Fic 11. Prompt 013. 'Yellow.'
Gaara decided, one day when he was very small, before the thing that his siblings referred to in hushed tones as 'The Incident' with the man whose name he is unable to speak, that yellow was his favorite color.
When he was older, he learned that it was the way of young children to change their favorites arbitrarily. These children were 'normal.' Gaara had never been normal, and he had always kept yellow close to his heart.
At first, he had chosen yellow for that man, yellow for his hair and the bright finger paint that the man always used when he painted pictures of a normal family with a father and a mother and a sister and two brothers, all smiling underneath a blue sky.
Then it had been yellow for the sun, the bright round ball that lit up the sky and kept the Voice- he had not known, then, what the voice was- at bay, its restless demands quiet, kept him sane. Or saner, at any rate.
After The Incident, it had been yellow for the desert, his home, his friend, father, mother, lover. The desert comforted him, gave him whatever he wished. It guided him to water, shaded him from the heat of the sun, was home to hidden life, like the fennec foxes, huge-eared and dark-eyed and also yellow, that Gaara befriended one day when he was seven. The foxes had been his only friends, had taken advantage of the shade he made for them and settled in his lap. They had been the only affection he had known.
And then, when he was older, he chose yellow again. Yellow for Naruto's hair, yellow for the salty ramen that tinged every kiss, yellow for sun and golden koi and the floorboards of their house worn with the steps of hundreds of people before them.
Yellow for love.