Chapter 8

Last words

A soft rustle beside him caused Gaara to wake. He didn't even remember falling asleep; one minute he was awake and the next, he woke up in the cell. How time flies. Glancing around, his eyes caught a glimpse of Konan carefully stepping into the room. "Are you awake?" She asked gently, sitting down beside him.

"Yeah." He replied, pushing himself into a sitting position.

"How are you feeling?"
"Okay I guess. How's Itachi doing?"

"He's fine. I think he's sleeping at the moment." She sighed and sat down beside him. "I tried to reason with them about killing you."

"And?"

"It made no difference. I'm sorry kid."

He felt a stab of pain at his heart. "It's okay. It's not your fault. When am I going to be killed?"

"I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing soon."

Soon wasn't an answer. How long did he have left? Were his siblings still looking for him? He hoped not. There was nothing anyone could do.

"Are you okay?"

"What does it matter?"

"Are you hungry? Want me to get you anything?"

He was starving. He hadn't eaten in two days. But what was the point in eating if he was going to die anyway? "I'm fine thanks"

"Come on, Sasori wanted me to fetch you."

"I feel dizzy." he said, standing up.

"It's just nerves. Will you be okay?"

He shrugged and followed Konan into the sacrificial chamber, heart thudding against his ribcage. Sasori was waiting by the door, a sinister look on his features. On seeing the pair, he grabbed Gaara and threw him across the room. The fifteen year-old smashed into the corner of a steel table and smashed to the floor.

"Hey, was that necessary?!" Demanded Konan, helping him up. "You okay Gaara?"

He nodded, raising a hand to his side. His palm came away, hot and sticky with blood. It didn't bother him at all. He was used to his own blood by now.

Sasori growled. "Konan! Get here now or I'll kill you too!"

The woman obeyed him. "Gomen Sasori-sama."

"You'd better be! Gaara, come here, you useless little rat!

Gaara shakily stood and walked towards the puppet-master. "So you're Sasori of the Red Sands, huh?"

"Yes, why?"

"This is what I think of you!" He landed a hard punch at the man's face. "You nearly fucking killed my brother, you ugly bastard! Go fucking die in hell!"

He twisted Gaara's arm back, completely snapping the bone. The teenager cried out but didn't retreat and hit him again with his good arm. Sasori stumbled back and punched Gaara in the gut. It barely hurt.

"How dare you fucking hit me!"

"You deserve it, you bastard!" He snapped the man's wrist and pinned him to a wall.

"I've had it with you!" Sasori slammed Gaara to the floor and kicked him hard."I certainly remember your brother. Cocky little bastard isn't he? Just like you."

"Shut your mouth! Kankuro was trying to protect me!"

Sasori threw him into the wall. "Shut your mouth, or I'll gut you like a fish whilst you're still awake."

Gaara stood up. Despite how much pain he was in, how many broken bones he had, he didn't want to look weak in front of anybody and continued to fight.

"Why can't you stay down?!" He slammed Gaara into the wall and ground his knee into his back.

"Because I'm not weak." Replied the boy simply.

"You'll be fucking weak when I'm finished with you!" He picked up a nearby chair and smashed it onto him. Gaara collapsed and groaned in pain, but stood after he'd regained his senses.

Konan pulled Sasori back. "You're not meant to injure him, remember?"

He backhanded her to the floor. "It won't make any difference. In fact, if he bleeds, the extraction of Shukaku will be quick no matter what happens to him, as long as he doesn't die."

"He is bleeding. Don't you think you're taking this too far?!" Konan pushed herself up, but the man kicked her down again and continued to beat her to a pulp. "You fucking whore! Do as I say and fucking shut your useless, bitchy little mouth!"

Gaara dragged him off of her. "Leave her the hell alone! What the fuck did she do to you?!" Using all his strength, he managed to drive Sasori into a wall and repeatedly smashed his face into the stone, breaking his nose.

"Let go of me, brat!" The bleeding puppet master threw him off his back, causing the boy to fall onto a tiny glass table. It smashed as his body made contact with it. "Fuck... you..." growled Gaara. He looked down at his body and saw a large glass shard had stabbed into him between the ribs. He pulled it out, doubling over and crying out as he did so.

