Kisame took his daughter home at the end of a week to an empty apartment that smelled of bright citrus. Saki liked having candles around. She always bought the same one, and Tropical Sunrise always had been her favorite...

He frowned and shut the door with the sole of his sandal. He'd put away the candles when he had the time, maybe at the back of the cupboards where nobody could sift through and find them. Those candles couldn't just be thrown away. What would Saki say? If he wasted them and—

A sigh rumbled out of his throat as he looked down at the small bundle in his arms. Sakura silently stared up at him, her hands balled up beneath her chin and green eyes searching around his hairline.

He smiled.

"Welcome home," Kisame whispered. He flicked on the lights to the living room as he passed it and took a seat on the couch, placing his elbow on the arm rest and adjusting Sakura to put more support at the back of her head.

At least the rain hadn't touched her.

But now he had to consider his options now that he worked for a time-extensive organization and had to double up as a new father.

For one, Sakura had to be kept as far away from Orochimaru and Sasori as possible. Orochimaru would more than likely experiment on her and Sasori would try to turn her into one of his disgusting human puppets. Kakuzu was... maybe he could reason with Kakuzu through money and favors, but the man had just killed his third partner of the year. His temper was one of the worst he'd ever seen and the last thing he wanted was to come back and see his daughter turned into nothing but a puddle of blood and cartilage.

Zetsu was more or less out of the equation. He ate people and was gone on reconnaissance nearly all of the time. So that left Konan; the only person sane enough to take care of a baby.

Sakura blinked sleepily and started drifting off and Kisame poked one of her cheeks. She wasn't blue or had sharp teeth like he thought she would. She was just a quiet little baby that gave him happy toothless smiles.

He already loved her, and he already knew she deserved better than this.

"Kisame-san."

He stood, holding Sakura close to his chests, and turned to regard his visitor.

Konan could barely restrain her surprise. She'd felt a small blip of chakra that wasn't his and assumed it was the residue from a previous mission—never in a hundred years would she have assumed it was a child. Kisame was only seventeen and she herself was only three years his senior, and not once in her life had she wanted a child. In fact, shinobi as notorious as they were didn't have children.

And not only had the newborn caught her off guard, she didn't even know his wife was pregnant to begin with.

... and now that she thought more about it, she didn't even know his wife's name.

They were coworkers. Not friends. Personal matters were kept personal.

"She's yours?" Konan questioned despite herself. It was such an unprecedented discovery that she found herself unable to bring up any other subject. Kisame nodded, his free hand flexing over his kunai pouch. "I won't hurt her."

"You won't. Or I'll kill you," he warned. He bared his teeth for a split second to seal the threat before turning to hoist his baby's care bag off the floor and onto the couch. 

Konan eyed the movement carefully. She heard stories of how mothers were intensely protective of their children when they were born because they'd fostered them in their own bodies for nine whole months with care and love and a hope to raise what grew inside them. Fathers were protective too, but normally not as much as mothers because they didn't have the same internal connection. 

Kisame reminded her much of the mother between the two. If that were so and if the rest of the empty house meant anything, it was because of one of three things. One, his wife was out on an errand. Unlikely. Two, his wife was still at the hospital, a possibility if she was truly sick.

Or three.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Konan said. Kisame met her blank gaze for a moment before he turned back to his daughter's sleeping face.

"Don't worry about it."

She looked at the baby again.

"I'll have to tell Pein-sama about his development."

He shrugged, but in a careful way as to not disturb the bundle in his arms.

"Do what you want. But aside from him, she stays out of everything and out of sight. I'm not getting her involved in this shit."

Konan nodded in acquiesce and moved to leave the apartment but paused at the front door. She tilted to her head to the side and listened to the rummaging behind her.

"What's her name?"

The rummaging stopped and was followed by a reluctant silence.

"... Sakura," came the wary reply. She looked back ahead of her and opened the door as she let her body disintegrate into paper cranes.

"It fits."

She didn't tell Pein what she saw that day.

::

Her casket was open and the pastor spoke in words recited through several other dead; passionate but detached, heartfelt but empty.

Kisame sat in the front row dressed in black, his head bowed and two week old Sakura held close to him. She stared at his face the whole ceremony, observing how he didn't cry no matter how much his eyes wanted to. She also stared at the gills on each side of his face, how neither were straight and how none of them were really identical to each other.

The pastor stopped talking and faced the front row.

"If the husband of the deceased would like to say a few words?" he prompted. Kisame angled him with a glance the made him quiver in his spot.

"No."

The pastor coughed and tried to regain his composure.

"I-If that's so, then we will proceed with..."

Sakura made a small spit bubble at her father, and he returned it with a sad smile as he wiped it away with a handkerchief.

::

Fuck.

A month had passed without too much of a struggle. Kisame had been sent out on missions that lasted a few days at a time and weren't too chakra intensive, leaving him the option to have a clone stay with Sakura the days he was gone so she wouldn't notice her father was absent in the first place. But the mission he'd been assigned to this time was three weeks long two countries over, and he knew damn well he wasn't able to keep his chakra steady enough for that long.

"Is there a problem?" Konan asked informing Kisame of his duties. Sakura was in her gray sleeper on the counter, watching the exchange in front of her.

"A... small one," he admitted. He scratched his head and looked around for where he'd left that damn baby bottle. "I'll be gone for too long and I need someone to watch Sakura and I don't exactly trust the locale."

