Family Portrait
She's seven years old, already deadly, just like Daddy wants her to be. She carries around a black-lacquered fan, half her height and weight, with no trouble at all. It has nothing on the fan she will wield by fifteen, though it does have the same three "stars" that she is fond of threatening her opponents with. She can already mask emotions better than many shinobi twice her age, letting only arrogance shine through. To everyone, she is the cocky daughter of the Kazekage, wandering everywhere with her fan and her smirk and her attitude. She usually keeps to the Kazekage's palace, or her training grounds, but when the yelling between her father and uncle gets too unbearable, when the fights escalate to the point that she trembles just to hear them argue, she slips out of the palace and hides on the roof and pretends that the happy family portraits from back before Gaara was born were still true.
She decides one day, at the sound of shattering glass from the wing where Gaara usually stays, that she doesn't want to deal with it all anymore. She is sure that if she stays around the hatred raging between two family members for much longer that she'll be just like them, that she will fight like that with Kankurou. He drives her crazy half the time, but she is sure that she doesn't ever want to hate him like Daddy hates Uncle Yashamaru. She knows nothing of Gaara and feels like she should, that the other kunoichi may be flighty but at least they care about their family like she thinks families are supposed to care. She finally gives up, taking up her fan and fleeing the palace out into the blazing midday heat of the desert.
She darts through mazelike streets, between cement buildings radiating heat, and ducks down in a dead-ended alley, huddling at the end of it in the shadows, very sure that nobody will find her here. She is shaking, knowing that one day, Daddy will kill Uncle Yashamaru, and then the final strings keeping their family together will snap. Gaara will kill them all, probably Daddy first. She wonders, in her child's mind, that if she hadn't flushed the live goldfish last month if things would have been better. If she hadn't intentionally broken the wooden horse puppet Kankurou had been given for his fourth birthday before his eyes, would Uncle Yashamaru still be as happy as he was when she turned four? Her ears are still ringing as she crouches in her hiding place, hugging her knees to her chest to try and quell her shaking.
She doesn't want anyone to know about this. Daddy wouldn't be happy. Shinobi weren't supposed to have emotions, let alone fear of their own families. But then again, not many families had little brothers possessed by tanuki demons.
Kankurou shows up to bring her home around dinner time. She only knows the time by the fact that her stomach is making strange noises at her, twisting painfully because she hasn't eaten since early that morning. He looks down at her, five-year-old pudgy fists planted on his hips.
"Dad says you have to come home now," he says matter-of-factly. She scowls up at him and sticks out her tongue.
"Don't wanna go back to that place," she says, tone biting. "They'll just start yelling again and I don't wanna hear it anymore."
"Don't have no choice, do you?" Kankurou sneers. They've never been particularly close, constantly at each other's throats for one thing or another. "You can't sleep out here, the thieves'll get you."
"Don't care."
"I'll get your room. You gotta come back or its mine and I'll throw out all your stuff."
"No way. I'm not goin'."
They argue for a few more minutes before a minor scuffle breaks out. Kankurou doesn't have the puppets he's already learning to control with chakra, so he loses swiftly to her strong buffets of wind and her bony fists. He does manage to land a few punches on her, manages to pull her hair painfully, because he knows her weaknesses and has no shame yet because he's only five years old. He feels nothing about beating up girls, especially his sister, because she doesn't count as one.
They will eventually get over the extreme rivalry, but for the moment, they limp home seperately, too proud to lean on each other for help.
Author's Notes: I like this one, but it's so weird. XD;; Wrote it while I had Pink's "Family Portrait" on repeat in my CD player, so it had a heavy influence. Credit goes to Pink for a couple lines ("Don't wanna go back to that place / But don't have no choice, no way"). The spark word for it was 'sibling rivalry.'