Naruto Fic: The Wheel
Yes! I did it! I finished this weirdo Gaara genfic I started a year ago. It took me that long to find the thread *laughs at stupid in-joke* that linked all my ideas together. I hope ^_^;
Title:: The Wheel
Rating: PG13?
Pairing: None, Gaara-centric
AN: I started this fic because I wanted to try my hand at writing a quiet, creepy, not to say spooky, ambiance. Please tell me if I have succeeded or not...
Posted in two parts.
Timeline: Not too long after the Sasuke-in-a-bucket arc.
The Wheel
Alderman Matsuo didn't need the help of his ever-present clipboard to verify the address or review why he was here today. His duties had led him to this squat stucco box of a house many times, including two occasions - one a decade ago, the other all too recently - which had been...unpleasant. It was never easy, breaking bad news to the families. He didn't particularly want to be here now, even though they'd removed the old woman's body some time ago, but this was also his duty to Sunagakure.
He pushed open the door and felt it stick. Trust the old nut to let her house go to ruin, he thought with a scowl. A hard shove and the door swung open without any sign of warped wood touching wood. He glanced at it as he shut it; it closed without a murmur. Odd.
The air inside smelt musty and made him sneeze, but he did not dwell on what other odours could be lurking about. Before a decades-old accident had left him with a bad limp, Matsuo had been a Shinobi, so the thought of bodies did not disturb him, even though it had been an unfortunate number of days before they'd found the old woman. The house had no neighbours to notice the smell; to the left was a warehouse, while the road turned in a hairpin away from a sheer fall on the right-
Something brushed his face and he stumbled back, old heart seizing. He growled at his own reaction, his voice sounding strange in the barren room. Spider webs tickled his fingers when he reached out, the strands otherwise invisible in the half-light; evening had fallen, and the power to the house had been cut. Damn, how could the place be such a mess already? She'd only been dead ten days...but she'd probably taken little to no care of the house these past few months. Pitiful, wretched creature. The Alderman brushed away a few more cobwebs with a gesture harsher than required. As the spokesperson between the Shinobi and the civilian population of Sunagakure, Matsuo had delivered 'Killed In Action' notices more often than he could count, but for some reason the old woman's expression a few months ago had lodged in his mind. Face rigid, eyes like stones; she'd looked already dead. That same expression had been his only welcome the few times he'd gone back to see her, to personally pick up her work and check on how she was doing...
Right here, in this deserted house, the memory held an unusual taint of guilt...
From one of the rooms upstairs came a creak.
The Alderman frowned, staring at the ceiling. There it was again. Faint, but too heavy to be a rodent.
The creak sounded a third time. Louder. It was definitely coming from above. Alderman Matsuo glanced out the window. The dust of Suna's streets was undisturbed by any breath of wind, and the house around him was still and silent as if listening with baited breath for the next sound. What could-
Creak...creak...creak...
It was becoming regular. The Alderman stared at the ceiling as if he could discern the origin of the sound through the wood warped by dry air and time.
"Is someone up there?" he called. His left hand drifted to his belt where he still kept a kunai even after all this time. Then he deliberately took his hand away and wrapped his fingers around his clipboard. It was probably just-
Crea-eak crea-eak-
"Nobody should be in here! The Urban Committee is repossessing the house-" why was he shouting? The Suna Council seals had been on the door, he'd removed them himself to get in, so anybody in here would know they were trespassing.
The Alderman stomped towards the stairs, swatting more spider webs with his clipboard as he felt their ghost-like touch on his face. Those creaks didn't sound like footsteps, he wasn't sure what they sounded like, but he was going to find out. It was his duty; they all had to do their share.
The house was divided into two small rooms upstairs. One door was ajar, and the rhythmic creaking came from there. The Alderman stopped in confusion. That noise did sound familiar, but it was so inexplicable to hear it coming from an empty room that he'd not identified it at first, even though he'd heard it every time he visited in the past. How could that be? Was someone playing a really tasteless joke?
The door gave way with a firm shove. The room was painted in half-light, swathes of thin cobwebs scattering what light there was. Dead center of the ten-foot-by-twelve space stood an object that belonged there, that he'd seen there many times before- but it had no business spinning and creaking like that, it wasn't possible for it to move on its own-
The Alderman realized, between one stunned heartbeat and the next, that it wasn't cobwebs brushing his face, neck and chest, and that the creaking motion could only mean that, despite all appearances, the house wasn't as deserted as he'd thought.
There was scuffling but no screams once his throat was crushed. The old house muffled and drowned all the sounds.
In the middle of the room, the spinning wheel continued to turn.
The wall of ravines cast their afternoon shade over Suna, surrounding the village like the sides of a cradle, or perhaps the walls of a trap. Gaara had never been able to decide. Simile was not his forte. He stared out over the towers of brick and stucco baking in the heat of the late day. His mind was in that half-there state in which he spent many of his overabundance of waking hours.
He could have stayed like that until nightfall, motionless bar the slow movement of his breathing, but the noise of the front door slamming focused him. Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to his room. Old reflexes sent the Sand curling in the gourd, pushing against the cork. Gaara's life to date had consisted of too many dead hours of the night to think, too much solitude, and too many assassins to remind him just how meaningless and precarious his existence really was.
But that was the past. Today, the presence approaching his door was familiar and, oddly enough, not unwelcome.
"Gaara?"
"In here."
Kankuro's scowl was highlighted by the paint, turning his expression into a mask of fury worthy of the theatre. Baki followed on Kankuro's heels, his one visible eye as watchful and unreadable as always. He gave Gaara a small nod of greeting as he caught sight of him; unlike many in Suna, Baki acknowledged Gaara's presence and made an effort to be at least neutrally polite. But from the look on Kankuro's face, this small civility was going to be the highpoint of whatever was coming, and the conversation was going to go downhill from there.
Baki stepped onto the hot tiles of the balcony, gave the view of Sunagakure a curt glance and then looked down at Gaara who was sitting balanced on the stone balustrade, hands on his knees.
"Where were you last night?" the senior Jounin asked without preamble.
"I told you, he was here with me all evening and-" A sharp look interrupted Kankuro's terse words. Baki turned that hard gaze back to Gaara, who nodded, confirming his brother's statement.
"You didn't leave the house at all?"
"In the evening? No. I went out at two in the morning to walk around."
"Ah. How long did you stay out?"
"Two hours. I returned before dawn."
"Notice anything wrong?"
A small line drew itself between Gaara's eyes. "No. Everything was quiet."
Baki made a 'hmm' noise. He was watching Gaara closely. Gaara stared back without asking what this was about. Gaara's curiosity was a jagged, haphazard thing that didn't always engage, and tended to hurt people and small animals when it did.
"Someone went missing last night," Baki finally said.
"Another deserter?"
The Jounin gave him a searching glance, as if he'd not expected Gaara to know about that. A mistaken assumption. Gaara might be living cloistered in his old home, coming out only at night or to perform missions for the Council, but Kankuro was still a link to the outside. It was from his brother that Gaara had heard about Suna's ebb of morale after their defeat by Konoha, their difficulty in finding a new leader, the pressures mounting on their village from all sides, and the four desertions they'd had as a consequence.
"No, this person wasn't a Shinobi, not any more. He was one of our Aldermen. Civilians don't usually desert, they just move to another town," Baki added. From his dry tone, Gaara gathered there'd been a few of those instances as well.
"Maybe the old coot decided to take a break and visit the onsen near the border, ever think of that?" Kankuro put in, looking at the twisted towers around them as if he blamed them for something.
