Brother Sand, Sister Wind
Forest green eyes gleamed like dark emeralds in the midnight and followed the natural, flawless grace of a ruby haired man. He seemed to dance up the tawny shadows of the country's towering dunes.
It was the second week Gaara of the Sand had silently strolled out into the harsh desert, Temari always watching protectively from his shadow. Two weeks had passed since Gaara had been stripped of the jinchuuriki Shukaku's influence. Since their return Temari had watched her young Kazekage with baited breath held.
Gaara came to a pause on top of Shakunetsu as Temari, beside him, pulled her desert robes into tight folds before wrapping her lean, tanned face. Far off in the distance the moon glowed copper as the sharp edges blurred against the horizon.
"Sandstorm," Gaara rasped as the sand at his feet trickled down the face of the huge dune. It wasn't by his will it did so.
"Perhaps we shouldn't be on top of Suna's storm cutter," Temari suggested even as she tied off the wrappings around her large fan.
Gaara took a sideways, braced stance against the incoming howling winds. The dust clouded over the entire koketsu. The moon hazed blood red before blinking out completely. The storm raged up to them. Dust and wind rolled over. For a brief moment Temari noticed how it skirted around the unwrapped Kazekage beside her, as though it was unwilling to mar his perfection with it's drab dusting.
The true storm screamed for them, hungry to devour them and everything else it could. In a split second Temari dug her wrapped fan into the heavy sand in front of her buried feet. The raging wind beat against her taut body and light defenses, trying to rip them from her. Although she'd advised against doing this insensible notion only moments ago Temari smiled grittily from beneath dusty linen. Beside her Gaara held his palms out to throw off only the sands, the wind just laughed.
Despite their beginnings it was Kankuro who saw the Kazekage as a leader. It was that belief, that trust in him that spurred Gaara to be just that. But Temari…She saw him much differently. To the blonde kunoichi she saw him just as the title stated: Shadow of the Wind. Gaara was the Desert's son, the dune's twin. A man gifted with unimaginable power and the very desert's blessing. Despite everything he'd ever been Temari saw in her brother the soul of the unforgiving land she worshiped.
Tons of glass-like shards whipped her leathered skin raw through double-layered desert robes as her heart raced with adrenalin. A true daughter of the sun and burning sands she reveled in the merciless force as it attempted to rip her soul from her body. Against all logic she laughed. Laughed because the blind storm had no idea she'd giving freely long ago.
In a sharp shift the sand dune beneath her buried feet gave-way. With the all too familiar roar of moving sand the dune exploded into the air, sending thousands of pounds of slicing, whipping death into the screaming, furious winds. If Temari had thought the sand cloud from before was like seeing hell the sickening sense of annilation enveloping her wild spirit was enough to make it shriek with insane pleasure.
Ripping her face scarf off for the wind's sacrifice the young woman held her beautiful face up for the raging sands. Crystals embedded deep into her thick hide and welled up blood even as more scraped it away.
"Temari!" The world yelled through an all too familiar voice. Her eyes where crusted shut, but the storm was muted as night fall chilled hands slipped over sand fevered skin. The girl smiled in bone deep happiness.
"Gaara," she rasped in her country drawl. "Do you feel him? Here? In us, still," She asked passed a dust-thickened throat.
Pale fingers brushed clotted sand from black-gold lashes. Endless green eyes peeked up at stark aquamarine in the complete darkness of a sandstorm ravaged ultimate sand defense.
"No. Not anymore." The girl cried in his arms, causing muddy tracks to course down her face.
"Then what sings to me? What is calling for me," she choked as the chill of the desert night seeped into her bones.
Gaara brushed at the bloody mask of sand glued to his sister's face. He had an answer to her pleading question, but his mouth didn't speak it.
"Shukaku is gone. I can't begin to regret it. With you and Kankuro, with Suna, we will find the Hidden Village of the Sand is strongest without that parasite leeching from it," he told her instead.
"But," Temari started, her eyes darkening "What if…"
Gaara winced in the deep shadows.
" We've not lost anything of true value Temari," his hand brushed over her nose and the sticky, embedded sand poured off her face. " I promise."
Calloused, leathered hands smooth by youth slipped over marble pale skin. Temari stroked one of Gaara's darkly rimmed eyes.
"Then all this time, it was just you," she murmured unabashedly in the din of the dying storm.
The heat characteristic of his sister burned against his much cooler face. Something sad and bittersweet shone in her deep jade eyes up at him. It was both silent and loving. Gaara knew quite well what she'd said. And what she'd meant by it.
"Just me. Always."
Temari burned a familiar symbol against his smooth forehead.
Ai
"I knew it," she whispered as the sand walls crumbled apart around them. "I knew it all along."
Gaara lifted his big sister into his arm and stood atop one of the Wind's largest dunes. Sandblasted desert stretched forever under a red-gold stained moon. The air smelled like dust and freedom. Like survival and Gaara.
Some people say: "Home is where the heart is," but for Temari her heart belonged to the desert, just as Gaara did. Her home belonged to Gaara, just as her heart did.
The desert never tolerated laws besides life and death. Temari's heart had made its choice the moment the desert's Kazekage had given his daughter Wind her love and brother Sand.
Far off on the horizon a monsoon was moving in behind the blasting sandstorm: punishment and reprieve.
"Like us," she murmured to the smell of long awaited rain. Lightening flashed out across the massive sky as thunder cracked the night.
Gaara stared out at the monsoon that would bring new life to his beautiful desert. And like all good things in his life it came in with his sweet sister Wind.
THE END