Iruka stumbled through the sands of Kaze no Kuni as the sun beat down on his head. The sandstorm had left him hopelessly lost, with abrasions all over his exposed arms and face. The wounds stung with the sweat, dirt, and sand that coated his entire body. His lips were cracked and bleeding. It felt like all of the moisture had been sucked from his mouth.

He'd come across a small cactus not so long ago, and he'd spent a long time debating whether or not to drink from it. He didn't know anything about deserts and cacti here, and little about them back in his own world. But he'd definitely heard the stories about cactus water from Sifu Katara. If that was the same here, then the hallucinations could easily lead to his death.

What it came down to was that he would almost certainly die without some sort of water. Better to risk a possible hallucinogen than certain death by dehydration.

So he was slightly better off than he might have been, and his mind seemed sober. But the cactus had been small, and there had been only one. He needed to find more water soon, as well as some sort of shelter. His dark skin wasn't prone to burning, but he had a feeling he was going to find out what severe sunburn felt like.

He'd tried to stick to traveling during the night and resting during the day. He'd known that much about desert survival. Unfortunately, he hadn't found any sort of shade by the time the sun had risen beyond the horizon, and he was exhausted on top of all of his other ailments.

Iruka didn't know how he was going to survive this.

It would be so easy to just…stop. If the sun and the heat weren't so cursed uncomfortable, he thought he might have done just that. As it was, if he lived long enough to find shade, he'd probably just drop dead as soon as he reached it.

The wind kicked up again. Iruka's eyes watered. He blinked, but the sand left behind dark spots on his vision. They grew larger, obscuring more and more of what he could see. He wasn't even sure if his legs were moving.

Something…something was niggling at him. The thoughts just wouldn't come to him. He squinted as a different colored blob slipped into his view. Was that something…someone small? Or just more spots?

That niggling resolved itself just before he lost consciousness.

Chakra. He could sense chakra.

A monstrous amount of it, actually.

Time passed as he drifted. He burned. Everything hurt. He struggled to breathe, to move, as the weight of some vague, nebulous horror threaded through his delirium. The fear and feelings of alienation that he had become so adept at pushing back - the agonizing loneliness of being the last, first, only – wrecked his body and mind. Every breath, every heartbeat was a struggle.

And still he fought. He didn't know how to stop.

Iruka had no idea how much time had passed before he became truly aware of the world again. Everything ached, as though a harsh fever had finally broken. There was also a sharper pain, a burning tightness to his skin, as though he had gone up against a gang of firebenders on a waterless battleground.

Someone had laid damp cloths on and around him. Whoever it was hadn't removed his clothes, but they'd managed to place some beneath his shirt and against his skin. They also must have compromised with his pants, as they were damp below the knee. The air was cooler than he expected, and he could no longer feel the sun beating down on him, suffocating him with heat. It might have been night, but it felt more like he was in some sort of cave.

Iruka cracked an eye open for a moment. Yep. Cave.

He had no way of telling the time, but pain and exhaustion drove that insignificant worry from his head. He had just enough energy to pull a bit of healing from the water in the damp cloths before gladly succumbing to unconsciousness.

When Iruka woke again, he felt…better. For a given definition of better, anyway. His mouth was still dry and tasted of blood and sand, but there was a chipped bowl of water lying next to him. He levered himself upright with a groan and reached out to for a drink. Blankets had been arranged into something of a nest, atop a bed of sand that protected him from the rock floor. He'd definitely slept on worse.

But who had rescued him?

As if in answer to his unspoken question, the shifting of sand immediately brought his attention to his watcher and probable rescuer. Iruka's gaze darted over to meet bright green eyes ringed with alarmingly dark circles, peeking out from beneath red hair. The boy watched him with caution and an almost bashful expression.

He was so small. But his chakra was enormous and…dense? It was difficult to describe, but he supposed dense was close enough.

"Hello," he said. His voice came out as more of a croak than anything, and he coughed. Iruka took another drink of water, hoping that would help.

The boy remained silent, watching him warily. Whether or not he was as young as he appeared – Iruka really hoped not – no child should look like that. But then, he supposed that was simply what this world was like.

He tried not to think about what he had probably looked like when he'd been taken from Ba Sing Se.

"My name is Iruka," he said, voice still hoarse but less than before. "Umino Iruka," he added. It was difficult getting into the habit of including his second name. But it had been a gift. An important one. He was still unaccustomed to it, but he wanted to use it. It would just take practice.

"I'm Gaara." He stood very still as he said it, face downcast.

Iruka wanted to frown, but he suspected Gaara would misinterpret that. "It's nice to meet you, Gaara." He tried sensing other chakra signatures, but as exhausted as Iruka was he couldn't concentrate enough to overcome the way the boy's seemed to drown out everything else. "Do you know who saved me?"

Gaara shuffled his feet and looked up at him from beneath his eyelashes. "I did," he said quietly.

Iruka blinked in surprise, and rasped, "All by yourself?"

He nodded.

"Well," Iruka said, shoving down his fury at this child's guardians allowing him to wander the desert alone. "Thank you very much, Gaara. You saved my life."

The corners of his mouth quirked up a bit when the boy visibly brightened. He looked almost grateful just for Iruka's thanks, and the waterbender's heart ached. He could infer quite a number of things from how Gaara behaved, and none of it good.

He sighed, swallowing another sip of water and looking around at the surprisingly large cavern. Most of the pitted stone was coated in sand, but he could just barely make out patches of dampness on the walls in the flickering firelight and weak rays of what he was pretty sure was sunlight. His overheated skin was sensitive to the cool, slightly damp air, and if he concentrated he thought he could hear a water trickling somewhere near the back of the cave. He never would have guessed that something like this could exist in the desert.

