Golden Kitsune - Thanks muchly for the review. Really I love this pairing the most!! Sorry to make you wait so long. You'll have to tell me what those errors in my previous chapters were so I can fix them. Anyway without further ado... here you go.
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Gaara melted slowly, like cheese left in the sun too long. People, villagers from Suna surrounded him, their faces blurred except for their eyes. That penetrating gaze of open hostility he had not seen in a few years. He was not human in their eyes.
What am I then? He asked himself and a voice whispered back. ‘You are nothing. Disappear from this world. Your existence is not needed.’
More than the physical pain, those words rent his soul asunder. He’d tried so hard to be accepted by them – by anyone. He’d worked hard. Made himself an invaluable asset or so he’d forced himself to believe. The truth was he was just a hapless boy stumbling around the dark world known as adulthood. Now it was eating him alive and with great vigor.
He was close to disappearing now, just as the world had wanted. Skin and muscle had melted, dripping into pools of flesh around his feet. Only bone was left and as he slowly faded into nothingness, he welcomed it, but just when he thought he’d finally be free, his body became whole again and the burning started…
Days passed in his mind. By the fourth day, he’d forgotten who he was. Whether his body was whole or whether it was being ripped apart didn’t matter. He deserved that pain. The taunting was endless. The villagers were throwing rotten food at him now.
It was true; he was a monster and he deserved that abuse. If this physical and mental pain continued for eternity, well it wasn’t long enough. He deserved to suffer more.
‘That’s right, you are no longer allowed to disappear. That would be too easy. Suffer… suffer forever…’
Yes, he thought,
this was how it was meant to be. Whoever I am doesn’t matter… “NO!” the familiar voice penetrated into his dark world like a shining bright light. “Gaara kun…”
Who? Gaara? Was that him? He was nameless, not deserving of a name, but the name resonated in his heart – the heart he forgot he had.
“Come back, Gaara kun,” the soft female voice continued to croon at him. “This pain is not for you, you don’t deserve any of it. You don’t belong in this darkness. You belong with me.”
Then she appeared.
Hyuuga Hinata smiled down at him, grey eyes looking only at him. Delicate, soft hand held out to him.
“Let’s go,” she said in that sweet voice of hers. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Mesmerised, he instinctively reached out his hand - his whole, undamaged, unscarred hand and placed it in hers.
***
Reality rushed back around Gaara as if he’d never been gone. Only minutes had passed in real time. Now free of the genjutsu he could see the warped room. So his Desert Graveyard attack
had done some damage. If he’d known at the time, he wouldn’t have panicked and gotten caught in a more prolific genjutsu.
Gaara blinked once, eyes focused on Kinshiro instead of Itoshiki’s still spinning parasol. The glass nin was hovering over a crumpled body next to him. A body he didn’t dare look at for fear of being paralysed with the truth of the situation.
“Ho! That sneaky little bitch!” Kinshiro said amused. “To think in her state she was still able to free you from Itoshiki’s little mind play.”
Not letting the comment get to him, Gaara said, “It’s over.”
He lifted up a hand and reached out at the sand slowly flowing in from the hole Kinshiro had made when he’d gone through the glass wall. The glass nin also saw what Gaara was doing and realised his mistake. In his haste to destroy Hinata he’d forgotten to patch up the hole. Now the sand outside the room flowed freely in, surrounding both the glass user and his team mate.
Kinshiro tried to melt the sand into glass but there was too much. Gaara had pushed so much through the hole so fast that it had cracked and gotten bigger, letting even more sand in. Kinshiro managed to freeze some of it before his hands were bound tight and he could no longer form the seals for his Ninpou, Glass Solidify technique.
The red head didn’t even say goodbye before clenching his fist on their lives.
***
Shallow, ragged breath, bleach white complexion, perspiration beads forming on her forehead; like a nightmare, the unconcious girl next to Gaara displayed all these symptoms.
Gaara forced himself not to think of the implications of Hinata’s current condition and focused on getting them out of the room.
Now that Kinshiro was dead the glass room was beginning to fall apart under the pressure of the sand surrounding it.
Scooping up the limp girl, Gaara seized all the sand in the vicinity, infusing his chakra with the sand to suspend above and around the room. A giant feat by anyone’s standards but the redhead made it look easy. Carefully he parted the sand above them like Moses and the Red Sea and sent some sand up from inside the room to shatter the glass roof. His sand automatically protected them from falling glass. Once they were outside, he released his hold on the sand. There was a deep rumble and the structure collapsed on itself, settling the desert as if it had never been there. Gaara didn’t even give a second to look at it his mind whirling with rising panic as he headed toward Suna Medical.
He entered the emergency ward waiting room with a mini sandstorm in his wake, his sand reacting to his agitation even though it didn’t show on his face.
Without giving the young leader a chance to explain, nurses and doctors came out of nowhere with a gurney and took the seemingly lifeless girl from his arms. The trained professionals knew a poison victim when they saw it; too many shinobi traversed these halls in that kind of state not to put the staff on high alert for it all the time.
