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The First Shifting Grains
CADEL
CHAPTER 4
Gaara found himself lying naked on his own bathroom floor.
After the jinchuuriki had reacquainted himself with the village, he hesitantly decided it was time to go home.
Despite its grandness, there wasn't much love lost for his house, and even less for his small bedroom. The main part of his childhood was spent inside, isolated from the populace. It was only after he had officially joined Baki's genin team with his siblings that he was permitted to live in the same house as his family. Before then, his father had ostracized his youngest son and kept Gaara separated from his siblings, with only his uncle for company.
It was strange looking into the room. It felt like walking into a photograph, a still image from a very specific time in his life.
It did not feel lived in, nothing like his room from the future. The space felt like a cage. Maybe a tomb.
He banished his thoughts and grabbed his towel as he made his way to the bathroom, the grime and filth that clung to his skin becoming unbearable.
Gaara stood under the hot water for long minutes, feeling the kinks and knots gently unravelling under his young skin as steam billowed around his body in a thick blanket. He felt tired.
It was only a few moments later, when Gaara began to feel a strange pull in his stomach.
He held onto the tile wall for a brief moment in alarm, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.
Perhaps ignoring it was not the best idea, because by the time he had turned off the faucets, Gaara collapsed onto the floor with a splitting pain ramming into his temples. The strange pull in his stomach had come back ten-fold and his vision had reduced to almost nothing.
Biting back a scream, the young ninja forced himself to breathe regularly, ignoring the droplets of water falling into his nose and eyes. The thrumming in his head eventually receded, but a harsh whisper replaced it instead.
Gaara snapped his eyes opened and forced himself to stay lucid when he realised what was happening.
Shukaku had woken.
Gaara had been expecting this, but he didn't know what to expect after the creature had come out of his exhausted slumber. It had been so long since he had to worry about the Ichibi, that the young ninja was concerned about the level of control he really possessed over the demon.
It seemed he would soon find out.
Gaara had never been able to control and communicate with Ichibi the way Naruto could with Kyuubi. He never got the chance, nor did he want to come face to face with his tormentor.
But in his later years Gaara paid close attention to Naruto's interaction with his tailed-beast out of curiosity.
Kurama and Naruto had a very odd relationship, something that Gaara couldn't even hope to create with Shukaku. Or really want to. The beast was unreasonable. However, he watched Naruto enter his own mind through some focused meditation, but despite Gaara's questions, struggled to explain the method in words. It was in this state that his friend would communicate with his furball pet and even interact with it in a tactile manner. At some point, his blonde friend had relative control over the environment of his mindscape, enough to alter things at will.
It was funny, because like all the things Naruto did, he didn't know how utterly incredible the things he did were. He blundered through them with endearing bullheadedness and found new paths.
And it gave Gaara an idea.
He did not know if it would work, but it just might hold Ichibi off temporarily – at least till he could find his bearings in his backward journey.
The genin pushed back the ache in his body and ignored the lust filled whispers as he sat up and crossed his legs on the tile floor. He immediately closed his eyes and began to detach himself from his surroundings, no longer acknowledging or reacting to his five senses.
There was no specific time to when Gaara had found himself no longer in his bathroom.
Time made no sense where he was now, and the forever encompassing weightlessness seemed to settle into the very marrow of his bones.
And with another deep breath, he let himself fall.
III
With deliberate slowness, Gaara opened his pale eyes.
And found himself upside-down.
In his moment of complete disorientation, he found it difficult not to flail helplessly. The ground and sky had switched places.
After moments of adjusting to the strangeness of his directional orientation, Gaara took a step forward - on the sky. His body swayed, expecting to fall, but his feet remained firmly attached to the ground...no...sky. A sky of solid sunset.
Gravity seemed to feel normal, as if Gaara was the only one right-side-up, and that the rest of the world was stuck on the ceiling. And surrounding him, was a never-ending horizon of gold sand dunes which rose several metres into the air, then dipped back into the ground.
His world was an upside down desert, bathed in perpetual sunset.
The desert part was almost boringly unsurprising - but it didn't feel right. There was something off with it...too quiet and too lovely in a way. It didn't feel like it was his.
But most importantly, he noticed there wasn't a single trace of demonic presence anywhere.
The seducing whispers of Shukaku was now absent, along with the underlying blood-lust that accompanied Gaara's every waking moment. The silence was more than a little unnerving, like being trapped in a genjutsu.
"Shukaku?"
Gaara's voiced echoed into the strange landscape without a reply.
He waited a moment, then took another step. "Shukaku, I wish to speak with you."
The desert swallowed his words.
All of it was getting strange. Where was the demon? Surely its presence would have been the most noticeable thing in his mindscape, no matter where it hid. Ichibi had such profound physical presence in the living world that it was beyond strange it would be almost none existent in his mind.
