..

Nighttime brought its own set of issues. Sakura lay awake, in contemplation of how long it took to form—or break—a habit. An abnormal sleep pattern had warped her sense of time; she was surprised to count and find she'd spent less than a week of nights in the Kazekage's bed. The mattress in Temari's guest room felt strange and didn't smell right; being clothed seemed unfamiliar, uncomfortable. Her body betrayed her, reminding her with an unwelcome pang of craving that by this time of night she and Gaara were typically already entwined.

But when she closed her eyes and pictured him she saw him covered in blood and frantically searching her face, and when she started to doze off the pressure of the blanket against her limbs startled her awake with memories of constricting sand.

The entire ordeal had taken only minutes—minutes of being afraid she was going to die, then certain of it; minutes of watching the man she loved hit rock bottom while covered in what was left of the man she'd almost married . . . Where it looked like the man she'd almost married had tried to get her and everyone around her killed because she'd had the audacity to be happy with someone else.

So she struggled to get comfortable, tried to quiet her racing thoughts, and let her physical craving be chilled by what it'd mean to continue a sexual relationship with someone who'd recently and vocally confused her with his long-dead mother—and who, for all she knew, had been quietly doing the same for weeks. And then there was how Shizune said Tsunade still wasn't quite right, days after her encounter with Sasuke . . . And then there was how Sasuke's clash with Itachi when he was twelve had likely been a major trigger for his mental breakdown and desertion . . . And then there was how Naruto had spent hours searching for Gaara while becoming more and more frustrated, despite her insistence that Gaara not be blamed . . . And then there was how she'd just officially left Leaf and bound herself to Sand, in no small part for a relationship that may have spectacularly self-destructed . . .

It all still overwhelmed her, and kept her up despite her exhaustion. She hadn't had nightmares in weeks but when she finally managed to drift off, one woke her within hours. There were no specifics to it, no images; just darkness and an overwhelming sense of pressure, of being hunted, of impending disaster—

And she was awake, gasping for air, with the blanket tangled around her and with Gaara at her side, his hand on her shoulder.

Because he was watching for it, he saw how the stress and alarm in her face didn't dissipate once she recognized him. His heart sank, and Gaara sat back before she could decide if she wanted to reach for him or not. "I did this," he whispered, his words barely above a breath.

Sakura pulled herself upright, pushed aside the nightmare's vestiges, and took a deep breath—then another, until she could trust herself to speak. "No." She wouldn't let Naruto blame him—and she wouldn't let him blame himself, either. "Sasuke did this."

Gaara shook his head. "I messed up. I waited because I thought he'd set a trap, and I thought I could get him to give it up. I didn't realize he was the trap. I should've just killed him. Instead I almost killed all of us." He paused, steeling himself, and put the worst option on the table. "If you need space," he said, "to be away from here, from this . . . From me . . . I wouldn't try to stop you, or fault you."

"Don't talk that way." She held back, then left it at that; Gaara had a lot to explain still, and blindly forgiving a man's actions because of her feelings for him now felt shallow, childish, and wildly self-destructive.

He was wearing his brother's clothes, she realized; the shirt was too big, the pants a little too baggy. But that made sense. Everything he owned would be either covered in blood or buried. She watched his face, noting how he seemed distracted, how he didn't appear to be fully with her. "How long have you been here?"

"Just a few minutes." Long enough to see her go from a restless sleep to the tension and unease of a nightmare; long enough to wonder if the nightmare was about him, and if his presence had been the thing to set it off.

He looked weary, she realized, and the slump to his shoulders made him seem disconcertingly unsure of himself. And the fact that he was here instead of seeking whatever solitude he'd reached for the last time . . . "Did you get enough time for yourself?"

"Not really." He'd needed cleaned up; his building's tenants had needed rehomed; he'd needed to be seen while not covered in blood and on the edge of a breakdown; he'd needed to forcibly steady his hand and send a terse letter to Leaf about how their assassin had failed; he'd needed to avoid Naruto and take care of the Uchiha's remains before the heat made the state of them any worse. He'd needed to know Sakura was still alive, still whole and unbroken by their encounter. . . and to know where she stood before he could start to think about how they'd—or he'd—proceed.

She saw her answer in his face, but asked anyway. "Do you need time, still?"

Gaara closed his eyes and frowned. "Probably." But he'd needed this more. His usual process for stabilization had failed him; instead of being able to disentangle sanity from insanity by his memories' clarity, he found he remembered every bit of the day's proceedings with excruciating detail. And every time he tried to sort through it all, he'd kept mentally coming back to her.

Sakura didn't need to ask why he'd sought her out rather than try to find peace on his own. She lay her hand, palm-up, on the blanket between them. He watched it, recognizing the offer; his fingers twitched, but he didn't reach for her, leaving her unsure if the distance he maintained was for her sake or his own. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.

