Chapter 26

'I love you.'

The words ran through his mind for the millionth time, stabbing the back of his eyes as he blinked up at the ceiling. His limbs lay immobile as a soft, warm body curled into his side and the moon shined through the window into the room innocently. It was so quiet, the silence rang in his ears painfully as his dull eyes rolled to look at the outside. Nothing moved.

It was as if the world sensed his blank state of mind and stood back in silent awe, wondering what his next move would be. The only problem was he didn't know himself. Nothing was making sense and it pissed him off. One minute he wanted to shake her awake and demand her to explain her words while the next he craved to slink back to the institution where he knew he belonged. At least he understood things there.

Emotions held no meaning within those familiar walls. It was blank and empty from the heavily medicated patients. The only thing that you had to worry about that even came remotely close to expressing feelings was when one of them snapped. And he could handle that because he had grown up with it, it was recognizable and detectable while being here in this bed left him exposed to her and vulnerable.

At one time he had thought that maybe having himself open to her wasn't so bad, that maybe he could be normal for once by having her so easily accept him. But now, having heard those words fall from her lips, he knew just how big a mistake it had been to get so close. He wasn't like her, nor would he ever be. He was legally insane. Dangerous. Menacing. A monster. He was something from her nightmares that she had deluded herself into developing feelings for.

He used to believe that she was the disease that would attack him after being in a safe remission for a while, but perhaps he was wrong. Maybe he was the deadly virus slowly infecting her and poisoning her bloodstream, killing her from the inside out. Maybe he was the acid in her veins, continuously tainting her pure body with his filthy presence. It wasn't right.

She mumbled something quietly in her sleep and shifted beneath the thin linens, moving closer against him. It suddenly became too much, being there in the bed with her, holding her, feeling her, seeing her, tasting her in the air he breathed - all too much for him to wrap his head around. Everything up to this point, the fork in the road, had been for a reason. There were two paths he could choose now, and Gaara felt sick to his stomach.

He could lay with her, whisper the words he knew she wanted and needed to hear, and mean it or he could get up, walk away, and never look back.

The answer was so obvious it was painful.

XXX

Sakura yawned and stretched, wincing when her muscles protested against the movements. Peeling her eyes open, she looked around the room lazily. It was the same as always, bland and homey. Just right, to her. When she sat up the first thought that entered her mind was that she might be late for work if she didn't hurry since the sun was just beginning to peak out over the horizon. The second was, why did her room smell so strange?

That was when it hit her.

She had brung Gaara home yesterday and one thing had led to another and it so happened that he had spent the night at her house. The strange smell was that of their actions and the scent of sandalwood. Distinctly Gaara. Tsunade was going to maim her and then bury the pieces.

Groaning, Sakura rubbed a hand down her face. God, she shouldn't have fallen asleep. Now they were both going to catch it, and something told her Tsunade wasn't going to be too pleasant about the situation. Reluctantly she dragged herself from the bed - wrapping the sheet around her as she did so. First things first, she needed to find Gaara to forewarn him of what was going to happen but he wasn't in the bedroom.

After peeking in the ajoining bathroom and small walk-in closet, Sakura tiptoed into the hall. He was in none of the other rooms or second bathroom. Now she was starting to panic. Where was he? She sprinted to the living room and sucked in a breath when he wasn't in there, either. Fuck. It was one thing to be an entire day late to return to the facility, but to lose the patient? Tsunade was going to have her head.

Fear began building within Sakura, she was worried about him. Without him close by she felt so alone and not knowing where he was at the moment had her about ready to rip her hair out and cry like a child when denied candy. "Gaara?!" she called a few times, tripping her way around the house, a few tears began to leak their way down her flushed cheeks.

The sheet began to slip around her and Sakura almost let it fall in her blind panic, but a sudden clanging caught her attention and she yanked the linens back up around her chest quickly. Her head whipped to the left as her eyes zoned in on the open archway of her kitchen. Had she already checked there? No, she hadn't. Why?

It must have just slipped her mind.

"Gaara, we have to - " she began as she stumbled into the kitchen, only to abruptly cut her sentence short at seeing Gaara hunched in front of her sink. She didn't know why, but something in the air had her anxiety building instead of lessening. It felt as if the panic was wrapping around her throat and squeezing slowly, cutting off her airway.

Something was wrong. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end like an electric current was racing throughout her system and her knees began to shake.

She took a hesitant step forward, her hand reaching out to rest on his shoulder and force him to face her. "Gaara...?" she whispered tentatively.

"It won't stop."

His cold, monotone voice stopped her in her tracks. "What?"

"It won't stop," he repeated, dull eyes glancing at her over his shoulder. "No matter how many I take, it won't stop."

Sakura swallowed nervously and stepped to his side, her hand a centimeter from resting on him. His eyes locked on it and Sakura didn't even have time to pull away before he was leaping away from her like she was fire and screaming at the top of his lungs.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!!" he yelled, hands grappling at the counter behind him. "DON'T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!"

Bewilderdly, she took a step toward him. "I'm sor-"

He bared his teeth at Sakura and she stood, frozen, eyes wide and staring. He looked exactly like he did when she first met him. Crazed eyes, glinting teeth, pale, pasty skin. It was as if they had been flung into the past, and Sakura didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

A white container caught her attention and her eyes flicked to the sink. An empty bottle of pills lay toppled on its' side with the lid tossed to the outer-side of the basin. Sakura's stomach dropped. One hand covered her mouth as her eyes stared at the bottle in horror. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as her entire body began to shake.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sakura saw Gaara crash to the ground and time began to move swiftly forward at unimaginable speeds. Idly she wondered why things were going by so quickly instead of slowing down like in the movies. But this wasn't a movie, this was reality. This was her life, and Gaara was lying motionless on her kitchen floor.

