a/n Valentine's day can bite my shiny metal ass. That's what Bender from Futurama would say if he were reading my fic:)

Published to Mr. Chatterbox by my man, Bob Marley:)

Chapter Two: Porked, Prisoner, Poison, Pregnant

"You're just upset because you broke up with Shikamaru," Kankuro mutters as he follows her to the Kazekage's tower. "You're probably—"

"What!" Temari snarls, slapping him on the shoulder. "I didn't break up with that clown—we were never dating! And I'm not upset!" she cries, storming up the stairs to her apartment.

"You seem upset to me, lil' sister. Why don't you just—"

But Kankuro cannot complete his sentence, because he is forced to dodge a barrage of kunai.

"Shut up! I'm not your little sister! And I'm not upset—asshole!" By the time Kankuro recovers himself, Temari has locked herself in her room.

"We're supposed to report to Gaara," Kankuro calls at the top of the stairs. He stands close to her door, but not too close.

"You can go report; I'm staying here," is the muffled reply. He can hear her, pacing behind the door like a caged tiger, her feet falling in rapid, dull thuds on the floor boards.

"I'm not going without you—" Kankuro begins, but stops short when the door swings open and another volley of kunai are thrown in his direction. "That's it!" Kankuro howls. "I'm not picking your gods-damned kunai out of the walls, and I'm not covering for you! If Gaara is pissed at you for not checking in, then it's your own damn problem!"

All he gets in returned is a muted "Fuck you." Sighing, Kankuro climbs the stairs up to the top flight, then strides down the long, red-carpeted halls. Seriously. He had carried his puke-covered sister for half a day's journey through the worst of the desert heat, just to get her back to Suna as soon as possible—and this is the thanks he gets?

She must have her period, Kankuro muses. Why else would she break up with Shikamaru? The kids had seemed to be getting along well enough, back in Konoha—the way they had looked at each other with those moony eyes! It had been sweet enough to give him cavities. Shikamaru must have really fucked up; either that, or the 'Zombie Plague' had really addled Temari's brains.

Whatever.

"Where's Temari?" comes Gaara's rasping voice, breaking Kankuro out of his thoughts. Kankuro hadn't realized his feet had already brought him to his brother's office.

"Um…resting?"

Gaara raises an eyebrow at this. "I was informed that she is perfectly healthy. Where is she?"

Damn it. I said I wasn't going to cover for her, and by Kami, I'm not going to! "She's…having a temper tantrum. She didn't want to come," Kankuro mumbles, staring down at his toes.

Gaara gives him a long, hawkish stare. "It's just as well," he says at last. "Close the door behind you."

Kankuro heaves a sigh of relief and does just that. Gaara may be his little brother, but he's also the Kazekage, and a bad-ass Kazekage at that. Plus, Kankuro supposes he's still extra diplomatic around Gaara, after years of having to handle Gaara-the-mentally-unstable-jinchuriki. Old habits die hard.

"Sit," Gaara intones, and Kankuro perches on the edge of his seat. "I wanted to ask you something, Kankuro. Not as your Kazekage, but as your brother."

"Sure. Anything." Kankuro spreads his hands wide in his lap; he can guess what the question will be about.

"What…happened between Nara Shikamaru and our sister? If he's hurt her…" Gaara pauses for a moment and looks thoughtful. "If he's hurt her, I will kill him." The words roll like molasses off of Gaara's lips; slow, thick, but without any sweetness to blunt his threat.

Kankuro agrees with the sentiment. Anyone who hurts his sister will be tied up and left to die of thirst in the desert. No, he probably wouldn't have the patience for that; he would probably throttle the bastard, then tie him up in the desert, and afterwards leave his bones to be picked clean by the buzzards.

Kankuro shakes his head at his morbid daydream and replies, "Unfortunately, I don't really know. All I could get out of Temari was that they were never really dating."

