I was by Gaara's side for the entire two weeks while he recovered from that pneumonia. He may have been able to walk, but by no means did that fool me into thinking he wanted to. He all but refused to move, dropping down on the couch as soon as we'd returned home with his medicine. He stayed there on a little makeshift bed for a fair amount of the two weeks. Towards the end of the second week, he began feeling better and got up a few times - well, a few more than just me forcing him to get up and use the bathroom every once in a while. By Thursday of the second week, he was his old self. He was running around, and his appetite was back. I knew that because he asked me that since I had said he could have as many cookies as he wanted, if "a bajillion" was too many.

... Yeah I know, what a cutie.

I sent him back to school on Friday, and he seemed fine when he got home. Except for the fact that his class had started on reading skills while he was gone for two weeks, and now he had to practice. But I didn't think it'd be too hard, because he could already read a lot of words. He could read his teacher's name, for example; my name, his own name, Yashamaru's, and he had read through a short book to me once. Well, he'd actually written it himself, and it was only four pages... and most of it was drawings... but still! He was doing pretty good for a six-year-old.

SO. Anyway, another week went by without any events. Nothing bad, nothing extraordinary except for the occasional nasty look or word from Takamine Sensei. Well, the villagers gave us looks, but nobody really actually spoke to us aside from Takamine Sensei.

Then came Friday of the week after he had recovered, and I had just picked up Gaara from kindergarten. He'd come out happy-go-lucky as usual, showing me some writing practice he'd done where he'd written my name and Yashamaru's. His cursive had improved, and he was extra cheerful because it was the last day of school this week.

Takamine Sensei and I regarded each other with a cool exchange of our eyes, and I led Gaara out of the building while holding his hand. I didn't want him to be in a place full of people who didn't like him anymore than he had to.

We walked down the streets, Gaara humming quietly. Earlier last night, I'd promised him ice cream if he could write his teacher's full name, Takamine Ayasunako Sensei, right. He was one letter off, spelling her last name as Ayisunako, but I gently corrected him and decided to let him have the ice cream anyway. It was a rare thing.

So there we were, walking down the street. I was heading straight to the ice cream shop, while Gaara... well, he sorta had other plans.

"Whoa! Cool! Kame-chan, look!" And he ran over to the toy store, looking at the window.

I rolled my eyes. "For heaven's sakes, Gaara. If your teddy bear hears about this, he's going to feel so unloved..."

And so I began walking back toward where he was to drag him away from the window. I didn't run like I could have, I just walked. What harm could a six-year-old do at the window of a toy store? He hadn't even gone inside.

As I got closer, I could see two men standing in front of Gaara and talking to him. I got even closer, and I realized they weren't talking; they were yelling. "... and I don't even know why Kazekage-sama keeps you around!" one of them shouted.

"Yeah, you're useless! All you do is kill people!" The second guy was holding an empty beer bottle, and he raised it, quite prepared to hurl it at Gaara.

"Damn it!" I ran over as fast as I could, using myself as a shield in front of Gaara and simultaneously grabbing the guy's hand so he couldn't do anything. "You must be hella dumb if you think I'm gonna let you do that, you drunk bastard!"

He just looked at me for a minute, before his scowl deepend. "Hey, let go of me, fatass!"

That was it. I just flew into a rampage. I absolutely hated being called anything that referred to my weight. The last time somebody called me fat, I got put in out-of-school suspension for breaking a couple of this one guy's ribs. "Who you callin' fatass, you old fart?" I screamed, yanking the bottle from his grasp and throwing it to the ground so it broke. "I'll kick your fat ass up and down this damn street! Hell be damned if I'll let you sit there, call me names, and terrorize my kid!" With that, I turned around, picked Gaara up, tossed him right over my shoulder, probably scaring the poor boy half to death since I was only holding him by his legs, and stomped off.

Once we got to the ice-cream shop, I just stood there, trying to calm myself down. I rarely ever let someone off that easy when they called me fat, and especially when they were harassing Gaara besides that. It was the same feeling I got when my aunt had attacked him; that "I-wanna-kill-someone-but-do-I-really-wanna-be-that-kind-of-person" feeling.

It was midway through my mantra of Those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter when Gaara piped up. "K-Kame-chan," he squeaked, pulling at the back of my shirt. "I-I'm not your kid, a-and I think all the blood's going to my head. Getting kinda hard for me to - whoa!"

That "whoa" was because I'd lost my grip on his legs. My hands were sweaty from the encounter with those dumbasses back there, and I hadn't noticed my grasp was slipping... until he actually fell.

I spun around and saw that a pillow of sand had instantly rushed to protect him, but he was still rubbing his head in confusion. He blinked up at me and rocked his head from side to side. "... Uh... am I supposed to say 'ow', Kame-chan?"

"Oh God!" I hurried to my knees, helping him up. "I am so sorry, Gaara! Are you okay?"

"Unh." He accepted my hand and stood up, brushing his pants off. "Like we both said, I can't be hurt, really." He pointed to the left side of his chest, making a motion like his heart was beating really fast. "But over here it felt kinda funny when I started falling. Like... you know how your stomach gets butterflies when you're nervous? I had that in my tummy, but it was here too."

"Yeah." I breathed a sigh of relief that his sand shield thing - whatever the hell it was, I wasn't going to ask around, it protected him and that was good enough for me - hadn't faltered. "Your heart was nervous. So was mine, ha!"

He wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my stomach, leaving a small kiss there. "I'm sorry I made your heart get butterflies, Kame-chan. Is it all better now?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good, I'm glad." I put a hand on top of his head and tousled his hair.

