shrill, "don't I deserve forgiveness?"

She let Daichi fall, and crumpled in on herself like a used piece of paper, her face hidden in her thin hands, her shoulders shaking inside her blouse. Daichi was silent, his sad little face blank, his dark eyes empty.

He stood, pulling Naruto with him. There was nothing more they could do here.

And they left Hiroko Nii there, weeping in the little ramshackle house on the edge of the village, haunted by a husband that killed a daughter, a daughter that killed a husband, and a demon that had slain her world.

A victim of the tragedy that was the jinchuuriki, an endless circle of pain that stretched out to enfold the world.


Annotations

'...an endless circle of pain that stretched out to enfold the world.' - An allusion to the poem The Diameter of the Bomb by Yehuda Amichai.