Disclaimer; I do not own Naruto, Gaara, or anyone else.
The mission was going badly, Naruto realized. Perhaps he should not have insisted on tackling it alone, but whatever mistakes he had made in the past it was the present that he was having the most trouble dealing with. He'd succeeded in killing the enemy shinobi but was badly wounded in the effort. As he lay there slowly regenerating his two broken legs and a sucking chest wound, he only hoped that backup would arrive soon.
"Uzumaki!" Naruto heard a feminine voice exclaim and momentarily Temari appeared in his field of vision. "Gaara, Kankuro, get over here!"
Soon Naruto could see the three sand siblings standing before him and evaluating his wounds. Gaara was downright creepifying with his emotionless and impersonal gaze. Slowly the infamous demon container smiled and a light began to shine dimly in his eyes.
"I am experiencing strange urges," Gaara informed his siblings. "I do not understand them."
"Like when you want to kill someone?" Temari ventured.
"Yes, but different," Gaara studied the leaf ninja carefully. "It is not the urge to crush him in a sand coffin, nor the urge to use him as target practice for my kunai, nor the urge to drive a spike through his middle watch as he dies slowly. Perhaps it is the urge for something new."
"Would you like me to kill him so we can move on?"
"No!" Gaara's hand flashed out to stop his sister. "Whatever it is I want from him, I will take it myself. Yes, I want something, that's it. What does he have that I want?"
Naruto tried to speak, but the number one noisy ninja of Konoha could only manage a gurgling wheeze.
"Gaara, we have a mission," Kankuro reminded him.
"Very well," Gaara pulled a kunai from his pouch and slid it across Naruto's throat before stripping the ninja of his possessions. "I will sort out whatever it was I wanted later."
Within moments the three were flashing from branch to branch as they ran through the forest. Something was troubling Temari however.
"Gaara, what did this urge feel like?"
"Like I was hollow inside," Gaara said after a moment's thought. "I saw that we were the same and I wanted something from him. It made my chest ache and the world seem bright at the same time. I felt the overpowering urge to do something and I knew it involved Uzumaki."
"I think maybe you wanted a friend," Temari told him.
"Oh," Gaara thought about it for a moment then shrugged. "I guess I do not need the burden of his possessions then. Remind me to bury him if we ever come back this way. I think a friend would do that."
A/N; Don't know where this came from, but the idea of Gaara making friends was funny. Anytime you try something new you are bound to make a few mistakes along the way.