The weight wasn't human.
Humans were dead weight or live weight. Gaara was more like one of his puppets—something hollow filled with something heavy.
Kankurō adjusted his grip, boots skidding on the slick, mossy branch. His flight suit was already smeared with grit.
"He's shedding," Kankurō hissed, revolted and terrified in equal measure.
The sand armor—usually so perfect, so impenetrable—was sloughing off Gaara's skin in heavy, damp clumps. It didn't feel like sand anymore. It felt like wet clay. Clumping, heavy, ugly stuff that smelled of iron and damp earth111.
"Shut up and move," Temari snapped from the branch ahead.
She didn't look back. She kept her fan closed tight against her back, her posture rigid. She was terrified. Kankurō could see it in the way she checked the tree line every three seconds.
She wasn't scared of the Leaf pursuing them. She was scared of what was breathing against Kankurō's neck.
"We need to stop," Kankurō gasped, lungs burning. "Just for a minute. My chakra is—"
"No stopping," Temari cut him off, voice sharp as a wind blade. "Sasuke Uchiha is fast. And that... that other one."
She didn't name him. The loud one. The orange one. The one who had done the impossible.
Gaara groaned.
It wasn't a normal sound. It was a wet inhale, a drag of breath like lungs scraping against ribs.
Kankurō nearly dropped him. His heart hammered against his ribs. The sand on Gaara's shoulder bulged, shifting like a cocoon trying to decide if it wanted to protect him or eat him.
"Easy," Kankurō whispered, his voice trembling. "Easy, Gaara. It's just us."
Just us. The people you haven't killed yet.
The forest around them smelled of ozone, wet timber, and the smoke drifting from the village they had failed to destroy.
Kankurō looked down at his brother's face. The Love tattoo on his forehead was stark against skin that had gone deadly pale. Under the cracking armor, Gaara looked small.
Broken, Kankurō thought, and the word tasted like ash.
Gaara wasn't supposed to break. Gaara was supposed to be the weapon that broke everyone else.
Pain was a color.
White. Blinding. Absolute.
It throbbed in the center of his forehead, right behind the mark, radiating out like cracks in a mirror.
Gaara floated in the darkness of his own mind, but the darkness wasn't quiet today. Usually, it was filled with the Shukaku's screaming—a constant, hungry roar.
Today, the Shukaku was silent. Sulking. Beaten.
In its place, a voice echoed. Not a demon's voice. A human voice. Rough. Broken. Honest.
I know what it's like when everyone looks at you like you're a mistake!
The words hit Gaara harder than the physical blow.
He tried to push them away with sand, but there was no sand here. There was only the memory of the impact. The headbutt. Bone on bone. A sound that was sickening and too human.
It shattered the logic Gaara had built his entire life around.
He fought for others. He was strong.
I fought for myself. I was weak.
The equation didn't balance. If love was weakness, why did the Uzumaki win? If solitude was strength, why was Gaara currently being carried?
The confusion felt like cracked glass inside his skull. Sharp edges rubbing together.
The memory shifted.
Suna, years ago...
The clinic smelled of antiseptic and dry heat.
Small Gaara sat on the table. His feet didn't touch the floor. He held the ointment jar in small, trembling hands2.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
Yashamaru smiled. It was the only smile in the world. It was the light that kept the darkness at bay.
"A little," Yashamaru said gently, wrapping the bandage around his finger. "But physical wounds heal quickly."
Gaara touched his own chest.
There was no blood there. No bruise. The sand stopped everything. But it hurt. It hurt so much he couldn't breathe.
"What about here?" Gaara whispered. "Why does it hurt here?"
Yashamaru's expression softened into something that looked like pity, or maybe sorrow.
"That is a wound of the heart," Yashamaru said. "Physical medicine cannot cure it."
"Then... how do I cure it?"
"There is only one cure," Yashamaru said.
He leaned closer. He smelled like sun-dried linen and safety.
"Love." 3
Present Time
"Love," Gaara whispered.
The word felt like sand in his mouth. Gritty. Abrasive.
He opened his eyes.
The world was moving. Green blur. Brown trunks. The smell of old blood. He was moving, but he wasn't walking. Someone was holding him.
Gaara stiffened. His instinct—honed by six years of assassination attempts—screamed: Kill.
The sand at his waist stirred, hungry and angry.
"Gaara!"
The voice was terrified. Kankurō.
Gaara blinked, the world sharpening into focus. He was draped over Kankurō's back. Temari was leaping ahead of them, carving a path through the leaves.
They were... escaping?
No. They were carrying him.
"Put me down," Gaara rasped. His voice sounded like lungs scraping.
Kankurō flinched so hard he nearly missed his footing. "Gaara. You're... you're awake."
"Put. Me. Down."