This is not a dream like the others. This dream is so comforting, so calm. There is no feeling of urgency in this dream. I feel like I'm floating, like I'm held in my mother's arms again. I'd forgotten this feeling; it's been so long since last I was wrapped up safely in someone's arms. In this embrace all my cares and worries melt away, all the tension that has been building in my body for years is relieved, taken away by this love, until I feel weightless.
I wonder for a moment if this is a memory, if I'm a little girl again, and this really is my mother holding me now. I wonder if it's that woman again, for she too is a mother, as she told me. And then I stop wondering, lulled by this peaceful feeling. It feels as if everything is right in the world, even though somewhere in the back of my mind I know it isn't.
For the time being I'm just here, held in invisible arms, so warm…
As I wake out of my sleep and shift around, a blanket of sand retreats from around my body. I blink away sleep, and turn to look around. Now that the dream has fallen away the real world starts to find its way back into my mind. Here I am, still in the middle of the desert, blindly searching for a thing of my dreams. Here I am, with no idea what I'm doing.
Gaara is sitting a ways away, staring off into the distance. I watch him for a moment before getting up and walking over to him. He looks so peaceful in the late afternoon sun, sort of soft around the edges.
He stands in a graceful cat-like manner and faces me. "You know which way to go?" he asks matter-of-factly and I nod in response, and start to walk.
The feeling of urgency in my chest is still there, and as the night continues, and we continue heading towards our destination it grows stronger, until it's practically pulling me off my feet. It grows so strong that I can't help myself any longer – I start to run.
Within seconds Gaara jumps in front of me and grabs me up, knocks my feet out from under me, and we tumble down into the sand, with him on top. I try to push back, to get him off me, but he keeps me pinned down.
"What are you doing?" I demand, glaring at his face inches above mine. "Let me go!" I would hit him, but he's pinned down my arms with sand now too.
"Quiet!" he hisses. "You don't know what we'll find there. Running in wouldn't be wise."
I don't argue because I know that he's right. I know the same myself, but this feeling has taken over. It must be that woman. That's the only reasonable explanation, as if that's so reasonable.
I nod. He gets up slowly, and then gives me a hand up, and we advance more carefully. After a moment I hear voices, and instinctively get lower to the ground. We come over a particularly large sand dune, and on the other side there's an encampment.
We both lay low in the sand to observe the place before trying anything. There are a few tents out here, some more permanent buildings made out of what looks like sand, but not many people. They all seem to be standing around, on guard, and they're all wearing blank headbands. This is starting to look like a cult to me, or something worse…
Gaara nudges me in the side, and I look at him. He tilts his head slightly, motioning for me to look. On the other side of the camp is a big cage. There's a big blue… thing inside of it. My guess is that it's a demon of some sort.
The thing is, as soon as I see it there, the feeling in my chest grows until it bursts inside of me. I know now that it is that woman; that she's somehow taken up residence in my body, and now she's taking over. I try to fight back, more for the sake of not giving up my body than because I have a problem with her, but her desperation proves stronger than my will. My consciousness is pushed into the back corner of my mind, and all I can do is watch while she hijacks my body.
I jump up and start to run, oblivious of the guards. Gaara curses behind me and soon after follows. The woman controlling my body doesn't even pay attention. She's too concentrated on that blue creature.
It is her child. I can sense her thoughts in my head. She's so glad to finally find her baby, but she is angry too. As soon as she frees her she's going to kill whoever is responsible for this.
I wonder who is responsible for it. What could they have been hoping to achieve with this? There must be some reason.
I run to the cage, reaching through the bars for the child. In her haste the woman runs my body right into the bars. I want to tell her to be careful with my body, but there's no way to get to her. She's oblivious to everything but her child.
The thing looks up and sees me. It has a pointed noise, and big eyes. Its body is covered in scales. It looks a lot like a fish actually, now that I see it up close. As I watch it opens its mouth, showing hundreds of small pointed teeth and starts to wail.
