Long chapter is long . . . But there were a lot of loose ends to tie up.
..

In the end they touched down on Sand's eastern wall at daybreak, in time for Gaara to give their unofficial mission report directly to his brother.

"It went well," Gaara said. "The alliance is still in place and we left on good terms with the people who matter." And as they were addressing priorities, and as too many attacks on Sand had made him cautious: "Did I miss anything?"

"We burned Sand down an hour after you left," Kankurou replied, with the casualness of someone telling a well-worn joke. "What you see behind me is every ninja here holding the illusion. Come on, don't give me that look. You've barely been gone. Here." He passed the redhead a scroll. "There's some envoys waiting for a chance to meet with you. They heard there was trouble and want to make sure we're not about to go to war again."

As they continued Sakura stepped past them, to the wall. This time she faced Sand itself instead of the sunrise, and watched as the growing light illuminated buildings, chased shadows. She set her palm against the stone before her: feeling the exchange of her body heat for its coolness, knowing how quickly the sun would render it too hot to touch with her bare hand, and finding solace even in the extremes of this cycle.

Maybe, she thought, she hadn't let herself fully love the city until her place in it had completely solidified—or maybe until she'd been able to formally leave her old home behind. But with the certainty of her new life before her, with the sun warming the back of her neck and the stone wall chilly against her palms and the exposed skin of her thighs—now . . .

By and by, Gaara returned to her side. He noted her silence, her detachment, and how the soft smile on her face was one usually directed at him. Just a few weeks before he'd stood beside her, afraid to touch her as she fell in love with the sunrise; remembering this, he deliberately moved closer and stroked his knuckles up her spine.

"An entire adopted hidden village?" he murmured.

"Tell me that's not what this is."

Maybe she had—which, he supposed, meant he had adopted all of Sand as well. The thought pleased him.

He waited a few breaths; then, with some concern: "Practically married?"

"Better than letting my friends and the Hokage think I'm the Kazekage's kept woman."

He grimaced. "We would've had to fight our way out."

"Yeah, I know. Hey . . ." She touched his hand with a fingertip. "Can we stay here for a minute?"

Gaara nodded assent, then leaned against the wall as well. He rested his hand on the ledge between them, palm-up, offering; without a second thought, she enfolded it with both of her own.

Like normal, he thought. Like everything could still be all right.

He helped her carry her belongings back to Temari's; they snuck in, trying to not disturb the older ninja, grinning at each other as the door to Sakura's room closed behind them. Sakura put her bag and a box on the bed, turned—and found herself lightly against him, her hands settling on his chest and at the small of his back as he wrapped his arms around her. She tucked her face into the crook of his neck and let herself relax; this, too, was calming and steady and hers.

Only weeks before, he thought, he'd been afraid to get physically involved with her, had been afraid his past would spill over and ruin what they had together. Now . . . Now was much the same. But here, like this, he could deliberately face his memories of their fight with the tactile immediacy of her: unflinching, unafraid—as if nothing had gone wrong between them.

She'd said they could be better. He needed to believe her.

So he touched her—immersing himself in the here and now; reminding himself of how his hands fit to the curve of her waist; refamiliarizing himself with the texture of her hair and the neat lines of her eyebrows, of how delicate the skin was over her temples and how her lips moved against his fingertips as she smiled.

Sakura tilted her face up to his in the same way she'd done for weeks, and without thinking he cupped her cheek with his hand and covered her mouth with his own.

For a second there was fear—his fear, that he was rushing, making a mistake, would overwhelm himself—to the point where he pulled back after the initial brush of his lips against hers. But there was no confusion, no shift of reality that he could discern . . . and the expression on Sakura's face was neither alarm or pity, but relief.

"I missed you," she whispered.

"I love you," he whispered back hoarsely, and after a few breaths leaned in to try again. This time went easier.

It'd only been three days, Sakura told herself, and three days wasn't long at all. They shouldn't rush, she told herself; he might need more time. She still found herself thinking about the bed behind her, wishing he'd push her back, craving his warmth and weight and strength.

Maybe they could be quiet.

She ran her hand down over his side encouragingly—then startled when Gaara flinched with physical pain. "What—" she started—then grabbed his shirt and pulled the fabric out of the way. At first she thought he'd been brawling with Naruto again: the bruise in the center of his chest was deep purple; the one against his ribs, nearly black.

It took her another second to realize they were both the size and shape of her fists.

Sakura gaped. "You didn't tell me?"

"I didn't want to upset you more."

She covered one of the bruises with her palm and whisper-hissed incredulously, "So you went to Leaf and met with Tsunade-sama while—"

"It was all right. I think she likes me." He even managed to say it with a straight face.

Sakura exhaled slowly through her teeth, then started to heal him as she struggled for further words. The bruise on his ribs went deep enough that it had to hurt him to breathe. "Seriously, though," she finally told him, "I can't have you get hurt or put yourself—or anyone else—in danger because you tried to spare my feelings or thought I couldn't handle something. I can't. Not again, okay?"

"Okay." Here, then, was another chance to do better.

Sakura looked up, examining his face intently. "I don't want you to feel like I'm making demands, but—"

"No. It makes sense. I can do that."

He gave a wordless happy murmur when she finished healing him, then pulled her closer, feeling her relax as the hug helped mollify some of her worries. Both her hands were still under his shirt; she ran them over his skin casually, then appreciatively, then with intent, and was rewarded when he nuzzled her mouth open for another kiss.

It might be too soon, with everything they'd just gone through, but she had to ask. "Will you stay with me tonight?" She licked her lips, then breathed, "I can be quiet if you can be quiet."

"I'm sorry," he whispered back regretfully, and shook his head.

Sakura nodded—maybe it was still too soon. "All right. I understand—"

"I promised Temari we wouldn't do anything here."

She paled, gaped—then blushed furiously as she started to sputter. "I— Oh no." Was Temari awake? Was she awake, listening as Sakura attempted to seduce her little brother, and hoping she didn't have to hear the two of them— "Oh no. I didn't know, I just—"

"Shh. I know." Gaara bit back a laugh and touched her cheeks, her ears, to see if they were as warm as they looked.

He pulled her back to him and she kept whispering against his shoulder, resting her clenched fists on his chest rather than returning his embrace. "It's just been— And I wasn't sure if . . . I—I don't even want to know what you think of me—"

He nudged his hips against hers to demonstrate exactly what he thought of her, and her protests quieted. Eventually she whispered, "They'll catch us in my office."

"Mine, too." He kissed her temple, then her cheek—little, simple gestures he'd made dozens of times before, worn comfortable through habit—and she finally relaxed in his arms. "We'll figure something out," he promised. And until then, they'd both get to be profoundly frustrated.

