"You'll not look on the disgraceful things I've done or have had done to me. In darkness now you'll look on those I ought not to have seen, and not know those I yearned to know."

— Oedipus Rex

Faced with a split second decision, Sakura dove for the stairway's landing and chose to pit her strength against the single piece of falling ceiling rather than shattering it and risking death under the rest of the building. The slab came at her with a deafening boom and she caught it, bracing and bolstering herself with chakra and desperately hoping everything settled quickly. The hallway lights shorted and died; sand and stone shifted under her feet, and despite her best efforts she felt her knees buckling, felt the weight of the building following her down—

And then stillness again, and absolute blackness, with the fallen slab trapping her in an angular space too small to stand in and with half a building precariously stacked above her.

Sakura slowly, cautiously let go of the ceiling, feeling for any shift—then let out a shuddering breath and collapsed into the deep layer of sand that still covered the floor. It had to have been Sasuke. Gaara wouldn't topple an entire structure knowing she was somewhere in it and unshielded, right? And if it hadn't been Gaara who'd dropped the building, his shields would protect him and he'd find her.

Unless he'd been trying to do something else and been knocked out—or killed . . .

She couldn't think about that yet.

She could be calm. She would be calm. She wouldn't think about how many floors up she'd been, or how long it might take people to dig her out, or the possibility she'd run out of air—

A violent impact shook the walls around her, and she shrieked as the floor bucked, lurched—and just as suddenly went still.

Her cell had shifted, become that much closer. Sakura felt along the edges, testing. She could kneel, but barely; she could stretch out her arms in the center but would touch the walls if she leaned too far in either direction.

This, she told herself, was not the time to develop strong feelings about enclosed spaces, or the time to recognize how one more shift like that could be the end of her. This was not the time to despair.

But that upward jolt . . . That wasn't the wreckage settling. The fight hadn't been over after all.

Sakura clenched her fists in frustration, fear, anger. Here she was, still forced to the sidelines, once again shoved into a position where she couldn't help and instead had to wait on someone else to rescue her—if that someone was even still alive—

The sand around her stirred, then moved of its own accord, and Sakura scrambled to a crouch. It wound its way up her arms and legs, contracting slowly as if testing for her presence. She grabbed handfuls of it, too relieved to question Gaara's method—"I'm here, I'm alive, come find me"—and his grip loosened, then fell away.

Silence again, except for her own too-rapid gasps and the internal cacophony of things she couldn't allow herself to think about.

And then there was someone else with her, in the dark. She could hear their breathing: shallow and rattling with rales.

"Gaara?"

No answer.

It was their lack of response that made her hesitate, she told herself, their silence that made the hair on the back of her neck and arms prickle to attention. But it had to be him. She crept closer. Why hadn't he replied?

The person coughed wetly, then groaned.

Because he was hurt. Sakura shot forward, her hands skimming the sand underneath them, afraid to inadvertently cause any more damage. All she could smell was blood, and when she touched him she learned why: Gaara was sticky with it, damp where it'd soaked his clothes and gritty where his sand had stuck to him.

How much of it was his? Damn it, she couldn't see—

She touched him with a chakra-charged hand, intending to do a basic medic's scan—and he jerked to motion, spiraling sand up her arm and grabbing her wrist so tightly her bones grated under his fingers.

Sakura froze. It wasn't the first time an injured person had lashed out at her in fear or confusion, she told herself. Even Sasuke'd—

She couldn't think about that. Not now.

"Gaara," she whispered. "It's okay. It's me. Let me help you."

The rattle as he breathed was blood in at least one of his lungs. She could smell bile on his breath from where he'd thrown up. Nausea was a sign of concussion, she told herself, and not necessarily an indication the redhead had come out on the wrong side of an extensive illusion.

"Gaara," she pleaded.

The sand around her arm loosened first. She pulled free of his hand, then caught it between both of hers, squeezing reassuringly—then reached to gauge the damage done.

His right arm hung limp at his side, dislocated as well as broken. Ribs, collarbone, and skull cracked; shoulder blade all but shattered. Blood running down his face from the wound to his scalp; blood in his lungs, blood in his abdominal cavity. She had no idea how he was conscious let alone moving, but thought it might tie in with how he'd all but hard-wired himself into perpetual sleeplessness.

