Epilogue
"What happened to you?" His voice was rough and scratchy. He grabbed my face with strong fingers and rough hands, making my downcast eyes look up at him. It hurt to see those eyes so full of feelings for me, so tortured at my decaying sprit. "What did they do to you?" he asked the most painful of questions and the guilt in me made it unbearable to look at him. I looked down and my eyes stung with unshed tears. He waited, his hands never moving from my face.
"They took everything away from me..." My voice cracked as I voiced the devastation of my mind. I had no ability to speak above a whisper. And the next part I uttered made my tears spill freely, my pains ripped open for him too see.
"They took everything I wanted to give to you." I felt him still, his breathing slow down, as though he was deep in thought. He pulled me into his tight embrace, holding me so bone crushingly close. I looked over his shoulder at nothing, I was hollow now and the guilt at that tore and obliterated me to absolute nothing. Because he deserved better than some broken girl who had who couldn't feel anymore.
"I'm going to kill them." and it was the only promise I knew he could give.
And it wasn't enough.
A kunoichi who just never seemed to get when she was in danger.
She woke up one day and there were no memories to color her mind. She wasn't anyone. She couldn't remember anything before that day. The day she woke up in the sand and heat of the desert, the village of Suna. The Hidden Sand Village.
She was different. She could see it in her skin, in her eyes in her hair. She saw the differences in how people 'felt' around her. She grew up an orphan. But despite her loneliness she was happy, a happy child.
And she met someone who 'felt' like her, and all she wanted was for him to be her friend.
The kids in the streets were playing ball. She, who had no name, was in the shade of some buildings, knees curled into herself. She stared out blankly at the sand moving in the wind. A red ball rolled towards her and stopped directly in front of her. A boy yelled at her.
"Hey throw our ball back." She didn't respond and he neared. He was a regular village boy, his hair brown and his eyes a dark green. He ran up to her smiling, his front teeth missing. He picked up the ball smiling shyly at her.
"Won't you play with us?" he cocked his head to the side, his smile widening. The girl just stared, lifting her head from her arms. The boy kept smiling but he felt weird. She wasn't talking, only starring with a blank face.
"Don't you talk?" She just kept staring. Her mouth opened but she didn't get the chance to speak.
"Kiren, are you coming?" Kiren, the boy, looked over at his 3 friends, he smiled and waved. He turned to the white haired girl and offered his hand.
"Come on, we don't bite!" He giggled and his eyes closed in happiness. She didn't take his hand. It scared her, to touch him, even if that's all she wanted to do was feel another human to know she was alive. She stood, leaning against the building. She was a mess, dirty and dusty and too thin. She wobbled a little and the boy didn't know in his head that it was wrong to see her this way. He felt sadness in him but he wanted to play with her. He saw her a few times around town. She would go through the trash.
He started walking to his friends, laughing as she followed. She didn't smile but he just thought she was sad, sad because his mommy told him she didn't have a mommy or daddy. She just stopped a few feet away from them, just starting at them, observing. She saw a few she recognized.
Then there was the boy with red hair. He had black around his eyes like he was so tired. The black made his eyes practically glow, and she liked them a lot. They reminded her of pictures she'd seen of the ocean. Pictures she found in magazines in trashcans. He had a feeling about him that told her he was like her. All alone.
He was off to the side like he was not asked to be played with. The boys threw the ball at her and she caught it. She walked innocently to the red haired boy. The other boys just starred at her. She was brave and they were scared for her but they wouldn't say anything.
The boy with red hair watched her as she approached the ball partially in front of her face as though she were shy or scared. He thought more the later since that's how everyone felt around him. He was sitting in the sand; facing the boys' play their game and he watched her intently as she kneeled in front of him.
"Play?" Her voice came out scratchy and cracked as though she rarely spoke. Underneath that he could tell she had a nice voice. His eyes grew wide as he stared at her. Unable to understand her question.
"You want to play with us?" He was speechless, but he nodded, standing slowly. The sand shifting of his accord. He looked up at her with those sea like eyes that seemed so haunted and smiled a small smile. It was taken a few moments later.
"He's a monster! Don't play with him! He will eat you!" Kiren yelled at her. The other boys joined in and the girl became so angry. He wasn't a monster. He didn't look like one at all. Especially not the kind that ate you. She glared at them, her icy blue eyes frosting them with cold looks.
"He's not a monster. He doesn't look like a monster at all." She yelled at them, throwing the ball at them. Kiren seemed scared for her.
"Don't, he really will kill you!"
