"Temari, explain it to me so I can understand."

"Explain it to you?" Temari repeated slowly. "I said enough already! Why won't you get it?"

"How am I supposed to know what I did wrong if you won't tell me?"

"It's because you don't know what you did that it's making me frustrated!"

"Then what should I do about it?"

"Figure it out! And once you do, do us all a favor and cut it out!"

Gaara, cut it out! Please. Don't say something so cold. As a favor to your sister. Okay?

Temari stood there panting. Gaara had his lips pressed together and his eyes were slightly affronted and confused.

"Gaara-sama?" Suzume's voice announced her before she rounded the corner. "Is everything okay? I heard yelling."

Temari glanced at her sister and looked back at Gaara in time to see him cover up the look of shame and wretchedness he'd have whenever he'd see her wrapped up in bandages. She sneered darkly at him and like a robotic recording said, "This really bums me out. It really bums me out."

Five Weeks Later

"Shiro, do you know how to solve this question?"

"You know," Shiro looked at her through slitted eyelids, unamused, "usually people greet each other with a 'good morning' before immediately asking them how to do homework. It's sort of good manners."

Suzume lifted her gaze to meet hers and Shiro was exasperated by her unchanging passive expression. "Good morning. Do you know how to solve this question?"

Shiro sighed and sat next to her friend on the bench and leaned over to see what she was talking about. Her eyes widened. What the chakra points? She didn't understand half of what the question was asking.

"You should ask a teacher," she said, standing up again. The sound of the bell signaling the start of lessons added finality into her suggestion. "I'll see you later, Suzume."

Suzume watched her walk away before closing her textbook and shouldering her backpack and heading for her classroom.

Dear Hisoka, I never thought I'd encounter a more uncomfortable atmosphere like Kankuro and Gaara-sama's spat.

But that was only because I forgot about Temari.

Gaara's been out for several days on a mission but the stretch of acres between him and Temari didn't stop the tension from saturating the Kazekage's household like smog. Temari acted normally enough around and with Kankuro and Suzume but it only made them more on edge. It was how one would feel if they were strapped to a bomb they knew would explode with no idea when it would set off and no way to stop it.

"How obstinate can they be, jan?" Kankuro expressed out of his frustration one day. "Can't they swallow their pride and make up already?"

"You're one to talk, Kankuro," Suzume responded mercilessly.

"Hurry back, Gaara!" Kankuro sent up to the heavens.

It looked like their prayers were heard since Gaara came back to the mansion shortly after.

Suzume was sneaking back into the house through a window when Gaara's voice startled her.

"I never thought you'd be one to miss curfew, Suzume."

The brunette picked herself up from where she'd fallen out of the window frame out of fright. "You were home already."

Gaara caught sight of something and took a step forward.

"How did you get that?" he asked dangerously as Suzume gave up trying to cover up her black eye. "Tell me."

"It's really nothing, Gaara-sama," she insisted.

Gaara sighed then looked her dead in the eye. "I may be your brother but I'm also a teacher at the Institute. I have a job to report any violent actions between or toward the students. Is that enough of an excuse for you to tell me who hurt you?"

Suzume played with her tongue nervously. She surrendered to Gaara's determined gaze. "Nobody hurt me. I—um— hurt myself."

Gaara blinked and his silent desire for an explanation made her shift uncomfortably on her feet and mumble. "I ran into a door..."

She glanced at her brother whose eyes were wider than she'd ever seen them. "It was dark and I had my arms out, trying to keep from bumping into anything. But the door was opened inward and it slipped between the gap of my arms and I walked face first into it."

It was quiet at first. Gaara's lips pulled into a smile and his shoulders shook. He closed his eyes as he laughed a silent laugh, then his chuckles graced the air with its presence followed by full, breathless laughter. Tears slipped out of the corner of his eyes and Suzume pouted. "You don't have to laugh so hard..."

Gaara stifled his chuckles and gestured for Suzume to follow him. "Should we make up a story for Temari and Kankuro? Something that consists of a heroic feat like a scuffle with drug dealers or catching a pickpocket."

"Don't tease me, Gaara-sama," Suzume pouted as they headed to the bathroom.

Gaara pulled out the first aid kit in the cupboard and went about treating Suzume's swollen eye.

The amusement was gone as suddenly as it came. "What were you doing out?"

Suzume's eyes immediately latched onto the side, her body stiffened, and she began to fidget. "I was...tending to the greenhouse."

"Tending to the greenhouse," Gaara repeated, dabbing some ointment onto her injury. "This late at night?"

Suzume nodded, still averting eye contact.

"Suzume, you need to work on your lying."

"How was the mission?" she asked quickly.

"Done and over with." Gaara finished with his first aid and the pair exited the restroom. "Was it training again?"

