Hello dearies! Lovely seeing you! This one I've been working on for the past two weeks, but I kept getting stuck so I went on to write the last chapter, and then came back and finished this one up and then I edited it so that I liked it. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it gets the stuff about the kids and the clan out there.
When Eri had been younger and more foolish, maybe around when she had been around ten or eleven, she used to dream about the perfect family. One where she had a father who she not only knew but would pick her up and place her on his shoulders like she had seen some civilian and other ninja men do when she was people watching. Her mother wouldn't be beautiful -she already had to suffer through one of those- but she'd be warm and would smile and hug her and love her.
She saw a white house with a big lawn and a really big and shaggy dog that would track mud into the house, but even though it was annoying there would be enough love for them to move past it with a smile. There would be gardens with bright flowers and neighbors that were willing to play, and during the summer they would play with a hose out in the yard just because it was fun and not care about the indignity of it.
The word whore would never be learned by too young ears, food would never be regulated because her mother felt that she was getting too fat and her mother would never measure her with frigid eyes that had never held even a single drop of feeling in them.
But this foolish dream had faded after the years, and Eri had accepted that nothing would ever come of any dreams of hers. Of course, she hadn't expected Kiba to come along, and with him and Akamaru and the years they had between them of friendship and love she had actually gotten her family -one that was so much better than her dreams- and she was truly happy for the first time in her life.
But this... this was going to ruin it. This thing growing inside of her was going to destroy everything.
"You're sure?" She whispered one last time, just to be certain. Just in case the world that was crumbling down around her could somehow be salvaged.
"Yep." Sakura said happily, "Your pregnant!" She grinned happily at the blonde, but the grin faded as she saw the blank and almost cold look on the other woman's face. "Hey, are you-"
"What are my options with aborting it?" She interrupted stiffly, making the pink haired woman visibly recoil.
"What?" Sakura asked, studying the woman with wide eyes. The two of them weren't close though they did get drinks together with the rest of the girls sometimes, but Sakura really wouldn't have pegged her to be like this. Not even questioning, asking as if she had no real option.
"Abortion. I have no plans for children." Eri spoke through frozen lips, her entire body stiff, her soul's cries muffled beneath the sound of her thundering heart.
Ignore it, she told herself, ignore it and be strong.
Sakura slowly turned away and opened a drawer, pulling out a couple of pamphlets before turning back and handing them to the other woman. "Here. But... before you decide anything you need to talk with Kiba, and I'm saying this as a friend, not the doctor you came to for your check up. You don't want him hearing about this from someone else. Not me," She said, noting the look in the other woman's pale eyes, "The nurses gossip like crazy, and something could eventually get out."
Eri took a bracing breath before nodding. "Yes... you're right. He should know, at the very least, before I terminate it." She slid off of the table and shook Sakura's hand in a polite and frigidly distant way before leaving, her heels clacking lightly across the tiled floor and then the concrete of the sidewalk as she made her way back to the apartment she and Kiba shared.
When she got there he was lounging back on the couch watching the television, Akamaru stretched out on the love seat. They both looked up as she entered and Kiba grinned at her, quirking his eyebrow questioningly.
"How'd the check up go? Are you still fit to file papers?" He snickered at his joke, and Eri just walked forward until she was sitting beside him, though a bit farther away than she usually would.
"When I was doing my clan's work, my period was suppressed so that I would be available to work at any time and so that I would not be able to get pregnant by an 'undesirable influence'. Of course, when I left the clan I could no longer go to the physician, and so my cycles restarted after a little while. They have always been unpredictable and spotty, maybe because of how long I went without one, and I have been far from regular."
Kiba blinked at her, trying to figure out why she was telling him all of this, but still nodded so that she knew he was listening. "Okay? Um... did they give you a pill for it or something?"
Eri shook her head and folded her hands in her lap. "It is because of this that I took very few precautions with you, and because of this I... I found out today that I am pregnant."
Silence. Silence and then suddenly Kiba took a nosedive towards her stomach and sniffed.
