Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

"One can never be as happy as one seems." -Valencia, "Que Sera Sera"

Chapter Four: Shitty days and Matricide

Seventh squad was gathered in their wing of the precinct, surrounding a table with pictures strewn across it and a whiteboard with a diagram. Shikamaru, the squad captain, sat at the head of the table enjoying his smokes while Naruto sat across from him, Neji standing in front of the whiteboard nearby.

"So, how are we going to take care of this?" Neji asked, the corners of his mouth tilted down, his face showing evidence of strain. They had all been working at this new case obsessively and all of them were getting exhausted.

Shikamaru shook his head mechanically. "I have no idea what to tell our superiors. This is getting entirely out of hand. I don't know if we can handle it."

Naruto frowned, his normally bright expression careworn and weary. "There has to be something...something we're not getting.... We just need to find it, that's all. Something..." He wracked his brains desperately, unable to think of something without jeopardizing himself or his secrets. No such luck. It was all gone to shit.

Sakura appeared on the hologram hanging near the top of the floating whiteboard. "Hey, guys. I was going to recommend that Neji come back down and help me examine this again, but actually, I think you should all get down here. Now."

They stood and made their way through the section of regular police who were staring openly at the Horrors. One of them sneered at Naruto, who smirked and snapped like a dog in the officer's direction. The man instantly recoiled, afraid of the Horror, of what the lot of them were capable of. They'd all heard stories about the ones that regulated the people that belonged to the Seventh Squad. And the crimes that they committed in order to prevent others.

Naruto rubbed his eyes tiredly and opened the doors to the morgue. "Hey, Sakura. What do yo have for us?"

Sakura was standing by a table with the remains of the dead man spread out over it. Other tables with other bodies were out. The room looked like its occupants had gone through a meat-grinder. Sakura had on her smock, filthy and up to her chest in flesh. "First, Neji. Look at them and tell me what they all have in common."

Neji blinked. For an instant he thought that she was messing with him, but then shook his head at the thought: they couldn't afford to mess around at a time like this. He took off his glove and spread his fingers, his hand passing over each mound of human meat. A series of scenes and colors and textures passed through his brain and the energies shifted as he gazed at the "bodies". He came to the newest the stopped, turned around and went back to one of the first. He appeared puzzled for a moment. "This isn't right..."

"What...?" Naruto leaned against the far wall while Shikamaru wished desperately for his smokes. "What isn't right?"

Neji looked at them. "There's more than..." He passed over them all once more before saying, "He was one of us."

Naruto went rigid. He rounded on Neji, "The hell does that mean?" His fists, clenched were shaking with outrage and panic. "How could the victim possibly be—!"

Shikamaru shook his head, his eyes closed with a sad weariness one only acquires after years of that horrible kind of knowing that came from experience. "He isn't talking about the vic. Naruto...it was the killer."

Naruto's face fell, his expression a painted mask of disillusionment and horror. "No...not..."

Sakura burst into tears. "Sasuke..."

"Gods curse it!"Temari was furious at her brother. Just as she should be. "Gaara. You can't be doing this shit!" He had killed again. Again, when she had specifically told him not to even go outside. She knew it wasn't his fault, but still... "Going off and killing whoever Baba Chiyo says to is not how you'll keep yourself alive and out of jail!" Chiyo, the founder of HiddenSands, was behind half of their problems. Their great-grandmother was so stuck in her horrid ways; Temari swore that the old woman was going to be the death of them. Really, we will probably die because of that irrational old hag.

Gaara began, "I told Sunako—"

Temari's fist hit the table. A cup, unbalanced, toppled and rolled off the table. The sound of shattering glass on the tiles was voluminous. "I don't care!" She ran a shaky hand through her loose hair. "If they catch on... if they figure it out..." Oh, god, to think what they would do to him...

Gaara shrugged, "But they won't." He uncrossed his arms to pick up an apple from the table and...eat...it.

Temari sat back in her chair. Unbelievable. "How the hell do you know?" She shook her head as if she could somehow shake off her irritation. "No, Gaara. We need to consider all possibilities." She stood and began to pace. "We have to lay low." What would it take to make him understand?

Gaara watched her as he munched on his fruit. "We?" In Gaara's mind, there was no "we", only "me". He had only ever had himself to rely on. He was taught to believe that was how things were always going to be.

