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It is as Kushina walks home one afternoon, grocery bags in hand and several months pregnant, that she decides to speak to her shadow.
She’d noticed him long before now, of course: lurking behind alleyways in the dead of night, crouching under her window in the pouring rain or baking in the midday heat atop her roof. She didn’t know whether to be amused or mildly offended, honestly—had Minato sincerely thought she wouldn’t notice? For an Uzumaki, sensing the chakra signature of a child—no matter how talented at espionage they might be—was as simple and natural as smelling a storm on the breeze, or feeling the sun on her skin. That, or perhaps the kyuubi didn’t take kindly to being trailed, as she liked to muse. To say it could be particular would be the understatement of the century.
Kushina takes a sharp turn down a narrow back alley, smirking to herself at the telltale lightning-crackle of chakra that follows a few meters behind. She walks a few steps, then halts abruptly.
“Hello, Anbu-san,” she announces into the empty air. “Would you like to come out?”
No response, of course. Kushina tuts to herself.
“Ah, what a shame! I am just so pregnant, and so vulnerable.” She rubs her swollen belly for emphasis. “It’d be so terrible, y’know, if something were to happen to me, all alone in this alleyway.”
Once again, Kushina is greeted by silence, but she senses an energy spike in the nearby chakra signature.
“If I were to be attacked by marauding thieves,” she continues, “I’d definitely have to scream, and then all the other anbu would come running, and they’d see that my diligent guard-dog had failed his mission. How humiliating that would be for him! And you know, if I were gonna scream, I bet it would sound a lot like this.” Kushina opens her mouth, inhales a lungful of air, and–
“Stop!” calls a high, boyish voice.
Aha.
Kushina’s shadow drops from the roof, lands in a crouch, and straightens up. His hound mask may hide his face, but that shaggy gray hair fluffs over his ears, sheathed blade peeking behind his shoulder, and she’d know him anywhere.
“Oh! It’s you!” Kushina feigns surprise. “What are you doing here, Kakash–”
“Please, Lady Kushina,” he interrupts, sounding a bit harried. “I am on a mission, I must ask you to refrain from using my real name.”
“A mission, hm?” She quirks an eyebrow at him—a feat that Minato had always been rather jealous of. “What might that entail?”
With his face obscured, the only tell of Kakashi’s frustration is the short huff of air that filters through his mask. A smile dances at the corners of Kushina’s mouth, but she tries to tamp her expression down into one of innocent bemusement. Kakashi probably wouldn’t appreciate knowing how cute she thinks he is in this moment.
“I believe you already know, Lady Kushina. So, if you are quite safe from any marauding thieves, might I return to it presently?”
Such formal words clashed with such a young voice—although, Kakashi had always been the solemn one. Kushina could recall, on days when she watched Minato train his team, noting the hard glint behind Kakashi’s gray eyes, offset by the childish tuft of hair plastered to the middle of his forehead.
She’d wanted a genin team herself at the time, of course, but it’s not like Konoha’s jinchuuriki could very well go running off with three children unsupervised. At least, that’s what Lord Third had told her when she’d shouted at him about it in his office. Kushina still thought she’d been robbed, but, well—you got used to it. No leaving the village, no leadership position, no genin team.
Stuck to observing, Kushina was able to see the slow change overtake that lonely kid: the dismal stormcloud around him channeled into training, then backtalking his sensei, then bickering with his team. Great Sage, that Obito could rile him up like no other, and poor Rin always the middleman—
Kushina’s stomach drops, and unbidden, a memory flashes to mind: her Minato, that first night he returned from that mission, trembling and silent and clutching her like a lifeline as she caressed his golden head of hair. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, darling.
And when the news about Rin came, Lord Third sent a child after her—a child who came back with a hollow look in his eye and a tension he kept curled up tight in a lightning-charged first.
She heaves a breath to forcibly expel her heavy thoughts.
“Well, Hound-san,” Kushina says, “would your mission happen to entail helping a poor, feeble woman carry home her huge bags of groceries?”
