A/N: Oh man, guys, is it super cheesy? It's super cheesy, I know. Bahhhh oh well. Anyway. This here is the final chapter. The final chapter. So please take a moment to listen to me being super cheesy:

Like The Obsession, Sand Child will never have a sequel. This is not because I don't wish to tell you what happens next, but simply because I'm stepping out of fanfiction for now. Quite possibly forever. This… is actually super emotional for me, probably more so than it has a right to be. xD But I've gained so much from FF—from you guys. I absolutely cannot believe how far I've come. Don't believe me? Go back and read my first fanfic, then reread this one. (Only don't actually do that, because my first fanfic… -shudder- Please don't.) I just… wow. I'm sure not perfect, but I needed this. And I needed you, every single one of you who encouraged me and criticized me and helped me find the place where I am now. Ahhh I don't deserve any of you.

I'm really seriously going to miss this.

But you see, I'm pursuing writing as my actual career goal, and being obligated to my fanfics doesn't really allow that. I need to leave fanfiction behind and move on to my original writing. So the next time you hear from me (apart from replying to my reviews, of course, which I strive always to do)… I'll have published a novel. Because rest assured, if somehow this momentous miracle does occur (…I have a long way to go), no way could I fail to let my wonderful devoted readers know. (:

And in the meantime, I am more grateful to you than you can ever imagine, and I love you all. Enjoy the cheese!

With oodles of love,

Kit

-/-

I didn't actually know where Gaara was standing to throw this massive temper tantrum, but I assumed he hadn't left his house. So I slammed my way into the Kazekage's mansion and collapsed a moment against the doorframe, noting the raw red hue my skin had taken on beneath shredded fishnet and glove. The sand may have let me pass, but it did not do so with kitten breath in mind.

Several ninja rendered impotent by the sandstorm leapt to their feet at my arrival. I coughed dust, rubbing at my eyes until tears cut dirty swaths down my cheek, and demanded hoarsely, "Where is he?"

"The roof," said a shinobi I recognized as the one who'd tipped the hat he wasn't wearing to Soriko, back before we'd left for Konoha. I stalked past him, muttering the darkest words I knew around the grit in my throat, heading up.

I burst out onto the roof and the door banged shut behind me with a sound like the gates of hell locking into place. I followed shortly, crashing backwards into the door as the storm rescinded its unexplained mercy that had allowed me to move within its grip. It clearly could have eviscerated me in seconds, but it chose to take its time, tearing into my skin as if testing the waters. I could hardly breathe for sand in my mouth and my veins.

With difficulty, I gathered the grains of my own dust. Most had long since fled my control, dancing gaily into Gaara's storm; I dragged at the ones ground into my clothing, caught in my hair, and flung them into the wind as I began to walk. Splitting my attention between moving forward and directing my sand actually made the stuff go somewhat in the direction I wanted: not straight through the gold inferno, but sideways, spiraling inward into the course of the storm. I didn't know I was approaching Gaara until I nearly ran into him, my vision so sticky with dirt I might as well have plastered chewing gum across my eyes.

His dust-bedeviled silhouette cleared a little, with me inches from him. His usually-pale skin was veined with blue like rivers, and he seemed to be bulging with muscles in places Gaara had never bothered to acquire muscles. I squinted, trying to decipher the mutations, when my sand swerved up behind him and scraped across his face.

They didn't move deep enough to wound; this wasn't a desperate attack like the one that'd taken his eyes. It was just a reminder, a wake-up call, fueled by more emotions than just the rage I was busy paying attention to.

Unexpectedly, at the touch, Gaara stiffened. With the movement, every grain of sand that comprised the storm froze like fireflies hitting a hundred thousand windshields all at once. And then they fell, cascading over me—and the rest of the village—in a deluge that hammered me to my knees and was going to be a hell of a time cleaning up.

I staggered back to my feet and glared down at Gaara, who had collapsed with his storm, and now sprawled among the miniature golden dunes that swelled over the roof of the Kazekage's mansion. I opened my mouth to excoriate him until he bled contrition—or until he killed me and we were done with this damned nonsense. But pale and worn amid the soft gritty gold, he looked too helpless, and apparently I'd grown less heartless when I wasn't looking, because instead of yelling, all that came out of my mouth was, "What did they to do you?"

