Misaki closed her eyes and crossed her fingers and then even her toes, wishing as hard as she had ever wished before for her suspicions to be true. Cracking open an eye she peeked down at the little white stick on the bathroom counter and slumped back, defeated.

"Not pregnant." She mumbled, tossing the useless test into the waste basket.

She had really thought, reallyreally thought, that this time she had been right and that she was pregnant. But, just as with all the other times before, the little stick had proven her hunches wrong. She shuffled out of the bathroom and into the living room as her depression stuck to her every step of the way, sighing she opened the little aquarium and started shaking in the food for the little turtle she and Lee kept.

"I thought that I'd have some good news to give Lee when he got home, Gomo-chan. I mean, we haven't been using protection for nearly two years now." She sighed and kept on shaking the food in, creating a little mountain that the turtle lazily approached. "Maybe I'll go see a doctor and see if there's anything that can help, like something I can eat. Yeah! I'll go make an appointment." She smiled down at the turtle and then tilted her head a bit, confused.

"Huh. I think the cup is broken, Gomo-chan. That's way too much food. I guess I'll just grab you some more when I go out to the doctors." She said, smiling down at the poor helpless animal.

Misaki looked up at the doctor when he came into the room, her legs crossed prettily at her ankles as she looked every bit the lady she was. He walked around his desk and sat down, lacing his fingers together over her file before gazing at the woman with serious eyes. Misaki, not noticing his mood, smiled sweetly at him.

"Hello again, Doctor. I'm surprised were meeting in your office. Really, all I expected were you to give me a few pamphlets and then we'd both be on our way, but I suppose it is nice that you take more interest in your patients."

"Rock-san."

"Hmm?" She questioned, smiling a little brighter just as she always did when people called her that, the doctor nearly flinching back at just how happy and care free the woman looked.

"How old are you, may I ask?" She blinked, a bit puzzled.

"Ah, nearly twenty-three. But that should be in my file, shouldn't it?" He nodded, sadly thinking about how young the girl was.

"And your husband?"

"Thirty-three, and we've been married for two years now. Why?" The doctor sighed and braced himself for the inevitable backlash his words would bring.

"I'm sorry, Rock-san, but I'm afraid you are not able to become pregnant." Misaki blinked, her entire face going blank as she tightened her grip on the strap of her purse.

"I'm sorry? Could I ask what you mean?" The doctor looked into her eyes and wished he hadn't as soon as he saw how utterly blank they were.

"Your body is not able to produce or carry a child. On the off chance that you do become pregnant your body would attack the fetus as if it were a virus, though this is very unlikely since the chances of you getting pregnant are about the same as mine."

Misaki slowly nodded, her face staying as perfectly blank as a porcelain doll's. "I see. Thank you for your time." She said, holding out her hand so she could shake hands respectably with the doctor.

"Rock-san, we can discuss other options such as getting a surrogate. This isn't something that can stop you from having a family." She smiled at him, bowing slightly. "No, that's quite all right. Thank you though."

She walked gracefully from the room and out of the building, her back straight and her head high just as she had been taught since childhood. When her neighbors called out to her on the street she nodded politely, smiling a smile that was so beautiful and elegant that it caught peoples' breath. Her steps were light as she walked up the stairs to the apartment she and Lee shared and her smile never slipped as she unlocked the door and stepped into the empty apartment.

Remembering that Lee had told her he could be home from his mission that night she went to the kitchen and started on supper, calmly cutting up the vegetables for the chicken stir fry and making the rice. She only stepped out of the kitchen long enough to change into her pajamas and feed Gomo, but when she came in the chicken was sticking to the bottom of the blackened pan and the rice was a giant mushy glob. She turned the knobs for the burners off, leaving the pans on the stove as she went to the bathroom.

She went about her normal nightly routine as she washed her face and used the toilet, and was washing her hands when she looked up and met her eyes in the mirror.

Reaching her hand up she traced the shape of her face, lightly touching the mole under her left eye and brushing her fingers over her soft skin and the sharp aristocratic features of her face. One of her hands drifted down and brushed lightly through a bit of her red tinted brown hair, continuing its wanderings down her chest to finally rest on her flat stomach. Her hand fisted in her shirt as she met her clouded navy blue eyes in the mirror again and she just couldn't keep it in any more.

She fisted her other hand and hit the mirror, the water on her hand splattering out and distorting the perfect image. She wrapped her arms around her stomach as she fell to her knees, leaning forward so much that her forehead touched the cold tile of the floor as she sobbed.

She had been able to hold onto the pale porcelain mask of the refined lady that had been ingrained into her since birth, a mask that had locked her pain tightly inside of her and had given her the cold strength needed to face everything with a simple smile and elegance, but now it had shattered, the truth causing her to cry out in terrifyingly painful agony.

She would never feel her child grow inside of her, never feel the thrill of that first kick or the pained glory of that final push. She would never hear it cry out for her at night, needing the comfort that could only come from her touch. She would never release those tiny fists as it wobbly took those first steps away from her or hold out her arms as it ran back to her so she could calm its tears. She would never feel the pain or the joy or the tears that could come from a simple word it would say or a passing look it would give her.

She would never be a mother.

She shook her head, pushing against the tile so much that it hurt, though such a shallow pain couldn't compare to the one that was shredding her soul.

Eventually her tears ran dry and she was left coughing and hacking, her throat tight and burning from her sobs and cries. She rubbed the drying tears from her face, her breath still shuddering and her whole body trembling and weary from sheer exhaustion, her muscles weighted from all of the feelings the tears had dragged out of her, leaving a mere husk of a woman to stumble out of the bathroom.

Finger tips lightly dragging over the wall she walked to the bedroom, crawling into bed to curl into a little ball in the middle of it as if to protect herself from more pain. She reached out and grabbed Lee's pillow, pulling it to her and breathing in deeply to absorb the calming and masculine scent of her husband.

How would she tell him? Could she tell him? She knew he loved her and that he hadn't married her for her body or the children it would bear, but being a mother had been the only thing she had been sure of.

She burned nearly everything she cooked and what she didn't burn was usually deformed or tasted terrible. She was lucky that Lee's taste buds had apparently died long ago because he always ate all of her meals, even saying that they were good after he ate. She was terrible at house work, always breaking something and leaving streaks of dust behind and she was always shrinking clothes in the wash, no matter how diligently she thought she had read the tags. She knew she was a terrible house wife and that Lee could have done better, but she had been so sure that she could be a mother and that they would all be happy as a family.

But now that dream had been smashed to dust, a mere memory left to drift away on the wind.

Misaki woke up at the feeling of the bed dipping with added weight. Keeping her eyes squeezed shut she felt Lee brush her hair back, burying her face farther into his pillow so he couldn't see her tear ravaged face. "Did you really miss me that much?" He asked, joking about the way she desperately clutched his pillow. She nodded.

God, she had missed him. Four weeks was such a long time for him to be gone, one of the longest missions he had taken since their marriage, and all she wanted to do was throw her arms around him and hold him close, letting him keep the monsters away.

But she didn't. She couldn't.

She felt him get up to go shower and change for bed, slipping in behind her and spooning with her, wrapping his arms around her and settling in just as they always did, though there was a tension flowing between them that had never been there before. One that was all her fault. She wanted to turn around and hold him back, to whisper her worries to him and have him sooth them just as he always did, but she didn't. Instead she peeled open the eyes that had been glued shut with the last hidden tears that had rocked her to sleep and stared bleakly at the wall.

"I have to go to my Aunt's place for a little while." She croaked.

"When?"

"In the morning."

He could have asked why she didn't wait until they had had a few days together, he could have asked her to stay. He could have asked her to do any number of things and she would have done them but he was too wonderful of a man to do so, and so he simply wished her good luck on her trip.

Shijimi smiled over the rim of her teacup at her niece as the girl finished telling her some story of one of her husband's exploits, happy to see the girl though the feeling was tainted by the hollow look in the girl's eyes. She knew the mask the girl wore, she knew it far better than anyone else since she had been there when her sister had taught it to her. Shijimi sat her tea down gently before lacing her fingers together in her lap, ready to get to the bottom of things now that pleasantries were over with.

"It's wonderful to have you here, dear, but I have to ask why you're here when you should be at home with your husband. Marriage troubles?" Misaki shook her head.

"No, that's not it. It's... I went to the doctor yesterday and... Auntie, I found out I can't have children." Tears welled up painfully in her eyes as she stared to her Aunt for guidance. "What am I supposed to do? How can I tell him?"

Shijimi nodded. "So it is marriage problems." Misaki blinked, puzzled at how her aunt had gotten there after she had expressly told her no.

"Our marriage is fine, didn't you hear what I said?"

"Oh, I did. You said you can't tell your husband that you can't have children and it's because you don't love each other and the only thing keeping the marriage together is the fact that he thinks you're fertile."

"What? No! It isn't like that! We love each other Auntie!"

"Then why can't you tell him?"

Misaki blinked and lowered her head to stare at her hands where they rested on the table. "I... What if it changes things? Like the way he thinks about me?" Shijimi picked up her cup and sipped, merely watching the girl.

"What if he stops loving me because we can't have a family? What if it gets so that he can't look at me because he sees that I've taken all of that happiness away from him?"

"Were we wrong to allow you to marry that man? Is he really so shallow?" Misaki's shoulders began to quiver as she shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"He's not, but what if I am?" She choked out, fisting her hands together so tightly that her nails dug into her skin. Shijimi looked to the pitiful girl and then out over the garden they were sitting in, watching the path of a butterfly as it danced over the flowers.

"I married your uncle in an arranged marriage when I was sixteen." She started, causing the girl's head to jerk up in surprise at the sudden change in topic. "Neither of us were ready but our parents were, so we were pushed into it so fast that we were left reeling in the aftermath. But we were happy together, eventually. We became friends and gradually came to love each other, and I suppose we fit each other. He gives in so easily and is never really decisive, whereas I am... 'flamboyant and opinionated', I do believe I've heard people say. And just as we came to love each other someone went to poison him, though the plate was accidentally given to me instead of him. I was in bed in a coma for nearly two weeks as it tore my body apart, and though the doctors saved me the poison left me barren, any chance at a child eaten by it."

"Auntie..." Misaki breathed, her heart going out to the woman, but Shijimi shook her head at the girl.

"It took me such a long time for me to tell him and afterward we tiptoed around each other, unsure of what was proper to say in such a situation. But one day we woke up and even though that piece of our future was gone we found that we could still joke with each other and still love each other and I found other things to love. Like you. You're the daughter we couldn't have, and we are so thankful for you." She leaned forward so that she was grasping the girl's hands tightly, squeezing them as she tried to give the girl strength with her words.

"Misaki, nothing will end just because you find yourself unable to receive a gift that everyone else can. All you have to do is find the gifts that have been made just for you and open them with love and happiness. If you do that then everything will be fine."

Misaki thought back to her words as she stood in front of the door to the apartment, praying she was right. She opened the door and was met with the sight of Lee doing his usual exercises that he did to pass the time, currently in the middle of doing full body pushups with one hand. He flipped over when he saw her and smiled, pleasantly surprised. "I thought you would be gone longer than-" He was cut off when she suddenly dashed across the room to wrap her arms around him and hold on tightly.

"Misaki-"

"Hold me." She demanded, wanting to feel his security and strength before she sat him down and told him the truth. And as they stood there for those few silent moments, wrapped in each other's arms, Misaki could feel the sterling truth throughout every bone in her body.

No matter what, as long as they faced it together, they would be just fine.

No, I'm not going to tell you how she tell him. Why? Because I'm evil like that.

No, it's actually just because it ends better like this.

And there is one more actual part to their story after this, so that may be next.

Oh, and Kathy's back! I'm so happy! I was actually going to type up the Temari bit but suddenly Kathy kicked down the door, looked me over and said, "Bitch, what do you think you're doing? Shut up and let me drive."

So there are a few parts that I have to get through before Temari (sorry), but it's all practically written in my head. Kathy just won't let me type it.

I love you all so much that I'm staying up so much that I'm sleep deprived just to give this stories to you.