[LOG] Look issa baybeh.
Who: Uchiha Itachi, Yokobue Tayuya, Zetsu,and Sasori.
What: By Itachi's calculations, this multiplied by that divided by nine months and the chance that he is crazy (which he is) could possibly mean that something terrible involving contractions is happening.
Where: Tayua & Itachi's apartment of death.
When: February 29, last from 300 hours to 1400 hours.
Warnings: Lawls issa baybeh. 8D Cursing, birthing, and Sasori and Zetsu. Thar be ur warnins.
Itachi wakes with his face cold against the glass pane of the window, his skeleton arms crossed around the thinness of his stomach. He wakes, blinking, wide-eyed for some reason, feels a jolt in the back of his skull, as if someone has fastened a hanger there and seen fit to tug at it. A thrill shoots up his vertebrae, a silent, unfeeling domino effect.
He isn't sure why.
But he looks to Tayuya.
(Something.)
It's about three in the morning (3:12:08 if you're going to be exact about it, and Itachi always is), February the 29th.
And he can feel it.
(Something.)
Wet against the sheets.
(She's fluttering awake with a groan, and there's a kind of pain inside of her that which it feels like her insides are falling out of her, and she pulls herself into conciousness in a sort of slow motion disgruntle. It's enough of a pain to wake her up. And quietly does she roll over on her side, mumbling something-) "Itachi...piss the bed... kill your ass..." (-and goes back into her partial dream state featuring herself and that crazy-ass redhaired guy she'd seen when Itachi brought her to an Akatsuki meeting. She groans.)
It hurts.
(3:12:15
Something.)
"Godfuckingdamn."
(Half awake.
And only half.)
The way most people would say "what the hell are you talking about?"
(Itachi descends from his throne at the top of the world in order to get a better look at her, for speaking is not his way, nor has it ever been. "Itachi-kun, hold still." The throne has never been comfortable - stone and old as it might be - but Itachi is not a person that speaks so he cannot be one who complains either. He is silent. An onlooker. An observer. But perhaps it is pretentious to call himself by such a word. Afterall it is Sasori who is-)
-in both their minds?
He frowns. (His face is ice.) An odd occurence. Not normal, certainly. (But how could Itachi possibly know what Tayuya is thinking?) He doesn't, of course. Nor does he ever, realistically-speaking. He is cold in his entirety, and in the same way is he unfeeling. And so how could he possibly identify emotions outside his own, very less the cause of them? (Especially with women. Itachi hates all women, really he does, and Tayuya is no exception, excepting - of course - when she is. ...it's all very complicated. Either way, she's a very disturbing bed partner, and so Itachi sleeps sitting up.)
On the windowsill.
(On his throne atop the world.)
He comes to the edge of the bed and stares at her face.
(Says nothing. How typical.)
Tayuya used to have night terrors and attack Itachi half-asleep.
(And so to call her a disturbing bed partner is justified.
She stopped dreaming a little while after she found out she was pregnant, and anything abnormal about her sleeping patterns vanished, yet still Itachi is paranoid of her, and for decent reason. When she attacked him, it wasn't just a punch, or anything pussy like that, goddamnit.) Her face is scrunched up in pain, and the sheets around her, as well as her underwear and thighs, and drenched in water, and she is one-quarter aware of what's going on, but three quarters asleep, and since she became pregnant has she become a relatively heavy sleeper. (But things are only spoken in relatives anymore.)
Abruptly, it seems, does she roll over onto her stomach, groans, and rolls back onto her side.
"Itachi... go away... asshole..."
But it is Itachi who finally understands what is going on.
He does the arithmetic - simple, precise, straightforward. Tayuya had announced having...contracted it on the third of September - she had already been into the second trimester at that point. Those three months, another three until December. That made her exactly twenty-nine days and approximately twelve hours into the eighth month. And Itachi can make the connections with that and the actions of her body, not because he knows it particularly well (he does) or because he really cares (...) but because it is simple math. And Itachi can easily do math that is not simple.
So it goes.
"Stay here."
And so does Itachi go to retrieve the only physician he knows or trusts.
Sasori is still awake, after all. Itachi doesn't have to know him well to know that much.
He doesn't bother to knock on the door.
(Sasori expects it to be open for him, which it is, and he walks in with a kind of sadistic stride in it for whatever Itachi has summoned him here for, because the man left it to Sasori's imagination - in a fashion completely unlike Itachi - as to what is to come for when he arrives, and he closes the door behind himself and his partner. He does not know when Zetsu became his partner over Deidara, and at the same time, he knows precisely when it occurred. He knows precisely when it happened because it was he and Zetsu that leaked the virus into the air and water supply. He and Zetsu alone, and it was one of the best cases of Mission Accomplished the Akatsuki have ever had, because everything has gone according to plan, and as it should.
The antivirus will be released soon.
But not today.)
Today is a day for-
(There's a smell in the room he enters as he weaves through furniture and corridors.
A familiar one.)
"Itachi."
-who looks full to bursting with a nervous energy but it is subtle in its own way. Itachi is so composed a person that for his edges to be frayed is compromise by the prim sharpness of his figure, the emotionlessness that veils his face. But emotionless is rather innaccurate a word, most of all in accordance to those who can recognize the slight tectonic shifting of the Uchiha brain for what it is. It is small, it is inconsequential to those who might overlook it, and those number in the thousands. It is easy to completely miss what Itachi's body displays about his feelings on any given matter. Unless you are a certain type of person, you can go decades without knowing that Itachi feels anything, really.
(But Sasori is a certain type of person.) And the physician (he is one) knows that the way Itachi holds himself now is a sign that he is in some sort of restrained distress, that he is in the throes of a desperate worry for one reason or another, that he is clenching and unclenching the muscles of his stomach because he dislikes clenching and unclenching the muscles of his hands.
