Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any characters associated with it.

A One Month Bet

What the hell did I just do?

Gaara stalked hurriedly away from Sakura before she might say anything else to distract him. He had to get away as quickly as possible; he feared her knowledge of the truth, and it was much too possible for her to discover it if he allowed that conversation to continue.

He growled under his breath and dipped his chin, shielding his face from any passerby's that dotted the still-awakening Suna streets. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. He'd been so upset last night that his training binge left him tired and fatigued. What's worse, he'd had to clean up his mess on the training fields this morning.

Gaara knew he needed to rest and revitalize before the last of his stamina was spent. It simply wouldn't do, especially when he was out and about in the city, to exhaust all his energy and fall into one of the more unfortunate consequences, such as becoming sick or passing out. He'd worked damn hard enough to gain the respect of his people; he wasn't about to have their view of him lessened by something so pathetic as that.

Get some food. Get some water. Get out everyone's view. That was Gaara's goal as he made a familiar turn into a street market. Several citizens bowed to him, and many responded to the sight of him with surprised exclamations. It was no less than he'd anticipated; he had, after all, been cooped up in the Kazekage tower for two weeks, and it was likely that the people of Suna had wondered where he'd disappeared to. He nodded kindly to as many people as he could handle, exerting extra effort to disguise the level of his fatigue.

A chunin ninja that Gaara had come to recognize as Meijo stepped forward and bowed. "Kazekage-sama," he said as he straightened, "I saw the training fields this morning, but I heard you cleared them out, sir. Thank you."

"Of course," Gaara replied stiffly. He winced as his sore muscles screamed for respite.

"It must've been a hell of a storm," Meijo continued. "Caught us all by surprise."

Gaara replied with a weak sort of smirk. "Indeed." He no longer wanted to continue this exchange. He needed sustenance. Now. With a small tilt of his hat, he said politely, "If you'll excuse me." Meijo bowed deeply and thanked his Kazekage again, but Gaara was already on the move. He made a beeline for the nearest food stand he could. The woman running the stand seemed surprised to see him, but certainly not unhappy. She looked to be in her early twenties, with long dark hair billowing down her right shoulder, chocolate-colored eyes rimmed with long dark lashes, and a slender, womanly body that was tanned to the essence of toasted honey.

"Kazekage-sama," she hummed, "What a pleasant surprise!"

Gaara tried to live-up to the pleasant façade the woman declared. It took great amounts of effort to keep the polite smile he displayed from turning into a grimace as he listed his purchases.

"My, my," the woman smirked, "Someone must be hungry." She placed the items in a bag and rolled the edges neatly before handing it to him. As Gaara sifted through his money satchel, he heard her rich, feminine voice purr, "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Gaara glanced up to see the woman with her hands on her hips, accentuating the clothes that clung tightly to the natural curves winding up and down her profile. Her head was tilted slightly to the side and her shaded eyelids hung heavily. A seductive smirk was playing on her lips.

Gaara felt no physical reaction to her intimation. In fact, he felt nothing but the natural ache of his fatigue. With a weary glance to his surroundings, he cleared his throat and handed her the correct amount of money. "No, thank you."

The woman took the money with a pout and attempted to say something in response, but she was too late. Gaara had already moved away and was making his way to a thinner, less-crowded part of the street. It was difficult to find anywhere to be alone with so many people constantly pointing him out. He'd been singled out everywhere he went, all his life, and yet he still didn't feel comfortable with everyone's eyes always on him. With his ostentatious Kazekage robe, it felt as though people could recognize him coming for miles.

But every now and again, even a Kage needs a little break.

Gaara ducked behind a large pyramid of barrels that was positioned on the edge of the street and removed his robe and hat. His gourd was still conspicuous, but as more and more people began to mill about, perhaps he could move quickly enough to pass as a merchant carrying wares on his back. He mostly just wanted to disappear into an alleyway without too many people noticing, so he quickly rolled the hat into the robe and tucked the bundle underneath one of his arms before emerging back out into the street again. With his head angled down and out of sight, he wound left and right through the throngs of people. Gaara tried to ensure that he was never in a single place for too long in case someone might recognize him by face.

He continued onward, spying into random alleyways as often as the opportunity allowed. He finally discovered one that was empty and darted quickly into the shaded, cramped solitude, thankful to at last be free of the crowds. However, the longer he stood in the alleyway, the more he was assaulted by the stench of sour trash bundles. Gaara glanced around for another escape route that would lead him to somewhere a bit cleaner. His gaze locked on a metal ladder that stretched up one wall and snaked its way over the edge of the building. A roof. He sighed with relief. Perfect. After a bit of creative handling, he eventually managed to hoist all the items he had up the ladder with him. The bars on the ladder were hot from exposure in the sun, but he kept moving until he at last managed to swing a leg over the top edge of the wall.

Sweet reprieve.

The roof was wonderfully bare, and the air was clear. He sat in the shadow of a skylight block that jutted intrusively out of the middle of the roof and leaned his head back on the cool clay structure. His limbs felt heavy and his throat felt parched. He tore his sack open and retrieved the bottle of water and an apple that he'd purchased. He felt so starved that the sudden introduction of food made his stomach retract with pain and he grimaced, but after a moment he was able to relax again, finally indulging in the solace around him. At last, the poor young man could take a moment to reflect.

After speaking to his brother and sister the night before, Gaara had ventured to the training grounds searching for a way to calm his turbulent mind. He hadn't trained so hard in years—It is especially difficult to train when one's enemy is oneself. For lack of a sparring partner, he'd fought sand clones of himself. It might've seemed counterproductive, for he knew simultaneously every weak-spot of every clone, and he knew every way in which they would counter his attacks. But it did not matter to Gaara that no substantial progress was made; it was simply a means of focusing his thoughts.

To conceal the battle, he willed a turbulent mass of sand upon the side of the city. It seemed he'd successfully fooled everyone into the belief that it was sporadic, unexpected sandstorm, when in reality it was all of his own doing. The only people he suspected might know the truth were his siblings, for they were the only two witnesses to his disappearance. The unfortunate side-effect of this, however, was the massive collection of sand leftover from his session. And, of course, as Kazekage he would be the one to call when every single one of the training grounds was immersed in sand. Despite his exhaustion, he'd dutifully removed all the sand he'd inadvertently placed there, nearly depleting the last of his chakra.

Gaara had definitely kicked his own ass last night, but what did he have to show for it? When dawn broke he'd released his energetic hold on the clones and simply listened to the whistle of sand and wind. He stood there, feeling the gentle downward tug of the dune in which he stood and the encroaching heat of the sunrise on his skin. At last he'd spent the stress on his mind, and he could focus. He could process all that had happened, event by event, minute by minute.

Starting with Sakura.

The question was where to start.

Gaara took a long, desperate gulp from his water bottle and sighed, remembering his conversation with her not that long ago. She'd looked so lovely. Tired, perhaps. Worried, even—but still lovely. He hadn't seen her outside before today. Her delicate skin looked luminescent in the sunlight and the pale pink color of her hair shone like a pearl. He'd wanted to reach out and touch it, to apologize for the way he had treated her, but he could not. She'd come looking for him, to talk to him about what had happened, but he wouldn't have it. He didn't want her to apologize. He didn't want her to tell him that it was all a mistake. He didn't want her to be embarrassed or ashamed of what she'd done.

Above all else, Gaara did not want Sakura to regret that kiss.

Instead he'd lied—for her sake. He'd saved her the trouble of confessing that it had all been a ruse by claiming she'd already told him. That, of course, was false. Temari and Kankuro had been the ones to tell him everything, but he'd suspected that Sakura would eventually realize that she had not told him herself. Naturally, the civil thing to do would be to come to him directly, which was exactly what she had done, and try her best to explain her actions, to edge slowly backward across the bridge that had already been crossed between them. By apologizing for that kiss, Gaara feared it was Sakura's goal to erase what had happened between them and continue on as if it had never happened.

But Gaara didn't want that either.

The weary young man sighed with exasperation again and let his head fall back against the wall with a 'thud', feeling disturbingly older and more somnolent than his youthful body should have. What the hell do you want? he asked himself. His mind felt strained from the confusing emotions he felt. Why couldn't he have just let Sakura do what she'd tried to? Why couldn't they go back to pretending like nothing had happened? Why didn't he just send her back to Konoha and be rid of her once and for all?

That's what he should've done.

But it was certainly not what he wanted to do.

Gaara did not want Sakura to leave, especially not on account of what had happened. In fact, he was no longer even upset with the actual incident. His only regret was that he'd treated her harshly and hurt her feelings—the kiss itself, well, that was a different story entirely.

He scoffed. "Kiss" was a generous way to describe it. Sakura did all the kissing; he'd just sat there, petrified. She probably would've better off kissing a statue, he scowled. He was embarrassed for the way he'd reacted. After all the incriminating thoughts and fantasies he'd had about the pink-haired kunoichi, having her approach him the way she did and kiss him with little hesitation was disarming. What with his inescapable physical attraction to the woman, he couldn't believe he'd become frozen in front of her. Why then, of all moments, had his body locked up?

Gaara felt the water bottle being crunched by the tension in his hand. He took a second to relax his muscles again, but it did little to lessen the ache in his pride. He growled and closed his eyes. Stop acting like a fool, he commanded to himself. He was the Kazekage, after all!—In charge of leading an entire village! He couldn't afford to let one woman affect him so much.

But affect him she did.

The young man ground his teeth and slammed a fist into the warm, clay surface of the roof. How could Sakura hold this much sway over him? His body ached when he thought of her. His chest felt thick. On the one hand he felt he needed to uphold his honor as Sunagakure's Kazekage, yet on the other he felt desire gnawing at his insides. He wanted a second chance at that kiss, a second chance to prove to Sakura that he wasn't a fool, or a failure. He refused to pretend that nothing had happened, refused to allow Sakura to apologize, because Gaara felt as though he'd missed his one opportunity to be with the one woman who did affect him. The only woman that ever had.

Not the woman at the food stand.

Not the groups of fan girls that occasionally bombarded him in the streets.

Only Sakura.

Gaara opened his eyes and stared over the rooftops of his village. Somehow, someway, he would find some middle ground. He would find a way to uphold his title without being subjected indefinitely to the charms of a single woman.

The only obstacle, he feared, would be Sakura's reluctance. There would be no way of knowing if she would submit to his resolve. What if there really was no second chance?

Gaara pulled a single hand through his wind-swept hair and let it snake down to rest on the back of his neck. His gaze lowered to the white and blue bundle of cloth at his feet before sweeping back over the skyline. He tilted his chin up proudly as a breeze ruffled quietly past.

I will not give up.

Thank you as always. If you have not yet left a review, I would be humbled to receive one.

-Olly