A/N: My Christmas/etc. present to those of you who wanted it. :D Happy holidays.
-/-
A tendril of sand wound its way up out of the pouch at my waist, as it did when I was nervous. It was the only time I didn't need to concentrate—or slit my on wrists—on the damn stuff to get it moving. Eiji, taking notice (and she hadn't missed my speedy head-turn, either), slid her arm around my shoulder and leaned over.
"What's up, hun?" she whispered.
"Tough competition," I said stiffly, keeping my eyes straight ahead and refusing to let them search for a redheaded teenager with seafoam eyes. On second thought, I decided I was less likely to see him if I was looking at Eiji, and turned my gaze on her.
Half a grin curled up her face. I was a useless liar; I just couldn't bring myself to like it. Eiji wasn't fond of it either, but at least when she had to, it slid out smoothly. I was the one who could see when other people lied to me, though, even when it was less obvious.
"Wanna try again?"
I sighed. "Raiyo hasn't been talking much."
"Who cares?" Eiji's voice went cold; behind her, I saw a little light go out of his eyes. "It's better he keeps those words locked up inside him, ne? Less irritating that way."
Whatever reply I (never really) had died on my lips at the appearance of our proctors. Distracted from my apprehension, the lazy drifting of sand collapsed onto the table; I swept it into my cupped hand and dumped it back into my pouch, not feeling like moving it there mentally. I was too preoccupied with trying to find an answer for both the disregard in Eiji's face and the something-else-entirely in the wells of her pale blue eyes.
The proctors organized us into rows, explaining the exam. It occurred to me very suddenly that, in the midst of my own damn anxieties, I'd forgotten Eiji's: There were a hell of a lot more male shinobi here than female. Swearing under my breath, I twisted around to locate her; she was hunched between two guys, eyes narrow and wary and decidedly uncomfortable, though she hid it relatively well. To show my undying support, I flashed her a grin; she returned a strained smile. I seriously considered standing up and kicking one of the guys out of his seat, but I thought the changing of assigned seats would be frowned upon, damn it.
Frowning darkly, I faced forward. So, a written test. Damn, I was bored already—but then, after three years with Aruno-sensei, I should have been used to that. The only way to get a fight was to pick one with a younger, stupider genin. Or to challenge an older one with enough pride, if you were feeling lucky.
Still, a written test. Not so bad. I'd probably do alright. If worst came to worst, I could cheat. Cheating ranked right up there with telling lies—although, while I'd never had the opportunity to cheat before, it seemed like it would be a damn sight easier than lying. You didn't have to talk until you got caught.
My pencil tapped on the table as I looked over the questions I'd been given. Not a secret message to Eiji, though I wished it could be. We'd both probably get half of these. Too bad we couldn't share; with luck, we'd have opposite halves. Raiyo might get one. Maybe two—I remembered teaching him that one myself.
Tap, tap. I just needed to be glad Aruno-sensei wasn't allowed in, or he'd be giving us the damn answers himself. Hell, he'd do it at the top of his damn lungs, too, with pride, like he was helping us. Tap, tap. I was starting to get the occasional dirty look now as I searched for hints to this puzzling and unknown problems in the words of the proctors.
Red hair, like a poisonous butterfly—no, the same Kumo-nin as before. Damn. I needed to stop jumping at shadows.
"Time's up, boys and girls," announced the proctor, condescension lacing his voice. I looked up in shock. What? I had half a problem done—no, a problem and a half, I'd managed to get that one I'd taught Raiyo fairly quickly.
"Now you're sharing answers, children." If I hadn't been so heartened by the words, I might have stabbed him for the last. Children. Hah. We hadn't been children since the Academy—or before. Hell, not since we learned the word kill, at least.
But this meant I could skip over to Eiji and ease her suffering and steal answers while she smirked at me for having so few. How I loved that girl.
Oh, but—"You may get one answer from a teammate, and one from another genin of your village. The rest have to be from other villages' shinobi, girls and boys."
