Chapter 109 - Witches Weed

"Hajime's over a year old, now, so we'll be able to handle another infant," Sasuke explained. "Any earlier would have been too much of a hassle."

"But, uh, Sasuke—now?"

He was telling her this in bed. And his shirt was off.

"Of course, why are you hesitating?" he said. He smiled a little. "I figure you'll enjoy yourself."

Ino bit her lip.

"Well… if you want to…"

"I do. Come on, let's get going."

Ino didn't know what made her more uncomfortable: the fact that Sasuke now seemed almost certainly only interested in sex for procreation, or the fact that, the one time she actually hadn't felt like it, she hadn't said no. The imbalance of both facts burrowed into her ears and made her feel dizzy and nauseous as she tried to sleep, after they were finished.

The night after the next arrived, and Sasuke asked again. A faint panic began to grip Ino's stomach.

Her options, in terms of getting rid of her mistake with Shikamaru, were becoming severely limited.

There was always the hope for a miscarriage, morbid as that was. Sasuke would… probably be sympathetic, and they could always try again without suspicion.

And though there were always clinics she could visit, and though Ino knew it would be safe, she feared Sasuke's suspicion and his anger, if he ever found out, through some way or another. They'd never really fought before—sure, they'd had their arguments, every couple did—but she couldn't imagine how furious with her he would be if he knew. Even if she told him that it was because she wasn't ready for another baby, or some other, false reason, she would still have done it without his permission, without at least talking to him about it, and that didn't seem fair to her.

And she was too scared to talk to him about it, anyways, because he would have probably said no. He wanted a big family, he wanted children, and… well, so did she.

She just didn't want this child. Because it wasn't Sasuke's.

(No matter what, she wouldn't dare tell him about Shikamaru. Even though there was no love involved, even though she was otherwise utterly devoted to Sasuke.)

With each night that passed, especially the nights that had her laying beneath Sasuke as he moaned with exertion, her stress level rose.

When Shikamaru called one afternoon, she told him she wasn't feeling well, and wouldn't come by.

(She wouldn't dare tell him about this, either. She could handle this on her own.)

"Fine, whatever," Shikamaru replied, and hung up without much of a goodbye.

Ino had to do something.

So one day, she dropped Hajime off at her father's shop, and went to the library, where she flipped through books of herbal remedies and poisonous flowers, searching for plants that would induce bleeding or uterine cramps.

If it worked, this would be a blameless option. She would have sympathy, and she could tell Sasuke that they could always try again.

But even after she found the plants, and ground them into a fine powder in the kitchen, she wrapped them up and kept them in her purse for days.

Fear paralyzed her. Fear of the pain, fear of something going wrong, fear of discovery.

Especially because Sasuke was starting to get impatient.

"This didn't take nearly as long with Hajime," he grumbled, almost to himself, as they were getting ready for bed one night. "I thought you were ovulating."

"E-excuse me?" Ino replied.

"You usually get your period right about now," Sasuke said. "That's why I wanted to get started earlier this month, so we wouldn't have to waste as much time trying. Take a test if it's late."

The next day, Ino flushed the medicine in her purse down the toilet.

That was the nail in the coffin. He—he paid enough attention to her that he knew when she got her period. She felt almost violated by this, by the almost invisible control that seemed to come with this knowledge, and the terror of what else he could have possibly known about her, without her awareness.

There was no way he wouldn't be able to notice. Even if she took the medicine now, she feared she had waited too long, and that the resulting bleeding would be too severe, too painful—and who was to say that he wasn't aware of how heavy things were supposed to be, either?

She had only one option: to act as if nothing was wrong. She would pass the child off as Sasuke's. After all, it would probably look like him… enough. Since Shikamaru had dark hair and eyes, and the rest could be waved away as… her side of the family. It would come a month "early," but that wouldn't raise many eyebrows.

So the next day, she told him that a test had come back positive.

"That's fantastic," he replied.

His smile was absolutely no comfort whatsoever.

The months that passed were much like her months with Hajime. Though the growing child seemed almost gleeful in causing her pain, especially once it was big enough for her to feel inside of her. Little feet jabbed her in her ribs and made the muscles in her chest and stomach seize up, and though she didn't get much morning sickness, her appetite was almost nonexistent, and her limbs grew bony as her belly swelled.

