Must. Need.
Author's Note: Just a little gift for my amazing bud, TheGrandSpecter, as her birthday passed just recently. And Gaara is her fantasy crush – in the realm of Naruto, at least – so I thought I would write her a little Happy Birthday starring the one and only Gaara.
Summary: Gaara evaluates the reasons why winning this war is so important to him and just who he is doing this for.
Gaara stood in the small sandpit he created, breathing heavily as he prayed fervently for this battle to end. He was tired. He was desperate. And he was fairly certain that if he didn't get sleep soon, he might just lose his mind. And he hadn't lost his mind since he lost the One Tail. Sleep has been amazing ever since then.
The sand lifted and Gaara refocused on his surroundings. As the older kages fought alongside him, he wondered, albeit briefly, what they were like in their prime, as he was right now. If they were formidable now, he shuddered to think what it would have been like to go against them. As he performed his jutsu, he hoped against all hope that they got out of this alive and victorious.
For Naruto. For Team Seven. For Shikamaru and Ino. But mostly for him. He finally had something to prove to his village and live by. He had Naruto and all of the Rookie Nine. He so desperately wanted to win because he wanted his friends. His best friend. Naruto was that to him. He had to win this for him.
For Huuga Neji. The Huuga genius was probably the most changed by Naruto. Gaara knew he was transformed, but Neji realized something that truly set him free.
For his siblings. Temari and Konkoro sacrificed so much for him and if they came out of this alive, he could fully appreciate them to the extent they deserved.
But the person he wanted to win this for was himself. In the end, the one who needed to win this battle was him. He needed the reassurance that he was a good person, that he could protect the people he loved. He needed to know that the sacrifice Sasori's grandmother made, that his mother and father made, was not in vain. He needed to survive to prove to himself once and for all that he was a good person, that he was capable of doing something for someone else. He needed to win this battle. He needed to.