Rating: M

Pairing: Off-screen SasuSaku

Beta Reader: Not beta-read; check back at a later date for edits

Author’s Note: As promised, Sarada’s birth scene from Penthesilea. It was gonna be a one-shot, but I decided to space it out. I liked the idea of multiple points of view for this, and it sort of gives it more weight if the labour lasts a long time via chaptered updates :P

Warning(s) Blood as per childbirth?

Previous Chapter

Sakura moans, weakly curling onto her side to avoid the ministrations of her master and friends. Her lower lip is raw and bleeding where she fruitlessly clamped down on it, trying to muffle her screams.

Her clothes are stained with sweat and blood and other bodily fluids, the birth pangs coming faster and faster. They sweep over her as she fights to keep sense of everything around her. She thinks Naruto was here a moment ago, but might have dreamed him. Reality isn’t solid right now, and she keeps slipping in and out of it from one second to the next.

One moment she knows she is surrounded by loved ones, and in the next they seem like strangers to her pain-addled brain.

She finds herself murmuring nonsense, begging for her mother who she knows—thinks, no, remembers—is dead. She wishes she was still here to be with her, someone she could call out to.

Because she won’t call out the name she truly wants to; the name of the one who should be here by her side right now.

“Come on, now, Sakura,” Shizune says gently, once again trying to make her sit up.

“No,” Sakura insists, pushing her away.

“Sakura, please, you need to lie on you back and sit up, you need to push—”

“Leave me alone!”

“Sakura, if you don’t cooperate, I really will knock you out,” Karin growls at her.

“Try is,” Sakura snarls back, pretty sure that even like this she can take the other woman in a fight. “If you dare—”

“Sakura.”

Instantly everyone in the room freezes.

She can’t help the way her head whips around to stare at the owner of the voice, utter disbelief temporarily blocking out the pain.

Uchiha Sasuke stands in the doorway, looking tense and uncomfortable, but gazing upon her in something like reproach.

A sob escapes her, as she struggles to pull herself into a sitting position.

“Sasuke-kun!” she gasps, anxious. “You’re here, you—” She remembers here they are, and who is in the room with them. “No, you—you have to leave, you have to—you could be in danger!”

“He is permitted to be here for this,” Tsunade says grimly, her expression unreadable.

Sakura doesn’t have a chance to puzzle over this, as Sasuke crosses the room and leans in close to her.

“Sakura,” he goes on, “you surprise me. You are so strong in battle. What are you doing now?”

“It’s…it’s a little different,” she whimpers.

“This is nothing to you,” he tells her pointedly. “You are Haruno Sakura, the heir of the Senju. You have never quaked in the face of pain or bloodshed or death. You have never given up on anything before, even me. And you’re giving up on your life out of what…fear?”

“No!” she protests. “I just…I had to…see you! Had to apologise!” She reaches out and clings to his arm, shuddering because touching him again after so long makes the world shift. “I tried to tell you—I swear, I did, but then Itachi died, and you said—”

She trails off into an anguished sob, remembering that horrible day when he looked at her like she was nothing.

“I know what I said,” he tells her quietly. “I know what I did. None of that matters right now, in this moment. What matters is the child.”

“Our child,” she murmurs dimly.

“Yes,” he says, something like pain flashing across his eyes. “If you don’t start to push, you could die. So could the child. Do you think I will ever be able to forgive myself if that happened?”

Sakura swallows, her mouth and throat too dry for the movement to offer comfort. Sasuke is already so burdened, so guilty over so many things, she can’t put him through this too!

“Alright,” she says. “Alright, we’ll…let’s do this.”

He nods, slow and grave, and then looks up to the others in the room.

Sasuke helps her sit up, and after a signal from Tsunade, he gets up on the bed behind her, crawling in to bracket her back with his chest and legs. Sakura sighs, the familiar contours of his body giving her a strength she hasn’t felt since her labour started. She feels Tsunde’s warm hand around her blood-starved ones.

“Squeeze when it hurts too much,” Tsunade tells her; she’s the only one there who can withstand Sakura’s strength.

“Alright, Sakura, take a deep breath and on the next contraction, push,” Shizune tells her, while Karin crouches in front of her exposed lower half.

Sakura does as she’s told, trying to push. She bellows in pain, the sense of being torn in half growing stronger as the seconds pass. Although she bears down, doing her best to expel the infant from her womb, nothing changes.

The contraction passes, leaving her panting and gasping for air. She feels something cool and wet passing over her forehead and neck, and when the spots disappear from her eyes, she sees Sasuke’s hand holding a cloth to her.

“You can do this,” he insists. “You’ve performed feats even Uzumaki Mito couldn’t dream of. You won’t lose this. I know that Sa…that I wasn’t there while you were going through this. And there are man things going on right now in the war that we have no control over. But this?” He reaches further and rests his hands delicately on her bloated belly, “This you can do. I have no doubt.”

