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The day that Kankuro was officially declared Missing in Action, Gaara decimated two of Suna’s older outbuildings. It was something he did almost instinctively, without fully thinking about it. Temari said the words from behind his shoulder, and seconds later he was standing in rubble, a fistful of sand in his hand. Fortunately the buildings were empty, long fallen into disuse and mostly full of old papers and dust; he retained that much awareness. Still, the loss of control shook him. His chest tightened in a way that he hadn’t felt in years, like the strain after first exercising an injured muscle. When he first started to feel pain, all those years ago, nobody had told him that emotions could hurt worse than a broken limb.“When is the soonest we can leave?” he asked Temari. “Tonight. There are a few more arrangements to be made, and we need to assemble a squad.”“You and I should be enough,” Gaara said.Temari grunted her agreement.Minutes later, Gaara found himself at his home, hastily packing provisions into a rucksack. Lee lingered behind him in their bedroom. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asked.“I need you to stay here and watch the children,” Gaara said. In the backyard, he could hear cheerful screams and the clash of kunai as Metal and Shikadai sparred. He was faintly aware of the flicker of Shinki’s chakra downstairs at their kitchen table, where he was carefully revising mission reports.“Isn’t Shikamaru staying back, too?”“He’ll be temporarily assuming my duties in the absence of myself and Temari. He won’t have time to keep an eye on them,” Gaara explained as he fastened a bedroll to the top of his pack.“The council won’t like that.”“He’s technically the closest adult successor to the position, and he has the best disposition for the role,” Gaara said pragmatically. “Shikamaru pledged his allegiance to Suna years ago. The council can accept that, or they can rot.”“The boys are all genin now - they could come with us.”Gaara stared at Lee for a long moment, tightening the straps of his pack.“No,” Gaara said. “They’ll stay here.”Lee opened his mouth to object, but Gaara silenced him with a step forward. Gaara cupped Lee’s neck with his hand, pressing Lee’s forehead to his own.“Please,” he whispered. “I don’t know what we’ll come up against out there. I need you to stay here, in the village, where I know you’re safe. I can’t lose you, too.” Lee’s eyes blinked at him wetly.“But Temari-”“He’s her brother,” Gaara said, insistently.“He’s all of our brother!” Lee said. “Just because we’re not related by blood-”“It’s different,” Gaara replied. “We’ve been together our whole lives. I couldn’t stop her from going if I wanted to. Please, do this for me.”Lee’s fists clenched at his side. Gaara drew him into a fierce embrace.“I understand,” he muttered into Gaara’s hair. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”They started with a 20 mile radius of Kankuro’s last known position. Gaara extended his senses, expanded his chakra into every grain of sand that he could reach, a wavering sensor circle around them as they moved through the desert. Temari sent her weasel summons to scout underground, scouring through burrows below the sand layer for any signs of life. They moved as a unit, perfunctorily clearing each area before moving on. The mission stretched on into a week, then two. They became more strategic - harvesting the desert plants for food and shelter, cutting into a cactus when they ran low on water. They strayed down into valleys, hoping Kankuro had sought low ground. Still, there was nothing. They were nearing the edge of Wind Country. The plains there slowly faded from sand to soil. Gaara knew that in just a few short miles, there wouldn’t be enough sand left in the earth for his jutsu to be of any use. And he was growing tired. Two weeks in the desert with little to eat, working tirelessly, with hardly any sleep had worn both of them down substantially. Temari’s steps now faltered when they climbed an embankment, her shoulders slumped with fatigue. There were moments where Gaara could barely keep his eyes open, focusing all his energy into feeling the perimeter of his chakra radius. That was when he felt it. At the very edge of his senses: the faintest flicker of a familiar chakra signature.“This way,” Gaara said, abruptly turning. His body was imbued with renewed energy and he urged his legs on.Temari instantly recalled Kamatari. “Where?” she breathed.“About two miles to the South,” Gaara replied. He brought a hand to his eye and summoned his Third Eye jutsu. The extra expenditure of chakra was an even further drain on his limited stores, but he needed to see for himself. He sent the ball of sand flying at Kamatari’s heels, speeding ahead of both of them as they tore towards that faint flicker.A few moments later, Gaara’s eye registered it: a slumped black figure in the dark. Kankuro was somewhere underground.“I see him,” he shouted, over the whistle of wind past his ears.“Is he- “ Temari couldn’t even bring the words to leave her throat. Gaara focused. It was difficult at times to reconcile the sight of the Third Eye jutsu with his own natural eye. The color was distorted, sepia-toned, making it difficult to distinguish between objects in whatever shadowed place Kankuro lay. For a long moment, there was no movement at all. Gaara’s heart pounded weakly in his chest. He had just felt his chakra, surely they weren’t already too late...