New chapter and some new characters to boot! Honestly I was expecting this chap to be a lot funnier when I started, but then it got kinda sad and feelingy, still though, it was a good excuse to explore the hugely complicated sand sib relationship (and also some of my own conflicting feelings about certain things that happened in canon that will probably become glaringly obvious once you get to them parts) ((alsoalso, I just realised that parts of this might come off a bit sandcesty? That's not my intention, I just think they have a very close sibling bond))

Enjoy!


Family reunion – fluff, comedy and a good dose of angst (also, warning for swears)


The clouds were beautiful today.

The whole day had been pretty lovely actually, sunny – but not too sunny – warm, but not stifling and for once he didn't have any annoying things he had to do, like chores or errands.

Or work.

Shikamaru let out a long, contented sigh, simply taking in the nice view from his porch and listening to the gentle, soothing sounds of the forest. Even his young son lying next to him didn't need to be taken care of right now, Shikadai was quite happily snoozing away; somehow, just being in the presence of his own creation made him feel a strange, tight, tingling sensation in his chest.

His mother had claimed it was love, his teammates said he was proud. His wife had just scoffed and teased him about indigestion.

He couldn't help smiling thinking about that.

She really was something else and he wouldn't change that for the world.

The sliding door to the house suddenly slammed open, with an intensity that left him wondering how much structural damage had just been inflicted upon it.

"Get up losers, we're going to Suna!"

And, to think, the day had started out so well.


Temari wasn't one for nostalgia – her childhood had left very few positive memories for her to reminisce on – but, as she saw the edges of the sprawling Kazekage estate, she found herself quickening her pace, feet gliding as naturally over the hard, dirt paths, as they did over the flowing sea of sand they'd crossed on their way here.

It'd been far too long since she last visited, almost a whole year; though Kankuro had dropped by to visit a few months back; he'd claimed to have had a mission in the general area, but Gaara had later confirmed her suspicions that he'd gone out of his way to see her.

She still missed her brothers more than she could really explain, even to herself.

And apparently things had been quite hectic while she'd been away, if Gaara's rushed and unexplained letter a week ago was anything to go by.

"Tem, do you want to slow down a little?" Shikamaru called out to her, she turned back to see him and her boy dragging pretty damn far behind. She had been setting a fast pace for them, especially Shikadai, who had had to be carried the bulk of the journey; now he was walking, but his curiosity at this unfamiliar environment – had it really been three years since she last brought him, already? – was slowing him down and her lazy husband certainly wasn't encouraging him to move any faster.

"No I don't! I'm gonna go ahead, you two can either hurry up or make your own way," she said, normally she'd be teasing, but in this case she really wasn't going to wait around.

The blond didn't wait for an answer, she just launched herself into a run, reaching the front door of her old family home in record time. It hadn't changed at all. She didn't bother knocking, the house was huge and besides, she still had a key. The entryway was as grand and overwhelming as always; she easily stretched her senses for any indication of where her brothers were, hearing chatter and movement from the direction of the kitchen, she moved to track them down.

As she got closer to her destination, she started to pick up on things that had changed; there were boxes – small, large, plain, bright – scattered in various rooms she passed, scuff marks were just visible on the stone tiled floor, one of their father's old antique vases was conspicuously missing from its usual place in the hallway.

More than any of that though, was the sound.

For as long as she could remember, the house had always had a stifling stillness hanging over it, when she was a toddler and had yet to know true heartbreak, it was simply too grand and her father too strict to allow anything to disturb it. Then, when her youngest brother had been born, a different kind of stillness reigned, the silence born of fear; she and Kankuro had always stayed quiet when they knew Gaara was in the house, even before they had truly understood what he was, because father had told them not to disturb him under any circumstances – a rule they had learned to respect very quickly.

And after those fateful chunin exams – so very, very long ago – the silence had changed again, this time to one filled with tension and uncertainty, as Gaara navigated the arduous path back to humanity and she and her brother nervously walked beside him, too scared to hold his hand, but too hopeful to let him walk it alone.

