A/N: song: Breathe Into Me by Red
(O)
Instead of releasing the girl in his arms, he ended up griping her tighter at the news. A battle was certainly something he wanted to avoid, as protecting her proved more of a liability, and he didn't want the kunoichi to become collateral damage. Growing with irritability, he threw his things that had been discarded at the bank on, and Tenten was already pulling her hair back up when he buckled his baldric in place. Game face on, Gaara left her at the bank to consult with his siblings.
They flanked him, strategically going over best case scenarios and retreat tactics as they walked away from the bank as if scared that Tenten would overhear.
"Wait, wait, wait," Temari raised a hand as Kankuro spelled out a plan of attack that Temari was sure would only result in certain death for them. "Didn't you say that Tenten was apart of some tactician squad, like with Shikamaru or something?" The three siblings came to a halt, the boys peering at each other with a quizzical expression, then both pinning Temari with a the look of why ask that now? Gaara nodded.
"We can't loose that sword, Gaara," Temari warned, "Tenten is our best bet for coming up with a tactic to get us out of this mess, especially if there is as many of them as Kankuro estimated."
After a pregnant pause, Gaara finally blinked as he thought it all over. "We can consult the kunoichi," he used his most controlled voice, arms across his chest with his usual regal manner.
They were on their way to turn to find her when she came up, all business, and presented them each with a soldier pill.
"Already got a plan, it involves us running to the boarders of Suna as fast as we can: the Council will have several small squads camped along the edges as our back up, if we are lucky we won't need another pill before we reach Suna territory." She pulled on her boots and quickly buckled them.
Temari looked in awe first at the soldier pill, then at the serious kunoichi presenting it to her. "We run?"
"If we stay and fight we either die or make an international incident, Suna has been unstable with its bordering countries since the fourth war, and any bloodshed outside of Suna will result in direct violation of the latest negotiations that the Kazekage has worked so hard to get them to sign this last year to dissolve. Suna won't take the loss of the Kazekage lightly and if Sound gets involved, everyone loses."
She stated all of this while putting on the last of her shinobi gear, strapping her scroll in place and donning her fingerless gloves, stating the answer to Temari's question as fact. Everyone stared at her with mild confusion. Tenten rolled her eyes. "What? You didn't think that your council was going to send me on the basis of just knowing my sharp, pointy weapons, did you?" Eyebrow raised, she met each of their eyes, and they only continued to stare at her with dumb awe. That was exactly what they thought. She let out an exasperated breath, "Let's go. Try and keep up, I don't want to babysit your asses. Move." More exchanged glances as the siblings glanced around at each other as if debating on weather or not to follow her orders. After a short pause, Gaara nodded for them to follow.
Kankuro looked at his sister and muttered deftly, "And I thought you were bossy," which was returned with a firm smack to his cat-eared head.
Without respite, the sand siblings followed and were soon trying their best to catch up to the kunoichi in question, who was not kidding when she said she moved fast, and somehow Gaara thought Lee might be to blame for her amazing speed. He would have to inquiry later, as his breathing turned heavy from how hard it was to trail her, not that he minded the view. She could easily run circles around them all, Kankuro having the hardest time keeping up as he struggled and lapsed behind them all.
They sped over hill and terrain, jumping in tree branches when available, but the shade of the lush foliage and the cover of the trees had long been lost after an hour after straight running. This was a bit of a relief, as it was a sign to Gaara that Suna was not far ahead. After three hours with no break, Tenten broke from her spot at the front to pull Kurasu off of Kankuro's back before throwing him her canteen and plucking up the lead again. Kankuro looked grateful and miserable at the same time. The action of receiving help from a female gave him feelings of being feckless and the notion set his mouth in a grim frown, as he plied on to keep up with the rest of the covey, his grumbling lost in concentration to keep up.
After five hours of straight running, Tenten called for a small break, reminding everyone to stretch and rehydrate. Five minutes to rest was all she was going to give them before starting back up again.
Kankuro crashed first in a rugged-breathing-sweat-dampened heap next to his brother who was determined to keep his decorum despite how much he wanted to suck in air at alarming rates.
"She doesn't even look winded. I think I hate her." Kankuro rasped with distain before dousing himself with the rest of water from a canteen.
Gaara watched her stretch with Temari, taking note of her limber extremities and the way she interacted with his sister, as if she was her sister. This seemingly unassuming girl was part of Shikamaru's tactician squad. How had he forgotten that?
They were back running at top speed a few short minutes later, the borders of Suna approaching quickly. Gaara was happy to see half of the visage of his former Sensei, Baki, once they crossed the borders, as Temari clutched the stitch in her side as she caught her breath. Soldier pill or not, running that fast for that long was a bitch.
"Gaara," Baki greeted the Kazekage, "I just called the others from the boarder to join us here," he informed as Tenten dropped Karasu off in front of a supine Kankuro, spread eagle in the sand, heaving loudly each breath he took in.
He took Tenten aside and she briefed the man, whose only response was a head nod. With no question to the leaf-nin, he turned to Gaara, clearly impressed, although one would have had to know him for years in order to read it on his otherwise expressionless half face.
"I don't want her here," Gaara explained to the wind-user as his eyes roamed over the object of which he was speaking, "this isn't her war."
"No," Baki replied easily, "but she is in charge of this mission, and technically she outranks you right now. She is operating under the orders of the Council." He motioned for a trio of shinobi to come over to them with a hand wave, and Baki focused his attention on Gaara as much as the approaching ninjas.
