Like the Summary says, this is a prequel to The Voice, and how Gaara got to where he was in that story. I am also going to apologize in advance for the wordyness and over description of this story, and Gaara may be a bit OOC, i apologize for that too.
"Shukaku Speaking"
"Teddy Speaking"
'Thinking'
"Speaking"
He sat in the middle of the living room staring at the fire in the fire place. He was focusing on the two voices fighting in his head. Staring into the fire he saw faces and matched each with an individual voice in his head. One, a younger version of himself, and the other a raccoon.
"He hasn't moved an inch in the past hour," whispered a female voice from the doorway that lead to the kitchen.
"I think he died," whispered a male voice back. "Oww!" he yelped as he was slapped upside the head.
"Idiot," muttered the female voice.
"I can hear you," the boy seated in the middle of the living room stated, as he ripped his eyes from the fire to turn his head and look at his older siblings. "I'm not dead, yet," he added and turned his gaze back to the flames.
"I told you he could hear us," said the female as she slapped the male again. She turned and walked back into the kitchen.
"What do you think he's thinking about?" asked the male as he tried to grab a piece of bacon from the pan. Only to have his hand slapped away.
"I don't know," answered the female who was chewing on her thumb nail.
"You are amusing, boy" said the voice that the boy had assigned to the raccoon.
"Are you going to kill yourself?" asked the other voice that he had assigned to the younger version of himself.
'No, I'm not going to kill myself. At least not yet,' he thought back to the two voices.
"Why don't you talk to us out loud like you do with your siblings?" asked his younger self.
"He doesn't want people to think he's crazier than he already is"answered the raccoon before he could answer for himself.
"That's not entirely true," the boy said in a quiet voice. "That isn't how I feel," he added.
"Yay! You can talk to us out loud!" cheered the younger version of himself.
"Gaara! Dinner is ready!" yelled his sister from the kitchen. He blinked and the faces in the fire vanished.
"I'm coming" he said as he got up from the floor. 'They always stop talking to me when my siblings want my attention' Gaara thought to himself. 'My head feels so empty without them.'
He sat down at his seat and stared out the window across the table, as a plate of food was placed in front of him.
"Breakfast?" he asked, as he looked up at his sister questionably. "I thought you said 'dinner' was ready.
"I did say dinner was ready. But we're having breakfast for dinner" answered his sister.
"Oh…" Gaara sat and stared at his plate, one pancake with two pieces of bacon. He then looked at his brother's plate, which was stacked with four pancakes and too many pieces of bacon to count. "Why does Kankuro get more than me?" he asked, still staring at his brother's plate.
"Because I'm bigger and you hardly eat anything" Kankuro, answered then shoved a forkful of food into his mouth.
"You do tend to leave a lot of food on your plate when you are done eating Gaara" added his sister, who sat down with a plate of three pancakes and about six pieces of bacon.
"I know" replied Gaara as he picked up his fork and started eating.
The house was completely silent, save for the clicking of silver wear on plates. Gaara had finished eating and leaned up his plate and now sat in the same place he sat before, staring at the dyeing fire, waiting for the voices to start back up and save him from the insanity inducing silence.
"Did you miss us?" asked the childish voice.
'I did miss you' Gaara replied. 'But it didn't take you as long as the last time to come back.'
"As you get older the more we become part of your psyche" the raccoon said.
'What does that mean? 'Cause you have only been in my head since I was 4, and that was 7 years ago' Gaara questioned.
"That means the older you get, the harder it is for you to get rid of us" answered his younger self.
"But I don't want to get rid of you" Gaara said, not noticing that he had spoken out loud.
"What was that, Gaara?" asked his sister from the kitchen.
"Nothing!" Gaara responded curtly as he realized that he had spoken out loud.
"He was probably talking to those voices, Tem" said Gaara's brother who was shoving his last piece of bacon into his mouth.
"I'm starting to worry about him. I mean it's only a matter of time until he slips up and does that in front of someone that matters" she said, on the verge of hysteria.
"Someone who matters?" questioned Kankuro who looked at his sister skeptically. "Someone at school, when he hangs out at the park someone could catch him, or what if father caught him doing that? What do you think father would do with him if he found out? Send him straight to the nut house that's what he'd do" Temari ranted on and on. What she didn't know was that Gaara could hear everything she was saying.
"She can't honestly think that you would get caught by your father. You're too smart for that"said the deep voice of the raccoon.
'… I don't know she might be right' thought Gaara. 'I don't notice when I speak out loud as much as I use to' he added. As he conversed with the voices that faces in the flames began to reappear. 'I should give you both names' thought Gaara when the two faces were completely reformed in the dyeing blaze.
"Really! You're going to name us? That means you accept us!" cheered the younger voice as the face in the fire danced around the raccoon's face.
"Huzzah indeed" replied the raccoon in his deep voice.
'I'll name the lower voice Shukaku. 'Cause I think it fits with your low voice' thought Gaara
"Shukaku, hmm, I like" said Shukaku as he said his name a few more times to get use to the way it sounded.
"What are you going to name me?" questioned the younger voice.
'I don't know' he replied 'you sound like me when I was younger so I imagine you as a younger me. But I can't call you Gaara, 'because that would get too confusing for me.'
The face in the fire began to put. "But you said that you would name us" whined the voice that belonged to the pouting face in the fire.
"I'm thinking!" Gaara said aloud in a hurried, loud tone trying to subside the pouting face.