Without warning, sand from the desert above him - his sky - began to fall.
Streams of gold grains silently cascaded downwards to the sky - his ground - and began to pool around Gaara's feet. The sunset sky that the young Kazekage had been standing on began to drip...upwards. In moments, Gaara was neck-deep in sand and watched as it flooded the entire terrain.
The world was flipping.
Oddly, Gaara felt no need to panic. Surely he would be suffocated under tons of pouring sand, but an underlying voice told him to stay still. Let the world guide him.
By the time his mouth was filled with sand, Gaara shut his eyes. When his head finally went under, he found himself submerged in water.
Deep blue and inky black.
He could breathe and the aqueous volume was neither cold nor warm. The pulse of his heart seemed to thrum in tandem with the heartbeat of his ocean – like a womb.
And when he turned around, he came face to face with the very demon he had been looking for.
Shukaku was staring at him, its enormous form floating, submerged in deep blue. The demon did not attack or move from its watery suspension. Instead, it gazed at Gaara with vacant eyes, as if unsure who he was.
"Shukaku." his voiced echoed.
The demon remained eerily still.
"I don't know if you understand me, or if you are listening – but I'm afraid I cannot accommodate you anymore." Gaara whispered calmly, his voice no louder than a hush.
The demon suddenly seemed to recover from its stillness and began to snarl and scream, as if it woke from its half-lucid state. Yet, what was odd was that Gaara couldn't hear a thing. What should have been bone-chilling, demonic screeching, was now just silence, lost in the mass of watery blue.
"It seems your screams have landed on deaf ears Shukaku." Gaara said to himself.
After a moment of hesitation, Gaara swam closer to the violently thrashing creature, and placed a small hand on the tanuki's head. The creature snarled viciously, its face turning even more hideous in its anger, but Gaara felt its enormous body began to involuntarily still.
Gaara closed his eyes, and brought forth a behemoth of chakra from somewhere within his belly. Burning hot and uncomfortably tight, the jinchuuriki lifted his hand and snapped it around the demon.
Shukaku bellowed in panic and rage as chains tighten around its body from the darkness below.
The seal was weak, but Gaara was not.
"Listen Shukaku, and listen carefully." Gaara began with a voice that held all the authority of a Kage. "You are not permitted to leave this prison I have made for you. I will not allow you even an inch of foot space in this pitiful cage. You cannot whisper sweet things in my ear and I will never ask you to give me your power. I will take it."
Gaara shifted his hands to grab a now visible chain attached to the tanuki's legs and tail. Shackled down by unknown forces, the demon could not move from its watery prison.
It was an unusual cage for the demon of the desert, but poetically fitting. Somehow, this strange, never-ending ocean of ultramarine blue became Ichibi's tomb.
"A cage within a cage." The boy moved away. "This ocean was created by Lady Chiyo's seal, but these chains are mine. They will rust and decay with time, but I will find a way to keep you here. To keep you safe."
Liar!
The demon hissed out its thoughts like slow crawling lava.
"I am trying to protect you, and I'm also trying to protect myself." The jinchuuriki held its stare. "There are people out there right now who wish to use you, destroy you and tear your brothers and sisters apart. They will try and they will probably succeed." He leaned in again, pushing as much weight into his voice as he could, trying to desperately reason with the creature's dubious logic. "I am not your enemy."
It twisted itself into knots trying to clamp its jaws around Gaara's throat.
The genin lifted his gaze to Shukaku's dilated pupils, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly, felt deep pity.
A creature of such old power, age and lineage was left to drown in the mind of an eleven year-old child.
"You are tired." the jinchuuriki commented with a sigh.
For the first time, Gaara considered how his own behavior affected his prisoner. He was completely aware of how Shukaku's desires bled into Gaara's own personality, but the reverse was also applicable.
"You cannot sleep, like I cannot sleep." Gaara gave out a small sigh as he let go of the shackles in his hand. "I don't have time to worry about you."
Gaara swam up and placed his hand on the demons eye-lids. "Sleep Shukaku. The more you fight me, hurt me and corrupt me, the more you will suffer. Sleep, so I can sleep. Perhaps then, I may find a less painful way to keep you here."
He inserted a small dose of his own chakra directly into the demon's forehead, and watched as it tried to vainly fight off Gaara's command.
Slowly, gradually, its eyelids began to droop to a close. For the first time in eleven years, the Ichibi fell into a drowning slumber.
III
The waters stilled, Shukaku slumbered and it was time for Gaara to leave.
He remained under a little longer, deciding how to exit the seal, till he looked up and saw a glistening above which broke through the depth.
Gaara swam upwards, his small arms pulling him above, till he broke the surface of the water. Breathing underwater wasn't a problem, but when his head emerged, he still took in a deep breath of air.