“I don’t- “ he started to say.And then he saw it: the faintest rising and falling of Kankuro’s chest. Weak, and shaky, but unmistakably alive.“He’s alive,” he yelled. Temari almost lost her footing. She turned to Gaara with a fierce grin.“Let’s go rescue him,” she said.They spotted the cave from a hundred meters away. It was little more than a rocky outcropping, shrouded in scrub bushes, the opening hardly distinct from the land around it. The only thing indicating they were in the right place was Blank Ant’s hunched carapace, its limbs disassembled on the ground surrounding the cave entrance, and the unsteady flicker of Kankuro’s chakra. Gaara dropped his sensor jutsu just as Kamatari ran back to Temari’s side. “He’s here, boss. I didn’t see anyone else or any bodies, but I don’t know why whoever blew Blank Ant apart would leave him alive,” Kamatari squeaked.“We’ll just need to stay on our guard,” Temari warned. The three of them rushed into the cave, Gaara blocking the entrance while Temari examined Kankuro’s supine form.“He’s almost completely chakra depleted,” she reported. “I can give him some of mine, but it’ll be a long journey back. I don’t trust you to transport the three of us in the shape you’re in either. We’ll have to walk.”“Whatever it takes,” Gaara replied, turning back to look at her. Temari nodded and began siphoning chakra into her brother’s body. Just then, there was a startled cry and a laugh from behind him, something brittle and sharp-edged.“So my plan worked,” said a woman, stepping into the shaft of light falling across the cave’s entrance. In her fist dangled Kamatari’s limp body, the long-nailed fingers of her hand clenched around his throat.“Kamatari!” Temari yelled. The woman cackled. Her teeth were filed sharp and they glinted in the half-light - a ninja from the Hidden Mist. “Don’t worry princess, you won’t need your little pet where you’re going,” the woman said. She threw Kamatari’s body aside; it made a sickening thump as it hit the cave wall and slid down, his sickles trailing the the rock with a shriek.Gaara raised an uneven sand barrier in front of himself and his siblings. Behind him, Temari unsheathed her fan.“What do you want?” Gaara asked. “Leave us be, and I’ll give you anything. I have all the resources of Sunagakure at my disposal.”The woman smiled, a crooked thing. Her mouth seemed just too slightly big for her face. Her left eye rolled wildly, milky and blind, giving her a deranged expression. “Oh, Kazekage-sama. The only thing I want is my prize. I almost had your big brother,” she said in a mocking voice. “I could have killed him any time I wanted. But then I thought, who is most likely to come looking for him, when all hope is lost? Why, his protective big sister, of course. Two for one!” She wiggled two taloned fingers in Temari and Kankuro’s direction, and Gaara batted her hand aside with his sand. The woman didn’t seem phased at all, stepping ever closer. “But you, Kazekage-sama, you were a surprise even to me. Surely, I thought, the great and powerful Gaara of the Desert wouldn’t abandon his village for a hopeless rescue mission.”“If you thought Gaara wouldn’t come rescue his own brother, then your foresight is as bad as your eyesight,” Temari called.The woman threw her head back and laughed.“That’s bold of you, princess,” she shouted back. The Mist kunoichi raised one hand and several watery figures rose from the ground around her. Water clones in the desert - a risky gambit with few resources to ensure the jutsu would be successful. Perhaps the woman really was mad. “I can see the thoughts racing in that pretty little head of yours, Kazekage-sama,” she said, tilting her head to the side. Her eye rolled and rolled in its socket. “Have you forgotten the oasis? It’s barely a thousand meters from here. Plenty of water there, so I can do my work. You foolish boy.”Gaara cursed under his breath. In his exhaustion, he had forgotten the geography of the surrounding area. There were indeed plenty of oases this close to the border. “You’re the foolish one, if you think you can take on all three of us and survive!” Temari shouted, baring her teeth. At her side, Kankuro gave a shuddering breath. The woman laughed again, sharply. “Three? That’s funny, I counted one corpse…” She pointed at Kankuro, whose eyes were now fluttering. “… and two soon-to-be corpses.” The watery figures lunged at once. Gaara raised his sand barrier to block them, and they shattered against the blockade, water slopping to the floor around them and being absorbed by the sand.The woman shrieked with laughter.