Grains of Sand
Repair work on the now-demolished buildings is moving on schedule; there's been some dispute about how much the construction workers are to be paid, but it's nothing that can't be worked out, in time. Most of the citizens who found themselves homeless after the Shukaku's rampage have found temporary housing, whether it be in other apartment complexes, shelters, or with friends or family. The rest, however?
Those who have not found housing in Sunagakure, are leaving, one by one.
The Kazekage is aware of this, just as he is aware that since all those leaving are civilians, he can't do much to stop them. He looks over the summary of petitions for those seeking to leave, and knows he hasn't got any legitimate reason to keep them here. He signs his name in black ink, presses a minute amount of his chakra into the ink to verify his identity, and hands the summary back over to the messenger, biting back a sigh all the while.
When they leave, they'll take their business, their work, their industry with them. If there really is no longer any place for them here, no place where they can live and thrive, then the Kazekage supposes he can't blame them for seeking their fortune elsewhere. If they don't feel safe here, if they feel like their lives and the lives of their children are at risk, then he supposes he really shouldn't blame them for leaving. But their departure will hurt this city. Oh yes, it will hurt all the more if they leave the nation altogether, but Suna would still be left to ail even if the villagers who are planning on leaving now were just planning on moving to one of the port cities or one of the villages up in the mountains to the northwest. The economy, and thus Suna's ability to assert itself as a major power on the continent, suffers whenever there is a mass migration out of the city.
I find myself the leader of a nation of wary of shadows and the future. And why, exactly, are they not supposed to be wary, especially considering…
Sitting at his desk, staring out the window upon a Sunagakure in full afternoon blush, the Kazekage's face darkens as he recalls another report that made its way to his desk earlier today.
Last night, he called the first of potentially many jonin into his office with an "unusual" mission for him. Anand, the young jonin in question, has a long history of insubordinate behavior and not working well in groups. Though the man is apparently talented enough to have become jonin, he shows no sign of ever being willing to learn the importance of cooperation and respect for authority, and as a result, few will work with him. On top of all that, he specializes in taijutsu and hasn't mixed a poison in more than two years. He's perfect for the mission.
Or, rather, he was.
The Kazekage hadn't expected any better. That's what he tells himself, as he looks at the photographs accompanying the report, stark black-and-white things—Anand on the attack, Anand falling back to defense, Anand quite, quite dead. He remains caught between relief that Gaara survived the attack and frustration that, having made a weapon out of a child and having watched that venture fail miserably, if ever comes the time when Gaara will pose so great an immediate threat to Sunagakure, it's entirely possible that no one will be able to put an end to the threat he represents.
Anand is dead, Gaara still lives, and in a few days, a week at the most, the Kazekage will have to organize another likely (hopefully, no matter how much he has to mask that opinion) futile assassination attempt against his youngest child. He puts the pictures of the dead jonin down, pushes the written report (courtesy of the ANBU) aside, and takes the other photographs taken by the ANBU in his hands.
In the moments before the assassination attempt began, when Anand was still creeping up behind him, Gaara sported the dull-eyed, blank expression that he so often wears these days, the look that has become normal for him. He doesn't look like one of the living when he wears that face, too pale for a Suna villager, eyes too lusterless to belong to a living boy when he looks at the world around him. There's no liveliness to his limbs when he walks. The Kazekage stares at this first picture for a few moments, but the more he looks at Gaara, at the boy's dead-eyed face, at his long, thin shadow, at the carved 'Ai' scar on his forehead, the more he wishes that he'd never re-opened the jinchuuriki project in the first place, and the more he can't stand to look at him like this. He turns the photo down on its face and moves to the others. That one is almost more difficult to look at than what comes afterwards.
Gaara's expression in the following photographs is progressively bestial. There is a photo of Anand trying to attack him with kunai. Both the jonin and the kunai appear as blurs in the photo, but Gaara is standing still. While the sand is swirling all around him, the boy, facing the ANBU agent's camera as he is, can be clearly seen and observed. The photo was taken from the side of a wall some thirty feet up from the ground, but even from that height there's no mistaking the way his mouth has twisted in a snarl.
The second photograph, taken as Gaara was first going on the counter-attack, engulfing his would-be assassin in sand, was taken from closer to ten feet off the ground, and gives a much better look at his face. That snarl is still firmly fixed in place, showing all of Gaara's teeth and the gaps from where some of his milk teeth have fallen out and have yet to be replaced by permanent teeth. It drips with cruelty and bloodlust; his pale eyes are no longer flat and dull but gleam with a heart-stopping malice. He wants to kill.
The third and final photograph was taken by an ANBU agent on an opposite wall. Gaara's back was facing this camera, but the scene the photo catches instead is all that needs to be said of the conclusion of this story. The image captured is that of Anand's last desperate glimpse at the sun before he is swallowed entirely by sand. Only one of his dark eyes is visible. It is wide open and dilated in terror.
