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Chapter 26: Vacancies and Recovery Patience

Apologies for what a freaking long time this took; I had to do a third plot rewrite as to the fic's ending. As usual, thank you for sticking with me; you help to make it worthwhile and encourage me along!

(I disclaim.)

I can't throw away my fears
Up into the atmosphere
They race away at the rate
Of the smoke and rust

- from Sarah Harmer's 'Every Time'. (1)

o

He remembers…

The walls were a piteous white, their glare constant and unrelenting with a brightness that seemed to make his eyes smoulder and ache. He couldn't feel much, but his wrists were tight and sore, stinging (pinpricks left from their attempts to sew him back together again; a tattered doll all worn from play). There was ice trickling slowly through his veins, like the miniature streams created from the melting of snow-mounds in spring.

(A fresh sort of cold; a cold sort of clean; like all that dirt from before had all been washed away…)

Even though he could hear noise, coming from somewhere beyond those milky walls, it was only vague and intangible in comparison to the raging silence that held him prisoner. It pulsed as if alive; coming in, then out, wavering and fading before rushing back strong…

Time seemed to pass slowly, hours coming and going within a single blink of the eye. The walls stayed the same the entire time, though some things changed (people came, he realized, splotches of blurred colour that never stayed long and never said much). He was scared at first, but after a while, he began to like it a little bit. He wasn't sure how he got there, but there was no yelling and screaming, only stillness, and he could sleep all he wanted. Sometimes pain burst through his limbs and from deep in his chest in flashes, but they always faded quickly and was never very much compared to what he seemed to know.

("Is this death?" he wondered once, but decided it didn't matter.)

And then something slipped, just something little, and it all came crashing down onto him like a mudslide that dirtied the whiteness he had grown accustomed to. The ache started again, the fear, the guilt, and time began slowing down…

("Is this rebirth?")

And suddenly the colours had faces and those faces had names; names that he knew, pushing them from his throat in desperation. No one was listening; not even the nurse that came once a day to clean and bandage the large red gashes on his wrists, not quite healed over with rough scabs. Everything about the room started to make him itch, made him frantic for any sort of way out.

But there was none. His only exit had proven faulty, after all. So what was there left?

("Hope," she had whispered, but there was none at all and all three knew it.)

There were only the walls, still white and without sympathy as time dragged them along…

'It was a long time ago,' he thought, caressing his wrist. 'Things can be different now…'

(One wrong step, and so easily, everything can come tumbling down…)

o

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Nope, they seem completely serious."

"Just… just kill me now, alright? Get it over with, please. End the agony!" Ukon rolled his eyes up into his head to expose the whites and made exaggerated stabbing motions at his chest, though he stopped abruptly as he saw the conspiring look Sakon was giving him.

"I-I was just kidding, you know? I didn't actually mean that-"

"I know," Sakon said with a devious smirk as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I was just… entertaining the thought."

Temari snickered behind her hand at the display, and Kankurou rolled his eyes as the twins' mock bickering continued. Where a month or so before there had been a sort of awkwardness between them that left gaping holes in conversation and offered no explanation, there was now a closeness between them Tayuya claimed they hadn't had since they were kids in elementary school. In the past week alone, the duo had managed to scare a grade nine girl (how they wouldn't disclose, only that she had moved her locker to the other end of the school after the incident), and build a sculpture of Kankurou out of French fries, among other things.

It was quite a relief, really. The ease their light-hearted interactions brought seemed to settle things, as if behind the scenes, all the problems had fixed themselves with a certain amount of efficiency and things could only go up from that point on. Kankurou still didn't know just what it was that had been resolved or not, but Temari had taken up the habit of ignoring him if he dared bring it up.

"I mean, if I actually was going to kill you, you would never see it coming," Sakon continued, sounding as if he had considered such things before.

Ukon looked appalled. "You think you could actually get away with it?"

"Oh, come on, all I'd have to do would be to slip a little something in your drink and you'd be done for. Mind you, that'd be a little boring so I'd have to make it an interesting poison. You know, one of those special ones that keeps you alive, but in mass amounts of pain while it eats away at your heart tissue until-"

The clearing of a throat caused Sakon to stop mid-sentence, and the group looked up to the preppy girl that had interrupted a few minutes before.

