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"He's not in the village," Tsunade deadpanned, stamping a form with more force than necessary. Her desk shuddered. Shizune slipped the paperwork out from her reach, tucking it into a manila folder and holding it to her chest. She gave her Hokage an admonishing look. Tsunade rolled her eyes and scrabbled around in her top drawer for an envelope. She labeled it in the same imperious, elegant handwriting that graced the invitation that Temari clutched awkwardly with clammy fingers. The office building was cold, damnit.
Gaara seemed momentarily speechless, staring blankly out the window behind the busty woman growling about the indignity about being strong-armed into mundane paperwork in front of snot-nosed diplomats when she was supposed to be impressing them.
Temari rather thought that not referring to her as "snot-nosed" to her face would have done more for her opinion of the woman than whether or not she was doing paperwork.
That didn't mean she was going to say anything about being offended, however. She wasn't stupid. The village she headed may have been full of sissies, but the Slug Sannin herself was rather famously ill-tempered and punch-happy.
At her side, Gaara gave a slight frown. Temari felt a little sorry for him—he must have been eager to see his friend again if he'd actually made the effort to get onto the mission roster. He'd never had a friend before, so this disappointment would be a new one. She steeled herself for a moment before reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. He turned to blink at her, gaze flicking down to her hand, posture relaxing oh-so-slightly.
Tsunade looked up irritably, pushing herself to a standing position and striding to the door. "Well, come on then, girl. I haven't got all day."
Shizune flushed a pretty pink, carefully not looking at the foreign guests lingering in the office doorway. "Please, this way please, Temari-san." She bustled down the hall towards a small conference room, then glance back uncertainly. "Will, um, Gaara-san be joining us?"
Surprised, Temari had to disguise her laugh as a cough. "Not if we're still hoping to negotiate peace," she deadpanned. Gaara didn't react. There was some truth to that statement. He had made significant improvement on social interaction in the months since he had re-examined his life. But negotiations were more suited to someone with more practice and a more nuanced understanding of rules like 'Don't kill someone who has something you want,' 'People don't like being reminded of their imminent mortality,' and 'Please don't smile like that, it frightens everyone.' (He had compromised by not smiling at all, which was still a bit unnerving.)
"Well…" Shizune cleared her throat. "Then feel free to explore Konoha, Gaara-san."
"Just meet me at the apartment for dinner?" Temari offered, knowing that he'd do what he felt like. He seemed to shrug. Then he was gone in a wisp of sand.
The obviously civilian receptionist gave a small curse, clutching at her chest. Temari wondered at that- she had never seen anyone below Chuunin in a similar job back home. Konoha was strange.
One newly-promoted Sand Chuunin, even the daughter of a Kazekage, was hilariously outgunned in the company of a Hokage and her two apprentices. So of course, the room was also populated by two hulking ANBU operatives. Seriously, Konoha must have found goons that big with a specially placed ad. Temari felt her plastered smile falter and did her best not to look too skeptical of the ice gently rotating in the clear pitcher of water in the center of the table. Logically, she knew that if they wanted her dead, they wouldn't poison her. That didn't help much when she knew that she had been the only delegate sent so that Sand could cut their losses if the Leaf decided that the damage they had caused outweighed whatever benefits an alliance would give them. She was technically qualified for this mission, but if the elders had possessed much faith in it, they would have come themselves.
'Then again,' Temari remembered with a sideways smile that seemed to offend the pretty-boy sitting across the table, 'the elders really hate Leaf from the last war still. They may not want this alliance to work out.' If she could make that happen, it would be a resounding victory for whatever side she threw her support behind. She wasn't formidable enough to make a bid for her father's hat herself just yet, but she knew damn well that her words carried weight.
~~~
"It was nice to meet you." Aiko gave a short bow to Ken's mother, a voluptuous woman with a pixie cut and heavily scarred hands. The door shut on her face after they exchanged a few niceties- thank you for taking care of my boy, thank you for the tea, so on and so forth. As soon as the door was closed, she took the opportunity to discreetly adjust that damned vest she was wearing. It was uncomfortable and unflattering. She wasn't entirely sure she liked it, even if it did signal that she wasn't a child.
