Chapter 3.2

Gaara III​

Even now, days after the first transformation, days after Gaara had finally had a taste of what lasting peace looked like, he couldn't begin to wrap his head around the whole thing. It all felt like a fever dream. A week ago, Gaara couldn't even have dreamed of a life where he and Shukaku had come to an accord, where his siblings did not fear his every motion, where screams for bloodshed did not haunt his every waking step. His father had told Temari and Kankuro of the monumental developments that had taken place a few miles away from their village – he'd been forced to, given Temari's insistence on knowing why Suleiman was brought back unconscious.

Gaara had resolved to thank him – and find a more meaningful to convey his gratitude, though he doubted that was even possible – as soon as the man had woken up.

As far as the auburn-haired boy was concerned, he owed Suleiman a life-debt of staggering proportions, so when a messenger came bearing the good news, Gaara immediately made his way to the hospital, ignoring the stares that followed him.

"You don't have to thank me," Suleiman had replied to him softly. "I did what anyone would have done, had they my powers."

Gaara stared at him blankly.

Slap him, Shukaku rumbled.

Gaara did so, lips quirking upwards despite himself at the exaggerated hiss of pain that Suleiman let out. The man almost pouted sullenly. Gaara had seen him single-handedly hold out against three ninja while holding back, had witnessed him exorcise the hate from a centuries-old Tailed Beast. Had seen him do the impossible on the fly. And yet, away from the public, Suleiman continued to act as if he was 'just another guy', as Kankuro had put it.

"What was that for!"

"You know they wouldn't have,"

Suleiman said nothing in reply to that, gazing at him lightly. Gaara hated it. That look had always preceded the man pulling the impossible off, just because he wanted to help Gaara.

"Don't do that," Gaara said firmly. At Suleiman's questioning look, he continued. "Don't think up of other ways to help. You don't need to. You've helped enough already."

"Please," Gaara said, and for once he didn't mind his raspy voice. "I know I will never be able to reciprocate what you've done for me, but there must be something I can help you with."

The red-haired Jinchūriki expected the older man to immediately shake his head, but instead, Suleiman hummed. For a while, he said nothing, continuing to rub his chin. Finally, he looked Gaara in the eyes, a hint of mischief glimmering in them. "Aside from continuing to train with Shukaku, there might be one thing you can do…"

Gaara listened to him go on, bewildered at how what he wanted Gaara to do could possibly benefit the man.

-o-o-o-​

It was almost two days later when they let me return 'home'. I'd been given a furnished house in the same building complex where the Kazekage and his children lived. It wasn't a palatial estate, for even when times hadn't been nearly as rough, Suna's people believed in practicality over unnecessary flamboyance, but it was more than sizeable enough for its occupants.

That was all the same to me – I didn't have anything to do in the village, particularly, so I'd just ended up having more time to re-evaluate a few things.

For one, despite the monumental undertaking of enabling a Jinchūriki to almost reach a perfect symbiosis with his Tailed Beast, the Celestial Grimoire hadn't given me another perk. I didn't get any explicit information about why, but I got a vague sense that whatever I was meant to, I had only accomplished partially. Healing Gaara and Shukaku's psyche, ingratiating myself with the Kazekage, they were only facets of a larger aim. I devoted a thread solely to thinking about all the possible paths I needed to take to get there.

I wasn't too bothered, though. Over the course of the past few days, I'd been able to build up a sizeable amount of CP. Whenever I was able to roll for a new perk, I would potentially have a lot of perks open to me.

For two, I needed to gain real-world combat experience. The Weirding Way allowed me great insights into what genuinely was an unrivalled martial art, but some of the incongruencies between Dune and Naruto would limit its application. I needed to see how ninja fought, how ninja bled, to be as efficient as possible when it came time for my next fight.

And lastly, I needed to accelerate my plans for dealing with the Iwa issue. I had to be careful, though. Even if Suna didn't agree to attacking Konoha, even if Orochimaru never met Rasa, the Sannin wouldn't simply drop his plans of waging war against the Leaf. In him burned a need for vengeance against a village he thought had slighted him, against a sensei he thought had abandoned him. My Maiar self allowed me to see how horrible a combination of pride and wrath Orochimaru had become.

It wouldn't be until years after, when the Fourth Great Shinobi War was underway, that the Snake Sannin would prove to be of any help to the greater world.

