A/N: Hey guys, I'm procrastinating again… please shoot me. Anyway, this is a fanfiction but also a kind of character study. It's set pre-timeskip or mid-timeskip or whatever. Your choice.
The desert is shifting; it is as unreliable as it is mysterious and harsh. Had you not grown up with its shifting moods, it might swallow you whole. There is no way to be perfectly safe in the desert, no way to be absolutely sure you're not going the wrong direction.
The only one who is, and would always be, really safe in the desert is a young boy. His hair is a mix of reds, darker and lighter, like blood on bricks. His eyes are a cold teal color, with a piercing gaze not unlike the one of the sharp desert sun.
In a way, he is connected to the desert; he feels its pulse beating beneath the soles of his shoes as he walks and he heart its voice whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
In a way, it's the only thing that keeps him from going insane, and the only thing that once put him in that state.
As he walks, the sun that kissed the faces of the inhabitants of the Hidden Sand Village tan and warm, merely strokes his chin, leaving its creamy color untouched. He could travel through the desert in eternity, maybe he will, and he would never get lost, never get sunstroke. He could just keep walking until he reaches another place, a place better than the one he came from. Sometimes the thought is tempting, but he never gives in to that temptation. But he knows that if that was what he really wanted, he could walk on forever.
His sister thinks he is not made of flesh and blood like her other brother and her, and she knows that deep inside, he isn't. Although the thought that her youngest brother would somehow be the creating of the sand and the heat and the everlasting winds, the thought leaves her amazed for a moment or two.
His brother just calls him crazy.
The occasional sandstorms are a dangerous hazard for just about anyone, citizen of the Hidden Village of Sand or not. The redheaded boy finds them thrilling. He likes to step outside in the harsh blowing wind and he feels the dusty air fill his lungs as the storm rampages around, leaving the boy unharmed as always. The next morning, the villagers will be outside fighting the small sand dunes on their doorsteps with brooms and shovels, wiping the dirt away. The boy with the cold gaze doesn't see it that way. In his point of view, the sand carries everything filthy and unwanted away with the winds, and every morning a fresher air will fill his lungs as he takes a moment to step outside and simply breathe.
Gaara wishes that sometime, he could show to beauty of the storms to someone, someone who would understand. His siblings perhaps. He knows his sister sometimes looks out the small, round windows - typical for the village - and admires the pure power of the winds raging outside.
Maybe someday, he will take them out with him. He would protect them from the winds (although surely his sister would oppose, claiming that was he job), he would make sure the sand didn't harm them or get in their eyes and they would watch together, and maybe, maybe they would understand. The next morning his brother and sister would take a moment and breathe, and they would both see what the redheaded boy meant.
Maybe someday, he would…
Once, on one of his sleepless nights, he read about an old man that could study a person's hands and tell their whole life story, reading out of their palms. Gaara's hands are slender and pale, almost in a feminine way, unscarred, not like the other shinobi's. His fingers are long and thin, not strong and firm like they are supposed to be.
Gaara wonders what the old man would read in his hands. Maybe the word "monster" would be written in his palm as clearly as it was written in his heart.
Kankuro's hands are firm and his grip is strong. There are scars all over his palms, white lines contrasting the tan of his skin. Before the young puppeteers learn to control chakra strings, they practice with real strings. Gaara doesn't remember it very well, but his brother came home with his hands cut open and bleeding every evening, and the demon would stir inside him, and he'd had to turn away.
Kankuro's hands, though being so strong and firm, were used to fine works, putting traps or poison holders inside the limbs of his lifeless partners. His fingers could dance when he played with his puppets, a dance with a deadly outcome at all times.
Temari's hands are almost as steadily built as her oldest little brother's, a fact she secretly hates. Although she was never meant to be feminine or girly, her big hands are mocking her with the way too thick fingers and broad nails that were never the right shape, no matter how much she filed them.
Gaara wishes his hands looked somewhat more like his sibling's. Then maybe there would be a part of him that didn't scream "demon" or "unnatural" at the first look. Instead, he stuffs his abnormal hands in his pockets and avoids the looks of passing villagers, promising himself to wear a hood the next time he went outside.
There are few things in this world that takes Gaara's breath away. If you asked him, he would reply that there was no such thing, but most likely he would say nothing at all. But when the skies over the village explodes in a million different colors and nuances whereof half he cannot even name nor describe, he feels his breathing hitch just a little. The sun is setting, and Gaara has to admit, it is beautiful.
He knows that his sister and brother sometimes watches it together, relaxing after an exceptionally hard mission, like after the one in Konoha, with the failed invasion of the village and the murder of their father.
Gaara wishes that sometime, his siblings would invite him up on the roof to watch the sunset with them. Maybe they would tell him the things they told each other, maybe they would for once confide in him. Until then, Gaara just watched the sky light up from his bedroom window and sat perfectly still until the sky was dark and hi heard familiar footsteps in the stairs, signaling the return of one of his siblings. Gaara sat alone and listened to the chatter of his brother and sister, and he wished.
The desert is shifting; it is as unreliable as it is mysterious and harsh. Had you not grown up with its shifting moods, it might swallow you whole. But the desert could also be as reliable as any rock, as comforting as any forest. And Gaara wished that maybe someday, they would understand.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed, please review? : 3