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and then afterwards by ailavyn-siniyash fandom: Naruto words: 1300 for my wonderful qpp, Pop @ocellotte AO3 link

On the way home to the Sand after Orochimaru's failed invasion, Gaara gets to talk to Naruto again.

"So!" says Naruto, then he sobers, his grin slipping sideways, then off his face entirely and tumbling to the far-below ground. "You've got one too. A monster."

After that day in the forest, Gaara desperately wants to talk to Naruto again, but he doesn't get a chance before being hustled back off to the Sand, his teammates (his siblings) looking at him in fear and then confusion when he doesn't try to kill them, and then doesn't try to kill them again, and again, even as they grow tentatively more bold.

Both the Leaf and the Sand want him out of the Leaf Village because (he is a weapon, after all, and they are working out a peace treaty) there is unrest back in the Sand with the Kazekage dead, and he had been their father. So, once he and his teamma-- siblings have recovered from their fights in the woods enough to make the journey back, they set out, with a token guard of two who survived the invasion (they are not valuable as the Kazekage's children anymore, and Gaara never had been anyways) and a Leaf ninja shadowing them to make sure they truly leave. Even the Leaf aren't so trusting as to just let them go.

The journey is relatively calm, quiet, Gaara suddenly hyperaware of the way his siblings (and the guards, but, his siblings) twitch away from him in fear whenever he makes an unexpected move, the way his feet slip on the unfamiliar tree branches (so different from running on sand, make a wrong step and you could break your legs but there is no risk of being buried alive), the way Shukaku stirs every time he so much as blinks.

The journey is calm, quiet, almost leisurely, (the guards survived, but one of them received a nasty leg wound that still has her limping some) so it is a surprise to the entire company when partway through the second day they hear a yell.

"Hey, wait up!"

In unspoken agreement, they stop.

The voice, Gaara notes, is distinctly familiar, and then belatedly he recognizes the tone of it. Naruto. He spins around on his branch, nearly loses his balance except that his sand steadies him.

Naruto comes up out of the trees, breathing only a little heavily. His face brightens when he sees them and he grins, runs a hand through his hair. "Gaara!"

"Naruto..." Gaara feels, against everything he knows, a small smile form on his face.

"You!" says Temari, confrontational. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be helping with, uh," she trails off, clearly uncomfortable with mentioning the aftermath of the invasion to one of the victorious invaded.

"Well, yeah, I guess I should," says Naruto, hand on the back of his neck, "but I wanted to talk to Gaara!"

"Oh, um, hello," says Gaara. He admits, "I had wanted to speak with you as well."

"Cool!" says Naruto, then jumps up and grabs Gaara's arm, unheeding of the way Gaara has to consciously still the sand that gathers to crush it, "we'll just be over here for a bit, then!" and drags him off a few trees to the right, to one with a sort of criss-cross of branches forming a stable platform to sit. He flops down on it, feet dangling all casual into the void, then gestures for Gaara to join him.

"Hey! You can't just..." says Kankuro.

"Too bad," calls Naruto back. Gaara sits down much more cautiously than Naruto had, conscious of the way everyone is looking at him. "I didn't get to talk to Gaara at all, and you guys live in the Sand so I can't just see him at Ichiraku or something." He looks at Gaara, appraisingly. "We're the same, so we have to look out for each other."

Gaara looks back at Naruto, notes properly for the first time how like the desert he is, hair yellow like the all-consuming sun, eyes blue as oasis pools, and if he squints right, orange like the sunsets or the glare of sun on sand. (And he is trying his best to squint right, because otherwise it just gives him a headache.) The desert has always accepted him.

Kankuro sighs.

Temari sits down, resigned.

The guards imitate her.

"So," says Gaara. He doesn't know how to start a conversation, he never has started a conversation before, but there are so many things he wants to say that he feels he has to try.

"So!" says Naruto, then he sobers, his grin slipping sideways, then off his face entirely and tumbling to the far-below ground. "You've got one too. A monster."

Gaara nods, feeling suddenly, oddly, out of his depth. Everyone knew, but nobody had known, nobody had ever talked about it with him in a way that wasn't fearful or disgusted or emotionless. He hopes that Naruto's grin is okay. Things grow, on the forest floor, in ways they don't in a desert.

Naruto looks at him, face all weird, and Gaara knows that he is feeling the same.

Gaara says, "What's yours like?" That isn't the question he had meant to ask at all. "You've," he winces a little, "met mine already."

"It's really really mad," says Naruto, gripping his jacket at the stomach in an odd motion. "I don't have to go to sleep for it to come out, I just have to get really mad. Except that Pervy Sage pushed me into a chasm so I figured out how to talk to it so if I really need help I can make it give me some power but it doesn't like me so I don't like doing that." Naruto nods emphatically, satisfied with his description.

Gaara stares, unashamedly. Then he asks, "Pervy Sage?"

"He's my teacher! Well, one of my teachers. I made him help me when he knocked out Closet Perv. He taught me how to summon toads like Gamabunta, who you met! Or who Shukaku met at least."

Gaara looks at him some more, then tries, tentative, to broach the topic he most wants to talk about. Really, he would like to never think about Shukaku ever again. "This... Pervy Sage. Is he your friend?"

"Huh." Naruto looks thoughtful. "I guess he is, yeah!" he declares, satisfied at the discovery.

Gaara says, "What's it like, having friends?"

Naruto closes his eyes, opens them. "It's... really nice. It's like being warm, I guess. You know the feeling when people run away from you?" He doesn't wait for Gaara to nod. "It's like that, but all turned around and made happy. Friends are people who acknowledge you as a person who is worth caring about and being cared about by. Even if most of the time you want to beat each other up that's okay, because you have a bond!"

"Oh," says Gaara, "I see." He doesn't see, really, but he is looking at Temari and Kankuro, glaring petulantly at each other, and he thinks he is beginning to glimpse.

"My goal," says Naruto, perfectly serious, "is to make everyone in the village be my friend. Even the people who hate me! When I'm Hokage, I'm gonna be friends with everyone."

"You can do that?" asks Gaara, voice soft. Hokage, huh?

"I'm going to do it, it doesn't matter if I can or not!" says Naruto, grinning again. It's like daybreak.

Gaara says, "Good luck." If he can do it, then maybe I can do it too?

"You can totally do it!" says Naruto, as though reading his thoughts. "I'm your friend, and we're even from different villages!"

"You... are?" Gaara can hear the small tremble in his voice, hopes Naruto cannot. (Hopes Naruto can, because friends are supposed to notice things like that, right?)

"Of course!" says Naruto, all sunrise and wind. "You're my friend too, right?"

Gaara smiles, wider than he has in years. "Yes," he says, incredulously, tremulously. "Of course I am your friend, Naruto."

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