“Sloppy, Kazekage-sama!” she cried. “You must be so tired! Did the long journey wear you out?”Gaara clenched his teeth. With the sand saturated with water, it would be even heavier and more difficult to maneuver. Already, his legs were trembling. The water clones reformed themselves from the ground. “Gaara, duck!” Temari shouted. Gaara crouched just as a blast of wind tore its way through the cavern. The water clones fractured into mist, but the Mist kunoichi threw up a column of water around herself. The wind battered against her barrier and failed. She dropped the column, stepping closer. “So this is the legendary might of Sunagakure?” the woman mocked them. “My brother must have been weaker than I thought, to have fallen to the likes of your village.” She straightened her head, staring straight at Gaara. That crooked smile cracked across her face again. “Nevertheless, I’m sure his spirit will celebrate when I decorate his grave with your blood.”Gaara raised a layer of sand from the floor to hold her ankles fast, but there was little he could do to stop the water clones from springing towards them again and again. He brought up column after column of sand, each one rising slower and more laboriously than the last. The sand was quickly becoming far too heavy to adequately move in the tight quarters. Temari shot dart after dart of wind from the back of the cave, but it wasn’t enough to stop them, and she too was fading fast.Gaara dropped to one knee, the only way he could keep upright. He heard Temari panting for breath behind him. Still, the onslaught continued. The Mist kunoichi’s wild laughter careened around the cavern. Gaara began sending the last of his sand into the rock walls around them. It was a longshot, but if he could just work it between the cracks in the rock, it was possible he could destabilize the structure enough to cause a cave-in. They would have to find an alternative way out, but if he killed her now, he might have a chance.“Temari, cover Kankuro!” he yelled, clenching his fist. The woman howled with laughter. Gaara summoned up the last of his chakra reserves. His vision started to darken around the edges. The woman lifted her hand to command her clones forward once more, then halted, her body becoming stiff. Her eyes went wide. The water clones were crushed under a wave of black. Iron sand filled the cavern and lifted Gaara off the floor. The Mist kunoichi coughed. Blood spattered her lips, and she toppled forward to the ground. Gaara released his grasp. In the swimming of his vision, he saw two green figures standing behind her limp body, one short and one tall, their fists extended.There was a splatter of blood across Metal’s cheek, but Lee was smiling. Gaara lost consciousness.He awoke, hours later, next to a roaring campfire. He was covered in a heavy blanket and Lee’s hand was in his hair. Lee was propped upright, back resting against a rock, snoring with his mouth wide open. Looking across the flame, he saw Metal, Shinki, and Shikadai sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, their eyes weary but bright. To his left, Kankuro was dozing with his hood pulled over his face. His chakra signature was strong and steady. Temari walked up behind the three boys, a tin cup of tea in her hand, and ruffled their hair in turn.“Lee,” Gaara rasped, “what the hell are you doing here?”Lee sputtered awake.“Gaara!” he cried. “You’re awake! Please watch your language in front of the boys.”Gaara gave him a long stare. Lee coughed behind his fist.“Right, well,” Lee started. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble these three put me through.” Lee gestured across the fire, where the boys were elbowing each other companionably. Shikadai pulled a face and Metal laughed at him while Shinki rolled his eyes. “You should have known when you left that they wouldn’t be okay with letting you two go after their uncle all on your own,” Lee explained. “I caught them trying to sneak out of the village twice.”“So you, what, followed them? Let them go on their own?” Gaara stretched and sat up. Lee threw an arm around his shoulder and held him close.“Of course not! I obtained permission from the interim Kazekage for a coordinated rescue mission.”Gaara turned to look at Lee accusingly. Lee flushed.“You two were gone much longer than we expected,” he said lamely.“I’m going to kill Shikamaru,” Gaara said.Temari sat down behind him with a thunk. “Not if I kill him first,” she said.“That’s fine, you can have him. I’ll take care of Lee,” Gaara replied.Lee gulped and adjusted the neck of his jumpsuit.“Now, Gaara-” he said.“You should be grateful,” Shikadai drawled. “We saved you three.” Temari pointed her fan across the fire and Shikadai flinched back.“You keep up with the sass mouth and you’re gonna be next,” she threatened. “I’m already grounding you for a month, don’t make it two.”“He’s right, though!” Metal said, sitting forward. Kamatari perked up from his lap and nodded along. Metal's dark eyes flashed in the fire’s light. “You would have been goners if us and Papa hadn’t rescued you. It’s a good thing Shinki talked him into it.”Gaara turned to look at his younger son. “You?” he said, “You’re meant to be the responsible one.”Shinki paled behind his face paint and looked at the ground. His coat of iron sand shifted around him. “Something felt off,” he said.Lee squeezed Gaara’s shoulder tight. “You have to admit,” Lee said, “he has good instincts.”Gaara tucked his chin to his chest, grumbling. “We’ll discuss your punishment when we get home.”From the ground, Kankuro unleashed a mighty groan, stretched, and sat up.“Whoa,” he said, blinking sleep from his eyes. “It’s a goddamn family reunion here!” “Language!” Lee hissed. Kankuro rolled his eyes.“Hey, thanks for coming to get me, you guys,” he said, turning to acknowledge all of them in turn. “You really saved my ass.”A vein started bulging in Lee’s forehead. Gaara leaned to the side and rested his head on Lee’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispered.