Two more chapters after this: wedding night and the day after (hehe). The idea was short and sweet, even if the whole premise is a little wonky. Thanks to those who thought this was a not totally twisted idea.

Disclaimer: see part 1

Gamos: Evening

"Aren't you done yet?" Sakura grumped at her sister who seemed to be paying attention to every single hair on her head instead of just evening things out as she requested. It felt like pounds of hair were gone from her head, and while she had expected to miss all her long hair she was surprised to find she preferred her new short locks.

Hinata maneuvered the shears dangerous close to Sakura's ear and she heard a distinctive snip. A slight spray of fine pink hair dusted the cloth tied around her shoulders and she sighed. Ino would never have gotten so fixated on the details, but Hinata always did a better job with their hair because of that concentrative power.

"It's already starting to get dark," Ino whined from the corner where she had been tuning a lyre she was bringing to the feast. "And the rain is even harder now."

That meant their father was going to be here soon, and Sakura wasn't sure if she was happy with that knowledge or not. It was his fault she was in this mess.

"Ok, I'm done with this." Sakura pushed the shears away from her and removed the cloth from her neck carefully. If she wasn't ready by the time her father was here to escort them all to the banquet then she would be on the receiving end of a lecture and that hadn't happened to anyone but Ino in their small family for almost a decade.

Ino practically dropped the lyre as she rushed over to see Sakura do something she rarely did in front of them: wear jewelry. Both Hinata and Ino had grins on their faces that Sakura wished she could just smack off. The pouch that Gaara had left behind for her taunted her excessively as she knew what it held.

Withdrawing the necklace she had to stifle actual admiration. The huge diamonds in the shape of teardrops held in place with delicately latticed gold on the edges weren't just beautiful, they were artful. As soon as Sakura put it on her powers activated to send an extra shine and glow through the jewelry. While she would always appreciate that one of her domains was good health, she couldn't quite get over the fact that she was goddess of (as Gaara very bluntly put it) jewelry. Anything she put on would look extraordinary. Anything she put on would shine brighter and look newer than anything had a right to. There was nothing she looked bad in, and you would think that would be a blessing…

"You look like a constellation…" Hinata said, her hands clasped together and eyes beginning to water a little in happiness.

"I look like an idiot." As soon as the jewelry came on Sakura stopped existing. How lovely… Where did you get it made… What luster… I wish I could have something like… Sakura didn't wear jewelry; due to the nature of her powers jewelry wore Sakura. "Just get the rest of this on me. Our father will be here any minute."

Despite herself, Sakura was impressed with the necklace. Gaara was a real craftsman, and she knew quality when she saw it. Even with his ability this would have taken time. He didn't seem like the sort to be able to work something so delicate. There was grudging respect for him that had gotten a beachhead in the battle against this marriage. Sure he was a jerk, and seemed to have a volatility to him that was disconcerting, but not many of the gods could be described as level headed. He wasn't hideous, as others had reported, even if he wasn't exactly a model of manly beauty like Sasuke or Naruto (when he wasn't pulling faces at people). And she had felt a rogue flutter at the end of the marriage ceremony as he had stared at her. Something about his intensity was compelling.

Weak thoughts! Follow through on the plan! Her veil was secure, under it her necklace was radiant, and she was bathed and oiled until she wanted to scream from all the attention. This was all the armor she would get going into battle so she better mentally prepare and stop letting these strange swirling doubts bore holes in her defense. While Hinata and Ino argued about which relative needed to be greeted first at the feast they heard the loud knock at the front door and all the sisters fell silent as all looked to the window which should have been completely dark but which glowed unnaturally.

"Minato. Come in, please." Kurenai's voice was pitched to carry to the girls in the other room.

"Kurenai! It's been too long. I greeted Asuma on my way in, he looks well as do you." Their father's smooth and cultured voice hit the sister's differently. Hinata's joy bloomed on her face as she rushed out to greet him, Ino looked reserved as she wandered out and made sure to give a backward glance at Sakura who was scowling under her veil.

Through the open door she saw Hinata and Ino embrace their golden father in turns. His gentle smile had gone to Hinata, and his golden good looks to Ino, but Sakura had gotten something a little oblique from their father: a rock solid sense of duty and responsibility. The impossibility of resisting this marriage doubled up the despair in her heart. At what point would she just accept that some things had to be bourn for family. You mean for your father… her inner voice whispered.

