...
My mother used to tell me that my name- Mai- was unique. That she'd taken two words- Ma, real and true, and Ai, affection and love, and put them together. 真 愛. Without the kanji, everyone thought I meant Dance- teachers, classmates, strangers. I didn't care at first. It was just a name. It was kind of cool, because Gaara had the same mark on his forehead as on all my school papers.
There are a lot of jutsu with the name Dance included in the title- Karamatsu no Mai. Kugutsu Suiton: Yōu no Mai. Mikazuki no Mai. Fūton: Hanachiri Mai. Hundreds, probably. But none, so far as I know, with True Love. After a while I decided: it was a stupid name- fitting maybe for my sister, who loves everyone at first sight. But me- I don't like anyone. I barely have any friends. I can't forgive the people who wronged me. I'm the broken sister, the angry sister, the bitter sister.
My teammates and sensei- Shiragiku, mostly- they told me once that my name was more fitting than I realized. True Love, they said. Not all-consuming baseless love. When I loved someone, they told me, I loved someone. Like my sister, and Gaara, and my Taicho, and my team. Not frivolous love, but earned.
I guess that's true. I've been told I go unnecessarily ballistic when someone messes with my friends and family- and for good reason. (Assholes.)
But it hurts. That's the one damn unsung villain- love hurts.
Maybe I don't want my fucking name anymore.
Maybe my Sharingan hurts too much.
But if I've learned one thing through everything that's happened, it's that a Shinobi endures- a good one, at least. And that shit happens, and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it. So I'll just say it.
My name is Mai.
...
5
It had been a regular day so far.
Mai had stayed home with her mommy 'cause it was a weekend and she didn't have to work at the doctor place. They'd spent the day making a chili pot to last them the week- Mai enjoyed the adding and stirring, even though she'd gotten chili powder in her nose.
Fumiko-nee had gone away with Yoshiki and a couple of their other friends a few hours ago even though it was really hot outside. Now it was getting dark, so she would be home soon, and Mai couldn't wait- she'd promised to help her learn to draw today. Mai had already drawn things ahead of time, though, and she wanted to show her nee-chan those, too.
Tomorrow would stink because mommy was going to work and daddy was going to work and Fumiko-nee was going to school so she would have to go to old Oba-san Jin's apartment for the day, and Oba-san Jin never did anything fun. So Mai was determined to get the best out of today...
... at least until Yoshiki came running through the door at dusk yelling and being really loud and looking scared. There was sand on him like he'd rolled on the ground for a long time, and it fell onto the carpet as he waved his arms around and yelled to get her parents' attention.
Mai looked with wide eyes at her father, who for some reason didn't scold Yoshiki for getting sand all over the floor. "What?" he said instead. "Slow down. What happened to Fumiko?"
"Fumiko-chan- she- and the monster kid, they-"
Her daddy put his book down and leaned forward on the couch futon, suddenly looking alert and scared-looking like Yoshiki. "Slow down," he said again. "Did you say- do you mean Gaara?"
Yoshiki nodded. Now her mommy was coming out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her red-spotted apron. Mai stayed back, stepping into the corner near the lamp so the shadow pushed over her. Gaara- the boy her parents told her never ever to talk to- be nice to everyone else but stay away from him, he'll hurt you.
"Yeah," Yoshiki said, and took another big breath to get back the air he'd spent on panicking. "Gaara attacked us while we were playing soccer- he got her! She's still there!"
Her daddy said a word that was bad and her mother said nothing about it. Mai's heart thumped loudly, and she felt like it might 'splode like the papers ninja used in the sparring fields she liked to watch at. Was Fumiko-nee in trouble?
...
~ "Up! Pick her up!" ~
...
No matter how loudly Mai protested nobody left to find her sister. They stayed on the futon and looked surprised and cried after telling their upstairs neighbors and the people next door about what happened. Daddy every once in a while said he would kill someone and that just made mommy cry worse.
She cried, too, because she was getting scared and everyone was acting like Fumiko-nee was never coming back ever.
Yoshik stayed as well, even though he'd never been allowed to stay over this late. No boys after nine o clock, those were the rules. But so was 'Fumiko-nee has to be home by seven o' clock for dinner' and that hadn't happened yet, either.
It was dark- way past Mai's bedtime, but she was too worried to be excited- when the door opened again, and everybody jumped. It opened real slow and careful, but then Fumiko-nee poked her head through the door with a sheepish grin. When she opened the door the rest of the way Mai could see all the ouches and scrapes on her arms and legs.
"Fumiko! You're alive!" her mother said really loud. Fumiko-nee opened her mouth but then her dad said, "How did you escape?"
Mai didn't know that word, but she didn't feel like asking. Instead she tried to wriggle out of her mom's hold to go hug Fumiko-nee- because she'd gotten away from the monster boy!- to no avail. She sniffled and cried, "Yoshiki said Gaara got you!"
"Gaara didn't kill me," Fumiko-nee said, and gulped. "He... he's really nice, actually..."
"What?" her parents and Yoshiki yelled. Yoshiki stood up and stomped across the room until he was standing in front of her sister, grabbing her shoulders hard. Mai couldn't see his face, but his voice was really angry. Fumiko-nee tried to move but he didn't let go.
"You didn't," he said in a low, serious voice, "make friends with a demon."
Her mother gasped, burying her head into Fumiko's father's shirt, crying things like "My stupid daughter" and "curse her soft heart." and that was weird because Fumiko was super smart. Mai frowned. Soft heart? How could a heart be soft?
"He's not a demon," Fumiko-nee said defensively. "He was just born with it."
Mai didn't know what 'it' was, but 'it' sounded bad. Maybe 'it' was the monster thing? She would have to ask later, maybe tomorrow when everyone wasn't so upset.
"He tried to kill you!"
"Not really. You all just made him really upset-"
"He tried to kill you!"
"-because you were treating him like a bad guy," Fumiko-nee finished. "He was just trying to give us back the ball, not attack us at all, not kill us. All he wants is a friend, Yoshiki! Can't you-"
Mai jumped really high when Yoshiki reached out and slapped her across the face. After a second her sister's face turned shocked behind the hair that covered it, and it didn't take long for the skin to turn red. You weren't supposed to hit people! But her parents said nothing and so Mai kept quiet because if that rule was broken who said nobody would hit her, too?
"You can't be friends with him," Yoshiki said.
"But, Yoshi-"
"Enough!" her daddy roared, and Fumiko-nee jumped. Mai cringed away from him, scrambling over her mother's lap to the other side. "You've upset your mother, you made us believe you were dead, and worst of all, you risked your life!"
"D-"
"Go to your room!" he yelled. His face was red. Fumiko-nee's face still looked really surprised, and she stared at them. She was starting to cry, Mai saw it. Then she ran away before Mai could say anything out loud, and a few seconds later there was the loud slam of a banging door.
It wasn't long until Mai had to go to bed, and she was asleep the second her mom put the blanket on top of her, troubled by the way her sister had been treated and the way everyone had been so upset.
...
~ Mai-chan? Mai-chan?- She's not resp-" ~
...
Mai woke suddenly to the sound of screaming.
It was louder than anything she'd ever heard except for a sandstorm. She jumped up and scrambled out of her bed even as the screaming suddenly stopped, but paused in the hallway with wide eyes. There was red all over everything, and Fumiko-nee was lying on the futon really still with her eyes closed, and her mommy was doing something to her leg to make it bleed more.
She clapped her hands to her mouth, edging slowly into the room so her parents wouldn't see her. It smelled like metal, and the scent made her suddenly sick; and so she darted to her corner and sat down and pulled her knees up to her chest, hiding her face. Occasionally she peeked up, but the futon's back was facing her and her mother was kneeling; there was nothing to see but the blood on the floor.
Eventually her mommy stood up, hands and arms covered in bright red like marker ink to her elbows, like dress-up princess gloves but wetter. She wiped her forehead, and it tracked red across her face, but she didn't seem to notice.
There was a few more minutes of silence, and then her daddy went to the door and opened it. At the sound of conversation, Mai stood, slowly, and against the wall she could feel her skin shaking like she was cold, which she wasn't, even though it was probably freezing outside.
Her daddy moved away, and Mai gasped quietly at who stepped inside before putting her hand over her mouth.
Gaara. Don't talk to him, he'll hurt you and you'll die. That's what her parents said and her friends said and Fumiko-nee's big-kid friends said, too.
It was the first time she'd ever really gotten a good look at him. She'd only ever seen him from a distance- red hair, she knew, and that poncho. But now she noticed that his skin was white so he looked like a ghost- paler than anyone she'd ever seen before! And his eyes were blue, and he didn't have any pupils. They were right. He didn't look like any person Mai had ever seen.
Was he even one?
He was bleeding from a mark on his forehead that looked like it really hurt- stuff like what her parents wrote on papers and things. It was coming down his face like he was crying out of his hairline. But he didn't seem to even notice it, lips pushed together so they turned white, too.
"Why did you cut it off?" he said, quietly, and his voice was not what Mai expected: it didn't match the way he looked. It sounded like her friends' voices but even- kid-dier. Higher. His weird eyes were trained on the futon.
"Because it was dead. There were no nerves, or much skin left." her mother answered in a shaky voice. Mia didn't know what nerves were, but where was her sister's skin? Skin, she knew, was really important.
"Oh." Gaara seemed to hesitate, fidgeting his hands slightly. "Will... will she be okay?"
"We'll have to see about getting her a peg for her foot," her father grumbled, "but yes- she'll be fine with some painkillers."
"Thank- thank you," Gaara murmured. He twisted his hands together uncertainly. "Fumiko- when she found me, she told me that you wouldn't let her back home. I was so worried."
"Not that she cared," someone else said suddenly and she jumped, pushing closer into her dark corner, but it was only Yoshiki, who walked inside. "Not that she cared at all about what we had to say."
"She was just making sure I was okay," Gaara said. And Mai nodded, because that was something her sister would do. To her surprise, there was water on his face when she looked again. "I thought she didn't want to be my friend anymore, when she did. She found me... at a really bad time."
She frowned, remembering her sister saying Gaara wasn't bad. That he was nice. She wasn't a liar but... maybe he'd tricked her? And hadn't he hurt her- wasn't that why she was hurt? Hesitantly she stepped forward. Gaara didn't seem to notice her at first, until she got closer to the futon, where the metal smell was strongest.
"Why are you crying?" she asked, in the quietest voice she had 'cause she was hoping a little bit that he wouldn't hear her, but he did, and she met his eyes and glared at him. "Is it because you're bleeding?"
Gaara blinked, and then reached up and touched the bleeding spot. When he brought his hand back down, he almost seemed surprised at the redness on his fingers. He looked back up at her.
"Mai," her mother said sharply, but Mai didn't run back to her corner or duck under the futon like she wanted to. She swallowed. He wasn't in pain, so- why was he upset?
"Tell me," she demanded, and despite the way her arms were shaking her voice came out loud, too.
"She almost died," Gaara said with difficulty. "and I don't want her to get hurt."
It took a second for Mai to respond, she was so startled. Then she pushed her lips together the way he had and took a breath. "But she got hurt," she said bossily, pulling her lips down in a serious way. "Does that make you sad?"
"I-" He paused for a really long time. Mai thought she was a good judge of whether people were lying or not- and when she lied she stopped like that- but he just looked confused more than anything else. "... yes."
"Okay," she said, and stayed behind the futon. I don't trust you.
But okay.
...
~ "Did you see? Did you see what she-" ~
...
Fumiko-nee didn't go to school for a long time. She was always either in her bed or on the couch. As far as Mai knew, she couldn't even crawl.
She left all the time, though, with mommy, going to the hospital and coming back. Her leg looked strange, ending a little bit after her knee, and with the bandages on it looked kinda like the top round part of cactuses without the needles. And she was always hurting, face red and scrunched even after she took medicine.
When the bandages came off, Mai went into her room until they went back on, because the red raw scraped look of the end of the leg made her feel sick and she didn't like it.
Gaara was always around.
She couldn't leave her room most days without seeing him, hovering in the doorway or sitting on the couch with Fumiko-nee or in her room or something. They were always talking and talking about random things, and he helped her with her bandages.
