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Gaara's New Old Desk- Recursive Sunshine fic bit
Gaara’s New Old Desk
Team Seven has given Gaara many gifts, but this one is hard to explain.
-----
The first time Sasuke fought Gaara and Shukaku the One-tails during his first chunin exam and the invasion of Konoha, he didn’t really know what he was getting into despite all the training for it. Only a mix of hubris, ignorance and the overriding need to protect his friends kept him from freezing under the pressure of that much malicious chakra.
Afterward he’d learned about Naruto and the Kyuubi, and steeled himself to dive into the Uchiha compound library for a scroll he remembered on the tailed beasts. It’s old, but his family had updated it after Madara and Hashirama’s throw down and the Shodaime’s campaign to capture and distribute the Bijuu to the other villages, and what was known of their history afterward. He felt better knowing where Naruto’s ridiculous chakra reserves came from, and that it wasn’t his fault they couldn’t beat Gaara without the help of Gamabunta and the Kyuubi.
When the tournament chart at his second chunin exams was posted, Sasuke had worried about Gaara’s sand and endurance, but not for his life- their meetings after the incident with the Sound Four and reports from the Super Secret S-rank Pet-Rescue had assured him that Gaara had gotten his old blood lust under control. When Gaara’s second match revealed that he’d worked out a counter to lightning jutsu, Sasuke had felt a bit smug and taken note. When Shikako’s match turned the flat field into a sandy ruin, to which Haku so thoughtfully added an ice maze, Sasuke had hatched a plan, for all his complaining to about the amount of sand. Sensory blocking ninjutsu and area effect Genjutsu to corner Gaara into a Sharingan Genjutsu surrender- because Gaara was a powerhouse but he wasn’t without weaknesses- and even if it didn’t work at least it was a plan, it showed that he was thinking, not just reacting.
And the plan did work, to a point.
But once he’d caught Gaara’s eye and laid the layered illusion over him, Sasuke found himself in another place entirely. And right now Sasuke needed to fend off a raging mastiff-sized demon tanuki intent on dragging him to the ground and ripping his guts and eyes out- he knew this because the tanuki in question was shouting those threats and screaming for Uchiha blood at the top of his lungs.
Sasuke dodged the first several attempts at his legs and turned a leaping attack into a throw that sent the angry One-tails sailing into the white distance.
“What. The. Fuck,” he asked the other occupant of the pale mental tableau.
“Is this not your Jutsu?” Gaara asked, equally confused.
“No,” Sasuke said, “In my Genjutsu we were having tea with the rest of my team, not wrestling with Shukaku.”
Gaara nodded, “That does sound more pleasant.”
They both turned to watch as Shukaku raced back toward them- the steady stream of threats made him easy to track. The space around them was not quite as featureless as it first appeared; the ground was crystallized salt, and though the air seemed to stretch into blank distance, there was slightly more light in one direction, like the promise of dawn in an overcast desert. “This must be your mindscape,” Sasuke said slowly, as he turned to take it in, “I’ve only seen this much flat, open space on the ocean.”
Gaara glanced at him with curiosity much easier to read in his face than in reality, but kept most of his attention on the approaching Bijuu. “And?”
“You don’t seem surprised to be sharing your mental space with your Bijuu.”
“No, he is with me always.”
“Hnnn,” Sasuke considered the implications and didn’t like them at all. He hoped Naruto’s (clearly superior) seal maintained better separation between the sunshine fool and the Kyuubi’s thoughts, because excepting a few infamous breakdowns during the last chunin exams, Gaara was a rock of impulse control compared to his teammate. Of course, if this was what he was up against every moment a will of steel was not surprising.
His musing were interrupted by the return of Shukaku to what could generously be called conversational distance, and the Tanuki’s rant had turned from pure wild blood lust to a litany of Uchiha crimes against the Bijuu. These consisted mainly of being capable of influencing them at all, helping Hashirama round them up like a set, and “invading my seal like a thief in the night.”
