Canon divergence because fuck Sasuke. That guy is the worst.


"When I was six years old, I wanted to die."

To her detriment, Sakura has always had a fondness for broken things.

He would resent that distinction — "I'm not broken," he would say with a scowl — but her choices over the years have made for a fairly convincing track record.

Starting with the Uchiha.

Orphaned. Traumatized. Vengeful. Power hungry. Single-minded to the point of self-destruction. But she'd loved him all the same. Until one day after the war ended — specifically, the day he'd informed her he was leaving, yet again — she realized she'd outgrown him, and deserved a man who wasn't so destructively selfish.

Somewhere in between, there had also been Hatake Kakashi. Even now, years later, she's still not sure how they fell in to bed together. It had been unconventional and frowned upon by many — taking up with a man fifteen years her senior who'd had a hand in raising in her — even though she'd been of consenting age — well, almost — and his days as her instructor were all but over. Something about it still hadn't looked quite right to their peers, but neither had cared.

Despite also having been orphaned and traumatized, where it counted, Kakashi had been everything Sasuke had not: relentlessly kind, unfailingly patient, entirely unselfish, and content with his place in the world, and she had loved him. But a relationship in wartime with a man who believed to his core that he had been responsible for the deaths of everyone he had ever loved had not been easy, and at some point, they had both realized it never would be. With no less love for one another, they had both agreed it would be best if they went their separate ways, and after the war had ended, even though it had been hard — and still is — she'd happily accepted his invitation to continue in her role as assistant to the Hokage as he took up the mantle.

Over the years, to a certain extent and in a different capacity, there had also been Naruto. Also orphaned, but not quite traumatized, and lacking a single uncaring, selfish bone in his body, he'd been the brother she'd never had, or even known she'd wanted. And she'd loved him. Loves him still. She only wishes she'd realized it years earlier. The knowledge that, in her ignorance and foolishness, she had contributed to the suffocating loneliness he'd endured as a child breaks her heart daily, and all the years of love and friendship they've shared to this day cannot change that.

So when she looks at Gaara, and sees yet another little boy the world hadn't seen fit to love, her heart breaks all over again.

When I was six years old, I wanted to die.

The words cement themselves in her brain.

"You can't mean that," she says.

But in six years, she's never known Gaara to say something he doesn't mean. His darkened expression reaffirms that.

She reaches across the bed and lays a hand on his chest. Suddenly he feels so very fragile.


Even though she asks, Naruto opts not to share much of Gaara's personal history when she's assigned to oversee antidote development as part of a Suna-funded research project on toxins — either out of deference to the Kazekage or misplaced concern over Sakura's feelings about the man. Possibly both. She's seen very little of Gaara over the years, and still holds some reservations about the young man's mental stability, though she's never chosen to share them out loud because it isn't in very good taste to openly criticize a powerful ally, and she doesn't want to upset Naruto, who has very strong convictions about how much Gaara has changed.

So she goes into a six-month stint in the Wind country mostly blind, with only the knowledge that Gaara had not been blessed with a terribly pleasant childhood, and that Shukaku no longer holds residence in his brain since she'd had the misfortune of being on-hand to witness the One Tail being forcibly extracted from his body three years prior. But she doesn't think it will matter much, because surely the Kazekage will have matters more pressing than medical research in which to invest his time, and their interactions will be minimal. And she isn't entirely wrong.

At first.

They don't cross paths until nearly two weeks after she's arrived. Kankurou had been officially tasked with getting her settled since he would be her poisons counterpart heading up the project. He specifically requested her when the project had been proposed, he tells her with a sly smile — the admission doesn't surprise her. She has always suspected that he might have developed something of a crush on her after the night she'd detoxed him of Sasori's poison and she cannot help but return his smile before continuing to organize her work station. Then he apologizes for the absence of his brother and sister — they're attending a summit of the Suna elders to discuss spending and the continued post-war effort to rebuild the village, he says. But, Sakura doesn't mind. She's perfectly happy to skip the formalities of being welcomed by the Kazekage and his advisors and immediately immerse herself in her work instead.

