I'm slightly horrified. "Wait," I ask. "does this mean I'm going to go mad too? Is the poison that ran through Izo's chakra in me now?"

She shakes her head but a look of uncertainty crosses her face. "No. At least, I don't think so. You're in a very unusual situation. The only time my kekkai genkai uses chakra is to make or break a bond. Even so, Izo and I are supposed to have the same kekkai genkai but his was a little… warped compared to mine. Compared to what it should be."

Uneasiness stirs in the pit of my stomach. I don't want to go back to the insane monster I was with Shukaku, the monster I still sometimes become. I've worked so hard to master myself, to become the Kazekage of the Sand.

Ri's voice is sympathetic. "As much as I would like to tell you that you're going to be just fine, I can't. I promised myself that I'm not going to lie to you anymore. The kekkai genkai that runs through my blood is a highly complicated one. I'm willing to bet you've never heard of it before. It's called the Level Bond."

She's right. I have never heard of anything called the Level Bond before.

"The Level Bond belongs to the Nara clan but it is such a well-kept secret that, even within the clan, few know it exists. Those outside the clan who have heard of it think it's only a legend. Since my brother and I inherited the Level Bond, we must belong to the Nara clan, though my grandparents never mentioned it. The number of people who actually inherit the kekkai genkai is so small that it isn't very difficult to keep the Level Bond under-wraps. My brother and I are the first in almost thirty years to have it and, of the two of us, I'm the only one who can use it with any success."

"What exactly is a Level Bond?" I ask.

"As I said before, it's really complicated so bear with me while I try to explain." She pauses for a moment, debating where to start. "You know that the Nara clan is known for their intelligence right? Well, the Level Bond takes the advanced brain capacity of the members of the clan to a different level. Those who possess it contain an extra lobe in their brain that allows for a higher level of brain function. Of course, that doesn't mean using the Level Bond is easy. It requires intense mental control, achieved through meditation, to master. The Level Bond allows the person who contains it to mentally connect with another person through physical touch, accessing their thoughts, memories, and chakra."

"That doesn't seem so difficult to understand. Though it does sound invasive." I interrupt.

Ri smiles grimly. "You didn't let me finish. This is where it gets difficult. There are two levels to a Level Bond. Stage 1 and Stage 2. In Stage 1, the initiator of the Level Bond can access another's thoughts and memories, but only the other person can access the initiators chakra."

I blink. "I don't get it."

She rolls her eyes. "I told you it was confusing. For example, if I created a Stage 1 Level Bond with you, I could hear your thoughts and shuffle through your memories by touching you, but I couldn't use your chakra. You however, could use mine, so long as we were touching."

"So the Level Bond is more beneficial for other people then it is for its user?" I ask. "I mean, I can see how being able to look at someone else's memories could be helpful, but then you open yourself up to having someone else use your chakra. Why would you take the risk?"

Ri smiles. "You only say that because you haven't heard the second part to it. While the user of a Level Bond can create a Stage 1 bond with anyone, a Stage 2 bond can only be created between two people containing the Level Bond. Both users establish a Stage 1 bond with each other, giving the other person access to their chakra and their all of their jutsu. The Level Bond now flows both ways."

"So each of them can access the others' memories, thoughts, and chakra?" I clarify.

"Exactly, but now distance doesn't matter. They don't have to be touching. They can both be across the world from each other but still do all that. And there's another thing. A Stage 1 bond can be broken but a Stage 2 bond is for life. No matter what, you are now bound to the other person, who can access your chakra and jutsu at any time."

I shudder. "That sounds terrible. What if the other person takes your chakra while you're in the middle of a fight?"

She nods. "That's why we do not choose our partners lightly. The Level Bond shows up rarely but, when it does, it's always present in two to eight children, always an even number, and all similar in age. We don't know how it's so precise but… Anyway. My brother couldn't use the Level Bond. While it requires no chakra to use, and by use I mean to pull away your partners chakra and go through their mind, it does require chakra to establish a bond. Since Izo couldn't use his chakra, we couldn't create a Stage 2 bond. I did however, without even knowing, establish a Stage 1 bond with him. I granted him access to my chakra, which he could use without pain.

"As I found out, that was a very foolish move. Without him ever knowing what it was like to manipulate chakra, the first time we tested out the bond was a disaster, due mostly to the circumstances. Watch and listen."

She turns to look at the young versions of herself and her brother, still meditating under the tree. The scenery turns black, but not in a worrying way. It's the sort of muted darkness that happens when you close your eyes on a sunny day. I can still feel the warm air on my face, hear soft breathing from next to me and the gentle splashing of the river.

