As the months passed, winter slowly made way for spring. Madara watched as the snow cleared away, flowering vegetation taking its place. The sound of curious fledgelings filled the air alongside the scent of the flowers from the blooming grove of plum trees. Soon enough the field of cherry blossom trees, Sakura's namesake, at the southernmost part of his holdings would flower as well.
The cold washed away under the sunshine of clear days, the afternoons of warm sunlight only interspersed by sudden thunderstorms.
It was during one of these thunderstorms that Madara found himself at Sakura's home, shoulder to shoulder on her engawa as they watched the storm unfold together. The thrum of heavy rain drop hitting the overhang protecting them from the rain made a soothing backdrop to the peaceful moment.
They both nursed cups of hot tea, Madara cupping his glass in his palms to absorb the warmth, steaming swirling around his hands. Sakura's own cup remained planted on the engawa at her side, her attention drawn to the rain and the lightning instead.
Despite it being the middle of the day, the water laden clouds completely obscured the sun and forced them to rely on the warm light from a few strategically placed paper lanterns to see. Even protected from the wind, the candles within the lanterns flickered, playing with the shadows on her face.
"This is the fourth storm just this month... Is it common for it to rain like this here?" Sakura asked, leaning in close so he could hear her over the rain.
"This is actually quite a rare occurrence for this time of year..." he explained as he drew closer to her before teasing, "Did you bring the storms with you, Sakura?"
Sakura laughed in response. "Perhaps I did. I need to do something to keep you fire users on your toes."
He shook his head in amusement as he leaned back against the wooden siding of her house, bringing his cup to his lips to take a sip from his still hot tea. They watched curiously as yet another lightning bolt hit the trees in the forest surrounding them.
"One and a half miles," Madara called out while Sakura already began to count the number of seconds on her hand.
"No way, two miles at least," she insisted instead as she counted.
When the boom of thunder finally reached them after Sakura had counted eight seconds on her fingers, the Uchiha leveled her with a smirk. She rolled her eyes as she reached down to pluck her cup off of the engawa with feigned nonchalance.
"What is that now... eight to three? Shouldn't you be better at gauging distances?" he teased, gently nudging her with his shoulder.
She patted his arm with her free hand as she leaned back against the side of her home, cup of tea in hand. "Not all of us have eyes like yours, cheater."
"I did no such thing!" Madara asserted in mock offense, trying to keep the smile from spreading across his lips at having been caught.
When Sakura simply turned to look up at him with a knowing smirk, the Uchiha was unable to restrain his own smile any longer.
"How about we just call it a tie then?" she suggested before taking a sip from her tea, looking up at him through her bangs as she drank.
"I suppose we could settle with that," he sighed, as if doing such a thing was a favor to her more than anything else. When she nudged him with her shoulder in return, his smile returned.
The two fell into an easy silence, watching as more lightning bolts landed in the forest around them. The calming backdrop of the heavy rain and reverberating thunder lulled the Uchiha into a sense of calm that was only made that much more comfortable by the warm presence at his side.
After a few minutes of comfortable quiet, Madara looked over to his companion to mention a passing thought. When he noticed the faint smile gracing her lips as she watched the lightning bolts strike the forest around them, he paused. For a handful of heartbeats, he was transfixed on her profile - on her smile, lit up by the flickering light of the lanterns and the lightning - as she watched the thunderstorm unfold around them.
He watched her as she gazed out at the storm and noticed that, when a bolt struck especially close, her smile would widen. He watched as she reveled in the resounding bass of the thunder reverberating through their chests and gently rattling the fusuma leading into her home.
Sakura was basking in the power of the storm, in the scent of the rain, and the strength of the wind, rather than being intimidated by it. He shouldn't have been surprised. She held more power within herself than this storm held in its entirety.
As the Uchiha observed her profile, he pondered all the things that made her truly one of a kind, the things that had first drawn him to her as a friend. The pieces of the puzzle that was her that he had slowly been collecting to sate his never ending curiosity.
