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Alderman Matsuo didn't need the help of his ever-present clipboard to verify the address or review why he was here today. His duties had led him to this squat stucco box of a house many times, including two occasions - one a decade ago, the other all too recently - which had been...unpleasant. It was never easy, breaking bad news to the families. He didn't particularly want to be here now, even though they'd removed the old woman's body some time ago. But this was also his duty to Sunagakure.
He pushed open the door and felt it stick. Trust the old nut to let her house go to ruin, he thought with a scowl. A hard shove and the door swung open without any sign of warped wood touching wood. He glanced at it as he shut it; it closed without a murmur. Odd.
The air inside smelt musty and made him sneeze, but he did not dwell on what other odours could be lurking about. Before a decades-old accident had left him with a bad limp, Matsuo had been a Shinobi. The thought of bodies did not disturb him, even though it had been an unfortunate number of days before they'd found the old woman. The house had no neighbors to notice the smell. To the left was a warehouse, while the road turned in a hairpin away from a sheer fall on the right.
Something brushed Matsuo's face and he stumbled back, old heart seizing. He growled at his own reaction, his voice sounding strange in the barren room. Spider webs tickled his fingers when he reached out, the strands otherwise invisible in the half-light. Evening had fallen, and the power to the house had been cut. Damn, how could the place be such a mess already? She'd only been dead ten days...but she'd probably taken little to no care of the house these past few months. Pitiful, wretched creature. The Alderman brushed away a few more cobwebs with a gesture harsher than required. As the spokesperson between the Shinobi and the civilian population of Sunagakure, Matsuo had delivered 'Killed In Action' notices more often than he could count, but for some reason the old woman's expression a few months ago had lodged in his mind. Face rigid, eyes like stones; she'd looked dead already. That same expression had been his only welcome the few times he'd gone back to see her, to personally pick up her work and check on how she was doing.
Right here, in this deserted house, the memory held an unusual taint of guilt...
From one of the rooms upstairs came a creak.
The Alderman frowned, staring at the ceiling. There it was again. Faint, but too heavy to be a rodent.
The creak sounded a third time. Louder. It was definitely coming from above. Alderman Matsuo glanced out the window. The dust of Suna's streets was undisturbed by any breath of wind, and the house around him was still and silent as if listening with baited breath for the next sound. What could-
Creak...creak...creak...
It was becoming regular. The Alderman stared at the ceiling as if he could discern the origin of the sound through the wood warped by dry air and time.
"Is someone up there?" he called. His left hand drifted to his belt where he still kept a kunai even after all this time. Then he deliberately took his hand away and wrapped his fingers around his clipboard. It was probably just-
Crea-eak crea-eak-
"Nobody should be in here! The Urban Committee is repossessing the house-" why was he shouting? The Suna Council seals had been on the door, he'd removed them himself to get in. Anybody in here would know they were trespassing.
The Alderman stomped towards the stairs, swatting more spider webs with his clipboard as he felt their ghost-like touch on his face. Those creaks didn't sound like footsteps. He wasn't sure what they sounded like, but he was going to find out. It was his duty; they all had to do their share.
The house was divided into two small rooms upstairs. One door was ajar, and the rhythmic creaking came from there. The Alderman stopped in confusion. That noise did sound familiar, but it was so inexplicable to hear it coming from an empty room that he'd not identified it at first, even though he'd heard it every time he visited in the past. How could that be? Was someone playing a really tasteless joke?
The door gave way with a firm shove. The room was painted in half-light, swathes of thin cobwebs scattering what light there was. Dead center of the ten-foot-by-twelve space stood an object that belonged there, that he'd seen there many times before- but it had no business spinning and creaking like that, it wasn't possible for it to move on its own-
The Alderman realized, between one stunned heartbeat and the next, that it wasn't cobwebs brushing his face, neck and chest, and that the creaking motion could only mean that, despite all appearances, the house wasn't as deserted as he'd thought.
There was scuffling but no screams once his throat was crushed. The old house muffled and drowned all the sounds.
In the middle of the room, the spinning wheel continued to turn.
The wall of ravines cast their afternoon shade over Suna, surrounding the village like the sides of a cradle, or perhaps the walls of a trap. Gaara had never been able to decide. Simile was not his forte. He stared out over the towers of brick and stucco baking in the heat of the late day. His mind was in that half-there state in which he spent many of his overabundance of waking hours.
He could have stayed like that until nightfall, motionless bar the slow movement of his breathing, but the noise of the front door slamming focused him. Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to his room. Old reflexes sent the Sand curling in the gourd, pushing against the cork. Gaara's life to date had consisted of too many dead hours of the night to think, too much solitude, and too many assassins to remind him just how meaningless and precarious his existence really was.
But that was the past. Today, the presence approaching his door was familiar and, oddly enough, not unwelcome.
"Gaara?"
"In here."
Kankuro's scowl was highlighted by the paint, turning his expression into a mask of fury worthy of the theatre. Baki followed on Kankuro's heels, his one visible eye as watchful and unreadable as always. He gave Gaara a small nod of greeting as he caught sight of him. Unlike many in Suna, Baki acknowledged Gaara's presence and made an effort to be at least neutrally polite. But from the look on Kankuro's face, this small civility was going to be the high point of whatever was coming, and the conversation was going to go downhill from there.
Baki stepped onto the hot tiles of the balcony, gave the view of Sunagakure a curt glance and then looked down at Gaara who was sitting balanced on the stone balustrade, hands on his knees.
"Where were you last night?" the senior Jounin asked without preamble.
"I told you, he was here with me all evening and-" A sharp look interrupted Kankuro's terse words. Baki turned that hard gaze back to Gaara, who nodded, confirming his brother's statement.
"You didn't leave the house at all?"
"In the evening? No. I went out at two in the morning to walk around."
"Ah. How long did you stay out?"
"Two hours. I returned before dawn."
"Notice anything wrong?"
A small line drew itself between Gaara's eyes. "No. Everything was quiet."
Baki made a 'hmm' noise. He was watching Gaara closely. Gaara stared back without asking what this was about. Gaara's curiosity was a jagged, haphazard thing that didn't always engage, and tended to hurt people and small animals when it did.
"Someone went missing last night," Baki finally said.
"Another deserter?"
The Jounin gave him a searching glance, as if he'd not expected Gaara to know about that. A mistaken assumption. Gaara might be living cloistered in his old home, coming out only at night or to perform missions for the Council, but Kankuro was still a link to the outside. It was from his brother that Gaara had heard about Suna's ebb of morale. Their defeat by Konoha and the losses had taken their toll; so too had their difficulty in finding a new leader. Pressure mounted on their village from all sides. There had been four desertions to date...
"No, this person wasn't a Shinobi, not any more. He was one of our Aldermen. Civilians don't usually desert, they just move to another town," Baki added. From his dry tone, Gaara gathered there'd been a few of those cases as well.
"Maybe the old coot decided to take a break and visit the onsen near the border, ever think of that?" Kankuro put in, looking at the twisted towers around them as if he blamed them for something.
"All possibilities are being considered, but it's doubtful that's the case," Baki answered. "He was reliable according to his colleagues. We're searching the village for him now. We'll know more when we find him, or his body. Until we do, we are-"
"Body." Gaara turned his gaze back to the dusty streets. "You think I killed him."
There wasn't the slightest hint of feeling in Baki's voice. "There's no indication of it, but the Council asked me to check in with you." In the background, Kankuro snorted harshly.
