Gaara was still in his office when Naruto was announced in, about midnight. He motioned his friend to a chair.
Naruto said and informed him of the earlier talk with the old man. "And now… I'm not sure what to do." He finished, lamely.
Gaara sat with his chin on his hands, and looked calmly at him.
"You're afraid." It wasn't a question.
Naruto nodded. "I wanted to talk to someone who is already a kage. Someone who…" he paused, trying to put his feelings into words.
"You think because I'm Kazekage I don't choose things purely for myself ever, that I always consider the whole picture before acting on my interests."
"Yeah."
Gaara sighed.
"Naruto, if I did that, I would be an even bigger moron than you are." He raised a hand as Naruto started to protest.
He stood up and started pacing around the room. "My father… all he ever did was put the village first, and his own feelings later. He always wanted to protect it, whatever the personal cost to him. So, when the time came to stick Shukaku inside a Jinchuuriki, he didn't even flinch, and chose his own son. Much like your father did, despite the difference in reasons each had."
He took a long look at Naruto. "You knew what it was like for me when we were kids, Naruto, and you helped me with that. I think it's time I repay the favor. Come with me." He opened a hidden door, leading to a staircase. Naruto followed. The path led to a tunnel. As they followed, Naruto wondered what was going on, but kept his mouth shut. The tunnel ended in a sealed door. Gaara deactivated the seal and they went in. "Be quiet." He whispered.
Naruto followed him into a small room. The sand nin took off his kazekage robes and hanged them in a hook after resealing the door. He then whispered something in a small radio device, then detached it from his clothes and hung it with the robes.
He then opened the other door, and they stepped into a half-lit playroom, with cushions and toys everywhere. Naruto's eyes widened at the utter mess as he followed Gaara further into the house – for it was clearly that – while carefully avoiding a myriad of half-finished puzzles and building-block copies of Suna buildings.
They entered a kitchen upstairs, and Gaara motioned him to a chair by the simple table, after turning on a soft light over the sink. "Wait here for a minute."
Naruto took his seat and observed the surroundings. The kitchen was larger than the one on his own house back in Konoha, with room for a full table and three chairs. On the other end of it were two high baby chairs. The refrigerator was covered with notes, take-out magnets, and on the opposite wall there was a small picture frame. Naruto was coming closer to get a look when Gaara returned, with a sleepy-looking and very beautiful woman in her early twenties at his side.
"Oh. Hajimimashite." He greeted her.
"Naruto, Mina." Gaara introduced. The blue-haired woman raised a hand to him, and Naruto took it, feeling acutely aware of her sharp look upon him. Her handshake was a firm one, too.
"Hm." She yawned, and took a seat, crossing her legs. Gaara kissed her lips and went to the sink, starting to fix them some tea. "Coffee for me", the woman said, fashioning her hair into a bun and sticking a pencil from the table to hold it up.
Naruto's jaw dropped at the scene.
"Ah, uhm, er…" he mumbled, blushing.
"Yes, we are." Mina looked at him with deep, dark violet eyes. "Gaara tells me you're having trouble separating your public and private lives."
Naruto nodded, dumbfounded. "Uh, does anyone else, er, know about you?" He asked, blushing.
"Only immediate family and Anbu." Gaara mentioned.
"Oh, duh. Safety issues, of course." Naruto said.
Mina snorted. "Like we need them for protection." Gaara smirked at that. "No, Anbu knows because Suna Anbu is my immediate family" she continued.
"But… then why hide from everyone else?" Naruto asked with a confused face.
Gaara poured tea for them, and handed his wife her coffee, sitting next to her and throwing his arm over her shoulders.
"Because if we didn't, our life would be crap." Mina said. "This way is much easier to lead a normal life, and raise our kids without interference."
"But how do you manage it?" Naruto still felt confused.
Gaara sighed. "Here's how it works. Most of kage work is paperwork, you probably know that, right?"
Naruto nodded.
"So, I leave a copy doing the paperwork and other stuff for me with Temari and Kankuro, and when something important happens, they send me a messenger and I go back. We use a henge so we aren't recognized, and with that we can live just like a civilian family most of the time."
"But, but… why would you want to live like civilians?"
Mina rolled her eyes and Gaara chuckled.
"Because, Naruto, protocol is a bitch, and civilian life is actually damn good. When we are here, we can just walk around the village and be what we want to be, not what we have to be. We can haggle with vendors, we can take our kids to the park – " Mina said.
