And Darkness Prevails

Chapter Eleven – Snowball Effect

It had been a day, and Naruto was still unconscious. Gaara was getting more and more nervous about the situation on the whole; he kept bouncing back and forth between thinking that he should just let Naruto die, to wanting Naruto to live, to not caring, and then starting the cycle all over again.

His cycle was generally to stare at him for five minutes straight, leave for a half hour, and then return to the room.

What he didn't know was that Naruto had been awake for the past three cycles, talking to the Kyuubi and doing his best to ignore Gaara.

'Kyuubi, what should I do? He wants to know how I know about him…'

"I've been thinking about it. When you're mentally prepared, tell him you're him that you're not going to say anything unless he makes a deal with you."

'… I thought we were friends.'

"We're not."

'Well. I thought you didn't want me dead, at the very least,' Naruto was almost hurt by the blatant rejection that the Kyuubi dealt out – only almost, because it hadn't changed from the first time he had spoken to the Kyuubi.

"I don't want you dead. But the Ichibi needs information from us… and to do that, he's going to keep Gaara from killing you, no matter what you say. Just… don't insult his mother."

'Insult his mother?'

"Look, trust me, I knew Ichibi way back in the day. His mom abandoned him when he was little or something, so you can bet your ass that he'd give his host the same kind of mother complex."

''Kay… I'll talk to him next time he comes in, then.'

Next time turned out to be five minutes from that time. After a few seconds of Gaara's hard stare, Naruto slowly blinked his eyes open, as if he was just waking up.

"What… Gaara?" he asked, rubbing at his eyes. "Are you already hungry again? I'm getting kind of hungry, so if you could…"

"Shut up," Gaara spat out the command with such force that Naruto was almost worried. There was a second of tense silence, and then Gaara began talking again. "What do you know about the Ichibi?"

"I…" Naruto coughed a little. "Not much. Just that it's a demon, and you're its container."

"… How did you know about the Ichibi?"

Naruto shook his head slowly. "I can't answer."

In a flash of movement that Naruto's eyes couldn't quite follow, Gaara had leapt onto the bed. He grabbed Naruto around the throat with his slightly clawed hand, eyes blazing with an inner fire that Naruto felt could scorch him.

"And why not?"

"Because," Naruto choked, "I can't… breathe." Gaara released his grip, but kept the intense stare. "That's much better," Naruto said, nodding slightly. He grabbed the glass of lukewarm water off of the nightstand beside him, gulped a good deal of it down, and then let out a breath.

"I'm waiting," Gaara was grinding his teeth.

"Tell you what…" Naruto said, looking at the wall.

'Here we go! Now, just ask him for painless feedings and to be healed after them. Permanently. That way, we can conserve my chakra, and bust out of here sooner. All this healing is seriously draining our reserve.'

"I'll make you a deal. If you tell me more about you and the Ichibi… and I don't mean just how you got him, I mean how you talk to each other, how often he controls you, everything like that, I'll tell you how I know."

Gaara glared at him darkly. "Tell you what. You tell me how you know about the Ichibi, and I'll… Well, I'll make your death painless. Relatively," Gaara let out a low growl. "Or we can do it my way. The fun way. The way that gets your blood all over the room, and makes you scream like your brain is being ripped out of your head."

"I'd rather die," Naruto stated simply. "I can handle the pain; I can handle the bleeding. But what I can't handle is not knowing why you're such a psycho."

'Naruto…' the Kyuubi growled in his disapproving tone. It was rare for the Kyuubi to speak at all in front of Gaara, but the Kyuubi was so annoyed the fact that Naruto had ignored his advice for the first time that he was forgoing his usual reserved attitude.

Gaara's eyes intensified, if that was possible at all. Naruto could practically feel the hatred radiating from the red-headed boy, the heat in his gaze almost as damning as Hellfire. But Naruto stayed firm in the strained silence. Finally, Gaara's eyes seemed to soften, as if someone was calming him down.

They got softer and softer, until he appeared nearly brain-dead. Finally, he whispered, "Yes, Mother, I understand…" and pulled a knife out of one of his pockets. He slicked through his palm before grabbing Naruto's hand roughly and doing the same.

Gaara then pressed the two palms together and began channeling chakra through his hand and into Naruto's. It felt tingly at first, but then Naruto felt like he was getting pulled out to sea, as if a tide was dragging him out into the abyss.

And then his consciousness was pulled into Gaara's mind.


"So, I got really annoyed with him, and Itachi and Sasori had to keep me from practically killing the guy… They would have let me, since he'd insulted me so horribly, if he wasn't Sasori's damn eternal victim… Hey, Shino, are you listening?"

