"What are you doing?"
Sakura found herself caught off guard once again by Gaara's sudden appearance, though this time at least she had the presence of mind not to draw her kunai on an ally. She needed to learn that skill, she decided, that 'sneaking up on people' skill that Gaara seemed to just naturally fall into. It clearly wasn't a Jinchuuriki thing. (Naruto had the subtlety of a raging bull). This meant it could be cultivated. She would learn this skill…once she was done with the twelve others on her list.
"I'm training." She finally answered. She was in the middle of an early morning session, following Rock Lee's tried and true 'kick, punch, and run until you couldn't anymore'. She still couldn't make it to a hundred kicks in a row without giving up, but that just meant she'd throw a hundred punches and run a hundred kilometers and so on until she was strong enough.
"You're training on an air conditioner." Gaara commented. Ah, so that was what this tall machine was.
"Well, there aren't any trees and I doubt any shinobi here would want to spar with me." Sakura let out a deep breath as she went for kick number sixty-two. "I'm sure I'll get a lecture about not training with a potential enemy, and I doubt anyone will let me use their training grounds, so I found my own. There's not much else I can do with my time until that damn storm outside lets up." She paused, breathing again before looking around. "I will say, this natural cliff around the village really does a good job keeping all that sand out. It's really only bad higher up."
Gaara was quiet at this. It had probably been an obvious thing to point out; of course a Sand village would pick somewhere naturally protected from the harshness of the desert around them. It was just amazing how well of a job it did. Sakura wouldn't have been surprised if there were jutsu in place on top of the cliffs to help mitigate the damages sandstorms would bring.
Gaara's silence prompted Sakura to continue her training. He'd probably been sent up to make sure she wasn't doing anything suspicious. (And kicking an air conditioner was admittedly suspicious, yes.) But unless the owner came and yelled at her for it, she doubted it was illegal.
"Was that all the questioning you had about Shukaku?"
Kick eighty-one and Gaara still hadn't left. Maybe he'd been sent to keep a permanent eye on her? "No, I don't have anything else on Shukaku, unless you're willing to reconsider attempting a conversation with it. But you seemed pretty against the idea so…" Sakura stopped her kicking. Eighty-six and her leg just didn't want to lift anymore. Now for the other side.
"So you're training." Gaara concluded.
"Yup."
"By kicking an air conditioner."
"Every kick makes me stronger. Just ask Rock Lee, he kicked the hell out of you in the chunin exams." Three kicks with the left leg, then four, five, six…
It was quiet for longer this time, and Sakura was beginning to get a bit embarrassed by the attention. It wasn't like she didn't understand why Suna was keeping an eye on her, but did Gaara even blink? He was like a statue watching her train, but in a weird way it was almost helpful. She didn't want to appear weak in front of him, which ensured she kicked harder and faster than she was used to.
Damn, she'd be sore tomorrow, but Lee would probably approve.
She heard a small thump from behind her, and she stopped her kicks just long enough to see that Gaara had deposited his gourd onto the ground. Then, to her shock, Gaara came to a position next to her in front of the air conditioner.
"Every kick makes you stronger?"
"Um...yeah." Sakura blinked as she watched Gaara slowly begin to start kicking at the machine. Every time the kick landed, she saw a couple grains of sand fall to the ground before slowly returning to Gaara's body. That sand armor...he always kept it on, right? But more importantly was Gaara...training?
He was slow. A lot slower than her, she realized, and it made sense. With sand doing everything for him, when would he ever have need for taijutsu? When would he ever have need for speed at all? Plus, that sand armor was probably a fairly large weight hindrance, even if by now he was mostly used to it.
It was weird. By now she figured Gaara would have been sent on another mission, or maybe training with his own team. Certainly not with her. Certainly not at all.
But the company wasn't unwanted.
"Do a hundred kicks with one leg." She instructed, continuing her own set. "If you can't do a hundred kicks, do a hundred with the other leg. If you can't do the other leg, switch to punches. And if you can't make the punches, do a hundred laps around the village."
Gaara paused to look at her, bafflement clear on his face. "...everyone in Konoha trains like this?"
"Only the crazy ones." Sakura admitted. "I just started this recently. I can't make it to a hundred yet on anything, but when I started I could only get to about fifty before I got tired. Today my first set got to eighty-six."
Gaara nodded and went back to work. Ever the quiet one.
Seventy-nine more kicks and two more sets of punches later, Sakura began to jog. Gaara followed her, easily keeping up. As they went, Sakura couldn't help but notice how time and time again faces would turn in their direction, in Gaara's direction, unease and fear emanating from even the children who probably didn't even understand what Gaara was. This was what it was to be a Jinchuuriki, and even by proxy, Sakura was starting to understand how disheartening such negative attention could be.
Several more days passed as she waited for the sandstorm to subside. Her pocketbook thankfully didn't run low, not with Gaara tailing her like a lost puppy. As the Kage's son, food seemed to be free wherever he deemed it, and with her in his proximity, she was able to mooch off quite a few meals. For the most part, Gaara said little. He trained with her and sat watch over her while she practiced her sensing. After a while of him being near, she could almost tune out the fear that Shukaku's aura of death brought about.
