Day 13
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The setting sun cast his shadow over the grave in front of him.
It was a familiar sight, his silhouette lingering over the headstone, and the quiet evening wind blew a fine dusting of sand over the resting place of an individual deeply missed by his people, and by himself. Wittingly or not, they had been entangled with one another from his birth into this world until her departure from it, and he found an unexpected hole left in the shape of her.
“Lady Chiyo,” Gaara greeted, head bowed in respect. He looked out to the east, to where the sun was displaying its vibrant majesty across a cloudless and endless sky. “It’s another beautiful one for you today,” he mused, having always enjoyed the view from her resting place, finding it fitting for such a beloved member of his people.
Crossing his legs, Gaara sat before the headstone as if sitting across from an old friend, though their conversations only ever went one way these days. He often came to visit her like this after his resurrection, there was nowhere else he thought he could turn. Having been thrust through such monumental change, he hadn’t felt like himself and he’d been going through the motions for days after his return. His only solace was when he could retreat to her graveside and sort through all the confusing thoughts he had, the unquestioning silence of her resting place becoming a close confidant for him.
“I hope you’re well,” he said, much as he always did. “That things are peaceful.” He looked to his hands in his lap and sighed. “It hasn’t gone away,” he said after a moment, his voice hushed even though he knew there was no one to hear him. “It’s almost been a year and I–” his throat tightened around his voice and he sighed. “I wish you were here; you might’ve known what to do.”
Softly, and with an echo that still haunted the quietest places of his mind, something chuckled at him. Within his head, outside of it, it didn’t matter; he heard it all the same, and he still wasn’t rid of it.
A chill ran through his body, a physical reaction he couldn’t stave off, he shuddered out a breath. He closed his eyes, breathing evenly and slowly. It’s not real, he told himself, it’s gone.
I am always here…
Yes, unfortunately, even after being ripped from the seal within him, after succumbing to death and returning to life, it remained, that demon; the Shukaku. It hadn’t been right away, but after he started to get his rhythm back, the nightmares began. He wasn’t used to sleep, and he’d begun confusing his nightmares with reality, forcing himself to forgo his rest until he simply could no longer. It had gotten better after a while, he’d learned how to wake himself from his nightmares and grew accustomed to the cold sweat and pounding heart he often awoke to alone at night, but even the daytime held no reprieve for him now.
“I know that it’s gone, but…” he spoke to the grave. “I don’t think I’ve let it go. And I don’t know how.” Silence responded, accompanied by the soft breeze wafting the arid scent of the desert over him.
Gaara spent a minute sitting in the stillness that these moments offered him, a place that he could go and no one would disturb him, no one would question him. At times, though, the silence was deafening.
“Sometimes I still wonder why you did it,” he admitted.
It had been a shock when he learned that the sand still protected him with the demon gone, he had always thought the sand only defended him as the vessel of the Shukaku. But it obeyed him and protected him just as it always had, and he wondered if the power had been his all along and that he’d been tricked into thinking it wasn’t his to control. Could Chiyo have known that he would still be able to protect their city and their people even as a jinchuriki no more? Was she trying to make up for the life that she and the council had given him?
“You didn’t have to…that life isn’t over just because I died.” The word still felt heavy on his tongue. “I am still haunted, and I feel so stuck.”
Do it…
He’d told her before, in the other times he’d visited to talk with her, that he had come to hear of her battle with Sasori, seen the remains that had been retrieved of his puppets and what they later learned was actually him. Everyone to be involved in the mission to bring him back home had learned of how their ally from the leaf had fought side by side with her and together they had achieved victory. Theirs must have been a thrilling battle to witness.
Gaara had been awestruck when Sakura recapped the details of their fight before leaving his city with her team back home, an acute respect for the dead in every word she spoke about the fallen Lady. He was certain that Kankuro would be envious of such glory till the day he died, and she had quickly gained prestige within the puppet guilds. That wasn’t the last time he’d seen her, and when she would return to his city or she would assist in hosting himself and other visiting diplomats within her own, he continually found himself increasingly drawn to, impressed by, and enamored with her.
