A Hero of War and Words
By
Wisperwind
He wakes up to a dull, throbbing pain in his shoulder and his mouth being as dry as the desert, which is surprising. Not the pain, no, and not the dry mouth. After all, the last he remembers is an arrow protruding from his shoulder and commander Baki shouting at him. He must have been out for a while. No, what surprises him is that he's awake at all. He hadn't expected to survive.
He remembers Baki telling him to keep fighting while the vibrations of the cart send spikes of pain like lightning from his shoulder up and down his spine. He hadn't been able to move, had barely been able to speak, and that might have been a good thing, for if he had been able to, he'd have been cursing all the gods and Baki on top of them. It was all well and good to tell him not to die, but the effort required to keep himself from slipping into the underworld had been immense. Unconsciousness had come as a blessing, and the thought of death as a balm.
He moves his hand to feel his shoulder and is met with a thick wad of bandages. He truly is not dead, then. He doubts that there would be a need for bandages in the Underworld. Before he gets the chance to try and sit up, see where he is now, a voice interrupts his thoughts.
"Ah! You're awake. Good. I was starting to worry."
He blinks and turns his head towards the voice… and then blinks again because - what?
On the stool next to the cot he's lying on sits a child. The boy can't have seen more than ten summers, and he's staring with huge blue eyes that shine from beneath the fringe of a wild mop of blonde hair. There are scars on his cheeks like a cat's whiskers, though the huge, teeth-baring grin makes him look more fox-like.
He doesn't know who this child is, or why he is here. He still doesn't know where 'here' is either.
"Who are you? And where am I?" he asks. His voice is rough with disuse and breaks more than once even on less than ten words. It prompts the boy's grin to widen even further, something that he would have thought impossible, had he not just witnessed it happen.
"I'm Naruto!" He says the name proudly, and with mischief in his voice. "And you're in Athens. This is the temple of Apollo. Your name's Gaara right? I head the others say it when you came here. You were brought in a week ago with a pretty nasty infection, but since your fever has broken, I'd say you'll be fine. Sakura said so anyway, and she's the best at what she does."
Well that answers some questions and poses about three times as many more. Athens, so he is back home? How did he get here? Had they won the battle? Had they lost? No. No, they couldn't have. There was something, someone had said something about that, but- the fever. He can't remember. Where is commander Baki? He'd know. Had- had his father heard about his injury yet? His siblings? How long will it take until he is sent to return to the front?
The child - Naruto - isn't likely to know any of the answers. He's most likely an orphan the temple took in - just another charity case - or the son of one of the priests. He's still babbling, going on and on about this Sakura person and her supposed awe-inspiring proficiency at healing. Gaara itches for his Xiphos to force quiet onto the boy, but as he cannot see it anywhere, nor move his dominant arm, it seems he will have to employ some less permanent methods of silencing the annoyance. He would tell the boy to keep his mouth shut, but Gaara's own throat still feels rougher than his whetstone, so he settles on fixing the child with a glare the likes of which has often sent his enemies running for the hills.
Naruto acknowledges it with barely a seconds pause before going on. "...and she said you might not be able to use that arm again, but I don't think-"
"Wait, what?! Say that again!" There is ice in his veins, suddenly, even in the warm air of a greek summer. His entire body is shaking and his brain feels frozen - blank. Not a single thought registers for a few seconds, and then they start flying away from him in all directions like a swarm of angry wasps.
He tries to lift his arm, the one wrapped in bandages, grinds his teeth through the pain that the motion brings him. He barely manages to lift his fingers and his entire arm is trembling when he does. It falls back down a few seconds later.
Not being able to use his right arm would mean he wouldn't be able to return to the war. He would be useless. Worse, he would be helpless. Powerless. If he couldn't fight then what… what else was there for him to do?
There has never been anything else. His entire life has been a long series of training, strategy and bloodshed - all for the glory of Lord Ares and the citystate of Athens.
His father, first priest of Ares and a man of such high ambitions they edge at being megalomanical, has raised him to be a weapon, had offered Gaara as a champion to his God before he had even been born.
Lord Ares had taken his mother in payment and given him the strength his father had coveted in return. Gaara is stronger and faster and colder than his peers and has grown to use these strengths to his advantage, but it had not always been this way.
He has fought with teeth and claws, with swords and shield for his place in this world. He has carved it from the flesh of his father's enemies (because the one he actually hated - his father - could not be touched) and painted a circle around himself in their blood, declaring 'This is my space! You cannot take this from me! Not this! This monster is what I am, this thing covered in blood, and if you try to touch me I will rip you apart!'