Okay. That was an odd reaction.
"I thought you've smelled a bit off recently but..." He mumbled to himself before chuckling. Suddenly he jumped off of the couch with a whoop of joy, picking her up by her waist to spin her around as her hands gripped his shoulders to keep herself steady. When he finally stopped he pulled back and looked up at her, grinning happily, and Eri smiled almost sadly as she framed his face with her cool hands.
"I want to have an abortion."
And that was all it took for everything to shatter around her like a house of spiderweb veined glass.
Kiba's eyes went wide as he dropped her, backing away a step to stare at her for a cracking moment before lunging forward, gripping her thin shoulders in a hard and punishing hold.
"What?"
"I said that I-"
"I heard what you said!" He roared, growing even more furious at just how frozen she looked. "What I want to know is why you want to kill our baby!"
Eri took a breath and steadily ignored the sharp claw-like nails that had grown slightly and were currently drawing blood. "It's not a baby yet." She said quietly, though she knew that he heard her.
"The hell it isn't! I can smell it, Eri, I can already tell that it is living inside of you!" He growled, low and dangerous, "And I'll be damned if I'll just let you walk out of here and kill it!"
"You can't stop me, Kiba. It is my body." She told him almost gently, her heart wrenching at the look he sent her. It was so angry and betrayed and hateful that it broke her heart and almost broke her will too. But she had to stay strong. She wouldn't change her mind.
The alternative was so much worse.
"And it's my baby!" He glared at her, gripping her shoulders even tighter and she knew that she'd have two identically dark bruises in the shapes of his hands, small crescent marks scabbing over in remembrance of his nails. "Why are you being such a frigid bitch about this?" Eri flinched slightly at his words. "Oh, so that's what it takes to get a response from you? You can stand there and say that you're going to kill our baby without batting a fucking eyelash, but I call you a bitch and suddenly you're hurt?" He laughed, a harsh and humorlessly bitter sound, and Eri felt her eyes begin to prickle with tears she refused to show.
This was all wrong. Nothing was going the way it should have, and it was all just so wrong.
"Do you think that I'm happy about this? That this is easy for me?"
"Yes! Because it's obvious that you just don't care!"
"THE HELL I DONT!" She finally screamed, wrenching away from him to shove him back, hard. "This, choosing this, is the only way I can show that I care!"
They stood there for a few minutes, breathing harshly as they faced each other, both pairs of eyes determined and hard, though there was something breaking beneath the frigid heat in Eri's.
"This is the only way to protect it, because they'll take her from us." Eri finally whispered, begging Kiba to understand, to see that this was the right path and that he couldn't push her.
"Explain." He demanded, and Eri's shoulders slumped because she knew that the upcoming explanation was something she had never wanted to go share. Not even with him. Especially not with him.
"When I left my clan, it was impossible to leave completely. I'm still blood, and because of that I'm still connected to them. Not to mention that I have all of their skills and secrets so... I couldn't be let go of fully." She took a breath. "And so, the head made a deal with me. I could leave and live my life without ever contacting them again or going back, but if I ever had a child I'd have to give her up. I'd have to put her in my place." She let her eyes drift away from his in shame, afraid to see what he would think of her now.
"And I took it. I took it because I had to get free and I never planned on children or you. My plan was just to work and be somebody other than just another a whore in a family of whores." She blinked her suddenly tear filled eyes and looked down and at the carpet intently, staring at it's weave as if it held all of the answers in the world and would be able to take away her pain.
"Is there a way out of it?" Kiba asked, his voice calmer but still threaded through with anger. She shook her head, already hating what this situation was doing to them. "What about if I married you, brought you into my clan?" She bit her lip to keep from crying and shook her head again.
"To get married I'd have to go before the head and ask for approval, which would have never been given before this situation and it certainly wouldn't be given now that I'm pregnant. Plus, neither of us are really the marrying type." She laughed bitterly at the bad joke and then took a shuddering breath, noting that her hands were lightly trembling.
