There was nothing around her for a very long time, or maybe just seconds, she couldn't tell. She couldn't even feel her own body in the endless black.
"Open your eyes," Jubei's voice said from very far away. Haruka did and then immediately tried to close them again, as pain shot through her head. It was a little like leaving a very dark room only to be greeted by blinding light, only she still couldn't see anything.
Then snowflakes began to fall, and the whispers started. They were distant, muffled, but got clearer as time passed. All the while the snowflakes were forming into hazy shapes, and then she was suddenly in a village.
Yashamaru.
The buildings were oddly rounded, with only a few small windows each. They were made of light gray or ocher stone, and there was sand everywhere. She had the distinct impression that the air was hot, but couldn't actually feel anything.
To her right a group of children was playing with a ball. They were loud and a little rowdy, but clearly having fun. She could see light blue, mostly translucent clouds surround their little bodies. To her left was a small boy on a swing. He was watching them with a solemn expression, a teddy in one hand. Haruka immediately recognized the red hair and dark rings around his eyes, but the distinctive kanji on his forehead was missing. His cloud, chakra she assumed, wasn't as clean as the others. The color was slightly darker and a little more purple than blue in some places.
"Gaara?" She ask, for once calling him by his name, but he didn't react.
"Oh crap!" One of the children shouted. It appeared they had kicked their ball onto a ledge of a nearby stone wall. They were arguing about how to get it down when sand enveloped it. The ball slowly flew through the air and landed in Gaara's hands.
Haruka hadn't seen him move, but he was standing in front of the group, holding out the ball to them. The children were frozen in shock for a moment, but then one of them screamed and they ran as if the hounds of hell were trying to catch them.
"Wait!" Gaara shouted.
Don't leave me alone!
Tendrils of sand were racing after them, catching the slowest boy and dragging him back. The purple hue got stronger.
I don't want to be alone anymore.
More sand moved to keep another child from running away, but a man with light hair jumped in front of it. The sand had ripped shallow wounds into the skin of his arms and face, but he didn't try to move away as he pleaded with Gaara to calm himself. The boy hung his head and the sand fell away, as the color of his chakra turned blue again.
A feeling of shame that wasn't hers overcame Haruka and then she was suddenly no longer on the street.
Gaara stood in a circular room, a thin knife in his right. He was staring at a portrait of the man, and Haruka somehow knew it was someone else. His mother, who he had never even met.
"It's no use," the boy sighed. The knife trembled in his right hand, struggling to pierce through the sand that protected his left wrist. "The sand always gets in the way."
The man entered the room then, asking Gaara not to try and hurt himself. He seemed both friendly and sad.
"Yashamaru, I'm sorry," Garra whispered. "Do injuries hurt?" The man pointed to the bandage on his head, saying that it only hurt a little, and then the boy asked him to explain what pain was. Apparently he had never been injured and so couldn't understand what it was like.
How did one explain pain? Haruka had no idea how she would go about such a task. Yashamaru wasn't faring any better.
"Do you hate me?" Gaara asked. He looked terrified of the answer, but the expression quickly changed into a smile when Yashamaru reassured him that injuries happened and it wasn't that easy to hate someone. It didn't last long though.
"I think I understand what pain is," the boy said, gripping his clothes over his heart. "Although it doesn't bleed, this part hurts so much."
In response Yashamaru took the knife from him and cut his own finger. He explained that physical injuries would heal over time, and that the pain would eventually fade. Emotional ones however could only ever be dulled by time, and not even that was always possible. According to Yashamaru the only way to heal them was love. He went on to explain that his sister had loved Gaara, and that her will lived on in the boy's sand, which was the reason it always protected him.
Haruka could hear laughter amidst the distant whispers, but it seemed she was the only one. With it came a dark fog that press in on her from all sides. All that happened in the room, however, was Gaara asking for some ointments. Happy anticipation flooded her and then the scene changed again.
It was night now. Gaara was running down the street with a paper bag in his arms. He knocked on a wooden door and one of the kids from earlier opened it, but only a crack. Gaara tried to apologize and hand the bag over.