Despite already knowing the answer, it still bothers him to see expressions like the one he wore today on Gaara's face. How does a seven-year-old boy who has never been on the front lines of battle come to so viscerally enjoy killing, as Gaara has? How do they come to need it so badly that the venture out past their homes at night, looking for victims to kill, as Gaara has begun to do?
The answer to these questions is always the same. Because I made him that way, the Kazekage admits heavily, rubbing his forehead and trying, always failing, to shake the weariness of that knowledge from his heart. Because I made him to be a weapon, the guardian of this village, but the demon had its way, and the child just couldn't take it. Because Gaara snapped, and I can't find it in me to put an end to the suffering he feels or the terror he causes.
Why, he wonders gloomily, why did I think this was a good idea? Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Why did I think that the risk to Karura, the risk to Gaara, the risk to the lives of everyone else in this village, would be worth the vague promise of augmenting the strength of Sunagakure? The past two jinchuuriki ended up just like this; why did I think that now would be any different?
What on Earth was I thinking that day, when I decided to go forward with this?
Of course, those questions he keeps asking himself don't erase the reality that everything that's happened has been the result of his choice, made over the warnings and objections of others. It doesn't change the fact that spending his life wandering through the past won't leave him any time to attend to the present, no matter how oddly appealing it is to take refuge in the land of things that can no longer be changed and the land of the way things used to be.
There's something else about these pictures that, though it doesn't leave him morose and brooding, hardly leaves him with the impulse to smile.
Nowhere in the report sent to his desk does it mention that Temari and Kankuro were present during Anand's attack today. Oh, the report is thorough in all other respects, detailing Anand's tactics and strategy, Gaara's response, and the bloody results that ensued, but that's all it says. However, the Kazekage has only to look at the pictures to see two familiar forms present there.
He can't tell the sort of looks that were on their faces; both of his older children hover at the edges and corners of the photographs, at the periphery of the ANBU agent's attention. However, the Kazekage can guess that they were terrified, and can guess that the only reason they didn't flee when Anand attacked Gaara was that they were too terrified to move. It's strange how terror seems to root so many, especially children, to the ground on which they stand.
No matter what the Kazekage told Anand to do concerning Gaara, the young jonin, however insubordinate he was, should never have for one second entertained the suspicion that his leader wanted his two older children to be put in harm's way by an assassination attempt on Gaara. I gave him a week in which to carry out the assassination. Surely he could have found a time to attack Gaara when Kankuro or Temari weren't nearby. I fail to see why it would have been such a difficult thing to arrange.
In future, when debriefing potential assassins, he will tell them to be certain, unambiguously certain, that Gaara's siblings are nowhere in the vicinity before they attempt to dispatch him. If they do not make sure, or if by some chance Temari or Kankuro become collateral damage in the assassination attempt, any assassin, whether they have succeeded or failed, had best hope that they die in their attempt to carry out the Kazekage's orders. Otherwise, they may well have more to fear from their leader than from the host of Sunagakure, as said leader has little reason to love and no more tolerance for collateral damage.
Too many loose ends. I keep leaving too many loose ends, keeping leaving too many things to chance.
Then, the door to his office creaks open. The Kazekage looks over to the door, wondering who would be coming in here without knocking first, only to see Temari standing with her back to him, shutting the door far more quietly than she usually does. A folding tessen the size of a hand fan hangs at her hip; she's just gotten back from training, then.
He sits there, frowning at her silently, as Temari crosses the floor, equally silent and pale as bleached vellum parchment around pink lips and green eyes. Though she does indeed look pale and slightly insubstantial, her pace is steady, her clothes aren't torn, and she doesn't smell of blood. He doesn't ask, but he supposes, from this, that she and Kankuro are both alright.
(It half-occurs to the Kazekage, in this moment, that he has probably never thought of his two older children as separate entities except when he absolutely has to. It's always "Kankuro and Temari" or "Temari and Kankuro", but never the two independent of each other, if they're together in a room or on a street. If they're together, they seem to coalesce into a single unit.
Perhaps that's not the way it needs to be. Perhaps the two of them need to be treated as separate individuals if there is ever to be any hope of their growing into such.
He pushes the thought aside, as the present presses down on him again.)
"Yes, Temari?" he asks her, when she comes up to his desk and stands there silently for a few seconds, straight-backed and trying to look more adult (or so he assumes), but ruining the image by running her fingernail over the seam on the inside of her sleeve hem. She doesn't meet his gaze; the Kazekage is met with the top of his daughter's golden head instead.
"Erm…" Her normally clear, well-heard voice is barely audible now "…I was wondering…"
"Well? Speak up."
At that Temari's head snaps up. She's not just pale around the eyes. Those same eyes are bloodshot; her irides seem more vividly green than ever. The girl draws a deep, slightly shuddering breath, but this time, she doesn't falter. "I was just wondering," she says quietly, "why Gaara calls the Shukaku 'Mother'?"
What?
Provided with this new bit of information, the cogs of the Kazekage's mind seem to cease whirring entirely, unable to process the knowledge Temari's imparted on him. He only remembers she's still there when he feels her fingers on his wrist, the dull edges of her fingernails pressing slightly on his flesh. "Father?" Anxiety pulls at her voice.
