Chapter Text
Gaara was well accustomed to the feeling of being alone in the dark for hours on end, well, as ‘alone’ as he could be with Shukaku in his mind.
But ever since the Chunin exams, things had been different. Normally he’d spend his nights bathing in visions of blood, soothing the demon inside him with promises of death soon to come. Now though, now, Gaara didn’t want that. For the first time in years he was having to actively fight back against the screaming, writhing, monster in his head. And it was exhausting, even more than usual.
It had been easier when he was complying with the demons demands, its words had been at least somewhat coherent.
“Blood! Give me blood! Quickly!
“Tear him limb from limb. I want to see him gush like a fountain!”
“More, more, more, more die!”
Its words had only served to push him further, and he rarely resisted its demands.
Now, it knew something had changed. When it screamed for blood Gaara no longer moved to supply it, and it was infuriated.
The sentences devolved into screams, animalistic growls and wails. Sometimes it got so bad Gaara felt as though he were a glass jar desperately trying to contain a hurricane within, and at any moment, he would break.
And it got worse at night. During the day he could listen to people talk around him, he could focus on his training, maybe even have one or two interactions that didn't end in disaster. And these moments help to drown out the noise of an angry Bijuu, push its screams to the back of his mind.
At night he had nothing to distract him from it. Even the noise of crickets died when he was near, perhaps feeling the bloodlust of the monster before them.
So his nights became...very difficult.
The physical toll that his many, many sleepless nights had on his body was becoming worse as well, his limbs felt more sluggish than usual, his eyes burned and at practically all hours a headache would be hammering merrily away at his skull. Maybe that was Shukaku trying to smash its way out of him, who knows.
Two months since the Chunin exams, two months of struggling to keep it together. Inevitably the consequences of wrestling to keep the demons' urges crammed down deep inside, struck.
It happened during training, one of the many unbearably awkward, few hour long sessions which mostly consisted of Baki training Temari, while Kankuro tinkered with his puppets, and Gaara himself mostly just observing. Occasionally Temari and Kankuro would spar with each other or with sensei, but they never asked for him to participate, and he never offered.
It was during one of these sessions where Gaara was perched on a large boulder, knees drawn to his chest and fingers digging into his ankles. He was watching as Temari attempted to give her wind slices more precision, trying to minimize the energy lost in her strikes by focusing all of it on a single point.
He was only half paying attention. The headache that he had carried with him was increaseing in intensity, and Temari's frustrated yells were not helping. He squeezed his eyes shut. Logically he knew that tearing his eyes from their sockets would not help his pain but the throbbing agony that pulsated behind them was pleading for him to do so anyway.
He settled on lifting his hands up to grind the heels of his palms into his eyes. Maybe not the best course of action, but better than his former thought.
The pressure didn’t help though, and instead he felt a dizzying wave pass over him, ferocious in its intensity. And then nothing.
He snapped up. Everything was blurry, he couldn't see, the world was spinning. And then movement in his peripheral vision, a shinobi, someone here to hurt him, to kill him, father sent them, they're going to try and kill me, kill, kill, kill, kill them before they can hurt me!
His sand stopped an inch from Kankuro’s face.
It was sharpened to a point, ready to skewer whoever the unfortunate ninja sent to kill him this time was.
Kankuro..he looked terrified.
He was on his knees, hands in a position that looked like they had been about to reach out to Gaara, dark eyes wide with fear, flicking between the hardened sand in front of him and his brother below.
“Gaara?”
Oh. oh. He had passed out.
It happened sometimes, when his body reached its absolute limit, he hated it with a passion, hated the terror of not knowing if Shukaku had taken over in his sleep. Over the years he discovered that the demon generally needed at least three hours of Gaara being unconscious before it could take over, but Gaara hated the vulnerability, and the possibility that his body would betray him and sleep more than the three hours he could risk. So he stayed awake.
But sometimes things like this happened where his body would refuse to function. It..had never happened in front of his siblings before. And the look on Kankuro's face made his stomach clench.
His sand dropped to the ground, retreating from his brother with a hiss of movement.
“Kankuro!”
The voice of his sister cut through the silence, pitched high with fear. She too must have been frozen up until the moment Gaara dropped his sand.
Gaara pushed himself away, back hitting the rock he had been sitting on a moment ago.
Self loathing filled his mind, laced with the hysterical laughter of Shukaku. He did not want his sibling to fear him anymore. He didn’t want to be the one who put that look of fear on their faces, who saw their lives as inconsequential. Who would kill them without a second thought.
He didn’t want that.