Suzume ran for it and she tossed a hurried 'Good night, Gaara-sama!' over her shoulder before the door closed on her.

Gaara decided he could continue the inquiry tomorrow and started up for the roof. As he was staring up at the stars, it hit him that the conversation he had just now was the longest he's had with his little sister in a while.

_ _ _

What's with this situation?

Kankuro and Suzume peeked over at each other with identical sweatdrops declining down their heads.

They were out on a family outing.

Kankuro couldn't believe it either.

Them, the most unsociable family that's ever existed, on something as cute as an outing; and while the two most assertive and hardheaded members of the family were fighting, not to mention.

"Uh," Kankuro said as Temari loaded the plastic bag in his hands with peaches. "Suzume and I could've gone shopping alone. It wasn't necessary for you two to come, jan."

Translation: You two are making this awkward and it's causing us bystanders physical pain. So, please, get the hint and leave.

"It'll get the shopping done faster," Temari said absentmindedly, straying over to the vegetables.

"Oh, I see...Hahahaha..."

Suzume pulled down on Kankuro's sleeve to whisper into his ear. "Why is Gaara-sama participating? He never goes shopping! This is out of character!"

"He's answering Temari's challenge," Kankuro whispered back. Gaara's eyes were seriously examining a bag of chicken nuggets. "Oh dear," he muttered when his brother accidentally knocked over a display. "Let's pretend we don't know him."

Suzume wasn't there.

"Suzume?!" Kankuro snapped around, searching for her desperately with comical tears trailing down his face. "Don't abandon me!"

The other shoppers were skittering around the pair of warring siblings, giving them a wide berth and trying to finish their business as soon as possible to avoid the stifling atmosphere between them.

It wasn't any better when they got home. Because, for some odd reason, Gaara became determined to help Suzume around the kitchen.

Crack!

"That wasn't a heat resistant cup, Gaara-sama!"

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

"How did you burn something without using fire?!"

Your rice is cooked, you incompetent motherfucker.

"Ah! Gaara-sama! Don't Sand Coffin the rice machine!"

Suzume kicked him out of the kitchen.

"Suzume—!" Gaara tried to placate his sister. "It was the machine that said—"

"If you can get riled up because of a machine, I don't think I can help but agree with what it called you!"

The door slammed in his face.

"Why did you even try?"

Gaara shifted to the side to see Kankuro and Temari walking up to him. Kankuro smirked. "She's really upset with you two already, messing things up in her territory will only make it worse, jan. How about you two make up already?"

"Declined," the pair deadpanned.

Kankuro ran a hand through his hair. "You know what, do whatever the heck you guys want." He knocked on the door of the kitchen before opening it. "Suzume, we'll be out doing some errands. Do you want us to get anything while we're out?"

"Ah," Suzume wiped some flour off her face as she turned to him. "Yes, please. Hold on, I'll write it down."

She pulled out a notepad from a drawer and just when she was about to put pen on paper, Kankuro snatched them out of her hands.

"You have shit handwriting, Suzu," he told her. "Tell me what to write down."

"I do not have shit handwriting," she disputed, frowning. "I can read it just fine. It's you guys who can't read."

"Hai, hai," Kankuro grinned, "whatever you say. What do you want us to get, my lady?"

Suzume sighed and surrendered. After Kankuro was done with the list, he tossed the notepad and pen back to his little sister and went to join the others in the doorway.

"Make sure to get home by seven," Suzume told him. "It'll give you time to wash up."

"'Kay." Kankuro waved goodbye. "See you later."

"Didn't we go shopping earlier?" Temari asked her brother once they were outside. "She could've gotten everything then."

"Hm?" Kankuro faced her with a convincing expression of confusion. "We went shopping? Oh, you mean that hour me and Suzume wasted babysitting."

Gaara and Temari glanced at each other for a fraction of a second, sharing a moment of shame.

"But let's not linger on such things, jan." He grinned in a show of unsuccessfully concealed annoyance. "We have research to do."

The trio arrived at the village archives, passed by the towering shelves filled with scrolls and thick, dusty texts, the cabinets stuffed airless by files, and scribes who were rewriting faded words at the tables in between the bookshelves. They gave the password to the man guarding the door and were let into the shinobi-only part of the archives.

This area was less crowded and pin drop quiet. The dust hung heavily and gathered into inches and all research done here was done with the utmost discrepancy. One misguided scan through the wrong texts and a shinobi could be branded as a defector.

Without a word, the siblings split up to scour through the books.

Kankuro didn't expect to find much. Today was just about checking if any stray bits of important information were available to them, since, if Suzume was a state secret, they would've long since removed anything she was involved in.

