Chapter 61

Gaara (one month later, 10:00 AM)

"Thankfully, no one directly died from this latest incident," Senior Lord Ebizo said carefully, referring to the attack that happened on Katiya and Gaara relatively recently. The pair in question, finally called to his office after the latest near-assassination occurred.

Katiya and Gaara exchanged glances.

"However, we've recently learned the shinobi that orchestrated the genjutsu you were under has committed suicide in prison."

Katiya bit back a derisive snort, unsurprised and possibly deciding Suna ought to start putting suicide watches on their prisoners. Shukaku roiled, annoyed that it hadn't made a difference that Gaara had spared the attacker previously.

"Did that shinobi reveal any clues as to who set up the attack on Katiya before committing suicide?" Gaara asked for her.

"No," Ebizo told the pair. "And it's been suggested to me the 'supposed' genjutsu you were under—initiated by taste as you allege—is a ploy to have your chakra collar and suppression bands removed. The Council had therefore been considering increasing the length of your house arrest," he said, referring to the attack format she had dealt with.

"Perfect," Katiya intoned. "Did the guy I stab also die?" she asked.

"... No," Ebiso replied after checking a document. "The medics managed to stabilize his condition, though he was unable to confirm anything besides the fact that he was a former genin of Suna, before resigning his commission three years ago due to a botched mission."

Gaara let out a low growl. "What of the Suna ANBU who previously attempted to assassinate me? Is there a connection?"

Katiya furrowed her brow. A previous Suna-led assassination attempt on Gaara was news to her.

Ebizo shook his head. "The ANBU from your previous alleged assassination attempt are now being held in Hozuki Castle per Lord Kankuro's request after they gave signed confessions of nonassociation to Sunagakure as an entity."

"What of the ANBU meant to guard Katiya?"

"The apparent genjutsu was likely a focused and directed one, such that it only affected Katiya herself. Hence why you were not affected and why the ANBU made no mention of it in their reports. They did, however, state they did not intervene for fear of hindering your own jutsu," Senior Ebizo replied to Gaara with a shake of his head.

Katiya rubbed her lips with her fingers. "So what does this mean for me?"

Ebizo cleared his throat. "It means things are going to have to continue as they are for a little while longer. We're still waiting on a few reports from our scouting missions to the bases you named, and with the death of the apparent genjutsu orchestrator after this incident, the Council will likely put further scrutiny on you and your ability to act freely."

"Doesn't the suspicious death of that guy mean anything though?" she asked rhetorically, "The Council can't have expected me to be able to sneak into their holding area with suppression bands and three ANBU following, do they?"

Ebizo pursed his lips. "If all goes well for you, perhaps not."

Katiya (approximate time: 11:something)

She and Gaara had left Ebizo's office for Yashamaru's place. The neighborhood was quiet as ever, perhaps only a few houses occupied, laundry hanging out the windows. The laundry owners, somehow not minding the sand reaccumulating in their laundered clothes.

"I wasn't aware anyone was living in this neighborhood," Katiya mused in a quiet monotone, looking to the hanging laundry, puzzled though her tone still failed to suggest it—as it was since she had joined Oto. "You or Kankuro get any notices about buyers? You two built the entire neighborhood."

Gaara flicked his eyes to Katiya's before glancing to the presumably occupied house. "I didn't."

"Squatters," Katiya suggested flatly.

"... Most civilians believe this place to be cursed and most shinobi would rather stay in a shinobi district," Gaara replied quietly, "Perhaps only if the squatters felt they had little choice but to live here."

Katiya raised a brow at that.

"There were some orphaned children living in the wreckage here before it was reconstructed," Gaara said. "They're likely still here if they had nowhere else to go."

"Doesn't Suna have a shinobi program for that?"

"Suna's shinobi academy doesn't accept students that can't externally mold chakra," Gaara reminded her, looking like he was thinking of something else. Perhaps thinking of Rock Lee, who if an orphan, would not have been allowed into Suna's shinobi academy. And about how some chose to take their chances on the streets than stay in the failing orphanages of Suna.

Katiya hummed indifferently. Better civilian squatters than more assassins, I guess, she thought.

...

"I plan to take a mission soon," Gaara told her as they settled into Yashamaru's house.

Right, Katiya thought, because someone still needs to pay the bills around here. A memory of the past when Yashamaru was still alive flashed in Katiya's mind. All I do is leech off people.

"Didn't you already have a mission to train the Academy kids?"

"The mission was to oversee curriculum changes from Konoha after the alliance's re-establishment. Temari volunteered to handle it while I take another mission. Kankuro, too, will be going on another mission soon."

Gaara paused to switch subjects. "Do you think you can go to your monthly check-ins with Senior Erusa alone or should I ask Kankuro to join you?"

Katiya blinked. Kankuro. Gaara's brother. The one who stopped her from—

"I don't mind going alone," she replied.

