For Mother
Shiori gasped, the sheer pain in her abdomen greater than anything she had expected when she'd discovered her pregnancy. She clenched her teeth, neck arching in the attempt to push the pain down long enough to obey the too-fucking-calm doctor's instructions. It hurt.
Shiori's delivery was not extraordinary by any means. If anything, the nurses said, hers was extremely smooth. Needless to say, that meant fuck-all to her while her body seemed to be tearing itself up from the inside. But she went through it, beared down, and when the doctor came up with something ugly in his arms, she barely remembered enough to realize—it was over. This was her son. And… she had never felt such joy.
She fell asleep very soon after that, hardly cognizant enough to raise one trembling arm long enough to brush the damp and sticky skin of her first-born child before falling back to succumb to her exhaustion.
When she woke up, after the first disorientation had passed, she was all but frantic to see her son. She thought it was a son, thought she remembered the doctor saying that—and she was desperate, she needed to see him. To see… to make sure…
So the nurses obliged her with half-heartedly hidden smiles of indulgence, clearly used to humoring such demands before. She didn't care though, didn't care what they thought of her—she just needed to see.
She was waiting anxiously when the door nudged open again, and a large white tray-crib thing rolled in.
At first she blinked, then looked up at the nurses. "You must be… this… th- where's my son? My boy?"
This was her boy, the nurses assured her, their smiles turning more towards the tolerant side.
"But…" Shiori looked down, into the wide, solemn eyes of her son. Vaguely, a part of her mind noted that weren't babies not supposed to open their eyes for some time? She wasn't sure where she'd heard it, or how long exactly the eyes were supposed to stay closed—but surely for a couple days, at least, after the birth, surely not so soon?
The rest of her, however, was staring with widened eyes of her own at this child of her body. This child who held nothing in him of her, or of her recently dead husband. And she'd so wished…
But he didn't. His hair—(were newborns supposed to have hair? She wasn't sure…)—was a shocking shade of red. No one she'd ever seen had hair so red. And his eyes… She'd seen green eyes before, a few times. On a couple people too busy with their lives and on their way for her to get a close look, and the clearer views of the stars on the magazines. But they'd never had eyes like this. Even on the ones with contacts, obvious contacts, none had had eyes like this.
This… this couldn't be her son… it couldn't be. But she looked at the nurses, and they held no other answer. She looked at the crib, and there was her name on the side. Not her child's name; she had not named him yet, not yet, she'd so wanted to see him first…
She hesitantly indicated that she'd prefer a closer look, and the nurses wheeled the boy as close as possible next to her. Shiori edged over as far as she could, looking down at her boy. And still, those eyes—(they'd blinked, right? They must have blinked sometime since he'd been here, why didn't she remember him blinking?)—gazed calmly, clearly at her. That clear, clear green, like leaves, not at all the hazel-dark color so commonly called green, these were bright, so bright. Shiori swallowed, then forced her hand—(and it wasn't trembling, wasn't that funny, somehow she'd expected it to tremble)—to gently brush the side, the soft soft side of her son's face.
His eyes blinked, finally! blinked; a slow, deliberate movement of the delicate skin of his lids. And his skin… His skin was so pale, so pretty, very pretty and translucent and pale—but why? Shouldn't there be a little color, just a little color other than that delicate, delicate milky pale in his skin? Weren't newborns supposed to be ugly and red and wrinkled and lovable only by the bursting pride of the parents? That's what she'd heard; and Mrs. Mezuminukuri across the street had brought home a child once—her niece's daughter to take for a while, for the poor dear had died in childbirth and the husband was too grief-stricken to take the infant home so soon—and hadn't that tiny tiny person been so ugly to her stranger's sensibilities? But her son wasn't… —(her son, why was he her son?)—he was delicate, and white, and crystal-like and beautiful. Surely he wasn't her son?
She reached down the hand that had been resting lightly next to his head, those clear green eyes still staring at her, and gently turned over the hand at his side, her eyes darting over the kana on the strip of white on the wrist—and yes, there it was, it said it was her son and she looked up again into those eyes.
And—they knew. She didn't know how but those eyes knew that she didn't believe this was hers, and those eyes—didn't care. They were so old, and so sad, and why was there so much distance, so much cold and alone-ness and distance in a child's eyes?
Shiori carefully, carefully ran her fingertips over the forehead and nose of this strange, beautiful child that had come out of her body—ignoring the way her so recently anguished muscles were screaming at her to get back into a comfortable position—and delicately, delicately ran a single finger along the tiny lashes bordering one of those sad, green eyes.
It didn't matter, she realized, as her son blinked once under her finger—didn't matter at all. He wasn't hers—and she knew it, and he knew it, but it didn't matter. Because no eyes so sad, so lonely as that should be left alone, and it didn't matter that this wasn't the son she'd wanted, prayed for after her beloved, dearest husband had passed on.
So Shiori smiled, tired and pained and beautiful, and leaned down ever-so-slowly to place a butterfly's kiss on her new son's forehead.
And named him Shuuichi.
And took him home.
-end-