AN: Oh, wow, look what we have here. 😅😬 I'll spare you all (whoever is still keeping track, at least haha) the "this is why I haven't updated in five years" not-so-sob story, but just know that I've seen all of the new reviews, follows, and favourites ever since I went AWOL, and I still can't believe how lucky I am to have people out there who take interest in what is essentially my Make-A-Wish fulfillment for my 12-year old self's favourite crack ship before she even knew what crack, or ship, or those two words combined together, even meant. I never once forgot about this story, and how I promised that I would see it all the way through, the good chapters and the bad (this one might be especially bad as I haven't really written much since my ~hiatus~, and am thus very out of practice/might just generally be a much worse writer now lol). Thank you to all the kind comments and the continued support despite the inactivity - you guys were definitely a huge part in remotivating me to dust off this old(ish) thing, and I hope all of you have been doing well/recovering from the pandemic, and that the reality of an update doesn't pale too much in comparison to any expectations of this fic that have built up over the years haha!

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The swelling in her hands is gradually getting worse.

It's a common symptom of your condition, Shizune had explained during her latest check-up, the fifth in two weeks, Shikamaru shadowing outside her examination room in faithful vigil, like he had the four times before it. But it's also just what happens when you're in the third trimester of your pregnancy. Her fingers, when she injects a large-bore needle into Kurenai's deltoid, are slim in comparison, dexterous with their movements as she plunges the contents of the syringe one painful mililitre at a time. I wouldn't worry too much about it for now. Barring the calluses of battle, the chewed out nubs of her fingernails, they are also markedly bare.

Kurenai rubs a thumb against her wedding ring now, the fold of skin bulging over the ever-tightening band; ignores the resistance she meets, the way it doesn't twist around her finger like it easily had in the past.

"I told you that you don't need to do those, Kurenai-sensei!" Ino trills from atop the step-stool she had brought over from her family's flower shop, along with what seems to be their entire backroom supply of red peonies, now hanging down Kurenai's apartment window in cascading garlands, in delicate wreaths that spell out, Okaeri. Kiba had warned her, but it is Ino who had sprung into action, showing up at Kurenai's front door unbidden, insisting that she must have a housewarming party along with a baby shower, don't be silly, Kurenai-sensei, and proceeding to micromanage every little detail about it with the type of single-minded fixation that, Kurenai knows all too well, usually belied something else. "Shikamaru! Why're you letting Kurenai-sensei fold the lanterns? I thought you said you'd volunteer to do them!"

Shikamaru heaves a loud and lengthy sigh beside Kurenai, pokes a pinky into his ear canal before rousing from his napping position against the armrest of Kurenai's couch. It had been an early appointment, but Shikamaru was at her apartment lobby before dawn, punctual for it as always, stubbing out the butt of his cigarette with the heels of his sandals as if Kurenai couldn't smell it from her window sill; a charming caricature, if done in earnest, but still pales to Asuma's memory.

"You volunteered me to do them," he grumbles mulishly, but grabs at the remaining pile of scored rice paper on the coffee table, just a few ways off from where Kurenai has elevated her bloated feet. "And besides, she's on bedrest, not invalid. What's the big deal if she does a few?"

"Did I ever say she was?" Ino rebuts before Kurenai can speak her piece; hands on her hips, slender on slender, sunlight glinting against the metal stud on her earlobe as she whips around to glare at Shikamaru, and the words on Kurenai's tongue turn into froth. "And the big deal is that we're the ones supposed to be holding this party for her and she's over there doing all the work!"

"Again: you're the one who decided to hold this troublesome party all by yourself. The rest of us were just roped into it against our will, as per usual," Shikamaru corrects, brows furrowed in consternation at the lantern he's assembling until it rips in his hands, and then he's sighing again, rising from his seat to amble towards the window. "I need a smo—"

"Shikamaru," Ino interjects sharply, a fruitless attempt at censorship. The air between the three of them stales, their stricken bodies forming apices of a triangle like some sort of occult summoning ritual for a ghost they all share. The same way Asuma had gone, she had been told. Kurenai clenches her fists so hard she feels as if the fluid in her fingers will weep.

"There's a designated smoking area out back," Kurenai finally supplies after a few more moments of sordid silence, tone carefully light. Their teamwork truly is impeccable; even the way they handle her grief is streamlined, down to the excessive, misguided fussing.

