Author's Note: Sorry for the wait. I needed to let my brain have a break so I took the week off from this story. Now I am ready to pick it up again. I hope you like this chapter. Please review!

Sandstorms and Falling Leaves

Chapter Thirteen: Experiments and Accidents

Naruto was on his way to meet Matsuri and Manabu for some sparring. He'd been out of the hospital for two days and he was feeling almost normal again.

"Naruto. Yo." Kakashi fell into step beside him. "I've been instructed to help you train for the final stage of the exam."

"Okay, do you have any really cool jutsus I can learn in three weeks?" The hyperactive jinchuriki practically vibrated with excitement at the thought.

"We'll see." The silver haired jonin shrugged.

"Alright! Let's go!" Naruto sped off, heedless of the fact that the masked shinobi continued along at his previous pace.

Kakashi shook his head. "And here I thought he'd matured some while he was away."

Gaara reached the training grounds just after dawn, carrying a heavy earthenware pot full of sand, since she still hadn't replaced her gourd. She wasn't due to meet the Hyuuga heiress for several hours but she wanted to try something and she didn't want anyone around in case it went badly.

'Jutsus were always easier when I was angry or upset. Shukaku had more control when I let go. So, maybe...' The thoughts had been percolating in the back of her mind all night.

Gaara thought back over everything that she had recently been through: the Akatsuki's attack, her excruciating death at their hands, Chiho's death to revive her, her exile by the council, the assassination attempt, Naruto's injury, her frustration with her new limits, her ongoing nightmares, dealing with suddenly being female after a lifetime spent as a male...

For the first time in years, she let all of her strongest negative emotions out of the carefully constructed box she had shoved them into. She let go of the tight reigns that had allowed her to wrest control away from Shukaku. Gaara let herself feel angry. Not just a little angry, she let herself be well and truly furious at a world that couldn't let her hold onto even a little bit of peace.

She lashed out with the sand, shattering the pot and sending the grains hurtling towards a tree. She pummeled the hapless foliage into splinters within seconds and moved her ball of sand on to the next target, a large rock. Soon the rock had been ground down into nothing but more sand which she added to the mass she was already manipulating.

She was starting to feel dizzy but she let that feeling fuel her anger. "I am not weak." A tree fell as she rammed it with her sand. "I am not some helpless creature to need protecting." The ball slammed into the ground hard enough to leave a substantial crater. "If I ever catch the Akatsuki bastards that tried to destroy me, I am going to make them wish I was still as merciful as I was before I met Naruto!" The ball rose above her head and exploded, sending razor sharp daggers of sand hurtling out in all directions.

Gaara knew her chakra was spent but she kept pushing, gathering the scattered granules and starting again. Then, something snapped. She felt strength that she had been beginning to think had deserted her. She drew from it eagerly, moving smoothly through several of her more complicated jutsus and finishing with a sand tsunami that left her the only thing standing for several hundred yards around.

The redhead was sweating and tense, her hands clenched at her sides as she looked for another target to turn her rage on.

"G-G-Gaara-san?"

Hinata's small voice squeaked from behind her and she reacted without thinking, turning her sand on the girl with a thought and a sharp gesture. The blue-haired ninja was lifted off her feet by a giant sand fist.

"Gaara! Please stop!" The girl screamed as the sand rushed to engulf her. Violet eyes went wide in terror. She'd seen this jutsu before and had no desire to be on the receiving end of it.

The redhead seemed to come back to herself with a start and she paled at what she had almost done. Her anger was banished by shame and the sand fell away from the leaf ninja as its wielder crumpled in on herself. In the anger's wake came sorrow as always. The Suna ninja wrapped her arms around herself and dropped to her knees, bowing her head to hide the tears she could no longer contain and rocking herself as she had when she was a child with no one to comfort her.

Except now she felt gentle arms wrap around her and a soft voice speaking soothingly as she sobbed.

"It's okay Gaara. I'm not hurt. I shouldn't have startled you. It's okay. Calm down." The stream of words continued even though the speaker wasn't sure she was getting through to the broken young woman in her arms.

Finally the wracking sobs eased and the redhead was able to catch her breath enough to speak.

"Why?" She rasped, clearing her throat before elaborating as she glanced at the blue haired teen's confused expression. "After...what I just did...why are you still here?"

"Because I'm your friend, Gaara." Hinata replied simply, as if it should have been obvious.

