The summer blazes. The summer blazes. The summer blazes and blazes and blazes and blazes until the earth melts into igneous matter and fever rises out of the hot vapors and mirages dream up delirium and whisper from within the tranced mind of the world he burns in.
Gaara licks the summer-lust off his lips. One lap of tongue – slow and wet and dragging. Men cover their heads and bodies and creep in the shadows but not the women. Strips of skin flaunted and vulnerable throats, swells of soft flesh and the delicious smell of prey. Prey. Women are nothing but bait when summer comes. It tastes like sugar-blood and flesh-heat and madness.
Madness is the medulla of instincts; madness is the hunger of carnivores. Madness is being quenchless; madness is the medium for sanity, the foul meat that shapes and fattens the tanuki's insides, slab after slab guzzled until its mass is thin enough for teeth to bite through and out of it.
Gaara prowls and stalks and summer-hunts. Close, and closer he comes. It is merely the illusion he seeks – never the blood, the skin, the organs, the bones underneath that taste of prey. He kills the men in the shadows when they think themselves the hunters but never the women. Those kills…he relishes.
Chapter Five
One hour and one brass of nonsense. Perhaps less than one hour and more than one brass of nonsense. Temari stays quiet and listens. Quiet. Listens. All her mind registers is a tautology. Pharisaic. Debasing. The Council elders iterate the words Daimyō and funding and marriage as if she is not even in the room with them – despite the fact that her name, her dignity, her life is tied to the latter. Her eyes stray to Baki now and then for the littlest fragments of seconds but he never meets her gaze. Not once. Filaments of panic whorl around her neck, twisting and knitting into one tight noose. Suffocation. Her lungs are seething with each shallow intake of air and what she wants to exhale is not breath but no.
Inhalation. Exhalation. Inhalation. "No."
Silence, and all eyes on her. All but Baki's. It feels like she has detonated an explosive right in the middle of a peace talk. Some are rendered blind, some charred to the bone, some choke-full of shrapnel. Jōseki is the first to recover from the shock of his injuries.
"What do you mean no?" His face is deformed beyond recognition. Monstrous guise, bestial roar. "You will do as you are comma–"
"Jōseki." Gōza's tone is calm, always calm, but she isn't fooled. When he pins her with his stare, Temari shivers at the things she sees in it. Reality. Sapience. Warning. "Do you not understand the significance of the matter?"
"I do." She nods and swallows to hydrate her throat. It will take much more than Gōza's sage eyes to make her cower. This isn't about not giving in to their demands but not giving up on herself. And she just can't. "But it's still my decision – and my answer is no." Her chin lifts high, higher with every word she speaks. "I'm a Suna kunoichi, not some highbred hime. I was trained in Fūton and Kuchiyose no jutsu, not Chadō and Ikebana."
"None of that matters." There isn't the barest inflection in Sajō's voice. Matter-of-fact. "We need the Daimyō's funding, and if this is what must be done to gain it, then you will obey."
Her lips tremble. They shouldn't. Temari wants to tear them off her face for their betrayal – and feed them to Baki. Look at me, you bastard. The least he can do is look into her eyes and own up to his betrayal.
"Temari." Gōza is too calm. If he ever snaps, it will probably resemble a volcano eruption. Temari is tempted to provoke him until he does, if only to watch him buried in the crater of his own fury. "Be reasonable."
Her lips tremble more – Baki is looking at her. His mouth is a string of grim resolve and the black of his eyes an abysmal pit. Wrath dissolves into relief. He will speak for me. It may not bear any fruit. It may amount to nil. But it is enough for her. As long as he stands up for her, Temari can forget – forgive – his earlier hesitation.
Baki's lips part. Temari's lips still.
"Enough." Deep. Sovereign. Low. Terror. That voice drips with deadly impulses – but it isn't Baki's.
Gaara stands before her. His hair is the color of rusted blood and she can see nothing beyond that. Sand rasps against her skin with a purring siss. Back and forth, languorous, stroking. Her brother stands before her.
"Gaara…" She calls his name softly, breathlessly.
"Temari." His head slopes down and to the side, one cheekbone cut sharp and high, skin pale and stretched thin over its angular line. "Leave."
"She isn't to go anywhe–"
Jōseki is choking on sand-aggression. Temari can see nothing except Gaara's back but she can hear the sand filling Jōseki's mouth and rushing deep down his throat. Deeper. Deeper. She turns and leaves with the satisfaction of that deeper.
Baki stares, and can't stop staring. Numb, stunned. Rasa –? No…no. This fourteen year old boy isn't Rasa…and he is. One part of him is – the part that now speaks.
"Who negotiated with the new Daimyō?"
No one answers – because the person who must is still coughing and shaking with violent spasms. The part that inflicts this torture isn't Rasa. It's Sabaku no Gaara. When the onslaught recedes to the point where Jōseki can speak, he levels Gaara with such hatred that it sullies his voice and blackened soot pours out of his lungs.
"I…did."
"Then you will send word that the terms could not be met and request to renegotiate."
"You insolen–"
Sand-choking. Again, and deeper. Rage sucks in all the oxygen and culminates asphyxiation. Out of them all, Baki alone can breathe, can speak. It's Gaara's allowance, he knows. For Temari's sake.
"And what will we offer in exchange?"
"Water." It's so unexpected that Baki draws back, confused, skeptic. But what Gaara says makes perfect sense. "The capital is a drying oasis, or so they think. Water still runs deep underground, but they can't find it. I can bring it to the surface."
Confusion distills into hope. Skepticism ripens into admiration.
"You can't be…considering this." Jōseki's ruptured croak goes unheeded by all.
Baki gives him the minimum consideration only because he is obligated due to Jōseki's station. "There's nothing to consider, but for legality's sake, we'll vote." Pure condescension, and eleven hands raised. "Majority is in favor."
It marks the end of misery and the beginning of prosperity for Suna. Baki smiles for the first time in one and a half years. Rasa…you left your gold with us.