Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Temari is a desert kid, she always will be. That being said, there’s a difference between Suna and the Wastes. Suna is gentle rolling dunes, sun-baked land, and carefully marked wells of cool groundwater. The Wastes, on the other hand, is infinite scorching hills, dried-up canteens, and blistering heat driving you out of your own goddamn mind. The desert is merciless, and should you fall, it is unforgiving in its promise to suck you dry.

They’ve managed to get maybe fifteen clicks into the Wastes, and Temari is already feeling the sort of dizzying insanity that’s only brought on by the very worst of her brother’s antics. And she’s not even doing this mission alone or with a capable and obedient squad, oh no. Because guess exactly who she’s been lumped with?

Gaara stares solemnly into the distance while Kankurou doesn’t even have the decency to halt his ridiculous rambles.

Temari inhales deeply.

Suffice it to say, by the time they bump into the foul-mouthed blond gremlin, it’s no wonder she’s already steaming.

Their first meeting with Edward Elric begins with a whole lot of cursing.

Gaara hears him first, or senses him through his sand maybe, going silent and then looking contemplatively over the dunes. He abruptly changes direction, and Temari is left to exchange looks with Kankurou who only shrugs back at her. They blindly follow after him.

That’s when they hear him. He’s loud, swearing up a storm and clearly exerting a lot of energy to express his displeasure, an unwise thing to do in the middle of the Wastes. Still, it’s not Temari’s problem. It’s not like she’s going to bother reprimanding him.

They catch sight of him soon after that, which is when things get weird. He’s short, really short, but he has the sort of face where it’s difficult to immediately judge his age. Probably younger than Gaara by at least a year or two, but she’s not sure. His long blond hair gives him pretty standard Wind features, but the golden eyes throw her for a loop. Not many people have gold eyes, certainly not civilians.

Because he’s not a shinobi. She can tell that immediately. For one, she’s never seen him before, and while she doesn’t have a perfect memory, she’s still sharp enough to recognize most of Suna’s ninja force. This guy is an unknown. What’s more, he doesn’t act like any shinobi she’s ever seen. Too loud, making a ruckus and stomping around, without any sign of the inherent gracefulness and deadliness that most shinobi cultivate. Her mind flickers towards another loud-mouthed blond-haired shinobi, but she shies away from making that connection.

No hitai-ate either, and no gear or weapons. No survival equipment of any sort, which is not only strange, but downright suicidal for anyone attempting to travel the desert.

All these details add up to one downright weird picture. And… he’s currently brandishing a metal arm up into the air as if attempting to commune with the gods, so there’s also that.

“Elric telepathy activate!” He screeches, flailing the arm wildly around, before he catches sight of their group. His face flushes bright red.

What the hell.

“What are you doing?” Temari asks flatly.

She starts to approach, and the flailing is abruptly cut off, the arm falling softly onto the sand. The boy’s eyes narrow.

“What does it look like?” He snaps.

At her side, Kankurou snorts. “Like you’re trying to perform some sort of interpretive dance for the sand spirits.”

“As if you are attempting telepathy,” Gaara says at the same time. He squints. “Is it working?”

“You never know when your psychic abilities could awaken!” He blusters, even as the flush deepens. “I was trying to commune with my brother!”

“With a metal arm,” Kankurou says skeptically.

“It’s–“ he scowls. “Shut up!”

Kankurou snickers. “Hey Temari, what do you think, next time we’re separated we can try it out—“

Gaara simply stares at her intently.

Temari does her very best to fight off the incoming headache. “You two, shut up.”

“Temariiii,” her idiot brother whines.

“I did not say anything,” her youngest brother informs her.

“I can hear you thinking.” She silently revels in the fact that she can express exasperation towards her youngest brother. Two years ago, she would never have dared to speak up against him.

Gaara’s eyes widen in wonder. “It worked?”

This time, the blond’s the one to cackle.

“You can shut up too,” she snaps.

The cackling dies down. Carefully, he picks up the fallen metal arm and straps it onto his back. Then he tromps over towards their group, heavy black boots creating deep impressions in the sand. He opens his mouth and Temari braces herself for more swearing, or an attack of some kind–

“So, you three got eaten as well, huh?”

“Eaten?” Gaara repeats. His voice is nearly inflectionless, but Temari knows her little brother now. That’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s utterly baffled.

He crosses his arms. “Eaten, chomped, sucked through the eye portal, whatever. Damnit, I can’t believe I got done in by that Gluttony bastard! And you three are the only ones I’ve seen out here. Have you seen anyone else? Maybe a squinty guy with a smug grin on his face?”

“Who are you?” Gaara asks. Temari is wondering that herself.

He rubs the back of his head. “Uh, you might have heard of me. Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist?”

Temari stares blankly back at the self-proclaimed Fullmetal Alchemist.

“I have not heard of you,” Gaara tells him.

He huffs. “Well, who are you?”

“You haven’t heard of him?” Kankurou mocks. “It’s Sabaku no Gaara. Ichibi jinchuuriki, next in line for Kazekage... Ring any bells?”

The boy jerks his head away sharply, scowling. “I’ve never heard of any of that. I guess it doesn’t matter though, if we’ve really been eaten.”

“You keep going on about that,” Temari says cooly. “Being eaten. What exactly do you mean by that, Edward?”

The blond looks up, golden eyes fixing on hers. “Being sucked into Gluttony’s stomach portal, of course. What else would I mean? And you can call me Ed.”

Temari wonders if this boy is actually insane. Maybe the sweltering heat and lack of fluids have given him some sort of solar madness. Because or else why would he imagine that they’ve all been eaten, of all things?

Kankurou laughs sarcastically. “Right. We’ve all been eaten. So what is this? The Pure Lands?” He gestures around at the wide expanse of desert. “It doesn’t exactly look like what all the scriptures talk about.”

It’s not like Temari spends a lot of time imagining what the Pure Lands might look like. She’s far more focused on, you know, actually surviving. But if they were to resemble anything from the Elemental Nations, she would dearly hope it wasn’t the Wastes.

Ed stares at them. “So you’re saying you weren’t eaten? You’ve never had any unexpected encounters with a really big homunculus?”

“There was no eating,” Gaara confirms.

The boy throws his hands up. “Then where the hell am I?”

“You’re in the Wastes,” Kankurou says flatly. “You know, the endless desert nobody ever tries to cross?”

“The desert?” Ed looks around wildly, as if the surrounding ever-present sand had just sprung into being. “You mean like, where Xerxes was? The desert on the way to Xing?”

Temari pinches the bridge of her nose. She has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. “The Wastes, as in the place at the far edge of Wind Country. Somewhere you definitely shouldn’t be without proper supplies and good navigation.”

“Wind Country? Where’s that? Where’s Amestris?”

Temari hasn’t memorized every small town around here, but she would think a name like Amestris would be pretty recognizable. Something’s wrong here. Besides, how can you not recognize an entire country?

“I have not heard of such a place,” Gaara tells him. He pauses. “Is it really true that you have come here due to being… eaten?”

Temari sighs in exasperation. “It doesn’t work like that, Gaara.”

“I was eaten!” Ed protests. “Well, kind of. More like, sucked into Gluttony’s belly through a giant eye… portal… thingy…” He trails off in thought. “And now I’m here. Huh.”

“You were sucked through a portal,” Temari repeats. That sounds like a jutsu of some kind. Maybe fuinjutsu? There are known records of space-time seals, even though there are very few of them, with most being heavily classified.

Kankurou’s eyes light up, and Temari just knows he’s about to say something either a) stupid, or b) unbelievably nerdy. “A portal, huh. Like those stories about getting sucked into the Summons Realm or like in the old play, the Tale of Guren, where the protagonist trips into a different dimension!”

Ah. Temari had been too optimistic, foolishly discounting option c) all of the above.

Or maybe not.

“A different dimension…” Ed says slowly. “A different realm– that’s it! I should have known from the eye. Gluttony’s stomach must be some sort of gate that passes outside Truth’s domain into this in-between realm.”

Temari stares at him wide-eyed. She’s not sure what to think anymore. Kankurou does the same, before his expression morphs into something a tad more gleeful.

“You’re actually from a different dimension? Wait, you’re from someplace called Amestris?”

“You can’t be serious,” Temari says.

“It’s true!” Ed argues. “It has to be–” His words cut off with a strangled yelp.

From far above them, a shadow looms wide. In mere seconds, it seems to grow, casting sudden shade over their faces–

“Look out!” Kankouro yells.

They all leap backwards. Temari propels chakra into her legs as she launches herself away, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. The multiple trees, on the other hand, do not.

Giant plumes of dusty sand billow up around them from the site of the thunderous crash.

Gaara’s sand dome cautiously peels back to reveal her wide-eyed brother. Ed steps out from behind some sort of strange looking earth wall he had managed to put up. It looks more like solid rock than the standard mud wall, and it’s intricately constructed with solidly built stone tiers and ornate curling vines. She’s never seen a jutsu quite like it before.

She raises an eyebrow. “Fancy.”

Ed puffs out his chest.

Gaara takes in the oddly designed wall. His sand shifts as patterned swirls tentatively creep across the surface of his dome. He peers hopefully at Temari.

Her brother was a mass murderer who used to literally bathe in people’s blood. How can he be this cute?

“Yours is nice too,” she assures him, and Gaara perks up.

More dust is kicked up as Kankurou makes his way back over towards them. “It’s… trees,” he states disbelievingly. “We almost just got crushed by a bunch of trees.” His tone quickly becomes irate. “Who decided to chuck trees at us? Not even the tree-hugging Leaf maniacs do things like that.”

“I told you,” Ed’s tone drips with impatience. “It’s the gate! Gluttony must have eaten them. How else do you explain trees dropping on our heads like that? But never mind that.” He rounds on Gaara accusingly. “You didn’t say you were an alchemist! What was that? How’d you do that transmutation? I didn’t see you using any circles.” His eyes dart around as if searching for something.

Gaara frowns. “I do not use any circles.”

“Then how do you do it? You didn’t clap your hands either, so unless you already are the circle–”

“Alternate dimension things,” Kankurou says knowingly. “We’re not alchemists, we’re shinobi. You must use some different type of system.”

Ed nods furiously. “We’re just outside Truth’s domain, or inside a different section, maybe– Everyone’s born with a gate, but maybe you aren’t, you use another form of energy… How exactly are you reshaping your sand?”

