[FIC: Naruto] Refraction
Refraction
The hospital doors closed resolutely with a thunk, sending a whirl of dust around Kankuro's feet as he brushed the sand off his clothes. With a resigned sigh, he pulled his hood off and walked down the now familiar hall, nodding in acknowledgment as others greeted him awkwardly. His father, the Kazekage, was dead. Gaara, Suna’s ultimate weapon, was in the hospital.
He came to a door at the end of the hall and carefully opened it. What he found made him catch his breath.
"Te-Temari!" he sputtered in a low voice. "What the hell are you doing?!"
Temari turned her head slightly to look at Kankuro out of one eye, her hand steadily holding onto Gaara's own as he lay unconscious. "What?" she replied somewhat irritated, though her brows were pinched in curiosity. Somehow, her voice sounded several times louder in Kankuro's head than it actually was.
"What are you doing," he leaned forward and repeated in a harsh whisper, "holding his hand?" His eyes darted nervously between the two.
"I think it's alright," she replied. Kankuro thought that was a terrible reason.
"Shit, Temari. What do you think's going to happen when he wakes up and finds you...touching him without his permission?"
She looked at him sternly as only a sister could. "I'm just letting him know we're here." Kankuro had a retort, but her determined, tired eyes kept him silent.
"It’s just a little chakra exhaustion," he said after a moment. He didn't care if they both knew that that was an understatement. And he didn't add that he'd really rather not die due to her temporary lapse of sanity. They were both drained and stretched thin in every possible way in light of the failed invasion in Fire Country, not to mention the political upheaval their father's death caused. Even in jest, mentioning death and insanity just didn't seem like a good idea.
"Wha-" Temari swallowed her own retort when Gaara stirred. Kankuro watched as his sister froze, her hand slightly spasming as if she wanted to pull away. Then, Gaara slowly opened his eyes.
Gaara blinked up at Temari, registering her hand on his. Or maybe he didn’t; for some reason Kankuro couldn't read him. Temari’s body language, on the other hand, told him it was taking all of her self-control to stay and not make any sudden movements, as if Gaara was a wild animal.
Kankuro couldn't help himself. He stepped back.
“Ha-hiya, Gaara,” he said, forcing his lips up into a shaky smile. He didn’t ask how he was feeling. “You’ve been out a few days.”
Gaara turned his attention to Kankuro and just...looked at him.
Maybe that's what had Kankuro on edge. Gaara didn't look angry, or indifferent, or annoyed. Or (his favorite) psycho. Maybe confused? Shoot, now Kankuro was confused, but he was careful not to break eye-contact.
Finally, Gaara turned his attention to the ceiling and the three of them didn't say anything for a long time.
- - -
Kankuro didn't bother hiding how tense he was as he and Temari walked out of the hospital.
"It's okay, you know," Temari said, half condescending, half comforting. Kankuro swung around, agitated.
"I know it's his first time hurt, but he's still dangerous. He-" Kankuro looked away, searching for words that wouldn't come. God, everything is so fucked up.
He could feel his sister regarding him silently, knowing that inside he was torn and confused and relieved and afraid and a whole mess of other things so muddled up he couldn't pick them out. He really didn’t want to deal with all the crazy shit happening to the village; to him.
To his family.
He both hated and was secretly glad that Temari knew.
"He-I think...things are going to change," she said in one of those rare, thoughtful moments.
But right then, Kankuro just couldn’t appreciate it. Change was not what he wanted to hear. Control meant everything to a puppeteer and there's no control when things change and you can't predict what's going to happen. Lately, it felt as if a rug had been pulled from under him and he can't find solid ground.
"Things have changed," he bit back. "In ca-“
"-For the better," Temari finished. She used her and-that’s-final voice and her scary sister-eyes again. Kankuro knew he had lost. He tugged his hood back on agitatedly and they continued to walk in silence.
"You noticed, right?" she said after a moment, her voice softening a bit.
"About Gaara?"
"Yeah."
"…Yeah."
Kankuro pulled his hands into his pockets and revisited a memory. "Just because he said 'thank you’ doesn't mean anything. Things aren't so easily changed, you know."
