.

He'd said that the world was chaos, that patterns in history's events were only coincidental—but that didn't mean they hadn't regressed to the beginning, and that she once again had every reason to believe he'd finally snap and kill her. His response to an unpleasant stimulus was almost invariably to destroy its source, leaving Sakura no longer as sure a treaty or some half-understood game would protect her. Two days after he'd left her—and only one after Tsunade, smirking, had noted the faint marks he'd left on her throat—he came back . . . though the attack she half-expected didn't follow. Instead he headed her off on her way to meet the Fifth, sneering, far too tense, his advance narrowing her options down to either running or facing him.

She still wouldn't run. Even if his rage was so blatantly evident that every self-preservation instinct in her demanded she get as far away as possible as quickly as she could, she still wouldn't run.

Eyes wild, he snapped his question before she had even stopped moving. "What good is all of your talk about emotion and caring and humanity if you still deny me?"

Meeting him anger with anger could only prove disastrous. One of the many questions that had occupied her spare waking moments slipped free. "What if I hadn't?" Sakura paused, watching his expression closely. "What if I had let you? And then what if I had hated you for pushing me into something I wasn't ready for? Then what?"

She still might have imagined the slightest flicker across his features, of something that wasn't hate or arrogance. "Then what?" he hissed in return.

"Then this would be over. You said you didn't want that."

She'd starting to box him in, but it still wasn't in his nature to retreat. "Why would I want to continue, to associate myself with someone as pitifully weak as you?"

"This made you happy, you said. You said you enjoyed it."

"It's a distraction, a way to bide my time."

Explanations meant he was being forced into a sort of retreat after all.

"If that was all for you, you wouldn't have stopped." With the words came realization. With all of his obsessions about power, with his rage, his violence, he was more than capable of forcing himself on her. The fact that he hadn't was a measure of his . . . Attachment? Respect? Addiction? Or possibly just of her incredible luck? "You said 'please.'" She swallowed hard with horror, certainty. "You wanted me to be willing."

"Willing? I want you to enjoy it." His best weapon had thus far been untouched. Gaara bared his teeth at her, maintaining the distance between them as his voice dropped to a lover's whisper. "And you did."

She couldn't deny it, and now had entirely too much to dissect to even attempt a denial. Suddenly, she wasn't as certain the act would have been less making love to him and more just surviving him.

"But," he continued, as his expression shifted back to terribly wrathful, "You're still afraid of me."

"After what you said—" The implications of everything he was saying gave her a hundred different reasons to run, a hundred different reasons to put an end to things right then and there. He had wanted to kiss her. He had wanted her to enjoy it. He had wanted to touch her. He had wanted her to enjoy it. He had wanted more than submission, more than power over her. He had wanted her to . . . "You didn't want me to enjoy anything! You threatened my life if I didn't!"

"That? Don't you pay attention? I said that I wouldn't! I said I want you alive!"

Wanted her. The adrenaline pouring through her made her legs and arms shake uncontrollably with the urge to run, to move, to get away now, though she knew if she bolted it would take him only a few seconds to catch up.

But . . . The shaking. Not just hers, his. He hadn't moved in on her smoothly, arrogantly. He'd shook—the same as he had in the beginning, when he was unused to her touch. The spasms of his muscles said he'd been . . . Nervous? Afraid? Afraid of what?

Rejection. Afraid of her turning him away.

To cover her cringe, to not let him squeeze out of things so easily, she attacked again. "You said you weren't sure I'd survive any other way!"

"Don't you understand? This is what I am. This is what I was made for. I am a monster."

How many times had he heard that as an accusation before adopting it as his personal aphorism?

"But how would that have made me immune to anything?" Did he realize he'd readily played the monster so long for her that he'd stymied her ability to see him as anything else? Did he actually think his words, no matter the intentions, wouldn't have caused such an adverse reaction? Had he even been thinking when he'd started talking? Or was he actually trying to protect her from himself?

"We'll never find out, will we?" Which meant he didn't know. As if to cover, Gaara flung out another accusation. "You're afraid of me. You're afraid to look at me."

