Night had fallen quickly over the desert and the village was quiet as everyone retreated into their homes to sleep. It was a real shame, Sakura thought, that the company here was so insufferable. Otherwise, she would probably enjoy the quaintness and quietness that Suna had to offer.

Chakra still masked, she made her way to the village gates. The massive wall was lined with guard towers – she could see that they were each manned with two shinobi. She would not be able to sneak out unnoticed, so she hoped no one would care that she was leaving.

She walked along the base of the wall, careful to keep her footsteps quiet. But it seemed that the guards were hardly paying any attention at all to what was happening inside the village. Instead, they all had their attention focused on some unknown point in the distance, well across the dunes. Sakura paused, straining her ears to hear anything.

Far off in the distance she could hear a manic screeching sound.

"How long should we give him before we come help?" she heard a guard above her ask.

"He ordered us to stay put no matter what," said another voice. "It isn't like he'll need our help anyway."

"But what if he gets himself killed?"

"He's the Kazekage. He won't get himself killed."

Sakura swallowed and peered up at the guard tower that was directly above her. Was Gaara out there in the desert? Was he alone? Another screech echoed in the distance.

She knew that sound. It was the sand beast. Gaara had told her it was supposed to have been moved to a hidden location. Was he out there moving it by himself? Was he fighting it?

With new resolve, Sakura shrugged her pack higher up on her shoulders and began to scale the wall. She already knew she wouldn't be able to sneak past the guards – they were all looking in the exact direction she needed to go. Instead, she took a more direct approach. She let her chakra leak through its mask before jumping and landing directly behind the guards.

"Hey," she said to get their attention. "Gaara-sama is waiting for me out there. I'm going to help him with that beast. So don't attack me, okay?"

The guards seemed unsurprised that she was there. The one on the left frowned while the other gave a quick shake of his head. "No, Gaara-sama told us to make sure no one left the village after he did."

Sakura shook her head. "Well, he wasn't talking about me," she lied. "He specifically asked for my help. I'm a Sakura Haruno of Konoha. I travelled all this way to help him."

Both guards looked like they wanted to protest that, but Sakura did not give them the chance. She leapt from the wall and plummeted down into the sand, using chakra to buffer the impact. She did not look back up toward the guards as she ran toward the screeching sound.

She would certainly be in trouble for this now, especially after the last conversation she'd had with Gaara. But she wasn't going to leave while Gaara was in trouble.

She ran as quickly as she could on the sand, careful not to waste any chakra in case she would need it later. Belatedly, she remembered how cold the desert was at night and she felt goosebumps rise up on her bare arms. She would have to remember to come back to Suna and grab some kind of jacket before she headed back home if she was going to be travelling at night.

The beast's screeches led her far past the farthest into the desert she had been. She crossed the dunes and miles and miles of sand, looking back toward Suna only once to see the tiny figures of the guards atop the wall. Soon the screeching grew louder. She was getting closer.

Up ahead of her the landscape was shifting. The dunes gave way to a massive stone formation. The red and brown stone was smooth and tall, dipping into the ground and coming back up to form arches and walls. Briefly Sakura mused that the formation almost looked like a turtle's shell if it didn't contain so many open holes and gaps.

She quickly approached the formation – she could feel that Gaara was close by. The ground was quaking beneath her now – a low tremble, but she knew what it meant. She quickly leapt up on top of the stone where the beast wouldn't be able to surprise her.

Sakura wasn't a sensor type, but she could feel that something was wrong. Gaara's chakra signature was faint, but she knew that he was near her somewhere. She scanned the horizon, looking for any sign of something amiss, but it was so dark. She could hardly see past the stone in front of her.

The tremors in the ground intensified – Sakura struggled to maintain her balance. Then she saw a wall of sand shoot up from the ground a few meters past the edge of the stone. She pulsed her chakra signature outward, hoping Gaara could sense her wherever he was.

Then she saw him – a thin, crumpled figure against the stark sky. He was in the air, falling quickly back down toward the sand. His sand wall must have launched him high into the air. Sakura darted forward, ambling to catch him before he hit the ground and injured himself.

He fell into her outstretched arms and Sakura was horrified to see that he was unconscious, covered in the beast's slime and a crusting of sand. His hair was matted down to his forehead and his eyes were shut. With a surge of chakra, she found that he was experiencing muscle fatigue – he had contracted the poison.

Quickly she brought him back to the top of the stone formation and set him down. She funneled her chakra into his chest, doing her best to alleviate some of his symptoms. She also noted he had some internal bleeding and was bruised all over his abdomen and chest.

"Kazekage-sama," she murmured, knowing he likely couldn't hear her. She shrugged off her pack and reached inside for a canteen of water. She needed to clean off the sand and slime around his injuries, so she ripped open his robe and poured the water onto his skin, using it in conjunction with her chakra to remove the sand and debris.

Near where his sand wall had been, more sand erupted from the ground and with it, the sand beast. Sakura used her hand to shield her face from the spray of sand, peering through her fingers at the beast. It was severely injured, Sakura saw. Before it had been able to float through the air, but now it seemed barely able to crawl along the sand. It moaned – an awful, ear-piercing sound.

Sakura crawled forward, edging close to the sand while keeping herself firmly planted on the stone. It was dying. She could see its blood seeping from some wound on its belly – far too much blood for a beast of that size to lose.

She turned back to Gaara and covered his exposed skin with his robe. "Stay here for a minute," she said to the still unconscious Kazekage. "I have to go put that thing out of its misery."

The beast groaned again – Gaara must have done quite a number on it. It writhed in the sand, twisting itself over to expose its bloody belly.

"You poor thing," Sakura said. She gathered her chakra in her fist and leapt high up into the air so she could get a good angle on it. A well-placed hit on the head would kill it instantly so it wouldn't have to suffer.

Her fist came down with a sickening crack. She felt the bone of its skull break underneath the weight of her attack. She landed on the ground beside its head, panting. The desert was quiet. She could feel the heat emanating from the beast's body still, but it was dead.

She returned to Gaara quickly, crouching down by his side. His injuries were severe, but not so bad that she couldn't take care of them here. She immediately set to work, reknitting skin and bone, closing the wounds, and extracting the poison.

For a moment Sakura was conflicted. She could wake Gaara up now, but she already knew he would be upset with her. She should not have come out here. She should not have tried to leave Suna without Shikamaru or Temari. She took the opportunity to study his face – the paleness there, the way he looked peaceful even during this time of duress. His features were soft and handsome, and Sakura was struck by the fact that he had the aristocratic countenance of a leader.

She knew she should wake him up. Otherwise she would have to carry him back to Suna, and she wasn't really into that idea.

"Kazekage-sama," she said, shaking his shoulder gently. "Wake up."

He was already scowling as she jostled him awake. He winced as she pulled him into a sitting position. "What the hell are you doing here, Sakura?"

"Umm, saving your life, Kazekage-sama."

He clutched his stomach, fingers probing the exposed flesh there. "You healed me?" he asked. He prodded his fingers into his ribs, his brow furrowed in confusion. He peered over the edge of the rock to find the beast belly-up and still. "And you killed that thing?"

"Well, you did most of the work," she said. "I just put it out of its misery."

Gaara cursed as he got to his feet.

"Now hold still, Gaara-sama," she said, pawing at his arms to coax him into sitting again. "Your injuries were pretty severe – you need to take it easy for a moment. I can carry you back to the village if you'd like."

"Go back to the village, Sakura," he commanded, ignoring her protests. "You're not safe here." He leapt down from the edge of the rock and padded around the beast, inspecting it with a wary eye. Sakura crossed her arms as she watched him jump onto the beast's belly and continue to survey the damage. When his eyes began to scan the desert's horizon, Sakura followed his gaze outward, looking for whatever he was trying to see out there.

"Sakura, did you hear me? Go back to the village. Now."

Sakura ignored the command again, knowing full well she would be in quite a bit of trouble for this. She leapt down to join Gaara in the sand, squinting to see the horizon in the distance. "Yeah, yeah, I heard you," she said. "So this is the business you had to attend to? What are you looking for?"

Gaara whirled to face her, a murderous glint in his eye. If he hadn't seemed so determined to protect her, Sakura would have feared for her life.

"You are the most frustrating person I have ever met," he said through clenched teeth. "Can't you just do as you're told?"

Sakura cocked her hip out and attempted to poke his chest with a prissy finger, but a circle of sand prevented the contact. "I overheard the guards on the wall talking about how you could be out here getting yourself killed and they would never know," she said. "And by the looks of it, they were right. How exactly were you going to fend off any of those beast's attack unconscious?" she demanded.

Gaara had the decency to look sheepish, which surprised Sakura enough that she dropped her sassy façade.

"I'm glad you were here to help, Sakura, but you're not helping your case."

Sakura sucked in a deep breath and sighed. "Forgive me, Kazekage-sama," she said with a placating tone. There was no need to exacerbate the trouble she was in, she thought. "I knew you were out here alone and I could hear that thing's screeching all the way from the village. Was I just supposed to lie in my bed and hope you came back?"

"You were supposed to listen to the guards and stay inside the village walls."

Sakura could already taste the retort poised on her lips, the sass that was coming back up like a bad case of food poisoning. But before she could speak again, Gaara's warm palm on her shoulder stopped her.

"But I suppose I can forgive this one transgression," he said. His eyes were eerily glowing in the scant moonlight and he was so close to her face that Sakura took a miniscule step backwards to put space between her and the unnerving way his eyes had settled on her. "Thank you for saving my life."

She didn't quite know what to say – she certainly hadn't been aiming for forgiveness. She gave him a grim, thin-lipped smile. "What were you doing out here, anyway?" she asked.

"I've had shinobi monitoring the beast's sleeping patterns," Gaara answered. "This location is known as Turtle Rock. I believed this location to be a good spot to move the beast to because of the size of the rock and its shape. The beast cannot burst up from the ground through it, so it is safe to stand on. It is also far enough away from the village that no one would encounter it unless they were looking for it."

Sakura nodded in understanding. "Turtle Rock?" she asked. "How clever. If I may point out – this place is a good spot for the beast in more than one way. The acid it spits from its mouth reacts to sunlight. If you were touched by it, you could hide from the sun underneath the rock."

Gaara blinked in surprise and then looked down to his body, which was still coated in a heavy layer of the beast's slime.

"I figured that out while creating the antidote," she said. "But don't worry, you'll be fine as long as you clean up before the sun comes up."

Gaara shrugged out of his Kage robe and began to wipe away the slime on his skin with it. Sakura reached into her pack and pulled out a clean cloth and moved to help him. It was still relatively dark outside now, but there was no reason to leave that slime on him when it could potentially hurt him later.

But as she reached out to grab his arm, a thin layer of sand materialized between them. She glanced up at him, his eyes wavering through the shifting sands.

"Sorry," he said. "It's the nature of my sand to guard against touch. You may help." The sand fell back to the ground and hesitantly, Sakura reached forward and began to wipe his arm with the cloth. She rubbed the cloth along the smoothness his forearm, marveling at how his skin was unmarred by any scratches or scars – a true testament to the power of his sand.

She couldn't help but notice the way his muscles were taught, bulging from his forearm as she continued to clean him. His heart rate was quicker than normal, she deduced. He must have been uncomfortable with her touch, but he still allowed it.

"I still don't understand why you came out here," she said in an attempt to distract him from feeling overwhelmed by her touch.

"There is a pulse beneath the sand," he explained. "Something that contains chakra, though I don't think it's alive. The shinobi team responsible for moving the beast noticed it first. It is faint, but it grows stronger each day the beast is here at Turtle Rock." He closed his eyes, pausing his movements for a moment. "Can you feel it, Sakura, beneath the sand?"

Sakura, too, stopped moving, though she let her hands stay clutched around the Kazekage's arm. She closed her eyes, trying to sense what it was he had explained to her.

And she could feel it – a minute flare of chakra somewhere deep below them. There was an abnormal quality to it, one that left Sakura to conclude, as Gaara had, that whatever it was was not alive.

"I can feel it," she answered, opening her eyes and resuming her cleaning.

"I believe whatever it is down there reacted to the beast in some way," Gaara said. "I'd like to know what it is and if it might pose a threat to Suna in the future."

