Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

The sand storm howled over the dunes, tossing up sand to reveal bedrock and age-old corpses, the fossils of primordial creatures, and more sand.

Gaara pulled his scarf closer around his mouth and nose as he navigated through the whirlwind raging all around him. The sun was setting, and he knew there was a cave somewhere nearby. He had to find shelter from the storm, or risk being killed.

The seventeen-year-old found the heavy rock face, and ran his hands over the rough stone, trying to find the cave hidden by sun-golden sands.

Finally, when Gaara moved his hands there was nothing there, and he knew he had found the cave.

Gratefully, the sand wielder slipped inside of the cave, thankful to be away from the storm. Normally, he loved sand in all of its forms, be it gentle or rough, but there was something about this sandstorm that seemed different and almost sinister.

He traveled deep out into the desert often; Gaara was still an insomniac of the harshest degree, so his load of paperwork never seemed so heavy as it did for other kage's, and it enabled him to take long excursions out into the desert often enough to drive his siblings to distraction.

Going out into the desert allowed Gaara to think. It let him meditate on his decisions, on his life choices, on what he had done right and wrong. It let him be calm and to himself, completely alone in his element, to be immersed in the desert's song, to hear it and be glad.

The cave was his regular haunt during his journeys. It was a safe place, quiet, cool and tranquil, with a water supply deep in the bowels of the cave. Some priests who had passed through the area said that the cave resounded with the gods. Gaara could well believe them.

The cave was his sanctuary. But the cave was not empty.

Gaara smiled slightly as he slipped through the threshold into serenity, running his hands over the rough earthen walls, but his smile evaporated abruptly when he realized that he wasn't alone.

Sitting in the shadows was a small-framed figure in dark brown full-length wraps and a cream-colored scarf about the head, shivering slightly and rubbing small delicately-fingered hands in the chilly cave.

"Who are you?" Gaara demanded roughly, his voice sharp with displeasure. He was not accustomed to having to share his refuge with others.

The figure started and stood, revealing itself to be slightly shorter than Gaara. Gaara had recently started growing again, but he was still short for a man of his age, barely sixty seven inches. So this figure was either an even shorter man or a tall woman.

"Forgive me." The figure had a deep, but definitely feminine voice, soft, dulcet and smooth. "I did not know that others came here." Those pale hands rose to the head scarf, and let it fall to the floor.

Gaara was looking at a young woman, slender and pale and beautiful, her clear, translucent skin almost shining. Gaara could see why she covered up so completely; the sun would burn her delicate skin the way a frying pan boiled grease.

She had long black hair hanging free at her shoulders, a wide, heart-shaped face, a high, unlined forehead and large, gentle brown eyes. She smiled slightly as he stopped himself from staring.

"Never mind," Gaara excused it a little more abruptly than he intended, just as surprised by this development as she was.

She smiled and swept her skirt as she sat back down on the sandy ground, cross-legged with the air of someone well-trained in this art. "The storm will not pass for several hours," she intoned softly. "You might as well settle in."

"I know that," Gaara half-snapped, at the same time settling down across from her. Deep down, he attempted to sooth his singed nerves.

The woman smiled again, and despite himself Gaara felt an odd sense of calm waving over him like a gentle sea, and his guard lowered smoothly like the fall of a veil.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked her, his tone softer than before.

Her small hands twitched in her lap; Gaara got the strange feeling, a sensation deep in his gut, that this question unsettled her. "This is my world now. It is a place for contemplation, for meditation. It is my sanctuary."

Gaara frowned. "Don't you get hungry?"

She flicked her dark black hair out of her face, banishing a shadow at the same moment. "There is a village two miles south of this cave. When I grow hungry, I retire there for food. When I become lonely, I venture there for human companionship."

Gaara nodded, his eyes haunting the threshold, ghosting the sandstorm that still raged outside. Strangely, the noise seemed worlds apart from their cave, from their conversation.

"And why do you come here?" A strange, speculative, almost sad smile reached across her graceful face, as her brown eyes penetrated his equally pale face. The hairs on the back of Gaara's neck stood on end. He was not alarmed, nor did he feel threatened. He just…had a feeling. There was more in that question than what was being said.

"For the same reasons as you. Except…" Gaara hesitated. Why was he speaking of this to a stranger, a woman he did not know. Her presence was strange. It was calming, like some great turmoil in him was being quelled.

"…Except that I come here, to think. I come here…to hear the silence."

She nodded. "That is an interesting answer. One filled with questions." Gaara drew a blank on that. It was probably the most obscure thing he had ever heard. The woman entwined her fingers. "My name is Haku."

The wind howled outside, an interlude as Gaara paused. His face never changed, but his eyes were alive with a strained curiosity. "My name is Gaara."

Her soft eyes deepened with something Gaara could not understand. "Gaara. I see in you're eyes… You are lonely."

He looked away. Gaara had always been able to tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes. Even when he had himself had little of what any would call humanity, he had been an excellent judge of the character and emotions of those he came across. He could recognize anger, fear, happiness, love. What he saw in this woman's eyes was…loneliness. Loneliness to match his own, loneliness like a hole in the chest that couldn't be filled no matter how hard one tried.

"I see in your eyes…the same thing."