Sasuke offered some comfort, both in his presence and his absence. He did most of the work in moving the baby furniture from Hajime's room to the new room he had partitioned off, and setting up Hajime's Big Boy Bed. Hajime, toddling about and already speaking quite a lot, pestered his father constantly and asked plenty of questions about the preparations. Sasuke, blessedly, had much patience for the boy, and answered most of them.

He was, as usual, never present for her checkups. So he was not there to hear the doctor say that the baby was perfectly developed for eight months, when Ino was only supposed to be seven months gone. She had the sex confirmed, however: a boy. And like with Hajime, Sasuke chose the name.

"Takeru. Like a rising sun. Sort of has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?" he said, while they were together in the new nursery one afternoon.

"It's a lovely name, Sasuke," Ino said, quietly, pressing her hand against the mass, shifting from her hips to her back.

There was also, to some extent, Shikamaru.

He didn't seem to care about the state she was in. Though her visits with him were rare, during her pregnancy. Mostly due to her lack of interest, her personal discomfort, and her guilt. Shikamaru seemed to do well without her, at any rate.

Outwardly, Ino seemed otherwise fine. Her conversations with Sakura and Chouji and her father did not betray any of the dread she felt about Takeru. She was, by all accounts, a typical young mother, anxious over the upcoming trial of managing a toddler and a newborn at the same time.

But Takeru seemed intent on cementing his status as her own, personal problem child. His restlessness in her womb and embargo on her hunger were a mere prologue to his dramatic first entrance: he was nearly born on the kitchen floor.

Ino hadn't been feeling well all of that morning, nauseous and achy, but when the first contractions hit she was frightened to find that they were far too close together for early labor. The pain very quickly brought her to her knees, and she began yelling for someone to help.

Sasuke, enjoying a book in the living room, was drawn to her by Hajime's own cries; hearing his mother in such distress frightened him, badly, and he ran in search of his father for comfort.

"Mommy hurt, mommy hurt!" Hajime blurted out, in between tears, pointing to the kitchen windows.

Sasuke was very fast. "Ino, what's the matter, is it the baby?"

"It's… it's way too early… Sasuke, help me…" She doubled over, her face red and wrinkled from the intense pain.

"The baby's coming?" Ino nodded, and Sasuke put Hajime down and got on his knees beside her. "Can you call your father?"

Ino nodded again, sucking in her breath through her teeth.

"Have him come over and watch Hajime, then we'll go to the hospital," Sasuke said. "Do you want me to pack your things?"

But Ino shook her head, violently, every muscle in her body tensing with the onset of another cramp. "No, no, it's coming, it's coming now, no, this is way too fast, I can't…"

"Ino, the baby's… not coming now, just calm down and call your father."

The contraction subsided, and Ino took the clear, almost cold absence of pain to breathe in, deeply. "All right, I, I'll try."

Daddy, please, come quick, the baby's coming and we need you to watch Haji—

But her concentration shattered as her uterus seized up with a strength that made her shriek. "Sasuke, I can't, I can't, it's coming now, we have to get to the h-hospital, I tried—Sasuke, please, please, plea-ase!" Her voice stretched and grew higher as the pain reduced her to little-girl sobs. Her eyes shut tight, and hot, stinging tears leaked down her face.

And she suddenly felt strong, firm arms under her legs and back, and she realized that Sasuke was now carrying her.

In another moment of blind clarity, she stammered, "Sasuke, where's… where's Hajime…"

"I'll get him once you're at the hospital. Don't worry. You and the baby will be okay."

Ino reached up and clung to his neck and his shoulders, because the comfort in his voice was not enough. And she felt the bend of his chin and his cheek against her arms, like an embrace in return.

In the severe and violent darkness of her pain, she heard Sasuke arguing with the hospital staff, and his refusal to let her go until he was certain that she would be given a bed and treatment. He did not want her to wait. And, eventually, she felt him lay her down on a bed, and she heard the nurse trying to ask her questions, like when the contractions had started, and if her water had broken yet.

But she could not respond, because all she wanted to do was push, at that point. Her body was screaming for it, aching to eject the source of the pain.

