To Guest: I'm sorry my story brings up a need to troll inside you. I'm sorry you have such a stiff scenario in mind that you would misread everything I write about NaruSaku's relationship. Thank you for taking the time to review despite your disgust for everything I write.
Enjoy, folks! ^_^
-X-
Gaara stared at the welkin, the smoke of the fire casting it in a bluish paleness.
He had never understood how it pulsed, how stars could brittle, vanish, and humans still be oblivious to them. Even when he was alive, he had read death in their gleam, accepted their life once they ended. The void. Demons filled the world in the same way. They died in the aggressive torturous shine of the underworld and then, they vanished. They forgot their name, took the ones that match their tails and became craftmen of wishes and despair.
Once they changed, once they gave up on humanity, they become part of the emptiness the darkness swept in the streets of humanity. Sleep never came again once Gaara understood that. He chose to stare at the stars. He chose to fade in.
He turned his glance towards Hyuuga Hinata, his lips curled over his teeth. Her soul blurred, hanging on to her tears and fears. Her hair masked her face, her eyelashes drawing haunting shadows on her cheeks. He had always wondered how could humans accept to be defenceless during the night. It was the night that carried the wind of danger, the putrid smell of the unknown. Yet, they slept next to strangers or on the battlefield.
They should glance up at the stars and let demons devour them.
His hand twitched and he almost reached for her sleeping form and shake her awake. Gaara wished he could point at the stars above their heads and chanted to her that Naruto used to be one of the stars until he died. He vanished. He gave up. He was just one of them, now deprived of his light and soul. How could she have set her eyes on him and never let go? He didn't shine, he wasn't human. And why not Gaara? Why couldn't she see him the way she saw him?
He narrowed his eyes, envying the tremors of her soul, the palpitation of her chest.
Monsters never rest. Monsters peopled the night, sneaking between the heaving chests they could crush. Naruto was the same. He hadn't told her that but Naruto was one of the monsters that slept but woke up the blood of his opponents dripping down his mouth and brows.
They met in a forest of sand during a time that pikes ornamented wars. Clans fought restlessly at the slightest disagreement when they were human. They never cared for harmony the way they did, today. It was a time when warriors still believed in the silence of the sword and the redemption of the fallen. He remembered how they stood across the battlefield, fighting for two enemy daimyos. They laughed at the end, soaked in blood.
Humans, they were already beasts.
Their muscles were screaming under the weight of their katana and they had found an equal in one another. They had called themselves friends, then, not knowing what it really meant. The bond of the blood they had shed had been stronger than anything they had ever tasted, despite it all.
They didn't believe in the power of wishes as they wiped the dark crust on their blades. There was no need; they had already lost their soul along the way. It didn't matter.
Centuries later, they had called themselves demons and turning away from their humanity had meant turning away from one another.
They didn't want redemption.
They loved only themselves.
They weren't friends.
It didn't matter.
Gaara let the fire die out, watching her curl up in her sleep. He still wanted to reach forward and shake her awake.
-X-
Wish for Redemption
by Clementive
-X-
Her reflection quivered, her mouth deformed by the rippling movements of the cranes on the other side of the lake. Her image was as shaky as her. Hinata Hyuuga had always shaken because of others, the ripples they made reshaping her, playing her in the exhaling melody of her shyness. Gaara frowned watching her quietly washing away the sleep from her muscles. She blushed, stopping when she felt the collar of her bridal kimono.
"What will happen if I don't marry? If I choose a honourable death?"
He walked towards her, licking his lips. Her shoulders stiffened at his proximity. He played with the faint shades caressing her skin. Gaara leaned forward, his mouth grazing her ear.
"I could show you if you want, Hinata-hime."
"It wasn't a wish," she stammered moving away from his burning chest but he caught her elbow.
She had nothing left to lose. He smirked, as she came to the realization, her mouth quivering. She refused to stare at him in the hollowness of the forest. She was the prey and he, the hunter.
