A/N: Chapter rating is definately R, for Angry!Gaara's potty mouth and some heavy content.

One more installment to go, people! Aiyaa, but did I write this fast. Only a handful of weeks, three at the most. Other fiction has taken me months. Though, I'm going to go back and edit the last chapter. I really don't like how the ending came out.

Soundtrack for this chapter was Coheed and Cambria's "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" album, especially the song of the same title. It makes me think of Gaara.

"The truth be told
The child was born
Man your own jackhammer
Man you battle stations
We'll have you dead pretty soon
And now
Sincerely written from my brother's blood machine
Man your battle stations"

"For you,
I'd do anything just to make you happy, hear you tell me that you're proud of me
For them, I'd kill anything, cut the throats of babies for them, break their hearts for they were them
Waiting for you to say: I love you too"

Onward to the ficcage, my friends!



He watched in dispassionate silence as she moved from casualty to casualty, slipping through the cracks like smoke, flowing unseen and leaving no evidence in her wake, an evanescent force that mended broken bones and sealed gaping skin.

He let her go where she pleased for the first few hours. There was no point in just throwing themselves out in the open without having a full or solid grasp on the situation. The reports from the other groups were short, alike and far in between. The same thing everywhere: bodies, blood, frightened civilians, prowling radicals, armed to the teeth with any sort of weaponry they could acquire.

The radio in his ear crackled sharply with static, making him wince. He ripped it out and shoved it in his pocket, frowning as he noticed that the girl had gotten quite some distance from him. She had paused at the end of the small alley, crouching, head cocked as she listened to whatever transmission her teammates had to offer.

Sakura's eyes wandered along the empty street as she leaned against the sandy alley wall, elbows resting on her knees and hands dangling between them, brushing the loose gravel on the ground. She made vague swirling patterns in the sand, pursing her lips when Shikamaru finished speaking.

"Thanks, Shikamaru. Continue with what you've been doing," she replied lowly. With a final crackle, he was gone. She noticed that Gaara was standing nearby. She sighed, standing and feeling her knees pop. "Nothing. Orochimaru's as slippery of a bastard now as he ever was."


The day bled into the next, and still, nothing. Sakura continued to receive status reports from each of her sub-groups, each with the same content. She was running out of ideas as to where they could even begin. Gaara suggested that they run a quick check of the city's perimeter, and so she found herself moving quickly from boulder to boulder along a rocky cliff face.

Sand hissed in her weapon pouch. Gaara had slipped some in, explaining tersely that it would alert him to any danger she came across a hell of a lot faster than the damn radio. She smiled slightly. He really hated that tiny thing.

She sped along for a few more moments; knowing Gaara was somewhere to the left and behind her, lower on the slope. Which was why she automatically knew it wasn't his doing when several rocks clattered down from above. She looked up and had barely enough time to dodge out of the way as a boulder landed and shattered where she would have been standing had she not pushed off into the air.

She landed on a projecting rock and pushed off, repeating the process several times until she was at the top of the rise. She hit the grassy surface with enough force to crack the stony ledge beneath her feet. Her eyes flicked every which way sharply, scanning the expanse carefully.

There. She locked onto an unfamiliar chakra signature. A camouflage jutsu, huh? I can fix that easily enough…She slipped several shuriken from her pouch. She didn't notice the sand slipping from the same location, sifting to the ground then rising with the breeze into the air.

The chakra moved from where she aimed a few shuriken; she'd known it would. Tossing a few more, she followed the path of her enemy with her eyes closed. They were useless until she could break the jutsu.

And…now! The exploding tag attached to the last few shuriken she threw went off, sending her opponent into the direction she'd hoped for. In a flash, she was standing only a few feet from it, hands flying into different seals.

"KAI!" She slammed her palms together, eyes narrowed, and an image flickered before her.

A pale face and golden eyes ringed in black. Long hair like flowing ink. Fangs in his grin.

Her breath caught, and she sprung backward, watching the image fade, then seeing the air flicker once more. The jutsu fell away completely, and this time she stopped breathing entirely.

There was that face.

That unearthly, beautiful face. His ebony hair was a little longer now, the bangs a bit more unruly than she remembered. And his eyes weren't like black obsidian anymore. They practically glowed red.

Nothing was said. She didn't even attempt to open her mouth; she knew nothing would come out. After all the time she's spent steeling herself against the possibility of this very event occurring at some point in her life, she couldn't move, couldn't say or do anything like she had hoped she'd be strong enough to do when the moment came.

