A/N: It's cool. I only rewrote this like 4 times to accommodate the following chapters. No biggie xD sorry my update schedule is trash.
xXx
A wave of ecstasy took him over, he could feel again. Never had he felt so empty, yet so full at the same time. The satisfaction threatened to overfill him, climb the walls of his mouth and drip from his eyes. But nothing came out. Instead, a silent roar occupied the empty space of his throat. Followed by a choke as his failed attempts to breath resulted in him falling into a coughing fit.
He jumped with a start from his own bed, rushing quickly to his bathroom to try and drown that feeling with water. Guzzling down the stream from the faucet for ten seconds until he felt he could breath again. Drenched in sweat, he looked up into his bathroom image at the mess he'd become.
His hair was becoming long and tangled spilling down past his ears. The peach fuzz around his jaw had thickened to a manly, rust cover that hid the finer parts of his face, his waist had finally filled out to a normal size again, and then there was the tattoo.
It wasn't fresh anymore.
The fresh after day scab effect seemed to have been long since gone, the red kanji for love now harmonized well with his skin, it's raised effect gone and healed.
He stared at himself for a moment. Minutes went by as he scrutinized his appearance the way kids do strangers. He took his razor and some scissors and slowly began to sculpt himself out the stranger before him.
xXx
"It's a shame really, I thought the scruff was kinda sexy."
Sakura's attitude was as nonchalant as ever. A single finger feathered it's way along Gaara's now smooth jawline. She was sitting in her typical spot at the cafe, close to Gaara at his side with one arm wrapped under his.
"And dear did you really have to cut the hair? I'm hurt, truly-"
"What's..." Gaara's hands shook on the table. He looked down at them and expected them to stop.
But it's hard to control something that's not truly yours.
"What's happening to me?" He'd woken up here next to her again and he'd begun to think that may be a cause for fear rather than joy.
Sakura took both of his trembling hands in hers and Gaara could feel himself began to relax. Hot, white panics began to cool into a manageable anxiet, and in seconds, into almost nothing at all.
Like the calm you find after realizing it was just a nightmare.
"You're having lunch with your beautiful girlfriend silly." Sakura's attention switched to his hair that too had been hacked at with dull blades, careful fingers twisting his shortened red locks between them.
'Yeah. Just a nightmare...'
"Right. And what day is it?"
"... Saturday dear."
"Right. Saturday." This had become familiar at least. Gaara has identified that something was amiss. Terribly wrong with perhaps his mind? This girl? It didn't really matter. He managed to live comfortably in between the gaps. Wake up. See himself. See her. Repeat.
In fact the last thing he remembered was being her with her. The last several times. It always made him happy. Always made him forget what he was trying to remember.
"Are you all right-" She started.
"How's Sasuke? Sasuke Uchiha?" He interrupted.
'Where'd that come from? And why the Hell do I even care?'
"Hm." Sakura took a moment to visually scrutinize his odd behavior. "Very dead, last I checked. You should know, you went to his funeral."
'So then it wasn't just a nightmare' Gaara feared that was the case, but he was strangely at ease with it.
"Right... When was that again?"
"And hear I thought we were making some progress... seems your memory is still a bit shotty. But that manageable I suppose."
"Manageable?"
"It's been two months." You went with Naruto even though I begged you not too. I mean honestly. The nerve of you two." Sakura let out an exaggerated huff and turned away from him in the booth. "Wasting your time on-on... him?!"
"I'm going home. You'll meet me there, yeah?" She had a grit about her. Her demeanor was always fluffy, aloof. And frustrated at worse.
But never gritty.
"It's not like you to leave mad, Sakura."
"It's not as if you'd remember anyway... I'll see you tonight." Sakura kisses him on the forehead and rushed out before Gaara could shoot off one of the millions of questions on his mind.
But once again, he can't remember what it is he had to ask. It irked at his senses, hands running wild through his scalp just trying to remember. But ultimately, he gave up. And more importantly, there was an alien sensation going on in his pocket.
Gaara noticed his phone buzz and wondered how long it been since he consciously even checked the thing. He pulled out the small device to see a ton of messages from his family spanning some weeks back, he'd have to read those later. One this morning from Sakura. A few from Naruto. And one, right now from the same unknown number.
Unknown: "Enjoy your nap?"
Gaara: "You again. know what's happening to me, don't you?"
Unknown: "I told you to stay away from her. Now look at you. Broken and crazy."
Gaara:"Who are you?"
Unknown: "Scared?
Unknown: "Ditch the ghost and come find out homeschool."
His mind flashed to the last unfortunate to poke fun at him. Provoke the beast inside. First the blood rush pumped through his veins as the thought of ending this stranger as hate tempted him. Gone they'd be in a fit of rage, just how Sasuke perished. Broken and unrecognizable beneath him. A week later, his casket sinking beneath him. The grief of a family losing one so young leaving them broken. This level of tragedy, unrecognizable. The entirety of the funerals attendance none the wiser of his sins.
He wish he could put a face to this stranger.
'He should really know what happened to the last guy that called me that.' Gaara thought to himself as his thumbs hovered hesitantly above the phone screen.