The woman's pain at the sound is nearly physical. She reaches out to her child to comfort it, somehow talking through me. In my trapped state I can still hear everything she says, and all that her child responds.
I hear its voice, tiny and high pitched in my head, as if it were right beside me, talking to me like a human, not some huge, bawling fish creature.
"Mama? Mama, they told me you were dead. They told me I would never see you again." I can hear the crying in my head now too.
"I'm fine, little one." She answers. "I've been looking for you for a long time, and now at last I've found you. Everything will be ok now I promise."
"I missed you."
"I missed you too."
The child pushes up against the bars of its cage, getting as close to me, to her mother, as possible.
"It hurts mama." She says.
"Where honey? Where did they hurt you?" The woman's words sound calm, but I can feel her rage and her worry when she learns of this pain. Her emotions are overwhelming me.
The child doesn't answer. She just sighs and slumps down a little, pushing her snout out between the bars. That's when the woman turns inwards and speaks to me.
"You know where she's hurt," she says, "so please help her now. You have to fix her." She turns back to her child. "This lady can make the hurt go away, so you're going to have to let her look at you now, OK? What happened to the boy I gave you? He'll keep you safe while I'm gone right? Didn't I tell you so?"
"I've been keeping him safe." I hear, with half my attention on their conversation. I'm trying to feel for any injuries this child has. It has been maltreated, and I'm sickened that any human could have done such a thing. She's only a baby.
"Where is he now?" The mother asks again.
"Sleeping. Do you want me to wake him up now? He's been sleeping for such a long time; I don't think he's tired anymore."
I start concentrating my chakra for the healing process. This is a big job; I hope I can handle it. This is different than healing a human. In some ways it's easier; aided by her natural healing abilities, but this child's injuries are not merely physical in nature. There's something inside of her, blocking the healing. I explore further with my consciousness, looking for the source. If I can just unblock it her body should do the rest.
There it is. A body – a boy, curled up inside the demons body. It's still alive though, only sleeping. This must the boy they were talking about. He must also be what's blocking up the child's systems.
As I get closer though I feel another presence, something somehow more unnatural than a boy inside her body. I reach out and find a seal nearby. This is what's really doing the harm here.
It only takes me a minute to figure out how to unseal it. As soon as I do I can feel the demon's body starting to fix itself again.
I pull out of my trance in time to hear the child telling her mother that she's got 'him' there. I look to see who this boy they're talking about is anyway. The child is holding him out to her mother, showing her the boy, still curled up and sleeping.
"Naruto!" I scream, or at least, I would have if my body wasn't currently controlled by a demon of some sort.
Instead my body punches the bars of the cage, trying desperately to tear it open. As my hand collides with the metal I wince inwardly. That's going to hurt when I'm allowed back in my body.
The woman yells her frustration at her inability to free her child. "Why are you so weak?" she demands. I protest silently. I'm not weak; she just doesn't know how to use my body properly.
"You won't be able to open it."
The woman turns to face the man speaking to her. It's Luo. He's standing behind us, beside Gaara, who is just watching him. I'm surprised he hasn't killed Luo already, but I'm thankful for his presence of mind.
"Let me out!" I yell at the woman, but she pushes me back. This is so much worse than that time Ino took over my body. This woman has all my personalities under control unfortunately. I need to speak with Luo.
"Let my child go." she says, through my mouth. Luo looks confused.
"Your child?" he raises an eyebrow at the demon behind me. "Is there something you're not telling me Sakura? Some... fetish you've got? Or are you really a demon in disguise? That would explain a lot of your behavior."
Trust Luo to make jokes in a situation like this.
"If you don't open that cage now and let her free I will kill you!"
Luo shakes his head. "I knew you'd be angry with me, but I thought you'd still at least be conflicted enough not to want to kill me so soon. But then again, you've wanted to kill me from the start…"
I want to yell at him, to tell him this obviously isn't really me, and that he's a fool not to have realized it by now, but there's still the small problem of being possessed that I have to overcome before I can do that.
"Release her!" She/I yells again.