"…so, I'm guessing you don't want tickets to our Valentines Day raffle? You can win gift certificates, and all profits go towards hiring a DJ for the dance next week." she tacked the end bit on hopefully, giving a rehearsed smile as if the cause hadn't already been lost and Tayuya weren't giving her a look that said she had the IQ of a dinner plate for even trying.

Ukon shook his head. "Sorry, hun, I'm broke. Now run along. Shoo!" He waved a hand jovially as if to dismiss her.

"Jesus, is it really Valentines already?" Kankurou asked once she had moved on to find some other victims, looking slightly troubled by this.

"Well, I'm not Christ but yeah, it's a week or two away. Right after our exams," Zaku answered, winking. "Why, you got your eye on a pretty girl to romance or somethin'?"

"N-no!"

"Oh come on, nothing to be ashamed of…"

'Already February? Shit, the days go by way too fucking fast these days…' Tayuya thought to herself, her mind wandering away from the conversation. It felt like time was playing tricks on her sometimes. For such a long time, all she had longed for was just to get out of high school for good and get her freedom, and now, graduation was only a matter of months away and she didn't have to wish so hard. More importantly, she didn't want to wish for it anymore. It was more and more often that she had to stop herself when she started rushing through her days and slow herself down, trying and soak in as much as she could handle. All of a sudden, she felt that she didn't have enough memories, that she had wasted too much time. Soon that part of her life would be gone, and there was no way to get it back or to try it again.

Looking back on herself, Tayuya often felt stupid for taking things for granted. Especially now.

She felt her breath catch involuntarily as her aimless eyes fell over the far end of the hallway, quickly recognizing the lone figure even from such a distance. Screaming at her were all those little details she found had surprising familiarity, forcing her to remember while she continued to hold her stare.

'Kimimaro…'

It had been a while since she had talked to him, or since any of them had talked to him. Her plan to wait until she felt comfortable talking to him, as these days she could barely look at him. It was like the were strangers all over again or something, and the days they had been together had slipped from existence and memory. These days, he was coming and going from classes like the ghost he was beginning to resemble, with hardly word or presence. (And oh, how the fluorescent light made him look so pale, so harsh on her eyes and conscience…)

Everyone had an unspoken understanding that they simply weren't together anymore. Had they broken up? She herself wasn't sure. It was more like there was a vacant space between them, and neither was willing to try to fill it.

When she went back through their memories, she often just ended up feeling bitter. He was sick, yes, and he was dying albeit slowly, but there was just nothing that could be done for it. It was over, it was done. She had to hurry up and stop worrying about things that were no concern of hers and get on with her life while she still had it.

"What do you think, Tayuya-chan?"

'It was his fucking fault, anyways… wasn't it?'

"Hm?" She turned her head, the gaze she had been close to sharing broken all too quickly. "Sorry, I kinda drifted off…"

"No kidding," Sakon said, and the conversation picked up where it left off, but with Tayuya included this time around. She made sure she laughed as much as she could for the fifteen minutes they had remaining that lunch hour, and she committed each syllable spoken to memory, trying to ignore the sense of dissatisfaction she felt creeping in.

She just had to try a little harder and make it mean something.

She owed him that much, didn't she?

o

"Jeez, Lee, are you trying to memorize that thing or something?" Naruto remarked, prodding Lee with a plastic fork. The large eye-browed boy was bent over a copy of Romeo and Juliet, his face so close to the pages it was a surprise he could read that way.

"I'm learning the ways of romance from the masters," Lee announced jubilantly, still without bringing his head up from the book. "Just like Gai-sensei told us! Shakespeare was a genius of love!"

Naruto spluttered a laugh, and adjacent him, Kiba began reciting in falsetto: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Bahaha!"

Across from them, Sasuke snorted. "Are you kidding me? Romeo and Juliet was pure drivel. Two idiots in puppy love who spend the entire book whining about it with extensive and cheesy metaphors. And then they DIE. Not exactly my definition of a good book. Really, they were doomed from the start…"

"Oh, what would you know Sasuke?" Naruto joked, and the Uchiha smiled a bit before putting his earphones back on, ignoring protests from Lee ("W-what? They die?"). From beside him, Gaara could hear the metal Sasuke was blaring leaking out, all scraping guitars and fast-paced drumbeats. It was violent music; music that covered up all your thoughts and replaced them with sweetly numbing distortion; music that kept all the other sounds and voices around you from reaching your ears. Lovely noise.

