A/N: I wanted to pause for just a moment to thank everyone who has reviewed Tengu Dances, and for everyone who keeps reading through the slow... slow... slow updates. Your encouragement means the world to me, and makes it easier to push past plot points that stick, the dozens of re-wordings and restructurings that wear me down and still fail to make the point I want to make, the writer's block, the deliberations on comma placement, the research. I hope this story brings you a fraction of the entertainment and enjoyment it has brought me. Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, thanks for spending your time with my fic. Bons baisers!

Over the next few hours, Kankurō helped Kumi pack her tools, her sketches and diagrams, and the few projects she was actively pursuing. Most of these were luckily small and easily transported. When she wrinkled her nose at the heavy coils of chakra activated wire, he seized the opportunity to let her know, as casually as possible, that there was no urgent need to come back for generic supplies. She was, he assured her, welcome to take anything she needed from his workshop. He also offered to help her move her larger, cast-off projects and prototypes when they returned from Shiroiya.

Kumi suppressed a smile and nodded politely.

He didn't want her crawling around the old Theatre alone. Just as obviously, he wasn't sure how she would react to an outright injunction and wasn't willing to test the bridge they had begun to build toward one another.

It was kind of sweet. He'd been only too sure of himself when he had first tried to evict her.

They called it quits at noon. The workshop was nearly all packed up, though it would take several trips to transport everything. She bit her tongue when Kankurō burdened himself with a heavy plastic tub filled with her tools, certain he would not appreciate comment. Instead she prudently picked up a relatively light cardboard box with drafts, sketches, and a few personal items, thinking darkly that she might be able to get out from beneath it quickly enough to catch him if he happened to collapse under the weight of his ego.

He did not collapse or even stumble. Despite the temperate weather, though, he was sweating profusely by the time they came to the limestone walk that led to his house. Before Kumi could suggest that "she" would like a drink of water, the front door opened abruptly to admit them; Lady Temari had seen them coming.

Kankurō's sister was an attractive woman with golden-blonde hair and blue-green eyes not unlike the Kazekage's, though several shades darker. She greeted Kumi with a pleasant smile, and Kumi ducked her head in a rough approximation of a bow, her large box not permitting anything more formal.

Slipping inside, she maneuvered swiftly out of her shoes and into a pair of house slippers clearly intended for her use. It had been a thoughtful gesture on someone's part. Temari's, probably; Kumi couldn't quite imagine the puppet master purchasing children's butterfly-print house-slippers.

"Just down the hall, Kumi-chan, on the left," Kankurō called after her. He brought his own load in, kicked off his shoes without pausing for slippers, and, mopping his face on a sleeve, followed Kumi down the hallway.

There was only the one door on the left side of the hall, so Kumi shouldered her way in and froze. Kankurō had warned her that the room was empty, having been previously used for storage, but he had been mistaken. A suite of brand-new furniture, sanded and sealed but otherwise unfinished, now occupied what would be her bedroom.

"We weren't sure what your tastes might be," Temari said from the doorway, smiling faintly, "but your father thought you might like a blank slate to work with."

She directed a self-satisfied smirk at her brother, who looked a little stunned.

"I was only gone three hours," he observed, recovering quickly and throwing a sour look at his sister.

"And it only took me two," she answered with a flippant toss of her head. With a smug smile, she added more matter-of-factly, "I do still have some friends here, you know. I called in a few favors."

"Well, nicely done," he said, a bit grudgingly. "Thank you."

Kumi set down her box next to the bed and bowed more appropriately to the siblings. "Thank you," she echoed sincerely, feeling overwhelmed.

"Ah, well." Temari shrugged modestly, but her cheeks pinked with pleasure.

Kankurō gave her a crooked smile; whatever brief aggravation his sister had roused had been assuaged by Kumi's gratitude. "Well, I wasn't gonna make you sleep on the couch, kid."

Kumi swallowed, not sure how to reply. They had gone to considerable trouble and expense for her, and while it seemed ungrateful to be unnerved by the kindness, her stomach began to churn with anxiety.

