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A Living Secret	By : viridianglare Category: Naruto > General Views: 3159 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto anime/manga/franchise and do not make money from this work.

Chapter List
- 1-results
- 2-exchange
- 3-seed
- 4-public
- 5-foundations
- 6-resolve
- 7-trust
- 2
- 3
- 4
Sakura stayed for three nights and three days.
On the night of the third day, she lay beside Madara in the darkness, her mind spinning. How am I still here? she asked herself, and she felt him stir in his sleep. His arm pulled over her stomach, large hand twitching over her skin. His smoky scent filled her nose and her body hummed pleasantly.
Sakura closed her eyes. Her hand threaded through the fingers over her belly and she sighed deeply. There was a deeply threaded panic that still thrummed threateningly beneath the surface of her mind, and with it were the many strands of thought that told her all the reasons she should not be where she was now. She knew Madara was still dangerous; she knew there was every chance that he could still turn on her, could still hurt her, but her undeniable contentment cut through the tension and she felt at ease where she lay beside him. I had told myself not to let my guard down, she remembered as she turned over and looked at Madara. Then I opened myself up to him completely.
Her hand crossed the gap between them; she drew aside the hair from his face, and she tilted her head back against the pillows as she examined his features. Sakura was unafraid to stare at him now since his piercing gaze was hidden in his slumber. Her thumb traced his sharp brow and along his jaw; she noticed faint scars from battles passed. The dark room did nothing to diminish the sight of the hale and peaceful face, and she let out a quiet exhale at the Uchiha before her. Beautiful, it occurred to her, and she cast her gaze away as the panic inside of her chest tightened.
I can’t believe I’m here. None of that happened. She swallowed her rising apprehension as she felt her heart beating faster and her spinning thoughts make her dizzy. Surely I just dreamt it all up and am sleeping in my bed at home. I didn’t just bare myself body and soul to Madara Uchiha, of all people.
Her anxious green eyes fell to his rough hand that was splayed along her stomach, and with a weight like a boulder that dropped through her chest and into her gut, she realized that she had not remembered to purge her body of the evidences of their unions at all in the last three days. With sinking dread Sakura sent a pulse of chakra deep into herself, checking.
A miniature but certain thrum of life answered her back, deep in her womb.
Sakura sat up abruptly, Madara’s arm slipping from her stomach. She heard him stir as she got to her feet and quickly got dressed. “What’s wrong?” He sat up in the sheets. Sakura turned, her heart aching at the sight of him - black hair a wild tangle that covered the blankets, tired eyes beseeching her - former enemy, turned lover. Her face twisted with pain. She knew by the way her heart ached that this had gone far beyond what she had ever intended… and now, things had just gotten far more complicated.
“I’m sorry, Madara,” she choked, and with a hiss of pain, she turned from his confused expression and ran from the room.
Sakura kept running until she was deep in the woods. She ran with tears streaming down her cheeks and her mind turning in circles with the memories of the last three days as she tore through the trees, trying to decide what to do. She didn’t slow until she neared Konoha, and she slowed to a trot with a hand over her lower stomach as she entered the midnight-cloaked gates. She tried to regulate her breathing as she strode through the familiar streets. You just slept with Madara Uchiha, her brain was repeating, many, many times, and he is very much alive, and now you are pregnant.
Maybe it’s all still just a dream, she hoped as her small house came into view. Maybe…
The hope circled and repeated as she slipped into her own bed, her hands spread across the empty space in her bed. She both imagined and remembered his wild mane and long, warm form surrounding her as she fell asleep with tears drying on her cheeks.

Sakura had inevitably realized not long after her return home that every moment of her time with Madara had been real, proven by the seed of life that grew deep within her. She refused the remaining option of purging her body; though becoming a single mother was a prospect she did not want, she also did not want to free herself of this last vestige of him, and she had always wanted a child of her own.

She held to the promise that she had made to him during their time together - that she would not reveal that he is alive nor where he is. Sakura was determined to keep her word and she was determined to not return to him, her fears too great of what he would say and do, of what might happen or not happen.
She found that the thing to save her from the inevitable questions of her baby’s paternity was Sasuke’s slowly melting demeanour toward her. Though her heart wasn’t as into it anymore, she pursued him, and managed to catch him well before her pregnancy was showing. Time progressed; Sakura wed Sasuke, and she bore her child that had the unmistakable eyes and hair of an Uchiha. No one questioned her, and if rumors were raised that their wedding might have been due to her pregnancy, she did not care - her secret about her child’s true parentage was still well-hidden behind the easy guise that it was Sasuke’s.
But Sakura allowed herself one nod to Madara that no one but her would recognize. She had thought of a name for her daughter - one that combined Sakura’s name with Madara’s in a subtle enough way. Sarada.

