Afternoon Reading

×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛× Chapter Start ×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×

Gaara waited in silence for Sakura to make her way downstairs. He had been waiting for a while and was quickly growing impatient. Anger and frustration were growing quickly and possibilities of how to go about ripping the offending girl upstairs to shreds ran rampant through his mind. But to his surprise his demon had been staying quiet ever since he had left her presence. The beast seemed to show no interest in in the way Gaara was thinking about this young girl. He shared no interest in killing the girl, not even a suggestion about what to do to depose of the body. He said nothing, and Gaara was in silence with his sinful thoughts. He scowled at the wall that was opposite him and the sand stirred in his gourd that he had moved inside. It sat leaned against a wall and the quark moved, the sand beneath it wanting to escape its confinements, wanting to react to its master and do his bidding. Or more so his demons bidding; rip apart things, or people, to be gorged in blood, and to make its master feel alive once again. It wanted to do what it had always done; kill. But no, Gaara - even though he hated himself for it - commanded his sand to settle. For some strange, and utterly ludicrous reason, he needed this girl.

He was going to lose it any minute now. He himself was pissing himself off! Why did he care about this? Why did he need to see her last night? Why did she have to not fear him like the others? And why was his stupid demon so damn interested in her when he didn't even want to kill her? He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes. It had been years since he had slept and due to his travels he hadn't even caught a light doze in months. Not to mention with the chunnine exams and now this, it had been days since he had meditated. Hid body ached with the stain of constant work, his eyes were sore and hurt, his feet hurt like no other, and his joints were starting to ache in a very sickly way. Once again, for those who thought Sabaku No Gaara never felt pain, they had obviously never had to go days, weeks, or even months without sleep. After depriving your body of something so needed your body turns on you. It was like it was punishing you for abusing it so harshly, for treating like a worthless piece of trash that didn't deserve such a luxury as sleep. He was exhausted, and hungry, and confused, and...and...at peace.

Gaara drew his brow together as he stared at the once offending wall in thought. At peace? How could that possibly be? No one like him could ever be at peace, his mind and body was a battle ground, his heart a shriveled up shell of what one would normally find in a so called human being. It was cold, and hard like a stone. But he was relaxed and felt comfortable in this house he was not familiar with.

'Why is that possible?' he questioned himself desperately.

Once again his demon chuckled in its cage. 'She's the one.' His statement was simple, short sweet and to the point. It was no question now that the demon approved it.

Gaara's eyes went wide and he stared at the stairs as he heard her make her way into the kitchen. This girl was capable of killing men and being covered in blood while sharing in his demonic look? It was impossible. Sakura appeared in the doorway with her eyes low to the floor and weariness in her step. Just as quickly as his expression came, it vanished, leaving behind his normal emotionless and stoic features in its wake. She slowly, tentatively, lifted her eyes to meet his. However his cold gaze sent to her back to looking at the floor.

"Why are you still here?"

"I told you I wasn't going to leave."

"This is my house Gaara," she said finding the strength to look up at him. "You're not even from my village, you can't just barge in here because we have this treaty, and you have to leave."

He glared at her and she instantly regretted her words of choice. He walked forward away from the counter and stood with danger just rolling off of him. "You have no right to tell me what to do. I will stay here until I see fit to leave, understood?"

Sakura took a breath and nodded quickly. "Yeah, sure." With that she walked away from him and quickly made her way into the living room and flipped on the T.V., inwardly cursing herself when she felt him follow her. She sat on the farthest end of the couch and he sat on the other end of it. He felt his demon smirk as Sakura tried to discreetly shift closer to the edge of the couch.

"Sakura?" he asked, amusement dripping from his voice. "Why won't you sit next to me?"

"Oh I don't know," she grumbled. "Maybe because some guy I have never met before decided to break into my house and is now refusing to leave."

Gaara smirked, amused in his little game with her. She was quite entertaining to mess with. "Touché."

"You know that you could get into a lot of trouble for this right?" she asked looking over at him.

"I know, but do I care? Not in the slightest."

"Why not?" she said with a burst of her temper as she turned to him. "I don't want to be associated with a person like you! Why one earth do you not care what your village thinks of you?"

