"Kankuro, get the door!" Temari's voice shouted faintly from the other side of the house.
"What?! Why me?"
"Because I'm busy, dimwit! Go get the door!" Their family seemingly had an odd way of showing affection.
The door opened to reveal a grumpy Kankuro.
"Oh, hey Sakura! I wasn't expecting you over so quickly!" Kankuro perked up considerably when he saw who was standing at the door.
"Come on in."
He walked down the hallway behind where he'd been standing and Sakura followed him.
The house had high ceilings and was furnished with a Spartan-like tendency. It was the cold colors of grays, silvers, and blacks, but still managed to feel welcoming. She thought that maybe it was the slight messiness. A book placed precariously here, a large cushion in the middle of the living room, but overall, it was pretty tidy.
But there was something slightly off about it. What was it…?
'You're right there's something weird.'
Sakura just ignored her Inner, too distracted by observing her surroundings to scold her for interrupting her train of thought.
Temari's head peeked from around the corner. "Oh, hey Sakura. Are you allergic to anything?"
"No, not really."
"Good. I think you'll like what I have planned. Kankuro, why don't you show her your study?"
Kankuro shrugged.
'Why does it feel like she's trying to set me up with her brother?' Sakura thought.
'Not happening!' Inner had flared back to life at her innocent thought.
But she ignored her and followed him around a corner and down a flight of stairs into the basement.
Strangely enough, the basement was divided in half by a thick stone wall. On one side there was a large, well-used punching bag. Normal enough compared to some of her other friends and their odd eccentricities. The other side was filled with wood carvings and the tools used to make them. This seemed rather odd to Sakura. The normal basement items were still there, a couch, a TV, a shelf with books, and a few boxes stacked discreetly in the corner.
Kankuro walked over to the side with the wood.
"This is my workshop." He was obviously a little nervous about showing her his personal corner of the house.
Sakura gave him a small encouraging smile.
"I would've taken Wood Shop at school, but there was a prerequisite of taking a basic art class first." He seemed a little more comfortable after she hadn't made fun of him for having a love of carving.
And how could she? At least he had a passion.
He told her that she could watch TV or use the training room or stay and sketch something if she wanted to. He also mentioned that there was a fridge in the corner and that she was welcome to help herself to whatever she liked.
"The only rule down here is: don't break anything, but other than that, you can really do whatever you want."
After he was reassured that she didn't feel awkward, judging by how she went over to the mini-fridge, grabbed a drink, flopped down on the couch in his shop, and turned on American Ninja Warrior, he took one of the small figures on the table and took to studiously carving it.
Sakura was a little uncomfortable at first, but was soon eased by how concentrated he was on what he was doing.
'He really loves what he does.' Sakura thought enviously.
A little more than an hour later:
"Sakura, I gotta go to my room and get something. Be right back, okay?"
"Would you mind if I came with you? I'm a little stiff."
'You'd better not be thinking about anything else.'
Sakura gave Inner a mental look while she waited for his response.
"Sure."
Kankuro led her up the stairs they had come down, through the main floor a little ways, and up another flight of stairs.
'Where's Gaara?' She thought. She hadn't seen or heard anything that would indicate that a third person lived here at all.
'See? You really do like him.'
"Now be really, really quiet. We don't want to disturb him." Kankuro disrupted her giving a mental strangling to her Inner's incessant chatter.
She nodded, convinced what he said was important by how worried he looked.
The brown haired boy padded quietly to a room at the end of the hall. There were two doors right next to it. One was open to show a bathroom. The other, to the left, was painted black and no sound at all emanated from within.
Kankuro opened his wooden door. His room had a dresser, a twin sized bed, a nightstand, and a shelf of pictures built into the wall.
The pink head bent closer to look at the pictures as her companion rummaged around in his closet.
Some of the pictures were without frames, but they looked like they were arranged in chronological order.
The images showed a family of four; a young Temari awkwardly holding a toddler Kankuro with a beautiful woman and a smiling man who looked a lot like the Kankuro she knew today. The next one had a slightly older Temari holding a small bundle with a tiny face peeking out and Kankuro looking up at his big sister, their faces were a little sad in the picture, but they were still trying to smile for the camera. That was followed by the classic pictures: the kids at a park, eating ice cream, a tiny baby that she realized in shock was Gaara eating pudding that had somehow managed to get into his hair.
'Awwww… that's so cute!'
The man grew sterner looking as the pictures progressed.
Kankuro was depicted holding an art set up in his hands at what was apparently his birthday party. Gaara was in a picture showing him proudly holding up a colored picture of a page in a coloring book.
