Madara's eyes were closed when Sakura finally ambled back into her bedroom several hours later. He opened them when she creaked the door open, watching as she slipped underneath the covers beside him.
She sighed softly as she settled her head against the pillow. She was facing away from him, and Madara wasn't sure whether or not he should touch her. He longed to pull her body flush against his, to curl around her and fall asleep like that. He could feel how tense and rigid she was even without touching her.
"Sakura?"
Slowly, she rolled over to face him. Her expression was unreadable and he wished for once that he knew how to seep his chakra into her brain and understand everything she was thinking. She lifted her fingers to his brow. He felt her flush of chakra.
He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. He wished he knew how to ease her mind, but he was afraid anything he said would only make things worse. Even just touching her seemed like a bad idea, though he couldn't quite bring himself to let go of her hand.
"You are something special, Mada-kun," she said.
His heart pounded in his chest, and he felt a magnetic pull between their bodies. With one arm he scooped her against his side, palming her head to hold it against his chest where he knew she could hear his thundering heartbeat.
"Go to sleep, baby," he murmured softly.
She nuzzled against his chest. He felt the brush of her lashes against his chest, and then the cadence of her breath slowed. Once Madara was certain she had fallen asleep, he shut his eyes, too.
/
Sakura was gone when Madara woke up. He groped blindly on her side of the bed, his disappointment immeasurable when he found no heat there. Groggily, he got up to his feet. He should have felt it the moment Sakura stirred, but for some reason his sleep had been far deeper than it usually was.
Presuming that Sakura had gone to the hospital for her shift, Madara made his way to her kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast.
She had given him a lot to think about last night. While he had been pursuing her and falling for her, it had never once occurred to him to put himself in her shoes and understand why she was so hesitant to be anything less than professional with him. It wasn't because of Sasuke like he had previously assumed. It was because she was afraid of the uncertainty.
Madara couldn't describe why he was so certain he was right about his predictions of a 'future' with Sakura. He felt in the very marrow of his bones so sure that everything in his vision would come to pass. He'd find a way to get back home, and save Izuna. He'd bring Sakura back with him, and together they would prevent the fall of the Uchiha clan.
But that didn't mean Sakura was wrong to feel so unsure. It was Madara's responsibility to allay her fears, and that meant he needed to make quicker progress with his work in the Uchiha archives.
As he poured himself a cup of tea, he made a mental note to also find a way to stock her kitchen with groceries. They couldn't eat takeout every day. With a frustrated sigh he realized this meant he'd have to find some money as well. He couldn't just ask Sakura for money when she was already doing so much for him.
Hopefully he'd be able to find some stashed away somewhere in the Uchiha compound.
/
As Madara continued reading where he left off in the Uchiha archives, he found that there were some things he couldn't understand. Many of the words on the pages puzzled him. Sometimes the strings of sentences seemed to make no sense altogether.
These strange little blurbs were spattered amongst the Uchiha clan's history, and it made Madara uneasy as he read.
Eventually he realized that some of this was because he hadn't awakened his Mangekyou. Remembering what Sakura had said about her research last night, it seemed that was out of the question for now. Unfortunately, that meant he would need Sasuke's help to see what he was missing.
With a resigned sigh, he shut his current tome and made his way back to the Uchiha shrine. He stared for a moment, dust floating weightlessly through the air around him. Everything about this place gave him the chills. The air seemed to sear his skin and stick in his lungs.
The shrine's secrets must have something to do with the mysterious circumstances of his arrival here. The only other place he could think to turn was the moon.
But he was grateful that the moon hadn't made another appearance since its last one. It often left devastation in its wake, and Madara had yet to understand the reason for this.
If the moon was guiding him somewhere, all roads pointed to Sakura. So now that he'd found her, what was he supposed to do?
This thought frustrated him, and he began to feel that pull of darkness in his head again. He sat back on his heels, dusting off his dirty hands. The air was balmy on the front porch of the main house, and the breeze felt good against his hot skin.