"I see," Sakura said. When Gaara's arm had been cleaned, Sakura moved to apply the cloth to his chest, where she could see more slime spread across his collarbone, but he grabbed onto her wrist to stop her. "That's why you monitored its sleeping pattern – so you could come out here while it was asleep and investigate."

Gaara held onto her wrist, but he did not push her away. He merely held onto her arm as he regarded her with cool eyes. "Yes, exactly," he said. "I wanted to minimize any risk of casualties."

Sakura did not blush, though she felt as though she could have. "I think losing the Kazekage would be the single most devastating casualty you could have accrued here," she pointed out. "What would Suna do without their leader?"

Gaara released her arm with a roll of his eyes.

"So did you find it?" she continued. "Whatever it is that's creating this weird chakra?"

Gaara shook his head. "It's under the sand and the rock," he explained. "I'm not sure how deep it is below the surface. We might have to tunnel for it."

"Oh, that's why you were under the ground when I got here."

Gaara nodded.

"So how did you get down there? Did you get close to it?"

"I was able to shift the sands around to accommodate my movements, but it was dangerous with the beast lurking around," he explained. "It can move a lot more freely under the ground than I can."

"It would help if you could know the location of the chakra source before you start tunneling," Sakura said.

"Yes," he said, giving her a mildly annoyed glare. "It would."

"You know a Hyuuga could easily help you out with this little problem," she said, ignoring the way he glared at her.

"My experiences with Konoha nin have led me to believe they are too insubordinate," he said coldly. "I won't be asking for their help in the future unless it is absolutely necessary."

Sakura smiled in spite of the fact she felt rather annoyed. "Oh, come on now, Gaara-sama," she said. "You can't hold Konoha responsible for my indiscretions. Admit that you wouldn't turn down Naruto's help for anything."

"Okay," he conceded. "I would not turn down Naruto's help."

"And Shikamaru has been helpful, too, hasn't he?"

"Shikamaru is fucking my sister," he bit out. "He's no higher up on the list than you are."

Shocked by his vulgar language and the rage the roiled off him, Sakura couldn't contain the short burst of laughter that erupted from her mouth. "Kazekage-sama!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know you had this possessiveness in you."

"I'm not being possessive," he argued. "Temari can do whatever she wants, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with it."

"Hey, Shikamaru is a good guy," she replied defensively.

"No one who would fuck my sister is a good guy."

Sakura sniggered into her hand, eyes lit with amusement. He sent another heated glare in her direction as he continued to wipe the slime from the body with his Kage robe.

"I think Shikamaru is good for her," she continued, watching as he tossed his dampened robe up onto the rock. "She could use a good fuck."

Gaara's glare intensified.

"So could you," she said.

She watched the glare on his face dissipate and melt into a look of total humiliation. Sakura was sure she had never seen the Kazekage look so red before.

"That is highly inappropriate, Sakura-san."

"Again with the suffix?" she asked. "You're very confusing, you know."

"It would be easier if you would just show me the appropriate amount of respect."

"Sorry," she said, genuinely apologetic, but not really ashamed. "Don't let my terrible behavior deter you from hiring a Hyuuga to help you out here. Hinata is much more obedient and docile. She won't grate on your nerves like I do."

"She's not here now and you are," he said. "So you're going to help me instead."

"How could I help?"

"The beast is dead now, so we can tunnel under the sand without its interference," he said. "You have completed your portion of the mission, but you have to remain here until Shikamaru is finished as well. If I'm forced to endure your company for a few more days, then I can at least put you to good use."

"Absolutely, Kazekage-sama," she said agreeably. "I'm at your disposal. What can I do for you?"

He eyed her skeptically, seeming to await some sort of sassy response from her. But Sakura merely stood waiting, her expression as neutral as she could school it. Honestly, she didn't intend to be such a pest. It was Ino's mannerisms rubbing off on her.

"How well are you able to manipulate the sand with your chakra control?" he asked. "Can you hit precise points that will enable you to punch tunnels instead of craters?"