Sasuke vowed to go over the Bijuu history scroll again with his Sharingan active because there were obviously a few things he’d missed the first time, and his ancestors did love their eyes-only codes. He was tempted to just dodge and let the Tanuki continue his informative monologue but Shukaku wasn’t lunging at him, but at Gaara.
Here, Gaara did not have an automatic and impenetrable defense. He moved his hands as if to direct the sand, but it was not responding. Here, the sand belonged to Shukaku first, and mental ownership mattered. Here Gaara was not an enemy, he wasn’t even an Opponent- he was Shikako and Naruto’s friend and they wouldn’t be here like this except Sasuke’d messed up and somehow turned a genjutsu into a mindwalk.
Sasuke blurred, catching Gaara by the strap of his useless sand gourd in two places and carrying him out of Shukaku’s path. Their limbs tangled and they ended up scrambling over each other to rise again, watching the Tanuki as he skidded and turned to face them again.
Shukaku flexed talons covered in glassy sand, “How dare you?”
Sasuke slammed his hand against the salt-ground and Summoned the Desk of the Head of the Uchiha Clan. It was Obviously Mokuton, eight feet across and solid with six visible drawers and more hidden ones and weighed more than half the rookie nine combined. Sasuke used to stand before this example of Senju Hashirama’s later work and pretend he was reporting on important cases to his father, so he knew it well. It was stained with ink, blood, and the imprinted chakra of three generations of Uchiha and as many allies. The Fourth Hokage himself had carved a Hiraishin Seal into the upper left hand corner, and his mother’s best friend Kushina had carved a stay-hot seal for tea- or ramen- into the other, and his mother claimed that his father had glared at them both for tampering with village artifacts. Sasuke had never seen its broad surface free of paperwork until after the massacre, when everything had been sealed away and the desk itself was put into storage to wait until he was tall enough for it.
This version of the desk had paperwork, though- Sasuke had seen the Hokage’s desk more than enough times while stuck in the village, and it wasn’t hard to populate the Desk with a stacks of reports- on every Grass and Cloud ninja unfortunate enough to have crossed Sasuke’s path in the last week- writing supplies, and the Kazekage’s hat. He’d summoned it so that he and Gaara were behind it, with Shukaku in the position of supplicant, and the flowing vertical lines of the wood grain on that side made it seem like a dozen smaller trees had grown together to trap something inside the box the desk formed, or so Sasuke had always thought. He made sure the implication would not be lost on the one-tails. The whole thing was conjured from his mind like a genjutsu, so if this version was a little wider and little less tall, so that when Gaara sat behind it he wouldn’t look so dwarfed? That was all an intentional part of the illusion.
Sasuke stood and motioned Gaara toward the chair that had appeared mostly as an afterthought, “Shikako said you’re going to be great Kazekage and Kages have guards.” he turned to address Shukaku, channeling pure Iruka-sensei scold as he shakes a finger at the Tanuki, “Even if they don’t need them most of the time. Show some respect.”
Then he’s getting stunned looked from both directions.
“This is a mediation,” he explained, “Clearly you two need to work out a deal between yourselves so you can kick me out and we can get back to the rest of the match. I’ll facilitate.”
Gaara got it, taking a seat and picking up the hat to fiddle with, though he didn’t put it on. “Team Seven Style mediation is... interesting.”
“I’m learning from Hokage-sama, it’s been a real master class,” Sasuke agreed.
He ends up hitting Shukaku over the head with one of the side drawers whenever the tanuki tries to come over the desk at them, suggesting alternatives when Shukaku is completely unreasonable, and taking the notes on the agreement the three of them negotiate. Sasuke’s really pleased that the Desk as Obstacle is working as well as it is, but Shukaku is single-minded to a painfully familiar degree. He didn’t intend to be a party to this deal at all, but his warning about Itachi’s presence in Akatsuki and that his brother has a more advanced version of the Sharingan, presumably capable of doing this sort of thing as well, is enough for Shukaku to agree to a truce as an addendum. It doesn’t take very long, even at the speed of mental argument, before they are all agreed on terms and witnessed. Sasuke resists the urge to conjure up a bottle of sake- drunk Shukaku is a nightmare for another time.
