Chapter Text
Kiba is eighteen months old when the Haimarus are born. The puppies are born at two o'clock in the morning, and Tsume is there to deliver them. With her youngest finally – finally! – sleeping through the night, and her eldest insisting constantly that she's old enough to have a ninken partner, Tsume’s hoping one of this litter might make a good companion.
Hana’s not wrong, after all, she's plenty responsible. Tsume’s little nurturer, eager to learn and endlessly patient with her brother, will do great with a ninken.
But when this litter is born, Tsume immediately starts considering alternatives. They're smaller than they should be, their mother's tawny fur nowhere to be seen among a sea of dull gray. Maybe, if one of them pulls through, the little fighter will be a good match for her stubborn girl, but as it is Tsume can't count on it.
She names the whole litter Haimaru, gets them settled with fresh bedding, and is heading out of the kennels to bed when a child-sized shape appears in the doorway.
There, in her sleeping clothes and slippers, is seven-year-old Hana.
“Pup, what are you doing awake? It's the middle of the night.” Tsume’s daughter is staring right past her, a knowing look in her eyes like the Inuzuka clan head has never seen from someone so young.
“They need names.”
“They have a name,” Tsume says as gently as she can manage. She knows people talk, think she's too blunt and too wild to possibly be a good mother. But she does her best. More than can be said for the runaway who calls himself their father.
She knows, for example, that death is hard for kids to grasp. That the idea that these puppies probably won't make it through the week will upset her sensitive eldest, even if it's just the circle of life working as intended. So she tries to avoid it, to take the girl by the shoulders and steer her back towards bed where she belongs.
“They need names,” her heir says again, shaking the hands off her shoulders and moving unerringly towards the brand new puppies.
“Hana…”
“They're going to live,” she says with complete confidence. Tsume didn't tell her they were dying, or sickly, and Hana hasn't spent enough time in the kennels to recognize the health markers of puppies. “All three of them, they need names.”
Hana reaches the litter, kneeling down to pat their mother's head. The mother looks up with utter trust that Hana can't have earned, and flops her head back down. The puppies, which can't see or hear yet, or move more than a clumsy wobble, let out tiny whines and flop themselves down at Hana’s feet.
“Hi, boys,” she coos. “You're so small again.”
Tsume takes in the unbelievable display, and decides there’s nothing to do but see this through, no matter how strange it is.
“Names, hm?” The clan head asks, crouching beside the pile of puppies.
“Names,” Hana agrees firmly.
“And all three, you're sure? Even the runt?”
“All three.”
“Hai, Ma, and Ru?” Tsume asks, because if this weird episode turns out to end with one of the dogs dying, she'd prefer to minimize Hana’s heartbreak.
“No good.” The pre-genin shakes her head.
“Ichi, Ni, and San?” Hana huffs a sigh, nudging the puppies carefully back towards their mother.
“Go back to sleep, boys. You need the rest to get strong,” she turns defiant eyes on her mother as she stands. “You don't believe me.”
“Can you blame me?” Tsume asks honestly, because while she's willing to pad the truth for the pups when possible, she won't lie to them.
“Ichi, Ni, and San? Fine, that'll do fine.” Hana leads the way out of the kennels, flipping the lights off as she goes. “You don't believe me?” She confirms. Hana doesn't seem distraught by the notion, only resigned to it. Tsume wishes she could say she did.
“I'm sorry, pup.”
Hana shrugs, casting a long glance back toward the kennels. “It’s fine. You will.”
Hana refuses to leave the compound for five days, trekking back and forth between the kennels and the big house multiple times a day with a notebook and a pen. Kami knows what she’s writing in there, but she hasn’t stopped and she won’t let anyone see. When the school week starts, Tsume should probably force her to leave the compound at least long enough to go to class, but Hana has never once expressed an interest in missing school before, so she lets it slide.
Besides, Kiba’s never been happier, with his favourite person in the world constantly within reach. At first he toddles after her, giggling all the way. Then he tumbles head over heels down the big hill and scrapes up both knees and both palms, still giggling and asking to go again while Hana fusses over him.
“He’s fine, Hana, good to toughen him up a bit.” the venomous glare she receives says otherwise.
“He’s plenty tough. He didn’t cry, even when he noticed the bleeding,” the little girl snaps back, shaking her head firmly enough for her bob to arc out around her. “You don’t ‘toughen up’ a kid by letting him fall down a hill. What if he hit his head, Mama, what then? Kids die like that all the time.” Do they? Head injuries are pretty serious, they take people out of the field for months sometimes. It’s not implausible.
“Inuzuka have hard heads…” she says slowly, chewing her lip.
