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The First Shifting Grains
CADEL
CHAPTER 6
Kankuro had only just managed to work out some of the kinks within his puppets when his youngest brother came knocking on his door.
To say the young puppeteer was alarmed was a grave understatement.
"Can I come in?"
Gaara stared expectantly while Kankuro floundered at threshold of his room, wondering if he should invite his terribly unstable little brother into his workshop - which he really didn't.
"Ah...yeah." the young genin stuttered.
His younger brother stepped in without glancing at Kankuro, and stopped when he reached the middle of the room. Kankuro just stared back at his door, wondering if he should close it or leave it open for a quick escape.
Kankuro observed as Gaara's eyes darted around the room to search for something. The puppeteer waited uneasily till the younger genin headed to one of his workshop tables. Gaara pull out a couple of draws till he found a brown leather wrap rolled up in strings. With a quick flick, he unrolled it and began setting out the contents on the worktop.
A dull set of kunai and shuriken lay evenly on the table, the blades rough and blunt with age and disuse.
Kankuro broke in a cold sweat as he realised that he was now stuck in a room with Gaara and a pile of weapons. The young puppeteer became suddenly aware of every twitch the jinchuuriki made.
Small fingers brushed against the cool surface of the old weapons, pale green eyes inspected them curiously before swiftly picking up a kunai and cutting a small line into the pad of his thumb.
The smallest drop of blood oozed from the cut and ran down Gaara's small fingers, pooling in the sink of his palm.
Kankuro, who had been sitting quietly on the chair a few meters away, was now pushing down his flight instincts with such intense fierceness, that he was sure there were nail indentations on his palm. His cold sweat, now accompanied with fearful anticipation, held his stomach in a vice grip that frankly made him want to throw up.
The cut in his leg throbbed
Gaara's attack three days ago was fresh in his mind, and the taste of demon intent was still stuck in his throat. It was definitely too soon to be sharing the same room.
"Do you have any sharper ones?" Gaara asked quietly as he rubbed away the blood from his hands.
No! No I don't! Was all Kankuro wanted to say, but instead he answered, "Ah, yeah, in the bottom draw..."
Gaara indeed found more weapons, but they were only a little sharper than the ones he found previously. They were good enough to injure, but they had to be sharpened if they would be of any proper use.
Something shifted in the air, and Kankuro found himself backed away in a defensive stance when Gaara's demonic sand shot out from nowhere. Too many years of experience had left Kankuro vigilantly reactive to the sound.
But it only took a moment to register that his concerns were premature. There was no crashing or crushing.
Gaara hovered his hands over the sets of kunai and shuriken, and then cocooned them gently with his sand. They danced around the metal, almost soft and fluttery. Seconds later, the sand disappeared, revealing a newly polished and sharpened set of gleaming weapons on his table. Each blade shone, sharpened to a hairline edge that could cut through stone.
The young jinchuuriki swiftly rolled up the set of newly polished weapons and bound them back in its leather wrap.
"Can I borrow these?" Gaara asked as he turned to look at his older brother.
Kankuro blinked, then nodded as he moved out of his defensive stance.
The tense silence was broken when Kankuro heard a loud rumble. For a moment, the puppeteer was genuinely baffled, then eyed Gaara stomach. The young jinchuuriki was also looking down at his stomach with confusion. After a moment, he reached inside his shirt and pulled out a little box of dried jerky and nibbled on the tough meat as he moved across the room.
Somewhere in the back of Kankuro's head, he unnecessarily noted the box was pink.
He almost missed Gaara suddenly stopping by his door.
Slowly, his younger brother moved towards Kankuro's table and after a moment of hesitation, placed his box of jerky on his workshop table. He would never know that it was Gaara's awkward attempt at an apology.
With the bundle of newly polished weapons, Gaara finally strolled out, leaving his older brother to stare after him.
Kankuro eyed the meat that was left behind with caution, but after some inspection, he decided it was indeed just a bundle of jerky.
Kankuro decided that whatever went on in the mind of his insane brother was something he was not going to understand any time soon.
So he picked up the meat and threw it in the bin.
III
Gaara traced his thumb against the sharp blades, then eyed his targets.
His weapons were all lodged dead-centre.
