A/N: Heyhey I bet you all thought this fic got abandoned! Soooo sorry for the long wait. I've had the drafts of these last chapters sitting in my computer for the longest time, but unfortunately I just lost the momentum to update in this past year and give a completion to this story. My excuse? I became a first-time parent! Nuff said?
Despite all of life's hecticness that happened, GaaSaku still has and will always have a special pace in my heart. I really do hope to go back to making more content once I get this whole baby thing down (no promises though).
Anyhow, on this exact one year anniversary (hehe) of the last update, I present you Chapter 27! For those of you who were so kind to leave a review even though the story was left hanging, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's seeing your comments pop up in my e-mail inbox every now and then that energized me to come back!
Rest assured I will finish Delicate. Looking back at the drafts I wrote more than a year ago, I did lose some confidence in my writing and how I made some parts pan out, but I hope I will give this a satisfactory ending. It might take me a while to get the next couple of chapters edited and published after this, so please be patient.
Thank you again for sticking with me. :)
Chapter 27
"—the hell you guys think you are doing!"
After some loose count of a fifth or sixth failed attempt to persuade, the trailing voice morphed into a frustrated growl… but hardly registered over the thumps of heavy soles touching down from one rooftop to another.
Pace steady and firm, in his pursuit Gaara honed in his attention on his target in front, sparing little mind to the voice that was getting raspier with each shout. Buildings after buildings of Konoha zoomed in and out of his vision at a speed that made them indistinct from one another. Some distance ahead, the dark cape flapped in the wind in a manner that felt all so invitational.
"If this is personal—" Close behind, Naruto grunted out again, inevitably compressing words of resignation into a hiss when his efforts convinced no heads to turn, no feet to slow.
"Take it outside. Not here, in village grounds."
If... The redhead repeated in his head. With the way his friend had phrased his cautionary command, it was evident that he'd held minuscule hope that the deliberate sport taking place now was stemmed from something—anything else.
And Gaara thought to disappoint.
...Oh this was. Personal. On all levels.
The need to witness recognition of faults and remorse on the face of this man surpassed all things present. There might come a day when Gaara would question his own approach in hindsight, all factors considered.
But it wouldn't be today.
Focus forward on his mark, he only sped up. Rapid footsteps persisted from all parties addressed, in the direction of the village gates, serving as unsaid compliance to the Hokage's urging as well as a small offering done to preserve the last of the blond's wits. This was Gaara's intention from the start, supported by what sensibility he had left, even as he had little logic to back up the rest of his actions.
Lush grass padded his landing not long after, as the bottoms of his feet planted down on the ground from the tree lines, following suit of another. The destination was chosen. Before him, Gaara embraced the view of a quiet clearing within the vast expanse of forest that quickly rendered the scenes of Konoha and their earlier ordeal forgotten in his mind. Back straightened, he stood under the afternoon sun, feeling its rays warming his skin in a way that was unlike the torrid heat of the desert. For a moment, he simply took in the fresh air his lungs welcomed.
"Who would have thought, that the honorable Kazekage would stoop so low to sneak around with another man's wife."
The peace from nature was spoiled, not unexpectedly. Malicious, derisive words spilled out from across, fast setting in motion what type of encounter they were to have. The dark-haired man looked over his shoulder. Through fringes of jet black hair, a cold gaze was cast his way, before the person shifted his footing and turned himself around.
Gaara trained his focus on him, expressionless. Unruffled and ready, he returned with equal charge in his own commentary long reserved for the man. "Sasuke. You remind me once again why I loathe you. You value little of the precious things you are granted in life."
"You have been," bluntly, he told him, "but a fool since the very beginning."
Sasuke crackled out a dry chortle of sort and silenced almost immediately after. Something in his gaze changed, akin to a flash of lightning in the night, as he gritted out. "That's rich coming from someone who slept with my woman."
"You don't deserve her."
"So that gives you the right?"
Sasuke's low voice shook, in contrast to his still form, growing restless and furious. With a movement of his arm under his cloak, he fingered the hilt of his sword in a purposeful show that was not missed by Gaara. Teal eyes gravitated down to the display then back up.
"Hey! This is really not the best time for this!"
The hoarse voice that'd faded earlier arrived first to their scene, before its owner dropped to his feet with a thud. Having lagged behind and finally caught up, Naruto scanned his heavy eyes from one to another, his eyebags underneath hung lower. Gaara briefly glanced over. The blond looked worn out, perhaps not at all recovered from their fight with the Otsutsuki and the aftermath, despite the aid of healing from the Nine Tails's chakra.
