When Madara woke up, he felt a momentary panic. He was alone in the bedroom, the silky sheets tangled around his bare legs. Darkness still cloaked the room. A glance at the window told Madara it was still the middle of the night.

His first instinct was to probe outward with his chakra and search for Sakura. Instead, he masked his chakra, hoping that she hadn't been stolen away in the night, right from under his nose.

Tossing the sheets aside, he got to his feet and pulled his robe around his naked body. There was no sign of forced entry in the bedroom, and he could see the cracked bathroom door from where he stood. Empty.

Silently, he padded through the cottage, concealing his presence in case it was some sort of trap.

He heard a light scratching at the door. "Sakura?" he whispered, approaching the entryway. The scratching continued and Madara realized it was a raccoon or rodent of some kind. He opened the door to shoo it away and was surprised to see a familiar black cat on the porch.

It sauntered inside as soon as Madara opened the door. Madara watched it with a dry gaze and flicked on the lights. He wasn't entirely surprised to see Sakura sitting in the corner of the room with a cup of tea in her lap. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulder and her eyes were red-rimmed.

"You've been crying?" he asked her.

Sakura's eyes were on the cat. She watched it until it walked up to her chair, rubbed against it affectionately, and then jumped into her lap. Then, Sakura finally looked up to Madara's face, absently scratching the cat's ears.

She said nothing, but the look on her face told him that she wouldn't be able to speak without bursting into tears.

"You ask a man to do dirty things for you and then just leave him cold in the middle of the night," he accused. "Would you rather have the bed alone? I can sleep out here. That way I can keep an eye on that cat."

Sakura blinked, moonlight glittering off the beads of moisture that clung to her lashes. "What?"

"I know you find it hard to resist me, so if you want to have the bed for yourself, I'll find somewhere else to sleep," he offered. "Maybe the bathtub. I've always been quite fond of them."

"What's the point?" she snapped bitterly. "My control is wafer-thin. All I've thought about for the past hour is how badly I want to ride your face."

Madara felt his jaw drop to his feet. He gaped at her, trying to ignore the stiffening in his boxers. "Then why are you resisting your urges?" he demanded. "Is it because of Sasuke?"

"It has nothing to do with Sasuke," she snapped. "You were angry with me earlier, and it made more of the darkness infect your head. You think that won't happen again? You think it won't get in the way of the research? What if I fail? What if I can't fix anything and all I end up doing is creating a monster of you?"

This deluge of questions stunned Madara, who hadn't thought much of any of that. He trusted her skills entirely, as she had been so confident. But he couldn't blame her now for having self-doubt. This was uncharted territory for her as much as it was for him.

And he supposed that it was a bit unfair that all this time he had put his faith in her and the moon, and done little else to improve his own situation. In fact, he felt rather selfish for thinking of Sakura as a gift from the moon.

"I wasn't angry with you, Sunflower," he said, because he wasn't sure how else to comfort her. He wished he had her back in bed where he could caress her and touch her and nuzzle her. That was an easy language to speak.

"Then why does your head hurt again?"

"Because the thought of you and Sasuke together makes me want to sever my own brainstem," he muttered with irritation.

This gave Sakura pause. She reached for the notebook that had been squished between the cushion and her thigh and flipped it open. Madara watched as she began rapidly scribbling notes and mumbling to herself.

"What are you writing?" he demanded.

"You're jealous," she said without looking up at him, "and if I want to invoke some of that darkness, I can use jealousy, not just anger."

"I'm not jealous," he said tersely, of course he had no valid defense for himself.

"I thought you wanted me to be with Sasuke," she said. "You said it was the best possible future for your clan."

Madara frowned. He wanted what would be best for both her and his clan in the long run. With Sasuke, that was a gamble. With him, he could guarantee it. But how could he tell her that without sounding arrogant or selfish?

In fact, he didn't think it wise to be having any kind of conversation with her at all at this hour.