“Kazekage sama, please sit,” a nurse had said to him as the medics carted Hinata away. “Someone will come to see you shortly.”
“I’m fine,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument. “Help Hinata.”
And he was fine. He hadn’t physically been hurt at all, not even suffering from chakra exhaustion. As for the genjutsu well he wasn’t ready to say it hadn’t affected him but they were old wounds being brought to the surface, nothing time wouldn’t help fade again. He would be better still if the medics would come out soon and tell him if Hinata was alright and he planned to sit and wait until they did just that.
***
When Temari and Kankuro were told that their little brother was at the hospital they rushed over without waiting for the details. They’d found the stony faced Kazekage sitting stiffly in a chair intimidating the rest of the waiting room.
“Gaara, what the hell happened?” Kankuro spoke up first, but the younger man said nothing.
“Hinata,” Temari said suddenly, noticing the younger girl was missing. “You were with Hinata. Where is she?”
“Poisoned,” Gaara said blandly and that’s all they needed. They exchanged looks then sat down beside him on the wooden bench to wait with him.
Day waned into night before any word came from the emergency room. At one stage Temari had tried to force her way in only to be threatened with sedation if she did not wait quietly.
A tall medic dressed all in white came up to them at around nine thirty with a grave look on his face.
“We were able to extract all the poison,” he said to the siblings. “However there have been… complications.”
The medic hesitated and Gaara said in a menacing tone, “Tell me.”
“There is definitely no poison in her system but she’s not improving. In fact she’s getting worse.”
Temari paled. “What are you trying to say? Hinata is going to die?! She’s the emissary from Konoha. Do you know what will happen if she were to die in our care?!”
“We have already advised Konoha of the situation. With Chiyo baa sama gone now, there is only the Hokage or one of her apprentices that may be able to help. I’m sorry.”
“NO! She is my
friend!” Temari felt so guilty. If she hadn’t purposefully dragged Kankuro away and left them alone maybe this wouldn’t have happened. They’d all known Gaara was a very big target now that he didn’t have the One Tailed Shukaku with him and she’d been so careless.
“Temari,” Gaara whispered.
“You can’t give up on her. Go back in there.
Fix this!”
“Temari!” Gaara said louder and she finally turned to him. “The wind weasel. Go!”
A full second passed before his words registered. Without a word, Temari gave her brothers a nod and drew out her fan. Within seconds she was gone.
After his sister left, Kankuro turned back to the medic that was still standing there, staring at the spot Temari had recently vacated. “Man, if you don’t get back in there you are going to find yourself lying in the bed next to Hinata very very soon.”
With a panicked look on his face, the medic hastily retreated back into the emergency room leaving the brothers to start the waiting game anew.
***
Temari arrived at Konoha gate with a flurry of wind, startling Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo who were on gate duty.
“T-Temari san!” Kotetsu cried, rubbing his shock of unruly black hair in confusion.
“Kotetsu, Izumo,” she called, dispensing with formalities in her haste. “I haven’t got time to explain. Where’s Haruno Sakura? I’ve come for her.”
“Gone,” Izumo said, his one exposed eye serious. He’d understood her urgency immediately. “Godaime sama sent her to Suna as soon as we heard about Hyuuga Hinata. She should be nearing the edge of the forest by now.”
“Thanks,” she said and she was gone again. She arrived at the edge of Konoha forest only seconds before the pink haired girl did.
Sakura skidded to a halt to avoid colliding with the blonde as she appeared in her path.
“Sakura, thank God!”
“Temari san? How the he-”
“No time,” the older girl growled. “Take us,” she said to the wind weasel who nodded and with a whirl they were off.
Sakura managed to land on her feet as the weasel dumped them on the waiting room floor but she still felt a bit woozy from the sudden transportation.
“That’s some jutsu,” she muttered, as the blonde girl beside her promptly fainted.
***
It turned out that Temari was fine, more or less. Using the chakra burning teleportation justu had drained her of everything and Sakura had to send her home to rest.
After a cursory examination of her new patient she did the same with the others.
“She’s in really bad shape,” the pink haired medic didn’t pull any punches. “I’ve never seen this kind of poison before and I’m having difficulty stabilising her. For now you should both go about business as normal. I’ll be able to tell you more in twenty four hours.”
Gaara left with reluctance. Of course he didn’t want to leave but there was a sense of finality in Sakura’s voice that gave only one course of action.
Sakura didn’t even wait for them to disappear from the room before she was back in with Hinata. She had to concentrate now. If she didn’t figure out what was affecting the young heiress, in twenty four hours she’d have to give the Kazekage of Suna some very, very bad news and the Hyuuga clan would have to find a new heir.
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Thanks for reading all!
I am working hard on chappy 7 right now and I'm hoping to get it up in the next week if I don't get caught up with Ed Sheeran stuff of course :D seriously that guys voice is amazing
