Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Hinata did not like the desert. The hot sand blew in her face and obscured the Byakugan (that may have explained why in the past Sand nin units were so adept at pulling ambush strikes on Leaf nin units with Byakugan-users in them) and set off little pricks of discomfort across the fair, soft skin of her face and clogging in her mouth.

As she listened to Kiba and Shino talk to their Sand nin counterparts twenty feet away, Hinata bit her lip and settled to her semblance of adjusting her sandal strap. The dusty winds has rendered her Byakugan useless and made her absolutely no use to her team. And when it had come down to a fight, she couldn't do a thing.

She was so tired of being useless. There had to be something she could do in such a situation. Hinata wasn't content with Kiba and Shino's assertions that she should just sit on her hands and leave the fighting to them; she neither needed nor wanted a knight in shining armor. But how could she do anything if she couldn't even use her eyes to see?

A small crunch of sand behind her made Hinata jump and whip her head around, heart thumping as her pale eyes met blank green ones.

It didn't matter that he was an ally. It didn't matter that he was slightly built and hardly any taller than her. It didn't matter that he plainly was not interested in attacking her, that he wasn't flashing that horrific grin or that he no longer held that aura of blood-soaked inhumane madness about him. Sabaku no Gaara was still a frightening person.

Hinata's tongue choked inside of her mouth as he looked blankly at her. There was a slight hint of an almost apathetic curiosity about him, as though Hinata were a sample of some unknown substance he had studied on a microscope slide a thousand times before. Personally, Hinata didn't like being compared to a sample of bacteria.

"You are frustrated." Though he stood barely a foot and a half away from her, Gaara's voice hardly carried, and Hinata wondered how such a person could have such a soft voice.

For a moment, Hinata didn't speak. She considered not speaking at all, and considered just staring at him like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. But then her innate politeness won out.

"H-hai."

His green eyes narrowed, and the wind buzzed in Hinata's ear. "You feel unneeded, unnecessary."

Hinata's cheeks burned.

"Because they protect you?"

Hinata decided that politeness could go to Hell for all she cared, and said nothing.

"Don't be."

She looked up in surprise, meeting green eyes that were now almost…sympathetic? It was impossible to tell. If anything, they still looked blank and emotionless. But not as cold as before.

"Do not feel shamed because they feel that you need to be protected." He paused. "It is not always a bad thing to be protected."

Hinata gaped at him. The wind whispered in her ears as Kiba laughed and Shino quietly spoke.

Gaara stepped a little closer, and said, "You are underestimated. You will prove that you do not need protection soon enough."

A slow, shy, slightly incredulous smile twitched across Hinata's face, unable to form fully, but content to exist in a half state. "Arigato," she whispered.

The wind whispered back, and Hinata smiled again, her small, shy smile. The desert wasn't quite as bad as she had thought.