Kankuro spent the next few days either sleeping or spending time with his siblings. He'd convinced Temari (through much negotiation and agreeing to things that he would surely regret later) to keep anyone else from visiting him. It was bad enough that the people he knew from Konoha had seen his pitiful state while he was unconscious.
After his siblings had been with him a week, Kankuro had begun to show, in Sakura's words, "some improvement." She'd been quite excited by the fact that he could lift his arm off the bed - on his own - during her afternoon rounds. Kankuro had attempted to lift his arm on her orders, which was no easy feat while on painkillers, chakra-suppressants (a drug that the pink-haired physician had successfully avoided explaining the necessity of), and not having moved a muscle in approximately ten days. It'd been two inches. Two measly inches of movement and he'd already felt tired. Temari and Sakura had looked like they were about to jump with joy; Kankuro had merely felt as bored and annoyed as Gaara looked.
By the time he was prescribed simple physical therapy "exercises" that made him feel like an idiot, his "progress" had apparently been reported to the Suna Council and the morons had decided to try to convince the Kazekage that it was time for him to return home. Gaara had looked like he wanted to kill someone and Temari had actually followed him when he'd stalked out of Kankuro's hospital room a few minutes after speaking with the messenger. Kankuro had sat quietly with the shinobi messenger for an hour, amusing himself by doing his best to make the poor man as uncomfortable as possible. He quickly discovered that leers - and other suggestive facial expressions - freaked the man out far more quickly than glares. When Gaara returned and saved the sand nin from further psychological trauma, it was with a simple message: Gaara was now on an official state visit and the council could continue their attempts at the risk of pissing off Naruto himself.
The next afternoon, Kankuro found himself alone for the first time since his siblings had arrived. Gaara was meeting with Naruto, since they had to at least pretend that this was a legitimate visit even if Kankuro was pretty sure that their "meetings" consisted of eating ramen and patting themselves on the backs about already having such a strong and effective alliance, and Temari was off pestering Konoha's resident genius. It was an afternoon of peace and quiet - and Kankuro hated it. He knew that the time his siblings had with him was coming to an end. They'd need to head home and Kankuro was pretty sure that Sakura wasn't about to let him leave. He was even willing to acknowledge that his favorite bubblegum-haired tease would be the medical nin who could give him the best chance at full recovery. But he'd be in Konoha - alone. Which meant that he would have more time to think than could possibly be good for his sanity.
After the original questioning about what had happened in that near-fatal fight, Sakura had made sure that no one asked him any more questions about it. While he appreciated that, it didn't mean that he could stop thinking about it. He wanted to know how that son of a bitch that he'd been fighting had managed to do this to him. It didn't make any sense. Thinking back to the fight, there was no way that idiot Cloud nin had the skill, the intelligence, or the necessary chakra supply to do such extensive damage at the end of a fight that the nin had been losing. Gaara had informed him that Naruto was personally looking into it and had some of Konoha's best minds trying to figure out how such a jutsu could work. Apparently even the prodigy Neji Hyuuga was getting frustrated, and he'd been the one to see the original damage. It boggled the mind. And when you literally have nothing to do but think, Kankuro had decided that being boggled was not a pleasant state of being. And he knew that once his siblings left, he'd have more time to think than he wanted. He didn't want to think about how annoyed he was about being beaten. He didn't want to think about how he felt like such a failure. And most of all, he didn't want to think about how scared he was. Scared that he'd never be able to use his hands again. Scared that he'd never be able to use his chakra again. Scared that whatever Sakura was so skillfully keeping silent about would be more terrifying than that his chakra system had been fried like bad wiring.
