Couldn’t save you from the start
Love you so it hurts my soul
Can you forgive me for trying again?
Your silence makes me hold my breath- ‘Forgiven’ by Within Temptation

Gaara’s feet ached, dust coating his face, grinding against his teeth when he swallowed, itching in his nose when he breathed. Lee and Gai were on either side of him, their loud joking making him want to disappear into the forests and make his way to the Southern Front on his own.

But he couldn’t, because he had to help them.

Because if they failed to delay Suna’s forces, the main supply line to the Western Front would be cut in Suna’s advance, and Riko had decreed that for Konoha to have any chance of survival, the supply line needed to survive for a while longer.

The thought of Riko made his stomach churn, the memory of their last conversation floating to the top of his thoughts, a terrible dark thing that made him ache down in his bones.

“Riko?”

He entered her bedroom on quiet feet, eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the darkness.

For a moment, he wished they hadn’t.

Riko lay on her bed, spasming muscles leaving her contorted in some awful shape of sharp angles and twisted planes beneath the sheets. Her amber eyes flicked over to him, trembling lips curling in the adoring smile that made him simultaneously uncomfortable and consumed him with a fierce love.

The room had the antiseptic scent of death.

Her back was arched in a straining curve, one curled hand vibrating by her chin, and he took a seat by her side, carefully taking her hand between his, rubbing muscles that twitched like steel bands beneath his fingertips.

“How long?”

The question that held so much- how long until you leave me forever, how long have you been like this, how long since you’ve last been able to run-

But Riko understood him, like she always did, and a voice as dry and splintered as old bones hissed out of her contorted throat, “Fifteen minutes.”

Gaara pressed his lips together, bowing his head over the small twisted hand that shuddered in his lap. Longer than it had been before. In a mere few months, she had lost almost everything.

He hadn’t known that the final decline would be so quick, had expected a long, gentle slide into the next world.

Not this headlong, wild leap into the dark.

“Shinobu told me you decided to stop treatment,” he observed, turning his face to hers, watching as her eyes drifted uncomprehendingly across his face. The world was fading around her, black clouds slowly encroaching on the edges of her vision as her brain unraveled itself, and soon sight and hearing and movement would be lost to her.

“Yes.”

Her fingers eased beneath his, and he fitted his fingers around her index and began to straighten it.

“Why?”

Her throat worked. “Because I have no control over any of this: the disease, the bijuu. I can’t move when I wish. I can’t… feed or bathe myself-“ Gaara had taken over that role, his clumsy hands as gentle as he could make them as he washed her hair, “-or even choose what food I would like to have.”

A rattling breath.

“But I can choose when I go. That is the one thing I can choose for myself, the one bit of control I have over this disease.”

Gaara didn’t have the words to articulate what he felt: the clawing darkness that opened up in his belly and tore his breath away from him, the loss that burned behind his eyes in tears that would not fall, the sense of utter futility as he tried to accept her decision and couldn’t.

“Are you sure?” he finally managed, the words blistering his mouth as they left.

Riko’s lips twitched, her chest vibrating in what might have been a laugh.

“I’m sure.” Her small body shuddered against his as another spasm wracked her, her head pressing back into the pillows as a groan slipped between her teeth, fingers crushing his hand as fury boiled inside him, but that fury could do nothing to save her.

The spasm eased, and she fell back against the pillows again, dark hair black against the pristine white pillowcases, Gaara carefully straightening her bird-thin limbs while she was relaxed enough to allow him to do so.

She smiled in his direction, saying, “I’m sure, because I’m tired of being in pain.”

What could he say to that?

How could he possibly ask her to endure more of this, simply because he could not bear the thought of life without her?

How could he ask her to live because he loved her, when he could not even express that love?

“I’m going to the Southern Front in a few minutes,” he said, and turned and carefully laid a kiss on her forehead, trying to communicate everything he could not utter. “But I wanted to say goodbye before I went.”

“Okay,” Riko said, and she turned her face against his to kiss his cheek, and her lips were as cold and dry as the desert wind at night. Gaara’s hands clenched with the urge to hold her, to shield her from the disease that even now hummed inside her, but he could not, and so held as still as possible while she whispered, her voice a caress,

“I love you.”

The reply strangled in his throat, and he pulled away, hating himself ever more with each second that ticked away in this dark room of a dying girl, and Riko’s face grew paler and more still with each moment the expected reply went unspoken.

He couldn’t say it, couldn’t lose her too-

Damn him, he couldn’t say it!

“I-“ they lodged once more, and he finished, lame and cowardly, “-know.”

Riko’s voice was very small, and very sad.

“Why can’t you love me, the way that I love you?”

Gaara shook himself free of the clinging cobwebs of memory, returning to himself as the column of shinobi marched over a wooden bridge, the supply carts’ wheels rattling. The carefully-crafted bracelet around his wrist needed charging, and he let some of his chakra flow into it. The seals- formed with ink mixed with a drop of Riko’s blood- glowed blue, then subsided into blackness once more.

“What’s that, Gaara-san?” He glanced up to find Lee hovering over him, lower lip thrust out in contemplation as he bounced along beside him, strange eyes fixed on the bracelet.

“It is part of my requirements to come on this campaign: a two-use teleportation scroll to take me to Riko’s location and then back to wherever I left from in event of an emergency,” he answered, shifting his pack on his shoulders and turning to glance at the long column of shinobi behind him. The few Kerumigakure shinobi, noticing his scrutiny, paled and avoided his gaze.

“Emerg-“ There it went. “Ah,” Lee said, softer now, the syrupy tones of pity coating his words. Gaara hated pity, knew Riko would hate it too, if she were here. “It is because of Riko-san’s… delicate condition, right?”

Gaara forced down a snappish response. It wouldn’t do to antagonize the commanders of the expedition, even though he was only nominally under their authority. Plus, Naruto would give him that damnable disappointed look when he heard, the one that made him want to offer to spend the rest of his life caring for war orphans with diseases if he would just stop looking at him like that.

“Yes. The jutsu is tied to her chakra levels through some extremely complicated method that I didn’t catch. Jiraiya seemed excited about the seals, though.”

“I always forget that Jiraiya’s a master at seals,” Lee said, before clapping his hand over his mouth, eyes comically wide. “But I’ve interrupted you- please continue!”

“So once her chakra levels drop below a certain threshold-“ once she passed the point of no return- “-I will be automatically taken to her.”

The next words were thick and cold, lodging in his throat as he spoke. “And once her chakra is gone completely, all I have to do is charge the bracelet once more for it to take me back to my starting location.”

“It’s a good idea,” Lee agreed, gesturing for the column to take the right path at the fork. “I’m sure it gave her comfort to know that you’ll be there when she needs you. Loyalty is, after all, one of the highest shinobi virtues!”

If Riko had been comforted by the bracelet’s presence, she hadn’t shown it.

“I’m so glad you’re coming with us,” Gai said, popping into the conversation, his teeth blinding in the brilliant noonday sun. “With you on our side, there’s no way we can lose!”

“Agreed!” Lee chimed in, looking far too pleased for his own good.

“I am powerful,” Gaara said, “but I’m not sure how suited my abilities will be to this mission. If they’re smart, they’ll stay on their side of the border where they have enough sand to launch large-scale attacks, but knowing my sister, she’ll probably have ordered them to charge into the forests, where neither I nor them will be at an advantage.”

Katashi’s mission had been the exception, not the rule. His abilities were perfectly suited to his mission, and it’d be quite simple for him to fulfill it and race back home. No doubt he would be absolutely insufferable for weeks.

“I’m sure you will be a vital part of our strategy,” Lee attempted to reassure him.

“Yes!” Gai backed him up.

Gaara ground his teeth together.

It was going to be a long month.

Gaara looked up from his latest sketch, done on the thick brown paper that some of their provisions had been wrapped in, as Lee slid down the tunnel into the small sand cavern he had excavated to keep their provisions cool.

“Hi,” Lee said, sounding odd now that he wasn’t talking like a hyperactive child.

“What’s the situation?” Gaara asked, turning the drawing to get a better angle with his charcoal.

“Nothing terribly interesting,” Lee said as he landed in the cavern. “About a third of us are on watch- well, not me, I just couldn’t sleep. Nothing much is going on at the Suna camp, according to our last scout report three hours ago. And the water we’re getting out of the well the others dug isn’t very good, especially since we’re on a salt flat. But never mind that; what are you drawing?” Lee’s hair was tousled and sticking out in odd directions, his pajamas a blindingly bright shade of green that was muted in the dim light of the candles scattered around the edges of the round chamber.

“The salt flat above,” Gaara answered, turning his chunk of charcoal in his hand and beginning to shade the outline of the moonlight on the plain. Lee perched on a box of dried rice at his side, leaning forward to see the drawing.

“Very impressive. But wouldn’t it be better to, you know, actually be up there to see it?”

Small crosshatching to shade in the shadows of the tents…

“I wanted to try drawing a landscape solely from memory,” he answered as he wiped his hand off on his black trousers. “I also do not want to subject the others to my presence.”

Lee’s brow quirked. “You make it sound like it’s a hardship for them.”

Gaara licked his thumb and smudged a line before looking up, meeting Lee’s earnest gaze.

Why was he even down here?

“I’m not so naïve as to think that they want me around. The Konoha shinobi associate me with the Sound invasion that depleted their shinobi forces, while the Kerumigakure detachment connect me with Varg, whose bijuu burned the entire village to the ground and killed many of them when we escaped. And you…”

He shook his head, unaccountably irritated by Lee’s illogicality. “You have more reason than any of them to despise me. I almost destroyed your chances of being a shinobi, not to mention I stood by and watched while Yugito burned the skin off your body. So why talk to me at all?”

Lee glanced down at the pale scar tissue covering the backs of his hands, Gaara following his gaze and feeling, for the first time, a twinge of guilt as he saw Lee flex his fingers, the motion sluggish and strained as it pulled against scar tissue.

“I never hated you for what you did in the Chuunin Exam,” Lee said, looking up and shifting on the box. “You were the better of the two of us, even if you did have an unfair advantage,” he grinned.

Advantage? Shukaku was an advantage?

Of course, intellectually, tactically, he had always known Shukaku to be a boon, but the price he paid- that he continued to pay- was too high for him to ever consider the bijuu worth it.

“As for what Nii-san did, well… she did what she thought she had to do to keep your quest going. If I hated you for not intervening, then I would have to hate Naruto as well, and even though he left us, I never hated him. I was disappointed, sure, and hurt, but never hateful.

“And even if I did hate you,” Lee continued, “I would be willing to set that aside, because we need you to save Konoha, and my love for Konoha outweighs everything, even theoretical hatred. I’m sure that’s what the shinobi that do dislike you feel as well.”

This love for his country- love that outweighed hatred- was a foreign concept to Gaara. He had no attachment to the country of his birth, no attachment to the country he now fought for. His only allegiance was to his family: nothing so nebulous as an ideal or a nation.

Love was a powerful thing.

“I-“ he began, only to pause, frowning.

Something was wrong, something prickling at the edges of his awareness.

”Gaara-san?” Lee snapped his mouth shut as Gaara held up a hand and closed his eyes, spreading his chakra deeper, further into the earth, past the cold, dry sensation of bedrock-

A long, thin tube-like chamber, a large one; he had known of its existence peripherally, but immediately dismissed it as an offshoot of a long-dead, crumbled magma conduit.

