My Son
By: Lone Ronin
Author's notes: This random one-shot just hit me out of nowhere. I somehow made time to write this in between homework and moving to another job a considerable distance from my home. I was rather happy how 'My Eyes' came out, so I wrote this first person from Hizashi's perspective.
"Hiashi, Hiashi…" I gasped as I came to.
It may have seemed odd that the first person I called for upon awakening wasn't for my year-old son, or the woman who died giving birth to him, whom I hadn't been able to marry and I was still mourning for. But when you have a twin, there is always that indescribable bond, regardless of what happens in your life. Where he was hard, I was soft. Where he was headstrong and confident of his place, I was weary and retiring, convinced that fate was my enemy, at least until my father had died and I became a father myself. Although we had been forced apart and a young age and it was decided that I was to be sealed to keep me in my place, we were still able to train and fight together as ninja. And the last thing I recalled before the Kyuubi's attack was wondering if he would be able to fight longer then I could.
"It's fine, I'm here." Hiashi limped up to my hospital bed, leaning on crutches.
Lying on my back in the hospital bed, I could his crushed left leg wrapped in a cast through his bloody clothing that the medics had cut in their haste to save it.
The nine-tailed monster had done considerable damage to both of us, so much that later on he would have to quit being a shinobi and require a cane to help him walk. Although he appeared well to those who didn't know him, I could see from the way he moved that he was in a lot of pain from his injuries inclifted by the fox monster, despite the medcations he had been given.
"How do you feel?" he asked as I finally became fully awake.
"Like a demon fox attempted to eat me alive." I answered as I looked down at my body as best as I could and assessed my injuries with my bloodline ability.
Even before looking at myself, I knew I was badly injured. The entire right side of me was in considerable pain, having been well-crushed by that demon fox, before the medics attempted to stick me back together as best as they could. My arm had been broken in several places, I could see the metal plates and screws that had been used to hold the fragments of bone in the correct places had been carefully placed. Inspecting my chest, I could see several of of my well-cracked ribs and some damage to my internal organs, my pelvis had also been shattered. In a nutshell, the nine-tailed demon fox had kicked me about thirty feet before stomping on my upper half as if I were nothing more then an insect.
My brother hadn't fared much better, he later told me he had been conscious the entire time and honestly believed I was dead when he saw me getting kicked. The fox had then crushed his leg as he tried to defend me, cruelly grinding it into the ground with its front paw. The only thing that had prevented it from finishing us off was Yondaime's summoned toad, and even now, several hours later, the fight between them was still raging.
I breathed deeply, trying my best to block out the pain in my entire body. It wasn't an acute pain, like being stabbed with a kunai, more of a steady, grinding pain, the kind which could make you start to lose your mind. After a lifetime of ninja training, I could handle the first kind, the second kind was tolerable with enough medication.
Trying to distract my mind from the pain, I looked around and carefully took in my surroundings, a good habit from my missions. Having been declared stable, the medics had moved my brother and I from the Intensive Care Unit to the maternity ward along with others whose injuries were serious but no longer needed immediate attention due to overcrowding in the hospital. Medics dashed in and around the hospital, spending most of their time with the most seriously injured.
It was quite active in the other rooms, but the room I was in was strangely quiet, filled with the injured but stable, sharing space with women who had children too young to take into the mountians. Hiashi quietly wheeled the crib with my son, still sleeping next to the right side of my bed.
I looked at Neji as he began to awake. Usually the other women in the Branch Houses cared for him, along with their own children, as I was often away on missions. It suddenly struck me that this was the first time since he was born that I was alone with him. As I reached my unbroken hand into the crib to gently rub his back, I glanced at Hiashi, giving him a look that said 'What do I do?'.
"Just look at the women and do the same things they do." My brother replied as he sat next to my bed, gently rocking the cradle where Hinata, his own newborn daughter, slept.
"That might be difficult." I replied as the watched one of the three wives of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio breastfeeding.
Everyone in Konoha at least knew of the Ino-Shika-Cho families, even if they didn't talk to them. Guardians to Sarutobi, the old Hokage, they had all gotten married and had their first children around the same time. Their wives were all quite close and I remembered Neji's mother spent a lot of time with her friends after she had given birth. They would come together in the day while their husbands were on missions, sharing chores and helping each other to look after their babies. I wondered briefly about that bond so many of the women shared with each other in the day, that they never shared with men.
