"Ahh!"
Anko flew backwards across the dirt floor from Sasuke's kick, her back roughly hit the ground and she growled in frustration as the tip of the Uchiha's Snake Sword edged closely to her neck. The dark-haired youth studied her angry face for a few seconds before he sheathed his sword away, and held out a hand to her.
"What's the matter with you?" he inquired stonily, helping her off the ground. "You're not fighting like yourself. You could've blocked that kick."
"I don't know what happened." Anko admitted, dusting dirt off her khaki coat.
It's been at least two since she returned back to the Sound Village after being kidnapped by the Leaf and held prisoner there. And since then, the violet-haired woman hasn't felt quite right. She was more tired and her movements were sluggish, which interfered with her daily spars with Sasuke. It wasn't the first time since he was able to beat her, and Anko didn't know why. It was the third time this week he'd managed to pin her to the ground with his Snake Sword at her throat.
"Losing your edge, aren't you?" Kabuto asked cheekily, sauntering forward with the Snake Sannin at his side. They were present during the spar, watching from the entrance of the hideout.
Anko snorted at his playful remark, pivoting her back to her lover to avoid letting him see the look of shame etched on her face. It was old feeling that bubbled inside of her from the time she was his Genin. When she lose a spar against him or disappoint him some way, she would swiveled around with her back to him so she couldn't see his disapproving expression on his face, which made a feeling of shame clenched in her stomach.
"I'm tired. I'm going in to rest." The snake kunoichi walked inside the hideout hastily, not wanting to be bothered with questions. She muttered a ripe curse under her breath, rebuking herself for her slow movements. What the heck was wrong with her?
Anko knew that something strange was going on with her, but she didn't know what. Besides feeling tired, she felt slightly nauseous, which caused her to have a lack of an appetite for a while. She never felt this kind of fatigue before in her life, and she wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible. She didn't Orochimaru to think her skills were getting rusty, because then he really might abandon her. There was a possibility that wouldn't happen because of the promise he made to her, but the mistrust that was now implanted in her head, thanks to the Leaf, kept telling her that he would do something to betray her trust once more.
Anko sighed in exhaustion, entering her room and slamming the door behind her in a loud bang. Kicking off her ninja sandals, she flopped facedown on the covers, burrowing her head in the pillow and succumbed to a dreamless sleep.
ஜ ~ ஜ
"Should I fetch her for you?" Kabuto suggested to his lord when the snake kunoichi left. He could tell that his master wanted to figure out what was wrong with his lover, since he noticed that was something odd going on with her.
The Snake Sannin shook his head. "No, leave her be for now."
"As you wish."
"Sasuke," Orochimaru turned to his future vessel. "Let's continue your training."
The Uchiha child nodded and strolled back inside the hideout with his teacher and the medic. As they reached the training halls, Kabuto spoke privately to the Sannin after he was done giving instructions for Sasuke to hone a new jutsu.
"My lord, we should be moving to the next base," he whispered to Orochimaru, whose golden optics was glued on his protégé as he observed his training. "The Leaf will be making their move soon. After breaking Lady Anko from her holding cell, they must know that she went back to you. They're not going to sit on the sidelines and let one of their shinobi stay with us."
"Indeed." Orochimaru pivoted his head over his shoulder to look at his right-hand man. "We will leave in two days. I have some business to conduct here before then. Inform Sasuke and Anko later on."
The silver-haired medic bowed obediently. "Yes, my lord."
"One more thing, Kabuto."
"Yes?"
"Tell Sasuke to keep an eye on my Anko." the Snake Sannin added, a grim frown crossing his features. "Something tells me she's hiding something from me."
The medic couldn't agree more. "Yes, sir."
