In which Kiba regales us with a story about one set of his scars. And other stuff happens, too, probably.
-----
When we first arrived in Bujitaihei, Toudai Narame and Otoyo greeted us. There was a festive hour as it was explained to Narame that, no, Kiba was not a girl in disguise as a boy but had been in an opposite situation previously. Moyun, their son, could not be persuaded to stop calling 'Chi', an odd perversion of the false name I had given them before. Apparently, he had heard the story often enough to recognize me, even at six years of age.
It took three hours to unpack and settle into the Toudai family's second home. Or, at least, settle as much as we allowed ourselves. Naruto was still petulantly grumbling at dinner that night.
Days passed, and we received communication and orders for rudimentary missions fit for genin. After that was the mission report, and then training until the next order came. Our days progressed into something in sight of normalcy quickly enough.
Mira seemed to manage. She and Narame were fast friends, and sometimes Mira would watch Moyun long enough for his parents to orchestrate an escape attempt.
Days became weeks became months, with Mira's stomach swelling each day. Occasionally, she and Narame disappeared to attend something instructional to prepare for the apparently imminent birth – which was weeks away.
Life was normal, by a shinobi's standards.
-----
One night, Mira tensed her back suddenly and startled me awake. Apparently, it also woke her, because she gasped and it turned into a pained groan. Her back arched, lifting her ponderous stomach from the bed.
Her hand found my arm, nails digging helpfully into my skin. "Shino!" she choked.
"I'm awake," I said. "You are in pain."
"No," she said more softly. Her back relaxed gratefully back to the bed and she said, "I'm in labor. I mean, I think I'm having contractions. I mean that I need to get to that room. And I need a medic. I don't care what order they come in. Shino, I'm in labor!"
I was dressed by this time, and had retrieved a set of her warmest maternity clothes. "Would you like help dressing?"
I steadied her as she stood. She didn't appear to be in pain at the moment, but still took my offer when struggling to clothing.
As I was assisting her with her coat, she doubled over. I dropped the coat and wrapped one arm across her hips, beneath the bulge of her stomach. The other held her shoulders still, keeping her from pitching forward. She held her hand over her mouth, tightly groaning in the darkness.
It passed after about ten seconds, and I finished dressing her. Her hands were shaking enough to hinder her ability to open a screen door steadily.
I opened the door for both of us.
In the hallway stood Kiba, Naruto, and Akamaru. Kiba was leaning against the wall casually, Akamaru had his ears flat to his head, and Naruto was fidgeting with a presumably empty thigh holster.
Kiba immediately took Mira's other elbow.
All of us made our way down the hallway, stagger slightly as Mira pushed her weight onto me and then Kiba in a slowly, remarkably steady movement.
Softly, Kiba said, "Naruto told Narame, and she's nipped off for a medic. Remember, you're going to be in the traditional room for – uh, for this kind of thing…" He broke off and sniffed, and Akamaru growled mournfully.
He handed Mira a towel. "Um, put that… somewhere useful. Your water is going to break in about thirty seconds, give or take."
She took the towel in one hand dumbly, and then tried to double over again. This time, Naruto come from behind her for a bear hug which involved various more intimate areas by accident, though none of us were in a mind to care – or notice.
I let go of Mira's arm to take the towel and make use of it beneath her dress. There was a sudden, uncomfortable wetness, and Mira squeaked. I stood up once more and said, "That was a very… different experience."
Kiba was holding his nose, and smiled sympathetically. "Do us all a favor and get that towel as far away from here as you see fit. Akamaru'll follow it and rip it to shreds, but at least, he'll be away from here."
I delegated the task to a detail of kikaichu. They buzzed dutifully away to the north, intent on leading the agitated but enthralled massive dog away to a remote area.
Kiba and Naruto had continued on with ira at a glacial pace, struggling through each step.
Mira was physically able to walk – in between the occasional contractions, about three or four minutes apart – but seemed to be in hysterics.
Naruto said, "What's she babbling about?"
Kiba shushed him, and spoke gently. "She says she wants her mother. Man, having a kid out here in the boonies – I mean, she hasn't got any really close friends besides Narame. She's terrified, poor thing."
There was another contraction before we reached the designated room and Mira was situated. Two more, with decreasing intervals, before the medic arrived.
She was sure, authoritative, and in her late forites. All men were promptly shoved out of the room.
