Gaara paced the length of the room, up and down and back again. He skirted his gourd propped at the foot of the bed, threw a glance out the window when he reached it, then shut his eyes tight as he stalked back to the far side of the room. He couldn't bear to look at the bed with the mound of pillows Hinata had insisted on buying, the flowers drying out on her dressing table, the picture of them both on his bedside table. He just couldn't look at them without feeling helpless.
Before Hinata, he had dealt with emotions slowly and cautiously. Then, she had come into his village bringing these waves of foreign emotions that had beaten him down and lightened him up at the same time. His siblings had called him smitten, whipped and other ridiculous sounding words. In his opinion, the Hyuuga with her kind words, soft eyes and patience had been the one who had made him start breathing in order to live, not just to survive.
But ever since he'd gotten the desert patrol's report yesterday morning, it had gotten so hard to find the will to breathe. Fear, panic, desperation, worry, they all coiled in him so tightly that his sand had lashed out at nearly all the furniture in his office. Eventually, today he had had to give up on the unimpressive trickle of paperwork and had locked himself in his bedroom while his sand and both Leaf and Sand shinobis were scouting the borders for her and Uchiha.
Hinata was missing. The thought whirred around and around his head, same as his guilt and his mounting anger. He couldn't lose her!
And yet, he was confined here, prohibited from going on the search effort since it was not a rescue mission! As if anyone cared what he thought! He had tried telling them over and over again that something must have gone terribly wrong but the Elders refused to sow panic in the village if the whole Kazakage clan went away with a troop of shinobi.
Earlier on in the month, Suna had received a request for assistance from the Leaf. Kakashi had sent an ANBU to inform him that Sasuke was currently in the Land of Earth, investigating suspicious activities that could be related to Kaguya. He needed a Byakugan user to help determine the nature and pattern of the chakra pulsing in one of the rebel hideouts.
Kakashi had appealed to Gaara to send in Hinata on his behalf as she would be carrying the Sand's forehead protector. The old Tsuchikage would more likely be partial to Gaara's wife and not so offended as to have Sasuke's presence on his land.
Gaara knew that the mission details were classified as risky given it was ANBU level. But a scouting and recon job had hardly sounded above Hinata's abilities. After all, he had been impressed at her Jounin exam results even while knowing perfectly well how powerful she was.
Now he blamed himself for not thinking twice two weeks ago when she sent no word. He did not bat an eyelid when Kakashi had sent an email asking if he'd received an update. He had dismissed her lack of communication as her stubbornness and stewed in his own resentment about the situation before her departure.
They had been fighting that week.
"You sound ridiculous, Hinata!"
"Well I don't care!" she shouted back, whirling around to face the window in that same room. "I just don't like how she seems to be always around you these days."
"Miyoko was only giving her report in my office," he explained, brows furrowed in confusion at this unseen side of his wife.
Lately she had felt strangely overtired and moody and that girl's blatant obsession with her husband was driving her crazy. She trusted Gaara and she loved him. She had never had to feel insecure about her position in his life as she'd often felt with Naruto. So it went without saying that she despised lashing out at her husband as such but he was just so oblivious when it came to that girl!
"She needed to report to the Kazakage about the state of the plants in the Hoki greenhouses? Are the cactus planning a rebellion? Or the desert roses a coup?"
Gaara crossed his arms over his chest. He tried very hard to remind himself that Miyoko had once been his potential bride and that was probably the reason for Hinata's jealousy.
The young man loved his wife fiercely, and he had wondered where he'd gone wrong in showing her that.
"She's a Shirogane. She's been pardonned for the deeds of her clan but is still heavily under watch. You do see why I have to keep close tabs on her, right?"
"Well it looks more like she's busy keeping close tabs on you. I swear Gaara, the next time she makes a disrespectful comment about my family or my past or my skills, I will not hesitate to set her misconceptions right!"
Sighing in exasperation, Gaara walked up to his wife and drew her around to face him, even when her shoulders tensed up defensively at the touch.
"The council had sent her a courtship proposal mainly because it would have been impolite to disregard her status as an eligible kunoichi of a Suna clan. She never interested me because as soon as I saw you on your first day here, my eyes looked only for you."
Seeing her eyes soften, he leant in and kissed her forcefully, quashing all her doubts into dust, moulding his lips perfectly to hers and stealing her moans in quick kisses when he moved his hands under her shirt.
"Alright alright," she laughed breathlessly when she pulled back to nestle under his chin.
The next day, when Hinata had come to take him to lunch, Miyoko had been standing with him in front of his desk. She'd just handed him a bento of some of his favourite foods, that Kankuro had told her about, as a token of gratitude for letting her take a mission to the Land of Waves.
Gaara had cursed at all the gods in the world for women and their wiling and timing.
Hinata had narrowed her eyes at the hand Miyoko had placed on his arm, at his sand that laid dormant in his gourd as a sign of familiarity and had stormed out of the room.
She'd avoided him for two days, eating out and training with other shinobis. Matsuri had informed him on the third day that his wife had asked the Shirogane to keep her distances from him after the latter had provoked her during her lunch with his former student.
That night, he'd laid in bed unable to fall asleep. His heart ached from the physical distance Hinata had put between them by curling on the other side of the bed, facing away from him. He longed to reach out to her and at one point, involuntarily, his sand had escaped his control to coil a small tendril around her wrist, inching its grains into her palm.
