Years passed.
Sakura had a happy life. Not very eventful, because international conflicts drastically decreased after the Fourth Ninja War. After Tsunade retired it, became even more peaceful, as certain jarring qualities of her shishou were no more having such an impact on Sakura's life.
The hospital was running perfectly. She was its head for six years now, her duties nowadays focusing mostly on administration. She taught and tutored so many medics that her presence in a surgery room was necessary maybe once in a month.
Over those years, Sasuke was sighted only once, and that in the most remote part of the Land of Earth. So, it was not that she was waiting anymore, not really. It was just that she was an odd piece, missing her other half. She dated some guys, from ANBU for most of the part. With some of them she even went to bed. It was sort of nice on couple of occasions.
All Sakura's peers have long married and got kids. Sakura was everyone's most beloved auntie. It made her grit her teeth at times. At other times it made her heart clench to see how the children were those perfect little mixes of their respective parents. Except for little Boruto - that one was Naruto's carbon copy, for the good and the bad of it.
Around fifteen years after the war, a certain weariness started to get to Sakura. She felt as if she was watching life passing in front of her eyes. Countless lives of others, to be specific. Radiant, vivid, promising, mesmerizing lives of others – and she watched them pass by as she stood on a patch of grey, parched ground.
She watched and watched and she couldn't wet this patch of ground around her, not even with her tears.
.
It was then, when in a stroke of the long-forgotten recklessness Sakura decided. She needed to know. She needed answers to the questions that formed in her mind. To the questions that formed too late to be asked.
She took holidays. She wrote it for a week, but let it be known that her plans could change. Her position was so strong that no one dared to question her request.
She headed the direction of the mountain range on the border of the Land of Lighting.
Sakura traced back her steps from years ago. It wasn't a problem because if she once saw something, the memory of it was safe within her forever. The only difficulty was that the path was overgrown, trees much taller than she remembered, so everything looked a bit different. But she found the way.
The hut was still there, unchanged.
She couldn't be sure if he remembered. In the end it was a decade ago and gods know how many pink-haired girls passed by and got fucked. Well, how many girls of any hair colour, because Sakura was convinced that at least in this aspect she was unique.
Madara was sitting on the porch, chiseling a small piece of wood with a knife. He raised his head acknowledging her presence. He must have sensed and seen her from afar, she wasn't making an effort to be stealthy.
Sakura's chest was still heaving from the climb. She took a deep breath. Now she wasn't sure anymore if it was such a great idea to come here. But she needed to ask him something.
"Why did you even give me the choice back then?" she blurted out without any preamble.
"If you had chosen differently, I would have known you came here with a mission."
"Mission...?"
"Securing the last available Uchiha genes for Konoha. Obviously." Madara didn't lift his eyes away from his handiwork. It was a figurine, a female form; whether it was bent in dance or fight – Sakura couldn't tell.
"Oh... Right... Obviously..." Sakura stood motionless, processing the information. So when they had been fucking, he had been convinced she had been... working? How disgusting. And how sad. Well, in such a case his paranoia made more sense. Until now Sakura assumed that he had just been wary of an accident. "So, purely theoretically," she picked up, gulping. "What would have you done if I had stayed and it had turned out that I really had gotten pregnant? Kill me? Get rid of the child somehow? Force me to perform an abortion on myself? Or... or... wait for it to be born and kill it then? Were you willing to trade calling a new life into the world and killing it for a fuck? Giving me a choice made even less sense in such a case! Or are you really such a monster?!"
Madara shook his head. "Is this what you expect from me?"
"I don't know what to expect from you. And your actions aren't logical to me."
He raised his head and looked straight into her eyes. It took an effort not to step back. "I would have kept you. Together with the child. As simple as that. There was no risk for me in it. If anything, I rather saw it as a smile of fate."
Sakura blinked. And then she blinked again. "Keep? But why? You didn't know anything about me!"
"Oh, I knew enough. I knew everything I needed to know."
There was a pine tree to her left, and it was good that it was there, because Sakura urgently needed to prop herself against something. The bark was rough and warm and fragrant when she leaned against it. No, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant back then, her birth control was on and working, she would have only gotten delayed to Konoha for two weeks and earned a horrible, worst-ever scolding from her shishou (followed most probably by a disciplinary suspension of several months). So the consequences weren't that what was making her head spin. It was the realization that someone would commit this way for her... Because no one ever did. No one cared enough.
Or, was it really true? No one? Or maybe she kept screwing up everything by building that wall around herself? This persona of Haruno Sakura - top medic, the head of the hospital, the second generation Sannin, forever Sasuke's bride-wannabe - was it even what she really was?
