digging up the ancient language
gaara/sakura
.
b e c a u s e
it's your way of saying 'I love you'
when you're toungetied
and choking.
.
She arrives with a determined look and a mission and greets him with a tiny smile, because she's caught up in her own little world — not his, not the Kazekage's world, he thinks. Lucky. — and she's every bit of person that he never was, every bit of pure that he could never be. He's instantly fascinated by her with her differences and dreamy looks and he's doing something like falling but he's Sabaku no Gaara — he doesn't fall like that.
He briefly wonders what he ever did to deserve anything like her, but the idea is pushed away, because don't think like that.
.
The first thing he notices about her when she's striding through the hallways in her (it was quickly established she was boss, with few complaints) hospital is that she's not afraid — she's not intimidated by any of the scowls or gossip or — well, Suna. And he's shocked by that because he'd always lived in fear — before things changed for the better.
He watches her through glass, though, because she scares him to the bone.
.
Something eventually happens — sparks fly, and the two of them click. It starts with a fight, screamed obscenities and stubborn perspectives and they butt heads for a while and then oh, look, they're kissing.
Once they pull apart, she laughs, a mix of fairy wings and callouses and he smiles something like a smile — filled with bubbling fire and ageless terror and pouring rain and bitter broken memories — and they give things a try. Because he's all alone and she's always surrounded by people and (t)he(y) can't decide whether it's a match made in heaven or in hell and neither of them really want to find out the answer.
.
It (more or less) explodes when she asks him to choose between her and Suna. And oh god, he can't decide because he loves the people and he ohhedoesn'tknow her, and so he turns away and stares at the paperwork and half wants to 'sand coffin!' it and the other half just wants a pen.
And he tells her, "I love you?" with a question mark and she catches it and looks at him with sad, sad sea glass eyes and turns on her heel and leaves him, except she doesn't really, because she's back at his manor talking with Temari when he opens up the front door and she looks up and with their own little language they both say I'm sorry.
And no one asks any questions because the two of them — it wasn't really worth asking questions.
.
It's because of something like love that he lets her go — he doesn't want to, honestly, he convinces his siblings, because he doesn't really — and turns his back. It's because she hates the sand and she misses Konoha like hell. It's because she's not him — she can't take the heat just like he can't take the memories lingering in her home. And so he sees her off with a hazy smile and a couple regrets — scratch that, so many regrets. Because, oh, he knows he wasn't anything she wanted — he knows he was a letdown.
He watches her pink hair and emerald eyes leave with a breaking (broken) heart.
Because maybe he was nothing good, but she was everything amazing.
.
He never tells her he loves her (except that one time with that one question mark) but she knows anyway, and the two of them are like some dusty old book on the shelf, written and read and loved and put back. And when she gets back to Konoha, oh how she misses him, and Naruto and Kakashi and Sai and Ino and all of the rest of them really ought to know, but she doesn't tell them and neither does he, when she sees them all, because it might as well be a secret and secrets aren't meant to be told.
He never tells her he loves her because Gaara just doesn't do love.
.
and you leave him be
b e c a u s e
he's
h
i
m
and he doesn't know this
stuff.
{you love him anyway}