mar (aka tumblr user momsagainstnaruto) requested a miscarriage fic a couple days ago, and i wrote it and managed to emotionally destroyed myself (and many others) in the process. according to the tags on tumblr it's v heartbreaking (highlights so far: a gif of dean wiping away a tear and also someone saying 'YOU WANT TO KILL ME OR WHAT').

i don't own naruto only much angst

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Naruto's new life falls apart at one in the morning, on December 3rd, three years and seven weeks after the war's ended, after everything is okay again.

Hinata wakes him, her face pale and worried in the moonlight spilling through their window, hair draping either side of her face like curtains parting to reveal the true show.

"Naruto. Naruto," she says, her tiny palms shoving against his bicep. "Wake up. Something's wrong—something's wrong with the baby."

That wakes him up quick, his back snapping straight as any tiny hint of sleep clears from his mind. "What's wrong—do, do you know?" He shakes his head. "Never mind, never mind—hospital? Hospital. They'll be able to fix you two up quick there." He hops out of bed, grabs the first shoes and shirt he finds and yanks them on, picking up a pair of slippers and then Hinata, heading out the open window.

It takes maybe five minutes, probably less, for him to get her to the hospital, his feet barely touching one rooftop before they're leaping off to the next.

When he pushes open the glass doors to the hospital, he notices blood, on Hinata's legs and on his forearms, and he almost drops her from the shock. He goes past the information desk, the shinobi working it leaping up to run past him, yelling, "Sir! Sir! You can't go past me; you have to register!"

He ignores him, heading for the bigger medical offices at the back of the hallway he's running down, heading for the office he knows Sakura will be in tonight. He kicks it open, sees Sakura with her feet up, book propped on her thighs. She looks up when her door flies open, and her eyes grow wide wide wide, large as the moon, when she sees Naruto with Hinata in his arms and blood on her legs.

"Sakura," he says, and she's up and around her desk in seconds, shoving him out the door.

"Go go go, Naruto; down the hall, room three, I'm coming right behind you." He can hear her pulling on a lab coat, snapping on gloves, and telling the shinobi who he'd rushed past to go back to his post, this is an emergency, it's okay.

It's barely even eight minutes since Hinata woke him when he's setting her onto an examination table, watching Sakura get to work.

It's barely two minutes after that when Sakura sits back in the chair at the end of the table, when Hinata starts crying, soft and loud and the same time. Sakura pulls off the gloves, stained red already, and throws them into the trash can at the wall and heads around to Hinata, puts an arm around her shoulder and pulls the younger one of the pair towards her.

Naruto looks back and forth between them—first at Hinata crying, tears falling from her moon-pale eyes, and then at Sakura, her arms around Hinata's shoulders, words falling from her lips into his wife's ears—and then looks at the blood, still on Hinata's legs and now on the table and on Sakura's discarded gloves—and he thinks he understands, even though he hopes with all that he's made of that he's wrong.

"Sakura," he says, and he's surprised at how raspy his voice has become in the two minutes that have passed. "Is... is the baby...?"

Sakura lifts her head and nods, and that's when Naruto himself tilts forward, his forehead hitting the edge of Hinata's hip, and the tears begin to fall from his eyes, too.

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Sakura gets Hinata checked into the hospital and into a private room in ten minutes flat, and Naruto stays with Hinata every step of the way, tears still falling even as he tries to hold them back. He curls up on the bed with Hinata curved against his chest, her head in the hollow space between his chin and collarbone, fitting perfectly just like it always has. His hand is in hers, engulfing it as his thumb rubs across her palm, around and around and around, in circles that head nowhere.

They lay there like that for half an hour, an hour, and longer, and Naruto thinks Sakura is making sure that nobody disturbs them, that nobody knows where to find them, and he's utterly thankful for that, because he can barely take this, just the two of them (and no third, not like there has been for the last three months).

"It'll be okay," she whispers against his neck, her lips barely moving as tears still fall, though slower, now. "It'll be okay. Someday. We'll... not move on, I suppose, but in a way, we will. We'll have more children; we'll tell them about this, about how much we treasure them, about how much they should treasure each other, and their own kids, if they ever have any."

He nods, just barely, trying not to drive his chin into her skull, and holds her hand tighter, pulls her in closer.

"We'll be okay," she whispers, and for the first time since she woke him up, he believes it.