And now here was this boy, this soft, bright, breakable child, who tells him that is was all for naught, because if he could no longer fight, if he cannot keep protecting his place in this world, then his life is as good as over. His father would not tolerate a weak son.
By the time he pulls himself out of his thoughts, the child is gone, and that might be the only thing that saves him from Gaara's wrath. It takes another hour for one of the healers - a woman with startling green eyes and hair the color of cherry blossoms - to notice that he is awake and confirm what he already knows.
"You will move your arm. You might even be able to write if you really put your mind to it, but the muscle has been permanently damaged and you will never be able to hold an object as heavy as that sword of yours, or weild it with any sort of force or accuracy. I'm sorry, but you should be happy to have your life. Even if it will be changed by this."
By the time the words register, he has numbed himself to the news ands manages not to react, if barely. 'Changed' she says. 'Change' implies continuation and Gaara is sure that he won't be granted that luxury. His father is not above assassinating his own children once they become useless, he's well aware.
He keeps lying there, staring at the marble ceiling, trying to process. The healer lists his options, but he can't bring himself to listen. 'Options', as if he has any.
Eventually she notices his disinterest and leaves him to his thoughts, which are slowly calming down. The initial panic has died down and is slowly being replaced by dread. It's making him nauseous. He does have options, though, just not the ones the healer has offered him.
He can wait for his father to hear what happened, if he hasn't already, and then wait for the assassin that will inevitably come for him. In his current state, he won't be able to defend himself and his life will end as it possibly should have weeks ago.
He can try to train his left arm to work as his right had before, but it would take him months, maybe years to accomplish, and in the meantime he would be helpless still. He could try to run, but that is not in his nature, and the still healing injury would slow him down too much for it to be a viable option.
He could-
"You should stay." and there is the boy again, suddenly right next to him as if he'd sprouted out of the ground. Had the fever dulled him so that Gaara could not even notice a child approaching? Disgusting. And how had the boy known-
"What? What are you talking about?"
"I can see you thinking from across the hall. You should stay. As long as you are in this temple you are under the protection of Apollo. Nothing will touch you here."
"How did you know-?"
The boy is still smiling, but it's a softer expression now. Gaara doesn't know what to do with it. Then he giggles and Gaara frowns. "You're so anxious I'd have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to see it. Also your siblings were here yesterday and I heard them talking. Your father, is it? He can't touch you here. Stay. Heal. Deal with him after."
He tries his best not to believe him. How could this boy know what Gaara's father is and isn't capable of? And yet he does. There is just something about the boy that makes him seem inherently trustworthy. It's an odd sort of feeling for Gaara to have, as he usually cannot bring himself to trust anybody.
Naruto says the words with the a kind of assurance that Gaara hasn't known before. He doesn't understand safety, has no concept of what it would be like to not be on his guard constantly, but Naruto's presence is soothing and by Zeus and all the Greater and Lesser Gods, he is tired. He needs to rest. Danger or not, he can't think about this now.
His eyes fall shut and sleep claims him.
o0O0o
For someone who usually suffers from insomnia, Gaara spends a lot of the next few weeks sleeping. His shoulder heals, faster than the healers can explain, but slower than he would have liked. The woman - Sakura, as he knows her now - was right. He will not be using his sword again. Those days are over.
He adapts - or tries to. He relearns writing, first with his left hand, while the right is healing, and then with that one too. He tries to lift his Xiphos with it once, and it proves to be impossible. The strain causes a setback that has the healers up in arms and threatening to tie him to his bed should he do something so stupid again. Naruto laughs at him when they actually do it a day later, after he does try again and strains himself even further. The laugh is high and clear and mocking, and it makes Gaara feel as if he was the child between the two of them. He doesn't try again after that.
Less than ideal though it may be already, the situation forces Gaara to be social and that's almost his undoing. Never before has he had the need for social skills. He snaps at the healers more often than he thanks them, doesn't think to thank them at all, really. He gets angry at them for being honest with him and then angry at himself for not being strong enough to shoulder simple truths.
One time, with his hands clenched into fists in his sheets, knuckles white - and he knows there is no reason for it, he knows he's being unreasonable, but that doesn't help - Naruto lays a hand over his, looks him in the eyes and shakes his head wordlessly. It quiets his father's voice in his mind instantly and leaves him feeling weirdly empty and tired. He's constantly tired now.
