A/N: Okay, I admit it – I'm stalling. I like all my endings, but I'm somewhat adverse to posting all of them. There are no alternate endings in life, how then can there be such in art, the point of which being to tell the truth of life? Quandary, quandary, how shalt thou be solved? And speaking of truth – time for Sakura to face a few of hers.

"Why is this child willing to go so far to save Gaara, who is not of the same village?"
- Chiyo, Hidden Sand elder

Chapter 13

The Truth of the Fairy Tale

It was Naruto who caught them, Naruto who stood a tense guard over them as Lee tended to the exhausted Kiba and Akamaru. It was also Naruto who later wrapped her bleeding leg, as Lee guided Shikamaru and Temari to them. Shikamaru met Sakura's eyes with an assessing expression, and when met with a tired smile, he nodded once and turned to deal with his canine comrades. Temari moved towards Sakura purposefully, kneeling next to Naruto with an expression of tender concern that Sakura hadn't seen for years.

"We got our shinobi out to safety," Temari said quietly, but it was more a reassurance than a report. "Shikamaru captured a bunch of the insurgents with his shadow techniques. From what we could get out of them, they were all mostly missing nins and exiles from other countries, and the traitor promised them the wealth of the Wind country if they helped him topple it." Her voice dripped with disgust, and then became worried again. "But we'll sort it all out later. You just get some rest." Shikamaru waved her over then, and with a small smile, Temari moved to answer him.

"Naruto," Sakura whispered.

He looked up at her, smile a bit strained but still a thousand watts too bright. I was blessed the day I met you, she thought, but couldn't think of a way to say it without sounding horribly cheesy and cheap. She held out a hand helplessly instead. He took it, and in his eyes she saw that he understood nonetheless.

"You're welcome, Sakura-chan," he answered, patting her shoulder affectionately. "And don't worry." He winked. "Youth grants us all remarkable powers of recovery." Blue eyes flicked mischievously towards their green-clad friend. "Shh," he mock-whispered. "Don't tell Fuzzy-Brows I said that, or he'll be on me to quit ramen again and take my 'springtime' more seriously." The grin softened again as Sakura made a weak attempt to laugh, and he put a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be fine."

"I know." Sakura looked down at the tangle of red hair in her lap, and ran a few fingers delicately through the mess.

"Thank you." Gaara's voice was quiet, restrained, his eyes trained on the blond Leaf nin. The irrepressible Leaf shinobi flashed him a patented Naruto-grin. It was testimony to the degree of exhaustion he felt, though, that Gaara's fellow Jinchuuriki dropped it almost immediately, and that he winced as he forced himself to his feet a moment later, waving some medical concoction at Lee that Tsunade had sent in the very likely event that the Beautiful Green Beast used the Celestial Gates.

Sakura was left propped up against an overturned boulder on a smoldering battlefield, her clothes and body drenched in blood (most of it her own), working her hand through the hair of a demon.

She'd never felt so peaceful.

It wasn't the whistling that got to him, if you got right down to it. It wasn't the frequent sidelong glances and the knowing little smirk that accompanied them, either. Hell, it wasn't even the long, hard, slow path the shinobi took around the jagged red cliffs that guarded Sunagakure. It was the whistling and the looks and the grin and the hot morning sun that glowered down on his tired body.

"Stop that," Gaara growled at last, managing even to muster the energy to turn his head towards the offending warbler.

Naruto grinned, shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, and shrilled one last slightly-off key note. "Whew," he said casually, as if he had not heard the command nor seen the dark glower. "Does it always get so hot this fast? Sun's not even completely clear of the horizon and I swear I'm roasting alive already. Man, I'd hate to be Kiba and his mutt right about now." He craned his neck to spot the white animal limping alongside his human partner up ahead. Akamaru was moving relatively well, but Kiba required an arm to lean on, and had been placed at the head of the party to keep his pace. Gaara and Naruto, who recovered more quickly than any of the others, plodded along near the rear.

Well, Gaara plodded – a form of motion he was rapidly learning to hate - and Naruto strolled along. He seemed to be recovering far faster than his companion.

"Well, at least Kiba could take off that heavy coat. Akamaru's kinda out of luck, there. But we won't be here too long, I bet. No offense, I'm not saying that Suna is a bad place to be," he added hastily.

Gaara felt well enough to shrug in response.

"Well, at any rate, I bet we'll head back to Konoha as soon as we're all recovered enough for the trip. And with Sakura-chan around to heal everyone, it shouldn't really take long."

The words came out blithely, but just a little too fast, as if it had been rehearsed. And Naruto's bright blue eye stayed circumspectly fixed on Gaara's face, watching for a reaction. But the red head was not the leader of his village for nothing, and his face and body stayed carefully neutral. His eyes did not flick to the side, nor did his shoulders tense or his hands clench.

Naruto's cheerful face turned thoughtful for an instant, but no one was looking, so he could risk it. "Underneath the underneath," he whispered quietly to himself.

But just to be sure, he dangled the bait again. "I'm still kinda pissed at Fuzzy Brows, though. What the hell was he thinking, carrying Sakura-chan up into that battle when she was already worn out from that healing she did on herself? Jeez." He shook his head, sending a stern look that he had mimicked from Iruka-sensei at the bowl-cut black head to the far left.

Gaara appeared not to have heard him.

Naruto nodded to himself. In a normal person, he heard that old perverted-hermit's voice in his head again, recalled from some lecture long ago. In a normal person, the facial expressions and body language of someone you are questioning will often give away exactly what they feel. In a shinobi, however, the surface reactions are usually directly opposite of what they are really feeling.

Naruto followed Gaara's disinterested stare, which seemed to be angled about twenty degrees to the left. He twisted his neck as if stretching, and directed his own eyes to roughly twenty degrees to the right. His gaze landed on a shock of pale pink hair moving slowly yet gracefully next to the determined stride of the blonde Temari. He smiled to himself, a little smug, a little sad.

The lonely sun began to climb in the empty sky.

Sakura scrubbed at her face and hands tiredly, trying to get all the blood off. This shirt is toast, she decided, eyeing the rusty stains down the front. Oh well. Behind her, Lee and Naruto were whispering rapidly, but their voices had become too low for her to able to discern anything in the rumbling. When did their voices change so much? She wondered idly. I can't remember exactly when. I've just been so used to them for so long, I forgot how much they grew up. How much we grew up…

They stopped mumbling to each other as she bent to rinse her face in the basin.

"Um, Sakura-chan?"

Naruto's voice was light but with an edge of nervousness. Uh oh. Sakura looked up at him, noting the tense way that Lee stood behind him. The hair on the back of her neck started to prickle, as if somewhere in her mind a warning signal had gone off. They both looked as if they would rather be out doing battle than standing there in her room - which meant whatever they were going to say, she probably wasn't going to like. Uh oh, indeed.

Naruto took a deep breath, in a very here-goes-nothing sort of way. "When did you know?" He scratched his head the way he always did when he was about to ask something that would probably get him smacked.

"When did I know what?" Sakura straightened, water dripping down her face onto her collar. She wiped at it with a towel, watching her normally loquacious friend hop from foot to foot and fumble for words. "Spit it out," she said at last, rolling her eyes and turning to toss the towel over the bar.

"That you…you know, cared about…or maybe that you…no, definitely that you loved him. Gaara, I mean." The words tumbled out in a heap, and his cheeks colored instantly in mild embarrassment. Lee also colored, Sakura noted. So that's what all the significant looks and muttered conversations on the way back had been about.

"What makes you think that I love him?" she demanded, turning a few healthy shades of pink herself as both Naruto's words and her own sunk in.

"Well, well…" he scratched his blond head again, and she was tempted to smack him just because he seemed to expect it so much. He seemed to be caught in a permanent stutter, so Lee bravely picked up the trail.

"It's just that we saw you jump up there between him and that traitor just as we were arriving on the field, and at first we thought that..." he trailed off helplessly too, even his personal strength failing under her stare.

"That I was going to stop Gaara before he could release the Shukaku," she finished quietly.

"Well, yeah." Naruto let out a massive sigh and flopped onto her bed, eyeing her. "I knew he wouldn't let the demon out when he was surrounded by all his people, but I figured that maybe you only remembered how he was as a kid…" Naruto rolled onto his side and stared at her, face serious. "But you're smarter than that. And I've seen you protecting someone you cared about before."

Lee put a gentle hand on her shoulder. He was smiling, but there was a hint of sorrow in his gentle voice. "It was obvious after that. You love him."

Sakura stared blankly at the floor. This was, essentially, the exact conversation that she had forced herself not to have on the slow, sedate trip back to Sunagakare, for reasons she'd also been a little afraid to consider. It just didn't seem plausible.

Love him? Love Gaara? Love the monster that terrified her, the man that had looked her over coolly and announced that she was unfit for his company. And yet, when she'd realized what he planned to do, how Gaara planned to just let that traitor bury a killing chakra into his chest in order to save his people from himself….

She walked unsteadily to the bedside and collapsed on the edge. Naruto moved over to make more room for her. Sakura debated ignoring the question, the accusation, but Naruto had never in his life let go of a question once he'd asked it, and though he seemed to be waiting patiently now, if she blew him off he'd just press again. She closed her eyes, frowning.

Granted, she had kissed the Sand ninja, but …well, she just hadn't wanted to hit him. Must be the princess-wannabe in me, she thought wryly. Even now on some level I believe those old fairy tales of true loves being awakened by a kiss, and then they all live happily ever after.

"I . . ." She thought of bloodshot eyes and a horrific toothy grin, of blood smeared on a sand-coated cheek and fire dancing across mad features. "It's not..." She thought of infuriating smirks and sly, cold statements that attacked her friends and the childhood ideals she had somehow never really let go. "I don't…" She thought of warm skin under her fingertips, of dark rimmed green eyes wide with a childlike confusion, and the almost tangible longing within them.

Sakura flopped backwards, sprawling on the bed.

"Oh no."

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto leaned over her, face pulled into a worried frown. "You ok?"

She sat up so fast that he fell off the bed in surprise, clonking his head solidly on the stone table. "Oh no."

"Sakura, what is it?" Lee moved to stand beside her instantly, concern radiating from him. "What's wrong?"

She looked down at where Naruto sat on the floor, rubbing the back of his head ruefully and looking at her with concern. Never thought I'd see the day, Sakura grumbled mentally, when Naruto would have to point out the obvious to me.

She buried her face in her hands, not certain if she ought to burst into tears or laughter. True love? Happily Ever After? Hah! The man was a killer, and inherently distrustful of everyone and everything around him. No Prince Charming on a white horse with his sword flashing in the sunlight as he challenged the dragon to save her. His own dragons were dark, sometimes cruel, and perpetually moody. And she was not such a fool to think that she could mount her own white horse and save him.

It's not fair! The day a girl realizes she's in love with someone, she's supposed to be happy, feel excited and nervous, but in the good, butterflies-in-my-stomach kind of way. That's how it felt with Sasuke…

But he wasn't Sasuke. And what she had felt for Sasuke had, in the end, not been enough for either of them. But this…this wasn't happiness, it wasn't nervousness. It wasn't sorrow or fear – she knew what those felt like all too well to mistake anything else for them now. What was it? What did she feel like, exactly? Confused. Yes, and a little afraid. Powerful and weak all at once.

"Hey, hey, it's ok, Sakura-chan," Naruto soothed, alarmed at the tightness in her shoulders and tense fingers that covered her face. "Maybe we were wrong. It's happened before, right, Fuzzy Brows?" He glanced up at Lee tightly, knowing with a sinking feeling that whatever reassuring nonsense he might invent right now, he was not wrong.

"Forgive us," Lee murmured, sitting gingerly beside her and putting a comforting hand on shoulder. He might have said something more, but Sakura threw herself against his chest, openly weeping now. Lee shot a panicked look at Naruto, but the blond threw up his hands in defense. What did he know about women? And Sakura's tears had always been particularly difficult for him to handle.

Awkwardly, Lee put his arm around Sakura's shaking shoulders, resolved to just let her cry it out. After a moment Naruto also put a comforting hand on her head, recalling when Iruka-sensei had done that for him as a little kid.

She sobbed for a few more minutes before regaining control. "I'm sorry," she murmured, swiping at her face. Now she'd have to wash it all over again. "It's just…not something I was fully prepared to think about just yet. I'm still worn out from the Rejuvenating Jutsu and …everything." She coughed a little, and added under her breath, "Why does it always have to be the moody one?" The words came out with a peculiar little hitch at the end, as if she couldn't quite decide whether to laugh or break into fresh sobs.

"So…what now?" Naruto asked hesitantly. "I mean…now that we're all here, and we've got to go back, and, well, everything, you know?" He finished lamely.

She stared at him, face twisted in an expression he couldn't quite identify.

"Don't worry, Sakura. We'll help you figure this out," Lee said quickly, as firmly as he could. He wanted desperately to make some promise, give her some course of action that they could take. Anything to dry the tears and clear the confusion in her face. But no inspiration came to him, and he couldn't think of a single thing he could possibly do about this. Any of this.

Naruto knelt down by the bed side, putting his free hand on her knee. "It'll be ok, Sakura-chan." He shot another glance at Lee. "Won't it?" he prompted.

"Of course," Lee replied firmly. "You can count on us."

Sakura looked up at his smile, and wondered quietly how she ever could have mistaken him for some weird freak that she wanted no part of. What a horrible, shallow child I was, she berated herself mildly.

She'd learned better than that, she hoped. Underneath the underneath, right?

She pulled back, smiling at Lee and Naruto, and sniffed back her tears. They were good friends. And she would be worthy of them. Firmly, she suppressed the surge of uncertainty and exhausted upset. It was time to take a break, take a deep breath, and get her bearings again.

She smiled at them, these men who had become so deeply a part of her life.

"Thank you. Thank you so much."