Marbles and Buttons
Warning: Giving birth, light swearing, someone getting kneed (if you don't know what that means I'm not sure you should be there).
Single italics are for emphasis. Phrases in italics are thoughts.
Enjoy : )
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First
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Mikoto — newly anointed matriarch of the Uchiha clan, ex-genin, 20 years of age — pushed, felt something give way and, finally, pass.
In front of her a woman dressed in white rose and held up something red with a worried look. She slapped it and a shrill sound filled the room; eery and far away...
The new matriarch came to five minutes later though it felt like an age and for the first time held her baby. The woman was bustling and saying it was a boy and congratulating her and looking at her expectantly so Mikoto sat up with a grunt to look down two little holes. Her baby's irises were so dark they appeared to fill the whole eye, giving the impression of two small marbles looking back at her. He'd been late in coming and now he fixed her with a squirrelly little gaze. What?
"Hello"
She stroked the side of his face and he turned in reflex to nuzzle her hand. He would always look at her, later, while he was feeding, and the young woman would wonder why she could never hold his gaze.
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Second
--
Itachi sat up with all the dignity his five years would lend him.
"Your mother will not be here this week. Your brother has arrived early and she needs time to recuperate. You are to proceed as usual.
- Yes Father. Father, did she get fat because of this?"
His father, rare event and incongruous sound, chuckled.
"Do not let her hear you say that. Yes, she got big because your brother was growing in her belly. But she wasn't fat and you are not to tell her she was.
-Yes Father."
A pause. An angel passed.
"Father?
- Yes?
- How did he get in there?"
--
The little boy was in a baaad mood. He frowned and sighed and even stomped a bit, but all the adults kept ignoring him.
He'd wandered over to the kitchen after coming back from the academy and his mother wasn't there. His father and every other relative he knew of wasn't there. Well, they were, but paid him so little attention that they might as well not have been. Apart from the odd "Get out of the way" (respectfully said of course) no one had spoken to him all evening. Itachi huffed again for good measure and stomped out to train.
As he arrived to the private Uchiha training grounds the boy spied another person there. They were wandering around aimlessly and occasionally kicked the dirt in the universal "I'm bored" signal. Itachi wondered if they would talk to him.
The person had just seen him and was wandering over now. They were actually quite short and wore the coveted Uchiha mon on their clothes. Maybe he could teach him the grand fireball!
"Hi, I'm Shisui. Who are you?
- Uchiha Itachi.
- What are you doing here?
- Training.
- All alone?
- Yes.
- Wrong answer, I was here first. Wanna train with me?"
--
"I don't know what you were thinking, young master. To wander about after what happened last week!"
Itachi knew. Everybody knew. The Hyuuga heir had been kidnapped and her father and caught and killed the kidnapper. It honestly hadn't occurred to him that he might be subject to the same treatment. After all, he was nearly a ninja now!
"Your parents were very worried, they send for you half an hour ago. And you Shisui! Why keep him outside?"
Itachi walked on silently as the boy named Shisui and his father argued over his head.
--
"Come in."
The boy stepped through the door, slid it closed. He then turned and bowed.
His mother, dear mother, was in bed with his father sitting cross-legged next to it. Between them, on the bed, a little something dozed.
"Come here, come see your brother."
This little thing... was his brother? But he'd wanted an older one!
Itachi said so and his parents smiled at each other, closing him out. His eyes narrowed. He stepped closer to the futon.
A small face swaddled in blankets and held next to his mother. A shock of black hair peeking from beneath the hood thus formed. Itachi gazed impassively at his new relative. This was it? This small bundle of useless flesh was what everyone fussed over? It didn't seem worth it to him.
In the pink face two bright black buttons suddenly appeared. His... brother opened his eyes, yawned, and looked at him; and Itachi was completely and utterly lost in such a fierce wave of love, that he quite reeled from the shock.
His Brother.
His parents looked on anxiously and relaxed as a brief, watery smile bloomed on their first-born's face.
