So...I've never done a story with Madara and Sakura both in it. Not that many people have, I think. And the song I'm using is called "Life is Beautiful," by Sixx AM. Take note that the lyrics are somewhat mixed up, and they're put in the story to set the mood for the scene right after them. So this is not how you'll hear them in the actual song.
Oh, some notes: firstly, it's mentioned that Sakura's apartment has a "chain lock" along with a regular lock. I hope you all know what it is…it's often on hotel doors. Y'all can google it.
—Just open your eyes
Just open your eyes
And see that life is beautiful—
"So…a B in Chemistry?"
"Yes."
"Was that because you dropped a lit match on the teacher's shoe or because she just hates you?"
"Both."
"Hahaha!"
"Sakura."
The most recent abovementioned comment was made by one Uchiha Sasuke, this town's resident "popular/smart/rich boy" who spent a lot of time with this town's resident "happy/cute/intelligent" girl. Sasuke's unwanted harem of girls surrounded him like clouds of smoke between classes, but he could count on his fingers how many he actually gave a damn about.
One of them was Haruno Sakura, a girl he'd known since sixth grade, who drifted her relaxed, friendly way through life, excelling at most everything that tickled her fancy (except for algebra, in which she'd gotten terrible grades all through junior high). They made an odd pair of friends, she watching clouds, reading classic literature and playing soccer, and he watching paint dry, reading obituaries and unintentionally playing hard-to-get with some eighty or ninety high school girls. But no one ever mentioned this to their faces, as they both had nasty right hooks.
"What, are you jealous of all my beautiful A's, Uchiha Sasuke?" Sakura rubbed her excellent report card on the top of his head as she walked down the sidewalk. She didn't see the little smile that brought to his face. "I'm just teasing! B is still good grade, and this is the first report card of the year. You have plenty of time to get it up again. Haven't you seen Naruto's?" Predictably, that brought a smirk to his face. "See, life is good." With what amounted to less than a paragraph of words, Sakura could make him happy again. She could always do that. "I won't be able to come to your house this Saturday. Sorry."
That remark was enough to put a needle through his balloon of cheer. "Again? Why? It is another school activity?"
"No, no soccer game that night, it's my parents. They're finally coming back since the day school started this year and I want to spend the weekend with them. They're leaving again just after, and might not be back till we graduate in the spring."
"I should meet them."
Sakura stiffened at this idea. "Just because your matchmaking father told you to meet them when they come home—"
"I want them to. I've known you for almost six years and no matter how many times I come into your house, I've never once seen your parents. That's very odd."
The pinkette raised a thin and questioning brow. "Since when do rich boys know what's odd in normal society?"
"Sakura—"
"I can't help that my parents travel. And you don't have to go along with your father's matchmaking game." They entered her apartment building, as they always did after school, and started up the elevator. "Of course you deserve better than Karin or Ino, but someday you'll find someone you really like. Your parents may have nothing to do with picking her out."
"I really like you," he said slowly, and though this made Sakura grow a little smile, her reply was not what Sasuke wanted to hear: "I know a high school crush when I see it, Sasuke…speaking of which…" The elevator doors had opened, and halfway down the hall stood an all-too-familiar figure leaning against the wall.
"God, it took you long enough!" And before Sakura could even get into the pose her self-defense teacher had taught her, the beast was on her.
Madara Uchiha, a relative who lived with Sasuke and his parents, was the paragon of perversion: the only woman he'd ever really had affection for was a high schooler seven years younger than he, and it was no secret that he'd tried to kiss her at her fifteenth birthday party (and about every other day afterwards). His eyes were unnaturally red and his hair unusually silky and long, which gave him a dozen or so new female admirers every day and even a couple male, but he would turn them all away for either his passionate work in the local police force or the holder of his affections, most likely the latter. Sasuke sometimes thought him amusing, other times worthy of a crowbar jammed through his face. Again, presently the latter.
"My sweet little one, I haven't seen you for ten whole days, I was about to die rotting in my godforsaken office without you—"
It was difficult enough reaching for her house key when someone's tight arms prevented her from moving. When he started murmuring inappropriate sweet nothings into her ear, Sasuke decided the atmosphere had become too much like an Uchiha fantasy. He quickly reached into Sakura's pocket her (rock-solid) cell phone—she yelped at the touch—and bashed it on his cousin's head.
