Sand and Blood

Chapter One

Hari Tenoki

Sometimes it's too hard to see the truth....

"Pass me the ball!!" A young girl laughed, surrounded by a crowd of her friends. They were playing, a group of them, in a sand-covered feild next to a playground. Everything was covered in sand, there was no grass to be found anywhere. The children were used to it, never have laying eyes upon a single blade of grass their entire lives, and continued playing.

The playground was completely abandoned, except for one child. He worse a loose-fitting scarf that hid the lower part of his face from the world, his pain-filled eyes outlines in black watching them unblinkingly as they played hapily. He sat on a swing, his hands grasping the chains on either side of him that held up the wooden seat, his feet dangling beneath him. He expected none of them to approach him, to even go near him. He had already chased them away. Merely by sitting at a swing they moved to go play ball, away from him.

His sad eyes continued to watch them, until one of the kids had kicked the ball too high. It was stuck on a ledge high above them, one of the many ledges in this village of sand. They stood below it, complaining and blaming each other for whose fault it was they could no longer play. Suddenly, the grains of sand near the ball came to life, gathering around it and lowering it towards them. The ball flowed into the young boy's hands who had been sitting at the swing. He held it out to them, gesturing for one of them to take it. Their eyes got big as they stared at him like he was death.

"It's him!!"

"It's Gaara!!"

"RUUN!!"

The children all yelled and screamed as they tried to escape. The boy looked crushed.

"Wait... please, don't run from me..." He stared at them with a horrified expression on his face. He reached a hand out to them, longing for someone to finally take it. They did not listen, but continued to sprint towards safety, calling him names as they did. He let them go, watching them vanish around a corner, their screams and yells and looks of terror becoming only a faded echo in his mind. They were always running from him... Why... Why...

Like an instict his right arm lifted and clutched his chest. Someone had once told him that the only medicine for the pain he felt so oftin in his heart was love... He wondered if he could ever find that medicine, or would it always be like this... He clutched his chest harder, trying to suppress the feeling. He left the playground, deciding it was too deppressing a place.

Walking the sandy streets he could feel the pain in his chest begin to rise once more, receiving only glares from people walking by, hushed whispers about him and avoidance. There was nothing he could do. He avoided making eye contact with any of them, but watched the ground as he walked. He kept on walking, turing down a few alleys until there was hardly anyone around. The only person he could see was a drunken bum, who winced at seeing him and backed away, glaring with bloodshot eyes. Gaara kept walking until he came to the spot he was looking for, the cliff at the edge of the village.

But someone had beat him to it. A young child with short, dark blue hair sat on the edge of the cliff, her feet dangling off. One wrong move and she could have fallen, dying on impact with the rocky ground far below where she sat. She was crying as she stared at the moon across the seemingly endless stretch of desert beneath her. Gaara hesitatly approached her, his sad eyes trying to determine whether or not she would run screaming, like everyone else. He turned to walk away, for she had not seen him yet. She continued to cry. He couldn't make himself leave.

Cautiously he approached her, until he was right beside her. He reached his hand out, about to put it on her shoulder, but stopped, and pulled back. She sensed him there and turned aorund, wiping the tears from her face. She looked at him, and for the first time Gaara did not sense any fear or resentment from another person. She sniffed, trying to hide the fact that she was crying.

"What do you want?" She asked, her silver eyes staring into his sky blue ones. The initial shock of her not running away or screaming left him too confused to say anything. He simply watched the way her dark blue hair caught the moonlight and seemed to shine. Sniffing again, the little girl wiped her nose with her sleeve, watching him. "Aren't you that kid everyone hates?

"I..." Gaara said, unsure of how to respond. "You... Why are you crying?" He asked.

"I wasn't crying..." She lied, sniffing again, her eyes glossy from tears. She turned back to face the full moon. He did not know why, but he felt a sudden wave of sorrow for her. The way she stared at the moon, how she was all alone, like himself...

Knowing he was taking a big chance, Gaara hesitatly sat down next to her, his feet hanging off the edge of the cliff too. She did not stir. She did not get up and try to run. Gaara eased up a little, overflowed with joy that he may finally have a friend.

"...What's your name?" He asked softly, not wanting to scare her off.

"... Tenoki... You must be Gaara... Pleased to meet you..." She nodded her head towards him, a sitting-down bow. She was extremely polite for such a young girl.

"...I've heard your name before...Are you from the Hari clan? Hari Tenoki?" Gaara asked. The girl nodded. That explains why she was so polite. The Hari clan has a bloodlimit, which passes down a forbidden tecnique that only they can know and execute. They are all very formal, a very polite and calm family. He stared into her light gray eyes, a common trait in their clan, as was the dark blue hair. "So what are you doing out here all alone? Aren't your parents worried?" Gaara asked, speaking softly again. Tenoki shook her head.

