So here's chapter 9! I was messing around with the new story I'm writing when I realized it'd been like two or three days since I last posted, and was like 'OH crap!' xD So I rushed to and got this chapter up as quickly as I could. I'm still sick, and I'm starting to think I don't have what I originally thought, cuase it was only supposed to last five days and it's been eight, I think. And it's only getting worse. Eugh... I really hope I don't have Strep Throat. The medicine you take for that is soooo nasteh! D:

Anyways, I don't own Naruto... But I do own... A really creepy bunny rabbit stuffed animal that has the face of a baby.

Creepy, right?

Temari was pulling guard duty when around a hundred tired, hungry, and thirsty people approached the hidden village. Alarmed by the numbers alone, Temari ordered someone to take her spot and went to meet them. "What happened?" She asked the man who lead the group, and he was holding the hand of a child who was hugging a small scroll to her chest.

"Our home was attacked. We come here seeking assistance." The man said with a bow, his daughter and the other villagers following suit. The man straightened up, looking Temari straight in the eyes, his swimming with tears. "Please, you must help. My daughter stayed behind to hold back the attackers so we could escape. Please." He begged and Temari eyed him.

"…You and your daughter can come with me. The rest of you, stay in the shadowed areas around the gates. My shinobi will bring you food and water while I take you two to speak with the Kazekage." Temari said with authority, and several guards immediately ran to get food and drink for the villagers.

"Thank you." The man said gratefully, lifting his daughter up into his arms.

"Come with me." Temari said, turning and running into Sunagakure. It took ten minutes because the man was a regular person, but she took him to Gaara's office and immediately knocked.

"Enter." Gaara called quietly, and Temari opened the doors. She walked in, the man following. "What's going on?" Gaara asked his elder sister as the man set his daughter down.

"Their village was attacked. I had the other villagers stay just outside the gates while some of the guards bring food and water to them…" Temari explained, trailing off when the young girl walked up to Gaara's desk. She stood on her toes and raised the letter up towards the Kage.

"Miyuki…" The man hissed, looking at Gaara apologetically. Frowning, Gaara took the letter delicately, and the girl went back to her father's side. Gaara opened the letter and scanned it quickly before narrowing his eyes.

"Temari… Gather a group of shinobi immediately." He said and Temari blinked at him in confusion. "It's the Akatsuki." He said and realization dawned. She nodded, immediately leaving the room. "You two stay… Tell me everything you know about these attackers and how you escaped."

"Well…" The man, Hatsuri, began hesitantly. "Two men came into the village wearing black cloaks with red clouds on it. One of them had really strange skin and green eyes with red instead of white surrounding it, and he wore a mask around his face, completely covering everything but his eyes. The other one wore his cloak oddly, with it open in the front, and he had a three bladed scythe as a weapon…" Hatsuri sighed heavily.

"My daughter, Miyuki, was the first person to see them. She was with Saki, my adoptive daughter and the villages healer, and warned her about them. Saki told Miyuki here to give you that letter, and had her gather everyone she could and leave while she fought them." Hatsuri explained, but Gaara opened his mouth, making him stop.

"Who is Saki?" He demanded seriously, and Hatsuri blinked.

"I don't understand."

"Saki is who wrote this letter to me, yes?" Gaara asked coolly and Miyuki nodded furiously. "Saki addressed it to me calling me a friend, yet I have never met a 'Saki' before."

"Well… Saki isn't her real name…" Hatsuri said hesitantly. Seeing Gaara's expectant expression, he continued. "I found her in the desert a year and a half ago. It was in the middle of the night, and she was near dead from the cold on top of a pretty bad head wound. She also had two fractured ribs and a dislocated shoulder, and the head injury was so bad it covered the whole right side of her face with blood." Hatsuri said with a heavy sigh. "I swear, it took weeks for her hair to go back to pink." At this, Gaara leaned forward with more interest, but Hatsuri didn't notice.

"I took her to my home and my daughter and I nursed her back to health. When she woke up, she didn't know who she was. We gave her a month to remember before we named her 'Saki'. It was better than her being nameless… She healed someone who was badly hurt, and didn't even know how, but I recognized it as a medic-nin's jutsu. From then, she became our town healer."

"About six months ago, she freaked out and ran off without saying anything to us. When she came back two weeks later, she was cut up badly, her hand shattered, and looked half dead. She couldn't heal herself, and could barely heal anyone else for a while. Even after she was able to heal again, she looks ill all the time and can't heal most wounds anymore. Please, you have to help her. She isn't as strong as before…" Hatsuri explained, trailing off when Gaara spoke.