But offshoots didn’t grow, as this one was, earth shifting, moving, his chakra flowing to accommodate the changes as a-

“Lee,” he spoke without opening his eyes, realizing now the cleverness of their plan even as he damned himself for not realizing it.

“Yes, Gaara-san?”

The tunnel upwards was less than a mile from the surface, and when it reached Suna’s forces- so many of them, the thunder of their sandals in the earth a cacophony in his skull, and now he realized why the Suna force they had seen in the camp seemed so small- would break free into the center of the camp-

“Lee!” Gai screamed from above, “they’re coming!”

Yes, more thunder, this the roar of feet pounding in a charge across the plain-

“Yes, Gai-sensei!” Lee screamed back, bouncing to his feet and ripping open a crate of kunai, arming himself, “I’ll be there immediately!”

“Lee,” Gaara said, and something in his tone made Lee stop and turn, “they’re coming from beneath. Six tunnels around the edges of the camp- at least three hundred shinobi per tunnel-“

Above, he heard the sound of battle, the shrill clang of the alarm bell-

“Collapse the tunnels!” Lee yelled as he leaped for the rope ladder and scrambled up it, disappearing from view.

“I can’t,” Gaara whispered to the emptiness. The tunnels lay too deep, their stone walls were too strong, and something big was coming from beneath, something heavy, inhuman-

A shrapnel cannon.

He pushed the drawing aside and rose through the sand above, emerging into chaos, his eyes burning, watering as a flashbomb exploded overhead and washed the color out of everything, except the oncoming tide of Suna shinobi, sprinting across the salt flats, howling, their curved scimitars flashing white in the moonlight.

Konoha shinobi stumbled out of their tents, some summoning hawks, wolves, a gigantic chameleon whose two eyes focused independently of each other, others yanking on their flak jackets.

He formed a sand clone and sent it slithering through the chaos to find Gai, to warn him of the attack from beneath, and yanked his pouch off his belt and opened it, tossing small shards of glass into the air.

They sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight, and he raised his hands, feeling thin strands of chakra connect with each, the shards humming, a thin high note that reverberated through his fingers, inside his bones, as he flicked his fingers, the shards moving with them.

The Konoha shinobi formed up, a circle around the camp, the rest haphazardly joining together into a line that sprinted towards the Suna force, the two waves meeting, crashing together in a roll of thunder over the plain, and from where he stood he saw only the Konoha shinobi’s backs, the white faces of the Suna soldiers half-glimpsed, the blood spilling black and iridescent over the plains.

There was a howling, a high, shrieking sound like a sword on a whetstone, and a tornado formed from nothing in the midst of the two lines, cut through the barely-formed Konoha lines like a scythe through grain, the ones that weren’t near the epicenter of the tornado flung back, a few of them hitting weak spots in the salt scum that covered the plain and breaking through, drowning in the boiling sulfurous sludge beneath. The Konoha shinobi wavered, broke, retreated to the circle around the camp where Gai was snapping out orders.

But now there was an opening in the lines-

His shards rocketed forward as he flung his arms in front of him, crossing them at the elbows, to pierce straight through the slim apertures in the Suna soldiers’ helmets, blood pouring through the slits as he yanked them back with a curl of his fingers, striding forward.

The earth shook beneath his feet, but he, used to it because of Riko’s seizures, stood where others fell, striding forward into the open space between the lines, alone beneath the stars.

He saw the recognition in their eyes, saw the fear once more-

How dare they fear him? How dare they look at him like that, when he had spent the past six years caring for a girl that was destined to die, holding her as she vomited, combing her hair, feeding her, devoting endless hours to her even though he knew that it would only hurt him in the end, that there were no miracles on the horizon?

How dare they look at him and see solely a killer, not a brother, not a friend, not something capable of more?

And something dark and bitter and vengeful took hold of him.

Hate.

He hated them.

He felt his mouth curl, muscles contracting involuntarily, the smile of a kitsune, of a bijuu, of something that saw the forces of man arrayed against it and knew that they only existed because it allowed them to do so.

And he would no longer tolerate them, these blind fools who had known him for twelve long bloody years and had never seen him as anything other than a beast.

A beast they would have, then.

He tensed, uncrossed his arms, flung them out to his sides, alone, his shadow stretching to encompass them all as another flashbang poured light over the desert.

And the shards followed his directions, reversed their directions and arrowed to either side, the chakra strings shaking, thundering, a dissonant symphony as the shards hit bone, tore through it, sliced jugulars, burrowed through larynxes, his hands trembling, metacarpals vibrating so hard it seemed that they might shatter-

And then his hands stilled as the blood-soaked shards cut through the ends of the line and thudded into the sand.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound of liquid was loud in the sudden silence as red waterfalls opened up, one by one, spreading outward from the center of the front line, heads falling back, too far to be natural, vertebrae gleaming ivory as the entire line crumpled in mid-rush, collapsing where they stood, gore pumping out over the salt flat.

And the shinobi that came behind ran forward over the bodies of their dead.

He finally became aware of Gai’s screams through the roaring of blood in his ears.

“Fall back! Goddamnit, fall back!”

The earth was shuddering beneath his feet, and he whirled, seeing the Konoha shinobi stumble out of the camp to form up on the other side as tents and tables and bedrolls rose into the air on a giant hillock of sand, the sound like the belly of some great beast, rumbling in hunger-

He dissolved in sand and rematerialized by Lee’s side, someone’s shoulder spinning him round as terrified Chuunin and Genin, some of them barely twelve, sprinted past him, running as the earth yawned, spewing boiling sludge and sharp plates of salt and sand into the air-

The noise was thunderous, the smell appalling, and as Gaara righted himself, turning, he saw the long, black arm of the shrapnel cannon break free of the hillock, reaching into the sky, blotting out the stars, shinobi, black and formless in the darkness, crawling out of the hole it made, knives clenched in their bared teeth.

