Wilt
Ten months ago. It was strange to think that a time that felt so far away hadn’t even happened a year ago, but it had, and Gaara knew well that it had. He remembered that day with a scary amount of clarity, especially with how out of it he had been.
It was cold outside, frost covering up Gaara’s window as he woke up when it was already dark once again. He hadn’t seen the sun in at least a week, always up just long enough to see the long nights that blanketed his every action. It almost felt like his existence-covered in an opaque black sheet that would never let up no matter what he did. It was painful really.
He had woken up to the same darkness that he always did, already tired and not in the mood, though when was he in the mood? There was a pain in his skull, a pain that reached from the backs of his eyeballs all the way down to the base of his neck, his mood somehow sinking even further. Some days, when he wasn’t in the mood, it felt like he was being consumed by a bottomless pit, so lonely that he knew nobody in the world would be able to pull him from it, and if he tried to pull himself he only sunk deeper, like quicksand. Today though, today was a different sort of day, today he was angry. He was angry at the sound of cars driving past his room, and angry at Temari’s voice, and angry at the clunk, clunk, clunk sound that Kankurou’s stupid fucking puppets made.
He laid in bed like that for a long time, listening and creating a list in his mind of every single thing he hated, he waited for Temari to go to work, not wanting to see her face. He knew that if he saw her he may lose it, Kankurouu’s face was something he could barely handle, though he knew he wouldn’t be leaving at all. It was 5:30 in the evening, if Kankurou was going out he would’ve left already.
Gaara climbed out of bed, letting his sheets drag out onto the floor. He only stood for a moment with some feeling of relief before he was met again with that pulsing headache. Of course, of fucking course today would have something like this in store for him when all he wanted was one peaceful fucking day. A day where his mind would shut up-where he didn’t feel like committing violence against everyone and everything that existed, including himself. No, especially himself.
Before Gaara could register the pain, he saw the scrape of his nails on his inner arm, digging deep into already raw skin. He scratched like that for a while, sat down on his bed as his nails dug deeper and deeper into wounds that were quickly reopening, and yet the pain still didn’t register with him.
He hated it.
He wanted to hurt something-someone-break it into pieces and watch as it was irrevocably destroyed.
He stood from the spot on his bed where he was sitting, his only goal in mind to get rid of this feeling, this desire to destroy.
Gaara walked to his dresser, using his hands to brace himself on nearby objects. The pain in his skull slowly becoming more and more excruciating. He went to pick up his phone, caseless and vulnerable because he had never gotten it together enough to buy a case. In his stupor, he ended up knocking it on top of something before it fell, screen shattered. It didn’t do anything to sate his need for destruction though, instead it made him angrier, as if he were being teased by the universe.
He stomped off to the bathroom, rifling through the bathroom closet until he found what he wanted.
Months ago, Kankurou had broken his nose in an accident pertaining to his puppets, and had been prescribed painkillers for it, though he rarely ever did. Gaara took them though. He took them on days like these, days where the world was much too much, he liked their texture on his tongue, smooth, almost plasticy. When he swallowed them, everything seemed to ease up a little bit more. He needed more than a little though, he needed things to come to a total halt.
For a split second, Gaara’s rage was quelled by the sight of those pills, his knowledge that they’d make everything easier. He couldn’t take them here though, not when Kankurou was home, not when someone would be there to bother him. He stuck the bottle in the pocket of his pajama pants, heading downstairs totally barefoot.
Kankurou, as Gaara walked past him, either didn’t see him, or didn’t want to acknowledge what he was doing. He had long learned that trying to police Gaara would end up in nothing but pain, especially when he was having a bad day like this, at least, Gaara hoped he did. One broken nose had been enough for him, even if it had been years ago.
He walked out of the front door, his feet tingling as he felt the ice beneath his feet. His body felt so overwhelmingly hot in that moment, like he could burn alive. He needed to let the fire out, let the fire out before it burned him alive.
Once again, his body moved before his mind could register it, and before he knew it he was elbow deep in the shattered glass of their downstairs neighbor’s car window. He could feel the shards of glass digging into his skin, nerves alight with the pain that scratching could never handle. He grabbed one of the shards of glass, throwing it on the ground as relief prickled through him like the pain he was feeling.