"Leave her, if she's stupid enough to be near him than we can't save her!" Kiren's eyebrows rose and he looked at her with fear, but turned with his friends. She turned to see the red haired boy looking down. He looked so incredibly sad. She kneeled down and drew a heart into the sand. He looked up at her and saw her smiling. He hadn't seen her smile ever and his heart caught in his little body. Fluttering in a way he didn't' know how to explain.
"We can play together than." His smile returned quickly, never having anyone stick up for him or even want to play with him. They started to play in the sand since he seemed so shy. She was making castles and little mountains of sand. The sand was calling him and it didn't want to hurt her, and it made him feel good. The sand never wanted to not kill someone.
She was humming to herself and he was listening in silence when a rock came from nowhere and smashed into his head. He looked up and saw the boys from earlier. They looked angry. The girl gasped as she saw the blood dripping from the gash on his forehead. She reached a small hand out and was about to touch it but stopped. She turned to stare icily at the boys.
"Hey that's not nice! STOP!" The girl put her body in front of her new friend. He seemed so hurt. His fists were shaking and she needed to protect him. Kiren looked hurt and yelled.
"We came back to save you but if you want to be his friend over mine then you are a monster too!" the boys started throwing rocks at her. They pelted and ripped into her from all sides. She started bleeding and tears pricked her eyes, her lip trembled, but she didn't want to cry in front of them. She kept her hands out, trying to block the rocks from hitting her friend. He kept starring at her in wonderment, and then a rage built up inside him and all he saw was red.
The sand moved to protect the girl. A wall of sand solidified in front of her. The boys screamed and gasped. The girl looked up after the rocks stopped hitting her. Her eyes grew wide.
"Wow." Was all she could wordlessly muster. She turned a huge grin on her dirty face to show her friend, but when she turned to look at him, his body was hunched over as though in pain. He was holding his head and he seemed so angry. She felt the rage in him and it was leaking out. She saw the sand roil and coil around him as though reacting to his agitated and enraged state. She fell with the surprise she couldn't control.
"Hey, are you ok? They can't hit us, this sand is protecting us." But he couldn't hear her. The demon was screaming inside him and it wanted blood. Blood for blood. For the blood of his new friend who defended him so selflessly. He wanted to protect her too.
The sand snaked towards the boys who started screaming as it latched onto them. The white haired girl kept staring at him, scared for him. She was about to touch him when he started screaming out. She was scared he was hurt beyond what she could know. But then everything happened too quickly. The other boys screamed but stopped and ninja from the village were everywhere and they grabbed her new red haired friend and took him away. She was pushed aside like so much excess.
She hadn't seen that boy for a long time. Three years passed and she had found a family to take her in. She was able to eat and have a place to sleep. They were a local ninja family that had given her a name and a home.
Nakamitsu Shiori was an odd girl by all who knew her. She didn't like cats or dogs but liked lizards and fish. She stayed up late at night and didn't sleep until 4 in the morning. She had blond hair that was so light it was white. She had the brightest blue eyes, the bluest of eyes in the village, but not the most unique as the boy with red hair and the sea eyes, she thought, had the best eyes.
She thought of him often, but never found it in herself to ask. Then one fateful night she had run into him.
She couldn't sleep like always and snuck out of her bedroom as she often did. Her father was on a mission in another village and her mother was sleeping. She had come home from a strenuous mission. She was a sensei to genin in the village.
So it was easy to sneak out with anyone taking notice. She was now 8 years old and found the city at night peaceful and much cooler than day. Her hair had grown out very long and touched the hem of her dress. She was walking the streets, towards one of her favorite places in Suna, a clearing of trees near her home but a few blocks away. She hummed quietly to herself as she skipped along. She played ninja in her head, hiding from imaginary people.
But the people weren't imaginary and they were hiding in the shadows watching her with a sick need that destroyed innocence.
The red haired boy didn't sleep. He stared out at the sleeping desert city of Suna. His emotions masked by layers of numbness. Like most nights his thoughts drifted to the only person he believed he could call a friend. The only one who had tried to protect a monster. He was 9 years old and already he truly was a murderer, sent out on missions by his father to kill many who were labeled 'enemies'. He had no heart and so it was an easy task. It sated the inner demon within him to taste the blood and death through the sand that he controlled.
As he stared out at the city, a niggling sensation came at him. In the back of his head he couldn't finger what it was but it told him something he never felt before. It made his stomach feel sick and he couldn't understand. He hadn't eaten anything to cause an upset stomach. But the sick feeling turned into a compulsion that drove him to move. To search out where it was leading him; he followed the odd compulsion.
He traveled the city in a cloud of sand, starring down at the quiet streets. His body becoming frantic, it was beginning to grow and hurt into a need that needed to be satisfied. He had to find the reason behind this uncomfortable feeling.