"...she's in the other room."
He does not look over his shoulder.
(Because his neck is cramped.)
She's on her back.
(Groaning.
Sasori recognizes what Itachi wants him to do with a moment's glance, and he stares up at Itachi with a kind of completely readable expression, and it is only such because he so desires for it to be such. Because he wants Itachi to know exactly what he's thinking.) And he stares back at her, crossing over to a distance from her to wherein she could hear him and asks, with a deadpan kind of calm-
"When did it break?"
And she answers, eyes snapping open-
"-Who the fuck are you, you little fag?!"
(Everything hurts.)
Sasori glances back at Itachi, folding his arms across his chest, before letting his gaze sweep to Zetsu, who stands silently in a corner, wordless in the wake of Itachi and Tayuya is her name - speaking in his calm, frozen monotone "-Itachi?"
"Twenty-three minutes and fifty-seven seconds ago."
His eyelids like the shutters of a camera-
He blinks.
They click mechanically.
He says it so quickly that its almost a thought rather than speech; actually, it is almost as if it slips out of his brain and into his mouth by some complex accident, because it lays docilely in the air for a while afterward. His mouth remains half open until he thinks to close it (his mind is whirling) and when he does his jaw shakes a little. (Imperceptibly.) He does not know what he should do with his hands and so they stay obedient at his sides (in the same way Itachi obeys no one - perhaps to a fault - his limbs are well bred in flawless obedience, and perhaps that is what reminded him that- "You're going to kill me, Itachi-kun?") But Itachi hasn't dreamt in a long time and so he has not seen Shisui's face.
For a long time.
His eyelids are camera shutters and when they close-
(But the pictures come back blank.
"What's wrong with your lens?")
When they open.
He is watching Zetsu.
(E)motionless(ly).
Because Sasori is a threat, certainly.
But when the wound is open, it is Zetsu that Itachi puts a wall in front of.
Sasori nods.
(Perfect.
Picture.
Of calamity.
Is how he is, how he has always been- And how he will absolutely never change. If Sasori changes, he is bound to become flawed, and that can never happen. Can't ever. Once upon a time, there was a child's play doll that never changed expression. Never lost the sheen to its plastic skin and never lost the look in its plastic eyes. It was absolutely perfect, but then a child's mother purchased it for her daughter, and the second it was out of the box, that perfect doll was ruined. Perfect hair cut, eyes drawn on, lips painted with gloss, clothes stripped in place of less attractive ones- It really is a tragic story.
And that is why Sasori has never been open.
He will be packaged forever until he finally dies.)
"Keep her on the floor. I'm assuming a low-dose sedative is necessary."
It is Zetsu who moves from the wall (steady. Steady. Steady. Do not falter and do not touch any more than you must. He can smell it, her insides, the throb of her heartbeat, and he recognizes her as the girl who puts Itachi in dresses. He recognizes her as the violent blossom he saw one night before Sasori took him home and filled a wine glass that he begged and screamed and clawed at,) and feels Itachi's barb eyes on his shoulders even as he takes a hold on Tayuya's. He lifts her well and gently from the bed in perfect bridal fashion and lays her out on the floorboards even as his arms tremble and shake around her.
(Steady. Steady. Steady.)
And Itachi's eyes are so sharp.
Sasori moves to where she sits, and Tayuya is raging, kicking like a madman and screaming something fierce, and Itachi only watches with a low key kind of melancholy, what is common and everyday - Itachi is common and every day in the most phsychotic of fashions in the way Sasori and Zetsu are so very not every day. So very not normal in any fashion that can be imagined. Sasori prepares the needle, calmly as he always is, and Tayuya screams, but Zetsu holds her down for him because in exchange for Sasori's slavery (-which Zetsu is contented with so terribly) does he once a month get to eat a chunk out of Sasori's perfect perfect flesh.
Perfect.
Perfect.
(-injects the needle into her vein. It's an overdose of a typical antipsychotic, I.E. a Major Tranquilizer. Sasori knows who Tayuya is well because-
And she's shrieking and thrashing against both Zetsu and Sasori- "GODDAMNGODDAMNITGODDAMNIT GET OFF ME YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES I'LL KILL YOU-"
She means it.)
It takes about five minutes for her to slow down long enough to stop screaming.
He turns to Itachi.
(Deadly. Calm.) "-Why didn't you inform me that she was having a child?"
Itachi's eyes do not move from Zetsu's (deranged) form as it shakes and trembles. (The double of the three of them - four of them? If a person is unconscious can they be counted as being there? But Tayuya is not unconscious, yet - is struggling to restrain himself. He can smell her too strongly, but he waits on Sasori's command. He waits knowing full well that it will come.) His porcelain arms are folded against his Adonis chest.
"I didn't think it was necessary."
He watches him, attention rapt but loose at the same time. He is both disinterested and made very nervous, it's quite clear. (He is incapable of handling the situation on his own and that is why they are here, but that is not what he says. Itachi is not a very straightforward person, least of all in times of personal weakness, and so there is much that he places under the rugs of his words. Poetry is not really his thing, but he would be good at it, as he is good with most things, but in a different way, simply because all poets are both very good liars and faithless hypocrites, and if they are not they are bad poets.) His hair is neither down nor up, and he is neither thick nor thin, as he is in front of the window. (It's the same glass as his bones.)
It was not insomuch that Itachi thought it unnecessary as it was because Itachi has a great deal of difficulty actually saying it, and he is offkilter. (Offcenter. Misaligned. "My-" and what would he even call her? "-is pregnant." And in his clear-cut voice how would the words sound, rather than read out of a textbook? It makes him slightly nauseous, thinking about it. And, if the thought is enough to bother him, it is no mystery why he is so desperately uncomfortable now, even while still being the leadfaced person that he is.)