"Right." Shikamaru nods tersely at neither one of them, floats out to the front door, and the spell breaks, their ghost temporarily exorcised. "I'll finish the rest of the lanterns when I come back."

"He's just a little stressed," Ino explains on Shikamaru's behalf once his footsteps disappear down the hallway, turning back to her handiwork as if she hadn't looked away. "He's just been made proxy general for Gaara-san's division, and you know how he gets about responsibility."

Under the surface waspishness, Kurenai can hear how proud Ino actually is of Shikamaru for accomplishing such a feat. She doesn't know whether to find it sweet or sickening, whether she should feel it for him herself. "And you? How are you doing?"

"Me?" Ino whips back around, doe-eyed, and it strikes Kurenai how adept Ino has gotten at weaponizing her beauty. "What do you mean?"

Beauty will not be of much use in a war of this scale. "Shikamaru tells me your father's started seeing to your personal training," Kurenai says, begging silent forgiveness for divulging what he had shared to her in confidence, in concern. "And that any other spare moment you have's dedicated to training with Shizune and the med corps."

Ino turns her back on Kurenai once again, shoulders squared as she weaves dainty little braids of her flowers, as she speaks from a field of dreams, "Of course, sensei! Who else is gonna stop those two knuckleheads from running headfirst into trouble?" She tips her neck back so Kurenai can see the half-moon of her face, partly luminous from her smile and the rest of it, concealed. "I promised."

Asuma didn't mean to make you do that, Kurenai almost says, but bites back on it like a scream. Asuma didn't mean to die, is what it all boils down to in the end, but who is she to speak for him, marriage be damned, when he still did, when after all the fine print has been sifted and milled, it's the job they've been hired to complete? "You don't have to try so hard."

"I can take it," Ino says, face as white as porcelain but as defiant as carbon, before it scrunches up, for just a blonde wisp of a second, in fear. "It's not enough."

Kurenai smiles; thin as the sheet of rice paper in her hands, unyielding as the stalk of its seed, knows what it's like to feel nothing but weak. "It rarely ever is."

"Will you help me, then?" Ino asks, back to syrupy sweet, but to Kurenai, it almost sounds to be a plea. "I've been thinking—I have every base covered except for my genjutsu, and with my clan's mind techniques—and you wouldn't even have to stand up for it, if that'd be a problem for you or Mirai's health, which is great!—so maybe..."

There was a time when the last of their batch of students—the ones remaining, at least, the ones who hadn't yet gone, or would ever go, on to learn from masters as legendary as the Sannin—had finally been promoted to chuunin, when Asuma had started training Shikamaru a little more closely, favouring him a little more obviously, that he had asked Kurenai to take Ino under her tutelage, citing womanly reasons as his winning pitch. Kurenai had been so offended that she had refused to speak to him for two weeks; primarily for the misogyny, partly because he knew that she had already been so busy with exam proctoring, but also in part, when she had really gotten down to the bottom of it—when she had allowed herself the briefest moment to be ruled by her emotions, and not by her practiced rationality—because it bothered her that Asuma no longer viewed Ino as a child, but as another woman worth paying attention to, whatever kind it may be.

Back then, it had been the thought that Asuma would cheat—for as sick as it was, for as much of a betrayal as it would have been of his trust, he had garnered quite the reputation during his stint with the Twelve Guardians, and she already knew far too many good men who resorted to bad vices when it was time for the next kill; Asuma already had the smoking.

Now—for as good of a fit as it would be, for as much as it had always made sense—all she can think about is failing, the possibility of losing another one of Asuma's kids, and wishing that she could get back those two lost weeks she had taken him for granted.

"What'd I miss?" Shikamaru walks back in before Ino can finish, before Kurenai can even reel, takes his seat back with a raised brow, an aborted grunt. When he passes Ino by and Kurenai gets a whiff of his clothes, he only smells of nicotine gum and cedar sticks. "More boring woman talk?"

"Shut up and fold, you sexist pig," Ino says, but she's smiling at him like she's never been prouder, like that brief moment of honesty was just another Yamanaka mind trick, and Shikamaru mutters something low akin to your name literally means pig, but he finally bashfully does as he's told as Ino comes full circle on another wreath.

Kurenai is immune to mind tricks, to the wiles of a woman. Beauty will not be of much use in a war of this scale, nor any genjutsu she can teach; she can only hope to God, like she always does, that love will.

