Rin held the sonogram picture in her hand, carefully running her thumb over what she was fairly sure was the baby's skull. She could already see the indentations where his eye sockets and nasal cavity were. He looked, even while still a fetus, like an Inuzuka baby strangely enough. He wasn't born yet, but Rin could already tell that he was going to favor his mother in looks. She couldn't wait to show Tsume.

She slowly rubbed the top of her protruding stomach, biting her lower lip as tears started to well up in her eyes. This was a big moment for her. She was going to be the mother of a beautiful little boy. She wished Obito were here to experience this with her. She could picture him talking to the baby, reading to it, singing to it when he thought that she was asleep. She could see it so clearly, like it was an actual occurrence instead of a fantasy. She could picture him buying odd trinkets for him, asking with an boyish grin if he could help her think of names.

She probably would have made Obito the baby's godfather if he were still here.

Goddamn it, he should still be here. If she hadn't been stupid enough to let herself get kidnapped, he would be. Goddamn it, it should have been her. They were nearly at the two year anniversary of his death and she still couldn't get past the one thought she'd been thinking since they buried him. It was her fault. Kakashi might have wasted unnecessary time fighting with him after Obito had already decided that he was going after her, but it was Rin who had put all of the events of that night into play.

Kakashi and Arashi-Sensei had both taken personal responsibility for it. She had helped them both assuage their guilt over that night. She remembered all the nights she'd stayed up with Kakashi. She could still see the changes in personality since then. Kakashi was a more loving person. He finally accepted his humanity, acknowledged his own soul and his own anguish instead of just the mission at hand. She felt an overwhelming amount of pride for him. She was proud of him, of the person he had finally become, even though she'd gotten hurt in the process. She loved him.

"Rin!" She heard a little girl's voice yell as she neared the white fence that kept in all of the puppies and small children. She snapped out of her self-induced trance, looking up to where the voice had originated to see an eight year old with bright brown eyes and an even brighter smile. Hana.

"Hey honey." Rin greeted, giving her a warm smile. She couldn't help but giggle a little as the little girl's eyes fell on her enlarged stomach, her mouth a gape and her eyes nearly bugging out of her head. Rin had almost forgot for a moment that Hana hadn't seen her since she was around four or five months along, a considerable difference from now. She must have looked huge to the little girl, unworldly. She held her arms out to her baby cousin.

"I'm not gonna bite you." She assured when Hana started to hesitate. This was the first time Hana had ever not thrown herself into Rin's embrace, open or not. "Come give me a hug."

"I just don't want to hurt it." Hana explained sheepishly, her eyes still glued to Rin's swollen belly.

Rin sighed softly in-spite of herself, looking at the little girl, touched by the concern that she openly exhibited. "You can't hurt it." She said, extending her pinky towards the little girl like she used to when she swore something to Hana. "I promise. " And after her promise was accepted by her cousin's little finger wrapping around hers. "In fact, I came to show your mom some pictures of it- him." She corrected. "Would you like to see them too?" She questioned the younger Inuzuka.

She nodded, pulling at the hem of the white shirt she was wearing in a nervous matter. Rin held her hand out to her, her angst over Obito's sudden death temporarily set to the side. Life was for the living. She owed Hana her attention, undivided.

"Come on then." She said softly to the little girl. "Where's your brother?" She asked when she noticed the toddler's absence.

"He's inside. Mommy said he couldn't be outside until he got over his cold."

This alarmed Rin. It was the first she'd heard of Kiba ever being sick. "How long has he been sick?" She prodded the eight year old.

"Not very long." She said, shrugging as she pushed open the door with her hip. "Mommy says he's just building up an immunity. She said that we all have to. It's what keeps us from getting sick."

"That's right." Rin confirmed, surprised that Hana even knew the word "immunity", let alone it's definition. "It keeps you from getting sick."

"Mommy! Rin's here!" She hollered into the house that smelled like honey and lemons, a sign that Tsume had made her homemade, yet very powerful decongestant. Rin had even recommended it to some of her patients with Tsume's permission. It had the power to knock the phlegm out of mucus itself. The only problem was that it took about fifteen minutes to work. An eternity if you were sick. A lifetime if you were a child and convinced that you were going to die before it kicked in. Rin grimaced as she heard the sudden screams of a three year old. Rin listened carefully to the sobs. She could tell by his languid coughs that Kiba really was sick. He sounded worse than she thought he would.

