A/N: This chapter has been edited to comply with Terms of Service. The NC-17 rated portion is on my Livejournal until the title 'Assent'.
Room
Temari stared out into the darkness of her bedroom, feeling Kankuro's breath pass across the back of her neck like a storm wind over the desert. Her brother's arm curled around her hips, pulling her in close as he muttered something indistinguishable.
The room was the same as it ever was, even in darkness; there was still a window facing north, only instead of admitting cool breezes from the forests of Konoha, it only let the pale light of a half-moon in. The ornamental fans- ornamental in appearance only; razor-sharp steel glinted on the curved edges- still hung on the wall. Kankuro was behind her, cold feet pressing against the backs of her ankles and itchy cotton sweat pants plastered to her thighs. Still a refuge from the outside, from whispers that cut into Kankuro's heart and cold eyes that- still, even after all these years- filleted Gaara's spirit.
But Gaara was missing. Her brother, who spent every night pacing back and forth, fingers plucking restlessly at his old ratty shirt and sometimes trailing across Natsumi's muzzle, before he would gingerly slide into the bed beside her, stiff and unyielding as a board, fear still gleaming in his eyes. And she and Kankuro would have to calm him with careful touches and silence, running hands over the ridge of his spine, lips brushing his forehead, until he finally unfolded, uncurled like a moth escaping a chrysalis, and relaxed against her, sand armor flaking off his skin and falling to the ground, leaving him vulnerable.
And then they would sleep. Kankuro would snore, kicking the sheets off, and Gaara would grind his teeth, mumbling something once in a while, and it was hot and sticky and sweaty and not conducive at all to restful sleep, but somehow it was, because she couldn't sleep without them.
Gaara did this, sometimes; slipped out in the night and disappeared into the flat white emptiness of the desert, and she worried for him despite herself, worried if he was cold, dressed as he was in Kankuro's cast-off shirt and sweats that pooled around his feet, worried that he felt alone.
Her hand crept out, feeling the restless shape of him still imprinted in the mattress, the lingering desert warmth that clung to the pillow, the sand grains grating against her nails. 'He left, and my pillow won't tell me where he has gone.' She closed her eyes and waited for a while, the ticking of the clock loud in the silence.
The shutters on her window slid aside silently, admitting more light to move across the inside of her eyelids. There was the soft swish-swish of feet moving through sand, and a cool, thin body slid into the bed with them, maneuvering under Temari's arms. She let her arm tighten around his skinny frame, pressed a kiss into his wild hair, and whispered from a dry throat,
"Welcome home."
Choice
Baki leaned against the side of the arena entrance, watching the newly-promoted chuunin mill about, laughing and joking, under the gazes of the Hokage and Kazekage. He glanced up and saw Gaara, slouched in his chair with cold green eyes flickering over the crowd, speak to Tsunade out of the side of his mouth. The Hokage laughed. Temari stood to Gaara's right, Kankuro to his left, poking each other behind the chair and squabbling in low whispers.
'Children, still.' He looked at the chuunin again, at their bright eyes and the way their hands played with the hem of their flak jackets, as if afraid the cloth would disappear like water underneath the sun. Many of them wouldn't live much longer.
Statistically, the first thirty would die in under three months. Probability of death would increase in multiples of five for every mission, before decreasing after the eleventh, as experience and skill conquered pride.
Unless you were a chuunin of Suna. There, you lived past the first fifty missions, or died in the first, for Suna had no room for pride, for weakness.
And Suna loved Gaara for that, for his ruthless policies, because it had made Suna the strongest of the Hidden Villages. Their armies were small, but held to a higher standard than all others, a standard of perfection.
In Suna you would defeat your flaws, becoming lean and honed as the jackals, or die in disgrace.
Unless you were Gaara, or Kankuro, or Temari, born with weapons in their hands and in their blood, who had survived hundreds of missions, who had hunted down their weaknesses and slaughtered them with the same cold efficiency that made them so feared.
Perhaps that was truly why Temari and her siblings had become lovers, had chosen to engage in something so ill-fated, because they were perfect weapons, bred and born to destruction, and only the children of the Kazekage could truly love each other.
