He was so tired, but he couldn't sleep. To Gaara it wasn't the familiarity of this feeling that surprised him so much as the knowledge that it had been so very long since he had last felt this particular type of discomfort. This time his fatigue had nothing to do with the lethargy of being the vessel of the Shukaku, but instead the feeling that he couldn't breath.
Each breath was too short, and his adrenaline was alive with the knowledge of it, even after the draining began. To close his eyes and to rest felt again like losing control - but this time not to a demon, but to death. Had he heard the door slide open? Maybe he was seeing some kind of hallucination, but all the sudden she appeared, standing next to the bed. Strange, he hadn't felt her at all this time, but he did feel what she did next.
Aiynuur's cold hand was a shock to his chest, hot as it was with fever. It seemed her intent was to calm his anxiety, because he felt her energy ooze into him like the flow of a hot spring. His energy rose up to meet hers and his dread was transformed into something else. He felt himself transported.
Gaara stood - no, floated it seemed - back and above her. Staring down over her shoulder at his own too pale body in its narrow bed, two tubes now draining fluid from his side. His lips seemed strangely tinged with blue. Gaara didn't feel fear, because he still felt himself connected to his body through her. The connection was strong, and she was strong. It was almost as if she held his psyche up and out, perhaps so he didn't have to feel what came next. He realized that he could see without turning Uta, Fumiko and Gen'ichi. His brother held back beyond the door, talking to someone on the phone - Temari perhaps.
Gaara was brought back into his body as his lungs heaved, instinctively he clutched at her hand on his chest and his sand, which had lane slack on the floor like dust for the past few days shot upwards, encircling her like a halo, but as if feeling him there too, or understanding her intention, it did not strike her.
He became aware of an alien rhythm in him, contrasted with the sound of his own breath, it beat its own tattoo in his chest, entirely independent of his own respiration. Gaara felt her mind shape the word. There. Her energy invaded him like a knife, and this time his sand did cling to her, but held still, as if a warning. The alien rhythm faltered, fractured, like a thousand synchronized cells falling into discordance. Gaara felt the rhythm slow and stop, then wash away, receding as a new tide - no, not new, an old tide grew.
It was the tide of his own life, his own body, it buoyed up in its wake. How could Gaara not have known it instantly? It seemed to grow like the surge of a storm, and he knew, he felt, that he was that storm. He skated above it like a kite on the up draft of that wind for a moment that felt like always - until he saw it, felt it - a tear opening up in her. A feeling like vertigo - her vertigo ricocheted through him and drew him back into the world.
With the eyes in his body, Gaara now looked at Aiynuur's form. Her own gaze was half lidded and the hand on his chest had grown slack and cold again. She began to fall away. Adrenaline poured into him once more as his sand poured away from her.
"Aiynuur!" the sound of his own body's voice, whole and strong did not even register to him as he pulled her towards him, her body tumbled gracelessly over his form. He cast about for her energy and felt none - only his energy seemed to animate her now, echoing through her. In her he felt a depth that opened up, a yawning gap that had no discernible end. He reached into the darkness and cast about for any trace of her, but there was nothing.
There.
A joy tinged with hysteria seized Gaara as he a felt the flutter of her energy. She was not in that darkness, he realized, but without it. Without him, even. Her energy seemed to float above that echo of himself in her - she was a rainbow film stretched around him - stretched thin. Relieved, he reigned in his projection, and said a prayer of thanks when he heard her breath start again with a gasp.
Incredulous, he realized that his strength again burned through him. Gaara tore the respirator mask from his face and sat up. Aiynuur's form slumped still on the bed and partially over him. Gaara looked up and saw the shocked faces of his attendants, his brother, and now his sister and Shikamaru's among them. Mutely he grabbed the rubber hoses that still snaked from his side and pulled them out before anyone could react or object.
"Don't..." Gaara heard Aiynuur's small voice whisper, as if she could feel what he did to his own skin. "You'll just get an infection again," she said, still slumped over. She looked up, and wearily raised her head and body. She sat at the edge of his bed tiredly and clasped her hand over the twin, now seeping wounds in his side.
"You shouldn't have done that," Aiynuur explained. "Your body needs to drain, or metabolize..." she said. Her other hand was back on his chest, and the crackle of her energy spilled across his lungs once again. This time it felt different, Gaara's breath caught for a moment as her energy did its work.
He breathed in again as she removed her hand. His chest felt so light as if the world had been lifted from it - the feeling of it and the return of his own energy made him feel high. He laughed, and looked to Aiynuur to see if she felt this sensation in him too and saw her skin, grey as ash, her expression slack. Alarmed, he reached out to steady her, to console her but she retreated from his touch.
Aiynuur stood slowly, but firmly - as if she were working hard to telegraph her own solidity to him, despite her grave expression.
