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At Sand, they waited.
Sakura'd sat down at Gaara's table to write her letter to Tsunade the night of her abdication, intending to send it so it'd arrive before Naruto. Gaara'd watched her patiently until she was finished—then marched her to bed and welcomed her to Sand as thoroughly as he physically could. For a while, it helped them forget.
Morning came; Sakura sent her letter winging to Leaf with the hopes that this outreach would be better received. Kankurou checked in as she and Gaara were headed back from the eastern wall, whooped when he saw Sakura's new forehead protector, picked her up, and spun her in circles.
The day drew on, and they waited.
Sakura put in her first stretch of hours at the hospital in her new capacity, then put off her afternoon nap in order to dive into Sand's medical library. Gaara met with his own council, then with Baki and Temari, then with some of his jounin, all while trying to quell his growing sense of unease. Maybe Naruto had arrived late. Maybe the ruckus in Leaf was taking longer than expected to be sorted out. Maybe the Hokage was taking her time responding, as petty revenge for his being a pain in her ass. Maybe the messenger bird had been caught and eaten by something.
Maybe he should've just disregarded all agreements, brought a force across their border anyway, and come down on Leaf with everything he had at the first sign of trouble—even if the act would certainly start a war.
Knowing nothing could be immediately done even if they got an alert right then, Gaara instead exerted himself destroying yet another training ground, then rebuilding it. He met Sakura afterwards, on her way to his place and weighed down with a double armful of medical texts.
"Anything?" she asked, and he shook his head.
They ended up going out for dinner with Kankurou and Temari, partially for decompression, partially to keep themselves out in the open. Sakura sat close at Gaara's side, holding his hand under the table, and laughed when he told her how Naruto'd given his genin advice and only his healthy sense of suspicion had saved them all from her teammate's good intentions.
"Why'd you let him do that?" she asked.
"It made him happy."
Sakura shook her head but smiled anyway, unable to fault him.
People circled and cycled through to greet them, ask questions, eye Sand's newest addition, and spend a minute or so chatting. At one point Sakura counted more than a dozen newcomers around them, talking to and over each other, and she realized she hadn't just picked up a new home—she'd landed in the very center of the mechanism keeping Sand moving.
Eventually dusk fell, and Gaara and his siblings exchanged pointed looks with her. By this time something had to be wrong.
Kankurou spoke up first. "We'll see what the morning brings, then?"
Gaara nodded.
"If we don't hear anything by midmorning, noon?"
"Then we take a few teams and head out," he replied, and didn't mention the chances they'd arrive to an openly hostile reception, or only get there in time to help Leaf's survivors pull people from the rubble.
Afterwards, back at his place, he watched Sakura set herself to picking up Sand's medical techniques with a single-minded determination: learning a set of hand seals, adjusting the cadence, nodding to herself, drilling the series—then flipping a page or unrolling a new scroll and restarting the process. Eventually she noticed the attention, looked up at him, and smiled a smile he'd come to recognize.
"You love it," he said, almost without meaning to.
"Yeah." Sakura glanced down, then back up. "I can keep people alive and I can hold my own—it's better than I could do for years. I don't expect to be able to go head to head against some of you guys, but it's still something."
"Sometimes you don't have to go head to head with a person," he offered. "Just outcorner them."
She grinned, understanding . . . then haltingly told him she still felt like she'd hampered herself, that she could've improved faster or at least gotten more of a head start by having a better sense of focus when she was younger, by concentrating on what she knew she was good at—no matter how her instructors at the time had encouraged (or discouraged) her. He pointed out that she'd just picked up a dozen new techniques in the time it took him to get halfway through the night's paperwork, and she colored, proud of herself, happy he'd noticed.
Before Sakura went back to work she realized he was examining her with a different kind of consideration, and she smiled to herself, knowing how this night would end as well. She still wasn't sure if she slept so well in his bed because he'd cemented himself in her mind as a safe haven or because he'd proven so adept at wearing her out . . . but found she was all right with either option.
