Naruto arrived at the café before the sun cleared the frost from the windowpanes. He chose a table in the far corner, back to the wall, with a clear view of both the main entrance and the secondary exit near the kitchen. The place was practically empty—just a Beta grad student hunched over a laptop in the center row, two elderly women embroiled in a silent game of chess, and the lone barista restocking sweetener packets with the morose efficiency of a funeral director.
He set his phone face-down on the lacquered tabletop, then repositioned it three times before giving up. His thumb fidgeted along the edge of the tin in his hoodie pocket—a battered mint tin, which currently held a week's supply of Tsunade's latest suppressant capsules, and, less helpfully, a couple of stale actual mints. The tin was warm from his body heat and slightly greasy from the pill residue.
At the last second before sitting, he switched chairs. The angle on the secondary exit was better from here, and nobody could approach from behind without his noticing. His heart still pounded, jumpy with adrenaline, even though he hadn't slept the night before. Or maybe that was the point—he was running on an emergency fuel blend of coffee, anxiety, and whatever brain chemicals his body pumped out when it anticipated a confrontation.
He tried to settle, but the minutes stretched long and sticky. Each time someone entered the café, his shoulders tensed, as if preparing to bolt. When Sasuke finally appeared, it was through the side entrance, wearing a nondescript black jacket, a beanie that flattened his hair, and sunglasses that looked more suited for a hangover than for surveillance. He ordered a tea, then sat three tables away, back to the window, arms folded, doing a textbook impression of someone not watching Naruto at all times.
Gaara arrived exactly eight minutes late, a rolling, unhurried stride, hands in the pockets of an oversized green army coat. If he recognized Naruto, he didn't show it; he paused at the counter, looked over the menu without reading it, and finally ordered a black coffee, no cream, no sugar.
He turned, and for a split second, Naruto barely recognized him. The effect of a week without sleep was dramatic—Gaara's face was raw, the shadows under his eyes deep and ugly, and the infamous tattoo looked less like a warning and more like a scar left by a desperate, inexpert hand. His hair was uncombed, his clothes rumpled. He moved with the slouching detachment of someone who had not only given up, but was actively exploring the bottom.
Gaara caught Naruto's gaze, and in that instant, the static between them evaporated. Gaara approached with zero hesitation and slid into the seat opposite, dropping a messenger bag onto the empty chair beside him.
"Hi," Naruto managed, but Gaara cut him off.
"I believe you." The words were flat, no hint of drama or even relief, just the declaration of a fact. Gaara's eyes didn't waver.
Naruto blinked. "Uh—what?"
Gaara repeated it, quieter, but still with the mechanical certainty of someone reading a verdict. "I believe you. About your brother, and the others. I checked everything I could." He hesitated, lips thinning. "It was all there."
Naruto fumbled for a response, but the line he'd rehearsed a dozen times in the walk over was suddenly meaningless. He looked down, then at his coffee, which was now cold and still half-full. "I—thanks. I mean, I'm not happy you found proof, but I'm glad you—"
Gaara shook his head, just once. "Don't. Not yet."
From the next table, the grad student shifted, casting an annoyed look at the two of them for breaking the sacred silence of early morning. Naruto ignored it.
Gaara leaned forward, elbows on the scarred wooden table. "I found something," he murmured, voice barely audible over the hiss of the espresso machine. His bloodshot eyes flicked toward Sasuke, who sat pretending to read a newspaper three tables away. Gaara's chapped lips twitched. "Before I show you, should we invite your shadow to join us?" He tapped two pale fingers against the tabletop. "Seems like he's straining to hear anyway."
Naruto's spine snapped straight, his fingers freezing mid-tap against the tabletop. The muscles in his jaw tightened until a dull ache spread through his temples. He risked a sidelong glance at Sasuke, who hadn't moved but whose shoulders seemed to have grown sharper in anticipation, like a predator caught in the moment before the pounce.
Gaara's pale eyes flickered toward Sasuke, then back to Naruto. His chapped lips barely moved when he spoke. "He can join us. You will tell him everything anyway." His fingers twitched against the tabletop, leaving faint smudges on the laminate.
Naruto's stomach knotted with guilt. He turned and caught Sasuke's eye with a small nod. Sasuke immediately folded his newspaper with military precision, each crease sharp and deliberate. He crossed the café in five long strides, pulled out the chair closest to Naruto with a soft scrape against the linoleum, and settled into it. His thigh pressed against Naruto's under the table as he acknowledged Gaara with nothing more than the slight inclination of his chin, eyes never leaving the redhead's face.
Sasuke didn't touch his drink. He sat with his arms crossed, gaze pinned to Gaara, the rigid set of his shoulders promising that nothing would get past him. Naruto gripped his thighs enough to blanch his knuckles, but he said nothing, waiting for Gaara to start.