He snatched the blanket from around her shoulders, spilling the purring cat out of her lap. "I'm going to sleep in the bathtub," he announced.

Sakura gaped at him, her expression half rage, half confusion.

An amused grin tugged at his lips, but he saved it for once he had turned around and she could no longer see his face.

/

The bathtub, while spacious, was not very comfortable. It was a smooth, cold porcelain, and Madara struggled to find a comfortable position without inadvertently sliding into a less comfortable one. He missed the warmth of Sakura's body, even just being in the same room as her.

All things considered, this wasn't so bad. He had a roof over his head, food in his stomach. Sakura was soundly sleeping just on the other side of the hall.

He felt a new resolve for respecting her wishes, though he didn't find himself agreeing with her position. Her research had the potential to save his entire clan, and he couldn't risk messing that up just because he wanted to get a little handsy with her.

But at the same time, he could no longer deny that Sakura was no less than an angel, perfection that he was blessed to be able to touch in the salacious ways he already had. While it wasn't good to press his luck, he wasn't selfless enough to just let her go completely. If he had to wait, and play her coy little games, then he could live with that. For now.

He didn't think Sakura could hold out for much longer. Her attraction to him was just as obvious, and he now believed her to be a bit more perverted than she had seemed at first.

Her heated words from earlier sent sharp pleasure dancing down his spine. She'd thought about riding his face. His throat burned at the wickedness of it, the lecherous, sinful, dirty nature of such an act. He could just imagine the feel of her silky thighs clenched against his cheeks, her fingers curled against his scalp as she grinded herself against his mouth.

Oh, he'd show her a good time, if she ever allowed such a thing. He'd leave her a quivering mass of limp limbs.

Growing hard again at the images brewing in his head, Madara reached for his erection. Maybe another go might help him fall asleep.

"Really? Again?"

Startled, Madara glanced in the doorway to find that he had been snuck up on. Sakura, dressed in her thin, long nightshirt, stood clutching onto the doorframe, her legs crossed at the ankles.

He let go of his erection, which only grew more strained against his boxers at the sight of her. Sleep had mussed her hair and her eyes were a little milky. Adorable was the only appropriate word to describe her.

"I have to pee," she said.

"So pee."

She scowled at him, stomping across the tile to snatch his blanket away. She tossed it out into the hallway, giving him a petulant look. "Leave," she said a bit more firmly.

With as much dignity as he could muster after having been caught nearly masturbating, Madara climbed out of the bathtub and settled Sakura with a disapproving look. "You give a lot of orders, Sunflower," he said lowly to her, letting his lips brush softly against the shell of her ear. Perhaps if he tortured her the same way she tortured him, she might cave.

A thousand other things crossed his mind to say to her, but between his erection and his nerves, he thought it best to just say nothing. Instead, he collected his blanket from the hall, shut the bathroom door behind him, and made his way back to the bedroom.

The silky sheets were still tousled, and after spending a few hours in the bathtub, they looked more than inviting. He slid beneath the covers, his body magnetically pulled to the warmth Sakura had left behind.

It was such a simple luxury, this bed. He'd been so used to sleeping on his cot, or on the ground, and alone. Would he ever be able to sleep again without craving Sakura's body against his?

When Sakura returned to the bedroom, she seemed unconcerned with Madara's presence in the bed. She merely slipped into the sheets beside him.

She sank down against her pillow and stared at him. There was a pained expression on her face that made Madara's heart clench in his chest.

"I want to know what you saw in your hallucination."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously. "It was just a hallucination."

"But you don't think that," she argued. "You said you saw a glimpse of our future."

Madara frowned. For her to ask him to explain this was basically to ask him to bare his soul for her. He wasn't foolish enough to think that they'd forged a lasting relationship already, nor did he want to contemplate that being her husband also meant loving her, which was very different from making love to her, which was something he felt far more comfortable doing.

But since his vision had practically written it in the stars for him, he had no doubt that he would eventually love her, and therefore there should be no shame in admitting to her what he had seen in his vision.

