Please see first chapter for disclaimer, rating, warnings, pairings, etc.
Special Thanks: goes out to LadyCassie, TheGirlWithNoIQ, phoenix fyer, McKazekage, rao hyuga 18, ASirensLullaby, tsukiko-uchiha95, Guest, SinShu, sailorangelmoon1, QueenP19, Daheim, lidianm, Anonymous, and TheUtsukushiiYume for all your marvelous reviews for the last chapter! I've read them over many times since you've posted them, and they've really kept me motived during the writing of this chapter. Also thanks to everyone who's added this story to their favorites and follows lists, I always get a boost of encouragement every time I see a new alert in my e-box!
Author's Note: I am so sorry for the late update! But I'm the kind of writer who pours every bit of herself into every word she writes, and this chapter is pretty ... intense. So that means I was worn out after every few paragraphs, and it took me a long time to get it finished. Plus, I wanted to make sure it was worthy of being posted - I don't want you all to have to read something I feel isn't at least good work. Thank you all so much for your patience, and I hope this chapter was worth the wait!
*~Chapter XXIX~*
~Invasion~
Suna, attacked.
Suna, invaded.
Suna, deceived.
Gaara wasn't sure which thing topped the list as the worst. He - the trained warrior, the trained assassin, the trained tactician - had been so fixated on the fact files on Konoha, his wife's former village and Suna's new allies, had been stolen, he completely neglected to take the time to consider the threat to his own home. Blinded by the perceived threat to Konoha, he utterly failed to consider the fact that it could be just what it had now proved to be: a red herring, a diversion, to lead them down the wrong path.
And now, because of his lapse in judgement, all of the people looking to him for protection and leadership were in danger.
Even worse than that, his family was in danger.
Even worse than that, his wife was in danger.
The situation emitted bad signals no matter from which direction he looked. Like so many others, he implicitly believed Suna impervious to attacks - even despite the Akatsuki-engineered explosion at the wall the night before he, Hinata, and Temari left for Konoha to attend Hyuuga Hiashi's funeral. It never occurred to him to doubt how their walls kept them protected from invaders, from the enemy.
But assuming the intelligence from Konoha to be correct - and Gaara had a distinct feeling it was - he believed wrongly. Horribly wrongly. And because of that overconfidence, everyone he loved now faced unimaginable peril.
"Snipers have been placed all around the wall," Itachi was saying when Gaara finally pulled his attention back to his brother-in-law. "Others have been positioned on the ledges lining the main entrance of Suna. Almost half of our remaining military forces have formed a barricade just inside the wall, ready to stop anyone who might get past our defenses there."
"And the rest of the forces?" Gaara asked. He absently checked the katana strapped to his back and the kunai and shuriken in pouches around his waist and right leg. Though he himself had been trained to be a weapon, he'd learned it never hurt to have backup with him as well.
"Scattered among the streets in various strategic positions, along with our ninja." Itachi nodded to several servants busily arming themselves, ready to defend their master's home. "We are the final line of defense to protect the heart of Suna."
And to ensure Hinata and Temari's getaway. Though Itachi did not voice the words, Gaara knew they were implied. He had paced off the secret escape passageway leading from the mistress of Suna's rooms, and he knew exactly how long it would take to get from Hinata's suite, past the outer wall, to the hidden series of caves which always remained stocked - just in case. "I should be on the front line," Gaara muttered without thinking.
His brother-in-law shot him a sharp look. "It is not this building which is the heart of Suna," he said. "It is you. With all due respect, your place is here."
Again, Itachi's unspoken words were very clear. Everyone in Suna was willing to die to ensure his safety. But in actuality he'd had more training than any of them. Things were so backwards! Instead of them dying to protect him, as leader of Suna, he should be the one dying to protect his people.
As if knowing the path of Gaara's thoughts, Itachi said mildly, "Suna needs a strong leader to keep it strong, particularly in the face of attack and invasion. I - and many others - can think of none better nor stronger than you."
Gaara wondered what enabled the Uchiha to stay so calm in the face of the worst calamity Suna had faced in its history. Part of him wondered if it was because Itachi had not grown up here, but as soon as it entered his mind he recognized the thought as extraordinarily unfair of him. Itachi had sworn his loyalty to Suna a long time ago. He'd since given every indication he would do anything to prove that loyalty.
Nodding once to convey his understanding of Itachi's comment, Gaara focused his attention on the servants hurrying about. Usually an efficient and unobtrusive force within his household, they ran things smoothly so his own attention could remain on the village. Now they had all moved to the forefront, preparing themselves to assist him in protecting the village and her inhabitants.