Gaara blinks up at him, and Temari already knows he’s going to regret asking.

“It is due to the one-tailed demon sealed within me that I have my abilities.”

To Temari’s surprise, Ed doesn’t falter, but he does start gesticulating more aggressively. “What the heck does that mean? Explain to me what type of energy you’re using. There has to be some form of conversion, right? So how are you channelling it?”

“Look,” Temari says, trying to bring the subject back on track. “You can research all you want on your own time. But right now, we’re on a mission, and it looks like you might hold the answers to what’s been happening recently.”

“A mission?” Ed squints at her suspiciously. “What mission?”

“We’ve been investigating the mysterious appearance of objects in the Wastes.” Kankurou informs him. “There’s been strange metal objects, ordinary things like trash cans or lamp posts, and even corpses. They’ve been appearing all over the Wastes for a while now. But the most concerning–“ Temari catches his eye, tilting her head fractionally sideways, and her brother smoothly changes tracks– “are the deep pools of blood popping up in the dunes.”

Best not to tell him about the missing shinobi just yet. He may not look like much, but Temari gets the feeling that there’s more to this kid than meets the eye. And a good shinobi never ignores their instincts.

“Those are definitely all the things Gluttony has eaten,” Ed says pensively. He shudders. “He usually eats people, but it seems like he’ll eat just about anything. He must have gobbled up some of the trees during our fight.”

So what about the missing shinobi then? Temari purses her lips and scours the dunes once more. It figures it couldn’t be that easy.

“Let’s keep looking,” she orders. “Maybe we’ll find another clue.”

“Wait a second, I still need to get back!” Ed leaps up, pushing into her space. “My brother’s still fighting him, and I have to go check in on Colonel Bastard too!”

Temari stands her ground. “You can’t use your alchemy to cross back over?”

Ed grits his teeth. “Alchemy is a science, you can’t just make random portals– wait…” He pivots suddenly on his feet. “I have to go check–”

“What is it?” Gaara asks.

Ed is moving now, racing back across the dunes, and Temari locks eyes with her brothers before they all turn to follow him. “I thought I saw something back there, but I wasn’t sure… But it makes sense! If you get here by passing through a gate…”

They pass by some strange objects. A large metallic contraption with a strange boxy frame and oddly constructed wheels. Splintered wood, worn down stone posts… Ed leads them past it all, before eventually coming to a halt at the foot of a large stone tablet half buried in the sand.

“I knew I recognized it!” He kneels down to brush off the base.

Kankurou’s eyes gleam as he takes in the double-headed dragon with the ruby eye, surrounded by swirling scripture. “What’s this? Symbolism of some kind, but what does it mean?” He looks down at Ed eagerly.

Ed scowls at the tablet. “The dragon symbolizes the perfect being, and this is definitely a replica of the tablet at Xerxes, but there’s something missing. Where’s the sun?” He points accusingly at the missing semi-circular chunk at the top of the cracked stone.

The writing is incomprehensible. It’s in no language that Temari has ever seen before. She kneels down by the tablet as well, fingers prodding the smooth grooves and brushing over the fragments indicating that something has been pried out. “Whatever used to be here, someone has clearly taken it.”

Ed throws his hands up. “I can’t do a transmutation without a transmutation circle! We need the sun!” He flails his arms towards the other side of the tablet. “And there’s a whole missing chunk on the left side as well. I could guess what it’s supposed to be, but I’m not sure– I need to find the missing pieces!”

Gaara tips his head curiously. “What will you use them for?”

“I can get back by reopening the gate,” Ed says. “I need to use human transmutation. But I’m not going to use the type I know, I’ll have to transmute myself. I need the circle to do it, but the pieces are missing!”

Gaara nods, examining the nearby indentations in the sand. “Perhaps someone thought it looked interesting and took it to resell. There are thieves and unscrupulous merchants around these parts. It appears as if they were headed northeast.”

Ed furiously clenches one hand into a tight fist. “Some jerk went and stole my circle!”

There are a lot of things here that Temari doesn't quite understand, but the words ‘human transmutation’ stand out over the rest. She doesn’t like the sound of those words.

“I see,” she says cooly. “Well, we wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself, but there are some other things we still need to look into. I wish you luck.”

“What?” Ed bristles. “But… I need to get back to Al! How am I gonna get my circle back?”

Temari gestures at the obvious tracks enhanced by the humming traces of leftover energy.

He stares at the ground. Glances back up at her. “What?”

“We’re busy people, you know,” Kankurou jeers. He’s doing his best to appear cool and unaffected, but his hand is also twitching like he’s itching for more play-worthy excitement, so he’s not fooling her. “We have better things to do than babysit.”

There’s a sharp intake of air–

“Babysit?! Who are you calling a little baby who’s too small to even feed himself a single pea!!”

Temari tries to lean back unobtrusively from the sudden blast of sound.

Gaara frowns in confusion. “You cannot eat peas?”

Literal steam seems to billow out of Ed’s ears before he takes a single enormous breath, and then lets it gust out heavily.

“Fine, let’s try something else. If you help me locate the tablets, then I’ll be able to get back to my world and deal with Gluttony. Once we take him out, then all this junk will stop appearing in your desert. That’s both our problems solved. Equivalent exchange.”

Kankurou tips his head. “Equivalent exchange, huh?”

“I accept,” Gaara declares. “We will aid you in finding your tablets, and in return, you will ensure the Wastes are returned to their former state. We will depart now.” He turns in the direction of the tracks before hesitating, glancing over at Temari and Kankurou. “That is… if you wish to.”

A smile flickers across Temari’s lips. It’s not at seeing him so unsure. It’s from the joy of knowing that their youngest brother cares about their opinions now, that he won’t overpower them and force them to obey out of fear. He’s still a leader, that won’t change, but he’ll ask them about things and actually listen. It’s amazing how far he’s come.

“Let’s go, then,” she says softly.

Kankurou’s eyes lighten. “Yeah, lead the way, future Kazekage!”

Chapter Text

Hamigakiko Haburashi is a simple man with simple tastes. There are things he likes: Sunday markets, colourful scarves, a quiet book. There are things he dislikes: loud parties, sand in his bed, awkward small talk.

One thing he dislikes above all else is surprises. Haburashi does not deal well with surprises, neither good nor bad. He likes fixed schedules and lots of prep time, thank you very much, not unexpected situations coming out of nowhere.

The murderous looking blond showing up during his lunch break is unexpected. The gigantic stone fists rising up from the dirt are very unexpected. And waking up tied to a chair?

No, Haburashi does not enjoy surprises. And this? This is a particularly terrible one.

As he might have mentioned previously, he wakes up strapped to a creaky wooden chair with a pounding headache assaulting his tender temples. The barely overheard hissed whispering from behind his back does not help matters.

“Good cop, bad cop, got it? I’ll be the bad cop.”

The voice suddenly shifts into a piercing yell that nearly has Haburashi jerking straight out of his seat. Fortunately, he doesn’t, but unfortunately, it’s due to the aforementioned wires keeping him trapped tight to the wooden frame. Wires. Trapped. He instinctively pulls against the restraints, fluttery panic bubbling up in his chest. What exactly is going on?

“Oi! You awake? You’re gonna answer all our questions right now!”

There’s a finger jabbed directly in his face. Haburashi leans back as much as he’s able to, eyes following the finger up to its owner.

It’s the blond from earlier. The one who had walked up to him, looking like he was about to deck him in the face, and then had proceeded to thoroughly thrash him when he ran. Haburashi winces in anticipation, panicked thoughts swirling through his mind. He doesn’t want to die! He’s only 28, and he’s a civilian! It’s not fair! His eyes trace their way up to his captor, taking him in, and–

“You’re… short?”

“What did you just say?!?” If his expression was previously murderous, now it might be something akin to genocidal.

“I mean– I didn’t–” Haburashi babbles, hastily attempting to backtrack. “I just didn’t really notice earlier, and now that I’m seeing you, and it’s just the first thing that popped into my head–”

It’s just, he had looked so menacing earlier, and then there was the punching, and the chasing, and the stone fists…

And now, look at him. It’s a kid. A midget kid has kidnapped him and tied him to a chair. Sweet Kami, he’s about to be killed by a kid who doesn’t even come up to his shoulders.

“Who are you calling a midget so small you’d need to use a magnifying glass to even see him?!?”

“I do not understand why you are so upset, Ed,” a second voice says plaintively from behind his back. “You are very short.”

“I’m still growing!” The boy howls.

Haburashi’s neck hurts from how hard he’s nodding, even as he strains to try and catch a glimpse of his other captor.

“Whatever,” Ed snarls. He turns back to Haburashi. “Where the hell did you put my circle?”

“Your what?”

“My transmutation circle! I know you took it.” Ed glares directly into his eyes, and spreads his hands apart, tracing out a large, vaguely circular shape into the air. “A stone tablet, about yea big? I need it, and you probably went and chopped it apart for precious metals. So where’d you put it?”

A stone tablet? Precious metals? Haburashi regularly handles relics and other odds and ends on a day-to-day basis. It’s his job. As a merchant selling knick-knacks, lost items, and recycled antiques, odd items like this pass through his hands every day. He has absolutely no idea exactly which item this kid is referring to.

“A tablet?” He asks, doing his best to appear helpful. “What exactly does it look like?” The initial panicked rush of adrenaline flooding his systems has abated, but now there’s a droning hum of dread that pushes him to appear useful. Maybe if he just answers the questions, he’ll get to go back home to his books. A quiet evening reading up on the lost tribe of Rouran. Peaceful. Calming.

Everything that this current situation is not.

“It has a double-headed dragon reaching towards the sun. There was Xerxian scripture surrounding it, and a double circle enclosing it all. I think the missing part of the tablet would have had other astronomical bodies.” Ed pins him with a sharp glance, golden eyes flashing. “So where is it?”

Ah. So this is where the doom comes in. As a matter of fact, Haburashi does indeed recognize this tablet. He had been doing his monthly trip through the edges of the Wastes to reach Sunagakure and catch up with the merchants there. On his return trip, he found many curious artifacts. Most of them were things he had never seen before, while others were familiar, if slightly unknown. The tablet had been one such thing, featuring an exotic writing system, shining ruby gems, and swirling graphics. He had been immediately taken by it, but hadn’t wanted to lug the whole thing home, so he’d simply cut out the most interesting parts.

