2nd warning that this fic is a bit strange. nonhuman pregnancy, though not described in detail, is a theme. as someone who usually hates pregnancy/birth in fics, I wanted to be sure to give y'all enough notice, lol.

enjoy, if you're so inclined. xox

創世記

To say that Sakura had been the woman of the woods for as long as she could remember was not quite accurate.

She remembered things from before the way it seemed the earth remembered the seasons. There were flashes of people's faces and voices, some vague and unclear like the first hint of a spring day after a long winter, the sun's rays a mere whisper of warmth along her face. Others still were overwhelming emotion, like a typhoon battering the countryside in late summer before the calm of autumn has a chance to settle in. In both cases, it was rare that the flowers could not recover. She had always tried to do the same.

At some point, she had taken up residence deep in a forest she recognized in fragments only, the way a dream convinced its dreamer that their locations were tangible places recalled from deep memory. It was strange to think back on those days, to remember the confusion and the fogginess in her brain, as at-home and settled as she'd become since. She could wander between the trees for days now and not be lost, but she was sometimes startled by her memory of when its familiarity had still been new. Back in that first week, after her many attempts at releasing any illusion failed, she found a reliable source of water suitable for consumption and would strike at the trunks of trees with a precise blow of her chakra-infused hand. In some punches see would the sparks of memories: a darkened sky, the cacophonous uproar that was unmistakably a battle, and a flurry of people darting all around her, dressed in the same deep-green jacket she'd been wearing in her earliest memory of this place. A moon red as blood, dread threatening to overtake her as she stared up at it in horrid awe.

She'd learned quickly, though, as she split the fallen logs into more appropriate pieces from which to build a short-term shelter, not to chase the memories in search of any clarity or understanding. Like waking from a dream, the more she tried to focus on them, the further out of reach they became.

However it was she ended up here, she was sure that it had not been under good circumstances. Her chakra, no matter how hard she tried, never seemed to settle—like it was permanently elevated, as if she'd been trapped in stasis while her reserves had been unleashed and flooding her system. When she slipped and sliced her hand along a particularly nasty splinter, she noted with curiosity that the wound closed on its own only moments after it'd split her skin apart. She remembered just enough of her life that she knew with confidence that she was a healer, and that healing never came without conscious action. That her body had reacted without her input gave her pause.

Although she'd searched for signs of civilization until well after dark on the first day, it seemed she was alone here in the forest. People began to trickle by, though, here or there, every few days—all of them dressed in traditional attire. They rarely stayed for long, always just passing through on their way to or from somewhere far more interesting. The first of them had twisted his ankle sometime while traveling, and it had healed in the wrong place. In exchange for re-breaking it and healing it properly within seconds, he'd showed his gratitude by offering his single teacup to her.

It was the first time she realized she had absolutely no resources other than what had, presumably, been on her person when she was whisked away here. The pouches that'd been strapped to her lower back and to her right leg contained a multitude of weapons that gave her both a heightened sense of safety and vulnerability—she recognized she should have backup, knew somehow that she hadn't trusted her combat skills in the past without relying on others.

That had made her grind her teeth so hard her jaw ached. She had no choice but to survive now, and it seemed she had to do it alone. Still she scanned the faces of every passing traveler, whether they required healing (not many did, in the beginning), or were simply thankful for a place to rest for the night. And it was always more of the same: those who had coin would part with one or two, but those without would part with other things. A bolt of cloth here, a pair of zori there. A small, travel-friendly teapot that she could actually brew with, and, to her surprise and despite her insistence that she couldn't take such a thing, a nomadic merchant generously gave her a large wok he'd had strapped to his back when he first arrived. She was getting tired of cooking her hunted and foraged meals out in the open, exposed.

With each passing person, she would ask after her surroundings.

You're in Fire County, girl, said the first man, looking at her like she'd grown a second head. But that couldn't have been right, because the trees, staggeringly tall as they were, were simply not big enough. She definitely remembered the colossal trees in their woods, and that was what prompted her to ask the next visitors—two adult sisters—how far the Village Hidden by Leaves was on foot. The hitai-ate securing her hair when she'd first arrived read shinobi alone, so surely someone in Konoha could either identify or help her.

