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He’s exactly where Gaara expected to find him, hair ruffled by the breeze that sweeps across the sunlit clearing, beads of sweat glistening on the back of his neck. Gaara can hear the faint metallic clank of his weights, even muffled by his leg warmers, as his kick lands on the wooden post. Wood chips fly, the ground shakes.
Lee hops backwards and then steps in again, winding up for another kick, shouting, “One thousand and ninety three!”
“Lee,” Gaara calls out softly.
Lee’s kick stops just short of the pillar, leg muscles quivering visibly with the effort of halting his momentum. He swings his leg back down and turns all in one fluid motion. His face breaks into a wide grin.
“Gaara!” He calls, and bounds forward a few steps. The delight in his voice, in the way he approaches a boy who was once his enemy, makes Gaara’s stomach flip flop nervously. But just as quickly, Lee seems to remember himself.
“I mean, good morning, Lord Kazekage,” he says, bowing low, tone subdued and serious.
“Please don’t do that,” Gaara whispers, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The obeisance looks all wrong on Lee, but he can’t quite put his finger on why. In the back of his mind, Shukaku cackles darkly, like he knows something Gaara doesn’t.
“I am sorry,” Lee says softly, and it’s his turn to look awkward now, fidgeting like he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands in Gaara’s presence. Gaara wonders if he’s fighting the urge to raise them into a defensive posture.
He decides to cut right to the chase. “I want you to help me with my taijutsu training.”
Lee’s smile is replaced by a frown, as quickly as if someone had turned out the lights, thick eyebrows drawing together, the expressive curve of his mouth pulling downwards. “Would that be . . . okay? Considering. . .”
“I’m the Kazekage, not some . . .” Gaara snaps his teeth shut around the snarling words, tries again. “I’m still. . .me.”
He knows it comes out sounding raw and uncertain, he can see that Lee understands that he has no idea what that even means. Lee has the good graces not to mention it.
“Anyway,” Gaara goes on. “Taijutsu was the one area I was found wanting during my jounin assessment.”
“But they passed you,” Lee points out. “They would not have appointed you otherwise.”
Gaara tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. “Do you really think they would even consider failing me?”
Lee snorts out a laugh, teeth flashing in the sun, as though he and Gaara have just shared some sort of private joke.
“Alright!” Lee agrees. “Of course I am happy to help you in whatever way I can!”
On anyone else, Gaara would have written the sentiment off as empty politeness, but from Lee it seems sincere. For a moment he considers whether coming here was a mistake, whether it would perhaps be better to just turn and leave now. Shukaku snarls and snaps in the back of his mind.
He ignores the demon, the way it’s looking at Lee from behind his eyes, but the fact remains that he sought Lee out for a reason. And it has to be Lee.
Only three people have ever been able to break through the defense of the sand, only three people have ever succeeded in inflicting physical pain upon him. In order to test the new ability he’s been practicing, he needs one of them. Perhaps he would have chosen Naruto, if he knew where he was. He wouldn’t have minded trying it on Sasuke; it might have been easier actually. The only thing he feels towards Sasuke is a faint sense of contempt, and beneath that a smoldering feeling of resentment. No one in Konoha will confirm his suspicions, they’re all very tight lipped about it, but he knows in his gut that Sasuke is the reason his first friend has disappeared, the reason he hasn’t heard so much as a word from him in the past year. He knows that Sasuke had everything Gaara himself has ever wanted and threw it away without a second thought. It’s impossible for him to respect Sasuke, but the power of his chidori would have worked wonderfully for his current purposes.
He takes a few deep breaths to focus his mind, making it easier to tune out Shukaku’s ravings about what he could do to Sasuke if only he could get his paws on him. He’s getting better at just ignoring him when he gets like this.
So it has to be Lee and his taijutsu, his inhuman speed. He would have preferred it not to be. Lee is guileless and burning with an intensity that makes it difficult for Gaara to look at him directly. He doesn’t know exactly what he feels towards Lee, but it’s neither contempt nor resentment. It’s a little like fear, and maybe there’s a tinge of jealousy there as well, but for some reason he cannot help but trust Lee. He follows Lee towards the middle of the training field as though his feet are magnetically drawn towards him. Lee grins at him and he can read in Lee’s eyes that he has no intention of hurting Gaara at all. That’s going to make this so much harder.
Shukaku cackles again. Gaara ignores him, though there’s something about that laugh that’s making him more and more uneasy.
“How do you want to do this?” Lee asks, still grinning. “What did you want to work on?”
“Can we just spar?” Gaara asks. His mouth has gone dry and he has to clench his fists to stop his hands from shaking. The taste of anticipation on the back of his tongue makes him want to be sick.
“Sure!” Lee shrugs and then charges at him. Gaara brings his hands up as though to block but the sand shield gets there first, repelling each of Lee’s attacks.