He hates his father, but without the guidance of the acolytes of Ares he does not know what to do with himself. Naruto flits in and out of sight around him, always there when his temper is threatening to boil over. It's as if this child has a sixth sense for anger and knows exactly what to do to appease it. Gaara isn't sure he appreciates it.
His siblings, Kankuro and Temari, have not visited since he woke and he cannot say he's surprised. They know the type of monster he is, know him for the murder of their uncle and his ferociousness on the battlefield and they have not willingly spent time in his presence since before Gaara had seen his tenth summer. He has never missed them before. He misses them now.
The temple gardens become his refuge about a month after he first awoke in the healing halls. Wandering the paths and sitting beneath the trees in the shade doesn't calm him, but it's better to think out in the open air, where he at least has the illusion of freedom. He has been regaining the strength the fever took from him, and Sakura encourages him to "get out more and get out of my hair besides". The gardens are large and beautiful, he can admit to that, and it calms his restless mind to watch the wind in the leaves of the olive trees.
More often than not he is accompanied by Naruto. Not that he has had much of a choice in the matter
"Play with me!" "No."
"Come ooooon, pleeease. You MUST be bored."
"I'm not." He is, but if he admits to it the boy will never leave him alone ever again.
"At least come outside with me, you're wasting away in here, just lying there all day."
He keeps his glare up for ten straight minutes in which Naruto does nothing but bounce on his feet and smile.
"...Fine."
Gaara has still not found out how the boy manages to trick his senses. He has, of yet, never seen him either approach or leave. He is either there or he is not, and entirely unpredictable in his whims. Gaara has learned that it is less of a failing of his, as it is an attribute of Naruto's. No one but him seems to even notice the child at all.
Gaara doesn't ask. In fact, he doesn't speak much at all. Not with Naruto or the healers or anyone else for that matter. He's never been exactly vocal, so it's not much of a change. Naruto takes it in stride and just fills the silence between them with more chatter.
In contrast to Gaara, Naruto talks a lot. Well, everyone talks a lot in contrast to Gaara, but Naruto would talk a person's ears off, if given half the chance. He talks about everything and anything, senseless babble to fill in the quiet, anecdotes about the temple and its residents. He talks about safe, meaningless things, except for the times when he doesn't.
"Your father is a dangerous man you know, and not just for you, though he is dangerous for you especially. A priest should know better than to go war mongering. Even a priest of Ares. Maybe especially a priest of Ares."
There are things he knows that he has no business knowing, dealings of statesman he shouldn't even know the names of. He has opinions on policies that do not affect him, and going-ons in the city that no one should know about, least of all a child. He knows more about the war with Sparta than even Gaara himself, and he had been fighting at the forefront not three months before. They are losing, or so Naruto tells him one quiet afternoon in the gardens, that is no different from any of the others Gaara has spent there. Gaara feels like he should care about that. He would have cared about that and nothing else but a few months ago and now he just… doesn't. Well no, he does care, but not in the same way as he did before. He no longer fears his own failure - it's no longer his war to fight.
His father has tried to reach him several times, has sent 'slaves' and 'servants' to 'send messages to his son', who no doubt were anything but as harmless as they appeared. And yet not one had managed to cross the threshold of the temple. He can't explain how, but for the first time in his life, Gaara is safe from his father. His mind is quiet from the constant ravings of the men who raised him, and he finds that this… peace is something he had never known he'd missed. He didn't know he hated violence before, because he never had the option to be without it. His entire life had been one act of violence after another, and the only way for him to gain any control had been to make sure he was the one dealing it out more often than the one taking it.
Maybe it makes him weak, this passivity, but he's not so sure he wants to go back to how he was before either. Not anymore.
o0O0o
"You're healed." It's just like Naruto, to be that blunt, not even a 'hello' to greet him before he jumps right in, materializing at Gaara's elbow, as he does, and picking up a conversation in the middle of it, as if he had never been gone in the first place. Gaara likes that about him. He has little patience for empty platitudes. If everyone would just say what they mean without beating around the bush, his life would be infinitely easier. "You will have to leave soon, won't you?"
He has stayed at the temple for half a year now. Gaara knows he is as healed as he is ever likely to get, and his father seems to have given up his quest to silence him, deemed it a waste of resources probably.
He doesn't exactly want to leave. The temple is comfortable, and the temple routines are similar enough to the place he grew up in, that he can feel at home here. The healers are brash but kind and especially Naruto has grown on him. The boy is cheerful, bubbly, and innocent - so full of life in a way that it radiates out towards the people around him in an aura of warmth and hope. He shines with an inner light that draws people to him. It has certainly drawn in Gaara, once he let it.