Behind the mask, she sees Kakashi’s eyes narrow. This time, Kushina can’t help the smirk that comes to her face. “Feeble” wouldn’t hope to describe her even on her worst days, and Kakashi is well aware.
“That is hardly–”
“What?” she interrupts. “Hardly the least a dedicated guard-dog could do for his Hokage’s wife? I’d have to agree with you, there.” She flashes a wide grin at him, the one Minato describes as “foxy.” Go figure.
Kushina can see the moment Kakashi bends, then breaks—his eyes dart around, his shoulders stiffen, then they slump forward as he releases a sigh.
“Yes, Lady Kushina,” he acquiesces in a murmur.
“Oh, enough of that, Kakashi, really.”
***
Kakashi, ever the sneak, had attempted to slink off after dutifully depositing Kushina’s groceries in her kitchen. He had one foot out the window when Kushina snapped her fingers at him, pointed to the bags, and ordered him to begin unloading their contents onto the table.
Out of the corner of her eye, she’d watched carefully as he unwrapped the saury on her table, and she had to turn to hide her satisfied smile when that red sharingan eye glittered hungrily behind the mask, despite the fishy smell.
“Your favorite,” she threw over her shoulder, trying to make it seem offhanded.
Of course she knew it was his favorite. She’d watched him eat broiled saury a thousand times as a kid—or, a younger kid—when Minato let them have breaks. Before Kakashi could make an excuse to leave, she put a knife handle into his hand and ordered, “Cut,” leaving no room in her authorial tone for argument. (She was practicing her “mom voice,” and to her great pleasure, it worked like a charm.)
It is as Kakashi is wiping the fish dry that Kushina leans an elbow on the counter and raises her eyebrows at him.
“So, Hound-san. Do you have any ideas on what me and Minato should name our kid?”
At the mention of her husband, Kakashi picks his head up and sweeps his gaze around the room as if the man were teleporting here that very instant. (He could and often did, but Kushina wasn’t about to say that.) Even with his face covered, Kushina can still read Kakashi’s thoughts instantly in just that little gesture: I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not doing my job.
“He’s got a late night at the office tonight,” Kushina says, to ease the kid’s nerves. She huffs and puts her chin on her palm, adopting a petulant air. “It’s so boring being pregnant, sometimes. I’m here all alone, just making delicious food for one—well, two.” She pats her belly.
She’d said it as a joke, to disarm Kakashi, but the truth is that it really is boring being pregnant—and not sometimes, all the time. Of course, Kushina would never regret the small human growing inside of her, and she couldn’t help but smile with giddiness every time she rested on the thought of becoming a mother… but in the long, lonely hours of the afternoon, when the sun stretched orange fingers over the wallpaper and it seemed all the world had somewhere to be but her, she couldn’t help but think she was exactly where the elders always wanted her. Immobile, inessential, and dormant.
She didn’t like to dwell on this for long: it made her prickly, irritated, and she had to shut it down before the kyuubi sank its claws into the emotion. She could feel it stir in those moments, the kindle deep inside her consciousness, as visceral and innate as her own skin, flaring with heat. It wasn’t fair that other people could ruminate on their more negative thoughts without the threat of a demon warping their soul—and that of their unborn child—but Kushina’s life wasn’t fair, and she’d long ago had to accept it. If she didn’t, well… wouldn’t the kyuubi just love that.
“I don’t know,” Kakashi says softly.
Kushina’s eyes snap back to focus on him. “What?”
Kakashi lifts one shoulder in a jolty shrug. He’s not looking at her: his eyes are trained on his hands, expression masked by the—well, the mask. “I don’t know what you should name your kid.”
“Oh,” Kushina exhales with a laugh. She’d honestly forgotten about that little conversation thread, and leave it to Kakashi to take her question deadly seriously. “Well, that’s okay.”
She passes Kakashi a bowl she’s prepared with sake to soak the fish in, and as he dips one tail under the water with laser concentration, she tilts her head at him. He is so comically focused, it brings a warm surge of endearment to Kushina’s chest.