About what?" asked his brother who had walked up behind him as he had blurted out what should have stayed in his head.
"Nothing, I am thinking about nothing" he said, not really giving his brother anything more than a sideways glance.
"Then why did you yell that you were thinking?" inquired his brother.
"It's none of your business" said Gaara. "Don't you have homework to do?" he questioned his brother hoping to distract him or to change the subject all together.
"No, I finished all of my homework before dinner. Now what were you thinking about?" Gaara's question had not helped him at all, but maybe he could just build off the subject.
"What did you have homework in?" he tried again at distracting his brother.
"Nothing too hard. Math and history, the math gave me some trouble but I got it. Don't you have homework to finish?" he said trying to get his brother to talk a little bit, maybe figure out why he had yelled something so strange for no apparent reason.
"No" was all Gaara said as an answer. He was not about to give his brother his focus, Because Shukaku and his younger self would leave for a while. He didn't want that, especially whith mini-him mad.
"Get up and go to your room" came the deep voice of Shukaku. "If he asks why say you're tired or you're going to read a book."
As soon as Shukaku had finished speaking Gaara let out a fake yawn and stretched his arms up. "I'm going to go to bed. I'm tired" he said as he got up from his spot on the floor and walked to his room.
"I couldn't get anything out of him" said Kankuro as he walked back into the kitchen to find Temari with a steaming cup of tea in her hands and worry written all over her face.
"You tried" she said. "Maybe I'll give it a shot later." Temari added as she took a sip of her tea.
Gaara sat in the middle of his bed, and stared out the window. The tree directly outside had died a long time ago, but has yet to be taken out. Whenever the wind blew the branches would scrape against his window. That is exactly what was happening right at that moment.
"That tree sounds like nails on a chalkboard" whined the younger voice.
"It is annoying, but father refuses to take it out" said Gaara. He pulled his teddy to him and laid down, still staring out the window.
"I've got it!" he said as he sat up.
"You've got what?" asked the voice that has yet to be named.
"A name for you" he said. "I'll call you Teddy."
"Yay! I have a name!" cheered Teddy.
"How did you come up with that?" asked Shukaku.
"Well, when I was younger I use to talk to my teddy bear. Teddy's voice makes me think of that time," Gaara explained.
"That makes sense" Shukaku mused.
A few minutes later Gaara was dozing, listening to Shukaku and Teddy talk to each other.
Down stairs Kankuro and Temari were sitting on the couch. The television was on but neither was watching it. It was just providing background noise.
"I'm really starting to worry about him. When I went upstairs to check on him, he was talking out loud and then paused, then started talking again like he was carrying on a conversation with someone" she said.
"Maybe he was on the phone" Kankuro offered.
"I thought that too. So I went around and looked at all the phones and none of them were missing, so he had to have been talking to himself" Temari explained.
"That's creepy" Kankuro said.
"What I found the worst was that I think he was naming the voice in his head" she said.
"I'm going to go check on him again" Temari said after a few minutes of silence. She set her empty cup on the table and walked up the stairs.
"Gaara… are you still awake?" she asked as she slowly opened the door to her youngest brother's room. She got no answer, but the wind blew and the tree scraped on the window. 'That tree could easily drive someone to insanity' she mused to herself. As she thought this Gaara rolled over and curled into a ball, his teddy bear pulled close to his chest.
Temari walked over to Gaara's bed and pulled the blanket u to his shoulder. The tree scraped the window again, causing Gaara to curl up tighter. "No wonder you're so screwed up" she said as she sat on the corner of Gaara's bed. "you never played outside with the other kids and you always locked yourself in here with that tree out there scraping on the window." She got no response from Gaara.
Temari rubbed Gaara's back as she started to hum tunelessly to herself.
"It's not the tree" Gaara mumbled, not turning to look at her.
"So you are awake" she said cheerfully patting him on the back, her face quickly falling as she continued. "Will you tell me what it is?"
"…No…" he said, not moving. He was staring out the window.
"Why not?" she asked. "You use to be so happy. What happended?" she looked at him with a saddened look. Gaara just shrugged his shoulders. "You're not going to tell me, or you don't know?" she asked as she placed her hands in her lap. Gaara just shrugged again. "You're no help" she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. What she didn't know was that Gaara was not really paying any attention to her.
"You really should give her a decent answer or she isn't going to leave" Shukaku said.
'I don't mind her being here' Gaara answered back. This answer caused Shukaku and Teddy to shrink back into the depths of Gaara's mind. Gaara rolled over to look at his sister. "I don't know why I'm so screwed up, I just am" he mumbled, before rolling back over to stare out the window again. Temari was at a complete loss for words. She just sat there, her hands limp in her lap.
After a few minutes Temari got up and left. Down stairs she found Kankuro glued to the television. "I got him to talk, slightly" she said as she sat down next to her brother.
"So he does speak?" her brother asked looking up from the television.
"Have you ever been in his room? That dead tree out back scrapes on his window when the wind blows" she explained.
"Maybe that's why he's so screwed up" he mused.
"That's what I thought, too. But, he said it wasn't the tree" she said, thinking about what he had said after that. "He said that he didn't know why he's so screwed up, he just is." The room went silent, save for the television, both were thinking about their youngest sibling.
"I'm going to bed" Kankuro said after a few minutes.
"Yeah, I'll clean up and head up as well" Temari said after Kankuro. 'Maybe he just needs a friend' she mused to herself as she closed the door behind her.