“Inuzuka ninja have hard heads,” Hana corrects, “shinobi focus chakra instinctually on impact to lesson damage. Kiba’s not a shinobi, he’s a baby. He barely has chakra coils yet, let alone control of them. If he hits his head it’s very, very bad. You should know this. You’re his mom .” She scoops Kiba up in her arms and storms off down the hill towards the kennels.
Tsume’s not entire sure what to do with this new Hana. She’s still gentle, and stubborn, and inquisitive. Still loves fiercely and freely. But she’s brusque, nearly harsh in a way that’s always been Tsume’s but never been Hana’s, and there’s little trust in her eyes when they meet her mother’s.
And she’s full of knowledge Tsume can’t explain. Not just in moments like Kiba falling down the hill, or the naming of the puppies, but little things. Knowledge of when chakra coils develop, not hard to find out but spoken like it’s long memorised. An insistence that everyone who comes within ten feet of her puppies wash their hands, to lower their risk of parvo. A handful of glances Tsume can barely track, while they’re making their way up to the main house for dinner.
“Watching for something?” she prods, glancing up from Kiba’s steady progress up the hill, keeping a closer eye than usual in case he slips.
Tsume’s attempted to check if that bit about the head trauma is true, but found that the only Inuzuka mednin regularly in the compound seem to be veterinarians with no idea how small childrens’ skulls work. Which is…admittedly not great. Her kids are here alone enough as it is with Tsume’s mission schedule, and no matter how level-headed Hana always is – always has been, even before this… whatever it is happened to her – they need to have access to medical treatment if they need it.
They’re not the only kids on clan grounds, either. Akita’s only six months old, and Shippo’s a year younger than Hana. It begs the question, what would they do, if one of them got hurt while their parents were on a mission? Kami knows Inuzuka trackers are in high demand, they’re gone often enough.
She’ll ask around at the council meeting tomorrow, see if one of the less insufferable clans would be willing to have someone on call.
The Inuzuka aren’t traditionally big on medical ninjutsu, not famous for the patience the art requires, and even the veterinarians are mostly civilians or retired shinobi with animal medicine training that doesn’t overlap nearly enough. The few actual mednin they have are run too ragged to be reliably present.
Until she can get confirmation one way or the other, best to be safe. Tough kids make strong shinobi, and strong shinobi survive. But the survival is the point, she won't toughen Kiba up at the risk of causing lasting damage.
“Something’s happening,” Hana murmurs, eyes darting to one side. This time, with her attention on her surroundings rather than Kiba, Tsume catches the edge of the same shadow her daughter watching, just in the split-second between the ANBU’s shunshins. Tsume should be more surprised that her seven-year-old is both noticing and tracking the ANBU activity, but after the last few days it’s barely noteworthy. “That’s too many.”
“And how would you know how many ANBU is too many?” Tsume asks, because what else is she supposed to say? Hana’s right, but how?
No answer is forthcoming. “Something’s happening,” she says again.
“I’ll look into it, okay?”
“And tell me what you find out?”
“If you need to know.” Hana tilts her head, considering her mother for a long moment, then frowns and hurries after her brother. Tsume is left with the distinct impression that she’s just failed some sort of test.
“Hey, you’ve got mednin training, right?” Tsume asks Inoichi, walking vaguely in the direction of both compounds after the council meeting has ended and they’ve negotiated a deal to get a Yamanaka medic on call for the Inuzuka kids in exchange for babysitting the newest generation of Ino-Shika-Cho when the three clans need to meet.
“I know the basics.”
“Say a kid falls down a hill, hits his head, how bad is that?” judging by the alarm on the Yamanaka’s face, Tsume should not have been downplaying it. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Ino, nobody actually fell. Well, okay, Kiba fell but he didn’t hit his head.”
“And yet you’re asking,” Inoichi points out. Tsume would protest the pushback, but she’s known Inoichi too long to convince him she’s not reckless.
“Hana was…upset. Seems to think I wasn’t taking things seriously enough.”
“Hm, were you?”
“Don’t therapise me, old man.”
“Two years. And it was just a question, don’t bite my head off.”
“Probably not, no,” Inoichi snorts, looking vindicated. “She… doesn’t have the best opinion of me right now.” Inoichi raises an eyebrow, whether at the flash of vulnerability on Tsume’s part or the situation at large she couldn’t guess.
“I thought they were supposed to wait until their teens to rebel?” he’d know better than she would, when it comes to psychology. She should probably know that, though, come to think of it.
“She’s not rebelling, I don’t think. She’s just been…different, I’d say, last couple days.”
“Hm. did she hit her head?”
“What?”
“Head trauma can cause personality change, sometimes.”
