|| @featherboots
Gaara pants like his lungs are falling out of his chest. It's mostly adrenaline, a side of physical effort, hold the panic. He is too well-trained for panic. The thing - that thing - lies lifeless or near-lifeless some meters away, the dark-soaked patch around it blooming outward, matting the grass, tinging the air metallic on the tongue.
He refocuses on the girl slumped against the bench. The one still moving, against all odds. The fight is over, but he is a rampaging bull force-fed a sedative, he is a rollercoaster halfway down the slope and someone has hit the emergency brake. For one terrible moment her life, too, hangs in the balance; he is not too well-trained to make mistakes.
This moment passes in the sound of his slowing breaths and the dull hum of traffic. Then it is her he approaches with unsteady knees, eyes all whites. To say he towers above her would be something of an exaggeration, but the nudge of his shoe against her hip is none too gentle.