The Story of Menma

Anjelle

Chapter 6

Notes:

Woo, it's been a while! I think I got a little burnt out a few months back, so sorry on the delays. My updating schedule will likely remain as erratic as ever, but I'm trying! Also the lovely Blackberreh made a comic that goes along with this chapter, so go check it out! It contains spoilers for the end of the chapter though, be warned! You can find it at the bottom of the page where it says 'works inspired by this one'. There's a comic for chapter 5 as well, and a colour spread!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The gates to Suna were situated in a cleft between two cliff faces, the edges of a valley of rock and sand that fortified the village on all sides but one. A grin tugged at Naruto's lips as he craned his neck back to take in the full height of the structures that made up Konoha's ally.

"Damn," he laughed, throwing his arms behind his head as he stumbled closer, his attention stretching beyond the guards at the front gate, "this place is so cool."

And he knew he was just saying that because it was different from the hidden village that he knew, but so what? It being so very different from Konoha was just another reason it was cool.

Naruto's grin fell away when it came his turn to explain his visit to the gate guards. He recited this with Kurama, damn it, but that didn't make it any easier! Somehow, though, it worked.

Well, after he was pulled aside to complete his paperwork. Which Kurama took over for, because he honestly had no freakin' clue what to write for any of the questions or how to fill out things like 'country of residence' and 'occupation' for a missing-nin. Kurama didn't, either, but he was a hell of a lot better at bullshitting.

Naruto raised his arms to the sky and laughed, eyes squeezed shut. "Freedom!" he cheered, and meant it. This was the closest thing to 'free' that he'd been in weeks, in more ways than one.

Naruto hadn't had to produce one damn shadow clone in four days and it was amazing. He actually felt rested. Well rested. Like he could take on the world.

The ANBU lost his trail. Kurama said they would head to Suna, too, but for now things were looking pretty great.

Suna was around the same size as Konoha from what he could tell, but everything inside was all sorts of different. The buildings looked like domes made of clay. Everything was coloured a muted beige that blended in seamlessly with the surrounding desert. And despite its size, he didn't see all that many people walking around.

...Why did they travel all that way, exactly? For this? For what? Twenty minutes in and Naruto already thought Suna was lame. Too much sand.

His stomach made its plea and he groaned. "Yo, Kurama, is there a ramen bar 'round here? I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, kit."

"Doesn't change the fact that I am."

"You're unlikely to find one," the fox grumbled. Grumpily. "Ramen is uncommon in this country."

"But Kurama, I need it," he pleaded, ducking his head. There were eyes on him. He maybe shouldn't talk to himself out in the open. "I miss Ichiraku…"

"Do you want to go back?"

"Yes—I mean no, I mean…" Naruto scratched his head, raised his eyes heavenward, and thought. The running was getting to him. Now that he had those three off his tail, he wanted to enjoy his travels. This was another hidden village in a whole other country. This should have been the coolest place to be ever. But he'd ran so long that he never had a chance to do anything else.

Now the chance presented itself, and he had no idea what to do with it.

And there was no ramen. That sucked.

"There should still be vendors," Kurama supplied with a sigh, and Naruto lit up. "Stick to the main roads and you'll find them eventually."

Naruto pumped his fists. "Sweet! Thanks, old man!"

"Cheeky brat."

And Naruto could only laugh, because the most surreal thing in the world was exchanging double-edged insults with a giant manifestation of hatred and chakra.

He was bleeding. For a moment, all that he could feel was the cold rush of something spread across his limbs. Then, bubbling deep beneath the surface, the boiling heat of a rage that was not his own.

Kurama, no, he pleaded. Calm down.

His hands shook, stained and dripping red. They wrapped feebly around the compressed sand piercing his abdomen, pushing at it weakly, uselessly, as his body dangled off the ground. He coughed and choked and forced his eyes open to stare hazily across at unaffected eyes on a pale face.

"He's a jinchuuriki," Kurama hissed, "He'll kill you. I won't let him kill you ."