"Yes, the both of us." A pair of turquoise eyes rolled upward. Temari prayed for guidance. ".... Don't let me rise up and choke the snot out of my brother..."

Gaara observed her muted utterances in silent bemusement. "You couldn't." He said this as a simple acknowledgement of his possession of more power, and that even if she tried to defy him... it would suffice to say that she would not last very long.

Temari stared at her little brother in wan sadness, "Aren't I your sister Gaara? Don't you see me as family?" She hated whenever he got like this.

Gaara slowly finished off his apple and crushed the core out of existence. "Don't make me answer that question again, Temari." He trudged out of the kitchen and into the guest room, leaving his sibling to deal with her emotional turmoil herself. Though, why she had herself getting so worked up, he had no idea. And, honestly? He didn't want to find out.

He slammed the door shut and sat on the bed trying to think. But, he couldn't. The room was dark -which was how he liked it. No mirrors. They usually cracked in his presence. It was due to the aura that surrounded him. A horrid aura. A killing aura. Something that no one could contain. No one except for him. Containing was all that he was good for. He was a cage. Caged. Not today, though. Today, he felt boxed in. Twice as much as usual. He could hear Temari making choking sounds in the next room and knew instinctively that what she was choking on were her tears. He knew it was all his fault. He looked to the shuttered window. Maybe if he could just—

As the shutters were blown off the window, he pushed into the outside and jumped. The day was gray, the clouds overhead stagnant and thick. Gaara drew his coat closer about him and stalked away.

He wandered aimlessly for hours, just moving along, unaware of where he was going, head down, until it became too dark. He realized that Temari would be worried about him. And she couldn't call the police department to locate him. Not with his "job" being what it was. One of these days it might actually be a relief to get a real career. If he was be capable of handling it. Something he doubted very much.

He glanced around. Damn. Where am I?

"Hello," a bright youthful voice said. "Would you like me to help you?" The bright voice came from the general direction on Gaara's left. Gaara turned and came nose to nose with a pale, blonde female. Her summer sky eyes stared straight into his; her gaze was unwavering, a feat in of itself.

"Who are you?"

"Yamanaka Ino. Call me whatever you like, formality is not needed when addressing me." She started to walk into a nearby shop but, when she noticed he wasn't following, she sighed, "Do you want me to help you? Or not?" The toe of her high heels were tapping on the pavement impatiently.

"Fine." Gaara figured the best way to get away from her was to do whatever she wanted. Many humans were similar in this. He had learned this long ago.

"Then," she stepped back and smiled, "come into my shop. You look like you could do with some relaxation."

Total and complete shock. Yamanaka's Flowers was vibrant. There was no other way to describe it. The shop was so tastefully arranged that the atmosphere was peaceful, yet charged with energy. And that energy seemed to flow in all directions like roads leading to the place where a person wanted to be in life. Or maybe it was all in Gaara's head. He could never be sure. A lot of what he thought was real seemed to be only in his head. Maybe everything was. "What do you want from me?"

"What I want is irrelevant." Ino smiled again, a knowing smile, "I just try to help people in need of something, whether it be the right flowers for making the perfect date a reality or talking to those who have nowhere else to turn."

"How do you know what I need, Yamanaka?"

"It's like I said," Ino swept past him imperiously, "I just have a feel about things involving people." She switched the sign on the door to Closed. "Right now, you are my customer." She led him down a hallway and into a softly lit blue room. There were futons and chairs in a circle as well as a punching bag off in one corner and puzzles on the floor. Sometimes it helped her patients to open up or concentrate whenever that had something to fiddle with. "Please, sit down, mister...?"

"Gaara. Sabakuna Gaara." He decided to come right out with everything. "I killed a little girl's parents right in front of her eyes." He watched Ino's face for signs of terror. "And then I gave her an apple. They were my hundred and eighty-sixth kill." She did not blink once. No reaction? "Before that, I have exterminated a man who was a politician, a pregnant woman, a drug addict –"

"Hold it," Ino held up her hand. "Backtrack for just a minute. Tell me something. If you're okay with my asking, who was the first to die?"

There was a heavy pause, the silence hanging in the air like a lead weight. "My mother." Gaara looked into the woman's eyes. She regarded him blandly. "Matricide is a sin, did you know that?"