He purses his lips.
Zetsu tries to stop their shaking.
The labor lasts exactly ten hours, fifty-eight minutes, and fifty-eight seconds, and Tayuya screams and thrashes the entire way through it.
(It is when Sasori knows that the child is about to be born does he send Zetsu into the bathroom, the sedative having long since been working in its full effect, for if not she would have probably killed herself out of pain. Tayuya is just like that. Suicide, to her, is a rash, brunt decision that requires no real thought because we, as people, were brought into the world with no say in it and should have an amount of say in death because, unlike birth, we do have an amount of charge in it. If Tayuya feels the need to be dismembered, she'll hook herself up to some machine or another and tear herself apart, but instead-)
She's lived up to this.
(Somehow.)
She's screaming.
(Like a fucking banshee. It can only really be compared to being torn in half between the legs, something Tayuya had thought she'd experienced losing her virginity to some male porn star or another with an eleven inch cock. That pain, however, is nothing and will never be anything to this. Not ever. Zetsu was sent out of the room because there's blood all over the mat Sasori had put her on top of. She's bleeding and screaming and, even against the mixes of painkillers and anesthetics does it hurt so much, this poison Itachi had put inside of her. Oh-) "JESUS FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCKFUCK ITACHI FUCK IT HURTS IT HURTS JESUS FUCKING HELL I'M GONNA DIE-"
(What if she did?
What would he do?)
He doesn't know, and - being that Itachi is not at all accustomed to not knowing things (God forbid) - he does not speak, hich is very typical of him, but has less to do with a habit and a great deal to do with the fact that he isn't breathing correctly. Something seems to have crawled up his throat (a renegade blood vessel perhaps, a creeping vine) and is now playing at strangling him. He can breath, it's true, but only a little, and its irregular no matter what he does. The blood that pulses from her steadily, to the agonized throbbing of her heart and the pained screams of the contractions that swallow her up, that blind her to the world, smells like stale water; like cum and old meat and righteous fertility. It's yeasty and full, mixed with Sasori's pungent antiseptics and the copper-salt of her insides, and it makes Itachi sick to his stomach. Even as he hears Zetsu lock the bathroom door unsteadily, hears the rattle as his hands move towards and then away from the handle, his sinuses are burning with the smell of Tayuya's labor, with the smell of birth and afterbirth.
(There is life afterbirth.
That's what they say.)
Itachi does not say a word, not one - he doesn't move from his place against the window for four hours, his shoulders cold and stiff, and when he moves suddenly at 7:04:18 AM (the sun has risen and he feels its fingers splayed cooly against his back, peeking over him to watch Tayuya writhe) it is to go to the kitchen and cut the symbol "crimson" (朱) into the back of his arm above the wrist, and then when he returns he is even less stable and so he sits a few feet from her which he knows from the beginning is a mistake and a gift in the same way. And when she finds something solid (a book Itachi is not through with yet but he doesn't need to finish - he knows how it will end already, and it is not because he has read the back) she hits him so hard in the face with it that he flinches, a condition that is difficult to induce in any Uchiha and twice as difficult to produce in Itachi. But he does not move, and he does not criticize her for it. (She beats him with it when she can move her arms, when she have the strength to move her arms, and he lets her because he knows Tayuya too well, knows that she will either destroy the things around her or destroy herself.
I hope they cannot see.
And Itachi will not be destroyed.) Even when the right side of his face is blooming in bruises he does not move from her, he does not touch her himself except to be touched by her (bruising all along the chiseled ivory of his temple and cheek bones) and this pattern consists for hours, and still can he not breathe.
(Speak.
I am the Great Destroyer.)
Sasori thinks it's dead for a fraction of a second when it comes out of her completely silent.
(-He cuts the umbilical chord quickly with the scalpel that had been sitting beside him through the entirety of the process, and she is not crying, not screaming any longer, only breathing hard with an occasional, agonized moan between every few hard breaths. The child weighs- (an instant calculation, exactly six pounds and three ounces. Instantaneous, correct, perfect. That is Sasori, preforming this horrible ritual of childbirth. To be born is to have suggested someone died for you. In the Myth of Er, Plato suggested one must drink from a river before one can be reincarnated, but Sasori has never believed in life or death at all.) Cuts the umbilical chord away from the child, away from Tayuya, baptizing it quickly in a small bowl of fresh water that immediately goes a disgusting shade of red with Tayuya's menstrual blood.)
He (-the child.) is not crying.
(He is breathing softly.)
Eyes are open.
(So curious.)
Sasori feels no attachment. No contentment. (There is nothing beautiful about this situation at all. Tayuya is two shades away from unconsciousness, Zetsu is locked in the bathroom, and Itachi-) Sasori does not look at Itachi. (Sasori does not care about Itachi. Sasori has never cared about Itachi. It was Deidara once, and now it is Zetsu, and it remains to be Zetsu because the man is so utterly disturbed in so many ways that Sasori absolutely never ceases to be fascinated. Never ever.
Does not look at Tayuya.
Does not look at Itachi.
(To a degree-
Wants Zetsu to feast.
But only out of silent anger.)
And Itachi, a long known patron of ill luck, is only seconds eyes blankly staring at his newborn son before he turns away suddenly and vomits on the floor. (His stomach churns chaotically and his mind is a boardgame in a box on a whirlagig. His mouth is scribbles and the acid burns his gums and his white teeth.) He has not eaten recently (nothing the day before this one and nothing since the sun - not high in the sky - embraced the bruises on his face, not since the blood on his wrist dried, not since Tayuya moaned softly and broke between the legs like some cruel deity's Barbie doll,) and so it is pure stomach acid, virtually any and all that he can possibly afford to lose. It is so sudden that it chokes him, and he coughs a little of it into his nose, which burns so badly that he could scream.
