((it's been a while since I put up a chapter and I had gotten over my four reviews for a couple of days now. sorry but I've been busy with work and such. anyway, I'll try to make this one even longer. I don't have a page counter on my word pad... please forgive if they keep being too short for your eyes. I'll try my hardest!))

Chapter 6: The One Who Lived

What to do, what to do? Gaara had two options-- kill her now and rid himself of another troublesome citizen or let her live and have her explain... then kill her. But there was one thing wrong with those options. He didn't like them. He didn't wanna kill her. And his fingers itched for a touch of something other than blood. He wanted to feel her... skin?

But you gotta do what you gotta do, right? So Gaara went to her side and knelt beside her. He watched her teared-moistened face with his eyes, emotionless. And he reached out to touch the fullness of Chikage's cheek. It was warm and red from her crying. But instead of the harshness of his own flesh, the girl's was soft and nonabrasive. It felt like silk to him, finely spun and shiny because of her tears. "Why?" he asked with unaccustomed gentleness.

Chikage's sobs caused her speech to be slightly choked. "Wh-y? Wha-at do you m-mean?" Her voice, broken as it was, still showed just how vulnerable she was.

'She would have made a terrible kunoichi...' he thought, slightly amused as he replied, "Why do you make me not want to kill you? What did you do to me?"

She stared into his eyes with her lilac orbs. She was searching his insides, his soul, for an explanation. "I don't know-- what are you trying to say? You... don't want to kill me?"

Gaara sighed. Didn't he JUST say that? "First, you make me not want to kill you and then you say something that does make me want to. Why don't you make up your mind?"

Chikage's eyebrows had scrunched together as a result of being confused-angry. "No one wants to die, Gaara-san. If we did, we'd go up to you and tell you to kill us. But we can't make you do anything. So why don't you make up your mind instead of telling me to tell you to kill me?" She didn't care now. She was going to die anyway, why should she have to ask him to do what he was going to do?

"When did you get so lippy?" he asked, looking a little interested.

She sighed softly. "You have me pinned to the ground. Anybody would feel irritation during a prolonged death. But I'm not going to beg for my life and lose my last little bit of dignity. I know better than that."

"So you're going to provoke me instead of trying to de-escalate my anger?"

"You can stop yourself whenever you want. I don't control you, Gaara-san."

Gaara's eyes widened at her answer. "Such an interesting... incredibly STUPID little girl..." he commented.

"I'm thirteen... far more developed than a "little girl"." Chikage's voice had gotten an edge to it. She was getting even fussier thanks to her grainy prison.

"Stupid, nonetheless. And more developed... are you trying to offer yourself to me?"

Her reddened cheeks flared as the confusion hit the road and left her anger behind in it's dust. "You pervert!! I would NEVER offer myself in order to save my life!!!"

Chikage was one lucky girl. She saw something that very few people lived to see. It was better than watching Haley's Comet sail across the night sky. More magnificent than the Northern Lights in the middle of Nebraska. Gaara's laugh rang through the empty street. The sands binding her loosened and disappeared as though they were merely an illusion. And as she stood, uneasy and dazed, his laughter came to an end. No smile graced his lips. If she hadn't been right there listening, she would have sworn that Gaara didn't laugh. He betrayed nothing of what had occured mere moments before.

'I'll let her live... at least until I see that stupid picture. One way or another, she will show me,' he vowed as he disappeared in a swirl of sand.