Chapter Text
There’s a sound of weeping at the edge of her hearing. Far enough to be distant, but too close to be ignored, it leaks through the haze of sleep and stirs a faint lick of consciousness to life within. Foggy, she opens her eyes slowly and wonders why.
The house is quiet and the windows are bright—still day, then, Mana thinks. Lethargic, she rolls over. The playmat is scattered with an assortment of toys, none of which she pays any mind to as she flops onto her other side. Now that she's facing the other way she can see into the kitchen where Chieri is sitting at the table. She must have been doing dinner prep at some point—there's a bowl of half-shelled peas before her—but right now she's crying, and it looks like she's been at it for a while. Mana watches a moment, vaguely wondering, before she puts her head down and closes her eyes again, interest faded.
She doesn't actually get to sleep again, though, because Chieri continues to sob into her hands and it keeps her awake. Mana thinks this might have irritated her in another circumstance, but in the end it doesn't really matter as long as she's not being bothered directly. Chieri can cry if she wants. That's fine.
Some time passes like that, but Mana doesn't care to mark its passage. Then eventually the front door opens and a man emerges into the living room from the hall. He's got a silent step, so Chieri doesn't realize he's there until he's already heard her weeping. Concerned, he drops his pack by the wall and goes to the doorway.
"Chieri?" he questions. Chieri gasps and jumps. "Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm home."
"W-welcome back," Chieri hiccups, hastily scrubbing her face with her sleeve as she stands. She's miserable enough that water immediately begins to leak from her eyes again anyway.
"What's wrong?" Ren asks. Chieri dithers for a moment, caught between the reflex to wave it off and the need to confess. He just stares her down. Eventually she cracks.
"Nii-san, am I a bad mother?" she chokes out.
"What? Why do you say that?" he wonders, startled. He glances back at Mana, who is still sprawled on her side on the mat behind him and is soaking up the quiet afternoon sunlight. Chieri follows his gaze towards her daughter and crumples into tears again.
"She hardly eats," Chieri sobs, "she doesn't talk, she doesn't play, she never smiles. No matter how I try or what I do it's always the same. She's nothing like Shisui was at that age. Shizu must have done something different. She must have raised him better."
"That's not it, Chieri," Ren protests. He goes over to the playmat and lifts his niece up into his arms. Mana, now thoroughly removed from napping posture, holds in a sigh and flops over his shoulder instead, exasperated. "It's not anything you've done. The doctors said from the start she would sleep more than the average child. It's because of the disorder."
"But why does she have the disorder?" Chieri cries. Ren, taken back by the ferocity of this outburst, pauses. "What did I do to give her a chakra deficiency? Why is she sick to begin with? What did I do during the pregnancy to make her this way?"
"It was nothing you did," he answers slowly. "You didn't give the illness to her. It's not your fault, Chieri."
"But then why?" she sobs. Ren sees the look of pure, overwrought stress on his sister's face and thinks it had been a mistake to take this last mission. She's been left alone to care for the kids on her own too long. A sense of guilt immediately overtakes him. He of all people should know firsthand the strain of juggling childcare and illness—it had been bad enough taking care of his son when his wife had been sick, and Shizu had been an adult. Even in the months leading up to her passing she hadn't been nearly as dependent as a three-year-old like Mana would be.
"It could have been anything, Chieri," Ren says softly. "Even if it is hereditary you would have had no way of knowing."
Chieri's lip trembles. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, Ren is right. For an adopted waif, plucked up off the streets from nowhere, who could say what sort of medical history lies hidden in her past? As it is, it's not certain that Chieri is even biologically an Uchiha. She's no ninja—she has no Sharingan.
"But what if she spends her whole life like this?" Chieri whispers as she reaches out to take her daughter from her brother. Just lifting her toddler and feeling again how light she is makes her chest constrict. Mana is so much smaller than a child her age ought to be. No matter how she tries to feed her the girl barely eats, and it’s affected her growth, and Chieri knows it.
Ren opens his mouth, pauses, and then closes it again. Unable to find a reply, after a moment all he can do is put a hand out and rest it on Mana's head. He pushes her bangs up and away from her face; Mana only stares silently back at him, dark eyes blank and gaze empty.
"Here! I'll give this to you!"
As far as gifts from six-year-olds go he's done pretty well. At this age it wouldn't have been uncommon to receive something like a bug or a lizard, but his offering is a cheerful yellow dandelion: pretty and harmless, perfect for a three-year-old girl. Mana takes it from his outstretched hand.
"Hmm…" Her cousin puts his hands on his hips and stares down at her. Mana stares back, holding the dandelion on her lap. There's a beat of silence.
"Do you like it?" he queries after a moment, eyes hopeful. Mana thinks vaguely that he's a cute kid. He's got a strong big brother instinct; he seems like the type who would enjoy doting on his siblings. It's too bad for him that he doesn't have any. He won't ever have them, either, since his mother is dead.
Absently, Mana glances down at the flower in her hand. The sight of its bright petals stirs a memory from beyond the fog; then abruptly she finds a long, asphalt road rolling out in her mind's eye, flanked by clovers on one side and dandelions on the other. If she were to follow that road, she thinks, she would find a creek and a pond. Fireflies come out there in the summer. When she'd been young her mother—her real mother—had caught one in her bare hands and showed her its glowing bottom.