“Oh,” Tsume wracks her brain, but she’d only been on the compound twelve hours before Hana found her in the kennels, and she’d been the same little girl as always at dinner that night. “Not that I know of.”
“There would probably be other signs,” Inoichi concedes. “Are you worried about it?”
Is she? Honestly, Tsume’s not sure. It’s nothing overtly bad, no habits or behaviors that need correcting, it’s just that one moment she knew the kid better than anyone, and now she’s completely changed.
“I’m not sure.”
“I could…” Inoichi studies her face for a second, nodding slowly at whatever he finds there. Insufferable shrink. “I could talk to her? See if anything stands out as a problem?” normally, Tsume would reject the offer outright, no matter how good faith she trusts it to be. Fact of the matter is, the Inuzuka are at a loss when it comes to Hana right now. She’s good, and stubborn, and patient, and she loves all four of her puppies, she’s just so different.
“Maybe?” Tsume barely breathes the word, forcing them out against all instinct. The Inuzuka are friendly, but they’re private. Between this and the medics-on-call they haven’t had so much extra-clan involvement since the Hatake (nearly) died out.
Inoichi – because despite being an almighty pain in her ass he is one of her oldest friends and they’ve lived through two wars together – nods, and tells her to let him know, and doesn’t say another word about it.
She’ll ask him, if it comes to it, because she loves her pups down to the marrow and Sage knows she’s not perfect but she’ll do anything in her power for them. But before it comes to that, she has to know something. Has to know for absolute certain that a stupid, insane theory that’s been growing in the back of her head doesn’t hold water.
If it’s as crazy as it seems, she’ll ask Inoichi to talk to Hana. but she needs to know.
On day five, Tsume sets Kiba down to play with Akita under the supervision of a couple off-duty chunin, ignores her sons’s protests that ‘Akita is a baby’ , and ‘ Kiba is not a baby at all’, and ‘how come he can’t come, then?’ and goes down to the kennels to talk to Hana.
“Where’s Kiba?” Hana asks as soon as she’s crossed the threshold, not glancing up.
“How do you know he’s not with me?”
“He’s the loudest kid alive. Where is he?”
“Playing with Akita.” Hana hums, turning her focus back to the puppies.
“Nimaru, get off of your brother’s head before you suffocate him.” The puppy, being that he is four days old and entirely deaf, does not obey. Hana gently picks him up and sets Nimaru down beside his mother, who doesn’t protest beyond a lazy blink in Hana’s direction. Tsume has seen dams go for the throat of breeders for touching a puppy that young. “Did you wash your hands?”
“Of course I did.”
“Okay, you can come in.” Tsume enters the kennel slowly, so as not to spook any of its occupants. She steps within two feet of one of the Haimarus and earns an immediate growl from their mother. Great, so she’s not just particularly laid back for some reason, it’s just Hana. another oddity. Kuromaru settles down just outside the door, not pushing his luck in their territory.
“Hey, pup?”
“Yeah?”
“Why’re you so worried about parvo?” Hana glances at the puppies and shrugs.
“Parvo’s dangerous, especially to puppies.” this is true on a purely factual level, but the pre-genin’s constant badgering is extreme even to the breeders.
“I know,” Tsume says gently, settling down in the corner. “But I thought you were certain they were going to live.”
“Just because it won’t kill them doesn’t mean I want them to suffer.” there’s a sparkle of her soft-hearted little girl in there – tempered and better protected, but still there just the same. Tsume’s never been much of one for theories and plans, she generally just goes where she’s needed and hits the other guy until he stops getting up. Oh, she can strategise, if she needs to (you don’t make any level of jonin with that sort of gap in your skillset), but on the scale she’s currently playing at? Well, worst thing the Hana can do is laugh in her face. Which would at least be a reaction beyond distraction, dismissal, or disappointment.
Tsume is very, very bad at sounding serious without sounding angry. She has been since she younger than Hana is now. Happy, excited, motivational, she can do that no problem. Somber? Immediately sounds like she’s threatening your life.
So she draws a calming breath and pours all of her energy into sounding calm, and neutral, and open, and asks: ““Hana? Can you look at me?”
Her baby’s gaze flickers to each puppy, checking and double checking that they’re all safe and well situated. Then Hana’s big brown eyes meet hers, a guarded sort of curiosity within.
“What is it?” she asks. Tsume must be doing something wrong, despite her care, because Hana’s eyes dart around her face and her shoulders rise to her ears. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re too calm, what’s wrong?” Too calm? Dammit, she’s never going to figure this out. “You only get like that when you’re giving really bad news, and – where is Kiba, Mama?” Hana gets halfway to the door, puppies whining anxiously in the background, before Tsume grabs her arm and drags her into her arms.