"I haven't killed anyone in months. Certainly no-one in Suna. The last person I eliminated was that Sound ninja I took out while helping those Genin from Konoha, as the Interim Council ordered me to."
"I know," Baki said simply. "I'll tell them so."
He turned and left without a further word. Gaara didn't watch him go.
"Not very promising," he said, after a few minutes.
Kankuro, who'd leaned against the balustrade, grunted. "We knew they weren't going to welcome you home with open arms. You did kinda spread terror and death around the village for years, and on top of that the Konoha mission blew up in our face...The only reason you're not under arrest, or six feet under, is because Baki - and Temari and me - we swore you've changed, that you'll be one powerful asset from now on - and frankly Suna can use all of those it can get. Besides, those old bats on the council are too afraid of you to do anything about you. But don't expect them to throw you a party any time soon. It takes time for a Shinobi to forgive someone who made them fear for their lives. Time and a miracle," Kankuro added under his breath.
Gaara's gaze drifted to the side to catch a glimpse of his brother's profile. "So you keep telling me. It makes sense. So why are you angry?"
"M'not. Just a bit annoyed. Some old geezer croaks - probably keeled over dead from a heart attack in an alley - and they automatically think you're to blame."
"This time last year, they would have probably been right," Gaara pointed out.
"Well, a lot of things change in a year, and Shinobi shouldn't assume shit so easily."
Some of those things that had changed hung awkwardly in the silence that followed, a sticky web of past fears and present-day uncertainties. Kankuro had no reason to stay in this house now that the Council had relieved him of the position of his younger brother's keeper. Yet he hadn't moved out. Maybe he felt obligated to stick by his brother after Gaara had taken the whole Konoha failure on himself, exonerating his siblings of any mistakes before the Council. Or maybe Kankuro really did believe Gaara's assurance that the latter would no longer kill him in a fit of pique or boredom. Kankuro himself didn't seem too sure why he was staying, coming up with different - and indifferent - answers each time, usually with an added "Well, I'll be moving out by the end of the week, it's time I had my own place to crash" without ever doing so. As for Gaara, he had often been irritated by his brother's presence when it had been imposed, but now that Kankuro seemed to staying on for an indefinite period of his own free will, Gaara found the company to be...acceptable. He even found himself wondering when Temari would get back from those final negotiations with Konoha. Gaara was ten times stronger than either of his siblings, yet not having her here right now felt like a strange sort of weakness. Gaara prodded the feeling like he'd probe a broken tooth with his tongue. He didn't understand it.
Kankuro let his head fall back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. "They're all still scared. You just got to get past that."
"How?" Gaara asked, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Not killing people randomly is obviously a start, but it looks like that's not enough."
"They're letting you live," Kankuro reminded him.
"That's not enough either," answered Gaara, barely audible.
The corners of Kankuro's mouth turned down and he scrubbed his hair beneath his hood as if rebuking himself. The brothers had discussed this. They'd exchanged more words over this subject in the past few months than they'd shared during their entire childhood. Gaara had returned to Suna because he knew he could no longer go on living alone. One day, he hoped to figure out how to live with these people around him, he would create these 'precious bonds' that were supposed to make it all worthwhile...and the Gods of his fathers help him but there were days Gaara almost hated Uzumaki Naruto for showing him the way when it was going to be so very, very hard. And slow, as Kankuro and Temari reminded him repeatedly, but that didn't matter as much. Gaara could have the patience of stones now that he had a goal to live for.
The hope of a world without pain. That was the debt he owed Uzumaki: hope. It kept the voices inside his head from getting too loud again.
Mudai Akiko tucked the ends of her scarf into the collar of her flak jacket. It was her only concession to the tepid sand-laden wind and the dusty streets. Chuunin Mudai was the best kind of foot soldier in the eyes of her superiors: entirely dedicated to her orders and with little imagination to distract her. If it had started to rain fish, Mudai Akiko would not have deviated an inch form her patrol route other than to go and report that the ground was getting slippery and a possible hazard to footing in case of attack.
She turned the corner shortly after midnight, gave the length of the street a quick scan, checked the doors to the warehouses to be sure they had been properly locked, and glanced down each alley she passed as assiduously as if there were actually something to be expected there. She was neither disappointed nor relieved to find them as empty as every other night. Her steps rapped against the stone, kicking up dust and marking time as she counted off the streetlights fighting against the sand-choked darkness. Two of the bulbs past the last warehouse had blown. The slight departure from the norm heightened Akiko's already considerable focus. She investigated the alleys once again and checked the warehouse and the nearby rooftops. Nothing amiss. She stopped beneath the last lit bulb and slid her notebook from her pocket to scribble a note to the Quartermaster to have the lights replaced...but paused with her pencil above the paper, head cocked to one side. She thought she'd heard-...
Was that the wind? It sounded like someone was sobbing and groaning. It was probably the wind. It was causing the wood of these old buildings to creak.
The guard glanced up and down the street, frowning. Senses prickled, not willing to rely on the easy explanation without proof.
The sound - which was probably the wind - seemed to be coming from the house looming in front of her. But the place was deserted; she'd seen the notice a fortnight ago on the patroller's bulletin board. Maybe a window wasn't properly shut, and the wind was blowing through an empty room and whistling through cracks, causing the old house to groan.
Chuunin Mudai remembered the missing Alderman, and decided to go check.
Baki was getting used to being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, to the point where it might be more convenient if he just went to sleep in a chair, or possibly propped up fully dressed by the door. There were too many crises these days, too many problems that seemed to snowball without a Kazekage as central point of focus to give them weight or delegate. Baki was one of three senior Jounin left alive in Suna; like his two colleagues, he accepted the strain this put upon him. If his village asked him to, he'd accept the mantle of Kazekage as well, though given the choice he'd rather go on extended patrol in the hottest part of the desert at mid-day in his underpants, because being the central administrator and leader of Suna would be just as tedious, uncomfortable and ultimately dangerous in all the wrong ways.
The night was thick with the sandy wind the desert-dwellers called The Whisperer. It'd picked up around midnight and would blow grit into Suna until dawn. The dust murmuring through the village cast haloes around the torchlight and muffled the voices of the people up ahead, though not the argumentative edge of their conversation. Baki walked faster, passing the Genin who'd come to fetch him. A couple of medi-nin stood to one side with the bored air of men who had an unpleasant job to do and no pressing hurry to do it, not while the bosses were infighting. Not field medics, or the ones assigned to the hospital, these were Suna's coroners, in charge of retrieving and autopsying bodies within the village precinct, and oversee their total incineration in the case of Shinobi. The Alderman's body had been found, Baki guessed, and things weren't good.
The loose circle of Suna nin standing around a prone form made way for him. He saw at a glance that it wasn't the Alderman, and things were even worse.
The features were dusky and bruised, it took Baki a minute to match the face with one from the troop roster he kept in his head. Mudai. First name, Akiko. Female. Twenty three. Chuunin. Good record. Reliable. Predictable. Loyal. Deceased. Her uniform was ripped at the chest, collar and sleeves. She didn't have a head cover or veil, Baki noted, which was odd on a night with The Whisperer packing grit between the teeth of anyone who parted their lips. Baki himself had his half veil, normally only over the scarred portion of his face, pulled over his mouth. Baki studied Mudai's disordered hair falling out of a tight bun, already full of sand, then he glanced up. They were in a canyon running right through east-side Suna, where apartments, warehouses and workshops rose in tiers along each side of the large gulley. She could have been killed anywhere up there, on either side, and the body tossed or tumbled down here. The missing items of clothing might have caught in rocks or juniper bushes on the way down and give them some idea where the assault had occurred.
