It takes a special kind of zen to invite someone into your head.

A monk might spend their whole life searching for supreme enlightenment and never find it. Call it a trick of nature, call it luck of the draw, but some people just aren't aware of themselves in the way you need to be to dive into your own mind. Hell, some people can't even keep track of their feelings. Compare that to the self-understanding you need to walk the halls of your own mind and it's no wonder they never make it past step one. Chakra makes things easier - sometimes - but it's not a guarantee. Every mind is unique.

Achieving that precarious state of self-awareness that wavers between narcissism and ignorance is a pretty big deal. Going further than that and inviting someone else into your own head space? The sheer mental control you'd need is out of this world.

Or maybe it isn't. I'm no Yamanaka, and even though this kind of thing feels like it should be difficult, I've managed well enough. It took time to perfect and nature did most of the work for me, but I still did it. Maybe inviting someone to poke around in your thoughts and feelings is easier than confronting them for yourself. Maybe all it takes is a little relaxation and some clever use of chakra. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"Whatever it is," I muttered. "Looks like I've still got it."

I stretched, basking in the quasi-sensations of my inner mind. Nature's taste was thick in the air, along with copper and other things. The sound of rustling leaves was everywhere, and so was the touch of the breeze that came with them. In spite of everything else, the transmigration hadn't changed this place. There was comfort here.

I dropped down from the same tree I always woke up in, twisting and rubbing sensation into tender limbs as best I could. Then I set off through the forest, striding with purpose to its edge.

Gaara came to on the outskirts of the forest just as I was stepping out of it. Right on place, right on time. I knelt beside him as he struggled for a place in my head, eyes moving frantically behind clenched lids. A few more moments of fighting and his eyes snapped open, wide and mystified. His body jerked, limbs spasming, like he was trying to move for the first time.

"Hey, easy," I said, steadying him. He looked up at me.

"Naruto?" he asked, voice hushed.

"That's me."

"You're-" He cut himself off, the wonder in him giving way to shock.

I blinked. "Hey, you okay? What's wrong?"

"You're... older," he said.

I laughed. "Yeah, it's- well, it's hard to explain. This place is my subconscious brought to life, right? That includes me. So this-" I waved a hand at my eighteen year old frame. "-is what I look like on that level of things, I guess." It was a clumsy explanation, but at least it wasn't entirely wrong.

His eyes flickered over me, pupils dilating just a bit. "And the blood?"

Ah. "We all bleed a little on the inside. Don't worry about it," I said, offering him a hand up. "Focus on yourself for now. I'm doing what I can to help, but it's on you to hold it together while we walk."

"Walk?" Gaara echoed, taking it. My grip was slick with blood, but I pulled him up with little enough effort.

"Walk," I affirmed, letting him go. He staggered under his own weight, struggling for balance and consciousness. I reached out to steady him-

"No," he snapped. "I can... I can do this." He held himself still, frozen in concentration. He breathed. As the seconds ticked on, his form solidified itself in my mind's eye. His hair brightened from fuzzy rose to vivid crimson and his skin flushed with real, living color. He sighed, and there was clarity to the sound where there hadn't been before.

I clapped him on the shoulder, delighted. "Proud of you."

We started walking.

"Why do we have to walk?" he asked a moment later. "Couldn't we have started there?"

"We could have," I agreed, shooting him a wry look. "But showing up with you coming apart at the seams wouldn't have made for a great first impression. Besides, you said you wanted to get to know me better, right?" Gaara contemplated that, looking as if he wanted to say something. He settled for a nod. "Then follow me."

I walked him through my mind, pointing out the details I thought were worth noticing along the way- mostly the really interesting looking trees and whatever wildlife we happened to run across. The phantom sun sat at its apex, lighting our way with noontime rays. We walked the dirt path that drove through the district into the village beyond, and when we reached its end I led him into the maze of high rise apartment buildings and alleyway networks that made up the residential district.

"This is your mind?" Gaara asked, craning his neck to look up at the towering apartments with some awe. "It's… big."

"Is it?" I mused, crossing my arms and looking up with him. "I think this is about normal."

Gaara didn't argue the point, but he didn't look all that convinced either. I lead him down a nearby side street, cutting a trail through the low-end apartments that salary workers and career genin called home. I showed off a few of my favorite getaway routes from back when pranks took up most of my life, pointing out twists and turns in alleys that looked like dead ends, twists and turns that were dead ends, and all sorts of hiding places within a sub-par Academy student's reach.

It finally clicked for him when we emerged into the high-end residential zone where old shinobi families staked their claim. Or, more like it clicked for him when the apartment towers fell away and freed up our view of the horizon.

Gaara stopped dead in his tracks the moment he saw it, eyes flickering from face to face. The Hokage Mountain stood stark and proud, stone visages looming protectively over their village. Even in death. Especially in death.

"This is..."

I ruffled his hair, smiling up at my predecessors. "Welcome to Konoha."