Others would shrink, would quail from Kankuro's skill, from Gaara's cold perfection. Others would burn themselves out trying to keep up, to attain Temari's status, would sicken and tire and die trying to pull off the missions that the siblings of the Sand performed on a daily basis. Others would fear Gaara's dark-rimmed eyes, Temari's bloodthirsty smile, Kankuro's unnatural chakra control. Others would expect leniency, would expect grace, would expect the siblings to give them leeway, because they were lovers.
They would die for assuming such.
Temari and Gaara and Kankuro demanded more of their lovers, demanded power and skill and terrifying ability that no one else could hope to match.
He turned and took the stairs to the box where the siblings were, brow arching as he saw Temari and Kankuro's hands entangled, hidden from view behind the back of Gaara's chair. Gaara finally spoke.
"They are all so… complacent." Baki paused, moved out of the doorway as the Hokage and her guards left the box.
"They're chuunin, what do you expect?" Temari sneered at the celebrations down in the arena, snorting. "Probably think they're immortal, or some shit like that." Gaara reached up and took off his headdress, shaking out his short hair.
"Truly?"
"Yep," Kankuro said. "They've made it to the next level, and they're so excited about that that they've forgotten that there's a whole other one." He could hear the smile in Gaara's voice as the Kazekage said,
"At least the Suna chuunin do not believe that fallacy." Temari laughed.
"They've spent their entire time as genin fighting the encroaches of Sound. How could they think that?" Temari draped herself over the side of the chair, fingers tangling in Gaara's hair as she mused,
"They'll make good soldiers." Gaara leaned into the touch, his hand coiling in Kankuro's jacket and pulling him close. The older brother snickered.
"The other villages want to get the pride out of their chuunin, they should sent them to us. We'd beat it out of them in a moment!" Baki shook his head wearily. 'We wouldn't even have to talk to them. All they'd have to do is look in Kankuro and Temari and Gaara's eyes. Look into their eyes and see what they know: everybody dies.'
Water
Kankuro watched his brother sail through the air and land in the river with a loud splash, and faltered, receiving a deep gash in his side for his trouble. He turned back to his battle, and sent rage-fueled chakra humming down the chakra strings, watching the ninja close with Karasu, kunai whirling on her fingers.
It was the last mistake she would make.
Karasu's chest sprang open, and a cloud of flechettes fired out in a swirl of snapping, gnashing steel darts. The tiny shards hit the Sound-nin in the face, gashing, cutting, leaving her face a ruin of flesh and seeping blood. She howled in pain, fell into the river. A red cloud, redder than wine, billowed out like silk from where she floated.
Karasu sprang back to him in a clatter of wood and mechanical joints, settling back onto its position on his back as he sprinted to the river, searching, knowing with sharp clarity that the water-logged sand had pulled his brother down into the cold, black depths. He prepared to dive, undid the harness keeping Karasu on him and let his puppet fall, and choked.
A thin steel wire was wrapped around his throat in a hot line of pain, the sharp edges biting deep into his flesh. Half an inch.
Only half an inch of skin and muscle separating his arteries from the outside world, and that half an inch was quickly whittling away. He brought his hand up, grabbed at the wire. Blood flowed from his fingers, and he could feel the steel scraping on his bones. The wire tightened. His muscles bulged as he struggled to push it away, to keep from dying as his arteries spurted blood into the air. His eyes bulged as he searched for the controller.
Kabuto Yakushi walked out into the open, the ends of the wire wrapped around his fingers and yellow eye gleaming sickly. A thick black tongue lolled from his mouth, and in that tongue lay Temari, her arms imprisoned and her face darkening as she struggled to inhale air into lungs compressed by Yakushi's tongue. His sister's eyes rolled in her head, finally focusing on him. She gritted out from between clenched teeth,
"Kill him!" Kankuro didn't think, only reacted to his sister's command. He sprang for Yakushi, and staggered as the noose tightened further. Yakushi smiled.
"Such fallacy. You can destroy my village, slaughter my shinobi, burn my body away to ashes, but I will never die. I cannot be defeated."
A black streak passed by in the corner of Kankuro's eye. It speared Yakushi in the chest, spread outward like the tentacles of some elder god, and exploded through his skin, tearing him apart in a shower of flesh and blood-soaked cloth.
It was sand.
It was Gaara. The wire loosened, fell away, and Kankuro turned around to see Gaara, risen from the river, his hair black and plastered to his skin, green eyes burning hotter than the desert at noon, black sand sloughing from his skin as he took a halting step out of the water.
