Chapter 10
The next few nights left me in terror. I never knew if any of them would be the last time I fell asleep. I was always wondering; will this be the last morning I see?
Gaara kept his word and stayed beside me each night though we never brought up the tears I shed on the shoulder of his clone and neither of us ever mentioned the look of sadness on my face when reminded that he could only touch me or give comfort to me with hands formed of sand.
I tried to act normally; I would run laps every morning and trained in the afternoon. I would still practice with the academy students as their 'enemy' from time to time. Nobody knew me very well; the village still seemed to dislike me as a whole, so I knew that my death wouldn't impact anyone. Sure the academy students would be a bit put out that their sparring buddy wouldn't be coming back and Sena might feel sad for a small while but impending loss of life really struck home that I was not a part of the community here.
"Hey Fatso!" It was one of the snot noses I sparred with. I called him Big Brass though he didn't seem to know I was mocking his self-importantance and arrogant attitude; he seemed to think I was commenting on his skill. We didn't exchange names on our little battlefield so insults became call tags, I was Fatso and they had a myriad of monikers that amused me but confused them. It wasn't like they could ever understand pop culture references from another dimension.
Stopping my jog towards the training grounds long enough to catch the shuriken he threw with a finger through the middle of it and pocket it didn't seem like his ideal answer to his call. I could hear the words he was going to use before he began but I let him speak anyway.
"I heard you're doing a special graduation exam today in the desert." It wasn't articulated as a question but I nodded anyway. "Is it true that anyone can come watch?"
"I hadn't heard about that," I admitted with a sigh, "but I doubt anyone could stop you. Even if it's in the desert, it will still be in the village's limits."
"Sweet! Just remember we will still beat your ass even if you are a genin." He thumbed his nose but the grin was hidden behind his face mask.
"You have to hit me first!" I couldn't help but wonder if he noticed the bravado. As things stood I wouldn't last long enough for them to land a hit. Maybe I should let them before things get too bad. The thought left a sour taste in my mouth.
The exam would be after dinner so I had plenty of time to train beforehand. Apparently the Jounin Council thought testing a twenty five year old woman to be a genin after a couple months training was a farce and were only attending to ascertain that Gaara would not pass me because of sentimentality. Temari had scoffed at that and Kankuro sighed heavily but Gaara just shrugged like he was used to such slights. I was under the impression that being a Kage for over a decade would lend credence to his ability but it seemed that there were those who just couldn't trust in Gaara.
I didn't do any heavy training, nor did I learn any new jutsu, knowing that I would need my stamina for the exam. Instead I went over basic taijutsu katas before branching off into the more advance styles I learned as I could. The sun had set beneath the cliffs surrounding the Village before I made my way to the tower for whatever mess Kankuro was cooking tonight. I learned long ago not to ask what was in his meals and to just be happy I was eating.
"Hey Harper!" The puppeteer had kept a plastered grin on his face since the night we learned I was dying; I was actually getting used to it and knew it was best to let him do what helped. "Got an awesome stamina fortifying stew for dinner tonight!"
Temari scoffed as she set out the tableware. "The pile of mush is what now?"
"What? Its got all sorts of stuff. I put a bunch of-" the face paint master reeved up to list his ingredients with pride but Gaara cut him off quickly with a command to stop and I figured I wasn't the only one who employed the 'don't ask don't tell' method for Kankuro's cooking.
The other option was that they knew how nervous I really was, even though I was trying to hide it from not just them but also from myself, and were trying to make me laugh and relax. There was more merit to that option honestly because I could hardly picture Gaara as someone afraid of something as simple as a meal.
Even with Kankuro's badgering and mock harassment about how healthy his meal was I couldn't really stomach more than a few bites. I even had to go grab my headphones and iPod to relax enough to wash the dishes; which was a whole other experience in Suna with the water ration.
The ten minute run to the small patch of desert I would be tested on completely knotted my muscles and I felt an acute need to vomit away the dinner I barely managed to eat but when we got there I realized that nerves were pointless. The way things were going I wasn't going to live long enough to really enjoy the genin experience and I was too old to be put on a team with a sensei. This was for my own peace of mind. There was no need to be nervous if I wasn't doing this to prove myself to anyone else.
Taking a deep breath I gently placed my iPod onto the ground with the silent hope that sand wouldn't worm into my old school headphones and stood before the instructor who would proctor my exam. He did not look impressed.
