Notes: Back and darker than ever. Idk how to feel about this one, honestly, this concept might be outdated but I'm rolling with it. This chapter was meant to be longer but I thought I'd see how it took to the masses.

***TRIGGER WARNING: infant death

"Otsutsuki Hinata?"

Otsutsuki Hinata?

No…she wasn't, not yet.

Not as of yet. She would be—soon.

"Otsutsuki-san?"

"No." Snatched from her reverie, Hinata answered curtly. It was a shotgun response to think she wasn't married yet. But that was it. She'd had time to think before her insistent denial, and yet she opened her mouth and suddenly sounded so utterly against it.

Upon realization of her rudeness Hinata was quick to an apology.

"I'm—I'm sorry, what I mean is to say that…not that that's wrong, I'm sorry. I'm not…we're not married yet. My name still Hyuuga Hinata." She realized she was scrambling, but she couldn't really stop, none of her words would ring the way she wanted them to.

The woman hadn't ever been bothered by the insinuation that she was already married—already an Otsutsuki. Being referred to by his surname wasn't something she corrected, it used to feel natural and skin-tight. After all, it never made a difference, she would be an Otsutsuki in the future.

Hinata looked down at her lap lamely, shame curling its ugly passive-aggressive fingers around her neck.

"It's okay. Please, call me Otsutsuki-san."

"Hinata-san, it's okay to be very tied, or even still want be tied to your maiden name. I don't mind calling you Hyuu—"

"No,"

Hinata's voice was meek but the shrink halted immediately.

"Please. Call me Otsutsuki-san."

Hinata dug her nails into the ground under her head, almost immediately afterward moved the same hand in shaky, jerky movements to grab onto the thigh upon which her head rested.

A crippling howl reverberated across the trees, bustling the leaves.

She inhaled deeply, moaning weakly, her other hand clutched at her abdomen, nails raking across her own flesh.

It hurt.

The harshest pain stabbed her from the inside of her lower stomach. Nothing she gripped, nothing she saw, or heard, not the reassuring whispers of the stranger whose lap she rested in could distract her from the pain that stole her every breath. She let out another cry, it cracked in several places, and she began to choke on her tears when her cries and gasps for began to lose correlation.

Hinata sobbed as the stranger rubbed her head and whispered would-be-comforting thoughts (if she had been in a hospital, with her fiancé, and her family). Hinata couldn't hear anything, she could hear herself and her panic, and quite belatedly the words 'breathe' every few minutes. She only wanted her baby to be okay, but, oh God…

Another hard cry ripped through the back of her throat but quickly turned silent as she laid with an open mouth, face contorted to the pain and hot tears stealing the moisture from her eyes.

There was another woman working between her legs to orchestrate the birth, she was also speaking, blurting out instructions and reassurances. This other woman, who'd introduced herself and—Haruno, perhaps?—Hinata couldn't quite recall their names, had been with her in the lifeboat and tried to couch Hinata through childbirth when the pain began. That felt like eons ago as it had worsened, and now apparently she was crowning, and all she needed to do was keep breathing and focus her energy—which was grossly overestimated—towards getting the baby out.

Hinata tried very hard to think of Toneri, with the loving sparkle in his eyes and his happiness at the realization of becoming a father—and a day ago she couldn't wait for her baby to arrive and be with them, but now she wished she could've lasted for the two weeks she was supposed to.

No.

No she would only think about happy things. For the baby. Toneri and her, they would be happy. They had priorities and love and a wedding and—

Her face twisted in pain and the stranger had grabbed her hand and began squeezing it reassuringly. Hinata bit her lip hard and tried not to think about the pain. Only Toneri, and their wedding, and their family.

Toneri, and their wedding, and their family.

Toneri, wedding, family.

Before trying to push again, Hinata choked back on her tears.

.
.
.

A distant scream shattered Sasuke's train of thought. Naruto bustled beside him.

"Shit…" Naruto grabbed his head. "Just…fuck, man…what are we doing again?"