Then she noticed a small cupboard on the desk. Like everything else, it was unpainted, though more elaborately carved. A cabinet shrine.

Drawn as if by a magnet, Kumi went to open the hinged doors. Within she found a framed photograph of her mother's face, conjured from gods-knew-where. It was a beautiful picture, but Kumi could not remember ever having seen it before.

Tentatively, she reached out to touch it.

Memory did Nozara Rira no justice. Her eyes shone with saucy good humor, a brighter hazel than Kumi had remembered, mottled green and brown flecked with gold and set under full, expressive brows. Her generous mouth curved in a smile that dimpled her cheeks. She had been on the cusp of a laugh when the picture was taken; a split second more would have crinkled the corners of her eyes and parted her white teeth. She must have been about twenty-three or twenty-four; her dark hair still fell in cropped, wind-tousled curls to the nape of her neck, and she had started growing it out when Kumi joined the Academy.

As she stood transfixed by the photograph, Temari motioned Kankurō back into the hallway. He set down his box by the door and followed her, pulling the door to behind him. Kumi spared a glance after them, and then she turned back to the photograph.

"Hi, Mom," she whispered to the shrine. "I was a little worried, but I feel better knowing you're already here." Glancing behind to see that the door was still closed, she picked up the photo frame and hugged it tightly to her chest. Then she sat on the edge of the platform bed and looked around.

A futon lay folded in its original packaging beside her, and opposite the door stood a dresser. A mirror rested on the floor beside it, its corners still capped in cardboard triangles, waiting to be mounted on the wall. Protective foam encased the knobs of the dresser and a matching chest of drawers. A corner desk and chair sat near the closet.

Despite her apprehension, Kumi smiled when she saw two large cans of paint primer sitting by the door. It was a considerate intimation that the furniture was hers, and that she could do as she pleased with it. And, perhaps, a subtle reminder of Kankurō's promise to take her wants into consideration. Her jangled nerves began to settle.

Exhaling slowly, she looked around at the room again.

It was pretty sterile at the moment. Painting the furniture would do a lot to warm it up. Something like the freehanded florals on her mother's carving tools, maybe. A clean white base, and some stark brown branches, adorned here and there with plum blossoms, the pink ones with red hearts that she had seen on the border between Kaze and Kawa. Maybe a pink cover for the futon – or red, to draw the eye toward the flowers.

Kumi pressed her lips lightly to the photograph and returned it to its shrine. He was trying. It was damned awkward, but he was trying, and so was his – their – clan. She could try, too.

Temari and Kankurō were standing in the living room when she emerged, talking lowly with one another.

"May I ask where you found that picture?" Kumi hunched her shoulders shyly. "I've never seen it before."

Kankurō shook his head; it hadn't been his doing.

"The Kazekage told me that Ajibana Ibuki was your mother's teammate," Temari explained. "I asked him whether he had any good pictures of her. He said he'd given most of them to you over the years but offered to ask whether their other old teammate – Arii something or other – might happen to have something suitable."

She gestured toward the front door. "Ajibana-san came by about twenty minutes ago and gave me that."

"Arii Junichi," Kumi supplied, surprised.

Arii-san, like his son, Hachiuma, tended to be pretty standoffish. Yet he'd kept an intimate picture of his old teammate, one that had been taken long after their genin days. She filed that away for future reference. Hachi wasn't as cold as he pretended to be. Perhaps he came by that chilly veneer of aloofness honestly.

"So, you set up that shrine for me, Lady Temari?"

"Aunt Temari," the blond woman corrected kindly. "And yes, I did. It occurred to me that your mother would have no male relatives to honor her, having renounced the Nozara. The responsibility would be yours, and," she gave Kankurō a sidelong look, "I have this appalling suspicion that you're going to be a great deal like my brother, here. For all his many, many, many faults, I have to admit that he is always careful to do his duty."

Winking, she added more companionably, "Your manners are much nicer than his, though. I'm very glad to meet you, Kumi-chan."