Mai was in her room more often than not now. She almost wanted to go to old Oba-san Jin's just to get away from him. Something about him felt not right, and it scared her. She could feel it when he got too close. He was scary, dangerous. That was what her mommy said and she believed her now.
...
~ "Like a demon!" ~
...
One day Mai came home from old Oba-san Jin's house with her mommy and got a nasty shock when she was greeted at the door by Fumiko-nee, who was standing.
Wobbling, teetery, and kinda looking like she would fall over at any second had Gaara not been holding her elbow, but standing, which was totally different from the rest of her month lying down.
It was... weird. The new leg-thing. It was made of wood and looked like a pirate-peg, and it was covered in sticky black Velcro, winding around her leg and her knees and every once in a while it fell off, and if Gaara wasn't there there would be a scream and a crash and she'd fallen over.
She still didn't go to school for a while. Mai watched intently every other week as her mother wrote absence notes to Fumiko-nee's civilian school, the same school she was supposed to go to. And Yoshiki stopped by her school after being at the Ninja Academy all day and brought her all the work she had missed, which her sister worked on diligently day after day.
Mai wondered if Gaara went to school. It seemed like he was always here. If he didn't go to school, then how did he learn anything? He was probably just skipping like Fumiko-nee was, except Mai never saw him doing any homework or tests or classwork things unless he was helping her sister with some.
Mai had a secret. Something she hadn't told her mommy yet.
She wanted to go to the Ninja Academy.
She was supposed to be enrolled in the Civilian school the next semester, but she didn't want to go there. Spying on both places, she saw the Civilian kids doing boring things and learning maths and bumbling around on the playground. At the Ninja Academy, the playground was a jungle gym and targets for throwing knives and blades at, and the older kids did exercises while standing on the walls or roof. They ran laps and sparred hand-to-hand and used ninjutsu.
Mai always noticed the grown-up ninja coming and going from the village, coming and going. And she saw them on the roof-tops and drinking drinks together in places she wasn't allowed to go yet. They seemed so mysterious- and they must have seen all kinds of places and done all kinds of things; if she asked they would tell her about visiting the Land of Stones or the Hidden Rain village and they would show her scars from fights against dangerous enemies.
The most interesting thing she ever saw a civilian grown-up do was teach 'civvie self-defense' and even the littlest kids at the Academy could do the exact same things. All the civilian adults sold stinky fish and newspapers, rotting vegetables and stupid toys on the sides of the streets or had boring jobs with a lot of paperwork, like her dad.
But it wouldn't happen. Her parents weren't ninjas, and they wouldn't send her to a school for ninjas. Mai would go to the boring school and end up teaching self-defense classes.
Fumiko-nee was friends with kids from the Ninja Academy, including Yoshiki. They told her she wouldn't be able to do it anyway, that she was too small and weak to be a ninja. That it was for big kids. At this rate, Mai wouldn't even learn civvie self-defense.
...
~ "She saved our lives! It was after the brothers-" ~
...
It was tense at the dinner table like it always was when Gaara ate with them. Not like he ate a lot, or he was rude. But Mai still sat as far away from him as she could.
She could still feel it. Whatever was wrong with him. Even from where she sat.
They all picked at their food, except for Fumiko-nee, who ate just as much as usual. She was going to school again, and was always busy now, sometimes gone all day at Gaara's house doing homework or something, Mai wasn't sure.
Mai took a drink of her water, fingers tight against the plastic cup, and glanced warily over at Gaara. He saw her, blinked and looked over, and Mai quickly looked back down at her steak bits.
Why couldn't Nee-chan feel it?
...
~ "Give her space! Move! Sir, please, watch her neck-"
...
6
Mai was sullen at the market all day, barely letting her mother drag her around by the arm, buying pencils and papers and big grey erasers, cardboard folders with stupid designs on the front. But it didn't matter. Her mom had bought them anyway.
She was going to the Civilian school.
Now she was in her room. Mai refused to look at the bags of stupid school things sitting on her bed or the empty pink backpack her mother had insisted on. She wasn't going to pack it. She was rebelling.
There was a knock on the door, so light Mai wondered if whoever had done it had drummed their fingers against the wood instead of their knuckles. But she didn't answer.
"Mai?" That was he sister's voice. Mai scowled. "Mom wants to know if you're ready to eat."
"No. Go away."
"She's been sad all day," Mai heard, a whisper on the other side of the door, and she stiffened. That meant he was there. "I don't know why."
The door opened suddenly, because she wasn't allowed to lock it.
At first she thought it was Fumiko-nee. Bu then as the footsteps got closer, Mai recognized the stuffy, angry feeling of Gaara's chakra (it was chakra, she'd read it in a book at the library) and she tensed.
He stopped. The way she was sitting, with her chin tucked against her knees, she could see his shirt, but not his face. He'd taken off his poncho for the heat, then.
"If you want to go to my school," he said softly, to Mai's absolute shock, "Then you should say so."
"What? Your school?" Now Fumiko-nee was coming in too; the door creaked with the movement as she leaned heavily against the door and gripped the knob, limping. "Mai, do you wanna go to the ninja school?"
"I can't," she said petulantly, and looked up to scowl at them both, despite the way her eyes slid away from Gaara's figure and how she didn't really want to make faces at her sister and so she glared at the wall between them instead. "Mom n' Dad won't let me."
They looked at each other. Fumiko-nee nodded.
"Hold on. I'll be back," she said, and vanished out the door, clunky wooden peg-leg thunking against the ground with every second footfall. Mai could hear her walking from anywhere in the house. Gaara in front of her hesitated, leaning like he would follow, but then settled back onto his feet to stay.
He looked weird without his poncho. The freaky rings around his eyes darkened with only his black t-shirt on, and his white obi looked so misplaced with the rest of his dark clothes. He didn't have any eyebrows or dots in his eyes, something Mai knew everyone else had- and the color of his eyes were unsettling; she couldn't figure out if they were green or blue.
And who had red hair? What even was with that?
And he exuded confusion, half that awful angry stuff and half- or maybe less than?- something different. Not nice, really, just quieter. When he moved, the sand moved, so that outside it looked like the ground was trying to swallow him up and inside it looked like the air was moving.
This 'Gaara' person her nee-chan was friends with felt not right.
In the street, other kids ran away from him. Adults did, too. And they stared at him without even thinking it was rude. They said he was 'evil' and Mai didn't really know what 'evil' was, but it couldn't be good if her mother covered her ears in the market-place when she talked about it. And he carried that weird container thing on his back everywhere he went.
"So you want to be a ninja?"
Mai jumped, caught staring, at the sound of his voice. He didn't sound angry. He always spoke so quietly- like he was afraid of getting looked at if he talked too loud.
"Ye," she grunted.
"Why?" Gaara smiled at her oddly. He was talking just to talk, Mai could tell.
Mai hesitated. "Because I want to do things," she said after a little bit, fingers tightening against her legs. "I want to do exciting stuff and go lots of places. Civvies don't do that."
Gaara hummed, but didn't say anything.
And then her Tou-san yelled her name.
...
~ Shiragiku, Mai thought. He sounded angry, more inflection than she'd heard from him yet. Did he know? Did he know? Her soul was pounding like a heartbeat. ~
...
"Welcome to Sunagakure's Ninja Academy," the ninja teacher said. He was a big person, with really dark skin too. He looked like a ninja, with his pouches and pockmarks. "Soon you will begin your first day here. But first, I will assign you to your teachers. After this, you will be shinobi in training. This means that you must always be diligent, always work hard, and always serve your village with all of your ability."
Diligent?
Mai rubbed her arm nervously. She was crowded in a group, and every once in a while someone jostled. She was wearing her regular old brown shirt and red shorts and old civvie sandals that had used to be Fumiko-nee's, but mom had said they would go out for new ninja clothes the next time she got paid at work. She had her dumb pink backpack with civilian school supplies in it, and two kunai Gaara had given her.
Everybody here was bigger than her. Most of them were boys. Some of them already had weapon pouches on their arms and legs, and little scars on their hands that Mai knew went together with training. She felt out of place, like a speck disappearing in the water.
But she was here.
And she could work hard and protect the village like a real ninja, even if she didn't quite know what diligent meant.
...
~ It hurt. ~
...
Mai hated crying.
She hated it because her nose clogged and ran and her body jerked and she couldn't seem to get three words out with starting back up. She hated it because in gave her a headache and because it made her mouth feel like it was full of glue and turned her eyes red and puffy. She hated it because it meant she was weak.
Ninja didn't cry.
"It's okay," Fumiko-nee soothed from where she knelt in front of the chair Mai sat on. "It's not that bad."
Mai winced at the way her knees stung where her sister patted them with disinfectant-wet cotton balls. They were red and raw the same as her hands from being smashed down into the ground over and over. Her left knee already had band-aids on them. Fumiko-nee was still working on the right. She sniffled again.
"You should tell a teacher when they bully you," Fumiko-nee said.
She would not. That made her weak too, getting grown-ups to fight her battles. That's what all the other kids said. Not that she really fought- she didn't know how to yet. PT wouldn't start until the second semester. "Okay."
Her sister peeled the wrapper off a big square bandage and smoothed it over the biggest scrape. Mai didn't even want to think about going to school tomorrow and trying to write with her bleeding hands, bandaids or no bandaids, but still she let Fumiko-nee take one and set to work, biting her tongue at the way it burned.
Nobody was home yet but them, Fumiko had picked her up from school. She was being bullied, too, Mai could tell- the bruise on her arm was a hitting-the-wall-or-ground bruise. She had two on her back, so she knew what they looked like. But Fumiko-nee never ever cried.
There was a sharp sound that didn't come from her sister's mouth, a kind of gasp or inhale, and Mai looked up to see Gaara gripping the wall of the archway into the kitchen. His fingers were a different color than the rest of his skin, whiter.
She hadn't even felt him coming this time. Weird. Mai looked away.
"What happened?" he said sharply before Fumiko-nee could even look up to see who had made the noise. Before she could say she'd fallen off a step or something like that- which wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was more like 'tripped off' then 'fell'- her sister cut in, wrapping her wrist and palm with a long white bandage that was soft but hot against her skinned cuts.
"Mai got tripped on the Academy steps."
"Tripped," Gaara repeated again, slower. "Or got tripped?"
Fumiko-nee said nothing, just kept wrapping. After a second, she put the clip in to hold the bandage in place, and then pulled more out of the box of regular sticky bandaids for her fingers. Mai squirmed uncomfortably, not just because it hurt, but because Gaara was making a face she didn't want to look at.
"It's fine," she muttered.
"No it's not," Fumiko-nee chided her.
Gaara said nothing as she started on Mai's other hand.
...
~ Everything was jarring, like when she had a hangover, blurry and she couldn't see, and voices slurred together, whispering like ghosts somewhere outside her closed eyes. ~
...
7
Mai packed her backpack as slowly as she possibly could, but it only took so long to pack up when the only paper you had on your desk you'd turned in. It was really just one folder and one pencil she had to put away. She tried to zipper really slowly instead, but even that ended quickly when the sensei started glaring at her.
And then she shouldered her bag and headed out into the hallway, peeking. Mostly empty, except for a few stragglers. Mai wondered if they were all trying to wait super long to leave just like her. But either way, she had to go out.
"Maybe they won't be there," she said out loud, walked toward the door that would lead to the hallways outside. They didn't tease her every day, after all.
She reached for the door, and it flew open to meet her, smacking her hard in the face and chest so she shrilled and fell back on the floor. "Sorry," she said quickly, reaching her hand up to her nose. "I didn't mean to- oh."
"Oops," came a high voice. Laughter.
Fantastic.
She tried to get back up, but smacked back down when a backpack hit her in the stomach, landing on her lap. It wasn't that heavy, but it'd startled her. It was a real ninja backpack- dark colored yellow that rippled in the light just like sand. She looked up at Ayumi- a popular girl in school that Mai honestly didn't even think was all that pretty, with her pug nose and spaced out teeth.
Ayumi was two grades ahead of her. Mai didn't even know why she'd started hating her, just that one day she was on the sidelines when a pink haired boy smacked away her homework folders in the hall, and then suddenly BAM, like it was an invitation and she'd joined in.