Gaara hesitated, eyes flickering from the mountain to me. "I don't think this is how it works."

I considered that. "Are you a Yamanaka, Gaara?"

"I am not."

"Do you know anything about brains?"

"I do not."

"Me neither. I've got a friend who does, though, and I'm pretty sure she would have told me if my brain was busted." I ruffled his hair again, noting that it was kind of fun when you weren't on the receiving end, and set off for the fancy clan housings. When Gaara didn't immediately follow, I added: "It's probably a jinchuriki thing!"

"You said this was your subconscious made reality," Gaara said some time later, crouched and twirling a blade of grass between his fingers. I paused in coaxing one of the Nara deer from their compound and considered the words.

"Something like that, yeah."

"What does that mean? The forests, the animals, the village itself- what does it all represent? I... I don't know much about what sanity should look like, but isn't this too much? Even the grass has its place." He plucked the blade of green from the earth, studying it pensively. "When I asked you to bring me here, I was expecting something... less."

So that's what it was. I shook my head, patting the skittish doe's neck and shooing her back into the compound.

"You were expecting something more like your own mind," I said quietly, taking a seat next to him in the grass. There was a faint, syrupy smell in the air; a product of the trees the Nara kept in their compound. It was a drowsy sort of smell. I'd fallen asleep to it more than once.

"When I sleep, mother and I switch," Gaara murmured. "I see inside myself. My mind's not like this. It's not like this at all."

"What's it like?" I asked, laying back. There were clouds in the sky, fluffy and white. Perfect for watching.

"There is no sun, no moon, no stars. There are no forests or mountains, no buildings. It's dark and there's no place for me to go. The air is stale and there are no walls but I can't move." He hunched in on himself a little more with every word. His body grew ragged at the edges, less substantial. "It's always the same. Sometimes the voices are different, but it's all the same. I feel what mother feels. I hear... I hear-"

"Gaara."

"Every time she kills someone it all gets smaller." He raised a shaky hand to the scar he'd carved into his own skin however many years ago. It was weeping blood. "I start to suffocate. When she takes one life too many, it crushes me. I stop breathing."

"Gaara."

He stared dully at the blade of grass between his fingers. "I wake up."

I grabbed a fistful of cloth and yanked.

"Oof!" My best friend hit the ground beside me, dazed. "Why-?"

"Look at the clouds, Gaara," I told him. He did.

"... What about them?"

"Keep looking."

A minute passed. "What am I looking for?"

"I'll let you know."

We watched the clouds.

I couldn't tell you for how long. Outside my mind I could take cues from nature and the skies to keep track of time, but this sun didn't move. The clouds drifted, but there were always more to take their place. Eventually, the exhaustion my mind still hadn't quite shaken made itself felt. I dozed off to syrup smell and the distant trill of birdsong- one arm propped under my head, the other thrown over my eyes.

Whenever it was that I woke up, it was to the sight of Gaara staring up at the clouds, entranced. I watched him from the corner of my eye, and in turn he watched the skies. He breathed easily, without the labor of Shukaku's voice or his own trauma to constrict the motion. He didn't blink until I moved, stretching out and yawning- and even then it was a delayed thing.

"Why this is so soothing?" he asked, sounding like he didn't particularly need an answer. "They aren't even real clouds."

"I never got it either," I admitted. "It's just one of those things that always helps. Like, y'know, smiling when you're feeling down. Or eating ramen."

"Is that why you took me here first?"

"Nah." The sound of soft steps through long grass alerted me to the arrival of another guest, and the shock of a cold nose nuzzling my cheek identified them. The little doe laid herself down on the grass behind us, curling around my head with her legs tucked under her slight frame. I reached up, idly scratching her neck.

"I used to have a friend that stared at the clouds every day," I said, watching the blankets of white drift on by, endlessly, without a beginning or an end. "He was the self-proclaimed laziest shinobi in our generation. Whenever he had a free second he'd lay himself down and look straight up until someone made him stop. He'd be dozing in some field while the rest of us were eating lunch or playing ninja between classes. Never made sense to me.

"Well, one day I fucked up. I fucked up real bad, and someone I cared about suffered because of it. I felt like the worst sort of guy- worse than trash, even. I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to be the strongest, but when it really mattered I just lost it. It was suffocating." Gaara pursed his lips, cogs turning in his head. "The people closest to me tried to cheer me up. Told me it wasn't my fault, some things couldn't be stopped, the whole deal. I didn't want to hear any of it, though, so I ran away."

"You ran?"

"Yep. Ran as hard as I could, as far as I could without leaving the village. I ran to the most isolated place that I could think of- the loneliest, nowhere niche in Konoha. I started blowing things up when I got there. Guess I thought if I ran out of chakra I'd be too tired to mope." I snorted, and the little doe licked my nose. "Somehow, he found me.