They do a triple-release of chakra and wake back in the ruined pillars. Sasuke isn’t sure how long they stood staring in the real world, but Gaara’s sand is in a loose pile around him, rather than its former defensive shell. He darts forward with a testing jab and the sand intercepts even faster than before.
Gaara smiles at him, a strange and fey expression pushing through the smoothness of his sand armor, “Shukaku says you have his respect, Uchiha, but you’d better dodge.”
Sasuke could draw this out, but the Genjutsu-Mindwalk took more chakra than he expected. He can’t afford to drain himself into exhaustion like Shikako had, not with how things were, “No, that was my best shot. This test isn’t over until tomorrow.”
Gaara nodded, and the sand whirled but did not strike as Sasuke raised his hand and called his concession to the proctors.
Then he held out two fingers in the Seal of Reconciliation.
Gaara stared at him for a long moment, then locked his fingers around Sasuke’s and shook.
*
Two weeks after Gaara’s inauguration as Kazekage Kankurou strolled into his office radiating smug, “Delivery from Team Seven for you.”
Gaara caught the scroll with ease and pulled it open. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but a friendly note of congratulations written by Shikako, a slyly formal one by Sasuke, and a storage seal labeled ‘Gaara’s new old desk’ was not it. When he activated the seal the same desk from the mindscape slammed into the office floor like a dropped boulder.
Kankurou yelped in surprise then launched into complaints about Hashirama wood furniture and it’s rarity and “how did you convince Konoha to part with such a large and famous piece? Gaara? Is this an alliance gift or a personal thing? Gaara?”
Using it as his Official Desk will imply a far deeper alliance between the two oldest clans of Leaf and the new Kazekage than the formal agreements their villages have but that is typical Team Seven. Shukaku grumbles inside his head but it’s a sleepy murmur easily ignored.
Gaara runs his hands over the smooth wood and smiles.
-----------
Notes:
Six months later, after the Isobu Incident, Sasuke is going to take a moment to complain to Gaara about having to wrangle a Bijuu at every chunin exam he attends. Gaara will laugh at him.
Team Seven has given Gaara many gifts, but this one is hard to explain.
-----
The first time Sasuke fought Gaara and Shukaku the One-tails during his first chunin exam and the invasion of Konoha, he didn’t really know what he was getting into despite all the training for it. Only a mix of hubris, ignorance and the overriding need to protect his friends kept him from freezing under the pressure of that much malicious chakra.
Afterward he’d learned about Naruto and the Kyuubi, and steeled himself to dive into the Uchiha compound library for a scroll he remembered on the tailed beasts. It’s old, but his family had updated it after Madara and Hashirama’s throw down and the Shodaime’s campaign to capture and distribute the Bijuu to the other villages, and what was known of their history afterward. He felt better knowing where Naruto’s ridiculous chakra reserves came from, and that it wasn’t his fault they couldn’t beat Gaara without the help of Gamabunta and the Kyuubi.
When the tournament chart at his second chunin exams was posted, Sasuke had worried about Gaara’s sand and endurance, but not for his life- their meetings after the incident with the Sound Four and reports from the Super Secret S-rank Pet-Rescue had assured him that Gaara had gotten his old blood lust under control. When Gaara’s second match revealed that he’d worked out a counter to lightning jutsu, Sasuke had felt a bit smug and taken note. When Shikako’s match turned the flat field into a sandy ruin, to which Haku so thoughtfully added an ice maze, Sasuke had hatched a plan, for all his complaining to about the amount of sand. Sensory blocking ninjutsu and area effect Genjutsu to corner Gaara into a Sharingan Genjutsu surrender- because Gaara was a powerhouse but he wasn’t without weaknesses- and even if it didn’t work at least it was a plan, it showed that he was thinking, not just reacting.
And the plan did work, to a point.
But once he’d caught Gaara’s eye and laid the layered illusion over him, Sasuke found himself in another place entirely. And right now Sasuke needed to fend off a raging mastiff-sized demon tanuki intent on dragging him to the ground and ripping his guts and eyes out- he knew this because the tanuki in question was shouting those threats and screaming for Uchiha blood at the top of his lungs.
