Nonexistent Mourning
by tovanell
-AU- An assassination attempt on ten year old Gaara is successful, and Temari and Kankurou mourn for the brother they never really had.
When Kankurou first found out the Kazekage had targeted Gaara for death, he asked his minder at the time why the hell Gaara was allowed to live with them, to have his own room and be clothed and fed, when it would be more appropriate to throw him out onto the streets, where his chances of survival would decrease? Why was the Kazekage still taking care of Gaara when he wanted the brat dead? It had been two years since Yashamaru's death and Gaara's coming to live with them, and it was hell. Terror was palpable, always, in the household and Gaara wanted it that way, the little bastard.
His minder cuffed his head and called him a fool.
"Gaara isn't stupid. If he can survive attacks from jounin five times his age, he can survive the streets," He said. "Letting him roam the streets, attacking the civilians and stealing food is the last thing we want. The Kazekage wants him dead because he's a threat to the village. Allow him to stay here keeps him always from the civilians and lets us keep an eye on him."
So Gaara stayed at the mansion, getting his own room at the back of the wing. Hardly anyone dared to go near his door.
Until now.
Grumbling and hauling a bucket full of cleaning supplies, Kankurou followed his sister down the hall to the room. It had been three months since Gaara died, but their stupid civilian maids were superstitious and refused to clean out his room, refused to venture down into the lair of the beast. Idiots.
The Kazekage, still wanting to pretend Gaara never existed, didn't want the room left as reminder, and ordered Temari and Kankurou to clean it out. Any belongings he had will receive the same fate as Gaara himself: burned and thrown away.
In front of him, Temari stopped in front of the door and Kankurou stopped right beside her. She gripped the handle and slowly, carefully, pushed the door open.
Kankurou blinked.
He had expected the room to be dark and gloomy, much like Gaara himself. Maybe a bloodstain here or there, or, hell, maybe the walls of the room would be covered with dry blood. The bloodthirsty little psychopath had that horrid blood-soaked gourd, so why not a blood-soaked room?
But no. The walls were plain and the brownish-tan color of most of the buildings of Suna. No blood anywhere, as far as Kankurou could tell. There was hardly anything in the room, just a desk and chair in a corner, and a bookshelf right next to it. Door to what he guessed was the bathroom in one corner, door to the closet in another. No bed, of course.
Sand covered the entire floor of the room, maybe an inch or two deep, perfectly even all over, but it was Gaara. Kankurou expected that.
The two siblings stepped into the room, walking carefully through the sand.
"We have the do something about the sand first," Temari muttered, looking back at the footprints she left. "I guess we will just have to carry it out." She glanced down at the bucket she was holding.
"We're going to scoop it out one bucket at a time?" Kankurou scoffed. "Temari, look at all the sand! It'll take forever. And I'm not hauling it back and forth out of the house."
"Let's hear your idea then." She crossed her arms and glared at him.
Kankurou scowled and looked around the room, his eyes landing on the single circular window in the room. It would be so simple if they could just pour the sand out the window, but windows in Suna usually weren't for opening and thick with two panels of glass to withstand the harsh and many sandstorms of the desert.
…
"Let's break the window. Then we can pour the sand out," Kankurou walked over to the window and tapped it with the hand that wasn't holding a bucket. "Or, heck, you can blow the sand out with your fan."
"We're not breaking any windows, Kankurou. Kazekage-sama won't be happy to have to replace it."
"It's just a window. It's cheap and all he has to do is order a carpenter to come fix it. Your plan is just a waste of time and effort."
"The window is closed for a reason. You have at least half a brain; think. We break it, sand blows in and we'll have to start over."
He ignored the insult, studying the glass. "They don't predict any sandstorms coming this week. We'll cover it up with a piece of cloth or something and call the carpenter as soon as we're finished cleaning this room. It'll be fine, Temari."
Temari was staring at the window too, mulling over what Kankurou had said. He knows she doesn't want to run around with buckets of sand either, and his idea, although unconventional and likely to get him in trouble (but not too much, and that's the important thing), works.
Temari finally shrugs and looks away. "Whatever. This is your idea; you can take the blame for it."
Kankurou grinned and pulled out a kunai. "Get that fan ready, Temari."
Kankurou held up the cloth with his chakra strings while Temari threw a couple of kunai at it, pinning the cloth to the wall, covering the hole that used to be a window. When they finished with that, they turned their attention to the rest of the room. Kankurou won the rock-paper-scissors used for deciding who the loser that will clean the bathroom will be, and he went to clear out the bookshelf and desk while Temari headed to the bathroom.
Gaara was neat. Or had so little stuff that he couldn't be messy. The bookshelf had a few books and scrolls, informational reading material about chakra control, tactics, history - standard shinobi stuff. There was a box of shuriken, a length of wire and a kunai. It would have been a waste to throw the books and everything away, so Kankurou swiped them for his own use. The desk drawer had a notebook, a few blank scrolls, ink, brushes, and pencils. Kankurou took those too.
