Blonding

Chapter 32 : Pregnant

When Minato returned home that evening, there was no fanfare.

No lights, no sounds or smells of Kushina cooking something up for dinner, no warm embrace.

The place felt… eerie.

The door clicked shut behind him, and Minato had to blink once or twice to adjust to the darkness. 'This is odd,' Minato thought to himself with a small frown, instantly on his guard. 'Kushina always leaves this place brighter than the Sun.'

He silently eased himself out of his sandals, piling them neatly in the corner, next to his wife's, which made him smile brilliantly.

'So she is home.'

He walked down the hallway, his dull footsteps reverberating off the walls. Shadows danced through the windows, the outlines of trees waving in the wind painting splotches of black on a canvas of moonlight.

It had been a long day.

It was like a perfect storm of events. First he learned of the Mizukage's incapacitation, while waiting in Kushina's hospital room for some sort of sign from Jiraiya. Then came the run-in with the now-infamous Naruto and his son, whose escape still baffled him to the point where his head hurt if he thought about it too much.

Then came the biggest news of the day.

"Kushina?" he called out into the darkness, listening intently as the floorboards creaked and moaned under his footsteps.

No response – although he did hear a small cough coming from the kitchen.

When he rounded the corner, he found her – sitting alone, in the dark, a mug of cold tea cupped between her hands.

"Kushina?" he asked again, a seed of worry suddenly taking root inside of his chest, all of his excitement and happiness extinguished in an instant. "Are you okay?" He flipped the lightswitch, and the florescent lighting in their kitchen clicked and hummed to life. "Have you been sitting in the dark this whole time?"

Silence. Minato took a moment to just look at her, his eyebrows furrowed across his forehead in confusion. Her own face was as blank as stone, her unfocused eyes burrowing an unseen hole in the table before her.

"No."

He cracked a small smile. "Then why are you?"

Kushina blinked, her eyes moving up to look out the window above their sink, an almost bored frown on her face. "Oh. It wasn't dark when I sat down."

Minato frowned, making his way towards the chair next to his wife. The sound of the wooden legs grinding on the tile floor made him wince slightly, but he ignored it and settled down in it, steepling his hands together across the tabletop before him.

"Okay. What's wrong?"

Up close, he could see just how fatigued Kushina looked. Massive bags sat under her eyes, hung across her cheeks from one side of her face to the other. Her normally fiery violet eyes were now a dull grey, still unmoved from the kitchen table. Minato couldn't tell if it was because of the artificial light in the room, or if it was because of something… else.