The tower standing above every other building in Suna had not been built that way for reasons of vanity or pretension. It served as constantly visible evidence of the village leader's power and strength - his ability to protect them. Were Suna's tower to fall, so would the hope of those who looked to it every day for proof of the village's - and its leader's - strength and stability.
Everyone froze mid-movement when a deep rumbling, like thunder, penetrated the walls. At the exact same moment, the floor beneath their feet vibrated so hard it made the furniture rattle.
The wall. Gaara knew without looking or asking that had to be the location from which the explosion had come. He and Itachi came out of their shock at the same moment. They ran for the front doors, using their combined strength to wrestle the massive things open.
From their vantage point, the two men saw Suna's rock wall rising far above the roofs of all the buildings between where they stood and the village's barrier. The crack in its face, the only visible way in or out, remained a dark crevice in the otherwise unshakeable wall.
"Where...?" Gaara knew he hadn't imagined it. Something, somewhere, had exploded. And if they couldn't see it at the front of the building...
"Temari!" Itachi spun on his heels and took off back through the building, racing through the halls and dodging around people in his way, Gaara only a step or two behind the slightly taller man.
If the front wall and its entrance had not been attacked, the back wall of the village had to be the Akatsuki's target. Rather than planning to use the obvious opening - they engineered one of their own.
The rear doors already stood open by the time Gaara and Itachi reached them. Bright orangey-red columns of fire shot into the sky, joined by thick black smoke which hung, undisturbed, in the still night air. A massive gash, bigger than Gaara even dreamed could ever be inflicted upon a solid stone wall, ripped straight through its center-
-Right over the secret exit where Hinata, Temari, and Matsuri would have come out into the open desert.
Hinata. He stood staring dumbly at the fire and smoke for a long moment, a sudden crushing weight settling into the center of his chest as realization filtered down from his brain to his heart. Hinata would have been there. The timing was right - she was there when the explosion...
A tremor started in his core, rattling through him so hard he visibly shuddered. In trying to keep Hinata safe, I killed her. Heaven help me, I've killed her!
Deep inside him, the monster long ago born of his own rage and hatred woke with a vicious roar, though only an anguished croak escaped his own throat. The old familiar whispers quickly rose to screams, calling for justice, for revenge, for blood.
Hinata... His last sight of her, eyes and face full of confusion and uncertainty, hovered at the forefront of his mind. He hadn't had a chance to kiss her; tell her he loved her; even say goodbye to her before Temari had led her away to what they'd both thought was safety...
He'd felt hatred before. He hated his father with a passion surpassed only by the love he felt for Hinata. He hated the members of the Council, every single one of them, for everything they'd done to Suna, to him, to his family. He hated his own ancestors, who had set the village on the self-destructive path from which he was still trying to steer it.
But he hated the Akatsuki perhaps most of all, for taking away his wife, the single bright star in his otherwise very dark life.
At last tearing his eyes away from the flaming remains of what had once been a solid, believed-indestructable sandstone wall, Gaara turned his gaze to Itachi. He saw in the Uchiha's eyes the same heartrending agony, the same soul-searing hatred and fury, he felt inside himself.
Like Hinata for Gaara, Temari had been the one person in Itachi's life who had brought him blinding joy simply by existing. To have her yanked away so abruptly, so violently...
Gaara had lost his wife and his sister. Itachi had lost his wife and his child - another child. Their losses differed, and yet the depths of their pain were perfectly, terribly, equal.
Very slowly, Itachi turned his face toward Gaara's, his black eyes burning red with the reflection of the flames licking away at the remains of the wall. The Sabaku met those eyes willingly, seeing in them the steady echo of every single emotion roiling hotly within the raw cavity of his own chest.
They achieved a perfect accord without exchanging a single word.
The Akatsuki would very much regret attacking Suna.
Wet stickiness dripped into Hinata's left eye, but she blinked it away and stayed focused on what Temari shouted over their horses' hoofbeats thrumming across the sand. They were close to the entrance of the hiding place, so close they might be able to slip into it before the encroaching enemy came upon them. It was so well hidden, she explained, it would merely look like the three women - and their horses - simply vanished into thin air, when actually they had entered a series of caves hidden deep beneath man-made hills of sand.
Clenching her reins so tightly the bones in her hands cramped and protested in pain, Hinata leaned a little tighter into her mount's neck. The mare's dark mane stung her face, but she ignored the repeated strikes, keeping her focus on the mounds of sand which appeared to grow larger as they approached.