"Carry my stuff, please," Ayumi said, studying her nails with the sloppy runoff on her skin like she could see her stupid overapplied dark lipstick in the reflection. She looked like a pig, Mai thought to herself. With makeup applied by a mole. "I have a lot of homework today, I think it's just too heavy."
Mai very deliberately, knowing this was gonna suck, picked the bag up by the strap without standing, held it out to her side, and dropped it on the floor. "Carry your own books," she muttered, looking away.
"What was that?"
"I said I like your hair today, Ayumi."
Mai didn't know if it was the sarcasm or the fact she hadn't picked up the bag that tipped her off, but Ayumi narrowed her eyes. "My okaa-san straightened it," she said prissily, probably because she couldn't figure out for sure if she was insulting her. Which she had been, but Ayumi was a stupid pig-mole with uneven mascara. "You should try it sometime. Take care of all- that."
Mai stood. Wanted to kick Ayumi's perfect backpack across the hall and then throw it in the trash, but didn't feel quite that defiant. Frustration filled her up. She was a ninja! Just because Ayumi was older than her didn't mean Mai had to be so weak! "I need to get home," she said, dropping her eyes somewhere to the left of Ayumi's face. She ended up looking at her friend instead.
"Someone needs to take care of your dumb hair," she said. "Do you even brush it?"
"Hey, Ayumi. How about a haircut?" said the other one- she didn't even know his name. Mai felt her eyes widen.
Ayumi glanced over, and Mai thought maybe she had caught the sarcasm and had just been teasing her as her hand went down to the pouch on her waistbelt. And oh no, she could hear more footsteps, and she doubted it was the teachers.
It was probably more of Ayumi's stupid boy classmates. The ones that liked her mole makeup.
"Hold still a minute, Hon," Ayumi said sweetly, came out of her pouch with a two-edge kunai Mai had learned about in her class that very same day. Maybe when the younger kids learned about the weapons, the older kids got to use them?
The footsteps stopped suddenly. Mai took a step back and Ayumi followed.
And then they were back, a quick tap-tap-tap way closer than they had been. There was a yell, like the way she had yelled when the door hit her in the face, and a loud sound as the kunai fell and scraped against the ground.
Ayumi's form folded in front of her, and then hit the ground at Mai's feet back-first. The older girl tapped her hand quick-like against the ground, probably out of habit from losing a million PT spars.
Gaara looked Mai right in her shocked eyes, and lifted Ayumi's hand further up, chopping his other hand like a snake against her wrist. Ayumi dropped the blade, and it smacked against the tile.
There was another sound, cracking-like, and a yell as the boy pulled his now bleeding hand away from Gaara's sand, where it'd cropped up behind his head to protect him.
Ayumi and this boy were two years ahead of her, yes. But Gaara was three, and Gaara was also scary, and really strong.
...
~ There was nothing left inside her, and she remembered being angry, and couldn't remember why, just remembering that she'd been angry, just now and all through her entire life. ~
...
"Can you teach me?"
"Huh?" Gaara turned around slowly, like he wasn't used to people talking to him during lunch. "Mai?"
"Can you teach me?" she repeated. She did not shy away from him, did not look away from him, did not let his freaky chakra scare her. Mai straightened. She couldn't help the nervous way she clutched her left arm, but she tried to look like she wasn't afraid.
"Teach you what?" he asked quizzically, and seemed a little surprised. (Mai had not spoken to him once since he'd helped her in that hallway, Gaara thought. And not much besides. He scared her, just like he scared everyone.)
"How to fight," she said, and he frowned.
"You're learning that, aren't you?"
"Not fast enough," she disagreed, shaking her head. "Not good enough. I want to fight like- like you fought."
...
~ When she hadn't been angry, Mai remembered being afraid. Always afraid of everything, her own shadow, losing everything no matter how hard she tried to hold on, stupid Sasuke, stupid sharingan. ~
...
Mai blew out a puff of air, tried again to focus on Toyotomi-sensei's words. But it was a drone. He was writing definition lists on the board with an irritatingly squeaky piece of white chalk, things Mai didn't really see the point in defining. Things deriving from chakra- which had no actual definition aside from 'Spiritual and physical life energy'.
Looking down at her notebook, Mai could see the first two or three copied words: Ninjutsu: one of the three main jutsu categories. Utilizes chakra to preform various ninja techniques, directly underneath that was an underlined SUBCLASS, where she had gotten halfway through Shape Transformation before giving up on the sentence entirely.
Toyotomi-sensei had gotten way farther than that while she stared at him, thinking offhand about her training with Gaara tonight, and the training ties prior. Slowly but surely she was improving, Mai could see it in her PT spars. She was a good fighter for her age, Toyotomi-sensei had said so.
On the board their were words like Nature Transformation, Senjutsu techniques, medical ninjutsu, sealing jutsu, barrier jutsu. Ugh, this sucked. She wanted recess or something. Fumiko had made her lunch. A bento, with chilies in it just like Mai liked it, and rice-
"Mai-chan."
"Eh?" My raised her head up from her palm, blinked a few times at the teacher. "Yeah?"
There was muffled laughter. Mai wanted to sigh again, because that could only mean she'd been asked a question. Toyotomi-sensei frowned at her in disapproval. "I asked if chakra has any correlation to Taijutsu."
"Well, duh," she muttered. Then, louder, "Yeah, Sensei. You don't need it, but it can make you stronger."
...
~ "-mean she's slipping-" ~
...
"Mai! Homework!"
Mai groaned loudly. Hopefully loudly enough to be heard from the kitchen.
"Don't make that noise at me! You've been home alone since noon!"
"I'll help you," Fumiko-nee said. Her textbook pages crinkled as she dropped her knee, and Mai could see she was working on some kind of notes- she'd been home for a half hour and already had five or six pages done. "I help Gaara sometimes, I should be able to figure it out."
"It's dumb," she said. "I don't get it."
"What is it? Maths?" she asked, and Mai winced. It was math. Formulative stragetics on the battlefield- how to throw kunai into certain winds, how to ricochet based on angles. Things Mai could not do on paper.
"I don't need help," she repeated.
"Come on," Fumiko-nee said, closing her textbook and tucking her pencil behind her ear. It stuck oddly out of her shoulder-length brown hair, but Mai knew it wouldn't fall out. Somehow it never did. "Gaara helps you with your fighting stuff. Lemme help with your schoolwork."
"Mai-"
"I've got it, mom!" Fumiko called back, dropping her book on the floor and carefully picking herself up, using the wall she'd been leaning against to stand. She hobbled over to the bed with her peg-leg, wobbling. Mai frowned.
"Where's your crutch?"
"Must've lost it," she replied easily.
Mai looked away, tapping her fingers against her knees. There was no way to lose a crutch vital to walking. "Did you tell Gaara?" she said softly.
Fumiko didn't really hesitate so much as pause, then grinned. "Nah," she said.
"Do..." Mai hesitated as Fumiko reached across her lap for her backpack to grab her homework folder. She bit her lip, chewing on it long enough o draw her sister's attention, who paused in unzipping her bag. "Do you want me to-"
"No," she said. "You don't have to fight if you don't want to. Now. Oh- is this what you're having trouble with?"
Mai hesitated. Just for a second, she hesitated. Somebody had stolen or broken her sister's crutch, and she was a ninja-in-training, she could do something about it. She had to, it was her job.
But the resolution was fleeting.
She would never do it. Mai wasn't brave enough.
"Yeah."
...
~ "-nothing left, she's not producing anything more-" ~
...
"Mai, are you hurt?"
She made a noise that made it impossible to deny that she was hurt- and it didn't matter anyway, Gaara wasn't blind and his sand had drawn blood- but she didn't want to stop. "I'm- I'm fine. Let's try that again."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes, yes, Gaara. I am bleeding." She blew air from her cheeks with a frustrated hiss. "Big whoop. I bleed more when I'm cooking food. I want to learn to do this thing without dying."
Gaara looked at her uncertainly, and Mai felt the slightest bit of guilt. He was nervous. He didn't ever seem to like training with her- he was afraid of hurting her, which made sense- he hurt people on accident all the time. But she needed to be able to do this. "... All right."
...
~ Sharingan, sharingan, sharingan. ~
...
Thunderstorms were stupid and they shouldn't have scared her.
But they were loud in a way that sandstorms weren't, and sometimes they made the floor flood and killed people trapped outside and darn it, they were scary and she was not staying in her bed alone for another second whether Gaara was sleeping with her sister or not.
She climbed out of bed, flinching as another crack of lightning lit up her bedroom, then fled down the hall to her nee-chan's bedroom.
...
~ It fed on pain and sorrow and fear, like some leech. Like some goddamn leech sucking all the feeling out of her limbs so she flopped like a dead body and Shiragiku was screaming in her ear- ~
...
"What if we get caught?" Mai whispered, more to herself than her sister, who was crouched next to her as close to the bottom of the bleachers as they could get underneath them.
Fumiko just shrugged. "I haven't yet."
"How often do you do this?"
"Every week or so."
'This' was apparently sneaking into her school to watch Gaara during his class' graded spars. It had been dumb luck that Mai, halfway through the hall's bathroom door and the only one not in class, had seen her walking toward the gym like there was nothing weird going on.
Mai frowned. She'd skipped class to follow at her sister's insistence, but... What if they got caught? She'd probably get detention and everything else. "But-"
"Shh," Fumiko warned just as the teacher called Gaara's name.
He got up from his spot on the other side of the bleachers- all alone; all the kids were crammed up on the right side. Mai understood why they were on this side- with so many kids, nobody would see them through the cracks but- well, she felt kind of bad.
Gaara was not a bad person. A scary person, yes, who looked strange and felt terrible, but not a bad person.
The other kid was just some random, a boy she didn't know by name or even by face, and he looked absolutely queasy like he would puke on his shoes, but still standing straight.
And then the whispering began above them, bets and terrified exchanges and calling out to the boy on the gym floor with Gaara. Mai very carefully closed her teeth together so she could clench them without them grinding, because- what? Did they think Gaara was gonna kill this kid?
The spar was called, and the other boy hesitated for only a fraction before leaping forward at Gaara, who stood motionless, hands at his sides like a soldier. He didn't have to move at all, Mai realized: he barely had to breathe.
She had never seen him fight this close before.
...
~ It was the only thing that hurt beside her veins, yanking nothing from everything to feed it, and her eyes burned like- like- like they would take the whole world down in ashes. Like she would burn the world straight down. ~
...
"But if we put a seven here..."
"No, it still adds up wrong."
"Aw."
Mai shuffled into the living room, mind steaming shut on her plans. She was done. She was done with everyone at her stupid school making a fool out of her. That was it. Screw practice spars- this was done. But not at this very second. At this very second she was just kinda tired and sore and wanted to put her backpack away and see what Gaara and Fumiko were playing on the couch.
She did just that and then squeezed up between them on the couch. Gaara made way, keeping a few inches' space between them as he always had. Fumio was trapped against the arm of the couch, so she just grinned and said, "Sudoku?" And held out a little pad of paper with a grid half-filled with numbers, and Mai wished she hadn't come, but she was stuck now.
"Nope."
"Four," Gaara said suddenly and reached out over her to point. His voice sounded weird lately, getting kind of scratchy like he was sick and lower. "Four goes there."
"Oh, yeah! And two goes here then!"
Mai pulled up her legs and crossed them to scoot up farther into the couch to watch them work.
...
~ Her mind was swimming, swimming with pain and rage and fear. ~
...
"I said leave me alone."
"Oh, c'mon, dead last, don't be such a drag." Eishi said, with a stupid little grin on his face.
"Yeah, Mai-chan."
She stopped walking, fingers clenching closed on her backpack strap. Something was making her heart pick up speed. Her skin got a little warmer, even in the high noon sun's blast. Mai could feel the way her toes kicked up the sand as she did so.
Eishi and his friend stopped, surprised. Usually she ran away, tried to ignore them. An unsuspecting classmate gave them a dirty look for blocking his path on the playground and went around, some kid in her grade with average skills, she didn't know his name.