Yet Gaara still felt uncomfortably underprepared. Almost all the strength and skills he had honed as an older shinobi had vanished. His hand-eye skills were acceptable, but woefully weak in strength. He had always been a long range fighter with little need for close combat. After the chūnin exams, the jinchuuriki could suddenly feel the effects of neglecting his katas in favour of his sand.
He asked Kankuro to lend him his old set of weapons purely because Gaara wanted an excuse to see his brother's workshop. He had to assess how Kankuro was progressing with his mechanism designs for his puppets. It seemed that his brother had already designed the initial prototypes of the puppets he would be using frequently in the future.
The Kankuro of the future was rather different to his brash, rude and over-confidant brother of this age – similar, but not nearly as grounded, and Gaara could not go to him for council. He wished for a brotherly ear to listen to him now.
He had forgotten how afraid his siblings had been at this time in their lives. It was sobering to see that kind of fear and hesitance in people he considered family. Of course in this time, no one knew Gaara actually had the desire to be considered benevolent but he'll have to reap what he sowed. It was mildly comforting knowing that Gaara now had a small chance to correct the wrongs he made in his first life.
But how far could he take it? How much was he allowed or willing to change? These were questions that Gaara knew he had no answers to.
His musing was cut short when something rolled and tapped the side of leg.
Looking down to inspect, Gaara found a red ball at his feet. Pale green eyes could only stare at the object in weariness as memories from the past echoed dimly in his head.
III
"Can I play too?" mumbled a shy Gaara.
Gaara scooped up the ball and looked around to see where it came from. He looked both left and right but no one came to retrieve it.
The other children only stared and began shuffling away, their eyes wide and terrified by the little boy standing alone.
"You can't play with us!" They backed away further.
Gaara held the ball tightly between his fingers. Why couldn't he play with them? Couldn't they tell he just wanted to be friends?
He waited a little longer, but still, no one came and Gaara was oddly relieved by it. They probably wouldn't want it back if they knew he had it.
"My mother told me to stay away from him…" a girl whispered. "I heard he'll crush you if you make him mad…"
Another added wearily. "I don't like him…he makes me scared…"
The jinchuuriki tried to give a friendly smile, but it looked awkward and made of teeth. It only made him look unpleasant. And lonelier.
The jinchuuriki bounced it once, then twice and let it rest in his hands. There was an emblem stamped in the surface of the ball. 'The Rising Sun – Sunagakure'. He knew the name.
"Please?"
A heavy weight sank into his stomach, like bad medicine and charcoal. Gaara stood alone with a red ball between his hands, red as his hair, red as the blooming tightness his ribs.
"Please?"
He noted a trail was left in the ball's path. He followed the dusty line and turned around the corner.
In the end, there was still no one to play with. Who would want to listen to the pleas of a monster?
After all, monster's mimic and lie.
They wear your skin and pull your smile apart.
Their pleas were fake. Those tears couldn't be real.
III
House of the Rising Sun.
Gaara recognised it as the name for Suna's orphanage.
The young Kazekage remembered a great deal about the establishment from his days as Suna's Kazekage. He had been involved in a great deal of building and managing homes for orphaned children from the war. Despite having family members alive for most of his childhood, Gaara paradoxically had an orphan mindset.
In terms of family, he sometimes couldn't relate to Kankuro and Temari, who remembered their mother and had a somewhat respectable relationship with their father. Gaara only knew animosity and indifference from his family for a long time. Yes, Gaara had always felt like an orphan at heart, and it was another thing that made him establish series of homes and better care for orphanages in his village.
The children of Suna were actually quite attached to Gaara…it still made very little sense to him, but his brother and sister found it hilarious.
Now staring up at the orphanage's emblem, Gaara was hit with the same sense of pride he felt when he looked upon the new paint on the sign when he funded the establishment in the future. He would do it again.
Finding his legs were already moving towards the House of the Rising Sun, Gaara jumped to the roof and slipped quietly inside. The hallways were neat except for a few toys strewn about. There was a child here and there, moving about in the corridors, but gratefully none paid much attention to Gaara.
The back of the building had a small quadrant of playing space that had red sails shading the small area.
There were no children in sight, so Gaara took a seat on one of the small benches and gently bounced the ball in small dribbles, indulging himself a moment of peace.