"Looking for boat wreckage, or supplies or anything." Sasuke promptly reminded, "Something that will get us help…or at least help her."

Sasuke darted his head in the direction of the wailing.

"Dammit." Naruto sighed, bending over to inspect what Sasuke knew was just a crab. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"No shit."

Naruto straightened and gave him a forlorn look, eyes swimming in overthought. Sasuke knew he was probably trying to think of a way to blame himself, but now, of all times, was not the time to be pointing fingers. They had enough to worry about.

"At least no one's dead." Sasuke lamely reassured his friend.

There had been casualties, very few at that, but of the few there was no one from their party.

"Why a cruise?" The idiot continued to lament. "Why not just a bar? That's a normal bachelor's party. And whose goddamn idea was it to combine the bachelor and bachelorette parties?"

Sasuke gave him a dry look. "Your fiancé's."

"Hey! It looks like they found something!" Naruto pointed in the direction of three other men that were on the ship before running off to them, hasty to ignore a glowering Sasuke.

"Heeeeyyyyyyyyy!"

Sasuke's face was calm, and he refused to run toward anybody, especially these strangers. As Naruto ran off to talk to them, Sasuke was left to his own thoughts, which was seldom a good thing.

His face was calm, but he could control his face, he couldn't control a deeply seeded unease that palpitated in his chest.

Naruto was right, this wasn't supposed to happen, what should've happened was that they celebrated the oncoming wedding with a lot of alcohol on a boat for two days, and then there'd be a wedding. At the wedding, he'd make a speech, and it would be a bit too mechanical, and a touch insulting, but it would be absolutely perfect because he excelled at public speaking. Shortly after that, he would be interviewed, which was a formality at this point, for a position at his father's firm. He'd work under his father and brother before being named a partner, or branching out, or becoming successful in some way that couldn't be accomplished while he was stuck on a godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere.

These were circumstances he didn't deserve. He was an adamant rule follower, and he had the best grades, he studied at the best university and he worked so damn hard that if this was how it ended he would fucking stab everyone on this island—including the pregnant woman—and sacrifice them to gods unworthy of it so he could have a better afterlife.

Sasuke refused to let his life be worth absolutely nothing.

"Sasuke! Teme!" Naruto waved him over, which was redundant because he was almost there. "These guys found something!"

They had? It didn't look like it.

Interest piqued, Sasuke slightly adjusted his pace so he could reach them faster.

.

.

"Breathe,"

Even at the hospital, Sakura had never delivered a baby.

But the hospital in Konoha was large, and bustling, and one of the best in southern Japan, and she worked there and that counted for something. Sakura's drive had gotten her as far as to be mentored by Tsunade-sama, the leading neurosurgeon in the district, and the fiercest woman she'd come to know. It was a privilege and honour for her to be mentored under her no-nonsense, foul-mouthed methods.

Some thought her heart was made of stone, but Sakura found her to be a goddess, because by all standards she was the perfect woman. Her knowledge was ethereal, she had experiences that preceded her age (although Sakura could admit she difficulty pinpointing where exactly on the spectrum her age ranged), and something that Sakura craved beyond the beyond was her approval. And she'd be damned to work under Tsunade and not be able to deliver a baby.

Tsunade had a certain pride in Sakura, because she had an unmistakable ambition.

That very same ambition would be what would help her save a women and her baby.

As if it were a mantra to herself and the woman giving birth she kept repeating "Just keep breathing."

This woman, she had crowned. She looked to be about ready to pop anyway, and stress can cause early labour, so everything concerning the birth should've been potentially explained.

Except, something was wrong, and Sakura felt it deep in her gut. She was waiting for something to go wrong, there was too much blood loss, and the woman was in too much pain. Sakura could tell she tried to keep still even though she was practically writhing in pain and for far too long.

But…

But she didn't know what was wrong. The birth was going as normally as she would imagine under the circumstances, given that she'd never delivered a child, and they'd just survived a boat sinking and a storm, everything was going about as smoothly as she imagined it could.

