Fuyuko spends the first three weeks post-childbirth in a state that could tentatively be described as being high on life or, less diplomatically, being bug-fuck crazy, but in a good way.
(Kanna, the red-haired angel that she is, assures her that this is entirely natural and to be expected.)
It starts like this:
Recovery from birthing the twins isn't a concern, because, somehow, there's practically nothing to recover
from.
In the immediate aftermath of the birth, her muscles aren't sore, her bones and joints don't ache, and all the signs of wear and tear her body had collected from the two-day blitz across the Land of Fire and hours-long labor that followed vanish as if they never were.
Aside from a severe case of chakra exhaustion that needs no explanation, she's healthy.
Impossibly so.
Because it wasn't just the trauma and
damage from childbirth and the devastated chakra system from the caged bird seal wreaking havoc on her insides that was miraculously repaired without a trace, bu
t everything else as well.
Even silver-faded scars from training accidents and wounds from the war she'd picked up
years before her pregnancy have disappeared without a trace.
Ravages of over two decades of shinobi training and active service simply
gone, just like that.
It's utterly beyond belief. Not even the best medical ninjutsu barring
maybe Senju Tsunade's herself could simulate recovery this rapid, this extensive, and even a bewildered Kanna had admitted that her
ridiculous kekkai genkai's boosted regeneration doesn't work this fast or anywhere
near this potently.
Not unless there's some other factor at play.
Stumped, they choose to bite the kunai and leave it at that. It's not a particularly hard decision to make - between the two of them they have some ten thousand other problems to deal and neither is willing to look an apparent gift horse in the mouth in a world where lucky strokes are mythically rare as it is for fear of the other shoe dropping and ruining everything.
(Fuyuko looks at her newborn son, so innocently snuggled beside his sister and
wonders.)
Regardless of how, her post-natal physical health is the highest it's ever been- and likely the highest it ever will be, come to think of it.
Her
mental health, on the other hand, is a tad more complicated - and by complicated, Fuyuko means that a single glimpse of her psyche would send all but the most battle-hardened of Yamanaka run screaming for the hills were she even a little less passably functional.
Her new lease on life doesn't exactly erase twenty-plus years of standard-package frontline shinobi strife and suffering, and that was on top of the absolute
hell that was growing up as an illegitimate bastard of the Hyūga clan with all that misery that entailed - not even close. She knows she's not exactly the poster child for stability and optimistic thinking. Likely never will be.
What it
does do is give her purpose- because her children are
alive, free, and by some stroke of divine providence she'd been given a chance to see that for herself. To live and fight and make
damn sure that they would always be safe, and that's far better than anything else she could have ever dared to hope for.
(In hindsight, that state of mind is probably how she ends up permanently attached at the hip to Kanna.)
As it turns out, the Uzumaki(and she gets confirmation of that dangerous secret less than a week into knowing her because the woman is too trusting by half and it makes the now firmly retired shinobi inside of her
despair, just a little
) is eager to prove that she's a moronic bleeding heart because the very first thing she does after sticking by her through her nightmare of a labor is to drag both her and the twins back to the merchant caravan she'd branched off from when she'd first detected Fuyuko's flickering chakra signature.
(Why a woman who was hiding in the ass-end of nowhere chose to follow a chakra signature undoubtedly belonging to a shinobi is something Fuyuko would only understand later.)
Fuyuko goes along with this not by choice, exactly, but because there's nothing else she can do. Between hefting the dozing Miyabi and Satoru in hand - she refused to have them out of her
reach for even an instant. She'd burn the world down before she let them out
of sight - and fighting off an imminent chakra-exhaustion-forced collapse through nothing but sheer force of will, it was another miracle in of itself that she managed to trudge behind her new ally (friend, eventually) to the civilian campsite in the first place.
She's not entirely sure what happens after that, because by the time they get there everything in her line of sight is grey and she herself is flickering over the edge of consciousness like a candle moments away from winking out, but by the time she focuses enough to lift her head and look to Kanna, all four of them have already been bustled into a cramped little traveling tent and all but manhandled into a bed-roll.