"We aren't going to make it!" Matsuri screamed. "Milady Temari, I can slow them down!"
"Matsuri!" Temari snapped in response. "Don't you dare-!"
But Hinata's bodyguard had already made up her mind. Drawing the katana from its sheath on her back, Matsuri sharply reined Kiri around and charged at the oncoming forces, eerie shadows dancing across the desert in the reddish-orange glow of the fires still burning by the wall. Temari let out a stream of invective and yanked her own reins hard to the left. Expression stony, she led Hinata around a gentle curve and out of sight of the inexorably approaching horde.
"This way. Stay right next to me!" Standing in her stirrups, Temari lifted the kunai in her hand and held it steady as she and Hinata charged down a very narrow canyon. Looking up, the brunette saw sand begin to rain down from above, only two or three steps behind their horses. She realized Temari was cutting small, nearly invisible threads to trigger some sort of mechanism to hide the way they'd entered the hideout.
"There're several other ways in," Temari said in a soft, flat voice, finally returning to her saddle and gently reining in a winded Sanraizu. "But that's the quickest. Now follow me."
The two women rode through what almost seemed to be a narrow hallway, its confines so tight Hinata felt the edges of her stirrups scrape the wall. She even had to duck a few times so she wouldn't scrape her head against the ceiling or bang it against a low overhang. Though the way was mostly dark, a circle of light far ahead of them grew stronger the closer they got.
At last, they emerged into a large, open area walled and roofed with stone, filled with several amenities similar to those in the palace. Rugs covered a portion of the floor, as well as a number of cushions. Four sleeping pallets lay in a loose square formation around a fifth across from the entrance. Several crates against the wall to Hinata's left appeared to hold provisions and supplies. An arched entrance off to one side provided stabling and fodder for their mounts.
"You weren't k-kidding when you said this place is well-supplied," Hinata breathed, dismounting.
Keeping one bladed fan in hand, Temari slid off her mare and quickly checked the room before returning to her sister-in-law's side. "We're always ready for attack," she said, as if in explanation. Then her features darkened as she looked back the way they'd come and said, "Well, we're supposed to be ready for attack all the time." At last the blonde ninja glanced at Hinata, and her turquoise eyes widened. "Hinata! You're bleeding."
Hinata's fingers immediately went up to the sticky spot just beneath her hairline. "Ouch." She stared at the bright red blood on her fingertips, knowing a piece of shrapnel must have hit her but not actually remembering the incident. "Are there first-aid k-kits in here, too?"
"Yes." Temari opened the lid of one of the crates and pulled out the aforementioned item. Motioning for Hinata to have a seat on one of the cushions as she approached, the blonde opened it and riffled through the kit's contents as she chose the one next to her sister-in-law's. "There was so much shrapnel flying around, it's a miracle neither of us were hurt more severely."
At the blonde's words, Hinata noticed the blood staining Temari's shirt. "Temari! B-But you're b-bleeding, too!"
Waving off Hinata's concern, Temari soaked a cloth in antiseptic before pressing it to the other woman's injury. Ignoring the brunette's soft hiss of pain, she reached back into the kit with her free hand to extract a bandage. "It doesn't look too deep - it probably won't need stitches. Which is good, considering I was never really good at the required basic med courses back at the Academy." Ripping the packaging open with her teeth, Temari pulled free the bandage, then quickly replaced the antiseptic cloth on Hinata's forehead with the bandage. "You know who really excelled at them, though? Matsuri aced every single-" She stopped suddenly, sinking back onto her heels as she turned very, very pale.
Hinata clenched her hands into fists in her lap. "She shouldn't have d-done that."
Gingerly tugging up the hem of her tunic, Temari twised slightly to get a look at a nasty gash on her right side, still oozing blood sluggishly. "She did what she thought was right. She - she did her duty." Rolling and tucking her hem up out of the way, the blonde picked up the bottle of antiseptic and another sterile white cloth.
Taking the items from Temari, Hinata helped clean the other woman's wound even as she spotted at least three others between them, though none looked too serious. "That sounds like a rationalization - or a slogan." It took a lot to kindle gentle Hinata's ire, but her sister-in-law's pat-sounding words certainly made a good start of igniting it.
Temari sighed, her hand clenching in pain against her leg at the sting of the antiseptic. "She was right, though," she said. "If she hadn't distracted them, it's likely we wouldn't have made it here without being overwhelmed. She bought us the time we needed." And, as Hinata smoothed down the edges of the other woman's bandages, "Besides, Matsuri's fast. It's entirely possible she got away." But Temari didn't really sound that hopeful.
