Bewitched
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
...
...
"Girl," a hand touched the side of her face that wasn't pressed into the soft mud," I forbid this - I forbid you dying. Do you hear me?"
Sakura recognised that voice, but she didn't want to answer. She forced the sound into the back of her mind as she drifted between conscious and unconsciousness. He couldn't even leave her alone on her deathbed, it would seem. Forcing her eyes open, she squinted as hands - so many hands - rolled her onto her back - hair pressing and tangling into the muck beneath her. Given the extreme sensitivity to light the poison she had been injected with caused her, even looking at the moon stung as though needles were piercing her retinas.
"Madara," she groaned, finally, voice raspy and breathless.
"Yes," he hissed, as she felt ice cold fingers probing the hole in her shirt and spreading the torn flesh beneath.
At this point the extra pain was hardly felt.
"I'm going to take this poison from your body, do you understand? And I am going to give you my chakra, do you understand? And you are going to heal this wound and take yourself back... And you will fulfil your purpose," he stated, voice more harsh and commanding than she ever remembered.
"I understand," Sakura murmured.
It felt as though his finger had become incorporeal and were touching her flesh on both the inside and the out. As though he was scooping the poison from her bloodstream and not even breaking the skin. Then that feeling stopped, and was replaced by a stream of the most potent chakra she had ever felt - Naruto's included.
"You're inside of me," she mumbled, barely coherent.
He barked out a low, sharp laugh and removed his cold hands from her feverish flesh.
"Not yet... Now, heal yourself and get going."
...
Orange.
Sakura's first thought was hazy, non-distinct and fleeting. For a few seconds she just breathed - in and out - and tried to muster the strength to stop her head from pounding and to force her eyes open again. The bright, cheerful, orange flowers that could only have been left by one person stood on a white bedside table at her eye-level. The sight of the colour had caused her to recoil at first as a memory, or a dream, or a something stormed into her mind.
Breathing heavily through her nose, she closed her eyes and pressed her face into the white cotton of the pillow and tried to force her thoughts into some semblance of order. Maybe it was time to tell someone about this. Maybe. But, even as she began considering it, the thoughts of the reactions to her story put an end to the idea. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a set of occurrences weaved into something else by the effects of poison, chakra exhaustion and too little sleep.
Feeling a little calmer, Sakura draped a bandaged hand over the edge of the bed in an attempt to get comfortable on the stiff, unfamiliar mattress. Her fingers brushed an almost entirely crushed section of metal that made up part of the bed framework... The dents fit the contours of her hand perfectly. Sakura winced at the thought of explaining that to Shisou, and did her level best not to think about the abject terror the colour orange could inspire in her when she wasn't able to keep her guard fully up.
It was, after all, just a dream.
...
The first time Sakura remembered seeing him, he wore a mask... and that image was imprinted on the back's of her eyelids, a fleeting remembrance that touched just before she went to sleep, and faded with the glow of the morning sun. She only ever saw him at night - and not necessarily just when she was sleeping; as her last mission proved.
The mask was a strange, oval thing - orange with a black pattern that was almost like flames, and a single eye-hole through which one red eye watched, unblinking. A dull sense of fear accompanied that first, oldest memory; where she stood - small, pale and clad only in an old cotton nightgown - before his sitting figure. He was almost always sitting... Maybe so as not to intimidate her with his far taller form, maybe just because.
It was black in there; it always was. Usually Sakura's dreams were splattered with colour - sunlight, flowers, bright, warm streaks of blues, pinks... Later, the yellowish green of snake eyes, like needlegrass drying in the sun, and the harsh vermilion splatters of fresh blood. But, in that particular dream the only colours were her stark paleness, and his orange mask and red slathered cloak.
She didn't remember exactly how it went. Dreams had always been intangible things and details were lost over the passing of time. If she could work out where, and how, it had began perhaps she could beat him, perhaps she could salvage something from this train wreck.
...
Shishou gave Sakura a reassuring touch on the back as she walked from the hospital; apparently free of the chakra fatigue that had put her there. The spring air was cool and crisp against her face as she walked back towards her little flat and her own soft bed. The hairs on the back of her stood to attention like a row of little soldiers as they had been doing for what felt like months. That prickly, electric, trickling feeling of being watched just wouldn't go away.
