Sakura awoke with a slow breath, finally emerging from a deep, peaceful slumber. What dreams she'd had faded with the touch of the morning sun across her face; forgotten with waking, the only thing she remembered of them being a lingering sense of peace.
She was immediately wary, tensing up where she lay: she didn't recognise the starchy, stiff bed under her back that was nothing like her own mattress.
Before she allowed any panic, Sakura registered most importantly that she felt physically fine, and it didn't sound like anyone was nearby. She wasn't a stranger to being disoriented after vivid dreams, and perhaps she'd just fallen off the bed and slept on the floor, hence the uncomfortable surface she was on.
With a grumble Sakura sat up, the sheet shifting away from her shoulders as she ran a hand through her tangled hair. Lately she had woken up with hellish headaches, the resulting fallout of nightmares and constant grief and stress, but her usual sunrise head-pounding was missing today. Compared to just about all previous mornings, she felt surprisingly good.
Sakura looked around at the hospital suite around her with a confused hum, completely disoriented. She must have worked an extra-long shift at the hospital and then crashed in one of the empty rooms. She recognised this one, having shadowed Tsunade when she'd occasionally work in the maternity ward as well as the rest of the sections of the hospital back while she was still in training.
Groggy, she cleared her throat, parched for a drink and a good splash of cold water in her face to wake her up a little more. Had she worked so late she'd really crashed here? She'd done it once before in the years before the war. But the war had happened, and was over, she recalled with a deepening grimace. Why was she here?
Sakura looked over to see the gentle rays of early-morning sun splashing in across the floor from the window, which was partly open. Taking in a breath, she could taste the sweet, earthy scents of spring on the breeze that invited itself in, sweeping over the tiled floor and making her feet cold at the end of the hospital bed she'd slept in.
That's right… winter was ending. Relief warmed her bones.
But it brought her a secondary panic: had she been hospitalized? Sakura looked around and then at herself. She blinked at her dirty, rumpled clothing that wasn't the expected standard paper dress of a patient; she registered she had no IVs in her wrist nor heart monitors set up at her side, which confirmed nobody had hospitalized her. Further obvious confirmations that she was fine: just incredibly groggy from a deep, restful sleep.
She scratched at her head. "Wake up, Sakura. Wake up and remember." Her voice was cracked and sleepy in the small, slightly echoey suite.
Sakura shook her head and straightened out her hair with impatient fingers as more of it came to her, piecing it back together in her waking mind as her increasingly conscious memory ironed itself out. She remembered awakening in her own bed at her parents' house, troubled by nightmares and whispers outside.
Paling, Sakura sat forward further, staring at the window as she started recalling more in better detail. She'd been tricked. She'd chased the Zetsus down underground in a boundless rage. She'd nearly smashed them in before they weirdly apologised. And then—
She drew a sharp breath through her teeth before lurching off of the bed and stumbling to her feet, righting herself in time before she knocked over the cart by the bed. A few bits of glass tinkled to the ground anyway, disturbed from towering piles and scattering near her feet, catching the early morning light in sharp, glittering flashes.
Sakura stared at the shard-covered cart, at the thousand bloodied bits of broken glass and the forceps she'd used to pry them free.
She drew up tall where she stood, her heart pounding as she remembered it all.
Shutting her eyes, her memory finished on the recollection of falling asleep on Madara's shoulder, lulled by his warmth and her sense of absolute safety, peace, and relief. The joy that had seeped through her bones had been a different kind of healing, soothing her grief and erasing it altogether.
Sakura bit her lip: she had admitted everything about Sasaki…
…and she had woken up alone. She scowled at the hospital bed now, recognising that he had left her there; left her here, in this hospital suite. Again she had been robbed of "pillow talk", that mystical thing Karin had teased her about ages ago, such a simple privilege of couples that Sakura hadn't yet tried out for herself due to plain bad luck.
But he was alive.
She shut her eyes again, hugging herself tightly with a mixed, adrenaline-fused relief. Madara was alive and well. Her reunion with him had been something of a dream to her; while she hadn't expected herself to shout at him for what had happened before, it had still gone so well.
Sakura questioned again if perhaps she'd dreamed it all, even as she tossed one more grimacing glance at the cart full of bloodied glass pieces looking quite real.
It could just be a beautiful dream. The thought squeezed Sakura's heart painfully.
She pushed her hand through her hair, a nervous habit stolen unconsciously from Naruto and Kakashi both. Her hand snagged in some of her pink locks that she tugged free impatiently. She might be dreaming, and if she woke up again this time in her bed at home to realise that none of it had been real, she would lose it. If that joy she'd felt proved to be for nothing but a passing dream, she'd—
Sakura realised why her hand had caught in her hair, and she brought it before her face, slowing and then freezing in time.
Her heartbeat halted. The world around her paused entirely. All noise or sensation or feeling utterly ceased as she stared with abject shock at her hand; more specifically, her finger.
The ring shone in silver, catching the morning light in a polished shine.
Turning it slightly, there was that haunting symbol captured in the deep red of an embedded ruby and the glittering of a diamond, forged together and shaped to fit. Cut in a way that reflected and absorbed the sunlight no matter what direction she moved her hand, the ring bore the Uchiha crest in a stunning, eye-catching way; managing to be somewhat subtle as well without any gaudy oversized gems or overcomplicated smithing about its shape. The ring was simplistic in a practical sort of way, and it was timeless, classy, bold.
