A/n: It's here!! WHOOOOOO!!!! (that's supposed to be a cheer) And it's got a prologue! Uhhh...yeah! Prologue! On the second story!...yeah, I'm odd. Of course, if you're just figuring this out, you were probably dropped on your head when you were a child. Much like I may or may not have been.
And yes. It was obvious. Obviously obvious. So painfully obviously obvious that everyone knows. Really. But, it happened. And I seem to have a slight obsession with girls in Akatsuki getting pregnant...to the point where I don't even think about what they're going to do. Ahhh, fond (or something) memories of really Mary-Sue OCs...
Pein is Malcolm Reynolds again. Except more obsessive. And Kai is Inara. Except not...I'm not explaining that. Anyone who's seen the TV series Firefly or the movie Serenity will probably know what I'm talking about.
Anyway...I left Konan as Kai, because...why not? It's not very far into it, I don't think it would take much persuasion to make me have her as Konan from here on out. I really should. I keep calling her Kai, mentally and everything.
As of yet, I have considerably less plot than the last story. Yeah. But there are children! In Akatsuki...not the most original thing, but hey, there's a reason why it's done a lot, right?
In case anyone's still confused, the three pairings that I yet have in mind are as follows:
PeinxKonan/Kai/that one, SasorixDeidara, and ItachixTobi. Someone was wondering about Itachi, and that's what I had in mind. And maybe sort of kind of something else, but it's in the past, gotten over, forgotten, long-gone, and only matters in the physical remnants.
Warnings: Before the end of this...notstraightness, bad parenting, more notstraightness, and really bad parenting, violent little tiny girls and maybe some cats too, and...do pregnancies count?
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters yet listed. They're all property of evil slave driver Masashi Kishimoto, as of yet.
Pein stared at the ceiling, his spiraling gaze harsh enough that he couldn't say he was terribly surprised to see a small crack that hadn't been there when he'd first crawled into bed. He wondered vaguely how long it had been since the sun set, and how long it would be until it rose again, and what would happen when everything that the sunrise would trigger came into motion. It could be anything from happy and peaceful to angry and chaotic. He couldn't even by certain that it would happen—and that worried him. Oh, it worried him so, but maybe it worried him more that it would happen but it wouldn't be ideal, and that there would be some kind of big change that he hadn't anticipated. Possibilities upon possibilities piled in his head, the pressure of them keeping him awake during the long hours of the night before the day he would least want to sleep through.
Because tomorrow would be the day Kai came back.
Kai had been gone for some nine months, and while Pein…well, Pein was a sneaky bastard when he wanted to be, and often a cheater, so he had kept in contact with Kai nonetheless, sort of, meeting up with her once a month despite his orders to keep out of contact with her. Tonight was just like any other night when he'd run off to see Kai in the village that she'd chosen to stay at. Every time, she smiled happily, and they spent time doing virtually nothing but basking in each others' presence, and he was happy to find her in good health, and maybe even happier to see that she didn't seem to have made a lot of contact with the rest of the city—not that her being antisocial was the best thing, but it meant that she wouldn't be missed when she returned to Akatsuki, and it meant that she wasn't meeting with other men or anything.
For all he knew, she had been eyeing someone but thought better of starting a relationship, because, really, she knew probably better than anyone else that it would displease him, and people who displeased him were doomed to very unfortunate fates. Yes, it wasn't out of the question that she'd thought of another man, but chances were pretty slim that she'd actually done anything with anyone.
Pein knew this, and Pein told himself this, and Pein repeated this to himself, and he knew that he knew that he knew it, but for some reason, he remained unchanged, staring with ceiling-cracking intensity at the same spot above his head and body as he had when he first laid down, and indeed still staring, his eyes still open, not closed in the bliss that he so hoped that sleep would bring him. At least it would give him enough energy to not fall on Kai the moment he saw her. That would be very…unleader-like.
Of course, it would also be unleader-like to read Hagar the Horrible every morning, but he did that anyway, so it would technically be okay to fall on Kai because he already did unleader-like things, right?
Wrong. He was okay reading Hagar the Horrible because nobody knew. If they knew, he would be publicly considered unleader-like and thus he would loose all faith and trust and Akatsuki would fall apart. Except maybe Tobi's little family thing would probably keep them together somewhat, so they'd probably wind up being a cleaning service or something silly like that rather than conquerors of the world.
