First Oneshot, Smoke and Mirrors
Gaara is sent out into the desert on a petty mission, but finds himself face to face with something hauntingly familiar. Himself.
Disclaimer: Naruto is owned by Kishimoto and all distributors involved.
The gray scarf around his neck whipped behind him in the strong, grainy wind that scratched at his face. As it snapped, the fabric sounded to him like wing beats. Or a flag, over a hill.
Their foot prints had long been covered by the swirling sands of the desert, eroded by the shifting air. But the dark, swaying forms above the horizon gave away their position as well as any beacon or banner.
When he finally came across them, there wasn't much left. Most of their clothes and flesh had been torn away as the vultures and kites had their fill.
As he came towards the mass of feathers, the birds suddenly departed; all taking flight in a flash of gray, black and red. The scavengers of the desert were intelligent, however, and they hovered on the drafts of air above with spread wings. Here they waited for him to take what he wanted and leave.
After all, they knew he wouldn't bother with them; they were only getting out of his way.
Earlier that day he had been brought forward to the council. It wasn't a request, it was an order. But they were allowed to take such liberties with him these days.
"Gaara. An artifact of Suunagakure has been stolen by a group of thieves. The desert will kill them as they try to escape, but you must go and retrieve the item."
It was saddening that his village could fall so easily towards the whims of bandits. Even bandits who had forgotten to restock on water before running back to the dunes. How far it had fallen since its firm vanquishing at Konoha.
"It is a mirror. You will know when you see it." The group of men in the white robes-indicating their status-pressed down upon him with their narrowed gazes. He was long used to the gazes of others, regardless of how tightlipped they were. Their faces weren't passive. They didn't bother to hide their sour looks, their cruel scrutiny under which they searched him.
He nudged a body over, the arm shifting from a tap from his toes. Uncertain of the size of this mirror, it could be anywhere on the men.
But then he saw it. Bright blue appearing, half buried under the sands. He walked towards it, and stared down at something matching the exact hue of the sky.
Dropping to his knees, he brought his hands to its surface. With sweeping motions, he wiped off the golden grains of the western desert. The sand felt pleasantly warm on his fingers. The mirror shined, looking like a window to some colorful off world. His own reflection greeted him, the remaining sand's underside showing oddly dark into the mirror.
The figure looking at him was soft in features, with nary an expression on his lips or in his pale teal eyes. He examined the dark rings around his eyes, lifting his hand to tug at the weakened skin. It was odd. Before now, he never really paid much attention to his own image.
Something in his reflection changed, a tiny, yet noticeable change. He blinked his eyes, lifting his head and lowering his arm to his side.
His reflection drew back, and lowered its arm.
But it was smiling. His mirrored self showed a curl of his lips, its eyes glinting with some feral contentment.
Blinking again, he turned his head, wondering if perhaps in some absentminded revere at seeing himself, he had taken on an expression of happiness.
But his reflection did not move. It faced him, smiling, even more distinctly than before.
All artifacts from hidden villages have special properties. Their leaders were practical; they would not put energy into guarding some old relic unless it was worthy of such treatment.
His doppelganger moved, abruptly, stretching forward to place its hand against the glass. The glass on the other side of the mirror.
It… seemed like such a pious gesture. A pleading gesture.
He felt his own hand reach out, to stroke the surface, to match his hand with his copy's.
The mirror wasn't as solid as he originally thought. No, rather, he felt his hand sink through it, like as if he had applied too much pressure to wet, cool mud.
And in a perfectly affectionate gesture, his reflection laced its fingers with his own, and began pulling him through the mirror.
Panic seized him as he felt the cool feeling shoot up his arm as he sank in up to his elbow. To brace the fall, he tried to place his free hand on the mirror, only to have it sink through as well. Fighting, he gave a vocal gasp as his head passed through the glass.
His whole torso had been dragged through now, the cold feeling sending shudders all the way down the length of his body. And his copy dug his other hand into his shoulders, clinging to him with both arms; the uncharacteristic smile on its face remained, taunting him.
