I don't own Naruto
Gaara looked on as the sunlight filtered in his practical, yet stylish, office and pleasantly sighed at the rare peace and calm he had at the moment. That is until his brother decided that now would be a great time to demonstrate that peace is but an illusion.
"Gaara, I…uh….we need you to rectify a situation."
Gaara looked at his older brother with his normal stoic face and wondered if maybe he pretended he was asleep with his eyes open, Kankuro would leave him alone.
"Uh Gaara, did you hear what I just said?"
'Not a word, just stay quiet and he'll eventually leave.'
"Gaara, I don't know if you're ignoring me on purpose, but I'm not leaving this office until you fix the situation."
'Damn it.'
"Look, it's about Temari."
Gaara finally changed his facial feature as he attempted to raise a nonexistent eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Yeah, she's down at the private training facility….venting."
"I see." Venting meant only one thing, Temari was pissed at all people of the gender male. Looking at the calendar, Gaara realized that not only was she pissed at half the human race, it was also that special time of a lunar cycle. Add that upon her obviously foul mood, Gaara understood his brother's fear and weighed his decisions on what to do. On one hand, Gaara was the only person that had a somewhat slight chance of surviving an encounter with a wild, untamed, ferocious, and temperamental entity that even Shukaku would run in fear at. Therefore, he was the most logical choice and best decision Kankuro could make. On the other hand, however, Gaara really didn't want to. Thus, after a serious ten seconds of contemplation, Gaara came up with the fairest judgment. "Kankuro, go and help Temari alleviate her stress."
Shock, panic, betrayal, and utter fear plastered across the puppeteer's face. "C'mon Gaara, that ain't funny. You know that you're the only one that can handle this. Last time I tried to help alleviate her troubles; she almost made me into her sister."
A face that showed no jest responded with, "I've always wanted another sister."
"THAT'S NOT FUNNY AND YOU KNOW IT!"
Gaara sighed as he looked upon his brother with pity. Kankuro was currently on his knees crying and begging for the Kazekage to save him from impending doom. "So, instead of you handling the situation yourself, you want your kawaii otouto to risk his neck to save yours." After Kankuro desperately nodded his head, Gaara continued. "Why would I do something like this when there are clearly no benefits for me?"
"Because I'm your brother and you love me."
Gaara's eyebrow twitched at the family love card his older brother pulled. "It is true that I do love you, but the question is how much do I love you?"
"Love should have no boundaries."
Gaara once again sighed as he realized that his brother would give up his pride, dignity, and who knows what else to win this negotiation. "Fine, I'll do it." Kankuro jumped and cheered in celebration, until the redhead interrupted him. "I'll do this because I love you. Not because you're the closest thing to a personal assistant to me, and not because that if you died, the paperwork would keep me from my dinner reservations with Matsuri tonight." A look of puzzlement and slight dread graced the black-clad puppet user. "Remember, I do this because I love you, not because you'll be doing all of the paperwork for the next month."
Kankuro gulped at the clear message delivered in his little brother's statement. Looking to his right, Kankuro noticed that Gaara took last week as the week to completely ignore all the paperwork. And as he continued to study the several stacks of paper trying to imitate a mountain, Kankuro could have swore it was growing by itself. 'Okay, I assumed there was gonna be consequences for this. I didn't even do anything wrong but I'm still gonna be punished. This sucks major ass.' He then took a deep breath as he weighed his options. 'Alright, the payoff will determine on what Temari will do. Would Temari just straight out kill me, or would she be so vindictive that she would take her time in torturing me by castration.' Noticing the self-growing paperwork, Kankuro continued his assessments. 'Clearly the decision would be easy if she decided to have mercy and just kill me; death over paperwork any day of the week. But she is venting, meaning she's clearly pissed off at men in general. Pissed Temari equates into torture and castration. Damn it, looks like I'll be suffering carpal tunnel for the next month.'
Gaara looked on in triumph as his brother finally succumbs to Gaara's demands and pointed at the stacks. "I'm glad that you love me as well dear brother. You can start on those, right there, and once you're done with them, you can start on the ones I hid in the closet behind you."
