InsaneJournal

Because I haven't posted enough today! Also, ficcy: Storms pt. 1, sequel to Not Heaven
This is, as stated, the first sequel to Not Heaven. It's driving me mad. Gaara is an uncooperative little bugger, but there was a lot of stuff running through his head during Not Heaven that didn't come out during that fic. Therefore, I put it in another fic, along with backstory explanation of why he was thinking that, and how the Not Heaven universe is different from the current Naruto canon.

This is the first bit of what's meant to be a oneshot. I'm working on the rest. :)



Storms pt. 1


Gaara hates storms.

Whenever he is home in the Hidden Sand during a storm, he finds himself staring out of the window and wondering if anything else exists beyond the fierce, whipping wall of sand. Gaara is not a people person – indeed, it’s rare that he willingly speaks to anyone at all. There are a few people for whom Gaara will speak first, but he prefers not to. It reminds him of a time when the people he spoke to the most were those he was about to kill.

But despite the fact that he is introverted to the point of becoming a hermit, and despite the fact that part of the reason he prefers not to speak first is that those around him despise him, he does not like to feel cut off from the rest of the world. He does not like the idea that there could be no one in the world but him – him and Shukaku, screaming and thrashing and clawing at the back of his mind.

This is why Gaara hates storms.

If he squints, peering from the ground floor window of his home, he can just about make out the building across the road. On a clear day it looks close enough to touch, and that simple fact makes him doubt that he sees anything in the storm at all.

It is not just the absence of anything more beyond his window than thick, whirling sand that makes Gaara suddenly, acutely aware of his loneliness – it is the absence of sound. On a clear day, the shops and stalls around him would be open, their owners conversing with customers or calling out to those walking past. The noise feels safe; it makes him feel as though he is home, even though he knows that those same people despise him. All people, Gaara has come to realise, need contact with other human beings – and even hatred is a form of contact. It is why he does not allow Temari to do his shopping for him.

But storms. . . .

Gaara lives alone. It is not just that he likes to be alone, never quite sure how to handle himself in a situation that does not require violence, but that the rest of the village prefers him to be alone as well. He does not mind; Temari visits him regularly, and sometimes Kankurou comes with her. That, the few missions he is assigned, and the sound of the village outside, are all he needs.

These thoughts bring him back to the storm, however, the storm which blocks him off from all he has come to cling to in the hopes of staying sane. At times like these, all he has to listen to is Shukaku. True, that is all he has to listen to most days, but at least when he can see and hear the people outside he can pretend that that is by choice.

During storms, Gaara finds himself wandering around his house, moving from one window to the next as though one of them might show something other than endless sand. He peers out of them, restless, hoping to see something out there and all the while knowing that he never will. Over time, it has become a habit – something to keep the storm outside from venturing in, almost a form of meditation.

And that is why, the first time he sees a flash of orange in the whipping sand outside his window, he thinks he has imagined it.

Gaara stays by the window, however, halting in his habitual path through the house. He stays, waiting, staring blindly into the twisting, whirling sand – and is about to give up and move on when he sees another flash of orange.

This time, he can just about make the figure out. Blond hair spikes in a distinctive and disturbingly familiar pattern, and his stomach clenches because that can’t be who he thinks it is, can it?

Can it?

-----

[Nine years ago]

Gaara had never expected that Temari and Kankurou would help him.

Between them, they carried him back to Suna in four days – quite a feat in itself, since it usually took the better part of a day just to leave the forest surrounding Konoha. Their touch was firm and sure, and whenever they stopped to rest one of them was always awake and with him.

He’d apologised to them. He had only the vaguest idea of what he was apologising for, but . . . it felt important that he did.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the fight with Naruto.

They’d beaten each other so badly that neither one could walk. Fought, struggled, screamed and bled, but in the end it had been Naruto who had had the strength to keep going.

Naruto.

Not him.

Naruto had said that because he had something other than himself to fight for, that was the reason he kept going, and in one moment the enormous truth of that had hit Gaara like a sledgehammer. He had given up. He had had no reason to keep going, no reason to push himself beyond his limits and risk permanent injury, if not death. But even more than that, it had never crossed his mind that there might be a reason that someone would keep going.

He had been sure that he would die, and in a way, he welcomed the idea.

Naruto.

He would never have believed that a precious person would be a reason to keep going.

