Lucky Number

"Well?" Kankuro shifted fluidly away from the doorframe. "You coming in or what?"

He said it so carelessly but still Gaara hesitated before stepping over the threshold. There was a time these rooms had been off limits to him, or as off limits as could be managed. Nothing had ever stopped Gaara if he wanted to enter a space, but his particular brand of nihilistic ennui had meant he spent more time avoiding his siblings than bothering them.

Gaara beheld arguments between brothers and sisters with wonder now. How strange it seemed, that one should have a shirt the other called theirs, that toys and nintools and even the task of doing the dishes were matters for debate and disagreement. Neither Temari nor Kankuro would have dared take his shirts, if any fit, and they would rather have done the dishes themselves than risk bringing his ire by interrupting the neverending stream of violent thoughts Shukaku provided him.

That was then.

Gaara closed the door behind him and followed Kankuro into his domain. His space was shaped differently than Temari's, up high where she could open her windows to the breeze. It consisted of three chambers, the first one connected to the others by a short hallway. As Kankuro lived below street level (the cool dark being better for the clay and wood he used in his puppets) long thin windows vented air.

The first room of the set was basic- a ninja's bedroom with bed, dresser, and table. Several scroll racks were lined up along the walls and on the wall closest to the bed was a single set of hooks. This was where Karasu lived when not in use though the puppet had its own sealscroll just like all of Kankuro's others.

Karasu was special.

Kankuro led his Kazekage through the bedroom and the small hallway, seemingly oblivious to the close quarters. As a child the puppeteer could move easily through the passageways but age had added a few feet to him, and Kankuro's broad shoulders almost brushed the walls. Gaara followed close behind and they entered the first of Kankuro's two workshops.

This was the puppet room. Heads, torsos, limbs, some painted and some not, all hung from the ceiling on hooks. Against the far wall by the cubbies that held gears, pegs, screwdrivers, mallets, chisels and other sundries was a ladder meant for the retrieval of the parts. The lights in this room were brighter than the bedroom, almost too bright. Kankuro had clearly been working if the pile of shavings surrounding a large wooden block on the table was any indication.

Beyond the table and the ladder, the cubbies and the cabinets and the hanging puppet parts, there was another door. It was closed with a large lock and several nasty surprises. No one but Kankuro ever went in there.

Kankuro sat down on the bench, gently shifting the puppet aside and patting the space beside him. Gaara sat as well, laying the three pieces of paper out neatly in a fan. Kankuro brushed them with long fingers.

"Can you explain these?" Gaara asked.

Kankuro rose a brow. "What is there to explain? They're mission reports. You've written enough of them."

Gaara's eyes narrowed as he recognized an old game Kankuro once played, keeping hurting places safe by deflecting with ease. "Kankuro." He said firmly. "Consider it an order from your Kazekage. I want an explanation. These are all solo missions given to you while you were on a team with Temari and I."

"Genin can be assigned solo missions," Kankuro says.

"You know what I mean, Kankuro," Gaara replies.

Kankuro leaned forward, studying his handwriting. "Mission replacement." He said. "You know the rule."

Gaara did. In other hidden villages a ninja could turn down any mission- ill health, a personal affiliation with the client, the list was endless. In the Hidden Village of Sand, which was in constant peril of losing both patrons and funding, no nin was allowed to turn down a mission- and those few foolish enough to try were often given missions much harder than the one they had been assigned as replacements.

"You turned down three A ranked solo missions?" Gaara asked, a tinge of disbelief coloring his tone. His brother was an unapologetic glory hound and he reveled in fieldwork. Age had given him experience and would yield yet more if he survived to his thirties, but the mission reports were not yet seven years old. Solo A ranks? Kankuro would have been on it like- what was that phrase Gaara had heard in Konoha last- white on rice.

Kankuro nodded. "Pretty much." He said with a smile. "Didn't feel like it, you know?"

"And what," Gaara said, "was so boring that you found more stimulation in assassinating a political leader, single-handedly defeating a faceworm, and destroying an intelligence leak by collapsing a travelling troupe?"

"I never said it was boring, Gaara." Kankuro corrected. "I just didn't want to."

"And you wanted to do these things?" Gaara asked. It's a loaded question. They do not live peaceful lives. The very makeup of their culture depends on the kind of violence that was written in those reports. These were successful missions that someone should have congratulated Kankuro for.

Did anyone? Gaara knew his brother had few people he considered friends. Had any of the puppeteers offered to buy him a drink, had any of his yearmates from survival training looked him up after he returned? Had a whisper of these missions found Temari on the wind? Perhaps he was the only one who hadn't known yet the way Kankuro was avoiding his gaze told Gaara otherwise.