While Temari took over working on her own wounds, including one on her lower arm, Hinata went about bandaging the deep cut on her own upper leg, just above her knee. Fortunately, her loose pants made it easy to pull the fabric up and keep it away as she went about her work. "I feel so useless just sitting here," she ground out.
"You're where you're supposed to be. Where Gaara wants you to be." Temari gathered up her own used supplies and set them aside to be disposed of later.
Something in the other woman's voice made Hinata look up sharply. "And you're not?"
Lips pinching slightly, Temari looked away. "I'm where Gaara and Itachi want me to be." She wiped furiously at her face before letting out an unsteady huff. "Since one is my superior as well as my liege lord, and the other is my husband, their word is my law."
Hinata thought of her husband, and the giant, flaming hole she'd glimpsed in Suna's wall. The explosion to bring down such a powerful barrier had been massive, and she was deeply thankful she, Temari, and Matsuri had been far enough away to escape serious injury - or worse, death. "The Akatsuki are invading Suna right now," she whispered. She wasn't sure why she spoke the words aloud, but she knew them to be the grim, certain truth.
Temari bowed her head. "I know." Her right hand curled around her left, the pad of her index finger worrying at the simple gold band encircling her finger. She spoke no more, but she might as well have shouted what she was thinking. I should be at Itachi's side. I want to be at Itachi's side.
Feeling like a coward for hiding, Hinata picked up the tattered cloak she'd shed when she and Temari had started doctoring their wounds. "C-Come on," she said.
Lifting her head in surprise, Temari stared at Hinata as if she thought her crazy. "Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, tensing.
"To help Gaara," Hinata replied determinedly. Swinging the cloak over her shoulders, she secured it beneath her chin and tugged the hood over her head. "Are you c-coming with me, or not?" Granted, she didn't have much training with her wristbands and kunai, even less with a katana, and hadn't even had a chance to put what she'd learned doing forms into practice with sparring. But Suna was her village now, its people hers, and so help her, she would do whatever she could to help defend it.
Temari's reply remained unspoken as she leapt to her feet, one hand out in a shushing motion as she spun around, bladed fan once more securely in her grasp. She moved silently across the floor towards a tall vertical crack in the wall which Hinata had not noticed before. Set directly into the wall, it looked almost like a-
-It is a door! Hinata's triumph at recognizing it quickly vanished when it slowly began to swing open.
Apparently we won't even have to leave our hiding place to help fight this battle. Far from resigned, Hinata lifted her arm and took aim on the silently opening door. They are going to regret ever attacking Suna - and my family.
"Let me handle this as much as possible." Temari's voice, low and intense, barely carried to Hinata's ears as the blonde shifted into a deeper fighting stance, pulling out a handful of senbon in preparation to throw.
Even though Hinata wanted to help, she knew Temari was the better fighter and ceded to her experience. Here we go... Using her right arm to steady her left, she prepared to release a few poison-tipped senbon of her own.
Metal gleamed in the darkness beyond the door, and Hinata fired.
Baki met Gaara and Itachi not long after the two men left the safety of the tower. The part of his face not covered by cloth was smeared in soot, and he smelled strongly of smoke. "They've taken out half the back wall," he shouted. "I don't have an exact count of the enemy coming through there, but our forces at the front entrance are already engaged with a very-" his voice faltered for a moment, sounding strangely unsteady, "-very large number."
How have the Akatsuki remained hidden for so long if their forces are so great? Gaara kept the question towards the front of his mind as he kept his eyes open for any shadows which didn't belong. "How many have we lost?" He didn't want to know, but he needed to all the same.
"For sure at least a dozen of the snipers on the wall when it exploded. Beyond that, I haven't heard anything for certain." Baki's visible eye darted to Gaara's face, then away. "Milady...?"
"I don't know for sure." He swallowed back a fresh wave of grief. Not now. He'd mourn later, after he'd avenged Hinata. "But the timing was right for her to be right under it - or at least pretty close to it." Once again, he pushed away a thousand unwanted images, needing to keep his focus. He couldn't avenge her if he got himself killed by inattention.
Itachi silently swung his dao sword in a graceful, deadly arc, ending it with a blade in each hand. Like Gaara, he kept his eyes moving, watching for any infiltrators who might have already worked their way deep into the village ahead of the main group.
Baki went pale under his ruddy complexion, understanding what hadn't been said. "We'll get them," he said. "They'll regret ever making Suna their target."
