Sakura came out of her room that morning in time for the debriefings Gaara couldn't have handled the night before. "And as for the three Sakura fought," Temari said, then paused. "You ready for this one?"

Gaara took a seat across the table from her and nodded.

"It was all a series of gross misunderstandings."

Over the years he'd perfected a flat affect; Gaara's expression didn't budge. As she inched up beside him, Sakura couldn't tell if he was even breathing. Unsettled by his silence, Sakura spoke for them both. "How's that supposed to have worked?"

"We've always pushed to better our ninjas. The girls you fought knew their value was in their strength and capability; that's something Gaara's always . . . strongly encouraged. But then you turned up here—and you were in danger, and visibly shaken, and scared and not fighting, even when they started to give you trouble. You came off as the kind of ninja we'd told them not to be—but the next thing we all know, you're spending a lot of time with him." Temari crossed her legs, then interlaced her fingers over her knee. "So as far as they knew, the head authority who'd told them to be stronger—with the implication that he'd like them more if they were—had fallen for someone who . . . wasn't."

"Why didn't they just ask?"

"Are you gonna walk up to a rival and ask them if they're really better than you are? It was easier for them to just think less of you—and feel justified when you didn't turn on them for anything. Then Kankurou's rumors hit the streets, and they figured if you could be rattled easily then they might be able to rattle you right out of Sand. But when you challenged them, in front of him no less . . . It wasn't something any of them could walk away from."

Gaara still hadn't moved. If he'd been more open, he thought, this could've been avoided. If he'd been harsher with his admirers, maybe; if he'd done any number of things differently. But this was a dangerous thought path to take, one that'd cripple him with regrets. Far better for him to fix the present. But as the Kazekage, he was still responsible for his shinobi—even if they desperately needed to carry out better research before leaping to dire conclusions.

Temari leaned in, set a fist on the table, and reminded him that he needed to officially decide what to do: the three had still attacked a refugee, within Sand's walls and in full view of their Kazekage. If Sakura'd been a dignitary, they might've had to pay for their mistakes with their lives; if Sakura'd had any less self-control, their forfeit may have been the same.

Gaara, having not dealt with a situation like this before, hesitated. He couldn't pass judgment yet—not, at least, until he was sure the course of action wasn't motivated in any way by revenge.

Sakura recognized his indecision, and wondered at how easy it was for her to forget that he was only her age. Maybe, she thought, it was time for her to help take some of this weight.

"I'll deal with it," she said.

She shouldn't have to deal with it, though, and both Sand-nin told her so.

"Doesn't matter," she said, and straightened her spine. "I should've taken care of things before it got this bad. Give them D-ranked missions for a month if you want—but let me deal with them otherwise."

"What are you going to do?"

She smiled. "I fought them already . . . so I'll try to talk to them. Worse comes to worse, I'll fight them again."

Temari's eyebrows arched. "It's a way to get your exercise."

"If she'd been able to fight too . . ." Gaara started, but trailed off, his eyes fixed on the tabletop.

Sakura looked and was touched by what she saw: the human under the robes of office; the young man who wore the scars of his past as honestly and openly as the kanji on his forehead. Temari, more experienced in dealing with her little brother, saw his fragmented stability—and the mental comparison he'd made.

Gaara looked up, meeting Temari's eyes first, and she concentrated on her breathing to not look away. Was this dread a subconscious recognition of their path's inherent danger? Or a logical response built from years of guessing at her little brother's mental state? There'd been hundreds of nights on missions where every time Gaara wandered off, she and Kankurou and Baki would exchange glances and wonder if the redhead was going to relieve himself or hunting for something to kill. For the sake of their lives, they'd all learned to read the nuances of his body language: the slight rounding of his shoulders, the tension in his forearms, his tendency to stare silently at nothing and the subtle shift of flat affect to flat, predatory calculation.

She was no longer sure Gaara was the one who needed protection in this relationship.

Then Sakura moved, his attention shifted to her, and Temari couldn't say if she'd imagined what she'd seen. The Leaf-nin reached towards him with a half-formed excuse; Gaara caught her hand and pressed his lips to skin split by an unfortunate girl's tooth. Sakura's words trailed to nothingness as the two smiled at each other, each hopeful for completely different reasons.

It wasn't until Sakura went back to shake out the day's clothing that she noticed he'd pulled every single grain of sand out of her room.

The salt of her skin was on his lips; Gaara tasted it thoughtfully. Temari wisely kept her questions to herself.

