Characters: Temari
Summary: While waiting for her brothers and sensei, Temari reflects.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Another Temari-centric piece. Hope you all like it. It also connects to From a Certain Angle, so I wouldn't mind if you, the readers, would go check that out too.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Pale reality comes with the rise of the moon—everything seems so much clearer now: the sands highlighted by the moon and their edges softened out by the darkness, the lights like dim little terrestrial stars glittering from Sunagakure, the little dark blobs and the larger ones that indicate that the genin of Suna and their senseis are starting to filter into the desert for nightly practices.
Temari wonders which one of those larger bobbing shadows belongs to her sensei, and which of the two smaller ones belong to her brothers. If both of her brothers have even deigned to appear tonight—Kankuro has a margin of respect for Baki but Gaara defies all and answers to none. Baki can not control him any more than their father can—Gaara merely accepts the orders of the Kazekage out of pragmatism.
The moon is rising over the horizon—somewhere, Temari knows, Gaara can hear it singing in his blood, and maybe tonight he will choose to heed the call and maybe he will not and simply listen to the song of the desert instead—and Temari is there before the others as usual. Her tessen training tutor gets tired easily of late, and her father sent her up here to wait for them.
And Temari watches the bobbing shadows, purple yukata hanging on her knees as she sits, and iron fan resting behind her.
If she listens very hard, she can hear the voices of genin laughing and fraternizing, but Temari knows they will never approach her. She is unapproachable for three reasons: she is the Kazekage's daughter, she is the jinchuuriki's sister, and she is intimidating in her own right, even at twelve years old.
But there is very little of her mind and heart put into worrying about that tonight, even if loneliness still tugs at her in places she can't really identify.
Gaara's seemed a little calmer lately. Temari supposes that has a lot to do with the fact that he disappeared into the desert for a week and came back with blood flecked and foamed around his mouth, teeth stained black and pale skin painted with it. His appetite has been sated, for now. Perhaps he'll join them tonight—and in that case, the four of them will have to move far off to keep all the other genin from running away in the attempt to give Gaara wide berth.
On the contrary, Kankuro's getting more and more irritable. Temari suspects this has something to do with the way Chiyo (his puppetry mistress) has been treating him lately—more demanding, considerably less pleasant (not that she was ever terribly pleasant to begin with), and downright condescending at times. Knowing Kankuro's temperament, Temari's surprised he hasn't tried to murder Chiyo yet.
Oh well. It's probably coming.
And their father has been…himself, which is to say demanding and difficult to approach, utterly intimidating when he wants to be, though he was strangely subdued and considerably less snappish than usual (if still just as stern), when Temari encountered him a few hours past.
Now, the moon is rising. It casts its milky fingers shooting out over the desert. Temari can hear a song flying over the hills and the wind, the fierceness and bloodthirstiness found there belying the moon's serene appearance.
No wonder Gaara becomes uncontrollable at the time of the full moon.
The night is full; the sun, fully extinguished. The others should be here soon.
Temari waits for them as the moon rises, and doesn't listen to its song.