He doesn't.
This is not real pain.
(There is absolutely no pain that can possiby rip, tear, or affect so drastically as 6 pounds 3 ounces.) His mind whirls and his eyes almost tear up because the lighting of the afternoon sun is just perfect, and he can see Sasori holding him, he can see what has been roiling in Tayuya's womb for nine months time.
He feels so violently nauseous that he thinks he will vomit again.
And even as he feels it, he raises his unmarred wrist to push the saliva and acid away from the edges of his lips. (And the words that will never be uttered by his twelve-year-old brother in the house of Tazuna- "I want to eat.") He pushes it away, his eyes narrowed but at no one in particular, his expression as bitter and calculated as it has always been. (Perhaps nearly as calculated as Sasori's perfectperfect mind.) He feels as if he has been tossing and turning in bed.
Tayuya is drenched in sweat that is cooling in the air.
Eleven hours for this.
Nine months and eleven hours.
And his son is-
(His son.)
His stomach clenches.
"Give him here."
In a soft voice marred only slightly by the roughness of his scalded throat.
Sasori wastes no time in handing the dripping babe into Itachi's arms.
(Would not care for a second if Itachi killed the child right then.
Sasori is never caring of anything. Ever.)
Tayuya's eyes are closed.
(Her breathing is only so beginning to slow down. There is blood.
It.
Is.
Everywhere.)
The baby's eyes are fluttering, softly, up at Itachi with that same kind of innate curiousity, and he is neither screaming, crying, or making any sort of noise, for that matter. He is silent. He is glowing, dripping in water, small body stained pink with Tayuya's blood. Tayuya, who has just spent eleven hours in labor on her living room floor giving birth to a child with the help of a complete stranger Itachi had a disturbing amount of medical trust in. Tayuya, who- (wants to die right now. Who wants to diediedie because she's in so much pain she can't even think, can barely breathe, can barely-)
Sasori glances back at Tayuya.
(Glances at the bathroom door, but-
Decides against it.)
The same way that Itachi, having taken the baby from Sasori's arms, gingerly supports the unsteady neck of him, rather than snap it as some part of him desperately wants to. He regards the infant's facial features, recognizing them as primarily his own; the long dark lashes to compliment ghost-pale skin, a gentle china swoop of a nose, and a deep taint to his amber-brown irises. (Their color is identical to something that gives Itachi a deep and terrible chill in his stomach.) His cheeks are flushed with baby fat and a new world, and he has Tayuya's thin-but-pretty lips, a rust hue dusting the very top of his head. He has quite a lot of hair for an infant, and it is plastered down with the afterbirth, his umbilical cord bleeding and broken over a round stomach, and Itachi simply looks at him, slightly irritated, greatly awed.
It is so foreign a feeling.
And he speaks to Tayuya.
(As if he will choke.)
"Name him."
Tayuya should be crying.
(Can barely speak.
Only croaks.)
"Oh for the fucking love of god-"
She doesn't say anything more.
(For almost too long.)
"-Shut the fuck up."
(Itachi, who has been quiet the whole goddamn time, how dare you say stuff like that now-)
-who watches her blankly.
"Name him."
As if she must think he was joking. (Because Itachi is not joking. He is not sexist either, really; his dislike of women stems not from preconcieved notions but from an orientation he does not control, and by their ability to irritate him. It is not sexism. It is a generalization that simply correlates with their gender. And Itachi does not just assume that Tayuya will have been thinking up names like some sort of housewife. Tayuya is not a housewife. It is more an artist's perspective which is strange because Itachi is not an artist. But "you made it, you name it" is an artist's philosophy still. It cannot be helped.)
Because all Uchiha are named within seconds of their birth. It is only tradition.
Tayuya is so close to crying right now-
(Out of exasperation.
Fucking.
Exasperation.
It had been Tayuya's expectation completely that Itachi would either kill the child or, if keeping it, at least name the hellish thing. The hellish fucking boy, but Tayuya supposes, really, that such is more convenient than having a girl because Tayuya has next to no experience with interacting with girls. Has no experience in calming down pools of emotion and the kind of rage she possesses herself.) She can't move. (Can't twitch. Is so sore, is in so much pain, and she does not notice Sasori open the bathroom door and walk inside, shutting it behind him. She does not notice because oh she could care less.)
"-Name it Sakai."
(Sakai.
Fighter Pilot of a war very few in Curia know ever existed.
The name of the guy who saved her ass from starving.
A year after she met him, she ended up shanking him in the liver, resulting in his death.
He was no one.
But without him-)
There would be no Tayuya.
No Itachi.
No Sakai.
(Can't.
Move.)
But Itachi can.
And in Sasori's absence does he carefully reach out and stroke her cheek with the hand that is not cut.
(So long as no one sees-)
Because Itachi is private.
And not affectionate.
He stands up a second afterwards and walks to the bedroom and, after a short debate, places Sakai on the floor and changes the bedsheets so that he can set him down there instead. The infant neither fusses nor stops watching him throughout the entirety, and then he is back in the living room, carefully dabbing at the insides of Tayuya's thighs and tidying up, carefully rubbing the blood that sticking to her skin clean. And then, when she is clean a moment later (he works ridiculously fast, and the rag was white at first and now it is pink, and he will put it somewhere and not touch it again. That bleach and chemicals might be to brutish,) he lifts her and takes her back to bed.
The two o' clock sun watches them through a window, and as he lies down beside her, clothes still as on him as they were eleven hours ago and back twisted with stress, a tiny baby between them, looking from one face to another, he thinks nothing.
(He thinks everything.)