And… fairly old. Sakura observed the tiny hints of age in the smallest of scratches along its sides in the silver, though light enough she doubted it had ever been worn; it had stood the test of time, and its embedded crest of expensive stones would never fade no matter what decades it had lived through. Its subtle age made it feel even more comfortable where it rested around her ring finger in a perfect fit. It belonged there, and Sakura loved it.
She loved it. Tears welled up around her eyes that she shook away as she touched the ring with her other hand, spinning it around her finger, feeling its cool weight, admiring its embedded symbol. It was perfect to her, and so reminiscent of him.
Certain she was dreaming now, but not caring at all, Sakura was giddy, smiling brightly down at her finger and her heart pounding once more. The sheer joy overwhelming her in this moment was spinning her around where she stood like she was amidst a passionate dance. Oh — to feel such a swell of bliss after so many days of grief—
Feeling so thrown off she was dizzy, Sakura had to steady herself on the side of the hospital bed. The ring on her finger clinked upon the metal rail, drawing her eye to it again, and her heart kicked up with desperate percussion. Dream or not, she would savour this moment every day and hope to return to it nightly. If only he had been here with her instead of strangely missing. If only…
Sakura registered the sounds around her at last, and she paused before withdrawing from the bed railing with a return of her smile.
"I'm an idiot," she declared of herself.
With her hand clasped around her newly ringed finger, Sakura turned around, her gaze shifting to the shut bathroom door across the suite where she registered at last the sounds of the shower running.
It was as if the rest of her senses were in a rush to remind her of everything else, all at once. She could hear the bustling of the lower hospital floors beneath her feet, the dull hum of the fluorescent lights in the nearby hallway, the morning hubbub of crowds down in the streets below; the happy din of streetside vendors, clattering feet and mingling voices. The breeze sighed in through the partly-opened window, and she could hear the distant brushing of the trees beginning to bud for early spring, the soaring forest canopies reaching for the skies. She felt the creak of the big multileveled building; heard the squeal of the elevator constantly at work; and she heard again the spray of the shower, slightly muffled behind the bathroom door.
Sakura's throat was tight: Madara hadn't left her at all.
Was this truly real?
She looked back down at her hand, her pulse like the rapids of a waterfall, desperately pounding like she was in a mortal chase for her life rather than standing in a quiet room. The ring shone in polished silver, the red of the ruby as vivid as blood, as intense as the red of his eye. The diamond that formed the latter half of the Uchiha symbol caught the sun and glittered beneath the searching weight of Sakura's gaze; proudly, with all the rare beauty such an expensive stone commanded.
No. She couldn't breathe, repeating it softly to herself with giddy, dumbstruck disbelief. This was real.
Sakura opened her mouth, then shut it; then she stepped forward, and in a flurry of steps was pushing through into the bathroom, finding her voice at last in a rushed and breathy protest. "Madara!"
Steam rushed past her, jolting her with an unpleasant war memory before it faded. She had to remind herself that this was not bloodied healing steam.
She breathed in the heady scents of soap and warmth that billowed around her as a reminder of this as she shut the door behind her. The spraying water sounds echoed and bounced loudly now, and she quickly forgot her brief jolt, seeing Madara's silhouette where he stood in the shower beyond the thick, opaque glass.
Her heart pounding, Sakura put her hands on her hips, her fingers dancing in a thrumming pattern nervously as she kept her head high. She affixed a stern stare upon his tall shape obscured by the shower walls just ahead of her. The steam clouded around her in the spacious bathroom and made her skin pearl with moisture. "You're supposed to," Sakura drew an uneven breath, the joy still making her head spin, "ask me!"
Madara's deep hum thrilled her blood, the sound reverberating through the bathroom. She watched the fuzzy shape of his outline that she could only just make out as he turned as if to look at her through the glass.
She felt his gaze anyway as he tossed her a look she couldn't see. "Hmm; I think not, for—" there was a brief glimpse of pale fingers running through silvery white hair just above the top of the shower, "it is not even a question, at this point."
How much this flattered Sakura had her heart racing even faster, but she brandished her ringed fist anyway. "It's tradition!"
"We are not traditional in any way."
"That doesn't mean we can't be!"
"Tradition according to my time would dictate no proposal or ring at all; a foreign concept, compared to now. You are simply told… you are getting wed."
"Well, that's not how it's gonna work now," Sakura was furiously tugging off clothing, kicking aside her shorts and tossing her shirt aside. Her chest bindings fluttered to the floor along with the rest of her underclothes as she stomped up to the shower curtain, ready to rip it aside. "No one decides for me but me. Not even you, not then, not now, not ever. And when I get in there I'm gonna knock some sense into you for—"
The curtain slowly drew aside beneath pale fingers, and Sakura stood at sudden shy attention as his towering silhouette was in sharp focus now, just within her reach. Glowing mismatched eyes burned down upon her.
Sakura hugged herself with a squeak, her arms over her chest and her legs crossing, abruptly aware of her nakedness beneath Madara's intensely heavy attention. Her skin rashed with goosebumps, and while she had the courage to maintain brash eye contact with him, she flushed bright red with shy, virginal embarrassment.
