Chapter Text
The desert is not a place for the weak.
In the first memory Temari has of her father, they are on the roof of their penthouse and her father holds her in his arms resting on his hip. He looks out towards the vast desert that stretches out beyond their village. Rasa leans closer to his daughter, making sure he has her full attention as he prepares to speak.
“The desert eats, starves and dries out most living things. Only a few resilient creatures survive it” he pokes her belly playfully “so you, my wind princess have to be far more resilient than the desert herself. You will be forced to grow up under these harsh conditions and will have to face the desert at its absolute worst. There will be moments when she’s trying to break you, to trick you into forfeiting and in those moments you will have to stare her down and defy nature as you refuse to let her win.”
In response the blonde toddler had just hugged her father closer and nodded into his neck.
It is one of the few good memories she has of her father, just before her mother died and he changed forever.
Temari has through the years made an unconscious oath to disagree with her father almost on principle in all matters, as an act of final defiance and in anger for how he shaped her upbringing. But as much as it hurts her to admit, her father was right. Not in all matters, but regarding her relationship with the desert which surrounds her, he was right about the desert's active role in trying to snuff out all life within it.
At this point she can’t count the times she has had to tell the desert (or the universe at large) ‘not yet, not today’ and then had to pull herself up and continue fighting. Moments when she could barely breathe, instances when she’d been covered in blood that was (probably) mostly her own, moments when her chakra levels had been so low she’d hear the whispers of her ancestors pulling her towards them.
The war shifted her duties, for better and worse, being wrapped up in the newly formed alliance and her ambassador duties kept her on the road. Which in turn has led to a stark decrease in the time spent at home, in Suna.
(Whatever qualifies as home these days).
While the work had come with feelings of purpose, of being a part of something substantial which could cause change for the better and while the new vagabonding lifestyle has left her feeling free and independent on her own terms, she can’t help but to miss some parts of her home when she’s away. And even worse, it has resulted in feelings of heavy melancholy whenever she actually is back in her home.
Losing her ability to feel present in Suna, mind clouded by faux melancholy as if she’s already left.
Which is why when her beloved younger brother so graciously informed her that he’d want her to lead the yearly hunt, she had been taken aback by the honor of it.
(The fact that tears threatened to roll down her cheeks she refuses to acknowledge).
“Are you sure?”
Gaara nods, a gentle smile which only those close to him would recognize on his face.
“Baki won’t mind?”
Gaara shook his head, “He was the one to suggest it to me. You’ve earned this.”
The young Kazekage keeps his face still as his sister peppers his forehead with grateful kisses.
“I’ll offer my biggest kill to you”
Gaara grimaces, “I don’t enjoy eating scorpion.”
A warm smile graces her face, “I know.”
Temari rushed from the office out into the streets to find some dried flowers and incense, then she nearly ran to her mother’s lavish grave where she sat down near the gravestone and offered up her offerings.
She lit the incense, and with a face covered by dark smoke she spoke directly to her mother, “Mom, I did it before Kankuro.”
She sits at her window that night, a warm cup of steaming tea in her hands. She gazes out towards the late night sky at the nearly full moon and surrounding stars. Her restless mind drifts back to her mother, to the few memories of her that she keeps close to her heart.
It drifts to the photo she keeps of Karura, at one of her scorpion hunts, in her bedside drawer. Her mother’s tired smile as she holds up the tail and poses with the giant venom bulb in the photo.
She’d found the photo after her father had died, rifling through some of Yashamaru’s possessions. She’d asked Baki about the photo and had ended up getting hours of stories about how much her mother had enjoyed hunting, information which her father had never shared. The following day Temari had sought out older shinobi that were adept Scorpion hunters so that she too could learn how to hunt the giant beasts.
Then her mind drifts to the story her mother would tell her and Kankuro on nights like these when their minds were restless and they couldn’t sleep. When Temari closes her eyes she can still see her mother’s warm smiling face as she acts out, portraying the giant scorpion threatening to attack. How her and Kankuro would giggle as their mother lovingly attacked them with soft tickles only to be cut off by her children with complaints of ‘continue the story!’.
She thinks of this particular story because it might have been her mother’s favorite, not because her mother’s greatest passion was killing scorpions but because the tradition behind the hunt had been started by her father, a man who’d long been dead by the time Temari had been born.