He wandered into the history aisles and pulled out a general book about the Sage of Six Paths and the Rabbit Goddess Kaguya, everything he already knew, when he saw the awkward skip between pages. A chunk of the book's pages were missing and Kankuro ran a hand down the middle where the rip was made. His eyes squinted before he flipped back to the front page and read through the entire thing but nothing. Nothing new, at least.

"Nothing new..." he repeated the thought under his breath and placed the book back to its original place.

The creaking of floorboards, a showering of dust, and a couple of coughs from above urged Kankuro to exit the row. He glanced back at the faded sign and made out the words: The History of the Shinobi World.

As they anticipated, they garnered nothing from their mundane trip to the archives. Kankuro gave his two siblings a shrug at their questioning looks after he met them outside in the civilian's part of the building.

They had the likeminded, unspoken idea to leave and were doing so when something caught Kankuro's eye.

He paused in his step to stare at the forgotten book on the table, and, on a whim, walked over and picked it up to read.

Hibernation: a state during cold or winter in which animals remain dormant or torpid; a season of heterothermy that is characterized by low body temperature, slow breathing and heart rate, and low metabolic rate.

"What is it, Kankuro?" Temari went up to his side, followed by Gaara.

He handed the book to Temari and Gaara peered at it from beside her. "Doesn't that sound familiar?"

Their eyes expanded simultaneously and Temari lowered the book slowly. "You can't mean..."

"But she has them once every month not during winter," she said analytically, "and I've never heard of animals staying awake for the number of days they've slept."

"But it's too similar to ignore." Gaara's eyes cast around for any open ears. "Perhaps we've just been refusing something that's been plainly in front of us. Let's get Suzume's groceries and go home to talk about this further."

Kankuro intentionally abandoned them to awkward companionship after giving them their share of groceries to hunt down.

Temari treated Gaara as an inanimate object that kept following her around and wheeled around the shopping cart for a few minutes before deciding she couldn't keep doing it if she wanted to enter the house tonight.

Gaara seemed to be following the same train of thought.

"Temari— Gaara—"they both paused and stared at each other, aggressively coaxing the other to keep talking.

"I was wrong," Temari said, ending the silent opposition. "I shouldn't have lashed out at you like that."

"You had a good reason," Gaara replied.

Temari leaned closer to him keenly. "Does that mean you figured it out?"

His eyes lowered. "No."

"So you how do you know I had a good reason?!" Temari asked exasperatedly.

"Because you're not the type of person to overreact to a little thing, so I think you probably had a good reason."

"You have too much faith in me," Temari chuckled.

"If you said it hurts you, I have no right to deny that it did."

"Dang, it's annoying when you say things like that. It makes me want to forgive you."

"And the situation was what it was." Gaara clenched and unclenched his grip on the bar of the cart. "I'm sorry for whatever I did."

Temari's mouth fell into a frown and she looked on sadly at her little brother. She reached out and squished his cheeks into his face. "No."

"No?" Gaara's eyes widened.

"I don't accept your apology." Temari let go of his face and went to look for eggs. "Try again when you figure out what you did wrong."

Gaara let himself take a little moment to sort out his thoughts before going after his sister.

The pair were exiting the store to see Kankuro leaving the one from across the street. Kankuro waved at them and as they were crossing the street a pattering of footsteps came and went and Temari was with one less grocery bag.

The whole street was paralyzed in shock while Temari and her brothers realized what happened.

"Did that just happen?"

"That man has a death wish," one of the people on the street said, sounding awed.

"You don't just steal from Temari-dono."

A bloodthirsty grin flashed onto Temari's face and the street plunged into winter. "The asshole won't get away with that."

Shoving the remaining groceries into Gaara's hands, Temari zoomed away after the thief.

Kankuro ran up to Gaara and punched him on the arm, "Let's look alive, little bro. We're going after them too."

Once the two caught up with their sister, the man who dared was down on all fours fervently apologizing with a plethora of bruises forming on his face.

"Oh," Temari turned to see her brothers had joined her. "You guys are slow."

"I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were those wonderful, merciful, powerful shinobi everybody says not to bother! Please forgive me! I won't do it again!"

"You must be new to town," Kankuro closed one eye and smirked. 

When they got home, Kankuro scooped the bags into his arms, put them in the mudroom, turned to the other two and proclaimed: "Finish things up or else you're not allowed to see Suzume!"

Then the door closed shut.

"That threat is kind of daunting once you're on the receiving end," Temari smiled and lifted an eyebrow at Gaara. "We good?"

Gaara nodded. "Aa."

Temari's grin stretched from ear to ear and Gaara pulled on a small smile.

"To be fair," Temari said as she entered the house, "at least our argument didn't end with making one of us an invalid."

"I CAN HEAR YOU," Kankuro's voice said from inside.