Gaara's heart was pounding in his chest, wind whipping his bangs into his eyes. The height at the top of Sarabi's sand wall was dizzying. He could feel himself teetered as he gazed down at the expanse of sand below.
Behind him, Sakura was down below, cradling Sarabi in her arms. Gaara didn't want to think about the two of them at the moment. He was still unsure of Sarabi's condition and he was sure that whatever Sakura might be able to explain to him would only exacerbate his fear.
Instead, he tried to focus on the task at hand. In front of him, the beast was wriggling around in the air. Repeated attempts to head slam the stone to get to Sarabi had obviously left it in bad shape. It writhed about, wailing and groaning. Though the crack in the wall was substantial, it seemed Sarabi's handiwork was enough to keep the beast at bay – at least for now.
But until he could come up with another way of communicating with the beast, Gaara needed to keep it occupied. With Sarabi still unconscious, he was at a total loss for what to do.
"Did Sarabi do this?" asked a voice beside him.
Gaara glanced to his right and saw that Temari had joined him at the top of the wall. She gaped down at the solid stone beneath her feet. Gaara couldn't blame her.
"She did," he replied evenly. "How is she doing?"
Temari gave a slight shake of her head, looking off toward where the beast was still whirling through the air.
"Tough to say, isn't it?" she asked. "Sakura can't even tell what's wrong with her past chakra exhaustion."
"Just like before," Gaara muttered under his breath.
Another wail pierced the air, drawing Temari and Gaara's attention. The beast swirled up high above them and then dove down toward the sand. Gaara had no clue how deep Sarabi's sand wall went beneath the sand, but he didn't want to take the risk that the beast could burrow under it and get to Sarabi and Sakura.
Calling on a massive portion of his chakra, Gaara attempted to solidify the sand beneath the beast just before its head hit the ground. Unsurprisingly, the sand didn't immediately bend to his control. Whatever force had taken from him the ability to control the desert's sand before had come back in full force.
But with what little control he did have, Gaara was able to create sand packed densely enough to still keep the beast from diving beneath the sand. Its head smashed into the ground with a sickening crack. Gaara winced as he heard the bones in its massive neck crackle under the immense pressure.
If Sarabi were awake, he could have her build a cage around the beast to keep it still until they could communicate with it. Without her, he could barely control the desert's sand. All he had was the sand in his gourd.
Gaara knew any attempt he made to subdue the beast would likely harm it. It seemed to have a propensity to harm itself and Gaara wasn't really prepared to lose it to death just yet.
He looked back down behind him at the dunes, scanning for Sakura's pink hair. Panic seized his throat when he saw Sarabi's limp body propped up against a mound of sand with Sakura nowhere in sight.
"Where's Sakura?" he asked, his voice steel and ice.
Temari leaned down to peer across the desert, looking for Sakura as well. "I told her not to leave Sarabi's side," she said brusquely.
Perhaps she had gone back to the village for help, Gaara thought. Maybe she needed something – a tool or a medicine – to better care for Sarabi. Gaara prayed to whatever gods would listen that this was the case.
The beast, which had slumped against the sand, nursing its wounds with quiet, shuddering whimpers, suddenly jolted, its body flipping over onto its back. It screeched and began to writhe again, but was clearly too injured to do much of anything else anymore.
This was good, Gaara thought, because it was still alive, but now it was relatively well-subdued. However, it was the lithe, pink-haired kunoichi that had flipped the beast over that sent Gaara's heart into a frenzy.
"Sakura, what the hell are you doing?" he yelled down to her, swooping down on his sand disk to join her on the ground. She was climbing up onto the beast's belly, her glowing, green hands roving over its scaly hide.
Under whatever ministrations she was making, the beast stilled. Gaara fear she might have killed it for a second, but as he got closer he could see it was still breathing. The rise and fall of its chest moved Sakura up and down, but she clung to its belly anyway, her hands still green, still pressed against its scales.
"Are you out of your mind?" he demanded, reaching up to grab her and yank her off of the beast. "You were supposed to stay with Sarabi."
"She's dying, Gaara," Sakura said breathlessly, flicking her sweaty bangs from her eyes with a delicate finger. Her hand went straight back to the beast's belly, where Gaara drew his attention.
"What are you doing?" he asked, curious and afraid now instead of volatile. "Can you save her?"
Sakura pressed her lips together, moving her head so that her hair would be released from behind her ear and create a curtain to shield her face from him. "It stole all her chakra," she explained quickly, her voice shaking. The emotion in her voice made dread fill Gaara's stomach. "We have to get it back to her," she continued. "She won't last much longer without it."
