Sakura woke up in a sour mood. She was still in the medical wing and every muscle in her body ached with disuse. Her headache was back, her stomach was growling, and she was in desperate need of a shower.

Instead of going back to her rooms to shower, Sakura decided it would be best to have a quick training session to exercise her muscles. Food could wait. What she needed was to beat the shit out of something and vent out all her pent up frustration. She made her way to the courtyard where she remembered seeing training dummies when she had first arrived.

The courtyard was blessedly empty, which Sakura was extremely grateful for. She wasn't in the mood to deal with strangers. Or any of the Sand shinobi she knew, come to think of it.

She squared away in front of one of the training dummies and began to practice her taijutsu, kicking and punching without the aid of chakra, both because she didn't want to ruin the dummy and it wouldn't help her with her muscle fatigue.

Truthfully, Sakura was upset. This mission hadn't been going at all according to plan. Sakura wasn't particularly fond of being admonished – even by Tsunade, who had more of a right to do so than even her own parents did. But for Gaara to chide her… Well, it was an unpleasant feeling. He was the same age as her, and a man who just a few years ago had been so loose a canon that he had nearly killed her. She knew that he had changed, that he was a respectable man now, but was he really the Kazekage? That seemed like way too much responsibility.

But then she supposed that his father had been Kazekage. Perhaps he wasn't so ill suited for it. The villagers certainly seemed okay with his being their leader.

Sakura grunted as she landed a particularly brutal punch on the dummy's chest.

It wasn't just Gaara bothering her. She was now halfway through the week's time she had been allotted for the mission and she hadn't even started figuring out the antidote yet. Who could have predicted that a giant floating worm beast would be the source of the poison? Hopefully Tsunade would understand if she needed an extension of time.

Though after Gaara's words, she was more determined than ever to not need more time. If she put enough effort into it, she could get the antidote done fairly quickly now that she had the egg. She would finish her training session, get some breakfast, and then get to work on the antidote. She could finish her mission in plenty of time and get back to Konoha without needing an extension.

And she was really missing Konoha about now.

"I figured you'd be in the labs now that you have that damn egg."

Sakura turned to find Gaara sitting above her in a tree near the window they had been looking through just the night before. His Kage robes were gone, replaced with his standard shinobi clothes. He looked tired – more tired than usual.

"I was just trying to breathe some life back into my muscles," she replied. "I'll get working on the antidote right away."

She turned back to the training dummy and aimed a high kick for its shoulder. It connected with a loud thud. Some of the tightness in her muscles was dissipating now. She aimed another high kick on the other side.

"Right away?"

She paused, peering at him over her shoulder.

"Would you like me to leave, Kazekage-sama?" she asked. "Is that what you're getting at?" She glanced around at the empty courtyard. Perhaps he liked to come here to train himself. This was the palace after all. She was in a private wing. It hadn't occurred to her that she might be encroaching on his space.

Her stomach chose that moment to growl quite loudly, the sound echoing in the quietude of the courtyard. Sakura remembered then that it had been quite some time since she had eaten.

"No," Gaara said, watching her with a sort of amused curiosity. "But you should probably go get something to eat."

She narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't need to be told what to do. But she remained silent because he was still the Kazekage, and if he wanted to tell her what to do… well, he could.

"After I've finished here," she said. She turned back to the training dummy and aimed another kick, this time at its stomach. But before her foot landed, the dummy was knocked down to the stone by a wave of sand.

"Half of the villagers fear me," Gaara said. Sakura turned around to face him, more than a little confused. "And the other half adore me."

She put her hands on her hips, watching him carefully. From her past experiences with the Kazekage, she figured she was in some sort of trouble again.

"There aren't many people in Suna who would defy an order from me," he continued.

"Sorry, Kazekage-sama, but have you given me an order?"

"Gaara," he corrected. "And no. But I can't imagine a villager would stay here in the courtyard after the suggestion I made."

"I'm not a villager."

To her surprise, Gaara smiled. "No, you don't fear me," he speculated. "And you definitely don't adore me."

"Does that bother you?"

"Bother me?" he asked, leaping down from his perch on the tree. He approached the training dummy and set it upright again before turning back to face Sakura. "Not at all. You treat me the same way my sister does. Like a friend. How could I be bothered by that?"

"You seemed pretty bothered yesterday."

"You are special to Naruto and I cannot let anything happen to you," he said, his tone taking on a darker note. "Your wellbeing is more important than the antidote for the poison."

"Then perhaps I should be locked away in a tower somewhere like a princess instead of being a kunoichi and putting myself in harm's way," she said sassily.

He raised a nonexistent brow at her.

"You really think you can take me?" asked a familiar voice on the other side of the courtyard. Both Sakura and Gaara glanced over to see Shikamaru and Temari walking into the courtyard, a little too close to one another to be considered merely friendly.