None of them were, truly. But Gaara had chosen to ignore the persistent aches from numerous bruises. He retracted his attention from the Hokage, as he quietly spoke, "No, it's not."
He concentrated on the Uchiha again and added, with conviction, "It's the only time."
When faced with the sight of the dark-haired man slipping away from their group, Gaara had determined it was his one and only opportunity to act. He couldn't allow Sasuke to walk away, go off the map, without getting what he had in mind to achieve.
Before him, said man kept deaf ear to Naruto. His hand now gripped at his sword. "You know, I don't have the whole day to waste. So let's skip the meaningless talks."
"I'd rather that you pay the consequences for your sins, Kazekage." The corner of his mouth slanted up into a vicious sneer.
Gaara's eyes thinned. The scenario wasn't exactly out of his calculation: At the most harmless, their exchange would be a constructive verbal discussion, he'd surmised. At the least... There were primitive urges rising from within him that found pleasure in more drastic options. And he'd decided he didn't really mind after all.
Resolution through words of mouths—it was a game for politicians. Before he was Kazekage, he was a shinobi first and foremost. A fighter.
If his message to Sasuke necessitated a different method of delivery, so be it. Diplomatic protocols be damned.
"Guys!"
Gaara moved a step forward. For the second time that day, his sand rattled within its container. And when he opened his mouth, he wasn't asking for understanding; but simply no interference, from his position as a friend.
"Naruto, stand down. This is between me and Uchiha."
"Hokage-sama requests your presence urgently."
In her seat, Sakura brought her eyes up to the strange badger mask appearing in her space. Curiously she looked at the anonymous individual, halting in her application of dressings to Boruto's burns. A frown settled across her forehead.
"What is it?" she asked tentatively, then warily, while hoping for the opposite. "Is someone hurt?" After all, weren't they all told that Naruto and his rescue party had returned to Konoha safely hours ago?
To her side, a standing Hinata also crinkled her brows at the shinobi from ANBU.
"Come with me, please," the man only insisted.
A small surge of irritation rose in her. Miffed by the secretiveness—unnecessary given a time like this, in her opinion—Sakura scowled, "Listen, unless somebody is in need of urgent medical assistance—"
"It's Kazekage-sama and Uchiha-san..." he interjected, supplying a meager piece of information in a cautious whisper. If he'd surveyed their surroundings before he talked, she couldn't tell.
Lips agape, Sakura dropped her hands into her lap. It was after a second before she spoke again.
"Di-did..." she stumbled a little, trying to swallow the sudden pressure that swelled up in her throat and finding it hard to do so. "Did something happen?"
"It's advisable that you come with me, Sakura-san." There was no reassurance given, and Sakura felt a pang of anxiety in her heart and knots twisting in her stomach. Torn, she turned to her company, apology in her expression.
She was already on her feet, even before receiving a nod of understanding from Hinata who laid her palms on Boruto's shoulders. The head nurse filed in to finish the dressing of the boy's wound. The masked shinobi proceeded to march away from her for the exit, without any apparent need to check behind him. Brisk steps followed him closely, faithfully.
Sakura ran. Her heart pounded in the same rhythm her feet pounded against the pavement. Her head buzzed with a dozen thoughts, all thick with concerns and confusion. Winding through the streets of Konoha, passing by scenes of recovery efforts after the enemy's attack, the messenger continued to guide their path. He made her forehead tighten in bewilderment, as she watched their trip taking them over the threshold of the village gates. The canopy of trees was high over her head, allowing only hints of the blue sky above. She breathed hard, and she smelled only of plants and earth.
Soon she felt it—with each foot of ground swiftly covered—the faint bursts of energies and noises from ahead registering more prominently on her senses. Familiar. The woods began to thin out, creating an opening, and toward the brightness at the end of the tree lines she rushed.
For a second, white flooded her vision. Then she was brought to an abrupt full stop, her brain struggling to absorb the scene.
"What is going on!"
Her nervous yell reached her friend first. Naruto whipped around, calling her name that barely made an impression, while signaling some sort of order to the ANBU agent who'd escorted her. The messenger disappeared. She didn't care.
Thick tendrils of sand shot through the air like angry serpents, clashing with slashes after slashes of a gleaming blade. Following it were physical blows exchanged almost too fast to see. From one spot to another, limbs collided, recoiled. Repeat.
"They are fighting..."