But somehow, still, he'd known to come to her.

She found points along his neck and spine by touch and tapped them with tiny pulses of chakra to mute his pain response, and he gave a low moan. Sakura addressed the concussion first because it was the most dangerous, and the scalp wound next, because it upset her to know he was bleeding. Slowly, blindly, she put him back together—all while one exceedingly important question circled through her mind.

He didn't reach for her after she finished; she told herself it was because he'd just been through a lot and didn't want to get her covered in blood as well. Her own voice seemed too loud in this small space, so she continued to whisper. "Where's Sasuke? Is . . . Is he dead?"

"Who?"

Was this head trauma or a new technique? She touched his arms, using them as a guide to find her way to his face. "Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke. Remember? He came after you because . . . Because of me." She ignored how his cheeks were still wet and sticky under her palms. "You just told me he was here—"

He made another pained sound as his muscles locked hard enough to hunch him forward into her arms, and she felt him reach for his head with both hands.

Had she messed up the healing? Concussions required delicate work in even the best of conditions. Her hands covered his and she scanned him again, searching for a mistake, an untended-to brain bruise or bleed.

Nothing. So his response wasn't physical. So—

Sakura held him, stroking his wet hair and blinking back tears. She knew; she asked anyway. "What happened?"

Gaara pulled free slowly but remained kneeling in front of her. "He tried to kill me. Again." There was a sour gust of breath on her face as he gave a short, sharp chuckle. "He failed. Again."

"Sasuke?"

"Sasuke?" His amusement put a singsong lilt to the word. "Nooo. Not Sasuke. Rasa."

She'd never heard him speak his father's name before, had never heard that much loathing in his voice. Sakura almost tried to heal him again, wanting, needing to believe this was just remnants of confusion from the concussion—even though another part of her recognized what had actually happened.

"I promised you I would," Gaara whispered. His hand inched up from her knee, fingers gripping. "I promised. And it took me so long . . . I wasn't strong enough before. But this time . . ."

He'd bragged about his past, he'd told her. And if he'd done so in front of Sasuke, and Sasuke'd taken his words and formed a weapon . . .

"He tried to hide from me. He knew this would be the end. He tried to get away, but he couldn't. And I found him, and then . . ." He laughed, low and cold and merciless. "And then."

The hand on her leg elongated, became a huge sandy paw; its claws encircled her thigh completely.

"Stop," Sakura gasped. She didn't want to know how Sasuke must have felt, alone in the dark, realizing what he'd unleashed as the sand around him started to move. She didn't want a blow by blow description of how Gaara'd torn him apart.

Not all the blood on Gaara's clothes was from the his wounds, then; he'd come to her wearing his kill. But a genjutsu was supposed to fade if the ninja who'd made it died, so this—

"Why?" Gaara seemed genuinely confused. "I did it for you." His voice hardened. "Tell me you're proud of me."

"I—" Sakura choked back a sob, almost covered her mouth with her hand, and immediately regretted it when she smelled the blood on her own skin. The two had gotten each other, then. How many times had Sasuke managed to put Gaara through the events that'd broken him before . . . Before the building came down. The scope of what'd happened hit her, and she groped for Gaara's fingers. At some point in the final few seconds of their confrontation Gaara must have realized Sasuke's intentions; the building hadn't been an attack but a failsafe, not an attempt to stop Sasuke from using the Sharingan but Gaara's attempt to stop himself.

And he'd almost succeeded. Almost.

And when he'd come to, severely concussed and abruptly thrown out of an illusion, Gaara'd filled in the blanks as best he could and ascribed identities he knew to the people he couldn't see—and then taken everything out on the first person he'd found.

And if Sasuke had managed to get away, that person would've been her.

Had she ever told Sasuke about her nightmares of the half-demon Sand-nin, in a child's plea for sympathy and attention? It'd been years; she couldn't remember. But if she had . . .

Gaara leaned closer; she hadn't given the response he wanted quickly enough. Sand encircled her waist and suspicion colored his words. "Are you proud of me? Tell me."