"We can complain about the government, gossip and laugh at the Kazekage in front of everyone…" Gaara interrupted, snickering.
Naruto gaped at that.
"Yeah, listen to the man himself, like he does nothing of the sort… It was YOU who threw that tomato on my uncle when he announced the village would be closed off for trade, before you left for the war." Mina smirked at Gaara and poked at his waist.
"But most of all, we do it because we want to. When we decided to be together, we realized that there was a side of life we wanted to live for ourselves and no one else, that even though we love Suna, we won't give it more than our work demands we do." Gaara said. They were serious now.
"You see, Naruto, what I've come to understand best in my life is that you can't convince people to stop their lives and follow your orders if you yourself don't have a life to do the same. If I don't have a life that is MINE, apart from being the Kazekage, how can I understand and work with all the reasons other people might have not to obey my bidding? How can I understand a mother's need to nurse her sick child instead of being part of my entourage when I need to visit another country? Or that I need to compensate my ninja for the time and effort, and many times their lives, that I called for use in the village's name? If I give Suna everything, I will end up demanding everything from everyone around me, and that will make me end up like my father."
"I… I never thought of it like that." Naruto felt humbled by how much Gaara had grown as a person.
"Naruto, if you love your daughter, if you want to be a parent to her, you have to keep them both despite what might happen to Konoha in the future, or what other people think of them, or of you for keeping them. You have to love them for yourself, no matter what, and let them be free. Just as they love you." Gaara finished.
Naruto thought about it for a while. It wasn't anything he was used to. His love with Sasuke was almost like it, but he had always felt the need to be needed, and he knew Sasuke needed him, as much as he loved him. He knew they didn't need him, only want him as their father. However, Naruto loved his daughter, and he knew that Kurama was right and he would easily love her… twin. He had seen the sacrifice the boy had done to help others, and that resonated within himself. Besides, it wasn't like he didn't have a soft spot for tragic figures.
"Thank you." He said, and finished his tea. "I think… I think I'm ready to go back."
"Not before you see our kids." Mina gave him a huge proud grin.
They went into a quiet room with a bed and a large cradle. In the bed was a four year-old red-headed boy, sprawled on his back and hugging a plush Shukaku, and on the cradle there were two small babies with matching blue hair.
'Awwwwwwwwwwww they have twins…' Naruto thought, and gave them a huge smile. They quietly made their way back into the playroom.
"Shuuko is our oldest, Chieko and Chiemi are our babies." Mina said.
"We think he has a talent for architecture." Gaara smiled proudly. "Those are all his." He pointed at the block buildings.
Later on, when they were back in the Kazekage's office, Naruto looked at Gaara sideways.
"What?" the Kazekage asked.
"Nothing" Naruto blushed. "Never thought you'd be, er… an early father."
Gaara snickered. "Life's too short, Naruto."
Sasuke was already sleeping when he got in the bedroom, making as little noise as he could as he sealed the door again.
"I can hear you, dobe, you don't have to pretend to be quiet." Sasuke muttered from the bed.
Naruto took his clothes off and sighed as he went under the sheets.
Sasuke turned to him, and he almost lost himself in the depth of those black eyes.
"Sasuke… I'm…" he started, and swallowed dry when he closed his eyes.
"All my life… all I've done…" he started again.
"Was for Konoha." Sasuke finished for him, in a soft voice.
"Yeah."
Sasuke sighed. 'Oh, shit, dobe…' he thought.
"But…"
He listened, his heart almost missing a beat.
"After you and me… and Ishoo-chan… I… I can't give all of me to Konoha anymore." Naruto pulled his lover into an embrace. "I found myself analyzing the situation and thinking that this boy… her… her other self, is so different, and that no one will understand how the Hokage can go out on a diplomatic mission and come back with a child from outside the village, and how will everyone react when they know everything, and what will Tsunade baa-chan say, and what everyone will think when they're grown up and decide to go fight Swamp being the Hokage's children, and that Konoha would end up being involved, and all the repercussions…"
Sasuke said nothing, but hugged him back harder.
"And then I talked to Gaara, and he told me something that is true. I can't… I can't be Hokage if I don't ever do anything for myself, for my own selfish reasons, Sasuke. I can't lead free people if I'm a slave to them. If I let them go… I'll be Hokage and we will be fine, but I'll have given up on being a father, on all this happiness we've had since we had Ishoo-chan with us, and it would be like giving you up, giving what we have up. I… can't do that. Not even for Konoha." Naruto sighed. "So, I guess we'll have to get another bed into Ishoo's roommmmph"
Sasuke threw him on his back and straddled him before he could finish the last words. He wasted no time speaking, and bombarded Naruto with kisses instead.
