Disclaimer: Kishimoto owns Naruto. All of it. I own only pencils and a thick skin.
Birthday
Everyone thinks Gaara doesn't train; that he just sits on roofs, killing anyone who ventures an inch into his territory. But that's not true; Gaara does train, he just doesn't want anyone to train with. Gaara runs up staircases; the seventeen flights of the Sand temple, the ninety flights of the Sunday wholesale market, the eight hundred and eighty two that lead to a prison. And its at this prison that Gaara falls in love.
Mind you, everyone thinks Gaara will never fall in love. The Suna girls have paid Kankuro everything to try but, secretly, Kankuro pockets the money and walks away. He knows he can't touch his brother, not even remotely; that even when they're in the same room, scanning the same reports and talking about War, they're not breathing the same air. His is bitter and coarse, right off the streets; Gaara's is a pure, impenetratable fog.
Actually, Gaara does care for his brother. He'd die to protect him if it came down to that. He thinks about this as he climbs, up and up. Five hundred and eighty, god knows how many more. On the way he passes all the things people have thrown down over the years; books of illegible kanji; Meiji chocolate sticks; half-bitten cigarette stubs. One of these Gaara picks up and scrolls over his lids like a kohl stick; he wonders if it'll leave a streak of white ash and wonders why he even did something so pointless.
Six hundred and forty. Gaara takes a break. He's winded. To train, he refuses to fly. He refuses to take a sip of sake and contends himself with the thought that to conquer the desert, he should become one. He wonders if anyone ever uses staircases anymore and just as he thinks it, a slender, hesitant silhouette of a girl appears in the stairwell.
This isn't the thing Gaara falls for. Not so soon. But she's a pretty one (hasn't he seen her somewhere?), with thin, pale lips the shade of an oases and dark beetle eyes that avoid his. Her hair is a tight, blonde bun; functional, unsympathetic. Something about her stance - a brusqueness, perhaps, or a purpose - tells him she hasn't recognized he's her Kazekage.
"Hey," he says, completely out of the blue.
"I'm bringing food. Excuse me." Her voice is pure silver.
"Food for who?"
"The boy upstairs."
"Upstairs."
"This is a prison - sir."
"Oh." Gaara lets her pass but grabs her wrist on the next step, twisting it up and catching the bread and milk that she releases. "Tell me," he says, quietly, "Who's this prison for?" He releases her.
There is a slight snarl on her lips as she draws her wrist away. "If not for the make of your loincloth, sir, I would say you weren't familiar with these parts." Her voice is darkness but her eyes are full of water. "I never leave this place and nobody enters. No One Touches Me. Ever. Give me the food and leave."
As everyone knows, nobody orders Gaara around.
"You love that boy." He says, as if it were an afterthought. There is a strange, strong feeling in his stomach that reminds him of the way Shukaku used to breathe, deep inside him. The young girl, no older than him, has a soul nearly as old as his. But, as everyone knows, Gaara is never scared.
"I'm going up," he says, "I'm training." But he isn't training. He bends slightly at his knees and flies up, curling like a missile around the never-ending staircase, thinking of nothing but the door he knows he'll meet at floor eight hundred and eighty two.
The door is open when Gaara arrives and, from the corner of his eye, he can see a bed and a cup with a single, red flower on the table beside. He can see a window, too, and a boy, a full head shorter than him, sitting right at its edge.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. "There are no prisons in Sunakagure. We release all prisoners into the desert. Get out." (As everyone knows, Gaara never beats around the bush.) The boy's ears prick and he turns slowly and deliberately to face the intruder. Gaara realises, I've definitely seen this boy before.
"That's what my sister told you, isn't it? She thinks she loves me but that's not true. You see, no one loves me. And this is not a prison. I... don't think I am a criminal. This is my home." The boy's lips betray a small smile; he allows himself to be momentarily happy that someone has come so far to see him. To actually see him. It doesn't last. His eyelids fall and the dark circles around them grow darker.
"I...brought your bread. And milk." Gaara feels a knot tighten in his chest. The boy walks towards him but Gaara knows, instinctively, that he cannot be touched. "And your sister... didn't say anything about love."
"Do you love me?" the boy asks, suddenly and with great feeling. He asks it like its the Most Important Question In The World and winces under Gaara's unmoving, emotionless stare. Self-consciously, he stuffs his fists deeper into the pockets of his makeshift toga. It is a light orange, the colour of sand.
Gaara doesn't know what to say.
"Does anyone love you?" The boy walks away and turns his eyes to the desert. In one glance, he takes in its salt and its shifting plains; eddies of sand that kick up in the drafts and a thick and familiar silence. Gaara sees the world through the eyes of this boy and snatches of conversation long buried brim to the surface of his mind: "there is an oases out there, somewhere", "you whisper secrets into the wind, see, and they'll be carried for miles", "i'll race you to the dunes!", and gently, rising above the rest, "it's time to go home". By now, he has forgotten who has said them.
"No," Gaara answers, so softly its barely audible, "Not until now."