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01. Temari learns early, that men only want one thing. So she learns to be really good at that one thing, crooked smile and arched back and lean legs that go on for miles, crossed just so. She is not delicate, no, she couldn't be delicate for all the world, but she uses it to her advantage; ninjutsu is not her only weapon.
02. Kankuro is scared of the dark when he is small (because in the dark he can hear the fluting whisper of sand running along the floor and he doesn't know if this is the night it comes for him).
03. There is something peculiar about Gaara, but he doesn't know that until he sees a woman hurrying her child to the other side of the street when they almost cross paths. (He's felt it, always felt it, but never known until now.)
04. Temari always wanted to study fire ninjutsu, but was never allowed; in a place so dry, a mistake could be catastrophic, set the whole village ablaze. Secretly, she wonders if that wasn't what she wanted.
05. When he is six, Kankuro snares a fly with a chakra thread, leading it a merry dance before running it into the wall with a satisfying squelch. He knows now what sort of ninja he would like to be.
06. Gaara's small for his age, but people always leave a five-foot radius around him, like he takes up more room than he does.
07. Even though Temari goes through a harder punk phase than either of her brothers, she can't bring herself to get her ears pierced. It's too permanent, too lasting, pins her down too much, sticks her like a beetle (she isn't a butterfly) in a display case, and everyone knows you can't cage the wind.
08. Kankuro's face paint starts as a joke, when someone makes fun of him for playing with dolls, so he marks up his face and finds them again later, intent on showing just how girly he is exactly. He doesn't worry about being made fun of after that.
09. Gaara tries. He does, makes his eyes big like other kids, sits on swings like other kids, carries a bear and loves his uncle like other kids.
10. Temari's embarrassed to have someone like Gaara as a brother, until she realizes that everyone else is terrified of him, which gives her, by proxy, free reign of the playground. She decides maybe it's not that bad after all.
11. Somehow, Kankuro's always a little more interested in the boys Temari brings home than the girls that bat their eyelashes at him in school.
12. After a while, Gaara stops trying.
13. Temari sleeps with a girl for the first (and last) time when she's nineteen, and though it's nice, really, there are parts of it that Temari prefers -- less cluelessness and less clean-up -- she can't help but feel scared she's going to break something, and terrified that she's going to want something that lasts.
14. Kankuro doesn't even try girls, because he's too afraid, like his sister is, that their delicate bones will snap in his hands, that stray chakra from his fingers might strangle their long, white necks, that their fluttering pulse might stop entirely if he goes too fast. (Besides, he's got way too many daddy issues to work out.)
15. There is nothing that irks Gaara more than garage bands, the pounding and screeching and squeal and feedback and camaraderie of sweaty teenage boys in close quarters, and he wishes it would stop, so maybe he could finally hear his own thoughts.
16. But boys, boys are a wonderful challenge, easy to catch and hard to break and all near-identical enough to choose from, and Temari revels in them, tears through them like a bullet through paper, hungry for the next.
17. Like when Kankuro watches his father dote on Temari, his firstborn, his fighter, his little darling girl, sees him give her dolls to play with when he takes Kankuro's away.
18. Gaara suspects that that's exactly why the world is so full of noise, though, to stop him from thinking clearly, because once he organizes his thoughts, it's impossible to stop him.
19. Temari has actually burnt salad. After that, she doesn't try cooking any more.
20. Kankuro doesn't especially care for socializing with other kids, but he does love the pinata at their birthday parties, loves snaring it with chakra and jerking it around just enough for the blind-folded kids to miss.
21. Strangers sometimes ask him, when desperately trying to make polite smalltalk, if he likes to make sandcastles. They give up entirely and subside into occasional throat-clearing when he replies the only things he builds with sand are graves.
22. Shikamaru, though, he's too lazy to break, which is positively infuriating, but delightful, too, a challenge, and Temari is like a dog with a bone, gnawing at this angle and that soft spot, though she finds out later that Shikamaru likes it when she uses her teeth.
23. Kankuro is by no means unintelligent, but he sometimes just doesn't have the same social know-how as his sister. When people murmur about their brother, for example, Kankuro ignores it, because they're not worth it, but Temari has the courtesy to threaten them to their face, like a real lady. Every time, Kankuro grins.
24. Gaara doesn't really miss human contact any more; sand is warmer, cooler, drier, coarser, yields to his every thought.
25. Temari used to tell people her favorite color was "wind," but she eventually gets sick of their indulgent smiles and settles on the ugliest color she can think of that day; most of the time it's puce or pink, with beige and lavender as honorable mentions.
26. Dogs were never all that interesting to Kankuro; he's never liked them, but Kiba is a different matter, he likes Kiba, maybe a little too much. Kiba is interesting, his angles and sharpness are interesting, his teeth and eyes are interesting, the cut of his cheekbones and the bruises on his knuckles and curve of his spine are interesting (definitely too much).
27. But it's perhaps comforting to know that, even though they're not especially touchy-feely, if Gaara really, really wanted a hug or a high-five or some other similarly plebaian thing, his brother and sister would oblige him.
28. Temari, though, she doesn't stop for too long, and Shikamaru's maybe a little too slow-moving for her, so she comes and goes, sticking with people who live a little faster.
29. Kankuro, he likes to live fast, run fast, fight fast, talk fast and build fast and fuck fast, and chase after his brother and sister fast, bringing up the rear guard, though he does let life catch them from behind every once in a while, and laughs when it does.
30. And Gaara can live with this, he can, he can deal with this strange and distant world with his wind-sister and puppet-brother and their aggressively broken sense of duty to each other, though he's sure they don't know remember his favorite season or fairy tale or even his birthday, but they'll bleed and fight and die for him, not just because he is Kazekage, but because he is their brother and, for them, he would do the same.