Title: A Reason
Pairing: Gaara/Sakura
Rating: M (mild smut)
Summary: "Because she is his lodestone, and if she remains, everything in the world is still right."
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me!

A Reason

He carries her heart tightly fisted in the palm of his hand, and he realizes this. It is his talisman against the cruelty of his youth, and his reminder of all things good to come. She is strong, and supple, more like a willow than her namesake. Though she bends to the will of the wind, she does not break. But she can be damaged. He's held her against the storm, picking up the pieces of her ravaged heart to carry, but vows that he will not live to see the day where she is broken.

Because she is his lodestone, and if she remains, everything in the world is still right. She is the way, the will, and the reason. His compass and his path.

His sister had panicked, randomly emerging from the tree line and within seconds had promptly demolished the nin she had been toying with. The man would have been ideal to pump for information, and Sakura had been less than happy when the opportunity was so brashly torn from her fingers. Temari couldn't have cared less, grabbing onto the pink haired medic and flying full speed towards the area her brother had last been spotted. Even years later, after she had come to embrace the fact that her jinchuuriki bearing sibling had the ability to be beaten, and thoroughly so, the rarity of the event left her completely unprepared for the next instance. And it was occurring, to her horror, and this time under her own watch.

Even still, despite her reassurances to Temari that all would be well, that it was Gaara for heavens sake, nothing could have prepared her for the situation she found herself stepping into. They had been separated into search parties for the day, and the mixed village team's current task had been information gathering. Though risky, as all missions were, it was hardly anything that should have resulted in the carnage that lay before her.

Sakura had seen the Kazekage near death. Dirtied and without breath in his lungs. But she had never seen him... for lack of a better word, shredded. Strips of his clothing had been torn away, and his bared torso was painted with crimson patches of half dried blood that oozed, sluggishly, from painful looking flesh wounds. His face was contorted in muted agony and fury, sand shields cracking and disintegrating off of his battered body. The entire valley floor was flooded with sand, and if there had been a body of the enemy fought, nothing was left in silent testament to the Kage's rage.

She slowly approached the feral looking man as he lay coiled beneath a half submerged tree, and he snarled as his eyes made contact with her figure, attempting to draw himself into a crouch. The fact the he'd been injured enough to bleed so severely was intensely frighting to the medic. Gulping down the terror in lodged in her throat, she shakily extended a hand to the wounded man. Who, staring her down like the wounded beast that he nearly was, growled gutturally before he reaching out with a single arm and dragged her down beside him, startling Temari who had moved to hover beside the pink haired ninja.

"Akatsuki." He hissed in response to her unspoken concern, drawing his lacerated, free hand across his knitted brow, further smearing blood across his already filthy visage. Her palm stopped in the almost unconscious action of healing his wounds, and he took the moment to rock backwards on his haunches without releasing her arm, away from her to grab at something behind him. Moments later he thrust the tattered remains of a black and red robe into her shaking hands.

Temari wept.

Few people were surprised when Sakura was assigned as a permanent emissary to the Sunagakure. The two countries had been tightly knit, as their respective demonic carriers allied against the greatest unification of S-Class criminals their world had ever seen, and she'd known her place in the matter. The Kyuubi's teammate and the savior of Ichibi could only be in the thick of it, and after the proactive search had begun for Akatsuki, Sakura had been placed as the Kazekage's team as a medic. The combined forces of Konoha and Suna ninja were taking the battle to the enemy, and teamwork within the mixed village teams came easier than one would have thought.

War had that effect on ninja, and the survivors of mass actions before the Akatsuki Task Force witnessed their trials with somber pride. But a village is still a village, despite the changing plane of battle. When the young Kazekage bore down on the Konoha gate, engulfed in sand with an unconscious rose haired medic in arm, tongues wagged. When he kept vigil on the roof of the hospital until her release, though he never visited her bedside, the rumors were unstoppable. Barely able to keep pace though stable in condition, he'd immediately dragged her back to active duty upon her release, shocking the populace with his seemingly purposeful negligence towards the object of his previous concern.

He was imperfect. Their friendship was imperfect. She didn't want perfection. Perfection was awkward. Perfection was boring. If it had been any other way, she might have given up on it, but it was the imperfection of it that kept her working so fervently to stay afloat above all that had occurred. It kept their boon a reality. They were both broken people rising above the fractures, and she understood his antipathy towards compassion as much as he did her aversion of deficiency.

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice was soft, barely carrying above the whistle of April winds through the trees. The hesitance in and of itself was alarming, as she was hardly one to censor herself anymore these days. At least, around him.

"And just what is it that I'm doing?" As usual, though his own intonation was completely serious, there was the embodiment of droll humor concealed within his words. Once her teacher had said to look beneath the underneath, and generally the analysis of this particular mans actions resulted in rage, general amusement or utter disinterest. After being so in-tuned as necessary of a teammate, the unspoken emotional language was all too tangible for the woman.