We sat in the next room down, with a faint, dampened scream coming from the other side of the wall every two minutes or so.
Naruto asked, "Kiba, how did you know to do all that stuff?"
Kiba was sitting in close next to me against the wall. He shrugged without modesty and said unsteadily, "I've helped with things like this. Kind of. I mean, just with animals before, because no Inuzuka man is stupid enough to be around a birthing bitch."
Naruto, on the far side of Kiba from me, kicked his foot.
Kiba corrected himself, "Chick. Mother. Not a human one, for sure, and especially not when she's got a mate because that just leads to – well, to bloodshed. Instinctive, sort of. 'You, with the sharp teeth and claws, get away from my vulnerable bitch and new pups'… kind of thing. You get the gist. Only safe for women. So basically, all of my survival instincts are telling me to run as far away from you," he moved his arm against me, "as I can."
I said, "I'm not going to fight you."
"Yeah, I know," Kiba said breathlessly, "but my feet don't. Do me a favor and don't make any sudden movements, okay?"
Mira screamed again, and Kiba tensed.
Naruto asked, "How did you know about… well, you know, her water breaking?"
Kiba pointed to nose. "Her smell went completely wonky. Hormones were practically coming out her eyes. Trust me, anyone can smell that. Especially Akamaru. Some instincts are not as helpful in the modern age as others. Like the one about weak females bringing easy hunting into the world."
"He won't try to do anything extremely not good later, will he?" I asked sharply.
"Oh. No. It's just the smell. Trust me, it goes away soon enough. It'll be fine a couple of hours after someone gets rid of the placenta – and no, Naruto, I'm not going to explain what that is so shut your mouth."
Naruto reluctantly closed the orifice in question.
I said, "It seems that you have finally found a subject in which you excel," I said dryly.
"Hey, don't be mean. It's just that when I was eight, my cousin had a kid."
"A girl in your generation got pregnant when you were eight?" Naruto asked.
Kiba swatted him in the head. "No, retard. She's my mother's uncle's sister-by-marriage's third cousin's daughter, but I decided for the sake of your sanity and mine to shorten it to just 'cousin'."
Naruto grumbled something that sounded very similar to, "She's probably both. And your aunt, too."
"What was that, chibi?"
"Nothing! Ow, cut it out, jackass, I have a headache already! And don't call me 'chibi'!"
I picked Kiba up by the arm and disentangled him from Naruto. Sitting us down together, I prompted, "Your cousin had a child."
"Right, yeah. So I was all alone with her in the tent – on guard duty, you know, just in case – and then the whole place smelled orangey-green and it was thick enough to chew your way through. She smelled it, too, and told me to call for anyone, and that translated to shouting for help instead of running to get them directly – yeah, Naruto, I was a dumb kid, stop sniggering like that – and the first person to show up was her mate."
He sat forward and started unzipping his jacket.
Naruto whistled, "Yeah, take it off!"
Kiba threw the heavy material at him and said, "Shut up, Naruto, or I'm seriously going to hit you in the face."
Mira's renewed screaming punctuated his words, only this time forming phrases, which were indistinct yet still far from complimentary.
He pointed to his left shoulder, to an old scar where a small chuck of meat had been removed entirely. I had seen it before, but didn't know its story. In general, if you weren't present when a scar was formed, you didn't need to know how it came to be where it was. Kiba twisted his body the other way, resituating himself so that we could see the front of the same shoulder. There were four more scars, again forming little craters where muscle had been torn out. The spacing was ridiculously wide, but other than that, it seemed to be a fine caricature of five finger-marks.
Kiba came back to sit with us. "So, yeah, her sonuvawhore mate decided that an eight-year-old, skinny little academy kid was too much a threat and took me by the shoulder to show me the door. Except that he was reacting to the scent and getting ready for a battle and his nails were long enough to stick me. So, of course, he didn't even notice until he threw me about ten feet to get me away and I kinda stuck, a little, only he threw me hard enough for me not to stick for very long. So, yeah. That's how I learned about the joys of life."
Naruto poked Kiba's shoulder, next to him. "How come his hand was so big? That's monster."
"Because I was an eight-year-old, skinny little academy kid then, but I'm not now," Kiba explained with exaggerated patience.
Naruto nodded his understanding slowly.
The sounds in the other room reached a fever pitch, a plateau, and a resolution.