I become aware of a muffled thumping, like a distant heartbeat. The darkness around me fills with tangled cords of a dim purple blue that I feel rather than see. With each heartbeat the cords disappear then appear again, brighter and slightly more organized. A thought that does not belong to me floats through my head. "The lights are so pretty. I wonder what they are." The heartbeats falls silent for a moment, its smooth rhythm interrupted, then resumes. When the cords appear again they are just at shadowy and twisted as they were when I first saw them.

The sound of an explosion shatters the darkness and the cottage and valley snaps into view again, except the cottage is no longer in existence. Only the foundation of it is left along with fiery debris that falls from the sky. A half circle of nine ninja surrounds Izo and Ri who stand back to back. One of the ninja casually tosses a shuriken at Ri, clearly expecting it to go right through her, and laughs in surprise when she slows it down and catches it. "My my." He calls out mockingly. "We have a little fighter here." Izo cowers, pressing himself closer to his sister who turns so that the tree protects him from the back and she covers him from the front.

"Don't come any closer. You'll regret it." Ri warns and I suppress a smile. Even faced with nine fully trained killers, her voice doesn't tremble. All the shinobi laugh at her bravado and one asks "What's your name, little girl?"

"That's none of your business." She replies boldly. Another one of nin turns to the obvious leader of the group, a man who stands in the middle of the semi-circle, slightly ahead of the rest. "C'mon Iba. Do we really have to kill them? Well, I guess the boy can go since he's no good but this girl has spirit. With a little bit of training…"

With a shout, Izo places his hands on Ri's shoulders and a blood red chakra wave immediately followed crackling blue one surges out of her. The scene freezes as the wave is about to hit the shinobi. I look down at Ri to ask what is going on but hold my tongue when I see her face. Her eyes are closed and an expression of intense concentration wrinkles her eyebrows and forehead. My surroundings jerk, then are replaced by a tiny, dark room. The only things it contains are a small cot and dresser with a flickering candle on top of it.

Just as quickly as it appears, the room dissolves, turning into a swirling mass of color and noise. In the chaos I see my face, then Izo's, then an unfamiliar man's, then me again. Slowly, all the colors fade, replaced by a silent, white space. White floor stretches away from us, disappearing into a soft mist that surrounds Ri and I in a forty foot radius in every direction. Ri drops my hand and places both of hers on her temples. After a moment, she relaxes her arms and looks up at me.

"Sorry about that." she says sheepishly. "I lost control for a moment there."

"What happened? Why did you and Izo freeze? How are you even showing me all of this? I ask.

"All the places we've been to and all the things you've seen are my memories. Showing you my memories the way I have been isn't easy. It requires an incredible amount of mental control. Whenever you saw something that didn't include seeing me, such as when I showed you the Hidden Shadows Village, you were seeing the memory through my eyes, as I saw it. When you could see me, such as on the roof and at my grandparents' house, I'm using many memories to re-create the scene. I'm pulling together my memory of the landscape as well as I what I was doing and what was happening around me as I was doing it. That requires a perfect recollection of almost everything around me and is very difficult. Showing you a memory through my eyes is worlds easier, but I wanted you to see everything."

I look around, "Where are we?"

"I don't think I have enough focus left to show you anything else so I brought you to a neutral zone, a place between both of our minds." Suddenly, she bends over and coughs, shoulders heaving. Red droplets spray the ground at our feet.

"Ri!" I reach forward, not sure what do to, but she holds her hand out, keeping me away. She straightens up and wipes the blood off her chin. "I'm getting worse. You're going to have to hear the abridged version of my past from here."

"I don't care about that." I growl. "Just tell me if I can do anything to keep you alive!"

She gives a humorless smile. "I'm getting there, though you may not like the solution. Anyway, that memory was the last time I saw the place where I grew up. Even though Izo and I had no idea we contained a kekkai genkai within us, instinct allowed me to create a Stage 1 bond with him and allowed him to use my chakra to protect us. Using me as an outlet, he projected all his poisoned chakra as well as mine, out to destroy our attackers. The memory stopped because I fainted at the sudden release of all my chakra. Izo didn't realize what he could do then but Iba, the only ninja left alive, did. The first chakra, the red one, passed through the nin and completely blocked their chakra flow. Then my chakra drew all the metal in the ground into razor sharp spikes that impaled them.

"Iba realized how powerful my brother and I could become, the twins who could stop chakra and manipulate metal, so he took us back to the Shadows and trained us personally. He was also the one who discovered we contained the Level Bond and managed to steal any recordings of it from the Nara clan.

"From the start of his training, Izo thrived. He loved that he could finally use his chakra for something. Through hours of training, he discovered ways to force his chakra out of his body and into another person or object without suffering. Since his chakra was filled with poison, this served the purpose of paralyzing the other opponents' chakra for a time, rendering it completely useless. He embraced his new role in life and I watched in horror as he became more and more insane.