Shino was in hell. He was frustrated at a guy who couldn't pick up any of the signals he was sending out. Instead of leaving him the hell alone, he was prattling on about some drama that had occurred a century ago.

"Yes, the guy from the Mist decided to attack you with some kind of sword, and…"

"Shino, I told you about that yesterday," Kankarou's eyes narrowed. Shino let out a sigh of relief. Maybe he was finally getting somewhere. The worst part about everything was that Shino couldn't stop listening. Some of the stories were truly amusing or interesting, while others were just annoying… but Shino, no matter who was speaking to him, had been trained to listen with utmost attentiveness.

That trait had its pros and cons, just like any other trait. For instance, because he was constantly listening, he had become very observant, and knew the most miniscule of details of everyone around him. But, on the other hand, those very skills were what had gotten him the position of Kankarou's victim.

"I suppose I just wasn't interested," the words felt dead in his mouth, and as soon as he said them, he knew that Kankarou would know of his lie. Of course he knew what Kankarou was talking about; he was talking about Deidara, and the first time they'd met.

Kankarou decided to call Shino's bluff. "You never ignore me. I don't know why, but somehow, you were wired to listen to everyone's every word. That means… you want to piss me off," Kankarou rubbed the bridge of his nose. "What's wrong?"

"…"

"Not this again."

"…"

"I will hurt you if need be."

"… A ninja does not fear pain."

Kankarou glared darkly at him, but an old adage came to mind, and he decided to change strategies. 'You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, huh?' Kankarou's face changed from a dark look into an almost scary smirk. Kankarou had been sitting at the desk that was provided for Shino, and Shino was on the bed, one leg curled up against his body, the other stretched across the bed, as if to keep Kankarou from sitting there.

Kankarou crawled onto the bed, closer and closer to Shino, one knee on either side of the stretched-out leg. He kept the devilish smirk on his face, pushing himself closer and closer to Shino until Shino had backed up against the wall, and Kankarou was looming over him.

"Well… I'm not hungry right now… and since you don't seem to want to listen to me, I guess we could find… other things to do for now," Kankarou gave Shino a devilish smirk, and for once, Shino prayed for pain.


"Where the hell am I?" Naruto was surrounded in darkness, his voice echoing off of the walls of the room as if he was in a cavern of some sort. As soon as he said that, his surroundings suddenly lit up; he was standing in a dingy hallway, with walls made of dry, flaking plaster.

It looked a lot like the times when the Kyuubi would drag Naruto into his own sub consciousness, so that they could speak face-to-face, mostly for training purposes.

'Kyuu…?' Naruto thought. Instead of the words being silent, however, they were projected as if he'd actually said the word, echoing just as his actual words did.

"You're in my mind," Gaara said, appearing out of nowhere, his arms crossed across his chest. His voice was devoid of his usual underlying rage, but it still didn't sound normal… It sounded almost dead.

"Your… mind? You can do that?"

Gaara made a gesture, as if he was saying, 'Why else would you be here?'

"So… you're going to tell me what having the Ichibi is like."

"No," Gaara shook his head slowly, but then said, "I'm going to show you."

And then, as if a movie was playing in front of the two of them, a large hovering image appeared in front of them. Gaara stared at it as if he was looking past it, while Naruto focused on the scene with an extreme amount of focus.

There was a small child with red hair and sky blue eyes staring teary-eyed at the screen, his fingers interlaced with each other as if he were extremely nervous. "You're a freak," a deep voice boomed, "You deserve to die after you killed your mother. But you don't have the common decency to do even that!"

A kunai was sent flying to the boy's face, but was blocked at the last second by a strong wall of sand.

"I'm sorry, Daddy…"

"Don't call me that! I fathered no demon spawn! Yashamaru! Get this child and take him out of my sight!" the man spat before turning and storming away, putting as much distance between himself and Gaara as he could.

The scene changed.

The little boy, now slightly older, attempted to slice his wrists open. 'No…' a pretty, feminine voice seemed to whisper from inside of Gaara. 'No, sweetie,' and sand blocked the knife from cutting his wrists. 'This is your mother speaking. I was in Heaven, but you need someone to love you… I'm here now, honey. Your own personal, guardian angel…'

"Gaara! What are you doing? Don't ever do that again!" Yashamaru rushed at Gaara, pulling the knife away from him.

"I… I just wanted to know what it feels like…" Gaara whimpered, more to his mother than to his uncle.

