((The Image is a piece of fanart done for this story! Isn't it lovely?))
Gaara kept his eyes trained on the door. The Anbu guards had escorted him and his siblings into the meeting room at the same time they always did, saying nothing as they lead them from their cells in the bowels of Konoha's Intelligence department. It was...strange, to say the least. When the masked shinobi had arrived after Killer Bee beat the Ichibi into submission, he had fully expected to die. His siblings, too, if their grim expressions were anything to go by. Suna certainly wouldn't have spared any lives, had Konoha invaded them. So, naturally, he was confused when, instead of having his bijuu ripped from him as spoils of war, he was taken to a cell and treated by a medic nin. Sure, he was still a prisoner, but he was alive. He was fed, watered, and clothed. His siblings, too. He was even allowed to see the very people he'd tried to kill, his fellow jinchuriki treating him kindly as though they had always been friends.
Friends.
Yes, they were his friends, weren't they? Well, Naruto was. Killer Bee was more of a...senpai? Yes, a senpai, better versed in navigating life as a host for a demon and more than willing to pass on his wisdom. That, too, was strange. Knowing others like him made him feel both less and more alone. They could understand him, to a certain degree, but Killer Bee was on good terms with the hachibi and Naruto had only ever spoken with the kyuubi once. Neither of them knew what it was like to be tortured by their beasts as he was.
It didn't help that mother—Shukaku, not mother, never mother—insisted on continuing to torture him.
There's a reason they only send the jinchuriki, the bijuu hissed, words caressing Gaara's mind in all the wrong ways. They don't trust you. They're tricking you into thinking they care, that they think you're human, but the only ones who visit are the ones who can subdue you. Where's that little girlfriend of yours, hmm? Why hasn't she come by?
Because he was a potentially hostile jinchuriki who could very easily kill her. It was such an obvious answer, and the fact that it came to him so easily made it hurt all the more. There were a million reasons why Hanako wouldn't come to see him—couldn't, even. He had no idea what had happened to her after he left her at the arena. Naruto had looked rather green when he asked after her, but ultimately didn't answer, leaving the older genin to think up all manner of horrible fates which might have befallen his friend. He knew Orochimaru was targeting her, for whatever reason, and that snake was foul enough to deter even the ichibi. He didn't even want to imagine what he might have done to her, if he managed to find her.
The door opened, revealing the tall, heavily muscled frame of Killer Bee. The Kumo nin was...an interesting person. Gaara had never met anyone like him before, and he doubted he ever would again. He still wasn't quite over the shock of being punched back into his human form.
"Yo, my cute little kouhai," the large man said with rhythm, moving his hands in strange gestures. "I've come to chill and say 'hi'!"
Kankuro snorted, amused as he always was by the older shinobi's rhymes. Temari only watched him with nervous green eyes, her mouth set in a grim line as her hands fidgeted with her belt, where her kunai pouch would have been.
"Hello," Gaara said softly, glad for the silence in his head. Shukaku seemed rather cowed by his siblings. "It's good to see you again, Killer Bee-san."
Killer Bee waved a hand in dismissal, the motion as large and over the top as he was. "No, no, no! That's gotta go! Call me senpai or you'll make me cry!" His face warped into a caricature of sadness, the expression horrifying in its exaggeration.
Ah. No.
Before Gaara could muster the courage to reject the older jinchuriki's unwelcome overture, the door opened again.
"Hey, Gaara! Guess who came with me!"
Naruto was just as loud as Killer Bee, and Gaara had begun to wonder if that was simply a common trait among the stronger jinchuriki. They were eight and nine, after all, and their host status was the only thing they had in common—although, Naruto's coloration was closer to what one would expect from a Kumo nin, with his golden hair and sun tanned skin. Gaara looked past the hachibi to the doorway where Naruto stood with a wide grin on his face, hands splayed as he presented his companion.
Gaara took an unconscious step forward. "Hanako."
She looked well, at first glance, her dark hair pulled away from her masked face in a short ponytail. Upon a second look, however, he realized exactly why she hadn't come to see him.
"Damn, kid," Kankuro said, unwittingly voicing his brother's thoughts. "That looks bad."