"Gaaah! Sasuke…" He caught sight of the paper his younger cousin held. "…Hey, a B? A B? Are you doing drugs, Sasuke? "
"Madara, just come inside. Sasuke, you can hit him as much as you want when I close the door; these walls are pretty much soundproof."
Sakura opened the door and was unwillingly dragged inside. Sasuke sighed and closed the door. He and Sakura dropped their school bags in the corner as they often did, passed by the door to her parents' room that was ever-locked, and Madara made himself comfortable on the couch.
The cleanliness of the place never ceased to amaze either of the boys, Sasuke especially, because her locker and binders and folders at school always were flawlessly spic-and-span but he never saw her cleaning up. One of her talents, along with sports, cooking and—well, Sasuke's list is too long to put down—was performing stealthy little tricks like that.
One example: he was looking at the stack of books on the kitchen table—The Metamorphosis, Watership Down, other such well-known works—and when he looked back, Sakura was no longer wearing her skirt. She had shorts. Out of nowhere.
"Nice legs, baby," Madara purred, and Sakura began busily doing something on her phone. "Why don't you wear short shorts around me more? You know you look stunning in them."
"They're not short shorts." She was pressing buttons quite rapidly at this point while the rest of her was still as a statue; in the opinion of the two young men, she looked absolutely adorable trying not to look ruffled by their stares. "I had gym today and I couldn't just wear a skirt to gym, so I wore these under it." There were a few moments of silence, and then Sakura walked briskly to the little kitchen area, where her legs were hidden. Sasuke threw his French textbook at his cousin's head when he tried to follow.
—You can't breathe until you choke
You gotta laugh when you're the joke—
It was Friday, thank the good Lord, Sasuke had left school early to meet an old friend of his father's, and Sakura had no schoolwork to do. Her friends Tenten and Naruto had invited her over to a sleepover, but she declined in favor of resting up for a weekend that would require much energy. She was contentedly reading a book on her bed when there was a knock at her door. She stood up and took her book with her. Sakura's apartment door had long ago been fitted with a chain lock to prevent someone forcing the door open from outside. This made it quite safe to release the first lock and open the door a few inches. Feeling that safety, she turned the knob.
Her heart skipped several beats when the door was shoved open four inches and barely held by the chain lock. She jumped back and almost screamed. After a few moment, a black lock of hair filled the gap, and then a red eye as bright and fine as a music box. "Madara?"
"May I…come in?"
There was really nothing to say but "Um, allright," unlock the chain and let him in (even though she was in her pajamas already). His darkly-clad figure didn't even move until the door was all the way open, and then examined her outfit before stepping inside. "Short shorts again?" he murmured. The rather flattering shirt that accompanied it, with a cute Snoopy design, wasn't even noticed.
"They're not that short," the pinkette grumbled as she shut the door and locked it again. "I wear shorts when I play soccer or run, or when pervs like you aren't around. And it's almost too cold outside for them, anyw." Sakura wasn't able to finish the word. Madara was suddenly standing so close her nose bumped his chest.
"Why don't you like me?"
Even with Sakura's decent five-foot-five height, Madara was a tall fellow and she had to crane her neck to look him in the eye and this almost-nonexistent distance. "What?"
"You always side with Sasuke. You use him to push me away, and when he's not there, you push me away harder than he ever can. Why?" His large hands gently grasped her wrists. "…I want you to like me."
It somewhat made sense if one looked backed at all the times she had thrown a book at Madara's head, habitually sided with Sasuke before hearing Madara's side of the story when the two argued, accused him of trying to molest her…it went on. "I do like you. When you take a break from being a closet pervert, you're funny and…kind. There aren't a lot of guys who can be both those things at once."
For a minute or so, his left eye glared intensely at her, and it was a good thing his hair obscured the other. "You mean that?" he asked, but he sounded convinced already. She squeezed his hand gently as she broke away from him and walked to her little kitchen.
"Since you're here, you should try this little recipe I made for my mom. I need to know if it's too sweet." She took a bowl from the countertop and suddenly found he'd grabbed her wrist again. Madara was once again very close, now threateningly so and Sakura instinctively moved back. She was far too slow, though, and she foolishly left her lips parted when he kissed her.
The experience was overwhelming enough that innocent Sakura could barely think, and it was a struggle to think at all when she found there was a tongue in her mouth that wasn't hers. It touched hers, and the man put a hand tenderly on the back of her head to attempt to bring them even closer. Madara moved back to breathe, and groaned when he returned to his new favorite post. He could feel Sakura's knees shaking against his and he let his body and hers fall together. He let her land in his lap, from which point he could push her up against the wall, where he had wanted her to be for a long time.