"There's no way out of this, Kiba."
They stood there for long, tense moments before Kiba straightened, a sudden idea coming to him. "You keep on calling the kid a 'she', and saying that your family will take 'her'. What if the baby is a boy?" This made Eri pause for a moment. She hadn't even considered a boy, especially since one hadn't been born into her family for generations.
"I... The clan has some men who work, but they're not as in demand as girls. I actually don't think anything in the agreement said anything about a boy, and it only specifically said that they would take any girls that I gave birth to." She shook her head as she looked up into his hopeful expression. "But Kiba, the chances of it being a boy are..."
He stepped forward and gripped her arms tightly, though it wasn't a roughly as he had done earlier. "Don't think about that. Just think 'boy' and you keep on thinking that. And even if it doesn't work I am going to fight for my kid, Eri. I'm going to fight like crazy even if it has to be against you."
Eri took a deep breath and nodded numbly, but she didn't even bother to allow a sliver of hope.
Because all this was doing was forcing her to fall in love with the flicker of life inside of her. All this was doing was building a beautiful brightness inside of her only to have it torn away as soon as it was born. And then the only way around that was to go back to the clan and leave Kiba, to once again become a shadow of a woman living in a world where the taste of shame was heavy on her tongue.
Be a boy. Please be a boy.
They spent the rest of the day in silence, going about their regular activities with a dark cloud hanging over their heads and she she half expected a clap of thunder to clamor from it and force the gavel down on her life.
Later that night they both lay in bed together, silent but not sleeping, until Kiba's gravely voice broke through.
"What was life like, there? What..." He lead off, but Eri knew what he couldn't bare to say though.
'What are we damning our child to?'
Please, please baby. Please be a boy.
"When I was little I was woken up at six every morning to go to my schooling lessons with the other girls, about five or six more, and we were given fruits and rice cakes for breakfast. After our schooling was done we went to whatever lessons we had that day which ranged from dressing to body language to vernacular and flower arranging. After that we usually had a salad and broth for the mid-day meal, and after out daily exercise we we weighed and measured. If they found that one of the girls had gained too much weight her diet and exercise regimen were immediately rectified. After that there were more lessons in conversations, and then we were sent out to town to people watch. We were usually asked to write about the interactions between the women and men, of the advances that worked and the looks. That was always my favorite time because I got to watch how all the normal little girls acted. At dinner we were given our protein, usually fish or chicken with nuts, and we were sent to out rooms to finish our self studies and go to bed." Eri took a shuddering breath.
"Though that was only up until I turned twelve, and then the lessons had to be changed for my sexual theories classes, and even more at fourteen, though the clan head thought that it could have been done earlier since I looked more mature than the other girls. After my virginity had been rectified by an appropriate man, one of the chosen bed mates within the clan, I had to shift more towards night classes in the weekends to accommodate the partners I was given to train with."
They lay there together and yet apart for a few more moments before Kiba rolled over so that he faced her, settling his arm over her abdomen protectively.
"It'll be fine." He said harshly, almost desperately, "None of that will happen."
"Okay." She whispered, turning her face away so he wouldn't see the doubt written so clearly on it. She didn't want to take his hope away, not when at least one of them needed to have it.
Please baby.
Please, for me.
Please be a boy.
"Are you ready to see your baby?" The chipper little doctor asked, cheerily getting everything set up with a sunny little smile on her face. Eri couldn't decide if the woman was just blatantly ignoring the tension in the little room or if she was actually that dense.
It hadn't been a tense few weeks between the couple, and Eri knew that Kiba was trying to move past her idea about the abortion now that he understood a bit better, but it was hard for them to just move past it all. Kiba still couldn't get over the fact that she had wanted an abortion without even fighting for their child and Eri couldn't move past the knowledge that she wouldn't even have the time to fight for her child.
It was just so hard.
"I..." Eri glanced over at Kiba's excited face and knew that there was no getting out of it, "Yes."