"Because they don't care about what I think, or anything about me for that matter. They want me dead, they want me gone. I'm just a mistake to them that they want to forget." Sakura's eyes softened and she listened to him as he told her his answer. An answer she had not expected in the least. Why would a village be so ashamed of such a great ninja? "To me, the angrier they are at me the better."

"That sounds awful," she said quietly looking into the cup of tea she had quickly grabbed from the kitchen.

"It sounds like their stupid." His statement was cold and bitter.

Sakura felt the familiar uneasy chill snake up her spine at his hard words. "Why?" she dared to ask.

"Because they know that if they piss me off too much I'll kill them all."

Sakura bit her lips as she stared her reflection in the colored water of her cup as she thought about this. She did not see the way Gaara's eyes fallowed her move as he watched her think. He was fascinated with those eyes of hers, they could plainly display the emotions that others were afraid to show, such as fear itself, and even anger. And towards him, it was something to read into.

She took a breath and looked up before forcing herself to look over at him. "Gaara? Why are you here? Like seriously, why?"

"I was told to find you."

"Well yes, but why?" she urged him. "I'm really nothing special."

'That's not what I've heard,' he thought dryly. He could feel his demon nod in agreement. "I don't know, I just needed to find you."

She sighed and shook her head. "Ugh, you're much too vague."

"And you're too talkative."

"Hey!" she exclaimed whipping her head back to him with a fire in her eyes. Gaara stared at her, unfazed by her outburst. There it was again, the fire in her eyes that made her different. The fire that burned with a demonic blaze when he saw her drenched in blood. Maybe this really was the same girl, maybe she was somewhat capable of killing alongside of him. "That is an insult."

"Yeah, I know."

"Get out." Her voice was flat and serious, too bad he didn't give a rat's ass.

"No."

"Gaara, get out of my house now!"

"I just said no." he replied calmly, restating in his voice that he had no intentions of being kicked out.

"I will call the authorities on you," she tested, seeing if the threat held any response in him.

He offered a rare chuckle at this and smirked at her. "Go ahead and tattle on me, I'll kill em' all when they come."

Sakura shut her mouth at his blunt reaction. "Fine!" she said getting up from the couch. "But I'm going to have to leave soon for training, and when I do you can't stay here."'

He shrugged. "Fair enough."

"Good."

There was a short pause and in this time Sakura fidgeted with her fingers and decided that sitting there so close to his being and constant river of chakra flowing out of him and spilling to the floor just might drown her if she stayed too close for too long. She stood and tried to ignore his eyes as they followed her back into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot she kept on a timer for the mornings she was too lazy to start it herself. With just a little crème and sugar it smelt like heaven and savored the warm feel of the mug on her hands. She leaned against the counter and took a sip. It was only until she opened her eyes after her slow drink did she look up and find Gaara standing in front of her across the kitchen.

"So when will you be done with training?"

'Aw hell...'

×愛×▬▬▬×愛× Later That Afternoon ×愛×▬▬▬×愛

Sakura sat in the midst of her favorite medical book as the library. She had become recently fascinated by how the body worked and mended itself. It could be manipulated and drastically sped up with the right type of chakra control. The books held jutsus and symbols that she had never seen before. It had been weeks since she started her reading and she was pretty sure that this is what she wanted; to heal. She didn't want to fight people, or go to battle with an intent to kill. It wasn't her style, she wanted to help people who were suffering. It didn't matter what village they were from. Innocence should never be harmed in the wars between politics. But they were all the time and she felt as though her hands were made to ease their pain. It touched her heart to think that she could help people in the safety of her village like work at a hospital and still make a difference, while also traveling to battles and helping the soldiers fighting for their homeland.

She flipped the pages to her book and hummed quietly in the stillness of the library. There was almost no one around and she had all the time in the world to learn with the books and scrolls had to hell her. That is, until the exams start. Her heart sank at the thought of what she might have to do. Nobody had any idea of what the stakes were, the types of tests they were going to have to face or the dangers that would test their bravery.