When she woke up again in the hours before dawn she found him still there: his eyes closed, his heartbeat slow and steady under her ear, his fingertips idly tracing little circles and figure eights on the bare skin of her shoulder. Not asleep, still . . . but resting. For a while she remained motionless, unwilling to disturb him, watching him breathe; for a while longer she wondered about the damage that'd been done to him, and how much of it would directly impact the two of them.
Gaara's eyes slitted open, almost colorless in the dark, and focused on her. When she didn't say anything he picked up her hand from where it lay against his stomach, pressed a kiss to her palm, and replaced it on his chest instead. She nodded in response, smiling faintly—even though he still hadn't said the words, she knew with absolute certainty what he meant—and he closed his eyes again and squeezed her tighter.
It wasn't until after she'd headed back to Temari's the next morning that the first messenger bird arrived—a full-sized hawk, one that dove unerringly for Gaara's upraised arm. The letter was from Shizune, and was free of preamble or layering: Naruto'd spent hours looking for Sasuke, then hours more looking for Tsunade, and had finally kicked down Tsunade's office door that night to find the Hokage unconscious and stuffed under her own desk. Thus far Tsunade had been either unwilling or unable to talk about what'd happened. Sasuke had run again. He'd been last seen shortly after Naruto and Tsunade's clash with the council, by a gate which wouldn't directly put him on a route to Sand; Naruto had immediately left for Sand anyway, despite being roadweary and potentially twelve hours behind him.
Before he'd left, Naruto'd told Shizune to ask Gaara to wait—to try to hold Sasuke off rather than fight him, or at least to not try to kill him. Shizune told Gaara she'd promised to relay the message, but would make no such request.
Instead of fear or dread, Gaara felt relief. Here, finally, was a battle he'd know how to fight.
He barged into Temari's without knocking. Both kunoichi read the gravity of his expression and visibly assumed the worst, so Gaara opened with reassurances. "Tsunade is alive. Naruto, too."
"What—" Sakura started, then stopped herself. She already knew what'd happened.
She reached for the scroll first; Temari read it over her shoulder, then took a step back, her face twisting. "We knew it was always a possibility that Sasuke'd take things badly. We knew—but damn it, I'd hoped he'd not be stupid enough to pull something like this."
Gaara turned to Sakura; after a few seconds, Temari did too. It took her a little bit to break away from the letter and notice their attention was on her.
"You know him better than we do," Temari told her, carefully, soothingly.
"I . . ." Sakura looked between the two of them, then at the letter, then back up again. "I don't know what to say. He lashed out first the last time he ran, too . . . He took a swing at me, he attacked Naruto—"
"He punched a hole in Naruto and left him to bleed out at the border," Gaara said, and pretended not to notice when Sakura shifted to cover her flinch. "We were there for that. What we need to know are the chances he's going to go anywhere but here."
Sakura's teeth clenched. "We're not that lucky."
He'd figured as much. "What are the chances Naruto'll catch up to him between Leaf and Sand?"
Both of the Leaf-nin would be angry, and running on that anger; only one would be fresh and have a significant head start. "Low," Sakura replied, and hoped she was right—that her teammate wouldn't run directly into an ambush.
Gaara nodded and started making mental calculations for what Sand would need in the coming days: More sentries. Anti-illusion specialists checking everyone and everything coming into Sand. Every single one of his shinobi getting the order to not engage, to keep the Uchiha's collateral damage at a minimum . . .
In front of him, Sakura's thoughts had taken a different direction. "Maybe if I'd just told him no right then—"
"Then you would've been the only one there to face him," he replied. "Then it would've just been you versus whatever fit he threw that time, or the next time—and Leaf's elders on top of that."
Temari stepped closer to act as counterpoint, her voice low, intent. "Don't blame yourself for his choices. This isn't your fault."
Sakura turned back to Gaara, seeking confirmation, and he touched his fingertips to her breastbone. "Know it here," he told her.
She reached for his hand and looked away, nodding.
Temari stared at him, trying to get his attention without drawing Sakura's, and Gaara saw his own question in her eyes: Why was the Hokage still alive?
