LOG; ONGOING; CLOSED

[sandmullet.livejournal.com]

When; Sunday, July 12, late morning.
Rating; R; for violence!
Characters; Gaara (sandmullet) & Kankurou (smacktalker)
Summary; Gaara arrives cursed like the rest of the crew of speshul (ed). Ninja-ing around the network, he finds evidence of his missing-nin brother. It's easier to track someone in the City, kids! WARNING: ASH AND I HAVE MUTUALLY DECLARED a dmsalkd re: fight logs, making us the worst players of shounen kids ever. So timing will jump around 8). Suck it.
Log;

It had been years since Gaara had walked on the city pavement, a constant ticking reverberating in his skull. There was more room for it now, but it didn't make it less irritating. It had been years, but he plucked at the memory easily enough as it came, remembered certain intricacies, the over reliance on the network and that, consequently, it would be the best place to find information.

The date on recent posts told him it had only been a few months since he had left. Almost eleven years had passed, and in their passing added new depth to his much-blackened eyes. If he thought about it, it was jarring, and so he did not over think it. He prioritized locating any and all allies via network, while sending out a sand eye. It should have been an indication of something, that the others were older. The other posts on the network.

But it was new again, and jarring, and a voice he hadn't heard for six years laughed in response to Nara Shikamaru.

It took him some time. But Gaara found him, and blood or sand roared in his ears as he sped to the location. Common sense: attack first, remain always on the offensive, give the enemy no opportunity. His brother was the enemy. He had chosen that the minute he left the village, and his hitai-ite behind. So when his feet hit the ground in a whirl of sand, Gaara did not hesitate to thrust out his arm and with it a rope of sand.

Comments

[smacktalker.livejournal.com]

He would dodge the sand that shot in his direction. He decided that almost as soon as he became aware of the other presence- a presence so painfully familiar he almost, almost felt human again. And it had been so long since he'd felt human.

He would dodge, even if it would be easier to yield. He wanted to yield. Wanted the sand to wrap around and around and around him, crush the body he fled the village in shame over. One cowardly act begets another. Your brother is a coward, Gaara, he thought. You see it. You know it. Kill me. End it. I'll let you. I'll die by your hand.

So easy...

But not today. There would be no dying today.

The puppet that was Kankurou moved of its own accord, out of the sand's path, away from release. (Who pulled the strings, he wondered. Who pulls them now?)

Back still turned, he spoke.

"So it's you...Gaara."

[sandmullet.livejournal.com]

It may as well have been a warning strike. Gaara knew, with some frustration with himself, that he could have done better. Should have. His arms stayed at his sides; his hands flexed, fingers spreading wide and curling in. The ground beneath their feet stirred, shifting so completely, so entirely, that it groaned. Sand poured from his gourd and beat at the dirt.

"..."

That was all he had to say? Six years. Six years of watching Temari's face line, of dissecting his heart. It had been a whole different kind of pain. As strong as that which he had felt daily, but different, and he learned that the word was loss, the word was betrayal in a way that it had never fit for Yashamaru, for his father, for the village in the beginning.

Because Kankurou, with his languid grins and his cocky talk, with his bickering, with his coming to accept him after he had hated him, feared him, had left him.

Searching for a way to cope with that, to understand what to do with it, where to put it, while Kankurou evaded the hunter-nins who pursued him had been impossible. Gaara had learned that there wasn't always a place, an answer. Or he had always known.

Gaara stood there then, loss beating his heart in his ears, and stared at his brother's back. He had left them, left him. It was easier to be angry, though the reflex was now ten years old. He was angry, shaking, gritted and clenched and knowing better, that rage had no place in this, in the Kazekage eliminating a traitor.

"Kankurou," he responded, forcing the word between his teeth. And the ground shook, rocked, and began to rise in spiked waves.

[smacktalker.livejournal.com]

How do you teach a puppet to feel? Kankurou’s face could no longer show emotion. His voice had no more warmth. His words were just that, words, delivered as if by rote, without any indication that his brother had impacted him at all. The passage of time made little difference to him—six years might have been sixty.

And yet he still clung to his shame the way a child clings to a favorite toy. There was a reason he led the hunter-nins on a wild goose chase, flitting from one location to another, avoiding capture over and over again.

Were his brother and sister to see him, were he to see himself reflected in their eyes…

It was too much to bear, even for a doll that felt nothing. Memories always remained, of waking up in the middle of the night drenched in fear sweat because he shared a home with a monster kept in a flimsy cage. Of the breakfasts Temari used to make when she was in a generous mood, and the scraps of paper containing reminders or rebukes or tactless jokes that she would hide in his puppets. Of the first genuine smile Gaara gave him, when he called Kankurou his brother and meant it.

