Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or anything associated with it whatsoever. Alas, and woe.

Written in the Dust

Chapter 7

"Sunamaru-sama stop this!" she wailed as much as she could, loud and long, but her throat was raw from shrieking and sobbing, as exhausted and worn out as her aching limbs, wrenched as the dislocated wrist trapped in the hand of one of the orderlies pinning her bodily to the raised platform.

"Sunamaru!" she shrieked again. Sweat soaked hair slapped her face mockingly as her tear-drenched cheeks as she flailed her head in mounting panic. It couldn't be real; it had to be a horrific genjutsu, a contstruct of a sadistic mind by order of the council to break her spirit.

The searing ache in every inch of body, the burning, grinding shards of pain in her wrist, and the red hot pain accompanying every spasming contraction of her womb as it attempted to birth her third child while enduring the sucking drain of the seal on her chakra told her she was very much awake and in reality. She knew an attempt to cancel the jutsu that didn't exist would be futile and waste her precious, dwindling chakra, but any potential escape, no matter how impossible, was better than this.

"Sunamaru snap out of this please!!" Her voiced cracked in agony as both arms were mercilessly yanked into position by the numerous shinobi acting at her husband's, her oldest friend's, coldly, calmly given order. She coughed painfully in a spray of red droplets. Blood slowly dripped onto the platform and slide in crimson tracks down the side.

She hadn't wanted to believe it; couldn't fathom, and couldn't process the horror of the truth of the betrayal that hurt far more than anything they could do to her physically as she shuddered in unabated agony. She struggled uselessly, defenseless, without even the benefit of the now torn away and discarded thin white nightshirt for protection.

"Please, Sunamaru!" she begged, choking, sobs breaking up her words, her weakening flails easily restrained by her captors. "This is the Ichibi controlling you! It has to be! It's evil!" Too exhausted to hold her head up, her skull clunked pitifully against the corpse dust caked stone slab. "It drove its last host insane!"

Her blood-soaked shriek crashed feebly into the bitterly cold, stone walls of the underground chamber after clawing uselessly against indifferent ears.

"Don't do this thing! Stop this!"

For months the vile strings of malevolent chakra that had clung to the Kazekage; becoming increasingly palpable until even the most chakra insensitive council members trembled finely when all sat in session. As the chakra collected like layers of festering flesh, she had witnessed Sunamaru becoming more and more distant.

It had been so subtle at first; he'd always been so intense, so demanding in his wants, so wild when angered. She had been so focused on ensuring that Yashamaru and she maintained control of how Temari and Kankuro were raised, so distracted by setting up a mental and emotional sanctuary for her children against the elders and the distant threat of the daimyo that she hadn't thought too hard when the first Village Council member died, or even the second. She had even put aside considering how Sunamaru had treated her when their newest child was conceived. She had not listened to her kunoichi instincts and intensive training and now she was going to die for it.

The Shukaku, the insane, evil desert monk, name forgotten by time, who had transformed into an evil embodiment of all the dangers of the desert, the permanent target for destruction of his old order, had clawed his way into her husbands mind. Who knew what the Shukaku had promised him? What lies kept luring her husband back again and again into the catacombs beneath Suna, older than memory and full of corpses that refused to rot and one unholy, seemingly mundane, battered old teapot? Did the Ichibi pretend it would protect the village, her, or the children?

Her mind searched for an escape part of her knew wouldn't come.

Why hadn't Kankuro's birth been the turning point she hoped for? Why hadn't the bandits and mercenary nin been crushed instead of increasing in numbers and daring?

How long had she been mislead, tricked, and lied to by her oldest friend?

"Insane?" A shrug. " Maybe so, but maybe it was the seal," he was so clinical, detached. Apathetic. Her heart broke apart into aching pieces, shattered like the bones in wrist. "Chiyo-baa-sama has agreed to apply this new seal which will function better than the old design onto this new jinchuuriki. This will be an experiment of sorts to improve the jinchuuriki's control over the Shukaku's chakra."

Not a 'jinchuuriki', your own child! A sibling of our other two children!

"Sunamaru…" A whimper.

"A new weapon, one that can face any assault, remain completely outside the influence of the Village Council. Perfect. Untouchable, quite literally." Karura gagged on the crimson liquid trickling freely from her nose and eyes. Congealed blood on her eyelashes began to cake her eyes shut. "Oh, don't act so frightened," he admonished her as if she were an unreasonable child awoken from a nightmare. "We both wanted to be free of the council and protect Temari and Kankuro."

He leaned over her pinned body to look her in the face, his eyes no longer dangerous, or wild, just totally, totally insane.

