"This... what is all of this..."
Temari stood at the entrance to the basent, looking at everything in front of her, her voice carrying disbelief it could not contain.
Her eyes moved across the wide worktable, across the components arranged neatly on its surface -- golden hair, a familiar face, a torso, limbs, and the deeply unsettling chanical structures connecting them all.
Her mind went completely blank.
"Kankuro! What have you been -- what did you DO?!"
Her voice ca out at the edge of breaking. She still had no idea why Naruto and Satsuki had materialized in their ho in the middle of the night, but that question no longer had any room in her head. All she could see was the scene in front of her -- her brother, in the process of building a puppet that was the exact image of the Leaf's greatest hero and Sand Village's most important ally.
Was he trying to completely destroy the relationship their two villages had spent years building?!
And then a figure stepped out from behind her.
Gaara.
He moved like each footstep was landing on the edge of a blade. The face that was normally composed and unreadable now held an expression that did not have a clean na -- panic, tension, the particular helplessness of soone who had run out of ways to avoid what was coming.
His eyes found Naruto across the room. That golden-haired young man. And a single thought spun through his head in a continuous desperate loop.
It seems I really cannot have two Narutos at the sa ti after all...
Wait. No. What was he thinking?
Gaara shook his head sharply, trying to knock those thoughts loose. The harder he tried to be calm, the worse the chaos in his head beca.
If Naruto found out the extent of it -- found out how deep the dependence ran, found out that Gaara had spent months in his room sculpting small clay figures of him because he could not stand the distance, found out that Kankuro had built a puppet with his face because the clay was not enough -- would Naruto not even want to be friends anymore?
That thought poured over him like ice water.
"You don't need to ask him."
A cold voice cut through Temari's questions.
Satsuki turned slowly. Her eyes, which had returned to their normal black, settled on Temari without warmth. "I can tell the difference between the person who had the idea and the person who carried it out."
She said it without heat, then let her gaze travel past Temari to the figure standing at the foot of the stairs.
Satsuki looked at Gaara directly.
"I want to ask -- why exactly does the Fifth Kazekage of Sand Village want a puppet that looks like my husband?"
"Wha -- WHAT?!"
Temari's comprehension shattered completely. Her eyes went wide, her thoughts going in directions she was entirely unprepared for.
Why would Gaara want a puppet of Naruto?
The question had barely ford when another image rushed in to answer it -- that day she and Kankuro had forced their way into Gaara's locked room, the one where he had sealed himself inside without food, without water, doing nothing but using sand to shape figure after figure after figure. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. All arranged to face the center of the room.
All of them Naruto.
Temari's face went white.
"I..." Gaara's voice ca out.
It was tight and slightly dry, but he was making a genuine effort to sound controlled. "I only... because I wanted..."
"To be able to see Naruto even when he is not with ."
He said it straightforwardly. Sincerely. With the earnest quality of a student answering a teacher's question and aning every word.
Only Gaara knew how thoroughly cold the sweat running down his back had beco.
"..." Naruto blinked.
He looked at Gaara's honest face. At those open, unguarded eyes. The tight thing in his chest slowly loosened.
He exhaled quietly.
He had been overthinking it. Obsession, dependence, reading too much into things -- really, this was just the straightforward loneliness of soone who missed a friend. Gaara had grown up without anyone close to him. Of course his first real friendship would an more to him than most things. That was completely understandable.
"Oh... I see."
Naruto's face settled into a relieved smile. "I guess I really have been too busy lately, not coming by enough... I'm sorry, Gaara."
He said it with genuine remorse.
At the mont those words landed, Gaara's body gave a single involuntary shudder.
The kind of shudder that belonged to a person whose conscience had just been struck by a lie they were living.
Satsuki stood where she was and watched him.
She watched his body react to Naruto's apology. She watched the expression on his face -- the effort to hold composure cracking at the edges, the guilt leaking through what he could not quite seal off. She watched the fine perspiration appearing at his temple.
She understood.
No more speculation. No more half-ford suspicion. Understanding, complete and absolute, with nothing left to question.
She understood now why she had felt so irritated when she heard those sounds outside Gaara's room. That had not been ordinary irritation. That had been her instincts telling her sothing was wrong -- that sothing was treating her Naruto in a way that did not have the right.
And now she knew.
Also -- the puppet on the table was not the first one Kankuro had built.
"By the way, Gaara."
Satsuki's voice ca again, its surface casual, almost conversational. No accusation in the tone. A thread of sothing that almost sounded like idle curiosity. But the temperature underneath it could have frozen still water.
"Naruto and I were outside your room earlier. We heard so sounds."
A pause.
"I didn't realize. It seems you've finally found soone to be happy with."
The words arrived light and easy.
They nearly stopped Gaara's heart.
His legs went unsteady beneath him. He caught himself before his knees hit the floor.
His secrets.
The ones he had worked so hard to bury. The ones that absolutely could not survive the light. All of them -- found?
Gaara's mind emptied. One thought was left, rotating in place.
It's over. All of it is over.
His expression shifted. Those dark green eyes filled with a desperate, voiceless plea as they found Satsuki's face. Every line of it was begging. Please don't say it. Please don't let Naruto know. Please don't take away the only warmth I managed to find for myself.
But Satsuki did not stop.
"Introduce us, Gaara." Her voice remained perfectly even. "Your partner is in your room, isn't she."
Each sentence was another step closing off the exits.
"Oh -- right, yeah!"
Naruto's voice from beside her, carrying genuine delight and curiosity.
"I honestly didn't expect this at all -- you actually have soone special! Can you introduce us? I'm really curious what kind of person managed to catch your attention."
He was smiling, those blue eyes full of uncomplicated warmth and goodwill. He had absolutely no idea that Gaara was currently standing at the edge of total collapse.
Gaara looked at Naruto's open, trusting face. At those eyes that suspected nothing. He felt sothing close around his heart.
It was completely over.
Naruto did not know.
Naruto knew nothing.
But in a very short ti he would know everything. He would see what was in that room. He would know the nature of the thing Gaara had called his "partner." He would know what this devotion actually looked like.
And then he would --
Temari stood to the side, her expression cycling from shock through confusion and back again.
She looked at Gaara. At the bloodless quality of her brother's face.
Gaara had soone? Was that not the rumor that had been going around the village?
If Gaara had truly found soone, and that person was here, in this house, in his room -- how had she, living under the sa roof, not known anything about it? She had never once heard anything from the direction of his room that suggested the presence of another person.
Not once.
***
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