All the world, for as far as he could see, was wind and sand and unrelenting fury. Gaara stood at the center of a whirling sandstorm, but untouched by its screaming presence. He knew it should hurt, knew the sand should sting his flesh and scour it raw, but he felt nothing. The desert sun was high above him, searing down at the sandy world, but Gaara could not feel that either. All he felt was cold.

At times he could glimpse through the whirlwind at the desert beyond. The rolling hills of golden sand were littered with bodies, hundreds of mangled corpses, silently screaming their death throes to an uncaring sky. As Gaara watched, the desert rose up and devoured them into its depths, holding them forever in a sandy grave. Gaara watched the golden desert swallow up the dead and felt nothing but indifference for so many lives lost.

He knew the exact moment when he was no longer alone. Gaara turned, and the wind died down, the sand settling gently around his feet. Watching Gaara silently, he stood there, elegant and ethereal. As Gaara was, he was untouched by the storm's destruction. His hair was long and unbound, the color of dark chocolate. His skin, in contrast, was pale, fragile-seeming. And his eyes were some indeterminate color, sometimes a pale lavender, sometimes silver, a shifting spectrum of icy colors. Despite the icy gaze, Gaara felt some of the coldness inside of himself give way to tentative warmth.

The pale-eyed man reached a hand out to Gaara, and spoke, though Gaara could not hear his voice. And then…

.x.x.x.

And then the dream ended there, as it always did. Gaara became aware of an insistent buzzing in his ear, and he swatted at the alarm clock until he managed to knock it off the dresser onto the floor, where it clattered and finally went silent.

And so another morning had begun, starting as it always did with the dream. Gaara had been dreaming of the same desert and the same man for most of his life, and he had yet to delve out any kind of meaning from it. He considered asking someone about it, like his siblings, or one of the many therapists he'd been sent to, but always decided against it. They all thought he was crazy enough as it was; they wouldn't be thrilled to hear about the parts with the dead bodies. It wasn't as though he wanted the dream to go away- after so many years of dreaming of that man, he took some comfort from seeing him, night after night. Here at last, he felt he'd found someone who would never leave him. Even if it was just a figment of his certifiably insane mind.

Sometimes he felt the dream might be the only worthwhile thing in his life.

There was a soft knock on his bedroom door, and his sister Temari's voice calling out to him, gently, as though comforting a dangerous animal. "Gaara? It's time to get up now. You have school today."

"I know that," he said, but he doubted she heard.

Summer vacation had ended, and it was the first day of school. The first day at yet another new school. Gaara had lost track of how many times they'd moved, and how many schools he'd been to. They were all pretty much the same anyway. Nondescript buildings full of nameless, faceless people. Sometimes he just wanted to-

"Kill them all."

Gaara grit his teeth, getting out of bed. The voice was awake too. Like the dream, the voice had been with Gaara most of his life, as far back as he could remember. A voice that told him to do terrible things. A voice that called itself "Shukaku."

When he was little, everyone had just assumed "Shukaku" had been Gaara's imaginary friend. Other kids had imaginary friends, too. But Gaara soon discovered that his friend was different than theirs. His wanted him to do things, things that were bad. And it wouldn't leave him alone until he did them. When Gaara nailed the earthworms to the porch, that was Shukaku's idea. When he'd beaten his sister's pet mouse to death with a hammer, that was Shukaku's idea too. Setting fire to the couch while his brother was sleeping on it was at Shukaku's insistence as well. And when he was in kindergarten, and had stabbed the boy sitting next to him in the eye with a pencil, it was all because Shukaku had made him.

That was the first time they'd had to move, but it wasn't the last. Every time they moved, Gaara hoped that Shukaku would somehow be left behind. But the voice came with him, everywhere he went, and there were more… incidents.

He was sent to counselors, people who were supposed to help him control the voice. The first couple he went to see, he told everything to, hoping they would help him. He told them about Shukaku, and its awful insistence that he do things he knew he shouldn't, and how his head was filled with visions of blood and dying things, and some nights he couldn't sleep because of the screaming in his ears. After the fourth counselor prescribed yet another medication and sent him on for someone else to try and deal with, Gaara gave up even talking to them.

He learned that none of them had any idea how to make Shukaku go away, and that he would just have to learn to deal with the voice on his own. Ignoring it only worked for so long, however. Every new place they moved to, he tried so hard to be good. He could manage it for a few months (his record was nine), but finally the voice would get to him. Weapons weren't hard to find, even at his age; shards of glass, knives from the kitchen, pieces of wire, even rocks from the garden. He would end up hurting someone, and they would move again.

They'd just moved to this new town at the end of summer, after his attempts to drown a girl in the last place, and Gaara was due to start a new year in high school. He'd been prescribed a new medication by his newest therapist, one that everyone had high hopes would finally take care of his "voice" and violent tendencies. It might even, Gaara supposed, assuming he ever took the meds. Over the years, he'd also learned that the pills never made the voice go away. All they usually did was make him sleep more, which only seemed to make the voice stronger. So he'd stopped taking them.

"Gaara?" Temari called him to the present. "Are you awake?"

