Attest

Death by storm—death by a great calamity of some sort. It tends to overlap with death by water, can overlap with death by sun, and almost never with death by sand. It is considered one of the more unfortunate deaths, but still preferable to death by sand. Better to die on account of some ill alignment of the stars than to fade away, out of memory and history.

"She named him Gaara, you understand," Chiyo calls from the other side of the room; Yashamaru hears, as though from some great distance, her shutting the door to the room, leaving them entombed in the cloying, all-encompassing heat. Yashamaru's not sure if he'll ever be able to escape it, even if he goes to the far polar wastes of Tsuchi and Kaminari. Even if he went and stood atop the roof of the world, he would still feel the heat pervading the hospital clinging to his bones.

Yashamaru's team arrived back at the gates of Sunagakure some times before dawn; the inky sky was only just beginning to lighten. The team was stopped at the northern gate for inspection, as was procedure and only fitting, but only a few minutes after they arrived, Chiyo came hobbling up to the gate, panting slightly. The elder puppet master of Sunagakure muttered a few words to the guardsman in charge, and to Shiva when he protested, and then she drew Yashamaru away by the arm as she would when she was training him in medical ninjutsu and there was someone in urgent need of care. Like he couldn't get there on his own, or she didn't trust him not to wander off.

Perhaps that is what she fears, that he'll wander off and just vanish into the shadows pulling at the alleys. But even in the old days, Yashamaru wasn't the one who wandered off; that was always Akira's forte, before the war left its mark on him as it left its mark on everyone and turned them into different people, and Akira strayed no more. And yes, she kept a weathered eye on us all.

Yashamaru's mind rushes to a multitude of mundane things. He wonders who has been taking care of Temari and Kankuro—probably the same succession of off-duty jonin and medics since Karura fell ill; God knows there aren't enough hours in the day for their father to properly care for them. It could well be Kalyani; she usually covers Yashamaru's shifts at the hospital without even having to be asked when he's gone, but took leave just before he left for Kawa. If she's the one who looked after his niece and nephew, he'll have to thank her.

The house will probably be two inches deep in dust and sand. Yashamaru was sharing it with a married couple until about a year ago, when they moved out, and since no one else has moved in the house has been Yashamaru's alone. No matter how tightly he shuts the windows and latches the latticed shutters, sand always seems to find its way in, and dust materializes out of nowhere on the countertops. If he didn't know better, Yashamaru would swear that a ghost was entering the house to play tricks on him.

Was the body washed properly?

Had the funerary rites been properly observed…

"And you'll be back in two weeks?"

This is the most lucid Karura's been in days, her eyes dull but relatively clear; the IV drip's doing its work, keeping her hydrated. She's even sitting up in bed, even if she does have to use the pillows as props. Still, her face is haggard, eyes sunk deep in their sockets, her bones jutting out at the shoulders and the wrists, her veins like roadmaps on her arms. To look at Karura is to see how long it's been since she has been well enough to venture outside for any length of time. Her hair has darkened and hangs lank and dull around her face. By contrast, her skin is several shades lighter than it was before she fell ill, waxen and translucent. Good health seems to have deserted her utterly.

Yashamaru smiles, and his grip upon his knees tightens when she seems not to notice anything amiss about the pull of his lips. "That's right. We're heading to Kawa later tonight. We've been allotted two weeks, but Taicho says we'll likely complete our mission ahead of schedule, so I hope to be back sooner than that."

She nods. "That's good," Karura murmurs. Her eyes glaze over. "That's good." Then, her eyes are on him, and in a moment they have shifted from glazed to feverishly bright. "You'll be back soon?" she asks in an almost totally uncomprehending tone of voice.

Not back soon enough.

Never soon enough.

Almost of their own accord, Yashamaru's fingers wrap around the rails of the bassinet. He feels as though he could snap the wooden rails in his grip. "What…" His blood is roaring in his ears; Yashamaru feels his fingers itching to yank on them until they fall off. "…What was done with my sister's body?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Chiyo shifts her weight from one tired foot to the other. "I'd thought you had outgrown strange questions," she murmurs. She flexes the fingers of her prosthetic hand, a nervous habit she's had ever since it was first fitted for her arm over fifteen years ago.

"I… Please, Chiyo-sama." It's important to me."

"There isn't much to say. I washed the body; no one here was willing to do so, considering…" Chiyo catches herself. Her gaze drifts downwards, lips pursed. "Well, you can imagine."

