Triple Crescent
By: Prosely
Summary: Hinata volunteers to be the surrogate mother of Naruto and Sasuke's children while hiding a secret of her own.
The hum of the monitors was quiet, it seemed overwhelming compared to the heaviness of the atmosphere in the room. Sakura's pink lips were parted in a perfect o-shape, her pencil hanging loosely in her hand.
"Hi-Hinata, are you serious?" Naruto's voice was sunlight peeking through curtains, a tendril of hope in his shaking tone.
"Of course Naruto." The Hyuuga said, her smile as soft as the moon. "I have always wanted you to be happy, and to help Konoha in any way I can is an honor." She bobbed her head a little at the words, a blush rising to the top of her cheeks.
"Liar," a dark voice in the back of her mind hissed, the ghost of a hand trailing up her spine. Hinata ignored it, lacing her fingers in front of her to keep herself from twitching.
Sasuke had been leaning up against the far hospital wall, though the moment that Hinata had opened her mouth to say "I can be the surrogate," every one of his muscles had gone perfectly rigid.
"Hinata, you're a nurse, you know all of the risks involved-" Sakura began haltingly, looking back to her files as if they held some sort of answer.
"I do," Hinata replied, her voice more at ease then it had ever been around the intimidating kunoichi. "I also know that this might be the only chance for Naruto and Sasuke to have children, especially since you can't be the surrogate for them now."
Sakura looked pained, though her free hand subconsciously drifted down to her own rounded belly, rubbing it thoughtfully. "As a Hyuuga, you would have the ability to make the most accurate observations of your own body with the Byakugan. Since this treatment is so new, we have no idea if it would even work or not." She said, as if turning the idea over in her mind a few more times would make it palatable.
"As long as it won't hurt her!" Naruto immediately added on, sneaking out from behind Sakura to grasp Hinata's hands. The Hyuuga felt her heart flutter, just a little, like it always would for her first love.
Endless blue eyes gaze deeply into her own, as if searching for the truth she would never be willing to give.
"Hinata, if you do this, it would be the greatest gift we have ever been given." He said, his usually loud voice soft in reverence. He would make an incredible father, Hinata thought. He would be the one inclined to spoil and tease and jump, to make their imaginations soar. He would laugh and sweep his children into his arms, and never for one minute would they ever feel unloved.
She already envied those children a little, she thought, smiling softly over at Sakura.
"If the plan is anything like we discussed Sakura, tomorrow would actually be the best day on my cycle to attempt the implant." She said softly, feeling Sasuke's chakra spike, the energy in the room crackling with palpable tension.
"Tomorrow?" Naruto said, running his hands through his hair. His Hokage hat was sitting on one of the chairs in the room, long forgotten.
"Either that or you wait another month, if you need the time." Sakura agreed, conferring back to her charts. "With our preliminary tests and the samples you gave today, we could actually perform the treatment tomorrow-as long as all of you are absolutely sure."
Hinata nodded firmly, while Naruto, also sensing the Uchiha's tension, was drawn to where Sasuke stood in the room. They did not touch or speak, but Hinata knew they were having some sort of conversation all on their own.
"We've been wanting this for a long time." Naruto said finally. Sasuke tilted his head in assent. "We don't want to wait any longer if we don't have to."
Sakura closed her folders with a soft snap. "Alright, let's do it then. Is ten o'clock okay with you?"
The idea was simple enough, Hinata remembered, her world fading into the blackness of anesthesia. Sakura would use a careful array of chakra to blend Hinata, Naruto, and Sasuke's three DNA structures and chromosomes into fertilized eggs that would be implanted into the wall of her womb. The resulting children would be a third of each of them, unique in its existence. It was based on some of Orochimaru's oldest work with DNA that Tsunade had for the most part, destroyed with the exception of ideas like this one.
Like any in vitro fertilization however, multiple fused eggs would have to be planted, because most of them would probably not take for a myriad of reasons.
The fact that another child was already forming on the wall of her uterus wouldn't make too much of a difference.
But Sakura wouldn't notice, Hinata reassured herself, even as the darkness became heavy, sleep pulling at her brain. She had been careful. The pregnancy was less than two weeks old, and she had only been able to detect that small, wisp of new chakra beginning to form when she was looking for it with her byakugan. She had taken special pains to ensure it was well hidden, layering seal upon seal until it didn't look like there was anything there at all. She had known that the former Team 7 were all trying to become parents, and all it took was a little positioning of being at the right place at the right time.