“Y’know, I’d like to cook with my kid like this,” she muses aloud. “Teach him to appreciate good food. It’s important.” Kushina rubs her tummy and makes a funny face at him.
Kakashi glances at her out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t respond, instead sliding another fish into the bowl.
Gotta keep talking. Kakashi was such a good little soldier—if he remembered his initial awkwardness about being here, he might really insist upon decorum and leave.
“I wonder what he’ll be like,” she says, flicking her eyes to the ceiling and pondering. “More laid-back, like Minato? Or more fun, like me.” She shoots Kakashi another “foxy” grin. “Maybe both. That’d be nice, if he’s the best of both of us. A good personality will help him make friends, and I want him to have lots of them–” She’s rambling, she hears herself, but she’s never been good at stopping her verbal train of thought, “–‘cuz I didn’t, really, when I was a kid. I was kind of lonely, but I’ll make sure he won’t be. I’ll have kids over for his birthday and take him to playdates and all that stuff. Geez… I hope I’ll be a good mom.”
That sentence lingers in the air, because isn’t that the crux of it, really?
She wants to be a good mom. She wants it more ferociously than she’s ever wanted anything in her life: more than her home—her first home, her birthplace—more than hokage, more than anything she’s been denied in her years as Konoha’s jinchuuriki. If she can do this one thing right, if she can bring a happy child into the world and raise him to be good, and kind, then everything—everything—will have been worth it.
“You needn’t worry,” Kakashi says.
Kushina meets his eyes, stares past that blank porcelain slate.
“You’ll be a great mom.”
Suddenly, she’s overwhelmed looking at him. Thoughtless, thoughtless—how could she have forgotten who she was talking to? A fellow orphan, and one who’d lost more love by the age of twelve than many adults gained in their whole lives. What a sorry hand he’d been dealt, and how earnestly he looks at her now. She can see how much he means it, this solemn, somber, lonesome boy with gray hair and a gray eye and a gray heart and too much power lacing his emotions like a conduit, just waiting for the spark. They told me he left no one alive, Kushina—not even for questioning, not one.
Minato thought this would be good for him—to watch over the nurturing of a new life—but all Kakashi had done over the past months was isolate himself further. It was obvious to Kushina, but why couldn’t Minato see that?
She’s doing it before she’s even thinking about it, and by then, it’s too late to stop, and she’s never been one to ignore her impulses, anyway. Kushina reaches for Kakashi’s hand and pulls it to her, fishy residue and all. She places it on her belly and covers it, gently, with her palm.
Kakashi tenses. His shoulders climb up to his ears, he stops breathing for a moment, but he doesn’t pull away from her. There’s a long moment where nothing is said and the quietness of the home, so familiar to Kushina, descends upon them.
Then there’s a sort of shift inside of her, like when the kyuubi stirs, except more corporal and with far less brooding evil attached. The baby has moved.
Kakashi nearly jumps out of his skin. He gasps, and—wonder of wonders—he smiles. Just a little. Kushina can tell, from the shape his scarred eyes make.
“Is it awake?” Kakashi whispers, unable to keep the awe from his voice.
His question is so naive and childlike that happiness bubbles over in Kushina’s throat into a laugh. She grins at Kakashi, and there’s nothing foxy about it.
***
Minato returns late that night.
He comes silently into their bedroom, crawls into their bed, and slides his arms around her. Nose buried in her hair, his breath warms the back of her neck. She curls into him, back pressed to chest, and laces her fingers with his.
“Long day?” she murmurs.
“Mm.” He sighs, and it tickles the baby hairs behind her ear. “How was your day?”
“Good. Same as always.”
She thinks, then, about telling him of her breakthrough with Kakashi. She wants to describe to him how Kakashi wolfed down the saury like he’d never tasted it before in his life, yet somehow managed to keep his mask on the whole time. She wants to joke that perhaps Minato could hire him, on the village’s yen, to be a full-time babysitter for their kid when he’s older.