Gaara levels Kankuro another one of those unblinking stares. "I'm not a people person, Kankuro. I'm not…wise in the way of how people 'date.' However, it seemed to me that Temari and Shikamaru were 'dating.'" He pronounces the word 'dating' with a strange accent, as if the words don't quite fit in his mouth.

"They were sleeping together, I'm pretty sure about that," Kankuro blurts out; gods, if Temari could hear him now, his hide would be full of sharp, pointy objects.

Gaara merely raises an eyebrow, not perturbed in the slightest. "Doesn't having sex…isn't that a part of 'dating?'"

Kankuro shrugs. "Usually. Sometimes. Not always. I dunno. Temari doesn't seem to think so, at least."

Gaara leans forward on his oval desk, his chin cupped in his hands. "Isn't it usually the man who eschews commitment, while it is the woman who equates sex with a long-term relationship? Like you, Kankuro; you seem to sleep with many women, but you don't date them."

Kankuro feels himself flushing under Gaara's scrutiny, his eyes that narrow on Kankuro like a hawk on its prey. "Maybe I'm a bad example?" Kankuro squeaks, shifting in his chair.

Gaara shrugs as he swivels in his chair to face the window. "Temari has been surrounded largely by men in her life: you, me, the council. Most of the ninja in Suna are men. It makes sense that she would have more male sensibilities. While Shikamaru seems to be surrounded mainly by women, and men who are just as emotional as their female counterparts. I wonder…"

Gaara's sharp eyes narrow and stare out of the window for a long, long time. After a while, Kankuro is not sure if Gaara still knows he is in the office; he twiddles his fingers, wondering if he should say something, when Gaara turns back around to stare at him once again.

"I don't know what happened between Shikamaru and Temari, and to be honest, I don't care. What is my concern is this: ever since this alleged break-up, Temari has become a complete hypochondriac at best, or is under so much stress, she has contracted some kind of illness."

"The Zombie Plague, you mean?" Kankuro offers, hoping to make a joke.

"The Zombie Plague," Gaara echoes gravely. "Kankuro, I have a mission for you. You need to help Shikamaru and Temari make amends."

"Me? But I—"

"Have people skills. Something which I lack. Also, I happen to be the Kazekage; I'm busy. It falls to you—"

"But—"

"This is an official order, brother mine. We're at a critical juncture, and I can't afford to be out one of my best jonin and counselors. Take this," Gaara rumbles, handing him a scroll. "It's a letter to Konoha; I've called in some favors, and I'm asking Tsunade to send over team Ino-Shika-Cho on a diplomatic mission."

"But—"

"Thank you, Kankuro. As your brother, and as your Kazekage. You are dismissed."

Kankuro gulps, clenching the message scroll in a sweaty palm. "You owe me for this, little brother. You owe me big time."

"Yes, yes I do," is the susurrant reply. Kankuro rolls his eyes and closes the office door behind him. What has he gotten himself into?

Although…for some reason, Kankuro has a sneaking suspicion that there is more going on here than meets the eye. As he walks down the stairwell, and out of the Kazekage tower towards the messenger hawk mews, Kankuro can't help but think there is something Gaara knows that Kankuro doesn't. After all, it is unlike Gaara to meddle in other people's personal lives. Could it just be brotherly concern that motivates Gaara?

No, Kankuro muses, that's part of it, but that can't be the whole picture. Kankuro is sure Gaara has a plan up his sleeve, but he'll be damned if he can figure it out.

As soon as Kankuro leaves, Temari dresses in her darkest, most nondescript clothing, and leaps out of her window. Generally, it is unwise to scale the walls of the Kazekage's tower if one does not want to be shot full of arrows, but Temari is well aware of the best path to take to avoid being noticed, or punctured—or both.

It's sunset, which casts the tower in high relief; she ghosts along the shadowed joints of the building, spiking her chakra just enough so that the guards know that it's her, yet still faint enough that her brothers won't notice her passage.

