……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter Nine:
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past. - Robertson Davies
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Wednesday 3/9/18
Time passes quickly; I go for a jog between the two main buildings in the morning now because I have nothing else to do. I've asked Gaara about me getting a job somewhere and he says it's too dangerous and not necessary, for now we have a free place to live, and almost too much money. I don't think that's a reason for me to do nothing, but the way he said 'but for now we have somewhere… ect' made me shiver with pleasure. Even after he wasn't Kazekage we'd go find somewhere nice, not conspicuous, little to live. Somewhere I can know the neighbors and go back to a small Uni and get some sort of qualification.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Thursday 4/9/18
"Gaara?" I whisper. It was late yesterday night. And the past few days this had been driving me insane. I had to know. It was dark, and I had to reach out to find his hands and entwine our fingers.
"Yes?"
"Where were… were you when I was in Sound?"
"Hm?"
"What's your story?"
"I don't have one, not one like yours."
"I don't mind."
"I don't attract trouble and the quiet dangerous types like you do." He chuckled, quoting Kimimaro. I sighed.
"Stop changing the topic. What were you doing while I was in Sound?"
"Surviving. Barely."
"Tell me about it." I said holding his hands tighter.
"You wouldn't want to know."
"I do. That's exactly what I would have said about all those things I wouldn't have told you… please." I pleaded.
He had stiffened a little, and was leaning away. I sighed, and let it drop, knowing it must involve saying lots of feeling-related things. Knowing that, I just wanted to know more. Sighing again, I lean up to kiss him and turn to lie in the curve of his body.
"Goodnight." I snuggled closer to him and wrapped his arms around me, I felt him relax, and draw me slightly closer. I knew that was his way of saying sorry. One of these days I'd get his story out of him, it just depended if I was fewer than 50 by that time.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Saturday 6/9/18
They came back. I almost died of shock, when Gaara had told me Temari had come straight here after sound I'd assumed she'd gone soon after. Kankuro was with her.
After breakfast, since it was Saturday, I'd gone to find Gaara. He told me he had a quiet day and I'd visited him in the day before this. I spent every bit of his free time with me, really, since I can't say I spent all of my free time with him, seeing as every time is free time for me. Which really sucks.
I had brought him coffee and slid my foot into the door to get it open, and then hit it open with my hips, I entered the room and smiled brightly automatically, then my eyes fell back and I saw two familiar figures, I stopped in my tracks. They both turned to see what Gaara was looking at, I had hoped to sneak away. I didn't want to see Temari again, not after our last meeting.
Gaara sighed and rubbed his temples, and I knew this was a bad time. Kankuro turned first, and then grinned in his I'm-better-then-you Kankuro-ish kinda way.
"Sorano!?" He asked in disbelief. "Wow… you've, er, grown." He eyed me slightly, god. He was always a sleaze. I scowl at him, and then he stopped looking as he noticed the look on Gaara's face, which was about four-hundred times worse then my scowl.
My face was white, I could feel it. These two were the last people I really felt like having in my life at the moment, Temari wasn't bad… she just, well, she carried bad memories. But maybe it would be good to have a girlfriend to talk to, I thought, one that wouldn't bow when I entered the room. And Kankuro? Well, who in the entire world would really be genuinely glad to see him? Except prostitutes. They'd have a field day.
"Sorano came to visit me. She's staying." He said it as if it was a slightly holiday, he warned me with his eyes not to say anything. I nodded slightly, why wouldn't these two be able to know? Everyone else in the Buildings knew. Everyone.
And then I caught sight of Temari. She was rigid, her face was paler then mine, she clenched her hands in her lap so hard her knuckles were white. And her eyes, they were so hostile, pure hate radiated from them… at whom? Me? What had I ever done…?
I gulped slightly and waved. "Hello." Something was very, very wrong. Something that I could take a guess, mainly came from Temari, Kankuro was still lounged across his chair, arm slung over the back.
"Hey." Was Kankuro's reply, he lifted an arm lazily.
Gaara's cheerful (as cheerful as Gaara can get) words were forced. "Sorano," he never called me Sorano. And that just topped it, something was horribly wrong. "Temari and Kankuro have come back from their trip to Land-of-the-Waves, where they were organizing a contract for Oil Exportation." He explained.