He smiled and her insides shriveled and her mind went blank and her lungs burned because she forgot to inhale. He smiled and her eyes suddenly ached, her lips suddenly shook, her whole body trembled.

He smiled as he moved closer, each measured step sending her whirling mind into further panic. Her lips formed his name without any sound to back them up. His mouth stretched wider in its twisted mockery of a smile as he watched her conflict.

"Sakura." His voice was deep, flowing music, wrapping around her, invading her mind like a poisonous entity, dragging to the surface all the memories she kept locked away at a careful distance.

Him, bloodied and still, his chest motionless as she lay across him, weeping. Him, a deadly ball of crackling chakra in hand, flying towards her as she ran between he and Naruto. Him, attempting to look disinterested as they lured their teacher to the Ichiraku to try and get him to remove his mask.

Him, him, him, him…

Sasuke.

He stopped only inches from her, and she could smell his scent: one of the woods and the earth and the air and the world. One reeking of the countless amounts of blood he had spilled, of the decay and the decadence of every village he had massacred, of the salt from the tears of all the women and their children he had disposed of. He was enshrouded in a cloying smell that told of the years he had spent away from his homeland.

It made her want to vomit and cry and fall down and push him away all at once.

"Sakura." He was close, so close. Too close.

"You." She couldn't say his name. To say his name was to die; she was sure of it.

"Me," he replied, voice playing along her ears.

She finally found the will and the energy to back up a step. He followed, lips still quirked in a parody of amusement. Or maybe he was amused. She didn't know.

He made to move in even closer, smile faltering as he felt the sharp tip of a knife against his chest. He looked down at it, frowning lightly, eyes traveling along the cold steel to the slender hand and arm that held it against him.

"You've stopped trembling," he noted. His eyes rose back to hers. "Do you want to kill me?"

She shook her head, eyes crying out her reply with their wetness. Yet the knife pressed harder, point gliding easily through his shirt and up against his skin.

"Then kill me." His hand wrapped about hers, pulling the knife harder against him, breaking the skin, letting blood flow. Shuddering at the contact of his cold hand on hers, Sakura swallowed convulsively, forcing down a distressed noise in her throat.

"Kill me," he hissed, malicious grin back full force. And that's when she saw.

Saw the fangs in his grin; saw the tinge of gold in his eyes.

The knife jerked with her hand, pressing hard into his chest, drawing a gush of blood. She stumbled backwards, mouth open in horror and… revulsion?

Those gold-red eyes gleamed at her sudden understanding, fingers bringing blood to a grinning mouth for a taste. Sakura nearly heaved at the sight of that familiar, abnormally long tongue.

His eyes on her the whole time. She had to fight down the bile in her throat.

"There's been no Uchiha Sasuke in this body for a long, long time, girl." He growled… or purred? It was so hard for her straining mind to tell.

"And yet," he sighed, lowering his hand, "And yet, something in me calls out for you, the weak little teammate of long ago. Some emotion keeps me from killing you as is my want." He suddenly leered. "Something I may be so bold as to label desire, perhaps." She made a noise of some kind. "Oh, yes. You didn't know? You couldn't tell? The boy loved you, to some degree, of course, but he desired your body even more. You would have been the vessel used to repopulate the Uchiha clan, had he stayed. Sasuke always planned it to be your body he used. You would not have put up much resistance; you would have conceded easily." He relished the hurt look that snuck onto her face.

He advanced again, and she froze when his hand traced her jaw. "Such a pretty little thing," he murmured, and she knew that he meant not a single word. The hand on her jaw slipped down, tightening on her throat. She thrashed, trying to loosen his hold. "Maybe I'll concede to this body's wishes."

His fingers hit something in the muscle of her neck that made her go limp, vision blackening and flashing back on in the rapid span of a few moments. In that time, he forced her back against the rough bark of a dead tree, warm from the sun and twisted with age.

Her body barely managed a weak twitch, pain radiating from where he had tapped into a pressure point on her neck. Her loose jacket was tossed aside, her shirt unbuttoned almost all the way in the process. He touched her none too gently in a place that wasn't his to touch, popping the button on her pants completely off. No longer secured at the waist, they slipped down her legs and bunched at her bent and opened knees.

His breath was hissing, and she became aware that she was crying. His hands were so cold against her, as if the climate of the desert had no effect on his body. Time suspended for her, slowing until a breath seemed to take years, till the rustling of the grass along the rise was a snail-like grating.