It wasn't that much later, when Gaara felt the presence of someone nearby.
He couldn't see who it was, but they had been staring at Gaara for almost five minutes. Deciding to let them come to him in their own time, the jinchuuriki continued to dribble the ball in his hand.
After a moment, Gaara let the ball drop from his hand and rolled it towards the small figure watching him for the back door.
The red ball eventually stopped at the child's feet.
He wasn't much older than six, and was completely bare foot with a big scarf enveloping his shoulders and neck. The child looked down and after a long moment, the he picked up the ball and slowly made his way towards Gaara. The young child stepped closer, then held out the ball towards Gaara.
But the child was just a little too close - his movement were too sudden - that his sand automatically shot upwards, knocking the child to the floor.
Gaara went cold, then quickly reigned in his sand.
Still not enough control. The jinchuuriki clenched his hand in frustration. His habitual need to defend himself was much harder to override than he liked to admit.
But it was too late. He had alerted the ANBU who had been tailing him. The guard suddenly appeared in front of the child in a protective stance.
Five seconds passed in tense silence as the ANBU and the young jinchuuriki assessed each other.
Gaara didn't move an inch. He knew he wouldn't do anything to harm the child, but nobody else would believe that. No one could allow themselves to be so trusting that they would drop their guard in front of Suna's unstable demon vessel. No, Gaara would always be the bad guy to these people.
Surprisingly, the silence was broken by the child who had stood back up and dusted himself off. All he did was glance over at Gaara with curious eyes.
Suddenly, the overall appearance of the boy reminded Gaara of Sasori. The child had the unmistakable look of someone who had been alone for far too long and from an age that was far too young. He also reminded him a little of Naruto.
The orphan gave the ANBU a funny look, almost distrustful which was ironic. The demon mask probably didn't help.
The red ball slowly rolled back to Gaara till it reached his feet. The jinchuuriki looked back at the child, as if he was something that held all the mysteries of the world.
He wanted to play with him? The jinchuuriki blinked, then obliged.
Without much thought, Gaara bounced the ball gently, causing the ANBU to tense, but the guard remained unmoving. The ball bounced too high, over the little child's head. The orphan child ran after it and then bounced it back to Gaara.
The child had put too much force behind his next throw. He angled it wrong, because it didn't go towards Gaara, but instead headed straight towards the ANBU still standing between them. Of course the ANBU caught it with ease and without even bothering to look.
Not a moment later, the ANBU found himself subjected to two intense and expecting stares of both the orphan child and the jinchuuriki.
"Oh dear!"
One of the female carers, which worked in the orphanage, dropped her box of toys as she opened the back door, and found all three of them in the playing yard.
The sight she saw was nowhere near normal or very comforting. She gasped at the homicidal jinchuuriki, the orphan child and an ANBU with a playing ball tucked under his elbow.
It just looked like some messed up game of piggy-in-the-middle.
A surreal moment passed by as all four stared at one another, unsure how to proceed.
The silence was broken when the ANBU suddenly dropped the ball and rolled it towards the child. He gave the jinchuuriki one last look, then the ANBU shunshin out of the yard.
Gaara knew he had already outstayed his welcome, so he gave the child a pat on the head and strolled pass the dumbstruck woman with a polite "Excuse me."
Just before Gaara exited the building, he caught sight of a person standing near the outer gate, a woman with dark hair in twin braids. Her eyes remained on Gaara; there was weary apprehension and a dash of curiosity in her gaze. Gaara couldn't recall where he had seen her before but she was familiar.
Not bothering to understand the woman's behaviour, the young genin quickly jumped on the fence and began his way back to the training grounds.
III
The next morning, Kankuro decided to take the day off and shop through the junk yard markets to see if there was anything worth buying for his puppet designs.
But before he stepped out the door, he found a basket of freshly baked bread sitting in the doorstep of his home.
He blinked at it once then looked left and right to see if anyone was near. He lifted up the baked goods and gave it a cautious sniff. It was a little suspicious and there was high possibility that it was poisoned, but after his initial test, Kankuro found that the basket full of cheese rolls and bread cake were exactly that – a basket of pastries.
Deciding to ignore his initial suspicion, Kankuro bit into a sweet-bread bun and rolled it around his tongue.
