A/N: OK, so after that whole "lost chapter" fiasco, here's the way this chapter should have been introduced. Dang me for giving it all away, eh?

In the meantime: I have three different places I can go after this. Tragic ending, realistic ending, and pseudo happy ending. Debating which to put up – actually, also debating putting up all three, but not sure if that would detract from the story. Opinions on these issues, and of course the story itself, are welcome. And on an encouraging note, almost done!

"As long as I live, I will always appear when you need me."

Rock Lee

Chapter 11

Betrayal and Trust

Kenji's face was contorted with gleeful triumph.

"I originally wanted you to kill her yourself, you know," he was yelling, over the noise of the battle below. "That's why I killed the Sand chunin who was running back to tell you about the Leaf chunin raid at the border. I killed him, and changed the message. There was no scroll for their spy." He laughed, and winked. "There was no spy."

The sand rose around him, twisting itself into larger copies of Gaara's monstrous limbs. The sand-claws crashed into Kenji's body, but the body only dissolved into smoke. Shadow clone. "Then I tried to have my followers kill her, with that fake mission in the desert." He reappeared on the rocks above the first clone, still grinning, still shouting. The claws angled, redirecting upwards and slamming into his face. Poof – another clone. "At that point," he laughed from the sands below Gaara's perch, "it was more an experiment to see just what kind of reaction you would have."

He's invisible, Sakura realized, as this third body likewise dissolved when the sand crushed down on it. He's using an invisibility illusion and shadow clones to manipulate Gaara.

"Your reaction was even stronger than I anticipated," another Kenji called from behind Gaara. "I was angry about that at first. I hate when my pawns don't react the way I expect them to. But this," he threw a sweeping gesture at Gaara's enraged face just before a spike of sand negated the clone. Another appeared, slightly further on. "And when your damned brother came along and saved the fucking day, I figured that having you think she'd betrayed you and then run off into the desert to die would probably be the smartest course of action."

A tentacle of sand encircled the talking clone, but another one lashed out at seemingly empty air to the left of the clone. Kenji's clone face registered some mild surprise just before it dissolved. The next one appeared a few feet further back, looking less smug.

Gaara knows, Sakura thought with some relief. He knows about that invisibility technique, and the real Kenji is invisible, somewhere close by. He's trying to hit the real one too. But how does he know where to strike?

"Tell me, Gaara, how does it feel to be betrayed like that? You must be an expert by now."

"She trusted you," Gaara rasped, eyes narrowed to dark slits.

"Of course," the Sand nin laughed, reaching up to brush his fingers over his hair in a gesture Sakura knew too well. "That was the whole point." Another crushing blow destroyed the talking clone, but this time two random tentacles of sand whipped out into what appeared to be empty air. Gaara tilted his partially transformed head towards the empty space, and she thought she saw a flash of satisfaction on the warped features.

He's listening, she realized. He can tell that the voice from the clones is originating somewhere else, and he's trying to listen for the real source.

"I just wanted to use her as a means to destabilize you, to soften you up for this moment, this fight," Kenji went on. Yes, Sakura thought savagely. Keep talking.

"And I have to say, in that she exceeded even my highest expectations. You're remarkably easy to manipulate, emotionally. But that's enough talk," Kenji raised his hand, and a girl appeared obediently in front of him. She was small, pale, and wearing the clothing of an ordinary Wind country villager. But even from her distant place, Sakura could see a dull sort of fear in her bright blue eyes. Without a word, she knelt down before Kenji and bowed her head.

"And if it comes to betrayal, Gaara," Kenji said, his friendly tone almost as horrific as the knife he raised over the strange girl's head, "she trusted you, too. And you left her to die in the desert, despite Kankurou's report that she was wounded and weak." He shook his head. "Which of us betrayed her more?"

On the ground below, Sakura felt the intent to kill a fraction of a second before her opponent hit her. She ducked, feeling the powerful chakra ripples go through her pink hair, mere centimeters from her skull. The enemy shinobi who had thought she was too distracted to fight back learned a hard lesson in her last few moments of life. It took Sakura about twenty seconds to slam a well-placed fist into the strange woman's jaw, snapping the head back and breaking the spine. She spun back around, searching the dark sky.

Kenji's servant was lying at his feet, blue eyes now staring blankly at the feeble moon as blood gushed from the grisly red smile on her throat. Tendrils of red and black chakra were rising off the corpse like heat, swirling in the air and closing themselves around her murderer's right arm. Seeking to catch his enemy off balance in the midst of this strange ritual, Gaara sent a heavy whip of sand slicing down on him. The red and black chakra knocked it away. This, then, was the real Kenji.

There was a brief flash of painful red light that sliced into Sakura's eyes. She blinked hard to clear them, and then wished she hadn't.

Kenji was still smiling, a sweet little grin that was at gruesome odds with the rest of his heaving body. The flesh on his right arm was warped, the swollen, bulging muscles laced with black poison. The red and black chakra swirled menacingly around the mutated arm, and he radiated the cloying sour-sweet smell of rotten eggs and raw meat left in the hot sun. The rest of his body was drenched in the blood of the girl at his feet, but it stayed relatively human. His right hand was a demon claw, and in it the red chakra screamed with the high, thin voice of a dying girl. Before her eyes it stretched and grew until it became like a great sword of humming energy.