They had two days to figure it out, he thought—and if they couldn't by then, he could probably ask Sasuke himself.
ooo
Sakura insisted she could still work, that working would help her keep herself together; Gaara insisted on keeping her close at hand for when the letters from Leaf inevitably started to arrive. They compromised: he'd stay around the hospital and would set up a secondary office in the room where she usually slept during the afternoon, and she'd remain available for consultation.
Tsunade's message arrived first. The Fifth Hokage's penmanship, usually neat, was uneven—Gaara's first warning sign. The rest were scattered throughout her letter, like tiny red flags.
If you are anything like my council, you may be concerned for my well-being. I regret to inform you all that my health remains good and I continue to recover.
I wish you congratulations on your new relationship, though I fear Uchiha Sasuke does not share my sentiments. This may not have been what I intended when I asked you to keep Sakura safe, but as long as she has no complaints then neither do I.
So physically Tsunade was all right—but only physically. Leaf's elders were giving her trouble while feigning concern over her well-being. Sasuke knew about Gaara and Sakura, and hadn't taken it well. If Gaara mistreated Sakura he'd have at least two hot-tempered kunoichi with spectacular destructive abilities out to make him regret it—though he'd expected that much and didn't take exception to the threat, seeing Tsunade's continued willingness to butt heads with him as a positive.
He wrote back expressing his own regret that Sasuke'd chosen to abandon Leaf yet again, even though he entertained the possibility he'd get to tell the Uchiha exactly what he thought of him in person soon. (I know he's coming.) Further, he certainly hoped her council wouldn't be short-sighted enough to question her leadership abilities after a single poorly-timed scuffle. (They're stupid. Don't give up.) He also offered to help Tsunade deal with her naysayers, in the spirit of camaraderie; he even suggested they make an event of it. (Let's execute them.)
Tsunade's response said she appreciated his enthusiasm for statecraft but would prefer he kept all of it in Sand for the time being—which, he noted, didn't explicitly reject his offer. She also finally told what she could of the confrontation that'd led up to Sasuke breaking the seals on his Sharingan . . . but, Gaara also noted, gave no further details as to what'd happened after.
Shizune's next letter arrived with a much smaller bird, and he knew it'd been sent in secret. The Hokage still wasn't quite herself. Their council had become vocally dissentious; the verbal and physical beating they'd taken the previous day was probably the only thing keeping them from outright trying to depose Tsunade. She, Shizune, was doing her best to maintain appearances, and could use Sakura's input for how to best help their teacher.
Gaara handed Shizune's scroll off to Sakura and made a note to himself to send Shizune a bottle of something expensive. Upon further consideration, he decided to send Tsunade the same. Sakura read silently, then sat at the room's small table with a piece of paper and quickly started listing questions; Gaara watched her for a moment, then returned to the rooftop. He knew there was at least one more message in transit.
The letter from Leaf's elders arrived a short time later, and circled their point at length: They apologized for any offense he or Sakura had taken, swore they'd meant no harm, assured him they'd seen the errors of their judgment and that they held no ill will towards him or anyone else at Sand . . . and finally, offered an exorbitantly high bounty for the live return of Uchiha Sasuke, should he perchance appear at Sand.
He sat at the table across from Sakura and hammered out his response: thanking them for letting him know they'd sent an assassin, suggesting the next time they not give him prior warning of an attempt on his life, and asking how much of a bounty they'd offer for the Uchiha's remains . . . should he perchance appear.
Gaara stood, his hands flexing against the tabletop. He'd suggested Tsunade let him execute her council mostly as a joke—but at the moment, the idea was far too appealing.
"They still want him back," he growled, and Sakura looked up, worried by the undiluted contempt in his voice. "They still want the damned bloodline."
"After everything," she said quietly, shaking her head.
"After everything—even with this, even with everything he's done before. It doesn't matter what he does, does it? They'll just keep enabling him." Gaara's temper finally cracked and he started pacing circles, openly angry, his voice raising. "How many more people does he have to hurt before Leaf finally recognizes he's far more of a liability than an asset? How many lives are acceptable collateral damage? How many people have to die before someone finally makes the decision to put him down?"
A second later he realized what he'd said, stopped pacing, and turned to Sakura.