"Yes. I know." Ino sat back on her futon and elegantly crossed her legs. "How did it happen, Sabakuna?"

"I was born."

Down at their headquarters, Nara was having the shittiest time ever. After the news imparted by Neji and Sakura's revelation the next four hours mostly consisted of consoling a devastated woman. Shikamaru shook his head. Shit. We've got better things to do. Now, as he sat back and enjoyed his frapp, he squeezed his eyes shut, bone-tired. The latest homicide was almost as disturbing as the last one. As was the witness. A little girl who had seen the entire thing. She sat like a grave little porcelain doll all through the ride to the precinct. She had not spoken a word to anyone until Uzumaki had showed up. He always was good with the kids. Shikamaru figured it was because Uzumaki was still sort of a kid himself. Uzumaki never really had a childhood, growing up too early, so he was probably making up for that loss now.

"The Lieutenant wants some progress, Nara. She wants good news." Captain Yamato walked over to Shikamaru, his intense stare pinned on the detective. "So. Anything on who the little witness saw?"

Shikamaru shivered. Gods, that man's so damned creepy. "Naruto's been working with her but... we got nothing." Shikamaru leaned back in his chair, rubbing his neck. "Nothing. All we've been getting is—"

"He was a really sad man," the little girl, Hanabi, had been saying to Naruto. He usually worked with young witnesses because he had a way about him, something that made a person want to trust him and confide in him. Something that made people want to walk with him at his side, and talk to him. Many in the force were unable to decide on whether it was charisma or enthusiasm that did it. Everyone agreed however that with something like that, someone different would have abused such a trait for their own gain. Not Uzumaki, though. A pure soul if they ever saw one.

But since Hanabi was a Hyuuga, the Lieutenant Yuuhi didn't want Neji getting personal with the case, even though Naruto knew that Neji hardly cared, seeing as how the Hyuuga was nearly an orphan himself. All Naruto knew of Neji's family was that he was estranged from the main family and all he had left was a little sister.... Neji was a secretive kind of guy. Most of the rest of the section were not even aware of that much.

"Did you notice anything special about him?"

Hanabi thought back, still drawing feverishly with the crayons they gave her. "His eyes looked like water. Salty water. And spearmint gum. But they were dry. And they looked..." she paused. "His eyes looked like mine did when I couldn't find mama in the market once and I was really scared and I didn't know what to do and I was all alone even though there was lots of people around me but I didn't know any of 'em..." She looked straight into Naruto's eyes and he saw something in them that no child should have. Weariness. These eyes were veteran's eyes. That kind people get after fighting war. Or from being the lone survivor of something like this. She was strong, this one.

"He was lost?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh." She did not know why she was able to talk about the murderer; something inside her told her that she should be grieving. But she felt numb and cold inside, like she was only asleep and she was just having a scary dream...

Naruto sat back on the floor and started drawing on a paper, too. "Did he hurt you or scare you?" There was a large golden-red fox forming slowly on his paper. A very angry fox. It was run around in a swirl, curving itself around a yellow-haired, whisker-faced child with a blue shine drawn around it. This child was smiling but was slumped down on its knees, alone in the picture. "We need to know in case he does it again."

"No. He didn't scare me. Hurting scared me. And how he was all lost and 'fraid of it in his eyes when he looks at you. That scared me 'cos I don' like being lost." Hanabi looked down at her knees. The blood was gone from them now and she had changed out of her clothes she got sick in. But she still felt like the blood was still there. She could see it. She could see it. She smelled it. "Why do you need to know? Daddy said Daddy deserved it. Daddy said he knew it was his fault and for the man not to blame me too."

So the guy knew it was coming? And he trusted the stranger not to harm his little girl? That explained the smile on his face. That also meant he knew the stranger. "What did he mean?" Naruto stored this bit of information in his head. "How did he deserve it?"

Hanabi bit her lip, a nervous gesture that she acquired from a friend at school. "Daddy was one of the ones who made the man really sad. I remember when he said he knew, and he was waiting. Daddy knew when all of his friends started showing up on the news." She fidgeted. "But the man gave me an apple. He was nice to me." She hadn't known what to make of the stranger from the start, anyhow.

"....Nice to you?" Okay, I'll bite. Naruto made a face of exaggerated thought, squinting his eyes and crossing his arms. "Like, how?"

