In their nightmares, in their dreams:
Soft skin changes into coarse fur. Soft skin turns into sand before hardening into stone.
(A voice that sounds like their fathers mocks, " don’t you know what happens to people who try to control something that isn’t meant to be controlled?")
The thing that they are trying to reign in breaks them, and they are torn apart.
Gaara and Naruto stare at each other, sizing one another up. Finally, Gaara looks away. Naruto smiles, but it’s twisted and wrong in every way possible, missing a snout and teeth.
They turn to the crowds of people below them, some of them mistaking the lack of commotion for resolution, until the pair grin, revealing the fangs that have replaced their dull human teeth. The claws that overtake their fingers. Tails swishing behind them like bad omens.
The villagers always see them coming. Damned weapons that were never really under the control of anyone, less the children tasked with housing them. The streets flow red. Full of carnage and blood, chakra fills the air. Chokes everyone in the vicinity.
It will be beautiful.
Gaara never sleeps, but Naruto wakes up. Not screaming. Not agonizing.
The moon hangs over them.
A call to something better left forgotten.
There first meeting is a little like this:
“You’re like me,” Gaara states, tilting his head. Naruto smiles, his teeth bared. A sound comes out of his throat, something halfway between a chirp and a cough. Gaara returns the sound.
"Do you feel empty too?" Naruto asks.
Temari and Kankuro look at one another, nervous. Their younger brother looks at them, before turning to the blond, making something that sounds like a hiss.
"Always."
Naruto, turns his eyes on them, he coos.
The moment is over when Sakura bashes Naruto on the head.
And everyone except Gaara misses the red in his eyes.
There’s a reason why infants are never used when sealing a tailed beast.
Perhaps both their fathers should have looked into that when confining the beasts within them. All the nations had tried that before, sealing into infants, and those infants either died or became the beasts. So the villagers weren't wrong in fearing the children. Except they weren't the one's making the decisions.
Gaara’s first word is “One”. Sand flowing closer towards him into elusive forms and shapes. Foreign, (no never foregin, familiar) to all of his caretakers.
He kills the first couple of them.
Naruto’s first word is not a word but a number, “ Nine.”
The caretakers take it as a bad omen, and take to treating him like he's plagued (and they're not wrong). Perhaps that is what seals their fate. In the end most of those who were around Naruto when he was younger are always seen in the shadows of Konoha.
It wasn't as if the secret of the blond demon was never contained by the Third, but loose lips have been the failings of all.
Killer Bee takes one look at the Kazekage and frowns.
There is a darkness surrounding the man, boy.
(no, not darkness, something less evil and more wild, you can't fault the predator for killing to eat)
It's only after the meeting is over, that he gets an answer.
"He was a Jinchuriki, much like yourself, Bee-Sama," one of his bodyguards says. They must've sealed him when he was an infant. Bee nods, and just looks away.
Within him, he hears the displeasure voiced by his friend.
He ignore the almost longing in the deep tenor of the Eight-Tails. The crashing of waves in his head. He spends the rest of the day making rhymes.
Gaara feels empty without Shukaku whispering in his ear.
He tells Naruto during the night. The night that is no longer a battle for control. The blond only laughs, "what did you expect?"
No one understands the growls and odd sounds the blond makes when Gaara wakes up, Gaara does. Too relieved that he's alive they ignore the way he mimics the sounds. Maybe they should have payed more attention. Maybe they should have still feared the red-head.
The beast still made its imprint on Gaara.
Bee thinks Naruto is more far gone than anyone would admit, but he does something completely human and Bee dispelled the itch that tells him that this child is not human.
Bee always wears his glasses. Even before he had the Bijuu sealed into him. Afraid that they’d see his eyes.
(pools of darkness, as if he contains the ocean in his eyes, the blond Two-Tailed Jinchuriki would talk about the dead, know things she shouldn't; he makes sure to steer clear of her)
“ Nine-tailed Jinchuuriki, you’ve gone kookie,” he raps.
Naruto laughs, and the sound could almost pass for human if not for the slight bark in it. Or the way the wind seemed to laugh as well. Naruto twists his head, almost unnaturally, and grins wildly at the ninja who had the misfortune of facing him, and Bee almost pities the poor fool.
Almost.
He brings out his blade, he doesn’t have the misfortune of calling his Bijuu father. As such, he’s more or less sane.
“ Bring it! Bring it!” he smiles, feeling his own Bijuu give in — despite trying to act human, he’d always been a little too prone for impulsivities, “ Let us get a hit!”
The man shrieks, but Naruto is fast and Killer B is faster.
Gaara grows up growling and grunting more than actually talking.
The sand still swirls around him and he still is feared, but people find that out too late.
His uncle can't help but be relieved when it's by the boy's hand that he dies.
Despite Gaara being his sister's, being his kin. He still hates the boy. Even when he shouldn't. The boy has no one. But still:
He pauses outside of Gaara's room, hearing the sound of sand falling, glass chipping. Earth ripping apart. He goes into the room.
The child is by himself, the only sand lies around him, making shapes that Yashamaru doesn't recognize.
His brother-in-law may have miscalculated.
" Obito, do you feel it too?" Naruto hisses, but the man doesn't respond. Naruto quells the disappointment. It used to be Naruto and Gaara, but Gaara is shedding the skin of a monster, pretending otherwise.
It's not fair.
" What is this?" Obito whispers back, and Naruto feels glee.
" We're cousins now."
" Something is missing," Obito hisses, the wind taking his words.
Naruto nods his head, ecstatic. From across the battlefield, Gaara pauses. The sand seems to tremble, rocks turning finer. A storm of his own making.
Killer B winces. It doesn't go unnoticed by Kakashi and Gai, but these are matters that mean nothing to them.
"What's happening?" Kakashi demands. The not dead Minato beside him. Grim.
" You didn't know," it's the best consolation Killer B can give.
Kushina worries. She puts her hands on her stomach, gnaws her lips, as she worries about the life in her stomach. She knows she already loves them. Whatever they choose to be.
(Mito's diaries speaks of her cursed children, craving war and easy to anger. Was it a really a surprise that the Senju are all dead?)
She doesn't tell Minato. He's already too busy. Being Hokage is demanding, almost thankless job. Or so her husband doesn't say.
But still her child grows, his heart beats and his chakra swirls.
(and she ignores that the chakra feels less human, something more akin to a tornado, a natural disaster the kyuubi)
She wants to tell Minato to let the beast go, far, far away. Minato is making a mistake, a grave mistake.
But her throat is filled with blood, and her baby has whiskers.
Karura isn't sure she loves Rasa.
She would say it's a mistake. That she was young, but she always wanted to be more than what she was. She wanted to be more than just the Kazekage's prize.
Temari and Kankuro are his children.
She deserves this. Karura tells herself that as she kisses the redhead man, his eyes a breathtaking teal, filled with no love, she won't dissuade herself with anymore lies.
She falls pregnant.
Rasa knows, of course he does.
But he keeps a face up, keeps the betrayal under wraps, what would the message be to the rest of Suna?
She still lies next to him, his golden sand around him, protecting him, from her. She wants to sneer.
The old priest locked up, and the demon in his stomach.
Rasa will make her son a weapon, something to break her. But she's always been strong, so she will not break apart.
Fracture maybe: " You want to seal the demon into our son?"
And Rasa will not refute his faux fatherhood, will not injure his pride.
" Of course."
So when her child, or maybe not her child, rips out of her womb, forced c-section. The earth seems to rot, her insides rotting. She names him, and despite her death, she loves him.
"Love yourself, Gaara."
Love can be a poison too.