Author's Note

This arc is cut weird and I don't like it, but that's okay. I think. This entire arc is going to be a smack into Land of Wind culture and religions anyways (WHICH IS ENTIRELY HEADCANON) because I want that and this is a very character-driven story (not that I originally intended that per se). And in order to flesh out characterizations, the world needs to be built. The last chapter was the prelude to the smacking. Skip at your own discretion, as always.

Oh yeah, and Katiya's emotionally constipated still. But she should finally have a bowel movement at the end of this arc (again). Like normal bowel movements, they need to happen regularly in order for someone to be healthy. So, that.


Chapter 66

Kankuro (approximate time: 5:00 PM)

"So what'd you think about Anko?" Kankuro asked Katiya when they finally settled into an inn for the night after lunch and a few more hours of walking.

"She might be faking," went Katiya's reply. "It's possible Lord Orochimaru's making her nervous so she's trying to be extra cheery to cover it."

Katiya scowled.

"Or she's pretending to be extra cheery to pretend she's nervous about dealing with Orochimaru to hide her own killing intent." Katiya's voice then flicked into a monotone. "Or, oh wait, that's just what she's like because the psych profile on her's years out of date and she's a Konoha-nin so they're just like that."

It was Kankuro's turn to frown. He had thought Anko Mitarashi was a bit fake-y himself with her blaise remarks about Orochimaru, or at least a bit… overly obnoxious and was hoping the other shinobi had additional insight.

"No baseline," Katiya admitted.

"What?!" Anko had asked as she polished off her sticks of dango hours earlier. "It's like you've never seen anyone eat before!" she had joked.

The conjoined teams had stopped by a pastry shop for lunch before checking into the inn they were at now. At the time, Kankuro had been fiddling with a handheld wire toy while he ate, keeping himself out of direct conversation. Katiya, however, had no such distraction and had neither a mask or goggles to hide her disapproval.

"Not with so much fervor. And not on a mission pertaining to Lord Orochimaru," Katiya had responded evenly over her own ordering of more muted flavors. Poison-checked by a jutsu from Gaara.

"All the more reason to eat and enjoy!" Anko had countered to Katiya's point about Orochimaru before adding rhetorically, "I mean, who can be worried with so much sweet food?"

At that point, Kankuro had spared a glance to the other Konoha-nin, casually chatting amongst themselves as they ate their own treats. Maybe it's just Konoha-nin quirks, Kankuro had thought then. Katiya, as a non-Suna-nin, still wasn't as… odd.

In the present, Gaara stepped out of the bathroom. "I have brushed my teeth twice and I still cannot remove the taste of that kuri no shibukawa-ni from my mouth," he announced, his eyes narrowed in a way that once used to signify someone's impending death.

Seeing Gaara, Katiya's scowl softened and Kankuro hid a grin. Kuri no shibukawa-ni was a dessert we might know as similar to French marron glace. The candied chestnut dessert was far from the more muted savory palate Gaara had come to prefer.

"You should try it, Gaara," Kankuro had told his brother at the shop. "Just to see what it is. I'd be curious to see your expression when you eat it."

Katiya had to be the one to inform Gaara of the polite… or… "polite" way to spit out food, the one that involved covering one's mouth with a disposable napkin and spitting into it while pretending to wipe said mouth. Kankuro, on the other hand, was fully aware of his younger brother's growing preference of less cloying flavors when he dared Gaara to try the treat.

It was a good thing Gaara was now less kill-happy. And that Katiya had the Suna team order a few plain raisin-wheat buns to go.

"I should have you try kuri no kanroni the next time Lunar New Year rolls around! Since you just love kuri no shibukawa-ni so much!" Kankuro told Gaara teasingly, not bothering to hide his grin this time.

"No."

Katiya spared Kankuro a glance and he maintained his unabashed grin under the combined gazes of her and Gaara.

"Where is Temari?"

"Securing the other room," Katiya replied. "I'm surprised you aren't doing the same, actually," she told Kankuro.

"Nah, we've got Gaara."

Katiya blinked, decidedly unamused, though she didn't argue with that logic.

Temari yanked the door open. "Okay, I'm done. Katiya, you can come over on this side. Kankuro, Gaara, you two can have some privacy to do your thing now."

Katiya raised a brow but said nothing, getting up to check Temari's amendments in the room she and her were to share overnight.