Sasuke and Naruto would never know that one of their newborns weren't their own. Or if they eventually figured it out, by the time they did they (or at least Naruto), would have already come to love it, and her child would be safe long after she was gone.
Hinata's heart thudded in her mind as she felt her consciousness slip from her grasp.
She just had to survive the next ten months.
"You're not going to believe this! Triplets!" Sakura said, her voice half a scream as she crushed Hinata's face into her full breasts with her hug. Naruto jostled her on the other side with a sound of wild, unadulterated joy, and she even felt the blonde pull Sasuke in. Never outside of her own team had Hinata felt so a part of something, yet at the same time, so far away.
Three children, she thought, the reality of it making her feel a bit awed by the entire idea.
But one of them was an imposter; Hinata knew it by the sly rise of its chakra beneath her fingertips. She could still remember the dull throb of a heartbeat over the sonogram, pulsing from that dark space deep within her. One of them was different.
"We have to celebrate!" Naruto's voice was entirely in awe, and Hinata saw Sasuke shoot him a look which the blonde promptly ignored. "Ichiraku's anyone?"
"Why don't we get food with actual nutritional value, idiot?" The Uchiha countered, and Naruto's face twisted into a pout. "Sasuke, that's what you said last week!" He whined, rather undignified for a Hokage. Sakura couldn't seem to help herself from laughing, and even Hinata was distracted from the dark thoughts pressing into her heart like knife points. The two shinobi bickered with an aching familiarity, so different from when Sasuke had first returned to the village.
Back then, She remembered the clan members hedging wagers on whether or not the last Uchiha would finally kill himself, drowned in the darkness and self-loathing that seemed to seep out of the places his pride had once masked for him. She remembered the lines that had been drawn on Naruto's young face as the new Hokage paced in his office every day the Uchiha was gone on missions longer than a month.
No one knows what changed, just that one day Naruto went after Sasuke again when the other failed to report in (at least, that was what rumor had said). But when they both came back, bloody and broken (again), Hinata remembered something being distinctly...different.
They never mentioned the shift in their relationship to any of the old rookie nine, save for maybe Sakura, since she knew them the best. But the change was palpable in the air: from the relaxed way Naruto would sit at his desk to the slow opening of Sasuke to village warmth again, like a flower that had long been hidden from the sun and was hesitantly returning back to its light.
Then Kiba had walked in on Naruto and Sasuke in what could be delicately called a "compromising position" in the Hokage's office, and the rest of Konoha knew about their relationship by noon.
That had been five years ago now.
"Hinata, you coming?!" Naruto's voice drew the Hyuuga back out from her thoughts, and she nodded as her eyes refocused on the group before her. Sunlight struck them from behind, and their shadowed figures seemed almost like they were from a dream. Sakura was smiling at her, Sasuke's eyes had softened in a way she had never seen before, and Naruto's hand reaching out to her with the promise of the future. Hinata took it, smiling, even as her heart broke on the inside, because she knew it would never last.
Sasuke was more attentive to her needs than Naruto ever was, much to Hinata's surprise. She had moved in with the two with them once it was made abundantly clear that she would be branded on sight if she so much as took a step near any of the Hyuuga complexes again.
Hinata missed visiting Neji's grave, but everything else about the situation was quite alright with her.
It was Sasuke who insisted she be given her own apartment, rather than sleeping in the guestroom in his and Naruto's small flat that "wasn't even fit for Inuzuka's dog" if she remembered his words correctly. He bought her the apartment above theirs without even telling her, only stopping by the hospital to give her the keys on the day she was supposed to move in.
Hinata didn't have many personal belongings left, but she loved the way the sun came through her windows in the morning, the small garden she tended to on her window sill, and the softness of her new duvet. She didn't buy much for herself, as she didn't want to make the apartment feel too much like a home it would never be for her.
Naruto was the one who stopped by with dinner from Ichiraku's, and Sasuke was the one who held her hair back when she vomited it in the toilet, the blonde Hokage running around in the kitchen like a madman to remove all traces of the smell that made her so nauseated. Sasuke made her dinners of fresh tomatoes and green herbs, of miso soup and rice. His calm, collected presence was soothing to her even as she battled horrendous rounds of morning sickness that turned into a swelling of each of her joints.
