Sadness

One-shot, Gaara-centric

Having no time to just shut down and sleep and this way being unable to avoid his memory, the actions repeated themselves again and again in front of his inner eye. The sand -nearly killing the other children- the objection of the kid and the following kill. Yashamaru's words were only distant memories compared to this one.

The second death in one day:

Yashamaru's blood sprinkled over his ANBU clothes. The bandage around one of his fingers where he had cut himself in the afternoon. His word's -already forgotten after they had been spoken.

First Gaara had thought that someone had replaced the real ANBU with his uncle to confuse him or had placed an illusion over themselves to attack him later. He had been young and inexperienced. Still it took only some seconds to make his hope shatter. Yashamaru had tried to kill him. He wasn't one of Yashamaru's precious people. Still he had questioned him. And had got his answers. Hard and cruel. He must have cried like never before and then Yashamaru had told him one more dark secret. Everybody hated him. His mother, his father, his uncle, his siblings, the children…it had felt like a thick torn had been driven into his heart.

Gaara. A demon that only loved himself. His mother hadn't loved him. She hadn't even wanted him in the first place, being sacrificed.

He had barley noticed that Yashamaru self-destructed; feeling like the torn was wrenched sharply around in his heart and smashed it in the progress to pieces. The procedure of gritting the kanji "Ai" in his forehead was nothing to the pain in his chest. Both faded away and he told himself never to care about anybody else if he didn't want to repeat these aches.

-

Gaara stood in front of the swings he used to sit on with his bear in one hand and the other loosely around the metal cord. His green eyes were dead and cold like everybody was used to them by now, the bear gone. Again one villager had bothered him and he had crushed him within the blink of an eye. Now everyone feared him. That felt better than hate.

Gaara blinked and looked at the woman who sat on the swing beside the one he normally occupied. She smiled with her eyes closed but he had the distinct feeling she knew very well that he was there. Interest briefly flickered awake but he suppressed it immediately but none the less opened his mouth to ask her what she was doing here.

She put one finger to her closed lips to show him to keep silent. Her eyes finally opened and he was met with sadness and pain.

"Don't talk with me. They will think you are insane."

Her smile was still intact but looked unhappy. Sad.

"I am a ghost, they can't see me."

Only now he noticed the bandages around her arms and neck and the multiple plasters on her fingers and face. That explained the pain in her eyes.

He patiently waited for her to continue but she just kept smiling, her eyes closed once again. Then- "Sit with me."

Without hesitation he placed himself on his old swing and stared at the ground in front of his sandals.

"I wanted to talk to you and prevent things…but you aren't very talkative and things have already happened."

Again silence. Sand curled around his feet but didn't get any near the strange woman beside him.

"You know that you have a monster in you, don't you?"

Silence.

"I would like you to remember that you aren't the monster."

Gaara shot the woman beside him a curious look and found her staring right back. The smile was gone.

"You are…innocent. Not as innocent as before but…you aren't to blame. You weren't the one to make the decision to place the demon in you. You weren't the one pulling the demon out of his somewhat…peaceful state." A weary smile crossed her features like she had wanted to add "As peaceful as a demon can get." It was as quickly gone as it has come.

"Why do you think so?" Gaara asked. He knew that his voice held no emotion but it still came out thin and weak.

"I know it for sure. Humans don't have a tendency to be born with demons within them." She gave him a pointed look. "And normally they can't control sand. But it is too late to seal the demon away from you now."

Her expression darkened and he could feel the anger radiant from her in thick waves, directed at nobody else as his father, walking in his direction. The feeling was gone from one second to the other and she regarded the man merely with cool calculating eyes.

She turned her head abruptly in his direction, a strained looking smile on her face. But when she stood up it became real and warm and friendship/pity/sympathy…love?... shone out of her eyes.

"Remember just that you are not to blame. Please, don't let get yourself lost in the pit of hell the demon offers you with killing. You are not to blame…" She reached a hand out and let it rest on his hair.

Snow on Blood, Blood on Snow

Then she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.

Gaara blinked and she was gone. Instead his father stood some feet away, looking impatiently at his youngest child.

That was the day Gaara had stopped calling the Kazekage his father –be it mentally or physically. Later he couldn't remember how the woman really looked like, hair-colour black or white and eyes of green-brown or deep blackness, swallowing him whole. And not a year latter he had the whole thing already pushed to the far back of his mind, the memory only roused occasionally by words or gestures. He had barley reached his ninth year and the meeting was already forgotten or stored deep away, nobody knows.

And only the image of snow with blood firmly implanted in his mind showed that it had actually happened.

Gaara didn't feel or saw real snow until he was thirteen.