"All possibilities are being considered, but it's doubtful that's the case," Baki answered. "He was reliable according to his colleagues. We're searching the village for him now. We'll know more when we find him, or his body. Until we do, we are-"
"Body." Gaara turned his gaze back to the dusty streets. "You think I killed him."
There wasn't the slightest hint of feeling in Baki's voice. "There's no indication of it, but the Council asked me to check in with you." In the background, Kankuro snorted harshly.
"I haven't killed anyone in months. Certainly no-one in Suna. The last person I eliminated was that Sound ninja I took out while helping those Genin from Konoha, as the Interim Council ordered me to."
"I know," Baki said simply. "I'll tell them so."
He turned and left without a further word. Gaara didn't watch him go.
"Not very promising," he said, after a few minutes.
Kankuro, who'd leaned against the balustrade, grunted. "We knew they weren't going to welcome you home with open arms. You did kinda spread terror and death around the village for years, and on top of that the Konoha mission blew up in our face...The only reason you're not under arrest, or six feet under, is because Baki - and Temari and me - we swore you've changed, that you'll be one powerful asset from now on, and frankly Suna can use all of those it can get. Besides, those old bats on the council are too afraid of you to do anything about you...But don't expect them to throw you a party any time soon. It takes time for a Shinobi to forgive someone who made them fear for their lives. Time and a miracle," Kankuro added under his breath.
Gaara's gaze drifted to the side to catch a glimpse of his brother's profile. "So you keep telling me. It makes sense. Then why are you angry?"
"M'not. Just a bit annoyed. Some old geezer croaks - probably keeled over dead from a heart attack in an alley - and they automatically think you're to blame."
"This time last year, they would have probably been right," Gaara pointed out.
"Well, a lot of things change in a year, and Shinobi shouldn't assume shit so easily."
Some of those things that had changed hung awkwardly in the silence that followed, a sticky web of past fears and present-day uncertainties. Kankuro had no reason to stay in this house now that the Council had relieved him of the position of his younger brother's keeper. Yet he hadn't moved out. Maybe he felt obligated to stick by his brother after Gaara had taken the whole Konoha failure on himself, exonerating his siblings of any mistakes before the Council. Or maybe Kankuro really did believe Gaara's assurance that the latter would no longer kill him in a fit of pique or boredom. Kankuro himself didn't seem too sure why he was staying, coming up with different - and indifferent - answers each time, usually with an added "Well, I'll be moving out by the end of the week, it's time I had my own place to crash" without ever doing so. As for Gaara, he had often been irritated by his brother's presence when it had been imposed, but now that Kankuro seemed to staying on for an indefinite period of his own free will, Gaara found the company to be...acceptable. He even found himself wondering when Temari would get back from those final negotiations with Konoha. Gaara was ten times stronger than either of his siblings, yet not having her here right now felt like a sort of weakness...Gaara prodded the feeling like he'd probe a broken tooth with his tongue. He didn't understand it.
Kankuro let his head fall back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. "They're all still scared. You just got to get past that."
"How?" Gaara asked, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Not killing people randomly is obviously a start, but it looks like that's not enough."
"They're letting you live," Kankuro reminded him.
"That's not enough either," answered Gaara, barely audible.
The corners of Kankuro's mouth turned down and he scrubbed his hair beneath his hood as if rebuking himself. The brothers had discussed this. They'd exchanged more words over this subject in the past few months than they'd shared during their entire childhood. Gaara had returned to Suna because he knew he could no longer go on living alone. One day, he hoped to figure out how to live with these people around him, he would create these 'precious bonds' that were supposed to make it all worthwhile...and the Gods of his fathers help him but there were days Gaara almost hated Uzumaki Naruto for showing him the way when it was going to be so very, very hard...And slow, as Kankuro and Temari reminded him repeatedly, but that didn't matter as much. Gaara could have the patience of stones now that he had a goal to live for.
The hope of a world without pain. That was the debt he owed Uzumaki: hope. It kept the voices inside his head from getting too loud again.
Mudai Akiko tucked the ends of her scarf into the collar of her flak jacket. It was her only concession to the tepid sand-laden wind and the dusty streets. Chuunin Mudai was the best kind of foot soldier in the eyes of her superiors, entirely dedicated to her orders and with little imagination to distract her. If it had started to rain fish, Mudai Akiko would not have deviated an inch form her patrol route except to go and report that the ground was getting slippery and a possible hazard to footing in case of attack.
She turned the corner shortly after midnight, gave the length of the street a quick scan, checked the doors to the warehouses to be sure they had been properly locked, and glanced down each alley she passed as assiduously as if there were actually something to be expected there. She was neither disappointed nor relieved to find them as empty as every other night. Her steps rapped against the stone, kicking up dust and marking time as she counted off the streetlights fighting against the sand-choked darkness. Two of the bulbs past the last warehouse had blown. The slight departure from the norm heightened Akiko's already considerable focus. She investigated the alleys once again and checked the warehouse and the nearby rooftops; nothing amiss. She stopped beneath the last lit bulb and slid her notebook from her pocket to scribble a note to the Quartermaster to have the lights replaced...but paused with her pencil above the paper, head cocked to one side. She thought she'd heard-...
Was that the wind? It sounded like someone was sobbing and groaning. It was probably the wind. It was causing the wood of these old buildings to creak.
The guard glanced up and down the street, frowning. Senses prickled, not willing to rely on the easy explanation without proof.
The sound - which was probably the wind - seemed to be coming from the house looming in front of her. But the place was deserted; she'd seen the notice a fortnight ago on the patroller's bulletin board. Maybe a window wasn't properly shut, and the wind was blowing through an empty room and whistling through cracks, causing the old house to groan.
Chuunin Mudai remembered the missing Alderman, and decided to go check.
Baki was getting used to being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, to the point where it might be more convenient if he just went to sleep in a chair, or possibly propped up fully dressed by the door. There were too many crises these days, too many problems that seemed to snowball without a Kazekage as central point of focus to give them weight or delegate. Baki was one of three senior Jounin left alive in Suna; like his two colleagues, he accepted the strain this put upon him. If his village asked him to, he'd accept the mantle of Kazekage as well, though given a choice he'd rather go on extended patrol in the hottest part of the desert at mid-day in his underpants, because being the central administrator and leader of Suna would be just as tedious, uncomfortable and ultimately dangerous in all the wrong ways.
The night was thick with the sandy wind which desert-dwellers called The Whisperer. It'd picked up around midnight and would blow grit into Suna until dawn. The dust murmuring through the village cast haloes around the torchlight and muffled the voices of the people up ahead, though not the argumentative edge of their conversation. Baki walked faster, passing the Genin who'd come to fetch him. A couple of medi-nin stood to one side with the bored air of men who had an unpleasant job to do and no pressing hurry to do it, not while the bosses were infighting; not field medics, or the ones assigned to the hospital, these were Suna's coroners, in charge of retrieving and autopsying bodies within the village precinct, and oversee their total incineration in the case of Shinobi. The Alderman's body had been found, Baki guessed, and things weren't good.
The loose circle of Suna nin standing around a prone form made way for him; he saw at a glance that it wasn't the Alderman, and things were even worse.
The features were dusky and bruised, it took Baki a minute to match the face with one from the troop roster he kept in his head. Mudai. First name, Akiko. Female. Twenty three. Chuunin. Good record. Reliable. Predictable. Loyal. Deceased. Her uniform was ripped at the chest, collar and sleeves. She didn't have a head cover or veil, Baki noted, which was odd on a night with The Whisperer packing grit between the teeth of anyone who parted their lips. Baki himself had his half veil, normally only over the scarred portion of his face, pulled over his mouth. Baki studied Mudai's disordered hair falling out of a tight bun, already full of sand, then he glanced up. They were in a canyon running right through east-side Suna, where apartments, warehouses and workshops rose in tiers along each side of the large gulley. She could have been killed anywhere up there, on either side, and the body tossed or tumbled down here. The missing items of clothing might have caught in rocks or juniper bushes on the way down and give them some idea where the assault had occurred.