February 29.
Leap Day.
And so Yokobue Sakai is born.
What: By Itachi's calculations, this multiplied by that divided by nine months and the chance that he is crazy (which he is) could possibly mean that something terrible involving contractions is happening.
Where: Tayua & Itachi's apartment of death.
When: February 29, last from 300 hours to 1400 hours.
Warnings: Lawls issa baybeh. 8D Cursing, birthing, and Sasori and Zetsu. Thar be ur warnins.
Itachi wakes with his face cold against the glass pane of the window, his skeleton arms crossed around the thinness of his stomach. He wakes, blinking, wide-eyed for some reason, feels a jolt in the back of his skull, as if someone has fastened a hanger there and seen fit to tug at it. A thrill shoots up his vertebrae, a silent, unfeeling domino effect.
He isn't sure why.
But he looks to Tayuya.
(Something.)
It's about three in the morning (3:12:08 if you're going to be exact about it, and Itachi always is), February the 29th.
And he can feel it.
(Something.)
Wet against the sheets.
(She's fluttering awake with a groan, and there's a kind of pain inside of her that which it feels like her insides are falling out of her, and she pulls herself into conciousness in a sort of slow motion disgruntle. It's enough of a pain to wake her up. And quietly does she roll over on her side, mumbling something-) "Itachi...piss the bed... kill your ass..." (-and goes back into her partial dream state featuring herself and that crazy-ass redhaired guy she'd seen when Itachi brought her to an Akatsuki meeting. She groans.)
It hurts.
(3:12:15
Something.)
"Godfuckingdamn."
(Half awake.
And only half.)
The way most people would say "what the hell are you talking about?"
(Itachi descends from his throne at the top of the world in order to get a better look at her, for speaking is not his way, nor has it ever been. "Itachi-kun, hold still." The throne has never been comfortable - stone and old as it might be - but Itachi is not a person that speaks so he cannot be one who complains either. He is silent. An onlooker. An observer. But perhaps it is pretentious to call himself by such a word. Afterall it is Sasori who is-)
-in both their minds?
He frowns. (His face is ice.) An odd occurence. Not normal, certainly. (But how could Itachi possibly know what Tayuya is thinking?) He doesn't, of course. Nor does he ever, realistically-speaking. He is cold in his entirety, and in the same way is he unfeeling. And so how could he possibly identify emotions outside his own, very less the cause of them? (Especially with women. Itachi hates all women, really he does, and Tayuya is no exception, excepting - of course - when she is. ...it's all very complicated. Either way, she's a very disturbing bed partner, and so Itachi sleeps sitting up.)
On the windowsill.
(On his throne atop the world.)
He comes to the edge of the bed and stares at her face.
(Says nothing. How typical.)
Tayuya used to have night terrors and attack Itachi half-asleep.
(And so to call her a disturbing bed partner is justified.
She stopped dreaming a little while after she found out she was pregnant, and anything abnormal about her sleeping patterns vanished, yet still Itachi is paranoid of her, and for decent reason. When she attacked him, it wasn't just a punch, or anything pussy like that, goddamnit.) Her face is scrunched up in pain, and the sheets around her, as well as her underwear and thighs, and drenched in water, and she is one-quarter aware of what's going on, but three quarters asleep, and since she became pregnant has she become a relatively heavy sleeper. (But things are only spoken in relatives anymore.)
Abruptly, it seems, does she roll over onto her stomach, groans, and rolls back onto her side.
"Itachi... go away... asshole..."
But it is Itachi who finally understands what is going on.
He does the arithmetic - simple, precise, straightforward. Tayuya had announced having...contracted it on the third of September - she had already been into the second trimester at that point. Those three months, another three until December. That made her exactly twenty-nine days and approximately twelve hours into the eighth month. And Itachi can make the connections with that and the actions of her body, not because he knows it particularly well (he does) or because he really cares (...) but because it is simple math. And Itachi can easily do math that is not simple.
So it goes.
"Stay here."
And so does Itachi go to retrieve the only physician he knows or trusts.
Sasori is still awake, after all. Itachi doesn't have to know him well to know that much.
He doesn't bother to knock on the door.
(Sasori expects it to be open for him, which it is, and he walks in with a kind of sadistic stride in it for whatever Itachi has summoned him here for, because the man left it to Sasori's imagination - in a fashion completely unlike Itachi - as to what is to come for when he arrives, and he closes the door behind himself and his partner. He does not know when Zetsu became his partner over Deidara, and at the same time, he knows precisely when it occurred. He knows precisely when it happened because it was he and Zetsu that leaked the virus into the air and water supply. He and Zetsu alone, and it was one of the best cases of Mission Accomplished the Akatsuki have ever had, because everything has gone according to plan, and as it should.
The antivirus will be released soon.
But not today.)
Today is a day for-
(There's a smell in the room he enters as he weaves through furniture and corridors.
A familiar one.)
"Itachi."
-who looks full to bursting with a nervous energy but it is subtle in its own way. Itachi is so composed a person that for his edges to be frayed is compromise by the prim sharpness of his figure, the emotionlessness that veils his face. But emotionless is rather innaccurate a word, most of all in accordance to those who can recognize the slight tectonic shifting of the Uchiha brain for what it is. It is small, it is inconsequential to those who might overlook it, and those number in the thousands. It is easy to completely miss what Itachi's body displays about his feelings on any given matter. Unless you are a certain type of person, you can go decades without knowing that Itachi feels anything, really.
(But Sasori is a certain type of person.) And the physician (he is one) knows that the way Itachi holds himself now is a sign that he is in some sort of restrained distress, that he is in the throes of a desperate worry for one reason or another, that he is clenching and unclenching the muscles of his stomach because he dislikes clenching and unclenching the muscles of his hands.