Yashamaru nods. Yes, he can imagine, all the whispers of ritual uncleanliness, the horror of the dead increased tenfold by the stigma attached to contact with the demon. It should have been a family member, but if her husband wasn't going to do it then it would have fallen to one of Karura's children, and in that case, Yashamaru is glad that they were at least spared that. The corpses of the dead are often prepared for burial by hospital staff these days; Yashamaru himself has performed the rites more than once. So long as it was someone…

"The funeral was the next day." Which I missed because I took that mission, that I wasn't here for because I was in a different country altogether. "Your sister was buried with due speed; no need to worry about that."

At that, Yashamaru turns his gaze to Chiyo sharply. "Buried?" His teeth worry at his lip momentarily. "Not cremated?"

If Chiyo is surprised by this turn, no sign of it appears on her face. "No, no cremation. I see no reason as to why the body would have needed to be destroyed."

No, Yashamaru supposes she wouldn't. To the non-Hindu* residents of Sunagakure, cremation is a method used only on the bodies of executed criminals and those who died of infectious diseases. To cremate the bodies of those who died any other way is to them as disrespectful a way as the body can be treated short of simply leaving it in the open to rot beneath the sky. It's always been a point of contention between the natives of Suna and the peoples from the West. Yashamaru knows that, rationally, for the Kazekage's wife to be cremated after death, even having died the way she did, would have set more than a few mouths to muttering. And yet…

How long has it been since he last behaved as though he cares what she wants?

Yashamaru's gaze is inexorably drawn back to the miniscule infant lying in the bassinet. And now, this child no longer has her to speak for him. Neither do his siblings. The flash of blood gleaming in sunlight as it flies through the air, the rustle and whisper of browned teff† as he runs through the field alongside his teammates—Yashamaru is often away; his missions often take him far afield these days. He's not been in his niece and nephew's lives as often as he should be, and though he pushes the ache down outside of Suna so that he can barely feel it anymore, it's not gone. Now, his sister is dead, and her youngest child lies…

She…

She gave birth, and died. No. More accurate to say that she had a miscarriage and died, given how far she was along as of January 19. Yashamaru can imagine it, much as he doesn't want to—he's seen a few women die of miscarriages or disastrous childbirth. He knows how it goes. He wouldn't wish that death on anyone.

Gaara…

The child opens his eyes and stares up at him.

Yashamaru stares back, brows furrowed. Washed-out as the world is, though pale Gaara's eyes are almost shockingly green. They have no pupils that Yashamaru can see, usually a tell-tale sign of cataracts and yet, through some sense of knowing, Yashamaru knows that Gaara has been afflicted with no impairment of eyesight. There are black rings around his shallow-set eyes, as though someone has dabbed kohl on the baby's face to ward off the glare of the sun.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Your eyes are the windows to your strange soul. Already, you are different from everyone else. From the moment of your birth…

Yashamaru nearly chokes when Gaara stretches his tiny arms up towards him, pale eyes intently searching his uncle's face. "He's… alert, isn't he, Chiyo-sama?" Yashamaru stammers, taking a step back from the bassinet.

"Yes, he is. He doesn't eat very well, but apart from that Gaara seems to be thriving."

"Ah… Pardon me, Chiyo-sama—I've delivered a few children, but only out in the field; I don't know that much about babies. Is… Is it normal for a baby born so prematurely to be this alert so early on?"

The look Chiyo shoots him is the half-withering, half-condescending stare she reserves for those whom she feels have just asked an exceedingly stupid question. Where it once would have left Yashamaru abashed beyond the ability to string together an apology, today it barely even stings dully. "No, Yashamaru, it is not, and whether or not you are all that familiar with childbirth, I do seem to recall teaching you at what stage of development a fetus becomes viable. Gaara should not even be alive, let alone fully-formed or 'alert.'" She snorts indelicately. "Small wonder the nurses all tread on eggshells around this one, even without taking Shukaku into account."

An image of Gaara hooked up to a life support machine with wires and tubes piercing the length and breadth of him flashes through Yashamaru's mind. Beyond that, there is the image that would have been, if Shukaku had never entered into the picture—the baby dead but Karura still alive, or both mother and child still living and Karura happy and healthy, not expecting her child until May, when he should have been born. He licks his dry, cracked lips. "The…" He knows Shukaku only as a malevolent mass of chakra being forced into a seal on his sister's stomach, which then disappeared as it poured into her unborn child. It was dry as the sand and as wickedly hot as any sun that ever beat down upon the Wastelands of Kaze no Kuni. That was enough of an impression to last him a lifetime. "The demon affected his growth? Is that it?"

