Down in the archives, Taiyo and Shikamaru had set up their own makeshift research center. Stacks of books were piled up around them. Scraps of paper furiously scribbled on were crumpled and tossed to the floor beneath the table they sat around. Shikamaru's head was buried in a massive tome while Taiyo sat scrawling something with sharp focus on a scroll of parchment.

"How's it going down here?" Gaara asked, wincing at the ridiculous casual tone he'd used.

Shikamaru glanced up at Gaara and found a scrap of paper to use as a bookmark. "I think you should take a look at this, Kazekage-sama," he said to Gaara, searching the desk for a piece of paper before handing it over to Gaara.

With a skeptical glance first at Taiyo and then at Shikamaru, Gaara looked down at the page. The top portion was a recreation of the markings the beast had made in the air and sand. Underneath it was a hastily scrawled translation.

"Let me have her," Gaara spoke the written words aloud. "Let me go home."

"It must have been talking about Sarabi," Shikamaru said. "We've been going over some theories and it seems like the ritual transferred the beast's chakra to whatever was at the epicenter of the monoliths, and the beast just wanted its chakra back."

Gaara thought back to the massive monoliths and the copious writing underneath that he would never be able to see again.

"So that light," Gaara began. "That was the beast's way of reversing the ritual and taking back his chakra? And the process killed Sarabi?"

Shikamaru gave a small shrug. "I can't confirm any of that," he said. "All I know is that the beast wanted Sarabi and to go home."

Gaara whirled on Taiyo, who had yet to speak. His head was still lowered to the desk in front of him as he continued to scribble, either oblivious or willfully ignorant of Gaara's presence.

"What do you make of this, Taiyo?"

Taiyo did not answer. His wispy grey hair fell into his face, obscuring it from view. His arm was stretched across his page, shielding it from Gaara's sight.

"I asked you a question," Gaara said, trying to muster up what limited patience he still had for the petulant elder.

Taiyo dropped his pencil and turned to look at Gaara. It was then that he noticed the old man was crying, thick, silent tears pouring down his cheeks. The sheen it left on his skin exacerbated his old age, drawing attention to every age spot, every wrinkle. Gaara felt a pang of sympathy for the old man. He had outlived everyone he ever loved and now here he sat, deliberating the death of his last remaining loved one.

"I should have warned you, Gaara-sama," Taiyo said. "I thought I had all the answers, but I knew nothing. I see now all the harm I caused my people. I only wanted to do what was best for them."

Gaara swallowed the constriction in his throat. If anyone could relate to something like that, it was him.

"Hindsight," Gaara said dismissively, though he was aware of how flippant the dismissal was. He could see that Taiyo's remorse was genuine, but it did little to assuage the unsettling feeling Gaara had about him. "Please, Taiyo, if you have any information about what happened, you have to share it with us."

Taiyo shook his head. "What difference does it make?" he asked dejectedly. "It won't bring Sarabi back."

"We need to be sure that the beast is really gone," Gaara argued. "And if there's any chance of bringing Sarabi back, I want to know."

With a little difficulty, Taiyo pulled himself up to his feet, sliding the page he'd been writing on against his chest. He made his way over to Gaara slowly, his bones creaking with every step. Once he was close enough to reach out and clap and hand onto Gaara's shoulder, he flipped around the page pressed against his chest.

It was a pencil drawing of Sarabi – one with so much detail he could hardly believe Taiyo's fragile, trembling hands had created it. Struck by the sight of her, Gaara snatched the drawing out of Taiyo's hands so he could run his fingers over Sarabi's eyes, her dark hair, the familiar lines of her face.

"The beast is truly gone, Gaara-sama," Taiyo said. "And Sarabi is never coming back. It is finished. I am the last of my people, and once I am gone, you will have only this to remember us by."

Gaara thought of Sarabi's marble eyes down in the labs with Sakura.

"How can you be certain?" he asked Taiyo.