All three of us held out breath.
Two seconds later, there was a wail.
We all exhaled, and then Naruto and Kiba were both congratulating me.
I said, "I didn't do any of the work."
Naruto laughed, "Yeah, your part was fun – ow! Goddamn it, Kiba, stop hitting – ow!"
-----
It was more than half an hour before the aging medic came down to our room. She was unrolling the sleeves of a practical brown dress as she said, "The lady's resting. Who here is the father?"
Two fingers pointed at me.
She directed her piercing gaze at me. "She's in there with the boy. Don't leave them alone for long. If she tries to move, stop her; she's still bleeding, the normal sort of bleeding, that's natural, but I'm worried about the color of it as it first started. There's the danger of her staring to hemorrhage if she does anything stupid. Now, I was woken up rather rudely in the middle of the night, so I'm not going to be any help to her if I stand vigil for the rest of it. I'll be in here, resting, if there's an emergency."
I nodded, indicating a vague grasp of what she was lecturing about.
She waited a moment, and then pointed to the door and repeated with perfect elocution, "I'll be in here, resting."
Before her last syllable, we were all out in the hall and the door was sliding closed.
Naruto shuddered. "I wonder if that's a nurse thing, or if she just knows Sakura?"
I ignored him and walked down to the room where the rest of my family was staying.
I stepped through the door to see Mira, visibly exhausted, buried in damp towels and soft blankets. In her arms was another human being.
A male human being.
My son.
I approached slowly, assuming that they were both asleep. He – the unnamed child – was forcing air in and out of his lungs with strength, a clean draw, in and out with a steady rhythm that gave the entire world a beat to follow and I had a son.
He had been alive under his own power for nearly an hour.
…There was no time to waste.
I nearly touched my son, but then remembered that he had a far weaker immune system than I without the kikaichu. My fingers pulled away reluctantly.
He was pink, and his cheeks were full and soft-looking, and he had only the barest layer of fuzz in lieu of hair.
My son.
I shook Mira's shoulder gently, enough to wake her. She tightened her arm around her son, and then opened her eyes – she wasn't wearing her glasses. The moving tan of her eyes focused reluctantly on me. "Shino?" a hoarse voice managed.
I said, "Mira. We must act quickly."
Her brows drew together. "What? Why?"
"The naming ceremony."
She nodded in recognition, but didn't move to allow me to touch the baby. Instead, she unravelled the blanket from around his fat stomach and appendages. When she had him situated again, she raised him slightly. "What are you going to name him?"
"I haven't thought of it yet. It would be unfair to name him without seeing him first." I held my hand over his stomach and summoned kikaichu. They writhed and crawled over and under my skin – out to scuttle along the outline of a tendon, in at the knuckle, out again at the tip of the finger – and then I touched my son. A mass of black and, once, a flash of tan, swarmed onto and into him.
He awoke suddenly and screamed fit to burst my eardrums.
I held him down, sending still more into him, knowing that I was correctly remembering the lectures and education in Aburame tradition that I had received a hundred times over in my adolescence.
Mira knew all the ceremonies as well, and she wasn't protesting. That was enough affirmation to me. However, she was sobbing and talking quietly to her child, trying to sing through a tired scratchiness.
I stopped, having sent in half the required amount to found a colony.
Mira looked up as I moved my arm away. "Is that really enough?"
"You must give the rest."
Her eyes filled with fear. "No, I can't. I don't even know how to control them…!"
"They know what to do better than either of us." I took firm hold of her wrist and pressed her hand flat to our son's belly, already marked with healing cuts and bruises.
I felt the kikaichu move under the skin of her wrist, and watched the mass exodus of tan shells, shiny with the candlelight illuminating the room. She was screaming and trying to wrench her hand away, and our son was screaming in an eerie harmony, and then it was enough and I let her go. All parts of her sprang away from him on reflex.
I picked him up carefully, taking the blanket with me. One hand rested in the small of his back, forearm supporting his pelvis and legs, and the other held the base of his head still and solid.
He squirmed uncomfortably, still bawling, little bumps racing hectically under the skin of his shoulders and arms and hands. He was so small.
A name for him.
Obviously, the first syllable would be 'Shi', a tradition for the head of the clan…
Kiba, at the doorway, said, "What the bloody fucking hell is going on in here?"
I said, "Shiki."