"I couldn't handle the way of life in the Shadows. I failed miserably at my training, full of potential but unwilling to learn anything that would end someone else's life. The only reason they didn't kill me was because of Izo's instability. At just the age of ten, he was one of the Shadow's most valuable assets. I was the only person who had some measure of influence over him and they didn't know what he would do if I was gone. So instead of having me killed, they did something much worse.

"Knowing that it was my softer personality that was keeping me from advancing in my training, Iba sealed away my feelings. Sarriette was gone and in her place was an alter-ego, a blankness with a tendency towards cruelty named Kara. Well, I shouldn't say gone. The real me was still there but it was locked away in much the same fashion as the nine-tails is locked inside Naruto Uzumaki. I watched as she used my body and chakra to become one of the most powerful ninja in the village and as she killed countless good people with my brother.

"Izo didn't even seem to notice that it wasn't me anymore. He was too far gone. And no matter how much I fought, no matter how much I raged and screamed and cried I was bound too tightly. I hated every minute of my half-life, hated that Kara could kill people so effortlessly. I also despaired. It wasn't like Iba had inserted a new person into my body. No, Kara was me, a part of me I wish I had never discovered. I understand you Gaara because we are the same."

Ri stops, tears glistening in her eyes and voice trembling. I stare at her, completely shocked. What she is describing is utter hell. I know, because I have lived it. I know what it's like to be stuck inside an unresponsive body, watching as you kill people. But she does not understand me if she thinks what we went through is the same.

"How can you tell me that we are the same?" I ask hollowly. "You said it yourself, you fought against the binding and you obviously were strong enough to break it. While I might have not wanted to kill at first, I grew to love feeling so alive at the moment when I took someone else's life."

"No!" Ri exclaimes vehemently. "That wasn't you any more than Kara was me. That was Shukaku. You cannot entirely blamed for what you did when you were a jinchuriki. And it's not like the people around you made it any easier for you to deal with what you were. The fact that you still won't let go of what you did in the past, that you torture yourself with the knowledge of what you could become once again, shows how good of a person you are."

I don't want to hear this right now. I don't need my ego stroked while the girl I'm still in love with, even after everything that has happened, is dying.

"You said you were going to tell me how to save you." I remind Ri.

"Right," she nods "those kunai, the ones I stopped to save you, aren't normal. They are like the ones you were injured with the first time we met."

"I know." I say. "They're poisoned. Izo said that you're the cure."

"You see, they aren't actually poisoned." I look at her quizzically and she goes on. "They are imbued with my brother's chakra, as well as with mine. As soon as they enter the body, they explode, sending thousands of pieces of chakra-stopping shrapnel into the body. They allowed us to kill many powerful opponents who normally wouldn't be too effected by a wound from a kunai knife without having to fear some sort of counter-attack before they died. There really isn't a cure once the kunai have exploded inside you."

"Then what-" I start but Ri talks over me.

"Sure, I could pull out the pieces of metal, but the damage is already done. Unless a powerful medical nin was around, the victim would die from internal bleeding."

I frown at her. "Then how did I survive?"

"Oh come now Gaara." Ri says with a challenging glint in her eyes. "You must have some idea."

I fall silent, mulling it over. An idea begins to form in my head, but an idea with many holes. "You established a Stage 1 bond with me? But, I don't see how that would keep me alive…"

"I thought I told you about that." Ri says. I give her a blank look. "No? Well, ninja tied together with a Stage 2 bond, we call them Bound, are in a sense, almost immortal. If one dies while the other is still alive, he or she will come back to life. The only way to kill Bound ninja are to kill them both at the same time. Or old age. A Stage 2 bond is the most intimate mentally intimate thing a person can do. Once you're bound, it's more like one person shares two bodies. There are no secrets between Bound. While the connection between Stage 1 partners isn't as powerful, it still has the effect of lengthening the mortally injured partners' life. When I initiated the Stage 1 Level Bond with you, I lengthened your rapidly diminishing life force, giving you enough time to heal so you wouldn't be in danger of death any more. That ointment helped a lot as well."

"Why would you do that?" I ask, honestly confused. Why would Ri risk that I would use her chakra, just to save my life? She didn't even know me then.

Ri's face grows solemn. "It's because of me, Kara, you were attacked in the first place. As my brother said, my assignment was simple. I was supposed to take a small task force, kill you, and leave. What Izo didn't know, however, was that I was also supposed to get a piece of information right from here." She lightly taps my forehead. "According to the man who hired me, a lackey from the Mist, you know a very valuable and very powerful secret. My employer wanted me to get this information and relay it back to him. He didn't trust Izo not to somehow forcibly extract this secret from me and become even stronger. While you were dying, I established the bond and sorted through your memories. Your pain, your suffering, and your strength to overcome your past and protect the very people who reviled you gave me the strength to break out of my cage and overcome Kara."

"But," I start "I don't have a secret that would be of any value to anyone."