I nodded stiffly. "Er, did you have fun?" I didn't know what else to say, what else could is say? Not when if I looked at Kankuro I was afraid I'd catch time staring at my chest again, and if I looked at Temari I think I'd be scared for my own life. I looked pleadingly at Gaara.
He understood. "Can you ask the kitchen when Lunch will be ready?" he got out. "I'll take it soon."
I nodded, and as quickly as I could, with an awkward wave at both of them, I ran out of the room and down the hall.
Kankuro, well, he'd always been like that, it was just there had been other girls who were about three times as pretty and had double-D bra-sizes who were much more interesting.
But Temari? She'd been more of the caring type, as caring as one in Gaara's family can get, but she was the slightly more motherly one. Why did she… hate me so much? It was me, wasn't it? Was it just the wrong time?
No. It was me. She hated me, the hostility and anger radiated off her, you could almost feel it. And then I realized, she hadn't told Gaara about me. She was in deep shit. No wonder she hated me, she hadn't counted on me finding him, why wouldn't she tell him in the first place, though? Argh. So many questions. Why why why why whhyyyy. Why hadn't she told him? Why did she hate me? Why didn't she think I'd find him when he was the Kazekage? Why did it feel so much like she wanted me to just go jump off a cliff?
But what really made my stomach flip over and tie itself into knots was how Gaara reacted. How he had been slightly, well, hesitant about the situation. He was still thinking about things, about what he should do. Where he should be, and who he should be there with. Terror seemed to seize my body, and I braced myself on a wall… What if he sent me back to Sound? What if Temari was angry because, I dunno, because I wasn't good enough for him? Because she thought I was a high-school crush, not a life partner for the Kazekage.
After much worry and pausing and fighting back scared tears I made it too the kitchens, where I enquired about Lunch. I knew somewhere it was just a ploy to get me out of the room, but I did what he said anyway.
After that, I didn't bother reporting to Gaara over when lunch was, I donned the full Suna gear, attachable-sleeves, veil, complicated sashes and all. I was going for a walk, Gaara and I both needed time to think. Well, not so much me. I'd do whatever he wanted me to. If he said stay, I'd stay until I died, or worse, he sent me away. If he wanted me back at Sound, I'd go back, if he wanted me dead… I don't know what I'd do. I'd just play along and see how it all panned out.
The clothes were itchy, the veil made things sketchy, and the sleeves made me feel like an idiot (Sassuke…), but I made my way to a familiar paper-stall, and sat on a bench for a while. Eventually, I got fed up, and flipped my Veil over my face, so I could watch people go by, I got less dirty looks for at least having the decency to cover the rest of my body.
I knew I'd be in trouble for leaving again, and I didn't want the Guards to be sacked for letting me out again. Really, I don't know if their even trying. I just walk out, really. Nothing fancy.
When I walked back into the room, I ripped off my veil angrily, I really hate that thing. It's itchy as hell. And then started on the small clips keeping the sleeves on, I was half way down the second one when Gaara came out of the shower, holding his shirt in his hands and drying his face with it.
"Oh, there you are." He said after a while, I'd now had to resort to trying to undo the clips with my teeth. They were annoying, and I couldn't see over my shoulder enough to get the last two.
"Can you get these?" I hold my arm out to him, he efficiently undoes them and the sleeves falls, I see a red mark where it was bound to my upper-arm. I scowl at it. "See, look at what it did!" I point at it accusingly.
Gaara's mouth twitched slightly and I managed to get the other one off without too much trouble, once I had changed into my 'SLIP-SLOP-SLAP IN SUNA!' T-shirt, I sat on the couch next to Gaara, and sighed. I had various questions burning holes into my mind.
Eventually he sighed, and looked at me dryly. "Just ask."
I looked at him with wide-eyed innocence. "Ask what?" He gave me another dry look and I sigh. "Temari hates me."
"Not a question."
"Yeah, I know."
"…" Silence, I wriggle under the pressure of my next question.
"Why?"
He grins a bit at my amazing desire to know what I could have done to offend her that badly. "It's stupid." He warned.
"I'm stupid; it'll all fit together nicely."
"No, I mean really stupid. I sent her to file reports because it was so stupid."
"Ohh… that stupid? Well, I went for a walk… In the… ready for this? Outside!" I cover my mouth as I gasp comically. He raises an eyebrow. "I know, I know, rebel I am. And your guards really suck."
