Chapter 15
Though he’s still healing, Gaara flies them all back to Taki at near his top speed. It takes four days, and every time they stop Utakata kneels by Shisui to make sure he’s still alive. By the end, Gaara is pushing himself faster, afraid that Shisui will die and it will be his fault, no matter how difficult the nearly-full moon makes it. Utakata asks to stay by Shisui while they fly, nearly exhausting his healing chakra.
Itachi meets them at Taki’s south gate, pale and tense. When Gaara sets Shisui and Utakata down, she runs to him, hands moving over his head, arm, chest to find out why he won’t wake. After a minute, some of her tension eases and she sighs, “He’s just asleep. Exhausted. I’ll take him to the hospital.” Gaara and Utakata trail after her, unsure where else to go, and end up sitting in a waiting room until Itachi comes back. Utakata, who has scarcely been in a building for nine years, is twitchy, or at least his version. His version of twitchy is sitting completely still in an exaggerated posture of relaxation, eyes slitted open just enough to watch everyone who goes by.
When Itachi returns she takes them back to her house. Fuu is lying on the couch with her arm flung over her eyes, but jumps up when Itachi softly calls, “We’re home.”
“So? Is he okay? Is he gonna be okay?”
“He’ll live, at least. The staff are hoping he’ll make a full recovery.”
Fuu crashes into Itachi and wraps her arms around her, probably crushing Itachi’s lungs. She’s taller than Itachi is now. “He’s the strongest person I know, besides you. He’ll be fine. Otherwise I’ll beat him up.”
“Well,” says Itachi, stroking Fuu’s hair, “you’ll have to get through me first.” She seems to remember that they have guests, and turns around. “I’m sorry, please make yourselves comfortable. I’ll make tea. Sasuke is out on a mission right now, so you won’t see him unless you stay for a few days. What are your plans?”
“We have some money to deliver to Shibuki,” says Utakata, who had insisted on stopping by a bounty exchange station to drop off Biwa’s corpse. “After that I suppose we’ll leave again.”
“Aw, stay!” pleads Fuu, grabbing his arm. He looks much more alarmed than necessary, in Gaara’s opinion. “It’s so boring being stuck in the village and you only stayed for one day last time!”
“The sooner we leave, the sooner we can eliminate the rest of Akatsuki, and the sooner you can go on missions again,” says Utakata, eyeing her warily.
“But even if I go on missions I won’t get to hang out with you! I mean, I guess I would, in mindspace, but it’s not the same. I wanna spar with you and hear cool stories and you can show me all the poisonous plants and I can ride in your bubbles and maybe learn some cool water jutsu even Shisui doesn’t know! And there’s some really cool stuff in Taki, I bet you’d like the five thousand waterfalls. I guess you’ve seen waterfalls before…” Utakata glances at Gaara, who is trying not to laugh. Fuu continues rambling about all the things she and Utakata can do, even as she starts getting out ingredients for a hot pot and piling them onto the counter. She hands him a knife and he seems bemused to find himself chopping vegetables again.
Itachi, who still hasn’t learned how to cook, sits down with Gaara and his bingo book. She uses a thick red marker to cross off the four missing-nin they have eliminated. The ones that remain now are Hoshigaki Kisame, Sasori of the Red Sand, and the masked man who is not in the bingo book at all. When Itachi asks about him, Gaara tells her and she goes even paler than normal.
“I’ve met him,” she murmurs. The marker traces out a striped mask on the back of the bingo book, not the one Gaara saw but with the eye hole in the same place. “He calls himself Uchiha Madara, and at the time I thought it really was him, but now I’m not sure. Madara should have died seventy years ago.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? I know that he has the ability to… teleport, more or less, and become insubstantial. Presumably he has the sharingan, or he wouldn’t claim to be Uchiha Madara.”
“I only met him once, and I’ve never seen him fight.” Itachi chews on her lip, tracing the edges of the mask she drew again. “He hates Konoha, and I believe he may have been working with Danzou, but that won’t be very helpful to you.”
Gaara’s heart pounds, just once, against his ribs like a sledgehammer. “Oh,” he says faintly. It pounds again. “The moon is rising.”
“How do you know?” asks Itachi.
“I always know where the moon is. It’s full right now.” He’s struggling to breathe.
“That’s very impressive,” says Itachi. “You’re like a moon expert.”
“No, you don’t understand…” You held me back yesterday, but not today. Today I WILL have blood. “On the full moon, Shukaku… I’m going to kill someone…”
“Gaara? Do you need me to restrain you?”
“You can’t restrain him! If I lose consciousness he’ll only get stronger.”
“I can put him to sleep.”
Don’t you fucking dare, you little brat. I’ll have blood even if it has to be yours.
“He doesn’t want…” But it isn’t just Shukaku’s happiness or even Gaara’s safety at stake. “I’ll leave the village. I can come back in two days. Just, come with me to make sure I d-don’t hurt anyone?”
Itachi takes Gaara’s hands and gently uncurls them from the fists he’s making. “I won’t use my eyes to control him without your consent, but are you sure this is wise?”
“Without his consent,” Gaara insists. Shukaku’s laugh reverberates through his head. “Please…”
When they stand up, Utakata is already watching Gaara warily. He must be able to feel Shukaku’s rising bloodlust. “I’ll be back,” Gaara chokes out. “Sorry to leave you here. Just a few days. We need to go.” He wrenches the window open and steps out into the air, onto a platform of sand. He’s not sure Itachi is following him until he passes over the north wall of the village and he hears her call, “Stay safe, Gaara.”
After that it takes all his concentration to direct Shukaku away from the blood he can smell, further into the forest.