It was so bland and impersonal, Gaara's room. One can learn a lot about a shinobi just from his personal effects; what he keeps and buys says a lot about his likes and habits, sometimes even weaknesses to be exploited. Not the case with Gaara. A ninja wouldn't learn anything about him from looking at his room; maybe that he was a simple guy – which in a way, he was – but otherwise nothing.
Kankurou finished emptying the drawer and looked for Temari, but she's still cleaning the bathroom. Grabbing a garbage bag, he decided to clear out the closet as well.
Clothes will be no use for Kankurou, so he ripped them off their hangers and shelves and shoved them into the garbage bag. The small walk-in closet revealed nothing about Gaara as well, except maybe he was partial towards black, but that doesn't mean too much. Simple black shirts, black pants, shemagh, sand shawl – more standard Suna wear.
Damn, kid really didn't have much interest in anything other than death and carnage, Kankurou thought, grimacing. He was fine with just the gourd and Shukaku.
Kankurou sighed and continued stuffing clothing into the garbage bag. It didn't matter anymore. Whoever or whatever Gaara was didn't matter anymore. He was gone and dead and there was no point trying to understand him.
(And they did try to understand, if only so they can predict Gaara's violent moods better and navigate their way around them; if only so they can calm him down and maybe, maybe find something human that remained.
But by the time they tried to do so, when Temari and Kankurou realized Gaara will be their future teammate, there was only a demon and they didn't – couldn't – bother try anymore)
It was when he cleared out the last of the clothing that he noticed it. A wooden box shoved into the far corner of the closet. Kankurou paused, frowning at it. He quickly threw the last article of clothing into the bag and set the bag aside. Crouching down and carefully reaching for the box, he dragged it out to the room.
It was a wooden chest, old and worn with age. The metal lock was jammed with sand, so he would have to pried the lid open to look inside. Kankurou could tell it was well-made, though, and probably had been expensive when it was new and first brought. He stared at it, puzzled. He recognized this chest, strangely, but where…?
"Toy chest," Kankurou murmured, remembering. It was one of Gaara's many toy chests when he was little, he remembered now. Spoiled rotten, Gaara had so many toys – anything he wanted and they were the best ones too. He even got toys imported from other countries. Kankurou remembered being jealous, and peeking into Gaara's room every so often just to stare at myriad of toys there. But that was years ago, when the Kazekage was still hopeful about his experiment and Gaara hadn't gone completely off the deep end yet.
A week after he killed Yashamaru, Gaara also destroyed the wing of the mansion he and Yashamaru lived in back then (though Kankurou founded out a few years later that it was because he was fighting off an assassin). That was why he moved in with them in the first place.
Everything else was destroyed, so why not this old box? What was in it that Gaara would want to keep?
Only one way to found out.
Kankurou pulled out another kunai.
An old beaten up teddy bear and three broken picture frames. That was what the toy chest contained (And sand, but Gaara got sand everywhere).
Kankurou recognized the teddy bear – how could he not, when Gaara used to drag it around everywhere?
Kankurou lifted it out of the chest and held it in front of him, staring at it. The fur was falling off and it was missing one of its button eyes. He thought Gaara destroyed it, like he did with everything else, after Yashamaru.
Kankurou dropped it back into the box.
He picked up one of the picture frames, careful of the broken glass. The wooden frame was burnt and cracked, but the picture was intact. A picture of their mother.
Kankurou sucked in a breath. Their mother.
This, unfortunately, brought up bad memories of Gaara and his 'conversations' with Shukaku (at least, Kankurou thought it was Shukaku). It freaked Kankurou out, whenever Gaara, with blood thirst to the extreme and about to completely lose it, began speaking to whatever it was, calling it his mother and all that other shit. He didn't do it regularly or when he was calm, but who knows what the hell went on in that head of his.
That thing was not his mother. Gaara's, maybe, in a way, but not Kankurou's.
Kankurou knew what happens during a sealing, why people like Gaara are called jinchuuriki - the power of human sacrifice. He knew it was his mom, Karura, who was sacrificed, forced to be the container for the vessel, and how her chakra was drained for the sealing, bit by bit, month by month, until she ran out of chakra and died and Gaara was born, possessed by the Ichibi.
Maybe something of her, something of her chakra remained in Gaara; no one was sure, but no way was she responsible for Gaara's blood thirst and insanity, Kankurou was certain. Not his mom, the one who saved him from a fate similar to Gaara's.
Yashamaru had once told Kankurou about how he was almost turned into a jinchuuriki. When Kazekage-sama and the council decided to use Shukaku, Gaara wasn't born yet and their first choice was Kankurou. So it could have been him who was the raging, insane monster, but then his mom stepped in and refused to let them use Kankurou.
But Kazekage-sama wouldn't stop until he had a jinchuuriki for a son, so his mom went and had another kid – Gaara. It cost Karura her life, but she saved Kankurou and he was eternally grateful. Every time he saw Gaara transform and every time he heard about another assassination attempt, he prayed and gave thanks to his mother. And every time he heard Gaara talking to his 'mother', it also kinda pissed him off.