“Gaara!” Lee cries, rolling away from the sand. Gaara is pleased to see that he is once again every bit as fast as he had been that first time. “You will never learn taijutsu if you keep doing that! Does that happen automatically?”
“Yes,” Gaara whispers, because they’re getting right to the heart of the matter now and he doesn’t want to have to give up the game before he has to.
“Can you stop it from doing that?”
“No.” He feels awful as soon as he says the word and Shukaku is shrieking with laughter now. It reverberates along Gaara’s bones and he has to grit his teeth in order to stay focused on Lee.
“We can try it another way then,” Lee decides. “Try attacking me.”
“You’re sure?” Gaara asks slowly.
“Of course! You’re not going to hurt me.” Lee sounds so sure of himself that Gaara wants to scream.
He keeps his teeth clamped around his tongue so the sound won’t escape and just nods. Lee drops into a defensive stance and beckons Gaara forwards. He deflects Gaara’s punch as easily as swatting a fly, sidesteps his kick, gently shoves Gaara off balance with his shoulder when Gaara tries again, all the while calling out corrections and encouragement:
“Keep your weight lower!”
“Yes, good try!”
“Move from the hips! It is more stable and gives you more power!”
“Just like that!”
Lee begins sneaking in his own punches again, not complaining when he meets sand each time. But Gaara can see the determination in his eyes, in the way he moves just a little faster with each punch, puts a little more force behind each kick. He’s going to try to catch the sand off guard, to sneak by it and force Gaara to use taijutsu to protect himself. Good.
Gaara can also tell that Lee does not even begin to suspect that the sand is no longer moving to defend him of its own will, he hasn’t noticed yet the tremendous effort that Gaara is putting into controlling it. Lee hauls back for a haymaker punch, fist like a demon’s war hammer as it speeds right for the centre of Gaara’s face. Gaara tightens his control on the sand, wills it down to the ground and drops his hands, closes his eyes.
Lee’s fist slams home, Gaara’s head snaps back. The force of the blow lifts his feet clear off the ground, sends him flying through the air. He hits the ground all wrong, lands painfully on one arm and tumbles across the hard packed dirt before slamming to a halt with his back against one of the training posts. He’s gasping for breath but there’s no air to breathe in. His eyes are open but all he sees are stars dancing in the darkness.
“Gaara!” He hears Lee’s voice and his footsteps as though from underwater, and holds up one shaking hand to ward him off.
“Stay back.” Something warm and wet dribbles into his mouth as he speaks, flooding his tongue with the taste of iron.
He blinks slowly a few times and Lee drifts hazily into focus, halted a few feet from where Gaara sits, crouching low, hands held out in front of him. Lee curls in on himself, making himself seem smaller and takes the tiniest shuffling step forwards as though approaching an injured wild animal.
“Stay back!” Gaara snaps again. It’s at this moment that he realizes he can’t hear Shukaku anymore.
“Gaara, please!” Lee whispers, eyes so wide that Gaara can see the whites all around the black irises. “I think your nose is broken.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Gaara replies slowly. “Stay back.”
Gaara redoubles his control on the sand. It seethes and pushes back against his will as he reaches for his thigh holster. Gaara ignores Lee as he inches just the tiniest bit closer, let’s his beseeching words wash over him without registering their meaning, as he tightens his grip around the hilt of the kunai. He looks down at his lap, watches the blood from his nose splash onto his pant leg, and chooses a spot in the thickest part of the meat of his thigh, where Shukaku’s chakra will easily be able to heal him. He raises the kunai high and plunges it downwards.
There’s a hiss of sand, a howling in the back of his mind, a green blur. Gaara closes his eyes at the last second. The sand eddies and writhes around where he sits, struggling against his will. Shukaku’s rage screams through his veins, and though he tries, he cannot move his hand any further, held in place as it is by an iron band around his wrist.
Finally, he lets his wrist go slack and opens his eyes. It’s not iron at all that holds his wrist but a scarred hand wrapped in white bandages. He looks up, blinking the haze from his eyes, head still swimming. Lee’s face is only inches from his own, tears gathering on the edges of his full lashes.
“Gaara, what are you doing?” he asks softly. “Why would you. . .?”
“Don’t you see?” Gaara whispers. “I can control it now. I can stop it from defending me. I can hurt if. . . if I want to.”
“But why would you want to?” Lee cries, his voice is hoarse like he’s struggling to hold himself back from shouting.
“My defense is a curse,” Gaara says. Lee’s hand still has not left his wrist, hasn’t slackened its fierce grip even a little bit. “I was born and named a demon and the sand keeps me from being human, from suffering as I should, from feeling the way all the rest of you do. It keeps me separate and alone always.”