"Oh, Kiba, son." She heard Tsume plead. "Please calm down. You have to wait for the medicine to work, baby."

Rin carefully made her way down the hallway that was filled with pictures and tables filled with knick-knacks, trying desperately not to knock anything over. "Tsume?" She asked.

"I'll be right there, Rin." She yelled, not realizing that Rin was also in her son's room. She turned around to see there intruder. "Oh. Hi." She told her niece.

"Having fun?" She asked her Clan Leader , feeling sympathetic for the red-faced, still screaming three year old that laid on the changing table, his mother rubbing some vapor gel on his chest to better open up his nasal cavity.

"You'll find out." She said confidentially as she picked up the toddler, cradling him close to her own body as she started to bounce him in a soothing way, shushing him as she ran a gentle hand over the back of her head. Rin was amazed at how fast Kiba had settled down once Tsume picked him up. She could see it in his eyes that he felt comforted and secure. She couldn't help but wonder if she ever looked like that as a toddler when her mother had held her.

"I had a sonogram today." She said, her throat suddenly feeling raw at the thought of her mother. She held up the pictures in her hand. "I brought some pictures by."

"We'll look at them as soon as I get him to sleep." She told the heavy pregnant Inuzuka. "Go ahead and help yourself to what's in the fridge." She said simply. "You really shouldn't be on your feet so much."

As if on cue, the arch of her left foot gave a subtle ache. "Okay." She resigned. "C'mon, Hana, you can show me the new T.V. I saw in the living room."

Kakashi sat quietly in the corner of the sterile white hospital room, staring off into space as he rested his chin against his knuckles. He was nearly lulled to sleep by the steady pulse of the monitors they had hooked to Asuma to make sure that he stayed in the stable condition that Kakashi had barely managed to hold on to long enough to get him to a hospital. They had told him personally had he not been so quick to react, Asuma most likely would have died before they even had a chance to get him to a decent hospital. They had even talked about honoring him with a medal of some sort during the next festival, but he politely declined.

Asuma's life was thanks enough.

He didn't know why he was still here. Asuma probably wouldn't wake up until tomorrow at the earliest with the drugs they had him on. Even he was, he wouldn't be much company in the shape he was in. But, the fact remained that Kakashi was still sitting with Asuma with subtle differences. He was clean and bandaged instead of dirty and bleeding.

He had checked in on Rin soon after they had released him from care only to find that she had an early morning appointment and had left the hospital hours ago with sonogram pictures.

She was probably home right now, wondering where he was and if he was okay. He had very nearly lost control when he had heard that they had told a very pregnant Rin that he had been lost in a war-torn enemy country. That kind of news could have hurt her or the baby. They shouldn't have bothered her until he was confirmed dead and had been brought back to Konoha and already prepared for burial and not a second before.

Obito's family, the Uchiha's, he wondered for a split second how they would feel if they were to hear that Kakashi had died. The unclean, non-clan member that had the Sharingan that he couldn't even use. He wondered how his death would affect them, if even at all. The only Uchiha's who had cried over Obito were his parents and the Clan Leader. Everyone else had come out of obligation. They were stone-faced. Kakashi had nightmares about that stare in the first month or two he'd been home after the funeral.

What did it take to be that heartless?

He swallowed thickly, refusing to sit here and feel sorry for himself another damn second in front of Asuma. He owed the people in his life better than that. He stood up, readjusting his mask so that his Sharingan eye was covered. It had a bad habit of becoming active at inappropriate times since he'd been back on friendly ground and he didn't want to tempt it. He ran his fingers across the clean bandages on Asuma's chest, comforted by the warmth that was given off by Asuma's body. He was alive.

"I'm gonna go see if I can find Rin." He told Asuma even though he was even more unconcious than he had been before. "I'll be back tomorrow, maybe even later tonight, to check on you, okay?"