So we come to the end. It didn't seem right that they would have a mushy scene, but oh I wanted to write one for them anyway and I think I struck an ok balance. I see happy endings in their future but I like the ambiguity here too. When I think about it, there's a lot of ambiguity in Red Riding Hood because there's so many versions out there you can really tell whatever tale you want, everyone lives, everyone dies, some of them die… but the common theme seems to be that at some point they have to suffer. I think that's what the movies miss, trying to make it sexy when they need to look how it's painfully transformative instead.

Tl;dr GaaSaku good, story writing fun. Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: see part 1

One wolf doesn't desert the other. – Estonian saying

Mechanically, Sakura took the opportunity while she was going through shock to set her nose back in place. It didn't take much to leverage the cartilage into place with a crunch and a flash of pain, so she figured it was as set as it was going to get. More blood began to flow out of her nostrils, over her lip, and dripped onto the already stained dirt. Gaara stood, absolutely and inhumanly still, and she continued to shake.

The most terrifying part of it all was that she realized she didn't feel anything. Her grandmother was dead, she had been beaten and almost raped, and three men had been murdered in front of her eyes (one of which had died on top of her) and she felt like an iced over pond in winter. As if to challenge her assessment a surge of emotional pain radiated from her center as a precursor to what she could expect to feel soon enough.

"Are you going to kill me?" It sounded stuffy, like she had a cold, as she finally directed words in Gaara's direction.

"No." He said it with conviction he'd never expressed before so she allowed herself the luxury of believing him.

"I need…" she felt like she was far away, completely removed from this place and this time. "I need to take a bath."

Gaara nodded, his eyes flicking around, from the edge of the woods to her face and then around him at the oozing mess. He folded the arms of one of the men, (the one whose head was only half attached) in an 'x' over his chest and grabbed him by the feet before beginning to drag him into the woods. Sakura watched him as he began to dispose of the first body and wondered if later she would feel grateful. She didn't want to know where he took them or what he did with them. And to think, she had actually wanted to find a corpse a week ago.

Slowly, careful to step around the pools of blood, Sakura made her way to her grandmother. Killed at her doorstep, the only thing Sakura knew was that it had been quick. Grandmother had been so strong, a weathered tree in her orchard, and this wasn't the way it should have ended for her. Anger at the unfairness of it all and the beastliness of people finally pierced the veil of her numbness.

Gathering up her grandmother, noting how light the old woman was, she carried her back into her bedroom. She laid her out on her grandmother's bed, bereft as it was of blankets and sheets, and then closed the door. Surveying the mess she didn't know what else to do but begin to clean it up. The broom was miraculously unbroken and she started with one end of the kitchen and moved everything on the floor into a pile on the other side. Once the floor was swept she looked at the fireplace and the living area where the small table there was overturned next to destroyed chairs and simply sat in the middle of the floor, thinking deeply about everything.

If Gaara hadn't been there she would have been raped and probably killed. But because Gaara had been there three men were dead. The way he moved had been surreal, like he wasn't even human. The whole event from the scream on through to carrying her grandmother into the bedroom replayed in her head and Sakura tried to see where she could have done something different to change the outcome. Unless she had been at a different place at a different time she didn't see how her grandmother could have been saved. If only she had noticed people approaching the house, if only she hadn't been so far away, if only…

"I thought you were taking a bath." Gaara stood in the doorway, blocking the afternoon light. His hair seemed like fire on his head, messy as it was. While not covered in as much blood as Sakura, none of it was his own and his clothes were spattered with it.

"I was going to but…" There was no good reason why she had changed course. Outside, near where the laundry was drying, water that had sat over the fire since they started hanging things to dry was ready to carry to the tub even if by this time the fire had died out. Probably they should relight it. Gaara's hands appeared in front of her offering to help her up. They were noticeably soft, she realized with some surprise, not like the hands of a farmer or even a fighter. Assassin, her brain hissed.

As soon as she was standing he dropped her hands, but he hovered next to her as she made her way outside. Even though the day wasn't cold, Sakura appreciated the fire once Gaara got it started again. He circled over to the drying laundry and brought back a kitchen cloth that he first dipped in the lukewarm water over the fire and then handed to her.

