Blood Breakdown

by Juno42 /center

Temari never remembered Gaara being ill.

Things had seemed to be looking up between her and her brothers since the night she had caught them both coming in from the desert at three or so in the morning. She had awakened with a start (in itself unusual because Temari was the heaviest sleeper in the family) with one of those unexplainable feelings that something was… well, not wrong, perhaps, but certainly not normal. The sort of unrest that can drive you nuts if turns out to be unfounded. She did the first thing she could think of and went to check on her brothers.

She wasn't too surprised to see that Gaara was not in his room. Having nothing much to do in the nocturnal hours, he often wandered the house and beyond at night. But Temari's feeling of unease persisted, so she went to check on Kankuro and was alarmed to find him gone as well.

She combed the house for them, found no trace of them. She tore out the front door, froze in the middle of the sandy patch that served as the front yard, and scanned the surroundings with eyes and ears. She was beginning to think about panicking when she finally spotted both her brothers coming around the block from the west side of town.

She was quite relieved, so naturally the first thing she did was storm over to them as they approached and harangue them as quietly as she could. This was not so much to save face, as it was to release all the pent up energy she had built up during her search for them, which she no longer had the excuse to do by panicking. She also surprised them very much when, at the apogee of her tirade, she grasped Gaara firmly by the wrist and yanked him back to the house, still griping now at no one in particular, and leaving a bemused Kankuro gawping in their wake. If you held a knife to her throat she could not have told you what possessed her to do that.

That night, after verbally flaying the reason for their little escapade out of Kankuro, and ordering both boys back to their rooms, she lay in her own bed and considered it. It was the way she did things; act first, then review the results and decide whether it had been successful or not. It occurred to her then that she and Kankuro seemed to be the only two people who could touch him without aggravating the sand. Oh, certainly if they attacked him, whether accidentally or not, the sand would protect him, but it not allow anyone else to touch him even casually, not even Baki. If anyone else tried to lay a hand on him, on his shoulder, say, the sand would at least get between them and Gaara. She didn't know why she had never noticed this before.

After that, Gaara had been the most socially she had ever seen him. An outside observer would still have called him an almost pathological recluse, of course, but for Temari and Kankuro that was a fair improvement. He was actually starting to seek them out. She would catch him wandering past the rooms they inhabited and looking into them briefly, as though checking to make sure they were still there. Sometimes he would even linger, not speaking, but just being there. If Kankuro reminded Temari of a housecat, Gaara was the one that sat up on the highest shelves, staring for hours at invisible things.

It had puzzled Temari like nobody's business when he had pulled it on her the first time. She had been in the kitchen, where the light was good, sorting a pile of mission papers, when Gaara had entered the room. She had looked up, nodded at him tentatively. He had watched her for a few a few moments. She got up to get a glass of water, when she turned around he was sitting the kitchen table, watching her. At least, until she tried to meet his eyes: he had a funny way of un-focusing his gaze so that it was still aimed her way, but he was only looking only about half the distance. Then he turned his gaze away, pulled a few of the mission papers across the table towards himself, and began sorting them.

It was the first time Temari could ever recall him voluntarily being in the same room with either of his siblings. So she did the same. Sat right down across the table from him and began sorting. They kept it up for nearly an hour. After that day, Temari had begun to, tentatively, foster some hope for Gaara.

That was when Gaara seemed to suddenly fall ill.

It started small. His already perennially pale skin turned even whiter, and he seemed to tire quicker and more frequently. It didn't stop there. A few days later she noticed that he was eating even less than he already did, which wasn't much to begin with. And a couple days after that, she noticed the shaking. But what bothered her most of all was the sudden reversal in habit of seeking them out. He became, if possible, even more of a recluse. He had taken to locking his door. If he spotted them about the house, he would hurriedly reverse his course and flee as unobtrusively as he could. Temari could almost swear that he was afraid of them.

And then, right around the time he was beginning to sweat feverishly, he changed habits again! Now he couldn't seem to decide where he wanted to be in proximity to them. He would seek them out, loiter fitfully in their presence, dodge their inquiries, and then rush away as though he couldn't bear to be near them. The most ominous aspect of Gaara now was the way he would look at them. He always had the impassive expression, but his eyes held a frantic kind of hunger. Temari could almost feel it burn on her skin. She could also sense that Gaara was giving everything he had to suppress it. That familiar instinct of constantly impending danger was back full force. But it was the only thing that kept her from grabbing Gaara by the shoulder and shaking an answer out of him. She couldn't. She would be no help to Gaara if he killed her.