So why was the birth so difficult?

The woman screamed and wept. She was sobbing so hard that Ino began voicing concerns about her passing out from the pain.

"Just…stay calm, breathe—"

"She's breathing!" Ino snapped, exasperated.

"Don't get annoyed with me! I'm trying my hardest, but this is a process and it takes time." Sakura had to take her top off to wipe at the blood between the legs in front of her. In all honesty, Hinata, if she recalled weren't the only ones panicking, and that 'process' speech she spouted was utter bullshit that everyone needed to hear, herself included, even if she knew it was a lie.

"Please, Hinata-sama, I need you to push."

She got a painful choking-sob in response, and Ino looked at her hopelessly, squeezing the woman's hand, and stroking at her dark hair. There was aching thought that something was horribly wrong, and it grew louder at the back of her head.

Some minutes later she would be able to gently pull the baby out, but Sakura could feel something nagging at her.

She was cradling a beautiful baby girl, slick with amnion fluid and blood, with strikingly white hair and chubby, bloodless cheeks. In a split second Sakura was working instinctually, with heavy breathing and a racing heart. No breaths escaped the tiny vessel, so she tried resuscitating her, with two fingers on her little chest.

Please. Your mommy needs you.

Belatedly, the woman realized she had, in fact delivered a baby.

And that would've been a victory to her, but her eyes began to brim with wetness and her heart pounded as adrenaline coursed through it, and a sweat dropped onto a tiny, un-heaving, cold chest.

.

.

A lifeboat with a hole punched through it.

What they'd found was a wrecked lifeboat.

Sasuke grit his teeth at their incompetence. He had no time for their bullshit.

Much to Naruto's chagrin, Sasuke walked away. They hadn't been stranded for a day and yet that was still far too long for them to be fooling around with a wrecked lifeboat. Said lifeboat was sans any supplies and had quite a huge hole ripped through its side. It was essentially without any worth, because by no means were they sailing back to goddamn Konoha on a lifeboat (which they already had), never mind a wrecked lifeboat.

He had better plans.

Once there was a realization that the ship hadn't ported, they would try to make contact, or whatever their procedure calls for. Once they detect an emergency, which won't be hard since Sasuke knew the ship was due to port in less than a week, they would send rescue. And they would search until they found him because his family was very powerful.

Of course, rationally, he knew everyone else was as stranded as he was, and as much to blame for the situation as he was (which was zero goddamn percent), so really the fact that the lifeboat they drew in had absolutely no way of helping them was also not their fault.

He knew it, he felt it, but his temper kept flaring. He was so irritated and he couldn't stand not having something to blame that would satisfy that—because he couldn't hit, sue, or kill the weather, powerful family be damned.

Sasuke rapidly clenched and slowly unclenched his fists as he paced his way back to the meeting place, where Ino and Sakura were helping the pregnant woman in labour. He thought back to the three woman as their silhouettes came into view, and belatedly realized the lack of noise in the area. There were no more agonised screams that, frankly, sent a discomforting emotional rivet down his spine. Sasuke was absolutely horrified with these events.

He couldn't fully imagine an infant surviving long on the island. It seemed relatively desolate and void of any more people. The trees alluded to a forest, but they were extremely sparse for a few dozen feet before the forestry grew thick at all. There were banana trees everywhere, but the wind was cool even with the beating sun and in all hopes her child would survive.

But Sasuke's stoic face fell slightly as the silhouettes came into clear view; Ino with the woman's head snug in her lap and the rest of her splayed on the beach floor as Sakura worried with something else and the sense of distress that radiated from the situation made him pick up the pace.

Through her peripherals, Ino spotted him and yelled, "Sasuke! Sasuke hurry!"

And then he was running as fast as he could, sand whipping his ankles and spraying behind him as he bolted to them.

He arrived to Ino's side as she was shaking the pregnant lady's shoulders and begging her to wake up, when she gave him a hopeless look.

"Sakura won't listen."

So he looked towards Sakura and felt…nothing.