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In the wake of Ino's chilling request, of her housewarming turned cold, she sits on the midmost rung of Ino's step-stool as she washes the dishes, elbow-deep in soap suds and scalding hot water. Where once she had used to take off her ring and lay it down on the counter in fear of dropping it down the drain, now it remains on her third finger, moored and intact.

(Until death do them part.)

"Looks like I missed the party." Immersed as she is in her task, her trance, her kunoichi's reflex still kicks in, throws the santoku she'd just stowed away on her knife block at the direction of her intruder's voice.

It is no intruder, not so much, nowadays: just Kakashi, head peeking through her wilting curtain of peonies, expertly and effortlessly catching the tip of her knife in between his first and second fingers. "Or maybe not," he adds unhelpfully.

"I could've injured you," Kurenai says heatedly, but mostly out of principle rather than panic; Kakashi is unharmed, as is regrettably evident, and would require much more skill to deal even one small nick.

"Luckily, you didn't." He pats himself down like he's actively checking for damage, more salt to the gaping wound in her self-esteem, pivots every which way before hopping inside her apartment, landing loud and ungainly on her hardwood floor. "Although I was expecting a little more courtesy from the guest of honour." She almost scolds him for it, but stops herself in time; she is no longer living above Sugimoto-san's apartment, no longer bound by his stringent code of conduct; no longer bound by much of anything, ring on her third finger or not, because what is a marriage if not another contract, contingent on the fulfillment—or infringement—of its own terms and conditions?

(Until death do them part.)

"Courtesy would also dictate that you knock and enter through the front door, and that you actually come on time for once." She returns to her washing, fixates on the stubborn stain of turmeric lining the bowl they had used for the curry. It had been part of a set of dinnerware gifted to her by the Sandaime, a year before he had passed—the finest ceramics from Chori no Sato for one of Konohagakure no Sato's finest kunoichi, he had said in that booming voice of his, guffawing in a laugh that sounded more similar to Asuma's than Asuma would've cared to admit, when she, flustered from the Hokage's, at the time, baffling bout of generosity, had fumbled all but one of the Hanasaki plates, dropping them right at his bare feet. Not to worry, child, not to worry! According to superstition, that just means a happy, lasting union between you and your future husband! Whoever that may be, of course...

For once, maybe far too late, Kurenai shares Asuma's disdain for his father's mistakes.

"I wasn't exactly formally invited, so I'd say formal rules don't apply, in my case," She doesn't even notice that Kakashi has walked the few steps towards her kitchen until he's standing right beside her, placing the knife she had thrown at him back on its block—a personal purchase, made on her way back home from her first out of however many appointments she's had with Shizune, right after the realization that she was going to become a mother and yet still hadn't learned how to cook serviceably. "Anyhow. You off bedrest?"

Beneath the water, the twinge in her stiff, swollen hands acts as another tiresome reminder. "No. Just cleaning up a bit."

"Hm." He bends at the waist, sniffs at the plate of leftover food she's compiled to throw into the compost. "None of our eager little students could do it?"

They are neither hers nor his; she is effectively retired, her license to lead merely another broken contract, while his students had never showed up: Sakura, far too busy, mobilizing her own group of med-nin mentees; Naruto, too far away, training for a threat that grows ever closer with each passing day; Sasuke, too far gone to expect anything from, and yet in some parts, a whole war had been declared on the slim chance that he can be brought back home.

(Until death do them part.)

"They're Asuma's students," is all she says, pumps a few more beads of soap onto her dish sponge, scrubs harder at the blemished porcelain.

"Unless you signed something binding against it," Kakashi sets-up, turns around to lean back against the sink counter, crosses his arms over his flak-padded chest before delivering the final blow, "By law of marriage, that makes them yours, too."

There's an audible crash, a splatter of suds, but Kurenai doesn't register what's happened until the dull pressure in her third finger turns into a sharp sting, until the brown-yellow murk of the dishwater turns red-orange with her blood.

(Until death—)

"Kurenai." Half-blind, she dunks her hand back into the water, paws at the base of the sink for each broken shard of glass, plucking them out, one by one, like weeds from a flower pot. "Kurenai." Hanasaki ceramics, once broken, can never be mended. That had been the next thing Hiruzen had said to her; it had also been the last. It's a funny thing: she remembers Hiruzen's last words, her father's last words, the aggregate noises of all the nameless, faceless men she has had to see die by her hands—husbands themselves, fathers themselves—but not Asuma's. "Kurenai."