ஜ ~ ஜ
Anko treaded down the hallways the next day; her hands snuffed down her coat pockets as she wandered aimlessly down the corridors. She wanted to workout at the training halls, but she knew Sasuke would be there and demand a spar with her. She wasn't in the mood to lose to the Uchiha again, so she spent most of her afternoon lazily throwing kunai knifes at the tree outside the hideout—a pointless distraction, really. At least her aim was still perfect, unlike her battle skills.
There was nothing to do around the base if she couldn't train with Sasuke. Orochimaru and Kabuto left early morning for whatever business they needed to do before they leave for the next base, and they explicitly told her not to journey away from the hideout, which meant they she was stuck doing absolutely nothing.
Suddenly, Anko felt her stomach lurched as bile rose up in her throat. Fumbling quickly to one of the inner rooms in the base, she threw the door open and ran into the bathroom, vomiting her light breakfast she had this morning in the toilet. The nausea was never this bad before, to the point that she would actually puke. God, what the heck was the matter with her? Did she eat something that her stomach didn't agree to this morning?
She gagged again in the toilet, her arms coiled around her abdomen tightly. Over the sound of her own vomiting, she didn't hear the footsteps that belonged to Sasuke as he entered and watched her throw up over the toilet. When the wave of sickness passed, the snake kunoichi moved to the sink and twisted the faucet to clean her mouth from the bile.
With her puking down, the dark-haired boy decided it was time to make his presence known. "Are you all right?"
The violet-haired woman jolted in surprise at the sound of his voice, turning to see Sasuke leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. "What are you doing here?"
"I asked you first."
"I'm fine. I think I ate something bad, that's all." she lied again, wiping her mouth with a towel that by the sink.
"Are you sick?"
"Maybe…" Anko trailed off as something hit in the back of her head: She hasn't gotten her moon blood for this month yet. To go along with that, her breasts have been aching and she occasionally felt the crest of a headache coming onto her when the nausea kicks in. No way… No way, she couldn't be…?
"I have a headache coming on," She wobbled out of the bathroom and back into the hallway. She needed to rest and cast aside the insinuation of her being… It wasn't possible. She'd been careful with Orochimaru since they first slept together, using a jutsu to prevent conception.
Although, now that she thought about it, she wasn't able to use it lately since they arrived in the Sound from the Land of Hot Water. They had to leave Sound on short notice because Kakashi and Kurenai was coming after her, and then she was captured the Leaf. When she escaped from the Leaf, she had completely forgotten to use it after she and the Snake Sannin was reunited. With all those things happening to her during that time…it could be possible. But it can't be, Anko had no attention to have a child right now, especially since now that she is a rouge ninja. It had to be stress, and nothing more. However, as she made her way back to her room, a small part of her brain was yelling at her to stop making excuses and accept the truth.
Sasuke watched her go with a unreadable expression etched on his face, unsure what to make on the situation. Contemplating on it for a few minutes, he decided to shrug it off and head back to the training grounds. For now, he'll pretend that he doesn't know anything.
ஜ ~ ஜ
"Did anything interesting happen when we were gone?" Kabuto questioned the Uchiha when they returned late at night from assisting Orochimaru on his business, his master retiring to his chambers shortly after arriving. The two youths stood the silver-haired medic's medical quarters, the Sound ninja at the monitor and stroking a few keys, while Sasuke was bandaging a laceration on his right hand from his training.
"No."
The Sound ninja looked at the Uchiha as if he didn't believe him. "How was Anko? Did you notice anything odd about her?"
"No." Sasuke hopped off the bed he was sitting on and walked out of the medical quarters, a small smirk plastered on Kabuto's face as he left. He knew that the Uchiha was hiding something, but he wondered why Sasuke wasn't telling him anything. The medic told him to report the slightest behavior from the snake kunoichi when he and his lord got back.
"What could he be keeping from us?" Kabuto mused curiously.