Temari had, of course, considered dragging him off to a medic. Pointless, of course, even if he could get him to go, there would be no one who would see him. And they would probably be in more danger than her.

But she couldn't stand not knowing what was wrong. Whatever was ailing Gaara could have a simple explanation, of course. But it could just as easily is something very uncommon. For all she knew, it could be an affliction unique to Gaara as a demon-carrier. What she needed to do was talk to an expert. She didn't know of any experts.

But she did know a genius.

Nara Shikamaru was enjoying the bright summer day by doing what he did best: which was nothing. It was an ideal day. The sun was bright, but not oppressive. The breeze was cool, but not chill. The sky was the perfect shade of blue, with just enough fluffy clouds to decorate it. Shikamaru lay on his back in the grass near the training field, watching them drift serenely towards the northeast.

The only thing that spoiled the mood was the sudden appearance of some sort of messenger bird. It circled above him a few times, a small winged smudge in the sky. Then it dropped something.

Shikamaru had been hoping that the bird was just on it's way elsewhere, but when it had started circling, it became clear that this was not the case. As he grimaced up at it, he noticed that this bird was of a breed foreign to him. Who would be trying to contact him from out of Konoha? That's when he noticed the elongated shape plummeting through the air directly at him. He just had time to hitch his grimace up a notch before the thing impacted him squarely in the solar plexus. It was not particularly heavy, but falling at a speed sufficient to elicit a healthy "Guff!" from him.

He lay there, getting his wind back, watching the bird wheel away from him, before picking up the scroll. He grimaced at it. His name was on the side of it, so it was definitely for him. Then he noticed the small stamp in the shape of an hourglass, the emblem of the Hidden Sand Village.

Who would be writing him from Suna? There was only one person he could conceive of who might, But what would she want to write to him for?

Just open the thing and find out, he thought. He broke the seal, unrolled and read it:

:Shikamaru,

No one is more surprised than me to be writing this, but I doubt that there is anyone in this village or country who would help me. I couldn't think on anyone else. Even if you can't help, maybe you know someone there who can.

Anyway. Here's what's wrong. Gaara is sick. I have no clue why. He's been that way for almost a week. It doesn't look like anything I've seen before. The weird thing is, he was doing great just after we left the Leaf. No kills, not one. Then this weird illness just popped up. I thought if you had no ideas, maybe you could talk to your Hokage for me. He won't talk to us.:

The letter went on to list Gaara's symptoms, and bore Temari's signature at the end.

Hmm, thought Shikamaru. Even for something he hadn't expected, this was unexpected. The very, very slightly sad twinge inside of him that had hoped for something a little different faded quickly into slightly flattered; that she had chosen to send this problem to him rather than straight to the Hokage. And even the flattery surprised him a bit. Normally this would fall under the heading of Severely Troublesome.

He set these thoughts aside and settled to the task at hand. He reread the symptoms listed a few times, and ran through his mental catalogue of possible ailments. The closest thing he could come up with was the flu, but he finally decided that this was not the case. Suna, being a rather threadbare and closed off ecosystem, was a pretty sterile place as far as viral diseases. They could have picked up something from the Fire Country during their stay at the Chuunin Exams, but it would have manifested much sooner than this, and Gaara would have passed it on to his sibling rather quickly. So a disease was unlikely.

The other thing these symptoms could indicate was reaction to something toxic. Poisoning of some sort? He knew that Gaara was just short of invulnerable to injury, but he'd heard nothing indicating he couldn't be poisoned.

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Shikamaru stood and made his way back to town. He was in no particular mood to bother the new Hokage with such a thing if it turned out to be a simple explanation. So he took it to the only other person in Konoha that had a mind at least as sharp as his, and the knowledge of a medic.

"Hey, old man."

Nara Shikato looked up from his Shougi game with Akamichi Chouza to see his son strolling towards them, looking bored, with a foreign scroll in hand.

Shikamaru held it out to him. "What do you make of this?" he asked.

Shikato cocked an eyebrow at the boy before unrolling and reading the document. "Temari," he said thoughtfully. "Isn't that one of those Suna genins? The young lady?"