Sasuke dodged the first several attempts at his legs and turned a leaping attack into a throw that sent the angry One-tails sailing into the white distance.
“What. The. Fuck,” he asked the other occupant of the pale mental tableau.
“Is this not your Jutsu?” Gaara asked, equally confused.
“No,” Sasuke said, “In my Genjutsu we were having tea with the rest of my team, not wrestling with Shukaku.”
Gaara nodded, “That does sound more pleasant.”
They both turned to watch as Shukaku raced back toward them- the steady stream of threats made him easy to track. The space around them was not quite as featureless as it first appeared; the ground was crystallized salt, and though the air seemed to stretch into blank distance, there was slightly more light in one direction, like the promise of dawn in an overcast desert. “This must be your mindscape,” Sasuke said slowly, as he turned to take it in, “I’ve only seen this much flat, open space on the ocean.”
Gaara glanced at him with curiosity much easier to read in his face than in reality, but kept most of his attention on the approaching Bijuu. “And?”
“You don’t seem surprised to be sharing your mental space with your Bijuu.”
“No, he is with me always.”
“Hnnn,” Sasuke considered the implications and didn’t like them at all. He hoped Naruto’s (clearly superior) seal maintained better separation between the sunshine fool and the Kyuubi’s thoughts, because excepting a few infamous breakdowns during the last chunin exams, Gaara was a rock of impulse control compared to his teammate. Of course, if this was what he was up against every moment a will of steel was not surprising.
His musing were interrupted by the return of Shukaku to what could generously be called conversational distance, and the Tanuki’s rant had turned from pure wild blood lust to a litany of Uchiha crimes against the Bijuu. These consisted mainly of being capable of influencing them at all, helping Hashirama round them up like a set, and “invading my seal like a thief in the night.”
Sasuke vowed to go over the Bijuu history scroll again with his Sharingan active because there were obviously a few things he’d missed the first time, and his ancestors did love their eyes-only codes. He was tempted to just dodge and let the Tanuki continue his informative monologue but Shukaku wasn’t lunging at him, but at Gaara.
Here, Gaara did not have an automatic and impenetrable defense. He moved his hands as if to direct the sand, but it was not responding. Here, the sand belonged to Shukaku first, and mental ownership mattered. Here Gaara was not an enemy, he wasn’t even an Opponent- he was Shikako and Naruto’s friend and they wouldn’t be here like this except Sasuke’d messed up and somehow turned a genjutsu into a mindwalk.
Sasuke blurred, catching Gaara by the strap of his useless sand gourd in two places and carrying him out of Shukaku’s path. Their limbs tangled and they ended up scrambling over each other to rise again, watching the Tanuki as he skidded and turned to face them again.
Shukaku flexed talons covered in glassy sand, “How dare you?”
Sasuke slammed his hand against the salt-ground and Summoned the Desk of the Head of the Uchiha Clan. It was Obviously Mokuton, eight feet across and solid with six visible drawers and more hidden ones and weighed more than half the rookie nine combined. Sasuke used to stand before this example of Senju Hashirama’s later work and pretend he was reporting on important cases to his father, so he knew it well. It was stained with ink, blood, and the imprinted chakra of three generations of Uchiha and as many allies. The Fourth Hokage himself had carved a Hiraishin Seal into the upper left hand corner, and his mother’s best friend Kushina had carved a stay-hot seal for tea- or ramen- into the other, and his mother claimed that his father had glared at them both for tampering with village artifacts. Sasuke had never seen its broad surface free of paperwork until after the massacre, when everything had been sealed away and the desk itself was put into storage to wait until he was tall enough for it.