Gaara glanced up at the wall, where Temari still stood, waiting for her instructions.
"Okay, so how do we get it back to her?" he asked, trying to stay calm. Inside, he felt all his emotions roiling. He had no idea what to do, how to save Sarabi, or how to understand the beast and its purpose in his desert.
"I don't know, Gaara, how did it get out of her?" Sakura snapped.
Gaara winced a little at her accusatory inflection, but brushed the emotion aside because that was not something he could deal with right now.
"Temari," he said into his mic, pressing down on the radio talk button. "Find Sarabi and bring her over here."
Temari remained motionless at the top of the wall. "Are you sure that's a good idea, Gaara?"
He wasn't sure. "She's going to die if we do nothing," he said quietly into the mic.
Temari's silhouette was still for a few seconds more. There was a static crackle in Gaara's ear like Temari had pressed the talk button and then decided not to speak after all. She disappeared over onto the other side of the wall.
"I've relaxed the beast's muscles to the point where he is completely paralyzed," Sakura explained, removing her hands from the beast's belly and leaping down on to the sand. "He's still alive, but he won't be able to move for a while."
Gaara was at her side in an instant, pulling her into a crushing embrace. She was pliant in his arms, but she didn't return his hug. Gaara wasn't too bothered by this – he was too relieved to have her safely in his arms again. There was something immensely comforting about having her near him, even though he would far rather have left her back within the safe confines of the village walls. Breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, he felt himself relaxing into her, his stresses melting away.
It was then that he realized she was funneling her healing chakra into him, calming him down like she had done all those years ago in the catacombs.
Temari landed deftly beside them, Sarabi's body flung over her shoulder. Sakura quickly shoved Gaara's chest and lifted Sarabi's body off Temari's shoulder.
"What are you planning to do?" Gaara asked, watching helplessly as Sakura brought Sarabi's body over to the beast and laid her down in the sand beside him.
"I have no idea," she admitted. "Are chakra transfusions a thing?"
"Sakura, I think Sarabi did this to herself," Gaara said, hoping that the theory he was about to provide was correct. "Maybe she can reverse it, too."
"She's unconscious," Sakura argued. "She can't do much of anything right now."
Gaara glanced up at Sarabi's sand-turned-stone wall. She hadn't used chakra to build it, but Gaara wondered if some of her chakra was perhaps stored in it, keeping it solid while her body was still unconscious.
Curious as to the strength of Sarabi's creation, Gaara prodded at her wall with his chakra and sand, trying to see if he could return the stone to its original sand state, or at least gauge how large it truly was.
To his dismay, he couldn't budge it with his sand. While he would have liked to be able to tear down this barrier that now stood between him and his village, he also hoped that it meant that Sarabi's chakra was ingrained in the stone, ready to return to its master.
"Sakura," he said, sounding authoritative now that he felt a little more control over the situation. "Sarabi created this sand wall and I can feel her chakra still in it, keeping it solid and standing. Maybe there's a way we can get that chakra to return to her body."
Sakura considered this, her eyes flicking between the wall and Sarabi's body. "How much chakra do you figure is there?" she asked, peering up at the massive wall. It was nearly impossible to see the top of it from their position on the ground.
"Not much," he admitted. The technique she had used didn't really require chakra. Whatever chakra remained in the stone and sand was whatever Sarabi had deemed necessary. "But hopefully it will be enough to keep her alive."
"Okay, so how do we get to it back into Sarabi?" Temari asked.
"Let's bring her back up to the top of the wall," Gaara suggested. "We need to figure out a way to stop the jutsu she used to create the wall. Maybe then its chakra will go back to her."
Temari, who had just carried Sarabi down from the top of the wall, shook her head with disapproval. "There's no guarantee that destroying the wall will bring back her chakra," she argued. "And even if it does, we don't want to be standing on top of it when that happens."
"We need to keep her away from the beast," Gaara replied, trying not to sound angry that his sister was disagreeing with him.
"Or maybe the beast is the answer to all this," Sakura said. Gaara and Temari both turned to look at her. "All Sarabi's chakra is inside the beast. Do you think that's what it was trying to tell us? That it wanted Sarabi's chakra?"
The beast was still paralyzed, but whimpering softly from its position in the sand. Sakura approached it, prompting Gaara to follow closely just in case it were to break free from the paralysis and attack. Sakura placed a palm on the creature's head, her hand glowing with chakra again.
