"Neechan."
Gaara murmured aloud. Temari heard this, but assumed her youngest brother was talking to himself, a habit he had recently picked up. Pulling her blanket closer to her next to the fire, she decided to ignore him and pretend to be asleep to avoid the possibility of talking to him. It had been a few weeks since he had met the strange boy who held the Nine-Tailed Beast, and Gaara had acted…differently since that incident, something she did not quite understand; but her fear of the monster within him was still strong, and she earnestly took advantage of any opportunity to escape his attention.
"Neechan." He repeated, more strongly this time.
And this time, it clicked. Gaara is calling me neechan. Puzzled and still fearful, she turned around to face him. He was lying across the fire from her, his face in its usual indifferent stare, though somehow lighter. Kankuro slept at their feet, and his somnolent mumbles mixed with the snaps and crackle of the fire. Baki-sensei was farther back, keeping watch in the silent darkness. They were returning home from a mission and had decided to camp out for the night. The scene was perfectly normal – three asleep, one keeping watch, fire, traps set up just in case, another successful mission, stars and moon above them – and yet here Gaara was, blankly staring at her and calling her neechan.
"Are you talking to me?" She softly asked, trying to suppress the quiver in her voice.
"That is how the children in the village call their older sisters." His voice did not resemble its old, familiar coldness.
"Uh…Yes, yes, that is how they call them."
"Should I call you neechan too?"
That was when Temari finally understood. Her eyes – all ice and glint and green-blue sharpness, honed to focus only on the enemy, killing, surviving – softened just slightly.
"If you want to, yes, that'd be okay."
"And can I call Kankuro niisan?"
"Yes."
As she curled back into her original sleeping position, Temari vaguely wondered how in the world that idiot, orange-clad little kid could make Gaara start observing the villagers, talking to himself, and calling her neechan all of a sudden. Now if only he could get Kankuro to pay me the same respect…She thought, inwardly smirking at the idea. But she didn't want to think too hard on it, and she didn't really care anyways. As some faint notion of appreciation tugged at the corners of her lips, she dozed off with the first genuine smile she had worn in years.
Kankuro had always felt obscured by his siblings. Temari was the eldest, and proud, strong, and smart to boot. Growing up with her consistently resulted in him getting beat up, especially if he dared yank one of her pigtails, or pull their shared blanket to his side of the bed, or even touch her favorite stuffed weasel. With Gaara, it was obvious; the kid had a freaking evil monster in him, and his bloodthirsty personality led everyone around him to watch their step. Kankuro, on the other hand, was the little boy who played with puppet dolls and liked wearing purple make-up. Being the middle kid sucks.
But when Gaara was taken by the Akatsuki after nearly dying to save the village, Kankuro forgot all of that. All he could feel, see, sense, was the rage that made him want to shout and claw and run after those Akatsuki and that damned traitor Sasori, shred them to pieces for taking his brother, his baby brother. He had watched and helped his brother grow from a shunned and bitter killing machine to a trusted and protective leader, and he was not going to let anyone so much as give him a dirty look and not get away with it. He remembered the time when Gaara told him his hopes of becoming Kazekage and winning the faith and trust of the villagers, and he remembered the great swell of pride he had felt for him that day. He could not let some freakish punks made out of wood or with fucking mouths in their hands take him away. He could not allow it.
And when he was poisoned by Sasori in his attempt to rescue Gaara and finally made it to Suna's hospital, and the pink-haired Konoha girl painfully extracted the poison from his body, he could feel Temari's strong (but shaking?) hands holding him down, and he could hear her frantic voice yelling at him to hang in there…and he felt just a little bit more assured that everything would be alright.
Gaara stared in absolute fascination.
Even though his niece was already four years old and he saw her at least a few times each year, he still watched her with renewed fixation every time he saw her.
She was tall for her age, no doubt due to her mother's own exceptional height. Dark brown hair, sharp teal-colored eyes…an unusual combination. But what baffled Gaara most was her complete and utter innocence. She looked at everyone with the same trusting, wide-eyed expression, she found as miniscule and insignificant objects as a flower petal in the sand enthralling, and most of all she did not shy from him at all. Quite the contrary, actually: the little girl absolutely adored her uncles. And neither Gaara nor Kankuro could resist her requests to please please pleeeaaassee build a sand castle with her, or take her out to get sweets, or buy her that gigantic stuffed bear three times her size. No matter how many times Temari scolded them for spoiling her rotten, Kankuro would just mock her for being so motherly and Gaara would simply ignore the reproaches.
