A/N: Extra long chapter to make up for the horrible horrible horrible long delay. I am so so sorry. But here it is at last, Christmas morning, and I thank you all for your most wonderous patience. (: Happy Christmas, dears.

-/-

Fingertips brushed against rough stone as I stepped into the stone fortress of Suna. Caught by the memory, I drifted sideways and leaned my head against the rock, feeling jagged edges press into my skull. I could've fallen asleep there and drifted through warm dreams, but Baki had no patience for my reminiscence; he grabbed the back of my shirt and dragged me forward. Growling, I wrestled free and ran a few steps to get back ahead of him.

Gaara trailed behind. I offered him no second thought, no hint of sympathy or responsibility. I owed him nothing, and damn it, I was home.

The first thing that hit me across the heart nearly crippled me. I froze in my tracks, long enough that Baki shoved me forward again as if I were a slow-moving slave getting in his way. I might as well have been, the way I worked for Gaara without gratitude or pay.

But no, here was my reward: coming home.

It was a reward that now seemed weathered and old, and that is what struck me like a tangible blow. Erosion chipped away at the sturdy walls; cracks slithered across stone like insidious snakes eating away at my home. Suna had grown worn and weary without me.

But still it bustled. Even this close to the edge of the city—even in the heat of the day, which siphoned people off the streets—shoppers wound their way through the hive. Without hesitation, I plunged into the sparse swarm—it would buzz frenetically in the early morning or the evening—trying to lose Baki and Gaara behind me. I refused to let it matter that they were the reason home; I refused to look back.

Damn Baki, though, is a jōnin. He moved through the crowd like a ninja and closed his claws in the back of my clothing, pulling me up short and choking me. I swore violently.

"You have a mission," he said coldly. "If you go anywhere, you take Gaara with you."

"What the hell?" I gave him a look as if my steely stare could change his mind. The expression he offered in return was one I could not hope to compete with. Making a noise of disgust under my breath, I called, "Gaara. How do you feel about some damned delicious shaved ice?"

His face turned toward my voice and followed it like a trained dog as he struggled to catch up with Baki and I. I waited a few moments longer, keeping my cool, and inwardly straining to run off and see what I had missed—and what I still knew.

When Gaara drew even with me, I threw caution to the wind. Leveling him a stare that he couldn't see but which ordered him not to dare kill me, I coiled my uninjured hand around the demon's white sash—no longer pure as snow, but splattered with dried blood like constellations—and dragged him off. No way in hell could I muster enough patience to delay for his ponderous, blind gait.

My hand didn't remain uninjured for long. Sand attacked it like a ravaging hound; I clung grimly on, until I felt battered skin give way to bone. Jerking my shredded digits back, I retreated, cradling my hand against my chest and reflecting on the benefits of red clothing.

I could now do nothing with either left or right, but at least the blood stinging my tattered skin would not stain my outfit.

"If you kill me," I said, voice low and furious, "I will come back to haunt you until you go mad and die." I cared little for the fact that he was half-mad already; I merely needed to get my point across.

"I am haunted by a thousand ghosts," he snarled, "whose living selves meant nothing to me; and whose laments still fail to move me. One more spirit in the crowd will make no difference."

"No," I countered, "my spirit will. Phantoms take a form that you can see; but you are blind, damn it. And the ghosts don't know that, so they stand there and think that you see and that they're tormenting you. But I know the truth. You are blind as a damn bat, so I will make enough noise to raise the Devil out of Hell and you will never sleep again."

"I do not sleep," he growled. "If I did, you would see what Hell looked like."

-/-

Lost.

Of course I would be lost; I hadn't been here in ten damn years. But I hated to admit it. I wove my sand in with Gaara's to guide him and pretended I knew exactly where I was going.

He'd lived here his whole life, and more recently than I; he may have known where to look. But he was blind, and looking wasn't high on his list of skills at present. My pride sure as hell wouldn't have let me ask him for help anyway.

I decided a rooftop would afford an excellent view of Suna's streets; but with two useless hands, I wasn't going to be climbing anything any time soon. I scouted out a house with a stairway all the way to a rooftop cactus garden and headed for the steps, telling Gaara to wait behind. He didn't want to obey; he wanted to kill me again, still, but I withdrew my sand and he tripped on the stone streets and pressed himself back into darkness.