"It's a lot."

"If it's too much, I'll let you know," she murmured, and he nodded.

"We were both leading each other," he told her. "I wanted his targets, and to tell him he was stupid and wrong; he wanted confirmation of my weaknesses. I should've seen it. He talked about what'd happen when you saw me for what I am, how he thought you'd react when I lost control again. I thought he was just ranting; I thought he would only come after us, not after everyone."

"You couldn't have known."

"I shouldn't have ruled it out."

Sakura pulled her legs out from under the blanket, then sat beside him on the edge of the bed. "I was supposed to find you, huh? Wake you up, set the whole thing in motion?"

"I think so. He was waiting for you—and he'd guessed Naruto had asked me to not kill him. He'd banked on my not just attacking him." Gaara watched her hand, imagining the warm, dry slide of her fingers against his, wanting the contact but not trusting her willingness would remain steadfast once everything was in the open. "How long did it all take?"

"A minute, maybe two, between the last impacts and when you found me. Between when the yelling stopped and the building came down? Seconds, if that."

He nodded again. Sakura inched closer; he focused on her, on the distance between them, and against his own better judgment leaned his shoulder into hers before speaking again. "I tried to kill all of us."

Sakura started a denial; he raised a hand to stop her. "Before that part. I figured out his plan and knew if he got me before I could kill him, then I'd try to kill everyone here. Everyone. Most of them wouldn't even have a chance to know what was happening. So I grabbed the building—because if I went down I'd drop it, and it might stop me as well as him. But I knew you were there, and Kankurou and Temari were less than a minute behind you. I knew it might kill us all and I did it anyway, because it'd be better for Sand to potentially lose the two, maybe the four of us than to lose however many I'd kill before I ran out of targets or someone managed to stop me." He grimaced. "It didn't have to be that way. I should've just killed him the second I saw him."

It was another ugly aspect to an already ugly situation, but Sakura already knew where she should assign culpability. "Don't blame yourself. It was him. He put you—put all of us in that position."

He could feel a hint of hesitation, though, could hear the echo of his own doubt and how she was trying to convince herself as well as him. "Where do you know it?"

She closed her eyes and smiled faintly as she tapped a fingertip against her temple. "Here, still."

"I know. Me too." But she hadn't leaned away from him. He took a tiny measure of comfort in that, in the warmth of her pressed against his side—then pushed on. "Beyond that, though. Beyond . . . forcing me to remember and relive my past. He set me up to be or do everything I was the most afraid of. Losing my mind again. Losing control. Attacking my people. Hurting you." He looked her in the eye. "Confusing you with her."

Sakura looked away, and he felt her draw back a little as she realized he intended for them to meet this entire stack of problems head-on. Despite her best intentions and the confirmation of her theories and suspicions, the stack still appeared insurmountable—and just kept growing. "Did you?" she asked. "Before?" Knowing Sasuke'd forced a terrible choice on him before retraumatizing him into almost killing them all was one thing; thinking Gaara might have spent the past few weeks trying to have his dead mother through her was another entirely.

"No—but I was afraid I had. Every time I looked at you, it was with them in the back of my mind, and I didn't realize how much so until we got involved. Then when I kissed you . . . I realized I'd made an unpleasant association, and I needed to untangle it."

"That's what you couldn't tell me about before?"

"Yeah. It was my problem; I didn't need to put it on you. Especially when I didn't know how bad the entanglement was, or how far back the roots went."

Sakura raised a hand towards her own cheek, remembering every time he'd touched her, every time he'd made a point of watching her face as he came. "And the rest of the times . . . How many were . . ."

She couldn't say it.

Now he knew she'd noticed. With nothing else to offer, he gave her his honesty. "I made a habit of grounding myself with you, around you—to remind myself of where I was, and when, and with who. And even after I realized I didn't need the confirmation I kept at it, because it was . . . A comfort, more than anything: that you were you and I was all right. But after I woke up under there, I couldn't think straight. Then you were close by, and you weren't afraid when I touched you with my sand, and you'd said you were alive . . . And I thought, 'Of course she is.'" He smiled wistfully, sadly. "It made sense. That's what I was afraid of—that it'd make sense, that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't . . . And that you'd get caught up in it."

When she didn't respond, he offered again: "If you want to take time, or—"

Sakura cut him off. "Stop talking like that. I don't blame you. I won't. It's what he wanted, wasn't it? To hurt us with each other. For . . . For my last thoughts of you to be that I'd been wrong about you, that you were still . . ."

Some kind of monster, she thought, but didn't say it. He closed his eyes again, though, and she knew he'd recognized what was in the omission.

"You didn't confuse us until you'd been tortured and concussed, though," she insisted. "Right?"

