A/N: Hi! I had this idea in the middle of a BO-RING sociology class. It came out of nowhere, really, and I immediately started working on it. I got so excited about it that I skipped all my classes that day just so I could finish writing it. That and because I'm a lazy bea-tch. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, because I really enjoyed writing it. Except the ending. I hate the ending. Ah, also, I know Karura (and probably Temari's too) hair is straight, but I felt like making it curly, so whatevs.
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishi. Not me. And people, what the hell was that about Madara, chapter 560? I'm shoooocked!
.
.
.
She Looked Like Her Mother
.
.
.
She looked like her mother.
Ten-year-old Temari looked in the mirror of her bedroom and glared at the girl staring back at her.
It was true. Blonde hair, green eyes, small round nose, heart-shaped face. If she smiled, she would look like a copy of the pictures on the walls.
So she rarely did.
At such young age, Temari wasn't sure what exactly it was that bothered her about it, it just did. There was something about the way the elders in the council smiled at her while saying it that made the hair in the back of her neck stand up.
She didn't quite get it yet, but what she knew for sure was she didn't like looking like her mom.
So she pulled her hair in four ponytails, the way Kankurou said looked stupid. Even she admitted he was right, but she guessed it was better than having people look at her with tight smiles and underhanded eyes.
.
.
.
By fifteen Temari had long figured what those smiles meant and how she felt about her mother. She was older and smarter, and at the apex of her rebel streak. With a father who ruled her village and went off turning minds and warping values, an insane twisted brother and one psychotic murderer as the family baby, there was much to rebel about.
But a lot of hell to catch for it.
She wasn't stupid, she knew what insubordination would get her. A one-way ticket to the daimyo's palace with a wedding certificate in her pocket, and she would never be a man's possession. Not like mother.
She groaned quietly. Everything came down to that, didn't it?
She caught a glimpse of herself on one of the windows. The resemblance was even more striking now. They still had the same green eyes, same round nose, same heart-shaped face, and this time it would take more than a stupid-looking hairdo to hide it. Now she had her mother's arched eyebrows, her thick eyelashes, that curve in the corner of her mouth that seemed to hold a secret, and it was there for everyone to see.
She was a pretty girl. But she would be a beautiful woman.
Like her mother.
And she resented it like nothing else in the world.
.
.
.
The first time Temari ever thought twice about it was the day her baby brother had become Kazekage. Yes, he was baby brother now, sweet and fragile, and she would protect him tooth and nail so he would never have to feel alone again.
She stood beside him, clad in a silky white dress that contrasted beautifully with her smooth golden skin, green eyes alight with pride, and all the mystery on Earth in that soft smile. She was seventeen and turning heads, and the almost-woman standing on the spot a boyish girl should be nearly glowed among the sunlight and glittering sand. It might have been her brother that won the position, but it was she who shone brighter in that place.
One elder approached them with a content expression. She remembered him as one of the members of the Council who had voted for Gaara. He was one of the few decent men in the rotten politics of Suna. He shook the – now – Kazekage's hand, giving his best wishes, and then turned towards her.
His eyes filled with a heartfelt warmth, and he took both her hands in his and kissed them, as if she were some sort of princess. She blushed slightly at the treatment, and glanced up to see if anybody had seen it. To her surprise, all the present seemed to be looking at her the same way. She shuffled uncomfortably and the man stood straight, squeezing her hand somewhat fondly and letting go.
She was disturbed to say the least, she wasn't used to that kind of behavior, that kind of adoration. Usually, people feared her. Respected her, but feared her all the same.
The man turned to Kankurou. She watched, confused, as his eyes hardened and his smile became tight. He shook his hand quickly and turned away to go. Her brother snorted as if it was something amusing and greeted the next congratulator. She did the same on automatic, her head was still on the awkward moment that had just transpired. The elder knew Kankurou, they had met many times before and never once he had strained to be nice. She couldn't understand what had changed.
She turned her eyes to her brother. The face paint was absent, and his hair was a little shorter. He had white robes for the occasion, like all the other men, but somehow he stood with a careless grace, hands on pockets, but shoulders back. It was strange to see her goofy brother looking so… Regal. A disconcerting thought flashed across her head.