To resist was death.

And she already felt like she was dying.

There were calls for the midwife; a shout of "She's crowning!" accompanied a host of cold, uncomfortable fingers between her legs.

Someone was trying to make her stop, to only push when instructed, but those voices were distant and murky.

She wanted the creature out of her, and they would not stop her.

And, eventually, Takeru slid free, and she felt someone pull him away from her. There was a horrific, dry screech—his first cry—and someone put a towel and then his wriggling, slimy body on top of her.

The pain, finally, lessened. And Ino managed to find her breath, and open her eyes.

She couldn't imagine how disgraceful she must have looked. Her dress and apron were wet with blood and amniotic fluid, and her face was undone. And the child on her chest was skinny and shuddering, now, with very long monkey-fingers that curled and uncurled in the unwelcome air.

"Looks like… he couldn't wait any longer."

Sasuke's voice, strained but amused, drifted to her from across the room. His head was lowered, away from the mess, but Ino could see him smirking uncontrollably, his hands in his pockets.

Ino just leaned back into the pillows, barely holding Takeru, waiting for the final twinges of pain to disappear with eyes closed against everything else.

They managed to clean her up by the time Inoichi arrived, with Hajime, breathless and worried and confused. And Sakura came shortly afterward, still in the scrubs from the surgery she had been assisting with. The whole ordeal had barely lasted a half hour, which gave Sakura no small amount of shock.

But soon the dramatics of the earlier part of the day were shoved aside, and proper attention was given to the baby himself.

"I'm so excited for Hajime to have a little brother," Sasuke said, holding Takeru, an unusually warm smile on his face. "Though I don't want to favor him more, because he's the oldest. They'll receive equal attention."

"Sounds like a good idea, Sasuke," Naruto, who visited the day after, replied.

Taking Takeru home wasn't nearly as joyous an event for Ino as it had been with Hajime.

There were the usual trials of late-night wakeups and diaper explosions, which Ino took responsibility for, without complaint or even a word. But she did not—could not—hold Takeru like she held Hajime, spontaneously and with great tenderness. She only held Takeru if she had to, and fed him from a bottle, instead of from her breast. Her lack of weight gain seemed to have affected her milk, anyways, so she couldn't have fed him that way, even if she wanted to.

(Even her own body didn't want to nurture him, she would sometimes think, darkly, to herself.)

But Sasuke, to her astonishment, made up for this.

Her husband was very affectionate with Takeru, holding him and bouncing him on his lap during almost every free moment, and even feeding him from his bottles and later jars of baby food during dinner. A nickname developed: "Bright One," and sometimes "My Little Light."

"I don't want him to feel like he's inferior, just because he was born second, you know," Sasuke explained, to nobody in particular, while balancing Takeru on his hip one evening. "He's just as good as his brother. I want him to know this from his father."

(And this obviously wasn't because Sasuke had regrets about his own childhood.)

Most importantly, he didn't suspect anything. Hell, he loved Takeru just as much as—if not more than—his first (and biological) son. And whatever physical differences Takeru had—his eyes were small and almost sleepy, like Shikamaru's, most-noticeably—he didn't seem to notice.

And to Ino's relief, the paranoia fueling her depression lessened from a roar to a quiet simmer.

(Though it never truly left her, sometimes flaring up when she was feeling particularly hateful or scared, but it at least became bearable.)

(Sasuke's ever-increasing favor was a fine dampener, as well.)

And then, after a few months, she found could finally breathe again. The great, dark fog that had fallen over the world following Takeru's birth lifted. Ino seemed, suddenly, to notice that it was spring—had time really passed that quickly?

But with that return to clarity, with that return to genuine smiles and gossip with Sakura, came despised and undeniable urges, and the inescapable plainness of Sasuke's disinterest in her.

Ino forced a condom on Shikamaru, the next time they got together. "I don't care what you say, I don't want to make a mess."

"…sure, whatever," he replied, ripping open the package with thoughtless, nimble fingers.

She sometimes wondered why she didn't just invest in some sort of toy or vibrator, after a while. But none of those would be able to replace the irresistible spider-crawling hands over her chest and the lips on the corner of her mouth, and her eyes.

The sex, she realized, after a while, wasn't what she really wanted. It was the contact, the intimacy that she craved, that satisfied her, more than anything.

If she just wanted sex, she wouldn't be returning to Shikamaru's house every damn week.

She was glad she was so clear-minded about the whole thing. If she were younger, or stupider, she might have confused intimacy with love, and that would have been horrible for everyone.

She loved Sasuke. He had his flaws… but that was what love was: looking past those. He was affectionate—in his own, understated way, which she'd long grown to adore—and responsible and a very good father. Sure, he wasn't incredible in bed, and he rarely embraced her or even held her hand, any more, but that wasn't why she had married him.

There was nothing she really liked about Shikamaru, beyond the astonishing efficiency of his intercourse. He drifted through his life, unremarkably, his only anchor being Kurenai's daughter, Benio, who seemed to bring out an unusually strong responsibility in him.

The affair—if she could even call it that, and she never did—continued flatly and became, after a time, as annoying and as necessary to satisfy as hunger.

Her children, both wanted and unwanted, grew.

And in the spring after Takeru turned one and Hajime turned three, Sasuke said they should start trying for their third child.

Ino, closing her eyes, resigned, took her clothes off and tried to enjoy what she could. The entire time she struggled to ignore the absent, phantom hands on her body, wandering where Shikamaru would have placed them.

The first battery of attempts failed, painfully. Ino bled for days, after going for nearly two months without her period; it felt like her insides were going through a meat grinder.

Sasuke's concern almost surprised her. He brought her herbal tea and heating pads, and told her, softly, that he didn't want to try again with her until she was feeling better. He kept the boys out of her way, otherwise, and made sure the house was quiet when she was sleeping.

It was the same with the second, and the third time, in the months afterward. And she sensed neither frustration nor anger out of him, for her body's failings. Just the expectation that, as soon as she was well, they would try again.

(Her bitter wish that this rotten luck had fallen upon her only two years earlier only made her feel more ill, so she avoided thinking about it and focused on recovering.)

Finally, in the autumn, they succeeded.

And when Ino found out that it was a girl, a few months later, she was elated. Especially when Sasuke seemed almost as happy as she was, about the news, which she did not expect, considering how much he gushed about being able to work with boys.

He'd even said, early in their marriage, before all of this, "I hope we don't have many girls. I don't think I'd be able to train girls."

Instead, he smiled. "Two boys are more than enough for now. It'll be good for you, to have a girl in the house for you to fuss over, while I'm out with the boys. I'll let you name her, it's only fair."

Ino felt almost overwhelmed by the freedom of this allowance, since Sasuke had chosen Hajime and Takeru's possible names with very little input from her—and whatever input she had given was usually brushed off. She and Sakura got together many times to brainstorm. This was useful to the both of them, since Sakura was expecting another baby of her own, and since she and Lee decided not to find out what sex the child was, she had to come up with twice as many possibilities.

Sakura, eventually, decided on Kenji for a boy, and Mikomi for a girl. Ino was stuck on Inori for the longest time, but after consulting with her father and, eventually, Sasuke, decided that she would save a traditional Yamanaka name for her next child, whenever it came, since it would be the next Yamanaka heir.

("It can't be Takeru," Sasuke had debated. "We'd have decided it earlier if he were supposed to be. I'd have given him a different name.")

After all, Chouji wasn't married (yet—he was quite accidentally courting his future wife, Chun, around this time) so there wasn't a new Akimichi heir. And Shikamaru, to the Nara clan's absolute annoyance and frustration, showed no sign of settling down, either. So Ino felt it was best to wait.

(She figured that she would have to ask Sasuke to try for a baby, should at least Chouji produce a child at that time. But given the reason behind the request, when it came—not lust, but a child—there was no way he'd say no.)

(Even if that attempt produced another daughter, Ino wouldn't be terribly disappointed. She was ever so fixated on the name Inori.)

Her father suggested naming the child after a flower. "It's a very feminine thing to do. And besides, you love flowers," he explained.

Ino tried to wave him off, but she couldn't deny how right he was.

There was so much wonderful symbolism possible, with flowers. Naming a child after a rose, a symbol of love, was so much more elegant and stylish than a plain and clumsy option like "Aiko."