Gaara nodded once, cautiously; relieved, she continued. "And you still did what you were supposed to. You stopped him, and you stopped yourself. Everyone at Sand is still alive because of you."

He scowled at the floor. "Because I was lucky."

She pushed at his shoulder, gently but firmly. "You just told me you talked him into giving up his plan before he got a chance to execute it."

Gaara took a few seconds to consider this perspective, then looked up at her. "Naruto did say you were the smart one."

"Yeah, I know." Sakura shook her head, linked her elbow with his, and leaned hard against him; he found himself leaning back with just as much force.

Was this what they had, then? Each of them propping up the other, to the extent that if one backed away the other would fall?

He could accept it—but he still couldn't accept making her trade hideous situations, having her switch from one relationship stained with distrust and no small amount of fear to another cut from the same cloth.

"I know it's a lot," he told her. "I know I can be hard to deal with, especially like that—and you shouldn't have to. You don't deserve it. So I won't try to hold you here, and if you want to go back with Naruto—"

"No." The flat denial seemed to startle him, and she sat up straight as her chin raised. "Damn it, Gaara," she hissed, fighting to keep her voice quiet. "I'm not letting him take you from me."

Without looking away from her face, he finally reached for her hand.

"Besides," she said, very softly, "I almost killed you too—I tried to kill you, when I couldn't get through to you or put you under again. You weren't gonna stop; you were going to kill me and then kill everyone else in Sand, and I didn't know what else to do, and when I tried to stop you I almost killed us both—and I'm having trouble with that right now." She inhaled, trying to ease the tightness in her chest, and clutched his fingers as they closed around hers. "I love you, and . . . We're not supposed to try to hurt the people we love. We're not supposed to try to kill them. And—"

"Thank you," he breathed. He cupped her cheeks and tilted her face up so she'd look at him, and when she met his eyes she found him smiling at her—his first real smile since that afternoon. "You know it's Sand before me. Always, it's all of you before me."

"But—"

He hushed her, his hands so familiar and gentle against her jawline that her eyes stung. "You know I'll gladly die to save my people here—and now I know you wouldn't hold back if I needed stopped." His forehead nudged hers; his fingers ran into her hair. "Thank you," he whispered again, earnestly, and Sakura shook away her hesitation and reached out, needing comfort. When Gaara dragged her halfway into his lap in his attempt to pull her closer she felt a flicker, more a memory of panic than the actual emotion—and then that was gone, and there was only him trembling, their arms clenching around each other, his eyes closed tightly and her breathing hitching as they each sought the release they needed in the other's forgiveness.

If she left his shoulder damp, he said nothing—nor would he.

ooo

It wasn't until much later, and still much before dawn, that they found their way to Sand's eastern wall. The sentries gave them space, perhaps sensing they needed it, and with perfect faith they waited for morning to come.

Wrapped in her blanket, Sakura took stock and felt the ground had become more solid under her feet. Her old teammate's assault had been cruelty stacked on cruelty, intended to hit both of them as well as everyone around them: Sand for approving of them both, Naruto for taking their side, anyone who'd thought well of Gaara's turnaround. The only things it seemed Sasuke hadn't counted on were Gaara's willingness to die to protect Sand, and the extent to which he'd ground Sakura's identity into his own psyche.

Beside her, the redhead still seemed quieter than usual, distant, to the extent that she asked if he was the one who needed space.

"Time, maybe," he replied. "To sort everything out. Things still don't feel quite real—like I might still wake up."

She told him Shizune had reported much the same—though Shizune also said Tsunade was proving a recalcitrant patient, and Sakura hoped he'd at least be self-aware enough to let her help without making her fight him the whole way.

"I thought we tried that already," he mused, and Sakura winced—then laughed despite herself.

"I hope that's not an indication of how life's gonna be here," she said. "I mean, we have our first fight and it goes like . . ."

The noise he made was almost a chuckle. "You're the one who said it was going to happen." And that they needed something to come back to afterwards, because even then she'd been thinking in terms of their future and . . .

Oh.

When Sakura glanced over, she found him watching her like he'd had some sort of revelation. She grinned, relieved to see him expressing something other than guilt or worry. "Yeah, but I thought we'd just yell a bit and maybe one of us would throw something—something little, like a plate. Not a building."

"I never said it was a good idea." But the look he shot her was only exasperation, not offense, and when she made a face at him he sighed and smiled at the rapidly lightening horizon.

Sakura rolled her eyes at his profile—and because it'd seemed to help pull him from his brooding, she prodded at him again. "Could you maybe wait another month to throw more buildings at people, though? Maybe two months? Especially while we're in them?"

"Maybe two."

He intended for the statement to provoke her; as expected, Sakura groaned. "You'll spoil me." She shook her head, then put a corner of the blanket over his hands; he smiled his thanks, grateful for the trace of her warmth in the fabric.

