Sakura stepped out from the shadowed room, her new set of civilian clothes hugging loosely over her thin frame. She zipped her pack back up, the black and white of the folded robe disappearing beneath its zipper. Her throat tightened as she noticed Obito in her peripheral vision, leaning against a nearby wall; his red eyes glowed slightly in the dark of the abandoned little house as his narrowed gaze swept over her. Sakura pretended not to be bothered by his mistrusting scrutiny, glancing hollowly across the symmetry of dusty furniture and tatami mats across the shadow-crossed household.

"You'll explain it to me now."

Sakura shifted uncomfortably. "I don't have to tell you anything." She stood up taller, trying in her defiance to recall her feelings of inner peace and confidence she'd built earlier in the day. With Obito's burning glare upon the side of her face, she felt them growing more distant instead, buried beneath a teetering pile of growing anxieties.

"You can and you will." Obito stepped away from the wall, and Sakura flinched when he caught her arm, gripping her tightly. "You promised to tell me what happened once you had some time to think and a change of clothes. Now we're here: now you have had time." His luminescent glare narrowed. "What else did you expect? Or were you thinking of trying to go somewhere?"

Sakura took in a slow breath, eyes closing as she forced herself to calm. Obito released her when she lifted her head, tears needling her. "I don't…" She seized up, the breath she'd taken rattling out through her nose in an unsteady exhale. "I don't even know how to start telling you."

Obito scoffed, folding his arms. "I can start. You stepped out of range of my ability and foolishly faced Madara on your own. Naruto almost managed to shove his way out of the tent in trying to save you before I got him and the team to my pocket dimension, which as you know, would have resulted in his death."

Sakura stared numbly at the front door while Obito went on, "Naruto insisted that he come back to save you. Since we can't risk him or Sasuke dying, I came back to look for you, against my doubts you could possibly be alive. After seeing the state of our former camp, I was certain you were dead."

Sakura's lips tightened. That whole swathe of forest must have burned down. She could only imagine what it all looked like as a general picture; the landscape had been completely overwritten by the destruction created by that night, with the crater and its new lake in particular. She hugged herself, increasingly uncomfortable, already on edge from the ghostliness of the dead residence they stood in.

Obito's fingers tapped along his arm, his red eyes burning through the side of her face while she continued to avoid his scrutiny. "I was surprised enough to find a trail you had left at first. It was still not difficult to track you after you started bothering to be more careful. I know you understand how to cover your tracks, as I taught you better, Sakura. Did you want to be found? Who did you expect or want to find you?..." He paused, aiming a significant look at her before going on, "I thought I was surprised enough by your being alive. But to see you not only uninjured and very much alive, and wearing Madara's clothes?..."

"Go on then," Sakura shot back, glaring over at him, "try and release the genjutsu you think you must be under. I've seen it in your eyes. You think Madara's caught you and put you under some sick delusion of me as a trick before killing you."

Obito blinked at her before his features hardened again. He set his hands together and growled, "Release."

They both stared at each other as nothing happened. He grimaced, and Sakura sighed. "I'll even share chakra with you to let you try and release yourself from genjutsu. Whatever way you want, to prove this is real. I know you won't trust a word I say until you make sure anyway."

"Fine."

She set a hand on his arm, and Obito gestured again with releasing commands. He paused for a moment, waiting to see if this strange vision of Sakura as she was now would shatter; she watched him grimly, her fingers twitching along his sleeve.

The dark of the room increased slightly as he deactivated his red Sharingans. In the silence that followed, Obito met Sakura's stare with a slow blink, all the harshness about the corners of his gaze having softened; a deep frown arrested his expression.

Removing her hand from his person, Sakura backed up, towards the front door. She held Obito's dark eyes. "Please… I will try to tell you. But I need…" She exhaled shakily. "I need fresh air. I need to clear my head." She picked at the strange new clothes she had pilfered from the nearby bedroom of the abandoned home, a shadow crossing her expression as her gaze traced once more across the silent threshold. She knew that the same unwanted images that floated through her mind haunted Obito also: spectres, drifting up from every glance across the empty rooms, the knowing that those who once brought life to this household now hung in the vaguely human-shaped cocoons high above the roof, trapped in their infinite dreams.

Sobered, Obito nodded. "Fine then. Go on; I'll follow."

Sakura didn't venture far from the little forest-drowned house, sitting with her legs hanging off the edge of the open front porch, and Obito settled down beside her, resting his arm along his knee with his chin settling against his palm. He watched her carefully as her weary gaze picked through the winding trees surrounding them.

Sakura's terse expression reset upon his quiet question. "Are you okay?"

She closed her eyes, tears slipping silently down her face.