Luo shrugs. "Sure. I never liked this part of the plan anyway." He walks brazenly past Gaara and me to open the cage. The door swings widely, as he steps back and gestures widely, smiling, to let the child out. "I hope you're happy. He's going to kill me now, even if you won't."
The woman inside of me laughs. "You're even more of a fool than Sakura thinks." she says, and lunges at him.
I try to fight her back, to keep myself from killing someone I really don't want to kill, but it's not enough. She knocks Luo back, with her hands around his throat.
"Not quite as good as my claws, but these will do." she hisses, squeezing the life out of Luo.
I scream at her, to make her stop, but in vain. I haven't felt so helpless for years, not since I was a little girl. But then something amazing happens.
Luo disappears in a puff of smoke. A clone. How could I not have seen it before? Relief floods through me. I know it's pretty twisted, but no matter what his role in all this is, I just don't want Luo to die, especially not by my own hands. And besides, I still want to ask him so many things.
The woman stands and brushes the dust off my knees. She turns to her child and holds out her hand. "Let's go home little one. You'll have to leave the boy here."
"Wait!" I yell mentally. "I want to ask you…"
"You may ask me whatever you wish." she answers gracefully. "But please be quick – I don't want to be here any longer than necessary."
"Naturally. I just wanted to know… why did your child have Naruto inside of her? What is this all about?"
"I found your friend, some time ago. I don't know what he was looking for, but there was something in him that called to me. I had known something was going to happen to my baby – it came to me in a dream, just as I came to you. I needed something to protect my child because I knew that I wouldn't be enough. So I gave him to her, to keep safe until he would have to keep her safe. I never thought that she would be so selfless, as to keep him safe from everything, while she was being tormented like this. If I had known…"
"Why did they do this?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. They will pay for what they have done; you will see to it."
"Me?"
"I have to go home with my child now. There are… too many things I have left unattended. The world is in a horrible state because of this. Farewell now, and I thank you."
I feel her leave like a breath exhaled from my chest, leaving me feeling strange and empty, but I only have to take another breath to feel fine again. I watch as her child lingers over Naruto for a moment longer, looking down at him, then at the sky. Finally she leans close over him, and I can't see what she does next, until she moves away from him and then follows her mother up into the sky.
"Naruto!" I yell, running over to his body lying face down in the sand. I turn him over and lay my head on his chest to listen to his heart. To my relief it sounds out loudly, beating regularly, healthy.
"Is he alive?" Gaara asks, walking up to stand right behind me. I look up at him and smile, and then nod. I look away again quickly, afraid that I'll start crying; I'm just so relieved to see Naruto alive, even if it doesn't make any sense.
"Sakura?"
I smile as Naruto opens his eyes and stares up at me groggily. He sits up quickly, overcompensating and nearly ending up face first in the sand again. "Where are we?" he asks.
"We're in the desert. What do you think?"
He makes a face. "I realized that much. But what am I doing here? I don't remember coming here at all."
I shrug. "I'm afraid I can't explain it any better than you. Well, not much anyway. There were these two demons, and one of them was keeping you in her chest…"
"What?? Sakura, you've lost it since the last time I saw you."
I nod, barely keeping back tears. Here he is, alive and well, just the same as he was last time I saw him, how long ago now? Months. Since before the drought. "A lot has happened since you left." I say.
He finally notices Gaara standing behind me. "Gaara?! What are you doing here?"
"This is my home." Gaara answers simply.
Naruto stands up, still as energetic as ever. He should rightly have atrophied muscles, after months of inactivity inside a demon, but he looks fine, and he is fine. This is almost too happy to believe. "Well why are we standing around here? And what's with all those bodies over there?"
I turn to look where Naruto is pointing. Gaara doesn't look; I guess he already knows what's there. He wasn't wasting time while I was busy with the demons; he had all those ninjas to take care of. And take care of them he did. I look at him, and he looks back at me with a hard look in his eye.
I shrug and try a little smile before turning back to Naruto. "We have a lot to tell you on the way back."