Kumi concealed a smile behind her hand while Kankurō glowered at his sister.

"She's teasing – mostly," he explained flatly. "But I am the eldest surviving male in the family, so…" He shrugged.

So, it would be his responsibility to honor the Kazekage clan's ancestors in the annual, formal observances held in the Vaults of the Honored Dead. As Kumi did for her mother.

Kankurō was rumored to possess little in the way of religious convictions; Kumi didn't know whether that were true, though it wouldn't surprise her. Regardless, a small shine, like the one that held her mother's photograph, sat unopened in one corner of the living room, and a recent offering of three oranges lay ripening before it. Whatever else he did or did not believe, he honored his family.

A family to which she now belonged.

"I'm going to get some lunch started." Temari glanced at Kankurō, suddenly serious. "Gaara will be here before long – do you want to show her around while I cook?"

He grimaced but nodded, jerking his head toward the stairs.

"Come on, kid. Let's start at the top, yeah?"

He started up the stairs without waiting for an answer, so she followed him up and out onto the terrace. It was difficult to believe that the night before last, she'd been standing on the wall, and –

"Hard to believe it's only been a couple of days," Kankurō remarked, staring into the ashy hearth. Shaking his head ruefully, he asked, "You wanna know how Kawamura broke the news to me?"

Kumi shrugged.

"Congratulations," he quoted, "It's a girl." He barked a laugh.

"Well, that sounds like Sensei," she agreed. "Are these poisonous?" She kneeled by the cacti at the base of the wall and touched one, partially because she was genuinely curious, but partially to change the subject.

"No," he said. "You'd think so, knowing me, but that's my brother's handiwork, there."

"The Kazekage grows cacti?"

He laughed out loud at her look of confusion.

"Guilty pleasure," he acknowledged. "Some of us it's booze, some of us it's…" he coughed. "Well, this is his. The way he wastes time he thinks he should be using to do something more productive."

"What's yours? Unless it's…" She feigned a cough herself.

"Do you want to be thumped again?" he asked, raising a brow.

"No, sir," she said, retreating out of reach, "but I would like to know your guilty pleasure."

He shrugged. "Other than puppet-crafting? Theatre, probably. Not acting," he assured her hastily. "Purely a spectator, me. I read some, histories, biographies, playscripts. The occasional novel. There are a few poets I have a weakness for. And I've got a nose for good beer. You?"

"Drawing and painting," Kumi answered immediately. "And I like music. My mom…" She sighed, but a small smile of remembrance crossed her lips. "She could dance – she was a great dancer – but she was completely tone-deaf. She told me I used to cry when she tried to sing lullabies."

A strange look passed over Kankurō's face, but he said nothing. Instead he gestured her back inside. This upper floor was composed only of the small alcove that opened into the terrace and his bedroom; he opened the door to the latter, though they didn't venture in. It was surprisingly uncluttered, Kumi thought with approval.

"I'm in here," he said unnecessarily. "There's a bathroom attached, through that door, there, and that hatch," he pointed at the ceiling, "opens to the upper terrace."

Glancing down at her, he added, "I generally use the bath up here, anyway, so I was thinking maybe you should have the downstairs one to yourself. As long as you don't mind keeping it tidy for guests."

"That's fine with me."

It was a tremendous relief, actually. The thought of bathing with a grown man just down the hall had unsettled her more than a little. Evidently, he had been no more sanguine about the idea than she was – a fact she found counterintuitively comforting.

Downstairs, aside from the kitchen, the living room, and Kumi's newly appointed bedroom and bath, there was only a small office tucked under the stairs behind the kitchen. Kumi's eyes lit up on seeing the computer sitting on his paper-strewn desk. He laughed and told her she was welcome to it; he hated the damn thing even more than he disliked his phone.

Back in the living room, she asked about a cardboard box labeled "Masks," so he pulled it over to the sofa and opened it for her. His collection was impressive, consisting mostly of Noh theatre masks, interspersed here and there with antique festival masks and puppet face-plates. One lonely Anbu mask resided among them; he explained that it had once belonged to a close friend who was now retired.