"Gaara, thank-you." Said Konan weakly.

"Shut up, slut!" Yelled Sasori, kicking her in the stomach. She screamed.

"Bastard! I won't stop until you're dead!" He stabbed the man in the leg with the same piece of glass. Sasori screamed. "Bastard!"

Gaara smirked and slammed Sasori's face through a mirror. Tiny fragment of glass and the smooth reflective shards of mirror tore at the man's flesh. He screamed.

"I'll fucking kill you!" After he recovered, he smashed Gaara into the wall and ground his knee hard into his stomach. The teenager couldn't breathe, it was agony. The man smiled and forced it in harder, using all his weight. Gaara refused to cry out and eventually, everything went black.

Itachi stirred slightly. A load of noise outside was waking him from his peaceful slumber. Voices shouted random things and the sound heavy footsteps pounding up and down the busy corridors met his ears. Turning over, he felt surprised when he rolled into a cold spot. "Kisame?" He called, sitting up and glancing nervously around. The room contained nobody but him. Standing up, he groaned when pain shot through him. It felt like his ass had been ripped in two. His clothes lay strewn all over the floor. He quickly pulled them on and left the bedroom in search of Kisame. His seme was nowhere in sight. Limping down the corridor, he decided to see how Gaara was doing, but as he tried to open the door, it wouldn't budge. "Gaara? Kisame? Are you guys in here?"

An eerie silence fell upon his ears. Something was wrong. He then heard a crash from inside. Summoning all his strength, he managed to break the door down. As he looked around, he saw Kisame step out of the shadows along with Pein. Gaara lay motionless a few feet away from the pair. His eyes were closed and his skin was horribly pale. Worst of all, he was surrounded by a pool of blood and looked badly injured. Itachi ran over to him. "Are you okay, Gaara?"

Silence.

"Hey, come on, speak to me."
Still no response. Confused, he shook him roughly. Nothing. This time, he turned him onto his back and saw where all the blood was coming from; A deep wound was visible on the side of his chest through his ripped black shirt. Blood stained the whole of his abdomen, spilling onto the cold stone floor beneath. "What the fuck did you do to him?" Demanded Itachi, not leaving his friend's side. "Gaara, come on." He pleaded desperately, lifting him into his arms.

"Itachi... you were too late. He's gone." Said Kisame grimly.

The raven looked up, panicking. "What d-do you mean by that?! He's fine!"

"We extracted his demon. He's dead."

"No he's not! Why is he bleeding?! Did you beat him up?!"

"He attacked Sasori. You can imagine what happened next." Said Pein in a low voice.

"What in the goddamned hell did you do to him? It looks like you've stabbed him about sixty times!"

"Itachi, put him down, he's dead. Sasori got into a fight with him. Gaara was badly injured and passed out. Whilst e was unconscious, we seized the opportunity to steal Shukaku. He didn't feel any pain when it happened to be grateful."

The raven growled. "Pain?!" He yelled. "Have you seen what that bastard did to him?! He was in fucking agony before that damn thing was taken out of him!"

"It would've hurt him a lot more if he was awake."

"I don't fucking care! Tell Sasori that I'll be waiting to kill him. Tell that fucking bastard that I'll rip his body apart and burn him! If he kills me, I'll curse him to hell from beyond the fucking grave!" He ran into the nearby bathrooms carrying Gaara and locked the door tight behind him.

"Itachi, let us in!" Kisame's fists pounded against the door.

"Hell no!" He carefully laid Gaara on the floor and tried to heal him. "Come on, you're much stronger than this." His chakra was draining away rapidly and nothing was working. Itachi ran inside one of the toilet stalls and ripped off a load of toilet paper. He desperately tried to stem the bleeding, but it proved useless. He then checked Gaara's pulse and gasped when he felt nothing. Heart sinking, he quickly lay his head on his chest to find a heartbeat and was even more alarmed to find that his friend wasn't even breathing. In fact, his heart wasn't even beating. "Dammit!" He performed CPR, desperately trying to get Gaara's heart working. Seconds passed. Nothing. Those seconds turned to minutes, more minutes. Nothing. Tears filled his empty grey eyes and spilled over. "Gaara... Come on! You have to be okay! You can't die. Please!" He tried again to revive him, but it eventually came to the fact that his friend was dead and nothing could be done to save him. Itachi felt numb to the core. "Why did you have to go? You didn't deserve all of this pain." He sobbed into Gaara's chest. "I'll kill them. Fucking kill them for what they did to you. I'm sorry, I didn't save you like I promised. You were killed and it's my fault. I'm no friend. A good friend would've done everything in their power to save you." It hurt him to think that whilst he was soundly asleep, safe beside Kisame, Gaara was being almost ripped apart and beaten by Sasori. "Why didn't I wake up?! I'm fucking worthless!" He screamed, clutching his head and doubling over in depair.

