FST = Fan Soundtrack (as opposed to OST). This was fairly common terminology back in the day, so I guess I'm old. Shiz. It's just a playlist.
The idea of Gaara as a thirst trap that just follows Sakura around makes me laugh so hard still. I feel like there's a comic there if I could draw anything besides stick people.
Took a while to get it out because I wrote this chappie out, hated it, scrapped it, rewrote it. Blurgh. It continues at the pace it desires to go.
Disclaimer: see part 1
Shikamaru had been nice and given Sakura the cell with a window looking out to the courtyard where the security force dispatched everything from fire brigades to emergency medical services. If Sakura yelled loud enough, Tsunade might even hear her on a quiet day in the medical compound just beyond the courtyard, but she wouldn't be dumb enough to try attract her mentor's attention right now.
Sakura was quietly telling herself to calm down as she watched the shadows slowly shift across the cold floor of her cell when Ino burst through the door with an accusatory finger pointed in her direction. A glance to the side showed Sakura that Gaara was still sitting with his back to the bars, totally ignoring her in favor of meditation or some other equally irritating version of complete lack of concern for their predicament. So Sakura backed away from the bars and sat on the floor to wait for Ino's tirade. Truly it would have been either Ino or Tsunade, and odds were that Tsunade was probably inside the council chamber at this very moment. Her teacher would flay her later.
"How can you be so stupid?!" Ino looked good, if a little thinner than she remembered, tired. That could have been from some sort of wedding planning but the wedding wasn't going to happen for more than half a year. Sakura wondered in the back of her mind if perhaps grief over her could have contributed to Ino seeming more haggard than usual. Regardless, she felt defensive as her best friend took a deep breath to berate her at full volume. "You, against all odds, survive being left to die and instead of running off somewhere like a sensible person you come back here?! What were you thinking?!"
"Look, you don't have the full story," Sakura said, irritated. Weeks and weeks of rough living, grueling travel, having her life in danger, and nearly no private time away from one of the most dangerous people in the world were making her tolerance razor thin. These were the people who loved her, right? They should be at least a little happy to see her! "Let me explain…"
"Oh and a fiancée? What the hell! Was it like, you had a near death experience and now the nearest farmer's son will do? You are the pickiest person I have ever met when it comes to men, and now suddenly you're dragging some skinny red haired guy around with you? I see how you keep looking over at him every time you flinch, so I know I'm not totally wrong here."
She was looking over at Gaara? Sakura wasn't even aware she did that. Weird. "Damn it, Ino, let me get a word in for once…"
"Are you even a virgin anymore? Oh gods, is that why the demon wouldn't take you, are we all going to die because—"
"INO. STOP." Sakura was done playing around and the steel in her voice finally broke through Ino's increasingly panicked babbling. "First of all, the demon isn't coming for us."
Ino looked around the room and pulled a rickety wooden chair from near the door over in front of Sakura's cell as her words escape like lashes of a whip. "I am all ears as to your new miraculous connection to the will of the demon. Did you receive a vision on the mountaintop? Talking animals? Burning bush? Enlighten me as to your very practical and reasonable conclusion making ability when by all rights you should be dead right now." Her voice lowered and there was a stray tremble as she said. "I thought you were dead." She cleared her throat and those eyes that could pin Sakura to a wall not so long ago did their best to intimidate. Sakura was surprised to find that after so long in Gaara's presence, and after the experience in Suna that Ino's attempts to cow her just seemed quaint.
"I know this is going to sound crazy, but… the uh, demon and I became sort of, I don't know… friends? This is hugely hard to explain…" Sakura's use of the word friend actually seemed to catch Gaara's attention and he turned his head to regard her with that disturbingly acute stare of his before quirking his lips and going back to meditating or whatever it was he was doing. Clearly he wasn't going to interrupt her narrative.
"Friends." Ino said flatly.
"Yeah, you know how these things go." Sakura weakly supplied, stalling as she tried to think of what she should and shouldn't tell her friend.
Ino flicked her hair back, her long high ponytail so familiar that Sakura felt at least a little bit like she was home at last. Other than the jail cell, getting yelled at by Ino seemed like the kind of normalcy she had desperately missed without knowing she missed it.
"No, I really don't, Sakura. You're going to have to tell me. And it better include how you ended up with him." Ino gestured towards Gaara. "Shika told me he said you were betrothed."
It didn't seem prudent to just spill the beans about who Gaara really was, but Sakura could probably tell enough of the truth so that what she said wasn't a lie, precisely. "Well, you aren't wrong about how I was left on that mountaintop and I was all set to do my duty," Sakura spat the word like a curse, "But the monster never showed up as expected, and so rather than die of exposure I got free. It turns out he's not a monster, just a man."
Gaara hadn't turned to her at that, but she saw from the corner of her eye how his forehead creased in mild surprise.