"…" his uncle wordlessly took the knife before slicing his own palm open. "Gaara. Never do something like that again. I love you… I don't want you to even try to hurt yourself. Are we understood?"

"Yashamaru… what is love, anyways?"

"… Have you ever felt a pain in your chest? Like your heart has just dropped, and you can't breathe anymore? You feel it at the thought of losing someone…"

"Yeah… and it hurts. A lot," Gaara clutched at his chest. "But… what hurts more? Getting hurt, or… this?" he clutched his chest again.

Wordlessly, Yashamaru grasped the knife and sliced his palm open.

"Yashamaru?" He rushed to his uncle's side, slightly interested in the bloodshed, but more so worried for the one live person who cared for him.

"No, see, Gaara? I'd much rather feel this than emotional pain. This… this is nothing compared to losing someone close to you."

"I… I see…" Gaara nodded, as if he was confirming something to himself. "Hold on," Gaara turned to the side, opening the drawer closest to him. He pulled out a long, cloth bandage, and began wrapping it around his uncle's hand. "There! Better!"

"You're a good kid, Gaara," Yashamaru said with a smile, ruffling his hair. "Don't ever change."

"What happened? You were such a… well, I wouldn't say normal, but you were a cute kid, given the situation," Naruto said, turning to Gaara in between the scene changes.

"…" Gaara said nothing, but continued glaring forward at the screen.

A flash of a bomb, combined with kunai flying at Gaara's face. His sand shield jumping forward to protect him just in time. The bomb exploding around his dome of safety. Sand crumbling inward. The sand shield falling down just enough to show his assailant.

Yashamaru.

"Oh, god, Gaara, I'm sorry…" Naruto said, even as the scene kept playing.

"Yashamaru… why? I thought you loved me…"

"How could I love the person that killed my sister? It was her I loved, not you!" Yashamaru screamed with his dying breaths. "No one… could ever… love a monster… like…"

And he was dead.

"Gaara! Most people aren't like that!" Naruto jumped forward, grabbing Gaara by the shirt and shaking him back and forth. "Seriously! Your uncle… he was an ass! It wasn't your… it wasn't your fault…"

Naruto was shocked. He was crying already, of all things.

"You wanted to see my past. Keep watching, or give away your secret now," Gaara said, shoving Naruto away with ease and indifference.

And then Naruto saw Gaara killing countless ninjas, mostly those who had mocked him or were prejudiced against him for being a container. He saw Gaara watching his father from the shadows, contempt and rage radiating from the boy from the time Yashamaru died to the time he was turned.

And then he saw Gaara being turned, and heard the voice of the Ichibi, egging him towards the vampire's blood. He saw Gaara nearly kill Temari and was reminded of her horrendous scar.

He witnessed centuries of bloodshed, and a descent deeper and deeper into darkness, a descent that was like falling into a bottomless pit. He saw him torture, maim, and eventually, brutally murder each of his victims.

And yet, somehow, something kept him from hating Gaara.

The knowledge that, had he been mistreated as Gaara had been, he'd be the exact same.

"Enough," Gaara said, when the scenes of Gaara first biting Naruto began playing. "You know everything now," he said, and the screen disappeared.

And suddenly, Naruto felt a whooshing around him, and the world faded from the dark corners of Gaara's subconscious. And Naruto found himself on his bed, as if he hadn't moved.

"Now," Gaara growled.

And then Naruto heard something that he wished Gaara hadn't.


Naruto was still inside of Gaara's subconscious when Kankarou was trying to force information out of Shino. Kankarou was pressing himself closer and closer to Shino's face, and now their lips were nearly an inch away from each other's.

"Get away from me," Shino breathed out, careful to keep his lips drawn against his teeth as much as possible.

Kankarou stopped moving closer to Shino, and instead held his position. "You're too… bottled up. Come on, Shino, let me have it," Kankarou felt proud of his double entendre.

Without warning, bugs began crawling up from Shino's neck and to his face. They covered his and jaw first, then his lips, and then his other cheek. Kankarou didn't flinch or look surprised, disgusted, or put off in any way. He'd pretty much come to terms with Shino's insects, and he'd expected Shino to do this… but that didn't keep him from being annoyed with them.

He held out a finger, and after a moment, one of the bugs swarming over Shino's face happened to walk onto his finger. Kankarou pulled it back from Shino, and cut his other pointer finger on the fingernail of his thumb. He held that finger up to the bug, and when his finger was only an inch from the bug, he emanated a blood chakra that took the form of a small cloud of blood-colored fog.

The bug fell off of his finger, dead.

Shino's eyes widened in shock. He could make pesticide using his blood jutsu?