The what? asked the younger, looking to the elder.

We've certainly never heard of such a place, she said. And we're decently well-traveled, ma'am.

Sakura had furrowed her brows, but bowed and thanked them just the same. They'd left her with a few rugged robes to wear, and she was as grateful as if they'd been woven from the finest silk. They helped her blend in, which she needed for her next plan.

Every morning she woke at dawn, and though she'd stalked the grounds nearest to her little hut for food and medicinal herbs, she hadn't gone far, not yet. She began to comb the woods, circling further and further out each day, memorizing the way to and from in as many ways as she could think. She found her sense of direction as well-developed as her chakra control, and often relied on what plants were growing where to gauge her proximity to the freshwater stream near her makeshift home. Her stamina was also remarkable, for rarely did she tire from her excursions. Whoever she'd been before she ended up here, she was certainly suited for survival.

There was a certain line, though, nothing real that she could see, but a feeling deep in her mind all along the circumference of the area just a few meters shy of ten kilometers, if her approximation was correct. It struck a sense of dread deep in her throat, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling as if someone had leaned close into her ear and whispered, Go no further.

She did not, indeed.

Towards the end of her first month, she had accumulated a small collection of essentials. As her monthlies began to twist her lower stomach in unpleasant cramps (and, strangely enough, they too were eased by the aura of healing that seemed to surround her), she shook off the fatigue as best she could and set to work on crafting a small, sunken hearth in the center of her tiny wooden home. With her lack of progress in finding either her own memories or a most logical way forward, it had gone from a short- to long-term shelter. She had been so distracted with this project that it took a few days before she had the realization that she was not bleeding as she should be. It was enough to send her into a panic, racking her brain for any recollection of sleeping with anyone, but came up empty. In fact, she was sure she was still a virgin, and was a little annoyed at the thought. She took that to mean it must be the truth.

Late on the first night she noticed her distinct lack of a period, she sat in a meditative position before the lit hearth. She called upon her expert precision and channeled her chakra through her lower stomach and surrounded her womb with it. There did not appear to be either anything wrong, or anything growing inside it, as far as signatures or heartbeats went. She pursed her lips in thought, skimming her hands along the curves of her breasts. They felt slightly swollen and sore, but that could have just been what her cycle did to her normally that she couldn't remember. Further down her body, her hands came to rest on her stomach.

It protruded only a bit, and was radiating healing energy that calmed her significantly. She decided that should definitely not be the case, as being pregnant in her situation could easily be a death sentence over which she had every right to be panicking. But just what was her situation, anyway? She wasn't necessarily lost in the woods, although that great anxiety she felt at the invisible perimeter was certainly worrying. And her amnesia was even more worrying, but she'd long since checked inside of her skull for brain injuries—all she'd found was perfection.

The days wore on, and she tried to carry on as normal. An elderly woman traveling with her young grandson had taken pity on her incessant cramps, and urged her all evening to return with them to their village. Sakura would be taken care of, the woman insisted, and well loved as their resident healer. But Sakura, of course, refused—instead, the woman left her with one of her spare kimono and obi, exquisite things to Sakura's eyes woven through with detailed embroidery that sparkled in the firelight. Wherever she had been before, it had certainly not been a lavish life.

It was past midnight on the seventh day since this strange phenomenon began. She could not find sleep, and so she stood and walked to the door of her little hut. Bracing her weight on the threshold, she crouched down to sit and swing her legs over the short, raised wood slats that formed a pathetic little porch and looked up at the sky. The moon was in its first stage and nowhere to be found, a smattering of stars and faraway galaxies sparkling through the foliage instead.

There was a sharp pain in her lower stomach, an odd sensation when immediately the healing chakra emanating from her closed it off entirely. She furrowed her brows, but when she felt something within her wriggle, they widened in panic.