"For your face." He offered it to her, still searching her eyes for something. As she took it and began to gingerly wipe off her face she noticed that every time she swiped at her cheeks and lips there was more red on the cloth. Getting punched hurt, she knew that from various scraps growing up, but breaking your nose was definitely worse than the occasional black eye.

Gaara just sat there staring at her, like he was waiting for something. It was eerie, but no more surreal than anything else going on today. Tears started up again, out of nowhere, and finally he looked away.

"I'll leave tomorrow."

"NO!"

Her heart felt like it was jumping out of her chest. The idea of being alone was too hard, and as long as Gaara was here she had choices. She wouldn't go so far as to say she felt safe, but without Gaara there she felt like a sitting duck for whatever evil was coming next. If Gaara was evil, and she hadn't decided on that yet, then at least he was a known evil.

Awkwardly, Sakura got up and found the bathtub on its hook in the shed. She carried the old copper tub next to the fire and started pouring in the buckets of hot water while Gaara watched with veiled interest. He made no move towards her, simply poked at the fire and watched.

"Here are the rules," Sakura eyed the laundry drying and thought about how much cover it would provide, but while she couldn't be seen she also couldn't see and thoughts of the two escaped men returning were plaguing her already. "Face away from the tub at all times. Unless I am in mortal danger you are not to even think about turning around."

Gaara shrugged and began to get up.

"And," he paused, looking at her as she pulled back her outstretched hand. It had been entirely involuntary. "If you could just stay close it would be… comforting."

His eyes widened in surprise only briefly before he dutifully sat back down and rotated away from her. Taking a few long moments to see if he was going to try to sneak a peak, she finally pulled off all the clothes she had been wearing and stuffed them quickly next to the burning logs under the water pot before climbing into the tub. The fire was so bright while the clothes burned that she couldn't look at it.

Things that hadn't hurt until that moment began to ache, both physically and mentally. Talking herself down from scrubbing skin until it was raw, she instead very thoroughly washed herself from hair to toes and carefully thought about nothing. Gaara, who she always had one eye on, didn't move except to tilt his head back and forth and scan the tree line ahead of them. It was still hard to resolve the idea in her mind that a killer could also be a protector, but it made her think back to something Tsunade had said when Sakura had lamented about the fact that they hardly ever had patients to treat. You have no idea how hard it is when you're waiting for people to come to you to die. Be grateful to be a training doctor in peacetime. Those who had lived through war were tempered with different instincts and ideals. She couldn't pretend to understand if this was just a taste.

What would she tell her dad? What was going to happen to the orchard? What about the house and the tools and all the pieces of Haruno family history? What about Gaara? Yes, whispered a silky voice in her mind, what about Gaara? Overwhelmed, she pulled herself out of the water suddenly to shrink back in the tub again just as fast.

"Gaara," Sakura cleared her throat and said his name louder when he didn't react at first. "Can you get my red dress and, ugh, my underclothes from the clothes line? Just nod if you know where to find it all."

The water was murky and pink and she was happy to climb out of it at last and wrap herself in a sheet to begin to dry off. Gaara arrived back shortly after she got out and Sakura dressed behind the shed before they emptied the tub and refilled it with water from the pot. Sakura took her turn scanning the forest for trouble while he cleaned off. He made almost no noise so when he put a hand on her shoulder to get her attention she started.

Sighing what she hoped was relief as she realized it was him, she thought how foreign he seemed to her again now that he was in the clothes he had arrived in. It was almost dark out now, and the laundry still needed to be taken in and folded. Sakura didn't have the heart for it, feeling like her duty to fulfill this basic chore was at war with the impulse that mundane activities had no place on a day like today. Instead, they sat by the fire and Gaara put on more logs. While not sitting next to her, he was close enough that she could make out how his eyes darted over at her every now and then. After hours of anguish and numbness in turns she felt too exhausted to do anything, even eat.

"Have you killed many people?"

Over the sound of the fire and feeling of the cool wind making her shiver, she heard his soft reply. "Yes."

"Do you enjoy it?" Inside of herself she knew that whatever he answered was going to determine a lot of things for her in the coming days.

He stared at the fire for a moment, then met her eyes and she could see reflections of twisting light in them. "If you are trained to do something, let's say you do it well, and you are praised and rewarded for what you do… isn't it natural to come to like it?"

