Author's Note:

Sorry to distract you from the chapter, but I wanted to point out that a few months have gone by in the story. Once again, the characters are a little older.

I do have some… good and bad news at the same time. The bad news is that this story is almost to an end. That's bad news for you people who wish for good stories to just keep going and going, but all good things must come to an end, right? It should be good news for those of you who like the story, but really just want to get to the end. Anyways, just giving you a notice.

Onto to the next chapter:

Chapter 34:

If anything Gaara wanted, it was sleep…

If anything Gaara wanted, it was peace…

The stresses and cares of the world were, inch by inch, starting to make their way to his mind that had been blocking them out the past… approximately sixteen years of his life.

Now he was eighteen…

Another year had come and gone, but still no sleep came to him.

No matter how hard he tried each night, his eyes refused to close…

Insomniac…

Hour after hour went by through the long night as Gaara kept rethinking about the past few months. So much had happened, it almost seemed like a daydream that had passed by him without him even being aware of it. Raxiel had done a superlative job of planning out where the new villages would be. She had even drawn her whole idea onto a map, and it was a reasonable, well thought out plan of where everything would be. Gaara was amazed by how fast she had drawn up the whole thing.

As the months went by, the country had managed to make two new villages: one which was towards the west, and the other which was to the south of Sunagakure. They were huge towns that made the lives of the townspeople easier. They still had a long ways to go, but everything had been working out real well. Raxiel's plans were doing marvelous things for Suna, and the townspeople's spirits were raised with high hopes of getting more villages done by the end of the year.

Gaara knew that if Raxiel had not helped him, he wouldn't have been able to have kept so many of the townspeople here. Half of Suna was threatening to leave the country, but once Raxiel had announced her plan to the townspeople and they had started to work on it, fewer townspeople complained and threatened about leaving. In fact, most of the townspeople had grown… a bond with Raxiel.

"It was all because I let her go out into those villages. Now everyone knows her, and everyone wants to be her friend," Gaara thought as he tossed over onto his other side in the bed. "But if I hadn't have let her go to those towns, we wouldn't have come this far." Gaara knew they had more faith in her than they did with him. He knew exactly why those people wanted to stay and become better acquainted with her. There was some aura around her that just attracted people to her, whether she intended to or not.

It was almost as she was an exact opposite of him…

Months had gone by, and every day, Raxiel's trust had grown with him as his trust had grown with hers. Some nights, they would even stay up late together… just the two of them. They would talk about the most random things, and yet each conversation they had seemed as though it was necessary. The more he learned about her, the more amazing she seemed to him.

She almost… made all his stress go away…

When those rare moments when they were alone occurred, his mind was soothed, and his stress and cares were almost erased and forgotten until the next day.

Gaara finally sat up in his bed. There was no doubt in his mind that he would not be able to sleep tonight. He stood up and walked over to the window that showed the veranda outside of his room.

It was a full moon tonight, giving the sand a bluish tint and making his room light up with the moonlight. As he looked up at the moon, he saw her face again.

Gaara smirked. He started to think about Raxiel and if she was asleep or not.

He started to ponder in his mind what she'd look like sleeping…

Come to think of it, he had never seen her sleep before, unless you count the time that he had woken her up in her hotel room when she was a mess…

He started to wonder what she looked like when she was sleeping…

Was her breathing slower than usual?

Did she still manage to keep her smile on her face when she was dreaming?

Was her shoulder-length hair over her face, or was it kept behind her back?

He started to picture in his mind how the moonlight would look across her unconscious face…

"I shouldn't let things like this enter my head," Gaara thought as he looked away from the window towards the bare door across the room from him. That door seemed to be calling him to go downstairs. Gaara had no reason to go downstairs, but since there was nothing else to do in the middle of the night, he decided that there was no reason not to.

As Gaara made his way downstairs and into the family room, he swiftly stopped.

Something was on one of the dark blue, leather couch…

Something was breathing on it…

Something was lying on it…

Brunette hair and a petite figure was what Gaara saw as he cautiously made his way over to Raxiel. Quietly, he whispered her name.

"Raxiel?"

As he looked down at her face that was on one of the couch's pillows, he could not find the dark brown irises that made her big, dark eyes stand out.

She was asleep…

Just as if Gaara's wish had come true…

Gaara closely examined her beautiful figure are it inhaled and exhaled. As the moon's light made contact with her elegant face, Gaara almost thought that she was… an angel…? The strands of hair that fell across her face made her even more alluring to him. Dark circles under her eyes quickly alerted Gaara that she also had not had sleep for a long time. As his eyes made their way across her face down to her lower body, he watched as her chest glided outward and inward, almost hypnotizing him to her. Her usual covered hips were now visual as her clothing was showing off every curve in her body.

Gaara knew that if she caught him looking at her like this, he'd be in for one, long, darn good explanation.

He shook his head violently to snap him back to reality. "She must have been having trouble sleeping, so she came in here and accidentally fell asleep," he reasoned with himself. He knew he couldn't stay in here while she was in here asleep. It was too dangerous, and he didn't want to hurt her, especially knowing that she was a very modest person. And now that he knew every curve in her figure, he was going to be cursing at himself for many days now.

He was about to leave. He was about to do the right thing and not let his emotions take over him…

But when he saw the blanket on one of the other couches, he couldn't help but pick it up and gently place it on her.

Caring…

Never in his life had he been to… polite to anyone…

She made him want to do nice things like that…

And she never even asked him to do it.

What strange affects she had on him… and Gaara would never know the real answer to them.

As he glanced at her one last time, this time with the blanket covering up almost all of her silhouette, he heard her sigh and… a smirk appeared from her lips…?

She had been cold, and he had made her happy…

Gaara eyes widened when he heard her soft, pleasant moan, as if telling him that all was well tonight.

And Gaara was happy…

He was happy that she was happy…

He was happy that all was well…

Her smirk from her light red lips had told him everything he needed to know…

Red…