Yeah, a sand sibs fic! Who doesn't love those, hm? This does have to do with facial hair; but not eyebrows. Trust me, it's something...quite unexpected. You'll see when you read. :)

Oh! Yeah, I forgot to mention something. I don't own anybody or anything from Naruto...including Gaara...even though that'd be nice...anywho, Masashi Kishimoto does.

Imperial Fuzz

Gaara was becoming quite rough, in Temari's opinion. Kazekage certainly wasn't an easy job, she was sure, but did he really not have time to shave in the mornings? Brick-red whiskers were invading his previously smooth face, and as a result giving him a rugged and unprofessional look. It wasn't suitable for the Kazekage. But, as much as it irked her, Temari let it be. Gaara was probably relishing in the fact that he finally had facial hair; he'd shave it eventually, when he got annoyed with it.

After a while, though, the small army of stubble was evolving into what could only be described as a beard. A whimsical, scruffy, auburn beard. This excess facial hair irritated Temari to no end, because if you were dressed in the Kazekage robes, a beard was certainly not threatening. At all. In fact, Gaara's beard was amusing. Kankuro definitely got a kick out of it, and was rewarded with dirty glares from both his siblings whenever he pointed and laughed.

"Gaara!" Temari finally exclaimed one evening. "You have to kill that thing!"

"What thing?" Gaara asked, aimlessly looking for the thing Temari was referring to.

She gestured to his chin. "That thing overtaking your face!"

Gaara's hand was immediately drawn to the lower portion of his face, where the beard had decided to make itself at home. He fingered the bush thoughtfully before sighing and looking rather resigned. "I would but...I can't."

"What do you mean? You can't shave?" Kankuro inquired, barely holding back a fit of giggles as he thought of Gaara struggling with a razor. The mental image was too much for him, and he collapsed into thunderous laughter.

"No, it's not that," Gaara snarled after his brother was finished. "I can't shave, but it's not because of incompetence. It's because the sand won't let me. Every time I bring a razor to my face, the sand blocks it."

"Really?" Temari snorted.

Gaara sighed again. "Yes, I suppose it thinks I'm going to kill myself or something."

"But wait," Kankuro said, suddenly sober. "How do you shave your eyebrows then?"

"I don't shave my eyebrows!" Gaara defended, his fingers brushing the place where his eyebrows should have been. "It's a birth defect!"

"I've never heard of somebody being born without eyebrows."

"You just did. Tell him, Temari, you probably remember my birth."

"I'm not that old, Gaara."

Kankuro shrugged and inspected Gaara's beard. He wrinkled his nose. "I dunno...if we let it go any longer it might try to eat your brain or something. It's a pretty menacing beard. It has an evil aura."

"My beard does not have an evil aura," Gaara deadpanned.

"Evil aura or not, that thing's ridiculous. You'll be the laughing stock of Suna before long," Temari said matter-of-factly. "We have to get rid of it. There's gotta be some way...I have an idea! Why don't you show Kankuro and me an attempt to shave the beard and we'll see if there's anything we can do."

Gaara shrugged. "Okay, whatever. Come with me."

Kankuro erupted into laughter as Gaara spared the razor a vehement scowl. Temari hissed and whacked him in the back of her head with her fan, panting from the exertion of keeping the sand away from the razor. They'd tried several techniques, but all of them resulted in the sand attacking them while somehow blocking the razor from Gaara's face. Everyone but Gaara was covered in scratches and the bathroom was a disaster; on top of that, they weren't any closer to eliminating Gaara's beard. Temari directed her frustration at the more aggravating of her brothers, who for some reason found the whole situation extremely entertaining.

Temari was not amused.

"This is not funny!" she cried, slapping Kankuro after every word for emphasis. Gaara observed his older siblings bicker, then turned his attention back to the mocking razor. He didn't care too much for the beard (it honestly only brought more attention to the fact that he didn't have eyebrows) and he felt that if it grew any larger he might actually be mistaken for a lumberjack.

"Sorry," Kankuro wheezed, partially from laughter and partially from Temari's jab to the gut. He considered Gaara's face with a smirk, rubbing his painted chin thoughtfully. "Let's see...Gaara, can't you, I don't know...chat with your sand or whatever and tell it to stop protecting you from the razor?"

"You're asking me to communicate with my sand?" Gaara repeated.

"Yeah."