For a minute, Gaara only stared into the cup's black depths. The silence was deep enough to absorb the sound of the café proper—the clatter of dishes, the dull thump of the old espresso grinder, the hum of the ancient fridge on the far wall. Light slanted in through the dingy glass of the sunroom, painting the circle of the table a jaundiced gold.
Then, voice low and thin, Gaara began to speak.
Gaara's knuckles whitened around his cup. "Shukaku and I share a father. Not a mother." His voice flattened. "When Shukaku was eight, his mom died. I was five when my father dragged him home like some unwanted souvenir. He gave him a room, clothes, food—everything except acknowledgment that they were blood."
Naruto leaned forward, coffee forgotten between his palms. Where was Gaara going with this? Family drama wasn't what he'd expected when he'd asked about missing students. He caught himself chewing the inside of his cheek and forced himself to stop, glancing sideways at Sasuke, whose face remained a perfect blank while his eyes tracked Gaara's every microexpression.
"My father's a traditionalist," Gaara went on. "Obsessed with appearances. Always made a point to tell people how grateful he was to have a 'normal' family again." Gaara's mouth twisted. "But in the house, Shukaku was always an outsider. I had a new toys every birthday. He kept the same ones. When guests came, he ate in the kitchen with the staff. He wasn't allowed to use the main staircase."
Sasuke said, "He treated him like a servant." Naruto glanced at Sasuke, noting the strain in his jaw. Naruto couldn't help to wonder if he knew where Gaara was going with this.
"Worse," Gaara replied. "He didn't even acknowledge him when he was home. Only when he needed something. When he wanted to hurt him." The tips of Gaara's ears went red, but his voice never shook.
Gaara's shoulders hunched forward. "I have two older siblings—Kankuro and Temari. They saw everything, but what could they do?" His gaze dropped to the table, voice falling to barely a whisper. "They were helpless against my father, like I was." He left the thought unfinished, hanging in the air between them.
Naruto watched Gaara's knuckles whiten around the cup, the slight tremor in his voice that he was fighting to control. Something twisted in Naruto's chest—not pity, but recognition. Each word Gaara forced out seemed to scrape his throat raw. Naruto found himself leaning forward, wanting to reach across the table, to say he understood what it cost to excavate these memories, to lay them bare for strangers.
Gaara took a breath. "When Shukaku turned sixteen, he got a job, moved out as soon as he turned eighteen. We didn't see each other for a while. But then…" He shook his head, as if the memory was a stone in his shoe. "We both ended up at Konoha. At first, I thought maybe it would be different. Away from our father, it was easier. We talked. Sometimes we even studied together." Gaara's voice softened just a fraction.
Naruto's throat tightened as a sharp pang of envy twisted through him—those stolen study sessions, those moments of connection that he and Kurama never had, even before everything fell apart.
"Then last year, he started getting these headaches," Gaara said. "Bad ones. He'd get nosebleeds. Forget things. I told him to go to the health center, but he wouldn't." Gaara's hands clenched tighter on the cup. "He said he didn't trust doctors, not after the stuff our father did to him as a kid. Some kind of medical tests, but he never talked about it."
There was a hush, as if the table itself held its breath.
Naruto finally asked, "What changed? Why do you think he didn't just leave?"
Gaara set the cup down so carefully it didn't even clink on the saucer, his fingers trembling slightly despite the control. His sea-foam green eyes, rimmed with sleepless shadows, locked onto Naruto's with an intensity that made the air between them feel charged. "You." The word hung there, accusatory and desperate at once. "Two nights ago, I broke into my father's work computer." His laugh was brittle, a sound like glass on tile, barely audible above the café's ambient noise but sharp enough to make Sasuke's jaw tighten. "He's careful, but not as much as he thinks."
He dug into his messenger bag, pulled out a tablet, and tapped through a series of screens. He turned it so both Naruto and Sasuke could see.
"Three days after Shukaku disappeared, my father got a wire transfer. From Juinjutsu, Inc. The money was six figures."
Sasuke leaned in, scanning the numbers. "The email chain?"
"Deleted. But he missed the sent-mail archive." Gaara pulled the tablet closer, finger hovering over the screen. "All the emails came from [email protected]. They negotiated the price for weeks—one hundred thousand for the 'extraction procedure,' as they called it." His voice tightened. "I tried tracking the email, but it's a dead end. I still don't know who has him or where they took him." Gaara's eyes flicked to Naruto, then away, his knuckles white against the edge of the tablet.
Naruto stared at the screen until the numbers blurred. He tried to imagine a world where someone would do that, and couldn't. His parents hadn't been saints, but they'd died before they could ruin him.
"He always said Shukaku was a burden," Gaara continued, voice hoarse but steady. "A stain on the family line. That's what he called him. Now he's just…gone."
