Sorry for the long wait. The last month has been utter Hell; I haven't had a whole lot of time for this.
The Lines of Fear
As the night gives way to morning and the warmth of the air climbs back up to typical blistering midsummer heat, the weary residents of Sunagakure flood back into their bruised city. The Kazekage has no way to know how the villagers are reacting to the sight of destruction in their midst; he's been too busy sending for and dispatching various repairmen to go back to the place the Shukaku destroyed last night. The pale, stretched looks on the weather-beaten faces of the repairmen as they filed in and filed out of his office was enough to tell him what the rest of the village probably thinks.
"I must say that, as far as seal inspections go, I've certainly had better accommodations."
Chiyo arrived at the Governmental Complex around nine in the morning. However, when told of why she had been summoned there, she insisted on going back to her house first for the proper supplies. "The inspection, maintenance and reinforcement of a seal is very delicate business. I could botch the job thanks to not having exactly the equipment I need. Do you really want that?" As such, she's just arrived back.
Given that Gaara's still unconscious and thus vulnerable, the Kazekage decided against having him transported to the hospital. As such, the seal inspection is taking place with the unconscious Gaara having been placed on the kitchen table, hence Chiyo's griping. Leaning heavily against the soapstone countertop, the Kazekage figures it prudent not to answer and give her more ammunition. Tired and irritable and not approving of any of this at all, Chiyo's looking for an argument. And frankly, he's not in any mood for idle talk right now.
He wonders when Gaara will wake up, deliberately not contemplating the idea of him not waking up at all, the boy still gripped firmly in unconsciousness. It would probably be better for everyone if the child did not awaken while still lying on his back on the kitchen table with an old woman poking and prodding at his now-visible seal. But he's already been unconscious for several hours. Just how much longer is it going to be before Gaara awakens?
And just what is he going to be like when he does wake up?
The Kazekage rubs his forehead wearily. He still feels weak and tired from the battle of the night before, still feels as though the very fibers of his bones have been stretched and strained and left to dry in the sun like skins left out by a tanner. The moments that sneak in between giving orders to repairmen and coordinating meetings, those moments are consumed by one thought, and one alone. What will he be like when he wakes up?
When he sent the repairmen out this morning, the Kazekage told them to keep an eye out for any signs of a corpse. He doubts highly that Yashamaru survived detonating all those explosive tags, and even if by some incredibly unlikely circumstance he did, he certainly didn't survive the Shukaku manifesting practically right on top of him. Maybe at least the repairmen would find a corpse that could be cremated and put to rest, but no. They've found neither hide nor hair of Yashamaru.
Usually, the Kazekage would doubt that someone's actually dead unless he's brought back a body. But under the circumstances, there can be little doubt about it. Yashamaru is dead. When Gaara wakes, how will he have been changed by what he perceives as his caretaker's betrayal? With despair and despondency? With rage? Both, maybe? It seems too much to hope for that Gaara will be just the same as he was before, that he'll still be, though dangerous and unstable, a fundamentally good-natured little boy. No, that's far too much to hope for.
And now, now there are only two things left to do. It would be so much easier if he had died. But still…
The minutes drag on in silence. Chiyo pores over Gaara's activated, visible seal, painstakingly comparing the intricate lines and symbols to a graph she brought with her. In some places, she fills in vanished lines or darkens fading ones with sealing ink. In others, she summons chakra to her fingertips and presses her fingers down on certain parts of the seal. Occasionally, she takes Gaara's vital signs, frowning and clucking. A far-away look comes over her eyes. She seems to have forgotten that there's anyone else in this kitchen with her and the child—she honestly seems to have forgotten she's in a kitchen at all.
Then, there comes an injection of fresh life in this hollow, quiet space.
Kankuro and Temari tend to make a fair amount of noise when they bustle into places—though Baki's been teaching them the basics of ninjutsu, getting them ready for the Academy exams, the lesson of stealth doesn't appear to be one that really took (Or maybe Baki simply hasn't gotten around to it yet; he really can't be sure). It's much the same now; to someone with decades of experience as a shinobi, their childish footsteps sound clumsy and loud, even if they're far lighter than what could be expected of an adult civilian.
The pair crosses the threshold into the kitchen. Both are a touch pale, purplish shadows gathering beneath their eyes from what was doubtless a sleepless night. They were whispering to themselves beforehand, but stop abruptly when their wide eyes soak in the situation before them. Their reactions are rather different from one another's.
