Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto-sensei.

Pairing: Sasusaku, post-canon.

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A/N: Needed to write something. I WANT TO READ STUFF AND NOBODY SEEMS TO BE WRITING ANY.

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When she isn't in bed, its because she's in the bathroom throwing up. Lately, they've been administering her vitamins and electrolytes through IV because her stomach won't hold any food. Most of time, she has no energy to speak at all, and when she does, her voice is hoarse and raspy. There are shadows under her eyes and her face looks gaunt, and her skin is so white it shines against the dark purple sheets.

She looks like death.

They tell him she's going to be okay, that this is normal for some people, that everything is okay. But how could everything be okay? The shaking hands, the sheen of sweat on her forehead, the fact that she hasn't stepped out of this room in two weeks. That she cannot even support herself enough to make her way to the bathroom alone. He has never seen her so sick, so helpless.

How was any of this normal?

He cannot keep the annoyance from his voice as he tells Tsunade he doesn't care, just fix her. But the one feeling he can't shake off is the fear that's clawing at his heart. The terrifying thought that this is what is going to tear her away from him.

He has been declining missions, and he won't leave her side, not when Ino is there, hovering around like a mother hen and stroking her hair, not when her real mother is there, telling stories about the time when Sakura was born- more for his benefit than hers.

He doesn't think he has felt this helpless since the night his parents died. His sword, all of his jutsus and all of his training and there is nothing- nothing he can do to help her.

There is nothing he can do.

He doesn't think he wants to repopulate his clan afterall; not if he has to watch her go through this everyday for nine months. Not when she looks like she's on the brink of death. He doesn't, he cannot—

He is torn away from his thoughts when a hand squeezes his own, and he looks down to see Sakura looking at him tiredly, one of her hands on his.

"You should get some rest, Sasuke-kun," she rasps, smiling slightly, and Sasuke has to look away to get his composure back.

"I'm fine, " he says, but he can't look at her anymore. Not with the lump growing in his throat, making it difficult for him to speak, not when she is lying there, looking so small and broken, and worrying about him. He couldn't- he couldn't lose her.

Not when she was everything he had.

Everyone is right though, and Sakura does get better. It takes a terrible amount of time and there are times when Sasuke is certain she is going to slip away, but she makes it, just like everyone said she would. Her appetite comes back slowly, and at first, she can only keep down plain, tasteless food like bread and pieces of unflavoured biscuits. There is no need for the tray they keep by her bedside anymore because she can make it to the bathroom when she needs to vomit—although Sasuke makes sure she's accompanied by someone—and she doesn't throw up as much as she used to. Soon, the colour returns to her face and she is up and about, but Sasuke is still skeptical as to whether she should be. In the past two weeks, she's lost so much weight that her clothes won't fit her anymore, but she laughs when he points that out and assures him she would be needing a larger size soon enough.

And sure enough, within two weeks, she is looking like her old self and eating enough to make up for the weeks that she lost. She has even put on a few extra pounds. Sasuke starts taking on missions, but none of the s-ranked ones for now, thankyou very much, because he'd like to be home every few days to make sure she hasn't succumbed back into the sickness.

In the next few weeks that follows, Sakura develops an unhealthy attachment to fried foods, and everything she cooks has a healthy dose of oil on it. She even takes to frying chocolate and fruit because Sasuke-kun, it tastes like heaven! That night, they have fried rice for dinner with fried fish and fried vegetables, and fried pinapple with icecream and chocolate(fried) for desert. Sakura eats twice as much as he does, and still, he finds her up in the middle of the night, making her way through a bowl of popcorn.

It is like this for the next few weeks, but Sasuke doesn't really mind, until he returns from a two-week mission to find her in tears, a huge bowl of custard on her lap, and the rugrats on the TV.

When she sees him, she tries to wipe away her tears and smile, but she ends up dissolving into a fresh batch of tears when he asks her what's wrong. "I don't know, Sasuke-kun," she says through her tears. "I ruined the custard and I'm fat and I.. I thought you wouldn't want to come back because I-I-I-I'm fat and –". Sasuke doesn't understand most of it, but he takes her into his arms and tells her to stop crying, that she wasn't fat and ofcourse he would want to come back, but it only makes her cry more, and in the end, he just holds her until she tires herself out and falls asleep.

In the coming months, Sasuke finds out that that first night on the couch is just a small dose of what is to come. Sakura is okay sometimes, but the more he is away from home, the more distressed she gets. Sometimes she's angry and she would throw things or shout, and that, he could deal with. But when her anger goes away, she would end up in tears, and that he did not know how to deal with. Especially when she told her through her sobs that she didn't want to make him stay with her if he didn't want to. That day, he'd come home from an eight day mission and found her watching a documentary about spiders and crying.

After that, Sasuke took to taking long breaks between missions. It helped that Sakura was going back to the hospital now, and patients took up some of her day. When he did go on a mission, he made sure it was three days or less. Having him around, Sasuke had found out, made Sakura calmer and less prone to emotional outbreaks, as he had labeled them.

Around them, their house changed as Sasuke assembled the crib they'd bought and Sakura took to baby proofing the rest of it, which included making it nearly impossible to operate electrical plugs and use the toilet. They bought clothes and toys and blankets, and little boots and finally, finally they were ready for the new arrival.

Sasuke stopped going on missions at all by the end of the eighth month. He wanted to be there when the baby was born, and he wasn't taking any chances. As it turned out though, the night she went into labour, Sasuke had been called out to a three day emergency reckon mission.

He'd gotten the hawk on his way back, and he had rushed to the hospital as fast as he could- the mission report, the hokage or his wounds could wait. So could getting cleaned up. But in the end, they refused to let him into the labour-room with clothes caked with mud and blood and the long gash down his face—something about infections, it seemed. So at the end of it, Sasuke was forced to give up a whole ten minutes where he went home, got cleaned up, and returned.

The labour-room was frightening. Sakura was lying on a bed, face scrunched up in pain. They'd put chakra restrainers on each of her hands, lest she accidentally released chakra and caused the hospital to cave in accidentally. Her hair splayed wildly about her and she thrashed about on the bed as two nurses hovered around her feet, which were raised on either side with a blue sheet covering them. When she saw Sasuke, Sakura attempted a smile, but it was more of a grimace, really, and when he walked over, she gripped his hand so tightly that it started to feel numb after a few minutes.

It was like she was being tortured. When she wasn't screaming, her face was convulsed in pain, and she breathed heavily in between the contractions, like someone who was fighting for oxygen. She was crying too, and when she could, she was begging him to make it stop.

It was, perhaps, the longest hour of Sasuke's life, but finally, finally, there was a sharp, high-pitched veil and Tsunade stood up holding a bundle . And then, she put the bundle into Sakura's arms, and Sasuke got the first look at his daughter. Beneath the blood and goo, her hair was black, and she had the largest eyes for such a small face. But most of all, he noticed how her tiny fingers bunched up the blanket.

His daughter.

His.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura sighed and he let himself sit down on the bed beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders and hesitantly touching the tiny, tiny fingers with the other. Then he looked at Sakura, who couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the tiny form on her lap, and he knew, as he brushed his lips against her head, that he was the luckiest man alive.