Damn. I could practically hear Aruno-sensei—this is a lesson in teamwork and cooperation and assessment and blah blah blah. Well, fine. I'd just avoid everyone with a Suna headband.
Although I sure as hell couldn't have told you why.
-/-
Two hours later, I was standing in front of 'The Forest of Death' without a clue as to what the hell the 'gimmick' of that test had been.
Several teams had been eliminated for cheating—getting more than one answer from their own squadmates or villages—but that can't have been the whole point, to see who could follow orders and cooperate? Eiji had already figured it out, I was sure. Hell, maybe it was just an ordinary test. Maybe they were going to grade us for real. Damn. That would be unexpected.
For the third time, I jumped at a flicker of red in my peripheral vision. This time, it wasn't the shinobi from Kumo, but a girl from Amegakure whose hair was more orange than red anyway. I ground my teeth in frustration.
Eiji folded her arms and stared me down.
"Alright, Sunako, what's up? You look like some damn lazy frogs crawled in your sandals."
I snorted and started to say something dismissive when it occurred to me to wonder why the hell I was trying to lie to her. Not only was I going to fail miserably, as I always did when attempting such a thing, I had nothing to hide. Everyone here knew I'd come from Suna—and as far as I knew, no one here gave a damn. Konoha and Suna were allies.
"Someone from back home," I admitted. "I keep thinking I've seen him, and it's getting on my damn nerves."
"Me, too, your jumping is driving me up a wall, girl." She grinned, showing she was kidding—and it applied to her next statement as well. "A guy, huh? From so long ago. I smell the luuuuurve."
I cast her a reproachful look, half-snickering and trying my damndest not to. "We were five, Eiji."
"True love lasts forever!"
"You sound like Aruno-sensei," I shuddered. "No, trust me, Gaara sure as hell wasn't the type for any kind of love—not from what I heard."
"Alright. Tell me what he looks like; I'll keep an eye out for him."
"Hell no," I said. "I don't want to find him. I wish I didn't know what he looked like."
Our tones were light, but Eiji saw the fear in my brown eyes, and hers deep down were solemn blue. She pulled me close in a one-armed hug.
"Don't worry, hun, I'll protect you from that big nasty ninja."
"Deal," I said. "And I'll protect you from every other shinobi here, not to mention anything else we meet in the Forest of Death." With the final phrase, I widened my eyes and lowered my voice. We both snickered.
Glancing over my shoulder at Raiyo, I was suddenly damn sure I knew why he wasn't talking. Our bond sure as hell would've been hard to break—hard even to slip in edgewise.
A couple of genin got into a scuffle a few feet away; sighing, I turned to eye them. They were just throwing punches, no jutsus or anything, but at least it was something to take my mind off Gaara…
A thunk and a whimper of pain from just behind me had me spinning. I found myself face-to-face with Raiyo's hand—which had a kunai embedded in it. He had stopped the damn thing from burrowing into my brain, but he hadn't caught it as Eiji would have… he had tried.
Wordlessly, I glanced past him to see another couple of brawling genin, obviously bored as hell with this damn waiting. It was their stray kunai that had almost killed me. Looking back at Raiyo as he lowered his hand, tugged out the weapon, and tried to heal over the skin with a bit of chakra. He ended up expending a damn sight more than he meant to and not even fully healing it. Biting his lip, he gave up, wiping the gifted kunai off on his just-past-knee-length pants and shoving it in his holster.
Looking sideways at Eiji, who was gazing scornfully at her teammate, I dug some bandages out of my own kunai holster and wrapped Raiyo's sluggishly-bleeding hand.
"Thank you," I said, voice still shaking with a touch of shock. He took his hand back and mumbled something—his own thanks or a 'you're welcome,' I couldn't tell—and I felt a wash of relief. So he could still speak. Even if Eiji was getting crueler. And when he turned his face to her with some hope of—what, congratulations? Gratitude?—she let her expression go blank and turned her face away.
Ignorance is always the silence that hurts the most.
But I knew why she was doing it… I thought. She had to stop him. He damn well knew shinobi couldn't be in love or they'd get themselves killed.