Temari stands stock-still and silent, her summer-green eyes passing from Chiyo, to Gaara, and to her father. Then, she hurriedly turns on her heel and heads up the stairs, face white and lip bitten; she'll not emerge from her room at all today. Kankuro, on the other hand, after a long moment's hesitation, strides over to the kitchen table where his brother lies prostrate and the old retired kunoichi does her work.
"Erm…" Kankuro fidgets, his eyes shooting from Gaara to Chiyo and back to Gaara. "…Is… Is he alright?" the boy asks awkwardly.
Chiyo doesn't look up from her inspection; instead, she puts her blue clay jar of sealing ink back in her bag and pulls out another small, earthenware jar, this one painted dull purple and labeled 'lacquer.' "that's that I'm trying to find out." Her tone, thought still rather tetchy, is significantly milder than anything else heard out of her thus far this morning. Shaking her drooping gray bangs out of her eyes, Chiyo takes a slip of thin, waxy paper out of her bag. She then looks at Kankuro, and frowns. "If you could go stand on my other side…"
Kankuro quickly obliges her. Though his skin's painted with apprehension and starting to drip with sweat (small wonder, since the air conditioning seems to be broken—again), his eyes gleam with interest. He clearly has no desire to be dislodged from his proverbial spectator seat.
After blowing on the sealing ink to dry it, Chiyo takes the sheet of waxy paper up in her hand. Balancing it on her fingertips, she charges the paper with her chakra. Then, she rests it on top of the seal.
Kankuro's eyes widen when the formerly white sheet of paper suddenly starts to glow a bright shade of lavender, casting dancing shadows on the walls. To the Kazekage, this doesn't really qualify as an occasion for widened eyes or looks of wonder. He surveys the scene dimly, feeling the wound at his side start to ache again. He can't remember at the moment if Chiyo did this during the initial sealing, but judging from the air of satisfaction conveyed through her brisk nod, this did what it was supposed to do. All is well, then. I don't remember the sealing taking so long, though.
The paper is stowed away in Chiyo's bag. She selects a brush from her brush set, the twin of the brush she used to apply the sealing ink, and starts to paint lacquer over the ink.
After a few moments of this, in which the boy seems to be wrestling with something behind his skin, Kankuro speaks up. "You're Chiyo-sama, aren't you?"
"That I am."
With that terse affirmation of her identity, Kankuro's face lights up in a smile and a beam. "Is it true that you once captured a whole castle with nothing but puppets?" he demands excitedly.
Oh… That story again. That story's one that has a tendency to be circulated around Sunagakure whenever someone wants to offer up an example of a legendary feat of puppetry. The formation of chakra strings is a basic skill that every prospective shinobi in Suna is taught, but Kankuro's been exhibiting a special interest in puppetry for a couple of years now; it seems inevitable that he would have heard that story before. He's probably been hearing it his entire life, just the way his father has; the Kazekage's never been able to positively affirm if the story of Chiyo taking down a castle with nothing but puppets is actual fact or exaggeration, but he does know that whatever she did, she did it as a young woman during the First War, before he was born.
A small, nostalgic smile floats over Chiyo's lined face. "They were very special puppets I did it with—I've not seen craftsmanship on par with them since. But yes, yes I did."
Kankuro's grin only widens. "That's so cool! How many did you have?"
"Ten, child. That's the most any puppeteer can wield at once, after all."
The young boy tilts his head a bit, frustration flitting over his tanned skin. "I can't get my chakra strings to hold on to a puppet for more than a couple of seconds." Kankuro looks up at her out of his eyelids, clearly sensing an opportunity ripe for the taking. "Will you help me with it?"
"Kankuro." At this, the Kazekage lifts his voice to send Kankuro out of the room, frowning deeply all the while. There's a fine line between being confident enough to reach for what you want and just being entirely too forward, and Kankuro's just crossed it. And considering what Chiyo's doing at the moment, he really shouldn't be bothering her to start with…
But then, Chiyo holds up a hand, clearly meant to silence him. Though still deeply dubious about this, the Kazekage holds his tongue for now, if only to see what Chiyo will do. Not looking at Kankuro, still dabbing lacquer over the sealing ink on Gaara's exposed belly—it's become entirely too easy to forget the boy's still there—she says to her little admirer, "Alright, boy. I'll teach you to handle puppets, if you can answer me this riddle," she lays out whimsically. "'I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.'"
"Tomorrow," Kankuro answers promptly. Chiyo stares at him laying down her brush. The Kazekage's lip twitches. While Kankuro does love his little puppets, he also loves riddles.
Chiyo's lips tighten in a frown. Evidently she hadn't actually expected Kankuro to answer the riddle correctly. "'At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen.'"
"The stars."
"'All about, but can not be seen, can be captured, can not be held, no throat, but can be heard.'"
