A/N: Content warning for good people being unintentionally bigoted assholes (and kind of justifiably so.)

IV. The Teacher

Temari's youngest brother isn't human.

It's an easy mistake to make, if you don't know Gaara as well as Temari does. After all, he's just a little kid, not quite eight years old. He's small and round-cheeked, and his eyes are as blue as the dawn sky over the desert. Someone might even think him cute, with his fluffy red hair and unsteady child's gait.

But Temari knows better:

Gaara, learning to walk, had never fallen. When he stumbled, the floors would rise to steady him in a surging wave of sand. When sandstorms brewed and all the villagers ran for shelter from the whipping blades of wind and grit, Gaara would sit alone by the fountain in the square, untouched by the rage of the desert.

Gaara stares. It's a hollow, unchildlike gaze, captured by something far away that no one else can see. Like the howling winds of the desert sing a different tune to him.

There's something wrong about him.

That had been enough to make her uneasy growing up, even without the dark whispers and fearful glances from their attendants. A little brother that watched with wide, distant eyes and rarely spoke, who murmured to himself in a soft raspy voice with no one to hear him. He never laughed, never smiled, rarely cried.

It hadn't been a surprise, then, when Father took Temari aside and explained about the demon.

"Gaara is the vessel of the Shukaku," he'd said, cold and regal. "The One-Tailed Sand Demon."

"Yes, Father," she'd said.

Temari had been five years old, then, and Gaara barely a toddler. She'd been about to begin her training. She'd been determined to be a daughter that the Lord Kazekage could rely on, determined to be an example for Kankuro, determined to bring honor and strength to the Hidden Sand.

"He will be either our bane or our deliverance," the Fourth Kazekage had said. "I rely on you to watch him."

"Yes, Father."

His mouth had quirked into something nearly like a smile, but without the warmth. He'd rested a hand on her head briefly. "You may look like your mother, but you have my spirit."

(At the time, she'd taken it as a compliment.)

So Temari waited with bated breath for something to snap, for the demon to break free—and then one night, four years later, it finally happened.

Gaara killed Yashamaru.

Understand this: there had been no one.

After Gaara's birth and Mama's funeral, when Father retreated back to his office with a face as hard and cold as iron, they were utterly alone. The three children—Temari only three, confused and lonely, was left in a dark, empty room with toddler Kankuro and the strange new infant with red hair. They'd stayed for hours, forgotten by the rushing attendants, waiting for Mama to return and sweep them all into her arms.

It had been Uncle Yashamaru who came, and it had been Uncle Yashamaru who became a parent when the Lord Kazekage retreated into his office for days on end. It was their uncle, gentle, affectionate, laughing, who taught Temari how to brush her hair and tie it up. He'd given Kankuro his first toy marionette, brought them candied fruits and iced syrup on their birthdays.

Yashamaru had loved them all. He'd loved Gaara.

And Gaara murdered him.

So:

Gaara isn't human.

He can't be.

It's a clear, crisp afternoon in the village nestled in a forest valley. The woods in and around the village rustle with a sweet breeze. The song of cicadas pours out from under the chirruping wings of insects high in the branches above. In a small copse of trees, there's an overgrown clearing bearing a worn wooden placard that reads Training Ground 32.

It is here that a young, barefoot boy sits cross-legged on the ground, looking up at an old man.

"Meditation?" asks Naruto curiously.

He feels so much better after having slept for about thirty hours and then gorged himself silly on three huge bowls of ramen. Even better, Jiraiya had paid for all of it. Behind the dumb bragging and the showy red coat, the old man was turning out to be one of the awesomest adults Naruto had ever met.

"Yep," Jiraiya agrees. "There's a special kind of training people can undergo, to resist mental influences like genjutsu and mind-reading techniques. That's what we're going to try."

Naruto's a little dubious, but he nods anyway.

"From what you told me, you managed to find a state of intense focus that blocked off some of the fox's thoughts," the Sannin continues easily. "So if we can mimic that focus and intensify it, you should be able to get into a habitual state of concentration that shields you from internal mental probes."