Kankurou set the picture of their mother down carefully on the ground beside him.
He was reaching for the next picture when Temari came out of the bathroom.
"Kankurou, the bathroom's clean. Have you…" She trailed off, puzzled at the sight of the toy chest in front of him. "What is that? What are you doing?"
"I found this at the back of his closet." Kankurou said, picking up another picture frame. This one was one of Gaara, back when his forehead was still unscarred. In the picture he was in front of the Kazekage Dome, teddy bear in hand and looking… sad. Kankurou couldn't remember the last time he saw Gaara looking sad in person. "It's just a few pictures and his old teddy bear."
"Teddy bear? That thing he used to carry around everywhere? I thought he destroyed it, after he killed Yashamaru." Temari walked over and sat down beside Kankurou, peering into the chest.
"Guess he didn't."
"Why would he keep these things though? He wasn't the type of… He didn't care." Temari frowned, picking up the last picture frame left in the chest. This one had Gaara and Yashamaru in it; a smiling Yashamaru crouching down besides a smiling Gaara.
Temari stared at it, eyes clouding over in remembrance.
She took a deep, almost inaudible breath.
"…I forgot he used to smile." She said, voice quiet and flat. "I forgot what he was like, before…before…" She didn't finish.
Kankurou didn't know what to say, so he didn't.
They spent the next few minutes in silence, staring at the pictures in front of them, lost in thoughts or memories or both. Kankurou barely remembered anything of the Gaara that was expressive and half-alright, because they were never close or allowed to be close, and most of the memories he had from then involved both him being angry or jealous of Gaara, or Gaara being angry at him and the sand reacting to his anger. Temari might remember, though, because she was older and always got on a bit better with Gaara than he did.
"Maybe…Maybe there was still something left of him, besides the demon and bloodlust." Kankurou finally said, breaking the silence. He looked at the teddy bear. "Maybe the little kid that dragged this thing around wasn't completely dead yet."
Because who else would keep a teddy bear and a few pictures around? Not the demon obviously, but someone human, someone that wanted to remember and cared.
Kankurou felt very tired, all of a sudden. Tired and agitated and uncomfortable in this room, all at once. He sort of wished he never found the toy chest, wished Gaara stayed completely inhuman and demonic and had destroyed everything like he was supposed to.
He wanted to finish cleaning this room quickly and get the hell out of here, never to come back, and go focus on something else, something more worth his time and kept his mind off Gaara and teddy bears and pictures from a long time ago.
"Too late for that," Temari said. "Too late for anything. Maybe there was, but we'll never found out." She looked down at the picture frame in her hand, then carefully opened it, taking the picture out. After throwing the empty frame into the chest, she swiped the one Kankurou was holding.
"Hey- Temari, what are you doing?" She almost made him cut his finger on the glass, damn it.
"I'm keeping the pictures," Temari said matter-of-factly.
"Why?"
She shrugged. "Because I want to. The same reason Gaara did, probably." Temari now reached for the third one, the one of their mother.
"I don't want to forget."
Kankurou wanted to say something – something like, As if we could forget, after everything; or a tease, like You're getting soft, Temari, even if it meant he'll get hurt for it –but Temari had finished taking out the last picture and stood up, putting the three pictures into her pocket.
"Come on," she said, looking down at Kankurou, back to her no-sense self. "We have to finish. You throw away the trash - and don't forget the bag in the bathroom - and I'll go call for a carpenter for the broken window." And with that, she walked out of the room, leaving Kankurou alone.
Kankurou looked at the teddy bear again, one last time.
-Too late for anything-
Letting out an annoyed sigh, he closed the lid of the wooden chest and went to do what his sister ordered him to do.
A/N: Ah, now we have some, albeit repressed, emotions/regrets from Temari and Kankurou. Or at least I hoped I showed it well. I didn't want to identify the emotions, the sadness, straightforwardly. No 'He was sad', but instead, it's implied, because two are feeling it, but refusing to identify it.
You mentioned the scar, XHugsOKisses, and no, I don't think they know the story behind it, but I don't plan on them finding out either. It comes back to Yashamaru and I doubt Gaara will ever reveal that incident to anyone. Temari and Kankurou probably thought Gaara just killed Yashamaru for the heck of it, and Gaara let them believed that. Daddy Kazekage most likely won't say anything either.
Now, a question: the toy chest. Think I might have made Gaara a bit OOC to have him keep the toy chest? I myself don't think so, because I think there was still a bit of the sweet, teary-eyed kid inside of him. That still cling to some hope, because how else would he have changed so much after one fight with Naruto? That part of him that couldn't destroy the toy chest, kept it, but shoved it away, out of sight, out of mind.
Also, recently, in the manga, it was revealed that jinchuuriki were usually close blood relatives of the Kage. When I read that, I was like, ohshi-, because that meant Temari and Kankurou might have had been in danger of having Shukaku shoved into them. Interesting thought, and I wanted to include my thoughts somewhere here. Who knows? Maybe I might make another AU fic that explores that possibility...
Looking forward to constructive criticism and/or just reviews.
tovanell