Baki bent forward to examine the body more closely. His movement caught Councillor Chiba's attention in mid-assertion.
"-strangled, bones crushed- there's no doubt. This is serious- Baki! Look at this!"
"I'm looking, sir."
"It didn't take him long to revert to form, as you can see. I told you from the start that it was insane to let him come back to Suna, we should have ambushed him out in the desert."
Baki pulled aside a strip of Mudai's torn collar. "Who are you talking about, sir?"
"Who- that demon child, of course! Gaara. He should never have been allowed to roam free."
"You may be right, sir, though I'm not sure why we're discussing him over a dead body in the middle of Suna at four in the morning."
Chiba's eyes bulged dangerously, but he must have remembered the troops listening in, and reined in the words he obviously wanted to say. The old man had been in charge of Suna's defences for years and hadn't seen combat in all that time. In Baki's opinion he could stand to remember his basics: a ninja never assumed and never lost control.
And never lost sight of his surroundings, either. "Kudeseko. I'm here, as you requested," said Baki without turning towards the man who'd kneeled in utter silence at his side, just before Kudeseko could clear his throat and try to make him jump. Kudeseko was one of the other three senior Jounin left. He and Baki had been a couple of classes apart way back in their pre-Genin days, and at some point in the intervening years a discreet war of nerves had been declared; a secret game of catch-you-out that none of their underlings would believe these two high-level and seriously dangerous Jounin capable of. Not that Baki ever thought of it as a 'game', more a sort of running practice...He couldn't remember now how it had started, though it might have been the day they realized they were two of only a dozen survivors of their generation.
White teeth were briefly visible in the uncertain light, acknowledging Baki's awareness. Kudeseko was a contrast to Baki in every way: shorter, whipcord thin, somewhat good-looking for his age and profession, and the kind of Shinobi to show his emotions openly, though of course they were never the ones he was actually feeling, just the ones he wanted people to see and which would put them off their guard. Tonight his smile was brief and never reached his eyes as he gave the body a clinical once-over.
"Chuunin Mudai was missed an hour ago when she didn't check in from her patrol," he reported. "A search party was sent out, one of them found her down here. No witnesses to the incident have come forward so far. We called you out here because there's a possibility Gaara is involved."
Baki didn't look away from the corpse, tilting his head to get a better view of a bruise by the light of the torch Kudeseko had thoughtfully provided. "There is always a possibility. But I doubt it."
Councillor Chiba snorted as if he'd expected Baki's objection all along. Baki's eyes flickered up, dissimulated beneath the angle of his veil; Chiba was here, as well as three Jounin and councillor Yamada, who didn't look convinced by his colleague's argument for Gaara's guilt, but didn't seem too keen on eliminating the possibility either. He was in charge of the ANBU, and several of his men had been victims of their Kazekage's attempt on his youngest son's life over the years. There was the nucleus of Gaara's execution here, if things continued heading in the current direction.
"Why do you doubt it?" Kudeseko asked, sounding merely curious and quite open to an explanation. Baki felt a faint gratitude to whatever gods or demons were out there that his level-headed fellow soldier and friend of twenty years had been in charge of the troops tonight, and had sent for him.
He took the torch out of Kudeseko's hands and brought it close to Mudai's face and neck. "She's been strangled, not crushed."
"Gaara doesn't always opt for the more spectacular method of execution," Councillor Yamada pointed out in a deceptively even tone. "I've known a couple of instances where he's killed quickly and cleanly rather than paint the whole area with blood. The medi-nin say the bones of her neck were snapped in several places with considerable force. So was one wrist, and there are marks on her arms and legs indicating she was restrained at the time - and from the lack of finger-shaped injuries, it was not by human hands. We've instituted a state of alert, naturally, but there is no sign of an attack from outside. There are ninja who can do such a thing in our village, but I can't think of any of them who would have any motive. Our Shinobi kill without hesitation, but I only know of one who ever did so without rhyme or reason." At Yamada's side, Chiba nodded and made a discreet gesture in the fold of his long tunic; the flick of fingers to ward off evil. Cretin, thought Baki.
"That is so, sir," he said, "but in this instance, the murderer used rope."
His audience squinted down at Mudai. "How can you tell?" one of the Jounin asked. "It could have been a noose of sand as easily as rope."
For answer, Baki planted the torch into the sand, where it burned at a jaunty angle while he unbuttoned his cuff and pulled back his sleeve. All eyes present went from the wounds on Mudai's throat to the scar decorating Baki's forearm, snaking up from the wrist to the root of the biceps.
"It almost looks like a burn more than anything else," said Kudeseko thoughtfully. "And it's very even; no ridges or areas where the pressure was greater and cut deeper. There are definite differences. This wound here looks more like it was done with rope, as Baki suggested, or possibly some kind of cloth band, or a hemp cord. See where it sawed into the flesh at the deepest part of the contusion?"
While everybody bent once more over Mudai, Baki secured his sleeve, feeling the prickle as cloth slid over scar tissue. Gaara had been nine years old and in a forgiving mood that day, fortunately for his keeper. He'd squeezed Baki's arm until the ulna snapped, but he'd not bothered to crush anything else.
Kudeseko was scratching his chin. "If the murderer jerked her around by the noose, it might account for the cracked vertebra. Or if he continued squeezing and shaking her even after she was dead."
His words hung over the assembly like a shroud. Death was a Shinobi's job when all was said and done, but what Kudeseko had described was not business as usual.
"But the medi-nin examined her hands carefully, and said there's no sign she injured her attacker; no tissues beneath the nails, no fibres caught in the fingers, no bruises on the knuckles, nothing. All the blood is her own, from when she bit her tongue. She's missing one kunai, but the others are still in her belt. So not only did the killer restrain her and kill her, strangling her and shaking her like a rabbit in a snare, but he did so at a distance where she couldn't even take a swing at him. Councillor Yamada is right, there are some in this village who could do that, but not many, and then we're back to the question of motive."
"A question we will have to ask," Baki stated as he got to his feet.
Kudeseko stood up as well, his voice more formal as he said: "Thank you, Baki, councillors; you will all get a full report at noon today, and another one at first watch tonight."
Chiba opened his mouth to protest, but Yamada grabbed him by the upper arm and walked him away. Baki watched them leave. Chiba had a big bark, but no bite. Yamada was the exact opposite.
"Can Yamada order out an ANBU task force without council approval?" Baki asked before he could properly consider his question and what it might imply.
The quality of the silence impelled him to turn towards Kudeseko, who was looking at him quizzically. Behind them, the medi-nin were finally dealing with Mudai's earthly remains.
"The politics of this place are in such a mess, I don't rightly know," Kudeseko answered with a shrug. "I don't think he'd take that step without dire need. He didn't get his position by being twitchy. Besides, some of our senior Jounin might take it in mind to stop him, which would lead to internal conflict we can't afford at present."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're pretty defensive of your ex-student, aren't you."
Baki watched Mudai get zipped into a body bag. "Gaara was never really my student, and I'm not defending him."
"Tell that to councillor Chiba. You were quite rude to him earlier, in a nonetheless very polite way."
"If Gaara were responsible, I would be the first to acknowledge it. But blindly pinning any random crime on him is foolish and dangerous. Right now we have a murderer in the village - one who's possibly killed twice - and they can only think about Gaara."