The kikaichu learned their new host's name and settled, burrowing deeper into him. He wriggled a few moments more and then calmed, breathing harder and crying more quietly.
With a singular focus, I wrapped the blanket around Shiki and tucked him against me, one arm under him and the other on his far side.
Then, I looked at Mira.
She was staring at Kiba with the most horrified expression I would ever see on her pretty face. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes flitted from Shiki, to me, to Kiba, and then she began to scream again. It was not out of pain, and was sharper for it; she seemed to have evolved past the need for oxygen. Her hands went to her ears, fingers knotting themselves in her hair and freezing in an uncomfortable position. She began to shake her head, quickly, throwing black hair everywhere.
She struggled to throw the blankets away from her and sit up. She made it to her feet and tried to run before she walked, but Kiba took her by both elbows.
He put his face close to hers and hissed, "You're an idiot. The medic warned you about moving, didn't she? You're in danger of hemorrhaging still, and if that happens you could die! You don't want that, do you? What will your son do without you, Mira? What will Shino do? You aren't thinking!"
They were both silent for a long beat, as I tried to master the art of rocking my son to sleep as I had seen Itari doing with Mikoto so long ago.
Mira jerked her right arm free and slapped Kiba as hard as she could. It wasn't enough to turn his head. She spat back, "I conceived him. I carried him. I delivered him. These," she gestured to her breasts, which had reportedly swollen two sizes in the last few months, "this," her distended stomach, "is all for him. That boy is mine!"
"Ours," I murmured, endeavoring to wipe Shiki's eyes with a corner of the soft blanket. He was tranquil, occasionally opening and closing his mouth experimentally or twitching an extremity to discourage the movement of a barely-visible traveling bump.
Kiba gave me a meaningful look. I was not helping the situation. He whispered, "I'm not trying to do anything to your son, Mira. He's yours, and he's Shino's. You've beaten me, alright? You've done something beautiful and amazing and it's something that I could never do for him. You've won. They're yours."
She was weeping, sinking down as her knees failed. Kiba moved her back to the bed tenderly. "Didn't you hear his name?"
"Shiki," Kiba said solemnly.
She held his sleeve in a frantic grip. "Don't you know what that means?" she gasped.
"It doesn't mean anything."
"I've seen how he is with you! To him… both of you together are 'we'. With us, it's 'Mira and I'." She buried her face in her hands. "I thought it was just that he wasn't used to us being married! It was just new! But it's been more than a year and it's still 'We were training' and 'Mira and I will come to dinner'. I'm not an idiot!"
Shiki's face wrinkled as it pinched in preparation for more tears.
Kiba said, "You can't read anything into it. He doesn't. It's just… natural for him. None of it's up here," Kiba said, poking himself in the temple.
I held Shiki closer to me. He calmed down.
"That's what makes it worse," she sighed, losing her energy. She either slept or fainted.
Kiba slowly stood, rocking back on his heels, dragging all ten fingers through his hair, and breathing through his teeth. He looked up, stalked toward me, and said icily, "You have no heart." He stormed out of the room, closing the screen softly enough on his way out.
I sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the helpless little person in my arms silently. I stayed awake the rest of the night, careful to let both of the others in the room have their rest.
Once, near dawn, Shiki's eyes half-opened. Two irises, one black and one tan, blinked at me once and then slid closed.
I would need to acquire sunglasses, I reminded myself.
-----
One week of new experiences - sleepless nights, the science of diapers, an in-depth education on the mysteries of breast feeding - passed as a dreamlike blur.
The first visitor of many was Shikamaru. He was passing through on his way to Suna from Konoha, and stopped overnight for recuperation and copious amounts of alcohol. Mira agreed to watch Shiki one her own, and I joined Naruto and Kiba to heard the news of our village.
Shikamaru raised his glass with his left hand, absentmindedly flicking the fingers of the otehr as though repeatedly counting to three.
Naruto asked, "Doesn't that hurt?"
"It's been four months, Naruto," Shikamaru rolled his eyes. In the face of Naruto's incomprehension, he clarified mockingly, "So, no, in fact, it doesn't."
Naruto shrugged. "Sorry! I have a bad measure of how quickly normal people heal!"
"Maybe we should blow two of your fingers off and see if they just grow back altogether," Kiba joked.
Naruto tilted his head. "No, that sounds kind of like a bad idea..."
