disclaimer: I own nothing except for my imagination and creativity.

Adam, Eve and the Serpent

Chapter 1:

Garden of Eden

"Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"

"Kankuro, you've got to stop pushing yourself so hard," said Sakura, as she stood over her fiancé with a concerned look that Kankuro couldn't help but find adorable. However, he brushed her off casually as another set of coughs spiraled in his chest.

"I'm fine," he said insistently, pulling on Sakura's wrist to bring her back to their shared bed. However, she pulled away and gave him a stern look that made the male slightly flinch.

"As an experienced doctor, and your concerned fiancé, I forbid you to take missions of A rank or above until you're fully healed from this cold," Sakura ordered, with her hands on her hips authoritatively.

"What? That leaves rank Bs and lower! That's Chuunin and Genin work!"

Unfortunately, Kankuro's protests were silenced by the intimidating glare Sakura was giving him.

He sighed in frustration, before agreeing just to make her happy and to bring her back into the warmth of their bed.

.&.

Sakura shot up, her skin sticking to the thin, white sheets, as a cold sweat attacked her vulnerable body.

It had been another nightmare… or rather a memory that replayed itself in her mind when she was in slumber. They reminded her of the guilt and of the things that she had lost. In their wake they left a tearful Sakura remembering back to when she had Kankuro in her arms. Now, he was six-feet underground.

The cold that he had experienced from overworking himself had turned deadly in a matter of hours when he had taken an A rank mission, despite going against his word. However, Sakura couldn't help but to blame herself of his undeserving death. She was a Jounin medic and had been the famous apprentice of Tsunade, the Godaime Hokage, yet she still couldn't diagnose her fiancé with anything more fatal than a cold before his death.

The guilt ripped through her, like a fresh wound, and she suddenly found herself in that helpless position again that she had felt when she was a Genin on a team where all she could do was watch her teammates' backs as they fought their enemies.

She slid off her mattress and fell to a crumpled pile by the side of her bed. She bent her knees up towards her chest, before letting out a heart-breaking cry of grief. She wept for what seemed like hours, staying in that protective fetus position until a knock on her bedroom door resonated throughout the room.

Alarmed, she looked up as the person cautiously opened the door slightly to peek in. She was shocked when the red-haired Kazekage, also the little brother of her dead fiancé, poked his head in.

He was shocked also, but for different reasons entirely. It had been four months since his brother's death, yet he still couldn't seem to get use to the sight of Sakura's teary eyes and emotional outbursts. He certainly hadn't expected to walk in on her in this state.

A silence enveloped the room awkwardly until Gaara coughed to clear his throat. "…Sorry to intrude on your privacy… but Temari sent me up here to say that breakfast is ready." He backed out of her doorway without even waiting for a reply, but he was stopped, mid-way through closing her door again.

"Wait, Gaara-san," she said quickly. However, she was unsure of what to say when he entered her room again. She racked her brains for an excuse but the best she could come up with made her regret saying it at all. "Stay with me for a little bit."

There were undertones of desperation in her voice that Gaara instantly detected but he put it down to her immeasurable grief.

She bit her lip, waiting for his reaction. She knew that the Kazekage was possibly the most antisocial shinobi in Suna and for her to even suggest to him to keep her company seemed like suicidal madness, but she couldn't help the fact that she clung to anything that reminded her of Kankuro. That's the reason she had permanently moved to Suna, into the very house that the Sand Siblings resided in. She had taken the room that Kankuro used to sleep in… the one where she often stayed when she came on long missions and needed a place to crash.

Surprisingly, he stepped further into her room and closed the door after him. She signaled for him to take a seat on the floor next to her so their backs were leaning against her bed. He obliged but sat about a meter from her.

He wasn't very good with words; Sakura knew this from the many scarce interactions she had with him. So they sat in silence for a few good minutes, not caring that Temari was probably eating breakfast alone.

"Do you ever have dreams of Kankuro?" Sakura asked out-of-the-blue, breaking the thick silence with her soft tones.

Gaara didn't make any visible notion to move or to reply, until he said quietly, "I don't sleep much."

Sakura had completely forgotten about his insomnia, even after Shukaku was extracted from him. "Right… sorry," she abashedly apologized.

"…But I can still feel his presence in this household," he consoled, flicking his jade eyes at her, to see her reaction. The tough façade that she wore on missions had completely crashed in the face of the death of Kankuro, evident by the fact that Gaara could read all the emotions that flitted over her face, even if they only stayed there for a fraction of a second.

