a mélange of moulages
{ and she was, she is, she will be - ? }

...

Temari, Gaara, Shuukaku, Kankurou, Baki, Yondaime Kazekage, Shikamaru
Gaara/Temari, Sandcest, Shikamaru/Temari, Yashamaru/Karura, 4thKazekage/Karura, etc.

Watch out for violence, incest, consent issues, abuse, underage, sex. Oh, and language.

...

01.
nine years old, terrified

...

She wakes with a start to the cries of a child and clenched fists - a dead weight - about her chest. She opens her eyes in the twilight hours of her ninth birthday to see a blood-splattered little boy desperately shaking her shoulders.

Yashamaru, he sobs.

Yashamaru, you came back, he cries.

Gaara, she mouthes, understanding coming before realization. The stench of death hangs about him, has always hung about him. He is a sibling, another little brother, her father's favorite and the savior of the village. He is also a stranger.

You take after your mother, one of the attendants had told her.

Not Yashamaru, she whispered, propping herself up on her elbows and holding him.

Mother's brother is dead, and her thoughts accidentally became speech.

This demon who killed her mother and stole her father - he howls and the desert listens to his rage.

What -, she manages to get out as a tireless deluge sand floods through from every inch of her room, embracing, smothering, suffocating. She screams, and he screams, and there's the dash of footsteps, the slamming open of doors. The posted guards rush to untangle them, to help her, to stop him, and specks of white blot her already-darkened vision. She can make out the voices of her father, her brother, but there's no helping her now.

If she can survive the night, she will be ten years old.

Mother, she gasps, forgetting to remember.

And just like that, the sand retracts.

Temari falls onto the bloodied sheets, into the arms of a panic-ridden attendant, and her father and brother come running. She's shaking, gasping, breaking out in a cold sweat, and she takes one look at Gaara and screams murder.

I want my mother back. Give me my mother back. I want my mother instead of you.

She lunges at him, uselessly, of course, and beats her fist into one wall of sand after another, until her father catches her wrist and pulls her into an uncharacteristic embrace.

Temari, Temari, Temari, Kankurou calls, chides, pleads. Though he's too young to remember Mother, he's old enough to fear Gaara.

Temari, don't; Temari stop; Temari please.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, she shrieks, arms and legs flailing, eyes and fingers clenched. The Kazekage pulls her close and she manages to cuff Kankurou's ear, but her words reach the intended recipient.

The monster laughs, harsh and ragged, throwing his head back and letting the sand encompass his being.

It was just a dream, her father tells her the second she's calmed down. He takes her face in both his hands and looks her in the eye. Temari, he says, you just had a nightmare.

But, but, but, she tries.

Look around your room, he insists, and she does. Her eyes settle on the clean bedsheets, the closed windows and empty room. Finally, she relaxes, nodding firmly.

I wasn't scared at all!, she says - a bald-faced lie.

That's my daughter, her father preens, ruffling her hair and helping her back into bed. She sniffs: I'll be ten years old tomorrow so I can tuck myself in, she haughtily informs him and he chuckles and closes the door.

The servants scuttle about, used to rearranging this, cleaning that, burning this, and his youngest child rematerializes before him halfway down the corridor.

Gaara, he acknowledges, keeping himself from scowling at the boy's crazed grin. And to think he was seven years old already.

"That was my older sister."

"It was."

"She's funny." Another bark of a laugh. "I'm going to kill her."

It is only practice that keeps the Fourth from reacting. Gaara is testing him, he knows.

"She takes after your mother," his father says.

Gaara freezes then, all lost and lonely seven-year-old boy, and he knows he's lost. He can't admit it though.

"It doesn't matter," he presses, grinning widely and tracing his signature tattoo. "I can kill Mother any number of times."

"After all, she always comes back to me."

...