In the story her grandfather, a rogue tribe leader, serves as the hero and the woman who’s hand he’s vying for, the woman he risks his life for, had been her grandmother.
Now Temari is not a romantic, and she honestly doesn’t remember the love story being the core part of the tale when she heard it as a child. Both she and Kankuro had cared about the action of the big scorpions and cool super human shinobi who bravely fought them off. It is in retrospect she has pieced together the truth behind her mother’s nighttime stories. It is with the experience of being a woman that she can understand her mother better, a thought that never fails to sting.
Her grandfather had served as the head of a tribe in the borderlands of Suna, back in a time when Suna was barely Suna. When it was a loose collection of Shinobi tribes who had settled in the area. Karura would always smile at the recollection of her father, a strong charismatic man, a father who emphasized the strict rules of shinobi life but had compassion and an open ear to his two children. It’s too bad the man died a shinobi’s death and had never been able to meet his grandchildren, not because Temari desired the affection of a grandparent but because she’d like to know what he was actually like beyond her mother’s rose colored lens that she described him through.
Her grandmother on the other hand had been the daughter of a lord, the second youngest out of five daughters. The lord, a distant relative to the daimyo, whose only wish had been for all of his daughters to marry fine men of the correct rank, higher than the level they’d been born in if he had any say in it. She’d grown up in a big house on the border of the Daimyo’s expansive compound. While she’d lived in a closed ecosystem of luxury, the expansive spice gardens of their mansion had been close enough to the local farms that her grandmother could see the life outside of her bubble, close enough to nearly touch without ever being allowed to do so.
At this point in the story Karura would pull her children close and whisper that her mother’s greatest joy had been the freedom the life of a shinobi wife had given her, that her mother had been so happy to get to see the world because of her husband. Karura would ensure her children that her mother had gladly given up her luxurious comforts for the freedom of being a shinobi wife and mother, with perspective and experience of life Temari feels a pang of doubt in her chest at this.
Had her grandmother not traded one prison for another, Karura’s relationship with her grandmother had been strained and by the time Karura passed the old woman had retreated into a small house outside of the village and Temari only remembers her seeing her briefly at her own father’s funeral. When the old woman had died herself, it took months for the news to reach either of her siblings. The morning Temari had been locking her quarters up to join the war was when the news was given to her. She was handed a single piece of expensive fabric that her grandmother had wanted her granddaughter to have. The obi had been embroidered with the daimyo’s seal originally before having had the tribal symbol of her mother’s tribe embroidered in plain linen thread roughly on top of it. A mix-match of her heritage heavy in her hands. The obi lies hidden and half forgotten at the back of some drawer, along with a photo of her grandfather.
The story goes that one morning after another meeting with a suitor, that her lord father had been pushing her to marry, the young lady had snuck out in a makeshift disguise. Just to experience whatever morsel of freedom she could. Now the young lady had done this before, but she’d never reached the village market before, worried she'd be recognized. For some irrelevant reason this morning was special and the young lady found a morsel of courage she hadn’t found before.
At said market the lady spots a gang of loud shinobi, bumbling down the street laughing and jesting half covered in mud and hints of dried blood. The young woman had marveled at the sight, having only seen shinobi at a distance when they conducted business with and for the Daimyo. The young lady had been overcome by curiosity and couldn’t help staring at the men as they walked the rows of the busy market. She’d hidden behind the stalls as she followed the group along the busy streets.
This is the moment Karura always emphasized, she’d heave a dramatic inhale to heighten the tension and tell her children how her parents eyes had met across the crowded stands and how the spark between the two had been instant. How her father had blushed at the sight of the beautiful lady and how her mother had felt compelled to approach the man. Throwing caution to the wind for a chance to hear his stories of adventure and of struggles in the real world. The young lady had been spellbound by the rough worldly man.
In retrospect, Temari doubts this part of the story, likely her mother exaggerated it or possibly edited it for a child friendly version. She can’t help but to wonder what the darkest version of the story is, where on the scale between the story her mother told her toddler and the darkest version her adult daughter could imagine the actual truth lies. She's met enough shinobi to know the way they can treat naive women in country villages, even some who seem friendly initially won’t hesitate to take advantage of a civilian woman who can’t put up a fight.