"That's easy. It's the wind."
"'I drive men mad for love of me, easily beaten, never free.'"
"You're hedging!"
"Answer it."
The fourth riddle, it seems, is the one that Kankuro just can't answer. "I don't know that one," he admits reluctantly, shrugging.
"It's gold," his father supplies wearily. "The answer is gold." He remembers; that riddle had been a favorite of his uncle's, a merchant. The man had muttered it, astonished, the first time it had become clear that his nephew could make gold move without touching it.
Chiyo attempts to go back to her work as though nothing happened, but Kankuro will have none of that. "Hey!" he exclaims indignantly. "I answered your riddle! You didn't say anything about the other ones. Come on, Chiyo-sama, you promised."
She waves her prosthetic hand to quiet him. "Alright, alright, if only to make you quit your yapping. You keep learning from whoever's teaching you now. It may be a long time, but eventually I'll call you over. Then we'll see just how serious you really are about this." Kankuro grins and nods; she laughs, low and wheezing. "Good. Now leave me be."
That being said, Chiyo dabs on the last of the lacquer. She summons chakra to her fingertips one last time and probes the seal, gnawing at her lip in concentration. Then, her hands form a long succession of seals. In her youth, it probably would have taken her all of two seconds to form these seals. But her flesh hand is old and arthritic, and the wooden prosthetic that's taken the place of her long-gone right forearm can not compare with flesh for dexterity. She murmurs something under her breath, and the seal vanishes from sight.
With that, the brush set and the jar of lacquer go right back into her bag. Chiyo jerks Gaara's shirt back down over his pale belly, and briefly reaches over to peel back one of the adhesive flaps of the bandage on Gaara's forehead. Her eyes narrow shrewdly in a look the Kazekage doesn't think he likes, before replacing the bandage, smoothing the adhesive over pale, pliant skin. Then, she slings her bag over her shoulder. "The seal is repaired," she says evenly, turning to go. "And that's quite an interesting mark your boy's left on himself."
Mark? What mark?
Kankuro frowns and leans over his brother, prodding him on the shoulder gently. "If his seal's fixed," he wonders aloud, "why isn't Gaara awake?"
"Who knows?" Chiyo's uneven footsteps echo against the stone floor. The back door slams behind her.
With that, and completely forgetting that Kankuro's still in the kitchen, the Kazekage goes over to Gaara, frowning and wondering what Chiyo meant by "interesting mark" under the bandage on his forehead. It's just a wound he picked up during last night's battle, isn't it?
He lifts the bandage, and in the moment of sight and revelation that follows, it's as if the whole world stands still and all he can hear is his heartbeat pounding, thud-thud-thud, in his ears.
What he had thought was just some wound, some slash Gaara had sustained during the battle, isn't that at all. The Kazekage's eyes show him now what they couldn't see last night, plain to see. Kanji, a character of the diplomatic tongue—a message not just for the people of Kaze, but for all the world, to be seen and remembered. 'Ai.' 'Love.' There it is, carved, stark and scarlet, into Gaara's smooth, pale skin.
Beside him, seeing all of this just as clearly as he does, Kankuro makes a small, perturbed sound in his throat. The Kazekage doesn't hear it. Instead, he reaches forward, feels the ridges on Gaara's forehead, sure to scar, beneath his fingers, and wonders how he never noticed this before.
He doesn't think about what this means.
-0-0-0-
The day wears on.
The councilors are, of course, utterly livid over this catastrophe, and when they come in to the council chamber they strongly stink of fear. While they're furious over the damage and what they consider the "mishandling" of the situation, they've also witnessed the full scope of Gaara and the Shukaku's destructive power when someone who is capable of stopping the pair is present to do so. None of them like to think of something like this happening again, or what it will mean for Suna if this is allowed to go on. All in all, the meeting was about as productive as the Kazekage expected it to be (which is to say, not at all); the councilors do naught but express their fears the whole time. But at least he's seen to be doing something, which gives him more time to think about exactly what he's going to do about this.
After the meeting, the Kazekage calls the hospital to send a medic to see about his side. A kunoichi who looks too young to be practicing field medicine, let alone practicing in a hospital, responds to his summons. She applies healing chakra, reapplies antiseptic, re-bandages the wound, gives him the "change the bandages at least once a day, more if they get soaked or dirty" speech he's been hearing ever since he made genin twenty-five years ago, and recommends fluids.
