A/N Hello minna-san!! This is my very first attempt to write a Naruto fanfic, and I must say, I've fallen in love with the series! xD I've twisted the plot of some episodes a little so watch out for that. This is a Gaara/OC fic at the moment, but I'm planning to add more pairings in due time. :3 Perhaps a bit of Neji/Tenten, Shika/Tema and Naru/Hina maybe?Hmm.. I'm not sure yet myself, you'll have to wait and see. ;)
NOTE: The story starts out in Sunagakure, back when Gaara was still a kid. Konoha High parallel universe will be added in, and maybe, just maybe, some yaoi pairings (ahemKakaIruahemahem)
"words"
'thoughts'
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does.
"Even the Coldest ofHearts can Melt with the Warmth of a Single Touch..."- Anonymous
Chapter One: Rendezvous
Along the sand-filled streets of Sunagakure's local night market, a young boy hurriedly made his way through the busy crowd, towards a well-known stall selling medicinal herbs. He was a small boy, probably only six years of age, with short, messy, red hair and big, green eyes. He carried on one hand the directions his uncle had given to him, and a small pouch filled with some silver coins on the other. He made his way impatiently towards the stall and took out a few pieces of coins from his pouch before placing them on the wooden counter, surprising the stall's vendor.
"Give me your most effective ointment and a few bandages please." he said, smiling.
The vendor gulped upon realizing who the boy was and immediately scrambled about to gather the materials he had requested. He picked some herbs and roots and mashed them in a bowl before adding a few drops of water into it in a hurried manner. He then scooped the mixture into a bottle, grabbed a few bandages from his stall's mini-cabinet, and placed everything into a paperbag.
The boy unintentionally glared at him, making the poor vendor shake in fear. He then browsed through the displayed medicine, picked up a small jar of menthol cream and handed it to the vendor, who placed it into the bag as well.
"I-is there anything else you n-n-need, G-G-Gaara-sama?" the vendor stammered.
Six-year old Gaara shook his head sadly and looked at the vendor, who shook even more in fear as he handed the boy his purchase.
"Thank you." the boy said, handing over a few more silver coins to pay for the menthol cream.
The vendor made no motion to recieve the payment so Gaara gently placed the coins on the counter before jumping away from the stall. Passers-by who were watching them immediately ran over to help the vendor, who looked like he was about to faint from fear.
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As the night grew on, Gaara hurriedly jumped from rooftop to rooftop hugging his purchase to his chest and slowed down when he had reached his destination: a schoolmate's house.
Earlier that day, he had unintentionally injured some of the other kids at his school when they had refused to play ball with him; and he would have killed them accidentally if his uncle, Yashamaru,hadn't showed up to stop him in time.
He nervously walked over to the door and knocked three times before taking a few steps back. The residents of the house yelled at each other to answer the door and he gulped the moment the it opened, revealing one of the kids he had accidentally injured earlier that day. She was covered in scratches and band-aids, and her eyes widened when she saw Gaara standing at her doorway.
She glared at him, disgusted that he'd even have the nerve to show up at her house after what he had done to her and her playmates a few hours before.
"A-anou. . " he started, shyly offering the bag to her. "I-I'm really sorry about what happened earlier. . so I brought you some ointment and bandages. The ointment's said to be really effective in healing wounds, and-"
"Go away." the girl cut him off.
He stared at her, surprised.
"Go away." she repeated with venom dripping from her voice. Gaara swallowed hard and watched as the girl in front of him started shaking with rage.
"Didn't you hear me?!" she yelled, pushing him away. "I said GO AWAY! Don't come near me or my friends ever again! You're just going to kill us all! You're nothing but a monster!" she cried out loud with tears in her eyes.
Gaara fell back at her words and held back the tears that were threatening to fall from his own eyes when she slammed the door shut at his face. He heard the voices of the girl's parents asking her if she was okay and heard her yelling at him one more time to go away.
