Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 9: Sacrifices Are Always Required in the Name of Glorious Pursuits (word count: 622)
Due to the wartime the roads were heavily patrolled so, for the most, part they kept to the wilds. They lived off the land and for the first two weeks after the tragedy Gaara allowed Kokuo free reign while he struggled with the changes.
A decade of learning care for Mei, Chieko and Shiori as family, months of quiet, understated love for Nori⦠and his strongest ties had been suddenly, brutally and permanently severed. To cope with the pain, Gaara slowly locked his emotions away.
As a Kage, he had sent many of his own loyal men to their deaths when the missions had exceeded their parameters; as a Regimental Leader during the Fourth Shinobi War, his decisions had affected the lives of thousands. Even as a simple shinobi, death was a constant but vengeance could and would occasionally be sought, when one was aware of the identity of the murderers.
But his siblings had still been alive; Naruto, his dearest friend, and Matsuri, his loyal apprentice, had still been alive. None of the deaths had been personal. He had felt the burden of leadership but not the anguish of true loss.
In this case however, he had been robbed of his retribution when the Jashinists had fallen on the same night, victims of their own foolishness. There was no sense of justice, not when 'victory' tasted of ashes, failure and defeat.
And so he buried the tender feelings with memories of happier times and tried to adapt to the changes within himself.
The physical differences were minor: increased energy and vitality, white hair and blue eyes as opposed to the previous black. In comparison, the mental changes were more disturbing and harder to adjust to.
The first time they let a person die - out of disinterest and not carelessness or spite -, Gaara realised their altered nature. They had become less compassionate, more dismissive of human lives. Sharing a body and sensing each-other's thoughts had led to consonant goals and desires but a significant part of their individual personalities had also leaked across the bond.
It had become difficult to distinguish between the originator of one thought or another, to determine the initiator of a response. In truth, it was becoming increasingly hard to simply see themselves as separate beings but Gaara privately vowed to draw a line at labeling human lives as insignificant or worthless - he had done so once, in his younger years, when Shukaku still rasped lies in his ear, and would never do so again.
After the shrine's destruction they had decided not to heed Ohnoki's summons. Gaara had already felt conflicted about returning to Iwa in order to fight against Suna and Konoha shinobi. Kokuo took advantage of his indecision to persuade his former warden to act according to his wishes.
Slowly, they traveled east.
Kokuo saw the entire ordeal as a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he was bound to a human even tighter than before. On the other, he was closer to freedom than he had been in decades.
While his brothers still languished in their prisons, he roamed the wilds. He ran through straits and across mountain peaks, marveling at how impressive the heights appeared from the vantage point of a tiny mortal. He walked through forests and pastures, he bathed in cold mountain creeks and fed on the earth's bounty and throughout it all, he basked in the ability to perceive the world with his own senses.
AN: Yep, Kokuo's a bit selfish and uncaring. ...But after half a century of imprisonment, he's entitled to it. :)
AN2: I'm trying to stick to the one-update-every-day thing that I've got going, but I've just received a beta pass for ESO this weekend so the next couple of updates might be a bit late. On the plus side, if things go according to plan, the next chapter's going to have another lemon! :D
