A/N- ok so it’s taken me forever but I had so many reviews asking what would happen when she woke up that I got inspired! Now I’m going to get this chapter up and be happy because I haven’t updated in forever! Ha! Haha!

Disclaimer- Don’t own any of the characters but I do own this plot. It all came from the demented place called my mind.

Hearing Demons

Sakura mumbled, consciousness slowly returning to her sleeping form. She hugged whatever her head was on closer to herself. She was dreaming that the thing she was sleeping on was a self-heating body pillow and didn’t want to let it go! She snuggled closer, pressing the entire length of her body to the warmth. But what was that silly beating? Pillows don’t beat…

She cracked her eyes, squinting at the brightness coming out of the window. But what she had her arms wrapped around wasn’t a self heating body pillow (which I’m pretty sure aren’t real), but none other than Gaara himself. His black rimmed eyes were closed but by the tightness in his muscles she could tell he wasn’t asleep. Slowly she unwrapped her arms from around his waist and sat up…

“What the hell am I…” she started. One of Gaara’s eyes opened, staring at her. “Did you sleep well?” he asked. It was almost as if she hasn’t just woken up with her arms around the man who is holding her captive. Sakura clenched her eyes shut for a few seconds then opened them again, trying to make herself wake up from this nightmare.

“Stop blinking like an owl and answer me,” Gaara said, his eyes both closed again. She glared at his still figure.

“Why the hell are we in the same bed?” she demanded, realizing that this was no nightmare but the horrible truth of reality. Gaara just sighed. “Let me see,” he recalled, “I was lying in my bed, when all of the sudden someone comes into my room. Not too soon after that someone crawls into bed and falls asleep. At about three am to my horror this someone wraps their arms around my waist and snugglesup to me. Oh and this someone talks in her sleep!” By the end he was yelling, upset with himself for not getting out of there before she woke up. That would have made things a lot easier to explain and he would have been able to tease the kunoichi for kicking him out of his own room. Now he would simply blame it all on her.

YOU ARE SO CHILDISH

‘Yes.’

Sakura rolled her eyes at the two. They were at it again…

You know it’s funny to listen to these two. It provides me with a little entertainment, her Inner Sakura chimed in.

‘You back out of this… My life is complicated enough without you!’ Sakura’s eyes focused back on Gaara. He was looking at her with the oddest expression.

“Were you just arguing with yourself?” he asked. Shit, she had momentarily forgotten that he could hear her thoughts too. How to explain that she had an inner self without making herself seem like a total nut. She pursed her lips, really not wanting to explain anything to him.

To her horror, her inner self chimed, I’m what she calls her inner self! She won’t talk about me because she already thinks she’s a nutcase for having a voice in her head! The entire thing just seemed stupid to even say making Sakura roll her eyes. Yea, he really was going to believe that she wasn’t crazy now.

Gaara raised an eyebrow. Did the girl seriously have an inner self?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THE GIRL IS A BIGGER NUT THAN YOU!

Since punching Shukaku was impossible, she flipped all the blankets on her onto Gaara and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard a long crack formed down the center. Was it too much to ask for her inner self to just shut the hell up for five minutes?! Now the man who was making her stay in Suna thought she was insane.

You are the one who agreed with the demon to stay even with you having a mission to kill the guy. Sakura stopped dead. Her mission! She had completely forgotten her mission! Now this was a dilemma she really didn’t want to deal with right now. There had to be a way to get a message to Naruto; there had to be a way to let him know her delay. How could she kill him? How could she kill the man that she… NO! She was not going to say anything like that ever again. It would never happen to her ever again because every time it had she had come out hurt.

How can you kill the man you are falling for? Her inner self finished what she was ‘not’ thinking.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about. I am not falling for anybody!’ She was half way down the hall now, her anger so visible that several maids jumped out of the way. When she finally realized she was scaring the poor women she schooled her features. She got to the kitchen and almost tore the place apart when all the cooks denied her even fruit because Gaara wasn’t there to give it t her.

