Yeah, Estonia has a lot of sayings about wolves. Interesting stuff. One more part after this. People didn't seem to fond of this concept, but I'm still digging it. Fairy tales are meant to be short and I'm at least on target for that. Sometimes these "oneshots" bloat out. Like I said, feeling dark. Let me know if you think the violence deserves an M rating. Fairy tales are supposed to be a little sobering.

Still thinking about part 3, the final bit.

Disclaimer: see part 1

The wolf is happier when it's alone – Estonian saying

If Gaara had a story he would probably say that first and foremost it was about blood. From his point of view he was disinclined to think of his life so poetically as to call it a story because each chapter would have comprised the same climax and resolution up to a certain point. He had arrived in the world a killer, and hated by his father for it. Siblings moved through his life like sand flowing through his fingers while he was trained to kill like a tool instead of a child. Shortly after his tenth birthday he was sent on a suicide mission to assassinate a nearby tribal leader and no one expected Gaara to succeed except Gaara. When he arrived back in his village covered in blood, green eyes clear and calculating, that's when they started calling him demon child.

And so it went. A demon had utility and he was appreciated in a twisted way, in the only way he had ever experienced, and he lived after a fashion. In his dreams he drowned in blood, but for all he knew that was normal. Once he had asked Temari about that but she had only shuddered, which was no answer at all.

When the drought hit the people of Sand were ready, being accustomed to the occasional drought, but as it stretched on and hunger weakened the people the diseases that normally only affected the old and weak began to take the formerly strong. Gaara knew the world was cruel and random, but the people his father ruled only saw dark magic at play. It was a curse, they whispered, and who better to be the cause than the person they all feared.

The rumors started small, wisps of thought dispersed by nervous laughter in small groups of people. Eventually they became rumbles of discontent, and eventually a clamor for action. They wanted his blood, but no one was strong enough to face him and take it. Gaara was too perfect a weapon.

Sitting in his father's meeting room, Gaara heard the words as impassively as every other order that had issued from those hateful chapped lips. Kankuro had said once that Gaara reminded them more and more of their mother every year, and secretly he was glad he shared as little connection as possible with the distant man he called Kazekage.

"Don't think of it as exile. Eventually the weather will turn and the crops will grow. The weak will die and the strong won't get sick. All those ignorant farmers will come to me again and ask for security and your time will rise again." Behind the door he knew his siblings were listening and most likely sighing their own relief to no longer be his keepers. "Kankuro or Temari will find you when the time comes."

He had thought himself alone his whole life, but once he left the city limits with a week of rations and his sword he knew what alone finally meant. No missions, no rules, no whispers, just the voice in his head raging over nothing. He wasn't sure if this was true freedom or a living hell.

Gaara walked east.

The wolf forgets, the dog remembers. – Estonian saying

Under the light of a black sun he gloried in destruction. The wind blew hot and rancid as he ripped through the homely domes that made up the typical Sand domicile. Brittle ceramic crumbled under his clawed feet and in his hands. Faceless people ran screaming while he snatched at them, hungry for more than flesh. Hungry for their terror, or maybe revenge, but mostly for the sweet hot emotions they spilled out into the air. Scream for me, he roared, the words sounding mangled through rotting pointed teeth.

"Shhhh." the wind scolded him, cooling where it had burned before.

Distracted for a moment he turned back to his rampage to find the village empty, the crushed buildings replaced by heavy fruit trees. Apples he knew, but as he reached for one the trees grew past his claw-like reach. Always denied, he lashed out, rending the bark and watching the sap ooze dark red in rivulets to the ground.

"Dammit you're strong." The wind sounded testier, and it occurred to Gaara for the first time that this wasn't real. Those perfect shining apples, the too bright sky, or his monstrous form were all some delusion. But that voice he knew from another place, and so he followed it.

The concept of opening your eyes when they're already open seemed impossible, but Gaara wasn't about to let impossible stop him from doing something. The trees blurred, merging with the dingy insides of a depressing little room, but in the center of his vision was the source of the voice. He'd been regarded with fear, reverence, anger, and any number of intense varieties of aggression from the sexual to the purely survivalist but the expression the pink haired girl wore was completely foreign to him.

His body felt heavy, like he had been drugged, but if she was going to kill him she would have done it when he was unconscious. Nothing about her bearing implied she wanted something from him so all he was left with was either she was going to engage in activities more depraved than outright killing him or this was some form of altruism. He considered either possibility equally viable.