"I don't really give a crap," Naruto said, twirling ramen on the fork. "I just wish Gai-sensei didn't read it so…"

"Passionately?" Kiba suggested, raising his eyebrows.

Naruto laughed. "Pretty much, yeah."

Neji rolled his eyes. "What do you wanna bet he'll start crying by the end of it?"

"My God, he will too…"

Sasuke's fingers began drumming against the table; a quiet rhythm that sang to itself about all kinds of secrets.

The cafeteria was just as loud as it was any other day, but that certain day it seemed worse to Gaara for whatever reason it did. Every single voice that battered his brain made him a little more paranoid, trying to keep his eyes concentrated on the grain of the table – as if it would make a difference. His head was aching. At that moment, he wanted to be anywhere but where he was, anywhere at all…

Gaara felt Neji's hand cover his where it rested on his leg, spreading warm and wide over his thigh.

"Ignore them," he murmured, just loud enough so that Gaara could hear it despite the strained way it came out. As usual, he knew just what was on the redhead's mind.

The redhead kept his eyes on the table. Maybe, he thought, maybe he was just making a big deal out of nothing again, and maybe his ears weren't hearing things right, and maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. But suggesting such things didn't change the fact that he still caught glares being thrown his way in the halls and in the cafeteria, and the vulgar words spewed out so casually. There were more than usual, more whispers and words thrown about like itty bitty knives poking into him all over. Little pricks, but it was much more than enough to cause discomfort and torment.

"What do they matter? They shouldn't; there's no reason to care whether they agree with us or not," Neji said, though he had told Gaara the same thing several times before and hoped that this time Gaara might come a little closer to fully believing it.

Everyone knew now, though some had suspected already. Most people, it seemed, were fine with it; Sakura had squealed fangirlishly when she first caught them holding hands (secret's out, they figured, no need to hide it any more) and Naruto had congratulated them, joking amiably about it as he did.

But there always would be those other people, the type that just found such things unacceptable and went out of their way to make their stance known. People like the boy who had caught them that one day – it was a few weeks ago, now – and had since tried to provoke both as often as he could. Some days, it was all Gaara could do not to jam his pencil through the boy's forehead (but no need for a repeat incident of the last time someone had crossed him, no…).

"Can we," said Gaara, "go somewhere else?" Then under his breath, a trail of discontinued thought: "I swear…"

Neji nodded, picking up their lunch trays (both barely touched) and gave the rest of the group they were sitting with a succinct 'Good-bye' before following Gaara out.

"Where to?" he asked, and Gaara shrugged irritably.

"Anywhere, I guess." He glanced briefly at his leftover meal. "Just dump it; I'm not hungry."

Neji, not nearly in the mood to insist that Gaara eat at least a little more before they left, let their food slide into the trash and abandoned the trays atop the bin, increasing his stride so that he could keep up with Gaara's tense and hurried one. The hallway was empty, per usual, allowing the sound of mismatched footsteps to reign in its faint, metallic echoes.

"Gaara," started Neji, a bit surprised when Gaara's step kept its pace.

"Look, don't get them get to you…"

"It's not just that," Gaara snapped instantly, though immediately after he heard the words come out, he pulled himself inwards in a full-bodied wince.

"I just…" his feet slowed to a stop then, and from behind him, Neji noticed with a reassuring familiarity that Gaara had started doing that little head movement he always did when he was unsure about things.

Gaara shook his head. "I'm just bothered that I can't do anything about it. That's all."

Sighing restlessly, Gaara turned and let his body fall back until it hit the lockers behind him, then slid down until he was in a crouch. Neji came to sit beside him, scanning Gaara's distraught visage as he settled down onto his knees despite the rather dirty state of the floor.

"I see," Neji said softly, watching as Gaara's hands knitted anxiously with one another, struggling to restrain each other as the redhead tried to sort out his thoughts.

"But don't you feel it too, sometimes?" Gaara asked, his thin voice nearing desperation. "I mean, it all just seems… so useless, so pointless. So helpless. I don't know how to put it, but… these days, it just seems nothing will ever work out right. No, that's not it at all. I'm trying to say that… Oh, I can't word it properly. God damn it."

His fingers tightened, squeezing as if to strangle each other as his thumbs slipped down to make quick (harmless) passes at his wrists. The frustration kept building and building, but anything tangible evaded him.