When the summit ends two days later, Temari promptly swings by the hospital to make sure Sakura has been properly situated — Does she have the equipment she needs? Is her apartment comfortable? Is she eating? Sleeping? Is Kankurou giving her a hard time? — and, once she decides she's satisfied with the medic's accommodations, to inquire after Shikamaru, which Sakura is sure had been the true intention of her visit all along. Gaara does not make an appearance, for which she is secretly grateful. She no longer fears him, because after six years and two wars, she has seen and experienced countless things more terrifying than a twelve-year-old jinchuriki unable to control the bijuu sealed inside him. But his perpetually brooding demeanor and quick temper on the few occasions they've seen one another since her first chuunin exam still leave her wary.

So she spends much of the first two weeks gently rebuffing Kankurou's frequent invitations to dinner at his brother's. She doesn't want to hurt his feelings — not that Kankurou's feelings are easily wounded — but she also hopes he'll eventually tire of being shot down and stop asking, because the idea of sitting down to dinner with him and his siblings is a stressful one. She likes Temari and Kankurou just fine, but their's is a family whose inner workings she isn't inclined to see up close, so she continues to kindly refuse. Simply staying late at work, she finds, makes for an easy loophole, because unlike Kankurou, after years of studying under the Fifth Hokage, Sakura is acclimatized to excessively long hours in a hospital. She only needs to stay an extra hour or two before Kankurou will start to yawn and decide to call it a night. Tomorrow night, he'll insist. Yes, she'll say with a polite smile, maybe tomorrow night.

The Friday of her second week, she unwittingly stays at the hospital until nearly midnight, absorbed in a promising antibody until her stomach gives a weak growl and she realizes the time. Reluctantly, she puts away her equipment, grabs her flak jacket, turns out the lights and ducks out of the lab to head for home.

She'd spent some time in the Wind Country before and during the war, but finds that she still doesn't care for the desert climate — unbearably hot during daylight hours, and shockingly cold once the sun sets, so she's taken to wearing her shorts and quipao when leaving her apartment in the morning, but toting her flak jacket along for when she returns home in the evenings. She knows it's a silly combination, but evidently none of the clothes she owns — or at least the clothes she'd packed — are appropriate for Suna's climate, so she's resigned herself to making the best of it.

So it's on the corner of the street outside the hospital, hands stuffed into the pockets of her flak jacket, shoulders braced against the biting wind and desperately wishing for her infantry pants, that she finally runs into him. She recognizes his familiar shock of red hair from the front steps, and, realizing that she can't simply turn and head the other way — the opposite direction of her apartment — she slowly makes her way down to the end of the block where he's waiting.

"I was on my way to see you," he tells her.

There is still something in his voice that she doesn't like — the eerie calm she remembers as a child that had belied the rage and bloodlust just below the surface.

"Oh," she says, offhanded. "Why?"

"Kankurou says you've been working late."

"There's a lot to work on."

"He thinks you're avoiding me."

She frowns. "I'm not."

He studies her for a long moment, and she shifts uncomfortably.

"You look different," he says, and she vaguely recalls why she's always struggled to make conversation with this man. Whatever unpleasantness he'd lived through as a child had left his social skills a little wanting, even after years of friendship with the single most charismatic human she knows.

"Yes, well, it's been almost a year."

He continues to stare at her.

"Your hair is longer," he points out. "And your dress is different."

She supposes he has a point. She had taken to growing out her hair after the war ended, though she hasn't made much progress as it's only just started to reach past her shoulders. And when she'd come home from the war officially on the jounin payroll and happy to be alive, she'd promptly gone out and furnished herself a new wardrobe, including a new dress that's reminiscent of both the qipao she'd worn as a girl and the red vest she'd loved back in her chuunin days — sleeveless with a high collar, in red, of course, but it fades nicely at the waist into a short white skirt that's split at the sides to allow for a longer hemline in the back, and zips up the front. She'd personally emblazoned a white circle below the bust after bringing it home.

"I decided to grow my hair out," she says with a shrug. "And I bought some new clothes. You look different, too."

