Naturally Unnatural

If you had told a fifteen year old Temari that one day she would be a mother, she probably would have laughed at you, and then hit you with her fan. She was a shinobi, a defender of her village and country. She was also the oldest of her three siblings, and they alone were enough to take care of. She had no time for children, no time for motherhood.

Of course, if you told her that both of her brothers would one day be fathers, she probably would not have believed that either.

She ponders this thought as she leans on the roof railing of the compound. The evening is unnaturally warm and all around the village, she can see windows open just a bit—enough to let in the warm air, but not too much sand. She looks around and considers Suna, her home and her responsibility. It is not easy to live in the desert; the days are scorching and the nights are freezing (usually). For adults like herself, living is difficult. For a newborn, it is near impossible.

"We have our own natural selection," she once heard Kankuro explain it. "Only strong babies survive their first year in the desert. That's how our shinobi are so strong."

Their children, then, must be the three strongest to ever set foot on the sand.

Cain came first, a complete surprise to all three Subaku siblings. He was Temari's, and it was fitting that the oldest should end up a parent first, regardless of how panicked that oldest was over the responsibility. The father had died, felled in battle, soon after conception. She had liked that man, and—after some careful consideration and many looooong talks with her brothers—decided that she liked him enough to want to bring the child into the world. Into her world.

It was no picnic, that was for certain. Cain came early, nearly a month early. The harsh wind and sand made it difficult for him to breathe, and the Healers all shook their heads and murmured what a shame it was that the child, who looked so much like his mother even at birth, would probably not survive.

The unfortunate soul who said this to the mother's face ended up on the business end of said mother's fist. Temari was blown away by the surge she felt in her chest. So this is what a mother's love was meant to be. Fierce, and unconditional. All things seemed to pale in comparison to the survival of her son.

And survive he did. Temari tilts her head back, listening to the sounds from the room behind her. He was asleep, of course, it is nearly midnight, but even in sleep Cain is active and energetic. She can hear him rolling back and forth, his blond hair plastered with sweat and his face curious even in sleep. He already shows signs of possessing his mother's gift of harnessing the wind—soon, she is going to have to find a suitable practice fan for him. Her old one is definitely going to be too small for her swiftly growing four year old.

There is a soft thump and Temari turns in time to see a small, dark-haired figure flash around the corner, footsteps whispering across the hall. She smiles and rolls her eyes.

"Sonya, to bed. The house will not collapse while you sleep, so you can relax."

"Okay," is the stage-whispered response, the feet fading away back down the hall. Temari stifles a laugh. Kankuro is on a mission, so naturally Sonya cannot sleep easily. And Sonya-the-insomniac is equal to Sonya-the-really-loud-night-patrol. What did anyone expect, though? She is Kankuro's girl.

That had been a surprise if ever there was one. Temari still remembers the day Gaara had raced into the kitchen (which was ridiculously bizarre in and of itself. Gaara did not race anywhere. Ever.) and said, "there's a baby on the front step", in a tone that suggested he thought it was actually a bomb that was going to go off any second. Kankuro was behind him, his eyes the size of dinner plates and his face a chalky white that made the purple kabuki paint stand out like neon.

"And apparently," Gaara continued, sounding slightly calmer, "it's nii-san's."

"Hell. No." was Kankuro's immediate response. He sounded like he was choking.

But hell yes, Sonya was every inch a Subaku, and Kankuro's no less—the woman who had left the child (a brief fling from a neighboring village) detailed in a brief letter exactly how long she had been pregnant (the baby had been born on time) which meant there was really no weasling out of the responsibility.

"Look at it this way," Temari had said between laughs, as her brother stared down at the baby before him as if it was covered in exploding tags. "The chick must really have liked you if she was willing to carry her full term, right?"

Amazingly, neither child nor father died in the weeks that followed. Once he got his head around the fact that, yes, this dark haired, green-eyed bundle was his, Kankuro proved to be a startlingly good father. Sonya was always clean, well-fed, and Temari was fairly certain she had never once heard that baby cry from some sort of discomfort. It became a private joke between the three of them that, instead of caring puppets slung over his back, Kankuro now carried Sonya. The little girl went everywhere with her father, and watched with fascination while he worked on his puppets. They weren't sure if she had the gift of puppetry yet, but Temari didn't doubt it for a second. She was like her father in personality, too—loud, brash, and quite fearless. She actually reminded Temari a bit of herself when she was young.