He'd managed to find a decent amount of money stashed away in what he presumed had been Sasuke's parents' room. He imagined he'd find more if he scoured the rest of the compound, but he'd found enough to buy Sakura some groceries and that was plenty for now.
Madara marked his place in the archives and locked up the Uchiha compound. This time as he left, he felt the need to place some protection seals around the place. Now that he was here, he felt responsible for it. He didn't want people to come snooping through here again, especially if his presence here might renew some dormant curiosity people had about the Uchiha clan.
Once he'd finished, he started making his way toward the market. After he'd found groceries, he could make lunch and bring it to Sakura at the hospital. Then he'd have plenty of time in the afternoon to try to figure out the whole Mangekyou problem.
He had only just made it to the market when a familiar presence sidled up beside him, peering into the cart of mangoes Madara had stopped beside.
"Hungry, are you?"
Madara turned to look at Sakura's sensei, annoyed that all of his face but his non-Sharingan eye was covered.
"Kakashi-san," Madara said curtly, but politely.
"Sakura sent me to fetch you," Kakashi said almost apologetically. "If you're hungry, though, I'm sure she'll take you to the cafeteria."
Madara raised a confused brow. "You run errands for your student?"
"There are a great many things Sakura asks of me that I must say no to," Kakashi said. "When she asks for something so easy, I feel I must oblige her."
This only confused him further. "What does she ask of you?"
"For starters, she asked me to fetch you," Kakashi said, his impatience growing. "Something about her research. I suppose she scheduled time for it today. That girl's always busy with something, isn't she? Now she'll be mad if we get her schedule off kilter, so we'd better get going."
Madara gritted his teeth, but leapt after Kakashi anyway.
/
Kakashi brought Madara directly to Sakura's office, and then without a word to either of them, he left and shut the door brusquely behind him.
His hasty exit made Madara suspicious, but before he could question Sakura about it, he noticed that she was about to pop a food pill into her mouth. He dashed across the room and caught her arm, using his free hand to snatch away the food pill.
"You are not eating a food pill for lunch," he said sternly.
"I don't have time for anything else today," she said, pulling her arm out of his grasp. "I need to get started, so if you could take a seat… please?"
Madara took a look around her office for the first time, a little shocked to see its luxury. It was nothing like her apartment, which was tidy, but small and rather minimal if he didn't count the multitude of plants.
But her office looked far more like what the Uchiha compound had probably looked like before its decay. He was standing on a soft, handmade carpet of silk and cotton, surrounded by tall shelves brimming with leather bound, gold-lettered medical tomes. Her desk contained a glossy ebony plaque with her name embossed: Haruno-sensei. Behind her hung a certification of some kind, flanked by a couple of medals on one side and a large, gleaming window on the other. It overlooked a courtyard and a greenhouse – the same one he'd seen before but from a different angle.
Wordlessly, Madara took a seat in one of the plush leather chairs that were nestled beside her desk. From his seat he had a direct view of the window until Sakura sat in the seat beside him.
He stared at her for a moment, clutching her food pill in his fist. There was still a sort of tension between them. He couldn't ease her mind just yet; he didn't know how. There wasn't much he could do, but his heart ached at the sight of her all backlit by the noon sun.
She reached for his hand and uncurled his fist. She shook her head when it revealed the mashed food pill inside. Her eyes darted up to his, a little admonishing but still amused. She took a tissue from the tiny table between their chairs and cleaned his hand with it.
"Mada-kun, for this part of my research I need to ask you some rather probing questions," she said, dropping the tissue onto the table and then fisting her hands at her sides. "This conversation will probably be uncomfortable," she said, and already she was avoiding eye contact with him, "but I need you to be honest, regardless of how you think I will react to the answers."
He reached for her hand, a small gesture to reassure her. He could be honest with her, if that was all that was required of him for now.
"Of course," he said, threading his fingers through hers. "I'll always be honest with you."