But he knew her—deeply, physically, viscerally, without anything but the memory of his past confusion. It meant he could let go of some of his worries about being too damaged to be with her.

He stretched out on her bed while she collected herself, then accepted a kiss on the forehead before Sakura headed for the bathroom and what she'd already declared would be a cold shower. In a moment he heard the water turn on; from his sister's bedroom he could hear Temari moving, getting ready for the day. For a moment he let himself bask in the sounds and smells and feelings—calm and regular and mundane, going on around him.

No—not around him. With him.

Gaara smiled to himself, then got up to start their breakfasts. This situation—with Sakura as his sister's perpetual houseguest, and with so many facets of their lives still in flux—was something that couldn't last . . . But it didn't have to.

ooo

Late that afternoon he found Sakura under a canopy in one of the markets, standing in front of a long table and lecturing to a small group of medics. Gaara sat at the edge of the table to listen as well; she acknowledged him with a smile before continuing.

"As far as medical techniques go—as with ninja techniques, as with most things—we all have a habit of becoming hidebound. Just because a particular medic once used a particular technique to fix a specific problem, we tend to accept that's the only way it should or could be done. If we don't know how to do someone else's combat techniques, that's one thing—but letting patients suffer because we can't replicate someone else's medical technique is unacceptable."

She reached into a pouch, pulled out a small bottle of dark liquid, and held it up. "Poison," she said, and mixed it into her glass of water. "We see it frequently. How do we deal with it?"

"Don't drink it," called one of the medics, to a round of chuckles.

"Besides that," Sakura grinned. She set the glass down and quickly made a few hand seals; as they watched, the poison coalesced. With another gesture she extracted it and held the orb of poison encapsulated within a layer of water, hovering over her palm. "This was how I learned." She met Gaara's eyes. "This is how I saved your brother. But. What if there's another way?"

She mixed the poison back into her water and followed it with a different series of seals. "What if, instead of extracting it, we break it down into its base parts—salts and proteins and chemicals that won't hurt the person?"

The water rippled; she picked it up and took a drink—then made a face. "It doesn't taste good, but it won't kill you."

Another medic offered that Sand's ninjas did something similar to purify water from bad springs, and Sakura nodded enthusiastically. "That's where I got the idea. So . . ." She held up the glass. "Is one of these techniques better than the other, just because it came from a walking legend?"

A murmured chorus of no's, though she could sense some hesitation.

Sakura arched an eyebrow. "Have any of you ever scalded a person's veins or liver while trying to pull a poison out of them?" She counted the winces and cringes with a smile. "Yeah. In some cases one technique works better than the other, and in some cases a poison's already burned through the person and the best we can do is try to treat damaged and failing organs. But the point I'm trying to make is about not limiting yourself to a circular system where we only follow in the footsteps of those who came before us. It's too easy to stunt ourselves with the limitations of someone else's knowledge and abilities, or to say one particular method is good enough. The heart of what we do is helping people, but the root is analysis, synthesis, reanalysis. We don't have to reinvent every technique, but assuming things can only be done one way because of someone else's process or because that's the way it's always been will only hold us back."

After the group broke and left them in peace, Sakura flopped onto the space beside him and grinned. "What are the chances at least one of them goes home and accidentally poisons themselves?"

Gaara reached for her half-full water glass and watched her eyes as he raised it to his lips. Sakura giggled at the face he made; as she'd said, it didn't taste good at all. "I thought you'd taken the day off," he said.

"I did—I just ran into Sakio when I was shopping, and she had a question, and then there were four of them, and then there were eight of them, and then I think we took over this poor guy's restaurant, and . . ." She shrugged. "You know how it can be."

He didn't, but nodded anyway.

Gaara reached for the water again and she snatched it away—"Stop that, stop that. Let me get a new one"—and as she swatted at him he caught her fingers. He leaned into the nudge contentedly when Sakura butted his shoulder with her own, and she huffed with mock-exasperation. "How am I gonna explain that, anyway? 'Yes, I poisoned my water and now the Kazekage won't stop trying to drink it.'"

Gaara reassured her this couldn't be the strangest demonstration they'd seen, and she squeezed his hand. From this close, she could tell his clothes still held the dry, acrid smell of broken stones and masonry from his old building; Sakura shoved her nose against his shoulder anyway, to be sure he knew she could tell where he'd been working. She took his cautious smile as a positive, then leaned back and released him before the heat could make their contact uncomfortable.

"I know it's tradition to hold on to your techniques," she said, "and to keep them secret . . . But what if I do that and someone dies because I wasn't available and no one else could pick up the slack? Like you said, they're my people now, too—and the more I think about it, the less okay I am with letting people be hurt because it might give me a chance to swoop in and play hero. Sure, I could be the last line of defense . . . Or I could build that defense up around me. It'll take a while—but I've got time."

Baki'd said he expected Sakura to take over the entire hospital within five years. Gaara had the feeling his instructor's time estimate was overly generous. He hadn't been sure about their next step—but after watching her there, seeing her talk about the future and being brave enough to not structure one's life around the past, he felt more certain. He stood and offered Sakura his hand. "Come walk with me. There's something I'd like to show you."

He'd known he couldn't carry on living out of boxes at his brother's, and had been half-heartedly looking for a new apartment—but the more he'd thought about it, the less an apartment appealed to him. A house carried more of an air of permanence, he felt . . . But still seemed forward.

But if they had time now, and possibilities . . .

It wasn't his first visit to this site; the house's seller had left its key with him, with "It's you" and a shrug. Gaara unlocked the door to relative quiet. He let Sakura examine the rooms on her own; he trailed her, watching her touch walls and doorways and windowsills as she wandered with a slow, dreamy cadence. He saw her see the practicality and the possibilities, just as he'd done: Sturdy stone walls, to retain the night's coolness through the day and the sun's heat at night; rooftop access, for late night picnics. The absurd luxury: a bathtub that should easily fit them both. Space for both of their bookshelves; space for her to add a personal greenhouse for some of a medic's necessary plants. Space for them to grow into.

Not an apartment rebuilt on a foundation that'd once been watered with her old teammate's blood.

As he watched her walk and daydream he weighed the shame of his assault against their weeks of steady, comforting interactions, then stacked those up to the echo of years of madness and years of damage control—and finally, set all of that versus the ephemeral, glowing possibilities of what they could make together.

He'd worried . . . but like he'd told Tsunade, he couldn't be afraid. He'd learned—and though he hardly counted himself an expert in relationships, he knew in this case all he needed was trust and time.

And so, with the same faith he directed towards the eastern horizon, he lay their possibilities at her feet and waited for her to come to him.

And treading softly, she did. "Is it yours?"

"Not yet," he meant to say, but instead said, "I didn't want it to just be mine." He'd wanted her approval first, and to know he wasn't rushing her into anything. "Tell me what you think."