"Go away you monster!" The kid shouted, loathing clear in his voice. The door slammed shut and Gaara was left standing in the street with wide eyes.
Haruka could feel his shock and disappointment as well as a deep pain that gnawed at him from the inside. Loneliness, she recognized, even if she had never felt it to this degree herself. Again purple won out over blue, albeit more slowly this time.
Gaara was wandering down the almost empty street when a drunk bumped into him. The man shouted at him to watch were he was going, but then quickly stumbled away from him once he recognized the boy.
Those eyes, those hate-filled eyes.
Why?
Sand shot forward, wrapping around the man's throat and head. It strangled and pushed until there was a popping sound and blood spurted in every direction.
The next thing Haruka saw was a man with red hair and a very angry expression staring down at Gaara. This time the boy reacted differently though. He lowered his gaze, and guilt washed over her like a tidal wave.
Then Gaara was sitting on top of a roof, hand shaking. The whispers where a jumbled mess of sounds, but she clearly heard the word 'monster' several times spoken by a myriad voices. She couldn't tell how long the boy sat there before kunai impacting with a sand shield at his back ripped him out of his thoughts.
What?
Why?
Why me?
Gaara's emotions quickly shifted from fear to frustration and then anger. This time he actively commanded the sand to attack. It wrapped around his would be assassin and compressed. The spray of blood wasn't as dramatic as it had been with the man of the street, but the veiled figure fell to the ground just the same when Gaara released the sand.
The distant laughter only Haruka seemed to be able to hear came closer then, and the fog got thicker, giving the world an odd tint that made every color seem slightly off.
The boy slowly walked forwards. His hands were trembling terribly as he pulled the veil away.
"Impressive Gaara-sama," Yashamaru smiled, blood matting his hair and running out of his mouth.
Gaara fell to his knees crying and screaming. Pain lanced through Haruka's chest. She knew it wasn't her own, but it hurt all the same. She thought she knew what agony was, had learned it at the hands of a monster, but this was far worse than anything she had ever experienced in Orochimaru's care. She'd simply shut down emotionally while she'd been chained in the dark, and no physical wound could ever cause this much pain. But Gaara had felt this. Loneliness, rejection, betrayal, fear, hate.
"Why?" The boy sobbed. "You were always—"
"It was an order," Yashamaru interrupted him in a weak voice. " I was ordered to assassinate you by your father."
An image of the angry, redheaded man flashed through Haruka's mind, while a new wave of sobs shook Gaara and he vomited on the floor. There were more images as well. Angry or frightened villagers with hate in their eyes. A girl with blond and a boy with brown hair. Kankuro and Temari, she realized. They were his siblings, and so, so terrified of him.
She watched as Yashamaru explained what had been done to turn the boy into a weapon and that he had become too dangerous to keep around, and realized that this was what Gaara had told them about in the hospital. This was the first of many times someone had been sent to kill him.
The boy she saw crying on the roof didn't know that though. He was desperately clinging to what Yashamaru had said. That he'd acted on orders and had no other choice. The man disabused him of that notion though, claiming that he'd always resented the boy for killing his sister. That the woman had never wanted to give birth to him and had died cursing the village. He told the boy his mother wanted him to only love himself and only fight for his own sake. That she believed he would live forever if he existed that way, to carry her hatred for the village eternally.
"No one ever loved you. Please die," he finished, igniting dozens of explosive tags that had been hidden under his vest. All that was left of Yashamaru after the smoke cleared was a crater, whereas Gaara was completely unharmed behind a wall of sand.
I believe she loved you very much.
Love?
The sand protects you because it carries your mother's will.
Only love can heal emotional wounds.
Gaara screamed, and as the sand etched the kanji for love into his forehead the whispers were drowned out by laughter.
"I finally understand," he said, right before the world was plunged into darkness again.
