Chapter 17
He is really, really tired of waking up sore and confused after passing out, but he’s even tireder of waking up with the smell of blood coating his mouth. About time, you little asshole. D’you know how hard it is to get anything done around a lightning user when you’re passed out? REAL FUCKIN’ HARD.
Itachi is on one knee in front of him, repelling what the gravity manipulator throws at them, and he can smell blood on her. Her leg is injured, but she’s doing an admirable job anyway with just her sword. Gaara brings up his sand shield in front of her so she can rest. “I’ll take us underground, if you want,” he offers.
“Lend me some chakra instead,” murmurs Itachi. “I just need enough to heal myself and make a few clones.”
Gaara’s eyes widen as he holds out his hand. “How long have I been unconscious?” He keeps his chakra steady and slow as it flows into her, though his control isn’t as good as hers.
“Maybe half an hour.” She touches her free hand, glowing green, to her ankle. “I will go underground, and my clones will end this. Be ready.” Gaara didn’t know she was an earth release user, but clearly she’s at least chuunin level. She slips into the ground and her clones flicker away, and Gaara’s sand shield takes a shattering impact from an entire tree behind him.
Then the rain of rocks and branches from the front stops, and he forms his Third Eye to look. The gravity manipulator is in the process of blowing one of Itachi’s clones away, even as a blur behind him strikes. His head drops to the ground, and Itachi’s remaining clone vanishes. For half a minute, it’s completely quiet, and then Gaara walks on shaky legs to where Utakata fell. The blood smells old, which either means he’s stopped bleeding or he’s just dead.
Gaara’s sand picks up the splintered logs and tosses them aside. Underneath is Utakata, whose left leg is completely crushed and whose skin is burned and blistered, maybe from a partial transformation. He’s covered in some kind of thick, clear fluid that must have come from Saiken.
“Utakata, Saiken, can you hear me?”
An enormous bubble emerges from Utakata’s mouth. When it pops, Gaara can hear Saiken’s voice: “He’s not doing well.” Another bubble. “You have to get him to a healer.”
“Itachi!” Gaara shouts. “Please help him!”
Itachi appears silently behind him and kneels by Utakata. “I need more chakra to heal him.” She takes Gaara’s hand and uses it to scan Utakata’s body, which would be amusing in any other situation. Instead, Gaara is tense with worry as she places his hand on Utakata’s shattered knee and starts clearing shards of bone. Slowly, the burns on his skin heal on their own.
He wakes up around the time that all his visible wounds are healed—barring, of course, his left leg. Gaara has been holding his hand, so he notices first when Utakata’s fingers tighten. Then his eyes open wide and he tries to stand up. Itachi presses him back onto the ground, murmuring, “Don’t try to move yet. We’re not in any more danger, but you won’t be able to walk until… well, until you can get a prosthesis.”
Utakata pushes her hand away and sits up, taking in his bloodstained kimono and the smooth skin where his leg ends halfway down the thigh. He grips Gaara’s hand even tighter, looking grim. “Let’s get out of here.” He lets Gaara pick him up, and they follow Itachi back to Taki. Utakata doesn’t let Gaara take him to the hospital; he insists on going straight to the apartment. He doesn’t have much more healing to do anyway, he says.
When Fuu sees him she frowns and—with what for her is a lot of restraint—comes to sit on the floor next to the couch where he’s resting. She takes his hand and starts telling him about her training with high-level wind release techniques. Itachi, who seems mystified by all normal social interactions, makes tea.
Gaara meditates and enters the mindspace, and is unsurprised to find Saiken, Utakata, and Choumei already there. Saiken is explaining the battle with the six strange Akatsuki members to Son Gokuu and Kokuou and their jinchuuriki, but pauses to say hello when she notices Gaara. “These guys were absolutely ridiculous, I’m telling you! I didn’t even get a good look at all their powers, Gaara could probably help me out with that. Does anyone remember what rinnegan actually does? I, um, forgot.”
“Dumbass!” screeches Shukaku. “Don’t you remember our old man had rinnegan?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Do you remember how he was the Sage of Six Paths? THAT’S WHAT THOSE WERE, IDIOT. THOSE WERE THE SIX PATHS.”
Son Gokuu puts a hand over Shukaku’s face, and then sits on him. “Calm down, brother. You are giving me a headache, and I do not even have a physical body. And this is beneath my dignity.”
Shukaku starts clawing Son, trying to throw him off, and the other bijuu laugh.
“While Shukaku is busy,” says Roushi, “hello, Gaara. Thought you might want to know how our hunting is going.” Gaara edges away from the fight and comes to sit next to him by the fire and at Kokuou’s feet. “We finally managed to find those two who attacked us before, we just had to pick up their trail. Son’s a great tracker, you know.”