"I love it." She turned in place, measuring, imagining—and recognizing the weight of his offer: for them to deliberately resume what they'd previously stumbled into organically.

Instinct held Gaara still. "It's all right if it's too soon." No one had been able to give him a straight answer when he'd asked, which meant it probably was. "It doesn't have to be for today, or tomorrow . . . But I wanted you to know it's here. I'm here."

And as far as Gaara was concerned, she realized, it was a final step—and everything after it would just be window dressing. And she, who'd very recently been facing an imminent marriage, looked at the empty rooms, imagined the paucity of her few boxes of belongings, and felt like she'd been caught playing at being an adult.

A month before, the man she'd thought she loved had knelt before her and offered her a part in his plans for his future. The man in front of her now offered more—at her own pace and in her own time.

"I'm not gonna lie," she told him. "It's big, and a lot."

He nodded.

"But . . ." Sakura steeled herself. "I was kind of hoping you wouldn't make me spend the next few weeks unpacking everything, then repacking it and bringing it over here little by little."

His shoulders relaxed, and a smile softened the cautious severity of his gaze. "Even if we further scandalize your friends?"

"Did you see Ino's face? She was over it within ten minutes of you being there with me." Sakura grinned. "So . . . Which room were you thinking would be for guests?"

"This one," he said, and pointed—but when he looked back at her, he found her watching him with suspicion.

"Gaara . . . Did you let your personal assistants team pick out a house?"

"Personal assistants team," he echoed amusedly, and reached for her hand.

Sakura found herself being reeled in by the arm, and set her heels. "You did."

"They helped narrow things down."

An entire adopted hidden village, she thought as he hugged her, then laughed to herself and shook her head. "You did good. All of you. I'll tell them that, too."

And just as soon as she figured out when and where to get a bed, she'd—screw it, she didn't care if there was a bed, she'd have him on the hard bare floor.

Except his signing off on the house appeared to be a signal for everyone in the hidden village to show up, in succession, to thwart her.

Temari brought them a box of towels; Kankurou, a spare lamp and some takeout. One of the men from Sand's council turned up with a set of dishes: "So you have something until you get situated." Sakura watched as Gaara thanked him with actual warmth and received an awkward, familial pat on the shoulder in return.

"He's one of the first ones I fought to become Kazekage," Gaara told her later, as they walked her things over from Temari's. "After I won I talked to him; I told him I was tired of being used by Sand, but that I'd willingly serve. Then I told him we're all supposed to be working together, not at odds with each other—and whoever else had a problem with that or with me could fight me over it, too. He made some good points, so I made him part of my council . . . Except sometimes it seems like he's trying to take care of me more than council me. I don't know if I mind. It's just . . . Strange, still."

He had a tell, Sakura realized, a particular tone of voice and stance used when he didn't understand a person's actions. She also had the sneaking suspicion he'd gotten himself adopted as well, and just hadn't realized it yet.

The ramen team arrived abruptly and ran through the house like a flash flood, everywhere at once, bombarding Sakura with questions—do you live here now are you really staying with us are you in love should you be married will you get married when will you get married—and she found herself trying to explain cohabitation to genin while wondering how Gaara'd manage to so conveniently disappear.

The team vanished just as suddenly as they'd invaded, leaving Sakura in a preternaturally quiet, vibrantly empty house. She looked around, finding the silence striking—then exhaled, blinked, and said to herself, "Not yet. Definitely not yet."

And so on, and so forth, and so on again.

It wasn't until hours later that she and Gaara wandered back through rooms lit only by moonlight: holding hands, deliberately casual despite knowing exactly how this would end, reaching for each other as they tried to let go of their ghosts. She'd spread her camping bedroll out in what'd be their bedroom; Sakura could still feel the floor through it as she drew him down, twining around him and sliding her hands under his clothing. She had missed him, and deeply: the way his muscles moved under his skin, the texture and warmth of his skin under her hands, the smell and taste and weight of him as their caution dissolved into the certainty of established lovers.

She stopped once to tell him it didn't have to be now if he still needed time—but by then the only things Gaara knew he needed were her acceptance and the thoughtless sense of security that'd come from being inside her. He'd intended to go slow but instead let himself be overwhelmed as Sakura told him how she wanted him, as she let him feel just how ready she was—and then with her slow, shuddery exhalation as he pushed into her.

"Are you all right?" he whispered—even as the way she ground her hips up against his gave him his answer.

"Yeah." She dug her nails into his back and her teeth into his shoulder. "Don't stop."

But after only a few moments he did—holding her still even as he remained deep inside her—and it was her turn to ask. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. You're just . . ." He leaned his forehead against hers and smiled ruefully. "I'm not gonna last."

"Good," she replied, wrapped her legs around him, and shifted to grip his sides with her knees. This way she could move him, could draw him into her, could control their tempo and feel him start to shake as she brought him closer and closer to losing control. "I want you to," she whispered.

His response was partially a chuckle, partially a moan. Gaara slid an arm under her and lifted her, then carefully rolled them both, and Sakura recognized the offer as she settled down onto him: for her to take care of herself rather than worry about pleasing him. She stayed upright anyway, moving his hands to where she wanted them, teasing him, watching his face as he watched her in turn—until his eyes closed, his neck and back arched, and he gasped in counterpoint to how she moved on him. And when the way her hips met his came with a different sort of intent he held on, overstimulated, as she worked herself to her own release.

She'd missed the after, too—being sticky and sweaty and not caring nearly enough to want to move; she told him as much, and got a happy sigh in response as he cuddled her closer.

"Is this what'll happen when one of us has to travel?" he mused.

"Come home, get tackled?" She closed her eyes, imagined it, and smiled. "I hope so."

Silence for a few moments, and the idle whisper of his fingertips on her skin as he absorbed himself in the certainty of her.

"Does this count as picking up where we left off?" she asked. "Or starting again?"

He thought about it. "It's what we had," he finally said. "Just . . . The same book, only on a different page." Not a clean slate—not with their history—but a more positive one than shared trauma and immediate overhanging threats.

Sakura propped herself up with an elbow and glanced around the otherwise bare room. "Definitely a new start as far as furniture goes, though."

"I know some ninjas who already offered to help decorate."

"Not the kids," she fired back.

"When do you work next?"

"Gaara. Not the kids."

"They think we should have a moat."

She sat up completely. "Here?"

He grinned.

"We're gonna be those neighbors, aren't we?" Sakura groaned, and sank back down to rest her head on his shoulder.

"Maybe." But the thought still pleased him. "What if I tell them we'll call them in if we need help?"

"But no moat."

"No moat," he agreed.

"To compromising," she grinned, and offered her hand; with a chuckle, he accepted. They could be this, too: absurd, naked on the floor, shaking hands over the state and future of their relationship.

