Chapter 22 Part 4
Gaara walked into her room. Glanced around the small space — sat on the bed against the wall, in the corner. Her face was completely blank. Like she hadn't just nearly crippled her jonin mentor a minute ago. Why? Simple: she didn't care. Other people's lives had no value. If Mother had demanded blood — she'd have happily slaked Her thirst.
Gaara was a sociopath. Couldn't exactly call it her fault — she hadn't always been this way. As a child, she'd been a very kind girl. Wanted lots of friends. But the selfish, ephemeral "needs of the Village" were far stronger than one small, defenseless child.
From the start, things had lined up against Gaara. Like fate itself wanted her destroyed. The unstable politics in the Land of Wind — a lost war — had badly shaken Suna's position. Worse: the daimyo was deliberately weakening Suna's military — seeing it as a threat to his own power — giving jobs to shinobi from other villages. The Kazekage's hold grew shaky. The steady decline only fueled the rumble of discontent.
The Kazekage was proud. Domineering. Some on the council disagreed — but she held her title by force. Demonstrated her supremacy. Her right to set Suna's course. Even so — she couldn't crush the opposition entirely, and a string of failures had people talking about new leadership. The Kazekage could not — would not — even entertain stepping down. So she used every method to hold power. One of those methods was Gaara.
You couldn't quite say Suna's ruler didn't love her daughter. But she was Kazekage first. Woman and mother second. That was just who she was. Not the best person, honestly. But she'd loved her husband — sincerely. Which made it so much worse when the barely-sealed demon killed him. Having lost the one she loved, she withdrew even further from her children. She'd never been a great mother — but after losing her spouse, her heart seemed to turn to stone. Her older children — she could still see as successors. Tools to solidify power. But Gaara? A failure. In every sense. The grief-stricken woman couldn't help herself — she blamed her own daughter for murdering the only person she'd ever truly loved. Worse — Gaara was useless as a weapon, too: the demon kept breaking loose. The "living weapon" was completely uncontrollable.
So. Gaara was abandoned by her mother before she'd even learned to crawl. The endless nannies were terrified — all those "accidents." Other children feared her. Wouldn't play with her. A permanent dead zone around the girl. The only one who stayed was her father's sister — Yashima. Gaara's one attachment. And the one who finally desiccated the jinchuriki's heart. That was the last time Gaara felt pain — when she carved "Ai" — "Love" — into her forehead. A sign. A reminder. She'd never been loved. Never would be. From that moment, Gaara sealed herself off completely — destroying whatever scraps of kindness and hope remained.
Gaara's mother — seeing this unstable jinchuriki as a threat — ordered Yashima to assassinate her own niece. Yashima obeyed. It ended with Gaara — without even meaning to — mortally wounding her aunt. Yashima, dying, confessed: she'd always blamed Gaara for her brother's death.
After that — Gaara's life became Hell. Constant assassination attempts — no time to relax. They became routine. She viewed everyone with paranoia — killing on momentary suspicion. No one was allowed to touch her. Anyone who tried was maimed or killed. For the same reason — she'd never once felt the warmth of human contact. Several poisonings later — she'd virtually stopped eating. Starved herself to the edge. Found a workaround: confiscating food someone else had already tasted. Very often — that someone was Kankuro. Leaving the older girl utterly terrified of her little sister. Gaara trusted no one. Despised everyone. Every single person was an enemy — every single one she was ready to kill without thought. Nightmares haunted her. She rarely remembered what they were about — but the feelings they left behind were more than enough. She wanted to feel them as little as possible. Insomnia became her eternal companion.
The further it went — the more Gaara became a psychopath. The sealing had been flawed — the One-Tail had enough power over its jinchuriki to be comfortable. The cunning demon deceived the abandoned, isolated girl. Eventually — Gaara stopped seeing the Kazekage as her mother. Didn't even acknowledge the biological connection. Gaara genuinely believed her TRUE mother was the One-Tail. So she obeyed him — killing whenever "Mother" demanded. Over time — she'd begun to feel a dim pleasure in it. Crush an enemy. Drench the sand in his blood. Fill her ears with screams. The crunch of shattering bones. Like it gave her a taste for life she'd never known. Soon enough — everyone around her was nothing but contemptible insects. Allowed to live only as long as she permitted. But killing bugs was boring. Didn't heat her blood. Strong opponents, though — that was different. They could resist. Try to flee. Even try to kill her! Those victims were FUN. Their despair — their death-terror at the very end — made Gaara tremble. Something almost like sexual pleasure. And more than that — those were the moments when Mother was most pleased. Which only reinforced the young Sabaku's principles.
People didn't interest Gaara. What's the point of being interested in insects that die with a wave of my hand? So it was all the stranger that she'd suddenly noticed someone she hadn't planned to crush in the Sand Coffin. That boy had popped out from around the corner and crashed full-body into the One-Tail's automatic defense. Normally — Gaara would've just swatted him away. Broken a few bones. Or ground him up entirely. But — to her own surprise — she hadn't. Something made her push aside her usual indifference. That something was in the boy.
She frowned, trying to figure out why she'd even registered someone so insignificant. He didn't give off any feeling of power — so killing him would bring no pleasure. Therefore — not worth the attention. And yet... Gaara had sensed something. Not hostile. Not stirring. Just... Strange. This Strange Feeling — she'd never felt it before. Couldn't identify it. And as if on purpose — Mother was asleep. Gaara couldn't ask Her advice.
And it wasn't just the feeling — the boy himself seemed to be a concentration of oddities. He was afraid of Gaara — obviously. She was used to that. Read fear perfectly. Familiar. Natural. Correct. But this time — it was wrong. The taste of fear vanished, replaced by something the jinchuriki couldn't comprehend. This wasn't the first time someone hadn't feared her — half her victims felt superiority. Condescension. Pride. Overconfidence. Anger. Fury. Gaara knew those flavors — and they always, eventually, gave way to that sweet primal terror. Hopelessness. But this... Gaara was lost. Completely thrown. A new feeling — directed at her — that she'd never once felt in her entire life.
The strange bug's behavior only bewildered her more.
Gaara looked at the odd thing she'd been given. Ordinary amulet — the kind sold in shops. Nothing special: velvet over a piece of wood. Schooled by childhood's painful lessons, she inspected it exhaustively. Found — to her surprise — absolutely nothing. No chakra. No hidden seals. Not a gram of poison. Just fabric. Thread. Wood. A worthless trinket. Toss without thinking. But somehow — Gaara never even considered getting rid of it. Touching it, she couldn't shake the contradictory feeling: gentle warmth and cool softness against her skin. Another strangeness. For a while, she thought about slicing it apart — trying to understand the sensation. But quickly dropped the idea — unwilling to ruin it. In the end, reaching no conclusion, she decided to keep the unusual thing. For a while.
"Nagisa. Kaoru." Gaara spoke the name slowly — the name of the person who'd sparked her interest for the first time in many, many years.
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