Baki bent forward to examine the body more closely. His movement caught Councillor Chiba's attention in mid-assertion.
"-strangled, bones crushed- there's no doubt. This is serious- Baki! Look at this!"
"I'm looking, sir."
"It didn't take him long to revert to form, as you can see. I told you from the start that it was insane to let him come back to Suna, we should have ambushed him out in the desert."
Baki pulled aside a strip of Mudai's torn collar. "Who are you talking about, sir?"
"Who- that demon child, of course! Gaara. He should never have been allowed to roam free."
"You may be right, sir, though I'm not sure why we're discussing him over a dead body in the middle of Suna at four in the morning."
Chiba's eyes bulged dangerously, but he must have remembered the troops listening in, and reined in the words he obviously wanted to say. The old man had been in charge of Suna's defences for years and hadn't seen combat in all that time; in Baki's opinion he could stand to remember his basics: a ninja never assumed and never lost control.
And never lost sight of his surroundings, either. "Kudeseko. I'm here, as you requested," said Baki without turning towards the man who'd kneeled in utter silence at his side, just before Kudeseko could clear his throat and try to make him jump. Kudeseko was one of the other three senior Jounin left. He and Baki had been a couple of classes apart way back in their pre-Genin days, and at some point in the intervening years a discreet war of nerves had been declared; a secret game of catch-you-out that none of their underlings would believe these two high-level and seriously dangerous Jounin capable of. Not that Baki ever thought of it as a 'game', more a sort of running practice...He couldn't remember now how it had started, though he thought it might have been the day they realized they were two of only a dozen survivors of their generation.
White teeth were briefly visible in the uncertain light, acknowledging Baki's awareness. Kudeseko was a contrast to Baki in every way: shorter, whipcord thin, somewhat good-looking for his age and profession, and the kind of Shinobi to show his emotions openly, though of course they were never the ones he was actually feeling, just the ones he wanted people to see and which would put them off their guard. Tonight his smile was brief and never reached his eyes as he gave the body a clinical once-over.
"Chuunin Mudai was missed an hour ago when she didn't check in from her patrol," Kudeseko reported. "A search party was sent out, one of them found her down here. No witnesses to the incident have come forward so far. We called you out here because there's a possibility Gaara is involved."
Baki didn't look away from the corpse, tilting his head to get a better view of a bruise by the light of the torch Kudeseko had thoughtfully provided. "There is always a possibility. But I doubt it."
Councillor Chiba snorted as if he'd expected Baki's objection all along. Baki's eyes flickered up, dissimulated beneath the angle of his veil; Chiba was here, as well as three Jounin and councillor Yamada, who didn't look convinced by his colleague's argument for Gaara's guilt, but didn't seem too keen on eliminating the possibility either. He was in charge of the ANBU, and several of his men had been victims of their Kazekage's attempt on his youngest son's life over the years. There was the nucleus of Gaara's execution here, if things continued heading in the direction they were taking.
"Why do you doubt it?" Kudeseko asked, sounding merely curious and quite open to an explanation; Baki felt a faint gratitude to whatever gods or demons were out there that his level-headed fellow soldier and friend of twenty years had been in charge of the troops tonight, and had sent for him.
He took the torch out of Kudeseko's hands and brought it close to Mudai's face and neck. "She's been strangled, not crushed."
"Gaara doesn't always opt for the more spectacular method of execution," Yamada pointed out in a deceptively even tone. "I've known a couple of instances where he's killed quickly and cleanly rather than paint the whole area with blood. The medi-nin say the bones of her neck were snapped in several places with considerable force; so was one wrist, and there are marks on her arms and legs indicating she was restrained at the time - and from the lack of finger-shaped injuries, it was not by human hands. We've instituted a state of alert, naturally, but there is no sign of an attack from outside. There are ninja who can do such a thing in our village, but I can't think of any of them who would have any motive. Our Shinobi kill without hesitation, but I only know of one who ever did so without rhyme or reason." At Yamada's side, Chiba nodded and made a discreet gesture in the fold of his long tunic; the flick of fingers to ward off evil. Cretin, thought Baki.
"That is so, sir," he said, "but in this instance, the murderer used rope."
His audience squinted down at Mudai. "How can you tell?" one of the Jounin asked. "It could have been a noose of sand as easily as rope."
For answer, Baki planted the torch into the sand, where it burned at a jaunty angle while he unbuttoned his cuff and pulled back his sleeve. All eyes present went from the wounds on Mudai's throat to the scar decorating Baki's forearm, snaking up from the wrist to the root of the biceps.
"It almost looks like a burn more than anything else," said Kudeseko thoughtfully. "And it's very even; no ridges or areas where the pressure was greater and cut deeper. There are definite differences. This wound here looks more like it was done with rope, as Baki suggested, or possibly some kind of cloth band, or a hemp cord. See where it sawed into the flesh at the deepest part of the contusion?"
While everybody bent once more over Mudai, Baki secured his sleeve, feeling the prickle as cloth slid over scar tissue. Gaara had been ten years old and in a forgiving mood that day, fortunately for his keeper. He'd squeezed Baki's arm until the ulna snapped, but he'd not bothered to crush anything else.
Kudeseko was scratching his chin. "If the murderer jerked her around by the noose, it might account for the cracked vertebra. Or if he continued squeezing and shaking her even after she was dead."
His words hung over the assembly like a shroud. Death was a Shinobi's job when all was said and done, but what Kudeseko had described was not business as usual.
"But the medi-nin examined her hands carefully, and said there's no sign she injured her attacker; no tissues beneath the nails, no fibres caught in the fingers, no bruises on the knuckles, nothing. All the blood is her own, from when she bit her tongue. She's missing one kunai, but the others are still in her belt. So not only did the killer restrain her and kill her, strangling her and shaking her like a rabbit in a snare, but he did so at a distance where she couldn't even take a swing at him. Councillor Yamada is right, there are some in this village who could do that, but not many, and then we're back to the question of motive."
"A question we will have to ask," Baki stated as he got to his feet.
Kudeseko stood up as well, his voice more formal as he said: "Thank you, Baki, councillors; you will all get a full report at noon today, and another one at first watch tonight."
Chiba opened his mouth to protest, but Yamada grabbed him by the upper arm and walked him away. Baki watched them leave. Chiba had a big bark, but no bite. Yamada was the exact opposite.
"Can Yamada order out an ANBU task force without council approval?" Baki asked before he could properly consider his question and what it might imply.
The quality of the silence impelled him to turn towards Kudeseko, who was looking at him quizzically. Behind them, the medi-nin were finally dealing with Mudai's earthly remains.
"The politics of this place are in such a mess, I don't rightly know," Kudeseko answered with a shrug. "I don't think he'd take that step without dire need. He didn't get his position by being twitchy, and besides, some of our senior Jounin might take it in mind to stop him, which would lead to internal conflict we can't afford at present."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're pretty defensive of your ex-student, aren't you."
Baki watched Mudai get zipped into a body bag. "Gaara was never really my student, and I'm not defending him."
"Tell that to councillor Chiba. You were quite rude to him earlier, in a nonetheless very polite way."
"If Gaara were responsible, I would be the first to acknowledge it. But blindly pinning any random crime on him is foolish and dangerous. Right now we have a murderer in the village - one who's possibly killed twice - and they can only think about Gaara."
