This story is for Madara x Sakura week, day three, theme: AU, prompt: fractured fairy tales.

Warnings: Brothers Grimm kind of twisted

In the small village of Konohagakure, there once lived a young woman who was famed to be the most beautiful in the land. She had eyes as green as the forest and hair as pink as the cherry blossoms and no other could compare to her in terms of looks. And that is where the trouble all began because beauty often comes at a terrible price.

One night, when the moon was high up in the sky, and the time was perfect for the twisted, terrible things to come out, the village held the annual festival to appease the storm kami. All of the streets were lined with fluttering paper lanterns, but the atmosphere was melancholic and filled with an uneasy solemnness.

Under the night sky, all the unmarried young men and women in the village lined up in rows and danced with mournful slow movements to the sounds of the shamaisen and kokyu. They all wore formal matching kimonos and low-brimmed straw hats, which hid their faces from view. The young woman was with her love the entire time, dancing and drinking umeshu and towards the end of the festival, the two lovers escaped out into the night.

The two lovers made love and fell asleep beneath the stars, but when the beautiful, young woman woke up, it was not her beloved that was beside her, but rather a terrible demon with long, great wings, protruding horns and strange red marks that covered him from head to toe. The young woman went to scream, but as the demon opened its eyes and stared at her, the scream lodged in her throat and she whimpered instead.

The demon smiled at her and it was a terribly grotesque thing that made her fearful for what the smile promised. Then, her fears became a reality when the demon spoke in a loud booming voice that scared the nearby animals away, "I will make you my wife, beloved."

The woman shuddered at the twisted title that came from the demon's lips and knew that she had to haggle for her freedom. So, she cajoled and tried to offer the demon her hand in marriage in 60 years time (when she would most likely be dead), but he would not be deterred from having her sooner. In the end, the young woman promised that she would become the demon's wife in sixteen years time and he went away, swearing to return for her.

Unfortunately for the young woman, the night had consequences in the form of a daughter who she named Sakura after a long, arduous birth. Sakura grew up to be just as beautiful as her mother with dark green eyes and rosette hair, but she was a very strange and headstrong girl.

A fitting name for the beautiful girl, villagers often whispered when she passed by, delivering her mother's orders about the small village. Sakura was as beautiful as the blossoms she embodied, but there was a strangeness that lurked about her.

Nevertheless, Sakura grew to be just as skilled with the needle as her mother who was a seamstress of repute that could change beggars' rags into kimonos fit for the most gentle of ladies. However, Sakura never knew her father and when she asked about him, her mother simply tightened her lips and refused to utter a single word. This did not deter Sakura from imagining him to a prince from an exotic country or as she grew older, a distinguished merchant.

It was the night of Bon, on the cusp of Sakura's sixteenth year, which was an auspicious age where like a butterfly; carefree girls were transformed into women with responsibilities. And each year, Sakura and her mother held a vigil from sundown to sunrise to welcome in the day of her birth. Every year, Sakura would light a candle for her father and place it on the windowsill to honor the man who had helped bring about her existence. Sakura did not know why, but her mother usually stared disapprovingly towards her little practice. She also noticed that her mother would grow paler and more frightened as each year passed. This year in particular, she looked grave. Her face was pulled taut and Sakura could see her lips had formed a tight line into what could have been a grimace.

So, like every year before, Sakura washed up and placed a tawny wax candle on the windowsill. Then, she struck the flint with a little piece of metal and set the wick on fire. But the oddest thing happened. The wick, which had caught on fire rather quickly, blew out from an unseen force. She crossed her fingers and then tried again and again, but no matter what she did, the wick would always blow out. Finally, her mother with a pale face took the flint from her and set the wick aflame. It quickly caught to the wick and a nicely developing flame of oranges and pretty embers glinted off the window.

Then, mother and daughter supped, settled down on the rug in front of the hearth and occupied themselves with some unfinished sewing. The tall candle in the windowsill waned lower and lower as the night passed.

Then, they heard a harsh thud against the door and mother and daughter sent glances to each other, wondering who could be calling at such a late hour. Another knock hit the door and this time it seemed more insistent.

"Who is it?" the mother hesitantly called out. There was no answer.

Another knock, but this was the one that startled them the most. It hit the door with such force that the door rattled and almost came off its hinges. Suddenly, darkness crept into the cottage as all of the lights went out in unison. The mother clutched Sakura close to her breast as if to protect herself from the evils of the world.

Then, the doorknob turned and the door opened with an eerie creak, despite the fact that neither mother nor daughter had unlocked the door. The mother only clutched her daughter tighter and began crying and as Sakura looked up to the door lit solely by the moonlight, she understood why.