“Kiba’s fine, Pup. I promise, everything’s fine. You’ve just been having a…hard week and I didn’t want to make it worse.” Hana relaxes in shades, pushing out of her mother’s arms and padding softly over to the puppies, running a hand over each of their tiny bodies until they stop their shaky little whines and settle back down.
“You don’t have to try so hard, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Hana, you’re clearly not fine. And I feel like I haven’t been trying hard enough , lately.” Hana shakes her head, but she’s returned to not meeting her eyes. Instead she’s staring at Kuromaru, tracking the rise and fall of his chest as he dozes half-sprawled in the doorway. They’ve been on too many missions lately, nobody’s getting enough rest.
“That’s not true.” Tsume’s first instinct is alway to protect her sweet girl, but if she’s right… well, even if she’s not, Hana’s shown maturity beyond her years this week and Tsume’s not going to patronise her.
“Pup, not knowing what puts your brother in danger is unacceptable. You’re right to be upset. Not having any mednin on the compound if you kids get injured is unacceptable, and my academy-age daughter should not have had to point that out. I’m going to do better–”
“You did fine,” Hana growls, snapping her head around to lock eyes. “You did great. You…you’re doing great. You’re doing your best. That’s not what I…I’m not mad at you. I’m not. I’m just worried about Kiba.”
“Hana, sweetheart, can I ask you a question?”
“I…yeah. Of course.”
“The parvo precautions–”
“I get it , okay? It’s overkill. I know–”
“Have they had it before?” Hana’s eyes widen in shock, lips parting just a little.
“What?”
“Parvo, have the Haimarus had it before?”
“How would they have had it before? They’re four days old.”
“I might be impulsive, Pup, but I’m not stupid. I know my little girl.” Hana stares a while longer, then slowly, slowly nods.
“Nimaru and Sanmaru had it.”
“They made it through?” another nod. “Okay.”
“I can’t do it this time.” Hana blurts out.
“Do what?” whatever it is, they’ll sort it out. Whatever she needs.
“I can’t…I can’t be the clan mednin, and half-raise Kiba while you’re run ragged on back-to-back missions. I can’t do it, I have so much I have to do and I’m a shinobi, dammit, even if I’m sort of technically not, now. But I am, and I have a responsibility to this village, and that means not letting hundreds of people die just because I can’t stand the idea that Kiba’s going to grow up alone. But I can’t. I can’t, Mama, I can’t stand the idea so I need your help. And it’s not fair because you’re doing your best and you’re stretched so thin and I was always here but I can’t be here and do what I need to do and I…” Hana trails off, looks at the Haimarus, and promptly bursts into tears.
Tsume gets to her slower than she’d like, trying not to piss off the dam who seems to think Hana is one of her puppies, but when she hugs her this time Hana clings back. “It was never your job to raise him in the first place.”
“I was happy to do it,” she sniffles, holding a little tighter. “I’d be happy to do it again.”
“But you can’t, you’ve got things you need to do?”
“Mhm.”
“Are these things I can help with?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are you going to let me help?”
“Kiba comes first.”
“I have two kids. You’re both my number one priority.”
“We always were,” Hana whispers, “I know that. I just, I’m remembering every close call we ever had while home mostly alone and wondering if someone will die without me there. I’m the eldest, I’m the responsible one, I’m the mednin. What if something happens?”
“I can’t promise it won’t”
“I know. I know that. I just…all the variables are sort of a lot to process with the emotions of a seven-year-old.” and yeah, Tsume can imagine it is. She’s glad she didn’t get Inoichi involved in this, he would have had a field day with Hana’s mental state.
“Let’s just go one step at a time, okay? You and I are both going to be home as much as we can, right? We’re both going to do everything we can to keep this clan safe.” Tsume’s going to do more, so much more than whatever she did last time. So much better than four kids left to grow up on their own by a tiny, overworked clan. She will beg, borrow, and steal, and call in every favour she has if that’s what it takes. “You’ve got your book, I’m assuming there’s a plan in there? You’ve always been a better paper ninja than I am.”
“Not a high bar,” the tiny time traveller murmurs into her soaked shirt.
“No, I guess it’s not.”
“Kiba still couldn’t pass it.” this startles a laugh out of Tsume and if Hana’s laugh is a little watery when she joins in, there’s nobody to hear but the dogs.
“What’s first on the list, Pup?”
“I need to graduate early.” Tsume hates this already.
“All right. Not a fan of that, but I trust you.”
“Thank you.”
“Not until the boys are old enough to join you in the field.”
“Course not.”
“Why, exactly, do you need to graduate early? Am I allowed to know?” Hana waves her book.
“Someone needs to keep an eye on Itachi Uchiha.”