Chiyo's irritated expression gives way to one of weary pity. It's amazing, the way that such a small shift can add years upon years to an already aged face. "It seems the only credible answer. Huh—" she rolls her eyes exaggeratedly "—There was a pediatrician in here earlier trying to give some hare-brained reason as to why Gaara could look the way he does without the Ichibi being responsible, but it was all prattle and I think even he knew that. There is no natural explanation for that." Chiyo waves her hand fitfully in the direction of Gaara's bassinet.

In the next moment, Chiyo closes the distance between herself and the bassinet. She makes a soft, crooning sound in the back of her throat as she lifts Gaara up from the blankets and cushions into her hands—how small he is, to fit so well into her cupped hands—but she sighs heavily when she looks down at the tiny newborn, and rearranges her face into expressionlessness. "I warned the Kazekage and… I warned them that sealing a bijuu into an unborn child could have unforeseen consequences. 'Better to wait until after the child is born,' I said. No one ever listens," she mutters. "The consequences, well, we've seen the consequences."

Yes, they have.

"However," Chiyo murmurs, an odd gleam flashing in her dark eyes as she runs her finger down Gaara's cheek, "I do not think we need to fear that Shukaku has destroyed the child's consciousness. Not unless the child sleeps will we fear of that, and he's shown no sign of the capacity to sleep, let alone the urge."

"He… can't sleep?" For what must be the thousandth time, Yashamaru feels as though he could be bowled over with a breath of wind. He doesn't like being put in such a position of ignorance—knows no one who does—but it seems unavoidable this day, when all the harbors of rational knowledge pull away from him. "What do you mean?"

Chiyo proffers Gaara to him, but when Yashamaru only stands there dumbly, his hands shaking, she sets him back down in the bassinet and glances Yashamaru over with an appraising look. "I suspect you will be deemed one who needs to know these things within the next few days, so I will tell you this. Neither of the past hosts of the Ichibi were able to sleep. If by some chance they were to fall asleep, normally by use of a jutsu to induce sleep, the bijuu would manifest. And that is under controlled circumstances. As for when Shukaku manifested under less controlled circumstances, without the application of false sleep… Each time this occurred, the host was less emotionally stable afterwards than they had been before the bijuu manifested. They were only able to last three or four times before the bijuu had robbed them of too much of their consciousness to remain stable."

"That's…" Yashamaru fingers curl around the wooden rails again, still warm from where he had clenched them before.

He… can't sleep?

Once, in the early days of the Third War, just after becoming hospital-licensed, Yashamaru was called upon to fill in for shift after shift at the hospital, as his combat abilities had been deemed 'sub-par' by his superiors but his proficiency with medical ninjutsu was, by contrast, far above average for someone of his age. Suna was short on manpower to start with, not having had nearly enough time to recover from the Second War, and medics were needed out in the field just as badly as they were in the hospitals in Sunagakure.

On one occasion, staff were so thin on the ground that Yashamaru had to stay up for three days straight, only able to doze off for a few minutes every twelve hours on a hallway bench, never reaching REM sleep. By the end of it, he had begun to hallucinate, hearing voices where none existed, including the voice of his late mother. His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't even pick up a glass of water without spilling it, and he couldn't navigate the hallways of the hospital without getting hopelessly lost.

That was just three days, three days that culminated in Yashamaru being hospitalized for the better part of a week (Though the hospitalization had more to do with the fact that he'd also drank and eaten very little during this time period). Just three days, and that was enough to convince Yashamaru that he never wanted to go so long without sleep again. He can't imagine going an entire lifetime without sleep. He can't imagine fearing sleep as much as Gaara will have to. He can't imagine…

"That's…"

And to look at Gaara, his tiny body stretched out in the bassinet, his delicate little arms reaching upwards, is to know that he has no idea of his fate.

He stands there, rooted to the ground, hands fixed upon the rails, feeling breath and warmth come and leave him in agonizing measures. Yashamaru doesn't hear the footsteps drawing nearer to the door from the hallway. He's not aware of the newcomer until he hears the voice sounding from the doorway.

"Chiyo. I need to speak to Yashamaru alone."

Yashamaru swallows hard, sets his jaw. Of everyone it could be, it would have to be him, wouldn't it?

Addressed in such a way, Chiyo's entire demeanor changes. Her indignation crackles around her as much as killing intent would; even without looking at her, Yashamaru can feel it hovering in the air. "Hmph. I was leaving anyway." Her uneven footsteps echo unnaturally loudly in the room as she starts to leave. "The child's ready to be discharged. Do try to keep him alive longer than a week," she says acidly, and is gone.