"You need to rest," Gaara said to her, revelling in the sound of his own voice again, and trying to intimate without saying that she should stay here and rest with him.
"I will," she said, turning back towards him partially. "And so do you. You might feel like a million bucks right now, soldier boy, but don't you dare over do it. Feel how tired you are and sleep. If you don't, you may undo everything I did to help you today. And then I may not be able to complete this work, and I will not forgive you for that," Aiynuur said firmly. Frowning, her chest hitching in a cough that lasted briefly. Resolutely she turned and walked as steadily as she could past their group of stunned onlookers and through the open door.
Aiynuur sat down heavily on the couch. Clutching her head in her hands. She looked up when she saw someone slide a glass of water in front of where she sat. She looked up and saw Kankuro there.
"Thank you," she said.
Uta-sensei left Fumiko, Gen'ichi and Temari in the room checking out Gaara's vitals. Shikamaru stood back, leaning against the door, staring at the new comer - the one who he and Temari had unwittingly bought the dresses for. Kankuro sat in one of the chairs across the lacquer table as Uta sat down next to Aiynuur on the couch. Without asking, Uta gently clasped Aiynuur's wrist, checking her pulse. Aiynuur let her, allowing her hand to drop away from her face.
Fumiko-sensei joined them, quietly closing the sliding door to the bedroom behind her. She stepped into the space between Aiynuur and the window, and squared her shoulders.
"Aiynuur-sensei, is it?" Fumiko asked. "What was that? What you just did..." the tall woman said, "I've...never felt anything quite like it."
Aiynuur looked at the earnest expression the woman's face. There was no censure there - only a deep disquiet - the look of someone who'd seen one of Aiynuur's ugly miracles for the first time.
Ugly they were, or at least she knew them to be. They were always some sort of brutish and confused until Aiynuur truly got a handle on them. Healing herself she was quite good at by now. She'd had a lot of practice. Making plants grow was easy, earnest creatures that they were. But healing another besides herself - that was messy. Her memories were messy. If it were a map the route would read, "Here be dragons." The secret that she did not, could not tell anyone was that the dragon was her.
She met the eyes of the lanky woman. They were wreathed with smile lines, Aiynuur noted. "I'm afraid...that's a question for another day," Aiynuur said.
Uta had still not let go of her wrist, and now felt her forehead with the back of her hand.
"Well Doc, is my heart still beating?" Aiynuur asked. "You know there are far more accurate ways of checking my temperature, right?"
"Ssshhh..." Uta shushed her. "You're cold and your shoulders are shaking. Excuse me, Kankuro-San, are there extra blankets?" Uta asked.
Kankuro returned a moment later and handed a spare blanket to Uta, who shook it out and put the cloth around the woman's thin shoulders. Aiynuur was thankful for it, but frowned nonetheless. Had she just passed some sort of test? Uta-sensei's manner had changed. Or perhaps it was simply because she was now cast in the role of invalid. Aiynuur only realized she'd been shivering when the shuddering of her shoulders stopped under the warmth of the blanket.
"Thank you," she said.
"Ha...thank you, Aiynuur-san," Kankuro said. "I think? What just happened, anyway?" he asked looking up at Fumiko-sensei.
Fumiko nodded. "His lungs sound and feel like they're clear - the infection that we couldn't shake appears to be gone. He's resting. Well, reading. He said he was too wired to sleep, but that he would 'be obedient' and stay in bed."
"Ha, obedient..." Aiynuur said. So it had worked, suddenly she felt tired. Unbelievably tired. Her eyelids slid shut, irresistibly heavy. "I'm just going to...rest here for awhile," she said, her eyes still closed. The four watched as Aiynuur curled into a tight ball in the corner of the couch and quickly fell asleep.
Aiynuur was trapped once again in the dream. That man, the man with the surgical mask was there with her. A sick cycling vision played in repeat as she stood locked - unable to intervene. The man held a child, a toddler, over a black floor, a floor so dark it looked almost like a pit.
The illusion of its depth was broken when the man dropped the child like a stone - where its body shattered. It broke like a glass figure into a million pieces, which skittered across the floor. But then...it reformed again like watching a film in reverse, only to play forward.
The bow breaks. Aiynuur was frozen, as unmoving as a tree - she could not form a single word - but she could form a sound, a single low syllable, and she moaned it. "Aaaahh," she said, as the tablou rewound and played again. And played again. And played again.
"Aiynuur."
She woke with a start, pushing herself away from the utterance of her name with such force that she whacked her head on the wall behind the low back of the couch. She could not see his face, but she knew it was him - or at least his clone, crouching down in front of her. Gaara. Aiynuur felt her face flush in the dark, embarrassed by her jumpiness, her nightmares, and also surprised to wake and discover herself still here in his apartment.
"I said no clones," she hissed, rubbing the back of her head, feeling exposed and annoyed.