"I don't know if I could ever be truly certain," Taiyo said. "My people and I… We messed around with things we should have just left alone, and this was the price we had to pay for it. We stole the beast's chakra for our own gain. Now I'm the only one left. Even the beast has gone. It was all for nothing."

Gaara frowned and exchanged wary glances with Shikamaru. There was still much that they didn't know, but Gaara supposed Taiyo was right. There was no way they could ever know all the truths that were buried out there beneath Turtle Rock. It was better left unsaid, anyway. As far as Gaara was concerned, the issue died with Sarabi.

He felt a pang of remorse, a flash of pity for Taiyo, who would now have to spend the rest of his days alone, waiting for death. Gaara had never quite gotten over his distrust of the elder, but now he found himself wishing there was more he could do for him.

"It's okay, Taiyo," Gaara said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "It's all over now."

/

Temari's wedding was in three days. Gaara tried not to think of it – it only left the hole in his heart feeling bigger, emptier. Temari would leave for Konoha. Naruto and Sakura would go with her. But now the date was looming ahead of him and he needed to prepare for it. Temari would have her farewell feast soon. He needed to give his earrings to Sakura and figure out how he could possibly begin to say goodbye to her.

It was too much for Gaara to think about, so he went where he always did when he needed to space to think – the guard tower. By now, his hiding spot was pretty well known. His siblings knew of it, of course. Hideki and Sakura both knew of it as well. Still, it left him with enough privacy to dangle his legs over the side as he thought about Sakura while had gazed out into the desert.

Of course he knew this moment of peace wasn't bound to last long. He heard the delicate clang of the ladder rungs as somebody made their way up. He was only mildly surprised to see Hideki's face pop up over the railing.

"Here you are, Gaara-sama," Hideki said, smiling pleasantly but not without distance. "You're late for the council meeting."

Gaara cursed, glancing toward the palace. He had forgotten all about the night's council meeting. They were supposed to be arranging the dispersing of Temari's duties and finding every gap they would need to fill once she left for Konoha.

It was something Gaara wasn't really in the mood to think about.

"Should I let them know you're on your way?"

Gaara peered at Hideki, wondering if the friendship they'd built over the years would remain in tact if Gaara were no longer Kazekage. Did Hideki's loyalty lie with Gaara or with his title?

"No," Gaara said. "I'm not going."

Hideki couldn't hide the surprise that pushed his eyebrows high up onto his forehead. "Not going?" he asked. "It's not like you to skip council meetings, Kazekage-sama."

"Extenuating circumstances," Gaara said dismissively. He just couldn't go to that meeting. He wasn't prepared for that

Hideki was silent for a moment. Gaara half-expected that he would leave, but he could still feel his presence behind him. "Where is Temari?" Hideki asked after a few moments of stillness.

Gaara shrugged. "With Shikamaru, I suppose."

Silence settled around them again. Gaara could sense that Hideki was trying to parse out the right things to say. It almost annoyed Gaara. He knew it came from a place of concern, but it was hard not to feel fragile when people treated him that way. Sarabi's death was still too fresh. He just wanted to be left alone.

He was seconds away from saying as much to Hideki, when he opened his mouth to speak again.

"Where is Sakura?" he asked. "She was looking for you earlier."

Gaara repressed a sigh. He had heard Sakura calling for him earlier that day. It was with great shame that he admitted (at least only to himself) that he was avoiding her. He felt too much guilt for his part in Sarabi's death, and too much agony over knowing that he was about to lose Sakura, too. Whatever she might have wanted to say to him, it needed to wait until he knew what he was going to say to her.

"Gaara-sama?"

He had been on the verge of snapping at the poor shinobi. Only the shock of hearing Hideki say his name stopped him.

"She has something for you," Hideki continued, his eyes wide and wary now that he had Gaara's attention. "Something she wanted to give to you, I mean."

"What is it?" Gaara asked.

Hideki didn't answer, and Gaara hadn't really expected him to. Gaara returned his attention to the dunes. Whatever Sakura had to give him could wait. Right now, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.

"Don't you want to spend time with Sakura before she leaves?" Hideki asked.

