Ok folks, here's the deal. Thank you so much for sticking with me until now!!! I know there were some big typos in the last chapter, and I will do my best to do back and correct them eventually.

This was a freaking impossible chapter to write. I HATE writing fight scenes. I probably worked this one over two or three times and I just can't get it right. Anyway, though, I'm still throwing it up as is for now.

BIG WARNING to all you female Naruto fans. As of the next chapter I post, Naruto's getting his balls back. That's right, boy-Naruto is coming back.

xoxoxoxoxo

"Naruto, you're as big as a house!"
Sakura clamped her hands over her mouth with horror. She had been sent to deliver some medicines to Naruto, not to insult the poor boy. Now, as she stood on the doorstep of his house, she couldn't believe that she'd just said that out loud. "I mean.. um…"

"It's fine," Naruto said, "I'm due, like, three days ago." He smiled. "I feel like I'm gonna pop. You wanna come in for some tea?"

Sakura nodded quickly, and followed him into the house.

Naruto waddled into the kitchen. "Can you check the fridge?" He asked. "I think there's some cake in there from the other night."

Sakura opened the fridge and gaped. "What is this?" She asked.

Naruto looked over her shoulder. "Bah." He grumbled.

She didn't see any cake. What she did see were pre-made onigiri, a plate of sliced raw vegetables, a glass bottle labeled, "Carrot Juice" in Sasuke's neat handwriting, a small bowl of yogurt: an entire refrigerator full, in fact, stocked full of neatly labeled health foods.

Naruto clenched his head in his hands. "He must have thrown away that cake. Hinata even made it for me. Argh! Sakura-chan, you gotta help me." Sighing, he took out the raw vegetables and the onigiri. "He's making me crazy. I mean, aren't pregnant people allowed to have cravings? And I'm craving cake, damn it. And ramen."

Sakura giggled in spite of herself. "He's trying to make you eat healthy, huh?"

"Yeah. I thought I'd gotten away from him for a few days while he went on that C-rank mission, but apparently he snuck around to Tsunade and got her to take him off the roster…" Both Naruto and Sakura froze as they heard the door slam.

"Naruto!"

"In here!"

Sasuke came in looking sweaty and tired. Sakura thought vaguely that it wasn't fair that even that was a good look for him: the sweat making his bangs stick to his forehead and his shirt to his chest, the exhaustion just looked like bedroom eyes. "Sakura," he said, shortly.

"Sasuke." She replied.

"Sasuke-teme! What the hell did you do with that cake that Hinata-chan brought me yesterday?"

Sasuke looked impassive. "I ate it." He said. "For lunch."

"LIAR!" Naruto yelled. "There's no way you ate half a cake. And you don't even like sweet things."

"Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" Sasuke replied, mildly. "Tsunade said your blood pressure was dangerously high."

Sakura was surprised. "Pre-eclampsia?" She asked.

"Mild." Sasuke replied. "Naruto. Go. To. Bed."

Naruto looked angry, and about to argue, so Sakura put up her hands in an appeasing manner. "Please, Naruto, you really should. I'm a medic in training, you know. It's best."

"Argh!" Naruto yelled. "It's SO FUCKING BORING!" But he turned towards the door anyway. "Come and sit with me, Sakura."

"Ok."

She took her carrots and sat munching by the side of the bed while Naruto made a great show of untucking the neatly tucked sheets and rolling over in several different positions.

"You're really getting uncomfortable, huh?" She asked, gently.

Naruto stopped his fidgeting. "Naw. It's not that bad."

"You really are due any day now."

"Yeah. If nothing happens by Monday Tsunade wants to check me into the hospital.

"Are you.. uh.." Sakura paused. "Are you scared?"

Naruto looked at her in surprise. "No. I guess..." He paused. "Scared of what?"

"Uh… childbirth? Parenthood?"

"Oh," Naruto said. "Oh, yeah, I guess so. Sakura, you'll help out, right?"

"Yeah, of course."

He must really have been tired, Sakura thought, because he had drifted off to sleep almost in mid-conversation: talking to her about nonsense one minute and then suddenly quiet the next. Slowly she eased from her chair, moving quietly so as not to wake him. She was moving through the door when she heard a groan.

"Ugh… Sakura."

