Chapter 7: A Mother and Her Child
Life from a parent's point of view
From the very first day Reiko's child was born, she knew she was different.
The way she looked, reacted, and responded to things was different from others; unique even.
And for all that she loved her child, sometimes it scared her.
She remembers the first time she truly noticed how different her child was.
It had been three months since they'd brought her home and gotten used to the ups and downs of parenthood.
She had been doing some paperwork in her home office, bouncing Marcella in her lap as she did so. She'd stopped for a moment, simply observing her child, when she noticed something confusing.
Marcella was staring at the walls, her desk, the papers, and at her with a dazed expression. Reiko had, for all her worry, brushed it off as a mere passing occurrence, but when it happens a second and third time, her worry turns into concern.
She confides this to her husband in the darkness of their shared bedroom, and he tells her of his thoughts.
How their child, as small as she is, reminds him of himself—dissociation—Shinsaku had whispered in her ear, his voice trembling.
She was worried, and so was he; the possibility that their child, barely a year old, could be disassociating of all things left them restless.
Later that night, they're startled awake by loud banging and the cries of their child, and they don't hesitate to run straight to her room despite not feeling a lick of dangerous intent.
The image that greeted them would forever engrave itself into their memories. Their three-month-old child was crying, wailing, and waving her arms amid the wreckage of her crib, her tiny fists slamming and cracking anything they came in contact with.
They had rushed to their child, Shinsaku, holding those tiny hands in his own to stop any more damage. His grasp was firm but gentle, as a flicker of pain flashed across his features.
She had then, without pause, grabbed Marcella from behind and held her close to her chest, watching worriedly as her chakra spiked and she dozed off in an instant.
As the three made their way back to the bedroom and the two ultimately fell into a fitful sleep, she cast a worried glance at her husband's chakra-burned hands, watching as they faded against her flickering green palm.
In the morning, she awoke to a kaleidoscope of colors: seafoam greens and a mirage of blue.
The owner of those eyes had frozen, seemingly shocked by her wakefulness, and the appendage reaching for Reiko's face had frozen with her. She seemed startled, looking at her approaching limb and herself as if thinking she had done something wrong.
It was cute.
Reiko had slowly, so as not to startle the child, guided the still-frozen limb to its intended location while holding back an amused chuckle as she allowed small fingers to trace her features.
In all honesty, it felt like her daughter was truly seeing her for the first time.
Then, after a few cough cough moments, their child sent a small smile to her father, and it felt like all was right, like what had happened mere hours before had been a dream or an illusion.
The serene atmosphere that had barely been established broke apart instantly as a metallic scent filled the air.
Reiko found the source as soon as she caught the scent.
Marcella was bleeding—not like a simple prick of the finger or paper cut type bleeding, but the heavy and putrid kind that was left after forcefully cutting a wound.
It had started first from her ears, then her nose; some dribbled from her mouth and left a daunting red trail down her chin.
She and her husband were across the rooftops and in the hospital before either of them had uttered a word.
Shinsaku had yelled down a medic and guided her to the waiting room as doctors and nurses rushed off with their child.
He had sat by her side and taken care of everything as they waited for the news about their little girl.
She was truly grateful to her husband for what he was doing, but her worry for Marcella pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind.
*****
It had taken two days of worrying, fretting, and yelling at nurses before the doctor came and announced Marcella's status. The results left Reiko gritting her teeth, both appalled and disbelieving.
The doctor had diagnosed their baby as completely healthy despite her coming in bleeding two days ago from various parts of her body and Reiko herself still wearing the shirt covered in her child's blood.
Apparently, he and a multitude of other doctors had checked her over countless times, and whatever had happened had healed on its own.
The doctor, Yamaki, continued to state that as soon as they brought her in and had her placed down, Marcella's chakra pulsed in a barrier of sorts and repelled them away.
They were left scrambling to find other methods to diagnose the problem, hastily having someone check her over with a chakra scan while rushing to replenish the blood she'd lost.
The results of the scan showed that the cells of her body were rapidly trying to heal themselves against a sudden attack on her endocrine system caused by a lack of certain vitamins in her body.
He continued to explain to them the suspected cause of Marcella's internal bleeding, as both he and the other doctors weren't completely sure, but she and her husband knew that it was only a half-assed assessment at best and at worst a well-spoken guess.
He finished off by explaining how they were going to keep her under observation for two more days before giving her the green light.
By the end of his explanation, Reiko's nails had left hard red prints on her palm.
The assessment had left a bitter taste on her tongue.
This wasn't the first time their child had suddenly and randomly started bleeding or choking on blood; it was the third. The third time and all three times, these doctors, these medics, these med nin have told her that her child was fine, was healthy, and that basically nothing was wrong with her.
All of a sudden, they have a half-baked assessment to drop into her lap.
Did they think her a fool? A deluded woman with no sense, her fists clenched at her side.
Healthy children don't randomly start choking on their own blood; healthy children don't bleed from their ears. Healthy children didn't bleed as much blood as hers has in the past few months.
She felt bile rise in the back of her throat and swallowed it down. These people were deluded, mere shells of what they once were and what they once could've been.
The only reason she even bothers to come here with their child is because she knows an ordinary clinic won't be enough to drain the blood from her child's lungs if it becomes too much.