Or maybe because Madara didn't know all that, he saw the real her?
"Why?" Sakura whispered.
"You get to know a person once you dance with them..."
"Dance?"
"And we've danced twice. That's more than enough."
Oh, right. She now remembered that he had this peculiar pattern of speech, calling fight a 'dance'. Apparently it could refer not only to fighting, if he meant they did it twice... And, as in case of Naruto's prattle about 'connecting fists', it implied forming some link. Sakura never imagined she would be a part to any of that. Tears threatened to spring out of her eyes, but she wouldn't have any of them in such a moment so she blinked them away.
"I wasn't on any mission... It was a genuine coincidence," she said in the end.
"Yes. And your answer was the proof of it. A very pleasant surprise, I should emphasize."
"Do you think that I'm on a mission today?"
"No, I don't."
In five brisk steps she closed the distance to the porch. She stopped right before him. She took the figurine and the knife out of his hands and set them aside. She put one knee on the floor of the porch. And steading herself on his shoulders she straddled his lap. "I'll choose differently today. And tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow."
.
She propped her forehead against Madara's and felt how he put hands on her waist.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. "There is soup."
Sakura's lips stretched into a smile. "Of course, that there is soup."
"The same as last time."
"Because you have just this one type of soup here, right?" Sakura touched her nose to his. "Yes, I would love to have some."
She propped herself against his shoulders and stood up. She walked across the porch and opened the door to the hut. Madara followed just after her.
He warmed up the soup, set two small portions on the table – one for her, one for himself. They ate in silence. Sakura didn't remember how it had tasted the previous time, but the one in front of her was good.
When she finished, she stood up, and so did he. With sudden sense of serenity that one feels when all the pieces fall into their places Sakura closed the distance between them. She reached to the belt fastening his shirt. With unhurried and certain motions she started to untie the knot. When it went loose, she unwrapped the belt and hung it on the back of the chair. No sense to throw it on the floor, one of them would only have more cleaning up later.
With the same unperturbed composure, she began to unbutton her own shirt. Madara helped her pull it off and placed it on the same chair.
She knew she should feel the excitement, the thrill. Some nervousness at the very least. But there was none. Just an airy serenity that made her head swim a little bit. Serenity that was even preventing her from wondering at her strange reactions. She simply knew what to do.
Their respective trousers each of them handled on their own. And then they stood there – naked, at arm's length away from each other. He was looking at her, but not as men used to - ogling her particular body parts, their eyes drawn to the shape of her breast or the outline of her sex. He was looking at her, at her whole. Sakura tilted her head and smiled.
Then he closed that last distance. They were skin to skin and Sakura had to raise her head to adjust to his proximity. She wound her arms around his neck. Their faces were close, so close. And the angle was just right. They barely needed to move for their lips to meet.
Sakura opened her mouth a little and the kiss deepened.
Holding her by the waist, Madara made a step forward. So, she had to step backwards. He made another step. Following the cues from his body, she let herself be led. She kept her eyes closed, and all her attention focused on the kiss, because she knew he would guide them just fine.
When the furs of the pallet touched her feet, Sakura lowered herself onto the bed. Somehow able not to break the kiss, Madara followed. He moved the blankets out of her way, and he covered them when they both lied down.
He was over her, and on her, and he was heavy, but it was just right. Between her open legs was just enough space to hold him, so Sakura did. She held to him with her arms, and with legs, and with her mouth.
He must have been already perfectly aligned with her, because it took only the smallest of movements for him to slip inside. Sakura thought that she would never get enough of this feeling.
She lifted her heels from the mattress and crossed her legs behind his back. Madara shifted more weight onto his elbows and broke the kiss.
Sakura opened her eyes. She brushed strands of his hair away onto the other side, to better see his face and laughed breathily already foreseeing how they will be coming in the way each time.
Neither of them moved for a long while. Sakura almost wanted to close her eyes again to better concentrate of the feeling of having him inside when he spoke up.
"Welcome home," he said.
"Good to be home," smiled Sakura and rocked her hips.
He answered, met her halfway. Within the next two repeats they found their rhythm. With every thrust he was reaching deep, reaching her to the very end. And she was more than happy to let him.
The unhurried dance didn't last long at all. It was mere moments later when Sakura's reached her end. Still clenched around him, she felt the heat of his release.
When all the tension left their bodies and Sakura was ready to drift away to sleep, instead of slipping out of her Madara flipped them so that she was splayed across his chest. Still connected to him, Sakura propped her head against his shoulder, closed her eyes and let the sleep wash over her.
AN: Thanks for reading, and I'm really curious to learn what you think about the end of this story!