Disclaimer: Ha! I'm just a poor student whose parents are paying her way through college. Like I'd own Naruto.
Notes: I'm fond of this part. I don't know why. It was the easiest to write and . . . I just like it. (Edited 6/16/10 to fix errors and a few other things.)
Hana
By midmorning Hana is kicking the chair she's sitting in with her heels impatiently. Auntie Akaiha has been coming out of the room at odd intervals with Aoke behind her; the dog is now heavy with her puppies. Hana wishes Aoke would stay with her but she's forever following Akaiha. What Hana really wants right now is a dog of her own.
What she's getting is a little brother.
She scowls at her aunt when she emerges from the room once more. "Why is this taking so long?" Hana demands, kicking the chair for emphasis. "Mama went into labor last night." Her aunt pats her head.
"It takes a long time," she responds, sitting down next to Hana. She sighs and sinks down into her chair. "When Aoke has her puppies it'll take a long time, too."
"Oi!" Tsume calls from her room. Hana starts and begins to jump out of her chair but Akaiha stops her with a cool hand on top of hers. "Akaiha! Get back in here!"
"I don't want you to see your mother in such a state," Akaiha explains to her, stroking Hana's cheek with that same hand, before standing and walking back into Tsume's room. Hana stares at the door and kicks the chair once more.
No one's been paying much attention to her lately, ever since Tsume started to get really big. All everyone in the clan talked about was the baby and not how Hana was progressing in her tracking and defensive skills.
Not that her mother hadn't been still paying plenty of attention to her. She'd been home more ever since she'd started getting rounder, and Hana helped her around the compound, following her like an eager puppy, almost tripping Tsume a few times.
(And when that happened, Tsume would snap at her; Hana would then run to Auntie Akaiha and jump on the counter on the far side of her office to watch her aunt do her medical work until her mother would come and heft her off the counter so they could go curl up together on Tsume's bed until they both fell asleep.)
Hana starts again when she hears a wail in the other room; it's definitely not her mother, or any dog. She stands and runs to the door and pushes it open, and, there in her aunt's arms is a naked baby, squalling so loud that Hana covers her ears and runs away.
Later, Auntie Akaiha finds her in her room; she's "hiding" in the big pile of stuffed animals in her corner. The woman plucks one of them, a dog with a missing eye and ear, off Hana's head and smoothes her hair back.
"I don't like him," Hana says, not looking at Akaiha. Her aunt sighs and smiles before picking up the six-year-old. Hana pulls the one-eyed, one-eared dog from Auntie Akaiha's grip and hugs it to herself, looking back at her mountain of stuffed animals and wishing she was still there.
Her mother is sitting up in bed when Akaiha brings Hana into the room. She's half naked and Kuromaru is on the bed with her, head on one of her pillows. She's supporting the baby with one arm, holding him to her breast.
She sets Hana down on the edge of the bed and the little girl glares at the baby, who is nursing very happily.
"I don't like him," Hana says snippily. "Can we give him away?"
Tsume looks at Hana for a long moment, and then throws her head back and laughs. The baby is dislodged from her sudden movements and starts to cry, but Tsume settles him back in and he begins to suckle again. Hana is very irritated at this point.
"What?" Hana demands as she folds her arms and scrunches up her brow. She bares her teeth to show her crossness better, and Akaiha joins in Tsume's laughter.
"We can't just give Kiba away," Tsume says. Her voice sounds rougher than usual, and Hana looks at her face for the first time. She appears more tired than Hana has ever seen her. She wants to put her head in her mother's lap, but the baby would get in the way and she wouldn't be able to see her mother's face.
"Why not?" She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. "Isn't that what we're going to do with Aoke's puppies?" Aoke, who is settled on the floor next to Akaiha, lifts her head at the mention of her name, and then snorts. Hana glares at her. Why is everyone laughing at her today?
"Hana, this is so much different," Tsume says fondly, running her fingers down Kiba's little arm. "I didn't give you away after I had you, did I?" Hana pouts and fails to see the point. Why would anyone want to give her away? After all, people in the clan are always going on about how pretty she's becoming and how much she looks like both her father and mother. Not to mention the fact that she knows she's going to be a great ninja one day.