The only reason she bothers to even step into this deteriorating shell is because, if push comes to shove, they will be her child's only hope, second only to her and her husband. If they can't help her, this is what they will have to resort to.
So Reiko holds her tongue and bites down on the inside of her jaw until she draws blood and breathes.
Her husband, sensing her rising anger, tightened his grip on her hand and shook his head.
They both knew the medical program had deteriorated as a result of Tsunade's departure—not abandonment; the woman had done too much for the village for them at least to ever label her departure as such—and that this was the best they could offer with the lack of funds and such, but it still made her angry no matter how many times she had to witness it.
She turned, ready to drag her husband back to the waiting room, when she caught the tail end of a murky chakra signature exiting her range.
It flickered and froze for a moment as if its owner could feel that their presence had been discovered and was quickly snubbed out—not so much that she couldn't sense it as it faded out of her range.
And that was what dredged up the first few drops of fear in her heart.
*****
In the five months that followed, there was a surprising transition. Marcella had gone from dazed and borderline depressed to childish and giddy. It was disorienting the first time Reiko experienced it, and it shocked her the first few times that followed.
A few weeks after they had taken Marcella home, she had started smiling—not the small smiles that seemed to come and go as fast as a gust of wind, but bigger, brighter ones that held childish glee and a world of wonder.
The first few she had witnessed had nearly brought tears to her eyes.
Next were the laughs. The first time Marcella laughed, Reiko froze, and Shinsaku, who had been playing with their child, froze with her. They both stared in shock as their daughter's laughter echoed in their ears.
But as per usual with these happy moments, a voice in her mind would whisper about the wrongness of Marcella's sudden transition, the sudden smiles, and the laughter, but like every time these thoughts passed, she brushed them aside and focused on her.
The star that was her child's presence lit up the darkness in her mind.
She knew her husband, Shinsaku, would also have thoughts like these sometimes; they had talked about them too, and they had both decided to just wait and see what happened.
They didn't jump to conclusions or make strange hypotheses; they just decided to wait and see. She was their child after all, no matter how strange she may be.
Time passed and life lived on while moments like these filled the Rai household in the dullest of moments.
But for some reason, Reiko's mind would always flash back to that early morning before all that havoc rained down. She would stop and think about how silver-ish blue seafoam orbs would stare into hers. Looking, searching for something she could never possibly understand.
Tiny hands wading through her hair, that small, almost hesitant smile that was sent her husband's way It made her wonder if Marcella now was the same as then, and most times she didn't know what to think when those thoughts came.
Around late August, something changed again, not as it had in the past but like a switch had been, well, switched. Her daughter still smiled and laughed, but it seemed more subdued, less controlled, and more real.
Marcella started hesitating again to smile, laugh, or even cry, but after a while, it started up again, just as she said, a little more subdued.
She felt like this was real; it wasn't forced, fake, or synthetic.
Not like she felt it had been for the past few months. This was real.
Sometimes, though, when her thoughts about her daughter took a particularly dark turn and her husband wasn't there to placate them, she would feel revolted with herself and hesitate to go near her daughter.
It felt as if her thoughts would physically manifest themselves and go on a rampage against her child.
Somehow, every time she felt this way, Marcella would find her wherever she was in the house, stare at her for a moment, then climb into her arms and hold her.
It didn't matter if she was in tears, which she actually was once or twice, or if she was held up in her office. Marcella would always find her staring for a moment, then climbing into her arms.
Marcella's eyes, despite being those of a mere infant, always held understanding and quiet sadness.
*****
On the night of the Nine Tails rampage, Reiko wasn't with her family, and she hated that fact. Minato had asked her to help with Kushina's pregnancy separately from what he asked her husband, and she had agreed.
They went to the cave a good ways away from Konoha and had done everything to a tea, and Naruto was born without incident in the beginning.
Then the masked man had come, and everything had gone to hell. Her anbu comrades died, the third's wife died, and Minato and Kushina, sacrificing themselves not for the village but for their son, had died.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that story would get twisted somehow.
She doesn't blame Minato or Kushina; they didn't know this was going to happen or that they would die.
After the Nine-Tails had been sealed, she had personally hand-delivered Naruto—Kushina had named him—to the Third Hokage and gave him a brief report before running off in search of her family.
When she found them, they were in the Jounin lounge. Shinsaku going around ordering his fellow ninja with Marcella close to his chest.
She didn't hesitate, immediately rushing over to the two, ignoring the crowd of ninjas behind her, and pulling her husband and child as close as possible. She had thought the worst and was grateful it did not come to pass.
Months later, after rebuilding efforts and funerals for her comrades and friends, grieving for those they had lost, she would ask what happened with their child that night, and neither would be truly surprised by what he had replied.
According to Shinsaku, Marcella hadn't made a sound the entire night—not when the Nine Tails appeared, not when he was flying through the trees, not even when he was forced to go through the village with all the bloodshed happening around them. Marcella would clutch onto his vest in between jumps or look in the direction of a certain noise, but not even once did she utter a sound.
Even now, three years later, as she looks down at her child, silver-ish seafoam orbs staring up at her with pure mischief, she knows that the uniqueness her child was born with could be both a blessing and a curse, and she silently promises herself to be there until her dying breath.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone