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The First Shifting Grains
CADEL

CHAPTER 3

It was as Temari was heading to the training ground for practice, that she saw him.

The kunoichi had recently modified her weapon of choice and wanted to test out the new modifications. The young genin had learned a new wind technique and was eager to hone her skills to perfection. Kankuro would usually join her but he was resting for the rest of the day in bed.

As her thoughts strayed to her brother, Temari recalled last night when Kankuro came back home quiet, with blood trailing down his leg which stained their floor.

She knew it was not a training accident, not with the way he gripped the door knob too tight or how he still clutched onto his kunai even within the safety of his own home. Kankuro did not speak while she cleaned his wound and she didn't pry. Temari could guess what happened. It was clear in the way the stench of 'demon' that clung to her brother's silence.

Temari was nowhere near the outer walls that night, so she was not aware of the incident that had occurred there, but she found out after Kankuro got over his mild shock. He gave a rough and crude description of the event: "He's gone off the rocker!" and "Batshit crazy!"

Although Gaara's bouts of blood-lust were not uncommon, Kankuro's descriptions did not sound the least bit good. Yet what surprised her was finding out their younger brother had passed out from a fever. Temari could not recall a time where Gaara was ever ill.

Temari jumped onto the rooftops so she could travel faster towards her destination. After travelling for a few minutes, a flash of familiar red caught her eye in the distance.

Gaara was standing on a roof top looking over the village.

His clothes were still covered with dirt and sand, and were clearly not changed since yesterday. Temari observed as Gaara gripped the railings and leaned over to look down at the people walking below. His back was towards her so she could not see his face.

But the image of his back seemed oddly expressive at that moment, the way his face wasn't.

Tight and bent forward, like he wanted to jump.

Temari knew Gaara tended to do things on his own. He was so solitary in nature, but now and then, she wondered what was going on in her little brother's mind. Was it any different to her thoughts? It must be. But it can't all be mystery. She remembered a time where he wasn't so bad - wasn't so torn in two. Or maybe she was over thinking, maybe his mind really was just a reflection of his behavior; blood thirsty, cold and apathetic.

Gaara was still for another moment, then suddenly he pushed of the railings in a single, swift movement and jumped down to the streets below him.

Temari was taken aback by the sudden movement, but without thinking, she quickly jumped down after him.

Why she was following him, she had no clue.

Perhaps the heat was making her impulsive. Maybe it was her curiosity. Maybe it was the image of Kankuro distantly watching his leg get sown back together that got her moving.

Regardless, she found herself tailing Suna's Jinchuuriki.

The blonde kunoichi stayed a few meters behind as she weaved through the streets, keeping her eyes on Gaara. She had been informed that he – much to her alarm – had been unconscious for the majority of the night, but from what she was seeing, he was well enough to walk around.

Temari frowned as she continued to tail her brother. She wasn't exactly sure what Gaara was doing.

For all she could tell, he wasn't doing anything at all. As absurd as it sounded, it looked like the boy was just taking a leisurely walk through the village. Gaara paced his steps and weaved his way around the people, completely ignoring the frightened glares from the civilians. His eyes wandered to the buildings, to the market stalls, the dusty windows and the blue sky above – seeing things she clearly could not. Temari also observed that he stumbled now and then over nothing, but other than that, he seemed perfectly fine...although 'fine' was a generous description when associated with Gaara.

Temari wasn't even sure what the hell she was doing following him. Surely she was courting death.

The boy liked his space. He liked it a lot. There was an unspoken rule that when the kid wanted to do something, stay the hell away.

Baki had pulled both her and Kankuro away when their team was first formed, and began a listing off things they should do in situations that involved Gaara and his needs. Most of the instructions involved fleeing from sight which both siblings were more than happy to do.

Their sensei even made an instruction manual. It was that serious.

Temari's logic was telling her that her younger brother should not be left alone to roam around after completely losing it just the day previously, despite knowing that if he did, she wouldn't be able to do anything. Yet despite the warning bells in her head, Temari continued to tail him.

Gaara behaved calm, making no extreme movements as he strolled silently through the street. His controlled steps were such a contradiction to his violent nature that Temari couldn't help wonder about her brother's dichotomous nature sometimes; like a highly reactive chemical with a very low threshold for stability.

Her feet carried her to a larger street lined by market stands and rutted roads for cargo. The market area was already bustling with a feeling of hectic movement as people sold and traded food and goods.

Gaara continued to walk past everyone as if they didn't exist, and continued to his unknown destination.

As Temari continued to follow her brother through the village, her attention was distracted by a movement a little to the left of her vision.

It took only a few moments for the disaster to unfold.

A young woman with long, black hair - tied in twin plaits - moved across the street with a basket full of bread loaves. As she walked towards the bakery across the small road, she tripped over an elevated stone jutting out of the ground.

Loaves of bread rolled to the ground as she fell to her knees with a heavy thud.

She did not see the cart racing down the path.

The young woman had bent down to collect her food but her back was completely turned to the street and could not see the oncoming danger. But Temari could.