His glowing stare slid slowly down her figure, gliding over her curves with slow, slinking, appreciative attention to detail. Madara towered forward from within the shower, leering at Sakura, the steam breathing outward past the curtain and fogging around Sakura in curling clouds.
She tightened up against herself further, her exposed skin reddening another shade.
"Well?" Madara's voice was a damp velvet heavy with invitation and expectation. He held the shower curtain open, grinning down at Sakura, the hot spray dripping in rivulets down his body. Silvery hair clung around his face, a cloak of wild white soaking over his shoulders like a lion's mane, and as he awaited her steam rose around his lean frame from the sheer boiling heat of the shower.
Sakura swallowed thickly, all of the brave half-angry confidence that made her stomp her way here already gone. She was realising that this was terrifying.
They had been intimate in the past, but this was different: where before they'd either been in a medical context, or tangling with each other in rushed moments of passion, it was a whole new level this time. Unrushed, heated, and gradual, Sakura felt a thousand times more visible and exposed, hugging herself tightly beneath Madara's unrelenting gaze.
Ignoring his impatient question for a second, Sakura scolded herself internally. She was being silly. The two of them had already ventured into wild places before. Their previous encounter had been of a rather exotic nature, reaching places Sakura had never thought she'd venture to (and certainly didn't regret exploring).
She shoved at her hot cheeks with a hand while holding her chest with the other, annoyed with her schoolgirl shyness she'd been struck with as soon as Madara directly laid eyes on her. While before they'd been like sharks circling each other in dangerous waters, they were engaged, now. Committed, being together was more than permitted, but warranted. Why couldn't she just be brash and forward with him like she had managed before?
Sakura's skin prickled as his attention bored down upon her in the tense silence between them, and she felt even more exposed the longer Madara regarded her with all the boldness she currently lacked.
She belatedly recognised it with a hunching about her shoulders. As of her late-night confessions, all of her cards were played. She was completely laid bare in all senses of the word beneath Madara's sharp, calculating eyes. With nothing left to hide, and no easy ways out, Sakura lacked the reckless bravado of an expendable clone, standing before him as her own, original, vulnerable self.
Sakura was struck with the compounding recognition of all that the ring on her finger meant. Stepping forward into the steam with him or backing away instead felt like another mountainous precipice; an implicit understanding she was about to solidify. It was so much more than just a decision to join him in the shower, just as his offer to dance with her the night of the Union gala had been so much more than just an invitation to dance.
It was the question of proceeding, or turning back. This was about confirming the silvery weight upon her finger, or taking a last chance to fight it, and the concluding question lodged itself in her throat, uninvited and unwilling to leave until she answered it: was this what she really wanted, for life?
Like they were hurled at her from the zoomed-out, judgmental view of onlookers, the facts of it slapped across Sakura's brain. She was too young to be getting married, according to most. And Madara was a lot older than her; older than the members of the Konoha elders' council, even. The logistics of everyone believing Madara to be dead and the whole of the shinobi world hating his guts if he wasn't was difficult enough. Would they hide in secret forever? Would they be condemned again if they were caught? Would she have to go on another trial, or watch as he suffered again? How would any of it work if they stuck with this madness of being lovers instead of enemies?
Old whispers of memory from when Naruto had commented she'd chosen the most difficult man that existed to be with raked across Sakura's brain in a harsh reality check. She sucked a breath in through clenched teeth, troubled.
She was quite unaware of the way Madara had become patient as he awaited her. His stare upon Sakura lingered in a more understanding way as he allowed her a moment to debate the great precipice he knew she was navigating within herself. Leaning up against the shower walls and shaking some of the water from his eyes, rinsing some of the foam from his cleansed hair, Madara chose to wait a little longer; he could not and would not force Sakura to come to him. She had to decide if this was what she wanted on her own.
They were a pair of perfect opposites. There really wasn't anyone else alive that it would be harder for her to be with, especially in permanence. Madara was as he always had been; her biggest challenge, but now with the contexts of that challenge changed away from basic survival to something much more complicated.
Sakura searched his face as if it was the first time she was looking at Madara, recognising again how strange his features were. The headband of bone stretched across his forehead, a curiosity she'd always wanted to ask about but hadn't dared comment on before. His skin was so pale; paler than some of the dead she'd worked on in the hospital morgue, though he had the hale look of someone young and alive but for the age hinting in the creases around his eyes; hints of a century rather than a couple of decades. There was that affinity for darkness that clung to Madara in the oozing aura of his ever-sinister presence; like a warning, or a marking flag of who he was. And then those eyes — those powerful, frightening eyes, one being the Rinnegan like Pein's and the other the Sharingan that he'd stolen right out of Kakashi's head.
Madara would utterly terrify any other women, especially looking as he does in his jinchuriki form, Sakura knew with a slight indent about the corners of her mouth. It was only her that was crazy or perhaps stupid enough to be drawn to him at all.
Madara was hated and dangerous; he was her opposite in his ideals and actions, and he was quite ancient. These conclusions settled in Sakura's gut as she looked up at him.
They were observations she had made since she had first seen him in the war a year previously. She hadn't registered them as obstacles until she'd begun to view him as a lover rather than an enemy. These were the biggest things anyone else from the outside looking in would use to strike her with doubt; and they were important facts she must face and overcome if she wanted to continue. She couldn't ignore her obstacles any longer if she really wanted to make this work. There must be resolution rather than avoidance.
