'And I don't understand
By the touch of your hand
I would be the one to fall'

- 'Sweet Surrender' by Sarah McLachlan

"I have a plan."

Neji looked up from his book, watching Shikamaru's fingers tap restlessly on the shogi board, the genius' eyes fixed on Shino's, who sat across from him, a cicada resting in his hair.

"What is it?" Chouji sat up, swallowing his last chip. Shikamaru glanced at him, then looked at where Lee and Sakura were sitting underneath the spreading branches of a weeping willow.

"You said that Naruto formed a contract with the Kyuubi that allowed the Kyuubi to have him every night, correct?" Neji inclined his head in a short nod, tucking his hands inside his coat. "Then," Shikamaru said, moving one of his pieces, "all we must do is distract Kakashi and Gaara, get them away from Naruto, and hold him down so he can't go to the forest that night, thus breaking the contract, thus stopping the…" he trailed off, setting another piece down with a clack.

"Rapes?" Shino finished. Shikamaru glared at him. "Yeah." He looked back down at the board again, and said heavily, no triumph or joy in his voice, "I win."

Neji looked around the park, watching Academy students, bundled in thick winter coats, play and whirl on the merry-go-round, their high-pitched voices raised in laughter. Old men ambled down the cobbled paths, their faces upturned to the warmth of the sun. Lee thrust a fist in the air and said something, making Sakura giggle.

It was all so… normal, and he hated it, hated this, hated that the world kept spinning and turning and going on as it had since the beginning of time, when Naruto, the best ninja of their generation, was suffering in a way no one could heal.

"All right," Neji said, closing his book. "Tell the others to meet at my house tonight at seven. Bring your own food." Shikamaru waved a hand in the air, already focused on his game.

Naruto stared, wide-eyed, at Gaara, who met his gaze with calm green eyes. You… love me? He loves me? Words stuck in his throat, unable to be expressed. He swallowed, breathing, "But… you can't." Gaara's expression darkened. "Why not?" Naruto shook his head in denial, hands clenching in the bedcovers. "Because… I'm dirty. You don't need someone like me who can't even give you what you need. I mean, just kissing you made me feel sick!" He looked down at his lap, wishing he could cry. "I'm sorry."

A clenched fist slammed into the wall by his head, making him flinch. He dragged his gaze upward to stare dully into green eyes burning with rage and sorrow.

"Don't tell me what I can't do!" Gaara snarled, the words poisonous. Naruto watched him for a moment, tracing the black rings around his eyes.

Gaara gentled his voice, "Did you think that was why I said I love you?"

Naruto looked away, glancing over the picture of the sea that hung on the wall. He missed the sea. One day he'd like to see it again.

"Answer me," Gaara said, his voice pleading.

Naruto looked back at him, feeling heavy and dull with leaden pain.

"You are Naruto," Gaara said, "and that's enough."

He stared at him for a long moment, unable to speak. What could he say? 'Thank you,' was so inadequate, unable to express what he felt at the moment. He opened his mouth, shut it again. Gaara touched his hand, sand rubbing against his skin in a reminder that Gaara understood, was the only one who could really understand just what he was, something both more and less than human.

"I'll think about it," he croaked. Gaara didn't smile but his expression lightened a tiny bit. "Good. I will be downstairs with Hatake. I believe he wants to get a closer look at my Sand Armor." Naruto laughed, the sound scraping against his throat. "That's Kakashi-sensei for you. He's always curious about new jutsu, especially one that's as cool as your Sand Armor."

Gaara studied him for a moment more, then picked his hand up and brought it to his mouth, his tongue flickering across the back of his hand, blood-warm and feral, something beyond normal, but beautiful all the same. He let go, rose from the bed, and crossed the room, glancing back at Naruto one time.

Green eyes disappeared behind the door, leaving Naruto alone. Drawing his legs to his chest, he wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his head on them, closing his eyes. He shuddered, fingers clenching and drawing blood, but he didn't cry.

In the end, he had at least that to be proud of.

Kakashi looked up from polishing his last kunai as Gaara came out onto the back porch, the pale man's mouth compressed into a tight line. Obviously something happened with Naruto… He said nothing, but instead stood and took the three steps down into the yard cratered from Gaara and Naruto's spar, feeling the other demon vessel follow him, silent as a shadow.

"Are you ready?" Gaara nodded and closed his eyes for a moment, his face smoothing out into peacefulness, something so rare for him. Sand flowed from the gourd, settling on his skin and almost merging with him. Kakashi raised his hand to his forehead protector and slipped a thumb under it, taking a breath- still so strange, even after all this years- as he pushed it up and let his Sharingan open.

Kakashi almost gasped at what he saw.

Chakra was blue, he knew this, except in the case of demons. But this was the first time he had seen demonic chakra, and for something so frightening, something that brought only sorrow, it was beautiful.

Golden as the sun, chakra flickered around Gaara's form, almost looking like he was surrounded by a halo of light. He smiled at that ridiculous thought, that someone who had killed over three hundred people could be angelic, before he focused further, looking closer. The chakra wasn't being produced. It was only residual power left over from the Shukaku, but that power was more than most jounin could ever hope to possess.