"Why... are you doing this?" Here she gently stilled his hand by capturing it with her own, bringing it down from it's position at the back of her head, stroking the soft, downy hairs that lay at her nape. As his hands turned to capture her own, pulling them into his chest as he leaned in to rest his split lip against the plane of her shoulder. Another close call. Another step closer to the black, never to return from battle. Things left unsaid, undone. Unexperienced.

Glittering, pale green eyes held hers with an air of quiet desperation. "Because I can't not."

Like he should have, he worried. That by the nature of his nocturnal beast, he was starving her of the sunlight that she needed. She was a blossoming cherry tree, air and brightness to his craving for the black canvas against the stars. He couldn't count the number of times he'd pondered the oddity of the dissimilarity of light and dark between them. And how he worried, gazing upon familiar constellations, that he would one day taint her brightness. But somehow, he wondered with a soft smile, if it wasn't a balance of an exchange between them.

Sasuke undulated underneath him, scrabbling for purchase against the dessert floor. Lifesblood, red and wet dripped onto the sand beneath his tattered red clouded cloak. He coughed thickly. "Proving your existence again, Kage-sama?" Naruto growled behind him, spitting curses as Sasuke's cursed form thrashed in their hold. Both men looked mauled, but their captive in comparison was broken. "I thought my people had beaten that out of you." Gaara slid a kunai underneath him, slicing through tendons that would have meant walking away would be a possibility. Naruto's eyes closed in submission.

Gaara's malicious grin belied his flatly negative answer. "You threatened what is mine, Uchiha," he muttered lowly.

Sasuke's short bark of laughter was resigned. He barely grimaced as Naruto snapped both wings beyond repair, sealing his curse mark with a jutsu so immense in power that Sasuke thought his soul was being ripped from what was left of his husk. "What the fuck is he talking about, bastard." Naruto was already staggering away, face turned towards the mountains. His blond hair blended into the sun as he collapsed against a boulder, chakra spent. "Oi. Dobe," he hissed.

Sand was slithering up his spine, shuddering his resolve. His former teammate gazed into the sky. "Our last battle..," Gaara's eyes smoldered with an inhuman light he'd seen only once before. He was bathed in the blood, both his own and from the ragged corpses that surrounded him. His teeth were grit into gash that could never be called a smile. "You touched what is mine." Stepping back he tossed the kunai away. It was unnecessary.

For the first time in years Sasuke felt true fear. His mind raced, face contorting. Tomoe eyes flashed in understanding. He spat blood, "You." Crimson sand was rising up into the air around him, crawling over his body in waves, slipping beneath his coverings into his torn skin. "Me," Gaara's reply was gutteral. "She would never have you," his tongue felt heavy. His fingertips were cold, useless. Another failed revenge. An empty district.

"She is my mate." A victorious snarl in two voices. Gaara's hand seals flourished with triumph.

"Monster, " hissed Sasuke. Gaara's hands paused, panting with blood lust, remembering soulless green eyes under matted pink hair.

"Yes. You are." He finished his jutsu.

Sasuke's tormented shrieks were brief.

The room was cold. She'd grown used to the permeating heat of the desert. Though most of the rooms withing Sunakagure boasted air conditioning, she liked the heat of the sun against her back from a shadeless window. It's sterility was unfamiliar as well. No matter how often she cleaned, or how thoroughly, his sand always seemed to find it's way onto the floor. Or onto the counters. She'd know he was home when the grit on the windows suddenly forced themselves open, his unconscious desire for fresh air overriding her own need for cleanliness. Their bed, however, was always conspicuously clean of debris.

It was his element. Another part of himself. When he'd arrived home, he'd been encased in it, and she welcomed that, knowing that he was protected by the form fitting layer upon layer of the desert. And when he'd opened his eyes, holding her with a pupiless gaze she'd come to desire as a woman parched for water, she'd rejoiced in the knowledge that he was home. They had brought him back to her.

He smelled like death. Fishing into his clothing, he tossed an emblazoned ring at her feet. She thanked every deity she could think of.

"Okaerinasai, danna," a breathy whisper.

Then he was on top of her, half gone, teeth mouthing her for sustenance. Her head tipped back as he savaged her clavicle, and she tore at his straps until he pushed her hands away and undid them himself, snarling. The floor slammed up against her back as he ripped open her robe, pressing her body into the wood as he lashed out, a hand trapping hers above her head. His breath choked against her temple as she wrapper herself around his waist, pushing breathy moans into his chest as he ground his pleasure into hers.

Panting, he shoved his wild face into hers, "Why?," he rasped. His free hand fumbled between her thighs, finding her ready. Both of them gasping as he slid home, he relinquished her aching arms as they wound into his hair. Her lips found tender purchase on his tattoo, causing his brutal rhythm to slow.

"Only for you," she sobbed. "Only you." His bride. His wife. His.

He worshiped his flower.

Author's Note

I'm back. This one is years in the making, but, I'm starting to write again. Sorry for the wait.

- Okobo-chan