"Gaara, stop." She pried at the coil around her middle; her hands sank into it, and she searched for him under the shifting grains. "I love you. Stop. I need you to stop."

Pulling a person out of an illusion was one thing; confronting someone who'd had a break with reality was something entirely different. Walk carefully, Tsunade has taught her: a patient in the grip of a delusion might respond to confrontation with fear, or might refuse to listen—or they might respond with violence.

And if the patient was the strongest ninja Sand had to offer, in the midst of full-blown psychosis caused by being forcibly cycled through his own emotional torture, betrayals, attempts on his life, and terror-induced insomnia—

Thoroughly healing him without also sedating him may have been a mistake.

"Why stop?" he asked. "It's what you wanted—what we wanted. It's why you named me this, as a reminder. So no one could forget. They wanted a demon, so we gave one to them."

She'd realized how hard he'd worked to have Sand's people accept him, but hadn't considered what it would mean for him to forgive their part in his early life.

"Everyone at Sand knew," he continued, bitterly. "They weren't just complicit. They joked about you, about what he did to you. 'Barely waited for the medics to finish healing her before he was back on her. He'd have put a litter in her if he knew how.' And I didn't understand what they meant for years."

She couldn't control the tears now, and gave up fighting the sand's grip to reach for his face. He leaned into her caress; skin touched hers as he cupped her hand with his own. "It was never his fault, though," he said. "He blamed me; Yashamaru blamed me; Sand blamed me . . . You blamed me." His fingers over hers shifted into claws, then back.

Naruto'd managed to get through to him years ago, violently, matching him blow for blow until they'd both worn themselves out . . . but she wasn't Naruto. Tsunade's teachings ran almost along the same lines: Sakura's choices boiled down to attempting to talk Gaara back to the present, knocking him out—or killing him.

"Don't cry. I'll fix the rest of it soon." He gently dabbed at her cheeks with his sleeve. The fabric was already wet; she had no way of knowing if it was his blood or Sasuke's that he smeared on her cheeks. "This was just the beginning."

Tremors of equal parts fear and disgust shook her, and Sakura's control cracked. "Gaara, stop. It's over. It's done. You can stop now." Because now she understood Sasuke's endgame: to break the Sand-nin's mind and walk away, leaving her and then all of Sand facing a traumatized and unstable child's rage and hate—backed by Gaara's adult strength. Would people have thought twice about Sasuke once Gaara started shredding his way through them? Would anyone even be left alive to remember? Or was Naruto supposed to arrive in time to find her dead, Sand obliterated, and Gaara ravening?

If she couldn't outcorner him, that scenario might still come to pass.

"No," Gaara told her. "It's not done yet. He was the only one who could stop me, and now that he's gone? There will be a reckoning." He smiled widely, horribly, against her palm. "I'll kill every single one of them."

"Gaara, hold on, stay with me. Naruto'll be here in a little while, we'll figure something out—"

"Who?"

"He's a friend, our friend. He can help—"

"I don't have friends. He made sure of that."

She didn't know if he was talking about his father or Shukaku. "He's gone, Gaara. Both of them. Shukaku's gone and your father's dead, he's been dead for years. Orochimaru killed him."

A pause; then, warily: "What are you talking about?"

"You got hurt and forgot us. Things are different now—you have friends, people who care about you." She pressed his hand to her breastbone, willing him to remember. "People you care for."

His hand fisted in her top. "Is this a joke? A trick?"

"No. Sand is yours now; the people are your people, and they need you—"

He reached for his head again, his breathing a panting hiss, and Sakura knew she'd said something wrong.

"Why would you tell me that?" he snapped as he dragged her closer, and she realized that just under the surface of his rage was fear. "You're trying to trick me. Why would you say that? Why would you try to protect them?"

She'd completely lost control of the situation. "Gaara, I'm not her."

His grip tightened; his voice rasped into her ear, harsh and brutal. "Then who are you?"

She clamped both hands to the sides of his head and hit him with a sedation technique, and he slumped, unconscious, into her arms without a whisper.