He stirred, feeble as a baby bird, and the shreds of flesh that had once been eyelids flickered. "Nothing," he said, his voice so weak a spider couldn't have heard it. "That is… the problem." He started to sit up, moving as if he fought steel solidifying his veins, and then he jerked forward, empty eyes turned on me as they hadn't in so many months. Fury flickered across his blood-streaked face, fury that matched mine, and he said sharply, "I will kill you."

My aggravated state returned with a vengeance. I fisted my hands on my hips and snapped, "Wait just a minute, Red, not if I kill you first."

I could tell that if he'd had the energy, he would have scoffed. As it was, not even a twitch of his sand could proclaim his derision, but I knew. I scowled, calling up a handful of grains that had worked themselves free of the fallen storm. "It's not such a difficult thing now, kid, you don't have any chakra left. It might not even be any fun to wreak my revenge. What'd you have to go and waste all that energy for?" I realized I hadn't irritated him nearly enough with my words and revised my question: "What the hell did you have to go and waste all that energy for?"

He looked past me with a weary exasperation in the set of his mouth and said, "Sunagakure betrayed me."

"Like hell!" I jabbed my thumb at my forehead. "They gave me this hope, all the while plotting to stuff some demon my throat. Which—dammit—would be to your benefit, since they'd be ripping it out of you! Betrayed you, ha." I kicked some sand at him; it skittered across his hand in a tiny golden rain. "Betrayed me. So what're you complaining about?"

He looked ready to collapse back into his cushion of sand dunes and stay there. "The Council rescinded their decision. The demon… is to stay with me." A flash of some emotion touched his face, like he was determined to stay angry, no matter how drained he was. "It is your fault."

"Oh, so you're going to kill me after you punish them for turning on you like masters who abused their vicious dog?" The words lashed out bitterly, masking the surge of disgust I suddenly felt for not Gaara but Sunagakure. They never recognized what they had. They threw me away, then Gaara, and the disappointment struggling through his heart must have been greater than the pull of the tides. "In case you forgot," I added, trying to be smug, "I almost beat you in Konoha, when you were all full of chakra, so you don't stand a chance now, redhead."

"It was a set-up," he murmured. "I was never… intended to win. We needed you."

Well that dragged all my forced smugness away like a cat with a dead rat. I had motivation only for an expression of annoyed disbelief before something thudded against the door to the roof, trying to smash it open past the piles of sand that held it in place.

My chance had nearly passed; whatever punishment Baki, the Kazekage, and his minions wreaked on the both of us, I doubted they would let me kill Gaara. I gathered my sand into a tight ring around my fist and looked down at the redhead, the host for a demon who was meant to be mine. If I killed him, I didn't know what would happen to the Shukaku, but maybe it would die, too, and I would be safe from any future whims of Sunagakure.

The door grated open two inches, and I snarled down at Gaara, giving up all pretenses. "Get up," I said, letting my sand fall in a thin stream back into its pouch. "Come on, Red, get up. We have some running to do."

He didn't seem to comprehend, so I let an exasperate sigh wrench its way from my throat and then stepped forward. I hated it—I wanted to touch him now less than ever, knowing how close he'd come to watching me suffer the fate he knew firsthand—but I grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. He was heavy with exhausted, but at least I didn't have to drag his gourd full of sand with us, too. I struggled to the edge of the roof as the door burst in another few inches, nearly crumpled under Gaara's weight as we jumped down, and then ducked down a near-invisible alley in as close to a run as we could manage.

-/-

I really wanted to go to Nami's place, because I already knew she was on board with leaving Suna behind. But she hated Gaara, and I sure as hell wouldn't make it up that cliff lugging his chakraless form anyway. Plus Soriko was closer, and even though I was now known to be associated with her, I figured she could help.

She answered several seconds into my frantic knocking and wearing someone else's face. The disguise dissolved when she saw Gaara and I, coated in blood and near to collapse, and the questioning look she gave me didn't need any words.

"Hide us," I said, as close to begging as I would ever come.

"I think," said Soriko, "they know what I can do? If they find strangers here, will there be doubt?"

"We don't want to stay," I said. "We're going to see Nami. But we need to be invisible on the way there."