His emphasis on the last few words told her what had set him off, gave her deeper insight into what he was upset about, and abruptly made her sure she was a horrible, shallow, incredibly callous person. Sakura would have kissed him if he'd been calm, in all likelihood would've unhesitatingly met his need with her own until the next time his expression shifted and she once again remembered his grip on his sanity was tenuous at best.

Afraid to look at him. She'd dealt an incredible blow to his ego and hadn't even realized it.

When she reached out in a motion that may have been intended to either gesture or touch, he snarled. Her trust in him at the moment was measured by how she immediately froze.

"Only to control," he hissed. "Only for your own purposes. And when you're finally faced with me"—with his rage, his hate, the clench of his raising hands and the grotesque permutation of his features that marked either his madness or his transition to his demon's form—"You're afraid. You run. And if you run, you're just like everyone else."

Sakura set her feet, certain that doing so was one of the stupidest things she'd ever done. But she had to. Cowering would in all likelihood only make him see her as a potential victim. Submitting, accepting his accusations, would only tell him what to do to trample her the next time they clashed. Facing him was what had set her apart from the others in his life, would hopefully keep him placated enough that he wouldn't completely destroy her.

But he wasn't touching her. Through everything, though he had reached out part of the way towards her, though his insanity was at the surface, he still would not put his hands on her in anger. It meant that, on some level, he understood what was going on and was controlling his actions—was fighting past every one of his regular impulses and refusing to physically hurt her. It meant he knew if he attacked her, then whatever fragile thing it was they had built between them would be destroyed.

This knowledge meant she could relax the tiniest bit, could take a deep breath before forcing her tone to soft and engaging him again. "You don't know how to do anything but fight, do you?"

He blinked, startled, then grimaced. "You know that's not true."

"It's the most comfortable for you, though. It's what you know. It's familiar."

"That doesn't mean anything." Thankfully, though, his hands were lowering, expression settling. She appeared to have defused him.

Aside from that, it seemed they were at a standstill.

"I have to get to the Fifth's," she offered.

His sudden, toothy smile made her sure there was something to worry about. "Yes, you do."

"Are you on your way out?"

"Not just yet." The smile got wider as his tone dropped to sinister. "I have business to take care of first."

"What?"

"Go ask the Hokage."

He made no move to follow her as she left, her horror warring with disbelief. He couldn't mean what she thought he did. Once again she stormed, shaking, through the door to Tsunade's office. "What's going on?"

The woman was never one to mince words. "He's sticking around for a little while."

Sakura stuttered, finally settling on one word. "Why?"

"The Kazekage's message essentially said he's proven problematic, to the degree that they don't want him around." Tsunade sighed. "So they sent him here, hoping he'll stabilize in the time it takes him to get back."

"On a fake messenger mission?"

"It's a real messenger mission. It's been one every time. This time, though, the reason is a little more blatant than the recipe exchange we were doing earlier."

This time Sakura choked. "Recipe exchange?"

"He's been here every few weeks lately. Did you really think I had that much to talk to Sand about?"

It had gotten worse. His own village didn't even want to deal with him, and now she didn't have a way to avoid it. "You sent him out there to find me?"

"I sent him to find out where you were, yes."

Which meant the older woman had almost certainly been watching their interaction. "You knew."

"I guessed."

"But . . ."

"Enough stammering. His stabilizing will in all likelihood not occur until whatever problem it is between you two has been fixed."

"You're ordering me to—"

"I'm not going to order you to do anything. Call it 'encouraging.'" Tsunade's slight smile took the edge off of the words, but just barely. "You didn't kill each other down there today. You managed to take the worst of the edges off him without lifting a hand—and despite his delivery, I think a big part of him wanted that from you. With a few weeks and a handful of visits you two would probably work things out. I'm just giving you the time you need to accelerate that."

"But you're 'encouraging' it as a favor, to maintain relations! That's tantamount to an order!"

