"You might say that, but there were probably plenty of times there where I had hurt you. I am not going to pretend that I am perfect. No way have I gone soft, but I fully recognize that in the past I committed crimes. Honestly I did so, and I have instead learned to direct my anger and aggression. Therefore, I am not going to hold anything against you merely because it happened in the past. You'll have to come to understand that as I have."<br/><br/>Gaara frowned a bit as he spoke. Then again, he always remained rather stoic when he had such discussions. It was a usual condition for him. Part of that came from the fact that he had never learned quite how to deal with his feelings. For instance, he was still having a pretty difficult time telling her that he liked that punk rock outfit she had on. "Obviously you were raised by the Akatsuki, which is why you care about them. I believe that some of the others, my brother included, would like to wipe them off the face of the map." Gaara then cleared his throat a bit as he considered something.<br/><br/>"Remember that later on Keiso-san will be watching you." He made a conscious effort not to address his other brother as Keikkun. "That does not sound like real friendship that you were introduced to. It merely sounds like you were being controlled. Is that the case? Were you merely being controlled the whole time and had to treat it as though it was friendship for your own safety?" With that he lowered his head, not liking this story, but doing his best not to allow his anger to get the better of him. It was very difficult, especially when she had mentioned Orochimaru.<br/><br/>Indeed, he found it difficult not to act on it right now. As a result he figured that he might as well vocalize what he was going through. Perhaps that would have helped him somewhat. "What you said about Orochimaru and what you had said about experiments threatened to turn me violent again. I don't want to have to hurt people unnecessarily, but I figure that such an action might very well have actually been deemed as self-defense at this point." Well that wasn't quite right either to be honest. It wouldn't have been an act of self-defense. Honestly, it would have just been him acting out of revenge. Nevertheless, something inside of him had wanted to just go out and get violent.<br/><br/>For the time being, though, he merely resigned himself to listening to her story. He figured that it might have been the best course of action. Continuing to listen along to it, he did his best to just actually do that and listen to the part about her getting her copycat ability and such. None of this was easy to hear. Even the positive parts of the story were a little much. Throughout none of it, though, did Gaara place a great deal of blame on her. While he figured that she was going to fear this, and if he were capable of reading minds, which he wasn't, he would have known that she did, he decided to tell her straight out about what he felt like. "I forgive you for all of this, but I find it very hard to forgive anyone else including the man you continue to refer to as Uncle Hidan. I very badly want to kill him, and more than likely should not be placed in the same room as him again."<br/><br/>If nothing else, then he figured that honesty was clearly the best policy here. He didn't want to do or say anything that would have been dishonest. Actually that might very well have been just as bad as everything that she had done to begin with, and while he didn't want to do anything that could have scared her off Gaara also didn't want to do anything that was a lie. That could have caused far more major problems somewhere down the line, and he had known that. Swallowing deeply he considered the odd juxtaposition of choices that he had in front of him.<br/><br/>Gaara then took the one that was the most interesting and he actually just changed the subject. "Well, you know uh..." He stumbled with it at first. Complimenting a member of the opposite sex wasn't at all something that he had even the slightest amount of practice with. That made it all the more difficult. Swallowing once again, Gaara didn't look nervous. He actually just sort of looked confused, which he was. Nervousness wasn't something that he had often felt so much as confusion about the right way to precede in a situation. "Let me say that your outfit is rather...fierce." Was that the right word? Had he actually used the right word? If he had, well, then he was feeling quite a bit on top of his own world.<br/><br/>Then again, he had also worried to some degree that changing the topic like this after such a serious discussion might have been a faux pas that he didn't even realize that he had committed. It wasn't something that he had wanted to devote too much thought to. Turning away, he waited for whatever sort of judgment was going to come as a result of the words that he had picked to use in this conversation. It was difficult, but if there was one thing that Gaara hadn't been afraid of it was a challenge.