Just because I'm hurting
Doesn't mean I'm hurt
Doesn't mean I didn't get what I deserve
No better and no worse
~ Coldplay
To Die
By Amazonian21
"Don't die!" she plead, and demanded, and begged, and sobbed. Two words rolling and clashing together, turning and turning, changing meaning even as they remained the same.
He felt, from a distance, her hands on his battered chest, frantically moving over the many lacerations and contusions marring his shredded torso. It was so bad the pain didn't even hurt him anymore. The pain belonged to his body but his mind no longer did.
There had been an awful moment during the fight when he'd seen her go down to his left. She'd blocked a hit meant to blind side him, losing her balance and crashing into a boulder in the process. For five seconds she'd been nothing more than an angular meat sack, thudding dully in an inhuman, sloppy way before slumping to the ground in a heap. It was disgusting and horrifying and disturbed Gaara more deeply than he'd thought possible.
He hadn't thought it distracted him from the remainder of the fight, believing himself capable of coolly continuing his barrage of attacks and parries without thought for fallen comrades along the way. Battle was battle and people fell. She got back up eventually anyway and went back to kicking ass and taking names, but without realizing it, he didn't get back up with her. Her momentary defeat had rattled something deep in his foundation. To what extent he didn't know, but one attack from the insanely powerful S-ranked criminal they'd been struggling against had hit its mark. His sand failed to protect him in time, his sand armor was torn through like wet tissue, and he felt the blow like a zing of electricity before he was knocked to the ground.
When he couldn't move his arms and the pain from the torn muscles in his chest made it impossible to draw breath he had a moment of clarity. This was bad. This was really bad. He might suffocate from lack of oxygen. He might bleed out through thousands of torn blood vessels, leaking onto this thirsty desert sand. He might, in this moment, really really die.
He didn't know what to think about that.
He deserved to die for all the death he'd caused. He knew and accepted this as his due. He may have been a created monster, but he was still a monster nevertheless. His father had effectively put the one tailed beast into his body, but not every death he caused was prompted by the demon. He'd often killed just because he wanted to, because it pleased him to do so, for no other reason.
Dying in a hard fought battle to protect the lives of his village was more than he'd ever expected for himself. It felt like atonement had come to him at last. As the blood seeped out so did his ability to care much one way or the other. In fact, he would have slipped away entirely if it weren't for one pink thread holding him in place, even before her hands came to rest on the meat of his chest.
She loved him, and he loved her. It was weird because they'd known this about each other for a while now and it had never caused him any drama or uncertainty. Loving her was so easy it was bizarre. A murderer like him, tainted and filled with the darkest potential, should never have fallen into the role of lover so easily. But she completed him, brought him light, and made him see the world in shades of life instead of endless possibilities for destruction. She made him, protector and passionate guardian of his village, make sense. She made everything- life, beauty, purpose- make sense. It would have been enough to keep him up at night in confusion if it weren't so easy and subtle.
So when she told him to live he paused, reoriented himself in the world of the living, and listened to what she was saying. He knew she was frantically pumping her chakra energy into his body, mimicking her mentor's last desperate efforts to stem a tide of too much blood. He knew she was making deals with gods or whoever she thought might listen. He knew she really did want him to stick around, to see what all the fuss was about, to keep on partaking of the beauty they created just by being together.
He didn't know if he could do it, honestly. He was hurt pretty bad. She was amazing and had the ability to bring dead things back to life, but he might not be one of those things this time around.
But he knew he would try. He'd changed from a monster with no soul to a monster with the desire for a soul to a monster with humanity. Maybe, if they made it through this one, he could lose the monster altogether.
Maybe, if she could pull him back from dying all the way, he could let the monster die in his place. Then she could have whatever was left over, and welcome to it.
A/N: To die would be an awfully big adventure.