He spent a long time kissing her, getting her used to him, used to this, and somewhere in the midst of it he took one of her wrists yet again and pressed it helplessly above her head, leaving the other free to hold onto him if she wished. He heard her mew and decided it was time to move. Regretfully, Madara moved his mouth from hers and immediately Sakura's head fell. Her chin hit her chest and her notorious strength collapsed into that of a shaking noodle—for Madara was quite powerful.
His plan was moving smoothly for the most part. Despite knowing she was too young to make love now, he'd rather hoped to be on her bed at this time; then again, for all he knew, she'd seen this coming and gone into the kitchen just to keep him out of there.
"Sakuraaa…" he sighed against her swan neck. And after catching her breath some more, she replied with the cutest, "What?" he'd ever heard, so she earned an extra feather-kiss on her jaw. "I love you. I love you."
Her breathing slowed dramatically and she said nothing. Her trapped hand, which had been weakly resisting for a few moments, ceased to move. The anticipation of her response was too much. He pressed his head lovingly into her neck, a blatant beg for something positive. However, this was also a good angle to look down her body—and see the red, angry mark her sleeping shorts almost hid. It was a wound he couldn't guess the nature of, because Sakura suddenly pulled her legs close and her trapped hand was pulling to be free again. "You have to leave." she gasped suddenly.
"Sakura, what is—"
"I can see their headlights glowing on the wall! It's just one beam, not two, it has to be their car coming down the hill! Their sedan has a busted light. Please—"
"Don't be scared," he soothed. Many times he'd imagined saying this to her after she'd woken from a great nightmare. Her expression now was very similar to the one from his imagination. "Don't be scared, my little one. What's wrong?"
"My parents are coming. They can't see you yet. You have to go." The sweet pleasure in her eyes was fading quickly, and suddenly she gave a little laugh. "Y-You're—I like you more than I thought. But you can't stay now. Go home."
For one thing, Madara liked their current position so much he opted for stalling just to hold them both there another few moments (And he was getting suspicious, too, but he loved her in his lap). "I really don't see why I have to—"
"Madara!" She slapped her free hand—her shaking hand—onto his shoulder and squeezed violently. "Please."
He couldn't refuse her anything. He didn't refuse her when she wanted a copy of the Mona Lisa for her sixteenth birthday and he didn't refuse her now. "Allright." He kissed her softly on the forehead just the same. "But later I want you to tell me why your parents' car makes you so—" She interrupted him with "Fine, fine, I will! I promise!" and her vivid eyes started darting around the apartment.
In less than a minute she'd forced him out of her home and left him confused and inwardly furious at himself. What had gone smoothly in his mind had started out well, had a fantastic middle, and an end so unfairly abrupt he didn't know what to make of it. Because he respected her, he wouldn't have forced her to make love (not tonight, not when she was still seventeen) but now his feelings had at last been made clear. He had beaten Sasuke...and many others as well.
But he knew without thinking that his first business upon getting home would be to brag of his new claim to everyone he knew…and Uchiha Madara knew many people.
—I know some things that you don't
I've done things that you won't—
Saturday morning. He had nothing to offer the police force on his weekend off his volunteer work, however much they wanted him. But still they were calling him at seven in the morning—oh, actually six forty-two, like that made it better. With one of his typical exaggerated sighs Madara swung his arm to this nightstand, ripped his cell carelessly out of its plug and slammed it to his ear. "Whut."
"Madara? Get up now." It was Fugaku. His uncle. Sasuke's father. Chief of police. He listened. "Sasuke's on his way already. My first call today was at the apartment home of Sasuke's friend Sakura. The neighbors on both sides of the apartment could smell blood and rot through their walls. There was a murder here last night."
Exactly how he dressed himself decently and drove to Sakura's apartment complex four miles from the Uchiha manor in three and a half minutes is something we'll never know. It is known, however, that Madara carelessly parked his Jag crookedly in two parking spaces, and pushed through the little group of people at the entrance so quickly one of them fell against a parked car and set off its alarm. Madara was past giving a shit. He skipped the elevator, sprinted up the stairs to the fourth floor, passed his uncle's partner Juubei, burst through the open door of Sakura's apartment, and didn't breathe.