Sliding her key into the lock, she turned it and pushed the door open with a sigh. At the sight of yet another bouquet of orange flowers Sakura dropped her key with a resounding thud against the hardwood floor. Backing up to rest against her closed door she breathed deeply, and tried to bring a heart rate back to normal. As a medic, it was highly worrying that she couldn't seem to control her adrenalin production and get her heart rate back to normal. Soon, Sakura thought, she might have to admit that there was something very wrong.
As it was, a few minutes later she pushed her body up and read Naruto's hastily scrawled note, smiled, and acted as though she hadn't had a small panic attack at the sight of a mere colour.
A few days past in the normal sort of way; too much ramen at Ichiraku, work at the hospital, training, a flash of an orange, orange, mask in the trees near the training grounds after dark...
These sightings usually meant another meeting would be soon, and that thought made cold sweat form and run sticky on her skin. Putting off sleeping to work wasn't difficult, but there comes a point when the body just can't exist on soldier pills, and caffeine and sheer force of will anymore. And when it came down to it she felt that as a ninja she should face him on her own terms.
Or act as though that was possible.
There was a certain stubbornness to the way she folded back her freshly washed sheets and slipped among the many comforters and pillows, the way she took time in picking the nicest, silk, lace edged pajamas she owned, and the way she loaded her bedside table with enough newly oiled and sharpened weapons to kit out a minature army in style - as though she could take them with her into the hazy realm he held sway over.
Sleep came far too quickly - the darkness curling over the edges of her vision the moment she lay down.
...
And then...
His voice murmuring,"Sakura-chan - it's been a while, no?" Drawing her attention to the fact that he had been seeing her more and more these days in the roundabout way only Madara would think to use.
Sound always came before sight. There was that terrifying moment of crushing limbo before she laid eyes on him directly in front of her.
Madara sat like Sakura imagined royalty would sit. It wasn't that his posture was straight and perfect - it wasn't. It might have been the arrogance in his eyes, the barely restrained sensuality of his half smirk or the way he seemed to dominate every molecule in his presence. That was the first thing she noticed - that, and the fact that he was naked beneath the usual black cloak splattered with clouds the colour of blood. Sakura hated the way she felt her cheeks heat until they were scalding hot and how it felt as though steam should be coiling off them in waves.
Madara must have noticed her stare and infuriating virginal response to his body with those hideous Uchiha eyes of his.
She felt him eating away at her with his gaze as they stood facing each other. Sakura was aware that she should be acting submissive and deferring to him by dropping her gaze and adopting a defensive posture in the hopes that he might get to the point quicker rather than breaking down her defences beforehand as he had done in the past. She didn't. There was a long interlude of minutes where all they did was breath as she took in his form. She had never seen his face uncovered, and despite herself she stared... Head propped up on arm, long wild hair covering an eye and dropping down past his shoulders, one leg raised to expose the entire bare length almost up to the dark wiry curls that would mark his sex.
Sakura felt almost violated by the easy way he wore his skin and exposed himself to her. The important parts were covered, but she knew he was bare beneath that length of black fabric, and she felt dirty because of that awareness and her reaction to it. The strong muscles of his exposed leg contracted and strained against their fleshy casing after several minutes had passed.
This was just another way to get to her.
She couldn't move from where she stood, surrounded by the inky blackness. In the past, the stark surroundings in the dream had always unnerved her, or comforted her. Depending on his moods it could be a womb-like darkness - warm and encompassing - or a cold, icy blackness reminiscent of the haze that accompanied extreme pain. Now, it almost seemed intimate. For the first time she remembered she took a step towards him.
Beneath her bare feet the ground was cool and smooth - almost like glass but not quite solid enough. He didn't seem surprised by her action if the widening of his smile was anything of an indication. Stopping in front of him, Sakura looked straight at him - eye to eye - and in a single instant drew her fist back and slammed it towards his head. Her knuckles cracked painfully against something that definitely wasn't his skull just as a warm breath drifted across the back of her neck.