Her heartbeat quickened, her blush deepening. She could sense his amusement. His eyes remained hard and unwavering but the corner of his mouth creased. Often, his face would morph into emotions she could read. He would grunt at the unfamiliar movement of his muscles, uncomfortable. They were glimpses of his past resurfacing and she would glance away, pretending she hadn't noticed the way he caressed workable wood or close his eyes in a rising harsh wind.
Reaching past her, Gaara soaked his fingers in the blue waters drawing a slow circle. Cranes flapped their wings, the ripples of their movements soaking her knees. The air stilled and she hiccuped, finally letting her stare ghosted over his face.
"I already have your soul, Hinata-hime. I need nothing else from you."
The water gleamed in a green hue, raising in a thickening smoke around her. The cold hands of fear flogged her face and neck, slashing her kimono. Nervously, she turned around, tumbling over her skirts peeling away from her legs. She stood in a mist that froze her breath, Gaara's heat gone from her skin. Hinata puffed, screaming silently. She choked on his name, the smell of rotten pines filling her instead. She brought a shaky hand to her throat, bending down to retch.
The mist kept swallowing her screams. Fear licked her insides. Her stomach churned.
Ice weighed down her tongue and she swallowed, carefully straightening her back. Children ran past her, pushing her out of their way with ghostly hands.
Hinata heard laughter and gripped a small hand. She looked down, petrified, letting the hand go when she recognized her younger self.
They kept running, growing up with each step. They carried her past, the way she had let it slide off her skin when she became stronger, when it still wasn't enough. She watched it unwrap around her, tainting the mist in the things she preferred buried inside her. She raced against them, trying to catch them, volatile and painful.
"Relax, Hinata-hime," Gaara whispered to her ears and she choked back a sob, her hand passing through another version of herself.
They faded and she faced a handsome tall man.
The smoke turned grey, a blue moon piercing it. The cold intensified but something pulled her up. The man walked through her, drenching her icy waters. The mist became a room around her, roughing its edge in a spinning ceremonial room. Monks sat in the receding darkness and she felt their eyes piercing through her. She focused on the man she knew to be her fiancé. His bridal robes were strict and lords around wore the dedicated respectful frown of those in position of weakness. A woman advanced towards him and Hinata released a thin exhale.
It wasn't her.
The world would go on, she understood. The world she had always been afraid of had never included her; it would roll past her death. Her betrothed would marry another and her father already had another daughter. In trying to fade in, to blend in, she had forgotten to exist on her own.
She stared down at her hands, creased and blue. Frozen. Dead. Rotting.
To the world, she was already dead.
The heat savagely bit her skin and she gasped, the forest solidifying around her. She blinked and the colours circled her once more, blinding her. Birds chirped, the waters snaked and she exhaled heavily, falling back against Gaara's chest.
"We don't care about time, the way you humans do, so we can create it."
"It was fake then?" Hinata murmured through her shattering teeth.
She thought of the beautiful woman under the veil and her transparent past.
"If you die, it will become real. The future is malleable."
It was against everything she had ever been taught; the idea of malleable and choice.
Hinata pulled away, pinching her lips to quell the sob raising in her throat. The coldness she had felt earlier lingered in her muscles. She felt dirty, soaked in her family's betrayal. She had destroyed herself by following her quiet ritual all those years. She became strong, but in silence, and no one tolerated it the way she did. The way she vowed to herself she would.
Soft, but strong.
She believed in demons, she had given up her soul and her mouth still tasted of the wishes he could see through her. There were her wishes, her faith in changing herself that had damned her. Her sadness didn't only crush her, it stained her. She could feel her aunt's hand on her back, her father's voice howling in her ears, her sister's prowess smashing every single of her pitiful attempts to beat her.
She could never beat them. She felt dirty, unworthy because she believed she would, one day.
"I meant to take a bath," Hinata stammered abruptly, hunching her shoulders.
Her arms fell protectively over her chest and she avoided his stare. Her hair veiled her expression, but Gaara reached forward catching her chin. His index curled around one of her tears and she closed her eyes. She thought of all the things about herself she hoped to scrub off her body. She would make her skin raw with her wish of strength if she could.
It always came down to the things she couldn't do. Gaara let go of her chin.