I took the rest of Naruto's sake away from him before it convinced him otherwise.
Kiba waved his hand in front of him to help him talk. "Tell us again, O Hero of Negotiations."
Shikamaru sighed and rattled off, "Tsunade, Gaara, Temari, and I were at the ass end of an seven hour meeting when some chuunin kid flickered into the room and shouted something about Kumo being number one or something equally obtuse. He lit an exploding tag, so I jutsu'd him into throwing it out the nearest window, but it wasn't going to make it. Luckily, my hand got in the way of Temari's face and the next thing I know I'm operating in base eight."
Naruto pitched his voice two octaves higher. "How brave and un-lazy you are!"
Shikamaru still had his right middle finger, though it was technically a bit off-center.
I asked, "Why did you block Temari and not either the Kazekage or the Hokage?"
He sobered considerably. "She was closer, is all."
Kiba snorted into his drink.
Shikamaru changed the subject. "Nice-looking kid you've got, Aburame."
"Thank you," I said automatically.
Kiba cut in. "How does Ino feel about you protecting Temari so uncharacteristically?"
"Well, I dunno, Inuzuka, she only kind of dumped me two months ago."
Kiba's mouth dropped open. "Really? But you guys've been going out for, like, three years!"
"And she calculated that I've been going to Suna for negotiations for four."
"Yeah, but it's not like the whole time you and Temari were-"
Shikamaru shrugged noncommitally.
Naruto said, "Oh, hell, Shikamaru! What were you thinking? Even I know that you're not supposed to go with two girls at once!"
He did, apparently, have a temper, though it was usually buried under layers of lethargy. He said, "No, Uzumaki, you just figure that it's okay to sleep with a woman as long as she doesn't actually love her husband."
Naruto turned red and searched for his stolen sake.
I asked, "How is Hinata?"
"Well enough. Halfway done with being pregnant, actually."
All three of us were taken completely by surprise.
He looked around at us. "What? Didn't I mention that the last time I was here?"
Naruto stood up and left. Watching him go, Kiba growled, "You know damn well that you didn't mention it. If that was a lie just to get back at Naruto, it was a lousy thing to do."
Shikamaru finished his drink and shrugged again. "It's not a lie, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't keeping it for just such an occasion. If he's interested later, tell him that it's going to be twins according to Tsunade."
Kiba sighed. "Can I ask you a question?"
"If you're going to ask me another one, go ahead."
"Did you love Ino at all, or was it for sex?"
Shikamaru squinted up at the ceiling. "I did love her, after a fashion. Not the same as Temari, but... it's not like I was just lonely, either. Shit, I'd even sometimes go for about a month with having anything physical with Ino... you'd think I would have been smart enough to break it off then, huh?"
Kiba said philosophically, "Book smarts don't amount to much in that department, I've found."
I said, "That reminds me. What is the protocol for sex after a child is born?"
Kiba blinked at me, realized what that question meant, and set his glass down merrily.
Shikamaru laughed. "Logically... you should wait until you're in the mood before even talking about it with her. Definitely not until the kid can go more than an hour without needing either of you dressed and ready."
Kiba euphorically drawled, "Or, y'know, until you want another kid. One seems like more than enough, though."
Shikamaru laughed again and said, "No man can go that long without some nookie, Inuzuka." Then, he paid and sauntered away to sleep in the second house's extra room.
Kiba winked. "Well, then, I guess it's a good thing that I'm keeping that appetite of yours at bay, hmm?"
I said, "Yes, I was also wondering what the protocol was for that, as well..."
"Whatever we want it to be, Shino. Trust me, we'll be able to work something out. Now, come on - you need to get back to that wife of yours."
-----
I was a bit iffy about Mira's reaction. But then I thought about it... and, yeah, I would react the same way. So it stayed. And Kiba was even trying to be nice to her, so pack your parka before heading off to Hades.
Oh, and all that stuff about Inuzuka customs - actually, most of the custom stuff in the entire story - is all me flying by the seat of my comfy flannel pajamas. It's just... what's really custom in a world where you could get shanked by a shemale with ice powers at any moment? (For those of you who haven't gotten through the first ten episodes... that's a reference to Haku. I know, I'm vague.) Including weddings, and the Aburame things (augh, why do we know so little about that goddamn family?)... it's all from the top of my head. Neat, though, right?