"...she's in the other room."
He does not look over his shoulder.
(Because his neck is cramped.)
She's on her back.
(Groaning.
Sasori recognizes what Itachi wants him to do with a moment's glance, and he stares up at Itachi with a kind of completely readable expression, and it is only such because he so desires for it to be such. Because he wants Itachi to know exactly what he's thinking.) And he stares back at her, crossing over to a distance from her to wherein she could hear him and asks, with a deadpan kind of calm-
"When did it break?"
And she answers, eyes snapping open-
"-Who the fuck are you, you little fag?!"
(Everything hurts.)
Sasori glances back at Itachi, folding his arms across his chest, before letting his gaze sweep to Zetsu, who stands silently in a corner, wordless in the wake of Itachi and Tayuya is her name - speaking in his calm, frozen monotone "-Itachi?"
"Twenty-three minutes and fifty-seven seconds ago."
His eyelids like the shutters of a camera-
He blinks.
They click mechanically.
He says it so quickly that its almost a thought rather than speech; actually, it is almost as if it slips out of his brain and into his mouth by some complex accident, because it lays docilely in the air for a while afterward. His mouth remains half open until he thinks to close it (his mind is whirling) and when he does his jaw shakes a little. (Imperceptibly.) He does not know what he should do with his hands and so they stay obedient at his sides (in the same way Itachi obeys no one - perhaps to a fault - his limbs are well bred in flawless obedience, and perhaps that is what reminded him that- "You're going to kill me, Itachi-kun?") But Itachi hasn't dreamt in a long time and so he has not seen Shisui's face.
For a long time.
His eyelids are camera shutters and when they close-
(But the pictures come back blank.
"What's wrong with your lens?")
When they open.
He is watching Zetsu.
(E)motionless(ly).
Because Sasori is a threat, certainly.
But when the wound is open, it is Zetsu that Itachi puts a wall in front of.
Sasori nods.
(Perfect.
Picture.
Of calamity.
Is how he is, how he has always been- And how he will absolutely never change. If Sasori changes, he is bound to become flawed, and that can never happen. Can't ever. Once upon a time, there was a child's play doll that never changed expression. Never lost the sheen to its plastic skin and never lost the look in its plastic eyes. It was absolutely perfect, but then a child's mother purchased it for her daughter, and the second it was out of the box, that perfect doll was ruined. Perfect hair cut, eyes drawn on, lips painted with gloss, clothes stripped in place of less attractive ones- It really is a tragic story.
And that is why Sasori has never been open.
He will be packaged forever until he finally dies.)
"Keep her on the floor. I'm assuming a low-dose sedative is necessary."
It is Zetsu who moves from the wall (steady. Steady. Steady. Do not falter and do not touch any more than you must. He can smell it, her insides, the throb of her heartbeat, and he recognizes her as the girl who puts Itachi in dresses. He recognizes her as the violent blossom he saw one night before Sasori took him home and filled a wine glass that he begged and screamed and clawed at,) and feels Itachi's barb eyes on his shoulders even as he takes a hold on Tayuya's. He lifts her well and gently from the bed in perfect bridal fashion and lays her out on the floorboards even as his arms tremble and shake around her.
(Steady. Steady. Steady.)
And Itachi's eyes are so sharp.
Sasori moves to where she sits, and Tayuya is raging, kicking like a madman and screaming something fierce, and Itachi only watches with a low key kind of melancholy, what is common and everyday - Itachi is common and every day in the most phsychotic of fashions in the way Sasori and Zetsu are so very not every day. So very not normal in any fashion that can be imagined. Sasori prepares the needle, calmly as he always is, and Tayuya screams, but Zetsu holds her down for him because in exchange for Sasori's slavery (-which Zetsu is contented with so terribly) does he once a month get to eat a chunk out of Sasori's perfect perfect flesh.
Perfect.
Perfect.
(-injects the needle into her vein. It's an overdose of a typical antipsychotic, I.E. a Major Tranquilizer. Sasori knows who Tayuya is well because-
And she's shrieking and thrashing against both Zetsu and Sasori- "GODDAMNGODDAMNITGODDAMNIT GET OFF ME YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES I'LL KILL YOU-"
She means it.)
It takes about five minutes for her to slow down long enough to stop screaming.
He turns to Itachi.
(Deadly. Calm.) "-Why didn't you inform me that she was having a child?"
Itachi's eyes do not move from Zetsu's (deranged) form as it shakes and trembles. (The double of the three of them - four of them? If a person is unconscious can they be counted as being there? But Tayuya is not unconscious, yet - is struggling to restrain himself. He can smell her too strongly, but he waits on Sasori's command. He waits knowing full well that it will come.) His porcelain arms are folded against his Adonis chest.
"I didn't think it was necessary."
He watches him, attention rapt but loose at the same time. He is both disinterested and made very nervous, it's quite clear. (He is incapable of handling the situation on his own and that is why they are here, but that is not what he says. Itachi is not a very straightforward person, least of all in times of personal weakness, and so there is much that he places under the rugs of his words. Poetry is not really his thing, but he would be good at it, as he is good with most things, but in a different way, simply because all poets are both very good liars and faithless hypocrites, and if they are not they are bad poets.) His hair is neither down nor up, and he is neither thick nor thin, as he is in front of the window. (It's the same glass as his bones.)
It was not insomuch that Itachi thought it unnecessary as it was because Itachi has a great deal of difficulty actually saying it, and he is offkilter. (Offcenter. Misaligned. "My-" and what would he even call her? "-is pregnant." And in his clear-cut voice how would the words sound, rather than read out of a textbook? It makes him slightly nauseous, thinking about it. And, if the thought is enough to bother him, it is no mystery why he is so desperately uncomfortable now, even while still being the leadfaced person that he is.)
