Content Note: Mentions of drug use.
About Face
Any shinobi worth their salt knows that, when orchestrating multiple assassination attempts on the same person, the next attempt can not take place too soon after the first one failed. Anyone who has recently had an attempt made on their lives, especially if that person is a shinobi or in possession of some sort of special ability, will be extra-wary and vigilant, just waiting for another assassin to attack them. What needs to be done is to let the target go long enough without any further attempt made on their life that they fall into a false sense of security.
The Kazekage isn't entirely certain that Gaara is even capable of feeling secure anymore. But as it stands, he waits a month before sending a second assassin after him.
In that month, there are eight casualties and three fatalities inflicted by Sunagakure's young jinchuuriki host. In that month, an apothecary and a baker from the far east end of the village, the only one in his neighborhood, leave Sunagakure for good; the apothecary goes to the port city of Mynassaf and the baker leaves the country altogether. They see better business and a smaller likelihood of death elsewhere. Those who have stayed behind grow more and more frightened, less likely to venture outside after dark. Some of the shops run by shopkeepers who have chosen to stay start closing up at earlier hours. Suna goes dark before midnight now, not afterwards.
The councilors want something done. The daimyo wants something done. And it's not just them, either. Lately, the local community leaders have been making their voices heard, whether through letters, petitions, or showing up to speak to the Kazekage in person.
"Sir, please." This latest one is an elderly Hindu temple priest, peering out at the Kazekage through thick spectacles. "I can understand why you hesitate, but even I can no longer deny that you must stop the child before his bloodlust devours us all."
And still, the Kazekage knows he has to wait. It's unlikely that Gaara will ever forget any of the attempts made on his life, but he needs to wait until the boy's no longer casting his eyes behind his shoulders every other moment. In the meantime, he reads the reports of the deaths, negotiates with his councilors, wearily answers letters to the daimyo, and prays each night that the next day won't bring any deaths at the incorporeal hands of Gaara's sand. I may as well, he decides, casting his eyes towards the ceiling, go back to worshipping the god of my youth, with all the praying I've been doing.
So it is with a mixture of relief (gladness to be done waiting, for while waiting is something the Kazekage is perfectly capable of, it's never been something he does gladly) and trepidation (the worry that this assassination attempt might be successful), that, thirty-four days after Anand's attempt on Gaara's life failed, the Kazekage calls on another to assassinate his son.
Mihoko is a thirty-six-year-old jonin who fell into opium addiction after the close of the last war, and was put on prolonged medical leave until she was able to recover. While she has since been able to go back to work, her performance is not what it once was. She no longer works in the field, instead making her living as a patrolman, wandering the city streets at night. Her supervisor notes that she is easily distracted, and that her reports are often sloppy and incomplete.
She accepts the mission with an utter lack of curiosity that would have disturbed any other man. The Kazekage is not disturbed, only relieved that he doesn't have to answer impertinent questions or, worse yet, the look of curiosity many cast upon the man seemingly happily willing to have the child of his flesh killed. "Yes, sir," she murmurs without looking at him, and leaves.
Mihoko ambushes Gaara in the middle of a crowded street, and falls to the sand with pitiful speed. After the terror that follows is done, four are admitted to the hospital; two as result of being trampled by the mob rushing away form the scene, one as a result of a stray kunai, and one as a result of being lashed out at by Gaara's indiscriminate sand. Another is killed by that same sand, smashed up against a wall.
Gaara walks away, whispering to his "Mother", as though nothing ever happened and the sand swirling behind him isn't dripping blood. Mihoko is taken to the nearest morgue in three separate bags. The incident is an utter fiasco.
-0-0-0-
Two nights later, the Kazekage happens upon Gaara in a hallway in the Governmental Complex.
Lately, some of the sand that swirls around him at all times has coalesced into a gourd that sits across his back, secured by a length of white cloth. The boy's shadow is misshapen, and his back slightly bent. His footsteps are far heavier than they used to be as the result of this increased weight, and thanks to that, the Kazekage hears him long before he sees him.
There is a dark red stain on one of Gaara's trouser legs and the Kazekage bites back a sigh when he sees it. He doesn't question the boy about it; you don't have to be a genius to know where the blood came from, and the Kazekage's sure he'll have a report on his desk soon enough, about who it is Gaara killed or maimed this time.
Gaara looks up at him, a silent, baleful stare, his pale green eyes full of hate. His lips are clenched tight together, receding into his mouth; his brow is furrowed, the 'Ai' tattoo wrinkled. The Kazekage's been expecting this look for a while, been expecting it for a long time now. But at that expression of concentrated animosity, murderous intent, the Kazekage can't help but take a step back, despite himself, despite the fact that he hasn't flinched away from a silent threat since he was thirteen years old and he'd had no intention of doing so again now at the sight of his son.
I suppose he could decide to attack me at any time. Why should I be surprised? By this time he must know where these assassins are coming from; Gaara must have reasoned with himself, at least once, that if he was to kill me, perhaps the assassination attempts would stop. It's not true, and he doesn't know—can't know—that far worse would happen if I died, but how is he to know that?
And why, the Kazekage reasons with himself wearily, shouldn't he want to kill me?
But then, after what seems an eternity with the silence growing ever thicker and more difficult to breathe in, Gaara's eyes glaze over, and he seems to stare straight through his father, no longer seeing him. He looks down at the ground, shaking his head. "No, Mother," he whispers in a rasping voice. "Not yet. Soon." The boy trudges away, shoulders hunched and back bent, his lumpen shadow quavering behind him in the flicker of the lighting overhead.
Watching him leave, the Kazekage lets go of the breath he'd been holding deep in his chest. Something painful rises in his throat, something he either can't put a name to or doesn't care to name. All of a sudden, he feels very tired, every muscle sore and aching with exhaustion.
If what he has planned for the boy is to go forward, it would not do for the Kazekage to antagonize Gaara any more than he has to. But still, he'd like very much to call Gaara back and tell him not to call the Shukaku "Mother." To call the demon by the only name it deserves.
-0-0-0-
This time, the waiting game goes on just long enough to keep the councilors from raising too much of a fuss. It's unlikely that Gaara will let his guard down again, so the main struggle is stalling for time until the councilors start voicing their concerns again, but not waiting so long that the Kazekage has people knocking down his door again.
Twenty-eight days and seven fatalities later, the Kazekage calls on another to kill his young son.
Hirokazu goes up against Gaara this time. He's an elderly jonin, planning to retire; the Kazekage bills this as one last mission for Hirokazu, before his retirement. Hirokazu has lived through three wars; his sense of honor and duty are unimpeachable. If he has any objections to being sent on this mission, he does not voice them.
He was a loyal soldier; it almost seems a shame…
Come the next morning, the Kazekage receives a report from the ANBU while responding to a letter from the Daimyo.
…we are working towards a resolution… Sitting at his desk, the Kazekage stares down at the parchment pressed beneath his hand in frustration. The daimyo is weak and has been growing demonstrably weaker with each passing month. He resides at his estates in the southern region of the country, on the coast, year round; the Kazekage doubts that Kaze's present daimyo has ever even set foot in Sunagakure. The daimyo has no contact with his people and yet he continues raise a fuss over the country's economic situation and Gaara's status (Or rather, the Kazekage's ostensible dithering over what to do with the boy; evidently, sending assassins after Gaara's hide isn't clear enough a message).
Then, there's a knock at the door. The Kazekage looks up from his letter-writing, both relieved to have a distraction from this task, and irked that the writing of the daimyo's letter is going to take longer than it has to. "Come in," he calls shortly.
A masked and hooded ANBU operative, bearing the porcelain mask of a hawk, slips through the door with nary a sound. For a moment, the Kazekage is given pause, a familiar name on his lips, before he remembers that the one who bore it is dead. Yashamaru had worn a hawk mask when on duty. But Yashamaru's dead. Let him rest. Let them all rest.
The operative produces a manila file from the folds of his, or her (it's difficult to determine gender with this one from height and build alone; but then, it had been difficult to determine gender with Yashamaru as well), brown cloak. "You wanted the report, sir?" Though through the porcelain mask, the operative's voice is muffled and echoes slightly, but it is undeniably female. And there is only one report that she could possibly be talking about.
"Yes, thank you."
She puts the file on his desk, bows, and leaves.