Love was pain, and betrayal, and misery. Love was nothing worth having, because it gave you nothing of worth. Love was a useless myth created in the attempt to control people, to prevent them from realising that they were the only thing worth anything on the entire planet and that every other person was only useful insofar as they fulfilled an end. Love was something Gaara did not understand.

Because when push came to shove, every person chose themselves. They would not risk themselves for another person. They would kill you if you chose to let them close enough. Love denied that; love gave you a happy myth that nonetheless was dangerous.

But. . . .

Gaara had been waiting for either capture, or death. Either he would breathe his last on the forest floor outside Konoha, or Konoha’s shinobi would come across him lying there and take him in for interrogation and hostage purposes. That was the way it would be, he thought; none of the Sand shinobi cared about him enough to want to save him, take him back with them to terrorise Sunagakure any further. He was Sand only by name, not because they actually wanted him – if it were Temari or Kankurou, they would be rescued, but he was Gaara, and after him it was doubtful that they would even want Shukaku back. He had melded more successfully with the demon than any other, and it had made him both unstable and not easily controlled.

So Gaara had been sure that Naruto would pass out, as exhausted as Gaara with no more reason to continue fighting. The Sand shinobi still alive would leave him, and the Leaf shinobi still alive would come looking for their three rookies – and find Gaara as well. If they didn’t kill him on the spot, they’d take him back with them, while his siblings continued on back to Sunagakure.

To Gaara, his view had been perfectly logical. Neither Temari nor Kankurou had ever taken any interest in him before, beyond what was necessary to keep out of his way. He knew the rest of the Hidden Sand both hated and feared him. He had no reason to suppose that Naruto would keep going, because even if he was fighting for his ‘precious people’ – especially if he was fighting for them – he would fail. It was only relying on yourself, on your own strength, on desperately trying to confirm your own existence by snuffing another’s out so that you didn’t just fade to nothing more than a whisper of a voice in the screeching howl of a whirlwind of sand soaked in demonic chakra—

Except Gaara’s siblings had come for him, and Naruto had kept on fighting.

He kept on fighting.

Gaara didn’t understand it.

-----

“—found his body, so now we’ve got to elect a new Kazekage,” Kankurou said, pacing the floor of Gaara’s hospital room. “There are a couple of good candidates, but I’m not so sure about Fukuzawa. He’s got the power, but a really bad temper if provoked. And he’s too easily provoked..”

Gaara remained silent, listening to his brother fill him in on the fallout of the disastrous attack on Konoha. The first thing the council had done on the discovery that Orochimaru had betrayed them and killed the Kazekage was to declare that all of Suna’s actions in attacking Konoha had been the result of orders from Orochimaru disguising himself as Kazekage, and thus they would aid Konoha in any way necessary to restore the pride of the village and gain revenge. An alliance was being discussed, and – if completed – it was unlikely that Suna would betray it any time in the near future.

Gaara himself was not healing as fast as he would have liked. His battle with Naruto had left him with numerous injuries and exhausted; his own chakra was sorely depleted and he refused to rely on Shukaku’s chakra to heal himself. Despite the fact that, if pressed, Shukaku would have no choice but to surrender its chakra to him, Gaara did not want the possibility of the demon gaining any kind of control over him during. He never had, really.

It meant that his progress was slow and tiring, however, and Shukaku’s constant shifting-scraping-screaming at the back of his mind drained him further.

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see,” Kankurou said, stopping next to Gaara’s bed and frowning at the wall. “With the way things are at the moment, anything could happen.”

-----

It occurred to Gaara, not long after Kankurou had left, that if he were to put himself forward as a candidate for Kazekage, the council might well accept it. The possibility both intrigued and daunted him, as it would be the perfect way to help him understand why Naruto had been so obviously right and so obviously stronger than him, when everything Gaara knew said that he should have been wrong and weak.

It didn’t happen.

The village was in turmoil, and it needed a leader as soon as possible. With that in mind, the council elected and installed a new Kazekage well before Gaara was able to suggest himself as a candidate, and everything was over almost before it had begun.

He could have challenged it. He could have walked up through the village to the Kazekage’s tower, entered the council room and demanded that they declare him Kazekage instead. Demanded what it felt like he should have been offered anyway.

Then Gaara remembered Naruto yelling that he was going to work to become Hokage, and he realised that if he was contemplating that in the first place, he wasn’t ready for the position anyway.

It felt . . . a little like learning.

-----

Nights were long, and cold, and lonely.

