Chapter 4: The Meaning of a Cactus
After his losing his virginity to Shikamaru, Peony felt more comfortable with his customers. She didn't jump into having sex all the time but when she did it was just as good as with Shikamaru. On those nights his dreams were calm. Sex was something she enjoyed but nothing to brag about, it was just something Peony did to keep the memories from when she was pretending to be Naruto at bay.
Things were good for Peony at the dancing Willow. Things were not as good outside of it. Naruto's relationship with everyone in the village had gotten way worse. Sakara was mad at him for not stopping Sasuke. Kakashi was Kakashi never there to teach you anything and Iruka was busy teaching. Tsunade wasn't telling him something either, she was sending him away from the village with the pervert. She clearly was drunk when she made the decision that Jiraiya was capable of teaching anyone anything. Naruto spent months with the pervert wandering from town to town, village to village. The only thing he saw the pervert doing was spy on women get beat up and sleep with women when he could afford them. The only benefit of not being trained was Naruto could work with the fox to get better. The other good thing was being left alone for long periods of time meant Naruto could be Peony for hours at a time while training. Sure Peony missed sex and her sisters, but at least there was no angry Sakara or distant Kakashi. Jiraiya at may be a pervert but occasionally he would make time in his days to train Naruto or treat him to food.
During his travels Naruto learned that he found that even when no one knew about what the name Naruto stood for he still liked being Peony occasionally. When the Dreams got bad he would become Peony and go to a brothel to offer her services provided the pervert wasn't at that one. She would dance have a few drinks with the girls and sometimes when she found the right man for the night she would take them back to one of the rooms and loose herself in the pleasure and release of sex and orgasms. She had to be careful not to let Jiriaya spot her and to be back before he got back. She couldn't stop though not when the dreams about Sasuke got bad and not when she started feeling lost in the persona that was Naruto. Having to play dumb and slow was killing her, even Jiriaya expected an idiot not someone worth teaching. Jiriaya had long ago lost his will to teach prodigies he lost the day Minato died, an idiot was all he could handle. An idiot would not question why he looked at Naruto with sad nostalgia or why he chose never to sleep with big breasted blondes despite the longing in his eyes when he looked at one particular one. The wouldn't question why when they finally went home Jiriaya barely stayed long enough to tell Tsunade anything.
Despite what he may pretend Naruto was no idiot he saw through Jiraiya, the Daffodil was a perfect representation for Jiraiya, uncertainty, respect or unrequited love, please return my affection. Naruto had decided to refer to Jiraiya as Daffodil in his head from now on, he even made a headband of them that he put on Jiraiya when he fell asleep. He was never showing anyone the photo he got it was going in his secret collection. Blackmail is always a good thing to have especially for a Yujo with a pervert for a sensei.
His days with Jiraiya didn't last long, even Tsunade could only keep the demon fox out of the village for so long before her advisors complained. It didn't work out in Naruto's favor though, as soon as he got home the leaf got an emergency hawk from the sand saying that Gaara had been taken. Naruto was sent out with Kakashi and Sakara, Kakashi easily kept pace with Naruto but Sakara was slowing both of them down. When asked why she said she was conserving energy because if Gaara was hurt she would have to heal him, and because she didn't understand why they were helping the host of Shikaku after what it did to the village. She also didn't understand how sand could make a monster the Kazekage. Naruto couldn't look at her after she said this, he could only think about what she would think of him if she knew what he was. That didn't even include the fact that he worked as a yujo who Sakara also hated. He could only bite his tongue and put all of his mind into running faster.
It took them three days to get to Suna, both because of Sakura and because they hit a sand storm along the way. When they got there Temari and Baki met them at the gate and told them about what had happened to both Gaara and Kankuro. (for those of you that don't remember Kankuro got poisoned by Sasori) Sakara immediately when to help the medical team with the poison while Kakashi and Naruto when with Baki and Temari to figure out where Gaara had been taken.
Baki gave them a breakdown of which direction Sasori and Deidara had gone in and where he found Kankuro along the route. Temari gave them input about what they knew about Sasori, the puppets he used and what antidotes they would need to bring to help combat his poison. She also told them that the Sand Council had forbidden any sand shinobi from participating. The Council thought that if anyone left the other villages would find out that Gaara was gone. Temari thought it was more that the Council had no love for Gaara or the Beast he was host to. The Council would be happy to have Shikaku off their hands even if it meant that they would need a new Kazekage. "We will find him for you Temari, Gaara is important to me like family. I won't abandon any of my friends." Naruto gave his classic dopey smile when he said this. Even in a different village he couldn't let his "Naruto is an Idiot" mask fall.
"I don't care what the council says, This involves my grandson. I am going." An old woman burst into followed closely by Sakara. "I am going with you son of White Fang, my hate for your father is not going to stop me from preventing the Akatsuki from getting their hands on Shikaku." Seeing Sakara's confusion at this statement Chiyo continued, "The One Tails, Just like Konoha has the Nine tail fox we have the Crazy Shikaku. I'm not about to let it be used against us no matter how the Council feels about it."
"Why stop them from taking the One tail, the fox did so much damage to our village and killed the Hokage and many others I don't understand why you are protecting it. I would be very happy if someone killed the beast." Sakara completely ignored the atmosphere in the room and boldly spoke her mind.
"Because disciple of the Slug Princess though Shikaku may be a crazy pain in the ass, He is also a terror to fight against. We can't be certain that Akatsuki is killing them. Even if it is the beasts just resurrect after a few years I don't want to face down an unsealed Shikaku any time soon."
