The bright Suna sunlight was blocked from beaming fully into the room by a set of heavy black curtains strung in front of the window. Only slightly parted to allowed a sliver of true light into the otherwise relativity dim lit room. But it was fine because Kankuro liked it that way, if too much sun got into the room it would get annoyingly hot despite his body already long since used to the temperature. Music blared from his stereo so loud it was a wonder he wasn't a deaf-ninja, he knew if Temari or Gaara were home they'd long have since come in and made him turn it down or shut it off. Thankfully, the Kazekage was busy in his mostly sound-proof study on the complete other side of the complex and Temari was on a mission.

The elder puppeteer was currently focused on cleaning out his room for the soul purpose that he was starting to lose things that he needed. More namely gears and assortments of other things for his mechanism's, but there were clothes and things he needed as well. Plus, he was one of those people that often got a kick out of going through his old stuff. The floor of his room was littered with old clothes, boxes of wooden limbs, and more numerous amounts of CD cases. He sat down at the back of his suddenly more spacious closet and pulled the newest item - a small box - into his lap to look through it. He pried back the cardboard flaps and rummaged around inside, sitting in that ray of sunlight.

The first thing he pulled out was yet another CD, though much farther from his usual style. He loved music, all kinds for the most part, but even this was something he wouldn't have normally bought. After flipping it over in his hands a few times, he remembered that he hadn't bought this at all. The memories of it didn't exactly come 'rushing' back but he did rather suddenly remember why he would have had this CD of all things. His dark eyes rolled as he pushed himself up, balancing the box on his hip, and heading out of the closet. Ha, no pun intended.

The heavy-rock music he had been listening to soon stopped and was changed for something that was a sharp change so fine he could almost feel it cut through his senses. Flipping through the songs, picking which to listen to by the listing on the back, he stopped on the third. The sound of a phone ringing was evident before the sounds of two female voices having a conversation in a language he never knew. The volume was turned down, weather to increase the effect or decrease the chances of his brother hearing, didn't really matter to him. He turned and landed on his bed, crossing his legs and setting the box in his lap again just to lean over it as he continued rummaging through it.

It seemed mostly to be notes, or rather letters seeing as they were written on scrolls and signed with various names, showing they had passed the inter-village mail service crew and weren't dangerous. Tch, yeah right, like anyone that would mail him anything would send something beyond joke-dangerous. His name was written on all of them, the outsides of course, in a fine but still scratchy hand-writing. It wasn't recognizable at first, as he broke one of the already ripped seals holding it closed. Carefully he unrolled it, not very long, but it was just a letter anyway. If you filled up an entire scroll with a letter, you probably were in prison.

Kankuro-

When's the next time you're due to be in Konoha? I'd rather not have the foolish notion that I'm avoiding you run through your head like last time happen again. The sentiment would probably be spared much easier if I knew in advance to keep those few days free of missions. Try to get back to this soon, before you leave Suna – and not just by a few hours.

It's getting rather unpleasant attempting to ignore Kiba's attitude, I'm sure he's not being any worse than normal but in all honesty, since you two broke up, he's been doing nothing but sulking or complaining...

He read through a few more lines before rolling up the scroll again and smoothing out the broken seal for the third time. Dropping it back in the box, the wooden edge clattered against something, nearly making him wince as the voices from his stereo continued to sing in an echoing pattern of 'Show me love' over and over before new lyrics broke through. Fishing for a moment, he pulled out the undamaged wooden frame of a picture, not a particularly good one and clearly taken by one of the people in it, but a picture all the same.

Unsure of whether to smile or frown, he simply blinked and looked at it curiously, like a cat batting at a ball of fuzz on the carpet before deciding to pounce it. Well, he certainly wouldn't pounce the picture, but that hardly changed the fact that his memory of it was a little fuzzy. One of his arms over Shino Aburame's shoulder, while the other's returned the favor around his waist, another hand up adjusting those dark glasses of his as he glanced off to the side, clearly annoyed by Kankuro's decision to take the picture. Kankuro himself was grinning as though it were the most amusing thing on the planet.

"You owe me a picture!"
"I do not. You know what I look like, that's good enou-Kankuro..."
"You know how to smile?"

He remembered grabbing the other around the shoulders before he could walk off, pulling him back in the frame before snapping the picture right after asking if he knew how to smile. His eyes squinted slightly at the other's high collar, the slight hints of a smile beginning to show despite his clear aggravation. How many times had he picked this picture off his desk just to squint and see if the start of that smile was still there? Way too many. He dropped the picture back in the box, where it joined a few others, most of them badly taken, out of focus, random shots. He never once claimed he was good with a camera just that he liked to take pictures, it was fun and memories weren't such a bad thing when you had time to make them. The nin was pretty sure he had found this before now but after that fling had ended, he didn't feel much need to look back on these particular memories, they were sort of a one time thing. Yet he still, after all this time, hadn't gotten rid of them, and he knew he wouldn't now either.

Eyes lifted up to his desk across the room where his puppet laid sprawled out with it's chest cavity open, left where it had been in Kankuro's random urge to start looking through things. But his focus wasn't on the puppet, more on the small array of pictures decorating his desk. He was always there so he kept all his pictures there, or at least the ones he liked to look at. One of him and Gaara, then one of him and his two siblings, a picture of him with his mother after his first attempt at putting on his now well recognized facial paint, his mom and his uncle, but more pin-pointed, he was squinting a little at the picture of him and Kiba.

In the replacement picture, he'd been sitting at one of the lakes with Kiba and his friends, the other was sitting between his legs, Kankuro's arms around him in a method that looked protective despite his face was similar to Shino's in the picture he just returned to the box. Kiba flicked off the camera, Kankuro's gaze clearly looking towards whoever took it out of the corner of his eyes. Lee and Gaara were in the background, or rather Lee attempting to goad Gaara into the water was, as well as a few other people running around. He moved a hand up to his squinting eyes to rub at them; the memories drifting away for more present things. All that came to mind as he fell back to the mess of pillows at the head of his bed was; I think I need glasses.