The repairmen send someone to report back to him. The buildings can not be salvaged. None of them can be. They'll all have to be demolished, and built back up from the ground. Half of the cracked cisterns are looking the same way. Fortunately, the electrical lines aren't beyond saving, and none of the pipes are damaged. But the Kazekage still shudders when he looks at the projected cost of all the needed rebuilding and repair work. There's no cutting corners on things like this, but if only there had been less damage…
More reports come in. The shelters are indeed overflowing; now-homeless citizens flock to the shelters, to the hostels, to the tenement houses, when they can't find refuge with family or friends. The people are frightened, shying away from the shadows. The people are outraged, muttering among themselves. The people are wondering what is to come, whispering into the dark.
It… It was inevitable, I suppose. But if the situation altogether just could have been averted…
Then, Gaara wakes up.
The Kazekage bites back a sigh as he stares down at his young son. The boy had apparently woken up in a kitchen chair (obviously, he didn't just let Gaara continue to lie on that kitchen table after Chiyo was done with her work; that would have just been entirely too unsanitary) and had wandered up the stairwell and onto the second floor. Gaara's never been here before; inevitably, he got lost, and no one could have been more surprised than the Kazekage to come down the hall and see him standing there, drinking in his surroundings intently.
"You'll live here from now on," he says to Gaara. "That room there—" he points and nods to a room off to Gaara's left "—is where you will stay. Here is the key to that room." He hands Gaara his key, which the boy takes without comment and tucks away into his pant pocket. "Do you understand?"
Gaara nods wordlessly. There's not the nervous timidity that his father's come to expect to be found in him. His shoulders don't shake or slump; they are straight and level. The boy meets his father's gaze evenly, instead of ducking his head as he would have done just yesterday. His eyes are… They're blank. Pale green irides that betray utterly no emotion. They look like marbles. They don't look like they did yesterday.
Maybe he'll still be alright, the Kazekage thinks to himself, though not with much optimism, as Gaara unlocks his door and slips inside. After all, he's much calmer than the other two hosts were after their outbursts. He's not rampaging. Maybe he'll be alright.
-0-0-0-
The morning after all of this finds all four of them, father and his three children, sitting down at the same kitchen table for breakfast the first time in their lives.
Now that all the seats are filled, with Gaara taking what once had been the empty chair, the table seems just a touch crowded. At the same time, though, no one attempts to engage him in conversation, and his presence there is not verbally acknowledged or, by the other two children, really acknowledged at all. Those three children eat their bread, eat cold lumps of white, briny cheese unearthed from the back of the refrigerator, and drink their frothy milk in silence.
Over his own cup of coffee (strong; he barely got any sleep at all last night), the Kazekage considers his youngest child. The boy eats slowly, and with far less enthusiasm than either of his older siblings, who apart from their unnatural silence, seem more or less back to normal this morning. He keeps his head down, and his eyes trained on his plate. There's no way he could suspect that his future is being contemplated by his only surviving parent, at this very moment.
There's no doubt that most would consider it unwise (at best) for the Kazekage to bring Gaara into his house, to house him alongside his siblings, after everything that's happened. The Kazekage doesn't think Temari and Kankuro are in any less danger of Gaara now than they were when he was born; quite the opposite. But now that Yashamaru has died (and even if he had survived, the bridges have been burned), there is nowhere else for Gaara to go. The Kazekage trusts no one else with him, not even Baki, who's been caring for the boy's older siblings for years now, and he doubts highly that anyone would be willing to take Gaara on as their charge anyways.
There's nowhere else for him to go, nowhere else I can send him. Maybe being around his siblings, around children who don't automatically ostracize him, will help stabilize him, keep him from lashing out at strangers and the children who refuse to play with him. Maybe.
The fact that he's having Gaara live with his siblings now, now that the child's proved just how dangerous he is at his lowest point, probably isn't what would make most people raise their eyebrows if they could know the thoughts going through the Kazekage's mind, though. There's something else far more likely to provoke that reaction, and stronger reactions still, that occupies his thoughts at the moment.
Yesterday during the council meeting, it was decided that since Yashamaru's "assassination attempt" had been a failure (with much whispering from the council members—none of whom were privy to the medic's status as an ANBU member—that the Kazekage should not have expected a chunin, let alone one who had been out of the field for seven years, to be able to pull off a successful assassination against the jinchuuriki host), it should fall to others to end Gaara's life. The Kazekage hadn't expected them to believe otherwise, and he agreed to it, both to silence any possible objections over him being too soft because the host's his flesh and blood, and because it is, after all, standard procedure to have eliminated any person or creature who poses a significant threat to Sunagakure.
That's not to say that he honestly expects any of the future assassination attempts to succeed. After what happened last night, how can he?