Of course, nights were always long and cold and lonely for Gaara. He had developed a way of dealing with them, though, which involved detailed reminiscence of the five most recent people he had killed – what they looked like, how they moved, how they died. In slow periods, with no missions and no assassins sent his way, it meant that those faces and sometimes names were indelibly imprinted into his memory; others he barely remembered killing at all. It was a grisly and barbaric way to pass the time, but it served very well to keep Shukaku from ripping his mind apart. The demon wanted to kill, but he didn’t care whether it was him or Gaara that did it. If Gaara refused, Shukaku would take over.

Gaara had never bothered with resisting. When he had told Naruto and the other Leaf nin over Rock Lee’s unconscious body that murder was his reason for existence, he was being quite, quite literal. During the day there was always something to focus on, something that he could use to ground himself and save what little was left of his mind from the vicious erosion the demon inflicted on him. The nights, though. . . .

If he had memories Shukaku could salivate over and rip into, then Shukaku was not ripping into him. And if he could make those memories as bloody and gory as possible – even better, if he could get the blood into his sand so the demon had the taste of it all around him, tangible and real – then Shukaku would be more content, less likely to destroy him from the screaming-scraping-clawing at the back of his mind when there was nothing to distract from it, nothing to hold onto. It was a struggle, every night, and when each morning came Gaara could feel little pieces of himself and his sanity slipping away into the receding blackness, never to return. When he embraced the murders, embraced the violence and sadism and misanthropy, it felt like the erosion slowed.

So death was his reason to exist. Death was who he was, what he was – he came from death, he caused death, he was good for nothing but death. He had embraced it, thinking that if that was all there was for him, then what choice did he have? He wanted to live. The desire burned in him so strongly that nothing could extinguish it – not betrayal, not loneliness, not the hate and fear of those around him, and if death was all that came from him, if killing was his only ability, then – then that was his reason for living. His way of maintaining dominance in his own mind.

He was good at it, and it was the only option he thought was open to him. It didn’t take long before he enjoyed it.

Naruto.

That first night back in Suna, the hospital refused to take him. Gaara did not blame them; nights were when his grip on sanity was at its most frail, and so nights were when he was the most terrifying to the occupants of Sunagakure. He had expected it, and simply said that he would go home for the night and return for a check-up the following morning. He would be fine, he said, ignoring the bandages wrapped tightly around his body when he had never been injured before, and the way he shook when he got to his feet. He had survived the nights back to Konoha intact. He felt drained, but also a peculiar mixture of both lost and found, and he had a goal. He had to make amends, he had to make things right, and he had to – to make sure that he could make things right. Naruto had shown him another way, a way that the larger part of him desperately wanted to be true – but there was a niggling little doubt at the back of his mind, asking over and over again whether Naruto’s way only worked for Naruto.

He was Gaara of the Sand. He’d been a killer since he was a baby. A small but significant part of him was still sure that that was all he could be.

Temari and Kankurou had glanced at one another at his words, their expressions peculiar and unreadable to Gaara. Then Temari said, “Don’t be stupid. You need supervision tonight,” and somehow he ended up at Temari’s house, in Temari’s spare room with Kankurou on the sofa.

Which was an idiotic arrangement to begin with, because Kankurou would be the one sleeping and so Kankurou was the one who actually needed the bed. For the first time in his life, though, Gaara had had his siblings disobey him when he pointed this out.

“You need to rest, Gaara,” Kankurou had said, arms folded across his chest. “Sit in the fucking bed.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll fall asleep?” Gaara responded, staring at the wall just past his brother’s head.

Kankurou hesitated, then deliberately moved into Gaara’s line of sight. “You’ll stay awake,” he said, something strangely final in his tone. As if that was what was going to happen – as if Kankurou was sure.

As if he trusted Gaara.

Gaara was too tired to argue Kankurou’s stupidity further.

----

. . . want. . . .

. . .

. . . why do you not give me . . . mother needs. . . .

No.

they’re there below us . . . won’t give me that give me this. . . .

N-no.

you will die you will fail you will fall out of existence

. . . I won’t. He was stronger.

he was wrong he was lucky mother needs this be a good son

He cared and so he won. Mother hated me, Yashamaru said. If he won because he cared then I lost because I didn’t and you told me not to care you hate me so you’re wrong, you have to be wrong.

mother NEEDS this do as mother tells you

“Er, you awake? . . . Right, stupid question. Um.”

mother needs this be a good boy just three steps to him you want to please mother, don’t you

. . . No. . . .