The other woman manages to exchange torn, half-way bloody rags that are swaddling the children for actual linen wraps and blankets ( which is a feat and a half because Fuyuko
knows she hasn't once let go of them since the second they'd been put in her arms. Where did they even come from?) before she turns to her and very gently but firmly starts pushing her head down against the quilt.
It's not particularly hard. Fuyuko's almost completely slumped over all on her own.
"Sleep." Kanna urges, tucking her into the bed-roll, and is smart enough not to even attempt to pry either of the children out of her grip. "All of you. Sage, I don't even understand how you're
alive right now, but you need to
rest."
Fuyuko has plenty of arguments for that - Ranging from how a kunoichi thoroughly lowering her guard in foreign territory surrounded by unknown parties was just
asking for someone to slit her throat in her sleep and ending with the
children, because what were her
babies going to
eat?
When she tries to say this aloud, however, she quickly realizes that moving her jaw to speak is suddenly about as easy as bench pressing an elephant boss-summons.
"
Babies. Feed."
She manages to croak out in the end, and the amount of effort it takes to get those two words out is completely mortifying. If she had any shits left to give - or any chakra at all, for that matter - she'd try and bury herself alive with an earth-jutsu to avoid the humiliation.
Branch member or no, if any of her former clan elders had ever seen her acting so
pathetic, in a manner so unbecoming of a Hyūga, they'd have probably killed her on the spot. Assuming that none of them suffered a well-deserved coronary out of sheer
rage.
That vindictively pleasing thought would have made her laugh if she had even an iota more energy than the bare minimum it took to
breathe.
"I'll take care of them," Kanna says soothingly and finally moves to pull the infants out of her grip. Fuyuko instinctively tenses as her grip turns to iron, the idea of parting with them driving her to irrational rage, and Kanna wavers.
"I won't harm them, I swear on my-" She hesitates again, the words stalling on her lips before her eyes flicker past Fuyuko to something she can neither see nor angle her head to track and firm herself. "I swear on my
daughter's life, I won't harm them. Not ever."
It's naive as all hell, but it's the
conviction in her voice that has Fuyuko finally surrendering her grip and letting her arms fall away with a soft sigh, the darkness encroaching on her vision for the last time.
"...Thank you."
"Sleep, you crazy ninja. They'll be here when you wake up."
That's the last thing Fuyuko hears for a long while.
Strangely, it fills with her with relief.
A second later, her eyes roll back into her skull and she finally falls into blissful oblivion.
...
She wakes to a baby's cries, which has her heart seizing for two seconds before she realizes that it
isn't one of hers because
both are nestled into her side and dead asleep.
That wasn't going to last with the unholy racket ringing out around them.
"Sorry!" Kanna gushes, scurrying around the tiny tent and trying in vain to hush the wailing little bundle in her arms as best she can while failing miserably. "Karin-chan just woke up feeling a bit grumpy, didn't she?"
There's a long-winded, hastily thrown-out explanation that follows, but Fuyuko doesn't pay much attention. She'd made the mistake of looking down at little Miyabi, caught the way her nose scrunched up at the irritating volume and promptly had all conscious thoughts
obliterated.
Her little girl is a Hyūga through and through (in looks, and only
ever in looks), she thinks as she ever so gently reaches for her, fingertips brushing over her skin. Dark tufts of hair and a flash of pale Byakugan irises and not much else that wasn't scrunched up and hidden by her age.
She shifts her gaze to her dozing son, and it's his features (like everything else about him, as she'll come to learn) that are the real surprise.
Satoru's snow-white hair wasn't what she was expecting. He sure as hell didn't get it from her.
Something on his father's side, maybe?
(The less said about the eyes, the distinctively
not Byakguan eyes, the better. Fuyuko doesn't even try to think about those, and won't for a long while yet.)