"A job is a job, Gaara. If you were to assign me something like this I'd do it too."

"Stop it."

"Stop what?" Kankuro asked.

"Stop stalling, stop evading me," Gaara said bluntly. "Stop trying to spare my feelings, whatever you think they are. You will tell me what missions you replaced and why. And you will tell me now."

Kankuro leaned back and sighed so deep his shoulders sagged almost in an upside-down V. In the too-bright light his paint seemed to stretch, like the mask of an oni in a play. Kankuro leaned back against the table, thoughtful, afraid. Gaara watched in quiet fascination as one his brother's carefully constructed masks was disassembled and put away.

"It wasn't three different missions." Kankuro said quietly. "It was the same mission three times."

Gaara felt his blood run cold.

There was only one running mission in Sunakagure.

---

"No."

The Kazekage looks up from his desk, sharp emerald eyes catching an identical set that face him. The young puppeteer stands at complete attention but there is a determined set to his jawline, his too-wide mouth a thin line.

"Excuse me?" the Kazekage purrs.

"I refuse the mission." As an afterthought, "sir."

The Kazekage steeples his fingers, one elegant eyebrow lifting as he looks the genin over. "Did you just refuse a mission, ninja?" he asks, and his voice is the sound of a desert viper's scales sliding over rock.

"Yes sir." The young puppeteer responds. "I did."

"Well then." The man looks over the pile of documents before him. "Let's see if I can find a suitable replacement."

He shuffles the papers at an agonizingly slow pace but the blackclad boy doesn't move an inch, face as firm as though it has been carved in stone. Only when his Kazekage holds out a folder does he move.

"The Arakida have been bleeding us for far too long. The client..." the Kazekage pauses, as though relishing the words. "wants it painful. We must give the client what they want, Kankuro."

"Yes, sir." The puppeteer replies, turns, heads for the door.

"Kankuro?"

He pauses. "Yes, sir?"

"I hope that you'll think better next time. You disappoint me."

---

Kankuro took the papers from where they sat under Gaara's limp hand. He began looking them over. "Oh, Arakida. That really was a shame, even if he was bangin' his own daughter. Smart dude but he threw in against Dad and we all know how that ends."

---

The second time Kankuro is summoned to the Kazekage's office for a mission assignment, there is yelling, two raised voices almost alike in pitch and volume. Someday soon they will be indistinguishable from one another.

When Kankuro leaves the office with his mission orders, no one meets his eyes.

He waits until the sun has gotten a little lower in the sky before he heads for the Red Sands Playhouse, notes his intention to spend the night in the logbooks, and goes to the southern practice courtyard.

They aren't used to seeing him so late.

"Crow?" one of the Journeymen asks, his blue painted face concerned.

"Dragon, have you seen Mantis?" Kankuro asks, smile big and eyes empty. "I need to study up on faceworms."

--

Kankuro slid a mission report between his fingers. "That first faceworm seemed so terrifying, you know that? But I've killed twenty since. Hell they ask for me special now. I'm running out of places to put the barbs."

---

"I had hoped that by now you would know better."

"I'm a bit of an idiot like that, sir."

"You won't get any argument from me."

The papers are offered; he takes them.

"Discovery means death. Memorize it."

"Yes, sir."

The wagons are stopped at a village just outside of the capital city, too cheap to perform within but perfect for the tiny towns that have sprung up along the road. A beautiful girl dressed in red approaches him.

"Yukio? You're Yukio, aren't you?" he nods, and she assumes he is too scared, or perhaps awed, to speak. "Oh, good. I'm Kaede. I'll introduce you to Naraku. She's our Troupe Master. Bitter old bitch, but at least we make money."

Yes, Kankuro wants to tell her. Yes, you do.

---

He read the last paper, eyes soft. "Poor Genji's players. They weren't the best, but they were pretty good."

He looked up.

Gaara was staring at him.

He quirked his lips in a puppeteer's smile.

"Mission 102398-B." He recited. "Open to all Shinobi of the Hidden Village in the Sand, to be assigned at any time. The assassination of the container of the demon Shukaku." Kankuro shrugged. "Probably woulda' tried to assign it a fourth time but then we had that crazy idea to take over a village hidden in some leaves somewhere. Three always was my lucky number."

Sand whirled around the room, mixing with sawdust. Kankuro's arm came up to shield his eyes in a motion that had long ago become as much a habit as breathing. When the dust finally settled, Gaara was gone.

Kankuro glanced at them and then stood up, walking back through the corridor to his bedroom. He sat on the bed and looked up at Karasu, who was grinning grotesquely at him.

"Think I should go find him?" he asked. The puppet's wooden jaw clicked.

"Right. Lemme find my shoes."