Hanabi giggled at Naruto. He actually looked foxy in that moment, what with the jagged tribal whisker tattoos on his face. But, she grew somber again as she remembered her father's body on the floor. "He...when Daddy got...he says "D'you rilly wanna winness this?" and I nodded 'cos Daddy always taught me to be strong...and then when Mama was...when she got—" She paused. "When Mama went apart...he said he was sorry for getting her in our spaghetti dinner. And I didn't go all in bits like Mama did and I got to keep my head..."

"That is nice of him." Naruto remarked. Hell, he'd be grateful too if he got to keep his head in that situation.

The girl nodded seriously. "Yeah. That's when he gave me an apple. Said it was 'a'cos I would need my strength...and cos he spoiled the s'ghetti. So I thanked him."

Naruto tilted his head to the side, unknowingly and forcibly reminding the girl of the stranger. "What? Why?"

She swung her legs as she concentrated on making it so that the moon smiled in her picture. "Well...Daddy said to always be polite. That way, if you see 'em again, they'll remember your kindness and it'll come back ten times as much." The sun on the other end of the sky was red.

Well, that was pretty sage advice. "You know what? I remember when I was lost for a time. I was six years old—"

"What?" Hanabi gasped, "I'm six!"

"Nuh-uh!" Naruto gaped. "No way!" Exclamation was best when dealing with children. Naruto lived by the four E's: Exclamation, Exaggeration, Elucidation and ...Emprovisation—okay, so it was actually "improvisation" but he needed another E and Empiric + Improvisation combined worked just fine for him.

She nodded vigorously. "I am."

"That's amazing!"

"Yeah! You were six and I'm six now." She set down her crayons for the first time in hours, "But, what happened when you were lost?"

"Well, I'm an orphan, so I felt lost all the time. No one talked to me, 'cause kids are like that, you know?"

Hanabi nodded wisely. She knew alright.

"They usually act weird when they find out you don't have parents. Their parents told them not to play with me, too. They said I was bad luck, so I kinda ended up being punished for acting out a lot. I figured that they thought I would only ever be bad and started believing the same thing. So I got myself into trouble. I mean, what else would I do? They all expected nothing from me so I gave 'em nothing." Naruto remembered those days. The beatings, the fights, the expulsions, the suspensions, the reputation and the condescension. Oh, yeah. Those days.... They were horrible. "You might go through something just as bad."

"Oh. What did you do?" Hanabi sat, head bowed, wearing an anxious expression. Her fingers clutched at the edges of her sunflower dress.

Naruto beamed. "Showed 'em I wasn't a pushover and proved to 'em all that I could be somethin' great." He leaned in so that he could meet her downcast eyes. "You'll do alright. I know it. I got a feeling you're gonna turn out just as well as I—"

"I sincerely hope not." A woman stood in the doorway, lounging against the frame. "I do worry about you, Naruto." The little girl gave Naruto a small smile at that. "Come on, Uzumaki. You have desk duty."

Naruto groaned. "Ah, man, Kurenai. Why?"

Kurenai glanced at him so sharply he almost felt himself get flayed. "That's Lieutenant Yuuhi to you, Detective Uzumaki."

Uzumaki nodded and picked himself up off the floor. His carefree expression fell from his face as soon as he reentered the hall, and he focused on pulling himself together. He never thought he would have to face this again. He slumped down against the wall. An oppressive feeling was swamping him...he couldn't give in...not now...not when he had come so far...

"Hey." Shikamaru was shaking his shoulder. "Are you doing okay?" Naruto jumped up, pulling on the mask of light-heartedness he had worn for so long.

"Never better," he grinned widely. He couldn't let anyone know. He couldn't let anyone know that he knew exactly who the next victim was.

Temari felt horrible. Her brother must think she was so weak now. She knew he had heard her crying. She just hadn't meant for him to hear. It had been hours since she had seen him. She had tried his cell phone for the fifth time and, when he did not answer, was about to leap out the front door. But the phone on the endtable in Sunako's place rang, insistently, calling for Temari to pick it up.

Temari sighed, then returned to the kitchen. "Hello."

"Hello great-granddaughter. Would you like to drop by old Auntie's for a visit?"

"Baba Chiyo." Temari felt the air in her lungs condense and liquify. She thought for a second that she was drowning. This woman, this old crone, was the one responsible for Gaara's pain. "I'd be delighted."