They're both gorgeous. Lumpy, more potato-looking than human, but utterly
beautiful.
"-There we go." Kanna's voice finally filters back into her ears, and Fuyuko reluctantly turns her attention back on her just in time to catch her cooing at the little girl in her arms. "Isn't that better, baby?"
Little Karin finally quietens down and falls into serene quiet, and Kanna's relieved beam is the most heartfelt expression she's ever seen.
"Sorry." She apologizes again, cradling the girl closer as she begins to dose off. "Karin's got a good pair of lungs on her and she's not afraid to use them. Especially not when she's hungry."
"That right?" Her voice is desert-dry and clear of inflection, and now that she's not fighting off unconsciousness with every breath, she starts to really acknowledge how vulnerable she is.
How little she knows and understands of anything going on right now.
"Yes." Kanna seems to notice the shift in her posture because she straightens and goes for a tentative smile. "You probably have questions."
She does.
Kanna doesn't hesitate to offer answers.
And it's more or less the best that Fuyuko could have expected.
The woman was traveling along with her eight-months-old infant, joined a civilian merchant caravan for the relative safety from small bandit forces it would offer and just happened to sense Fuyuko's chakra a little ways off when they'd stopped and set up camp for the night.
Somehow sensed the twins' chakra signatures as well, unborn as they were - and that was
definitely another kekkai genkai, because no untrained civilian had sense chakra that precisely. It was
absurd - Put two and two together, and decided to rush in to help.
A one-in-a-million chance.
There's no deception there. She doesn't need the Byakugan to see the earnest honesty all but shining off of her with so much intensity a blind man could see it.
The woman had saved her life and labored away by her side solely out of the goodness of her heart.
What an utterly anti-mercenary, anit-
shinobi mindset.
(She's so grateful it physically
hurts.)
...
She falls asleep again soon, body still too tapped for any real strength and by the time she wakes up (Some fourteen hours later, because chakra exhaustion is a bitch like that) it's blatantly clear that she won't be going
anywhere any time soon.
Kanna is thrilled about this because she's odd like that.
The civilians who are traveling with her?
Not so much. Not at first, anyway.
They don't know that she's a Hyūga, or that she's a shinobi at all. She hasn't set one foot out of the encampment and Kanna swears up and down that no one else has been inside the tent (when she was asleep, vulnerable), but they still want her out.
Are apparently worried about the peasant - and that's by far the most polite word they use - and her bastard brats mooching off of them and slowing down the caravan
Fuyuko sticks inside the tent and doesn't see what happens, but it doesn't stop her from
hearing it. All the concerned and pointed busybodies quickly change their tune when Kanna lights into them loud enough to wake the dead(and Sage above, Karin
clearly inherited her lungs from her mothers) and tells them all where to shove it.
They do so begrudgingly at first, and then far more happily once Fuyuko amasses enough chakra to unseal one of her storage packs (and thank everything that Kanna had grabbed her discarded pack with all her sealing scrolls when she'd dragged her here, or they'd be in a real mess right about now) and hands Kanna a wad of ryo thicker than her wrist when she storms back inside in a huff.
"Here."
The other woman freezes at the sight of the bills, mouth agape.
Which, fair enough, for a civilian it was likely a substantial amount, but from where she was standing it wasn't anything that impressive. She'd lived in the Hyūga compound all her life (hadn't been
allowed to get her own place) so she'd never had to worry about rent. With several years of standard A-Rank mission pay and nothing to spend it on, she'd collected a small fortune and had dragged it out here with her out of spite more than anything else.
She sure as hell wasn't about to leave it for the old bastards to claim. Far better to use it here and pay for her place among the civilians. And for the baby supplies for the twins, because the lack of her own had prompted Kanna to offer Karin's to share.
(The generosity has long passed the point of raising Fuyuko's hackles and is just downright
scary at this point)
"I-this is-"
There's some idiotic protest coming her way, she can tell, so she shoves the bills into the other woman's hand and calls it a day.
