A/N: Ahh, finally, the final chapter is up! Please tell me if you liked the story, the ending, the gist of it all. Review?

There was only pain, lessening and then peaking again. There were only her screams, more often wordless than not. "Make it stop . . ." she begged the doctor after hours of agony. It revealed how desperate she was, that she would stoop to asking Kabuto for assistance. He sat scrutinizing her through his lenses, his chin on his folded hands.

"I can't numb it this time," he told her. "Once the baby comes, then the pain will go away." She rocked forward and backward on the medic's table with her hands clasped around her knees. Rocking didn't really help. But she did it anyway. She slid off the table and walked the length of the room restlessly. Pacing didn't really help. But, helped along by Kabuto, she did it anyway.

When she was in the hallway, leaning against the wall, heaving for breath, Sasuke entered from a side corridor and came face-to-face with her. They stared at each other wordlessly for several moments. There was nothing to be said. But Soma could read the regret behind his eyes. Tears trickled down her face as she said, "Get away from me, snake spawn." Her former teacher's eyes flickered at the use of the words. What was the deepest insult coming from Soma might just have been a high honor when directed at Sasuke. She couldn't tell. "You're better than me. Orochimaru doesn't use you." She turned from him so that she wouldn't see him leaving. His footsteps got more distant, but he stopped to speak before going.

"You're right. I am better than you," he assented coolly. She could feel his eyes on her before he, too, turned away. "But you're wrong when you say that he doesn't use me."

Because Kabuto kept time all throughout her contractions and talked to himself about procedures and analyses, Soma knew it hadn't only felt like hours. It had been hours—twenty of them—since she had, as Kabuto put it, "broken water." He hovered over her, but couldn't, or wouldn't, help, beyond giving her water to drink.

"It's taking too long," Soma heard him say. As if to prove him right, another spasm coursed through her, and she screeched with pain. But if she had wanted his help before, she regretted ever speaking up when he bound her against the cold table. Kabuto only tied down those who were about to be subjected to great torture.

Spontaneously, she began to cry. "Please don't . . ."

He mopped her face with a rag and used that same rag to gag her. "It'll be over quickly," he promised. Anything more that Soma tried to say was muffled by the cloth and drowned out by the hum of his blue chakra. He placed his hands onto her round stomach, arms straight, in position for a chakra infusion. An enormous amount of chakra poured into her.

Had she thought there had been pain before? It was but a pitiful wavelet compared to the tsunami that crashed over her now.

Completely spent, Soma lay on the table hearing Kabuto in a daze. He had delivered her baby, and now he was making his report. Orochimaru stood listening; Soma had fruitlessly pulled against the ropes holding her down, but she couldn't get away. His snakelike eyes burned down at her. She wanted to hide. She wanted the contractions to stop. She wanted to hold her baby. But she was forced to lie eagle-spread on display before them. She knew from Kabuto that the minor contractions wouldn't cease until she passed "the placenta." And Orochimaru was the one cradling the infant in his arms. He held the baby high and admired his prize.

"Don't kill him," Sasuke spoke up from within his teacher's shadow.

Orochimaru let out a cackling laugh and cosseted the infant's dark hair. "'Kill him'? Dear boy, surely you don't think I've waited this long just so that I can end the child's life as soon as he's born? Nonsense." He left the room, and Sasuke followed him. "I have much more ambitious plans for this infant."

The baby was crying.

Orochimaru returned shortly and gave the infant back to Kabuto, who instantly pressed a chakra-bright finger to the baby's chest. The fresh wound there was quickly erased. When the snake left and it was safe, Soma begged Kabuto pitifully, "Give me my baby . . . give him to me . . ." The medic ninja complied with her wish, untying her and handing her the baby to hold. He was writing a new information card.

"Subject #2385," he read aloud as he wrote the numbers in chakra. "Possesses a kekkei genkai. Ten minutes old. Male, 0.3 meters, 1.9 kilograms. No outstanding allergies or diseases." He paused and looked at Soma. "Do you have a name?" he asked.

"Bi," she answered without hesitation.

Kabuto nodded and ran his finger over the card. "Uchiha Bi—"

"Anakame Bi!" snarled Soma, holding her son against her.

Kabuto tilted his head and agreed to humor her. "My mistake. Anakame Bi," he remedied, re-energizing his card to correct the misinformation.

Soma sat with her baby—her baby—in her arms. Kabuto looked both of them over, fingering the baby's black-as-night hair and bending to massage Soma's abdominal muscles. "You're familiar with nursing?" he asked her. He nodded at her recently-swollen breasts. "That's how you'll be feeding him." It was such a casual question, but for some reason it sent Soma into a veritable paroxysm of sobbing. Rocking back and forth again, she was too miserable to pay much attention to Kabuto as he attempted to comfort her. He caressed her head in a sickeningly tender gesture and gently picked her up. "Shhh, now, calm down. The procedure went well. You're doing fine. And your son is alive and well."

But he could never comprehend that she was weeping because Bi had been born with no complications.

And because he was alive.

The End