Yes, he remembered, what was and what is.

Kankurou knew exactly how much he had lost. Every time he ran, he became more distinctly alien.

But it was never enough.

As the ground beneath him turned to violently undulating sand, Kankurou did the thing he had run from for the past six years.

He allowed his brother to look at his face.

“It was meant to be you, in the end.”

Wooden, ball-jointed arms and legs creaked as he prepared to strike. Maybe, just maybe, this time would be enough.

[sandmullet.livejournal.com]

It was jarring, even for him, to see it. The sliding jaw, the separate mouth piece, prominent under paint; how far Kankurou had gone. It did not click, it did not creak as he spoke, too well tended. Without flesh for his voice to form in, just wood, Gaara understood the different sound. It made him wonder if Kankurou wasn't somewhere else, hidden, pulling the strings, orchestrating a trap.

A possibility. As was this puppet being his actual brother. It did not disgust him. It did not matter. Not this part. He could not understand why, but he knew something about monsters.

His eyes narrowed at the words, at their implication, but he would not interpret them now. It was enough that it was true. He understood. Gaara rose into the sky on a fountain of sand, shooting upward, and squeezed his fingers, shook his arms; the undulating sea that had been the ground threw itself in immense, grasping waves at Kankurou.

"As the Kazekage of Sunagakure, I will eliminate you, Kankurou, for desertion."

If he let himself think of Temari, he would flinch. Gaara thought of nothing but the kill.

[smacktalker.livejournal.com]

A long fight. They gave and they took. A messy fight. They whittled one another down. But all that was past. Gaara destroyed the upgraded Karasu, Kuroari, and Sanshouo. Only Kankurou remained, and he would die soon. He’d been wrong. Today was the perfect day to depart this world. Perhaps they would see each other in the next one—unless Gaara secured an antidote to the poison that coursed through his veins within three days, he would follow Kankurou.

And it was ironic. Years ago, Kankurou had been in the same position as his brother, poisoned, three days to live.

He couldn’t appreciate the irony, however.

“Finish…me…” he murmured, neither demand nor plea.

Gaara’s hand lingered above his face, grains of sand swirling sluggishly around his fingers. Kankurou lie on his back, splayed and motionless, a marionette with severed strings. He’d expended what little strength he still had by forcing words through the mechanism of his mouth. His eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the point where his brother’s would be, should he lift his hand.

There was nothing left now but to die. Nothing left but to watch the curtain fall.

[sandmullet.livejournal.com]

Years ago, Gaara had been in the same position as his brother. Targeted by assassins assigned by family. His father the kazekage; his brother the kazekage. The irony had not escaped him; it had fueled the fury, the twisting of his stomach, the unidentifiable heart.

Kankurou had forced him to become like him. But Gaara was past pinning blame; this was his burden, his choice, what he had done. As Kazekage. Time had proved nauseatingly cyclical. Unfairly. Naruto had brought back his brother, figurative, the Uchiha. Naruto had saved him after all.

Gaara had never expected fair. Now he panted, his breathing uneven and too long, too rasped. It hurt. His left arm hung useless, dangled, cut through to and into the bone, tendons slice neat. His sleeve there sopped and dripping with blood. It hurt; he could feel the poison. Kankurou, he knew, couldn't feel anything at all. Strange, to be the one who could feel pain. Bleeding.

He shook as he knelt before his brother, mild spasms from toxins, his right hand half-curled as his sand wrapped itself, slow and snug, around Kankurou's body. His left arm, at his side; but a rope of sand had twined itself up it, forming a loose support from ground to shoulder, to keep him upright.

"Don't... tell me what to... do." Gaara did demand. Of course he would. Of course.

A sand coffin, a quick death. Too quick for pain, as if Kankurou could feel it. Too quick to scream, to know. Kankurou's face was left, then, and he know he should cover it too, swallow the wood and grind it into less than chips, into dust. His wrist quivered, his fingers convulsed. Gaara stared at his brother's face, impassive, blank. That wasn't right. That wasn't Kankurou. Not even a lump of meat, just a pile of wood.

A minute passed. Another. Nothing moved, not the sand, not his fingers, other than to twitch unbidden.

Six years ago, Kankurou had disappeared. When it became obvious that he would not return, he and Temari had discussed it as officials of Sunagakure. He signed the missions with her approval, but after, her eyes had changed. She looked at him less. She looked at everything less, and everything changed.

The warm summer breeze was not enough to stir his sand, but it stirred. His thumb curved in, but the sand did not tighten. It trickled down his arm, stained red, soaking in it, and Gaara slumped down and forward, sitting on his feet, staring at Kankurou from beneath his hair, and there, the sand had shifted and his hand had dropped, and it squeezed through cloth over wood, not where Kankurou's throat should have been, but his shoulder, or his arm, or his heart, or--

"Why?"