"Bring Sarabi to me," Sakura said to Gaara, keeping her hand against the beast's cheek. Gaara didn't like how near to its terrifying jaws she kept her hand, but he quickly did as she asked and brought Sarabi's body over to her.
Hesitantly, he placed her down in the sand at Sakura's feet.
"With the beast paralyzed, I think I'll be able to transfer Sarabi's chakra back to her," Sakura said, shifting Sarabi's body so that she was parallel to the beast in the sand, "but the beast is resisting my paralysis. I won't be able to keep him still much longer."
"Are you sure you can do this, Sakura?" Temari asked, glancing skeptically between the beast and Sarabi's body. "You've never done anything like this before."
"We don't have a choice," Sakura insisted. "I need to act quickly, so please be quiet."
Temari and Gaara exchanged nervous glances. Sakura knelt down into the sand between the beast and Sarabi. Gaara noticed that her hands were trembling and her vest was soaked with sweat. He had the sudden urge to rush over to her and kiss the top of her head and convince her that everything would be just fine.
She reached one hand out to Sarabi's chest and pressed her palm to the girl's heart. Sarabi's body convulsed weakly. Sakura bit her lip apprehensively and then reached toward the beast's belly.
The second her hand connected with the beast's hide, a burst of light filled the air like an explosion, blinding Gaara and forcing him to close his eyes. He could hear the low grit of sand moving, and the rumbling earth beneath his feet told him the beast was back on the move again.
Blindly, he ambled toward Sakura, reaching his hand out of her. "Sakura!" he yelled, panicked and nervous.
A hand on his elbow stopped him and pulled him back.
"Gaara, wait," Temari said, tightening her grip on his arm. The two of them stood side by side, straining their eyes against the brightness. Gaara's heart was pounding in his chest. Wherever in the light Sakura was, she made no sound and Gaara couldn't stand not knowing what was happening.
The beast wailed. The rumbling in the earth stopped, but the screeching continued. Slowly, the light began to wane. Gaara squinted, trying to make out what was happening in front of him.
The beast was up again, whirling through the air and wailing. Desperately, Gaara rushed forward, searching the sand and debris for Sakura and Sarabi. Temari was close behind him.
"Sakura!" he called out again, growing more frantic. "Sarabi!"
He closed in on them two of them, their bodies twisted together, half buried beneath the sand. Frenzied, he and Temari began to pull them both out of the sand.
Sakura's skin was clammy and cold, but there was a quick heartbeat puling in her wrist that gave him immense comfort. Once she was freed from the sand, she gripped Gaara's arms with tight fingers, her eyes wild and filled with fear.
"Sarabi?" she asked, her eyes flitting around, searching for her young apprentice.
She and Gaara both turned to where Temari held Sarabi's limp body.
"Oh my God," Sakura breathed, reaching for her. The dread in her voice didn't leave Gaara feeling comforted.
"What's wrong?" he croaked, still clutching onto Sakura's wrist. "What just happened?"
"I don't know," Sakura said, tears brimming in her eyes. "The second I touched the beast, it just sucked the rest of Sarabi's chakra right out of her!"
Gaara swore his heart stopped beating for a second. "You mean she's…"
Temari released Sarabi's body to Sakura, helping her set it upright in the sand.
"No," Sakura snapped. "She can't be."
Before Gaara had a chance to feel any type of confusion or sorrow or regret, the beast screeched louder than he had ever heard before. Temari, Sakura, and Gaara all pressed their palms to their ears, wincing as the screech reverberated in their skulls.
With a glance up at the beast still swirling through the starry sky, Gaara could tell that it was poised to strike again. It's hide was glistening in the moonlight, the scales that made up its belly glowing from underneath. He wondered briefly if this was the beast whole, if with its chakra returned it was finally at its most powerful. The thought made Gaara's chest constrict painfully.
They needed to get out of here. He reached for Sakura and Temari, one of their arms in each hand, and lifted them up on a sand shield, pulling them out of harm's way.
"Stop," Sakura screamed, attempting to leap off the disk. "We can't just leave her there!"
Gaara held onto her tightly, leaning back into Temari for balance.
"Sakura, stop moving," Temari warned, doing her best to hold all of them steady.
Sakura stilled, but Gaara could still feel her heart beating wildly. They all looked down below where the beast had burrowed deep into the sand again, casting a wave of sand over Sarabi's unmoving body.
"We have to go help her," Sakura said, her voice nothing more than a terrified whimper.
