Chapter 3

The next day Gaara found himself staring impatiently at the classroom clocks, tapping his pencil against the desk. Normally class passed by in a blur, voices and readings blending together as they wandered through his brain and settled somewhere in his subconscious. He never cared about the teachers, doctors or their students, caring even less about their dates, names and math problems. School was a chore, much like cleaning one's room – no matter how often you cleaned your room it would always be dirty again – creating an endless cycle doomed to repeat itself throughout eternity. Gaara could have paid attention in class and maybe even could have aced everything, but in the end he'd still be there. His father would never let him leave, that would mean agreeing he was sane.

Normally days flow, because there was simply nothing to look forward to in the monotony of Gaara's life. However, today, he had a reason he wanted to leave, and the clock hands simply couldn't move fast enough. Something to look forward to wasn't the right phrase, it didn't even come close. Instead, it was the fact that Gaara had a reason for wanting to leave class and make time move faster.

He wanted to check on Haku.

The vivid dream from the night before haunted him, more effectively then she ever had in all his life. He could still, literally, feel the dream creeping over his skin and ringing in his ears. Every moment he closed his eyes, every millisecond in a single blink, he could see the watery visions that had invaded his mind. He could very nearly smell the sweat and blood which had saturated the scene. He didn't want to know if Haku was okay, the image made him need to know. He needed to know if he was just insane.

It was a paradox, a contradiction of one of the worst kinds – damned if he was right and damned if he wasn't.

If Gaara was right, and the vision was real – or even a shade of reality – and Haku was dead, then he'd become the witness to a murder and rape case that would never stand. He's seen it all in his dream. At the very best he could claim the false title of psychic and attempt some false play with drawn out words and perhaps a crystal tucked in his pocket to convince people, or attempt to get them to believe what he'd seen. Worst-case scenario he was sent back home, ready to meet his father's belt because he was 'hallucinating' again.

On the other hand, if Gaara was wrong, he would be immediately pronounced psychotic and whatever parts he tried to explain would be immediately passed off as some homicidal fantasy, lending his father the final excuse he needed to lock Gaara away. Neither option really seemed open to him, and after pondering the points over and over the only thing he could do was make it down to the fence and wait for Haku there.

It wasn't that he was overly panicked or even really concerned for the boy. He cared, obviously – he wasn't twisted enough yet to completely stop caring about other human beings. But on the other hand, if Haku had died like his vision said, he knew he'd still be more worried about the apparent fact that he could now see the future rather then the boy himself. Everything, at the moment, seemed to ride on whether or not Haku was dead, as morbid as it seemed, and Gaara was almost itching with curiosity.

His eyes drifted to the clock on the wall, watching it tick away the moments until freedom. Students around him spoke silently, desperately trying to sneak in conversations behind their teacher's back as she scrawled words on the board that didn't strike any of them as terribly important. Gaara sighed softly in boredom and impatience and finally didn't want to deal with it anymore. He stood up and shoved his books in his bag, then moved for the door and left as if class were over and the bell had rung.

He didn't have to look back to know that the teacher had stopped and was watching him leave. He heard the white board pen stop squeaking and the hushed whispers of the class stop, only to be replaced by more urgent ones whispering about his boldness. Once upon a time he'd taken an odd sense of comfort in the popularity and solitude that such an action brought. However that 'once upon a time' was quickly broken by nights of his father beating him with his favorite leather belt – which he never wore – and worse. School comforts never stayed at school in this type of place and they never stayed comforts for long. Gaara went to school for the same reason most of the other students did. None of them really gave a shit about grades or passing class, rather every moment they were at school they were distracted and not home. That time wasn't something you took lightly, it was a rare gift to the abused and mistreated psycho that it was never given up willingly.

But none of that mattered to Gaara now. What mattered to him, oddly enough, wouldn't happen for another half hour, but his mind was sick of that logic. It wanted to see if the vision had been real and it wanted to see now. There was nothing left to argue and for once not even the painfully vivid memory of his father's belt was enough to dissuade him. He was impatient and he was through waiting in that classroom. School and father be damned, this feeling – perhaps need was even the right word – wouldn't go away.

Feet carried him faster then he'd ever traveled before and he nearly tore through the bushes, his pace reaching a near-out run as he reached the small hill. His foot slipped, the worn treads on his lace up boots proving just how useless they really were for a few seconds before catching a root and allowing him to stumble to his feet and land clutching at the fence to keep his balance. Gaara closed his eyes and leaned against the biting cold metal of the chain link fence and let it press into his cheek, enjoying the cool feeling and letting it calm him down.

With his eyes closed he could hear the space around him. The breeze whispered from the willow tree, speaking in a soft, secretive voice he could never hope to understand. Around him the air tasted of a diluted mint flavoring, with a soft bite of sweetness from the newly cut grass at the other academy sitting beyond the fence. Haku's school could apparently afford to care about the lawn more then a handful of times during the year, and then some. Below those smells was a murmur of something sweet and watery smelling, also tangy, the kind of taste that lingered on the edge of your tongue simultaneously making you scrunch up your face in disgust and ask for more.