The man was a walking disaster, she thought, as she visually traced the lines of his cheekbones and nose and lips. And she still, absolutely, still loved him. And most importantly, she knew she could support him as he pulled himself back to standing—rather than hanging back, wringing her hands, and hoping any change of heart beaten into him would stick. Maybe then, in time, she could find some way to balance the disconnect between "I love him and I forgive him" and "I loved him and I find his actions inexcusable."

The ninjas who usually delivered morning reports instead kept a healthy distance, and when Sakura looked down she saw the sand below them stir. She glanced at Gaara—and because she was watching she caught the shift as his shoulders tensed and his features went alarmingly blank.

Naruto stood on the walkway behind them, his fists clenched.

Gaara turned, stood, folded his arms, and studied Naruto silently, noting how it looked like the Leaf-nin hadn't slept in days. He knew Naruto had loved Sasuke despite everything the deserter had done; he feared the blond would defend Sasuke's actions, and the defense would register as Naruto blowing off or denying everything Gaara and Sakura had gone through. With the sun behind him, he knew if the discussion broke down he'd at least have the advantage of its light being in Naruto's eyes.

Then Sakura casually moved far enough forward that she'd come between them should he and the Leaf-nin come to blows, and he realized he had backup.

Sakura didn't trust that either of them wouldn't do something stupid—that Gaara'd let his guilt override reason and decide to goad Naruto into yet another brawl, or that Naruto would say all the wrong things and push Gaara, still fragile, into lashing out. Neither would do—not just in terms of their collective friendships, but with regards to how it was only a matter of time before Naruto became the next Hokage. Bad blood between these two as leaders could have repercussions that'd echo for years if not generations.

Though right then, if it came down to fighting Naruto or tangling with Gaara again, she'd tackle the blond without hesitation and hope Gaara still had it in him to stop himself.

Her teammate spoke first. "Why'd you have to kill him?"

"Because after the genjutsu, I didn't know him." Gaara didn't blink or try to take the edge off his words. "By that point he could've been anyone, and it wouldn't have mattered. I woke up, he was trying to get away, I caught him, I killed him."

He'd left out a few details, but Sakura—already cringing at this start—didn't attempt to add them in. She took a step closer, her tone gentle. "Naruto, we always knew this was a possibility—that he'd do the wrong thing, pick a fight with the wrong person, and get killed. We spent years expecting to get that news."

"With the wrong person, sure, yeah—but not with a friend."

Gaara stared him down. "Do you want to know what your friend did?"

Naruto hesitated; Gaara launched into it anyway. Straight-backed, his features set at impassive, the Sand-nin told them both how he'd been followed, how Sasuke'd confronted him, how they'd baited each other into a final confrontation, how he'd realized his opponent's goals—and his drastic last-ditch attempt to save Sand before Sasuke managed to make eye contact and taught him what the Sharingan could do. He described being deliberately held at the edge of fear and hate and total breakdown, until the point where awareness of anything beyond that faded—and waking up half-buried under stone, knowing the only way to make it all stop was to destroy everyone responsible.

And then finding Sakura in the dark, and not knowing her even as she lay hands on him to heal his wounds.

Sometime during the tale Naruto had looked away, unable to meet his friend's eyes, but as the redhead's story came to a close he looked back up again. "But you figured it out? You remembered her?"

Gaara turned to Sakura and paused for a half-beat too long. There were some things, she understood, that her teammate didn't need to know.

"Yeah," Gaara said. "I remembered her."

If Naruto registered the pause, he didn't address it. "Why didn't you wait? I could've helped you. The two of us could've taken him, no problem! I would've been here; I was only a little bit behind him."

"Hours behind him," Gaara rebutted. "Hours behind a high-level missing-nin who'd already decided to kill everyone here because the woman he wanted said no."

"You know that? For sure?"

Gaara felt the unintended insult behind the question, and knew Sakura had as well when she bristled. "Yeah," he said. "I do. He even made a point of telling me how no one had seen him. He would've gone back to Leaf afterwards, told you all he was sorry for attacking the Hokage, bribed or genjutsu'd a few people into swearing they'd seen him elsewhere for the time he was missing, accepted your forgiveness, and carried on like nothing had happened." He felt himself start to sneer, and struggled to push the emotions aside. "I already know I made mistakes. Killing him wasn't one of them."

"You could've caught him—"

"So you could try to fix him again—and have him come right back at us the second your guard went down?"

They were both spiraling out of control, Sakura realized. Naruto still continued to avoid the situation's severity, was instead trying to make excuses and shift blame, and Gaara wasn't backing down or pulling any verbal punches. But while Naruto's defense of their old teammate stemmed from being able to focus on Sasuke's best qualities, Gaara'd faced his unadulterated worst. Naruto's unstoppable optimism may have just hit an immovable sandy wall.