"Of course I can," Shikamaru answered. He paused mid step when he saw Gaara and Sakura near the training dummies. A furious blush painted his cheeks and he took a massive step away from Temari. "Uh, hi, guys," he said. "We were just about to spar if you'd like to join us."

Sakura was about to nod because that sounded like a great way to gain back her muscle strength, but Gaara spoke before she could.

"Actually," he said. "We were just going to get some food. Sakura is hungry."

She opened her mouth to protest, but as if to demonstrate Gaara's point, her stomach growled loudly again.

"Good, then Shikamaru will know that I'm kicking his ass fair and square," Temari said, pulling her massive fan from her back.

"We'll see about that," Shikamaru muttered.

True to his word, Gaara led Sakura down to the kitchens to get some food. It was too late for breakfast now, but he watched as she prepared a quick meal for the both of them. She wasn't particularly good at cooking, but she imagined she was probably better at it than Gaara was.

When she had finished cooking their food, she unceremoniously let his plate clatter on the table in front of him and then took a seat opposite of him.

"You didn't want me out of the courtyard," she said. "You just wanted me to cook your lunch."

"I can't eat this," he said. "Not without my food tester present."

She paused with her food nearly to her mouth and gave him a heated glare. "Then why did you watch me make it without saying anything?"

He smiled before taking a bite of the food. A little unnerved, Sakura busied herself with eating her own food and tried to ignore the Kazekage as he sat across from her, watching her unabashedly.

She tried – she really did – to ignore him while she ate. She just needed to finish her food quickly so she could get back to the medical wing and get to work.

But why was he staring at her like that? Did he want something? Did she have something on her face?

Deciding enough was enough, Sakura slammed her chopsticks down on the table. "Why are you staring at me?"

He glanced down at her hands, white knuckled as they were against the table. Then his eyes found hers and he seemed confused. He seemed to understand that he had hit a nerve (or rather that she did not appreciate his staring).

"How is Naruto doing?" he asked.

Sakura blinked. "Naruto is fine," she answered, a little unsure of herself. "Same obnoxious loud mouth, as always."

"I'm glad to hear that."

Sakura felt her ire fading. She didn't know Gaara quite as well as Naruto did, but she was sure that the blonde teammate had been the catalyst that shifted Gaara's paradigm. They were both jinchuriki. They understood each other in a way that she never could. It made her feel sad that Gaara missed Naruto, that it was her expertise that was needed here instead of his.

She swallowed hard, feeling almost as if she were about to cry. It was ridiculous and she knew it. But the surge of emotion got the better of her. First Sasuke, then Gaara. Naruto was the one people could relate to. Would she have to suffer like they did to be able to understand them? Why was it that Naruto could form these bonds like this (even with her!), yet she could barely call Gaara her acquaintance? She felt more like an outsider in that moment than she ever had within Suna's walls.

She chanced a look back up at his face again. He was still watching her, though now it seemed he had refocused his attention. His eyes were sharp on her, searching for whatever truth was in her face that he couldn't gather from her silence.

"Naruto misses you," she said eventually, once the silence had become too tense to bear. "And he's insanely jealous that you've become the Kazekage."

The corners of his mouth quirked up minutely before the smile faded again. It wasn't a lie, per se. It had been some time since Gaara had become the Kazekage, and Naruto was well over it by now. He more than anyone understood Gaara's position and respected that he was the right man for the job.

"I have no doubt that he will become Hokage."

"Me either."

Silence fell again and it made Sakura feel uncomfortable. She wished that she were more like Naruto, that she could fill the silence with something amicable and friendly.

"I should head over to the labs," she said after a moment.

Gaara only nodded in response.

Sakura felt much more in her element down in the medical labs. The Suna medics had given her a cubicle to work in – one private and well equipped with all the things she might need. They had also left the beast egg for her, encased in a glass tube on her desk. For a while, Sakura fiddled around with the samples she had collected from Temari, avoiding the glass-encased egg on her desk. It seemed too much of a burden now, too much of a reminder of her failure so far.

But after a while, when Temari's samples yielded no results, Sakura decided it was time to take a look at the egg. The thing was massive, and if Sakura was quite frank, gross looking. It had an awful greenish yellow tinge and appeared to be coated in some kind of mucus. Clumps of sand clung together along the shell, which Sakura noted had a very tiny crack in it near the top.

She carried the tube to the biohazard lab, tiny as it was. The poison that had made her feel weak and nauseous was more potent than the one that had affected Temari. Sakura theorized that this might have been due to sheer proximity of the egg. If Temari had crossed over top of the egg where it was buried under the sand, she may have inhaled enough of its noxious fumes to feel affected. That was the same way it had to have affected the other sand shinobi.

Sakura, however, had touched the egg with her bare skin. She had also been sprayed in the back by the beast. Luckily she had collected a sample of that to analyze alongside the mucus from the egg.