He looked at her pretty face, so still and ethereal in the moonlight. Her cheeks were a little ruddy, but she was glowing with that sort of middle-of-the-night air that made her seem like a waif, an apparition, a dream.

"You were my wife," he said, sorely tempted to touch a fingertip to her cheek and drag it down to the pulse point on her neck. "You had one child on your hip and another in your belly."

He was amused to see her skin flush prettily under his gaze. "What happened?" she asked.

"Something was hurting you," he said. "The boy turned to ash and floated away, and then… something else happened to you. I don't know. I think you had a miscarriage."

Sakura's face flickered into a deep frown. Her eyes searched his, worried, concerned.

"I saw Izuna, too," he continued. "You were with him in his tent. I think he liked you. I don't know why he wouldn't."

She flushed some more.

"When I saw the two of you together, I came closer," he explained, leaving out the bit about feeling jealous of his own brother. "But when I got close enough, Izuna turned into Sasuke, and then he…"

"He what?" Sakura pressed, her eyes eager and finally starting to warm up.

"He slit your throat."

She blinked and swallowed a lump in her throat. Madara blinked back, a little enamored with the way she looked at him with such undivided attention.

"I see," she said softly. Her hand, which had been curled up into a fist at her side, inched a little closer to him. Tentatively, she tapped her fingers against the silk sheets. "How did you know I was your wife in your vision?"

He cocked his head, a little curious about her line of questioning. "Just a feeling," he murmured in answer.

"I see," she said again. "Do you have that feeling now?"

A smile tugged at his lips again, lighting him up from the inside out. "Only every time I look at you."

A fleeting smile found its way to her lips, too, but then it was whisked away as quickly as it had appeared. Her features darkened, first with a cloying fear that Madara felt emanating from her in thick waves, and then with a desperation that made his heart lurch in his chest.

"Sasuke isn't going to kill you," he said, covering her hand was his. Her fingers froze beneath his, but she didn't pull her hand away. "I won't let him."

"It was just a hallucination," she said consolingly, her eyes warming up as they found their way to his.

She already knew he disagreed, so Madara didn't bother to voice his opposition.

"You know sometimes I think I should just give up trying to maintain a platonic relationship with you," she said. "You flirt so much and you have visions of me as your wife, and you're just so goddamn handsome."

Madara's chest fluttered with a light, nerve-wracking feeling that he hadn't experienced since he'd been a boy. He tightened his hold around Sakura's hand, resisting the urge to bring it to his mouth and kiss it.

"Sometimes the way you look at me makes me feel like I could just float right off the ground," she said with a demure smile. "And sometimes I don't care at all about Sasuke or getting you back to where you belong. I just want to steal you away and kiss you until we both die from lack of air."

Madara grinned at her.

"But I can't let these feelings get in the way of my research," she said. "You understand, don't you?"

"I trust your judgment, Sakura," he said, lacing their fingers together to rest against the silk sheets. "But maybe there's a way to indulge in these feelings without compromising the research."

"I'll need more notes before I can determine if that's even possible," she said. "I worry that your feelings for me might affect how the curse manifests itself. There will be nothing to observe if you don't feel any darkness at all, but you'll lose control if you feel too much. If any of the darkness has something to do with me, it'll be much harder for me to remain impartial—"

"Don't kid yourself, Sakura," he said. "You aren't impartial. But I understand what you're saying. Liaisons between us have the potential to become ugly, especially now that you've deduced that jealousy can, in fact, induce the darkness. That puts us in a dangerous place where Sasuke is concerned."

Sakura's blush bloomed over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. "I wasn't trying to imply that you'd be jealous," she said.

"I would be, though," he conceded. "Not just jealous, but angry, too. I've got pity for the little twerp, but I can't forget that he threatened to kill you."

Sakura began to shake her head, rolling halfway onto her back to stare up at the canopy above. "I don't understand you," she said. "It's not like you couldn't have any woman back home that you wanted. Why waste the mental energy on being jealous of Sasuke when you're so… you?"