"I'd like to say he was looking for me, but he was honestly just out for a place to unwind. When he stepped into the clearing I'd made during my meltdown, he took one look at me, pointed at the ground, and told me to join him or get the hell out of his spot." Gaara's lips twitched, and I raised my hands up. "I couldn't say no to that. I wouldn't have wanted to get on his bad side, even if he wasn't a friend- he's got this thing he does with shadows that's a lot scarier than it has any right to be in a fight.

"So we watched the clouds, and you know what? All that negativity, all that pain and frustration, it just sort of disappeared. I ended up falling asleep, and when I woke up there was a blanket I didn't own thrown over me." Memories of time spent in the grassy districts of Konoha prickled at the edges of my subconscious, manifesting themselves as more clouds above.

"I got to thinking maybe he wasn't just a slacker," I said, running a thumb along the doe's snout. She huffed and shook off some blood that trickled down my fingers to her nose. "This guy, he was smart like you wouldn't believe. Maybe the smartest guy I've ever known. As time passed and things got worse and worse, I started to wonder if he'd seen it all coming. There's only one thing history is good for, and that's repeating itself. Maybe he put the pieces together as a kid. Maybe he saw what we'd all be going through, knew what it would do to us, and realized there was nothing he could do to stop it."

I let my hand drop, considering the clouds and the memories behind them. "Maybe he spent so long watching the clouds because it was too much for him. Could be that he didn't care about nothing, y'know? Could be that he cared too much about everything."

"What was his name?" Gaara asked. I hummed, considering.

"You know, I can't remember."

I shrugged off the look he gave me, propping myself up on my elbows. I patted the dainty doe and gestured at the compound around us. "That's not really the point. The point is, this is him."

"This is…?" Gaara sat up, casting around for a clue as to what I meant.

"You wanted to know why my mind is like this, didn't you? This is it. This is why." The doe stood, rising on slender legs, and trotted back into the forests of the Nara compound after one last affectionate bump of the nose. "Our minds are a reflection of who we are, and who we are is a reflection of the people that are precious to us."

I watched it click, savoring the enlightenment that bloomed in his eyes. The clarity of his body sharpened even further, becoming something hypersensitive to my mind's touch. I stood, and he stood with me.

"I understand," he said confidently. I grinned.

From the Nara compound, we ran over to the Akimichi district and toured the restaurants laid out for the biggest bones in Konoha to peruse at their leisure, in their leisure. When one shop in particular caught my eye, I dragged him off the road and sat him down at a grill while I rummaged around in the back.

"I had a friend that lived around here who'd eat just about anything if you put it in front of him," I explained, emerging with a stack of fresh beef that I laid out on the grill. "Not that he had bad taste- he just wasn't very picky, you know? Couldn't afford to be. He had these techniques that burned fat in exchange for chakra, so he was always putting something away to keep himself topped up for a fight."

I sprinkled some assorted seasonings on the beef and flipped it after a good sizzle. "Before I got to know him I figured he was just a glutton. I…" The crackling of burning fat filled the silence between us when I trailed off. I rubbed my neck, sheepish. "Well, to tell you the truth, I judged a lot of my friends pretty harshly before I got to know them."

"Is it not a good thing to trust your judgement?" Gaara asked quietly. I waved a hand in a so-so motion, pressing the beef flat against the bars of the grill.

"The thing about judging other people negatively is that you're almost always going to be wrong, and even if you're right you won't be happy about it." I leaned back on my stool, sighing. "You know what it's like to be judged, Gaara. We both do. People make mistakes sometimes, or they have bad habits, or whatever. That doesn't mean they have nothing to offer. There's always more beneath the surface."

"Always?" Gaara asked. I nodded, fixing him a portion. "Then what's beneath this?"

I froze, a slab of meat caught halfway between the grill and his plate. A drop of blood fell into my eye and I looked away, scrubbing at it with a tattered orange sleeve. "We'll get there," I assured him. "Gotta ease into these things, y'know?"

Gaara mulled over that while we ate, the beef tender and bursting with flavor. When we were done he clasped his hands in polite thanks, contemplating his dish.

"This still doesn't make sense."

"What doesn't?" I asked lightly, collecting the plates and carrying them back to the kitchen.

He frowned. "We just ate a piece of your subconscious."

I laughed. "How'd it taste?"

Next up was the Yamanaka clan's modest complex, less an official compound and more a smattering of homes mixed in with civilian lodgings- and at their center, the family's flower shop. The door to the place opened with a musical tinkle of bells. I ushered Gaara in, the smell of nature's chemicals and perfumes a near violent contrast to the scents we'd left behind at the barbecue. I gave him the grandest tour I could manage, parading down the aisles and explaining things as I went.