Something was glowing inside the cannon’s barrel, a red-orange like sunset, and Gaara’s breath left him.

“Get down!” he roared, his order lost in the screech of half a ton of metal being propelled against the inside of the barrel, rocketing free into the sky-

He hadn’t done this- had never needed to protect others-

His hands slammed onto the burning sands, and as the shrapnel shards completed their ascent and began to turn towards earth, gravity taking hold once more-

He ripped what small sand remained free of the salt’s clinging hold, lofted it into the air, spread it over the eight hundred Konoha shinobi as best as he could, unable to breathe, to think-

Only able to coalesce that thousand tons of sand into a dome over them, as thick and strong as he could make it, to hear the surprised curses of shinobi-

The shrapnel arrowed towards earth, gleaming.

He would not let them impact, would not let these shinobi fall, because although he bore no love for them, Riko had asked this of him, and he would not fail her in this, the only thing he could do for her now.

Shrapnel hit the sand, and stuck, shuddering, as the other shards pierced the thinner edges.

Screams rose up in the darkness beneath the sand cloud.

Gaara’s arms shook. He couldn’t breathe, and a sharp-edged agony was digging into his lungs and hollowing them out. He bowed his head, even that small motion causing pain.

“Gaara…” Lee breathed beside him, staring up. “You did it.” Pinpricks of moonlight dotted his face.

Gaara lifted his head, blinking sweat from his eyes, and pulled one hand away from the ground, more chakra- he could feel it, thin and weak- streaming from his fingers, catching hold of the sand cloud.

‘Come on.’

With a final gasp, he twisted his hand and shoved the cloud atop the gaping abyss in the middle of the camp. Moonlight poured over the Konoha shinobi once more, but he had no time to check on their conditions, no time to count the wounded and dying.

Shrapnel hung suspended in midair over the abyss, and snarling, the sound a dry rasp emerging from a parched throat, he let go.

Gravity pulled the metal blades downward, the shards piercing headbands, hastily-soldered-together helmets, pinning limbs to the earth and blowing skulls apart into red mist. The Suna shinobi faltered, stopped, and he could see his name come unwillingly to their lips.

“Go!” Gai shouted. Gaara didn’t move as shinobi streamed past, the earth shaking beneath his hands, Lee hurling himself forward, leading the pack. The chameleon summon’s tongue zipped out, curled around several Suna shinobi, and dragged them screaming into its mouth.

Grunting, he pushed himself onto his knees and knelt on the burning sand, trying to breathe. Medic-nin rushed around him, their hands soaked with blood from where his shield had been too thin, and long, low moans filled the air.

He had enough chakra left for one last blow, one that would hopefully be enough to force Suna to retreat, if only temporarily.

One of the Suna shinobi was loading a flashbomb into the cannon-

His gaze flew to the shinobi still pouring out of the abyss, engaging with the Konoha shinobi. It was a welter of bodies and blood, screaming and smoke-

But yes- dark glass goggles hung around the Suna shinobi’s necks.

Sand raced to Gai’s side, a mouth forming out of nothing, whispering, “Cover your eyes. Retreat.”

Gai spun, foot slamming into a man’s neck, a sickening crunching filling the air as the man’s head slid three inches to the right, before dodging a wild swing and driving his elbow back into the woman’s nose. Bone splintered, pierced the thin sheet of bone shielding the brain, tore into neurons.

She staggered and slid to the earth.

“You sure?” Gai panted.

“Yes.”

Gai’s eyes flickered, as if he was debating whether to trust him, before his jaw firmed and he nodded, hands slamming together into seals.

A giant turtle appeared from nothing beside Gai, its voice a deep bass rumble that carried over the noise,

“Retreat! Cover your eyes!”

The Konoha shinobi, soldiers to the end, obeyed, turning, running, even though they were showing their vulnerable backs to the enemy. Many only lived long enough to regret it, swords and spears gutting them, and fell.

As the survivors thundered past Gaara, he levered himself to his feet, unable even to groan with pain.

No time to create the Sand Eye-

Lee and Gai were the last to go by him, Lee skidding to a stop and turning, taking up a position at his side.

Gaara didn’t even spare him a glance, every fiber in his being fixed on the cannon, watching, waiting.

“Cover your eyes,” he rasped as the cannon roared once more, a gray sphere flying into the sky, tumbling, end over end, before bursting apart.

“Gaara!” Lee screamed, a hand landing heavy on his shoulder, but Gaara shoved him back and down, watching the shell continue its arc.

He closed his eyes.

It was strangely silent, the explosion, but the terrible, cold light that poured over the plain, made Gaara’s eyes burn even through his closed eyelids, more than made up for it.

He had to open his eyes.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done, to push past every instinct in him that screamed to leave them closed-

He opened them and stared into hell, involuntary tears streaming down his cheeks, a lancing agony hammering through his skull- thought was torn from him, and all he knew was pain.

Hundreds of black dots were growing larger and larger-

The goggles.

Roaring, he cast out his chakra, felt the strands snap to every lens, and-

He clenched his fist.

Hundreds of glass lenses shattered, and screams rose up over the salt flats as the oncoming charge stumbled, halted, and broke apart into hundreds of writhing men and women clawing at their eyes, blood streaming from between their fingers, splashing red, the only color in the whiteness.

The light faded enough for him to see two figures emerge from the hole.

A woman, tall and bronze, her sandy hair tied into four pigtails, her mouth twisted in a snarl, purple fan slung across her back in a half-remembered pose.

A man, face marked with purple lines, his eyes wide, hand outstretched, pointing at him, the puppet at his side gazing at him with three glittering eyes.

Gaara almost smiled-

But then the world went away, shrinking into a tiny bright dot that was swallowed up in darkness as black as Shukaku’s heart, and he sank into a gray, drifting twilight.