"What?" she asks, half-deaf. All that remains of Asuma are particles, things already lost; the crystal fibres of this bowl, the cinders of their marriage certificate, the ashes of his corpse; Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji, too gentle to come out from such a cruel war still whole. Even Mirai, inside of her, is still but a cluster of cells; not yet fully formed, not yet enough to fill the gaping, human-sized void that Asuma had left in her soul. "I have to—"

"You're bleeding," Kakashi—or someone who resembles his voice, Kurenai can't rightly tell—says, ginger as the fingers he circles around her wrist to pull her wounded hand from out the water, to sit her down at the dining table and apply direct pressure to the laceration. It runs from the distal knuckle of her third finger to the top edge of her ring, oozing blood and serosal fluid that stains the palm of Kakashi's already wet glove an even darker shade of blue. Kurenai takes one look at Kakashi taking one look at it, braces herself for his pity, his sensibility, his overdue irascibility—

—but it never comes. "You got a first aid kit here?" Kakashi asks. When all she does, all she can give, is a terse shake of her head, Kakashi reaches his free hand behind his back, takes out what appears to be a nondescript medical pack, if not for the katsumori she sees sewed onto the inner lining of the pouch when Kakashi pries it open on the counter, the rust stains surrounding the punctures where a line of fresh suture needles are lodged into the worn linen.

Kurenai remembers even less of Rin, but she remembers this: her kind heart, her sunny disposition, her natural affinity for the medical arts; how she had been in love with Kakashi as far back as Kurenai had been in love with Asuma, how she would have loved him as long as, maybe, if she had been given the chance.

(Until—)

"How do you..." Kurenai stops short, bites down at her lip from the first prick of needle through her skin, the stab of guilt in her gut when she reminds herself of the circumstances of Rin's death, when Kakashi looks up from his stitching, just the slightest tilt of his neck, just enough for her to see the half of his eye that's shrouded in darkness underneath his hitai-ate, as well as the other half that gazes at her blankly, filmed over with another kind of darkness entirely. "Nothing. Go on."

Kakashi stares at her for a beat longer before bowing his head once more, threads the needle through the opposite edge of her wound. "Pain's okay?"

She's dead. It had been Raidou who had told them about what happened, fresh off his first mission as a newly minted jounin: to serve as reinforcement for Kakashi's reckless solo pursuit of Rin. Kakashi—she took Kakashi's Chidori to the chest. Killed her and the bijuu inside her on the spot.

Asuma had been shell-shocked, at a loss for words, while she had been full of them, demanding retribution, Kakashi's or otherwise, because even if she and Rin hadn't truly been friends, just a month before that all the young kunoichi had been gathered to start training on medical ninjutsu, and Rin had been the only one not to sneer at her for neglecting her duty and refusing to go to a single class.

How could he do that when she'd loved him her whole life? Raidou had just rubbed at the scar on his face, the way he always did whenever he complained about being stuck in a team with naïve little kids, whenever he was remembering his own dead brother, and his voice had been calm as it always was but it had shut her up all the same. What choice did he have? All I know's that the way he looked right after we'd recovered him...it's like it'd killed him on the spot, too.

"Yeah," she says, willing her finger to curl inwards and managing a spastic twitch, "It's mostly just numb."

"Ah." Kakashi knots off another stitch with near surgical precision, undeterred. "You should probably get it checked by a medic, then. Make sure there's no nerve damage."

"It's not nerve damage," she declares immediately, but Kakashi has a near surgical understanding of most things, too, so Kurenai knows he knows exactly what it is. "It's the ring. My finger's been like that for days."

A defunct wedding band, a daily offering at the cenotaph, a decomposing scrap of gifted leather—they were all just different tokens of the same futile attempts at manifesting their fading spirits.

She braces herself once more for his reproof, maybe even dares him to. Say it. Say I'm pathetic, say I'm self-pitying, say— "Asuma wasn't originally gonna buy you a ring, you know."

"What?" she says, jarred by the revelation, by Kakashi referring to Asuma by name after a whole day of everyone else omitting it in her presence. "What do you mean?"