She nodded thoughtfully, then inquired, "Can I come?"

I stared at her, said, "Sure, whatever," then thought better of it. "Soriko, we're not coming back to Suna. Ever. It'll be a damned unpleasant life." And it would be, I knew sourly, hating the sick selfish feeling in my gut that wanted to think of a way to go back to being a shinobi who was—not coddled, not living easy, but living the proper life. It couldn't happen now.

But at least, wherever we were going, there would be no more betrayal. I would make damned sure of that.

"I know," Soriko said firmly.

"You have no reason to hate Suna, do you really want—"

"Yes," she said, all trace of the questioning lilt to her voice vanished like a spider's broken web. "Saru Tei was my best friend, and I was gonna marry Saru Kobin." She said it like a child, which was all she was—all she had been when Nami's brothers had been alive. But I couldn't question her. I just nodded somberly and said, "Three's better than two."

"They'll be expecting two, right?" A film of cheer returned to her face and she spun, crouching to scribble on a piece of paper that graced the floor. "Good thing I've already done you and Gaara. And me?" she added pensively. "I know me pretty well."

A flurry of seals later, three strangers left Soriko's house: an old man limping on the arm of his rose-haired granddaughter, with a puppy trotting gaily in their wake.

-/-

The cliff still presented a problem. I could barely climb it without giving Gaara a piggyback ride; the redheaded burden would never let me get up there. Luckily, we splashed through a couple unexplained puzzles on at its base, clearly Kanri's warning system. The sky-haired Saru dropped over the edge and sped toward us, one hand on the stone, gathering velocity until he landed with a silent shudder that spoke of unreasonable chakra control and years of practicing a rapid descent to minimize the inconvenience of his home.

"Soriko, I presume?"

The puppy barked enthusiastically, startling me into a wince that jolted Gaara into a reluctant grunt of pain. I didn't apologize, just nodded shortly and said, "You know how Nami said to leave? We want to leave."

Kanri eyed us with cool scrutiny, clearly taking in the weary way we walked and the drain of chakra. Then he said flatly, "You expect to escape in that shape."

"What the hell choice do we have?"

He shrugged as if this didn't actually matter, though he pivoted with an urgency that belayed the appearance. Possibly the sound of pursuing footsteps echoed to his ears and drove him on, though of course we were too far from Suna's streets for this to be possible.

"Follow," he ordered shortly, setting off along the base of the sentinel wall, hands flipping into a series of signs as he moved. "But the dog stays. We are not smuggling a loudmouthed puppy out of the village."

"Um," I said. "The puppy's Soriko."

He stopped, voice suddenly chill and sharp as a field of icicles as he asked, "Then who is the old man?"

Gaara stirred at my shoulder, but left me to defend him without help. This was possibly a mistake, because I had reason to hate him as much as anyone—and I did. But I also didn't. We were birds in a basket. Two pears in a pot. However the hell that saying went. "What hell does it matter?" I snapped. "He's coming with us, and we don't have time for this stupidity, so let's get moving."

The tension did not ease from his shoulders, but Kanri moved forward again, hands weaving the jutsu once more. "You better save his life or something later," I muttered to Gaara as we staggered after. "Or else we'll just have to deal with his grudge through all our outlaw days."

Only then I raised my voice and said, "I get it, Kanri. I lost my family because of him, too. But we all lost family because of them."

Kanri nodded once, tersely, but not in disagreement, and I thought he relaxed infinitesimally as he led us on.

-/-

The warrens beneath Suna's cliffs were dark and cold and everything I had never hoped to experience again. Until next winter, anyway, but hell, I hibernated during the winter. They pressed in on us like the closing maw of a giant beast, and all I could think to do to keep my mind off them was talk.

"Where's Nami?" I asked. I thought I'd been loud, but the tyrant stone muted my voice. Probably best, but it nagged at me.

"She can't come yet," answered Kanri, quiet as the wind in a meadow. He apparently still thought we could be pursued in here, though I'd never known about these tunnels. From what I gathered, they were a Saru family secret: guarding them was the task of each new generation. This seemed to indicate that some of the tunnels went up, which was the only explanation I could think of for having a house so high in the wall. "She has to find a way to get mother out."

