Second Chance

Summary: Shikamaru, Gaara and Naruto go back in time. Only Shikamaru and Gaara make it to the past.

Chapter 1

"I don't know, I just found him like this."

"Just like this? Sleeping?"

"I don't know! He never slept before. … Did he?"

Gaara creased his brows to a frown and the voices fell silent immediately. He shifted his weight – heavily, sluggishly – and tried figuring out what it was that made the situation feel odd. There was something, just barely out of reach of awareness, something–

He didn't know what it was, but he wasn't quite ready to follow this train of thought. His thoughts felt sluggish, too scattered to offer him any kind of explanation. Was he under some kind of drug? No, that didn't feel right.

"Do you think we should get someone?"

"I don't know." There was a pause. "He doesn't seem to be going mental."

"Shut up! He might hear you!"

… Whatever Gaara had expected, it was not an offhand comment about his admittedly questionable mental stability.

People were often wary around him – even afraid. It couldn't be helped, considering his past and the reputation he'd built due to the role he'd played during the war.

The war...

His mind seemed to linger on the word, eager to dive into territory Gaara was unwilling to even graze just yet. Not here. Not now, where voices were talking about him like he hadn't experienced in years, talking in this quiet, muffled way that told him they didn't want him to hear them, were afraid of him doing so, afraid of him.

Not while they sounded so awfully familiar.

"Gaara? Can you hear me?" The feminine voice was speaking again. She sounded louder this time, though Gaara could tell with a sinking feeling that she was standing a safe distance away from him. Too much to be mistaken as anything but intentional.

"What are you doing?!" It wasn't more than a hiss, from the male speaker this time.

Gaara opened his eyes to be met with the semi-darkness of his room – his old room, not his quarters as Kazekage. He briefly let his eyes wander, coming to a halt at the window that allowed the last sun rays to shine through before nightfall. His eyes widened, taking in the sight before him.

Suna stretched out before his eyes. Suna, the village he hadn't seen in years. Not standing and whole. Not unmarred by the years that had gone by.

Not all the memories he had of it were fond – almost none of his childhood was – but Suna was still his home.

Genjutsu was the first thought that struck him, but his eyes found the other occupants of the room and everything else was wiped from his mind.

His siblings were young. So impossibly young and innocent – a word he would never have thought to use on Temari, who could terrify a grown jōnin on her worst days. How old were they? Kankurō couldn't be a day over eight, maybe nine. Temari was one year older.

His sister stood closer to him – just a few steps away and watching him from wide eyes. She wore casual clothing, thin enough to be comfortable in Suna's desert sun, and her trademark hairstyle, sandy blonde hair held back in four ponytails. A wave of nostalgia rose up in Gaara's chest. She'd discarded the hairdo after a stray attack had burnt off two of the tails and worn it short after that.

She'd fallen, trying to lead what was left of one of their troops to safety. It hadn't sunk in how strong of a pillar she'd become in Gaara's life until she'd been gone. Determined, he shoved all his memories away in the very depths of his mind, all the emotions he wasn't ready (would never be ready) to face.

Kankurō lingered just behind Temari, one hand clutching the door handle as if to push it open and disappear in just a moment if he had to.

He was missing his make-up and wore similar clothes as his sister, convenient to wear in the desert village that was their home.

Kankurō had died just weeks after Temari did. Blinded by their loss and not able to overcome his grief, Kankurō had charged headfirst into one battle after another. He had wasted no thought to his own safety, uncaring up until it killed him as well.

It had been nothing short of suicide, and Gaara knew it. He understood it.

And now they were here, breathing, alive, and Gaara shouldn't feel anything but joy, endless relief to see his siblings again, no matter their age.

If it weren't for the way they looked at him. The look in their eyes told him everything he needed to know, filled with caution and worry and horrible, horrible dread. They were afraid of him. They were afraid of what he might do to them. It was such a distant concept coming from his siblings, Gaara had to take a moment to take it in.

He sat up from where he was slumped in one of the armchairs and Temari flinched away. It felt like a punch to the gut.

"Erm. Hey Gaara! Are, are you alright?" Temari's cheerful tone sounded so fake Gaara had to suppress a wince. The smile plastered on her face looked more like a grimace and he could see how tense she was, ready to jump into action – ready to flee the room as soon as Gaara made some sort of threatening move.

