That thing about Karura's name comes from a note I noticed on her profile on Narutopedia, saying that her name is spelled with different kanji in 547-548 than in other appearances. I looked at it and thought: this can not be a coincidence. I also thought: plot point. It's not exactly the same as what I present here, but take it as you will.

I own nothing.

The ANBU operative with them disables the last of the traps surrounding the archive room concerning casualties and late operatives. It takes a while. The young man told to assist them (mask up of course, but Temari can tell sex from his body and age from his still-smooth voice) is being careful to defuse them all; if the Kazekage and his sister are injured or killed by an ANBU trap in an ANBU building that isn't supposed to exist, that could get ANBU in some serious trouble and they'd rather not have that.

It took six months to get back to Sunagakure, six months in which a war was fought and won and the world went somewhat back to normal. Six months that were all the reprieve Temari had, and even after that she's still not comfortable with what they're doing—this is going to unearth old skeletons by the dozens, she just knows it, and Gaara for all his outward stoicism and composure may not be equipped to deal with it.

Gaara was right, of course; the ANBU deferred to his authority immediately and allowed him the full range of the ANBU headquarters, provided that they allow an operative to go in with them and disable the (even more copious than Temari could have ever imagined) traps. They seemed almost… embarrassed about the whole thing, at least as embarrassed as men and women hiding their faces behind porcelain animal masks could seem.

There comes a sharp, metallic ping and the operative springs to his feet. "That's the last of them. I've disabled the trigger for the suppressive gas as well."

The young Kazekage nods and steps past him into the room. Temari follows close behind, watching her brother's face intently; Gaara betrays nothing, even and pale. "Thank you, you can go now."

Not startled at all, the nameless operative executes a shallow bow. "As you wish. You should know, the files go by given name, not surname. Kazekage-sama." The operative nods to Gaara, then does the same for Temari. "Ma'am." He is gone in a swish of shadows and wind.

As Gaara goes further on into the room, Temari takes a chance to drink in her surroundings. The archive room for late operatives is a huge rectangular room with a ceiling maybe twenty feet high. The walls are carved out of the bedrock, dull, dark brown and rough-hewn; the only lights are the harsh fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling. The room is bare and hollow except for the shelves, oh so high, nearly reaching the ceiling, pressed against all four walls. A rolling ladder leans idle in the shadows. There are cardboard boxes on the shelves, labeled and unopened, all coated with a fine gray layer of dust. Clearly this is not a room regularly ventured into.

Temari dawdles, trying to stave off the inevitable moment as long as possible, but Gaara makes a beeline for the boxes and eventually, reluctance reading in invisible ink all over her face, his sister follows. She hovers behind Gaara as he searches—his first thought took him to the J's—knowing that this is something he would rather do himself and respecting that, even if she does think this is a bad idea.

With a tense eagerness bordering on impatience, something so incredibly uncharacteristic of Gaara, he goes around the room, looking for the Y section, eyes gleaming. Temari's mouth becomes increasingly pursed as they make their progress around the room. In a way, this room is a tomb, and it's not just her personal feelings over Gaara's state of mind that tells her they shouldn't be here. The sanctity of a tomb is not something to be violated, not even in time of most desperate need.

Finally, they come to the Y section and Gaara narrows his eyes as he looks over the boxes. "Yachiko, Yasahiro," he murmurs to himself, running a finger down the brown cardboard and cutting a trail through the dust in his wake.

She can tell when Gaara has found the box labeled Yashamaru because his shoulders tense and he goes very still, his chin tipping down. After a moment in which he seems to be contemplating all the world, he says, so quiet as to be nearly inaudible, "This is it."

Even if she doesn't like this, Temari knows what to do. She and Gaara both take the box, even if it is not particularly heavy, and set it down on the ground, sitting on either side. With surprising gentleness and care, Gaara lifts the top of the box, and, surprised to find that she's holding her breath, Temari joins him in peering inside.

There are several manila folders, likely the logs of missions, all in a mess. With them there is a roll of wire, a mask, and any number of small things that look entirely out of place where they are. Yashamaru's effects, Temari observes dully.