And it was as he pushed himself onto solid ground, that he noticed everything had changed.
The upside-down desert was gone, and in its place, were trees. Hundreds of them.
The trees were made of translucent shale and the leaves, polished stone. The canopy reflected the flushed hues of the twilight sky, bouncing iridescent light in between the branches. It looked a lot like the trees in Konoha. He lived in a desert and saw the great sands of wind country everyday but…Gaara liked these trees.
His own forest of glass.
The ninja turned back to look at where he had swam out of, and found a small circular pond, only five meters in diameter. The small body of water looked nothing like the mass of ocean Gaara had just emerged from. From above, it looked like a tranquil water pool in the middle of an oasis.
He peered over the edge, and saw Shukaku's massive form deep down in the pool, chained and in a deep sleep.
He knew that Ichibi's sleeping state was only temporary; he would have to get his seal checked soon if he wanted any kind of permanent security from Shukaku's insanity. He just didn't know if that was possible, right now in this timeline.
Suddenly, exhaustion spread through Gaara's body so fast that in only a few moments, his consciousness sank into blackness and then bloomed back into bright light.
Thus Sabaku no Gaara found himself naked on his bathroom floor.
The weightlessness from his mindscape was gone, and now he felt extra heavy.
With aching slowness, the young ninja stood up and grabbed the towel to cover his waist. In a few minutes he had changed into fresh clothes and walked back into his small room. It felt as if he was dragging his body through mud. The exhaustion he had felt in his mind amplified several times in the real world, and the genin found himself practically crawling into his bed.
Not bothering to dry his hair or cover himself with his blanket, Gaara slipped into the first real sleep in a long time.
III
There were always at least two ANBU guarding the Kazekage's children.
Temari and Kankuro had been shadowed by invisible protectors ever since they could remember. The ANBU constantly ensured the safety of the Kazekage's legacy.
The youngest, and most dangerous son was no exception.
Gaara had twice as many guards tailing him where ever he went - on maximum alert - 24 hours a day. But unlike the ANBU that protected the jinchuuriki's siblings, these ANBU did not protect, their aim was to defend.
They guarded - not the boy - but the people from the jinchuuriki.
As the years went by, even the ANBU did not bother to fight the child; it was no use battling against powers they had no advantage over. So if the boy ever went into his episodic rages, their main job was to set up defense perimeters and stall the jinchuuriki till the Fourth Kazekage arrived.
That meant all ANBU watching over the jinchuuriki had reduced their life expectancy by seventy percent.
If the vessel went on a killing spree, life expectancy was reduced to ninety-five percent.
The remaining five percent were the unlucky ninjas who survived, but came out so physically damaged, that they could not resume their shinobi careers.
ANBU headquarters had noted that all mission associated with the combat and capture of the jinchuuriki were listed as S-Rank or A-Rank minimum. All mission linked to the guarding and tailing of Sabaku no Gaara were listed under potential suicide mission. The statistic were not official, but were universally acknowledged by all members of Suna's black ops.
Eventually, their leader decided to reduce the guard detail since it was decidedly a waste of resource.
But now and then, one ANBU would take a solo mission to check up on the boy and report back to the Kazekage.
These were not common, but they had to be done. It seemed that tonight, one unlucky ANBU had been chosen to have night watch over the demon child.
It was midnight by the time the silent ANBU stationed himself on the opposite roof of the jinchuuriki's window. The young demon child was known to be very inactive at night time and was noticeably calmer with the rise of the desert moon. The vessel would sit by the window for hours on end till the sun rose. Sometimes the vessel trained in one of the old training grounds, completely ignoring the ANBU watching him.
Tonight however, the ANBU who was on watch became very uneasy by the time it hit half-past-two.
He could feel the jinchuuriki's chakra, but there was next to no movement. Not even a shift in the air.
There was very little the ANBU could see from where he was sitting, but the open window had caught him by surprise. The ANBU on watch was seasoned despite his young age. He learned that instinct was probably the only thing a ninja could rely on when logic had been thrown out the window. So after a slow analysis of the situation and a long internal debate, the stealthy ANBU gracefully perched himself on the ledge of the jinchuuriki's circular window.
The ANBU peered into the room.
A moment later, the ANBU found himself wishing upon all deities that he had never looked inside.
The jinchuuriki was positioned in a graceless sprawl, face half buried in its pillow while the other half peeked out, flushed with moonlight.
The ANBU immediate became rigid and prepared himself for possible combat.
All training lessons that involved the jinchuuriki were surrounded by the one intel that if the demon became loose, either by lack of control or sleep, immediately prepare for an S-Rank level battle. The next thing ANBU were trained to do was to establish at least one ANBU to notify back-up squadrons while the others kept it at bay.
The ANBU was now completely at loss as to what he should do.