Shiori screamed. Her body arching as her innocence was crudely ripped from her young and fragile body. Tears streaked her face and a scream stayed locked in her throat. Pain seared through her and her fear was something tangible. The monsters that had followed her had their sick hands all over her youthful and innocent body. Their laughs into something maniacal would haunt her waking mind for years.
They lay there, unable to fight back, she was too weak. She let them defile her and so shut herself inside herself, trying not to feel what they were doing to her, trying not to 'know'. But it couldn't be stopped. Her body was ripping open and it hurt so much, and it was at expense of their pleasure. Shiori wasn't able to understand, wasn't able to know the pain and damage she was receiving, but she felt it, oh how she could feel it and it just numbed her even further. The tears kept coming and silent cries she kept screaming with every single ounce of her soul for someone to know and for someone to come and save her.
Blood dripped from her mouth as she held in the screams she couldn't release as the men kept taking away parts of her. Parts she wouldn't understand weren't there until she was older.
At this point the compulsion was a burning hot thing that was driving him almost to the points of madness, which wasn't too hard. This nine-year-old boy murderer had to find whatever was causing this deep and scary ache in him. His sand flared out searching, needing it to end it as much as the master.
He lowered the sand cloud down further into the village; his senses became acute as it he was brought to the place that left a painful need inside him.
And what his eyes saw he couldn't understand, but it left an enraged wrath in him that killing blindly was his only option.
She was there, battered and broken. The only one, the 'only' one who ever looked him not afraid. His sand moved quickly towards the men that pinned down her body, her fragile and busted and brittle small body. She lay at odd angles, staring at him. Only at him. The look in her eyes scared him the most, and he had never really felt fear. Her bright translucent blue eyes were wide. So large in her face filled with a look of fear he recognized, as that's how many people looked at him.
And then he saw red as he heard their laughs turn to bloody screams.
He didn't kill them right away, that would have been too nice and he was never the kind to be that way, and neither was the demon who was inside him restless and in need of blood, of vengeance. His childish face contorted with a rage that most grown men would never know.
He shredded them like so much paper. Their blood painted the streets and small alleyway. Their screams reverberated off the walls in the memory of an echo. He heard them coming. The ones who felt the flux of his chakra. He gently, oh so gently, wrapped the soft sand around the broken girl with the white hair and brought her to him. She was naked and bruised, bloody and staring at him, just staring.
The ache in him that had compelled him to this alleyway, to this girl, subsided the moment she was near him. He could have touched her but he didn't know how, not after seeing how those men had defiled her in ways a boy of nine should not see or a girl of eight experiences.
The fear was in every inch of her, and scarred into her eyes, but she looked at him, it wasn't fear of him he felt, but fear for herself, for those men, for him. He covered her body with his sand, shielding her, and he watched as she relaxed if only a little bit.
"You are safe now." The only words of comfort he could offer her, as he did not know how. He deadpanned them and it would seem as though he was heartless and did not care, but she was the only one. And he knew it. A question was in her eyes, one she couldn't bring to her bloody lips. He just kept staring at her, being near her in his own way.
Then they came. Ibiki was the first to arrive, and then his father and the other jounin that watched over him. They saw the scene before him and he knew they wouldn't understand. They called his name,
"Gaara, what has happened here, who is that child?" The medic nin's who came whenever his chakra enflamed like it did started working on the girl immediately. His sand retracted hesitantly and he starred at her until he walked away, forced by Ibiki's hand.
"Her name is Nakamitsu Shiori, She's Yuri's and Nagato's child. Someone inform them." Those were the last fading words that he heard from the scene of his crime. That name was forever burned into his mind. Shiori.
Shiori sat in the hospital bed. Her parents had placed her in there for 2 weeks straight. They had posted guards out every night in fear. Her mother, Yuri, would sleep next to her every night singing to her child who had been so damaged. She felt helpless about her little girl's pain. She watched her as she stared out the window. The sky was blue and the desert was still its rustic red and heavily pigmented gold and browns. She hadn't spoken since the incident, and quiet wasn't something that Shiori did.
Nagato had come home immediately after hearing of what happened. He felt so guilty he only asked for local missions and refused to go anywhere that wasn't near Shiori.
Yuri watched her as she stared out the window. The hurt in her little girl was something tangible. Yuri felt it deep in her bones, how broken her little singer was, and it broke something inside her. She stood and walked over to Shiori, grabbing a brush in the side table. She sad on the bed beside her and ran her fingers through her hair, brushing as she went through the soft snow-white locks. Shiori began to sing, and it was the most beautiful sound Yuri ever heard.
