Something Simple
'Dear sleep,
I know we had problems when I was younger, but I love you now.
Sincerely, Me.'
Three days later, after the vaccinations had been doled out and the birth certificates had been written up to everybody's satisfaction, Tsunayoshi and Nadeshiko were taken home by their terrifyingly enthusiastic parents.
Tsunayoshi had begun crying the minute they had set foot into the Sawada residence, and his cries, however adorable they might have been to his parents, were not appreciated by the elderly neighbours.
"Ah, Tsu-kun! Are you hungry? Do you need your diaper changed?" fussed Nana, fumbling to unclasp her shoes while holding Nadeshiko steady in her arms.
Iemitsu, seeing his wife's difficulty, tried to help her the best way he knew how. "Here Nana, let me hold Nade."
"That's a really good idea anata!" agreed Nana enthusiastically, transferring the sleeping girl to her father's arms while she focussed on taking off her shoes.
Unfortunately, for various reasons that ranged from Tsunayoshi wiggling in his cocoon to Nadeshiko waking up and screaming bloody murder, Iemitsu nearly dropped both the twins in the four seconds he'd held them in his arms.
How he manoeuvred the twins to hold them both was a mystery no one on the earth would ever solve.
"Ah, Tsu-kun, Na-chan! Anata, bring them in here ne?" called Nana from the kitchen, having already reached there to start preparing a meal for her husband.
"Coming Nana!" yelled Iemitsu, irritating both of his twins. This then prompted Tsunayoshi to start mimicking his little sister, with a lot more snot and a lot less terrified horror.
And this marked the auspicious beginning of the Sawada family's new life.
The first few times she'd been lucid enough to register her surroundings, Sawada Nadeshiko had had absolutely no idea what was going on. In the end however, she opted to go back to sleep, because no alarm was blaring, her baby wasn't crying, neither one of her parents were ranting at her for her bad life choices, and her stupid excuse for a boyfriend wasn't banging on the door in either apology or anger.
Yes, she simply went back to sleep.
After the fifth time she'd bobbed into awareness from her sluggish peace, Nadeshiko had had something in her mouth that felt a bit like rubber, smelt a bit like her baby, and tasted like a long forgotten memory.
The next couple of times were a lot less lucid, and Nadeshiko had absolutely no idea what was going on, but the nagging feeling in the back of her mind was telling her that there was something major that she was missing, and that she'd best get up and figure out what it was.
But then, she was feeling rather sleepy, so she simply went back to doing just what she'd been doing previously—sleeping.
In and out of foggy dreams and misty memories, seesawing between near-panic and complete-chill, climbing out of the quagmire of sluggishness and lassitude before falling right back in with a plop and floating away on a cloud of quiet…
Once or twice, during those moments of awareness, she'd felt someone next to her, something soft and squishy and who smelled like clean baby.
She thought it was her baby, and she held the someone close to her with her lethargic hands and listless body. Sometimes, she thought her baby held her too, but she wasn't too certain about this. It didn't stop her from feeling a warm happiness though.
The first time she broke out of the weariness, the first time she registered the wrongness of her situation, was also the first time she breathed the air of the Sawada residence.
It all started fairly normally.
A sweet-scented woman carried her with warm arms and the impression of a smile, a gruff-sounding man keeping pace with them and carding a hand through her hair at intermittent intervals.
They walked a fair distance, and Nadeshiko bobbed along with them, content in a way only someone with no worries could be.
Wait a minute. What's going on?
She didn't panic at first, more confused than frightened. Had something happened to her? Where were Comfy Woman and Loud Man taking her? Did her parents know where she was? Had her pet bunny been fed? Had her good-for-nothing boyfriend returned her phone calls yet? Had someone taken out the trash yet?
Then the questions crashed into her one by one, each a successive punch in the metaphorical gut. Did my boyfriend dump me? Are my parents going to kick me out? Should I have just aborted the baby? Where is he? Where's my little honey-bear? Who are these people!?
As Comfy Woman opened a door and the foreign scent of mild cleaning products, pricey cherry scented candles and crude oil assaulted her delicate senses, Nadeshiko began to panic. The man and woman exchanged a few words and then she was handed over to Loud Man.
As the world disappeared from under her and she slipped and slid across a quarry of oh-my-gods and please-let-this-be-a-terrible-dream, she screamed.
And if someone else was screaming with her, she didn't register it. After all, she had enough problems on her own plate to handle without dealing with someone else's.
She was by no means stupid. Terrible as she was at making decisions, Nadeshiko, formerly known as Lucia, had never been lacking in the intellectual department.
Of course, she'd never used it—a combination of the lack of need to put effort into anything, trying to fit in with the cool kids, falling into the wrong crowd and zero respect for teachers ensured that she came off just a few shades shy of airheaded—but that didn't mean she didn't know how.
Or rather, it would take a real idiot to not notice how utterly wrong being given a bath by giants making odd hippo noises was.
The baby laid next to her in the little tub the giants had placed them in was someone, she had decided quite firmly, that was not her baby. She didn't know how she knew exactly, but there was a gut feeling that insisted that this one wasn't her honey-bear, the baby she had lost everything to have - her family's love, her ex-boyfriend's affections, her standing in society, her peace of mind, her fertility, her job, her education...
The new baby's hands flailed dangerously close to her vulnerable eyes but she, however, was too afraid to wiggle away from said flailing limb, because she wasn't altogether certain that the giants would catch her if she fell into the lukewarm water. She would even hazard a guess as to say that they would be worse than useless if such an occurrence were to happen; the way they only noticed her or the baby next to her was if they cried or cooed. If no sound was made, the giants seemed to get hit with cupid's arrows and started making cutesy noises at each other in a foreign tongue.
Even without understanding a single word they said, Nadeshiko very nearly barfed.
Not to say that she didn't anyway, and then wail loud enough to burst her own eardrums so that the blond giant and the brunette giant noticed that she'd gotten milk sick all over her face.
The baby next to her, she'd gathered from the barrage of words that assaulted her every day, was Tsukan with a barely pronounced 'a', or, if the blond giant was to be believed, Soona. They referred to her as either Natchen or Naditchen, and she hadn't quite decided what she thought about this form of address.
But currently, it wasn't just Soona and herself in the bathtub, oh no. If it had been just that much, she would have been able to handle it.
No, the blond and brunette giants clearly believed in conserving water by bathing together, because they were in the bathtub too, getting thoroughly distracted with each other and nearly getting soap in her ear.
Nadeshiko blew bubbles with her pouty lips and blinked away the water from her eyes. Soona or whatever, began crying earnestly as the baby shampoo got into his eyes.
The giants, incompetent as they were, began panicking comically.
Nadeshiko made gurgling noises that, in her head, equated to a laugh.
And no, she wasn't really sure whether this was a fabrication of her wild imagination or not, but she was fairly certain that if she stuck around, she would find out sooner or later.
Thank you so much for the favourites, follows and reviews! I didn't expect such an amazing response! Please continue to be just as awesome, yeah?