His arm was burning, and someone’s hand was on his shoulder.

Groaning, he reached up to slap away the unwanted touch, only to have his hand seized, a voice calling,

“Lee! He’s back!”

Gaara eased his eyes open, blinking away the grittiness, His stomach chose that moment to make itself known, an empty, gnawing hunger that jabbed into his spine and made him hiss.

“Gaara!” Lee bounded into the tent like an overexcited dog, skidding to a stop by his cot. “I see they finally got the stimulant needle in.”

Gaara quirked a brow, his throat too parched to speak.

“They couldn’t get the first ten past the sand armor, so now we have a bunch of bent syringes laying around.”

“Waste of good needles,” the medic muttered, placing a glass of water on the table by the cot and leaving the tent in a huff.

Gaara picked up the glass, annoyed by how his hand shook, and took a sip of lukewarm water, swishing it around his mouth. It tasted like death.

“Status?” he finally croaked.

Lee hooked his foot around a camp chair and dragged it closer, plopping down and punching the air as he spoke, unable to sit still. “You’ve been out for two days. Did you just use up all your chakra?”

Gaara grabbed the bowl of unpalatable gruel on the table and attacked it, only pausing in his shoveling of the food into his mouth to say, “I’m not used to performing large maneuvers like the three I did in the battle. My bijuu and chakra levels are more suited to small-scale, precise attacks against individuals, not large masses. It was only luck that I was able to do all three of those maneuvers one after the other.”

“That makes sense,” Lee said, before rushing onward, “All casualty reports say seventy of ours died outright, and about forty are too injured to go back into combat. After you smashed all the Suna guys’ goggles, we used the time they were all trying to reorganize to beat a retreat.”

“How far back are we?”

“About three miles from the edge of the salt flat. The Suna shinobi are holed up in their camp; all reports say they’re waiting for reinforcements, since you pretty much blinded like a third of their forces here.”

Wonderful.

“How long until the reinforcements arrive?”

Lee shrugged, picking up a paperweight and tossing it from hand to hand. “The Kerumigakure spies returned from doing a sweep not too long ago, and they’re still working on the calculations, but I think it’ll be about a week, week and a half.”

Gaara’s lip twitched.

The odds were going to be even more stacked against them. He finished his gruel and shoved it aside, reaching for his accoutrements on the table and buckling them onto his belt.

Finishing, Gaara struggled upright and swung his legs off the cot to sit on the edge, waving off Lee’s offered hand. “And Temari and Kankuro?”

“Um…” Lee shifted, “they’ve actually sent an emissary to us. They want to talk to you.”

Gaara frowned and looked down at his hands, watching sand ripple over his skin. Why would they want to talk to him? It wasn’t as if cultivating a relationship with him had ever been high on their priority lists.

“Where would we meet?” he finally asked, for lack of anything better to say.

“They’d set up a neutral tent on the salt flat,” Lee answered. “And neither one of you would be able to bring a bodyguard or weapons.”

Gaara snorted. “If they think I’m removing my sand armor for this, they’re sadly mistaken.”

Lee said nothing, but he could feel him vibrating, skin itching where Lee’s hopeful gaze bored into it.

“You want me to go meet with them, don’t you?” Gaara said, amused by Lee’s visible surprise at how transparent he had been. The other man wore his heart on his face, always had, and somehow that transparency was refreshing.

“Well. Um, yeah.” Lee fidgeted, tossing the paperweight back onto the table with a bang. “If you could stall them, that would be great, since the supply line hasn’t finished moving yet. And don’t you want to see your siblings?”

Gaara shoved his arms into his jacket and stomped his feet into his boots, glancing at Lee. “You seem to think I consider them to be my siblings.”

Lee’s look of horror was so blatant that Gaara almost smiled. “I don’t want to offend you,” Lee blurted, waving his hands in the air, as if that would do anything if Gaara did attack, “but I don’t understand. I have five siblings, myself, and the idea that…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

Yes, Gaara’s relationships with Temari and Kankuro weren’t normal, but they had never been. “We never spent much time together even before,” Gaara said as he pushed himself upright, swaying as the still-novel sensation of pain- warm and somehow wet- welled up inside him.

Every joint in his body ached like they had been filled with ground glass.

Chakra exhaustion, and when he concentrated he could feel Shukaku pacing inside him, trying to generate more chakra, to protect itself by protecting him.

“I lived with a different family member, while they stayed at our father’s house and were cared for by women from the village.”

Why was he even telling Lee this? There was no reason for him to be so forthcoming to anyone outside the jinchuuriki, but somehow Lee’s openness and attempts to… befriend him, he supposed, were inspiring him to reciprocate.

He didn’t understand.

Grinding his teeth, he pushed the mosquito netting draping the entrance to the tent aside and emerged into the camp. The sky was the dull gray of unpolished iron, and the humidity curled itself around him like Varg’s hand around Moriko’s.

The silence made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. No sound but for the soft sighing of wind, the low rumbles of conversations, no signs of life but the deliberate motions of hollow-eyed sentries. Everyone lay around the camp in various stages of exhaustion, two newly-minted Chuunin, younger than he was at his first Chuunin exam, draped over each other in the shadow of the infirmary tent, their eyes and noses still red.

“They lost their squad mate,” Lee informed him quietly, before stiffening, eyes going to something over Gaara’s shoulder.

A familiar chakra-

Gaara turned his head just enough to see the scarred, half-remembered face out of the corner of his eye.

“Baki,” he acknowledged, turning around to see him, folding his arms across his chest.

He deliberately left off the ‘sensei.’ Baki had never had anything to teach him. The older man looked much the same- the gangrene scars on his face remained covered, although there were fresh wounds pocking the skin around his visible eye.

Gaara smiled, the expression pinched and mechanical, a sickening vestige of emotion.

“I see my technique needs refining.”