In his desperation, he drew a kunai out from the folds of his shirt. A quick, jerking motion, and he sunk the wedge blade into the chest of his alter image. But the movement had cost him, sending the last of his weight awkwardly over the edge of the mirror, and he tumbled in a free fall into the endless blue of the reflection.
And he was still grappling with himself. His doppelganger refused to release him, and Gaara refused to retract the steel greeting he had given him.
The blue around them faded as they both dropped, darkening, swelling, and the force of his fall grew quieter in his ears.
The red hair of his attacker grayed out, as if the color was slowly peeling away, the skin growing shockingly white.
And from the wound Gaara had inflicted came dark smoke.
In that instant, the copy dissolved into the haze, blowing past him as he kept falling into the endless blackness below him. The kunai slipped out of his hands.
His arms swung, as he tried to reach out around him, catching only the air.
"If you want to land, kid, you'll have to want ground."
A voice in his head, a rough little whisper sounding just behind his left ear, like a creature sitting on his shoulder.
"What?" he hissed, even though the wind stole the sound from his speech.
"Do you want ground, Gaara?"
He squeezed shut his eyes, gritting his teeth.
…I want ground. I want ground!
His body hit a solid force not a second after the thought past his mind, his entire skeleton recoiling from the impact. A metal ringing came as the kunai hit a second later.
It hurt. It hurt, dammit. He cracked open his eyes, but stared down at nothing. A solid force was keeping him held up, but he couldn't see it.
Pushing himself up off this… ground with his hands, he looked around at the expansive black emptiness around him.
"Cheery place, in'it? I hate it." came the crooning, coarse voice he had heard in the rarity of his nightmares. His nightmares…
"Who are you?" He demanded, rising on quavering legs on the absence of anything holding him up.
The owner of the voice disregarded his question.
"I bet you're wondering where we are." The voice fell into sweeter, silkier tones, "I could tell you if you'd let me out."
Gaara jerked around, facing nothing, but he glared off into the void as if peering down at something horrid. "Leave me alone, Demon."
The Shukaku in him seemed to settle, upset and a tad frustrated that his fun had come to such an unsatisfactory end. But the creature had its wit, yes, perhaps so much more then the boy he was in.
"You're stuck in here. We both are. If you want to get out, you'll have to let me out first."
The boy said nothing for an--to Shukaku, anyways—infuriatingly long time.
"Brat--?"
"Go ahead."
That was enough for the beast. Like a river pouring out of Gaara, the chakra spread. It was warm, irritated, but smoothly moving. And gathering grains from the air around them, his body quickly condensed, going from his long arms, to his heavy torso, and finally his face, legs and twitching tail. All crafted from hissing sand. Blue lines suddenly spiraled in the sand, as if drawn on by giant invisible calligraphy brushes.
The creature was over a hundred meters tall. He looked down upon his host, and bared a jagged grin, eyes gleaming like lanterns.
A child looking up at a skyscraper, Gaara's head tilted back to look it in the face. He was… frightened. Even though it did not show on his face, his fear was evident, fluttering wildly in his chest. Losing his balance, he fell backwards onto his backside, bumping soundlessly onto the nonexistent floor.
A chuckle echoed, crackling from inside the deep gut of the giant Tanuki.
"Yes. Glad ta' see you, brat." It was so wonderful to see the little child as the insect he was for once, rather then his prison. But there was no urge for violence in him for the human at the moment. No, rather there was something more pressing on his mind. The Bijuu shifted from his stand to a thudding sit, bringing his legs out to let them flank Gaara.
Gaara continued to stare blankly, his breath irregular and his mouth dry. He had barely felt more then some tingling, and now the creature was out. What was this place?
"You've…" He murmured, chilly eyes meeting the demon's, despite how anxious it was making him, "You've been here before?"
"Aye kid, I've been here before." The creature answered, dully, reaching back a monstrous hand to scratch noisily at its neck. "Now, enough floating on nothing. I want to be sitting on something."