He blinks. "Um. What?"

"It's like this: you managed to block off the fox before, right?"

"Kind of?"

"So we figure out how you did that," Jiraiya explains. "Then we practice until you can do it all the time, even with other stuff going on."

"Uh, I dunno if anyone told you," he begins uncomfortably, threading his fingers through the grass, "But I'm not really—"

"Not the focusing type, right." The man cracks a grin. "I saw your school files."
He flushes. "It's not my fault!"

"Hey, no sweat. Genjutsu's never been my forte either; I'm all for the big and flashy, y'know?"

"Yeah."

"Normally, I'd say good for you." Jiraiya shrugs. "But unfortunately, you can't fight off the fox with physical training. Sometimes we've gotta confront the things we're not so hot at, and for you that means meditation."

Naruto groans.

"On the bright side: once you get the hang of this, dispelling illusions'll be a cakewalk."

"Fine," he agrees grumpily, pulling his legs into a meditation pose. "How do we start?"

"By sitting comfortably. Yeah, you heard me," he adds at Naruto's squinty look of disbelief. "Lotus position isn't the best way to meditate for everyone. Pick something you're more relaxed in."

Naruto regards him suspiciously. "Anything?"

"Anything."

Still seeming skeptical, Naruto unfolds his legs and flops backwards, lying flat on his back with his arms flung out sideways. "How about this?"

"That's fine. Actually, that's a pretty common meditation pose," Jiraiya notes. "They probably don't mention it in the Academy, though, since it's the least efficient pose in combat."

"So I gotta lie down every time I want to hide my thoughts?" Naruto asks, voice muffled by his jacket collar. "That seems pretty dumb."

"Only while you're still getting the feel of things," promises Jiraiya, amused.

"So what now?"

"In a minute I'm going to ask you to listen for the voices in your mind. Once you hear them, I want you to practice blocking them and coming back to awareness. We'll keep doing this until you can do it regularly and completely."

"You want me to listen to 'em?" Naruto asks, alarmed. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Remember, your seal is secure." Jiraiya regards him with serious gray eyes. "If anything happens, I'm right here to help you. We don't have to do everything all at once, either- you can take a break if you're feeling overwhelmed."

"Oh." He takes a breath. "Okay."

"Ready to start?"

"Yeah."

"Close your eyes. Can you hear the voices at all?"

"I can always hear them," Naruto grumbles. With his eyes closed, he doesn't see the flash of pity cross Jiraiya's face. "I just don't normally pay attention is all."

"Try listening."

Naruto bites his lip.

"I'm here, remember. Nothing bad is going to happen."

"I know," he grumbles, but the assurance is comforting.

Listen. Focus. Listen.

It takes an effort to try to fall back into his mind, with his heart racing a little at the recollection of what happened the last time. He tries to force it twice, but only ends up jerking back into full consciousness- like when you're dozing on the edge of sleep, and a loud noise makes you jump up, wide awake.

At last he scowls and rubs his nose.

"I can't," he says morosely. "It's not working."

"That's fine. Just relax," Jiraiya says. His voice is deep and gravely and slow. "It's a nice day, isn't it?"

"I guess?"

"Nice breeze, too. From the west- you can smell the rain coming over the ridge. We'll have some clouds tonight."

"But—"

"And the sun- a little past noon, I'd say. Feels good and warm with that cool wind, don't you think?"

Oh. Oh. It's an odd kind of meditation. Not like the ones they do in class, where Iruka-sensei is reminding them all to focus on their chakra flow, concentrate hard and master control over the way the energy is flowing. Not like the ones Mizuki-sensei leads, where it's focus on your breath, and if you lose count you have to start all the way over again.

"Mmm," Naruto hums.

The grass tickles against his shins, and the sun is warm on his face. A cool gust of wind pushes past him, making his hair flutter around his ears. He takes a breath- and he can smell the rain Jiraiya was talking about, a tang in the air and a shiver in the breeze.