"I… here." Neji leaned in closer to Gaara, offering a shoulder and a look of attempted and wanted understanding. The redhead looked up at him, and Neji was surprised for a moment at how distanced he looked just then, with those green eyes opened wide but nearly vacant. It was like a part of the redhead had disappeared without Neji noticing the slow decadence until it was almost mockingly blatant. It was impossible of course, the Hyuuga decided, but he was nonetheless relieved as Gaara eagerly let his temple rest against the offered shoulder and his hands began to still. And there was warmth that was theirs and only theirs (as always), heartbeats echoing through the spaces in between…

"Just try not to think about it so much," Neji tried, pressing his cheek against the top of Gaara's head. With that touch, there was more reassurance; more reassurance that Gaara was there with him and not slipping away.

"I know, but I…."

His lips stopped abruptly then, pressing against one another as if to keep the words inside. Again, his pale, thin-knuckled fingers had begun their movements. Shaking, tense, deliberate…

Gaara closed his eyes, trying to stop himself from thinking it (yes, yes he was doing it again). When he tried to control his trembling it only grew worse, and the knots his stomach had tied themselves into tightened. As much as he cared for Neji – the one thing he never let himself doubt – he could feel himself moving to rely on the brunette more and more and it troubled him a little. He felt weak, and he felt pathetic; all those things he was trying to escape being again. It wasn't right for Neji to have to comfort him so much, and the more he went over it inside his head, the more it seemed like his fault. And there was guilt, guilt, guilt…

"Do you ever…" (fingers jerking, pleading) "…think that maybe they… that we aren't supposed to be toge-gether, or…"

The syllables died in a choke, extinguished completely as he felt Neji's hands seize his and halt their movements. His fingers fell slack, even though his insides were on overdrive. Sheer panic reigned as his stomach seemed to double in weight.

(Shit shit shit, shouldn't have said that!)

"Gaara…"

(Why do you always…)

"Come on." He felt Neji's shoulder shift a little, as if the Hyuuga were trying to get a little better look at him.

Turning his face to press closer into Neji's flesh, he murmured, "I didn't mean it."

(Don't leave me, I need you, I couldn't bare to destroy this, not this, not this!)

"Gaara."

"I'm sorry."

The touch of one of the Hyuuga's hands lessened, as if a precursor to its drawing away a few seconds later – there were three heartbeats of panic on Gaara's part in this intermission – and lodging itself in Gaara's hair, thumb sneaking down to brush the redhead's cheek. It was a tragic sort of embrace, hardly bearable as Gaara waited for him to speak.

"I didn't mean it," he repeated, though it hardly seemed like enough. And then…

Was Neji shaking?

His eyes opened, blurred vision filled with strands of dark chocolate hair and a tilted rendition of the hallway. Despite the urge to just curl up into Neji's body and be safe, he stayed the way he was, perhaps out of fear. However, he soon felt Neji drawing him closer and he indulged himself fully. Hoping…

"Gaara." Neji's fingers were in his hair, twisting a few strands as he inhaled. "If it feels wrong to you-"

"It's not that," Gaara said urgently. "I promise. It's not you. It could be everything, but it would never be you."

And he became aware that it was the complete truth.

"As long as you're happy…" Neji murmured. He could feel the cold metal of his locker against the back of his neck as Gaara's hands began again, but this time they moved without doubt, fluid in Neji's palms. The head on his shoulder lifted just enough to bring lips to touch his jawbone. It was amazing just how good that relief felt as it enveloped them ('Oh, heavy lightness…') (2), and all doubt seemed ridiculous in its presence. Gaara inhaled, feeling Neji's hand hovering about his neck.

"I am."

'Or I'll try.'

"I just feel bad when I… rely on you for things like this."

"Don't. I think I like it when you rely on me."

Gaara realized then that even if the hallway had been full of people, at that moment, he wouldn't have cared at all.

'If only it could be this way all the time…'

And maybe it was foolishness, but it felt that right.

o

"What do you think?"

Shikamaru shrugged, lazily focusing his eyes Temari's lower lip.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm not exactly an expert on the aesthetics of facial piercings."

"Oh come on." She pouted a little, exaggerating the ring that had been put through her lip just a half hour before. It was a slightly whimsical decision on Temari's part, and perhaps irrational and childish, but she was pleased with the outcome. What had brought it on she wasn't entirely sure, but the past few mornings when she had been fixing herself up in the mirror, it was all she could think about it. She kept picturing it – a little slice of silver cutting across the soft pink of her lower lip – until her mind had become set to have it done.