First he had me throw shuriken at a target, huffing impatiently as I took careful aim and hit the bulls eye the first time and a soft shink sound as the shuriken thereafter drove it into the post further. After that he ran me through different katas for taijutsu variations taught in the academy. Without even looking up from his paper he told me to perform the Bunshin no Jutsu. Before I could a loud cry came from somewhere to the west and I almost rolled my eyes as Matsuri was forcibly dragged into view by a rough looking man with teeth missing in his grin.
Gaara lifted his hand nonchalantly to send sand his way when the man quickly brought a kunai to the fangirl's throat with a sneer.
"Make a move and the girl dies. Or would you choose that new broad over an honored citizen of Suna?" That had me raise an eyebrow, word of drama spread to bandits too, it seemed. The man flicked his gaze to me and before I could open my eyes from a blink the most mindboggling array of visions swept through me.
It wasn't a complete vision; not one that went from point A to B all the way through to the end. Instead I saw two beginnings. One showed Gaara moving to disable the hostile force by his own strength; the future attached to that was rife with political nonsense about choosing to ignore Matsuri's wellbeing even though she comes out just fine. The other...
Almost second nature I fingered the random kunai that I was never told to throw and without pause snapped it up and threw it with picture perfect accuracy into the man holding that stupid sniveling idiot's eye without pausing to be satisfied with the easy way it slid through skull and brain to poke out the back of his head. There had been no need to take aim. I saw clearly that I would hit with deadly precision so taking all the time to aim and line up the shot was pointless because I already knew.
A part of me figured I should feel something. I just killed someone. That person dead on the ground was no longer breathing because of me. But I knew before I killed him that he would die. There was no time to lament my actions as five more bandits closed in from the observer circle. This really was just like a shounen anime; I mean really, five bandits just chilling in around waiting for their cue?
Gaara looked unimpressed and would have probably obliterated them easily but that stupid clingy bitch flung herself into his arms with crocodile tears; claiming his hands with hers as if she were panicking. After that the world pitched.
Fighting with opponents out for blood was a completely different ball game than fighting academy students who just wanted to get a hit in. These five bandits would have no problem slicing me open and bleeding me out; I was clear from the glint in their eyes and the determination in their steps. Before it even happened I saw two dash in and cut at opposite diagonals. In that future I was sliced into quarters through bone muscle and sinew; unwilling to die I stepped into the small gap the swords created a few moments later.
After that I was completely on the defensive. Dodge, duck, jump, slide. I was always moving, trying to assimilate the things I could see both with my eyes and my bloodline. There were times when it was unclear which was which. All it took, in the end, was one fumble. In the odd second vision of my bloodline one of the men, a tall, gangly guy with a hook nose and piercing blue eyes, slashed at my leg. In that vision I sidestepped the move and danced away from the next attack with ease but as that slash came up I moved as I should and the second attack didn't come. There was a pause as I moved my body to avoid an attack that never happened and, seeing an opening, one of the bandits tackled me.
I could hear frantic shouting in the background. A male and a female. One seemed to want to act and the other was holding him back. Glancing through the legs surrounding me I saw Matsuri clinging to both of Gaara's hands as if she were terrified; whether that fear stemmed from the bandits or from me or if it was real at all wasn't something I cared about at the moment because my eyes caught sight of the look on Gaara's face.
He was distraught. An unhealthy combination of pure rage and overwhelming concern warred with what seemed like a strong desire to help. He looked like he was in pain. He looked like he wanted to flick Matsuri away like he would a flea and stop all of this now.
Gaara Point of View:
Watching Harper fight was amazing. She slipped between miniscule cracks in the enemies attacks and delivered hits in minutely revealed critical areas. She was fighting five trained fighters and had yet to be scratched when all of a sudden she reacted to something that hadn't happened yet. The mistake landed her on her back with four hostiles circled around her.
My first and only instinct was to destroy them all. I wasn't concerned with how they knew about the exam or the point of all this; I just wanted to taint the sand red with their blood. There wouldn't be enough in their veins to satisfy me. I tried to lift my hands to call on the sand that was my weapon only to notice Matsuri clinging to them desperately.
"Let go." The command was obvious but she just shivered and clung closer to me.
"Gaara-sama I'm scared." She had no reason to be afraid. It was Harper who was in trouble, Harper who was looking at me with apologetic eyes as if she could see a future that was too terrible to speak on. It was Harper lying on the ground with an agitated man unsheathing a dagger over her throat. It was Harper that I couldn't help, couldn't touch, couldn't comfort, couldn't save.
It was maddening. The sand protects me from harm. I am not in danger with Harper. Those thoughts circled around my head over and over. Why does it spring to my protection? Harper is not a threat.
