#fuzzybrowss

  The salves his doctor prescribed him haven't done much, but, he thinks, it has only been two days, and it has been difficult applying the creams to his back alone. He remembers the day the doctor graduated from the Academy, all chipped teeth and hair like wildfire. Now she is married and as of last summer had been blessed with a young one of her own. He thinks so, anyway. He called her by the wrong name twice during the appointment, and she had corrected him both times, but gently, a strange sort of sorrow behind the honor and respect of treating the former Kazekage in her eyes. He had received his salves in a labeled paper bag and thanked her and left, puzzled by her behavior but all the more grateful.

  How the time goes.

  He laces his fingers around his cup of tea. He assumes it is his cup of tea, in any case. He does not remember a whistling kettle or the glug-glug of steaming water poured into a mug but here it is in front of him, red paint with a ruddy orange stripe around the rim, thus it must be his. The ceramic warms his paper-thin, spotted skin, so translucent he is sure he could see the bone straight through his knuckles if only his eyesight was still strong enough.

  Jasmine. A favorite. Jasmine is his favorite, isn't it? He remembers sitting at a kitchen table much like this one many years ago, drinking a tea with a scent as herbal and sweet as this. He should ask his aide if it is the same table, he thinks, next time she comes to visit.

  His aide, bless her, stocks his pantry once a week now since they no longer allow him to shop for himself. Every Saturday evening he pens out a list of groceries, and every Sunday afternoon she leaves and returns with full canvas bags. Recently, she has taken to double-checking each word he writes before she departs by reading it to him aloud. Gaara knows she is too polite to say she has difficulty reading his writing now, wobbly and uncertain as it has become. Gaara is too proud to admit holding a pen between his arthritic fingers has sometimes become painful. He is too stubborn to admit that sometimes he forgets where certain strokes of a character goes, or that he is only sure of a phrase until he sees it on paper and reconsiders, so he continues to scratch out his list each weekend night by candlelight, an Olympic marathon in its own right.

  It is a quarter to eight in the morning. He slept four and a half hours last night. It seems that an ironic twist of time and fate allowed him a mere few years of average, normal, completely adequate sleep before the tendrils of age drained him of the need for it; once again he returned to late, late nights, and waking before dawn. These days the nights were cool and the mornings birdless. He would not have minded as much if he had someone with which to share them.

  The tea quenches his parched throat. He drinks in sips now. He always had, though before he had done so from patience and moderation. Now his fingers tremor if he holds the cup to his lips more than a moment at a time. Feeling the liquid run past his tongue dredges up a queer sense of déjà vu, but before he can consider it, it slips away into nothing.

  He drinks and sits and listens to the kitchen clock tick slow seconds away. It strikes the hour just as he sets the empty cup back on the table. On the first gong, he places his palms on either side of the table. On the second, he rolls his weight to his twiggy forearms. By the fourth, he has steadied his knees. He nearly stumbles on the fifth, grabbing hold of his cane to stop his ankle from rolling beneath him. On the sixth and seventh he sags against it and breathes in, breathes out, calming his seizing heart. By the eighth he has stood, or at least, as close to standing as he can manage, now.

  The house is quiet. So, so quiet. He had cherished the quiet, once.

  It is eight o'clock, and he slept alone last night. He remembers the last time he slept with someone beside him but it is an old memory, a faded memory, like a childhood picture withered by the mercy of the winds and rain. Struggling to recall it does nothing for his gasping lungs so he leaves it behind in his empty kitchen and hobbles through the corridor and into his office.

  Ten years ago, this room had been a spare sitting room for guests. His child (his deteriorating memory balks at this phrase at first and he must remind himself, yes, you had one of those, didn't you, don't forget, please don't forget) had once used the area for after-school homework and for sleepovers. Some time ago (a month? A year? Two, ten?) the contents had been gutted and replaced with his office furniture from upstairs. He recognizes the finished oak veneer and the oval window on the west wall. The desk is littered with picture frames. He rounds the corner, creaking in a familiar path, and sets himself into the padded leather chair. He could lean back but he does not and instead he lurches forward, resting his cane against the side of the desk so he can trace the glass front to the frames and peer at the people trapped inside them.

  A layer of dust covers the surfaces but he can still make them out. The first picture is of a young man around twenty-five. Gaara makes out jet-black hair and a forest green outfit. He cradles a small child with baby-fine hair and eyes pinpoints of onyx. In the other, a trio of teenagers stand in front of the village gates. A hooded man in purple. A face that reminds him of his uncle (right?). He, in the center, his hair colored and strong, eyes like cold gems.

  Something tugs in his chest, like a gentle nudge, or a chakra wire sawing through bone. Something tells him he knows the faces of these strangers. Words like dreams float behind his eyes, but none piece together in any language he understands. What he does not recall in names he does in other senses: An arm around his back. Breath against his neck. A shriek of laughter. The thud of fists hitting solid wood, lightning hands. Are these memories, or recollections from a book he once read?

  He wipes his eyes and his palm comes back wet. When he blinks and his vision clears to its foggy norm he glances around at the beige walls, the open door, and panics. Where am I?!

  "Hello?"

  A young woman bursts through the entryway in a uniform he once knew and sets her bags on the floor. She rushes in a blur and he feels a hand on his elbow, support at his hip. Suddenly he is standing, swaying. "I'd thought you had left, did you make it here all by yourself? I told you I was only running out for more creamer - are you all right? What have you been looking at? Oh...Well, come on and..."

  Her words run together like rivers. Gaara lets her assist him up and out to the main hallway and to the living room, where he eases onto the couch, wincing at the spark of pain up his spine. The nice young woman drapes a blanket over his shoulders and he realizes for the first time how cold he had been.

  "Did you make my tea?" he asks. "I'll put more water on," she replies after a pause, which confuses him, because she had never put any water on in the first place. He sits for some time until she sets a red mug with an orange stripe on the coffee table. He wonders if the mug is his; it looks familiar, but he can't be sure.

  "Careful, it's hot." He nods, complacent. She brings something else out, too, and even without his glasses he can make out a small pastry, a cupcake with white frosting, set beside his mug on a matching plate. He stares, wrinkled brows drawn, eyes full of questions. What a kind girl she is, though he does not always understand the ways she looks at him, or why a girl of her rank would spend her days caring for an old man of no further use to the village. Yet she is here, day in and day out, ready to tend to him like a mother would her young. He only wishes he could remember her name.

  "Thank you. Your parents must be so proud."

  He wonders if it is a trick of the light or something else that makes her eyes - so dark, like onyx - look so misty and bloodshot.

  "You should go home," he continues, waving her off. "I'm sure your family is waiting for you. It's a fine morning."

  The silence that passes is palpable and tense for the first time between them. The girl says nothing, only pushing the cupcake closer to him, guiding a fork into his hand. This close he notices a candle stuck in the center of the cupcake and when he looks at her again for answers he finds her looking back at him the way a dog might beg for scraps, or a prisoner might beseech his guard for freedom. He feels his mind grasping for something just out of reach, feeling for answers that have not been there for a long time, and he comes up empty. He wonders if they had ever been there at all.