Obito looked away, and she tilted her face into her hands, her cherry-blossom hair falling around her face. Sunlight flickered down through the trees, warning of sunset as it painted Sakura in worn amber hues. She absorbed the warmth, letting it soak through her skin, though the relief it brought wasn't enough to ease how tight her throat had gotten. In her silence, she tried again to unearth her lost calm resolve.

"Sakura…" Obito was staring at her hard enough that her skin prickled. "What did he do to you?"

As Sakura shivered, words still escaping her, she caught Obito's aghast mutter. "I can't believe…" After a tense pause, he finished, "I thought he was above doing such a thing."

"He is," Sakura shot back, green eyes suddenly fierce upon Obito. "He didn't hurt me. He didn't force me, if that's what you're thinking."

She froze after her words left her, seized by the affirming memories she could not keep away; Madara's conflicted expression as he'd hovered above her, how she had murmured her permission into his ear, pleading for him to continue. Please, Madara.

Colour flagged Sakura's cheeks, but this time she held Obito's searching stare. She watched as understanding fought with shock in his expression – he was struggling to believe what she'd said, the honesty of her words reaffirmed in the hard glint of her eyes. She met his scrutiny levelly with her head held high.

In the silent beat that followed, Sakura was increasingly bothered by Obito's reaction of calculating disbelief. She twisted her mouth to the side in a wistful scowl. "I don't want to go into everything that went on." She straightened where she sat, feeling numbness in her chest spreading with fingers of ice. "What matters is that you and our team are alive. I'm alive too, and well enough, sitting here with you." She reached out, setting a gentle hand on Obito's shoulder as she hoped he'd move on now, "Let's focus on getting back to them and um… do you need any healing after all that use of Kamui?"

"Don't change the subject." He leaned back, glaring at her and settling down more comfortably upon the leaf-littered porch. "It certainly matters what else happened. You've just confirmed that he —" Obito grimaced, his words seething out from between gritted teeth, " —did the unthinkable to you, and you're asking me to move on from that like it's nothing?"

"Yes." Sakura's heart squeezed painfully. "Please."

"I don't know if I can do that." Obito's red eyes burned through the shadows. "If this is even somewhat true…"

The entire porch area darkened like it was already night with the waves of rage rippling off Obito. Sakura glanced over at him with wide eyes as he went on in a rasping growl, "...I'll hunt down every damned Madara clone. I'll force him to endure every type of pain. I'll kill every last version of him until he finally ceases to exist."

Sakura blinked at Obito, her face very still in her expression of surprise, and he unclenched his fists as he noticed her staring. When she slowly smiled, he was somewhat reset, his features rearranging from enraged to mildly perplexed. She looked away from him, hiding her smile with a hand, her tone wry as she returned her attention to the wind-woven forest around them. "Hn." Small indents beside her lips betrayed the subtle dimples in Sakura's pale features as she couldn't help her warm amusement. "When did you start caring about what happens to me so much, Obito?"

"That doesn't matter," he answered quickly, and Sakura hummed. She felt her throat loosen, the pain in her chest fading back to an ache; she set a palm over its slow beating, letting out a long sigh and watching the sun's setting over the distant trees. "I wasn't lying, Obito. He didn't originally intend to… he wasn't…" She reasserted what she was trying to say with a sigh. "It was my fault. That glass vial of poison — when I managed to kind of land a hit on him with it…" She reddened. "It was complicated." Bitterness found her tongue as she continued, "But I told you it doesn't matter. I meant it when I said I don't want to go into it. Just call it good that we're all alive, and let me… let the rest go."

Obito sighed. "Surely you know I can't just accept such an upsetting truth without questioning it. I'm not naive enough to trust that it's harmless and shrug it off, some poison being involved or not. Anything that involves Madara cannot be harmless."

Her smile lost, Sakura scowled out at the trees as Obito went on with a steely tone, "And in any case, if that is what happened last night, Madara most certainly forced you. He must have tampered with your memory when he used Rinnegan genjutsu on you."

Sakura let out a withered sigh and slipped her face into her hands, hunching over her knees. Long, silent minutes followed Obito's words, and he watched her with a taut expression, the breeze sending her sunset-tinged hair around her hidden face in a drifting of pink.

Though the tension in the air remained, Obito spoke this time with a touch less vehemence, running a restless hand through his choppy hair. "You don't want to simply tell me the truth, because you're afraid I'll tell the rest of the team, and that they'll treat you differently; is that it?"

Sakura drew in a slow breath of forest scents, grounding her apprehension and fears by focusing only on her senses while she gathered herself. Her eyes closing, she listened to the last few keening cicadas, their long-held notes giving way to cricket-song that rose from the underbrush in a sweeping ambiance that called for night to fall. Evergreen boughs shivered beside the porch, filling her nose with refreshing hints of its sap. The previous night's rain had left a lingering petrichor tang, and the wind murmured through the trees, leaving gentle indiscriminate words of sensation that breathed through her hair and across her covered face.