She looked down at her left arm, the appendage half the length it was when Gaara last saw her. The long sleeve of her shirt was sewn shut, hiding the actual injury from view, but somehow it just made her missing limb that much more obvious. Hanako shrugged, gesturing with her arm like it was whole.
"Oh, this? It looks worse than it is, believe me."
"Can you even be a shinobi with an injury like that?" Temari's question rang like a bell in Gaara's mind, his eyes never leaving the straight edge of Hanako's injury.
Naruto took vocal offense on his friend's behalf. "Of course, she can! Hana-chan can do one handed jutsus, believe it!"
Gaara's eye snapped from Hanako's arm to her eyes, the tentative brush of her chakra against his snapping him back to the present. Her brows were furrowed as she met his gaze, her night black eyes boring into him. He reached back with his own chakra, overwhelmed with relief. He'd expected her to reject him. It was shameful, but he had. Because of him—and his entire village—she'd received a potentially career ending injury, had been targeted by a rogue ninja of legendary strength, and likely lost friends in the carnage. She had no reason to reach out to him like she had before, for all she'd made it clear she didn't care about the demon inside him. She was friends with Naruto after all, but he was her comrade and Gaara...
Gaara was the enemy.
An enemy she reached out to, all the same. The cool water of her chakra ran long his burning sand, the sensation as calming as he remembered it, but with a major exception. There was something different about her chakra. The gentle river he'd first encountered on the run to Konoha had lost some of its tranquility, the barest hints of whitewater making themselves known. The heavy melancholy which he'd come to associate with her was now accompanied by an anger which agitated her chakra. Despite that, he knew for a fact that she was happy to see him. That certainty suffused him with warmth, heat spreading out from his core and burning his skin.
"Gaara," she said, her voice as soft as her chakra. "I'm glad you're alright."
He said nothing, his tongue uncooperative as he tried to reply. Luckily, his sister still had things to say.
"I'm surprised they let you in here," Temari said with a raised brow, her arms crossed over her chest in the way Gaara knew meant she was preparing for a fight. "Even if we weren't part of the invasion force, our families aren't exactly on good terms."
Hanako looked at Temari the same way she had Kankuro when he brought up their family histories the day they met. Gaara could feel her exasperation, the underlying anger amplifying it beyond what he expected.
"Kakashi-sensei's Hokage now," Naruto answered, surprising the Suna genin with his forthright response. "So Hana-chan can do whatever she want!"
Hanako snorted, hiding her masked face behind her hand as she stifled a laugh. "That's not how it works, Naru-nii."
The youngest jinchuriki smiled widely and crossed his arms behind his head. "It should be! Besides, Gaara's your friend, so it's not like he'll hurt you or anything."
Of course, he wouldn't. He wasn't even sure he was capable of it, anymore. Maybe, before meeting Killer Bee and Naruto, when Shukaku's voice had greater sway on his mind, but now...
The very idea was abhorrent.
"This is cute, and you kids are a hoot," Killer Bee interrupted, reminding everyone he was in the room—though how a man that size could fade into the background was a mystery. He was looking at Hanako, his expression oddly serious. "But this situation begs some serious questions. You've got a debt, kid, which you can't just forget, kid, and I won't make no threat, kid, but I need you to sweat, kid, cause my bro's going out of his head, kid, and there's only so much I can do before somebody ends up dead, you dig?"
Gaara wasn't the only one staring up at the Kumo nin in confusion, but Hanako seemed to understand him...somehow.
"Of course," she said, her amusement rippling through Gaara as she nodded. "That's actually one of the reasons I came." Her dark eyes bounced from the Anbu guards back to the jinchuriki, a strange emotion reaching Gaara through their entangled chakras. "I don't suppose you can give me a moment to prepare?"
It was hard to read Killer Bee's expression past the sunglasses, but something changed in the air. He opened his mouth to reply.
Gaara jumped in his skin as an alarm began sounding, the high pitched wailing grating his ears. The Anbu around them leapt into defensive positions, clearly caught by surprise. Temari and Kankuro stood back to back, carefully keeping their postures both alert and submissive, ready to accept arrest but also anticipating violence. Naruto held his hands to his ears, loudly demanding an explanation from the agents who looked ready to pounce on any of them.