I tried my best to watch them discreetly, not just to see how to hold Neji, but also to see a brief glimpse of their world that most men never saw.
"I just fed and changed you, what's wrong now?" one of them asked as her daughter continued to cry.
"You're so lucky he sleeps all the time, Yoshino." The woman who was breastfeeding commented.
"He's lazy like his father." Joked the only mother with a baby that was sleeping peacefully.
Finally, after some hesitation, I gently reached in and picked my son up. It was awkard, trying to hold him gently in a sitting position with one arm in a cast, but his crying slowed and he began to relax against me as I held him close. The fact that being almost a year old now, he was strong enough to hold on to me, helped.
I watched my twin as he sat near to me with his infant daughter, just born this year. Normally he didn't see her very much either, but with the Main House servants busy and her mother sick, he watched her sleeping intently, as if trying to analyze something. I remembered one of the servants had mentioned to me how oddly quiet she was for a baby.
"Is everything okay?" I asked him.
"Look at this." Hiashi replied as he quietly crept up to his daughter.
"HINATA!" he suddenly cupped his hands and shouted right into her face.
Surprisingly, Hinata awoke and looked around, clearly startled, but she didn't cry at all. The three women across the room turned and stared as my jaw dropped in shock. Even I knew you weren't supposed to do that with a baby!
"She never cries, I think she might have mental problems." Hiashi said, half to himself before receiving a stinging slap to the back of his head from the woman whose baby was still sleeping despite Hiashi's shouting and her getting up and going across the room to reach him.
"The only one I'm looking at with mental problems isn't lying in the crib!" the young mother shouted at him.
My brother stared at her, shocked that this woman who he had never met before would hit him, let alone talk to him that way. Hinata remained quiet the entire time.
"What's wrong with you, shouting in her face like that?" Yoshino scolded him.
"Don't order me around!" Hiashi replied.
"You want to take this outside?" she was starting to take her earrings off, I guess she was serious.
Neji clung to me as I quickly pulled the sheets over my head with my good arm, trying my best to hide my laughter even as I heard them beginning to argue.
"This is a maternity ward, have some manners you two." I heard a new voice calming them down.
"Hold her like this." the medic guided Hiashi on how to hold her, while Yoshino muttered something as she rejoined her friends.
"What are you doing?" the voice suddenly spoke to me as she prodded me under the covers, she sounded so much like his mother that I felt sad for a moment.
She had been a medic, that was how I first met her. With medic or nurse being a common career choice for women, it wasn't uncommon for ninja to become lonley and fall in love while their injuries were being attended to.
"Just… keeping my son warm." I answered pulled the sheets down, expecting to to see a young woman.
I had a bit of a 'Yikes!' moment, coming face to face with a very old and haggard medic. She looked as though she had once been pretty, but it wasn't that she was just old, she also had this weary, heavy look to her. I guess she had been a medic for a little too long. She didn't say anything to me at first when she saw that I was at least holding my son properly. But with everything calm again, Neji began to whimper and tug at my hospital gown. He was hungry.
For a moment I was sorely bewildered by my lack of instinct. Thankfully, the old medic provided me with a bottle. How does this go again? Oh right, I have to put some on my inner arm to make sure it's not too hot.
Fourteen years later…
Neji awoke in the hospital bed, barely recalling how he had been shot clean through with an arrow, let alone being carried to the hospital. He reached down and gently pushed his hospital gown aside, inspecting the scar. He ran his finger over it, impressed with how well it was healing; the medics had done an impressive job.
"Hizashi, you're well now, why haven't you gone home yet? Let me get a bottle for your little son." an elderly lady said as she entered his room.
"I'm not Hizashi." Neji replied.
"Stop playing with me and pretending to be your twin, I can tell you apart since Hiashi's left leg was broken." She seemed to be searching the table nearby for the non-existent bottle.
"No, Hizashi was my father, I'm Neji." Neji tried to explain, to no avail.
"There she is, sorry about that Neji, she used to be a medic here." Sakura said as she led the elderly lady back to her room in the palliative care section.
"W-wait!" Neji started as he watched the old medic being led away, wanting to ask her about his father, before deciding it was better to just let it go.