When he got up to go shower she followed him in, dropped to her knees, and coaxed him back to readiness with her hands and mouth. Sakura knew he preferred to finish inside her rather than down her throat and still took joy in bringing him to the point where she knew he'd stop her—then laughed with delight as he lifted her and filled her again, at the certainty and strength of his grip, at the way his muscles bunched and corded across his shoulders, at the sounds their wet bodies made together. His hands at her hips set the pace as he deliberately drew out his pleasure with slow, deep strokes; his breath shuddered in her ear, letting her know how much he enjoyed her. She hadn't expected to finish a second time—she'd wanted the closeness more than the sex—but as she felt the familiar tension building she encouraged him: "There. There. More—"

"Wider," he hissed, and pushed her knees farther apart.

Her muscles clenched around him in a new way, magnifying each of his thrusts until the tension brimmed, then spilled, leaving her wrapped tightly around him and gasping for breath.

When Gaara set her down in order to turn off the water her legs wobbled, and she laughed more as she grabbed him for support. "I'm supposed to go back to work tomorrow. I'm gonna be bowlegged."

"Not yet," he told her—then flipped her over his shoulder and carried her, still dripping, back to their bedroom.

ooo

Pulling the house into reasonable shape took days. They might have picked out furniture together but Sakura was the one to arrange, then rearrange it, and Gaara felt fairly certain she acquired and set up a greenhouse in the time it took him to look away, then look back.

Kankurou told him she was nesting, and then refused to explain what that meant.

Gaara went to her over it, half-afraid he'd missed a cue and should be helping more, and Sakura explained: "No, you're okay. It's . . . The difference between finding a place for myself and making a space for myself in it . . . If that makes sense."

It might—and in time, it did.

By the end of the first week Ino'd sent them an extravagant flower arrangement. Sakura carefully examined every sprig and blossom, and later told Gaara her friend said she'd made a good choice, that Ino was happy for them and wished them both well, and that the blonde wanted to visit and see what kind of life they'd made.

She neglected to tell him there hadn't been a note.

After a few days Sakura rethought what she'd asked of him regarding endangering others by withholding information, declared herself a hypocrite—and then made Gaara promise to not stop bringing her flowers before she'd tell him what he'd been sending. She thought she'd miss the incoherence of his early, accidental messages; instead, he sent her pointedly absurd assortments just to watch her try to explain their intricacies through her giggles.

He told his brother he was learning a new skill set by making Sakura laugh. Kankurou told him that by now he was just bragging.

It still wasn't easy. It took weeks for her nightmares to diminish; it took months before he was able to walk the length and breadth of Sand without fear of being brought to an abrupt standstill by a flashback of rediscovered memories. Other things surfaced at random, sometimes manifesting subtly, sometimes violently: The next time Sakura was called to help a severely wounded patient she froze, struck by the sight of their blood on her skin, before forcing herself to continue the healing. The first time a self-proclaimed warlord approached Sand with a demand for recognition and territory—citing with no small amount of glee the hidden village's various struggles and diminished numbers—Gaara only remembered what his own hesitation had recently cost . . . And at the first breath of an actual threat he splattered the man with enough ferocity to shock even his own retainers into horrified silence.

But the first time she lost a patient he was there to comfort her as she raged and cried and struggled through her grief. And the first time he came to her, needing to know if his choice of action was unreasonable, she didn't falter—and didn't question how he'd all but asked her permission to kill. And sometimes she'd have a hard day—she missed her friends from Leaf, and the sensation of being engulfed by a forest, and maybe a little bit of being able to blend into a crowd of medics rather than be almost constantly under observation—and Gaara learned the importance of taking a few minutes to hold her. And the first time he needed solitude he left her a note before isolating himself: I need time. It's not you. I'll be back when I can.

She woke later that night to him sitting beside her and listened as, in disjointed fragments and repetitions and whispers, he described what had set him back: He'd overheard a few of his council discussing his and Sakura's potential future children—whether her strength and abilities were more familial or just learned, whether their progeny would be merely smart or geniuses, and if any of their offspring would manage to be as strong as him without the added push that'd come from his possession by a demon tanuki.

Except Sand had known exactly what Shukaku'd do to him when they sealed it into him—the unbroken loop of violence and terror and control—and had done it anyway. Except even his own family had blamed him for breaking down under an impossible strain, then blamed him further for returning their hate and violence with even more hate and violence. Except he'd proven strong enough to hold Sand even without the possession—which meant every excuse he'd been told about making stronger ninjas had been lies, and everything he'd gone through had been completely unnecessary, and everyone who'd died along the way had been sacrificed for absolutely nothing.

And even without Shukaku as a part of the equation, the thought of putting Sakura through childbirth still terrified him beyond words.

Had he actually taught any of them better, he wondered? Had Sand really learned from their mistakes—or were his atrocities something some people were able to push aside or forget the second they stopped being directly affected? Was the root of their forgiveness not recognition of his work or his changes, then, but merely a matter of convenience? Or was this just someone voicing a poorly thought out joke or concern for Sand's future in front of what they believed was a safe audience?

Or had what they'd all been through—before as well as recently—been for naught?

He hadn't stuck around to ask.

"I wanted to hurt them . . . And then I was afraid I'd hurt you. And . . ."

Sakura sat beside him, her arm around his shoulders, as she tried to figure out what to say.

He helped. "I know it's not rational." Then, angrily: "I know I would never be like—"

She hushed him. "I know, too. I know."

"But I can't shake it. It's like they forgot already—or like they know what could happen and they didn't care. And if they'll talk like that while I'm still here, this soon afterwards, what's to stop them or people like them from trying to implement something like it again when I'm not?"

It wasn't so much a blood legacy that concerned him, she realized. "Someone might try—so we'll do our best to make it harder for them."

He nodded but remained silent, lost in thought. After a little bit, tendrils of sand pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and tucked it around her; Sakura untucked the one side to drape it around him as well. "You knew this wasn't something that could be fixed just by hitting it a few times, too," she told him, and Gaara exhaled heavily as he nodded again.

"Maybe," she offered, "instead of asking yourself how many more times you have to hit the problem to make it stop, you should ask yourself how you can get more people to keep hitting it along with you. It's not just your fight."

And maybe, he thought, he'd gotten too used to fighting on his own.

Slowly but certainly she felt his shoulders relax and his grip on her fingers loosen; after a few more breaths Gaara brought one of her hands up so he could touch tiny kisses to her knuckles before whispering an apology against her palm.

"It's all right," she told him. "Don't be sorry. This involves me—if not right now, definitely later. I do want kids. You know that. Just . . . Not for a while, still. But I know where you're coming from, too. We don't have to work this out right now . . . But eventually we'll need to."