"You got better and you had it harder than him," the blond insisted. "Why couldn't he? Why do you get to take that chance from him?"

"Because of them." Gaara gestured towards the city at Naruto's back. "My people," he grated, "are not acceptable collateral damage. How many would've had to die before you decided this wasn't a misunderstanding and held him accountable? A hundred? Ten?" He looked at Sakura again. "One?"

Naruto watched her as well, deeply afflicted yet torn, as Gaara continued his barrage: "He said you cared enough about him to forgive whatever he did—through however many times he hurt you and yours. He knew you wouldn't want to give up on him, and he would've used that to secure his place in Leaf after. He knew exactly what he was doing. The fact that he wasn't successful doesn't negate his attempts."

Through it all, Sakura realized, Gaara hadn't used Sasuke's name once. Was there safety in the emotional distance, or scorn—or both?

Naruto, finding himself cornered, voiced a bitter protest: "He was my friend—"

Gaara replied coldly, curtly. "Was he really?"

There'd been layers to the gouge, and blond stiffened with hurt—then sudden anger. "You bastard," he snarled.

He stepped forward, his fist raising, and Sakura lunged between them. "Don't you dare," she snapped, so adamant that the Leaf-nin's forward momentum faltered.

"But he's not even so—"

She cut him off. "You don't get to tell him how to feel!"

Naruto read her willingness to fight him in her mien—and behind her, Gaara's clearly projected baleful intent. Sakura looked over her shoulder at him as well, willing him to not make this any harder. The redhead finally met her eyes; when a little of his tension dissipated she nodded, then faced Naruto again. "It was almost all of us," she entreated. "We all almost died here, because of Sasuke. We can't 'maybe' it away. There is a difference," she said insistently, "a difference and a vast distance between making apologies, making changes, and making excuses."

Naruto bowed his head; behind her, she heard Gaara take a step back and lean against the wall.

Quiet, as they found themselves at a standstill.

Her teammate broke their silence as he came to a decision. "I'll bring him home, then. One last time."

Gaara didn't want a speck of the Uchiha left in his city but, having already pushed Naruto too far, wouldn't say it. He already feared this debacle may have just cost him the friendship of one of the people he valued most.

"I want him cremated," Naruto continued. "I won't—" The words caught in his throat, and came out like gravel when he tried again. "I won't have them try to rebuild the bloodline off what's left of him."

Gaara closed his eyes. "I'll take care of it."

"I—" The blond swallowed whatever else he had to say, his face twisting with a mix of strong emotions—then he stalked off, leaving them alone under the rising sun.

Quiet again, as she watched Gaara stare into the empty place their friend had left behind. When he spoke, it was without looking at her. "Before we fought yesterday, one of the things he said was that Naruto cared about him more than me. Maybe he was right."

Sakura closed the space between them, knowing the sentries wouldn't interrupt them if they thought the couple was having a moment—and knowing Gaara needed that moment to recover his composure. "It's Naruto, though. Give him time. He'll come around."

"He's going to get people killed. Or himself, or both."

Sakura frowned, not understanding, and Gaara elaborated: He knew what it meant to be an outcast—but also what it meant to be a predator. So while he understood the impulse to shelter everyone who seemed to be in need, he also understood that refusing to curate the people he allowed into his life as well as into Sand would only open their collective doors to those with malicious intent.

He looked up at her, weariness and misery showing around his eyes and in faint lines around his mouth. "If he doesn't do the same, he'll put a person's possibility of changing ahead of the safety of everyone around them—which means this'll happen again. It means we're watching him set himself up to be hurt, and have the people he cares for be hurt . . . And I can't stop it. I can't even address it. I don't have any kind of moral high ground here—and that's what makes him right." Gaara held out his hands, palms-up, gesturing with each in turn as he spoke. "I know some people don't deserve a chance to prove themselves changed if that chance puts those around them in danger—and I know I'm only here to make that call and only got a chance to prove myself because I was too strong and too hard to kill for anyone to stop me first."

His hands stilled at level, and he frowned as if they'd offended him. "But between these two things, where am I?"

Sakura reached for his hands, replacing his weighted statements with her touch. "You're right here," she told him. "With me."

ooo

At the hospital later, Sakura staved off the curious with sanitized explanations: The guy Leaf had wanted her to marry had come after them, had wanted to hurt them. Gaara'd stopped him. Yeah, it'd been scary, but she'd seen Gaara fight before. She learned to leave it at that after the first time she mentioned having once faced Gaara mid-transformation, and the person asking questions had paled and abruptly found somewhere else to be.

He and Sand had deeply scarred each other, despite years of work—and with all of it fresh in his mind, she thought, it was no wonder he still seemed off. Sasuke's plan had taken on yet another layer of cruelty.

