AN: Thank you for the continued support! The reviews have been so encouraging!

Chapter 3 - Mental Breakdown

Sakura tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable spot in her bed. But it wasn't really her body that was uncomfortable, it was her mind that was restless. Madara's words kept relentlessly echoing in her head.

'He's probably just trying to mess with my mind,' Sakura thought, trying to find any other reason for the Uchiha's actions than the fact that what he said was true. If she believed what he said and if it was true how was she supposed to react?

Dammit. Damn Uchihas. They always had a way of seeping into her mind and absolutely turning it upside down.

"Ugh!" Sakura groaned as she buried her face into her pillow. Her head felt like it was going to burst from the myriad of thoughts that swirled inside of it. Sighing, the pinkette hoisted herself out of her bed and padded over to her dresser. She rummaged through the drawers till she found a small container of pills. She'd been using sleep aids ever since the war had ended but she'd weaned herself off them. But now with Madara's words plaguing her, sleep had become a thing of the past once again.

Sakura rubbed her forehead, she could feel the beginnings of a headache. She needed sleep. She quickly retrieved a glass of water from the small kitchen and downed the tablet.

She snuggled back under covers and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the medication to kick in. But even as the fog of sleep slowly clouded her mind a certain dark gaze flickered through her head. His words were still there.

Morning came, creeping over Konoha like a warm mist. Sakura's alarm clock shrilled from her bedside table and she sleepily rolled over to turn it off. She hadn't gotten much sleep at all. Even the sleep aids couldn't completely calm her mind.

As she flipped over onto her back, her gaze focused on the ceiling Sakura knew she had to take the day off. There was no way she could work in this condition. The pinkette sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed, pausing before standing up. She quickly ran through the hand seals and summoned a messenger hawk. She retrieved a scroll and quickly penned a message to Tsunade asking for the day off due to exhaustion. She rolled up the scroll and attached it to the holder on the hawk, then opened her window to let it off.

As she watched the bird take off, Sakura sighed, feeling a wave of relief wash over her. She didn't have to face Madara today.

She needed to restore her inner balance that Madara had disrupted. A hot spring seemed to be the prime candidate to help with her cause.

Sakura nodded to herself. It was decided, she'd go to the hot spring today.

He'd been waiting for her and when his cell door finally swung open he expected to see pink hair but was greeted with boring brown instead. She hadn't come. The first thing that ran through his mind was why. Why hadn't she come?

A nondescript brown haired medic and her equally nondescript partner entered Madara's cell, their distaste for the Uchiha evident on their faces. Madara gave them a once over before closing his eyes again. His vision had been tainted. He couldn't believe he was to be in the presence of such inferiority. He'd not actually come to terms with Haruno's superior looks until these… disgraces had been slapped in his face.

"Uchiha-san we will be your medics for the day because Haruno-sama is on break," one of the nondescript medics said, her voice grating against Madara's ears.

So the pink haired medic was on a break.

Madara scowled. Who did she think she was just abandoning him?

The annoying sound from earlier grated against Madara's ears again. It seemed as though the medic was trying to speak to him. Raising a weak but dismissive hand, Madara didn't even bother looking at the medic, but instead kept his eyes closed.

"Do not speak to me," he said simply, aristocratic features turned up in disgust.

The medic bristled, her patience quickly waning. She ignored the Uchiha and ordered her assistant to give him an injection of antibiotics. When the assistant reached for Madara's arm, his eyes snapped open, his dark gaze freezing the assistant in place.

"Do not touch me with your filthy hands, Konoha maggot," he hissed, baring his teeth at her. She flinched and stepped back. Madara smirked and pulled himself upright, reaching out as far as his shackles would allow him and grabbed the assistant's collar.

"Remove yourself from my presence. Such inferiority is intolerable," he grinned humourlessly and shoved the medic away from him, delighting in the fear that filled her entire being. He hated these ignorant gnats.

The head medic rushed over to her assistant.

"Shima-chan are you okay?" She glared at the Uchiha who was still smiling. "Y-You are such filth!"

Madara's grin widened. It seemed as though he wouldn't be bored today.

"I see the maggots of Konoha are able to decipher words of the great Uchiha…" he smirked, leaning forward as he leered at the medic, eyes full of bloodlust. "You would look much more acceptable with a kunai through your chest."