The clone shrugged.
"You were dreaming - it didn't seem like a good dream," it grabbed a pillow from where it rested on the lacquer table and handed it to her.
"You were in a weird position, but no one had the heart to wake you," he explained.
"I wish someone had," Aiynuur said, now rubbing her sore neck with one hand and reaching out for the pillow he offered her with the other. A sudden loud snore interrupted their exchange - they both looked over to see Kankuro sprawled out, asleep on a cot in the dining area.
"Thank you," she said, accepting the pillow.
"Thank you - for everything today," the clone remarked.
"Don't thank me yet. I'm not done," Aiynuur explained.
"With my lungs healed..." Gaara's clone continued.
"Zip it," Aiynuur said, holding her hand up. "I'm not done yet. I made a promise to your family that I would heal you and I will - completely. No half measures. No mistakes."
"You don't need to prove anything to me," it said.
"It's not about that," Aiynuur admitted. "It's about...a sort of karma, that I think you can help me with."
"Karma?" the clone asked.
"Yes, something that I need to do. Let's talk about it another time, please," Aiynuur asked, scooting her cramped body further down the couch and finally stretching out on it with a feeling of relief.
"Aiynuur-san...I know you said no more clones, but I want you to know that I will be using one more," he explained.
"Ugh, why?" she groaned. It was bad enough he misused his energy this way, and now he wanted her permission?
"Temari and Shikamaru's wedding is today," it said.
"Oh, of course - I'm sorry, of course you'd want to attend. Well, just don't over do it then...No dancing."
"No problem," it said, dryly. Quietly it picked up the blanket she'd been clutching and unfurled it, laying it gently over her. Aiynuur froze, surprised by the intimacy of that small gesture.
"No bed time story?" Aiynuur quipped.
"I don't think you're serious," it said. "Jokes are difficult to...identify in this form, but I suspect that was one."
She smiled, "Yeah, but Gaara..."
"Yes?" it asked.
"It felt good to hear your voice again today."
Gaara looked at the cat, and the cat looked at him. It was an old grey tabby, and it sat on top of the blanket in his lap. He scratched the space just behind her ears and was pleased to hear a rumble in its chest as it purred. The purring was charming, the drooling of the poor toothless elderly animal was...less charming. He chuckled as the cat rubbed its face against the fingers of his good hand.
"So, three legs, huh?" Gaara said.
"Yes, and that's how I know she can do it," Kankuro explained.
"Hmm..." was all Gaara could say in response.
Sure enough, the cat did have four legs now. They looked identical. The cat seemed to walk a little strangely, as if it wasn't quite used to its wholeness. But Gaara looked at the frayed edges of the old girl's ears. She was clearly a fighter. A fighter and a lover, he mused as he cat continued to purr lustily and drool on him.
"Gross," Kankuro said, scooping up the cat and putting her on the floor.
"She can't help it," Gaara remarked.
"Ugh - whatever, anyway. This is patient number 4. The rest are just like her. Aiynuur-san can do it, and Uta-sensei thinks so too," Kankuro said.
Gaara paused before responding. He wanted to be whole, absolutely. He also wanted to know more about Aiynuur's power - but to experience it more first hand, the idea was - unsettling to say the least. Especially as Aiynuur had described it to him. She would need to regenerate and recompose his very cells to heal his body completely this time.
It wasn't that he didn't particularly trust Aiynuur or the possibility of her power. He knew it. He had lived it. It was the deep seated need inculcated since his childhood to protect himself, to not allow anyone to touch him, that held him back now. The suddenness of Aiynuur's last intervention had been a blessing. She had given him no opportunity to think about it. To say he was out of his comfort zone did not begin to express his how he felt about what Uta, Fumiko and Aiynuur proposed to do that very night.
Temari and Kankuro had anticipated this hesitance in him. Burned though he was yet - thanks to Aiynuur's help, his lungs were strong now, and it was his lung infection that could have killed him. The temptation to find out what life would be like with this new normal was there. No one ever even need to know that his left foot was gone, or that he was scarred. His sand, his second skin, could handily cover for those injuries now that his breath and his energy were returning to him.
Knowing this, Kankuro had brought Gaara his visitor today, to help build his confidence in what the woman could do.
"Uta-sensei thinks that Aiynuur-san was likely some kind of medical genius - before, well, before whatever happened to her...happened to her," Kankuro said, faltering a bit, sheepishly. It was so easy to forget that their strange new ally, who in some ways fit so comfortably among them, held such a void in her past. Addressing that mystery and solving it were among the many things Gaara was looking forward to tackling now his health was restored.
"Yes," Gaara said, watching the old grey cat stand on its haunches hesitantly at first, and then vault itself gracefully from his desk chair to his desk, scattering some of his papers as she did so. "I believe it."