It had never really left, that oppressive feeling; not when Gaara had proved himself worthy and stable enough for the title of Kazekage, not when she and Kankuro had learned how to be truly comfortable in his presence.

Not when she had made the decision to leave, to live with the man she hated to admit she loved.

Especially not then, she hated thinking about the fights she and Kankuro had gotten into when she first announced her intentions. They were never directly about her moving away, but the underlying reason for the hostility was always clear to them both, though neither ever acknowledged it.

She couldn't blame him though, even in the worst of times, there had always been the unspoken pact between the two siblings – three, eventually – that they would never abandon each other, even if they knew staying together would cause problems for them, even if the laws that be demanded it, even if the world came crashing down around them, they would always be there for each other.

And now, she wasn't. Of course, she would always be ready to help her brothers – nothing could hope to stop her – but there was an unspoken sense of loss for all of them. Even as she'd made the decision to move to Konoha, to spend the rest of her life with that lazy, stupid, infuriating genius; she had still felt the loss of her siblings, deep in her bones. She wouldn't be able to spend long, boring days bickering with Kankuro about everything and nothing, she wouldn't have Gaara to talk to on those nights when sleep simply wouldn't come.

She wouldn't have the paradoxical familiar comfort of the suffocating atmosphere of the house she had grown up in, the air that had always stubbornly lingered – even after so many life-altering transformations it had been host to – she could still feel it now, that familiar, comforting, uncomfortable silence, but it seemed… lighter, somehow.

"Oh yeah? How are you gonna stop me, huh?"

The voice was unfamiliar to her, but it definitely belonged to a young girl, Temari hastened her steps.

"Are you kidding? I'm one of the most powerful jounin in Suna, I've fought against S-ranked criminals and won, I'm the leader of the Puppetry Core and right hand of the Kazekage and you're just some uppity brat with an ego problem," her brother's voice was a more welcome noise than she'd care to admit, even as his arrogant bragging made her reflexively want to smack him upside the head.

"I am not!"

"You so are."

"Am not!"

"So are."

"Arghhhh!" the girls screech of aggravation was followed by stomping footsteps and Kankuro's always aggravating cackle.

She finally reached the entrance to the kitchen and had to take a moment to process everything she was seeing. Kankuro was running circles around the large dining table, pursued by a tiny, slip of a girl – though with her blond hair cropped so short, she could easily pass for a boy – while two young boys sat eating their lunch, she could only see the front of the one facing her, his blank eyes had snapped to her the second she'd entered the doorway, but he didn't do anything more. Gaara was leaning against a counter, eyes closed and fingers rubbing at both of his temples, he looked notably more dishevelled than usual – his casual t-shirt creased and bags under his eyes darker than she remembered.

"You're one to talk Kankuro, here you are bigging yourself up as some great ninja and you haven't even noticed me standing here," she finally said, smirk plastered across her face.

Her brother skidded to a halt, spinning round to look at her. "First thing you say to me in five months and it's an insult? Some sister you are," he snapped, grinning wide as he ambled over to her and wrapped her in a suffocating bear hug.

"Temari, I wasn't expecting you for another ten hours, you didn't push your family too hard, did you?" Gaara said; shaken out of his daze, he moved to greet his oldest sibling with a light embrace and subtle smile.

"I carried Shikadai most of the way and the cry-baby could use the exercise, they're taking their time to be tourists, but they'll be here, eventually," she smiled back, gently patting his shoulder before pulling away to take in the whole scene again.

The girl was now sitting next to the blank-eyed boy, glowering at her suspiciously, the child who had previously been hidden from her view was now peeking over the back of his chair; the woman was shocked by his face, it was, well, it wasn't the worst she'd ever seen – ninja life hardened you to all manner of horrifying wounds and scars – but she felt deeply uncomfortable seeing such a face on a child so young.