That's strange… he circled Gaara to look at the gourd, focusing in on the sand within it. It wasn't made from Shukaku's yellow chakra or even Gaara's flickering blue flame, rather a deep, dark red, almost like blood in the moonlight.

Nausea roiled in his stomach at the realization that this was Gaara's mother, a skeletal hand made of sand reaching out to torment her son from beyond the grave. The form outlined in gold moved to face him and came closer, stopping scant inches from him as he closed the Sharingan. Kakashi's breath froze in his throat at the first tentative brush of unskilled fingers over his closed eyelid. Sand rasped against his skin, his heart thumping in his chest as if he had just run a marathon.

"Gaara?" he whispered, surprised at the gentleness of the touch. Gaara's face was serious, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he brushed a thumb over Kakashi's face, tracing the long scar that went beneath the edge of his mask. Kakashi almost shivered, unable to tear himself away, long-denied wants aching in his chest. How long had it been since someone had just touched him like this, unafraid of the scars and the mask?

"I didn't think," Gaara said slowly, his brow wrinkled, "that the Sharingan Eye could be called beautiful." Kakashi swallowed.

"It's not really my eye," he offered. Gaara's fingers left, and Kakashi, absurdly, found himself missing it. "Thank you for letting me examine your chakra," he said, unable to think of anything else to say.

Gaara nodded. "It was not a problem." He looked down, red hair flopping over his eyes, and said, "Temari and Kankuro sent me some dates from Suna. Would you like to have some?"

Kakashi pulled his forehead protector down over his eye once more and smiled, looping an arm around Gaara's thin, frail shoulders. "I'd like that very much."

Gaara looked up at him, and smiled.

It wasn't a particularly big or toothy smile, or even a beautiful one. But Kakashi, seeing this expression on the face of a man whose shell even his siblings could not get through, resolved to do whatever it took to see that Gaara was like this more often.

For that smile.

Neji opened the door and let Sasuke in, the Uchiha still dressed in his ANBU uniform, snake mask dangling from one hand. The curse seal stood out lividly against his skin. Sasuke nodded to him and took up his regular position in the corner of the room, arms folded across his chest and katana dangling from his hip.

Sakura looked up from her position on the couch and gave him an apologetic smile. Neji narrowed his eyes; what could Sakura have to be apologetic about in the first place?

"Shikamaru has come up with a plan," he said, "where we distract Kakashi and Gaara and get them out of the safehouse. Once that's done, the rest of us can go inside the house and hold Naruto down, preventing him from fulfilling the stipulations in the contract, thus breaking it and stopping the abuse from continuing."

Hinata propped her chin on her fists, twisting from where she sat in Kiba's lap to stare at Neji.

"What distraction would we use?" Shino spoke up from the armchair, looking up from the moth perched on his finger, wings drifting in the gentle breeze of his breath.

"I have found that Kakashi gives a report on Naruto's progress to Tsunade every four days. If we could find a way to coincide our strike with Kakashi's absence, it would make it easier to subdue Gaara." The insect-nin winced as he finished his words, the skin around the lenses of his eyeglasses wrinkling. 'Did he have some experience with Gaara that frightened him?' Neji shifted his gaze, looking at the rest of the members of Team Eight, all of who paled at Shino's words.

Interesting.

"Why can't we distract him and deal with him that way?" Lee rubbed fretfully at his arm, the remnants of a battle with a blood-soaked boy that had never quite faded. He grinned weakly, "Not that I'm volunteering!"

Sakura glared at him, mockingly waving a fist, "Try and I'll beat you to a bloody pulp myself."

"Yes, dear."

Sasuke stepped into the silence, "I could probably distract him with a spar."

Shikamaru shook his head, "Wouldn't work. Gaara's not going to leave Naruto's side for anything, even a spar. We would have to do something much more drastic to get him to even consider it."

"Seal the house to prevent Ninjutsu from being used inside, since he doesn't know taijutsu?" Kiba ventured.

Shikamaru twirled a kunai around his finger, considering. "That might work, but I don't think any of us know any seals powerful enough to contain a very pissed vessel."

"Ex," Sakura interjected. Shikamaru waved a dismissive hand, "Whatever. The point is, we can't fight him by ourselves unless we find a way to seal the house. I'd try to use the Eight Divination Sealing Style if I could, but that requires the sacrifice of someone's life, not to mention it's a forbidden technique that none of us know, and using it would make all of us into missing-nin. It would require breaking into the Hokage's Archives to find the scroll for it, and none of us are able to bypass the heavy guards on the archives."

Neji got up and crossed the room to his bookshelf, scanning the titles. Guide to Elementary Kirigakure no Sato Jutsu… no, History of Tailed Demons… nowhere close, Fundamentals of Seals, maybe. He slid the thin, green-leather-bound volume out from between the thick books and sat back down on the couch, flipping to the index.

"Look under 'Self-made Scrolls,'" Shikamaru suggested, leaning over to steal a ball of onigiri from Chouji. Chouji hit him. Sasuke picked out a book and sat down beside him, his pale face drawn and thin.

