A.N.: So this is set sometime after the Chunnin Exams arc and the Sasuke Retrieval arc, while Gaara was still in the process of changing his ways/denying Shukaku. I read a fic awhile back called "Change" by Expressive Dissonance told that I thought about a lot while writing this. It's really good, I totally recommend.
"I want to change," he tells her, gaze as unwavering and unsettling as it ever has been. "I want to get better."
Not a bone in her body instinctively believes him. Too much has passed between them, she has spent far too many years counting her very breaths around him. She has learned how to tiptoe in such a way he'd hardly even notice her, far better than the most common alternative. It had taken her so long to perfect, trial and error where the trial was a seething glance in her direction and the error was the tight constriction of sand around her ribcage—alleviated only when her breaths had come short and it became clear that the one person he best tolerated would no longer be. She never called this favoritism, it hardly felt like acknowledgment most times. But here, she is the only person he can bring himself to confide in.
And this, this has to be the most vulnerable she has seen him be in all of five years.
It is not nighttime, sunlight pours through the windows like golden urns spilled over. It makes the room look far too bright, paints him strange and ethereal and wholly unnatural. His skin a milky white, the shadows under his eyes smoothed away until his face becomes all one shade. If he would tilt his head just so, it would cast lines across enough to mark distinction. But he won't. He traces her face as if to pick her thoughts from right off it, and she fears what he will find.
A visceral thing, a sharp spike in her middle that sucks the air right from her lungs. He has always been a small thing, diminutive in comparison to absolutely everything outside of him. All of it has always come down to the look, there, in his eyes. If there is a hell, it must reside within the calm, the stillness of his gaze. What awaits is a tempest, a twisting and terrible thing, ready to be unleashed at any given moment—and she, anticipating. Afraid of its coming. How such a little thing like him can contain even a fraction of it is unfathomable. That is, she thinks, the reason why it must be as terrifying as it is. He must be fit to burst, he must be only barely containing it at all; an ocean of wrath toiling beneath the surface. Shackled only by the delicate sinews of his tiny body, the porcelain skin still untouched.
She swallows the lump in her throat and wonders at what the proper response must be. Kankuro is nowhere to be found, he is not much better at these sorts of things but he would at least serve as anchor. A reminder that she is not alone. "Is that so?" she asks, voice tight.
Gaara doesn't move, but the barest crease forms at his brow. It is more than enough to draw a thin sliver of ice up her spine.
"I – I mean," she hurries to placate, hands lifting in that way they so often do in these situations. The way one would toward a feral animal. "It's…a little sudden. What brought this on?"
He can't have missed the crack in her tone. "I've…had a realization. Of sorts."
Temari knows, this topic has been long exhausted between she and her other brother. Late into the night, stowed away in her bedroom throwing furtive glances at the door. Lest he hear their speculation. It has been a few months since their return from Konoha, the disappointment has yet to fade. The grief is still fresh. The entire journey home had been all but silent, the nights they took to rest were spent staring into the fire and wondering where to turn from here. First and foremost, there was no body to bury. There was nothing, physical, to mourn. No living proof of what no longer was. This weight settled within them—at the very least, herself and her other brother; who knew what the youngest of them was feeling, how the loss has nestled itself within him, what lies the voice inside his head are still feeding him—and it has refused to leave ever since. Secondly, perhaps more importantly, Gaara has become undeniably reserved. Different. Subdued.
Nothing about him has softened, there is no clear evidence of change, in the way he must be referencing now. But he is no longer the same.
His presence does not ooze with malice, in that way it used to.
The name rolls about on the tip of her tongue but she does not bring herself to say it aloud, now, in front of him. She has repeated it time and time again in the absence of his presence—Uzumaki, Uzumaki, Uzumaki, catalyst that he is Uzumaki—has pressed the face accompanying it into memory as if it somehow belongs there. They do not call it obsession, exactly. This kinda fixation Gaara seems to have. They tell themselves they get it, or that they would. If they were in the same position. How can someone who has spent so long alone possibly feel learning he never had been? How can someone so unfortunately unique possibly feel knowing he was not the only one?
How does it feel to know there had always been another way, had he only been given the right tools?
"I… I know I am beyond help," he says suddenly, and Temari—cold, hard, weapon chipped from stone Temari—feels her chest squeeze, her breath catch on the way in. His eyes are no longer on her, but the strain in her middle does not disappear. His hands have turned themselves into fists and his shoulders pull in toward him. He is not wearing his gourd but Temari searches for it anyway, eyes the area just beyond him for the hulk of its shadow. His mouth twists into a frown and he can't seem to find the right words, or maybe he can't bring himself to say them. Maybe he knows exactly what he's supposed to be saying. Maybe he's just forgotten what forgiveness tastes like on the way out, having spent so long without it parroted back to him. "I know I have done terrible things. I know I cannot make up for them."