What that meant now, though, was that the egg was highly dangerous and needed to be treated like a hazardous material. Sakura changed into a HAZMAT suit and pried open the glass case.

Her gloves protected her skin, but even through her helmet she could smell the egg. Its odor wasn't as terrible as its appearance, but it was pungent and chemical. With a small chakra blade, she sloughed off a portion of the slime that coated the shell and put it into another glass vial to be analyzed later alongside the mucus that the beast had sprayed from its mouth.

Her next step was to figure out the properties of the fumes. It seemed that fumes were not coming from the slime as Sakura had previously thought, but from the crack in the egg itself. Sakura assumed that this was a self-defense tactic, as the egg seemed to be in the first stages of hatching. The fumes were released from the crack to prevent predators from stealing the egg.

Sakura tested the crack with her finger, pressing into it to see if it would widen under the minute pressure. It was sturdy enough. If it was anything like a large bird's egg, it would take several more weeks to hatch, which Sakura was extremely grateful for. She certainly didn't want to have to deal with a baby version of that horrible sand beast.

With that knowledge in mind, Sakura was unsure of how to proceed. If the fumes were coming from inside the egg, she would have to crack it open to analyze the organic material inside that she would create the antidote from. That was nearly impossible to do with just the smell – otherwise she'd have done it already from the samples she had collected from the infected shinobi's lungs.

She had two options, she realized. She could use a syringe to poke through the egg's shell and extract a bit of the embryo inside, or she could use chakra to do the same thing. Using chakra meant permeating the shell. Sakura was unsure of whether or not this would compromise the egg's ability to hatch. Some wild creatures reacted adversely to chakra and she had no way of knowing if this creature was one of them. And poking through the shell could also compromise the egg's integrity, though was probably a safer bet.

What she needed was to understand more about the beast.

With a sigh, Sakura set aside the egg, replacing it in its glass case. She could work some more on that when she had learned more about the sand beast. For now, she could contrast and compare the egg's slime with the beast's mucus.

She moved back to her cubicle, remaining in her hazmat suit, and pulled out her microscope.

She didn't expect to find too much in the small samples she had gathered. She knew that the meat of what she needed was under the egg's shell.

But she was surprised by what she found in the sand beast's slime. The mucus that covered the egg was innocuous enough – it had no effects like the noxious fumes. It seemed that its purpose was to deter predators simply by being unappealing and making it difficult to hold onto the egg.

The beast's mucus, however, had entirely different properties. Sakura remembered the tingly feeling on her back after she had been sprayed by it. At first, it hadn't seemed to have an effect on her. But she remembered the heat of the sun and the way the slime reacted to it.

Slowly, Sakura held a portion of the mucus over a burner, trying to discover what new properties the heat would bring out in it. When the heat yielded no results, Sakura placed a clear vial of the mucus underneath a light.

She noticed a faint glow to the mucus now, and tiny bubbles that rose up from the bottom of the vial as if it were carbonated. They were so small that it was hard to notice, but Sakura assumed that this was the cause of the tingling sensation she had felt before. She turned up the brightness of the lamp and pulled out a journal to take notes on the light's effect.

For several minutes, nothing else happened. Then she noticed the consistency of the mucus become more liquid and less gelatinous. Curious, she wiggled the tube around, watching as the substance inside no longer stuck to the sides.

Carefully, she placed the new substance under her microscope and gave it a look. She was astonished to find that it had similar properties to acid. She removed the vial and pulled out its stopper. She poured two drops onto a piece of paper and watched as it ate away at the paper.

With a shudder, Sakura reached over her shoulder and touched her back. She had been sprayed with that slime, and while it hadn't harmed her because she had been cleaned of it before she had woken up, she realized how much damage it could have done to her. If it reacted to sunlight, then the desert was a perfect place for a creature like this to live.

Quickly, Sakura gathered up her things. She had the sudden urge to take a long bath.

With her soap and shampoo in hand, Sakura made her way down the corridor toward the baths. She could see that another sandstorm was brewing, so she wanted to make sure to get to the bath before it started. She didn't care how long she was trapped in there. She even had a book tucked under her arm just in case.

Humming to herself, Sakura turned the corner and collided with a warm body.

"Oh, Sakura-san." It was Temari, looking worse off than she had when Sakura had left her in the courtyard. She reached out her hand to steady Sakura by grabbing onto her elbow. "I was just coming to check up on you."

"Oh, you mean about the poison?" Sakura asked. "I'm fine now. In fact, I've been in the lab all afternoon and I'm in desperate need of a bath. Want to join me again?"

Sakura could see that Temari wanted to say no. Again, Sakura was distraught by her lack of closeness with the sand kunoichi. Gaara would not have declined the same offer from Naruto, Sakura was sure of it. She suddenly felt homesick and wished that Ino had come with her instead of Shikamaru.