"Describe this person to me. What does she look like?" He asked and Hatsuri frowned.

"She has long pink hair that she keeps in a pony tail, bright green eyes, skin that is slightly tanned…"

"Does she have a large tattoo on her back?" Gaara demanded and Hatsuri blinked at him.

"Yes… She does… How did you-"

"I knew because I used to know her very well." Gaara said, standing up. "Tell me… How was she fighting? Was she being overpowered, or was she winning?"

"She wasn't even fighting." Miyuki piped up, and both of them looked at her. "She just kept running away from them and dodging the attacks… Only one of them was even attacking her. The one with the scary weapon." Miyuki explained with a concentrated expression. "But she was getting tired really fast. She's been really sick lately… I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me anything." Miyuki said tearily, looking worried.

"Don't worry, little girl." Gaara said calmly, and Miyuki looked up at him. "I'm sending a team to your village and I'm leading it myself." He said before walking past them and out of his office.

The hour long trip took only ten minutes with Gaara flying the group of four there on his sand. The group consisted of Gaara, Baki, Temari, and Kankurou. However, when they arrived, the town was completely empty. "Baki, you are the fastest. Circle the town from two miles out and see if they are completely gone, or if we can catch up." Gaara ordered and his old sensei nodded, immediately turning around and leaping over the town's gate. "You two spread out and search the town for any signs of her." Gaara growled before he leapt up onto the rooftops and scanned the town.

It took him a moment, but he finally spotted a small pool of blood several rooftops away. He quickly jumped to it and knelt down beside the blood, narrowing his eyes. He touched it with his fingertips and pulled them away, staring at the blood on his fingers. Fresh. He concluded, eyeing the drops of blood leading away from the puddle. He stood up, brushing his fingers off on the roof and then following the trail. Once the trail left the rooftop, it became very spread out and hard to follow, but he managed.

He stopped when it led him to another small pool of blood with a sharp black pole lying in it. She must be badly injured to bleed so much… He thought, turning to call for his siblings when something caught his eye. He frowned deeply, grasping the small folded up piece of paper and pulling it out of the crack in the wall. He narrowed his eyes, unfolding the letter.

"Gaara

Their names were Kakuzu and Hidan. I don't know much about their attacks, but Hidan uses a scythe and tried to do something with my blood. Also, I saw Kakuzu get annoyed and he decapitated Hidan, who continued to live even after. Not sure what that means, but it's nothing good. I've been badly wounded and won't make it without help. Give Temari my love… and be careful.

Sakura"

What? Was his first thought. He wasn't sure what to make of anything she wrote. Why did he want her blood? Why would his partner cut his head off, and why would he still be alive afterward? Not only that, but why did she not only tell him to give Temari her love, when Temari hated her, and why was she telling him to be careful if she was trying to kill him before? None of it made sense. But the thing that most concerned him…

…Was the fact that he was terrified for her.

"Kazekage-sama…" Baki began hesitantly as the four of them regrouped in the center of town, the buildings and ground having several three-stab pattern marks everywhere, probably from where the scythe wielder continually missed Sakura.

"What is it?" Gaara asked coolly, and he sighed.

"Judging by the amount of blood loss, she's probably already dead." He began regretfully, and Gaara snapped his gaze to him. "Even if she isn't, she's too far from any town to get the help she needs…and the wind is picking up very fast. You know what that means."

"…I hate to say it, but he's right." Kankurou sighed heavily. "Even if she managed to survive, a sandstorm is about to hit, and she's out there alone. If she's not dead now, she will be soon. I'm sorry."

"…" Gaara said nothing, his fists clenched at his sides for several moments as the wind picked up to dangerous speeds. Finally, after several seconds, he turned and walked into the house a few feet away, sitting down inside of it. Baki and Kankurou exchanged glances before following, and Temari hesitated a moment. She looked up at the sky before following them into the house.

"I need to talk to you guys." She said, gaining all of their attention. "To get to the point… Sakura wasn't planning on killing you, Gaara."

"…I don't understand." Gaara stated after a moment.

"She was ordered by our father to get close to you and kill you. You already know this… What you don't know is that he forced her to do it. Do you remember how resigned she was whenever our father was around, and how she would be happier when he wasn't?" Kankurou nodded after a moment of thought, so Temari continued, looking directly at Gaara this time. "And surely you remember how happy she was when he died. She acted as though she just had a giant weight removed from her soul."

"That was because she was relieved she wouldn't have to kill you." Temari went on when Gaara frowned and nodded. "You see, she thought of Kankurou and I as family, and it didn't take long after our father died for her to think of you the same, and then as more than just that. She helped you become the Kazekage, but the whole time she hated herself because of the fact that she only ever got close to us so she could kill you."

