Chapter Text
"Sensei."
The kid looks surprisingly serious, and that’s an expression Baki has grown slightly unused to ever since Gaara started hanging around his siblings. There’s always an underlying tension to him, some… Heaviness of sorts. But even that falls away in the light of Kankurou and Temari’s presences. So, what happened now?
“Gaara.”
“I have a question for you.” something glints in his eyes, then.
If it were anyone else, Baki would call mischief, but it’s Gaara, so he contents himself to lifting one eyebrow.
“You do?”
The kid’s always coming up with those, these last weeks. Most of them are related to ninjutsu and chakra manipulation, sometimes nature release, and Baki still hasn’t figured out if he’s surprised or what about this turn of events. Someone like Gaara… Well, it would be easy for him to just fall back into his ultimate defence and just let his sand do whatever. Being the One Tail’s jinchuuriki, he wouldn’t even need to worry about his chakra reserves, has never had to, actually, or control.
Instead — instead he’s a restless, hardworking student, always trying to figure out a way to make himself and his techniques stronger; even his taijutsu, that he bores a high chance of never even needing. More than that, though: Gaara’s constantly trying to find a way of making his team stronger, and the difference is just significant enough that Baki can’t not take notice of it.
“Father’s magnet release. Do you think me or my siblings inherited it?”
To say that that’s not what he was expecting would be an understatement. It almost feels like a betrayal of sorts, but Baki’s immediate thought is that the Kazekage’s kekkei genkai is the one thing that allows him to subjugate the One Tail’s rampages; the fact that Gaara’s taken a sudden interest in it is alarming, but does it warrant any sort of reaction?
Baki’s pragmatic. Has always been, will always be. There’s the part of him that has steadily grown through the last year, the one that wants nothing but to see Gaara thrive and grow under his tutelage until he can choose and pave his own path regardless of others’ expectations of him — and then, there’s the part of him, the seasoned, always wary shinobi, that knows that the boy is a danger to himself and others no matter how much Baki, personally, wants to trust him.
For the briefest second, those two sides wage war against each other.
“I mean, do you think father would agree to helping Kankurou with it, if he‒?”
A considerate, pregnant pause. Baki’s silent bafflement at the turn of events urges the boy to go on.
“We were talking the other day, and it got me wondering.” him and his father, or him and his brother? The latter seems more likely, but Baki still wonders. “I mean, I don’t know much about puppeteering beyond the basics, but Kankurou has been explaining some things to me, and‒ his puppets are to him what my sand is to me, right?” not the comparison Baki would make, but okay. “Which means that if you neutralize those, he might even have something up his sleeve, but that won’t be his strong suit, or whatever; in my case, I guess that’d be the taijutsu? I digress. Kankurou hasn’t started working on his nature type releases yet, even though Temari has, and… You could work with him on that, couldn’t you?” Gaara frowns. “But that’s not the point I was trying to make. Back to the puppets — if Kankurou had a way to stop people from rendering them useless, than that’s one less thing to worry about, isn’t it? And father’s Golden Dust could render them useless, because chakra infused metal can sneak in between the puppets’ joints and make it impossible for Kankurou to use them in a fight.”
How he went from one thing to the other goes unsaid; it’s not unexpected, but still a bitter realization, to notice how easily Gaara can see his own Kazekage — but above that, his own father — as an enemy.
“If the magnet release is the trick up Kankurou’s sleeve, though, the fact that his puppets’ joints can’t be interfered with, then… And there’s other ways of using it, too. I suppose. How does it even work, anyway? Not that you’d tell me, even if you know, I understand, but‒ can father create magnetic fields to repel things? Feel things? What are the useful applications of that on, let’s say, shinobi standard weapons like kunai and shuriken? On a closer scale of defence or attack, maybe he‒” Gaara stops himself, eyes widening. “Do you think Temari inherited father’s kekkei genkai?”
His silence, this time around, is pensive — if a bit terrified.