And he'd rather that they fall apart than they become a cleaning service. Which wasn't to say that the concept of Akatsuki in maid uniforms wasn't…interesting, to say the least, and thinking of Kai in that uniform almost made him want to confess to reading the comic strips in the newspaper in the vain hope of seeing her like that. But he didn't want Akatsuki to lose its pride, so he would have to settle with Kai in whatever she wanted to wear. Except he didn't even have Kai.
Pein couldn't wait for tomorrow. Which was why he so hated this mysterious insomnia.
Time passed. Pein didn't even bother trying to keep track of it—he would only hate that wakeful anxiety more, and that hatred would make it even harder to fall asleep, if it was even at all possible. But he did know that, eventually, a fine line of dust trickled from that hole in the ceiling. That trickle rapidly grew, then rapidly shrank, revealing a miniscule hole in the ceiling, not much larger from Pein's point of view than the period at the end of this sentence. But it was a hole nonetheless, and a hole in the ceiling will always show the sky, which, in this case, was the bright blue of daytime.
Pein had officially not slept for at least twenty-four hours. Not that he was proud of it, but it was so, and he sighed to break the silence as he shoved the sheets aside and sat up.
Shortly after, Pein emerged from his bedroom, his Akatsuki robe draped over his shoulders sloppily and mostly zipped up, at least enough that nobody would know that he was wearing only underwear beneath it. He closed the door behind him, running a hand through his bed-ruffled hair as he dully wished that he'd remembered his allergy pill last night.
AppaHanatly, however, bed-head and rivers of mucus down either side of his nose did not do anything to decrease anyone's happiness to see him, considering that he saw only a flash of blue before finding himself on the ground with a warm body on top of him, and his elbow suddenly hurt, and a head of blue hair nuzzling his shoulder.
The next thing he realized was that everyone else in Akatsuki was fully dressed and watching, ranging from two feet to ten feet away from the foot of the figure on top of him. All of them looked rather tired, for whatever reason, but smiled when they saw that he emerged.
And then Pein thought he realized what happened. Kai was already back, for whatever reason, and was appaHanatly so happy to see him that she totally just…what would the word for that be? Hug? Attack? No…probably glomp. Yes, she glomped him.
Wait, what?
Pein cleared his throat, and her head retreated to look up at him adoringly, proving that it was, indeed, Kai, though she was slightly harder to recognize without her flower.
He would have smiled, but that would have been unleader-like. But then, she smiled at him brightly, and his lips widened anyway. Although his question still wasn't answered…
"Honey," he muttered enduringly, "when did you get back, and why was I not informed of your return?"
"Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you to wake up?" Kai demanded, pouting slightly. "I got here right when you wanted me to, but you locked the door and didn't come out, so I had to wait around in the hallway forever."
"It wasn't that long, was it?" Pein breathed. Did he seriously lock himself in his room for that long?
"It's three in the afternoon, sweetheart," Kai informed with a cheerful front.
Pein blinked. "Already?"
"Already," Kai repeated, smiling glossily.
A/n again: Hope you liked it. Or at least that you can stand it...yeah.
Preview: Three years have passed since this whole thing started, and Pein's starting to wonder if maybe this softened them up too much...
Special: Comparrison: Today's Special is going to focus on where the hell Pein's not-so-professional-ness is coming from.
Unfortunately, I think I put some of my own faults into this. If anything is happening on any given day that will possibly be good or possibly be bad, I can't sleep at all, hence Pein's insomnia. Except he was actually thinking about it. I just lay there cursing my insomnia and how I have nothing to worry about tomorrow as long as I get some sleep...which I don't.
The other main source, as I've complained before, is Malcolm Reynolds. I doubt that any of my readers know who he is, so I'll explain. On a series called Firefly (live-action, not anime, but I wouldn't say it's entirely dissimilar to some), Mal is the captain of the space ship Serenity, and the crew of that ship pretty much just works to get by, doing some things that aren't so morally correct (see the comparrison?). The main difference is that Mal, in the end, has a heart. Well, usually. It really does seem to vary. But he's usually kind of improvised. And I keep making Pein do that, too.