The resulting, stunned flutter of her lashes was enough to break a grin across Madara's face. Remembering he had not kissed her yet, he leaned across the distance between them and pressed his lips to her forehead.
"Anyway," she said, clearing her throat with a charming sort of fluster, "I thought about maybe having Tsunade-sama conduct this interview so that your answers would be less influenced by my presence, but I didn't want to include her in… in these particular parts of the research."
Madara knew Sakura was sharing her research with the Hokage, but he hadn't realized she'd been keeping parts of it from her.
"Why?" he asked.
Her cheeks grew past the adorable stage of a flustered flush well into the full ripeness of a summer tomato.
"That will become obvious as I ask the questions." She cleared her throat again. "Let's begin, shall we?"
Curiosity piqued, Madara nodded.
"These questions are designed to help me understand what you feel both physically and emotionally when you are experiencing certain symptoms related to you curse," she explained. "At the risk of sounding vain, I understand that you associate a good many positive emotions with me, so a lot of these questions will have answers that you might not instinctively want to share with me. You will also likely have lots of memories of your brother or your family or friends and girlfriends that you feel uncomfortable telling me about, but all of it is to help me get a better understanding of what I need to do to awaken your Mangekyou, okay?"
He nodded again eagerly. He would do anything to awake his Mangekyou, and honesty was of no cost at all to him, at least where Sakura was concerned.
"First I'd like to clarify something," she said. "From my understanding, the headaches, the darkness you feel, it's always present, correct? I mean unless I've literally just cleared it away. It comes back and it doesn't go away on its own, right?"
Madara nodded again.
"Okay," she said, reaching for a notebook and pencil from her desk. "Describe what you experience when the darkness is at its worst."
He blinked, remembering all the times the pain had ever felt sharp and overwhelming.
"I'm usually feeling angry," he said, "or afraid. Anytime the moon does something odd, the fear is very acute. When I think of Tobirama killing Izuna… when I thought Sasuke was going to hurt you."
"Physically, what does is feel like?" she pressed.
"Like pressure against my skull," he explained. "It starts off dull, but the longer the emotion simmers, the more the pressure builds."
Sakura leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Madara did the same, bringing their faces closer together. "Does the pressure ever explode?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I mean other than the time you said it literally exploded, no," he said. "Sometimes it does feel like my skull has cracked, though. The pain goes from throbbing and dull to excruciating and sharp."
"When did you feel this?"
Madara closed his eyes, struggling to remember. It either had something to do with Sakura or the moon, but they were so closely entwined in his mind that it was hard to tell.
"I can't remember," he said. "Probably when I found the moon particularly frustrating."
Sakura frowned. She scribbled something down in her journal, angling it so Madara could not see.
"And the moments when you hardly notice the pain," she continued. "I know it can be difficult to scrounge up memories of the absence of something, but if you can remember what was going on at the times when the pain was nearly unnoticeable, that would be helpful."
This took even less time to decipher. It was easiest to forget the pain when there was pleasure to focus on instead.
He reached for her hand. She dropped her pencil and let him press her hand against his chest. "Anytime your hands are on me," he said, dragging her hand down the plane of his chest. "Anytime I hear your laugh."
"Madara, this is serious."
He leaned across the short distance between them. "I've already agreed to be completely honest with you, Sunflower," he murmured lowly to her. "If my answers make you uncomfortable, perhaps you should let Tsunade-chan conduct the interview."
She scoffed derisively, her face flushed. "Your honesty sounds a lot like flirting."
"There are a lot of truths I could tell you that would make you blush," he teased, "but you're the one asking the questions, so you can decide which ones might have an answer you don't want to hear."
"The intent of this research is to help me understand what positive emotions will be most efficient in awakening your Mangekyou," Sakura explained, cheeks blazing with heat. "Is there a positive emotion that you feel as strongly as you do rage?"