"They elders won't believe you."
Sakura got closer to the bars, gently touching Ino's fingers. Her hand was cold from having been sitting in the cell for a couple hours, but Ino was the one shivering. Ino was terrified but holding herself together through anger, something with which Sakura could easily relate.
"He's a man with a lot of pain, and I just couldn't ignore pain. I can't ignore it." She knew Ino would at least understand that, Sakura was always the person who ran towards disasters instead of away. Sakura's impulse to help is what had impressed Tsunade enough to take her on as her apprentice after years of denying potential candidates. "It turns out he's more reasonable than people gave him credit for."
Ino was no fool, and Sakura couldn't help but stare in Gaara's direction while she spoke. "He's not just some farmer's son, is he?" As always, she was going to make Sakura say it out loud. Ino liked people admitting their truth in front of her, and she had always been good at helping Sakura find perspectives outside of herself.
"No."
"Is he really betrothed to you?"
Like with Shikamaru, Gaara's deep "Yes" came as Sakura said "No."
"Interesting," Ino said, the beginnings of a smile finally cracking her granite exterior. "Regardless, I meant it when I said the elders won't believe you. Shika came to find me when they stopped arguing about if they were going to kill you and instead moved on to how. I told him I just had to see you, before something…" The touch of desperation in Ino's eyes made Sakura's heart ache. This was her best friend and Sakura couldn't even think of how painful it had to be to go from thinking your friend was dead, to alive, to soon to be dead again. And if Ino was this torn up, her parents were probably frantic. Plus who knows what crazy things Temari had said to them. This was a huge mess, and Sakura had no clue how to make her voice heard above the din of too much emotion. "Trust you to mess up dying. I should have figured."
The joke was lame, but welcome. It meant Ino wasn't really mad, not in a way that would last.
"Do you have any proof? Maybe if you had proof that the demon wasn't going to come rain fire on us in the night and kill us all then they would at least stay your execution until they could confirm it. I think they are just scared, Sakura. They think you doomed us."
Sakura felt her temper rise. "Do you think I could ever do that? You know as well as I do that I was ready to die for this village."
"I know that. All your friends know that. Tsunade knows it. But Tsunade is just one voice on the council, and she might be able to shout them down but she needs time to change minds and they are voting as we speak." Ino shifted her gaze to the shadows of the bars on the floor, expression bleak.
Gaara stood and both women watched as he regarded them with curiosity. "Your way has proved ineffective."
"Gaara," Sakura's heart sped up as alarm oozed over her, causing goosebumps to rise. "No, please. I'm handling this my way. These are my people, they won't harm me."
He knew she believed that, Sakura hoped, but he also wasn't inclined to continue to sit here and do nothing now that Ino had revealed her present danger. Ino, for her part, was sizing up the man claiming to be her betrothed while also observing their interaction with some puzzlement.
"This woman just indicated they had already decided your fate. That they need proof. I can provide that proof."
Ino let her hands fly up. "Gods Sakura, why didn't you just tell that to Shikamaru in the first place! You should go tell the council right away!"
"You're not helping, Ino, shut up." Sakura ground out, annoying her friend, before turning back to Gaara with pleading eyes. "Gaara, don't do it, it will only cause a panic. This won't help anything at all. You're not good at being discreet."
He didn't look affronted, but Sakura knew she was losing this battle as she heard the hiss of what she suspected was sand moving up the wall outside. "I'm adept at stealth when I wish to be. You, where would I find this council?"
"Don't tell him!" Sakura said, voice rising in pitch as she sensed she was losing control of the situation.
"There's a large circular town hall in the middle of town, but I don't see how you're going to get there when—" Ino stopped talking and jetted up from her chair as two wedges of sand rose up in front of Gaara and bent the thick steel bars in front of him until a large oval formed. She was clutching the bars of Sakura's cell with white knuckles as she began to shake in earnest from the fear based adrenaline dump she no doubt experienced as she realized who Gaara actually was. Sakura tried to reach through the cell and hold her friend, but it was hard to grip her. Meanwhile, Sakura started to yell at Gaara.
"This is exactly what I didn't want! Are you just going to march through town, bust down the door, and terrorize the council into letting me go?!"
"If necessary." Gaara snapped at her, and Sakura realized finally that whatever control Gaara had relinquished in this scenario he was reclaiming and she would just need to do damage control later. If that was even possible.
She grasped at straws. "What about my safety? Temari isn't here and without you I'll be a sitting duck again."
Gaara considered her for a moment and then with a tilt of his head that hissing sand filled up the spaces in the window and solidified, leaving them in total darkness. Ino started to groan, a low precursor to a scream that didn't seem able to leave her lips yet.