Faster than Kakashi. Faster than Shishou. She had no idea what she was dealing with. Sakura couldn't move - not an inch, not a hair's breadth. And it wasn't due to that cliche notion of fear rendering the body static.. she hadn't done that since she was twelve.
"You don't have to fight," his voice rumbled along the length of her spine like velvet thunder,"haven't my little... visits always been comforting for you, Sakura-chan?"
His hands drew up to hover over her body, but not to touch - lingering like a malevolent spirit behind her. She felt his breath and nothing else. Her eyes strained to try and watch the progress of his fingers in her peripheral vision. After a moment he placed one hand firmly on her flesh, exactly where he had just a week prior. A single thumb slid across the highly sensitive skin under her tank top. She could tell he was measuring her reaction with the slow, steady, watchfulness of ancient being.
"Healing nicely. Konoha's fine medical staff's work is pleasing to the eye," he half kneeled by her side and pushed up her top to probe at her flesh," and the hand."
He knelt beside her then and and there was another pause as she watched him press his face into the skin of her side, touching her as only a highly familiar lover would. Instead, she concentrated on the irritating way his hair tickled the top of her thigh.
Sakura felt his mouth open against her skin and shuddered inside as the moist words curled along her flesh," I'll take great pleasure in destroying them all until there isn't a healing hand left able to patch up the damage."
She felt his malice vibrate through her very bones and mingle with the anger that boiled in the fabric of her being.
He stayed knelt beside her, but she felt no power from seeing him in that position. Madara controlled from wherever he was. She was frozen there - a puppet to his every whim - as he lifted a hand and placed the tip of his finger against the skin of her stomach, just below where the healing wound ended. Pressing down lightly he began to move his hand diagonally in a distinctly southerly direction that made a deep sting of fear prick her awareness.
If Sakura could open her mouth she would have threatened him - she would have threatened to dislocate, then break, every one of his bones down to the tiny ones inside his ears, pull out his fingernails and use them to gouge out those precious eyes of his, turn him inside out... As though hearing her thoughts, she felt him smile where he was still pressed against her skin. His index finger continued its slow march across the planes of her skin until it just dipped into the cleft between her legs.
Hips jerking against her will, Sakura tried to force down the deep blush of shame, anger and mortification that spread from her chest to her cheeks. No one had ever touched her like this, and he deliberately allowed her body to move only to show how helpless she was under his ministrations. It took everything in her not to sigh in relief as his hand moved again until he had completed a triangle shape on her skin.
One which roughly encompassed where her reproductive organs were.
An icy swirl of something like realisation formed in her mind, and for a moment she wished she wasn't quite so intelligent. He placed a rough palm over her womb and let out a soft hiss of laugher against her. The darkness as so tight around them she could almost taste him on her tongue - dark, earthy and masculine.
"I am glad that you weren't damaged: that would have ruined everything. I might have had to get rid of you."
Still watching him out of the corner of her eye, Sakura saw his pink tongue dart out and taste the tip of the finger he had touched her with. A wave of prickly heat swelled over her body to settle between her legs in an uncomfortable throb. She felt herself sweat and wished he would just get to the point. This was torture, but... that was probably what he intended. She felt, and heard, him rise to stand beside her.
Tsunade would be so ashamed of her. She could not bear to meet his eyes for a moment.
Sitting before her again, she felt herself begin to move and fought against it as stiffly as she fought against being kept still. Her bones grated harshly together as she turned and lowered herself until she was sitting between his two spread legs. Sakura couldn't see him, and she couldn't feel him - he liked to keep her deprived of some senses sometimes; as though even that required his control.
She wondered if he got off at the thought of his own power, and wanted to spit that question at him.
When she was little she was afraid of the dark, and he used that against her. Now she was afraid of what was in it, and he used that against her.
"It's time for our usual talk, little one," he spoke slowly, she knew he liked to take his time.
"Do you remember when you were smaller, Sakura? Just after your father passed away?"
Of course she remembered. It stung even now.
"And we sat just like this and I said I would take care of you forever. And you agreed to that. You wanted it."
"Yes, I did." Sakura felt her own voice forced from her throat, alien sounding.