"Using this method, the village will always be protected, our family always safe from those meddling old men, and with the Ichibi at the mercy of it's host, not the other way around. Flawless."

"No," a bare squeak, "this our child." She gagged, choked, and hyperventilated around the blood draining into her throat; her failing voice hardly moving the words past her colorless. "Sunamaru, don't hurt the baby. Please. Please don't... please…"

The room was swimming in her vision, and breath was a fight against the chakra bands tightening like fists, each breath of putrid catacomb vapors requiring all her strength. She couldn't even feel the crushing grip of the orderlies anymore.

"Chiyo-baa-sama, Yashamaru-san…" Unfamiliar voices drifted to her blood leaking ears.

No… Leave him alone…. Not Yashamaru.

"She's dying. The child is killing her…"

It was becoming difficult to hear, and she gagged painfully, blowing a bubble of blood that popped against the sanguine fluid already caked and drying on her blanched lips. Her yellowed eyes rolled useless and unseeing in their bloodied sockets. Every sound was muffled and fuzzy, like listening through a layer of dirt.

"…the doctors tried everything, Yashamaru…. "

"…too fragile! Don't touch her…"

"…all happened so fast…"

"…declining far too quickly…"

"…she wanted to help the Kage to the last Yashamaru-sama…"

"…she volunteered the thing for this…"

Cold. She felt so cold and everything hurt. Shouldn't she be numb if she's this cold? She shuddered uncontrollably as the muscles around her uterus contracted violently.

"Chiyo-baa-sama hurry!"

"GET HER HERE NOW!"

A heartless command. She shuddered uncontrollably now. How could Sunamaru sound like that? No, not Sunamaru, the spirit of a cursed, undead desert monk.

Tendrils of dread curled into her awareness, followed by giddy delight at her pain, at the burning in every spider web of her nerves, every dribbling rivulet of tears, blood, and saliva dripping onto unforgiving stone.

Malevolent, poisonous chakra swirled into her chakra network, directed toward the seal, but also, racing for her lungs, her mouth, and her voice. It seeped into her misfiring nervous system, hijacking muscles and bone.

She cried out, then sucked in rancid air so forcefully she barely felt the orderlies pin her with enough force to snap more weakening bone.

"I hate you all for this…" she rasped.

She sucked in another rattling breath.

"I hate you all for this!!!" she roared, her body not all her own.

What am I saying?

"This village, these people, all of you!"

I am not trying to speak!

She writhed in the restraining grips loosened by utter shock, her blood dribbling over cracked, blue-ing lips flecked with red froth.

"I never even wanted this child! I had the boy they wanted! I had one!!!" She shrieked until she roughly hacked up even more fresh scarlet fluid.

"I had my boy and girl! I didn't want this one!"

No, this one is my baby, too! Someone, please…

Incoherent curses such as she never said flew from between her lips like demons; curses and swears she would never say she used on the village, the council, her husband, and her own baby not even born.

Please…

"I hate you, whoever you will be you vile little thing…"

Please somebody silence me!

"I'll never love you. No one will love you and you'll love only yourself… You little demon, you'll love only you…

I don't mean this! I don't!

"You are… You are Gaara! This child's name is Gaara!

No! You're my baby! Like your sister and brother!

Cruor and hatred boiled over from her cracked lips and she hissed and shouted the lies of hate until her voice shriveled and died completely. The alien chakra began to abandon her voice, satisfied or simply no longer interested, she didn't know, it's acidly cold flow swirled into the coils at her center, sliding through the connection between mother and child, invading her baby through outside direction, manipulated by the forming final seal.

She had wondered at points if she would know what death felt like, the feel of her life force draining away, her senses closing off, silence and nothingness coming in through every avenue of awareness.

Wait. I didn't get to say it. To counter the lies, how I really feel…

Temari and Kankuro drifted through her mind in a watery haze of color. The new child's siblings. She had one last moment to feel, so distantly, like it wasn't even her but another person she didn't even know, as she was sliced open for the Cesarean.

I love you…

AN: The epilogue to this story will be posted separately. It has a different tone than the rest of the story and stands by itself rather well. Look for the one-shot Carved in Stone in my profile shortly. You need to read it to truly read the conclusion of this story.

The Ichibi attempted to use Sunamaru as his way to freedom, but quickly realized Chiyo wouldn't le him escape. Instead it settled for plan B: Learn to use the child. Shukaku also realized that as long as Karura lived, he would never rule the Kage or his son. Her strong family values and affection for them was too strong to override, so Shukaku waged a campaign to destroy their ties to her and her influence on them, including making her shriek complete fabrications at the end.

Thank you to all of you willing to read! I appreciate it greatly.