I snorted, but not loud enough to raise Kanri's ire. I just couldn't figure out what we were supposed to do with a half-catatonic former shinobi while running around in the desert, but what the hell. It's not like I could change their minds. And it's not like I didn't understand that he didn't want to sacrifice any more family to Sunagakure's mercy. I wondered if Soriko had any relatives she wanted to save, but she didn't volunteer the information.

"Hey," I said softly, not quite sure I wanted to say it. "Do you think we could go back to Konoha and get my mother out?"

Once I'd asked, I regretted it. I couldn't take care of her; I'd never wanted to. But I was anchorless, without any family of my own—and I couldn't bear that Gaara would have lost me everything. Kanri just looked back at me, face grey in the dark as if covered by a veil, and said, "Of course."

Gaara shivered slightly, then said hoarsely, "Temari… Kankuro.,,"

"Um… what? Why?"

"This was never… their fault."

"They won't want to come, Red."

He paused a moment, then agreed, "No. Perhaps not. They would not… follow me."

This struck me as being unreasonably sad, like drowning children, and I refrained from comment. At last we broke out into the desert night, which provided no respite from the cold and dark of the tunnels except for the light of the stars. They spread out above us like a hundred sparkling armies; I stared up at them until my neck protested, then dropped Gaara's arm and untied the hitai-ate from my head.

I gazed down at the Sunagakure symbol that I had craved for so long, even as I bore the Konohagakure one—even as I had worn the hitai-ate of two villages, with neither claiming me. Konoha's betrayal had not been the fault of the Hokage; she'd had no choice but to surrender me, to keep the peace between my homes, as Suna had undoubtedly planned. But that void within me ached now that I'd noticed it.

Yet it didn't hurt half as much as the place where Suna had torn out my heart like weeds. My determined loyalty had been ugly and worthless to them, a testament to my blindness. Blindness that rivaled Gaara's. And I'd been so derisive of his lack of direction. Mine was worse: my direction led me into a hole that threatened to devour me and then spit me back out like refuse.

Slowly, I drew a kunai from my holster, pressed its tip to the metal of the hitai-ate, and dragged a line through the symbol of Sunagakure.

"Is this how all missing-nin start out?" I asked the sky at large, tying the cloth back beneath my ponytail, which probably looked like a cat who'd been left out in the rain by now.

"Betrayed?" said Soriko, the first word I'd heard her utter since she'd barked at Kanri.

"Yeah. I dunno. With a cause."

"We have a cause?"

"Nah. I guess not. Besides family and loyalty and all that great stuff." But the idea fidgeted in my head like a nervous snake, even though I couldn't take it seriously and still retain an opinion of myself somewhere short of insane.

-/-

We had to leave the desert for a while, or it would've been all too easy for Suna to catch us again. We traveled to places that never could have rivaled the Land of Wind for beauty, keeping our heads down and trying to get along. I guess I came pretty close to killing Gaara again (or making the attempt, anyway), and so did Kanri, but not as close as Gaara came to killing both of us. Nami joined us after a while, followed by her navy-haired mother who blinked too much and always seemed vaguely on the edge of dropping back into sleep. The expressions that set the Saru family's faces to glowing at the reunion reawakened the desire to plan the retrieval of my mother, too, though plans and me got on like mongooses and serpents. But it was still too soon; they hadn't stopped looking for us.

When we passed by Amegakure again, I detoured to see the desert. I didn't dare step out into the open, but I stared out to where the grass turned to rolling gold and wish for that dry heat against my skin, yellow grit instead of mud. Gaara followed me, and his sand roiled at his feet as if yearning to rejoin its kin.

"Your dad thought you were in love with me," I said casually, as if this is something normal people bring up in conversation. Hint: it sure as heck isn't.

Gaara frowned slightly, then said, "No."

"That's flattering."

"I… can't."

"No. I get it." I titled my head back and examined what I could see of the sky. It didn't match the desert's for blue, though they weren't so very distant from each other. "It's hard stuff, huh?"