They found the children awake and studying scrolls with Kabuto in the morning on Amachi's bed. The boy was sitting up propped by pillows, and Ishoo was lying on her belly at the bottom of the bed, with her head on her hands and her feet up.
"What do you mean? They are the same thing!" Amachi was saying.
"No, you see, his jutsu transfers his soul to the other body, it's not like this." Kabuto tried to explain.
"Yes it is, it's exactly the same seal, the animals are the same." Ishoo said.
"Uh, no, this is crow-wolf-bear-ox-horse-goat; the other is panther-tiger-snake-lamb-deer-mouse." Kabuto said, pointing at the scrolls.
"Aaarrrrgghhhhhhh!" The boy pulled at his fluffy ball of frizzy hair. "That's why we're saying they are THE SAME THING!"
"Oi, maybe we can help?" Naruto said, pulling up a chair next to the bed. He bent down to kiss his daughter and, after a moment of surprise at the boy's expectant look, kissed him also, before sitting down. Sasuke kissed the children and sat down next to him, unfazed.
"We're trying to tell Kabuto-kun that the snake-man's whatchamacallit seal is just a genjutsu, but he doesn't believe us." Ishoo said and gave them an exasperated look.
They looked at her with wide eyes.
Amachi turned the two scrolls so they could read. "See the animals on this drawing, and on this one? They are the same. It's the same spell."
Sasuke frowned. "But there's more to the mind-transfer technique than just the animals, look" he pointed at the corners of the seal. "These are modifiers, they change the nature of – "
"No they don't." The boy interrupted him with a confident voice. "They are memnonic…nmenomic… argh!"
"Mnemonic devices?" Kabuto helped.
"Yeah, they are things you put on the spell so that you don't lose focus from the energy that you are sending from your body to the other. They don't change anything much." The boy answered.
Naruto was still looking at the animals in the two seals, when suddenly he felt things click on his mind.
"Wait! I think I see it!" He raised his hand so nobody would interrupt him. "The animals are the same because there's three meat eaters, then three things that eat vegetables, right?"
"Finally, SOMEONE who understands!" Ishoo sighed and clapped at her father.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto looked at him and opened a wide, smug grin. "Everything. See, it's like them." he pointed at the two children. "Animals that eat meat have a different nature from animals that don't. But all meat-eating animals have the same nature, and all…"
"Herbivores" Kabuto filled in.
"Yeah, herbivores have the same nature too." He grinned at Sasuke again.
Sasuke looked at the children wearily. "Are you seriously telling me that the village idiot is right?" Both children nodded, and he put his hands on his face. "I think I'm gonna regret this, but explain why."
"Kabuto said that genjutsu is when you force somebody into a dream, that the person is stuck inside their head while it lasts, so then you can do whatever you want with them." Ishoo said, and her fathers nodded.
"This spell that the snake-man uses is the same thing, but instead of dreaming, the person just thinks they are the snake-man." Amachi finished.
"It can't be THAT simple." Kabuto said. He looked at the scrolls and back at them. "Can it?"
" Yup. Bodies that were changed by chakra, their brain works with it, and it's branded with the memories that the person has while they are alive. So then, if you touch into their chakra and change that, and make the brain forget who they are, you can make the brain think the memories that the chakra carries are the real ones, and then it thinks you're that person, and the memories mess the body chakra around so it was like in the first body, until the soul can mess up the life in the body enough that it dies, so it can escape." Ishoo said.
"There is a spell back across the ocean that does almost the same thing to make zombies, but it messes with the brain chemistry instead of energy, so it's reversible", Amachi completed.
"That would explain why Orochimaru has to change bodies so often and why the Sharingan negates the effect." Sasuke mused.
"I still can't believe it's so easy to be immortal." Kabuto muttered.
"Oh, he's not. He's been dead a long, loooooooooong time now." Amachi chuckled. "But his soul can't really move on until the memories that make his zombie are put to rest with the chakra, and that can't happen as long as people aren't truly convinced that he's dead."
"I was taught the soul was tied to the chakra." Kabuto said.
"No, the soul is the flesh and blood of the gods. Chakra is just a"
"Face." Ishoo completed what her twin said. "A face of the power that moves everything, but not the whole thing. That's why you don't have chakra in trees and other plants, but you have nature energy in them, which is different too, 'cause it's not on everything like rocks and the air, and the stars, and souls, and gods. The power that moves everything is bigger."
