Characters: Kankuro, Temari
Summary: She is his sister, the only one he has ever known, the only one to be true.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: The Sand Siblings rock. That should explain everything.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Temari is Kankuro's sister, the only one he's ever known in a village where family is supposed to be all and yet he has nearly none. Gaara in the early years can not be called anyone's brother, so as Kankuro sees it, he has but one sibling.
His sister, Temari.
Though he's never been asked, Kankuro is one of the few young men in Suna who would willingly admit to loving a relative, let alone a sister. Love is no weakness even if it isn't a thing to be advertised—he can accept this, he's not blind or stupid—no matter what the inflexible, unspoken laws of desert life. Temari is all he really has, so she's where his loyalty falls.
They've always been unusually close for a shinobi family, even unusually close by the standards of a Suna shinobi family—love may not be admitted to but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, along with fierce ties of familial loyalty to bind blood together. It's noticed but never remarked upon, seen with discreet yet staring eyes that see the secret but don't betray it. If this is how they choose to survive, then so be it.
Kankuro and Temari have always stuck together for one reason above all others: survival. One to cast the poison in the wells, the other to watch his back while he does it. One to guard the other at all times. Guard from Suna, from their father, from Gaara, from everything. That is how it's always been—Sabaku no Kankuro and Sabaku no Temari against the world.
(Later, Sabaku no Gaara against the world will join his siblings, and it will be the Siblings of the Sand against the world, instead of just Kankuro and Temari standing alone. However, for now Gaara simply spits and sneers at all half-hearted attempts at companionship and though Temari never entirely gives up Kankuro writes him off as a hopeless case and focuses his attention on his sister. Blood must stay together, after all.)
When the sun descends over the dunes, casting the sky a bloody red and making the desert seem as hammered gold with ripples and tides, when the moon is full and high, when the noonday sun obliterates everything with heat, still they'll be together, always.
Because above puppets, above the spilling of blood, above Sunagakure, Kankuro loves his older sister, the one who has always been true even when the others are not.
Even if it is never said, it is still known, to both of them.
The doctrines of Sunagakure no Sato go thusly:
Spare no enemies in wartime battle, unless the enemy carries with them information invaluable to the defense of Suna and the course of war.
Spare no traitors. Visit unto them a thousand fold more cruelty than what would be visited upon the execution of a foreign nin. Traitors and thieves and murders and all criminals are undeserving of pity or sympathy.
In the course of a mission being carried out, if a comrade falls behind and is captured, that comrade is to be left behind. That the mission be carried out is crucial; all shinobi are by contrast expendable.
The one exception, of course, is if the shinobi to be captured is a sibling of a shinobi's blood. Siblings who are loyal to one another are more precious than gold, worth far more than the riches of the earth or the spoils of war.
If a sibling has been captured, every effort needed to retrieve them can and will be made. Blood rules above all other things in Sunagakure no Sato.