With a quiet exhale, Sakura let her hands fall, turning once more to face Obito. She nodded to him. "Yes…" The blood-red sunset light caught in her eyes and painted her stare crimson as he levelled with her. "They would see me in a bad light. They would abandon me, just like before, and I can't deal with that. Not after last night, or this morning." She flinched, but held his gaze, a knot between her brows.

"Again?"

Pain seized Sakura's expression so fast she couldn't control it. She bit it back, but Obito witnessed its flicker through her features, and he frowned deeply. "Sakura, are you telling me that Madara took your innocence and then left you for dead afterwards?"

She drew up, ready to protest, but found that no words could come out of her mouth. Her lips parted, but she could only give a wordless sigh in response.

Obito's fingers dug into his knees as his Sharingans reactivated unconsciously, flashing through the thin dusk, and Sakura's defense came out of her in a belated rush as colour rose to her cheeks. "It was the kindest thing he could have done for me, considering everything. The alternatives were worse."

She withered beneath Obito's acidic glare. "Worse than abandoning a girl after taking her against her will?"

"Just… just —" Sakura shook her head, rubbing her temples with her shoulders tightly drawn up like she was being constricted. "Fine. I'll tell you the truth. But you do not tell Naruto, Kakashi, or Sasuke… anything. Not a thing. Other than that I fought Madara and lived."

Obito scowled, his expression thunderous. "Is that your condition for telling me everything?"

She reddened further, looking away, but she nodded, pink hair hiding her face. Obito leaned back against a wooden beam and watched her with a subtle softening about his harsh features. "Then I promise you that I won't tell them unless it will directly harm them not to know."

Sakura hesitated, but after a long pause, nodded again. She shifted to face him fully, the sunlight finally dying away behind the trees and slipping away from the curves of her figure. She was fully cast in shadow as she took in a long breath, preparing to expel the truth for the first and hopefully last time.

The sun had begun to set by the time she finished telling Obito nearly every detail, and he had descended gradually in emotion from enraged to saddened. When her haunted gaze shifted to him, his expression was carefully unreadable. "I'll ask you again, Sakura. Are you all right?"

She sighed. "Yes and no." Her gaze dipped out into the golden fading light. "Yes, because I'm alive and unhurt, as are you and our team." She closed her eyes. "Yes because I still feel… physically good. I didn't know I could feel all the things that I did."

Gazing at the night-drenched forest, she didn't see the face Obito made as she went on, "but no, because… the poison has worn off, and I still feel the same." She bit her lip that had begun to tremble with her admittances. "That terrifies me, Obito. I can't bring myself to hate him like I used to. After all that happened—" She expelled a short and painful breath, keeping her panicked eyes on the trees in effort to hide the full extent of what she felt. "—I don't know how I see Madara anymore. I don't even know if I feel the same way for Sasuke now."

Obito was silent, and Sakura covered her face as the tears returned, apprehension that she had said too much rolling over and over in her stomach. Even in her fears, she was unable to stop the momentum of her honesty, the purge of her truth already too far underway, fuelled by the need for someone else to share its burden. "Why do I not regret what happened, Obito? Why can't I bring myself to move on from it and call it a poisoned accident and nothing more? It's all worn off, but I still… I don't regret anything." She sniffed, annoyed at her tears. "I felt calm enough about it earlier today, but I guess it's all caught up to me now."
"You're worried you're falling for him."

Sakura bowed her head. "Isn't it impossible after only one night?"

Obito set a hand on her knee with a quiet sigh. "It's not love. It was just that poison influencing you both. Its influence was also why Madara left you behind. It's just not who he is; the Madara I knew would have chosen among either killing you, manipulating you into parading about for his cause, torturing you for information, or using you as a hostage against our team. He is not capable of true mercy or kindness."

Sakura covered her face as she shook. "But everything was so… intense. I'll never be able to forget a single moment. And he was almost…"

She caught herself, a flash of horror across her expression disappearing quicker than it appeared. She looked up at Obito with a tremulous whisper. "Could it really have all been a lie?"

Obito's mouth twisted to the side, and he looked away from her, a shadow crossing his features. "Yes. Be glad you can blame it on whatever that poison was."

"I don't know," Sakura went on, her eyes welling up with unshed new tears. "I can't ever face Madara again. I don't know what I'll do or say. I'm terrified of him more than I was before, because, because…" She began to shake, and Obito reached over to her, pulling her against his side; she hugged him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. His shadowed red eyes were distant as he held her. "Shh, Sakura. It's all right. It'll fade. Just breathe."