She glanced back to her youngest brother and raised an eyebrow pointedly.

Gaara cleared his throat and led her to a seat at the table, where she had a clear view of all three kids. "Children, this is Temari, mine and Kankuro's older sister; Temari, these are my adopted… charges, Yodo," he gestured towards the girl, "Shinki," the impassive boy next to her, "and Araya," the boy with the disfiguring facial scar.

She shifted a little awkwardly in her seat, she'd never been much good with kids, "Hi, nice to meet you."

None of the kids said anything for a long minute, the skinny girl was still glaring distrustfully at her, Shinki hadn't looked at her once since she'd first announced herself – instead staring into his cup of juice like it held the answers to every question in the cosmos. The scarred boy was glancing uncertainly between her, his siblings and his… father.

This was going to take a lot of getting used to. For everyone involved.

Finally, the anxious looking Araya broke the tension, by sheepishly waving and muttering a nearly inaudible, "Nice to meet you too."

Kankuro snorted and moved to slump down into the empty chair next to her, "Well, now that that's out of the way, Gaara, how about that tea?"

"Oh, yes," Temari's youngest brother murmured – he looked more spaced out than she'd seen in decades – as he moved to the counter and poured out boiling water into two cups, wordlessly grabbing a third from the cupboard.

The blond woman tsked and smacked the puppeteer's arm, familiar smirk working its way onto her face. "What, too lazy to get it yourself? It looked like you had plenty of energy to be bullying little kids a few minutes ago."

"He was already making it, besides, I just sat down."

"And the bullying?" she asked, still teasing – Kankuro had outgrown his true bullying phase years ago, not long after the chunin exams.

This time the victim in question spoke up, "He couldn't bully me if he tried! 'e was just trying to stop me stealin' his cookies and being a shitfuck," she stated confidently. Temari blinked at the foul language, that was unexpected and, judging by Kankuro's howling laughter and Gaara's dropping of the spoon he was holding, it was apparently new to her brothers too.

The older blond found herself liking this kid, "Yeah, you'll just have to get used to that I'm afraid, but if you ever need to get any payback you can never go wrong with a few insects down his shirt-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's uncalled for, she's already a little terror, you don't need to go giving her ideas," her brother cut in, glaring her down, though his shoulders were still shaking as he tried to restrain his snickers.

"Well, maybe you should stop being such a shitfuck then," she shot back, already snorting at herself, as the sound of Gaara's head thudding against a cupboard reached her ears.

It was good to be home.


Shikamaru was beginning to wonder why he'd even come, his wife was sitting next to her red headed brother on the couch in the living room, the other brother sitting next to her, his long legs slung over his siblings' laps – Temari had complained and pinched him a few times, but made no move to break the contact.

Meanwhile, his only son was sitting at the dining table with his new cousins, well, Araya at least; the other two were sitting further apart just watching their adoptive brother as he showed Shikadai some of his favourite drawings.

The shadow-nin himself was sitting in one of the unbearably hard chairs with them – he'd long ago accepted that people born in Suna apparently didn't know the meaning of the word 'comfort' – trying to work out exactly what he had to offer in this situation. Sure, he was mostly just here to look after his son and, now, his niece and nephews too, because no way in hell was his wife going to be paying much attention to anyone other than her siblings after so long apart; he didn't hold it against her, not that he really understood why she got so wrapped up in them whenever they met up, but he didn't have any siblings, so that wasn't surprising.

Besides, even if Temari was still tight-lipped about her past and her deeply complicated relationship with her brothers, he knew enough of their life stories to understand how much they meant to each other. If he had to play babysitter while they caught up and worked through their feelings together, well, he wasn't going to be happy about it, but he wasn't going to complain either.

Not out loud anyway.

At least Shikadai was enjoying himself.


Temari's soft laughter drifted away into a contented sigh, being with her family again gave her a sense of peace she dearly missed.

