A thousand thoughts, a thousand voices, they all clashed, they all mixed, streamed together into one multitude. Still the whisper close to his ear, the whisper that was a disguised shout of panic, was foggily decipherable.

"Quick, we need to get him to the hospital!" A pause. "I don't know, I thought he'd be okay… he usually is adequate for any battle, any time, just look at the state of him…. No, I don't know which would be closer- probably-…. Yeah, I thought so too. Help me with him- he won't last much longer…."

The words, although plainly spoken, had no meaning for the fallen warrior. The gaping mouth in his midsection prevented any thoughts to penetrate his ripped skull. His sunset fingers merely twitched as he almost felt himself lifted off of where he had fallen.

Dusk fell in a heartbeat.

"Rock Lee…" a dozen voices collaged the name. Rock Lee opened his eyes, the dim light amplified as twenty suns; his eyes shut. "Rock Lee!" Squinting was manageable.

Eyes closer than a breath away, dark, brown, wide with concern. Rock Lee tried to lift his hand from his side to gently push Tenten away; his arm rebelled ferociously and achingly. A strained wheezing sound was protruding from somewhere. When Rock Lee realized he had groaned unconsciously, he quickly stopped.

"Tenten… where am I, exactly?"

So… he was at the hospital in Sunagakure, he found out. He had failed his mission. Instead of victory, his ribs had all shattered, split his torso and painted him with crimson. His skull had been fractured and his hand was broken to bloody bits. But he was alive, that's what Tenten kept telling him, so that her voice was engraved in Rock Lee's mind, hypnotically chanting and caressing, he was alive.

Time grew unfathomable in the time that the female ninja explained. When, at last, she got up to leave the room, another young man, this one sitting quite silently in a chair a good distance away, finally spoke. "With you injured, we have to carry on this mission alone," said Hyuuga Neji. "We'll return in three days."

With the disturbances and sick hot feeling of pooling remorse and shame gone at last, Rock Lee could easily drift back into sleep. Easy… so easy.

The following sunrise. By then, Lee was awake, awake and itching to stand. Although obviously forbidden, he threw his covers off and swung his legs around and off of the itchy, sky blue hospital bed. Feeling it improper to stroll around wearing the rather flashy gown he wore, Lee turned to favor his forest green jumpsuit, only to find it missing.

Upon searching for a good half hour, the suit was discovered, although rather useless, a large hole had pierced the center of it. Again the embarrassment of losing crashed on Lee as a tsunami, and it was with a rather gloomy melancholy that he turned to dig his unused casual clothing from his pack, which had been mercifully left beside his bed.

Of course, Lee had never worn this outfit. It was, by normal standards, described just as that: normal. Dark pants, light, loose shirt- it felt hot and uncomfortable to Lee, who rather preferred his green tightness. Every movement caused his chest inexorable grief and his hand was petrified and bound beyond movement. Lee didn't need to look in a mirror to see the bandage wrapped around his head, it protruded into his vision slightly and was tight on his forehead.

After checking that the pillows he had placed delicately under the sheets mirrored the form of a sleeping body, Lee limped to the door, wincing as he walked. It took a bit of maneuvering, skill, and pain to get out of the hospital undetected, but after a few tense minutes, he was free!

So… he was in Sunagakure. What was in this hot, desert place anyway? Plenty of people, Lee noticed, with a bit of happy empathy. Nothing pleased him more than others' happiness. Desert sand blew slightly across Lee's face and he coughed, pain electrifying through every fiber of his being, a spot of blood mixing saliva that fell into the dust. Gaara! Came the immediate and habitual zing of thought that Lee unconsciously found himself thinking every time sand hit his skin.

But then- realization! Of course; what was in Sunagakure? Gaara, Gaara of the desert, of course! Lee had been meaning to properly talk to the Kazekage ever since he had saved Lee from the bone mastermind Kimimaro a year ago. The two didn't see each other often, and even then had been surrounded by people, since Gaara was busy all the time and such. Lee should visit his, what he considered, good friend!

So, meeting with Gaara wasn't as easy as Lee had first assumed. Finding the Kazekage's office had been no problem at all, but the Sand ninja's schedule was apparently busy for quite some time.

"Oh, no, please, it is no trouble at all!" Lee smiled at the woman who had refused his immediate consultation with Gaara and seemed to have an apologetic mouth. Bowing yet again, the woman excused herself and Lee settled himself rather uncomfortably in a stiff chair. It was an oasis to a long hour or so of constant activity, Lee's wounds were throbbing in syncopation and his head was hurting rather a lot. He wished he had chosen to eat something before coming.

Judging by the sun's position, it was near enough to noon by the time Gaara was ready to see him. Wincing and wobbling dangerously, Lee stood and entered the Kazekage's office. If Gaara was surprised to see him, his eerie blue eyes did not show it. "You," was the word that betrayed his lack of awareness. "What business do you have with me?"

It was rather daunting, in Lee's opinion, to face Gaara without the heat of any sort of tension around them; Gaara's cold, speculating stare was fixated on one thing: him. Ignoring the nails in his head and woodpecker in his upper chest, Lee cleared his throat and smiled slightly. "No business in particular. Since we are old friends I figured I would come by and say hello, is all!"

