Author's Note: Hmm...well, I'm going to first of all admit that I don't know a whole lot about medicine in our own universe (mostly what I pick up from television and my EMT hubby), much less in the Naruto-verse where details are pretty scarce, so I won't say all my medical mumbo-jumbo is entirely accurate. As for what Kyuubi is doing about this injury...well, I'll cover that in this chapter, please excuse me if it seems a bit contrived. These chapters sort of wrote themselves with very little input from the author. lol. Thanks for paying my ransom so quickly once again. ^_^ I love you all! This chapter is it until Monday most likely so no ransom this time. Reviews are still greatly appreciated though.

Sandstorms and Falling Leaves

Chapter 11: Longer Days

The sun had finally risen. Gaara was sluggishly getting ready for the day when a frantic knock at the door pulled her from her room. She wondered if it was Naruto, coming to tell her he'd passed the second stage, and the thought quickened her step as she crossed the living area.

The pink hair of her visitor squashed that small hope. The stricken look on the girl's face made the redhead's heart clench and her breath catch.

"Sakura, what?" She managed to choke out, slightly sharper than she had intended.

"It's Naruto. He was injured during the exam. He's in the hospital..." The young mednin gulped, looking faintly sick. "It looked really bad, he wasn't even conscious and there was a lot of blood and they said they didn't need my help and I didn't know if anyone else would think to tell you since...well...you and Naruto aren't...that is to say...you don't...uh...it is common knowledge that you two are uh..."

"Take me to him now." The redhead ordered sharply, cutting off the pink haired girl's rambling.

The pair darted from the apartment complex, leaving Temari standing silently in the livingroom, which was as far as she had made it when Gaara had reached the door.

"Don't let that little idiot die..." She muttered as she went to dress and gather the shoes and coat her little sister had left behind in her hasty exit. "I don't think Gaara could stand to lose him..."

With a quick stop to inform their brother of the situation, Temari was on her way to the hospital. She wasn't sure what good she could do but she figured she could at least be there for her baby sister.

Gaara entered the hospital ahead of Sakura but hesitated, unsure where to go.

"Stay here." The pink haired girl patted the shorter teen's arm and went to ask the desk nurse for an update on Naruto's condition.

Each moment to the waiting redhead seemed to last for hours before Sakura was hurrying back, her expression less than reassuring.

"He's alive." She hastened to assure her friend. "Let's go. Matsuri is in the waiting room down the hall."

Gaara followed numbly in the taller girl's wake as Sakura lead them to a small, crowded room lined with chairs. Matsuri spotted them almost immediately and rushed over. She dropped to her knees in front of the redhead, head bowed in shame.

"I'm so sorry, Kazekage-sama." She blurted breathlessly. "I should have paid more attention, should have seen that it was worse than Naruto was letting on. It was such a small wound, and at first he seemed okay and he was just so insistent on passing the test..."

"Matsuri." Gaara cut the younger girl off with a softly spoken word and a hand on her shoulder. "Look at me."

The distraught genin looked up hesitantly.

"Whatever happens, it is not your fault." The redhead assured her slowly. "Now what have they told you?"

An older man joined the group, looking uncomfortable but he bowed in greeting. "Manabu Akado. I'm the third for Matsuri's squad."

Gaara's aqua colored eyes locked onto the elder genin, noting the smear of blood on his pants. The ninja accountant took a step back from the intensity in the dark rimmed gaze. "What happened to Naruto?" She demanded, growing impatient with the lack of information.

"It was a piece of debris from an explosion." Manabu explained carefully. "It stuck him in the leg. The injury didn't seem too bad at first but it wouldn't stop bleeding and then I think it may have gotten infected. By the time we realized how severe it was, we were almost through with the test. It was faster to finish than go back for help. We reached the mission objective and then the proctors brought us straight here."

He watched as the exiled Kazekage nodded her gratitude for the concise explanation and made her way over to one of the room's many chairs. She dropped into it heavily, as if she simply didn't have the energy to stay standing any longer. Then she crossed her arms across her t-shirt clad chest and waited. She didn't fidget or look around and she barely acknowledged attempts to talk to her. Only her sister's arrival got any response at all as she allowed the older girl to put an arm around her shoulders and leaned into the offered comfort for just a moment before resuming her vigil.

"Naruto Uzumaki?" A young mednin stood in the doorway of the waiting room. "Family of Naruto Uzumaki?"

Gaara turned her fierce gaze on the hapless young man, in front of him before she was aware of moving from her seat. It had been several hours since she'd arrived and they had had no news. "Is he going to survive?" She all but snapped, trying to control her temper.

"I'm only allowed to give information to family Miss. How are you related to..."

"He doesn't have..." Sakura started to explain.

"I am his girlfriend." Gaara's voice was deceptively calm and Matsuri and Sakura took a step back from the angry redhead. "Furthermore, I am Kazekage of Sunagakure. You will tell me everything you know about Naruto Uzumaki's condition or I will bury you so deep even the worms won't know where to find you."

"Stop scaring the help, Gaara." A tired voice cut in as Tsunade waved the terrified mednin away. "Come on, my office is this way."

The redhead needed no further prompting to follow the Hokage down the hall to a small office tucked between two exam rooms. Temari was just a step behind her little sister. The other three followed more hesitantly but none of them were willing to miss whatever the woman had to say.

They crowded into the cramped office and shut the door.

"He's alive and knowing how stubborn he is, he'll stay that way." The older blonde stated simply, rubbing her neck tiredly. "The shrapnel that lodged in his leg perforated his femoral artery. The bleeding wouldn't stop and the idiot pushed himself to finish the exam which didn't help. If he were anyone else he'd have bled to death hours ago. Still, repairing that was a relatively easy fix though he has lost a lot of blood." She sighed. "The infection is the problem now. By the time they got him here, it had already gone systemic."

"Blood poisoning." Temari scowled in dismay. In Suna that was practically a death sentence.

Gaara was almost white and her hands gripped the arms of her chair with enough force to crack the dense wood. Tsunade had said Naruto should live. The redhead clung to those words as she waited for the woman to finish.

"I think we got to him in time. I've managed to cleanse most of the infection from his blood with a process similar to the one Sakura used when your brother was poisoned. The rest will just have to run its course. Naruto is strong and he's got more will to fight than just about anyone I've ever known, not to mention...other factors he has in his favor." She avoided mentioning the nine-tailed fox directly, unsure how much Naruto had shared with his temporary squad mates. "He has a good chance to recover fully if he makes it through the next few days."Tsunade finished with a weak smile. Truthfully, the odds weren't great but she long ago decided that betting on Naruto was smarter than betting against him.

Gaara pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the arm of the chair snapping as she used it for leverage. "I need to see him, Tsunade."

"Sure. Follow me." The blonde woman stood and ushered the group out of her office. "He's probably still out, he hasn't regained consciousness at all since they brought him in. You can all go in and see him but then you need to clear out and let him rest."

"I'm staying." Gaara announced immediately.

Tsunade smiled crookedly. "Yeah, I figured you would say that." She'd heard the redhead's declaration just a few minutes earlier. "Okay but just you. Everyone else is limited to ten minute visits and no more than three visitors at once, counting Gaara."

"I can't leave my sister without a guard." Temari spoke up.

"You can guard from outside the room once your ten minutes are up." The Hokage informed the younger blonde lightly. "Here we are."

Gaara beat her to the door and darted inside, freezing at the sight of the still figure on the bed. She moved forward slowly, needing to be near him but at the same time wanting to wake up as she had the night before when she had dreamed he was hurt.

Her hand caught his pale, warm one and everything was suddenly very real. Someone pushed a chair up behind her and she sat without taking her eyes off the blonde jinchuriki's still features. Naruto was never still, even in sleep. He twitched, he talked sometimes, he even occasionally flailed himself into a snarl of limbs and blankets. This...this was unnatural.

She was only dimly aware of the others entering the room. Tsunade was talking to them but the words held no meaning for the redhead. Her focus was entirely on the sleeping jinchuriki. She refused to think of him as anything but sleeping.

