Utsumi Uzumaki knew that her son was different.
Maybe if she didn't also have a daughter, the way he acted wouldn't have stood out so much. Maybe if he wasn't an Uzumaki, she could have fooled herself into thinking that he was a perfectly normal baby. Maybe- Utsumi blew a wayward strand of red hair out of her face, tilting her head back against the wall. Thinking in maybes, and what ifs wasn't going to suddenly change anything. Besides, it would only give Himuro more ammunition to tease her with.
He thought she was worrying too much. 'You're expecting too much from him, Utsu. He's only six months old'. But he didn't pay as much attention as she did. Her little girl had come into the world kicking and screaming with all the fire of an Uzumaki. Where Kushina was the whirlwind, the storm that the medics only stood their ground against after years of dealing with dozens of other little whirlwinds, Kiunno was the silence that followed, the aftermath of a bad storm. The medics were the survivors, not sure of what they were supposed to do with the sudden and total absence of noise.
Kiunno didn't cry when he was born. Not during, or even minutes afterwards. For an Uzumaki, that had raised about a dozen red flags. It was only when one of the very-concerned medics tried to use medical chakra on him to see if anything was wrong did he make his first sound. Kiunno didn't just cry, he shrieked in agony. The medic had jerked her hands back and backed away quickly, but he hadn't stopped. Utsumi didn't remember much after that. She remembered the red, burning rage that consumed her, and the abrupt, overwhelming urge to drag herself out of bed and strangle the medic for daring to hurt her child.
When she came back to herself, Himuro had been there, holding an unsealed kunai against the medic's throat. He had looked at the medic like she was an enemy ninja rather than one of their clansmen. The other medic had restrained Utsumi, her hands firmly pinning her shoulders to the bed while she calmly explained something about extreme chakra sensitivity and overdeveloped pathways that Utsumi didn't listen to. Her eyes had been on her husband, who after frantic arm waving from the medic seemed to believe she didn't do whatever she'd done on purpose and let her go. Himuro had done his best to calm Kiunno down as the medic scrambled away, but he didn't stop crying until everyone in the room suppressed their chakra. It was only then that they started to hear Kushina's loud, frightened cries, which Kiunno had completely drowned out.
That was how they learned that Kiunno was sensitive to chakra, and why Himuro, despite many, many, apologies, was still banned from the hospital.
Utsumi never wanted to hear him make that sound again.
For months, Kiunno was oddly, scarily silent. He didn't cry when he had a full diaper, or when he wanted to be fed, and that terrified Utsumi. She took him back to the hospital once, after two full months of this, but since she refused to let the medic use chakra on him, there was only so much he could tell from just physically looking over him. She hadn't even known that she was going to stop the medic until his glowing hand hovered an inch above her son's chest, and her voice had acted on its own and shouted at him to stop. She had been afraid for Kiunno and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the same room as her if he made that sound again.
After that, she slept on a blanket on the hard, cold wood floor of their room more often than her own bed just so she could hear him breathing. She often held his still body in her lap just to feel his tiny heartbeat against her leg.
Himuro had worried too, in his own way. He hid it behind nervous smiles and laughter that was just a little too loud and expressed it through playful pokes at Kiunno's cheeks and tickling him in a way that always sent Kushina into a fit of giggles. When that didn't work, he showed it by pacing back in forth in their small kitchen in the middle of the night for hours when he thought that she was asleep.
It was almost worse that Kushina was the exact opposite.
Kushina had done everything in her power to be reclassified as a tornado. Utsumi learned quickly that she had three choices when it came to her little whirlwind. Calm the storm before it became a destructive force, weather it until it tired itself out, or find a bunker to hide in and stay out of the way of the devastation.
Her little whirlwind was constantly offended by the world and showed it through flailing limbs and screaming her head off. She let them get so little sleep that Himuro once resorted to dropping to his knees in front of her crib and clasping his hands in front of him in prayer. He had prayed to his fickle goddess, only half-playfully begging her to let him get just an hour of sleep. Utsumi had been half-tempted to join him in his worship, too exhausted to even crack a smile. Her little whirlwind made her feel a new respect for her own mother, while simultaneously making her feel like she should profusely apologize on her and her sister's behalf.
Kiunno didn't open his eyes until he was five months old.
It happened abruptly, like facing an enemy-nin that only used ninjutsu and being suddenly thrown into a genjutsu. Seeing Kiunno's eyes open felt like a false reality to Utsumi, and took her almost a full minute of staring for her to believe what her eyes told her when she looked in his crib. One day, he was motionless, a statue carved out in the shape of a baby. The next he was trying to fit the entirety of his fist in his mouth while at the same time using his free hand to play with his tiny toes.
Once the shock had worn off, Utsumi felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. She couldn't help but think of Himuro's increasingly desperate attempts to make light out of their situation, 'It's just a phase, Utsu. It'll pass', and was overjoyed by the thought that he was right. When she told Himuro, he was so ecstatic that he had immediately picked Kiunno up and spun him around in a happy circle, cheering loudly enough to wake up Kushina. Utsumi would never forget the way Kiunno had smiled for the first time around his fist, as if he wasn't sure what was going on but was still entertained by it, and that his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. She wished she didn't remember the way he had stared at Himuro with a deep level of awareness, like he wasn't just looking at him, but studying him.