"I have no human desire if this is what you are afraid of, Hinata-hime," he stated coldly, raising to his feet. "I will get you clothes and some food."
Roughly, he brushed a branch out of his way and he heard her gasp before he felt her small palm against his bicep. He froze, controlling the heat of his skin not to burn her.
"What?" Gaara barked through clenched teeth.
She was supposed to be scared, to beg for life or dive the dagger he gave her in her flesh and destroy the chains around her soul. For him. She was supposed to be his. Now that she was down being theirs- being a Hyuuga- why couldn't she still be his?
"Do you have money?" Hinata hesitated, looking at her rigid hand on him.
She blushed, retreating it slowly. He laughed darkly and crossed his arms over his chest. The wind ruffled his hair, his tattoo appearing.
"People don't say no to me," he said coldly.
Except you.
Gaara could grant her other wished: becoming stronger while staying kind. His face hardened. He knew those were wishes she would never utter. She wasn't petty. She only wanted Naruto and she thought everything would be hers once she had him.
Despite everything he had shown her, she knew she could never have him, but she still fought.
-X-
Hinata stood on the bank of the lake, her toes playing with the sparkling sunlight breaking the waters. It darkened her skin. She expected to fade and the waves to ease her in. She didn't want the choice to be hers even if she had been taught to hold a dagger if her honour needed saving. Now, it was her soul. It ached, it pulsed. She struggled.
She would have an anonymous death, entrapped in the sanctity of the forest; forgotten, replaced.
Gaara drew closer, his hands grazing her hips.
"How did the others do it?" she murmured.
She fell erased in his arms. His nose nuzzling her spirit instead of her. Inside her something flickered, reaching for the demon's palms in a screeching sound. He steadied her, frowning, his index caressing her cheek. She saw Naruto, looking through her. A watcher and a listener, she had never been seen or heard. His pale eyes stopped on her mouth.
"There are all sorts of way to die, Hinata-hime," his pale eyes tracked the repercussion of his words on her face. "They usually choose the dagger though. Or poison," his hand fell onto the base of her neck and he cocked his head on the side, his look feral, "they always choose the most painful poison when they do. It's like they are punishing themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if you chose poison, Hinata-hime."
"I'm a co-coward."
"Cowards don't wish for things. They don't allow themselves to. They are too afraid to never be satisfied. You, humans, have a singular way to see things. Honour only come from the blade, according to you, but what about wars? Are those meant to be honourable when soldiers are bred as beasts?"
"Is this how you became a demon?"
Gaara smirked, the heat of him radiating across her chest. She almost curled back against him; the water rolled icily between her toes.
"I was born a beast," he watched her, his lips twisted in a roar, "a bit like Naruto. He killed his first man before I killed mine."
He enjoyed the way she flinched away from him, hurt and feeble, but desperately fighting. Her shyness altered her movements, bent her posture, but Naruto was both a weakness and a strength.
"What about her?" she passed a moist hand on her forehead, stepping out of the water. "Is she a demon too?"
"Who?" Gaara frowned watching her in a cascade of dying light and shimmering darkening waters.
"Sakura Haruno... Naruto's lover."
He crossed the distance between them so fast, she jolted when yellow flickering eyes bore into hers. Her back hit a tree, the sound of birds high-pitched as her heartbeat hammered her ribcage.
"Who?" He repeated harshly and she trembled, feeling the roughness of his skin through her stolen kimono.
The heat tangled out of his body and sand glided off him. A scorched wind howled, his hands pressing her harder against the tree. Pain snaked in her shoulders, burning her sides.
"Answer me!" He roared, his mouth deformed by the demon taking over.
"Sakura Haruno," Hinata yelped, choking on the words. "She lives in Konoha, they had been together for years."
"Years?" he said tonelessly and she nodded briskly, trying to move away from him. "Are you sure?"
"I have known... watched... Naruto since I'm seven," she muttered, watching warily the dark flames dancing in his orbs. "She was always there."
"I will be back."
Her chest heaved abruptly.