Naruto brought her ice packs and rubbed her feet, distracting her with exciting stories about his day as the Hokage. Hinata barely registered the sight of him in his official red and white robes any more, as he wore them with his boxers whenever he wandered around her apartment after a nap (he escaped to her couch to hide from his advisors).
Hinata rarely caught the two being affectionate to each other. If anything, they always seemed to be fighting about something, from the type of food they were eating for dinner to the proper way to hold a kunai. But she quickly realized that was how they showed they cared, because despite the little fights now and again, Sasuke would still always throw a blanket over the blonde when the Uchiha found the Hokage fell asleep on Hinata's couch, and Naruto would still groggily make two cups of coffee in the morning (in Hinata's apartment because their coffee maker was broken and they had yet to buy a new one).
She noticed how Sasuke's eyes always found Naruto before anything else when he entered a room, and the way he would offhandedly tug on blonde hair, or flick the Hokage in the forehead, like a small child demanding attention. Naruto would of course, give it to him, and they would be back to bickering once again.
Hinata began to regret her lie, only in that it felt wrong to lie to those who had given so much to her.
The thought of it was haunting her one late July evening, laying in her bed and feigning sleep as Naruto clunked around with the dishes in the kitchen sink (he had lost some sort of contest with Sasuke that morning, and was still muttering about it as he cleaned). The Uchiha was sitting on her couch, his pose languid as he thumbed through an old book on lightning techniques, occasionally fiddling with the reading glasses perched on his nose.
Hinata saw Naruto hit the glasses off Sasuke's face with a flick of the dish towel. Sasuke's lips twitched before he vanished, behind the Uzumaki a second later, hitting him in the head with a dirty spoon. Naruto blocked the strike with a spatula, and suddenly they were at war, utensil and dishes flying, each one miraculously caught before being launched again in the air as Naruto laughed and even Sasuke's lips were caught in a half-smile. The sound was so free so light, that Hinata couldn't help but smile.
Metal clattered to the ground and Naruto pressed Sasuke against the counter, the energy suddenly changing from playful to something else.
They would go back downstairs now, Hinata thought sleepily, her hand resting on her belly as she rolled onto her side.
One of the triplets kicked in agreement.
Hinata had been ordered to bed-rest for the last two months of her pregnancy, and she could feel the ebb and flow of her own strength. It seemed as though her very essence was being absorbed into the new people she was helping create. Naruto let Sasuke off all missions but those of the highest priority, and between the two of them and Sakura's daily check-ups and baths, the former Hyuuga was almost never alone.
Which is why it was surprising that she had been left to her own devices the day that her water broke.
Sasuke and Naruto were at the Kage summit, that much she knew. It was only in the Hokage tower, and they had left her a scroll on her nightstand to summon them in case anything happened, and she was still over a month from her due date.
She hadn't expected the sudden dampness between her legs.
This was too early, Hinata thought wildly, remembering the calendar Sakura had shown her. "Because they're triplets it's almost guaranteed they'll come early," she could remember the kunoichi's voice in her mind, Sakura's own newborn carefully balanced on her hip. The child's dark grey eyes peered at Hinata's face with interest beneath a wild of mop of decidedly burgundy-violet colored hair. Naruto was already calling the boy the "Fuchsia Flash," despite the kunoichi's continued death threats every time she heard the moniker.
Hinata thought Sakura's son was cute, but holding him in her arms for too long made that part inside her that knew she would never have the same experiences with her own child ache more than she had expected.
"But less than 36 weeks is a cause for concern." Sakura said, absentmindedly running a finger through the two month old's spikey, uniquely colored hair. Hinata remembered his contented gurgle, and the sound seemed to echo in her mind as she gasped through the first spasm of pain riding up her spine.
That early autumn morning, Hinata knew she was exactly at 32 weeks, a full four weeks before her earliest deadline.
"No, no no no," she whispered, her swollen, oversized hands clumsily scrambling out to the nightstand for the summoning scroll. It clattered to the ground at the side of the bed, and Hinata made a choked sound of distress.
"No, come here…" She whispered, trying to swing her feet around so that she could at least get down next to the bed and grab the scroll. But she was too large, the movements impossible around her massive stomach. She felt an insistent tugging beneath her navel and looked down. She didn't dare activate her byakugan, as using any sort of chakra use at this stage in the pregnancy would be detrimental to the health of the triplets. However, Hinata had always been extra sensitive to chakra, and to this one in particular, this chakra that was more familiar, more hers , than the other two she had become accustomed to, both within her body and outside it. One of them had a presence that was very similar Naruto's chakra, was like a cool breeze on a summer's day, and the other was like Sasuke's: the bitter taste of lightning as it struck. The last one however, it was darker, softer, like moonlight on lake water.