A few medics showed up to her office for unnecessary consults, making Sakura glad she'd finally managed to fix her bruises. Baki was more overt; straight-faced, the Kazekage's old instructor presented her with a splinter in his finger. As she extracted it he talked to her, gruffly, cautiously: he'd been there when she and Gaara had emerged from under the rubble; he'd been there when Gaara'd pulled what was left of the Uchiha out as well. He'd seen enough of Gaara's bad states to recognize the damage his student had taken as being beyond that of a grueling physical battle. The redhead hadn't been very talkative but his siblings had filled Baki in on some of the details—and now he'd come to check in with her.

"They say he's all right," he told her, "but I know they'll try to protect him and cover for him. How's he doing?"

"Taking it hard still. He blames himself." Sakura hesitated—but she knew Baki was one of the few safe sets of ears. "He's being distant, and kept offering to let me leave."

He eyed her, expressionless, not hinting at what answer he wanted to hear. "What'd you tell him?"

"I told him no—a few times. He didn't seem to want to believe me. I don't know if it was remnants from the technique, or guilt from . . . how he behaved right after."

Baki closed his eyes, then sighed heavily. "It's because of us."

He hadn't asked for that particular team, he told her; the Sand siblings had been foisted onto him . . . And he'd been wholly unprepared for all his position entailed. The first time Baki'd seen his youngest student transform he'd found the Kazekage and pleaded to be assigned to another team, or to literally anywhere else; the next time, he'd thrown his forehead protector at the man and threatened to abandon Sand. He'd stayed on as Gaara's instructor because of a set of promises: that Baki would never be called on to assassinate the child, and that if Baki were ever to attempt to abdicate from or flee his responsibilities, Rasa would declare him a missing-nin and make sure Gaara was the one to hunt him down.

"We were trapped with him," he said with a heavy air of finality, "and Gaara knew it." Gaara's siblings had oscillated between being proud of him and abjectly terrified of him; Baki'd swallowed his resentment and resolved to deal with the redhead as best he could—because that way, he at least had a chance of survival.

Sakura finished cleaning and healing his wound, disposed of the splinter, then turned back to the man. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you should know where he is right now, why he kept asking, and why he wouldn't try to stop you from leaving—why he might even try to drive you away if he thinks you don't want to be here. And because you should know other people understand. It's why his siblings try so hard to protect him and his image. Most people remember what he was and what he's done. It was bad enough when he decided to take over for his father—if Sand thought he'd lost control again, we could see anything from unrest to rebellion and insurrection. It could be the end of us."

So the man was afraid for Sand—and possibly sympathized with her. Sakura nodded, then opened the door. "I need to send a consult to Shizune," she told him. "Walk with me and tell me more about what it took for him to become Kazekage. We only heard bits of it in Leaf." Tell us both of the kind of person he became in order to prove himself, she thought; she felt they both needed the reminder.

Sand had tried to name other people Kazekage before him, Baki told her as they exited the hospital. Gaara'd found the first potential incumbent, challenged him, casually beat him senseless . . . Then woke the man up, sat with him in the street, and talked with him at length. Baki hadn't been around for the fight or the conversation, but was there at the end when Gaara stood first, pulled his opponent to his feet, and shook the older ninja's hand.

The second nominee had found the redhead waiting for him on the way to talk to Sand's council, had refused to fight him, and had promptly disavowed any interest in the position. Gaara'd gone in his stead; he'd reminded his elders that they already knew he was the strongest person in Sand, and they returned by telling him in no uncertain terms how it'd been his failure to control himself that'd derailed their attack on Leaf, which led directly to a number of lost lives along with Sand's catastrophic defeat.

Baki paused as he remembered his audience's previous allegiance, then apologized; Sakura waved it off and encouraged him to continue.

Next Sand's council had reminded Gaara of the people they were certain he'd killed (for reasons ranging from serious to frivolous); further, they brought up how until recently he couldn't be expected to not menace and terrorize Sand's residents on a whim. The council told him that in times like these, with Sand in shambles around them, they needed someone who was steadfast, reliable, stable, and able to do more than just kill people—or get them killed.

Gaara'd taken all this in silently; Baki, observing, hadn't been alone in holding his breath and hoping the boy wouldn't snap—and if Gaara did attack them all, hoping the combined strength of everyone there would be enough to bring him to heel. Instead Gaara'd told them he understood, turned, and left. They'd all thought he'd abandoned his decision to be Kazekage; instead Gaara'd immediately designated himself the newest safety feature of a building crew, starting what'd become an ongoing cycle of Sand's elders either praising his initiative or openly lamenting his getting into everything.

On the street beside him, Sakura laughed. "They didn't realize? They didn't think he'd hear instructions instead of a denial?"

At that point, Baki reminded her, none of them had seen Gaara show anything remotely resembling caring for anyone besides his siblings—and even that was liberally peppered with threats and violence.

