Author's Note: Well, this sort of popped out of the blue for me. I had an idea, and I just had to write it. I love how it turned out. Read, enjoy, and review! :)

I just so happened to like it that I felt the need not to spoil the ending by any note there... but that doesn't mean you don't need to review if I don't nudge you! :D (At least if you want to make me happy. :P)

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Kishimoto-sensei does. Nor do I own the Sand siblings, they pwn me. :D

Learn Again

o§o

A sandstorm was coming from the direction of the desert. It rampaged through the empty land, then reached the village. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary; after all, this was the Land of Wind, and its hidden village, Sunagakure.

With the sandstorm coming, inhabitants of the village closed their shops and windows, and retreated to their homes. It was usually like this; half an hour later, when the storm went away, they re-opened.

Today, though, most of the shop owners decided to not open again, as it was sundown anyways, so by the time the sandstorm was finished with the village, it was dark and almost totally empty.

It was even darker than usual, since the lights were off at the Kazekage Tower. It wasn't much of a surprise, after all that had happened recently. Nobody who knew of it – and who wouldn't, after how bravely the Kazekage-sama had defended the village! – expected their leader to get any paperwork done after just being brought back from death.

Or so they believe, thought Temari before closing her curtains, sitting down, and stretching. In fact, Gaara was doing paperwork. He did it every night, from sunset to sunrise, so he wouldn't have to bother with it at broad daylight, when he could attend more important things. It's just, he wasn't particularly fond of the Kazekage Tower, so he usually came home to the place Temari and Kankurou lived at, and continued working there. It had always been like this, and it didn't bother her in the least, and the thought of anything changing didn't cross the blonde girl's mind.

She stifled a yawn, and pulled out a drawer to get paper and something to write with.

The room she was sitting in was her bedroom; it was nothing complex, just a bed, a desk by the window with a chair, and a wardrobe. Only the little table lamp was on, filling the room with dim, butter-yellow light. She pulled her chair a bit closer to the desk, and started to write.

Everyone has their own way of relieving stress. Some methods are ordinary, some not so ordinary. Some are productive, and some are destructive. Kankurou, for example, always got drunk after long, draining missions. Of course, Temari hated it, but Kankurou never listened to her, and in the end she always dropped the subject. It was still better than Gaara. If Gaara was stressed, he was literally murderous. At times like those, it was best to avoid going near him in a 2-kilometer radius at all.

As for Temari, she had two ways of stress-relieving: either cleaning her weapons and collection of fans, or writing. When she was tired, she always wrote. It didn't matter what she wrote, usually it was just mindless scribbling or doodling. The process was what mattered: it calmed her down, and gave her time to think things over. And she was absolutely sure she had never needed stress-relieving more than she did right now. It was one hell of a couple of days. Her precious little brother was killed by Akatsuki, who extracted the One-tailed Shukaku from him. If she thought back to what she was feeling when she got to know what happened, she still felt like screaming wildly. Miraculously, though, Gaara was revived, but it had cost another life: the life of the most honored village elder, Chiyo-sama. Temari was eternally grateful to her, just like the rest of the village, who were happy to have their Kazekage-sama back.

Temari looked down on the paper. It had "sand", "sibling", "Gaara", "Kankurou", and "Temari" on it. She smiled to herself.

There was a knock on the door, and she got ripped out of her thoughts so suddenly that she dropped her pencil in surprise. It rolled under the desk, so she knelt down to crawl in for it while answering.

"Yeah, who is it? Come in..."

"Temari?" came an astonished voice. "What are you doing...?"

"I'm looking for my pencil..." she answered, barely avoiding to hit her head on the bottom of the desk as she got out from under. She raised with the incriminating writing tool in her hand, and looked at her brother while sitting back to her chair.

"What's wrong, Gaara?"

Were it not for the strange clothes he was wearing (he was barefoot, in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of pants which she vaguely remembered belonging to Kankurou) and the somber expression on his face, she would have addressed him as "Kazekage-sama", as she always did when he was working. Kankurou never had problems breaking these sorts of unspoken rules, but she felt she needed to state an example, and, after all, Gaara did deserve the title, so she also wanted to show him that she truly respected him.

But now he didn't really look like the Kazekage, and the informal call just slipped off her mouth before she thought about it.

Gaara came a few steps closer, all the while avoiding looking in her eyes. Temari started to get really curious.

"I don't know how to say this," he stated in a listless voice.

"Well... just say what comes to your mind?" she suggested with a faint smile.