Kumi traced the outlines of a particularly exquisite tengu mask with reverence. "This is… man, I wish I could paint like this. I wish I could carve like this."

Kankurō grinned. "Yeah? Well, you've got a good eye, kid. That's the work of a master craftsman – one you're familiar with, by the way."

Kumi tore her gaze from the mask. "Who?"

"The man who gave me that," he nodded at the long-nosed mask, "also made Little Bird's eyes."

Her jaw dropped. "You know Master Eiji?" she demanded. "Master Eiji gave you this?"

Kuroisuna no Kankurō was the greatest living crafter of ninjutsu puppets, and probably the best of the last several preceding generations. Some might argue Sasori had perhaps been more ruthlessly inventive, but Kumi had little regard for the dead Akatsuki criminal. Either way, in the civilian world, Master Eiji had been the unequalled master of Bunraku puppetry for over sixty years.

Eiji – if he had a surname , she'd never heard it – was a world-famous artisan. Disillusioned by the events of the Second World War, he was an out-and-out pacifist, although he could occasionally be induced to supply hand-made eyes or face masks for the Corps, if he happened to be taken with the design of a particular puppet.

On a recommendation from one of her Corps instructors, Kumi had written him personally with a request for Little Bird's eyes, enclosing specs and a photograph of her nearly-completed model. He hadn't responded with an invoice or even a question, but with two words – She's beautiful ¬ and a pair of shiny black eyes, fitted precisely to Little Bird's sockets. He never had charged her for them.

Kankurō was watching her, enjoying her amazement. "Oh, yeah, the old man and I go way back. I was just about your age when I first met him."

He took the mask from her and carefully replaced it in the box. "I owe the old geezer a visit, so I was planning on taking you to see him when we go to the Capital, anyway." He hesitated a moment, then went on, "You know, I think he can probably repair Naruki's broken face-plate, if you're willing to part with it for a few days."

"Really?" Her head snapped up at once.

"Really. The old man has sort of a gift with broken things. Makes a hobby of restoring old masks, bunraku puppets, costumes. Now," he warned, "I'm gonna tell you up front, it won't be sturdy enough to use in combat. But it will be intact, and if he's half as good as I think he is, you won't be able to tell that it was ever broken. You'll have a keepsake, at least.

"And, you know," he added with a shrug, "if you wanted to, we could put it up on the wall out here. I've been meaning to mount my own collection for ages and never have gotten around to it. They've been gathering dust for the better part of a decade. Gives me an excuse to get off my ass and do it."

He backtracked at her look of surprise. "Or, we could put it in your room," he amended quickly, "if you would rather do that."

"You… you wouldn't mind hanging it out here?" she asked, a bit of bashfulness creeping into her voice.

"No. Not at all." He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was a little uneven. "This is your home, too, Kumi-chan."

Neither of them really knew what to say after that, so he got to his feet with a cough and gestured toward a door next to the kitchen.

"Here, I got one last thing to show you."

Kumi glanced back at the shrine with its citrus offerings, curious, but he shook his head.

"Later, yeah? Temari asked the Kazekage to bring a few of our old photo albums for you to look through. I'll introduce you to your grandparents after lunch."

Kumi nodded an acknowledgement. Then she followed him through the doorway and down a staircase into the basement, where she promptly screamed in delight.

All around her, stuffed in bins and hanging from the ceiling and spilling over shelves, the silent denizens of Kankurō's personal studio watched her, all just as wonderfully creepy as Karasu had been.

Chiyo's White Secret companions, the Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu, hung together behind iron bars, just as curious about her as Kankurō's prototypes seemed to be. Sasori's artificial body, his Mother and Father puppets, and his Red Secret puppets hung beside them, although the body of the Third Kazekage was notably absent. When she asked, Kankurō told her that he had buried the corpse-puppet with the rest of the Kazekage clan in the Vaults as soon as it came into his possession. The man was his great-uncle, after all, and he wasn't quite so unfeeling as to leave his grandmother's elder brother unburied any longer than necessary. His own Black Secret Puppets were held in reserve in a carrying scroll by his front door, she learned, disappointed.