Gaara met her eyes. "I don't want what happened last time to happen again," he told her.

Katiya startled as she thought Gaara was referring to her suicide attempt before realizing he meant the genjutsu attack on her.

"It's okay, Gaara. I don't want to be a burden on you or your brother."

Gaara put his hand on Katiya's shoulder. This time the sand was still.

"It's a burden I will carry willingly if it means our future burdens can be shared between us, Katiya."

Gaara (one week later, approximate time: 7:00 AM)

Gaara picked up his mission briefing scroll and headed to the border to meet his team. According to the briefing, he was set to go on a transport mission of an emissary from a village south of Suna to the Land of Fire. After the Suna Council and Konoha had negotiated following the invasion, Konoha had agreed to impose a "foreign origination fee" on missions that originated from outside the Land of Fire. And as a result of the fee, Suna was gradually getting more missions back from civilians who didn't want to fork out the extra money. Though the daimyo himself had yet to renegotiate with Suna on behalf of the Land of Wind as a whole.

This mission, however, was set to be led by a chunin this time—unlike the first mission Gaara went on as part of the standard infantry where he himself was the leader. It would be the first mission he'd take with someone other than Baki leading him. Shukaku, reminding Gaara about how he used to kill the people who held fear of him—that fear quick to change to anger. Gaara, on the other hand, knew that his reputation was responsible for the chunin's apprehension and that the only way to change that was by acting otherwise.

As Gaara neared the village border, he made out two shinobi standing separate from the border patrol. His team, Gaara assumed. Hasani: chunin, and Suname: genin, the mission scroll had read. As Gaara neared his mission team, he could feel the chunin's—Hasani's—chakra shift nervously from the proximity. Gaara paused. He made sure to make no sudden motions of attack from where he was stopped within two meters of the pair.

Shukaku let out a depressed and bored huff. i likEd it beTter whEn we ActUaLLy goT to kill thinGs. don't tell mE yoU're sTiLL goinG to avoiD sLeePinG juSt to preVent Me from plaYing, arE you?

Gaara mentally replied in the affirmative. Shukaku knew Gaara's default response to killing peers at that point.

Shukaku let out an exaggerated groan of frustration. YoU CAN PrEteND tO BE a SAiNT ALL yoU WAnT riGHt NOW bUT watCH! WheN soMeThiNg YOU carE aBouT's oN the LinE, yOu'd bE WiLLinG tO sLaUghTer pEOpLe JusT LiKe ME! Shukaku yelled back, forcing Gaara to recall how he had killed two enemy shinobi when his student Matsuri was kidnapped.

Gaara took a calming inhale. He vowed to walk a path beyond that of a monster. And that meant he could not harm those that could be ally. It was a decision whose ramifications he would accept.

"N-ow that we're all here, let's head out," Hasani said, apparently resolving to pretend Gaara was any other shinobi.

Kankuro (two weeks later, approximate time: 12:00 PM)

"Are you sure you should be working on that thing when I'm in the room?" Katiya asked. "I know I said I didn't mind you using the coffee table but I don't want you to be accused of selling national secrets or something."

Kankuro looked up from his work where the open anatomy of his war puppet was currently strewn over the aforementioned coffee table. "Gaara trusts you so—so do I."

"And that's it?"

"You wanted more to it?" Kankuro rhetorically asked in reply.

Kankuro took a pause from his work to watch the thoughts flicker past Katiya's face.

"We're trained shinobi. Isn't it imperative you trust no one?"

Kankuro snorted derisively. Man, she sounds like one of Father's shinobi conduct manuals.

"We're trained shinobi but we're still people," Kankuro countered. "If we didn't trust each other, we'd never even have a shinobi village to begin with."

"So you'd trust me. Even though I killed your father."

Huh.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, I need to pick up my father's autopsy report. It went out a while ago, but I keep forgetting," Kankuro said, purposely obtuse.

It was Katiya's turn to pause. "You're not... upset?"

"I'm not," Kankuro said, fixing Katiya with a long, hard stare. "Because the Lord Kazekage was one hell of a sucky father."

Kankuro broke eye contact as he remembered the "training" he'd get from his father before becoming a puppeteer. How badly beaten he got when he messed up, and still told—forced—to get up. Because if he messed up on the battlefield, he was dead and no one was going to help him, his father taught. Not even the people supposed to love him.

"He never really had time for us after mom died," Kankuro said aloud. "Not that I remember much before then. But let's just say he was just better at commanding hardened shinobi than raising kids."

Kankuro shook his head, trying to remember better memories with the Puppeteer Corp. "How 'bout you?" Kankuro asked, changing the subject. "I'm sure you had a story. Why'd you kill the Kazekage?"