A shooting pain lances between her temples.
"Eh?" The boy startles as his cousin's brow crumples and her face collapses into a terribly ugly cry. Mana throws the dandelion away and falls onto her front, eyes burning. She lets out an inconsolable sob.
"Huh? What? But—" Shocked that his present has provoked such a reaction, he watches flabbergasted as the girl begins to wail. "What's wrong?" he asks as kicks off his sandals and climbs onto the veranda, but Mana pulls away, weeping uncontrollably. He reaches out to try and grab her around the middle, presumably to pick her up or give her a hug, but she hits him with one of her stubby little limbs and shrieks, "Go away!"
Her puny little swat isn't even remotely painful for him, of course, but the little boy takes on a look of hurt regardless. Mana suddenly remembers being rejected by her own baby cousin Hannah long ago in that other life, and she might have felt bad for him if this new recollection didn't send her into a screaming fit of pounding head-pain. Screwing her eyes shut, she rolls onto her back and writhes, just once, before even that's too much energy to muster. Then she just whimpers instead. Her limbs feel heavy and her whole body is cold.
Chieri, of course, is never far in these moments, and a beat later she emerges from the kitchen to see what's going on. Shisui is still kneeling on the veranda with a look of terrified shock. He looks up at his aunt.
"I-I didn't…" he stutters, utterly stunned. "I don't…"
Chieri, though, realizes immediately what's happened. She scoops up her daughter, who hangs limply from her arms like a rag doll, and recognizes the criteria for an emergency hospital visit instantly. Shisui's already old enough to be commuting to the Academy on his own, so for the first time in his young life she decides to ask him if he can stay home alone, at least until Ren returns.
"Shisui," Chieri says, "can you watch the house for me? Your father should be home soon."
Later on she tells him it wasn't his fault—that Mana's just sick and sometimes she gets like that. He can't tell if she's telling the truth or if she's lying the way that adults sometimes do to make children feel better, but either way he remembers the way Mana had looked at his dandelion and he doubts.
After that the poor boy avoids her like the plague, which Mana really can't blame him for. There's bound to be trauma in seeing your toddler cousin have a seizure and then get whisked off to the hospital all because you were thoughtful enough to hand her a flower. It goes without saying that Shisui never tries to give her a present again.
It’s a tired life, full of grief and constant unwellness, and sleep is the only break she seems to get from it. No matter how much she rests, though, she never seems to feel better, and the more she sleeps the more Chieri seems to worry.
Mana can’t help but think that she’s a pitiful woman. Widowed and living in her elder brother’s home, she’s been cursed with an extremely ill first child and there are no female relatives around to give her help or advice. Even though the other young child in the house has started school now it hardly seems to matter; they’re in and out of the hospital all the time anyway, perpetually dancing an exhausting dance between home and doctors. Ren is often absent, as he seems to be a working person whose hours can be both long and varied, so no matter how tired or upset Chieri gets she has no one to lean on. It’s thankless work, too, because Mana doesn’t know her and can’t really think of her as her mother. If she’d had a normal child, perhaps Chieri could have enjoyed a daughter’s love as reward for her toils. As it is, Mana’s just a burden. It’s wholly depressing in its own way, separate from her grief over her past life.
That afternoon she feels exceptionally bad. Three long days at the hospital have finally concluded and now that they’re back home, lying quietly together on the futon, the whole house is still and silent. As for Chieri, she’s flat on her back, but she’s not resting—she’s staring vacantly at the ceiling with the empty gaze of a person gone beyond her limit, calcified into stillness by despair and sleep deprivation. Mana looks at her and can’t help but think it would have been better for both of them if she hadn’t been born. She doesn’t love this life and she only causes this woman unhappiness and distress. If she weren’t around, Chieri probably wouldn’t have to suffer so.
There’s a hiccuping noise that Mana belatedly realizes is coming from her own throat. Chieri stirs from her glassy-eyed daze and immediately turns over, which Mana just can’t comprehend. Why keep spending so much effort on such an unloving child, no good for anything but hardship? Chieri doesn’t seem to be asking the same question, though, because she immediately puts a hand on Mana’s back.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?" she murmurs as she begins rubbing her fingers in a soothing circle. Mana doesn't know how to reply; she just stares back at her, miserable. Chieri's brow creases with sorrow.
"Oh, honey," she sighs as she presses her lips to the girl's forehead. "Oh, sweetie. I know. I'm so sorry. I know it's hard."
As she speaks she looks almost as wretched as Mana feels. As Chieri presses her forehead to hers and silently sheds tears, more grieved by her daughter's illness than Mana herself is, Mana wonders what a thing it must be to be a mother. Not her mother, perhaps, but a mother all the same…
Nothing much else is done that day. Shisui returns from the Academy and is surprised to find the kitchen silent and empty. At this hour it's usually already full of light and sound and smells as Chieri prepares for dinner. Curious, he wanders the house in search of her, ducking into the laundry room and peeking at the garden before he finally pokes his head into the first floor bedroom. He finds his aunt dead asleep on her bed, totally unconscious; Mana is wrapped in her arms, face pressed against her mother's neck.
Shisui blinks and stares for a moment, surprised. He stands there. Then, silently as a shinobi, he slides the door shut.