She drew upon her forgotten past, knowing that somewhere at some time she'd helped deliver a baby or two, though that couldn't possibly be happening to her right now, of course. The entire time she prepared herself—leaning back, propping herself up on her elbows, parting her knees in a way that mortified whenever she thought back on it—she kept chanting, This isn't happening, over and over again in her mind. There was something there, something she hadn't felt or sensed before now. It couldn't be terribly big, and for a brief moment she wondered if it was some sort of tumor or horrible enemy jutsu.

Where the gestation had been short, the entire ordeal of expelling whatever it was had been minuscule by comparison. Sakura spared even herself the details whenever she recalled those days, her confusion and fear mingling with her utter disgust and even a bit of morbid fascination. In little more than a minute since that first prick of pain, with little more than a shallow clench of her abdominals and a slick sensation between her legs, it was over.

Despite her memory loss, there were some things she knew with absolute certainty. The boy she'd been in love with for years had black hair and black eyes. He hadn't liked her much, and that knowledge had burned a hole right through her heart and drove her to work harder than ever before. Both of her best friends were blonde, but one was a boy who loved freely and the other was a girl who loved with a bit more judgment. They were both loud, though, drawing attention wherever they went, and so vibrant that even now Sakura could feel the warmth of them. She'd had the privilege of having two mentors: one was old, she thought, with grey hair and tired eyes, and the other was young—also blonde, funnily enough. On their foreheads was the same diamond-shaped yin seal, and their hands were suited for killing as much as they were for mending. On that note, she also knew that wounds, no matter her skill in healing, should not close up without her conscious effort.

And wherever she'd come from, a menstrual cycle did not end with giving birth to slugs.

She shot up in a flash, all of her pain erased—or maybe it was forgotten. The darkness in the single room had been subtly cast away, for there on the floor was a slug glowing green and heavenly. She cocked her head, studying it from a distance she felt was safe, but bit by bit she leaned forward, drawn in by an intense urge to observe and theorize. It was white with deep blue stripes marking its sides and forehead, and then she was struck by that overwhelming feeling of comfort and familiarity.

Sakura felt a prominent tug in her heart. She knew this creature somehow, was connected to it by more than this absurd mimicry of motherhood. The slug's stalks swayed as if in response to her appraisal, and then she was struck with the revelation that a cluttered, wooden shack was no place for such an animal.

She took both of her hands and scooped up the slug with ease. It was somehow both sticky and slimy, but she had been prepared for that, at least. She got to her feet and took the few steps out into the night, the dewy grass wetting her feet beneath her as she sunk to her haunches to let the slug go.

It was as it began to slither out of her hands that she realized something curious: she could not sense its chakra signature inside her, because it shared her own exactly. It went off into the woods, and she followed its otherworldly glow with her eyes until it was well out of view. A bright flash, quick as lightning, shot up in the distance, illuminating the undersides of the tree cover so piercingly it was like a moment of daylight.

When she wandered into that same area the next morning, she found it so covered with new growth it was hardly recognizable. Pungent floral scents were heavy in the humid dawn air, vibrant reds and yellows and blues sprung up all around her, thick moss and tall wildgrass underfoot. Even the trunks of the trees seemed wider, thicker than they were before.

Her life carried on, as it was wont to do. At first, she'd chalked the whole thing up to some sort of fever dream or hallucination. For good measure, she brought her hands into a dispelling seal and commanded any illusion to release, but there was no reaction. She'd known it'd all been real, though, by the way her breasts ached. She knew how this should go, that if her offspring (she refused to think of it as a child) had been human, it would nurse and relieve the feeling. Her body's natural capacity for pregnancy, even if it had been the most unnatural circumstance she could conjure in her wildest imagination, must have been triggered in spite of how brief the whole thing lasted. Instead, she would stuff the neckline of her robes with cloth to soak the leaking milk, and rinse them nightly in the nearby stream. By all accounts, this should have lasted months—but it was only a few days before the well of her dried and their size returned to its normal, smaller state (and she wasn't sure if she was upset about that or not).