She’s crying again, because for so many months she dreams of him returning, of saying these things to her.

“Alright,” she sniffs. “Alright…”

“Ready to try again?” Shizune asks, and Sakura nods.

She cranes her neck to stare up at Sasuke, and tries to smile at him.

“I love you,” she says. “From the day…you carried me off that battlefield. Maybe before…I think.”

A myriad of expressions cross his face then—astonishment, pain, guilt—and then he smirks in that way of his.

“I know you do,” he tells her, and she’s struck with surprise with the sincerity in it. There’s something about this that makes no sense, and she wants to ask—

But another contraction hits.

“Push!” Karin demands, and Sakura tries to comply, summoning as much of her strength as she dares. She just needs to get the baby out, where they can care for it—

“Stop!”

“Sakura, stop pushing, now!”

She does as she’s bid, staring up at the two women who are staring at her in panic.

“What is it?” Tsunade demands, while Karin probes Sakura’s thighs. Shizune watches her face for signs of pain, but it almost feels like she’s beyond that now. Everything is pain, there is no relief.

Karin draws back, her hands coated with blood—much more than before, much more than is normal.

“Breach birth,” the Uzumaki woman says, grim.

“The baby has to be turned,” Shizune agrees. “We need you to sit up.”

Sasuke makes a noise of confirmation and helps Sakura sit up even more. She whimpers, quiet at first and then ratcheting into a shriek as one of the women—Karin or Shizune, she doesn’t know which—reaches a fingers inside of her and begins to rotate.

She doesn’t know how long that goes on for—honestly, she might have passed out for a few seconds. But when she comes to, Tsunade is nodding in a business-like fashion.

“Alright,” Tsunade says. “It’s time, Sakura. The next contraction is it. As hard as you can, you push and don’t stop. Do you understand?”

Sakura stares blankly at her teacher, too far gone to comprehend.

“Sakura?” Sasuke prompts, and she forces herself to concentrate.

“Ye…yes,” she rasps.

“Get ready…” Karin orders. “And—” The contraction hits. “NOW!”

Sakura’s body shudders and she screams in pain and terror and fear, the sound unearthly and inhuman even to her ears.

“Push!” Sasuke encourages, while Tsunade continues to hold her.

“A little more,” Karin says. “The top of the head is out.”

“I need to stop…” Sakura murmurs, trying to fall back against Sasuke but he keeps her in position. “I need…”

“You’re doing well,” he tells her tensely. “Shrug it off. It should be nothing for you to do that.”

“You…you’re right” she pants, gritting her teeth in the face of the next wave of pain.

“Ready?” Tsunade asks.

Sakura nods, unable to speak anymore.

Karin says, “Okay.”

“Push,” Sasuke orders.

Sakura pushes, and once again screams as the ripping, tearing white pain radiates throughout her entire being. She feels Tsunade’s fingers snap within her own, but the older woman doesn’t move or show any indication that she has even noticed.

She has the sense of wet and solid sliding from her, and then suddenly a foreign sensation of emptiness.

There’s a startled cry from somewhere near her lower half, so unfamiliar and quiet, but instantly Sakura’s head swivels toward it because she knows this sound! Something primal within her reacts to it, instantly wants to quiet it and stop whatever is causing the noise of distress.

“Give…give me…” Sakura tries, but words are still giving her trouble.

“The baby?” Sasuke says, both finishing her sentence and asking Karin, whose back is turned to her as she busies herself with cleaning off the wailing infant.

“Perfectly healthy,” Karin tells him, thought she frowns at the bundle. “Her eyes are strange, though.”

“Her?” Sakura breathes, falling back on Sasuke, her face slack and the sound of her pulse in her ears oddly slow.

Down below, Shizune murmurs to her that everything is alright as she massages Sakura’s belly and uterus back into shape, while Tsunade bends before her to heal the damage.

But none of this means anything in the face of Karin finally coming over and laying a tiny, wriggling bundle in Sakura’s arms.

Everything else seems to vanish, every other sense suddenly muted.

She stares at the tiny, wrinkled pink face, the thin but strong that kicked beneath her heart, and those eyes. She might think there was something wrong, expect she knows those eyes intimately—they’re the reason she’s in this situation to begin with.

They are utterly black, reflecting Sakura’s exhausted expression back at her.

Sakura gazes at the baby, suffused with joy and love that somehow overtake the pain that won’t disappear. She never realised she could instantly love something so much. She thought Sasuke was it, but this creature in her arms…

“You did it,” Sasuke says, sounding breathless; she thinks he might even be crying, and that makes her heart flutter.

“Not alone,” she says. “We…knew you would come…”

Sasuke swallows at this, and gapes at the baby like he has no idea how to react properly. She never thought the great Uchiha Sasuke could look as stunned as Naruto, but then she’s iterations of that look on his face before.