Gaara wanted nothing more than to swoop down on his sand and scoop up Sarabi's body, but every bone in his body was telling him not to. Instead, he clutched Sakura's arms with a white-knuckled grip. There was no way he was going to let her off his sand disk. He absolutely could not lose her.
But she was right. They couldn't leave Sarabi's body here. Reluctantly, he tried to feel out through the sand, searching for Sarabi. The sand still refused to bend to his will, but Gaara was still able to feel it, to understand the position of each grain. This was his desert, after all, and he would not be defeated like this.
Sensing Sarabi's body somewhere below them, a few feet deep in the sand, Gaara made a careful note of her location before flying Temari and Sakura back up to the top of the sand wall. He deposited the two of them onto the stone and offered no explanation before he was flying back toward the earth.
"Gaara, wait!" he heard the two of them cry out in tandem.
But there was no time for explaining anything. He just needed to get Sarabi and get out of here. He couldn't fight the beast if he couldn't control the sand. And without Sarabi…
He didn't want to think too hard about the lack of Sarabi, but without putting too much emotion behind it, he realized that he could never defeat the beast without her. And maybe he'd never gain back control of his sand again.
Panic was slowly starting to claw at his throat, but he pushed it aside as he skimmed the top of the sand, looking for the spot he had tried to remember that Sarabi was buried just underneath.
He had just started to close in on her location when he heard another screech from the beast and a gust of wind. He didn't have to turn to look over his shoulder to know that the beast was now racing toward him. If he could just reach Sarabi first…
His hand plunged down into the sand, reaching for Sarabi. When he felt the clamminess of her skin in his fist, he yanked upwards hard, heaving her up over his shoulder.
A loud explosion echoed through the air. Gaara wobbled, caught of guard by the sound and the quaking earth beneath his feet. He tried to peer through the cloud of sand that was settling around him to see what had happened, but he could hardly see a thing.
It was then that he saw (or felt, rather) Sakura and her impressive fist. As the sand and debris cleared the air, the beast's hulking, motionless form came into view, Sakura standing atop its head with her hand still glowing with chakra. In awe, Gaara stared down at the beast, who had definitely experienced a fractured skull from Sakura's attack.
"Did you kill it?" he asked, his voice a hoarse croak.
Sakura was silent, panting as she stared down at her own handiwork. The beast was deathly still, not even the rise and fall of its chest to indicate that it was still alive. Gaara was tempted to come closer, to press his hand against its face to see if he could feel a pulse somewhere within, or a spark of chakra still nascent in its chakra pathways.
"Sakura, what did you do?" asked Temari, who had leapt down from the wall and landed beside the beast with a loud thud.
"It was going to attack Gaara!" Sakura shrieked.
"But you could have—"
Temari cut herself off, her attention lost. Sakura, too, settled her attention on Gaara – or rather, the girl still slung across his shoulder. Concerned and curious, Gaara lowered Sarabi's body from his shoulder to his arms.
Her milky eyes were glowing and her skin was nearly wet with sweat and clamminess and something sticky. Gaara couldn't help but stare at her, confused and in awe of whatever made her eyes glow like this. On some level, he understood that it wasn't a good thing. This had happened before when the catacombs had caved in. It had happened just before he lost his ability to control sand before. He knew that something really bad was happening.
But he didn't quite care. Well, he did, but it was in the back of his mind now. He couldn't look away from Sarabi, couldn't find purchase in anything but the milky glow coming from her eyes.
"Gaara, put her down."
The sternness in Sakura's voice was almost enough to pull him out of his reverie. Sarabi's skin was glowing now, too, and so were the tips of her hair and her fingernails.
Was she coming back to life? Gaara daren't hope for such a thing, but he couldn't help but feel the anticipation. Sarabi had lived through this once before, hadn't she? Surely she couldn't be dead yet.
But when Gaara pressed his fingers to her wrists, there was no pulse there. Nothing but the silvery glow that emanated from all over her skin.
"Gaara, please, put her down."
This time Gaara listened. Carefully, he tilted her body as if to stand her upright. Of course he realized that she was unable to do so, but to his surprise, her body moved into an upright position of its own, hovering a few inches above the sand. Cautiously, Gaara let go of her floating form, his hands trembling.
He had never been more uncertain of what to do.
"Gaara, we have to get out of here," Temari said, but Sakura was already moving toward Sarabi.