He laughed again, a wet, gurgling noise that sounded to Sakura like flesh being squished beneath stone. The nightmare that had been Kenji leaped, arm outstretched. Something dark slammed into his left arm, forcing him to twist violently in midair. He swung the chakra sword viciously in response, severing the claw that nonetheless continued to dig into the flesh, ripping at muscles and tendons.

Gaara roared as the red and black light sliced through his flesh, but the sand only melted away, leaving his human arm bare for a mere second until the sandy demon-flesh reformed. The Kazekage had not remained idle while his opponent had changed; he had responded in kind by allowing his own body to warp further into the tanuki form. He was almost fully gone, Sakura saw – but his eyes were open, and they glowed green. Gaara, not Shukaku, was still in control.

Deep inside, Sakura's insides writhed in revolt. Memories of her first chunin exam, of the fight in the forest outside of Konoha rose unbidden in her mind. But then, she had been unconscious by the time Gaara had fully let go of his control. And though Naruto had told her what he had become, the cheerful Leaf ninja had not described the sick smell of blood and entrails, the festering stench of rot that emanated from the demon flesh. He had not told her the screech that sliced at her ears like a knife. She had known it was horrific but – ('knowing about something and being confronted with it are different,' Gaara insisted flatly.)

"Move!" Temari thrust her shoulder into Sakura's abdomen, using her momentum to hurl them both clear before the battle above came slamming down into the ground where they had been standing. Sakura rolled to her feet, threw a chakra-charged knee into the face of an enemy who somehow appeared behind her, and then launched herself back towards the overhead battle, leaving Temari to handle the incoming attackers. The woman was more than capable, judging by the howl of wind that drowned their screams behind her.

But her attention was elsewhere. "No choice!" she heard a scream, blurred into tones that no human voice could have achieved. It was as if Kenji spoke with two throats, two sets of vocal cords set on different octaves. His plain, round face was set in a mad grin, mouth wide open, teeth bared. "Let him come! Let him come now!" he shrieked, as he turned, leaping at the steep cliff side. "Let him fight me!"

In a terrible rush of insight, Sakura saw, and understood.

Kenji had lead Gaara here, into the thick of the battle between their subordinates. He had harried and pushed, but now that they had arrived here, here amongst the people they lead, Kenji would no longer dance around with smoke and shadow clones. He would fight Gaara with everything, heedless of the people around him. Gaara would have no choice but to respond in kind, to unleash the demon tanuki where it might destroy Kenji but would certainly kill everyone else. If he tried to shield himself, hide inside the impenetrable sand shell, Kenji would merely turn this powerful blood-chakra sword on the people he had sworn to protect.

Choices, Sakura thought, as Kenji slammed against the cliff wall, leg muscles bunching for the push-off leap that would carry him straight at Gaara. The chakra sword flamed brighter, the angry red overwhelming the burning black. It hurt to look at. Kenji chooses a victory over the lives of his subordinates. He'll kill them for the sake of his own strength, and his own life.

And he was forcing Gaara into the same position.

No other choice.

Except, she realized, one.

Kenji rebounded from the cliff, somersaulting in the air to bring the blazing sword back for a killing thrust. Gaara's only choices were to summon the impenetrable sand shield, or close his eyes and let Shukaku come.

Or.

He could drop his arms. He could let the sand run away from his body, exposing unmarred human skin. He could stand there, watching his death fly towards him. He could even smile, as the blade split screaming air to bury itself in soft, yielding flesh.

But not his. Gaara's triumphant grin faded, warping on his gaunt face into something much more frightening, and much more human. For the first time in his life, he felt fear surge up in his guts, and for the first time in many years, horror and shock writhed in his chest.

A flash of pale pink, a glint of blue chakra as her kunai scored into Kenji's face even as the chakra blade ripped across her body, and then she slammed backwards. Gaara threw out his hands instinctively, but the sand moved quicker, blocking her flying body before she could hit his chest, knocking what it perceived as a threat to the ground several feet away. He was left standing there, arms groping at the empty air like a child chasing a butterfly, or a dream.

Dimly, Gaara was aware of his opponent's scream of pain, aware that somehow she had managed to draw a deep gash across one of those pale brown eyes in a last act of defiance.

He knew, but it did not touch him. The world constricted and narrowed until all he could see was a crumpled body lying face down in the torn up earth, absurdly pink hair splayed awkwardly over her face, hiding her eyes. Her body was in an unnatural, graceless heap, and a her teeth were stained bright red. Her lips were open, and they moved a little. He couldn't hear the sounds that may or may not have come out of them, but the wind blew a lock of sweaty hair to reveal one green eye that met his own, and he knew what she had said anyway.

"You?" The hoarse yell was enough to snap him back into the reality of blood and battle. Kenji crouched low on the ground nearby, bleeding face mirroring the shock on Gaara's own. "She lied to me," he hissed, remaining eye rolling to stare in disbelief at the bloody corpse of his former servant. "She told me you were dead!"

Gaara turned, and hell itself cowered when they met again.