He purses his lips.
Zetsu tries to stop their shaking.
The labor lasts exactly ten hours, fifty-eight minutes, and fifty-eight seconds, and Tayuya screams and thrashes the entire way through it.
(It is when Sasori knows that the child is about to be born does he send Zetsu into the bathroom, the sedative having long since been working in its full effect, for if not she would have probably killed herself out of pain. Tayuya is just like that. Suicide, to her, is a rash, brunt decision that requires no real thought because we, as people, were brought into the world with no say in it and should have an amount of say in death because, unlike birth, we do have an amount of charge in it. If Tayuya feels the need to be dismembered, she'll hook herself up to some machine or another and tear herself apart, but instead-)
She's lived up to this.
(Somehow.)
She's screaming.
(Like a fucking banshee. It can only really be compared to being torn in half between the legs, something Tayuya had thought she'd experienced losing her virginity to some male porn star or another with an eleven inch cock. That pain, however, is nothing and will never be anything to this. Not ever. Zetsu was sent out of the room because there's blood all over the mat Sasori had put her on top of. She's bleeding and screaming and, even against the mixes of painkillers and anesthetics does it hurt so much, this poison Itachi had put inside of her. Oh-) "JESUS FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCKFUCK ITACHI FUCK IT HURTS IT HURTS JESUS FUCKING HELL I'M GONNA DIE-"
(What if she did?
What would he do?)
He doesn't know, and - being that Itachi is not at all accustomed to not knowing things (God forbid) - he does not speak, hich is very typical of him, but has less to do with a habit and a great deal to do with the fact that he isn't breathing correctly. Something seems to have crawled up his throat (a renegade blood vessel perhaps, a creeping vine) and is now playing at strangling him. He can breath, it's true, but only a little, and its irregular no matter what he does. The blood that pulses from her steadily, to the agonized throbbing of her heart and the pained screams of the contractions that swallow her up, that blind her to the world, smells like stale water; like cum and old meat and righteous fertility. It's yeasty and full, mixed with Sasori's pungent antiseptics and the copper-salt of her insides, and it makes Itachi sick to his stomach. Even as he hears Zetsu lock the bathroom door unsteadily, hears the rattle as his hands move towards and then away from the handle, his sinuses are burning with the smell of Tayuya's labor, with the smell of birth and afterbirth.
(There is life afterbirth.
That's what they say.)
Itachi does not say a word, not one - he doesn't move from his place against the window for four hours, his shoulders cold and stiff, and when he moves suddenly at 7:04:18 AM (the sun has risen and he feels its fingers splayed cooly against his back, peeking over him to watch Tayuya writhe) it is to go to the kitchen and cut the symbol "crimson" (朱) into the back of his arm above the wrist, and then when he returns he is even less stable and so he sits a few feet from her which he knows from the beginning is a mistake and a gift in the same way. And when she finds something solid (a book Itachi is not through with yet but he doesn't need to finish - he knows how it will end already, and it is not because he has read the back) she hits him so hard in the face with it that he flinches, a condition that is difficult to induce in any Uchiha and twice as difficult to produce in Itachi. But he does not move, and he does not criticize her for it. (She beats him with it when she can move her arms, when she have the strength to move her arms, and he lets her because he knows Tayuya too well, knows that she will either destroy the things around her or destroy herself.
I hope they cannot see.
And Itachi will not be destroyed.) Even when the right side of his face is blooming in bruises he does not move from her, he does not touch her himself except to be touched by her (bruising all along the chiseled ivory of his temple and cheek bones) and this pattern consists for hours, and still can he not breathe.
(Speak.
I am the Great Destroyer.)
Sasori thinks it's dead for a fraction of a second when it comes out of her completely silent.
(-He cuts the umbilical chord quickly with the scalpel that had been sitting beside him through the entirety of the process, and she is not crying, not screaming any longer, only breathing hard with an occasional, agonized moan between every few hard breaths. The child weighs- (an instant calculation, exactly six pounds and three ounces. Instantaneous, correct, perfect. That is Sasori, preforming this horrible ritual of childbirth. To be born is to have suggested someone died for you. In the Myth of Er, Plato suggested one must drink from a river before one can be reincarnated, but Sasori has never believed in life or death at all.) Cuts the umbilical chord away from the child, away from Tayuya, baptizing it quickly in a small bowl of fresh water that immediately goes a disgusting shade of red with Tayuya's menstrual blood.)
He (-the child.) is not crying.
(He is breathing softly.)
Eyes are open.
(So curious.)
Sasori feels no attachment. No contentment. (There is nothing beautiful about this situation at all. Tayuya is two shades away from unconsciousness, Zetsu is locked in the bathroom, and Itachi-) Sasori does not look at Itachi. (Sasori does not care about Itachi. Sasori has never cared about Itachi. It was Deidara once, and now it is Zetsu, and it remains to be Zetsu because the man is so utterly disturbed in so many ways that Sasori absolutely never ceases to be fascinated. Never ever.
Does not look at Tayuya.
Does not look at Itachi.
(To a degree-
Wants Zetsu to feast.
But only out of silent anger.)
And Itachi, a long known patron of ill luck, is only seconds eyes blankly staring at his newborn son before he turns away suddenly and vomits on the floor. (His stomach churns chaotically and his mind is a boardgame in a box on a whirlagig. His mouth is scribbles and the acid burns his gums and his white teeth.) He has not eaten recently (nothing the day before this one and nothing since the sun - not high in the sky - embraced the bruises on his face, not since the blood on his wrist dried, not since Tayuya moaned softly and broke between the legs like some cruel deity's Barbie doll,) and so it is pure stomach acid, virtually any and all that he can possibly afford to lose. It is so sudden that it chokes him, and he coughs a little of it into his nose, which burns so badly that he could scream.