Pushing himself away from the railing, Gaara turned to look at Hideki. His lower face was covered by his headscarf, but his eyes were glimmering in the sunlight. There was determination on his face, and also sadness, and something Gaara hoped wasn't pity because it sent a current of irritation whipping through his body.

"I see," Hideki said solemnly, immediately aware of the shift in Gaara's mood. "I'll leave you alone. What should I tell the rest of the council?"

"That you couldn't find me," Gaara said tersely.

"Yes, Kazekage-sama."

Gaara watched as Hideki slung his leg over the railing, hooking his foot on the ladder. He stepped down two rungs.

"Hideki?"

"Yes, Kazekage-sama?"

"Thank you."

Understanding passed between them as their gazes leveled on one another. Hideki gave a curt nod, the corners of his mouth curling up toward a smile. He didn't speak another word as he made his way down the ladder.

/

"Where the hell have you been?"

Gaara was flustered by the sound of a voice so near his ear. Evening had fallen quite some time ago, and he had wasted every second of daylight moping. After leaving the guard tower, he'd gone out to the oasis – the opposite side of the desert as Turtle Rock. It wasn't so wrong that he just needed some space to think, was it?

"Sakura," he murmured, reaching for her in the darkness of his bedroom. His hand collided with her chest, and she backed away from him.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," she said, her voice unequivocally angry.

"I'm sorry—" he began, but before he could finish the thought, Sakura had grabbed him roughly by the neck and mashed her face against his in a desperate kiss.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, peppering the words between harsh kisses

Unsettled by her erratic behavior, Gaara pushed her away. Her eyes were wild, glowing eerily in the moonlight that filtered through his closed curtains. It was easy for Gaara to forget that this was just as hard for Sakura as it was for him. She had lost her apprentice and needed a shoulder to cry on, and he had just disappeared.

He should have felt guilty, but he didn't. He had needed that time alone, regardless of how Sakura felt about it.

Still, he didn't want her to be angry with him.

"I have something I want to give you," he said, the words catching in his throat. He reached into his pocket and fingered the earrings that were still there. They seemed like such a trivial gift now – a miserable replacement for Sarabi. He had meant for them to show his interest in her, for them to be his stake and her his claim. Now, though, it felt like an empty gesture. Sakura wasn't his. She belonged to the whole world, just the way Sarabi had.

Sakura eyed the gold studs in his palm, her eyes wavering. Annoyed that he couldn't gauge her emotion, Gaara flicked the light switch on, casting a harsh fluorescent glow over the two of them.

Hesitantly, she reached out to touch them with a reverent hand. She picked them up, turning them over so she could appraise them in the proper light. Her eyes flicked to Gaara's ears, he was pleased to note. She recognized them.

"Your earrings?" she asked. "Are these your way of appeasing me after you spent all day avoiding me?

Stung by the accusation – however true it might have been, Gaara shook his head. "Of course not, Sakura," he said, taking one stud from her hand. "These are my earrings, but I want you to wear them because I love you. I want you to have them and wear them when you're in Konoha."

Her anger seemed to melt under the heat of his words. She tucked her hair behind her ears while Gaara fastened one in her ear, and then the other. They glinted in her earlobes, but didn't distract in any way from her beauty. For the first time since yesterday, Gaara felt a smile tug at his lips.

"Thank you," she said, turning to look at herself in Gaara's full-length mirror. Gaara, turned to look, too, and his heart swelled with pride at the sight of the two of them together. Fireheads, as Sarabi called them so long ago.

"I have something for you, too," Sakura said, crossing the length of the room to reach into her pack. It was then that Gaara noticed that all of Sakura's belongings had been moved into his room.

"My analysis of Sarabi's eyes came up short," she admitted. "I was certain that they would have some kind of mystical properties to them. I can't believe that she'd leave them behind otherwise. But as far as I can tell, they're essentially just really pretty marbles."

Gaara felt something hot and painful in his gut. He didn't want to talk about Sarabi or her eyes.

