Author's Note: Wow. Have I mentioned how great all of you are? Because you are. I can't believe how quickly people reviewed and how nice everyone is about the long wait between updates (I'm still looking for that Chobi typo though lol). I also noticed that I didn't mention Matsuri leaving the office...so we're just gonna say she's a stealthy ninja and was so quiet nobody noticed her slipping out with Gaara and Kankuro, okay? At least until I get up the will to face that chapter again and fix the oversight. I also can't wait to see the fanart one reviewer mentioned! I hope they put it up and send me the link (with spaces so ff net doesn't eat it lol) Now, because you all are such wonderful and faithful readers, I'm gonna give you this chapter pretty quickly and get to work on the next one.

Sandstorms and Falling Leaves

Chapter 17: Questions and Answers

Tsunade waited until the masked jonin had shut the door firmly before she focused her full attention on her favorite jinchuriki.

"So, Naruto, what haven't you told me recently?" She asked, her tone deceptively light.

"Um..." The younger blonde was immediately wary.

"Maybe something that could cause an international incident... something that might jeopardize the most important peace treaty Konoha has ever made...anything like that spring to mind?"

"Uh..." The orange clad teen scratched his head sheepishly. "Gaara and I..." He trailed off into a mumble and blushed.

"What was that?" The fierce older woman snapped. "It sounded like it might be important."

"Gaara and I are dating." Naruto said again, his voice stronger.

"Really, I never would have guessed." Tsunade drawled sarcastically. "I knew that already, numbskull. I want to know why I keep getting reports about her sneaking into your apartment at night."

"What?! But we were so careful!" Naruto blurted in horror. If Tsunade had caught them, then there was a good chance that they hadn't been careful enough.

"I should hope so! The last thing we need is the Kazekage getting pregnant!"

Naruto's blush returned with a vengeance. "No! You've got the wrong idea! We're just sleeping, I swear! Nobody's getting anybody p-pr-pregnant." He stumbled over the word, looking a little queasy at the thought of that much responsibility.

Tsunade sighed and settled back in her chair. "That's a relief, but you do know what Suna's laws are like, ne?" She leaned forward and cupped her chin in one hand thoughtfully.

"Yeah, Gaara told me some...and Temari told me a lot more." Naruto admitted. "But Gaara...she doesn't sleep when I'm not there."

Tsunade nodded. She had suspected as much, the timing of the reports on the problem had coincided too neatly with Gaara's noticeably improved health.

"Right, so you see the problem. By Suna's customs and laws, she could be banished from her village for sleeping with a man before she's married, and nobody is gonna believe it's innocent. If you let things continue the way they are now, you risk Gaara losing more than just her position as Kazekage. Now, the question you have to ask yourself, is how can you fix this."

Naruto thought for a minute before shaking his head. "I don't know what to do, Baachan. I care too much about Gaara to let her get hurt that way, she loves her home, but I can't send her away when she needs me either."

Tsunade sighed. "You're overlooking the obvious answer." She said dryly. "There's a way you can keep your sleeping arrangement and Suna's council won't be able to do anything about it when they find out."

"Really?" The hyperactive teen bounced eagerly. "But how? I thought in order for it to be okay we'd have to be married..."

Tsunade looked at the orange clad teen meaningfully.

"Oh...right." Naruto blushed again, now sweating a little as well. "I guess that would fix it, but I don't even know if Gaara wants to get married. I mean we're both so young and she's got so much else going on right now..."

"Naruto." Tsunade interrupted his rambling. "The way you find out if a girl will marry you, is to ask her."

"Right...yeah, of course." Naruto pulled at his collar fretfully.

"Sheesh, I'm not saying you have to decide today, baka." The older woman shook her head. "I just thought you might want to start thinking about it before it becomes a serious issue."

"Okay...thanks." Naruto nodded, looking pale.

"That's it for now, you may go."

The blonde teen nodded, uncharacteristically quiet for once as he left the room.

Kakashi entered, his eyebrow raised at the younger ninja's mood. "So you told him."

Tsunade nodded. "They needed to know they've been spotted, so they can try to be more careful...and I may have planted a seed or two in that thick skull of his as well." The Hokage stretched and sat back in her chair. "Let's see what it grows into, ne."

Naruto wasn't sure why he felt so panicked. This wasn't the first time someone had suggested he and Gaara get married someday. Temari had joked about it and it hadn't bothered him then.

'But it's the first time someone said we should do it right now!' His mind pointed out frantically. 'We're too young to get married. What if it doesn't work out? What if she doesn't really love me? What if she says no?' The blonde shook his head to clear it as he walked aimlessly.

He left the arena area and slowly made his way back to the village, lost in thought.

'I don't want to have to get married just to satisfy some stupid laws that we aren't even breaking...' He scowled, his buoyant mood from making chunin nearly forgotten.

"Naruto-kun?" A voice pulled him from his thoughts.

"Hey Hinata-chan." He greeted the Hyuuga heiress half-heartedly.

"Hi...um...I guess you're probably upset about the exam, ne?" Hinata was surprised how easily the words came now that she had let go of her long held crush.

Naruto shrugged. "Actually, no. I made chunin. Tsunade just told me."

"That's great!" The lavender eyed teen smiled, but it soon faded as she noticed her friend's unusual lack of enthusiasm. "Isn't it?"

Naruto blinked. "Oh, well yeah...I mean, I've been waiting a long time and all..." He hesitated for a moment before giving in to the urge to talk to someone about his new problem. "It's something else Baachan had to say that's bothering me."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Naruto looked around to make sure nobody was near enough to overhear them before he let the words rolling around in his head escape. "You see...Gaara has been sleeping in my apartment and somehow Baachan found out and now she says I should marry her so she can stay Kazekage but I don't want to get married because of some stupid laws and I'm only 16 and her brother and sister said the same thing and it didn't bother me but they never said I had to do it right away and she'd probably say no anyway and she's too busy right now with her training to worry about this stuff and..." He paused to take a breath.