It had been an amazing find. He was excited to try and research it and maybe find out about where it had come from, but unfortunately, sometimes life was cruel. That tablet had soon gone on to thoroughly bite him in the behind.

And now, even after he had thought it was over with, here he is, getting kidnapped over that very same tablet.

Sometimes, Haburashi truly believes that life hates him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Haburashi lies.

Now, upon meeting Hamigakiko Haburashi, there are a couple things that become immediately apparent. Number one is this: Haburashi is a very bad liar. He’s perfectly aware of this. His hands sweat, his face flushes, and the inside of his mouth feels like he’s swallowed a bunch of fire ants. Lying is very much not the ideal situation, but he does so anyway because what else is he supposed to do? There aren’t a whole bunch of options here.

“You’re lying! C’mon, fess up!” Ed marches up close and slams his hands down on either side of the chair. It’s mildly intimidating, but only mildly, because the boy is probably 4’10.

“I’m not lying!” Haburashi protests. He is definitely lying. Still. He can lie to this small blond child, or he can break his vow of silence made to the hulking, scarred, one-eyed and battle-hardened shinobi. It’s an easy choice to make.

Ed scowls, leaning in. “You’re gonna tell me the truth, or you’re not gonna like what I do next.” He clenches a fist, shaking it threateningly. “So, let’s do this one last time. What did you do with the tablet?”

Haburashi wants to bury his face in his hands, but he can’t, because of the stupid wires. “I don’t have anything to tell you,” he moans. “Can’t you please just let me go?”

The boy turns around and kicks the wall in frustration. It makes a surprisingly loud banging noise, and Haburashi flinches, but Ed doesn’t react to what should be tingling pain jolting up his toes. Instead, he continues glaring and then starts to pace around the room.

“Fine. Fine, you thieving bastard.”

“You’re letting me go?” Haburashi asks hopefully. Maybe a quiet evening in isn’t too much to ask for, after all.

“Nope, we’re just gonna have to switch tactics.” He looks over at someone behind Haburashi’s chair. “I’ve softened him up, so it’s your turn now. Remember what we talked about, got it, Gaara?”

Softened him up, ha. Haburashi feels fully tenderized. It’s not as if the boy’s interrogation skills were by any means excellent, but Haburashi has never had a strong constitution. Just the thought of T&I makes him want to puke.

Wait a second. Did he say…

Gaara?

Haburashi gets a full three seconds to contemplate his life choices before Sabaku no Gaara, Sunagakure’s Ultimate Weapon, stalks out from behind his back.

Sabaku. No. Gaara.

Jade green eyes drill into him, pinning him in place. He feels lightheaded. His soul must have taken the reprieve to flee his body, abandoning him for safer ground. There’s a high-pitched ringing noise in his ears, and it takes Haburashi another second to realize that it’s him, silently shrieking under his breath.

The bloodthirsty jinchuuriki prowls towards him, water glass clutched in his deadly hands. Oh Kami, he’s going to die, he’s going to die via sand burial alone in this wretched room with only a mad demon and midget blond for company–

Sabaku no Gaara opens his mouth, sharpened teeth glinting in the dim light. “Would you like some–”

“I’ll tell you everything!” Haburashi shrieks.

Ed’s expression flickers, looking absolutely dumbfounded. “That was faster than I expected.”

Haburashi is not an idiot. He knows exactly what he is capable of, and lying to the demon boy who smells fear and bathes in blood is not on the list.

“Does that mean you would like the water?”

If the mad jinchuuriki wants him to drink a cup of water, he’ll drink the damn water. Haburashi nods shakily, and then realizes that he isn’t able to take the cup. His hands are still tied to the seat. For what seems like the billionth time this afternoon, a deep wave of dread sweeps over him.

Oh no. Oh no.

Sabaku no Gaara locks eyes with him and slowly tips the glass up towards his lips. Haburashi thinks he might be hyperventilating. Is this how the jinchuuriki intends to do him in? By drowning him in his own drink?

It’s a strangely intimate experience, Haburashi thinks hysterically, as they gaze into each others’ eyes all while he tries not to choke. He wants to avert his gaze, but it’s like he’s been locked in. In any other situation, this would just be awkward, but here, it’s nothing short of pure terror.

Haburashi makes a few gurgling noises as he chugs down the last droplets, and then blessed relief! Gaara pulls back and his airways are clear once more.

Ed continues to stand there, arms crossed over his chest. “So, you’ll tell us what you did with the tablet, then?”

Haburashi’s still catching his breath. He inhales another gulp of sweet, sweet air.

Gaara’s eyes narrow. “I will provide further encouragement.”

Shit.

The jinchuuriki moves to the other side of the room, setting the water glass down on a long counter. There are a few other items there, but Haburashi can’t see well, not even when he strains his head all the way to the left. He can only hear the loud clatter of objects being moved across the table.

His mind conjures up images of large, metal pliers, nearly rusted shut from a history of constant soaking in warm, salty blood. Something else clangs, lighter this time. He visualizes other torture instruments, screwdrivers and pliers and lighters–

“I’m going to talk!” He yelps, voice coming out all high pitched and panicky. His heart is pounding in his chest. “You don’t have to- to- encourage me! Please–”

Gaara turns around with a metal tin tucked menacingly in his arms. “You do not wish to partake in these date bars?”

Date bars? It’s unfortunate. Haburashi actually quite likes date bars. He eyes the container suspiciously. Are they poisoned?

…Would Gaara feed him?

Haburashi clamps his lips together and does his best not to let his horror-stricken whine escape. He’s currently experiencing some kind of mute horror, the sort that can only come from the idea of getting personally hand fed by a killing machine.

“I’m, uh. I’m good,” he says weakly.

Gaara nods and takes a bar for himself, chewing slowly and steadily. His eyes are locked on Haburashi’s the entire time. Haburashi watches the bulge in his throat as the demon boy swallows.

Haburashi gulps.

Ed’s head is still swivelling, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Wait a second! Are you scared of him? You were supposed to be scared of me! I’m the bad cop!”

His forehead is beading with sweat, and he can’t even wipe it off. “It’s just–” he stutters. “It’s Sabaku no Gaara, so, I mean, he’s just slightly more… intimidating?” He winces in anticipation.

“You’re saying I can’t be intimidating, huh?” Ed asks, tone filled with sharp accusation. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I am not intimidating,” Gaara informs him, in that soft, dangerous voice that makes it sound like he’s plotting Haburashi’s bloody murder. “I am the good cop.”

“Of course not!” Haburashi squeaks. “You’re- you’re a very good… cop…”

Gaara nods, satisfied, and just like that, it appears the decision has been made. Haburashi gets to live another day.

Ed stares him down for another second, before relenting. “Fine. So what about the tablet? You took it from the Wastes, right? What did you do with it, and where is it now?”

If he could, he would be wringing his hands right now. “About that… I’m so, so sorry, but I don’t have it anymore. I’m not lying! I swear, if I did have it then I’d give it to you right away, but I sold it two weeks ago!”

“You sold it?” Ed exclaims. “Why? To who?”

“Well, I picked it up in the first place because it looked really interesting,” he stammers. “I like learning about ancient civilizations, and I thought the tablet would be a cool display piece that I could read up on too. And I had to cut it because it was too big and heavy to take all at once, and I swear, I would never normally do something like that, but it was already crumbling apart– I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize it belonged to someone–”

“Right, right,” Ed says, rolling his hand impatiently. “And then you sold it?”

“I kept it in the back of my shop because I didn’t expect anyone would buy it. But then these people came in, I think they were shinobi. A guy and a girl, and they got really interested in the tablet as soon as they saw it.”

“Interested how?”

“The guy noticed it right away, and then they started asking me all sorts of questions. About where I found it, the script, the curved lines, the imagery… I couldn’t answer most of them of course, but they kept asking. Mainly went on about one of the gems in the side. It was built into a different section of the tablet, and it had all these rays coming out like some sort of sun. It was a huge gem, big and red. Beautiful.”

“A red gem,” Ed breathes, eyes impossibly wide.

Haburashi shifts uncomfortably. His legs are starting to tingle. “Um, yeah. And they barely paid me anything at all, but I couldn’t complain, you know? He looked like he was going to kill me, and then he said if I told anyone about anything, he’d come back and, uh. Rip my head off my shoulders.”

“Well, nothing like that’s gonna happen when we’re around,” Ed declares. “I need to get the tablet and the stone back, and we’ll make sure to take them down too!”

“What did they look like?” Gaara asks.

Haburashi has never been so thankful for his excellent attention to detail. “The first was a big, scarred guy, dark skin, brown hair, scary eyes. One was brown, the other was white, probably blind from the scar over top of it. He had these winding tattoos around his arms– some fancy script design, but I couldn’t read it. And the girl– typical Wind country, tanned skin and blond hair. She had a big brown bag on her back, and a pouch full of scrolls. They were both missing-nin, I’m sure of it!”

“Do you know where they went?” Ed demands.

“I, uh. I’m not entirely sure–”

The jinchuuriki frowns, and Haburashi hastily changes the direction of his sentence.

“–but I could probably speculate! They came in with the silk caravan, and I think it looked like they were going to get inks or something, so I bet they went east! There’s a lot of good suppliers that way, so it’s possible that they were interested–”

Gaara opens his mouth again, and Haburashi very quickly gets to the end of his rambling.

“–but there’s no guarantee and that’s all I know, I swear, I’m sorry I can’t help you but that’s everything I can think of!”

“Calm down,” Ed says, rolling his eyes. “We weren’t really going to hurt you. I’m not that kind of guy.” He claps a hand on Haburashi’s shoulder. “Look, sorry I thought you were sketchy, but you were trying to run away. What’d you have to do that for? Couldn’t you have just told us from the start?”

“Why did I run?” Haburashi repeats, semi-hysterical. How could he have not? “You were looking at me like that!”

“Like what?” Ed demands, who is indeed still looking at him with that expression, a mixture of malevolent glee and toothy menace.

Haburashi shudders. “Of course I ran! I try my best to avoid irritated clients, and you looked, ah– beyond irritated. And then there were the stone fists, and I thought I’d be crushed to death and disfigured and no one would be able to identify my body–” He accidentally makes eye contact with the Suna jinchuuriki. The Suna jinchuuriki whose signature move is crushing people to death.

Haburashi shudders some more.