He slowly got back to his feet and jumped away with a heavy heart.
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In an abandoned factory located in downtown Sunagakure, a young girl cried out in fustration.
Her long, layered, black hair was messed up and her hands and legs were covered in deep scratches. Surrounding her were bits of tree barks, herbs, broken glass, some burnt petals, and a few cut-up leaves that were leaking out strange-smelling juices. She sat up with a huff and closed her big, chocolate-brown eyes as she thought hard on where her experiment could've gone wrong.
"Maybe I added too much Jojoba oils. . " she muttered.
She then sighed and stood up, wincing from the stinging pain from the cuts on her arms and legs. Her clothes were covered in dirt and sap, and she smelled like someone had dabbed different kinds of medicinal ingredients on her. Dark lines appeared over her head as she sniffed herself and looked dejectedly at the wasted ingredients around her.
"The experiment can wait; I really need to take a bath right now. . " she sighed.
Grabbing a towel and a change of clothes from one of the lockers in the next room, she set off towards the only bathroom that still had plumbing while humming a random tune. She turned on the showers and sighed in relief as the tensions in her sour muscles faded away. Her cuts started to sting from the contact with the soapy water and she realized that some of her other wounds were starting to bleed.
'Whoo boy, this is bad.' she thought to herself.
Baring the pain, she washed off the suds off her hair and body before drying herself carefully with a small towel. She then changed into an old dress that was faded in color and obviously unable to protect her from the cold nights in Sunagakure before making her way back to her experimentation scene to clean up.
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Gaara sniffed as he hugged his knees to his chest; the bag of medicine laying a few feet away from him. He looked over the desert horizon that was illuminated by the moon and rubbed a tear away from his eyes.
"Don't come near me or my friends ever again! You're just going to kill us all! You're nothing but a monster!"
The girl's words echoed in his mind, and remembering her enraged expression towards him made him flinch. He knew he should be angry at her for calling him a monster, though one really did live inside him, but he knew that being angry with her wouldn't solve anything.
He was still alone and unloved.
The reason why he felt so hurt was because she was the only girl who talked to him at school. Well, she really just asked to borrow his pencil for around two times, but at least she borrowed it from him. He thought they could be friends through that small act of sharing; and he blew that chance to become friends by unintentionally attacking her and her friends just because they didn't want to play ball with him.
How pathetic.
He lowered his head sadly and glanced at the bag next to him. He had used his most of his spendings on purchasing that medicine and now they weren't even going to be used. What a waste.
He then raised a hand, letting sand surround the bag, and was about to make a fist when he heard an explosion coming from the building next to the one he was in.
Curious, he stood up and jumped off to where he had heard the explosion come from, temporarily forgetting about the bag.
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The girl groaned and rubbed the aching spot on her head while wincing once more from the extra pain.
'Two failures in one night. This is too depressing. .' she sighed, getting up. 'I'm gonna have to take a bath again after this.'
She bent down to extinguish the flame from the alcohol lamp she had used and placed it into one of the cabinets. Her head was starting to get dizzy from the stench of burnt medicine mixtures so she decided to retire early for the night. Grabbing a large notebook and a pencil from her rucksack, she flipped over a couple of pages until she found a clean one; and in big, bold letters, she wrote: "NOTE TO SELF: NEVER ADD FIRE PETAL ESSENCES IN BOILING OINTMENT MIXTURES".
Satisfied, she returned the notebook and pencil into her rucksack and headed off towards her "bedroom", which was just a used-to-be storage room. While she was cleaning it up, she was lucky enough to find a small blanket and an old sofa mattress in one of the boxes, and they've served as her bed and cover over the past few weeks. Her stomach then grumbled, making her sigh once more.
"Kat-chan, I know you're hungry from eating nothing but single carrot slices for the past four days, but you've just ran out of carrots. Bare with yourself until tomorrow, okay?" she told herself while patting her stomach. Passing by the main entrance of the factory, she caugh sight of the moon outside and walked out of the building to stare at it.