The medic's eyes widened and she sputtered with fear, clutching to her assistant with all her might. Madara took one look at the two medics cowering before his restrained form and erupted in laughter. His mad howls reverberated through the cell and the ANBU burst through the door, responding to the emergency signal one of the medics activated.

Upon seeing the masked shinobi his wild laughter increased. If he were honest, he found the situation far from funny, since Sakura had effectively ditched him today, but the knowledge that his laughter scared the interim medics was in fact hilarious. If he were to continue being honest, this was the first time in a while that he'd laughed with even a hint of genuineness in a while.

Seeing that there was no danger the ANBU exited the room… leaving the two medics with the laughing Uchiha. The ANBU's response to the apparent lack of danger only made Madara laugh more. Abruptly growing serious, Madara focused on them with a deadly glare.

"If you want to sleep peaceably any time in the near future, I suggest you drag Haruno's ass back here. I refuse to deal with you cowering scum… shaking like the leaf of a village you come from…" he sneered.

"B-But she's on leave…" one of the medic's stuttered, flinching when Madara snarled at her.

"By all means stay, then, hmm?" Madara responded with a smirk. "I've been bored all this while. Can you handle a few games? It will be fun for me, I promise," he hissed. He inspected his fingernails nonchalantly. "You do know I don't need chakra to make you question why your pathetic existence even bothered to make the transition from sperm to fetus, right?"

He'd get the pink haired medic back in his cell by all means. Uchiha Madara always got what he wanted. Always.

"Y-yes Uchiha-san," the two medics muttered before scurrying out of the cell.

"Its Uchiha-sama," Madara smirked as he watched the medics run out of his cell. It seemed as though his day was going to be quite eventful.

"What?" Tsunade yelled, slamming her hands into her desk as she glared at the two medics before her.

"You're saying that he refuses to accept any medic other than Sakura and that he threatened you?" The medics nodded, their heads moving in sync. Tsunade scowled and clenched her jaw.

"You cowards! He's restrained and his chakra sealed! He can't actually do anything to you!"

"B-But Tsunade-sama the things he said…"

"SHUT UP AND GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!" Tsunade yelled, punching the wall behind her, causing the medics to sprint out of her office and reconsider their choice of career.

Taking a deep breath, Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. It seemed as though she'd have to pay the Uchiha a visit.

Madara's gaze swung to his cell door when it clicked open to reveal Tsunade.

It was another maggot...and a Senju one at that. His patience was basically nonexistent at this point. How could these imbeciles not understand that he was ordering them to bring him the pink haired medic? He was quite sure he'd made it very evident.

"Uchiha, what is the meaning of this behaviour?" Tsunade hissed, eyes flashing with anger as she stomped into the cell. She didn't get much further in her tirade however because the monitor on Madara's vitals had suddenly begun to beep. Even though he was staring her down, the insane Uchiha wasn't breathing.

"Shit," Tsunade cursed, quickly channeling chakra into her hands as she scanned the Uchiha's body, frowning when she noticed nothing out of the norm apart from the wounds she already knew he had. The monitor was still beeping.

And he was still staring her down.

The cocky look in his eyes told her that he wasn't against suffocating himself to death. Kami knew he had nothing to lose… nothing that she knew of, and she knew he knew that she was not prepared to take the chance that he wouldn't just die in front of her.

Tsunade turned to the ANBU she knew were just outside and yelled frustratedly.

"Get Haruno Sakura's ass in here now!"

The beeping stopped. Tsunade's eyes snapped down to the Uchiha, expecting to find him unconscious or something of the sort but she was met with his dark gaze and a very unnerving grin.

"I see finally one of you maggots were able to comprehend my demands."

As Madara's words filled Tsunade's ears, it hit her.

Even when weak and restrained the Uchiha could still manipulate people into doing his bidding.

Sakura rested her head against the edge of the hot spring pool, feeling rather relaxed. She'd finally decided she'd just ask Madara what he had meant when she went to check up on him tomorrow. The pinkette sighed, getting ready to close her eyes and relax even further when a masked ANBU appeared in a poof of smoke at the entrance to the hot spring.

"Haruno-sama, Tsunade-sama requests your presence."

The ANBU disappeared as suddenly as he'd appeared, leaving a shocked and very annoyed Sakura behind.

She was on a break dammit.

"This damned Uchiha," Sakura muttered as she pulled herself out of the water and quickly dried and clothed her body. She paused to bury her emotions beneath a mask of professionalism then flash stepped to Tsunade's office at the Konoha Hospital.