"Just in case you need it," Fuyuko tells her, then rolls back into her corner of the tent and grabs for the nearest twin like a comforter - Satoru, Miyabi's just a little too far away. - before the spinning in her head from the abrupt chakra usage gets truly unbearable.
"Wake me up if there's someone I need to kill" She grunts lowly, and promptly tunes out everything else.
...
It's on the third day that things get... momentarily
complicated.
The caravan is about ready to start moving again - they've apparently been stopping at every town in Gass to sell wares on their way to the Capital - and Fuyuko's just finished breastfeeding the twins, which means she's already well on her way to getting crankier than the literal infants when Kanna drops the bomb on her.
"You're a Hyūga, aren't you?" Kanna says to her a few nights later, and Fuyuko freezes. "That dojutsu is very famous. And
distinctive."
Shit.
She'd taken to wearing a blindfold since the second she'd woken up in the tent - it wasn't as though she couldn't see through it - but Kanna had gotten plenty of good looks at her eyes before, hadn't she?
She breathes heavily.
(She knows by now that it's only an observation, not a threat, but she still has to stop herself from acting on her initial gut reaction, which would have involved a blade and blood and a whole lot of disastrous grief.)
Kanna has had days to betray her and more opportunities to kill her than were stars in the night sky.
And yet... the fear remains
Something of her panic must show on her face (or in her chakra, whatever meager amount she's managed to recover - because Kanna
"I won't tell." She hurries to reassure her, "I'm... I'm from a clan too."
Fuyuko inhales lightly but says nothing at all.
"My name is Uzumaki Kanna." The other woman whispers damningly, and seals away any chance of them going their separate ways. "I know what it means to carry a clan name and yet have
no clan protect you. By choice or by circumstance. I get it. Your secret is safe with me, I
swear."
And Fuyuko?
"That explains the bullshit healing, I guess." She forces herself to shrug casually, and the dismissive response has Kanna relaxing entirely after a second of utter shock.
The redhead beams at her.
Fuyuko has to resist the urge to grimace out unpleasant guilt
She knows Kanna only tells her because she's already exposed her kekkai genkai. Giving her the full story just balances the scales. One deadly secret for another.
She's still stupidly appreciative of the added bit of leverage, as unnecessary as she's beginning to realize it is.
One can never be too careful. She hopes she'll never have a reason to, but she won't hesitate if she has to.
...
It's a couple of weeks after that, and they've fallen into a routine.
Fuyuko's adapted to living among the civilians, adapted to the utterly demanding schedule her infants have on her, adapted to pretty much everything there was to adapt to in the circumstances that she's in.
Then she makes the mistake of asking Kanna where it is she intends to go after the caravan reaches the Capitol of Grass and finally disperses, and promptly nearly dies of a heart attack.
"I'm sorry,
what!?"
Discounting the seal, It's the closest anyone had gotten to killing her since that one Iwa nin in the war and she
doesn't appreciate it!
Kanna winces, but it's more out of morose confusion at the volume and intensity than it is out of apology.
"I was planning to find passage to Kusagakure."
Fuyuko gives her
dumbass of an ally a look that would have curdled milk.
"You are a civilian-born woman of a former great clan, with not one but
two incredible bloodline limits, with an equally helpless infant daughter." She enunciates the words slowly, carefully, because otherwise she'd start screaming at the
suicidal stupidity at play here "Are you out of your mind!? Do you have
any idea what they'd
do to you!?"
For fuck's sake, even Konoha wouldn't be above pressuring the woman to settle down and breed a new generation of Uzumaki to call their own now that the Red-Hot Habanero was undoubtedly dead, and the Uzumaki had once held status almost as legendary as the Senju or the Uchiha.
To get access to a bloodline like that, to the genetic potential that would entail, a minor village like Kusa would commit atrocities that would make seasoned veterans go weak in the stomach.
"What the
hell are you thinking!?"