"Awake again are you?" Her eyes darted around, but all he saw was fading apple trees and the wavy outline of a lamp next to them now. When her arm darted behind her he tried to catch it, preventing her, but it was like moving through quicksand and his fingers curled around air. The water cup she had grabbed was in her hands as she brought it up to his lips. "Drink. Or not."

Gaara stared at her and her slight smile faded as with a sigh she brought the cup to her own lips and drank a sip before pushing it back to him again. Taking a calculated risk, he accepted a few sips while he watched her with unblinking eyes.

"Did your mother ever tell you it's impolite to stare?"

"No."

His response surprised both of them. "Well, I'll tell you now then. I didn't expect you to be awake again so soon. You're lucky to be alive you know."

Yes. He was lucky. That was the word for it. Grimly, he watched the cup move back to his lips again and he shook his head until she pulled it back. Even that simple shake made his vision swim and only her concerned face grounded him.

"My friend Naruto bit into a red cap mushroom once on a dare and we had to rush him to Tsunade who made him throw it up straight away. He said he saw fairies and giant foxes following him for hours after and we all got yelled at for days for letting him do something so dumb."

Sakura, that was her name. He remembered that much from earlier, and he remembered threatening her as well. She was an idiot to bring a dangerous stranger into her home. The only people around were her and her grandmother. If the damned forest weren't so hard to navigate the other denizens he had noted since he arrived would have found them and slit their throats for all the food they had.

"What's your name?"

"Gaara." It cost him nothing and it meant nothing to her.

Her face scrunched like she had bit into something bitter. "Just Gaara?"

Giving no indication that he had heard her question he took some time to examine her further. Probably his age, maybe a little younger, everything about her screamed weak to him. Wide innocent eyes, smiling countenance, bright impractical clothes, she would probably have looked rounder if not for the ubiquitous leanness that everyone sported in this famine. As she flushed with annoyance at his manners, he thought that she must have a good life to be so welcoming of a stranger. His life had been ugly, so devoid of basic humanity, he wanted a piece of what she had for his own. The shock of that wanting left him cold once more. He must be confused.

"Just Gaara."

Sighing and rolling her eyes at him, she got up and walked over to where a bowl sat and brought it over to him. "Well, Gaara, I've got some porridge here for you even if it's cold now. Can you hold a spoon?"

"I can feed myself." He wondered how long it had been since he had a conversation with a person based around more than simple transactions. Long before the two months he had been wandering in exile. Being here, talking with the girl, he almost felt like the time before faded from the forefront of his thoughts.

She took a bite first, making a big show of it as if his distrust forced her into theatrics. The food was tasteless, but he was hungry, and when it came down to it he had eaten far worse under much less trying circumstances.

"My grandmother said you need some meat on your bones. You might even be handsome then." She looked like she wished she could snatch the words out of the air and stuff them back in her mouth.

Gaara didn't recall ever having been called handsome. The closest he ever came was when his misguided older brother, thinking he was helping him out, took him to a brothel at sixteen. The ladies, overly perfumed and made up, had touched him in a familiar way, calling him pretty, while he talked himself down from sliding a knife into them to stop the assault on his senses. None of their attention had been welcome, their fleshy bodies and wide fake smiles just driving home how nothing he was ever given was normal. That mockery of affection hadn't done anything for him and his brother declared Gaara a lost cause but a rogue voice told him if this girl had been there maybe it would have gone differently that night. The implications of having a thought like that he stowed for later with his usual efficient mental compartmentalization.

"You live here with your family but I only saw one other person." His voice cut through her embarrassment.

"So we're talking now?" As he suspected she wasn't good at maintaining silence. "I spend most of my time in Konoha. My family spends time in both locations." Vague answer, he approved, maybe she had a little more sense than he thought. "I would invite you to Konoha but I have a feeling you'll just be branded a sheep killer and run out of town."

The idea was so ludicrous, that the worst he could be considered was a sheep killer, Gaara felt the corners of his mouth twitch up.

"I'm glad you think that's funny. Personally I doubt you've killed any sheep because if you had mutton to eat you wouldn't be touching any mushrooms."

"Why are you doing all this?" He didn't expect any answer he could trust so he wasn't even sure why he asked.