"I've never tried that before," she said, tapping her finger against her chin. It was feasible, she decided, but would require a lot of concentration. She was unsure of how far she could extend her chakra to create a tunnel. She had a feeling that if she were to attack the sand in such a way that a tunnel was formed, the tunnel itself would be relatively short.

"Now's as good a time as any to try," he said, gesturing to the ground beside him.

"Can't you just move the sand yourself?" she asked. "Isn't that your thing?"

"I tried that," he answered. "I think whatever is down there can also manipulate the sand. I found my tunneling pattern to be inconsistent and I couldn't figure out why. Your abilities should be unhindered, though, and with my personal sand we shouldn't have any trouble."

Sakura had some qualms about that, because his lack of consistency in moving the sand was concerning and seemed like an awfully good reason not to venture down there at all.

"What about the nest?" she asked, thinking of any other excuse to avoid what he was suggesting.

He regarded her for a moment, his brow furrowed but his expression otherwise unreadable.

"The shinobi squad that moved the nest put it underneath the rock, but it was gone the next time they came back," he explained. "I'm not sure where the nest is now. I imagine it's somewhere buried beneath us."

"Surely you don't want to accidentally injure the eggs, though," she said. "You said the beast made the chakra source underneath us react in some way. The beast is dead now, so if it was eliciting some kind of effect then we'll need to eggs to learn what that effect was."

Gaara made a small noise of acknowledgement with the back of his throat and crouched down low, his knees sunken in the sand. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms into the sand. Sakura watched as he sensed what was below their feet. Sakura, too, tried to sense what she could – the chakra source somewhere below. It was faint now, but still there clear as day.

"Are you able to sense the nest?" she asked.

Gaara shook his head and brought his finger to his lips to silence her. She continued to watch him. She could feel his chakra in the sands under her, shifting and moving beneath the surface. There was a rumbling, static sound coming from the ground – a sound she hoped was Gaara and not something more nefarious.

"I do not sense the nest anywhere near," Gaara said, his eyes still closed. "Though I imagine the beast left it somewhere it would be safe and well protected after having one egg stolen and the nest itself relocated."

Sakura hummed in agreement. Gaara opened his eyes and looked at her. Again, Sakura felt unnerved by his gaze and the intensity behind his eyes. Did he always look at everyone that way? How could anyone stand it?

"Go on," he urged. "Give it a go."

Resigned, Sakura amassed a precise amount of chakra in her fist and pulled back to hit the ground beneath her feet. Gaara leapt back to avoid the probable devastation, landing deftly back on top of Turtle Rock.

Sakura's fist connected with the sand. Usually Sakura allowed her chakra to dispel itself however it pleased, letting gravity and physics do all the work. This usually ended in a crater of some sort – an explosion of everything near where her fist landed. But for this to work, Sakura channeled her chakra more precisely, forcing it to go only downwards in the sand, the radius of effect only three feet wide. It was like walking on her hands, she mused. It did not come naturally – the movement, the flow of her chakra felt odd that way.

But when she removed her fist from the sand she was pleasantly surprised to see that she had, indeed, punched a tunnel into the sand. She peered down into the vertical hole she had just made, feeling a sense of accomplishment. She was immediately annoyed, though, to find that the hole was roughly ten feet deep – not nearly deep enough to explore.

"Nice work, Sakura," Gaara said, hopping down from the rock. "It's not very long, but as long as you can throw consecutive punches, we should be fine."

Sakura was about to protest, because throwing consecutive punches sounded like a lot of work – work that would expend a significant amount of chakra. Gaara jumped down into the hole she had made and peered back up at her expectantly.

"Do you think you could make the tunnel a little wider?" he asked.

"I think it already expends too much chakra to feasibly explore while doing this," she said, refraining from letting a heavy sigh whoosh out of her.

"No matter," Gaara said, beckoning her to join him with a wave of his hand. "I can move the sand myself." She looked on as he shifted the sand in the tunnel, pushing it outward to create a wider path for the two of them.

Hesitantly, Sakura hopped down into the hole beside him. She didn't think this was a great idea, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let him explore beneath the sand alone. He'd already almost gotten killed once that way.

She shrugged her pack tighter around her shoulders and reared back for another tunnel inducing punch.