"These flowers are purple, but we call them blue gems because I guess the guy who named them was color blind," I lectured, tapping a row of potted flower with purple petals. I pointed to another row beyond them, white flowers with windmill petals. "These ones are oleanders, and the only thing I know about them is they look kind of like shuriken. Those light purple ones that are kind of wilting are common mallows, but they don't grow naturally in fire country so they're pretty uncommon. Those prickly ones are scorpion weeds. You're not supposed to give them to a girl, but I don't know why. I think they're pretty cool."

"You had a friend that worked here, then?" Gaara asked, cupping the petals of the desert flowers with some familiarity. "Were they a civilian?"

"Nah, she was a shinobi. Her family took turns running this place whenever they weren't on missions," I explained, leaning against a shelf stacked with fertilizers.

"To what end?"

"They had these yin techniques that let them mess around with other people's minds. Not quite genjutsu, but somewhere in the same neighborhood. Her dad did a lot of interrogation work- nasty stuff, I won't go into it. They weren't always invasive, though." I plucked a bright orange flower from its pot and held it out. "They did a lot of work as therapists, mostly for other shinobi. They used these flowers to ease their patients into things while they worked. Aromatherapy, I think it was."

"I see," he said, smelling it. "It… smells like a flower."

"It grows on you." I twirled the stem in my fingers, heading for the door. "Come on, the puppies are next."

We swung by the Inuzuka kennel and played around with the ninken there that were still too young to speak or use chakra. They spent most of their time wrestling around with themselves, but I managed to work Gaara into it. Seeing him freeze up when one of the little mutts broke off from the group and hopped into his lap made the whole thing worth it. That done, we wandered through the high class residential area, our path set for the market district beyond-

"What about that one?"

I stopped in my tracks, following Gaara's pointing finger to a set of ornate metal gates, beyond which a pristine garden and an absolutely massive series of interconnected buildings sat. Ahh. That one.

"That's the Hyuuga Compound," I said after a moment. "I had some friends who lived there, yeah."

"Can I see it?" Gaara asked, already stepping forward.

"The gates are locked, actually."

"They're… what?"

"Locked. No outsiders in. The Hyuuga are pretty stuffy, as shinobi families go." I shrugged and kept on walking. "Just how it is."

"Even in your own mind?"

"They're really stuffy. They'd probably find a way to arrest me for trespassing even if it was all in my head." I tapped beside my eye, shooting Gaara a mock stern look. "There's no escaping their eyes."

"Naruto…" He inhaled, setting his feet and bracing himself. What, did he think I was going to- "You're stalling."

I stumbled to a stop, and the skies rumbled with distant thunder as I cursed up an internal storm. I turned around smiling. "You wanted to get to know me better, right?"

Gaara shook his head. Firm. "I asked to see your monster. When you told me about it, I was… happy. Happy to know I wasn't alone. That you shared the same burden, had overcome it, and still wanted to be my friend-" His tone turned sour, disgusted. "Even though I broke beneath the same weight.

"I wanted to return that support, but you aren't letting me." He crossed his arms, and I caught a glimpse of the man he would become. The unwavering man that Suna would claim as their most beloved Kazekage. "I've changed my mind. I think we're similar after all."

"Yeah?" I asked, smile falling away.

"I think you're stalling because you don't want to show me something. And I think the something you don't want to show is what I see every time I fall asleep. I think our minds are similar after all, yours is just-" He paused, reaching for the word- "More."

He sighed, closing his eyes and focusing. Then, piece by piece, he began to unravel from my mind. Withdrawing of his own free will. "You could have said no."

I lashed out, catching him by the sash he wore across his chest and yanking him back into my mind. His eyes flew open, and I glared into them with determination.

"You might be right, Gaara," I said. "No, you are right. But don't you dare think I'll go back on my word just because I'm a little scared. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, you hear? If I say I'm doing something, it's sure as hell getting done."

The Kazekage glared right back. "Then show me."

I did.

"It's down there?" he asked, crouching beside a sewer grate in the middle of Konoha's market district.

"He likes to sulk in the sewers, yeah." My lips twisted at the sour taste the words left in my mouth, and I shook my head. "Well, no, he doesn't really have a choice." We delved into Konoha's underground, and from there it was a straight shot to the place I'd been avoiding since we arrived.

Kurama's cage was as dark and forbidding as the last time I'd come to it, the sewer water burning faintly around our ankles as we approached. The shadows beyond the bars were all-encompassing, and made the slip of white paper that covered the true seal stand out even more. There was a tension here; a tension that I'd done my best to ignore during my last visit. The strength I'd drawn from these depths in the final hours of my life was gone, and the distance between strangers, between a prisoner and his warden, was back.

I hated it. I hated it so much that I wanted to scream.

But Gaara was here, so instead I clapped a hand on his shoulder and called out to the darkness.

"We've got company, Kurama! Come introduce yourself!"

Silence. It dragged on for several long moments. A minute. More. Gaara grew restless as the atmosphere of the place pressed in on him, fidgeting under my hand. His eyes flickered from point to point in the manmade cavern that my bijuu called home, straining to see beyond the bars and failing. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

And Kurama struck. Rude as always.