She placed an emergency 911 call as she grabbed Gaara's shoulders and rested his head on her lap. Screaming, she informed the woman on the phone of his condition and that he was unresponsive to her voice and touch. At the woman's demands, Sakura felt for a pulse (it was too fast) and opened his eyelids to check his pupils. They were dilated, which scared her when she couldn't see the normal healthy shade of glittering green they normally were.

The woman on the phone tried to calm Sakura, but she couldn't seem to get a hold on things. She was hyperventilating and the room was spinning and she felt so nauseous and everything was happing too fast.

Again, the woman on the phone spoke and Sakura shook out of her hysteric daze to concentrate on what she was trying to say.

"What?!" Sakura choked, clutching the phone tighter.

"I said, what did he take, ma'am. What medication did he take?"

"I-I don't know! He just - GAARA!!"

Sakura dropped the phone and screamed as Gaara's body began to abrubtly jerk and spasm violently in her hold. His dilated eyes snapped open and stared blankly up at the ceiling as a paroxysm of convulsions overtook him. Sakura screamed his name as her hands held his head carefully and used her legs to push him on his side.

The phone crackled as the woman called for Sakura, but she ignored it, focusing on Gaara in her hands. Tears poured down her cheeks and dampned his hair and Sakura tried to gather her jumbled thoughts. It was so hard, but somehow she managed. She had to keep him on his side. He was having a seizure. He had overdosed on....on....

Her eyes darted around and locked on the sink. She couldn't leave him alone, not when he was like this. He could hurt himself badly if she didn't stay by his side. "Gaara why did you do this!" she sobbed, fingers thredding through his hair. His only response was to convulse harshly in her hold. "Answer me!"

Blood began to trickle from his nose and Sakura panicked. Once more she was screaming frantically into the phone, cursing and swearing as her hands tried in vain to hold him still. The seizure still held tightly to his body. In a flurry of minutes, the seizure ceased, but the blood continued to flow from Gaara's nose. In the next instant, three EMTs were rushing through her home and taking Gaara from her.

Sakura launched herself at them, her mind solely on Gaara and Gaara alone. She had to be with him. She had to know why he would do this to himself. To her. After everything that had happened, everything he had worked toward, why would he go and do something like this? Most of all though, she was excessively worried about him. Never in her years as a student in the medical field had she ever encountered nosebleeding during a seizure. It could mean so many things ranging from a dry nose to a traumatized blood vessel.

Her nerves were shot.

She had to be held in place by one of the EMTs because of her state of dress, something that had up to that point completely slipped her mind. The sheet was barely covering her body, but she just couldn't find it in her to care. Gaara was loaded into the ambulance and the paramedics slammed the doors shut, refusing her entrance. Sakura yelled and demanded to be let in. The driver placated her and told her which hospital they would be at. Once she dressed herself, she could go and find him.

Then they left, and she was left alone. Sakura wasted no time in jumping in a cold shower and quickly dressing herself. Tears still leaked from her eyes as she fumbled with her keys and jogged to her car. In seconds, she was speeding down the road toward Harmony Hospital where Gaara had been admitted.

XXX

Voices were yelling around him and he was bouncing all over the place. If straps had not been tied down over his chest, he would have already been flung to the floor of the van.

A paramedic taped down the IV on his arm while the other strapped an the oxygen mask. Questions and demands and orders were flung back and forth between the two nurses and Gaara lay bleary eyed between them. His fingers twitched as his eyes blinked repeatedly, trying to see past the blurring in his eyes. He wished everything would stop spinning and that his stomach would stop rolling. It was confusing and disorienting.

"Did we ever find out what drug he took?"

"No, the girl was too upset."

"What about how long the seizure was? If he hit his head, nose, anything?"

"No."

A heavy sigh was heard. "That just makes things so much easier."

'I love you.'

The monitor that was tracking Gaara's heartbeat - starting to slow thanks to the IV - began to beep loudly. One of the paramedics bent over Gaara's face and opened his eyelids wider to shine a flashlight into his eyes. More orders were yelled out as the nurse's hands felt over his throat and inside of his arm.

Gaara's ears were ringing loudly, blocking out the noise of the ambulance and voices of the paramedics. All he could hear was his own thoughts, and how torturing they were. His concious repeated over and over to him that he wasn't good enough. That he would never be good enough. He desvered this and much more. He deserved punishment for ever thinking he could have something as beautiful and unreal as Sakura.

It was just a little boys' illusion.

His eyes flickered shut as his mind dragged him into a self-beating. It was pitiful to think he could be with her. How stupid and illogical. He was going to break her, hurt her, tear her apart, and then she had to go and say that. Now the game was over, dead. He felt hate. A searing, burning hate toward her at that moment.

How dare she think that she could change him? She was the stupid one, to delude herself into thinking that a murderer could give her something that he never even experienced. Love, he scoffed. There was no such thing. It was a trick of the mind, a fake emotion labeled just for the sake of being labeled. It was a ghost.

This entire time he had done nothing but fucked with her mind. That's all it was. A distraction from the empty walls of his 'home'. She was a toy to him and nothing more. He wasn't sorry for any of it, it had been a good run. A fun time. But it was over now, she had forced him to forfeit.

Coward.

He wasn't a coward.

Yes, you are.

No. NO, HE WASN'T A COWARD! She had caused all of this, she was the coward! She was too damn afraid to find someone normal so she settled for him. She was too scared to go and be with someone that could give her what she wanted. He was not what she needed, what she craved. He was a fuck buddy to her and he knew it.

She was nothing. At least, she would be nothing once he finished with her. He was going to bring her down.

Gaara Sabaku was going to shatter Sakura Haruno's heart for good.