ஜ ~ ஜ
Anko puked for the second time that day. After being careful to not wake her lover, she escaped into one of the other rooms in the hideout and vomited into the toilet as the bile continuously force its way up her throat
"You're pregnant, aren't you?" a cool voice asked from the bathroom doorway. Lifting her head from the toilet, her meek optics met Sasuke's black ones. She stood up from the toilet and came to the sick to wash away the bile from her mouth. "Well, are you or not?"
"I don't know, all right?" Anko confessed, seeing no reason to make excuses anymore to the clever young man. "I'm late, but that doesn't mean I'm with child."
"Late," Sasuke repeated in a dull tone, pondering thoughtfully. "You're stressed out a lot, you don't eat right, it could be possible that your…"
"Cycle." she said it for him, due to his reluctance.
"Got off balance. Does Orochimaru know about this? Did you tell him?" he inquired, trailing close behind her as she left the bathroom and into the hallway.
"No."
"Are you going to?"
"I'm not even sure if I am pregnant. I'll have to run a blood sample test or something." Anko replied, rounding down in another corridor that led to Kabuto's medical quarters. It was the dead of night, and she presumed that the Sound ninja should be asleep in his bedroom by now. Halting in his tracks, she pivoted around and jabbed a pointed finger in the Uchiha's chest angrily. "And if you tell anyone about me being pregnant, if I am, I will come after you with a bone saw!"
"I'm not getting involving." Sasuke responded calmly with a shake of his head. "This has nothing to do with me."
"Good." She swiveled back around and stepped inside Kabuto's medical room, flipping on the switch. From the doorway, the dark-haired, young Uchiha watched her as she grabbed a syringe from a drawer and stick the needle in her arm, wincing as she drew out blood. The procedure of taking the blood test didn't take too long, but the most anxious part was waiting for the test results to come back.
Anko paced anxiously back and forth in the room for them to come out, Sasuke still leaning against the doorway with a bored expression on his face. Eventually, observing the snake kunoichi anxious stride repeatedly was starting to get on his nerves.
"Fidgeting won't make it come any faster," he told her flatly.
The purple-haired woman shot him an irritated look. "If you're so bored, then why are you here?"
He shrugged his shoulders as her only reply, and she groaned in annoyance the Uchiha. After a few more minutes, the sound of the monitor made a noise to alert Anko that the results were in. She rushed over to the screen quickly, her brown optics widened in shock as she read the results.
Sasuke came forward as her body started to slump to the floor, and he caught her in his arms. Moisture broke out from shut eyelids as she wept, and the Uchiha felt profoundly confused on what to comfort someone who was so tough, strong, and so steadfast. "Anko, are you…?"
She shook her head up and vigorously, her voice cracking through the din of her sobs. "I'm pregnant…"
ஜ ~ ஜ
"For someone who doesn't want others' help, you sure do need it a lot."
"…"
After Anko's mental breakdown back in the medical quarters, Sasuke carried her back to his room, and was now sitting beside her on his bed. Her face was white as a sheet, her optics filled with tears streaming down her flushed pink cheeks, and her form was trembling uncontrollably. The Uchiha didn't know what to do with a weeping woman—a weeping, pregnant woman. To make matters worse, sooner or later Orochimaru will wake up to find that his woman is gone from his bed and then will be hit with the news of the pregnancy.
"He's going to hate me…" she sobbed, her face covered by her hands. "He won't want me anymore…"
"Orochimaru, you mean?" Sasuke guessed, somewhat perplexed. There is a possibility that could happen, the Snake Sannin was never the type to keep burden from slowing him down from his plans of crushing the Leaf or learning every jutsu in the entire world. And a child was defiantly an obstacle from that task, no doubt about it. On the other hand, it was obvious he…cared deeply for the snake kunoichi, and they could figure out what to do with the child. "What are you going to do with the baby?"
"I don't know. I never wanted to get pregnant. I never thought of myself as a mother, always telling myself I'd be a terrible one." Anko professed through her tears, wiping them away with her arms, but they kept coming down from her watery optics. "What am I supposed to do?"