"I could easily do that to all of your bugs… even the ones inside of you right now… but I won't. I suggest that you pull them in," he had stopped the façade of being sensual, and he was no longer overly-concerned. He was just serious, and was telling Shino how it was.

Shino obeyed, his protectiveness for his bugs overriding his self concern.

"Good. Now… do you want to be a good boy, and tell me what's wrong?" During his demonstration with the bugs, he'd sat down on Shino's chest, essentially straddling him. He didn't move to move out of the position, but instead was just sitting and waiting.

"Could you get off first?" Shino's normal attitude had come back after the shock of Kankarou's 'pesticide' had worn off.

Wordlessly, Kankarou pulled his right leg to join his left leg, though he didn't move from the bed. Shino squirmed further away from him, sitting on the edge of the bed so that it would be harder to draw him into another intimate position.

"I can understand Temari," Shino's voice held restrained anger, and his volume was rising with each word. "She seems to have some kind of commitment issue because of… whatever happened to her. And Gaara? Gaara's crazy as fuck! He'll never be sane enough to think of turning someone!"

Shino wasn't usually so stupid. But he was stressed, and he had just been in the most uncomfortable situation of his life. And Kankarou had a way of poking and prodding until everything came flooding out… which, in this case, was exactly what Shino needed… But perhaps it should have been done in such a way that Gaara, as well as Naruto, Temari, and Shikamaru, did not hear the whole ordeal.


Gaara moved from Naruto's room, leaving the door wide open and unlocked in his wake. His eyes glistened with the deepest blood red Naruto had ever seen… a red redder than blood.

"Naruto! Here's your chance! Go, quickly! Temari and Kankarou are going to be too busy taking control of Gaara to keep you from leaving!"

"I can't leave Shino to die," Naruto didn't bother restraining the words to his head. No one was listening.

"Oh, the hell you can't! Go!"

"Lend me some of your power, Kyuubi. I'll need it."

"How many tails? Five? Six? The whole nine? I don't give a damn!"

"Not nine. I need… control for this."

The Kyuubi could not read Naruto's mind, unless there was an intense emotion behind it. Naruto had been somewhat trained to hold in his emotions, and though he rarely used the ability, he was controlling them as best as he could now.

"Fine. Eight. How's that?"

Naruto had trained enough with the Kyuubi's powers to know what eight tails felt like. It was a surge of power, and a want to dominate everything around you. He would pass out directly after using such a surge of power, but he would at least maim the most powerful thing around him.

And that would be Gaara. Even amid the confusion, Gaara would still stand out in Naruto's crazed mind.

"Yeah, good idea. Run as fast and as far as you can, get as hidden as you can, and slow down tail-by-tail… Then pass out in a good hiding spot."

"Right," Naruto said. And with that, he felt the sudden surge of raw, animalistic power. He felt the chakra coursing through his body, the chakra forming an outer shell that gave him the appearance of a fox. He could feel the tails sprouting, his teeth growing, his voice changing…. Eventually, he could even feel the fox's skeletal system over his own body, and the smooth, hunter muscles of the fox.

His world was no longer in color. Instead, it was monochromatic – everything was in shades of red and red-orange.

When he gained the eighth tail, he flung himself forward, dashing to Shino's rescue.

"Oi! Kid! Wrong way!"

'Shut the fuck up, you cowardly piece of shit," Naruto cursed at him. He'd noticed that his thoughts got more and more violent, depending on how many tails he'd acquired. With just one tail, he was only a little more excitable than usual… but with eight? He was extremely bloodthirsty.

He rushed forward, running as fast as he could. The Kyuubi was growling and screaming at Naruto to turn around and just escape, but Naruto easily ignored the commands. Naruto wasn't, by any means, happy in his situation.

But he wasn't going to let one of the few people who had gotten him to accept it die. Sure, he hadn't always liked Shino. He hadn't even always liked Shikamaru, even though they talked nearly every day when they were still in Konoha. But now that they were in the same situations, he felt a stronger bond with them than he'd felt with even…

Sasuke. It'd been a while since Naruto had thought of him. But that wasn't important now.

What was important was that Kankarou was barely managing to hold Gaara's sand from grabbing a hold of Shino. Shino's bugs were everywhere, a flood of uncertain black energy. Gaara was flinging heavy groups of sand at large groups of bugs, squishing them with the sand as if the sand was a flyswatter. One of Kankarou's puppets was blocking some of the attacks, and Kankarou was even diving in front of some of the attacks to keep it from hitting Shino.