Naruto found himself gripping the edge of the table, nails digging into the cheap veneer. "What about your mom?"
Gaara shook his head. "After father's affair she left, never seen her again. Father raised me himself. Or, more accurately, Tamari and Kankuro."
A beat passed. Sasuke, still studying the numbers, finally looked up. "You think your father is apart of this?"
Gaara's lips thinned. "No. I think he saw this as an opportunity to get money and rid of Shukaku."
A cold wind rattled the glass. For a long moment, no one spoke.
Naruto broke the silence. "So what do we do?"
Gaara's shoulders slumped. His eyes, rimmed with dark circles, searched Naruto's face like he was looking for a map in unfamiliar territory. "I was hoping..." His voice trailed off, fingers tracing the rim of his empty cup. "I thought maybe you had a plan. You found me, after all." He swallowed hard, the movement visible in his throat. "But whatever you decide to do, I want to help. I need to be there when you find them."
Naruto's shoulders slumped. The names Juinjutsu, Inc. and the email address were breadcrumbs, not the feast of information he'd been starving for. Still, he clung to them, turning them over in his mind like worry stones. Maybe these thin threads could lead them somewhere—anywhere—closer to Kurama. Maybe this time, the trail wouldn't go cold.
Naruto studied Gaara's face—the hollow shadows beneath his eyes, the tightness around his mouth that never quite relaxed. He'd seen that same expression in his own mirror for months now: the look of someone who would tear the world apart with bare hands to find someone they loved. Kiba's help had given him leads. Sasuke had opened doors. Maybe it was time to stop trying to carry this burden alone.
Naruto took a deep breath and reached for his backpack. Before his fingers could close around his notebook, Sasuke's hand shot out, gripping his wrist. Their eyes met—Sasuke's dark with warning, Naruto's resolute. Naruto gently placed his free hand over Sasuke's.
"I trust him," Naruto said quietly, the words meant only for Sasuke.
A muscle twitched in Sasuke's jaw before he reluctantly released his hold. As Naruto pulled out the notebook, Gaara's expression transformed—the hollow desperation in his eyes kindling with the first fragile spark of hope.
Naruto placed the notebook on the table, his fingers lingering on the worn cover. "Everything I've found is in here," he said, meeting Gaara's gaze. "But I should warn you—it's not much." A flicker of understanding passed across Gaara's face as he nodded, his eyes never leaving the notebook as Naruto slowly opened it to the first page.
The Naruto flipped open the cover and there tapped to the front page a reminder of what Naruto was doing all this for was Kurama, his bright red hair and smile stared back at him, and Naruto's heartached just like it did everytime he opened this. He turned the notebook around for Gaara to see.
Naruto tapped the photo taped to the first page. "My brother, Kurama Namikaze." Gaara leaned forward, studying the image. Something flickered across his face—recognition? Surprise? Before Naruto could decipher it, the moment passed. He swallowed hard, his finger tracing the edge of the photograph. "January 7th, 2:47 a.m. That's when I got his last call." His voice caught, and Sasuke's hand found his shoulder, steady and warm. "He was running. The video was shaking. All he managed to say was 'They're doing something to the Betas' and 'Stay away.' Then nothing—screen went black."
Gaara's eyes lifted from the photo to Naruto's face. "I tried reaching him for days," Naruto continued, his voice steady despite the slight tremor in his hands. "After a week, voicemail. Now the automated message just says the number can't be completed." He swallowed hard, thumb absently tracing the edge of his phone in his pocket. "Eight months, and I still dial it every night before bed." Beside him, Sasuke's expression shifted—a subtle tightening around the eyes that betrayed his surprise at this revelation.
Naruto took a deep breath and flipped to the next page, revealing a meticulously drawn timeline. "Kurama enrolled in Advanced Biological Sciences his first semester. By October, he'd call me late at night about Professor Orochimaru—how he'd corner students after class, ask questions that went beyond academics." Naruto's fingers traced a date circled in red ink. "We'd laugh it off then. 'Creepy Snake Guy,' Kurama called him. Said his eyes followed you around the room like he was deciding which parts to dissect first." Naruto's smile faded. "But Kurama needed the credits, so he stayed."
Naruto tapped the next entry on the timeline. "End of October—that's when the headaches started." His finger lingered on the date, voice catching slightly. "He kept it from me. Neji was the one who told me."
Gaara's eyes narrowed. "Neji Hyuga?"
"Yeah," Naruto said. "You know him?"
"Everyone knows the Hyugas," Gaara replied, a hint of disdain coloring his tone. "Old money, pure Alpha bloodline going back generations, well mostly. Didn't think someone like that would bother getting involved."
Naruto shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. "His cousin Hinata was getting hassled by some Alphas. I stepped in." His eyes flicked to Sasuke, then back to Gaara. "After that, Neji started talking. Led us straight to the medical building. I showed you the photo's at the bar." Gaara nodded remembering, but waited for more.