"No," Tsunade snapped. "Not for relations." She stood, then started pacing. "Have you ever noticed how many ninjas live to an old age, Sakura? And of those, how many weren't taken out of commission by being seriously maimed or crippled in missions?" Tsunade stopped moving and faced her, features twisting with emotion. "Have you ever watched the people you care for die in front of you, no matter how hard you've tried to save them? No, he's not stable. It's part of what he is. There's no helping it. However, barring Shukaku rising to ascendancy or a massive breakdown on his part, he's the only thing you don't have to worry about. He's obsessed to the point that he'll never abandon you and he's too damned hard to kill for it to be likely that you'd have to go through what I did!"

Parallels. History repeating itself. Sakura had heard of Dan, of the incident that had left Tsunade afraid of the sight of blood, but had never actually heard her mentor speak of him before. If the Fifth saw her student as a younger version of herself, it seemed reasonable that she would try to protect Sakura from the things she had suffered. The patterns they saw may be forming only to break, but there was no telling when the breaking point would come.

Desperation made Sakura voice her last protest. "But you don't know what he wants!"

"All he wants . . ." Tsunade took a deep breath. "Is confirmation."

And in the basest of ways, that was what it would have been.

ooo

Sakura tucked away a small list of items she needed to pick up for that day's training, closed the office door, and turned around to find him leaning against the closest wall, his arms folded, waiting for her.

"You were listening," she accused, but there was no heat behind the words.

He looked up, met her eyes. "I wanted to be sure it wasn't an order."

"It matters to you."

"It shouldn't. You want me to be someone else." Gaara sneered before continuing. "You want me to be him."

"That's not true." Even though on some level she knew he was right. He was too different, too harsh, too strange to match up with her ideal, her perfect concept of how things should be. And her perfect concept had always hinged and focused on one person.

Looking down was showing weakness, putting him further on the offensive.

"If he came back, would you accept him with open arms? Would you pretend things were the same, even though he's made his decision as to where he stands? After the lines had been drawn, he chose to rise up and be counted among the enemy."

"He didn't kill Naruto."

"But he joined the one that killed the Third Hokage. Do you think he sat idle these past few years? Do you think he has some sense of honor that would prevent him from doing anything to would stain him in your eyes? He fights for that quarter now. If you met him on the battlefield, would you give up, give in, and hope his conscience would protect you? Though you fight me, would you give him whatever he wanted, be it his freedom or your life?"

"It's different—"

Gaara uncoiled, his hands flexing and eyes wide, and took a single, aggressive step forward. "How is it different?"

Letting him continue talking exponentially raised the possibility he'd personally hunt Sasuke down before bringing her a memento of the killing as proof of his strength, his superiority. The Sand ninja would definitely have no problem with wiping a person he saw as his major competition out of existence. But though he'd beaten Sasuke before, Naruto had beaten him. And Sasuke, after accepting Orochimaru's offer, had beaten Naruto. Gaara going up against Sasuke alone wouldn't necessarily result in a repeat of their last fight—and she was afraid of any of the possible outcomes. Which meant . . .

Her heart sank as she realized that somehow, despite Gaara's considerable list of faults, she actually cared for him. And while she may have been holding him up to an unfair ideal, he'd thoroughly mauled that ideal to the point where she questioned it as well as herself. Once again, he'd given her far too much to think about.

When Sakura looked up again, his expression was completely blank. All of his emotional shields were up, and he ignored her hand when she reached out towards him. "I need time," she whispered.

"You've had time."

"I need more." She grit her teeth, hating herself for having to ask. "Please."

If he saw it as a victory, he gave no sign. "Why can't you decide now?"

It wasn't in his nature to beg, to crawl, to show weakness to an opponent, to lower himself in an attempt to garner her favor. His reaction was more to push, to manipulate, to destroy. Continuing to harass her rather than respect her request could only mean he was getting closer and closer to the point where her words would no longer faze him.

She refused to explain herself. "I'll come find you when I'm ready."

ooo

On her way through the halls, she once again found the sand stuck to her arm couldn't be rubbed off, picked away, or otherwise gotten rid of. She decided it was fitting.