Baki hadn't talked to Gaara about any of it until after he'd beaten a third nominee—and after people'd realized he actually intended to become Kazekage and the assassination attempts resumed in earnest. Baki'd always known his student to find a particular joy in killing assassins, but now the redhead had started disarming them and talking them down instead. He'd asked why; with a surprising level of calmness, Gaara'd replied, "Sand needs someone who can do better than I've done—so I'll do better. If I don't, then at some point someone else will strike me down for it . . . and I'd be completely deserving." He'd smiled, the expression incongruous enough to be startling. "Besides: If he can do it, so can I."

It'd been when he realized Gaara was serious about leadership and about change—and it wasn't until later, when Baki learned more about Naruto, that he realized Gaara's last quip might not have been about his father.

Their path back from the cotes took them by the rubble that'd been a building. Sand's residents had gone industrious for the salvaging and clearing process, swarming, collecting—and in the middle of it all stood Gaara, his forehead lined with focus as he helped stabilize, delicately lift, and guide chunks of stone into an already respectable pile.

Sakura didn't turn away from the scene as she spoke. "Praising or lamenting, you said?"

"Today? Praising." Baki cleared his throat. "Now that you've seen him, though, really seen him . . . Now what?"

She knew Sasuke's last act had been to try to punish all of them, by breaking Gaara's mind and breaking her faith in him—and she wouldn't let her old teammate succeed. Spite might not be a positive or socially acceptable motivator, she thought, but she accepted its motivation nonetheless.

Sakura looked up at the jounin with a smile. "Now we figure out what it'll take to rebuild."

Baki hung back and let her approach Gaara first; she stood at his side to not distract him and quietly asked how he was doing.

"Okay," Gaara replied. "Reminding myself that I like them, and they like me." He knew what she'd ask next, and spared her the trouble: "I told them the Uchiha came after all of us and this was the only way to stop him and keep everyone in Sand safe. That things can be replaced, but they can't." The corner of his mouth quirked upwards. "They've been understanding."

"Did you get time yet?"

"I'm trying something new." Because his memories were still toxic enough to do more harm than good to his equilibrium—and because he couldn't shake the feeling that if he let them set him back, Sasuke would win.

To cover his pause, he added, "I had a medic tell me that sometimes it helps to keep moving and focus on a task at hand." And in this case, as they pulled the wreckage apart layer by layer in search of anything salvageable, he felt it was apt. "I guess she knew what she was talking about."

"I bet you just listened to her because you think she's pretty."

"That was part of it," he agreed, and Sakura smiled as she felt her cheeks warm.

It was too hot to stand this close; she did it anyway, knowing he wouldn't complain. "I've got a lunch break coming," she said. "Did you eat yet?"

"Not since this morning." When he and Sakura had turned up together for breakfast and Temari'd made no attempt to hide her relief. "I've disrupted enough here," he explained. "The least I can do is help get the people back on their feet. They shouldn't have to have their lives on hold because of me."

He still carried more than a little residual guilt, then. Sakura narrowed her eyes at the pile, then shot him a glance. "If I bring you lunch, will you eat with me?"

"I'll eat if you make sure to get some rest. You barely slept last night."

"Are you gonna try to out-take-care-of me now? Good luck," she scoffed, then smiled broadly. "I'm a professional."

"I know." Gaara scanned the debris, weighing the damage versus the headway made versus what still needed accomplished—then looked her over with the same type of consideration. "I'll take a few minutes."

"I'll pick something up," she grinned, touched a fingertip to the back of his hand, and darted off.

His instructor gave him a few seconds before taking Sakura's place at his side. "I'll give that one five years until she's taken over the entire hospital."

Gaara smiled to himself, imagining it—until Baki added, "Unless you drive her off first."

His smile faded and eyes widened with alarm. "You talked to her?"

"Yeah. You'd have to try to budge her from here," the jounin reassured him. Then, flatly: "Don't."

Gaara eyed him dubiously—then sighed, smiled, nodded, and returned to the task at hand.

ooo

Insecurity, Gaara found, did not become him. It wasn't until after midnight that he let himself into Temari's, not wanting to make Sakura search for him, not certain she'd want to search, and unsure of what would be worse for her: his presence or his absence.

He'd collected the salvageable medical texts she'd left at his place; he left them in a box at the closed door of her room, then sat on the couch and started to write his event report. The document concerned his clash with the Uchiha as well as extensive detailing of it'd take to clear and rebuild the building, what it'd taken from the people who lived there, and what it'd taken from him—the monetary cost as well as the human. He knew it wouldn't be finished for days and wouldn't be turned over until Naruto had been sent on his way; he knew he'd add notes for weeks if not months after, as the overall fallout became more apparent.

