"The seconds take a part of me with them. Hopefully to you." – I Wrote This For You

Like Kankuro had said, when I returned to the sibling's home, all my belongings were packed alongside Kyan's. I entered my…well, the guest room, and glanced around. None of the surroundings would be familiar to me once I left. Not the dresser that I had never quite used, not the window that I'd spent hours staring out of some days, not the bed where Kankuro and I had once…

I didn't want to leave. My stomach felt sick and my head was throbbing. Maybe I was coming down with a fever. That could be a good excuse to stay in Suna for a little while longer.

"No," I whispered to myself, sitting on the bed. I couldn't just make up excuses to stay. They wanted Kyan and me to leave, so I needed to suck it up and go.

The bedroom door opened and one of the men who would be escorting us back walked in to grab some of my things. "Kyan is ready to leave," he informed me in a gruff voice. "Are you?"

"Um, yeah," I muttered, rising to my feet. "I'm ready."

As I followed him through the house, I kept my gaze to the floor. When we passed Kankuro's bedroom, I noticed the door was open a small crack. Fighting the urge to open it and tell him that I was sorry and that I wanted to stay was very difficult, but when the door closed on its own, I continued to walk behind the escort.

We met Kyan and Gaara at the front door. I think watching them saw goodbye was just as heartbreaking as not saying goodbye to Kankuro. Kyan stared at the floor and stood in front of him, her hands clasped together in front of her.

The escort stopped short when he saw them then retreated to the dark hallway. Instead of doing the same, I stood and watched.

They were quiet for a very long time and didn't move. Then, out of nowhere, Kyan flung her arms around his neck and began to cry. Panic flashed through me as I expected a wall of sand to spring up and strangle her, but everything remained calm.

Gaara allowed her to stay there, crying into his shoulder, until finally, his arms slowly rose to wrap around her smaller frame and pull her closer. And she just kept crying. And he let her.

()()()

Our goodbye to Temari was hilarious, in its own way. She met us at the gates, gave a both a tight hug, and said, "I swear, if you two start that crying bullshit with me, I won't let you come back to visit for the holidays. Got it?"

But I think we all knew that we wouldn't be sharing the holidays together. We just didn't want to admit it.

We began the trek to Konohagakure. During the time we spent walking, Kyan and the escort carried on a small, meaningless conversation to break the awkward tension, but I remained quiet.

I didn't want to leave the restaurant, but I knew it would be in good hands. We left it in charge of Kasaji, who was more than happy to take over the position and thanked us more than twenty times. Even though I told him he didn't have to thank us and that he was the only one we trusted enough to run it for us, he still kept going.

We walked for what seemed like weeks until the sky finally grew dark. We were making good time; trees were beginning to come into view, which meant we were approaching the Fire Nation. We would be home within another day or so.

We set up sleeping bags in a formation that if someone were to attack, our escort could easily put us behind him to defend us. Kyan was the first to fall asleep and shortly after, our escort did too. I remained awake, searching through my bag for something to help me sleep. I felt tired, but every time I curled up in my sleeping bag, I was suddenly wide awake and alert.

I didn't find anything to help me sleep, but as I searched, something small and hard caught my attention. Slowly, I lifted a small bracelet from my cluster of clothes. It had belonged to Kankuro, the one with the brown beads and green jagged lines. I hadn't seen it on his wrist since the day he bought it at the market.

How did this get in my things? I lifted it up and stared at it for a long time. Then, I slid it onto my wrist. It was a lot bigger than I expected, so it hung off my skin about an inch. Still, I kept it on.

Once again, I tried to sleep. Instead of remaining awake like before, I rolled to my left side and stared at the bracelet until sleep overtook me.

()()()

My mother was the first to give Kyan and I any sort of attention. She pulled us both into tighter hugs that Temari could ever give and began to cry. I'm not sure what she said, but I heard the words "my little girls" and "home" a few times.

After being overdramatically reunited, she left us to unpack our things in our rooms. Kyan disappeared from the family for hours and I disappeared from the world.

My bed was uncomfortably big and my room had an unfamiliar scent to it. Every time I inhaled, I expected the dry smell of sand. But instead, I smelled moisture in the air. I didn't like it. In fact, I hated it.

I didn't even feel like putting away my things or setting up my room the way I had it before. Even though this was the house I had grown up in, it didn't feel like home.

I moved my wrist to the front of my face and stared at the bracelet. I tried to image that the space between my wrist and the beads was Kankuro's space, and that at any moment, he would come and slip his hand in there where in belonged. But I realized that it was stupid of me to think like that.

The escort dropped by my room at a certain point to place the rest of my things on the floor. I didn't stand to thank him for bringing us here. I didn't even acknowledge his presence, not even when he bowed and said, "It was a pleasure to serve you." Then I was left alone again, and I was okay with it.

When my mother called for us to come downstairs and eat dinner, I didn't move. I just felt like my body no longer had any bones in it, like I was completely empty of anything that had once made me human. It was a horrible, sickening feeling, but I couldn't feel any other way.

I didn't cry. I just felt as if it were a waste.

"Haketa!" Mother called, knocking on my door before coming in. When she saw me, she frowned and took a seat on the edge of the bed. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Eventually," I told her. "I didn't want to leave."

"I know." She placed her head on my head and began to stroke my hair. "You know, you could always go back and visit for things like Kankuro's birthday."

I shook my head, freeing myself from her hand. "I don't think he'll want me around ever again."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," she said amusingly. Without another word, she stood up and left me to myself.

If anything, that was the only thing I could be sure of.

()()()

Life fell back into the monotonous routine of days at the restaurant. I never had anything to look forward to and before I knew it, I had fallen into a state of depression. Even when my father was killed and Kyan became mute, I never stopped eating for three days because I had no appetite. But when I did eat again, I found myself so suddenly hungry that I ate too fast and too much, that I usually found myself bent over the toilet, puking it all back up.

Mother had taken me to see the Medical Shinobi who had trained Kyan. I was told to exercise three times a week to see if my condition improved, but when I refused to get out of bed most mornings, that plan was quickly abandoned.

One morning, Kyan entered my room and closed the door behind her. Over the month that we had been back in Konoha, she hadn't said much to me, but from hearing her conversations with others, her speech had improved tenfold.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" she demanded to know.

"Doing what?" I asked, pulling the blankets over my head. With a quick yank, the blankets were off my body and on the floor.

"Starving yourself, keeping yourself locked up in your room, ignoring everyone that cares about you."

"I don't know."

I sat up and reached for the blankets, but Kyan pushed them even further away with her foot. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. I only shrugged and lay back down, placing my pillow over my head.

"You're not being fair to yourself, you know," she scolded.

"I don't care."

"Yes, you do. If you didn't, you would just kill yourself without putting up with the starvation. What if Kankuro were to come back, huh? Would you want him to see you in this condition?"

I started to laugh. I laughed so hard and so long that my stomach began to hurt. "He wouldn't come back," I finally said. "There's no reason for him to come back."

With a quick huff, Kyan disappeared for only a few minutes before returning with a piece of paper. She threw it at me, then turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

Slowly, I grabbed the paper and read it, my hands trembling at the handwriting.

Kyan,

I'll be there in four days. Please make sure it's ready for me to grab. Thanks.

-Kankuro

Well, we've reached the beginning of the end! That's right, the next chapter will be the last! I hope you've enjoyed the story as much as I've enjoyed writing it! :)