"Heads up!" I yanked my fellow jinchuriki behind me a split second before a titanic appendage bristling with blood red fur came whipping between a gap in the bars. Nature wrapped herself around me and The Fool reached up through the water-

I tightened my grip on Gaara's shoulder and leapt back, a thunder crack of shattering wood filling the cavern as Kurama's tail smashed The Fool's hand to pieces. I winced, my own hand spasming in sympathetic pain.

"Forgot how much stronger you are than Shukaku," I muttered. I glanced down at Gaara. "You okay?"

He swallowed, eyes fixated on the ruin Kurama had made of my colossus. He nodded once.

I will not dance to your tune, Kurama spoke from the depths, a throaty growl that could be felt vibrating in the air. Entertain your playthings yourself.

My eyes narrowed. "His name is Gaara. He's my friend."

Empty words. He is an investment. One of a thousand pawns to be stacked in your favor for the future. Another tail whipped out from between the bars, slamming against the walls of the sewer. He is as precious to you as he can make himself useful. No more.

"That's wrong. You know that's wrong."

I know nothing. I hear, see, feel nothing. For as long as I refuse your "friendship" - he snarled the word, his scorn boiling the sewer's water - I am nothing.

"Gaara," I said quietly, as the shadows parted around the old sage's final creation. "Meet the king of monsters."

Kurama loomed above us, a behemoth of chakra stripped from a titan's remains and molded by a god's eyes. He sat behind the bars, one quasi-hand resting on a quasi-knee, his lips pulled back from his fangs. Something caught between a fox and a human being. Created with the dying chakra of a natural creature - the natural creature - but in a man's image. The Rikudo Sennin's touch could be seen in every feature of him, from the clawed fingers to the sharply canted eyes, and the ears the flared out from them. The light of the sewers tinted his fur red, and his wrath made the edges of it sizzle and burn. He looked like a living flame.

He looked like a demon.

"This-" Gaara breathed, the color literally draining out of him. "I have to fight this?"

"No."

Kurama slammed all nine of his tails against the bars at once, but this time I was prepared. The remains of The Fool's hand shivered and pressed itself against the surface of the water, along with another hand that rose beside it. The wooden colossus dragged itself up from the depths and accepted the brunt of the whiplash.

"You don't have to fight them. If you stand against Shukaku, meet his hatred with a kind hand, you'll get through to him eventually- I know you will." I locked eyes with Kurama. "But even if it comes to that, you won't be fighting this one. He's my fight."

He always has been.

You are a fool. His eyes narrowed to burning red slits. But worse than that, you are a hypocritical fool. For all your talk of compassion, you are no better than those that came before you. You preach the value of friendship as you tighten the chains around me- His other arm jerked, the one still in the shadows, and the groan of straining wood filled the cavern.

His arm forced its way into the light. It was covered in vines.

You think yourself better than Hashirama. Better than Madara. His arm jerked, the vines tightening and yanking it back into the depths. You are worse.

A thousand refusals strained against the back of my teeth. The Fool's eyes glowed yellow, tinted orange by the sewer light, more and more branches rising up from the sewer floor to reinforce his frame. With my parents' seal holding the worst of Kurama's strength back, I could subdue him. Maybe even fight him.

"You think this is what I want?" I asked, gnashing my teeth. "You think I like having these bars between us? I don't! I can't stand it- no, I hate it!"

Then tear them down. Kurama gripped the bars with his unshackled hand, vicious desperation stoking the flames of him. Do what your ancestors refused to and break this seal!

"I can't do that, Kurama!" I seethed. "You know I can't! You're too angry, you'd hurt too many people if I let you out!"

Liar! He lashed out with another tail, and this time The Fool caught it with both hands. Wood splintered and broke, but together they held. I am too valuable for you to let out. You need my chakra for your perfect future, so you lock me away until your friendship is the only option left to me. Madara's methods with Hashirama's means. You haven't learned a thing.

It hit me like a bijuudama. "You've been listening to me."

I am always listening to you. There is nothing else to hear.

"Then you know," I said, a pathetic sort of hope bubbling up in my chest. I hadn't wanted to tell him about my future, hadn't wanted to tell any of my friends, because I knew it wouldn't be fair to dump such heavy expectations on them. That it would taint anything new. Anything real.

But if he already knew, then maybe it was okay. Maybe-

I know, Kurama said, his contempt crawling along my skin. And it means nothing.

I stepped forward, frustration clawing up my throat. "Nothing? How can it mean nothing!? It means everything!" Kurama shook his head and turned, the shadows consuming him in an instant. "Wait! Wait!"

We are not friends.

I called out to him, roared his name, ranted and raved at the darkness while The Fool pounded the bars. I walked straight up to the gates and dared him to crush me, dared him to do anything so long as he'd come out and talk to me.