But as the questions and heavy recognitions fell like stones through Sakura's gut, she felt her heart swell with a strong, easy response to each one; not with words, but with feeling. Constant, true, and permeating everything she thought about, the resolve and deep, patient love Sakura felt rose up through her like a tidal wave. Feeling it disperse her doubts in a powerful push, she clasped her fingers over her heart like it was a pendant she wore, her skin warming and her tension easing slowly.
She offered Madara the slightest of smiles, a certain kind of levelled intensity calming her gaze; wise beyond her years.
Sakura's throat was tight, or she'd tell him all the answers that rose against her questioning doubts that weakened and fell away in the face of what she felt.
The world hated him, but she didn't care. His ideals were not the same as hers, but she had found nobility in his motivations the more she'd come to know him over the past year, his intentions revealed to be so much deeper than what others had assumed was simple violence or greed or evil. He was her opposite in nearly every way, but he had proven to her that opposites attract, intentionally or not. She had discovered just how compatible they were in just as many ways, something that only improved with the more time spent in one another's company — adjusting to the other, then picking up little habits, to the point of him growing tempered for her while she grew stronger for him.
They weren't so different, anymore. They had become kindred spirits.
And he was indeed ancient — but even if he looked his true age Sakura would have ended up loving him anyway. Their unexpected compatibility… her attraction to his brilliant mind, his intelligence and harsh wit, his complexities and fickle nature, his stubbornness, confidence and pride yet his ability to recognise when he was wrong all made a powerful draw for her. Imagining him with an ancient face didn't diminish him to her either; she knew she'd still love the man beneath, and his voice, his intense attention, his dominating decisiveness.
Powerful or powerless, jinchuriki or dark-haired Uchiha Founder, young or old, she was attracted to the whole of his being inside and out. She was drawn to everything about Madara both tangible and intangible no matter the state he was in.
This was a heavy epiphany for Sakura. It wasn't a new revelation, but rather a deciding weapon to bludgeon any of her surviving doubts into nothing but pure conviction. Unconsciously, she slid her fingers over her ring, the weight in her gut growing lighter as her heart pounded harder, her decision for which direction to take on this new precipice made in full at last.
Sakura swallowed thickly, thinking about that tangible element now as she finally broke eye contact with Madara's glinting gaze. Slowly, she allowed her stare to draw down his drenched, elegant features to beyond; lower.
The way she regarded Madara was not quite the leer he continued to eye her with, but something akin to one, and equally as appreciative. Just as magnetic as the slide of her wanting gaze across his wet skin was Sakura's instinctive urge to view with her touch, and with a soft murmur about needing to check how his vitals were doing she uncrossed her legs and stepped into the shower stall with him.
Madara pulled the curtain shut behind her with a victorious smile curving his lips; a subtle crinkle of both confidence and relief around his eyes.
Sakura didn't have the chance to do her vitals check before she was slammed up against the tiled wall, shrinking beneath Madara's hulking, towering frame, his eyes two burning red and metallic suns above her as he caged her in beneath him. Trapped, visibly steaming from the hot shower spray, she breathed hard as he loomed over her with both arms blocking her in beside her head against the wall.
"You cease your protest because you know this is your fate. You have belonged to me… since before the beginning."
Sakura shivered with an aching sigh as Madara drew closer, his mouth sliding along her cheek to move against her ear through her damp hair. His deep purr rumbled through the whole of her being; she shut her eyes, absorbing every part of the feeling. "Clever, dangerous, beautiful woman…"
She shivered beneath the caress of his hand down her throat, dancing across her collarbone and gliding around one of her soaked breasts to press over her stomach and then take hold of her slim, bare waist. Shivering with adrenaline, her pulse roaring in her ears, Sakura opened her eyes to meet smouldering mismatched ones as Madara went on, "You are perfect for me. And so I will wait no longer—" he caught her ringed hand and grinned, "to stake my claim upon you."
The rebellious, stubborn part of Sakura wanted to continue her earlier protest. Normally she didn't let anyone command her around, but beneath the weight of Madara's domineering, intensely bright stare and the ocean-swell of feeling in her chest she had no protest to possibly make.
She squeezed her fingers around his and tipped upwards, longing to reunite once more with the man she loved and had thought was dead. She didn't want to waste a second more being coy or stubborn. She wanted to savour every moment she had to revel in the fact that she had been wrong; that he was alive… that he was here with her now — and that he was proving through the most official way he could that he was as committed to her as she was to him.
"My old-fashioned," Sakura murmured, tasting affectionately along Madara's cheek, pressing herself up against him and thrilling at the feel of her skin against his skin, "stubborn old man."
"Tch." His teeth grazed her ear. Fingers dug in around her slender hips; his broad shoulders overshadowed her as he pressed her against the wall, chest-to-chest. The hot spray of the shower sent steam between their bodies, its flow cascading down his back and down where their legs began to tangle.
Madara glanced down to admire Sakura's breasts that were pressed up between them; then he pushed her a little harder between himself and the shower wall in emphasis of how he had her thoroughly trapped. An impish, threatening smirk rose beneath his dangerous gaze upon her. "I'll show you old."