"Actually, yes," Temari said, earning a surprised look from Sakura. "I've been training and sparring all day. I could use a good soak."

Sakura beamed at her and they walked down the hallway together toward the baths. Once inside, Sakura wasted no time getting undressed and slipping into the heated water. She leaned back against the marble and sighed.

Temari, however, lingered at the edge of the water.

"Sakura-san," she said and Sakura detected a hint of trepidation in her tone. "Do you often find yourself affected by poisons you've been sent to create an antidote for?"

Sakura focused her eyes sharply on Temari, who was still hovering near the water naked. She didn't seem too abashed to have asked such an offensive question, but Sakura didn't feel particularly offended by it. She narrowed her eyes nonetheless, hoping that her gaze was intimidating to the Sand kunoichi.

"No," Sakura answered firmly.

"So this is a special case, then?" Temari asked. Sakura's eyes lingered on her, and Temari seemed to remember in that moment that she was naked so she slipped into the water, moving to sit near Sakura, but not too near.

"I suppose," Sakura said, reaching back behind her for the shampoo she had brought with her. "Why are you asking me this?"

"It was a problem when our shinobi came home poisoned," Temari answered. "It's an even bigger problem for foreign diplomats to be poisoned here as well."

"Ah," Sakura mumbled, understanding what Temari was getting at. "I sensed that Gaara-sama was displeased with me after I'd been poisoned."

"It's Gaara's duty to protect us." Temari said, watching as Sakura sudsed up her hair. "And you as well, while you're here. Because of your close friendship with Naruto, he feels an even greater need to make sure you are safe."

Sakura scowled, but Temari held up a hand before she could reply.

"Believe me, Sakura-san, I know how that feels. I'm the Kazekage's sister," she explained. "Do you know how many times he's pulled me away from a mission he feels it too dangerous for me? To be fair, Kankuro gets similar treatment sometimes, but the point still stands. Gaara is a protector."

"I gathered that," Sakura said dryly.

Temari smirked, reaching for her own shampoo. "Don't take it personally, but I thought you should know that's why he was upset with you. You're gotten under his skin. Did you know that?"

"Under his skin?"

"Are you as defiant with your own Hokage as you are with Gaara?"

"I'm not defiant!"

Temari chuckled as she dipped herself lower into the bath, letting the water hit her chin.

"Seriously," Sakura continued. "I haven't defied him at all."

"This is true," Temari agreed. "But you have to understand. Gaara is used to people trying to please him. He doesn't usually have to give direct orders."

"I wouldn't defy a direct order from the Kazekage."

"I'm sure Gaara knows that."

"Then why is he annoyed with me?"

Temari sighed and sat up again, leaning back and glancing over to Sakura at her side. "Let me give you a little tip for dealing with Gaara," she said. "He doesn't like to be feared, but he does like to be respected. Showing some defiance is fine, but you'll need to mollify it with something else."

"You mean patronize him?"

Temari laughed. "As long as he doesn't realize that's what you're doing."

Sakura flicked her finger at the water, sending a few droplets flying toward Temari's face. "I'm not going to do that," she said.

Temari shrugged in response, but Sakura had to wonder if the blonde had a point. Temari knew Gaara much better than Sakura did, and though she didn't feel bad about her behavior so far, Sakura did feel the need to appease him in some way. He was her superior, after all, and it was never a good thing to annoy your superiors.

"But what else could I do?" Sakura asked after a few seconds of silence. "You know, to not get under his skin so much?"

"What's wrong with being under his skin?"

"For starters, he sent a message to Tsunade-sama detailing the events of the past couple of days," Sakura replied dryly. "And he's also a Kage. I usually make it a priority to not go pissing off people in positions of power."

"He's not pissed off."

Sakura rolled her eyes. She didn't know why Temari had even brought Gaara up unless she just wanted to watch her squirm. It was unfair, really.

"You know, Sakura-san," Temari continued. "I kind of like having you around."

"Me?" Sakura asked with a dark chuckle. "I think you mean Shikamaru."

A pink blush adhered to Temari's cheeks before a scowl lowered her brows and scrunched up her face like a peach pit.

"What is going on with you two?" Sakura asked, unable to help herself. If Temari could do it, so could Sakura.

"There's nothing going on," she said firmly. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

Sakura gave her a pointed look. She wasn't dense – she could see the looks they gave one another. Hell, Shikamaru was a completely different person around her. It was as blatantly obvious as the sun hanging in the sky.

But Sakura decided to cut her some slack anyway.

"So who won?"

Temari looked up, giving Sakura a questioning glance.

"The spar?" Sakura reminded her. "Who won the spar?"

She glanced down into the water again, another blush painting her cheeks. "Shikamaru won."

Sakura laughed.