Ah, yes; this one will definitely be one of my favorites. :)

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Of Daughters and Death Threats

Because Sakura was a woman, and women were always right.

There were only two times throughout Itachi's entire life when he found himself absolutely frozen, unable to do a thing. Unable to move, to speak, to think. The sudden flash of worry was paralyzing, an icy claw jabbing up beneath his ribs and digging into his chest.

It was an awful feeling.

The sense of being unable to fix something, of being unable to effect the outcome in the slightest.

The first time was when his younger brother walked in on him killing their parents. Since then, he had felt nothing even remotely like that crippling shock — until now.

"Uchiha-san," an ANBU murmured, appearing before him.

He and his team — consisting of Nara Shikamaru, Inuzuka Hana (and her dog), and Hyuga Neji — came to a halt from leaping through trees. His companions watched him curiously as he interacted with the masked man.

"Hn."

The ANBU bowed respectfully before delivering his message. "Hokage-sama has requested your immediate presence at the hospital. Your wife was apparently cleaning a friend's house to keep herself busy, but overstrained herself and passed out. She took a tumble down two flights of stairs."

He froze, eyes ever-so-slightly widened. Hana gasped. His voice was airy when he spoke, almost as if the breath had been knocked from his lungs.

"The baby?"

"It's condition is unclear. She has gone into an early labor as a result of the fall."

Never in all his days had Shikamaru sensed such an intense wave of killing-intent waft off one man.

"I have been sent to replace you on your mission."

But he was gone before the ANBU finished.

He knew he shouldn't have accepted this mission — not with Sakura so far along in her pregnancy. The baby wasn't due for nearly another month, but, damn it, he should've known not to leave her alone.

The sole proof that whatever god up there didn't completely despise him came in the form of the knowledge that he and his team had only been a mile or so away from the village. With the divine speed he'd spent years to perfect, he reached Konoha in under two minutes. He made a direct path to the hospital, having been there so many times — what with Sakura helping out the medical staff every now and then — that he could crawl there from the Uchiha Compound with his eyes closed. He didn't slam his hands on the nurse's desk and demand to know the room his wife was in; that would take too much time. He simply cast out his senses and felt for her.

There.

Third floor.

Her chakra was spiking wildly, a clear signal that she was either royally pissed or in great pain. Upon reaching her room he discovered that it was, in fact, both.

Going by the fragments of yells he heard from Tsunade and the other rushing medics in the room, Sakura was apparently being denied numbing medication because, "if she had any severe head damage, the meds would block out the pain, and then they'd never know if she had a serious injury to her cranium until she keeled over and died." Delivering a baby clearly was higher priority that treating a head injury.

Itachi wasn't sure what she'd bashed her head against upon falling down the stairs, but, damn, it was bleeding. He caught her eye for barely a second before a medic forced him out of the room. When the door slammed behind him, somewhat but not completely muting the sounds from inside, he leaned heavily against a wall. His eyes didn't blink.

The shouting and screaming started a moment later.

It began with the usual wordless cries of pain, but soon escalated to accusations and death threats. She was, apparently, never going to suffer through this again, and if he had any complaints about that, then she was going to, it appeared, shove her foot up his ass and force him to birth it out like she was currently doing to that thing and god it hurt and stupid fucking Uchiha and his ugly face and conniving ways and he was so dead when she got his hands on him because this hurt and she would make him pay for it because it was all his fault.

If Itachi had ever had any doubts about his wife's violent tendencies or her expert ability to craft extremely creative and painful-sounding death threats… Well, let's just say he never had those doubts.

It came as a shock when hours later — surely it had only been a few moments? — the room went deathly silent. The screams — well, her voice had been getting a little rough there close to the end so, considering her lungs of steel, maybe it had been a few hours — had stopped. He stood before the door in the blink of an eye, expression hard, but didn't open the door. (It was locked; he had tried it earlier. Damned medics.) When the woman that had shoved him out slid it open, she met his gaze with an embarrassed look. She clearly knew that he had heard each and every promise of agonizing demise his wife had snarled at him through the wall. She stepped back, allowing him to flash to Sakura's side. His eyes instantly flew to the tiny bundle — was it supposed to be that small? Why was it gurgling? Was it sick? If it was sick, he'd kill every medic in this room for their incompetence — in her arms.

Dark pink hair.

With black streaks.

He could've twitched when he caught the blatant smirk Sakura was sending him. Despite the obvious tiredness etched across her face, smug satisfaction won out.

It was a girl.

"I told you."