"Promise?" Her breath was a cloud of steam through her nose, her smile buried in his wild hair that fell in wet silver locks around them both as he bent over her to taste along her slender neck. Slick hands eased around her shoulders, slipping down and squeezing appreciably along her curves, memorising, unhurried and slow. "Pervert," she added in the lightest of protests, leaning into his explorative touch.
Madara's velvety chuckle shook both her and the shower walls around them, echoing off of the water-pearled tiles and heating Sakura within his grip from head to toe. "Do you think you can handle it? I am—" She hissed a breath in through her teeth as he roughly regripped her, speaking harshly into her ear. "—insatiable."
Sakura's heart nearly pounded right out of her chest, pressed up against his: she knew he meant that. She had seen Madara fight all-out a few times now, and even without considering their generally quite satisfying past of intimacy — if he wrought war in any way similar to how he was threatening her with sex then she had quite a lot to look forward to.
Her hand had drawn down his side, sliding across his lean waist across slick pale skin. Her fingers paused where they'd been trailing over his thigh, towards the source of pure heat that she could feel straining against her. Breathing hard, she was buried in his arms, his wicked mouth grazing along her shoulder as he continued to sample along her wet skin. He had a palm along the soft skin of her middle, pushing upwards to stop over her desperate heartbeat.
They were both soaked in the soothing hot spray of the shower, surrounded by billows of steam, safe and sequestered in the opaque glass of the shower. One shift of Sakura's hands, one adjustment of limbs and they'd be started already, but was this where she wanted to…?
She drew a breath, intoxicated by Madara's warm, smoky scents. She could feel exactly how much he wanted this, a sizeable swell against where they pressed together that she was still too shy just yet to look at or seize.
Either way, Sakura was excited as he was, eager to continue. Her skin was afire beneath his lips and hands; her heart soared with adrenaline-kicked beats, and her body sung beneath his, ready to find out in physical conversation just how much he meant his words. She held onto Madara more tightly, her leg sliding higher up the side of his even in her moment of indecision; steam continued to rise in heady swirls around them from sprays of hot water and their short, quick breaths.
She had invited herself into this shower with Madara knowing exactly what they would end up doing. Beyond her constant, often-suppressed lust for him, she'd dreamt and daydreamed about doing something like this beforehand, throughout the year and even amidst former grief. Especially with the revelation of the ring on her finger and the undentable love in her heart, Sakura's body and pulse demanded that the two of them do everything and more here and now with no regard to anything else. Until the shower water ran cold. After that, until there was no water left.
Madara had no intention of waiting. Sakura squeaked as large hands seized her by the hips and lifted her up, her back sliding against wet wall tiles. She hummed a happy note as he wrenched her face down to his, their lips meeting roughly.
She clamped her dangling legs around his waist to steady herself, which was exactly what he wanted her to do. She stole a sharp breath from his lips upon feeling him slide up between her thighs in a single, languid push, not entering yet as his body greeted her slowly; though it felt more like a warning. She scrabbled for a grip around his soaked shoulders, fingers tangling through wild, thick wet hair and then clasping around his grin as she couldn't help herself, sinking against his unrelenting grip with her smaller figure surrendering into his control. She closed her eyes as she kissed Madara slowly, fingers sliding up around his cheeks.
The push of her lips moving with his was drenched with desire. It was all passion and no innocence as Sakura angled her face along his, parted lips sliding together and noses bumping. Their eyes briefly met before she dipped back in for a deeper pronunciation of their mutual lust where their tongues tangled and heated breaths mingled in a heaving cadence; kiss after kiss after kiss increasingly forceful and frenzied.
Again she remembered thinking he was dead or worse these past days and all the pain of it, and she dug in her grip around him and tensed from head to toe in his arms with a shaky breath, trembling slightly as she felt like she was about to implode. Breaking free of their liplock Sakura tilted her face against Madara's, breathing hard, her brows twitching and her eyes closed as she was overwhelmed with feeling.
Madara had been adjusting his grip along her hips, angling her between the wall and his body, but sensed Sakura's intensity change and hummed as he spared a hand to trace along her fine features, meeting her eyes once more.
Green leveled upon red and metallic, burning bright with their own luminescence. The ring on Sakura's finger flashed in the warm light where she held Madara's face in a softened, loving way, like he was breakable, or like he might disappear if she let go. She searched his features, lost in the glinting heat of his stare as he regarded her with impatience; a brusque sort of manner that veiled the very same deep-level sentiments she felt, ones only she was prone to express aloud.
Sakura recognised them behind Madara's eyes anyway, and she sensed it in his mood, just as it was obvious on her finger where it caught the light where she drew her hand along his cheek. He lusted for her… but he also loved her.
"I'm so glad you're alive," Sakura was breathing, Madara blinking up at her in his iron grip as he saw the tears rolling down her cheeks; tears of joy. "I love you so much."
She watched the words ripple behind his eyes: a visible butterfly effect. From this close Sakura could fully feel how her fervent confession affected him in ways invisible to one who didn't know him; signals others wouldn't notice in one who had been taught all his life to stifle emotion down to the subtlest signs instead of open expression. While Madara never hid his hatred or mockery, or even lighter moods such as amusement or moments of mirth, he jealously guarded the rest like they were treacherous secrets. The expressions of emotion that came easily to Sakura were all the ones she knew were an extreme rarity for Madara to ever show even in a muted way.