Satisfaction radiated from him in waves. She knew he was leaning forward to talk in her ear now, and the urge to throw her head back and feel, and hear, the resounding crack of her skull against hers was savage and consuming. It almost got rid of the tingling ache between her legs. Almost. He slid forward until her body was cradled between his and the darkness that surrounded them. Underneath the thin fabric of her shorts she feel a slightly soft surface, not at all similar to the glass-like material she had stood on previously.
"Our talks are usually about Sasuke, right?" he continued, his tone light and casual.
And, truthfully, Sakura didn't know - thinking and probing her memory had brought up almost nothing. Something there was not quite right. She still felt her lips move to say; "Yes, Madara."
"It is taking too long for him to be found. Other things are progressing more swiftly than I had anticipated."
For some reason she felt a rush of shame at his statement and a willingness to please that shook her to the core.
"So I will do what I intended for him to do."
Like pieces of a puzzle her thoughts fit together. His constant mentions of Sasuke, of her duty, of her un-damaged state... She wanted to cry, and scream and hurt him for daring to use her like this. Instead she felt herself lift her arms as he slid her top over her head. Wanting to cover herself, Sakura closed her eyes instead. She felt his hands reach from behind her to cup the skin she was so reluctant to expose.
His hands felt too large and rough against her delicate skin, nimble though his fingers were.
"Relax," Madara said, and she did against her own will," I'll bite only if you ask."
She snorted derisively, and he tweaked her tiny, hardened nipples in retribution. It really was as if he was from another time - modern phrases were used, but twisted in a way that made them seem almost archaic. Bit by bit, she felt she could move her fingers and toes, but - anger swelled up - chakra was useless here. Her spine stiffened almost painfully as one hand crept down to sneak beneath her shorts.
Panic set in for the first time as she forced her mind to Tsunade. Her mentor. Her guide. The Sannin had once told her that she might get in a situation like this - from which there was no escape - and that she had to use it. Men were vulnerable at climax - that was true for even the strongest. Madara didn't trust her, but maybe she could get something from this that she took for herself. For Konoha.
"Madara," she groaned out his name - finally able to speak - as he touched her mortifyingly slick flesh.
"Mmm."
"Why Konoha?" She felt herself rock into his hand and hoped, feverishly, that his ego prevented him from thinking telling her anything would be dangerous in the slighest.
He licked the salty sweat from her neck, and in a lightning flash Sakura wanted to touch him. She quickly thought of Sasuke and his pale toned muscles, and his cold, cold demeanor, and how this would feel if it was him touching her.
"You know that I founded this Village and that they refused to acknowledge me as their leader. That is why."
She wondered what he would do if she threw off his control as dramatically. If, perhaps, she 'damaged' herself and lost what she was sure he intended her to have. If, one day, he saw through her eyes - and she had no doubt that he was often behind them - the bloody pound of flesh he intended to extract from her. Her thoughts derailed as he slid a single, long finger inside of her and curled it in.
"Madara."
"You're wet," he stated, vicious glee in his voice - stabbing her like so many kunai in the back.
Think of Sasuke. Think of Sasuke. ThinkofSasuke. Sakura repeated the mantra in time to the way her hips thrust against his hand before the thought; but, that's what he wants you to do too; surfaced. Even that was just playing to the pattern of thinking Madara had suggested to her. So, she thought of Naruto, desperately, and his shaggy blond hair, smile and tanned, smooth skin.
It didn't work.
When she closed her eyes she saw the mask, and his red eye, and then the pale length of his taunt thighs on either side of her... The promise of what was pressed to her back. Was it so bad to want what was being given? Forced, she reminded herself, forced. And he had probably planted that thought in her too. To him her mind and body were nothing more than fertile ground ready to be sown.
Sakura's thoughts exploded into colour and the vicious pounding of her own blood in her ears as her muscles contracted sharply around his finger and her entire body spasmed. She found herself on her back beneath him - skin to skin - a moment later.
"If you destroy Konoha, I'll destroy whatever grows inside me," she panted, torn between dragging her nails, or her tongue, down his chest.
She would burn what he grew and salt the ground so that nothing would ever grow again.
