Summary : What if Naruto and Gaara met earlier on in their lives? How would this change the future of both the young shinobi?

DO NOT ASK ME TO PUT PAIRINGS IN MY STORY. If I add pairings later on, they aren't going to be the standard pairings for the most part because I don't like the standard pairings. This is an AU of sorts so if you don't like that kinda thing then click the BACK button on the menu bar and return to browsing the Naruto fanfiction menu. Thanks for your cooperation!

Disclaimer : I don't own Naruto but if I did then Itachi and Kakashi would be my slaves and I would give Sasuke to my friend Kayli and Obito would go to my friend Kelsey thus making all well in the world. Hehehe

Demonic Ties

By Hyuuga Ayame

Blue eyes watched from the swing set as the other children ran around the park laughing. The young boy's blonde hair flew around in the wind as his head turned to watch as the parents of the other children came to get them because it was getting late and dinner would be soon. As they all dispersed, Naruto sighed and got up from the swing that he was on. He brushed off his blue pants and orange & white T-shirt then stretched a little because he was sore from sitting in one spot for hours, trying to work up the courage to walk over to the other children and ask if he could play Ninja with them too. The last time that he had, the parents of the children came and took them away while scolding them. The reason that they did this every time he wanted to play with some one escaped the young boy of only 6. Some of them would even turn around for a second glance at him, only to glare when they saw that he was looking straight at them.

"Why is it that they look at me like that? Did I do something wrong?" Naruto asked himself daily. But every time he tried to think of just one thing that he did to make the entire village hate him, his mind turned up blank and he was back to square one on answering the question that had plagued him for years, Why?

He walked along the road, kicking up dust as he walked and staring at his feet, trying to avoid the eyes of the villagers around him. As he walked he could hear the people around him looking at him and whispering to each other. He occasionally caught the same words that he always heard when he passed; 'Monster', 'Demon', 'Sandaime (1)', and 'Container' were the most common ones. Naruto didn't notice that he was starting to cry nor the fact he was walking faster and faster until he was in an almost dead run towards the forest that surrounded Konoha. He could only hear the words of the villages and feel their ice cold stares on him as he ran away from the words that caused him to run, from the pain that he felt with every word that he caught.

He finally stopped running when he came to a familiar patch of underbrush that covered the entrance of the hiding spot that Naruto had found about a year ago when he was crying and didn't want to face the villagers. Now, no matter how far he was, his feet would carry him back to this very spot whenever he was upset. Naruto pushed aside the leaves of the brush and crawled under the braches that crisscrossed above his head. The space was small but his mal-nutritious diet caused him to be thin enough to glide through with ease. At the end of the tunnel was a clearing that had vines encircling it, making it impossible to get to any way but through Naruto's secret passageway.

But as Naruto got closer to the clearing, he heard a strange sound; a sniffle and a hiccup that seemed to originate from the clearing that he was headed to. He then heard a young boy's voice whisper the word "Yashamaru (2)" and then more crying. When Naruto poked his spiky blonde covered head out of the brushwood, he saw a young boy sitting on the ground. The boy had blood red hair and looked to be about his age but Naruto had never seen him in all his time in the village. The boy was strange in other ways as well. He wore a sandy brown shirt that had a cloak attached that draped over his arms and down to his waist. His pants were a much darker brown and had bandages wrapped around the bottom to hold the fabric closer to the skin. The boy's eyes were closed but large amounts of tears pour in torrent down his face. But the strangest thing about the boys was the sand that swirled around his legs and most of his upper body.

"Are you OK?" Naruto asked curiously, wiping away his own tears to try to hide the fact that he, too, had been crying not even minutes before.

The boy looked up abruptly, startled that some one had spoke. The sand that had been swirling tensely around his body suddenly seemed to become a little more agitated and denser than it had been. His wide eyes looked up at Naruto, his glowing green eyes meeting Naruto's electric blue. There was something in the boy's eyes that reached out to Naruto, making him move slightly closer.

The boy tensed up even more and the sand shot out at Naruto. With a yelp, Naruto tried to move out of the way but the sand wrapped around his leg and began to tighten around it. He cried out in pain when he felt it constrict around his leg.