He said nothing, which made sense, because he didn't need to argue or agree. Loving people was damn hard, and I thought I hadn't done enough of it in my short and bitter existence. "We should go back," I said suddenly. A startled flinch took ahold of his sand, but I pressed on, grinning. "No, this is a great idea. Listen, we raise an army of the bitter and betrayed, then go back to Suna, overthrow its moron government, and you," I finished triumphantly, trying and failing to hold back my laughter, "take over as Kazekage from your moronic father. It's perfect."

This turned out to be one of the rare occasions where Gaara once again offered me a blank-bandage stare. I was struck by a sudden urge, but resisted it as he said slowly and incredulously, "You believe that you—and I—have the… charisma… to raise an army?"

I snickered, choked on the sound, and coughed embarrassingly for a minute. "No," I said when I'd recovered, then chortled again. More carefully this time. "But Soriko could."

His expression sent me into another tide of laughter. "Nah, I'm kidding," I said, breathless as a deflating hot air balloon as the mirth drifted away. And then I succumbed to the random impulse and reached out. First I touched his face, feather-light, so he knew what I was doing, and then I untangled the bandages from his eyes.

The sight of the scarred flesh drove a spike through my chest, as usual, but I forced myself not to look away, gag, or run screaming in guilty terror. No matter how many times I changed his bandages, this was still a challenge, but somehow, I managed. The demon hardly ever ripped its way into his vision anymore; the cloth was not so much precaution as a crutch, so that I didn't have to look at what I'd done.

To my surprise, the kind that turned my jaw into an anvil, Gaara said quietly, "I am sorry."

I dropped the bandages on the ground and fidgeted with the mask from Eiji that I still wore on my belt. "Damn, kid. I mean, darn. You don't—" I shrugged futilely, kicking mud over the cloth white as roses, then said abruptly, "Hey, we should switch names."

His expression clearly demanded to know how many more dumb-as-cows ideas I was going to come up with today, but he only said, "What?"

"Okay, that's another stupid one. But all the same…" I snorted. "Sunako. 'Sand child'? I mean, how obvious can you get? My mother, let me tell you." I paused, staring out into the distant bright desert, and said, "I'm not Suna's child anymore."

"And I?"

"Well… Gaara. The demon loving only itself, right?"

"…Yes."

"Well, we can't have that."

I turned away from the seductive sun, turned my back on the desert. "Okay. New deal. We give each other new names. You can be… Akage."

I looked back just in time to see his expression, vexed as a fox faced with a stream too wide to cross, and grinned. "Yeah, I know. Okay, your turn. What's my new name?"

He hesitated, giving it way more consideration than I had. I felt a moment's contriteness for being as flippant with his name as with pancakes, but damn, it's not like it didn't fit him. Finally, after keeping me suspended over a cliff with genuine curiosity, he said, "Hiikime."

I tried it on, then determinedly met his empty gaze, though he wouldn't know it. I refused to let my sight stray past him to the desert again. "Sure. Thanks, Red."

We headed back to the camp, walking in step, Gaara's—Akage's, haha—movements far from graceful but without needing my help to find his way. Before we reached the others, his quiet question brushed the air like the fletching of an arrow on its way by.

"Why?"

I didn't know which part he meant, and afraid to ask, I simply pretended he referred to the naming business. "Because that's who we used to be. And I'm starting to hate—" I hesitated. "—the past. So isn't it better to forget it?"

"…No."

I sighed. "You're probably right, darn it. But I'm going to try anyway. Start over. With you. And them." I nodded ahead, to where the remains of the Saru family and Soriko waited, then scowled a little as I realized I was going to finish with, "But I guess mostly with you."

-/-

When the dry winds of the desert whispered back toward them through their cover, the hot gusts still spoke of hell to him, though he knew she would never consider them as such. But they were a hell he had escaped, a hurricane-fury of bloodlust and betrayal that he didn't have to go back to—even if he were to take her seriously and fight for Suna. If he did return, then, it would be to remake the place: to convert hell into an oasis where he could breathe. He did not want to, but he found that he would, if she came upon the way—the will—to do so.

Her. Hiikime, now, by his design. No longer the little girl who'd approached him in a desolate land—but still the girl with her hand outstretched, whether she intended it or not. He'd trailed her in and out of the desert, the blind man following the girl who couldn't see.

He didn't want to forget, though the past haunted him as those winds, because then he might not remember the opening of their eyes.