"I don't know if you're deaf or dumb," she said, voice not even shaking or anything, and looked up at the sky, shading her eyes against the sun with her free hand. "Either way, I guess I should cut you some slack."
"What did you just say?"
"Deaf, then." She moved one foot, shifted so she turned around slightly, and dropped her eyes. Maybe she should've kept up her hand, since Eishi's salmon-head was reflecting light like a kunai metal. "Can you read lips? Leave- me- a- lone," she said slowly.
"You got a lot of nerve to-"
She laughed unexpectedly, a quick burst that faded instantly, sounding harsh and a little spastic, but then Mai managed to school her face back to something calmer, if not a little mean. "Nerves," she said. "What do you know about nerves, picking on a girl half your body weight, debu?"
Wow, she'd only seen that color on kids with heat stroke.
"Bah. I'm going back inside. It's hotter than an oven out here," she said, and turned around. "Sayonara, manuke!"
Her mind was pinwheeling despite her calm, swaggered body language. That had been too easy. Had she really been putting up with that kid- that annoying little idiot who thought he was cooler than the seniors? With his stupid pink hair it was amazing he didn't get bullied. Hah! she thought viciously. Take that! Take that! I can stand up for myself!
Gaara had walked her through several different kinds of lessons and exercises since they'd started training. training for personal stamina, tai chi, kata and running for speed and flexibility, sparring and weights for raw strength, other kata techniques for weapon and taijutsu form, different jutsu, spot-what's-wrong for seeing the unseen.
Non-chakra sensory techniques using only sound and instinct.
She jerked to the right to avoid the hand going for her backpack. He wants it? She thought, heady and mad all of a sudden, pulling down the strap of her bag as she slid, heart thrumming like woah. Then lemme give it to him instead.
She whirled without stopping, foot twisting in the sand; brought up her arm with two texbooks, three binders and two training weights and shuriken each worth of stuff flying upwards, nothing compared to trying to fend off Gaara's heavy sands. Eishi didn't even see it coming, overbalanced from his grab- his form was wrong! why would anyone even reach that far in a fight?- and looked more surprised at the fact he'd missed than by the backpack slamming into the side of his skull.
It didn't really make a noise, the impact dulled by the thick shinobi fabric of her new green bag. Eishi didn't fall- well, at least he wasn't an awful fighter, she thought grudgingly, although she'd already known that; Eishi was up in the top tenth percentile of the Academy for Taijutsu- but he stumbled backward, grabbing for his head, looking startled.
"Finish what you start," she remembered Gaara saying. "If it's not practice, finish what you start or they'll come back."
Mai dropped her bag, raised both of her arms. Step forward, set foot in sand until it stopped, pull arm back into bow-and-arrow stance.
Well, if she could hit a dummy.
Mai released, a sharp, practiced 'hah!' slipping out of her lips out of habit, knowing that her fist was set correctly but that this would still sting like a mother even as she hit up square into the middle of Eishi's face. That made a sound- already off balance, there was no way for the bully to catch his footing, and he fell like a flagpole in hard wind, straight down.
He made a weird little shrieking noise that sounded like words, clutching at his bleeding face. Mai drew up from her formal stance, shook out her hand, and grinned a little. "Your face sucks to punch," she told him, and she thought maybe he cursed, but it was muffled.
...
~ Fuck, shit, Kuso, damn, son of a mother, she thought, prick, jerk, shite, Kami, please, stop it, stop it. ~
...
8
"You look like an idiot."
Kankuro blinked, straightened from where he'd been leaning against the wall waiting for Temari. She was supposed to be there almost an hour ago, but he wasn't giving up yet- if he didn't keep training, they wouldn't be able to go to the Chunin Exams without making a fool of themselves. Who had said that? Who as even in the living section of the Kazekage Tower whose voice he didn't recognize?
He was also the only other person in the hall, which meant someone had just called him an idiot.
He turned his head, ready to snark something mean, but couldn't really think of anything to say when he saw a kid standing there.
Like. An actual brat. Younger than his eleven year old brother by at least two or three years. She looked disgruntled, with gnarly black hair down to her shoulders and a red top with brown shorts. Her shorts had a hole in both knees and looked patched to hell, but she had a kunai holster on her thigh and shinobi sandals on, so she couldn't be a civ kid.
Noticing his glare, she raised both eyebrows, crossed her arms. "What?" she challenged. "You do. Like some kid got loose with kaa-chan's makeup."
"Damn brat," he muttered under his breath. "What are you doing up here, huh?" he said, ignoring the way she mimicked 'damn teenager' in a higher pitch. "You're not allowed up here."
"Says who?"
"Says me."
She grinned like she'd heard a good joke. "I'm here to train with Gaara," she said, and laughed when his face paled underneath the facepaint. She raised one hand to tap her cheek. "So you can run along, me."
...
~ Wake up, wake up. Mai imagined Shira's voice and heard Eishi's and wondered if this heat was the sand, if she was sweating from the damn burning noon sun, they were laughing, if she could just open her eyes she knew it would all just be a nightmare. ~
...
Someone was making strange noises in her house. Normally Mai wouldn't care because Gaara was sleeping over and Gaara was probably the strongest person there, but the noises were coming from Fumiko's room, where Gaara was supposed to be, so Mai got nervous.
Terrified but trying her hardest to ignore it, she got out of bed, winced at how cold the wood floor was. She needed to get a carpet in here.
All was going well until she got to the door- nothing had jumped out of the dark, she hadn't been murdered, attacked; or even tripped on anything- but then she froze.
Bad bad bad bad, her mind screamed. Run run run!
She was dead. Mai was as good as dead, she was going to die because that thing was gonna kill her before she could take a step, it was going to crush her and eat her and she wouldn't even have time to make a sound, squish! Dead.
Her hands started to shake first, and then her arms, and her whole body until she was trembling and there were tears in her eyes. The doorknob shook with the force. Kami, she was scared, and she didn't even bother running away because she wouldn't make it.
"... stop. Stop, stop, wake up!..."
Mai flinched at the unexpected voice, getting louder and louder through the hum of pure fear and death death racing through her blood, seeping through her skin. Fumiko? Her mind was stuttering in and out, heart beating a hole in her ribcage, but Fumiko-nee didn't sound that scared.
"Gaara-..."
Mai rested her forehead on the door, taking heavy breaths, pants. She hadn't realized she was sweating until she did that, because the door felt freezing against her suddenly flushed skin, but it helped. Righted her brain.
Where's this coming from? she tried to rationalize, teeth chattering together. I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid... this is not my fear...
Before she could think about it again, she twisted the knob and slammed against the door to make it open. In the hallway that stink was worse- a thick ooze that filled everything. Again she tried to fight through it- not mine not mine I am not afraid- taking the slowest steps she'd ever taken, trying not to fall, trying to force herself to breathe.
Eventually she made it to her sister's door, where the voices were different now: her sister was not alone.
"You're dead I killed you get away- Hide- Fumiko hide get him out of my head get him out- I hate you-"
"Gaara," Fumiko's voice said, pushing through the meaningless babble. "Come on, wake up now. Come on. All the way, yeah. Gaara, your eyes are changing. It's okay, Gaara, everything's fine, we're safe."
The light was on in the room, peeking out through the bottom of the doorway. This was where it was coming from, that foreign rage and fear that made her want to die before whatever was inside inevitably killed her.
She opened the door.
Something was writhing on the bed, and for a second, Mai was too terrified to figure out what it was, lungs freezing over and heart stopping and everything went blurry as her eyes fought to the top of her head. She was choking on her own tongue.
But then it faded a little- whether because the ooze was going away a little or because she was fighting it, Mai didn't know which- and her senses returned.
Gaara. It was Gaara, she could see his hair and familiar clothes he must've kept on before going to sleep. But he looked different- one of his arms was a different shade, sand clumping together on his fingers. It was coming from him.
I was right I was RIGHT- her mind shrieked, pinning the fear on him. Monster MONSTER-
"Wh-what's happening to him?" she managed to force, voice going high with fear.
Fumiko's head jerked from where she sat on the bed beside him, trying to shake him awake. "Mai?" she said. "Mai, I- Gaara. Gaara, Mai's here. Can you feel her?"
He'd stopped babbling, more mumbling that wasn't quite words, but he stopped to make an odd noise, a quiet keening her parents wouldn't hear from their side of the house as long as this craziness in the air didn't wake them up.
"Gaara, you're scaring her. There you go. Yeah. We're at my house. You're okay. You just fell asleep for a little, you're okay. Nobody's here but me and Mai."
For a long long time, it seemed like, Mai stood there, petrified in the doorway, watching Gaara cry and lose his mind until eventually he started to quiet, started to make sense, and the sand started to crumble back to the bed. A long time before he let her sister go, a long time before he sat up and looked at her, eyes red and puffed and bloodshot.
A long time before she forgot that look, how terrified it was, nervous, ashamed. The way he said "Mai, I-" before fading off, staring. And then Fumiko cut in, talking, soothing, and Mai escaped out the door, fear no longer leading her movements, and fell back against the wall outside her door, just sitting and listening and breathing hard, heart beating.
There was a monster in her brother.
...
~ "We're almost to the medic's tent, Shiragiku-san-" ~
..
9
Mai sighed, sat down in her bed, still shaking slightly from her father's angry tirade. Yes, she'd helped Fumiko pack her things and find dried foods for ration. Yes, she'd broken the lock on the window for her sister to climb through, and yes, she'd very deliberately distracted him from going into the bedroom. No, there's literally no say in what she does now.
Deal with it, Dad.
Yare, yare, she thought tiredly, pulling out a pencil and paper from her headboard with the homework supplies. It'd been almost a week and a half and he was still going off every other hour.
To: Fumiko and Gaara
How're things going in Konohagakure? What's it like? In the Academy I heard it's mostly leaves and trees and stuff, so I bet it's really different from here in Suna. Bring me back something cool, Fumiko!
How close are the Chuunin Exams to being done? I bet Gaara's dominating as always. As for me, I stopped failing that one class, so that's good. Gaara, I also finally figured out that stupid Clone Technique. We should work on Shadow Clones when you get back, because these things are basically useless. Also kick ass.
Dad's still freaking out, but don't worry about that. He won't do anything about it but make a lot of noise.
- Mai
The letters were slow, a few days in between each other, but they came. Asuka was probably tired as hell, but the bird stayed the night wherever it brought the next letters to before taking off the next morning.
Fumiko was quick to reply, of course. Dear Mai, her letter read, We just got your letter this morning. Gaara's doing great in his fights, but did you know he could actually get hurt? I'm serious! I just wrapped his bandages ten minutes ago. He says to tell you hello. It's amazing here. It's all really green, and the air is completely clean. There are trees everywhere! The colors are just incredible. The other Genin are all really strong, and I think I'll be good friends with some of them. I'm bringing them my chocolate fudge brownies tomorrow. I hear you've succeeded in your technique! That's great, but if you haven't already, please don't use it to attack Eishi. With love, Fumiko & Gaara.
To that one she didn't even bother adding the recipient name. Was she seriously- no, of course she was. Fumikowas probably going to come back and be pen pals with everyone in Konoha.
But she was troubled by I just wrapped his bandages ten minutes ago. Okay, hurt was surprising but not, like, traumatizing, because contrary to popular belief Gaara was a human, sand or no sand, demon or no demon. It was probably possible. Technically if Gaara got wet, that was an issue in in itself, but that was never a problem in Suna.
But how badly did he get hurt? What had happened to the other guy? Was he dead? No, Fumiko wouldn't have been quite so lighthearted if Gaara had killed someone in peaceful tournament. But it never ended well when Gaara got stressed or angry during battle- the one time she'd actually been there when that happened was not exactly enjoyable.
So she replied quickly, asking all such questions and being sarcastic as usual because seriously, Fumiko? Also of course not. Why on Earth would I antagonize poor innocent Eishi?
Bleh.
Time passed slowly after that. Letters came and went over the span of a month. School was boring and full of jerks, and without Gaara and Fumiko around home wasn't much better. Thinking about it, they were basically her only friends. Which was a little sad, but fuck societal expectations because they also coincided to being the only two cool people in Suna close to her age.
Or maybe in general, if one included her mother.
