A half hour had gone by when Tsunade and Sakura finally showed up again. Gaara was still holding onto Nikomi. He looked down at her. The girl who not that long ago was being sarcastic and overly confident now looked frail and weak.
"What took so long?" Gaara asked the two women as they walked into the room.
"Sorry. It took me a while to find Tsunade-sama. You could have told me you guys were at the academy." Sakura answered annoyed.
Tsunade sighed, shaking her head. "She really let it go too long this time didn't she?"
"It was bad. If she had let it go much longer I don't know if we could have helped her." Sakura replied.
"What's wrong with her?" Gaara asked.
"Look at the palm of her hand." Sakura instructed.
Gaara picked up one of the girls hands, causing her to stir just a bit, and turned it over to look at the palm. There, right in the center, was a large dark purple spot.
"What is this?" He asked.
"That's a chakra point. She has one on each of her hands." Said Sakura.
"A chakra point?" Gaara asked confused. Normally chakra points were the size of the head of a pin, naked to the eye. But this was almost the size of a golf ball. It covered nearly her entire palm.
Tsunade sat down in a chair that was in the room and began to explain the situation. "Let me start from the beginning. First of all, Nikomi wasn't actually born blind. She was simply blinded when she was an infant."
Gaara looked at Tsunade perplexed. "How?" He asked intrigued.
"You see. Nikomi is an orphan. Her father died before she was born and her mother passed away at child birth. So from the start she was alone. Since she was so young she was given to an orphanage. But she didn't stay there long. Instead a man, who at the time seemed confident and stable, came and adopted her, saying he and his wife couldn't have children and always wanted a baby girl. But that man turned out to be none other than Orochimaru." Tsunade explained to him in detail.
Gaara looked at her shocked. What could he have done to her to make her this way?
"It turns out he was going from country to country searching for babies orphaned at birth so he could experiment on them by opening the chakra points in their hands and infusing them with a special new substance he had developed. As you know from the preliminaries she has a negative chakra that flows through her. That was Orochimaru's doing." Sakura added.
"But to his dismay all of the children died by the time they were 4. All but one. Nikomi here only went blind from the negative chakra. For some reason her body could handle it. Of course at first Orochimaru thought that her blindness would make her useless until he realized she could see Chakra." Tsunade explained to him. "So he began to train her as a ninja, teaching her to use the negative chakra to her advantage. She was his little weapon."
Gaara stared intently at the girl sleeping in his arms. A weapon. He thought. Just like me.
"But Orochimaru noticed that everytime she used this ability the chakra would eventually attack her body. So when she was ten he kicked her to the curb, labeling her a failed experiment." Sakura finished.
Gaara could completely understand. He too was a failed experiment. His father had put the Shukaku inside of him to make him the ultimate fighting weapon. But it was realized he couldn't control it his own father tried to have him assassinated over and over again.
"A year later, just after I had become Hokage, I found her walking the streets covered in dirty bandages and stealing food wherever she could. I decided I'd take her in then and help her." Tsunade informed him.
"So…does this happen every time she uses the technique?" Gaara asked.
Tsunade shook her head. "Not every time. As you probably know, that walking stick she uses isn't normal. It's infused with that negative chakra. At the preliminaries when she was fighting that boy, she hit his chakra point opening it up to allow the negative chakra to flow in and his chakra to flow out."
"But since Nikomi knew this boy was only fighting her because he had to, and probably had no intention of killing her, she didn't want to seriously hurt him. So she stopped the chakra from flowing anymore into his body." Sakura added. "But the problem with this chakra is that once it begins to flow, it's hard to get it stop. So once she broke it from attacking that boy, it began to attack her instead."
Gaara looked at her hand, examining it further. People had always called him a monster, but compared to Orochimaru he was nothing.
Just then Nikomi moved, yanking her hand down, causing the blankets to fall off of her. She moaned and cuddled up even more with Gaara, pressing her entire upper body against his chest.
Gaara's eyes went wide as he felt her press against him. His heart raced and he felt his cheeks flush. It took a lot to make him react like this, so this was definitely making him feel a little awkward.
He cleared his throat and tried once again to lay the sleeping girl down on the bed. But just like before, Nikomi whined and clung onto to him.
Sakura giggled and Tsunade let out a little snicker. "It seems she really likes you." Tsunade remarked.
Gaara sighed and sat back up, still holding onto her. He could not get her to let go of him.
"You can just lay her down. Once you make her let go she won't notice." Sakura explained.
Gaara nodded and did as she said. He had to pry her fingers from his shirt, and she did complain a little, but she eventually curled up on the bed and went to sleep. He then covered her with the blankets and stood up.
Sakura laughed once more. "You're soaked from tears and sweat."
Gaara looked down and grunted. His shirt was completely drenched. Back in the day he would have been pissed, but now he only found himself a little put off by it.
"Go home." Tsunade ordered him. "She'll be fine."
"Alright." Gaara agreed. "Then I'll leave her to you." At that he turned and left in his normal uptight fashion.
When he arrived back at where he was staying he fell back onto the bed and let out a heavy sigh. It had been a rather eventful and exhausting morning.
He touched his shirt and groaned. It really was sopping wet. But then his mind went to something else. He could still remember how it felt to have her against him. Her warmth on his skin, the feel of her pulse against his chest. It made him feel good, like he'd never felt before.
"That was a good feeling." He said to himself out loud.
"What's a good feeling?" A voice asked from the other side of the room.
Gaara sat up and looked towards the door. "Nothing," he said sternly.
"Where have you been?" Temari asked.
"I had to go to the academy this morning," he explained while standing up. "Then I had to take one of the students to the hospital."
Temari looked him up and down then asked, "What were you doing there, swimming? You're soaked!"
Gaara turned, rather nonchalantly, to face the window on the other side of the room putting his back to her. He could not let her see that he was blushing for the second time today. "One of the final candidates collapsed and I had to take her to the hospital." He explained not telling her any more.
Temari let it go. She knew pestering him about it would be completely useless. "Well, I just stopped in for a second to grab something and now I'm heading back out to train Persephone and Keeran. I'll be back later."
Gaara didn't say anything else. He waited for the sound of the door then turned around to check if she had left. Once he was sure she was gone, he let out a heavy sigh and sat back down on the bed. He couldn't get the feeling of her body against his out of his head. It just made him feel…strange. He didn't know how to describe it. But it was a good feeling.