Kankurō had his own band saw, lathe, and a combination milling machine and drill press. Kumi couldn't decide whether to be more excited about the machining tools or the legendary puppets while they passed a pleasant quarter hour in the basement workshop. Amused by her obvious excitement, Kankuro answered her endless questions with surprising patience, though he did make her promise not to use any of the heavy machinery or mix poisons under the fume hood when he wasn't around. He pointed out his own workspace and the supply cabinets, and where he thought they might set up a work table for her – unless she still wanted a space in the Theatre? No?

They both laughed.

It was an odd sound and an odder feeling. Kumi's workshop had always been a place of silence and solitude, and intrusions had been categorically unwelcome. But Kankurō hadn't felt like an intruder, unlike even Seichi or Gohachiro, both of whom had been inside it on occasion.

And she didn't feel like an intruder here. At least the puppets liked her, she thought, convinced it was true even as she pushed the strange idea from her head. Something of their makers lingered in the wood and the wire, and they didn't mind her presence here in their master's workshop. One of the White Secret Puppets, a blue-eyed female with beribboned hair buns, seemed particularly glad to see her.

"Seriously, though," Kankurō said, interrupting her thoughts, drawing her by the hand over to his desk. "You can screw around with anything you like down here, except the Secret Puppets, and my workbench. It's usually covered in shit I'm already pissed off with, and I'm likely to lose my temper if anything is disturbed."

She nodded in understanding. "I won't forget. I leave things half-done when I'm frustrated and come back to them later, and I'd be pretty annoyed if they weren't exactly the way I left them."

He smirked good-naturedly. "I figured you'd understand." He gestured toward the back of the studio. "Alright, then. Those shelves back there, you wanna take a stab at any of those old projects, go for it. Rip 'em up and put 'em back together, if you want to. Innovate. Go nuts, yeah? Just… right here, and maybe a meter or so around, above, beneath…"

"I got it," she promised, but even as she said it, she leaned to one side to look behind him.

"Is that a snake puppet?" she squealed, hands clasped firmly behind her back, though she desperately wanted to get a better look at the massive thing stretched across the puppet master's workbench. "I've only ever seen them as toys! Everyone says they're too bloody complicated to use in combat."

He smiled crookedly. "Just who the hell do you think you're talking to, kid?" Quick as lightning, he strung the snake – completely with chakra thread, she saw with amazement – and hurled his latest project forward, wrapping the long body around her.

The giant head swung around to look at its captive, who grinned up into the three sightless eyes and terrible, fanged mouth.

"You are just wonderful," she murmured emphatically to the cobra, squirming a little to get her hands free. She reached up through the coils to hold the flared hood. "How many pulleys?" she asked of his master.

Kankurō groaned. "Twenty-fucking-four."

"Twenty-four! Could anyone else even manipulate him?" she demanded, pushing the terrifying face out of her way to stare at her father in disbelief.

"Her," Kankurō corrected. "This bitch is definitely female. There's probably a half-dozen puppeteers in the Village who have the technical skills. Two of them are retired, though."

The snake liked her, and this time she didn't shy away from the thought. Instead she yanked one hand back inside the loose trap and repositioned her arms into a comfortable hug around one coiled loop. She rested a cheek on the cool wood, breathing the familiar and comforting fragrance of sawdust, machine oil, and varnish. Yes, this one definitely liked her, she thought with satisfaction. Well, that was alright. The feeling was mutual.

Kankurō's mouth and his fingers twitched, and the cobra tightened around her, returning her impromptu embrace. She closed her eyes and gave the snake another squeeze. Another board in the bridge, she thought. One plank closer to not being complete strangers.

Unwinding her, Kankurō laid the puppet back on his work table and dissolved his strings. Just as she was about to venture the names of a couple of prominent puppeteers, Temari called them up.

Lunch was ready, and the Kazekage had arrived.