He remembered the first time they had met, of the look she had given him after she had crushed her enemy beneath her fist. She had stared into his eyes without hesitation, without fear. If she had deemed him an enemy, she would have thrown herself at him without abandon to protect her friends. She was powerful and brave.
Madara thought of when she had removed the poison from his then doomed clan mates, saving their lives and saving his family from the agony that came from losing one of their own. Her determination and her focus. She knew what to do, how to save their lives, and had absolute faith in herself. She was confident and skilled.
He recalled when him and Izuna had sent their personal cook, Hitomi, to Sakura as a test. The woman had been suffering from her limp, brought on by a too early pregnancy, and they had wanted to see what Sakura would do when presented with an injured party without being prompted to heal them. She had tended to Hitomi without question and the cook had returned to prepare their dinner with a skip in her unhindered step. Sakura was friendly and compassionate.
The Uchiha could remember the numerous training sessions they now spent together. After their first dance in the woods that snowy winter day, she had taken him up on his offer to train with him and and his brother. Now, she trained with them nearly every day, much to his, and Izuna's, glee.
At first they had played with her, going easy on her so she could benefit from their matches, before tearing into one another with their usual reckless abandon (luckily she always remained to heal them afterwards, despite her scoldings). Slowly but surely, her speed and skill increased. Sakura began landing hits and she began to challenge them both. She had pushed herself to the point where she would stand on equal footing with them soon enough. She was determined and indomitable.
Madara thought of how, in the five short months she had been with them, she had read through nearly a quarter of their expansive library, constantly fed by the sharingan wielders copying their adversaries techniques and adding their stolen jutsu to the vault. Sakura had taught herself numerous jutsu, focusing on water jutsu in particular when she found she had an aptitude for it.
They had tried to use chakra paper to determine her chakra nature but, no matter what they did, the paper refused to function in her hands. She had been just as baffled as them and, for a lack of a better answer, they all assumed that she must not be able to use the paper since she had never used elemental jutsu before. It was an answer which irked them all but one which they settled upon when they could come up with nothing else.
Despite the mystery of the chakra paper, Sakura happily settled into utilizing water jutsu. Part of Madara wondered if this was solely to spite them due to their fire natures. Especially when she got into the habit of learning her jutsu in secret so she could surprise them during their training sessions, something that always kept them on their toes.
He had even been impressed by her crafting a handful of her own unique jutsu, most of which she used in conjunction with her medical ninjutsu. She was impossibly intelligent and clever.
Madara realized that he had been staring the moment that Sakura did. She tilted her head to regard him, a wider smile already gracing her lips, just as a bolt of lightning struck a lone tree not even four hundred feet away. The bolt lit up their surroundings in a bright flash of light before the air exploded, a shockwave rattling them down to their bones and making her home tremble.
Sakura's eyes shot to where the bolt of lightning had struck in alarm before she laughed aloud, her head tilting back with her gleeful giggles. His gaze remained on her.
At that moment, as Madara watched Sakura laugh in the face of such overwhelming power, he wanted nothing more than kiss her. To close the small distance between them and to feel her smile against his lips.
The thought startled him more than the lightning bolt had.
Madara looked away, watching as the rain doused the small fire the lightning bolt had created, as he dissected the urge. He dug it open, searching for the cause of why he wanted to do such a thing.
He had known Sakura was beautiful since the moment he first saw her, standing in the center of that decimated battlefield soaked in gore. She had the strength and the form of a warrior. To him, she was the epitome of what he believed a goddess of war would look like.
He knew she was beautiful but she was so much more than that.
As the months passed since their first meeting and the deal they struck, he had begun to care for her. Sakura's actions revealed that she cared for him and his family as more than just their hired medic. He had come to think of her as a powerful and trustworthy friend. There were few people whom he could rely on, who he could trust, and the stranger they had plucked off a battlefield to heal his poisoned clan mates had, shockingly enough, become one of them.
She was his friend, yes, but it was deeper than that.