Quickly she returned to the bedside.

"What is it?"

Naruto clenched his teeth, and then looked up at her. "I just had the most awful cramp."

"Cramp?" She felt alarmed. "Do you think you might be…?"

Naruto looked at her in surprise, and then his eyes widened. "I dunno. I've never done this before, so…"

"What did Tsunade say to do? I'll go get Sasuke!"

"Wait, Sakura, it's alright… I already feel better, so…" But she was already heading for the door, yelling for Sasuke to come.

xoxoxoxoxo

"Well, here," Tsunade said. "This'll be your room."

"Wow…" Naruto gaped. "It looks a lot different than the hospital room I was in the last time I was here."

"Well, they try to make the maternity wards cheerful." Tsunade almost laughed at the way Sasuke was eyeing the pink and yellow bunnies that had been stenciled on the wall of Naruto's room: as if they might be dangerous, or have evil curse seals hidden behind them.

"Since it looks like your labor is just starting, we've got a couple of hours before we have to do anything. It's good you came in early, though, because – well, obviously your situation is unusual, so we want to keep you under close watch." Tsunade smiled kindly. She looked at Sakura and Sasuke. "Sakura, why don't you stay with Naruto for a while longer? And Sasuke, I hate to say this, but why don't you go home and get some rest?"

Sasuke looked at her in surprise.

"We'll send a messenger as soon as anything happens. It really will be a while. You can rest up…" The Hokage refrained from saying what she was thinking, which was that the Uchiha looked so keyed-up and nervous that she thought that he might make Naruto anxious too. Which was decidedly not good for him. "Come on, Sasuke, you only live five minutes away from the hospital… or" she said, seeing his stubborn expression, "we can set up a cot for you in here?"

He nodded, and Tsunade sighed. "Is that ok, Naruto?"

Naruto looked at him. "Yeah, sure, it's fine. I'm kind of feeling tired though, so I just wanna nap."

By midnight, Naruto's contractions were coming a little more quickly. He had spent most of the time in between contractions reading the manga that Sakura had brought him. Sasuke had spent the last several hours studying scrolls. Naruto was too distracted to notice that Sasuke had, in fact, read the same scroll four times in a row – once he had read it upside down for about ten minutes, without even noticing.

"Hey, Sasuke" Naruto called.

"What! What is it?"

Naruto looked at Sasuke's intense expression and tried not to laugh. "Uh, can you get me a little bit of water?"

"Sure." Sasuke practically stalked out of the room – and Naruto gave a sigh of relief. Sasuke's intensity was a little exhausting. Another contraction caught him and he tried to ride the pain, letting the sensation wash over him until it began to subside. Tsunade had said to call a nurse as soon as the contractions came more than… damn, how often was it? Once every how many minutes? Naruto shrugged. Doubtless Sasuke was keeping track of that.

Lazily he lay back on his pillow. The parasite was going to come out. How would that be? He regretted now that he had asked Tsunade not to tell him the gender, because perhaps that would have made the baby a little more real to him. Well, not that the baby wasn't real, at this point. More that he was still having a little trouble imagining what life with the baby was going to be like. During the last few weeks, Sasuke's (ok, it was his now too) home had become full of baby-type paraphernalia: a crib, a playpen, piles of neatly-folded little baby jumpers (and oh, hadn't they argued over the little Uchiha fans embroidered on the back) Baby diapers, baby bottles, baby pureed food (Naruto had tried it, it was pretty awful), baby formula, even though Tsunade was still telling him to breast-feed. Baby blankets. Baby pacifiers. Baby toys. Baby things Naruto hadn't even imagined existing until Sakura or Hinata or Ino or somebody suddenly dragged one over and told him he couldn't possible live without one. The baby, Naruto thought, already had more shit than he did. And it wasn't even born yet.

Though he had never spent much time with babies, he knew that it was going to be a lot of work. They cried, sometimes at odd times of night. Also, you had to change their diapers. When Naruto considered all the missions he'd done, it didn't seem that bad, though.

He knew he'd really love it. Sasuke too. But he still didn't know jack about raising a kid, and he did worry that they'd make mistakes.