"Gaa… ra," Naruto seethed out, now on all fours and glaring at his vampire. Gaara's eyes shifted from Shino to Naruto, still a horrifying blood red. But it didn't matter, now – Naruto's eyes were almost the same color, but where Gaara's eyes were darker red, Naruto's were a blazing fire red.

Gaara's eyes narrowed into slits. "So… this is how you knew?" And with that, he flung his hand forward in Naruto's direction, sending sand hurtling towards him.

Naruto smirked. "That's nothing," he grumbled with the kind of voice that could make mountains shake. With a blast of pure, glowing red chakra, he easily deflected the sand that was hurtled at him. He whipped one of his chakra tails forward at Gaara, wrapping them around Gaara just as Gaara used the sand coffin.

Gaara attempted the Sand Shield, but Naruto easily broke through the dome. When Naruto's tails came into contact with Gaara's skin, his skin cracked and burst, a layer of sand peeling off of his body.

Gaara attempted to wrench away from Naruto's grip, but to no avail. Naruto had taken him completely by surprise; there had been no time to chance into the Ichibi, no time to use any sort of subduing blood jutsu… not to mention the fact that Gaara had no idea of how strong Naruto actually was.

And now, Naruto was choking Gaara, attempting to either put him in a sleeper hold or kill him… in his current state of mind, Naruto wasn't sure which.

"Let… go!" Gaara whined; panic was now flashing in his eyes, and he was trying to tear at the chakra mass to no avail.

And Naruto was reminded of the little boy who cried when his father had expressed his extreme disgust at him for being born a monster. The same little boy who cried when his uncle had died. The little boy who had been scorned his entire life.

Naruto released him, Gaara hitting the ground with a hollow thunk. Naruto's eyes lost their red sheen and became his usual bright blue again, before he fell forward, passing out from the exertion.

If he had chosen to run, he would have gotten far enough away to escape the vampires forever. But he had to save Shino.

Gaara looked at Naruto with shock, before disappearing from sight.


"You… okay?" Kankarou asked, nearly a full minute after everything had calmed down. Shino wasn't reacting to the situation, now that everything was over; he was just trying to calm his bugs down.

"I'm fine," Shino stated simply. Which was not true. He was relatively sure he had a few bruised ribs, some scrapes here and there. Everything really was fine, except for the fact that it hurt to breathe.

"… 'Kay," Kankarou breathed out. "So… you were saying?"

"What?"

"Earlier. Why are you upset with me?" Kankarou slumped against the wall, brushing bugs and dirt off of his outfit.

"… Because I don't see why you couldn't become attached to someone enough to turn them," having seen the lengths Kankarou had gone to in order to protect him, he had decided that he might as well just put it out there.

"What do you mean? We've talked about this; I want to like the person that I turn."

"That's… understandable. But I understand Temari and Gaara having trouble finding someone to turn. They have… issues. But I can't see why you would."

Kankarou paused for a second. "Well," he finally said, after thinking it over, "I want the person I turn to want to be with me for a long time. And most people? Can't stand me 'chattering,' as one girl so sweetly put it."

"… There are worse things," Shino said as he slipped back in his room. He wanted to sleep.

"Huh. I suppose there are," Kankarou said with a small smile as he stood back up, and ambled over to Naruto. "For instance, you can be a brain-dead guy with a hero complex," he said, more to himself than to either Naruto (since he was unconscious) or Shino (since he was now in his room, and out of ear-shot). "But, thanks all the same," he said as he picked Naruto up and slung him over his shoulder.

He deserved to, at the very least, be unconscious in his bed.


"Check," Temari muttered.

"I'll show you insane, you little bastard!" Gaara's screamed echoed through Shikamaru's room as the fight began.

"Should we…?" Shikamaru said, his focus shifting from the game.

"No," Temari said bluntly. "Let them work out their own damn mess. Now. Check," she repeated.

Shikamaru blocked her attack, and began a counterattack of his own.

"Get away from him, Gaara! He didn't do anything!"

"Shit!"

"I'll rip your flesh off, shred by shred!"

"Are you sure…?"

"Yes. Check," Temari said.

"You really ought to help," Shikamaru moved another piece. "Check," he said.

"Damn," Temari muttered before moving another piece.

"Gaa… ra!" they heard a strange voice growl.

Temari finally looked perturbed. "Who is that?"

Shikamaru smirked. "That," he said as he moved his piece, "Would be Naruto. And now we have nothing to worry about. Checkmate… want to do another game?"

Temari looked at the door, and then at the chessboard. "Chess," she finally said, leaning against her arm, "would be a lot less troublesome than that out there, even if I can't seem to win. Go ahead."