As they spent more and more time together, seemingly spending every day in each other's company, they had grown close. Their friendship had turned into something even warmer, instead becoming a companionship that he treasured. He cherished the time he was able to spend in her company; the conversations, the spars, the tender moments that they shared that he had never experienced with any other person.
He cared for her, yes, but he felt more for her than that. He...
With a suddenness that stole the breath from Madara's lungs, everything that he had been feeling over the past half year made sense. Why Sakura could so easily steal away his attention, why she was constantly on his mind, why he felt the odd sensation in his chest when those viridian eyes of hers met his...
He was in love with her.
Once the Uchiha had put the pieces together, and before she could notice the sudden change within him, he stood.
"I apologize but I must leave. I've been putting off important clan business by staying here that I should attend to," Madara lied, leaning down only to set down the cup he had forgotten was cradled in his hands, "Thank you for the tea, Sakura."
Sakura looked up at him with a sly smile, as if sensing his lie. He cleared his throat.
"Whatever you say, Madara. Watch out for the lightning on your way back," she replied as she turned to face the rain once more and took a sip from her cup.
Madara wanted to say something more but couldn't figure out what it was as he lingered for a moment too long. He simply turned away and left, ignoring the weight of his unspoken words in the air. He rushed through the rain and towards his home, already lost to his thoughts.
After reaching his home, soaked to the bone in frigid water, he still could not focus. He spent the rest of the night in contemplation, not speaking a word to his confused brother or any of the workers who tended to their home.
As he laid in his bed early that afternoon, listening to the sound of the rain on his roof and the distant thunder, he made a useless attempt at sleeping away his thoughts. No matter how he tried to lose himself to sleep, he instead remained lost in his mind.
Madara loved her, he knew it was a certainty now... but he soon came to realize it was a love that could never be.
Sakura was their hired medic and once she was through with their contract, she would leave. He couldn't imagine a being such as herself, who had appeared so mysteriously in the first place, leaving in any less of a fashion.
She was searching for something, desperate for something, and he knew that he couldn't provide her with the answer she needed. While he had yet to discern what it was she desired so, he doubted she would abandon that goal to stay with the Uchiha indefinitely.
To harbor feelings for her, or even worse act upon them, would only make her inevitable departure that much more depressing.
Even if Madara did act upon his feelings, he doubted that a once in a millennia kind of woman such as Sakura would be interested in a relationship with a man such as himself: a clan leader committed until death to his family and who was as tied to their fate as fire was to the air that fed it.
He doubted she would be interested in becoming a matriarch and tying herself to the clan as tightly as he was. In becoming his wife. In sharing a life with him. In becoming heavy with child, their baby safely nestled within her beautifully rounded belly. In dark haired children playing at her feet in their garden as-
Madara gritted his teeth as he stopped himself, his imagination running wild as his heart sang in his chest at the thought of her as the mother of his children.
Children… Here he was, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking about having children with Sakura. He must have lost his mind if he had already fallen so deeply and so quickly.
Rolling over to his side and glaring at the darkened wall of his cold bedroom, he made his decision.
He would not threaten the friendship he had with Sakura by acting upon his amorous feelings. He hated the thought of her leaving him one day to pursue her goals but hated the thought of scaring her away, of ruining their easy companionship for the rest of her stay if his feelings were unrequited, far more.
Then, when she finally left, their inevitable parting wouldn't be as painful... He would move on to the future and try to push the memories of her to the back of his mind... just as he had with his once close friend all those years ago.
Madara closed his eyes, determined to rest even with the invisible weight suddenly bearing down on his chest. He fell into a fitful sleep, his dreams a nonsensical mess of riotous pink and destructive thunderstorms.
Despite all of Sakura's research, all of the scrolls she had thoroughly dissected, she had yet to come any closer to her goal of returning home. Hundreds of scrolls and not one contained a single iota of the knowledge she needed to craft the jutsu she needed to return to her timeline.