...
~ "Her heartbeat- she doesn't have a pulse-!" ~
...
When her siblings returned, it was unexpected and also kind of terrifying, because they hadn't been supposed to come back for at least another week according to Fumiko's most recent letter, and also because they were all seriously injured in some way, extremely dehydrated and sunburned, and had been found nearly passing out close to the village.
When she heard, it was through the principal at the Academy. It was standard procedure she guessed to tell a kid when their family was put in the hospital, whether it was the ninja school or the civilian one.
She ran to the hospital. She didn't know how to shunshin yet, but she could run pretty damn fast by regular standards, and plenty of practice with obstacle dodging and sometimes she could wall-walk.
Mai was at the hospital within ten minutes of hearing the news: her unconscious siblings and Kankuro and Temari were at the hospital with serious injuries caused by unknown assailants.
She rushed inside and up to the desk, ignoring a two-person line in favor of grabbing the stupid too-tall rim of the attendance desk and hauling herself up. It was just like the pull-up bars on the playground.
"Mitsuwa Fumiko and Fuma Gaara," she said.
"What?" the clueless attendant asked, confused.
"Patients," Mai grunted, keeping her weight in her stomach. "They just got admitted?"
"Just a minute, um, ma'am," the woman said. "You should wait for your parents to-"
"They're my siblings," Mai hissed, leaning forward. Her elbows bowed out slightly, shaky from the movement. Mai could hear the people behind her grumbling, but she didn't really care. "I-"
"You're not related to that child," she said sternly.
"Not by blood," Mai said, and brought her knees up too to kneel on the counter top. The woman looked shocked. Everything in Mai's body knew this was against the rules, that she was being rude, that she should wait her turn, but it was quieter than usual. She overwhelmed it, overruled it. "Let me see them or I'll tell Gaara you tried to stop me from seeing my hurt sister."
Needless to say, she got their room numbers.
...
~ "Then transfer chakra!" ~
...
10
Mai didn't know why she got so mad when people shied away from Gaara- when they whispered to each other right in front of him. She'd used to do it, after all, and it happened to everyone, even the most wallflower kids in the freshman grades. Most of these kids didn't even know what they were talking about, just spitting out whatever they'd heard their parents wussing about.
But god damn, did it get under her skin. He was a damn ninja. He could hear every single word they were saying and these brat kids surrounding her probably knew it, too. They gave her a berth as she shifted and glared, but not by much.
"Hey, stop shoving," one boy with a turban around his head muttered.
"Hey, stop being an asshole," she shot back, because blah blah blah, Gaara could destroy the village if he got angry! I don't wanna be on his team! Wah, wah. Damn right he could, she thought, disgruntled. You're all lucky he's freaking even sane at this point.
"Idiot," the boy said finally, but it was too sad to even try to one-up. He turned away, and she threw her hands up in frustration, puffing out an annoyed sigh.
"You're all idiots!" she called, and made to push her way through the crowd. They knew where she was going and they'd heard her, and so her classmates moved out of her way, whispering at her as she went, nervous titters and warnings and scathing orders. Fuck them.
Eventually they all scattered to their respective choices after she stood up in the front with Gaara. More went to Temari than Kankuro, although a lot of it seemed to be gender-split between them, girls to Temari and boys to Kankuro. Must've been a role-model thing.
Mai pursed her lips as the last of the children filed themselves away, then flicked her eyes to Gaara, who had closed his, looking resigned. It had always hurt him, she knew. That they were scared of him. He'd almost gotten used to it. Konoha had been a total change of pace, and now- ugh, now Mai almost wished he hadn't gone, because now the pain was back that he couldn't form a bond with strangers.
"Don't worry about it, Gaara," she tried, putting a hand on his arm. "Like I said before, they're all just a bunch of idiots who believe whatever their parents spout."
He didn't respond, just made a little sighing noise between his teeth, and she frowned. Mai had never been any good at this part of friendship- the part where you comforted them. She was too blunt. She opened her mouth to try again, but clicked her teeth shut as a shadow stepped up alongside hers.
Matsuri. Mai didn't know this girl personally, but knew of her. She was in the failing percentile with her in most classes: enough that the final could pull them through, completely bypassing any and all praise. The only difference was that Mai was known among teachers as a quick physical-learner and hands-on fighter, and Matsuri was known for being skittish and having random anxiety attacks.
"E-excuse me," she stuttered, and Mai thought maybe she might pass out. She was twisting her fingers together. Gaara's eyes had opened, and now he watched her guardedly. "Will you be my sensei?"
Mai blinked. Gaara blinked. Everyone blinked, because what in hell- oh this was rich, the shy little wallflower coming straight up to Gaara and all those big bad ninja-in-training that thought they were the First went all the way around the table on their way to Kankuro to avoid him.
"Are you sure you want that?" Gaara asked quietly, but damn if Mai was going to let her out of this once she agreed. He might be giving her an out, but she sure as hell would not. Gaara needed this.
Matsuri looked terrified and uncertain out of her mind, but she didn't flinch. "Please teach me!"
"Nice, kid." Mai laughed delightedly and thumped her back, grinning wider when Matsuri actually stumbled. "Some actual backbone. Good to see."
...
~ She was trying. She was trying to wake up in the desert- but something was tugging- it hurt- the pain was keeping her tied in sleep, a pain that started in her heart and ended in her eyes. ~
...
Mai shoved him and scowled. He didn't really give, just skidded on the sand a few inches.
"Bug off," she said. "I'm so sick of you I could puke."
He put his hands up nervously. "They pushed me," he said defensively. "I swear they just pushed me."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes!"
Mai glared over at 'them' a group of three boke who probably didn't know the difference between a senbon and an exploding tag. Kami, she hoped they all got put on the same team together without a kunoichi. They would stay Genin forever. "And why would they do that?"
"How should I know?" he challenged.
She looked at him, unimpressed.
"Go on," one of them called. "Kiss your girlfriend!"
Eishi blushed to the roots of his hair, looking mortified. Mai could feel the way her eyebrows shot up.
"Excuse me?" she said indignantly in their direction, put her fists on her hips. "I wouldn't date anyone in this damn school, bunch of morons. Fuzakeru na, before I bust your faces."
"S-sou janai!" Eishi yelled back at them, balling his fists. "She's not my girlfriend!"
Loud arguments were like blood in the water, and a couple of curious sharks and minnows wandered over to see what was going on, having heard the conversation. They abandoned weapons and training in favor of the coming bloodbath, and Mai wanted to smack herself. Of course none of the Sand Siblings were here.
This is not worth swords, she told herself. This is not worth swords, this is not worth swords...
Now 'they' came closer, flanking Eishi, and she'd never actually felt bad for this kid, but well that kind of must have sucked. "Aw, what is it," a boy with black hair said patronizingly. "What's wrong with our buddy Eishi?"
"He's stupid, mean, and has pink hair," she listed off, raising one hand to count on her fingers. "Has too many groupies, doesn't have a brain, and won't get anywhere out of the Academy. Also, I hate all of you pretty much."
"Wow," one said, with a snicker. "Harsh."
"You sure you're not just scared?" one taunted, and damn it she knew he was trying to get a rise but she was not scared of anything anymore, so fuck him. "You're already kinda an ugly looking girl, what if you can't kiss, too?"
"You know what?" she snapped, because she was about to kill all of them and wanted them to know it. "Fine!"
And she reached out, grabbed his shirt, and before he could flinch, yanked him down to her level.
...
~ "Shiragiku-kun, I know you're upset, but I have to check the dilation-" ~
...
Mai guessed Matsuri was sort of like her friend now.
They didn't really hang out other than in-class training, one-on-one when they both stayed behind. Matsuri didn't step in when Mai got into fights, and Mai didn't always fight her battles. But Mai taught her the way Gaara had taught her- minus the sand, of course- and Matsuri tried hard.
"Right, you know what this means?" she had said.
"What?"
"When we get back, we're gonna train ourselves into the ground. Now that you know how to use that Dohjo of yours, it would be pathetic if you got kidnapped again. Next time you'll kick their asses to the Land of Snow."
And boy was Matsuri getting good with that little needle-rope. She could deflect swords with that shit now- deflect swords, deflect shurikenjutsu, catch limbs running in shunshin, and stab through wood. Her Taijutsu was improving as well, but her ninjutsu was still subpar. She was working on an actual move of her own: Certain-kill Treasured Tool Meteor, which basically meant she worked a crap-ton on her chakra control to be able to launch up into the air and throw it at you.
And it was great, a few times, catching her with a foul mouth, especially since she blushed afterward.
At the moment they weren't working with weapons at all, just going over kata techniques together since Matsuri hadn't quite yet gotten the hang of it. Mai was falling out of Tai-chi as an actual fighting style, but it was great for practice: muscle buildup and memory, stamina training, and discipline. And there were variations for her swords as well. They worked on it for nearly an hour, and then went their separate ways home.
...
~ "No! Leave her eyes alone!" ~
...
11
When Fumiko told her Gaara's ambition, Mai both couldn't believe it and couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it first.
Gaara would make the most perfect Kazekage, she couldn't believe the Elder Council hadn't already approached him about it. He was from the direct line of the Fourth Kazekage, which gave him a leg up, not to mention that he was easily the strongest ninja in Sunagakure. In the Land of Wind- well, he was probably the strongest of that, too, and that could be easily tested.
He wanted to be accepted by the people- and he had no qualms about work. Gaara could work, work, work, she remembered him from his school days, and from helping her classmates and his siblings grade papers and plan curriculums.
The Council had had him created to become an Ultimate Weapon- a defense for the entirety of Suna. Well, now they could deal with Gaara's peace-loving consequences, because those old fart council members needed a check, fast.
So when Fumiko told her Gaara's ambition, Mai set right to work. She enlisted Matsuri's help and set about convincing her entire school, starting with the Jonin and Chuunin teachers who respected him and appreciated his and his siblings' contributions, set them on infecting those not quite so keen. Then she and Matsuri set out to the students: honey and vinegar.
She went with Fumiko to advocate to the hospital, and to the training fields to talk to those ninja she respected, the old ones who told her stories as a child, the younger ones who'd just become Chunin in the Exam before the one Suna betrayed. Those too old to hold a grudge and those too young not to see the impact Gaara had made. Mai talked to little kids in the street when they followed her around out of boredom, their parents when she finally found them.
And when Fumiko came with the petitions, well, Mai did it all over again, and with some kind of mixture of honesty and violence managed to get more than enough on her end. Fumiko got most of the signatures- from the sellers in the market-place and Old Oba-san Jin and patients she was and had cared for, random strangers she befriended on the streets and the workers in Kazekage Tower.
Temari, Kankuro and Baki pitched in too, going on random stranger-signings with Fumiko and her and doing their own things as well, with Temari going to her friends and peers, Kankuro to the Puppet Corps.
Gaara probably did the least amount of propaganda, but he made up for it in the sheer amount of work it took to apply for the Kazekage position. Paperwork out his mind, and physical tests and emotional evals. Mai knew Fumiko helped him with that, but still. It was horrible just to look at the papers in their rooms. And he acted as a temporary Jonin-sensei to at least three different Genin teams.
And then the Council were assholes and declared a month long waiting period until voting.
At least they got to visit Konoha.
...
~ Mai could hear about a bed but felt nothing, only slightly less gravity slamming her down. There was something gross in her stomach- poking, prodding- oh god, people were dying everywhere, why weren't they waking her up- ~
...
Her skull pounded. It felt like a concussion and a migraine and a headshot from a set of brass knuckles.
On top of that, she felt like puking for an hour and passing right out afterward. Everything was just so slightly off, not quite blurry or a few millimeters to the left, just wrong for no reason.
Shunshin was evil, so she walked like a stumbling zombie all the way to the Kazekage Tower, ignoring the odd looks from passersby and kids. Gaara had said Kankuro dealt with this at least sometimes, so shit, she hoped he had something better to say than 'take an advil.'
Finally she made it and pushed through the door. It was hard to remember how to use the stairs, and she bumped and cursed her way up to their floor, praying nobody would try to stop her from going to an unauthorized floor- that they would recognize her enough to let her by without attempting to engage in any kind of noisy human interaction.