It may have only been minutes since she'd left him, but she had to think fast. He'd seemed to be running at less stable than usual, and if he came to find her . . .

A quiet, far-too-calm voice in the back of her mind reminded her that if it came down to it, all she had to do was close her eyes and hang on.

The problem there was how he apparently wanted more than a few moments of submission. While it would in some way prove his power over her if he could convince her to accept let alone enjoy him, she was certain they'd moved beyond that stage of their strange, convoluted relationship. He'd opened up. He'd talked to her. If it were just about power, he wouldn't have said anything that could give her an edge on him.

He'd trusted her.

If it came down to it, Sasuke had told Naruto about his quest to kill his brother long before she'd ever known Itachi as anything other than "a man."

Sakura shook her head. She refused to think of Sasuke at a time like this . . . but what he had meant to her decreed his memory would hold a place in her decision as well.

She stopped right outside of the door to the building, only feet away from the place where Gaara'd once confronted her about giving up too easily, and decided it was an ironic place to try to make up her mind.

She might have every reason to run. He might've trusted her to some extent, but Sakura had any number of reasons to not trust him in return. She'd managed to drastically adjust his proximity to her two days before but couldn't be sure he'd continue to give her space when she needed it, couldn't be sure the distance between them would hold should something else set him off. Knowing he would probably rather kill her than let her break ties completely somehow stood even with the fact that she desperately didn't want to let him go. Greed, he'd called it, when they were talking about death. The base concept applied here as well. But if she didn't . . .

The sand falling away from her arm was the only warning she had. A vague sense of warmth prompted her to lean back, bumping her shoulders against Gaara's chest. In return he shifted in slightly, pressing against her as one of his arms wrapped around her waist. Her not pulling away upon realizing his proximity had apparently been taken as an acceptance. His accepting the contact said volumes about the level of his addiction.

His accepting the contact told her she already had the perfect bait and hook, one that he could never refuse. Herself.

"I told you I'd come find you," she muttered.

"I was headed out. You were in my way."

As an explanation, that might have to do.

Sakura took a deep breath as she considered her major problems with him. She stroked his wrist, then fitted her fingers between his. "Is it so wrong to want something to be perfect?"

He snorted softly, the gust of air ruffling her hair. "Perfection is a myth, an impossibility."

He was insane. Even excluding the possession, too much other damage had been done too long before, and the scars were too deep for anyone to ever be able to fully repair. Hoping that he could ever be a normal person was futile. But for Sasuke to abandon Leaf for only the promise of power, knowing Orochimaru's intentions towards him . . . It was either insanity or stupidity, and Sasuke had always been hailed as a genius.

Sasuke wasn't housing a demon that would take over and consume him given the chance, of course. Instead, he was carrying a cursed seal that would overrun his body and drain him of more chakra than he was able to use—which would effectively destroy him.

"But to want it. I think that—" That she was afraid of Gaara's propensity for violence, though he hadn't actually directed that towards her since the fight in the forest years before. "That we try to find it. That's why we believe the people that feed us our ideals. We want that perfection."

"Seeking that ideal beyond rational thought is stupidity."

She'd been afraid of him, but she'd been afraid of Sasuke as well. When he'd first used the cursed seal during their chuunin exam and his anger hadn't been directed at her, she'd managed to shake away her fear in order to stop him from going completely out of control. In the hospital, though, only hours before he'd left, when she had been so sure her good intentions would go over well and he'd struck out at her . . . She'd been terrified. And then with the way he'd attacked Naruto . . .

"But by constantly trying to make that perfection happen, make it exist, could a person not better themselves?"

Only hours before he'd left. Only hours before both he and Gaara had re-thought what side of the line they wanted to stand on.

They'd switched sides near-simultaneously. That had to count for something.

For a moment he was silent, his thumb rubbing against her index finger. "For the self, that may work, but only until you lose the line between possibility and idealism." His hand clenched. "But when you do it to others . . ."