"We do have a murderer in the village, one who's killed a number of times, occasionally in self-defence," Kudeseko said, voice mild as he watched the corpse being lifted on a stretcher. "But I grant you, I don't think this is his work tonight."
"What will the other Shinobi think?"
"Hm?" Kudeseko glanced at Baki, then cocked his head as he caught the latter's searching look. "Who knows? What do you mean?"
"Do none of them believe he's capable of changing? Of becoming an asset?" Baki asked slowly. "Is he damned in their eyes like he appears to be to our Council?"
"Chiba is so scared of him he can barely think straight, and Yamada is suspicious and wary, but I don't think the other councillors are baying for Gaara's blood yet. To start with, the ones who were already in his father's service thirteen years ago probably feel responsible for him and the whole Shukaku fiasco, and-"
"I don't care about the Council," Baki said measuredly. "What do we think?"
The council and the Kazekage - assuming they'd find a new one who could handle Suna - were the rudder that directed the ship across the sands, but they weren't stupid enough to ignore the deeper feelings of a whole village full of accomplished assassins. More to the point, Suna's Shinobi were the village, they were its hands, heart and soul. The Council and the Kazekage worked for their village, not the other way around.
"I don't think we know quite what to make of him yet, my friend," Kudeseko answered. The weariness in his voice perfectly summed up the current chaos in Suna, the lack of a leader to be their central point of strength, and now a killer on the loose. It was obvious that Kudeseko would love something less to worry about, particularly a something of Gaara's magnitude, but..."We just don't know."
The fact they'd not yet made up their minds against him was already something, thought Baki as he turned with no more than a nod of farewell.
Dawn broke as Gaara watched. Once the sky had stopped bleeding, he went down for breakfast to find that Baki had apparently moved back in with them.
Gaara didn't ask any questions, and his old mentor/keeper didn't offer any explanations as he read through a pile of documents and drank a cup of coffee so black it was nearly solid in the cup. Kankuro didn't say anything either, just stomped around in a way that suggested he was in a bad mood. Needless to say, breakfast and the rest of the morning unfolded in silence. Baki stayed seated at their kitchen table, reading papers, discarding most, saving some, occasionally going to the door where a discreet Chuunin slipped him more.
A masked Shinobi delivered three bento boxes at noon, forestalling Kankuro in the need to pointedly make lunch for two or ask Baki what he wanted. Gaara poked some yam tempura with his chopsticks and wondered if he was under house arrest. It seemed odd that they wouldn't have told him.
"A nine-year old student slipped in the street on the way to the academy three days ago; his veil caught in a nail and he nearly strangled himself," Baki suddenly said, turning over a piece of paper. His pile had greatly reduced. He hadn't touched his bento box, but he was on his sixth cup of coffee.
"What's that got to do with us?" Kankuro growled.
"Nothing," Baki answered, pokerfaced. "In the past ten days, the quartermaster has reported an increase in breakage in satchel straps, holsters, tears along the seams of flak jackets- that happened to me yesterday, actually. A jacket I'd had for two years; the pocket ripped right off as I put in a scroll. Like it was made of tissue paper."
Kankuro stared at him.
"There's a warehouse in the east of the village, in the semi-industrial area, that's reporting an explosion in the rat population. They've not actually seen any rodents, but all their ropes have begun to fray and that's the only reason they can think of. One of their workers was nearly crushed by a falling stack of boxes when the cordage hauling it snapped."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Kankuro asked.
"There's something strange going on. It's not very focused yet, but it's slowly pervading the village, getting stronger, and it wants to cause us harm..."
Gaara looked at Baki's pile of papers. "You can read all that in there?"
"Of course." Baki spun a dossier around for Gaara to see. "A Shinobi village runs on information. An enemy infiltration will only be visible as the smallest ripples in what's the regular, humdrum chaos. These details matter for their own sake as well; a good quartermaster who can keep us supplied in weapons, food, water and dry goods is as important as a leader who can tell us what to do with all that."
Gaara eyed the lines of figures in ledger format. Kankuro stopped looking so irritated and examined Baki attentively.
"What are you looking for?" Gaara asked, as Baki turned back to his papers.
"I don't know. Something is wrong. I'm trying to find it."
Gaara looked down at the ledger. "By following the ripples?"
"Yes. We're conducting a house-to-house search for the missing Alderman, and we've tripled patrols in the east of the village, but I don't think we'll find anything. Not before someone else dies. Then we'll probably have a better idea what this is about."
That pronouncement left silence in its wake once more.
Evening fell, ushering in a tepid breeze and the faint pinging sounds of concrete, stucco and stone cooling rapidly. Gaara hadn't moved from the table or stopped staring at Baki. The latter didn't seem to notice or care, undoubtedly used to Gaara behaving in a way that defied politeness or even basic understanding. The Jounin reached for his coffee cup without looking, found it empty, put it down with his eyes still on the flimsy rice paper carbon copy he was reading. Then he absently rubbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into stiffening muscles. Gaara tracked the movement as if every gesture was important. He was familiar with his mentor's strength, his control, his absolute dedication to Suna and his mission, but this was the first time he'd seen this side of Baki before. Patient, relentless, focused on every piece of minutia without distraction. Someone could have died out there, but he kept following tracks only his instincts told him about. Gaara absorbed this.
Footsteps outside were followed by a solid hammering on the door. In the workshop, Kankuro dropped something heavy and stifled a curse.
"Come in," said Baki without turning around.
"Sir?!" A breathless Genin poked his head through the door, gaze flickering reluctantly towards Gaara. "Um, Kudeseko-san sent me to fetch you and tell you that we found it and you were right, it's in the east side, next to the warehouse-"
"Did anybody else die?" Baki asked levelly.
"Um, one of the ANBU was badly wounded I hear, and there are complications."
"I see. Run back and tell Kudeseko that I'm coming. Gaara, you and Kankuro stay here. I'll send a note when we've resolved this, in case you're interested in the conclusion."
"Yeah, I'm interested," Kankuro muttered from where he'd come into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag; his fingers were black with machine oil. He glared at the door Baki had closed for a few moments, then went over to the fridge. "Want a bite? We got some leftovers."
Gaara didn't answer. He was staring at the papers on the table. The numbers fluctuated through rows and columns like a heartbeat. Details. Ripples in a web. Connections between every Shinobi in this village, their actions, their lives. Was he in there, connected to anything...?
"Maybe I can cook something," Kankuro said with a certain lack of enthusiasm. "We got cans of- where are you going?"
Gaara picked up the gourd near the door. "To the east side of the village. Near a warehouse where the ropes break."
He reached for the doorknob and found his wrist caught in a hard grip. It was released immediately as Kankuro's survival instincts in regards to his little brother kicked in, but the hard light in his eyes didn't flicker.
"Don't be an idiot. You can't go out now. Not before they figure out who did it. Or don't you realize why Baki was sitting at our kitchen table all day?"
"To give me an irrefutable eyewitness as to my whereabouts until someone else was hurt or killed," Gaara answered.
After a moment of silence, Kankuro said, "If you know that, why are you going?"
Gaara had the oddest feeling he was six again, bludgeoning on between one situation he didn't understand to the next, never knowing which one might hurt this time. But..."There's a problem in Suna, a threat. I might be able to help. It's better than sitting on a balcony all day and achieving nothing more than not killing people."
