AUTHOR'S NOTES: Based off of certain scenes from Gaara's flashbacks in episodes 75 and 76, from the point of view from the girl therein - hence, somewhat unreliable narration. I may not be aces at child psychology, but there does seem to be something of a gap between running away screaming and saying what she did - at least, saying it in quite that way.

Here's my attempt to fill in said gap. Of course, might be there isn't one and everyone else has figured this out already, but eh. Enjoy.

Monsters Don't Say Sorry

When they found out who had been at the door and what she had said to him, her father let out a high strangled noise. Her mother grabbed her shoulders and demanded that she go apologize, quickly, before -

Her mother didn't need to say before what. She'd imagined it all, in detail she didn't want, as the sand tightened around her ankle and leapt at her.

Of course, he was gone by the time they had the door open again. He'd left the bag on the doorstep. The bottle of ointment inside had cracked. She suspected her parents would have handled it with the same ginger care if it had been intact.

"What could you have been thinking, saying something like that?" they asked her, and they kept looking at the closed door. "What could you have been thinking?"

What she'd been feeling - that was easy. It started with irritation as she limped to the door, which tangled up in her suddenly-dry throat as she saw him - she thought she would choke to death right there before his sand could get near her, and thought that might be better. Then it all untangled, letting out what had turned into a dangerous anger - though she didn't think it was so dangerous. It was the smile that did it, she decided. That anxious little smile, and the way he held the bag out and up in front of his face the same way she remembered he'd held out the ball, like a shield from invisible kunai. Monsters didn't smile like that. Monsters didn't need shields. Monsters didn't say sorry. So he was just a little boy, a stupid boy, and he'd still hurt her but at least now she knew she could hurt him back.

He wasn't really a monster - she knew that now like she knew Tami wasn't really so stupid and Jiro wasn't really so clumsy. She was sure that wouldn't have stopped her saying it of them if they'd come knocking in the night, smiled as they said sorry and acted like they could just do that and it would be okay. And they were her friends. Just because he wasn't a monster didn't mean she had to let that pass.

She couldn't figure how to tell them all that, so all she said was that she wasn't sorry and she wouldn't say she was.

"Can't you be sorry for our sake?" said her father. "If it takes it into its head to do something over this -"

"He won't," she said. "I know he won't."

The next day she heard about the dead drunk in the street.

She was right, as it turned out, but for close on a decade she kept wondering if her luck would run dry.