I can't apologize enough for leaving everyone hanging for about four months! Preparing for college kinda sucks…. Thank goodness for spring break! I hope you haven't lost faith in me! I'm still here! Please enjoy!

35: Surprise

She could hear it. Joy. It was a distant heartbeat fluttering against his chest like a small drum. She could feel his calm breaths brush against her hand. She couldn't think of a time in her life when pure happiness flushed her entire body. She never met someone whose presence made her feel indisputably infatuated and blinded with love.

Her love cuddled under her hand that kept him close to her body. He was so small that she could hold him in one hand and so cute that she wanted to smother his chubby cheeks with kisses. He was her happiness. She caressed a finger down his soft, chubby cheeks, staring at the wonderful creature that shared the same blonde hair and oceanic eyes as her.

"Ino," Shikamaru whispered as he appeared on the bed next to her, wrapping an arm around her blanket covered waist. Ino smiled as she received a warm kiss to her temple, and a tremor shook Ino's bed, interrupting Ino's dream.

"What, Sakura?" Ino snapped as Sakura ripped the blankets off Ino. "Give me back my blankets!'

"It took you long enough to wake up! I've only called you like five times." Ino raised her eyebrows at her roommate, waiting to hear the reason to this abrupt awakening. "Shikamaru's here to talk and I have to run to the market. Do you think you can make breakfast with what we have?"

"I'll think of something," Ino yawned, stretching her arms over her head. "Where's Shikamaru?"

"I think he's raiding the fridge."

Ino sat up and rolled her neck to stretch out the kinks. "Tell him I'll be out in a second."

"Don't forget you have an appointment!" As Sakura closed the door behind her, Ino glanced back at the spot where that beautiful creature slept, nestled under her protective arms. She wanted to feel that dreaming warmth and his breathing caressing her skin; she wanted to hear that heartbeat drum in her ears. As she stood up to ready herself for the day, she paused in front of her mirror to stare at her heavy stomach. It was only a matter of a few weeks until that bundle of joy actually nestled in her arms.

No. Ino ripped her eyes away from the mirror before she could continue to allow herself to daydream about something that will never happen. Once the baby is born, she would hand it off to another pair of arms that could give it the love and the time that the baby should have. Love and time Ino knew she could never give.

Shikamaru sat on the counter with an orange sitting in his hands. He stared at the fruit with a deep furrow between his eyebrows. He looked up at Ino as she waddled into the kitchen. "What if he wants to become a shinobi?" he suddenly asked, finally tearing into the skin of the orange and peeling it off.

Ino scowled at the young man and silently walked past him to raid the cupboards for any sort of ingredient to make breakfast. "It's too early for this discussion."

"You wouldn't let me leave until two this morning because of 'this discussion'. I have the right to wake you up at nine to ask you a serious question." Shikamaru plopped an orange slice into his mouth and expertly spit the seeds into the wastebasket across the kitchen. "You're not listening to me."

Ino glanced over her shoulder. "I am."

"I was thinking that since Kanna knows all the paperwork involved with enrolling into the Academy. A couple of civilians won't know—"

"Sakura's parents are civilians; they went through all the scary paperwork and look where Sakura is now," Ino countered, waving a spatula in Shikamaru's face as she made her point. "She's one of the best medics and kunoichi in these parts."

"There's a one in a hundred chance that our kid will be one of the best."

"You obviously have no faith," Ino sighed.

Shikamaru shrugged. "I'm just saying Kanna will have a better understanding is he wants to become a shinobi. Not to mention the skills she has as a shinobi. She could train him the best jutsu there are."

Ino spun around and placed a hand on her hip. "What's with her, Shikamaru?"

A grin swept across Shikamaru's face. Ino spun around and continued to rummage through her kitchen, refusing to make eye contact with Shikamaru. She kept her hair curtained over her face as she worked. "Are you jealous?" Shikamaru mocked with a grin still on his lips.

Still avoiding eye contact, Ino responded, "I just don't like the idea of Kanna being a single mother. If she starts dating, what's he going to think when he sees different men come into his life? He won't have a stable male role model in his life. At least Noriko and Daichi are married, and if they end up divorcing, hopefully he'll be old enough to understand." Finally, Ino turned and pointed her cooking utensil at Shikamaru. "You just think Kanna is hot."

"What! That's not true!" Shikamaru waved a hand in the air to stop Ino's accusations—and the spatula flying at his face. "She's an intelligent and respectable woman. Even now that she's a civilian, shinobi still stop and bow down to her…. Some even hit the floor in respect to her." In a lower tone, he said, "and I'm just thinking of his future plans."

"Are you one of those few that—?"

"Hit the floor? No."

"So you bow to her?"

"Occasionally … it depends on who I'm with."

"If you like the woman so much, why don't you marry her?" She flashed a goofy grin at Shikamaru who raised his eyebrows in mock disbelief.

"How old is that joke, Ino? Last time I checked, we used that joke back when we were toddlers."

"Anyway, how are the exams going?"

Shikamaru went silent. His eyes wandered around the apartment complex and he slowly chewed his orange as he appeared to think. "It's all right, I guess. Troublesome as always. The second stage ends in two days, and then it'll be the preliminary rounds." He sighed and hung his head.

"Excited or what?" Ino joked with a soft snort of amusement.

Shikamaru smirked. "Hardly but it lasts for a day so I supposed I can survive."

Ino chuckled, shaking her head. "You guess? I need you, Shikamaru. Don't go dying on me just yet."

For the first time in several months, Ino wasn't the one waddling. Sakura rubbed her full stomach as she toddled down the sidewalk alongside of Ino who was snickering at her groaning friend. "I'm so full," Sakura grunted. "Breakfast was so good…."

Ino smiled but quickly snatched it off her face as she felt a twinge of uneasiness flush through her body. She cleared her throat and smiled again, ignoring the anxiety building in her stomach. "I'm glad you liked it. There wasn't much…thank you," Ino said as Sakura held open the door to the pediatric ward of the hospital.

The receptionist looked up at the two women with lazy, tired eyes. "Hi, how may I help you?"

"I have an appointment with Dr. Akanishi."

"Yamanaka?"

Ino nodded.

The receptionist stood up and pushed past double doors while grumbling, 'I'll let her know you're here—sit tight."

"So what did Shikamaru have to say?" Sakura asked nonchalantly as she flipped through a maternity magazine. Ino looked out the window instead of peeking over Sakura's shoulder to look at all the cute babies with sparkling eyes and cute smiles. She didn't want to see all the cute baby and pregnancy clothing. Ino didn't want to see anything to do with pregnancy, babies, and cuteness.

"He wanted to talk about Kanna again. He really wants her to have the baby."

"Shikamaru has a good judgment of character. From what I've heard, Kanna is a legit bad ass—has a license and everything. She's also done a lot of good for the village; people just haven't heard about what she's done."

Ino snorted and leaned back in her seat. "Like what?"

"She helps at the Academy on her spare time. According to Iruka, the students have improved a lot since she started volunteering over there. She helps find refugees from war-torn villages find homes and helps them until they're stable. Kakashi told me that she helped him set a dislocated shoulder…."

"I still don't like her."

Sakura rolled her head to gaze into Ino's eyes. "You know what you need to do?"

"What?"

Sakura grinned. "You're lucky your best friend has the keys to the files of everyone in this village. We'll do an unprofessional background check."

"You're freaking insane, Sakura. Do you know what Tsunade would do to you if—"

"Yamanaka Ino," Dr. Akanishi called.

The blonde and the rosette stood up simultaneously, caught in a staring contest. Sakura shrugged her shoulders. "All right," she sighed, shoving her hands into her pockets. "It's your loss…."

"I'll think about it," Ino quickly whispered as they followed Dr. Akanishi.

Ino stared at the tiled ceiling as Akanishi poured the cold gel onto her exposed midsection. Looking into Kanna's files wasn't a bad plan, and then she could look into Noriko and Daichi's files and gather information they did not share the first time they met.

She couldn't disclose these plans to Shikamaru or he'd want to be in on the plans, too and Ino figured that they would just argue for the rest of the night….

"Baby is looking nice and healthy."

Ino, still staring at the ceiling, smiled and thought back to her dream earlier that day. The warmth on her hand and the drumming… "Oh, look….she—it's waving at you."

The tick of the clock echoed as Ino tried to decipher Dr. Akanishi's slip of the tongue. The word, that three letter word, sounded foreign as it rang through Ino's mind. Sakura stared at her with wide, surprised eyes. Ino turned her attention to her doctor. "Her?"

Dr. Akanishi smiled. "Congratulations."

"Dammit," Sakura scoffed under her breath. "My dreams lied to me."

It's a shorter but very important chapter! The next will be up within a month! After next week, life will be good and stress-free…if my senior project is good enough….

Have a great day!