~ Part 9 ~

Song of War, Song of Loss


~.~.~

A mass of black clouds lumbered across the sky, blanketing the stars and blotting out the moon. The young Kazekage looked up and sighed softly through his nose. There went their only source of light.

They've been stalling, biding their time. For the past day they retreated from the slowly advancing enemy. Now that night had fallen it had become a standstill, neither side making a move. Gaara glanced at the elder Kage beside him. The Tsuchikage, Oonoki, was a very short man with a big reddened nose that briefly reminded him of one of Katy's stories about a reindeer with a glowing red nose. He brushed the thought aside and continued to wait apprehensively – though he hid it well.

This was Gaara's first war. He knew war was coming, knew it would be upon them someday. Akatsuki had shaken the shinobi world, threw it into a state of chaos. That organization had captured every tailed beast except Naruto's Kyuubi and the Hidden Cloud's Hachibi. Now a war was being fought and the Shinobi Alliance, the combination of all the Hidden Villages' forces, had to keep the last two remaining bijuu from the clutches of Akatsuki.

The Tsuchikage had experienced war before, had lived through it. When he and Gaara first met at the Summit Meeting, they almost instantly clashed. The elder looked down on the youth, belittling and mocking him, and the youth challenged the elder's beliefs, calling them old-fashioned and immoral. When did you forsake yourselves? Gaara had asked. His words that day seemed to hit the Tsuchikage. Now they stood on mutual ground, here to support the other and fight for their world. The young Kage would rely on the older's direction, his experience. When they would attack, Gaara would let Oonoki decide.

It was too risky to make a move in the dark when they could barely see. They waited for the sun.

Gaara looked out over the desert terrain – over the rock formations and gulches where his troops hid themselves, ever patiently waiting for the signal to attack. But it was certain the two Kages would have to engage the enemy first. Each was a former Kage, brought back from the dead with an accursed soul-binding jutsu. His division of the Shinobi Alliance was made up of long-range fighters, which was good for keeping powerful foes such as the former Kages at bay. But up close, his ninja might as well be civilians before the Kages. Many of them would be slaughtered.

Using the sensor sand and the Third Eye earlier, Gaara was able to see who and what they were up against. There were four of them. Four extremely powerful Kage-level shinobi. And one of them was his father. Gaara had glared darkly and his heart had shuddered. He hadn't had to face that man since he was a boy. He used to fear his father, hate him. But now…

It didn't matter. When dawn came, he'd have to face his father one more time.

Gaara looked up to the sky again. The moon, nearly full, shined through cracks in the clouds and the red haired ninja was reminded of that lunatic's Eye of the Moon plan. If that happened, if Akatsuki captured Naruto… it would be the end of everything. They would all be slaves to a never-ending genjutsu.

Steeling himself, the young Kage prepared for the dawn and for the fight that would come with it.

Off in the distance, far away, carried on the breath of the wind, he thought he heard the high whistle of a screaming blizzard.


~.~.~

"We cannot move back more than this," said Oonoki, and Gaara knew the time had come.

The tsunami of sand he brought forth nearly encompassed the entire desert before him. It crashed down short if its target, however, sliding to a stop at his father's feet. Gold dust, the famed ability of the Forth Kazekage, glittered in the Fifth's sand. It was how the father used to stop the son's rampages, and it still worked… to an extent.

Hands of sand sprung up, grabbing the legs of the four Kage of old. Oonoki lent his strength then, swooping down from above and delivering a Jinton. But his former teacher, the Second Tsuchikage, sent one of his own and the two energies clashed – swallowing a portion of the land before canceling each other out.

Gaara's father undid the sand that rooted them.

He confronted his father. He hardened his mask, anticipating fighting the man that haunted his nightmares. And that was what he got. The words that were spoken were few and clipped.

"Where's Shukaku, Gaara?"

"Gone. I'm no longer the jinchuuriki you created."

"How is that possible?!"

Gaara briefly explained how Akatsuki captured him, how his friends came to his rescue, how Lady Chiyo sacrificed her life for his…

"That old Chiyo would do such a thing?" His father was astonished. "And your… friends? You of all people have friends?!"

He expected such a reaction. The last time his father saw him he was an angry, bitter Genin who hated everyone and everything. His father was not there to see him change, to witness him become the man he was today.

"You tried to have me killed many times, and every single time I grew to hate and fear you… But now, I do not hate you. I even understand what you were trying to do…" He looked his father square in the eye, and said with almost a hint of pride, "I am Kazekage now. It is the duty of a leader to protect the village and eradicate any threat to his home."

His father looked as if he was punched in the gut. "You… you are Kazekage…?"

"That's not all!" Oonoki chimed in. "He's a commander general of the Joint Shinobi Army. He calls himself Kage at his young age, but even so all the other Kages respect his power."

"So I was right," said Muu, Oonoki's former teacher. "All the chakra types merging together. To think the shinobi have merged forces…"

Gaara and his father locked eyes as the others said their piece on the situation. Memories sped beneath the surface of both men, each different, each important in their own right. The father remembered the way he turned his youngest into an experiment, forfeiting his wife's life in the process. The son remembers a cruel and uncaring parent, yet he also remembers – or rather yearns for- the father that could have been. If only he understood sooner his father's struggles, perhaps he could have reached out to him, come to an agreement…

But it was not to be. It was far too late for that.

"This Resurrection Jutsu," said his father, "Perhaps there is some value in it after all. I will determine your worth once more, this time by my own hands."

The battle truly began.