In those clothes, and in that light, Kankurou looked like their father.
It was the first time in years she didn't feel so uneasy about her resemblance with her mother. She had it easier than her brother. It was better to look like someone who was loved.
.
.
.
She heard it from her youngest brother, among held back tears and shouted orders, ending battles, removal of injured and carrying of dead bodies. He told her – whispered to her – he was loved. He had been loved all along. He had never been alone, because she had never left him. Temari felt the weight of her fan like the personification of the weight of a guilt that waved her breath away.
The woman she had hated so fervently all her life was not deserving of that hatred.
All eighteen years of her existence, she had thought her mother a weak creature, who couldn't stop her own husband from sealing a monster inside her unborn son. She thought her a pathetic excuse for a woman, who bowed her head to whatever the man dictated and smiled like an idiot to pretend all was fine as to not break their picture perfect family image in front of the crowd. She thought she was cruel for placing the blame of her death on her son's shoulder and condemning him to a loveless life. But most of all, she had resented her for leaving in her a face who would forever mark her as the legacy of such a weak woman with such a disastrous fate.
But she knew now, she had misunderstood everything. Her mother had never hated her son, she had loved him, loved him with all her heart and beyond death. She had smiled so no one would worry, so their village, their people would not worry, so none of her children would suffer, and even when everything took a turn to the worst and fairytale crumpled into a horror story, she stayed. It would have been easy to give up, run away. She didn't. She held on until the last minute. This had got to be some kind of strength.
She wanted to cry, but she had fifty men looking at her for guidance; she wanted to scream, but she had grown hoarse from shouting orders; she wanted to grieve all over again, and mean it this time, but this was war. And there was no time for grieving in war, if you didn't want to join who you grieved over.
So she held on tighter to her fan and pulled her hair out of the ponytails, letting them curl naturally and frame her face, the way her mother's always did in all the pictures.
She was Sabaku no Karura's daughter, and she was not ashamed of it. She was going to win this war quickly and go home to kneel at her grave and apologize…
Or she'd do it face to face.
.
.
.
The first time Temari saw Shikamaru, she was fifteen.
The first time Temari saw Shikamaru, she was twenty-one, free of a burden she had carried on her back all her life, and it showed. Her blonde curls were pulled back in a single ponytail, and she wore a short black kimono, her fan out of her back, into her sleeve. She crossed the gates feeling lighter than ever and greeted the men at the entrance with a friendly smile. She felt the warmth of the Konoha atmosphere invade her chest. After all the years running back and forth between the two villages, she had grown a soft spot for the Leaf, though she would never admit it under torture. She had even made friends! The thought made her laugh. If those kids knew how fond she actually was of them they wouldn't be nearly half as scared of her as they were.
She looked around a while, stalling a little. She had been there so many times that she could get around as well as any citizen, she hadn't needed a guide in a long time, and she was there often enough for there to be no party to welcome her. It wasn't like she didn't know the way to the Hokage tower. It was just that something was missing. She shrugged if off as nostalgia and turned to start walking the right direction.
That was when she saw him.
He was leaning against a building, one foot on the wall and arms crossed in front of his chest, an annoyed expression on his face. On his right was what seemed to be the cause of his chagrin, his blonde teammate was nagging him away about something and he didn't look too thrilled to be at the receiving end of her speech. Seeing the two of them standing together so close, she felt a spark of something extremely uncomfortable, crawling under her skin and giving her an adrenaline rush that didn't feel right at all. Normally, she had nothing against Ino, but curiously enough, at the moment she felt the strange urge to punch her.
She shook her head and cracked her knuckles, trying to relieve some of the tension in her fingers. She was still deciding whether to approach or leave them be, when he lifted his head boredly, and their eyes crossed.
He looked surprised for a second, but then he opened the brightest smile she had ever seen on his face, and his eyes lit up. She couldn't help but let her lips curl in a playful grin. He lifted his hand in a greeting and she walked closer. Ino simply glanced her way, opened a knowing smirk and said "Oh", before making up an excuse and running away.