She means to make a point, but truthfully he looks much the same as he did during the war with his tanuki eyes, unkempt red hair, grey vest and tawny overcoat, and historically apathetic expression. Except maybe, she thinks, he's gotten a bit taller. And maybe he's filled out a bit more, but compared to many of her male peers who have finally come out on the other side of adolescence and started to put on some muscle, he's still too wiry to be eighteen years old and a shinobi.

He blinks at her, disbelieving. "I do?"

"Yes, you're not as skinny," she tells him. "Are you finally sleeping?"

The corners of his mouth turn down. "No."

She immediately regrets asking and shoves her hands further into the pockets of her jacket. Her hair whips around her face and she can feel the tiny pinpricks of sand on her bare arms and legs as the wind picks up again.

"Apologies, Kazekage-sama—"

"Gaara."

"What?"

"I'd prefer if you just called me Gaara."

She eyes him warily. "Okay… Well, I was just on my way home—"

She moves to step around him, and is dismayed when he shifts as well and their shoulders knock together.

"It's late," he says. "I'll walk you."

She thinks that really isn't necessary, but keeps it to herself as she starts down the street in the direction of her apartment and he falls in step beside her. As they walk, she realizes that he's most certainly gotten taller, and by a solid three inches at least, because when once she'd been able to look him square in the eye without even lifting her chin, she now finds herself staring at his jawline instead. It bothers her just a bit — she's come to dislike men who can look down on her, and whether he means to or not, Gaara still has a habit of looking down his nose at people.

He says little as they make their way through the darkened Suna streets, except to ask if she's comfortable in her lodgings, which she assures him she is, and they both lapse back into an uneasy silence. She wishes she'd just politely insisted on seeing herself home instead of agreeing to let him walk with her because it's cold and she'd really prefer to just run the rest of the way so she can get inside and out of the wind and the sand. She has to force herself to match his easy pace, even as another stiff wind picks up and her stomach twists painfully with hunger.

When at last they round the corner of her street and find themselves standing at the front steps of her building, he looks down at her and asks if she'll come tomorrow then, and her head snaps up in confusion.

"What?"

"You said you weren't avoiding me," he says, "so you'll join my siblings and I for dinner tomorrow?"

She opens her mouth, then closes it again, resigned.

"All right," she concedes.

She thinks she sees a flicker of a smile tug at his lips.

"Six o'clock. Kankurou will be happy," he tells her.

Is that all? She shifts her weight from one leg to the other and stares up at him, hands still fisted in the pockets of her flak jacket.

"And you?" she asks.

His expression smoothes over and she can no longer gauge his emotions.

"It's good to see you," he says and she can't help but give a little snort of laughter.

With a wry smile, she says "Goodnight, Kazekage-sama," and heads up the steps into her building.

But, curiosity gets the better of her once she's made it up to her apartment on the top floor and locked the door behind her, and she finds herself drawn to the window that overlooks the street in front of the building to see if he's still standing outside. But when she pulls back the curtain and peers down at the darkened street, he's disappeared, and she wonders why she's surprised that he'd simply headed home. Her stomach gives another groan of hunger, and she shakes her head at her own behavior and goes to step away from the window, but a shadow on the neighboring roof rediverts her attention and she realizes he hadn't left after all. She watches him for several minutes, tracing his darkened outline, mostly just to be sure it's actually him and not god-knows who else. She wonders if he knows she can see him, and whether or not that had been his intent in the first place.

"Strange boy," she says quietly, and pulls the curtain closed.


The first thing she realizes the next day is that, in addition to being inappropriate for life in the desert, all of the clothes she's brought with her from Konoha are also inappropriate for being invited to dinner with the Kazekage and his family. Aside from her every day attire, she'd only packed her Konoha infantry uniform as a precaution. Her typical dress-and-shorts combination is casual enough to pass as civilian clothing and she hadn't seen the need to bring along anything formal. It would have just taken up space in her already small pack, and no one wants to hump a heavy, overstuffed rucksack three days across the desert. She curses her evidently poor decision, because she has plenty of pretty new dresses hanging in her closet back in Leaf that she could have worn if she'd had the forethought to bring them, and now she has to go buy one.

So after having breakfast and a shower, she takes what she deems to be a healthy amount of ryo from her wallet and sets off for the markets in search of an acceptable boutique.