That was an interesting question that he'd never really thought of before. His rage always felt like the strongest emotion, possibly because of the pain it brought to his head. It was so much easier to notice a physical sensation along with the emotion, but did that mean that the feeling was actually stronger?
He thought of the other emotions that often plagued him – sadness, jealousy, fear. All of them brought to mind the very vivid sensation of pain.
But other emotions – happiness, contentedness, affection. There was no physical sensation to those, at least not one he could quantify. Of course he felt pleasure every time Sakura kissed him, felt the sensation of her touch, the satisfaction of sexual contact. But this was isolated to sexual scenarios.
Was there a pleasurable sensation associated with other positive emotions?
"I don't know," Madara finally said. "Feeling something positive will usually lessen the amount of pain I feel, if I'm feeling any at all, but there isn't a physical sensation attached to those feelings. The pain is what makes the negative emotions feel so strong."
Sakura frowned. She tapped her pencil eraser on her notebook, her eyes glued to her lap. Her silence made Madara nervous. He wondered if his answer somehow made her research harder.
After a moment, she scribbling something down in her notebook and then returned her attention to him.
"What are some emotions that you associate with you brother?" she asked.
"Izuna?" Madara asked in surprise. "Lately when I think of him I feel sad. I miss him and I wish I could be there to protect him."
Sakura glanced up from her notebook to give him a sympathetic look.
"But it's usually good things," he continued. "I guess joy, predominantly. The few times I can recall feeling pure joy are my memories of him – playing with him when we were just children, bonding with him as we got older. Thinking of him makes me think of camaraderie and family."
A faint smile stretched across Sakura's lips, and he felt a little burst of joy right then, glad to have caught that beautiful, fleeting little grin.
"What about Hashirama?" she pressed.
Madara blinked, and then he shrugged. "The same, I guess. I don't really associate any negative feelings with him," he explained. "Sometimes I feel angry or bitter that we are on opposite sides of war, but for the most part he makes me think good, positive things."
Sakura scribbled away in her notebook, lower lip caught between her teeth.
"And sunshine," Madara added, the thought flying from his mouth before he could censor it. "He reminds me of the sun. Like you do."
This seemed to catch her off guard. She glanced up at him with wide, curious eyes. He nearly laughed at her pleased expression, though it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. He almost laughed again at the comical way she schooled her face into something neutral.
"What other feelings do you associate with me?" she asked, her pencil poised.
"With you?" he said, feeling an uncontainable grin spread across his face. "Only good things. The best things."
"Could you be more specific?" she asked, her cheeks adorably flushed in spite of her professional demeanor.
"All the best combinations of lust and affection and admiration," Madara explained, carefully watching the spread of blood beneath her skin. First her face flooded, then her ears, then her chest. "I always feel rather content when I think of you, at least now I do."
Her expression faltered. "That's right," she said. "You told me once that you associated the darkness in your head with me. Is this just because of my part in helping you handle it?"
He shook his head. "No," he answered. "Knowing that you preferred Sasuke to me… that caused me pain. The jealousy, I mean."
"I don't prefer—" She cut herself off, blinking to clear her head. She coughed into her arm, her gaze anywhere but on him. "Do you still feel jealous of him now?" she amended, her tone clinical and dry.
"No."
She raised a brow, her gaze finally coming back to him. "Not even a little bit?" she asked, and if Madara didn't know any better, he might think she wanted him to be jealous.
"No," he repeated.
Sakura nodded, scribbling down more notes. Madara thought he noticed the corners of her mouth tilted up in a smile, but he could have been imagining it. Once she had finished with what she was writing, she snapped the notebook shut and set it down on the table between them.
"One more question," she said, her cheeks still pleasantly warm. "There is no physical sensation in your head when you feel pleasure like when you feel pain. To me, that seems to indicate that your curse is all in your negative emotions, your pain. Your kekkei genkai, however is not directly linked to the negative."
Madara narrowed his eyes, not sure that he was following. "So what's your question?"