"Um...but what can you do out there? I don't think it's an attack; more like a serial killer or something. The ANBU can deal with it. What are you going to do?"
"No idea. But I won't figure it out here." Gaara gave the papers on the table a regretful glance. "I don't see the connections, I don't understand them. This is all I can do."
"...Fine. Who cares what Baki says anyway, he's not our team leader anymore, we're supposed to be directly under the Interim Council's orders and they've said squat. Let me go get Karasu."
"You don't need to-"
Kankuro was already gone.
In lieu of troop deployments and ANBU everywhere, the brothers found, to their surprise, nothing but a huddle of people in the middle of a darkened street. If Baki hadn't been present, Gaara would have assumed they'd gotten the wrong address. Their previous mentor was talking to a scarred Jounin that Gaara recognized as Kudeseko Tsubaki, one of his father's generals in times of ninja wars. The rest of the knot was composed of a couple of younger Jounin, one ANBU and Councillor Yamada, as well as the village priest in full robes of office; he was wearing that ridiculous tasseled platform hat that very young ninja of school age used to test their skills, by flicking rocks onto its flat surface without its owner noticing. Both Gaara and Kankuro examined the man in surprise. Religion and Shinobi rarely mixed.
The small knot of people were gathered at the end of the road where buildings abutting the fall into the ravine were visible as shadows against the moonlit night. Or rather, the group faced that direction until they realized who'd joined them, and then the small assembly took on the airs of people caught between a rock and a hard place as they tried to both edge away from Gaara and yet not stray further down the dark street. Tension permeated the air like poison, and Gaara didn't think he was the sole cause for once.
Since Baki was the only one who didn't shuffle away, he found himself at the front of the small crowd. He didn't look at all surprised to see the brothers, though Gaara might have missed whatever expression had fleetingly passed over those hard features because he was so busy taking in Baki's appearance. Their one-time Jounin sensei had apparently been in one hell of a fight. The uniformed, crisp Jounin who'd left their home twenty minutes ago was now thoroughly rumpled, clothes torn and his shirt and vest ripped open at the collar. He'd also lost his head veil, leaving the twisted scar tissue covering the left side of his face and eye socket to shine oddly in the moonlight.
"You've found the cause of the disturbances?" Gaara came to a halt, feet slightly apart, arms folded. The harness of the gourd creaked as its weight shifted. From the crowd came a faint 'ting' of a kunai being half drawn from a holster. People twitched and looked around. One of the Jounin glanced down at the weapon in his hands as if he had no idea what it was doing there, before putting it back with an awkward, stilted gesture.
"We believe so," Baki said as if he were all alone with his former pupil. "The building next to the warehouse seems to be the focus. Some ANBU investigating the place got driven out, one seriously injured. We don't know how badly, unfortunately; they've been cornered in the backyard. One of them conjured a jutsu shield, which so far has held, but we don't know how long that state of affairs will last."
"Waitasec, cornered by what?" asked Kankuro.
Baki dug around in his pocket and held up-...
"...They've been attacked and pinned down by string?"
"Ninjutsu?" asked Gaara without any of his brother's incredulous tone in his voice.
"No. That much we know." Baki's finger idly sorted through a few torn strands of thick threads. "Kudeseko and I approached the focus point to see if we could break our men out, and were attacked by this. Not only by these threads, but by our clothes, too. I was almost strangled by my collar. The seams on my shirt tightened so much I could barely move until I ripped them. But throughout the whole attack, not a speck of chakra. This is not ninjutsu, and probably not the doings of a ninja."
"I don't get it," said Kankuro slowly. "What is it, then, some sort of trap?"
"Do we know who's in there? At the focus point?" Gaara added.
Kudeseko had been giving Gaara an unreadable look until now, but at that he glanced at a sheaf of papers in his hands. Gaara noticed in passing that Kudeseko was in much the same state as Baki, his shirt torn, the pockets of his flak jacket ripped off, and he had what looked like thin cuts over his hands and face.
"The last registered occupant of number 344 Esside Street was a civilian, a widow. Her husband died on active duty during the war against Stone ten years ago. She had children in the force. We're checking, but if I remember right, they were both lost during the attack on Konoha. Word is, she took it very hard. Blamed our forces for it."
Kankuro nodded. "So you think she's cooked up some form of revenge."
"She's been dead for the last two weeks."
Gaara tilted his head, looking at the house barely visible at the end of the darkened row of buildings. "That'd make the reprisal theory rather hard to sustain."
"I'd say." Kankuro gave Kudeseko and Baki a 'you guys have been working too hard' look. "Why are we even talking about her?"
Baki glanced pointedly at one of the Jounin behind him, with a downward twitch to his mouth that suggested the man had done something that Baki did not fully approve of. The Jounin, whose name Gaara did not know, looked a little leery at being suddenly thrust into the center of attention. "Well, you see, all things considered-" he said in quick staccato, aiming his words halfway between Baki and Gaara, "the phenomenon seems concentrated on her house - ah, it may seem stupid, but while we were waiting for Kudeseko-san to come, we thought we should take steps, ah-" And he glanced back at the Shinto priest who'd knelt in the dusty road and started muttering over his beads.
Kankuro snorted loudly. "Give me a break!"
"There have been previous cases of hauntings in the village." This was Councillor Yamada who'd spoken. He'd moved forward to Baki's side, looking slightly to the left of Gaara's shoulder as if he'd chosen to ignore the demon child's presence here and was just speaking to himself. "There are cleansing rituals that we can use, keyed into jutsus and not some religious claptrap." Behind him, the priest fumbled a line of mantra and started again with a determined expression. "One of my men has gone to find the relevant texts. The problem is that the seals will take time to put into place, and my men in the courtyard don't have that time. We have to get them out."
"Was that what you and Kudeseko-san were doing, Baki?" Kankuro took a step down the road, hand on the strap holding Karasu to his back.
"Yes, and this is above Genin level, Kankuro. Even my wind blade was ineffectual. It cut, but there was just more of the stuff. Also, if this is some sort of...manifestation, its reactions will be hard to gauge. Their power can increase under certain circumstances: nighttime, the full moon, the presence of certain people involved in their passing, or strong emotions. We didn't want to take the risk that an attack would give it the power to crush our men."
"So what you need is a distraction." Karasu slipped from his master's shoulders and stood to attention with a bony rattle. "My boy here doesn't have a windpipe to squeeze."
"It also doesn't have a life force or anything to distract the spirit, if that's what's in there. And there's no saying that-"
"I'll go."
The words, so calm as to be indifferent, stilled everyone.
"Gaara-"
Gaara was already walking down the street.
"Hey, Gaara, what are you- didn't you hear Baki? Let Karasu do it, you'll just get your head ripped off."
"Sand armor," said Gaara succinctly. Nobody else was trying to stop him.
"Well, okay, but- hey, wait up-"
"You will stay back here."
"Gaara." Baki hadn't moved. "This is not a physical enemy. You can't hurt it."
"I think the point is that it can't hurt me," said Gaara over his shoulder. "If it expends its efforts on me, you might get your men out. Beyond that...I'll see what it is that we're up against, and maybe talk to it. I'm curious."
A faint frown twisted Baki's unveiled brow. That hadn't been what he'd expected. Gaara simply turned and walked on.
Curious. Yes, he was curious. After believing he carried a ghost on his back for six whole years, he was curious to finally meet a real one, if such a thing even existed.