'He will wake up. The demon won't let him die.' She told herself. 'Everything will be fine.'

She didn't notice when the Hokage ushered the rest of the group out. She paid only fleeting attention to the other visitors that came through as the day wore on, a brief glance to ensure they weren't a threat and then they ceased to matter. She cataloged them in the back of her mind. Hinata and Shino were first. Rock Lee came around midday, with Sakura in tow. Kakashi put in an appearance early in the afternoon. A chunin with a scar across his nose who introduced himself as Iruka showed up mid-afternoon. Even Nara wandered in at one point.

Temari and Kankuro took turns checking on the silent redhead every hour. One of them brought her a sandwich at some point but it sat on the bedside table untouched.

Eventually, even Gaara's worry was overwhelmed by the fact that she had gotten less than an hour of sleep in almost forty-eight hours and she laid her head down on the edge of the bed and fell asleep. She never let go of the Naruto's hand.

Naruto dreamed. He was fighting a fiery beast that kept trying to crush him under its massive clawed feet. The heat rolling off of it was stifling and he couldn't seem to get far enough away to get any relief. The beast caught him by the leg, holding him upside down and laughing in a voice he recognized but couldn't place.

"Now you die brat."

Everything faded then and the next time Naruto was aware, he was standing in the forest holding two scrolls and he was wearing the robes of the Hokage. He grinned, but then he noticed the blood spattered on the ground around him. He looked closer and found that the ground was actually a pile of corpses beneath him. So many bodies, some were old enemies and these he looked away from sadly but then his eye caught on familiar figures that ripped a cry from his throat. Sasuke lay amongst the dead and Sakura beside him. Kakashi's corpse was a few feet away, still clutching his stupid book, but someone had gouged out his one normal eye. Jiraiya was slumped against a tree, looking asleep except for the gaping hole in his chest.

Then the leaf ninja spotted something that sent him scrambling over the pile without heed for who or what he might be stepping on. Red hair.

He reached for the body with shaking hands, turning the slim figure over slowly.

"No..." He mumbled.

Aqua eyes stared up at him, clouded with death, empty. He searched the body for some sign of life, some hint of what had killed her but his gaze kept being drawn back to her face. Somehow he only knew he could have saved her.

He could have saved them all.

"Nooo! Gaara!" He screamed, clutching her cold corpse to his chest and rocking as he grieved.

Gaara was awoken by a small sound, a twitch of the hand she was holding. At first she thought the jinchuriki might be waking up but a quick glance told her he was still out cold. He seemed to be in the throes of a nightmare.

'Well, he keeps mine away...I suppose I can try to banish his...'

She hesitantly squeezed the blonde's hand, but his face was still creased and he was mumbling something.

"...m sorry...Gaara...no..."

Gaara's eyes widened slightly as she heard her name fall from his lips. "I'm here Naruto." She told him, brushing her hand across his too pale cheek, tracing the markings there.

The sound of her voice seemed to help so she kept talking softly to him, telling him childhood stories about her siblings, events from the years he had been away, her suspicions about her sister and the Nara heir.

She wasn't sure when she had crawled into the bed on his uninjured side and curled against him, she only knew that his face had smoothed out and he stopped calling out for her as he sank into a more peaceful sleep.

Temari entered the room to check on her sister and froze as she took in the tableau. The redhead was curled against Naruto's side with her head on his shoulder, holding his hand. More surprising was the steady stream of words spilling from the usually quiet girl. The older Suna ninja stood and let the softly spoken monologue wash over for a minute before Gaara finally noticed she wasn't alone.

"Then Baki had Kankuro run all...Temari." The redhead acknowledged her sister, letting the room fall silent for the first time in almost an hour. She didn't move from her self-appointed place, even though part of her wanted to jump up guiltily.

"Yeah...uh...Hey Sis." The blonde managed, after a moment to recover from the oddity of hearing her sister talking so much. "Any change?"

"He had a nightmare." The redhead offered, turning her attention back to the sleeping leaf ninja. "I think his fever may have broken a little while ago."