A spark of electricity ignites at Kakashi's fingertip, zapping the vicryl thread in two. "He thought you wouldn't wear it. Said you'd find it a nuisance."

At the time of his proposal, she did; her sandals soggy from the swamp water, arm wraps bunched up in a heap to act as kindling for their dwindling fire, nostrils burning from all that damned mist. "What changed his mind?"

"Me. Kind of," Kakashi shrugs, gaze focused on weaving another piece of thread through the eye of the needle. "I agreed with him. A ring would just impede the speed of your hand seals. Real impractical." He misses a fifth time, expels a shallow sigh of resignation through his mask. "He just laughed at me and said that since I'm the least romantic person he knows, he's gonna do the exact opposite of what I tell him."

You've never been the best at romantic gestures, but this really takes the cake, she had told Asuma that day, before storming off to her tent, flushed and filthy and ferocious and freaked. "So that's what you meant when you said you helped him pick out a ring."

"I gave him my options, which he then used as process of elimination to pick this." He taps at the ring with the tip of his needle, tungsten against steel, drags it across with enough force for Kurenai to feel the pressure of it, but not a single scratch is made.

I don't think there's anything in the world that scares me to shit more than marriage, Asuma had said, after he had given her just the right amount of time and space she needed to cool down and think, because he knew her and she knew him and that was their routine, and Kurenai had never needed a marriage when they were already wed in all the ways that mattered, in everything but name. All that worrying about you dying before me, or you finally figuring out somewhere down the line that you deserve better than my ugly ass and leaving me high and dry with twenty years' worth of alimony. Except—except that when Asuma had wrapped his arms around her from behind, pulled her into him so that they were back to chest—his sharp angles moulding onto every soft curve of her body, the familiar tang of blood and cigarettes infiltrating the space in her lungs that the fog somehow hadn't—she had wanted it. But if there was ever anyone tough enough to power through it...

In spite of wanting to prove her father wrong, in spite of her losses, in spite of her already binding commitment to the people of her village—she had wanted it.

It's you. From that day forward.

It's us. Until death do them part.

"How do you do it?" Kurenai finally voices the question that has been curdling in her throat for the last half-hour, the last half-day, the last half-year. "All these memories, these reminders...how do you hold onto all of them just so you won't forget, and not just want to..."

"Die?" Kakashi supplies, makes up for her gall, her weakness, and then exposes his own, "I still do, sometimes."

The way he looked right after we'd recovered him...it's like it'd killed him on the spot, too. "Only sometimes?" Kurenai asks quietly, drops her gaze down to the stitches on her finger in shame, stifles the sudden urge to rip it all out and vivisect herself from where she's dehisced and flay her skin raw until all her viscera is out in the open for the elements to consume.

"It used to be all the time." As if sensing her intentions, Kakashi produces a small flame from the base of his thumb and forefinger that travels down towards the needle still in his grip, sterilizing it for his immediate continuation on the remaining half of her cut that still needs to be stitched. "Every second. Every minute. Every hour, for twenty four hours. And then again, the next day. Rinse and repeat." Kurenai watches him sew off another section of skin following the same running pattern as before, transfixes herself on the repetition of it all. "That's what the ANBU was for me, to an extent."

Watching Kakashi...it's as though he's in a hurry to die, she had plead to the Third, a bleeding heart for a cause she could hardly even say she understood; a year later, and she had proven her ignorance tenfold. They were my classmates, too, and I grieved as well, but he's got to get over it.

Now, she does. "Maybe we were wrong to take that away from you," she muses, trails a trickle of drainage leaking out of her wound, more of her blood to pile on to Kakashi's already blood-soaked hands. "Maybe it's also what gave you purpose."

"A pretty hollow one." Her blood, and a hundred needless others'. "But yeah. I guess it did for a while."

He ties a final knot, severs the thread, wets a piece of gauze with a small bottle of saline. Her finger remains grossly distended, worsened by inflammation, but the wound has closed up completely, a file of black stitches holding it neatly together; proficiency beyond first aid.

After a lifetime of dismembering bodies, cracking chests open with his Lightning Blade, it figures that Kakashi, too, would be skilled in piecing flesh back together again. "And now?"

"Now?" He wipes the length of her finger down with the gauze, pats it dry with another clean piece. "Finish cleaning your hand up, I guess. Maybe eat whatever food you have left. Walk back home when I'm done."