“Huh,” Ed says, scratching his head. “Oops. Sorry about that, heh. Obviously, that’s not gonna happen though.”

Gaara nods. “With enough pressure, my sand leaves no body at all.”

Well, that’s just great. Haburashi manfully withholds a very pitiful whimper.

“Can you please just let me go?”

Chapter Text

They receive the messenger hawk minutes out from their destination.

The hawks hate Gaara, and Temari’s too fussy about the talons and her short sleeves, so guess who’s on hawk duty again?

“Don’t mind me,” Kankurou grouches, holding his arm up for the beady-eyed bird to land on. “Just ignore the labours of your message boy.”

“Messenger hawks,” Ed scoffs. “Don’t you have telephones?”

Kankurou perks up. “Telephones? Is that another alternate universe thing?”

“Yeah, and much better than relying on an animal too.” He gives the hawk a suspicious glance.

Kankurou can’t blame him. Some of the messenger birds are great, but others have an attitude. They can get prickly when handled incorrectly, and many of the shinobi working in the aviary have the scars to prove it.

Thankfully, this one’s just fine and lands on his arm without any hassle at all. “Let’s see what you’ve got for us.”

He unrolls the attached scroll and starts skimming over the contents. Looks like they finally pinned down the location of the latest missing patrol. It’s been the third one this month. The locations of the first two had been vague, reported as missing somewhere just outside the Wastes. This one is clearer. Northeast of Suna, patrolling the town near the Red Ruins Canyon, named for its iron oxide sands and sharp jagged rock formations. Kankurou casts his gaze straight ahead towards the dusty red stone and towering drops.

Looks like they’re right on track.

He tucks the scroll away, and chances a glance back at Ed. Temari hadn’t wanted to tell him about the missing shinobi just yet. It made sense at the start – no point in leaking unnecessary info on private Suna affairs to a complete unknown. Kankurou’s gotten to know him since then and thinks he’s a decent guy, but he’ll stick with Temari’s wishes for now.

“Just an update from back home,” he says, all while signing discreetly with his left hand. “Council meeting debate. Nothing important.”

“The elders again,” Temari says disdainfully. “Ugh. They better have it sorted out by the time we get back.”

Understood, she flashes back.

Gaara just nods, eyes hazy and far off.

Kankurou peers closer at his little brother. “Hey Gaara, you okay?”

“I am fine,” Gaara replies, but something in his voice sounds distracted. “I sense something.”

Now, Kankurou’s no sensor. None of them are, but he still strains his chakra-sensing abilities to try and find out exactly what Gaara has discovered. To his surprise, now that he’s looking, he is able to sense something. Something… strange.

It doesn’t feel like anything he’s ever sensed before. Almost like ghostly echoes at first, but as they journey on, approaching the source, it quickly becomes apparent that the power level is immense. It hums and beckons, drawing him in and repulsing him all at once. He stares down into the canyon and feels waves of pressure crawling up his spine.

He has no idea what it could possibly be, but one thing is obvious.

Whatever this is, it’s definitely not chakra.

Temari holds them off before they descend into the cavern below. “Our goals here are simple. We want to take down the missing-nin, locate and collect the tablets, and find the power source.”

“The power source?” Ed asks sharply. There’s a strange glint in his eyes, knowing and dangerous.

“Whatever we’re sensing,” Kankurou explains, waving a hand in the air. “We need to find it. It’s clearly dangerous.”

Suddenly, Ed looks wrong-footed. “Wait. You can sense it?”

Kankurou turns towards him incredulously. “You can’t?”

It’s nearly overpowering now that they’re standing here, so close to the source.

“No,” Ed says thoughtfully. “I can’t do stuff like that, but I knew a few people who could. Alkehestrists can sense life energy. Maybe you guys do something similar.”

“We can sense chakra,” Temari informs him. “But this isn’t chakra.”

Gaara’s frowning again. “It is not. I sense pain and torment.”

Ed looks away.

Something very strange is going on here, and judging by Ed’s reactions, it’s clear he knows exactly what it is. Kankurou doesn’t like it. His sister picks up on it as well.

“Do you know what is producing the energy?” She asks sharply.

Ed grimaces. “I don’t know for sure, but if it’s what I think it is… Just leave it to me, okay? If we’re lucky, we’ll be in and out in under five minutes.”

“And if we’re not?”

“Leave it to me,” he repeats. “I’ll get the stone back, and I’ll make sure they regret ever messing with Edward Elric! It’ll be easy. We’ll pop down there, and when they’re distracted, I’ll bring the canyon down over top of them and trap them!”

Temari gives him a look like, can you believe this guy? Kankurou shrugs. It’s a bit of a simple plan, but it’s not like Gaara uses fancy techniques himself. He just uses the all-powerful force of his sand. So if Ed can really alchemize the whole cavern and trap them, it sounds just fine to him.

Gaara nods, and that’s the final say. “We will proceed.”

With bated breath, they follow the haunting call down into the canyon.

Their plan goes to shreds almost immediately.

They’re just setting foot onto the ground below, when Kankurou catches Ed carefully examining the dirt. It almost looks like there are faint markings there. Nothing dangerous, as there’s no chakra to signal bad intentions, but Ed frowns at it regardless. Slowly, they pick their way across the basin of the canyon, peering into the dark cavern. That’s where their hideout most likely is, and they’re bound to be waiting inside, but he doesn’t see anyone just yet.

Ed, on the other hand, has his eyes fixed on something else. Kankurou follows his gaze to across the way, where a stone tablet sits. Is that it? Should they just take it? He glances back into the cavern, frowning–

“Get off the ground!” Ed bellows, pure horror threading through his voice.

Kankurou curses, making a frantic dash for the side of the canyon. Light begins to flare, and he knows he won’t make it, he won’t make it–

His brother sweeps him up in a floating pocket of sand, Ed alongside him. Temari has hopped atop her fan, and they float in midair as they watch a giant circle flash into existence, emitting crackling blue light. It glows for five seconds, before dying back down, returning the ground to harmless dusty dirt once more.

“What the fuck was that?” Kankurou demands.

“A human transmutation circle,” Ed breathes. “They used parts of the tablet, and something else. I don’t recognize it–”

“What does it do?” Gaara asks intensely.

“Discorporates your soul,” he murmurs, and Kankurou’s eyes bug out, because, what? “Don’t touch it. We have to break the circle!”

He only has a second to process this frankly alarming revelation, when a horde of kunai come flying at them, spit out from the mouth of a cloth-covered puppet. Kankurou tries to dodge, but it’s hard to do from atop the floating platform. Gaara doesn’t move at all, using the sand to form a shielding barrier. At his side, Temari tries to manoeuvre, but the narrow canyon limits her room, causing the edge of her fan to get clipped by a kunai.

Kankurou winces. That’s one way to get her attention.

“It’ll be easy, he says,” Temari snarls. “Just great.”

Has his sister always been this good at voice imitation? What an uncanny Ed impression. The mind truly boggles.

“Look, Gaara, if you can keep me up, I’ll take on the puppet master. The rest of you should check the cavern to see who else is in there.”

Puppets against puppets. It may not be the most strategic battle plan, but Kankurou also has his pride as a puppet master to think about here. He can’t let some subpar puppet user get the best of him.

“We should split into groups of two,” Temari argues, trying to fly in closer. Kankurou eyes the unassuming ground. If she keeps flying around on her fan like that, she’ll never be able to use her wind jutsus to their fullest extent. His sister’s lips purse, probably coming to the same conclusion.

“I’ll stay,” Ed says. “But first we have to– woah!”

A heavy blast of cutting wind roars across the clearing. Temari swoops out of the way, and Kankurou forces chakra into his feet, planting him in place. He lets his strongest puppet out, dropping Sanshouo onto the sand in order to shield himself from the worst of the blast.

At the base of the cavern is a man. Tall and fierce, he has close-cropped brown hair and a veritable array of scars adorning his muscled body and face. There’s a nasty one crossed down from his forehead to nose, straight through his right eye. His arms are crossed over his chest, and black fuinjutsu markings encircle his forearms.

“What’s going on, Kouki?” He grunts.

“Taking care of the intruders!” The woman says, as five more puppets dance into being. They’re cloaked in long white cloth, and shiny masks are perched atop their faces. “Perfect trap, ha! I told you we needed more security.”

Kouki has narrowed catlike eyes and short blond hair, gathered into a little tuft of a ponytail at the back of her head. Chakra strings wave from her slender fingers.

“You have no idea what you’re messing with,” Ed growls. “Don’t go playing around with human transmutation, you absolute idiots!”

“You’re the idiots,” Kouki snorts, sharply tugging a puppet towards them. “It doesn’t matter if you have a jinchuuriki or not.” She nods at Gaara. “You can’t escape this. Come on, Haruto, let’s take them down.”

“You bastards!” Ed snarls, clapping his hands together before slamming them down into the sand. The material reshapes and hardens, forming a spiralling runway and staircase framed by skull-tipped newels. He sprints across the platform at– shockingly slow speeds. Kankurou narrows his eyes. He’s no faster than a civilian.

Kouki laughs and sends a puppet after him. It moves somewhat clunkily, at a slower pace than Kankurou’s standard puppeteering speed, but it’s still much faster than Ed. Kankurou easily moves to intercept, switching out with Karasu. He casts a henge over top, and lets his first puppet clash with his opponent’s. The other puppets are guided around the clearing, propelled through the air by Kouki’s chakra strings.

In terms of numbers in this fight, their opponents are at a disadvantage, but the puppets more than make up for it. All in all, she has twelve puppets that she pulls to and fro. Although their movements aren’t the smoothest, that’s a pretty big number for a beginner, so she’s likely not a novice after all.

One puppet lags back, staying behind to guard Haruto. Some head towards the edges of the clearing, while others beeline towards Gaara, and the rest move to encircle Temari. His sister stands tall, hands coming up to form the hand signs for a wind jutsu, probably looking for the best angle to bash them against the canyon walls. They’re in a tight spot, it’s true, but they’ll have to make do.

Gaara tries to pull on his vast quantity of sand, but unfortunately, Ed seems to have done something to it when he made his bridge. Kankurou curses freely. How utterly inconvenient. It won’t put him down for long, as he can easily grind it back down to its original form, but it has temporarily slowed Gaara for the time being.