In addition to knowing that Gaara and Temari would eventually have to head home, Kankuro also knew that before they left, Temari would - and he'd be lucky if she left it at this - attempt to convince him to allow their friends in Konoha to visit him in the hospital. They'd be able to keep him company and keep his mind off of his injuries and his long recovery ahead. And his siblings knew him well enough to know that Kankuro was almost desperate to keep his mind occupied. It would even have been glaringly obvious yesterday, when he'd indulged both Sakura and Temari in gossip. And he really didn't care about Ino's or Matsuri's latest drama. In fact, after that all-too-enlightening session, he'd decided that he would perfectly fine if he never had to see those two overly emotional little freaks again. And yet, he, the great Kankuro, had sunk so low as gossiping like a preteen girl in order to keep from thinking about anything deeper than Ino's latest dating disaster.
Kankuro was painfully aware of how distracting the Rookie Nine could be, especially when they were trying. But there were two things holding him back. It wasn't that he didn't want to see them; he didn't want them to see him. When they'd visited while he had been unconscious, he'd been spared from having to see the looks on their faces when they saw him lying in a hospital bed. Awake, he wouldn't be able to miss the subtle glances at his heavily bandaged hands (which he'd been doing his best to not look at himself - it was too depressing); he'd be unable to avoid the looks of concern and, god forbid, pity. And he'd be unable to ignore the unasked questions that would be hanging in the air, the very questions that the presence of friends were supposed to keep him from pondering: what happened? How long will you be in here? Will you be able to use your hands again? Will your chakra system ever recover? Every shinobi he knew had been wounded enough times to know not to ask such things aloud. But they also had been hospitalized enough times to know that the injured could see it in the eyes and on the faces of visitors. And Kankuro desperately didn't want to break down in front of a friend the way that he had in front of his brother and sister. He still had a small amount of pride left and he intended to keep it.
The second reason that he didn't want visitors could labeled as shallow vanity by others: he didn't want anyone else to see him without his face paint. The thought made him feel like a chick, but it was an important consideration all the same. He had some consolation that most of the flowers in his room had been delivered by Ino or her family's delivery boy, a civilian that Kankuro didn't think he'd ever met. And the nurses were the same ones who cared for him every time he ended up in the Konoha Hospital. But he wanted to keep the number of people who'd seen his actual face to a minimum. It wasn't that he thought he was ugly. He knew he wasn't; the reactions of the nurses he flirted with told him enough about his appeal to the female population to feed his ego for years. And it wasn't that he felt he needed to keep up an air of mystery the way that Kakashi seemed to. He'd been out drinking with enough of his potential visitors to have lost enough shame and enough secrets to destroy any delusion of mystery. And he was well aware that it was nearly impossible to seem intimidating while lying in a hospital bed, bandaged and hooked up to IVs.
The problem was that he felt naked without his facepaint. And while he'd been physically naked around some of the people from Konoha for various reasons, he'd done his best to always have his paints on. They were literally his mask. They helped him hide his true emotions; they helped him maintain the badass, lecherous, jokester front that he presented to almost everyone he knew. It was hard enough to flirt and joke with Sakura without them on. It'd be even harder to put on a strong, brave face with the others, who hadn't seen him literally naked and near death. He certainly couldn't put his paint on himself and he wasn't about to sit down and attempt to explain to his sister where each stroke should go - he knew he'd end up looking like an abstract, post-modern nightmare if he even tried to do that. His siblings had already seen him without masks of any kind, at his best and his worst, and Sakura had treated his body to an extent that she knew him in a more physically intimate way than anyone, even more than if his joking attempts at seducing her had ever actually succeeded. The others he knew in Konoha were practically strangers compared to those three. He felt vulnerable enough with limited movement and a distinct lack of chakra. If he'd ever needed to hide his true feelings, if he'd ever need help with concealing his vulnerability, it was now - when the softest sigh would make him shatter.
A/N: I'm SO sorry!! Life got in the way of writing!! Here's number 4 and I'm already working on chapter 5.
You all should profusely thank the-yaoi-squirrel for being awesome enough to beta three (count 'em, THREE) different fics in one day!!
You can find the other two on my profile - and feel free to consider them part of my apology for disappearing off of the face of the earth.