"Why? Why feed you, make sure you don't freeze, let you sleep in my bed, and all that? I don't know. Something inside of me tells me to, and I listen to that voice. Maybe I just didn't want to leave a sick person in the woods." She gave him a sideways glance, narrowing her eyes. "But don't think I forgot about this." Pointing to the neat stitching in her dress he assumed she meant whatever injury he had done to her earlier. "You owe me."

Gaara wondered what he would have done to her if he had listened to the voices in his own head.

The wolf changes its coat but not its way – Estonian saying

Despite being "less stout" than her son at that age according to the old woman, she still had some clothes packed away in a trunk that would basically fit him. His own clothes would need to be washed, and he could see to that when he felt better or wait until she did all the washing properly in a couple days. The material was thicker, less fine, and the strange pants itched. Clothes were looser in Sand, cotton more tightly woven, and he felt naked without his sword (which Sakura swore she would give back to him when he "proved" himself). Effectively, he felt caught. After the first long day alone in the house he was not strong enough to leave, nor weak enough for bed rest so Gaara followed Sakura around and helped her with the picking. As her grandmother had said "if you're just going to mope you can make yourself useful."

Unable to stand on a ladder without feeling dizzy, he still maintained he was fine and tried to keep pace with her and the old woman. It was the first time in many years he felt bad at a physical task set before him, and he blamed his recovery. Other than the vague spinning in his brain and itchy legs he had a full belly and people around him that neither feared him nor demanded anything taxing of him. The clamoring voice in his head that desired their blood died down to a whisper and that night he went to bed early and slept the whole night dreamlessly. It was as close to peace as he had known.

"So why love?"

"What?" Gaara sputtered at breakfast, egg dropping out of his mouth onto his shirt.

She tapped her forehead. Ah, of course. Under no circumstances did he want to share that memory with her, but he knew by now he needed to say something or she would persist in asking. Sakura was nothing if not tenacious. Gaara hadn't determined yet if it was one of her finer qualities.

"It's there to remind me of my purpose."

"You're not very good at it then," She gave him that smile he was starting to recognize as uniquely hers, thin lipped and considering but never unkind. "Being loving I mean."

"That isn't what it means." He could practically taste the blood from that night and found he wasn't hungry for the last bites of his meal. None of his kills after that bothered him like the first.

Sakura saw him withdraw it would seem because that expressive face of hers became all concern. "Hey, I was just teasing you. Sorry I asked."

No one at Sand had asked; no one would have dared. Her familiarity with him was becoming less upsetting by the hour and that thought in of itself was alarming him. Had the mushrooms done something to his brain?

He rolled up his sleeves and brushed the hair back from his forehead, it had gotten longer than he would have liked since he left Sand. The questions continued as they worked. He had preferred when she was silent next to him, swearing softly as they moved through the orchard picking and dropping the apples into bins. Sakura clearly seemed to ascribe to the tactic that if you used enough force and repetition eventually you would get an answer for something. And darn it all if it wasn't working.

So tell me why people in Sand use khol? Do all the men use it too, or is it some fashion statement? What do you eat in the mornings there? What games do you play? How hot is it during the day? At night? In the shade? How do people stay cool? Are there trees there at all? How do you get water? What sort of music do people like? And on….

Sometimes Gaara even felt himself answering her involuntarily, like the words he had kept to himself for so many years were leaking from his lips. Her interrogation was much sweeter and far more effective than many professional jobs he had been plied with at various points—most of those situations that he had purposefully entered into to get closer to a target. At one point he found himself just staring at her lips while they moved, hearing nothing. She threw an apple at him when Sakura realized he wasn't listening, and he was gratified to see his arm snake out and catch it. His reflexes were almost back to normal.

"Grandmother and I have been working all week, so tomorrow we're resting. You're lucky. A year or two ago she would have made us work straight through until pickup in a week. Naruto and Lee both are driving carts to pick everything up, I think you'll like them." Sakura laughed in the shade as they ate their midday meal and told him stories about her friends.

If this is what normal people did, it was boring. Gaara had heard Temari and Kankuro complain of boredom before, but Gaara had never understood. There was always a corner to watch, a shadow to track, the next mission to plan, or someone to fight. Life for Gaara the successful assassin had been high tension all the time. Life for Gaara, Sakura Haruno's patient, was not exciting at all. Then again, even she admitted this was more monotonous than she was used to compared to Konoha. Gaara, more than anything, was starting to want to see this Konoha and meet these people she talked about.