Ri nods. "I know that now, but I didn't then. The first time I left you at Suna was because I was supposed to meet my escort to travel back to the Shadows. I know you noticed I was acting strange. I was afraid they were nearby and had seen me with a very alive you and were going to go back to the village to get my brother. Thankfully, they weren't nearby but I knew they would become suspicious if I never showed up, so I went to go meet them to kill them and buy me some time.

"You needed to die so the Mist could take over Suna. They have become very power-hungry of late. When I heard that the Mist has aborted their attack on Suna, I knew that meant my brother had been informed of my mission and had some sort of trick up his sleeve. That's why I went with Izo when he came to get me. I needed to know what he was planning so I could warn you."

"I see why you needed to go, but why didn't you tell me this?" I ask.

"I was going to, but then Izo came and I knew I would never be able to hurt you by making you think I had betrayed you, but Kara could. So I let her out, hoping I could re-establish control over her. Thoughts of you were the only thing that kept me strong. Even though it may have seemed like I didn't care for you, I never stopped loving you."

"But the ring. You didn't keep the ring I gave you." I say

"Of course I did." She reaches under the collar of her shirt and pulls out a thin silver chain. At the end of it lies the ring. "I didn't want Izo to see it so I changed my outfit a little and put it on a necklace."

I give her a small smile, hope stirring in my chest. That hope recedes quickly as I remember she's dying. "You still haven't told me how to save you."

Ri fiddles nervously with the ring around her neck. "Well, if you established a Stage 2 bond and made us Bound, you could use my metal connection to pull the metal out of me and, even if I die because my injuries are too great, I'll still come back to life."

I don't even have to think about it. "Just tell me how."

"Don't be so hasty." She cautions. "Once it's done, there's no going back. You're stuck with me for the rest of our lives. You said it yourself, it's invasive. You will never again have a private thought or moment to yourself."

I nod, considering her words. "I wouldn't mind being Bound to you. If there's anyone who I wouldn't mind sharing all my thoughts with, it would most definitely be you."

"Well," she says "If you're absolutely sure…"

"I am."

"Ok, then give me both your hands." I do and she flips them so my palms are facing upwards. "What in the…" I murmur, catching sight of my left palm. Dark, blocky lines stretch from the corner of my right palm opposite my thumb, stretching diagonally across my hand and ending at the top of my index finger. "What is this?"

Ri smiles. "It's your mark. To create a bond you have to channel the chakra through your mark. Everyone with a Level Bond kekkai genkai has one and every mark is unique. Yours looks nothing like my brothers did."

"Do you have a mark?" I ask. "And, speaking of marks, what's that sun on your hip? And why is my kanji sometimes inside of it?"

"Oh this?" she lifts up the bottom of her shirt and traces the outline of the sun. It seems to have faded a little bit, though my kanji, which is now visible, is still as dark as ever. "This is the seal that was used to bring out Kara. It's gotten lighter because the seal is getting weaker now that I can switch between us at will. I'm not certain why your kanji is there, but I have two potential ideas."

"One," she holds up one finger. "which is the more likely reason, is that, since I created a Stage 1 bond with you but you don't have the kekkai genkai, any symbol that stood for you would appear on my body. But that doesn't account for the placing of it. The Nara clan recorded very little of the Level Bond, preferring, I'm sure, to keep it passed down from trustworthy member to trustworthy member verbally. While the papers Iba stole were helpful, they did not explain everything. One thing they said was that, when a Stage 2 bond is formed, the marks on the hands of each partner with appear on the hand of the other. If a Stage 1bond is formed, the nin forming it gets a mark that should stand for the person they are tying themselves to. Two," she holds up another finger "I think it was placed within my seal and not on my palm because it was you that helped me break the seal."

She holds up her left hand. It's bare, but after a moment spiraling designs spread across her palm. Unlike mine, it covers her entire hand and fingers. "I can choose whether to show it or not, which is why you haven't seen it before now. Once we bond, your mark will cover my right and mine will cover your left. Are you ready?"

I nod and she places her hands down on mine so our palms are touching. "Close your eyes." She says and I comply. "Now, do you remember the glowing blue threads I showed you? Search your mind for them." I frown. How am I supposed to do that? I try anyway, figuring I might was well humor her. "I see them." I say, surprised.

"Well of course you do. Take those threads and pull them apart, slicing them in half. Tell me when you've done that." This is much harder. Every time I've almost got it, my concentration snaps and they pull back together. "I can't." I say, frustrated.

"Yes you can." She murmurs. I grit my teeth, throwing all my energy into separating the threats. Slowly, very slowly, they finally split apart. "I got it." I pant, feeling sweat dripping down my forehead. "But I don't think I can hold them much longer."

At the edges of my consciousness, I feel another presence. More of those threads are coming. Even though they are identical to mine, I know they belong to Ri. With a silent snap, Ri's threads latch onto mine and bind together.

"It is done."