His mouth twitched. "I'll let them off. I told them not to except anyone dressed in clothes not from a souvenir shop."
I scowl at him, my worry had slightly subsided. He didn't seem to have any immediate thoughts of telling me to piss off. "Anyway, go on, why? What could be so mind-bogglingly stupid as to make you give them filing duty?"
"She thinks… eh, it's so stupid." He glares at an imaginary Temari. "She thinks your bad luck." He spits out.
I blink. "Oh… that's not so bad." I pause, contemplating. "Well, that's not so bad at all. I've had you give me worse insults then that. I was expecting something more along the lines of 'not worthy of you' or 'ugly short self-absorbed clumsy bitch.'"
"She said that too."
I go pale, and he laughs. I swallow. "Well… all because I'm bad luck?"
"She has some kind of logic behind it." He says, I know he's actually really amazingly angry at her, I know she must have said something horrible. "She says that in every place she's been, you've turned up and ruined everything."
"Explain more?"
Gaara was getting angry remembering it, but I wanted to know too much. "In Konoha, she blames you for making me want to move." He didn't meet my eyes. "In sound she says when you… fainted, everyone thought she pushed you. She left because nobody would talk to her. And now she's here, and she says she goes away for a month and comes back and you're here to ruin another life she's made for herself."
I blink. "Wow."
He nods. "Stupid." He says again angrily.
"Well, I have to say I'd be pretty pissed off if I were here too…" I say slowly.
Gaara's eyes flick to mine, and for a moment I saw a small fraction of how angry he really was. It scared me; I'm surprised Temari left with filing-duty and with a prescription for a government-supplied wheelchair. "She lied, and she knows she is in deep, deep shit." He said angrily, staring into the distance. "When you turned up in the room, did you see her face? She knew she was pretty much screwed." He was speaking with some of my vocabulary now, I almost grinned.
Composing myself, I nod. "Still…," I trail off, knowing what I'm about to say will make him extremely pissed off; I look him in the eyes, so he'd know I wasn't just teasing. "Maybe she's right."
He growled, and his eyes flashed to mine instantly. "You really believe something so idiotic?" he spat.
I flushed. "Well, not the whole 'bad luck' thing, but maybe I have ruined all the other places she liked for her… I didn't even know about Sound. All I knew is that she left."
I knew I was getting on his nerves. I should have really stopped being self-conscious aloud before he locked me up somewhere until I got some sense. He grabbed my shoulders, and turned me so I had to look at him.
"No. You haven't. She has ruined all the other places, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Konoha, she agreed to leave. In Sound, she didn't notice the fact you'd fallen into a pool. And now here she lied straight to my face, and it's come back to bite her."
"I don't want to bite her…" I said slowly.
"She isn't staying here." He was angry. Very angry.
No matter what Gaara said I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe it wasn't good to have Temari and I in the same place, well, not good for her anyway. And I wouldn't let her lose her job because of me. "Gaara, don't fire her."
"Why shouldn't I?" His eyes burned, and I just wanted him to be happy again, it killed to know that what I was saying wouldn't do that.
"Please." I didn't have a reason that he'd agree too. Or like. All I could do was ask. "She is doing an amazing job here, you can't fire her for personal revenge."
He was silent, eyes narrowed at me.
"Please." I repeat. "She did an amazing job on that Oil Contract, she was back early and everything. She may have… held grudges, but hopefully she'll learn from it."
Gaara's knuckles were white, he had his hand clenched on the arm of the couch, his jaw was clenched… but he was thinking. Re-thinking. Then he sighed.
"She slips, once, at doing anything. Or repeats that kind of idiocy, she's gone, Sora." He told me. "I don't know why you're vouching for her to stay, but she gets one more chance."
I relaxed immediately. At least that was one less reason for Temari to hate me.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
HELLOOOOO!! Hope you liked the chappie! LOVE YOU. LOTS.
HAHAHAHAHAH. Funny review award of the entire universe goes to Celiatsu for this comment – 'Though now every time I see a vent I try to estimate whether or not I could fit in it!' That made me laugh SOOOO very much.
Love to-love.
P.s. I find this quote is really really good. And true. I know lots of people like that, myself being one of them at times.