Naruto wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his breaths heavy and burdened and shuddering against the pain, and forced a smile. "Like he could."

The compressed sand broke apart and crumbled away, and he hit the ground with a merciless thud. He hissed, his back throbbing as he rolled over and forced himself up onto all fours. The ground was so close, sweat beading down the bridge of his nose, dripping and fading into the earth beneath him.

What the hell was that? What the hell was he?

A jinchuuriki. A tailed beast container.

Someone like me.

Naruto swallowed the metallic wash in his mouth and raised his head to meet the gaze of the motionless boy looming over him. The jinchuuriki's face was cracked, chipping away to reveal beneath it the porcelain-pale complexion of the boy's skin. That outer layer—what was that? Some sort of armour?

Sand. It was sand.

He rasped out a laugh, keeping himself up by the balance of his forearms as he felt the newly familiar burn of the bleeding edges of his wound mend, Kurama's chakra pooling out of the seal like a barrier of light. It strained the seal—he could feel it. Tugging. The pull of Kurama's anger—of his frustration—fighting against its constraint.

"Armour and a shield?" he hissed with thin amusement. "Hardly seems fair."

Green eyes watched him with disinterest. The cracks in the boy's skin slowly mended.

"H-hey," he whispered and winced, his every movement a painstaking effort, "if you've got some cool defense like that, now's the time to tell me, Furball."

"Not quite."

"Figures," he laughed. "Useless freeloader."

With braced effort and a cry that didn't sound all too manly, Naruto staggered back onto his feet, swaying in the clouded winds of sand that breezed by. He wasn't sure what the hell just happened, didn't know why this man attacked or what he was supposed to do next. One moment, he was running loudly from a street vendor when he realized he couldn't pay for his meal—he'd used the last of his ryō on this third night's stay at the bed and breakfast by the gate—and the next he knew, he was on the ground with a wave of sand crushing him beneath an insane weight. He'd bumped into this guy, maybe. It was all a blur.

Then Kurama's chakra was flaring to life on his skin and the sand was pried apart by the sheer force of it just long enough to escape and he ran at the guy, threw back his fist and—

But it connected with sand, not skin. A wall of it. Shifting and changing and matching his every move effortlessly and this whole thing seemed wholly unfair.

A few failed blows later and he was spilling his guts across the dirt. This was so uncool.

Naruto stumbled back, crouching low to the protest of his injury, and his muscles tensed. "Hey, No-Brows," he breathed. "Why're we fighting?"

The boy narrowed his eyes and raised his hand, sand coiling around him like a cocoon. "You're a nuisance."

So he didn't know, either. Huh.

The sand shot forth like bullets only to break apart before impact, eaten away by corrosive red chakra right at the last possible moment. Naruto looked down at himself, at the claws lining his fingertips like a warning. He licked his teeth, feeling sharp edges that should not have been there, and the whole thing felt too familiar.

Painfully so.

"Not now," he ground out, fisting one hand as the other slid into his kunai pouch. Then the action was aborted, because if a fist wasn't enough to break through this guy's defenses then a kunai sure as hell wouldn't be. "Don't, Kurama."

"You'll die."

"As though I would."

Naruto shot forward, a blur of motion and sand and red chakra swirling in the winds. He slammed his fist into the shield of sand and it gave briefly only to reform before he could move past it. There was a delay, though. He needed to be faster. Faster, more agile, because that jerk was still just standing there.

Behind him, the blanket of Kurama's chakra twisted and morphed and sprouted a second tail.

It stung, that chakra. He could feel it heating his skin from within, was too keenly aware of the fever of his thoughts.

He leapt off the ground and spun into a roundhouse kick that connected with sand. A wall of it. A freakin' shield and he was so sick of sand. How the hell had he gotten past it that first time?

No, wait. He knew. He knew because Kurama pulled forward then, forced Naruto to take a backseat to his control, and Naruto's mind was called back to leaves and a scroll and Iruka-sensei dead at his feet. This control was different from what he felt when they switched. This control was more complete, involuntary.

