Tentatively, Temari knocked on the door to her brother's room.
"Come in," came the monotone response.
The door opened to reveal a room she knew well. Every inch of the bare sandstone wall had been basted smooth and even the tiny round windows looked worse for wear. Less than four years ago, it had been completely bare. Gaara's destructive strength had destroyed whatever furniture it had once held almost as soon as it became his. There had been nothing, but an empty space and the occasional whirlpool of sand.
Now however her youngest brother had changed and so had the room. He had calmed and his room had been slowly refurnished to something fit for human habitation. It was still clinically Spartan, but the shattered wardrobe had been rebuilt and they had added a desk, a chair, a bedside table… even a bed, which Gaara was still getting used to now that Shukaku had vacated his body.
The Kazekage was sitting on that same bed, still wide-awake as Temari had known he would be. He would probably fall asleep at some point during the early hours of the morning and then be awake again long before dawn; a lifetime of insomnia is a difficult habit to shift.
He had not even bothered to change his clothes yet, still dressed in his blue and white robes from the day, and was reading a book in soft yellow half-light of the lamp on his desk. It was snapped shut on Temari's entry and her brother gazed at her with unwavering attention.
It was simple courtesy, she knew, but not in the glib routine fashion of an ordinary person. The Gaara of the past had been anything but courteous. He had never had the opportunity to learn most of the little rituals and customs society deemed to be polite. Instead this was calculated, deliberate, designed to put her at her ease. It was something he had picked up somewhere, from someone she couldn't guess. People who have come to visit you like to have your attention: it was a simple gesture in a sea of impassiveness; a way of reaching out to show affection he didn't really understand how to express. Its action was deliberate, but its intention sincere. Temari smiled.
"I'm going to sleep now," she told him, leaning on the door frame with one hand, "I just wanted to say good night."
"Good night," Gaara replied, nodding, "Sleep well."
"You too…" she paused, then taking another step forward her eyes narrowed on the book in his hand, "What's that?"
"This?" Gaara raised the book, showing her the cover. 'Hamsterlopaedia (1) ', Temari read, her eyes widening slightly. When had he bought that? On his way home from the office?
Gaara had been home, as promised, not long after dark. She had cooked what she was reasonably certain was his favourite meal, shouting at Kankuro as her remaining sibling pestered her about putting up decorations, and they had eaten it together – just the three of them – in the comfortable half-silence that was so common in this household. Afterwards there had been the cake, served with tea, and the elder brother had entertained them by performing tricks with balloons and some of his puppets that had Temari reaching for her fan and roaring about the dignity of a ninja. Gaara had just watched the whole scene impassively; apparently he was content merely observing his siblings' antics. They had sat together downstairs, talking – about politics mainly or the village, until quite late at night and then Gaara had retired upstairs to his room and Kankuro had disappeared somewhere into the bowls of some war puppet or other to fiddle with mechanics. Presumably he was still there. She was going to have to go and extract him in a minute or he would probably stay there all night.
"Oh? Is that for...?" she asked, rather superfluously, still eyeing the book.
"Yes," Gaara nodded, sitting up and waving his fingers in the direction of his desk. Sure enough, when Temari looked, there next to the usual small, organized piles of paperwork was the brightly coloured cage she and Kankuro had brought him earlier.
The hamster had been crouched low in the cage, listening to the strange sounds from the door and the noisy humans. Now however, it was apparently bored with that and darted forward, scurrying up to the bars of his cage. Hooking its thin pink paws around the bars, it climbed effortlessly upwards at an astonishing speed – its broad white tummy wiggling as it moved – and stopped dead as it hit the roof of the cage. It sniffed, twitching its little whiskered nose, as it inspected the annoying horizontal bars above it. Then, leaning backwards, it unclasped a single stumpy front leg from its grip on the bars and, flailing slightly, caught hold of the metal obstruction above. Another paw quickly joined it, and then suddenly the hamster was suspended upside down from the top of its cage. Fearlessly it carried itself out into the middle of the roof, apparently unperturbed by the wide-open space below it. The lid rattled noisily as it moved, but the little hamster seemed to be having a whale of a time exploring the world upside down.
Then, just as suddenly, disaster struck. One front paw slipped and lost its hold on the bar. The second almost immediately followed suit. Panicking the hamster was left dangling in mid-air, as even a back leg gave out and his whole weight hung from one hind-paw hooked precariously over a single metal bar. The little oblong mass of apricot and white swung helplessly, little legs waving, little whispers twitching in alarm, but then – just as it looked as it was all over and the hamster would fall – a soft cloud of fine sand materialized below it and carefully enveloped the tiny frame. Plucking it from its dangerous vantage, it carried the tiny rodent safely back down to the wood shavings below. Glancing at her brother's impassive face, Temari realized that he had done this so automatically that this must be rapidly becoming a regular thing; and, as if to confirm it, the newly rescued hamster – having cleaned it's face and adjusted its whispers – sprinted straight back to the bars for another climb.
"I'll need to get a new cage in the morning," Gaara informed her coolly, sitting up and dusting off his robes, "It seems a cage for a Syrian hamster should have at least 30 by 40 cm worth of floor space; or 40 cm by 60 according to some other sources. This one's too small."
"Oh," Temari looked at him in surprise, "Sure."
"The wheel too," he added, glancing thoughtfully at his new pet's habitat, "Apparently it should be solid with a closed back and sides, a spoked one such as this is likely to cause injury, and it would need to be bigger too. It should be big enough for him to run on it without having to curve his spine backwards." He stopped speaking and glancing at the book in his lap, picked it up and placed it neatly on his bedside table.
Temari nodded thoughtfully, leaning on the door frame again and folding her hands. "Okay," she agreed slowly, "If you like Kankuro and I could go pick one up in the…"
Gaara shook his head. "I'd quite like to pick them myself," he explained. His voice was calm, but looking closely Temari was almost sure that a small shimmer of a smile was playing across his lips.
1.) Shameless plug; I am well aware and I apologize. However Chris and Peter's Hamsterlopeadia, which they wrote along with their vet, is actually pretty much the equivalent of the bible when it comes to hamster care. They are so well renowned among hamster-keepers here in the U.K., and probably count as some of the foremost experts in the world. If you already have a hamster or are thinking of getting one then you really should invest in a copy of this book. Even if you think you already know all about hamsters, I still guarantee you will find it useful.
I hesitated a lot over adding in a real book over a made-up one, but I thought if this leads to even one hamster getting an improvement in care because their owner found out about this book, then it's worth annoying people with a useless interruption. Too many hamsters suffer because their owners are poorly informed. A huge sorry to all the non-hamster people; I hope you can forgive me!