All the next month, she was bracing herself for a repeat of the same, and was relatively unsurprised when her suspicions proved correct. The panic and the disgust were lessened, but only marginally; it still seemed impossible for her mere human brain to comprehend something like this. She knew that she must have been accustomed to bearing through plenty of strenuous circumstances, but weird slug-birth didn't seem to be among them. Prepared this time for the awkward ritual, she expelled the slug and found it to look exactly like the one before. When she gently took it in her hands, she took more time than she had before to study it, flooding it with a monitoring chakra.

She furrowed her brows and pursed her lips at the small, glowing creature. As she set it into the grass and watched it slither away, she only found herself even more confused. Its signature seemed like hers, and likely was to some extent—but it also felt distinctly othered, something nigh undetectable and all but thrumming with an immense power she could not understand.

A year went by before she could hardly blink.

More and more often, the travelers that passed by her healing hut were injured: bleeding, limping, bruised, lacerated. Bones cracked, limbs gored, bodies as broken as their minds. In a sickening turn of events, this felt so familiar to her that she was more at ease than ever. She soon learned that beyond the borders of her forest, a war was waging, and her name was spreading among the warring sides.

Well, not her name. She hadn't given that to anyone; she gathered that people talked about her in hushed whispers, gave vague instruction of where to find her.

Said you can pull a man back from the brink of death, said a man whose foot she had to amputate. Despite this, his spirits were high, her bedside manners banishing any lingering melancholy. They sure weren't kidding about that!

I'd heard you didn't pick sides, said another as she carefully stitched together a deep cut in his shoulder. Even so, I was nervous about coming here...but it's good to be somewhere my clan name doesn't matter, for once.

Three young men—they couldn't have been older than eighteen—dressed in samurai armor had insisted, as thanks for healing an infected gash across one of their chests, on helping her expand her little hut when she lightheartedly complained of sharing the one room with so many bloodied soldiers at once. They stayed for two weeks, the longest she'd gone with company since she arrived. Together they added a new space that would become her sleeping quarters, and one of them had even dedicated some time to carving out a shelf and setting it into the wall. Her space, once bland and built only for function, could now be described as quaint.

When they left, an acute sense of loneliness had seeped through her for days.

As even more people sought her out, she was careful to hide her condition. She was in enough danger by existing as a woman living alone, but she worried now and again of her belly ever becoming visible enough during her week-long pregnancies that someone would try to hold her for ransom, or take off with one of her slugs. She wasn't sure why the latter was the scarier scenario; perhaps because they were so much a part of her, imagining them in any pain at all troubled her deeply. Though they parted ways immediately, she had the vague sense that her offspring had become part of the forest, rather than simply living in it.

She was also careful to have any of her guests shuffled out the door and on their way every new moon of the month. There were a few exceptions, especially since those boys had helped her with her new quarters—sometimes the wounded would be sleeping so soundly (and once, one was comatose) that her monthly ritual went unnoticed. On those nights, she would tiptoe to the opening of her front door and let them out into the grass, then clean up and prepare to act as if nothing at all was amiss the next morning.

It had been an unusually quiet week on the evening a young man with the wildest, darkest hair she'd ever seen showed up, standing there with an unconscious boy in his arms. The sun was setting, but the woods seemed to grow thicker by the day; though the sky through the tall foliage was a hazy, muted orange, here on the forest floor she had to squint to see him with clarity in the encroaching dark. Fireflies danced around him here or there, and beyond him hundreds of thousands of them lit up the treetops in irregular intervals.

The man's eyes were tired set there in his pale face, but held a fear in them she'd grown accustomed to seeing but still hated to her core. Whoever was in his arms was dying, and there was no time to waste.

"Give him to me," she said at once, keeping her voice calm so as not to worry him as she held out her arms. The sleeves of her long, red kimono—she had taken to wearing it every night of the new moon, heralding in the slug of the month dressed as finely as possible—billowed with the sudden motion.

There was the slightest bit of hesitation, a nearly imperceptible flinch as he surely gauged if giving over the boy to a stranger was the smartest option. But then he took a swift step, closing the distance between them; he was shorter than she'd first assumed, his massive stature aided by the shock of his dark hair, but his broad shoulders indicated that he was not the sort to be trifled with.