Intrigued by the way she seemed so relaxed, so open with him right now, Madara inched a little closer to her. His fingers twitched around hers, too afraid she'd never let him touch her like this again if he let go.

"You think there's a whole field of women like you back home?" he asked. "That I could just pluck the prettiest one and make her my wife? If women were sunflowers, you'd be the actual sun. There's only one of you, and of course I'll be jealous of Sasuke for being the one you want."

"Stop it." Sakura yanked her hand out from under his, ignoring Madara's hiss of disapproval. "I'm not some unicorn for you to pine after."

"No, you do have your faults, don't you, Sakura?"

She turned her head to the side to glare at him, but it was so endearing that he could do nothing but grin back at her in return.

"You'll make a good wife someday, Sakura." Whether his or Sasuke's, Madara didn't know.

"You'd make a really sexy husband," she replied, flicking a strand of hair out of her eyes.

"Is this you trying to be impartial?" he asked with a sleepy half grin.

"You're objectively sexy, Uchiha-sama," she explained primly. "That's why this is so hard for me. I'm honestly so repulsed by your personality. You're quite lucky to be so attractive."

Madara barely registered her words, but he knew enough to be able to tell that she was teasing him, and that she found him attractive. And with that hazy, sleepy smile on her face she was attractive, too. She always was.

"You're so attractive," he echoed softly, trailing his fingertips lightly over her wrist and then her hand. He was fascinated by the texture and color of her skin, the size of her tiny little arm compared to his much larger one, and the way goosebumps raised the hairs on her arm.

She let out a noise, half sigh, half moan. Feeling heat creep up his neck, Madara glanced up at her face.

Her eyes, wide pools of fear and shame and something else that made Madara want to fold her into his chest and stroke her hair, blinked up at him. She held her breath for a moment, and Madara held his, too. He didn't even want to look at her – her fear, which appeared very real even without the Sharingan, was of him, Madara.

The thought sickened him, and he wasn't sure how to rectify the situation. He supposed he should leave the bed, return to his bathtub. He had offered her the comfort of the bed and then stolen it back before the night was over.

But Sakura flipped onto her side, her back facing him before he could decide what to do.

"Goodnight, Uchiha-sama," she said, her voice unreadable.

"Goodnight, Sunflower," he whispered so quietly he wasn't sure she heard him.

/

Blinding, searing pain exploded behind Madara's eyes. He blinked, his vision flashing and blaring. Rubbing at his eyes made orbs and circles of light dance around his head. His heart beat rapidly in his chest.

Izuna's face flashed across his mind. Madara's heart seized in his chest. He watched a young Izuna nearly topple over the side of the cliff to his death. Before Madara's heart could calm down – it was only a memory, one that seemed from so long ago, he saw Hashirama's face. Hashirama was motionless, his body pitched into a heap on the ground.

It had been a little too rough a spar, Madara remembered. He couldn't forget that moment of panic and fear he'd felt when he thought he'd inadvertently killed his best friend.

And then Hashirama was gone. He was at the Valley of the End, staring up at his own cracked, crumbling likeness. The stone was overgrown with moss and algae. It was almost unrecognizable.

Pressure against his chest and stomach made Madara convulse. His vision began to swim again, and blindly he reached forward to push away whatever was crushing him.

Gasping for breath, he caught two arms in his hands and tore them away from his body. He rolled over, pinning his attacker beneath him. Pain was still searing behind his eyes, his heart kicked into overdrive. His brain felt tickled and electrified, yet somehow numb at the same time.

His vision slowly came back to him. Still panting, he blinked.

Sakura's face was beneath his. He held her arms pinned above her head. His legs were on either side of her hips, his entire weight on her. She struggled to breath in his hold, her eyes brimming with fear.

"What were you doing to me?" he demanded, knowing that the tickling sensation in his head could only have come from her.