"Don't worry, baby," He said, rubbing his stomach, reassuring himself, surely, more than the infant inside. "We will love you. And we'll take really good care of you, too. Sasuke'll be a really great dad, and we won't let anything bad ever happen…"

The room suddenly became a shade darker and Naruto looked towards the window. It was a full moon that night, and until a moment ago he had been able to see the stars when he looked out. But suddenly he could see nothing but darkness. Naruto shrugged. It must be getting cloudy. Now it was already almost 12 am, which meant that the baby would certainly be born tomorrow, which was April 1st… an April Fool's Day baby. Naruto snickered. How awesome.

Hadn't it been a while since Sasuke had left for that water?

Suddenly Naruto was gripped with a funny feeling, like that of ants crawling across his skin. He froze, and strained his eyes and ears, trying to sense everything very, very closely. But he couldn't hear anything.

Wait a minute. Nothing. He couldn't hear the drip of the water fountain across the hall, although it had been bothering him only a few minutes earlier. He couldn't hear the rubbery squeak of the medic's shoes in the hallway, either. And the faint night breeze, that had been causing the curtains to gently billow into the hospital room, was suddenly dead, the curtains hanging flat.

"Sasuke…?" He called, and he hated the way that his voice sounded quavering and uncertain.

Then another contraction hit him. Damn. They seemed to be lasting a little longer now, and surely they were coming a little faster. Naruto sweat, and clenched the bed sheets.

When he looked up, there were eyes.

His first thought was to yell at Sasuke to stop scaring him. But the eyes were the wrong color: bright, emerald green. Like Gaara's. And then Naruto saw that the eyes were attached to a shadowy body, a man dressed in dark mesh, a mask that covered every part of his face except the eyes.

Naruto felt his hackles rising. Just like a fox, the fine hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt the instinct to almost bare his teeth at this stranger, this intruder, who was in Naruto's own den, somewhere he was not supposed to be.

The stranger lifted a hand to his jaw, and pulled down the mesh mask.

"Itachi." He was glad that his voice didn't waver, that he sounded calm, and even superior, as he said the name. Itachi smirked, ever so slightly. Oh, that mouth was so like Sasuke's. Even the face. Even the build of the body.

But the eyes. Even when they had held the Sharingan, the eyes had never been Sasuke's eyes.

"Naruto…. kun?" The slight question at the end made Naruto want to growl out loud.

"Pathetic loser," Naruto said, quietly. "I'll rip your head off. What are you doing here?"

Swiftly Itachi closed the distance between them. Leaning over the bed, he ran a finger along Naruto's jaw, from the base of his ear to the tip of his chin.

"Pretty little thing," He said.

Naruto glared. "I defeated you once, Uchiha. I could do it again."

"Such an empty threat." Itachi took the chair that had been by the side of the bed and sat.

""Why are you here?" Naruto grit his teeth as he felt his stomach muscles clench, as another contraction hit him. He felt a hand in his hair, supporting his head – realized it was Itachi's and bit back a groan of pain.

Itachi calmly waited for the contraction to pass. "My brother called me back."

"What?" Naruto swore. 'He would never."

"And yet he did. What do you think, Naruto? It seems he chose his vendetta against me over his future with you." Itachi looked terribly calm. "Did you tell him you defeated me? Maybe that was why he betrayed you. Must have been hard, knowing his lover had accomplished something he himself could not… ah…" Itachi looked speculative as Naruto, angrily, wrenched his head away from Itachi's grasp. "You never told him."

From somewhere, as if they were inside of a cave, came the sound of a great thud that echoed around them. Itachi looked up.

"It seems my brother has discovered my barrier, and is now trying to enter." He produced a cloth, and Naruto could smell that it was drenched in some kind of chemical. "Breath deeply, little fox. I don't have much time. This will make your labor come more quickly."

Naruto tried to lift himself from the bed, but a firm arm drew him back down, holding him solidly against the mattress as the other hand pushed the cloth over his mouth and nose. Spluttering, he felt the muscles in his body tightening, and he grabbed Itachi's hand between his two and bit down as hard as he could.

Itachi laughed lightly. He pulled his now bleeding hand away, and used it to trace Naruto's brow. It left a streak of blood behind. Gently, Itachi bent down and kissed his cheek.