Maybe it would have been, to someone who had grown up having friends. Gaara couldn't fathom how the girl could trust her enough to stay near her after she'd nearly crushed the gentle leaf ninja in a fit of temper.

"I..." The ex-jinchuriki could think of no response that seemed adequate. "I'm sorry." She finally said lamely, knowing the apology wasn't enough.

"You didn't hurt me. It's fine." The blue haired girl smiled shakily. "Just...uh...try not to do it again okay?"

"Okay." Gaara agreed shakily, trying to pull her facade of calm back together. It was easier letting her suppressed emotions out than it was to put them back now that they were doing their best to turn her mind to mush.

"So...what was all this anyway?" The girl gestured around at the destruction of their training area.

"It was...an experiment. It got out of hand." The sand ninja cringed at the mention of hands but the other girl didn't seem to catch the accidental pun.

"Oh...and did it work?" Hinata asked curiously.

"In a way." Gaara conceded thoughtfully. "I got to the chakra...but I lost control of myself doing it." She shuddered. "It felt...almost like before I met Naruto...except without the voice in my head to direct me." Her eyes grew distant with memory and her voice was almost a whisper.

Hinata paled but tried not to show the already conflicted Suna teen how unsettling that idea was. "Okay, well if the key to accessing your chakra reserve is in using strong emotions as a conduit...um...why don't you try using something other than anger?"

"Like what?" The ex-jinchuriki wondered.

"Well...um...something more positive might be a little more controllable, maybe."

"Hn." The redhead frowned. "I'll...have to think about it."

"Okay...Well, in the meantime it looks like we may need to find a new place to train...somewhere further from the village might be good." Hinata smiled, hoping her friend wouldn't take that the wrong way.

Instead she was surprised when the sand manipulator coughed out a brittle sounding laugh and nodded, pushing herself to her feet. Aqua eyes fluttered closed and the slender girl swayed dizzily. Hinata reached out to her instinctively, but didn't quite touch her, suspecting that her help wouldn't be appreciated this time. After a moment, the unsteady feeling passed and Gaara opened her eyes. She was surprised to see violet eyes watching her with concern and a hand hovering just inches from her arm, ready to catch her if she fell.

'I nearly kill her and she's worried about my health...' Gaara marveled again, her heart clenching at the idea of hurting the sweet tempered Hyuuga girl. 'Of course...Naruto does much the same thing...always trying to save his enemies...'

"I'm fine. Just tired." She assured the leaf ninja with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Hinata nodded, not at all convinced but knowing the redhead wouldn't react well to her hovering. She took a step back to give her friend some space to collect herself. There was a haunted look in the redhead's dark rimmed eyes. Even as she schooled her features into a mask of calm. Her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil.

"So do you still feel up to training?" The dark haired girl asked slowly.

"I...no." Gaara felt drained and she wasn't sure if it was from chakra exhaustion or from the intense emotions she hadn't dealt with in years.

"Alright, well...then do you want to go get something to eat?" The leaf chunin offered with a genuine smile.

The redhead blinked. "...Okay." She agreed finally.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The two teens ate lunch and then Hinata went to find her teammates. Gaara didn't want to go home. Instead she wandered around the village, trying vainly to reconstruct the control that had taken her months to wrest from Shukaku. It should have been easier without the demon whispering in her mind but she was discovering that a fair amount of the problem was actually her own temper.

'Should have known that...with my family.' Her father had been prone to fits of blind rage, lashing out at her siblings and the household staff. The idea of being anything like that man made the food that she had just eaten, suddenly weigh heavily in her stomach. 'I can't go home...they'll see it. That I'm just like him...the demon was just an excuse...' She darted into an alley and wretched until her stomach was empty.

Spitting and wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she looked around, relieved when she saw no one paying any attention to her. Tired of the press of people in the streets, she fled to the rooftops. She had no destination in mind but soon found herself back at the rooftop bench that she had found the day she ran into Nara and his large friend. It was deserted and she sank heavily onto the worn wood, pulling her feet up and curling herself into a ball as she ran the events of the morning over and over in her mind until they ceased to make any sense at all.

'How can I ever face Hinata again? How can I face Temari and Kankuro?' Her thoughts spiraled into dark places and she moaned between clenched teeth. 'What will Naruto think?'

"Hey." A familiar, bored voice suddenly intruded on her self-loathing. "You okay?"

She didn't look up. "Fine."

"Okay. Can I sit here or did you want to be alone?"

