His siblings and the gorilla had gone to find water and Gaara had been left alone with the child. If he hadn't been trying to not murder anybody, the child would've been nothing more than a corpse.
"So, Gaara. Homicide. What does it mean to you?"
Gaara glowered. He didn't need a psychoanalyst, for heaven's sake! What business did some kid-quack have telling him what to do? Or sticking its nose into his private thoughts? His siblings did enough of that anyway, nowadays; now he wasn't trying, left right and centre, to kill everyone. Really, he didn't know why he bothered: either he let Shukaku loose and his head stopped pounding, or he kept him on a tight leash and his head-ache worsened.
'Crush it and bathe in its blood.'
"Shut up..." he growled. The child raised his head.
"What?"
'Burn it. Nail its corpse to a tree. Turn it inside out.'
"I said... shut up."
"I don't understand – I was being perfectly silent."
'Make it eat its own innards.'
"Gaara?"
Gaara blinked. It was a menacing blink; the kind that stopped sumo wrestlers mid-charge and reduced them to quivering jellies. The kind of blink that, if its explosive power could be harnessed, you could make five or six decent sized nuclear bombs. The kind of blink that shut people up. Unfortunately, the kid-quack seemed to be immune.
"...Okay, so, how about we play a game?" It produced a ping-pong ball from the inside of its jacket pocket.
"..."
"It's a very simple game: the person holding the ball says a word, throws the ball to the other and the other person says a word that connects to the one before. It's a warm-up activity. I'll start. Homicide."
Gaara didn't bother to catch the ball. The child sighed.
"It would be easier if you just cooperated."
"..."
"Alright... we'll try it without the ball."
The ball disappeared back into the pocket. Gaara waited.
"Homicide."
"Psychoanalysts."
The child shut up.