And beyond that… there was something else.

The cold of the fence was forgotten as he held his breath, carefully listening. He could feel something else beside himself in the area, cold and waiting, watching. It wasn't her, the one from his room. Her presence was constant but she always felt like a soft weight between his shoulders, like a hand setting on the center of his back, as if to push him forward. This was different. This feeling was a chilling breath, a pressure on either side of his neck, as if someone were ready to strangle him with cold, dead and twisted hands. A breathing pulse of icy chill slipping just below his back hairline.

Gaara pulled back and his eyes snapped open, flickering around the area. The grass was at that height, hinting that tomorrow it would finally grow high enough to wet the edges of his jeans with memories of morning dew, and the trees which created their own natural wall which almost hid the school from sight. His eyes stopped on the willow tree just beyond him and his own breath came in, icy cold.

Beneath the waving branches he could see it, watching quietly. It wasn't her, it wasn't the one from his room and every night of his life, this one was different. Even through the branches he could just barely make it out, and began to take slow steps forward as his eyes focused on it.

He could make out the body, a thin willow-like body surrounded – more then covered – by thin wisps of fabric that acted more like a cousin of the wind then clothing. The skin was pale, with the same lack of color she'd always had, but this was worse because there was a sickly grey tint, making this one look very old. Like her, this one had no legs or feet. The body just continued down and faded away somewhere beneath the knees, as if it were natural for the rest of its legs to be less visible then the air. The face was he last thing he looked at, always the last thing he ever wanted to see – if that was even the right word to use.

The eyes were black, the type of black found in semi-precious gems, still managing to look alive with a nearly intelligent light even though you knew they weren't possibly, not anymore. And it wasn't just the iris that was filled with this color, but the whole eye, not a speck of white in them; just endless black pools able to be completely drown in. The eyes were complimented by a mouth; twisted as if some thing had forced it open as wide as it would go and then, like every mother's threat, it had stayed that way. Black stringy hair completed the image, swaying in a macabre dance around its head that was hypnotizing in its movements.

Gaara stopped a good ten feet from the tree and just stared at the thing before him, his mind unsure what to do next. All he could really do was stare, his mind moving frantically while his limbs seemed to go numb. He'd never seen one like this before, not with eyes like this. The eyes were the part that bothered him the most. Even if he never saw her eyes, he knew they didn't look like that. The deep black pools seemed to almost pull him in, beckoning him to come closer and what stopped him was the look beyond them, the deep red that seemed to be somewhere in the very back of those dark crystals.

The air didn't smell like mint anymore. It smelt like blood.

The thing moved under the willow branches, stepping forward but really more gliding thanks to his lack of feet. The movement was jerky, as if it were limping or in pain. Gaara could see that all the limbs were twisted, broken and bent in unnatural places. The thing moved like a broken puppet with uneven strings, a movement and then a shaky stop, and then another movement that sent tremors through its body. And all the while its eyes were on Gaara, citing him as his target.

Target.

The word rang in Gaara's mind as he heard sounds behind him. For the life of himself he couldn't move, the word pounding in his head and reverberating around his skull. It was so loud the thought was like a physical force, pounding on the closest solid object, anything, to get out. Target rang over and over in his head and the smell of blood choked his throat, but still he couldn't move. The thing in front of him moved, without the need of legs and it was as if it had stolen Gaara's ability of such, leaving him immobile and nearly trembling from just watching.

Then it all snapped away as hands grasped his shoulders. Gaara was jerked back from the tree and caught by two sets of arms, holding him tightly and not giving him a chance to escape. They turned him away from the tree, back toward the group of people who'd finally discovered his hiding place and come to deal the punishment of leaving class and school grounds. It was only when they forced him to turn his back to the tree that whatever spell seemed to break.

Gaara sagged in their arms, panting softly as he suddenly found himself able to breathe again. The air returned to its normal scent, now a stale minty sweetness that stained the throat, but he swallowed it gratefully, anything to forget the blood which had been in the air. He cared more about the clean air in his lungs then their words or the fact that they were forcefully pulling him away from the fence and the willow tree. Two muscled bodies pulled him up the hill and through the bushes and he felt the chilly feeling lift from around his neck, giving him a moment of peace.

But that moment of peace was short lived as a sick feeling settled into his stomach. He'd known this would happen because of his actions, but the reality of the situation hit him when he saw the car waiting in front of the school gates. They'd called his father and now he was being sent home. The black SUV in front of him was the feared car of the school, the very vehicle that took you home when ever the school felt you'd done something that it was better felt your parents should punish you for.

Due to the fact that many of the teenagers at the school had their own shrinks and their own medical and rehab programs, the school itself almost never dealt out punishment. Punishment was dealt out by parents, rather then the school making some attempt to keep everyone's treatment records and restrictions up to date and on file. When you did something larger then send a spitball across the classroom or talk out of turn, you were sent home in the black SUV, to await whatever punishment was part of your 'rehabilitation'. In Gaara's case, he had a sinking feeling he wouldn't be returning to school for the rest of the week.