It was the other child, the secret child that no one would ever know was not Sasuke and Naruto's own. It was demanding exodus before it's half siblings, furiously kicking at her spine.
Hinata gasped in pain, crumpling back onto the bed like a leaf.
"Help…" she whispered, feeling the sudden onset of her first contraction.
She screamed, and the world was suddenly bright with pain.
"How is she Sakura?! C'mon, give us something!" Naruto demanded, his usually tanned skin pale and bloodless. Sasuke's expression looked as though he was about to make an attempt to break through the kunoichi's barricade, despite the threat of her freakish strength.
"Can't say. Tsunade is with her now though, and she was the one that helped design the treatment in the first place. I'm sure it will be fine." Sakura said, tying a medical apron around her waist. "This isn't the first time we've had to have an early delivery."
"But Sakura she was laying there for hours, just laying there alone during the contractions! Are you sure everything-"
"I don't know Naruto! But there's nothing we can do now!" Sakura snapped back, her own fears finally crystallizing in her friend's blue eyes before she quieted, seeing Naruto's overwhelming dread and not wanting to add any more to it.
"We'll do everything we can." She said softly, before disappearing back behind closed doors.
Sasuke put a hand on Naruto's shoulder, and the later grasped at the Uchiha's fingers like a lifeline as they stared after her, waiting for the worst.
"I want to hold him." Hinata said, though no one heard the words leave her immobile lips. She was cold, and all she could manage was a twitch of her fingers, which went unnoticed by the bustling Nurses of the NICU unit.
She was mentally reaching out for the dark haired child on the operating table beside her. Hinata knew she was probably delirious from the medication and the blood loss, and by the sounds of the beeps and the flurry of activity around her that she was still in the darkest part of her journey. But she hadn't even held him yet. She wanted to hold him once, before he was gone.
The other two she didn't really see as her own children, though they shared a third of her DNA. They were Sasuke and Naruto's, at least in her mind. The only girl had hair the dark red of an ocean sunset, the boy was a bright, sunshine blonde, Naruto's genes clearly much stronger than anyone had predicted. It made Hinata smile a little, even as her glassy gaze turned to rest on the interloper whose existence had started this entire scheme.
He was the smallest one, her natural born son. He had been pressed to the side of her womb as the others took up the space that was meant to be just for him. He was curled and wrinkled now, a tuft of violet black hair sticking straight up from his scalp, and he still wasn't breathing properly.
But his little hands were perfect, down to the softest fingernail as they clutched at something he couldn't reach. He didn't have enough air with which to cry, but he flung his limbs around, as if that would make all the difference.
The beeping sounds grew more insistent, as did the intensity of activity around her and Hinata sighed as she closed her eyes.
She was tired, she thought, even as the world darkened around her. She wanted to rest.
"She's in a coma." Tsunade said, unflinching. The former Godaime never minced words when it came to these sorts of things.
"Well when is she going to wake up?!" Naruto demanded, his entire body vibrating with pent up energy.
"We can't say right now." Sakura said. Tears had mixed with the blood on her cheeks, even as she wiped at her red arms with a thick cloth. The four stood in the waiting room, heavy with the weight of the one person who was missing. Sakura took a deep, shaking breath, before putting her hands on each of her old teammate's arms.
"But they're ready, if you are."
Naruto sought Sasuke's eyes first, and the Uchiha gave an imperceptible nod.
It was summer again when Hinata woke up, the cicadas singing outside of her hospital window. She glanced down to see that her arms were thinner than before, barely anything left of the muscles she had honed as a kunoichi. A plastic hospital bracelet was wrapped around her wrist, noting her name and the date she was admitted.
She glanced at the calendar on the far wall, surprised at how clear her mind was, how easily she accepted her new reality as the memories came flooding back to her in a rush.
Nine months, she noted, making the mental adjustment. She had been asleep for a little over nine months.
Sleeping may have been putting it lightly, she thought, gently stretching her stiff limbs in each direction. Feeling her muscles obey her without too much pain told her that someone had at least been making sure she was exercised every day. That was good. She thought. It would make what she had to do next so much easier.