"Does he ever say anything to you?" Temari asked her once, in a whisper low enough that she figured Gaara couldn't hear.
"Not really." Sakura shrugged. "He talked to me about Shukaku when I asked but other than that he just follows me around."
"He's stopped going on missions." Temari let slip. "He doesn't even bother checking in anymore, but after…" She hesitated, taking a breath. "Well, we haven't elected a Kage yet, so there's nobody with enough motivation to look after him. As long as he isn't killing anyone."
"He's not." Sakura insisted. "He just sits around and watches me all day. I'd thought he'd been ordered to."
"Well, I feel better if you're keeping an eye on him. At least if he decides to kill you, it's not one of us." Temari chuckled, and Sakura forced a laugh in return. She had been worried at first but...not so much now. If Gaara had wanted to kill her, he'd have had plenty of opportunity. She was more unnerved by how casually Temari treated Gaara's bloodlust, like it was inevitable. Like there was nothing that could be done. She was his sister...if she'd reached out to Gaara, shown him affection, how different would things have been?
It was on the evening of her fourth day in Sunagakure that Gaara spoke to her at length once again, surprising her by initiating. She'd found a quiet spot in the village to start reading her scroll for something new, and he'd followed, as usual, before speaking up.
"Where's Naruto at, now?"
"Naruto?" Sakura pulled herself from her reading. "Well, he's out training with a strong shinobi from our village, but he's being kept on the move to avoid Akatsuki finding him. Otherwise he'd probably be here with me."
"Training." Gaara confirmed. "He wants to be Hokage, doesn't he?"
"That's his plan." Not that he ever stopped announcing it to anyone.
"I'd thought about trying to become Kazekage."
There was a long silence after the announcement. Sakura couldn't help but watch Gaara. He was getting easier to read now, she realized. He didn't show much emotion, but it was there, if you knew where to look. Right now he was pensive, but some of the melancholy from their first conversation was peppered in.
"Why don't you then?" Sakura asked. "They need a Kage right now, and you're certainly strong enough. Plus, Kage get tons of bodyguards, that'd be perfect if Akatsuki ever tried to come after you."
"They won't ever let me become a Kage. I'm too unstable." Gaara explained. "Even if I trained, even if I restrained myself for the rest of my life, they won't ever trust me. I'm not like Naruto."
"Not with that attitude, you aren't." Sakura huffed. "Naruto's never been trusted either, but he'll never stop trying. That's how come he will become Hokage. And that's how come he'll get strong enough to beat Akatsuki and bring Sasuke back."
"Naruto will. But...you don't want to become Hokage?"
"Of course not, I know I can't beat Naruto."
"But you could." Gaara argued. It was the most verbose he'd ever been, and discounting the chunin exams, the most emotional she'd ever seen him. "You could train every day like he does and get stronger. Your village already trusts you. You could get strong enough to become Hokage. Strong enough to beat Akatsuki and bring Sasuke back."
He was right, of course. She could train every day and become Hokage. If she'd tried, she could have become an active jounin, learned the ins and out of village politics, gained the respect of everyone there. In another life, if something had been different, maybe she would have. But now, right now…
"It's not what I want." She admitted, more to herself than to Gaara. "I don't want to be Hokage. The Hokage just sits around worrying about a village when the world is in danger, when people they care about are in danger. They're stuck. They can't go out and make a difference without fear of the other villages retaliating, without fear of leaving their own village undefended. If I was Hokage, I couldn't be out here trying to help Naruto."
Sakura looked back down at her scroll as she spoke, rows upon rows of descriptions and hand signs in front of her. "It's stupid." She lamented. "Naruto and Sasuke, they're so damn strong and important compared to me. They have strong shinobi just jumping at the chance to train them and help them reach their dreams. But nobody ever reached out to me. Nobody ever thought I could be Hokage or anyone important, so now I have to be out here in the damned Sand village just so I can prove that I'm capable, that I can help if they'd just let me. But what's even more stupid is that they're right. I don't have any special jutsu or talents. I don't have a Tailed Beast, I don't have a Sharingan. I'm just Sakura. So it doesn't even matter if I wanted to be a stupid Hokage anyway. I'll never be more than just a backup for someone stronger." She rolled the scroll back up with an angry snap. No, she wouldn't let herself get this emotional in front of Gaara. She'd pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind for the entire trip, now wasn't the time to get soft. "Yet here I am anyway, trying like an idiot to catch up to them. Using a stupid dumb scroll that hasn't taught me anything useful yet, because nobody else wants to waste time teaching me." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Yup. The biggest idiot of Team Seven was actually me the whole time."
More silence, and this time Sakura let herself wallow in it. Maybe she'd needed a break from the scroll anyway, and this was a good enough excuse. She didn't even notice Gaara standing up, not until he was next to her and speaking again.
"Every kick makes you stronger."
Sakura opened her eyes, frowning. How dare he use her own words against her? That just wasn't fair. Nobody could argue against their own logic.
"Yeah." She simply agreed. "So go be Kazekage if you want to be. If you go kick that air conditioner enough, they'll have to let you."
Gaara nodded, and said no more that night. He did, however, sit down next to her as she read, and Sakura realized for the first time that week that she truly was no longer afraid of him.