Lee shakes his head hard. “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is you’re human to me. You don’t deserve to hurt and I don’t want to see you hurt yourself. Not ever.”
“But I hurt you,” Gaara reminds him.
“I already told you I forgive you for that,” Lee says. “Is that what this is about?”
“No.” Gaara decides to confess. “I knew you were the only person in the village who would be able to hit me. That’s why I asked.”
“Gaara!” Lee cries. “I did not want to hit you! Why would you want that?”
“I just want to feel. . .” Gaara takes a deep breath and coughs as his own blood trickles down the back of his throat. He can feel the cartilage knitting itself back together as Shukaku squirms under his skin, but the blood still flows. “Something.”
“You want to feel something, ” Lee repeats slowly.
Gaara nods and suddenly can’t look at Lee’s eyes anymore, can’t watch the tears finally release their grip on his lashes and roll down his cheeks. “I’m sorry I deceived you.”
The iron grip on his wrist shifts and tightens and suddenly he’s being pulled forwards. He doesn’t resist, keeps the sand at bay. At this point, Lee can do whatever he wants to him; he deserves it. The grip on his wrist disappears and there are two strong, lanky arms encircling him, a bandaged hand cradling his head against the shoulder of a green chuunin vest, the weight of Lee’s head leaning softly against his own.
Gaara freezes. The kunai falls from his numb fingers and he’s only vaguely aware that Lee flings it away into the grass.
“Here’s something for you to feel, Gaara,” Lee whispers fiercely. “And the sand can’t stop me unless you want it to.”
Gaara almost doesn’t dare move or speak, but manages to whisper, “I don’t.”
He feels Lee nod once, a few strands of his hair brush Gaara’s cheek. His nose is dripping blood on Lee’s vest but Lee doesn’t seem to care.
“I only know a little bit,” Lee says softly. “About what has happened to you. So I will not try to tell you what you should be feeling or how you should heal. I am only just learning that for myself, after all. But I can tell you that I care about you, and I do not wish to see you hurt yourself. I do not wish to hurt you.”
“But it’s -”
“It is not what you deserve,” Lee insists in that same fierce whisper. “I know it will take a long time for you to accept that. But you don’t have to be alone in the meantime.”
Gaara realizes that he has stopped trying to restrain the sand, but it remains lying still on the ground all around them, doesn’t even try to creep in between him and Lee.
“Does this help at all?” Lee asks tentatively, giving Gaara a small squeeze.
Gaara closes his eyes and thinks about what he’s feeling. Lee’s body is warm and solid against his, his arms firm and steadying around his shoulders. Gaara can feel Lee’s heart beating beneath his cheek, can feel his lungs rise and fall, his life so fragile beneath the palms of Gaara’s hands where they have fallen against his back.
In the back of his mind, Shukaku is screaming for blood, wailing for Gaara to tear Lee to shreds right here and now. He’s so close and it would be so easy to snuff him out like a candle. But Gaara barely hears him. The demon can shriek and howl all he wants, it’s of no consequence. The only thing Gaara can concentrate on is the heavy, twisting pain in the centre of his chest. It pushes the air from his lungs, forces him to wind his hands into fists in the back of Lee’s vest. It scrapes at the back of his throat like it’s trying to force words past his lips, and causes his heart to stutter and freeze. It hurts like nothing else he has ever felt, makes the pain of his broken nose or the shock of the lightning blade meeting his shoulder seem insignificant. It’s a sweet, terrifying, bottomless ache and he wants to let it consume him.
“Yes,” he finally whispers. “It’s helping. Don’t let go.”
Shukaku falls silent.
“I won’t,” Lee promises. “Not until you tell me to.”
So very slowly, one muscle at a time, Gaara lets his body relax in Lee’s arms. Lee says nothing about it, just holds him up, supports him as he sinks into the embrace.
“I know I cannot be there for you all the time,” Lee whispers after a few minutes. “But anytime you need to feel this, you can ask me.”
“Why?” Gaara ventures.
“Because we are friends,” Lee explains. “It is what friends do.”
“Friends?” Gaara repeats.
“Yes. Friends,” Lee insists.
Gaara weighs the word in his mind. It’s still foreign to him, still new, but he knows that it’s bigger and more complicated than he had thought at first, knows that he wants it. He sits silently in Lee’s arms, and when Lee starts to stroke his hair in slow, soothing motions, he leans into it. Somewhere, in a distant, cobwebbed corner of his memory, he knows he’s experienced this before. In that corner of his mind, he knows what this pain is, knows what it means, but he doesn’t want to remember that part of himself right now.
For now, all he knows is that Lee is bright and beautiful, full of determination and kindness. And maybe there is some small chance, if Gaara is allowed to remain this close to him just a little bit longer, that some of those things that make Lee what he is might seep in under his skin, make him into something better.