She sucked in a deep breath, knocked off her feet by the absence of his hands on her body. Hinata fell to the ground, her small palms sinking in the grains of sand. She panted, through her locks sticking to the moisture of her cheeks and neck.
"Where are you going?" she squeaked, pressing her shaky hands to her mouth.
She feared the answer.
She tasted the sand and his anger. His pale eyes hesitated, the anger brisk and he paced. His hands shook, claws replacing nails.
Hinata shivered.
"You know where."
She sat up in the sand, unable to hold in the tears. Naruto had chosen a human and it wasn't her.
Hinata leaned back against the three. Still panting, she still felt Gaara's hands on her, her fingers carefully traced his heat.
Her dagger appeared in the rolling grains of sand, the sun rays turning cold.
-X-
He didn't wait, he didn't prowl, he flew.
The window exploded, shimmered in his hair as the glass bit at the soles of his feet. Sakura Haruno faced him panting, her eyes widened. Gaara sprung across the room, his clawed hand crushing her neck in one brutal movement. He roared, tasting the sweetness of her blood staining his hands. It rolled down his palms, scarlet. He smirked darkly, as her hand hit uselessly his chest and arm. She choked on her screams, tears welling in the corner of her eyes.
"Hello, little one."
Her scream ripped off her chest when Naruto knocked him off her. He appeared in thin air, pushing her away from them against the corner of the room.
They hissed, their half demoniac forms flowing in the room. The shadows recoiled, demons bowed and the moonlight played with the blood and glass mixed between them. Sakura held her hammering head, tossing herself in a corner and they prowled in front of one another. Her lids burnt, the blood still oozing down her neck.
"And you told me nothing could come off a demon showing too much interest in a human! What is this, Kyuubi? Why did you tell me I was wrong in looking at her when you are..."
He couldn't say it. Love. His roar faded in the memory of puppets holding his hands and an uncle showing him that he could never love anyone but himself. The room swayed, his chest dulled in the emptiness that inhabited him. The void. Always, the void in the prison of his mind.
"What is this?" he repeated, his voice hollow and rough.
"What are you doing here, Shukaku?"
After centuries, they still stood across a battlefield and Gaara knew they wouldn't laugh and call themselves friends. It was all gone, now that Naruto protected his human. He chose to crush Hinata to save Sakura.
He chose redemption.
"I will make sure you lose all of your tails," he threatened darkly, taking a step forward.
Naruto clenched his jaw and set a blanket over Sakura's shoulders, his hand hovering her wounds. She smiled timidly, tightening the blanket around her shoulders. Her screams had dried up. Gaara's nostrils flared thinking of Hinata trapped in the shatters of her past and future.
"If you thought only Angels could fall, you were wrong, Shukaku! Demons can fall too and when they do, they cease to exist," Naruto neared him until he was mere inches from his face.
Gaara thought they were miles away, fighting their way through blood and gore. They had fought for princesses once.
"They become miserable humans driven to madness. We aren't damned to hell, Shukaku, we are damned to life, death, children and love. And that's all they wish for. Ironic, isn't it?"
"Humans, not us! Not demons! You tried to cheat me off my tail so you could keep bedding a woman you can't have, Naruto. She's human!"
He didn't reply, his blue eyes turning red. It had been years since they had Sakura reached up and touched his hand.
"You made her immortal," Gaara said flatly, turning human again.
The joints hurt, muscles snapping back into place underneath his skin.
Naruto pushed him against the wall, cutting open his abdomen. They hissed, releasing their hold on one another. It was useless; they couldn't bleed. They couldn't die. They could only live on, eternally. Gaara panted, flames licking his wounds until they disappeared in his flesh.
"Don't come to me again unless if it's to bring me the girl's soul."
"She's mine," he roared, thinking of the hurt that would spread on Hinata's face if she knew Naruto couldn't even pronounce her name. "I'm not bringing her to you."
He shoved him off him and they felt both as cornered and lost. Their eyes paled, a grim expression twisting their lips.
"I don't want her," Naruto said lowly, balling his fists.
"Even if her soul is more delicious than this woman's?" his eyes glowed and he laughed sadistically. "You have been leading this life for too long. You have no excuse to stick around her and yet, here you are. You are here because you want to know how they do it... love. You want to know how they love."