There was silence for a couple of seconds, then...

"I'm abnormal," Gaara blurted out of the blue.

"What?" Temari nearly fell off her chair. "What makes you think that?"

"I..." Gaara took another step towards his sister. Temari stood up again, feeling a little helpless. She went to sit on the edge of her bed instead, and motioned him to sit beside her. He obeyed.

"Come on, Gaara, tell me," she prodded.

"I just thought... that now that I'm not a Jinchuuriki anymore..." Gaara took a deep breath. "Now that Shukaku's gone, I thought I could finally sleep. But-... I just can't!" he bursted out. He leaned forward and grabbed into his brick-red hair. "Temari, I forgot how to sleep!"

Temari was speechless. She certainly wasn't expecting this. Gaara looked at her expectantly, but she had absolutely no idea what to say.

"But... I thought sleeping wasn't something you needed to learn?" she asked helplessly. Gaara hid his face in his palm.

"Yes, that's why I said I'm... not normal."

Temari sighed. "Look, Gaara, when was the last time you actually slept?"

"I don't remember. It was too long ago."

The blonde girl pulled her legs up onto the bed and scratched the back of her head. Of course, Gaara had constant insomnia since he had been made the Shukaku's container. It was one horrible ordeal he had to endure, not to mention everything else that came for him with being a Jinchuuriki. If he happened to fall asleep, the beast immediately took over and went on a rampage, and only Gaara had the power to stop it. So he ended up forcing himself to stay awake, and he had been doing it for years. Temari didn't actually think about it until now, but she guessed it was also thanks to Shukaku's power that Gaara didn't actually die from exhaustion, which could have easily happened otherwise, likely within a week or so. But now that Gaara wasn't the beast's keeper, he needed sleeping just like everyone else did. And, well, it seemed he needed to learn again how to.

"Come on, try it," she suggested. Gaara blinked at her.

"You mean here?"

"Sure, why not?" She offered a smile.

"I don't want to disturb you. And if I stay here, where will you sleep?"

"I don't mind," Temari said, still smiling. "When I was little, before you were born, I hated to be alone at night. I usually slept together with Kankurou, even after we had our separate rooms, I sometimes visited him because I couldn't sleep when I was alone. And sometimes," she added with a chuckle, "we both went to sleep together with Mother."

She caught sight of his smile before it disappeared, and she was secretly grateful. At least he wasn't in that foul mood anymore; it was a start.

"All right, lay down," she ordered him. It didn't matter anymore that he was the Kazekage and she but a mere advisor. She was his elder sister, and she wanted to help him, that was all that mattered. Gaara obviously thought the same too, because he obeyed. "Close your eyes, and think of something pleasant," she continued a bit unsure. She herself never really had problems with sleeping; she just got under the sheets, and fell asleep, just like that. And whenever she did have trouble with sleeping, she got back to the old routine: visiting Kankurou. Although now that they were grown up, they didn't really sleep together, just talked through the night until she felt sleepy enough. "Hey, Gaara," she said with a sudden idea, "do you feel sleepy at all?"

Gaara, who was now laying on top of the bedsheets, shook his head silently. She bit her lower lip.

"Do you have something on your mind?"

"No, not really. Nothing unusual," came the calm answer. But Temari had known him long enough to be able to decipher his speaking tone, and she quickly discovered the hint of annoyance in his voice. She had to agree with him: this was getting nowhere.

"I just thought... we could talk, if you'd like," she offered. "Until you feel sleepy, or something like that."

"All right," Gaara sighed. But they never really got down to it.

At the next moment, a loud BANG filled the house. Temari, who was still sitting on the edge of the bed, gave a start, and Gaara's head jerked up too.

"What's happening?" he asked. Temari just flipped her hand after recovering from her initial shock.

"It's Kankurou... he's probably drunk."

"Hey, Temari..." A couple of moments later the aforementioned nearly fell through the doorstep upon entering the room. "Haven't you seen my trousers...?" He looked around, and his vision cleared a bit. "Wait... what's Gaara doing in your bed?" He stumbled closer, and sat by Temari, who moved away from him with a disgusted frown.

"Eww, you reek of alcohol, Kankurou."

"It's still lighter than the poison under your tongue, Temari-chan," Kankurou laughed at his sister. Temari looked ready to hit him, but Gaara sat up, and they both looked at him. "So, once again, what is Gaara doing here?" Kankurou asked again.

"... He couldn't sleep," Temari answered reluctantly.