Yashamaru says nothing, doesn't dare turn round. He stares intently down at Gaara, refusing to look up from the bassinet. He knows he's not alone, knows it to be deeply disrespectful to ignore the presence of his village's leader as blatantly as he is, let alone when that leader is kin to him, even if only through marriage—And even if his wife is dead at his hands. But that knowledge isn't enough to make him look at him.

He can feel the Kazekage's eyes upon him, feel his scrutiny. The man's always had that tendency, glancing over people appraisingly—Yashamaru can still remember how it had felt to have that gaze leveled at him a little over eight years ago, when they first met and Yashamaru was still a raw genin. That he can still look at people like this when Karura is barely cold in her grave (Buried? Not cremated?)…

It… It isn't as surprising as it should be. But then, Yashamaru knows the Kazekage.

"She wasn't due until May."

This is all unreal. Yashamaru finally comes to that conclusion, long after he should have. This whole situation seems like something so far from reality that it would better belong in myth. He can still imagine his sister standing at his side, pushing his hair out of his face and smiling at him. 'Come on, talk to me. You can't just stand there and stew.' But he'll never hear her voice again, even though it feels as though she's standing just out of sight.

"No, she wasn't."

…

"She named him Gaara, in case you're wondering."

And there is his still-awkward attempts to make conversation, unaffected even after all that's happened.

"Ah… yes, I know." His voice barely sounds like his own voice. He sounds like a stranger to his own ear. "Chiyo-sama told me."

"I need you to look after him."

Yashamaru doesn't know what it is that makes him look up, whether it be sheer surprise or the tone the Kazekage takes with him, one so bizarrely close to a request rather than an order that it's as though he's been replaced by a different man. But the moment he looks at him, he can see the changes in the other man.

Of course, if you asked him, Sunagakure's Yondaime Kazekage would likely deny that he is any different a man than he was before his wife died and his youngest child was born. However, even as much as he doesn't want to, Yashamaru can see the changes in his demeanor, in his very face, that the Kazekage himself might not even be aware of. Skin drawn tighter across his face, faint lines at his mouth, weariness shining out of his eyes. Shoulders too stiff, standing too straight.

If this has changed him, then good. It should have changed him, and in Yashamaru's opinion it hasn't changed him nearly enough. He pushes down any pity he might feel; it is only reflex, and if his training in ANBU has taught him anything, it has taught him to restrain emotional reflex when it is inconvenient for him. This is still… This is still the man who all but murdered his sister. This is still the man who turned Yashamaru's nephew, his own son, into a jinchuuriki host for the Ichibi.

But he is also the Kazekage, and Yashamaru, whatever he may feel, is a shinobi. He is a shinobi of Sunagakure, an ANBU agent, and when his leader tells him to do something, there is only one answer he can give.

Notes:

* In 2469 AGB (After the Great Burning), ninety-eight years before Naruto started, a vast country to the west of the shinobi nations, known to the shinobi nations as 'the Empire to the West', drove out everyone who practiced Hinduism, as well as their families, banishing them from the land on pains of death. They scattered and eventually ended up in Kaze no Kuni and, to a lesser extent, in Kawa no Kuni (There were already small populations of Hindus in Kaze no Kuni, concentrated largely in Saumdhaara on the coast, and larger populations in Mizu no Kuni). During the civil war between the shinobi of Kaze no Kuni and the Daimyo's forces, the leaders of the refugee Hindu community allied with the future Shodai Kazekage, who as part of his terms with the Daimyo granted them sanctuary in Kaze no Kuni and full citizenship.

These days, 'Hindu' as used in Kaze no Kuni does not necessarily refer to someone who practices Hinduism, and can also refer to someone who is a descendant of those refugees from the West. Integration has been limited; the cultural divide between the peoples of the West and the natives of Kaze no Kuni has softened somewhat, but not much. Many shinobi from this group choose not to practice certain tenets of their culture or religion (if they are observant at all) in public. The vast majority of the peoples of the West living in Sunagakure live in the Immigrant Quarter in the southeast of the city. The leadership of the Empire to the West has since become more tolerant, but has not allowed those it drove out to return.

† Teff (Eragrostis tef) is a species of grass grown as a cereal crop in the highlands of northern Kaze no Kuni and on the coast of Kawa no Kuni, as it is adapted to both extremely dry and extremely waterlogged conditions; it is also grown in the south of Kaze no Kuni and south of that country. It is high in dietary fiber and iron, and as it is gluten-free, is often used in the diets of those who cannot tolerate gluten.