The doctor spread the warmed gel over her still flat abdomen and then started to move the little receiver to the ultra sound around, staring at the screen as she did so. "AAAAAnd..." She drew out, smiling excitedly as she settled into one spot and turned the screen towards them. "There's your baby!" She said, pointing.
It was a little blobby thing, just this little smudge of a blobby thing, and as Eri sat there staring at it, trying to figure out if it was really her child, the doctor flipped a switch and suddenly the room was filled with the sounds of a flutter of a heartbeat.
And it was beautiful.
Reaching out blindly, unable to take her eyes off of the screen and what was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen, she grasped Kiba's hand when he gave it to her and fell head over heels in love.
She had tried to stop it, telling herself that it would only hurt when they took her baby away, but staring at that beautiful little blob and listening to the sound of her child's heart she knew that it was impossible now not to tumble over the razor edge of the cliff.
"Hmm..." The doctor said, making Eri snap her eyes over to her in a sudden moment of fear at what that sound could mean. Could there be something wrong with her baby?
"Well, it looks like you're going to be welcoming two... three little bundles of joy!" The doctor said chipperly, and Eri could only gape.
Three? Three babies? That was two more chances of her heart being broken. Two more little people she would love and then hate at the same time just for loving them so much as they were taken from her.
She couldn't do it. She really couldn't. It was going to destroy her and leave her scattered as jagged shards and pieces that would take her years to put back together, if she ever could.
"I'll just leave ya'll alone for a minute, but I'll be right back and you can ask me whatever questions come up." The little woman said as she bounced up to practically skip out of the room, closing the door behind her, and as soon as the click signaled that it was closed Eri turned towards Kiba with wild eyes.
"Kiba, I can't! They... it's too much! There are three of them and if I loose even one of them it's going to ruin me! You can't do this to me, and you can't force me-" He stopped her by pulling her off of the bed and into his lap, forcing her face into his throat and wrapping his arms around her.
"Calm. Down. Nothing is going to happen and we're not going to lose even one of these kids, ya' here me? Not only are we going to fight like hell to keep them with us, but do you really think that Naruto is going to let anything ruin his best assistant? He'll fight off an entire shinobi nation if it means keeping you doing his paperwork." He said roughly, and though she felt her lips twitch into a smile there was no real feeling behind. She was filled with too much fear to feel anything else.
She took a shuddering breath and burrowed deeper into him, closing her eyes as she tried to reassure herself that everything would be fine. That nothing would go wrong and that her baby -babies- would stay with her, where she would hopefully never let them go. That her fragile heart would never be broken in such a horrible way.
"I'll leave you." She whispered fiercely, gripping his jacket tightly in her damp fist, "I'll leave you if even one of them are taken away from me. I'll be sorry but I willleave."
There wasn't even time enough for her to take another breath before he tightened his hold around her and whispered into her hair, "I know."
And with those two words, spoken in that grave tone, she knew that she wasn't the only one that was utterly terrified at how this could turn out.
Eri was in the middle of writing out the sick leave reports on all of the on duty shinobi as well as the administration when a sudden and ironic bout of nausea forced her to bow her head and focus desperately on not vomiting all over her paperwork. If she did that not only would her hard work be wasted, but then she'd have to clean it up.
When she heard the loud snick of the door being opened she forced herself to swallow a number of colorful curses as she raised her head, a perfectly professional smile slipping smoothly in place as she hid her discomfort long enough to get rid of whoever had walked in. It certainly wasn't something important since they weren't hurrying, and the Hokage didn't have a meeting, especially since he was -last time she had checked- just sitting in his office throwing paper airplanes at the wall while he ignored the paperwork he was supposed to do.
And that flawless and practiced smile turned brittle when she saw just who was standing in the now opened doorway.