Kankurou manipulates Karasu, letting its blades flick out to cut and slash at their clothed opponents. His puppets dance around, moving smoothly with far more grace, in his humble opinion. All his blades are poisoned, but that’s next to useless when fighting against a fellow puppet user.

It’s strange. He’s never gone up against another puppet user for real before. There’s Granny Chiyo and friendly spars with the other members of the puppet corps, but he’s never had an actual fight before. Suna doesn’t get a ton of missing-nin, thank kami, and certainly not puppet users. The only one he can think of is Sasori of the Red Sand, but there’s no way he’d come out of an encounter like that alive.

He’s shivering just thinking about it. But that’s not important right now. He needs to focus on the fight.

Gaara finally gets his sand under control and manages to catch three puppets in its unrelenting grasp. His hand clenches in a motion that used to feature in the worst of Kankurou’s nightmares.

“Sand Coffin,” he rasps, and tight, coiling sand rushes in and squeezes.

He nearly winces. His childhood puppets had sometimes been on the receiving end, and it’s easy to recall the broken slivers and crushed joints that were the only remnants once the sand was pulled back. But this arrogant traitor is their opponent, so there’s no reason to take pity. He’s simply relieved that’s three out of twelve puppets down. Only nine more to go.

Except maybe it’s not quite that easy.

Kouki laughs, long and loud. “You fools! Please, you thought you could crush my puppets? My parents were metal workers, you know. Everyone used to mock me and tell me that I was spitting in the face of tradition, but my puppets are the best! What’s a simple wooden frame compared to iron and steel? Ha!”

Kankurou nearly spits in disgust. Metal puppets? What is this, the Land of Iron? It’s ridiculous. Wooden puppets are obviously superior. They’re lighter and more mobile, for one, making them more agile combatants and easily manoeuvrable in battle. They’re stealthier, they’re adaptable, they require far less chakra for movement control… Kankurou could go on and on.

Not to mention, Suna puppetry is an ancient tradition! Hand carving your first wooden puppet is a sign of respect that shows your dedication to the craft. And besides that, it’s Suna! Where do you go about finding large quantities of metal anyways? This area has a good deposit of iron oxides and ores, but metals aren’t that common in the desert.

He’s really looking forward to showing this woman a thing or two.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the opportunity just yet. Gaara’s sand draws back to reveal the puppets, dented and worse for wear, but not crushed beyond all repair.

“Fucking metal puppets,” he spits.

She scoffs. “Puppet Corps. No respect for innovation.”

“Trading manoeuvrability for durability. With twelve puppets.” Chakra infusion is different with metal compared to wood. “What a chakra drain.”

“You’re just like them,” Kouki accuses. “This is why I left. I hate you self-righteous idiots clinging onto tradition and refusing to even consider changing your ways. Maybe I just wanted to try something new, huh? And you all looked at me like I was an abomination.”

It’s true that Puppet Corps is very traditional. They’re bound by a cultural heritage that stretches back aeons. But it’s not all tradition. They do it because it works. And sure, you can incorporate metal into your puppets. Weapons, shields, Kankurou does it all the time. But a full metal puppet? Honestly. And besides.

“You turned traitor,” he points out. “You don’t get to talk.”

Kouki’s eyes narrow. “Whatever. Just die already.”

The puppet beside Haruto is doing something, and more puppets race to his side, but Kankurou doesn’t get to see what, as the rest of the puppets burst into action. Gaara’s eyes harden as he prepares further tendrils of sand. Temari’s hands move into a familiar wind jutsu. Kankurou just strengthens his chakra strings and lets his chakra flow into his puppets’ blades, hopefully giving them extra sharpness and durability. His are so much more agile, but the metal will certainly make his opponents’ more difficult to destroy, he’ll give her that much.

Karasu dances through the air, and Sanshouo keeps him shielded. That leaves Kuroari. He sends it under a genjutsu towards Kouki, in an attempt at catching her off guard. It nearly works, but Haruto seizes on it, and manages to send an air bullet in warning. Kankurou curses. So close.

Higher up in the air, Temari sends a swarm of puppets crashing into the cavern walls. Her wind blows thick and furious, and they fly straight through the rock. Crumbling red dust and stone falls down into the canyon below. Unfortunately, Kankurou knows this is far from the greatest gales she can achieve with her fan being used as transport instead of jutsu enhancement. It must also be difficult to keep both wind jutsus going at once. The puppets pick themselves out of the rubble, the wind being too weak to have done permanent damage.

On the other hand, Gaara is succeeding in his next attempts at making a dent. Instead of crushing, he grabs the puppet's limbs and twists. Limbs pop out of their sockets, as metal clangs to the ground. Kankurou shoots him an appreciative glance. His trusty little brother is coming through as always.

At the very end of his self-made staircase is the final member of their group. Ed. Poor, non-shinobi Ed. Kankurou should have realized earlier that he wouldn’t be able to contribute to the fight, but he’d been so impressed by his ridiculous alchemy that he hadn’t taken into account that Ed simply didn’t have the speed or strength to keep up with the rest of them.

Currently, the blond is charging at Haruto with a– a knife-hand. Kankurou blinks. Okay then.

He turns back to his own fight. Now that he’s had time to analyze his opponent’s shoddy construction work, he’s able to pinpoint the weaknesses of these puppets. Their joints are screwed weirdly, and if Kankurou manages to get Karasu’s blade in the right place, he’ll be able to disable their main attack functions. It would normally be difficult to be so precise, but thankfully these puppets are slow and clunky. He shakes his head as Karasu makes a jab and the limb unhinges itself. He does the same thing to the puppet behind it. So disappointing. Useful, but disappointing.

Oh well. Four down, eight to go.

Some of the puppets nestled by Haruto straighten, slinking around the edges of the canyon. Kankurou eyes them warily, then shrugs. They’re spreading out, probably looking to come at them from all angles.

“Temari,” he shouts. “Get on Gaara’s sand already. You can sweep them away from the center.”

His sister scowls. She likes her mobility, but using the full power of her fan for jutsus is really the best option here. She reluctantly descends onto the sand below.

“Get in close,” she calls. “You too, Ed.”

Ed is barely able to push past the heavy wind coming from Haruto’s direction. He’s spitting mad, but it’s not difficult to bring him back into the huddle.

Temari’s eyes narrow as she grips the hilt of her fan in both hands. Kankurou’s puppets have been called back in, and he tucks them close to protect them from his sister’s wrath. She breathes in, readying herself for the perfect moment. As soon as they start closing in, she’ll cast her jutsu, dashing them against the canyon walls.

Three. Two. One–

His body slumps.

It’s like a sudden burst of cold injected straight into his veins. His limbs feel heavy, and his head feels dusty and muddled. A wave of fatigue. Sludge weighing down his stomach.

It’s not quite the dizzying and disgusting sensation of chakra exhaustion, but Kankurou can recognize this all the same. His chakra has been suppressed.

All of their chakra has been suppressed. Temari leans heavily against the base of her fan, and Gaara makes a strangled keening noise from the center of their group. Oh no. Oh no.

From the edges of the platform, sand begins to fall.

Kankurou frantically tries to recall chakra into his fingers, but it’s utterly useless. He can only hold his breath and prepare for their impending descent into the soul-sucking circle below. His chakra is blocked, and their souls are about to be ripped apart. His heart races faster and faster as the sand crumbles inwards, falling as a gentle dusty shower. So soft for something so terrifying.

First to disperse are Gaara’s curling tendrils, then comes the shields, and then the sides of the platform, until the only thing saving them from their terminal drop is the disintegrating base–

The platform holds firm.

Ed’s golden eyes glare back at him. The alchemist looks up from where he’s been kneeling, hands slammed down into the platform. His teeth are gritted and his expression is hard.

Thank Kami.

Kankurou’s never felt such a sheer rush of relief.

“What’s going on?” Kouki turns and glares in the direction of one of her puppets. “Isn’t it supposed to suppress chakra?”

“That’s the purpose, yes,” Haruto says. He surveils their little group intensely.

“Then why isn’t it working? It doesn’t work on jutsus already cast or something?”

That’s clearly not it, but Kankurou dearly hopes they go with that explanation. Damn. Ed’s the only one who can do anything now. Ed. He’s got spirit and cool alchemy, yeah, but he’s still not a shinobi. And now he’ll need to take down two missing-nin and the rest of the puppets on his own.

They might just be doomed.

“She didn’t have a lot of time,” Haruto says, scowling. “For a solution made to deal with the jinchuuriki on the fly, it’s very impressive.”

Kankurou takes a look at their on-the-fly solution. It’s a series of five fuinjutsu tags, stuck to the outsides of each puppet. The black ink is still wet, and the hastily scribbled symbols are not very neat, yet clearly still effective.

“Well, if that’s the case,” Kouki says irritably. “Fine.”

She sends one of the outer puppets towards them. Kankurou inhales, and grabs at his kunai, but it turns out it’s unnecessary. The chakra strings break down at the threshold, sending the puppet’s limbs sagging downwards. Kouki scowls and reels it back in.

“Your tags are shit.”

Haruto’s head darts up. “Watch your language.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine, your tags are crap. Is that better, Mister mother hen?”

“You can shut your mouth about the tags,” he says warningly.

“Whatever,” she repeats. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Good luck dodging without chakra, assholes.”

Heated metal glints in the light as she stacks shuriken between her fingers.

“You want to try me? Bring it!” Ed surges forward, and Temari grabs him by the shoulder.

“Wait,” she hisses. “You won’t be able to take them out immediately by charging, and if you display your skills like that, they’ll just kill you. We need to take out the puppets.”

She tries to lift her fan, but the heavy weight is far more difficult to handle without chakra-enhanced muscles. “I’ll block the shuriken, and the rest of you throw your kunai to disable the seals. Ed, just support them.”

Kankurou balances two kunai in the palms of his hands, and peers warily at the miniscule tags stuck to the puppets located at the very edges of the clearing, nearly 60 feet out. It’s a simple throw even for someone like him who doesn’t specialize in weaponry, but right now his limbs are like jelly and his head is spinning. And as for Gaara? Kankurou would be shocked if Gaara had personally touched a kunai in the last decade.

“This is the plan?”

Temari ignores him. “Gaara?”

Gaara tentatively pokes a finger through the kunai ring hilt.

Kankurou clears his throat. “You were saying?”

She glares at him. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“We need to take all the puppets at once,” Ed mumbles. “Metal puppets. Red sand.”