Gaara moved to stand between them, wary of whatever was happening. He didn't trust Sarabi now that she was dead or in limbo or whatever she was now. Even she didn't remember what had happened all those years ago in the catacombs. It was a blank spot in her memory. But if she had been the one to destroy the catacombs, he couldn't risk Sakura being anywhere near her.
"Temari is right, Sakura," he said, catching her just as she lunged forward to touch Sarabi. He fought with her for a moment, struggling to keep her still. "Come on, we have to go."
"We can't go!" Sakura insisted, tears brimming in her eyes. Gaara winced as one fell from her cheek and splashed onto his arm.
"What are we supposed to do?" he asked. "You killed the beast and Sarabi is…"
"Is what?" Sakura demanded fiercely.
Silence settled around them, eerie and unsettling after everything that had just happened. Gaara watched Sakura with his jaw clenched, hoping that just for once she would listen to him.
Sarabi's light cast harsh shadows across Sakura's face. He could see how haggard she must have felt. She was covered in sand and sweat and her eyes were puffy and wet from crying. He would have loved to just fold her up in her arms and whisper to her that he'd never let anything like this happen again, but he was frozen.
The shadows across her face began to move. Instinctively, Gaara glanced back to Sarabi to find that she was moving now. Well, sort of. She was gliding toward the beast, her limbs swaying but not moving of their own accord.
Sakura moved to catch her, but Gaara stopped her with a hand on her wrist. "Don't, Sakura," he warned. To his utter surprise, she stopped fighting him. Instead, she took a step back away from Sarabi, her back brushing against Gaara's chest. He held tightly onto her wrist, watching Sarabi with rapt attention.
"Gaara, shouldn't we do something?" Temari asked.
Gaara glanced at his sister over Sakura's shoulder and shook his head quietly. Whatever was happening now was beyond his expertise. If it would settle all this business with the beast, he wanted nothing to interrupt it. He only wished that Taiyo were here to explain things to him.
Sarabi's body floated until it was face to face with the beast, hovering just in front of its massive mouth. Her body stilled in the air and then slowly, her light began to seep away from her, flowing into the beast's mouth like liquid.
With morbid fascination, Gaara, Sakura, and Temari watched as all the light was sucked out of Sarabi. The beast's body began to glow, starting with its eyes, which were sealed shut still. Light began to seep through the cracks, brighter and brighter as Sarabi's light faded.
When all of Sarabi's light had been sucked away from her, her milky eyes fell shut and her lifeless body fell to the sand. Sakura lurched forward to catch her, but Gaara held onto her firmly, too afraid to lose her to let her go.
"Sarabi!" Sakura cried, straining against Gaara's hold.
They all watched as Sarabi's crumpled form began to fade, morphing into dust right before their eyes. Gaara felt his breath catch in his throat. He was hardly aware that Sakura had elbowed him hard in the ribs so that he had loosened his hold on her. He barely even felt it as he watched her scramble toward Sarabi's disappearing body.
Temari, on the other hand, seemed to be at least somewhat rooted in reality. She reached for Sakura's hand, catching it just as Sarabi's head disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving nothing behind but two milky orbs that fell into the sand, rolling down to Sakura's feet.
"No," Gaara heard Sakura breath, though he was certain he shouldn't have been able to hear her over the winds that were beginning to pick up.
They still needed to get out of here.
"Come on, Sakura," he urged, reaching for her hand again.
Temari released her and she instantly fell onto her knees, her hands scrambling through the sand to find what remained of Sarabi.
"Sakura, please, don't touch that," he said, hardly trusting himself to speak.
She didn't listen. She combed through the sand, already clutching one of those white orbs in her hand.
"Gaara?"
At the sound of his name, Gaara glanced back at his sister, who was watching the beast with wide eyes. Both Sakura and Gaara looked up at the beast, who wore something on its motionless face that looked very much like contentedness. It weakly lifted its head, every crevice of its body still glowing with Sarabi's chakra, or whatever it had been.
Then, it too began to fade into sand, its body disappearing before their eyes. Concerned for their safety, Gaara reached for Sakura again and attempted to pull her back up onto his sand disk.
More desperately, she fumbled through the sand, clutching onto the second orb just as Gaara had had enough and hoisted her up onto his shoulder.
She didn't put up much of a fight. She now had one milky orb in each hand. If there was any satisfaction to be had in that, he wished she would share it with him. It had been a long time since his heart had ached like this.
But if there were any satisfaction in it, Sakura must not have been able to feel it either. Gaara could feel sobs wracking her body all the way back to Suna.
