Here's part two of three. The first was Temari, and this is Kankuro.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Kankuro does not remember his mother. Karura was always a whisper upon a dream, a compilation of stories told to him by Temari and Yashamaru. She seemed a fantasy for little children.

For the first eight years of his life, Kankuro has a pristine image of his mother. She was fierce and proud, beautiful (Karura was never described as beautiful by anyone but Temari and by extension Kankuro) with gold-spun hair and emerald green eyes, strong to wield an iron fan, almost too perfect to be real. Kankuro dreams of his mother almost every night, smiling wistfully, wishing she was still there.

Then, when he is eight, Kankuro's perfect picture of Karura begins to crumble.

It is night when everything begins to fall apart in earnest. Gaara ran out of the house a couple of hours ago, and Yashamaru left too, maybe forty-five minutes ago.

Temari is playing with a jigsaw puzzle, a large one, her forehead scrunched in concentration. Kankuro is coloring a picture in his coloring book with his twelve-pack of crayons.

At that moment, Gaara comes rushing into the living room. Temari and Kankuro already know to tense and be wary when Gaara does anything sudden. Kankuro hears Temari gasp. Their little brother's face is covered in blood and tears, and there is a large gourd on his back that they didn't see there before.

But it is his eyes that are the most horrifying thing. They are blank and empty, shell-shocked and as dead, two pieces of lifeless pale jade.

Temari jumps up; Gaara starts to back away, but she doesn't notice. Their sister immediately sets about to getting paper towels, a basin of cold water, bandages, and disinfectant.

Half way through, their father shows up.

All hell breaks loose.

Temari grabs her brothers, shoves them behind her, and begins screaming at their father, spitting and swearing, distraught, with a complete loss of composure.

"OKAASAN HATED YOU! AND NOW I KNOW WHY!"

Kankuro is aware of nothing after this scream. Mom (he can't for the life of him remember what he called his mother when she was still alive)…hated Dad?

This doesn't make any sense. How could Mom hate Dad?

Kankuro keeps listening, and he soon figures out why.

Kankuro has no memory of his mother. He has no memory of any time in which Karura was alive, so by extension he has no memory of her ever loving his father. So Kankuro has no conception that Karura ever loved her husband, even when Temari tells him different.

Kankuro learns that if something seems too perfect to be real, than it isn't. Karura was not a goddess, a dream given form. She was a woman eventually consumed by hate.

As Kankuro grows, he becomes more closely acquainted with the brutality with which his father conducts his life. He comes to understand how Karura could hate that man. He does not fathom how she or anyone else could love him.

Kankuro does not know his mother at all. He has no memory of her. No memory of her hair, her eyes, her laugh…or her love.

Next up is the final act in the Remembrance, Gaara!