Suddenly, Taking Over Me by Evanescence sounded in the room. Itachi jumped and glanced around. "What the-" He then found Gaara's phone on the floor. It was ringing. He didn't know whether to answer it or leave it. "Forgive me." He said quietly, as if Gaara were listening and picked it up. He had to inform whoever was calling that Gaara was dead.

"Hello?" He answered shakily, trying not to sound upset.

"Gaara. what's wrong? Are you crying?" Asked Temari's voice.

"It's not Gaara. It's Itachi." His tears didn't stop falling

"Itachi, you're alive?"

"Yes."

"Wow, I never thought that I'd hear your voice again."

"Temari, I have to tell you something."

"By the way, what the hell do you think you're doing? You don't answer Gaara's calls! It's not your phone!"

"Temari, listen."

"Where is my brother?!"

"Temari-"

"He's not hurt is he?"

"Gaara is dead!" He blurted out. There was a lengthy silence on the other end of the line. It was eerie. Itachi was shaking, his heart hammering. What would Temari say? Would she believe him? He doubted it.

"What?!"

"He was killed earlier this morning! I'm sorry!"

"You're lying!"

"I'm not! He was hurt in a fight and when he lost consciousness, they extracted his demon, Shukaku."

Temari said nothing for a while. Itachi guessed that she was letting the bad news sink in. It had to be awful for her and Kankuro. They'd just lost another family member. They had no mother, no father, no uncle and now they're younger brother was dead. "Is that why you're crying?" She asked after a few minutes. Her voice faltered toward the end of the sentence and he heard her finally burst into tears. "We w-were t-too l-late!" She sobbed. "He w-was a-all we h-had!"

Itachi broke down too. "I tried to save him, but he was already gone! I'm so sorry!" He then heard Kankuro's voice. "Temari, what's wrong?! Hey, it's okay! It's okay!"

"No it's not! Gaara is dead!"

"What?! Who is this?!" He demanded, picking up the phone. "Do you think it's funny? Scaring my sister like that?!
"It's Itachi."

"I remember you, now tell the fucking truth! Where is Gaara?!"

"I told you, he's dead!"

"But, I spoke to him last night! He was fine!"

"He told you about how he was going to be killed by morning right?"

Kankuro gasped. "Oh shit. I didn't take him seriously."

"The Akatsuki extracted Shukaku. Gaara is gone."

Itachi heard Kankuro drop the phone in shock. He too, began sobbing uncontrollably. The line went dead.

-Cries eyes out- I'm sorry I killed Gaara off, but that's what happened in the cosplay. (Yes I died. Please lay flowers on my non-existent grave and mourn my awful death) I know you all hate me now, especially Gaara fangirls v.v I am a Gaara fangirl and I killed him off! I'm ashamed of myself. Ah well, the yaoi must go on!

[At Gaara's funeral]

Gaara [Jumps out of coffin]: Beckii! I'll kill you! I'm not fucking dead!

[Everyone gasps]

Me: Oh my god! It's a miracle!

Gaara: Ah, screw this. I'm going to retire.

Me: Gaara, you're fifteen! You can't retire!

Gaara: Watch me! [Runs off]

[Pulls him back] Me: You're not going anywhere, Mr.I-am-the-best-goddamn-ninja-pants!

Gaara: [Folds arms and pouts] I hate you Beckii

Me: I love you too, Gaa-Gaa-kun [Noogie]

Gaara: You're messing up my hair!

BYE! LOVE YOU ALL! PLEASE REVIEW, MY AWESOME NINJA BUDDIES! xD