Characters: Temari, Gaara, Kankuro, Shikamaru
Summary: Three times Temari was proud to be Gaara's sister.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: As mentioned on the summary, this contains spoilers to 516. The first segment is during the time-skip, not long after the Sasuke Retrieval arc; the second is just after Gaara is revived; the third takes place during chapter 516.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

I think the first time I love you is when you prove to me that you're human.

Vicious white circles pinwheel in front of Temari's eyes as she prods the wound on her lower thigh—it's just above the knee, really—but she clenches her teeth and sucks in her cheeks and probes it again with gritty, unwashed hands. She and Kankuro and Gaara are still two days away from Suna, and now she has this to deal with too.

Temari hisses through a gate of teeth, both in pain and irritation. They'd completed the mission—and Kankuro has the body safely sealed in a scroll as proof so the bounty can be claimed—but she'd been injured on the way out. Back on the desert wastes the three are safe from attack, but Temari knows that she herself is far from being out of the woods yet.

Great, just great. Two days from the village, and I'm injured and bleeding. Given my luck, it'll probably be infected by the time we get back to Suna. Green eyes gaze skywards. And God knows the smell of blood's enough to send Gaara clean over the moon.

She's just starting to consider asking Kankuro if he has any disinfectant—he's the sort to carry it—when the slight sound of small footsteps behind her makes Temari jump and turn around.

Belligerence turns to a touch of wariness when Temari sees Gaara staring uncertainly at her. "You've been hurt," he states with an odd inflection digging deep in his voice.

"How did you guess?" Temari snaps shakily.

Not having the best grasp of sarcasm, Gaara only narrows his eyes and explains, "I could smell you bleeding. It's not like when—" his face contorts and he breaks off.

Temari's cheeks burn. She remembers when she was eleven and Gaara stared at her and said he could smell blood. It had been her first menstrual cycle; explaining what was happening had been such a wonderful conversation to have over the breakfast table (Apparently there's some subtle difference in the smell of regular blood and menstrual blood that Gaara can pick up; Temari's not sure what it is). Gaara has since avoided her at that time of the month.

Then, Gaara does something that surprises her. He takes a small roll of bandages and an even smaller earthen jar out of the folds of his shirt. "Here," he says simply, holding them out to her.

From her sitting position on a low boulder, Temari takes the proffered objects in stunned silence, turning them over in her hands. Bandages and a jar of salve. Then speech returns to her, accompanied by wide eyes. "Do you always keep these on you?"

He nods. "Yes."

Temari gapes at him. "Why?" She bites her tongue to keep from adding, It's not like you need it.

Gaara pauses. His face is utterly unreadable. Then, very softly, he says, "In case one of you needs it."

-0-

Death has over been a reality of my life, but never has it touched me and mine so closely.

Held tight in his sister's arms, Gaara is still stiff as a board, the muscles just beginning to come out of rigor mortis rigid and nearly totally inflexible. His breathing is labored, the lungs still faintly necrotic and the esophagus hard and, though Temari doesn't know it yet, glittering with blowfly obstructions; Gaara can feel them writhing in his throat—he is light-headed, weak and weary. Blood reeks on him, a riotous miasma of copper and iron; it's seeping over Temari, running down her legs.

Temari squeezes her burning eyes shut, throat prickling with the sort of fire that preludes tears. This is the closest she's come to crying in ten years, and over the last person she would have ever expected. Being jarred out of complacency—because Gaara can die and he did too—hasn't been the most pleasant of experiences for Temari.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" Temari whispers, so quiet that only they and Kankuro, crouching nearby, can hear her. Her voice cracks and she feels so helpless, so pathetically small. There's nothing she can do to make this right.

Gaara takes a moment to respond, drawing in breath, short, staccato gasps for air like a man going underwater, to take in enough air to talk. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat, if I had to," he whispers hoarsely.

Kankuro manages a weak smile, directed at his sister; he's long since learned to detect her pain. "That's our Kazekage." The fond humor in his voice is tempered by the pain of the thought of his brother drying again.

Temari doesn't hear him but her whisper is an echo of Kankuro's assertion. "That's my brother," she chokes out. "That's my brother."

She squeezes her eyes shut, pushing back tears. She will not cry, not even when the brother she barely got the chance to know was dead but is now alive again.

She is the Desert's child, and she will not cry.

-0-

You are unrecognizable for what you once were, no longer the loveless child born of the hate of others.

Shikamaru raises an eyebrow at the furor all around him, at the passion in the voice of the young Kazekage as he single-handedly rallies the troops, all of them, to battle as a unified force. He's sure that this is the most he's ever heard Gaara talk at one time, not to mention being the loudest he's ever spoken.

He promptly turns to Temari. "Your brother's pretty eloquent today." The observation is wry, but also holds a question. Shikamaru hadn't been aware that Gaara was aware of such charisma.

When Temari turns around, he's taken aback by the way her face glows and by the huge grin that splits the cheeks of the jonin from the Sand. If Gaara's never been so talkative or so loud before, Shikamaru's sure he's never seen a smile on Temari's face that wasn't condescending or teasing in some way. "He has his moments."

Temari's heart is ready to burst.

But she hopes it can wait until after the war's over.

She has no desire to dissolve into a giddy little girl in front of the grunts, after all.