A/N: Cross-posted to AO3 under the url polyxena_chatoyant. Author notes for chapters one and two are copy pasted from there.
October in Konoha has always been chilly, so when Kizashi wakes up to find that his wife has stolen the blanket he's a touch exasperated. He rolls over on their large bed and, yes, there Mebuki is. Or rather, the lump of blankets that is Haruno Mebuki. Her head barely peeks out, strands of orange hair a contrast to the dark green blanket. Kizashi reaches out to try and tug at a corner of the blanket; maybe he can just slide under and they can cuddle?
But no, the idea crumbles to dust as Mebuki mumbles in her sleep and tugs the blanket back to her. He can't even find it in himself to be irritated, a smile growing under his scratchy, dusty-pink mustache. The sound of her sleepy mumbles, sometimes even speaking in her sleep, is cute. His wife deserved the blanket anyways, he decides. She was keeping warmth not only for herself, but also for their little miracle.
As Kizashi gets up and out of bed, moving carefully and quietly to avoid waking Mebuki, he thinks about their unborn child. Not for the first time, he remembers how astounded the medics and doctors were when Mebuki became pregnant again, so shortly after Sakura had been born. Their eldest daughter's birth had been complicated, wrought with fear that the baby would even survive. By all accounts, Mebuki would never again have children.
Kizashi steps into the nursery adjacent of their bedroom, walls painted a soft yellow and security seals hidden in the paint. There are two cribs in the room, one newly built and the other occupied. His daughter's chakra is smooth, settled; she's fast asleep. Kizashi pulls the rocking chair from the corner, the old one his mother had given him when news of Mebuki's first pregnancy was announced, and settles in it next to Sakura's crib. He can barely fit in it, and the wood is cold against his skin. Perhaps he should have put a shirt on.
Kizashi peers through the wooden bars of the crib. Sakura, small and pink skinned and hairless, is swaddled in a blanket and surrounded by plush toys. He traces his eyes over her face, the large forehead, Mebuki's nose - she's perfect. He doesn't dare pick her up for fear of waking her. It's the first time that she has slept through the night, Kizashi realizes.
"Kizashi?" a tired, grouchy voice says softly from the doorway between rooms. Kizashi straightens from where he was leaning close to look.
Mebuki, draped in their bed's blanket and wearing only one of his long-sleeved, blue uniform shirts, leans against the doorframe. Her belly, round and large, pushes out against the fabric. She's frowning, green eyes bleary and barely awake. Kizashi wants to reach out and smooth her wrinkled forehead, but settles on grinning at his lovely wife.
"Good morning, darling," he says. "Decided to steal Sakura's blanket, too?"
Mebuki rolls her eyes, huffing a breath, but pulls the blanket over her shoulders tighter. "Why would I need her's when I have this nice one?"
Kizashi relaxes against the back of the rocking chair, holding out a hand to her. She steps further into the room to stand next to him, letting his hand engulf her small one. "Because you're greedy, love."
Mebuki smiles at him, and he wonders how he ever landed someone so beautiful. "Only with you."
Kizashi pulls her close and presses his cheek to her belly and closes his eyes to feel their unborn child's chakra. It's barely there, a tiny spark of flame that, compared to Sakura's, makes his other daughter seem like an inferno. It is there, though, ever growing and fluctuating despite its small size.
"I was thinking that today we could go to the Market," Mebuki says, threading her fingers through Kizashi's hair, which was a mess. "We need more fish and I was thinking of trying my hand at sushi."
Kizashi's eyes pop open, cheek still pressed against her belly button. "Are you sure about that? We can always go to that one Akimichi restaurant you like for dinner…"
Mebuki tugs on his hair, though he barely feels it. "What, do you think I can't make sushi?"
Memories of her previous attempts at cooking make his stomach clench. "O-of course not, love. I was simply thinking of taking you out."
He can feel the rumble of her quiet laughter, and hears Sakura shift in her sleep at the sound, rustling her toys. "Well we can do that, too, but for lunch I'm going to make sushi and ramen."
Kizashi gives in, simply thankful that she wasn't going to cover them in cheese. That was one craving he found absolutely revoluting, covering everything in cheese no matter what it was. Dango? Covered in cheese. Vegetables? Covered in cheese. Sandwiches that had no right to have cheese on them? Cheese.