He scooped the alarm clock off the floor, chucking at the door as hard as he could. It broke apart against the door with a satisfying crash. On the other side of the door, Temari let out a startled squeak, then laughed nervously to cover for it.

"Well, I'll leave you to get ready then," were her final words before she made a quick retreat.

"You know," said the voice, "that would be a lot more effective if you threw the clock at her head, instead of the door."

"No one asked you," Gaara told Shukaku pointedly.

"I know, and you should be grateful that I generously offer such advice for free," it said. "Out of the goodness of my heart."

One of these days, Gaara promised himself, he was going to work up the courage to put a bullet in his brain, just to shut the bastard voice up. Until that day, though, he had yet another new school to attend, and he had better get ready. And who knew, maybe this time he'd manage to refrain from maiming anyone.

"Or maybe you'll finally manage to kill someone."

.x.x.x.

After his morning routine of dressing in his new school uniform, brushing his teeth and flushing his daily dose of anti-psychotic medication down the toilet, Gaara headed out to see what new bloody perversity the day held for him. Temari and Kankuro dutifully dogged his steps, about three paces behind him, supposedly to keep him from causing injury to someone on the way to school. Not that they'd really have much hope of stopping him if Shukaku pushed him into it.

The sun was out, the season still clinging desperately to the last remnants of summer. Strangely, this soothed Gaara somewhat. Summer was his favorite season. The parched heat seemed to suit him. Several years back, one of the towns they'd lived in had been on the outskirts of several miles of desert. The voice had been somewhat easier to deal with during that period, and he'd had several almost peaceful months before Shukaku had made him beat a boy with a crowbar. To this day, he still carried a plastic soda bottle full of that desert's sand in his backpack. It wasn't much of a good luck charm, but it made him feel better to have it.

There was a crowd outside of the new school, with students reluctant to leave behind the freedom of summer to resign themselves to yet another school year of drudgery. Gaara moved through the crowds as though they did not exist. No one talked to him, no one touched him. They had their own friends already, and Gaara was just an unknown face in the crowds. He was a nobody here, as he was at every school. That suited him fine. If they ignored him, he could ignore them. And if he could ignore them, he might not be forced to hurt them.

"Wishful thinking," Shukaku informed him. "Why bother going through with this farce? You know you can't deny me. How about I pick you out a victim right now? I can have you kicked out of this school before lunch."

"Don't," Gaara whispered, ignoring the curious looks he got from other students as he walked past them, entering the building. At this point in his life, being thought weird for talking to himself was the least of his problems. "Just don't. Just give me one day…"

The halls were crowded too, with students scouting out their new lockers, the quickest routes to their classrooms, the best vending machines. The babble of their voices was white noise in Gaara's ears. His gaze wandered over their faces dispassionately, wondering which of these smiling students was he going to hurt, what tragedy he would cause that would once more uproot his life and force his family to move.

Something, or more likely someone, crashed into Gaara's back, almost knocking him into the nearest set of lockers. He recovered his balance, turning to face whomever would be so stupid as to make him aware of their presence.

His gaze landed on a boy sitting where he'd ended on the ground after crashing into Gaara. The boy had somewhat spiky blonde hair, and he looked up at Gaara with startlingly blue eyes. After a moment's pause, he offered Gaara a toothy grin.

"Sorry, wasn't really watching where I was going." The boy held out a hand, as if assuming Gaara would help him up.

"Him!" Shukaku snarled, the suddenness of the voice's rage making Gaara's head ring. "Kill him! Kill him now!"

The boy on the ground blinked, then helped himself up when it appeared Gaara wouldn't. He was looking at Gaara with a curious expression on his face, a mixture of surprise, awe, and excitement. "You're new here, aren't you? Can I talk to you a sec?"

Gaara barely heard him, as the blonde's words drowned out by Shukaku's snarls. Gaara took a long, deep breath, doing his best to ignore the murderous rage that welled up inside his mind at the voice's command. He'd hoped for more time, but he knew with Shukaku, it had been too much to expect. Not even in his new school for a full hour before the voice began its demands for bloodshed. He didn't know why Shukaku would react with such venom toward the goofy-looking blonde boy, but now that the voice had chosen a victim for its wrath, Gaara knew it would be best to stay away from him. Without a word to the blonde, Gaara turned from him and began walking away.

"Hey, Red, hold on!"

A hand on Gaara's shoulder halted his retreat, and he shook it off quickly. "Don't touch me!" I don't want to hurt you. "Just leave me alone."

There was a heartbeat of silence from the blonde. Then, "Like hell!" He grabbed Gaara's arm, all but dragging him down the hallway. "Come on, I need to talk to you."

So startled was he by the blonde's forcefulness, Gaara did nothing but follow in his wake, wonderingly. What on earth could the boy want to talk to him about? And what was with that weird look he'd given Gaara? It was almost as though he'd seen something in Gaara he'd not expected. But that was ridiculous. There was nothing to see there but-

"Me."

But the blonde couldn't possibly see Shukaku. Could he? No, of course not. Nobody ever believed Gaara when he told them about the voice. How could this stranger even suspect it was there?