All of a sudden he ran inside the store. "Come on, Kame-chan! You promised ice cream, and I want chocolate!"

"Pfft." I followed him less enthusiastically, thinking mostly about how this was going to affect my weight... again. I knew I wasn't as attractive as other girls, but with a friend like Gaara it was easy to forget and not worry about how much I was eating or what I was eating. It didn't help that certain old coots were calling me fatass, though. I wish I coulda kicked their cans, but that probably wouldn't have been very good for Gaara's rep around town... and if that didn't improve, his confidence would stay low. Couldn't let that happen. "You better slow down, Gaara," I commented, pulling out my wallet. "I'm the one who has money. All you have is paper you've drawn yen signs on. In crayon."

"You said they were pretty!"

"They are. I just really don't think you're going to be getting anything with them."

I looked down at him to see that he had the pieces of colorfully drawn on paper in his hand, as he blinked up at me. He looked from me to the papers, then back at me, and then stuffed them back in his pocket. "Yeah, I guess."

Coulda smacked myself. "You brought them with you? Here?"

"Well, I was thinking what would happen if we didn't have enough money and you couldn't get any ice cream. I want you to be able to have it too."

I let out a short, soft laugh as I pulled him toward me in a one-armed kiddie hug. "Don't worry, honey. I'm sure I have enough. I don't need that much ice cream anyway."

"So you don't need my money?"

"Nope, I think we're good."

"Kay. I'm gonna go save a table for us, kay?"

"Okay."

He hurried off to a table near a window for us, and immediately sat down, pulling out his "money" and a crayon and beginning to draw some more.

I shook my head and got in line.

Once I got up in the front of the line, I rolled my eyes at the disgusted look the guy gave me. Apparently, I wasn't held in too high regard here either, because I was associated with Gaara. Well, damn, if being friends with Gaara made me a demon too, then boy, was I ruling hell now.

I got our ice cream and headed back to the table, deciding to ignore the way people were looking at me. I sat down, handing Gaara his cone and slowly starting to eat from my bowl with the little spoon. "So whatcha been doing, Gaara?"

"Look." He held up one of his made-up currency. "I changed it from 4000 yen to 40000. Now it's worth a lot more!"

"I'll say." I took another bite.

Gaara put his papers aside and took one large chomp out of the ice cream, not even licking it or anything. Nope, just trying to eat it like a normal food item.

"Gaara!" I reached over, pulling the cone away from his mouth. "Would you not eat it so fast? Making me nervous, you're gonna get a brain freeze."

"Eep." The effects of the coldness were already getting to him, as he'd brought one hand up to his head. "Ow! Ow! Ow! My head!"

"Yup, brain freeze."

"Mmnh." He rubbed his head. "What makes that happen, Kame-chan?"

I giggled, spooning some more ice cream into my mouth. "Hell if I know. I didn't finish school, remember?"

He looked at me for a minute, all but forgetting his ice cream, and then smiled. "Hey Kame-chan, have you ever noticed how pretty you are?" He said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like I should have known.

I made another "pfft" noise. "I'm not that pretty."

"You are too. I like your hair, and your eyes."

"Please, Gaara. They might be nice, but those are the only good things about me."

"I like your smile too! I can feel this place..." He placed his free hand over his heart. "This place gets really happy when you smile."

Boy, did that make me smile.

"See, there it is! Right here, right..." His hand clutched onto his shirt where it already was. "Right here is happy again."

I pushed my ice cream bowl away from me, sighing lightly. "Okay, there are a few good things about me. So what? Those guys were right. I'm fat, maybe I should try not eating so much..." I sighed again, setting my cheek on my slightly-curled fist. "I should probably go on a diet or something..."

"Kame-chan, no!" He looked very seriously at me, his invisible eyebrows knitted together. "No. You can't listen to them. Just like you tell me all the time, if they don't care then it doesn't matter what they say. I don't want you to ever change anything about you, Kame-chan." He reached over with the hand that had been on his heart, and pulled my fist down so that his little palm was on top of mine. "I like you just the way you are. I don't want you to change. If you change, then... then you won't be Kame-chan anymore. You won't be you."

I closed my eyes halfway, and I could feel a smile spreading over my lips. Finally somebody who didn't care what I looked like, who wanted me to stay the way I was. Someone who didn't think I needed to be better, or I needed to change anything about myself. I could see it as I looked in his eyes, that Gaara thought I was pretty no matter what.

I leaned back, gently curling my fingers around his. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Eating healthy is expensive anyway. And it's a lot more boring. This is fine... it doesn't matter that much, does it?"

He smiled at me, bringing my hand over to his side and placing my palm against his cheek, rubbing it slowly up and down. "Yashamaru says that you hafta figure out what's important in life. And he says that stuff like appa... um, appre..."

"Appearance?" I finished.

"Yeah, appearance. He says stuff like appearance and power and all that... it doesn't matter too much. There's stuff that matters more." He grinned against my hand, and a light blush dusted across his cheeks as he pressed his lips airily on my fingers. "Like how good friends you and me are. That matters way more than what you look like, 'specially when you're pretty anyhow."

"Thanks, Gaara." I drew my hand away and tapped his nose with one finger, just now realizing that I rarely thanked anybody. "You don't have any idea how much I needed to hear that."

He shrugged, taking another lick off his ice cream cone. "Yashamaru always says to tell the truth. That's all I did."


G'awwwwww. Now the REAL action will come next chapter. I can't tell you what it is, but I CAN tell you that it's not canon... yet...

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