Starting over

#74 Packing Up

Naruto POV

At the funeral, everyone was pretty quiet. No one was making any big speeches, we were all just silently grieving the loss of a great leader and a good friend to most of us. Temari was silently crying into my shoulder as they closed Rasa's casquet. Baki stood next to it and was watching over the ceremony, since he was the acting Kazekage. Next to me and Temari was Gaara, who had his arm around the waist of a silent Anko. They both had tear tracks on their faces, even though they both tried to stay strong in public.

After they lowered the casquet down into the grave, Baki officially ended the ceremony and the crowd began to disperse. Temari and I waited at the grave, silently saying our final goodbyes to the man, while occasionally some citizens came to us to express their sympathy.

The sun was almost setting when we finally got home. Gaara had gone with Anko to her apartment again, so we were once again alone in the house. Opening the door, we were greeted, by all the flower baskets that we had just put inside without looking through them.

Deciding that now would be as good a time as any we took the envelopes from each basket and put the flowers into the garden, where we let them be, until they would inevitably wither away. Looking at the stack of at least forty cards, we sighed and got to work, silently reading letter after letter, with mostly just bland phrases like 'We are sorry for your loss.' in them. In some cards were small presents like coupons for a free meal at a certain restaurant or something similar, but those were rather rare.

We finally threw all the cards away, before we both fell into our bed and almost instantly falling asleep.

I opened my eyes to see the sun already high in the sky and at first panicked but then I remembered that Baki had given our team a week free time to clear our minds. I looked down to see Temari with her head on my chest and her arms around my stomach, smiling ever so slightly. Kissing her on the forehead, I woke her up to discuss what we would do this week.

"Good Morning.", I said smiling, as the girl slowly opened her eyes. "Morning.", came the reply from the sleepy kunoichi. "What do you wanna do this week?", I asked, while the girl slowly crawled up, putting her head next to mine on the pillow. "I don't know.", she answered, smiling, before leaning over and pressing her lips against mine. "How far along is the house?", she asked, after we parted again. "I think they will be done in two days or so.", I said, earning a smile from the girl. "Well, then why don't we finally move into our own house? After all, when are we gonna have another free week. With Gaara probably spending most of his time with Baki to get ready for being Kazekage the next few years, I am guessing that we are going to be back up for teams that need reinforcements, since we both just are chunin. I don't think, that we will have much time in between our missions.", Temari suggested. I nodded. I could tell, that she was still sad, about her father, but also, that she was trying to look into the future with a smile.

"Then, what are we going to do until the house is done?", I asked, smiling at the girl, who was smirking at me. "I think, I know something.", she whispered, hovering her lips over mine. "And what would that be?", I asked, wrapping my arms around her waist. "Packing our stuff.", Temari burst out laughing, rolling around on the bed. After the initial shock, I realized what she had done and joined her.

"I got you so good.", she said, giving me a quick peck on the lips, after we had stopped laughing. She went to get up from the bed, but I put my arms around her and pulled her back, rolling over, pressing her into the soft bed. "Oh, don't think, that I will let you off that easily.", I whispered in her ear. The girl chuckled as I kissed her neck and slowly made my way to her lips. Just as I was about to kiss her on the mouth, I halted and smirked, before beginning to tickle her on her sides, causing her to cry out laughing again. After a minute I stopped and pressed my lips against hers. "Now, we are even.", I said, as I sat up. The blonde girl chuckled again and reached out for my hand. I helped her sit up and we got out of bed, to start packing our stuff.

As the sun set, we were in the streets of Suna, searching for Gaara. He was not at Anko's apartment and they were also not at his usual training ground, so we were just wandering the town, looking out if we somewhere saw the redhead or the former konoha kunoichi. Earlier we had gone to the construction site of our house and saw that they were already in the process of cleaning everything up. The headmaster, that was overseeing the whole construction process had come to us, with a smile on his face, to tell us how, they would be finished the next morning and that he would like to present us the keys to our new house around noon that day. We smiled at each other and thanked him, for telling us, before we headed out to find Gaara.

Our little search had been going on for almost an hour now. We didn't bother to use any jutsu to find Temari's brother, since we quite liked the relaxing walk around the city.

It took us another hour before we spotted the purple hair of Anko in the crowded streets of Sunagakure. As we went up to her, we saw that Gaara, was with her and that the two were smiling at each other.

Smiling at the pair, we made our way through the mass of people. "Hey you two.", Temari greeted them smiling. Gaara looked at us and smiled, while Anko blushed and quickly let go of Gaara's hand. I chuckled at that. "Don't worry Anko, we suspected it already.", I said, earning a smile from Gaara and an even deeper blush from his purple haired girlfriend. "Well, anyways, we have been searching for you.", Temari said, coming straight to the point. "Why's that?", Gaara asked, looking concerned at us. "Well, Temari and I are moving out tomorrow. Our mansion is done and we wanted to use the free time that we have to get set up in our new house.", I told him, earning a surprised look from him. "And, between us, a house is better than some apartment. You'll have much more room there.", I said winking. That even made Gaara blush, as Anko hid behind him. Temari chuckled as she took my hand. "Well, we just wanted to tell you. Come on Naruto, let's leave the two alone.", she said, pulling me away from the other couple.