Since there was no way she was going to ask that bastard for anything, she tried to follow her directions from the night before to get to the training grounds. It took 4 tries, turning around each time to find a new way, before she found the training field. Once there she sat down in the middle, legs crossed and eyes closed. She cleared her mind till she could concentrate on nothing but the field.

Signs of life flared through her senses. Birds to the south, a rabbit and its babies in their burrow to the north east, an ant hill not 4 yards to her left, and what she thought was a fox at the edge of the field, following the trail of something. Keeping track of the animal calmed her and took her mind off of the problems she was having. It wasn’t like all of them were so bad that she should lose it like she was, but there had been a reason why Sakura had been sent on this mission and not a more experienced ANBU captain or something.

FLASHBACK

“Sakura, I have an important mission for you.” The seriousness in Naruto’s voice was kind ofscaring her, but she sat down anyways. She sat, silent, waiting for Naruto to say something, or even move. Instead his eyes stayed glued to her face, almost as if he was trying to memorize everything about her.

“Naruto, what’s wrong?” she said, finally breaking the silence. He almost jumped. “Did you forget why I came here?” He shook his head but stayed silent. They both sat silently again for a little bit longer.

“Sakura, I need to tell you something, but I don’t really know how to tell you,” he finally said. Yet again Sakura was getting a little scared of her usually chipper friend’s solemn mood.

“So why don’t you start with the mission you had talked about when I first came in,” Sakura said. This had to get moving or she was going to die from the amounts of adrenalin pumping into her system.

Naruto sighed and passed her a paper. It was a mission briefing but all it said was, ‘Go talk to the Hokage.’ Well that was helpful. She tossed it back on his desk and crossed her legs.

“Spill it Naruto. I’m so nervous now that I’ll probably try to kill the next person who comes through the door,” she growled, trying not to give away her fear in any of her body language. Fortunately she had had Anko teach her how to control her body and face, so when she was learning it was either control it or get a shurikan in the head. Fear was a great motivator. It still took the blond ninja a while to start talking and when he did she wanted to scream.

“You see I never knew about it or I could have helped you a little and Tsunade told me right before she left and I feel terrible for not seeing it sooner!” he almost yelled. None of it made sense to her but it seemed to matter a great deal to him that she understand he felt bad. She smiled encouragingly. At least it was getting somewhere.

“Naruto, calm down just a bit and tell me what you feel so sorry about,” she said calmly. Maybe if she was calm it would help him calm. Of course that was too much to ask for and this time he went off in sentences that didn’t even make sense. Rolling her eyes in exasperation, she sent out a wave of chakra into the room. His erratically jumping chakra calmed almost instantly and he slouched in his seat.

“Thank you,” he said. His voice was low, but sounded normal otherwise. A few deep breaths later, “Sakura, I’m sending you on a mission to Suna. You will kill Gaara no suna with a small ANBU team.” Now it was time for Sakura to fall off her seat.

“What!?” she yelled, climbing back into her seat. What was going on? Why would Naruto have to send someone to kill one of his friends? “Why?” she asked

Naruto’s face scrunched up. “It wasn’t my choice. A few rogue ninja’s from Suna have kept attacking Konoha and Gaara has failed to fix it. The council has outvoted me and deemed him too dangerous and not good enough to be Kazekage.”

She wanted to yell, to scream, to rant and rave about this, but by the look on his face she could tell that it wasn’t the best of ideas. He didn’t like it any more than she did; the only difference was that Gaara had been closer to Naruto than to herself. “Why me?” she asked quietly. Naruto sat back in his chair, eyes clenched shut.

“This brings me to the other reason I called you in here…”he trailed off. When his eyes opened they were a deep blue. Everything he was feeling or thinking was hidden in that blue. “Sakura… You have one of the tailed demons sealed inside you.”

END FLASHBACK

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A/N- ok so I know it’s short but I got a chapter up!! It’s amazing! I’m sorry if it seems to take me a bit longer to update than usual but I’m going through depression right now so finding inspiration is getting harder and harder. But after several pitchfork threats I have this one up and will soon have more. I’m WANTING criticism so even if it’s flames I want to know what you think. Please, I see so many hits on this story but so few reviews. It’s getting sad.