He did not move, his fingers clenched tight around the window sill, his body in a half defensive and half offensive stance. His instincts were telling him to run, but his eyes and logic were telling him there was no need.
It was three in the morning by the time the shadowy ANBU silently ghosted over to the prone figure. The regular deep breathing indicated the jinchuuriki was indeed asleep.
He peered at the sleeping child with increasing curiosity, a reluctant interest blooming from an unknown place. He really should leave. But instead, the soldier inched closer.
The demon looked...small. Maybe even a little soft and almost on the squishy side, like a porcelain cub. It was unnerving.
Without thinking, the ANBU lifted his hand over the boys head, but a wave of sand immediately prevented further intrusion of the jinchuuriki's space.
The child did not wake up.
The ANBU extracted his heartbeat out of his throat.
Enough. He was dancing on the line unprofessionalism. As the ANBU took a step back to return to his previous outpost, something broke under his sandals. The crunch was agonizingly loud in the small room.
His blood ran cold when the jinchuuriki snapped his eyes open.
The ANBU's entire body was violently flung across the room by a wave of unrelenting sand. His slid down the wall and landed into the furniture below like a discarded rag doll. His vision blurred and the sudden hammering in his head danced to the beat of his panic. All he saw was sand; encompassing, suffocating and gloriously monstrous.
The blanket of pale gold, wrapped around him like a coffin.
Oh spirits, he knew what would happen next. His initial terror guided the ANBU into a grim calm. He decided that he was going to be another dead ninja added to the statistics.
So with that fatalistic sentiment in mind, the ANBU shut his eyes, and waited for the final crushing.
III
A haziness Gaara was not familiar with fogged up his mind. Like cotton stuck behind his eyes.
Then, there was a noise.
He reacted out of instinct and began to lash his sand out at the possible threat. It was all very fast as the jinchuuriki's body adjusted to the unfamiliar sensation of sleep. He was barely even aware of the ANBU now bleeding on the floor, sprawled gracelessly among his crushed furniture.
However, it was the mask of the ANBU that snapped Gaara out of his sleep induced daze.
Kitsune.
As suddenly as he lashed out, the sand receded at his command.
The ANBU remained still in his half sitting position, breath labored as a startling amount of red dripped to the floor.
There was a time where Gaara's mouth would have watered at the sight of the blood, his lust anticipating the carnage that would soon follow. But now, all he felt was a sudden chill of alarm and shame.
This was not supposed to happen. Not after he had just vowed to never let his control slip. He was supposed to protect, not kill. He was supposed to be the defense, the shield, not the flesh-hungry, failure of a weapon. Gaara seethed at himself for a moment until he gathered his wits and ripped the edge of his sheets into a single strip.
The ANBU sat quietly and unmoving.
He could feel the soldier's eyes tracking his movements as he approached. The shinobi, while on alert, didn't bother to move away. He expects to die, Gaara realised with bitterness. It left a chalky taste in the boy's mouth.
He pushed his mood away and crouched down to eye-level. Without asking for permission, he reached out to inspect the bleeding arm. It was when Gaara moved to touch the exposed wound, that the ANBU made his first violent movement.
A flash of moon light reflected off the kunai that slashed just under his chin.
Gaara swiftly leaned backwards and easily knocked the weapon out of the ANBU's hand. With a single motion, he pinned down the man's arm against the wall and firmly placed his small, but powerful hands against his throat.
The ANBU stilled.
Without losing a moment, Gaara began to wrap the cloth around the bleeding bicep. It was a shallow wound, but it had produced an alarming amount of blood – stiches would be needed.
A few seconds later, the small hands finished wrapping the wound and gently inspected the other injuries. His touch was methodical and clinical, never lingering in areas the shinobi would instinctively find threatening. He didn't look at the masked face during his inspection. There were definitely more injuries under the clothes, but he was not going to push his luck. Whether the ANBU was in shock or not, the soldier would definitely attack if he tried removing his armor.
Gaara finally stood back up, and backed away from the ANBU who sat unnaturally still. With deliberate slow movements, as if trying not to startle a cornered creature, Gaara inched back to his bed.
On his way, the genin picked up the object the ANBU had unwittingly broke.
It was a frame.
A picture of a pale haired woman stared through the shattered glass – a gentle smile and kind eyes framed by broken edges. Gaara stared for a moment, a little surprised to see it in his room, then placed it back on his bedside table.
Without looking back at the baffled ANBU, Gaara cocooned himself under his sheets and closed his eyes.
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A/N: This story was improvised from the beginning and there's no distinct plot except for a hazy image in my head. But the response from my readers has made this project incredibly fun to write. So thank you everyone!
I should probably start planning this thing out.
Keep it real guys.
CADEL
[EDIT – 28 MARCH 2015]