Secrets
A/N: WARNING: Some brief mentions of homosexual relations. And when I say brief, I mean blink-and-you-miss-it. You have been thusly warned.
Kankuro Sabaku has a list of things his siblings do not know.
Some of these things are innocent things, if he himself could ever be described as innocent; Kankuro's favorite flavor is butterscotch, and he admires cats, after whom he has always fancied himself. He prefers comedies as a rule, but all of his paint designs are from tragedies. If given a choice between a peach and chocolate, he would choose the peach every time. No matter how many times he has tried, he still does not know what is under Baki's hood.
Some of the things on Kankuro's list are not so innocent. They are night things, deadly things, things that bite. He keeps them to himself.
Temari doesn't know that her brother once catwalked across Suna's electrical wires in a sandstorm, because she had lost her favorite fan.
Gaara doesn't know that Kankuro knows over one hundred ways to please a male, and utilizes most of them when hungry eyes stray too close to his younger brother.
Temari doesn't know that Kankuro has dislocated both shoulders twice (it had to be done; the target had cornered him in an earth bind jutsu, and Kankuro's shoulders were just the slightest bit too wide..)
Gaara doesn't know about the blade dance, whirling kunai attached to chakra strings, a cyclone of blood and steel, and the closest emulation to the sabaku taisou that Kankuro will ever be able to create.
Neither sibling knows that since he was old enough to create poisons Kankuro has been dosing himself with them, building up an immunity to everything in his puppets.
Gaara doesn't know that his brother killed another puppeteer for calling him 'monster'. Kankuro isn't sure he can remember where he buried the body, anyway.
Temari doesn't know that Kankuro has sometimes considered cutting his face off, each and every piece, until he is something unrecognizable, something all his own.
Gaara doesn't know that it was mostly Kankuro's political machinations that brought his name up for the candidacy of Kazekage; he doesn't know that the night he was inducted, Kankuro congratulated himself with a cup of his finest poison and a single satisfied smirk.
Temari doesn't know that Kankuro's paintings of their mother, which he keeps locked in a cabinet with his deadliest potions, are based solely on her- because he cannot remember any mother but Temari.
Neither sibling knows that under Kankuro's bed is a small black book that he has considered burning, because love letters are for fools and he chose his brother and sister in the end; but he can't bring himself to do it, not even after Gaara's resurrection.
They don't know what he would do for them. They don't know what he has done for them.
His siblings don't know.
And that, Kankuro long ago decided, was what made the difference.