Chapter 1
It wasn’t like Gaara just forgot it happened.
Well, he did.
But he didn’t.
One doesn’t unlearn the automatic responses that that gives you. He didn’t stop tensing up when left alone with a man he didn’t know.
(it doesn’t matter that they can’t do anything to him realistically because they could. He did. He did.)
He didn’t stop having the nightmares or the badwrong feelings he got when he visited that little house. The way his eyes skipped over the door in the house that he thought protected him.
So, no he didn’t forget what happened to him but the details sat hidden and ignored, left to gather dust far away from the light of day.
When he turns thirteen, sex becomes part of his life again.
(lies lies lies. He’s been masturbating since he was seven. He didn’t get anything out of it but... but... he didn’t know)
He gets off thinking about clear blue eyes and sunshine hair. The figure in his mind holds him down and makes him take it. It hurts to get off. He uses his water reserves for the week to sit in the shower and stare blankly afterwards.
Gaara wonders what that fantasy says about him. It doesn’t stop him from making himself bleed the next time he jerks off. Shukaku laughs cruelly in his head and whispers words that sound more familiar than they should. Things like whore and sicko and slutty bitch. He wonders what he did to deserve this. He remembers.
Temari mentions her budding courtship with the shadow boy from Konoha one day and Gaara asks if they’ve fucked yet. She scrunches her nose up and tells him not to be so vulgar. He flushes hotly with shame and digs his fingernails into his skin for as long as the sand will allow.
(the first time Yashamaru heard Gaara say fuck, he called him a vulgar child and made him put his mouth on him. He rewarded him with a slightly tighter than normal hug afterwards and Gaara thought the gross taste sitting on the back of his tongue was worth it.)
He brings up sex more often than Temari is comfortable with. Kankurou thinks it’s funny but sometimes Gaara worries that even his brother judges him for his disgusting mind. He beats himself up for it after they go their separate ways.
As time passes, more and more memories start to resurface.
(Yashamaru liked when he sat on his lap. Gaara liked it too. It was nice to be close to someone in a way he didn’t often get to be. His uncle just liked the way the sad little thing squirmed against his crotch.)
(one day he brings a friend to watch them. Gaara kills him. Yashamaru learns the limits of the situation)
(most of the memories are sensory. A squeeze of terror in his chest and stomach and the sensation of hands where they shouldn’t be. He feels a hot “I love you” whispered in his ear and a phantom thrust.)
When Gaara is finally old enough to actually be considering having sex, he becomes terrified of the concept. His fantasies remain dark and cruel enough to cause him physical pain, but the first time a man hits on him he has to run to the bathroom to throw up. Sex has a become a mystical concept to him. He can almost make believe himself into a virgin.
The only man stupid enough to force himself onto Gaara is long dead so he doesn’t get fucked. Naruto is back from journey with his pervert of a sensei. Gaara imagines the jinchuuriki’s hands on his throat. This time Shukaku isn’t around to mock him. Good fucking riddance.
Rock Lee bounces along the path on Gaara’s journey back from his death. Gaara remembers the feeling of his foot on his face and wants to die. His companion, the long haired Hyuuga, Neji, snorts at his misfortune. Gaara distantly remembers the boy mentioning the fucked up actions of his clan during the chuunin exam. He knows the seal on his head binds him to his uncle. He wonders if all uncles like to touch their nephews. He doesn’t ask. Neji remains quiet throughout the journey.
When Gaara gets a moment of peace, he gets himself off twice thinking about being assaulted. He wants to be dead again. He’s such a sick fuck and he knows it, even without Shukaku there to remind him.
A few years later, after so much happens and yet Gaara remains alone, he tells Temari and Kankurou about what happened to him.
(he remembers, but doesn’t remember the first time Yashamaru raped him. The details of the time and location are fuzzy, but it’s ingrained in his muscle memory. It’s horrifying.)
His siblings are rightfully furious. They bundle him up in hugs and Temari pets his hair, her pregnant belly pressed tight against him. He feels his nephew kick and vows to himself to protect this child from everything. Shikamaru wasn’t present when they spoke of it, but he seemed to know afterwards. He knows that Temari wouldn’t have told him, but one day his sister’s husband shows him a scar on his hip that dips too close to a part of him Gaara isn’t meant to see. He says that enemy-nin aren’t nice to boys with vaginas. That we recognize each other sometimes.
(he thinks of the long haired Hyuuga, Neji, again and agrees with Shikamaru silently. Sometimes you do recognize it.)
Shikadai is born two months later. Kankurou calls him uncle. Gaara spends that night scrubbing himself in the Leaf’s showers until he starts bleeding. He sucks off Lee, his friend how dare he soil him like how dare he, and cries in his bed afterwards. The Leaf ninja is nicer than Gaara deserves. After he goes back to the house he’s staying in, he tries to dig a senbon into his arm as if he picks something small enough he can trick the sand. He can’t. He wonders what his mother thinks of him. Kankurou wakes him up from where he passed out in the bathroom with an assortment of ninja tools spread around him and a blanket of sand tucked over him.
He refuses to be left alone with his nephew. His fantasies become even darker and violent.
(one night he imagines the captain of his guard trying to murder him and deciding to rape him instead. He has to sit in bathroom for an hour for fear that he’ll vomit everywhere.)
Gaara is genuinely surprised when Shikamaru is the one who pulls him aside to talk to him about it. It’s Shikadai’s second birthday. He tried to climb onto Gaara’s lap and the man had frozen in terror. Shikamaru asks him if he intends to hurt his son in that bland, straightforward way he asks everything. Gaara blanches and explains that he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t, but he’s dirty, tainted and he doesn’t know how an uncle acts when he isn’t trying to get something from his nephew. Shikamaru points out to where Chouji and Kankurou are competing for Shikadai’s attention. He points to the picture on their mantle where Gaara is holding infant Shikadai with a look of wonder and terror on his face. His brother-in-law says, “you already know how.”
(years later, he adopts Shinki and sits outside his bedroom every night with his sand shifting restlessly around him. His son asks one day why he does that. Gaara explains that it’s so no one can get in, explains that he saw that hounded look in his eyes, that he knows what it means to worry about footsteps coming down the hall.
Shinki’s trauma is different, thank god thank god, but still vivid and horrifying in the back of his son’s mind.)
One night, Shinki curls into his side in bed after a nightmare and Gaara realizes he hasn’t thought about Yashamaru in at least a year. He didn’t let the man’s memory stop him from pulling his son tightly to him. He didn’t worry that his very existence would taint his precious boy’s light.
Things aren’t better, but they are.
They are.