Kankurō skidded to a halt on a thick branch. He lowered Gaara to the bark as if handling a live explosive.
Creak-groan.
The massive oak limb dipped under their combined mass, the damp moss beneath Kankurō's boots squelching and losing its grip as the bark protested the sudden, heavy load.
Gaara slumped against the trunk. His head swam. He raised a hand to his forehead. It came away wet.
Blood. His blood.
It was thick and dark, smelling of raw iron and a biological reality the sand had kept hidden for years, the warmth of it seeping into the cracks of his cooling armor.
"Real," he murmured. "It's real."
Temari landed on the branch beside them. She kept her distance, fan half-raised. She looked at him with the same look everyone gave him.
Fear.
"We have to keep moving," Temari said, her voice tight. "The Leaf is tracking us. We can't stop."
Gaara ignored her. He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
"Why?" he asked.
Temari paused. "Why what?"
"The Uzumaki," Gaara said. The name was a hot pressure in his mind. "He fought for... precious people."
Gaara looked up. His eyes were wide, rimmed with the black of insomnia, but the murder in them was dimmed by a terrifying confusion.
His pupils were pinpricks, vibrating with a frantic energy as if his internal world was a kaleidoscope of broken glass being shaken too hard, refracting the dim forest light into jagged, nonsensical shapes.
"He was strong because of them."
"He was a freak," Kankurō muttered, rubbing his sore shoulder. "Just like—" He cut himself off.
"Just like me," Gaara finished.
"No," Kankurō said quickly. "No. He was just... stubborn."
"He beat me," Gaara whispered.
The admission hung in the damp air, heavier than the wet sand.
The acrid scent of the burning village drifted over them again—a bitter, charcoal bite that tasted like the failure of every "truth" Gaara had ever been told.
"He fought for others. I fought for myself. And I lost."
Gaara's gaze drifted to Kankurō. Then to Temari.
They hadn't left him. They had orders to treat him as a weapon, yes. But they had dragged his unconscious body through miles of enemy forest when they could have run faster alone.
Why? Fear? Or something else?
"Yashamaru said love was the cure," Gaara murmured, his voice sounding like a child's again.
The air in the clearing seemed to go thin and cold, smelling of the dry, sterile dust of Suna's medical wards and the faint, sweet scent of sun-dried linen.
Temari stiffened. She knew that name. She knew what came after.
"Gaara, don't," she warned. "Don't think about that now."
But he couldn't stop. The crack in his armor had become a crack in his mind. Naruto had used love as a shield. Yashamaru had said love was a cure.
But Yashamaru... Yashamaru had lied.
The memory shifted. The warm clinic dissolved.
The darkness returned. The rooftop. The blood. The mask falling away to reveal the face of the only person who had ever smiled at him.
And the words that had turned Gaara into a monster.
Suna Rooftop, Six years ago
"She never loved you."
Yashamaru's voice was wet with his own blood, stripped of all kindness.
"You are a self-loving carnage."
Boom.
The explosion ripped the memory apart. But the words stayed. They hung in the dark, glowing like neon.
She never loved you. Love is a curse.
Gaara grabbed his head in the present, his fingers digging into his scalp.
"If love makes you strong," he hissed, his voice climbing into a snarl, "then why did it try to kill me?!"
The sand around him surged—not the slow, heavy defense, but a tail-shaped lash. It snapped a branch in half.
CRACK. The sound was sharp as a bone-break, the wood splintering into a jagged white spray that smelled of fresh sap and sudden, unguided violence.
Kankurō jumped back. "Gaara!"
"He lied!" Gaara screamed at the trees. "He said it was a cure! But it was a poison!"
The forest shuddered. The cracked glass inside him finally shattered.
If Naruto was right... then Yashamaru was right about the power of love.
And if Yashamaru was right... then why did he die hating Gaara? Or did he?
Gaara looked at his siblings. For the first time, he didn't just see targets. He didn't see frightened villagers. He saw witnesses to his unraveling.
He saw the people who hadn't let him fall.
"Tell me," Gaara pleaded, and the monster's voice bled through, wet and older. "Tell me why he was strong."
Temari lowered her fan. She looked at Kankurō, then back at Gaara.
"Because he didn't fight alone," she said softly.
The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Alone.
Gaara looked at Kankurō's bruised shoulder. He looked at Temari's exhausted stance.
"Temari," Gaara said. His voice was so quiet she almost missed it. "Kankurō."
He took a breath that sounded like it hurt.
"I'm sorry."
The world stopped.
Temari's fan slipped from her fingers. It hit the branch with a clatter she didn't hear.
Clang-thud.
The heavy metal ribs of the fan vibrated against the bark, a hollow, ringing sound that felt too loud in the sudden, airless silence that followed his words.
Kankurō's jaw dropped.
Gaara didn't look up. He gripped his knees, knuckles white.
He could hear the frantic, irregular thumping of his own heart—a wet, human percussion that drowned out the steady, hungry hiss of the sand for the first time in six years.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
For everything. For the threats. For the fear. For the sand that moved before he told it to. For being a monster who thought love was a lie just because one person had broken him.
Temari stared at him. Tears pricked her eyes—hot, sudden, confusing.
"You..." she started, voice wobbling. She cleared her throat, forced the steel back into her spine. "You really got your head knocked loose, didn't you?"
It was the closest she could get to affection.
Gaara reached out a hand. Not to attack. To be helped up.
Temari stepped forward. She grabbed Gaara's hand. His skin was cool. Rough with sand. She pulled.
Kankurō stepped in on the other side, grabbing Gaara's arm. Together, they hauled him to his feet.
His arm felt like cooling stone, the surface grit of the sand armor still biting into Temari's palms as she finally felt the actual, fragile weight of his skeleton.
"We're going home," Temari said. Her voice was steady now. Fierce. "We're getting out of this stupid forest, and we're going home."
Gaara nodded. He leaned on them. Really leaned.
As the trees blurred past, Gaara let his eyes drift shut for a second. The pain in his head was still there. But for the first time in six years, the silence wasn't empty.
He thought of a boy in an orange jacket, screaming at the sky.
The memory was a searing, burnt-orange flare—a high-frequency heat that stayed behind his eyelids like a permanent sun-spot, refusing to be dimmed by the dark.
One day, Gaara thought, and the thought was a seed in the desert. One day... I want to be like him.