"So when you found out and thought she was still trying to kill you, she felt like she deserved your punishment. That's why she never resisted it and just left without saying anything. She told me that she walked through the desert for as long as her legs would carry her, but she ended up tripping and didn't even try to get back up. She probably would have died if her adoptive father hadn't found her." Temari said, sighing heavily.

"She stayed in this village with her new family, but… None of us knew this, Gaara, and I tried to kill her when I found out, but she slipped some kind of herb into your drink once… and it let her feel your chakra from wherever she was. She wanted to be close enough to come to your aide if anything happened, so she stayed here, only a half hour away if you're a trained shinobi… So when you were captured by the Akatsuki, she immediately came running. She found Kankurou dying from poison and got rid of it before chasing after you."

"Wait, what?" Kankurou asked in confusion. "That was real? I thought I was hallucinating or dreaming when I saw her. Chiyo-baasama said that she was the one who cured me of poison…" Kankurou trailed off with a deep frown.

"She lied to protect Sakura. She didn't want anyone to know that she was in the Land of Wind, and right outside of Suna no less, seeing as she was exiled. Anyways, Shikamaru, Naruto, Kakashi and I ran into her on the way to you, Gaara. I attacked her immediately, but she said she would lead us to you. Kakashi decided to follow her, since we had backup from Suna right behind us if she tried to trap us."

"She ended up collapsing from sheer agony when they… when they started to remove Shukaku." Temari hesitated for a brief moment when Gaara's eyes widened. "Because they were destroying your chakra, she felt it all. I guess the herb lets her feel your chakra instead of sense it… Anyways, on the second day of this, the five of us, now with Chiyo-baasama, left to scout the area and Naruto kept a shadow clone with her."

"But while we were gone, she got irritated and hit the clone, making it disappear. We didn't think anything of it, and at the time we didn't really care if she left because we still thought she was a traitor… But when we saw the dust and smoke from her super strength jutsu's, we rushed back to find the whole place covered in poison. When the poison cleared, we managed to get to her. She was cut to ribbons, and Yuri had lain several feet away in a puddle of his own blood, dressed in Akatsuki garb."

"On the last day, she was able to move almost completely on her own because there was so little chakra left that was being destroyed, but it was still bad enough that Kakashi needed to help her. In the end, she completely freaked the hell out when the pain disappeared because I guess she couldn't feel you anymore. She punched right through a ten ton boulder to get to you." Temari explained. "All of us went after you are that explosives bastard while she and Chiyo-baasama stayed behind and took care of Sasori… Who, by the way, we discovered was her father. And apparently that's why Chiyo-baasama took her in."

"They killed him and rushed to where we all were with your… With you." Temari coughed slightly, unable to say 'corpse'. "and she literally just stood there, staring at you, and crying her eyes out for an entire minute before she put her hands on your chest. One of which was all black and gnarly looking." Temari added with a hint of distaste in her tone. "Anyways, her hands started to glow and Chiyo-baasama immediately started to beg her to stop. She sat down on your other side and put her hands on your chest where Sakura's weren't and started to do the same thing as her."

"None of us had any idea what was going on until Chiyo-baasama told her that since she was already dying, it should be her who died to bring you back. She explained to us all that Sakura was innocent, and told us everything I just told you. Sakura continued to cry and stopped using the tensei jutsu, then walked around you and sat beside Chiyo-baasama, hugging her as she died."

"Afterwards," Temari took a deep breath, looking sad as she spoke. "Afterwards, she got up and started to leave. She asked us not to tell you anything yet… But she looked like hell when she left. When I say that, I mean she looked like hell chewed on her and spat her back out, not liking the taste. I honestly was surprised to hear she was alive…" Temari trailed off at that last part, hanging her head. Gaara stared at his sister, his eyes wide.

"She tried to give her own life for mine?" He murmured to himself before standing up. Without another word, he walked out of the building, using his sand manipulation to move the sand in the air away from him. He leapt up onto one of the rooftops, staring out at the sky that he could barely make out through the sand in the air. And as the air blew, a single teardrop hit the rooftop… followed by another, and then another.

D: Maybe that seemed a little ooc of Gaara, but I'm going to point this one fact out. He cried when he realized he would have to fight and kill Sasuke, and he barely even knew him. Remember that scene at the Kage meeting? So it makes sense that he would cry for someone he loves when he thinks she just got killed.

So now he knows she isn't evil! And guess what! They are going to have a chat soon. Either next chapter of the one after that ^^ Please review!