The boy nodded. "The soul is mixed with the body like… like salt in water. You can't get your soul out of your body, and other people can't either, because it's too mixed up. Even when you die, mushi and other dead people have to work together to help separate them. Chakra is easier to pull out or mess up with; you just call up the right mushi and yank on it, or use jutsu."
"But you can pull souls out of bodies." Naruto couldn't help but say it.
The boy looked at him calmly. "Yes. I can. There is no suffering in that." Naruto could see 'Can you say the same about what you do?' written in the boy's look. He lowered his gaze.
"And what now?" Kabuto asked.
"Now," Amachi said "We first let the Babalawo rest. Then, tomorrow, we go catch ourselves a zombie snake."
The old man looked relieved to see the four of them together. Ishoo hugged him, then cut her hand with a kunai she got from Naruto's pouch. Amachi also cut his hand, and held hers. The adults felt a tug on their energies as the bond passed from the girl to the boy.
"Got to go." She poked her twin's ribs, giggling, and left the room.
Naruto went for the door, but the old man held a hand. He stopped.
"Stay, please. This is something you need to know." Monifa said calmly.
Naruto stood besides Sasuke, but couldn't suppress a shiver.
"What's wrong, oyaji, afraid of ghosts?" Amachi smirked at him.
Naruto blushed furiously. "Um…" he swallowed dryly. Sasuke nodded at the boy, a small smile on his face.
Both old man and boy started laughing at Naruto's scared face.
"Are you serious?"Amachi asked, and laughed even harder at Naruto's embarrassed nod. Monifa was holding his belly and guffawing at him.
"What's so funny?" Naruto asked embarrassedly. "Ghosts exist. I've seen them." He gave a furious side look at Sasuke, who was snickering at him.
"Of course they exist, duh. That's no reason to be afraid of them, they're just people like you and me." The boy wiped laughter tears off his face.
"Yeah, but they're dead!" Naruto made a scared face.
"So? The only difference is that they can't kick your ass or kill you. Living people are a lot scarier."
Naruto frowned at the novel idea.
"Oh, I just KNOW whose feet I'll be tickling as soon as I can move around again. Boo!" Monifa told him merrily.
Even Sasuke felt a chill to his stomach at that, but he didn't let on.
"It's a good thing that you can see, though. Maybe I can show you something that will help you stop being afraid." Amachi said, and turned off the lights in the room. He then closed the curtains.
Naruto saw his new son climb on the bed and hug his old master tightly. He and the old man exchanged a few muttered words, and the boy sat beside the old man, cradling his head softly on his shoulder.
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh." The boy put a finger in front of his mouth, and closed his eyes.
The shinobi felt the room temperature get warmer, and the light dim, until they were in complete darkness. He knew Sasuke must have activated his eyes to see. He felt a little queasy as the energy slowed in the room.
After a few minutes, all he could hear was his and Sasuke's breathing. Then he felt a tingling in his eyes, and saw a very tall, very large, dark indistinct figure standing by the bed. The figure reached down and picked the old man reverently. Naruto saw the boy pass his hand under the old man's head, as his body was lifted, and he heard the old man snort and mumble contentedly, making himself more comfortable on the large figure's arms. It bowed to the boy, and then to them. Naruto could not see its face, but he was sure that it leered at him, before it disappeared with a hearty chuckle.
The light came back slowly as the boy's energy fastened. Amachi was still seated at the old man's (now quite dead) head.
"Still afraid of ghosts, oyaji?" The boy smiled to him, and leapt from the bed. Naruto looked at the boy, fumbling for words.
"I… I hope Ero-sennin went like that." He whispered.
"Most people do. Except that in your war a bunch of them got snatched to fight as zombies, but eventually they all got back. Baraa says some of them can hardly wait to see that Madara figure waking up, they're taking bets on who wins the right to be the first to kick his ass."
Naruto couldn't help but snort laughter as he thought of Ero-sennin and his mother betting on who would be the one betting on the Sandaime, and the one on his father.
"Hn. That'll be a very long gauntlet." Sasuke said, and tried to hide a smirk. He could imagine many dead Uchihas bickering on how to make Obito and Itachi leave something of Madara's soul for them to spank.
Author Notes:For Amachi's use of the word "spell" instead of "seal": seals are pretty much written spells, and coming from a different culture, it seemed reasonable to me for him to call them that way.
Oyaji = old man (as you would call your father)