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on-the-edge-of-dune · 1 year

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《ancient modern au idea》

kid Gaara lives with Yashamaru, has never even seen his siblings, and only vaguely remembers his fathers frowning face when he dropped him off at his uncles place before he could even walk

everything is cool and all, Yash is hanging out with him, they watch TV together, study, assemble this huge puzzle the man won in a raffle some years ago at forced team-building at former workplace

"you are sick, Gaara" his uncles says, "you don't want to infect the other kids now, do you?" and so he never approaches any of the children he sees when playing in the garden

all he does is observe the kids playing, and then tries to imitate it with his stuffed toys, which isn't the same, but he fights through the disappointment

he never leaves the property, at least not alone, and not during the day

Yashamaru sometimes drives him around town when he comes from work, which is usually past normal bedtime, since the guy works 12 hour shifts

one night, Yashamaru finds Gaara sitting in the living room (possible ISD, chemical/hormonal imbalance, no one really knows why he doesn't sleep much because he saw a pediatrician only once), reading, and asks him if he would like to go for a ride

excited, Gaara agrees

as always, belt is forgotten since he loves to lean from the window, watch the stars and feel the wind caress his face

this time tho, Yashamaru acts weird

he talks about their distant family, and how difficult it is sometimes to look at Gaara and not feel resentment, which is a word the kid doesn't really understand, and so he doesn't expect the sudden burst of tears, whining, mentions of his deceased mother

and he surely does not expect the sorrowful "please die" uttered by his uncle, the collision, the fall, the pain of being forcefully bashed against the dashboard before he by some miracle manages to put the belt on

that was the last restful "sleep" Gaara had

(and here is where i fucked up and somehow began writing amateur story)

heat lickes his cheek, but it doesn't burn as much as his forehead, leaking something warm down his face, getting into the corner of his eye, successfully flooding it and making it very difficult to see

so he closes that eye, squishing the warm liquid inside, and watches the flames eating what used to be pretty orange front hood with the other

reality doesn't hit as much as it slowly creeps in

his left eye is drowning, so to see he has to turn his head, which hurts, but little neck pain is nothing compared to the terror he feels when Yashamaru not only doesn't seem to be moving, but is getting eaten by the same flames he's seen earlier

the belt clicks, faux leather creakes, an orchestra of sizzling fire and panicked breathing

Gaara grabs his uncle's shirt and pulls, trying to get him away from the flames, begging him to wake up and move

emulsion of blood and tears stream down Gaara's pale face as his little fists uselessly tug at Yashamaru's sand coloured button up

maybe it's the adrenaline finally kicking in, or something gave, but suddenly Gaara finds himself pinned to the seat by Yashamaru's head, facing up, and Gaara wishes the warm liquid to blind both of his eyes

for what he sees will haunt him for the rest of his life

(please... do not read ahead if you're squeamish.. i didn't have to be so thorough with my descriptions, but i was, and therefore what follows is probably a bit disturbing)

half of what used to be his uncle's kind beautiful face is mangled and charred

it reminds Gaara of that one time he rummaged through "these are not for children" DVD's and watched The Mummy for the first time

part of him wishes in that moment his uncle won't wake up like the mummy did and try to kill him, only to feel guilty about it

until he recalls what happened before the crash, and how the only person he ever loved cursed him with death, so technically, he already did try to kill him

still, staring down at the brutally mutilated head resting in his lap, Gaara can't help but feel sympathy, and while he sits there, paralysed with terror, Yashamaru's last words overshadow every possible escape plan his 6 year old mind could have come up with at the moment

so he keeps staring, hypnotised by the still sizzling skin, whatever remained of the left eyeball sitting unnaturally deep in its socket, the pretty blonde hair he loved to touch whenever he had the chance, suddenly curling close to his uncles head, black and short

every single detail is burned into Gaara's retina, and it really does burn, because he didn't blink once since he got trapped in the car, and also....you know, the fire

it occurs to him how strange it is that skin dissolves like heated up plastic, stretching, splitting and creating holes

he contemplates the imperfection and weakness of human body, as he looks at the light yellow pools spreading across umber land, and as he keeps staring, he feels more and more disconnected from the whole thing

smell of gasoline and smoke don't bother him, as long as they cover up the smell of burnt meat.. that's what humans are, really.. just meat