Her rounded eyes switched between the field in front and the blond beside her. With great effort, she took in his sudden insertion and tried to reconcile it with what she was seeing. Both men looked bruised and winded, with one maybe more so than the other. It was just a spar—Sakura hoped, prayed naively, stupidly that Naruto would tell her next. Nothing to worry about.
But he didn't. "Because of you..."
His mouth clamped into a grim line, as if not at all willing to have to reveal this fact. His simple statement told her so little, yet so much. Too much. Like it was a cruel punch to her chest. Her feared scenario made into reality before her, Sakura paled. None of it made sense.
Why? Why then? Why now?
"This is insane!" she snapped at the blond man, the seeming bystander, "why are you just standing here? Stop them, Naruto, dammit! At this rate they'll…"
"I tried... but—" His expression contorted. From it Sakura perceived the degree of his helplessness and frustration, as well as his terrible exhaustion. She sensed the low chakra reserve in his system. And above all, the reason she was brought here.
Sakura grimaced.
"If you don't..." Clenching her teeth, she doubled up her fists. "I will!"
She sprang forward.
So many sounds overwhelmed her. "Get out of the way!" Sakura heard someone shout. She couldn't tell who it was.
A torrent of sand froze with a jerk above her, held back by an invisible force in the nick of time from burying the ground where her heels just dug into. A swing of sword pierced through the dust toward her, too late to withdraw from its course. A glowing red eye rounded at her. She gasped and dodged barely out of the path. She went for the bend of the wielder's arm, missing it and failing to pry the weapon from his tight hold when he jumped back out of her reach.
Between the two men Sakura situated herself.
There was a certain irony that was not lost on her, as her mind couldn't help but drift to that hauntingly similar episode in the forest so long ago... Except the one she stood to defend now was the one who didn't spare a thought about hurting her back then; and the one she faced now was the one her younger self would do anything to protect...
"Move." Brandishing his sword, Sasuke warned her darkly, in a voice that was no longer familiar to her.
Sakura took a firm defensive posture instead, not hesitant to raise her fists before her.
She was taken aback when he decided to charge, just as she heard the rustling of sand slithering and sliding from behind her. Her fists tightening more, as her alert eyes studied his advance. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five feet—Her chest constricted, staring straight into the ringed purple iris. Instinct told her to leap away, but she braced herself for impact.
It was instant. Sasuke vanished right in front of her eyes. Her body shook and lurched forward without her control. Her heart skipped a beat, as she realized their swap of positions as the result of his space-time ninjutsu. She snarled inwardly.
"Oh no you don't!"
Twisting her body around, Sakura made a grab for the aggressor, catching a handful of the fabric of his cloak. She yanked it backward. Hard. It was enough to make him lose his balance before he could get to his target. With her brute strength unchecked, she flung his weight overhead. Sasuke turned a somersault mid-air, landing on a mound of greens a short distance away.
Sakura huffed hotly, heart drumming against her ribcage, eyes ablazing.
"Sasuke, enough. Stop."
His jeering gaze descended upon her.
"You think I started this?"
His glare darted over her shoulder past her. Sakura stretched her eyes wide, unable to turn her head around to look at the other person. The somber silence from the man behind her only served to feed the so many "why's" that filled her head.
"Sakura, look at yourself." A harsh tone forced her to refocus. Sasuke talked gratingly. "Look at what you've become."
"Turning against your own family for an outsider."
"That's... that's not it," she answered fragilely to the accusation, the flare of indignation in her living out its short duration. His words always had a dominating effect on her.
"What then," he coerced, "explain yourself, Sakura."
"You..."
She'd told herself she owed him nothing, after every and all things that've taken place. She'd laid out all her grievances in her letters to him, so he should know. Yet she felt compelled to respond. The bangs of her hair fell over her view.
"I did everything for this family, and you... you were never there..."
So don't you dare...
She squeezed out, through trembling lips and all, a scant version of all the truths she would've wanted him to know—and none of the uncivil things her inner self wanted to yell at him. It was all she could manage out, under such odd circumstances, in front of the three men in her life—each important to her at one point or another.
Maybe another time, if it was just the two of them, in the privacy of a confined space, she'd have screamed, cried, and unleashed all her years of pent-up frustration and anger at him in ugly words.
Maybe another time, she'd have furiously beat her fists against his chest in resentment.
She watched the frown between his brows deepen. His eyes darkened. Her heart clenched.
Or maybe not. Because...
"Are you saying it's my fault that you cheated?"
She'd wronged him too...
Sakura stiffened. Wilted. Couldn't produce speech. A burst of emotions pushed against the back of her throat competing for voice, suffocating. She really shouldn't have considered his spiteful question...
But, two people so, so horribly at fault, who was more to blame?
Half a minute of painful silence didn't stay unbroken. The worst damage came next.
"Clearly, you are not fit to be Sarada's mother."
Her wide gaze locked onto the rigid angry face of her husband. She wished she'd heard him wrong. Oh how he managed to stab her right into her core, without a knife, without moving...
No…
"I will take her with me."
No...!
Through her blurred vision, Sakura saw him turning, saw him walking away. She rushed toward him, one arm reaching out desperately for his back.
"You can't!"—
Before the dark-out, Sakura remembered those colored orbs that spinned and spinned. She felt her mind swirl, her muscles go numb. Her legs gave.
Then she saw nothing at all.
"Shit."
Between the two of them the blond man dropped a curse under his breath, pulling his pinched blue eyes from the unconscious woman cradled in his arms to him, then to the west of them—the empty path that led back to the village, where both had suspected that Sasuke had gone to. Like a mirage, he'd vanished, too quick to be stopped.
"Way to give a break to a guy who just survived kidnapping by aliens."
Naruto let out a grumble, sarcasm laced, his flat expression telling of more irritation than accusation. Gaara mutely accepted the sentiment, saying nothing. He was instead concentrating on the pink-haired woman in his arms, the rise and fall of her chest. Intently, he watched for any irregularity in her breathing. Despite his Kage status, he knew he would be no match for Sasuke, possessor of the Sharingan and Rinnegan. He could, at best, be on par with him on a good day. But that hasn't deterred him.
Sakura's arrival and intervention, however, wasn't at all within his calculations of the potential outcomes of his confrontation with Sasuke. It'd been a complete surprise.
His sand had cushioned her against her fall first, before he leaped to secure her in his hold. His mind had cooled and steadied, deep concern overtaking his anger and gnawing at his insides.
"She'll be okay." Naruto sighed, answering without being asked to the worry conveyed through his body language.
"It's not the first time." An added mumble making up the rest of the blond's reassurance had Gaara level his attention to him, his forehead creased. "Not the first time," his mind dwelled there. But Naruto chose not to address the question in his face.
"C'mon." He motioned with his head, in the direction of Konoha.
To his companion Gaara nodded concurrence, pressing Sakura closer to him. Sand swirled in the spaces all around, and he used what little chakra remained in his reserve to transport them.
It was mere minutes after they'd crossed the gateway into the village that the Hokage whispered out, "There." In a quiet neighborhood, a clamor of voices had already drawn Gaara's attention, allowing him and his company to alight.
"Papa, where are we going!" Sarada staggered behind the tall dark-haired man, one wrist in the grasp of the older Uchiha.
"Sasuke!" Naruto called out.
Sandaled feet temporarily stopped. With his permafrost expression, he fired his callous response.
"Get lost. You have no business in our family affair."
"Mama! Is she—" The girl focused toward their direction, wide-eyed, about to sprint, before being tugged back with force.
A low growl emitted from within Gaara, echoed by Naruto.
"Sasuke." The Hokage ground out again, disapprovingly, warningly. Glancing over to Naruto's solemn profile, then back to the street they occupied, Gaara took notice of the unusual emptiness of their environment, devoid of civilians. The perimeter had been cleared with intention, he recognized. This observation was ensued by the sudden landing of several figures, all positioned in a tight circle around Sasuke. Two Konoha ANBU members, Sai, Shikamaru, and—
Temari. Gaara found her eyes falling to a passed out Sakura in his arms, then rising to meet his stare with her fierce frown. Then she rolled them away, instead fixing her attention on the two Uchiha. And he did the same.
In front of them, a pair of wild eyes flitted to and from every angle. Narrowed. Darkened... at the blond, then the rest of them.
There were sounds of discrete shuffling left and right. The air tensed, then electrified.
"Papa, you are hurting me!"
A sharp cry grounded all of them back to their surroundings. Sarada winced and wriggled her arm in Sasuke's white-knuckled grip. The latter dropped his gaze downward to her, looking momentarily stunned.
Gaara's face hardened. With Sakura in his protective hold, he took a step forward toward the father and daughter. Before anyone else could speak or act, he'd sent his loud and clear message to Sasuke:
"Let them go. You are not worth their pain."