The man's face grew lined. A red haired boy was shone smiling with another man who highly resembled the woman from the first pictures. Gaara's face slowly began to only appear in the background occasionally, growing more and more closed off. Temari's high school graduation picture was beautiful portrait. Abruptly, Gaara's pictures were cold; he had suddenly acquired the same closed off expression that I knew now. He was shone listening to music on the couch with his eyes closed. The man that looked like Kankuro disappeared from them entirely. Kankuro was shone working in his workshop in the other house. The second to last image was that of Temari in a graduate's uniform, proudly holding a diploma showing that she had studied law. The final picture was of the three siblings in front of their old house. Temari was smiling as wide as she could with one arm around Kankuro, who had a smaller smile on his face. The youngest sibling was standing slightly apart from his siblings with an emotionless mask on his face.
She shivered. 'What had happened', she wondered, 'to make him change like this?'
"Yeah. A lot's changed." Kankuro's voice whispered unexpectedly from right behind her.
She jumped in surprise, knocking a book off one of the lower shelves. It fell onto the wooden floor with a loud, crashing bang.
"Oh my God! I'm so sorry! I was just-"She started to say loudly in her chagrin, but was cut off by Kankuro's hand over her mouth, effectively cutting off her voice.
His eyes were wide with dread, and his breath was rapid with a sudden adrenalin-rush filled fear.
A long moment passed in silence. Neither of them moved a muscle, she wondering what he was panicking about and he waiting for something.
A loud scream broke the silence. It was terrifying. It sounded like someone was being tortured, flayed alive, boiled, and torn to shreds in the most painful way possible.
She barely made out a horror-stricken 'No' in the shriek.
"Oh no." Kankuro became panicked.
He ran out of his room and threw open the black door. He leapt into the room as fast as he could, the shrieks still ringing out from within.
"TEMARI!" Kankuro's voice was panicked.
There came the sound of thundering footsteps up the stairs and I saw a flash of Temari rushing to her brothers' aid.
She came sprinting out of the room at a breakneck pace. She ran to the closet in the hall and pulled out a white metal case.
Watching these events from the door of Kankuro's room, Sakura waited until Temari had reentered the other room to shakily exit his room. She turned so that she was facing the interior of where the scream had come from.
What she saw would be forever engraved into her mind.
Gaara was being restrained by his older brother, holding his arms and legs down with his own while his older sister was cleaning the fast flowing blood from a very pale palm.
She quickly mopped up the blood and proceeded to spread a clear substance over the gash on his palm which seemed to stop the bleeding. Temari calmly continued to bandage the cut, despite the fact that Gaara was doing his very best to writhe out of his brother's grasp. Once she was done bandaging it, Gaara suddenly went limp. All fight left him faster than Sakura could blink.
She quickly ran down the stairs, intending to run out.
'No I can't just do that. I should give them a chance to explain.'
'No! We gotta get out of here! These people are crazy!'
Sakura tried to focus as she made her was meanderingly to the kitchen and sat down at one of the available barstools. She tried to take calming breaths and slowly counted the passing seconds.
That was one of the scariest things she had ever witnessed. She had seen people have a raging temper tantrum, break down crying, and panic. But what had just happened to Gaara was completely different than that. It was as if he wasn't entirely in control of his own actions. There had been a wild, crazed look in his eyes as he struggled that showed he wasn't seeing the same things she had. He'd been seeing something that he was fighting for his life against, bringing forth the struggling instincts that emerge when one is faced with a life-threatening situation. His mind had been overpowered by the fight or flight reaction that everyone is born with and cannot escape when cornered. And the way that he had suddenly just dropped, limp and lifeless onto the floor…it was like watching him die. Whatever his mind had been conjuring images of, it had abruptly shut down, deserting his wracked body to recover.
She suddenly wasn't sure of her decision to stay. She could've walked out and pretended that it had never happened. She could have gone home, done her homework, eaten dinner with her mother's ghost, and carried on with her life. The option of walking away from this dysfunctional family vanished the moment she had sat down. But did she want that? She already had enough problems of her own. She had her future, her mother, and the normal everyday things to worry about and take care of. By staying she had made the choice to see this through. A choice she found herself questioning the rationality of. Even her inner had agreed with her, something that never happened between them. This could end badly, with her even more screwed up and backwards than she already was. Or…it could get better. But the path of light barely shone through the possible darkness. And the question still remained, had she made the right choice?
Kankuro came down ten minutes later holding his little brother in his arms. Temari was close behind him.
"She probably ran out Kankuro. I wouldn't have stuck around if that were me. I thought he was getting better. It's been so long since his last fit."
"Yeah…" Kankuro's voice was soft with worry.
Sakura saw them lay their brother on one of the couches in the living room gently.
Temari walked into the kitchen, still talking to Kankuro. She stopped abruptly when she saw Sakura sitting there. None of them moved.
Temari broke the stalemate by walking over to opposite where Sakura was. Sakura used the spinning abilities of the stool she was sitting on to face her once again.
"What was that?"