DISCLAIMER - I do not own Naruto. This is pretty much a baby chapter. Depression sucks.
Rated 'M' for sexual situations and lemons, violence and bad language.
Give me life, give me love,
Scarlet angel from above.
Not so low, not so high,
Keep it perfectly disguised.
- Shinedown, Miracle
We gathered in the living room of the apartment in a loose circle.
"Okay, do we all have our kunai pouches?" Temari asked, having taken charge of the mission, being the best strategist. The dynamic among the Sand Siblings was strange. While Gaara, the youngest, was usually the leader, when it came to strategizing, he was happy to pass on the role of "leader" to his eldest sibling.
Back with Team Seven, Sasuke and Naruto were constantly clashing for leadership. They never quite worked out a hierarchy.
But here, with Temari checking over her little brothers' weapons pouches and giving Gaara a fond look, my heart fluttered a little.
"Okay, I've got the mission brief right here," Temari declared, pulling out a scroll and reading from it. "The Irregulars are based in a large compound on the border of the Land of Wind and the Land of Birds and-"
"The Land of Birds? Where's that?" I cut in, raising an eyebrow.
"It's the border country of the Land of Earth and the Land of Wind," Temari responded impatiently, looking back down to her scroll. "They have declared that a large portion of the Land of Wind is rightfully theirs and they have destroyed and pillaged their way through the villages and the citizens living there. They wish to be granted land and to be accepted politically, and in return, they'll hand over Lord Juro. If we refuse, they have declared that they will kill him and continue taking hostages."
"So what do we know about the Irregulars?" I asked, folding my arms, a bad habit I'd picked up from Gaara.
"It says here that they're a criminal organization founded by a man named Akuji. He and his men are known to be taking women from the surrounding villages and using them…" Temari trailed off and bit her lip, glaring at the scroll she was reading from.
"What?" I spluttered. "What?"
"Yeah, what is it?" Kankuro questioned, his expression a little worked up as he too seemingly began to run through all the possibilities in his mind. Gaara frowned, waiting for Temari to continue.
"They're using them for labor to farm the land, to cook, clean and… other things we're not quite sure of yet."
"Labor?! So like…slaves?! WHAT THE HELL! How come there aren't more people on this? They are our… I mean, your people!"
"Everyone is busy protecting the village. Besides, it's not the Sand village that's being attacked. It's an outlying village, so technically it's up the feudal lord to deal with it. They're not kidnapping the Sand's women so it's not first priority."
I grunted in frustration and bit my lower lip, frowning. I knew it was a childish expression but I was growing aggravated.
Keep your emotions in check. A shinobi never shows his feelings, I thought to myself, trying to reign in personal feelings.
"Okay, so is there anything unusual about the women? Is it just any woman or all women? Mothers, daughters? Blondes, brunettes? What similarities do these women share?" I asked.
"They're all above thirteen and younger than twenty one. They're all what you would consider… attractive," Temari explained, watching me carefully.
"They're kidnapping attractive young girls and using them for slave labor?!" I shouted, feeling my fury flare up at her words, my incorrigible temper setting alight.
"Aimi, calm down. You need to stay calm," Temari soothed. "But I must remind you that our mission is to retrieve Lord Juro, not to rescue the girls."
"What?! We can't do that, we have to save everyone," I protested, glaring at her.
"You're a shinobi, Aimi, you're not a superhero," Kankuro said, butting in, reprimanding me like an older brother.
"We can't just leave these women!" I argued, my voice hysterical as I looked to Gaara who exuded calm. "We can't. Gaara, you agree, right? We can't just leave them!"
"That's not the mission. Our job is to retrieve Lord Juro," he said firmly.
"But-"
"If it's possible, of course we will do our best to save these girls as well. But we have to stick to the mission," Gaara concluded.
"Gaara-"
He reached out for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, the heat from his hand seeping into my cold fingers and filling me with a reassuring warmth. "Trust me. We'll do our best. But you know our job is to rescue Lord Juro and that takes priority."