Mebuki leaves the room to go get dressed and Kizashi heads to the bathroom to make himself presentable for the world. The bathroom is a mess, the sinktop covered in various tubes and bottles, the trashcan overfull. At least, his portion of the bathroom is, and he looks longingly at the clean, orderly medicine cabinet that Mebuki had claimed as her own when they moved in.
It takes Kizashi and hour to get ready, where it takes Mebuki twenty minutes. Mostly because he spent so much time styling his hair into the cherry blossom shape he'd started doing after Sakura was born. Dressed in his standard Chuunin uniform, with the loose black pants taped to his ankles and the long-sleeved navy blue shirt, he heads down to the kitchen. His flak jacket hangs off his favorite chair, next to Sakura's high chair where their daughter sits, now fully awake.
He beelines for the infant, grinning as she cooes and smiles at him when he gets within reach. Her chubby fist encloses on his mustache and tugs, hard. Mebuki, carrying three plates to the table, bursts into laughter at his facial expression. She's dressed in warm leggings and a sweater, and he grumbles internally that he wishes he were on leave and able to wear something so comfortable.
"She takes after her mama," Mebuki giggles, setting the plates down.
Kizashi closes his open mouth and gently pulls Sakura's hand off his mustache. "How mean, Saachan. So mean to papa."
Sakura, with no understanding of language but every bit as sadistic as his wife, laughs. He melts at the sound, bright like bells. Her eyes are finally losing all traces of the newborn blue, and he knows that they'll be the same shade of green as her mother's.
After breakfast, Kizashi dresses Sakura in a cute purple onesie before putting a soft hat on her naked head and strapping her to his chest. He stands in front of a floor length mirror with his hands on his hips and grins, shaking his shoulders to bounce Sakura. She erupts in giggles, waving her arms.
"Today will be a good day, Saachan," he says confidently. Sakura shrieks with laughter as he reaches up to tickle at her feet. "But before it can be a good day, we've got to indulge your mama. Sushi and ramen, what a weird combination. Your little sibling is so strange."
He hears Mebuki call for him and heads for the front door. When his wife seems them she snorts, reaching up to cover her smiling mouth. Kizashi loves the way her eyes crinkle in the corners when she smiles like that, and leans forward to press a whiskery kiss to the hand covering her lips.
Outside, the sun shines on their neighborhood. It's a nice neighborhood, in one of the residential districts closer to the Hokage Tower, and the trees lining the streets are a mixture of red, gold, and brown. Some of their neighbors are out and about, and greet them as they pass. The midmorning chill makes him shiver, and he pumps chakra through him to keep warm, and then to the seals sewn in Sakura's onesie to keep her warm as well.
The market, when they get to it, is busy. It always is at this time of day, but Kizashi has never minded. He enjoys talking with everyone, stopping he and Mebuki's walk every few minutes to chat with someone. Mebuki bares it with a smile, not the most extroverted person herself.
They've only just gotten to their preferred fish stand when it happens.
A sound not unlike an explosive tag goes off, far in the distance but with such force and strength that the ground underneath their feet rumbles, a sharp wind kicking up dirt from the road. The dust hasn't even settled when, with a roar that he only belatedly realizes can actually be heard, a terrible chakra spreads through Konoha, the killing intent behind it enormous.
Sakura wails. Mebuki screams, holding her stomach as her knees buckle and it's only instinct that has him reaching forward to catch her. All around them, civilians run screaming as a figure larger than a mountain rises above Konoha. Kizashi grew up on the stories of the Sage of Six Paths and how he gave the world Chakra and sealed nine demons, the Bijuu, away - he puts a name to this monster almost instantly in his mind.
The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. The Kyuubi no Kitsune.
It's large enough to block out the sun, casting a shadow that encompasses the entirety of the village, its form a bubbling mass of red-orange chakra. Its tails sweep out around it, and trees slam into the ground under the force. He can't make out much of its face but the demon opens it's maw and pours out flames onto the village.
"Kizashi!" a voice screams in his ears. "Kizashi! Move!"
It's Mebuki, dangling in his arms and clutching her stomach. Sakura is still wailing. Around them the market is a a rampage of people pouring towards the Hokage Mountain, where the evacuation tunnels are. Sirens wail and he can see the elite black-ops shinobi, the ANBU, pouring over rooftops like a wave of black water towards the demon. As a sensor, Kizashi is overwhelmed, the vile, hatred-filled chakra of the Kyuubi filling his senses.
