"Damn it."
Her eyes snapped open. Sasuke was awake and rubbing at his shoulder, a light sheen of sweat on his face.
"Is your shoulder bothering you again?"
He turned to her, the light from the moon causing him to look paler than usual.
"It's fine, I'm sorry I woke you up."
Sakura rolled onto her side and looked up at him as he continued rubbing at the muscle.
"Have the pains been coming often?"
Sasuke looked tired and his hair was all disheveled from running his hands through it but he still managed to look utterly ethereal. If she focused enough she could make out the rings of the rinnegan now that his hair had been moved from his face.
"It's been happening more often than usual but they usually dull down pretty quickly."
Placing a hand on his back, a green light suddenly shone in the room. She tried soothing his pain but was on alert for anything happening out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine other than the fact that the muscle was a just a tad warm.
"I can get you some medicine from the hospital if you like."
He shook his head, his brow smoothed as he released his shoulder and exhaled a heavy breath.
"No, it's gone now. Thank you."
Sasuke laid back and closed his eyes for a few moments, just breathing away the pain until he turned over and rested on his arm.
There was a sudden chill in the air that day on their walk to the center. Some Anbu were jumping on the roofs and towards the Hokage building but to Sakura's trained eye they seemed to be in a hurry. Some of the kids trialed after them down on the street, Tadashi looking out in awe as they disappeared in blurs. Ever since his godfather had spoken to him about being in the Anbu in his younger years that was all the little boy could talk about becoming.
Kisuke squirmed in the pocket of the baby sling and cried out. He rubbed his tiny face against her chest and wailed an ear piercing scream. Sakura grabbed him and started patting his back and bouncing him up and down while Tadashi held on to his sisters hand.
"Is it going to rain?! We were supposed to train outside today!"
Tadashi groaned and used his unoccupied hand to drag it down his cheek. Sarada giggled and tried grabbing his hair so that he could entertain her during the walk. Sakura looked up again and noticed that the sky was turning into a dangerous looking gray and black with thunder rumbling off in the distance. The villagers seemed confused at the sudden change of temperature and some began to even look nervous.
"Come on kids, lets go."
Picking up the pace, she had dropped the two off, leaving Kisuke with Rin and told her she would be back soon. It was when she had stopped by the Naruto statue that the rain began pouring over the village in large drops and with a powerful force. It splattered off tin roofs and slid into the streets like slithering serpents. Many ran for shelter, others shrieked at the sudden out pour of freezing water. A stray lightning bolt hit outside the wall that protected the village, another hit the barrier that protected them.
"Sakura-san."
She whipped around, not having sensed any chakra, to see a masked anbu standing before her.
"Come with me. Hokage-sama has requested you."
She had to move her bangs away from her eyes to see where she was going through the down pour as they headed towards the Hokage tower. Jumping in through the window and in the Hokage's office, she noticed that not only Kakashi was there but also a furious looking Sasuke.
"What's going on?"
She accepted the towel that was handed to her by the Anbu before Kakashi thanked him for his services and dismissed him. Trying to dry herself off, she wrapped the immense towel around her shivering form and looked between the two men. Kakashi looked over at Sasuke who just stared out into the village with a furrowed brow and clenched fists.
Kakashi sighed and walked around his desk. Their old sensei had aged quite a bit, the stress of being Hokage and running a village as big as theirs right after a war hadn't helped. He managed to run it smoothly though and with just a couple of years, Konohagakure was up and running once more.
"It seems I will have to be the bearer of bad news..."
He looked at Sasuke once more before bringing his eyes over to Sakura. Thunder crackled in the distance, a bit closer than before and seemed to darken the room with shadows and an ominous feeling. Kakashi closed his eyes and seemed his age for a moment before gesturing over to Sasuke.
"Sasuke has informed me that someone has stolen Naruto's body."
Another crackle of lightning, this one was quick and loud and seemed to shake the windows with tremendous force. Her eyes widened and the towel slowly slid from her shoulders.
"What do you mean stole his body? Why would someone want to steal a seven year old corpse?!"
Sasuke turned to her, the maddening look he gave her actually caused her to draw back a bit. Kakashi ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the wooden desk.
"We were thinking the same thing. I had called you here because I thought you might as well know seeing the grave site isn't that far from the Uchiha compound."
Sakura's mind was in many different places all at the same time trying to make sense of this. The grave was about three miles from their home and something like a grave robbery happening so close to her home and her children brought chills down her spine. It wasn't just a body, it was her best friends grave that had been disturbed. Someone had gone and disrupted the place where not only her friend laid but also where her husband spent a majority of his time in.