I nodded reluctantly, deciding to trust him.
"So, what's the plan?" I sighed, cocking my head to one side and biting my tongue. I would save those women, hero or not.
"Well, I think we should use bait and then get someone on the inside and then launch an ambush. One of us needs to be bait," Temari stated, giving me a pointed look.
"What do you- Oh, hell no! No. I'm not doing it," I objected, turning and heading down the hall, throwing my hands in the air. I felt a large hand grasp my wrist then to stop me and I spun quickly around, too quickly and stumbled into Gaara's arms.
I righted myself irritably and made an exasperated sound. "No," I said firmly, looking Gaara right in the eye, even though Temari was the one who had suggested the idea of me as bait. I could see it already, me wandering the forest in a tiny little skirt and a barely-there shirt with the majority of my breasts on full show. "No. This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. You do it, Temari." All the while I kept my eyes locked on the sea foam of Gaara's.
"You better fit the age range. And you're a little more vulnerable looking than me, bigger eyes, bigger boobs and you're smaller than I am. You look the part of sexy yet innocent girl," she explained and I snapped my gaze to her, Kankuro stood behind her with an apprehensive look on his painted face.
"They might like blonds better," I grumbled. "I can't play sexy and attractive. I'm a shinobi."
"She really can't, Temari. She might look passable but the way she acts, she's too obviously a ninja to pull off sexy. Have you seen the way she creeps about? Especially since she came back from that Sage training. You can barely hear her moving around the apartment at all," Kankuro said. Was it me or did Gaara eyes turn a shade darker upon his elder brother's words?
"She's also a kunoichi. Kunoichis are supposed to take advantage of their God-given gifts to attract, entice and capture the enemy. She has to embrace that," Temari countered, folding her arms and giving me a very dark look. Then, she left the room and went down the hall to her room, disappearing momentarily.
"Alright, so how do I get all enticing and attractive then?" I questioned hypothetically.
"We don't have time right now. We need to get going. We were supposed to have left by now, so we'll discuss it along the way," Temari called, coming out of her room with a large pouch of supplies on a belt around her waist.
And with that we set off.
PAGEBREAK
We'd been running for hours, finally reaching the dank dark forests on the outskirts of the Land of Wind as the sky grew dim and the night drew in.
"Okay, I think we should stop here," Gaara suggested and we all came to a halt on various tree branches. We jumped down into a large clearing with plenty of shading and shadow and began to set up for the night. "We need to take a break and attack first thing tomorrow morning. So let's take a rest stop."
"Right," we all agreed. We all set about arranging our sleeping bags, aside from Gaara. Temari scalded me for not getting a thermal one, ("it's gonna get chilly tonight, apparently") and Kankuro and Temari scuttled into their sleeping bags. I grabbed an oversized T-shirt I'd folded in my sleeping bag and followed suit.
Gaara leapt up to a tree branch, just as Temari called, "Gaara, are you on watch all night?"
He grunted his affirmation from above and I snuggled down into my sleeping bag. I undressed inside the bag, taking off my catsuit as it was uncomfortable to sleep in.
I should rethink my clothing choices, I told myself as I struggled into my t shirt, throwing it on over my underwear and then buried myself into my sleeping bag, hoping sleep would come quickly.
Yet somehow, I could not escape consciousness. I could hear Kankuro's snores, the rustle of the wind in the trees, my body always finding itself in an awkward position. The night air began to whip around the clearing, cold and foreboding. It was… a little scary. I began to shiver as the minutes passed and Temari started to murmur in her sleep. The cold was starting to sink into my bones and I was trying to curl up into a ball, the fabric of my T-shirt always in the way.
The night dragged on and still sleep evaded me. My mind wandered to the boy sat up in the tree above us. Suddenly, a wind picked up against and I hissed at the cold.
Then, I heard a light thud and the murmur of a soft voice, whispering with the wind. "Are you cold?"
I looked up to see Gaara looming over me, toying with the white cloth wrapped around him and flinging it from his body, the gourd going with it.