"I know." He thought about it as he looked her over, finding elegance in the lines and curves of her. Eventually he looked back up and met her eyes. "Want to help hit people?"

She smiled. "I thought you'd never ask."

The relief to being with him, she knew, was knowing he would try—knowing the worst parts of him had been inflicted on him by other people, but also knowing he wasn't willing to be defined by them. She wasn't sure what his chosen process would be for handling the dilemma of potential parenthood, but a few days later found him crouched in a group of small children, regarding them with an echo of their same curiosity and caution. None of the children, she realized, were old enough to have known him before; any hesitation on their part would be due to his title more than his past actions.

And once the group shook off their hesitation, things progressed about as she'd expected.

Gaara reported to her afterwards, visibly struggling for words: "They're . . ."

"Adorable?" Sakura could see from his expression that "adorable" wasn't remotely the word he was thinking of, and—struggling to hide a grin—tried again. "Precious? Delightful?"

"Terrors. They're terrors. They're not rational. They don't listen to sense. They shriek, for no reason. Then they get hungry or tired, and it gets worse."

"Any one of them could be your successor. Any one—you said it yourself." And at that, she had to cover her smile with one hand.

Gaara noticed it and frowned in return. "You've known this all along."

"Anyone who's worked with or had little kids knows." She fought down the smile and looked him in the eye. "And what did you learn?"

The frown deepened to a scowl.

She stepped closer and tried again: "Tell me what you learned about tired, irrational, cranky small children."

His scowl faded. "Point proven."

It took him a couple days to realize the kids had claimed him as their new friend; it took Sakura about as long to recognize his process as controlled, deliberate exposure—the same thing he'd done with her.

After another week her fellow medics figured out why Gaara'd suddenly started paying attention to pre-academy-age children—and despite Sakura's protests, they immediately started plotting ways to hand him babies.

ooo

In time Leaf's rumors drifted to them: Ino and friends had worked hard to propagate their story, and to redefine what could easily otherwise be labeled Sakura's desertion or Gaara's predation. Through Shizune they learned Leaf's council had almost all stepped down or been replaced, and that Naruto, with a newly honed sense of distrust, was the one assigned to keep a close eye on them all. When he found two plotting, Shizune's letter said, he'd asked them how many people they felt were acceptable collateral damage . . . Then dealt with them accordingly.

Sakura read the message and thought about what it meant: how she'd never be able to confront these people either, how she'd never get a chance to call them out on their wrongdoing to their faces. How, like Sasuke, they'd escaped having to actually face her anger; how, like Sasuke, they'd probably died without having learned let alone actually comprehended what they'd done wrong.

For the first time, she asked Gaara to come spar with her.

He required convincing, and when he acquiesced she could practically feel his discomfort through every line of his body . . . And when she realized why, she knew she couldn't push him into actually fighting her. On the training ground they compromised: she'd been working on a new combination, could she show it to him? But what if he disturbed her setup at this point, or this one—

Within an hour they were exerting themselves with something closer to play—and by the time a handful of his council members came looking for him the pair had mostly worked out how to best link his defense and her offense: attacking together, laughing, offering each other options, resetting, attacking, adjusting strategy, and attacking again; mowing down an unending army of sand clones and imaginary foes, too caught up in entertaining themselves to notice their audience's retreat.

On their walk back she found the words to explain what had really gotten under her skin.

"I'm still angry with them," she told him. "They're dead and I'm angry with them. It's stupid. I know it's what you said before, about two believers on either side of the battlefield. But someone else fought that battle for me—again—and . . . It just feels empty." She paused, then glanced at her companion. "But I don't know if what I wanted from them would've been justice, or just revenge. I'm having trouble drawing the line . . . So I end up dragging you out into the desert, because part of me really wanted to fight dead men."

Gaara thought about how he'd once sought equilibrium through killing sand clones of Sasuke, and met Sakura's gaze levelly. "Did it help?"

"A little," she admitted.

"I'm starting to think you can't get justice from the dead," he told her, "or really for them, either. They're still dead. Typically they stay that way."

He watched her sidelong; Sakura did a double-take, then shook her head, smiled, and accepted his water bottle.

"What we're left with," he continued, "is our feelings towards them, or towards the people responsible: guilt, remorse, fear, anger. Sometimes relief. Add enough of those, and the line between justice and vengeance becomes even less distinct." Remembering the picture in his desk of the lost genin, Gaara added, "Sometimes we're aware of the blur and lash out anyway."

Sakura toyed with the bottle silently. Gaara knew who occupied her thoughts, but didn't begrudge her the Uchiha's mental presence.

"Being angry with dead men is stupid," she finally grumbled.

He shook his head. "Sometimes it's understandable."

"But it goes nowhere," she argued.

Gaara suggested she wasn't retreading worn ground so much as solidifying her own sense of what was and wasn't acceptable. "As ninjas, we train to recognize dangerous situations in order to avoid traps and stay safe. How's this different?"

"Because . . . Of energy expended. It's tiring."

"Fighting Naruto is tiring. I still learn things."

And then, she thought, he and Naruto still had the nerve to come to her afterwards and ask what she could do about problems like wrenched shoulders or sand-scoured limbs or mysteriously loosened teeth.

She swallowed the senseless little pang of jealousy over how Gaara was willing to play rough with Naruto but wouldn't even spar her, and reminded herself to focus. "Part of me is learning," she admitted, "but part is just stewing. I'm still angry at Sasuke. I don't think I want to stop, either—at least, not now. It took me years to be able to be and stay angry with him—to really get my head around how much I tried, and how little he was willing to try in return. I thought I'd hold on to my anger, use it as a way to help myself not make the same mistakes, but . . . After a while I realized I was just as pissed off at myself—for letting him treat me the way he did, and for telling myself I couldn't be mad or couldn't fault him because doing so meant I didn't actually love him. I know I was young, but I still feel like I should've known better."

"You learned better," Gaara offered.

"Thankfully. But it still stings." She scuffed her feet, and after a few more steps she prodded Gaara with her elbow. "You're quiet."

"I've watched you threaten to fight Naruto over him telling me how to feel."

"That's a copout," Sakura smiled, and nudged him again. "I could use some perspective. What comes to your mind first?"

When he was thirteen, he told her, he'd found a fledgeling on the street. He'd stopped to look and it'd opened its mouth at him, asking for food. "It was wrong but didn't know better," he said. "So I picked it up and stood there with it"—with Shukaku pushing for him to crush it, since even a tiny amount of blood was better than no blood at all—"and realized it didn't deserve to be hurt just because it looked to the wrong person to take care of it. I'm still there, I think."

"Looking at people like they're hungry baby birds?"

He tilted his head back to better appreciate the scope of the sky. "Maybe a little."

She wanted to know what he'd done, and he replied, "I asked myself what Naruto would do. Then I found its nest and put it back."