The embodiment of Kurama's rage.

Bodies and leaves and red chakra.

Naruto shook away his thoughts and dodged the cloud of sand threatening to ensnare him. He leapt over No-Brows and landed behind, swinging his fist around—

"That won't work, kit!"

No-Brows twisted to face him but he was already gone in a blur of shunshin speed, materializing at his foe's back and slamming his everything into one finally connecting punch. The armour of sand cracked and crumbled and I did it—

A strangled cry clawed up from his throat as the bones in his arm fractured beneath unbearable force. Naruto grit his teeth and fell to the ground, curling around the white-hot burn of the sand encasing his arm. It hurt. It hurt so completely that he couldn't bear to open his eyes, couldn't bear to look at the damage, couldn't even think.

"Lord Gaara is attacking!" a voice cried from the crowds gathered around. Suddenly there was panic, screaming, running and why were they running? Naruto was the one getting hurt. Why would they run? This was their jinchuuriki, wasn't it? Their living weapon. Their tool against rival villages.

"Take cover!"

Naruto sucked in a painful breath and forced open a red eye. Through the haze of red chakra he could see the people of Suna scatter, vacating the streets, staring back at No-Brows as they ran with complete and utter terror in their eyes.

Oh. Oh, this man was like Naruto, wasn't he?

A third tail sprouted from the mass of chakra orbiting him, flicking out wildly at the world.

He forced his eye on his very indifferent opponent as the armour of sand repaired itself. The first dregs of fatigue were finally making themselves known on the stranger's face and Naruto could sense out his depleting chakra reserves because that was the second time he'd needed to repair the armoured layer of sand. Naruto tried to grin, to give him one more reason to be angry, but couldn't bring himself to through the pain.

Why were they fighting, anyhow? One little bump to the shoulder and No-Brows went in for the kill.

He tried to move his arm. He couldn't. No, no no no, this wasn't okay, this wasn't—

His body jerked, a hardened spear of sand piercing his chest, and he breathed in nothing.

Everything was getting cold again, cold against the heat, against Kurama's surfacing rage, and Naruto's vacant eyes stared at the streets. A man stumbled back, his legs giving out beneath him, and he fell to the ground with his hand covering his mouth, looking every bit like he was going to lose his lunch. His eyes were on No-Brows, on the swirls of sand sifting through the air like a waiting assault, and his whole body trembled.

"M-monster…"

Naruto went still, considering the man. Monster, huh?

Monster.

Naruto was cold. His clothes were slick with his own blood. His arm was crushed and immobile and everything was going wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet that man, that word, that everything—

The fourth tail manifested and Naruto's mind went blank.

The chill of blood loss felt like a far-off echo. The world was dark. He closed his eyes to the village around him, to the pains of his body, and allowed himself to drift. Anger was there, ripe and fresh and cutting and bitter as he was brought back to his life in Konoha, to the sidelong stares and whispered words of strangers in the streets. He was six again, dragging his feet back to his empty apartment, turning on the hall light to find no one there. He kicked off his shoes, pulled out a packet of ramen, and stared at it blankly as his eyes stung and he brushed away unneeded tears.

Then there was Iruka-sensei, warm smiles and sunshine and the tantalizing smell of an irreplaceable ramen bar.

And then there wasn't.

Naruto felt in waves. He would bury his contempt beneath bold-faced lies of confidence and attention-seeking desperation. All of his anger and sadness bottled up inside, compressed, left forgotten until it could be forgotten no more. Then it exploded. And with it went the world.

There was a man with red hair and no eyebrows and the kanji for 'love' branded on his forehead, and that word carried with it a weight that Naruto could intimately understand. That man was a monster and a container for something greater than himself, a weapon for his village. He had no choice in what he was or who he was or what he became. That man was a product of the world. That man was feared and revered and never had a choice.

That man was Naruto, and he could no longer hold onto his hate.