Mai got all the way to the living quarters floor and managed to get off the stairs without falling back down them. Shit, she was hammered. She couldn't even remember drinking that much, goddamn, it shouldn't be this bad. Mai was going to kill the Jounin who'd offered her the stuff.
She counted off doors until she got to Kankuro's: a plain hinged door with no resemblance to the freakshow of a puppet studio inside. From the hall, she couldn't smell the metal and oil, but even though she'd only actually seen inside his room once or twice, Mai remembered it like he was holding a can to her face.
Ugh.
She raised up a hand and smacked the wood open-handed, then had to stop at a wave of blood that pulsed in her ears. With her free hand Mai grabbed the doorframe, and bit her tongue as she waited for the pain to subside, the pounding.
Once her vision cleared, she lifted her hand again and banged it against the door with the side of her fist. Nothing happened- no one stirred inside, and she made some kind of pained noise of impatience, an eh-hh that sounded wounded. Mai hit the door a little harder and didn't stop, wanting to yell but knowing if she did it would probably knock her into the door.
"Kankuro," she muttered, probably not any louder than her knocking. "Baka-Kankuro, wake up already."
Her hearing must've been off, because the door suddenly gave way without her hearing anything. For a second her muddled brain thought it'd disappeared. But then something wrapped around her fist, and she squinted at it blearily. Another hand.
"Finally," she mumbled crossly.
"What?" he said. "And what's wrong with you?"
She scowled at his stupid sleepy face and pulled away her hand. "What do you think?"
"Who in hell gave you alcohol?"
She didn't really remember, just that it was a Jounin with a somewhat-blurry face that was probably a male and a couple of colors after that. But she didn't want to say that. "None of your business."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay. And so why are you at my door?"
"Gaara said you do-" She gestured randomly into the air near his chest, her head. "-this."
...
~ "-our teammate, he probably knows why she did it, but I can't find him-" ~
The place Gaara wanted to use was big. Considering that this was Suna- it was big. It was only so massive because it was unfinished, Mai knew, because the floors hadn't been put in all the way and then had been taken down. So it looked like a hollowed-out apartment building meant for twelve or so families or more.
It was big, and it was empty, and it was disgusting, but Mai also knew that if anyone could make this place spectacular it was her sister and all her crazy-skilled art, her restless cleaning.
It wasn't really like Gaara to do something so big like this- give someone a building as a present in a place where overpopulation and space was an issue. But at the same time, she guessed it made sense: Fumiko didn't have enough space in an overly large bedroom for all of her things, and since it was becoming a hazard- get another space.
It probably had helped a lot that he was Kazekage.
There was dust all in the air that pressed against her nose and made it wrinkle. It was hot as balls with the sunlight pouring in through the thousand freaking windows, baking on the inside, but it wasn't like she wasn't used to heat. Actually, this was pretty tame.
The Genin team was coming soon to clean the place up, and then she would finally be able to give up this 'hey let's hang out every second you're not working Fumiko' act, and fall back into her old schedule, get some more training done. All said and done, though, Fumiko was easy to surprise, because she never suspected anything was off.
Class had just ended, so she wasn't even skipping, just... curious. She hadn't seen this place yet.
...
~ Mai tried to speak, to explain, to say there was a psycho on the loose in her nightmares, that Eishi hadn't been avenged, that he was in her back pouch, that death was calling her into a dream, but she just slurred, just made a noise like pain pain pain. ~
...
Mai twisted, spinning on her heel in the sand like a top. Both of her opponent's fists slipped past her chest, and instead of slamming her other foot down to stop herself, she whipped it out, catching the back of the other girl's knee so she toppled.
But Noriko was one of the scrappier kunoichi of her class. She was losing, but she was going down fighting. The brown-haired twat reached out with her kunai, flailing and yelping on her way down, and Mai didn't have enough time to both process the move and put down her foot to regain balance before the circled hilt slammed into her ankle.
She fell, because she was only standing on one foot, and cursed the whole way down. But unlike Noriko, who was only scrappy, Mai had training and remembered it in battle, and so she tucked to land on the round of her shoulder and rolled as soon as she made contact, sand flying up her nose and in her ears. Pain flared in her ankle, but she ignored it, scrambling up on her hands and knees as soon as she had purchase and leaping.
She hit Noriko just as the girl pushed off the ground, and then it was over, Mai's knee in her back and the other stable on the ground, one hand twisting out the kunai and the other smacking her face back down into the sand.
"Take that," she huffed.
Noriko tapped at the ground quickly, almost drumming her fingers.
"Match end," their sensei announced a few yards away off to the side. Her classmates watched on from behind him. Mai liked fighting out here in the arena much better than inside her Academy gym- outside had resources, outside had sand and wind and walls and rocks, and her every move didn't echo. "Winner Mitsuwa Mai."
Mai let go of Noriko's hand, who immediately scowled, looking like she might jump her anyway despite the call. Every match her stupid classmates thought they could beat her out, shut her up. Fuck them. She'd beat them all into the ground.
As she stood, Mai grunted, eyes going wide with surprise as her right ankle tried to give, and almost stumbled back down on her butt. She tried to catch her face, hide the sprain, but her sensei had already seen her wobble.
"Dachi-kun. Help take Mai-chan to the infirmary," he said, writing in his clipboard.
"Toyotomi-sensei!" Mai protested angrily, hands fisting at her sides. "I have two more spars!"
"Tomorrow," he said dismissively, and she bristled, shot a killer at Dachi, who looked like he'd run out of luck.
"Sensei, I think she can make it on her own," he said, and his words were a strange combination of hateful and anxious. She didn't know why they hated her, but she went with it, matching them; she understood why they were nervous, strove to encourage it.
"Nonsense," Toyotomi-sensei said. "Haruki, Toshi, you're up."
Mai muttered curses under her breath, flipping up her finger at her sensei's back as she hobbled toward the sidelines. Dachi followed like an obedient pet, went so far as to try and go under her arm to help her walk, but she slapped away his hand with more force than necessary. "I can do it myself," she grumbled, and knelt next to her bag, shoving in her hand to yank out a roll of bandage.
She unwound a length, ripped it with her teeth, and wrapped it around her ankle- poorly, but it didn't really matter if she was going to the hospital. For a sprained ankle. Rrgh- and tied it off before tossing it back in her bag that she picked up by the strap and stood, content to aggressively limp her way to the hospital as Dachi tried to pretend they weren't walking together.
...
~ "What? Mai-chan? She- she said something-" ~
...
Halfway to the hospital, Dachi had to go back to get a slip from Toyotomi-sensei to prove that he'd sent them. Mai didn't wait up, because if she had to ditch the one part of school she actually liked, she was damn well going to get her stupid ankle wrapped, not stand around like a fool limping out of the way of pedestrians.
The hospital wasn't really that busy. It was the middle of the day, and not really sandstorm season. The only people coming in and out were ninja and the occasional reckless civilian. There wasn't a waiting time at all- in an out, and they didn't even need Dachi's dumb slip, because Mai had been in and out of her a million times from little injuries.
So she went straight to a doctor and they chakra-scanned it, did a lot of talking- because it wasn't broken but rules and laws and blahblah school payment for checkups parental permission blahblah- and called in her mom to settle everything, and eventually wrapped up her ankle.
But of course, Mai got stopped before she could even make her way out of the examination room. As a shinobi-in-training, it was standard for her to get annual physicals to make sure nothing was being messed with- that her chakra was flowing properly, that she wasn't getting chronic wounds, that her bones and muscles weren't being damaged by incorrect training.
It took way too long, in her opinion. Yeah, it was great she wasn't going to be crippled forever in any way because of these checks, but they took hours. Which sucked. But it was going just as it always had- she was lying on a patient's bed on top of some seriously crackly paper in just her undergarments, and they'd been going through all the normal steps, telling her as they went what was going on, asking questions.
And then the nurse stopped.
Mai hadn't been paying much attention to what they were saying. They did their thing and she did hers, just kind of zoning off into space thinking about her spars tomorrow and the history homework she had to do that night. But of course she was keeping aware of the chakra they had inside her, and stuff like that, because that shit could go way wrong.
So when it stopped moving- up, down, up, down, checklist, checklist, checklist, Mai noticed.
"What?" she said warily, cracking an eye open to stare at the nurse, who was frowning down at her stomach or something. "What is it?"
"Probably nothing, dear," the woman hummed. But she pulled away, pausing her examination, and Mai opened both eyes, narrow. Something was definitely wrong. "Can I ask if you've started your menstrual cycle yet? And if so, how long it's been since your last cycle?"
"I haven't started yet," she answered. "What's going on?"
The woman pursed her lips. "I'll be right back," she said.
Mai never went back to school.
There were tests upon tests upon doctors upon nurses, chakra-specialists and physio-specialists and civilian doctors and ninja doctors. Miles of words she didn't really understand, a million and twelve questions she couldn't always answer. Her mom came again from where she'd been working. Mai was passed from person to person, room to room.
Maybe it was because she was a kid, but no matter how many times she demanded to know why everyone was panicking, nobody explained anything further than "We don't know anything for sure, honey" or "it's probably nothing" even though it was obviously something, there was no way those doctors actually believed that.
But again, she wasn't stupid. Every question they asked and test they ran had something to do with her menstrual cycle or her ovaries or fallopian tubes (Mai didn't know what those were but figure they had something in common with her menstrual cycle and ovaries).
She was getting scared. This wasn't damage so far as she could glean- this wasn't an injury or something life-threatening, but it was something that made her mother start to sniffle and it was also something the doctors and nurses as a whole seemed extremely distressed about and it had something to do with her nonexistent period.
In the midst of the tests her brain kept coming back to that, the way that first nurse had stopped, foreign chakra pushing and settling right below her stomach, right above her legs. Bouncing around the few presentations she'd had in school on the topic that honestly she'd mostly ignored.
Her mind said no, more violently than she would have expected, even though she didn't really know what was wrong yet. She had a sneaking suspicion, that was all. But just the thought of something being wrong with- with that part of her made Mai feel sick to her stomach, a symptom the doctors were immediately all over.
Finally it was all over, but Mai almost wished it wasn't- there had to be more tests, more theories, more ideas. Other possibilities. Other things this could be. Her ankle still throbbed despite the mild painkiller she'd been given. She was back on that stupid goddamn paper and it crackled and crumpled under her ass every time she shifted. That sharp, sickening hospital smell jabbed her nose, like ammonia and shots and air freshener.
She didn't know how her mom could stand to be here. Mai wanted to leave and she'd only been here a day. That smell was getting on her nerves. Why did the doctors only wear white? What the hell? It was unnerving and made them all look like bad messengers. Everyone here was sick. She kept rubbing her elbows, a nervous habit she thought she'd bit.
Mai knew it was bad, because her mother was with her when they told her.
"Miss Mai," he said, like he thought he was treating her like an adult, with his head-wrappings and stupid white clothes. His watch was ticking like a fire alarm. "We've run- well, I'll be honest. We've run multiple tests, and I think we can honestly say for certain that you have premature ovarian failure. It doesn't appear to be genetic, or-"
"Premature ovarian failure," she repeated, voice feeling hollow in her throat and in her ears.
"Are you sure?" her mother said anxiously, wringing her fingers together. She was biting her lip, something Fumiko did when she was nervous. Her mother was wearing white too, Mai noticed. She shifted. The paper tore loudly against the bottom of her leg and she jumped, cursing a lot less softly than she intended, and it scared her mom, who flinched in tandem.
Her heart was flipping off her ribs, and Mai couldn't figure out why. She was having a hard time looking this doctor man in the eye, had her breath always been that warm? It wasn't hot enough in here. They were in a damn desert. Why was it so cold in here?
"What does that mean?" she asked, and there was a little snort of laughter that bubbled up with her breath, pushed out by her heartbeat. "I can't- what, I can't have kids?"
"We think so, Miss Mai."
Pulse. Pulse. She could feel it in her brain. There was a heartbeat in her stomach, in her chest, in the bottoms of her arms. "Okay."