The breeze shifts, and a definite chill has started to settle over Suna, so Temari heads back inside, securing the door behind her. A quick peek into Cain's room shows her a lump snoozing peacefully under a sheet, all other blankets kicked to the floor. She smiles and continues down the hall. Not surprisingly, Sonya's room is empty. The girl has an annoying habit (her father's habit, of course) of following only half of directions, and usually only in a way that satisfies what she feels is important. Temari arrives at the end of the hallway and opens a door. A shaft of light falls across a crib, where a red headed infant slumbers on his stomach. Underneath the crib, wrapped up in a blanket pulled from her own bed, is Sonya. Temari leans against the doorframe and studies the scene silently.

Jax was just a year old a few months ago, the third surprise the Subaku siblings got in such a short time. The youngest of the three, he had been the biggest and the smallest bit of startling news to Temari. Biggest because, well, it was Gaara who was going to be a father. Gaara, who was Kazekage, who still barely ever spoke, barely ever slept, and still had that quality of not-completely-normal about him (of course, none of them are normal, but this is comparatively speaking). Smallest, though, because Gaara had been quietly seeing someone for nearly a year (nice girl, Temari remembers. Quiet but independent. A streak of the fearless in her). The woman died, unfortunately, in childbirth. That alone was enough to set Temari's teeth on edge with worry—after all, their mother had died giving birth to Gaara.

Worse, Gaara had been afraid of his infant son. Not afraid in the "this-kid-is-possessed-and-going-to-kill-me-in-my-sleep" sort of way, but in the "I'm-going-to-hurt-the-very-tiny-baby-if-I-touch-it" sort of way. Temari remembers the hours he used to spend, just staring at the little boy—who already vividly resembled him with pale skin and red hair. She remembers the slightly helpless look on his normally carefully neutral face. She had worried. A lot. Interference was a definite no—Gaara had to work this one out on his own—but she feared the lack of contact would cause a divide like it had between her father and she and her siblings. She did not know what to do at the time.

Temari focuses on Sonya, and her lips quirk into a smile. When Sonya had arrived on the doorstep Cain—two years old at the time—accepted her only after realizing that all his demands to make her "go away" were not going to be met. He grudgingly deigned that she was "alright" and could stay only if she remembered that he was the boss.

When Jax arrived, and Gaara freaked about inadequate parenting skills (Temari snorts at the thought. None of them are adequate. They just got lucky these children are so damn resilient), Sonya—barely three years old herself—seemed to think that some god placed the baby on this earth solely so she could care for him, and Jax took to her like a desert rose to the rainy season. She slept under his crib for the first week and a half, scared witless that he was going to die or disappear in the night if she did not watch him constantly (a fear that was definitely not helped by the fact that Gaara did the exact same damn thing), and she stayed close to his side as long and as often as she possibly could. No one was allowed to hold "her" baby unless she was standing right there by them, watching with hawk-like severity. No one, that is, except Gaara. Whenever he went near his son, Sonya took off in the other direction, and watched from a safe distance. If Gaara did not do what she wanted (pick up the baby, feed him, look after him, whatever) she would stomp back over, make her demands known, and scamper away again. It took several attempts on her part, and then a tumble down the stairs (god was that terrifiying) for Gaara to get over his delusion of his son's fragility. Jax is a mighty little boy, but he needs his father.

It is with that thought in mind that Temari steps away from the nursery, only to bump in to aforementioned father. Gaara raises an eyebrow at her, and then peers into his son's room. He nods.

"He's okay, then?" His voice is uncharacteristically hesitant. Temari nods.

"He's fine. They're all fine."

"Cain asleep?"

"Yep," there's a thump and a muffled mumble from back up the hall. "All evidence to the contrary, of course." The sibling smirk at each other as Cain settles down again.

"And Sonya?"

"Is probably faking it. She was up and walking not even five minutes ago." Temari raises her voice only slightly. "When I come back in five minutes, you better be in your own bed, missy. Your father is going to be home tomorrow and you don't want to be exhausted for that."

They have not gone five steps away from the door when they hear the patter of fleeing footsteps behind them, but when they turn, they see nothing.

"Quick."

"They all are."

"That's good. They'll make good shinobi."

"Of course they will! They're ours, aren't they?"

"Temari…" but he is amused, she can tell.

The desert has its own form of natural selection. Only the fittest survive. By some strange turn of fate, the three most unnatural people in Suna not only survived themselves, but lived to continue that tradition in their own children.

Well, Temari muses as she locks the doors and turns off the lights, they must be doing something right.