Katiya (approximate time: 5;?? PM)

Entering the room, she noticed sound seals on all four side walls, and another one on each door—allowing sound in but not out. Almost perfect if Temari was planning to murder her without her siblings' knowledge because sound (at speech frequencies, at least) could only escape through the ceiling or the floor. Though, the ceiling and floor would've had to be reinforced to sustain human weight while the walls didn't, meaning sound passing through them audibly would've been less likely.

Katiya pondered that as she swung her head back to look at the other seals on the walls. Another set to prevent sensory-nin from using chakra to sense inside, a useful one. She knew how to make the sound seals, but not the chakra sensory one. Another one to filter the air coming in to prevent gaseous poisoning. She knew a version of that one, but didn't use it often—because it was the one seal she had on the interior layer of each of the several balaclavas she wore. (One for each day of the week and ten more in storage.) And she wore those to sleep when she felt extra paranoid…

"Did you write these yourself?"

"Bought," Temari replied, fluffing her pillows.

"Impressive skill on the writer's. How much did it cost?"

"About 50,000 ryo per seal tag."

Katiya eyebrows jumped off her face. It was about 5000 yen in 1970's Japan, in our world's terms, give or take some for differences in inflation rates. Katiya covered her expression before walking around to inspect the other corners of the main space and then into the bathroom. The other kunoichi needed to learn how to haggle better.


Kankuro (approximate time: 5:10 PM)

There was a clause in their holy book, that one's life being in danger was a permissible reason to skip prayer. Before, that was the clause their sensei would remind them of, traveling with an unstable Gaara. "Securing the other room," Katiya had said Temari was doing. Secured from outside listeners; Temari definitely didn't bother doing that when Gaara used to be housed with them on missions. There was never a need to.

Hmm.

"Do your thing now," Temari had told him.

Kankuro didn't know what that could have been referring to until he realized the time. Oh. Sunset, one of their times of prayer.

He didn't consider himself as connected to his mother's religion as Temari was—only praying in-village, if he did—whereas she, as often as their religion dictated unless with an actually permissible reason to skip… It seemed Temari finally felt comfortable enough to not die during prayer while on missions with Gaara. Kankuro shook his head out and unsealed a grass mat out onto the floor, after having cleansed his hands and face in the bathroom. He wasn't a very good religious adherent, but it would've been a waste of Temari's intent, moving Katiya around just to have given him an opening to pray.

"What're you doing?" Gaara asked after Kankuro knelt on the mat.

"Prayer, Gaara."

"Prayer? What for?"

"Religious stuff—I'll explain after—'kay?"

Gaara watched silently as Kankuro did his thing, standing and bowing and chanting in a language he didn't understand. He waited for Kankuro to finish rolling his mat back up before speaking.

"I don't remember Uncle Yashamaru ever praying like that."

"It… Uncle Yashamaru's agnostic. And technically Father was too? But the entire Kazekage lineage he came from's been religious. Except for Great-Gramp Shamon. He's adopted and converted to the Land of Wind's southern religion even though he was raised with Great-Granny Nadira with our northern one. Still don't know what prompted him to tattoo himself… that's… still a sin for those guys, pretty sure.

"But anyways. Mom was a pretty serious adherent. Prayed with Temari and me a lot when we were kids. And then after she had died, Father had some of his aides drag us to prayer with Priest Rafi. For her sake, I guess."

"Baki?" Gaara asked, referring to one of the possible aides.

"Mm, nah. We didn't meet him until I was, like, five. I forget who they were…"

Gaara looked down to his stomach where his seal was. His mother being religious was news to him despite Shukaku living within him and Gaara once believing Shukaku was the manifestation of her will.

"What does it mean?"

"Uhh…" he started before realizing Gaara was referring to the prayer chant. "God, you're the greatest, I worship no one but you; protect me from evil, protect me from evil, protect me from evil. God, you are unique and powerful. Glory to you, God? Glory to you, God… something-something prophets? Protect me from hellfire later, on the day I die, let me be accountable for the stuff I did… peace and blessings, ask Temari."

Once Kankuro brought his eyes down from the ceiling, he and Gaara blinked at each other.

"Look, when I was younger, I was just told to memorize the prayer chant. I didn't even know the chant was supposed to translate into something until I was, like, eight. Before then, I just thought some guy thought the syllables sounded nice together," Kankuro told Gaara with a wide-eyed shrug.

"Why not chant it in the common tongue?"

"... Long story. Err… You know that old historical-ish myth? About how some 'foreign god' came in, gave us our chakra, and also did a jutsu to get us to speak and write their language—our current common tongue?" Kankuro asked.