--
Third
--
Sasuke was in Konoha Hospital's maternity ward, doing what many prospective fathers do, pacing. His wife had been taken in over a day ago and still hadn't come out. At first it was quiet, then she had screamed and cursed and he'd rushed in only to be kicked out again by the nurses. That had been two hours ago. Now, silence.
The one important door opened and Sasuke rushed over to grab the doctor by the throat, fully intending to to threaten a complete report out of him. Tsunade gave him the knee and sat down heavily on one of the plastic blue chairs in the waiting room.
"Your wife's OK Uchiha, now quit it.
- Why (wheeze) the screams?
- Her contractions started before she was completely dilated. Painful as hell, nearly ripped her vagina apart, but I stopped them and sedated her.
- (wheeze) Still no birth? (hackcoughwheeze)
- No. These things take time Uchiha, your kid'll come out when she's ready."
Sasuke finally uncurled himself and wheezed his way off the floor into another chair. They sat there silently, everyday sounds of the hospital reaching them. A scream two doors down, a shout of joy, a general announcement summoning doctor Haruno to operating block D, a mother calling her child back to order.
A man and two young girls entered the ward and got directed to a short-stay room on the other side of the building. One of the girls giggled and skipped around bit until the other tugged on her braid, which of course called for immediate retaliation. The man smiled and snapped at them both to stop and behave themselves or they wouldn't get to see their new brother. I want to be that man, Sasuke realised. I want to have three children and call them to order and spoil them and argue with their mother and make up and have another one on the way... God. Please be OK. The girl had blond hair and wore a blue dress with white socks. I want a child like that, thought Sasuke, a happy one.
"You know Uchiha, you better damn well be grateful."
'Uchiha' nodded his understanding. He hadn't come back after killing his brother, in fact he'd buggered off to god-knows-where and had only come back for his wife. She'd been six months pregnant when they arrived with a bad infection. Tsunade had taken her into her care and the council lobbied to keep the budding Uchiha clan in Konoha. He and the Hokage both knew he wouldn't stay.
"Where are you going after this?
- We'll stay in the village for a bit I think, and then we'll go on the road again.
- With what money?
- Inheritance.
- Ha! You nearly got back too late for that. The only reason you got it was because as clan head you couldn't disown yourself.
- Hn.
- I'd better go back in."
As Sasuke made to follow Tsunade added:
"I'll ask if she wants you there."
Of course she would, he thought, they fought, together and for one another, had seen each other at their worst and best... They supported each other.
--
An hour later, the prospective father found himself seated next to a hospital bed on which a woman writhed and cursed his ancestors and descendants over several generations. He was holding her hand and wondering whether his fingers would get out of the ordeal intact.
"Nearly there", he said.
The woman heaved, screamed ("Son of a b-tch!") and collapsed back onto the bed, letting her hand go slack. Sasuke discreetly tried to get some blood back in his fingers.
Tsunade came up to them and deposited with utmost gentleness a small, red, blood-covered baby on his wife's chest. Sasuke wiped some hair back from her sweaty brown and took the sight in like a sponge.
"Hello little one, you sure took your time", said his wife.
A nurse took the baby away for a bit to wash it and slap it on its back to make sure it was breathing and weigh it and wrap it in a blanket and put a big red bow on it and fuck up the whole moment.
The new parents watched the proceedings hungrily.
The nurse finally gave them the bundle back ("Congratulations, it's a girl!") and Sasuke got to hold his daughter for the first time.
She had a little nose, little mouth, no hair, a screwed-up-in-constipation kind of face and she was the ugliest and most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Her eyes opened momentarily and two black marbles looked up at him — What are you? — and they were brighter and clearer and warmer than any eyes had the right to be. A fist gripped his heart, ripped it out and fed it to that little girl. She was his daughter and he would kill anyone, do anything for her in an instant.
Had his mother been there, Mikoto would have remarked how similar her eyes were to his brother's, and how different. She'll be all right, she would have said, she'll be fine.
A bit stilted but I like it. What do you think?