"Your girlfriend, you ass," she told him, and allowed herself a trembling sigh of relief.

She gave herself a moment to push her tension aside and forcibly remind herself there was no longer a reason to panic, then another to check him again, to be sure she hadn't missed anything or accidentally done any damage. Slowly, deliberately, Sakura sat back, pulling him into what she hoped was a more comfortable position: the back of his head warming her shoulder, his shoulders against her middle, his weight between her thighs.

It was the first time he'd actually slept with her, she realized, and wrapped her arms around him, resting a hand on his chest to monitor his heart rate. He should stay under for a few hours—though she suspected he'd be atypical with anything sleep-related—and by then they'd hopefully be rescued or she'd have come up with a plan for controlling him. Otherwise she'd have to deal with him alone again, and she doubted he'd be as interested in just talking now that he knew she wasn't his mother.

She had no idea if that hitch had been planned by Sasuke, had been the result of an incomplete technique or head wound . . . Or had been an unforeseen consequence of his past: where even at his absolute worst, even through the depths of his madness, there'd been one person Gaara hadn't had a chance to hate.

"You jerk," she murmured, and cuddled him closer. "We told you not to fight him alone."

The blood drying on both of them had progressed from sticky to tacky. She couldn't think about it yet.

Maybe she could bring him back slowly, keep him partially sedated, and talk to him all the while, giving him a chance to know it was her and that she meant him no harm . . . But how was she supposed to get him to recognize her if he couldn't see her?

She had time to figure it out, she told herself, and let herself relax.

This was a mistake.

He was on her before she'd even realized he was awake, his hands closing around her neck as he toppled her over, and Sakura reacted instinctively: smashing an arm down into his to break his hold, then striking out with the other, slamming her palm into his chest with enough chakra-driven force to break the sternum of a regular man.

A sand shield absorbed most of the impact; he exhaled hard and came right back at her. She reached for his head in an attempt to knock him out again, but he blocked with sand and pinned her hands to the wall behind her. "Who sent you?" he snarled.

"No one!" she shouted as she wrenched free and grabbed for him, only to have a clone crumble at her touch and run through her fingers—then solidify around her calves, anchoring her to the floor. Sakura sent pulses of chakra through both legs, breaking his hold, and lunged in his direction again.

She had no space to maneuver, was completely sightless, and absolutely wasn't Naruto—but her only option was to try. Otherwise . . .

His attacks came from all sides, sand engulfing her limbs as claws wrapped around her from the front, and for a horrible second she was once again a woefully outmatched twelve year old facing a monster in the forest—and then years of training kicked in, and she fought. Chakra bursts shattered his grip, but the coils reformed and came back. She grabbed wildly, latched onto one of his arms, and tried for a nerve block; sand armor absorbed the technique. His next strike drove her backwards and she twisted, catching herself with hands and feet to launch off the wall, intent on following the sandy arm to its source.

He caught her with insulting ease before she could get her own grip on him, ensnaring her with so much sand it took effort and multiple strikes to free herself.

But it seemed like he'd been pausing for a half-beat before applying any serious pressure—

Too late, she realized he'd been testing the limits of her senses and abilities—and she'd shown him everything he needed to know. Unless she managed to close the distance between them she had virtually no chance. The flurries of attacks came faster, giving her no time to strategize or regroup—just enough to wrest free of one grasping tendril before another took its place. And when he started laughing she realized he wasn't trying to win, just to wear her down—and that above anything else, she needed to not find out what he intended to do to her once she couldn't fight back anymore.

She didn't want to hurt him, but realized surviving might require a lot more than just hurting him.

Cold, damp fabric brushed her arm; she grabbed on and yanked, dragging him close enough to grapple, trying to wrestle past his hands and shields in order to sedate him or knock him unconscious. Gaara laughed directly into her ear at her efforts, inhaled—

And finally, for a second, he was able to smell something other than blood and bile. And underneath the joy of battle, the faint hint of something being wrong spiked and became impossible to ignore.

