By the time the sun rises the next morning the city is no longer in view. I turn back once then, thinking that maybe I'll be able to see the sun rising over Suna, a city I've come to love, but all I see are shifting sands under an endless sky.
I don't know where I'm going exactly, or what I should expect to find, but I have a feeling in my chest telling me which way to go. It pulls me in this direction, and I've decided to trust it, no matter how stupid it is if I'm thinking reasonably. I think the time for reason has passed.
God knows this is crazy enough.
I've been walking all night, following this mysterious pull. As soon as Gaara left I hurried to pack everything I need and was soon out of the city. Now I find myself out in the middle of the desert with nothing but this feeling in my chest and this pack on my back.
And my brains of course.
Once the sun rises it soon becomes too hot to keep walking, so I burrow into the sand and lie down to wait out the day. At first I lie awake, hating not being able to move on. If I could I would keep going until I found this child I'm supposed to be saving, but I know that walking through the desert in the middle of the day is a sure way to get sunstroke, at the least, possibly premature death.
Soon enough I fall asleep, nestled in the warm sand like an embrace.
Maybe the woman in my dreams is happy now that I'm acting on her words, or maybe it's just the effect of the desert, but I don't dream. When I wake up in the late afternoon I feel wonderfully refreshed, as after a full, undisturbed sleep. I keep walking, following my gut feeling.
I stop for a little rest when the sun sets. The sunset is more beautiful than I'd even imagined. The sand lights up just like the sky; in bright oranges and reds. It looks like the world is on fire, and it stretches on as far as the eye can see. This sunset is forever.
"Is this what you had in mind then? If I'd known I might not have warned you."
I swivel my upper body around to look up at Gaara. For a moment I'm blinded by the sun reflecting off him, before I can make out his face. He's frowning a little, but he doesn't look very angry.
"Why did you warn me anyway? What did you expect me to do?"
He shrugs, and as he makes no move to sit down, I stand. It's somehow easier to talk to Gaara when I'm on eye level with him. Well, actually, when we're both standing I look down at him. Maybe that's what makes it easier for me.
"I didn't really think you would actually run away, knowing your sense of honesty. And I didn't think for a moment that if you did run it would be out here."
"I'm not running away!" I protest, but I know that's how everyone will see it. "I'm out here following… a feeling. A dream."
"That woman?" Gaara asks.
I nod. He is silent for a long time. I tell him I'm going to keep moving; that I don't have time to waste, and to my surprise he starts walking beside me.
I watch him as we walk, out of the corner of my eye. The sun sets and the colour drains out of his face, as the beautiful red drains out of the landscape. Gaara looks smaller in this light somehow.
"I… I've been having dreams too." Gaara says, waking me out of my thoughts.
"Really? Like mine?"
"Not exactly…"
Then I remember that Gaara doesn't sleep, and wonder how he can dream. "But how is that possible?" I ask. "If you never sleep how do you have dreams?"
He looks at me with shadowed eyes. I pull back involuntarily, and notice another frown on his face before he turns away.
"That's exactly it." he says. "I don't dream like you. It's more like a vision. And I've never seen a woman in my visions, but I have heard crying, and screaming. Not like the usual screaming."
I don't ask him about the usual screaming, afraid of what the answer might be.
"They must be connected." Gaara says finally. "Someone – or something – is guiding us to this."
If there is one thing in my life I will never forget (though I'm sure there are plenty of things) it is this moment. Watching the moon rise on Gaara's face while he talks to me about something that sounds suspiciously like destiny, I feel this funny stirring in my gut, like something inside of me is about to break loose.
"Wow." I say, effectively keeping (I think) my inner self under control. "I didn't think you were the type to believe in that sort of stuff."
"That sort of stuff?" he asks. When he looks at me like that, looking confused, I feel like I could swoon. What the hell is wrong with me anyway? One minute I'm making out with Luo, the next I'm 'swooning' over Gaara. I'm not that flighty am I?