Neji dragged a finger down the page, flipped to another chapter, and stabbed a finger at the paper. "I've found something we can use." Sakura got up, shaking off Lee, and plopped down on the arm of the couch.

"This says that the creation of seals to make it so Ninjutsu can't be used within a given space is relatively easy, but the measure of how much power the seal will suppress is based on the blood of the ink-maker. Gaara has more power than any of us…" he trailed off, turned a few pages, and continued, "but we could combine our blood in the ink, which should be able to hold him for long enough.

The supplies are easy to find, I've got them around, and the rest are easily gotten from the stalls in the marketplace." He closed the book and looked up, knitting his fingers together as he gazed at the assembled shinobi levelly. "Are you willing to donate your blood for Naruto's sake?"

"That is a stupid question," Hinata said, her white eyes, colder than ice, somehow profane on such a gentle face, boring into him. "Of course we will. He has saved all of us, and now we have a chance to repay the debt, how could we refuse?" Neji almost winced. Of course, how could he have forgotten the love Hinata had borne for Naruto for years? Love like that did not fade easily like the snow under sunlight.

"I'm… sorry." The words felt thick and useless in his mouth. He rose and went into the kitchen, not wanting to feel her accusing gaze, and pulled a small glass bowl from the cabinet, taking it to the living room and placing it on the coffee table. He removed a kunai and held it over his palm.

A heartbeat of silence as he cut, feeling cells split and die under the blade, red blood welling from the long slash, the dim, pale white of the metacarpals visible through the thin layer of muscle separating them from the open air. He tilted his hand and watched the blood drip into the bowl, passing it to Sakura, who sterilized it with a few quick seals before doing the same and placing her hand over the bowl, palm-down.

As their blood mingled and the knife was passed around the room, Neji glanced out the window, watching the red, red sun touch the rim of the earth, the dim corona of red haze rimming the star, for a long, terrifying moment, seeming to take the shape of nothing so much as the leering, lolling grin of the Kyuubi, laughing at their feeble attempts to stop a demon of such power as he, the king of demons, a beast of pure chakra, a being who could uproot the mountains with one casual sweep of its paw. What could they do against he, the fox seemed to ask, immortal, indivisible, apocalyptically powerful?

Neji turned his head away, closed his eyes tightly, and shuddered.

Naruto sat with his legs crossed on the couch, a bowl of ramen held in one hand and Gaara's head resting in his lap, Naruto's free hand resting on Gaara's thin shoulder.

"Gaara?" One blackened lid cracked open, an annoyed green slit staring up at him. "I kind of need my hand back to eat my ramen, you know?" Gaara made a low noise, but twitched his shoulder in acceptance.

"Yeah, I know that you're cold, but there's a blanket on the end of the couch if you're really that freezing!" Naruto scolded, cracking his chopsticks apart and beginning to slurp the noodles into his mouth, smacking his lips. . Oh, ramen, how would I ever live without you? Gaara's head crash-landed in his lap, the younger boy dragging the thick green blanket up over his shoulders.

Naruto yelped, catching the spilled ramen in his palm and licking it up. "Gaara!" he whined. "You made me spill my ramen!" Gaara grumbled, closing his eyes and pointedly ignoring him. Naruto huffed and turned his attention back to the television, changing the channel to the soap opera channel.

"Look, Gaara! All My Shinobi is on!" A hand made of sand made a threatening gesture from the corner where the gourd lay. He sighed, leaned back into the couch, and slurped up more of the noodles, looking up as Kakashi ambled into the room, dressed in ratty gray sweatpants and shirt.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei! Come watch TV with us- well, me, Gaara's sleeping."

"I'm trying to," Gaara muttered from beneath the blanket. Kakashi crossed the room, grabbed Gaara's feet, lifting them into the air, and plopped onto the couch, putting Gaara's feet on his lap.

"Naruto, you can call me Kakashi, you know," his old teacher said mildly, resting his arms on Gaara's legs, drumming his fingers on the bottom of Gaara's soles. Gaara's toe twitched as a disgruntled redhead emerged from beneath the blanket, looking down the couch at Kakashi.

"What are you doing?" His voice was hesitant. Kakashi smiled underneath the mask, his voice gentle as he answered, "Nothing, really. I need something to do with my fingers, don't I?" Naruto glared at Kakashi, who smiled angelically.

Once a pervert, always a pervert, Naruto thought wryly, turning back to his show and ignoring the jealousy bubbling inside him. Gaara glanced at Kakashi, then at Naruto, his eyes huge in the light and confused. Naruto patted him on the shoulder absently, watching Kazuma confess his love to the reptilian love-child of his evil clone and his step-mother.

Gaara lay back down, resting his head and closing his eyes. Naruto's breath hitched for a moment at the realization that this was normality, this was something beautiful, here on the squeaking couch with Kakashi and Gaara's head on his lap and horrible soap operas on the television and ramen in his hand-

This was normal, he was okay (I'm okay, I'm okay, I can try and stand up), and there was no place else on earth he would rather be.