Naruto Tales: The Next Uchiha | SasuSaku, NaruHina, InoShikaTema, NejiTen +

XXXVIII: Fifty Shades Freed

QOTC: I was looking after myself. I didn't care what the cost was.

- Hotaru

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Chapter 38: Fifty Shades Freed

"If it isn't Blonde bombshell. Here to pay me a visit?"

Temari sighed obsequiously. "I forgot how charming you were." She made a Wind Scythe out of her giant fan and blew up the whole fairy-nin's cell. "Gaara wishes to see you."

Temari's clothes looked just fine. Hotaru wore black tight shorts, white sandals and an chunin flak jacket that has originated from Suna. She cleaned up in the small bathroom, using a bar of hard lavender soap. Drying herself with a white hand towel left damp hair straggling around her face in fragrant tangles. She squinted at her reflection into the mirror. There was a purpling bruise high up on her left cheek, and her lips were dry and swollen. Taking a bath in Suna is probbbably one of the most refreshing sensation especially of the scorching weather. She wondered how the villagers have survived on such dehydrating season.

I have to call Kabuto. Or Sakura, she thought. As agreed, Temari threatened that she and Kankuro won't hesitate to kill her if she tries to escape. Oh well, running away was something she was good at. She'll steal all the files, gather intel by talking it out with the Kazekage, snip away their scrolls and bargain it for her freedom. Surely there was a phone here somewhere, maybe they'd let her use it after she talked to Gaara.

The corridor outside the dungeon was empty. Hotaru glanced down it, perplexed. It looked like the sort of hallway she sometimes found herself racing down in nightmares, shadowy and infinite. Gaara isn't at his office, which is kind of weird because he's usually spotted sitting in his desk with his eyes closed, his chin resting above his intersected fingers. Blood was everywhere, but the air smelled more like dust and candle wax. Temari must've been that conservative.

In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall.

Gaara was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. He was shirtless and barefoot, dressed in his red pants, his scarlett hair ruffled up around his head as if he'd just woken up. Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Hotaru remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, stroking her waist, and she gasped.

This was the exact scenery from his dream. Gaara must have heard her because he twisted around the stool. "You can come in."

"You know it wouldn't hurt to keep the shirt on." The stool was big enough as she sat next to him. "So you summoned me all the way from my cage just to watch you play a freakin' piano?"

He didn't respond but continued into the melody he's been playing, it was different from her dream and each notes represent a glimpse of his childhood. Hotaru's head was spun as she tried resembling the missing pieces.

"So, um, how long have you been playing? You play beautifully." Hotaru said, thoughtfully.

Gaara raised his brows. Hotaru wondered how old he was. He could be the exact same age at hers, and he would have looked like a normal highschool student if it weren't for that red kanji that painted on the right side of his forehead. She wondered how he had gotten it. "Since I killed my own uncle."

"Oh," Hotaru thought of her dream again, the repeating cycle of that endless night. "Sorry."

"I don't understand why people apologize for the things they aren't responsible for,"