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Sakura meets Gaara on a Monday.
In the moment, she's preoccupied -- with Sasuke's arrival, with making sure Konohamaru is okay, with calming the rapid beating of her adrenalin-and-guilt-ridden heart -- so what she sees doesn't immediately register as off. It's only later that night, as she lays on top of her bed sheets, staring unseeing at a the pages of a book as the day's events replay in her mind, that the stranger details start to filter through.
Gaara's sudden, silent appearance. How every muscle in that girl's body had gone rigid in half a second. The fear that lurked under the other boy's face paint. The way Sakura hadn't quite been able make herself look at Gaara's eyes.
It's the anxious hole he burned into her memory -- more than the looming threat of the chunin exams, more than any book she reads -- that keeps her awake into the early hours of the morning.
Sakura meets Gaara of the Desert on a Tuesday.
Sakura thrives on analysis, examination, classification. She knows she can be sentimental and impulsive -- and knows acutely that's all most people see when they look at her -- but what she's always been best at is taking a fistful of logic and using it to break things down into their most basic parts. Those parts go into boxes, which go onto shelves, which Sakura keeps neat and dusted and clean in her mind. Everything has its place. Everything can be understood.
Gaara of the Desert broke half the bones in Lee's body without even batting an eye. Sakura could never understand him.
So instead she turns inward and takes inventory, processing each emotion individually, because that, at least, is something she can understand. There is the fear, of course, and it flooded her system so completely that it takes her a few minutes to wade deep enough that she can find the anger. It's not hot, the way it is when Naruto says something stupid or Ino makes fun of her forehead. It's cold and smooth and hard, like the handle of a kunai in her palm or the curve of shuriken between her fingers. It's the afterimage of Lee's broken body branded behind her eyelids and the echoes of his screams ringing in her ears.
It's the way, when it's announced that Sasuke will be fighting Gaara in the third exam, that the second voice in her head, usually so loud and demanding, whispers with horrible determination that it doesn't matter that she would die trying: if Gaara of the Desert hurts Sasuke like he did Lee (or worse, so much worse, if he hurts Sasuke and then the bracket pits him against Naruto and he hurts him too), Sakura is going to kill him herself.
A month later, Sakura meets Gaara-as-Shukaku on a Wednesday.
Sakura is a lot of things, but she's never considered herself to be particularly brave. She knows what bravery looks like: it's Hinata standing up against her cousin's fury, again and again until her heart almost stops; it's Lee launching himself at the Sound ninja in the Forest to protect her; it's Naruto waking up every day to a village that half hates him, half ignores him, a village that's never protected him, and promising that someday he's going to be Hokage and protect them all.
When she throws herself between Gaara and Sasuke, Sakura doesn't look like any of those things. What she looks like is a girl with a big forehead, scrawny arms, and a defensive stance straight out of the textbook. It doesn't look like bravery, because Sakura is not brave.
But she is angry.
This time, the anger is hot. It starts just behind her breastbone and burns out, devouring all her organs and all her fear and leaving behind only the thought that not today, shannaro! Sakura is not brave but she is angry and she loves, she loves her team and her friends and her village, and this time it's all of Sakura saying that it doesn't matter if she dies trying: if Gaara -- Shukaku -- whoever wants to hurt the people important to her, she's not going to make it easy for him.
The last thought Sakura has before he slams her against a tree so hard she's knocked out on impact is that maybe, maybe this is what all those retired shinobi who would speak at the Academy meant when they talked about the Will of Fire.
When Sakura finally meets the Gaara the Kazekage, it's late at night on a Thursday.
The original plan was for her meet him earlier that morning, at the historic first meeting of the Fifth Kazekage and the Fifth Hokage, but Sakura learned early on that being Tsunade's apprentice meant that plans were just a paper bag against a hurricane. There was always paperwork to be filled, always a crisis that had to be dealt with, always people to be met with, always more more more to do. Tsunade juggles most of it and Shizune handles the rest. They're incredibly good at it, but staying on top of everything is a careful, tedious balancing act, and sometimes things slip through. And, increasingly, those things fall to Sakura to handle.