It wouldn't stop her. She would always tell him how she felt, and indeed remind him frequently, in case he ever chanced forgetting. Sakura decided, as she watched Madara's face with water and tears streaking her cheeks in her overwhelmed, glowing joy, that she'd make sure he knew she loved him every day and night for the rest of time.
She also recognised how well she knew him now that she could read him easily, where others could not. On the exterior he appeared unchanged by her poured words, made more impatient and even annoyed at her pause. His eyes were narrowed on hers, his grip on her merciless and digging in; he shifted up against her, another reminder that made her blush. Madara looked bulletproof to her words, as always, and managed his imperious aura even now, bared with her in this shower where he was verging on showing her how little mercy and patience he had left before unleashing the friction between them.
Sakura took her time, smiling as she held his face a little tighter, squeezing her thighs around his waist and shaking some of the water from her eyes. She was soaking in Madara's hidden secrets, her joy continuing to spread the more she read every little signal; the steel of his frightening metallic eye tempering upon her, his slow, patient exhale and smallest quirks about the corners of his lips that subtly indicated how pleased he was to hear her words; pleasure she could feel in the subtle stroke of his thumbs over the dips of her hips that he gripped tightly in little indicators of affection. She could see it in the responding way that he looked at her, like heat and warmth staring down at her in tandem, embers and flame ignited.
Sakura swallowed hard, her heart pounding: Madara had always regarded her with a unique intensity, but never compared to now. Whatever fires he'd lit in her heart looked like they paled in comparison to the ones behind his malevolently intensive stare burning upon her, straight through her soul. He certainly didn't need to tell her he reciprocated her: she could see it clearly for herself, like she stood within a forest fire that blazed in all directions.
Her pulse skipped a few beats almost as if in shock at this. She was fairly certain Madara had loved her before now, but his new intensity was almost intimidating in the best way, making Sakura question herself for a second like she needed to know what she did to stoke Madara's zeal for her so effectively. Was it something specific? Was it that he'd had such a close brush with death he'd barely escaped? Was it her admittance about Sasaki? Or was it just that he was glad to be reunited with her just like she was?
The thoughts were knocked right out of her head as Madara slammed her once more against the wall, cracking the tiles and making her gasp — her legs slipping around his waist, his grip adjusting to keep her legs high along his sides, his mouth engulfing hers, chests heaving against the other and a hot prodding between her legs as their tongues warred and he prepared to spear her through—
"No, wait!" Sakura managed to gasp. She kissed Madara again and then shoved at his shoulders, ignoring the protest of her body as she reached down and seized him, keeping him from taking her just yet.
He stiffened at her grip upon him with a low growl. "Careful with that. What are you—"
Just as she tilted her head back against broken tiles to meet his eye and explain, they both heard the footsteps in the hall distantly beyond the shut door. Pausing together, they were frozen beneath the hot spray of water, listening.
Jangling keys and the squealing of wheels: someone pushing a cart as they walked down the echoey corridor beyond the bathroom and corner suite they were in. Off-tune hummed notes further indicated their oblivious presence as who Sakura knew was the janitor continued off on his way. They listened as he went to work on the other rooms before making his way to this one.
She rolled her eyes back up to Madara's, still breathing a little hard. Their soaked bodies were still tangled, and he still held on to her with full intentions of continuing, his fingers digging in hard and a certain dominant sort of irritation burning in his stare upon her. Sakura reddened, wanting nothing more than to explore that, to have the fight for power between their bodies that they both ached for.
"But we'll be caught," she sighed, sitting up slightly against the wall, shaking some broken tile bits from her wet hair. Madara sucked in a sharp breath when she gave him a teasing stroke before hopping off of his lap and standing on her own, her feet slipping slightly on the floor and causing him to snatch her arms and steady her so she didn't fall. Pulling him to her and slipping her arms around his middle, Sakura embraced Madara in an almost apologetic sort of hug, sliding a kiss against the tense column of his neck through wild, thick silver-white hair. "This isn't the place to do this. I don't want us to be interrupted by anyone. And," she cleared her throat, drawing back and meeting Madara's narrowed eyes, "I have… ideas on where I want it to be. How we'll continue."
His expression was thunderous, a look that would frighten anyone else, and Sakura grinned up at him with an uninnocent smile. "Promise." She reveled in the flicker of mixed pleasure and irateness across Madara's otherwise infallible look as she stroked him once more, her devious fingers increasingly brave and teasing as well as subtly appreciative.
"Hmm…" They could both hear the janitor and his cart still through the relatively thin walls, far away but not far enough. Madara exhaled tiredly as he pulled back from Sakura, regretfully. "I suppose you are correct."
"Makes it harder when you can't just kill interrupters, right? Or you'd keep going with me here anyway."
Her giggle echoed throughout the bathroom as Madara boxed her in against the wall again, towering over her. "Do not test me, woman."
"Or what?" Sounds of soaked skin sliding and short breaths reverberated from the shower cubicle, her next little laugh caught by sounds of a harsh kiss with clicking teeth. Her words barely escaped between meshing lips, her tone rough with want. "Are you threatening me?"
"Yes. I thought that was clear."
"Oh, I'm so scared," came her lilting, lightheartedly sarcastic tease, and then, "Madara—stop it! I mean it, let's not do it here. If they walk in—"
"Then cease your teasing."
