Sakura and the Prince
of Flowers
By Miss Angel Maxwell
Free Talk: Here is the penultimate (second to last) chapter of the story. The hardest part of this one was writing Sasuke's part. I find it much more difficult to write guys like him then say, spunky guys like Naruto or naïve guys like Lee. I hope that I did an okay job, though. The ending of the last chapter, along with this chapter is actually what I consider the climax of the story. The last chapter will be the resolution and tying up any loose ends. I hope I don't forget any… Is there anything I seem to have forgotten? Thank you so much for the comment and support! Please tell me what you think!
Chapter 22: "I Thought You Were Going To Take Care Of Her"
Don't be dead, Sakura! Please don't be dead!
It was all Sasuke could think as he sprinted through the field of grass towards the still form of Haruno Sakura. He cursed in his head that he hadn't been fast enough to catch her before she fainted and fell to the ground, as if catching her in his arms would change what had just happened. Sakura had achieved a feat that supposedly only members of the Rock family were capable of. She killed one of the Children of the Kyuubi. Now her teammates and friends were faced with the terrifying reality that, for members of the Rock family, killing one of the Children carried a one hundred percent mortality rate.
Running on sheer determination, Sasuke was sure he'd be the first to reach the fallen kunoichi. Gaara, however, had traveled by sand, and by the time Sasuke had fallen to his knees and lifted Sakura's unconscious head into his lap the Kazekage was already attending to her. Naruto and Temari arrived only a fraction of a second later.
"Is she…?" Naruto asked in a shaky voice. His face was painted with a fear that was rare on him.
Gaara remained silent for another moment as he knelt next to his former maid, evaluating her condition. Naruto, Sasuke, and Temari were all staring at him in wide-eyed terror, waiting for his reply. "She's alive," he finally answered and a collective sigh of relief was released. "She's unconscious, but she is breathing and she has a pulse. I think she is just exhausted. If possible, we should wait until she wakes up before we move her. She could have internal injuries that cannot be detected." He stopped and looked towards his sister, who still looked shaken. "Temari, I think you should go back and look for Rock Shin, and if he is alive tend to his injuries."
The blonde girl nodded obediently, quite different from her normal fireball self, and gave her pink-haired friend a last sympathetic look before dashing off.
Upon hearing that the woman he cared most about in the world was alive, Sasuke felt utter relief welling in his chest, but he was not the type to jump for joy. He gently stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles and touched her lips just to feel the warm air streaming out for himself. Yes, she was definitely breathing. "Wake up, Sakura," he said, softly enough so that nobody else could hear. "Wake up and let me take you home."
While Sasuke celebrated the news that Sakura wasn't dead in his quiet way, Naruto was positively beaming. "She amazing!" he proclaimed. "Absolutely amazing! Not only was she able to use the unique ability of the Rock family, she did it and lived! She's got to be the first person ever to do that!"
"Do you not find it odd?" Gaara asked, looking up with serious eyes. "Sakura should not have been able to kill the creature that attacked her. Rock Shin had said that only a specialized form of chakra allows one to kill the Children of the Kyuubi. And possessing such chakra is an advanced bloodline exclusive to the Rock family."
"But Sakura doesn't have the advanced bloodline of the Rock family!" Naruto blurted out, ignoring the fact that he was stating the obvious.
Sasuke suddenly gasped, startling the other two young men standing near him. "Sakura doesn't have the advanced bloodline, but the baby…"
Before the Uchiha could finish his sentence, Sakura's green eyes shot opened and, rather than being groggy, she seemed utterly terrified. Her hands clutched clumsily at her belly and she tried to sit up but didn't have the strength. "I can't feel it!" she wailed, though her voice was weak. "I can't feel the baby!"
"Calm down, Sakura," Sasuke urged, rubbing her shoulders to try to relax her. "Just wait a few minutes and the baby will kick again." He was silently praying that what he said was true, even if he doubted it.
"It's not just that!" the panicky girl cried. "I can't feel the baby's chakra! Ever since the second week of my pregnancy I could feel the baby's chakra swirling around inside of me and now I can't! I can't feel anything!"
Sasuke felt his heart plummet to his feet, and from Naruto's face, he was certain they were having the same internal reaction. It wasn't difficult to piece together what must have happened. Sakura herself realized it immediately and was mortified.
The baby is a descendant of the Rock family!
"Oh my god!" she shouted. "I didn't mean to do it! I stole my own child's chakra! I didn't mean to! And now…! Oh god! It's dead, isn't it? My baby is dead!"
"You don't know that for sure," Sasuke said, trying to reassure the hysterical girl. "Maybe you can't feel the baby's chakra because you're weak from the fight."
"But releasing their specialized chakra kills members of the Rock family! Every time! It's what killed Lee! And now it's what killed his baby!" Her tone became somewhat softer and more hopeless and she began to cry. "Because I took its chakra… I stole it…"
"What you are claiming is impossible," Gaara said calmly. "It is true that there is an exchange of chakra between mother and child via the placenta. But it is the child that expels excess chakra into the mother's body. She cannot actively extract it for her own use."
For a moment, the three members of Team 7 stared at the Kazekage incredulously. To Naruto and Sasuke, what Gaara had said was something they never even pondered. To Sakura, however, his words sounded strangely familiar. She had read it somewhere.
"Have you been reading my pregnancy books?" she asked curiously.
"I have," Gaara answered. "In my quest to become more learned in all aspects of medical jutsu. Do not feel that you have done anything wrong, Haruno Sakura. You haven't."
Sakura quickly resumed her crying. "It doesn't matter anyways if my baby is dead… It's dead…"
Sasuke wrapped his arms around Sakura's shoulders and pulled her tightly against his chest, pressing his cheek against her pink hair, which was wet and matted with perspiration. There was nothing he could do, no way he could possibly console this grieving and heartbroken woman. It cut him like a knife, and it wasn't just because he loved Sakura and hated to see her in pain. In a way it was as if he had lost his own child. After all, Sasuke wanted to spend his life with Sakura, and that life would have included raising this baby together. Even if he wasn't crying, he couldn't stop the stinging sensation in the corners of his eyes.
Naruto knelt at Sakura's side and held her hand, his eyes sad but optimistic. "The baby saved your life," he said softly. "By killing one of their own, you've removed the mark of the Children. And you're alive, Sakura! Do you realize how miraculous that is?"
"If the baby is dead, I don't know if I want to live," she cried. "Even if I have other children in the future… I already loved this one… And what's going to happen now? It's still inside me!"
The three Leaf shinobi were all clinging to each other in desperation and paid no attention to what Gaara was doing until Naruto noticed that he had started a fire and was holding a kunai over it. "What are you doing?" the blonde asked in a shaky voice.
The Kazekage looked past Naruto towards Sakura's belly. "We have to get the baby out," he said gravely. "If there is any chance that the child is alive, it must be delivered as quickly as possible. Haruno Sakura is too weak to push, so inducing labor is out of the question. There is only one other option."
"You're going to cut her open?" Uzumaki gasped. "Sakura, are you going to let him do this to you?"
The young woman stared back with puffy red eyes. "If there is any chance that my baby will live, do whatever you have to. Besides, I would trust Gaara with my life."
Gaara gave a small nod then his frosty green gaze moved upwards to where his older sister had just reappeared. Her facial expression was blank and her hands were smeared with blood. She didn't have to say anything, just shook her head, and it was obvious that Rock Shin was dead. It was probably a good thing that she remained silent because Sakura did not need to hear about what had happened.
"Temari," Gaara said. "I am glad that you have returned. I need you to assist me in a medical procedure. I am going to deliver Haruno Sakura's baby and I need you to perform an anaesthetizing jutsu on her. In our lessons you were much better than I at it."