Yes

“Temari wanted to know if you were hungry—”

“. . . get out . . .”

“G-Gaara?”

not ally not friend just blood want the blood need the blood give me the blood

“. . . run.”

“Gaara—”

“RUN!”

“Kankurou, what’s – oh shit.”

“I know! Gaara said to run, but—”

“Gaara said to?”

“—but if he – if there’s enough of him in there—”

why do you fight me why do you deny me I WILL KILL THEM YOU WILL AID ME

“NO!”

“Shit, Gaara!”

OBEY ME

“NO!”

-----

There were arms around him.

Gaara’s fingernails dug into his forehead, scratching at the kanji scar. The pain was sudden and too-intense as the screaming in his head vanished, leaving him gasping and shaking and abruptly too aware of the world beyond the confines of his mind. There was sand in the air around him, twisting and scraping, agitated, wetness at the corner of his eyes, cool cloth against his legs and a cold sweat on his skin.

And there were arms around him.

Shukaku would return, and return soon. He knew it, he could feel it gathering like a storm at the back of his mind, ominously silent pressure.

So he didn’t have much time.

Gaara lifted his head, opening his eyes. Temari was hugging him, kneeling on the floor beside the bed as if she’d fallen there. Kankurou stood arrested in mid-motion a few steps away, reaching towards them. Gaara stared at him and . . . did not understand why Kankurou and Temari had stayed when Gaara told them to run.

“What the fuck was that?” Kankurou said, finally, eyes still locked with Gaara’s.

“Shukaku . . . wanted something,” Gaara replied.

Kankurou kept staring. “. . . And you didn’t give it to it.”

“No.”

“And that’s what happens when you tell it to fuck off. With the sand and the breaking of furniture and all.”

Kankurou was lucky that the furniture was all that had been broken. No. Don’t think about that. They will not be hurt. He would not allow them to be hurt. “Yes.”

“Holy shit.” Kankurou looked away, slumping a little. “. . . Temari, you okay?” he said, not looking at them.

The arms around Gaara loosened a little, and Temari’s head lifted. “. . . Yes?” she said.

The ache in his head was growing, but it took second place to the utter confusion Gaara was feeling. “Why did you stay?” he asked, looking from one sibling to the other.

“You went batshit before we realised how bad it was,” Temari said. “And you’re—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s over now, right?” Kankurou interrupted.

“No,” Gaara said.

Temari jerked upright. “No?”

“I can . . . feel him,” Gaara said. “He wants. . . .” he trailed off, unwilling to tell them what Shukaku wanted for a reason he couldn’t put into words.

It didn’t matter. “Leave, now,” Gaara ordered.

Temari and Kankurou glanced at one another. “Why?” Temari asked.

“Not – not safe—” Gaara winced, the throbbing pressure in his head increasing. “Get out,” he snapped.

“I don’t think—” Kankurou began.

A tightly condensed ball of sand slammed into the wall beside Kankurou’s head, cracking the wood panelling before it dissolved, falling towards the floor before an invisible force caught it, and it flew back to join the growing maelstrom around Gaara.

“Get OUT!”

They got out.

-----

That first night had been the worst. Gaara had destroyed the room, fighting desperately not to give in to the screech of Shukaku when for so long he hadn’t bothered. When for so long he had agreed, had hidden his fear of becoming nothing more than a whisper at the back of the mind of the demon behind savagery because he had no choice, no reason to fight back. It enraged the demon, and it was hard to hold onto his reasons – to his need to understand the truth – when your mind was filled with scraping, clawing screaming.

All in all, he supposed he was lucky that it was only the room that was destroyed.

He had come downstairs the next morning to find Temari and Kankurou in the kitchen, discussing something in low, heated tones. He felt a spike of curiosity towards the subject of their conversation, but ignored it; it wasn’t relevant.

“I’m leaving,” he announced, and felt their chakra spike with shock.

“You’re – leaving?” Temari asked, shock now colouring her face as well as her chakra. “But you can’t!”

Gaara stared at her and said nothing, waiting for her to elaborate. Was there some new rule about related shinobi living together that he hadn’t been informed of? . . . or maybe there was just a rule for him. That was more likely.

Kankurou shifted uncomfortably, and began speaking in a voice that was far too reasonable for him. “If you leave, you’ll be a missing nin—”

“Because I purchased my own residence?” Gaara asked, frowning.

“Oh,” Temari said.

“What?” Kankurou said.

Gaara shook his head impatiently, dismissing what they’d said as nonsense. His head felt a little too light, legs shaky and arguing with him over whether standing was a good idea, and his siblings were being idiots. “I can’t stay here,” he said shortly.

Temari and Kankurou said nothing. After a moment, Kankurou slumped in his chair. “Well, fuck.”

Temari reached out and thumped him without looking away from Gaara. “You can stay here as long as you want to,” she said, something strange in her voice.

Gaara just looked at her.

His sister sighed, then nodded with a grim look on her face. “Then we’ll help you find somewhere,” she said, and suddenly she was the person he knew again – the one who never needed him and didn’t like him much, except that now she had decided to do something for him even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself and that was something people who cared did, wasn’t it?

Gaara wasn’t sure.

“Why the fuck did I even get up this morning,” Kankurou grumbled, but he was standing and pulling Karasu onto his back, just as Temari was standing and adjusting her fan in its strap. Looking at them, Gaara couldn’t understand why they had asked him to stay and then decided to help him leave, or why they looked like they didn’t want to be doing the latter.

He didn’t understand a lot of things, it seemed – now that he was finally paying attention.

-----

The estate agent’s tried to close as soon as they saw Gaara coming. Temari kicked the door in.

“Detached house, two bedrooms, price not a problem but you’d damned well better not try to foist off any shit on us,” she said to the man cowering behind the counter, scowling. “And yes, it’s for Gaara, and no, you may not refuse to sell him anything. Well, you can try, but I’d like to see you do business with a piece of rubble for an office.”

“Oi, Gaara, you like the look of any of these?” Kankurou said, examining the listings up on one wall.

Gaara walked over and looked. He could eliminate half of them easily, just for being too close to the centre of town, but a couple of properties near the end of the wall looked interesting.

“Are you sure that it’s wise, for—” the estate agent began behind him, his anxiety showing in his voice.

“If Gaara wants to live on his own then Gaara is going to live on his own, and Kankurou and I are going to do our best to see that it happens with as little fuss as possible. Got it?” There was a pause, then Temari continued. “Good. Properties?”

“Ah. Um. Detached house, correct?”

“Detached house, two bedrooms, at least one and a half bathrooms and – right, so this house has all of those things, but it doesn’t have a kitchen. How can there be a house without a kitchen? It goes without saying that houses have to have kitchens. The hell? Next one.”

“Well, there’s – no, that one won’t do, it’s—”

“Why not? It’s got everything, it’s in great shape, it’s—”

“In the town centre,” the estate agent interrupted.

An icy silence fell. Then, “And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Temari,” Gaara said, staring at the picture of a house on the South wall.

“Er, yes?”

“Nothing in the town centre.”

“You sure?” Kankurou asked from his other side, after a moment. Gaara ignored him, and after a moment Kankurou took his silence as assent.

“Right. Okay.” Behind him, Temari began harassing the estate agent again. Gaara stopped listening and went back to staring at the picture of the house on the South wall. He’d heard her intimidate people before, and no doubt he would again.

-----

“This is the one,” Gaara said the moment they stepped into the house on the South wall.

“You haven’t even looked at the rest of the house yet,” Temari said, frowning.

Gaara folded his arms, not budging. “There’s a functioning internal well, strengthened walls, increased sound-proofing, and it backs onto the South wall. This is the one.”

“The, ah, down payment is—” the estate agent began.

“Not a problem,” Kankurou said. “Got the deed?”

The agent fumbled with his file. “Here – if I can get G – the honoured client to sign on pages two and four on both copies—”

Gaara plucked the papers from his hands and scrawled his name on pages two and four without looking at the rest of the document. Temari and Kankurou exchanged a look over his head, but said nothing.

“The house is unfurnished, I’m afraid, and you’ll have to make your own arrangements,” the agent said, a little more confidence in his tone now that the end was in sight. “Garbage collection is Tuesday. I’ll get these papers filed as soon as I get back to the office, so you can consider the house officially yours as of five p.m. today. Thank you for your custom.” Bowing, the man hurried out with the signed papers.

“Well,” Temari said. “Time to go furniture shopping.”

TBC

That's the mostly-finished part of the fic, although once everything's done it'll need some brushing up and a few things changing. Yar!