The world bled back into conscious sight and Naruto found himself hovering over a bloodied and bruised man with fear in his eyes. Armoured sand was cracked and broken across his skin and beneath it lied marred purple-blue flesh. The jinchuuriki's defensive shield sanded the dirt, immobile as that boy used up the very last of his chakra to try to recreate his protective shell.

Naruto's hand stopped just before his opponent's face, his entire arm covered in blood, skin burned and aching, hissing red. He wanted to scream against the pain but found that he didn't have the energy. Half-dazed, Naruto drew back his fist, straightened his back, and watched the man. Sand rattled at their feet as No-Brows reached for control with his chakra, but there wasn't enough left to pose a threat.

He looked around to find the whole block levelled to little more than ruins at their feet, and distantly wondered if he'd done all of this. He thought that maybe he did, and he wanted to care, wanted to feel guilt so badly, but all that was there was a distant acknowledgement, an unfeeling 'oh.'

Because this village had a jinchuuriki, and this jinchuuriki was just like himself.

Naruto turned again to face his opponent, still bleeding all over the sand. He sucked in a breath, thankful to be able to breathe again without the choking dread of no air— and why was that, anyway?—and leaned down to offer his hand.

No-Brows stared at it, wide-eyed and wary.

He smiled, tired and so very, very sore, and all he wanted was ramen and a long fourteen-hour nap. "C'mon," he whispered with an overused voice. His jaw ached, as though it'd been torn open. "We fought, so now we're friends. Or something."

"Wh—" No-Brows twitched. "What?"

Naruto tried to grin but it didn't hold its usual vibrance. Blood dripped from his hand, a steady reminder of his injuries, of injuries that should for all intents and purposes have killed him, and snatched his opponent's wrist up, hauling No-Brows to his feet.

He gave the village more thoughtful observation. No, it wasn't just the block that was levelled. What could only be the aftermath of explosions pitted the distant buildings through the carnage. There were no bodies, but he remembered the civilians vacating when the fight first broke out. Knowing there were likely no casualties fought away the threads of guilt that he was finally starting to feel.

But this was bad. This was very, very bad. Nothing about this was okay and he couldn't be there and he was damn-near terrible at medical ninjutsu but they were both bleeding—

Please tell me I have enough chakra left for this.

The most worrying thing about it all was that Kurama did not answer.

From across rooftops, he could see the bodies of uniformed men arising in swirls of sand and wind. Whoever they were, they couldn't have been good.

Naruto hooked his own arm around the too-dazed-to-be-struggling redhead's and formed a practiced hand seal and they were gone, leaving in their wake a crumbling village and a world of fear.

Naruto wasn't exactly sure where they ended up. He shunshined without a destination in mind, his only thoughts focused on not here. There were trees, surprisingly—a few cropping up from the sands around a small pool of water. An oasis. In the distance stood a tall fortress of rocks and edges, and Naruto was pretty sure that had to be Suna.

He breathed a sigh of relief and slid down to the ground, finally released his captive, and looked down to assess the damage. There were two large, gaping holes in his shirt and outer robe, but the skin beneath was healed over, leaving nothing more than a red and raw scar. He tested his left arm, flexed his fingers. It hurt, but it moved. It moved naturally, in the ways that he told it to, instead of swinging involuntarily at his side. But it wasn't all good news. Every piece of his skin was burned red and aching, an endless sea of open sores that he could never hope to heal on his pathetic medical ninjutsu alone. Beneath the surface, his body screamed at him not to move, that if he tried he would be brought damn near tears, and he was inclined to believe those warnings.

No-Brows stood over him, swaying like his legs were about to give way, but for all that he was bruised and bloodied himself, it didn't look all that serious. Fatigue, mostly. Aches and pains that he would recover from with time.

A whole section of the village was gone and here this guy was, worse for wear and otherwise fine. What a joke.

No-Brows stared down at him vacantly, as though considering another assault even while on the bleeding edges of chakra exhaustion, before wobbling to the ground himself. Exhaustion was a good deterrent to conflict.

