A/N: So…for those wondering about Kenji and his sacrificial girl, I'm contemplating a short side story, one-shot, maybe, about who she was and where they both came from. And maybe why Kenji hated Gaara so much. Standby for that to appear. In the meantime: This is my attempt at compromising between happy ending and reality. I warn the hapless reader to make no assumptions about how this story is going to end. With that said, on with the next (but not last) chapter.

"Indeed you are skilled. Because you concealed yourself, I did not see you until it was too late."

- Uchiha Itachi

Chapter 14

Fear and Acceptance

She found him on the roof, an hour before the sun set. Her strength was returning to her fast, but she still hadn't dared to expend the chakra necessary to heal the cut on her calf, so she moved slowly, careful with her leg.

She leaned on the wall, watching him. Gaara turned his face in her direction, not looking at her but just to the left, as if something interesting just happened to be in her general direction. His expression was cool and indifferent, his eyes guarded. He was waiting for her to speak, to acknowledge him before he would deign to acknowledge her.

No, she thought, frowning. No, that wasn't exactly what he was doing. She'd thought that, when she'd first arrived. Sakura pictured that first meeting in the Kazekage's office, recalled the words and the tone and the frown that he had used against her. She'd labeled him then as condescending, as the sort of man who considered her so far beneath him that he need waste no time with courtesy or kindness. Or maybe just the sort of man incapable of either. But she saw now, with strangely clear eyes, that he looked at her not so much as an inferior but as a threat. The indifference was a shield, the cruelty a sword.

He refused to look at her not because he thought her to be inferior, but because he feared her to be superior. And all along she had thought the exact same thing, acted on exactly the same fear. She wanted to laugh at the comic irony of the strange dance they had woven around each other from needless caution. She wanted to cry at the tragic irony of realizing she loved him right when she knew she must leave him.

Sakura bit her lip, and hunted for some way to form the words she had come to say.

An interesting change, Gaara had called their stolen time together, and he was right. There were a thousand ways to explain it, really. An idle pastime. An attempt to drive away the loneliness. Just another routine into which she had fallen. But whatever it was, she didn't for a moment pretend to understand it. He was Gaara of the Desert, and for all his improvement in the art of being human, he did not fall in love. He was not a prince in a fairy tale. She was not a princess. And no matter what Kenji might have said, or what conclusions he might have drawn, or even what illusions she might allow herself to harbor, she did not have a hold on him.

But somehow, someway, he had created a hold over her.

I'm leaving, she thought, and opened her mouth to confirm it aloud.

"I was wrong," Gaara said abruptly, his voice cutting through the quiet and startling her.

She blinked in surprise, and then mentally slapped her forehead. Predictably unpredictable. Forgot about that for a second. Aware that her mouth was still hanging open, she collected her wits and snapped it shut. No sense in looking like a fool, no matter how much she felt like one.

He seemed mildly agitated, as if there was something on his mind as well and he didn't like it. She knew the feeling. Taking a controlled breath, she tried to say it again, to commit to the facts she needed to state. I'm leaving, I'm going home, and nothing can ever come of any of this.

"I was wrong." He managed to cut her off again, as if he somehow knew what she was trying to say and was deliberately preventing her from saying it. "To think of you like I did," he elaborated at last, and his voice was flat again, emotionless. Retreating into the familiarity of apathy, she recognized. Instantly, the speech she had so painfully prepared and memorized flew right out of her head, and a surge of something that wasn't anger or mockery took its place. Something…solid, confident. Whatever it was, it made her stand up straight and take a step towards the defiantly stoic figure standing with her in the dark.

Oh, no, you don't.

"You mean you were wrong to think I was a traitor?" Sakura demanded bluntly, but with no malice in her voice. He tilted his head a little, still not really looking at her. Alright, if he wasn't going to look at her of his own will, then she would just have to force him to do so.

She moved closer, sliding between him and the wall at the edge of the building. "Or do you mean that you were wrong to believe that I was lying to you based on nothing but the word of a one chuunin?" Her eyes stayed locked on his, unwavering even when he shifted his weight dangerously. Her voice was low and oddly melodic, the charmer's song that held the poisonous cobra in thrall.

"Or do you mean you were wrong to think that leaving me in the desert would actually kill me?"

Gaara stared at her, though if it was her words or her sudden proximity that made his breathing hitch, she couldn't tell. "Because, yes, you were wrong." She jabbed a finger gently into his chest. "On all those counts. And just so you know, the Fifth did technically ask me to study you, but she only requested it as sort of a side note to my actual mission. I think she only wanted me to talk to you once or twice so I could give her a general opinion of you." She shook her head, and traced a finger along his jaw line, watching the way his nostrils flared, his eyes widened marginally.

"Once or twice?" His voice was low and deceptively flat again, but she caught the other question underneath nonetheless.

"After that first time on the roof, I considered my task accomplished. All those times I came back after that…It wasn't a mission. It may have sort of started as one, but in the end it became…" Sakura trailed off lamely, realizing with a stomach-churning lurch how close she'd come to blurting out the truth that she had been determined to hide from him.

She couldn't do it, couldn't say it. She hadn't come here to say it, but somehow she'd found herself trying to admit to something she neither wanted to admit, nor should she. It hardly matters what I should or shouldn't say, she thought privately. I'm too much of a coward to say it anyway. She'd done that before, put herself on the line before, and look where that had landed her.

His fingers grazed her neck, and her brain stopped working properly.

"What did it become?" Gaara asked, very quietly. She was suddenly aware that he had stepped forward, slightly, that the distance between them was perfunctory at best. She could feel his body heat – she could feel…him, brushing ever so lightly against her. And his fingers hovered over her throat, up to the delicate curve of her jaw, to the sensitive skin at the corner of her eye.

What was he really thinking? Sakura tried to open her senses as Tsunade had taught, tried to feel something in his aura. There was a muffled sensation around him, as if he was deliberately holding some strong emotion back, shielding himself.

She swallowed, and watched his eyes shift to regard her throat, then back up to her face. Waiting.

"What did it become," she finally whispered, "to you?"

He blinked, confused for a moment. And then that smirk rose to his face again, but there was no cruelty in it tonight. "I don't know what it's called. But I hate it and I want it, all at the same time. It makes me feel weaker." He narrowed his eyes briefly, then sighed a little and let the anger go. "But it will not go away. And sometimes, it makes me feel stronger. I fear it and I want it."

"What do you fear?" she asked. "What do you want?"

The smirk switched to a frown instantly as Gaara slide his hand flush against her face, pushing strong fingers into her hair. His other hand rose and settled on her shoulder, as if he expected her to run off and he was holding her there. No, as if he feared she would run, and he was confirming to himself that she hadn't already.

"You," he said at last, and there was fragility in the statement. He had abandoned caution, and he knew it. He didn't like it much either, judging by the set of his jaw and the tension in his body. It disturbed him. Left him vulnerable. If ever she wanted to crush him, to end the emotional dance she had somehow initiated with him, all it would take would be one word, one sentence.

She didn't want that.

Still moving carefully, slowly, because some things had not changed and would not change for a long time between them, she stood on her toes, ignoring her protesting calf. And because some things had changed, she kissed him.