Disclaimer: All your ninja are belong to Kishimoto

A/N: This one's a bit short, but it's because this and the next one were originally one chapter that got monstrously long, so I had to split it in half. :P The good news is, that makes the next bit almost ready to post already, so you should only have to wait a day or two for it. :)

Chapter 14: Brotherhood:

Naruto looked around at his current companions. The two mobile ones were sitting nervously on what was left of his bed, only glancing up occasionally as if afraid of what he might do. Gaara was just as he'd fallen except more sand had seemed to slough off of him since he didn't have access to his chakra reserves anymore. The senbon in his neck prevented him from anything but the most automatic body functions, breathing and heartbeat mostly.

Random medical facts floated through the chaos that was Naruto's current emotional state of mind - it wouldn't be safe to leave the redhead like this for long or it could do some pretty bad damage to his internal organs. 'Zune had grilled the dangers of this kind of thing into his head as soon as she's given him his first set of needles.

He carefully scooped the other boy up and carried him over to Jiraiya's bed. The two awake sand-nin watched him like he was handling explosives instead of their brother and the boy even sucked in a sharp breath of fear, but Naruto couldn't bring himself to leave the other Jinchuuriki on the floor like that. Jiraiya's bed was in a little better shape than his own was, since he hadn't been sitting on it when he'd been attacked. Naruto was careful to set the boy down so his limbs wouldn't be in painful or awkward positions. Impeding blood flow in this state was a good way to lose limbs if prolonged, and he wasn't sure Fan-Girl and Kabuki-Boy would let him free the Jinchuuriki any time soon.

The awkward silence drug on for several more tense minutes before Naruto couldn't take it anymore. "Okay, so you guys want to at least introduce yourselves before the hotel staff comes in, and I get hauled off to wherever it is you put people with stupid, lazy, irresponsible, sensei who don't turn in their paperwork right away?" He offered, hoping to at least get the conversational ball rolling if they were going to hang around until Jiraiya got back.

"Um, you probably don't have to worry about any of that – The lady at the desk didn't say who you were in her report – at least not the one we saw." Fan-Girl looked a bit suspicious for a moment before continuing, "You'd have just been put under surveillance until your time was up to turn in your credentials if she had, and no one is going to come see what happened here because of Gaara – they probably already assume you're dead, and he's bathing in your blood by now. They'll be too scared. We'll file a proper report stating the actual circumstances, and you shouldn't have any repercussions as long as we can verify your papers."

"Well, that's really strange, but I'll buy it since they really should have been here by now…but that still doesn't tell me who YOU are." Naruto replied. "I'll go first. I'm Senju Naruto – new genin of Konoha."

"You-You're just a rookie genin?" Kabuki Boy seemed stunned.

"Of course! I'm only 11, and non-wartime graduating age is usually 12!" Naruto frowned, though it was kind of nice to be taken for older instead of younger for once – he really wasn't THAT short for his age!

"Um, he didn't mean any disrespect, Naruto-sama!" Fan-Girl slapped her hand over her teammate's, brother's? - Whatever - Kabuki-Boy's mouth.

"N-Naruto-sama?! What the hell? It's just Naruto!" These were two of the most confusing people he'd even encountered.

"Er, yes – Naruto-um-san. I'm Sabaku no Temari, and this is my younger brother, Kankuro….I guess you already 'met' our other sibling…"

"Yeah, well, look, it's nice to meet you guys and everything," Naruto replied, distracted by checking Gaara's pulse, "but I've really got to let him up now, or he'll be really hurt. You can leave if you're scared." Naruto wasn't going to let their issues make him cause this guy irreparable harm when he had been lucky enough not to kill him in the first place…actually, now that he was calming down and standing back a little from the fight, he was starting to put it into perspective and feel a little better about it.

He knew he kicked ass with senbon, and the fact was, Gaara HADN'T died, and neither had he.

Kankuro blinked. Who the hell WAS this guy to say, 'you can leave if you're scared'? He takes down Gaara with a fricken tiny sliver of metal, and then he acts like it was NOTHING and talks down to them about being frightened? The puppet user wondered if he'd fallen into some strange alternate universe where up was down and plaid was fashionable. Was he being pranked? Surely, Gaara wouldn't participate in some weird sort of practical joke? Gaara wasn't exactly the 'playful younger brother' type.

"Er…yeah. We'll just go then." Temari knew that look; she figured they'd better make their retreat before Kankuro dug them into a hole with his bulldozer sized-mouth. She grabbed the back of his collar before he could say anything to piss the guy off and drug him towards the window. "We'll just…umm, not say anything about this. Right, Kankuro? No one will question Gaara about it…just…er, show him your passport before you send him off, and we'll put that in the mission report." With that, they were gone.