"Do we have any idea who could have done thi-"
The door to the office slammed open and the three of them turned to see a random jounin with a crazed look and drenched from head to toe.
"Hokage-sama! There's a disturbance at the front gate!"
They moved quickly as the man led the way through the blinding storm towards the front gate, the village disappearing in the pouring rain and the thundering of her heart beat couldn't drown out the water falling on them. Once they arrived at the gate, Izumo and Kotetsu were already there crowding around something and turned to them when they had landed on the ground.
Their faces were the epitome of shock; pales faces and gaping mouths they moved aside and suddenly her blood ran cold and it had nothing to do with the icy water sliding down her skin.
There, right in front of them, laid a body. Not just any body, it was Naruto not looking a day older than sixteen. His skin looked healthy and his hair was the same bright yellow that marked the blond out in a crowd. He laid on the ground, bare to the world with droplets of water running down his body and unconscious to everything happening around him. Missing limb and all, there was dirt smeared on his skin and leaves with seeds still attached to him were holding on for dear life as the drops of water tried to pry them off.
A sharp pain crossed her lower abdomen and then another one zipped right by the same place in a quicker pace. It was a pain that she knew very well after three births but she wasn't due for another two months and yet the contractions were hitting her harder than ever. She fell onto her knees and clutched at where the pain was and winced when she felt the baby shift inside her. Sasuke stood still like a stone statue even as she gripped his pant leg, his eyes never moving from the body in front of them.
Kakashi was the first to react out of all of them. He made his way over and thoroughly inspected the body of his former student, going as far as poking and prodding. She didn't know what to think or how to react and when she turned to her husband she found him clutching his shoulder and gritting his teeth.
"It's him Kakashi."
They looked at each other, a silent conversation happened with just the look of their eyes before Kakashi took off his Hokage robe, wrapped it around the body and hoisted him over his shoulder.
"Not a word about this to anyone, you two."
Izumo and Kotetsu nodded. Sasuke's hand slid underneath her elbow and hand to help her stand and as she held her stomach in hopes to sooth the pain away, she noticed that Sasuke wasn't really looking at her. His hair at the moment reminded her of Sai's ink, black as the night sky and it pressed against his face seeing he made no move to swipe it away. His eyes were in turmoil and she had never seen so many emotions in them churning and boiling away.
"Sakura, why don't you go to the hospital with Kakashi and get those pains checked out?"
It wasn't meant to be a question. It was a suggestion that wasn't for her to fight back on. She nodded slowly, releasing her hand from his and watched him disappear. The hospital building was quiet when she walked in. The only people inside the waiting room were mothers with sniffling children and older couples reading the magazines left there for them.
"Hokage-sama!"
Some of the nurses huddled by the front desk, worried expressions on their faces as Kakashi walked by them with a covered body over his shoulders.
"Good morning everyone! I hope everything is well with you all. If you will excuse me, I will be borrowing the top floor for a while."
He disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, his steps retreating with his body.
"Can I have a little help over here?"
Their heads turned to Sakura, who by now had a light sheen of sweat on her forehead and had an arm wrapped around the side of her stomach while the other held her up.
"Sakura-sensei! What's wrong?!"
If there hadn't been so much pain shooting down her stomach she actually would have laughed a little. They bustled around looking like frazzled hens in a small coop as one brought over a wheelchair and another brought out her charts. The whole process was all too similar as they led her down the corridor and into a well decorated room and they bustled around already creating gossip between them about what the Hokage could possibly be doing upstairs with an unknown body. Once there was an IV placed in her, the world around her suddenly seemed to slow down and the pain slowly dulled. She was asked questions that were muffled by the overwhelming sense of sleep and as she nodded to anything that was said, her eyelids drooped and she suddenly felt so at peace.
"Sai, I told you not to touch the kitchen damn it. That's the third one this month we're going to have to replace."
Sakura's brow furrowed. Why was she suddenly hearing Ino's voice? She tried opening her eyes but the sun that was filtering into the room was too bright and it hurt to look into it.
"Jeez Ino, be quiet."
Ino hurriedly clicked on Sai and grabbed Sakura's hand.
"Hey Sleeping Beauty."
Sakura waved at the window and Ino got the idea of it seeing as it suddenly got darker. The room became shrouded in darkness and it became easier to open her eyes and take a look around her surroundings. The hospital room had almost a sleepy mood to it with the TV on a soap opera channel but on mute and the gentle whoosh of the air conditioner above her.
"Where's Sasuke?"
Ino's faced changed into a worried look but she hurriedly tried to put a smile on her face. It just came out pained as she gripped Sakura's hand, petting it for a moment before she sat next to Sakura's thigh.