"We do have a murderer in the village, one who's killed a number of times, occasionally in self-defence," Kudeseko said, voice mild as he watched the corpse being lifted on a stretcher. "But I grant you, I don't think this is his work tonight."
"What will the other Shinobi think?"
"Hm?" Kudeseko glanced at Baki, then cocked his head as he caught the latter's searching look. "Who knows? What do you mean?"
"Do none of them believe he's capable of changing? Of becoming an asset?" Baki asked slowly. "Is he damned in their eyes like he appears to be to our Council?"
"Chiba is so scared of him he can barely think straight, and Yamada is suspicious and wary, but I don't think the other councillors are baying for Gaara's blood yet; to start with, the ones who were already in his father's service thirteen years ago probably feel responsible for him and the whole Shukaku fiasco, and-"
"I don't care about the Council," Baki said measuredly. "What do we think?"
The council and the Kazekage - assuming they'd find a new one who could handle Suna - were the rudder that directed the ship across the sands, but they weren't stupid enough to ignore the deeper feelings of a whole village full of accomplished assassins. More to the point, Suna's Shinobi were the village, they were its hands, heart and soul. The Council and the Kazekage worked for their village, not the other way around.
"I don't think we know quite what to make of him yet, my friend," Kudeseko answered. The weariness in his voice perfectly summed up the current chaos in Suna, the lack of a leader to be their central point of strength, and now a killer on the loose. It was obvious that Kudeseko would love something less to worry about, particularly a something of Gaara's magnitude, but..."We just don't know."
The fact they'd not yet made up their minds against him was already something, thought Baki as he turned with no more than a nod for farewell.
Dawn broke as Gaara watched. Once the sky had stopped bleeding, he went down for breakfast to find that Baki had apparently moved back in with them.
Gaara didn't ask any questions, and his old mentor/keeper didn't offer any explanations as he read through a pile of documents and drank a cup of coffee so black it was nearly solid in the cup. Kankuro didn't say anything either, just stomped around in a way that suggested he was in a bad mood. Needless to say, breakfast and the rest of the morning unfolded in silence. Baki stayed seated at their kitchen table, reading papers, discarding most, saving some, occasionally going to the door where a discreet Chuunin slipped him more.
A masked Shinobi delivered three bento boxes at noon, forestalling Kankuro in the need to pointedly make lunch for two or ask Baki what he wanted. Gaara poked some yam tempura with his chopsticks and wondered if he was under house arrest. It seemed odd that they wouldn't have told him.
"A nine-year old student slipped in the street on the way to the academy three days ago; his veil caught in a nail and he nearly strangled himself," Baki suddenly said, turning over a piece of paper. His pile had greatly reduced. He hadn't touched his bento box, but he was on his sixth cup of coffee.
"What's that got to do with us?" Kankuro growled.
"Nothing," Baki answered, pokerfaced. "In the past ten days, the quartermaster has reported an increase in breakage in satchel straps, holsters, tears along the seams of flak jackets- that happened to me yesterday, actually. A jacket I'd had for two years; the pocket ripped right off as I put in a scroll. Like it was made of tissue paper."
Kankuro stared at him.
"There's a warehouse in the east of the village, in the semi-industrial area, that's reporting an explosion in the rat population. They've not actually seen any rodents, but all their ropes have begun to fray and that's the only reason they can think of. One of their workers was nearly crushed by a falling stack of boxes when the cordage hauling it snapped."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Kankuro asked.
"There's something strange going on. It's not very focused yet, but it's slowly pervading the village, getting stronger, and it wants to cause us harm..."
Gaara looked at Baki's pile of papers. "You can read all that in there?"
"Of course." Baki spun a dossier around for Gaara to see. "A Shinobi village runs on information. An enemy infiltration will only be visible as the smallest ripples in what's the regular, humdrum chaos. These details matter for their own sake as well; a good quartermaster who can keep us supplied in weapons, food, water and dry goods is as important as a leader who can tell us what to do with all that."
Gaara eyed the lines of figures in ledger format. Kankuro stopped looking so irritated and examined Baki attentively.
"What are you looking for?" Gaara asked, as Baki turned back to his papers.
"I don't know. Something is wrong. I'm trying to find it."
Gaara looked down at the ledger. "By following the ripples?"
"Yes. We're conducting a house-to-house search for the missing Alderman, and we've tripled patrols in the east of the village, but I don't think we'll find anything. Not before someone else dies. Then we'll probably have a better idea what this is about."
That pronouncement left silence in its wake once more.
Evening fell, ushering in a tepid breeze and the faint pinging sounds of concrete, stucco and stone cooling rapidly. Gaara hadn't moved from the table or stopped staring at Baki. The latter didn't seem to notice or care, undoubtedly used to Gaara behaving in a way that defied politeness or even basic understanding. The Jounin reached for his coffee cup without looking, found it empty, put it down with his eyes still on the flimsy rice paper carbon copy he was reading. Then he absently rubbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into stiffening muscles. Gaara tracked the movement as if every gesture was important. He was familiar with his mentor's strength, his control, his absolute dedication to Suna and his mission, but this was the first time he'd seen this side of Baki before. Patient, relentless, focused on every piece of minutia without distraction. Someone could have died out there, but he kept following tracks only his instincts told him about. Gaara absorbed this.
Footsteps outside were followed by a solid hammering on the door. In the workshop, Kankuro dropped something heavy and stifled a curse.
"Come in," said Baki without turning around.
"Sir?!" A breathless Genin poked his head through the door, gaze flickering reluctantly towards Gaara. "Um, Kudeseko-san sent me to fetch you and tell you that we found it and you were right, it's in the east side, next to the warehouse-"
"Did anybody else die?" Baki asked levelly.
"Um, one of the ANBU was badly wounded I hear, and there are complications."
"I see. Run back and tell Kudeseko that I'm coming. Gaara, you and Kankuro stay here. I'll send a note when we've resolved this, in case you're interested in the conclusion."
"Yeah, I'm interested," Kankuro muttered from where he'd come into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag; his fingers were black with machine oil. He glared at the door Baki had closed for a few moments, then went over to the fridge. "Want a bite? We got some leftovers."
Gaara didn't answer. He was staring at the papers on the table. The numbers fluctuated through rows and columns like a heartbeat. Details. Ripples in a web. Connections between every Shinobi in this village, their actions, their lives. Was he in there, connected to anything...?
"Maybe I can cook something," Kankuro said with a certain lack of enthusiasm. "We got cans of- where are you going?"
Gaara picked up the gourd near the door. "To the east side of the village. Near a warehouse where the ropes break."
He reached for the doorknob and found his wrist caught in a hard grip. It was released immediately as Kankuro's survival instincts in regards to his little brother kicked in, but the hard light in his eyes didn't flicker.
"Don't be an idiot. You can't go out now. Not before they figure out who did it. Or don't you realize why Baki was sitting at our kitchen table all day?"
"To give me an irrefutable eyewitness as to my whereabouts until someone else was hurt or killed," Gaara answered.
After a moment of silence, Kankuro said, "If you know that, why are you going?"
Gaara had the oddest feeling he was six again, bludgeoning on between one situation he didn't understand to the next, never knowing which one might hurt this time. But..."There's a problem in Suna, a threat. I might be able to help. It's better than sitting on a balcony all day and achieving nothing more than not killing people."
"Um...but what can you do out there? I don't think it's an attack; more like a serial killer or something. The ANBU can deal with it. What are you going to do?"
"No idea. But I won't figure it out here." Gaara gave the papers on the table a regretful glance. "I don't see the connections, I don't understand them. This is all I can do."
"...Fine. Who cares what Baki says anyway, he's not our team leader anymore, we're supposed to be directly under the Interim Council's orders and they've said squat. Let me go get Karasu."