The attack was immediate and vicious as soon as he got within five yards of the house. Snakes of thread, rope, cloth, anything woven, leapt out of crevices in the stone wall, the doorway and windows, and the cracks in the wooden warehouse walls nearby. In a flash, Gaara was caught in a multi-layered snare, to the point where he wondered, bemused, if he didn't resemble some giant ball of yarn. Baki had been right; no sense of chakra anywhere. The smell of blood, though, pervaded everything.
The ropes tightened, striving to crush him. It would have been a fearsome attack against anybody else.
The sand erupted from the gourd, pushing back the mass of woven things, ripping and tearing savagely, a massive claw striking out until there was nothing left but small pieces of string and lint floating down to the dusty streets.
"That won't work," said Gaara, shaking fluff off his sleeve.
His coat tightened slowly around his neck and chest...then seemed to think better of it and settled down.
Still no chakra, but...there was something here. A presence, for lack of a better term, and it was considering him with fair amount of anger and animosity. Fair enough. Gaara continued his slow pace towards the door hanging from one of its hinges. All the windows were broken, strands bleeding from their jagged edges. Up here, close to the house, the thread was coarse like newly spun cotton.
The house was thick with the stuff, hanging like cobwebs from the rafters, lurking near the long-dead hearth, coiling down the stairs. Gaara tilted his head, left, right, then looked up at the ceiling, towards that feeling of presence. There was also a sound, muffled through layers and layers of material; a creaking noise, high, fast and furious. Gaara's sand pooled around him and aimed itself like a battering ram at the ceiling...then he changed his mind and headed more sedately towards the stairs. There were a few too many unknowns in this situation for indiscriminate destruction. He thought of Baki looking through reams of papers at their kitchen table, of Kudeseko and even Yamada giving Gaara requested information...they wanted answers, and Gaara found himself wanting to provide them, rather than go back with 'I don't know what it was, but I killed it'.
The thread didn't try to stop him. Whatever was inside had acquainted itself of his power. Gaara wondered if he should go free the ANBU in the yard before proceeding, but remembered Baki's caution about provoking the entity. It would be...unpleasant if Gaara went to help and was only able to present a few crushed corpses to Baki and Councillor Yamada as a result. He'd deal with this at the source. Hopefully Baki and Kankuro, assisted by Karasu, could sneak in and free the men while Gaara monopolized the threat's attention.
Heading towards the creaking sound, Gaara entered a room where threads hung in tatters from every cranny. The strands swayed in a non-existent breeze, pooled in corners, and seethed like live wires from the single visible object in the room, a spinning wheel. It was moving so fast that it should have shaken itself to pieces long ago. There was no material hanging from the distaff, the fibers warped and twisted themselves out of thin air.
Gaara squinted in the darkness. There was a spinner at the wheel, a figure built of shadows crouched on a stool. Only the hands were fully visible, now that Gaara's sight was adapting to the nocturnal conditions. These hands resembled those of Suna's oldest crones, dried by too many drought-ridden summers into brown, bony spiders. The rest of the creature was cloaked. The hands grasped thread from the wheel, spun, twisted, a chain of movements so old they seemed to come from beyond history. Other than that, the creature didn't move when Gaara came to a halt six feet away. He could feel its attention on him, though, and it wasn't all that impressed. The emotions in the air were as solid as the thread.
"Stop what you're doing," said Gaara. It wasn't much of a conversational gambit, and he did not expect it to get him anything other than a start to the dialogue.
No answer, bar the wheel's high-pitched rapid squeaking like hysterical giggles.
"I could break that," Gaara added, looking pointedly at the object. Then he wondered if he could. Or should, with the lives of fellow Shinobi at stake. This situation was a little more complex than those he usually had to deal with.
Silence, bar the multifold hiss of strands moving against wood and the cree-cree-cree-cree of the wheel. Thread curled slowly around his ankle. Gaara let it. He felt it tense and test the resistance of his sand armor, his ultimate defense. Then the skein pulled back and slunk away. Gaara tracked it with his eyes, and noticed a large fibrous cocoon anchored halfway up a wall like a spider's catch in a web. It was about the right size for a body. Probably the Alderman.
"Sandaime took my husband."
The words drifted like the threads.
"Your father took my sons."
Creecreecreecree-
"What do you think you can take from me now, boy?"
Gaara ducked his chin and narrowed his eyes as if the scorn in that dead tone had actually scratched at his face.
"Is talking all you do?" If this thing took a physical swipe at him, he'd know what to do with it.
"No." Syllables hollowed, drifted in and out of the audible. "I spin and weave..."
"Why?" From far back in his childhood, if one could call it that, Gaara distantly remembered sayings and old stories; people who communicated with angry spirits and listened to their wrongs could appease them, couldn't they?
The voice from the smoky darkness-on-darkness seemed to turn inward. "They told me to spin and weave. They'd give me money for my dead, but I have to do my share. We all have to do our share. So I spin and I weave and I'm told to feel grateful I can still help my village."
Gaara knew the pension for the civilian widows of Shinobi was adequate, well, up to Sand Village standards, which wasn't saying all that much. Enough water to wet your mouth, as the saying went. But everybody had to do their share. There was no choice. Suna existed on the edge of a blade, out here in the middle of the desert and with powerful enemies all around. If the widow had refused to work, she'd still have been paid the pension, but nobody would have talked to her. She'd have been ostracized, left to mourn her dead children in isolation. No wonder she'd kept spinning that wheel. Gaara knew there was no limit to the price one would pay to avoid that kind of hostile segregation.
This stirring inside...was that what Naruto had felt for him? Was this pity? If it was, he didn't think much of the emotion. It seemed to be made up of equal parts of sadness and contempt.
"This is meaningless," he stated coldly. "You are attacking-"
"Meaningless?" The word turned into a howl along with a tortured screech from the wheel. "Meaningless?!"
"I-"
"My children! My children!"
"I didn't-"
"My childreeeeeeeeen!"
The hunched, crippled thing lurched towards him, leaning forward without leaving the stool, arms wide in the tangled folds of cloak, and the palpable pain made Gaara step back almost to the window before he caught himself. The sand batted away the threads trying to hurl themselves around him to strangle the life out of him.
"Your children are dead," he snapped. "It's meaningless to attack the village."
The screams stopped, the wheel went back to its rapid, breathless creecreecree, but the emotions tangled around Gaara stronger than the threads. He forged on regardless.
"Nobody can live alone. When you lost your children, you should have formed new ties within the village you're now attacking. In fact, you do have a bond with us; if you hate us so badly you came back- if you could conquer death to come back for us, how strong must your connection to us be? Instead of rotting here, you should have used this bond to be your strength, to give you a reason to live. You need a reason to live. We-...you only had two children. And your husband, whoever he was. How can you put your existence into the hands of just three people? Three Shinobi? We die for this village, you should have known from the start their existence was more fragile than this thread you weave."
Gaara's words thumped against the hanging swathes of material and lost their force. He could feel his mouth moving...but the words, he realized, were not really his own. They were Naruto's, or rather, whatever Gaara had distilled from that blinding moment of revelation Naruto had pounded into him. He wasn't saying it right. Only natural; Gaara of the Desert had never uttered these words aloud, that was why they didn't have the strength of what Naruto had shouted at him. Just...words. It was just the words that weren't quite right. What was behind it, that was real, though. It was.
But this ghost was real. And its pain...that was very real. Gaara turned the words over in his mind, but they slipped from him, leaving only questions.