His legs still hurt from the last beating. Another would send him to bed, probably sick for a week until his father drunk himself into an unconscious stupor and he was able to sneak out of the room to eat again. A look down the hill and a run in with a new local spirit certainly didn't seem worth the week of pain it would cause him, but luckily the thing he'd seen had scared any sort of panic out of his mind.

As bad as it sounded, he would have rather been under his father's belt then at that tree again. In fact, in comparison, the belt actually seemed safer and almost… comforting.

(That Night)

A crack snapped through the air and Gaara gritted his teeth, his eyes shut tightly from the pain that shot through his body. His legs throbbed, well close to the point of being deathly numb, and his back ached from the new red scratches. He was bleeding and he could feel the hot red liquid spreading out over his body as the sharp and cold metal bit into his back.

It wasn't just the leather belt today. Instead his father had decided to be even more sinister and use the end with the latch and hook, the metal proving to be much more painful then the leather would ever be. It also didn't help that he'd made Gaara completely strip down and hit at his legs until he couldn't stand anymore and crumbled to the floor, before moving to his back.

The belt hit again and Gaara leaned his head against the wall in his bedroom, trying to take a small bit of comfort from the cold concrete that met his face. He struggled to keep his mouth shut and not cry out, his brain tuning out his father's hateful words as the beating continued.

He didn't hear the words, he never heard the words. Once upon a time, when the beatings like this had started, he remembered screaming back at his father, trying to protest and trying to beg him to stop. Such reactions only seemed to egg him on and those nights had lasted forever, imprinting his mind and filling his future with painful dreams where all he could hear was himself screaming. He's learned quickly to keep his mouth shut and not say a word, waiting for his father to grow bored with the unresponsive body his son became when he was beaten now. The most that came from his actions now were bleeding and the occasional reflexive jerk, but otherwise Gaara had trained himself to completely shut down during the beatings. A lack of screaming and reacting bored him and sooner then other times he grew tired and retreated to drink on the chair in front of the TV.

Gaara winced as the belt buckle bit into his back, near his neck and he felt the skin break. He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe quickly and block out the pain. The concrete wasn't cold anymore, now it was warm and slippery with his own sweat. He waited for the next hit to come, but it never did. Instead he heard the familiar, and wonderful, sound of his father rolling the belt up and stopping.

He didn't move and he even dared to hold his breath. His ears filled with his own heartbeat, counting the seconds and waiting for his reaction. No reaction came, and there was no retaliation to his slight change. Instead he heard the footsteps of his father leaving the room. Painfully he forced himself to stay still until he heard the springs on the chair move and his father sit down, the sound of glass scratching on the table as he picked up his bottle for another drink.

Only then did Gaara let the stress flow out of his body and he crumbled completely to the ground. His body screamed in pain and he couldn't hold in a small whimper that escaped as he curled into a ball and took quick but quiet breathes. His head felt light and the room seemed to spin around him, the pain covering him like a spiked blanket.

He couldn't move now, his shock completely taking over. His body shook, trembling from its held back reactions that now shattered through him. His vision filled with black dots and he coughed in his effort to breathe, a spasm shaking his chest.

It was a strange feeling at first and he almost didn't notice it as he fought his own body's need to drift into unconsciousness. He couldn't fall asleep, he refused to, because he didn't trust his father to not come in for a second round when the television bored him. The feeling was very small, like the brushing of slightly cold air, the kind that was just cold enough to make the hair on your arm stand taunt, but not give you goose bumps. It was just a brush, but he noticed it from below the pain and his mind seemed to quiet at it.

Gaara tilted his head up and turn it, looking behind him despite the odd and almost painful angle, to see. He found her standing there, above him, the wispy edges of her legless image brushing against his torn and red skin. She wasn't touching him and really wasn't reacting to him more then usual, but she was floating there, looking down at him.

From this angle he could see her eyes, buried beneath the overgrown tuffs of bangs that were groomed over the top half of her face. They were a white, a pearl white, making the rest of her skin and dress look dirty and a far touch from any type of bleach. Her eyes actually shown to an eerie extent, sightless and yet seeing completely in the same glance, and giving the idea that there was a whole world behind them, simply waiting to be gazed upon. The look almost made one think that there were two holes in her head, leading to a light bulb shinning brightly behind her and showing light through.

"I'm not insane. I saw him, mom." Gaara whispered softly, not able to speak any louder because he was still recovering.

The apparition above him simply watched him and didn't react more then letting her image jerk in and out of focus. But he didn't expect an answer from her as he twisted back to lay down normally on the floor.

He finally let his eyes drift shut and sleep envelope him in a comforting numbness. Behind him, somewhere in the other room, the words from the TV seemed just a bit louder reporting a murder.

A boy had been raped and killed, left in the street to die.

Somewhere in Gaara's subconscious, he knew it was Haku.