This time what Haruka saw weren't memories. A monster stood in her way, held by nothing but a few rusty chains. The version of Gaara she knew was sitting between it's front legs, wrapped in a clawed paw. He talked to it. Calling it mother and promising there would be more blood soon.
Panda Eyes, she heard her own voice. A quiet sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
I have a real monster inside of me!
That one belonged to Naruto. It had been a little louder, but still so far away.
What a fucked up way for a parent to show love.
This one was so quiet, she only knew it was Shikamaru because she had been there when he'd said it originally.
You have no right at all to attack Lee.
Her voice again, almost inaudible.
You always make such a mess Panda Eyes.
His strength is false.
The only way for someone to be truly strong is when you have something special that you want to protect!
I will protect them no matter what!
Naruto's voice was so much louder than anyone else's. But then he was the other side of Gaara's coin, wasn't he? It still wasn't enough to get the redhead's attention though.
Haruka tried to move closer, but the Ichibi's golden eyes suddenly snapped up. It's gaze was so full of hatred, it froze her dead in her tracks, and then sand wrapped around her body.
"Wake up!" Naruto's scream pierced the void. Gaara was suddenly gone, but the sand was still holding Haruka prisoner. Then blinding light ripped through the darkness and it shattered like glass. It felt like pieces of it were stuck in her flesh, yet when her hands roamed over her body there was nothing but unbroken skin.
She was falling again, but this time it was for real. Naruto and Gaara lay on the ground below her. They were both caked in dirt, chakra levels ridiculously low and blood was dripping from their foreheads and running down their faces.
Haruka didn't think she had enough chakra left to break her fall effectively. It probably wouldn't kill her, but she'd definitely end up with a few shattered bones. It didn't come that far though. She heard a bird's cry and then one of Sai's ink beasts caught her. It slowly spiraled towards the ground in wide circles.
"Why do you go so far for other peoples' sake?" Gaara asked, she could barely hear him over the rustling of leaves, and Naruto's answer wasn't much louder.
"They saved me from the hell of being alone," her teammate told him.
"Love," the redhead whispered.
The bird landed a moment later, set Haruka down between the two boys, and then flew away again. Sasuke and Sai rushed toward them through the trees. The former knelt next to Naruto, telling him that Sakura was fine. The latter moved past Haruka, advancing on Gaara with a kunai in his hand.
"Wait," she said. Sai stopped, frozen in place. He was close to Gaara. Closer than Kankuro and Temari, who had arrived shortly after him and Sasuke.
"Please don't," Temari begged, and Gaara's eyes widened in surprise.
"They are enemies and should be eliminated," Sai stated. His voice was completely even, but she saw the tension in his muscles and felt it in his chakra. "My orders are—"
"I said wait!" Haruka cut him off, then shifted her gaze to meet the redhead's. "Shukaku is not your mother Panda Eyes, you know that right?" Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but she might as well have slapped him. He flinched back even though he could barely move, and his limbs began to shake like leaves in the wind. He was completely helpless.
If she'd arrived to this without seeing his memories, she'd have killed him in a heartbeat. It was the logical thing to do. He could have been like Naruto, but he wasn't. Gaara was dangerous, volatile and he murdered people in gruesome ways just because it amused him. Letting someone like him live was stupid, and yet… after seeing what had happened to him? After feeling the pain that had almost torn him apart? She couldn't do it.
"I know," Gaara breathed. Haruka stared at him for a long moment, searching his eyes for any hint of deception, but all she saw were loneliness and a tiny spark of hope.
"Don't forget Panda Eyes, and remember what Naruto told you as well." When she motioned his siblings forward they looked at her in disbelieve, but didn't hesitate. Kankuro pulled Gaara's left arm over his shoulder, and then they were gone.
She saw Sai tense even further, but he didn't try to protest again. Instead he steadied her when a wave of vertigo hit her, blood loss and low chakra reserves finally making themselves known as the adrenalin left her system. Naruto was out cold on the ground, a happy smile on his face. Next to him Sasuke was only marginally better off, likely due to the curse marks that spread over the left half of his face.