It was Gaara that stopped me from going straight through the bars, gripping my arm with white-knuckled fingers. His lips were pressed thin, expression wild with fear, but he stood in front of the cage with me anyway. The effect Shukaku's eldest sibling had had on him was clear, and yet he stood outside The Fool's reach with resolution. I grit my teeth.

Too close. They were all too close. Gaara, Kurama, and the rest of my friends beyond. Every second I spent with them only made it worse- the knowledge that no matter what I did, I'd never have them back.

Kurama didn't come out again, no matter how long we stayed.

He had nothing left to say to me.

---

There was something intoxicating in the dissonance between two opposite forces. The heaven and the earth, the sun and the moon, the yin and the yang. Perfect asymmetry. I'd been introduced to the concept in passing as an academy student, picked it up from a pair of civilian girls gossiping about some couple or another and filed it away for future disuse. Opposites attract- that's how they'd put it.

I'd taken to calling it the gap.

"Enjoying yourself?" Naruto asked, all grimace. I hummed and dragged my kunai along the ridge of his collarbone, parting the skin with careful force.

"Immensely."

I hadn't noticed the gap until the first time I saw Naruto on a battlefield, and by then it was already too late for me. After that first point of dissonance, it became impossible for me not to notice it all. Naruto and I, we were all dissonance, right down to the smallest of details. My slender, whipcord build and his firm, unyielding frame. My features, painted with a nighttime palate, and his drawn from the sun and skies. The way I lit up like a flame when I was fighting to my fullest, and the way he grew cold and excruciatingly focused when there were lives on the line.

The two of us were different in every single way, and we fit. We were oil and water, forest and flame, but oh, it worked. We lived in different worlds and that was fine. More than fine. My world was my own, but there were times I didn't want to live in it. When it became too much I had Naruto. When I was drowning in Uchiha Sasuke, I could break for air in Uzumaki Naruto and inhale the gap.

Hardly more than two years of pseudo-courtship, pseudo-rivalry and I'd been hooked. I hadn't realized how much I'd come to rely on that escape until I was cut off from it. No warning, no unforgivable offense on my part, nothing. All it took was Haruno fucking Sakura to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and I didn't see Naruto again for a year.

A year. Even now, sprawled out on his bed with his arms slung around my hips, it made me seethe to think of what she'd taken from me. And for what? So she could feel better about her place in his life? So she could pretend that for once she wasn't the third wheel, the piece we didn't need to fit, had never needed to fit-

"That's my jugular," Naruto hissed, pressing his head back into the mattress, away from my blade. I blinked.

"Ah, I missed a stroke." I leaned down to study the errant line in his throat, flicking my sharingan to life when my hair threw shadows across it. I consulted my memory of the design, tracing the wound with a finger. "Heal this, from here to here." He muttered something unkind, but unwound an arm from my waist and pressed two fingers to the wound nonetheless. I watched nature's ink unravel to frame his eyes and traced its chakra as it flowed into Naruto and was deftly guided to the tips of his fingers.

He held them there for a moment. When he pulled away there was whole skin beneath.

"So why are you cutting me up?" he asked, settling his hand on the small of my back. My lips twitched against a smile.

"You'll see."

The cursed seal of heaven looked odd on Naruto. Perhaps it was the fact that I was carving it into his skin rather than applying it with ink, or perhaps the difference in build was to blame, but it looked out of place. The eerie contrast of black ink on white skin had turned me into something otherworldly when I'd borne the mark, a spirit consumed by inkwrath. On Naruto, the clash of crimson with tawny skin made him look beastial. Combined with the marks on his cheeks and the over-sharp canines that peeked from his lips when he spoke, he looked like a monster fresh from a folk tale.

It wasn't actually a working seal, of course. Orochimaru had never taught me the specifics of the cursed seal, and I had never wanted to learn. The cuts I was making were shallow things, too, and with Naruto being what he was they were closing themselves up almost as fast as I was making them. In all honesty, I'd just wanted to see what the curse would look like on him. That and, well, being together like this wasn't so bad in and of itself-

Something cool and wet pressed itself against my forehead. I froze, looking slowly up from my work. Naruto, in turn, twirled the brush in his hand and made another mark on my forehead, eyes narrowed in concentration.

"... What are you doing?"

"You'll see."

Hn.

"I've been thinking," I murmured some time later, as the ink and blood flowed and the sun dipped out of the sky. "About the nature of transmigration."

"Is that so?" A slim, noble hand laid itself across the back of my neck, announcing my ancestral hanger-on's presence.

"What about it?" Naruto asked, distracted. He flicked his brush under my right eye, leaving behind a lash of cool ink.

"Many things. The mechanics of it, what we brought back, the implications-" I made a sharp curve in my design and Naruto winced, shifting around on the bed. "Why they haven't done this before."

The brush froze on my cheek.

"Unless," I mused. "They have."

"We have not."