"You don't need to-"
Kankuro was already gone.
Link to part 2
Title:: The Wheel
Rating: PG13?
Pairing: None, Gaara-centric
AN: I started this fic because I wanted to try my hand at writing a quiet, creepy, not to say spooky, ambiance. Please tell me if I have succeeded or not...
Posted in two parts.
Timeline: Not too long after the Sasuke-in-a-bucket arc.
The Wheel
Alderman Matsuo didn't need the help of his ever-present clipboard to verify the address or review why he was here today. His duties had led him to this squat stucco box of a house many times, including two occasions - one a decade ago, the other all too recently - which had been...unpleasant. It was never easy, breaking bad news to the families. He didn't particularly want to be here now, even though they'd removed the old woman's body some time ago, but this was also his duty to Sunagakure.
He pushed open the door and felt it stick. Trust the old nut to let her house go to ruin, he thought with a scowl. A hard shove and the door swung open without any sign of warped wood touching wood. He glanced at it as he shut it; it closed without a murmur. Odd.
The air inside smelt musty and made him sneeze, but he did not dwell on what other odours could be lurking about. Before a decades-old accident had left him with a bad limp, Matsuo had been a Shinobi, so the thought of bodies did not disturb him, even though it had been an unfortunate number of days before they'd found the old woman. The house had no neighbours to notice the smell; to the left was a warehouse, while the road turned in a hairpin away from a sheer fall on the right-
Something brushed his face and he stumbled back, old heart seizing. He growled at his own reaction, his voice sounding strange in the barren room. Spider webs tickled his fingers when he reached out, the strands otherwise invisible in the half-light; evening had fallen, and the power to the house had been cut. Damn, how could the place be such a mess already? She'd only been dead ten days...but she'd probably taken little to no care of the house these past few months. Pitiful, wretched creature. The Alderman brushed away a few more cobwebs with a gesture harsher than required. As the spokesperson between the Shinobi and the civilian population of Sunagakure, Matsuo had delivered 'Killed In Action' notices more often than he could count, but for some reason the old woman's expression a few months ago had lodged in his mind. Face rigid, eyes like stones; she'd looked already dead. That same expression had been his only welcome the few times he'd gone back to see her, to personally pick up her work and check on how she was doing...
Right here, in this deserted house, the memory held an unusual taint of guilt...
From one of the rooms upstairs came a creak.
The Alderman frowned, staring at the ceiling. There it was again. Faint, but too heavy to be a rodent.
The creak sounded a third time. Louder. It was definitely coming from above. Alderman Matsuo glanced out the window. The dust of Suna's streets was undisturbed by any breath of wind, and the house around him was still and silent as if listening with baited breath for the next sound. What could-
Creak...creak...creak...
It was becoming regular. The Alderman stared at the ceiling as if he could discern the origin of the sound through the wood warped by dry air and time.
"Is someone up there?" he called. His left hand drifted to his belt where he still kept a kunai even after all this time. Then he deliberately took his hand away and wrapped his fingers around his clipboard. It was probably just-
Crea-eak crea-eak-
"Nobody should be in here! The Urban Committee is repossessing the house-" why was he shouting? The Suna Council seals had been on the door, he'd removed them himself to get in, so anybody in here would know they were trespassing.
The Alderman stomped towards the stairs, swatting more spider webs with his clipboard as he felt their ghost-like touch on his face. Those creaks didn't sound like footsteps, he wasn't sure what they sounded like, but he was going to find out. It was his duty; they all had to do their share.
The house was divided into two small rooms upstairs. One door was ajar, and the rhythmic creaking came from there. The Alderman stopped in confusion. That noise did sound familiar, but it was so inexplicable to hear it coming from an empty room that he'd not identified it at first, even though he'd heard it every time he visited in the past. How could that be? Was someone playing a really tasteless joke?
The door gave way with a firm shove. The room was painted in half-light, swathes of thin cobwebs scattering what light there was. Dead center of the ten-foot-by-twelve space stood an object that belonged there, that he'd seen there many times before- but it had no business spinning and creaking like that, it wasn't possible for it to move on its own-
The Alderman realized, between one stunned heartbeat and the next, that it wasn't cobwebs brushing his face, neck and chest, and that the creaking motion could only mean that, despite all appearances, the house wasn't as deserted as he'd thought.
There was scuffling but no screams once his throat was crushed. The old house muffled and drowned all the sounds.
In the middle of the room, the spinning wheel continued to turn.
The wall of ravines cast their afternoon shade over Suna, surrounding the village like the sides of a cradle, or perhaps the walls of a trap. Gaara had never been able to decide. Simile was not his forte. He stared out over the towers of brick and stucco baking in the heat of the late day. His mind was in that half-there state in which he spent many of his overabundance of waking hours.
He could have stayed like that until nightfall, motionless bar the slow movement of his breathing, but the noise of the front door slamming focused him. Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to his room. Old reflexes sent the Sand curling in the gourd, pushing against the cork. Gaara's life to date had consisted of too many dead hours of the night to think, too much solitude, and too many assassins to remind him just how meaningless and precarious his existence really was.
But that was the past. Today, the presence approaching his door was familiar and, oddly enough, not unwelcome.
"Gaara?"
"In here."
Kankuro's scowl was highlighted by the paint, turning his expression into a mask of fury worthy of the theatre. Baki followed on Kankuro's heels, his one visible eye as watchful and unreadable as always. He gave Gaara a small nod of greeting as he caught sight of him; unlike many in Suna, Baki acknowledged Gaara's presence and made an effort to be at least neutrally polite. But from the look on Kankuro's face, this small civility was going to be the highpoint of whatever was coming, and the conversation was going to go downhill from there.
Baki stepped onto the hot tiles of the balcony, gave the view of Sunagakure a curt glance and then looked down at Gaara who was sitting balanced on the stone balustrade, hands on his knees.
"Where were you last night?" the senior Jounin asked without preamble.
"I told you, he was here with me all evening and-" A sharp look interrupted Kankuro's terse words. Baki turned that hard gaze back to Gaara, who nodded, confirming his brother's statement.
"You didn't leave the house at all?"
"In the evening? No. I went out at two in the morning to walk around."
"Ah. How long did you stay out?"
"Two hours. I returned before dawn."
"Notice anything wrong?"
A small line drew itself between Gaara's eyes. "No. Everything was quiet."
Baki made a 'hmm' noise. He was watching Gaara closely. Gaara stared back without asking what this was about. Gaara's curiosity was a jagged, haphazard thing that didn't always engage, and tended to hurt people and small animals when it did.
"Someone went missing last night," Baki finally said.
"Another deserter?"
The Jounin gave him a searching glance, as if he'd not expected Gaara to know about that. A mistaken assumption. Gaara might be living cloistered in his old home, coming out only at night or to perform missions for the Council, but Kankuro was still a link to the outside. It was from his brother that Gaara had heard about Suna's ebb of morale after their defeat by Konoha, their difficulty in finding a new leader, the pressures mounting on their village from all sides, and the four desertions they'd had as a consequence.
"No, this person wasn't a Shinobi, not any more. He was one of our Aldermen. Civilians don't usually desert, they just move to another town," Baki added. From his dry tone, Gaara gathered there'd been a few of those instances as well.
"Maybe the old coot decided to take a break and visit the onsen near the border, ever think of that?" Kankuro put in, looking at the twisted towers around them as if he blamed them for something.
"All possibilities are being considered, but it's doubtful that's the case," Baki answered. "He was reliable according to his colleagues. We're searching the village for him now. We'll know more when we find him, or his body. Until we do, we are-"
"Body." Gaara turned his gaze back to the dusty streets. "You think I killed him."