After they had gone out on their second run to the closest outpost, they had been mildly surprised to receive orders to run messages to the next two outposts. From what she understood, people were being pulled home and border security finally relaxed from emergency status. Understandably, people had been happy to see her team. Her team had been less happy about spending an extra six nights in the wild, although there was enough space for them to take up beds at the last outpost for a night. There had been a throw-down fight over first rights to the showers. Aiko had laughed herself sick when they finally figured out that the water was all cold—the luxurious of home were hard to get in a forest.
By the time they returned to the village, the genin were finally comfortable enough with her to get a bit sassy. Before, they had been nearly silent in her presence. They must have been closer in the Academy than most of her classmates had been, because they had tons of inside jokes that they seemed to find absolutely hilarious. She'd been a bit bemused when they gradually became comfortable enough to have conversations around her, but generally just stayed silent and learned about them.
It turned out that Ken was a third-generation nin whose grandparents had come from Sand. They'd immediately changed their last name to something more suitable for Fire Country, but the boy bemoaned that his grandmother refused to adjust her way of speaking and actually artificially emphasized her accent to show that she wasn't ashamed of her girlhood home. It came up because Ken ended up translating whatever she said to his friends when they came over. Occasionally, he slipped and used terminology or slang that he'd picked up from her, and the girls liked to tease him about it.
Akira had reminded Aiko of Ino, but it soon became clear that the resemblance was only a superficial one—they were both snappy dressers and moved with confidence. Akira was actually very mature, and thought that her peers should be as well. Naruto might have liked her—she loved animals as much as he did. For her, that manifested in learning about them instead of catching and snuggling them as it did in Naruto (bless his heart). She could list the technical names and dietary habits of just about every creature native to Fire Country and kept a scrapbook of photos. To serve that end, she kept a camera with her at all times, lovingly wrapped up in a waterproof leather pouch. Her family must have a lot of means—such a thing was not cheap.
The student that Aiko had most misjudged was the last one. Emiko had seemed sweet and shy and dressed as bashfully as Hinata. Apparently, her daddy was a single father and wanted a little princess. The girlish wardrobe was his doing, not hers. Additionally, it soon became clear that her mind was sharp and her tongue even sharper. Her peers hadn't caught on yet, but every third bashful statement was in fact a veiled insult at their expense. She tried not to laugh too hard and instead made comments about Emiko's excellent vocabulary.
The last of her genin returned safely to their homes and mission report firmly in hand, Aiko was slightly travel worn and thirsty. She was also surprised to spot the boy who would be Kazekage looking a bit lost in front of Hokage tower, watching passers-by with an intensity that made several of them hustle. Shamefully, some of them were even ninja.
It was pretty funny, she admitted to herself. He wasn't even letting off killing intent. Maybe it was the month-old blood stains on his clothing that put them off. Or the dead-eyed stare. Or the fact that he had a Sand headband and appeared to be roaming unsupervised (she knew better. Tsunade would have ANBU tailing him).
For the first time, she realized that she knew very little about what happened to Gaara in the time between the Chuunin exams and his abduction by Akatsuki. Was he already the man who measured his words and hoped for peace? Did he still slip into madness? Or was he somewhere in between, in an amorphous state of becoming a man when he had been a monster instead of a boy?
'Only one way to find out,' she decided impulsively. It was a selfish decision to satisfy her curiosity, but a small one.
It was also possibly stupid. She held no grudge against him at all for attempting to kill her, especially since she didn't think it had been his fault. He wasn't responsible for Shukaku, or for her misusing what she knew about Naruto's nature. She had made the conscious decision to leap into the fray so that Naruto would find the strength to draw on the Nine-Tails and stop him, after all.
But she could hardly tell anyone else that she wasn't mad at him at all because she had just been using him to injure her, not least so because the Nine-Tails was kind of a taboo topic. Anyone with sense would probably be alarmed to see her spending time with him amiably.