"Kizashi, fucking move!" Mebuki screams, fingernails digging into his forearms and drawing blood. "Get me to the fucking hospital!"
At that, Kizashi's blood starts pumping again, but cold instead of warm. He looks down, almost expecting to find a gaping wound, but instead he sees that her leggings - once a soft grey - are soaked. Her water's broke.
What a terrible time to be having a baby, he thinks distantly.
And then he gathers his wife fully into his arms, gathers his chakra into his legs and pushes up and forward, heading straight for the Hospital. Shinobi race in the opposite direction, all of them baring weapons as they go to defend their home. He would join them if he wasn't busy defending his most precious home, his family.
As he nears the Hospital he sees that Mebuki is not the only pregnant women panicking. There are dozens, clutching their stomachs in pain as they stand amongst the wounded. He has never seen the hospital so full, has never seen so many civilians hurt and bleeding, since the end of the Third Shinobi War only a few years ago. Kizashi had thought that would be the end of it, thought there would finally be peace, and wonders what nation had decided to end Konoha like this.
Probably Iwa, he thinks derisively.
"Medic!" he shouts into the fray, like so many others. "Medic! My wife's gone into labor!"
One of the nurses running about beelines towards them. She's young, pale faced and hard eyed, with her forehead protector, her hitai-ate, tied around her neck. Her scrubs, a pale green that label her another Chuunin like him, are already splattered with blood.
"This way!" she shouts over the noise.
The operating room she leads them to is filled past capacity. Where there should only be a single patient, three beds have been squished in along the operating table, each of them a different woman in labor. Kizashi places Mebuki down where he's told, on the far left bed. Instantly Mebuki is swarmed by medics, their hands glowing with green healing chakra.
Sakura is still wailing in his arms.
A hand grips his left arm, pulling him back and away from his wife. Mebuki has started to scream in pain. Kizashi almost breaks the hand that pulls at him before turning to look at who it is. A man with purple hair and grey eyes, who looks at him with understanding and quite a lot of fear.
"We need to get out of their way," the man says. "For our wives and children."
There are two other men, he notices, without scrubs on. They stand off to the side, pressed against the wall, eyes locked onto their spouses. One looks almost catatonic and the other cries openly, sobbing into his hands. Kizashi looks back at Mebuki and lets the purple haired man, a civilian by the way his hands aren't calloused around the shape of a kunai, tug him off to the side. He stands in the far corner of the operating room, his hulking figure almost comical in how he attempts to make himself appear smaller, wrapping his arms around Sakura as she continues to cry. Medics run in and out of the room, their hospital scrubs covered in blood. His wife is screaming.
The world is ending, both outside and in this room.
Kizashi closes his eyes and tries to focus on Mebuki's chakra, feeling the way it sputters and contorts against the blanketing chakra of the demon raging destroying their village outside. The Kyuubi's chakra poisons everything it touches, spreads far and wide over the village as it destroys their home, large section by large section. It's hard to push past, acidic and cloying, but he's spent years memorizing how to spot Mebuki's chakra.
Let them live, he prays to any higher being who will listen. Shinobi do not live religiously, but he's out of options.
The hospital is cold. It keeps him steady, feeling the chill of the air. Through the windows he can see the dawn rising over the horizon, the spirals of smoke and destruction standing out against what should have been a beautiful sunrise. Sakura had tired herself out to exhaustion with her screaming, and she sleeps fitfully against his chest. She seems to be the only one able to stop screaming.
He and the three men from the operating room had long been ordered to leave the operating room. They sit together in the waiting room, amongst the injured who have yet to be seen and the people looking for family, hoping against hope that the Kyuubi didn't kill them. Kizashi doesn't know any of their names, but none of them move to sit elsewhere.
"Haruno Kizashi?" a voice calls and he snaps his head up. It's the nurse from before, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail that's falling apart, grey eyes locking onto him.
"My wife, is she okay?" the words tumble out of his mouth like broken glass. "Our baby?"
The nurse is short enough that she doesn't have to sit down to be at eye level with him, as he is squeezed into a too-small hospital chair. "Mebuki-san is resting, we were forced to do a c-section and she lost quite a lot of blood. She'll recover. Your daughter is in the NICU, where she is being treated for chakra poisoning. I can take you to see them both…"
Kizashi knows Mebuki, knows how strong she is. If this Nurse had said Mebuki was dying he'd be hard pressed to believe her, and thus knows that his wife will be fine. His daughter, his newborn daughter who doesn't even have a name yet?