"I was always going to have to leave eventually," he answers after a while. The truth is that even if the temple is beautiful and he now knows that the last thing he wants, is to return and to fall under his father's control again, he is getting restless. Antsy. It's not in his nature to be idle for so long. Passivity is not his calling. The forced calm of this place and the time it took for him to recover have given him a space to think, put things into perspective, but he cannot stay forever.
"A few more days maybe. I wouldn't force my presence onto you and the healers much longer." He hasn't exactly been a model patient and he's well aware of the complaints the healers have about him. Sakura especially has no issues telling him exactly what her issues with him are. It's unnerving and refreshing, how no one here seems to fear him. Whether it's because they don't know of his reputation, or because they don't care he isn't sure, but he will take what he can get.
Sky blue eyes are watching him as he gets up from the grass and brushes the dirt from his chiton. "You will always be welcome to return here." and Naruto's voice has this weird serious tone again that he gets from time to time. Gaara doesn't know how much influence Naruto has in a temple where everyone acts like they cannot see him if he walks past but it is a nice sentiment in any case. Gaara chooses to believe him.
In the morning, Sakura comes to him and tells him in no uncertain terms that he is to gather his belongings and leave by nightfall. "This is a temple and a place for the wounded to heal and recover. You are healed and recovered. There are others who could better use the space you occupy."
Gaara nods and doesn't argue. He knew this was coming.
His circle of blood and violence vanished when he realized that it was a cage. It is time to find a new way to make a place for himself in this world.
He's gone by morning.
o0O0o
He leaves the temple and finds his own place to live, away from all he has ever known. He does so, to have a clean break, to find a new beginning for himself and not be influenced by anyone of once. Finding work is not easy, but he is a hero of war, technically, and he can read and write as he had grown up in a temple. He is still strong, even if his right arm is mostly useless and eventually he finds work as the assistant of one of the statesman who help write the laws proposed for the city. He pays Gaara enough to keep a roof over his head and food on his table, and not much more. He's being underpaid and he knows it. If he was a more vain or hedonistic person he might have minded, may have still minded a few months ago out of pride, but an ego tends to deflate when you realize that everything you build your sense of self on was ultimately useless.
He has not seen his father, his siblings or anyone else he knew before the injury since he left the temple. His father has decided to stop wasting good money on assassination attempts that are doomed to fail from the start. It's a good thing the man doesn't know he lives on his own now. He's an easy target like this, and he worries about it sometimes, but mostly he keeps himself busy.
Going from fighting on the front lines of a war to working as a scribe would be a harder adjustment if he hadn't had his time in the Temple and his daily talks with Naruto in between. He hadn't noticed how much the child had taught him until he left. Maybe that's not quite right. Naruto hasn't taught him anything, not in the traditional sense. He's a child not a teacher, but that doesn't change the fact that Gaara has learned a lot at his side.
He has learned patience. How could he not, with having someone as overly energetic Naruto around him all day? He also learned to be mindful of his own thoughts, and to recognize them as separate from what his father had taught him. He learned that there could be strength in kindness and bravery in peace.
He unlearned the fear of his own weaknesses, unlearned violence and anger as a first response to everything and all of this because Naruto would not let him wallow in his own self-pity.
That is not to say that he doesn't ever slip up. He does, and on some days his father's voice is loud in his ear as if the man was standing in the same room and shouting his poison at him like he used to. Gaara recognises it as poison now though and that makes it, if not easier to ignore than at least harder to internalise.
It's almost a year later when he hears the news that his father died. It is said that the loss of his son and greatest weapon, as well as the fact that Athens had lost the war convinced the man that his god had left him and it drove him to madness and into Hades' realm.
Gaara doesn't know how to feel. He feels relieved. That, he expected. He also feels sad, which he hadn't. It frustrates him, makes him angry, because Rasa has caused him nothing but pain and doesn't deserve this grief that Gaara still feels, despite himself. He carries this knot of conflicting emotions with him for weeks. It tightens in his chest every time he thinks about his father. He hasn't thought this much about the man in months but a death will drag a person's memory right back to the forefront of the mind. Gaara had banish his father from his conscious thoughts before but now he sneaks back in all the time, makes Gaara question himself and his decisions.
Eventually it gets to be too much and he decides to return to the Temple of the Sun God. He does not meet Naruto that time, nor Sakura but a stroll through the gardens still lightens his mood and helps him bring his thoughts in order.
His father has had no influence over him in for over a year now. He is doing himself a disservice in allowing him that much power now, where Rasa no longer has the means to enforce it.
