Second Oneshot, Hypothesis
Looking back, a Kazekage wonders where it all went wrong. And considers how hard Yashamaru tried to raise his son.
One year old. His first birthday.
And there was something maddeningly awful about what a happy child he was.
I wasn't the kind of father to foster on my son something as ridiculous as a birthday party. Cakes were just extra calories the toddler had no need of; party devices were choking hazards and noisemakers.
But Yashamaru still saw it fit to place the boy in his high chair, and present to him a pastry drowning in frosting of all colors.
And soon Gaara was drowning in colors and sugar, the cake reduced to some splattered, sweet tasting toy.
He reached out for his uncle--who sang him a song--and patted a little spot of icing on the man's nose.
It's a celebration.
Happy, happy days for you.
One solitary candle flickered in Yashamaru's hands. His eyes reflected its shining glow before be gave a whip of breath to extinguish it.
The toddler laughed, and almost mumbled along with his uncle's song.
Happy, happy days for you.
Another year down the road.
Another number on your name,
Baby, you're getting old.
And I watched from the doorway, listening to the song that he had sung a few times on my own birthdays.
At two years of age, Gaara had been plagued with nightmares.
It was before he was even really old enough to voice that something scared him.
To comprehend that he had a life to fear for.
But even though the demon in him thrashed, at that time there had been nothing to fear.
Gaara's body was not developed enough to be possessed by Shukaku.
Yet still his caretaker panicked while the child rolled around, fighting the sheets that encased him. Like some infant reptile trying to escape the shell around it.
Yashamaru couldn't handle the nightmares. That puzzled me.
He could handle the trembling that sometimes overtook the teal eyed child. He could handle the days of crippling silence Gaara sometimes brought. He could handle the tantrums, the long stares at the photograph of her on that windowsill, the fact the son was growing up to look so much like his father rather then his mother, and how desperate the child was for attention because he knew something was missing.
And yet the nighttime cries and shuffles were enough to send the blonde scrambling to me, back to Baki, back to anyone who could take the child away from him and make him stop screaming.
And I so easily remember the image of when Yashamaru finally lost it. Sitting on the couch, his arms slowly rocked back and forth, cradling the bundle in his arms. Gaara wriggled still, muffled whines and broken sentences, signaling that he was finally awake.
But the other did not seem to realize it. And tears fell on the child's head, and the boy couldn't see where the tiny droplets were coming from.
I couldn't move then, watching my brother-in-law rock his arms back and forth, humming and sniffing, hair dangling in his face and he looked so much like a memory that for a while I lost myself in the image that took me far back to some day I might have looked happily on starting a family.
Until my son's wails eventually reached a throat ripping magnitude.
Yashamaru relinquished the child he held with such a resignation, he could never quite be a mother, or the mother he was trying to be.
At four years of age, it finally happened.
He had been a bright child then. He could talk clearly. He could understand ninjutsu enough that he could actually manage a technique.
In fact, it had been just a few hours earlier where we had trained together.
Gaara could not easily move stone, but sand itself seem to willingly obey him. Every little gesture it would follow, and the boy used it like fingerpaint. The walls of the training ground were periodically covered in sand.
But he got tired easily. So very tired.
I patted my son on his shoulder, told him what a good job he was doing.
He said he wanted to take a nap.
I laughed. I didn't know better.
I sent him back home, away from the training grounds that were truly too large for a child his age. He was made more readily for playgrounds, seesaws, swings.
Come nighttime, and there were screams in my village.
They weren't Gaara's.
He was causing them.
Cocooned in layers of hardened sand, he forced himself in a frantic pace through the streets, three pairs of ANBU tailing him. When someone informed me of the issue, they didn't tell me it was him.
That it was Gaara snarling, slashing at everything that moved, face contorted with some horrid flesh the color of desert and night, and eyes that glowed like lanterns.
Four years old.
I had to stop the ANBU from striking him down where he stood. But I'm not sure if they would have been able.
And he faced me, eyes alight. He was drooling like a rabid animal.
Kazekage? He asked me, voice distorted with shrieking tones, They made you Kazekage? The aura rolling off of him stung my eyes and made my head throb. I readied my own energy. If it were me that had to fell him, then so be it—
And there, in a flash of blood smeared clothing came Yashamaru in between us. He was nursing a wound already, clutching at the gash across his chest.
Gaara, please stop this. He begged, his back against me, almost as if trying to hide me from him. Gaara, you don't mean to hurt anyone.
Not Gaara. Not Gaara, he would never. But me? The creature in my son's body snarled, tones falling to a low rumble, and I felt Yashamaru's body jerk as the child was there in an instant. His bloodied robes got even bloodier. Mine was well.
Gaara was an experiment. I knew that from the beginning. Back before year two, year one, year zero---the first second.
Experiments fail.
Sometimes they do.