Rejecting him because of his violence, his insanity, because of her fear, when Sasuke had elicited the same responses from her by running along the exact same lines would be the blackest of hypocrisy.

Sakura twisted away carefully, turning to face him. "Then that's not right. At all."

His maintaining the distance between them could either mean she was supposed to take the step, or that he was still less than content with her—if not both. "Few things ever are."

She still had too many questions she needed to ask him, had far too many things that needed clarified. Standing around watching him wouldn't get any of that accomplished. Her only problem would be getting him to trust her enough again to be open.

Sakura reached out, tugged on his sash, and watched as his expression settled at bemusedly curious. "I have to go pick up a few things."

"I'm supposed to find books for the Hokage."

She blinked. "The library's inside."

He smirked.

She may have just come closer to dying than she ever had in her entire life.

But . . .

Leaning closer, she inhaled against his shoulder, stopping only when she noticed how he'd gone from confused but curious to definitely focused. "You didn't kill anyone," she said. "This soon after, you'd definitely smell like it if you did. But you didn't."

"I frightened them, so they sent me away."

It was probably wrong to be proud of herself for not showing too much outward dismay. "But only for a little while."

"It doesn't matter."

More parallels. She chose her words carefully. "Should they have given you the benefit of the doubt?"

"No." The corner of his mouth twitched. "That would be stupid."

She wasn't sure if that sounded more like forgiveness or understanding.

"Only possibly." Sakura smiled wryly in return and formulated the closest she could come to an apology. "We both misjudged each other, didn't we?"

"Yeah."

That, she supposed, would be the closest he'd come to one as well.

ooo

He stuck around for a few hours that day, a quiet and watchful presence in the corner of the Hokage's office as Sakura worked through her lessons, but when he left it was without saying goodbye. She decided that, in regards to all the trouble he'd put her through, she had no reason to be upset—but still found herself unable to shake off a sense of disappointment, confusion. Sakura wasn't the only one that seemed confused, though. Her sometimes-companion stopped her in the street two weeks later to question her reasons for carrying an armful of cut flowers before moving close enough to unsettle her and demanding to know why she had them in the first place.

"They're for the hospital," she gaped.

"But why? They just die. They're only useful while they're pretty, and they look pretty for a couple of days and then they die. And then they're useless, and you throw them away for new ones."

"You know how this works. People don't mind that they're only temporary."

"So they accept that something will disappoint where it once brought happiness? Where's the sense in that?"

If she took his words at the level she believed he was aiming for, then it sounded almost like he was trying to talk her away from him. "Sometimes we have to take the bad with the good. Perfection is impossible, you said."

He watched her, considering. "You got them for the people you've worked with."

"Yeah."

"You're too soft."

"I heard it from the Fifth already." It was her turn to consider. "Would you rather I was like you?"

"You would put up a better fight, if you were."

"One of us would be dead by now, if I were. By accident or otherwise."

He nodded, lips twitching into an almost-smile, but said nothing and made no attempt to touch her. She told herself it was hesitation on his part, told herself the next time she saw him that she reached out in order to help him feel more comfortable and not because she missed the contact as well. He may have made the move to head her off on her way home that evening, but he still didn't relax at her embrace even as his arms went around her in turn. She found it both understandable and disappointing.

"Tell me," she tried, her cheek against his, her hands against his ribs. "Do you think people believe in fate for comfort?"

"It would be easy to, wouldn't it? To believe that everything that happens does so because it's supposed to." He paused, then pulled back to look at her. "To think that way would justify the thinker's actions, whatever they may be, because if something wasn't supposed to happen it simply wouldn't."

"I don't see a way to prove if there is such a thing as fate, either. Anything could happen for any reason. Reactions to other events, progressions, patterns . . ."

"Willpower. But if there's fate, then what we want is meaningless. If there's not . . ."

Sakura shrugged. "It seems like comfort both ways. 'I can change things' versus 'Everything will eventually fall into its designated place, no matter what.'"

"Maybe we should worry more about what's definitely happening or going to happen, instead of about how our thought patterns may or may not affect the rest of the world."