Orochimaru knew he couldn't attack Konoha alone. He needed the aid of another village. In the original timeline, he'd been able to convince Suna to side with him, but what now? Who would he approach now that that route had been cut off? Had he simply not found any other willing allies originally, or had he stopped with the village he thought easiest to bring into his fold? My intuition told me he would attempt to seduce Iwagakure, but would Onoki be open to Orochimaru's ambitions? The Snake Sannin wasn't liked in Suna, but he'd be hated in Iwa. When the last Shinobi War had been underway, Orochimaru had still fought under Konoha's banner. My understanding was that he, his fellow Sannin, Sakumo, and Minato had reaped the greatest individual casualties for Konoha.

How many Iwa-nin had met the reaper's scythe at his hands? Would hatred for the Snake Sannin trump a chance to beat Konoha down, or would it be the other way around?

I thought of these things because my plans for Iwa, whether they succeeded or failed, would change too much to be accounted for, even by me.

The week passed in relative peace. I trained with Baki and a few other Sand-nin, oversaw Gaara's attempts – which were slowly but surely becoming more refined – at calling upon the Imperfect Chakra Mode, and spoke of logistics with Rasa. A Maia was made to be talented at many things, and with the advantage of the Weirding Way, it had almost been easy to try my hand at improving Suna's position before we changed their approach to the low-intensity conflict with Iwa.

Every morning, I trained with the three siblings. I'd forced Gaara to attend, telling him his 'absolute defence' was no reason to slack on every other aspect of his skills as a ninja, Jinchūriki training notwithstanding. I'd become a lot closer to the three than I thought was possible. Something about my nature as an Ainur inherently inspired awe, and my actions had won a great deal of respect from both Temari and Kankuro, not to mention Gaara. I gave them pointers on how to flow from one strike to the other in the middle of combat, adjusting their form when I saw even a minute point of failure.

Repeatedly beating Temari and Kankuro unarmed had ensured they understood I was qualified to help them, and the sincerity of my efforts convinced them I wasn't trying to show off.

In the afternoons, I practiced my singing, creating greater slabs of inert, black metal. The blacksmiths in the village had been awed at the displays, vowing to do their best to make something worthwhile with the increasing quantities of metal I was able to fashion from nothing. One particularly noteworthy interaction occurred when an old, burly blacksmith fell to his knees, weeping at hearing the song.

"I don' know if anythin' I do will ever be enough," he had said to me, taking my hands in his soot-stained ones reverently. "But if I can do somethin' ta repay you, just ask. May Kagutsuchi watch over you always."

Something within me had changed over the past few days as I interacted with more of Suna's inhabitants and used my song for their betterment. I felt like I was… more of myself. Like I was on the path to reclaiming something that had always been mine. This, I thought to myself, was my Maia self waking up to its own potential. I did not have a Mantle yet, I didn't even remember the name given to me by Eru, but I was still closer to what I had been, who I had been, than before. And that, for now, was enough for me.

One evening as I came back to my house, I found Temari waiting for me outside. She was standing at the threshold, her shoulders carrying a great deal of tension. I frowned. She turned as I approached the door, waving at me lightly.

"Hello Suleiman," she began awkwardly, shuffling on her feet. "Have a good day at the foundries?"

Greeting her back, I twisted the door handle and let her in, quickly offering her a glass of water from the kitchen as we sat down in the living room. She accepted it tenderly, not quite refusing to look at my eyes, but doing her best to avert her gaze nonetheless. I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion.

"Is everything okay?" I asked gently. Had Rasa said something? Had Gaara trained with the Chakra Mode in my absence and accidentally gotten himself hurt?

She nodded quickly. "No, yeah, everything's okay. Kankuro's rebuilt his puppet, Gaara's progressing well with training. Dad seems happier than I ever remember him. Even Baki, the stubborn grouch, seems to have a spring to his step."

"Sounds like everything's going well, then."

"Well, yes."

There was a lull in the conversation where both of us were silent. I let her gather her thoughts. I wasn't sure where this was going, but I sensed I was going to find out soon enough – and in any case, if she was struggling to say what she wanted to, I wouldn't get more out of her by pushing.

"Why did you ask Gaara to apologise to me and Kankuro?" She asked finally, setting the glass of water down on the coffee table in front us.

Ah, so that was what this was about. I honestly hadn't remembered I'd asked Gaara to do that until just now, but I was inwardly pleased he'd listened. The kid deserved to have his siblings on his side. I let the silence linger for a moment, thinking of how best to approach this conversation.