"I know you're on break," Tsunade said without preamble when Sakura appeared before her. "But that bastard Uchiha… will only accept you as his medic."

Sakura deadpanned.

"He's a patient almost on the verge of death, with sealed chakra and no physical strength to speak of. How exactly is he a threat enough for you to call me from a day off?" Sakura asked, her voice raising with frustration as she pressed her fingertips to her temples.

"That is… he stopped breathing until I called for you…" Tsunade admitted, taking a sip of sake.

Sakura deadpanned.

"S… S-Stopped breathing?" she parroted, eyes wide.

"Stopped breathing," Tsunade repeated, taking a sip of sake, then a gulp.

"Do you mean to say he threatened you with self-induced suffocation?" Sakura asked, trying to make sense of what Tsunade was saying.

"Correct. And he made uncanny eye contact while doing so," Tsunade continued, turning a frustrated look in Sakura's direction. "It was a complete error on our part to assume that because he's technically weak and defenceless and has his chakra sealed it means that he's incapable of getting exactly what he wants."

"That aside… why me?" Sakura sputtered. Tsunade fixed her with an inscrutable look.

"Ask him that yourself. I have a feeling that if he sees my face again, he'll just simply stop breathing again. He didn't even say a word until I bowed to his will…" Tsunade muttered, annoyance lacing her words.

Sakura sighed and shook her head. To say she was confused was an understatement. She was utterly puzzled. The Uchiha was definitely messing with her head.

"Well I'd better get going then…" Sakura trailed, before bowing to her shishou and shunshin-ing to Madara's cell.

He knew it was her before she even entered the room. Because he knew that Tsunade wouldn't have refused his demands after what he'd done earlier.

Madara smirked.

"It took you long enough," he said arrogantly, turning his head to meet Sakura's gaze.

Her gaze faltered slightly before hardening.

"Apparently you've been refusing to have any other medic but me?" Sakura asked, her brow quirking upwards.

The Uchiha closed his eyes, a smug expression settling itself on to his face.

"The rest were all incompetent maggots."

Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation. She had to stay professional.

"Watch your tongue, Uchiha, I won't tolerate you speaking negatively of my fellow shinobi," Sakura said, eyes hardening.

"Hn," Madara grunted before turning his back to Sakura, dismissing her from his presence.

Sakura felt her eye twitch with annoyance and she silently counted to ten. It wouldn't do to lose her temper and destroy all the equipment. She didn't want to have to pay for them out of her salary.

Deciding to ignore the Uchiha, Sakura busied herself checking his vitals and scanning for infections. His chakra burn wounds were healing extremely slow but the necrosis in his organs had completely stopped, which was good. As Sakura went about injecting nutrition into the Uchiha's IV her mind slipped back to the words he'd said the previous day.

Sucking in a breath Sakura decided to grab the bull by the horns.

"Uchiha-san...what did you mean yesterday when you were talking about your reasons for...doing the things you have done?" Sakura asked quietly, her hands fiddling with his IV as she waited for his reply.

He turned to face her, a smirk tugging his lip upwards.

"I thought you would have gone to the library to read up on my history with this place," he said smugly, feeling rather pleased that he had got her to think about his words and obviously for a long time too. When she didn't respond, he continued. "There are details few people seem to consider when they think about me and my motives. Is there anything you know about me outside of Akatsuki?" he asked. "Or have you just blindly accepted what you've been told?"

Sakura carefully observed the Uchiha, but she couldn't read his emotions as his face and eyes were a stoic mask.

"What do you think? You tried to kill my two teammates and destroy my world...and you slayed hundreds of my fellow shinobi…" Sakura said quietly, her words heavy with emotion. Green eyes locked onto black ones. She could have sworn they flashed red for a moment.

He closed his eyes again, jaw clenched as he battled with his thoughts.

"And you think you're the only person such a thing has happened to? How hard did you fight with those emotions in mind?" he asked. "Do you honestly believe I just got up and decided to change the world? Do you seriously not have the aptitude to consider the rationale behind my actions? This is why Konoha will always be mediocre no matter how powerful your shinobi claim to be. Your puny forces never consider what is underneath the underneath, and that there can be something underneath that. And to use a glaring example, I fail to see how a whole nation of people could blindly believe that Uchiha Itachi just blindly killed his entire clan for no apparent reason. How could you be so… ignorant? And if his case is so much more obvious than mine, it's no surprise that I'm an enigma."