"There's always abortion."
A gasp flew out of her mouth and her hands wrapped around her abdomen tightly as she could, her head hung low so her bangs hide her eyes from the Uchiha's view. "No… No! I don't want to kill…"
"It was just a suggestion—an option." Sasuke explained before she could get hysterical. The last thing he needed right now is the snake kunoichi screaming at him and wake up the Sannin and Kabuto in his room. And ever happened to 'not getting involved' in this pregnancy? Yeah, well… That ship has officially sailed off with him not on it. "You can't hide it forever. You don't want Orochimaru to find out, but you won't terminate the pregnancy, either. "
"I have to get out of here." Anko bolted up from the bed, her palms rubbing soothingly over her stomach. "I need to leave, now."
"Leave? Where do you plan on going?" Sasuke came up to his feet too, his hands extending to touch her, but she moved away and started pacing in the room frantically.
"This was a mistake, I shouldn't have come here. If Orochimaru finds about the baby, then he'll do God-knows-what to it."
"Experimentation?" It was likely plausible, but voicing the agreement out loud to snake kunoichi would only make her more…anxious. "You need to calm down. Your hormones are out of control."
"I can't stay here, he'll just throw me aside if he finds out it; I know he will." She ignored him and continued to babble nervously. She needed to leave as soon as possible, but she didn't have a destination in mind. How the hell is she supposed to care for herself and baby? She won't go back to the Leaf, so that option was clearly out of the picture. She was a rouge ninja, and she refused to go back and be pitied upon by the Leaf ever again. She can't with Orochimaru; he'll probably hurt the child and do whacked experiments with it when it's born.
"You won't be able to survive long if the Leaf is after you." Sasuke pointed out in a matter-of-factly tone, his cold and aloofness voice coming back to him. "If you leave, Orochimaru will be furious and might send Kabuto after you. You'll have both sides to fend off with a child in a womb. You honestly think you'll be able to live through it? You might as well kill yourself and save everyone the trouble."
"You're not going to tell Orochimaru, right?" Anko inquired him, her eyes narrowing at him dangerously.
"I'm not getting involved, I told you that already," the Uchiha asserted firmly. "What you do is up to you, just make sure you're making the right decision before you do anything stupid that might get yourself killed."
A silence spread between the two as the violet-haired woman thought about his honest words. However, no matter how you look at it, she can't stay here or go back to the Leaf with the way the circumstances are now. Exhaling a deep sigh, Anko offered Sasuke a sad smile.
"It was nice knowing you," she said tenderly, planting a kiss on his forehead that shocked him as he watched her dashed out of the bedroom. The Uchiha touched the place on this temple that tingle from the warm press of her lips to his skin, and he glanced at the door that exited from. She was actually going to do it, huh?
ஜ ~ ஜ
Anko strapped her backpack onto her as she stood at the exit of the hideout, looking back at it for one last time. Her eyes wavered with hesitation and sorrow, but she knew she had to do this. For her baby. She didn't want leave the Snake Sannin and go back on her promise, but she was so scared to find out what he will do to their child when he realized that she was pregnant. She wondered if he would be angry with her when he wakes up and finds her good-bye note she wrote him, and what will he do then.
She was terrified to go out on her own while she was carrying a child, and she was sad that she would be separated from the one man she'd ever loved. A bittersweet smile blossomed on her face at her musings, and she rubbed her tummy gently as she gazed at it affectionately.
"No, I won't be completely alone, will I?" she whispered to her unborn child. "I'll have you, and him with me. A part of him…in here."
Pivoting towards the exit, she took a step forward and then a voice called out to her.
"Where are you going without saying good-bye?" His silky tone was layered with mixture of hate and love for his lover. Cursing silently to herself, Anko swiveled around and stumbled backwards when she realized Orochimaru was standing directly behind her with a harsh frown on his thin lips. He was dressed in his usual garbs, and in his right hand held the note she wrote for him. "Well, Anko?"
