Disclaimer: "Naruto"- Don't own it or any of the characters.

So...

Well...

Hope you like it.

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Gaara was still avoiding Sakura, but now she had so much to think about she hardly noticed. She could no longer focus on her school work. This wouldn't go over well with her parents if they found out. Sakura couldn't let this screw with her life right now. Everything was so fragile. She was walking on eggshells. If there was anything that could be done to solve her problems quickly, it would be to talk with Gaara directly. At least, that's what she hoped anyways…

And how would I accomplish that? She wondered. After school I go straight to Hinata and Neji's and then right after that I go home and I'm not allowed to leave unless it's for school the next morning. Her mood wasn't lifted when Kakashi-sensei walked by and handed her a quiz with a 35 on it and a note requesting to see her after class. She showed the note to Hinata who nodded sympathetically and wrote back: No worries, I'll tell the others.

As soon as the bell rang Sakura waited behind. Gaara looked back curiously and almost waited for her. Her heart soared with admiration, thinking maybe he had finally decided to not avoid her and openly speak with her again!

…until Kakashi shooed him out the door. The fates were just against her recently.

"So, Sakura," Kakashi began.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Your mom called me the other day."

"Really?"

"Yes. It was nice to hear from an old friend."

"Oh…that's good. Did you talk to my dad too?"

"Briefly…same old jerk as always, no offense."

Sakura giggled, glad to have something said to lighten her mood. "None taken." She replied.

"Good. Now, normally I wouldn't care about a brat's grades, but you're a friend's kid so I thought I'd step in. Do you mind?"

Sakura looked guiltily at her grade and shook her head 'no'. "Good," Kakashi continued. "Now are you going to tell me why your grades are going downhill or are you going to make me play twenty questions?" His eye crinkled with a smile. Sakura was pretty sure that he could guess anyway, but she decided to tell him (and herself) the truth.

"No games," she promised. "I understand everything that you've been teaching, but I can't focus because of Gaara." she explained.

Kakashi, curious as to why she had decided to come out and openly say that so quickly, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk leisurely. "He your boyfriend?"

Sakura didn't miss the bored and uninterested tone in his voice. "Yes…well I think so anyway. We've been having a little trouble since…" she trailed off at the part about the attack. "He's been avoiding me, and I know why, but I don't know how to fix it."

"You teenagers and your high school drama." Kakashi replied boredly. Sakura was torn: half of her wanted to agree with him, that all this commotion was a stupid side effect of hormones and intruded secrets but the other half of her wanted to scream at him, because he didn't understand! Because he had never felt the way she felt now! He had never been in her situation!

But instead of screaming and crying and slapping him in the face, Sakura swallowed her inner thoughts and countered with the less defensive and the more undecided, "Heh, yeah."

Her sensei smiled and leaned back even further, resting the back of his head on his own makeshift pillow of intertwined fingers. Sakura worried somewhat that if he became anymore relaxed he would fall backwards out of his chair with his legs waving confusedly in the air. The thought coaxed a small grin onto her face.

"Don't let all this get to your head or else I'll fail you for the semester." He warned after leaning forward once more to write her a pass to her next class.

"That's really encouraging, sensei." Sakura answered with only just a hint of sarcasm. She took the pass.

"And for your cheek you'll have detention tomorrow afternoon." He said with a grin.

Sakura stared at him as though he had suddenly turned into a gorilla and was asking her quite calmly for a banana and a copy of the first volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Cheek? What Cheek? Detention? Sensei I didn't do anything!" she stammered. He only shook his head.

"If you argue I'll give you another one," he cautioned with a humorous look in his eye. He handed her another piece of paper, this one with the word 'DETENTION' labeled across the top of it. She groaned and stalked out the class and to her locker. How was this supposed to help her situation?

At lunch she sat with Gaara and everyone else, but they didn't talk much. Sakura, having never received a detention in her entire school career, was fuming with irritation and thoughts of ways to piss off a certain teacher.

At dinner that night she had to explain why she couldn't go to the Hyuuga's house the next afternoon. Of course that went over well.

—Not.

"Sakura, detention?!" her father sputtered over his plate of lasagna and garlic bread. Sakura sighed and pushed her plate away, knowing that she wasn't going to have another chance to eat without some kind of interruption from the coming argument. Mr. Haruno groaned and rubbed his temples as though suffering from a migraine. "Why?" he continued. "You've never, never gotten a detention before. You've always been a model student. What could you have possibly done to get a detention?"

The girl in question tucked a piece of colorful hair behind her ear and looked pointedly at the specks of flakey seasoning on her square of lasagna. "Well," she began, "I got a…um…disappointing grade on a quiz and apparently gave my teacher, uh, cheek…"

Her father stopped rubbing his temples and looked up slowly with his face a blank façade. Fearing the hidden meaning in her dad's reaction, Sakura quickly jumped into defensive mode. "But," she pointed out, "that's what he said. Personally I don't even recall being sarcastic. I don't even know what I said; it was just all of a sudden: you have detention." She acted out the last part with an impression of Kakashi-sensei, hands on his hips, sentencing her half-finished dinner plate to an afternoon of imprisonment.

An awkward silence followed with Sakura frowning grumpily at her plate while her dad maintained his blank pretense. Mrs. Haruno, attempting to break the tension, cleared her throat quietly and turned to her daughter. "What was this grade?" she asked. "The disappointing one?"

Sakura winced and whimpered, "Thirty-five."