"I was the bird, though, trying to attach myself to the wrong person," she said, and hooked his pointer finger with her own. "I didn't quit after the first time he shut me down, too . . . Or even the tenth. There comes a point where I feel like I let it happen—and like letting it happen for so long is what brought all this on us. It's hard to not blame myself for it."

"We're still alive to figure out how."

Sakura's eyes narrowed. "Your encouragement's a little . . ."

"I've been told," he said, and smiled at the distant silhouette of Sand ahead of them. "By Tsunade. She and I talked about learning better, too—about how sometimes we find our paths at different times and in different ways. And just because . . ."

He trailed off. Sakura, watching, saw the shift from engagement to flat affect and knew he'd thought of another comparison.

"Perspective," she urged.

"What you said before about there being good times with Sasuke." The flat affect slipped away as he frowned. "And Yashamaru, and how there were good times—and how they're what made the end worse."

"I get it. It would've been easier if they'd just been awful all the time, huh?"

He nodded. "But just because it wasn't constantly bad doesn't mean the bad parts were acceptable . . . or deserved." His fingers linked with hers and squeezed as if trying to physically drive his declaration home: "You didn't deserve to be mistreated or have your life endangered because Sasuke only wanted you at his own convenience."

His grip loosened as he followed the statement to its parallel conclusion, and almost hesitantly he voiced the thought that'd been plaguing him for weeks. "And maybe I didn't deserve to be killed because my family was horrible at raising children."

Sakura, having made any number of excuses and justifications for another's behavior, saw his "but" coming and headed it off. "Even if I was a pain in the ass?"

"Maybe even if I was an unholy terror of a six year old." But he said it without hesitation, and with half a smile.

It was a step, she thought, and theirs was a murky reflection, nowhere near as cleanly lined up as the one between him and Naruto . . . But through betrayals and abuses, a reflection nonetheless.

It didn't mean his process had to make perfect sense, though.

Sakura shot him a dubious frown. "So . . . Baby birds?"

"Fragile. Needy. Sometimes self-destructive." He glanced skyward again. "Loud."

She smiled. "Maybe I could try looking at some of my patients like lost baby birds, then."

That hadn't been his intended takeaway, but . . . "If it works."

"So when we get back— You know, I've never really looked for bugs in the markets here."

"Ew."

She burst out laughing. "That? Of all things, that makes you say 'ew'?"

Gaara gave her the same long-suffering stare he usually reserved for his brother's jokes, and she laughed harder.

"Here—" Sakura passed out invisible dosages to imaginary patients. "Take two of these annnnnd . . . don't come back."

"A medical prodigy," he sighed.

She cackled and hugged his arm. "Handing out little gift boxes of crickets—"

"Some people think they're a delicacy, you know."

"Live crickets."

"This was not my point."

"Crickets," she gasped, "all over the house—"

"Maybe I was wrong, maybe you're not the normal one—"

"But what if this is as close as it gets?"

Gaara stopped in his tracks, mouth set in dismay—then smiled at her laughter, accepted her hand, and resumed walking home beside her.

After a few more weeks and a stretch of introspection, he invited her back out for an actual sparring session.

ooo

Normal or not, Gaara found he acclimated to her presence remarkably well. He'd said the hardest part of surviving what had been done to him was moving on after the fact . . . But he hadn't factored in what it meant to move forward as part of a unit, what it meant to be part of a constantly cycling, constantly affirming structure. He learned simple, quiet joys: stripping down before getting into bed with her for the sake of skin-on-skin contact. How his satisfaction in the trusting way she reached for him in her sleep went deeper than sex. The unconscious warmth and affection on her face when he caught her watching him over her morning coffee. How much weight came off his shoulders in the face of this stability, and in having one more person he could trust without hesitation.

His council told him he was smiling more; a few went as far as to remark on his settling down. He told them he'd learned to appreciate coming home to someone, and got understanding nods in response.

He brought a few of them home on occasion, for dinner and to show off how he and Sakura were getting along, and she learned to be a lot less blasé about what she was (or wasn't) wearing around the house. She'd initially liked the idea of sleeping nude, liked the idea of passively encouraging Gaara to come to bed and take her with ease—but after the first night a team brought a number of wounded Sand-nins to her rather than the hospital and she ended up attempting a multi-point healing while precariously wrapped in a sheet, she started considering pajamas.

She ended up commandeering one of Gaara's shirts instead . . . Then another, then an older one for working in the greenhouses, then a pair of his pants for relaxing in, then—

Temari reassured Gaara that this was all very normal, that Sakura's impulse had a lot to do with feeling close to him when he wasn't there, and that he should either resign himself to losing a few articles of clothing or take them back, just to let her steal them again. The latter was easier, he found—and came with the bonus of being able to watch as his shirt rode up a bit too high on Sakura's thighs, or draped closely over swells and curves he'd seen laid bare any number of times but which proved no less fascinating.

They spent another few nights picking over her possible eye reconstructive techniques—with the pink-haired kunoichi in his lap, her bare feet dangling as she detailed every step and decision and risk, tapping points and numbers against his chest and arms with her fingertips—before she officially requested permission to start testing it. And with the first few successes, the most recalcitrant of his council members stopped being as concerned with the possible underlying motives of a woman who'd leave her ninja village, or the revolving circuit of her visiting Leaf-nin friends.

The scrolls with Gaara's original notes on her methods were still where he'd buried and forgotten them, months before; after congratulating Sakura for her first success, he quietly dug them up and burned them.

Every so often she'd storm through the door of his office, vocally frustrated over some issue with higher-ranked medics, and he'd need to figure out if she just wanted to bitch or if she wanted talked down . . . Or if he should encourage her to fistfight her problem. As the instances picked up in regularity he realized they were testing her—informally, but all the same—and he knew what was coming as his advisors slowly cycled through to ask him about her, in ways subtle and not: How did he think Sakura's loyalty balanced out between Sand and him and Tsunade and Leaf? Was her temper more an asset or a liability? Could she still be suited to field work, or would Sand be better off keeping her close? Did Gaara actually believe he could give a non-biased answer to any of their queries?

Gaara, mindful of Sakura's thoughts on fighting her own fights, made a point of finding the balance between neither clearing her way nor obstructing her efforts. He couldn't be unbiased, he told them, but he could encourage advisors and head medics alike to consider Sakura's abilities without focusing on his proximity. And they, neither stupid nor malicious, found little reason to argue against advancing her again.

He was one of her first visitors to her new, official office—and when he locked the door behind him, his intent plain on his face, Sakura stood to meet him with, "I just got this promotion—"

"Shh," he replied, as he reached for her.

"The couch squeaks, they all do—"

"Shh," as he backed her to the wall, unbuttoning her shorts as he went.