As if in obedience to the creature's wishes, something spread out beneath them. Sand, of the paler, beiger hue then the golden seas of the western desert, began appearing at their feet. Everything just rose out from the darkness, expanding to infinity, the edges of this void.
They both sat for a moment, in silence, the Shukaku watching until he couldn't see the phantom desert spread any longer.
"What do you mean you've been here before? …what is this place?" Lifting his voice, Gaara felt exceptionally small, against the sand and the Sand Spirit.
The creature gave another echoing chuckle, in a sort of 'I was thinking you'd never ask' sort of way that sent feelings of dread dodging down his spine.
"Two times before this, brat. Such memories." Quietly, the demon crooned, stuck halfway into some dreary reminiscing, "You see, Ga-ara," his own name stung him like a needle hearing it from Shukaku, "This was created by the first Kazekage. No one knew quite why, the guy wash-a nutter, if yeh ask me. Damn glassblower. But anyway, he made this, and people fell in, occasionally. It's a little dream world where you can have anything yeh want."
Reaching out, Shukaku caught a large liquid filled gourd-not unlike his own, only undecorated-and brought it in front of his face. After some consideration and sniffing, he tossed it aside. The item simply faded.
"Eh. No sake now. So I've been in'ere twice, you know. But you wanna know why?"
"Indulge me."
Shukaku must have found their (as Gaara assumed they were sharing their troubles, despite the seeming separation) predicament quite amusing, as he broke into another hearty bout of laughter at his container's snark.
If Gaara wasn't so occupied in the fact that he was in front of his monster, he might have found it more then annoying.
The laughs died down to hoarse coughs, and the Tanuki lasped into silence again.
Narrowing his gold eyes, Shukaku's mood grew exceptionably colder, when he finally continued his tale.
"This is the mirror they contained me in, before they extracted me. I've been taken out of two other people before the hag shoved me in you, Gaara. And it happened here."
Astonishment.
Then he felt himself freeze over with the inexplicably icy feeling.
When he finally realized what trouble he had fallen into.
He was up on his feet, unbalanced, nearly tumbling into the fattened flesh of the Tanuki's thigh. Even at the gesture, the monster was stern, watching the child as he regained himself, breathing through slitted nostrils.
Gaara found his own breath draw in and out, painfully, a horrible rasp.
"What happened… to your containers?"
"They died, of course. Their bodies are probably still in here if you want to see them."
A shudder went through him, and he looped his arms around his shoulders. No… I don't want to. I don't want to.
"Learning quickly, are we? But it's a little too late for that. Didn't anyone tell you not to touch the mirror?" Shukaku brought his hands to the ground before Gaara, leaning forward his great head to regard him with his bizarre pupils.
The redhaired boy shook his head. "No."
In agitation, the tanuki jerked his head back, "What? They didn't tell you what it did?"
Again, Gaara muttered, "No."
Contemplating, the bijuu gave a slight snort. "Obviously, then, they want to extract me. The village. They's put you in a trap, little Gaa-ra."
That was the breaking point. The village's leaders had not told him anything about the mirror, as if they knew he would touch it. As if they knew he would be dragged in by his doppelganger and be forced to face his demon here. Gaara's eyes were really wide now, him finally breaking his calm façade.
"Then they're… going to—"
"Kill you. Yes boy. That's what I've been trying to hint at this whole time. Stupid, stupid little brat. And you're bleeding, too."
Looking down at himself, he gave a small, shocked hiss. A small part of his shirt had been torn, and blood oozed from a stab wound in the center of his chest.
Where he had gotten his copy with a kunai.
Following the usual pattern that wounds took, it only started to hurt when he saw it.
Half in his own desperation, half in the shock of seeing himself wounded, he fell to his knees. His blood felt oddly slick on his fingers.
Two muted thuds as medical tape and cloth pad fell into the sand beside him.
… just what he wanted.
With a sort of mechanical disinterest, he unraveled the bandages and placed the cloth pad on his chest, pressing down to halt the bleeding. He bit into the tape and ripped off four similar sized bits, and secured the pad to the wound.
