Kankuro watched his brother.
It was painful.
Temari watched the blonde.
That was painful too.
They sat side-by side on Suna's wall. The Kazekage and a runaway genin of the leaf, who was never where he should be.
Kankuro absently wondered whether Naruto had been classed a missing-nin yet.
Temari wondered what Gaara would do if he was.
They both knew nothing would change.
Naruto would turn up here at the full moon, only half in his own mind.
Gaara would go out to the wall. He would sit, patiently, as Naruto snarled and snapped. He would restrain him if necessary, but mostly he just waited. Eventually, Naruto would butt his head against Gaara's legs. The sand, Gaara's eternal defense, was kept in check by the force of it's keepers will. It said something that he couldn't do that for anyone else.
Gaara would pull his hands gently through Naruto's increasingly long hair. He would rub the sensitive spots behind ears that had a definite point. He would rock the skeleton of a boy backwards and forwards, crooning a song that raised the hairs on the back of everyone's necks, but calmed the boys who sat on the wall.
Once they asked about it. The blank look on their brother's face prompted them to leave it alone.
But they can't help wondering if it is something to do with the demons. If the bijuu who have overshadowed lives and destroyed cities have a lullaby too.
At the new moon, the process is reversed. Naruto arrives, and waits outside the city walls. The Kazekage disappears, eyes wide and hands clutching desperately at his head as if it will crack in two. He stumbles and scrambles across the desert. The sand forms and twists around him, before dropping back to it's brethren. And this time the skeleton boy holds the shell, and he just holds him, once-strong arms spindly, fragile as he encases a demon with arms that couldn't hold a bird. He whispers constantly, voice hoarse. The words are nonsense, a babble of unintelligible sounds.
You would be blind if you couldn't see they were dying.
The demons have torn through their lives, twisting and warping everything they should have had. They have ripped through their minds, and now they are ripping through their bodies.
Gaara is more sand than flesh these days. When they catch glimpses of Naruto he is hollow, a dandelion boy that's been blown empty by the wind.
Sometimes Kankuro screams. He yells, furious, working himself into oblivion over puppets, tears falling hot and heavy from his eyes. Temari comes to his door with bandages, taping up crushed fingers. The look she gives him says she wishes she had bandages for the other things, and for Gaara. Kankuro folds himself into her arms, and she rocks him. It brings back memories of similair days. When their father would rant and rave. When storms would crash, and Kankuro would crawl into her room, and they would hide together.
They couldn't go to Gaara then. Now, even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference.
Sometimes Temari breaks. She comes back from training and comes through the door and just collapses, folding in on herself. Kankuro patches her up. Puppeteering requires precise chakra control. He could say that because he puppets he is a good medic, but that's a lie. When he was little he wanted to be a medic. He used to toil over Temari's bruises and small cuts, healing them shiny-new. Their father caught him at it. That night, he healed his own bruises and cuts. Medic's were weak. He could not be weak. And after that, he holds her. She cries, hot, heavy, angry tears, silent sobs wracking her.
They do not mention it to Gaara. It is doubtful he would even notice. His head bobs to imaginary conversation. He sways to a tune that nobody can hear.
The council are allowing him to stay in power only because it is that that ties him to the village, prevents him from leaving. They do that because they know Temari and Kankuro would follow. He is a figurehead now. He does little, a shadowy imitation of the impassioned leader they had come to love. He is even less of their brother.
It is the full moon. Gaara sits on the wall.
Temari wonders if it is the light that makes him look so ill.
Kankuro wonders if it his imagination that makes it look like Naruto is a heap of bones.
They both know they are fooling themselves.
But they can't fool themselves for much longer.
Naruto doesn't have the energy to snarl. He almost falls off multiple times as he scales the walls. Gaara tries to reach out with his sand, but that only causes him to fall too. They are falling, a shell and a skeleton, birds with clipped wings and beaks strapped shut. Eyes sewn shut.
They run forward, Temari, Kankuro. They push every inch of chakra they have, but they are too slow. Like sand slipping through their fingers, the last vestiges blow away with the wing. Gaara clutches at the skeleton. Naruto clutches at the shell.
They press together in a mockery of a lovers embrace.
Birds who have never learned to speak trying to sing.