Gaara: "When and where?"
He did it once, he could do it again.
Unknown: "Where they buried Sasuke. Don't bother looking up the address. Just start walking.You'll get there."
XXX
And so he did.
Gaara's feet brought him out on a path he wasn't sure he needed to be on. But Instead of watching where the path bended and winded in the empty streets, he looked to the sky instead. Kept his eyes on the fluffy clouds as they seemed to accelerate a sunset. The suns prescense dipped below the gray and he sank with it.
"You made it." A voice said. It was distant, almost eerie.
Gaara snapped out of his slight daze to look at what he assumed to be origin of the mystery voice. A black haired, maniah figure, with it's back to him. It stood their, looming over a grave stone, littered with already wilting flowers. A multitude of other graves, all left open and bare around this particular part of the cemetery.
He recognized it immediately.
'Sasuke's grave. '
It stood their, so prideful. A headstone a person high a life wide. Seems the Uchiha's cockiness favored him even in death.
"You said I would. Who are you anyway?"
"You mean you don't recognize my voice?" The voice grew nearer as he approached the body in front of him. The soles of his shoes crunching with a crack amongst the dead leaves.
'Fallen leaves in... what month is it again?'
"Unsure are we? Bet you don't even know what day it is? When it is? Hell, where you are?" The voice said as it noted his pause after stepping amongst the autumn leaves.
Gaara squinted his eyes as he edged closer. Wide shoulders, gruff voice. Surely a man, but who? Impatience took over the redhead before he could debate further. He gripped the man by the shoulder, spinning him around and he felt both equal parts disbelief and relief.
'I'm not a murder' He thought. His eyes surely didn't betray him. Surely those memories of bashing his skull in were false. The mournful tears, the closed casket. Surely they were all fake.
Sasuke had everyone fooled, but not him. No. Because Gaara wasn't crazy. The man was right there, in his grip.
"Where do you get off harassing me like this!?" Gaara shook the man. But found no response from the stimulus. He shook again but couldn't help but notice the dead look in his eyes. The one that glazed over as it looked not at him, but through him.
"He can't hear you ya know. " Words sounded once more, but not from Sasuke's mouth. "No more than that body you put in the ground."
'That voice again. I know that voice and it's not Sasuke's.'
"You did this to him. It's almost ironic really." A tall hooded figure all but materialized in the fog. Black lockes peaking out from beneath his hood. Piercing blue eyes closed the distance from behind Sasuke's memorial stone and his face, Gaara could see clearly now.
Amidst the fog, and the confusion, it was Menma's face he saw.
"You-"
"Yes." He interrupted. "Me."
He waved a hand in front of Sasuke's face, but failed to get a response all the same.
"But it's you who did this."
"I don't understand. If you know what the Hell is going on then why don't you just explain?" Gaara's temper began to rise again. Either with Menma, Sasuke, or maybe even himself.
He couldn't be to sure. Everything about this school, these people, his life, seemed unsure.
Unfair.
He just wanted to be a normal student. He wanted a place for creativity, to study, learn. But instead. He could feel the pressure rising within. A truth he had no business partaking in was swelling at the surface and that all to familiar drowning feeling was consuming him, nearly chest high.
"I told you to stay away from her." Menmas anger matched if not dwarfed Gaara's. He shoved the redhead back whom threatened to fall into one of the many open graves. But instead just falling down, catching himself with his hands on the cold earth.
"And what do you do? You just keep digging, and digging, and fucking digging."
"Well it looks like someone needed to find out what the Hell is going on around here. Ghost. Conspiracies? For Christ sake, that asshole is playing dead and you have the nerve to come at me?? What's the catch? Actually, forget all of this where's Naruto? He seems the to be the more sensible of you two weirdos." Gaara hoisted himself from the ground. Keeping the distance between them both. Sasuke, now unhanded, returned to his former task of watching his own grave.
Gaara took a moment to lament that this was the first time he's heard himself speak this much in what felt like an eternity. His voice a stranger, and this free will and questioning empowering.
"Naruto's not coming back. Haven't you figured this out by now? You fell for her little trap and now we're all fucked."
There it was again. More nonsense. More people running off at the mouth, this never ending confusion felt again like eternity.
"What are you on about-"
"Get this through your thick skull. Wake. Up."
Gaara may not understand, but even he knew you could wake up from eternity. Right?
There's that fog agin. Gaara could feel Menma yelling at him as his body begins to limp. Falling back to the earth. The cold ground and the wet leaves enscasing him. That drowning sensation creeping towards his throat and for the second time that day he found himself looking up at a stranger.
Scrutinizing the face before him.
Menma was shouting at him, but no sound came out. Those friendly blue eyes were blazing and suddenly those dark lockes weren't so dark. Instead they were blonde. And the graveyard around them was bare, empty. Long gone were the clouds and he could feel the warmth. It was sunny.
Shinning even.
Gaara could hear him now.
"And now you've gone and put this poor boy in the dirt, now he's no better than a vessel. A Ghost. Just like my brother."