Her wet face turned up to the sky, ignoring the slide of clothing as he loosened his pants. A bird flittered leisurely across the blue, wings spread wide to catch the breeze and the updraft that allowed it the luxury of flight.

And then his hands were no longer on her skin; his body was no longer against hers. Time slowly regained its natural fluency and speed. A hot, stale breeze blew up from the bowl below, the city nestled within it.

She slid down the tree trunk, legs askew as she hit the ground, back propped up by the dry wood behind her. He was just struggling to his feet two dozen or more feet away.

"You filthy little shit," growled a voice nearby. Her hear turned to the far left, to the place where she had mounted the rise. Gaara stood perched on the ledge, arm crossed, sand piled about him, slithering from where the other man was still righting himself, retracting back to its master. Gaara's eyes were hard as green glass, the black surrounding them making that glass into sharp, cutting edges. His body was tense to the point of breaking. "Get up, motherfucker."

Sakura watched through bleary eyes as the sand hit Orochimaru (Sasuke? …No! Not Sasuke, not anymore. It really did hurt too much to think about it) again when he failed to completely rise to his feet.

The sand slammed him again and again.


Gaara was furious. So furious, in fact, that he was forcibly restraining Shukaku so that he could enjoy shredding the shit out of the Sound-nin bastard himself. He didn't even spare a glance at the pink-haired girl by the tree; his entire attention was focused on her assailant. He was certain that the Uchiha boy was completely gone from the body; this was the evil Orochimaru of the Legendary Three entirely.

His jaw clenched, teeth grinding, eyes narrowing. There was something off about the whole situation. Certainly one of Orochimaru's strength wouldn't just stand there and take hits one after another. Gaara knew that the man was waiting for the opportune moment, yet he threw caution to the wind for the first few moments of the fight, letting the sand do as it pleased, enjoying the sound of the hard sand impact against flesh. He was pretty sure that there was the sound of some bone or another snapping, too.

He made the sand shrink back from Orochimaru, finally allowing the man sufficient time to stand. "Gaara of the Desert. It's been too long," he spoke at length, voice mockingly cordial and friendly.

Gaara stepped away from the rocky edge and chose to say nothing. He hid his increasing anger as the pale bastard's eyes traveled away from him to Sakura, roving along her bare legs. His red-gold eyes watched her for a few moments then he turned back to his opponent, grinning rakishly. "I apologize that you had to see Sakura-chan and I… interacting."

When Gaara's sand rose once more, moving in on all sides, he evaded easily.

Luckily Gaara had relinquished conscious control of his sand. Orochimaru moved so fast that putting up a sand barrier to protect him would have been impossible had he tried to do it himself. There was a thud that trembled the whole of the sand dome about Gaara. He couldn't see through it, but he was sure that hit had done some damage. One more could quite possibly shatter the defense.

He reached for the one of the five longer-than-average knives strapped onto his sand gourd that he had begun carrying shortly after his first chuunin exam. He had realized after the fights with that Lee kid and Uchiha that his close range combat was below average, so while he trained more in taijutsu, he carried knives in case anyone ever got under his defenses like those two had. Even long after he was vastly improved and more than capable of fighting using only physical skills, he carried the blades out of habit.

Gripping the worn hilt with familiarity, he thought vaguely that this fight definitely merited its use. If Orochimaru could break through the sand so easily, Gaara was going to have to rely more on his own strength. He molded the outside of the sand dome into sharp spikes and edges, hoping to buy himself a little more time to strategize.

Orochimaru broke through the wall with a shower of sand and dust. The entire structure dropped about the two men, and the Sound-nin wasted no time moving forward, impaling the boy's stomach with a hard punch. Sand collapsed about his arm. A clone.

The sound of metal cutting the air alerted him. He caught the knife between two fingers, easily shifting it so that he held the hilt. Gaara moved in from the left, striking out while plans raced through his head. Orochimaru calmly deflected his attacks, hiding any small annoyance he felt at having been interrupted and caught in such a compromising position with the girl. His body still burned; he needed to get rid of the Sand brat and finish what he had started. He nearly grinned. The girl was weak. She'd still be there when his fight was done.

He could read a great many things from Gaara as they fought, in his eyes, his face, his movements. He had left himself completely open, emotionally speaking. It was vividly clear that Gaara of the Desert was a very different person than he was in his youth. Not so long ago he had held nothing dear, killing those who would kill him and then some. He had shed emotions like some sort of reptile shedding its skin; living without them, therefore living without their liabilities. Yet now…now, what was written across his face was as clear as day. The worry, the frustration, the guilt, the anger. Gaara had grown soft. Vulnerable.