"You should have known your loved ones would die. Why couldn't you form new ties? Why do you hate us? They-...we need these bonds to live, they are our strength. We...they can't hurt us. They're not meant to hurt us."
The silence was strangling him like rope.
"...Right?"
He'd forgotten what he was arguing for. This was some kind of genjutsu. Yet there was no stink of chakra in the air, no shimmering illusion, and the sand in the gourd was quiescent as if it was listening as attentively as the ghost on her stool.
"You..." A hushed breeze shaped the word. Gaara had the feeling that the ghost was only now truly seeing him and listening to him. "I know you...you are the one who wanders our village at night..."
"I didn't kill your children," said Gaara automatically and then wished he'd not sounded so defensive. He was off balance. There was something wrong, and he had the sick, crawling sensation that it was in him. He wanted this very badly to be genjutsu, but he recognized the little voice whispering in his ear, and it wasn't this ghost, and it wasn't shukaku or his dead mother...The little voice of a lonely Tail-ridden child whispered, 'You grabbed the hope Naruto gave you, but you never really understood what he was talking about, did you...You can't understand, you're too scarred, too ugly, too different, too damned. No wonder they all look at you funny. No wonder they all avoid you.'
The sand was scratching at the inside of the gourd like an animal trying to get out. Gaara was shaking his head, thread drifting against his cheek unheeded. It was true, he'd never understood - fundamentally - what Naruto had been on about, because Gaara had never had these bonds Naruto described. The only thing even approaching them had been Yashamaru's lies. Gaara's teeth clenched and the scar on his forehead seemed to burn. Lies. False promises. False hope.
"...You think I could have replaced my children? You think I could have not hated the village that took them from me, that gave me nothing in return but the chance to sit here and spin the threads I wanted to wrap around the throat of every man, woman and child I saw...?" But there was something different in the voice now, a lessening of the venom. "You think that? Boy, you understand nothing..."
Gaara flinched - and the sand erupted through the room, ripping through thread, crashing into the figure on the stool.
It roiled around, reaching the walls and cresting near the ceiling before it returned to Gaara, yet the ghost was still there, still crouched near her wheel.
"It's not true. You're lying." Gaara knew he sounded like he was six again, and didn't care. "They don't hurt- our ties to our friends and family can't bring us pain. Not as much as solitude."
"Worse," whispered the ghost.
"No!" Gaara shook his head. "If that was true, then what would be the point?!"
"...The point..."
"Why would we have these ties? Why did you ever have any children at all?!"
The silence that followed was cut into segments by the creak of the wheel, but...it was turning slower now. Cree...creee...creeeee...
"You understand nothing," whispered the ghost in something like the tone Naruto had when he nearly killed Gaara while assuring the latter that he knew what the all-consuming loneliness felt like.
Creeeeee...silence.
"Come here, child." The voice was curt again, and commanding. It occurred to Gaara that this must have been a rather formidable woman when she was alive, the kind who could marry a Shinobi and raise two of them, and he should not have underestimated her.
She paid no heed to his wild, suspicious look. "Come here." The brown spider-hands gestured to a spot near her stool.
She can't hurt me, thought Gaara. More than she already has, he amended, feeling the raw ache inside. Following that silent order from brittle fingers, he walked up to her. An imperious gesture indicated the floor. Gaara stared at the thread-strewn planks. His mind felt flayed. He slipped the gourd from his shoulders and knelt. Old instincts screamed at him that this was a terrible defensive position. Oh, the fun his father's assassins could have had with him if he'd knelt so meekly at their feet. But he didn't think she would hurt him. He didn't think she'd have to. Gaara stared at what might or might not be bony knees under cobweb robes. This wasn't Genjutsu. It felt more like despair.
The fingers were dry and cold when they touched his neck. Gaara wondered if this was where he was going to die after all, assuming the sand armour could somehow be beaten. But the hand didn't tighten, the pressure on his neck beckoned, until his cheek touched cloth that smelled of dust and old, dry death. Then those fingers started to run through his hair.
"Al-lai-lai...Al-lai-lai..."
A shiver ran down Gaara's spine. Hadn't he heard someone singing like this once? From behind a closed door?
"Brave little child, run over sand
It will not cut you
Brave little child, run over rock
It will not hurt you.
Al-lai-lai, Al-lai-lai, not while-"
The voice cracked and broke. New emotions were flooding the room. Gaara felt a prickle in his eyes. It'd been so long since he'd cried, it took him a few seconds to recognize the sensation. He didn't know why he was crying, or if it was his pain or the spirit's that spilled the tears.
Fingers smoothed down his hair along with the whispered half-sung words.
"Brave little child, run over earth
It will not take you
Brave little child, run under sun
It will not burn you
Al-lai-lai, Al-lai-lai, not while mother is here…"
For years, he'd believed his mother's ghost was in the gourd. Now, finally, and totally unexpectedly, Gaara knew why he'd thought that; why a six year old Gaara had needed to believe it, even if it had never been true.
"Al-lai-lai...Al-lai-la...not while mother …"
A wounded gasp came from Gaara's throat and he clutched what felt like old sticks wrapped in winding cloth, rocking back and forth on his heels, as lost as he'd ever felt.
"GAARA!"
Gaara made a very unusual sound for him, that might have been a shout of confusion or even possibly a yelp, and straightened up convulsively. His head swam. He was kneeling on a dusty floor, forearms braced on a wooden stool near a decrepit spinning wheel. A lantern on a pole outside the window was bathing the room in a prosaic light.
"What happened?" he muttered, his sense of reality doing the same slow waltz as the room. "Kankuro?"
His brother's hand had been on his shoulder. That fact seemed to be very important, though Gaara couldn't remember why just now. Kankuro had jumped a mile when Gaara had shot up like that, and was now three feet away apparently trying to get his heart beating again by massaging his chest and swearing very loudly.
"What the hell were you doing sleeping here?! You scared the ever-lovin' shit out of me you bloody shrimp! How could you-"
"I was asleep?" Gaara croaked, horrified.
"Well, you certainly looked like you were. What the hell happened?! You went in here, and we couldn't get near the place, and then after half an hour the air kinda cleared itself. Baki and I rushed in and got the guys out - the idiot who got scrunched should make it, probably, and the other two are okay, bar some rope burns and stuff. But you weren't answering when we called. Baki said to wait but who the hell does he think he is, and I come in here and I thought you were dead, lying there - and you're just sleeping?! What the hell?!"
He was worried about me, thought Gaara, the idea like the lantern light outside, both illuminating yet oddly commonplace. He was worried about me, and that's why he's being so aggressive. Fair enough, I'd have been worried about him if our positions had been reversed. He's an idiot and much weaker than I am, but he's the only brother I have.
Everything flooded back with that thought. Gaara leaned against the stool and let his head sink into his hand.
"You okay?" Along with his other emotions, Kankuro was also afraid, something that Gaara had gotten so used to he barely noticed it anymore. His brother was staying at a cautious distance, but his hand had reached towards Gaara, fingers clutching air. "You look like shit. Worse than usual. You were actually asleep? I mean, you, er, are you..."
"I'm alright. Not driven insane by that damned Tail, anyway. I think I would have noticed. I was...I think I was protected while I slept..."
"Oh. Good. Protected by what?"
Gaara got to his feet. His clothes were almost white from dust, and the seams were torn asunder so his coat sagged off his shoulders, but there were no signs of threads. They'd turned into dust, along with their creator. Gaara wondered why she was gone. Maybe...maybe she'd found a single soul in this village she could not entirely hate.