Finally, he had a sense of satisfaction, though minor it was, he felt meekly satisfied in a way he hadn’t been since he’d punched Kankurou in the face so hard that his knuckles bruised and Kankurou threw up from the pain. He had been about sixteen then, closing in on seventeen like a meteor toward a planet, all of his hatred and rage at the world less volatile. For a moment, Gaara couldn’t help but wonder for a moment if he was evil. He had thought about this before, considered the dark needs and wants he had that only ever kept people from getting closer than he could handle.
It was easier to not think about it, push the thoughts away as he laid curled up in his bed day after day after day, only leaving his rooms for the bare necessities to keep his body from shutting down. He lived a wasteful existence, and he knew that he was bound to waste away in that wasteful existence of his. He had thought about this day plenty of times in his life, thought about when he would finally decide to stop maintaining this body, this life, he had assumed that he would’ve done it much sooner. Eighteen was fine though, being eighteen meant that he didn’t even have to become an old man, decrepit and horrifying small children by looking like the corpse he already felt he was, eighteen meant that he wouldn’t be forced into going out on his twenty-first birthday, eighteen meant that he would die now instead of later.
That moment of easiness, that sweet relief that came with destroying the car window dissipated then, instead replaced by the feeling that this was it, this was the day that he finally completely wasted away. His fury returned then, so intense and in such a flurry that Gaara blacked out, only to be on the beach, arms bloodier than before and a shard of glass gripped so tight that the sand seemed to have been stained red by him and him alone. His arms didn’t hurt despite their injuries, and the sand felt pleasant beneath his feet, buying itself deep into every crevice of his body. Slowly, he reached into his pocket, reaching right for the pill bottle.
Gaara then, eyes closed, opened the bottle, pouring the contents into his hand. Until, upon opening his eyes, he was met with the sight of his pale palm, no pills inside. He looked at the bottle, empty. He must have taken them in his blackout period, meaning that they had started taking effect already. He sighed, the bottomless pit that he always found himself inside of finally revealing what waited at the end. Death, peaceful and easy and calm.
No more rage.
No more self hate.
Just peace.
Those were the thoughts that Gaara had as he shut his eyes, too tired to keep them open anyway. Death was easy, death was surrender from a fight that he had been losing since the day he was born.
Death wasn’t what happened though.
Instead of death, Gaara was met with a clean, white hospital room and bandages covering his arms and his feet. In the space that showed his skin, more sickly pale than usual, there was an IV drip. He felt like shit, too tired to fight or ask questions but too awake to let himself fall back into the thoughtless space he had just been in.
Kankurou and Temari were asleep across from him, sitting in ugly pleather chairs that squeaked with their every shift. More than anything, Gaara could remember how the bandages pressed into his skin. The wounds hurt, even though he was on painkillers he knew they hurt, and that pain kept him from thinking about the implications of what he did, or what he would do from here on out.
He was kept under hold, repeatedly being interviewed by a psychiatrist who tried to make him open up more than he ever had with himself. When he returned from the hospital, he was in his sand covered pajamas, trailing it with him through the house, like the ghost of what he had done infecting their little apartment. Gaara threw the clothes on top of his hamper, laying down in his bed.
He slept for what felt like three hours before he was being woken up, he was being taken to inpatient care. It wasn’t surprising to hear, it really was the expected outcome of something like this, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to go.
As he stood on the beach-that beach, Gaara through of what had changed and what had not, and somehow he managed to make himself walk home. He wanted to hurt, he craved destruction and blood and the rawness of pain, but he couldn’t do something like that again. He couldn’t make Temari pay a fine or have them pay for his stay again, not when he had had to celebrate his nineteenth birthday locked away. Instead, he waited for Lee, waited to confront him. He needed to confront him, for if he didn’t he would destroy himself, and self destruction, though one of Gaara’s best skills, could not be paid for any longer.
Gaara may have been a monster, but Lee was a liar, and that was plenty worse.