The worst part of it all was she adored him just like everyone else. He's the god of the sun for goodness sakes! Who didn't feel fantastic on a sunny day?! His presence just made people feel warm inside, he was impossible to dislike. There were no secrets from him, either, so he knew everyone mortal or immortal intimately and behaved with dignity and honor holding those secrets to himself except where he felt compelled to intervene. He was an impossibly perfect person, but he was also always taking care of others. Not a lot of time for the family, when it came down to it.

"Sakura, you look like a bride." There was always a glow around him, even at night, and it reminded her of the way her jewelry sparkled unnaturally when she put it on. There was no need to comment on the ceremony earlier or fill him in, he would already know. "Are you ready for the feast? Your mother will want me to report on every little detail."

"I'm sure Hinata and Ino will have a lot to tell her as well."

"You know she's never satisfied with just one side of things." Kushina always needed to hear every perspective on things before she made a decision. It made shopping with her impossible since she had to compare every vendor's wares before she bought anything.

Minato turned to Kurenai who smiled a little wider as she met his eyes. It was automatic, and Sakura knew she would see this unthinking joy reflected in hundreds of faces before the end of the night. "Will you be acting in place of Kushina tonight?"

"She sent me many notes on what I should do. As well as who needs their heads knocked if they get unruly." That sounded so much like Kushina that Sakura immediately wished their mother were here with a strong arm around her shoulders. She may have been a water nymph but no one would have called Kushina weak, and Sakura wanted some of that strength tonight.

There was some speculations about wedding decorations and general observations about the weather and Jiraiya's absentmindedness when Asuma entered with a smile and the whole group wandered out to load into the chariots. Sakura joined her father, whose aura kept the rain at enough of a distance that she would be kept dry. He smelled like summer.

"It may not seem to you now that I knew what I was doing," Minato said before he snapped the reins. "But in time I think you'll see what I see in Gaara." She hadn't exactly been hiding her displeasure the past months, but she was surprised he would bring it up to her so directly.

"And what do you see?"

She only caught his considering smile a moment before they were off and running and she was more focused on keeping her veil on her head than anything she would be encountering at the end of the journey.

Garlands were everywhere. Normally this chamber was only used for storage of large items for delivery or for incomplete projects that didn't fit in the normal workrooms but it had been transformed into something extraordinary. His Cyclops workers were brilliant in their own fashion, seemingly slow but truly good at transforming things. They had gotten all the dishes set up and then disappeared to their own personal spaces, shunning the presence of the Olympians and Titans as a rule. Gaara wished he could dismiss his family so easily.

"Looks good in here. I'm glad you didn't do it yourself." Naruto had just let himself in, blue eyes shining in honest happiness for his friend.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You just tend towards…. I don't know… severe and metallic I guess. The Cyclops did a good job eh? Maybe they should get into decorating more often." The trouble with Naruto was not knowing when he was joking or if he was being honestly clueless. "And oh oh, I wrote a new song for the feast. I was talking with Jiraiya and he thinks I should call it Burning Love."

For being patron of musicians and athletes, Naruto himself was more of a 'fake it until you make it' when it came to musical performances. The idea that Jiraiya and Naruto had collaborated on anything that would be performed at his wedding filled Gaara with unearthly dread.

"—Because you're all about molten rock and such which is why I thought it was a pretty good title. Plus Sakura's got a pretty mean right hook when she gets angry so-."

"You know Sakura?" Gaara was honestly surprised.

Naruto looked at him like he was nuts. "Well, Minato and I are both sun gods, had to collaborate at some point. People are getting us confused all the time. But yeah, I remember playing with Sakura when we were both little-ish. Even then she was a know it all! But she was also the first girl I knew well besides my sister and I was convinced I was going to marry her, but when you're a kid you think you know everything, right?"

Gaara had to admit this sounded like the Sakura he had encountered the past couple of times. If she had Naruto's endorsement, despite all that, that was a mark in her favor. The idea that Naruto wanted her too didn't sit well with him. He might have been running at the mouth, making light of it, but he wasn't a man who easily changed his mind. Naruto wasn't Sasuke, he reminded himself, and Sakura was not Karin. Past betrayals did not dictate future behavior from totally different people, but he had to squelch the evil feelings boiling in him all the same.