Sand and gold dust surged, spread like wings of eagles and rained down, intertwined and glimmering, specks shimmering in the air. Father and son never broke eye contact, even as Oonoki gave the command for the shinobi unit to charge. They stampeded forward into the fray. The revived Mizukage and Raikage rushed to meet them while the two Tsuchikage fought it out. Hail of sand fell upon them, slowing them. Gaara quickly lifted his sand above the gold dust. The resulting sand that restrained the three Kage took on the appearance of a woman with short hair. Gold dust flew down like a spear towards Gaara, but as always the sand protected him – even without his consent.

After that, Gaara wasn't sure what broke his father's expression. But the man crumbled and words were said that Gaara never thought he'd hear.

"You've truly grown, Gaara. It seems you were right, Karura… It appears I didn't have an eye for value after all…"

"What… are you talking about?" The son is startled by the turn in the father.

"The sand will always protect you. It's not Shukaku's strength that you wield… but your mother, Karura's."

Completely unexpected facts were thrown from his father's dark and secretive mind into the light of truth.

It was all a lie.

Gaara's mother loved him. His uncle loved him. Yashamaru lied under orders from the Fourth Kazekage – to see if the young Gaara could keep Shukaku under control when in extreme distress. They had originally planned to kill his friend, the little brunette that he adored. But she had disappeared – and Gaara silently thanked Calypso, the spirit that lured his Katherine away. Thanks to it he had her for longer than he would have.

Everything Yashamaru had said before the assassination attempt – about his sister loving Gaara and her will being in the sand that would always protect him… that was the truth. Not the lies that were spilled over it in the gleam of the bleeding full moon, when his uncle tried to take his life. His mother, with her dying breath, declared she would always protect him.

And now, here, his father was trying to make what he could right. The son wept – for his mother, for his father, for his siblings, for his friend… for the family that could've been.

"Mother was definitely amazing," he said wiping his eyes. "But this is the first time you've ever given me 'medicine', father."

The father knew in that moment, with amazement, that he was forgiven, and a tear slipped down his face.

He was sealed away, and he went peacefully, knowing that his village and his people... were in the capable hands of his son.


~.~.~

The war raged on. Gaara fought many strong foes alongside Oonoki and their people. Funny, how all of them – the Sand, Stone, Leaf, Mist, and Cloud – had become "theirs." There was a solidarity that had never been experienced before in all the shinobi nations.

Naruto had escaped his safe haven, to Gaara's chagrin, but he soon learned it was inevitable and necessary. He fought together with the blond for the first time and, with help from Oonoki, sealed away the Tsuchikage.

Looking back it was a blur. They went from one battlefield to another. They fought the Second Mizukage. His oily water techniques had the sand turned to sludge, dripping and crumbling apart. With Oonoki's expertise and, surprisingly, his father's aid in the form of leftover gold dust, Gaara was able to overcome the water tyrant. The next thing the young Kazekage knew, Madara was standing before them.

"Impossible," Oonoki hissed. "He's dead. Look carefully at his eyes!"

They looked and found him to be a part of the Resurrection Jutsu. As it turned out the masked man claiming to be Madara was someone else entirely. They'd been fooled.

Not that it mattered; their objective was the same. Madara and the masked man both wanted the world enslaved in eternal genjutsu. The Shinobi Alliance would fight till the last for a free world. However Madara was not called a legendary shinobi for no reason, and the damned man (if he could still be called that) summoned a meteor – or something. Gaara wasn't sure how he did it. He and Oonoki tried to slow it, but another fell right on top of it. They took great casualties.

The Five Kage assembled.

Naruto – who happened to be only a Shadow Clone of himself – dispersed back to the original body, which was in pursuit of the masked man. The Kage were confident in their power to stop Madara.

And at first it seemed they would win. They gave Naruto their word. Gaara gave his word. They fought, synchronized to the last moments; combined in offense and defense. But ultimately their opponent was too great. His Mangekyō Sharingan was like no other.

The last thing Gaara remembered was Oonoki shouting for them not to give up, whilst multiple Susanoo surrounded them. Then a giant Susanoo.

Then darkness.

He thought he heard, in the back of his mind, in his dreams maybe, that strange sound again. The high whistling screech of a blizzard. It was far away, but it kept sounding and each time it got nearer, closer, until it was right on top of him. Then he felt himself floating, and he thought maybe he'd died again. He silently apologized to Chiyo; her gift did not last long with him.

Coolness washed over his body, and then cerulean light flashed around him like lightning in the darkness. Flashes of blinding cerulean light in dark rolling clouds. He drifted in that space and, somewhere, he thought he could hear a woman humming. It was a soft, sad song. A song of grief, of loss, and finally the melancholy acceptance of that loss. One he never heard before, yet familiar. It echoed all around him.

Cerulean waters flowed softly, entwined with his body. The fluid seemed familiar somehow, and he felt like he was being held in someone's arms.

When he opened his eyes he was staring into twin full moons on a backdrop of midnight blue.

He looked into Calypso's eyes.

That was not the spirit's original name, and for a split second he wondered what its name really was, where it really came from. It was not always with his Katherine. No, it found her that night in the desert storm when they were little and had lost each other.

It spoke no words. Gaara sat up, taking in its form. It was the shape of a doe, as it had been before, though larger than a horse this time around. But it was different in another way. Before it was a ghost, a spirit that could not be touched nor touch. Now it appeared solid. It was made up of water, ice, and snow all weaved together in makeshift bones, muscle tissue, and flesh. It still held that same cerulean glow to it though.

He thought to his theory and how it was proven right. It did revive after its "host' was killed, just as a tailed beast did.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again, Calypso," he rasped. "Or should I call you Gelel?"


~.~.~

A/N: I've been stuck in a rut and finally dug myself out. So what do you think? Like the progress? There will be much more next chapter, I assure you.