He recovers thought long enough to stare over the top of his daughter's head and send her out of the room with a peremptory "I couldn't tell you. Now away with you." Temari skitters away, not her proud, clear-eyed self, but like a shadow shying away from the sun. The door falls shut behind her. Her father's left to his thoughts.
Mother…
He calls the demon Mother…
Just what did Yashamaru tell him that night?
There's no telling at the strangeness lying, dark and deep, in Gaara's heart and mind, strangeness beyond that of any normal child. The child who had adored the mother of his flesh and blood now looks to a sexless demon, the creature that haunts his every waking hour and keeps him from rest, and calls it Mother instead. How can have made this change? How can his view of the world so profoundly shifted that he feels more akin to a demon than to human beings?
I suppose it would be easier to guess at the answer if I knew him well, or if I knew him at all. His jaw twists bitterly. But there's the crux of the matter. I don't know my son any better than I know the rye farmers in Kaminari or the fishermen in Mizu. I made him into a weapon. I bound his fate to that of a demon and gave him to another man for safekeeping, for fear that he would hurt his siblings, for fear that if the day came that he needed to be killed, I wouldn't be able to do it.
And look where that's gotten me. His siblings are still in danger from him. Yashamaru is dead and no one else will take him. And even though I kept him far away from me, I can't kill him. I'm not sure if anything's capable of killing him anymore, and I'm not sure if I'm even capable of trying. The most I can do is send ineffectual assassins after his head, hoping they won't succeed.
He can't begin to imagine how broken Gaara would have to be to seriously believe that the demon whispering in his mind is his mother. Or how utterly mad he'd have to be to believe it. When did he start to believe this in his heart, after years of the Shukaku's whispering, or that night on the roof?
What did Yashamaru tell him then?
What does the demon tell him now?
What could I have done? (Plenty of things, as it happens, he acknowledges, in the part of his mind where he can be honest with himself, but I did none of them.)
Karura wouldn't have…
That thought fizzles out, like the carbonation from soda after it's been sitting out too long. There's a lot of things Karura wouldn't have done, a lot of things she wouldn't have wanted to happen, and a lot of things she wouldn't have let happen. But it's worthless to wonder about what a woman more than seven years dead would be doing if she was alive. It's worthless to be looking to memories and shades for advice. If he could hear her voice today, all Karura would say is "Well I told you not to. Why didn't you listen to me?" That will give him absolutely no help.
By all rights, Gaara ought to name her as Mother, and not the demon of the wastes. But how, his father concedes heavily, is he supposed to know who his mother is when all he's ever known of her is his uncle's stories and a portrait sitting on the living room table? How?
He's not. He's absolutely not.
I just wish this could be over with.
-0-0-0-
Down in the kitchen that night, intending to search for something to eat—the workload was such that he was forced to skip supper—the Kazekage comes upon his two sons in the midst of an altercation.
He doesn't know what this was about. He doesn't know who started it. He supposes that he should be grateful that Gaara hadn't yet been sufficiently angered as to summon his sand and was sticking to making death threats under his breath and steadily backing Kankuro in a corner. If he'd brought the sand out while the Kazekage was still in his office the latter doesn't think he would have gotten all the way down to the first floor in time to keep Gaara from using lethal force against his brother.
Feeling his ire rise far more than it normally would under such circumstances, the Kazekage sends Gaara out of the room curtly and roughly demands out of his middle child "What happened now? What did you say?"
Though the fight is over, Kankuro still looks… irate. Apparently the Kazekage isn't the only one out of sorts tonight; it's rare for Kankuro to look so unthinkingly furious. He's the type to hold grudges and keep his head when angry, not launch in to bad situations without a care for his own skin. His cheeks are flushed dark as he answers. "He calls that demon Mother! I told him not to, but he wouldn't listen! He just kept on calling it Mother!"
His father doesn't answer.
"Did you hear me?!" Kankuro insists, all restraint clearly quite forgotten. "He calls the Shukaku Mother! Why is he doing that?!"
"Get whatever you were here for and go," is all the Kazekage says to his elder son, and he cares not a whit for the thwarted, indignant look on the boy's face.
As soon as he is left alone in the kitchen, the Kazekage leans against the table and groans.
1: A tessen is an iron Japanese war fan; the one in particular that Temari wields is a folding fan similar to the one she has in the present day, but smaller. I don't know if fans smaller than the one Temari wields in Naruto proper exist in the Naruto canon-verse, but I'm just going to go ahead and say they exist here, and that the use of the tessen, both giant and "traditional" (read: small) is a dying art in all lands other than Kaze no Kuni, which is why you don't see them in any other lands. The tessen can be used, in this universe, for channeling wind chakra, but it can also be used as a club, to deflect darts, arrows (and I suppose kunai and shuriken as well), to parry sword or spear strikes, and, according to the Wikipedia article (so take it as you will), even as a throwing weapon. Temari's training with the smaller one both for its own merit and in preparation for the day when she plans to use a larger tessen.
Happy New Year's, everyone.