"I already know, but you don't. Even then, you didn't. You can't forget it, Gaara, once you have understood it."
Gaara snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. They called one aother by their names. They called one another human, but a part of them still ran wildly onto battlefields. They had never understood what it meant to be friends.
"You are turning human again, aren't you?"
"We are damned to eternity, Gaara. What did you think it meant?" Naruto asked icily, crouching down next to her. "Now get out. We are done."
"I won't bring you Hinata."
"We are done," his voice hardened and his eyes turned red again.
Gaara paused in front of the broken window, stars dying above his head. The glass trapped in his red hair gleamed in the moonlight. He thought of circles and sacrifices they had been willing to make for one another, then.
"We are, but I'm not bringing her to you."
-X-
Gaara told her flatly that Sakura Haruno was human. He told her in his demon form, not trusting the angular shapes and jerking muscles of his human form to tell her. She balled her fists and faced him, her pearl eyes shinning in the darkness.
He looked up at the stars. It was all the same, over and over again. Life. Death. Shining. Extinguishing.
"Are you sad?"
He didn't taunt her this time, his stomach churning lightly. They stood in the darkness as quivering shadows that spoke about a battlefield dividing them. He wanted her closer, but farther. He wanted to call her an enemy, but his insides boiled whenever he thought of Sakura and how Naruto acknowledged her and forgot about Hinata.
"Yes," she whispered through thinned lips.
She kept being forgotten. Her body kept folding onto itself in the shadows of those she loved and admired. She wanted pink hair that grazed her shoulders in the summery heat, green eyes that shone with happiness and confidence and a voice that could yell beyond words.
Hinata sat down, holding herself like she had been taught to; like a Hyuuga. She paled, her hair falling softly around her. She didn't know what it meant anymore to be a Hyuuga when hearts didn't burst open under her palms, when it didn't fill her thirst for recognition.
Gaara had been a demon longer than a human, yet he had never felt so much despair in himself. Usually, he would smell it rotting in others, not in his chest. Not when it came to humans. He cast his glance down, turning back human. He had to stop himself from pointing up at the stars.
"You should have told me, I couldn't have him."
"It wouldn't have made a difference and I wanted your soul," he answered quietly, crossing his arms over his chest.
How could she understand the appeal of her scent when she hated herself? She was blind to her own beauty and that made her shine delicately. The kimono roughed her edges, the chains of her soul heavier and gleaming in a purple fading light at her feet.
"And now that you almost have it? Now that I bear your mark? What does it change for you or for me?" Her lips moved imperceptibly, frozen, the blood gone from her face.
The shades of the leaves crept on her face. She had wanted change, all of her life. She had thought it was all that mattered because she couldn't love herself, she couldn't love the pale reflection of a Hyuuga that cried and gave up. Weak. She didn't want to be a weakling, the unwanted daughter, the ignored shadow of the demon she loved.
"What does it change now?" she repeated stronger, her hands balled on her knees.
Gaara hesitated, thinking of the nights he had spent imagining how the people live in Suna. How could Temari still smile after their parents' death? How could Kankuro? Will, want, longing, survival, forgiveness... He shook his head. Demons couldn't think of redemption. They were damned to an eternity of forgotten memories and forbidden emotions.
Faintly, he cringed thinking of Naruto and Sakura and the way their bodies interlocked.
"I will become stronger and you will die."
Hinata looked down at her feet, her hair wild in the wind. Men in her clan would kill her for strength, but it had never made sense to her. She had trained to become stronger. She had cried, fallen and given up only to hit harder. Again and again.
"Don't die," his mouth twisted his eyes as wide as hers.
His voice had sounded human.
"B-bring me back to Konoha."
He nodded stiffly, feeling empty and cold for the first time.
'Bring me back to Naruto,' she had meant, he knew. She thought she still had a chance. She still hoped and wished. Human. She was still human and the stars shone around her.
-X-
I hope you have enjoyed it! :) Please take the time to let me know what you think! ^_^