"Because of what he did to Gaara," she told him softly. "And to me... I would've never run away from Suna if not for him," she admitted. "When Lord Orochimaru gave me the opportunity, I took it. I don't know why he gave it to me because I'm sure I wasn't the only person to hate Rasa and I definitely wasn't one of his top fighters—but he did it. And I took it."

Kankuro put down the instruments he was using to fix his puppet.

"We ambushed him by the canyons at the Land of Wind's border and then Lord Orochimaru—Orochimaru—set up his Four Violet Flames barrier and beat Rasa down with his top fighter—the guy who was his top fighter—Kimimaro. Kind of like how the assassination of the last Hokage was planned to go. Except after the fighting was over, Orochimaru used his snakes to restrain Rasa. Instead of killing him directly. And then he took down the barrier and all of the attack team gathered around... and that's when... when he allowed me to do it," Katiya said.

Kankuro took in the information quietly. He was sure the autopsy report would verify Katiya's statement.

"How did it feel?" Kankuro asked instead, a strange brightness in his eye. "How did it feel to kill the Kazekage?"

Katiya let out a breath. "Nothing like I expected."

She took a breath. "When I told Gaara about how I killed his father and he just accepted it I thought it was just him..." she said, taking a break from the conversation topic, leaning back in her seat and putting the book she had been reading over her chest.

"I've... killed before. Even before joining Oto. Self-defense, mostly. And then after a while in Oto—I just stopped caring and it just—became a routine. But the Kazekage? When I was first driven from Suna—away from Gaara—I thought I'd feel vindicated. But I felt... nothing, really."

Katiya flicked her eyes to Kankuro, who was staring at his open puppet unblinkingly.

"Yeah," Kankuro eventually said in understanding. Yeah.

Katiya (approximate time: 4 in the afternoon)

"Your Council takes forever to do anything," Katiya decided, looking to Kankuro.

"They're like that everywhere, I think," Kankuro replied.

Katiya had just gotten out of her check-in with Senior Erusa. Yes, her chakra suppression bands were still intact. No, she did not tamper with her chakra collar. Yes, she still knew the terms of her house arrest. But until the scouts Suna set to check on the veracity of her statements returned, she was still under house arrest. Which meant her schedule needed to be planned out in advance for her ANBU guards and that she still couldn't leave the shinobi village.

She rubbed her left thumb. It was healed, thanks to her mother's old jutsu still doing its job. And the medical care she got after being readmitted into the prison system after her escape. But the memory of her tearing it off—the thumb—was still there and there was still something visceral about it that Katiya still couldn't shake.

"Do you think your sister will feel the same way you did?" Katiya asked absentmindedly. "About what I did to your father?"

Kankuro gave Katiya a look. "I don't know," Kankuro admitted. "Do you want to tell her yourself?"

Katiya looked at her hands, refocusing. "I killed a lot of other people. Some of them I don't even know the names of. So it's not like I can apologize to every next-of-kin. And. I'm technically already going to be doing my penance by saving as many people as I've killed."

"But do you want to tell her yourself?" Kankuro asked again.

"I should," went Katiya's whispered reply. "For the people I know I killed, they should know. What they do with it'd be their choice."

Katiya took a breath. "When I see your sister someday, I'll tell her."

Gaara (two weeks later, 2:00 PM)

"See you next time," Gaara's chunin mission leader said to him as they entered the village border. Hasani, as Gaara resolved to remember his name.

"Until next time," Gaara replied, the team going their separate ways home to write their reports.

Gaara remembered how Hasani at first acted apprehensively to his presence but recovered as he made no threatening action and how in turn their mission's last member, a genin, acted less apprehensive as well. Less so than Yaoki and Korobi were in the beginning that first mission Gaara went on with the standard infantry. Arriving back in Suna, he resolved to walk the long path back to his quarters in the Kazekage compound. To give himself time to think.

He walked by streets of people that cleared the way for him. Doors and windows shuttered, Shukaku yelling at the change. Gaara had learned not to mind it when he was younger, first because of Yashamaru's care, then bypassing it by entrenching himself in bloodlust. He knew it was only a response to what he had done before. Warranted, though only now he truly noticed it. His pace slowed, noticing every detail of the civilians and shinobi that moved to avoid him. The slight headache that was always there from Shukaku.

As he walked by shuttered doors, he thought of the orphans that were living in Yashamaru's old neighborhood. About how he needed to take responsibility for the role he played in their plight. About how he would need to take responsibility for them as their future Kage. About—

"—Hey—Gaara-sensei! You're back!" a voice called. He had walked past the Sunagakure Shinobi Academy while en route to the Kazekage compound.

Gaara turned round. "Matsuri," Gaara saw. He shifted his gaze. And friends, he realized.

"Gaara-sensei, meet Sari and Ittetsu," Matsuri introduced. "They're friends of mine from a year below me," she said, gesturing to a girl with long brown hair and a boy whose hair was tucked under a bandana. "Sari and Ittetsu, meet Gaara-sensei."

Gaara bowed slightly and the pair of Matsuri's friends did the same.

"I was just telling Ittetsu about how you taught me to use the rope javelin!" Matsuri told him. It was the primarily defensive weapon Gaara had her train in given her pacifical nature prior to her kidnapping; one Yashamaru had taught him how to use in an attempt to teach him how to control his sand tendrils when his father's beatdowns couldn't. And unbeknownst to Gaara, it was now the weapon Matsuri intended to specialize in.

Matsuri continued, beaming, "When they get to my year-level, they want to be taught by you too, Gaara-sensei!"

Gaara blinked. "You are... not afraid of me?" he asked them.

Ittetsu and Sari exchanged glances.

"Maybe when you first started here," Sari admitted.

"But when we heard about how you rescued Matsuri, that changed," Ittetsu added. "The other villagers might think you're a monster, but we'll always remember that you rescued our friend."

Gaara bowed his head again. "Thank you," Gaara replied genuinely, pushing thoughts of Shukaku's rantings out of his mind. "It would be an honor to teach you in the future."

Author's Note

Hasani is an OC, Suname is canonical. Ittetsu and Sari are also canonical. All will be minor characters in this fiction.

Now, onto a bonus scene I now consider somewhat redundant to the main story. And disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist so I have no idea if Gaara's youth would have been better described as psychopathy or sociopathy. (It comes up in the bonus scene.)

Gaara (one week later, approximate time: 3:00 PM)

Gaara's mission report had been processed and he had received his paycheck in the mail like he usually did. And so Gaara got in line for a bank teller. Said line was gradually dwindling as many of the others in line left... fearfully, not wanting to stand in between a Jinchuriki and his current goal: to deposit his paycheck.

He had half-hoped someone he recognized would be there at the bank but the chunin shinobi running security were all unfamiliar to him and the civilians shooting him nervous looks, even more so. Shukaku was loud, noticing the looks but Gaara had responded by closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing. Meditating, like Katiya and Yashamaru used to try to do with him. Gaara trusted his automatic sand defense to protect him from any physical attack that might arise.

"Next!" a middle-aged bank teller called over the edge of her glasses.

Gaara opened his eyes and walked up to the bank counter.

"Ah—actually, it's time for me to go on break," the bank teller decided as Gaara, her next client, came into her view. "One of my associates can assist you over there," the teller said, pointing across the aisle.

LiAR, LIAR! Shukaku yelled from within the confines of Gaara's mind-seal conjunction. LeT's KiLL heR FOR LyiNG! Gaara could practically sense the fellow banker tellers wincing in fear. Externally, Gaara simply blinked in apathy at the bank teller's poor excuse to leave as Shukaku decided he wanted to kill her for lying. Rants of which Gaara ignored.

"I'd like to deposit this," Gaara said, sliding across his paycheck, deposit slip, and shinobi ID like Temari told him to do, his eyes boring into those of the bank teller's. "It won't take long," he added.

The bank teller pursed her lips then wordlessly took the proffered items, breaking off the eye contact as she operated her machine and pulled out the receipt for him. Gaara, warmed—happy?—as he took it.

...

"Now, I don't know if Kankuro or I are going to be able to go with you to the bank especially if you're transferring to the standard infantry so I'll tell you what you have to do and you'll have to remember, okay?" Temari said from Gaara's memory of a few months prior.

Gaara nodded.

"So what happens is you go into the bank. And there's usually a line. You just stand in that line—and it should be labeled—for a bank teller and while you wait you fill out these deposit slips to say how much money you want to deposit. Kankuro, you got one? I know you like to take extra."

"Yep," Kankuro had replied, pulling one out.

Temari took the slip from him, pointing out the fields to fill out. "Do you want to try practicing a bit?" she had asked Gaara cautiously.

He nodded again, filling out the fields as directed on the deposit slip. Temari then explained what he needed to bring for depositing and withdrawing. Withdrawal slips, something he'd need to get for withdrawals like deposit slips for deposits, his shinobi ID card being crucial for both.

"The Suna Council has legal contracts with the local banks to be secured by shinobi," she went on to explain, "But that also means they can't discriminate against shinobi. They can't kick you out for being a Jinchuriki or you can take it up with the Council."

Kankuro coughed into his hand. "Technically though sis, businesses can't do that either," Kankuro countered. Some of them still did anyway, unknowing Gaara once upon a time might've killed them in response, his father having carefully minimized the need for Gaara to interact with them in his more psychopathic youth.

"I don't know what they might pull when we're not there but just remember they're not supposed to. And they'll have us to deal with if they do. You got that?" she asked rhetorically.

Gaara left the bank, his deposit receipt tucked into the chest pocket of the red bodysuit he wore. He got it.