He quickly faded back and away from her, drawing his sand with him, sliding past her outstretched arms and occasional blind swings as she searched for him. Bloodlust pushed him to finish the imposter off; instinct demanded he examine her more closely to find the root of his unease, to find out why he'd woken up at all after she'd taken him down—let alone woken up in her arms. And since his instincts had kept him alive through any number of missions and assassination attempts . . .

Sakura whispered his name again as she turned slowly. Had he left her? Had he realized she was trapped without him and slipped free of the building, intent on destroying Sand without her impediment? Had—

Sand latched onto her from every direction, stifling her movement. She fought wildly, desperately, blasting away at it as best she could—only to find he'd learned to roll his grip with her strikes.

Breath on her face; he was close. She wrenched forward and tried to bite him, but her teeth clicked together on air.

"Stop," Gaara told her, distractedly. Images crowded him, confusing him: a rooftop, a forest, a bedroom. Yashamaru bleeding, asking him to die. Fighting. Skin against his.

"No," she snarled back, then cried out as he squeezed harder.

"Stop."

She refused, instead continuing to batter her energy against the sand around her, knowing all she needed was one second, one touch of his skin—knowing the survival of all of Sand rested on her finding some way to free herself and stop him.

But he hadn't crushed her yet.

Hope brought words. "Gaara, it's me. It's Sakura. I need you to remember—"

Sand covered her mouth. "Stop."

He held her perfectly still as he let the sand slide away from her shoulder and throat, and, careful not to touch her, smelled her again. He let himself string the segments together—her voice, the shape and feel of her straining body, the scent of her skin, her fire, a distant sense of physical comfort—and found himself faced with a different mental loop, one he'd made himself over the past few weeks: not her, not her, not her but—

"You."

His grasp loosened with shock. Sakura felt the opportunity and tore through the sand holding her in order to attack again. This time she kept a fistful of his clothing to gauge his location, pulling him back when he tried to evade, so frantically intent on her assault she didn't recognize he'd gone fully on the defensive and didn't hear anything else he might've said.

Her first right cracked through a sand shield; the second, rapid-fire, broke through the shield's remains and spent its energy on his armor. While he shielded from her right Sakura jerked him towards her and into her left fist, hitting him with a short but loaded punch that knocked him back into the wall. She put everything she had behind her next shot, trying to drive the right-handed haymaker through multiple layers of shields, and as the first shield gave Gaara passed her punch with a parry he'd learned from Lee—directly into the wall. Stone cracked under her fist, the ceiling shifted, and Sakura ducked and covered her head as she realized their combined mistakes and everything started moving—

And stopped. Gaara's arms were around her, his body covering hers to block her from any potential debris, and when she tentatively stretched a hand out she felt the curve of a sand shield protecting them.

Sakura tried to whisper his name, and her voice broke. In return he tried to tell her to stop fighting, that he'd caught the building this time, that it was okay now, but the only word to come out was, "You." She sat up and attempted to pull away; Gaara dragged her back to him and pressed both her hands to his chest, knowing that at this proximity she could easily rip through his heart and lungs before he got a chance to stop her. She struggled—it was all too soon, too much—then jerked back, wrenched an arm free, and socked him in the shoulder.

But, he noted, only with the force of muscle and temper, and only in the shoulder she hadn't just healed.

"You," he murmured, and she hit him again before shuddering and letting him draw her in.

But everything was still too close, and the smell of blood overwhelmed and nauseated her, and she could still feel it on her skin, her clothes, his skin—

"Get me out." Her hands clenched spasmodically on Gaara's arms. "I need—I need out. Get me out of here."

She felt him nod, felt the sand under them filter away into dozens of gaps and cracks. And over them, slowly and deliberately, the slabs and fragments started to move.

She'd known he was strong; she'd had what was probably an outdated idea of his range of capabilities. But to witness him almost casually treat the building like an elaborate puzzle, knowing he'd just thrown it around like it was nothing—while knowing she'd just tried to fight him blind and barehanded in a tiny stone box . . .

She could hear her breathing hitching; as the rubble around them parted and sunlight filtered through she saw how badly her red-streaked hands had started to shake.