She looked down into her lap bashfully, avoiding looking up into his face. "I believe that intense emotion is required to unlock your kekkei genkai," she explained. "I also believe that physical sensation is required. I'm just not convinced that it has to be pain."
"But my curse doesn't give me pleasure," Madara said.
"No, but there are other ways to feel pleasure," she said, her cheeks so red he worried she might spontaneously combust. "If you were feeling a particularly powerful emotion, a positive one, and then you… were to engage in something pleasurable… I think it might awaken your Mangekyou."
Her plan all seemed to click into place. Her embarrassment made sudden, perfect sense.
"This is just a theory of yours?" he asked, wondering if this was all speculation on her part or if she had something more concrete to show as evidence for this claim.
"A strong theory," she explained, finding the nerve to look up at him again. "Looking at scans of your brain and the scans we had archived of your deceased clan members, it seems that the combination of physical and emotional pain causes a reaction in the nerves in your eye."
Madara frowned. "You think you can replicate this effect by having me feel emotional and physical pleasure at the same time?"
"Not just any pleasure," she explained. "Obviously you understand that the intensity of your emotion plays a part. That means it probably won't work if I just tell you how handsome you are and then suck your dick."
"Well, we won't know until we try," Madara teased.
"I'm not going to screw this up by letting my own emotions get the best of me, do you understand, Madara?" she asked, her voice almost frantic.
Madara stood up from his chair and extended a hand to her. Hesitantly, she looked up at his face and then placed her hand in his. He pulled her up to her feet and then crushed her in a tight embrace.
"My beautiful Sunflower," he murmured, tangling his fingers in her hair. "So professional, so ambitious. We spend so much time going over my emotions that we never talk about yours."
"We don't need to talk about mine," she insisted. "It's not relevant—"
He cut her off with a kiss, fingers tightening in her hair. She melted against him immediately, and Madara smiled into the kiss, beyond pleased with the way her body reacted to him so easily.
"Of course it's relevant," he argued. "Do you think what you feel doesn't effect me, too? I hate it when you're sad or upset or hurt."
She lingered in his arms, looking up at him with those stunning eyes of hers – a veritable nymph, a creature so lovely that he mused just looking at her for long enough should awaken his Mangekyou.
Her body pitched into his, her face colliding with his chest. Her felt the weight of her entirely fall upon him, so he lifted her up into his arms as if she were a child. Her head fell against his shoulder, and he peered down at her with concern.
"Are you alright, baby?" he asked, brushing her hair out of her face with gentle fingers. "What's the matter?"
To his horror, she began to cry. "I can't think of a way to do this that won't end with you getting hurt," she said, her words chopped up by intermittent sobs.
Madara winced, realizing exactly where her thought process had led her.
"I won't," he said, because the only thing that could hurt him now was leaving Sakura behind, and he would absolutely not do that. "I promise, baby. You just keep working on your research. Don't worry about me."
"Of course I worry about you!" she screeched. Madara almost dropped her, caught off guard by her loud outburst. "You're going to fall in love with me, and it's—"
"Sakura, I am already so deeply in love with you that—"
Her loud sob broke him off before he could finish the sentence and he felt a sudden swell of darkness in his head. Maybe this wasn't going to work out exactly like he thought.
"That what?" she demanded. "That you'd be okay living the rest of your life here with me? That you're fine with never seeing me again if you manage to find a way to get back home?"
Darkness throbbed against his skull, dull and pounding. He could feel that dark cloud swiftly filling his head, seeping into his grey matter. What could he say to her that would comfort her now?
"I'm not so fragile that I can't handle normal human emotions, Sakura," he said, cradling her against his chest. He tucked her head under his chin as she continued to cry. If she needed to cry for cathartic reasons, he'd allow it even if it made his head swim with pain.
"I know, but I just want you to be happy."
She would never be able to understand how much it broke his heart to hear her say things like that. In spite of how heavy it made his heart feel, he could feel it chip away at the cloud of darkness in his head.
/