It figures, too, that someone who has been as serious as Kakashi in his youth, who's seen the things he's seen, would be as glib as he is now. "Such great purpose."

"Does it have to be?" Kakashi asks, wraps her finger in an elastic bandage, not too tight or too loose; not enough to leave it agape, but just enough to let her wound breathe. "You said it yourself."

Not enough to thrive, but just enough to get by. "I suppose it doesn't."

If only she had any; feel the pain of the needle in full, centre on it like the trigger she needs to escape a powerful genjutsu; join everyone else in the war, a motive greater than herself, the outlet Kakashi had for his grief in the ANBU. "I don't think I..." Mentor another student, one of Asuma's prized kids, teach her all of her techniques, only to send her off to her near-certain death, willingly and prematurely. "Oh."

Carry a child—their child—to term, the kick of a foot fluttering inside her womb.

Kakashi stills. "Something wrong?"

She supposes it doesn't, but she has the greatest purpose of all. "Mirai." How could she forget? "She hasn't—I haven't felt her kick in a couple of hours, but she did just now."

"Ah." Kakashi looks to be perplexed, for once seeming not to know what to do with a new piece of information. "Is that...unusual?"

A noise bubbles up from her throat despite herself, half-laugh and half-cry. "It's how she usually is. Shizune said that as long as she moves ten times in two hours at least once a day and follows the same pattern of movement every day, it's okay," she explains, lays her intact hand over the area where Mirai's landed another jab to her inner musculature, imagines it to be an expression of anger at being neglected, when Kurenai had sworn never to, when she hasn't even been born. Kami, what have I become? "Would you like to feel it?"

"Er," Kakashi articulates, very clearly angling for a retreat, but perhaps he sees something in her eyes—her desperation, maybe, or her endless self-loathing—and so he says, "Alright." He lets her mended hand go, slots the needle back neatly into its encasing, smearing blood across the cotton lining, new rust against old. "Should I...?"

She stands up instead, waddles around the table until she's standing right in front of him, the top of her stomach in line with his head. "Here—" When she reaches for his hand, he draws it back, but only to remove his dirty glove, and then he's looking up at her again, uncertain but acquiescing. "Place it right where I'm holding—there." The moment Kakashi's hand makes contact with the side of her belly, Mirai kicks again, and Kurenai can't help the smile that blooms on her face when she sees Kakashi's eye widen in that hallmark mixture of wonder and fear. "Weird, isn't it?"

"If you mean terrifying, then yes," Kakashi says, back to inexpressive, but he doesn't pull away, even moves his hand across her stomach to follow Mirai's motions. "She could knock out Gai in Sixth Gate with that punch."

Kurenai laughs. "Maybe she'll replace you as his rival."

"If only I were to be so lucky," Kakashi monotones, but the both of them know that he says it more out of condition than actual belief: Gai is the closest thing to a brother Kakashi will ever have, and they have long denounced good fortune when they had decided to become shinobi. "Can she hear us speak?"

"Shizune said she should be able to distinguish between voices by now, actually," she says, welcoming the change in topic, the distraction. "You can say something to her, if you want."

She expects him to pose more resistance, having had already humoured her once, but he extends her another indulgence, doesn't hesitate to bend his head closer, cups the hand he's been resting on her belly over his mouth like a local town gossip. "Uh, hey, kid. It's Uncle Kakashi," he says, supplemented by a light cringe shortly thereafter. "On second thought, don't call me that. Just Kakashi will do." A ripple of movement protrudes by his mouth, visible through the thin material of her dress; Mirai, head turning to the sound of his voice. "Anyways. You probably shouldn't listen to me if you wanna turn out alright." So does Kurenai's. "But I'm not worried. Your mom's tougher than she looks."

If there was ever anyone tough enough to power through it, it's you. The distraction fades, leaving her in the same state of drowning as before, but instead of breathing in water, sinking to the bottom—

It's us.

—she holds on to the lifeline she's thrown. "I hate to keep doing this to you," Kurenai starts weakly, but she meets Kakashi's gaze eye for eye, resolute. "But I need to ask you another favour."

There is another question altogether in Kakashi's answering silence, in his laden stare, but all he asks of her is, "What is it?"

