Characters: Matsuri, Gaara
Summary: He had green eyes, the color of sea foam, or maybe pale jade. That was what she first noticed. They were nice eyes, Matsuri decided. Kind, for all their reticence.
Pairings: GaaMatsu
Author's Note: While I usually disregard anime-only arcs as non-canonical, since Matsuri is a canon character I'm incorporating two of the components of the anime arc she appeared in here, namely, her fear of weapons and the Sand Siblings teaching a class in Suna (Them being genin and teaching makes a lot more sense when you consider that, though they're officially just genin, in the skill level they all probably fall somewhere closer to high chunin, if not outright jonin, at least by Suna standards).
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
He had green eyes, the color of sea foam—Matsuri was familiar with sea foam, having lived on the coast in the past—or maybe pale jade. That was what she first noticed. How odd. The only other person Matsuri had ever met with light eyes of any shade was Gaara's sister Temari, and her eyes were a slightly more natural shade of dark green. One simply didn't find light-colored eyes, be they blue or green or gray, very often in Sunagakure.
For herself, Matsuri didn't see about Gaara what there was to be so frightened of.
This was her first day of class, and only her first week in Sunagakure. Matsuri was a native of Kawa no Kuni, had been born there. But her parents had been killed when she was a child and the Sand nin who saved her ptook her back to Kaze no Kuni and placed her in a tenement house in a port city. When she passed the requirements to enter the Academy, Matsuri was shifted off to Sunagakure.
She had grown up without Gaara in her life. She had never known him, never known what he was capable of doing, never known him as a monster trapped inside the body of a boy. What she did know was the quiet, youngest and smallest sibling of the late Yondaime Kazekage, who said not a word as his brother and sister introduced themselves to the class and, to be honest, looked just a little lonely when all of the students avoided him like the plague and attached themselves to Temari or Kankuro.
While Gaara was intimidating to the other students it was Matsuri who found the elder siblings of Suna's jinchuuriki to be just a bit intimidating. Gaara, on the other hand, was quiet, and small and for his blank, piercing stare seemed to Matsuri to be the least threatening of the Sabaku siblings.
So she walked over to him, not noticing the way the other students cringed and got the sort of looks on their faces that made it clear they expected her to die very soon, not noticing the way Kankuro and Temari both raised their eyebrows in unison.
Gaara seemed no less shocked than all the others.
But immediately when she chose a path, Matsuri felt her confidence stumble and shatter.
Most found it more than a little bizarre, the combination of her desire to be a shinobi and her crippling phobia of weapons. Matsuri wasn't entirely sure what her aim was in the former, except that she didn't ever want to be so helpless again as she was the day her parents died. But her hands quivered and faltered when she was led to the table and instructed to pick up a weapon from there.
The club she ended up with, clumsy and unwieldy, had her on the ground and Gaara standing over her, shaking his head silently without any condescension. He was incredibly matter of fact, putting little inflection into his speech and displaying not even a hint of a thought that he might look down on her for any debacle or fear.
But she did feel crumpled, inadequate, as she scrambled to her feet with all the grace of a fleeing rat and brushed dust out of short brown hair. Matsuri wasn't the desert's child. Not like Gaara, not like any of the rest. She was just a foreign foundling with an accent and a sense that she really didn't belong here.
And maybe Gaara noticed when he put a hand under the crook of her arm and finished the process of getting up for her.
No superiority or disdain in his eyes, just a slight film, gossamer and shining, to make irises without pupils seem like polished marbles with depth.
He had nice eyes, Matsuri decided. Kind eyes, for all their reticence. She didn't know that she was probably the first person to ever come to such a conclusion concerning Gaara. But Matsuri had no preconceptions, and though she knew that he was the vessel for some desert spirit that raged and screamed and destroyed when it was free, she could be unafraid since she had never witnessed these changes herself.
Gaara's eyes narrowed speculatively as she spoke, confessing her fear of a blade of any kind. Matsuri's voice stumbled in shame but he said not a word and let her conversation break at all points until she was done. And the reproach Matsuri expected, the command to leave and never return she expected, it never came.
He pressed the jouhyou into her hands, hands hardly any smaller than his (Matsuri was only a year younger than he was, and barely any shorter), and told her to try with this, if a blade made her quake.
He didn't condemn her.
Matsuri smiled a huge, somewhat foolish, highly giddy smile, and nodded, following him to the spot of the courtyard that had been allotted to them.
"Yes, Gaara-sensei."
She decided she could grow to belong here.