“This is what…he wanted,” she tells him. “Your brother. Her. She’s…she’s our future…”

Sasuke nods wordlessly. In the background, Tsunade is watching them with a hard, speculative look on her face.

“Sarada,” Sakura whispers a beat later, to herself and Sasuke. “We’ll…call her…Sarada…”

She wants to tell him why, wants to explain the name she has been thinking about for the past few months, whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

But her tongue won’t move anymore, and her eyelids begins to droop. The baby seems to get exponentially heavier then, and the world inexplicably darker.

“Grab the baby!”

“We’re losing her!”

The last thing she is aware of is the sudden empty feeling in her arms, and the keening wail of her daughter.

つづく

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クリ

She’s aware that after he becomes stable and able to control his body again, he’ll be placed under the watch of Anbu and chakra restraints will be placed around his wrists. But for now, he’s put under her care and Sakura takes full responsibility for his actions. 

She enters his room with quiet footfalls and immediately goes to work. Sasuke is lying face up with bandages around his head and attached to his beaten and bruised face; he doesn’t move. Exhaustion clings to her eyes as she scans his paperwork and checks his monitors. The soft humming of the machines is like a lullaby to her ears, and as she works through his folder, it doesn’t occur to her that his sleeping form moves subtly and his eyes are upon her. 

He looks tired, Sakura notes. His hair has grown out and his eyes no longer match one another. Sasuke doesn’t speak, only lets his eyes wander around the room, allowing her to work in peace and silence.

“When was the last time you went home?” 

Sakura doesn’t answer, because she doesn’t know. She spends her days here, with her patients and nurses; coffee is what keeps her going, alongside small portions of food. She’s careful about chakra usage though, only allows herself to use it when it’s really required, and when she finds her mind wandering and not focusing on his question, she looks behind her at the door. 

It’s an awkward silence, one she hasn’t grown to stomach yet. After all, Sasuke had been gone for as long as she could remember, and the last time he was in the hospital like this, he had a haunting aura surrounding him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she speaks quietly. She doesn’t want to focus on that, she wants to focus on making sure everyone else is better. When she does go home, her mind over thinks and she ends up right back in the same place -- working on patients and offering help to the other medics and nurses.

“Hn,” he grumbles out before closing his eyes once more. Sasuke’s bangs now fall over his eyes and the ends of his hair brushes his shoulders. He looks peaceful with his eyes closed, until Sakura reaches for the bandage around his left arm -- at least what’s left of it. 

He shows no sort of peacefulness now. His eyes reveal a painful shimmer and his lips are straight, face expressionless. It’s a test for him to let Sakura close enough to touch his wound -- but then again it was always Sasuke who touched Sakura’s wounds, whether it be with his words or actions. 

“I haven’t told Naruto, but once Tsunade has fully recovered, she’s going to begin working on prosthetic arms made from Hashirama’s cells. One for you, and one for him.”

It was classified information, something she shouldn’t have told him. Sakura’s eyes found their way back to Sasuke. He shuffled in his bed and began to sit up, allowing Sakura’s hand to support his back. When the silence fell over them once more, she grabbed the rolling cart next to his bed and began to fill the tray with gauze, cotton, water, tweezers, and whatever else her fingers could find. Anything to rid the nauseous feeling in her belly and give her anxious fingers something to do. 

The bandages had began to soak through with minimal blood, and as Sakura undid the bindings around his stub, she felt nothing when his limb was revealed. Muscle still toned his biceps and triceps, but his limb was completely severed right above the elbow. She remembered when she found both Naruto and Sasuke after their fight, remembered just how bad his arm was and the condition his body was in.

On the brink of death, she explained to the two of them, but they denied her explanation.

She remembered the stinging of tears in her eyes, and the blood that stained the ground beneath them; the blood that stained her hands still burned, even if it had been rinsed from her body days ago. 

“I’m sorry.” 

He had said it once before, and Sakura knew he meant it. She held his limb in her hand still, viridian eyes glossed over as she pulled herself from memory lane and began to work on his wounds. She gently scrubbed the dried blood from his skin, applied cotton, gauze, and finally wrapped it all up to hold it together. 

She smiled, finding it funny how something so simple help his wound together; something as simple as a bandage. 

“I’m not going to accept your apology,” she finally spoke. She discarded his bloody bandages and pushed the tray away. Sakura finally leaned down against his bed, the sheets moving under her weight and Sasuke’s eyes watching her. “But I’m willing to forgive you.” 

Like the bandage on his arm, she was the bandage to a life lead astray. She held him together, tied his loose ends down and kept him from harm. Sasuke’s playful smirk finally appeared, and with Sakura mere inches from his face, he lifted his single arm gingerly and moved it towards her body with ease. 

It was then that she felt his cool fingers press to her forehead. Words that she hardly heard from Sasuke echoed throughout her mind, and although they held so much meaning, she fought back the urge to let tears run down her face. 

“Thank you, Sakura.”