Obito grew increasingly tense as Sakura sobbed into his shoulder, trembling uncontrollably with the violence of her emotions. "Can you erase my memories of him, Obito? If it doesn't fade soon? Or just put me out of my misery if you can't? Because… because… I would rather be dead than be in love again." She drew in a ragged breath. "I can't bear it. It almost killed me before with Sasuke. Please — I don't want to go on if this is how I'm going to feel. I can't. Not for my enemy… not for Madara."

"Ah… Sakura." He pulled her over against his chest, resting his chin atop her head and curling a protective arm around her slender figure. She shook in his arms, tears streaming down her face. He was silent, finding that he could offer her no further comfort.

Obito stoked a fire in the small hearth, eyeing Sakura where she was slumped against a nearby wall. Though she still wore her plain set of civilian clothes, Madara's robe was tight around her shoulders; she had fallen asleep wearing it like a blanket, her nose buried in the wide black collar. She had curled up in this side-room to rest alone; perhaps she'd thought Obito wouldn't notice that she'd taken it out of her pack for the night, being too busy patrolling the house while on watch.

He scowled at the fire he easily stoked, poking the logs viciously with the metal tool he was using. He hadn't felt so concerned about someone else in a long time; she reminded him far too much of Rin.

His brows unknitted a touch upon hearing her peaceful, steady breathing as she slept; he eyed her again. It still amazed him that she had faced Madara, fought him, endured the hell of laying with him under poisonous influence, and come out of it alive. She didn't have a curse tag, either, which had surprised him, considering his own experiences with his manipulative former sensei. It appeared that Madara had truly let her go.

Obito shuddered with gritted teeth. That old pervert… he hadn't been with a woman in probably two lifetimes, and even with the influence of some potent, backwards curiosity-shop potion, Obito didn't doubt that Madara had had much enjoyment in taking her.

The thought made Obito's murderous mood sizzle beneath his skin. He couldn't wait to wring his neck.

Remembering Sakura's shattered emotional state, Obito's grip on the metal poker tightened hard enough to bend the metal. How could Madara force himself on a woman? He was twisted and evil to the highest level but he'd had at least some honour of a kind the last time Obito had known him. He still didn't believe Sakura that she had invited and welcomed intimacy with Madara, poison-influenced or not. How could anyone be attracted to that crazed three-eyed bastard in any capacity? He just didn't get it.

Obito's glare softened upon Sakura's slumped figure, shaded with wistfulness. The fire's heat flickered across her serene expression. If it was true that she had begun to fall in love with Madara, she was bound for some very tough reality checks. There wasn't a way she could be with such a man. He would never genuinely requite her feelings; Obito knew for certain that Madara only loved himself. The singular world in which he would care about Sakura beyond his own selfish motives was within whatever dream the Infinite Tsukuyomi would give her.

His lips pinched together. He knew that awful kind of reality all too well. Rin. Obito ached with her memory, all this time later. He hoped to whatever gods that might exist that Sakura wasn't going through the kind of love that he had suffered – ultimately unrequited and doomed.

Why had Madara left Sakura behind? And with the kitschy addition of leaving his robe for her to warm herself in, like a reminder, or a flag of ownership. Obito got to his feet and padded over to Sakura. He fingered one of the robe's loose sleeves, eyeing it carefully – his Sharingans burned a little brighter, examining it again. No… it wasn't infused with anything, no seals or additional jutsu effects that he could sense.

His observant stare swept over to the hint of dark colour on the side of Sakura's neck, hidden beneath the sweeping collar of Madara's robe. His focus zeroed in on it. Echoes of knowledge related to Orochimaru's curse-mark techniques dusting off in the back of his head, Obito carefully peeled the collar back just enough to reveal where there was a shaded oval upon Sakura's pale skin just beside her throat.
Obito quickly released the fabric with a derisive snort. Shifting away from Sakura's peaceful napping figure, he sat back by the fire, continuing to watch her with worry while his hatred for Madara burned ever higher.

This was bad. Sakura was strong, and he knew that she would eventually recover, but there was a fundamental shift in her heart that would make the coming days all that much more difficult for her. There was also the question of what to tell the rest of the team.

He looked away from Sakura, watching the flames. He would tell Kakashi everything as soon as he could. This was a crucial problem that they needed to keep a close eye on. However, he didn't see a reason for Naruto or Sasuke to know just yet, and he planned on honouring that part of his promise to Sakura — assuming she put the telltale robe away and never let the others see it.

With a weary sigh, Obito tipped his head back against the chair he was in. He was exhausted and hadn't slept in over a day. However, that didn't matter to him; he would make sure that Sakura got some rest, even if he didn't get any at all.

His scowl deepened the lines in his features as his gaze dipped again to Sakura's pale neck. The disturbing mark he'd discovered was a hickey.