I wake up drowning in sand. It floods into my throat and ears, forces my eyes open, seeking any path possible into my body. I try to fight it off, but I can't move my body. I can feel it squeezing my ribs, my arms and legs. I'm going to die buried in sand, and no one will ever find me.

Suddenly strong arms pull me out of the sand, into the air.

"Do you understand now?" It's that woman again, with the long hair and beautiful face. But she's angry now, her face twisted with the emotion, and she's yelling at me. "DO YOU GET IT?"

I shake my head, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. I know I won't be able to keep them back if she keeps yelling like this. I feel like a small child again, being scolded by my mother.

"Why are you still waiting? You're wasting time, and that is not acceptable. There will be no time left if you keep waiting! I thought you understood! Get out! Get out! Get out!"

A small sob escapes my lips. I wish I could get up and run away, but my body still won't move. I feel as weak as a newborn, and just as fragile. "I'm sorry."

"That's not what I want! That's not what I need from you! You're supposed to help her!"

"But I don't know who she is!"

"Yes you do."

I shake my head violently. Strength is returning to my body slowly. "I don't. You never tell me anything."

"She's my daughter! I need her… I need you to save her. Please! You have to help her!" The woman starts to shake me back and forth. "What are you waiting for?"

"I…" A shadow appears over her shoulder, and I look past her to see who it is. A man is standing behind her, but the sun is right behind his head, and I can't see his face.

"Can't you hear her crying? She needs you…" the woman goes on, oblivious to the figure behind her. She pulls me into her arms, and presses her tear stained cheek against my forehead.

"My mother…" I murmur, remembering my childhood. "This is how my mother held me, when I was little."

"Of course it is. I am a mother too."

"What are you?" I ask, only now thinking that she might not be human. She opens her mouth to speak, but before anything comes out the man behind her lashes out, and strikes her across the face. She falls away from me, pushing me away as she falls.

"Run!" she yells. I get up and start to run, suddenly filled with strength. Behind me I hear loud noises, the sounds of battle. I turn to look over my shoulder only once, and the woman is no longer there. Instead the man is fighting a giant beast, some strange blue animal.

And then I run, and I don't look back again.

I wake up alone. My heart is beating quickly, struggling against the confines of my chest, just as if I had been running. I lay still for a long time, just waiting for my heart to return to its normal pace, but it doesn't seem to want to do so.

The room is filled with moonlight tonight, bathed in the same blue glow from my dreams of the desert. But it doesn't calm me the same way the desert did, it does nothing for me. I'm starting to hate this room, this impersonal coldness it has about it. I want my cactus back.

I look up at a light knocking on the window. My heart is still beating at a mile a minute. I get up and open the window; about to tell Luo how stupid he is for bothering to come through the window, or for knocking. To tell that it's too late to be developing a sense of propriety now.

But it's not Luo at the window; it's Gaara.

"My, you must really like visiting me in the middle of the night." I say sarcastically. I think that maybe I should be disappointed not to find Luo at my window, but I'm not. In fact, it's almost the opposite. "Do you like feeling inappropriate?"

He steps into my room, and I close the window behind him. "I didn't realize it was so inappropriate," he says, "so no, I do not enjoy the feeling, as I never felt it at all."

I stare at him, biting my lip to keep from laughing. A quick reply comes to mind, but I keep it to myself. 'Not useful now.' I tell myself.

"So, what's the business of the night?" I ask, realizing as I say it that it sounds sort of dirty, but by now I know that Gaara won't catch on to these things. He's too much of an innocent, in that department anyway.

"Kimura and Takeo were murdered last night."

"I know. Temari already filled me in."

He nods. "So you did see her. Good. Then I don't need to explain it all to you."

"Right. So…?"

He stares at me for a while, as if waiting for me to say something. I don't. Anything I say now would no doubt make me sound very unintelligent, so I decide it's better to keep my mouth shut.

"Well, I'm sure you understand the implications."

I sit down on my bed, and shake my head at him. "What are you getting at here?"

"They tried to kill you." he says flatly.

"Kimura tried to kill me." I correct him.

"Maybe you make that distinction, but no one else does. For all they care, those two were a team, so there's no way they wouldn't be working together. So in the eyes of the public, they were both your enemies."

I realize what he's telling me, and I understand what people mean when they say their blood runs cold. My whole body suddenly feels like its freezing. And still, my heart beats away at my chest.

"I didn't kill them."

Gaara shrugs. "That hardly matters does it?" When I stare at him slack jawed he relents. "Do you have an alibi, someone you were with last night?"

And then, for some stupid reason, I tell him no. I don't tell him that Luo came to me last night, how he told me he loved me. I just can't tell Gaara that. Even to save my own honor, my innocence.

"You are a suspect, at least." he says. "If you're innocent it won't matter if you're taken into custody; there's no way you will be found guilty."

But I can't help thinking about Takeo. We were both so sure of his innocence, but now…

"Are you here to take me into custody then?" I ask him.

He shakes his head. "No. This is an unofficial visit. I just thought you should know."

"Oh."

He is silent, standing nearby as I come to grips with this new reality. I look up finally, searching his face for some hope, something. All I see is Gaara, the same as he always is. There is no pity to be found on his face, no sympathy. Only the truth.

This sucks. I kind of feel like curling up in a ball on my bed and weeping, but Gaara is still standing there. What is he waiting for? And then, without knowing why, I start to talk.

"I have been dreaming." I say, not knowing why I'm telling him this, now of all times when it should seem unimportant. "In my dreams, there's always something I'm supposed to do; a child – a girl – I'm supposed to save. There is a woman… Her mother. She asks me to find her child, out in the desert she says. That's where she's hidden. And she chose me to find her, why, I don't know. But I'm the one she says. Before you came tonight she told me I'm running out of time. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"It sounds to me like you should be looking for her." Gaara says. I look up at him, but his back is to me. "It sounds like you don't have much time to waste here, on some bogus trial." He turns around then, and looks at me, and I realize that he's telling me to go; to run away. His face looks the same as always, but now I can read something new in those lines.

I nod slowly.

"Where's Luo?" he asks suddenly.

At first I'm startled by the change in subject, so it takes me a minute to answer. "I don't know."

"He should be here." Gaara says. I feel cold again, as I think that he knows. That he expects me to be here with Luo. I want to tell him it's not true, but I know how stupid that would be, so I keep my mouth shut. "I told him that once he was well again he was to return to his job guarding you. He was good at his job before, so why would he be absent now?"

I start to wonder the same thing then. Before he was nearly killed, I couldn't get rid of Luo. He was always, always, on my heels, tagging along everywhere I went. He would have gone into the bathroom with me if I would have let him. So where would he be now?

Gaara shrugs. "As long as he returns to work tomorrow, there shouldn't be a problem right?" He nods briefly to me, says good night, and then is gone out the window again.

I wait for awhile after he leaves, listening to the wind blowing through empty streets in the city outside. Then I stand up and walk to the still open window.

'I love you,' he said, 'please remember that.' and in the morning he was gone…

I have to get out of here.