In the Karura lives au: How would she have reacted to the first time Tensei went missing during a Shukaku's rampage? The one that made Rasa send Yashamaru to kill Gaara in the FtB canon?
Poppy and Yucca are still watching Temari and Kankuro, having been unwilling or unable to stop her without harming her. Karura knew something had gone wrong when the rumbling and shaking ceased hours ago and the order for people to stay in the bunkers still hasn't been lifted.
She looks for three people and only finds one. Her husband is safe. Her eldest is, at times, so capable that it unerves her. Her youngest, though— where the hell is her baby.
The Shukaku is gone, so it must have been sealed away again. Which means Gaara is back to being human-sized again. She's screaming at her husband to let her see her son, whose location no one will tell her. Her husband brushes her off by telling Yashamaru to take her away, but how could she stand for that? Gaara is recovering from being possessed alone because Rasa is too busy ordering the anbu about, which she understands, but how could he keep her from her baby, how dare he.
And Rasa finally snaps. Their son might be dead, and her baby would be the monster who killed—
Karura slaps him before he can finish that sentence.
Even in a kinder world, this night is not a gentle one.
Yashamaru guides her gently back to the bunkers. Temari and Kankuro cling. Karura makes him promise not to let Rasa do anything rash. She knows her husband— he'll obsess, like he did when Sarou-sama disappeared, sending out endless numbers of search teams and working through the night while waiting to hear back instead of sleeping. She stood beside him, back then, when they still had servants to take care of Tensei and Temari, but not now.
The night passes into day. Temari is eight, Kankuro is six, and the two of them alternate between being utterly bored and scared half to death. Karura tries to keep them entertained with stories, but she's no puppeteer, and her futon is no Mat Against the Wall.
The day passes into night. Karura has the guards fetch her updates and relay them to her in tap-code so that her children won't hear, and she thins her lips when they tell her about a broken lavender hair tie and a trail of bloodied sand that leads to nothing.
The night passes into day. Karura itches to cook something, or bake something. The rations aren't terrible, but they don't occupy her hands or her mind like she wishes they would.
The day passes into night. Yashamaru drags a stumbling facsimile of her husband to her while the children are sleeping, and Rasa clutches her arms with shaking hands as his shoulders hitch. Karura says nothing, because as long she doesn't say it out loud, then she won't have to feel it in full.
But her husband has his head bowed low for the first time in nearly a decade, and Karura knows when kindness is necessary. She places her hands over his and shares her breath to steady his, so that he won't fall from her next words.
Her husband shakes his head. One more. Just one more.
The night passes into day.
The day passes into night.
They get news of a bloody figure found crawling out the wreckage— a son, screaming on the operating table— a miracle, only Karura can't help but wonder for the umpteenth time as she looks upon a bare face and new scars if the elders were right.
Tensei wakes up and asks after his siblings. Evidently, Karura taught him well, because those violet eyes that challenge Rasa are a near-exact reflection of her own.
Half an hour later sees them on the village's outermost edge, before a cell hidden among the sandstone walls of the canyon. Karura sweeps past Rasa's rattling dust, picks up her son, and presses a kiss to his pale forehead. Gaara is whole, unmarred, and only slightly confused and disgruntled upon waking from his coma a few hours ago.
In a kinder world, a family will heal together, instead of in pieces.
In a kinder world, a brother and an uncle stays alive.
In a kinder world, love is not a scar, carved to rest above dull green eyes.