She didn't know what she had been thinking. She knew there wouldn't be a lengthy scroll contained in a glass case with the words 'break glass in case of accidental time travel' printed at the bottom, but this was ridiculous. She had yet to find even a clue on how to return home.
All of the space time jutsu she had dug up were all the predecessors for techniques she was already incredibly familiar with: summoning jutsu, displacement jutsu, substitution jutsu… She had found a couple scrolls which had described techniques for momentarily suspending time which had been incredibly fascinating and progressive, but that had only helped her in her progress on her stasis jutsu.
Sakura had taken to teaching herself various water jutsu just so she could hide her true agenda and prevent herself from losing her mind from the lack of progress.
Although the fact that chakra paper didn't seem to work in her hands still perplexed her. She had agreed with Madara and Izuna's theory that she simply was unfamiliar with using elemental jutsu so her chakra had developed in a way that didn't allow for her to have a base elemental affinity. Secretly, she assumed it had something to do with her being from the future instead and left it at that...
The benefit of drastically improving her skills by teaching herself these elemental jutsu was noteworthy in any case. Even if their chakra paper didn't function in her hands, she assumed that she had a water nature with the ease in which she learned water based jutsu.
Sakura was particularly proud of having mastered the Giant Vortex Jutsu in merely a day, an A ranked jutsu which she had seen Zabuza utilize when she was still just a genin. While the technique was a drain on her chakra, it was enough to douse (most of) the fire jutsus that the Uchiha brothers threw at her.
Spurred on by a childish desire for revenge, she had taught herself the Storm Upheaval Jutsu as well. Her and the Uchiha brothers had been sparring during the beginning of a rainstorm and she had used the jutsu, harvesting water from the heavy clouds above her, to absolutely soak Madara and Izuna to the bone with frigid water.
Sakura had laughed uncontrollably for a solid minute at their soaking wet forms, especially the elder Uchiha whose normally wild locks were plastered flat against his head and face, nearly concealing his irate expression. In the heart of her mirth, she claimed that the jutsu was revenge for her having gotten soaked clean through by the elder Uchiha during their first spar together. This had been met with a barrage of complaints from a shivering Izuna, who had nothing to do with their feud in the first place, and a look from Madara that guaranteed some form of counter vengeance in the near future.
Counter vengeance that was solidly achieved the very next day when he buried her up to her neck using the Headhunter jutsu, not only surprising her with his use of an earth jutsu but spurring a childish competition between them over who could inconvenience the other the most during their spars.
While her spars with the Uchiha brothers had done much to distract her from her mission, what had begun to trouble her in addition to her failure to figure out how to return home was her rapidly escalating... crush on Madara. At first, it had been easy to brush to the side and ignore. Now, however, he was beginning to be a constant figure in her thoughts, despite how she tried to fight against it.
Thoughts of returning home were beginning to become clouded with regret at the thought of having to leave her friend and the man she was developing feelings for behind. And not just him, but the younger clan head who had become a cherished friend as well.
The more Sakura thought of it, the more a feeling of shame began to build. She wondered if she was unconsciously replacing the feelings she once held for Sasuke with feelings for another Uchiha. The shame just added to the plethora of negative feelings which came with her escalating crush on a man who she could never be with.
Even if she did act on her feelings, it would only lead to suffering for them both when she returned home to a time where he was very much dead. The thought of returning to her time and never being able to see the people she had begun to care about here put her heart in a vice.
As if Madara would be interested in her in the first place anyways... The man was a legend during this time, a shinobi of the highest caliber and the leader of one of the most powerful and prestigious clans in the world. She was just a skilled kunoichi with a bad temper who had been unlucky enough to get tossed backwards in time. She knew she was of a special sort but certainly not special enough to warrant the relationship she secretly pined for with the clan leader.
Even if his not so subtle gaze when they had been watching the storm together hinted otherwise.
Decision already made, Sakura refocused on the scrolls she had borrowed from the library. There had to be something, anything, written somewhere in these parchments. Some hint to help her finally return home where she could move on with her life. Where she could shove the memories of Madara into the back of her mind and try to forget about the time they had spent together and the feelings she had developed for him.