Hanako stood stock still, her gaze still locked on Killer Bee's.
"Go on, git," the eldest jinchuriki told the Anbu. "You can lock us in, believe it!"
The Anbu hesitated for a moment before disappearing in a shunshin, leaving three jinchuriki alone with each other.
Were...were they stupid?
The shrill alarm was still blaring, making it hard to think. Shukaku was coiling in on himself in agitation, hissing angrily in the corners of Gaara's mind. Bone chilling fear gripped his soul as he was forced to consider the very real possibility that he would lose control again. Killer Bee was there, sure, but so were his siblings, Naruto, and Hanako. They would all be hurt in the crossfire if he lost it in such a small space. He was glad, then, that his sand had been confiscated. He was also terrified, as without it he could only show his true face to the world around him, his terror likely written across it for all to see.
"So," Killer Bee said as he sank into a crouch, staring head on at Hanako who had yet to react to anything, her chakra frighteningly still. "You gonna explain, or have you got some other aim?"
Hanako's chakra retreated, leaving Gaara bereft. He watched as she stood straighter, her arms crossing behind her back. The angry alarm didn't seem to be affecting her at all, for all her hearing was probably sharper than any of theirs.
"We have approximately half an hour before the alarm shuts off, probably less before they realize we're down here alone. What I'm going to show you is of vital importance, and the only reason I'm showing it to you at all is because Gyuuki-sama can disseminate the information to the other bijuu. They must be made aware of this."
Gaara looked over at Naruto, but the boy wasn't looking at them. Neither were Temari or Kankuro. With a jolt, he realized there was a thin layer of genjutsu over the room. Was that why the Anbu had left them so easily? Could the others even hear the conversation between the girl and the jinchuriki? Why was he not also being affected? Surely it wasn't on purpose.
Killer Bee smirked. "That's not something I can say, he does things his own way."
Hanako laughed, the sound not at all amused. "I trust he'll see things my way once this is done. Gaara," she turned to look at him, surprising him. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, but I need to ask a favor. I know this doesn't make any sense, but I promise this will help you, too. Please, can you keep watch for us? And," she looked away, suddenly looking as small and afraid as she probably should, given their circumstances. "Can you keep this a secret?"
"Yes." He didn't even need to think about it. Whatever was going on, it was important enough for her to cast a genjutsu on not just her friend, but her own village's Anbu agents. She'd pulled her chakra away, but he didn't need its assurance to know she wasn't lying to him. She wouldn't lie to him. Not Hanako.
She smiled, her mask doing nothing to hide her bemusement. "Thank you, Gaara. I'm glad we're friends."
Friends.
Yes, they were friends.
She turned away and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the pitch black had been replaced by bloody red, the signature tomoe of the Sharingan twirling in the iris. Had he not fought Sasuke Uchiha, he might not have recognized them so easily.
Impossible, Shukaku spat, pressing up against Gaara's mind in a painful display of panic. Those eyes are cursed! Don't look at them, boy, they'll enslave us!
The fear which gripped him through Shukaku didn't seem to affect Killer Bee the same way, though he did avert his gaze. "That's a dangerous secret. Should you be trusting us to keep it?"
"I don't have time to worry about that," she said sharply. "And neither do you. Please, Killer Bee. I know it's hard to trust the eyes that hurt Kurama so badly, but lives are at stake here. Yugito's life is at stake."
"You—!" He cut himself off and Gaara watched as his face twisted this way and that, probably in response to whatever the hachibi was saying. "Fine!" He said after too long a moment, pointing a thick finger at her face. "But you'd better not be lyin'!"
"Oh, I promise," Hanako replied, almost breathless. "This is the most honest I've been in a long time."
Killer Bee pulled off his sunglasses, revealing dark eyes which unfocused as the sharingan took hold. Gaara watched them, uncertain of how to proceed.
She'll betray you, Shukaku hissed. Those eyes are evil. Anyone who has them is a threat! I don't care how nice she's pretending to be, she'll be the death of you if you let her!
Despite himself, Gaara believed it. He couldn't bring himself to be upset about it, though.