After a moment, he took another one and then another one.
"So good." He mumbled between breathing and inhaling pastries.
"What's good?"
"Guess what I found Temari!" Kankuro turned around to his sister who was hovering over his shoulder and showed her the pastries. "Yummy stuff!"
The blonde kunoichi just gave a disgusted look at the way Kankuro was eating.
"That's gross, stop talking with your mouth full." Temari gave the basket a suspicious look but shrugged. If Kankuro was adamant in killing himself with bread rolls, then so be it. "Who's it from?"
Kankuro shrugged and went back into the house to put on the kitchen table. "Dunno, didn't have or a note or anything."
"Are you stupid? Stop eating! For all we know it could be poisoned." She reprimanded.
Kankuro shrugged. "They seem fine and even if they are poisoned, I don't care. This kind of death I can handle."
Temari just shot Kankuro a disbelieving look and shook her head. "Whatever."
The puppeteer glanced at his sister and noted that she wasn't in her ninja gear that morning. "Are you going somewhere?"
The blonde blinked then shrugged. "I was going to go to the markets. The Desert Moon Festival is in a few weeks and everyone's already starting to prepare. I thought I should quickly get some stuff before everything runs out. It's a damn hassle," she sighed, "I can't stand shopping for those annoying kimonos."
Kankuro sat up and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Is it already that time of year? Sheesh, time goes fast." Then a lecherous grin appeared on his face. "But you know what that means right? Time to go hunting for a date!"
"Kankuro, you're so sleazy, no girl would want a date with you." She added bluntly.
"Yeah well, you'll probably scare the living daylights out of any guy that approaches you…doesn't help that you're the Kazekage's daughter." Kankuro retorted.
"Yeah well, I ain't the scariest of the Kazekage's children." She mumbled, automatically thinking of Gaara.
Kankuro pouted. "You know, the prettiest girl was checking me out a few weeks back, pretty understandable seeing that my dashing looks and magnetic personality –" Temari scoffed. "But it didn't go further than one date." He sighed. "She's scared of Gaara, said she didn't want to be near him and seeing as the thing and I are brothers, she didn't want to associate with me either." After a moment of silence, Kankuro snorted. "Too bad for her."
Temari rolled her eyes. "I don't really care, just as long as Gaara doesn't kill me, I'm all good."
There had always been a harsh stigma branded on them since a young age, just for being Gaara's siblings. They never really talked about it, but it was always there.
Temari found that making friends was not the easiest thing to do when you brother was the stuff of nightmares for over half the population. She was also the oldest, so she at least had some semblance of normality while her mother had been still alive, but after she died, things changed. Kankuro on the other hand, adapted well and took things in stride. He played things rather nonchalantly, but now and then, they both wished their younger brother could be just that…a younger brother.
Temari leaned on the kitchen counter and observed the basket. "Do…you think I should buy some clothes for him?"
Kankuro blinked and looked up questionably. "For who?"
"Gaara." She answered.
Kankuro frowned in confusion. "Why the hell would you do that?"
Temari shrugged. "I dunno…just occurred to me that he wouldn't have any festive clothes. It's not like there's a mother around here to do those things for him. He's the youngest out of us three after all."
Kankuro just looked at her like she grew another head.
"Temari…its Gaara. He wouldn't go to the festivities anyway and if he did…well, I don't really want to think about that either. You don't have to be his mother, he already has one, and all she ever wants him to do is have us for food."
Temari just scowled at him. "I'm not trying to be his mother, I was just thinking out loud." She propped her chin in her hand. "Whatever. I wasn't talking seriously anyway. The quicker we become jounin, the better. That way we can finally be rid of him."
Kankuro nodded. "Agreed."
Upstairs, unknown to both the siblings, Gaara slowly turned away and shut his bedroom door. Pretending for a moment that he really was just a child, he hid himself within the confinements of his small room, and feigned sleep.
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A/N: I had a bad day – they're rare and few apart but I ended up cocooning myself in my bedsheets till I could ignore the heaviness in my stomach.
Then I reread all your reviews. I can't tell you how lovely your responses have been – the good and the bad.
You guys are the fuel to my fire.
CADEL
[EDITED – 3 APRIL 2015]