ooo
Tonight the dream was of drowning, with her waking just enough each time to recognize it as a dream—then falling right back into it as soon as consciousness faded. Sakura finally struggled to alertness, sick to her stomach with worry and from lack of sleep. The mission had been supposed to hold them over for three nights, with the Leaf team leaving the next morning. She had less than six hours until she was supposed to leave with them.
Bread and a glass of water helped her stomach. Temari came into the kitchen to find Sakura sitting on the counter in the dark, kicking her feet, unwilling to go back to bed.
The Sand-nin squeezed Sakura's shoulder and headed back to her own room without a word. Sakura understood: tonight there'd be no push besides the one she gave herself.
Well, she told herself, at least her indecision wouldn't be cutting into his sleep.
She brought the blanket again; she jogged when the wind proved cutting as well as cold. It was silly, Sakura told herself, to feel self-conscious letting herself into his building. It was silly to worry about who might've seen her or if Gaara would tire of her company.
Gaara hadn't expected her, but he'd hoped—and he'd left his door open. And just in case, he'd made preparations.
She knocked; he waved her in from his seat at his desk. Sakura glanced around and found his place to be about what she'd expected: a young bachelor's patchwork collection of furniture, its quality indicating a person of means if not of especially coherent taste.
As Gaara rolled up the scrolls he'd been examining, he asked if they would be walking again. The offer he gave her was of space—but Sakura felt less concerned with his apartment's relative intimacy, more concerned with how staying in one place for very long would tempt her to try to go back to sleep. It wasn't just that sleeping or complaining of sleeplessness around him felt rude in relation to his obvious continued insomnia—it was that waking from a nightmare in front of him would be even more embarrassing than her waking Temari every night.
She had the sudden, insane impulse to see if he'd let her use him as a pillow and sleep that way, to see if his presence would frighten her bad dreams away—and shook it away just as quickly. "Yeah," she said. "Walking would be nice."
"Here." He handed her a bundle of soft, heavy fabric: a wrap that would keep out the worst of the desert's night chill. "It should fit."
She shrugged into it, then paused, inhaling through her nose. "This is yours."
"We're close enough to the same size." The words were easier than explaining how Temari must think they would have the sense to stay indoors—or how Sakura leaving his place in the early morning would create more rumors than Kankurou could possibly keep up with.
She couldn't resist; she held her arms out and did a little spin. "How do I look?"
He looked her over, then looked her in the eye. "Like you belong here."
ooo
They ended up wandering along the inside of Sand's perimeter wall, with Sakura carrying her blanket as if she actually intended to return to bed. Her fleeting remaining time let her think out loud around him, let her bounce her thoughts off him as a sounding board. "On one hand," she said, and raised the hand to hip level, "it's supposed to be my choice. On the other, I don't think I have very much of a choice at all. Leaf wants his bloodline, and he said he'd only give them children of his bloodline through me. I worry . . . that they'll try to push me into the marriage, no matter what I want." Then she sighed, flustered. "I don't know what I expect you to say, though. This kind of thing's nothing you'd ever have to worry about."
"No one would be stupid enough to try," he agreed.
"Maybe that's the thing," Sakura said, almost to herself. "I should just be more like you."
He thought about it, pale green eyes observing her curiously. Then: "That might work."
Sakura stared, trying to figure out if Gaara was making a staggering understatement or being hyperbolic to the point of his making a joke. Then the mental image struck her—her chasing Sasuke and elders and every other annoyance away from her with shouts of, "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"—and she couldn't stop giggling.
A week ago, if someone had told her she'd soon find herself wandering around Sand at odd hours of the night as the Kazekage oh-so-gingerly tried to talk her out of getting married to the guy she'd been in love with for years, she would've laughed at them. But because she could talk to him and because of the range of his life experience, she decided it wasn't so strange an idea that Gaara could somehow help her with her problems.
She only had a few hours, though, and so many questions.
"Did you ever have to do something that was . . . well, against your nature? Against everything your gut was telling you?"
Gaara considered. "When I decided to become Kazekage." He looked past her and at the still-dark horizon, remembering. "I had to fight a number of people, the ones who couldn't accept me—I had to fight them publicly, and not kill them, or else the ones who hated me would hate me more. I had to demonstrate control—even if everything in me wanted to let go of it." A pause, as he put words to his realization. "They were so desperate. I had to be stronger than them but still respect their lives as Sand's ninjas; afterwards, I had to convince them that we all had Sand's best interests in mind." He scowled. "Some needed to be convinced a few times. Some . . ."
She nodded. "Doing something just as a job doesn't tend to drive people nearly as hard or move people nearly as strongly as a cause they believe in."
"And when there's two believers on opposite sides of the battlefield . . ."
"Yeah," she agreed quietly, and tucked her arms under her wrap.
Curiosity bested stoicism, and he turned back to her. "Why do you ask me?"
"I . . . just needed to know that someone else understands."
Had he missed a verbal cue? Had she decided to return to Leaf after all? "I did it to become Kazekage, though," he said, sudden alarm straightening his spine.
"I know. You took what you knew and what you wanted"—she made a little box with her hands—"and you stepped completely beyond it in order to do what you had to. Which was what was best for Sand . . . and what was best for you."
They walked a few more minutes, each lost in their own thoughts: Sakura wondering if she was making the right decision, Gaara wondering if she would fold and fall and start the entire terrible cycle over again. Finally, she spoke. "Gaara, do I have to leave with them today?"
"No," he replied—and both let out matched, minuscule sighs of relief.
She shook her head. "I don't want to be a coward—but I don't know what to say to them. At least, not yet. I just know I can't go back into that . . . situation unprepared."
He thought of all the terrible things that could be done to a kunoichi to make her compliant; he thought of every threat and every angle of pressure and every technique that could strip a person's will away. Gaara had put years into imagining every scenario, wondering which ones could've been used on his mother—and which ones had finally pushed her to the point where it'd been easier to kill her than keep her manageable. But this time Sakura was the victim of these faceless ninjas' plans. This time the Uchiha played the part of his father, coldly looking on as more than two straight years of pregnancy ground his wife to dust.
Sakura didn't have to go back at all, Gaara thought, but kept the sentiment to himself.
After a few more steps, she gave him a shy, experimental touch on the arm. "Are we going to watch the sunrise again this morning?"
"If you like."
They sat on the eastern wall, feet dangling, a dry wind messing their hair and making Sakura cling to her blanket. In silence, each was able to relax, just for a little while.
Once the sun's morning glow had gone from pale to red to orange to bright, harsh gold, Sakura turned back to him. "What will you tell Tsunade-sama?"
"I'll figure it out."
He dropped her off with Temari, went to his office, and sat down to write a letter that would hopefully not start a war with Leaf.