He noticed the bodies on the floor first. Both adults, both larger than petite Sakura—he sighed in deep relief—probably her parents. His heart began to find its normal pace. Behind them and an officer he didn't know, the television was perfectly aligned as ever, but its screen was cracked like it had been struck with a bat; a few meters away from that, near the kitchen table, were half a dozen bloodstains. Red footprints led down the hall to the bathroom, and there were at least twenty other tiny red spots scattered on the floor.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and didn't care till a voice came with it. "What did you do." The voice might have been Sasuke's or Juubei's; it was hardly registering to him presently. "What did you do, cousin? I know you came here last night."
It was Sasuke, definitely. And out of nowhere, he felt furious. He ripped the boy's hand off his shoulder and glared. "I came over, confessed my love to her and kissed her until she couldn't breathe. She forced me out when she saw her parents' car coming. When she saw that car, she became very frightened." He narrowed his eyes defiantly. "And if you want verification on any of that, ask Sakura herself."
"Ask Sakura?" Sasuke gaped as though this was a very new idea. "Now there's a stroke of brilliance! Maybe you can tell us where she is."
Madara gaped, a very un-Uchiha expression. "What?"
"Are you going deaf at twenty-four? Sakura's gone." This statement came at him with all the weight of a truckload of bricks, as did his response to it.
"Then why are you still here?" He grabbed Fugaku by his tie and held him so close to his face his uncle's feet were lifted off the ground. "These people are dead, why aren't you looking for her? The bastard that did this could still come after her!"
"Because she's the one that did it," Fugaku replied.
Madara stared wide-eyed, not understanding, till his own shock made him drop the Chief. "I know it's a strange thought. But we've gathered nearly enough evidence to prove it. The television for one."
He gestured to the broken machine. "Smashed in, obviously. And by a body. There were three small blue threads that match the material of a nightshirt found on Sakura's hamper. She was shoved so hard even her lithe weight smashed the screen in. And the stain on the wall there." Fugaku pointed to said bloodstain. "It's directly above the red footprints with the least pattern and highest concentration. Most likely she was wounded, staggered around a bit, fell against the wall, and left some blood there when she stood up again. And of course, the parents."
The parents indeed. The parents were covered with white sheets that had soaked up some of their blood, and some of it seeped outside of the white chalk lines that had been drawn around their limbs. "Each with several stab wounds in their torsos. Asuka, give that here."
A third officer handed Fugaku a folder he'd been carrying around and left the three alone in the little apartment. "Sasuke, I remember the day you told me about meeting Sakura. I wanted to do a background check on her family and you refused. You thought I'd be invading her privacy. My son, I truly wish I hadn't respected your wishes." Sasuke's face was frozen.
"Were they abusive?" Madara growled, and was silenced by Fugaku's brief, flat "Yes."
"Complete idiots, add to that," the Chief added with a cold matter of fact. "They met in a rehab clinic and got married because they finally found someone to be raging drunk with. They filed bankruptcy twice—financial morons—and miraculously had a child with no birth defects who was smarter than the average mouse. Rika Haruno had been going to anger management classes for years and complained regularly about her daughter. But according to said daughter's grades in school, Rika had nothing to complain about. When they lived in Tokyo, Wataru Haruno reported his elementary-age daughter to the authorities for stealing some food from a supermarket—which he actually stole, apparently. And though no true abuse was officially recorded, obviously Rika and Wataru were unfit parents."
"Why didn't she say anything about this?" the red-eyed man exploded. "She should have told me! She should have told me!"
"Madara, for once your emotional outbursts are not amusing me," Fugaku rumbled. "Shouting isn't going to help. We haven't even taken any of this to the station."
"Excuse me for not being fine little Uchiha robots like yourselves." Madara said quite robotically. Fugaku blinked almost nervously at his odd, red eyes. "File the report, Fugaku. And give any other call to someone besides yourself. You're the most capable officer in this city. You and I will—" Too late or perhaps too early, he noticed the soft tint of pink on the white carpet, against the tanned skin of the mother's hand. There were pink hairs gripped weakly in a fist. Madara left the room before his anger could drive him to beating people already dead.
—You can't quit until you try
You can't live until you die
You can't learn to tell the truth
Until you learn to lie—
As much as the strict and traditional Uchiha family frowned upon their third-youngest member, Madara, falling ungracefully head-over-heels in love with a seventeen-year-old girl, they could not say he hadn't chosen the perfect seventeen-year-old. All perfect grades, impressive athletic skills, (etcetera, etcetera) aside, she knew how to make herself scarce when the time called for it. As politically-standing as the Uchihas were, this was practically a required skill. It backfired on them in this case. It was three weeks into November, two weeks after the discovery of the deceased Mister and Miss Haruno. For many individuals who had been attached to their murderer, two weeks was quite akin to two years.
None of her friends or teachers knew where was, and no other family members lived in this country, or had even seen her since she was a toddler so were useless anyway. In fact, the people that didn't know her—as in, the writers of the local newspaper—could tell the Uchiha family more than her family could.
Somehow the reporters knew about a box full of broken glass in the parents' room with traces of the girl's blood all over them, the knife with her fingerprints on it which that jackfuck Fugaku for some reason didn't show him and other such heartbreaking bullshit that Madara could barely bring himself to read. Most of it pointed to the fact that she'd been beaten and tossed around and had killed them in self-defense.
And why read? His mind was too occupied with nightmares to read. They had started the first night, that is, the first night he had gone to sleep not knowing sweet Sakura was comfortable and safe in her upscale apartment. All the dream featured her—not that that was new—but now he saw nothing but his love in situations of varying peril: trapped in a box, suffocating, when the wasteland world outside didn't have any oxygen either; crawling through a network of tiny caves that shifted endlessly and threatened to crush her; lying unconscious in the woods and waking to find a bear was eating her leg…
Madara knew he was losing his mind, and he accepted it. His mind was not worth not losing, now that he had run out of places to look for her. 'Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless, die, die, die, hurt, hurt hurt,' his mind would chant like a stressed machine. And Sasuke would probably be there to put salt on the wound, saying something like, "Crying won't help," or other such bullshit.
There was one occasion last week where Sasuke said something so strangely comforting and touching that Madara's mind had blanked out five minutes after and he couldn't remember what his cousin said. Madara was thinking about that when his phone rang. He answered with the lifeless "…what" that had become normal for him. The responding, "Hi," startled him so much he bit his tongue and spat out blood.
"You…don't have to kill yourself just because I called."
He said Sakura's name in such a heartbroken, cracked voice that words truly cannot describe it. For a minute she didn't respond. "Please don't be sad. I just…was thinking when I should come back since I don't know if I'll be convicted and what the people around me will think—"
"Was it self-defense?" he asked immediately, much as it hurt to become as information-hungry as a robot.
She said, hesitantly, "Not directly." Since he couldn't say anything to that, she continued, "It was self-defense because of what they did to me every time they saw me. But it was murder because I killed them. I planned it, Madara. I wanted to slit all their major arteries and watch them bleed. I wanted to do this for a long time. I thought about it forever but I was scared, and then, then I kept thinking that Sasuke and Hinata and Temari and—and you—that everyone I knew was enough to help me through it, but it wasn't. So…I…"
"If you tell me, right now, it was self-defense, you'll be released from all charges. I swear."
She laughed on her end. "You're not the chief of police, Madara…you couldn't pull all those strings."
Considering she'd never even seen him at work, he had to laugh, too. "You have no idea what I could do, honey."
"Obviously you have no idea what I could do, either." That pause then hurt him like a knife wound, not in his heart, but his whole body, for the fact that Sakura hid such a thing from him ate at his entire being.
He stood up at his desk and his fingers pressed hard on the wood. "Right now, if you tell me you killed your parents out of self-defense, I'll free you. You belong with me. Come back."
"'I belong with you'? One make-out session doesn't mean—" She stopped and quietly panted and ground her teeth loud enough that he heard it through the phone.
He couldn't stand to wait. "Please come back. I'll make it work, Sakura, I will."
"What you'll do is see me in jail or on probation. I'm okay with whatever happens."
"You always say that," he murmured with a smile. "But now that I know the truth, I know that many of the times you said that, you were lying. Would you tell me…why?"
"Because I knew I could deal with it myself. I did deal with it myself, as of two weeks ago. I'm hangin' up now. I just wanted to tell you I'm allright."
"You're not allright. You need—" But the line had gone dead already. Well, it didn't matter. Lifting some crumpled paper from his desk he revealed the tracing device that had been searching for the signal of Sakura's phone throughout the phone call. It wasn't her cell phone, but a house phone, and in the basement of one of the Hyuuga compounds.
'I may forgive Hyuuga Hinata if she was the one who willingly housed her. If it was Neji…' Well, Neji wouldn't be around long enough to realize his mistake anyway. Madara grabbed the set of keys nearest him and his cell, and for the first time in far too long walked purposefully.
—There's nothing like a trail of blood
To find you way back home—
It was Hinata in the end, Madara discovered about half an hour later. She broke down after forty-one seconds of interrogation (longer than one would think she'd last) and tearfully admitted to giving Sakura a place to live and helping her with the school she was missing as best she could. Since Hinata Hyuuga was one of the kindest people on planet Earth, he informed her no charges would be pressed and she had his eternal gratitude for keeping Sakura in a safe home. Hinata responded to this great kindness by leading him to the finely-furnished basement and telling him Sakura was usually in the north corner. He looked there, and she wasn't there.
The south corner was currently under renovation, and so some pipes and wood panels were exposed and open. These were good places to hide, and it was not too surprising that he saw Sakura huddled and still like a statue behind some two feet of piping that only a person as slim as she could squeeze through. She appeared quite normal, save for her eyes stared pointlessly at her kneecaps.
"Sakura." He said her name twice more before she turned to look at his broken form through the piping.
"Why'd you trace the call?"
"I love you." he reminded her, in case she forgot. "I want to help you. And I have. You were let off on self-defense by the department. And because you were worried what 'people would think,'" He flashed back to the online poll he'd seen the day after the event, the results of which had hardly changed, "I think you haven't been on the Internet recently. Or did you already know that seventy-six percent of voters side with you on what happened?" Her only response was blinking.
She was resisting his help, as suspected. He'd try a different approach. "Sakura, there are people in this world who do deserve to die. There are parents who hurt their children. Even if you weren't a child who knew that kind of life, I would still want you to be with me. So will you?"
The speech was short but touching. It seemed to only register partway to Sakura. "….What?"
"Live with me." 'With Sasuke,' he added in his mind only, since he lived in the Uchiha manor as well. "Let me keep you safe."
The pinkette stared at her knees again, wide-eyed…perhaps considering his offer? In Madara's mind, this was a flawless, perfect proposition: to be living in a private mansion with one who unconditionally loved her, to have all wants and needs fulfilled, and to end her connection with the heartless demons who could have ruined her life. Even if she didn't love him, (yet) she would have Sasuke around to comfort her if needed…. At last she took in a soft, shuddering breath. "I don't know. I feel like I don't know anything, or feel anything…what am I supposed to feel? After this?" She sounded curious, normal, but her eyes were dark with tears.
'Confusion. Of course.' What should one feel after killing one's own parents? Madara could not relate, having been raised by two adequate, kind adults. And with that picture in mind, he couldn't help but wonder how far hers contrasted with his. And because he loved her, because he wanted to know everything about her, because it could make them closer, he asked.
"No one can tell you how to feel. But I wish I could know how you felt before. I wish you would tell me…what your parents were really like."
Her vivid eyes turned dark with dark memories. He graciously waited. He would never rush her. "When my mother turned forty, I got her a special kind of wine she liked. But she didn't want it. She wanted me to take the jar of pickles from the fridge and break it on my head." She paused and randomly looked around. "And I did. And I remember when I woke up, all I could see was red, because so much blood had dripped into my eyes."
At this point, Madara's eyes were quite red as well, partially because he knew from numerous readings of her profile that if her mother was forty, Sakura would have been nine. "More." he demanded, with the frozen voice of an Uchiha. Sakura supplied.
She wrapped a hand around one of the copper pipes nervously. "The last day of junior high, I had to do a biology project and, uh, make an animal. I used clay to make a dolphin, and my dad hated dolphins, so he kicked it down the stairs. And then me."
At this point Uchiha Madara decided that if these memories still haunted her and made her want to hide, he would have to rip her from them by force. If his gentle approach yielded nothing but bad memories, the only thing left to do was to take her to a place of safety and comfort as fast as possible.
"Come here." he said in the ice-voice. Sakura looked at him with eyes that were bright, sweet and damaged. "If you don't come here on your own right now, I'll bend these pipes apart and carry you out myself. I'll take you to my bed and you'll sleep protected and comfortable for the first time in your life. Now, come."
Madara was not aware it was mostly the regurgitating of these unpleasant memories that ate away at Sakura's wall of resistance, as opposed to his forceful words. He was quite aware, however, that she started crawling slowly through moments after, and reached out both hands to grasp her when she had wriggled out of her hidden spot. She half-fell onto him as he pulled her close. Her body shook with quiet, wordless sobs. Madara pressed her hands onto his back to remind her it was allright to hold onto him, and there the hands stayed. His own body calmed and relaxed almost without his consent, so glad it was to contain little Sakura.
He felt the vibration against his abdomen where she was murmured something. With a hand softly on her back, Madara leaned down slightly to hear, "Thanks," and his heart nearly imploded with warmth.
"It's allright, my little one."
—Just open your eyes
Just open your eyes
And see that life is beautiful—
"Why do you make me do these things?"
"Because I'm madly in love with you, darling. Now, open wide."
"Uhmm…"
"You're hurting my feelings terribly. I may have to spank you."
"You…are strange. You are a strange man. I'm leaving."
"The doors are locked, love."
"I think three years of soccer is enough for me to kick them open."
"Why do you make this so complicated? Don't you love me?"
"…"
"There we are. Come here."
Being nice, Sakura came, leaned down to adjust her standing pose with his sitting one, and licked the cream from Madara's fingers with a pretty pink tongue. Madara watched with the predatory, demon-gaze that she never dared lock eyes with (that incident on the first day of the new year had taught her more than one lesson). She ducked with the speed of lightning and avoided the grasp of the older man's greedy hands. Their sharp moves nearly spilled his coffee. The maids wouldn't have liked to clean that up so early in the morning, but at the moment he didn't care.
Unfortunately for him, something uncomfortably blunt slammed into his shoulder at that moment, destroying his perfect chance to grasp his prey. Sasuke had entered the room, adjusting his jacket's sleeves with one hand and brandishing a second pencil sharpener with the other. Sakura looked on him like the lord himself had come down to save her.
"Do you really have to be a pedophile so early in the morning? On a school day?" Sasuke growled "I mean, isn't that something more often saved for night?"
"Last night she didn't want to sleep with me," Madara complained with a pleading stare at Sakura. Her expression at his choice of words was sinfully cute and he almost forgot to continue. "Tonight maybe I will sleep with her."
"Maybe I'll change the lock combination on my door for the third time this week," Sakura muttered."Or maybe I'll finally gather up all your stuff and toss it out of my room. You think I don't notice you 'subtly' leaving all your stuff in my space and taking it over?"
"I noticed you didn't say anything when I started doing it last week." he smirked. His eyes randomly drifted down to the black leggings she wore, and the denim skirt over them. "Your skirt's too long. I want the weather to get warm sooner so you can wear short shorts again."
"I want it to stay cold so you'll stop talking about my legs, you fucking pervert." she scoffed back. "You know what? Pervert's never good enough. I should switch to pedophile all the time."
Sasuke suddenly decided to leave the grand kitchen now that Sakura had said something that opened up a perfect opportunity for Madara. "Not for much longer." He leaned forward on the glass table a bit and narrowed his eyes. "Only two more weeks of being seventeen, darling. Be ready." From where she stood now, he couldn't see her face, but he heard her sigh, and saw her turn around and come walking towards him again. When she was almost at the table, she dropped her bag gently on the floor and put her arms around him. He reciprocated almost immediately, and kissed the side of her head.
"I'll see you tonight," she said, and walked outside. Madara caught a glimpse of an expression that reminded him of the life he'd rescued her form and was surprised at himself for not flaring up in anger. It brought on only more thought.
She had been living with the Uchiha family for some three months now but still would not talk about her parents or anything related to them unless asked directly, which was not what he had hoped—just about the only thing he'd learned since dragging her out of the Hyuuga house was that she'd memorized her parents' work schedules throughout the years and used that knowledge to keep her friends out of her home at the times her parents were, a dark and clever feat. On another note, he also hadn't thought that she would request her own bedroom, which she did, even though he coerced her into sleeping in his own bed once in a while.
He thought about things like this all throughout the day and so his work in the department was hindered some. At least, Fugaku told him so. When at last his shift was over around seven, he drove home faster than normal, left the car for one of the butlers to park more accurately, and speed-walked to Sakura's room.
She was sitting at her desk, reclined back in the chair, holding a notebook in her lap. Madara felt it was a grand opportunity to test his ambush attacks (he'd kind of been wanting to beat her to her room and have her find him there shirtless and waiting…someday). It was quite easy since anything noisy he'd been carrying on his person had been dropped downstairs and the plush carpet absorbed all his sounds. Too late she saw a bit of his shadow on her desk and turned in the chair. But she was caught by that point, grabbed by the shoulders and tossed onto the bed not three feet away.
Regardless of what anyone else thought (well, actually most people thought the same) Sakura was very fun to tickle. Particularly when she lay flat on her back and he was on his knees above her. Then no amount of self-defense classes could help, against one such as him, anyhow.
"Tell me you love me." he commanded quite nonchalantly through her giggling. Maybe it was his imagination, but he seemed to hear, "Serious-lyyy-yyyy?" On one hand, he thought she took too long to break down. On the other, he was quite merciless in his attacks and probably had no chance to speak.
"I do, I do! I love you!" He felt the familiar flame of his own reciprocation and stopped. His fingers splayed across each arm just for the sake of touching and he took a moment to revel in the words he hadn't heard since the new year's celebration.
"You didn't have to drag it out of me like that," she said matter-of-factly. "And in the middle of me looking at pictures of you. I would think you'd actually let me finish that." He turned his head to her desk and saw the notebook she had was just a surface covered with photos of himself several years ago. Maybe twelve of them.
"Why did your eyes turn red? They were black like any other Uchiha when you were seventeen."
It was one of the best questions she could have asked him. He felt the brilliance of his own smile. "They were. They became red the day I met you."
She raised a thin brow. "I was so beautiful when I was eleven that you popped a blood vessel?"
Madara had been waiting to say this for years, and put as much heart into these words as he could. He set his hands down on each side of her and leaned down closer. "I knew I'd found my One, and I was filled with such love it spilled into my eyes. And there's no reason for it to leave."
Sakura did the unexpected by laughing again as though he'd started invisibly tickling her. "You're something else! Oh, my gosh!"
(Sakura laughed again and Madara said proudly, "Why thank you, I know I'm indeed one hot son of a bitch,")
That bubble of playful arrogance he'd started to build popped when he saw the unfamiliar…admiration in her sweet eyes. "I'm very happy you like me."
"That I like you?" he said, because that sentence itself was just so preposterous. "Who wouldn't like y—"
She lightly slapped his face. "Can you please be a real Uchiha and shut your mouth for ten seconds?" Sakura commanded, Madara obeyed, and shut his mouth. "Somehow you kept clinging to me when you had a hundred other girls to choose from and a hundred other things to do. I know how lucky I am."
"If you keep being humble and cute I may have to rape you," he said playfully, and caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. Even that soft touch made his being spark with pleasure. Sakura's eighteenth birthday couldn't come too soon. Which made him think of something he'd wanted to do for awhile. Madara moved up again so he was once again on his knees and Sakura still below him. Two fingers slipped under his shirt and slowly lifted it up and revealed a delicious amount of masculine features..
Sakura's eyes inflated to the wideness of plates. "What the hell are you doing?"
He continued until his fingers touched his lips, and then stopped. Madara's grin was quite reminiscent of the demon-gaze that made Sakura's inner innocence so nervous. "Just wanted to see your face. Which is becoming quite red and adorable." Sakura fisted the sheets in her left hand in frustration at her traitorous blushing.
The Uchiha flashed back on his dark ponderings from earlier in the day. The Sakura below him now who smiled and called him a pedophile seemed quite different from the one whose mother and father had tried to frame her for items that they'd stolen themselves. And thank goodness this was so. This Sakura who was healing was better than the one who had been hurting. This Sakura was more beautiful.
This Sakura's life would be much more beautiful.
Hm. That did not turn out quite like I wanted. Not that I can really describe what I wanted. But I still like it for being different from my other works. The biggest difference being that Sakura is not (pseudo-)invincible in this fanfiction. In most of my other stories, Sakura having a breakdown of any kind just doesn't happen. It's so weird!
Sakura's parents in this story are also different. They were simply...bad people. Bullies. What I pictured when I first ever heard about a parent abusing a child was the parent pushing the child down the stairs, stealing their money, destroying the child's possessions, all those things a schoolyard bully would do. Which is more hopeless and cruel than an adult beating a kid with a beer bottle, because it can't be escaped by the adult being sober. I thought such a family would be more difficult to..."fix."
If you have any questions about this, tell me and I'll be happy to answer, or even add it as a comment at this end-of-chapter note here. Peace out.