“That’s…” Baki holds back a huff, more amused than he feels comfortable showing. “That’s a lot of questions, Gaara.”
The kid flushes, ducking his head.
“I wasn’t complaining. Let’s address each of them, one at time, okay?”
Gaara is playing a dangerous game, and he knows it. Keeping tabs of the things he’s changed while planning for what is to come is already hard, but pushing for things that never did, in fact, happen, is… It’s reckless at best, and downright idiotic at worst.
Still, it’s something that he has put thought to. Gaara might not know exactly how it went down, cause specific details of fights always get lost in the aftermath, but there was something that Haruno Sakura, of all people, talked to him about, something that’s been nagging at him ever since his talk with his brother…
He has never met Sasori of the Red Sand. Heard about him, yes, first through Kankurou’s ramblings about puppetry, and then‒
Then on the reports of his own death. When Deidara infiltrated Suna to capture him — more specifically, to capture the bijū inside of him —, there was someone else with him; another Akatsuki member, cause they always travel in duos. The genius modelling specialist of Kankurou’s stories, member of the Puppet Brigade, S-rank missing nin, and killer of the Third Kazekage. Sasori has many deeds attached to his name.
Gaara remembers him as the man who almost killed his brother. There’s only one way of going about this, right? If he can’t protect his siblings from everything, and — as much as it pains him to admit — he knows that he can’t, then they need to be able to protect themselves. The Akatsuki is more of a looming threat as of now, but they will start their bijū hunting at some point, and it will lead them to Suna, and if he’s stupid enough to let himself be taken away (and killed, but he’s trying not to think of that) again, his siblings will come to his rescue.
Whatever shortcut to power Gaara can give them, no matter the cost, no matter if it didn’t happen before, he’ll do.
He just hopes that it doesn’t backfire.
(It always does. Hindsight is not a skill he picked up with time.)
When Baki comes up with a new idea for his training, Kankurou can barely reign in his excitement. He could never resent them for it, but being on the same team as his arguably stronger and more prodigious siblings unfortunately means sometimes getting overlooked, and since his sensei is not a puppeteer, and the one he wanted to be a pupil for refused him without a second thought, the amount of help Kankurou can get is relatively small.
Nature type releases aren’t exactly the kind of thing he envisions himself enjoying too much, he chose puppeteering for a reason, but when sensei brings up father’s kekkei genkai and the number of useful applications that it could have on his chosen fighting style… Well.
The new regimen is quite simple. Baki will go with him through the basics of nature releases, just as he did with Temari when she first started using her fan, and when his always busy schedule allows him to, father will find some spare time to help — in case that’s not possible, he’ll supply Baki with a list of things Kankurou might be able to try out to train. Inheriting the magnet release is just a meagre possibility, it always is with those kekkei genkai things, but Kankurou spends a really long time with his mind running the most varied scenarios, all the things he might be able to learn and how to implement that onto his puppets.
There’s some part of him that wants to poke at Gaara until his brother admits to having something to do with the whole thing — his sheepish smile does not fool Kankurou for a second —, but he figures that his brother must have a pretty good reason to not wanting to be credited for the idea. Knowing him, and with the amount of almost-fights they had about the whole training thing, it’s probably something Kankurou doesn’t want to ask — so he doesn’t.
The first few days are the hardest. The whole nature releases thing is hard, and working on his control over it isn’t merely tiring, it’s damn exhausting; to have that on top of his usual training leaves him cranky and unusually hungry most of the time — and that’s not even counting the team’s missions. There’s also the fact that the amount of time father is willing to pour into the whole thing is a far cry from what Kankurou thought it would be.
He gets used to it. He does, honestly, but some days are worse than others, and exhaustion works against Kankurou, overriding completely his brain-to-mouth filter.
Kankurou doesn’t do things on purpose. It’s never on purpose, it’s just… Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, and he grabs onto his memories with both of his hands. He doesn’t bring it up on purpose, he brings it up because the possible consequences are lost to him.
