Prologue: Suna as I Knew It

For the most part, I've always believed flowers to be overrated. Roses? Feh. Lilies? Puh-lease. Orchids? Not for me, no thanks. I've always tried to find beauty where others wouldn't normally look. Like in cactus flowers, which are so common around here people hardly give them a second glance. Dandelions, where every little weed-seed is a wish. And, especially, foxtails.

My mother, Um-ma, is most definitely to blame for this. She always loved them, having grown up in a world of lush vegetation near a lazy, clear river, with clumps of them growing taller than she was, in rich teals, greens, and maroons. Her parents, wealthy and always striving for perfection, thought them a scourge and were always trying to hack them away from their view of the river and from where they would spring up in their gardens. But the persistence of the so-called weeds by the riverbanks inspired Um-ma, who was a tiche rebellious by nature, and she began to hoard seeds in a beautiful leather pouch on her right hip so she could sow them in the garden when her parents were particularly irking her.

She would have never met Papa if not by a stroke of fate. She was a natural in the arts of medicine-making and chakra healing, and Papa, a medical ninja from Suna, had been sent to her country to learn of their medicines and techniques for use in the third great shinobi war. Not knowing the language, he wandered around and around asking for directions, but until he quite literally bumped into Um-ma, no one understood him. She spoke almost fluently because of her social status, and was able to tell him that the person he had been sent to learn from had recently passed, but she would be willing to introduce him to her teacher, and help tutor him herself. It was love at first sight, apparently.

Naturally, Um-ma's parents disapproved, but when Papa's mission ended, instead of staying behind, she eloped with him, so suddenly that when she arrived in Suna she had nothing but the clothes on her back and her pouch of foxtail seeds. It was just after the war had ended, and Suna's medical nins, mostly comprised of ninjas from my clan, had taken a great hit. The only ones left were my father, a cousin of his, and Gramma and Grampa (who were retired, so they only really helped those with the most severe of injuries). My father, knowing that my mother missed her home, helped her re-open the clan pharmacy, which had closed when the war began and its owners had been sent to the front lines, and taught her some of Suna's medical strategies in the brief period he was given before he was sent out on mission after mission. Times were rough, but the necessity of medicine and medical personnel never wanes, and so that little store and my father's many missions helped to keep us afloat when other families were nearly starving.

During the start of these bad times, I was conceived. In excitement, Um-ma rigged a makeshift irrigation system to the patches of ground on either side of the entrance to our little pharmacy (Suna Sky's Medicines, named for out clan, Sorabi, and our village) and tried her best to plant her foxtails. The first few tries didn't take, but at the start of her third trimester, the first shoots began appearing. Um-ma was ecstatic, and considered them a good omen.

Papa didn't.

"Why are weeds a good omen?" He asked her.

"They ahle pelsistent," Um-ma asserted, "They shourd not glow hele, but they did. That pelsistence is what I want oula chird to inhelit."

Papa still doesn't like like that explanation. I do.

I was born with deep red-brown hair, a blend of mostly Um-ma's dark brown and some of Papa's strawberry gold. Very nearly maroon, like Um-ma's foxtails. I was christened Miyako, beautiful night child, for the lovely night I was born in, and for my clan. Growing up, I always looked more like Um-ma. My thick, straight hair, my round face and almond eye shape, but I did have my father's gray-blue eyes. That much, at least.

I grew up happy, if introverted. I liked to read and play with imaginary friends. I would roam the alleys and explore by myself, using the ninja skills that I was being tutored in to reach places that other children my age, who weren't yet trained or who were orphaned and would probably not receive much formal training, could reach. I thought the other children were mostly rude and stupid, and so tried to avoid most of them when I could. The rest I just didn't feel like spending time with, because I always got so nervous when trying to talk and found it unpleasant, not realizing that shyness was normal. So I had no real friends, but I was okay with that, and my parents were okay with that, because it meant more time for me to study to become a medical nin as soon as possible, to help my father in the field. (my clan is famous for having abnormally large amounts of chakra, and for having very precise control of it, so we made excellent medics, and my path was chosen for me before I was born.)