"Escort the Kazekage to the tower, he will need to report to the council right away, protect him at all costs." The group saluted with a loud, "Hai!" and Baki nodded in return and looked over to Gaara who seemed to think that impaling him with the nearest object might relinquish some of the hate he harbored for the man in that moment for insisting that Tenten stay and fight despite his clear antipathy to the notion. Mission to complete or not, Gaara wanted her no where near battles of any kind. Baki sensed his irritation, far too familiar with the killing intent rolling off of him in waves to be properly distraught.
"We won't be so outnumbered once our back up arrives, go." Baki's words did not assure him that everything was going to go over smoothly, but resisting orders from the council would ultimately cause unrest amongst the ranks. He had no choice but to obey.
The trek to the tower was short time-wise, but long considering every step he made only created more distance between them, leaving him only with the worries that he wouldn't be there to protect her, and that she really shouldn't be fighting for his country to begin with: she wasn't from Suna, and asking her to die for his country seemed blasphemous, yet a part of his heart was proud that she was willing to put her own life on the line for the country he loved. Gaara's conflicting emotions got the better of him, and he could feel the chakra pool into his palms like it did in the wading waters of the stream, building into a tension enough to explode another fish if presented with one between his hands.
The elders of the council assembled, even before Gaara could properly catch his breath, eager for the reports of the waging war on their eastern boarders and anxious to see the Sword of Prosperity safely where it belonged on Suna land. The meeting wasn't brief, and Gaara was eager to get back into the fray, but he also knew as Kazekage, running headlong into a battle would be unwise, even if his heart remained there with his precious people.
Sometimes he hated being the Kazekage.
A few short hours after the Council assembly seemed an eternity for Gaara, even though he was bogged down with paperwork and other meetings, face after face demanding his attention on a foreign matter or some other obsequious matter occupied his time and served to distract him. Then another unknown presented himself with news, someone other than Baki to report about the ensuing battles on outskirts of Suna, which only served to heighten the awareness that something deep inside his gut wretched involunarily inside.
The unknown shinobi hobbled into the room and bowed lowly, field dressing on his right arm, marred with miscellaneous scrapes and bruisings.
The report was disparaging: heavy losses on both sides and Gaara inquired about the Leaf kunoichi that headed the operation, his siblings, and Baki.
He only reported that all survivors had been taken directly to the hospital, and Gaara nodded to the soldier and told him to report there as well so that he could also receive medical attention.
The battle had been brutal and savage, Suna eventually able to keep the borders free of unwanted mercenaries from slipping inside and exploiting the proximity of the sword and pilfering the treasured item back, but Gaara viewed it as a rather Pyrrhic victory. He nodded to his assistant, who knew instinctually that he would need to take a leave of absence and forged his way to the hospital, forming a sand platform to fly him there in all of his haste.
The front desk was empty as medical personnel raced hurriedly from room to room shouting orders and scurrying around IV stands and wheeling bleeding patients from one room to another. Kankuro stood at the receptions counter, holding a palm to his bleeding head as he waited for someone to validate his vulgar rantings. As a nurse walked by, he angrily announced that he wanted to see his sister and he would start tearing the place apart if someone didn't help him find her soon. The puppeteer stumbled as he raised his voice, already teetering from lack of blood, sprinkles of the crimson liquid splattering against the mottled white tiles below him as he struggled for purchase, spouting off an array of verbal diarrhea complete with crude visual hand gestures and equally disturbing threats.
The startled nurse helped Gaara catch him before any more cranial damage was done, and she set about the task of swathing his head wound before the idiot ended up either slipping on a puddle of his own blood, or just passing out from lack of it to his brain.
Gaara watched the nurse fuss over her brother's bandages, slapping his hand hard when he tried to remove the efforts of her ministrations, and she further explained as she checked his brother over for any other injuries that Temari received some internal bleeding that could only be taken care of in surgery, which was where she was now. Gaara nodded, then queried about any leaf-nin coming through, or any signs of Baki. The nurse replied that Baki had been unconscious when he had been admitted, and that she hadn't seen any sign of any leaf-nin, but he could look at the registry on the clipboard if that would be any help to him, or riffle through the lost and found box behind the desk.
It was a plain crate, not a box really, full of anything found that was not identifiable to a specific ninja so that people like Gaara might have some closure if they found a personal effect that had been bloodied and discarded on the battlefield. The contents usually held something like a necklace or a kunai that had initial on it or something else that another ninja had not pilfered, finding it too personal to use or be caught with.
As Gaara spied the edge of the crate, Kankuro broke the gravity of the moment with a startled, "I didn't see the butterfly, that's why I ate the chopstick," before passing out.
The nurse, who was taking the man's temperature at the time, deftly swore under her breath before explaining to Gaara that the man had hallucinated from a dangerous lack of chakra and blood and called for a crash cart. In a flurry of orderlies strong enough to lift his brother, Gaara was left by himself, once again staring at the edge of the desk, almost unwilling to rummage through the box for proof that the girl in question was no longer alive.
One careful step closer and the light reflected a shiny metal glaring brightly into Gaara's eyes. He suspected the object to be of importance since he was determined to further investigate what the object was that had caused such a penetrating gleam. Another step revealed that it was a metal plate of a hitai-ate. He slowly picked up the saturated cloth pinned with metal. The scuffing around the edges and the smell of the coppery liquid saturating the navy blue clothe caused the Kazekage to tense all at once, unable to draw his next breath.
It was a leaf forehead protector.