Even so, the way he gingerly placed the boy from his arms into Sakura's was a motion she hadn't expected—nor was the brief flash of desperation that pained his face before he had the chance to school it back to stoicism.

"You may follow," she offered as she turned to hop the little step into her hut, careful of her cascading skirts. She pushed past the long strings of bells and paper strips a middle-aged woman had sewn together for her—to ward off evil, she'd said—and laid the boy on the futon she kept as clean as possible for her patients. He was shivering and covered in a fine sheen of sweat, neither of which made for a good sign.

The older man had done as he was told again, but she hadn't realized how dark the night had become. Without sparing so much as a glance to the man she called out, "Light a fire in the hearth."

She brought forth her chakra and, pulling away the sleeve of her robe as if she was doing little more than pouring tea, laid her hand upon the boy's head as his older companion called forth fire from his lungs to light the fresh wood in her ryori. She wanted to look back; jutsu were rare here, but something inside of her gave a brief but prominent tug as he murmured the short incantation and light spilled over the room.

It pained her to look at the boy upon whom she worked. He was so young, too young to be involved in war, but as she moved her hands down from his sweating forehead and over the bridge of his nose, the more she noticed that he sported only a few minor cuts and bruises through and under his clothes. Moving past his mouth set off her chakra, and she peered down at him as she followed the pathway of his esophagus and down to his lungs.

Typically, those who brought an injured friend with them were balls of nerves, frantically talking in an attempt to explain what'd happened, and can't you please heal him, miss?, but this man hadn't said a word.

"What happened?" she asked, the sound of her voice cutting through tension she hadn't realized was there before.

"He and I were sparring. A cough tore from his throat that made him spit blood and double over in pain."

She hated the part of herself that was relieved to know that this was a training accident. What he was training for was too brutal for a boy of his age, but she knew somehow that she, too, had been trained young to be violent.

"I thought that perhaps I..." The pain in his tone was palpable, guilt-racked that this boy had been hurt by his hand.

"This is no battle wound," she murmured, both to him and to herself. By then she had found the source of the boy's fever centered in his lungs, and she tilted her head to bring her ear down. At each of his sharp inhales there was a slight wheeze, and she gave a small nod of understanding as she pulled back and replaced the monitoring chakra with a healing flow instead.

"On the shelf to your left," she instructed, still not looking up from her ward, "there's a stack of dry cloths. Soak one in the basin by the door—I hauled the water from the stream just this morning. It's clean."

He was a diligent attendant, but Sakura figured that it must be because he was still in the way of blaming himself for the boy's condition. But an upper respiratory infection was nobody's fault, not really, and she was pleased as his condition stabilized and his breaths came easier. The sound of water splashing in her small makeshift sink could be heard as the older man wrung out the cloth, then hurried to her side.

Just as she was about to open her mouth to further guide him, he seemed to know what to do. He wiped the sweat from the boy's temples and dabbed it along his face and neck before draping it over his forehead. He sat down, leaning his back against the wall with one leg propped up, his arms crossed over his chest.

Sakura would give the healing session a few more minutes, just to be sure. Her patient was sleeping soundly now, but she could feel within him something that told her this illness would not be a one-time thing. Hereditary, maybe, if—

"Okojo."

She looked up then, confused at first at what he'd said, but then as her eyes met his she was shot through with an intense sensation she couldn't readily identify. It was something like fear at first, to see him here in the light so clearly. She bit at the inside of her cheek, urging her heartbeat to be calm lest he detect her unease. He was nothing short of intimidating, his form looming like a deep shadow in the corner of her tiny hut, as if his presence alone could swallow this place whole.

But then he glanced away, down to the boy, and all she could see was a gentleness in those eyes, accented by an unmistakable spark of fierce protectiveness. A shiver racked through her, a fluttering memory passing through her of a man—no, a boy, not much older than the one asleep on her cot—with that same ferocity in his eyes.

Who hurt you, Sakura?