"Why did you not kill me?" No-Brows rasped out. There was no inflection in his voice, not like the last time he spoke. He'd calmed down. It showed on his face, a blank mask of indifference that Naruto recognized from the early stages of their fight.

Naruto shrugged, lowering one of his arms cautiously into the water. He hissed, the chill assaulting his raw skin like acid, before a soothing coolness quelled the burn. He closed his eyes. Ahh… Whatever that had been back there, he regretted it. Nothing should ever be so painful. "Why should I?"

"I lost."

"Yeah?" Naruto chuckled and it ended in a cough. His lungs were still hating him, even if he could breathe again. "I dunno 'bout that. I think… I lost consciousness at some point. Or somethin'. Which sucks 'cause I wanted to kick your ass myself."

He peeked an eye open to see that his fellow human weapon was very, wholeheartedly confused. It brought with it perverse satisfaction and he smiled.

"I'm a jinchuuriki, too," he stated simply, turning his attention to the sky, welcoming the blue relief from sights of nothing but sand and stone and the occasional cactus. His time in Wind Country saw cloudy skies across the board; this was the first time the world looked less bleak. "You attacked me, sure— unprovoked," he added for good measure. "But I can't hate you. And I don't want you dead."

"But why?"

Naruto hummed. His brain hurt. All this thinking was painful and all he wanted was sleep, not to be the moral pillar for which his fellow jinchuuriki stood. "I see myself in you," he said quietly, swallowing against the dryness of his throat. "I know how it feels to be so alone that all you can do is lash out, y'know?"

It was quiet. He leaned over and cupped his hands, bringing a pool of water to his parched lips, and nothing ever tasted so sweet. He couldn't bring himself to meet No-Brows's eyes, didn't want to see if his words got a reaction out of the man. The words felt like a betrayal, sharing them with someone other than himself, and admitting it all aloud felt wrong and embarrassing. But this man was like him, in every sense, and how could he not?

"They look at me the same way," he continued, betraying himself and hating it. "And I hate it. It's not my fault that I'm stuck with a tailed beast. I don't even know what they are, really… But they look at me like I'm a monster. I'm not. We're not."

At times, he wanted to give them something to fear. Kurama encouraged it, even if he knew it was probably a feeling that he should confront and diminish. He was quite content with burying it deep enough that it would never see the light of day.

He splashed water across his face and was thankful for so, so many things. Like shade and water and blue skies and not dying.

"So I'm gonna be your friend," he said simply, finally daring to look back at the redhead. There were a lot of things drawn on that boy's face but Naruto wasn't well versed enough in the language of 'no eyebrows' to really decide what those things were. Ah, whatever. No-Brows wasn't crushing him with sand so it was good enough.

"You know nothing of me," No-Brows stated when he found his voice.

Naruto grinned. "No better time to start learning, then, y'know?" He raised an aching thumb to point at himself, his name falling off his tongue like water, but he swallowed it. His name. The name given to him by his father. The name that was currently the bane of his existence. The name that he could not use anymore without fear of some Konoha shinobi using it to track him down. He was starting to hate that name, no matter how much it was his. "My name's Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm gonna be the world's greatest ninja! Call me Menma. My hobbies are harassing ANBU and ramen. My likes are ramen and Kurama. My dislikes are Konoha and also Kurama. My dream is, um," he had to think because being the best ninja was great and all but it seemed impractical at the moment, "to eat ramen. And to maybe not die anytime soon 'cause that would suck. Now you."

The redhead looked baffled, seated cross-legged by the water as his hand grabbed absently at the sands. But then it smoothed out, a strange determination taking its place, and he nodded. "My name is Gaara of Suna. I am the jinchuuriki of the tailed beast Shukaku."

It ended there. Naruto blinked, waiting for the rest, and laughed when nothing followed. What a weird guy. "Likes?" he prodded.

"I have none."

"Er, dislikes?"

"Most things."