The cold, frightened thought that letting Harper die here might be the wise, or at least easy thing to do flickered through my head and Matsuri tugged my hand. How much longer could she last without a dream popping up and triggering an instability in her chakra system that could not be contained? Just the thought made my chest hurt.
It was like I was a kid again with a constant pain in my heart. Thinking back on that, Yashamaru once explained the different types of pain to me.
"What are more serious are emotional scars…They are the hardest to heal…Physical and emotional scars are a bit different…unlike physical ones, there's no ointment available for emotional ones…And the pain may never go away..."
He said love was the cure for an emotional scar.
Could an emotional scar be caused by the fear of love? Could the sand be protecting me from potential pain? The pain that might come from admitting love?
The line of thought snapped brutally out of line at the glint of the setting sun on the dagger one of the hostiles held to Harper's throat. The weapon plummeted towards her throat but even as I jerked my hands out of Matsuri's grasp sand was flashing forth from the gourd at my back to cover the exposed, vulnerable flesh that peaked from her shirt's neckline.
Harper's eyes closed softly as if she were in pain before she flicked into motion. Without a second's pause she grabbed and broke the wrist holding that knife which was still hovering over the sand and before the man so much as screamed she had the weapon in her possession. A moment later the skin of the broken wrist was split and crimson blood plumed as Harper flicked her own wrist upwards and then back as she twisted away from the torrent of gore so that it fell unhindered onto the sand.
One of the remaining four screamed in anger as his companion bled out but Harper just knelt in the sand, tilting her head to dodge the projectile aimed at her face, as she dug the two domed ear piece and the small black rectangle from the dune she left it in. She shook the box once and sound began to stream out of it louder and louder as she swept her thumb in a circle around its base.
Put on your war paint
You are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down
Strike a match and I'll burn you to the ground
We are the jack-o-lanterns in July
Setting fire to the sky
He-here comes this rising tide
So come on.
Put on your war paint
Cross walks and crossed hearts and hope-to-dies
Silver clouds with grey linings
So we can take the world back from the heart-attacked
One maniac at a time we will take it back
You know time crawls on when you're waiting for the song to start
So dance alone to the beat of your heart
Harper Point of View:
A hunch prompted me to snatch my mp3 player from the ground and shake it once to start the random play feature. I brought it with the assumption that I could time the visions I saw through the music; if I had done that from the start I wouldn't have ended up on the ground and Gaara's sand would not have saved me.
Gaara's sand.
He wasn't using hand seals for that; it protected me as naturally as it did him. In that split instant I saw a possibility. One where Gaara confessed feelings for me. That couldn't happen though. I would be dying soon or I would be linked to someone who wasn't Gaara. It wouldn't be fair to link my mind to one person but constantly think of another. No one deserved to be shared. I would just have to interrupt him before he said it. I really didn't need to feel more guilt at dying and really if he didn't say it, it wouldn't hurt as bad, right?
I put the headphones on quickly and pumped the sounds of 'The Phoenix' as loud as I could as much in an attempt to drive out the angst pounding through me as to focus my timing. The visions started again.
Put on your war paint (the four remaining men all charged at once, pulling back fists or weapons in a rage at the thought of two dead comrades)
You are a brick
(the man on the left swings up in a left diagonal slash) tied to me that's dragging me down(the man behind him stabs past the left wing man's head in an attempt to pierce my shoulder.)
Strike a match(both remaining men make grabs at my legs) and I'll burn (I pivot away and dance to the side) you to the ground
We are the (They regain their footing) jack-o-lanterns in July
Setting fire to the sky (One breaks off and attacks on his own,)
He-here comes this rising tide (I thrust my palm into his chest)
So come on.(I whip around and slam my leg into the same man's side.)
Put on your war paint (I stomp my foot onto his face, knocking him unconscious; it's always wise to double tap)
The fight played out exactly as I saw it. When I saw them counter with something I did not want to happen I changed the future with an action of my own. Everything was stream line, even the swap outs that occurred when I meddled with the time line and as I got used to it I listened to the song play and even moved more in tune with the pop rock anthem. It was a little like aggressive dancing.
The whole song was just about over when the last man finally gave up and stayed down but that future, the one with Gaara explaining himself, was coming up quickly and I just really couldn't face that given the options. I was a coward. I could see the future and that terrified me.
I took one look at Gaara as that last struggler collapsed and I whispered to him, "I'm sorry."
Before he could respond I took off into the desert as fast as I could, hoping it would be fast enough.
Song used:
The Phoenix by Fall Out Boy.