Naruto blinked. He hadn't known they could move that fast. He turned back to the prone guy beside him and gently placed his fingers on the senbon in his neck, "I'm going to take this out, and you'll be able to move again. Don't panic or anything, okay? And, er…please don't attack me again or whatever." He had a feeling another attack wouldn't be very successful anyway, because Ivy was dead weight around his waist, but SOMETHING was sure using up the ambient excess chakra produced by his bloodlimit around Kyuubi's seal – it only made sense that it was Shukaku.

He carefully slid the needle out the way it went in, and the sand around the room immediately flew back onto the kid, reforming his armor like it had been magnetized. Gaara scrambled frantically away, until his back hit the wall, and he could go no further, his previously blank face and body projecting nothing but panic. Odd little whimpering noises came out of his mouth and his hand kept convulsively clutching at the blood trickling from his neck. "You hurt me!" He gasped, "I'm BLEEDING, – this is MY blood!"

"Whoa, whoa! You're hyperventilating! Take a deep breath! I'm not going to hurt you; I'll even heal your neck if you let me." Naruto started to edge forward, but had to throw his arms up in front of him to protect his face from flying sand, "GAARA, STOP IT!" A huge rush of power seemed to leave him from the hand he'd noticed itching earlier and the grit suddenly just dropped, covering the ruins of the room in a light blanket of sand.

Gaara sat in a pile of what had been his ultimate defense, his armor once more sliding off of him. His eyes grew large and round and he immediately began producing a high-pitched, panicked whine, his face set in absolute horror at his total lack of power. He was obviously trying to make the sand move as it had before, but it refused to attack the blond boy in front of him; it almost felt like it didn't WANT to – which was just ridiculous! It wanted to attack EVERYONE.

Naruto could tell every time he tried to draw on the power because it physically HURT, as if it was pulling something out of him instead. It was like when Ivy demanded more power for something stupid she wanted, but about three millions times worse. A familiar stirring under his seal told him Kyuubi was taking an interest in whatever was happening, and the blood seemed to be the main issue preventing the other boy from calming down. He needed to stop him from trying to draw on his Bijuu's power as soon as possible, because the sensation was like thousands of bees flying through his veins and there was nothing he hated worse than bees.

Impulsively Naruto flew through the hand seals for a basic medical jutsu and lunged, catching Gaara's wrists in one hand – Shukaku's jailer was surprisingly physically weak for a shinobi with that kind of power, the leaf genin noted - he obviously depended too heavily on his sand attacks. Before he could try yet again to attack with the sand or wiggle his wrists free, Naruto quickly touched the minor injury with the healing jutsu on his free hand. The green glow of the technique cast the frightened boy's face in eerie relief, but the wound was a tiny, insignificant thing now that the needle was gone, and it was quickly closed. "Look, look, no more wound! I healed it, you're not bleeding anymore!"

As soon as the pain stopped and the warm glow of Naruto's chakra seeped into his neck, Gaara completely froze, his eyes staring unblinkingly at the kneeling ninja's face.

Gaara couldn't process this situation. He'd experienced very little in the way of feelings aside from emotional pain to this point in his life, but he'd never experienced the cessation of any kind of pain, either. He had no frame of reference for how to react to something like this, especially since his fall back reaction for unknown situations – use extreme violence – seemed to be right out, and Mother wasn't pushing for the kill. He couldn't even be 100 percent sure he was correctly labeling the sensation; it had been so long since he'd let himself feel anything but hate and anger.

"You-you made the pain stop." He gasped, giving in to the weird feeling of comfort and drawn to trust the other ninja . He was too emotionally exhausted to fight that instinct – even the being inside of him seemed to be soothed at the sensation of the blond boy's power.

"Well, yeah! I never wanted to hurt you in the first place." Naruto said.

Not…wanted to hurt him?..."M-My sand—" This was unreal – like one of Mother's visions, only without the horrors, but he was so VULNERABLE. He'd NEVER been vulnerable before! Even before he'd been betrayed by that first assassination attack--

"Um, sorry about that – I think it's my kekkei genkai. It keeps back and sometimes calms the Kyu-er, other Bijuu, too, as well as neutralizes their power." He knew he shouldn't say anything; he knew where Jiji was coming from with that bit of advice, and he'd certainly never even CONSIDERED doing something like this before, but sometimes Naruto just got feelings about people and situations – sometimes he just knew what he had to say. Fuck it, if this guy's siblings were any indication of how people normally reacted to Shukaku's vessel, what harm could telling him do? They all thought Gaara was a crazy psycho, so they probably won't believe him, Naruto reasoned, besides, they'd have to stay around him for more than three seconds to listen to what he had to say. The sand Jinchuuriki obviously needed to be able to connect with another human being, and this was the only thing he could think of to build that rapport, "I'm a Jinchuuriki too."