Suna, as it turns out, does not have the same range of shopping as Konoha, presumably due to its history of economic struggle, and it takes Sakura the better part of an hour, looking in windows and popping in and out of shops, before she stumbles upon an upscale little place tucked away on a side street with an assortment of expensive-looking dresses in the windows. She wouldn't have dared set foot in a shop like this before her jounin promotion, because living independently at sixteen on a chuunin's paycheck hadn't left her with a lot of extra money each month, at least not if she'd wanted to eat. But money had become less of an issue for Sakura since the war had ended and she'd added a jounin's income to her existing salaries as the Hokage's assistant and a resident medic at the Konoha hospital, so she doesn't bat an eyelash as she walks inside.

It doesn't take her long to find what she's looking for. The dress she singles out on the rack and holds up in front of herself in the mirror is bright sunshine yellow, flecked with blossoms in black, white, and a shade of peach pink that closely resembles her own hair color. It's long enough to brush the floor — because she's not as tall as she wishes she were — with long sleeves, a deep keyhole neckline that twists up into a high collar, and an elegant open back. She doesn't even ask to try it on, and cheerfully ignores the staggering price tag as she hands hands the shopkeeper all but ten ryo of what she'd taken out of her wallet this morning.

Back at her apartment, she strips out of her clothes and carefully zips herself into her new purchase, pleased to find that it fits her like glove. The bodice will force her to go without a bra, though her breasts aren't large enough that she foresees it being a problem. But as she admires herself in the bathroom mirror, she also realizes belatedly that a dress like this really necessitates a particular kind of shoe — namely, the kind she hadn't brought with her because she doesn't even own any. She'd given heels an honest effort for the years she'd trained under Tsunade — because if the Fifth Hokage could live and fight in them, then so could she, dammit — but had eventually returned to a flat sandal because heels weren't part of her infantry uniform, and their disadvantages had become immediately apparent once she'd made the switch. She wanders out into the hallway and inspects her black knee-high sandals — the most elegant alternative that she'd been able to find when she'd given up her heels — before deciding that if she polishes them up a little, they'll probably look just fine, because she's already spent more money than she should have, and the dress is long enough to cover them up anyway.

But when she arrives outside Gaara's building at ten minutes of six with the hem of her dress gathered in one hand prevent it from dragging along the ground behind her, she sorely regrets that line of thinking. The two masked Anbu standing guard outside tilt their heads, as if puzzled by her appearance, so she gives them her name, and explains that she's been invited to dinner with the Kazekage and his siblings, and they promptly usher her inside, where another Anbu escorts her to the elevator and up to Gaara's suite on the top floor. She waits until the elevator doors close and the Anbu is out of sight before she knocks on the door, still clutching the hem of her dress. When it swings open after a beat, she finds Gaara standing in front of her, dressed in a long-sleeve black pullover and standard-issue black infantry pants, barefoot. His eyes widen just a fraction and she realizes her error in assuming a family dinner with Kazekage would be a formal event. The blood immediately rushes to her face — she's far too overdressed.

She hears Kankurou shout from somewhere inside, asking if it's her at the door.

"Yes," he calmly calls back over his shoulder, but his eyes never leave her.

For a lack of anything else to do, she releases the hem of her dress, letting it flutter to the floor around her feet, and anxiously smoothes out the front.

"You look nice," he says in a quiet voice, as if he thinks someone else might hear, and then promptly steps aside, gesturing for her to come in as Kankurou walks up behind him.

She's even more embarrassed by her choice of attire when she sees his naked face and messy hair, and that he's barefoot just like his brother.

"Wow, Sakura!" he praises her. "What a dress!"

She laughs — mostly at herself — and thanks him, explaining that she hadn't realized this was going to be a casual get-together, to which Kankurou jovially responds that she ought to always overdress. In her peripheral vision, she sees that Gaara is still staring at her.

"Get in here," Kankurou insists, grabbing her hand and pulling her inside. "Food's almost ready."

He immediately shouts for his sister and takes off down the hall— she needs to get out here and see Sakura's dress.

Sakura, unfamiliar with both her surroundings and her situation, remains in the entryway beside Gaara. There's a soft click as he shuts the door behind her, and then a tentative hand touches her exposed back.