He had fallen for Sakura; hopelessly, and the gravestone was the first and only confidant he had confessed his sorry situation to. “I want to,” he began, an admission he’d told her times before. “But…”
He looked down to his hands, the golden light of the setting sun casting a beautiful glow over the blood and shredded flesh that covered them. He smoothed his palms together, the blood smearing even though his skin felt dry, and he sighed. Rubbing his face and pinching his nose, he took a deep breath and when he looked back down, the blood was gone and his hands were clean.
“It won’t stop.”
Plagued with the voices of his past – demons of his own now – and the hallucinations that haunted him, Gaara still felt trapped with the beast, possessed and living with the illusion of control. Without warning his hands would smear blood on whatever he touched, his food would turn to refuse on the plate before him, a glance by a passing mirror would reflect him drenched in death.
He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t try and pull her into this when he was still a broken and tormented soul, it would only darken her light and stifle all that he wished to keep safe from the shadows of his past.
It’s okay…
Lies, all of it. He’d heard it enough from the beast itself that even the echo of the words was a threat to him. It was gone, yet its scars still remained. It had been taken from him, yet he would never be free of it. Even now the memory of it incited his downfall and goaded him to his conquest, whispering promises of her ruin and misery at his hands. The demon was not a spirit locked within him now, it was him, a piece of him that replayed the memory of it talking back within his mind. He was trapped with a part of himself that was still terrified of more pain and loss, one that was still a child stood petrified before a beast.
“If you had known it would be like this, would you have brought me back?” he asked, quietly and hesitantly, knowing that an answer would never come but fearful of what he had hoped it would be. His eyes fell to the dirt, and he felt his chest shake as he took breath. “Would I have wanted to come back?”
You could sleep forever…
No, he pushed the thought from his mind, unable to dwell on it.
This was precisely the outcome the beast had always wanted, his submission into despair, and he refused to go quietly. The voice was only just that; a voice. It held so sway over him, it could do him no harm, he was sure that’s what Chiyo would’ve said, and he swore to not give it any more power over himself. It wasn’t a battle he had fought before, there was no enemy to strike down, no risk to neutralize, and he knew that it would be a long and arduous road to victory.
He did, however, still have the gravestone. She wouldn’t take up arms in his defense or go to battle against his demon’s ghost, but he knew that if she still took breath she would have been on his side, and that was enough for him. Maybe with enough time he could find peace, when enough years had passed he might forget the sound of the demons voice within his head, and maybe he could even hope to heal enough to invite someone openly into his life, into his heart.
Desperate…weak…
The sun was set below the horizon now, the shadows around him growing and the light cast over his visit with Chiyo slowly fading. He stared at the headstone, the etching of her name staring back at him, and he found himself melancholy. “I know you’re not here,” he spoke aloud, not to the grave, but to himself. “But it helps to talk like this.”
From behind him, a fluttering of wings could be heard as a sand lark flitted around him and perched atop Chiyo’s headstone. It hopped one way and then the other, tweeting a few notes of a song before it flapped into the air and flew back to the open evening skies leading out to the desert. Once there, then altogether gone again.
Gaara watched after the bird even when it disappeared into the waning sunlight, and after a moment he huffed and couldn’t help but smile a little. “All right,” he said as he stood from the ground. “I get it.”
He wasn’t a man of words but a man of subtlety, and her message had been heard loud and clear; just as the sun set tonight, it would rise again tomorrow, and he would have another opportunity to heal, another chance to fight back against the ghost of his demon, another day living a life given back to him.
Gaara stood in silence before Chiyo’s grave and placed a hand gently atop her headstone, it was still warm from the sunlight, and he mused over how his tears didn’t fall amidst their farewells anymore. “Rest well, Lady Chiyo,” he said softly as he turned from her grave and began his slow march back to his home.
The voice would follow him, it may very well for rest of his days, but he’d regained some of his resiliency and felt able to stand a little taller in the face of it now. Each day he hoped to gain more of himself back, each day he wanted to be better than the last, and, perhaps with enough time and enough work, he may even become able to hope others– that a specific someone – would return his longing.
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