"I-I'm leaving, I'm sorry." Anko answered, turning back around to leave, but Orochimaru appeared in front of her and blocked her way with am arm pressed against the wall. Panic rose to her mind as she thought that she might forced her way through the Sannin to get to out the base, but she didn't relished at the idea of fighting while she was with child and she didn't stand a chance of beating him.
"If this is about the child, then don't even think about it." he told her, hissing his disapproval in her ear. Anko gasped in response, tremors of her fear vibrated throughout her form as she locked her optics on his golden hues that glinted at her in anger. "We both know how this will end, my dear, so you might as well surrender."
And so she did. Anko sighed in defeat, knowing it was better than to put her body through the strain of a fight, and nodded, allowing herself to be dragged down back to their bedroom for some privacy to discuss their current issue.
ஜ ~ ஜ
"Explain." Orochimaru demanded, folding his arms across his chest as he glowered down at his lover who sat on the edge of the bed while he stood in front of her.
"I was getting out of your way," the snake kunoichi answered bitterly, averting her eyes to the floor to avoid looking at him. "I'm pretty sure you don't want a kid to get in the way of your plans for obtaining power and crap, so I thought I was doing you a favor. How did you even know about that I was pregnant? I only found out for myself an hour ago."
"Kabuto."
"And how did he found out?" Anko asked furiously.
"The monitor on in his medical quarters." the Sannin replied, his amber optics still glowing with anger. "Why were you planning to leave?"
"I think you know why."
"You were afraid that I might hurt the child." Orochimaru stated with a small scoff. "Why would a do a thing like that, Anko? The child had inherited my genetics, so there is no reason to conduct any kind of experiment on it."
"I find that had to believe." Anko muttered under her breath icily.
The Snake Sannin narrowed his golden eyes at her, his patience wearing down at her coldness and the lies she was radiating off of her. "Tell me the real reason why you were leaving. You're not stupid, you know that there wasn't any reason for me to experiment on the child."
"I left because you…" Her sentence trailed off as she sucked in a deep breath, tears welling up in her optics as mumbled in a low tone, "I was afraid you wouldn't want me anymore and you would leave me, when you find out about the child. I know you weren't planning to conceive a child with me from the get-go, and I didn't want to get hurt again by you. I know you, all right? You're cold and cruel, and—"
"I have kept my promise to thus far, haven't I?" he inserted and cutting her off, his words laced with rage. "Yet you still see me as the very epitome and the very root of evil. I have no desire be subjected to an explanation why you see me that way. I'm well aware of your opinion of me."
Anko was stunned and ticked off by this, surging to her feet and off the bed as she glared incredulously and spitefully at her lover. "My opinion? You're the one who told me that I was weak and useless, which just so happened to be the very last words you tossed in my face when I was a child and then abandoned me!"
"You rejected me!" the Sannin retorted back heatedly, advancing closer to the snake kunoichi. "I offered a chance for you for you to come, but you refus—"
"—after you, without warning, came at me with an army of snakes and locked me in a hut, where you branded me with this thing on my neck!" the violet-haired woman yelled back as she placed a hand over her Curse Mark, getting into the pale-skinned man's face. "Didn't you think that I might be a bit angry about that? How the hell was I supposed to know that you weren't going to do the sa—"
"—you should have trusted me!"
"I didn't I could!"
As their words hung in the air, their chests heaving from their shouts, there was a knock on the door and Kabuto entered somewhat awkwardly.
"Lord Orochimaru, Lady Anko, I must recommend that you two calm down and—"
"Back off, would you?" Anko snarled at the medic, glancing at the silver-haired Sound ninja over her lover's shoulder. Her face was flushed pink with anger and she really didn't need someone to butt in right now into her conversation with Orochimaru. "We're trying to have a goddamn discussion here!"