Sakura's grumpy hum sounded before she sighed once more. The shower curtain drew aside, and she hopped out of the shower cubicle, snatching up a nearby towel and tossing it to Madara behind her before grabbing another for herself.
Drying herself off, she glanced back at him. "Look, I wanted to continue, too. I'm impatient as well. But we're both going to be fine… we're doing the smart thing and getting out of here before they catch us." Sakura passed him a sly look. "You can get your vengeance on me later."
"It isn't good for me," Madara complained, sliding a hand down the small of her back as he passed her, the towel already soaked from drying his mass of hair. Tossing it aside, he took another from the wall rack, tying it around his waist and eyeing Sakura accusingly.
"What… not— releasing?" she squeaked, swatting at him as he grunted in confirmation.
"The whole 'blue balls' thing is a myth," Sakura informed him in a manner both prim and somewhat embarrassed as she talked like she might to a patient. She ran her towel through her hair and raked her fingers through her damp pink locks, offering Madara a reassuring, embarrassed smile. "You'll be just fine. I've read many studies and I can assure you that…"
She trailed off, noticing the look on Madara's face. He stood tall beside Sakura, blinking down at her with a soft huff of amusement. "You have read many studies on… 'blue balls'?" He enunciated the term slowly, leaning over her with a glint in his eyes.
"No!" Sakura swatted at him again, pushing her towel into his smirk and striding past him. "You know what, never mind, you big jerk." She muttered to herself, pushing out of the bathroom, her skin a bright red as Madara shadowed her with a lingering grin. "Do tell me more of what you learned with such studies. I am sure you found them to be a fascinating read. Did you perform such studies yourself?"
Sakura ignored him, pulling on the clothes she'd strewn about with a red face and a moody pout. "You're always so mean to me." She tossed Madara a look that was both irritated and forgiving at once. "But it's good to see you're feeling so much better."
"I am completely well." He stretched his long, pale arms and watched Sakura as she finished tugging on her clothes; then the way she glanced around the hospital suite with a frown. The both of them, even while in the middle of swapping banter, were extremely aware of their surroundings; especially the sound of the humming janitor across the other end of this floor of the hospital, working his way towards this set of rooms.
Sakura was noticing just how much evidence of their activities was present and obvious in the suite. Starting with the broken doorhandle, there were drops of blood across the floor where she had carried Madara to the hospital bed the night before, intermingled with the crusty dried red footprints she'd left from tracking through it. The bed itself was splotched dark mauve; the cart beside it was the worst of it all, covered in mountainous piles of broken glass and red-splattered forceps as well as stained alcohol swabs she'd used to disinfect his wounds. Some of the glass had scattered to the floor, and the room was generally a mess, making a clear picture of who had been here and why for anyone to come in and see.
Sakura gathered up the towels she'd tossed aside, eyeing the mess with a thoughtful hum. "We have to clean this up before we go. I don't think we have much time, though. And don't just tell me that's the janitor's job," she preempted, sliding a glance over to Madara; but he was regarding her in a serious manner now, striding past her in a billowing of wild hair drifting about his shoulders.
She put her hands on her hips as he ignored her, in turn: of course he knew that the evidence of her saving his life had to be gotten rid of. She'd still expected some snark; but they really were running out of time. Listening to which song the janitor was humming now — a long-familiar, annoying playlist he listened through while doing his routines, ones she'd overheard in many late-night shifts working — he would be due to barge in here to clean in only five or so minutes. Was that enough time to scrub blood and find a way to hide all the glass before escaping?
Troubled, Sakura swerved towards a nearby utility closet, pulling it open and grabbing a mop. She hated cleaning, but she'd be the fastest damn maid in all the villages if it meant they successfully avoided being caught and exposing to the world that Madara was alive.
Her fists curled around the mop handle so hard it cracked beneath her grip: she wouldn't let him get exposed. She wouldn't allow anyone to interrupt either of them. She wouldn't allow this reunion to be ruined by anyone or anything.
Hefting the mop, Sakura glanced at Madara again, a smile dancing briefly across her lips in her otherwise serious action-mode. She was looking forward to everything that this meant, and all they'd do and see after leaving this place. She'd just barely begun to process still that he was alive and here with her, doing well, let alone the concept that they were — essentially — free.
With the world believing Madara dead, no one was hunting him anymore. Sakura wasn't on trial, her penance more than served. He was free to do as he pleased, if he stayed a secret; and that meant that the two of them were free to do a great many things as long as that was so.
Her heart lifted in her chest so much that she felt like she was going to float up into the skies. Irritated at the stinging around her eyes, Sakura swiped at her vision, determined not to cry again even for the sake of her joy. No crying, for now; she had to mop up blood and glass.
The feel of the air swirling oddly had her stopping just in time to see Madara gesturing, his hand disappearing through midair into the recognisable spirals of a Kamui portal. Sakura blinked at him, dumbstruck: the cart, and the entire hospital bed, was gone. A dusty space with a few hanging racks of hospital equipment remained; but all the shards, the telltale signs of their activities, were missing like they had never been there at all.
And he was pulling something from the portal, apparently already finished with cleansing the evidence and more concerned with dressing himself. Sakura watched, squeezing the mop handle dubiously, as Madara pulled a dark robe around his shoulders.