It was by pure luck she ran into Shikamaru that day after school, and on another whim (Temari had learned to trust her gut by that time; it seemed to know the right thing to do), she had decided to drag him along with her. And having 'nothing better to do', he let her.

Temari handed the ring to the young woman with bright blue hair and a nametag reading 'Tiffany', who quickly sterilized it and began readying the needle. Temari leaned back in her chair, trying to focus her eyes somewhere else. Not that there was much to look at, besides a half-decent paint job and a few crookedly hung posters for 80's punk bands. The place wasn't exactly the most high-class, as Shikamaru had remarked on their way in, but it was the only tattoo/piercing parlour in Konoha and Temari had decided she liked it immediately upon entering.

Sighing, Shikamaru leaned back against the wall.

"You sure about this?" he asked, still unconvinced, and she gave a short nod.

"Definitely." Temari fingered her lip. "What self-respecting girl doesn't want a lip ring?"

He shook his head, but she could see that he was smiling.

"Alright," Tiffany said, turning back to them. "I hope you're comfortable and have a decent amount of pain tolerance, miss. Now, I need you to let your jaw go slack and loosen the muscles all up. You used the water I gave you to wash your mouth out with, right?"

"Yes ma'am," Temari answered, feeling a little bit of nervousness start to grow in her stomach, though perhaps it was anticipation. Her fingers clutched at her knees as Tiffany first rubbed alcohol just below Temari's lip, and then some cream. "To numb it," Tiffany explained, handing Temari a bowl.

"What's the bowl for?" she asked, able to feel her lower lip begin to loose feeling. Well, that certainly was nifty…

The aqua-haired woman smiled in a way that just screamed 'Damn, I love my job'.

"The bowl is for the blood, dear."

And it had bled quite a bit, but not as much as Temari was expecting. Besides, the numbing cream had lessened the pain, and Temari liked the look of it more than she had thought she would. It suited her, she thought, though she knew Kankurou would freak out at her when she arrived home that night. Not that she was planning on going home anytime soon; she and Shikamaru had settled down once more in a café. Sounds of a soft female voice and acoustic guitar hovered beneath the clinking of glasses and conversation that filled the room like a soundtrack to life, and the situation had an odd amount of ease about it and between them.

"It looks fine, I guess," Shikamaru admitted after a bit more of Temari's pestering. "You really didn't need to squeeze my hand so damn hard when she put in the needle, though."

"Wimp," Temari said.

He shook his head. "Going through pain solely for aesthetics just seems so-"

"Troublesome?"

"Well, yeah." He smirked, the leaned forwards to sip at his coffee. "Besides," he added, "It seems somewhat impractical for activities like talking, or eating, or… other things."

"I can talk and eat just fine with it," Temari told him. "But what do you mean, other things?"

Shikamaru shrugged a little. "Well, things like-"

"Kissing?"

He raised an eyebrow, the thin line of his mouth twisting in amusement. "You're never going to find out if you keep trying to finish my sentences for me."

But Temari wasn't really listening to him at that point, no, because her mind had birthed an idea of the most devious and capricious kind. She shifted to the edge of her seat, pausing for a second as her mind questioned it's own impulses, but she quickly decided that she was on a lucky streak in terms of her impulses and she might as well go for it.

"Would you like to find out?"

"What?"

Temari leaned over and across the small white candles sitting in the middle of the rosewood table, skinny black wicks cold and unlit, until the distance between her face and Shikamaru's was small, and she could see fine baby-hairs that had escaped his ponytail hovering about his ears. He didn't look surprised, she found, but realized she should have expected that as her dangerously grinning lips found his, and a slice of metal became pressed pleasantly between them.

End Chapter 26

(1) – I've found two contradictory versions of the lyrics, one with can't and one with can, and I don't have the lyric book that came with the CD anymore. I chose can't because to me, that's what it sounds like in the song (which you should listen to, because Sarah Harmer is just wonderful).

Her music was also intended as the music played in the café (just like it is in a coffeehouse in my hometown).

(2) – 'Oh heavy lightness'. I am fairly certain this was said in the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, but of course, I wasn't paying much attention that day in English class when he discussed the overuse of oxymorons by a romantically desperate Romeo, so I may be mistaken.