The days continued onward despite Sakura's inner struggle and, soon enough, the day before her birthday arrived. Tomorrow would be the day she finally turned eighteen and a birthday she would be unable to celebrate with her family and friends from her time. A birthday that would more than likely go unnoticed. Tomorrow would also mark the ninth month she had spent trapped in the past.
Sakura couldn't bring herself to feel anything but morose.
She couldn't find her appetite that morning, let alone the energy to prepare herself anything to eat. She couldn't find the heart to go out to the training fields where the Uchiha brothers met to join them for a spar. She could hardly find the will to give her sole patient of the day, a young girl who had sliced her palm while hunting in the forest, a comforting smile.
She spent the day in a haze, as if preemptively numbing herself for the following day.
The medic tried to mix some new tinctures to treat headaches but they had come out so poorly that they went straight into the trash. Unwilling to waste any more supplies, she wandered into her kitchen under the pretense of making herself something to eat. This futile action resulted in her standing in her kitchen, blankly staring into her pantry. The surplus of food contained within may as well have been jars of dirt with how incredibly unappetizing everything appeared.
She considered just going back to bed but knew she had to remain awake in case another patient came in needing her assistance.
Sakura finally ended up sitting at her table, making a useless attempt at reading about a new water jutsu she was considering testing out. Instead of reading, however, she just stared into the paper, the words looking more like scribbles than anything actually legible to her uncaring eyes.
This was how Izuna came upon her, bleakly staring into a scroll as if it was her death warrant rather than a scroll on water jutsu. She hadn't noticed him until after he had already sat down next to her, a concerned expression etched into his features.
"You missed our training session," Izuna softly broached, drawing her out of her daze.
Sakura slowly lifted her head to regard Izuna, unable to find the energy to greet him with her usual smile. "Oh… Sorry. I've been… kinda busy today."
Her gaze returned to the scroll but, despite her gaze clinging to the words, her eyes were unseeing.
"What, with your one patient all day?" he tried to tease with a smile. When she didn't smile in return, as she normally would, his grin quickly withered away.
A heavy silence filled the air before he spoke again. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she muttered in response, her head still bowed as she stared into the scroll.
"You don't look fine…"
Sakura shrugged in response, the gesture so weak it was barely noticeable. She was unable to come up with the energy to respond properly, the effort to even speak being too draining.
"What's wrong?" Izuna questioned, tilting his head to look into her downcast eyes.
Her gaze moved from the scroll to the corner of the room, avoiding the Uchiha's eyes. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."
"I am worried about it. I've never seen you like this before," he replied, his eyebrows furrowing in concern as he frowned deeply.
"It's nothing."
"It's obviously not nothing if it has you like this."
Sakura was silent for a long moment. She glanced at Izuna before her eyes returned to her scroll. "It's just…"
"Yes?" he prompted after another moment of silence.
"Tomorrow's my eighteenth birthday…" she muttered in a tone more fitting for admitting one was dying.
"It is? Isn't that something to be happy about?" the Uchiha returned, confused.
"It's the first birthday I've had... alone," Sakura whispered, feeling tears building up in her eyes at the admission. She felt her throat swell as her eyes burned and began to panic, desperately willing her tears away.
Izuna's expression dropped, betraying his concern, when a tear slid free from Sakura's eye despite her attempt at stopping it. She immediately wiped the tear track and the tears welling in her other eye away, trying to conceal her sadness.
Faced with her tears, the young clan head appeared to struggle internally. He had never seen her cry before as Sakura had made sure to avoid such an embarrassment for the entirety of the time she had been there. She felt a warm hand settle on her shoulder and her gaze finally met his as the motion jarred her from her thoughts.
"But you're not going to be alone. You have Madara and me," Izuna comforted with a gentle smile, squeezing her shoulder.
"It's fine, believe me. I'm fine," she replied with a sad huff of a laugh that she was grateful didn't turn into the sob she could feel threatening to escape her. She wiped the tears once again pooling in her eyes to prevent them from falling.