"I would've tried to have myself killed." His mouth had gone dry; he forced out the rest of the thought anyway. "I would've done the same as my father—"
"What? No." She leapt to her feet, alarmed by the whiplash of his emotions. "Don't talk like that—"
"It would've made sense. I was already hurting people. It would've only been a matter of time before I started killing them. Just like Sasuke."
"Was it really that? Or was it that your father decided dealing with you was too inconvenient?" When he didn't respond, Sakura reached for his wrist. "How old were you?"
"For what part?"
"The worst part."
He met her eyes, his unblinking stare bordering on unnerving. "Six."
"Six," she repeated, with a flinty edge to her voice. Every time she thought she'd gotten a grasp of how much damage he'd taken he peeled back another layer, showed her just how deep the scars went.
"I was out of control."
"You were a child—"
"I was only getting stronger—"
"You were a child."
Her vehemence silenced him; she took the opportunity to push on, speaking quickly, trying to draw him back. "Sasuke's not a child anymore. We gave him chances; we tried to help him—we nearly broke ourselves trying to help him, and he knew it and he did this anyway. Can you really weigh that against yourself and come up anywhere near even? Six. Do you really think there was nothing else that could've been done to help you?"
Gaara remembered the ongoing sense of hurt, how emotional pain had coiled around itself to the point that it registered as physical. He remembered his craving for contact, affection, normalcy, and how he couldn't even sleep to escape any of it. For a while Yashamaru had managed to blunt the edges, but then . . .
Sakura wrapped her arms around him, squeezing as if trying to hold him together. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't—I know it's hard for you. I just can't let you put everything back on yourself."
"Don't worry about it." He ran a hand into her hair, trying to comfort her in return. "It's years past."
And yet it remained right there in their faces, she thought. "Is there more I should know about?"
Everything with Yashamaru, and the sheer number of attempted assassins who'd followed after. The years he'd spent taking his every negative emotion out on the people around him. How Gaara had only physically clashed with his father once: enough for them to get a measure of each other, enough for Gaara to know he might not cleanly win that fight just yet but would be more than capable soon enough. How he'd seen his knowledge mirrored in his father's face; how he'd laughed himself almost sick at the bastard's open dismay . . . then taken to stalking him.
He'd been eleven.
"Nothing good," he said instead.
She could still feel the tension in him. "You can talk to me about it . . . If you want."
"I told people about it before—I bragged about it. I thought it was proof that I was strong. I was wrong." And in time he'd learned people who were okay didn't do things like that.
"I'm not talking about bragging. Look: Naruto wouldn't tell me about the Kyuubi for years; Sasuke . . . Sasuke never told me much of anything. They had to carry all of it, everything on their own—and it hurt them. Both of them. Naruto came out of it all okay, but Sasuke? I don't know; maybe it's part of what messed him up. Maybe he needed someone to catch him before he decided to define himself with vengeance, or by what'd been done to him, or by measuring himself against everyone else. And you can't tell me you don't have your own things you're carrying, and I don't know that I can help—but I'm willing to try. So just . . . Let me be there for you. Like you're there for me."
"I don't remember a lot of it, though," he admitted. "Sometimes it's fragments; sometimes it feels like it wasn't real, or like I was someone else."
She told him she'd seen this sort of thing at Leaf, and knew he'd seen it, too: trauma being pushed aside, then reemerging and manifesting as acting out, phobias, psychosis, nightmares . . .
He gestured towards the darkness around his eyes and noted that he'd at least missed the nightmares part. The way Sakura's mouth tightened told him she'd missed the humor in his statement.
Maybe people who were okay didn't make those kind of jokes, either.
"I don't want him dead," she eventually said. "Even after everything. Is that . . ." Stupid, she thought, then toned the sentiment down. "Too idealistic of me?"
"I don't know." Second chances and forgiveness may have given him a new life, but he wouldn't forget the steps it'd taken, couldn't see any of it as something he'd been owed—and had trouble finding sympathy for someone he saw actively, violently squandering that same opportunity.
"It's just hard to look at this and still remember how things used to be. There were good times; we were all friends once. I want him to get better—but anymore, I don't know that he can get better."
