"No!" Sabuka yelled, but she could not control the blood. It burst through a thousand walls of sand that rose to meet it, and there was nothing that could stop it.

"Mother, please!" the kunoichi screamed. "Stop!"

She fumbled through the blood coating for her kunai pouch. She did not know what she could so, if the blood was not already satisfied by her open wounds, but she had to try.

The kunoichi struggled to cut through the blood seal on her pal, but it would not give beneath the blade. Gaara was backing away, but the tentacle was moving faster and faster.

"Mother!" Sabuka screamed again, but the tentacle did not stop.

Disregarding the consequences, Sabuka dredged up every last bit of chakra she could find and forced it into the kunai as she brought it down.

The blood coating her left hand rent with a squelch and the blade bit deep into her palm.

As her own blood spurted into the unnatural, the tentacle continued to move toward Gaara, but it slowed. Feet, inches, centimeters were left until it pierced his flesh. Yet as it slowed, it oozed, dripping to the ground, and Gaara quickly put distance between it and him. At last it was just a lethargic slug, creeping along, and then it soaked into the earth, leaving a swath of crimson stretching across the gold.

Freed from her protective coat, Sabuka knelt. Then, unable to support herself, she fell.

--

When she woke up, her throat was drier than the sand she lay upon and Gaara was standing over her. Idly, Sabuka wondered if he ever got tired.

"I have one question that you will answer before I kill you," he said harshly.

"That's not much motivation to answer," Sabuka quipped wearily.

"Why did you repeatedly scream for your mother to stop? She is dead, you told me."

"She is," Sabuka confirmed. Carefully, she raised herself into a half-sitting position, reflecting distantly that she would be dead if not for the blood that had spilled into her mouth.

The kunoichi brought her attention back to the shinobi of sand. His eyes bored into hers, but she did not look away.

"I will explain," Sabuka said cautiously, "if you will tell me your past."

She expected argument. Instead, she got history.

Sabuka listened with growing horror as Gaara dispassionately told her of the hate and fear he unfairly endured, of attempted murders by his own family - by the one person who'd expressed any care at all. There was no emotion in his voice as he spoke of the binding of the demon, the death of his mother, of the fear and the all-around pain he'd suffered through. She heard no emotion, but she saw it, deep in his eyes, an icy fire of rage and confusion and despair.

And finally, she thought she understood this boy and his desire to kill every living being but himself. He was not evil, and while he might be a monster, it was only because others had made him so. He had been shaped by expectation, the expectations of everyone around him.

Love might be on his forehead, but hate was in his heart.

Forgetting herself and who she was talking to, Sabuka whispered, horrified, "How do you live?"

Gaara just looked at her, the ice in his gaze almost tangible. "By killing."

"Right." Sabuka quietly took a deep breath. "My turn."

But she didn't know where to begin.

--

"My mother... is dead." Way to keep him interested by telling him something he doesn't know. "Before that, she was..." If Sabuka had been talking to anyone else, she would have said 'alive', but she wasn't willing to test his patience.

"Oh, gods, how do I describe this?" Exhausted, Sabuka flopped back down and stared at the sky, wondering just how curious Gaara really was.

"Do you have any water?" she asked hoarsely, having used hers up long ago.

Coolly, he unhooked a canteen and tossed it to her. Startled, she caught it, but only barely, and I drank.

"Alright," Sabuka sighed. "I'll try again."

--

"I guess you could say my mother was a demon, but not in the same way that the Shukaku inside of you is a demon. Her techniques centered around blood, mostly others'. She was near unbeatable, because everyone has blood, and she could manipulate it.

"But any who revel in the blood of others can't be in complete control of their insanity." Sabuka's face darkened. "I think she even began to... I dunno what word - adopt? - some of the memories and emotions of those whose blood she retained.

"She exploded. Killed a lot of people, including the rest of my family. She tried to kill me."

As a visual, the kunoichi raised her left arm, showing the scar, and also indicated the spattering of tiny scars across her legs.

"But she woke up. Sort of. She saw it was me. And she poured her Lifeblood into me through the wound in my arm."

Sabuka glanced up, just to see Gaara's reaction. There wasn't one. She looked back at the ground.

"That was her blood. The attack. I though I could make her stop, like last time. But it was too hungry. 'Til I gave it more of my own."

She had no idea why he cared so much about her mother. But then, she didn't know that his only mother was the sand he carried with him always.

"Anyway, I haven't a clue where I'm from, because... Well, I think I took on some of mom's memories like she used to do. Except that I was no blood ninja, and.. I dunno, the chakras clashed, or something, and canceled each other out. Some weird phenomenon like that. I'm surprised I even remember the... transfer, considering the amount of my life that I lost."

"And now you will lose the rest," Gaara hissed, either satisfied that her story was done or unwilling to hear more, "when you die at my feet."

"Oh," Sabuka sighed. "Not this again."

--

This time, she had no defense.

She watched it rise with grim regret, but not fear. Not anymore.

"I don't suppose you'd let me call in the life debt for saving your life?" she tried hopefully, but half-heartedly.

"You were the attacker," Gaara snarled.

"Technically, it was my mother."

"No. I don't owe you anything," he said coldly. "The prey owes the predator... its life."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Sabuka sighed as she watched the sand hide the sky and come down in a deadly wave.

--

Her mind drifted out of unconsciousness; her eyes opened and strayed to the gritty blackness where the sky should have been. She was in extreme discomfort, but there was no doubt that she was alive.

The kunoichi lay there for countless hours and decided that either Gaara had decided to torment her longer or something had happened to him.

She also decided that she was about to die of thirst once again.

"This sucks," said Sabuka to no one in particular.

