The wind howls. The wind howls. The wind howls and howls and howls and howls until sensation ingurgitates the voice of the desert and fangs rip out the ligaments of time and immortality spills from within the chasmal maw of the world he falls in.
Gaara leaps into the sandstorm – and laughs. He laughs because the desert rages and no one can hear him; he laughs as he is disintegrating into bloodless granules and merging with the sand; he laughs until he is swept up in the centre of the twister and the calm washes over him.
Sand is the gold of Lazarus; sand is the beginning and the end. Sand is being deathless; sand is the skin which stretches over mutilation, the arenaceous fibers of a heart half-eaten, sewing the holes so that the blood-rush won't become the hourglass before the choke.
Gaara loves sand. He loves losing himself in its savage affection. It is the one thing that doesn't belong to Shukaku.
Mine. Mine. Forever mine.
Chapter Three
The waiting room is filled with hunched bodies and the light that indicates surgery is being performed has been red for two hours.
Nara Shikamaru is the embodiment of failure and self-loathing, wretchedness made flesh and bone. There are no more tears than those already shed, no more cowardice than that already shown. Only waiting and more waiting.
Temari's arms cross and uncross; her legs shift and unshift; her lips purse and unpurse. She hates hospitals, but more than that, the tears, the cowardice, the waiting. Every time she enters a hospital, she becomes that three year old girl who waits for a mother she will never see or kiss or hug again. Temari resents that girl – for resenting the brother who has killed that mother. It wasn't Gaara's fault. The thought comes unbidden, familiar as the throb of pain it brings, and she curses herself.
That girl is dead – dead as her mother.
A smirk slashes across her lips, slays the remnants of that resentment, and she turns her gaze on Shikamaru. "How about we play a game while we wait?"
Slowly, listlessly, his spine straightens. Shikamaru blinks once, then his eyes lock with hers.
"A game? Now?"
His voice is a ghost of a whisper but that now screams with disbelief and imputation.
Temari chuckles. "It won't make a difference whether you cry your eyes out or play a game, now will it?"
His lack of reply is answer enough.
"So." Smirk sharper, chuckle softer. "I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to your mind, and vice versa."
She doesn't wait for his reply this time.
"Chūnin."
It is deliberately cruel, that she chooses this word, because Shikamaru doesn't want comfort – he wants someone to hurt him – and that comes naturally to her.
A noise thrums in his throat but he plays the game.
"Troublesome."
Temari clicks her tongue. "You can only use troublesome once."
As if to spite her, or simply out of habit, he mutters troublesome under his breath. She shakes her head, but the word he gives coils around her neck with vice-like constriction.
"Brother."
The way his eyes have hardened is telling – grey heated into charcoal, gone dark with knowledge, and darker. Shikamaru isn't the only one who wants to be hurt.
"Kankurō." A little breathless.
Shikamaru smirks, dripping with challenge, as if to say are you ready to stop this game now?
Temari only huffs. She spits the next word like a snake hiss. "Father."
Amusement lights his eyes as he glances at the man languishing in the opposite corner of the waiting room. "Pervert."
Her chest shakes with laughter. It is as appropriate as it isn't. Temari struggles to quell its tremors before it erupts but Shikamaru's next word does that and more.
"Gaara."
He is watching her closely, carefully – she can't breathe.
The doors of the surgery room burst open; Tsunade steps out haggard and thin-lipped; chaos and questions assault the medic nin all at once.
Temari stands stiff and apart. Something abrades the flesh of her throat, sears the flat of her tongue, rolls off vulnerable and drowned under the pandemonium.
"Pain."
Konoha's hospital whelms with unknown smells, unknown faces. It is the second time Gaara comes here, but unlike the first, the stimulant of blood-spilling doesn't overcome everything else. He can smell. He can see.
His steps are slow, perhaps even reluctant. He feels – but the feeling is too novel to name. Gaara walks through corridor after corridor until he finds himself outside the room he seeks. His back leans against the wall, mere inches from the door that leads inside. Minutes, maybe even hours, pass.
"You can come in." Rock Lee's voice filters through glass and wood and concrete. It is neither welcome nor unwelcome, merely a boy's voice, if high-pitched to some degree.
Gaara's back detaches from the wall, and he is walking inside. Slower steps, perhaps even more reluctant. He doesn't look at the other boy or speak, only finds another wall to lean against. Minutes, maybe even hours, pass.
"I wanted to thank you." Rock Lee's voice filters through his ears, merely a boy's voice, less high-pitched now that nothing separates them. "If you hadn't appeared when you did, I would have –"
"No need." Gaara is speaking before he can grasp that he does. His pulse is a belaboring beat beneath his ribs and that phrase is drilling into his mind. No need. No need. No need.
A sigh resonates with the frenzy of his heart and thoughts. Gaara raises his eyes, tracking the sound to its owner. Rock Lee lies on the hospital bed, covered in bandages from head to toe, one leg encased in a cast and elevated, brows creased and sighing again.
"This isn't your fault." A half-smile lodges itself on one side of his cheek. "I knew the risks when I entered the Chūnin exams…and when I used that technique."
Gaara's throat is too dry but he speaks past the dryness – past that unnamed feeling he slowly comes to know as…guilt.
"You don't…begrudge me?"
"Are you going to apologize if I do?" One thick brow lifts. Silence. Another sigh. "Do you feel like you need to do that?"
Gaara keeps quiet – because he doesn't know what follows after guilt. He barely knows guilt as it is. But he needs to do something. Even if he apologizes though, will it bear the meaning it must hold? Will it mean anything to the broken boy lying on that bed?
"I will accept your apology, if that will make you feel better." Rock Lee smiles again, his smile full, his lips strained, his voice unlike a boy's. "But it won't, right?"
Gaara can do nothing but nod. Rock Lee nods as well.
"Then like you said…no need."