Today, she was clinging to the leg of Shikamaru's pants while he and Temari were trying to depart for a mission. Gaara walked over to the door of his office where the couple was stuck and plucked the little girl off her father's leg.
"Come on, now. Mommy and Daddy have to leave for a mission for a little while, but in the meantime you'll stay with Uncle Gaara and Uncle Kankuro, okay?"
She stopped crying, but as much as she loved her uncles, the little girl still pouted in protest.
"How about we get some ice cream?"
Temari rolled her eyes but gave her brother a thankful salute before kissing her daughter good-bye and setting off. Shikamaru paused to turn around and nod to his brother-in-law, smiled at his daughter, and left too.
They took off at speeds that only shinobi can reach. Gaara and their daughter watched from the window of the Kazekage's office, the hustle and bustle of the village chattering beneath them and the two streaks of sand rushing to the East. But they did not have much time to enjoy the scenery, as ice cream was quickly demanded (not asked, but demanded; so like her mother) and Gaara, still holding her, thought just how fiercely he would protect this small, young life at all costs. He had messed up all of his previous relationships and had tried to amend them since meeting Naruto, but this little girl would never experience that kind of horror from him in her lifetime – he would see to it. He knew he couldn't protect her from everything (after all, she would become a ninja almost too quickly, and she will have to suffer the bloodshed and battle and loss of loved ones as well), but at least he could protect her from himself. And at least, for this moment, he could still spoil her rotten.
"Bubble gum flavor, that's your favorite, right?"
Don't get too attached to your students, because they too are shinobi and you can lose them or lose your mission trying not to. This is what they told Baki before he took on the Kazekage's children as his own. But, proud and merciless Sand-nin that he is, he does not always like listening to advice.
He enjoys watching them. Not so much when they train, though he's certainly there for that too, even today when Gaara is Kazekage and Temari lives three days away and Kankuro can and will slaughter anyone threatening the security of his siblings or his niece. He likes watching them when they're eating, or talking, or sleeping. He's sure most every sensei does the same with his or her students, because these are the moments when the shinobi part comes off and the human part come on.
When they first became a team, these moments were admittedly awkward. Temari and Kankuro would sit tensely close to each other at meals, eyeing Gaara every few minutes to make sure he hadn't lashed out. He himself kept a wary eye of the jinchuuriki, as that was all he thought of Gaara then, just an extension of the monster inside him. But later, as Gaara learned to love and the rest of them learned to accept him, they started to laugh together. He thinks the first time was at lunch when Kankuro made some snide comment about Temari's frequent visits to Konoha and she had whacked him with her fan, and soon enough all three of them were engaged in an epic food battle for which Baki had to apologize profusely to the restaurant owner (though he was secretly proud of how well they had exploited and aimed their surroundings and "weapons"). They left the place with smiles and sauce dripping down their faces. On some nights when he kept watch, he'd see them sleeping around the fire together, or in the tent if they had brought it, not necessarily close but at ease in each other's presence. When Baki found out that Gaara was selected for Kazekage, he swore he'd never felt so proud in his life, and he could see his wide smile mirrored in the faces of Gaara's siblings that day. Guiding them through their growth into the quick, silent, and refined shinobi they are today is what Baki regards his finest achievement, despite the number of S-ranked missions he's completed. Damn, he feels old.
He's reached the point in his life when he's started to feel the effects of age creep up on him. His stamina has declined slightly, and this worries him. But he knows that if he were to go on a mission with Temari or Kankuro tomorrow and he died protecting them, he would die happy. Or if some punk-ass idiot decided to mess with Suna again and put Gaara at risk, he would take the bastard out or die trying. But more importantly, he knows that even if he were to die tomorrow, his previous students would stop at absolutely nothing to protect each other.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor any of its characters.
A/N: Poor Kankuro got the short end of the stick, even in this story. xD whoops