"Cut it off," Kurenai says, rests her left hand over her stomach, the curve of Mirai's head nuzzled against her palm; the two of them, together, keeping each other afloat. "The—my ring. I need you to cut it off."

The two of them, and— "The only way I can do that is with my Lightning Cutter," Kakashi says, hand dropping back to his side as his head lifts further. "It'd probably be better for a medic to do it."

"It's late, and I've had enough hospital visits for now, honestly," she smiles sardonically, means it a little more when she says, "And since you helped pick it, I thought it made sense for you to see it go."

His good eye pierces through her, feels it to the back of her skull. He is Kakashi of the Sharingan, the Man of A Thousand Jutsus—a man made for war, or a war-made man, she could never truly discern—but more often, more recently, Kurenai thinks that that is his greatest weapon. "It might hurt you."

She doesn't miss the way he phrases his warning, it, not I; like it is not only the physical repercussions of it that he is alarmed about, like the pain would harm her in more ways than one.

"I trust you." It is not the right answer to something that is not even a question, but it is just as much the truth as any other response she could give.

Kakashi stares at her for a beat longer, and then no more. "Guess I did say I was gonna finish cleaning your hand up." He offers her his hand, palm up, a flicker of static right at his fingertips. "You ready?"

From Kurenai's vantage point, he looks to be almost kneeling. "Ready."

"Alright." She takes both; his hand, and a leap of faith into the parts unknown. "Here we go."

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Her next appointment yields good news; the first in what feels like a month, that feels like a year, that feels like a lifetime too long.

"Your blood pressure and sugar's been stable and well-controlled for the last month, and your ultrasound shows no signs of fetal distress," Shizune says, eyes alight, dialing up in wattage as she ticks through a column of numbers that may as well be ancient scripture to Kurenai; all that matters is that it means— "Looks like our little Mirai's gonna turn out alright."

Just as Kakashi predicted; like he always does, nowadays, as has always been the case. Kurenai would be aggravated if she weren't so engulfed by cresting waves of relief. "Everything's back to normal?"

"I mean, you'll still have to watch what you eat," Shizune's quick to caution, scratches the back of her neck with the ballpoint end of her pen, leaves marks in the same colour as the dark circles around her eyes. Kurenai wishes she could give Shizune the hours she doesn't sleep, donate it like blood, would be of much better use in her healing hands than Kurenai's haunted house, her scabbed over skin. "But otherwise, yes. A perfectly normal baby, with a perfectly normal scheduled delivery."

She does what she can; tells Shikamaru of Shizune's final assessment, her confirmed birthing plan; laughs at the greenish hue of his skin as she describes it in detail, softens when she catches him trying to stamp down a growing rarity of a smile; gives him a copy of Mirai's ultrasound photo, the one where her nose curves out before sloping down—just like Asuma's, she says, and asks for only one thing back.

"I was just about to pass by the flower shop anyways," Shikamaru shrugs, slides the picture inside his left vest pocket, his new heart just as much as it is Kurenai's, "What'd you want me to tell Ino?"

"Tell her to meet me on the rooftop of my apartment tomorrow at dawn if she's serious," she says, the drying pigment on her lips fire-red with her smile. "And that I'll be a much tougher teacher than Asuma ever was, so she better come right or not at all."

Mirai is her heart, but she has purpose beyond that: to see to it that all of their children—men and women themselves, dedicated shinobi themselves—have a home to come back to, even if they can't.

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AN: Part of the writer's block that caused me to intentionally shelf this fic for a few days, that then unintentionally became a few years lol, was the conundrum I had in trying to make sense of what exactly are the rules/limits of medical ninjutsu and genjutsu, as I of course wanted to incorporate it not only in this chapter, but in future ones as well. Five years later, I've come to these conclusions:

1) As evidenced by the Uchiha and just the general power scaling in canon, [Cady Heron voice] the limit does not exist. So I will make my own rules and limits haha (hopefully with a little more realism and restraint than Kishimoto though lol).

2) Like I mentioned, this is ultimately a story about Kakashi and Kurenai's relationship (and how I want them to actually have one lol), and so please forgive me if the world-building/action/plot turns out to be quite trite. 12 year old me just wanted Kakashi and Kurenai to kiss and raise Mirai together lol, but they have a long way to go before that 😂

Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! I promise there'll be a bit less going around in circles and "woe is me" and more forward movement in the upcoming ones (whenever I end up updating again haha).