Ah, to hell with it. She didn't care what anyone else thought.
Aiko idly crumpled her report and shoved it into a pocket, not minding the ugly way it bulged. She could take care of it later or something. 'The real question is how to approach him.' She was careful not to look at him too long and draw attention prematurely. Should she observe him from a distance? That could be dangerous- no ninja liked sneaky followers. Then again, he probably wasn't socially competent enough to have a regular conversation.
Then she rolled her eyes. 'What am I saying? If Naruto got through to him, being blunt and straight forward is my best shot.'
Aiko used shunshin to position herself at his side, already ready with a beaming smile and a raised hand when he turned slightly to look at her. "What's up, cutie-san? I haven't seen you in a while. How have you been?"
He really was adorable when he gave her that mildly concussed stare, she noted. It was almost hard to believe that no one had ever flirted with him before. He kinda looked like a punk rocker, with the spiky hair and dark circles around his eyes. Granted, the fact that they weren't paint was a little off-putting when she really thought about it…
"You…" His eyes narrowed. "I remember you from the fight after the tournament. You are one of Naruto-san's teammates."
She huffed a surprised little laugh. "Uh, no," Aiko admitted, watching him carefully out of the edge of her vision while she channeled Naruto's sheepish head-scratch. "He's my otouto. I'm not really on his team, though." Apparently he didn't remember her from the tower… or that Naruto's team had lost their third member. Temari had known that and hinted at it to Ino—she'd raged about it later when she put it together—so Gaara must just not have paid any attention at all.
Somehow that didn't surprise her. When she'd last seen him, he didn't seem like a guy who spent a lot of time being interested in others' lives. It just wouldn't be compatible with a mindset that viewed killing everyone else as a good idea.
"So… you are one of his precious people?" Gaara examined her with unnerving intensity. If she hadn't intentionally manipulated what she knew of him to make him more amenable to her presence, Aiko might have been uncomfortable.
Instead, she pretended not to sense the awkward atmosphere at all. "Of course, and he's one of mine. Are you looking for something or someone?"
"No."
'Okay…' Aiko chewed on her bottom lip. It was awkward being the socially adept one in a conversation for once. He wasn't giving her much to go on, that was for sure. 'Well, fuck it. When in doubt, feed the boy.' It worked on such variant subjects as Naruto and Sasuke. Why the hell not on Gaara?
"Well then, let's go get smoothies. I just got back in town and I am parched." She telegraphed the motions obviously when she reached out to snag his hand and drag him along with her. The move was a risky but calculated one. Gaara might react violently to being touched, or he could view it as evidence that she wasn't treating him differently because of his demonic burden. Or he could just be confused by the presumption.
Luckily for her, the only sand she felt was the grainy barrier around his fingers like armor. The unnatural temperature made her grimace—touching what appeared to be a hand without body heat made her think of corpses.
"Your hands are cold," she complained good-naturedly, channeling her second favorite blonde now. Ino was a goddamn champion of herding around reluctant boys.
When he stiffened, she tightened her grip in apology. 'Right. The boy is sensitive', she noted. Then she mentally amended, dropping his hand to open the door to a café, 'More likely he isn't socially adept enough to know what to say. He's probably uncomfortable.' That wasn't the only possible hypothesis, but it was the one that best explained why he was susceptible to Naruto's particular brand of philosophy. Doubtless Naruto had never even noticed the bodily and verbal cues that indicated Gaara's mood and had barreled right over them. Gaara might like feeling normal—a feeling that could only be inspired by meeting another jinchuuriki who socialized much more healthily and gave him the realization that he could have friends and family like anyone else. She could take advantage of that desire by treating him as if he was anyone else, she concluded.
Lucky that had been her plan in the first place.
Granted, in treating him as if he were anyone else, she actually had to make exceptions. If she had met a random stranger who stared the way he did, was clearly uncomfortable, and spoke in near monosyllables if at all, she would have decided that the conversation wasn't worth the effort and disengaged. It was a bit like calmly holding a conversation with Gai—you pretended that the shouting was completely normal and parsed through the flowery language to get at the meaning and responded to only that. With Gaara, you pretended his reticence wasn't a faux-pas and drew meaning from what little he said and the volumes he didn't say.