"Why are you bothering to tell me this, Demon? This is great for you if you're going to be removed." He finally managed to gather his voice, to offer it out into the air.
The demon hadn't even been watching him as Gaara patched himself up. Instead, his beady eyes roved the featureless realm with a forced interest.
Shukaku parted his great jaws, the jagged 'teeth' forming a zigzag line, before he finally spoke.
"Brat… I'd rather deal with your crap then be yanked around by those Suuna council bastards. I'm done going into some pot and being treated like an object. Finished. I'd rather take my chances with you."
That was… surprising, to say the least. It almost gave Gaara some comfort despite how much he felt his existence was threatened. Despite the fact that this was his Demon and one of the reasons his life had been so terrible for such a long time.
"What is it?" The demon seemed to notice the shock, and was quick to rub it in. "Or would living with me be less pleasing to you then dying without?"
… It would be simply better to ignore that prod, the Suuna human figured.
"If you have been here before, is there a way out?"
Thoughtfully, the demon looked around, craning his great head to look around at the indistinguishable landscape. "Yea-sh. I'd suppose there would be… perhaps…"
Gaara received an unusual view of the Bijuu's fat chin as Shukaku tilted his head back.
"Probably tha', I suspect."
Gaara looked up.
Up against the long blackness of everything shone a bright little bit of matter. It gleamed the taintless blue of the Wind Country sky, like the reflection he had first seen before falling into this looking glass.
A window. No, rather, a door.
With a sound like groaning of stone, the beast was moving, bringing his massive arm downwards, and it delved down into the sand under his container. With a slight heave, Gaara was lifted with a sizeable clump of sand up into the air.
Now he was even more fragile looking, the boy. A tiny form in the palm of his demon.
And he was being held way too close to the beast's face.
The irises were the size of Gaara's hands, and if Gaara spread his arms he wouldn't match the length of Shukaku's mouth.
When the demon spread its jaws, it was terrifying.
"Gonna lift yeh up, brat. Then you get us out of this hellhole." He regarded Gaara's fear with nothing more than a narrowed smirk.
The hushed reply came a painfully strained moment later. "Y-yeah." And Gaara was thrust upwards, and the air pressed down on him, making his stomach complain at the odd feeling. The tiny bit of blue grew closer and closer. Gathering a bit of daring, he looked downwards. Below him, the monster's arm was stretching upwards, to further the height.
When he looked back to directly above him, to mirror, the exit, he stopped short, his eyes bolting wide open.
There he was.
Colorless, his own skin was shockingly pale, the darkness around his eyes oddly swollen. His red hair had lost all its color, and now was struck a shade of gray.
There was nothing in his eyes, though. In the eyes of his suddenly monochromatic reflection. No irises. Just blank white.
The brightness of the blue on the other side seemed to disturbingly heighten the lack of any hue in his doppelganger.
And once again he stared at himself. And his copy was smiling.
The grin was no longer so blank. To Gaara it seemed likened to a triumphant smirk.
His copy placed his hand on the surface between them, and drummed its fingers in a mocking gesture.
In an instant, the boy on the dark side of the looking glass knew what he had to do.
His arm shot out, fingers nearly tearing through the viscous surface of the mirror. As Gaara's fingers passed through, he felt an odd, warm heat. The desert's heat.
And he locked his hand with his reflection's. He got to his feet, his sandals sinking down into the soft tissue of the demon's palm.
His reflection reacted violently, the smile falling off its face, like gathered water down a drainpipe. It thrashed, trying to pull its arm backwards.
No. Not this time.
Gaara gave a great jerk, and his copy sunk down to its elbow. Digging in with his nails, he caught his copy with his other hand, and pulled down.
He felt the weight of the adversary tumble down in his favor, pulled through the mirror. For a moment his clone struggled awkwardly on top of him, before he knocked it aside, and reached up to the heat on the mother side of the mirror.
He reached up, and out.
And felt the sand, the real sand, warmed by the merciless sun. It was an the edge of a cliff, for him to pull himself up with. Swinging up his other arm, he gripped the edge with one hand and swung his elbow up over the edge.