"You've given me a wonderful gift, Naruto. The eyes of an infant may be easier to transplant than those of an adult – and now that Sasuke is grown, I could not face him and take his Sharingan away so easily."

Naruto froze as another thump echoed around them, and then a third and a fourth. Then a wave of pain hit him and he was carried away, for a moment so distracted that he almost forgot that Itachi was standing beside him, and all the trouble he was in.

…when he regained control of himself, he felt the blade of a kunai at his throat, and hissed in anger. Sasuke was standing, only ten feet away, and Itachi seemed to be warning him away.

"I don't need your spouse, you know. Only your offspring."

"Come here and face me, you traitor!" Sasuke spat. But he didn't move, nonetheless.

"Foolish little brother…" Naruto glanced at Itachi and saw the way his eyes were gleaming.

"Those eyes…" Sasuke said.

"You see why it can't be a fair fight," Itachi murmured. "These have their own bloodline limit, but it's nothing to the Sharingan."

Naruto screamed. He screamed and screamed, and then, when he caught his breath, he yelled at Sasuke.

"Goddamnit! Hurry up and kick his ass!"

But Sasuke refused to move. He looked horrified, and then resolute. He put his hands to his side.

"I never thought of that," He said. "So you lost your Sharingan."

"Thanks to this one," Itachi said, clutching Naruto's hair and yanking his head back, for the first time violently.

"You want to take… the eyes." Sasuke said. "The baby's eyes."

"Yes."

"No."

Naruto watched as Sasuke deactivated his own sharingan, and then suddenly activated him. He brought a kunai from his belt and Naruto screamed again.

"No! No! No! Sasuke, don't listen to him! He'll kill all of us anyway, so don't do something stupid! You fucking idiot!"

But neither Sasuke nor Itachi seemed to be listening.

"What do you think?" Sasuke said, smoothly. "My sharingan for the child's? They may never develop, you know. Mine are already activated."

Itachi smiled. Damn, Naruto thought. Those Uchihas. The way they were talking, it might almost have been a business lunch. Except for an undercurrent of absolutely seriousness and killing intent; barely detectable.

"That would be… acceptable."

Another wave of pain washed over Naruto and he bit his lip before he began to scream again. Through his tearing eyes he could see Sasuke bringing the kunai towards his face. "Stop…" he moaned… and somehow, though he wasn't quite sure why, that did seem to stop Sasuke a little.

Itachi stopped too. For a moment, they both looked towards Naruto. "The head," Itachi said, reflectively. "It's crowning."

Naruto screamed and screamed and pushed and pushed, and as he did so he felt, suddenly, the red chakra of the fox beginning to rush from all the pores in his system. Though in the past it had surrounded his body, taking the shape of tails, now the tails seemed to be spinning together, creating a cocoon that turned like a giant rasengan, that pushed Itachi away as it expanded outward from Naruto's body.

Naruto panted and moaned. He grabbed the bars of the headboard to support himself, unable to do anything but what his body forced him to do by instinct. His body, the bed: the spinning orb of the Kitsune's chakra suddenly shielded anything within three feet of Naruto's body.

Outside of that sphere, Sasuke slowly lowered his kunai. Both brothers reassessed the situation instantly.

"It seems the tables have turned," Sasuke said. "I don't think you can reach Naruto now."

Itachi snarled. He performed a seal, and his green eyes blinked, horizontally rather than vertically: like the strange nictitating membrane of a cat. When the eyes re-opened, the pupils were ovals, rather than round.

With a sudden movement Sasuke rushed him.

Naruto tried to watch, and yet it was too difficult. "Sasuke," he murmured. He concentrated on what he could do.

xoxoxoxoxo

The two brothers went at eat other with kunai; shuriken and fists: the greater jutsu forgotten, it seemed, in the intensity of the moment. Sasuke slashed and Itachi was faster, but how could anything outpace the speed of his sharingan? And Itachi's sharingan were gone… which meant… which meant…

His first blow connected: just barely, and almost by accident. Itachi's leg twisted as Sasuke's heel broke the shinbone. The mark of a good shinobi: he spun back, not even indicating that that he had been hit or that anything was wrong.

And his hands moved into a seal, which Sasuke's eyes saw and memorized the pattern of: he didn't know the jutsu, but it must involve fire. Fire was Sasuke's element too.