But then Sakura pulled two dangling pendants from her pack – long gold chains, each adorned with a shining, milky marble adorned with gold wire. Sakura held one out for him expectantly.

Curious, Gaara took it from her hand and held it close to his face to inspect it. It was Sarabi's eye alright, nestled safely in a gold wire cradle that was looped through the length of chain. He lifted the chain over his head and fingered the pendant where it fell just below his clavicle.

"I know I should have asked you first," she said, "but something was just telling me to do this. This way, she can always be with the both of us." She lifted her own chain over her head, letting the marble fall against the creamy chest with delicate reverence.

"I think Sarabi would have wanted it this way," Gaara admitted, quickly closing the distance between them so he could pull her against his chest. "I'm so sorry about today, Sakura. I shouldn't have been avoiding you. I just needed some time alone."

Sakura stilled herself against his chest. He could feel her fist between them where she was still gripping tightly onto Sarabi's eye. "I understand," she said, and Gaara could feel her calming chakra coursing into him. He could never deserve her, he thought.

"I'm still mad, though," she said. "Luckily, you're going to have a lot of time to make it up to me."

Gaara's brow furrowed, and he pulled away to look at her face. "What do you mean?" he asked.

A sudden nervousness swept across Sakura's face. It made Gaara's heart drop in his chest. He'd give anything to just fold her up against him and assure her that he'd never let her feel pain like this again.

"Sarabi's death made me see something important," she began, her voice trembling. "I know it's a part of our line of work. The people I love will always be in some kind of danger. It's just that… if I die tomorrow, I don't want my time to have been wasted, you know? I want to spend as much of my life with you as I can. I don't want to have any regrets."

"What are you saying?" Gaara asked, not daring to hope for what it sounded like she was getting at.

"I want to stay with you," she said, her eyes locking onto his with intensity that made Gaara's knees buckle. "I mean that I want to live here in Suna, if you'll have me."

The ground seemed unsteady now, tilting him back and forth on a plane of existence he wasn't quite sure of. "Are you certain?" he asked, his voice a whisper.

"Yes, I'm certain," she said, a little edge back in her voice now. "I know how much I'll miss you if I go back to Konoha, and with Sarabi's death still so fresh…" She trailed off, her eyes dipping down to the pendant still clutched in her fist. "Sarabi would want me to take care of you."

Gaara could have laughed, both that he would need someone to take care of him and that Sarabi, of all people, would be the one to suggest such a thing. The laugh that burbled up in his chest, though, was one of sheer relief. He wanted to cry with joy, which was a feeling he wasn't all that familiar with.

"So…" Sakura said hesitantly. Gaara dragged his eyes away from the pendant in her hand up to her face. Her mouth was tilted down with worry, and concern bloomed behind her green eyes. "Can I stay?"

He laughed again. As if he would ever turn her away.

"Of course you can stay," he said, taking a step toward her to close the distance between them. "In fact, I was just going to forbid you to leave."

Sakura laughed – they both knew he couldn't forbid her to do anything. She wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled her body flush against his. He held her there, soothed by the rise and fall of her chest.

"Thank you," she mumbled into his chest.

"For what?" he asked, bewildered.

"For loving me and letting me stay here you."

He smoothed his palm over her hair, feeling the happiest he'd felt since Sarabi's death. He knew that if he had Sakura by his side, he could handle anything.

"I see you've already brought your things to my rooms," he said teasingly. "So I'm guessing you don't want to have your own bedroom."

"I'll make do with my own office at the hospital," she said matter-of-factly. "I want to re-train your medics, so I'm going to need employment records, and probably an assistant to help me get acclimated to things here."

Gaara blinked away his surprise. She certainly didn't waste any time. "Of course," he answered her, reminded of the fact that he wasn't just gaining a new citizen of Suna, but a new medic – the top medic in the entire world. "Anything else you'll require, Sakura-sama?"

"I haven't told Naruto or anybody else about my decision," she said, ignoring his jibe. "Can you keep it between us until I tell them?"