Naruto had set down his lyre near his seat and wandered over to the sweet sesame cakes to start the party early, so to speak. Gaara surreptitiously detuned all the strings. It would take him ages in the noisy banquet hall to get it fixed to sing whatever horrible wedding song he had composed. That delayed one problem.

"How come he gets to start and the rest of us need to wait out here?" TenTen, as if sensing her brother was enjoying himself more than she was by crazy twin-sense, had cracked open the door with a look on her face that told Gaara he had better go invite everyone into the hall before he got accused of favoritism.

Taking his time, wishing he could delay this noisy event just a little longer, Gaara wandered over and fully opened the floor to ceiling metal doors with a booming crash. TenTen, who was just the front of a large crowd of chatting and laughing Olympians and Titans stuck out her tongue at him as she found her own seat on the women's side of the hall.

Everyone entered as a group but filed off by gender to their side of the hall as was custom. The Titans and the Olympians tended to form groups apart from one another, but some could mix freely without causing too much comment. Jiraiya and Tsunade came in last, Tsunade practically dragging Jiraiya by the ear before releasing him in the direction of the head of the hall. Ever social, the cheerful white haired god wrapped Gaara in a hug that would have instantly broken his every bone if he had been less than a full god followed by a pat on the back that partially knocked the wind out of him.

"And here I thought you had escaped the ol' ball and chain, but you're going back for another turn?" He looked off somewhere behind Gaara where Tsunade was and then gave a nervous laugh. "I mean, congratulations! Best of luck to you!"

Gaara cracked his neck and shook out his arms as Jiraiya was off to make conversation with someone. Tsunade had found the wine and she would be fine until it hit her in a few hours at which time Shizune would be the only person that would get her back to Olympus without a fight. It would be appropriate to greet people and make conversation, but Gaara found that the more people were present the less he wanted to be around them.

Outside, the rain was coming down in sheets and Gaara leaned on the slippery rock near an overhang that contained a guttering torch. If he greeted his bride as she arrived they would assume he was being romantic not asocial.

"Gaara" the voice didn't startle him, he wasn't the only god that preferred a little solitude.

"Temari."

"I talked to Karin. She won't be attending this evening." Temari delivered the message without a hint of emotion in her voice. If she had picked a side in the divorce he'd never know. "She may hate you, but even she won't disrespect you or bring you ill fortune by showing up to your feast."

Honestly, he hadn't expected her to take the high road. She had done everything else possible to make his life miserable since day one of their marriage. He had picked her for her status, rather than for love, and she had punished him for his coldness. He was brought back to the words Karin had spoken that first night.

'You have to love me, I'm the goddess of love!'

'I will respect you, but you're asking too much.'

'Either I'll make you love or I'll make you hate me. I won't tolerate your apathy.'

Gaara wasn't going to dip anything more than a toe in the river of memory. He didn't have time for regrets, and when it came to Karin the only one he had was for choosing his first wife poorly. She was too headstrong and wrapped up in an infatuation with Sasuke's power to honor any promise, even marriage. Just another faithless person in his life.

"And Sasuke?" Gaara didn't know if he could refrain from a fight if the black haired god of war showed his face tonight.

Temari had no love for the arrogant war god. He and she had butted heads on too many issues in recent memory. "Who knows, not here. If he were here I wouldn't be."

They stood silently in the rain for some time until they saw the distant glow and heard the clatter of hooves. Minato arrived what seemed like a moment later and even Temari cracked a wan smile as he beamed at them.

"Everyone else inside already?" Gaara nodded. "Then I'll get the horses stabled and join you all shortly."

Minato helped Sakura down and she walked over to Gaara to get out of the rain while her father stabled the horses. He braced for another lashing comment from her tongue, while Temari watched the both of them out of the corner of her eye and pretended to examine her nails.

"Are you as exhausted as I am?" the veiled head obviously tilted to observe his response.

It took him a moment to take stock. "More." He was surprised she would ask mostly because it didn't occur to him she would be anything other than delighted at the attention and bustle. Wasn't all this fuss for women, in the first place? He never considered that she would find it a hassle as well.

"Too cold out here for me, I'll meet you in the vestibule and we'll all go in when the rest of my family arrive." She paused, and he wished for the umpteenth time that he could see what was going on under that veil because he felt like she was searching for something from him. Turning towards Temari she gave a polite greeting and wandered away from the two of them into the dry warmth.