"I don't have a
choice." Kanna looks
miserable, a far cry from her usual common spirit. It's more than a little horrifying to see. "Civilians don't live easy lives, Fuyuko-san. Or safe ones."
Her red eyes flicker to her daughter, who's sleeping off a nightmare of a tantrum between Satoru and Miyabi. The presence of her twins somehow more calming than anything and anyone else, which Fuyuko understands
completely.
(Her children are perfect)
"I want Karin to be a kunoichi, Fuyuko-san. I want her to grow up and be
strong. As strong as she can get. Strong enough that she'll be safe no matter where she is." Kanna shakes her head merely "I'm just a civilian, and so were my Kaa-san and Tou-chan. I can't train her, I wouldn't even know where to start, but if I take her to a shinobi village and offer my healing in exchange for a place for her..."
She trails off and pauses when she catches the look on Fuyuko's face.
For her part, Fuyuko gets where she's coming from.
Oh, her plan has more holes in it than Fuyuko's had (and she had literally planned to
die), but the desperation is still the same.
Civilians didn't lead good lives. Especially not poor civilians who were little more than peasants. The path to becoming a shinobi was hard and paved in blood and suffering, but if you could make even genin, then you were guaranteed a level of autonomy and power most civilians could only ever dream of.
So yes, she gets where Kanna is coming from.
That
doesn't mean she doesn't hate her stupid, doomed-to-inevitable-horrific-failure plan to the point she wishes it had a face so she could set it ablaze with a good katon jutsu and watch it
burn.
"You don't. I'll train her."
It takes about five seconds into the ringing silence that follows for her to realize what she's just blurted out.
"What?" Kanna manages to sputter, looking about as stunned as she feels.
Damnit. Now she can't back out.
"I'll train her." Fuyuko glances at Karin, then at Miyabi and Satoru. "I'm a kunoichi myself, and she's only a few months older than my children. They can train together."
All three are nearly of an age. She's deserted the village and the clan, but she had no intention of not passing down everything she knows to the twins and arming them with all the skills they need to protect themselves.
If she takes Karin on as well, she could train all three, Konaha style. Fashion them into a proper squad, a functioning three-man team.
(They could have each other's back even when she wasn't there to look out for them.)
It's spontaneous to the point of ridiculousness, but the more she thinks about it, the more she finds herself taking to the idea.
This could
work.
"You-" She looks back at Kanna, who looks at her with something achingly hopeful growing in her eyes. "I thought you planned to leave once we reached the capitol."
"I didn't have a destination in mind or much of a plan to begin with. And I owe you enough that I refuse to see you ruin your and your daughter's life out of a lack of good options." She says bluntly and is feeling nice enough not to press the point when Kanna flinches. "Besides, the potatoes like each other. It'd be a shame to break them up."
"... Potatoes?"
"...The kids."
(They're beautiful, of course, but Fuyuko isn't blind. Babies don't get cute for months after their birth and Miyabi still looks a little...
squished.)
"Oh." Kanna's voice wavers. "You're sure about this?
"I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't."
Which is a blatant lie. She'd offered on a whim, but now that the thought was in her head, she couldn't see enough downsides to discard it.
(If Karin inherited either of her mother's kekkai genkai then even basic kunoichi training would turn her into an absolute
unit. The idea of having someone with that kind of potential capability watching her kids' backs (out of genuine dedication, too) was far too tempting to pass up.
"Hn. She tilts her head and channels her inner Uchiha. "So, how about it?"
In the end, it's a brilliant plant.
That doesn't mean she doesn't instantly regret it when Kanna
lunges and wraps her arm around her in a hug tight enough to leave bruises.
"
Thank you."
Ugh. Physical contact
and feelings.
So damn
awkward.
"Please." She steps back and makes no move to hide the embarrassed flush to her cheeks. If she ignores it hard enough, it's bound to go away. "Don't
ever hug me again."
Kanna just laughs.
(And if it sounds a little choked, a little wet, well, Fuyuko's certainly got no one she intends to tell)
...