"Okay," she softly replied, adding a nod. "Are you sure you know what you are doing? If anything goes wrong and Pinky's life is in danger…"
"Do not worry," the redhead said. "I will not put her life at risk."
The anaesthetizing jutsu required that Sasuke and Naruto hold their frightened teammate up in a sitting position while Temari focused a nerve-blocking chakra to her fingers and touched it to the girl's exposed back, over her spine. Sakura immediately felt a tingling sensation sweep down her back and through her legs. Then it changed over to absolute numbness from her chest down. She had performed this jutsu before, but never had it performed on her and it felt strange. She was at the same time terrified and confused, but having her head and shoulders in Sasuke's lap kept her calm enough not to express these feelings too boisterously.
"Just look up here at me and Sasuke," Naruto urged, looking over his friend's shoulder at her. He could see Gaara pushing up her shirt and exposing her enormous tummy through the corner of his eye. "Don't look down at what they're doing. Keep looking at us."
Sakura swallowed hard and nodded nervously. Naruto is right, she thought. Even though a part of me wants to look and see the baby as soon as it comes out, I shouldn't… I need to stay calm, relaxed… Watching Gaara slice me open won't help with that. She squeezed her eyes shut for a minute and said a silent prayer in her head. Please, let the baby be alive. Please, just let it live… I know it's probably impossible… but I need this child… Just let me hear it cry…
Two pairs of eyes stayed vigilantly on her, Naruto's bright blue and Sasuke's smoky black. She could feel pressure on her stomach, but no pain at all. Though the surgical procedure really lasted less than half an hour, it felt like an eternity to Sakura. She continued to look up at the faces of her boys until she noticed Sasuke's eyes darting quickly over towards Gaara then back to her. Then he looked at Gaara again, longer this time. It wasn't the Kazekage he was looking at but what he held in his hands, a tiny wet body, limp and blue.
"Is that…?" the Uchiha breathed.
Gaara didn't respond because the answer was obvious and because he was busy tying off the umbilical cord with two of Temari's hair bands then cutting through it with a sterilized kunai. He continued to cradle the little body in one hand while he reached urgently for his discarded cloak with the other. "He is not breathing," he said as he wrapped the newborn in his cloak and rubbed vigorously to try to stimulate his tiny heart and lungs.
"He?" Sakura whimpered.
"It is a son," Gaara told her as he continued his attempt to resuscitate the infant. He rubbed the tiny bundle with his palm for several more minutes before setting it down on the ground and leaning over to breathe into the boy's teeny mouth.
Temari, now with only her top ponytails intact, was crouching over Sakura's abdomen, tediously healing her incision, so the patient had to crane her neck to try to catch a glimpse of what was happening to her son. She wanted to see him so badly, wanted to see him alive and hear him crying. But instead there was silence, and all Sakura could see was an itty bitty hand poking out of Gaara's jacket, limp and blue.
"Let him live," she muttered through tensely clenched teeth. "Please, let him live." But as the minutes dragged on and her grip on her two teammates hands grew painfully tight, nothing miraculous occurred. When Gaara finally stood up and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, she felt as if a kunai had pierced her through the heart. That was it. It was all over now.
"It is too late," Gaara spoke, sounding surprisingly mournful and sympathetic, though he shed no tears. "I am afraid this little one could not be saved."
"Nooooooooooooooooo!" Sakura moaned, squeezing her eyes closed to try to stop the liquid that had begun to ooze out in rivulets. "No! No! Nooooo!" She felt Naruto pull her hand up and press it against his cheek tenderly and discovered that his face, too, was wet with tears. Sasuke's grip, however, seemed to have gone slack, and she could feel the warmth of his body pulling away.
"Hold her, Naruto," he said in a steely voice. His face was calm and determined, and unlike Sakura, Naruto, and Temari, without one tear. As he transferred the bawling girl's head and shoulder into his best friend's lap, the blonde boy glared at him through wet red eyes.
"You're leaving her now?" Naruto spat. "When she is in more pain than she has ever been in during her entire life? I thought you had changed! I thought you were going to take care of her!"
Naruto's words seemed to reach everyone's ears except their intended target's. Sasuke kept walking over to where Gaara was cleaning off the dead infant and preparing to hand him back to his mother. There was only one thought on his mind. He can't be dead. Without so much as asking, the Uchiha scooped the little baby, cloak and all, out of the Kazekage's arms and set him down in the grass. Then he bent over and continued trying to revive him by the exact same methods that Gaara had used.
"What are you doing?" Naruto shouted. "It's too late, Sasuke! Just let Sakura hold her baby! She needs to see him!"
"Please," she said weakly. "Please just let my baby be. He's been through enough…"
"See what you're doing to her!" Naruto yelled. "She can't take anymore! Just stop it, Sasuke! Let him go!"
There was a brief moment of stillness as Sasuke stopped breathing into the baby's mouth and sat up, seemingly calm. Then he turned his head and stared at Naruto with an expression so intense, the blonde thought for a moment that his friend was going to use his Sharingan. "I will not let Sakura's baby die!" he growled fiercely. "In the past I ignored her feelings for me and I denied my feelings for her. I never showed her even a fraction of the love she showed me. It's taken me this long to realize that Sakura is the most important person in my life! I will not let her lose the most important person in hers!"
After years of waiting, Sakura had finally heard the words she most wanted to hear from this young man she longed for and she couldn't even feel any joy, not after her heart had already been torn from her chest. Sasuke said that he loved her and she couldn't even be happy. A part of her actually felt mad at him. How could he say such a thing at a time like this? Did he think it would make her feel any better? She turned her head away from him and buried her face into Naruto's shoulder, sobbing loudly. As he stroked her hair gently, his eyes, as well as those of Gaara and Temari were silently fixed on Sasuke. They were all startled and impressed by his conviction, even if he was fighting a hopeless battle.
Sasuke knew that everyone was watching him, waiting to see what he would do next, but he couldn't hold back his emotions and keep a cool face like he used to. He felt completely and utterly powerless, just like he had after Itachi slaughtered their parents years ago. Only this time he had nobody he could get mad at, nobody he could seek revenge on in order to free himself from his white-hot rage. It was cruel fate that had stolen Sakura's son before she could ever hold him.
Without a word he stood up, his chest rising and falling as he sucked in loud, ragged breaths through clenched teeth. In his left hand, he clutched Gaara's cloak, which still enwrapped the tiny boy. As his right hand curled into a tight fist, the air around him began to chirp and crackle. It was the sound of the chidori. Electricity gathered around him, stirring the grass, and, as Sakura continued to drench Naruto's jacket with her tears, the others kept their eyes on Sasuke, unsure of what he would do. Then, with a primal and frustrated scream, he fell to his knees and pounded his charged fist into the ground, sending a shower of sparks into the air all around him.
The earsplitting sound that ensued even drowned out Sakura's sobs. It was crackling and exploding at once, with a shrill ringing backdrop that wouldn't die down even after blast had settled. It was the cry of an infant. Sasuke blinked in confusion several times then looked down at the bundle in his left arm. The little guy's skin had pinked up and his mouth was opened wide, revealing soft pink gums as he wailed.
"He's alive," the Uchiha breathed. Then he said it again loudly and excitedly. "He's alive! Sakura's baby is alive! The electricity from the chidori must have shocked him back to life!"
"Alive?" Sakura asked in a trembling voice, lifting her head to see her son.
Sasuke smiled at her tenderly, then walked over and placed the crying infant in her waiting arms. "Here's your mommy, little guy," he said softly.
The baby stopped crying as soon as he was nestled in his mother's arms, and everyone else gathered close to get a good look at him. Sakura unwrapped him for a moment just so she could look at every inch of him. He had ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. And he was definitely a boy. She wrapped him back up snuggly. He opened his eyes. They were almond shaped, like Sakura's, but rimmed with long thick lashes and as black as two pools of India ink. Genetics had been merciful: although his eyebrows were dark and slightly thicker than average, they were still well within the range of normal. His head was topped with the softest jet-black fluff to which Sakura pressed a kiss that was pure love.