He locked their blades together, put his face close to the boy's. "Are you…angry, Gaara? At me? At yourself? If you had come only moments later, she would have been irreversibly damaged. Does the guilt eat at you; motivate you in your struggle to kill me? Does red mist before your eyes? Do you want to see me bleed?" The boy growled, pushed harder against their knives. Orochimaru nearly smiled with malicious glee. "She tastes as sweet as a flower, Gaara. And the way her green, green eyes glaze, the way she moves, it's all so intoxicating. You should have given her a try when you had the chance -"

"Shut your mouth, you shit," grated the redhead, breeze moving his hair, the kanji on his forehead bathed in sweat.

Orochimaru only moved in closer, their noses almost touching. "Doesn't it just tear you up inside that you're a weak fool now, and all because of her?" His eyes flicked to the girl, who was watching them with dull eyes. And as Gaara's eyes followed his, finally resting on the girl, he shoved him back and let the dagger fly.

He knew the sand would move fast enough to block the sharp weapon and protect her, but the dismayed and horrified look on Gaara's normally impassive face was entirely worth it and just too good to pass up.

What he didn't expect was Gaara to not even move. He hadn't thought that the boy would instead pull out another knife and jerk it into his arm without effortlessly. His Sharingan red-gold eyes narrowed. It was surprising, really, that his guard was so relaxed around the supposedly weaker fighter that he had allowed himself to be stabbed. Seems like he would have to stop playing around now.

Just as soon as he pulled the other two knives out of his chest. Just as soon as the sand stopped closing about him. Just as soon as he cleared his mouth of the cloying particles, as soon as he cleared them from his lungs and ears and eyes and nose.

Funny. He wouldn't have ever guessed that he could fall so easily. He hadn't even got to use the Uchiha clan's blood limit on the Sand-nin yet.

His sand-laden eyes flared vivid red with the Sharingan as he peered through the chaos. His opponent looked much different, now. His skin was encased in hard sand, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Demonic, was the word his mind managed to dig up. Shukaku on the loose.

And then the coffin was complete, and he knew no more.


He clawed frantically at the earth, hunched on his elbows and knees, heaving and gasping for breath. Shukaku ran rampant inside his mind, relishing in the destruction it had already caused, vying for control.

No, no, no, no, no, no! He clenched his jaw so hard that a tooth in the back of his mouth might have chipped.

Bit by bit, the sand armor fell away from him, leaving his flesh itchy; as it was each time he shed the second skin. His head hurt, but he was in control now. He didn't look over to the sand-encased lump nearby, instead turning his gaze to the tree at the other end of the rise.

She still sat under it, but had regained enough of her bearings that her pants were pulled up, loose and unfastened due to the missing button. Her fingers shook horribly while she tried to button her black shirt. Her eyes were locked somewhere to her right, staring out into the blue sky.

She turned those dull eyes on him when he appeared in front of her, taking her hands and moving them so he could fix her shirt. He had barely made it halfway up the row of buttons before his head dropped onto her shoulder. He let it stay there, nose brushing her collarbone. He pulled in a shuddering breath. All Orochimaru's taunts came back to haunt him, and he realized and conceded to the fact that they weren't taunts at all; they were truths; they were simple statements of undeniable facts.

Her voice was a whisper when she finally spoke. "He's dead, isn't he?" He had a feeling that she wasn't talking about Orochimaru.

He felt the wetness falling onto his hands, which were still clutching her shirt. She let the true tears come, let the sobs wrack her battered frame violently. Her misery was tangible and very, very contagious, Gaara observed after a moment. He let her cry on him, let her slim arms go about him and let her press her face into his aching chest, let her gain what comfort she could.

Gods knew it would be the first, last and only time he'd allow it.


Dear me. Orochi-kins is so naughty.

Jessicalikewhoa: (I meant to answer this in the last chapter comments, but I forgot 0) Well, they interacted a bit in this one...but the, ahem, 'good stuff' will be next chapter!

Hao'sAnjul: Kakashi came across as protective? I guess, after all - he was her teacher for a while. Though, I was just trying to write them having a friendly conversation; I didn't think about Kakashi worrying about her being with Gaara. Hm. Interesting way to look at it...

That's it for now, guys. See you all later, I'll be back to upload the next chapter to TYFA when I finish it off.

Hmpf. I'm bored. Sombody tell me a joke involving Gaara, a squirrel and a muffin.