An update for Life Lessons and Budding Blossoms will be up in the next few days! Bear with me ppls as I juggle all these stories and my internet loss! (dies inside) Gaara time! *que's fangirl screams to play at his entrance* lols enjoy and review please =D

Of Blood and Sand

Gaara paced the confines of his office irritably. What was taking her so long to arrive here? His thoughts nagged at him as the day slowly slipped to night and still there was no sign of Haruno Sakura. Earlier that morning he had received reports that a Konoha dignitary was crossing the border and slated for traveling to Suna for an extended leave of absence. This was all a part of the arrangements the Hokage had made with him in their last correspondence and yet the woman had still not arrived.

"Temari!" the man called out as he began to throw off his Kage robes and shoulder the large gourd leaning against his desk.

"You are going to tear the desert up looking for her because she took her time in arriving here?" A tall, blonde woman sighed as she fanned herself in the doorway. As her brother walked up to her with nothing but dead seriousness written all over his face she merely smirked and stepped aside so he could exit. "I'm just saying that Sakura-san is a big girl and might not appreciate you making a big deal out of this. Trust me that woman can handle herself."

"I know." He simply stated as he began to make his way down the long hall. "It just isn't like her and there is a sandstorm brewing for tomorrow morning."

Temari had pulled herself off the door and snapped her small hand held fan closed before hastily falling into step with her youngest brother. He had a point, Sakura was never late and no one knew the deserts tendencies better than Gaara no Sabaku. The last thing they needed was for the Pink haired kounichi from the Leaf to get lost in their desert.

"Fine, fine. At least give me time to grab my gear and let Shika-kun know what is up. I'll also find some scouts and we can head out. Meet me at the gate in ten?"

The Kage grunted out something and kept on at his steady pace. Temari knew that he would wait for her, but only for so long before he took off on his own. His grunt was a non-committal acceptance of what she said but if brought up later and he had left he could claim never to have agreed.

The desert was teeming with life after the sun went down. The sounds echoed about the quickly assembled search party as they formulated a strategy. All the while Gaara knelt upon the sand just ahead of them, one hand laid gently upon the start of a dune as his own sand slithered down his arm and mingled with the foreign sands. What he found out caused the Kage to stand up abruptly and take off leaving the others confused but with no choice but to follow.

There had been the strong sense of blood tainting the desert sands. Not the blood of past battles but fresh blood and lots of it that had been spilt upon his desert this day. As his team began to fall into a hastily constructed formation and word of his discovery spread they fanned out in search of signs of battle or passage left behind. Not an easy task in the ever changing landscape of the desert.

Sakura stumbled blindly through the desert. Sand gritted within her eyes and try as she might the wind kept blowing against her. The rough abrasion of sand rubbing against her sun burnt arms and battered body as it built up in her wounds caused stinging pain. She had never been so thirty in all of her life either. Her pack and everything else lay discarded somewhere during her flight from the battle.

There had been so many of them. They had to have been the remaining mercenaries left now without work and banded together with the goal of taking down the bitch who had ended their glory days. A mixture of rogue ninjas and bandits that attacked with no regard for their own lives or those around them. She had been lucky to make it out alive against such numbers.

Now though, she found herself lost in the sprawling desert without water or any supplies save her remaining kunai. All about her rang the shrill shrieks of the desert's occupants. The slithering of deadly snakes occasionally pricking at her ears as her chakra weakened and the animals that now hunted her grew braver to approach the wounded woman.

She had lost too much blood before she could heal the worst of her wounds and now as she fell to her knees and began to crawl her way, she found herself sinking into the cooling sand. Without her chakra to keep her atop she found out just how hard it was to traverse this deadly terrain.

As her vision began to weaken and her heart pounded heavily within her ears she found his face being recalled in her memories. Their love had been simple and regrettably she had never acted upon it. All she would ever have to remember him by was the night he had finally confessed his feelings and held her in his arms as she cried realizing she could in fact love again. Cruel fate kept them apart or from being alone after that and before she could say the words to him, he went off on his last mission. No, all she would have were the fond memories of him before and after she realized just how special he was to her.

She lay broken, half alive in the cusp of his sands embrace. The blood red hair and dark ringed eyes peered into her very soul. Strong hands shook her body as his deep voice seemed to reverberate through her empty chest. As she choked up blood and those soft green eyes were all she could see her body fell into seizure. Eye lids fluttering rapidly, she thought she saw Captain Yamato's face a few times as the face that was before her slowly dominated her vision, and she began to gasp on the air being forced into her lungs. Something warm and moist brushed across her cracked lips as her body jolted upwards in response to the presence of foreign chakra entering her body. Her parched mouth sought moisture and as the warm moist air began to fill her again awareness slowly filtered back in. Lips pressed against hers and large hands pumped down on her chest.

"Kaze...med...nin...let me" there was no more sound and she felt light as a feather.

"Don't you dare die on me!" A deep voice demanded by her ear as the familiar glow of medical chakra seemed to seep into her subconscious.