She didn't answer, which he seemed to take as permission to stay. She felt him settle on the other end of the bench. The silence stretched out and she did her best to ignore his presence.

He ruined this by speaking again. "Troublesome." He mumbled.

At this, she finally lifted her head to find him shaking his and watching the cloudy sky intently. "What?"

"You are troublesome." He explained tiredly. "Or...well...Your sister is anyway. I know that whatever is bothering you, it is none of my business and frankly I don't really want to know." He ran a hand over his spiky ponytail and sighed. "But I also know Temari would be furious with me if I let you sit here beside me and self-destruct, without making at least some effort to talk you out of it." He shook his head again. "See? Troublesome."

Gaara couldn't help it, she snorted a small laugh. "I'll move somewhere else." She offered dryly.

"No, too late for that. I'd have to follow you and that would be even more work." He scowled as if the word tasted bad. "So are you gonna talk to me or should I just go get your sister?"

Gaara weighed the two options. She certainly didn't want to discuss the subject with Temari. The redhead didn't much care what Shikamaru thought of her and she knew he was ridiculously smart. Maybe he'd see something in the situation that she couldn't. 'It can't really make me feel worse I guess...'

"I nearly killed Hinata today." She stated flatly.

Dark eyes blinked as he actually put forth the effort to look at her. That obviously wasn't what he had been expecting. "How?"

"I was angry."

"At Hinata?" The Nara heir raised an eyebrow, his tone skeptical.

"No. At...life." She frowned. "She walked up on me and I...she's okay but it was too close."

"You lost control." Shikamaru shrugged dismissively. "It happens to everyone."

"Not to me." She snapped sharply. "Not anymore." She added quietly.

"You've changed you know...and I'm not talking about the obvious." He gestured vaguely to her subtle feminine curves. "When you and your brother and sister showed up for the chunin exam, before the Sound invasion...you were terrifying, totally out of control. Even your own family was afraid to cross you. You didn't care who got hurt or killed as long as you got your way."

The redhead put her head back down on her knees. "You suck at this." She pointed out bitterly.

He smirked and rolled his eyes. "I know. Anyway, the point is you've come a long way from that...guy. I mean, look how upset you are about Hinata when you didn't even actually hurt her."

Gaara looked up at him thoughtfully but he was pointedly watching the clouds again.

"You care about the people around you now. That's why it's okay if you screw up sometimes, even if you get so angry you make a mistake...even if someone gets hurt. Welcome to the human race, Gaara." With that he stood and started down the stairs towards the street, hands shoved in his pockets.

Gaara remained where she was, thinking over his words and finding to her surprise that they actually helped a little.

She watched the sunset from her perch on the rooftop bench. She had finally regained some semblance of her usual composure but she had the uneasy feeling that she was never going to be able to lock her negative emotions away so completely again. There was too much danger that she'd explode and the wrong people would get hurt. She was going to have to face her emotions head on. Still, she'd done tougher things in her lifetime.

'Like face Temari and tell her what happened.' Except she hadn't actually done that yet. 'Best to get it over with.'

She stood and stretched the kinks from her muscles before starting across the rooftops towards her temporary home.

She arrived to find both her siblings in her apartment. Temari was cooking while Kankuro fiddled with a half finished trap.

"Hey." The blonde greeted with a grin. "Supper will be ready in a few. I'm trying to prove to our idiot brother that my cooking is just as good as yours."

"Hmph..." The hooded boy snorted derisively.

"I...need to talk to you." The redhead announced reluctantly.

Both her siblings were immediately wary. "About what?" Her brother asked, his project abandoned on the table. "Something happen?"

"Yes...almost..." She rubbed a hand over her face, feeling her carefully reconstructed control starting to fray. "I lost my temper." She admitted softly.

"Um...okay." Temari wasn't sure why that had the redhead so upset. True, a month earlier that would have been a scary thing to hear from her little sister's lips but, without the threat from the demon, the blonde didn't see what the big deal was.

"No...I lost my temper...like father." Gaara needed them to understand. She had to give them a chance to get away from her before she hurt them too. "I tried to kill Hinata."

"You...what?" Her sister stared in shock, unable to fathom any reason her sister would have been that angry at the friendly girl. "What did she do?"

"Nothing. I was angry. She showed up and I nearly crushed her with the sand coffin before I realized what I was doing. She's fine but...I lashed out at her for no reason except she was the closest target, the way he used to." The redhead looked away from her siblings' stricken expressions, expecting them to be disgusted with her.