I found a strange kinship with pets that families were abandoning so that they could afford to feed their children, and fed what ones I found that were still alive. More often, I found skeletons of those that died or were killed by the skinny strays that had roamed for years, bones picked clean by scavengers and bleached by the sun. I was four when I came across the first skeleton with a collar. It was a little cat, and the collar was a faded red. There was a tag that read "Buyo". I took the collar home and hung it on the bar where my curtains hung, so that I would look at it ever day and Buyo would know someone was thinking of him. Years later, by the time I finally stopped the somewhat morbid habit, I was unable to close my curtains, but I didn't mind. I liked moonlight streaming into my room, and I liked to imagine that the once-beloved pets did, too.

When I was about six, I caught a group of children around my age drowning kittens in a water barrel for fun. I chased them off, but there was only one left alive, a mostly-white calico. I cried as I carried him home and Um-ma cried when she heard his story (she was always the type to leave food out for the stray cats, and sometimes the dogs). We dried him off, and I expressed a desire to go and find the kids who did that to the little kittens and beat them up. Um-ma was shocked, and lectured me in Korean, her native tongue, which she had been trying for a while now not to speak around me (she thought this might help me make at least one friend). The words she gave me stayed with me the rest of my life.

"Never EVER be cruel to another living being for the sake of being cruel. You will be a ninja someday, so I know this will be hard for you, but without being directly provoked, it will make you meaner. To go seek them out and have vengeance will make you a worse person than them. Be kind, above all, my little night sky, no matter how much you dislike them or what they're doing. Always smile. Always be kind."

Anyway, Buyo is now a fat and sassy shop cat. He keeps the mice out of our second-floor stockroom. I sing to him, sometimes, about what a good cat he is. Sometimes, he sings back. Sometimes, Um-ma joins us. I inherited her beautiful singing voice, luckily, and she had coached me a little on how to sing, but the only times I really sang were when she or Papa asked me to, or when I felt like singing to or with Buyo, so while I may have had a pretty voice, it was nothing I focused on much earlier in my life.

When I was seven, I had my first direct indirect encounter with Gaara of the Desert. He was sitting on a swing and I was wandering along in my usual fashion and I saw him look at me out of the corner of my eye, so I looked back and waved at him. He waved back, and then I jumped up into the second floor balcony of an abandoned house and that was it. Shortly after, I heard about the assassination attempt and the transformation of the shy boy on the swingset to a cold-hearted "monster". (believe it or not, I slept through the Shukaku's rampage. Honest to God I did.) Um-ma kept saying how wrong it was, for that little boy to not be given the amount of love and attention he deserved, and Papa kept saying that the Shukaku should never have been sealed in him in the first place, or in anyone, for the sake of our village having an "ultimate weapon". So, I made up my mind to be the one person to be kind. I already walked past his little cactus greenhouse every morning while going up to Grampa's office for lessons. I had often seen him there with his uncle Yashamaru, but had never really said anything before.

The first time I did was the next morning, and it very nearly frightened me out of ever doing it again, the way he stared at me as I went past. I just said "good morning" quickly and then once out of his sight ran the rest of the way to Grampa's office. I may want to be kind, but I didn't want to die.

The stares eventually went from blood-curdling hatred to major annoyance and suddenly to complete and total ignorance of me. After a few times of this I decided I didn't like it. I was doing him a favor by greeting him each morning like he was a normal person and I was going to be acknowledged for it, thank you. So I leaned in the door-jamb one morning for several minutes, until he glared at me over his shoulder, and asked me calmly if I would like to die. I just smiled, gave my "good morning!" and left. Yes, I did still fear for my life at times, but now I just figured if I died trying to be nice it would be a nice thing to go on my headstone. And I only ever had to do that again twice before he picked up that he had to be acknowledging my existence every morning when I walked past. Our relationship evolved into me walking in at seven sharp each morning, walking past his doorway and saying "good morning," while his eyes tracked me impassively from one side of the frame to the other, letting me know that yes, he did see me, and therefore I could keep on walking as there was no need to bother him with my useless presence for any longer than what was necessary. I was happy with just that, though that little bit of quirkiness and my intensive medical training meant that I really didn't have any friends besides cousin Hanako, who was two years my senior and took lessons with me, ergo, no friends, really.