There wasn't the slightest hint of feeling in Baki's voice. "There's no indication of it, but the Council asked me to check in with you." In the background, Kankuro snorted harshly.
"I haven't killed anyone in months. Certainly no-one in Suna. The last person I eliminated was that Sound ninja I took out while helping those Genin from Konoha, as the Interim Council ordered me to."
"I know," Baki said simply. "I'll tell them so."
He turned and left without a further word. Gaara didn't watch him go.
"Not very promising," he said, after a few minutes.
Kankuro, who'd leaned against the balustrade, grunted. "We knew they weren't going to welcome you home with open arms. You did kinda spread terror and death around the village for years, and on top of that the Konoha mission blew up in our face...The only reason you're not under arrest, or six feet under, is because Baki - and Temari and me - we swore you've changed, that you'll be one powerful asset from now on, and frankly Suna can use all of those it can get. Besides, those old bats on the council are too afraid of you to do anything about you...But don't expect them to throw you a party any time soon. It takes time for a Shinobi to forgive someone who made them fear for their lives. Time and a miracle," Kankuro added under his breath.
Gaara's gaze drifted to the side to catch a glimpse of his brother's profile. "So you keep telling me. It makes sense. Then why are you angry?"
"M'not. Just a bit annoyed. Some old geezer croaks - probably keeled over dead from a heart attack in an alley - and they automatically think you're to blame."
"This time last year, they would have probably been right," Gaara pointed out.
"Well, a lot of things change in a year, and Shinobi shouldn't assume shit so easily."
Some of those things that had changed hung awkwardly in the silence that followed, a sticky web of past fears and present-day uncertainties. Kankuro had no reason to stay in this house now that the Council had relieved him of the position of his younger brother's keeper. Yet he hadn't moved out. Maybe he felt obligated to stick by his brother after Gaara had taken the whole Konoha failure on himself, exonerating his siblings of any mistakes before the Council. Or maybe Kankuro really did believe Gaara's assurance that the latter would no longer kill him in a fit of pique or boredom. Kankuro himself didn't seem too sure why he was staying, coming up with different - and indifferent - answers each time, usually with an added "Well, I'll be moving out by the end of the week, it's time I had my own place to crash" without ever doing so. As for Gaara, he had often been irritated by his brother's presence when it had been imposed, but now that Kankuro seemed to staying on for an indefinite period of his own free will, Gaara found the company to be...acceptable. He even found himself wondering when Temari would get back from those final negotiations with Konoha. Gaara was ten times stronger than either of his siblings, yet not having her here right now felt like a sort of weakness...Gaara prodded the feeling like he'd probe a broken tooth with his tongue. He didn't understand it.
Kankuro let his head fall back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. "They're all still scared. You just got to get past that."
"How?" Gaara asked, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Not killing people randomly is obviously a start, but it looks like that's not enough."
"They're letting you live," Kankuro reminded him.
"That's not enough either," answered Gaara, barely audible.
The corners of Kankuro's mouth turned down and he scrubbed his hair beneath his hood as if rebuking himself. The brothers had discussed this. They'd exchanged more words over this subject in the past few months than they'd shared during their entire childhood. Gaara had returned to Suna because he knew he could no longer go on living alone. One day, he hoped to figure out how to live with these people around him, he would create these 'precious bonds' that were supposed to make it all worthwhile...and the Gods of his fathers help him but there were days Gaara almost hated Uzumaki Naruto for showing him the way when it was going to be so very, very hard...And slow, as Kankuro and Temari reminded him repeatedly, but that didn't matter as much. Gaara could have the patience of stones now that he had a goal to live for.
The hope of a world without pain. That was the debt he owed Uzumaki: hope. It kept the voices inside his head from getting too loud again.
Mudai Akiko tucked the ends of her scarf into the collar of her flak jacket. It was her only concession to the tepid sand-laden wind and the dusty streets. Chuunin Mudai was the best kind of foot soldier in the eyes of her superiors, entirely dedicated to her orders and with little imagination to distract her. If it had started to rain fish, Mudai Akiko would not have deviated an inch form her patrol route except to go and report that the ground was getting slippery and a possible hazard to footing in case of attack.
She turned the corner shortly after midnight, gave the length of the street a quick scan, checked the doors to the warehouses to be sure they had been properly locked, and glanced down each alley she passed as assiduously as if there were actually something to be expected there. She was neither disappointed nor relieved to find them as empty as every other night. Her steps rapped against the stone, kicking up dust and marking time as she counted off the streetlights fighting against the sand-choked darkness. Two of the bulbs past the last warehouse had blown. The slight departure from the norm heightened Akiko's already considerable focus. She investigated the alleys once again and checked the warehouse and the nearby rooftops; nothing amiss. She stopped beneath the last lit bulb and slid her notebook from her pocket to scribble a note to the Quartermaster to have the lights replaced...but paused with her pencil above the paper, head cocked to one side. She thought she'd heard-...
Was that the wind? It sounded like someone was sobbing and groaning. It was probably the wind. It was causing the wood of these old buildings to creak.
The guard glanced up and down the street, frowning. Senses prickled, not willing to rely on the easy explanation without proof.
The sound - which was probably the wind - seemed to be coming from the house looming in front of her. But the place was deserted; she'd seen the notice a fortnight ago on the patroller's bulletin board. Maybe a window wasn't properly shut, and the wind was blowing through an empty room and whistling through cracks, causing the old house to groan.
Chuunin Mudai remembered the missing Alderman, and decided to go check.
Baki was getting used to being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, to the point where it might be more convenient if he just went to sleep in a chair, or possibly propped up fully dressed by the door. There were too many crises these days, too many problems that seemed to snowball without a Kazekage as central point of focus to give them weight or delegate. Baki was one of three senior Jounin left alive in Suna; like his two colleagues, he accepted the strain this put upon him. If his village asked him to, he'd accept the mantle of Kazekage as well, though given a choice he'd rather go on extended patrol in the hottest part of the desert at mid-day in his underpants, because being the central administrator and leader of Suna would be just as tedious, uncomfortable and ultimately dangerous in all the wrong ways.
The night was thick with the sandy wind which desert-dwellers called The Whisperer. It'd picked up around midnight and would blow grit into Suna until dawn. The dust murmuring through the village cast haloes around the torchlight and muffled the voices of the people up ahead, though not the argumentative edge of their conversation. Baki walked faster, passing the Genin who'd come to fetch him. A couple of medi-nin stood to one side with the bored air of men who had an unpleasant job to do and no pressing hurry to do it, not while the bosses were infighting; not field medics, or the ones assigned to the hospital, these were Suna's coroners, in charge of retrieving and autopsying bodies within the village precinct, and oversee their total incineration in the case of Shinobi. The Alderman's body had been found, Baki guessed, and things weren't good.
The loose circle of Suna nin standing around a prone form made way for him; he saw at a glance that it wasn't the Alderman, and things were even worse.
The features were dusky and bruised, it took Baki a minute to match the face with one from the troop roster he kept in his head. Mudai. First name, Akiko. Female. Twenty three. Chuunin. Good record. Reliable. Predictable. Loyal. Deceased. Her uniform was ripped at the chest, collar and sleeves. She didn't have a head cover or veil, Baki noted, which was odd on a night with The Whisperer packing grit between the teeth of anyone who parted their lips. Baki himself had his half veil, normally only over the scarred portion of his face, pulled over his mouth. Baki studied Mudai's disordered hair falling out of a tight bun, already full of sand, then he glanced up. They were in a canyon running right through east-side Suna, where apartments, warehouses and workshops rose in tiers along each side of the large gulley. She could have been killed anywhere up there, on either side, and the body tossed or tumbled down here. The missing items of clothing might have caught in rocks or juniper bushes on the way down and give them some idea where the assault had occurred.