"This way," he says.

She turns her head to regard him, but he's not looking at her anymore. Then she feels his hand fall away as he steps past her and follows after his brother.

Last night's thought returns to her: strange boy.


Dinner turns out to be a light-hearted, if slightly awkward affair. Sakura doesn't consider herself close enough with any of the Sand siblings to really feel comfortable sitting around a dinner table with them, but finds that conversation comes easily enough: her work. How the project is coming along in its early stages. Life in Konoha. Life in Suna. Stories from their genin days. Gaara, for the most part, says very little and spends most of the meal simply observing the interactions of his brother and sister, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth every now and again.

Toward the end of the meal, having had enough of Kankurou's ruthless teasing for asking Sakura about Shikamaru, Temari turns to Sakura and demands to know where she'd bought that dress. She asks if it was a little place just east of the markets, down a back alley. It was, Sakura tells her, and Temari makes a face.

"Did you know that the man who owns that shop designs dresses for the wife of the Wind daimyo?" she asks, and points a finger at Sakura's gown. "That dress is probably one-of-a-kind! I can't imagine how much you paid for it!"

Sakura smiles and shrugs. "Well, I have to look the part, don't I? How else am I going to land a rich husband?"

She tosses her hair over her shoulder for effect, and the eldest Sand siblings dissolve into laughter.

"You hear that, Kankurou?" Temari ribs him. "A rich husband! You're out of luck!"

Kankurou smiles and insists that he simply hasn't made his fortune yet - he's only twenty, after all. At the other end of the table, Gaara shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

"What about the Uchiha?"

Sakura nearly chokes as the words leave his mouth, and Temari does a double take between the Leaf nin and her youngest brother.

"Oh, Sakura, no!" She scolds, oblivious to Sakura's discomfort. "Please tell me you're not still on about him."

Too quickly, Sakura jumps to her own defense and the words come tumbling out before she has a chance to properly think them through: "Oh please, I gave up on that daydream two years ago when I started seeing Kakashi."

Kankurou's jaw drops, and Temari just stares at her dumbly, as if she hadn't understood.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Did you just say that you got a leg up on Hatake Kakashi?"

Sakura rolls her eyes, realizing what she's just brought upon herself. "Not in those exact words, but yes."

Kankurou balks. "The Copy Ninja?"

"Yes," Sakura repeats, annoyed. "We were together for over a year. You didn't know that? I thought everyone knew that."

Temari and Kankurou continue to stare at her, completely dumbfounded, so she chances a look across the table at the youngest Sand sibling to find his face completely blank. If Gaara has any opinion on this information, he doesn't show it. But, his brother and sister promptly launch into a full interrogation, and the questions come rapid-fire.

How old was she? Almost sixteen. Almost? Yes, almost. How old was he? Thirty-one at the time. Wasn't he her teacher? Yes, but not anymore. Wasn't it weird? No, why would it have been weird? They didn't get in trouble? No, they were both adults. The Godaime didn't castrate him? Tsunade didn't care. Why him? Lots of reasons. When had things ended? Just before the war. Why?

Sakura stiffens.

"It just didn't work out," she says, and reaches for her sake cup, hoping the siblings realize she has no interest in continuing the conversation, and drop it.

They don't.

"I don't get it," Kankurou says, disbelieving. "Kakashi?"

Temari rolls her eyes at her brother. "I do."

"But he's old."

Sakura's hand tightens around her cup.

"Temari. Kankurou."

In unison, both siblings immediately turn to look at their brother, and Sakura recognizes that tone in his voice. She remembers hearing it as a twelve-year-old during the chuunin exams when his siblings had stepped out of line. It's an order — a warning. She takes a sip of her sake, watching him over the lip of her cup. His face is still preternaturally calm. She doesn't know how to feel about that.

"I think we've done enough prying into Sakura-san's personal life for one evening, don't you?" he says, and even though the words are meant to sound good-natured, it's his polite way of warning his siblings they'd best leave things alone.

He reaches for his own cup and takes a slow sip, and when he meets her gaze over the rim, she immediately looks away and reaches for the bottle in the middle of the table to refill her cup, ignoring the fact that Temari or Kankurou should pour for her.