Madara laughed at her, grabbed both of her wrists and pinned them above her head. Some part of him was angry for taking away her ability to touch him. The darkness around them seemed malleable - it felt like other hands were touching her breasts though she could see both of his were not. She wrapped her legs around him and tried to crush his torso - without chakra she probably only managed to wind him before he grabbed one of her thighs, pulled them apart and licked his way from her sternum to the trim patch of hair between her legs.
Fighting back only seemed to make him more eager.
Positioning himself at her entrance, he paused to look up at her - greedily drinking in her heaving chest and furious eyes. She wanted to beg him not to, and she wanted to beg him to - but either way she would be doing what he wanted. Instead, she bared her teeth as he sunk so deep inside her it felt as though he was everywhere. The stretching and slight tingling pain, followed by a rush of pleasure was not what she expected. Her toes curled.
"I hope you're clean," she spat at him, wanting to insult him.
Madara bit her neck in a way that made her shiver and sweat, and pulled up one of her legs to press it against her chest. Sakura felt something rubbing insistently against her clit and pulling at her nipples, but pleading for more was not an option.
"How are you planning to do it?"
Pausing momentarily, in a way that made her writhe, he grinned ferally. The next few, definitely harder, thrusts of his hips made it feel as though both Sakura, and the entire world, were being split gloriously in two.
"Something like this," he said, calmly, cocky and in control as ever," Did you have any suggestions?"
"Konoha! I meant Konoha!" She growled at him, dissolving into groans as the stimulation at her clit increased.
"Ahh, you want to watch me work? Of course, little one, I'll give you front row seats. All you had to do was ask."
She reached up and latched onto his neck - digging her teeth into his flesh as viciously as she could. He tasted more delicious than he had any right to. She could barely concentrate as his thrusts became ever harder and her body was wracked with the tingling bolts of pleasure she was still unused to. The feeling of his own teeth clamping onto her neck made her tenuous hold on consciousness dissolve.
Just as she felt hot liquid gushing into her core the flood of memories she had so desperately sought flooded into her battered mind as the walls he had erected in her memory crumbled in the wake of his violent climax.
Sakura felt the tiniest inkling of power at the thought that she had made him come undone like that - along with a wave of shame and anger - just before her memories flashed before her eyes.
...
...
...
That boy... Sakura-chan... Uzumaki Naruto...
Uzamaki-kun is nice and funny! - you should have seen the prank he played on Iruka-sensei today.
I don't think you should like him, Sakura-chan. I think he's dangerous, I think he'll hurt you, I think he's a monster. Filthy little fox.
So... I shouldn't play with him?
No, but you know who you should like? - Uchiha Sasuke.
...
...
...
Sakura-chan, I was sure I always told you to stay with Sasuke-kun, didn't I?
Yes, Madara-san, but -
But nothing, you must go with him.
He's leaving Konoha... I just know it.
Then you shall go with him.
...
...
...
Why is it that you're so weak, little one?
I've tried, Madara-san, I swear... I've tried.
The female Sannin is near - I'm sure she could make you stronger. I'm sure she could make you good enough.
...
...
...
I don't think Sasuke-kun is coming back, Madara-san
You know it is your duty to be with him.
We can't find him.
You know you must.
...
...
...
In the end, Sakura thought, as his long nimble fingers and the vicious heat of his body drifted away from her skin and the light of day pierced her eyes - she wasn't sure if any choice she had ever made was of her own free will. The instant after that second reared its head, she knew that it would be wiped clean from her mind soon after. There was a cycle in here somewhere, and she wondered how often she had made these realisations.
This train of thought was replaced with a vision - a compulsion- filled with a swollen bellied Sakura arms full of dark haired, red eyed child.
...
...
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The parts of the poem at the start and end were from "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath. She be mad skilled.
And I know someone will probably mention Inner Sakura... I guess this is AU for more reasons than one - not just the mindfuckery - and another one of those reasons is that I don't think Inner Sakura exists here. I'm not sure there's room in Sakura's head for that much cool - the cool being Inner Sakura and Madara.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this ramblish, Pwp-ish piece of something.
Kthnxbai.
~ Phe.