[Edited for general
format and errors at
Title: Pitter-Patter
Word Count: 1,025
We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is
someone today
-Stacia Tauscher
She watches the small child amble down the dark hallway in the odd,
half-wobbling way that most infants walk after their first nine months of life,
her soft brown eyes following his every hesitant, experimental step and judging
him quite harshly.
'Come on,' she
commands him, her eyes narrowing and the death-grip she's had on her biceps
tightening even more, if that were possible: 'Don't fall down ag-'
With a small baby-noise,
the child does the exact opposite of what she mentally willed him not to do,
and begins to crawl on his hands and knees yet again, causing her to
curse underneath her breath. 'Dammit,' she whines,fists bunching at her
sides as a small spark of anger came to life in her chest. 'Stop doing
that...!'
As if sensing her presence,
the child turns and peers into the darkness. She stands stock still in front of
him, hoping that the he doesn't see her; pressing her back into the cool stone
and drawing her mask back down her face in a rather feeble attempt to resemble
a statue. A full minute passes with neither of them moving, until, with another
baby-noise the child seems to nod (not to her, not to her; no) and
stands using the wall for support.
'Oh gods, thank you,' she
begins, letting out a small sigh a relief 'He was just standing up.'
When she looks at him
again, he brief sigh turns into another low curse as the babe begins to walk towards
her with his arms outstretched, as if he were walking into the arms of
his moth--.
'Ohshit,' she
panics, distinctly remembering that this exact scenario was high on the
list of things the Third Hokage did not want to happen. 'Nononono.'
The child makes a small,
barely audible mewling noise. She tries to sink into the stone, half-realizing
that her imminent execution was her own fault for taking on the mission in the
first place. Children weren't her specialty in the least, and here was one of
the most important...'Crap...He's getting...' She never signed on for
something like this! She wasn't a mother at all! She was barely even twenty,
for crying out loud! Who in the hell did the Third think he was for
putting her int his position!
'Nyeeeeaaaahhh...!'
...And yet, when the child
stumbles and falls to the ground, knocking his forehead against the hard stone
and beginning to cry, she unconsciously runs towards him and sweeps him up into
her arms; pressing his face into the crook of her neck where the hard leather
of her armor was the most malleable."Ssssh," she croons into
his soft hair, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet as the child
wails into her jugular like a banshee, "Ssssh...It's going to be alright
now, little one...Ssssh...I've got you now."
The babe nuzzles her neck
like an animal would, spreading tears and mucus everywhere. The crying doesn't
let up, and slowly, she begins to grow more and more terrified at how far she's
going; at how much she's endangering her career by simply being near
this child.
Then, he hiccups,
gentle and low like a whisper, and small, pudgy hands with equally small and
pudgy fingers reach up past the part of her face that her mask covers and find
her skin, poking and tracing the curve of her jawline like a blind man
memorizing the edges of a painting he did not understand but wanted to so badly.
'...Wait, no...Don't...'
He comes to the cool
ceramic of the mask, his fingers dumbly tripping over the smooth-rough edges of
the material and the strange, raised spiral design that make up the whiskers
and the mouth, his hands drawing back when he feels the wolf's teeth as if the
thing had somehow bit him. Inwardly, she cringes as the babe inhales and
begins to cry again; wailing louder now than before, his face shoved into her
neck as if it were his lifeline; his safety.
She wonders, for a moment,
what that means in the grand scheme of foxes and humans, but dismisses the
thought just as quickly as it emerges, closing her eyes and slowly counting to
ten to cope with how...painful holding a crying child was. '...Oh
gods, what...what now?'
She does the only thing she
knows how to do with children, and begins to rock him back and forth in her
arms like the center of a steady metronome, her gentle ministrations calming
him down enough after a few minutes; but...even though he stops crying, and
even though he relaxes somewhat, something...something doesn't feel right,
still.
Children weren't...They
weren't supposed to be so still when they felt safe, were they?
'Wait...Shit, wait
It hits her all at once,
like a punch to the gut or a kunai to the back; her anominity...
Her badge of office..
What she's worked her
entire life to achieve...
'Oh Gods...'
It scares him.
It's...It's the mask.'
Throwing her mask to the floor so that it clatters all-too loudly in the dark
and helps mask the soft, whimpered sniffling the child, she collapses to her
knees and just...just holds him. "Little one..." she whispers,
understanding the severity of the events that have just transpired and feeling
that much worse for analyzing a...a human being (not a fox, not a
target; a child, for gods sake) so detachedly, "Little one,
I'm sorry..."
He makes a noise somewhere
between a cough and a sniffle, looking up at her with wide, bright blue eyes so
clear she can see her face in them. She smiles into his gaze, small tears
gathering at the corner of her eyes, and presses her forehead against his own,
causing him to reach out and feel her face again.
"...M-Momma."
She closes her eyes, the
tears finally falling as her heart swells with pride, and for the first time in
her life ...for the first time in her life Uzumaki Yuugao sees her nephew as a
boy, and not a monster.
XXX
- Fin
XXX
Whenever Naruto saw
someone wearing an ANBU Mask, he somehow felt intrinsically at peace with the
world.