Logically, she knows that being trusted to fulfill any of the Hokage's responsibilities, no matter how small or tedious, is an honor. But it's pretty hard to feel honored when that responsibility starts as filing hospital paperwork for patients Tsunade has personally treated and turns into a five-person manhunt around the hospital in search of one specific piece of paper that was misplaced eight months ago.
It's maybe five minutes to midnight and Sakura is annoyed, and tired, and hungry. She's glaring down at the stack of paperwork in her arms with enough force that she's surprised it hasn't caught on fire yet, and all she wants is to drop it on Tsunade's desk so she can go home and ransack the kitchen before going comatose for eight hours. That's her plan and this time it's going to work out, goddammit.
She's doing a mental inventory of all the snacks in her house when a pair of feet enter her line of sight. It's not surprising -- even this late at night, the halls of the Hokage's office are always bustling, and collisions between sleep-deprived shinobi are all too common. Sakura brings herself up short with a practiced "Oh! I'm so sorry, excuse me!" and moves to step around the person without looking up.
It's not his reply that makes her pause -- "It is not a problem" is a fairly standard, if formal, response in these hallway interactions -- but his voice. She hasn't heard it in nearly three years, and never in a tone of politeness instead of hate and rage, but she hasn't forgotten it.
Sakura whips her head up and meets Gaara's eyes for the first time since the Konoha Crush.
"Kazekage-sama." It's more a breath than an actual pair of words.
Gaara's voice is much steadier when he addresses her. "Haruno Sakura."
She can't help it. She stares.
(Tsunade had tried to prepare her for this. Sakura knew Tsunade had poured over each and every report from the Konoha Crush, and therefore must know what happened to her, but it had still been unsettling when she had walked into the office and been told to sit down, because suddenly it wasn't the Fifth Hokage sitting across the desk from her and it wasn't her shishou. It was just Tsunade, and she wasn't talking to a shinobi, or her student. She was just talking to Sakura.
"He's different," Tsunade had told her. "They wouldn't have made him Kazekage otherwise. And by all accounts he's a good Kazekage. He loves his people."
Sakura knew that already. She'd read all those accounts. She nodded.
Tsunade gave her a long, searching look. "Can you do this?"
Tsunade would have taken any answer, she knew, but for Sakura there was only one that was acceptable. "Of course, Shishou.")
It hadn't been a lie -- Sakura could do this. It had been a long time ago, and she'd endured far worse since. But that didn't mean she was prepared. There was no way she could have been, because the last time she'd seen those eyes he'd been charging her with the intent to kill, and this time there's not even a hint of bloodlust in them.
She knows she's staring, and it's probably rude, and oh god she's being rude to the Kazekage. Gaara doesn't seem to mind, though. He's just gazing back at her, steady as anything.
She has to say something.
"How are..." She had meant to say something more eloquent, like How are you enjoying your stay in Konoha so far? But all she can manage is a strained, "How are you?"
"I am well, thank you." He's so polite, and he even seems to know what she was trying to say, because he continues, "Konoha has been very welcoming."
"Oh...good! Good. That's good." This is terrible, Sakura decides. Human interaction is terrible. She wants to die, or at the very least go home where she can drown in her mortification in peace. She can't think of any good excuse, though, so instead she just helplessly shrugs her armful of paperwork at him and starts shuffling sideways down the hall. "Well, please feel free to let me know if you need anything. Excuse-"
"Haruno Sakura."
She stops.
He gives her a long, grave look -- long enough to make her squirm a little, but she doubts he means to make her uncomfortable -- and then: "I would like to apologize."
Sakura knows the effects exhaustion can have on the human mind, but she also knows she's nowhere near tired enough to start hallucinating. Her world tilts slightly on its axis.