I won't be able to justify sending anyone of lower rank than jonin after him, the Kazekage thinks to himself resignedly, swishing his cup in the futile attempt to keep the dregs from thickening up the coffee too much. Well—his thoughts take on a grimly sardonic note—I suppose this would provide a good opportunity to weed out the leeches and malcontents. Anyone who's not pulling their weight or seems disloyal, send them after Gaara. I'll just have to look over their records and make sure they don't have a history of being partial to poisons. And he'll have to make sure the jonin he sends isn't the type to use poisons first; being able to mix a lethal poison is a requirement for jonin in Sunagakure, but that doesn't mean they all do it on a regular basis.
No, after last night, the Kazekage doesn't think that there is anyone beside him in this village who could kill Gaara by any means apart from poison. That's not meant as arrogance, and frankly, it's not arrogance at all—it's nothing but plain, unembellished truth. Perhaps that automatic defense of Gaara's will fail eventually, but it's just as likely that it won't. No one can lay hands on Gaara unless he wants them to. No one can hurt him at all. The gold dust is the only thing that can move quicker than that sand, is the only thing that can subdue that sand. Right now, he is the only one who can kill his son. Even if no one else understands that, this knowledge weighs heavy on his mind.
And here I am, playing both sides against the middle. He knows that Gaara is a threat. He knows that his responsibility as Kazekage requires him to see that any threat to his village is stomped out, even if that threat is his young son whom he barely knows. He's willing to give the appearance of wanting to have Gaara killed. He's willing to keep the boy distant from him emotionally, to avoid growing too attached if the child is killed, or if the day comes when the Shukaku has to be extracted from him. And he's willing to concede that Gaara failed the test that would have given his father an excuse to spare his life.
There's all that, staring him dead in the eyes. But he just can't commit to the idea that Gaara must be killed. He just can't walk up to the child and strangle him with a tendril of gold, or snap his neck or suffocate him or poison him or anything else. It's not practical, the Kazekage decides bitterly. It's not good judgment. It's not the responsible thing to do, letting Gaara live. He's letting his feelings as a father overrule his duty as the leader of this nation. That's not something he should ever do.
That's the truth of the matter, nonetheless.
Temari reaches for the last lump of cheese on the cheese plate in the center of the table at the same time that Kankuro does. Frowning, she smacks her brother's offending hand with the closed fan that was sitting on her lap, making it painfully obvious what she thinks about having to share the cheese with anyone.
Except it's not Kankuro whose hand she's struck.
It's Gaara's.
For the second time in as many days, time seems to stand still. Temari freezes, her green eyes huge and horror-stricken. She still clutches the fan in her small hand, gaping, open-mouthed, at her youngest sibling who sits across the table from her. Kankuro's eyes flit towards the door, wondering in that moment if Gaara could kill him in the time it would take him to get out of the kitchen. The Kazekage stiffens, readying himself the storm that may well come.
Gaara stares at his sister for a long moment, his face registering naked shock. No one has ever struck him before, neither with a hand or with something like a silk-and-sandalwood fan. The fan's destructive power in the hands of a nine-year-old girl is so limited that the sand didn't even bother to rush to his defense. The silence yawns up between brother and sister, each moment in which nothing is said increasing the likelihood of violence.
But Gaara says nothing, does nothing. He stares at Temari for a few seconds, and then, he quietly retracts his hand, and starts to nibble on the warm, soft sourdough bread provided him as anyone would expect of a shy, quiet seven-year-old.
The Kazekage breathes a silent sigh of relief.
Maybe he really is alright.
-0-0-0-
A few minutes later, he'll eat those words.
Having finished his coffee, leaving his children to finish their breakfast and move on to whatever it is they're doing today, the Kazekage starts up the stairwell. He's halfway to the second floor when a monstrous wave of chakra spikes from down below, slamming against him like the sand of the Shukaku had two nights prior.
Rushing back down to the kitchen, he finds sand whirling all about.
Kankuro and Temari appear to have tried to escape, but find their escape route cut off by sand, and have backed into a corner.
Gaara looks nothing if not deranged. His aura drips with blood lust.
This incident is thankfully cleared up quickly and with minimal injury. A few ground rules are set after that. To Temari and Kankuro: when you are in your rooms, keep the doors locked; do not venture out of your rooms after dark unless you absolutely have to; avoid Gaara when he's angry. They are all too happy to comply, skittering away from their brother like cockroaches confronted with the light. To Gaara: never come to the fifth floor during office hours; never go in your siblings' rooms, for any reason. The Kazekage has no way of knowing if Gaara listened. He has no way of knowing if he even heard him.
And he doesn't think this is going to help. Gaara clearly isn't alright.