"Take me to the NICU," he says.
The halls are filled with patients, the rooms all filled to maximum capacity. Even in the areas with no windows there is visibility, the light of healing chakra casting green onto everything. The NICU's glass window is crowded as well, men and women pressing as close as they can to their children. Sakura is still asleep, and he holds her tightly.
The glass boxes that house all the infants glow with golden chakra, seals covering nearly every inch of the panels. There are few medics in the room, though, tending to the children.
"Where are the rest of the medics?" Kizashi demands.
"Treating the wounded," the Nurse he'd followed says, eyes shuttering in resignation. "Priority Procedures."
He knows the procedures. Wounded shinobi above non-wounded shinobi, non-wounded shinobi above wounded civilians, wounded civilians above non-wounded civilians. Kizashi reaches out with his chakra to sense into the NICU, can feel that every single infant there has chakra poisoning. Most won't live to see sunset.
"I hate procedures," he says simply, no longer looking at the Nurse.
He finds the small spot of chakra that he has spent seven months falling in love with, almost overrun with sickness. His daughter is small, so much smaller than Sakura was when she was born. It's to be expected of a two-month premature baby, though, and she's larger than some others. Her glass box is in the third row from the window, towards the right, and he moves to get a better view of her. For once, Kizashi does not apologize to the people he nearly runs over with his broad shoulders.
One of the seals on a glass box a few spaces from his daughter's starts blinking. A woman wails at the sight as one medic in the NICU goes to wheel the box away.
Many of the children are wailing. His daughter isn't.
Sakura shifts in the straps of her carrier, blinking her eyes open blearily.
Kizashi's chin wobbles dangerously as he lifts a hand to place a finger in his daughter's palm, almost too big for the tiny hand. "L-look, Saachan. That's… That's your little sister."
Sakura gurgles.
"Ye-yeah," Kizashi chokes halfway through. "She loves you, too."
Mebuki is allowed to leave only hours later, discharged so that there can be another bed to use. Neither actually leave the Hospital, though, staying at the NICU's window for hours. Eventually, the nurse from before returns and gently orders them to go home.
"If not for your own rest," she says, "then for your daughter's."
She's looking at Sakura when she says it, the infant sleeping fitfully against Kizashi's chest still. She's cried on and off again for hours, hungry and cranky, but healthy according to the Nurse when Kizashi asked that his daughter be checked over. Unlike the twelve children already wheeled out of the NICU. Unlike his second daughter.
"Will you stay with her?" Mebuki asks, her voice still hoarse and tender. "With our baby. Please."
The Nurse can't be more than fifteen, he realizes. She looks a lot older when there's blood flaking off her cheek.
"I will," she promises tightly, reaching out to put her hand on Mebuki's shoulder. "I won't let her out of my sight."
Mebuki closes her eyes and leans into Kizashi's side. "Alright."
The walk home is silent between themselves, aside from the occasional sound from Sakura. Outside the Hospital the smell of smoke and death is overpowering, mass graves already being prepared for the dead. The further from the Hospital they get, the further from the inner part of Konoha, the more destruction there is.
Walls and streets splattered with blood. Bodies covered in white sheets as shinobi move around them to find survivors of collapsed buildings. There is always someone crying wherever they go.
Their home is, miraculously, intact. A few houses down there is a crater where one once stood, and he recognizes the woman who stands at it crying as the granddaughter of the old woman who had lived there. Kizashi knows that the old woman rarely left her house, and knows she is dead.
Stepping inside their house and taking their shoes off, Mebuki heads to the kitchen instantly. Kizashi can hear her getting down bottles and rustling in the cabinets. He sits in the living room on the couch and unstraps Sakura for the first time in a day. She stretches her little limbs out as he sets her down on the couch.
Nothing has changed inside the house. No furniture has moved, there is no dust settling on anything. Inside the walls of his home, he feels disconnected. Even when he tries to shrink his senses only to this single room, the Kyuubi's chakra remains pervasive and present in its echo.
"Darling," Mebuki says, breaking through his thoughts. "Here, eat."