"Like… destiny." I say. Having two personalities has made me very good at concentrating on two thoughts at once.
"I don't think this is destiny." he says sharply. "It's something else… It's probably that woman who's been in your dreams."
I shake my head. "I don't think so. Well, I know she wants me to find her child, but I don't think she's been sending you visions. She always talked about me doing this; how I had to do it. She never even mentioned anyone else."
"Isn't it possible that she told you that you were the one to make you feel more anxiety, to get you to move? To make you feel important?"
"Ignoring the insult to my vanity…" I say, glaring up at Gaara, who just shrugs. "I don't think she would do that. Your visions must be something else. I think this is beginning to sound a lot like destiny." I grin at Gaara. He looks sort of surprised for a moment, before turning away.
"You shouldn't have come out here alone." he says, completely changing the subject and throwing me off balance for half a second. "You have no idea where you're going, or how long you'll be out here. You'd probably run out of water before you got there. And what if you got caught in a storm out here?"
"Well then I'd probably die." I say simply.
He stops and glares at me. I turn to face him, carefully keeping my face free of expression. "You shouldn't talk so lightly about death." He says. "Your life is not something that can be thrown away so easily, and you can never get it back."
"You got yours back." I say, my old argumentative self bubbling up to the surface. He has no right to talk to me about death like that. He doesn't even care about me.
"That was different. Who would bring you back to life if you died?"
"No one…" I say quietly. "No one would bother."
He frowns more deeply. "I didn't mean that." He says.
I turn away from him and keep walking. I hate this knowing he doesn't care, when I can't stop, even when presented with another to love. I hate how stupid I am when it comes to love. Just once I would like to fall in love with a man I can actually have. Someone who will love me too.
"Do you love him?"
I start, and spin around to face Gaara. "What?"
"I said that's not what I meant." he repeats.
"Not that…" I trail off, realizing that he didn't say anything else. "Um, never mind. Never mind that." I say again, to make him think I'm still talking about the same thing. So that he doesn't realize I'm losing my mind. "It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does." he says. I turn to look at him over my shoulder, surprised that he won't give it up. What does he care? "You can't die Sakura."
"Why not?" I yell, unreasonably angry. "I've done it once before, and maybe it didn't work for you, but I didn't mind so much! Sometimes I wish…" I turn away again, and stomp away from him, but a wall of sand rises, blocking my way. Gaara steps out of it and faces me. I roll my eyes at him. "Fancy tricks. So what."
Suddenly he grabs me by the throat. I'm taken too much by surprise to jump away from him, but I can still fight back. I kick and punch at him, forgetting my feelings for him in the moment, the rush of adrenaline to my veins. My blows amount to nothing against his armor of sand, until I start to really panic, and dump chakra into him via my fists. That's when he drops me.
I fall away from him, onto my butt in the sand, and sit there, staring up at him. He makes no move to continue killing me, so I figure it won't happen again – at least not right away. Maybe he's not as sane as I thought he had become.
"What the hell was that for?" I splutter.
He glares down at me. "You wish you were dead? Is that it? That is one thing you should never wish for, Haruno, because there are plenty of people who will grant that wish for you." And then he smiles crookedly, but his smile is wicked, and it sends a shiver down my spine. "And besides, when faced with death again you fought against it didn't you? If you don't actually want to die, then don't say such things." Having finished lecturing me, he walks away.
No doubt he expects me to follow him, that arrogant pig. He thinks I'll come crawling after him, thank him for showing me the way. Well, he's got another thing coming.
"You were looking for life." A voice inside my head reminds me. I wonder how many voices are in there. "You just found it, in a way. Just because it's not what you expected…"
"Yeah, yeah. Just shut up already. You're as preachy as he is." I mutter to myself, then stand up and follow Gaara on shaky legs. He shows more consideration than I expected from him when he turns and waits for me, and then actually asks how I am when I reach him.
"I'm fine." I mumble. "No thanks to you."
He says nothing about his behavior, but he smiles. And I feel like I'm looking at the moon.