This version of the desk had paperwork, though- Sasuke had seen the Hokage’s desk more than enough times while stuck in the village, and it wasn’t hard to populate the Desk with a stacks of reports- on every Grass and Cloud ninja unfortunate enough to have crossed Sasuke’s path in the last week- writing supplies, and the Kazekage’s hat. He’d summoned it so that he and Gaara were behind it, with Shukaku in the position of supplicant, and the flowing vertical lines of the wood grain on that side made it seem like a dozen smaller trees had grown together to trap something inside the box the desk formed, or so Sasuke had always thought. He made sure the implication would not be lost on the one-tails. The whole thing was conjured from his mind like a genjutsu, so if this version was a little wider and little less tall, so that when Gaara sat behind it he wouldn’t look so dwarfed? That was all an intentional part of the illusion.
Sasuke stood and motioned Gaara toward the chair that had appeared mostly as an afterthought, “Shikako said you’re going to be great Kazekage and Kages have guards.” he turned to address Shukaku, channeling pure Iruka-sensei scold as he shakes a finger at the Tanuki, “Even if they don’t need them most of the time. Show some respect.”
Then he’s getting stunned looked from both directions.
“This is a mediation,” he explained, “Clearly you two need to work out a deal between yourselves so you can kick me out and we can get back to the rest of the match. I’ll facilitate.”
Gaara got it, taking a seat and picking up the hat to fiddle with, though he didn’t put it on. “Team Seven Style mediation is... interesting.”
“I’m learning from Hokage-sama, it’s been a real master class,” Sasuke agreed.
He ends up hitting Shukaku over the head with one of the side drawers whenever the tanuki tries to come over the desk at them, suggesting alternatives when Shukaku is completely unreasonable, and taking the notes on the agreement the three of them negotiate. Sasuke’s really pleased that the Desk as Obstacle is working as well as it is, but Shukaku is single-minded to a painfully familiar degree. He didn’t intend to be a party to this deal at all, but his warning about Itachi’s presence in Akatsuki and that his brother has a more advanced version of the Sharingan, presumably capable of doing this sort of thing as well, is enough for Shukaku to agree to a truce as an addendum. It doesn’t take very long, even at the speed of mental argument, before they are all agreed on terms and witnessed. Sasuke resists the urge to conjure up a bottle of sake- drunk Shukaku is a nightmare for another time.
They do a triple-release of chakra and wake back in the ruined pillars. Sasuke isn’t sure how long they stood staring in the real world, but Gaara’s sand is in a loose pile around him, rather than its former defensive shell. He darts forward with a testing jab and the sand intercepts even faster than before.
Gaara smiles at him, a strange and fey expression pushing through the smoothness of his sand armor, “Shukaku says you have his respect, Uchiha, but you’d better dodge.”
Sasuke could draw this out, but the Genjutsu-Mindwalk took more chakra than he expected. He can’t afford to drain himself into exhaustion like Shikako had, not with how things were, “No, that was my best shot. This test isn’t over until tomorrow.”
Gaara nodded, and the sand whirled but did not strike as Sasuke raised his hand and called his concession to the proctors.
Then he held out two fingers in the Seal of Reconciliation.
Gaara stared at him for a long moment, then locked his fingers around Sasuke’s and shook.
*
Two weeks after Gaara’s inauguration as Kazekage Kankurou strolled into his office radiating smug, “Delivery from Team Seven for you.”
Gaara caught the scroll with ease and pulled it open. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but a friendly note of congratulations written by Shikako, a slyly formal one by Sasuke, and a storage seal labeled ‘Gaara’s new old desk’ was not it. When he activated the seal the same desk from the mindscape slammed into the office floor like a dropped boulder.
Kankurou yelped in surprise then launched into complaints about Hashirama wood furniture and it’s rarity and “how did you convince Konoha to part with such a large and famous piece? Gaara? Is this an alliance gift or a personal thing? Gaara?”
Using it as his Official Desk will imply a far deeper alliance between the two oldest clans of Leaf and the new Kazekage than the formal agreements their villages have but that is typical Team Seven. Shukaku grumbles inside his head but it’s a sleepy murmur easily ignored.
Gaara runs his hands over the smooth wood and smiles.
-----------
Notes:
Six months later, after the Isobu Incident, Sasuke is going to take a moment to complain to Gaara about having to wrangle a Bijuu at every chunin exam he attends. Gaara will laugh at him.