And he

falls

A breath of a whisper curls around his mind, quiet and tentative. He lets it pull him back into the echoey part of his mind- his soul?- and he waits. Listens.

It's like cracking open a door that he'd shut tight. Previously muffled tones, carrying the faintest inflections of thought, come clear.

-ugh what a headache never a medic around when you need one-

-gotta wash your hands 'fore lunch, wash wash wash your hands Fuu such a nag-

-where did I put it-

-storm coming from the east-

"Naruto?" asks a voice, seeming to come from a long way away. "Naruto? Can you hear me?"

"I... yeah," Naruto says. After a moment he remembers how to open his eyes and squints up at the the clear blue sky. "Jiraiya?"

"Hey, kid. You with me? Know where you are?"

-wish she'd just quit it-

-glaring at me, what did I ever do to him, nothing-

-village, two li north, better avoid it-

"We're... in the park?" Naruto says fuzzily. "The one by the Nara forest. Yeah, I'm good."

"Can you hear any of the voices?"

Loud and clear. A thrill of fear goes through him as he realizes opening his eyes hasn't been enough to shove the voices back into the depths of his mind. It's how it was before, with the whispers always twining around his mind, overlaid on the rustling wind and Jiraiya's voice.

"Yeah," he croaks. "Lots of 'em."

He catches the drift of faint annoyance and a flare of bitter tiredness from two different flickers in his mind. A fourth crows in victory while a fifth worries away like waves lapping on a shore and it's just so much.

"Are they talking to you?"

"No," he says blurrily. "Not to me."

"All right," Jiraiya says gently. "Now, can you try blocking them off like you did before?"

It's harder, this time.

It's as though by trying to listen, Naruto's cracked open a door that was shut tight. Instead of whispers only seeping through the gaps under the door, they've started coming in at the sides and hinges. It's too much, too clear, all at once, and Naruto feels like he's going to lose himself in the flow of emotions that aren't his.

He pictures slamming the door shut. With an effort, he makes the whispers recede, fainter and fainter until, finally:

"I did it," he says gleefully. "They're gone!"

It's quiet in his head for the first time ever. Naruto hadn't realized how loud the voices were until now, when they're all suddenly and starkly absent. The sensation is foreign and utterly strange. He almost imagines that his thoughts ought to be echoing with all that empty space.

"Good," Jiraiya says firmly. "Now we're going to do that again until you've got it for good."

Some weeks later, Fuu scowls as she hangs upside-down from a tree branch.

Her head is too quiet, and she doesn't like that at all.

The host of the Seven-Tails is ten years old, and she can count the number of actual human beings she knows on her fingers. It comes down to the eight Waterfall ninja who take rotating shifts on her guard detail, her tutor Kai-san, and the seal master who gives her checkups every couple of weeks.

Other than that—well, she's allowed to freely roam the woods, so long as she stays far away from the nearest settlement across the river. A fat lot of good that does, when its nothing but the same trees and rocks and birds she's spent her whole life with. She could walk the forest blindfolded and still point out every bird's nest and climbing tree.

"Stay still, Fuu," she imitates grumpily under her breath. "Don't stray, Fuu. Be careful, calm down, remember to meditate, Fuu."

She throws a pinecone at one of her guards, who dodges wearily.

That's no fun, either. They're all too used to her these days.

Despite being constantly alone, Fuu's never felt lonely until now.

The soft whispering of their voices had lulled her to sleep at night, and kept her company in the solace of the forest glen. There were eight of them, always echoing in her mind like ripples from ducklings in a pond. She learned to tell them apart by the feel of their ripples.

There's ancient lava under the earth and grass rustling in the wind—those two are quiet, mostly, but when they do talk they're terse and grumbly. There's reflection in the surface of a bubble who murmurs a constant stream of quiet worries without realizing it; and there's stinging blue fire who's a cold knot of anger and cleverly hidden hurt. Shifting sands is wrapped up in pain, like wind howling at an empty sky. Dark water on stone is resignation buried under momentum, and then there's the brine and cold iron that stays silent and watching.

Her favorite, though, is fire in sunshine, because he's loud.

