Disclaimer: Me don't own.

Summary: We're monsters both you and I, our cages are not all that different.

AN: I have to say, I'm quite proud of this. Not sure where the idea came from though, please do tell me what you think of it!

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How man times had he stood there? Just standing, barely moving, with his hand resting against the warn piece of paper. He'd been here so many times, he'd already lost track. Eyes watched him silently as ever, waiting to see what he would do. They always did that, never moving from the shadows on the other side of the prison cell.

The echoing drips of water reverberated around him, the ankle deep water freezing on his bare feet, but he remained utterly still. He ran his finger over the small sutra that still clung to the iron bars despite even the dank, heavy air. His large sky-blue eyes gazed up at the bars with curiosity, as his thumb brushed over the peeling corner of the seal.

Every time he came here, he always pinched that corner, always tugging at it, watching as the flimsy piece of paper that had been there from before he could remember slowly began to peel away with the greatest of ease. Whenever he went to tear the seal away the creature's presence always became stifling, its eyes glowing brighter in the gloom.

He didn't understand it. What had he ever done? "Monster!" they shouted at him. Pushing their children protectively into their homes as though he were some horrible disease. He hated them all and every time he thought that, he would always end up here. Standing in a dank sewer, with only a tiny worn cracked and yellowed piece of paper that was peeling at one corner standing between him and what lay beyond. He rolled the corner of the seal between his fingers, a familiar movement that brought him a bit of comfort.

"We are both monsters, you and I," the creature in the shadows had told him once, but when that was, he could no longer remember. "Our cages are not all that different." It was the only thing the monster had ever told him and he kept those words close to his heart. After all, it was the only other monster that had ever spoken to him, let alone that he knew.

He felt a kinship with it, how could he not? He was trapped, he was trapped just like the eyes who lingered behind these bars. His small hand tightened around the seal. He could free it, he could free this monster- and then what?

Anything that was free would fly away, everyone knew that and he didn't want that. He didn't want to be alone. So once again the child released the seal, and once again he backed away, leaving the monster in its solitude where only he could be its company.

But not long after, the young child found one person who never saw him as the beast and so it was he completely forgot about his childhood creation, the imaginary monster who was his only companion in those years.

Even much later when he had grown and he returned to that place and saw Kyuubi and the prison for it was, he never once remembered tugging at the corner of the seal that contained the fox demon.