In retrospect, it was going to happen sooner or later. Kankurou just wishes it had been later.
(He was four, or maybe five, and Yashamaru used to sit and talk to him about the most varied things while holding his baby brother in his arms. It was — it was nice. While it lasted. There were always tales to be told, legends of the numerous great ninja who fought for their village, of the puppet masters and the origin of the desert, the origin of Suna.
There were stories of their own family, too, but those were never spoken aloud, only in hushed tones and behind closed doors, and Kankurou wonders if he has the right to miss something that he’s never had in the first place.)
So, here’s the thing: they don’t talk about Yashamaru. They don’t talk about a great many things, they don’t talk about mom and they don’t talk about the monster sealed in his brother, and they don’t talk about the reason why Gaara is so afraid of their father or even of killing, but, above all of that, they don’t talk about Yashamaru.
“Sensei”, is what he starts with.
And it could’ve ended there, should’ve ended there, but Kankurou‒
He doesn’t think. And it’s not that he doesn’t think because he doesn’t care.
“Before he died, uncle Yashamaru told me once that‒”
He never finishes the sentence. The mistake is realized as soon as the words leave his mouth, and still, like every time, it’s already too late.
The half-smile on his brother’s face slips off. Tension replaces the previous comfortable air between them, thick and overwhelming. Temari is as caught off guard as Kankurou himself is, and he might be imagining things, but the horror on her face almost seems to reflect the one he feels bubbling inside himself.
Sensei blinks. The spell breaks. They move in unison, the three of them, and Kankurou’s heart is hammering inside his chest because Gaara‒
The emotion in his eyes isn’t one Kankurou’s ever seen before.
“Gaara‒”
“Don’t.”
Kankurou has seen him flinch before. He has seen him cower, and curl in on himself, and shrink as if trying to make himself smaller. Countless times, for things he doesn’t understand, things he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get to understand.
Kankurou has seen him flinch before, yes — but never from them. Never from Temari’s calloused, strong hands, or Kankurou’s tentative ones.
Never from sensei. He is always, always the first one to reach out, the first one to seek comfort and safety and let Baki calm him down from his panic.
To see him stepping back and closing himself off from them feels like a punch to the gut.
Gaara leaves. Kankurou is too much of a coward to go after him.
(There were once three siblings born to the scorching heat of the desert. The oldest wanted to be heard, the middle child wanted to be seen, and the younger one wanted to be loved. None of them ever got what they wanted. The older locked themselves away, the middle child learned to pretend, and the younger one gave up. None of Yashamaru’s tales were ever happy, and Kankurou wishes he could pinpoint why.)
The feeling of guilt only grows stronger. Gaara was supposed to have come back home with them, was supposed to help Kankurou cut vegetables and bicker about whose turn it was to do the dishes — he was supposed to be here, to be happy, to do that thing with the corner of his mouth that could’ve been a full-blown smile, if they paid enough attention.
They had a routine. They had plans, and they were comfortable, and after so long they finally had a semblance of something that could’ve been a family, and Kankurou‒
Blew it?
“It wasn’t your fault.” Temari says. But of course that that’s what she says, she never, she’s never the one to fuck things up, is she? It’s just him. “Kankurou, it‒”
“It was.” he knows it, she knows it, even sensei knows it. “I know it was, you don’t need to coddle me.”
Temari frowns.
“I was just trying to help.” there’s something to her voice that he doesn’t recognize; a feeling he’s so unused to see her showing, and Kankurou should probably keep quiet, but‒
He knows she was, he knows, but he’s tired. He’s tired of training and hurting Gaara and being ignored by father unless it’s something he thinks he can take advantage of — he’s tired of having Temari clean up his messes when he could have just avoided them if he had been careful enough.
He’ll fix this. He’ll fix this alone, because it isn’t fair, because he’s angry and he knows that the person he’s angry at is himself, but‒
“Then don’t.”
Temari doesn’t try comforting him anymore after that.
Gaara doesn’t show up for training the next day.