In the daylight they were horrific, blood-soaked and ragged. Splatters and smeared reddish handprints stood out gruesomely against the white of his clothing; she could see a number of the handprints weren't hers. Trembling uncontrollably, Sakura tried to pull away from him again; he wrapped an arm around her and refused to let her move, needing to see her face.

"You," he repeated, ignoring how she'd gone deathly white in favor of fitting his palms to her cheekbones. Sakura registered his scrutinization distantly, first with familiarity . . . then suspicion. How many times had he done this—examined her like he was trying to identify her? Hadn't he done so with the exact same kind of desperation the first time they'd kissed?

Maybe Gaara's confusion hadn't had anything to do with Sasuke after all.

She couldn't think about . . .

Kankurou and Temari were at Gaara's sides, asking him questions, as their fellow rescuers kept a cautious distance. "Was there anyone else in there?"

"No."

"Sasuke?"

Gaara pointedly looked at his clothing before looking at them. "Dead."

Sakura tried to push herself free; he slipped the hand pressing on his chest aside and pulled her closer, as if the contact hadn't lost its ability to soothe him.

"Shit." Kankurou read the nuances of his little brother's expression and grimaced before addressing Sakura. "How bad?"

Sakura stared wordlessly. She had no idea how to quantify "My boyfriend just tried to kill me."

"Let go," Temari told Gaara. "Look at her, she's going into shock."

"He's barely holding it together," Kankurou said in a low voice. "Gaara, let go of her and get out of here."

"It's okay," Temari encouraged. "We've got her, she's with us—" The blonde turned to Sakura; her voice hissed in the younger kunoichi's ear: "Damn it, Sakura, tell him it's okay, tell him to take care of himself. They can't see if he breaks down."

She heard herself tell him it was okay, and knew from the way Gaara's forehead furrowed that he didn't believe her.

The redhead touched one of the clean spots on her face; she barely felt it. He butted his forehead against hers and shivered, and without thinking Sakura cupped the back of his neck and stroked the locked-tight muscles. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and she nodded in return.

"Go get Sakura taken care of and get cleaned up," Kankurou was saying—loud enough for the people on the rubble around them to hear, casually enough for them to know everything was under control. "We can take care of things in the meantime."

"It's okay," Temari whispered from very close. "We've got this; you can go."

"No," Gaara said. "Not yet." His eyes opened and focused on Sakura's. "Not until you're taken care of."

The rest was a blur: the older Sand siblings reassuring and starting to mobilize onlookers; the moment of panic when Gaara lifted them out of the rubble with sand rather than make her pick her way through it on visibly unsteady legs; at least one acerbic comment from Kankurou about unhinged and entitled missing-nin; Temari and Gaara bracketing her on their way through the streets.

Temari stopped Gaara at her door when he tried to follow Sakura in. "I can take care of her from here," she said, her tone firm but gentle. "Take care of yourself. You know they'll need you soon." She knew there were at best only a few hours until Naruto arrived and started demanding answers—and didn't know if her little brother would be able to satisfactorily give them.

Gaara looked past his sister's shoulder at the pink-haired kunoichi, and found her watching him in turn. Each saw the other as very small, and very young, and unspeakably fragile. Sakura looked away first; Gaara closed his eyes and tried to quiet the raw memories of her struggling with him, pleading with him in the dark.

"Go," his sister told him. This time he complied.

Temari knew Sakura's expression, had seen it mirrored any number of times on Kankurou's face as well as her own. "It was him, wasn't it?"

Sakura nodded, unable to look at her.

"Is he all right now?" Meaning, Is Sand safe?

"I think so. He pulled himself out of it, before he could . . ."

Temari weighed her options, afraid to push but more afraid to not know. "Stress, or . . . ?"

"I think Sasuke put him through . . . All of it. Everything from before—with his father, his uncle. Everything." Sakura started picking flecks of dried blood off her arm without really seeing them, needing them gone but unable to focus on the process. She didn't see how Temari cringed. "He killed Sasuke; he wanted to kill everyone. I was in the way."

Temari was silent. Finally, with a painfully clear degree of understanding, she said, "You can tell me later, if you want. Take your time; get your thoughts together. I'll start tea. First, though, get a shower. It'll help some if you wash it off."