So it surprised her when Kankuro came towards her and laid a hand on her arm awkwardly. "You are nothing like him." He said firmly. "Did you ever see him feeling guilty after he hurt someone?"

His words, so similar to what Shikamaru had told her earlier, struck a chord. She thought hard, but no matter how many events her mind conjured she couldn't remember her father ever showing any regret over the people he used to vent his anger towards.

She shook her head slowly.

"There, you see?" Temari smiled stiffly as she joined them. "Kuro's right. None of us are our father."

The hooded boy looked over at his older sister in surprise. She hadn't used that nickname for him since he was five. They were so close back then, helping each other train, playing together...he even remembered climbing into the older girl's bed for comfort after nightmares woke him when he was really little. Then their father had beaten the seven year old girl, broken her arm...for babying the younger boy. The old man claimed such affection would make him weak. After that, the pair was careful to keep their distance from each other, turning everything into a competition, arguing more and more until they could barely stand to be in the same room. That was about the time Kankuro started painting his face and covering his hair, unable to stand seeing his father's features reflected back at him in the eyes of everyone he met.

'If it wasn't for Gaara our entire family would have fallen apart by now.' He thought with some shock. He and Temari were barely on speaking terms by the time they were introduced to the volatile little redhead and told to act as a team. Suddenly, the two elder siblings had no choice but to band together to try and keep the youngest in check...and to simply survive the demon's outbursts. They were terrified of the demon boy they'd heard stories about for so long. Then, during the chunin exam, they finally got a glimpse of the lonely, betrayed child hiding behind the insanity. After they lost to Konoha and Naruto, Gaara was so broken, so confused.

Temari and Kankuro had been unable to protect each other from their vicious father. By unspoken agreement they had decided to save their youngest sibling from the world.

'We're still working on it I guess.' He mused sadly.

Gaara felt some of the weight lift from her shoulders but she still wasn't sure how she was going to deal with her anger issues.

Temari seemed to see the problem, well practiced at reading the redhead's silences. "We all got some of his temper, Sis." The admission pained the older girl but Gaara needed to hear it. "We'll help you with yours." She assured the smaller girl.

"You just gotta learn to...aim it better." Her brother offered with a slightly forced grin.

Aqua eyes blinked back moisture as her other recently released emotions tried to assert themselves but she shoved them back down. 'One thing at a time.' She told herself firmly. First she'd learn to deal with her temper, preferably before it could get the better of her again, the rest could wait.

"Thanks." She managed to push the single word past the lump in her throat.

Her sister ruffled her hair and her brother patted her arm, before turning to go back to his project.

"That's what family is for." The blonde grinned and went to rescue the now slightly charred stir fry she'd left cooking.

"You want to go grab take-out?" Kankuro suggested with a suppressed chuckle.

"It will taste fine once the sauce is on it, Kuro." Temari replied snappishly.

"Right. Whatever you say, Ri." He watched as his older sister hesitated at the pet name he had used for her when they were children. The message got across clearly, without their youngest sibling being aware of the undercurrent running through the conversation, he remembered too. Maybe they'd never go back to that closeness, but they didn't have to be at each others' throats either.

Gaara didn't show up at Naruto's apartment that night. She didn't want to see him disappointed in her. She knew she'd tell him what had happened the moment she saw him. Sleep was out of the question. Instead she sat at her desk with her head in her hands, trying to take Hinata's advice to figure out if any of her emotions besides anger were strong enough to create the effect she had managed that morning.

Around midnight a knock on her window pulled her from her unproductive musings. She knew who it was without even looking up but she looked anyway. Naruto stood on her little balcony, between the pair of potted cacti she had brought from her old chambers in Suna. Despite her misgivings, she went to let him in, not meeting his eyes as she opened the glass.

His arms wrapped around her and she stiffened for a moment before leaning against him, unable to resist the comfort after her difficult day.

"Hinata stopped by my place this afternoon." The leaf genin told her gently. "You okay?"

The redhead took a long moment before she answered. "I will be."

To be continued...

Author's Note: So yay! Gaara is making progress towards getting her strength back. Now if only she had some control over it. Next chapter...no, I'm not going to spoil the fun. lol. Review and I'll let you guys read it. That isn't a ransom demand, it is simply a request for incentive to edit the next chapter faster...yes, I'm not evil at all. By the way, thanks everyone for the supportive comments about my home situation. It is always nice to know people care. *hugs*