"Yes, of course," he answered, feeling a sudden regret for his own elation. While he was glad Sakura would be staying with him, it also meant that she would have to say goodbye to Naruto – an exchange he knew would be painful for the both of them.

Sakura breathed a sigh of relief and let her weight sag comfortably against him. Gaara shifted on his feet, and scooped his arm beneath her legs to pick her up. With little ceremony, he took her to the bed and set her down rather gently on the mattress. She seemed faintly amused by his antics, but sadness was still strung along her features, tightening them so that she looked almost like a completely different person.

"Sakura," he said, throwing his leg over her waist to straddle her. "I'm so glad you've decided to stay. I must have been really good in a past life, because there is nothing I've done in this one to deserve you. But I will spend every day until the day I die trying to."

Sakura scoffed, but her cheeks were pleasantly flushed and there was a faint smile tugging at her lips. "You're being ridiculous, Gaara-sama," she teased. "I'm not worthy of all that."

"Oh, but you are," he insisted, "because you make me feel things I never even knew I was capable of feeling. Every day that you're in Suna I know that every struggle I endure will be worth it because I can come to you, and kiss you." He bent his head down and kissed her languidly. "And how could I ever be bothered by anything while I've got you like this?"

He pressed his hips down into hers, earning a shrill noise of surprise and pleasure from her. "You should have come to me sooner, then," she said, reaching up to graze her fingertips over the kanji on his forehead. "I was worried sick about you all day."

"I'm sorry," he said earnestly, bending down to press kisses along her jaw and neck. "Had I know what you were going to tell me, I'd have come to you much, much sooner."

Sakura pushed firmly at his chest so she could glare up at him. "You skipped a council meeting, too, Gaara," she said. "And aside from a few incidents, it's not like you to shirk your duties."

Gaara pulled away from her, reclining back onto his heels. "You don't have to worry about that, Sakura," he said. "That's not something you need to concern yourself with."

This was apparently the wrong thing to say. Rage crashed over Sakura's face like a wave, and Gaara only just managed to catch her wrist before she struck him with a closed fist. She tried to yank her arm out of his grasp, but he held onto her, curious about her anger.

"Far be it from me to be concerned about the man I love," she snapped.

Amused, Gaara bent down to kiss her again, but she turned her head away. "No, stop it," she said, so Gaara let go of her. "Why should I not be concerned that you skipped a council meeting?"

A little annoyed with her for calling him out and for treating him like a child, Gaara leaned forward to cover her body with his, placing a hand on each side of her head. "I have a lot to grieve, don't I, Sakura?" he hissed. "Sarabi is dead, my sister is leaving, and up until a few minutes ago, I thought you were, too. Do you know what the council meeting was for?"

Sakura shook her head. He could feel her hair tickling his wrist.

"It was to discuss a suitable replacement for Temari," he said, "and as much as it needs to be done, I just wasn't in the mood for it today. I can assure you, though, that you don't need to worry. The discussion will take place all the same. I just needed some time to clear my head."

Sakura was silent for a moment. Gaara took the opportunity to appreciate her, to soak in the sight of her. The sun had given her a spackling of freckles in all her time here, and her skin had a healthy glow in spite of the dark circles under her eyes, which were also puffy from crying so much. She looked achingly beautiful to him as cogs whirred in her head.

"What about me?" she asked.

"What about you?"

"I don't know the scope of everything Temari did for you, but I could do some of it," she offered. "I mean I'll still work as a medic, obviously, but I can do other things, too. I was apprentice to the Hokage, so I'm familiar with those kinds of duties."

Gaara had never heard such a good idea in his life. He couldn't bear the thought of some stranger walking into his office to do Temari's job. But if it were Sakura? Well, how could he mind that?

"I'll need to take a look at your resume," he teased.

Sakura giggled and rocked her hips forward into is. Gaara hissed, his hands flying to her waist to pin her down. "See?" she said. "I solved two of your problems already. You wasted all that time by yourself when you could have been with me."

"You're right," he admitted, leaning down to kiss her again and again. "I won't make that mistake again."

/