Sakura bit her lip as she tried to completely comprehend what she was hearing. Was he defending himself?

"Well what were we to do when you threatened our entire existence?" she spat angrily, feeling as though he was trying to blame her for something she hadn't done. "Just stand by and watch? I think not…"

"Oh, don't worry," he sneered right back. "I really didn't expect you or your teammates to amount to anything much. You've been blinded by your own leaders. Completely brainwashed," he laughed. "It's obvious that you knew nothing, know nothing, and at this rate, will never know anything unless it's served up to you on a silver platter. And to think that your very leaders have been serving up poison this whole time, or should I say drugs? Because it's as if the entire Konoha has been surviving in a genjutsu this entire time."

Sakura slammed her fists into his bed, her professionalism crumbling.

"You know nothing of the Will of Fire that we fight for!" she hissed, eyes hard and her breath coming in short bursts. "You know nothing of the love that spurs us on or the camaraderie we share!"

"Will of Fire?" Madara sneered, erupting into soulless laughter. He leaned forward, his long dark brushing against Sakura's arm. "The will of fire that you cling to so pathetically was built on lies and the bones of my clansmen! The will of fire that you claim to posses was what slayed by brothers! All five of them! My four older brothers and my youngest Izuna." He punctuated his distaste by spitting on the floor, eyes narrowed in anger.

"Your second Hokage slayed my brother in cold blood! Your second hokage viewed my clansmen as nothing but ants to be crushed! That vile Uchiha hating maggot who claimed to be fighting for peace slayed hundreds of my ancestors. The only one of the Senju even worth existing was the First Hokage. The Will of Fire you treasure so much died with Hashirama! And love? What love do you speak of? That silly infatuation you have with my nephew?" Madara spat, his eyes hard with hatred and hurt. "No one loves more than an Uchiha. Love is a curse. Have you ever experienced a love so deep that if it so much as looked as though it was going to be threatened you would be willing to destroy everything for the sake of protecting it? Have you?!"

"Of course I have!" Sakura shot back, although with a bit less confidence than she would have liked. "Why do you think I fight so hard? It's to protect what I love! What you threatened!" Madara watched her speak with a curiously sad smile.

"And what do you do when you've lost it?" he asked quietly. "What do you do when all is lost? Do you sit and cry, or do you change the world that took it away from you?"

Sakura felt as though someone had removed all the air from her lungs. Sasuke had said words very similar to the words Madara had just uttered.

"I..." she trailed at a loss for any tangible words. The Uchiha continued speaking. His gaze was no longer focused on her but at some point behind her, however Sakura could tell he wasn't actually looking at anything.

"When you lose everything, naturally you become angry and hurt. But when you are cursed with darkness like no other and your only source of light is removed you become a different creature altogether… and there is no escape, because that light only occurs once in a lifetime. When you are betrayed over and over by a world you fought for and trusted in, would you not want to change it? When others' delusions of peace extinguished your most precious source of light, wouldn't you fall to revenge and hatred? Where do you turn to when there is no one to save you? Do you sit and cry, feeling sorry for yourself? Or do you unleash your wrath on all those who took away your reason for existing?"

"And what of your dream of peace? Or is your dream for peace so … trivial that you would allow something as trivial as your death to stop it? I wanted a peaceful world to the extent that I fought from beyond the grave. There is no 'if I could' for me, because there was no one to listen to my gripes if I had any. I was entirely on my own, so your 'if I could' became my 'when I would', something that is hard to achieve when you're fighting alone. I hope you are grateful for your teammates no matter how puny they are, because you would be a different monster without them. Then again," he sneered. "I saw you as a child. In my position you would have probably ended your own existence like a coward. I didn't have that luxury, because the world needed to be changed into a place where Izuna could have thrived. Controlled peace. Peace that could not be broken by the whim and fancy of human greed."

Sakura did not hear much after he mentioned her childhood. Her entire body went numb after that. Because it was most likely true.

"And you could justify killing hundreds for Izuna's sake?" she hissed, her voice harsher than intended, because she felt as raw and defenseless as a baby on a battlefield. When the words left her lips she sensed the change in the Uchiha before she saw it. She'd hit a nerve.

