"The world does not know what it needs.
We offer it what we have."
As he held Hanabi's stillborn, the hard shell of the tip of his finger traced a pattern across the infant's face. Naruto's thumb was wide enough to cover the whole of what was once a mouth, and he couldn't believe how anything could ever be that tiny.
The babe's face was blue, as the sky. Even bluer than the depths of Naruto's eyes and it made it hard for Hanabi's voice to move, the air she caught getting trapped somewhere between her lungs and throat.
She swallowed but the tightness remained.
Naruto rocked back and forth, still humming a slight tune and smiling as he whispered something she wasn't coherent enough to hear. Neither of them were, really. His song was catchy and it became something she would remember and think often of.
Hanabi was sitting upright in the bed, the back of her skull relaxed against the unsupportive surface of cold brick and frosted tiles. Her heart still raced, each beat pounding at her chest, despite the perfect stillness of - the aftermath of - the room.
And though the windows were closed with heavy latches, she could smell the sharp odor of salt that never seemed to leave Wave Country. Her eyes started to sting from it - unaccustomed to the levels - but they remained open, solidly staring at the unexpressive ceiling.
The child's hair was curly from birth and slightly wet. But Naruto kept humming as he wiped the stains away with something as ineffectual and lasting as his fingers.
Hanabi was so quiet, one would scarcely believe she was breathing.
And Naruto, knowing the true depths of humanity, gently wrapped the smallest corpse he had ever seen to spare her the task. He held the lost life, and breathed deep and loud for Hanabi, so she would remember how to, smiling at her across the barrier of a hospital bed when she couldn't do the same.
The silence was penetrating, etching between them a pattern over their souls that could never be removed, and no one knew how they would ever describe it to Kohona.
t i t l e - s u m m a r y
STILLĀ·BORN
dead at birth; ineffectual, useless from the start
to allay or relieve
Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19.