Baki bent forward to examine the body more closely. His movement caught Councillor Chiba's attention in mid-assertion.
"-strangled, bones crushed- there's no doubt. This is serious- Baki! Look at this!"
"I'm looking, sir."
"It didn't take him long to revert to form, as you can see. I told you from the start that it was insane to let him come back to Suna, we should have ambushed him out in the desert."
Baki pulled aside a strip of Mudai's torn collar. "Who are you talking about, sir?"
"Who- that demon child, of course! Gaara. He should never have been allowed to roam free."
"You may be right, sir, though I'm not sure why we're discussing him over a dead body in the middle of Suna at four in the morning."
Chiba's eyes bulged dangerously, but he must have remembered the troops listening in, and reined in the words he obviously wanted to say. The old man had been in charge of Suna's defences for years and hadn't seen combat in all that time; in Baki's opinion he could stand to remember his basics: a ninja never assumed and never lost control.
And never lost sight of his surroundings, either. "Kudeseko. I'm here, as you requested," said Baki without turning towards the man who'd kneeled in utter silence at his side, just before Kudeseko could clear his throat and try to make him jump. Kudeseko was one of the other three senior Jounin left. He and Baki had been a couple of classes apart way back in their pre-Genin days, and at some point in the intervening years a discreet war of nerves had been declared; a secret game of catch-you-out that none of their underlings would believe these two high-level and seriously dangerous Jounin capable of. Not that Baki ever thought of it as a 'game', more a sort of running practice...He couldn't remember now how it had started, though he thought it might have been the day they realized they were two of only a dozen survivors of their generation.
White teeth were briefly visible in the uncertain light, acknowledging Baki's awareness. Kudeseko was a contrast to Baki in every way: shorter, whipcord thin, somewhat good-looking for his age and profession, and the kind of Shinobi to show his emotions openly, though of course they were never the ones he was actually feeling, just the ones he wanted people to see and which would put them off their guard. Tonight his smile was brief and never reached his eyes as he gave the body a clinical once-over.
"Chuunin Mudai was missed an hour ago when she didn't check in from her patrol," Kudeseko reported. "A search party was sent out, one of them found her down here. No witnesses to the incident have come forward so far. We called you out here because there's a possibility Gaara is involved."
Baki didn't look away from the corpse, tilting his head to get a better view of a bruise by the light of the torch Kudeseko had thoughtfully provided. "There is always a possibility. But I doubt it."
Councillor Chiba snorted as if he'd expected Baki's objection all along. Baki's eyes flickered up, dissimulated beneath the angle of his veil; Chiba was here, as well as three Jounin and councillor Yamada, who didn't look convinced by his colleague's argument for Gaara's guilt, but didn't seem too keen on eliminating the possibility either. He was in charge of the ANBU, and several of his men had been victims of their Kazekage's attempt on his youngest son's life over the years. There was the nucleus of Gaara's execution here, if things continued heading in the direction they were taking.
"Why do you doubt it?" Kudeseko asked, sounding merely curious and quite open to an explanation; Baki felt a faint gratitude to whatever gods or demons were out there that his level-headed fellow soldier and friend of twenty years had been in charge of the troops tonight, and had sent for him.
He took the torch out of Kudeseko's hands and brought it close to Mudai's face and neck. "She's been strangled, not crushed."
"Gaara doesn't always opt for the more spectacular method of execution," Yamada pointed out in a deceptively even tone. "I've known a couple of instances where he's killed quickly and cleanly rather than paint the whole area with blood. The medi-nin say the bones of her neck were snapped in several places with considerable force; so was one wrist, and there are marks on her arms and legs indicating she was restrained at the time - and from the lack of finger-shaped injuries, it was not by human hands. We've instituted a state of alert, naturally, but there is no sign of an attack from outside. There are ninja who can do such a thing in our village, but I can't think of any of them who would have any motive. Our Shinobi kill without hesitation, but I only know of one who ever did so without rhyme or reason." At Yamada's side, Chiba nodded and made a discreet gesture in the fold of his long tunic; the flick of fingers to ward off evil. Cretin, thought Baki.
"That is so, sir," he said, "but in this instance, the murderer used rope."
His audience squinted down at Mudai. "How can you tell?" one of the Jounin asked. "It could have been a noose of sand as easily as rope."
For answer, Baki planted the torch into the sand, where it burned at a jaunty angle while he unbuttoned his cuff and pulled back his sleeve. All eyes present went from the wounds on Mudai's throat to the scar decorating Baki's forearm, snaking up from the wrist to the root of the biceps.
"It almost looks like a burn more than anything else," said Kudeseko thoughtfully. "And it's very even; no ridges or areas where the pressure was greater and cut deeper. There are definite differences. This wound here looks more like it was done with rope, as Baki suggested, or possibly some kind of cloth band, or a hemp cord. See where it sawed into the flesh at the deepest part of the contusion?"
While everybody bent once more over Mudai, Baki secured his sleeve, feeling the prickle as cloth slid over scar tissue. Gaara had been ten years old and in a forgiving mood that day, fortunately for his keeper. He'd squeezed Baki's arm until the ulna snapped, but he'd not bothered to crush anything else.
Kudeseko was scratching his chin. "If the murderer jerked her around by the noose, it might account for the cracked vertebra. Or if he continued squeezing and shaking her even after she was dead."
His words hung over the assembly like a shroud. Death was a Shinobi's job when all was said and done, but what Kudeseko had described was not business as usual.
"But the medi-nin examined her hands carefully, and said there's no sign she injured her attacker; no tissues beneath the nails, no fibres caught in the fingers, no bruises on the knuckles, nothing. All the blood is her own, from when she bit her tongue. She's missing one kunai, but the others are still in her belt. So not only did the killer restrain her and kill her, strangling her and shaking her like a rabbit in a snare, but he did so at a distance where she couldn't even take a swing at him. Councillor Yamada is right, there are some in this village who could do that, but not many, and then we're back to the question of motive."
"A question we will have to ask," Baki stated as he got to his feet.
Kudeseko stood up as well, his voice more formal as he said: "Thank you, Baki, councillors; you will all get a full report at noon today, and another one at first watch tonight."
Chiba opened his mouth to protest, but Yamada grabbed him by the upper arm and walked him away. Baki watched them leave. Chiba had a big bark, but no bite. Yamada was the exact opposite.
"Can Yamada order out an ANBU task force without council approval?" Baki asked before he could properly consider his question and what it might imply.
The quality of the silence impelled him to turn towards Kudeseko, who was looking at him quizzically. Behind them, the medi-nin were finally dealing with Mudai's earthly remains.
"The politics of this place are in such a mess, I don't rightly know," Kudeseko answered with a shrug. "I don't think he'd take that step without dire need. He didn't get his position by being twitchy, and besides, some of our senior Jounin might take it in mind to stop him, which would lead to internal conflict we can't afford at present."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're pretty defensive of your ex-student, aren't you."
Baki watched Mudai get zipped into a body bag. "Gaara was never really my student, and I'm not defending him."
"Tell that to councillor Chiba. You were quite rude to him earlier, in a nonetheless very polite way."
"If Gaara were responsible, I would be the first to acknowledge it. But blindly pinning any random crime on him is foolish and dangerous. Right now we have a murderer in the village - one who's possibly killed twice - and they can only think about Gaara."
"We do have a murderer in the village, one who's killed a number of times, occasionally in self-defence," Kudeseko said, voice mild as he watched the corpse being lifted on a stretcher. "But I grant you, I don't think this is his work tonight."