"He's gorgeous," Temari gasped.
"You sound surprised," her brother responded. "Did you not expect Haruno Sakura's child to be beautiful?"
"No, no… Of course I knew he'd be beautiful," she chirped back, wiping tears from her eyes with her hand. Everyone's tears of sorrow had transformed into tears of joy.
"I… I think I know this guy," Sakura said softly, as she stroked her son's velvety pink cheek.
Naruto furrowed his brows. "Well he did live inside of you for almost nine months," he said. "I think that counts as knowing him."
"I know," Sakura sighed blissfully. "But it's more than just that. He reminds me of someone… a boy I've dreamed about. Maybe it's just because this little guy saved my life today… but I think he might be my guardian angel. My Prince of Flowers…"
Because she was so busy cooing over the baby, Sakura didn't notice that her words had caused Naruto to scowl severely. She didn't even hear him grumbling to himself. "That was me and Sasuke! The little runt is already getting credit for stuff we did!"
With a light chuckle, Sasuke placed a hand on his disgruntled friend's shoulder. "Let him have it, Naruto," he whispered. "He's going to be the number one man in Sakura's life from now on anyways."
It took a moment, but Naruto's expression turned from sour to gentle. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he sighed. "Heh, he does kind of look like you, Sasuke."
"I think he looks more like Lee," Sasuke said skeptically. "But he's got a lot of Sakura in him, too. How else could he have come out so cute?"
"Yeah, Junior Brows is damn cute," Naruto agreed. "Who could have predicted that Sakura sleeping with Fuzzy Brows would produce something so adorable?"
"Oh, stop it you guys," Sakura said lightly. "Lee was actually pretty cute, I think. Don't be so hard on him."
"I hate to spoil a tender moment between you all," Gaara coldly interrupted. "But I believe we should get these two back to their home. Temari, would you go on ahead to Konoha and tell the Hokage to have a bed ready at the hospital?" His sister nodded then flew away.
"But we don't have a stretcher or anything," Naruto argued. "I don't think Sakura is strong enough to walk home."
"I will carry her," Sasuke answered.
The new mother looked up at him. "Won't your arms get tired?" she asked.
He stooped down and hoisted her up into his strong arms as she held onto her child tightly. "Not at all," he said softly.
Snuggled in the arms of the man she adored, holding her brand new baby, Sakura had never felt happier or safer in her entire life. The baby had loaned her his unique chakra and saved her life, and Sasuke had saved his life, even if it was completely by accident. It was a true miracle. And even though Rock Shin, who had been her friend, had lost his life today, he was with his family now. And he was probably very happy. Plus, a new bud on the Rock family tree had blossomed.
Sakura gazed up at a single white cloud in the pure blue sky, towards a distant unseen face, with wide eyes and enormous eyebrows, which she knew must be watching over her. Look at him, Lee. Look at our beautiful son. You gave your life for me, and if you hadn't he'd never have been born. Just as you promised to protect me with your life, I promise to protect this precious little boy with mine. And if I have to die for him, as you died for me, I will gladly do so.
The sun was already starting to dip below the horizon when the little group of four teenagers and one infant arrived at the main entrance to Konoha's city. Apparently, when Temari showed up to announce their arrival the word had spread quickly. A small crowd of friends and well-wishers had gathered to greet them and were whispering curiously amongst themselves.
"I can't believe Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura finally came home."
"I know. They've been gone for so long."
"Is that Suna's Kazekage with them? What is he doing here?"
"That guy scares me."
"What's going on? I just got here."
"I'm not sure, but I think Team 7 had a baby."
The girl in Sasuke's arms was completely oblivious to the commotion, as was her baby. By the time they had reached Konoha, both mother and son were fast asleep.
To be concluded…