Sakura was wary of him as she finally ventured into the cottage and came back with bread, cheese, apples and some blankets. Tossing him food and a blanket she noted how his stare bore into her. He was expecting something from her, but she wasn't sure what. Today of all days she wasn't sure what she had to give. He didn't want her pity.

"Tomorrow I'll start back to Konoha, if you'll come with me. If you don't want to go with me then I'll wait until the cart comes in another few days." A week alone in the cottage with her grandmother's body and the memory of today sounded like her own personal hell, but she wasn't going to force him to encounter her village with the distrust and possible violence that had been brewing there. Then again he would be the most dangerous person in Konoha once they arrived.

Wrapping her shoulders in the blanket she bit into her cheese and felt it move as a lump down her dry throat. "If it makes any difference to you, I want you to stay with me."

Gaara took a bite of his apple.

Even the well-trained wolf won't become a lamb. – Armenian saying

After she fell asleep he took the opportunity to slide closer to her. The fire was nearly dead and he was full, clean, comfortable, and energized from his short fight that day. At his best drenched in blood, his teacher had said of him once. The hand he casually rested on his thigh was so close to her head that if he reached out his pinky he could touch her hair. Merely the fact that he wanted it so much was reason to deny the action. The perverse logic that had guided him up until he had poisoned himself at her doorstep demanded he disappear into the night because to travel with her would only lead to further attachment, and the tattoo on his forehead was supposed to guard him against falling for this trick a second time.

Saving her life may have repaid the debt he owed her, but somehow it had tied him to her even more securely. Sakura had asked him to stay. Even he knew how this manipulated emotions he hadn't admitted he possessed until she said the words. To be wanted after years of being merely tolerated by the people who were supposed to value him was intoxicating. Killing had been a purpose in of itself, a way to protect himself and by extension his village, but it had always been inherently selfish to him. Today, as he was dragging the bodies to a small gully where the forest would dispose of them more handily than he could, he thought about how it hadn't been about his own survival today at the core. He had killed for her, and because of her personality type and the hurt she had gone through he knew she wouldn't find that charming or romantic.

Finally shifting, he slid a hand under her head and leaned it against his thigh. You needed to keep a broken nose elevated; even she couldn't argue with that if she woke up. Dark memories from his years in Sand and the way his thigh felt like it was on fire everywhere she touched him kept him awake in turns that night. The feeling of sleepless frayed nerves was so familiar he almost enjoyed the way his eyes felt like they sunk into his skull. It wasn't even dawn when Sakura woke up and groaned. Overnight he noted that the bruising had became fairly pronounced on her face and it couldn't be comfortable.

Sakura looked up at him, squeezed her eyes shut, then looked back up at him again. "I guess it all happened, then."

No response seemed needed so instead he watched her get up, stretch and then gather the blankets to take indoors. She moved slowly and, while he gave no indication that he saw her doing it, he knew she kept looking back at him. Finally noticing the laundry once Sakura was out of his sight, he took it all down damp as it was and brought it indoors to find her tying up a pack firmly. He noticed she had only prepped for one and he felt suddenly cold.

"Ah the laundry," she spoke as if she was just remembering it existed. "Thank you, Gaara." His name felt like a caress and something electric crawled down his spine.

No questions were asked and some of the tension in his frame eased. He couldn't verbalize any of the complications he saw developing between them, and if she just allowed him to exist near her maybe things would resolve themselves. Nearby he noticed his sword leaning against a cupboard on the floor, looking a little dirty but no different. He moved to pick it up slowly, letting her see him inspect his weapon. He wanted to use it again, he knew that, and he thought to the men who had escaped into the woods again with a dark promise to himself.

"Seemed silly to keep it hidden now." She flashed a smile that turned into a faraway look. If she thought too much about yesterday they might not leave today, and she had said it was a half a day's walk.

"We should go." Gaara wanted to move, to touch her, but he held back. He wasn't sure he could stop from wanting to do more and he doubly wasn't sure enough of himself to know that it wouldn't end in violence. The instinct was still there to tear into her and destroy hot on the heels of his kills yesterday, but it warred with a new impulse and he felt his heart speed up in anticipation as his palms grew sweaty. He felt inadequate to join her in her idyllic life, but she was choosing him and he couldn't say no.

Sakura, oblivious to all this and squinting at him with her puffy black eye, gave him that tight smile of hers. "Follow me then,"

And he would, because not following her was impossible.