Gaara nodded. It was considered ancient history that shinobi classes tended to glaze over in the Academy but luckily something Yashamaru had thought of note, to teach Gaara about.

"Basically, that jutsu rewrote existing literature, including our holy book. No big, because it's just translating, really. But the ancient scholars still remembered from the original scripture that prayer in any other language besides the one our holy book was originally written in makes the prayer invalid. So they wrote out the phonetics in the common tongue as best they could and told us to pray with that because no one can write or speak in the ancient ones after that jutsu."

"And the phonetic transliteration is preferable to a translation?"

"Something-something 'God just interprets that as an accent' something-something? I guess he only speaks that one language but can still interpret bad accents. I dunno. I kinda suck at religion," Kankuro admitted after a minute.

Gaara dropped the conversation topic.


Katiya (approximate time: ???)

Katiya laid on her side in bed, watching Temari, both unable to sleep. Temari was just moving more. But then finally, after a moment of silently laying on her back, Temari rolled over. Only to be face-to-face with Katiya, who smiled at her… endearingly? Temari promptly rolled over to the other side. And then Katiya rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

Temari was way too trusting, Katiya decided. Temari clearly never bunked with anyone besides her own family, judging by her toothbrush and toiletries piled to one side of the bathroom's counter. If Katiya had done the same in Oto, she was asking for her toothbrush to be turned into a toilet scrubber—at best—or toothpaste, cup, brush… or even dental floss to be replaced with something injurious or sprinkled with contact poison. Eyes narrowed, Katiya wondered if she should verbally warn the other kunoichi or just mildly poison her, Otogakure-style.

After deciding poisoning was too expensive, the blonde kunoichi in question got out of bed. "Kankuro, Gaara! We're sleeping with this door open!" Temari declared after opening it unannounced.

Katiya flicked her eyes over to Temari as she threw herself back into bed but there was no eye contact. It seemed Temari had cracked first—opening the seal-covered door between the team's shared rooms meant her siblings could hear whoever screamed—should one scream. It meant Temari was more afraid of being axe-murdered by her than she was by Temari. Katiya humorlessly smirked.

And then the two rooms went near silent, besides the ticking clock and quiet breathing, bedding rustles. Katiya began to count the clock's ticks. Sometimes, she'd lose track when a thought wandered in. So she'd restart her count, unasleep yet. But Temari was already out. Too trusting. Katiya picked the clock off the center nightstand to stare at, placing it next to her where she slept on her right side, facing away from Temari's bed. 3600 "ticks" made an hour. More than that had passed.

Next to her head and with her trained-up hearing, with every tick, the clock made a threshing sound in her ears. Like the sound of grain being beaten out of its husk whenever the sound of the clock overloaded her eardrums. Regular human speech did that too, sometimes, over sixty-five decibels. With chakra, she could regulate her ears better, restricting them to certain decibel ranges or frequencies, or pushing them to hear more than civilians could. But when trying to sleep, expanding the auditory range was useless and restricting it was deadly. Useless, because in a mass bunker on a good day, all one would hear would be cacophonous breathing; deadly, because on a bad day, the murderer over one's bed would not be heard.

Murderer. Ticking. It had been a while since she heard that while attempting to sleep. Was she a ticking time bomb?

The prison cells had no clocks. And she unsealed none where she was living, in Yashamaru's house. There was one on the oven, three timers, another on the fireplace mantle, on the coffee table, surely one in Gaara's own room. But none in hers. She awoke by the sunlight coming in through the window. Or by the looming feeling of dread in the middle of the night Oto taught her was a sign of her weakness.

She hadn't had a clock to lull her to sleep since she was in Oto. With every tick, the clock made a threshing sound in her ears. Like the sound of grain being beaten out of its husk whenever the sound of the clock overloaded her eardrums. The beating didn't hurt enough. She could still think. Still feel her humanity. She pressed her left thumb into the clock, rubbing against its metal edge, wishing it were sharper.

What was she doing on this mission?


Gaara (approximate time: 12:00 AM)

Gaara stood up from his bed where he was seated, eyes closed, meditating… and periodically talking to Shukaku. But after an hour, he felt Katiya's chakra signature writhe. Sleeping people's chakra did not feel that way. But from what he knew of Katiya, suicidal people's did.

He got up to check on her, Shukaku quieting on his own accord.

"… Katiya?"