Kankurou gives an uneasy laugh.

"Gaara's right. Sorry, Sakura," he says, grabbing the bottle from her and holding out a hand for her glass. "It's none of our business."

Sakura forces a smile and hands him her cup. "It's all right, Kankurou-kun. It's just a bit of a sore subject still."

He frowns at her addition of the diminutive suffix to his name, but says nothing as he refills her cup and hands it back to her. She should feel bad, but she doesn't. Better to just let the crush run it's course, she thinks, taking a sip.

Later, after the dishes have been cleared away, when Temari and Kankurou say their goodnights to head for their respective homes, Sakura does the same — thanking the siblings for their hospitality before following Temari back out to the entryway. Kankurou, she notices, despite having announced his departure, lingers in the kitchen with Gaara. She mentions it to Temari as she zips herself back into her sandals.

"Probably to talk about you," Temari says with a shrug, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

Sakura feels the blood rush to her face. "What?"

Temari looks at her like she's an idiot as she shrugs into her flak jacket. "It's the most reasonable explanation, don't you think?"

"No," Sakura says, frowning. "Why would they have any reason to talk about me?"

Temari only smiles, and Sakura gets the feeling the older girl must know something that she doesn't, and it bothers her. But before she has a chance to press Temari for more information, Kankurou and Gaara emerge from the kitchen. She presses her lips together, zips up her other sandal, and gets to her feet. Kankurou smiles as he walks past her to stand beside his sister in front of the door, while Gaara stops just behind Sakura. She glances briefly between the two, feeling as though she's missed something.

"Temari," Gaara addresses his sister, "thank you for cooking. It was delicious, as always."

Temari's expression warms visibly as she smiles in response. Then Gaara turns to his brother.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he says, and the two embrace briefly and Sakura suddenly feels very lost, unsure of what it is she's witnessing.

And then they're gone, wishing Sakura a goodnight and shutting the door behind them, leaving her standing in the entryway with Gaara, without his siblings for a buffer. She glances over at him to find him slipping into his sandals and looping a large white scarf around his neck and shoulders. She doesn't bother to ask what he's doing.

"I'll walk you home," he says, turning to face her.

Sakura feels her patience wearing thin.

"That's kind of you, but I'm sure I'll be fine," she says, struggling for a polite means of saying no. "I don't want to be a bother."

He unlocks the door and holds it open for her. "You're not a bother."

Realizing she's not being given a choice, Sakura forces a smile, gathers up the skirt of her dress and steps out into the hallway with him right behind her.

"I apologize for my brother and sister's behavior earlier," he says once they're in the elevator.

She looks up at him, surprised.

"You don't have to be sorry," she tells him. "And neither do they. It just isn't something I like to talk about. With anyone."

"I understand," he says with a nod, and she finds herself believing that, of all people, he probably understands the most.

She can't imagine the memories he must live with, and if what Naruto says about him is true, she can't imagine how he lives with them at all. She feels a familiar ache in her chest at the thought, and silently warns it away.

They reach the ground floor, and Gaara nods silently to the Anbu on duty as they exit the elevator and pass down the hallway to the front doors. But when they step outside into the empty street, Sakura is entirely unprepared for the cold and the wind that cuts right through the thin fabric of her dress and stops dead, dropping her skirt tail and locking her arms over her chest to hide her now obvious lack of an undergarment. She wants to hope that Gaara won't notice, but she when she looks over at him, he's already unwinding the wrap from around his neck.

"No, please," she says quickly. "Don't. I'll be fine if we just hurry."

But he ignores her and, moving to stand in front of her, carefully brushes her hair out of the way and wraps the large scarf around her shoulders. His eyes never dip below her neckline, and suddenly she wants to die, because it all but confirms that she hadn't been able to cover her chest fast enough and he'd most certainly noticed. Then, to add to her embarrassment, he reaches down, carefully gathers the hem of her dress off the ground, and holds it up to her. She stares him, bewildered, wondering what he's playing at, or if he's just being polite. She accepts it from him with a wary thank you.

"Will you be warm enough?" He asks.