Once she's on the street, a simple Henge obscures her features; her false brown hair and chestnut eyes are hardly recognizable. She walks down the street with quiet steps, sticking to the shadows and avoiding other passersby, until she comes to her destination: The Pharmacy.

"I'd like two dozen pregnancy tests," she mumbles to the woman at the counter. The woman offers her a cursory smile, rings her up, and hands her the goods all wrapped in a brown paper bag.

"Are these for you?" the woman asks with feigned concern.

"Yes. No. A friend," Temari mutters.

"Tell your friend congratulations from me," is the saleswoman's honeyed reply.

Temari's fingers tighten on the bag. In her best impression of the saleswoman's sugary tone, Temari coos, "Drop dead." Before the woman can reply, Temari is out of the store and leaning against the outside wall. Her palms are sweating, and her stomach is threatening to flip. She swallows down the bile rising at the back of her throat and hurries on.

Back at in her apartment, Temari locks herself in her bathroom and draws all the shutters closed. She performs a jutsu to secure the area from prying eyes and begins to pee on the white plastic sticks, one after the other, until her hands are splattered with urine and the bathroom floor is sticky and wet.

She shoves everything off the counter with the back of her hand; shampoo bottles, bars of soap, razors, everything comes crashing down on the tiled floor, thump, clink, plop, fffitz. The shampoo bottle opens, oozes out its contents behind the toilet; the smell of her sage-sented shampoo mingles with the smell of urine. The stench exacerbates her nausea, but she pays it no mind.

"All right little magic sticks, show that bitchy doctor that she was wrong," Temari breathes. She puts down the lid of the toilet and sits; she hunches over and leans on her knees, her chin perched on her fists. Her eyes dart from the clock on the wall to the rows and rows of white sticks on their holders, like lines of votive candles at a temple. She thinks that maybe she should pray: dear goddess of fertility and babies, please spare me the horrors of your blessings. Amen. Om, shanti shanti. But Temari does not pray.

Instead, she bites her lip until it bleeds. She checks the clock again, and again, and again, the second hand moving with aching slowness. Something gooey crests over her big toe; she realizes it is the puddle of spilled shampoo, which has bloomed across her floor, picking up dirt, errant pieces of tissue, and loose hairs; where it has mixed with the puddles of urine, it shines and whirls like an oil slick. She does not move to clean it up.

One by one, the holy sticks upon her counter altar begin to develop tiny blue crosses, the symbol echoed in every test. A cross. Temari dimly notes that the cross stands for positive, for pregnant, for porked, prisoner, poison, pregnant, pregnant, pregnant. The river of slow moving shampoo globs over the rest of her toes, the clock continues to tick with slow precision, the blood from Temari's lip drips down her chin like a single, red tear.

She doesn't know how long she sits like that, lost in her own thoughts. All she knows is that one moment, she is sitting on the toilet, not thinking, not breathing; the next, she makes the hand-signs for a wind-jutsu, and all the fixtures are ripped from the wall. The pipes burst, water spraying everywhere—what a waste, the desert-minded part of her thinks, all this good water running to ruin in her bathroom temple. The evil white sticks are splintered, each laying in a thousand tiny fragments, their secret runes now indecipherable.

There is a hole in the wall where the window used to be. The shutters are gone, long gone, smashed to smithereens or fallen to their untimely death on the street below. The sun shines through, like the sun itself is trying to cheer her up, some gods-damed beacon of hope in the apocalypse that is her bathroom—

"Temari-sama! Are you all right?" An ANBU shouts, his bird mask looking up into her face.

The first thing Temari does is inspect the bathroom with ninja scrutiny; when she is satisfied that all evidence of the pregnancy tests are destroyed, all sticks splintered, all boxes torn and soaked into pulpy messes and obliterated beyond all recognition—

When she is satisfied, Temari—the Dreadful-Sand-Princess, Zombie's-Bane, Kunochi-of-the-Wind-Blade—kneels down in a puddle strewn with broken razors and urine and sage shampoo, and weeps.

a/n I am a review whore. Please review. lol:)