Chapter Update/Teaser

She entertains the concept of more sleep for about a third of a second, but she recognises an exercise in futility when she sees one and cross-kicks that idea right out the window. Instead, she shoves her tense, exhausted body into motion without mercy, forcing her stiff muscles into morning stretches.

It’s only then that she notices Gaara.

He’s perched on the edge of the windowsill behind her with his knees to his chest and his arms crossed overtop, so profoundly still it’s like he’s been carved right out of the wall. The wan, watery light casts his form in eerie silhouette, his head bowed in so far that shadow smothers his face completely. It looks like he hasn’t moved for hours.

Temari cannot sense his chakra. She can’t even be entirely sure he’s breathing.

“Gaara?”

His name draws through her voice so softly it barely qualifies as noise at all, but Gaara jerks like it’s been screamed, his whole body spasming violently inward. His eyes lift slowly, out of time with the sinewy contraction of the rest of him, and Temari instantly feels like an absolute ingrate for complaining about her meagre sleep.

Gaara’s eyes are feverish turquoise pearls in sunken pits of bruised shadow. His skin is sallow and papery, so thin that the bluish veins in his temples stand out like tender vine roots under a sheen of wax. He hasn’t slept again tonight.

“Temari?”

Gaara’s voice is rough and thick, clumsy around her name like he’s forgotten how to use it.

Temari swallows hard, her heart aching, a low thread of fear humming in her blood. “Yeah, otouto,” she breathes, as softly as she breathed his name. “It’s me.”

Gaara blinks heavily a few times, like he’s trying to clear something from his vision. A hallucination probably, or maybe phantom lights. “Did I wake you?”

Temari smiles and shakes her head, relief flooding headily through her chest. Gaara’s eyes are exhausted but clear, free of the dangerous mania that too often consumes them. “Nah.” she assures, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her shorts. She shuffles her feet a bit, wondering if he might feel stable enough to let her come closer, or maybe even sit by him, and Gaara notices.

Just as she’s decided not to push her luck, he lifts his head, dropping one leg away from his chest to stretch out in front of him. He tilts his head gently, allowing it to rest against his remaining drawn knee like he can’t be bothered to keep it up. He doesn’t smile– Gaara hasn’t smiled in more than a decade– but the look in his worn eyes gets close. “It’s okay, Temari.” he murmurs tiredly. “I’m… I’m alright, mostly.”

The grin on Temari’s face cannot be stopped no matter how much she tries to rearrange it.

She approaches slowly despite Gaara’s assurances, unwilling to risk this rare moment of peace by stepping on any emotional landmines. She plops down on the opposite edge of the sill, hands splayed out behind her for support. “So… rough night, huh?”

Gaara’s response is more an affirmative hum than an actual word, which is fine by Temari– she’s been fluent in his mumbles since she was six.

“Nightmares?”

That earns her a headshake, his mahogany hair falling into his eyes with the motion. Temari wishes she could brush it.

But this is as close as she will ever get, and that’s not his fault.

“Mother?” she tries, and this time Gaara nods.

Temari’s not exactly sure what the difference is between the Ichibi and the entity Gaara has always referred to as ‘Mother’, but she knows there is one. Well, most of the time. Sometimes the two are interchangeable, sometimes Gaara can firmly determine which is which, and sometimes saying the wrong name triggers instant homicidal episodes. It really depends.

Temari’s never really managed to work out which one is the truly violent one and which one is just batshit; all she really knows is the one solid thing they have in common, which happens to be the hysterical desire to reduce even the vaguest of threats to Gaara’s person into a bloody mush the consistency of pudding.

Gaara looks to her slowly, gaze shifting in and out of focus a little before steadying somewhere past her left ear. “Restless. Furious. Envious.” He says, gravely and slow, like each word takes effort. “She is too many things, too far down.” He brings a dry hand up towards his face, fingernails jagged and bloody from gnawing, and rubs his palm into the corner of one eye. “The silence is deafening.”

Temari blinks, alarmed. Gaara’s more lucid complaints are always of noise, of a kind of neural static that drives his cycles of insomnia– an effort to hold back the darker delusions and bloody rages. He’s never before complained to her of quiet.

“Is it the exams?” Temari guesses tentatively.

Gaara hesitates, giving a slow blink in thought, and then shakes his head minutely and breathes; “Fear.”

A chill drops down Temari’s spine much colder than the drops of sweat between her shoulder blades. “She’s afraid?”

Gaara hums in agreement, his eyes dipping half-mast. “Yes.”

“Of what?” she asks, trying to keep her tone as neutral as possible, her fingers curling in against the wood of the sill hard enough to press crescents into the grain.

Gaara looks her briefly in the eye– gaze filled with tired confusion and sharp anxiety– before closing his eyes fully, bruised lids pressing tightly, the skin around his temples creasing in concentration. “Gold and amber...” he mumbles senselessly. “The smell of rain on dry wind... The place where earth meets sky.”

Temari shakes her head softly, scrambling to understand before Gaara slips away from her again. “Outoto, I don’t–”

“A coming storm.”

The voice comes from behind her, from the other side of the room, and when Temari turns she sees Kankuro sitting up, awake and alert, legs crossed over his fuuton. His hair and paint are comically askew and he’s rubbing sleep from his eyes, but his gaze is as sharp and intelligent as ever. “He’s talking about a coming storm.”

Temari’s eyes narrow at him as Gaara’s finally begin to drift closed. “How do you figure?”

Kankuro shifts to stand and moves to kneel at Gaara’s feet, expression gentle. Their baby brother is finally asleep for the first time in days. “I’m not sure about the first part, but the rest we’ve heard before.”

Temari’s nose scrunches in confusion. “Where? He’s never said anything like that to me.”

“Not Gaara.” Kankuro counters. “Sensei.”

Temari blinks. “Really?”

Kankuro nods, straightening an arm to rest an elbow on his raised knee. “‘The place where earth meets sky’ is a Kamikaze– a typhoon. It was in that old old primer of war poems he used to read us, remember?”

Temari finds she does– the memory rises up easily now that she thinks of it, of the worn well-loved cover of a leather-bound tome at home in the worn leathery skin of their teacher’s hands, the low roughness of his voice in the lull moments of their first missions.

“‘Wary is the wise soul of the fury of nature’s breath, of the push and pull of her lungs, for no force of man could hope to match the place where earth meets sky.’” Temari recites. “Yeah, I remember.”

Kankuro nods again. “Mhm. And ‘the smell of rain on dry wind’? That’s how he first taught us to tell when a monsoon was coming.”

Temari frowns, turning the information over in her head. “A coming storm, huh? That doesn't sound good.”

Kankuro snorts. “No, not really.”

For long still minutes they sit there in silence, in quiet vigil over a rare moment of rest. Gaara’s breath is even, rustling his crimson hair on every exhale as dawn finally begins to crawl up through the trees, reaching fingers of light arcing through the window to kiss the too-sharp angles of his face.

“Hey, Tamari?” Kankuro whispers, something weighing ominously on his tone. “I have a bad feeling.”

Temari can’t help but huff at that. “About the exam? The war not-war? The missing-nin that may or may not be wearing our father’s skin like a suit?”

Kankuro swallows, letting loose a nervous laugh. “Let's go with D: All of the above.”

Temari clasps her arm to his shoulder and gives him a companionable shake. “No use worrying about it now, bro. It is what it is. We’ll come out on top somehow. We always do.”

“I hope you're right.” Kankuro sighs, “I really do, because something tells me this whole day is gonna be a shitshow.”