It was a familiar habit that they'd picked up after he'd discovered how ticklish her palms were. To amuse them during official events or council meetings, he would often attempt to incite her giggles by brushing his sand into her hands.
The gesture prompted her to turn on her back, staring at the ceiling, mimicking his position.
"Have you seen Shirogane-san today?"
For the first time in his life, he'd been very sorely tempted to lie to his wife. Gaara knew she would never violate his privacy by using her Byakugan to spy on him during the day. But he had vowed to be truthful and faithful and his promises to Hinata were everything to him.
So he had told the truth.
"She accompanied me for one of my visits to the academy."
"Was she forced to go with you?"
"No. She volunteered on her own, coaxing permission from an Elder."
Hinata stayed silent for a long time, her eyes trained on his sand that played with the fingers of her raised hand. Sleep had been unable to quell the misery that tormented them both.
"I know what she's doing. But hime, you have to know that I would never look at any other woman the way I look at you."
"I trust you Gaara. I am not questioning your faithfulness. But her actions are not going unnoticed. The councillors, they all look at me with disappointment in their eyes as if it was up to me to stop her. The villagers may pretend to know nothing but I don't want to see their pride in you diminish because of that girl. And try as I may, my emotions are fraying at the edges."
Gaara turned to his side, replacing his sand with his own hand and tugged her closer.
"I love you," he whispered in her hair, not knowing what else to do.
He hadn't said anything else, just kept her close to him and enjoyed her warmth the whole night.
He had known another fight would break out when she would find out that he had allowed Miyoko to train with Kankuro and his puppets. That would be when she would see that his brother, thoroughly under the Shirogane's charm, had been the one thoughtlessly stoking the young girl's interest in the Kazekage.
And she'd gone to meet the Uchiha as soon as the mission request had been relayed to her. Eager to aid her other village or to get away from him, Gaara still did not know. They had had no chance of clearing the air completely before she went and she had looked even more miserable and angry with the situation.
A knock on his door broke his mist of misery.
He stalked to the door and wrenched it open, scowling when he saw his brother-in-law standing in the doorway.
"Dinner's ready," he drawled before turning around and heading for the kitchen.
Gaara remained motionless for a moment, then followed the man when he remembered that Shikamaru had been in the very first group sent to search for Hinata.
"Did you find anything? Was there anything else where Hinata's bloodied jacket was found?"
The Nara shook his head and sat at the table. His sister was the one who eventually replied.
"Nothing is definitely a good sign. There were no indication of a fight nor a kidnapping, right Shika? And until the blood sample result comes, we can't be sure that it's Hinata's blood."
His fists clenched at his sides. He concentrated on ridding his mind of the countless horrible scenarios that it had formed.
"Now that you're back and resting, I'm gonna go out there," Gaara told his sister.
"Eat something first. Kankuro and the others stopped at an inn to eat before heading out again."
He went to protest, saying he couldn't eat while he had no clue of Hinata's condition. But Shikamaru silently glared at him, warning him not to upset the pregnant kunoichi.
Knowing he'd get out of here faster if he cooperated, he sat down at his place and started eating.
"So, Kankuro told us that you and Hinata were fighting before she went away?" Temari asked.
"Did he also tell you that he is largely to be blamed for that?" Gaara fired back, tired of being reminded that the last days he spent with his wife were probably the most miserable for the couple.
"He didn't. Mostly because I limit my conversations with him so he doesn't find out that I'm pregnant," Temari said morosely. "I wouldn't out it past him to blurt it out to the council like he did for my relationship. But Hinata has mentioned she intended on giving him a taste of the Gentle fist. Maybe she knew."
At the mention of his wife, the Kazekage pinned his sister with a probing glare.
"What do you mean?!"
"Well, she mentioned it in a conversation; something about Kankuro making her look like a fool just for a girl. See Shikamaru, I was so right in coming here!"
"Indeed. We came straight into a retrieval mess up. What a drag!"
Rolling her eyes at her husband's antics, Temari fixed her glare on Gaara.
"I was expecting so much better from you though, little brother. Kankuro is insensitive at the worse of moments, but you should have known to take particular care with Hinata in that..."
"Tem," Shikamaru interrupted her, brows furrowed. He could see Gaara scrambling to understand what Temari was talking about.
Apparently, the Kazekage had not been made aware of this particular suspicion and he would make sure his brother-in-law didn't hear about it from girls' gossip.
"Hinata what? Why did she need particular care?! Was she ill?"
Temari cut through Gaara's mounting distress with a disapproving exclamation.
"Must you both brothers always be an embarrassment to me when it comes to girls? Even after everything I've tried teaching you?"
Shikamaru snickered at this and the two launched into an argument, which pushed the worried man to the end of his tether.
Gaara pushed back from the table and strode away. He went back to his room, strapped his old gourd to his back and filled a pouch with medical supplies.
He would find Hinata however long that took and he would make sure she knew that he loved her to the brink of madness and they should never fight again!
He pushed from the window's ledge and set off in the night; a speck of red dashing on the rooftops, soon engulfed in the darkness beyond the village's lights. Temari could deal with the village.