Halfway up the stairs, an empty flower pot collided with my shoulder, bursting into red-clay shards like blood-stained glass. Cursing, I glanced around for my attacker to find a woman standing in the door of the house, glaring up at me, another pot at the ready.

Damn it. Shinobi didn't get flower pots thrown at them; if a shinobi were on a roof, the roof's owners knew damn well there was a damn good reason for it and let them be. But of course, no one around here knew I was a shinobi anymore; I'd been gone ten years.

I ran up the stairs, ducking two more pots, unable to shake the feeling that Gaara was laughing at me somewhere below. The woman in the doorway rivaled my swearing with curse words I had never heard, her furious voice cowing me into silence instead of defiance and flight instead of fight.

I really didn't belong here anymore.

-/-

I had to cross altogether too many rooftops before the damn hag's cawing faded out; by that point, I had left Gaara far behind. Muttering, I tried to calculate a roundabout route back to him, but figured I would only end up lost again; I would have to suffer further humiliating bruises to return.

For several minutes, I toyed with the delightful idea of leaving him to rot. I tossed it out for a multitude of reasons, but let the pleasure of contemplating it remain.

Then I went to work on finding the shaved ice man.

Other rooftop gardeners glared kunai through my form as I hopped from building to building, but my hitai-ate were visible from this distance, so they left me alone. They probably thought I was some imposter from Konoha, too damn stupid to take off my home village's symbol, but I left the Leaf Village headband tied in place at my belt. Ten years hadn't given me a new home, but it meant too damn much to just throw away with the trash.

I carefully memorized my path above Suna, surveying the streets and deciding I could maybe take the low road back to Gaara. That is, if I ever figured out where the hell I was going.

I slowed and stopped on an empty roof, realizing that my aimless hopping would only get me more lost. A young woman on the neighboring house's crown, gently petting a cactus between its needles, had glanced up at me and gone back to her business without a scowl; hesitantly, I jumped the gap and approached her.

"I'm sorry," I said, keeping a civil tongue in my mouth, "but do you know where the vendor who sells shaved ice is?"

She raised her blue-violet eyes to me and her gaze went first to the Sunagakure hitai-ate tied around my head—the one placed where a forehead protector rightfully should be placed: across the forehead. "He's over by Kaido's right now," she informed me softly, fingers brushing through a curtain of dark hair.

Ora Kaido's café had been around a hell of a long t ime; the woman who owned the place, Kaido, was known to take on most anyone desperate for a job, as long as she thought them desperate enough. I remembered the place well—but not how to get there.

I chewed my lip a moment, then gestured to the Konoha hitai-ate at my waist. "I haven't been here in ten years," I explained. "Could you tell me the way from here?"

My informant looked startled. "How long?"

"Ten years," I repeated bitterly, dropping my gaze. "I was five."

"I…" She paused, then shook her head. "I'm not going to ask," she said, and gave me directions to the place I wanted to go.

With thanks on my lips like birds fluttering free, I leapt to the dusty streets. The young woman watched me for a moment—I could feel her deep eyes on me—then turned away, offering her cactus a drink and apparently forgetting me.

Taking a drink of my own, I concentrated on recalling the route to Gaara. I would have to hold it in my head, in reverse, as well as the path to the shaved ice man, but after learning to navigate the mazelike forests of Konoha, I thought I could manage it.

At last my feet crunched over shards of broken pottery, alerting me of my return to my starting point. My eyes searched first the doorway of that damn woman's house, and then the roof, to make sure I wouldn't be facing any more red clay barrages. She was notably absent; I swore under my breath in relief and shifted to seek Gaara instead.

The shadows hid him well; and for a moment, I froze like a startled deer, terrified that he had moved and now rampaged through the village, killing blindly. But the darkness altered like a wind catching an eddy of fog; I muttered his name, and Gaara stepped free, drawn by my voice.

"You were absent… for a while." His tone was sour, disapproving, but calm; for once, he did not growl at me like an animal—like a demon.

I shrugged out of habit, though he couldn't see. "Been a long damn while since I've been here. I didn't know where I was going. Let's go now, before I forget the way."