Baki did an admirable job of not flinching, but Gaara, used to all the permutations of fear, saw it nonetheless.

“The Kazekage’s emissary wishes to meet with you.”

Kankuro, then.

“And the Kazekage herself?”

Baki’s lip curled as he drew himself upright, radiating disdain. Gaara was unaffected; this man was nowhere near Yugito’s level of prowess when it came to disdain for humanity.

“The Kazekage refuses to consort with, quote, blood traitors,” Baki recited.

Lee gasped, but Gaara only stared at Baki, expressionless. Why should he care what Temari thought? Her opinion had never mattered to him as a child, and that was one of the few things that hadn’t changed over the years.

‘I suppose we truly are dysfunctional.’

“Very well. Give me the coordinates for the meeting.”

Baki fished out a folded scrap of paper and handed it to Gaara with a mocking bow. “The emissary is already waiting.”

Gaara’s lip twitched at their presumptuousness, but he said nothing, only watched as Baki was escorted from the camp by glowering sentries, his former instructor’s hand lifting in a lazy wave.

“Lee,” he murmured, glancing down at the coordinates.

The green-suited shinobi edged out from behind him, looking…

Looking righteously furious on his behalf.

It was a look that he had only seen on the other jinchuuriki’s faces before.

Choosing not to analyze it, he said, “I will return no later than three hours from now,” and dissolved into sand.

He came back to himself outside a pavilion, the heavy canvas cloth emblazoned with a sheathed kunai, the universal shinobi symbol for neutral ground. A table, surrounded by cushions, was laid out in the center of the unrolled mats, a pot of tea steaming in the middle.

Tea- a sign of friendship and affection in Suna.

Perhaps Kankuro was looking to draw Gaara back to Suna?

And there he was.

He stood with his back to Gaara on the other side of the pavilion, his hood down, and as he felt Gaara’s scrutiny his shoulders tensed beneath the black cloth of his suit.

Gaara’s skin prickled, but he said nothing, waiting, and after a long moment Kankuro heaved a sigh and turned, gaze settling on Gaara’s face, his lips twitching in a tired smile.

“Hey.”

“Hello,” Gaara said, entering the shade and seating himself on one side of the table.

Kankuro looked well, from what little he knew of how men of that age were supposed to look. He was thinner, his paint more elaborate, and he moved with a solemn stillness that was anathema to what he remembered him being like.

Kankuro’s scrutiny made him tense, biting back a snarl, his brother’s eyes flickering over him, pausing momentarily at the bags of glass powder and shards arrayed on his belt while he eased himself into a seat on the other side of the table.

They sat in silence as Kankuro puttered about with the teapot, pouring two cups and offering one, cupped in both hands, to Gaara, who took it with the same solemnity, raising it to his lips. They met each other’s eyes and took a sip at the same moment.

It was hot, sweet, tinged with jasmine and cinnamon. Normally, Gaara would never have taken anything offered by someone who was not one of the jinchuuriki, but the idea of poisoning tea offered as a sign of peace was so anathema to the people of Suna that he was comfortable with drinking it.

In silence, listening to the wind outside the tent, they finished their tea and set the cups aside.

Ritual completed, the negotiations could at last begin.

“So, uh… how’ve you been?” Kankuro finally said, his hands twitching with the urge to fidget.

“Well enough,” Gaara answered, folding his arms across his chest.

They made asinine small talk for a few minutes, Gaara informing Kankuro of the other jinchuuriki, of the Village in the jungle, while Kankuro spoke of all the happenings in Suna that Gaara didn’t give a damn about. Why should he care if Baki was married, or Temari was engaged? Kankuro showed him a picture of Temari, and he made the appropriate noises of appreciation.

Growing tired of dancing around the issue at hand, he finally said,

“What is the purpose of this meeting?”

Kankuro frowned, shifting in his seat. “What, I can’t just want to catch up with my little brother?”

“I doubt you would call me out here for a social visit. Socializing with me was never part of your priorities.”

Kankuro sighed- good, Gaara wanted him annoyed, and even if it was petty, he didn’t care- and leaned back, planting a hand in the sand.

“The Kazekage wants me to convince you to either become neutral or come back to Suna, the latter being more preferable, of course.”

Like that was ever going to happen, when he had everyone he cared for, everything he needed in Konoha.

“The Kazekage…” he mused, drumming his fingers on the table. “Why is Temari now the Kazekage? Was Father finally usurped? I’d imagine it came as a surprise-” his lips twitched in an attempt at a smile, “-since she was always his favorite.”

“What?” Kankuro shook his head, staring at him as if he had never seen him before in his life. “You… you really don’t know, do you?”

“In case it escaped your notice, I spent the past six years in the jungle,” Gaara retorted. “That doesn’t tend to facilitate communication with the outside world.”

Kankuro shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “Yeah, okay.” He blinked, taking a deep breath, and said as flatly as he could,

“Dad’s… Dad’s dead, Gaara.” He blinked again, throat bobbing, and continued, “He died before the invasion attempt on Konoha. The Dad we thought was on the trip with us was actually Orochimaru.”

Shouldn’t he feel something more at the news of the death of his father? Something more than this dull, quiet satisfaction that the man had gotten what was coming to him?

Wasn’t he supposed to grieve?

“I see. What killed him?”

Kankuro’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know why you want to know, but it was snakebite.”

Why wouldn’t he want to know? Why wouldn’t he want to picture the man who had destroyed all hope for normality, for being part of humanity, strangling, dying, finally understanding that he was powerless?

“Hm.”

“Yeah…” Kankuro said, scratching his stubbled chin. “Look, I get that the other jinchuuriki are fighting for Konoha, but listen- you don’t have to fight against them. Just become neutral, and we can both go home happy. But I really do want you to come back to Suna with us.”

He did?

“Why?”