Al-lai-lai, Al-lai-la, not while mother is here...
"Kankuro-..."
"Yeah?" said Kankuro after a few seconds of silence.
"Take better care of yourself. Don't rush into haunted houses until Baki gives you the all-clear."
When Gaara had apologized to his siblings in Konoha, he'd gotten the exact same look of slackjawed amazement from his brother.
Baki met them at the foot of the stairs. He didn't look particularly relieved to see Gaara, but he nodded and asked him if he was okay. Gaara didn't know how to answer that question, so he didn't.
The scene outside was that of a one-sided battle. Lanterns hung from poles to illuminate every nook and cranny being investigated by hard-eyed Shinobi. A central core occupied the courtyard and gave orders: three councillors, ten high-level Jounin, four ANBU, with a quantity of Chuunin and Genin running around to carry their messages and fetch coffee and scrolls as required. Some seemed amazed that Gaara was alive, others that he'd apparently had a fight of it. Councillor Yamada looked at Gaara, face as unreadable as Baki's. Two of the Jounin and one of the ANBU who'd seen him walk off into the darkened street not an hour ago nodded faintly as if in recognition. When Gaara stared at them, they looked away and did something busy-like.
...It all held together. Gaara was in this, he'd always been in this, this web of interwoven actions and reactions known as Sunagakure. He could barely see it still, but he could feel it now. It was Kankuro coming into the house after him, it was Temari sending them messages every three days, telling them to behave, it was Baki...being Baki. It was the concern of the ANBU standing near their wounded comrade as the medi-nin worked on him. There was pain in their body language that their masks and self-control couldn't quite hide. Their connection to the injured man was closer than the connection that Yamada had with him, and Yamada's connection was closer than Gaara's, or Kankuro's, or Baki's, but they were connected nonetheless or Baki wouldn't look like his clothes had been put through a shredder, and Gaara wouldn't have walked into that house. Al-lai-la, Al-lai-la...Where the old woman had seen loss and isolation, where she'd seen targets, Gaara saw threads woven together. All these connections, all these precious ones. The loss of each one hurt, and each hole in the cloth made them all weaker...
...Gaara's thoughts were spinning faster than a wheel twisting thread out of nothing, and making just about as much sense. "I think I need to rest," he said, with the thoughtful air of one examining a land mine.
If he wasn't so distracted, he would have found it amusing the way everybody got out of his way when he said that.
"You want to what?" asked Kankuro weakly. Across the table, Baki paused with his chopsticks in his mouth. Gaara had come down after a few hours of rest to find that their one-time teacher, freshly dressed and shaved, had invited himself over for breakfast again.
"I want to become Kazekage."
Baki took out the chopsticks, chewed contemplatively and swallowed. Kankuro scrunched his fingers through his hair and rubbed his eyes, red beneath paint that hadn't been too well applied this morning. Gaara thought his brother looked tired.
"Gaara...are you okay? You'd tell me if you were being possessed by the spirit of a vengeful and totally insane ghost, right?"
"She's gone, I told you. She wouldn't approve anyway. She hated this place too much. I...maybe I have cause to hate it too, but that really doesn’t lead anywhere."
"As she demonstrated," said Baki, wiping his mouth.
"Yes. She didn't have to end up like that. We failed her, didn't we..."
"Shinobi die." Baki's gaze was steady and uncompromising. "Her children served and died in the service of our village in the best of their capacity, and there's no higher honour."
"I want to serve and die in the service of my village in the best of my capacity, and since I'm the strongest Shinobi in Suna, that should be as Kazekage."
"Wow, when he says it like that, it almost sounds like logic," muttered Kankuro, his head in his hands.
"Is that why you want the post? To prove you're the strongest?" Baki asked, ignoring the puppeteer.
"I know I'm the strongest."
"...Yes, so answer the first question. Why do you want it?"
"Because I-" then Gaara realized he'd have to backtrack a bit. Last night's hammer blow of understanding had settled into his mind after a few hours of rest as a dubious sense of epiphany, but it wasn't going to make much sense to the people at this table if he didn't elaborate. "When Naruto defeated me, he talked about loneliness, and how his friends, his precious ones, helped him out of hell and gave him strength. I didn't understand what he meant. It wasn't as if we had a long conversation on the subject, he was too busy hitting me. I thought...I thought I could create bonds like casting ropes across a gap and then I would be like him. I didn't realize that I already had these bonds, if I was willing to acknowledge them. And that acknowledging them might leave me open to a lot of pain, if I lose them or if they're used against me. I know this now, but...I want them anyway.
"I want to do more to be a part of this village than just not killing people. I want to belong to it. I want to be one of the ripples you look at in your papers, and I want to see those ripples myself. It won't make me feel any better about my past. It won't make me feel any better if I lose my brother or sister, either, since nothing can replace the blood we share." On cue, Kankuro gave him the same befuddled stare as last night. "But it's something to live for. You see?
"The pain I've felt in the past from isolation, the pain I'd feel now if I lost what friends and family I have, is what anyone in our village would feel under similar circumstances. I don't want them to suffer that. I never have - I know what I've done in the past, I snuffed out people like candles to validate my own existence, but however cruel I was, I never went so far as wishing any of them in my place. Now I want more, for myself and for the people of Sand. I'll protect their precious ones, I'll protect my own, and I'll protect this village that shelters us and makes us a whole to defend. And if I can become important in their lives, and they become important in mine...I think that will help the pain. I hope. Hope is better than nothing. Naruto showed me that."
"If you ever attain this improbable goal of yours, I foresee that your speeches as leader of our village are going to be rather colourful," Baki declared after a very, very long silence.
"Huh," was all that Kankuro managed.
"Well, that's probably the stupidest notion I've heard of," said Baki, pushing away his bowl and getting to his feet. "But then again, I've witnessed a lot of odd things these past few years, so I won't tell you its completely impossible. Highly unlikely, but not impossible."
"You're encouraging him?" Kankuro growled.
"No. Neither am I discouraging him. You earned yourself our acceptance by what you did last night, Gaara," Baki added, looking straight at him. "I saw it on their faces when you stepped out of that house, though you probably missed it."
"Missed what?"
"That's what I thought. Well, you have a measure of trust now. What you do with it is up to you. I suppose that as long as you're alive, there's always a chance that anything can happen."
"Yes," Gaara agreed solemnly, "that's what Naruto says too. He's very right about some things. Beyond that, he's a bit of an idiot, and I think I should figure out the rest for myself. My answers may start at the same place his does, but they will have to be my answers."
"Right."
Baki left with the hint of a rare smile on his face. Kankuro watched him go, jaw working soundlessly, then he made a show of banging his forehead against the table a few times.
"Okay, I'm with Baki on the 'stupidest notion' business. You do know everyone in this village hates you, from the peons up to the Councillors who could have you killed with a twitch of a finger, right? Oh god, Temari is going to kill us, she said 'don't do anything insane while I'm gone' and you chase ghosts and get delusions of grandeur. And just how do you propose we do this crazy thing, anyway?"
"It will take time and hard work," Gaara admitted, reaching for his bowl while storing Kankuro's 'how do you propose we do this' in a small place which he had found inside his soul last night.
In the courtyard of a house in the east side, the ANBU were burning a spinning wheel and a few other odds and ends, but there was nobody around to mind anymore. The house was empty once again.