WAP ch 39: Hana's sickroom

They needed someone to fix this.

“The leading medical experts… Ninja, the Senju, I think?” Hana’s husband wrung his hands after he answered her. “Can’t you do anything?” He sounded betrayed. “Please– anything you wish, we are your loyal servants-”

“Izanami-no-mikoto died in childbirth,” Aiko said flatly. “This is not her jurisdiction.” She ignored the weird swelling of divine indignance at her dismissal. She was right and she didn’t care to coddle ego about it. “I can revive Hana if she dies. But it would be vastly preferential to preserve her life.” She paced a tight circle, a trapped tiger for a few moments of thought. Then she reeled on Hiroki. “Let me pass.”

The poor man stumbled out of her way to allow Aiko into the sickroom. Hana was crying, red-faced and exhausted. The midwife looked up in naked relief. “Priestess,” she said. “The baby is turned, she won’t come out. Can you-”

“Hana.” Aiko knelt at her most loyal disciple’s head and brushed sweaty hair off of her forehead. “I apologize for my absence.” She paused a moment for an answer. Hana’s eyes rolled. She might have nodded, but it was slight. “I have no skill in the healing arts.”

That was an understatement. She was such an inherently malign presence that she could accidentally boil a person’s mind into insanity with genjutsu. She had never successfully healed so much as a scratch. Aiko sucked. She genuinely sucked to a unique degree.

“I will not allow you to die.” She pressed a kiss to Hana’s forehead. “Nor your baby.”

“Is she- my baby-”

“Alive,” Aiko promised. She didn’t know much about birth, but she knew that there was no one dead in the room. That would register to her senses. The baby could die, judging by the midwife’s stress. But that was out of Aiko’s personal power. “I want to retrieve a medic from the Senju. Is this acceptable?”

“As long as you don’t tell that loser-” Hana screwed her eyes shut and stopped abruptly. 

“I won’t tell Izuna that you needed help with anything, ever,” Aiko confirmed, because she knew Hana’s priorities. “I will return soon.” She stood and pulled herself to the Senju compound without bothering to put her shoes on.

She dodged a sentry’s blade a moment later, deflecting it to a wall. “Fuck off,” Aiko told them, and lit the whole compound up with the white hot brightness of a crack of lightning. People started awake all around her, going from a peaceful sleep to the panicked readiness of startled soldiers. 

The Senju night guard who had attacked her cringed from the light, a hand shielding her eyes.

“I need a medic,” Aiko demanded. She threw aside some idiot who tried to attack her. “I require a medic, a midwife.” Just to make sure they were getting her subtle subtext, she ran an earthquake underneath their feet. Just a little one. Nothing cracked or fell over. She was just letting them know that she felt a sense of urgency, that was all.

Tobirama burst into the scene with the subtle spark of Hiraishin. She repeated her demand to him, in the most reasonable tone she had available at the moment.

“...I can heal as well as any,” he said. He lifted his shoulders defensively, as if he anticipated a fight about his qualifications. As if she gave one single care that she found him odious on a personal level at a time like this. She would treat him like she would treat any other medic. “What is the-”

Aiko cut him off with a lunge. She grabbed a handful of his clothes and tore him away from the Senju compound. He cried out in surprise. She ignored it to adjust her grip to his throat and bullied him down to her eye level. Distantly, she felt a spark of respect for how calmly he took this treatment. He had the incredible discipline it took not to struggle in the claws of a larger predator. 

“Thank you for offering your medical expertise,” she told him from very close up. Her jaw was very tense. Everything about her was tense. His neck bulged between the fingers of her right hand. Her left hand was tangled in that white fur ruff he always wore. “My acolyte requires aid. If she and her baby are not well, I am going to burn this shitty goddamn country to the ground and salt the ruin so that nothing can grow for a generation.” Her nose was nearly touching his. “I will greatly appreciate your kind assistance.”