"I can't see in the dark, Gaara!" pinpricks of light appeared in the sand blocking the window, allowing enough light back into the room for her to see Gaara's self-satisfied expression.
"I'll be blocking up the door as well. I'll inform Temari to retrieve you." And with that imperious statement, he stepped out the door. Ino, now out of his presence, collapsed against the bars and slid to the floor with something like a sob. Sakura knelt next to the bars, trying her best to comfort her friend.
"He could have at least got me out of my cell too," she murmured to herself before turning her attention back to Ino.
As soon as Ino had put herself back together, Sakura was suddenly very grateful that Gaara hadn't gotten her out of her cell because her best friend looked like she was ready to beat her into the ground. Just because Sakura had won every physical fight they had ever had never stopped her before, and it had been years since they had blackened each other's eyes (the last time had been over a series of escalating misunderstandings regarding Ino's comments about Sakura's comparative beauty to her).
"You brought him here! The demon! Here!"
"Yeah, well, I thought he would behave a little better because I didn't think another village would want me dead."
Ino, even in the throes of panic, was sharp. "What do you mean another village wants you dead? You owe me an explanation right now. No, strike that, like ten minutes ago!"
Sakura cursed Gaara under her breath for being unable to keep his own nature secret for even one day, and took a deep breath before launching into her tale again, the full tale. The only part Sakura snipped out was accidentally molesting Gaara that night before their departure, as well as their continued arrangement massaging his scars. She told herself that wasn't relevant to Ino's understanding, but she knew that in normal circumstances she would have divulged that as well to her friend. Ino had known about every other terrible romantic encounter Sakura had had, but this one she needed to keep close to her chest. The thought that she was doing that because it might be more meaningful than those other experiences put a dark cloud in her mind she couldn't shake. Once she had gotten them caught up to the present, only interrupted by Ino's various questions, Sakura couldn't tell if it had been one hour or three since Gaara had locked them into the room with his sand. The pinpricks of light didn't allow any judgement to the position of the sun.
"Well," Ino said into the silence. "I'd call you a liar if I hadn't watched your fiancée bend those bars and lock us in here. With magical sand. Gods, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud."
"Don't call him that," Sakura said, sighing and leaning back on her elbows. The floor was hard, and it hurt to do so, but there was no possible comfortable position in this place. It was a jail after all.
Ino, back to the wall near the edge of Sakura's cell, smirked in the low light. "Why not? You should marry him you know."
"Shut up, clearly being locked in this room has made you lose your mind." It was so easy to pretend like things were normal, just for a moment, if she closed her eyes. Ino was next to her, they had been talking for hours, there was no sense of time or immediate danger, and with her eyes closed Sakura could almost pretend she was just laying on her floor in her room. Almost.
"I don't know, it doesn't seem that crazy. You saved his life. He saved yours. He took you to meet his family. He give you one hell of a betrothal gift: changing his whole religion…" Sakura didn't like where Ino was going with this one bit. "He clearly thinks you're going to get married."
"That was just a cover story for his village. Or I mean, they just assumed…"
"Why would a demon need a cover story?" Ino kept the body shots coming as she continued. "How could any other guy compare at this point? Maybe they could bring you flowers or cook you dinner? Please. And what do you think your new friend, ha, is going to think about some other guy taking you away? Face it, Haruno, you're stuck with him."
Sakura tried to cover her ears and hum loudly for effect. "I do not want to talk about this with you right now!"
"This is a lot more fun than thinking about if he's storming through the village right now," Ino said in a moment that was too real, too easily imagined, and made Sakura feel bad all in a rush. "Hurting people. Hurting our families and friends." Ino sounded like her mind was wandering away so Sakura made the sacrifice she hadn't planned on and entertained this ludicrous line of thinking.
"How can I possibly have a normal relationship with a man like Gaara?"
Ino took a moment to come back to earth and out of her catastrophic thinking. "Hmm? Oh I don't know, that's your problem. I'm just pointing out that I don't think anyone else will compare. Remember the list?"
"We were thirteen Ino," Sakura whined.
"Yeah, well, I don't think you're really looking for anything that different. Let's see if I can remember." Her eyes sparkled, reassuring Sakura that she had cheered her friend, but at a dire personal cost. "Taller than you, check. Mysterious, check. Strong, check. Handsome, well, I didn't get that good a look at him but that's a matter of personal taste anyway."
Sakura wished she could lunge through the bars and put a hand over Ino's mouth. "You are doing this just to torture me aren't you? Because you thought I was dead. Aren't you grateful you lost all that weight?"
"Good relationship with his family… he did just reconcile with his brother and sister right? That's not too bad."
"I should have stayed dead, clearly."