"Okaasan, please, give me strength." she prayed silently. "I'm thankful that you've led me to this abandoned factory which has served as a temporary home for me, but I'll need some more strength to last for a few more hours without food. . "
Her stomach grumbled again and her face fell. She sighed and leaned against the wall a little bit too hard, making the wound on her head open.
'Oh no. Not good.'
She felt blood trickling from the stinging spot on her head and her stomach grumbled once more, making her mind dizzy. She could see that everything around her was beginning to blur, but before she blacked out, she managed to catch sight a flash of red.
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Brightness.
That was the first thing she saw when she had opened her eyes. . . . but it turned out that the brightness was just the moon shining above her.
"The moon's so lucky. . " she murmured to herself. "She just sits up there in the night sky and doesn't have to worry about getting injured or getting hungry or..."
"Or what?"
"...Or making any mistakes. All she has to do is to spin around up there while providing us with light during the night and everybody's happy; but for us humans, we have to work hard and go through a lot of hardships for who knows how long before we can actually make someone ha-. . . "
Gaara looked at her curiously with big, innocent eyes as she trailed off, waiting for her to continue with interest.
-silence-
"WHO ARE YOU?!" She screamed, quickly backing up on the opposite side of the rooftop.
Gaara, caught by surprise, fell back on his elbows and stared at her blankly before smiling at her.
"S-Subaku no Gaara. . " he said sadly. 'Here it comes. . .'
The girl noticed the sadness in his voice and was about to say something when she realized that her arms, her legs and the wound on her head were covered in bandages. There was no pain felt and she could smell something tasty nearby.
"D-did you do this?" she asked, motioning to all the bandages on her body.
Gaara, surprised that she hadn't reacted to his name, nodded shyly and showed her the ointment he had used.
One second she was on the other side of the rooftop and the next, she was kneeling right in front of him ogling at the contents of the ointment bottle with pure fascination in her eyes.
"This. . this is amazing! I don't feel any pain at all!" she exclaimed. "All the medicines sold here are made of natural ingredients, right? What's in this stuff? Healing herbs from the snow country? Medicinal fire oils from the fire country? Or is it a Sunagakure original?"
She looked up expectantly at Gaara, but the red-headed kid just stared at her, not knowing how to reply. It was the first time someone outside his family had ever talked to him so casually, and with more than five words.
"Umm. . " he started.
The girl blinked and realized that she had done something rather inappropriate towards a complete stranger.
"Oh! Gomen, gomen!" she laughed, embarrassed. "I get too excited when anything medicinal's involved."
Gaara closed his mouth and nodded slowly. That was the first time someone had apologized to him too, and he was starting to feel the same feeling he had felt when Yashamaru told him that he loved him (as an uncle xD).
The girl backed up a few steps and stood in front of him once more while extending out a bandaged hand. Gaara, who was still laying back on his elbows, just stared at it and looked up at her. He then took hold of her hand unsurely and gasped in surprise when she pulled him up to his feet. Still holding onto her hand as she smiled at him, he felt his heart leap for the first time, ... and it didn't hurt at all.
"I'm Kate from the Earth country, but I'd prefer it if you called me Kat-chan." She grinned, shaking their hands up and down warmly. "It's Subaku no Gaara, right?"
He nodded, eyes wide at her actions.
"Then Gaara-kun it is! Nice to meet you!" She smiled happily.
He stared at her in awe, then at their handshake, then back at her smiling face again. It was the first time anyone had ever smiled to him that way and meant it, and it was causing a new wave of emotion to fill up his heart. It felt. . . nice.
A smile unconsciously formed over Gaara's lips as he looked at the girl standing in front of him holding his hand.
"Nice.. Nice to meet you too, Kat-chan."
A/N Was Gaara a bit OOC in this chapter? Well, he did have more innocence when he was younger. :o
R&R's please! :D