And then the door closed without a second's delay, leaving the snake kunoichi and the Snake Sannin alone, both of them staring at each other in a thick silence.
ஜ ~ ஜ
"They're still fighting, huh?" Sasuke inquired in a monotone voice, resting against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest in the hallway.
"Anko is going to exhaust herself at this rate. The stress isn't good for the child." Kabuto remarked wearily.
"I don't blame her for leaving after she found out the baby."
The medic's brow furrowed at him, realization striking him as those words left the Uchiha's mouth. How could he have known that Anko was leaving when he only arrived outside the Sannin's bedroom shortly after the couple started to argue? Sasuke's been in his room all night, haven't he? Unless… "You knew that Anko was with child?"
"Of course I did. Along with her tiredness, I saw her vomited a few times tonight." Sasuke answered in an uncaring tone.
"And you're telling me this now, why?"
"It wasn't any of my business."
"I told you to report anything strange about Anko if you saw it." Kabuto reminded him harshly.
"At the time, I wasn't sure she was pregnant." the Uchiha replied in the same tone. "And I wasn't going to get involved. Whatever goes on between Orochimaru and Anko is officially none of my business. The problem they're having is only between Orochimaru and Anko, and the only one who can fix it is the two of them."
With those words spoken, Sasuke straightened himself off the wall and sauntered down the corridor and back to his room.
ஜ ~ ஜ
"I never planned for you to be pregnant, Anko." Orochimaru told her, sitting next to her on the bed after they both have calmed down. "How that happened was unplanned and unexpected. It was your reasonability to use that jutsu to prevent conception."
"A lot had happened, so I forgot." Anko replied, caressing her abdomen gently with both of her palms. "And you must have known of the possibility of me becoming pregnant."
"It had occurred to me, but it was never my desire to have a child." the Snake Sannin said, his reptilian optics studied her affectionate gesture over the child that was growing in her womb. Thriving.
"Then what made you decide that you wanted me for?" the snake kunoichi quizzed softly, her brown hues meeting his amber ones. She honestly wanted to know his reason for choosing her to be his lover, and not anyone else. There was many women in the Sound that was attractive in their own rights and would gladly…entertain their lord, and might considered it an honor. So why her? She was nothing, since that what she saw herself as.
Orochimaru studied her face, reading the questions swirling around inside her head. Sighing, he coiled one arm around his girl and pulled her close in an embrace. She was so foolish that she couldn't even see her everything that was alluring about her. She was smart, stubborn, fiery, powerful, and beautiful. "You can't see your own value? That's very pitiful."
Anko felt lightheaded at his compliment that hinted that she was actually had desirable attributes that made her worthy of being desired by others. Her cheeks reddened and she burrowed her face into his chest.
"What happens now?" she asked quietly.
"That will be up to you," the Snake Sannin responded, tipping her chin upwards to look at her face. "Do you want to keep the child?"
"Yes, but do you want to?"
"An heir could be interesting…" he mused, bringing up a hand to stroke his lover's cheek. "Of course, you must stay with me, and discard the idea of leaving."
"And what do I get in return?" A small, wry smile blossomed on her face as she teased him, happy that he was allowing her to keep the child.
"I vow to protect you and the child."
"Promise?"
"Yes." He locked his lips with hers in a slow, smoldering kiss, sealing the unbreakable promise between them.
ஜ ~ ஜ
A/N: Yeaaah... I'm a big sap. Total OOC in this chapter, folks, but remember that Morning Glory was originally created from a story in my head. I can't write dark and evil characters very well, I'm too much of a romantic. I think I did pretty well up to Chapter 8, though, which was probably the best I could do for a story like this. I mean, the story is using meanings from a flower, after all, so naturally the story wouldn't be all dark and angst like any other OroAnko stories out there. But who cares, right? It's my story, so I can do whatever the heck I want with it! Hope some of you guys like it, and sorry if it was too mushy! The next chapter will be the last and will be posted on Christmas!