"Yes," I whispered as he knelt down next to me, removing his sandals. "What're you doing?"
"Move over," he instructed and I did as he said, too dumbfounded to argue as he crawled into my sleeping bag, stretching out his legs, his cold toes caressing my legs and he entangled himself in the sleeping bag.
"What're you doing?" I hissed, contrasting the way my hands splayed over his maroon body suit and my head nestled into his chest as I shivered once again.
"I think it's one of my duties as your boyfriend to make sure you don't freeze to death overnight," he murmured, nuzzling his head into my hair.
"My boyfriend?" I asked, looking up at him, the shock much more evident in my eyes than I would have liked. The wind whistled around us and he held my gaze steady, confident. "You're my boyfriend?"
His lip curled then and he wrapped an arm around me, his scent so concentrated in this small space as I cuddled closer into him, our legs intertwining, our toes grasping at each other playfully. He was so affectionate tonight.
"I would like to think so after everything that's happened between us," he said wryly, his hand that was slung over my body reaching up under my shirt and pressing against my back, against the one truly warm part of my body. I shivered again and he just held me closer, as we tried to warm up.
"I hope you're my boyfriend. I'd like that. But it just doesn't feel like enough to explain how I feel for you properly. It doesn't sound like enough," I told him, yawning at the end, feeling tears prick at the edge of my vision. Somehow, with all the fatigue, I still felt little electric shocks on my back where his fingers made contact with my skin. It still shocked me that he wanted me, that this was really happening for us.
"I know what you mean," he said, his voice low and collected.
Gaara and I just worked. He was calm and steady, steady like the suburban river lazily rolling through fields, meandering through a forest. I was a mountain stream, restless and wild, gushing over sharp rocks, tumbling down cliff faces.
But together what we had was an ocean of virtue, of truth and love. We didn't have to sink anymore, to drown in the pure shit that life had handed out to us, we could float, soar over the ocean that together, we had created.
We needed each other, I needed him to bring me down to earth, to steady me and keep me calm and he needed me to take him to the sky, to show him passion and fierce, fierce love.
"I love you," he whispered, his voice sailing on the night winds.
"I love you too," I promised, trying not to sound too breathless at his words.
He finally said it.
I felt my heartbeat growing erratic at his words and I leaned up and captured his lips in a soft kiss, my hand coming up to his hair, entangling in blood red locks. I could feel it now, the way we felt for each other and I wanted to drown in him, in us. "You hold me together."
"And you gave me medicine. You healed my wounds," he said, as my fingers came up to trace his scar once again, the strokes and dashes the same color as his hair.
"I love you, Gaara," I repeated and his eyes apprehended me, green on hazel in the dark of the night in this forest. He looked as if he were boring into my soul, just checking for any traces of deceit. He must have found none as the next second, his eyes had closed, all blackened eyelids again and he leaned down to me and kissed me once again, his lips touching mine tenderly. I opened my mouth to allow him access and our tongues danced together slowly, the passion smoldering between us. "Are you staying here all night?"
"I'll hold you while you sleep so you don't get cold," he whispered, all the time those eyes holding me. Sometimes, just that gaze brought me back down to earth and yet, what he had given me was ethereal.
He was earth and I was heaven.
And as I drifted off to sleep in his arms, a memory flickered in the corner of my mind.
"When heaven and earth are opened together, the pairless path will become righteous forever."
Author's Note: Sorry, guys, for not posting Monday but I'm posting tonight instead. I'll post again on Saturday.
I just wanted to tell you all the reason for it. I've suffered from depression for a long time going in and out of it and recently I've been sinking into it again and it's starting to worry me and consume me a little so it's been hard to write. But I knuckled down and this is what happened. I know it sucks but yeah, Gaara said he loves her!
Was the confession okay? I wanted it to be simple yet romantic.
Also, I got tumblr. My handle is thefifthkazekage. What're your tumblrs? I want to follow you guys! :)