"Sometimes," he said, thoughtfully, "we need to remember giving a person another chance is just giving them another chance to hurt us."
"I know. And . . . I'm tired of being hurt, or having to pick up the pieces after he hurts someone else."
"Good."
She sighed into his shoulder, then squeezed him again as a thought struck her. "Do you regret it yet?"
"Hm?"
"Telling me to tell you when you're wrong."
He exhaled into her hair. "No. I can use the perspective."
And like that, she'd dragged him back from the shock of his accidental comparison—something he knew might've sent him spiraling before, might've left him locked in a darkened room for hours as he tried to talk himself down. This time his struggle hadn't been solitary; this time she'd been with him: her voice, her face, the feel of her having become so familiar, such a constant . . .
Sakura touched his chest, looked up at him as his hand covered hers. "Say it. I know . . . but I still want to hear you say it."
This was easier; this was clean and simple and certain. "I love you."
"I love you, too. And I want us to stay safe, and come through this, and get back to . . ." She smiled. "Whatever counts for normal around here."
He agreed that Sand was usually a lot calmer, and she leaned into him, relieved . . . but only for a little while. They'd each made their choices: Gaara setting himself on a collision course with Leaf in defense of her; Sakura rejecting all of Leaf's political machinations in order to build a new, secure life for herself. But now the consequences of all of their decisions—hers, Gaara's, and Sasuke's—were bearing down on them, minutes and miles at a time, and Sakura couldn't help but feel the only thing she could do now was brace for impact.
ooo
Gaara's siblings waited until Sakura'd gone to sleep for the night to draw him out of his quarters to talk strategy. He was glad for the chance to privately confer with them; in instances like this he needed more insight than he could come up with on his own. Temari and Kankurou watched his demeanor shift as his door closed, changing from that of a young man concerned with not waking his lover to deathly serious, flatly calculating.
"Please tell us this is the only psycho ex she's got," Kankurou said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I think so. I don't know."
The puppeteer's tone was jocular, but his expression grave. "Well. If you make enough of an example of this one, you won't have to deal with others."
Gaara told his brother he'd keep that in mind.
"How's Sakura taking it?" Temari asked.
"She seems more upset than afraid. She doesn't want him dead, though," he scowled, and Temari and Kankurou exchanged glances.
"What are you going to do about her?" This was from Kankurou. Gaara recognized the strategy as one they used when they felt he needed delicate handling: carefully tapping at him from either side, one after the other, to sound him as well as guide him.
"I don't want him getting in sight of her . . . But I won't lock her away. It'd be harder for her to defend herself if he got around me . . . and wanting her to just sit there like a mission objective, like a thing, would make me like him." Gaara's eyes narrowed. "And I'm better than him."
"If he's acting like she's not her own person," Temari said, too gently, "he might treat her like a prize of war."
There were any number of terrible things that could be done to make a kunoichi compliant. There were any number more that could still be done to her should her compliance not be necessary. Gaara's expression went blank without him realizing it; in front of him, both his siblings finally recognized the side of their little brother they knew best—the side that'd been honing his ability to kill at an age where most academy students still had trouble hitting practice targets.
Gaara folded his arms and leaned against his door. "I don't know much about where he is now, mentally. He knows I'm involved with Sakura. Tsunade said he seemed more angry at me, and that he was still talking about Sakura like she was a thing instead of a person." He watched the ground between his siblings. "Will he try to take her back?"
"It's hard to tell," said Kankurou. "He'd have to get Leaf to go along with it—"
Leaf still wanted him alive, Temari noted, despite his having just attacked the Hokage in her own office.
"Leaf's council is starting to talk about replacing Tsunade," Gaara told them. "Shizune said they're saying she fell too easily and is taking too long to get back on her feet, that perhaps she's not best suited for the job anymore. And Naruto's out of contact for at least the next day and a half."
"Shit," glowered Kankurou. "So if they succeed in unseating her and plugging someone else in, someone more amicable to what they want—"
Temari shook her head. "Maybe we should've just gone in, rolled through them all before they had a chance to see it coming."
