A/N: It has been a while, but I didn't forget. Due to complications of muse and life, I won't be posting on a set schedule any longer, only when I have the inspiration. Forgivez me! I love you. (:

Also, vague idea of what the characters look like: http:/ameko-shadowsong(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/16-Web-116169440

-/-

We hadn't gone half a dozen paces down the road before I had twice as many minor cuts and bleeding wounds. None of them hurt overmuch, but little trails of red trickled over my skin, tickling like butterfly kisses, and I didn't want to die of blood loss before we hit halfway to Suna.

Finally, I tried to move around Baki so that he was between me and Gaara. He reached out, grabbed my shoulder, and held me firmly in place as we walked.

"Why?" I spat. "You're his keeper."

"Wrong," said the man, and I easily detected the smugness in his tone, despite his hard blank eyes. "You are his keeper now. You blinded him. You guide him."

Inside, I seethed. Outside, Gaara's sand roiled, writhing like a dying beast, stray grains rising up to prod and bite like flies off the carcass. His sight may have been gone, but his hearing worked just fine.

"Gaara," I snapped, "if you don't want me to die—"

He lurched toward the sound of my voice, face twisted in a snarl. I tried not to imagine his eyes, mangled and gaping holes beneath the bandages, bandages somebody had to have wrapped for him. Baki, probably. Damn, that would make it my job now.

I was going to be dead within the hour.

"Why wouldn't I want you to die?" he hissed, lunging, tripping, and falling to his knees. Briefly, I thought of helping him. Savagely, and cowardly, I stayed where I was as he struggled back to his feet.

He wove toward me like a drunk—and no longer guided by my voice, I wondered if, like an Inuzuka, he now followed my scent. It might have been funny, the sight of such a terrifying shinobi reduced to stumbling and staggering, but it wasn't. It just made me sick.

Inadvertently, I took a step back. Baki stood behind me, statue-like, and I collided with him, my own sand twittering around my hands. With an effort, I forced it down; Gaara may not have known that my sand moved on its own when I was nervous, but… Well, living in Konoha, you got to learn how to deal with wild animals in the forest. You didn't exude anxiety.

Oh hell. Guide? What was I going to do, take his hand and lead him along?

I glanced back toward Konoha. I could still see the gates, and maybe I could still see my friends. Suna, I mouthed bitterly, as if I were telling Eiji how to find me, and then I moved to face my fate.

My fate was angry. He was angry and he was in pain and I had not the slightest clue what to do about it. Gods above, at the pace we were moving with his stumbling agonized gait, it'd take us a month to hit Suna.

I just wanted to swear repeatedly at him, but instead, I made the effort to slip a few grains of sand through the boiling shield of sand now protecting him from our view. Taking a wild guess that it might calm him down, I let them alight on his shoulders, thinking, The sand is his element, so he just might accept it—

But the breach of his territory only made him angrier. What looked big enough to be a tsunami lunged toward me; I backpedaled, trying not to be afraid because I sure as hell wasn't going to admit fear to these too. Damn that Baki, he's probably enjoying watching this, damn well probably going to let me die, the cruel, sadistic ba—

"Gaara, enough."

Well damn, he was going to save me after all. Probably didn't want back the responsibilities of caretaker. It was a blow to my pride, but in the long run, it was also my life, so I bore it.

For one instant, I thought that Gaara would fail to heed Baki, too, as he rounded on the man with another inhuman snarl. I shrank away, though his attention had not lingered on me, and tried to guess how a human boy grew to be so feral.

But he was a beast trained to obey its master. Baki did not flinch from Gaara's wordless threats, and so the growling boy subsided.

"I do not need… help," he insisted in a low, furious voice. As his actions proved those words a lie and he once more stumbled and fell, I heard almost an echo of anguished desperation behind his tone.

If I'd had one damn iota of kindness inside me then, I might have moved in to show it, and maybe planted a seed inside his sandy, stony heart. But resentful, repulsed, and outraged, I cowered back and pretended my confrontational side knew when to take a break.

-/-

Baki took short, tense steps that made it clear he wanted to break into long strides that would move him far ahead of Gaara and I. I was sourly grateful that he didn't; I had no desire to walk beside the redhead alone.

Or even accompanied by another. I changed pace repeatedly, trailing behind, tripping on ahead, but never daring to be more than a few steps away, sand always misting around me. After ten agonizing minutes, I caved in to the discomfort of having unstable, raving Gaara behind me; we'd learned long ago not to turn our backs on the enemy, and if Gaara and his damn sensei weren't my enemies, I sure as hell didn't want to meet the ones who were. Falling back, I endeavored to keep my pace even with theirs, though Gaara moved slowly and haltingly as a disorganized army.

Time, too, passed with all the rapidity of winter in Konoha, inching by like it would never end. The trees hardly changed, only the patterns of dappling on the summer-green ground, and I didn't know if we'd walked even an hour beneath the leaves.

What I wouldn't give to be back home where I could see the sky. Oh, that's right—I'd already given it; I'd left my friends, family, and freedom in Konoha so I could return to Suna the one way I never wanted to go.

I should have thought of that a long time ago, when all I could consider were the depths to which I wanted to return.

Be careful what you wish for. Whoever the hell thought that one up needed a kunai to the guy just for being right.

Fifteen and angry at the world, I could focus all I wanted on the Shinobi Rules of Conduct, but I still yearned to dream without consequences. Too bad consequences are what we shinobi are all about.

We are the consequences.