She started to cry silent tears as she heard her daughter sing such a sad melody. She brushed her hair until Shiori stopped singing and then they just sat in silence for a little bit.
"Where did you hear that song, baby?" She kept starring out the window, but she clenched her hands in small fists and it didn't escape her notice.
"It just came to me. I made it up." She hugged her little girl to her body, a sick guilt twisted into her stomach.
"Do you like to sing?" Shiori turned around to look at her adopted mother, a woman she had come to love so tenderly as if she had given her life.
"Mama, when I sing... I feel good... in here." The little girl brought a small fist to her heart and Yuri was incapable of not crying. She nodded and smiled as tears kept spilling.
"Oh my baby girl." and she brought Shiori into a tight embrace as she held the girl to her and cried. The little girl started to cry as well, the emotions of her mother and seeing her cry bringing her to tears again.
That night her mother slept in the chair on the other side of the room and Shiori watched her, unable to sleep. The nightmares had haunted her, making her relive it every time she fell asleep. When they gave her sleeping medication she had no choice, but she had tried to let them know she was ok. So there she sat up alone, starring out the window and occasionally at her stirring mother.
The moonlight streaked into the small hospital room and it was the only thing outside that she could see. She kept staring at it not aware of the sand that leaked into the hospital room.
She didn't notice the red haired boy until she turned her head. She nearly screamed but caught it in her throat, making only a slight eeping noise. Her mother stirred but rolled over in the chair and fell asleep. She turned back to look at Gaara. His eyes glowed a vicious sea blue green in the moonlight and they mesmerized the little girl. He was her hero after all. He walked up to her; so silent she almost thought he wasn't real.
He stopped right in front of her. He was caught off guard by the pureness of her light blue eyes. The moonlight almost gave them a silver glow. He reached a tentative hand out and touched her cheek, or rather poked it. She just stared at him.
"You're ok," His voice was callous and harsh and sounded so monotone, there was no inflection of emotion. But he wasn't so numb anymore, not when it came to her, only when it came to her. But as soon as he left her presence he was the same. His demon causing his loss of sanity every second, but when he was near her, he felt a sort of calm inside his chest. So he felt a strange sensation as though he dropped something heavy he had been carrying around and not noticing. Yes... it was relief. He watched her watch him. Curious in those eyes of ice.
He kept watching those eyes and his body stiffened as he saw them start to sparkle like diamonds as they filled with tears.
"Why are you crying?" he deadpanned, his nonexistent brows raised in a monotone question.
"I'm... I-I-m so sorry... G-Ga-Gaara-k-kun." She started sobbing as huge tears leaked down her face. Gaara was at a loss, and so very confused. His face was heated with the term of endearment she used, but he didn't know how to respond to her crying.
"Stop that." He snapped out a little harshly. She stopped immediately and looked up at him, eyes wide and lip trembling. "Why are you sorry?" Her lips became to tremble as new tears began to fall, but she tried her hardest not to cry because she knew Gaara-kun didn't like her crying, so she breathed hard containing her sobs as it tore at her throat to let them out.
"B-Because you had to s-save me... I wasn't strong enough..." He stared her down, arrogant and thoughtful. How stupid could she be, she was a weak girl with no ninja skill sets and he was the demon vessel for the Shukaku? How could she have possibly not have needed his help and why is she sad about that.
"Then become strong." He simply stated. She stopped crying immediately after he said those words. She looked at him, the moonlight glinted of his Sand Village headband and she looked back up at him with her eyes of blue dawn.
"If I was a ninja, I could be with you?" His thoughts stumbled as he looked at her, eyebrows scrunched again, and his face reacting without him understanding why as it heated at her words.
"You must become very strong." She nodded, her eyes burning with the icy blue. He saw her shoulders tense and her hands ball into fists.
"So then I can protect you Gaara-kun." She smiled and inside him something fractured. He turned around, his heart beating. In him he shunned the idea, wanted to be true but knew he wouldn't allow it. Knew even that Shukaku had rejected the idea in him so strongly he shook his head, eyes closing slowly.
"No." He said so quietly she almost didn't hear it, but she had. Her shoulder's fell.
"Why. Gaara-kun?" Her voice cracked.
"Because I am a monster, and you are... "Too pure to be around me. His mind was shocked at what he didn't say but he shook it off as he turned to leave, the sand swirling. He saw her face before he left, and it seemed just as sad as how he felt, but refused to know that's how he felt.
Shiori stayed awake until that morning's first light, unable to sleep in the dark, knowing he had come to see her, the only person who had protected her and became her friend.