His head jolts up.

“Iron oxide.”

“Yeahhh,” Kankurou says slowly. “Is that supposed to be an idea?”

It is, apparently, and a damn good one at that, judging by the truly devilish grin breaking across his face.

“The sands are red here because they’re coated in iron oxide. Now, that’s a compound with a couple of interesting properties. They make good pigments, great catalysts, but most importantly, when you align the moments and amplify the field–”

His eyes glitter victoriously. “They’re excellent magnets.”

Ed claps and brings his hands down once more, slamming into the sand. There’s a rush of red, as the sand base sucks down, then up, dust spinning across the surface then rising, swirling outwards towards the puppets. Clumps of red sand gather and darken, hardening into a long brown bar that races to stretch around the clearing.

As it moves, the puppets are drawn in, flying towards the metal and clinking into place, completely immobile. Soon they’re all out of position, and Kankurou can feel the welcome burn of chakra pulsing through his coils once more. He stands up straighter and lets the chakra pool back into his fingertips.

“Stop!” Kouki cries out. Her shuriken are gone now too, pulled along by Ed’s magnet. She uselessly attempts to manoeuvre her chakra strings. The puppets twitch, but her strings aren’t enough to overcome the force of the magnet.

“They’re my puppets! You don’t have chakra! You shouldn’t be able to do that!”

Judging by the strength of the magnet, Kankurou figures that if it were him, he’d be able to overcome it. He would have to really push, and it would take all his control and the very depths of his stores, but he’s sure that his strings could handle it. But this woman, with her heavy puppets and badly infused metal…

He can’t help the smirk that slips across his lips.

Ed is just as smug. “I have alchemy,” he crows. “Take this!”

“Wait,” Haruto demands urgently. “Do not–!”

The magnet, with all its attached puppets, divides and twists, shredding the puppets apart and plunging them towards the ground. It’s powerful and awe-striking, an act similar to Gaara’s own masterful control coming from someone who Kankurou hadn’t thought would even be able to contribute to the fight. The dirt swells, dust curtaining through the air, and the puppets buckle–

An agonized scream cuts through the air before being hastily choked off.

“Ayumi!” Haruto shouts. “Ayumi!” His eye is red and frantic as he hastily crushes a nearby section of the tablet. The resonant hum of the circle finally dies out.

The magnet stops, sending metal clanging loudly against the sides from its abrupt halt. It hovers just above the dirt before the metal flows around forming another platform.

“Fuck,” Ed says. His hands are shaky. His face is a ghostly white. “I– Fuck.”

He brings his hands to his face and breathes out explosively, before rounding on Haruto.

“Who the hell is Ayumi? Are those puppets– are they people?”

“Puppets aren’t people,” Kankurou shoots back automatically, but he can’t deny the very human-like scream they’d heard. Haruto ignores them both. Now that the circle’s broken, he races across the clearing towards the giant metal slab in the middle. Kouki clenches her fists and tentatively follows.

Gaara frowns, retaking control of his sand. He slowly moves their own platform towards their enemies.

Haruto kneels down beside one of the puppets, hand carding across its metal limbs. He braces, then tugs hard on the body, but the metal stays stuck fast, attached to the large magnet. A pained hiss emanates from the towering frame.

“End your jutsu,” he snarls. “I need to check on her.”

Ed mutely nods, eyes still locked on the twitching puppet. He goes to clap–

Temari holds a hand up. “Surrender.” She states firmly. “You’re missing-nin. This is your last chance to come in quietly.”

Haruto’s jaw is locked, and his scarred face is as intimidating as ever, but Kankurou is looking directly into his eye and he can see the man’s true emotions. Concern, fear, desperation. Whoever Ayumi is, he’d do anything for her, Kankurou can tell. He knows these emotions well. It’s the same thing he’d felt that day when Gaara had been defeated by the Konoha jinchuuriki, when he’d looked up into his enemies eyes and could only hope against hope for mercy, for his siblings' lives to be spared–

“I surrender,” the man says. He bows his head. “We both surrender. But please, let me check on her–”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kouki demands from behind them. “We surrender? You’re going to give up, just like that? What have we been working for all this time then, huh? We can’t quit now!”

“We surrender,” Haruto repeats.

“They’ll take us in! You’re signing us up to be Suna prisoners, and then you’ll never fix–”

“It’s useless if she is dead,” Haruto snaps. “And I would rather spend a lifetime in T&I than let my sister die.”

Ed sucks in a breath.

“We can still do it!” Kouki shrieks. “We can fix her! Fine, if you won’t do anything, I’ll do it myself!” Her eyes roll wildly as she charges at Ed, who barely manages to turn around as her fist blows towards him at lightning speed–

It hangs in the air inches away from his face.

“Please surrender,” Gaara says quietly, letting his sand encase her limbs. “We have questions for you, but this does not need to be difficult. If you cooperate, we will ensure you remain together and do our best to help you as well.”

“I- Fine! We’ll answer your questions, but you better not screw with us, got it?”

“We will cooperate.” Haruto interrupts. “Now, please–”

Ed dismantles the magnet in an instant.

The puppet makes a gasping noise as it falls to the ground. “Ha-Haruto,” it wheezes.

“Ayumi. Are you alright?” Haruto hastily uncovers the latch, and removes the top head-shaped piece, revealing a dark-skinned girl with long brown hair. Her eyes are unfocused, and blood trickles down the side of her head, matting into her hair.

“You’re not soul-bound,” Ed accuses.

Kouki sneers. “What the heck is that?”

“I thought– never mind. What do you mean, fix her, then? What were you trying to fix?”

Something about this situation has been bothering Kankurou all along, and as Ed says those words, the answer suddenly snaps into place. All the puppets had been infused with chakra before, but with the seal, they were cancelled out, and then the chakra strings were dropped. There wasn’t the same flow of chakra coming from that direction, and it made sense. The puppets were no longer active.

But now he knows there’s been a girl inside all along. It’s true that he’s slowly gotten used to interacting with these ghost-like people– Ed, for example, who’s been with him for days, without a single speck of energy emanating from him. But this girl. She’s from here. Kankurou should feel her. So where’s–

“Her chakra system,” Kankurou blurts. “It’s missing.”

“Her chakra system,” Haruto says harshly, “was taken.”

Ed stumbles backwards, hands going back to catch himself. “No,” he says. “No, you didn’t. You idiots.”

“What did you do?” Temari demands.

Ayumi’s eyes flutter.

“We will relocate,” Gaara tells them all. “We can ensure that your sister is treated, and then you will tell us everything.”

Chapter Text

Gaara has a lot of thoughts on siblings. He’s never been a very good one, but he is observant. He sees the way that Kankurou and Temari act around each other. They bicker and quarrel all the time, and it used to irritate him beyond measure. His siblings’ constant little contests for power and attempts to prove their relative existences, without the force to back it up – Useless.

He sees now what he had always missed before. The love that strings through every word, every interaction. It’s always present, in their teasing nudges, in their soft and tender gazes. They’re family, and they love each other.

Haruto and Ayumi are the same. The girl is resting now, laid out on the bed of a nearby market stall they’d co-opted. She’s not heavily injured, but she is bruised all over, battered in a way that only someone without the chakra to reinforce themselves would be. Haruto hovers over her, a hand going to her forehead, then back down again, to hold the hand that pokes out from beneath the covers.

He clearly loves his little sister. He’s trading in his freedom to ensure her safety and remain by her side. He squeezes her hand, and seconds later, her fingers tap gently back. It’s soft. It’s sweet. Gaara feels–

He doesn’t know. A strange rumbling in his stomach, maybe, or some sort of fuzziness in his mouth. He’s not good at categorizing emotions. For so long, he focused only on blood and hate. Whenever he felt anything, Mother– sorry, Shukaku, would simply inform him to act on it by wiping out the cause. Now that he’s trying to be more in touch with his emotions, he has no one to turn to. He wants to ask his siblings, but he freaks them out too often, and he never knows why. And he can’t ask Shukaku because–

It’s your desire to kill, Shukaku pipes up. Crush them both!

Please be quiet, Gaara informs him. I am no longer taking your advice.

It’s not the desire to kill, that he knows for certain. But what else could it be?

Maybe he’s hungry.

Gaara fishes out the date bars just in case, and takes a few bites. They’re still very good. He offers some to the missing-nin as well, just to be polite.

Hm. They didn’t automatically assume he was trying to poison them. His personability must be improving.

“I would like to hear your story now,” Gaara says. “Please explain what brought you to this point.”

The woman scowls. “That’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Kankurou comments.

She rolls her eyes. “Well, you already know where I’m from. I joined the Puppet Corps and thought you guys were all assholes, so I took off. I wanted to do my own thing. And look, I know I’m a traitor, but it’s not like I hurt anyone! I just left, that’s all!”

“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Temari says sharply. “So our three scouting teams who coincidentally went missing around the location of your base weren’t your doing?”

Kouki pauses. “Well–”

“Missing?” Ed demands. His golden eyes flash as his head jerks towards Temari. “You didn’t tell me about that!”

She purses her lips. “Then I’ll tell you now. We’ve had over twelve shinobi vanish in this area over the past month or so. Missing, presumed dead.” She glares at their former enemies. “So, you tell me. Are they dead?”

“You’re trying to accuse us of murder?” Kouki snarls.

“Yes, they are dead,” Haruto says dully. “Kouki, please cooperate.”

She flushes. “I was just trying to–”

“Please, do not lie.” Gaara orders. “We wish to help you, but if you do not cooperate, it will be difficult.”

He feels a pang of something else at the thought of loyal Suna shinobi dying here. It’s not the same as the last feeling, this one is biting and sharp, gnawing in his chest.

Murder, Shukaku supplies helpfully. It’s the feeling of murder!

I do not believe it is, Gaara replies.

No, this one’s… sadder, almost. Guilt? Loss?

Or maybe he’s just dehydrated.

Gaara takes a small sip from his nearby cup of water.

He does want to help these people. He wants to protect the love of a brother and his sister. He wants to ensure the safety of the angry friend who wants nothing more than to help her teammates. But he is still a shinobi first.

He prays they cooperate.

“We did kill them,” Haruto says, looking down at his hands. They are still joined with Ayumi’s.

“You never should have touched it,” Ed snarls. “You should have left the tablets alone. That’s how you killed them, right? You used the human transmutation circle.”