Through the doorway came a demon. The leathery wings that sprouted from his back and the long horns protruding from his head combined to make him the most grotesque creature that Sakura had ever seen in her life. However, it was not his appearance that made her truly wary, but rather the unpleasant expression on his face, which seemed to be contorted into a countenance of utter terribleness. The demon ducked as he approached the room for he was taller than the doorway would allow and stopped right in front of them.

His voice boomed out, strong and powerful, rattling the walls with its intensity, "You promised me, beloved and I am here. I have come to take my bride back to the Underworld."

"I cannot leave my daughter alone," the mother pointed out trying to cajole him not to take her away.

"Daughter?" the demon asked. Then, he took notice of Sakura wrapped in her mother's arms. She was just as beautiful as her mother had been, if not more and he compared the two, mother and daughter, finding the mother much more lacking like an old rose that had lost its vibrancy.

"If you let me take your daughter as my bride, then I will leave you alone," the demon vowed to the mother. At this pronouncement, the mother grew even paler and though she shed some tears, she nodded her agreement because nothing scared her more than the prospect of becoming the bride of a demon.

"Mother!" Sakura cried out in protest, but it was too late for the demon had already lifted her into his arms and passed through the doorway into the Underworld.

Years later, the villagers would talk of the seamstress who went mad with grief at the mysterious loss of her daughter and eventually drowned herself.

~{{}}~

The Underworld was a twisted and terrible place. Though, not much more can be said about it as there are some things in this world that should never be uttered aloud by the living; even if only to the wind, for the Underworld holds the dark secrets that are solely for the dead and its denizens.

In the months since being parted from her mother, Sakura's hair had grown stiff and unkempt and her green eyes held deep sadness. In the palace of her demon husband, she slowly wasted away, refusing to let a single word leave her lips. She was determined not to speak, unless she had her freedom in the living world.

Her husband tried to do anything to get her to talk or even acknowledge his presence, but nothing he did worked. He gave her rich gifts such as enchanted combs that would brush her hair by itself and kimonos spun of the finest and lightest silk, but they lay unused and untouched in the corner of her room. Instead, Sakura sat each day in a chair made of fine elder wood in the corner of the room and did nothing.

The demon's mother was not very happy with her son's choice of consort and she let her opinion be known every time that she saw the wretched human that had stolen her son's heart. After a year of putting up with the girl, the mother came up with a plan to get rid of Sakura in the way that would not implicate herself. While her son was away doing business in another part of the Underworld, the demoness stole into Sakura's room.

She stared at Sakura who as usual sat in the corner of the room and said, "Little girl, I have three presents for you and if you use them wisely, you can return back to the living world and never see my son again."

At this announcement, Sakura's eyes regained some life and she wondered if her mother-in-law had decided to play a trick on her. But seeing no deception in her eyes, Sakura shakily reached for the offered gifts.

"The first present is a cloak woven from the shadows that will allow you to escape the palace. The second is a skeleton key to open the gates from the Underworld to the living world. Finally, the third is a spool of thread, which you must use to cover all your doorways with thread, so that my son will never find you again," the demoness explained further. The demoness departed, hoping that the girl would successfully escape and finally allow her son to marry a proper demoness.

Sakura planned her escape well though she made no outward change in her demeanor so that she would not betray herself. When her demon husband was once again away on business in the far reaches of the Underworld, she took the cloak given by her mother-in-law and covered herself with it. Making sure that she had the key and spool of thread secure in her pocket, Sakura escaped. As promised, the shadow cloak made her impossible to see and the alert sentries that guarded her husband's palace were unaware of her escape.

Unbeknownst to Sakura, her husband had placed a charm on her, so that the moment she left the palace, he would be alerted. As she entered the dark recesses of the Underworld for the first time by herself, her husband rushed back to the palace to see if she had truly escaped. Lo and behold, when he entered her room, Sakura was not in her usual place and could not be found anywhere in the palace. The Great Demon of the Underworld had the sentries punished and then released his hellhounds, so that he could find his wayward bride.

As Sakura made her way to the gates of the Underworld, she heard loud barking and snarling. Turning, she saw hounds the size of grown men, following in her path with her husband right behind them. She rushed even faster to gates, praying that she would make it through the portal of the living before her husband caught up with her.

The barking became even louder and she turned once more. This time, the hellhounds were three strides away from her. So she ran as quickly as she could and made it to the gates where she unsteadily tried to fit the skeleton key to the lock.

Just as the lock turned, the hounds growled and her husband reached out to grab her, but Sakura had already passed through the gates and all hope of recovering her was lost.

The demon never found his human bride again and due to the insistence of his mother, he eventually married a powerful demoness, but he was never as happy with her as had been with his beautiful Sakura. As for Sakura, when she came back to the world of the living, she found work as a seamstress. Eventually, she married a wealthy merchant who made her happy and never commented on her habit of tying thread around all of the doorknobs in their household.