Gaara, entirely unaware of how he just upended Sakura's entire sense of reality, explains, "The last time we met. During the invasion. I almost killed you." There's a half second pause where it seems like he wants to say more, but all that comes out it, "I'm sorry." And then he looks at her humbly and waits.
He's sorry.
It takes Sakura a minute to gather herself enough to respond.
"It was a long time ago," she says, because she has no idea what to say except the obvious. "And you were...different."
Gaara inclines his head in acknowledgement. "I was different. But I was still me."
She wonders how much that's true. Sakura's memories of that day are hazy at best -- head trauma will do that -- but she remembers the horrifying half-transformation that Gaara had undergone. Whatever that was, she cannot reconcile it with the polite and soft-spoken young man standing in front of her. Sakura had only known the monster, but even though they have the same face, she does not know this young man. Because that's really all he is, isn't he? He might be the Kazekage, but he's also her age, which means he's just another kid with a deep love in his chest for the village whose expectations weigh heavily around his shoulders. In that, they're the same.
She doesn't say any of that to him, though; she's not a diplomat, but Sakura is pretty sure that speculating about the nature of the leader of an allied nation's selfhood out loud is not good foreign policy. So instead she smiles for the first time and tells him, sincerely, "Regardless. I don't hold it against you. But thank you."
He tilts his head again, this time in gratitude. "Thank you," he echoes gently.
"Of course, Kazekage-sama."
But for some reason that makes Gaara shake his head and Sakura experiences another moment of sharp, head-spinning confusion before he clarifies, "Please, feel free to use my name. My title is...very formal."
There's a moment of respite during which Sakura has time to think Oh, that's all? before the confusion comes back around and punches her in the jaw again, and she gapes at him with none of the grace or decorum that a student of the Fifth Hokage should have. "But. But you're the Kazekage."
"Yes. But," and there is something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he mimics her inflection, "we are the same age."
Well, yeah, but you're still the fucking Kazekage. Again, she can't help it: Sakura stares. His expression hasn't changed at all, but she's fairly certain he's laughing at her.
"Well." It's all she can say. "Well, okay."
Gaara nods at her, satisfied. "I should let you return to your duties. I'm sorry for keeping you." Sakura blinks -- she had almost forgotten the stack of files in her arms. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," she parrots, and she's about to start walking away again when she hears a stomach growl, and it's not hers.
Gaara suddenly looks distinctly uncomfortable.
Sakura does not laugh, because laughing at the leader of an allied nation when his stomach growls is definitely terrible foreign policy. Instead she asks, "Are you hungry?"
"It...was a busy day," Gaara says. It's an indirect and slightly defensive way of saying he didn't eat dinner.
"You shouldn't skip meals," she tells him. It's the same thing she tells Tsunade every other day, and the thought makes struggle to keep the corners of her mouth down.
Gaara looks vaguely chastised, and Sakura has to take a long breath through her nose to keep the laughter down. "I know."
Her training has made Sakura's internal clock fairly accurate, and she'd guess it's now a few minutes after midnight, but there are still plenty of restaurants open. Sakura is familiar with them all of them (probably too much so, but Tsunade has no qualms about dragging her student out of bed to a training field late at night), so while she doesn't know what kind of food Gaara likes, she's sure they can find something he'll enjoy. It wasn't her original plan, but these days nothing ever was.
"Well then, Gaara-kun," she says, and watches as something in his eyes lights up at the address, "once I turn this paperwork in, do you want to go get dinner?"
There's a pause while Gaara's eyes widen with surprise, and then he smiles -- and it is a smile this time, small but there -- and he says, "Of course, Sakura-san. Although I think that at this point it might count as breakfast."
It's probably not meant as a joke, but maybe it is, but either way Sakura laughs, overcome with exhaustion and the absurdity of the situation. Gaara doesn't laugh, but that's okay -- she's pretty sure that from him, a smile is the same thing.
On Friday, Sakura meets a friend.