"We can't get caught," she insisted—then, "Let me get it, that button sticks—"

He pinned her to the wall, knelt, and hooked her thigh over his shoulder; Sakura fought to keep quiet as he deliberately brought her almost to climax with his tongue and fingers, then backed off, then brought her up again. After the third time she realized what he was doing and started swearing at him under her breath; after the fourth she grabbed a fistful of his hair—and when she finally came, it was with her teeth sunk into her own hand to silence herself.

"Shh," he reminded her as he rose, resettled her thigh high on his hip, and fitted himself to her.

"Quietly, quietly," she gasped in return—and still had to clamp her hand over her mouth again as he eased his way into her.

As she later found out, office sex turned her afternoon naps from a light doze to her sleeping like a rock—and as she learned a few days later, he deeply, deeply enjoyed watching her fight to climax silently.

After the second time they were almost caught, she talked him into coordinating their lunch breaks at home.

ooo

Bit by bit, their fragments stabilized and solidified. Time found them sitting side by side, surrounded by their barely-controlled rooftop garden, watching the night-dark sky and slowly dissecting what'd happened to them.

"I don't hate him," Gaara told her. "I don't think I hate any of them—Sasuke, my father, even the people who enabled them both. I understand them, even. But I remember, and I can't pretend they didn't know what their decisions would do to me. Naruto wants me to forgive them; he said I'll feel better, that I need it to move on. But how am I supposed to say everything's all right when it wasn't?"

Late night, she found, was when he'd shuck all armor and solemnly reveal to her his humanity: with neither distress nor detachment, but with pensiveness. And she loved being there to follow his trains of thought, to know he trusted her to help him understand his own reactions, and to watch him absorb and synthesize what she had to say. "Do you feel like forgiving is the same as saying everything is all right?" she asked.

"More like . . . It's a minimization, or an obligation to act like the things done to me or in the name of Sand didn't happen." Or weren't purposefully, calculatingly horrible, or hadn't changed him irreparably. "But that doesn't make sense to me. I've been consumed by hating people before. This is different. So there has to be more than two options; there has to be more than a dichotomy of forgiving everyone, or being unable to move on while always being wrapped up in what's been done to me or the people I care for. It seems . . . disingenuous, or at very least short-sighted to say I can only pick one or the other."

"You said before that sometimes it's understandable to be angry with dead men. Is this what's holding you up?"

"Dead men, live ones . . ." He frowned. "At least if they're dead I don't have to worry about them doing anything else. It's more . . . a collision, between responsibility and emotion. If I was faced with myself as I was before—an out-of-control weapon—I would've had to put myself down. But I thought about what you said too, about what could've been done to prevent . . ." He gestured broadly. "All of it." Gaara turned to watch her face. "If someone told me they planned on killing one of my people to seal a demon into another—with the full understanding that it would eventually drive the person insane and destroy them—I would stop them. If I found out they'd done it anyway? I'd execute them myself. That's my responsibility to Sand. But if I found out they'd done it and, by proxy, been responsible for the deaths of . . ."

Gaara trailed off. A few months before, he'd tried to estimate how many people he'd killed—but even after having his memories forcibly excavated by Sasuke, he found the number fogged not by madness but by time and volume.

"I don't know how many," he finished. "Too many."

Sakura nudged him. "If you found out about it, though?"

"The line I mentioned before, between justice and vengeance—it wouldn't be blurred. It'd be annihilated. But I remembered something you said too, about removing a cancer before it has a chance to spread or do more damage. And that's what that kind of person would be, wouldn't they? Malignant. Forgiving them, especially from my position, would at best be a cruelty to everyone they'd harmed."

He hadn't specifically named his father, she noticed, but had thoroughly condemned him anyway.

"So . . ." Gaara raised a hand. "Naruto says I should forgive . . . But what's forgiveness without justice? And what's justice to the dead?" Forgiving someone, he knew, wouldn't bring back the dead any more than it'd raise a collapsed building, heal the broken, change the mind of the zealot, or stop demons from having been sealed into children—but neither would killing them.

He found it all very circular and very frustrating, which only increased the temptation to just follow in line behind her old teammate. "It's like you said," he told her, "about treading over the same ground—but I don't feel like I'm learning or accomplishing anything. And now . . ." He chuckled—not bitterly, but wryly. "Now I think I'm making it your problem, too."

"Look, you spent weeks here wandering around all night with me as I whinged over getting married—this is the least I can do. Plus . . . You're working things out. You're processing and not just running away from it. I'll listen to you for as long as you need if it helps." She smiled. "Do you have any idea how much shit I would've avoided if half the people in my life were this self-aware?"

He blinked at her. "A lot?"

"A lot."

Another stretch of silence, as Gaara contemplated if self-awareness made his life harder even as it supposedly made hers easier.

"I think I get it," Sakura said. "Naruto's got a blanket solution . . . And you've got a complicated problem that needs more than a blanket. And while we might find our own paths, that doesn't mean the paths all have to go in the same directions or end up in the same place."

He took a deep breath. "Yeah."

"So . . . It seems like there's a difference between making peace with something and coming to terms with it. It seems like you're coming to terms, but not letting yourself forget that some things are irrevocable . . . Which, as Kazekage, just seems responsible."

"There's this gap between where I am and what Naruto says, though." He shrugged and leaned back on his elbows. "Maybe it's just me; maybe it's something I just haven't grasped yet, something he understands that I don't. But there's this nagging feeling that maybe forgiving is what good people do—and my not being able to wrap my head around it means I'm just playing a part."

"Gaara? I've known Naruto for longer than you, and I need you to trust me on this." She gripped his shoulder to focus his attention: "Not everything Naruto says or does is a good idea. Sometimes it's really, really not a good idea at all."

He leaned his cheek against her fingers and gave her a smile—then gave one of her fingertips a good-natured nibble.

"Is not forgiving any of them hurting you?" she asked. "Or is it hurting your people here at Sand?"

"No." He shook his head. "But in this case I know they're dead men. It wouldn't hurt me or endanger anyone if I say the words. I just don't want to . . . But I still feel like I should. That's where I get lost. I got another chance here because of other people's forgiveness—yours, too. So who am I to refuse to give it?"

Sakura knew by now what he was looking for: her to tell him if the way he processed his mistreatment was abnormal, if he should put his own feelings aside and do what his friend had insisted was important. She knew he was trying to understand, and he'd listen if she agreed.

But his problem was something she still found herself struggling with.

"You told me there's some people here who'll never forgive you for what you did before," she said. "Do you begrudge them that?"

"No." Even if it'd been made painfully obvious when he was sixteen, when the amount of time Sand's ninjas waited before attempting to retrieve him from the Akatsuki had eloquently informed him they'd only intended to recover his body. "I can't."