He leaned his aching body back down, grimacing slightly in discomfort and repositioning the damp cloths he'd knocked askew. His clothes and hair felt gritty, and his skin stung at the movement. Ugh. Sand really did get everywhere.

"How did you find this place?" Iruka wondered, stifling a cough. He turned his head so that he could see Gaara in his peripheral vision.

The child inched closer. "No one wants to play with me. Or be with me. Except my uncle, but he has to go on missions a lot. Everyone's scared of me. So I go out into the desert sometimes and explore."

"That's dangerous," Iruka said, trying very hard not to look appalled. "I'm glad you rescued me, but you could get hurt, Gaara."

"I don't get hurt," he said blankly, now an arm's length away.

Iruka might have dismissed this as a child's naivete, their innocent and dangerous sense of invincibility. But something about the way he said it had the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. "What do you mean?" he asked. "And why would people be afraid of you?" It was probably something to do with the unbelievable chakra contained within such a tiny body, but he couldn't imagine what it was, exactly.

Gaara shrugged. "People try to kill me sometimes. But I don't get hurt." He frowned and looked away guiltily. "I don't mean to. But sometimes I hurt people."

Iruka heard the shifting of sand and looked down at the cracked, empty bowl, only to see it balancing on a mound of sand that lifted it into the air. His eyes widened and darted over to meet bright green. He forgot himself for a moment, heart racing as he wondered, was this a sandbender?

Reality crashed down on him almost immediately. Gaara wasn't bending, wasn't making any of the motions required of benders. And he could sense the chakra threaded through the sand.

But horror quickly overtook his disappointment. Gaara was a child! A small and innocent child, who probably hadn't even begun learning to read yet, and people tried to kill him? Iruka had known that this world was a nightmare, but that was…was… That was basically infanticide, may they find themselves face to face with Koh the Face Stealer, and their souls become trapped upon the mortal plane, wandering forever lost among the ice floes.

"Gaara," he breathed. He reached out, but gave the young boy the choice of whether or not to accept his touch. "There is absolutely no excuse anyone can give to justify trying to hurt you, much less kill you. I'm so sorry."

Large eyes watched him suspiciously, and Iruka couldn't blame him. He remained patient as Gaara slowly inched closer, until Iruka's hand was buried in his hair.

It was surprisingly sandy. Even for someone who seemed to spend much of his time in a desert.

He ruffled the bright red hair gently. Iruka had seen maybe one red-head before arriving in this world, and never such a vibrant shade. He'd certainly never been close enough to touch. Aside from the grains of sand, it just felt like ordinary hair. Not that he'd really expected any differently, but who knew? He had expected to brush out more sand than he did, though, considering how much of it he could feel.

Gaara stared at him in something like awe, his body seemingly frozen in place. Iruka blinked when his palm brushed against the other's forehead. His brows furrowed slightly. He cautiously smoothed the bright red bangs back to lay his hand upon Gaara's forehead, as though to check his temperature.

If possible, the small boy looked even more tense, this time with something like fear. "That's why people try to hurt me."

"What do you mean?"

Iruka flinched in shock when the smooth skin suddenly seemed to crack, abruptly gaining a grainy texture and separating from… It took him a moment to register what he was seeing. "It's like a shell of sand," he murmured to himself. "A carapace…no, an armor." He met Gaara's gaze. "That's how you protect yourself. Although…Gaara, when was the last time someone touched you without hurting you?"

The sand began to shift, vibrating almost. The child's lower lip trembled. "I don't kn-know. But it's 'cause…Sometimes it hurts other people, but I don't mean to!"

Iruka gasped when the floating sand contracted around his wrist and forearm, like sandpaper against his burns.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry!" Gaara sobbed. "Don't hate me, I'm sorry."

The sand was reacting to the boy's distress, things quickly escalating into something that could become quite dangerous. Iruka gritted his teeth against the increasing pain. Barely mindful enough not to make his movements too sudden or violent, he suppressed the instinct to pull away. Instead, reached further, pressing a hand to Gaara's back and tugging him into a hug.

The sand that had been threaded with the child's wild chakra froze, as did the child himself. It gave the illusion that time had stopped. For a long time, Gaara remained stiff in his arms. Only slowly, incrementally, did he relax. But he made no move to hug back, and Iruka wondered sadly whether that was because he didn't know to do so, or if he thought that any movement of his might disperse some sort of…of genjutsu.

He didn't know how long they sat in that position. He noticed when the sand armor ever so slowly began to trickle away. Not completely, of course, and it hovered close at Gaara's back as if prepared at any moment to guard the child or crush the man. But Gaara just clutched Iruka's shirt in a tight fist until his own shaking died down, while the shaking of the waterbender's weakened body became increasingly noticeable.

The child pulled away then and said thickly, "You gotta lay back down so you can get better." He scrubbed at his tear-stained face and made fluttering, clumsy movements, trying to urge him to rest but having little idea of how to actually help.

Iruka obeyed his direction, hissing in pain. He pulled a bit more healing energy from the damp spot on his shirt, but his eyelids were heavy with exhaustion and he found himself almost collapsing into sleep.

There are a couple of things I feel I should clarify:

1. I was not, in fact, thinking of Gaara when I wrote the summary

2. I think I've said before that I was loosely following the Naruto timeline. Well, it just got a bit looser. I've decided that Gaara (and his siblings) are a couple of years older than they are in the manga/anime. Maybe 3 years? (Hey, the Naruto timeline already makes no sense, I'm just following precedence). It shouldn't have a big impact on things or anything. But I don't think a toddler would be wandering the desert.