AN: This is a prequel to Stairs of Sand on the Naruto side, but more of a very canon-compliant character study of Gaara before he met Naruto and in the 2.5 years Naruto was training. Also a lot of world building for Suna and the Land of Wind through Baki's eyes, based on a mix of Japanese(obviously), Arabian(think Aladdin) and desert nomad(mostly the Tuareg) culture.
Please be aware that this is going to be a very different society to the one you may have grown up in. Also, this is Gaara in the height of his insanity.
This Prologue isn't really necessary to this story, I just happened to be attacked by a Fallout-Suna plot bunny and I wanted to see if I could still write prose as well as I did in school. And I am sick and tired of stories that dumb down Gaara's insanity as well as 'Gaara meets girl' stories where she is miraculously on their first accidental meeting the one person who can get physically close without his sand reacting and/or who Shukaku likes!
Gaara is introduced as a villain. A wild card, at the least. He terrified us in the Chunin Exams Arc because he was the 'creepy little kid' stereotype -remember the hospital episode?- but with a frightening power to back it up and the decidedly non-reassuring fact that even his own team and family are threatened by him. Rant over. But the only pre-Chunin Exams fic with a decent Gaara I've seen so far is Forsaken of the Sand by BetweenTheSeaAndStars.
Greetings!
Welcome, traveler, to our humble camp. I hope the spirits gave you fair travelling?
I see that you are weary to the bone; come sit by our fire, where tales are unraveling.
Let it not be said that our tribe left a fellow wanderer in need; come sit and sup!
Lay down your pack and staff and take a bowl, let me fill your cup!
Brave and foolish equal it was for you to walk the sands alone,
For you look to be just a scholar, and so very far from home.
The spirits do not kindly take to intruders on their lands,
Shukaku must have seen fit to give you safe passage on his sands.
You say you come from cities with gates of gold and marble walls,
A place of painted ceilings, shelves of books and echoed lecture halls.
You say you seek the stories, the whispers of days gone by,
When shinobi ran these burning plains and a red moon once hung the sky.
When the Shadows of the Wind itself moved the dunes to their commands,
And the Dawn cast out it's tainted light across these barren lands.
That City of Sand is gone alas, given over to jackals, snakes and the hawk,
Streets unswept and shattered roof-shells, where once did warriors walk.
Many fled, but some did not; bones sun-bleached white still stay behind,
Great and small they gave their lives, for others who death sought to find.
We tribes of the sands alone remain, forgotten but not forgetting,
We remember stories of our ancestors, tell them when the stars are singing.
Shukaku tells them back to us, by his breath of storms, for he remembers all
The things that were, in the City of Sand, it's streets and between it's empty walls.
Take up your scroll and pen and ink, for to you a story we shall tell,
You recall the Shadows who ruled, some good and some not well?
There is one who stood apart, both from his successors and those before,
And although your histories speak his name, they do not open the door.
For you know his name, his glory, but can you say you know the man?
So we shall tell of just before, of madness, terror and bloody sand.
For he did not walk alone along the path of life: a brother who
Stood guard, a sister who remembered love, a teacher was there too.
So hearken now, scribe fast and well, watched by a moon crescent and pale,
For on a night like this an eon ago, in the City of Sand, so begins the tale.