"I'll be fine. It's not that far," she says, snapping even though she doesn't mean to, so she adds, more softly: "Thank you."

He gives her a faint smile that she only recognizes by the way his eyes crinkle just barely at the corners, and she isn't sure why. Maybe it's only because she exists in such close proximity to Naruto and is therefore a friend by extension. Or maybe Naruto is right and Gaara truly has changed and this is simply how he treats people now and she's the only one to whom this behavior seems out of character.

The latter is a nice thought, and she finds herself smiling back at him for a brief moment before the wind picks up again and she buries her face in his scarf to try and escape it. Warm fingers touch the naked skin of her back for the second time that evening and a hard shudder tracks down her spine. She hopes he simply thinks it's the temperature.

"Come on," he says softly, and with a gentle nudge, encourages her to start walking.

As they walk, she's pleased to find that his pace is quicker this evening, even though it means she nearly has to jog to keep up. So long as she doesn't trip over her dress, it's worth it to make it back to her apartment and out of the cold. She belatedly wonders if Gaara is cold, having given up his wrap for her sake, but when she glances over at him, he appears completely unbothered by the temperature, even as another gust of wind whips at their faces and Sakura shrugs further into his scarf to protect herself.

"You're not cold?" she asks, peering up at him over the top of the wrap which she's managed to wiggle all the way up over her nose to hide from the biting wind.

He glances over, and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm fine," he says, and for some reason, Sakura feels her cheeks redden.

It's strange, she thinks. She doesn't find him immediately handsome the way she had Sasuke or Kakashi. His facial features are still soft and delicate the way they had been when he was a boy, and he's too thin for his age and height — a byproduct, along with the kohl black circles around his eyes, of years spent suffering from insomnia that ought to make him look sickly but somehow fails. But something about the way he carries himself, the glint in his eyes when he finds something amusing, that small, guarded smile… Sakura doesn't know what to make of him now.

"I feel bad," she tells him.

His pale eyes flicker back to her. "Don't."

They've turned on to her street before she realizes, and while she's grateful at the prospect of warmth and a lack of sand — which isn't entirely true because this is the desert after all and there is sand everywhere — she's strangely disappointed when they slow to a stop outside of her building. She looks up to find him staring at her expectantly, so with her free hand she reaches up to unwind the scarf from around her shoulders, but he shakes his head.

"Keep it," he says.

She makes a face at him. "But, it's cold and you have to walk back."

"I told you, I'm fine, " he assures her, and she recognizes that half-smile again. "You can return it to me another time."

She smirks at him, realizing what he's attempting to do. Another time?

"So, I'm going to see you again, then?"

He crosses his arms over his chest and shifts back on his heels, knowing he's being teased. He explains that he wants to come by the hospital, to see how the project is coming along. He says he's interested to see what she and his brother are working on, if she doesn't mind.

"You need my permission?" she asks, grinning. "You're the Kazekage. Can't you do whatever you want?"

He regards her seriously. "Yes."

"Well, then, I'll be sure to bring it with me to the hospital on Monday," she says, tucking the scarf in closer around her face. "Thank you for lending it to me."

"I don't think Naruto would forgive me if I let something happen to you," he tells her.

She knows it will hurt his feelings if she laughs, but she can't resist the opportunity to poke just a bit of fun at him. "Like walking home alone after dark?"

He frowns at her.

"You ought to have more faith in your people," she continues cheerily. "And your friends."

Then, with a smile — even as he continues to stare at her, dismayed — she wishes him a good night, and turns to head up the steps of her building.

"Goodnight, Sakura-san," he calls quietly after her.

She thinks they could be friends.

When she makes it upstairs, she gives in and allows herself a peek out the window to see if he's still there — if he's going to make a habit of this. She might have to say something if he does. She looks first at the street, then at the nearby rooftops, but he's nowhere to be found.

Good, she thinks. She doesn't want to have to say anything.


He knows she only does it to bother him. And he's not sure why he likes that. As she walks inside, leaving him standing alone on the street outside her apartment building, he thinks maybe it's because she's the only woman other than his sister brave enough to have a little fun at his expense. Except he wouldn't like looking at Temari's back if she ever wore a dress like that.

The thought immediately sends him homeward.