She had almost lost herself in thought about the upcoming days when she caught a glimpse of something in the book she was looking at. A page number suggested at the bottom of an article on healing separate parts of the heart. It had a caption by it that said 'Hearts of those infused with a demon. See page 356'

She thought of Naruto and traced her fingers over the word 'Demon'. Flipping to the page she read over the articles. Everything was so precise, so detailed, and needed to be done with tentative care. There were subtopics about separate demons and different consideration that needed to be taken into account when healing their hosts. Do it wrong and you could damage the tissues with the raw power taken from the demon to heal its host, or worse – kill the host and set free the demon in their lifeless body. She read with cautious attention as she memorized hand signs and flow techniques, captured the pictures into her head locked them away. She needed to remember this, just in case Naruto were ever in trouble, then it would be her turn to save him.

Gaara sat on the roof of the library looking down at Sakura as she read and took scribbled notes. He was annoyed with her to say the least. She had told him she was going to training. After a quick stop at home for some coffee of his own and a small breakfast he left the apartment and set out to look for the training grounds. He had only wanted to observe and see her limitations for himself so he could know exactly how close to keep her during the exams. He had found three separate training grounds – none held her and hear team. Once he could not find any more he became frustrated and covered the town searching for her. It was no small feat and took him the better part of his afternoon. In the process he found her annoying little friend at the market in one of the vendor's tents, it looked like ramen. She was nowhere to be seen around him so he moved on. He found the Uchiha boy alone at a small clearing on the outskirts of town, training it looked like.

The demon stirred, whispering ways of using him as a stress relief for the fruitless afternoon of not finding the girl. He had made his feelings about the boy known as soon as he had saw him. He wanted him dead. Gaara was almost tempted to oblige to the beasts desires but knew better than to actually give in, Sakura needed her full team to participate in the exams. He would have to kill him later.

At one point Gaara found himself sitting on top of the Hokage monuments staring down at the city. It gave him a sense of power to be sitting so high and to be able to see so much of what he would soon concur. Everyone was so small and unaware. He was waiting for the wind to change. It was blowing from behind him and when it shifted all the smells from the city came wafting into his senses. The demon in his head took deep breaths of the air and sorted through all of the different smells and distractions. Nothing. There was nothing that reminded him of Sakura. He cursed his poor judgment. He should have taken the opportunities he had laid out in front of him to get her scent, her natural smell. He felt it deep within his mind that if he knew this it would be so simple to find her. But all the damn artificial smells that surrounded her, the coffee from her breakfast, the soaps and shampoos from her shower, the candles in her house, they all kept him from the fragrance that lay underneath.

He stood from his spot and stepped off the edge of the monument. Instantly his body dissolved into sand and spread out over the sky. Every particle of sand was a part of him and he covered the sky as he searched for her. It was some time later when he finally rematerialized on the roof of the library, glad to have finally found her. Trying to keep yourself straight when you're spread over an entire village drained him and made him feel misplaced and out of sorts. It was because of this that he tried to never have to do that. He only used this method to teleport short distances and become one with the sand around him if he ever had to ambush and enemy. He looked down through the windows on the roof and sure enough she was there, sitting directly below him with her nose stuffed in a book. He looked closer at what she was reading and found them to be medical books.

He stepped back, why would she be doing that? Medics were meant to help and heal people. Mend them back to their healthy state and save lives. The girl that he had seen first showed to care for life and looked as though this idea of helping others didn't even register in her mind. He created a small ball of sand, using his jutsu to create and eye connected with his own optic nerve. It slipped easily through the cracked open window and sunk down to hover above her as she read. He was actually surprised to see her reading on healing demon hosts. He felt his heart lurch in his chest.

'Could she know?' he asked the demon. 'Could she know what I am?'

There was a pause before the demon spoke his reply. 'No,' it said surly. 'There is a different reason for her interest in this. Since we arrived in the village I have felt another.'

Gaara thought over all the people he had come across in his travels through the village so far. He had not seen anyone like him, he had not felt the same vibe and chakra print on anyone as it was with himself. 'Who could it be?'

'Someone she knows, it has to be…'

It was at this point that he chose to make an appearance, again.

His sand swirled around him, tired from his search over the city, and slowly he started to melt away and file through the open window. The particles feel like rain silently behind her, building up into a pile in the form of a man, and slowly molding back together until Gaara was standing behind her.

×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛× Chapter End ×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×▬▬▬×愛×