After a few more minutes of staring at the shadows that were her sky - as well as her ground, her walls, and her general surroundings - Sabuka heard muffled voices through the thick sand. The only words she could make out were "Earth Style"; a moment later, the ground near her exploded.

The kunoichi waited a second. Naruto poked his head through the hole and said, "Come through the tunnel." Then he disappeared in a puff of ivory smoke: A clone.

Sabuka sighed. "Of all the techniques he could have been good at," she muttered, "it had to have been the one where he made copies of himself."

Then she crawled over to the hole and slid into it.

--

On the other side, all of Squad 7 stood arrayed before her. Sasuke's arms were crossed coldly, his face masked by ice almost as cold as Gaara's; all traces of the almost friendliness he had previously shown to her were gone. Sakura was looking rather spacey, Naruto was looking as triumphant as if her had single-handedly rescued her, and Kakashi was reading.

"Does anyone have water?" Sabuka asked hoarsely.

Without looking up, Kakashi tossed her a canteen., obviously brought along just for her. Sabuka drank gratefully, trying not to go so fast as to choke. Pausing, she looked around.

"Okay, I'll bite. What're you all doing here?"

"Hokage sent us to talk to Kazekage about Gaara," explained Sakura helpfully.

"It's because I'm on this team!" boasted Naruto. "Hokage knows I can handle that browless freak!"

"Look who's talking," said Sabuka nastily. "If I were you, I'd watch who I was calling 'freak'." Sasuke, almost imperceptibly, smirked.

Kakashi finally looked up, tucking away his book. "We've already been. To see the Kazekage, that is. Then a Ms. Kaido informed us that you'd gone out into the desert virtually unprepared."

Sabuka nodded dismissively. "What does the Hokage expect the Kazekage to do about it?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, he's not doing it. He insisted that he'd lost enough shinobi in assassination attempts already, and that he can do nothing more."

"He should have figured it out sooner," Sabuka muttered. "Fool."

"Look who's talking," said Naruto annoyingly. "You, the one who went into the desert alone!"

"I'm surprised you expected to find me alive," the kunoichi remarked, taking another drink.

"We really didn't," said Sasuke coolly, speaking for the first time. "Personally, I expected a week-old corpse." Nevermind that she hadn't been alone in the desert for a whole week.

Sabuka winced. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." Realizing that her arm was exposed, her hand twitched, almost moving to cover her scar. But she repressed the urge; that would only draw more attention to it. For now, it was coated in blood and hopefully hidden.

The kunoichi sat, cross-legged, in the sand. "Many thanks. See you around."

"Aren't you coming back to Konoha?" asked Sakura, confused.

"I'd never make it," said Sabuka brightly. "I'm completely out of chakra, and I'd never be able to walk all that way. A few minutes ago, I was dying of dehydration." As if to remind them, the kunoichi took another long drink.

"A bunch of my Shadow Clones could carry you," Naruto offered.

"I'd rather die," said Sabuka clearly. Naruto looked both crestfallen and mildly angry, as if he were going to burst out again, but the redhead cut him off. "I'll just return to Sand Village in a bit."

"You're completely lost," pointed out Sasuke coolly. Sabuka couldn't help but feel that he had an ulterior motive.

"Well, then, someone can point me in the right direction," returned the kunoichi.

"You," said a dark voice behind were, "will get the hell out of my desert." Kakashi and Sasuke immediately went on the defensive; Sakura looked frightened; and Naruto fell over out of shock. Slowly, Sabuka stood and turned around as Gaara went on menacingly, "And you will never come back."

Unwisely, the kunoichi almost said, "Who died and made you Kazekage?" Wisely, she didn't, and simply mumbled instead, "Yes, sir."

Gaara disappeared as silently as he had come, just as Sasuke began to shout something that sounded like a challenge. Sabuka looked around at Squad 7, sighed, and said, "I hope you're up to walking, because I refuse to run."

--

"I don't need a hospital," Sabuka protested furiously as they tried to convince her to stay at one, "unless you now have pills for restoring chakra, and in that case, you can just give them to me."

She glared around at her besiegers. "If someone could just lend me some money, I'll rent a room somewhere and pay you back later."

"Or you could stay with me," Sakura offered, perhaps the first useful thing she'd done since Sabuka had met her. The red-haired kunoichi professed her thanks and, when they reached the rose-haired kunoichi's home, fell asleep on the couch without asking.

--

Several days later, Sabuka was lounging on the couch, talking rather desultorily to Sakura, when Sasuke stalked in.

"Sasuke-kun is in my house!" Sakura squealed obnoxiously. Sasuke ignored her.

"You," he said coldly to Sabuka, "fought Gaara."

"Not really," the redhead denied, sitting up. "More like I was attacked and beaten by him."

"You survived," amended Sasuke coolly, "an attack by Gaara."

"Alright," agreed Sabuka cautiously.

"You will fight me," the dark-haired shinobi ordered icily, "and show me how you did it."

"No," Sabuka said firmly, scrambling to her feet. "It nearly got Gaara killed last time. And me. I'm not ever doing it again."

"I need to get stronger," Sasuke growled. "I need to be able to kill him!"

"I'm not going to help you kill Gaara," replied the redhead disgustedly, sitting back down.

"Not Gaara. Someone else," he snarled. "But I can't. Not until I can defeat Gaara." Sasuke glared at her, his eyes overflowing with hatred. But not, Sabuka thought, directed at her. Or even Gaara.

"I'll be waiting at the training field with the three posts when you're ready," he said coolly, then left.

Sabuka lay back. "He thinks I'm the type of person that can't resist a challenge. Well, I can, when I need to."

She looked over at Sakura. She saw shock, a lot of envy, and definitely a large amount of annoyance.

In the end, she went.

--