Better to immerse himself in anything else, though, rather than dwell on how Leaf's lack of response to yesterday's letter implied they were waiting to see how he fared against Naruto—or how Naruto was currently and pointedly avoiding him, or how Gaara'd had a few teams monitor the blond's position and mood rather than personally engage with him again. Better to add and tally rather than ponder whether the root of Sasuke's decisions had been hatred or contempt, or which of the two would've also driven Gaara to try to annihilate all of those who'd hurt him.

As for Sakura, every sign pointed to her wanting to get back to normal . . . But he knew she'd also clung to the deserter for years, trying to fix him in defiance of all reason and despite every one of his insults and misdeeds. Baki'd told him retaining Sakura was as simple as not trying to drive her away . . . But he needed to know they could have, do, be better.

From the other side of the door, he heard a faint gasp as Sakura jolted awake.

He waited.

In time the door cracked open. Sakura took a step towards him, hesitated—then glanced at the box on the floor, recognized its contents, and smiled. He thought she'd pick one of the volumes up; instead she approached, climbed onto the couch, and wedged herself behind him, settling between him and the backrest.

"I can move over," Gaara offered.

"Don't." She wrapped her arms and legs around him and pressed her cheek to his back. "Is this okay?" she whispered.

"Yeah. Do you want a blanket?"

"No."

He peered over his shoulder at her, but was only able to see a sliver of her face. "Are you trying to sleep?"

"No."

"Okay," he said, and she squeezed him, listening to how his breathing was slow and clear and healthy.

"Do you want me to do anything?" he whispered.

She shook her head. "This. Just this."

And his heartbeat was steady against her ear, and his body heat comforting, and if she just closed her eyes and thought about them for a little while . . .

When her grip loosened and the tension of her arms and legs around him became slack and heavy, he knew she'd fallen back asleep.

He hated the fabric between them; he hated being unable to feel the humid warmth of her on his skin. He hated how he knew she was teaching herself to relax around him again as well as reacclimating him to her proximity, and he hated that it was necessary. But he knew now that his absence would hurt her more than his presence, that running or pushing her away under the pretext of trying to save her from his problems would only do her harm, and that doubting her would be insulting her. Making mistakes and unwillingly coming at her with the worst parts of himself didn't make him like Sasuke—but refusing to meet her efforts or be there for her would.

They were fragmented . . . But if they still had all the pieces and they both worked at it, maybe they could reconstruct something like normalcy.

Maybe he was getting better at this after all.

Sakura startled awake midway through his next stack of paperwork but didn't let go, and as she recognized where she was, gave him another squeeze and a murmured greeting: "I guess I was tired." She stretched; he took the opportunity to crack his back before she resettled herself against him. He felt different, she decided—more relaxed, more present, more like the man she'd woken up to two days before. "What time is it?"

"About four thirty." He set his papers down. "Did you want to go walk?"

"We can walk," she said—then, comfortably warm, snuggled a little closer. "In a minute, if it's okay."

"Okay."

His hand traced up her arm, searching, and she unhesitatingly interlaced her fingers with his. Gaara lifted her hand, brushed his lips against one of her knuckles, and snugged their clasped hands close to his chest; she squeezed him again, harder, with arms and legs, and he felt her nod against his spine.

After a few minutes Sakura stretched upwards and set her chin on his shoulder. "What've you got tonight?"

"Mission reports. New genin," he said, with a note of dread in his voice.

"Oh?"

"A few months ago, this one"—he pointed to a sheet—"decided to dive-bomb me from a fourth story rooftop."

She muffled her giggle against his back. "How did you ever survive?"

"Well . . ." He turned, then trailed off: her eyes sparkled with good humor, and even though she playfully hid her mouth behind his shoulder he could still see her smiling.

"You okay?" Sakura asked, knowing fully well that she'd derailed him and taking no small amount of pleasure in how he'd gone tongue-tied.

Yeah, I—" His forehead wrinkled and he cocked his head at her; she raised her eyebrows and stifled another giggle with his clothing.

"C'mon," she pressed. "Story."

Gaara smiled and complied. "He didn't realize how far up he was until he jumped. His feet left the ledge and he started screaming almost immediately; I had plenty of time to know he was coming and catch him." He gave her his best long-suffering stare. "His instructor waited a couple days to tell me that he'd vowed to defeat me in battle."

"Not at all a tall order," she told him, very seriously.

"Everyone should have goals," he returned with equal sobriety, and her solemnity immediately cracked. Gaara waited for her giggles to subside before continuing. "Though the next time I caught him making a pit trap, and I filled it in three times—while he was digging it—before he got the point."

Sakura set her chin back on his shoulder and smiled at him without a trace of worry or fear. "You chose this."

"I know." Her hand was still in his; he stroked her fingers. "And I wouldn't give up any of it."