"Sasuke came by and asked me to stay with you for him. He disappeared before I could ask him if everything was alright. I'm just glad the nurses allowed me in."
Sakura listened as Ino rattled on about this and that. Over the years her hair had lengthen and her body had become more pronounced. Even after having Inojin, it hadn't taken her long to get the curvy figure she loved to show off. Their friendship had strengthen after the war and even more when their pregnancy had more or less been around the same time. She tried to adjust herself on the bed but the lower half of her body shot her with pain, a pain so excruciating that a whimper escaped past her lips and her arms wobbled as she tried not to move anymore.
"It's best if you don't move much, the doctor said you might open your stitches if you do."
Confused at the heavy feeling, she lifted her hospital gown to see where the doctor had made an incision and had stitched it back up; the ugly color that her skin had as it tried to repair itself. If there was an incision there then that mean...
"Ino, where is my baby?"
There came that look again. The furrowed brow and the eyes filled with turmoil. She wrung her hands out as if they were a wet towel but her gaze didn't waver.
"They're in the NICU."
"They?!"
Ino nodded, her bangs flopping with her until she moved them behind her ear. The beeping of her heart monitor picked up and she clutched the crisp sheets with sweaty hands. Her childhood friend spoke words, words that she tried to understand but at the moment she felt like she was swimming. Everything seemed so surreal, as if this wasn't supposed to be her life and some higher being was trying to ruin her life all in one punch.
"...apparently the smallest one hid behind the bigger one and their heartbeats were in sync with one another so that's why they said there was no record of your checkups of you carrying twins. They were born very early, which is why they're in NICU. That's all the doctor told me"
Sakura just stared blankly at the screen at where there was a man holding a woman close to him even as she tried getting out of his arms. He spoke words Sakura couldn't hear but the actress looked at him with such love in her face that it made her wonder if she's ever had that certain look on her face.
"I want to see them."
Ino hesitated for a moment but stood just as quick and left the room. It hadn't taken long until a nurse walked through the room, one of the many faces Sakura herself had trained, and with a quivering smile the nurse brought over a walker that would help her move around seeing that her body felt so heavy after all that it had been through. With Ino and the nurses help they moved slowly down the hallway and through doors that were pristine and had large glass windows on both sides. She was taken up to a window where there was a room on the other side of it painted in blue with a couch against the wall and two chairs. On either side of the walls were incubators where the children were kept.
From where she stood, she could see tiny bodies in the large machines and the computers with their information and too many tubes. One of the machines had a blanket draped over it while the other was allowed to have light filter through the glass. There were so many cords coming in and out of the machines thatshe could feel her stomach lurch at the image. She heaved but there wasn't much in her stomach so all she could do was gasp out as she held the walker with shaking hands.
"S-Sakura-san, are you all right?!"
Ino patted her back while the nurse tried to check her but instead Sakura waved her off.
"Why wasn't I moved in with them?"
She looked nervous as Sakura stared at her and she could definitely tell that ex-medic nin's patience was running thin.
"As you know, Sakurasan, premature babies are highly susceptible to disease and we wanted to wait just a bit longer for your incision to get better before we put you in there with them. If you're feeling up to it we can put you on a pump and feed them with your own milk. We've had them with a wet nurse for the past couple of days."
That most definitely caught her attention.
"Past couple of days? How long have I been out?"
Checking her clipboard quickly, the nurse pressed it against her chest.
"About two days. You came with a large quantity of stress that had had your body working so hard it had exhausted itself and the doctor said that if they weren't taken out then, there was a high chance that they could have died."
Looking back into the room, she placed a hand on the glass as she noticed a nurse come in and check the monitors.
"Can I go back to my room now?"
She got settled on the bed as the nurse promised her to keep her updated and would bring her a small lunch for her to try. Ino took the chair by the bed and looked at her friend who, at the moment, looked drained of youth and tired of living.
"Where's Tadashi, Sarada and Kisuke?"
"You're mom and dad are staying over at your house for the time being. They're making sure the kids are taken to school and Kisuke is dropped off at the center when your parents have to go to work."
The sigh that came out of her was of relief. They would be fine in her parents hands and she was just glad they could take care of them on such short notice. Sakura laid back on the bed and rubbed a hand on her forehead, the ever lasting headache seeming like it wouldn't ever leave.
"You haven't asked me yet about Sasuke."
Her friends voice was low, something not usually found in Ino Yamanka but Sakura was sure that she didn't look the best right now so Ino was handling her with care.
"Because I already know what he's doing but right now my children are my priority, not him."