"They haven't," Naruto said a beat later, resuming his brushwork.

"Why is that? What's so special about us?"

"Well, the world was sort of ending when I died," he said, shrugging. I scowled and gouged into his cheek. "Ow! What the hell, bastard!?"

"Don't say it again," I snapped. "You're here, you're breathing, you're feeling pain," I pressed the kunai deeper into his cheek and he bared his teeth at me. I leaned down and mashed my lips against his, forcing my tongue past those over-sharp canines. When I pulled back we were both breathless. "You didn't die. You're alive."

"Fine, I get it," he relented, an odd tone in his voice. "The world was ending when Madara beat seven layers of the Shinigami's stomach out of me. Better?" I hummed, extracting my kunai from his cheek and watching him mend it.

"Why wait until the last possible moment, though? Why not before? If they've always been capable of this, why us?" I surveyed my work, speaking lowly. "Why not themselves?"

"Maybe… they couldn't do it for themselves."

"We could have."

Naruto frowned, eyes focusing on some empty spot on the ceiling as he listened to his own ancestral parasite. "Then why didn't you?"

"There was no point," Indra whispered.

"Haaa." Naruto tossed the brush back onto his nightstand and stretched out, the muscles of his torso unwinding pleasantly with the motion. These prepubescent bodies of ours were a far cry from what we'd left behind, but they were still ours- it was still Naruto that I was straddling. That was enough. "Guess that answers that. We were in the right place in the right generation."

I rolled my eyes, drawing a thin line of blood beneath his eye. It was coming together, slowly but surely. If I was lucky the scars might even last through the night.

"It's not just that," I spoke after a long stretch of silence. Naruto's eyes were shut, but a squeeze of my thigh signalled he was at least partially aware. "You noticed it too, didn't you? While you were fighting the Ichibi, and then while I was fighting the Tsuchikage's granddaughter. We cheated."

"Cheated?"

"These eyes," I said, twisting the tomoe of my sharingan into six-pointed stars. The world around me slowed to a crawl and sharpened to a razor's edge of clarity. Streaks of color stained Naruto beneath me, countless predictions of what his next move would be- exactly how high his chest would rise, when it would fall. When he would crack an eye open to look at mine. "The mangekyou sharingan isn't something you can achieve through common stress. The threat of tragedy isn't enough, and neither is petty loss. There's only one path to these eyes."

"I know."

"I didn't lose anyone in that fight." Certainly not you.

"You came close, though." He reached up, grasping my kunai by its flat edges and tugging it from my grip. He tossed it aside, and then his arms were back around my waist. He pulled me down chest to chest. "I've been thinking about some things, too. Mostly what that old sage said right before he sent us off."

"Go now," I echoed. "Resume your journey."

"Yep. The way I see it, no one had to die to get those eyes because you already had them. It was the same for me when I fought Gaara. All I needed was that one little push, the possibility of- ah, you know." I did. "It felt like nature had been with me the whole time, and she was just waiting for the right moment to make herself known. I think that moment is all we needed. The pieces were all there- we just needed to pick them up."

"Hnnn."

We stayed like that, wrapped up in each other's arms in his quiet little apartment, and watched the day go by. With no team responsibilities to see to and nowhere suitably private to tear into each other, we'd settled for lazing the day away until night fell. I'd wanted to object, but seeing the exhaustion creeping along the edges of him had convinced me.

The future wasn't going to change itself, but neither was this moron if he kept refusing to sleep.

"Naruto," I said, fighting the grasp of my own fatigue. He muttered some nonsense sounds. "You're getting blood on me."

"You cut me."

I considered that.

"So?"

"Fuck off, Sacchin."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

His lips twitched into a smirk. "Suits you, eh?"

"Am I interrupting anything?" Kakashi asked, his appearance in the bedroom window as sudden as it was unwelcome.

"You are," I informed him, straining for the kunai Naruto had tossed onto the floor.

"Just-" Naruto grunted, struggling to hold me down. "What's up, sensei?"

"May I come in?"

"No," I snapped, reaching for the maiming weapon.

Naruto waved him in.

"You know, before the debacle in River Country, I was beginning to wonder if you'd been evicted," Kakashi said, swinging over a potted cactus and touching down silently in front of the bed. He glanced pointedly around at the state of the room, strewn with several weeks worth of dirty clothes and empty containers of food- most of them ramen. Absently, he scooped the kunai up out of my reach, winking when I glared murder at him. "You don't spend much time here, do you?"

"I don't have time to sleep," Naruto said, as if there weren't bags under his eyes almost as dark as the littlest jinchuriki's. "And there's nothing else to do here, so."

"I'd say you two have more time than most," Kakashi said lightly. Giving the room one last once-over, he shrugged and pulled two slips of paper from his flak jacket, dropping them on the bed and heading for the door. "Read these and tell me what you think. I'll go make some tea."

"I don't have any tea," Naruto called.