Her eyebrows raised in shock. She hadn't wanted to admit it to anyone before, lest they think her crazy, but she wouldn't lie; she completely agreed with Gaara on the idea that the feel of Kankuro was still present even after death. In her surprise, she grabbed Gaara's bicep, looking up at him in awe. "You too?" she asked, astonished that they were, on some level, thinking on the same wavelength.

However, his eyes instantly fell to the subconscious burning sensation on his upper arm where her touch was scalding him with every second that passed. She slowly followed his gaze, only just then realizing how the muscles on his arm had rippled pleasingly under her hand where he had instinctively tensed.

She couldn't help but for her face to burn up a little at these thoughts, and she retracted her touch away almost instantly.

Gaara couldn't explain why he had acted that way. His aura had turned darker, almost threatening, when she had touched him, but what most confused him were his contradictory internal feelings – how his arm felt like it had been on fire with just the gentle touch of her hand over his crimson coat. Perhaps it was just the strange awareness of a human touch after it had been so long since anyone had dared to lay hands on him, especially with his Kazekage status. But whatever it was, Gaara couldn't help but run away from it.

He bolted up and out the room before the pink-haired kunoichi could even blink. Just before he was out of earshot, he ordered just one last word to Sakura that said it all: "Breakfast."

.&.

When Gaara came down the stairs, looking slightly more dazed than usual, Temari dropped her chopsticks ungracefully into her miso soup bowl with a slight splash. She stared at her brother as he silently took a seat at the head of the dining table. When Sakura came in a few seconds after, also looking enigmatically modest, Temari began raising her eyebrows in suspicion.

"What took you two so long to get down here," Temari said with hints of a displeased frown in her voice. "Your breakfasts are more than likely cold."

Sakura simply mumbled a small apology, whilst Gaara kept his silent façade on, not bothering to answer his older sister. They both said their thanks in a semblance to the smallest whisper and began immediately digging into their food.

When Temari realized that was the best she could get out of the both of them, she sighed and stood up to leave. "Troublesome," she grumbled beneath her breath, a trait that she had annoyingly picked up from the Nara kid, who she was obviously spending too much time with.

When the older female was out of the room, the air seemed to grow stuffier and uncomfortable. Sakura felt silly and rejected from when Gaara had run away from her innocent touch. She hadn't meant anything by it, but felt the need to apologize nonetheless.

"I'm sorry, Gaara-san, if I offended you in any way…" she quietly said, looking down in shame as she poked around her food with her chopsticks.

He was quite surprised to hear the apology come off of Sakura's lips. To think that he had made her feel this uncomfortable sent an unhappy twang of guilt down his spine.

"It's fine," he replied nonchalantly, continuing with his meal.

"You've got to understand that all I want is to be like a sister to you," she garbled on. If Kankuro had lived, and they had married in March, just as they had planned, Gaara would be Sakura's brother-in-law and Sakura was not short of forgetting that. "I'm not saying that we should just move on and forget about him but-"

Sakura stopped mid-sentence as the screeching sound of wood harshly scraped against the floor. She looked up from her meal, only to find that Gaara was getting up from his seat abruptly and heading for the door.

"Wait," Sakura called out, almost finding the need to push her chair out too and physically pull him back into the room. "You haven't finished your breakfast…."

He paused slightly, but only murmured over his shoulder, "I'm not hungry."

Sakura was dumbfounded and confused about what he had been so upset about. Maybe Sakura just didn't realize how sensitive Gaara was around the topic of his older brother. Nevertheless, she just didn't understand what he got so worked up about all the time. He always seemed so restless around her, which was unlike his character around people like Naruto or Temari, where his calm demeanor often came off as slightly antisocial. She wasn't trying to say that he wasn't antisocial around her – because Kami knew that any words that came off his lips were a rarity – but he definitely didn't seem calm around her either. It was as if he were set on-edge whenever she walked into the room; a concept she couldn't possibly fathom.

This is a new story I'm working on at the moment, let me know your thoughts!

I wanted to write and publish this monthsss ago, but never got the chance because I've been on holiday and, since starting sixth form, I've been unimaginably busy.

I always hate the first chapter of stories, because to be honest, nothing ever happens in the first chapter, and first impressions are everything :(

But stay tuned, and more exciting things will be coming in the later chapters!

Mucho love and thanks for reading to the end of this chapter, mwahhh