(Time Skip to after Chiyo sacrifices herself for Gaara everything in that portion stays the same as before, except they don't tell people Naruto is the fox because how bad is everyone at keeping top secret info a secret.)
Gaara walked back to the village with Chiyo carried on his and his fellow sand Shinobi's shoulders. They had sent a Hawk back and arrangements for a funeral befitting her sacrifice were already being made. When the procession made its way into Suna they were greeted by red poppy and marigold flowers. They split off from the Konoha shinobi proceeding towards the funeral location.
"We shouldnt intrude on them, this is a funeral for one of their own. Everyone go see a healer, I want everyone to be healed up and ready to leave in two days." Kakashi said this and then left everyone to their own devices, trusting that they would be ready to leave in two days. Naruto finally had some time to himself after Team Guy and Sakara left so he found somewhere secluded and transformed into Peony. Quickly changing into more comfortable clothes for the weather, fishnets with a short light blue kimono.
Peony started wandering around seeing that a few shops were still open even with the funeral going on. She started by looking at lingerie shops finding more lacy underwear and bras for her to wear, she bought ones for Peony and for Naruto as she liked wearing lace underwear in both of her forms. She then decided to get a get well gift for Gaara, he had been through a lot. She hoped she got to talk to him before she left she wanted to know if he remembered anything about dying. She walked around seeing most of the flower shops were closed or only had flowers to symbolize romantic love. She didn't think she could go to a shinobi store in this form so she just settled for wandering about looking at everything Suna had to offer.
She found herself so lost in the beauty of the desert around her that she didn't realize that it had gotten late and she forgot to find someplace to sleep. She didn't want to go back to her teammates and the shops in Suna that were closed before were now opening up. So she continued to look around until she found a shop with cute Cactuses in the window. She looked around the shop finding one in a green pot the color of Gaara's eyes, it was a Tulip Cactus with yellow orange flowers. It was also the perfect gift for Gaara, cactuses mean enduring all things, no matter how painful or difficult and protection from danger and threats. She wanted to acknowledge what Gaara had been through without pity and send a prayer to protect him in the future. She picked it up and took it to the register, the guy at the register smiled at her and asked if it was a gift for someone. She smiled brighter at this and said yes. He chuckled and gave her back the cactus and a small care book and watering can for it, saying they were free of charge.
Peony was extremely happy with her purchase she just didn't know how she was going to give it to him. A gift might be weird coming from Naruto and she didn't know Gaara as peony so she didn't know how to get the gift to him. She sighed "I guess pretending to be an idiot is rubbing off on me, I'll have to tell Shikamaru when I get back. I'm sure he will have some funny insight on it, he is probably going to make Peony play shogi with him anyways now that he found out I can play it." She wandered around some more before deciding to shop for more girl clothes.
The clothes in the shops were cute, she was tempted to buy the orange one but decided that would be to obvious about her connection to naruto. As she was leaving the shop she ran into someone. "I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention." When she looked up she saw she had run into Gaara. His siblings were standing behind him glaring as if they were waiting for some reaction from her. "Kazekage-sama, I'm sorry I didn't mean to run into you, I mean I didn't mean to run into anybody." At this point Peony was a mess blushing and stuttering over her words when she realized that she could give him the gift now. " Oh I heard you were injured recently I'm glad you are ok, I got you a get well gift but I'm sure you will get a lot of those from women. I'm sorry just ignore me I can't stop talking. Here It reminded me of you." Peony handed the cactus in the gift box to Gaara in front of his stunned siblings who were looking at her like she was crazy.
Gaara looked at her and then the cactus in his hands for a long time. As if he was trying to decide what to make of her and the gift. Peony was getting ready for him to hand it back as she thought he must hate cactuses with the way his whole family looked at it. Gaara surprised her though when he asked if she wanted to go to dinner with them. Peony looked at him with a bright smile that lit up all of her features. "Really, I would love to go to dinner with you. That is if I'm not a bother, most people don't like me I don't want to drag you down." Peony spoke from the heart she was less hated in this form but still once people found out she was a yujo most people still talked badly about her.
Gaara however just looked more sure of his decision after her comment nodding at her and gesturing with his posture and head for her to follow him. Which Peony happily did, she spent the night eating and drinking with the siblings. Soon she was talking to all of them like she was old friends to all of them and talking to Gaara like it didn't matter what he had been or that he didn't talk much. She told them about herself that she was here on vacation from her work and told them that she was a dancer laughing when Kankuro asked for a dance. Only to start dancing on her own when the music in the restaurant they went to changed. She ignored the cat calls and calls for more from the other patrons and went back to drinking with the siblings. None of them believing her when she said she wasn't well liked. She finally after enough drinks told them, " I'm an orphan, I don't know who my parents are and I was kicked out of the Orphanage when I was six, the place I work at is the Dancing Willow, it's in the redlight district. As a female orphan no one will give you a job anywhere else if you can't be a shinobi, it's also the only safe shop there that doesn't force its dancers to be Yujo but most try it at least once. So everyone in Konoha hates me for working there. I won't lie I have been a Yujo on some occasions it's not that bad you can pick who you want and they will love you for a night. You can pretend that it's real so for an orphan like me it may be the only love I will ever get. At least that's what people tell me." Peony tried to smile but the siblings could hear the tears in her voice.
Temari looked at Kankuro and Gaara before decided to hug Peony. Peony had her face buried in Temari's shoulder so she didn't see the looks the brothers exchanged nor did she see the way Gaara's sand angrily danced back and forth around them
Red poppy- sacrifice, remembrance
Marigold- Pain and grief