His sister pulled on that smug expression of hers. "And here you were just complaining about it."
Kankuro snorted. "Yeah, well…just be careful."
"Yeah."
- - -
Kankuro scuffed his sandals against the gravelly sand as he walked, finding the grating sound and friction under his feet slightly comforting. It had been a few weeks since Gaara was cleared to leave the hospital and the three of them had somewhat settled into the new housing that they were provided. (They were still honored shinobi due to their lineage, but no longer children of the Kazekage). ‘Settled,’ of course, meaning that moments were awkward and cautious and strained and they each had their own rooms for refuge. Gaara had been quiet...er than Kankuro was use to. It was not quite the menacing, unstable silence he usually associated with his brother, but if Gaara knew peace, it wasn't that either. Something was stewing underneath and Kankuro watched with wary eyes, not quite knowing what he was looking for.
He squinted into the dying dusk and watched Gaara's back, his red hair rustling slightly in the hot desert breeze. Temari's familiar presence was just within his peripheral vision. It had been another grueling day of meetings and logistics for the internal restructuring of Suna and he wanted nothing more than to collapse onto his bed and let gravity lull him to sleep. But no rest yet: everyone was tired and Gaara seemed especially irritable today. He-
Kankuro was suddenly jerked out of his thoughts by Gaara and a young boy crashing to the ground; a rubber ball rolled by the wayside.
"No, get away!" A woman came running and swept the boy into her arms. She staggered away, unable to look away from the demon vessel.
Gaara sat, eyes closed, his palm against his forehead. Sand swirled agitatedly around his feet.
The woman held her child closer to her trembling body, her breath quickening with dread.
Kankuro watched as Gaara opened his eyes, his brow furrowed in pain and anger. There it was: Every parent’s nightmare. That woman would never wake up after having seen that face. Without the decency of making eye-contact, Gaara shot his hand up and with it a wave of roaring sand.
It snaked up the woman’s legs, her torso, and then filled her mouth with warm, suffocating gravel that stifled her screaming. The child, crying hysterically, struggled vainly to pull himself higher up his mother’s torso, but the sand caught his legs and tightened around his body.
It had all happened in an instant.
“Gaara, no!” Temari yelled, ready to run to his side. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing anyone could ever do when Gaara was in that state. All Kankuro and she could do was hope their voices reached him. “Gaara, stop! These are Sand civilians!”
Kankuro placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s pointless now, Temari,” he said soberly.
Gaara twisted his hand and the sand packed tighter, but the sickening sound of cracking bones and squishy entrails didn’t come. Brows still gathered, the demon vessel regarded the woman’s glistening, frightened eyes with his cold, calculating ones. Studying his prey. Prolonging the terror. Bastard, Kankuro thought, checking to make sure the area was clear.
Dark, rimmed eyes clamped shut, teeth ground together in a snarl and fingers twitched.
Then, unexpectedly, the sand slacked and slinked away, leaving the woman and child in a heap, choking the sand out of their lungs. Gaara rose to his feet heavily.
“Teach your kid some manners,” he said flatly to the shaking woman. “Let’s go.”
Without another word, the young shinobi moved away, leaving his siblings blinking behind him before they gathered their bearings and trotted along to catch up.
They walked in silence, the elder siblings stealing glances at one another. Kankuro couldn’t make heads or tails of what he had just witnessed. Had Gaara ever pulled back after he decided to Desert Coffin someone? Was it possible that Temari had been right? Was there hope for Gaara after all?
Kankuro broke the silence first.
“That was…decent of you, Gaara.”
He was met with cold, ice-green eyes. “Shut up or I’ll kill you.”
Okay, maybe not.
But Kankuro noted the lack of the shiver up the spine that usually accompanied his psychotic brother’s death threats. Whatever that was about.
Best not to question it.
“Got it.”
He thought he caught Temari smiling.
-'-
Author's Note: This is a companion piece to Firelight, but both can stand alone. And here’s the corollary drabble, Gift Giving.
Refraction on FF.net
Comments here or at FF.net = love.