Six months she has had to live with the revelations Gaara imparted on her, and still Temari has a hard time thinking of it all as the truth.

All her life, for as long as she can remember, Temari has heard stories told time and again about her mother. It was never made public what she had said at the last; through Gaara's information Temari has a rough idea of what Karura must have said, but even she doesn't know the exact details. Instead of making Karura's last words public as they should have been in such a situation, they were kept secret, and inevitably the stories started from that one little secret kept.

None one could accept that Karura simply had the most atrocious taste in names. No, Temari thinks bitterly; that's simply too mundane an explanation for the gossipmongers of Sunagakure. Secrets built up on top of secrets that gave rise to stories so outrageous but eventually accepted as fact. Temari can see, with the stark clarity provided by hindsight, how it must have happened. A name given to a child out of love and a desire to protect became a name speaking of hatred and revenge and devilry. A decent woman's last breath was used to bless her child with an albeit bizarre name, but a few stories later, her soul was twisted inside-out and she became a screaming wretch, hatred spewing like hot poison from her lips and curses against the village darkening the land. Temari has heard these tales for as long as she can remember, even accepted them to some extent, and even if none of them say exactly the same thing, the message is always the same at its core.

This was all bad enough, but what was always the worst in Temari's eyes was when they twisted her mother's very name. Her name isn't written with those kanji, she wants to shout when she sees Karura's name spelled out to mean "the demon who adds to the flow of sand and hatred". Her throat closes and she wants to scream, but she can't find a single sound in her lungs.

And Yashamaru? Temari still isn't sure what to think of Yashamaru, now that she knows the truth of him. Ten years of hating a man for turning her brother into a shell of himself and a monster and betraying her in the process isn't something to be forgotten over night, not even in six months—and it's not like Temari's had a whole lot of time to be soul-searching in those six months. That Yashamaru had his orders from the Kazekage and that he absolutely could not refuse she remembers and understands; it's just hard.

The siblings start to rife through the box of Yashamaru's belongings and Temari picks up his mask. A hollow-eyed desert goshawk stares back up at her; Temari sneezes as she brushes the dust away. The mask is mostly white, with only chalk blue rings around the eye holes for coloring. For some reason, it's oddly appropriate that he would have worn the face of a hawk.

Temari sets the mask aside with special care and keeps on digging through the box; she's long since forgotten her own feelings about the sanctity of tombs, sheer morbid curiosity having won out over propriety. The folders are mostly reports of missions, both successes and failures; Temari can't help but feel some satisfaction when she sees that the 'success' pile is much larger than the 'failure' pile.

Gaara stiffens as he opens a file and looks inside. Something cold settles in Temari's stomach as she sees what is unmistakably a flash of guilt white-hot flashing over Gaara's face before he hides his face from her (maybe out of shame, maybe from something else) and continues to dig. The folder is cast aside and Temari immediately plucks it up, wondering what could make him experience that swift and briefly overpowering burst of emotion.

She sees soon enough.

Black and white pictures, taken with medical detachment and precision. Bruised arms, bruised legs. Scoured skin. Dripping blood. A picture of a man with a skinny, blackened torso, Yashamaru's tired, too-weary, too-old eyes staring out frankly, shadowed and smudged, drooping yet somehow so intense that Temari can't hold their gaze. Sand-scouring… Mission ongoing… Attempted to restrain the jinchuuriki… Mission ongoing… The boy attacked three children today… Mission ongoing… Barely stopped him… Mission ongoing…

Oh. That's all her stunned mind can think to say. Oh.

Suddenly reluctant to return to scavenging through her uncle's effects, Temari hesitates, her fingers curled over the side of the box, fingernails digging into the cardboard. If all the unopened folders contain more of the same of what she just saw, then Temari is unwilling to venture any further. It's not the blood and the bruises and the pseudo-burns that bothers her; as a shinobi Temari has seen the same and so much worse on a near-daily basis. What makes it just a little difficult to breathe and impossible to look at those pictures again is the reality of who's wearing those wounds and how they got there in the first place.

