...
05.
ten years old, hopeful
...
In the two months that Kankurou spends away, Temari immerses herself in training.
Sometimes Baki compliments her. Most of the time, his attacks cut at her. Scrapes and bruises and flowering welts, these are the results of her efforts. She wears them proudly and is proud to have a teacher like him. Baki, for his part, does not apologize - daughter of the Kazekage or no, she is still his student and he is determined to train her well.
One night, her father was home and there were no political dinners for the evening. They had a simple meal then, just the two of them. There had been nothing to talk about, and she hadn't tried. Still, he had congratulated her on learning how to fly on her fan and she had failed to hide her smile in the curve of her cup.
She forgets to ask when Kankurou will return.
...
That night, Gaara had paid a visit to her, manifesting at the edge of her balcony.
She sits up, rising to attention, but keeps from grabbing the fan.
Run if you can, she remembers.
He approaches her and she strives to keep the fear at bay.
"Do you remember Mother?"
She does a double-take, brows furrowing.
"I... I don't remember much either."
His brow furrows too and she shirks back, already feeling the warm swell of death. He reaches out to her then, stopping short of actually touching, and he closes his fingers in a loose fist. Temari remembers their initial rendezvous, remembers who he had mistaken her for then. Perhaps he really does see Yashamaru in her, she muses.
"Is he" she begins, trying to break the silence, "sleeping right now?"
He pulls back his hand and says nothing.
In a fit of self-deprecating hysteria, she wonders if it would be rude for her to fall asleep right now.
Gaara continues to keep his silence. Perhaps he hadn't heard her questions then. She chances a glance in his direction and finds him staring heatedly at her fan. In a pointless gesture, she rearranges the bedsheets, piling them around her. Gaara continues to watch.
Kankurou can't come back soon enough, she realizes, fluffing pillows and wrinkling sheets. Without him, there's no one else to really talk to - between the servants and Baki and, heaven forbid, her father and Gaara - it's no surprise that Kankurou manages to win the award for best conversationist.
"No," Gaara says, slowly shaking his head. "He never sleeps."
"Oh." It had been a stupid question, in retrospect. No wonder his eyes were perpetually rimmed with such heavy shadows.
Without warning, he falls on top of her. She freezes, breath trapped somewhere between her stomach and lungs, and cannot do anything when a hand reaches up to her chest, pushing her back, back, back.
"Talk to me," he demands, an inexplicable quiver ringing through the final syllable.
What do you think I was trying to do?
"Does he?" she wonders, vision blurring. So this is it, she thinks, as she has thought. "Talk to you, I mean."
"Always."
Of course.
"Even right now?"
"Always."
She closes her eyes, forcing steady breaths while doing her best to ignore the weight over her midsection. She knows next-to-nothing of Gaara and would have been more than happy to keep it that way. Talk to me, he had commanded of her - but what for? There's nothing she knows that Baki wouldn't know too and she cannot imagine Gaara thirsting for conversation.
"What is he saying?" Why did you say that?, her conscience shrieks, you don't want to know the answer to that.
"Kill everyone. Kill everyone and you'll be happy," Gaara tonelessly recites. If he were any other child, she would have laughed and told him to not say such silly things. Well, actually, if he were any other child, the guards would've never let him into her room.
"So you don't believe him?"
"No."
Well, that was a relief.
"He told me killing Yashamaru would bring back Mother."
"Oh."
This is a boy who has never felt pain in his life, she knows. She has a field of welts and scars and she's proud of them. But Gaara does not know pain, does not know death. He is a pitiable creature, this brother of hers. Pitiable, but she has always been lacking in empathy.
"Now he's saying if I kill you, he'll keep quiet for the night."
Breath in, breath out.
He sits up and she keeps her eyes closed. She refuses to open them, even when she felt two small hands wrap about her neck, squeezing gently.
Breath in, breath out.
"It won't hurt," he whispers, voice tickling the shell of her ear.
This is it. This is how I'm going to die.
And then her conscience explodes.
"I don't want to die!" she screams, kicking him solidly off the bed. He lands on the floor with a satisfying thud but she's not satisfied, no far from it.
"Keeping quiet for one night?!" she bellows, getting to her feet, "Do you really think he'd keep his promise?! You just told me you didn't trust him, what are you - " the weight of her actions catches up prematurely and she scrambles down, hands moving from her hips to her face.
Gaara lays motionless on the floor and, for a moment, she stupidly thinks she may have killed him.
And then he sits up, rubbing his stomach and glaring balefully at her.
"You hurt me," he says, tearing up.
Temari falls back, stunned, as he runs off, crying all the while.
"That," she starts, tossing a pillow to turn off the lights, "didn't just happen."
...
Kankurou makes a triumphant return the next afternoon, bundled in cloth and laden down with trinkets.
Temari tackles him to the ground in a hug, and she punches him squarely in the shoulder after discovering he had switched places with his latest puppet.
After a dinner that is filled with conversation for the first time in months, he drags her up to his room and begins talking about the new techniques, the new people, the new types of puppetry. It's still a vast world, he concludes, eyes sparkling with mirth. He shows off his newest attacks, maneuvering three small puppets up the wall and into her hair. She tosses them off and tosses her hair and he laughs and she laughs and everything will be alright, she thinks.
Still, she can't forget her own exhilaration.
"Whatcha thinking of?" he asks when her divergent attention becomes obvious.
"Let me get my fan, I have something to show you too," she replies, dashing to her room and back. She sprints to Kankurou's balcony and fully opens her fan, blowing three times before letting go and jumping on.
"Wait, Temari - " her little brother tries.
"Temari!" he shouts, scrambling over to the balcony.
"Made ya'look!" she cackles, soaring up, out, and over. She rides atop the fan for a couple seconds longer before returning to the balcony, gleefully basking in the unadulterated admiration.
"How long can you do that for?!" he instantly demands.
"Eh, a couple minutes at best," she admits, scratching her head. "But I'll get better, don't worry!"
"And then..." he continues.
She looks at him, and realizes they've been thinking the same thing. And then she smiles, nodding firmly.
"Yeah."
...