Gaara passed him by, seemingly ignorant of his presence, and Kankuro could hear a low, terrible growl bubbling in his brother's waterlogged chest. Sand rose from the ground around them, crawled onto Yakushi's remains, pulverized him, crushed him, leaving him as nothing. There wasn't even a bloodstain to mark the spot where he had died.
"You will not harm them," Gaara spat in a voice dripping hatred. "You will not harm anyone." And then he staggered, fell to one knee, and lay prone on the earth, bloody foam trickling from his lips.
Love, unconquered in the fight.
Date
It is winter in the desert, cold and gray. Gaara stands with his arms crossed, and watches his ANBU spar with fading vision.
His hair is white, his sight dimming, his bones ache in the morning. The sand moves sluggishly now, but he is still dangerous, and no one who has attacked Suna in the long fifty-five years since he became Kazekage has survived.
Heavy steps behind him alert him to Kankuro's presence. He leans into his brother's chest, and feels gray, wispy stubble brush across his head. The ANBU below pause, glance up long enough to see them, and smile, lifting hands to wave, before launching back into their brawls.
Suna has prospered. The alliance with Konoha is stronger than ever, built on the intangible bond between jinchuuriki, and more children are being born every year into a world free of demons and terror and war.
"Temari's got some new information for you," Kankuro finally says. Gaara turns in his arms, gazes up at his brother with something almost like love. Green eyes peer back out at him on a wrinkled, bearded face, glinting behind spectacles. His brother can no longer fight; he limps, his cane necessary to move; but he is still Kankuro, patient and enduring as stone, and that is all Gaara needs from him.
"About the Iwa alliance, I presume?" Kankuro smiles, slings a companionable arm around his shoulders as they amble back to the doorway.
Temari is snapping orders left and right when they find her, the center in a sea of harassed, terrified chuunin. She looks up, spots them, and brightens, running fingers through long, silver-blond hair.
"Gaara! They've accepted the alliance, which means we have now allied ourselves with every village." Gaara nearly smiles, crosses to her desk. She reaches up with a scarred arm and pulls him down into a kiss. The chuunin giggle, a few of them whistle. Temari gestures rudely, lets him go, and roars,
"Get back to work, you festering boils on a horse's ass!" The room is filled with the sound of hurried footsteps as Temari's ill-fated employees rush away.
"Miso soup tonight?" Gaara inquires mildly.
"Huh? Yeah, that's good. I'll be home at seven." Kankuro hobbles over, pecks Temari on the cheek, and joins Gaara as they leave the room.
Gaara heats the soup one last time, divides it into three bowls on the table. Kankuro wanders in, a newspaper under one arm, and takes a seat. Gaara sits beside him, stares at his food.
A minute ticks by. No Temari.
Another minute. Gaara deliberates sending an ANBU to find her.
Five minutes later, Temari swoops into the room, trailing paperwork behind her.
"Sorry I'm late, Umeko wasn't clear on whether or not the trade route from Kumo to Konoha was open again or not-" she eases herself into a chair, and picks up her spoon with hands covered in paper-thin skin.
They eat in comfortable silence, and Kankuro and Temari wash the dishes while Gaara works on his papers at the kitchen table to the sound of the radio,
'I'd rather leave while I'm in love…'
Temari helps Kankuro into his pajama pants, takes his cane and stows it in the corner, before she sits down at the foot of the bed while Kankuro lifts his deadened leg and slides underneath the covers. Kankuro reads his book, Temari works quietly on her mending- one of Gaara's robes- and Gaara holds Temari's hairbrush in arthritic hands and brushes her long hair, watching the tangles disappear with every stroke.
They finally all get into the bed together, jostling and shoving good-naturedly, before they settle into their respective positions, with Gaara in the center, as he prefers. He stares at the ceiling for a while as his siblings continue with their work.
As Kazekage, he has strengthened Suna beyond what was thought possible; he has made alliances with all the other nations; he has bequeathed a legacy of peace and prosperity to his village.
He has succeeded in all the goals he could ever set for himself.
They tangle their hands, and Temari turns the lamp off. Gaara closes his eyes, and sleeps.
Somewhere between the click of the light and the start of the dream, he slips from this life into the next, to await his sibling's comings.