It was Gaara's turn to assault Kankuro. He had to admit, it was rather stress-relieving.

As Kankuro attended to his wounds and his pride, Gaara and Temari continued to conspire against the beard and the sand. Gaara sighed and rubbed his bewhiskered face tiredly. "You know, it's really not that bad. It's not bushy yet."

"It's getting there," Temari remarked, poking her brother's hairy chin.

Gaara glared at her.

Temari fingered her own chin (which didn't harbor any facial hair, thank goodness) and thought of other methods of hair removal. The razor definitely wasn't going to work. Tweezing would take too long. That only left...

"Wax!"

Gaara and Kankuro stared at her as if she had gone insane. "What?" they said in unison.

"Wax," Temari repeated, standing up. "If we wax Gaara's beard, than there won't be any problems. The sand shouldn't see wax as a threat, right? At least not a life-threatening one."

"Temari, guys don't wax their facial hair," Kankuro snorted, attempting to share an amused look with Gaara. But the Kazekage seemed dazed, as if his sister's declaration was slowly sinking in.

Said sister placed her hands on her hips defiantly. "Why not?"

"Because, it's just...it's just not done!"

"Well, this is a special case. Gaara can't shave and he can't go around looking like that, so there's no other alternative," Temari determined, shuffling around in the bathroom cabinets as she did so. From there she extracted a kit; a wax kit. Gaara's eyes widened at the sight of it. Kankuro shot him a panicked look and hastily tried to talk Temari out of whatever she was planning.

"It's really not that bad!" he said, pinching the flesh of Gaara's face adoringly. "It's actually pretty masculine, if you ask me. And I bet none of the other Kazekage had beards."

"I don't want Gaara to be remembered for his beard," Temari snapped, continuing with her hunt for supplies. "It's not masculine, it's scraggly and disturbing. He looks like a little kid who doesn't want to shave his first chin hair." Assuring that she had everything, she grabbed Gaara and dragged him from the bathroom, balancing the supplies in the other hand.

"Where are we going?" Gaara inquired, snapping out of his daze.

"I have to heat up the wax, then we have to go somewhere where no one will here you scream," Temari explained bluntly. She turned and shot him an apologetic smile. "Ah, I mean, I'm just teasing. It's not that bad, okay?"

Gaara shot his brother a pleading look before Temari towed him around the corner and out of sight. Kankuro heard Temari's footsteps and Gaara's dragging feet receding in an ominous fashion. He shrugged and walked to his room, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. It couldn't be that bad.

Ten minutes later, he could have sworn he heard Gaara scream.

The adviser wrinkled his nose in distaste, looking around aimlessly like the rest of his colleagues. After twenty more minutes of silent, anxious waiting, he finally asked the question and was inevitably on everyone's mind.

"Where is the Kazekage?"

It wasn't like Gaara to be late, and thirty minutes of apprehension was just outrageous. They should have been well into the meeting by now, but they couldn't start until the Kazekage was present. The other advisers shared worried glances. Should they be concerned for the Kazekage's safety? Was he missing? Kidnapped again, perhaps?

Suddenly, Gaara burst into the room as if beckoned. He gave all the advisers a menacing glare, daring them to say a word regarding his abnormal appearance. A long white strip of gauze was wrapped around the lower half of his face, effectively hiding everything from the eyes down. The advisers gave him an inquisitive stare, but they said nothing about it.

"Sorry I'm late," the Kazekage began in a muffled voice, taking a step forward.

The gauze slowly unwound, unfurling until the very tip brushed the ground and Gaara's face was out in the open. His cheeks, chin, and upper lip were turgid and red, scabbing over as if they had been lightly burned. The advisers unanimously winced, some of them looking down at their beloved Kazekage in pity, others forcing their lips into a tight line in an attempt not to chuckle. Gaara was absolutely still, the muscle in his jaw working ferociously. He knew he shouldn't have let Kankuro do his bandage, but he was rather frightened of Temari at the moment.

One cheeky adviser (no pun intended) opened his mouth to say something, but Gaara held up a hand. The adviser closed his mouth and tried to keep from grinning. Gaara sighed, grimacing when prickles of pain shot up his face, and slowly drifted to the head of the conference table. He sat with deliberate emphesis, once more daring anyone to mutter a single thing. He folded his hands on the smooth surface of the table and cleared his throat.

"Now, where shall we begin?"