"I'm fine," he answered quietly, not trusting his voice to say anything more.

"Well um. That's great! We'll just, leave you to it then!" Temari's expression hadn't changed from the cheerful, happy tone from before.

Gaara hated it. He recognized it. Temari had spoken to him this way for years. She'd tried placating him, had tried not to give him a reason to harm her and Kankurō.

He nodded, not wanting to force them to stay any longer when it was obvious how afraid they were.

"Alright then!" Temari flashed him one last, shaky smile before she hurried after Kankurō, who had left without wasting another glance at his brother.

Gaara couldn't blame them. He sat back in his chair, took a deep breath and started to organize his thoughts. They still felt all over the place.

Memories were pushing at the borders of his mind like insistent flies. They held the confusion and suspicion of finding himself back in his childhood at bay, and Gaara let them in before they could slip away and leave him none the wiser.

Another battlefield. Another of their victories that didn't feel like one.

Too many people dead. Too many fallen. Wasn't it ironic to fight a war when slowly but certainly there didn't seem to be anyone left to relish a victory?

The air smelled like blood. Pain pulsed through his body, a piercing, burning pain–

Gaara winced at the phantom sensation. Had he been injured?

Someone coughed. They spoke – a husky, rugged voice forcing out word after word in short, determined jolts. Blond strands of hair, falling messily into dull, gray-looking eyes that were supposed to shine in an almost blinding sky blue.

Naruto. No one had sunshine colored hair like he did. Where was the memory set place? Was he alright?

A second voice at their side, far calmer than it ought to be considering their situation.

Gaara's memories left him there. The second person was likely Shikamaru. The three of them had been traveling together.

It wasn't much. He remembered being injured. He remembered Naruto and Shikamaru at his side. He remembered… Had they been planning? Was that the reason his disbelief about his predicament wasn't any bigger?

At a loss, Gaara turned to watch the surreal picture that was his home village through the window.

A family was walking through the streets, two women and a girl who might have been their daughter.

A stray cat scurried around the edges of the market, hoping to find scraps left behind by shopkeepers who'd finished packing up their wares for the evening.

A group of villagers stepped out of a bar in one of the darker alleys. Rude gestures turned to shoving, turned to punches being exchanged, several of the villagers allowing themselves to be drawn into the drunken brawl.

Gaara hadn't realized he'd been smiling until it slipped from his face. He didn't like conflict. Especially not one so meaningless as a disagreement among drunkards. It made him want to skip down there himself, break up the fight, round up the villagers and make them disappear in a cloud of sand, crushing and tearing and squeezing–

Gaara snapped away from the window, his eyes wide and his heart beating several paces too fast.

Those hadn't been his thoughts. Those hadn't been his urges.

There was a voice, distant and nearly forgotten, the feeling of agitation, rage and bloodlust, a voice urging him to act, to kill–

Gaara's eyes snapped open, unfocused. It couldn't be.

But now that he had felt it once, the presence in his mind was unmistakable. It had been with him for a great part of his life, had cheated him of his childhood, had changed him to a bloodthirsty, unstable monster.

He knew now that most of the demon's insanity had been triggered by the seal trapping him inside Gaara, incomplete and doing more harm than good, influencing the demon (and, as a result, his host).

Gaara had come back to his childhood, the flawed seal inked onto his skin and the voice in the back of his mind whispering for blood.

All of a sudden it felt quite appealing to find whoever'd the glorious idea of time jumping and making them Shukaku's very first human sacrifice.

When Shikamaru woke up it was very much not to the sound he remembered losing consciousness to – which, while slightly unsettling, was not half as unwelcome as it could have been.

He kept his eyes closed and groaned at the stiffness of his limbs. He didn't want to think back to what caused it and decided instead to simply enjoy the moment that didn't see him in any kind of agonizing pain.

He didn't sense any danger in his near surroundings, settled down and thought back.

There was wasteland for what seemed like miles around them. Silence, save for the two other people with him. A soft voice, speaking with him quietly but determined – no, discussing, arguing with him – and a second presence next to them, strained words and rattled breathing and horrible, wet coughs–

Naruto!

Eyes snapping open, Shikamaru realized what it meant that he couldn't hear his friend anymore, what the unavoidable consequence was of him not speaking, not breathing.