Her pale hair was pulled and twisted at the back of her head, held in place by a skillfully hidden barrette. Makeup, perfectly done as always, graced a perfectly refined and elegant face as it accentuated full lips and heavily lidded black eyes. Gloves graced elegant hands and diamonds decorated her throat and ears, the cashmere jacket she wore over her black silk dress adding to the air of refined untouchability, and the dangerously high heels she wore doing nothing to hinder the elegant way the woman stepped into the office, hips swishing hypnotically.
Eri pushed her nausea aside and stood to greet the woman, her head tilting just the slightest bit in acknowledgment. "Kaoru-sama, may I ask what brings you here?"
The other woman merely ignored her, looking around the office with eyes that shrewdly and coldly noted every aspect of the room. Finally when she was done she shifted her frigid gaze over to the standing woman behind the desk, and pursed her blood red lips slightly as she began to tug off her gloves.
"Yes... Well you see the clan heard about your little... predicament." She murmured, her voice filled with smokey rooms and secrets, a hint of her perfume filling the air as she glided closer, heels clacking against the wood.
"Predicament?" Eri repeated, watching every movement of the other woman like you would watch a hungry beast circling its prey. She had a foolish hope that if maybe she pretended ignorance they could all just leave it alone. Leave her babies alone.
"Yes. Your pregnancy by one of those unsavory Inuzakas." She made a sound in the back of her throat, something caught between distaste and derision, "Really, I do see the point in dabbling in something a bit more primal every now and again but I would have thought that the clan had instilled more taste into you, or at least enough to know to not go for someone with such a lack of intelligence and refined manners for as long as the two of you have reportedly been together." She sighed. "Though I suppose that the new blood won't hurt our clan. Some men prefer their women a bit less civilized and more on the animalistic side, and having someone naturally so could be of some use to us."
Eri felt a sick twisting dread in her stomach that had nothing to do with her nausea at the thought -the knowledge- that they were going to use her children. They were going to take them and use them and force them to be... to be what she used to be.
"I do not wish to give up my children." She whispered, watching as one perfectly shaped and elegant eyebrow rose up slightly in a smooth movement.
"'Children'?" She murmured, and Eri realized what she had just done with another sick twist of her stomach. "So there will be more than one... I had not yet learned of that." She nodded as she slipped her gloves back on with quick and yet elegant movements.
"You'll need to be careful then that you carry them out for a long enough period of time. Those that are born premature sometimes are born with problems, and I do not want damaged goods." Kaoru turned on her heel to glide across the room to the door, and Eri only just found her voice in time to stop her from opening it.
"Mother..." She started, desperately trying to reach out to any part of her that held even a teaspoon of emotion, hoping that just maybe she could call out to something inside of her that would rethink this and just let her and her babies -that woman's very own grandchildren, though her carefully sculpted face would never acknowledge the fact- be free.
"Mother I-"
"Eri, I do believe that we discussed this when you were younger, though you seemed at the time to understand the basic concept I was trying to convey." Hard and frigid eyes met her pale begging ones, making her flinch. "Emotional bonds are nothing but a hindrance, and it would do us both good if you would remember this. I birthed you, yes, but I did not do so just for you to believe that it entails some kind of special relationship between us. I did it for the clan so that our work can continue, which is the same thing you will be doing in a few months. You would do well to remember your place as a Hikari."
And with that she swept out of the room and left Eri staring after her with tear filled eyes.
She took a steadying breath as she sat down and assured herself that it would be fine. There was nothing to worry about.
She tried to paste another one of her smiles on her face, but the effort proved to be too much for her and she instead found herself bowed over and violently throwing up into the waste basket, tears rolling past her defenses and down her cheeks.
The months passed slowly, achingly and tortuously slowly. Another one of their visits to the doctor's revealed that two of the babies were probably boys, but the third was behind the others and the doctors were unable to make a guess. And while those two little pieces of hope were wonderful, truly beautiful, that one single uncertainty was enough to keep them both immersed in the darkness of despairing dread.
Eri refused to take a break from work, and when anyone would suggest it she would get an extremely dangerous glint in her eye that made Kiba and Akamaru both instinctively back off and go hide as she asked the questioner if they believed that pregnancy somehow rendered her incompetent. One poor fool happened to insist, though he was quick to shut up when the politely smiling woman lodged an ink pen inches deep into the wood of the wall just centimeters from his throat with a simple flick of her wrist.
And after that, no more suggestions of rest were made.
The hormones had hit Eri -a normally very controlled woman- fairly hard. At one point she had tried to slip into her heels but had discovered that her feet were too swollen for her to put them on. This led to a twenty minute crying session on the floor in front of the bed, after which she insisted -screamed really- to Kiba that the only things that would make her feel better were bananas. Lots and lots of bananas.
He had grumbled and complained to himself that he was living with a crazy person, but twenty minutes later she walked into the kitchen to find a bowl filled with happy yellow bananas.
Just after the thirty-three week mark was when Eri woke up in the middle of the night, discovering that the lower back pains she had been experiencing had intensified slightly from the dull ache it had been earlier. She shifted a bit, grumbling under her breath about being the size of a bloated whale, when suddenly a rippling pain shot through her like the most intense cramp she had ever felt.
Hissing through her teeth as it passed, she shifted again and breathed, trying to relax a bit to try and figure out if she happened to be in false labor or not. She had read up on it some, and she knew that if she moved around and the pains didn't get worse she was probably not in labor, so she got up and went into the living room, waving Akamaru off when he lifted his head.
She paced around the couch while occasionally sitting down when she felt that she had to, rubbing a hand over the mound of her stomach as if it would sooth her coming children. The pains were steadily getting worse and were getting closer and closer together as the first hour passed, and then another, so she knew that this was the real thing and that it was probably time to wake up the father.
"Kiba." She called out to him as she leaned against the door frame. "You need to get up now."
"Why?" He grumbled, his face buried into his pillow.
"Because I'm in labor and we need to go to the hospital."
"Because you're in..." There was a pause as he processed this information, and then he was leaping out of the bed in a flurry of motion and a dramatic toss of the blankets. "Come on then! We need to go!" He said as he came over to her, grabbing her arm and making as if to drag her the entire way to the hospital.
"Kiba, calm down." She managed to say just before he threw her out of the window. "The baby isn't going to just somersault out of me right here and now, so we have a few minutes. I need you to get the bag, Akamaru, and Kiba I need you to get dressed. I'm sure the nurses would greatly appreciate you going in there in just your boxer-briefs, but hospitals are generally cold and I don't want you catching a chill." He stopped, allowing her to slip from his grip and go towards the bathroom while Akamaru happily trotted off to do as she had said.
"Wait, where are you going?" He asked her, confused. According to everything he had heard she was supposed to be screaming her head of right now and going completely crazy. She was just acting more normal than he would have ever expected her to be.
"The bathroom. I'm going to wash my face and brush my teeth, and then after everyone is ready we can go. Don't forget to call your mother!" She called as she shut the door, leaving Kiba standing there staring after her, slightly stunned, before turning to do as she had told him to do. After all, she seemed to have a pretty good grip on things.
Five minutes later they were out the door and heading towards the hospital -walking, since Eri had insisted on it, though as the contractions got more painful and closer together she had to grip Kiba's arm, her knees buckling slightly.
They were just five minutes away from the hospital when Eri felt a sudden slight tugging pop and felt a warm flow of fluid soak her underwear and her leg -and thank God she hadn't put on pants. Kiba looked at her for a stunned moment as she grimaced in distaste at just how gross it felt.
"Did you just...?" She sighed and nodded her head, gripping his arm a bit tighter as she hurried up a bit, scowling a bit at just how gross it felt. Though, she supposed that it would get a bit grosser before it got better.
"Yep. My water just broke so... I guess we need to hurry this thing up." She said, and she would have laughed had it not been for another contraction hitting, stealing her breath and making her knees tremble.
They arrived at the hospital soon enough, and once a gentle nurse had sat her down in a wheelchair and after they had talked the nurses into letting Akamaru stay they were on there way into a room where their happy little doctor skipped in.