No flicker of emotion. "Friend? What provokes such an unnecessary term?" the cold voice slithered across the air to Lee and his spirits dampened a little.

"I apologize if I sound prudent, I assumed that since you saved me from Kimimaro that one time that we were friends," he grinned. "You are my friend, Gaara of the desert."

"You are not my friend, though," Gaara pointed out, unimpressed. "You have misunderstood; I was on orders to save you, or I would not have done so."

Rock Lee laughed again, a weak laugh that sounded more conversational than amused. "I do not think that is true at all, though!"

"Which part?"

"You are too good a person," the injured young man smiled. "to not help someone in need." He opened his eyes to see that Gaara had secured the position one might have whilst praying.

To his knees, the Kazekage murmured, "You know absolutely nothing about me."

"Is that a problem?" Lee pointed out in a gentler tone. Finally emotion; Gaara's head snapped up and he stared at Lee, his eyes a bit wider with surprise. Rock Lee didn't know how, but he had an incline that his words had been rather inspirational. Of course, perhaps all Gaara wanted was somebody not to judge him for what he was.

"Excuse me, Kazekage," a man had opened Gaara's office door. He was busy reading the papers in his hand and didn't notice Lee sitting in the chair across the important desk. "I wanted to talk to you about this pact with the Rain village. Were we-"

"Sumosu," Gaara's deadly voice stopped the man from talking midsentence. "Can you not see that I am having a conversation with a guest?"

Lee could almost feel the heat bubbling under the skin of Sumosu, who looked up slowly and locked his wide, panicked eyes on Lee with something closer to terror than embarrassment. "I'm sorry!" He yelled as he sprinted away.

"Before you disrupt me from further business," the Kazekage quieted his tone. "Would you please return to the hospital?"

"I…" Lee was rather wishing he hadn't come now. Plus he was hungry. "First… uh… would you like to join me for lunch? I do not know where to get good food around here, after all." His stomach roared in approval.

As it turned out, while Gaara was an unmistakably disagreeable person, he was relatively agreeable at the same time. As the two ninjas walked down the busy streets of Sunagakure, the Kazekage didn't visibly mind slowing to match Rock Lee's limping pace. Nobody noticed the fact that Gaara was out and walking about; Lee assumed it was such a rare occurrence that nobody would care to acknowledge the possibility.

Many children roamed the streets; Lee noticed that Gaara's cold eyes followed every one of them with a kind of bitter resentment. Odd. The more cheerful ninja brushed it off with easy indifference.

He decided nothing would cease the awkwardness between the two better than also watching such innocent humans. They were cute. Lee smiled sympathetically at a little boy who had tripped and was crying over his skinned knee. He blinked in amusement at a little group of three marching along, a tough looking girl in the lead, looking like a shinobi squad.

His eyes opened and widened angrily as the tough looking girl wandered up to a small, blonde child, and attempted to take the smaller one's ball. After a few tense seconds of struggle, the larger girl won, and she viciously kicked the ball so that it flew onto the roof. The tiny girl began to cry, and Lee saw behind his eyes the many accounts in his life when the same things had happened to him.

"Please excuse me for a moment, Gaara!" Lee apologized as he quickly limped to the building where the ball had fallen. Ignoring the awed gasps from behind him, Lee jumped to the top of the building- it wasn't very tall. However, the jump caused him to gasp as he felt his wound tear a little, a trickle of blood made an imprint on his white shirt.

Trying not to cry out, Rock Lee bent to pick up the ball that had been lost in the distance. When he made another excruciating journey through the air, this time back to the sand, it was severely difficult to force the smile to his face as he returned the ball to the tiny blonde girl. The tiny one widened watery eyes and snatched it away from him, nearly making him topple over. With a cry of what was apparently happiness, she scurried away and Lee turned to the group of three children. The tough looking girl, who might have been four or five, had her arms crossed and looked ready to be mean.

"You should not take things that are not yours," Lee told her, not unkindly. "If you want, I can buy you a ball for you to play with…."

"We didn't want her stupid ball!" one of the boys behind the leader scoffed, scratching at the band-aid plastered across his chin.

"That stupid Yuki is a crybaby," the other boy added spitefully. In agreement, the lead girl spat in the dirt by Lee's shoes.

"So it was only by selfishness that you did that to the little girl- Yuki?" Lee asked in an even gentler tone. "If you keep that up, someday people will assume it is okay to take all that you have from you as you once did to them."

Feeling that the lesson was over and that the three bullies could seek their parents for further admonishment, Lee turned back to Gaara. Before he took three steps, the tough looking girl called after him. Despite her mean looks, her voice was soft. "You got it in your head you be bleedin' on that shirt a' yours?"

Lee threw a smile over his shoulder at the girl. "Got it, thanks!"

Gaara was waiting where he had been left, his arms folded across his chest, looking a slight bit angry. A little nervous at the expression on his companion's face, Lee stopped a few steps short of where he had been by the Kazekage's side.