Tsume somehow knows what Hana is thinking and runs a soothing hand through her daughter's hair. She then licks her thumb and rubs it against Hana's face, cleaning off the smudge Hana has been sporting since she finished her breakfast. Despite the motherly gestures, the little girl feels lost and just wants her mother to herself. But now that Kiba has finished nursing and still curled up in their mother's arms, and with Kuromaru on Tsume's other side, there's no room for her to squeeze in, and she feels like crying.
Instead, Hana runs from the room. Her mother calls her name and the baby starts to wail, and no one comes after her. She does start to cry then.
Hana runs to a place she knows that she'll be welcome no matter what. She pushes open the door to her father's home without knocking and hurries around the house, looking for Shippo. She finds him in the kitchen, making lunch, and she throws herself against his legs, almost knocking him over. He does, however, drop the jar he's holding, and it smashes on the floor.
"Hana, please be more careful," he chastises, pushing her hands away from his legs. She sobs and Shippo looks down at her. He kneels to her level on the broken grass and takes her face in his hands, rubbing a tear away. "What's the matter?"
She snuffles and manages to gasp out, "M-Mama h-had the b-baby." Shippo looks elated for a moment to hear the news, but he quickly changes his expression, looking very worried.
"Isn't that a good thing, Hana?" He picks her up and puts her on the counter so he doesn't have to kneel anymore.
"But I don't like him!" Hana has calmed down a bit and can speak without stuttering and gasping for breath, but her eyes are still shining with tears, and when she blinks they overflow and run down her cheeks. Shippo wipes them away again. He doesn't say anything for a few moments, waiting for the little girl to speak again.
"He's loud and ugly and I don't want him to be around," she explains. "I don't want him but Mama says we can't give him away." She looks up at her father to see if he'll laugh at her like her mother and aunt did, but his expression remains the same.
"Hana, we can't just give him away," Shippo says after thinking for a bit. "He is your brother, after all, and babies tend to be loud. He'll grow up before you know it and you'll probably like him a lot." He pauses, frowns. "What's his name, by the way?"
"Kiba," Hana replies, her tone bitter. She suddenly doesn't want to talk about this any more. "Daddy, can I spend the day with you? You don't have any missions, right?"
"No," he draws out his response, and Hana wonders if he'll tell her that he has to take her home and that he wants to see Kiba. But he smiles at her and takes her off the counter, mindful of the broken glass. "Let's have some lunch. We can spend the afternoon together but you'll have to go home this evening."
"All right," she agrees, hugging his legs tightly. She eases off when Shippo touches her head, and she smiles up at him.
Shippo helps her train all afternoon, showing her how to throw a dull shuriken at the target set up behind the Inuzuka compound. Hana is in focus again, and she loves it. But the day ends quickly and her father picks her up to take her home.
Auntie Akaiha is waiting in the entryway, and takes Hana from Shippo. "She's in her room," Akaiha says, tilting her head toward it. She turns her attention back to the girl in her arms; she doesn't smile when her aunt tugs on her cheek, trying to pull the corner of her mouth up. After realizing she couldn't make her smile this way, she tells her, "I have a surprise for you, Hana."
"Really?" Hana thought that when she returned home, it would be all about the baby. After all, her father had already left her there.
"Yes," Akaiha says. "Aoke had her puppies." Hana's mouth drops open and then she wiggles in her aunt's arms.
"I wanna see them!" She says, almost jumping to the floor. Hana runs to her aunt's room to find Aoke half-asleep, three small, gray puppies nursing from her. "Oooh, they're so cute!" Aoke opens one eye and smiles at her, somehow.
"Hana, your mother wants to see you." Hana is reluctant to go back into her mother's room, but she follows her aunt.
"What is it?" Hana asks right away. She wants to go back to the puppies.
Shippo is holding Kiba and her mother is dressed and sitting up in bed again. She smiles at Hana and beckons her.
"I'm sure your aunt has told you that Aoke has had her puppies," Tsume says, and Hana nods, a quick jerk of her head. "Well, we've been talking for a long time about it, and we think they should be your dogs." Hana's mouth drops open again, and she really can't believe it.
"Really?" She repeats, dumbfounded. "All of them?"
"Yes, all three of them," Akaiha responds, from across the room. "We're going to name them the Haimaru Triplets. Do you like that?"
"Yes!" She almost yells, and the baby starts crying, but she doesn't care.
Today, she decides, is the best day ever.