When Madara came down the next morning with a plate full of steaming hot breakfast, Sakura wasn't sure how to greet him.

The logical part of her said to keep playing the game. She'd slipped up yesterday, yes, when she fought him, but she couldn't have lived with herself if she hadn't. But now… she didn't know what to do.

She didn't just hate him anymore. It went beyond that. She didn't know how to describe it except that he was a non-entity to her. She loathed him to the point where she nearly felt nothing.

He wasn't worthy of being a speck of dirt on her shoe, much less a man she would spend the rest of her life with.

In the end, when he approached her, the game wasn't option. She could only stare at him with cold hatred, leaned on her side as she was to avoid sitting on her rear. It still ached terribly, and she had found blood on the bed sheets when she woke up that morning. Madara had made her bleed.

She would never forgive him.

Madara's brow furrowed at her hateful look, the scorn on her face, and frowned. "Sakura, I'm—"

"Don't even say it," she snarled furiously, feeling tears of anger fill her eyes. "Don't even talk to me. Just let me go."

His lips thinned. "Sakura, don't—"

"Don't you dare even fucking say my name, you motherfucker!" she hissed, unable to restrain herself. And then, even though she didn't want to, she burst into tears, curling up on her side facing away from him. Her entire body was wracked with unstoppable sobs, her small frame quaking with her pain. She felt every shake of her body exacerbating the pain in her rear, the pain that was still so all-encompassing.

There was silence from Madara as he placed the tray of food on the bed. Then there was a dip in the mattress and Sakura tensed, not sure if he was going to hit her or rape her or—

He leaned over her and she tried to scramble away from him, but all he did was gather her forcefully into his arms.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she shrieked, trying to shove him away. Instead, he gripped her arms tightly and wrapped his legs around hers, pinning her down and against him so that her back was to his chest.

It forced all of her weight onto her rear.

She screamed in pain, high and shrill, and struggled harder, bucking her hips away from the pressure. He seemed to understand what was happening and laid them down on their sides, and soon, his grip around her firm and unrelenting, she gave up on fighting him.

She never won, anyways.

Sakura went back to crying, her body trembling with both sobs and pain, and skin crawling where he touched her. She wanted to hiss profanities at him, but she was scared now that he was touching her. He could hurt her so easily—had hurt her so easily. A large part of her trembling wasn't just from crying but also fear; she was so, so scared of him.

"Please," she whispered when he didn't say anything, just holding her against her will. "Please, let me go."

"I'm sorry, Sakura," he said softly, those disingenuous words sounding sickeningly sincere in her ears. She knew better than to believe him.

She only cried harder. She knew what he was saying without saying it: he wasn't letting her go, and now she had blown her cover.

"I hate you," she seethed quietly after a moment. "I hate you so much."

She felt him stiffen. "No, you don't," he replied firmly.

She laughed harshly. "Why wouldn't I?" she asked rhetorically. "You've given me no reason to fall back in love with you again. You've actively done things to make me hate you. You shouldn't be surprised—actually, you'd be an idiot if you thought I felt anything—ow, you're hurting me!"

His grip on her was painfully tight, and she knew immediately that he was restraining his anger. She automatically quieted, remembering the last time he'd gripped her so hard and how angry he'd been then. If his grip was any indication, then he was beyond furious.

She didn't think he could be angrier at her than she was at him, though.

"Sakura," he said in a hard voice, "you don't mean that. You're just upset. I hurt you. It's a reasonable response, but you don't hate me."

Sakura swallowed the incredulous laughter that wanted to escape her, the cold insistence that no, she very much did hate everything about him. However, she wasn't stupid.

"…No," she lied, the words bitter like acid on her tongue. But it was necessary if she was going to survive him, much less escape. "I don't hate you."

Just like that, his grip relaxed along with his body, as though his soul had let out a sigh of relief. Sakura wanted to laugh at him. He was a fool to believe her.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

She didn't respond.

Madara gave her time to heal, at least, and treated her as though she was a fragile porcelain doll.

Sakura resumed the game reluctantly and without the original poise she had begun with. She made no effort to hide how angry she was with him, as it was literally the only acceptable outlet of her hatred. She didn't tell him she hated him again, because she knew now that it was an unwise thing to say.

He was delusional, and the worst thing to do to someone with delusions was to poke holes in them, especially when she was so obviously at his mercy.

So she played along, playing her part as the hurt girlfriend who still loved him on some level, even though every word she said to him left a taste bitter and sour like bile in her mouth. There had been a few times where she had had to say things that left her retching in the toilet after he was gone, but nonetheless she slowly healed, and by the end of the second week she could sit on her rear again with only slightly more than mild discomfort.

But she avoided doing that even though there wasn't much pain, because just the pressure reminded her of that awful violation.

Her restraints were slowly peeled off, her legs the last to be freed.

By week three, Madara was letting her take slow, leisurely walks around the house. He showed her new fixtures he'd had put in place for their future: a nursery, which had nearly had her collapsing in a dead faint at the thought of growing his child inside of her; a library with all of her favorite novels and plenty of textbooks to keep her quick mind busy; a giant gym he'd had renovated; and it became clear that he was trying to expand his mansion in such a way that she would never need to go anywhere without him.

It appeared that for all of his talks of living together, of building their family and futures, he held very little actual trust in her.

As well he should. Madara was a lot of things, but he wasn't an idiot.

But as they walked, as he allowed her some (supervised) time in the library, as he encouraged her to decorate the nursery and choose colors for the walls, as things progressed—week after week until she just about lost track, without access to technology or calendars—she planned and she plotted, generally to no avail. She assured herself she wasn't losing hope… but Madara had her cornered at every turn. It really seemed like there wouldn't be any escaping him.

And then, on a day like any miserable other, her small world of suffering was turned on its axis.