She recognised it with a stab through her heart; that dressy set of robes he'd worn the night of the Union gala, mostly a silken black with white Six Paths symbols printed along its lapels and sleeves, a perfect negative of his original robes from the day she'd met him.
"What, you use Kamui to…" Sakura searched for the right word before grinning at Madara teasingly, "hoard things?"
He shot her a sharp glance, scowling as he adjusted his robes and cinched them fully around his tall, lean frame. He shook the loose hair away from his shoulders to fall down his back in bright silvery-white. "Be grateful. It will serve yet another purpose in solving our situational issues."
"Of course I'm grateful," Sakura complained, moving to dip the mop in the stale mop water someone had left in the bucket in the utility closet, "but I'm perfectly allowed to—"
She squeaked as a head poked up out of the floor, nearly dropping the mop. She made another noise of protest as suddenly Madara was at her back and the mop was knocked from her grasp, clattering down until a black and white set of hands caught it. After a hissing exhale Sakura glowered at the combined Zetsus, watching with narrowed eyes as they rose fully from the floor to their full height, Black Zetsu eyeing her neutrally and White Zetsu offering her an impish smile, brandishing the mop like a wand.
"You will not be doing menial things such as cleaning," came Madara's growl against Sakura's ear; his fingers grazed her left hand. As she turned her head to answer him, White Zetsu piped in. "We've got it! We'll see you two later."
Sakura looked back to them with a dubious expression. "Mopping up the dried blood? Tidying the room to look the way it was before we arrived? And what about the door handle?"
Black Zetsu was grumbling while White Zetsu gesticulated excitedly, nearly knocking a painting off the wall with his brandished mop. "Are you kidding? He's made us clean up way worse messes. You should have seen when—"
White Zetsu was cut off by Black Zetsu's hand clapping over his mouth and a curse under his breath, mitigating the daggering look Madara was aiming at them both. "Don't get us killed," Black Zetsu growled to his counterpart, Sakura having no time to linger in her curiosity at what they were talking about before Madara was leading her away, shaking his head. "The amount of things I put up with, dealing with them," he sighed. "Like bumbling children."
"I'm perfectly capable and willing to clean things," Sakura answered almost randomly, still bothered by his earlier words, and Madara scoffed at her before gesturing once more.
She instinctively shrank against his side as the Kamui portal opened before them, revealing a vast cubic wasteland of shadows and cement. Across the way, Sakura could see the cart and hospital bed jumbled together, evidence cast aside to erode in secret between vast cement walls; she tensed as she saw that they were also afire with strange black flames. She almost asked why he used Amaterasu instead of normal fire, but then saw that the dark flames not only ate through metal and glass like it was dead grass and wood, but that they also made no smoke.
No smoke; no signal for the other who shared access to this place. Smart: should Obito explore this dimension, the Amaterasu would disintegrate the cart, bed and glass into nothing but dust by the time he ever found it, leaving him no clue that Madara was alive and had been here.
However, there was always a chance he was around. Sakura hesitated to follow as Madara stepped forward into the cement world. She had a hand on his arm, but looked up to him with a frown, glancing between his impatient expression and the open window across the room. She ignored White Zetsu's attempt to match the janitor's distant off-tune humming while he mopped and Black Zetsu was flitting across the room straightening and tidying whatever he needed to. "Shouldn't we… wouldn't it be safer to go through the real world?" she asked Madara, queasy with uncertainty.
Obito's face flashed across Sakura's mind, glaring at her with his one red eye, with malice, with hatred. She tensed up tighter, her shoulders hunched.
"Trust me," was Madara's simple answer.
This was enough for her. Sakura hopped through the portal after him, swallowing her doubts.
"Do you think," he said then as the portal closed behind them, turning around to face Sakura once more, "that Obito is in any shape to patrol this dimension, right now?"
Sakura stood a little taller, searching Madara's calm expression.
She grimaced, knowing the answer even without having been in touch with Tsunade or anyone else about Obito's condition since the war's end. Naruto had saved him from Madara's wrath just in time; quickly enough to prevent his death, but not before he was seriously injured; maimed, even. With the recent advances in medical technology thanks to Sakura's discoveries fixing Might Guy's leg and other new surgeries, Obito would get new limbs, in time… but without Sakura's direct help, with how busy Tsunade was, and with how long it would take to recover even after a successful surgery… Sakura knew that Obito was simply being kept stable in a hospital bed somewhere for now, sustained and cared for until his limbs could be fully seen to. Maybe in the future he could be fully healed, but not any time soon.
Sakura's grimace deepened; Obito was somewhere in the hospital they'd just left behind. He might have been only a few rooms away, a floor or two down.
Looking away from Madara, she hummed in acknowledgement of his point. They were safe to traverse this dimension for now, as long as they left no evidence here either.
As soon as dark recollections of Obito faded again from the stage of her thoughts, joy crept back into the spotlight, bringing that sense of freedom with it.
Madara was walking again in a confident, directed stride, dark robes and wild mane swishing down his back. For a moment, Sakura stood and watched him, absorbing the image yet again and letting herself really, truly believe it: he's alive. He isn't sealed away. He's doing well.
She looked down at the ring on her finger, feeling for the first time in a long time like anything was possible. Free to do as they pleased now, it felt like she and Madara really could do anything. They were free.