I knew it was bad, but I never thought… Almost (but not quite) afraid to look at him, Temari sneaks a glance at her brother. She can't imagine what must be going through his mind as he rifles through Yashamaru's things. Something that probably goes better unsaid, she can imagine.

Wait…

Gaara has stopped again, hunched over a sheet of paper clenched in taut hands. An open envelope is on the ground in front of him. When Temari peers more closely to read the expression on his face, she can see the guilt there once more, this time even more powerful thanks to the added presence of grief, threatening to spill and overwhelm. Forgetting everything she was taught about propriety and letting her personality shine through instead, Temari snatches the paper from Gaara; he does not object, hands falling to his knees.

The blonde's brow furrows as she smoothes out the paper and holds it to the light. It's a letter, written in a precise, matter-of-fact hand.

Gaara:

If you've gotten so far as to find this, I can only assume you know the truth of what I am about to do—what I will have done by the time you find this letter. I know that the whole tradition of men who are about to die writing letters to loved ones is a bit cliché, but I hope you will appreciate the gesture anyway.

You are, I am assuming, physically unharmed by my assassination attempt. No matter how I attempt to convince Kazekage-sama that the defense of your sand is absolute, he does not seem to believe me. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I'm beginning to believe he's just giving the task of killing you to the shinobi he no longer wants around him; given that he seems to have picked up on my feelings as regards to him, that would be a plausible explanation.

As you've probably gathered, I am—soon to be was—a member of Sunagakure's ANBU Black Op.s. You probably had a hard time believing that at first when you found out, at least I hope I did. You have to understand, Gaara, the thought that I could have been found out by a six-year-old is nothing short of mortifying; I do have some pride and I like to think I was trained better than that. If you didn't notice anything odd, then I have done my job properly.

Temari can't restrain a smirk. Oh no, we never noticed when you took missions in the middle of the night and showed up the next morning bruised and cut up, no. In reality though, Yashamaru had been quite convincing; Temari doesn't think Gaara or Kankuro ever suspected him of being anything but a chunin and she knows she didn't. She reads on, a new sense of foreboding making her stomach churn at the first sentence.

I wish I could say that things will get better for you. I wish I could say that I had the courage to even try to defy your father's order, that I was able to get my head above the curtain of ANBU conditioning for one moment and try to find an alternative for the situation I am inevitably coming closer to finding myself in.

Well, I didn't have that level of courage, or that level of disobedience. I am ANBU and your father is the Kazekage; I am bound to obey at all costs, including that of my own life. I do as I am told, as do all shinobi and all ANBU.

Though I could be wrong, though I hope that I am wrong, I do not think that things will get any easier for you. The life of a jinchuuriki is inevitably a lonely one. I know that loneliness, that isolation. Having a secret like mine changes you, and not for the better. You can be in a crowded room and have never felt more alone in your life; the faces of others seem so flat and their voices so false and shallow. This I have experienced since I was called, and this I have seen in your eyes since the first day. It is the fate of a jinchuuriki to be alone; that will not change any time soon.

I know you miss your mother. I miss her too.

And I am sorry. These are my orders, that and nothing more, but I am sorry. You know why.

Frankly, Gaara I don't care what you do with this letter. You can show it to the whole city, keep it to yourself, even burn it; I don't care. I just want you to tell your siblings the truth. I want them to see this. Maybe it's just vanity or ego, but I'd rather not have Kankuro and Temari spending the rest of their lives hating me for trying to kill their younger brother.

It ends there, without so much as a signature or anything. If it weren't for the fact that Temari recognizes Yashamaru's handwriting and that it's in among his effects, Temari would have to question whether this is actually something written by Yashamaru at all. Here is not the place for suspicion, though; here is a place for secrets unearthed and stories finally put to rest.

Gaara, clearly having read his way through the letter, is in a position Temari never thought she would see him after he receded into himself following Yashamaru's failed assassination attempt: near tears. The spike of strong emotions doesn't immediately register but Temari can see his pale features are taut and stretched tight, eyes too bright, lower lip quivering slightly. He's ducked his head to hide his face from her but Temari is a woman and, more importantly, she's his sister; she knows his moods and what his looks mean.