"So, what's with the kids, Gaara? I was pretty shocked to get your letter and seeing them all today… What the hell happened?"

Kankuro snorted, "That's what I said."

Her youngest brother sighed and ran a hand through his hair tiredly, he definitely looked exhausted. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I was doing a routine visit at the orphanage and those three, they were having problems with the other children, I had initially only planned to talk to them, see if I could find some way to help them." His head dropped, deep red curls obscuring his frown only a little. "They… are like me. Like I was, they were heading down that dark path, I just, I want to give them a chance," he said, his speech was never usually this faltering or rambling, a glaring sign that he was extremely stressed.

"So, this was a complete whim, no planning whatsoever?" she asked gently, nudging his shoulder with hers.

At Gaara's simple nod, the blond hmm-ed thoughtfully, "Well, I can't say that it was the best idea in the world-"

"That's an understatement," Kankuro interrupted.

"But, I think that it's an admirable decision, wanting to help these kids, it's the kind of thing that idiot Naruto would do," she took a little joy in the tiny smile that crept onto his features, "and I think you're right, those three do need a guiding hand and you're a great person to care for them."

He let out a soft, slightly hysteric-sounding, laugh – dear gods, how exhausted was he? – and slowly moved his left hand towards his forehead, Temari slipped her hand into his before it got there; gently but resolutely pulling it back down to sit on her lap – or, on Kankuro's legs, which were still annoyingly lying over hers.

"Gaara, listen to me, I know that right now you're terrified and have no idea what you're doing, but you'll be fine, nobody expects you to pick up parenting immediately. I had no idea what to do when I first became pregnant, it took months of reading every baby book I could get my hands on to feel just a little confident in looking after a child and even then, the second Shikadai was born I was terrified all over again because none of it really prepared me for being a mother. To be honest, I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing, you just need to take your time and not overthink it so much," she said, squeezing his hand lightly.

"But I can't take time with this, they need a carer now; making them wait while I adjust isn't fair on them-"

"Gaara," Kankuro finally spoke up, his voice terribly serious, "you're not alone in this, I've been right here from the start, Matsuri-chan's visited every day for the last week to see the brats, Baki-sensei has already helped you with getting the house in order and I think the kids like him more than me at this point. You know we've got your back, that you don't have to rush this; so, what's the real problem?"

The elder siblings stared hard at the youngest, not accusingly, they didn't want to make their brother feel attacked right now, but unrelenting and serious.

Temari suspected she already knew what the real issue was – she'd had to struggle with the same thing when she had her son – Kankuro certainly knew, judging by his firm tone of voice but sympathetic eyes. But they needed to hear it from Gaara and he needed to actually verbalise what was on his mind and admit that weakness to someone who wouldn't judge him for it.

"I… I don't know how to raise a child, I don't even know what a normal childhood looks like, I never had one." He turned his head to look at them, waiting for them to respond, uncertainty clearly visible in his eyes, even if his face looked blank as ever.

But, they still hadn't gotten to the root of the issue.

The uncomfortable silence stretched on until Gaara finally dropped his head again, eyes squeezed tightly shut; when he finally spoke again, his words were rough and almost too low to hear.

"I don't want to become him."

And there it was. The implicit but unspoken spectre that had loomed over all of their lives since the first second they were born. Temari carefully passed the redhead's hand over to Kankuro – who took it and grasped it gently – and then slowly raised her arm to rest around her baby brother's, minutely shaking, shoulders. She pulled him in closer and leaned her head against his.

"We know, none of us do," she breathed out.

"And it won't happen," Kankuro said firmly, "you're already nothing like him Gaara, I've seen how you act around those three and it's obvious you'd never treat them the way he treated us. We're better people now than he ever was and if I ever see you slipping, then I'll be the first to tell you."

The youngest of the three didn't respond, but his tight squeeze on his brother's hand and heavy lean against his sister's body let them know he'd heard them.

And if anyone was crying, then no one was going to judge. That would just be hypocritical.