Gaara'd thought the same thing already, imagined it in elaborate, monochromatic detail. He let himself taste the fantasy again, for just a moment—then shoved the images aside. "It's too late to think like that. Tsunade's not willing to step down. I've offered her my support, but for now we need to trust them to manage their own problems. Our immediate issue is the Uchiha."
Kankurou nodded. "Strategically, he'll know if he goes after Sakura he'll have to get through you—so it'd make sense for him to try to take you out first."
"But," Temari said, "she's the one who rejected him. He might treat her as complicit and blame her equally, or he might want to hurt her back more than he wants to hurt you."
"So I should stay close to her." Without treating her like a prize of war himself . . . Or like bait.
"Yeah," said Temari. "Also: We know Naruto wants you to not kill Sasuke, too. We know Sakura and Naruto mean a lot to you, and he means a lot to them . . . But we need to know you won't listen to them."
Gaara'd thought about that already, as well. "I can't hold back if he attacks me, or tries to hurt anyone here. I can't hesitate." His grip on his own arms tightened, almost imperceptibly. "I won't let him hurt her."
Kankurou nodded. "We need to know you won't try to fight him on your own, too. We don't know what he's capable of. Neither of us wants to see you go down again because Sasuke pulls some new bloodline ability out of his ass. If—when he turns up, bring us in."
"I will," he promised, thankful for their presence, their guidance, and their determination to save him from any questionable choice he might've made on his own.
Gaara waited in the hall after they'd gone, weighing his options, then soundlessly let himself back into his quarters. He went to his bedroom and stood beside the bed, his arms folded uneasily, and watched its occupant. He knew her scent, the taste of her skin, the weight and heat of her body as she slept; he knew her habits, her diligence, her strengths, how she moved in fear and in joy. He knew she had to understand there were only a few ways a clash with Sasuke could be resolved. He didn't know how she'd react to the confrontation that was almost certainly coming.
Fully clothed, he crawled back into bed with her, needing the comfort of her presence. He fitted against her back and wrapped an arm around her, feeling the warmth of her bare skin; Sakura gave a sleepy murmur and snuggled closer.
Before, she'd flung herself in front of him to save Sasuke and had almost lost her life for it. Now . . .
Pink hair tickled his face; he pushed it aside and nuzzled her shoulder.
Maybe this was all too sudden. Maybe, with more time, he could be more certain of how she'd react to his killing someone she knew, someone she'd cared for.
Her spine arched as she pressed back against him, and he knew what she was doing. Sakura twisted to kiss him as his body began to respond to hers, her hand slipping between them to coax him along.
Maybe he should worry less and trust her more.
His fingers slid into her easily, finding her already wet, already ready for him, and she gave a little moan against his lips—then pulled free of him and rolled to her elbows and knees, watching him over her shoulder, offering. Gaara rose as well, knelt behind her, unfastened his pants, and accepted.
For a few moments he didn't need to think—only to move with her, his hands at her hips as she pushed back to drive him deeper.
Maybe . . .
Sakura pulled away again, rolled, and drew him back onto and into her. He couldn't tell if her kiss was desperation or passion, but found at this point one tasted much like the other. Her arms and legs and body clenched around him as she whispered direction: "More. Please. I love you. Harder. I love you. Yes. Like that. Please. I—"
"I love you," he repeated into her ear, "I love you—" And she cried out, her muscles seizing and shuddering, his moans an echo to hers as the way she contracted around him wrung his climax from him near-simultaneously.
After, she tucked her chin over his forehead, cradling him against her protectively. In time her grip loosened and her breathing evened out, leaving him to find clarity in their closeness.
Before, he'd been sure love made people weak. Now he understood it just made them vulnerable; now he fully understood the vast difference between the two. It'd certainly made him vulnerable . . . But by giving him this much to defend, it'd also made him unutterably, irrevocably dangerous.
He wouldn't let Sasuke have her. He wouldn't let Sasuke touch her.
Gaara carefully pulled free of Sakura's arms, then leaned over her, his fingertips feather-light against her face. Maybe, possibly, she'd still be able to love him once this was all over.