"All right you kids, back to work. Don't make me come over there!" Her grandmother's sharp voice brought him back to the present as Sakura grabbed him by the hands and hauled him to his feet before pushing him in the direction of his ladder with a laugh.

"You heard her, back to work!"

Gaara had to consciously control his breathing as he recovered from her touch. It had been different when he was sick in bed, necessary somehow. Whatever she was doing to him, he both craved more of it and felt repulsed by it. If this was leading to whatever impulses that caused Kankuro to run after every pretty girl he saw Gaara wasn't sure he wanted any part of it, but he was pretty sure he didn't have a choice. Idly, he wondered what would happen if he offered to share the bed with Sakura tonight and decided against mentioning it only when he recalled how forceful that apple throw had been.

He needed to recover, absolve his debt, and leave before these impulses caught up to him and made him lose his mind completely. If attachments were growing, he knew where that would lead. Absently he brushed his tattoo and wondered what life would have been like without the knowledge that love only existed for the purpose of controlling others.

The wolf is made to be a predator – Estonian saying

"Today we clean!" Sakura gleefully greeted Gaara so early he wasn't sure it was actually morning. She was in a pair of pants and a baggy shirt taken from the pile of men's clothing that Gaara had been borrowing from as well. If this meant that they could finally clean his real clothes and he could stop itching then he would gladly do any laundry needed.

The roaring fire tended by the old woman outside had a large pot over it and they took turns carrying buckets from the well to the pot. They ate breakfast outside while the water heated and soon enough they were scrubbing and stirring and wringing and drying. Everything was curious about it from the lye mixture that went into the boiling pot to the other soaps near the washboards that Sakura showed him how to use. They had him wash his own clothes before he tackled helping with the rest of the wash. Sakura scrubbed at bloodstains on the interior of her dress next to him intently and he wondered at how it had been less than a week since he had collapsed in the field.

"Usually my mother and I take it to the laundry center, so we don't have to boil our own water or bring our own soap," Sakura said as she examined her red hands. "There are some advantages to living in a larger village."

Gaara had never done his own laundry, it had always been done for him, and he was satisfied learning something new even if he hoped he wouldn't have to do it again in the near future.

"After we clean our clothes we get to clean ourselves." Sakura seemed less excited about that prospect. "Don't get me wrong, I love a nice bath, but the bath houses in the village are cheap and my family goes often. When I'm out here picking I just have to be used to grime."

"If you have energy to complain then you have energy to scrub!" Granny Haruno had ears like a bat.

Sakura huffed and bent back to her work on some bed sheets. Even though she didn't seem tough or particularly muscular, like Temari's build, there was something about how Sakura attacked those sheets on the washboard that reminded Gaara of Temari's strength. He had eaten not long ago so he determined that the pang he felt near his stomach must be the feeling of missing someone.

"Is there something on my face?" Sakura asked him, pushing her hair behind her ears. It immediately fell back in her face as she tilted her head in question. "Because you keep staring."

A tremor worked its way through him as he pointed to her cheek. Nothing was on it, but he felt like he needed to generate some sort of excuse. Sakura dipped her hand in the laundry water and rubbed at her cheek.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." And he really hoped she wouldn't, not that there was anyone to mention it to around here.

The midday meal came and went and before he knew it he and Sakura were stringing up laundry lines between the trees and clipping their clothes up to dry in the sun. It was all too idyllic to last, and his instincts proved to be entirely correct when he heard a scream from the cottage where the elder Haruno was fixing their supper.

Every nerve fired and suddenly all the details around him came into sharper focus. The movement of bodies past the trees, the murmur of male voices, all the paths he could map from here to the house and what kind of cover he could expect to use. One thing was missing.

"Where is my sword?" but he was talking to air because after the initial moment they froze on hearing the scream Sakura had taken off running even as the words left his lips. Unthinking action got people killed, and protective alarm bloomed in him, clouding his thinking.

He took off on her heels, but Sakura's powerful legs and head start in the sprint meant he couldn't catch her before she reached the scene he had already calculated they would encounter: the old woman, at her doorstep with a growing pool of blood beneath her while one man picked through her clothes for valuables and another stood over him. More were undoubtedly inside, as people like this worked in packs. Here were Sakura's sheep killers, but they seemed to have moved to people with ease.

Gaara peeled off, running to the tool shed at the edge of the orchard. Sakura just needed to live until he got there. His eye slid over the pitchfork and the hoe and landed on the shovel. It would have a similar weight and length to the sword he dearly wished he had with him. After he had acquired his weapon then everything became mathematical.