"Hey! You guys caught me just before I was about to take off, so these guys have some pretty good timing, huh?" She grinned at them both as she took the expecting mother's temperature and blood pressure, popping down onto her little stool and rolling it over to between Eri's legs once she was done. "Well now, open up and we'll have ourselves a little looksie." Eri did as she asked, the little woman popping her head down between her legs and making a sound of thought as she studied her for a moment.
"Well now, you lot seem to be in a bit of a hurry. You're already over half way there and it hasn't even been three hours yet. Just a bit more and then we'll be moving on to the next part." She told them, wheeling her seat back and taking off the gloves. "I'll be back in a little while so you guys just sit tight, though you're more than welcome to walk the halls. You can socialize with the other parents-to-be and share happy little pre-baby stories."
The next two hours were spent gritting teeth through contractions and digging nails violently into one person's arm until it drew blood when he dared to have to audacity to try and order himself food from the deli down the street because he was hungry. She was glaring at him as she tried to breathe past the pain, silently killing him as painfully as possibly with her eyes for the offense as she gripped his hand when little miss chipper herself hopped right back in and slid skillfully between Eri's legs.
"Well then, it looks like we're all set." She said, grinning up at the suddenly slack-jawed pair.
"So... We're going to go have them? Now?" Kiba managed to strangle out, the woman laughing at him.
"Well, we're moving her over to the delivery room, and after that it might be a little bit longer, but your wait is almost over." She assured them.
Twenty minutes later all Eri wanted to do was stop the waiting and just push, though the suddenly stern woman between her legs kept on talking her out of it.
"Come on Eri, just a little bit more. Just ride this one out for me, just one more time. You can even scream, if you have to." Eri shook her head but moaned, trying to ride it out just a little bit longer while trying to ignore the way her body was just begging for her to push.
Kiba sat beside her on the bed, one of his arms going behind her as she kept both of their hands threaded together by crushing his with her sudden monstrous strength, watching it all with a kind of detached horror.
And then the doctor looked up and held Eri's still sharp but pain addled gaze for a moment before nodding to her once.
"Push."
Kiba had no idea why these things went so fast in movies. Usually the doctor says push and then, woosh, baby! But it took three times before the first writhing bloody potato looking thing came out with a hoarse cry from it's mother as she broke two of the father's fingers as he held her back from moving and bending forward with the push like she had wanted to.
"A boy." One of the nurses said as she cleaned the tiny thing off, and the two new parents watched in fascination as more and more of their child was revealed to them from the gunk that covered him, his shrill screams filling the room as she jerked his little limbs back and forth.
Neither of them had seen anything so beautiful in their lives.
They both became puzzled, however, when the nurse holding the new little boy started moving away from the couple instead of towards, worrying Eri greatly as she attempted to move, never taking her eyes off of the tiny little thing that was getting farther and farther away from her.
"Wait! Where are they going!" Eri asked, her heart clenching even as the doctor smiled kindly at her.
"To put him in an incubator. He and his siblings need it for just a little bit until their all done baking, and you'll get to see them all as soon as this is over with." The doctor assured her, but Eri shook her head. They couldn't take him away! Who was going to protect him if he was so far away from her?
The nurse brought the bundled little gift to them, and Eri held out trembling arms for him, tears falling as she settled him into her arms, running a finger down his cheek reverently.' "Beautiful." She whispered, Kiba nodding in agreement and reaching out to touch him as well, both of them sitting there for a single perfect moment.
And that was when another contraction hit her and Eri was suddenly made aware of the fact that she still had two more babies to deliver.
The next one was a boy, and twenty minutes later the pair would have been holding their breath had they had any breaths left to hold, both of them thoroughly exhausted.
They could only pray that God wouldn't pull such a cruel joke on them as the final push came and the last first cry rang out, and they heard those final blessed words.
"It's a boy."