With an effort, I slipped my sand into his, pivoted, and went off the way I'd come.

A flower pot crashed against a wall behind us, bursting like fireworks turned to flakes of dried blood and clattering to the ground.

-/-

The shaved ice man had as many flavors as I remembered.

For lack of a name, the title had started to take on capital letters in my head. No, he wasn't just the shaved ice man—he was The Shaved Ice Man, same as the Kazekage or the Council. He was that damn important, and he had just as many flavors as I remembered.

I had to list them off for Gaara; with just under a hundred, it took a hell of a long time. My throat grew hoarse; I coughed, suddenly looking forward even more to the prize at the end of the road as I read the sign with all its infinite glory. I should have just made Gaara go without.

The Shaved Ice Man must have been a ninja in another life; without manipulation of space, there was no way he could fit a hundred flavors into the tiny cart he wheeled around. As a child, I'd taken it for granted; now, I caught myself wondering. A tiny part of my mind reached out to sense for sense for chakra use, but found none in the pushcart of syrup and ice.

As I droned on about alphabetical flavors, I chose my own. Passing over 'Wild Poisonberry'—really only wild cherry and strawberry, it had given me a thrill as a child—with a shudder and a sour thought for Baki, I settled on an earlier option from the list: Tiger's Blood. Strawberry and coconut, with a savage pride from the name.

I expected Gaara to choose the same—it seemed his style. But after a long pause, as if he were waiting for me to tell him he couldn't have any, he muttered two words: "Black cherry."

Used to be, I liked to guess all the flavors my friends would pick on the day we were given coins and sent off to get shaved ice, a group of four- and five-year-olds with probably one ten-year-old to keep an eye on us. Since I had no friends here anymore, and I'd already guessed wrong with Gaara, I occupied myself choosing syrups for the young woman who'd given me information and the moron woman who'd thrown things at me. 'Cactus Juice'—fruit punch, peach, and blueberry—I decided for the former while The Shaved Ice Man prepared our treats; and 'Bug Juice'—strawberry and banana—for the latter. Or maybe lemon. Oh, hell—definitely lemon.

I dug into my kunai holster, where I kept my coins—and came up short. Damn D-Rank missions didn't pay much. Damn it. I glanced at Gaara and asked if he had any money—but he didn't. Of course not. The Kazekage's son wanted for nothing but a heart.

Since I couldn't give him that, he might as well have wanted for nothing at all. But right now, he was going to want for black cherry shaved ice if he didn't cough up something.

"Forget it, of course," said The Shaved Ice Man. "Pay me next time." And he gave me a smile like he was welcoming me home.

"Thank you," I said, accepting his gift. I held out the black cherry ice to Gaara, who didn't see that I was offering it to him. Finally, I wrapped the cup in sand and floated it toward him; sensing its presence, sensing a threat, his own sand whipped toward the innocent, syrup-coated frozen water. Gritting my teeth, I forced my recalcitrant grains to pull back; their movement caused Gaara's attack to slow, a spray of gold clashing with the cup but doing no damage.

"It's just your damn shaved ice," I said, and he raised a hesitant hand to curl around the thick paper cylinder, sand armor dampening as it touched condensation. Spoon poised over my blood, I glanced back at The Shaved Ice Man, who watched far calmly than I would have ever expected.

"What's your name?" I asked.

His lingering smile widened. "It would be better, of course," he said, "that you always remember me as The Shaved Ice Man. Because that, of course, is what I am."

-/-

Sunako had left him alone in the shadows, a place he had grown unaccustomed to. Once, he swung alone, played alone, and hid from the children who feared him. He'd become a ghost, haunting the playgrounds.

As a demon, recanting love, he'd never bothered to hide. She'd put him back in that darkness, and he hated her for that. Aroused by the hate, the Shukaku growled for her death.

But he fought the Ichibi back, much as he hungered to let it loose. He didn't know why he didn't let it have its way. Sands knew he wanted to, wanted it as much as he'd ever wanted anything.

What he did know was this: He hated her. She had left him in the dark for a long time, and he had started to fear she would not come back. Fear. He should have been pleased to be on his own again, but it had made him nervous.

And for that, he hated himself, too.