"What will the other Shinobi think?"
"Hm?" Kudeseko glanced at Baki, then cocked his head as he caught the latter's searching look. "Who knows? What do you mean?"
"Do none of them believe he's capable of changing? Of becoming an asset?" Baki asked slowly. "Is he damned in their eyes like he appears to be to our Council?"
"Chiba is so scared of him he can barely think straight, and Yamada is suspicious and wary, but I don't think the other councillors are baying for Gaara's blood yet; to start with, the ones who were already in his father's service thirteen years ago probably feel responsible for him and the whole Shukaku fiasco, and-"
"I don't care about the Council," Baki said measuredly. "What do we think?"
The council and the Kazekage - assuming they'd find a new one who could handle Suna - were the rudder that directed the ship across the sands, but they weren't stupid enough to ignore the deeper feelings of a whole village full of accomplished assassins. More to the point, Suna's Shinobi were the village, they were its hands, heart and soul. The Council and the Kazekage worked for their village, not the other way around.
"I don't think we know quite what to make of him yet, my friend," Kudeseko answered. The weariness in his voice perfectly summed up the current chaos in Suna, the lack of a leader to be their central point of strength, and now a killer on the loose. It was obvious that Kudeseko would love something less to worry about, particularly a something of Gaara's magnitude, but..."We just don't know."
The fact they'd not yet made up their minds against him was already something, thought Baki as he turned with no more than a nod for farewell.
Dawn broke as Gaara watched. Once the sky had stopped bleeding, he went down for breakfast to find that Baki had apparently moved back in with them.
Gaara didn't ask any questions, and his old mentor/keeper didn't offer any explanations as he read through a pile of documents and drank a cup of coffee so black it was nearly solid in the cup. Kankuro didn't say anything either, just stomped around in a way that suggested he was in a bad mood. Needless to say, breakfast and the rest of the morning unfolded in silence. Baki stayed seated at their kitchen table, reading papers, discarding most, saving some, occasionally going to the door where a discreet Chuunin slipped him more.
A masked Shinobi delivered three bento boxes at noon, forestalling Kankuro in the need to pointedly make lunch for two or ask Baki what he wanted. Gaara poked some yam tempura with his chopsticks and wondered if he was under house arrest. It seemed odd that they wouldn't have told him.
"A nine-year old student slipped in the street on the way to the academy three days ago; his veil caught in a nail and he nearly strangled himself," Baki suddenly said, turning over a piece of paper. His pile had greatly reduced. He hadn't touched his bento box, but he was on his sixth cup of coffee.
"What's that got to do with us?" Kankuro growled.
"Nothing," Baki answered, pokerfaced. "In the past ten days, the quartermaster has reported an increase in breakage in satchel straps, holsters, tears along the seams of flak jackets- that happened to me yesterday, actually. A jacket I'd had for two years; the pocket ripped right off as I put in a scroll. Like it was made of tissue paper."
Kankuro stared at him.
"There's a warehouse in the east of the village, in the semi-industrial area, that's reporting an explosion in the rat population. They've not actually seen any rodents, but all their ropes have begun to fray and that's the only reason they can think of. One of their workers was nearly crushed by a falling stack of boxes when the cordage hauling it snapped."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Kankuro asked.
"There's something strange going on. It's not very focused yet, but it's slowly pervading the village, getting stronger, and it wants to cause us harm..."
Gaara looked at Baki's pile of papers. "You can read all that in there?"
"Of course." Baki spun a dossier around for Gaara to see. "A Shinobi village runs on information. An enemy infiltration will only be visible as the smallest ripples in what's the regular, humdrum chaos. These details matter for their own sake as well; a good quartermaster who can keep us supplied in weapons, food, water and dry goods is as important as a leader who can tell us what to do with all that."
Gaara eyed the lines of figures in ledger format. Kankuro stopped looking so irritated and examined Baki attentively.
"What are you looking for?" Gaara asked, as Baki turned back to his papers.
"I don't know. Something is wrong. I'm trying to find it."
Gaara looked down at the ledger. "By following the ripples?"
"Yes. We're conducting a house-to-house search for the missing Alderman, and we've tripled patrols in the east of the village, but I don't think we'll find anything. Not before someone else dies. Then we'll probably have a better idea what this is about."
That pronouncement left silence in its wake once more.
Evening fell, ushering in a tepid breeze and the faint pinging sounds of concrete, stucco and stone cooling rapidly. Gaara hadn't moved from the table or stopped staring at Baki. The latter didn't seem to notice or care, undoubtedly used to Gaara behaving in a way that defied politeness or even basic understanding. The Jounin reached for his coffee cup without looking, found it empty, put it down with his eyes still on the flimsy rice paper carbon copy he was reading. Then he absently rubbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into stiffening muscles. Gaara tracked the movement as if every gesture was important. He was familiar with his mentor's strength, his control, his absolute dedication to Suna and his mission, but this was the first time he'd seen this side of Baki before. Patient, relentless, focused on every piece of minutia without distraction. Someone could have died out there, but he kept following tracks only his instincts told him about. Gaara absorbed this.
Footsteps outside were followed by a solid hammering on the door. In the workshop, Kankuro dropped something heavy and stifled a curse.
"Come in," said Baki without turning around.
"Sir?!" A breathless Genin poked his head through the door, gaze flickering reluctantly towards Gaara. "Um, Kudeseko-san sent me to fetch you and tell you that we found it and you were right, it's in the east side, next to the warehouse-"
"Did anybody else die?" Baki asked levelly.
"Um, one of the ANBU was badly wounded I hear, and there are complications."
"I see. Run back and tell Kudeseko that I'm coming. Gaara, you and Kankuro stay here. I'll send a note when we've resolved this, in case you're interested in the conclusion."
"Yeah, I'm interested," Kankuro muttered from where he'd come into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag; his fingers were black with machine oil. He glared at the door Baki had closed for a few moments, then went over to the fridge. "Want a bite? We got some leftovers."
Gaara didn't answer. He was staring at the papers on the table. The numbers fluctuated through rows and columns like a heartbeat. Details. Ripples in a web. Connections between every Shinobi in this village, their actions, their lives. Was he in there, connected to anything...?
"Maybe I can cook something," Kankuro said with a certain lack of enthusiasm. "We got cans of- where are you going?"
Gaara picked up the gourd near the door. "To the east side of the village. Near a warehouse where the ropes break."
He reached for the doorknob and found his wrist caught in a hard grip. It was released immediately as Kankuro's survival instincts in regards to his little brother kicked in, but the hard light in his eyes didn't flicker.
"Don't be an idiot. You can't go out now. Not before they figure out who did it. Or don't you realize why Baki was sitting at our kitchen table all day?"
"To give me an irrefutable eyewitness as to my whereabouts until someone else was hurt or killed," Gaara answered.
After a moment of silence, Kankuro said, "If you know that, why are you going?"
Gaara had the oddest feeling he was six again, bludgeoning on between one situation he didn't understand to the next, never knowing which one might hurt this time. But..."There's a problem in Suna, a threat. I might be able to help. It's better than sitting on a balcony all day and achieving nothing more than not killing people."
"Um...but what can you do out there? I don't think it's an attack; more like a serial killer or something. The ANBU can deal with it. What are you going to do?"
"No idea. But I won't figure it out here." Gaara gave the papers on the table a regretful glance. "I don't see the connections, I don't understand them. This is all I can do."
"...Fine. Who cares what Baki says anyway, he's not our team leader anymore, we're supposed to be directly under the Interim Council's orders and they've said squat. Let me go get Karasu."
"You don't need to-"
Kankuro was already gone.
Link to part 2