Oh boy. Not exactly a sentimental girl even under special circumstances, Temari dreads the thought that he might start crying in front of her; Temari has no idea what to do in case of that and Gaara isn't exactly what anyone sane and reasonable would term "huggable", even if he doesn't kill people for touching him anymore.

But he doesn't. Gaara must be exerting every iota of self-control he has, but he doesn't cry and Temari finally thinks of something to say.

"So…" She smiles weakly "…is this the part where it starts to sink in that pretty much everything you've known for the past ten years was a lie?"

In response, the young Kazekage grimaces hideously. "I've been thinking about that for a while but… yes, yes I think it is." Gaara holds a hand out for the letter, and when she returns it to him he fingers the paper, frowning heavily. "This is insane," Gaara murmurs. His face screws up. "This is all insane," he bursts out suddenly, eyes sparking.

Ah, there's the anger I've been looking for the last six months. Temari nods. "Yes, it is, but this is Sunagakure politics. Did you expect anything else?"

"No."

"Well there you have it."

The brief spike of humor brought on by trash-talking politics disappears as quick as it came as Temari remembers Yashamaru and the way he behaved and the things he did. He had given every appearance of loving Gaara deeply, and now Temari can see that that wasn't a mask after all; Yashamaru hadn't had to hide his true feelings to care for his youngest nephew like she'd thought. But even if Gaara is willing to forgive him completely—and Temari doesn't know whether he has or not, but he shows no sign of still holding a grudge against him—Temari can't get past the fact that, on an order from the Kazekage, a man she knows Yashamaru hated intensely, he was willing to throw everything away.

He was ANBU, and he had his orders.

He was Gaara's uncle and Karura's brother.

He was a shinobi. He could not disobey the Kazekage.

He was a decent human being, for crying out loud! He ought to have at least put up a fuss when being told to kill his own nephew.

Temari finally decides that it's too late to worry about these things. It's ten years too late to try and decide whether or not Yashamaru was justified in following orders.

"I don't think everyone has to know." She looks up in surprise when Gaara speaks, much more calm now, though still with eyes a little too bright, glittering like stars in the sky. "Yashamaru doesn't seem to have cared too much about how he was remembered. Besides, we'd have to reveal his status as ANBU in order to make this widely known, and even I can't expose an ANBU operative, even if he is dead."

Not perfect, but they don't live in a world that's perfect. Their world is anything but perfect. "We're going to have to tell Kankuro, though," Temari points out reasonably. "Can't keep him out of the loop forever." The fact that it was she who suggested they do this without telling Kankuro in the first place has for the moment escaped Temari.

Kankuro's anger against Yashamaru was, if anything, even worse than Temari's. Beneath the façade of fear of Gaara and rough recalcitrance, Kankuro always remained someone who wanted, deep down, to be a brother to Gaara, though he wouldn't admit it even to Temari. Whenever Yashamaru is brought up in conversation by either Kankuro or Temari (Gaara is never in the room; that's not a topic that needs to be broached in earshot of him even on a good day), Kankuro's words for his late uncle are anything but kind. In fact, they are invariably virulent and profane, but that's just how Kankuro gets when he's mad; he wouldn't be Temari's younger brother and Gaara's older one if he was any other way.

Gaara doesn't look like he much relishes the task of debriefing Kankuro the same way he did Temari, but he nods in concordance. "Agreed. How to tell him, though?" His voice goes a little thick at that.

Temari just leans out to rub his shoulder, and when his eyes meet hers, she smiles a little.

He's still getting over it, still getting used to have everything he knew about his history with his mother and his uncle proved wrong. Six years of fear and terror were built on a lie. Gaara became an absolute demon for six years on the basis of a lie. The implications are beyond monstrous, but Gaara can handle it. Temari is sure he can handle it.

After all, he's put up with worse.

I do hope you all enjoyed the ride.