"Well, what's news in that?" Kankuro asked with a dumb expression. Now he really got the hit he deserved. "Ow! I was serious, you brimstone!"

"WHAT did you call me?" Temari huffed angrily, but it seemed the slap somewhat sobered her brother, because he looked at Gaara with a more straight expression.

"Seriously, what's with not sleeping? You never did sleep, since the one-tailed..." He went silent. "Oh." His expression was so dumbfounded Temari couldn't help but chuckle.

"Come on, you stupid puppeteer," she gave him a gentle shove. "Get yourself a coffee or something, wash your paint off already – seriously, why haven't you done so before you went out to drink? –, then come back here and help us find a solution."

Kankurou shook his head in disbelief. "What's there to find? He just needs to lay down and sleep."

"It's not that easy..."

"I believe the Kazekage-sama can speak for himself, right, Gaara?" Kankurou turned to his brother, completely ignoring Temari. "So, what's the matter with this?"

"I can't sleep," Gaara repeated himself for who knows how manieth time.

"Why?"

"I don't know how to-..."

"That's rubbish," the puppeteer stated.

"Kankurou!" Temari snapped, but she was still ignored by him. Kankurou knelt up on the bed (earning a harsh look from his sister as his clothes were everything but clean), and looked at the red-haired boy seriously.

"Why can't you sleep, Gaara?"

Gaara opened his mouth, then closed it again. Temari was confused. What did he mean with this way of asking? It was getting them nowhere.

But then Gaara opened his mouth again, and asked, "How did you know?" and Temari's jaw dropped.

"It's in your eyes," Kankurou simply answered. "You say you can't sleep, but your eyes tell me they can barely stay open. Which is perfectly understandable, after all these years. You probably don't know," he added as a second thought, "but I used to sleep together with Temari when we were little, and we talked a lot, and I could always tell when she finally got sleepy. You have the same look."

Despite still being confused, Temari couldn't help but smile at this. But Gaara just looked down in front of himself.

"It's not about whether I can sleep or not," he said silently. "While I was watching over Shukaku, he didn't let me sleep, but that also gave me a feeling of being constantly alert to anything. It isn't easy to let that feeling go."

"You're afraid that something would happen if you fell asleep?" Temari asked incredulously. Then she slapped a hand on her mouth. "I didn't mean it like that..."

"That's basically the truth," Gaara simply nodded, which just made her even more surprised.

Kankurou suddenly stood up from the bed, and started pulling off his hood.

"Then it's easy," he declared. "You need to trust others."

"I already trust you with my life," Gaara objected calmly. Kankurou proceeded to pull his shirt off too, then disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, probably to wash his purple war paint off. He only answered Gaara when he returned, now wearing a ragged shirt he usually slept in, his hair messy and a bit wet from the water he had washed his face with.

"You trust us with your life, but not with your sleep. We can watch your back, but not the front when you're not looking at all."

"What are you getting to?" Temari raised an eyebrow as Gaara was speechless. Kankurou flashed her a look, and he looked so different without his paint, so much more like the brother she knew well and loved, so different from his usual attitude, that she involuntarily returned his smile.

"Let's sleep together, all three of us," the puppeteer offered. Then he winked at her. "It will be just like the old times, right?"

Temari chuckled. She had to agree with that. The question was just what Gaara would say to the idea.

Gaara looked from one to the other, as if he wasn't sure that they weren't just joking with him. But Kankurou didn't wait for an answer. He swayed the blankets to get under them, nudging Gaara away in the process so he could free all the sheets the red-haired boy was currently sitting on. The youngest sibling finally gave in, and so did Temari. While she went to put her own nightsuit on (which by the way was far more decent than those stupid shirts the boys were wearing), he also crawled under the warm blankets.

"How fortunate that Temari likes to have her space," Kankurou murmured, and although Gaara was facing the other direction, he could almost literally feel his smile. "Imagine doing this in a one-man-sized bed..." It was true indeed, Temari's bed was so big that all three of them could fit in quite comfortably. Although Temari complained a bit about getting the side closest to the window, but it wouldn't have been her if she didn't.

Somehow, Gaara didn't need any more convincing. He wouldn't have been able to tell himself the reasons that time, but just being with the two of them made him calm down. Perhaps it was because that sibling bond they talked about really did work. Or he was just really too tired to think about it anymore. He felt comfortable, and, though it was an unusual feeling, he also felt safe between them.

For the first time in years, Sabaku no Gaara fell asleep.