Kankuro looked up in alarm. 'The ones you hid in the closet?!?!?!'
"I shall not return until a much later date. Have a nice month, nii-san." Then, Gaara made his impromptu exit.
Not even registering the fact that his little brother left, Kankuro opened the closest door and immediately drowned in a flood of paperwork. And even if he didn't drown and die by paperwork, Kankuro would have drowned in his own tears anyways.
THIS LINE IS A SCENE BREAK AND HAS NO RELEVANCE TO THIS STORY OTHER THAN TO SEPARATE SCENES
Temari huffed as she used her fan to break the supposedly unbreakable steel post. 'Damn it! It's not like I asked him to just drop everything and meet all my needs. It was my last night in Konoha and I just wanted dinner.' She accentuated her thought with another fan-swipe at another post. 'I mean, is it so much to ask for dinner? I'm only there, like, once every two months. How hard is it to stop staring at the damn clouds and have dinner?' And another unbreakable post becomes two unbreakable half-posts.
"Hello, Temari." The addressed person quickly spun around to face the fifth generation Kazekage. A look of surprise adorned the temperamental blonde's face as she realized that she was so distracted and preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn't notice the person with largest chakra capacity within a five-hundred kilometer radius walk up to her. Gaara merely ignored her shock and said, "I see you've been venting again."
Temari huffed and crossed her arms in response. "I wasn't venting. I was just training and dusting off the rust I gained from being in Konoha too long."
Wisely not stating the fact that she's only in Konoha for three days at a time, Gaara instead said, "You've destroyed an entire shipment of undestroyable training posts."
"Huh!?!?!" Temari turned around and saw over a hundred of those flimsy posts (in her mind) laying all over the training field. Composing herself, she faced her youngest brother once again. "We got ripped off on those training posts. And I wasn't venting." Arms still crossed, Temari focused an intense glare at the redhead, daring him to say otherwise.
Being suddenly thrust under a highly concentrated death beam, Gaara carefully chose his words. "I am simply making an observation. Kankuro and I were worried because you seemed agitated. I dislike having the most important woman in my life being unhappy." Using Kankuro's tactic of appealing to sibling love became an instant favorite technique for Gaara to use on his older sister.
The gentle tone and rare admission of love softened Temari's face, bringing an end to Gaara's unnoticeable discomfort. Gaara hardly ever expressed sentimentality and spoke it even less. Every time Gaara showed how much he changed from his childhood, it hit a soft spot in Temari's heart and she treated each moment as a godsend. "I'm sorry Gaara, I appreciate your concern, but it isn't anything important. I'm just a little frustrated at someone, and just a little frustrated at myself."
"If it isn't something important, then no one will mind me killing the thing, or person, that made my older sister unhappy."
Temari giggled at Gaara's act of overprotected behavior. "Gaara, I don't think killing a Konoha diplomat would help relations between us and them."
"So it's the shadow user that once again makes you unhappy. I have my new target. He will be eliminated within a week."
Temari straight-out laughed this time at Gaara's half-joking manner. Walking over, Temari engulfed her little brother in an uncommon show of affection. "Thank you so much for being my brother. I don't know what I would do without you."
"The first thing you would do will be most likely murdering our brother." Temari laughed once again and continued to embrace her usually favorite brother. "However, if you were to be without me, you would survive. For me, without you, is an existence that I am incapable of having."
Temari broke off the hug and smiled. "You need to stop exaggerating. You've already cheered me up. No need to lay it on so thick."
"I am not exaggerating. But I am also pleased that you are no longer unhappy."
Temari didn't respond, but she did scuffle Gaara's red hair in an affectionate manner. After the moment passed and silence took over for a bit, Temari remembered her somber mood from before and asked the redheaded Kazekage a question no brother ever wants to hear. "Gaara, am I….am I unattractive?"
Seeing the timid and fearful look on his sister's face, Gaara squeezed his hands to a fist and quietly seethed in anger. That facial expression should never show up on his strong sister's countenance. "No, you have a beauty that no man deserves to ever lay their eyes upon. Only a fool and liar will ever claim otherwise."