"And believe me, tomorrow will be a day that you can look forward to. You may not be with… all of your old friends, but we're your friends too, right?"
"Of course… You both are..."
"Then we'll start a new birthday tradition. With us," Izuna asserted, his smile widening as he tried his best to comfort her.
Sakura felt tears building up again at his words and wiped at her face once again, sniffling. "You don't-"
"I do and will." He squeezed her shoulder as if to enforce his words before he released her and stood. "I promise, I'll figure out something."
As he left her home in a hurry, he left Sakura feeling surprisingly less numb than before. She found herself almost looking forward to the next day as she found that she could actually read her scroll.
When Izuna came across his brother, he was in much the same position as Sakura had been, sitting at their table, deep into a scroll. Unlike her, however, Madara's eyes flicked across it's surface, actually reading the words printed across the paper.
"Madara, we have a problem," he greeted immediately, leveling his brother with a serious expression.
The elder Uchiha's shoulders immediately tensed as his sharp gaze shot up to Izuna, his expression hard. "What is it?"
"Tomorrow is Sakura's birthday."
Madara's tensed muscles immediately relaxed in surprise although his expression morphed into one of confusion. "It is? How is that a problem?"
"She said this is the first birthday she's spent alone. The first one since her village was destroyed…" Izuna's face dropped as he recalled his interaction with the medic just a few minutes prior. "She's not doing well... She started crying when I spoke to her."
Madara's eyebrows furrowed as a frown pulled at his features. His gaze became pensive as he rolled the scroll he had been reading back into its case.
"You know how our clan celebrates birthdays. She's not an Uchiha so she doesn't have any close relatives to celebrate it. I think that we should do something for her," Izuna asserted, sitting at the table across from his brother.
The elder nodded in response, placing the scroll off to the side, now deemed unimportant. "I agree. What do you think?"
"I was thinking we should take a trip to Ine-cho and get her something."
"What would we even get her?"
The younger Uchiha grinned slyly before teasing, "I thought you could give her mother's wedding band and I could get her a shiromuku."
Madara's eyebrow twitched in aggravation as he glared at his brother. "Or I could stuff you into a sack and give you to her as a punching bag!"
Izuna simply laughed in response. "Honestly, I have a couple ideas but I thought we'd simply find something when we arrived."
The elder clan head shook his head and sighed deeply in exacerbation before standing. "Let's leave now then. Any later and most of the shops will be closed by the time we arrive. We'll need to speak with the scouts to let them know we will be gone until late tonight as well."
He nodded in response as he got to his feet as well. "Alright, I'll go speak to the captain before we leave. Oh, and something interesting…"
"Yes?"
"She's turning eighteen."
"Eighteen?" Madara parroted in surprise, "I thought she was our age."
"I did as well. Perhaps we'll add something extra to her presents on account of her age," he suggested with another grin.
The elder Uchiha smirked and shook his head once again as they split apart to prepare for their journey.
A/N: When you see a lightning bolt, you can count the seconds between the light and the time you hear the thunder to determine how far away the bolt was! If you count five seconds between the lightning bolt and the sound of thunder, it equates to about one mile. Or, for those of you using metric, three seconds is about one kilometer. Since I live in the middle of Texas where lightning storms are pretty common, I use this trick all the time.
Also, a Shiromuku "is an all-white kimono commonly seen in Shinto weddings, and is regarded as the most formal wedding gown. Like in Western culture, white symbolizes purity and cleanness in Japanese culture as well, with the added underlying expression of the bride's willingness to be "dyed with the groom's family color"." Izuna was teasing Madara saying he should just marry Sakura already. Little brothers know too much.
As a reminder, there is a four year age difference between Sakura in Madara. So, while Sakura is turning eighteen, Madara is twenty-two. Madara had a birthday a few chapters back where he turned twenty-two while Sakura has yet to have a birthday while she has been trapped in the past.