If possible, Gaara's unblinking eyes got even bigger. "You—"

"Yup – me too." He pulled up his shirt revealing the completely quiet Ivy curled around his waist and his always-visible seal.

Gaara's hand rose, as if it had a mind of its own, to touch the black markings. "Mother…" he gasped, "I can't hear Mother." She wasn't just soothed, she was almost GONE, like that 'sleeping' other creatures did. '—wait, no…maybe, was that, purring?' This was just too much – first the new sensation of physical pain, then the pain LEFT, and now the constant whispers in his mind were stopped on top of his sand failing him?! His thoughts were spinning so fast he couldn't keep up with them.

Naruto caught the hand and stared hard into the face of the boy in front of him. "The demon's not your kaa-san, Gaara. It's Shukaku. It's just something that's controlling you by making you think that. Gaara is Gaara, and I'm me. We're not them."

Gaara flinched back violently, huddling in the corner again and cradling the hand Naruto had touched like it had been burned, "NO! My existence, Killing! I have to prove—" His hands rose to clutch at his hair, and he whimpered, his nails digging into his scalp and raking down over the mark on his forehead, unprotected by its usual sand armor, which began to bleed. "NO!!" He couldn't process all of this! It was just too much!

Naruto yanked his hands away to prevent him from causing himself anymore harm. It figured Ivy would finally be quiet when he really needed her. The extra set of "hands" would have helped out a lot here. "Stop it! You feel that, don't you? You feel pain, don't you? That shows you exist!" He once more applied the healing jutsu to the new wounds, causing them to close and scar over slightly, marring the kanji a little, "-and now I've stopped the pain and that proves you exist too, right?"

"You—you stopped it." He gasped. "It doesn't hurt anymore." His mind desperately clutched at the words, desperately trying to make things make sense again.

"Right! Now you get it!" He grinned, though all he could think about was how but for his kaa-san, this could be him.

"How? How does it work?" Gaara begged, his voice a pleading and raspy whisper. He didn't get it at all. Pain didn't stop – Yashamaru had said his pain couldn't stop! Heart pain didn't heal except with love, and he wasn't capable of receiving that from others! Mother told him so…but his uncle had lied about things…lots of things…

Naruto wouldn't have claimed to know exactly what was going on, or exactly how his words were affecting the other boy, but he knew they were. "Humanity, Gaara. Feeling pain, and stopping pain. No pain is better, right? You said you killed and caused pain to prove your existence right? I guess to put it in a way you might understand, I'm kind of proving my existence by making yours better."

He nodded like he'd been given the greatest treasure in the world or just been told the secret of the universe. He was willing to accept any sort of explanation that might give his thoughts another foundation to build on.

†

"Do…do you think they killed each other?" Kankuro whispered to his sister from their spot on the roof of the building across from Naruto's hotel, which had pretty much emptied as soon as the Gaara related commotion had started. Unfortunately, it wasn't that odd for something like this to happen with the youngest son of the Kage.

Temari smacked Kankuro upside the head.

"Ow, what was that for?!"

"If they'd started fighting again, we'd have been able to see it! Gaara's not exactly SUBTLE." She reminded him. Down below people were beginning to move on the streets again, having taken refuge for the duration of the ruckus – no one wanted to be collateral damage in what, for all they knew, was another assassination attempt on their Jinchuuriki. Temari didn't know for sure that they were entirely wrong. What were the odds of their team picking up this mission when one of the ninja who were supposedly here illegally just happened to be one of the Legendary Sannin?... and that other boy – he was amazing! Gaara hadn't even met the Toad Sage - he'd been defeated by the guy's genin apprentice!

"…so you want to go see what's happening?" Kankuro asked. The curiosity was killing him. It had begun to overrule the fear he'd lived with since he'd first been told about his little brother and that his mother was dead. He'd always known his father was a cold and cruel man, but the kinds of choices he was making lately weren't making his oldest son feel very sure of his sanity. It didn't help that he was always with that strange woman... If he didn't know better, he'd think the Kazekage wanted all his children dead, not just his failed experimental weapon. Why else send them out with GAARA and conveniently reassign their Jounin sensei to border duty on a night they just so happen to get sent up against some super-chibi-freak. No way was that a coincidence.

