Sunbeams
56. Mother
Sum: It was so unforgiving
Naruto walks into the house – it is very still and the cat is mewling and rubbing herself against the furniture. He raises his eyebrows at her and shrugs off his training vest and shoes.
"Where's Kaa-san?" He asks loudly, expecting the obvious answer from the kitchen – but there isn't anything.
"Hinata?" He asks again, halfway through his left shoe. His brow furrows at the resounding quiet and the cat mewls again before darting down the hallway and into the bedroom.
He steps up and walks slowly to the kitchen, peering around the door in interest.
"Hinata?" The repetition is greeted by a kitchen left in disarray; a pot on the stove is boiling and hissing and about to go over, but he is there to turn the burner off in time. Vegetables of no particular kind litter the counters, left forgotten: one has a knife standing up out of it mid-cut.
"Hinata?" More frantic this time as he backs out of the kitchen, suddenly worried. He passes by the patio door and realizes that she's there and the sliding door is half pulled back. Shoving it to the side he walks briskly onto the porch to where she sits, her head leaning against one of the wooden beams supporting the roof.
"Hina, there's a pot on the stove, did you forget?" He stands behind her but finds no response, just the slight movement of her head towards him, but not turning fully around.
"Hina?" He asks again, cautiously stepping forward, "Baby there was a pot and it was almost boiling over – are you okay…?"
She doesn't move.
"Its gone." She whispers.
Naruto blinks at her and moves around to see her face. She doesn't acknowledge him, staring straight ahead, a small wad of cloth in her hands, balled on her lap.
"Sweetheart?"
She flinches, a brief shudder. Her fists enclose further over the small ball of fabric in her white fingers.
"Its gone…I lost it." She whispers once more, and then with no more provocation her mouth opens and then closes.
"The baby. I lost the baby."
Naruto doesn't say anything – he is stunned into the silence as the two of them stare at the grass beyond the porch. Her shaking fingers unfurl the small soft infant wash cloth and then condense it, over and over. Crushing.
"Its gone. They said there was something w-wrong…" She repeats, and Naruto watches the tears that are now falling fast down her cheeks, or the way her face is contorting into a kind of agony he's seen too many times before, silencing her words, hand coming over her stomach, fisting the fabric.
"Hinata – !" He cries out suddenly, dropping to his knees. Arms wind around her, suffocating and warm and heavy. "Hinata, this happens – this happens e-every day." He tightens, trying not to let the emotion creep in, but its there and he can't stop it.
"It happens all the time and people…baby this isn't the end. This isn't the end, okay baby? Promise me, promise me you won't give up…don't give up again…we'll try. We'll keep trying."
His words become lost in his head, and she isn't really listening to him the way she knows she ought to. She should feel comforted, she should feel justified. It wasn't supposed to happen again. It wasn't.
She wants to beat him off of her, to shrug his arms off of her, but she can't because she's such an ungrateful, selfish person.
She can't be a good wife, she can't provide. She's empty. But he still loves her and she is so greedy it disgusts her, but he is all she has and she loves him. Kami-sama, she loves him.
They told her that it wouldn't happen this time. They did everything. Followed everything.
She did everything.
It was going to work. They were going to be a family. She would get better, she would be happy again. She wouldn't cry at dinner or at night. She wouldn't look away from him, ashamed; pull away from his embraces and the needy grasp of his hands. She was going to smile again. She wouldn't make him worry anymore.
"Hina-chan, smile for me…just a little one…"
And those times that she could be convinced, but they weren't passionate, but instead so filled with an ache in her body. He would hold her and she would hold back, but it would be the hold of a dying person – the last tie to the earth. She would kiss him so desperately and he would kiss back, and later in the night, her naked body under him, both spent, she would sob into her hands and roll over, away from him.
Once, he was angry.
"ALL SHE WANTS IS ONE! JUST GIVE HER THIS ONE THING! DAMMIT! DOESN'T SHE DESERVE IT?"
She was sitting at the table as he shouted over the thunder after the second baby came, full term, and was so still. He knocked over a plate, it shattering on the floor.
She had apologized and he'd held her and told her violently not to.
It wasn't supposed to be this way – so she should be able to believe him.
But she can't, because this is too real – it's too real and the feeling in her chest is so awful, and she still can't believe it, just like she'll never believe it. The first time. The second time. Now. Every time she can't give it to him. She feels insignificant, she feels betrayed by her own body.
Disgusting. Weak. Useless.
She can't breathe.
She sobs instead, because who is he to think he understands?
Her body latches to him, the wails racking her body.
"Hinata, we won't give up. This isn't the end."
She lets him hold her above the waves, too afraid if her head goes down she'll never come back up.
"I'm too weak…I'm too weak!" She cries into his sleeve.
Always too weak, to be anything – even a mother.
Q-Q
I will write something more uplifting soon, for Naru-chan's birthday.
R and R,
xoxo,
Spoons