"Definitely," she grinned.

For a moment he was silent, watching something over her shoulder thoughtfully. "We're not fighting."

"Yeah."

Another pause, as he absently rubbed her side. "This never could have gotten this far if he'd still been around."

"No." Sakura shook her head. "It couldn't have."

It would be perfectly all right to lean against him, be held, and wait for as long as it'd take something to disrupt them. It would be better, though, to try to repair the damage she'd done. His hand half-raised when hers settled against the side of his face, her thumb rubbing over his brow ridge. The gesture seemed to trouble him more than it had in the past. "What are you doing?"

"Looking."

The place on his forehead that wrinkled when he was either confused or agitated took both of her thumbs and a few tries to be smoothed. Eventually, though, it seemed like he understood what she was attempting to do: Gaara stilled, his expression forced to calm, his head down and eyes closed as she brushed his hair away from his forehead, traced his cheekbones, grazed her fingertips over his lips.

He might trust her after all, she decided. Or he might just want to badly enough to risk her hurting him again.

She didn't want to hurt him again.

It might have been because he could let her touch him, or because he might still trust her, or even because he seemed so much less threatening in repose that she stretched upward to press her lips against the spot of skin between his eyes.

She'd never seen him move that fast before. His head jerked up and he stared for only a fraction of a second before latching onto her, the simple lock he used to twist one of her arms behind her back effectively immobilizing her without actually causing pain. "Do not," he hissed, face inches from hers, eyes wild, "play games with me."

"I'm not." It had become far more serious than any game, than anything she'd expected. The fingers of her free hand skimmed over his cheek as she leaned back in to butt her forehead against his, willing the muscles that had stiffened in shock to relax. She could grant him this moment of domination on one condition: that he realized it didn't come for free.

"Who was Yashamaru?"

The hand holding hers, maintaining the lock on her arm, clenched hard enough to hurt. Sakura remained still, patiently, with immaculate confidence. Her perfect bait and hook was still herself—and he hadn't seen it coming until she had him.

"Tell me," she said.

"My mother's brother. One of the medical ninjas on the team assigned to keep track of me when I was a child." He glared at her. "He tried to kill me. I killed him instead."

Things he'd said long before suddenly started to make sense. "You've been telling me about him from almost the beginning."

He nodded once, tersely.

"You said I reminded you of him."

"When you tried to stop me from killing the Uchiha. It saved your life."

There had to be more. "What happened?"

"He told me I was precious to him. He told me he loved me. Then he accepted a mission to assassinate me."

The way Gaara's expression had gone completely blank told her this had to have been where everything in his life took a sudden, major turn for the worst. Sakura wrapped her arm around him and pressed her face against his throat, trying to think of anything to say other than the "I'm sorry" she managed to mumble out.

He let go of her hand and pulled back so she could see his anger. "I don't want your pity."

"It's not pity." She bit her lip. "Pity implies . . . Thinking less of someone."

The way his muscles tensed said he was ready to either bolt or tear something apart. The safest place for her to be with him was still as close as possible: running her hands over his back to gauge how far he was from snapping, considering the warm skin of his cheek and throat as possible places to leave another kiss as proof of her support, her affection.

If closer was safer, then his previously stated desires didn't seem nearly as unreasonable.

"I know what it implies." Gaara set his forehead back against hers, and as his eyes closed she felt him slowly begin to relax. His murmured words were close enough that she could almost feel them, could almost feel his lips move. If she leaned in the slightest bit more, she would be able to. What had happened the last time they'd ended up in this situation . . . was irrelevant. Had been a fluke. Needed to be continued.

"But what it actually means," he told her, "is that since you feel sorry for them, you behave differently towards a person than you usually would."

He had her. Anything she did out of the ordinary would be seen as a gesture of condescension.

"But . . ." His hand caressed the nape of her neck. "You wouldn't be foolish enough to do anything like that, would you?"

If she pressed her face against his shoulder, he wouldn't be able to see the way her cheeks colored. "No. Of course not."