Lessons were a pain. I went in early in the morning and left in the early evening most days when I was younger. I would be tested on anything and everything on any given day, and Hanako, would try to help me where I was struggling. Or, she did, until she became a genin and stopped getting lessons from Grampa and moved on to lessons from Gramma. I knew I wasn't as good as her. My taijutsu was okay, my genjutsu a little better, but I sucked at ninjutsu. Not because of chakra control, but because I had a "stutter" of sorts. In sequences of more than three hand signs (and sometimes in sequences of three hand signs) I would trip up on one of the transitions, and botch the following hand sign. Grampa assured the judges for the genin exams that as a medic I wouldn't really need to know more than the standard shadow clones, transformation, and replacements, and so I was still able to pass at age ten, just in time for my life to take an irreversible turn.

See, Um-ma gave birth that year. Nine days after my birthday, on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of January, my little sister Haru (Korean for "day", in order to stick with the naming theme I started) was born. She had strawberry blonde hair and amber brown eyes. Her first word, at eleven months, was "Miyako". Her second was "butt". Both would reflect lifelong obsessions.

Example. When I was twelve, I got my long hair cut into a highly stylized bob. It started at my chin on the left, and spiraled down to the bottom of my breast on the right, with very straight-cut, heavy bangs. Haru wanted her hair to look just like mine, but didn't know her lefts and rights and accidentally got it cut in the opposite direction, plus she forgot the bangs, but she was so happy no one ever told her otherwise. (though Um-ma started pinning her foremost locks behind her ears, so they wouldn't get in her way.) I loved her then, and I love her now, but she was rather tiring to live with when she was little. When she wasn't busy acting like the little child she was, she was acting very Haru-ish, which was not much different. She never really matured out of her behavior, come to think of it. The only positive thing about this is that come nightfall she is always asleep at a reasonable hour, as she expends so much energy existing day to day that she just crashes.

Not much else happened between then and the summer in which I was thirteen. I kept a journal and started writing in it in upside-down, backwards Korean, inspired by some foreign anatomist whose work I had to study but whose name I could never remember, so no one could ever read it. I spent more time running the shop when I wasn't being assigned to missions with other genin teams. (as a medic, I had no specified team – there were so few of us to go around at the time that even though Hanako and I weren't fully certified yet, we still went out on missions where medical assistance might be required.) I babysat Haru a lot, which usually meant she just followed me everywhere and talked at me a lot. I still visited Grampa every morning, because Gramma had just been given an official spot on the Council of Elders and so I had to go see her in her office every morning. This meant I still wished Gaara a good morning as I walked by, and his eyes still followed me impassively. I liked to pretend that the animosity that had once been there was gone, but I was nice and not suicidal, so I never stopped to try to extend our little ritual. Life was just pretty normal.

Until I decided to intervene on one of nature's cruel realities, and saved a fennec fox from an eagle...

.:FINITE:.

First thing of Naruto in so long. I am currently Narutarding so hard right now you have no idea.

I was mostly inspired to do this by a lack of true gems in the Gaara/OC category. I know there are some there, but the bad fics, in my opinion, often outweigh the good in most fandoms (especially in OC pairings) and so I decided to try my hand. At the very least, it'll be better than My Immortal and Twila da girl who was in love w a vampir. (IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM, GO READ THEM.)

Anyway, please leave a review. First -official- chapter will be coming shortly. :)

Also, may I just say FUCK YOU FANFICTION TEXT EDITOR FOR NOT LETTING ME USE TABS OR FULLY UNDERLINE MY TITLE, BECAUSE THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MY FORMATTING SO MUCH NICER.