Naruto was doubled over, clutching his stomach and trying very desperately to hold in his snickers because this guy was really, really weird but that was okay. Naruto understood it. Well, a bit, anyway. Gaara was feeling like a more monotone, socially inept version of Kurama. Naruto knew Kurama. He could handle Kurama. Even if this Kurama was a hell of a lot shorter and was missing his eyebrows.

Once he caught his breath, he held out a hand, wiggling his fingers. Gaara just stared.

"C'mon," he whined. "We're friends now. You don't gotta be so grumpy about it."

"My sand—"

Naruto rolled his eyes and snatched up Gaara's hand, shook it firmly and smiled. "Was that so bad, No-Brows?"

This guy was funny. Naruto never saw someone so carefully apply bandages yet still manage to do such a terrible job. He watched with his hand outstretched, Gaara unravelling the gauze around the painful sores and burns on his skin, head tilted as he carefully contained his amusement.

Gaara didn't much care for being laughed at. It was as though he didn't know how he was supposed to respond to it or what it meant. And really, Naruto was the same in that regard. He didn't have much experience socially, apart from Iruka-sensei and Kurama. There was that Hinata girl that would sometimes follow him around, but she never actually spoke to him, and then, er…

There was old man Hokage. That old man who he saw formally once or twice a month. And really, the old man was nice and all, but…

Well. Old man Third was just keeping an eye on the jinchuuriki, wasn't he?

Gaara clipped the wrappings closed. His eyes narrowed slightly. It was a barely-there change, one easily overlooked, but Naruto was coming to find that when Gaara was calm, his expressions were cryptic. They were subtle, quiet, and that right there was a look of mild frustration. The bandages were too loose, slipping free at the elbow, but Naruto didn't really care; so long as it kept sand out of the open sores, he was happy.

Naruto flexed his arm and bent it to test the hold. Well, whatever. It'd do. He flashed Gaara a teasing grin anyway, though. "You're kinda terrible at this."

Gaara met his eyes and there were feelings behind that look.

Naruto offered up his other arm and that look lingered for a bit longer before the process was repeated there, too. "Suppose you don't get hurt much with that sand shield."

Gaara's movements were careful and meticulous, even more so than before. They'd already patched Gaara up; his sand tried to intervene when it came to the sting of the antiseptic, though. "I never felt pain before today."

"Never?"

"No."

Naruto pouted. "Huh. Feels like I drew the short straw with Kurama." To the questioning look that he received, he scratched his head with his bandaged arm. "Er, he's… brute strength, mostly. I guess? I dunno. Our seal is apparently really restrictive, and his chakra has a nasty backlash. Like, um." He waved his hand around, much to Gaara's displeasure.

"It harms you," Gaara finished, cutting away the excess gauze.

"Yeah. Badly."

"But it is… powerful."

"...Yeah."

He tested those bandages next and nodded. They weren't so loose; Gaara was getting the hang of it. This time Gaara looked satisfied, or about as satisfied as he could look. They filled their canteens, ate the junk food Naruto had stored away in his scroll, and relaxed. The heat of the sun was giving way to evening chill. Soon their world would be unbearably cold. They would layer up and protect themselves from the subzero night. For now, though, they rested.

Naruto retreated inward, searching for the strangely silent freeloader within. He found himself in that same dark, wet place, the seal within him, at a set of impossibly large bars, and behind them rested a fox, giant and orange and lying there, head resting on its chin, red eyes watching Naruto softly.

Naruto let out a very loud, long sigh of relief and sat down in water that he couldn't feel, wetness that wasn't there.

"You scared the crap outta me, old man," he groaned, burying his face against his arms, feeling the weight of the world around him. "Where've you been?"

"Here," Kurama said simply. "Where I always am."

Naruto peeked out from around his arms to shoot the fox a glare. "You haven't been answering me. I thought—"

"Thought what?"

"...I dunno." He scratched his head, listening to the rolling growls of Kurama's breath. "What you did back there—that scared me."

Kurama narrowed his eyes, tails flicking and coiling behind him. "That was not me, kit."

"...What?"

"You released my chakra all on your own."

