A/N: Chapter a day early, because I'm leaving town this afternoon and won't be back 'til Sunday. Hope you enjoy this chapter! I did. It started out so intense that I felt like I'd written two or three chapters, when really, I was only halfway through one. XD

-/-

I blocked out dark wood and splinters until the world narrowed to a stretch of open desert and jewel-blue sky. A spinning desert storm—Sabaku no Gaara, wrapped in his own sandrush of gold—filled my vision like the towering devil. The dust devil hungering to devour me whole.

Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to let him.

Heh, I barely even heard the proctor set us loose. The fierce determination—it bordered on hell-bent anger, but I was only angry at everything—coiled itself around my throat and cut off my air until I let my chakra burrow into my own little pile of precious gold-dust. Exhaling explosively, I twisted around my arm and spat it toward Gaara with half a snarl.

A second too late, I realized I had been too slow. Way too damn slow. I had been locked in a cage of chakra and fury, and my driving sand needles were lost in a golden haze. He didn't even hesitate in devouring me.

Hell, hell, hell!

I ducked into a crouch, as if that could save me. Sand rushed over my head, blocking out the starspeck shinobi audience all around. Faces blurred and ran in an agony of dust.

Then again, everybody dies alone. With no one to watch me, nothing was changed.

Swiftly drawing kunai from the holster at my hip, I touched the blade to a barely-scabbed scar, unable to ignore the stinging storm worrying at my skin like a yellow jacket swarm. A line of blood like a smile welled up across my palm; I smiled grimly back at it and shoved my hand into the storm.

Blood whipped away into the whirling frenzy. Feeling more trickling over my cheeks like macabre tears, I wiped my other hand, my kunai-wielding hand, across my face until my knuckles were stained red with gritty pain. I felt like I was probably grinding the grit deeper into my skin, but the pain only bled into anger and a thirst for life.

My own blood streamed around me as Gaara's attack closed in. Almost, I could hear him talking, though the roaring of his element overwhelmed the words. Just a slight mumbling drifted through the storm, dark muttering fingers of sound.

"Too… easy. Not even… fight… Mother."

I was a mummy in a gold-dust coffin, and my image of the desert waved out of existence. My closet was my new cage, and dark claustrophobia nightmares.

Concentration slipped away like a mirage in the desert, or the water in a Konoha forest stream. Heart stopped, eyes closed, I flung out my hands, stretching my arms like I could push the walls away.

It was almost like shoving them in a meat grinder. Again, my blood fountained into the storm as I choked on my lion's-claw screams.

Within the spinning golden death, every grain of sand that had been with me as I infused them with blood and sparkling chakra… stopped. Gaara's ravaging monster, so intent on bleeding me out before I died, raged on, but my own sand halted like rocks in the rapids. No longer driven by my orders, the flecks fought their way through the rush and flung themselves toward the source of the assault.

The storm rippled, shuddered, died. It pooled on the floor, then slithered back to its master. Peppered by pinpricks of gold, Gaara growled like a wolf was ripping its way out of his throat. Shielded by sand of his own, my little gnats of dust couldn't do more than annoy and distract him, but it was enough to earn my reprieve.

I went for a shuriken, but it fell from shaking, mangled fingers. Cursing loudly, I went for another, forcing my crying digits to close. Gaara recovered. I looked up and flung out my free hand and told the sand to go for his cold hard eyes.

I thought at first, irrationally, that the diamond in his eyes would prevent me from hurting them. For the moment, trying to regain control, I just struggled to irritate, but when the wave came swelling toward me, threatening imprisonment again, I lost it.

I heard him snarl something. Coffin of Crushing Sand. I felt bones snap and crunch—arms, ribs, pain—and then I felt my own barely-controlled sand coil into wire-thin weapons and drive through Gaara's eyes.

We screamed together, a grisly chorus as dust-made tides crashed to the wooden floor. I saw Gaara's pale hands shaking as they tried to stem the flow of scarlet tears. His skin wept crimson; he collapsed to his knees; and I passed out.

-/-

I found I was always in pain, waking or sleeping, so the wavering in between didn't have much distinction. Then again, awake hurt a hell of a lot more than asleep, so I tried to stop waking up as soon as possible.

Especially since Eiji was always sitting there calmly, but Raiyo hovered, and a strip of bandages across an eye that wasn't mine hurt a lot, too.

-/-

I barely had time to rest, once I really woke up. I suppose my half a week in-and-out unconsciousness was taken to be rest enough. Exhausted from chakra healing—I still felt I would never breathe again; there was only so much the medic-nin could do—I was dragged off by a man I didn't know (with only one visible eye; who the hell was tormenting me like this?) from the moment my sand-roughed feet touched the cold hospital floor.

As I stumbled after this strange tanned man, who hailed from Suna according to his hitai-ate, Eiji whispered cryptically, "You didn't lose." But we were moving at too unkind a pace for me to stop and demand why the hell she couldn't just say 'you won'? At least she and Raiyo were trailing after me like uncertain baby birds. Once this stranger stopped ripping my arm out of my socket, I would interrogate them.

"Where the hell are we going?" I tried to ask, but I think too many painkillers blurred my speech. My kidnapper merely cast me a scathing glance.

I was damn certain I was going to pass out again. Tripped, I reached for my sand pouch, hoping to detach myself from this man, but it had been left behind in the hospital room, along with my actual clothes; I was wearing just a white hospital gown. At least it was summer.