Sakura looked up. "Some?"

Temari's lips tightened in what wasn't quite a smile. "Sometimes," she quietly replied, and guided the younger ninja towards her bathroom.

The blood rinsed away in copper-tinged rivulets; the bruises didn't. Sakura found them blooming everywhere he'd gripped: darkly barred against her arms and wrists from his fingers, mottled against her torso and legs from his sand. They were almost negligible in the grand scheme of things, she told herself. She'd had much worse, she told herself. She covered one with her hand in order to heal it, then stopped; she was shaking too badly and couldn't—

Then folded; crumpled; wrapped her arms around her legs. Pressed her face to her knees as the water cascaded over her, and finally let the tears go.

ooo

When Naruto made it there a few hours later he found her waiting for him just outside the gate, mostly composed and alone in the fading sunlight. She'd pulled herself from the shower and stood down both Temari and Kankurou in order to be one to meet him. Her teammate slowed as he saw her, as he processed what it'd mean for her to be alone; fear forced his question out anyway. "Where are they?"

"Sasuke's dead." It'd taken practice to manage to say the words; she still heard her voice waver. "Gaara's recovering."

Naruto's eyes squeezed closed; his hands and fists clenched. "Where is he?"

Sakura watched the ground. "I don't know."

"What do you mean—"

"I mean I don't know. Temari and Kankurou said he usually finds a spot away from people when things get bad, if something's wrong, or . . ." Her voice caught. "Or if he's afraid he'll accidentally hurt someone."

The blond's voice hardened further. "He hurt you?"

She shook her head and shifted from foot to foot, unconsciously wrapping an arm around herself. "He scared me."

"But Sasuke—"

"He didn't have an option."

Naruto pointed at Sand's wall, and his voice raised to a shout. "He didn't have to kill him! He could've waited, he could've—I don't know, he could've done anything else! I told him to wait; I thought . . ."

Even in the dimming light she could see the tears in her teammate's eyes.

"Why didn't he wait? Why didn't he try?"

Naruto's anger pushed Sakura past her own muted feelings. "Stop it—don't blame him."

"Like hell I won't!"

He tried to bolt past her; Sakura grabbed his arm and dragged him to a halt. "You can't. I won't let you. Gaara did what he was supposed to; Sasuke came here to try to hurt people and he stepped up to try to defend us. You can't blame him for that. And . . . And I think Gaara did try to delay him. When I got there they'd been talking—but I think Sasuke was just waiting for me."

"You think?" The blond's chin was up and his eyes wild, and Sakura knew he would've already tried to fight anyone else. "So you don't know?"

She shook her head. "I was only there for the end of it."

Naruto finally looked at her and actually saw her: puffy-eyed, shoulders rounded, her hands alternating between clenching and rubbing each other. He didn't want to know—knowing would make the situation undeniable—but Sakura's state made him ask anyway. "It was bad?"

"It was like he was before. I think Sasuke did it: tried to break him, or at least tried to use him against Sand—all of us at Sand. I think I was supposed to catch the brunt of it and you were supposed to find him like that after. But it went wrong, and . . ." Sakura trailed off. She'd mostly told Temari and Kankurou what had happened, but wasn't ready to describe it again. "And now I guess Gaara's trying to take care of himself."

It didn't seem like enough, but at that moment it was all she had.

Naruto hesitated. Sakura could tell he didn't want to believe her; she knew anyone else would've probably been met with denial. "But . . . I thought Gaara was okay now. I thought he'd gotten past it, that he'd gotten better."

"How?" she gaped. "After everything he's been through, how could he ever be okay?"

Naruto looked up at the wall, then back to her. "I thought . . . I don't know."

"Just try to talk to him first, once . . ." Once we find him, she thought, but didn't say it. Once he's okay enough to come back and face the aftermath, face the hurt and anger of people he loves. She tried again: "Let him tell you what happened. You know he'll talk to you, too. Then figure out what to do from there."

Her teammate grit his teeth—then let his shoulders slump and nodded. "What are you going to do, though?"

She blinked angrily at the ground, willing the tears away. "I don't know."