He leaped up, looked around and stretched out his perception as far as he could, searching for his friend and hoping, begging him to be alright.

There was no Naruto lying next to him (bleeding and gasping but alive). No Gaara in front of him, breathing heavily and barely keeping upright (with a wound he suspected was much worse than his friend admitted). He was alone.

He wasn't just anywhere.

"You've got to be kidding," Shikamaru muttered, to no one but himself.

He was standing on a wide field of grass, right next to a group of trees and the curve of a narrow river – one of the training grounds of Konoha.

He couldn't remember which one it was, but he could remember how much time he'd spent doing nothing here as a child.

Recovering from the shock of seeing the place of his childhood again, Shikamaru settled back down. Now calmer, he concentrated on his thoughts and the conversation he'd had with his friends.

They'd argued, he recalled, discussing (and dismissing) options. They'd searched for a solution, some kind of plan, anything except the insane scenario they had planned for countless months that they had been on the run.

The suggestion had come from Naruto – no surprises there – as nothing more but an innocent remark none of them had taken seriously at the time. He had noted how far he had mastered the seals and techniques developed by his mother's clan, laborious collected by them month after month in form of nearly illegible, incomplete scrolls, the notes of a clan full of geniuses.

There hadn't been enough of them left to believe in winning the War. They'd spent their days traveling in small groups to ensure they weren't easy to track down, constantly on the move. Their life had seemed an endless sequence of hiding, fleeing and desperately searching for a solution, anything they hadn't thought of in the months, years that their lives just as well might have come to an end.

On the off chance of completing the half developed technique Naruto had managed to dig out from who knew where, they'd tracked down any remaining clues that may have been left by Naruto's clan members.

It was at that time that Shikamaru thought – not for the first time – how little credit Naruto was given for his intellect. He may not have been a genius in the straightforward definition most shinobi would use. But he had also completed the technique left behind by his father when he had been 13 years old.

And he had done it, in the end.

Naruto had one day announced (ecstatic and nearly vibrating with excitement) that he had completed the strange space-time jutsu he had mentioned to them now and again over the course of the last months. The technique that was the reason why they hadn't moved their hideout for far too long.

Then they were found. There had been no warning. They hadn't known the enemy was onto them, though they should have been smarter than to stay in one place for so long.

But Naruto had needed time. He wasn't able to accomplish anything with them on the run with no end, so they settled down, let him train and complete the technique.

But with the enemy on their heels, there had been no time to make plans.

It had ended with him, Gaara and Naruto just barely subduing their opponents, Naruto choking on his own blood before them, Gaara not admitting to anything, though Shikamaru strongly suspected a serious injury to the stomach. Both of them had been desperately trying to come up with some kind of way out, because what Naruto was trying to explain to them sounded so impossible, so final.

In the end they had listened, of course – trying (and failing) to ignore how it got harder and harder for him to breathe, how the life drained out of their friend right in front of their eyes.

Shikamaru let his eyes wander, taking in the sight before him. This particular training ground was near the border, giving him a clear view of the Hokage Monument. He looked up at the four Kage, gaze lingering just a little longer on the Fourth Hokage.

The sun was already sinking, casting its last daylight over the village he loved.

Eventually, Shikamaru heaved himself up from his seat in the grass, stretched and let out a sigh. He didn't want to think about everything that was to come. There was so much he needed to do. So many people he needed to meet.

His features softened. At least he wouldn't have to face all of it alone. If he arrived in the past unharmed that meant two other people had come with him.

His thoughts trailed off to Suna briefly, hoping Gaara was alright. It was regrettable, but he would have to hold out on his own for a while.

Gaara was smart – he hadn't become Kazekage at 16 for nothing – and Shikamaru was certain he would be fine until they found a way to contact each other. He sighed, idly wishing they could have had more time to plan.

But Gaara wasn't the only of his friends who'd come with him.

Mind made up, hands in his pockets and trying to look as carefree as possible, Shikamaru started looking for the man who would one day, once again, become his Hokage.

A/N: Thanks for reading! :D This is my first time writing anything, so please leave me a review and let me know what I can do better!

~Gwen

Edit: Smoothed over the writing and changed the summary because I lowkey started hating the old one. Will do the same for the other chapters, bit by bit!

PS: Find me on tumblr as 'xxgwenstacyxx'!