"If that's true, how come you're the only one who has ever told me so?"
"Like you've said before, nee-san, all men are fools and liars except me."
Laughing and wiping a tear that escaped her eye, Temari looped her arms around Gaara's arm and they walked side by side back home. "Still, it would be nice if there was someone else like you that would notice me." Leaning her head onto her brother's shoulder, she contemplated. 'You've got Matsuri doting after you, and even Kankuro has that sweetheart of his at that tea café. When will I ever find someone that will chase away the loneliness?' "Do you think I'll ever find someone?"
"Of course you will. Someone will eventually see past the unstable psychopath and make-up wearing guy playing with dolls that you always hang around with. And hopefully that same person will be stupid enough to try and date the sister of aforementioned duo."
Gaara smiled as he brought laughter to his sister's life once again.
THIS LINE IS A SCENEBREAK AND ONCE AGAIN HAS NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO SEPARATE SCENES SO YOU SHOULD STOP READING THIS AND FOCUS ON THE STORY
The next day, Gaara reviewed the list he made the night before. After he got back from a casual dinner date, Gaara spent the evening planning on how to make sure that the horrible expression of fear, sadness, and loneliness never show up again on her face. To Gaara, it was simple: find a man who will chase away those negative feelings away. But as simple as it sounds, accomplishing it would be a task completely devoid of simplicity. Finding a man that would be her slave for the rest of his and her life would have been great, but Gaara figured that Temari probably wouldn't want that. When Temari asked if she would ever find someone, she was asking if she would ever find love.
Love is a concept, until this day, that Gaara has still has much to learn about. He had help from his brother and sister, but they weren't very fluent on love as well. Because of this, most of his education on love came from his first ever student, Matsuri. Much to her joy, she enjoyed playing an active role in teaching Gaara a hands-on approach to love, and Gaara couldn't help himself but to enjoy it as well. Love is something to be shared, and a family is supposed to share love. Love is the answer, and Gaara was determined to find love for Temari.
After following this line of thought, Gaara devised a list that would dictate what kind of man he was searching for. And staring at the paper in his desk, Gaara reviewed his list one last time.
Requirements in Temari's Man
A man who is capable of surviving Temari's temper.
A man who will never make Temari unhappy.
A man who I can trust.
A man who Temari can fall in love with.
A man who will fall in love with Temari.
Satisfied with the order of importance, first being the greatest importance and last being the least important, Gaara contemplated each line of the list. While Gaara knew that falling in love with each other was important, the actual falling in love part could be manipulated. As long as each other has time to get to know each other, both could grow to love each other. And if it doesn't work out, he could always find someone else.
However, the reason the first two was important was because those attributes weren't something that could be taught or learned. Meaning the man Gaara chooses has to be most likely a high-powered ninja and a man who knows how to treat women right. So now the list reduces the options from all men to not a whole lot of men.
And then there was expectation number three on the list: A man that Gaara could trust. There were very few people in this world Gaara trusted, and even fewer whom he could trust with his sister's life. In fact, as Gaara went through a mental list of all the men he could trust with his sister, only three names came up. First was Kankuro, probably the one man that he trusted most in the world. However, Gaara was fairly sure that if he suggested dating Kankuro, she would most likely impale Gaara on her fan, favorite brother or not. Plus, he wasn't all too sure if Kankuro qualified expectation number one on the list. The second man Gaara trusted more than anyone was Baki, but Gaara quickly put an X on that as well. After all, the age gap was considerable and he wasn't sure if Baki's wife would accept such a situation.
After mentally crossing out the first two options, Gaara came upon his third and final option. The last man he trusted was a person he considered his inspiration, the man who changed his life. Carefully assessing the qualities he needed in a man, Gaara smiled in satisfaction. And as he saw Kankuro walk down the stairs with a yawn and prepare breakfast, Gaara said, "I will be gone for a few days on a business trip. I shall put you in charge while I'm gone."
Still drowsy and disoriented from sleep, the brunette of the siblings replied, "That's nice. Where are you going?"
"To Konoha."