"Mai-"
"Mom, I'm gonna head home. I've got a crap ton of homework to do, and I've been here, like, all day. Dachi's probably pissed at me," she said, and immediately knew that was wrong, because she never volunteered to do homework. "And Fumiko'll be home soon."
"I'll go with you," she said. "Just let me sign out and-"
"No, no," Mai insisted, sliding off the seat. The doctor was looking at her weird, like he'd been expecting her to burst into tears or some stupid shit like that. God, what? She'd come here for a freaking sprained ankle. Had she ever even been worried that she'd never started her period? "You have to work, it's fine. I can get home from here. Scuse me," she muttered, pushing past the doctor and out the door without another word, not caring that she was still dressed in a nightgown.
Her mother didn't follow, and Mai heard her hushed urgent voice through the door as it banged shut.
...
~ "We need infusers-" ~
...
Mai barely made it inside, having tripped twice from her stupid ankle and stupid running and scraped up her knees and arms and elbows, banging through the door, and bouncing off the corridor wall. She smacked the door shut, knowing Fumiko would be here soon and not bothering to lock it, and she made it to her room and closed the door and Mai wailed.
...
~ Fingers poked places she thought she couldn't feel, hotspots of pain and made them worse. ~
...
12
"The Founders' Festival?" Mai read off, lowering the strawberry tart she'd been eating to her plate. Then she shrugged. "Yeah. I've been to it. It's a blast, right up until everyone gets hammered."
"Ooh, but it would be so much fun!" Fumiko squealed. Her face was all excitement and joy and hysteria, and she clapped her hands together, unable to contain it. Her sister could put new levels on the word happy, but it'd been a while since Mai saw her so excited. "We could get all dressed up and play games and dance and hang out! And eat cotton candy!"
"Uh, I've never seen them serve-" Mai started, but Temari banged an elbow into the side of her boob. She hissed.
"Uh, yeah, sounds like fun," Temari said.
"Ow!"
Fumiko had found them together in the kitchen. They hadn't really been doing much, just lazing about on a Wednesday night and eating some leftover tarts. Mai actually didn't have any homework to do, and she'd already trained enough for one day, so finding the tarts had been nice. And then Temari had come in, grunting and griping about Konoha and all her troubles.
Mai rubbed her ribcage, shooting Temari an irate glare, who just shrugged and smirked in return. "Anyway, Fumiko, I don't think we'd actually be hanging out. You'd be hanging out with Gaara all night. And festivals just aren't his thing."
Fumiko bit her lip, and Mai winced at the way she just deflated, hesitation crawling all over her face. "You're right, actually."
"I'm sure he'd go if you asked him," Temari wheedled. "Especially then."
She brightened. "Yeah," she said, and grabbed a strawberry tart from the plate. "I'm gonna go ask Gaara now!" Fumiko paused, thought for a moment, then grabbed another. "And see if I can make him eat."
Then she dashed out the door with a quick goodbye. Mai could hear that stupid spring in her prosthetic all the way down the hall- she really neede to get that thing replaced.
She glanced over at Temari. "What, do you want to go, or something?"
"It seems like fun," Temari answered back breezily, raising another tart with the delicate air of some kinda noble. "Why not? Besides, Fumiko wants to, and Gaara really needs to get out."
Mai blinked. Then blinked again. And then straightened from where she'd been leaning against the island. "No way," she started accusingly. "Are you doing this for Fumiko or Gaara, or are you doing it for both-"
"An elder sister has her duties," Temari replied, shrugging, with a wide smirk. "I am my brother's keeper."
And Mai stood from the barstool she'd been sitting on, abandoning her unfinished tart. "Nope," she decided as she crossed the kitchen to the door. "I'm not going to be a part of this. This is too-"
"Come on, you can't say you don't-"
"Much!" she finished, and slammed the door closed behind her.
...
~ She was floating, floating and things weren't hurting anymore and woah, were those drugs or was she still dying? It was hard to tell, even in the dark everything was spinning. ~
...
"I've gotta say, Fumiko, you're better at a girls' day out than I thought you would be," Temari said from the dressing room. "You've got a good eye for color, at least."
"Thanks!"
Mai frowned down at her kimono, a shiny red with a gold and fire-orange pheonix stitched down her side, trailing fire just a shade darker than the rest of the fabric from it's body. It looked fantastic in the mirror: it was tight and form-fitting, a little short, but not revealing. The red went with her tanned skin and black hair.
"Hey, I dunno if I like this dress thing so much," she called out, knowing someone would hear on the other side of the curtain.
It was the day of the festival. It might not have been the best idea to wait until the day of to buy dresses, but Temari had insisted it was the only way not to get the same thing as everybody else. Mai didn't really care either way as long as she could wear something red.
Sliding as someone, probably Temari, pushed open her curtain. "I wouldn't be surprised if you've never worn a dress before." she snarked. "You're not exactly girlish."
An uncomfortable silence permeated the dressing rooms then, during which another curtain slide opened and closed. Mai pursed her lips, trying to find a way to answer that without sounding pathetic, and had just decided on who needs dresses when you have swords? when Temari spoke.
"What? Really?"
"Do you want a different one, Mai?" Fumiko asked, somewhere to the left of Mai's little stall. "Huh. Is yours too short too?"
"No. I look hot." she complained, dropping a hand to her hip and glancing herself over again in the mirror. Man. She needed to wear these things mroe often. But it was tight- uncomfortable almost- and there was no pockets or loose spaces. "But how are you supposed to put weapons in this thing? Or run? It's shortish and the fabric is thinner than decent oxygen in this village."
"You'll get used to it," Temari said sympathetically. "My suggestion? Use bladed hair sticks to put your hair up in a bun. They can kill rather nicely."
That was actually a good idea.
"I was thinking more along the lines of sewing pockets for my senbon," Mai admitted grudgingly as she slid aside the curtain and stepped out, feeling odd in her nice dress and battered shinobi sandals. "But I like your idea better."
"Why are you bringing weapons to a festival?" Fumiko said, fance looking not quite alarmed, but confused. "It's not like somebody's going to attack us."
Temari admired her soft purple, regular length short-sleeved kimono sewn with small black circles and a yellow obi. "It's a kunoichi thing, Fumiko. Actually, you of all people should be carrying a weapon." She nodded. "I think I'll get this one."
Fumiko frowned quizzically as she stepped back behind her curtain to change back into her clothes. "Wait! Why me?"
"Why you?" Mai sighed. "And here you have the brain, sister mine. Because you're practically Gaara's- now the Kazekage's- extra phantom limb. I know you hate shinobi tactics, but hey, crude can get the job done."
"It's a festival." she protested. "Festivals are supposed to be- supposed to be- festive! Not bitter."
"Best time and place for an assassination attempt," Temari muttered before she could, voice muffled by the curtain. "It gets dark, lots of people, lots of noise, lots of drunk people falling. Nobody would notice. Or a kidnapping. No one would realize someone was missing in that kind of throng."
"Ah, leave it," Mai said dismissively, waving a hand in the air like she was clearing it as she noticed Fumiko's forming distress. "Gaara will be there the entire time anyway. He'd be too uncomfortable to be alone for long. He'll notice if anyone shady gets close. Gaara's a hell of a shinobi. Besides, Fumiko knows all the side affects of deadly poisons, right?"
"Yeah," she answered, still sounding confused. "I studied them. But-"
"Right," Mai said. "You'll be fine then. Also, don't leave your drink anywhere. And if and when the lantern lights turn into pretty colors and every joke sounds funny, don't listen when people offer to take you home."
"Why?" her sister asked curiously. There was a folded haori in her arms, but Mai had seen it before her sister went in and knew she wouldn't keep it.
Mai shook her head. "Just stay with Gaara."
Fumiko shrugged, smiling again, and let the subject drop completely. "Okay," she said, and with that, she glanced down at the dress, and turned to head back out into the sea of dresses and humans.
...
~ Eishi was dead, shit, fuck, she thought dazedly through the pain even as it faded, didn't know if she managed to say it, hoping she hadn't- god, there was chakra everywhere- I can't die I can't die I can't- ~
...
After clothes they bought shoes. (Or shoe, in Fumiko's case, and she got one dark blue slipper.) Mai herself hated everything except a pair of black boots that reached halfway up her thigh, because it was the only thing without heels that weren't flats.
After shoes they got their nails done, which had been an event but it wasn't her fault she almost stabbed someone, it was that guy's own damn fault for touching a random shinobi from behind without warning. Still, she liked the way her nails turned out, just a plain red, even if they felt a little odd from the paint, looked a little too prim compared to their previous ragged-broken state, all rounded out and smooth.
Fumiko got blue to match her dress, with little white clouds painstakingly drawn out on her thumb and ring fingers of both hands. She'd also gotten her one foot done, which Mai personally thought was a waste, considering her shoe was close-toed- she wasn't getting her feet done, not when they weren't gonna show. Temari got hers clear with white trim, something that somehow took longer than both Mai and Fumiko's combined.
After nails, hair. Hair and makeup.
Makeup felt horrible, so she asked for less and less until she could barely feel it. Luckily they didn't touch her with that weird skin-paling stuff, but her eyes were lined with black and dark brown, something that admittedly made her look kind of mysterious, and made the little gold flecks in her eyes seem huge, and lip gloss that tasted like plums.
She'd also managed to convince the hair woman to use the hair sticks Temari had lent her, sharp things that could slit a throat. Which was fantastic, because Mai had gotten used to having weapons on her person, and had been a little nervous about spending a whole night without any. All the lady could really do was wrangle it into some kind of weird fishtail-looking thing that ran down the back of her head but didn't dangle. It stuck out everywhere, but with some hair gel and spray, it looked okay, she supposed.
Temari had found another way to solve the problem of having no weapons- they'd passed by a merchant selling ninja-fashion goods. A small, white 'silk' fan gilded with green and red flowers and purple trim. Folded steel, of course. Bladed, of course. She could take someone's head off with it. But it matched her dress.
She had to admit she was actually getting kind of excited as well. There was something about dressing up that set the stage for whatever it was you were dressing up for. They chided each other as they walked back to the Tower- Don't get sand in your pedicure! Careful not to wipe your eyes! Watch where you swing your fan!
She wondered how this festival would go.
...
~ "No!" someone wailed, and it was familiar, and she wanted to comfort, but suddenly there was pain in her head and she screamed at the way everything was white, everything was skin and fabric and darkness and noise- ~
...
Fumiko reached for the door to the kitchen. Behind her, Mai and Temari shuffled impatiently, having waited for her to struggle up the stairs after them, but unable to leave- she was making dinner. Or at least the snack before greasy junk food at the festival.
It opened too quickly; Mai jumped a little as her sister's hand shot forward through the door, but relaxed when Fumiko just sorta punched Gaara by accident, looking startled. Gaara was- fidgeting, a weird, slippery nervous smile flickering on his face.
"Uh!" Fumiko grunted with surprise. "Oh, hi."
"What's wrong with you?" Mai asked bluntly, not quite frowning. Was he just nervous for the festival? It was all Temari's fault for making it awkward.
"Fumiko, watch your nails," Temari warned. Then: "Oh. Not bad, Gaara."
Gaara was dressed formally. He wore a red yukata-style outfit with white trim. His hair was combed to the side to fully expose his kanji and completely uncover his cerulean eyes, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable, but there was still that nervous, almost impatient smile. Had he been waiting for them to come back?
There was icing on his nose.
"Hello. Fumiko. You all look nice. I like your hair."
"Thanks!" Fumiko beamed. "So, why is there icing on your face?"
"Oh. Um."
"It's about time you got back," Kankuro said, coming up behind Gaara and startling him. "Gaara's been pacing a frickin' furrow in the ground. He made food and didn't burn the kitchen down."
"Kankuro!" Gaara protested and turned slightly to look at his older brother, and for a second he looked so normal, anxious and so close to whiny he sounded like an ordinary teenager in sunday clothes and not the kazekage. Fumiko giggled.
Gaara looked stricken for a second, torn between confusion and embarrassment, then quickly turned and fled. Kankuro barely avoided being bowled over, stepping to the side. He raised his eyebrows. "Well. That was weird."