The bodies flew together, and sprung apart. When Sasuke's back hit the wall, it caused the plaster of the hospital wall to crumble, revealing a pale chakra barrier behind which Sakura was pounding and screaming noiselessly, and Tsunade had closed her eyes and was engaged in some sort of complicated technique. Trying to break through the barrier. Neither Sasuke nor Itachi not Naruto noticed, each so caught up in what they were doing.

Sasuke lowered his head as a blast of hot air overtook him. Did Itachi really think that he could defeat Sasuke with a jutsu that involved fire? The barrier his brother had created limited his movement, and Sasuke pushed into a corner. The only way out was through the flame that Itachi had created, and behind that flame there must be…

Well, who said you couldn't fight fire with fire? There would be some nostalgia to defeating Itachi with an old technique, anyway. Sasuke inhaled…

Only to feel his lungs burning; somehow Itachi had done something to the air and it wasn't quite right. As he felt his head swimming he realized with a start what that something was: somehow the oxygen was being burned out of it.

Still he managed to start a small fire, pushing it in his brother's direction. He couldn't tell if the flame connected: it did set the hospital chair ablaze. Sasuke swore. He couldn't start another fire with this… and he was even having difficulty breathing.

But if that was the case, what was Itachi breathing, what was Naruto breathing? Would that weird ball of chakra protect Naruto or would he be at just as much risk of asphyxiation?

Sasuke steadied himself against the barrier wall, which flexed gently under his touch, almost as though it was made of rubber. Flexible things could be stronger than brittle ones, Sasuke thought, with a grimace. He pushed all the chakra he could into his left hand and suddenly swung at the barrier: with enough precision and force that even Tsunade would have been proud. A small hole opened –

-and with a gasp Sasuke jumped aside, as the fire in the room suddenly flared, rushing towards the hole in a funneling inferno –

of course, he thought. The damn oxygen. Of course the fire would be drawn to a source of oxygen… and his hand throbbed. Certainly it had just been burnt. Thankfully that had been the left.

He saw Itachi then. They were arranged in a triangle: Sasuke, Itachi, and Naruto. But he couldn't spare a moment to look at Naruto. He heard a soft sound behind him and glanced back just in time to see the hole he had made in the barrier seamlessly closing up again.

Taking a guess as to the nature of the barrier, Sasuke pushed chakra into the soles of his feet and jumped into the air. Allowing his feet to hit the barrier he attempted to run along the wall – it was soft, like running in sand, and his feet sunk into it. It would only slow him down. Reaching Itachi, he had time to make a quick swipe with his kunai before his brother leapt away again. For Itachi, the barrier was firm, an easy surface to run on. Sasuke spat. A stupid trick. What was Itachi trying, just to delay the inevitable?

"Those replacement eyes of yours" he said, tauntingly. "You gonna show me what you can do with them?"

Itachi raised his eyebrows, delicately. "I still beat you in experience, brother. Don't get cocky."

Drawing a short sword, he rushed towards Naruto – what was he planning to do? – and plunged the blade, hard, into the chakra protecting the boy.

"And I know an awful lot about jinchuuriki…" Itachi drawled… "All that research as a part of Akatsuki…."

In response to the attack, the Kyuubi's chakra drew in, just for a moment, and then suddenly expanded outward, blowing outward in all directions –

-Sasuke crossed his hands over his face as the wave overcame him. Burning his hair and bringing the blades of his weapons to red-hot in an instant. But Itachi must have felt the same attack, even more strongly, since he had been closer to the chakra.

It seemed to Sasuke that the room had suddenly been saturated in chakra. Suddenly, his sharingan couldn't distinguish between Itachi's chakra and the fox's, which seemed to be everywhere. Even as the fox's chakra hit the barrier and seemed to be absorbed into it.

Itachi smiled. "How are those eyes working for you now?"

It was like, Sasuke realized, being inside a microwave. A goddamn microwave that radiated chakra inward from all directions. It was over-stimulating: painful, even. He found himself bringing his hands to his eyes without realizing he was doing it, and then closing them in order to take the pain away.

"I have a lot of experience fighting blind," Itachi said. "I don't suppose you do. Anyway, these eyes, I can keep open."

Sasuke waited for the blow to come. Once Itachi came even within a few feet of him, he would get a sense of his brother's body, and it's movement, and know how to attack. Foolish… he thought. What was Itachi playing at? This all seemed, in some way, to be an attempt to buy the older Uchiha some time.

He felt the air whistle to his left, swung and dodged, crouching low and swinging out with his right leg. Nothing connected. He opened one eye, just a crack, to see how things were going, and still found the chakra unbearable. Even without the sharingan it was unbearable.

"Do you know what they call these?" Itachi said. "Demon's eyes. Because I took them from a youkai."

Sasuke threw a shuriken, more to gauge his location from the sound of it hitting the wall than from any intention of hitting his brother. "When did you get so goddamn chatty, anyway?"
Now Itachi chose not to answer. Sasuke swore inwardly. He wasn't sure if it was Itachi's tactics that had managed to get him on the defensive, or if it was because of some unresolved fear of Itachi that was now working to his disadvantage. Grabbing his knife, he ran in the direction his brother's voice had last been in, pulling together a chidori – again, the old ones were always best – before a gasp stopped him short.

"Sasuke…"

Swearing, he opened one eye again. Naruto was there. Sasuke had had his location carefully mapped out in the room, so there was no way he could have made a mistake and hit the blonde. But it seemed that the room had changed shape. And that was due to the nature of the damned barrier again. Tsunade, Sasuke thought, irrelevantly – how was it possible to be irrelevant even in the midst of a battle – Tsunade was gonna be mad. Her hospital was getting fucking destroyed.

The pain seemed a little less than before. Cautiously he opened the other eye.

The walls seemed to be bowing in a little bit now, towards the middle. Pinching the room into two sections: one containing Itachi and Naruto, and one in which Sasuke stood.

And his feet felt a little unsteady. As though he were standing on quicksand. As if…

With horror, Sasuke glanced around. The barrier wasn't a barrier, it was a goddamn bubble, and while Sasuke had had his eyes closed it had risen a dozen or so feet in the air, and was even now rising higher. And Sasuke's side of the bubble, it seemed, was quickly separating from Naruto's…

With a yell he opened his eyes wide, put all the power he could under his feet, and ran towards the barrier –

-one hand just made it through, and then the stupid bubble was closed around his wrist. Should have concentrated on disabling this goddamn thing in the first place, Sasuke thought. Itachi was eyeing his fist with distaste. And Sasuke's other hand, the one that was not trapped, was his damaged left.

All the chakra went into that left hand, even as his right began to feel crushed by the bubble. He punched into the barrier and, for his reward, made a hole the size of a grapefruit. Quickly closing again. He pulled his arm back to punch again, when suddenly a hand reached through the hole and grabbed him.

A rather bloody, feminine hand – though the nails were as bitten down as they had been when Naruto was in his boy form. Naruto coughed, rather weakly.

"I think," He said, - and Sasuke was not sure if the blonde was speaking to him, or to Itachi, "you had forgotten about us."

The chakra that came out from spun from Naruto's body then rushed out, and where it hit the barrier it began to bubble away, like melting plastic. Soon Sasuke's hand was freed, and the floor around them began to melt, and they were falling, falling downwards…

To be caught in net as soft as silk, that someone – Shino, Sasuke later learned – had used spiders to create for them.

Twenty feet isn't far to fall, and Sasuke didn't have a moment to look at Naruto as they tumbled. But when they nestled in the spider's net, his eyes refocused immediately.

The first thing he saw was Naruto's hand, still clutching Sasuke's wrist. Then his gaze traveled up the arm to the shoulder, and from the shoulder to the body and then to the face.

Half naked, bloody, and looking entirely exhausted. But holding something to her – to his – to her - chest. A small, wrinkled, pink little body. He caught a sight of black, fuzzy hair before Tsunade, Sakura and the other medical nins surrounded both mother and child. A triage medic, looking unimpressed, came and told Sasuke to wait and he would bandage his burnt hand.

Sasuke lay back in the net. For a moment he wanted to laugh. Then he didn't know what to feel. Then he brushed away the medic who was trying to wrap gauze around his fingers, and pulled himself up, and followed Tsunade and the other women.