"My older brother, Isei... He yelled at me... I love him so much... But he told me to go away... He said mean things to me... He was acting so weird, he has never, ever been mean to me before...." Tears swelled in her eyes again. "I've never seen him act that way before..." She mutterd to herself under her breath. Gaara watched her as she stared at the moon. "There's no howling tonight... on a full moon..." She whispered. "I'm worried..."

Suddenly a couple kunai were hurled out of the darkness, and at the backs of the two children. A veil of sand rose, blocking the attack, the blades of the kunai sticking into the sheild. It quickly fell back to the ground as Gaara turned around, to see a masked ninja standing behind them in fighting stance. More kunai were thrown, only to be negated by the sand once more. Gaara's eyes got wide as he stared at his attacker with a vengeance, his anger boiling at the man who dared attack his new friend. He dared to attack the one person who did not run the second she laid eyes upon him. Something inside him, he could not control...

The sand beneath the man's feet rose like a giant serpant, wrapping around his legs. The man yelled out in surprise, unable to move. The sand quickly covered his entire body, and as much as he struggled against it could not break free. Gaara yelled in anger, as an invisible pulse of rage shot through the air like a bolt of lightning. The sand tightend around the man's body. He screamed in agony seconds before his voice was cut off, smothered by sand down his throat, peircing his skin and cutting him deeper than knives. When it had settled, al that was left was a pile of bloody sand. The wind gently blew the sand away, spreading the red grains off the cliff where they swirled in the sky before scattering with the winds. Beneath the sand was his mangled corpse, barely recognizable and gushing red, his body slowly being revealed as the wind uncovered it.

Shaking, Gaara approached the fallen man, the man who he had killed... Tenoki watched, now on her feet. Gaara did not see her move, he was too preoccupied. She stood close to him, daring not to touch him in his current crazed state. She was frozen, her legs trembling as she watched him kneel beside the man's head and remove his mask. His mouth dropped open and he jumpped back, eyes fixed on the dead body.

"Yashamaru!!" He cried out. The man who had taken care of him, his own mother's brother, was dead. He killed him. Even worse, Yashamaru attacked him, not caring who was in the way, with a burning intention to kill... Did he secretly hate him? Did he want vengeance? Gaara could not grasp why he would so such a thing to him... When he trusted him...

The sands began to rise again, lifting from the ground all around Gaara and Tenoki. He could not control them. His anger was all he could think about, betrayal, murder, lies... He realized too late what was happening. Her scream brought him back to reality. Tenoki was on the ground curled up in a ball, bleeding from uncountable cuts and gashes in her body. He arms covered her face. The sand was out of control.

The second Gaara realozed what he was doing, the sands stopped in midair, hovering above the ground. They fell at once in a cloud of dust back to the earth, some settling on Tenoki. Gaara pulled her to her feet, but she refused to remove her hands from her face. He appolagized over and over, but she said nothing. So this is what happens when they don't run... Gaara thought to himself, wishing now that she had ran away from him, like everyone else.

"It's ok...." She finally muttered. When she removed her hands, blood was streaming down her face and from her eyes that were just barely open. A trickle of crimson escaped a cut on her temple, dripping down the side of her face. The whites of her eyes were red and bloodshot, her silver eyes turned a pale metallic red.

With his arm around her shoulder, Gaara promised to take her home. They began walking down the dark streets, the only light to guide them was the dim glow of the light from the full moon. Once at the Hari clan's residence, Gaara stopped at the doorway as she walked inside. Before he could close the door a scream filled the air. It was Tenoki. Gaara stepped into the house, to see Tenoki standing in the middle of the entrance hall, surrounded in bodies. The floor was drenched in red from their blood as the crumpled corpses lay motionless. They were all the Hari clan, some humans identifyable by their dark blue hair, others wolves black as the night whose sharp fur coats shone of dark blue. But they were all dead. All except for one man who stood opposite Tenoki, grinning. He looked a lot like her, maybe in his teens. Tenoki's terrified expression seemed to amuse him.

"...So, looks like I missed one... How could I forget you, little Tenoki? This must have been Isei's doing..." His grin faded when he mention his brother's name. "Now, hold still and I promise I'll make it as painless as possible..."

"Daisetsu..." Tenoki whispered in a feeble voice. The boy took no notice. He pulled out a kunai from his bag, bringing his arm back and readying to throw it. With a smile back on his face it soared through the air, straight towards his siter's head. A wall of sand appeared before her, blocking the attack. Gaara walked into the room behind her. Daisetsu's smile emmediately vanished. "Kuso..." He whispered, backing away. "I'll get you later..." And with that he dissapeared quickly, his movements undetectable.

Tenoki was paralyzed. Her silvery red eyes followed the trail of blood from one family member to another. Everything to her was red, soaked from the blood in her eyes. They were wide and she was shaking uncontrolably, her hands clasped together under her chin. Gaara watched her as she cried silently, not moving an inch, her breath quivering. Her tears were blood red as her eyes closed on the last image she would ever see...