Briefly he considers contacting his siblings, asking if they are well, but he has seen neither of them since before he went to war and he doesn't want to push himself into a place where he is not wanted. So instead he donates what few coins he can spare and burns a loaf of bread as a small sacrifice to Apollo. In return, he asks for guidance and the strength to move on. He would not consider himself a devout man and maybe he'd be better served asking Hades for a favour in this matter, but this temple has been good for him before and in the end he feels lighter when he steps out on the street again.
o0O0o
It takes him another month to realise what the death of his father truly means.
Gaara has been living not exactly in hiding, but certainly not in the public eye either. Now that the pending threat of his father is no longer an issue, he is free to do as he pleases, and there are many things he plans to do.
In their Athenian Democracy every citizen gets to vote on new laws, and every man who can speak well enough can make his case before his fellows to convince them of his point of view. There is no official governing body, but a few powerful men, trained in the way of words tend to hold sway over the rest of the population. Gaara wants in on that game.
In the following years, this is how Gaara decides to make himself useful. He learns the art of rhetoric, learns to speak truth in ways that it will persuade his fellows in his favour and makes himself one of the most well liked spokesmen of his people. He dedicates himself to keeping the peace he has come to love so much and makes a name for himself as a pacifist. Many of the people he now works with do not remember who he once was or do not connect the Demon Soldier Gaara with the wise man who cares for rare plants in his spare time and talks of peace.
It is two years after their father's death that he sees his sister for the first time. She is in the crowd, listening as he speaks and if he falters slightly when he notices her than it's hopefully not too noticeable. It takes them another few months to collect enough courage to approach each other.
Their conversation is awkward and stilted, but overall successful. They make small talk, tentatively feeling for boundaries that they had never bothered to learn before. They meet again semi regularly after and eventually Kankuro joins them too. They are adults now, no longer children and their relationship is maybe not as close as it could have been under different circumstances, but Gaara is learning to love his siblings as he never had the chance before and for that he is grateful
He visits the Temple that started it all from time to time. Not regularly, but often enough that the priests start to recognize him. They greet him with polite nods that he returns of friendly smiles that leave him bewildered but feeling warm.
He does not see Naruto again.
He would be a young man by now, in his twenties for sure, and has it really been fifteen years already since the injury that changed his life? Sometimes Gaara wonders what happened to his young friend. Did he leave the Temple, make a life of his own? He wants to ask the priests and healers that live here sometimes, but he never does. For some reason he cannot explain, it doesn't seem like something he should talk about.
"Gaara!" He hears the voice on his way out of the Temple and turns in its direction.
"Sakura. How can I help you?" The healer smiles at him, bright and happy. It's a reaction to his presence, that he still hasn't quite learned to anticipate or learned how to properly react to. Fortunately, Sakura knows him to be awkward and does not expect courtesy from him.
"We have had a new statue added to the garden. I thought you might like to know and that you might like to see it."
Statues, specifically the carving thereof, are more his brother's forte but Gaara can appreciate good art in the same way as everyone else and in all the years he has come here the garden has only every grown more beautiful. He had not planned to visit it today, but he does have a little more time.
"Would you show me?"
They walk along the paths together, comfortable in their silence. Ever since he is no longer her patient, being in Sakura's presence has become a far less stressful experience.
They round a corner and behind a grove of olive trees Gaara finds the new addition to the gardens. Pure white marble and as tall as a man, a statue of the god Apollo. This one, unlike many of the other statues in the Temple does not depict the god with his lyre but instead with a large bow an arrow. Gaara is reminded, that, among other things, Apollo also is also the patron of archery. His shoulder throbs once, not in pain, more in acknowledgement. It could not be coincidence that an arrow had pierced his armor and rendered him injured in such a way that it confined him to this exact temple for half a year.
He had always known that the gods had a hand in his life. With the way he came into the world, there was simply no other way. What he had not known, was that the arrow that had changed the course of it, had been guided by the hands of Apollo himself.
He should maybe feel surprised by that, but as Gaara's gaze wanders up the effigy and rests upon the face, all other thoughts flee his mind. He knows that face, knows it younger and more innocent and with whisker-like scars on its cheeks but despite the fact that he has not seen it in years, he recognises him instantly.
"Naruto," he whispers.
"What?" says Sakura, looking confused.
"Nothing. You're quite right. It's beautiful."
"It is, isn't it? It's a bit strange though. It has only been here for a week, but I feel as if he has been watching us for years."
Gaara smiles softly. "Who knows," he says. "He might have."
~fin~