"Why did you do that?" Gaara demanded in his usual, dark voice. "You seem to have opened your wound- the world wouldn't have fallen around you if you hadn't gotten that ball back."

Lee blinked. "I guess it is because of the same reason you would have gotten the ball down yourself- that girl was crying. Did you know that happiness is contagious? If a good friend of yours who lives around you is happy, you also have an increase in potential to be happy. I like seeing people who are enjoying themselves, people… who are lonely, or sad, it makes me feel selfish for not being lonely and sad. So I want to be your friend, Gaara. It may seem selfish, but I really want to be somebody you can confide in and be happier!"

He ended his monologue with his typical smile, and three intensely long seconds passed before he looked over at where Gaara was standing. A faint color had sparked in the smaller figure's face and forehead; he didn't smile.

"I see."

The two walked on.

Lee's wound, after pressing the light t-shirt against it for a few moments, dried again, and Lee wasn't anxious to reopen it.

"Eeh- there 'ee is!" a small excited voice squealed. Instinctively, Lee looked to where the voice had come from. The little girl with the ball was tugging impatiently at what appeared to be her mother's sleeve and was pointing at Lee, her face cheerful again, displaying missing front teeth. Her mother, who appeared to be talking to some important businessman, slapped her daughter's hand away impatiently and didn't look around. The little blonde girl was undeterred; "'Ey! 'Ey, mister! Catch!" she kicked the ball to Lee from her position some twenty feet away.

The ball did a great arc in midair; Lee moved to catch it but before he could get to where it landed, Gaara had moved in front of him and caught it in his hands, his face emotionless. The blonde girl was appalled. "Ehh!" she called. "No, no, bowl-head catch it!"

The little girl's mother seemed to have finished talking. She looked around at last and saw Gaara holding the ball. "So sorry!" She called, jogging over with the little girl on her heels. "Kids, you kno-" Suddenly, the woman drew close enough to recognize her Kazekage.

As if in slow motion, Lee read the woman's emotions change like he was reading a book. First, it was vague puzzlement, switching rather quickly to shock, then an unimaginable, inexplicable terror, that started in her widened eyes and finished in her nervous words. "I- I- I am s-so sorry, mister Kazekage, s-sir. Um, we're terribly apologetic for disturbing you, Kazekage, uh, p-p-please, forgive us, sir!" Lee noticed with a twinge of unease that the woman had taken her daughter and roughly thrust the child behind her, acting as a shield from- from Gaara!

Suspense gripped the silence- the woman had shouted loud enough that even the activity of the busy street had halted momentarily.

Gaara handed the woman the ball. "It's fine."

As Lee limped quickly after the Kazekage, he looked back and saw the mother both scorning and reassuring the daughter. Words like 'don't talk to him' and 'he's dangerous' met his ears and he frowned. A measure of sympathy was building up within him for Gaara.

"Do you see now?" Gaara had stopped as they turned into a side street with, mercifully, no people around. Lee couldn't see Gaara's face from his position behind him; his head was bowed, although his shoulders were straight. "Do you see how they hate me? I am a jinchuuriki, a monster is inside my body, and because of that I cannot have friends. Even though I am the Kazekage of this village, nobody can talk to me freely in fear that I will lose control and kill them like I almost killed you. It would be unheard of if we became friends."

Lee blinked. He leaned against the fence and felt the wave of sympathy flood him. His good friend Uzumaki Naruto was a jinchuuriki, but the people of Konoha had forgiven the fact since Naruto was a strong worker and great ninja. It seemed that in Sunagakure, there was no such mercy.

"I know."

Gaara turned to look back at Lee, his blue eyes wide. Lee smiled slightly at his bewildered expression. "I've known forever that you were a jinchuuriki- they told me after I recovered from fighting you."

"You… knew? But you wanted to be friends…." The Kazekage was in disbelief. Lee knew that Gaara and Naruto were friends, but Naruto was a jinchuuriki himself. Perhaps Gaara was unaware that it could be possible for somebody with no possibility of empathy towards the situation to befriend him.

"Although what you said just now, it hurt. So you think it would be bad for us to be friends, then…?" Lee let the sentence fall dead for a moment before giving Gaara his brightest smile and assuming the 'nice guy' pose. "So can… can we be secret friends then?"

For a few seconds Gaara merely looked at the injured ninja who had devoted his entire day limping around only to please the Kazekage, who was a monster. Then, soft and almost undetectable, yet still unmistakable, Gaara smiled.

"Okay."

A/N hooo, I like it. I like it, I like it, I like it. No, it is NOT GaaLee or LeeGaa or whatever- it is what it is: friendship! I always like to think of baby Gaara and baby Lee playing in a sandbox together or something ^_^ I like them as friends, anything more is just… idk, too much. They would make good friends.

K, can you review please? It would really help my ego… and I don't really like flames. Usually I ask for constructive criticism, but today I don't even want that. I'm not feeling very good and I'd just like some good healthy praising reviews, if it's not too much to ask. Kthnx.

-5: 18 AM August 13, 2009