The kunoichi leaped into action, running towards to the woman, calling out a warning, but her voice was stolen by the bustle of the crowd. She wasn't close enough the intercept the cart. The kunoichi's heart sank a little as she watched the cart draw closer.

Only meters away from the collision, the bread woman finally noticed the sound of rushing wheels and her eyes widened in alarm.

Before she could scream, a sudden wave of sand engulfed her.

The sandy blanket - which seemingly came out of nowhere - wrapped around her small body in the last moment and pulled her away from the path. The woman screamed when she realised she was hovering in the air, unsure of when her feet had left the ground.

Temari stopped, her eyes growing impossibly wide when she realised it was Gaara's sand suspending the woman.

The sudden tension in the air was palpable as the villagers took in the sight of the demon boy and the woman in his sand. They backed away, pressing themselves closer to the walls and lower to the ground, hoping the jinchuuriki would not notice them.

"P-please, let her go." stuttered a voice from nearby. It was the baker from the shop behind and his face was white with fear as he looked up at the woman. "Please, she's my only daughter! Don't kill her!"

Silence descended upon the crowd as they morbidly watched on. Some were glaring hatefully at the demon, but most had undeniable expressions of fear and pity painted on their faces. But mostly relief. Relief that it wasn't them being victimized.

Despite not being exposed to the demon very often, the population knew his reputation for bloodlust. But for once, Temari had seen something that no one else seemed to have noticed.

The woman wasn't dead.

Had Gaara intended to kill her, she would have been dead before anyone could protest, before Temari could have arrived at the scene, before the bread woman would have time to scream.

It would have all happened unceremoniously fast. Nothing more than a passing blink.

But she was still hovering in the air and when living in a reality that consisted of Gaara and his law of bloodlust – this was significant.

Gaara's action were purely to remove the woman from the path of an oncoming cart. Even now as she watched the sand, she couldn't feel any malevolent chakra.

Incredibly, impossibly…he had saved her.

…

Maybe?

Temari was no idiot, but she still didn't quite know what to do with her deduction.

Since the forming of her three-cell genin team, the blonde kunoichi had become impossibly intimate with internal organs and body fluids from all crevices of the human anatomy - more than she would have ever thought possible. She had witnessed Gaara use his terrible Sand Coffin to crush his opponents to nothing at all, and seen the less-than-human apathy directed to everyone and everything that was not 'mother'.

There was a reluctant guilt that festered in her gut because she couldn't see Gaara as a brother sometimes.

…But now and then, she would look and see lost potential, an after image of red-haired child dwarfed by clothes too big, and the way he would trudge that bear everywhere.

But that was all it was. An after image, a mirage, a ghost of what could have been. She never dwelled on it.

Sentiment never over-rode her instincts to survive. Gaara was dangerous. She didn't want a first-hand reminder as to why Baki-sensei had drilled escape routes and evasive maneuvers purely to avoid being killed by her own brother.

A middle-aged man standing in the crowd was feeling brave, or in Temari's opinion very, very stupid. He took a step forward. "Let go of her demon! I've called for back-up! The Kazekage will be here!"

He was bluffing. Despite his strong words, it was evident that he was no less terrified than the man next to him, not with the way his voice tremble after every syllable.

The man flinched back when Gaara slowly turned to look at him, or more accurately, look through him.

There was a tense moment of complete silence; everyone seemed to hold their breath for the inevitable slaughter of the man or the woman. Most likely both.

But neither came.

Slowly the sand shifted, causing everyone to wince in horrified anticipation, but nothing lashed out and Gaara did not move.

Slowly the woman was gently placed on the ground.

Her limbs were shaking and her eyes remained transfixed on Gaara. The young woman's father rushed towards her as soon as the sand receded and wrapped her in his arms, trying to physically cover her from Gaara. The jinchuuriki paused and look at the dark-haired woman, and the woman seemed to stare right back at him. Then for a moment, Temari saw Gaara's eyes flick over to the ground for a split second to look at the...bread?

Then, his eyes locked onto Temari from across the path.

She blinked, then he was looking to the east, already turning to leave.

The man who had previously tried to talk to Gaara muttered 'demon' venomously under his breath as Gaara began to quietly walk away. The disdain and fear shot his way rolled off his back as he pushed forward, eventually leaving the market place.

Temari watched the back of her brother slowly disappear in the crowd, and decided not to follow him.

For probably the first time since memory, Temari honestly didn't know if her blood-thirsty brother had actually wanted to inflict harm on another person. Her brain said yes, but was she saw said no. His actions did not match his normal patterns of behaviour.

Temari sighed. This was not her concern.

It was a good thing Gaara didn't kill anyone today; it would cause more problems for their father.

The blonde kunoichi shook her head, brushing away the image of a lonely back fading into the crowd.

She had better things to do...safer things to do.

III

Gaara silently kept to the sides of the streets as he continued walking through the village.