"For Izuna's sake?" Madara whispered, his eyes dark, hollow and lifeless. Then without warning they blazed with hatred and wild insanity "Do you presume that his life was not important?" he screamed. " For Izuna's sake I'd have done anything! Izuna's life was the MOST IMPORTANT ONE! YES! I would have slaughtered every last human on this damned planet if it could have brought back Izuna! I would have ate amongst the bones of this entire damned village if I could have spent one more moment with Izuna! Do you honestly think any of this that you hate so much would have occurred if he'd lived? You don't know, do you?" he screamed. Sakura opened her mouth to respond, but Madara was not finished, and his parting shot hurt more than anything she'd ever been told.

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT LOVE IS. YOU'VE NEVER LOVED AS MUCH AS I LOVED, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE LOVED AS MUCH AS IZUNA WAS LOVED! YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND!"

And then the situation spiralled completely out of control, and Madara went… well, mental.

He didn't just scream. He howled. Tears of blood spilled from his eyes as his Sharingan struggled to activate on default despite his lack of chakra, the endeavor no doubt doing immeasurable damage to his optical nerves. He struggled against as his restraints, his wrists chafing against the metal. His eyes were wide and wild, the darkness in them sending shivers down Sakura's spine and freezing her in her spot. He howled at the unfairness of his life, screaming for the one person he'd loved more than life itself, until his voice was reduced to an almost silent cry. He screamed for the unfairness of the Uchiha, the deadly fate of the curse of hatred and the greed that taunted them to gouge out their eyes in order to gain the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan. He cursed against the blindness that enveloped every Uchiha after the use of their Sharingan and the pain that coursed through their bones when they used their techniques.

When Sakura snapped out of her shell-shocked state and saw the damage the Uchiha was doing to himself, she ran forward, chakra at her palms, and tried to restrain him. For someone close to death, he was filled with the ridiculous strength of the insane, and Sakura struggled to hold even one of his limbs in place while he writhed and screamed.

It was a futile effort.

Sakura was left with no other course of action but to send chakra to all of the tenketsu on the front of her torso and wrap her arms around him in a chakra-empowered hug. If she used any chakra apart from healing chakra, she would have crushed his body.

On reflex, his arms closed around her waist in an equally crushing grip. And as her chakra coursed through his body he clung to her as if he was drowning.

He was drowning. Drowning in the darkness of his insanity.

"GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME!" He screamed repeatedly, soiling her uniform with his bloody tears. Sakura couldn't have moved even if she wanted to, so she did the only thing she could think of.

Something she would have done for Sasuke.

Or Naruto.

Or Ino.

She patted his back.

He clung to her, his fingers digging into her back, and sobbing like a child as blood streamed down his face. Even his tears were painful.

Sakura never could have imagined anything even close to the situation she was currently in.

Sakura never could have imagined pain close to the pain he was obviously feeling.

She could never have imagined the depth of love he must have felt for Izuna.

She was comforting her enemy. The great Uchiha Madara was sobbing in her arms, as broken and lost as her Uchiha teammate had been. As broken and lost as Uchiha Itachi must have felt moments after the Massacre that changed the shape of Konoha so long ago. And it hit her head on. The darkness of the Uchiha and the pain they suffered. Was this what Naruto felt when he finally came to understand Sasuke?

The pinkette's emotions raged and swirled within her as she struggled to come to terms with a new concept of the one person she'd come to hate more than life itself. The rage she'd fueled towards Madara for hurting her loved ones and destroying her world seemed paltry in the face of what he was experiencing. But at the same time he had tried to end her entire existence. Her mind was torn between pity and hatred. She didn't want to feel pity for her enemy. She fought against it as hard as she could. She wanted to keep hating him blindly as she had before, but her reasons had been totally contradicted.

The words he'd said to her before wound their way through her thoughts. If she wanted to keep blindly hating someone, what sort of a shinobi was she? If she had an inkling of the truth, and still wanted to keep blindly hating him, what kind of a person was she?

It wasn't until she took a ragged breath that Sakura realized that some of the cries of pain she was hearing were coming from her own throat.

They were a sight to behold. Enemies clinging to each other in the wake of war. Mind breaking under the strain of the world.

Uzumaki Naruto really had been the prophesied. He'd changed the world into a place where enemies cried together.

This was the mental breakdown of the shinobi.

And so Sakura bent her head, burying her face in Uchiha Madara's hair, and cried.

AN: Chapter 3 is here with more of Madara's hot madness~~ hehehe now give us plent reviews reviewssss! Is there anything specific you guys would like to see in upcoming chapters?