They were both too smart not to know what she had meant, but for the sake of their prides, pretended they hadn't.
She took one look at his broadened shoulders, now set back, not slouching, the setting jaw line, the muscles on his arms that showed under the shirt everytime he moved, the effortless grace which he carried himself with, and it struck her that he had grown up.
But if she were to be honest, it was the jounin vest that got her.
If anyone asked, they had started dating when she was twenty-three.
Nobody needed to know she had had a secret affair with a boy who was barely even legal. Kankurou would never let her hear the end of it.
.
.
.
When he had proposed, twenty-two and lying down on her bed after a particularly spectacular reunion, she had looked at him with surprise. He wasn't pulling any rings, or cracking a smirk. He had just blurted it out, but he meant it. Temari never thought any man would be crazy enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her, much less about what she would do if she found a man who did.
She thought about her mom then. She hadn't thought about her in months, but she had in that moment. Twenty-eight years back, her mother had been in the exact same position. She had looked into the eyes of a man, and trusted him with the rest of her life, and look where it got them. She gazed into his eyes. He was staring at her with a lazy bored expression, as if it didn't even matter, but when she looked at his hands they were trembling. He was nervous. How cute.
She wondered if her father had always been the twisted bastard she knew. What if he had changed later? What if he had pretended in the beginning? Did Karura even know what she was getting herself into?
Did she?
She thought back to her childhood. It had been pretty crappy. She didn't want to have children and fuck them up like her father did to her and her brothers. She didn't want to rush into something in her head she had always associated with disaster. Marriage was a serious thing, and it could always go wrong. It always had too, as far as she was concerned. So why would she do this?
It came to her like a whisper.
Because she loved him.
She sat on the bed, pulling the covers with her, running a hand through her tangled hair. This was hard. This was the hardest thing she had done in her life, because… She loved him. She loved the lazy bastard with every tiny bit of her being, and she knew he loved her too. He had proved her, time and time again, and he was ready to attach himself to her for life. Scary truth? That wasn't such a terrible thought.
Her mother had suffered and ultimately died because of her marriage, she should be taking it as a warning and running away as fast as her legs could carry her, but the thing was… Despite what she had always told herself during her teenage years, she would do the exact same thing as her mother.
She would trust that man with the rest of her life, and trust her heart to know what it was doing.
.
.
.
Temari was thirty-four when she realized something quite disconcerting.
Her daughter looked like her.
She had never given much thought about it, truthfully she had never quite noticed. Heaven knew her twins could wreck some havoc, even if Hanajima had taken after her father and tended to laze about under shades of trees and watch the sky for hours on end. Uotani was a more than efficient motivator, and could make her quiet sister follow her in her wacky adventures around the village, driving everyone insane. They always had their hands full with those two, even more so after Daisuke was born.
It was only one April day she acknowledged it. Uotani was seven back then, and she had been playing with Chouji's kid while Hanajima was away with her father, visiting their grandparents and running clan errands. Apparently they had thought a paint war would be fun, because when she got home she was covered head to toe in paint. Her little friend's mother looked very sheepish, but Uotani was glowing in happiness at all the colors in her shirt. Temari kneeled on the kitchen, rubbing a damp cloth on her daughter's face while she giggled. She had finished wiping the paint away when it struck her.
Those big green eyes staring back at her, the little round nose, the curly blonde hair, the small pouting mouth. It was like one of her baby pictures. The realization shook her a great deal more than it should. She stared at Uotani, resting one hand on her forehead, pulling the stained fringe back lovingly. The child stared at her with a big innocent grin, blabbing about how she liked blue best out of all the colors of the rainbow, and some boy who had told her blue wasn't a girl's color. She didn't quite listen, but she got the feeling Uotani had kicked the boy's butt.
She didn't know how she felt about the discovery. It made her unseasy all over again. The same way she resented her mother, would Uotani resent her? Had she ever done anything to have her daughter ashamed of her? Had she ever given her any reason to doubt her stregth, her independency… Her love?