Temari cannot pinpoint the worst he's done, and that in itself might speak volumes. A mangled child's body, the homes that have turned skeleton, the blood soaked so deep into his sand he reeked for days afterward. How he reveled in this, and the wrinkle of their noses when he was close enough to smell.
Gaara showers more and more often, his hair is a different shade now as a result. His sand is the same and he still breaks more bones than he absolutely needs to but now, now he seems to reel back when he does. Not contrite. Not disturbed.
Just deeply confounded at his own reaction.
"I know you don't believe me," he mutters, the shadow of a scowl crossing his features. "But I want to change. I want to believe I can."
Temari thinks it must be scary, to him. He had taught himself his own solipsism, he had carved his perception in such a way there had been no room for modification. He had convinced himself so thoroughly, and had gone so long without challenge, that he had forced an entire village to accept—to submit, to bend, to wilt in the light of his terror. This was their way of life. This was their reality. To live in fear of this small boy, for the sea at storm inside of him.
But lately, lately it's been hard to pick this up like before. Lately it's been hard to justify this apprehension, still sharp in her side.
"I think," Temari finally says, mind working quick. His mouth has snapped shut, whatever he might've been planning to say cut off before it can come. His gaze is attentive, bright, round like that of a child's. It makes him look his own age. He is so eager to hear what she has to say. He needs this validation, he craves it in the way he once craved affection. Oh so very long ago. "I think it's important to understand that this isn't who you've always been. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that…we did this to you. We brought you to this point."
He considers this, for a very long moment. This room has one exit, the windows are narrow and purely decorative. Useless, too small for her to wriggle out of. The door is just past him, opened. She tries not to stare at it. She knows how volatile he can be. And for all his speak, she knows this is all theoretical at best. A conversation that may or may not leave this room at all.
But his gaze flickers, harmless.
"I do not know how to distinguish my actions from…from Shukaku," he says slowly, dropping his gaze. "I do not know where I end and…he begins. He has… He has embedded himself into me. He has made me forget who I might've been before."
Temari gnaws on the inside of her cheek. She has never talked to Gaara for this long. She has never heard him say so many words at once. "I… I remember," she tells him, nervously. She tugs on her sleeve and stops herself from looking away when he meets her gaze again. That sharp sting of fear starts up at her chest, as it always does, but she does not flinch. She does not shrink away. "I remember who you were."
There is a question there, clear as can be. His mouth thinning out, his eyes searching her face.
"I've always been afraid of you," she confesses quietly. "They said you were dangerous, they made you seem so dangerous. So I was afraid. I didn't ask why I should've been, I just knew I had to be. They said there was a monster inside of you, and so that made you a monster. But I remember how you were like, I remember you were kind. And sweet. I remember you were afraid, too. I remember you not understanding why you were alone. And I remember when you changed. And that… And that gave me a reason to be afraid."
She swallows audibly. His expression has not changed. This is not news to him.
"Shukaku did not own you so completely," she tells him, breathless, "not when you were younger."
His hand comes to rest over his middle, frowning again.
"It's easy to forget you're separate consciousness," she says. "You and him, you're not supposed to be interchangeable. When you were little, his actions were his actions. And yours were yours. I think… I think maybe he waited until you were low enough to take advantage of. And that if he…if he hadn't, you wouldn't have done what you've done."
"I wouldn't know," he says. "He's never wanted anything else."
Temari sighs tightly, almost relieved. "I think it's important we understand that you are not the same people. That he… That he is wholly to blame for the things he has forced you to do."
Gaara goes quiet. Perhaps this conversation has not gone where he'd anticipated, but it has made her somewhat confident. He has not taken her words the wrong way just yet.
"Have you ever," she begins, wringing her fingers. He lifts his gaze slowly to hers, waiting. "Have you ever not wanted to do it?"
He knows exactly what she means. He doesn't even hesitate. "I don't know. He took that from me, too."
Temari thinks she loves her younger brother, in some distant part of her. What does not echo back when she looks at him, a muted thing that shrunk and shrunk but never quite went away. It breathes its first sign of life, here, when this look comes over him. This confusion, this doubt, this fear of the unknown—visceral, as she has always known it to be.
He will disappear now, she can feel it. He has been exposed to too much for one day, he will need to evaluate his feelings. He will need to consider them in full, without distraction. And so she figures this won't hurt.
"I think you can change," she says, as confidently as she can manage. "I want to believe you can, too."
Gaara snaps shut, this new look shifting over his face before he backs out of the room. His mouth still curved in a frown, his brow furrowed, and his eyes shuttered with uncertainty.
.x.
A.U.: Hope you enjoyed. I wanted to continue it, but I backed myself into a corner.