Or at least, he used to be.

Where once there'd been a bright, burning warmth in that part of her mind, now it's like the barely-smoldering embers smothered by sand.

Silent too is shifting sands. She hadn't thought she'd miss him, when all he radiated was hurt and loneliness, but now he's gone everything is far too quiet.

The others are wary, guarded, scared of something she doesn't understand.

Why did you go? she asks them.

Why aren't you talking anymore? she asks them.

No one answers.

"Ah, Iruka," says the Lord Hokage serenely. "Please, sit. We have much to discuss."

Even after so many years, Iruka can't help but feel like a disobedient child when he sits in front of the Hokage. He hasn't done anything worthy of chastisement since he was a genin of fourteen, but under the old man's stern gray eyes it's as though all of his thoughts and words are under close scrutiny and don't quite pass muster.

"Lord Third," Iruka says, accepting the offered chair. "To what do I owe the honor?"

His question is answered for him.

A small boy with striking blue eyes and a mess of blond hair peeks out from behind the Third Hokage's robes. He's barefoot, wearing a worn orange T-shirt, and the only thing marking him out from one of the other children frolicking in Leaf's streets are the fox-whiskers on his cheeks.

"Old man, can I sit too?" asks the Nine-Tails.

"If you don't stop fidgeting, I'll have you sit on your hands," the Hokage warns. "No, don't touch those scrolls."

The boy scowls, but settles after a moment.

Iruka watches this exchange out of the corner of his eye. He can hide his distaste for Uzumaki fairly well in public—he's taught the demon host's class at the Academy for almost a year now without incident. Only Mizuki knows Iruka well enough to tell that he's putting on a front.

"You may recall," begins the Third, "Three weeks ago, I requested for Naruto to be excused from his classes due to health problems."

After the boy had suddenly leapt up in the middle of class, shouted something about going to see 'the old man', and then sprinted out the door before Iruka could get a word in edgewise—yes, he remembered that perfectly well. The other students had erupted into whispers and giggles that had been nearly impossible to quell.

"Yes, sir."

"As you've probably guessed, that was something of a euphemism." The old man laces his fingers together. "The real problem concerned the Fox."

Iruka's heart leaps into his throat. "Sir?"

The Third nods tiredly. "No need to worry; it's been resolved and Naruto is perfectly safe."

"Oh. Right."

Uzumaki's welfare hadn't exactly been at the core of Iruka's concerns, but he didn't feel the need to admit as much to the Hokage. All that mattered was that crisis had been averted—though of course if the Fox had truly broken its seal, everyone would have known about it long before now.

The Hokage is watching him inscrutably.

Iruka straightens. "So the arrangements you mentioned in the memo—?"

"Ah, yes." The Third sits up, nodding. "Those have to do with the nature of our little security scare. You see, two weeks ago, Naruto heard the Fox clearly for the first time."

What?

The fact that, among twenty carefree students in his class, lurked one boy with a murderous demon abomination sealed in his soul—the same demon that had killed hundreds of Iruka's friends, neighbors, teachers, and comrades as well as his only family, leaving him orphaned and alone—well, Iruka usually tried not to think too hard about it. Thinking only made him feel like he ought to be doing something.

So he'd never pondered the logistics of the seal much. Certainly he'd never considered the thin striations of difference between hosting a monster and being inhabited by one. Easier by far to box Uzumaki into the same corner of his mind where he stowed his grief and his nightmares and the image of a slavering demon standing over the wreckage of his childhood home.

Being told the demon spoke to its host—

Somehow, that's a difficult thing to process.

But the Lord Hokage is watching him, waiting. The old man has the same air of expectant patience that he did years ago, back when Iruka was an angry, lonely, troublemaking teenager. He'd always looked so calm and serene back then, never losing faith and always believing, unshakeably, that Iruka could grow into something better than he was.

Iruka has the uncomfortable feeling that he's doing something childish, but he doesn't know what.

"The- the seal was weakened?" he says, trying to assert some control over the conversation. "I suppose you had to quarantine it until it was resecured, then."