“They’re dead now,” says Han. “Lot of trouble, though.”
Gaara suddenly remembers. “Shisui managed to get some information out of one of the Akatsuki members we fought! When he wakes up he should be able to tell us how many more there are.”
“And can we please get rid of the World Tree?” Choumei asks. “Just, smash it or something. That thing’s very bad luck.”
“First we have to deal with that masked man,” says Roushi. “I really don’t like him.”
Gaara spends a while talking to them all—even Naruto and the nine-tails show up for a little while—until Fuu catches on and tells Gaara and Utakata to wake up so they can eat. Utakata is even more silent than usual. He doesn’t answer at all when Fuu tries to engage him in conversation.
Sasuke arrives halfway through the meal, looking tired but happy. He looks around, confused, and finally asks where Shisui is. When Itachi tells him, his face goes stony. “I don’t blame you, Gaara,” he says stiffly, and walks right out of the door without ever sitting down.
Gaara sighs. He’s tired. When Shisui wakes up he’ll have information on Akatsuki, and Gaara will have to meet Han and Roushi and go out to fight again. All he really wants to do is convince Utakata to stay in Taki, and maybe help him get a new leg from one of the puppeteers in Suna. He doesn’t want to move at all; he can barely motivate himself to chew his food, despite the fact that he hasn’t eaten in three days.
But he can’t be hopeless. He has to be bright for Utakata. So he forces his back straighter and doesn’t give in to the impulse to lay his forehead down on the table and meditate into nothingness.
Utakata can tell, though. He glances sideways at Gaara and murmurs, “Go and sleep.”
Gaara shakes his head. “Trying to sleep alone will be useless.”
Utakata chews on his lip, probably trying to decide whether to offer to sleep with him, but Fuu gets there first, pulling out his chair and picking him up under his arms. “Come on, then. Itachi, you can clean up, I have important work to do.”
She drops Gaara on the bed she and Sasuke share, and curls around him. “Relax. You feel like a rock that’s about to split in half. Re. Lax.”
It takes a long time, but in Fuu’s arms he does relax. He doesn’t quite sleep—instead he drifts. And it’s okay.
To Gaara’s great relief, no-one asks him to go out and fight. He suspects Utakata might have something to do with it, because Gaara is one of the most powerful jinchuuriki and by all rights he should be on the front lines. Instead, he pushes down his guilt and lets Fuu show him and Utakata around the village. He spends a lot of time reading, trying to forget his anxiety. Shisui wakes up a few days later, and after receiving at least a dozen hugs he tells them about the remaining members of Akatsuki. Roushi, Han, and Yugito go to get rid of the last of them, and Gaara has the chance to meet Matatabi, the two-tails.
Everything is fine. They’re safe. But he’s still so anxious, all the time. He doesn’t sleep for weeks, until the other jinchuuriki come home.
Yugito is a tall woman with very long hair and healing wounds all over her arms. Fuu is immediately enraptured by her, just like she is with all jinchuuriki. Han and Roushi look tired, but not badly injured. All of them are surprised when they find out Utakata can’t walk, because in mindspace he looks like he always has.
Fuu drags them all out to one of the training grounds to ‘camp’ because her house isn’t big enough for six jinchuuriki. Because it looks like it might rain, Gaara builds a house out of sand. They all lie in his house, listening to Fuu, who is doing all the conversational work. She starts speculating about what each of their home villages is like, so that they’re forced to correct her, and soon everyone relaxes and begins to talk. Fuu has a gift, Gaara thinks. He’s even able to doze off, with Fuu on one side and Utakata just barely touching his hand on the other. And he wakes before dawn to Han making tea with his steam release.
The next day, Shibuki gets a reply from Cliff Country’s daimyo, saying that she doesn’t mind if the jinchuuriki build a house near Taki. She’s probably motivated by self-interest, assuming that they will become loyal to Cliff Country, but the result is all that matters to Gaara. On the way to the place Fuu wants to show them, Utakata directs Gaara to collect plant clippings from inside his bubble. He wants to start a garden, he says, has always been interested in both poisons and medicines derived from plants. Gaara smiles down at the bag full of Utakata’s garden.
Gaara is a little surprised that Fuu’s location is a large tree, a smaller version of the one that looms over Taki, but he shouldn’t be, considering her preoccupation with treehouses. There’s plenty of room for a house up in the branches, and everyone seems to like it. The next few days are occupied with setting up wards—Utakata’s sealing expertise is very useful there—and gathering materials. After that, Yugito has to leave, because she was given leave for a mission, not for a life.
Utakata plants a garden. Han starts going into Taki to buy clay for his ceramic sculptures. Gaara and Roushi visit the village often to meet the children there. And every couple of days, Shukaku manifests in his bijuu form and just sits, staring at the moon. He seems… peaceful.