"It's hard to remember some of the others but I distinctly remember you also wanted him to have a nice body, and then you blushed a bunch because I made you describe what a 'nice body' would be. And while he was fully clothed, and a little skinny, your monster seemed pretty fit considering and I know you always liked watching the men in the fields harvesting the wheat when it was late in the day and they were all sweaty and shirtless—"
Sakura was saved from continued mortification by the loud sound of something hitting the doorway, making them both jump.
"Is someone there?" Ino yelled. "We're stuck in here!"
More loud noises started up and Sakura came to the conclusion that not only were the people on the other side probably taking mining picks to the door, but that that meant Gaara was definitely not with their rescue crew. He could have dismantled his sand with a thought. She hated the fact that she was disappointed by the fact that he hadn't come back to get them. This was the first chance she had had in ages to be away from him, and it shouldn't have felt so weirdly lonely. She needed to get her mind right.
"I told you we'd be ok from the start."
Ino sniffed in her direction. "That remains to be seen."
Shikamaru and Temari were on the other side of the door when they had opened up a big enough space in the rock-like surface to get through. Temari hefted her pickaxe to a shoulder, sweat drying on her forehead, as Shikamaru crouched through the large jagged hole and unlocked Sakura's cell.
"Took you long enough," Ino scolded. "Where's Chouji?" she looked around for her fiancée, expecting him to have been part of the rescue effort.
"Yeah, well, this little adventure was on a need to know basis, and I was told he didn't need to know." Shikamaru shrugged expressively as he opened up the cell door. His gaze wandered over to the bent bars of the cell next to Sakura's, but he just slowly shook his head in dismay. "I'm going to have a hell of a time replacing those. Ugh."
Ino, irritated, poked Shikamaru in the arm. "And I suppose my parents also didn't need to know, so they probably think I just ran out of the flower shop to play hookey all afternoon? You owe me for keeping my mouth shut about this debacle."
While Shikamaru and Ino discussed terms, Sakura wearily moved towards Temari. "So?"
"So." The blond woman replied. "I'm supposed to take you back to your parents. You're on house arrest until the council comes to a final decision about your status."
Sakura couldn't believe that after all that there would be any question that she deserved to come home and get back to her old life. It made her wonder what exactly Gaara had said rather than what he did since he had exited the jail.
"I'll say this much, I'm shocked that your little village isn't a ruin right now, but I suppose he has his own methods. Diplomacy is new. He's pretty shit at it."
Sakura hated it when Temari criticized Gaara like that, even more so because she never did it to his face. "At least he's trying."
Without another word, Temari turned to go, dropping her pickaxe with a clang on the ground and walking confidently towards the twisting path that would eventually exit them into the security services courtyard. Sakura turned to wave at Ino, who waved back, before scrambling after Temari. The air was hot when they exited the building, unbothered by any other security forces, and Sakura welcomed the heat after hours on a cold stone floor. She had felt chilled to the bone. Squinting in the much brighter light of outside she figured it was probably late afternoon. Her body reminded her she hadn't eaten since morning. Embarrassingly, she didn't need a toilet since there had been a bucket provided in her cell. Ino was never going to let her live that one down, either.
"Do you know the way back to my parent's house?" Sakura hazarded.
"Please." Temari said with condescension, before starting out in the correct direction. "But put this on first." She tossed a dark blue hooded robe in Sakura's direction. "People will stare, but it's better than announcing you're back to the world like you did this morning. That guy, Shikamaru, spent the better part of the day squashing and obscuring rumors of your return. Guy is clever, I'll give him that."
The walk home felt more like a walk of shame. This was no triumphant return home, not that she had expected that, but she had thought maybe she would have been allowed a little bit of happiness as opposed to the crushing worry of it all. Was Gaara going to hurt anyone? Had anyone followed them from Suna? Would the council expel her from Konoha? If she was allowed to stay would she be allowed to continue training with Tsunade? Would Tsunade even want her back? Doubts plagued her, and it wasn't like Temari was a good conversationalist to distract her from it all. They marched silently back to the familiar home with the line of tulips in front near the low wall that demarcated the tiny garden area.
It was far past the best season for the flowers and a single red petal hung off the naked bulbs. Sakura felt like she understood the feeling. The fact that her mother hadn't deadheaded them or weeded spoke to a level of sadness in her household that wounded her far more than she thought possible. Her absence was so inevitable that she had thought her parents would be able to function at some semblance of normal. Nothing about home looked normal judging from the terrible state of the garden. How had she not noticed this before she left? She had been a bit preoccupied by her own impending demise, to be fair.
"You going to stand there gawking, or are you going to come in?" Temari opened the gate that led to the short path to the front door.
Despite her grouchy companion and the unresolved circumstances, Sakura still felt like she was finally truly home and it felt good. Really good. This was the feeling she had been looking for since she had spied the city walls.
"Yeah, I'm coming." Sakura strode past Temari and confidently entered her new more spacious and comfortable cell.