Eri didn't think she had ever cried so much, burying her sweat streaked face into the curve of Kiba's neck as she gasped and sobbed and laughed and hiccuped and spewed off a whole assortment of useless words that no one understood.
Because maybe, just maybe...
Still amazingly sore -though she figured that such a thing was normal after childbirth- and wearing a soft cotton robe over a plain nightgown, Eri pressed her fingers to the glass that separated her from her children, watching as their quick breaths lifted their delicate chests, feeling the love for them fill her, unconditional and pure.
She was waiting.
Hearing the familiar click of heels on the pale tile of the floor, Eri took a bracing breath as she smiled softly at her little children. She could do this. No one was going to take them away from her.
The sound of the heels stopped as Eri felt the presence at her side, smelling the perfume that danced in the air from the woman's pores, not too light but not to thick. Eri didn't even bother looking at her, keeping her eyes on the tiny forms of her children.
"You're not taking them. They're boys, not girls like you wanted." She murmured, and she could almost see in her mind's eye the way perfectly painted lips would purse.
"It is true that our clan specializes in females, but we have men as well. A whore is a whore, as you very well know." Eri nodded and crossed her arms beneath her chest, releasing a calming breath.
"True."
"And you signed the contract for me to release you, Eri. You have to abide by it."
"Also true." She paused for a moment to see if Kaoru had any more arguments. "But do you know what a really good perk of working for the Hokage is, especially in such a close context?" She peered at the woman in her peripheral vision and saw a perfect eyebrow raise in an elegantly cultured question. "Lawyers. The council lawyers who go over all of the treaties and agreements. All of whom find going over a silly little clan contract child's play."
She turned fully now, looking into the perfectly passive face with one of pressed defiance. "I may have signed off my soul to you, but I did not sign of my sons. I signed off any daughters I would have, though, which will never happen now since I had my tubes tied after the birth. Loopholes, Kaoru-sama. Lawyers are wonderful at finding loopholes."
The other woman was silent for a few minutes as she watched her before beginning to slip on the gloves she had taken off when she had first walked up. "In the event of your deaths, the clan will still try and them." She paused for a moment to look at the babies through the glass. "Or, at least the one without the man's clan markings. But if the machines are any indicator, they were born pre-term, which could mean that they are damaged." She turned away smoothly, beginning to walk away.
"The clan does not wish for damaged specimens. Neither in you nor your children."
Eri nodded and turned away as well, turning back to the glass as she tried to figure out if she wanted to cry or scream or laugh.
They would be fine. It would all be alright.
She felt Kiba come up beside him and leaned her head against his shoulder with a smile, both of them watching their resting sons.
"Who was that?"
"Hmm..." She hummed contentedly for a moment, closing her eyes to revel in the first truly peaceful moment she had felt since those first words had come out of Sakura's mouth. "Just the head of my clan coming to check up on things."
"Huh... She looks a little young. You guys grow up together or something?"
She chuckled dryly and shook her head, wanting to close her eyes for a bit of rest from the emotional turmoil but also not wanting to take her eyes off of her children for a second.
"No, not really."
And that is that.
I am seventeen and have yet to get pregnant or have a child, and neither do I plan to do so for many years to come so all the stuff above was from the internet because my mother refused to tell me about anything other than saying "It doesn't hurt as bad as they make it out to on TV" (Really, how does that answer any question?)
Also, just little things about the triplets:
1) They are a set of identical twins and then a second egg, so like a fraternal twin brother (but a triplet) (there are a lot of technical terms that I looked up when writing that I forgot)
2) Their names are Arata, Katsu, and Takashi (I looked for dog body part related names so I could go with the theme of the Inuzaka in the manga, but Google gave me a "WTF?" look, so I eventually gave up and went to go cry in a corner)
A hello to my newest dear Natsu123 (Hi there!) and also a big thank you to TheCookieMonster77 who always gives me praise and enthusiasm that makes my day so wonderful and bright!
Good bye, dearly devoted followers! *rides off into the sunset on a magical unicorn*