Gaara resisted the impulse to grab her and pull her back to him. His eyes ate her up until she disappeared from view. Nearly his, he felt desire spark again and he wondered for the first time if perhaps this was Karin's real revenge. Marriage wasn't for love, and he didn't pretend Sakura felt anything. It was his turn to want what he couldn't have.

"You like her." Temari accused him, confusion and amusement both plain in her tone.

Snapping back to reality he sneered at her. "You're imagining things."

As if to prove a point he stoically waited for the rest of her family and shoved all thoughts of Sakura from his brain, but found the less he tried to think of her the larger she loomed in his mind's eye.

"I feel like an octopus." Sakura said as Ino snickered next to her. They sat on the women's side and relatives had been visiting her periodically to give her (oh horror) bedroom advice in addition to random matrimonial harmony advice. As the wine and nectar flowed freely the bedroom advice became more frequent. The whole time she was trying to get some food in her mouth having realized that after almost a whole day of sick worry she couldn't sustain it and her body just wanted sustenance and rest. Food disappeared under her veil and she felt like some lumbering sea creature sucking things up as it moved.

"Well, Gaara looks as red as one."

Once her sister pointed it out Sakura easily found him at the center of a lot of men with Naruto fiddling with a lyre next to him. Whatever Jiraiya was saying to him was turning him red as a beet and she could see the metal goblet he clutched was bending from the center under the force of his grip. She totally understood how he felt. She had knocked over a ceramic bowl of dates when one older aunt had warned her that most men were easy to handle but watch out of he had a thing for feet. Ino had blown wine out her nose and excused it as a sneeze.

The gods around her were drunk and happy, she was cozy and dry on a winter's day, and the more Sakura stewed over the problem of this marriage the more she was sure her misgivings with Gaara could be solved if they could just talk. Ino, in her cups, had already given up.

"You'll have to face the music," Naruto appeared to be getting ready to sing, and once the wedding songs began they wouldn't stop until the procession to Gaara's rooms in a couple hours. "And just accept you're as stuck with Gaara as I am with Shikamaru."

"I thought you liked Shikamaru."

"That's beside the point. I didn't know I would like him at first, and now it's almost worse because I do." Ino pointed over to where Hinata and TenTen were talking and laughing, old friends who didn't get to visit often. "You could always run off and swear yourself as one of TenTen's virgin warriors."

Sakura shook her head. She had thought about it once upon a time, but she'd never taken to killing anything even if she was pretty darn good with a bow and could wrestle better than Naruto (at least when they were teens).

"Honestly, even if you had convinced him to call it off you would have felt terrible. You never could deal with disappointing people."

"What do you mean?" Sakura didn't like the dismissive way Ino said it, like she was a fool for being responsible.

Ino picked up a nut and flicked it off of Sakura's veil, baiting her. "I mean you're all talk. If you really wanted out of this marriage you would have figured out a way with that big brain of yours months ago. I think you want to play the good daughter more than you want happiness. I just bought into that dumb plan we came up with because you're useless unless you feel like you're in control—"

With an animal cry, Sakura knocked her sister to the ground. It was too much. The anticipation, the stress, the stupid crazy plan that hadn't even been her idea, and now her dumb sister was telling her she never thought it would have worked anyway! She was just about crash her fist straight into Ino's nose when it was caught from behind by Temari who had moved like lightning at the first sign of trouble. Kurenai was helping Ino up, who was throwing weak punches in Sakura's direction and telling her to 'bring it on, ugly' much to everyone's amusement.

"Whatever she said, blame it on Kankuro and forget about it," Temari said in a soothing monotone.

The men were looking on with curiosity and quite a lot of interest when an out of tune chord rang through the hall and everyone's attention refocused on Naruto.

"This is for all those newlyweds, Gaara and Sakura that's you!" Naruto said before he struck another chord and launched into song.

Naruto to Gods (extended)

Shizune = Hebe, cupbearer of the gods

Jiraiya = Zeus, king of the gods

Temari = Athena, goddess of wisdom and war

Minato = Helios, Titan and god of the physical sun

Sasuke = Ares, god of war

Kankuro = Dionysus, god of wine and madness

Hope I didn't miss any gods/characters mentioned so far.

As a note, it was forbidden for a divorced woman to attending a marriage feast in ancient Greece. It was considered bad luck for the new couple.