But she hesitates. What if Minato, as Kakashi had, thinks the kid—no, the anbu operative—hadn’t been doing his job? What if she gets Kakashi into trouble, and she’d never be able to exhort him to cook with her again?
It’s a silly thought, but by the time she’s made up her mind to tell Minato after all, he’s fallen asleep. She squashes the little twinge of disappointment she feels—she can tell him tomorrow, when he’s not so tired.
Kushina tries to join him. She partly succeeds. She drifts out of consciousness, sure, but she stays dangled above the sea of slumber that she so craves. Something tugs at her awareness, like a dim but insistent scratching on the window.
It is awake, and it is restless.
Kushina allows herself to sink deep to that place inside of her, and her feet make ripples as they land on the surface of shallow water. She stalks closer, closer, until the familiar bars of a familiar cage cast lined shadows over her silhouette. She stares into pitch darkness, lets out a hiss through her teeth.
“Hey, you.”
A blast of hot air sends her hair flying back from her face. There are no real smells here, but she gets the distinct impression on her soul of something left rotting and forgotten. Undeterred, Kushina plants her hands on her hips.
“Will you shut the fuck up?”
A low, simmering growl emits from behind the cage, reverberating off the bars and sending her bobbing up and down on the surface of the rippling water. Even if she can’t see it, she can feel the sheer immensity of it, all that insidious chakra sucking up the darkness that shrouds it.
Insolent.
There are no real sounds here, but that voice fills up all of the space in this cavernous room, echoing off the walls of her mind.
You act as if I have deigned to speak to you, Uzumaki brat.
Kushina bares her teeth in a grin. “Well, you just spoke to me, creature. So joke’s on you.”
The kyuubi growls again, and this time, dust rains down from the high, cavernous ceilings. Despite herself, a snake called fear curls in Kushina’s belly. It is an old friend, and she welcomes it, and barrels on.
“I’m trying to sleep, so quit pacing, or muttering, or cursing my name or doing whatever it is you’re doing to keep me up.”
The growl morphs into something far more disturbing: a cold, mirthless chuckle.
If you seek the source of your disquiet, perhaps you should look into a mirror.
“Why?” Kushina fires back. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
Teeth. Massive, jagged teeth gleam in the gloom, all curved in a perversion of a grin, as two glowing, slitted eyes bear down upon her. Kushina’s heart leaps in her throat and she resists the impulse to take a step back—she hadn’t realized it had been so close.
Your cage may be gilded, but it is a cage nonetheless, the kyuubi hisses through the bars of its prison. You know this in your soul, and it troubles you. That child is a leash, grasped tightly in the hands of your husband. Let me free you.
Kushina swallows her heart back into her chest, where it belongs. “Yeah, you’ve given me that one before, and I said no thanks.”
You can always change your mind, it says, in the closest thing to a purr that a demon can achieve. I am always here.
“Finally!” Kushina throws her hands in the air. “Something we can agree on! You’re right. You will always be here. I’m never letting you out.”
The same unchanging grin leers down at her. I am patient.
“So am I.”
The fox actually laughs at her this time—a horrid, rasping sound that sends shivers finger-walking up Kushina’s spine.
Well, two can play at that game. Following her most daring impulse, Kushina draws out just one golden chakra chain from within her spiritual form. She swings the end to thump into her opposite hand, where she pulls the line taught with a clink. The fox’s smile dims, turning down at the corners into a grimace.
Yeah, that’s right.
“You can laugh all you want, you shitty fox. You can laugh and laugh all day and all night, but it’s not gonna change a damn thing.” Kushina takes a step forward and meets the kyuubi’s hellish red eyes with her own glare. “At the end of the day, you’re still gonna rot there behind that cage.”
There’s a tug in her belly that gives her a splitsecond of warning, and she jumps back just far enough to avoid the long, serrated claw that skewers the empty air, sending a rush of wind after her. Foiled, the kyuubi drags it against the bars in a mind-numbing screech before withdrawing back into the darkness.
Kushina grins, and she turns her back to it. As she leaves this place, she calls one last thing over her shoulder.
“Have fun watching my kid grow up.”