ALIKE
CHAPTER 18
Gaara knew he was supposed to be either at the Hyuga estate or the Hospital. As soon as they found out he was at neither they would come looking for him, so he enjoyed the solitude while he could. Being stalked, being under surveillance all his life, had become a regular thing for him. It never stopped being annoying. He had killed a few "babysitters" in the past, the ones he thought were actually assassins, but in Konoha he had to be on something like good behavior. Unfortunately his "best" behavior only extended as far as no murders, and he had almost broken that rule the first day.
The training field was quiet after dark. It provided a commanding view of the village, as it was located on the hill which preluded the mountain range. The smoke had been cleared from the village, which meant the competition was over. The one named Kakashi had cracked through the glass barrier himself, but it was Baki and the others who had transported Gaara to safety. Mediating had put him in a trance, so he only vaguely remembered it. When he came to and heard voices outside his door, the first thing he had done was escape.
So here he was. Admittedly he had wanted to go to the academy first. Just out of curiosity. The ones who had failed the competition should be fuming right now, shouting at the jonins who had deceived them. This was funny to Gaara. In a genuine effort to kill Sasuke and the other nuisances, he had actually ensured their success. Otherwise they would have been trapped in the school with their pathetic classmates.
No. It did not suit them. That's why Hinata's success bewildered him. One of the voices outside his door had been a Hiashi Hyuga, and he heard him speak briefly of passing his daughter. No great praise had come from his mouth, but Gaara registered the surprise. Despite Baki's assessment of him, Hiashi was not as cold as his own father. There was something beneath that paperweight heart that Gaara's father had lost a long time ago.
The same thought had occurred to him last night too, when Gaara had been meditating on the roof of estate and Hiashi interrupted him. "You must have quite an affinity for the moon," he had said. Gaara had ignored him, despite the annoyance that sparked at the intrusion. "I see you staring at it quite often—every night in fact. You must see memories in it." He had dared to stand closer to Gaara than any stranger, and comfortably at that. "The tournament is tomorrow, as I'm sure you know. I have information about it that you will tell no one else. Your siblings already know, but I'd hoped to tell you myself for a couple reasons: one, you are my responsibility. And two, you don't really seem to defer to any of your company—Baki-san included."
If Gaara was the laughing type, he would have done so.
As Hiashi went on to explain the procedure of the competition and the logistics of the deception, Gaara had wanted to laugh even harder. He finished with "As an honored guest of Suna, I trust that you will respect the wishes of the academy."
"You want me to be a pawn."
"Not a pawn. Just a helping hand. It won't have any bearing on your placement in the next competition." Gaara had thought that was all, but Hiashi lingered. His company was not appreciated. "Neji and Hinata will be competing," he'd said.
Gaara already knew that, so why bring it up?
"Neji may or may not find himself alone," Hiashi went on. "Either way, you are free to test him if you choose. My daughter, however . . . leave her be. Her test will be conducted by me." Gaara remembered the flex of his jaw, the unreasonable shift of anger.
"Why?"
"She is my child."
Even now Gaara didn't really understand. He wondered if he even wanted to. "Hey freak." Gaara dropped his eyelids. Solitude never did last long for him. He stood up, placing one hand to an oak tree for support. That someone did manage to find him, and so soon, wasn't a surprise. That it turned out to be Sasuke Uchiha was. But unlike Hiashi, Gaara welcomed this intrusion.
Only a few hours had passed since they saw each other, but it was enough time to recover. Neither one had really been injured in the fight, but Sasuke had been the one to exhaust the most chakra. Was he a fool coming here? "Back again?" said Gaara.
"I figured you'd be alone." Sasuke cracked his knuckles. Slowly, turning only his body, he began to tread a circle around him. "I'm sick of you. The second you showed up in class I knew. Your eyes say you've killed people—murdered them. You're a murderer and you like being a murderer."
"Is there a point to this?"
"Don't get me wrong," he said. "I don't really give a rat's ass if you've killed one person, a dozen people, or a thousand. They mean nothing to me. I'm no hero of justice, I'm not some brown-nosing do-gooder; I'm an avenger. I like being an avenger. If you'd only come to compete in the tournament I'd have nothing to say to you." Sasuke's voice turned harsher, angrier. Only a token of patience remained, but it was forced. "At first you were just a target to me, just another opponent I could defeat and toss in a pile. But you're strong. I knew I had to get stronger. If I wanted to fight you something in me had to change, and believe me when I say something has changed."
Gaara dropped his arms at his side. Sasuke finally stopped walking and turned to face him. His shoulders squared and his blood went hot. When his eyes changed he felt it. The world plunged into blood and shadow, shifting instead of flowing, and Sasuke smiled.
"You couldn't kill me with two ninjas helping you," Gaara said, apparently unimpressed. "You think you can do so alone?"
"They were in the way. I work better solo."
"Is that so?" Gaara reached a hand over his shoulder and popped the cork to his gourd. "I'm about to prove to you otherwise."
Sasuke sprang forward, eyes burning. Gaara snatched at the air with his right hand and sand erupted from his gourd. It twisted and spiraled, forming spikes on the rampage for blood. Sasuke made a sweeping motion with his arm that helped him dodge. The sand spikes missed him and he sent three kunais aimed for Gaara's head. They struck a sandwall that immediately turned pliant and absorbed them.
Sasuke landed on his toes. A cloud of smoke bloomed around him, catching the moonlight, and three clones darted from it. One circled around Gaara, whipping out shurikans and paper bombs. They mixed explosively with the fire phoenix bullets being spewed from another clone, all bursting in a firework sand and dirt. The other one tried to break through the sand shell behind him—all to no effect obviously, only for a poor distraction. They were like flies, all three, persistently annoying. Sasuke himself wasn't anywhere in sight.
The kunai clone jumped high enough to cover the moon, already preparing to throw more stars, but he was snared in a fist of sand and crushed back into the stump. Another one was skewered with the same kunais that Sasuke had thrown himself, having been absorbed by the sand for that very use. The third one was sliced through with a wave of sand as thin as sheet metal.
Gaara let his sand flow freely through the training grounds. It covered everything, from the trees to the targets to the wooden dummies, eating at the material, grinding them slowly and aggressively into manipulative grains. This was something he was only just learning how to do, so it was slow and mind intensive work getting it into the ground itself. That's why when the ground opened up under his feet he hadn't been prepared.
It split between his feet like a small canyon, and out of it came Sasuke's hands, wrapped tight around his ankles. Next thing Gaara knew he was being pulled under the ground. Cold soil gripped him from all sides, constricting, suffocating, and he was only in up to his shoulders. Sasuke appeared over him, smirking. He formed a series of familiar and signs, but a thick arm of sand snaked around his leg and threw him sideways.
Gaara let the sand uproot him from the earth. It was a single, violent motion that sent him into the air. Sasuke had recovered at this point, and seemed to have been waiting for him. With a swift procession of hand signs he curled a fist to his mouth and shouted, "Fire Style Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" Fire balls hammered Gaara's sand shield. The impact was much greater in the air, and sent him backwards onto the ground. The fireballs that hadn't stuck his shield rained down like asteroids onto the earth. Fire sprang up around him, quick in devouring the green grass around it.
The sand that had been crawling through the training grounds gravitated toward Gaara like an incoming tide, sweeping over the growing fire in waves. They were put out safely. Smoke was left rising in the air—real smoke—that choked the air around them. Sasuke made a run toward Gaara, mistakenly thinking he was disoriented. Two ribbons of sand turned into arms, both with hands that grabbed Sasuke's entire body.
A suffocating mire of anger welled up inside Gaara, the fiercest it had been in a long time—even fiercer than the previous fight with Sasuke and the other gnats. He whipped both hands out, turned his palms upright, curled them into fists, and brought them down to his side. Sasuke was brought down to the ground with earth-shaking force. Sasuke cried out in pain, grunting. The sand raised up again and brought him down with a force much greater, which caused him to spit blood. Gaara orchestrated these moves with fervor, with precision. When the final spike was in motion a ball of lighting came shooting from the sky, crashing into the sand.
Sasuke fell to the ground coughing. His eyes shot upward, glowing like enraged stars. He pushed himself on all fours, breaking into a sprint. An oncoming wave of sand was speeding his way, but Sasuke was thrown back by something else—a punch to the stomach. Gaara's sand wave was smashed apart by another, much smaller ball of lightening. It screeched in the night, like bats flying out of a cave. An ear-splitting sound.
Gaara went breathless. He straightened his shoulders and glared at the intruder. Without the terrorist's outfit on he was back in all his regular glory: the puffy side-sweep of hair, the face mask, and the one visible dreary eye, now ablaze with anger.
"Enough!" he commanded. His palm was held away from him, turned upright, cradling a screeching ball of chakra. Electricity sizzled out of it, snapping, sparking. Gaara snorted and crossed his arms. Of course there was an interruption. The senseis of this village were the most bothersome of any village he had ever seen. "So soon, Sasuke?" Kakashi said tersely, even though he was looking at Gaara.
"Mind your own business, Kakashi," Sasuke shot, wobbling to a stand. Kakashi only moved his head to look at Sasuke. "Look at you," he seethed. "Not only did you just come out of a fight, but your chakra is depleted. I can feel how weak you are, and don't try to deny it. What were you thinking jumping into a useless quarrel? Do you want to get disqualified?"
Sasuke was loathe to find himself cringing at Kakashi's tone. He coughed and grit his teeth, wiping the tiny speckle of blood that appeared on his lips.
"You act before you think," Kakashi went on sharply. "If I were any other jonin the results might have been disastrous for you. By the looks of things it seems that you were the one to initiate the attack, weren't you? Did you ever stop to think about how this would affect your teammates?"
"The teams don't mean anything anymore!"
"Shut up, you arrogant child!" Sasuke's heart stopped—actually stopped—at the fierceness in Kakashi's voice. The ball of electricity slowly disappeared from his hand. Turning to Gaara he said with infinitely more calm, "You should be at the estate, Sabaku Gaara. Your siblings are looking for you now. Part of your agreement stated that you wouldn't just wander off on your own."
That hardly meant anything to Gaara. As long as he didn't kill anybody it's not like they could disqualify him from the next competition. What mattered most to him was the Uchiha glaring at him from behind his sensei. Kakashi allowed him to close a bit a distance so they could talk, but he made sure to keep his guard up. "This isn't over, freak," Sasuke said coldly. "Never forget that you are a target. Only someone to be beaten and forgotten." Gaara narrowed his eyes. His mouth stretched wide enough to expose the tip of his tongue grazing the back row of his teeth.
"If that was the case, why did you come here?" Sasuke shook his head.
"You think your pain is so much greater than everyone else's. To you nothing in the world is comparable, and you think that gives you permission to do whatever you want—even kill people. That's what really makes me sick." With that, a look came over Gaara, one Sasuke had never seen before. It was cold, excited, insane. The little turquoise coins in his eyes shrank, and even in the dark Sasuke could see the veins showing in the surrounding corneas.
"Well if that's the case," Gaara said in a voice so cold that Kakashi stepped in front of Sasuke, "then I suppose we are more alike than you think."
*AN*
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