Naruto's fingers traced the next date on the timeline. "Thanksgiving weekend. Iruka had already bought the extra groceries. Kakashi even cleaned the guest room." He swallowed, remembering the text message that had appeared instead of his brother. "Then suddenly it was just 'can't make it' and something about being selected for some exclusive medical research group. I was upset, but I knew how much college meant to him."
Naruto's finger traced the December entries on his timeline. "The calls stopped coming every night. Just texts about finals keeping him busy." He paused at December 25th, circled in angry red ink. "Then Christmas dinner came and went without him." Naruto's jaw tightened. "I sent him this long, pissed-off message about how he'd ruined everything. Didn't even occur to me something might be wrong." Naruto's voice finally broke. He looked up at Gaara and caught a flash of something familiar in the other man's eyes—that same haunted look of someone who'd replayed every conversation, searching for warnings they'd missed.
Naruto took a deep breath and continued, "He called me that night, and we talked for hours." His voice cracked, and he pressed his knuckles against his mouth. "I spent the whole time telling him off instead of—" The words dissolved as his shoulders hitched forward. "I could have asked questions. I could have noticed something was wrong. But all I did was make him listen to me being angry."
The weight of Sasuke's palm between his shoulder blades steadied Naruto's breathing. He blinked hard twice, then dragged his sleeve across his eyes before returning to the notebook. His finger traced the final entry, voice hollow. "January seventh. That last call. And after that—nothing. Like he'd been erased."
Gaara leaned forward, taking the notebook from Naruto's hands. His pale fingers traced the timeline, lingering on the final entry. The silence stretched between them until Sasuke cleared his throat.
"The medical records we found had a project name," Sasuke said, his voice low and controlled. "Chimera. From what we can piece together, they're experimenting on Betas—specifically ones with certain genetic markers. They're trying to activate dormant Omega characteristics."
Gaara set down the notebook and took a steading drink of his coffee. "And you know this because?"
Naruto bit his lip, wondering how he would explain they got it from Tsunade, an Omega specialist who shouldn't have any connection to him. Sasuke spoke up first.
Sasuke shrugged, offering only a half-truth. "There was a research article in the school's archive records, written by Dr. Tsunade as her graduation thesis. The paper outlined the same concepts, even used the same project name."
"You think she is involved?" Gaara asked.
Sasuke said quickly, "No. You can do your own research, but from what I can tell she hasn't had anything to do with that research since graduating." Gaara nodded as if that was enough.
"Lastly," Sasuke started, "we broke into Orochimaru's office last night. He had files on the Chimera Project, and he caught me." Gaara's eyes widened. "I confronted him about it. He admitted to being involved but stated the project is all 'above board,' before sending me away."
Gaara looked suspicious then eyes narrowed, "He just let you go?"
Sasuke gritted his teeth, his fist clenching. "He has history with my family, that's all I am going to say." Gaara watched Sasuke for a long moment before nodding.
Naruto swallowed, he still held the truth about the file, about the message Orochimaru left Sasuke. He would find time to tell Sasuke… eventually.
Naruto looked down at the table so Sasuke wouldn't see the look of guilt in his eyes, "And that's it. That is all we have."
Gaara sighed and sat back. "Well, it isn't nothing. We know Orochimaru is involved, the project is called the Chimera Project, it's being funded by something called Juinjutsu, Inc., and it targets Betas that they believe can become Omegas." Naruto's fist clenched, weeks of investigation all summed up in a few sentences.
Gaara leaned forward. "I have an idea," he said, drawing both Naruto's and Sasuke's attention. "My sister works in the administration building. If this is run by the school, or if the school is involved somehow, she might be able to access some records." Naruto's heart swelled with hope, but Sasuke didn't look convinced.
Gaara leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "Her fiancé Shikamaru could be useful too. Guy's some kind of programming prodigy—always complaining about how troublesome everything is, but he can slip past firewalls like they're made of tissue paper."
Hope flickered across Naruto's face, but Sasuke's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "And we're supposed to just trust your sister with this? Someone who works for the administration?"
Gaara's eyes flashed with something dangerous, but he swallowed whatever sharp response had risen to his tongue. "Temari is the only person I trust completely in this world," he said quietly, fingers tightening around his cup. "But I understand your caution. She won't hear a word about either of you until you give me permission." Sasuke held his gaze for a moment, then gave a curt nod of acceptance.
The conversation wound down as Naruto fought to keep his eyes open, exhaustion from their sleepless night settling into his bones. Gaara pushed back his chair and stood, promising to reach out the moment he had news. As they left the cafe, Sasuke's arm found its way around Naruto's shoulders—a gesture that felt both protective and possessive in a way that Naruto was too tired to overthink.