A few more weeks pass them by (and kami, civilian travel speeds were pure
torture), and one night they settle into a small town inn.
Fuyuko and Kanna splurge and get a room unto themselves, which nets them a few envious looks but no more than that.
Later in the evening, when the children finally tucker out for the night, they bundle all three of them and step out into the dark for some fresh air, because there's a limit to how long they can stay cooped up before they start bouncing off the walls in frustration.
Eventually, they find a nice, quiet patch of grass away from prying eyes and settle down to watch the stars.
Kanna gives her a funny look when she pulls out the bottle of mid-priced Sake she'd unsealed on her way out, along with a couple of cups. "We're both breastfeeding. We really shouldn't drink."
"I take it you don't want any?"
"I didn't say
that."
Fuyuko. smirks "That's what I thought."
They're careful to drink in moderation, but that goes without saying.
For a long while, both of them drink in companionable silence and watch the stars, utterly at peace. The cool night breeze is a genuine pleasure and only adds to the experience.
At last, Kanna breaks the silence.
"I had-
have an older brother," Kanna tells her one night, firmly, as if trying to convince herself more than Fuyuko. "Gin. We... We had to split up after Kaa-san and Tou-chan died some time ago, but I hope we can find each other again one day."
Fuyuko glances at her. Kanna was only a little over twenty, just like she was. Some time ago meant that she would have been young.
Far younger than she should have been to be left alone.
"He's got a daughter too, you know? Little Honoka-chan. " Kanna smiles, and it's only a little sad. "She was born just before he left. He wanted to search for a few other Uzumaki cousins and couldn't afford to take me with him, but maybe one day Karin will get to meet her cousin. "
"That sounds..." Fuyuko gives her a measured look. "
Idyllic."
"Maybe a little." Kanna shrugs and absently twirls her empty cup, her free hand brushing over Karin's bunded form on the blanket beneath her, tucked into her side. "But hope never hurt anybody."
There's a lot of Fuyuko could say to argue that, but she doesn't. Instead, she makes a note of the expression Kanna gives her. Not expectant but still allowing her a chance to share.
She hadn't spoken about her brother to get Fuyuko to talk about her own family, but she gets the impression she wants to know anyway.
She's not sure she particularly wants to indulge her curiosity, really she isn't, and yet she does it anyway
"I have two." This time when she swallows, the bitter taste in her mouth has nothing to do with the alcohol. "Brothers, I mean. Hiashi and Hizashi."
She raises her cup.
"And If I never see them again,
it'll be too soon."
She doesn't say a word past that, even though she could.
She could tell Kanna about how she wasn't Hiashi and Hizashi's legitimate sister, but their half-sibling, a distinction the elders never forgot to rub in her face. A bastard sired on a mistress years after the twins' birth and sealed almost as soon as she was physically able to survive the process.
She could tell her about all of it and the misery she was sentenced to for the crime of being born, but she doesn't, because she's done with it.
Done with
them.
Forever.
She drains her cup and stays silent as a grave.
Kanna seems to draw her own conclusions from that, eyes glimmering in compassion.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not."
(She is. But she's never going to regret leaving either way. Miyabi and Satoru will always be worth far more than what could have been and never will be.)
...
A few days later, they reach the Capitol. The caravan disbands, and all five of them split and start on their own path.
(They don't look back for a long, long time.)
...
They get four years of peace, in the end.
Honestly, it's better than what Fuyuko had expected. Hell, it's better than what Kanna had expected.
But all good things come to an end, and more often than not, the better they are, the worse the ending.
...
No one dies when everything comes crashing down (no one important), but the night that the realities of their lives return with a vengeance marks a turning point nonetheless.
Blood is spilled. Terror is sown, and lives are changed.
("Miya! Karin! Satoru!")
("NO!")
And when the dust settles, and the screaming stops, the Honored One finally begins to
stir, and the whole world holds its breath and braces for
impact.
...
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous