Characters: Temari, Gaara
Summary: He's small. And watching him, Temari can't understand how she never noticed it before.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: This takes place shortly after Gaara's death and resurrection. We get plenty of screen time for Kankuro's reaction to Gaara's abduction, but never much of anything (at least not in the anime) about how Temari feels.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Wind batters sand into Temari's face and she doesn't so much as bat an eye to the uncomfortable sensation, sitting, with one leg tight to her chest and the other spread out lazily, on the edge mostly-buried ruddy brick wall of a building that has been submerged in seas of sand. There's just enough left exposed for Temari to sit down on it, and when she thinks about it, if she's not mistaken, the building roof she's sitting on used to rise fifty feet out from the desert sand.
The desert, she knows, swallows everything if given enough time.
She's never spent too much time watching Gaara before. Gaara doesn't need anyone to watch him, and it's not the wisest—or safest—occupation in the world for young shinobi. Temari ought to know; she is his sister, after all.
Never having watched him before, she finds herself wondering now how she went so long without watching her youngest brother, pale stalk of humanity that ventures through the desert sands.
Gaara stands among the whirling sand, so that only his bright red hair is visible any longer, and Temari sits, silent and unafraid, and watches without batting an eye, the skirt of her black yukata fluttering in the insistent wind.
Everyone says that Temari is the Sabaku sibling who most resembles her mother, seeing sandy gold hair and dark green eyes, and, of course, the scratched and scored metal fan. But Temari knows that it's really Gaara who is most Karura's child, in truth. A child born of vengeance, bearing his mother's legacy more than either of his siblings can ever hope to boast. Small, slight, and deceptively delicate.
He's so small…
And Temari's never noticed before.
She's still taller than him now. She has three inches of height and several pounds on Gaara, and God knows Kankuro dwarfs his younger brother. But Gaara never seemed small to Temari. Yes, she did think about it from time to time, back in the days when she could not understand how a bloodthirsty monster of a jinchuuriki could be so ridiculously small. But he was never like her youngest brother, never like the baby of a family. He seemed taller and bigger than Temari and Kankuro combined, even after coming back to himself.
It's because the demon has gone. Shukaku has taken his aura, his glamour away, and stripped away all the layers of sand. Revealed Gaara for what he has always been, small, small-boned, and to the eyes, frail.
Gaara first seems small when his body is still marbled, stiff and rigid, mottled at the extremities. Barely capable of movement, still caught in the icy clench of rigor mortis, he doesn't try to speak as Temari holds him tight in taut, protective arms (something she has never tried to do before), more resembling an enveloping shadow than a human girl, defying anyone to try and hurt him now.
Blood pooled in the small of his back has soaked his coat and skin, leaking through to slowly drench Temari's skirt. The smell reeks in the air.
(And Temari understands immediately when she finds him huddled over the toilet later, hacking up shapeless chunks of black blood and the writhing rice grain-like bodies of blowfly maggots. The smell of rotting decay, sickeningly sweet and reminiscent of buried tombs, that has so stubbornly clung to him in days past is being expelled with them. It's been a day since the Leaf nin left, and when eyes the color of sea foam meet her own, both weary and helpless, Temari again understands, and leans down to gently rub his back. She can feel bones through Gaara's clothes.)
He's small.
Gaara's standing in the vortex of a maelstrom of sand, so lost in the element that may well be closed off to him now. It seems so much a waste to Temari; with the Shukaku gone, there's no way of knowing if Gaara has retained his preternatural gift.
But he wants to try.
There's no sense of direction, Temari notices. All aimless chaos. This sand is purposeless, and doesn't give her much reason to hope; even in his darkest, most disordered days, the sand around Gaara possessed a will.
All will has turned to naught, spilling like blood in battle out of hand, into tides that swirl and eddy out of reach.
The sand is battering at Temari, lodging in her hair, in the hollows of her ears, her clothes (when she returns in evenings from long ventures into solitary wilderness, she strips away her yukata and sand pools at her feet), and she finally winces in discomfort, raising a hand to protect her eyes.
But then, it all stops.
The wind moves on, unstoppable, but the sand falls limp to the ground. No more sand gritting at Temari's eyes. No more sand clenched between her teeth.
Gaara is satisfied. Footsteps softly imprint into the dunes then are swept away again as, quiet as ever, Gaara holds out a hand to his sister.
His skin is warmer than it's ever been. Temari's full mouth curls up at the corners like paper smoldering above a candle flame.
Gaara is small, but lord of the Sand, he remains.