She stared at the giggling girl in fron of her, who had taken advantage of her distraction and drawn a heart on her mother's cheek with the still wet paint on her shirt, and couldn't even be mad. Sometimes she was strict, sometimes she yelled, sometimes she didn't let them burst into tears for nothing, sometimes she trained them a little too hard, but everything she did, she did for their own good. They were her most precious things in the world.
She understood her mother now. She knew why she had smiled, why she had stayed, and even why she had died. She knew she would have done the same for any of her children.
She hugged her child for a moment, and hoped someday Uotani would understand her too.
.
.
.
Now Temari's older and wiser, though she will beat the crap out of whoever calls out on her age. Her daughter is upstairs, getting ready to "hang out" with her uncle's apprentice. All four members of their family know that if it was been just hanging out she wouldn't had run around the house screaming for her favorite skirt, or stealing her mother's sleeve fan, but for their own physical health, let her be and pretend they believe her.
She can't believe it happened so fast. One minute she was trying to get Uotani out of the ceiling after managing to blow herself away with her mini-fan, and the next she's seventeen, running off with a guy she, herself, thinks is a total idiot. But the boy has a good heart, and even if he is a little goofy, had been infatuated with her daughter ever since they had met at the tender age of five, so she let it go. She wonders if that was how her brother's felt when she married Shikamaru.
She glances at her husband, sitting on a chair, playing shougi with their son, and beating him shamelessly. Look at him, acting all cool. He would never let anyone see, but she knows him enough to know that inside he is making a fuss, pulling his hair out and screaming Uotani was absolutely forbidden from dating until she is fourty. She knows it, because his hands are trembling ever so slightly. She grins to herself, because she just knows she will never let him hear the end of it.
They hear a loud noise, and Uotani rushes down the stairs, tripping once in her ridiculously high heels, barely managing to steady herself before continuing her mad dash. She twists her hair into a french braid faster than it is probably normal, and secures it with a rubber band she was holding in her mouth. She stops in front of her family with her arms open as if to ask how she looks. Daisuke lifts his head from the board, gives her a thumbs up and proceeds to accuse his dad of cheating. Hanajima smiles sweetly and assures her that she is looking good. Temari makes a joke about how Uotani shouldn't do anything she wouldn't, and she jokes back, asking her if she's sure about that because she had heard some really wacky stories from Aunt Ino, and apparently there's not much she wouldn't do. Temari swears she's going to kill Ino.
Uotani turns to her father, and she knows this is the most important moment. Uotani was ridiculously attached to her father, all of their children were, but she was just the one who cared too much. A little like the crybaby she married. Her husband lifts his eyes, studies her for a minute, and then smiles and says softly:
"You look like your mother."
Temari freezes for a second, because this is the moment she had been trying to avoid. This is the moment of truth, Uotani is old enough to have noticed it, and even more, to have thought about it, and she doesn't really want to know whether her daughter thinks the same way she did when she was her age. She turns to chide her husband, but to her surprise, Uotani opens the brightest grin, that lights up her face and makes her eyes glow greener. She beams at her father and says proudly:
"Thanks!"
.
.
.
Throughout the never ending changing that was her life, the one constant thing in it had meant plenty. Unease, resentment, regret, hopefulness and ultimately pride. But as she stares at herself in the mirror, nearly fourty years after the first time she had given it thought, she's in peace with it.
She looks like her mother.
And her daughter looks like her.
And her granddaughter… Well, she is still waiting to see who she looks like, but she's betting behind Uotani's back that it will look like her, and she just knows she's going to make a lot of money in a few months.
.
Note: I swear I was going to end it with "And her graddaughter looks like a knee." I acutally typed it, but then thought it was waaay too comic for this solemn fic and deleted. I have to say I hate the ending. To me, it's going good, it's going good, it's going good, and then MEEEEH! But whatever. Oh, and I know I took some creative liberties like, Temari's hair, and her fan change, but really, if Kankurou can keep his puppets in scrolls, why does she have to carry that humongous fan on her back? Think about the sleeve fan as a replacement for the scroll. Tell me what you think, I'll be happy to hear!