It was an art form, she decided while pointedly not coaxing him to eat the peach and mango smoothie she set in front of him. She wouldn't acknowledge that he didn't know what to do with it or that he seemed to think it might be poisoned. When she picked up her spoon and began to eat in between absently maintaining a conversation about her ducklings, she noticed with some triumph that he focused a laser-like gaze on her hand for a few minutes before he picked up his own spoon and flawlessly imitated her.
She would have been confused if not for the fact that she had never seen a single spoon in Suna, only chopsticks. It just wasn't a cultural norm. Soup was eaten from a tilted bowl, and cold treats like ice cream just weren't likely to happen there.
After a while, when it became clear that he at least wasn't ignoring her talk about her team—both her duckling and team seven—she tried to get him to contribute to the conversation. Of course, that was tricky. He didn't have friends to tell stories about, and doubtlessly he was getting to know his siblings for the first time in his life. So she didn't dig too deeply.
"Is your team here too?"
That appeared to be a question he couldn't answer with either a nod or a blank stare, so she counted it as a success.
Granted, "Kankuro did not come," wasn't going to be winning any prizes for eloquence, but it was enough that she considered it contribution to dialogue.
"Did you want to see any of the sights while you're in town?" she asked lightly. "There's a big merchant caravan that moved in about a week ago. They're only going to be here for another week. It's actually pretty cool. And one of the Academy classes is putting on a traditional dance performance as part of their infiltration final."
That had made her laugh until she was sick again. If her teacher had tried to do that, she would have caused him serious bodily harm. The dance and other similar classes were often taught by civilian experts so that they could be sure what they were teaching was both current and accurate. It wouldn't do to pass down ninja interpretations of civilian dance and ignore that things changed. They were often likely to consider public performance a necessary part of proving students had mastered the material- a faux geisha who was crowd shy would fool no one. Regardless of how intelligent the idea actually was, the students would probably hate it. She was pretty sure that the grumpy faces would be the best part of the performance.
Gaara looked at her as if she'd suggested they go streaking after they finished their treats.
"Or the water is really nice at the mixed onsen," she changed tracks, lips twitching with amusement. "I like to get a good book and soak for hours. I bet you don't spend much time relaxing in water in Suna."
"I do not," he reluctantly agreed. And that was all he said. The door to the café banged open, bells chiming irritably and roughly a half second later Aiko was blinking up at Inuzuka Kiba. It would have been a more pleasant surprise if he (and Akamaru perched on his head) hadn't been growling at Gaara, lips curled aggressively.
Aiko groaned, covering her face with her hands. And things had been going so well, too. Kiba was going to put Gaara back on edge after she'd finally coaxed him into relaxing slightly.
"What are you doing here?" Kiba placed both hands on the table and leaned forward into Gaara's personal space.
The redhead didn't take it well, trickles of sand beginning to agitate. His face remained blank, but he crossed his arms. It was somehow intimidating, even though he had to put down his ice cream first to make the motion.
"Whoa, boys," Aiko interrupted, placing a palm up. "Calm down. Kiba, it's nice to see you. It'd be nicer if you sat down instead of glared at us from up there." She scooted over and patted the bench next to her. Kiba's attention drifted to her, and a strange look crossed his face for a moment. Then it passed.
"I don't want to sit with him!" Kiba practically yelled, pointing at Gaara.
The other boy stood. Aiko noted absently that his full height was at least four inches below Kiba's. Of course, they were finally at the age where boys hit their growth spurts, so maybe Gaara just hadn't had his yet. Chakra swelled, and then Gaara was gone. Aiko blinked at the space where he'd been for a moment, not quite registering what had happened. Then she felt that damn twitch in her right eye and forcibly relaxed her face. Aiko wasn't entirely sure when she had developed a nervous twitch, but she was trying to catch it when it happened.