"Because," I replied, "Gaara, irrespective of all he has been through, and we're both aware that he's been through a lot, wronged you and your brother innumerable times over the course of a decade. It wouldn't have been right to expect you and Kankuro to simply get over it, despite what you may know now about his life. If there is to be forgiveness, Gaara had to take the first step."

"Was that all?" Temari sounded almost, not quite disappointed, but perhaps a tad dismayed, when she asked that.

I considered the question. "No, it isn't," I admitted.

"Then what else?"

I shot her a small smile. "Temari," I said gently, "When Gaara first fell victim to Shukaku's rampages, did you hate him for what was so clearly not in his control?"

"No, obviously not."

"Ah, but it wasn't so obvious to everyone else, was it?" I shifted my position till I was closer to Temari, locking eyes with her. Summoning my essence just a little, I injected an underlying note of the Song into my voice, letting the truth in my words bear witness to her. "The villagers never tried to understand. Your fellow shinobi could only see the Tailed Beast within him. Your father, so incredibly consumed with hate and resentment, couldn't begin to do his son justice. Even Kankuro, who held out for far longer than everyone else, slowly withdrew."

She said nothing, listening to me with rapt attention.

I continued. "You were the last to give up on him. You were the last to blame him. I cannot profess to understand everything about your dynamic with him, but I would be utterly remiss if I did not remind Gaara that you, and you alone, had stood by him when everyone else left. You held him when he was young, sung to him when he needed comfort irrespective of the fear you so understandably felt, fed him when his caretakers neglected him."

"Even when Gaara had fully embraced the hate within him, you never truly gave up, did you? You still saw him as your little brother."

"Never, always," she whispered.

"The love one's family has for them," I said softly, "Is impossible to describe in words alone. But who said we have to use words?"

Her eyes widened in understanding. I smiled, took her hands in mine, and sang. A low sequence of notes escaped my lips, mournful, haunting, each syllable in the language of the Ainulindalë swollen with love. I sang to her of Manwe Sulimo, whose love for his brother Melkor, no matter how wretched the Dark Lord became, dwarfed anything I'd seen before or since. I sang to her of Finwë, who chose to banish himself from the white walls and terraces of Tirion in Aman, home of the Valar and blessed in all the ways that counted, all so that his son Fëanor would not be alone.

As time yawned on, we found ourselves leaning against each other, my arms ensconcing her. Then, I composed a new melody altogether, singing to her not of the beings – ancient and young, big and small – that lived in Arda, but of her and Gaara and Kankuro. I sang to her of their pain, the love they held for each other that could not ever hope to be banished fully, and the bright future they had in front of themselves. I sang to her of peace, born not in the light of day but in the darkness of the night.

When I finished, she'd stopped weeping. Instead, there was a small, half-smile on her face as she turned her head to look at me, quiet, mournful, yet so very full of joy. I smiled back at her.

"Who were they?" She asked me, her fingers laced in mine. Belatedly, I realised she was wearing the pendant I'd gifted her, the emerald set into the chain of silver glimmering radiantly despite the darkness we found ourselves in.

I considered her question.

"You would not find any mention of them even if you consulted the most ancient of lore," I said finally, a deep knot of grief pulsing in my core. Each time I sang, I had to relive the experiences of my Maia self. With time, I'd gotten better at hiding just how it aggrieved me to remember things wondrous beyond imagination and to know I would likely never get to see them again. "But they were my family. My friends. Everyone I'd ever known."

Some hint of my grief must have made it through despite my efforts to contain it, for Temari twisted until she straddled my lap, teal eyes peering into mine. "Not everyone," she murmured.

Then, slowly, she lowered herself till her lips met mine. I stiffened momentarily before relaxing into the kiss, right hand pressed against the small of her back. I pushed back, letting the kiss linger till I felt something dart out of her lips and trace mine. I opened my mouth to let her tongue in, tasting her, pulling on her lips with mine till I was certain hers were feeling just a little too raw. She pulled back, a thin strand of saliva still on her lips. Her eyes found mine, amusement shimmering in them.

"I think Kankuro will be wondering where I am by now," she mock-whispered, stressing her brother's name.

My lips quirked upwards. Was I supposed to be scared of him? I shook my head in amusement. "Then I'll see you tomorrow,"

Her laughter tinkled in my ears as she left.

AN: The next five chapters are available on my Patreon, at https://patreon.com/andurielslight.