“I do not even know how it works,” Haruto tells them. “Ayumi would better be able to say, but yes. The tablets are what killed them.”

“Explain.” Temari orders.

Haruto bows his head. “If you truly wish to know everything, I will tell you. I grew up in a merchant family, and I wanted to work towards bodyguarding, but my family insisted that the shinobi path was the correct decision to take. I took classes at the academy, and I was an average student. I am physically strong, and I am talented with my wind nature. But–”

He hesitates. “But… my sister, my sister is a genius. She had a talent for chakra that I never understood. It quickly became her whole life. She did not want to fight. She was a researcher above all else, always curious, always pushing boundaries. And she excelled in fuinjutsu.”

Fuinjutsu. A difficult art, one that hardly anyone can say they’ve mastered. A dangerous art, one that caused the destruction of an entire people just to rid the world of it.

“What’s fuinjutsu?” Ed asks.

“Sealing techniques,” Kankurou explains. “Anything involving sealing things away, but for true fuinjutsu masters, it’s using chakra infused symbols to impose your will on reality. It’s ridiculously difficult, and insanely powerful. And your sister can do it?”

“Ayumi is a master,” Haruto states firmly. “I knew from the beginning that she would become talented enough to reach these levels, and she has surpassed my expectations. And I also knew what Suna would do to her upon finding out. My sister is a girl driven by passion and curiosity. She is not a fighter, and she never wished to become a shinobi. I did not want to see her become Suna’s new weapon of destruction.” He locks eyes with Gaara.

“A dog of the military,” Ed mumbles.

Gaara bows his own head. No, he would not wish that fate upon anyone.

“And so we left. I took her and ran. We met Kouki along the way, and joined with her, as we would be able to protect ourselves together. We lived like that for a time, wandering, learning and taking odd jobs. We were improving with every passing day, and I trained often, but I was still injured on a job. I lost my right eye.” He brushes a hand over his face. “Afterwards, we kept going, and it was in that period that we came upon the tablets.”

Ed’s expression darkens.

“Ayumi was curious. She thought they were some different variation of fuinjutsu that she had never seen before, and she set to work attempting to restore their original function. It turned out to be some sort of body transformation jutsu. A way to recompose a human body, change it and restore it.” He swallows. “At first it was simply out of idle curiosity, but then… She was dedicated. She thought she could get my eye back.”

Gaara watches as a myriad of emotions flicker across Ed’s face. He can’t categorize them all, but he recognizes one of them. Dread.

“We did not have all the parts of the tablet, but she supplemented it with fuinjutsu. I do not know exactly what she did, but that night, she must have struck upon a solution. I did not realize it worked, I simply went to bed and woke up to hear her screaming. She had been testing the circle on herself before she attempted to use it on me, and it… did not go well. She was not fatally injured, but her chakra system was taken. That is all she told me. ‘It took my chakra. I saw it, I saw the door, and it took my chakra.’ She said nothing else.”

Ed’s face is white. “I- I knew– She saw it. She–” He swallows, then laughs bitterly. “At least we know it works. If the door is there, then it’s confirmed. That’s my way back.”

Haruto’s eyes dart towards him, but he continues his story without asking any questions. “We went searching for answers. We attempted to find an expert, anyone who might know of its origins. There were none, but we did find more pieces to the tablet. An additional section, and… a red stone.”

Ed leans forward, eyes avidly fixed on the man, but Gaara is looking somewhere else. Throughout this whole speech, Haruto has never released his sister’s hand. His thumb strokes over the back of her hand, and he idly plays with her fingers. They are conjoined. They are together.

Gaara tries to be a better person now, and his siblings no longer cower, but they do not touch him so freely. He hasn’t been touched in such a way since Yashamaru.

The feeling in his abdomen shifts. He doesn’t attempt to categorize it.

“She said the stone was made of souls. A stone soul. It hardly makes sense, and you may not believe us, but that is what it is.”

“I believe you,” Ed says. “I know that stone. It’s a philosopher’s stone, and the horrific truth behind its creation is the fact that it’s created using human sacrifices.” He glares into the man’s eyes. “And you attempted to use it.”

“Ayumi would not tell me at first. She eventually hypothesized that with enough souls, the stone would gain the power to act as fare to power the seals and allow the body transformation to take place. We did not intend for it to happen at first, but Suna shinobi were lured in by the strange energy emanating from the stone, and their lives were lost to the circle.”

“An accident,” Temari says skeptically, eyes hard.

He shakes his head. “At first, partially, but I will make no excuses for what happened afterwards. Once we realized it would act as bait, we continued luring in the scouting teams. Their souls gradually powered the stone, making it grow stronger.”

“You murdered them,” Ed accuses fiercely.

For the first time in this conversation, he meets their eyes. “You are right. It was murder. I cannot deny it. But you must understand, her chakra was her life. My sister was strong and brilliant, and she loved chakra experimentation more than anything. Now she is weak and sickly, she is easily injured, and she cannot experiment. She cannot even stay at my side in battle without remaining encased in Kouki’s puppet. Her only way to power her seals is to do it through me.”

The man slams his hands down. “She is my sister. I would do anything to give her back what she has lost.”

“It’s still murder,” Ed argues. “You think that’s equivalent? All those people you’re sacrificing–”

“She has lost so much. She is my sister, you would not understand–”

“I wouldn’t understand?” Ed laughs, a harsh, cracked chuckle. “Me? Do you want to know why I thought you had Ayumi soul-bonded to the armour when I first saw her?”

“Soul-bonded?” Haruto echoes. His eyebrows crease. He’s caught off guard, wrong-footed.

“It’s because I know someone like that. My little brother. Your sister lost her chakra? I lost my limbs.”

He pulls up his shirt sleeve, revealing the metal arm Gaara had barely caught a glimpse of during their fight. Then he pulls up the hem of his pants, revealing a similar artificial leg.

“And Al? He lost his whole body. I had to attach his soul to the family suit of armour in order to keep it anchored. He can’t sleep, or eat, or touch anything. He’s just a soul stuck to a metal body.”

A lifetime imprisoned in a metal cage. Gaara already knows what it’s like to be unable to sleep. He understands the feeling of being untouchable, the sweeping sand preventing him from any connection.

Gaara sees the look in Ed’s eyes when he talks about his brother. Gaara is sure that if he could, Ed would hold his brother’s hand; embrace him fiercely. Gaara pities Al for not being able to fully experience the love Ed would be sure to share.

“We’ve been looking for a way to get his body back,” Ed continues. “We were searching for the philosopher’s stone for so long, and we finally thought we had it… but that was when we discovered the truth. The true sacrifice needed to create a stone.”

“And you refused,” Haruto murmurs.

“That’s right!” He stomps up towards the man. “The truth behind the world is equivalent exchange. You can’t create anything without something of equal value being lost. But there’s one thing that has no equivalence: human lives! You can’t sacrifice a life for another!”

“I–” Haruto whispers. “I–”

“Al and I are going to get his body back, but we promised to find another way!”

Haruto crumples over his sister’s slowly breathing form. “I just needed to fix her,” he says, anguished. “She lost so much, and it was all my fault. I could only–”

“Your fault?” Ayumi asks roughly. “Nii-san, how could you say that?”

He jerks up. “Ayumi? You are awake?”

“What do you mean it was your fault?” She asks insistently. “I thought… I thought you blamed me. I was careless, and I made a stupid mistake. And without chakra, I am useless. I wasn’t able to get your eye back, and then you had to fix your broken sister–”

“Never!” Haruto insists. “You are not broken, and you are not useless. I- It was my fault, as it was due to me that you powered the seals. If you had not been trying to fix my eye, you would not have gotten hurt. I assumed you hated me. I did not work on the stone for my eye, I only wanted to help you.”

“I- I don’t–” There are tears in Ayumi’s eyes. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I thought–”

Haruto kneels down and embraces her fiercely.

Gaara soaks in the scene. The girl’s eyes are shut, and tears trickle down her cheeks. The man’s face is pressed into her hair, and Gaara cannot see his expression, but his arms tremble from their tight grip around her form. Ed stares too. His eyes are wide, and a strange emotion lurks at the back of their depths.

“Jeeze,” Kouki drawls, breaking the scene. “You two are messed up.” She’s trying for an aloof, disinterested persona, but the slight crack in her voice gives her away.

There is so much to take in. Amidst the tears, the confessions, and the raw emotions laid bare, the weight of the situation hangs heavy in the air. Gaara watches as the complexities of human relationships unfold before him. The burden of guilt, the ferocity of love.

Haruto slowly pulls away from Ayumi, his expression a mixture of relief and regret. "I apologize, Ayumi. I never intended for you to feel that way."

"I am sorry, too," she whispers, her voice barely audible. "I should have spoken earlier."

Their voices are low, fragile, yet they resonate with sincerity. Gaara can't help but feel a strange tug within himself, a reminder of the emotions he's only just beginning to understand.

“We are finished,” Haruto says with utter finality. His head is still inclined towards his sister. “I… do not know what to do now. We have committed atrocities, and for nothing. Even after all that, the stone still does not even have enough power to restore her.” He pulses chakra through the seal on his arm, and at Gaara’s side, both Kankurou and Temari tense.

There is no need for hostility. Haruto simply activates a storage seal, letting a darkly shining stone drop into his hand. Agony emanates from the little red gem. Gaara eyes it warily.

“Take it,” he says. “I– We are done. Do what you wish with us, but please, understand that I was the one who pushed to power the stone. Even Kouki was only following my directions. Please have mercy on her and my sister. That is all I ask.”

“Following your directions?” Kouki repeats angrily. “I made my own choices, Haruto. I wanted to help Ayumi just as much as you did, so don’t you dare take that away from me.” She turns to face them. “Whatever happens, I’m going with them.”

They have completely surrendered. Gaara steps forward, his gaze steady on Haruto and Kouki. "You will accompany us back to Sunagakure and we will present your case to the council. The final decision will be theirs."

Haruto nods, a mixture of apprehension and acceptance on his face. "I understand."

Ayumi shifts, her eyes red from tears. "Nii-san, you can’t just– What if they don't forgive us?"

Haruto takes a deep breath, his grip on her hand unwavering. "Then we'll accept the consequences of our actions. We'll face whatever punishment they deem fit."