The talked. And talked. With the sandstorm caging them inside of the cave, there was little to be done but talk. Gaara found in himself an appetite for talk like he had never experienced in his short life. He suddenly wanted to talk to her, to know her.

They spoke, losing reality, and the cave became the sphere of their existence, reality, eternity. All that mattered was suddenly in that cave.

Haku went first. Her story was one that Gaara could relate to in infinite ways. She had been feared for a gift that she could not control, and as she spoke Haku would spin ice in her hands. Ice as thin as spun glass and as beautiful as moonlight, and her eyes would glow in strange contentment as she fashioned the shape; Gaara wasn't exactly sure what she was making yet.

There were, at course, point where Gaara had to interject.

"You're a man?" he asked her in disbelief. Gaara was sure that no man ever had such feminine features.

Haku smiled and a low giggle-like chuckle escaped her throat, not a coy giggle like those of the girls in Sunagakure who seemed to think (and Gaara still shuddered to think about it; Matsuri was thankfully regaining her sanity and didn't bother him about it nearly as much as she used to) he was cute, but the giggle of someone who was amused. "No."

"Then why did you tell Naruto you were one?"

A pall passed over her face, and Haku did not answer. She went on. Her story, as all stories of that nature did, hit a spiraling climax, emotion-filled. And of course, not every one got out alive.

"They believe I am dead."

"How did you survive?" Gaara enquired curiously. It never occurred to him, who had literally died, how morbid of a question this could be.

Haku did not seem to mind. "I'm not sure." Her face became darkly confused, and the ice sculpture was forgotten as she began to wring her hands in anxiety. "The skills I learned under Zabuza-san included the ability to put someone into a near-death state. I suppose…I suppose…that something like that could have happened to me. It took me weeks to recover, alone and by myself, and I still experience numbness around the area of my heart."

She was distressed, and Gaara did not quiz her again. As he abhorred speaking of the time in which he had been dead, Haku clearly disliked relating the tale of how she had survived. Numbness around the heart… Are you sure it isn't simply numbness in the heart?

"How do you know Naruto, Gaara?"

Gaara sighed, and stared down at his hands. "He saved my life. In more ways than one."

And then he began to speak. He talked and talked, until he had nothing to speak of anymore. Everything from his birth and his mother's death, the Shukaku's influence and Yashamaru's betrayal, his descent into madness and later redemption, to his election to the post of Kazekage, his battle with Deidara and his realization of all his dreams (the dream to be more than what he was, to be important to someone, to risk his life and ultimately sacrifice his life for the village, because even if he had been revived later, he had died in the defense of Sunagakure), to his death and resurrection.

Haku smiled as she finished fashioning the ice sculpture in her hands. She held it out to Gaara. It was a flower, a rose if he was not mistaken, fashioned entirely out of ice. "It is brittle, and fragile, yet strong, and it will not melt unless broken."

Gaara understood. There was so much more going on than what was being said. He took the ice flower, and laid it gently on the ground. "It will keep," he whispered.

Then he looked at her, as she was staring at the flower, her eyes far away and filled with questions that needed to be answered. "Do you miss Zabuza?"

She sighed, biting her lip and staring outside. "More than you can possibly imagine."

Gaara nodded, again and again, feeling strangely crushed and as awkward as a newborn colt. Then he noticed something.

She answered his thoughts. "Look. The storm has stopped."

Rising silently, both rose and came to stand at the cave mouth.

The storm had indeed stopped, and it had left a sweet night in its wake. The night was cool, as all desert nights were, but it lacked the chill bite of a normal desert night. The sky was clear, so clear. Set against the deep sapphire canvas, the moon shimmered as a crescent sliver, shining and silver like a curl of white hair or an ice shaving. The stars glittered like diamonds and sapphires and rubies, glimmering jewels in an ocean of forever.

"Do you wish to go back with me?" the words blurted out of his mouth, and Gaara could hardly believe that he was asking this of someone whom hours ago he had not known and had been rude to. But nothing was the same anymore, and this felt natural and normal and somehow right.

Haku smiled, the smile of a new person being reborn, beautiful and clear. "I think I may. It grows lonesome. And I believe that there is good that I can do in your city."

Green eyes, flashing like pale peridots in the spring sunlight, surveyed the snow-white desert sands with speculation. "It's too late to return now."

She smiled as though she had been expecting to hear this all the long. And maybe she had. "Then sleep."

They sat down against the rock face, near the mouth so both could see out of it; Gaara sat closer to the mouth. "I don't sleep," Gaara reminded her absently.

Haku's smile warmed the desert night for an instant, and that instant lasted an eternity in Gaara's eyes. "Yes, I know." She gently wedged herself in the crook of his arm, and Gaara wrapped his arm around her slight shoulders; again, it was an alien gesture that seemed as familiar as the warmth of the sun. "I will sleep," Gaara felt small fingers entwine themselves in his hands; her hands were warm, "and you will watch the stars, as you have always intended to."

Gaara smiled, and as all the time he watched the stars, careful not to disturb the young woman whose head rested on his shoulder, it seemed as though they had always been there. He had just been waiting to find himself. And her.

Sweet? Deep? Cloying? Cheesy? Ooc? Angry that I made Haku a girl (Again)?