Nostalgia and homesickness seemed to suffocate him from the moment he mustered the courage to walk out of the infirmary.

He didn't understand how he could be homesick for Suna, when he was in Suna.

Gaara tried to memorise every alleyway, every crack in the wall and every face that passed him by, whether smiling or glaring. Suddenly, he paid unnatural amount of attention to bits of rocks, pebbles, trash on the streets, the dirt that clung on the windows to the monolithic stucco structures.

Even the feeling of sand invading the softer parts of his body was oddly welcoming.

From the very moment he looked over the village from the infirmary window, Gaara forced himself to stop shaking.

Flushed orange and brown with a haze of gold, the village looked like a sunlit painting imbued with activity and heat. Vivid memories from the future where he was the Kazekage, where he had finally gained the love and trust of Suna, started to overlap with flashes of his first childhood and his current one now.

Gaara had three versions of the same village in his mind, and each one had been seen with vastly different eyes, all three in different times.

The first time he had been eleven, he had been so influenced by Ichibi that when he tried to think of anything remotely normal or mundane, screaming would fill the chasm in his head. The jinchuuriki was so wrapped in the demon's acidic whispers that when he looked at the village, all he had seen was an abattoir of pigs waiting to be slaughtered.

His youth was bleached grey.

He had been colour blind for so long – unable to see the warm hues of family ties, the solid shades in his comrade's trust and the brilliant red of the strings that bound them all.

Then a blur of chaotic orange and blue tore up his cage of apathy, and suddenly, Gaara's world became kaleidoscopic.

Gaara had been the leader of Sunagakure for a few years, not very long, but they were prosperous. There was a silent pressure for the one named to be the youngest Kage in the elemental continent. This had caused the young jinchuuriki to strive to make a mark, to make a stand that proved he had deserved his placement as a shinobi leader. The young jinchuuriki was no idiot, he knew that the real reason the council of elders even considered making him Kazekage was to keep him under close watch, to keep him chained to the village in more ways than one. After he took on the robes, Gaara followed his vows religiously in order to become the strongest leader of the Village Hidden in the Sand. Slowly, the village began to respect him for his merits and his drive to protect those he held precious to him.

He wanted trust, he wanted acceptance and eventually, he realised he had love all along. He earned it.

He was the defense, the shield and the driving heart of his village, no amount of time would erase the pride and adoration he had for his fellow shinobi.

But in a flash, not even a moment, everything was gone.

The Great Fourth Shinobi War was nothing like its three predecessors; it was a horror on its own level.

On some particularly bad days, the young Kazekage remembered he almost wanted Shukaku back...just so he could willingly let it loose, so it could destroy the Akatsuki or Tobi or Kabuto in a fit of uncontrollable blood-rage. It was not rational, but those thoughts were reserved for those few dark moments when his mind would wander.

Of course, Gaara only ever wanted peace.

And in one hit, Sunagakure was almost decimated in one night.

It was a day Gaara deemed to be the lowest point of all of Suna history. The village so proud and stubborn - demanding life in a middle of desert - that it was crushed back into the sand in which it rose. In a sense, it was poetic...but Gaara was never much of a poet, so he did not appreciate the irony.

The only thing he could be happy about was the fact that the people of his village were evacuated and many survived the attack. It had hurt him in the greatest way to willingly and knowingly leave his village to be destroyed. Gaara was amazed that shinobi and civilians alike were still calling him their leader even after they had no physical home, and were living in nomadic tents. But the people were more important and the sacrifice actually - in some twisted way - had actually helped there side gain positive advances against their enemies. Once again, the irony was ignored.

Now as Gaara gazed at the sprawling village covered in a haze of sand, he couldn't push away the stinging thought that he lost them all over again.

All the bonds, all the ties he created with his people, to his loyal shinobi, to his siblings...were all gone. And the most ironic part was that no one was dead.

For the life of him, Gaara had no idea how he ended up here.

Despite the Kazekage's intelligent mind, he was finding it incredibly hard to draw up any memories directly before he landed in the past.

All he found was a dark void where his memories should have been.

Time jumping was improbable, but not impossible. It seemed something people like Orochimaru, Kabuto and even Sarutobi would investigate out of curiosity or to try implement for malicious or academic research. But Gaara had never even contemplated the subject. He never had to.

The young Kazekage's forehead furrowed in concentration as he mauled over his unusual predicament, but a slight shift in the air broke Gaara out of his thought.

ANBU.

They could not be seen, but he felt them not too far away, hovering in a loose formation so not to crowd the unstable jinchuuriki. They made no more advances, but Gaara could tell they were on alert. The silent group of elites had been following him since he left the infirmary. Gaara ignored them, seemingly content with being surrounded by a dozen ANBU.

He stayed like that for a few minutes till he abruptly stood up, no longer feeling like bending his mind into knots.

The ANBU watched like gargoyles as the boy jumped down in one movement and walked back to the village.

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A/N: Thank you so much for reading this far.

Keep it kool

CADEL

[EDIT – 28 MARCH 2015]