Gaara looked at his hand, grasping at his brother, his monotone that had reverberated with rage now cracking. Kankurou had always resembled their father, but now, Gaara felt a hundred years old, felt six and he could see Yashamaru, blood sliding down his chin and thickening his words, his eyes vacant and rejecting.

"What-- what ... didn't I do? ... What should I have..."

To have made him stay.

[smacktalker.livejournal.com]

Ninja were expected to be ready and willing to fight at a moment’s notice. The possibility of injury, of death, always loomed overhead, a possibility every ninja had to come to terms with one way or another. Kankurou knew every mission was a gamble. When he painstakingly sat before a mirror to apply his kabuki-like makeup, when he donned his battle gear, when he checked every joint, every hidden weapon of his puppets, he would think to himself, this might be the last mission. Better make it count.

Ask any puppet master, and most would tell you they’d been poisoned multiple times; the number was only expected to grow the longer they were in the field. Occasionally, they would test their poisons on themselves, to study the effects firsthand—with the antidotes nearby. It was a good way to force the body to build up immunity to the more common poisons.

The major drawback to this method, however, was that it forced enemies to seek out poisons that had yet to be encountered in order to even the playing field. And while the Puppet Corps was highly trained at both defensive and offensive maneuvers, it was not invincible. There were openings, now and again.

Kankurou was no stranger to poison. He’d been lucky to survive that time, years ago, lucky that Konoha had dispatched a backup team that included Haruno Sakura to come to the aid of the beleaguered Sand village.

Luck, unfortunately, was a fickle thing. It did not last. An opening appeared, an enemy took it, and Kankurou had been on the verge of death again. This poison was too thorough, too virulent. The medic-nins working on him managed to isolate a good chunk of it, but the damage by then was irreversible. Kankurou wasn’t dead, but he may as well have been.

“Wasn’t…you…”

He could see his brother’s eyes now, could see the emotion on Gaara’s face, hear it in his voice. Maybe Gaara was feeling for the both of them. Maybe his heart broke twice, because it did the work of two. Kankurou couldn’t even lift his hand to cover Gaara’s, squeeze it, let him know that the connection was still there, that somewhere, buried, he loved his brother.

“Was…me. Didn’t want….you to….look at me. Better to…forget.”

Forget he still lived. Forget he existed. Consider him dead, and move on. Because when it mattered the most, when his mettle was truly tested, he gave in to the fear of dying, and he went the way Sasori had gone.

He may have had a new body, but he inherited the shame of the old one. So he fled the reminders. He ran from his sister. Ran from his brother.

“I’m…sorry.”

Ran from when he should’ve run to.

[sandmullet.livejournal.com]

Gaara could be selfish. Even now, even at twenty-six. But he could admit his motives, without resorting to blame, without attributing it to a toxin-induced delirium. Kankurou could not take his hand, but he slid his thumb, in that thick fabric. A thread of sand spiraled out, as if a string, to loop around his brother's limp hand, lift it, and drop it over his. The sand navigated with precise care, pressing the fingers down, tighter.

Colder than a human hand. But did it really matter, meat or wood, wood or meat? It was Kankurou's hand. His brother, one of the first to accept him. Family. They had tried to love him when he was still a monster. Had loved him? Had needed him? He had thought so. But Kankurou left, like Yashamaru, and that spoke volumes. But Gaara wasn't enough for Temari, without Kankurou.

His vision swam. Not with tears; it was hard to focus. The poison was potent. His mind felt dizzy from blood loss, his arm still oozing, and Gaara knew he should see to it. He had learned, over the years, a few medical jutsus. Medicine, helping others; needless to say who it reminded him of.

Impractically, he focused instead on their hands. Gaara did not want to die. Still within him was that which had once been most important: surviving, existing. Living like a person, not a monster, had complicated things. His reason had become tangled with people, with their reception, their reactions, their hands and feet and hearts and mouths and people, not targets. Sungakure. Kankurou and Temari.

Gaara twisted his hand. Clutched the wooden one.

"I'm the monster..." he reminded him. "... didn't matter. You... looked at me."

Anger was too easy, anger was too hard. Feeling hollowed out again, slumped and not defeated, or not physically (three days, but Haruno Sakura was in the City). It was a different emotion that lent to his trembling. One he hadn't experienced in ages.

It was too late for it, however.

"Do you... need me?" He asked, gazing now at the ground, at his bloodied sand lying still. "... To kill you."

Fratricide. It certainly would make him the monster again. And Temari -- but that was too late, too.