AN: Just a little thing I doodled out on a boring Tuesday morning. Slightly angsty. I think I'm suffering from Naruto withdrawal. Anyway… hope you like it. Please Review!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and I don't own Gaara.
Sand
Sand.
It gets everywhere. It saturates you. Inside clothes, scratching against skin. It causes tears to fall unbidden from bombarded eyes. Hair, nostrils, mouth are filled with it.
There is no such thing as smooth within the sand.
Yet this is what I cling to. This is both home and relief to me.
I live here, within the sand. I hope for it to swallow me. It provides solace sometimes, because I know that even while the sand grates at my skin and beats against me it has no power of its own. Its power is granted by the wind that hurls it.
Here it is the wind that has the power.
Not like me. Not like me at all.
I could stop the sand from hitting me. I could hold it away with the power of my will. I could show that I am more powerful than this wind: that the demon within me is not troubled by it.
But then, I think, I would lose a little more of what makes me human.
No, far better to sit here and have the sand blast me. Far better to not let go of that last vestige of humanity that remains, that keeps me clinging to the hope that one day I could love, or be loved.
He showed me that the possibility was there. Another, with a demon: a demon that could love.
And yet I have only known pain. I am as familiar with wounds of the heart as I am with the sun, or the sky, or the moon and stars that have been my only companion for the many sleepless nights my life has afforded me. I have known pain for as long as I have known what it is to be alive.
It is strange that it took severe physical pain, bleeding wounds, exhaustion, for me to know that it was possible for a demon like me to love others. I owe my life to him because he almost killed me.
He showed me that the demon is within me. But it is not me.
Still, I find comfort in the sand. It is like me and yet removed from me. I am Gaara of the Sand, Gaara of the desert. I am a part of the desert.
But now, now that I have been defeated, now I know that the desert is no longer a part of me. I shall be an oasis in this desert. And I will learn to love.