So after many considered possibilities—Aoi, for hollyhock, for ambition; Touka, for wisteria, for a beloved daughter; Masaki, for jasmine, for grace—she decided on Nadeshiko, for dianthus, for affection, for aspiration, for talent.

And best of all, Sasuke loved the name too.

"Very traditional," he said. "Proper. A perfect name for an Uchiha girl."

Nadeshiko finally arrived in June, after a deliberately slow, though gentle, labor, that lasted almost two days. Ino spent most of it at home, only leaving for the hospital with Sasuke and the boys when things actually got somewhat painful. Sasuke insisted on bringing her, so as not to tempt history to repeat itself.

Ino was utterly in love with the girl, as soon as she was out of her and placed on her chest. Nadeshiko stopped crying quickly, and nestled close to Ino's heart, her eyes with their enormous lashes closed in photograph-like peace. And after Sasuke had gotten his time in with her, Ino marveled at the thick, dark head of soft hair she possessed, and her tiny, pink-tipped fingers.

The boys were let in, once Ino had taken a brief nap. And since he was big enough, Hajime was allowed to hold his new little sister with Sasuke's help, her body taking up most of his lap.

Of course, Takeru took offense to his not being allowed—he was two, and therefore old enough, in his opinion—so he smacked Hajime on the knee, and wrestled with his arms to free the baby. Nadeshiko would have fallen, had it not been for Sasuke's quick reflexes. But although Hajime began crying, and Takeru joined him shortly afterward, even more loudly, Nadeshiko remained asleep, and stayed that way for quite a while.

Her ability to sleep through anything continued well after she had been brought home, and placed in her rose-pink-and-tea-green nursery, joyfully decorated by Ino. The number of times she woke up her family in the middle of the night remained in the single digits for months, and even after she learned how to prop herself up and then sit up and then crawl—far earlier than her brothers did, though nobody really noticed—she never explored much further than the living room, and never got into anything, much less destroyed it.

(Hajime was guilty of both of those things, like so many babies before him, and Takeru even more so.)

But even if Nadeshiko were a screamer, and an unsound sleeper, and a destroyer of books and electronics, Ino doubted she could have loved the girl any less. She delighted in how easily she could cuddle the child without fuss, and in Nadeshiko's gentle tugs on her skirt once she had learned how to walk, and in all the pale, soft-fabric dresses Ino could buy for her and dress her in. Sasuke, she supposed, was right—she was happy with a little girl to fuss over.

Though Nadeshiko didn't speak until she was almost two years old, and even after then, she was sparing with her perfectly-formed words. And this worried both of her parents, but Sasuke was the first to dismiss it. "It's all right if she's a late bloomer. She's an Uchiha, even if she is a girl. She'll be exceptional when she's older, anyways. I know it."

And Ino nodded and agreed and pushed the worry out of her mind.

Of course, even with her light-filled life, there were still imperfections.

Hajime was starting school, and Sasuke's after-dinner training sessions with him had her worried that he was pushing the boy too hard and too early. She wasn't actually present for them, but she had Hajime's scraped-up knees and other injuries to take care of, and that told her more than enough.

(Though she stayed out of this, because little boys were rough-and-tumble types, weren't they? And she trusted Sasuke to not harm him intentionally.)

(Sasuke's short criticisms at dinner, however, she was able to do something about.)

(Except his insistence that Hyuuga Ninako not come over again, and the lecture he gave Hajime after he informed Ino of the decision. That was Uchiha clan business. And that wasn't her business.)

(Though she still encouraged Hajime to play with the girl at school as much as he pleased. That was just friendship, after all. And they got along so well, anyways.)

Everything else was through faults of Ino's own.

Happy as she was, she still found herself awake in the bed she shared with Sasuke, wishing for his hands to be anywhere but beneath his pillow.

She was still visiting Shikamaru, though far less than she had before. Her visits now filled her with sadness, rather than guilt or frustration, in all the time that had passed. How pitiful it was, that she had to go to him to fill in the one lacking part in her life, and how base that lack was in the first place. She was almost growing bored with him, but not enough to stop.

She was therefore surprised by how upset she felt when Shikamaru told her, in so many words, "It's been nice, but we're gonna have to stop doing this whole casual sex thing."