She holds out cup ramen, cheap and salty, but he doesn't mind. She eats her own only after feeding Sakura, pulling their daughter into her lap. Kizashi can barely taste the chicken flavoring in his noodles.
Chakra sensitivity can be somewhat of a curse when it comes to a bijuu attacking. His brain plays on a loop of the first few minutes of the Kyuubi appearing, the blank terror that had rooted him to the spot. As a seasoned shinobi, a soldier and ninja of Konoha, he has seen his fair share of destruction, felt killing intent before - but never has he been rendered so completely useless.
Mebuki is his saving grace, as usual. Placing a hand on his and taking the empty cup from him, she runs her fingers over his knuckles.
"She will be fine," Mebuki says. Kizashi closes his eyes but the sight of his daughter behind a glass prison has been etched into his eyelids. "Kizashi. She will be fine."
"We don't know that," he whispers, voice breaking. "Her chakra system was already delicate, the chakra poisoning-"
"Will not take her from us," Mebuki says, voice hard and grip tightening on his hand. "Kizashi, our daughter has endured so much already. She will survive - even if I have to fight off the shinigami himself."
The idea of his strong, amazing wife facing off the grim reaper almost makes him laugh. As it is he only breathes out a shaky breath.
"That should be her name," he says. "Shinobu." Endurance.
Mebuki chuckles, and he sees tears in the corners of her eyes. Sakura gurgles around her bottle. "I like it. Haruno Shinobu."
Against all odds, Shinobu survives. Out of the fifty some children born from the tragedy of the Kyuubi Attack, as it is starting to be called, she is of the ten who survived. Kizashi and Mebuki are allowed to take her home, along with the glass box that keeps her chakra from continuing to poison itself, after a month. Snow has begun to fall.
The weeks following are hard. Shinobu cries and cries and cries, never sleeping more than an hour, but they can't take her out of the box for at least another month. It's torture, not being able to reach for her, not being able to soothe her cries. Taking her out to feed her is dangerous, and sometimes they have to cut feedings short when her chakra starts to revolt against her own body.
The Nurse from before visits sometimes. She'd finally introduced herself as Ohira Seki, and Kizashi wonders sometimes why she continues to come by. Out of pity, maybe? No matter her reason, he is thankful because it means that they get more than once-every-two-week checks at the hospital to make sure Shinobu is still growing alright, still healing.
It's Ohira who diagnoses her with chakra sensitivity, like her father.
"It's a more advanced case," Ohira says to them in their kitchen over tea. "Most likely due to her premature birth and the attack. She shock of her chakra system, which wasn't fully developed yet, against the Kyuubi's… It blew her channels wide open. It will cause her discomfort, and she may never be able to use jutsu."
Mebuki shakes her head. "That's not a concern. She doesn't have to be a shinobi."
For Mebuki, who comes from the refugees of Uzushiogakure, their sister village destroyed in the Second Shinobi War, daughter of a long line of ninja - Kizashi knows that must be difficult to accept, that their youngest will probably never do more than look at a kunai. But he feels exactly the same. Shinobu could be a cashier for the rest of her life and he would be content with the knowledge that she was alive at all.
"Still," Ohira continues after a moment. "Her chakra sensitivity is what is prolonging her illness. I expect that it's going to get worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all."
And it's true. Shinobu runs a fever almost every day, breaking only for a few hours at a time. Keeping food down is hard and sleep is fitful at best. Kizashi keeps a constant vigilance over her chakra, watching and sensing it to the point where the slightest fluctuation has him waking up from deep sleep. The one thing that Shinobu doesn't do much of is cry.
(It is a relief when she's cleared of all chakra poisoning at three months old, around the time Sakura has grown a head full of bubblegum pink hair and stubble starts to sprout on Shinobu's head.)
A/N: Kizashi loves his Strong Wife and is a Good Dad! 3
Anyways, welcome to the start of this trilogy I've got planned out. I've planned 100 chapters for this fic and I'm in the process of actually taking my chapter notes and turning them into full chapters, and I'm starting to plan out the second part. Inspired by the many great SIOC fics I've red, but in specifics, From Outside Eyes by Mysana and Time Flies Like An Arrow by Katlou303. (I only know them from AO3, no clue if they're on FFN.) This fic is edited by Jamie and Beatus, my two bff's!
Comments make my day! I love replying to them and answering questions!