Samsara

Part V

This chapter is unedited. It will be edited when I and my beta get to it. So you really don't have to email me pointing out minute grammar/syntax errors. Yes, I am aware they exist, it will be fixed when I have time. Until I get paid for writing, I feel no guilt missing a few spelling mistakes...

Also, there are some NSFW themes in this chapter. Warning for very mild dubious consent.

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The hospital in Kumo is as pristine and efficient as the one back home, yet Sakura can't help fidgeting while she lies back on the assigned bed. The doctor meant to be conducting her ultrasound is taking far too long to arrive, and though they're only here with the express purpose of checking the baby's health (and learning it's gender), she would rather be wandering around the hospital.

Apparently, there's a medic-nin visiting from Iwa that's experimenting with chakra tethering. Sakura's itching to see how that's done, mind already ablaze with potential life-saving procedures if it is successful.

Also, she really has to pee.

Her eyes flit toward Sasuke, who lurks by the door, wary and restless. He's even less comfortable right now than she is, although in his case it's a combination of not liking hospitals, or people I general, or Kumo. The latter two are more or less mutual – people here have long memories about his attack on the Raikage's brother, and then there's the fact that the Raikage himself has never completely forgiven him about the arm...

Time for a distraction...

"So, which are you hoping for?" she asks, making him adopt a somewhat confused frown. "A boy or a girl?"

They've never really talked about it. Her first trimester she didn't really bring it up – it felt a little like tempting fate to talk too much about the baby while the risk of miscarriage was still high. And then they were both so consumed with understanding and investigating her dreams, they never really got around to it.

Sasuke doesn't answer right away, and she wonders if he's actually thinking about it, weighing pros and cons...

"I don't care," he finally says, and shoulders relaxing. "I never thought I would be at the point in my life where I would have a child, let alone have a preference over whether it's a girl or a boy."

"You did when we were twelve," she reminds him innocently. "You wanted to repopulate. It was a life goal that you were going to make a reality."

Sasuke shoots her a half-hearted look of annoyance, but his mouth twitches. She often teases him that he was secretly as preoccupied with sex as any other pre-teen boy at that age. It at least downplays his other, more tragic life goals.

"If family history has anything to say about it, it will be a boy," Sasuke declares, not addressing her comment.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because in my family, there have only ever been boys," he shrugs. "In the main branch, anyhow. The Uchiha were never as strict about maintaining clan divisions and controls as the Hyūga, but my immediate family was recognised as the main branch. According to the genealogies I've studied, we only ever had men. My brother and I, my father, my grandfather and his brothers, great-grandfather and his brothers..."

"But there were female Uchiha," Sakura points out. She's seen their names on the rows of gravestones in Konoha's cemetery.

"In the branch families. Women like my mother marry into my our family either from one of the other clan branches, or from outside," Sasuke says. "Although the latter was uncommon."