"Oh... I didn't mean to-"
"I got this, Fumiko," Temari said, and brushed past her brother to find her other one. Gaara had fled into the kitchen- there was nowhere really to hide, unless he could somehow fit himself in the empty bottom shelf of the pantry.
"So." Mai prompted in the silence that followed. "Back to the subject of 'didn't burn the kitchen down'."
"Oh. Right." Kankuro stepped out and slid the door shut behind him. "He asked your mom for some recipe for cake. When I saw it it was crammed with notes. Step by step instructions so he couldn't possibly screw it up."
"Gaara made cake?" Mai frowned, thinking back to all the times Fumiko had tried to teach Gaara to cook: always fire, always messes, always things breaking or sparking. "I dunno if he's supposed to make cake."
Kankuro shrugged. He too wore a yukata, only his was deep purple with a few swirling designs Fumiko couldn't quite decipher in slightly lighter shades of purple. His was put on messily, all crooked. Kankuro's brown hair was combed but still stuck up. It was weird to see his face without all the purple makeup, and how long had it even been since Mai saw him last without a hood? "Smelled okay. Wouldn't let me touch it, though."
From the kitchen, voices floated. "... mean it's a girl thing? I... at me."
"Idiot. She... looked cute. ... wasn't laughing at..."
Kankuro sighed. "I'm so curious. But she'll kill me if I go in there."
"Well, I'm getting dressed." she announced, hefting the bag with the one little headpiece Temari had made her get. "Kankuro, I'm using your room. Don't you dare go in."
"Hey! Why mine?"
"'Cause I sure as hell am not using Gaara's," she said. "And Temari and Fumiko have to get dressed too."
Kankuro crossed his arms. "Do whatever you want." Then he coughed, "Girls."
"I'll stab you," Mai said cheerfully. "Then I'll stab you again for making me mess up my hair."
Tense silence.
Kankuro snickered nervously.
Then she smiled- grinned- at him and turned to walk down the hallway to Kankuro's room, swinging the plastic bag at her side as she went, whistling because she knew it would unnerve him.
...
~ "This- this is-" Mai couldn't hear it over her own screeching but she could read the medic's lips and it burned it burned it burned worse than fire- "This is the Uchiha's-" ~
...
There was a moment when they all almost walked in on her, but she'd avoided it with lots of yelling and throwing a puppet leg at the door.
Now she was all changed and ready and things, just waiting around in the kitchen with everything else while Fumiko scarfed a piece of the cake Gaara had made- it looked super amateur, sure, compared to the things Mai knew Fumiko could make, but it didn't look like it tasted horrible or was poisonous or anything.
Mai cast a dubious glance, though, at the rest of the kitchen, which was just a straight up disaster zone. There was flour on the counters and on the floor, spilled eggs and milk and cocoa powder. Mixers and bowls and cake pans were scattered across the cabinets, trailing food, and there was icing on the floor. It smelled like chocolate and burned Pam cooking spray. Gaara had used more or less the entire kitchen. That stupid smell was driving her nuts.
Gaara had somehow managed to even get it on the ceiling. How had he gotten food on the ceiling?
...
~ "I said get off!" It was a roar, and there was a crash, and there was blessed void, and suddenly the pain was gone completely, her eyes were clear and weren't sucking all the pain from her skin- ~
...
They had an hour left until the festival officially started, but it ran all night, so there wasn't really any rush. Gaara was nibbling on a now cold plate of soba noodles he'd found in the fridge, and Kankuro just looked kind of bored. Temari, like her, was sniffing at the air and checking out the battered kitchen.
Fumiko had blue icing smeared of her face. She'd eaten a little more than half of the entire cake, although granted, it was pretty small. She laughed with Kankuro as he joked around just for something to do, food in her mouth still. Gaara was being completely the opposite of subtle, flat-out staring at the side of Fumiko's head like he was trying to shoot her with lasers.
"Hurry up, Fumiko," Mai whined, stretching out on the table from where she sat on one of the stools. "Eat it later!"
Fumiko laughed. "Okay, okay," she said. "I'm gonna go get dressed then."
She got up and grabbed her bag peeking blue fabric and skip-dragged herself out of the kitchen. "Thanks for the cake, Gaara!" she called happily, giving a little wave, and then disappeared through the door.
Gaara seemed to relax slightly as Temari started to put it away, grabbing ceran-wrap from a drawer, but before she could, Kankuro stabbed a fork into some of it and stuck it in his mouth before she could protest. She did so, very loudly, but then paused when his eyes widened. "Kankuro?"
"Blech!" he made a coughing sound, spitting into his hand. "What the heck?"
"That's rude!" Temari chided. "Fumiko liked it just fine."
"Fumiko is crazy," Kankuro muttered, and she cuffed him on the ear with her closed fan. Mai stood, padding over curiously to look at the thing, chocolate with messy blue icing. It didn't look that suspicious, but... she carved a piece out with her newly painted figernail and popped it in her mouth. "Ow! Fine! You eat it, then!"
Oh shit. Oh, this was great.
Gaara came off the island, looking concerned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's- it's-"
"Salty," Mai said, licking her finger, cringing at the taste. There was even salt in the icing. "Like really salty." Her nose crinkled, and she stuck out her tongue. "Salt and chocolate. Ew."
"What?"
Now Temari had tried some too, and she gagged. "Holy-" She swallowed. "I mean- ugh, screw it. How did she eat this without flinching?"
Gaara, looking absolutely like a ghost or like someone had told him he'd lost his job as Kazekage and couldn't get it back, stepped forward and, instead of just taking their word for it, went to try it himself.
And spat it right back out on a little paper plate, wiping his tongue.
Mai just laughed, wiping her sticky finger off on a napkin already crumpled on the table. "Gaara, where's the sugar you used for this?"
He led her to the counter with the flour and the sugar and the salt. He pointed.
Mai tasted some of it on her finger. "Fumiko does all of the cooking, right?"
"Most of it."
"She has, like, a super-sense when it comes to ingredients." she said sympathetically, nodding as her suspicions were confirmed. "She doesn't need to label things. I did the same thing once. With my cereal." She nodded at the container. "Yeah, that's not sugar, Gaara. That's the salt."
...
~ "What's going on in here?!"
...
After a few more disasters, they finally went out to the festival itself, which looked just like it had the other two times she'd come to the thing: bright, loud, full of people.
She split off from the group, heading to go find some games she could win- because there were some that shinobi just crushed, like any kind of throwing/aiming game, balance or strength game. So she looked for her classmates, because they flocked to those places.
She won a few water guns, milk bottles and a shit ton of dart games. The civilians threw them weirdly, drew them over their shoulders and tossed them forward, instead of just throwing them. It was like senbon but with a little more resistance, some ring toss games.
It was fun calling out the game-riggers. The dart games with dull darts that she still popped balloons with, the weighted milk bottles that she just broke, even with the crap cork balls they gave her. And the festival-goers always finished the fights she started, the game-hosts glaring and yelling after her as she stepped away from the forming angry mobs each time.
Most of the things she won she just gave to random kids walking around, the ones that didn't win anything in the games or whose parents wouldn't let them play, because what was she supposed to do with stuffed animals and blow-up hammers and swords? She got a few strange looks from parents, but the kids seemed to like her just fine.
And then she came across Kankuro again, and damn him because he had alcohol on his breath and in his hands and she thought, why not?
Well, she didn't exactly have a tolerance built up, considering she'd only ever drank two or three times and only one of those had been without restraint. Really, she blamed it on Kankuro letting her have it without any kind of fuss.
Either way, the whole world blurred, glowing with the lanterns and the Christmas-light knockoffs, and the music was a soundtrack and they found themselves on the dance floor after what she would later estimate to be hours of nothing but laughter and games, food, dares and general horsery.
She'd taken a few dance classes before at the Academy, and she liked it. Dancing was a lot like fighting, really: certain steps and certain patterns, rushing around the dance floor and each other without letting anything go wrong; movement and heat and energy. And aside from learned dances there were some kinds of moving that just came from music.
Kankuro was a better dancer drunk than Mai ever would have thought, and though they stumbled occasionally he followed her back onto the floor for every fast beat. And Mai was drunk, and she knew she was drunk, but she was high with it and everything felt amazing. Fuck boundaries. Screw the rules.
So when he kissed her, she didn't really have the sense to do anything else but go with it, because dammit, it felt good, warm and sensual and things tingled when he did that, and for some god-damned reason he tasted like motor-oil, and he smelled like it too, and her brain was somewhere on Venus but not anywhere in this festival.
And when it was over they laughed and danced and danced and had another drink each and danced.
...
~ As the pain went away Mai was swept away, less and less numb and more or more nothing, and to a chorus of yelling and chaos, she finally relaxed, wanting to cry, wanting to scream. ~
...
Yeah, she regretted everything.
Ow. Ow. Fuck.
What was this? She didn't recognize- what was she lying on? A couch? This wasn't her couch.
No, hold on. It wouldn't have made sense if she was home either. Mai didn't remember going anywhere the night prior. She pushed past the headache, but only managed to pull up dancing and games and manicures and dress shopping. She didn't remember passing out, but something had definitely shorted out of her short-term.
"Oh, you're up," a voice said from somewhere, she had no sense of space or time to judge with.
"What in the-" she started to groan, hands finally pulling away from some shit strangling blanket to push over her yes because everything hurt, her muscles and her eyes from the light and the smell of motor-oil- but then something about the voice and the heavy smell just spiked a migraine like a railroad pike as she remembered hands and lips and lights. "... Shit."
"Yeah, I know. I forgot you don't drink much. There's advil in the kitchen."
Not the hangover, dumbass, she thought, and from Kankuro's affronted grunt, probably said out loud, too. "I- did you-? How much did I-"
"Oh," he said. Something squirmed in his voice, a forced kind of nonchalance.
It felt like her eyes were going to explode, so she didn't bother opening the or sitting up, didn't waste her energy and strained breath making a face or sounding angry, no matter how angry she was. ""Y-you thought I'd forget."
"Um," he said. "Can you?"
"Why?" she drawled, grinding her palms into her eyes. She was probably going to throw up in a second, but at the current moment that wasn't important. She didn't smile, but she kind of wished she could, wished she could open her eyes to see how he was reacting. God, he'd seriously kissed a drunk twelve year old. What the hell? "Are you embarrassed?"
"We were drunk. That's all."
If Mai could've laughed, she would've. But it hurt. It was true, she rationalized. She remembered most of it now, even if the audio/visuals were jacked. She remembered knowing it was him, deciding not to care, knowing she was too buzzed, deciding it felt good. They were drunk and they were dancing, and that was all they wrote.
"Question," she muttered. "Gaara and F-fumiko-"
"Yeah, that part happened, too," Kankuro said. Something clanked loudly, and he swore. Mai grunted in protest, trying to remember watching her siblings kiss. Wait. No. That sounded wrong. Whatever. She was dropping all this kissing stuff. It was going under 'drunk memories' next to that one party after Gaara got the Kazekage position.
"Why are you not in pain?"
Mai could just see him shrugging, with that stupid smug smirk. "Just more tolerant than you, I guess."
...
~ And she sank down into nothing. ~
...
HELLO!
I'MM NOT ABANDONING I SWEAR
I've just been having the worst writer's block and school and all sorts of crazy and I decided to split the 'Mai's past' into two so I could just get this posted, and besides, it got longer than I meant for it to XD
So I can't even remember everything that happened in this, but I know there are things I left out, like Mai helping kids find their parents, and a few other things I lost when I lost my planning sheet
NEWS! I'M GOING TO MEGACON! I along with Lily (who will be cosplaying MAI) and for one or two days, MY FAMILY. Who know nothing about anime but want to go anyway. XD
I would love to meet anyone who wants to say hello!
So as you can see, the tween is a little strange. This is because unlike previous chapters, this one is like a flashback, where in the others, the tweens were the flashbacks. So here, the tweens are in the present.
That monologue thing at the beginning has a purpose. In my mind, the last chapter was the end of an episode, and this was the beginning of another. So Mai passed out in the last chapter, and here, to the beat of the tweener, she monologues as she's being carried off, and it fades into her memories.
Also, I got a disturbingly small reaction to Eishi dying. I am concerned for your empathy.
REVIEW!