"Then why would you be mad at yourself for the same?" She let go of his shoulder and reached for his hand. "You don't have to now. Maybe you'll want to later; maybe not. But I won't tell you how to feel about it."

"I don't demand it of myself in the same way I can't demand it of other people," he told her. "But if I won't expect it of myself, how could I even hope for forgiveness from someone else? How could I ask it of you?"

"You didn't expect it, though. You didn't even ask for it—both times, here and when we were kids. You apologized and let me decide how to proceed. I could've left here after what happened, and I know you would've let me. That's . . ." She didn't want to admit it, but did so anyway. "That's better than I've been able to do before."

He nodded; through her struggle, he'd learned the subtle difference between saying goodbye and letting go. "Which ties into you being angry at dead men?"

"Yeah." She shrugged. "But . . . I don't think I care about forgiving Sasuke so much anymore as forgiving myself—but it's been hard. I've been trying to untangle it all; so many of our bad choices tied into the other's actions, you know? I tried to control him—his behavior, his temper, so on—and when that didn't work, it was easy to fall into old habits and put the fault on myself."

"Is one really contingent on the other?"

She looked to find him with his head tilted fully back, his face towards the scattered, faraway wisps of clouds. "Are you deflecting?" she asked.

"Looking for perspective," he answered. "Do you have to keep blaming and being angry with yourself in order to be angry with him—or can you separate the two, forgive yourself, and still not hold yourself responsible for his decisions?"

"I don't know . . . But I'm trying. It's just something I keep picking at. It seems silly, too—I get a chance to do better and I end up still having to go back and fight through how I messed up before."

That he understood. "I've been told it's not usually a person's good deeds that keep them up at night. Their mistakes, though, however well-intentioned . . ."

Sakura glanced at him sidelong, and found him watching in return. "At least I have good company," she told him, and was rewarded with a contented smile.

"You could fix your sleep schedule, if you want. I know the medics keep waking you up during the day."

"I like our nights, though. Plus they'll only keep doing it until I get my students up to par." She chuckled. "My students. It's still weird."

"It's still deserved."

"It can still be weird." Sakura looked around as she thought: skimming over the familiar outlines of rooftops, noting the distant points of familiar constellations. At length, she broke her silence: "You said Naruto thinks you need to be able to forgive in order to move on . . . But maybe you—both of us, really—don't need to be able to move on, but move through. Maybe it'd be silly for us to try and soldier on, pretending we aren't touched by anything. We've been changed; it doesn't make us lesser to acknowledge it, in the same way it doesn't make us bad people to point out when things aren't okay or to admit to our own mistakes. And we're gonna let some things go—we've got to, right? Otherwise . . ."

"We might find ourselves under a building," he finished, "tallying grievances."

"Yeah," she agreed. "It's like you said: we can be more than just a collection of wrongdoings—our own as well as other people's."

"More than what other people wanted from us or think of us," he offered, and she exhaled with relief before nodding.

"More than a weapon," Gaara continued. His grin showed teeth. "More than the Kazekage's live-in partner."

"Is that what I am now?"

He shrugged. "It's been the easiest explanation." Though most people in Sand (and what seemed like half of Wind) had an idea of their situation by now—and Kankurou'd heard an alarming rumor about someone trying to put it all to song.

"Gaara?" Her voice dropped ominously. "Don't think I didn't know you let the daimyo from last week call me your wife."

Gaara lay back; the roof's cold stone chilled his shoulders as he folded his hands over his stomach. "He wasn't sure. I just didn't correct him."

"What was that about easy explanations?"

"That's if someone asks."

Sakura opened her mouth, closed it, and took a deep breath before opening it again. "Do you have any idea how that went over when my work friends heard about it?"

More teeth, and something suspiciously close to laughter.

She huffed. "If Ino thinks we got married without inviting her, she will murder me."

He closed his eyes, unconcerned. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I mean it."

"I know."

Gaara opened one eye to find she'd stuck her tongue out at him. He smiled, knowing she'd smile back; he reached, caught her hand, touched the back of it to his cheek, and then settled it against his chest. "It'll be okay."

"You've been telling me that since I got here," she sighed, and even with his eyes closed he could hear the affection in her voice.

"I think I was right."

"I think so, too."

Sakura counted the seconds out by the steady cadence of his heart against the back of her hand; she looked him over, taking in the spread of his shoulders, the way his hair fell untidily over his forehead, the darkness of his eyelids and the familiar curve of his lips. "Hey," she said, and squeezed his fingers. "It's chilly. Let's go back to bed."

He didn't open his eyes, though his lips curved further. "I'm starting to think you're insatiable."

"Are you complaining?"

"Never."

Their bedroom was quiet and dark; the disarrayed blankets and pillows on the bed cast faint shadows, black on deep gray. She felt Gaara's breath on the back of her neck as he closed in on her, then his hands closed around her waist—and before she fully understood what was happening, she was airborne. Sakura bounced on the mattress once and caught herself, then caught him when he landed on her; the pair tumbled and grappled together amidst her peals of laughter.

Then slowed, stilled . . . And resumed movement again, with a different sort of intensity.

ooo

Months, then, until a moment she almost missed; where he sprawled partially across her in their bed and she curled around him, their legs entangled, his cheek against her shoulder and her fingers gentle and steady over his scalp and neck. She realized he'd relaxed, then how much he'd relaxed . . . but, disbelieving and unwilling to disturb him, continued stroking and smoothing his hair. It was just a lovely dream, she told herself; a ghost of a golden moment, a mirror to an alternate time where he could find his way past what'd been inflicted on him and she could love him this simply and fully, and for a little while everything around them could fade to a distant blur.

It wasn't until he snapped to alert—suddenly posted on his hands and knees over her, his eyes wide and startled—that she realized he actually had been asleep.

She set her fingers against the side of his throat to feel how rapidly his pulse pounded; slowly, he moved her hand to his chest. "Are you all right?" she whispered.

He nodded, then settled down to her again. After a few moments his heart slowed as he relaxed; in another few, he put her hand back on his hair. "I want to try again."

It didn't work, and after a little bit Gaara turned and propped his chin up on her shoulder to share a wry smile—then to tease her: But what if he snored? But what if he hogged the blankets as much as she did? And she teased back, about how she'd spent years afield with snoring, flatulent, twitchy, uncouth, inappropriate, and just plain rude guys and was thus ready for whatever silliness Gaara could inflict on her while unconscious.

But the fact that it had worked, even for just a few minutes . . .

Maybe, she thought, they could have this after all. Maybe their dreams could be what they made of them—beyond the fragments of their pasts, beyond vengeance or justice, forgiveness or retribution or what other people might tell them was best. Maybe they didn't have to be unscarred to be all right.

ooo

After the second year, they started seriously discussing adopting one of Sand's orphans.

.