Unplanned

Sakura

"Pregnant?"

Sakura Uchiha says the word as if it's a foreign idea; as if she isn't a qualified medical professional who has not only studied the vast permutations of the human body but has also delivered quite a few babies in her time.

And given birth to one herself.

Shizune laughs, nervous. "Congratulations?"

Sakura cannot speak for a moment as her brain processes the new information. It's several moments before she manages a weak rasp, "Are...are you sure?"

Shizune huffs in offence and, at her feet, Tonton emits and equally indignant oink. "Sakura, I might not be a doctor of your calibre, but I can recognise a pregnancy when I see the blood test results."

The minor chastisement barely penetrates.

"I just can't believe I'm...that I'm..."

The word does not supply itself with the same ease this time.

"Pregnant," Shizune offers with a gentle firmness that borders on amusement. "Knocked-up. Expecting. In the family way. Have a bun in the oven. Oops, you made a—"

"I'm familiar with the idea!" Sakura snaps, cheeks burning in irritation and embarrassment. Shizune is having too much fun with this, but she should have noticed it herself. In a quieter voice that belies the sense of unease fluttering somewhere beneath her ribs, she continues, "I thought I had missed a period because of all the stress."

First the emergency when the Ōtsutsuki attacked the village, and then the inexplicable adventure through time and space.

No, wait. It would have had to have been right after the Ōtsutsuki, she calculates, remembering that night well enough. They had tried so hard to be quiet and Sarada had still side-eyed them with a put-upon expression the next morning.

Another realisation sets in, and now the unease gives way to actual panic.

So, when we were fighting those things, I was already...?

Her hands splay across her lab coat and her as-yet flat stomach, and she murmurs, "How could this happen?"

Shizune's voice drops into a syrupy lilt she has never actually used with children.

"Sometimes, young lady, when a man's and a woman's hearts are full of love, and they care for each other very much, they show their desire by—"

"Oh, shup up, I know how!" Sakura groans, and falls back against the nearby examination table with a muffled thump. "What am I going to do about it?"

She never considered the possibility of any other child after Sarada; at least, not after it became clear Sasuke's absence would extend for longer than a year. As a child she pictured having at least three or four. During her teenaged years, in the few moments between guilt, anger, sorrow and a war, she dreamed Sasuke would return to Konoha and settle down with her. She imagined they would have a fairy-tale marriage and try to fill the empty houses of the Uchiha compound with tiny pink- and black-haired children.

(Sakura realises now how untenable her dreams were. She can never replace the people he lost, and after having Sarada, she was ready to swear off going through childbirth ever again. And besides, her hair colour is a recessive gene, so the probability of passing it on was always unlikely to happen.)

After the War, all those dreams faded to the realm of bittersweet, fanciful "what-ifs" that grew more dim with every passing year. Sakura's status as Director of Konoha's Children's Mental Health Clinic, and as Chief of Surgery at the main hospital, kept her busy. So much so she couldn't pursue any relationship, whether she was so inclined or not. And Sasuke spent those immediate years alternately in prison or wandering the world trying to find his place in it. On top of that, neither of them leads a life a normal person would consider safe.