Using chakra was as familiar to Hinata as breathing, and she used her byakugan to stay out of sight of the city shinobi as they wandered through the streets below her. Her body remembered the way back to her old apartment, though she still had to take the journey far more slowly than usual, unused to so much movement after nine months in a bed. But she didn't have any time or energy to waste.
Her packed bag was just as she left it, tucked into an inconspicuous corner in her closet. The air of the flat had the staleness of being unlived in for a long time, though from the lack of dust on the counters, Hinata guessed that someone was paid to keep it clean, waiting for her to wake up again.
She should go now, she thought, remembering her plan from more than two years ago. She would disappear into the morning fogs, make a new life for herself far from Konoha, far from the memories that would haunt her here.
Below her feet came the sound of laughter, and she paused, fighting with the part of herself that craved the pain of a certain sort of knowledge.
Hinata was weak.
She was careful to balance herself on the rooftop across from Naruto and Sasuke's apartment, using her Byakugan to peer in through their window from a distance that would be safe from Sasuke's sharingan.
Naruto was holding her dark haired son in the air, making faces that caused the child to giggle and clap his hands with delight. Sasuke was on the couch, reading as usual, with his glasses on. His free hand held their daughter in the crook of his elbow, and his foot was gently pushing the crib that contained their other sleeping son in easy, rocking motions.
"I'm telling you Sasuke, they're going to be a killer three man team. Team Uzumaki-Uchiha!" Naruto crowed, his whiskered grin widening again as he flashed the toddler his teeth. The boy squealed and latched his hands onto tanned, whiskered cheeks. The Hokage made a show of pain, spinning the kid around with him to the sound of more laughter.
"You're going to make him sick again." Sasuke said dully, turning a page of his book with his thumb. "And the team name would be Uchiha-Uzumaki, dumbass."
"No way! I don't see your name written on them bastard!" Naruto said, clutching his son to his chest.
Sasuke raised an elegant eyebrow towards the child in question, and Naruto then realized that the boy was actually wearing pyjamas emblazoned with the Uchiha fan.
"That's not fair! Where are his Uzumaki pjs anyway?!"
"The wash, because he got sick from you spinning him like that last night."
"You were distracting me!"
"You weren't paying attention."
Hinata had not realized that large tears had welled up in her eyes. There was a certainty now, a firmness in her knowledge that she did in fact make the right choice for him.
Her son.
Naruto turned around to say something else to Sasuke, and Hinata saw the child's clear grey eyes meet her own, seeing her even from this distance. His pupils were visible, so it wasn't the byakugan, but perhaps something else. Perhaps it was nothing more than sensing the truth in his mother's eyes.
The child began to cry, and Naruto jumped back to attention, making soft cooing noises and rocking him back and forth, waving off Sasuke's look of I told you so, moron.
He would be safe here. She thought again. No one would know he was her son. She just had to disappear, to make sure that no one followed the trail back to him.
No one could ever know.
Sasuke stood to deposit their sleeping daughter into Naruto's arms, ignoring the blonde's sounds of protest as he swept the dark haired boy up and cradled him against his shoulder in the moonlight. The child's cries quieted almost instantly, and tiny hands reached out to tangle themselves into the Uchiha's black hair.
Sasuke, of all people, could never know, she thought, unable to imagine what the Uchiha would do if he did. Fatherhood had tempered him into a man a younger version of himself wouldn't recognize. But all it would take is knowing that Madara's son lived under his roof-
Hinata vanished as the next cloud rolled over the moon.
Notes:
Bum bum bum! Okay, so I had a lot of ideas for how all of these crazy children came to be, but I'm not sure if I want to post the sequel. As it is I sort of like this story as a cliff hanger. But I'm curious to hear your feedback-what do you think of the development? What abilities do you think the triplets will inherit? If you have an good ideas, send them my way! (Though I will tell you I've already had some thoughts, and not all of them would be pleasant for our beloved characters).
Who is the father of the Fuchsia Flash?! (I'll write a brief one shot scene of a pairing/prompt of your choosing for anyone who can correctly guess who Sakura's baby-daddy is in the comments).
I've been writing and re-writing the next chapter of Petrichor for MONTHS now, but I've hit a really difficult plot point I'm trying to clamber over. Ergo, I went and wrote something totally not relevant. But, if you liked this story (I was thinking about re-wording certain paragraphs and actually making this story fully part of the alternate universe I've been developing in "Petrichor"), any reads and comments on the former to try and help me work through it would be great!
-Prosely