"Yes." his son replied shortly, in a tone that told him to expect much griping if he dared pursue that subject. Shikato noticed Chouza's mouth give an amused twitch out of the corner of his eye.

He dropped the matter, filed it away for later thought. "Well, I doubt it's a virus," His son nodded. "If someone were trying to poison him, you'd think they'd have done it already." Shikamaru looked pained at that, but nodded again. Shikato thought through a few more theories, but didn't have enough to pin any merit on any of them. "I'd need a blood sample before making any definite judgments." he said finally, rolling the scroll and handing it back.

Now his son looked nauseous. "Shall I ask them to get some smoke into a soda bottle with a tennis racquet for you while they're at it?" he asked.

Shikato shrugged. "You asked my advice, there it is." he said.

"Well, then how about some advise on how to accomplish that?" the boy said. "You know that guy is immune to anything short a dagger thrown at mach three-"

"Son," Shikato cut him off. "We have the technology." He heaved himself up and strolled into the house, followed by his now glowering offspring. Chouza chuckled slightly as they left. They wandered into the elder Nara's study, where he rummaged in cupboard until he unearthed a brown paper envelope. He opened it, and shook out on the desk two small packets. One packet was of fifty or so small plastic bags, tied with a rubber band. The other was also tied with a band, but these were small slips of parchment bearing calligraphic seals.

Shikamaru plucked the packet of parchments from the desk and studied the seal. It had three characters bracketing pair of interlocked diamond shapes. He recognized the characters for "sea", "earth", and "cup". He knew what these were for. They were used to draw blood directly from the skin without a needle, to be preserved over long periods of time. They were used mostly on very young children, people whose blood had trouble clotting, and the occasional pathologically needle-phobic. Shikamaru suspected that the only thing keeping the medical community from phasing hypodermic needles out altogether was the cost of the special ink required to make them.

Shikamaru also suspected that they might actually stand a chance against Gaara. The hypodermic-seals were painless and left no marks except a small trace of chakra for a day or two. Gaara's psychotic sand might interpret a needle as a weapon. But these were about as harmless as a slice of cheese.

"How many would you need?" Shikamaru asked.

"One would be fine," his father replied. "Three would be best. You think they'd work, then?"

Shikamaru scooped the packets back into the envelope and tucked it under his arm. "We'll find out, won't we?" He turned on his heal and headed for his room. "Thanks, old man."

"Don't send too many, those aren't cheap." His father warned.

Shikamaru waved idle acknowledgement as he left the room.

Continued in our next...
A/N: Anyone still there? If so, I hope you enjoyed the story so far. Next chapter is about halfway done. I won't give any spoilers, but here's a hint at what's coming: the title of the fic is pun, in several ways. That is all. Also, calm down, Gaara shows up in corpus in our next installment.

Some replies to those who read my first fic (to which this is a sequel, but you really don't need to read the first if you're dead set against it):

Shukaku: Glad you liked. I always try to stay in character. I just don't recognize characters when they're OC.

J-to: Thanks. Cute without sap is hard to do.

Junsui Kegasu: Glad you liked it, although I really didn't mean this to be any kind of yaoi. But whatever floats your 'ship, I guess.

Hurricane-rider: I am honored. I have read your stuff. Suna's Kekkei Genkai was sweet. I read Three Again over the phone to a friend, hilarious.

Ninja Shen: Ah, someone who agrees with the housecat reference. I like Kankuro, too. He reminds me eerily of my own brother. He'll show up in this story later (as will more cat references). Thanks.

the elfie: Sorry about the slightly messy grammar. I literally kicked that story up at about three in the morning and uploaded it the same night. I'm sloppy when tired. I looked over this one beforehand, though. Glad you liked.

Sariachan: I, too, can't deal with sancest. Or any cest, unless beyond all odds it happens to be canon, which sandcest is clearly not. When it comes to romantic relationships in fandom, I really like it when people stick as close to canon as possible, otherwise it just weirds me out slightly. (Naruto isn't all that specific yet, thought, so I'm open to the plausible.)

feifiefofum: I do, in fact, write my own characters. Their stories are in such bits and pieces and constantly changing that I haven't put them up anywhere yet. I will eventually, if I can get them to settle down. I'm just cutting my teeth on fanfiction though. It's good practice for anyone, really. Thanks for reviewing.

P.S. I tried hard to get Shikamaru and Chouji's fathers' names. I have no clue if these are the right ones. Pardon me if they aren't.