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Sakura gives birth to their daughter in the bathtub in the main house on the Nara compound.
Neji comes home and nearly has a stroke.
She's sitting there in the tub, running diagnostic jutsu over the newborn, the wet guck of her afterbirth buffeting against her legs. She looks up at Neji with a sleepy smile and alert eyes.
"Hey you," she murmurs. "Come and see her."
Neji takes one step forward and stops. He bites the skin of his thumb and forms the hand seals, summoning a peregrine falcon called Hiroshiki. The falcon looks from Neji to Sakura and the infant on her chest and gives a sigh.
"Chicks are good," the falcon says, nipping just a bit at Neji's ear. "I'll go get her other father."
Hiroshiki flies out of the main house and Neji lets himself stumble towards Sakura. He gets slowly to his knees and marvels at the wrinkled pink face of his daughter.
Sakura's due date wasn't for another two months, but the baby is pudgy and fat as if she's full term. Her hands are balled up into little fists and she yawns with her toothless mouth. His hand hovers delicately over her head of dark hair, and he looks up at Sakura like she's the marvel she is.
She winks at him. Because of course she does. Haruno Sakura was a field medic, the apprentice who surpassed the Godaime. Of course she had gone into labor by herself and hadn't asked a single soul in the bustling Nara compound, full of people eagerly anticipating the birth of the next Nara for help through her labor.
She had filled the tub with water, stepped in, and worked the rest out on her own.
"You," Neji says, with the upmost fondness, "are a complete and total idiot."
She laughs at him, laughs right in his face, and the sound jostles the baby. She makes a little noise of protest, but Sakura hushes her expertly.
"I handled it just fine," Sakura says. "Especially for a first time mom."
Neji narrows his eyes, and activates his Byakugan just to make sure she isn't lying. It was common for kunoichi to accidentally use chakra to help push their newborns into the world, and it occasionally caused injuries to both mother and child. He looks over Sakura's tenketsu from the tip of her head to her groin, and then he looks over his firstborn's whole body.
"I'm fine," Sakura says. "She's fine."
"Let me fuss over you," he says, gently cupping his daughter's head. "If I can't fuss over you now, when can I?"
"Never."
Neji has a retort on his lips when he hears Hiroshiki's caw and there are footsteps dashing into the bathroom. He turns, and sees Shikamaru, breathless from his sprint back home, looking just as wide eyed and useless as Neji feels.
"Oh good, you're both home now," Sakura says, adjusting the baby on her chest. "One of you hold her, and the other can help me wash this gunk off my body."
She has soft dark hair and her eyes are a magnificent verdant green. She's tiny and she rarely cries, but she's got a magnificent appetite that Sakura complains will chap her nipples.
They plan to name her Shikaro, but Yoshino is still the head of the Nara clan while she lives. And even though Shikaro is her firstborn grandchild, there is still a possibility that she is genetically Neji's and not Shikamaru's. Her little eyes may be green, but the Byakugan was not so powerful without intermarriage within the family to keep it so.
Yoshino tells them they cannot call her Shikaro until the results of the DNA test return. So they call her Karo-chan for short, which becomes Kero-chan, which Naruto of course, finds adorable. He piles gift upon gift of frog themed blankets and onesies and hats. Neji will not admit that he finds them terribly cute on his downy haired daughter, and lets Sakura and Shikamaru chide Naruto for the presents.
When the DNA tests come back, Neji doesn't look at them. Neither does Sakura. Shikamaru must, because unlike the other two, he is still the clan heir and if Shikaro is not his daughter, he will need to know.
Yoshino tells them they may call her whatever they please, which is enough of an answer for Sakura and Neji. The tense line that Shikamaru had been carrying in his shoulders for the past week eases into nothing.
Even if Shikaro were not biologically a Nara, if Shikamaru's wife bore no more children, the family would have no choice but to take on Shikaro as a ward. The Nara main branch was a family of a single line; the mantle of clan head could not go to someone who was not of that line by birth or by marriage.
Neji knows instinctively that Shikaro, that Karo-chan is not only his. She is Sakura's and Shikamaru's, too. She is theirs. Born of the three of them. With her wispy dark curls and her bright green eyes, she wraps them around her little fingers like Sakura does and she may be too young to make very many faces but every time someone does something she doesn't like, Shikamaru swears she's got Neji all over her face.
When she gets older, her first word is a mish-mash of something like 'some', which makes Sakura and Neji light up with pride as much as it makes them furious that Shikamaru says 'troublesome' so much that their daughter's first word is that one.
She's pudgy and curious for the first several years of her life. She gets into everything. She's only a Nara in name; Shikaro is a mischievous, sneaky little brat, who despite her pleasant demeanor can turn in a moment.
She's like her mother that way.
Neji is endlessly charmed by her, even when she learns 'no' or starts to teethe, or she must be potty trained. He dotes on her, spoils her in a way that Sakura chides him for, but he can't help it.
Hiroshiki is right; chicks are good. Children are good. And Shikaro is perfect. Even when she spits up all over one of Neji's nice yukatas for the end of summer festival.
"Yeah," Sakura says, wrinkling her nose at her daughter's spit up and where it stains the dark blue fabric of Neji's yukata. "She's doing that now. Spitting up on everything."
Neji raises a single eyebrow and tries to find the smell of vomit charming. He can't.
Shikamaru sweeps in to take Shikaro out of his arms to clean her up, and Sakura begins helping Neji out of his ruined yukata.
"Is she still your perfect little darling?" Sakura asks, a wry smile on her face.
Neji shrugs a shoulder and purses his lips. There's another yukata, one in a dark purple that will nicely match Shikamaru's dark green and Sakura's blue.
"Of course she is," he replies.
"I need two hands in here!" Shikamaru calls, interrupting them. "We've got a blowout!"
Neji and Sakura look at each other simultaneously. Sakura's eyes widen and Neji gives her a smirk.
"But she's your perfect little darling right now."
Sakura curses him and stomps off to tend to their daughter (whose bottom is covered in shit) and their husband (who is valiantly dealing with it). Neji gets dressed humming a tune under his voice, and sweeps into the bathroom to take their clean baby out of Sakura and Shikamaru's hands.
"She's mine again," he says promptly.
And he smiles, burying his face in Shikaro's clean smelling hair, delicately takes her fingers out of his hair when she yanks at it. Sakura catches up to them first, and tickles their daughter's foot. Shikamaru is last and slips his arm around Neji's waist, talking to Sakura over Neji's head while Sakura coos at Shikaro.
She's theirs. Always.
Sumire, their second daughter is born in a hospital, like a reasonable baby with a reasonable mother.
Shikamaru and Neji are both there for Sakura's twelve hour labor, holding her arms down when she threatens to give herself a C-section because her second born insists on being stubborn about this.
When Sumire finally comes into the world, her hair is pink and her eyes are lavender. She is the first Nara to have the Byakugan. When he sees her pale eyes, Shikamaru buries his face in his hands and moans about the paperwork.