"Yeah." Temari nodded decisively – the two boys had been in there a long time after all. She started to stand up, but Kankuro caught her arm before she could start jumping down.

"What if it IS bad? What if Senju killed him instead?"

"Well…Gaara's our little brother, isn't he? We shouldn't have left him in the first place…and if this mission and the last couple we've been "specially assigned" are any indication, we can't afford to let a chance like this pass us by. It could get us ALL killed."

"But—"

"No buts! Sure, he's a scary psychopath, but he's OUR scary psychopath! He's still our otouto, and Otou-san's getting worse!"

"Otouto?"

They spun around to the voice that had spoken from behind them. Gaara stood there with Senju Naruto, and he actually looked…really young, and vulnerable even though there was still no expression on his face. There wasn't even a single glint of murderous intent in his eyes! His arms were wrapped around himself, and he looked like he'd been through the wringer.

Temari couldn't believe the difference. Her own fear warred with her sisterly instincts for several moments before she decided it was worth the risk. She tentatively took a couple of steps forward and reached out a hand to place it on Gaara's shoulder. "Yeah, 'otouto'. You're my little brother, right?"

He flinched away from the contact at first, but a nudge from Naruto stopped him, and his mouth fell open in shock at her words. His head seemed to nod on its own. "Yes." He rasped.

Naruto grinned foxily and gave him a nudge towards his siblings – he thought he could really get to like the kunoichi. "Don't tell anyone what we talked about, okay?" He put a hand on his own stomach to remind the other boy of what he meant. "Come talk to me some more tomorrow."

"Hn." The redhead seemed to be regaining his calm and equilibrium. The talk they'd had about being Jinchuuriki and human had definitely helped and now Temari—'My sister' he reminded himself... "You have my word, Senju Naruto." He took several steps away and suddenly paused, his eyes going wide as Shukaku rushed up into his consciousness again becoming agitated and active once more.

Naruto noticed and figured out the issue when his own chakra stopped pulling harshly toward the other boy, and Ivy twitched a little like she was just waking up – it was evidentially a proximity thing. "Hey, you can handle it, can't you? Don't let it push you around." He frowned. It would suck if Gaara could only be himself when he was within a few feet of the Mokuton user.

"I can…" Gaara murmured, his eyes rising to lock in turn with each of his sibling's, "my will is my own, and honestly…the purring was very creepy." His sand hissed in the gourd on his back, but quickly settled down. He set to ignoring the whispering madness in his head as he'd once tried to ignore the rest of humanity. It was surprisingly effective, but then, he'd had a lot of practice.

†

A/N: Forgive the chapter length! :P The last one was over twice as long as a normal chapter and the next one's long too - it was a short chapter NOW or wait for me to wibble of the character development bits from the fallout with Jiraiya and get a 9,000 word chapter later, so this way, you're getting more sooner! XD Dry comedy is more my niche, so this heavy character development stuff is a bit nerve wracking for me to write! XD I inevitably go over and over things a thousand times before I think it's good enough while flailing wildly in an attempt to keep it from getting over-dramatic. When I said the story was going to take a turn for the serious, these three chapters were a big part of that. But, like I said above, I'll try to get the next part up in a day or two. :)

I know Gaara's attitude change probably seems a bit abrupt, but Naruto turned his whole world on it's head with a NEEDLE after he thought of himself as invincible for so long - that kind of thing changes a person and can totally rearrange their world-view - and consequently leave them somewhat suggestible because they are desperate for stability. If it didn't happen, we wouldn't have a term for it: "paradigm shift" ;) We'll go more into it next chapter. He's a very confused individual at the moment.

Some of you have picked up on the fact that I put the title art up about 24 hours before the next chapter goes up! LOL I didn't expect that, but good for you. :) Yes, that is a pretty accurate assessment of when I'll be updating next.

Speaking of title art, Yes, there is art in the profile! :)

I didn't get to respond to many of the reviews from last time, and for that I apologize! FFNet's alert and PM system went down almost as soon as I posted the chapter so I literally got swamped with all the comments in my inbox yesterday morning! XD I haven't had a chance to go through it all yet. I'm usually very good about responding to reviews because I love to get your thoughts and input and correspond with so many of you, so rest assured, they were appreciated even if I didn't reply! If your questions or concerns weren't answered with this chapter, please feel free to leave me another review and I'll be happy to get back with you.

Next time: Fallout with Jiraiya and both Jinchuuriki get a dose of reality. A bit of intrigue with Orochimaru? Chapter 15: The Two Sides of the Coin