"All right, everything's running smoothly and we're all packed. We're ready to leave any time now," Ryan announced to the band and crew.
Hayley was bringing down the last of her and Harley's luggage and piling it into the bus. She went over to join her sister in saying goodbye to Gaara, who was in tears.
"Do you really have to go…?" he sobbed.
"I really wish you could come with us…" Harley said. "But we already figured everything out, remember? We'll write to each other all the time, and once school's out for me we'll come back and visit! We'll keep in touch, no matter what!"
"I'll write to you too," Hayley said. "We'll all keep in touch. So this isn't 'goodbye,' it's 'see ya later.'"
Her attempts at comforting him didn't seem to be working. She knelt down and hugged him, and Harley joined. His sobs were uncontrollable at this point.
"I don't want you to go…"
"Hayley!" one of the guys called out. "We need your help over here!"
"Just a sec!" she called back.
She put a hand on Gaara's shoulder. "It's gonna be okay. We'll both be back here hanging out with you before you know it!"
She headed over to the bus to solve whatever situation was going on, and Harley hugged him one more time.
"I'll write to you as soon as I get home! I promise!"
She ended the embrace and let out a sigh. "So, until then…"
She started walking to the bus, when she felt a stream of sand catch her by the arm. Turning around to her sad friend, she sighed and walked back over to him. She wasn't scared by what he did, like anyone else would have been. She just… understood.
"Hey," she said, standing in front of him again and pointing at the small onyx pendant around her neck. "You told me before that you liked this pendant, right?"
He nodded.
"Well then…" she proceeded to remove it from her neck and placed it around his. "Why don't you keep it? It'll be something to remember me by, until we see each other again."
He held the onyx stone in his hand, tears slowly ceasing. Harley hugged him once more, saying, "See you in a few months."
And with that, she successfully made it onto the bus, not being held back this time. Gaara watched them drive away until they were out of sight, sad but also feeling a spark of hope for his life.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
A month later…
"FATHER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
A horrified Gaara stood in the doorway of his room, staring at his very angry dad. Apparently Rasa had raided his room and found the stack of letters from the girls, as well as the CD player and Paramore CDs they had given him. He tore up the letters and smashed the CDs and player to bits.
"I told you that you weren't to be talking to these people anymore," Rasa began. "I thought I made myself very clear: you are to focus on your training, and training alone. You are not to be wasting your time with these distractions."
Gaara's face grew as hot as fire, and in the spur of the moment he sent a sand attack towards his father, which he easily blocked.
"Ever since you met these people, you've been neglecting your training and have become soft. I wouldn't be able to block your attacks so easily if you stayed focused."
"They're my friends!" he screamed. "They're the only people who were ever nice to me! You can't take them away from me!"
"Well, I hope you enjoyed your brief time of having friends, because that all ends now. You won't be communicating with these people anymore. I'm forbidding any letters they send from coming to this village, and I will not allow them to return here. You are this village's hope in case of a war, and I will not allow you to be swayed away by a couple of distractions!"
The young boy was fuming with rage. He tightly gripped the pendant around his neck, which his father took note of.
"What's that in your hand? Is that from them too?"
He snatched it away with his gold and shattered it to pieces.
"Before you know it, they'll have forgotten about you."
Gaara was horrified. Completely horrified. And then he did what his father wanted from the start. He went berserk.
Rasa forced him outside and he went on a rampage. He figured he could stop Shukaku when he needed to, but he let him go for a while, in order to see his full potential. And he ended up struggling a lot more than he expected to stop him.
A/N: I know I'm making Rasa a bigger asshole than he already was, but it seemed like a way for Gaara to become the same character, despite having friendship briefly before meeting Naruto.
My headcanons are strange, but in my little world, the whole Naruto universe doesn't actually take place in medieval times, but these hidden villages don't have all the advanced technology that most of the rest of the world has, since they don't really interact much with the rest of the world besides other villages and such. Plus they use most of their funds to pay ninjas for missions and all that. But they're slowly advancing in technology, especially after being introduced to stuff when people from other countries come visit. That's also why most other countries in the world aren't all that familiar with shinobi, Jinchurikis, etc.
I also like to think that everyone in these hidden villages are bilingual, so they can speak and understand English just fine.