-/-

Even eyes focused only forward, my senses spread wide, searching for (other) enemy shinobi like a dog for its lost bone. I sure as hell wouldn't blame anyone for trying to kill these two—I could see any number of reasons for it—I just didn't want to die along with them. Plus, I damn well didn't want someone to off Baki and leave me alone with Gaara.

Movement in my peripheral vision drew my gaze: Baki, tugged a ribbon of cloud from one of his pouches. I swallowed and swore as he handed me a roll of bandages and pointed to the redheaded feral boy trudging along beside me.

So Baki'd finally decided that Gaara had walked with blank eyes and trailing bandages for long enough, and now it would be my job to replace the grimy shreds of tattered cloth.

Damn.

Holding the proffered bandages limply in on hand, I turned to Gaara and stopped walking. He kept going, oblivious to anything but his own pain and fury.

"Gaara," I muttered, and was unheard or ignored. Baki stood behind me, obnoxiously close, arms crossed, unhelpful in every way.

Gritting my teeth, I repeated louder, "Gaara," and he paused, turning his face to me in a gesture of habit, even though he could no longer see. Rivulets of crimson trickled over his pale cheeks, seeping through crevices in his skin—it must have been a layer of sand—and spreading in faint blotches nigh on the same hue as his hair. Was that color natural, then, or had he dyed it with the blood of a thousand victims?

No, stupid theory. He'd had red hair when we'd been five years old and innocent, without any blood on our hands.

Aside from my own and his mother's. But that sure as hell wasn't his fault.

Then again, what he'd done since then damn well was.

Raising my hand as if making an offering to a god, I showed Gaara the bandages, then muttered an oath at my stupidity. "Fresh bandages," I explained shortly, shifting my gaze slightly to the left so that I didn't have to look straight into his mangled eyes.

"I don't need them," he hissed.

"The hell you don't, you're bleeding," I snapped, then cringed.

Sand rushed toward me like a devil I couldn't defeat, and I flinched backwards. Flecks of gold leapt to my defense, but they were flies before a storm, and no help to me.

"Gaara." One commanding word from Baki and the sand hesitated—rushed forward still—then collapsed to the ground, obedience beaten into it like a pathetic puppy.

Damn it, I was going to have to learn that tone of voice if I wanted to survive more than ten minutes without Baki breathing down my neck. Or else I would have to create my own system—teach that dying dog a new way to learn.

We shinobi are admirable people.

"Just let me put on the damned bandages," I muttered, eyes still to the side but taking a step closer. Trying not to tremble like weeds before a gardener. After all, Gaara would never build a garden; he'd only tear it down and leave the whole thing to rot.

The redhead stayed where he was, breathing heavily, glaring with empty eyes, but not advancing, not reacting. One more pace from either of us and I could have reached out to weave the cloth around his battered eyes, although it would be a hell of a lot less awkward to be even closer. Less awkward for the wrapping, anyway, not for either I or the monster.

A sick sour feeling like old lemons coated my throat at the idea of touching this untamed creature's skin, of being that near to his wrath. Sand shifted over my own skin, donning scarlet garments of the blood from my arms; I picked my own grains from the breeze and artlessly shoved chakra into them. Tendrils of gold curled around the white cloth and lifted it from my hand, shakily carrying it like a broken bird.

My lack of fine control showed itself clearly in the sloppy, lopsided job the sand did of wrapping. Blood seeped slowly up into the snow, staining it in indistinct streaks.

Gaara tensed and growled, disliking the darkness across his lifeless vision, uncomfortable with the feel of bandages across his face. The cloth slipped, brushing his cheekbone and revealing the edges of one mutilated eye.

"Do it again," Baki ordered from behind me; I jumped and swore.

"Maybe later," I muttered darkly, casting him a sour sideways glance, even though he was too far behind for me to actually see him.

"Now." A hand bearing yet more fresh bandages appeared in my vision; I scowled at it.

What the hell would he do if I said no? Kill me? Do it himself?

Neither got him what he wanted: an absence of his further responsibility for Gaara. I would be the creature's keeper, and he would be the master who deployed the weapon as needed.

That damn man made me mad.

Snarling internally, I snatched the fabric from Baki and advanced the last step toward Gaara. To my surprise, he flinched backwards, maybe sensing the sudden movement. Startled, I gasped slightly, feeling like I'd inhaled a bug. A few grains of sand probably went down my throat, but I'd get used to that living in the desert again, I was sure.

"More bandages," I mumbled, frowning, trying to cover up both our slips with a restatement of the obvious. Even without seeing, he must have heard Baki's orders.

Reluctantly, I reached out with one tense hand, looping a finger around the slackly-woven cloth and tugging, trying my damndest not to touch Gaara as I did so. My knuckles brushed against his hair, which was as stiff and gritty as the toughest desert shrubs; I repressed a shudder and pulled the damn bandages off.

He hissed through his teeth, snarled, and an instant later, I was hip-deep in sand and pain. The monster of grit leapt to my wrist, chaining me to myself; I felt the bone snap, but let out nothing more than a growl to rival Gaara's. It hurt like hell, though. I just didn't want to tell him that.

In one swift motion, Baki strode forward and pushed me away from Gaara, an action that might have been more effective had I not been anchored to the ground by a foundation of sand. Glaring at me as if that were my fault, he imposed himself between us, turning his full attention to his out-of-control genin.

"Gaara, that is enough." His words rang with ice and steel; I could no longer see his eyes, but they must have been formidable, for my earthy prison slithered back over itself slightly, by no means freeing me but at least relaxing.

"Obviously, it has been a long time, Gaara, since we have allowed the success of our mission to depend on you." Baki's tone overflowed with derision. "You speculate as to why?"

"No." His voice was low, hissing, furious. "I don't."