The sunlight was light on his head.
"Go for it, kid!" Came the throaty shout of the creature below him.
Below him, his platform was fading away, Shukaku's arm breaking up into sand, the disintegrating going all the way down his body.
Gaara felt the chakra rush back into him, in a sudden wild tide, it settled back in him as his legs kicked in the air. As a hand grasped his ankle.
His shoulders jerked back as the weight of a body his same size suddenly afflicted him. A soft cry escaped from between his clenched teeth.
His doppelganger, he could feel it clawing into his legs, pulling itself up on his body.
There was no way he was about to let it drag him down. Not again.
He gripped the sand and the sand gripped him, rising up from the desert to grasp at his shoulders, heaving his body up from the mirror.
In the space of a heartbeat, he was free, the weight on his legs gone, and he was clawing his way out on the ground, surrounded by the ragged bodies of the foolish bandits, the birds picking at their remaining, semi-cooked flesh.
His heart was pounding in his ears, a steady beat of thuds, penetrated only by the occasional squawking of birds around him as they harassed each other.
He lifted his head, and slowly turned himself over, facing up to the sky.
A single, solemn white cloud drifted overhead.
A bird's head entered his line of sight. It was dark feathered, with silver eyes and an ugly, fleshy comb at its beak. Some vulture. Tilting its head in the distinctive fashion of birds, it dipped down to peck at Gaara's hair, tugging at the roots.
When it got a taste of him, it gave an aghast squawk and hopped backwards.
"Yeah." The boy muttered towards it, as it lumbered towards the other bodies on its long twig-like legs. "I'm surprised I'm not dead too."
When he finally forced himself to sit up, he saw the white cloud reflected in the mirror, and the mirror was as still as he had first seen it.
What now?
He got himself to his feet, and sat up on a little rise in the desert, watching the birds due their gruesome feeding.
Waiting.
A black and white hawk came up to him and pecked at his clothing. He tapped it on its head and it flew away in fright before landing some feet away. It came back to yank at his scarf. This time he ignored it.
The sun's position in the sky had shifted thirty five degrees before he fell into confusion.
If the village had planned on extracting Shukaku from him, if they had anticipated him falling into the mirror, they'd have arrived by now, wouldn't they?
… Maybe they just wanted to make sure.
Thirty more degrees, and evening was coming. The birds all clamored about, all around him, squawking, cawing, and the smaller ones sitting on his shoulders while he stood as still as a statue.
'Demon. What if, after all that, they hadn't planned on removing you from me?' Gaara called out to the deeper depths of his mind.
The rumbling voice came, with a touch of disappointment in its tone.
'Then I suppose you'd better take that mirror back before they send a search party after you.'
The young boy rose, and all the birds took wing, all entering the sky and flying off into the horizon. Going their separate ways. Feathers off various tones spun and dropped in the air. The silhouette of the last vulture looked like a painting against the colors of Suuna's sunset.
When Gaara arrived at his village, it was nightfall, and the sentries at the gate hurriedly let him in.
The mirror was slung over his shoulder, wrapped up and masked in the lengthy cloth he had worn.
The keeper of Suuna's vault graciously thanked him over and over again, oblivious to the expressionless look on his face.
The councilmen muffled their feelings of loathing while they told him that he had completed his mission and was dismissed.
His siblings expressed that they were worried after he took so long. Kankurou teased him about it to diffuse the tension between the three of them. Gaara was glad for it.
And during the night, when the village finally lowered itself to slumber, he made his daily route of exploring the streets. He checked up on his sleeping siblings, he noted that his teacher was up late once more, working on some paper work, and he witnessed young Matsuri with her stuffed animals, snoring slightly in her unconsciousness.
After he had satisfied his nightly walk where he made sure everything was still where he needed it to be, he returned to the light starved realm that was his designated 'room'. Where some forgotten mirror had been placed on his wall for decoration.
There he went, and there he spent until the morning, pondering his reflection.