No, that… that couldn't have been right. He remembered the same feeling, the same burning pain along his skin as that day three months ago, that day where Iruka-sensei lied cold at his feet and Kurama reached out, spoke to him, encouraged him, and—

And he had been the one to accept that offer.

Naruto straightened his back, took in his bandaged hands, half-expecting claws at the end of his fingertips. Red chakra burning at his skin. There was nothing, though—just aches and pains and the aftermath of a familiar rage.

"Oh," he finally said, understanding as a lump formed at the back of his throat. He fisted his hands and met Kurama's eyes with a kind of desperation that he hated. "...I didn't like that, Kurama."

"I know."

Naruto staggered and swayed to his feet, taking weak, thoughtless steps forward until he was crossing the bars into Kurama's cage, the spaces between them more than wide enough for his small body to pass through. From so close, Kurama looked larger than life, a towering, impossible mass of fur and hatred and chakra. Teeth the size of him poked out from behind black lips. Nine tails thrashed about in the background, and Naruto reached a hand out to awkwardly touch the fur of Kurama's paw.

Kurama narrowed his eyes and said nothing.

His shoulders sloped downward and he dropped to the floor, leaning back against Kurama's leg. Heat ebbed off the fox in waves, a comforting security against the chill. He couldn't feel the water, but he could feel Kurama. Kurama was there, solid and real as the bars that confined him.

Kurama sighed, closed his eyes, and lowered his head back down, right beside his jinchuuriki. For a time, they just waited out the night there, together, comforted by the stewing silence, the body heat radiating off one another.

"You were right, kit," Kurama admitted, his voice gravelly and low. "I should have trained you to do more than run away. And I will."

Blue eyes looked up to watch the fox, a tired smile passing Naruto's lips, and he leaned all of his weight against Kurama's leg. "Told ya that I was."

Kurama snorted. "Cheeky brat."

"Gaara's comin' with us," Naruto said suddenly, as though he couldn't stop himself. "Like it or not."

"I don't."

"Don't care," Naruto huffed, crossing his arms and turning away from the oversized ball of anger and fur. "I won't leave him. He wants to come, he's comin'. Like it or not."

Kurama sighed. One of his tails reached around to lightly flick the human's face, earning a sputter and a shove, and Kurama laughed.

Like that, it felt like everything might be okay.

Naruto opened his eyes to the outside world, to a frostbitten night of clear skies and a sea of stars. He cast a glance across the fire at Gaara, the self-proclaimed insomniac, and pulled the thick woolen blanket tighter around his shoulders.

Gaara looked at him then, a mild interest in his eyes. "You've returned."

Naruto grinned. "Sorry. Was I out a while?"

"Two hours, just about."

He whistled. "Damn. Sorry! Did I worry you?"

"Not really." Gaara looked away, stoking the fire as his sand huddled around him like a blanket. There were still medical supplies scattered about their campgrounds, only half of which Naruto actually knew how to use, and Naruto was amused to find that more of his snacks had been collateral in his two hour nap. "They will come looking for me."

Suna was there, on the cusp of the horizon, a veritable fortress of rock and sand. In the darkness, all that they could make out was a faded silhouette. "Yeah. I know. And ANBU are after me." He twisted, leaning in eagerly, firelight dancing in his eyes. "Who cares? We're jinchuuriki. Who's gonna stop us?"

"The ANBU, evidently."

Naruto pouted. "Well, you're no fun. Jeez…"

He chugged back the water in his canteen before handing it off to Gaara. There was a moment of pause before it was taken, and he watched amusedly. Satisfied, he curled up on the sand and closed his eyes, cocooning himself in blankets. "With your defense and my power, it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than a few ANBU and some Suna jōnin to take us out. Just you wait."

The moon was full and big in the sky, casting a haunting glow across the sand dunes, and he grinned.

"We'll take on the world."

Notes:

Thank you all for your patience and I hope the gap between this chapter and the next won't be so long. And as always, thanks so much for the lovely comments. They make working on these stories even more enjoyable!