Somehow, I didn't think it was helping.
-/-
The damn proctor, a man with scarred and lumpy arms but a smooth face, finally showed up and told us our task. Risking our lives and dragging Raiyo along for a five-day cut-throat vacation, Eiji had said; it figured she'd found out long before the rest of us.
"Each squad receives one, count them, one scroll," announced the proctor in a booming voice that nearly made me jump out of my skin. I scowled. "On this one, singular scroll is a map, and that map is the path you must, I repeat, must take to the tower at the center of the Forest. Some maps have quicker routes than others—and they all, all intersect with at least one other team's path at some point. With a little bit of luck"—he chuckled—"or skill or timing, you might, just might meet someone with a shorter route. It's up to you, and only you, to determine this. Anyone who strays from their map's path or remains inside the Forest after five, after the fifth day, will be disqualified."
He paused. "And, yes, children, it is a race." Then he went off about some damn release forms. Hah. We were ninja. And there he went, another damn adult calling us children. Did any of them have any common sense?
This task was stilted slightly in the older genin's favor, I could tell. Or at least, the ones who had taken it before; we were older, but not counted in that number of favored. They knew the forest probably a tad better, and could make decisions better about which route was shortest.
Oh, hell, who cared? We'd go fast. I sure as hell wasn't going to let some twelve-year-old just out of the Academy take my place as a chūnin.
The three of us started forward to receive our scrolls—and release forms—and our course intersected rather abruptly with another squad going in the same direction. I stopped short in an attempt not to collide with anyone—and stumbled back very abruptly when I saw blood red hair and seafoam eyes.
I clamped down on my chakra, refusing to let the blood-soaked sand respond to my sudden, inexplicable fear. Maybe his eyes did it; they slid slightly toward me—and a few grains quavered into the air, unbidden, as my concentration slipped—and sent panic shuddering through me. I didn't know why—expect that they were so… so hard, so icy, diamond-hard.
Eiji grabbed my wrist, her grip tighter than her lightly-spoken words expressed. "Is that the one?" she murmured, grinning slightly, making up things to calm me down with a smile. "With the brown hair and that fine face paint? Hm, love, the summer heat just got hotter…."
"No," I said. And I thought, Not the hot one. The cold one. The one with the cold, cold eyes and the skin pale as cold, cold snow.
-/-
The breezes stirred, bringing a wisp of cool air through this still, muggy summer, but he was accustomed to far more heat than this. Perhaps the shimmering humidity threatened sloth and sluggishness on his sand, but it had been a long time since his sand had really given him any trouble. It obeyed him as unfailingly as his terrified siblings—and a good deal more loyally. His waves of gold—the only riches he ever needed—didn't cast him frightened glances at every infraction.
Like Temari was doing now, as they nearly had a collision with a Konoha squad. The Leaf-nin let the Sand-nin go first, of course; everyone always get out of his way—except when they were home, and Kankuro couldn't always be bothered because he was less afraid, and Temari could see her littlest brother just a tiny bit more clearly in the dark.
But here, Gaara cast terror into them both. Certainty of the Konoha squad's approaching death radiated off the blonde like heat from a burn, but the redhead's sand never even twitched, not outwardly...
Inside his gourd, it roiled, a frenzy of gold and thirst for blood. Her blood—he'd tasted it before. He didn't recognize her, not at all, but her blood-soaked, chakra-saturated, little wisps of sand stirred a memory inside his twisted thoughts. A child's vow—to never visit Konoha. Not after their sand had danced together, and she had fled the desert with her mother.
It was her, yes. Yes, he knew who she was, and his emotionless eyes followed her for a moment before flicking back forward.
He wasn't a child anymore, not outwardly. And orders were orders, even for a demon.
-/-
A/N: I think I'm going to try and post this every other Friday, opposite of Obsession… Once I get back on schedule, that is. Plus, I'm probably losing my computer soon for… who knows how long… so if you don't see chapters, that's why. But I'm definitely continuing this now. :D