Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Dreams and Reality ❯ Dreams and Reality ( Chapter 1 )

Sacrificial Spring Challenge: Dreams and Reality

 

A GaaLee fic by ISMA

 

 

 

Love, Lee discovered, was not about fancy poems and songs and good-guy-grins. It had taken him a surprisingly large amount of time to realize this. He had pursued Sakura with a passion that was second only to his drive to succeed, he had chased after her like he chased after any difficult taijutsu and for once he had failed and failed miserably.

 

It was winter then, when he first saw that Sakura would never be his. She was the same, walking with and yelling at her team, competing with Ino, glaring at him when she thought he wasn't looking. It was Lee who had changed. It was Lee who realized, all of a sudden, that she would never love him anyway, and that perhaps he didn't deserve that love in the first place.

 

Lee had felt his heart fall as it had never fallen before. Because wasn't giving up on Sakura like giving up on everything he stood for? Wasn't that just another surrender that would prevent him from becoming the great shinobi he knew he could be?

 

It was then that Lee realized that love shouldn't be about being the best, and that love had nothing to do with taijutsu or shinobi. It hurt, a little, and Lee spent a few weeks just a little bit less enthusiastic than usual. He got over it, just like he got over everything.

 

When he met Gaara for the second time, Lee had given up on love. The sand-shinobi had slowly wormed his way into Lee's life without either of them noticing, first finding in his heart to speak to the smaller green beast, and then to have lunch, and soon they were spending nearly every day together. Lee found himself falling in love softly and quietly, like falling into a pile of sand-covered pillows.

 

It was more difficult being in love than falling in love, especially when love became a reality and not another unreachable goal. Lee learned that Gaara could be intensely sweet at the oddest times, and it was so much better than Lee had ever imagined it would be with Sakura. Gaara was real and alive and showing up at Lee's apartment at two in the morning with chocolate and already-wilted hand-picked wildflowers.

 

It was spring when Lee found himself leaving his village with an overnight bag and a small ring rustling about in his pocket. He sweated bullets for the entire trip, more because of nerves than the intense heat, and he had paced outside the village walls for nearly an hour before taking that final step. He had raced in, proclaiming his proposal with an enthusiasm that even Gai-sensei could not have matched.

 

Gaara had looked up from his paperwork, and given Lee an unreadable glance that somehow felt more significant than it ever could have been and said;

 

“No.”

 

So Lee had gone home. He had not persevered, nor attempted to change Gaara's mind. He had simply gone home, and cried. Because Gaara was not another goal, not a dream or an aspiration out of Lee's reach. Gaara was Lee's reality, and there was no point in reach for the stars when the ground was pulling away from you feet.

 

It was spring, and Lee felt more morose than he had ever felt in his life.

 

Naruto arrived the next day with a Styrofoam cup full of ramen and his usual bright smile, but Lee slammed the door in his face. Tenten had attempted to cheer him up with funny stories and a concession to his skills as a ninja, and Lee merely nodded vaguely before leaving the room. Neji called on the phone and Lee actually picked up.

 

The fall was spent staring at the clock, as Lee wondered what he had done to be rejected so firmly and decidedly. Lee wondered why he had even thought that Gaara would want to be with him anyway.

 

Time ticked by, measured in seconds and minutes and months by the former green-beast, who had trouble feeling as green as he had in years previous. Winter came, and with it a note left on Lee's kitchen table at two in the morning with a box of chocolates and some wilting hand-picked wildflowers.

 

I'm sorry, it read.

 

Lee had waited another week before finding it in himself to move. He left his village and trekked across the freezing nighttime desert without packing a bag or alerting his loved ones. The man at the gate let him in quietly, without a word spared between them.

 

When he met Gaara, in the sand-nin's room at two in the morning, he was angry. He yelled, and broke an antique lamp on Gaara's wall, and cried as his love held him gently in his arms.

 

“I'm sorry.” Gaara said, his voice pitched just right for the time of night and his hands softly touching Lee's hair as if they were afraid he would break.

 

“Ask me again.” Gaara had said, repeating himself over and over, “Ask me again.”

 

“Why?” Lee had asked, not ready to believe that he had spent all those months in pain for nothing. That Gaara had shattered the happiness they had…

 

“I'm afraid.” Gaara said. Not `I was afraid' but `I am afraid'. Lee realized why he loved the sand-nin all over again. He realized that Gaara was real. Not an unreachable goal but better in his reality. Lee looked up, and asked him softly without a ring and without the loud exclamations he had imagined;

 

“Marry me.”

 

Gaara took a breath, his fear curling in a tight ball in his chest. Lee would leave him, whispered the small piece of his mind that he always associated with the demon, Lee would betray him just like everyone else. One day, the voice whispered, he would arrive home with his chocolates and wildflowers to find Lee gone. His mind presented him with the image of an empty house that still somehow found itself filled with Lee's presence and Lee's absence.

 

Gaara let his fear go.

 

“Yes.”

 

In spring, they were married. The ceremony was filled with their closest friends and enemies, Gai-sensei gave a long and involved speech that eventually ended in tears. Naruto gave them ramen and Sakura gave Lee a congratulatory kiss on the cheek. Lee didn't revel in it quite as much as he once might have, since he was too busy staring dreamily into the eyes of his real-life lover.

 

Lee learned that love took work, even after they were married. That jealousy and fear would spring up occasionally. That nightmares would come and tear their nights apart at times. That shouting matches could fill an entire city block, and damage much more than buildings.

 

But he also saw those days that greeted him with a bouquet of wilted wild-flowers, and a box of chocolates (even if he didn't like caramel), and a good-guy-grin. And Lee realized that sometimes reality could be so much better than unreachable goals and fanciful dreams.