She had wrapped her arms around him then, sobbing. All at once this nameless boy had frightened and enthralled her, and it was those emotions that flooded her now. She struggled to keep her breathing even.

But if the man noticed any of it, he didn't remark on it at all. He merely sat there propped against the wall and said, "My youngest brother. His name is Okojo."

"Oh," she said, her limbs tingling as the lingering sentiments from her memory flew away from her. Slowly she cut the active flow of her chakra and lowered her hands into her lap, blinking away tears before they had a chance to fall.

"We've already lost two to this nonsense war," he carried on, like some seal had been torn from him. His gaze flickered back up to hers. "My father...can't bear much more, and neither can I."

She swallowed, averting her eyes and shuffling to her knees to fetch a spare blanket she kept folded atop the shelf. Even still, she could feel his eyes on her. "You're the eldest?"

It was quiet save for the orchestra of insects and scuttling of nocturnal animals out in the forest, and she was already back on her knees unfurling the blanket onto Okojo when the man gave his answer.

"Heir to the Uchiha clan"—a second shiver pulsed through her—"but heir to nothing if we keep dropping like flies. Madara, I'm called."

The name gave her pause, and when she blinked she swore she saw that bleeding moon high in a sickly green sky.

Shaking her head to banish the image, she tucked the fabric around the boy's shoulders and gave a minor readjustment to the cool, wet cloth on his forehead—anything to keep her busy. She had to say something, but all she could come up with was, "I'm sorry. It really is...such a senseless thing."

Her sympathy was sincere, but she knew that it was often little comfort to men like this: ones who were at risk of losing everything. Not that she was a stranger to having lost everything, but there was a perverse sense of peace that accompanied her inability to remember what it was she'd lost in the first place and—

"You're pregnant."

"Haa?!"

The single but exaggerated syllable fell from her so naturally (and at a very inappropriate volume for her newly-healed, slumbering patient) that it startled not only Madara, but herself as well. He sat up from the wall at the same time that she stumbled backwards and fell flat on her backside, his eyes narrowing at her strange display as he cocked his head to the side, his lion's mane hair framing his face in severe segments.

"You didn't know?" he wondered, a dash of humor in his low voice. "I apologize, then."

She glared at him, her lips pursed in a childish pout as she got to her knees. She knew for a fact that she wasn't showing, as her stomach never protruded too far even when she stood in the nude—and she was covered now by a wide obi and some layers of robes.

She hadn't had to fight anyone yet, but she'd kept herself in sharp shape over the last year. If she had to, she could defend herself; what use was there in denying it, anyway?

"Of course I know. How is it that you're so sure?" It'd come out more as a scoff than she meant, but she'd known that whoever she'd been before, brash would be a good descriptor. No one had ever noticed it about her before, and if they had they certainly never said anything so bold.

He'd sat back, somehow markedly more at ease by her attitude when he probably should've been put off by it. "You said it yourself: I am the eldest. I was a dutiful son and attended my mother for each of my brothers' births, at first at my father's insistence—but eventually of my own volition. The experiences were...invaluable, and it gave me the privilege of being at my mother's side when she passed."

"I'm...I'm so sorry." Sakura watched him carefully as he blinked slowly, those tired eyes drifting down to look at his brother. Of her own parents she remembered very little, just the vague inkling that she had them and that they were loving, but a bit distant, like they'd never fully understood her. It was far from witnessing their deaths, and to add two of his siblings on top of it?

He waved a hand just once, almost lazily. "Do not be. I shouldn't be confiding so deeply in a stranger; my apologies again. You simply have the radiance of an expectant mother. That is all I meant."

She stilled, thinking. Seeing her reflection only in the running waters of the nearby stream hadn't been ideal, but it'd been enough. She'd kept her hair cut as short as it was when she first arrived here, but it grew fast, faster than she knew human hair should grow, anyway. There were subtle signs of her aging if she really peered long enough at the rippled, watery mirror staring back at her, that deep indigo yin seal serving as the seat of her power crowning her features like royalty.

Could any of that be called radiance, though?