The blonde boy dragged Gaara to the nearest classroom, and pushed him inside. It was a small room, and deserted. From the shelves along the walls laden with specimen jars, creatures and body parts long dead preserved within cloudy formaldehyde, Gaara guessed it was the biology room. Instead of daring to look at Shukaku's intended victim, Gaara intently studied the specimen jar containing what appeared to be a human heart. Shukaku didn't even make the expected comment about adding a few choice parts of the blonde to the collection; the voice was too busy growling like an animal in the blonde's general direction.

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki," the blonde introduced himself. "You have one too, don't you?"

"Have one what?"

"A demon." Naruto watched Gaara with unashamed excitement. "I've never met somebody else that had one too, but Kyuubi always said there were others…"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gaara said, trying to gauge a safe way around Naruto and out the door before the blonde could catch him. This kid was obviously as crazy as he was. And if Naruto did hear a voice, and that voice was anything like Shukaku, this "Kyuubi" could very well have picked Gaara as its next victim.

"That's funny," Naruto was saying, not looking in the least bit like he was considering committing bodily harm. He looked a little confused. "Kyuubi said he recognized you and your demon. You sure you don't have one?"

"Go ahead," said Shukaku snidely. "Make the introductions. Preferably, something sharp and pointy introduced right into that ugly fox face of his!"

"It's… he's…" Gaara shook his head. "Shukaku's not a demon. He's just… the voice inside my head."

"Right, Shukaku!" Naruto nodded wisely. "Kyuubi couldn't remember his name."

"Look, Naruto, or whatever your name is…" Gaara said. "I don't know anything about demons or this Kyuubi or whatever you're babbling about, and I don't want to know. I'm just gonna go now. Do us both a favor, and don't talk to me ever again."

"They think you're schizophrenic, don't they?"

"They think I'm a lot of things," Gaara said softly. "Schizophrenia is just the diagnosis of the week. There'll be a new one next Tuesday."

"And a new medication to go with it," Naruto said. "But the meds never help, do they? Shukaku's not just a voice in your head. He's a demon, and he's not something your can cure."

"He wants to kill you, you know," Gaara said. "And I probably wouldn't be able to stop him."

"He won't find me so easy to kill," Naruto said, shrugging it off. "You haven't even told me your name yet."

"Oh." So few people asked for his name, he forgot to give it. "It's Gaara. How do I know you're not just crazy too? I don't even trust the voice in my head. Why should I trust the voice in yours?"

"It's not a voice. It's a demon."

"Voice or demon, what's the difference in what we call them? They're figments of the mind. You're just crazy, and that's all."

Naruto blinked wide blue eyes at him, then grinned toothily. "I can prove it to you."

"How?"

"I can tell you things. Things I wouldn't be able to know, but Kyuubi remembers. He knows you from before," Naruto said matter-of-factly.

"Before when?" Gaara asked.

At that, Naruto looked a little mystified, and shrugged. "Just… before. Before now."

"You have ten seconds to convince me. Then, I'm leaving."

"You like sand," Naruto said. "And you probably carry it around with you everywhere. You don't know why, but it's always been a weird fixation for you. Makes you feel safe."

Gaara blinked, and was intensely aware of the weight of the bottle of sand in his backpack. Naruto was grinning, an I-know-I'm-right-so-just-admit-it sort of grin. Gaara shook his head.

"I'm not convinced," he said, and walked purposefully out the door.

"Hey, wait a second!" he could hear Naruto calling out after him. But Gaara was soon lost amid the crowds in the halls, leaving the blonde and his weird talk of demons somewhere far behind him.

Demons, honestly. Maybe Naruto was skipping out on his medication, too. If Shukaku was really a demon, surely Gaara would be able to tell. Wouldn't he?

"Just keep telling yourself that," Shukaku said.

"You'd tell me if you were a demon, wouldn't you?" Gaara murmured out loud, ignoring the odd looks the students nearest him sent his way, carefully edging away from him.

"Maybe." Shukaku sounded smug. "You know demons require human sacrifices, right?"

"Never mind," Gaara said in disgust. "Forget I asked."

He made his way through the hall's congested passage, to a relatively less crowded spot against one wall. He dug out the crumpled piece of paper he'd stuffed into his backpack, the one with his new class schedule on it. Class would be starting soon, and he'd have to find his classroom sometime before the bell rang. It turned out his first class was on the third floor of the school building, while he presently stood on the first. He had less than two minutes to find the stairs and make it up three flights before he was late.

Shukaku just laughed at him as Gaara pushed his way back into the crowds of the hallway, dodging around roadblocks of the kids too "cool" to move out of the way of traffic. He finally spotted a staircase, and was pushing his way toward it, when something else caught his eye and stopped him in his tracks.

Not something. Someone. Just a glimpse, but it was unmistakable. Someone with long hair the color of dark chocolate, and flashing eyes of some indeterminate, icy color. The vision was there only a second, before he disappeared amidst the crowds, supposedly on the way to his own class. Gaara stood staring, heedless of the rather annoyed students making their way around him.

"It's him," Gaara whispered.

The man from his dreams.