The boy seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in. "Stop it!", he yelled. The sand immediately stopped tightening around Naruto's leg and dropped harmlessly to the floor. Naruto dropped down and hugged his leg to his body, trying to stop the pain. The boy looked frightened as he peered over at Naruto. He opened his mouth to say something but quickly closed it once more. He then began to move backwards, his eyes darting around, almost like he was looking for something.

Naruto was still clutching his leg when the other boy suddenly darted away from the clearing, pushing past the underbrush that was there. Naruto looked at where the boy had disappeared to, pausing for only a moment, before standing and trying to follow him. 'Itai'(3) Naruto thought as he stood up on his leg that was throbbing painfully with every step that he took. Naruto couldn't explain it but he felt an urge or even a need to follow the boy. 'His eyes…' he realized, 'they were the same as mine….'

Naruto's pace was getting faster again as he pushed his injured leg the hardest he ever had, trying to catch up. Even as the pain began to numb, Naruto hardly noticed. All he could think about were those eyes and all of the pain that they held inside of them that reminded him of every time that he looked into a mirror and saw his own eyes staring straight back at him.

Soon enough, he reached another clearing and the boy was sitting in the middle of it. He looked at Naruto and surprise, apprehension, and fear flashing though his eyes. They finally settled into curiosity as Naruto breathed deeply, trying to catch his breath. They stared at each other in complete silence for a moment or two before the boy spoke. "W-why did you follow me?" he asked, his voice wavering slightly.

"Why did you run?" was the question that the young boy got in answer.

The boy looked even more startled with this question and Naruto was almost certain that he was going to dart off into the woods again.

The boy opened his mouth to reply when his eyes focused on something behind Naruto. Naruto heard a low growl behind him and he jumped while turning only to see three wolves that were bearing their teeth at the two boys. Naruto dropped into a semi-good stance to try to fight off the wolves but before he could even move an inch, sand shot out from behind him and wrapped around the wolves' legs. He watched with fascination as the sand first expanded then tightened quickly. Naruto heard a snap and the wolves started to howl in pain. He whirled around to see that the boy had a fierce look upon his face and that his hand was clenched in front of him tightly. After a second he released it and Naruto heard a hiss of pain from the wolves. He watched as the wolves limped away with their tails between their legs and a smile began to form upon his face.

"Wow!" he exclaimed excitedly. "That was so COOL!" The boy looked startled by Naruto's exclamation and stared at him as though he was insane.

"Y-you're not scared of me?" the boy stuttered out with the look of awe and something else that Naruto had never seen in another child's eyes. Loneliness. Pain. Desperation. Hope. Now he understood what had made him draw closer to the boy when he first saw him back in his special clearing. The things that he saw in the boy's eyes were things that he saw every day in the mirror before he put on his mask of happiness. The boy that he saw before him though, he had no mask. The pain was blatantly obvious to anyone who looked at him. There was nothing hiding his pain. Nothing at all.

"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked pleasantly, "Why would I be scared of you? Especially after what you did to those wolves! That was really really cool! Can you teach me how to do that! Please!"

"I-I'm a monster…" The boy replied, "Why would you want to talk to a monster?" His face fell and he studied his feet, refusing to look at Naruto at all.

In that split second, Naruto decided that he was going to become this boy' friend. Do anything to remove the pain that they shared from the boy's eyes, and his own.

"Well I don't see a monster"

The boy's eyes flew to Naruto's face once more.

"I see a boy whose name I don't know." he continued, "By the way, what is your name?" He looked at the boy questioningly.

"G-gaara" the boy stuttered, still looking completely taken aback with the words that were coming out of the other boy's mouth. His voice strengthened a little with his next words, "Gaara of the Sand."

(1) Third Ruler of Konoha / Sarutobi-sensei

(2)Gaara's uncle on his mothers side who was given a mission to assassinate Gaara when he was only six years old. Yashamaru was also the only one who seemed to care about Gaara as a person in the Sand village.

(3) Ow / Ouch that hurt

Ok well you have to REVIEW and tell me if you guys like it so far! Flames are totally welcome because then I at least know that people are reading it! Flames also are helpful because they make me step back and look at the things that I might have done wrong so I can A.) fix them or B.) not do the same when I write the next chapter or even another a fic! So…..

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