A shivering flash of light off metal caught Gaara's attention. He lunged forward, swinging his katana to deflect the incoming kunai. Even before it embedded itself into a nearby wall, Suna's leader was halfway up the wall, jumping back and forth between it and the one across from it to get to the roof, Itachi and Baki right behind him.
The man waiting wore a forehead protector, its cloud symbol struck through with a jagged line left by a kunai. He was no match for the Sand's deadly shadow. Less than a minute after the incident began, it finished with the Kumo ninja dead and the three from Suna continuing their steady journey toward the column of smoke marking the wall's destruction.
As they grew closer, the scale of the damage became more evident, especially as their vantage point inproved as they leaped from rooftop to rooftop. Debris from the wall lay scattered in a massive arc, most pieces still red-hot. The jagged hole gaped like a monster's hungry maw, baring the flat expanse of desert and sky beyond it.
Some of Suna's ninja had been far enough from the wall to survive the explosion, yet still close enough to respond to the following threat quickly. Gaara and Itachi found them locked in battle with an army of ninja from other villages, all of whom wore headbands with the symbols of their homes struck through.
So these are the Akatsuki. Gaara paused in a crouch atop the last intact rooftop before the wall, quickly assessing the battleground before he joined the fray. Though Suna's own military and ninja forces were still quite numerous - even considering half of them were en route with those from Konoha - the Akatsuki outnumbered them at least five to one.
"Lord Gaara!"
At Baki's quick, soft warning, the redhead turned to follow his military advisor's gaze. A fluttery black figure leaping from rooftop to rooftop was steadily making its way toward the tower, now protected only by the servants Gaara left to hold Suna's center.
He hesitated, torn between two courses of action. On one hand, he felt he should stay and help those trying to keep the flood of the enemy from penetrating deeper into Suna; on the other, he remembered Itachi's words and knew he should return to the tower. If he could keep it from falling, at least until backup arrived from Konoha...
"I'll stay here, milord," Baki said, dragging Gaara's attention to him. "You and Master Itachi go where you're needed most." After nodding grimly to his leader, Suna's military commander went to join his troops.
"Come on." Reluctantly turning his back on the main part of the battle, Gaara kept pace with Itachi as the two rapidly made their way back to the tower. They met a few pockets of resistance along the way, none of them a match for their channeled fury and skill.
"This isn't right," Itachi murmured. At his brother-in-law's sharply questioning look, he explained. "All the Akatsuki members I've encountered have worn black cloaks with red clouds. I've not seen a single enemy dressed like that thus far."
Only instinct and years of training kept Gaara moving forward without faltering. "Are you saying this might not be the Akatsuki attacking us?" He was reasonably certain it wasn't another single village taking the iniative, since the headband symbols he'd seen thus far varied widely. But, at the same time, if not the Akasuki, what other explanation could there be? As far as he knew, only Suna and Konoha had a strong enough alliance at the moment to pull off something like this, and he'd seen neither Leaf nor Sand symbols among the headbands.
The two men paused to take out another pocket of five enemy ninja before continuing their strategic retreat and discussion. "It must be the Akatsuki. I cannot think of anyone else who could set up something like this - at least not on this scale."
Gaara led the way to the rooftop entrance of the tower, entering the building close to his office. On silent feet, he and Itachi moved through the halls, encountering no one as they grew closer and closer to their targeted room.
They continued to meet no resistance. The tower felt silent as the proverbial tomb, as if they were the only ones alive inside. It sent a horrible shiver down Gaara's spine.
At first, when the two men entered Gaara's office, it looked empty. But then the chair behind the desk swiveled, revealing the figure dressed in a black-and-red cloak sitting casually as if he belonged.
"Good evening, gentleman." A long tongue darted out to lick his lips as the invader tossed the item in his pale hand onto the desktop, where it slid to a rattling halt and glittered beneath the overhead lights. "I think we're long overdue for a - discussion."
The sight of his wife's opal necklace, broken and bloodstained, sent Gaara over the edge. With an insane howl of grief and rage, he charged.
*~To Be Continued~*
Author's Ending Notes: I am so sorry for this late update! But I'm the type of person who pours everything I've got into every chapter I write, and as intense as the emotion was throughout, I would no sooner get a few paragraphs in before I was exhausted. Plus, I always want to make sure I post something I feel is worthy of being read, so I wanted to take the time to make sure this chapter was of good quality before I released it. Thank you all so much for your patience, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you again for the next update!