"That's good." Temari walked over and sat down in the currently unoccupied chair. The silence stretched on for a few minutes making the older girl oddly uncomfortable.

She found herself watching her sister for lack of anything else to do in the sterile little room. The redhead was rubbing circles on the back of Naruto's hand with her thumb.

"So...this is what you do at night?" Temari asked slowly.

"Sort of." The redhead admitted with a small shrug.

Temari had expected more of a reaction, at least a blush, but what she got instead shocked her a little. Her baby sister was really in love. "Well, what do you know..." She mumbled under her breath, with a small smile. "You sure know how to pick them complicated, Sis." She raised her voice to a conversational level, wanting to be sure Gaara had really thought the situation through.

Gaara was tired enough that she briefly considered playing dumb, but that wasn't really in her nature. "The best things in life are worth fighting for." She said with a fond glance at her sleeping boyfriend.

"I see...and what about your dreams for the future of Suna? For that matter, doesn't he want to be the next Hokage? There's no way you can both achieve those dreams. Someone's is going to have to make sacrifices." Temari cringed at her own bluntness but her sister needed to hear these things. She wished someone had brought up these sorts of issues to her before she fell for Shikamaru.

"I...I don't know what to do about that." Gaara admitted quietly. "But we have nearly two years to decide."

"True. Just keep it in mind, okay? I...I just don't want to see you get hurt." With that the older sand ninja stood and went back to her post outside the door.

Naruto swam up from a sea of blackness, his body felt like someone had attached weights to his limbs and his leg ached dully. Something had him pinned down on one side and he struggled to open his uncooperative eyes so he could figure out what it was.

The first sight he saw as he finally managed to lift heavy lids was the hospital ceiling. It probably should have disturbed him that he recognized the dull white stucco with just a glance. The next thing he saw made a small smile grace his face.

"Gaara." The redhead was curled against him, fast asleep. The leaf ninja's voice was barely a whisper through his dry throat but the young woman's eyes opened instantly and she lifted her head to meet his gaze.

"You came back." She whispered with a small smile.

"Huh?" The blonde blinked in confusion. "How long was I out?"

"Since yesterday morning."

Naruto tried to process that. "Huh...the last thing I remember was feeling dizzy and then...the exam!" His eyes went wide as he remembered what he'd been doing.

"You passed." Gaara assured him simply.

"I...oh...okay then. So, how long until the next round?"

"One month."

"I better start training then." The leaf ninja tried to get up but he quickly discovered that he was either more tired than he thought...or Gaara had somehow made herself weigh about a ton.

"You have time. Rest." The redhead ordered, settling back down into her previous position.

Unable, and slightly unwilling, to push the warm body off of himself, Naruto was left with little choice except to relax. Still, a token resistance had to be made and he struggled briefly to rise before giving in with a huff and putting his arms around the contented girl.

A thought struck him just as he was starting to drift off, bringing his eyes open again. "Hey...aren't you worried someone will see us like this?"

"No. Sleep."

It wasn't much of an answer but since the blonde didn't really want her to leave, he decided not to press her and together the couple drifted off.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note: There. I hope I didn't squick anyone with Naruto's dream. I figured Gaara shouldn't hog all the bad dreams. I also hope I explained why Kyuubi didn't just poof the wound away. _' A person can bleed out from a severed femoral artery in just a minute or two, though Naruto's artery was only damaged, not completely severed. Still, Kyuubi was fighting to replace the massive amount of blood our favorite knucklehead was steadily losing and it couldn't deal with that and the injury and the infection at the same time. His healing factor just isn't that good (maybe if he was Deadpool...best Marvel character ever in my opinion, but I digress). No, the wood wasn't poisoned, but do you know how many types of bacteria thrive in moist, warm wood...let's just say it's scary.

So yeah, with the blood loss stopped, it won't take Kyuubi long to get our "little ninja that could" up and going again. It probably could have even dealt with the infection without further intervention but Tsunade wasn't going to risk it and it would have taken longer and Naruto has finals to train for. Next chapter is all written. Romance is in the air as our couple spends the day together to celebrate Naruto's release from the hospital and his passing of the second phase of the exam. ^_^