Hinata to the opportunity to cut in. "Um...Naruto...maybe you should slow that down. I'm not really sure what's going on." She blushed.

Naruto sighed but made a concerted effort to organize his chaotic thoughts before he spoke again. "Gaara came to talk to me one night. She hadn't been able to sleep and Tsunade told her talking to someone might help her." He paused to make sure the blue haired girl was keeping up and pressed on her encouraging nod. "Well, she ended up falling asleep in my arms and I couldn't get loose without waking her so I sort of decided to just lay down with her...um...in my bed." He blushed at how bad that sounded out loud.

"I don't see the big deal...if it was just the one time and nothing happened..." The violet eyed teen began but stopped as her friend shook his head.

"She slept the whole night and didn't have any nightmares, so the next might she came back...and every night since then...well, except the day she almost killed you, that night I had to go to her. I think she was worried I'd be mad at her or something."

"Oh..." Hinata blinked. "Um...and you say you're just sleeping? Nothing else?" She asked, blushing at the memory of Naruto's pants thrown on the foot board of the redhead's bed.

"Yeah, well mostly..." The blonde scratched his neck sheepishly. "We have kissed a few times...but not at night and nothing more than kissing!" He hastily defended.

Hinata pondered the situation for a minute. "I see. So what laws are you breaking?"

"Sunagakure is really old-fashioned." The jinchuriki explained tiredly. "They have laws against people...um...you know...before they're married." His face turned crimson as he tried to explain without actually using the words. "Temari told me Gaara could be exiled from the village permanently if we ever get caught...um...doing anything like that."

Hinata was blushing too, but she was determined to help both her friends. "So they all want you to get married to prevent that from happening, ne?"

"Yeah." The orange clad teen slumped in defeat. "I don't know what to do. I love Gaara and I don't want to see her get hurt, but I don't want to get married just because of a stupid law either."

"Is that the only reason?" Hinata asked thoughtfully.

"Huh?"

"Maybe you are looking at this from the wrong angle, asking yourself the wrong questions." Hinata said slowly. "Maybe...you should be asking yourself what other reasons you might have for wanting to marry Gaara...or not marry her. See how you feel once you've really given it some thought."

Naruto nodded thoughtfully a small smile crossing his face as he mulled the idea over. "That could work." He said with just a hint of his usual excitement. "Thanks Hinata. I um...I should go think...I think." He grinned sheepishly.

"Okay, glad I could help." The polite girl smiled back softly.

Naruto started away with a bit of his usual bounce and Hinata found herself feeling very pleased indeed. She never would have guessed she'd be giving Naruto advice about his love life with another woman. Things had changed for her since Gaara came to the village but she couldn't say she was unhappy with the way things were going. Smiling, the blue haired teen turned towards home. She had a date to get ready for.

Naruto hurried straight home, plopping down in his rarely used desk chair and scrounging in the drawers of his desk for paper and something to write with.

"Aha!" He crowed as he victoriously placed the wrinkled page of notebook paper on the desk's surface and proceeded to divide it into two columns with the slightly chewed pencil he'd found.

"Okay...Get Married...and Don't Get Married..." He labeled the columns as he spoke.

'Stupid laws.' He placed in the don't category, but then scratched through it and placed it in the Marriage column instead. He didn't like it but it was true.

'Love her.' was then added to the pro-marriage column as well, and the teen doodled a little heart next to the words as he thought about what to write next.

'Scary siblings.' went into both columns. 'Makes me happy.' 'Loves me.' and 'Understands me.' went into the marriage list. 'Too young.' went into the anti-marriage column followed by, 'Too much responsibility' and 'Not enough money.'

Naruto eyed the list thoughtfully. "Being young isn't really a good reason, we've both already dealt with more than most people twice our age, and being a ninja isn't exactly the safest job. Who knows how long we'll even have together?" Gaara's still, cold corpse from a couple of months before swam up from the depths of his mind and he ruthlessly shoved it away again. "...and as for responsibility, Gaara's already leading her whole village and people trust me with their lives on missions all the time." The two points were scribbled out.

He frowned at the paper for a few moments. The redhead's voice floated into his mind, echoing the question she had asked him a few weeks earlier.

'When you think of your future...am I in it?'

He hadn't given the question much thought at the time, but now he closed his eyes and really tried to imagine his future. He saw himself in the Hokage robes, that wasn't anything unusual, but now he found that his mental picture of the future included a certain slender woman with unmistakable crimson hair at his side, and several children that were a mix of the two of them running all around the pair.

Naruto smiled at the daydream.

'Can't picture the future without her anymore.' He scribbled the words into the reasons for getting married list before crumpling the paper and tossing it into the small waste basket next to his bed.

He'd made his decision. Now he just needed to figure out the best way to ask her.

To be continued...

Author's Note: Well...that wasn't what I intended to write at all but it wanted to go that way and I try not to argue with my stories since that seems to be the leading cause of my writer's block (besides fight scenes lol). So...what will Naruto do next? What will Gaara have to say when he asks her? Will she ever unlock her blocked chakra network? And what sort of missions are in store for our favorite knucklehead now that he's finally a chunin? These and many other questions will be answered, eventually. I'm working on the next chapter but this story has a way of going places I don't intend to take it yet so I'm not even going to say exactly what that next chapter will be. You'll just have to wait and see along with me. Please review and let me know what you think of this chapter.