"Oi," I protested angrily, as I stumbled over my feet and hit the floor with a crack. Damn. Damn damn damn. I only realized I was swearing out loud when the man glared at me. Well, no—he was doing that already. It was when Eiji poked me and grinned that I shut up.

Then I changed my mind, decided that I'd rather make my displeasure known.

-/-

I wheezed as the angry man pulled me into an office where the Hokage sat behind a cramped, hospital-office desk. I scowled, then gaped, then covered my eyes as the world spun like a top.

"Baki," said Tsunade with a sigh. "You didn't even let the child rest?"

"She's been sleeping for four days," he pointed out darkly.

"And she's not recovered." She slammed the palm of her hand down on the desk.

"Neither is Gaara," growled Baki, unperturbed.

"And all our best doctors are trying. I myself am working on saving his eyes. But he is not up and walking around either."

Not the least bit leery of interrupting the Hokage (I probably should have been), I croaked, "Why am I here?"

Tsunade turned her gaze to me. I watched her face swim in and out of focus as she crossed her arms over her unnecessarily large chest.

"The match between you and Sabaku no Gaara was declared a draw."

Well, damn. I resolved to kick Eiji for false hope.

"At this point in time, it appears that Gaara is going to go completely blind. We are still trying to save his vision, as I just said, but it looks unlikely. His eyes were mutilated by your attack."

"At least I stopped before his brain," I muttered. Tsunade inclined her head in acknowledgment.

"The fact remains that you have blinded the Kazekage's son."

"It was a fair fight!" I protested angrily.

"Yes, it was. There is no denying that the risk was present, and all who entered were aware of it. Nonetheless, at Baki's—" she cast him a somewhat sour glance "—request, it has been decided that you will return to Sunagakure with Gaara, seeing as neither of you will be required to fight further. Once there, you will become his—guide, of sorts."

Shock first, then rage. Boiled across my vision, blocked my throat. My dream come true—home to Suna. Not like this. Desert gods, not like this. Not with that monster.

"—help him acclimatize—"

I couldn't make myself concentrate on all of Tsunade's words anymore. I would not be chained to Sunagakure's demon. There was only space for that adamantine conviction inside my head.

"—until such a time as the Kazekage sees fit to release you."

No—no. That could be—'til death, for all I knew. "No," I choked, in a hoarse, furious whisper.

"This is not a request."

"I will not—monster!" I couldn't force my thoughts into a coherent sentence. "He is a monster, let him go blind, let him spend the rest of his life—crashing into walls—"

"He is the Kazekage's son." Her voice was cold, no longer holding any respect for me.

"The hell do I care?" I yelled, panicking. "I've lived here ten years, I'm pretty damn sure I belong to the Hokage now!"

"Sunako's ours," cut in Eiji firmly, and that was probably a hint of desperation in her eyes, when I turned to look at her, having forgotten she and Raiyo were still around. "Loyal to Konoha."

Oh, Eij, shut the hell up and don't lie to the Hokage for me. But I was too busy trying to save my own damn skin to say it out loud.

Baki's smoldering temper flared up again, encouraged by the bellows of our defiance. "Very loyal, disobeying your Hokage," he snapped, arms folded, knuckles white. "We have no shinobi to spare, Izari; you will return to Suna and bear the consequences of your actions!"

If he hadn't been a Sunagakure jōnin, I might have killed him.

As it was, I had trouble clamping down on the wave of rage-driven sand that twisted into the air.

-/-

"What about my mother?" I demanded, barely reigning in a decidedly snappish tone, having just managed to get my sand under control. Neither attacking Baki nor the Hokage would be a particularly brilliant plan. Then again, Baki was gone; he and my erstwhile squadmates had been shooed out by Tsunade. I hoped I'd have a chance for goodbye.

"Your mother will be given the choice whether to stay or return with you," Tsunade explained calmly, resting her elbows on her desk and twining her fingers under her chin. "If she stays, she will be cared for."

"Mom needs—a hell of a lot of care," I muttered, faltering. Not anger there, just fear, just—indecision. I didn't know, couldn't damn well tell if I wanted her to come. Her beloved daughter, her beloved desert—her beloved husband's grave. Didn't know which she most wanted to avoid.

She'd be out of my hands, if she stayed. Hell, I could have my own room again, and spend my stipend on something besides her damn cigarettes. Konoha itself would fund them instead.

"Don't—put her in the hospital." It was a sudden, constricting terror. Mom had no particular fear of hospitals, not like so many shinobi who'd lost friends there; Dad had died in the desert, not in a sterile white room. But—if she were there—how the hell long until I joined her? It felt too damn much like foreshadowing. Like mother, like daughter. Hell.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "Is she sick?"

"She—" I sure wasn't going to say she was crazy. "—Smokes. She smokes."

"Ah."

That seemed sufficient to her. She didn't add to it.

I stood there awkwardly, still more than a little angry, but piling sand on top of that anger, like an hourglass marking the passage of time, burying it. I should go—pack. Hah. Pack what? My closet?

"You may go," Tsunade said at last, just when I thought my heart would burst. Ducking my head in a sullen bob, I pivoted and marched out.

Raiyo converged on me like his own flock of mother geese. I mostly ignored him, looking over his shoulder and smiled mirthlessly at Eiji, and she smiled regretfully back, and we both knew it was going to be a long night.