She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by her own body. A stab of pain in her lower stomach, so familiar now to her that it was almost a comfort were it not for her now incredibly unwelcome guests. She clutched her abdomen, reeling back onto the floor and cursing internally.

Her fall earlier must have set things in motion sooner than she'd been prepared for; the strange births happened late in the night during every new moon, and though the day was right, the timing was all wrong. She paled, involuntarily looking up at the only other people in the room.

Okojo was still sound asleep, but Madara was looking at her through that impenetrable, hooded gaze. She tried to stand but another wave of pain pulsed through her, soothed instantly by that never-ending aura of healing chakra that emanated from her. She squeezed her legs shut, unsure of her best course of action. That she made it this far without anyone catching even a glimpse of this was probably nothing short of a lucky streak.

When Madara stood, mortification gripped at her throat. As he took a few confident steps towards her, she wanted nothing more but to sit back and open her legs, but the thought of it happening in front of a stranger—a man, at that—made her confidence nearly crack in half.

The slug inside her was almost ready, these rituals hardly ever lasting for more than two minutes. She could never feel them during their week-long gestation, but the flip in her lower stomach nauseated her every time. Sweat began to bead at her temples, but by then Madara had knelt down beside her and took her right hand in his, squeezing tightly but in a way that communicated in no uncertain terms that his support was hers.

The moment their skin touched, something passed between them.

It wasn't enough to erase her unease completely; there was no time left to tell him to leave—or scream it, rather, and risk waking his brother. She didn't resent his concern or his offer for help, but he definitely didn't understand what he was signing up to witness. He knelt there beside her holding their hands aloft, allowing her to brace her weight on him instead of on the floor like she was accustomed to. As she leaned back and parted her legs, she said a silent prayer to the old lady who'd gifted her this kimono. The inner robes kept the outer from being soiled, and its many folds shielded the more unsightly parts of this ritual.

With her other arm clutching her belly, she tucked her chin down and pushed. She wondered, had any pain ever accompanied these spells, if she would cry out or toss back her head in agony. The imagery made her shudder, and it was with that motion that the deed was done.

The slug slid out of her and fell to the wooden floor with a wet slap, and the sound was only horrible because there was someone else here to hear it. It turned at its middle to look back at her and bent its little stalks as if in thanks, and Sakura fought the urge to vomit for this ritual to be anything other than private. It was becoming endearing when it was only her to bear witness, but this was bordering on unacceptable.

Without a care in the world, it slithered towards the door and out into the dark of the forest. From her peripheral she could see Madara kneeling still as a statue, but he was not looking at it. He was looking at her.

She could feel her face flushed the color of her embroidered robe. Unsure where even to point her eyes—surely she could not look at him—she swallowed, steadying her breaths through her nose and closing her legs. Normally she would simply fetch a fresh bolt of cloth and dry herself off before falling asleep, but no one had ever been here before...!

But she hadn't realized until now that Madara's hand was still holding hers. He hadn't so much as budged since she'd stumbled and he'd rushed to her side, his presence steadfast and unwavering. Giving it a final squeeze, he stood and repeated the motions she'd instructed him in just minutes ago, taking a clean cloth from her shelf and soaking it in the basin. As she caught her breath and calmed her heart she watched him wring the fabric tightly, near hypnotized by how strong his hands were, his otherwise delicate metacarpals dancing beneath his skin like shamisen strings. One of those hands had just been clutching hers in solidarity.

He held out the cloth to her, and when she reached out to take it she was stunned by the nervous tremor still present in her arm. And even though he had enough sense not to try to clean her himself, he was unafraid to look her in the eye.

Humiliation should be washing over her in waves. She'd just, for all intents and purposes, given birth to a mythical slug, sibling to the dozen or so others that'd come over the last year, that bowed it head in thanks before lighting its own trail through the woods until it was out of sight and bursting into fantastical color. It didn't really matter, not to Sakura, that she'd just saved his brother's life, nor that he was likely no stranger to the more distasteful side of birth. By all accounts it should have been a disgusting display, but he could not seem less daunted.

As a matter of fact, Madara hadn't even flinched.