Through some form of introductions the two form an attachment, the young lady sneaks out more and more to meet up with her secret lover. All while her lord father is increasingly pressuring her into a marriage with an appropriate suitor. After weeks, or possibly a few months, her shinobi lover comes up with a solution.
He writes his lady a letter, telling her not to worry and to be patient while he goes off to solve the issue. He does not, according to her mother’s testimony, tell his future wife how he intends to gain her father’s approval.
He had worked for the Daimyo enough times to know what wares and issues were top priority. Therefore he knew that the farmers who worked directly under the daimyo would occasionally struggle with giant scorpions ruining their farmlands and killing their animals. They were an economic threat, and more importantly the venom as well as their tender flesh were high priced wares on the market and the meat itself was considered a fine delicacy. Something the Daimyo and his household liked to serve, especially to woo foreign guests and potential business partners.
The giant scorpions are however notoriously hard to capture and kill, especially for a civilian. So grandfather sets out to hunt and kill a giant scorpion for the Daimyo to gain his favor. To show that the shinobi tribes of the land would be willing to tackle the task of maintaining the Giant Scorpion population, at a price of course, no man risks his life so carelessly without reward.
He’s out in the desert for nearly a full week, during which his lady waits in distress for any sign that her beloved is even alive. She frets and worries and bothers her maids constantly on any letters or words from anywhere. Eventually locking herself up in her room and refusing to see any potential suitor, her father or even her mother.
When the young shinobi shows up at the gates of the vast Daimyo compound, the morning of the seventh day he drags behind him a nearly dead giant scorpion, twitching in its tight binds. The man cockily proclaims how prolonging its life had kept the meat fresh for the duration of his journey, to ensure the best taste for the Daimyo.
The young man, standing there covered in blue blood and a myriad of both fresh and half-healed cuts on both his arms and face, smiles up at the Daimyo he’d demanded to see. He graciously offers the beast to the Daimyo as a sign of loyalty and when the Daimyo calls for a servant to fetch him gold in payment he valiantly refuses and confesses he only wished to have his lady’s hand in marriage.
Said lady is sent for.
The Daimyo agrees to the deal instantly, it is the lady’s lord father who refuses. Attempting to argue with the Daimyo before quickly giving up, not wanting to disagree with the Daimyo and risk repercussions.
The lord father does however exercise his power and disdain for the situation in other ways. The only ways he had power too, as the young lady leaves her home with just a small travel pack on her back she also leaves her family for the last time. Her father let her go but completely cut her off and forbade any contact with any of her siblings or mother.
This part of the story was always glossed over with ‘my mother left her old life but built a new one with father’, Karura didn’t want to linger on the grim nature of her personal history. She wanted to instill hope in her children not remind her how cruelly a father can treat his children for selfish vendettas.
Her mother would then wrap the story up with something sweet, she’d tell her children how her mother has easily assimilated into her father’s tribe. How she’d learnt medical jutsu’s to help heal the shinobi who came back hurt.
Temari can’t help but to think of the truth behind the story, how in love had her grandmother been? Had she really wanted to trade her family for freedom at the cost at which it came and was what she got even freedom? How much power had she had in the situation? How hard had it been not only to be cut off from her family but to have to adapt to a new lifestyle without maids and luxuries.
To leave a life of maids and servants to one where dinner was cooked over open fire and palaces were huts and small houses built of sand mixtures. How well had her grandmother known the man she married? Had he treated her well?
Temari sighs as she struggles to accept that so many things of her family history will forever remain a complicated mystery.
Regardless of the personal connections to the story, her grandfather’s bold actions had strengthened the relationship between the Daimyo and the shinobi tribes. And as tradition the giant scorpion population was and still is kept in check by Suna shinobi, in times of need but most importantly yearly during the traditional week long hunt.
Which she would now lead, like her mother had before her.
Karura had been the first woman to lead it; it had also been where she’d caught Rasa’s eye.
Temari takes a long breath to try to center her complicated feelings. She notices the cup cold and empty in her hands. Then she gazes over at the clock on her wall, illuminated by the moonlight.
“fuck”