Konan approached the counter and extended one of her hands palm side up. And origami duck came to life on her skin and waddled onto Sakura's blue onesie, making the little girl go cross-eyed while trying to stare at the little form on her front.

"I can watch over her, if you wish," she offered. "You'll be gone for over a month and there's no one else you can turn to."

Kisame grabbed the baby bottle that was on the worn coffee table—why hadn't he noticed—and frowned.

"I'll figure something out so I won't owe you."

"You made it seem urgent."

"It is urgent. I have to leave in an hour."

"So refusing my help wouldn't be your best option."

"To hell with my options! What the hell are you gonna get out of it?!" Kisame snapped. He immediately regretted his tone of voice when Sakura's face scrunched up and she started to wail. He scrubbed a callous hand over his face as he hurried over and took her into his arms to whisper soft words in her ear and pat her back until she quieted down into teary hiccups.

Konan, as apathetic as she always was, watched patiently and impassively until Kisame pursed his lips and glanced back at her.

"... Keep her away from everyone else. Especially from Orochimaru-san and Sasori-san."

She nodded once.

"And when you hold her, always support the head and make sure her head doesn't hit anything, there was still soft spots in the skull that haven't developed and she can get hurt easily—" he began to ramble as he combed the room, pointing out various items and listing schedules for Sakura's usual feeding times, nap times, what temperature to keep the room at, how to make her formula, and including a quick step by step rundown on how to put on her diaper whenever it needed to be changed. "—and just... just be careful, alright? Sakura's only a month and a half old."

Konan nodded again but her face never changed.

"I've retained everything you've told me."

"Good," he sighed. He looked at the pair of green eyes that observed him so fixedly and placed a short kiss atop Sakura's pink hair. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Ever so gently he transferred his hold into Konan's and took a step back to be sure her arms were fastened around her daughter securely and correctly. The frown persisted on his face, even when he took Samehada and strapped it onto his back.

"Make sure she doesn't end up hurt."

She tipped her head and held the baby close like she'd witnessed Kisame do many times before.

"I understand."

He cast one last worried look at his baby before disappearing in a wisp of mist, leaving Konan and Sakura to themselves in an apartment that was a new sort of empty. Konan looked down at Sakura and saw how fascinated she was at the labret piercing fastened underneath her bottom lip.

"I'll have to tell Pein-sama about you now," she told the baby. "He'll be upset that I haven't done so before. He doesn't shout, though, so you'll have no reason to cry."

She peered out at the rain. It wouldn't be feasible if Sakura got wet and grew sick, nor would it be best if she used her wings to transport the both of them to the tallest tower in Amegakure. Sakura might get injured and she'd read medical accounts of abusive head trauma—or shaken baby syndrome, as it was more often referred to.

"We'll be walking, then," she decided. Konan tapped the girl's forehead. "You'll need to keep quiet so no one will get suspicious. Pein-sama is the God of this village. You should keep in mind to respect him."

Sakura made a strange gurgling noise as she flailed her small arms up and down. Konan blinked, her face the perfect mask of the least expression.

"Hm."

::

Pein disliked babies.

Even if they were impressionable, they were ineffective. Children were only tolerable when they could walk and talk and have a basic understanding of the world around them, but babies lacked even that much, and he loathed to think of living years trying to raise one of his own. And with being alongside Konan ever since they were children, he knew for a fact that she didn't want to bear the responsibility of taking care of children either.

So there was no reason for her to approach him with one in her arms. 

"We don't take in orphans," he said. "The orphanages here have viable space and are funded enough to care for newborns."

"She isn't an orphan, Pein. This is Sakura. Kisame's daughter," she introduced tonelessly. His lips pulled down into a thoughtful frown.

"I wasn't aware he had a child."

"He's very close-mouthed about it."

"Then why are you taking care of her?"

"He'll be gone for too long on his mission and there was no one he could turn to," she said. "What is a mission for peace if you're throwing those defenseless into the fray?"

She knew. She knew far earlier than she was letting on and she didn't bother to tell him, and that made irritation twitch in the groves of his finger tips. Children were trainable. Babies were nuisances. Would she even survive the three years it took her to mature before she was able to learn the ways of the shinobi?

Pein strode towards the baby cradled close to Konan. Really, a child. A new soul in this wretched world he was trying to fix and would grow up to see how gray life really was. He stopped inches from Sakura with a scrutinizing gaze over the supreme dissimilarity to her father.

Sakura took one long look at him before she started to cry.

He recoiled as his face folded in annoyance, turning on his heel and letting the hem of his cloak sweep against his ankles.

"Quiet her!"

Konan shifted the baby so that she could hold her by her bottom and pat her back in a soothing gesture like she'd seen Kisame do some times before. Her calculating amber eyes set on the back of her long-time friend. 

"Kisame-san is intent on raising and protecting her," she said. "Are you in opposition to the decision he made?"

Pein didn't turn even as the cries began to soften.

"She will not be the cause of any problem," he told her firmly. "And she will be kept out of this building until she learns to control her actions."

The space between Konan's eyebrows creased slightly as she moved to leave the building the same way she came. Sakura had reduced to sniffles and peeped over her caretaker's shoulder at the strange man who frightened her with his piercings and his eyes ringed like purple fire.

She stared after him the whole way out, only looking away when the colors around her changed as the world passed her by.