He doesn't.
This is not real pain.
(There is absolutely no pain that can possiby rip, tear, or affect so drastically as 6 pounds 3 ounces.) His mind whirls and his eyes almost tear up because the lighting of the afternoon sun is just perfect, and he can see Sasori holding him, he can see what has been roiling in Tayuya's womb for nine months time.
He feels so violently nauseous that he thinks he will vomit again.
And even as he feels it, he raises his unmarred wrist to push the saliva and acid away from the edges of his lips. (And the words that will never be uttered by his twelve-year-old brother in the house of Tazuna- "I want to eat.") He pushes it away, his eyes narrowed but at no one in particular, his expression as bitter and calculated as it has always been. (Perhaps nearly as calculated as Sasori's perfectperfect mind.) He feels as if he has been tossing and turning in bed.
Tayuya is drenched in sweat that is cooling in the air.
Eleven hours for this.
Nine months and eleven hours.
And his son is-
(His son.)
His stomach clenches.
"Give him here."
In a soft voice marred only slightly by the roughness of his scalded throat.
Sasori wastes no time in handing the dripping babe into Itachi's arms.
(Would not care for a second if Itachi killed the child right then.
Sasori is never caring of anything. Ever.)
Tayuya's eyes are closed.
(Her breathing is only so beginning to slow down. There is blood.
It.
Is.
Everywhere.)
The baby's eyes are fluttering, softly, up at Itachi with that same kind of innate curiousity, and he is neither screaming, crying, or making any sort of noise, for that matter. He is silent. He is glowing, dripping in water, small body stained pink with Tayuya's blood. Tayuya, who has just spent eleven hours in labor on her living room floor giving birth to a child with the help of a complete stranger Itachi had a disturbing amount of medical trust in. Tayuya, who- (wants to die right now. Who wants to diediedie because she's in so much pain she can't even think, can barely breathe, can barely-)
Sasori glances back at Tayuya.
(Glances at the bathroom door, but-
Decides against it.)
The same way that Itachi, having taken the baby from Sasori's arms, gingerly supports the unsteady neck of him, rather than snap it as some part of him desperately wants to. He regards the infant's facial features, recognizing them as primarily his own; the long dark lashes to compliment ghost-pale skin, a gentle china swoop of a nose, and a deep taint to his amber-brown irises. (Their color is identical to something that gives Itachi a deep and terrible chill in his stomach.) His cheeks are flushed with baby fat and a new world, and he has Tayuya's thin-but-pretty lips, a rust hue dusting the very top of his head. He has quite a lot of hair for an infant, and it is plastered down with the afterbirth, his umbilical cord bleeding and broken over a round stomach, and Itachi simply looks at him, slightly irritated, greatly awed.
It is so foreign a feeling.
And he speaks to Tayuya.
(As if he will choke.)
"Name him."
Tayuya should be crying.
(Can barely speak.
Only croaks.)
"Oh for the fucking love of god-"
She doesn't say anything more.
(For almost too long.)
"-Shut the fuck up."
(Itachi, who has been quiet the whole goddamn time, how dare you say stuff like that now-)
-who watches her blankly.
"Name him."
As if she must think he was joking. (Because Itachi is not joking. He is not sexist either, really; his dislike of women stems not from preconcieved notions but from an orientation he does not control, and by their ability to irritate him. It is not sexism. It is a generalization that simply correlates with their gender. And Itachi does not just assume that Tayuya will have been thinking up names like some sort of housewife. Tayuya is not a housewife. It is more an artist's perspective which is strange because Itachi is not an artist. But "you made it, you name it" is an artist's philosophy still. It cannot be helped.)
Because all Uchiha are named within seconds of their birth. It is only tradition.
Tayuya is so close to crying right now-
(Out of exasperation.
Fucking.
Exasperation.
It had been Tayuya's expectation completely that Itachi would either kill the child or, if keeping it, at least name the hellish thing. The hellish fucking boy, but Tayuya supposes, really, that such is more convenient than having a girl because Tayuya has next to no experience with interacting with girls. Has no experience in calming down pools of emotion and the kind of rage she possesses herself.) She can't move. (Can't twitch. Is so sore, is in so much pain, and she does not notice Sasori open the bathroom door and walk inside, shutting it behind him. She does not notice because oh she could care less.)
"-Name it Sakai."
(Sakai.
Fighter Pilot of a war very few in Curia know ever existed.
The name of the guy who saved her ass from starving.
A year after she met him, she ended up shanking him in the liver, resulting in his death.
He was no one.
But without him-)
There would be no Tayuya.
No Itachi.
No Sakai.
(Can't.
Move.)
But Itachi can.
And in Sasori's absence does he carefully reach out and stroke her cheek with the hand that is not cut.
(So long as no one sees-)
Because Itachi is private.
And not affectionate.
He stands up a second afterwards and walks to the bedroom and, after a short debate, places Sakai on the floor and changes the bedsheets so that he can set him down there instead. The infant neither fusses nor stops watching him throughout the entirety, and then he is back in the living room, carefully dabbing at the insides of Tayuya's thighs and tidying up, carefully rubbing the blood that sticking to her skin clean. And then, when she is clean a moment later (he works ridiculously fast, and the rag was white at first and now it is pink, and he will put it somewhere and not touch it again. That bleach and chemicals might be to brutish,) he lifts her and takes her back to bed.
The two o' clock sun watches them through a window, and as he lies down beside her, clothes still as on him as they were eleven hours ago and back twisted with stress, a tiny baby between them, looking from one face to another, he thinks nothing.
(He thinks everything.)
February 29.
Leap Day.
And so Yokobue Sakai is born.