The veteran jounin waved a hand. "I'll figure something out."

I pulled free of Naruto's bearhug and picked up the forms, committing their contents to memory in a snapshot of the sharingan's photographic storage. I read it aloud.

"Notice of Nomination. Konohagakure-hosted Chunin Exams." Naruto jerked up, snapping back to wakefulness in an instant. He snatched the spare form out of my hands and read through it, his sudden energy growing with every word.

"We get to be in the chunin exams?" he finally asked, disbelieving.

"Apparently."

"That's-!" He stopped short, caught between giddiness and his own bleeding heart. "That's not fair to everyone else, is it?"

"Not in the slightest," Kakashi called from the kitchen. "Good for business, though!"

"Why are you excited about this in the first place?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "They're exams for genin."

"I know that! It's just." Naruto looked away, drumming his fingers on the bed. "It's one of those things we never got a chance to try the first time around. It could be fun, right?"

"Naruto. You were the Hokage. You can't be promoted higher than that."

"I wasn't," he said, scowling. "You know I wasn't. Don't even joke about that."

"You sat at the desk and intimidated the foreign dignitaries. You wore the hat and robes and handed out missions when you weren't out on the field yourself." I tilted my head. "What do you call the person who leads Konoha?"

"Not me." His expression grew dangerous. This was a touchy subject for him, and I knew why, but I was done skirting around it. It didn't matter anymore, so he might as well get around to accepting it.

"Who, then?" I pressed. "If I took to the streets and asked a random citizen of Konoha who their Hokage was, what would they say?"

"Get away from me, you monster."

Fair.

"If I wasn't Uchiha Sasuke, what would they say?"

"They'd say Danzo!" Naruto snapped, driving a clenched fist into his mattress and straining the bed frame beneath. A very touchy subject. "And even then, they'd tell you he was only taking care of things until granny woke up!"

"Until she woke up," I repeated. He glared at me, daring me to give voice to what we were both thinking. Senju Tsunade had been in a coma for three full years before we transmigrated. Not even the end of the world had snapped her from it- she was never waking up. I opened my mouth to say it, because if nothing else he had to see how ridiculous he was being. Tsunade was alive and well, and more than likely hammered in some sleazy gambling town in Nowhere, Fire Country. He might as well acknowledge the sacrifice she'd made.

Kakashi, of course, chose that moment to come strolling in with tea.

"I'm sure you both know what this entails," he said, as if he hadn't heard everything. He passed me a ceramic cup with a dog's paw carved into it, steaming and yet cool to the touch. "Three tasks to determine your value as chunin that I can't tell you anything about, very hush hush. I can't imagine you'll have any trouble, though. You'll go in, pick on some children half a decade younger than yourselves, and civilians the world over will sing your praises. Won't you feel big!"

"... Where did you get these cups?" Naruto asked.

Kakashi quirked an eye. "So, what do you say?"

It wasn't like I'd say no. There was always a chance I'd be matched against Naruto in the finals. Or Sakura. I wasn't sure which would be more satisfying. "Fine."

"I'll do it," Naruto agreed. "Did you give Sakura her form yet?"

Kakashi hummed his confirmation, nursing the third ceramic cup he'd kept to himself. "I let her know when and where she'll be expected to show up- that's three days from now at the Academy building, eight o'clock sharp."

"She was okay with it, then?" Naruto asked.

"As okay as a rookie genin can be," he said, swirling his tea around. "You two will keep an eye out for her, won't you?"

I snorted.

"Of course we will, sensei," Naruto said, shooting me a sharp look. "We're teammates."

"Precious teammates," I agreed.

"Hmm." The weight of Kakashi's chakra fell upon me, not-quite-killing intent boxing me in from all sides. The stars in my eyes whirled, and Indra's slender hand tightened on the back of my neck. Naruto tensed, flexing his fingers towards a cross-

The moment broke, and Kakashi was climbing out the windowsill.

"I'll leave her in your care, then," he said. He glanced over his shoulder, cocking an eyebrow. "By the way, what are those marks?"

"Orochimaru gave them to me," I said, leaning back against my lover. He wrapped me up, a show of solidarity despite it all. "They gave me strength."

"I see," Kakashi mused. "Well, I like the duality." That said, he disappeared from Naruto's room as quickly as he'd entered, two cups of tea and some paper the only signs he'd been there at all.

"Duality?" I repeated. Naruto completed that cross, summoning a kage bunshin. The clone disappeared into his apartment's bathroom and returned a moment later with a hand mirror. It tossed the little circle of glass to Naruto, who in turn held it up in front of my face.

Ink. Ink on my cheeks, thick lashes of color that undercut my eyes. Ink on my forehead, a circle right in the middle and a dot of color within. Ink that wound around my eyelids. His ink. The ink of his sage mode, to match the mark of my cursed seal.

My reflection smiled.

---

AN: Merry Chrismasu.