Gaaras universe expands and shrinks, trying to find a place for his quickly deteriorating sanity, but a 6 year old mind can only take so much, and so it gets misplaced, forgotten about, and the kid leaves whatever is left of his humanity in the lifeless eyes of his uncle which never stopped staring right back at him

it seems like a lifetime until he hears distant shouting from outside his hell

and then someone pulls the door open, grabs his small frail body, and drags him out

but the Hell never left, instead Gaara took it with him

(im gonna keep it short again, okay? okay.. i just needed to get THAT out of my system, since it has been playing on repeat inside my head for years now)

since then, the insomnia gets worse now that he sees Yashamaru every single time he closes him damn eyes

unfortunately not sleeping doesn't solve the problem, because even when Gaara somehow doesn't believe himself to be human, he needs rest, and when the brain doesn't get it, it starts to compensate by projecting dreams into reality, and there is only one thing Gaara can dream of...

he doesn't consider it to be a hallucination, but a spirit reminding him of surviving the unsurvivable, haunting him for doing so

Gaara lives, if only out of spite

(holy shit okay so from NOW im really going to keep it short..)

the red head is still a bit of a dick considering all of this, basically the same little asshole he was in org Naruto before...you know, he met the blonde

he doesn't tell anyone about his uncles corpse always standing in his peripheral vision, or the trauma, and people somehow believe it was him who steered the car out of the road

👏👏👏Explanations 👏👏👏

~ai 'tattoo'~

(btw i always considered it to be more of a scar than a tattoo.. i mean, logically)

Yashamaru used to wear iron pendant with the symbol, as a token from his departed twin sister

Gaara found it on the dashboard during his whole 'sanity is for losers' crusade, and after seeing the gash on his forehead in the rearview mirror, his dissociating oxygen deprived brain thought it poetic to slap that hot iron on the wound, but to his credit, he didn't even flinch

(edit: and of course he read somewhere in the rich collection of his uncles books that a bleeding wound is best to be cauterized)

~family bullshit 1# Rasa~

Rasa dumped Gaara at Yashamaru's because his rich bitch ass believed him to be infidelity child, due to his hair and eye colour (but he's an idiot because he himself literally has darker version of red hair, which seems almost brown and the eye colour is from Karura's side of family)

since he's the CEO of a big company, he couldn't afford the media to know his wife cheated on him (which she didn't) so he took the kid and threw him at his estranged brother-in-law

~family bullshit 2# Yashamaru~

he sort of ran away from the whole ordeal after Karura died

couldn't get over the fact that she was gone, so he simply left and pretended it never happened, ignoring the existence of the entire family

that is until the reality knocked on his door and the reason for his anguish was quite literally shoved in his arms

~family bullshit #3 siblings~

they do remember the kid, but were forbidden to talk about him, or their mom

all they know is his name, since that was the last word that left their mothers lips before her candle burned out

after that, he was just gone, and they were kind of afraid to ask what happened to their little brother, because Rasa grew bitter and ill-tempered

Temari and Kankuro sort of had to raise themselves, since their uncle also ditched them for some reason

that's about all i have, the backstory

as for what happened to Gaara after the car crash? i have no fucking idea. logically, he would be in a hospital, most probably interviewed by a psychologist, who might not be impressed with the results, therefore Gaara could end up in a psych ward ( @atqh16 ????? )

6 years is the minimum age for admission into psychiatric hospital where i come from, so that lines up perfectly

anyway, thanks to those who just spend an hour reading this very short au modern fic prompt

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