Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Onyx Rain ❯ Yellow Sun ( Chapter 8 )

The sun was hot and warm like melted butter on his back. The dunes were lumps of crystal in his sun-streaked vision, and sweat was beginning to coat his body in a fine sheen as it dripped off of his nose and onto the patch of glassy sand he was scraping between the folded stained pink washcloth. His hands, too, had been burned raw and dyed from the blood that he'd been trying to wash away.

Gaara glared at the sweat that was dripping onto the washcloth. Sweat meant his body was losing water - and he didn't have much to replace it with.

The container he'd filled with cactus-water was nearly empty, and he'd already torn down the entire cactus. While he worked, Maizul went and searched, but so far it had been fruitless. Even digging in the sand had proved to be of no benefit. There simply was no more water. The drought had taken its toll, and so it gave Gaara the nasty feeling that he was going to die very soon in an unpleasant way.

Gaara slid back into the sand behind him, wiping his glistening brow and letting the cleaned sand slide from the washcloth back onto the ground. This was in no way an easy job - he hadn't even completed one full dune of sand and there were still a hundred out there. The nightly wind didn't help, either - it only meant that more sand was being blown off the dunes, away from him.

It made Gaara wonder why he was bothering to try at all.

But then he would remember the void.

He would remember how it had felt to stand in the abyss; to know that going there meant destroying yourself. It meant a fate worse than death.

Gaara unconsciously took another fistful of sand up into the washcloth and began to rub it clean with his torn, bloodstained hands.

And it made him wonder. . . .

What was redemption, anyway? What did it all mean? Why had he been chosen?

He wasn't thinking about the hokey `forgiven by God' bullshit. To him, redemption was to be forgiven by his people - those who despised him more than anything else. He knew, somewhere deep inside, somewhere inside of himself that he hadn't allowed to surface for a long time. . . .

He knew Maizul couldn't give him that.

She wasn't the will of the people. Only the people could decide what they wanted, and they had decided to hate Gaara.

And somewhere deep inside, it made him ache. Doomed to die a pathetic death by dehydration, in a wasteland where no one cared, all alone.

Gaara wished he could rip his thirst-swollen tongue out of his mouth, but that would only mean more blood, more mess. For the first time, Gaara was sick of the blood and the putrid, festering smell it brought. The smell that assaulted him daily now, even as he cleansed the sand he had brought death upon.

The heavy breathing of another worn soul alerted Gaara of Maizul's entrance onto the scene.

She, too, was streaked in sweat. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead and her eyes were dull, an unusual trait in the lively girl. Chunks of fabric were missing from the baggy dirty cloak she wore, having been used to replace the first washcloth that had become useless after the first day. Her feet slogged through the sand at a snail's pace; her mouth was slightly parted, indicating that her jaw muscles didn't have the energy required to keep it completely closed. She looked as exhausted as Gaara did.

Her eyes regained a small amount of shine when they tiredly rested on him, but she still collapsed on the sand next to him, panting and wheezing.

"There's no - water -," she gasped out. "I - walked for - miles."

Gaara said nothing, but he did hand her a small water container that he had stored in his pants. Maizul graciously took it, hefted it in her hand to estimate the amount of water left, and drank the tiniest of sips.

"Thank - you."

Gaara dropped the washcloth on the sand that scalded his hands and stood. His azure gaze met the similarly colored sky, and he risked a glance at the sphere of acidic light that rippled in his vision from the heat wave that accosted the sands.

Everything was burning up - almost a pile of ashes already.

He wondered how much longer he could survive it.