“...Are you the father?” Tobirama asked mildly. “You have a certain worried look about you.”

It took a moment to register that it was a joke. She let go of her death grip on his throat and shook out her hand.

“No. He is.” She indicated the poor bastard himself, who was currently cowering against the wall and clearly wished one of them was elsewhere. “We will be indebted to you. Right, Hiroki?” She pulled Tobirama into the room without giving either man a chance to speak.

“I have brought you an assistant,” she told the midwife. The elderly peasant looked extremely alarmed at this turn of events. 

“Thank you, Priestess,” Hana said. She sniffled and held out a hand. Aiko nearly teleported in her haste to hold it. It was clammy. Hana squeezed slightly then let go. “Please go provide comfort to my dear husband.”

Aiko paused.

“Am I being kicked out?” she confirmed, genuinely curious.

“Your gentle ministering presence may be needed elsewhere.” Tobirama was tying up his sleeves.

Was… was that another joke, at her expense? Aiko looked around the room, incredulous that this was happening to her. These people were supposed to respect her. They wouldn’t let him mock her to her face, would they?

The midwife avoided eye contact. Hana had squeezed her eyes shut again and looked miserable.

… “Good luck,” she said meekly. Aiko left and went to wait on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest. She did not bother attempting to calm poor Hiroki. He would probably feel better if she didn’t look directly at him. 

The situation hit her in waves. First relief and pride: she had provided for her acolyte. Aiko wasn’t even worried, now that the adrenaline was fading. Tobirama was famously brilliant generations after his death: Hana would be fine. 

Of course, after that came a rush of mortification that she had thrown a grenade into her diplomatic relations with the Senju. Aiko rested her chin on her knees and miserably calculated how many seconds she had saved with her temper tantrum in the Senju compound vs how much time she would have to spend apologizing for scaring the whole family. Boo.

Aiko finished her emotional rollercoaster with the realization that maybe she was a little guilty. Oh, hell. Was she going to have to apologize to Tobirama? She squirmed in place. Yes. She was going to have to apologize and thank him for keeping a level head to avoid escalation.

Ugh.

Hiroki edged even further away from her aura of gloom. He was backed against the wall when the door opened. Aiko looked up to see that the midwife was standing there. “Happy news,” she said. 

Hiroki was up like a shot and into the room, bowing apologies to the matron but unstoppable. Aiko heaved herself to her feet and put her hands on her thighs to give the woman a deep bow and her sincere thanks. Tobirama crept silently out of the room during their conversation about Hana’s condition, wiping his hands on a cloth. He watched her impassively.

As soon as she had ushered the midwife on her way out, Aiko turned to Tobirama and steeled herself. “Thank you,” she said. Her whole face twitched with the effort not to turn sour. “I apologize for my treatment of you. It was beastly. I was overcome by my emotions and I treated you unfairly.”

“It is of no concern,” Tobirama said.

…She eyed him skeptically.

“You reminded me of my honored- in-laws in that moment,” he said mildly. 

In-laws? Hashirama’s in-laws, specifically? Uzumaki?

She resisted the biological imperative to scowl. “I am flattered by the comparison,” Aiko said in a very unfriendly tone.

Yes. That was amusement in his eyes when he looked down at her. Tobirama was feeling amused. She fought down a wave of impotent fury. He had been so wary of her before. Had she really ruined her own reputation as frightening by threatening him and kidnapping him?

‘Shut up and take the victory,’ she told herself. The smile she managed was probably ghastly. But she aimed it at him. “Shall I take you home?” 

Tobirama hesitated. “Perhaps we ought to send a message home by conventional means in the daylight, before you return,” he said, which was an entirely diplomatic way to convey the information that Hashirama might try to murder her on sight. “Might I trouble your hospitality for the night?”

Aiko thought about her single room shrine, with her futon, the three girls’ futons laid out in a line, and… well, there were spares. She grimly prepared herself for more social suffering. “Of course,” she said. “Please, follow me.”