'It's fine.' She took a deep breath, pushing her ice cream away. 'Kiba didn't know any better. If I saw a peer sitting closely to someone who had tried to kill them the last time they'd met, I might demonstrate alarm as well.' Really, his concern for a peer who was a near-stranger should be used as evidence for the claim that Kiba was a good guy.
So instead of expressing her irritation with him—he'd ruined her information gathering session—she merely said, "Hello again, Kiba."
And then the weirdo blushed.
~~~
It turned out that Konoha wanted powerful allies slightly more than they wanted revenge. Temari had to swallow her pride, because at the moment Suna couldn't be a powerful ally to anyone, and agree to accept several personnel on a short-term basis to fill out their ranks and help them take all their mission requests. Nothing urgent or information sensitive, of course, but several administrators to help the hospital run more smoothly and free up medic nin for missions would be provided as well as a few lower class missions that would be sub-contracted out to Konoha.
That was a bitter remedy to have to accept—they desperately needed the money those missions could provide, but they couldn't fulfill them on their own. Konoha would be pocketing the money from those missions, of course, but this way they wouldn't end up failing to meet the terms of their arrangement with the Wind Daimyo by failing to accept all the missions from his people.
Because the Hokage was a medic, part of her terms had been sample specimen of a few plants and poisonous desert animals that Temari was vaguely aware Kankuro used in his poison compounds.
The elders would be infuriated—the move would cement their alliance by making it much more difficult for Sand to ever turn on Konoha. Their monopoly on many rare and deadly ingredients had been one of the things keeping them from being crushed under the heel of bigger villages. Without samples, it was almost impossible for remedies to be made for Suna poison.
But Temari had seen no other option. If she had rejected the offer, Konoha could have come in and crushed them and taken the damn plants anyways. It would be a pyrrhic victory—Sand was too inhospitable and entrenched for them to lose without taking out massive casualties, the only reason Konoha hadn't marched on them the day after that failed invasion. There was almost no chance that Konoha would lose, but they would be severely weakened afterwards and easy prey for other villages.
That knowledge was the only reason Temari knew she could negotiate from a position of strength as well, although her counterparts had clearly been hoping she was unaware of that nuance. It was possible for her to push Konoha into being obligated to start a war with Suna, but that was an unpleasant prospect for both sides. So she used that little leverage on issues that she found were important—like having Konoha maintain higher levels of border security so that Sand didn't have to. It was both a show of trust and so that Sand could free up experienced nin.
When she'd made that suggestion, the lady Tsunade's lips had twitched in amusement for the first time, and Temari thought she recognized a fellow predator. The Hokage had been raised to be politically astute due to her relation to a Kage as well. Very few ninja were—it was something that their civilian counterparts had mastered, but when villages were often led by those with the most physical power, well… often they were more likely to use their muscles than their brains.
Whatever the reason, Tsunade had accepted the proposal and several others. Temari knew damn well that the elders would be apoplectic with rage, but she wasn't going to support any one of them for Kazekage. They would find that out soon enough.
She had a different candidate in mind. Gaara had latched onto Uzumaki Naruto's goals with a one-minded focus, and was already a completely different person than he had been half a year ago. Having a direction was doing him good. Besides, he was really the only person in their village with the power to really lay claim to the title.
He wasn't ready yet, of course. But once she could be sure that he really had changed- she did owe that much to the citizens of Suna- and that his image was changing as well, she would speak to him about it.
Temari pushed the door open and flopped down on the couch of the luxurious, air conditioned suite she had been assigned as a diplomat, idly calling out for her brother. She didn't really expect him to be there or to walk into the room.
It was even less expected that he would be the first to speak. Granted, it was Gaara, so it wasn't an impressive start.
"You look well."
Temari blinked up at the ceiling, then tilted her head to make sure everything was in place. "Um, thank you," she said a bit dumbly. Then she cleared her throat. "The meeting went well," she informed, knowing that if she wanted to make him Kazekage he had to have some interest in goings-on like this. "Looks like we're allies for sure now. Did you do anything interesting?"
The last question was more for form's sake than anything else. It was Gaara- he never did anything interesting. He probably stared at the sun for a few hours, or people-watched, or just thought about the complexities of life. In fact, he probably-
"I had ice cream with a girl."
Temari sat up so fast she gave herself whiplash. That required some contextualization.
"Whuh… what happened?" she said weakly. Gaara with a girl? It almost had to be a misunderstanding. That didn't make sense.
"A boy showed up and was clearly agitated with my presence, so I left" Gaara monotoned. Temari was so baffled that she wanted to cry. That… that certainly sounded like he'd somehow gotten involved in a love triangle, or at least stepped on someone's toes by flirting with their girl. But that was the least Gaara-like thing she'd ever heard of. How on earth did he end up spending time socially with a girl? She'd never even been on a date—did that mean her youngest brother had been the first in their family to get a date? 'At least choosing to leave is a definite improvement over how he would have dealt with that a while ago,' some part of her brain noted. That was downright mature, actually.
Suddenly, the triumphs she'd made in the last day were less important than the fact that there was somebody out there Gaara had an interest in. Temari swallowed, hard. What monstrous kind of girl would Gaara find interesting?
~~~
"What," Jiraiya said flatly, unintentionally releasing a bit of killing intent. The dark haired man he'd been talking to stiffened reflexively, fingers twitching as if he wanted to reach for a weapon. He was intelligent enough not to, however.
It had apparently been a bad intelligence report to bring Naruto on, some distant part of his mind noted. Part of the stipulation for training Naruto had been giving him the chance to learn the trade and gain some of his own contacts. Jiraiya couldn't do it alone forever, after all. He'd thought that Naruto was ready to at least start sitting in on these meetings.
'Luckily, he's too clueless to realize who we're talking about,' the sannin noted with black humor.
The man who had claimed to be Akira (almost certainly a code name, even Naruto knew) carefully restated his last sentence. The one where he'd mentioned Rock had quietly put out a sizable bounty on a Konoha kunoichi using chakra chains, despite the fact that the countries weren't at war and she hadn't apparently done anything particularly offensive yet. It wasn't exactly politically appropriate, but the Rock had hated Aiko's parents enough that little things like that didn't stop them from wanting her dead before she hit her prime.
Aiko hadn't been named, of course. Akira probably hadn't thought the name important enough to mention when he had a copy of the bounty to hand over with all the pertinent information. Jiraiya snatched it up impatiently and examined the information, not sure if he was pleased or depressed to see that Uzumaki Aiko had been tentatively assessed as a B-rank shinobi with at least one A-rank skill. He'd never seen her in action, but she had two years more of field experience than his Uzumaki. It shouldn't be too surprising that she was stronger than her brother. If this was true, she was strong but not nearly strong enough to protect herself from the type of monsters who would be willing to take on a bounty like that.
He took a moment to hope like hell that Kakashi was keeping an eye on the kid. Hatake and Tsunade were the only two people other than himself that he'd trust to keep her out of that kind of trouble, and Tsunade was a bit busy adjusting to her new hat.
'Maybe this is what Itachi knew about?' Jiraiya hypothesized. But that didn't quite make sense either. Why would Itachi view Uzumaki chakra as a threat or worthy of notice? And it seemed impossible that Itachi could have known about Aiko's apparent ability before Jiraiya did (although he wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest if he'd beat Rock to the clue party, even with the stigma of being a genocidal missing nin. Rock couldn't find their asses with both hands, generally speaking).
Surely he would have been told if the girl had managed to master chakra chains before he had taken Naruto. Wouldn't Naruto know?
He cast a glance to his student and suppressed a groan. For once, the brat was paying attention, knuckles clenched tightly and lips pressed into a hard expression. 'So maybe he does know what chakra chains are,' Jiraiya concluded heavily. Naruto might not know it, but any veteran of the last war would know to associate chakra chains with both the Uzumaki clan in general and Kushina in particular.