He glances momentarily at the Nine-Tails.

The boy squints up at him, nose scrunched up, but he looks reasonably docile. There's nothing demonic about the way he kicks his feet back and forth off the side of the chair, or the way he apparently took the Hokage at his words and actually did sit on his hands to keep from fidgeting. If anything, he seems a little anxious, chewing at his lip with blunt human teeth.

"The issue was not with the seal, for good or ill," the Third continues wearily. "I called in Jiraiya and he ascertained that the best permanent solution was to train Naruto in meditation techniques, to block off all traces of the Fox from his mind."

"You were successful, I take it?" Iruka says distractedly.

"Fortunately, yes. The training took some time—"

"Weeks an' weeks," Uzumaki sighs mournfully.

"—but Naruto is now able to build a strong mental shield through meditation," continues the Hokage. "He's ready to return to the Academy. In the interest of everyone's safety, however, we'll be introducing some new precautions."

This is something Iruka can understand. "Yes, sir."

"You see, if Naruto becomes preoccupied or emotionally distraught, there's a chance that his mental defenses will waver. In case of such a situation, I'm having one of the spare classrooms set up as a place for him to go and meditate should the need arise.

"I'm informing you of this because you are Naruto's primary contact at the Academy. If he asks to leave the classroom, he is to be permitted; likewise if he asks to be excused from class. If he needs an escort, you will provide one. If Naruto asks to see me, as he did three weeks ago, you can contact me with greater ease and speed than he might alone."

Iruka nods, wordlessly.

"Naruto is, of course, exempt from the law forbidding discussion of his jinchuriki status. If he comes to you to talk, you are permitted to speak openly."

"Right," Iruka says. His voice is a little too tight; he can hear it. "Of course, Lord Hokage."

"Thank you for your understanding," the Hokage says gravely. "I know you can be trusted to be discreet."

Then he turns to Uzumaki. He smiles when he pats the boy on the head, warm and paternal and wry, and the boy rubs his nose, evidently flustered.

"And you, Naruto—mind you don't abuse your privileges." The order is accompanied by a very stern look. "If I hear you've been, oh, skipping math classes, or causing trouble when you're supposed to be meditating, there will be consequences."

"I know," grumbles the boy.

The scene strikes a nerve. Iruka turns away, discomfited and unsure why.

Kankuro was never afraid of Gaara—not exactly.

He's wary, of course, and sensibly so. There's no denying that Gaara is dangerous. His gaze is chilling and cold, and he looks at his siblings with the empty eyes of a stranger. Whatever goodwill might have existed between siblings rotted away long ago, and the older two children of the Kazekage live with the suffocating knowledge that one wrong move might reduce them to bloodstains on sand.

But living in the constant shadow of a predator has taught Kankuro certain survival skills. He can sense his brother's mood behind pale blue eyes. He can tell the fine line between upset and angry and murderous. He knows to steer clear when Gaara subsides into low-voiced whispers, knows to tread carefully when the sand swirls against the wind.

Except something's changed.

Before, there had always been some faint trace of human emotion within Gaara's bloodthirst. There had always been something—desperation, fury, pride—that Kankuro could navigate.

Some weeks ago, Gaara had collapsed suddenly.

When he awoke, the last trace of human in him had vanished. He didn't whisper to himself any more, didn't plead with people who didn't exist. His eyes weren't cold anymore—they were dead. Empty. Gaara killed without fury, moved without will, and it seemed to Kankuro that his brother was very like a hollow puppet.

Kankuro hadn't been afraid of Gaara, until now.

A/N: So I've never had to write prejudiced!Iruka before and it was way harder than I expected? Like, damn.

A bit of an interlude chapter, but I can't really apologize for it because necessary plot stuff just has to be written. Tragically, such is life. But anyway, this is the second of three 'interlude' chapters before our favorite jinchuriki are really put into motion.

Thank you guys so much for your overwhelming support! It is honestly great to know that I can write something that makes people happy and entertained. Double thanks for the great feedback and critique!