“’Why?’” Kankuro echoed, dumbstruck. “Because- well, because you’re our brother! And sure, Temari will be pissed at you, but it won’t last- just come back-“

“I am not,” Gaara whispered, cold and clear as ice, “your brother any longer.”

“Goddamnit, Gaara!” Kankuro roared, flinging his hands in the air as he leaped up from the table. “You have never- not for one single moment- stopped being our brother.” He turned, heel digging into the sand, and paced around him, fingers curled into fists. Gaara could smell blood seeping from where Kankuro’s nails dug into his palms, and felt Shukaku stir inside him at the scent.

“I was never your brother,” he said. “You were afraid of me. You never loved me.” Half-forgotten memories of childhood, stuffed into the same dark, cold box that held all his memories of Yashamaru, awakened, and that empty, gnawing hunger for affection he had felt every hour of every day as a child returned, the agony of it like a physical blow.

“Love and fear aren’t mutually exclusive, you dick!” Kankuro whirled to face him, eyes burning with emotion. “Love isn’t a switch I can turn off and on; I was afraid of you, yeah, because you killed people and never slept and kept telling me that you wanted to kill me, but that never meant that I didn’t love you.”

His voice cracked. “You’re my brother. I used to stand over your crib at night and watch you lie there and stare back at me, and even if I was scared, I still loved you, because you were family. I still love Temari, even though she’s leading us into a war that I don’t think we can win.”

“You are correct in that assumption.”

“Don’t you get it? We always loved you. Do you have any idea how we felt, coming into the forest and finding that you were just… gone? I mean, think about this… Riko. If she disappeared on you one day, and you had no idea where she had gone, and she never even tried to contact to you- wouldn’t that worry you?”

“She would never leave us,” Gaara said, eminently logical. “We are the only family she has, the only ones who have a hope of understanding her mentality and physical issues. And even if she did leave, there would be no place on this earth we would not find her.”

Kankuro jammed his eyelids shut, raking his fingers through his hair. “We tried to find you,” he whispered, “but you wouldn’t let us. And then Temari became Kazekage, and we thought that would help us find you, but then Konoha started killing our soldiers, and they started trying to annex us. So Temari and the Council decided we had to go to war. And I was fine with this, but then the news got out that Konoha had you guys on their side.”

“And no matter how hard I tried to make her understand that we can’t beat you, she just… wouldn’t give up.”

“Of course she won’t,” Gaara said. “She’s not herself. She’s trapped in a genjutsu.”

Kankuro’s head snapped up. “A genjutsu?” he repeated, brow quirking. “Why would you say that?”

“This war is not the natural outgrowth of differing goals between countries,” Gaara said. “For the past several years, all five of the Great Nations have been content with the status quo. They have no reason to suddenly launch a war against Konoha, even though Konoha has apparently killed their soldiers. Most small border skirmishes don’t lead to wars.”

“It was extremely sudden,” Kankuro agreed, his eyes narrowing.

“And Temari is smart, from what I remember of her. And stubborn, but not so stubborn as to be blind to the futility of this war. So are the other Kages.”

“The genjutsu is an insidious one. It was placed on the Kages, and slowly warps their worldview, forcing them to discount entirely the idea of not going to war. They could be staring straight at evidence that they were being manipulated, and wouldn’t believe it.”

“What about the bodies of our soldiers? They were killed by Konoha’s techniques-“

“Manufactured to get the populace to support the war.”

Kankuro shook his head, grinning. “Okay. So say that this is true and somebody’s managing to hold a genjutsu on four Kages without tipping anybody off.

“Why? Nobody’s benefiting by getting into a war, least of all Konoha. And sure, if Konoha falls, we’ll divvy up their land and territories, especially since they have the best farmland. And dividing it up wouldn’t be a favorable outcome, since all of us would lose potential spoils. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“The group creating this genjutsu is known as Akatsuki.”

“Akatsuki?” Kankuro frowned, scratching his chin. “Aren’t they some kind of terrorist organization? Why would they want to upset the status quo?”

“Because they needed the jinchuuriki.”

Kankuro’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You? Why?”

Gaara lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We don’t know what their aim is, just that it apparently requires our deaths to complete.”

Kankuro laughed, looking around, as if to find someone to share his incredulity with.

“You expect me to believe this bullshit? You expect me to believe some random terrorist organization can hold a genjutsu on four Kages that’s so specific that it only forces them to do one thing, and so subtle that no one can tell it’s there, all to accomplish some vague aim that no one knows exactly what it is?”

“I’d think you’d be happy to have an explanation for Temari’s stubborness,” Gaara noted.

Kankuro rolled his eyes. “I’m pragmatic, Gaara, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my intelligence specialists, it’s that the simplest answer is usually correct. What’s more simple and realistic: a crazy genjutsu on Temari and all of the other Kages with no real point, or Temari and the Council just being stubborn bitches?

“I’m sorry, but I think your theory’s fucked. There are too many holes and too much ambiguity for me to give any thought to it,” Kankuro said. Gaara inclined his head in a slow nod; even though he didn’t agree with Kankuro’s decision- knew that it could only lead to ruin-, he could at least respect his honesty.

And he had no proof of his allegations, nothing that could inspire Kankuro to believe him over the sister he had loved so dearly for so many years.

“Fair enough.”

Kankuro bit his lip, asking again, childlike hope shining on his face that somehow this answer would be different,

“So you won’t come back for us?”

Gaara shook his head, feeling some small inkling of regret for the way Kankuro’s face crumpled, for the deep black chasm between them that couldn’t be crossed.

Too much time had passed. Too many chances had been lost. And perhaps it had to end this way- perhaps he had been destined to born a jinchuuriki, leave his family for a new one- but it didn’t change the fact that somehow the look of devastation on Kankuro’s face made something in him urge him to rescind his actions.