When she tried to bring it up later, after finally, finally wrestling their whirlwind to sleep, Himuro had shrugged off her concern with a light, forced laugh. She hadn't brought it up again since it was clear that he hadn't seen it; maybe he didn't want to see it.
Utsumi noticed that look again when she put Kushina in the same crib as Kiunno for the first time. She hoped that some of her excess energy would rub off on him. She hadn't wanted another whirlwind exactly—the bags under her eyes deepened at the thought—but she had been afraid that she would wake up one morning and Kiunno would be lifeless again. She tried to do anything she could think of to convince him to be less quiet and still. Utsumi saw it right after she put Kushina down. Kiunno's eyes had lingered on her for just a little too long, and she caught a glimpse of that same awareness hidden in their depths. Her little whirlwind had been instantly excited by his company, babbling a mile a minute at him, but Utsumi could immediately tell that he wasn't paying attention to any of her baby-talk.
Instead, he hadn't just stared at her, he'd studied her like he was actively searching for something. It had been almost eerie when Kushina finished her one-sided conversation and they were left staring at each other in complete silence. Her eyes were filled with innocence and delight, while his were intense and intelligent. Seeing the clear difference between them had made her uneasy, but she hadn't been given any time to think too much about it. After only a few seconds the whirlwind in the room decided that she had enough of his silence, and decided to break it by rolling over and attempting to smother her brother.
Kiunno had made a startled, strangled noise during the second before Utsumi rescued him, and later, she would marvel—and Himuro would laugh at—the fact that it took a near-death experience to get him to make even the slightest of sounds.
That had also been the first time that Utsumi let herself acknowledge that Kiunno was different. Before, she had been drowning in so much worry and fear for him that the only thing keeping her together was to not think too deeply about her son. Her old worries had been replaced by new ones, but the fear was gone and that left room in her head to think, to see even though she didn't want to.
Then Utsumi started noticing other things too.
Whenever Utsumi put them in the same crib after what their whirlwind had almost done to him, Kiunno would immediately roll as far away from Kushina as he possibly could. He stopped looking at her with those intense eyes of his. Instead, he had always stared at her with wariness, like he remembered their first encounter which… shouldn't have been possible. He was an infant. He shouldn't have been capable of remembering anything, and yet Utsumi couldn't deny what she'd seen.
Kiunno wouldn't play with Himuro or Kushina. No matter how much Himuro beckoned or made silly faces at him, he was content to lay almost perfectly still on the floor and watch them. He wouldn't move as Himuro rolled around on the floor to entertain Kushina, or when he had her roaring with laughter. He'd just watch with those bright, curious eyes as if he were watching a group of strangers put on a play for him. The only time he had ever moved while they played had been when Himuro had tickled his feet to try and force a reaction out of him, but his effort had only been rewarded with movement so small it couldn't even be considered squirming, or one of Kiunno's strange, entertained smiles. Himuro always either laughed his strange behavior off or never acknowledged any of it.
And still, above it all was the fact that Kiunno never once cried.
Utsumi snapped out of her thoughts when she felt a hand tugging on her sleeve. She blinked down into the dark brown eyes of her sister's oldest son, Souta. Even though he was only thirteen, he was already capable enough to suppress his chakra at will. His hair was a dark shade of red, more so than most of the clan. His other hand was wrapped around his little brother, who hid his face in his shoulder as he sniffled.
Souta caught her looking and dropped his hand, adjusting his grip around the infant. "It's okay," he began before she could ask. "Kushi's just not very nice."
"Ah," Utsumi said, trying not to smile. "What did she do?"
Souta made a face. "She bit him." He shook his head, his ponytail swinging back and forth behind him. "But I wanted to ask about Ki."
Utsumi's smile disappeared, and she couldn't help but feel a small trickle of dread at what his question might be. Why doesn't he ever cry? Why does he stare at me all the time? Why won't he play with me-
"Why is his skin so red?" He asked.
She stared at him in surprise and for an instant her mind went blank. Of all the possible questions about Kiunno, that one was near the bottom of her mental list. Souta bent down in the silence that followed and lowered his brother to the floor, only for him to sit stubbornly on his sandal and cling to his ankle. "He scratches himself a lot, Sou. It's nothing to worry about," she said as she regained her composure.
"Does he have a rash?" Souta's eyes were wide, worrying anyway.
Utsumi smiled at him, flicking away stray strands of his hair. "What did I just say?"
"Is he sick?" His eyes grew wider.
"No and no. Stop worrying." Her voice was mock stern, but the truth was that Utsumi didn't have an answer. Neither she nor Himuro could figure out why he was doing it, and holding his hands away from his body was the only way to make him stop. Utsumi moved around Souta and peeked into their room, looking at each crib. The whirlwind was kicking and clawing at the air, demanding her next victim, while, sure enough, Kiunno was scratching his fingers, staring intensely at the back of his palm.
A loud, pitiful cry shattered the silence and they both looked down at the baby attached to his leg. He was looking up at them with big, round eyes as if asking them why he wasn't getting the attention he deserved. Souta sighed and bent down. Utsumi looked back at Kiunno again, and then she closed her eyes. Her earlier thoughts returned, and she thought again of what Himuro used to say about it all being a phase that would pass one day.
She could only hope.
A/N: I'm going to do this thing, where I recommend a story each chapter that I think deserve a read.
It Ends At Dawn by KannaKyomu