A sort of abandonment of feeling in his chest, as if his veins had knotted and his heart wasn't receiving any blood and Sakura was whispering under her breath, and his blood continued to curdle as his eyes were glued to the newly born baby that lay lifeless under Sakura's attempts at resuscitation. She bent low to breathe a small blow of air into the child's lungs, but to no avail.

"Sakura!" Ino yelled. "Haruno—fucking Sakura!"

But Sakura wasn't listening at all.

Sasuke looked back at the women between them and his heart immediately began to pound again, harder and faster against his chest and he moved to quickly grab Sakura's arm—to which she struggled and strongly hauled herself away from his touch, and he saw it.

The desperation that had pooled in her eyes as she hurried to get back to the baby.

"Sakura!" this time it was he who was shouting and he'd grabbed her once more, but Ino had decided to take over.

"Sakura—Hinata-chan isn't breathing regularly. The baby isn't going to make it, please save her!"

If there was anything in his life that Sasuke never even thought he would hear, it was those words. They hadn't even been an option in his solitude. And suddenly his problems didn't mean anything at all as he put two fingers to the tiny chest in front of him and began to mimic Sakura's actions so that she could get to the woman—Hinata. He looked at her purposefully, and he didn't know what he was doing even though he knew the method, he'd never done it to a child-much less a real person, but Sakura's eyes were glazed as she whispered quick instructions.

She then bolted to help Hinata.

Sasuke pressed into the chest gently, twice, and breathed into her mouth twice. And suddenly he understood that he couldn't stop, even though he thought it to be futile, he just did it so that Sakura would save Hinata. He repeated it at least four more times before losing count.

And then, eventually, he knew it was completely worthless.

Hinata breathed in and out, and had forgotten when she'd started counted her breaths.

The office, she could tell, had been amazingly expensive. He was amazingly expensive, and highly recommended. Hinata could only imagine all the problems with rich people he may or may not have dealt with.

The therapist, Yuu-san, was dressed smartly, with an electric blue tied and black suit, and magnificently shiny shoes. It felt like the kind of extremes that Toneri would go to.

They wouldn't need to pay for baby food, or school, or university, so why not spend it all on a therapy session?

Hinata didn't like her thoughts as of late, especially towards her soon-to-be husband. They were ugly and pointed, and Hinata was absolutely disgusted by her own mind, and her own body which bore fruitless war scars—of stretchmark's and scratches that became typical on that island…the trees were brimmed with long thorns. Even months later the very memory of her birth absolutely nauseated her, she needed to get up and go to a bathroom—but Yuu-san was speaking in a drawl that Hinata didn't think was very comforting.

He was on about the effects of PTSD and he tried to sound calm but he chose his words carefully instead of being direct, as if he were treading on extremely thin ice.

"There are support groups for people in similar situation that can help you feel less alone."

And then suddenly; he was.

"I'm sorry," Hinata breathed, finding resolve. "This was a mistake."

She promptly stood up, ready to close the door behind her and never look back.

"Wait, Hyuuga-san, I can't force you to stay, but wouldn't you please consider what you've been through and stay?"

Hinata's heart slightly withered when he called her by her maiden name again, but she didn't let it show on her face. She couldn't understand his adamance. It was just like Toneri's; perfectly selfish, only seeming to be to her benefit while she actually remained ignored. But Hinata didn't want therapy, and she'd told him. She said she didn't want therapy and yet she wound up in therapy as if she were just doll that could be played with.

She looked at the shrink with the glassy businessman eyes of a Hyuuga.

"Yuu-san, thank you for your time, but I'll be taking my leave." She gave him a pressed smile and only concentrated on the sound of her heels as they clicked on the wooden floors on her way out, until she finally heard the door closing and then briskly began towards the restroom where she emptied herself of the coffee and anpan she'd nibbled on in the morning.

Steadying herself against the stall, she dug into her bag, procuring her phone and tapping the screen until finally, the contact Uchiha Sasuke was bright on her screen.

Breathing in deep, Hinata pressed dial.