Gaara waited until he got back to his office to unroll that morning's scroll again, re-reading it as if to remind himself that he hadn't imagined it. Naruto shall be there as soon as he can, Tsunade'd sent. He and Leaf's council believe this shall help everyone get a better grasp on the situation.

"Not helpful," he said, and frowned. It was like some invisible timer kept resetting itself, then taunting them with yet another ominous deadline. Soon, one way or another, Sakura'd have to make a final decision. The redhead felt things were simple enough: Leaf wanted Sakura, he didn't want them to have Sakura, and Sakura wanted . . .

For him to be okay with taking their relationship to another level, she'd said. Which meant she wanted that next level—which meant she wanted him.

He wouldn't send that information on to the Hokage for a little while.

But if things continued to go well—if he could just put himself in order for what they had together, and if he could do it for the right reasons—then soon, hopefully, he could drop all pretense and spell the entire thing out. It'd certainly mean more unpleasantness, since Leaf had no reason to simply concede to one of their best medics leaving . . . but it'd at least be an honest unpleasantness.

In the meantime, he was left talking to a piece of paper.

With a gesture, a glower, and an ounce of sand, he shredded the message to fibers. Rationally, he knew insanity had been a terrible lifestyle—but it'd also been so very much simpler.

ooo

The medics were discussing her. Sakura waited around a corner from them, her back to the stone wall, listening.

"Hush," one said. "They'll be good for each other."

"Or wreck an entire block if they fight," someone shot back, to a chorus of chuckles.

Another wanted to know what things were coming to, if the future of their village was getting into fistfights in the street for their Kazekage's affection. Yet another thought it was about time Sakura'd stood up for herself. "People'll think twice before they try to say she's not good enough for him, right?"

The turn of phrase bothered her in some way she couldn't easily define. Sakura shook her head and left the medics to their gossip. Soon enough, she put her finger on the reason for her unease.

The words hadn't been there—at least, not all the time—but the implication that'd been ground into her psyche was clear: If she'd been a better person, everything around her would've been okay. If she'd just been good enough, Sasuke wouldn't have had to betray them all so many times. In a purely cerebral way, Sakura knew this wasn't true; in a purely cerebral way, she knew letting herself be defined by someone else's opinion of her was a certain way to get hurt . . . but on a gut level, she hadn't been able to totally convince herself. It was like trying to talk oneself out of throwing up: it might work for a short while, but the battle most often proves futile.

As a medic, she knew what to do: eliminate the source of the sickness, then medicate. Except for years on end, the sickness had resisted her best efforts.

But then there was Gaara, with his attention and his small smiles and company; with his disarming combination of strength and fragility; with how he made it clear he wanted to be a better person—for Sand and for her.

They'd both needed healing, she decided. So if both of them were actively committed to becoming better people, for themselves as well as each other . . . that wasn't sickness. It wasn't letting someone else define them. It wasn't chasing after some impossible ideal via a perpetual cycle of self-doubt and self-loathing and self-recrimination. It was growth.

Something in her chest loosened, something she hadn't realized was tight, and she smiled to herself as she turned to head towards her station. Strange, that she'd found a fairly functional relationship with someone as profoundly dysfunctional as Gaara.

Caught up in her thoughts, she almost walked past the kunoichi attempting to give her wide berth: a girl with an impressively black eye and the sullen, slump-shouldered stride of someone who'd been properly taken to task. Sakura looked; the girl looked away.

She thought of Naruto, how he'd claimed allies among those he'd once beaten. She thought of how the girls she'd fought hadn't thought her capable of standing on her own. She remembered how Gaara'd told her he'd had to first fight those who'd been against him, then convince them they were really on the same side.

"Come on," Sakura said, then grabbed the girl's arm and started marching her towards the bathroom. "Let's get that taken care of." When her victim started to resist, Sakura shook her. "Calm down—I'm just trying to help."

In a few minutes she'd repaired the outward damage, and announced her success with, "There. It'll be a little red for a few hours, but the worst is gone."

The other girl examined herself in the mirror hesitantly, as if waiting for an illusion to fade. But Sakura'd done her work well; the bruise was gone. She knew what the Sand-nin felt by her expression: disbelief, a little fear, a little awe . . . but realized she didn't even know the girl's name.

"How'd you do that?"

"I can show you." Sakura let out a breath, then smiled and stuck out her hand. "Here, let's start over. I'm Sakura."