He was already moving when he heard Sakura scream something nonsensical at the men standing over her grandmother, and as he rounded the back of the cottage he caught the beginning of her flying punch. If she had her whole weight behind it, that would at least provide a good distraction but a broken or dislocated jaw wouldn't be debilitating.

By the time he had made it around behind the two men one had Sakura partially pinned to the ground. The other was yelling at the first, encouraging the first man to rip off her clothes and other extremely unoriginal suggestions but as none of it involved immediate bodily harm he took a moment to examine the inside of the building through the window. Two he could see, eating everything in sight and destroying whatever wasn't edible. All of them carried at least a knife, one of the men inside had a sword, poorly tended and not very sharp looking and he was currently using it to smash the kitchen window. They probably had no idea how to fight.

Sakura's screams had become more urgent, less angry and more frightened, but then stopped abruptly so he immediately turned his attention back to her attackers. It seems she had been a little too successful because one man appeared to be nursing a dislocated shoulder while the other was just drawing back his hand to punch her again while she gurgled around what was most likely a broken nose spreading blood all over her face.

Gaara saw no reason to ask questions of any of these men so he twisted the shovel sideways as he brought it sideways into Sakura's attacker's neck lodging it well into his spine. He hadn't thought it would go so far in so he had to take his foot and brace it against the man's back to pull it back while the corpse slumped, still on top of Sakura.

Sparing a precious moment to meet her eyes and assure himself that she lived, he cursed himself for such inefficiency as the other man called out for the other members of their raid to come out and get him. It would have been more convenient if he had killed both men before checking on Sakura, but it was just another sign that she was making him go soft.

The man with the dislocated shoulder had a shovel buried in his gut before three men ran out and saw the carnage with Gaara standing calming in the center of it all. The one with the sword who looked like he could possibly rub up to two brain cells together surveyed things and spoke to him slowly.

"Now, kid, you don't want to do something you'll regret. If you just turn around now and walk away we might not even come after you. I'll even let you take your little girlfriend."

Gaara made the mistake of glancing over at Sakura who had pushed the still draining corpse off of her and was getting to her feet with an expression on her face he knew too well. The mix of horror, anger, and determination was so raw that despite everything he was struck by how beautiful she was.

The attack was so obvious Gaara didn't even need to think about the neat pivot he used to sidestep the swipe of the sword. The other two men were looking for a way to participate in his dismemberment but didn't seem able to find an opening as Gaara danced with the sword. Unbidden, memories of his lessons came in choppy waves. Imagine there's a bubble around you, then move every time you feel something encounter that bubble. Nothing will touch you.

Unused to waving it around so much, the sword bearing man's swipes slowed. The opportunity came and Gaara swept the taller man's legs out from under him and stepped on the hand clutching the sword hard enough to break any number of the man's fingers.

If you're fighting a lot of people, make sure when you kill to make it messy and painful. You want them to fear you before they try to fight you. The sword was in his hands while the two men with knives stood there stunned. Amateurs, he thought, just hungry thugs praying on what they thought was an old woman and a couple kids. Their "leader" didn't even have time to beg as Gaara planted the sword thought the man's chest. He struggled on the ground, dying loudly and spiting blood as Gaara met the eyes of the two remaining men.

"Now, don't do something you'll regret," Gaara said, and smiled showing every one of his teeth. Unsurprisingly, they turned and ran into the woods.

He turned to Sakura, and saw her clutching a knife in front of herself she must have taken off of the body that fell on top of her. It shook a little in her hand as he walked towards her slowly, certain the men were far enough away not to be a threat for the moment. Hunting them later would be another project, but right now Sakura was more important.

"Stay back," She spoke quickly and he paused a body length away from her.

He wanted to touch her, to tell her something comforting, but he had no words or even a glimmer of an idea what that would look like because it was out of the scope of his experience. Behind him, the gurgling man sighed and was silent. They were alone.

"Who are you?" Sakura asked with tears in her eyes. The knife dropped next to her as her tears caught blood from her nose and dropped red stains onto her torn laundry day shirt. Gaara watched her begin to shiver and wished he had the ability to be shocked by what he had done. This was what he had been made to do, and he did it well, so all he felt beyond concern for Sakura was the satisfaction of being the one to come out alive yet again.

"Gaara. Gaara of the Sand." He wished that could explain it all, but the only people that that name meant anything to were half a world away.