The past two months had not exactly been good. But he had not threatened them even once. He had not shed a drop of blood, and he followed his sensei's every direction to the letter. He had been trying.
But now he had messed it all up. He almost hurt his brother, scared them both, made them think he was the same monster all over again, that he would kill them.
And suddenly it all felt so fruitless, pressure built up behind his eyes again, stinging this time instead of pounding.
He had to...he had to try, one last desperate push to stop him from tumbling over the edge of hopelessness.
Temari had made it to Kankuro's side, helping him to his feet, and as if in slow motion, made a move to turn and walk away.
“I..I’m sorry!”
It came out gasped, strangled. The words awkward and stumbling as they fell from his lips.
Temari gaped at him, mouth open like a fish, eyes utterly unbelieving, and a little accusatory. Kankuro...looked strange. Gaara was not very good at reading the emotions of others and he had no hope of identifying what it was that ran across his brother's face right now.
Temari lifted her hand and grabbed Kankuro’s wrist, tugging slightly to pull him away from Gaara’s curled up form still pressed against the stone. But he didn’t budge, didn’t even look at her. She made a noise of question. But his eyes were still locked on Gaara's pained turquoise, searching for something.
“It's fine.”
It was said so quietly that Gaara was almost certain it had been a figment his mind had created from the noise of the wind and the sand. But then Kankuro broke his gaze and turned his eyes to his sister who looked back with confusion, before turning and heading back to his puppets, a clear sign that this moment, whatever it was, was over.
Temari followed him, and they both began to gather their things to leave, Gaara didn’t move until they were long gone, muscles wound tight in his body. He wasn’t sure if Kankuro's words were forgiveness exactly, but they weren’t rejection, and that had to be enough.
His siblings lived in the Kazekage's home, alone now that their father was dead, and Gaara lived near the edge of the village, alone as well. He had been separated from them for as long as he could remember, and once Yashamaru..died, he had no one. He wondered if his siblings felt alone now that their father was gone too.
He sat on the roof, staring at the moon as he attempted to block out Shukaku's howls.
It had changed tactics because of the incident in the afternoon, reverting from its nonsensical screams to something so much worse, taunting.
“His blood, his blood, I will have it!”
“Fall, fall, fall asleep, wake up in their blood!”
He heard something. Footstep on the sand, a fox? Some creature looking for a late night snack?
Gaara pushed himself up to look and immediately shrank back, people. Two figures approaching his house, he couldn’t make out their faces in the dark and the irrational part of his mind screamed assassins for the second time that day.
It would be best to stay still and hope they passed him by whoever they were, a confrontation would only lead to bloodshed.
When the figures were only a few meters from his doorstep he recognized them, his siblings? But what were they doing here in the middle of the night? What were they doing here at all?
They were in front of his door now, Temari had her hand carefully raised and she gently rapped on the door with a quiet, “Gaara?”
For a minute Gaara contemplated staying silent and letting them just give up and leave. But then he remembered that look that had been on his brother's face, he had been trying, it would be unfair of him to ignore them after that.
So his sand began to swirl and within a second he was standing before his siblings.
Temari yelped in surprise and whirled to face him, body angled defensively, subtly blocking Kankuro from him.
He didn’t say anything, simply waiting to see what they would do.
Kankuro's hand fell on Tamaris shoulder, and he walked past her towards Gaara. He stopped about four feet away from him and held out a bowl, it was covered by tinfoil and Gaara cocked his head at it.
“It's for you. Chicken soup. You passed out during training today, I know it was probably because you can’t sleep very much, but you need good food if you want to have a shot at keeping yourself awake.”
Gaara squinted at him. His siblings..had come all the way to his home, in the middle of the night, to bring him food?
“You, you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.”
His previously confident voice was now coloured with trepidation, but his hands remained outstretched.
Should he take it? Barely two months ago he would have just turned away with a scoff, maybe even slapping the bowl out of his hands. It could be poisoned, perhaps they were trying to get rid of him, it would be smart, to kill him without the threat of his sand.
He reached out and took it.
It was still warm. He looked up and for the second time that day his siblings were staring at him unreadably.
“Thank you.”
It was quiet and subdued but he couldn’t think of anything better to say in the face of such a strange act.
“You’re welcome Gaara, see you tomorrow.”
And then they were gone. Standing outside his house at three in the morning, Gaara pulled the foil off of the bowl, stared down at the warm contents within and brought it up to his lips. It tasted good, really good. All the food he made for himself tended to be either burnt, underdone, and either over or under seasoned.
It was just lukewarm chicken soup. But he cradled the bowl to his chest anyway.
Maybe...maybe he could do this.