She trembled like a baby bird underneath him and he nearly rolled his eyes at her foolish antics. Like he hadn't seen her punch a crater through a field of sunflowers. Annoyed, he shoved himself away from her and rolled back to his side of the bed, rubbing at his eyes and temples.

The mattress dipped with her weight. He felt her roll closer to him, felt her heat against his side though she wasn't quite touching him.

"I was testing what other emotions will bring darkness, and to what degree," she said. "I probed the section of your brain that lights up when you feel fear."

He opened his eyes to glare at her. "While I was sleeping?" he demanded.

"I thought it might trigger painful memories, so I wanted to try it when you were asleep," she said sheepishly. "I didn't know it would wake you up."

"You sitting on top of my chest woke me up," he mumbled bitterly.

She was silent for a minute, her eyes searching his. He wasn't sure what she was looking for.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "Here, let me get rid of your headache."

She reached for his head again but Madara pushed her hands away. He flopped unceremoniously on the mattress, pulling her pillow out from underneath her to hold over his head. Morning light was beginning to pour through the windows, but he wasn't quite ready to wake up yet.

And now that he'd had Izuna's face in his mind, it was harder to get his heart to calm down. It killed him that he couldn't reach Izuna right now to make sure he was okay. He'd begun to miss his younger brother's company.

Madara wasn't sure how long he was curled there between the pillows, lamenting his brother's absence. He'd gotten so little sleep last night, and he was beginning to feel rather cranky about his whole frustrating situation.

It wasn't until Sakura reentered the room several hours later that Madara felt the compulsion to rouse himself. He lifted himself up, propping himself up on his elbows to look at her.

She stood in the doorway with a tray of food – her peace offering.

"Hungry?" she asked with a shy smile.

He eyed her warily as she approached the bed and sat down beside him. She set the tray of food on the table beside the bed. Madara ignored the clawing in his stomach at the smell of fried eggs and grilled fish.

"Why don't you have some breakfast?" she asked. "Then maybe I can take another look at your head."

When Madara didn't answer her or make a move for the food, Sakura cocked her head curiously to the side. "Does your head hurt?" she asked.

He thought of refusing to answer her, but that seemed counterproductive so he merely nodded. She immediately pressed her fingertips to his temples, cooling chakra rushing to alleviate his pain.

"My research plan for now is to fill out a chart I've created that will map out each of your emotions and how they are affected by your curse," she explained, her voice clinical and certain. "Do you feel in tune with your emotions, Uchiha-sama?"

Madara reached for a slice of mango from the tray beside the bed and popped it into his mouth. "No," he answered because he wasn't really sure how else to answer a question like that.

"Would you consider yourself an emotional person?" she asked.

Madara paused as he mulled this over. "No."

Sakura frowned, and it was clear from her expression that she seemed to disagree. Something about the look on her face was soft and sad in a way that made Madara feel a little angry. It pulled a little more darkness into his head, seeping through the cracks in Sakura's chakra.

She seemed surprised, her fingers floating away from him with shock. They hovered in front of his face for a moment before she reached for his temples again and resumed her chakra funneling like nothing had happened.

"Do you have a favorite emotion?" she asked, her fingers faltering a little bit on his brow. He looked up at her, noting her rigid posture and the way her body was angled tensely around his. He would like to have hoisted her up onto his lap where she would be more comfortable, but he knew she wouldn't like that.

"No," he said again.

Sakura sighed, and she did not seem amused by his new single-word vocabulary. Instead of commenting on it, she reached for her notebook and pulled it open, setting it beside Madara's leg on the bed.

"Alright, then," she said. "I'll try to make this quick for you, Uchiha-sama."

Madara resisted the urge to sigh as she straightened her arms and closed her eyes. Her chakra filled his head, jarring but not exactly unpleasant. He was used to the feeling now, even though he felt a little unsettled about the way Sakura had woken him up.

But since she was supposed to be the expert, he let her do her thing and put up no fuss. He merely grazed on the breakfast she had brought him.

/