Kankuro rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, shoulders shaking once, twice, a long, tired sigh leaving his lips, before he looked up and said, his voice businesslike, drained of all life,

“If you can’t come back for us, can’t you come back for Suna?”

“Suna?” Gaara sneered. “Why would I return to Suna, to a place I was never wanted?”

Kankuro’s face twisted in some instinctual revulsion at his lack of patriotism.

“Because Suna needs you. It’s your homeland! There are a thousand men lying out there that died for their homelands; why can’t you understand that?” Kankuro said in a fierce, urgent whisper, his face pale beneath the makeup.

“Because they died for dirt. And you may have been born on it, and lived on it, and your ancestors may have died on it back to the thousandth generation before you, but it’s just dirt.

And I’m not foolish enough to give up everything for it.”

Kankuro blinked, his eyes glossy with some emotion Gaara couldn’t even try to name. “It’s home.”

Home? Home was a place where one felt accepted, loved, appreciated for all that they were. Home had never been a place-

Home was eight people. Home was the jinchuuriki.

Kankuro, sensing that he was losing him, shook his head and leaned forward, pressing on, “If you can’t come home for patriotism, what about all the future generations of Suna, the children who will be born, that you can save?”

Future generations? A possibility?

“I fail to see the point of dying for an intangible ideal. Possibilities, patriotism- these things mean nothing to me.”

“How can you not understand patriotism?” Kankuro demanded, slamming his fist on the table.

“Because there is no reason to die for a set of traditions and a plot of earth. And if you believe nothing else I say, believe this: if you come to Konoha, you will die.”

Kankuro rested his head in his hands, and something in Gaara, some long-dead spark of familial loyalty, flared to life, making him offer, grudging, slow,

“If you and your men wish to live, you can defect.”

Kankuro’s head snapped up, the twisted look of outrage and pain on his face making Gaara pause. Kankuro smiled, a broken, terrible thing, and shook his head with a choked sob.

“I can’t defect,” Kankuro whispered in a wretched, wet voice. “Suna is my home, and I’ll do whatever I can to save it- even fight in this war that Temari has made.”

Gaara looked down at the picture of Temari on the table, gilded by evening light. She was smiling, her eyes alight, her smile full of humor, and he felt nothing for her but a vague sense of pity-

For she was an unwitting pawn in a war of giants.

“Kankuro.”

His brother looked up, startled by the sudden softening of his tone. “Yeah?”

“What do you love more, Suna or Temari?”

He almost felt sorrow for what he was about to do.

“I-“ Kankuro stared at him, open-mouthed. “I- I don’t even know how I’m supposed to answer that question, Gaara! There’s different kinds of love-“

“Value, then.”

Kankuro shook his head, fingers tight on the edge of the table, the teacup nearest his hands vibrating with the motions. “I would die for Suna in a heartbeat, and I would die to free Temari from any genjutsu, because she is Suna’s leader. I love my country more than life itself. But-“ he raked his hands through his hair, “again, you can’t measure them against each other, they’re totally different!”

Gaara smiled internally, and sprung the trap.

“Temari will not give up the position of Kazekage willingly, nor will the people of Suna let her. But as long as she remains Kazekage, she will continue to lead Suna into a war that cannot be won.”

“With Temari at your head, you may be able to mow down the forces of Konoha. Perhaps, with luck and cunning, you will even make it to the gates.

And there, you will meet the jinchuuriki.”

Gaara leaned over the table, his voice flat. “I can tear a hundred people’s throats out in mere seconds, blind three hundred in a minute. And Shukaku only has one tail.”

Kankuro swallowed.

“If you are willing to face the walking dead, then come. If you think you can overcome the sea and the earth, then press on. If the power of lightning and poison doesn’t frighten you, then fight to Konoha’s walls. If having every single one of your shinobi no longer be sure of what is real and what is illusion makes you laugh, then walk on. If you don’t mind the idea of facing demons living in your own shadows and a kitsune whose steps crack the earth, then feel free to continue-

And we will grind Suna into the dust.”

Kankuro’s mouth opened and closed, but he had no words. Gaara sat back, shrugging.

“Suna has no chance of survival if it continues. And as long as Temari remains Kazekage, she will press on to Konoha, and we will obliterate Suna from the face of the earth.”

“Temari will never relinquish the position of Kazekage as long as she lives,” Kankuro finally said in a strangled whisper.

Gaara’s mouth twitched into a spare smile. “No. She won’t. But Konoha doesn’t possess the capability to get anyone into her inner circle to assassinate her and save Suna.”

A long, terrible silence, the sound of the wind like the moaning of wounded. Kankuro studied Gaara’s face, and his eyes filled with tears. He swallowed, and looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. “I can’t make this choice,” he said, and his voice was as hollow as the grave.

“I’m not asking you to. But as long as Temari remains Kazekage, with or without the genjutsu, Suna will die.”

“I-“

“Answer one question for me,” Gaara cut him off.

Kankuro closed his eyes. “Okay.”

“Do you love Suna enough to become its greatest villain? To go down in history, vilified by those you love, jeered at by those you hate? Are you willing to commit the worst sin for the best reasons, and never have the truth of what you’ve done be known?”

Tears slipped out from beneath Kankuro’s closed eyelids, glistening in the light.

Gaara delivered the finishing blow.

“You say you’re a patriot.” His mouth twisted in a smile. “Then show me the meaning of patriotism.”

A heavy, bitter sob tore itself out of Kankuro’s mouth as he curled into himself, rocking on the cushions.

The seed was planted. All that was left to do was see if it bloomed.

Gaara stood, turned on his heel, and left.

And as he walked out of the tent, and away from the brother he had manipulated, away from all hope of reconciliation with the land and the people that bore him-

He felt nothing.

A/N: All comments and criticism are cherished, and don't forget to check out the fanart linked in my profile!