Funeral
By xannychan
Short A/N: A one-shot that took too long to write.
Disclaimer: I do not own characters.
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It was hot in the desert. How cruel their father was, to arrange for their mother's funeral to be held at the height of the desert's heat. Already the corpse was beginning to rot, waves of her stench slowly rising.
She was three years old.
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Temari is three years old when she attends her mother's funeral, holding a two-year-old Kankuro's hand, his fingers outstretched as he plays with imaginary puppets. Her little fist grabs tight to her uncle's fingers; in his other arm, he holds a newborn Gaara, weak and small and confused.
The heat is dreadful and the smell is just as bad; the fragrant wood of the fans they were given is not enough to send it away.
Little Gaara begins to cry, just a baby, just barely a child, a feared and terrified child. Temari and Kankuro fan him vigorously, but they too begin to feel the effects of the heat. Soon, they are crying, too, and Uncle Yashamaru is doing all he can to quiet them.
Temari is three years old when she first disobeys an elder's orders and continues to cry.
The heat is so frustrating.
By then, the funeral has slipped into chaos because the sand is swelling under the villagers' feet.
The Demon Child opens his mouth and screams, and the platform on which the funeral is held cracks at the corner, the sand crumbling away.
By now the village is screaming with Gaara, screaming at him, "Kill the monster who killed his mother, kill him, kill him."
Temari is three years old when she first realizes that Gaara is hated.
Temari is three years old when her fan picks up the wind; she is three years old when her anger finds its way into her breath.
She is three years old when the delicate wooden fan in her hands becomes her weapon. She is three years old when she whips her father across the face as he reaches to strangle them into silence; she is three years old when her father hits her back.
Temari is three years old when she first protects her brother.
Temari is three years old when her mother's vengeance is birthed into being.
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Oh, how cruel it was, to stand in this heat and watch as the stench of bodies fills her desert sky, her iron fan bloodstained by a thousand fathers' blood without remorse. The entirety of an insubordinate village within the desert lies at their feet, rotten in the midst of destruction.
Kankuro stands next to her, his fingers outstretched as he draws his puppets back.
Gaara is a distance away, his fist clenched before him. Beneath them, the ground trembles until the bodies are encased in sand.
Desert Imperial Funeral, he calls it.
Temari finds it fitting.