Ed watches this exchange, his expression thoughtful. "You guys are willing to face whatever comes, no matter the outcome."

Kouki shrugs, movement carrying a touch of defiance. "Better than running forever."

Ed's grin widens, a glint of admiration in his golden eyes. "Yeah, I get that."

Ayumi sways slightly, and Haruto catches it. “Go back to sleep,” he says. “Whatever happens will happen. Rest, for now.”

They let the girl sleep and migrate towards the other room. As soon as they cross the threshold, Haruto seems to deflate, tired despair creeping across his face that had previously only shown false determination. He looks listless, struggling without purpose.

“We are to go back to T&I, then,” he inquires dully. “Not only are we missing-nin, but we have murdered your shinobi, and I know there is no light sentence for such a crime. I had only thought to help Ayumi, and now she is still sick, and there is no solution… I apologize. I understand– I know we have done wrong. And now we pay for it.”

He sounds utterly defeated. The air hangs heavy. So many lives were lost, but Gaara focuses most on the weight of Haruto's words, his struggle, and his desperate devotion to his sister. He has made mistakes, and now they are catching up to him. The man sees no path further to lead him from this abyss.

“We are finished,” he says again, eyes closing in defeat.

“No,” Ed says abruptly.

Gaara turns towards their wayward traveller. As Ed's gaze remains fixed on Haruto, his clenched fists tremble slightly. There’s a fire ignited in his eyes.

“No,” he repeats. “You’re not finished. What you’re going to do, is get up. Keep going. I'm not going to pretend that what you did was right. You made a terrible choice, one that cost innocent lives, and you’ll have to face the consequences of your actions. But that doesn’t mean you stop trying. You don’t give up on finding a way to help your sister. And you don’t give up on making things right, in whatever way you can.”

Ed's words are blunt, hitting with the full weight of the truth behind them. Haruto blinks, surprise mingling with the defeat on his face. He doesn't look away from Ed's stern gaze.

Ed steps closer, his voice growing firmer. "But condemning yourself to a lifetime of guilt and despair won't change anything. You can't change what happened, but you can change what you do now. You can show that you're willing to make amends, that you're not the same person who made those mistakes."

There’s a new light in Haruto’s eyes. It's as if Ed's words are stirring something within him that he thought had been extinguished. Kouki watches him too, her facade of indifference wavering.

Gaara's attention shifts between the two, as the dynamic in the room palpably shifts. Ed's determination is a spark, reigniting something in them that had long been buried under mountains of guilt and regret.

Ed continues, his voice unwavering. "You said you wanted to help your sister, right? Then show her that you're willing to fight for her in a different way. Don't give up just because the path you were on led you astray. Find a new path, a better one. And do whatever you can to make things right."

Haruto's eyes widen.

Gaara knows firsthand the desire to change, the wish to rise above past mistakes and forge a new future. It seems as though Ed knows this too. What in his past could have given him such insight? His words are not directed at Gaara, but they still seem to answer all of his fears.

Finally, Haruto speaks, his voice shaky but with a renewed determination. "You are correct. I cannot give back the lives that we have taken, but I can attempt to repay it in other ways. I will not give up. As you say, I will forge a new path."

Ed's lips curve into a small smile. "That's the spirit.”

Kouki rolls her eyes, but there's a hint of vulnerability in her stance. "Fine, whatever. What he said. We're not having a sappy group hug, are we?"

Ed smirks, his grin slightly teasing. "Don't worry, I’m not that touchy-feely."

Haruto turns to Gaara. “What would you have us do?”

That’s right. Gaara is the leader here. And it is Gaara’s decision that will decide the fates of these three missing-nin.

The breeze sways the canvas roofs. The sun is beginning to dip below the horizon, casting elongated shadows across the marketplace. In this dwindling light, Gaara contemplates their actions. He knows now, about the importance of protecting loved ones. His own journey has taught him about redemption and change, about walking a path that's different from the one laid out by his past.

Gaara feels the shifting sands beneath his feet. Gaara of the Desert, they call him, for he is the punishing dunes, bringing only sand, bloodlust and death. The desert is merciless. The unforgiving sand strips unprepared travellers to their bones.

But he wants to be more. He’s trying to be more.

The responsibility to make a decision weighs heavily on his shoulders. It's not his natural inclination to sympathize, but he has grown, or at least he hopes he has. The capacity to extend understanding is within his grasp, and he does his best to exert this new skill.

"Haruto. Kouki.” Gaara's voice is even. "Your actions are grave, and the lives lost cannot be undone. But I, too, have made my share of mistakes in the past. I have walked paths soaked in blood."

He looks towards Kankurou and Temari, who exchange glances. Are his siblings looking at him with understanding? Do they know what he is trying to say?

"However," Gaara continues, "redemption is possible. And so I will offer you a choice."

"What do you propose?" Temari inquires, her voice holding a cautious note of optimism.

Gaara steps closer to Haruto and Ayumi, the sand fluttering around him. "We will ensure that Ayumi is treated by our medical team. Suna has a developing medical team that can assess her condition and perhaps find a way to restore her chakra, if it is possible. If not, we will ensure her comfort and relieve her symptoms.”

Haruto swallows visibly, his eyes filled with a mixture of gratitude and anxiety. "You... you would help her?"

“We would. Should she sufficiently recover, she will join the research teams. We will not force her into the field, but she will continue with chakra and fuinjutsu research in our R&D department. As for you, we will bring you to T&I where you will inform us of the missing-nin you have encountered, the functions of your seals, and your jutsu secrets. Afterwards, we will offer you a chance to prove that you are willing to change. You will come back and serve as loyal Sunagakure shinobi. You will help our village and community flourish.”

Ed’s expression is grim as he presses his lips together. Kouki looks as if she's about to protest, but a stern glance from Haruto quiets her.

“We accept,” he says. “That is a generous offer.”

A very generous offer, considering the alternative for most missing-nin is either execution or leaving them to rot in prison after all valuable information has been extracted.

"Helping will not absolve what has been done," Gaara's tone remains firm, unyielding. "But it can guide us towards a better path. If you truly seek redemption, if you are willing to contribute positively, then Suna will offer its guidance. But make no mistake—this is your last chance to choose a different path."

How is he saying this? What is he doing? The words flowing out of his mouth– they’re so firm, so confident. It’s almost like he really believes it.

Temari steps forward, her gaze intense as she assesses Haruto and Kouki. "And understand this, if you're lying or if your intentions waver, we won't hesitate to intervene."

Kouki stiffens but nods, her defiance tempered by a touch of resignation. "We get it. We're not asking for a free pass. Just a chance to make things right."

"We'll hold you to that," Kankurou adds, his arms crossed.

They seem approving. Gaara hopes he has made the right decision.

“Well,” Ed says. “That’s that, I guess. You seem to have things sorted out here. Now it’s time to fix things on my end. I’ve got to get back to Al and defeat Gluttony.”

He eyes the stone, and grimaces. “I’ll need a toll to pay my way back across.”

Gaara nods. “Use it, and return to your brother.”

The red of the stone reflects off Ed’s eyes. It weighs heavy in his palm. “Right,” he says. He swallows, and then brusquely moves towards the scattered pieces of tablet. With a clap, the circle is reconstructed, spiralling patterns greedily swirling across the ground.

“I guess this is it.”

“See you, Alchemy Boy,” Kankurou calls. “Go knife-hand someone in the face for me.”

Temari rolls her eyes. “Good luck with your fight. Hold up your end of the deal, and we’ll keep Suna safe. We’ll destroy the tablets once you leave.”

Ed gazes over them. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best. Don’t let anyone else ever attempt human transmutation.”

Gaara isn’t sure what to say. Ed has been here for days, but it’s only now that he sees the kind of person he is. Someone who has made mistakes. Someone who endures, gets up, and keeps moving forward no matter what.

Someone who has changed Gaara.

He has been trying for so long to outrun his past, but in many ways he is still as stuck as ever. He prays that if he seeks redemption, maybe he can become the person he longs to be, but deep down, he fears he will never succeed. His siblings are friendly now, but will they ever truly forgive him? Will Suna ever accept him as a changed man?

Ed tells him yes. He’s made mistakes, but he can overcome them. He just needs to forge a new path.

“Thank you, Ed,” Gaara says simply. “I know you will succeed. You will not ever give up, will you?”

Ed grins. “That’s right! So just sit back and watch, okay? I’ll take out Gluttony, and I’ll make sure Suna stays safe!”

He claps his hands again, blue light crackling between his palms, and for the last time, slams his hands down into the circle. It lights up, sparks flying, as the symbols glow brightly in the darkened tent. It seems to open up, shadows moving to reveal an eye and an endless abyss. Ed’s teeth are gritted as he steps in, and that’s when the transformation happens, flesh peeling away into specks of dust, hands reaching, and skin being eaten away. It takes, and takes, and–

He’s gone.

The circle hums and falls silent.

They stare for a second, into the previously occupied space, silence sitting heavy between them. It’s a lengthy pause, where only the wind moves above them, fluttering the tent canopy. Something incredible has happened. The desert holds its breath.

And then the bustle of the market starts up again. Gaara is roused into action, and sends his sand sweeping out, grinding the tablet to bits. The circle is wiped clean. Alchemy has much destructive potential, and Gaara will not see it misused in such a manner ever again.

Gaara wishes to discuss with his siblings, but it’s a while still before they are able to speak in private. They return the missing-nin to Suna, speak before the council, and deliver their reports. It’s only later that Gaara is able to ask the question he has been holding in all this time.

“I told them that change was possible. That while one may not be absolved of all mistakes, for those who seek redemption, it is still possible to become a new person, one who can make things right. That is what I told them, but… what do you think? Do you believe that forgiveness is achievable even for those with the worst of pasts?”

Kankurou’s eyes widen. Temari’s do too, before her gaze softens.

She takes his hand. “I do believe that. It may not be easy, but for those who truly try, I think forgiveness is always achievable.”

Kankurou hesitates before putting a hand on his shoulder. “It takes a lot of guts to admit you’re wrong and be willing to fix your mistakes. You– I mean, people who can own up to it and are fully willing to learn how to be a good person? I’d forgive them for sure.”

Temari runs her thumb over the back of his hand and squeezes. “Does that answer your question, little brother?”

There’s a feeling pulsing in his chest. It’s warm and encompassing, spreading through his core and flushing into his face.

This time, he knows exactly what it is.