She jolted, but didn't look over her shoulder until a moment later, her eyes having been fixed on a clock tight in her grip. Gaara approached and lightly seated himself on the edge of her bed.

"What're you doing?"

"Nothing," went her barely audible reply. "I… Can't sleep. The clock's too loud."

Gaara glanced at the clock in her hand beside her head and then back to her, her eyes fixed back to it.

"I can put the clock in the other room. It would be farther from you then."

"... Temari needs the alarm."

"I can wake her up in the morning."

"No. It's alright." Pause. Long pause. "The clock. I used… I used to count the ticks to the clock when I couldn't sleep in Oto. It just reminded me, that's all. This entire mission does."

There was another pause as neither spoke.

"Did—do you ever get this.. thrill? When you get yourself hurt? Intentionally? Or when you think about it? Like this tickle in your chest?"

Gaara brought a hand up to the scar he carved into his forehead. "My sand barrier tends to prevent me from getting hurt. Even by myself," he reminded her… The only time he managed to do it was the time he most strongly felt love was meant to hurt. "But… when I killed other people, I would get something similar."

Katiya closed her eyes, silently wondering how messed up they were.

"Do you miss it? The feeling?"

Shukaku chose that moment to jump up, yelling the affirmative before rolling over and settling back down under Gaara's glare.

"Sometimes."

Harming oneself and harming others were not so different; they were only different in which direction the harm was directed. But like the 'warmth' gained from an item too cold, to seek that thrill—that joy—from harm would always be deathly in the end. Death, the most extreme harm a being can inflict unto a mortalizing reality. Though the pair did not quite have the words to verbalize it, they both knew this. And Katiya had been reminded by Gaara often enough, that if one's instinct or urge was harmful in reality, there was no reason why to follow it.

Katiya pulled herself from sleeping position to yank the blankets out from under him. Wrapping herself and the clock she held in the blankets, she sat next to him on the side of the bed. Sitting back down, Gaara watched her face though she didn't meet his eyes, instead staring at the curtained window.

"Your sister's too trusting," she told him at last. Gaara recognized the statement as indirect admission that Katiya had held the thought to harm her. "Her toiletries were out in the open, she left her gear outside of her arm's reach, and she's actually sleeping."

Gaara looked over to his sleeping sister, who in her defense, put her gear one step away despite it being outside of her arm's immediate reach.

"I would sleep with my pouches on in Oto," she told him. "Sleep on stacks of blankets just to accommodate the pouch lumps. Have a glass of water by my bed."

Gaara flicked his eyes to a spot just above Katiya's pillow, where her unmounted pouched belt was laid. It would be the first time she'd sleep without it on for a long, long time, actually. Because while she once had a chakra-sensitive belt buckle that only unclasped to her, unable to use chakra, she could not use it, decreasing the utility of her sleeping with it on. The glass of water was self-explanatory for her water jutsu or as a projectile, though.

"And she's just sleeping. It—it's too easy," Katiya hissed. "It feels too easy to… to kill her. Betray you. Especially heading into Oto-controlled territory."

"If someone had been truly intending to betray another, I doubt they would have told them," Gaara countered.

"Unless it was their intention to slip under the enemy's guard, off-balance them, like in psychological warfare."

Gaara flicked his eyes down to the clock in Katiya's hand. Her unseeing eyes were fixed on the closed-curtained window. He wondered why the fixation on the clock.

"Orochimaru. He used psychological warfare techniques on you, didn't he."

Katiya closed her eyes at that, bringing the clock to rest on her forehead. "Yes," she replied, barely audibly. "I knew it, too. I knew what he was doing. But it wasn't like genjutsu—he hadn't blanketed every one of his bases in his chakra—it—it was all—all—"

She paused, pulling the clock away from her face. It was all manipulation solely by civilian means.

"I thought I was—would be—I thought I was protected, knowing I was going to get psychologically manipulated. I knew that much, heading into Oto. But… even… even though I knew I was getting manipulated, it didn't help. Because I had no way to counter the manipulation itself. Even though I knew it was there."

Katiya now took the time to look down at the clock in her hands.

"Orochimaru needed soldiers. So I became one. Enhanced my hearing," she explained. "When it's all quiet like this, sudden sounds like the clock hurt my ears unless I chakra-block them. It's the bargain I made, I suppose," she told Gaara.

Perhaps half of a story, if being generous.

Gaara held a hand out for the clock, to take it away. "It doesn't mean you deserve to suffer for it. It's safer for you now."