Her dad finally cracked. "T-thirty-five?" he blubbered hopelessly. "As in—out of a hundred?" He looked away and let his hands fall back to the table. A conclusion flew to him before he could say anything else and he turned back to Sakura, finger pointed and eyes squinted accusingly. "It's that boy, isn't it?" he muttered.

Sakura's eyes narrowed. "Gaara saved my life." she reminded him coldly.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Sakura's mother and Mr. Haruno let his finger drop uselessly. His eyes, however, remained just the tiniest bit tauntingly accusing. "That doesn't mean he isn't a bad influence." he countered.

Sakura groaned exasperatedly and shoved away from the table, taking her plate with her towards the kitchen. The family had only been able to enjoy evening mealtimes together recently, thanks to the arrangements with the Hyuuga's, yet it seemed almost every night her father would slip something cutting about Gaara into the conversation. Normally she let it slide, but tonight it was just too much. She dumped her leftovers back into oven dish it was cooked in and let her plate clatter into the sink. She swept past her parents towards the stairs, calling over her shoulder: "I'll go to detention tomorrow. It's not that big a deal, really. I shouldn't be leaving later than six at the latest and if you guys aren't home I'll go to Hinata and Neji's until you call. Right now I'm going to bed. Love you. Goodnight." By the time she had finished she was already at the top of the stairs and striding towards her room. Sakura closed her bedroom door behind her with the very defiant scoff of: "ugh, parents!"

Meanwhile, just as Sakura was arguing with her parental units, Gaara was picking absent-mindedly at his guitar. He plucked the notes for his song; the one Sakura had liked so much. He remembered her voice when she sang. Ah, he missed that voice. He missed that carefree, bell-like tinkle of her laugh. He missed the pink that flooded her cheeks when he kissed her, the light that shimmered within her eyes, and that warm feeling that filled him whenever she was near. Plain and simple, Gaara missed Sakura.

Again with the damn poetics!

He ran a hand through his crimson hair and sighed. He knew he'd been avoiding her, avoiding the questions she would ask. You're only making it worse by waiting he told himself. Just tell her the truth.

If she knew the truth she'd push me away.

But if I keep avoiding her she'll go away anyways. Besides, if she really cares for me it won't matter.

But who could ever 'care' for someone who's killed another person? She'll be afraid of me.

My other friends have learned to deal with it. They don't hate me…I think…

Of course they don't hate me, but Sakura's more than just a friend…

Be it more or less, a friend is still a friend. Wouldn't I still care for her even if we weren't always frenching each other's brains out?

Gaara chuckled and then sighed. "Argh, I don't need to be thinking about this right now." He growled at himself and glanced around his room, looking for a distraction. His eyes locked an old sketchpad. Hell, he hadn't drawn in forever. No better time than the present, right? The young man put his guitar aside and slid off his bed to grab the pad. In one quick movement he was once again lounging on his bed, the pad in front of him, charcoal pencils in hand. Gaara flipped through the pages, looking for a blank one. His emerald orbs were just wandering over old pictures he'd forgotten about, when a familiar sketch flopped out and stared at him.

Shock seeped through his fingertips as he gingerly held the drawing. Very quickly he slid it back into the pad and tossed the whole thing to the floor. Gaara chuckled in spite of himself and rubbed his eyes. It was the long forgotten picture he had drawn of Sakura all those weeks ago. How did she do that?! It was like no matter what he did, he ended up thinking about her again and again. Gaara vaguely contemplated looking at some clouds to find out if he would see her figure in them and prove his hypothesis correct. After thirty seconds of this thought he finally disregarded the idea as a stupid one.

Then he glanced out the window.

Nope, no Sakura. But the sunset (which had just begun moments ago) was pink, the original color of her hair. And that tree was almost the color of her eyes…

Defeated, Gaara slumped down back on his bed and pouted. A long ignored teddy bear looked down at him from a shelf. Well? It seemed to ask. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you still care for her even if she was just a friend?

Gaara glared guiltily at the bear. It was true. Even if Sakura hadn't fallen for him as well, he would still care about and feel protective of her. Perhaps in a less noticeable way, sure, but the feelings would definitely be there. She was, after all, the only girl he'd ever met gutsy enough to defy him, the only girl he'd ever opened up to. He suddenly wished she was there with him, so he could tell her all this. And then she would accept him, and she would still care for him too. And they'd be able to put all this in the past, where it belonged.

Right, I need to tell her.

The young man stood up abruptly and grabbed his leather jacket.

Well, ok, but I didn't mean right this second…the bear murmured.

Gaara ignored that last inner comment and strode briskly down the stairs and across the kitchen. "Where you goin?" Kankuro called uninterestedly from the next room.

"Out." The younger brother answered.

Temari very unexpectedly blocked his way through the door. "What do you mean out?" she demanded, waving a wooden spoon accusingly in his face.

Gaara rolled his eyes and stole the spoon. "I mean," he answered, "I'm going out." He quite easily shoved his older sister to the side, walked past her, tossed her back her spoon, and called over his shoulder, "I won't be long."

Temari, now annoyed and pondering revenge, gasped when she saw her little brother mounting his motorcycle. "Gaara!" she cried over the roar, "You can't ride your bike. The doctors said it's not safe for you yet!"

Gaara waved at her, revved, and was gone in a matter of seconds. Temari groaned and planted her hands on her hips. "Teh. That idiot."

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R&R Please.

-Olly BaaBaaChan