It would be a lie for the Kazekage to say that he doesn't have some idea of what result "the report" entails, but he flips open the file and reads it anyway. Hirokazu has died, bit that doesn't surprise the Kazekage; he was, after all, an old man, long past his prime. He opened with a barrage of kunai, an outdated technique for which a more efficient update has long since been developed. Like everyone who has attempted to assassinate Gaara before, Hirokazu attacked him from behind. The sand shot out of the gourd on Gaara's back before Gaara had so much as an inkling of danger. It caught the kunai and flung them aside. Then, Gaara, now aware of the danger, turned round and struck. The old man did not seem to die peacefully.
For the Kazekage, this takes him one step closer to his goal.
-0-0-0-
The fourth, Yusuf, does not go eagerly. By now, word has gotten out among the jonin (and Tokubetsu jonin, and chunin, and likely the genin as well) about what happens to jonin sent to assassinate Gaara. Yusuf, though he is branded a malcontent, is no fool.
"Sir, I must—"
"Would you defy a direct order?"
"But sir—"
"Would you?"
A pause. Yusuf licks his dry lips. "No, sir."
"Then I see no reason for your protests."
The report comes in while the Kazekage is handing out mission scrolls on the first floor of the Governmental Complex. Handing out mission scrolls was always something he enjoyed, one of the few things about his position he truly enjoys these days, but given how often the council finds itself in session, it's not something the Kazekage can do very often; usually, this task is delegated to an aide—or several.
A chunin and her protégé are in the middle of receiving a C-rank mission when an ANBU operative, who from his height and build can hardly be taken for anything but a man, skirts the edge of the room, places a manila file at the Kazekage's side, and mutters "The report, sir," before flickering away
The Kazekage waits until the two shinobi are out of the room until opening the file, and tries not to notice the way they both stiffen when their eyes fall on that seemingly inconspicuous file folder.
Yusuf is dead.
He attacked Gaara from behind with an attack puppet, and the sand destroyed the puppet in a hailstorm of senbon, gears and splinters in the moment before Gaara noticed the danger at his back.
And so we move on.
-0-0-0-
The first four have come and gone. There are still yet more to come.
Number five, Shiri, dies in sand.
Number six, Noritaka, dies in sand.
Number seven, Ayano, dies in sand.
When number eight, Taichi, goes the same way as the as the previous seven would-be assassins, the Kazekage has waited long enough.
For a few moments, he pauses at his desk, fingering the report with narrowed eyes and slackened face.
In this attack, the sand shielded Gaara automatically, before he was aware of the danger rising up behind him. It was the same with all the previous attacks, back to when Yashamaru died at his nephew's hands, one night that seems an eternity past.
The sun is starting to sink in the sky, sinking over the rooftops and the city walls. Hexagonal shadows scatter across the floor from the terracotta lattice set over the window. For a moment, the Kazekage can hear a voice, dredged up from memory, half-whispering "My sister… I don't think that's wise, sir."
He and Yashamaru had never been friends. His brother-in-law, the Kazekage knows, had hated him over what happened to Karura. But Yashamaru saw clearly what the future held, perhaps more clearly than anyone else in this village. Far more clearly than the Kazekage, who had possessed only an inkling of Yashamaru's foresight, and had never seen that future plainly.
"The sand always protects him, doesn't it?" he murmurs, eyes growing glazed and abstracted. "Almost like…" The Kazekage remembers himself before he can finish that sentence, but only slightly, given what he says next. "Well, Yashamaru," he calls out to an empty room, "you never did approve of anything I did as regards Gaara. But perhaps you'll approve of this."
Not surprisingly, no one answers.
-0-0-0-
The councilors raise objections and are summarily ignored. Instead of being heeded, they are instead treated to the sight of their leader completely reversing his policy on what is to be done with the jinchuuriki host of Sunagakure, without anything resembling an explanation. And the daimyo, when he learns of this, will no doubt raise objections of his own. The Kazekage will deal with that when it comes.
He steps out into the world, wind beating into his face, dust going up into his eyes, the late afternoon light all but dousing the streets in shadow.
This was a mistake. Instead of huddling in secret places to cry, Gaara now kills to alleviate his pain, to sate the demon's voice in his head and slake his own bloodlust. This was nothing but a mistake from the start. But if the slate can't be wiped clean…
The Kazekage draws a deep breath. If the slate can't be wiped clean, then he should at least try to make the best of a bad situation.
Now to find Gaara.
1: Opium and its derivatives is the main substance used as a reliever of severe pain in Kaze no Kuni. There were high numbers of opium addicts in the nation after the close of each of the world wars.