present day
The impending conversation bubbled beneath the surface between Sakura and Sarada for a week, Sakura constantly avoiding the subject with her daughter about her true parentage. She knew that tensions were high between them and she didn’t have much longer before that tension snapped. It was too large a truth to hide in plain sight anymore.
Sakura found herself alone in the kitchen while Sarada was out training. There was no way her thoughts would relent without distraction now and she cut fiercely into the onion on the cutting board before her as she tried for the hundredth time to purge her mind of Madara. He had haunted her all week; every night, her memories replayed each moment she’d had with him as freshly as if they had happened recently, and he sliced through her thoughts in her waking moments. She was tormented by it and she had not slept well.
Damn that ancestry testing trend, she thought as she cut the onion in fourths, her chef’s knife glinting in the early afternoon light as she brought it up and rocked it against the board beneath her palm. Damn Orochimaru for doing the test and sending Sarada back the results. Damn it all. She clenched her teeth as she diced the onion, blaming it for the prickling at the corners of her eyes. Damn my head for keeping thoughts of Madara Uchiha after all these years. I regret ever meeting him.
The cutting board cracked beneath her knife and Sakura let up the pressure, blinking down at it for a moment before slumping her shoulders and hanging her head. Her practiced hands swept the diced onion into a bowl nearby and she tossed the cracked cutting board into the trash can by the counter. She took out a tray of smoked bacon from the oven, switching off the heat and placing the tray on the counter; the scent of smoke rose and filled her nostrils, and she held very still for a moment.
Sakura buried her face in the mane of black hair that covered the pillows, breathing in the heady, spicy smells of smoke and steel. Her fingers threaded through it, and she made a happy noise not unlike a purr as she enjoyed the warmth that surrounded her. “You have an obsession with my hair,” Madara grumbled as she smiled into the blackness and tugged it aside to peek at him; though his expression was unamused as he looked down at her, his eyes were warm.
“No!” Sakura cursed and shoved aside the tray; her hand burned where she touched it, and she pressed her other hand over the small burn, hunching against the opposite counter as she hung her head and tried to hold herself together. It was three days, she told herself again. It means nothing to him, if he’s still alive to remember it. If he remembers me.
She cursed again as she slid to the floor and huddled her face into her knees. She wanted to put her mind in a standstill, to purge the memories into the tears that streamed down her cheeks. Her desire to forget conflicted against her desire to relive it all again.
Outside the glass door beyond the kitchen counter, the distant sound of the wind in trees whistled and sighed. The oven next to her creaked quietly as it cooled. Somewhere above her in the living room, a clock ticked, its rhythm ever-steady.
Sakura let out a long exhale. She got to her feet, turning around to face the glass door, her gaze running through the sun-dappled woods. Her heartbeats slowed as she found that the only thing she regretted in all she had gone through was that she had never gone back and sought that hidden longhouse out again.
Madara, she thought, brows drawing together as she stared deep into the shifting woods. Where are you now?
Sakura stepped forward, one hand pulling open the glass door; she breathed in the scents of the leaves and the clean, crisp air, holding the memories in her mind and then releasing them into her pulsing bloodstream. Without further hesitation she took off into the forest, deciding that it was time for her to find out.
She did not notice Sarada watching her go, standing at the open patio door with wide eyes.

Sarada kept up with Sakura from a distance, using what she had learned in training to remain unheard and unseen as she followed her through the woods. She could tell how focused and tense she was even from a distance away. She didn’t know where they were headed, but she had a heavy feeling that it had to do with the conversation that they were yet to have about those test results.

As an hour passed of running, Sarada was having difficulty keeping up. She had tried to keep track of where they were going, picturing a map in her head, but she’d gotten lost after the first half hour; sweat drenched her arms and her back, and she was using all the energy and focus she had to keep her mother in sight ahead of her as well as remain undetected. She felt lucky that Sakura was so focused on her path and not as much on her surroundings. There were many twists and turns through the dense woods they ran through and Sarada wondered what could await them at this distant, obscure location.
It was another half-hour of running through the trees before Sakura slowed to a trot. Sarada withheld her gasp of relief as she tried to quietly regain her breath and her stamina, keeping a large distance from her mother and brushing off the dirt and stuck leaves from her clothes. She saw Sakura stop to breathe against a tree, running a hand up to let down her light hair; her skin was flushed and covered in a sheen of sweat though she did not look tired. She exhaled long and slow before she then walked with a straight back and watchful expression toward her destination.
It was then that Sarada noticed what that destination was. There were low rock walls around a tiny village that surrounded a wooden longhouse that was simple and traditional of build. There was a smattering of small houses surrounding it; dark-clothed people were dotted around the small village. Sarada didn’t recognize their clothing, and they did not wear symbols that she could see from where she was. Deciding to watch from above to keep her safe distance, Sarada climbed up a tall oak tree that overlooked the village, settling into the V of two large branches; she was relieved to have a chance to rest. Her dark eyes fell back to her mother’s figure as she approached the gates.
Sakura stood a moment, staring back at the two shinobi guards who silently appraised her. Without a single word exchanged they nodded to her, and then exchanged glances with each other as she walked into the village, her green eyes flicking around with barely detectable apprehension.
Sarada and Sakura’s gazes synchronously caught on a looming, red-armored figure that stepped out from the central building, his black mane of hair obscuring his face and running down his back. He stopped where he stood, and for a moment that felt as long as a pause in time, he and Sakura stared at each other.
“Sakura,” his deep voice rumbled then, breaking the spell, and she tensed where she stood. “Madara,” she answered unwaveringly, stepping toward him.
Madara? The name was familiar to Sarada; she had heard it before, but she couldn’t place it in her memory. She was too distracted by the scene unfolding beneath her.
Madara stepped toward Sakura in return. Her face was untensing slowly, and as she watched him step forward and into the shifting sunlight, her face broke into a smile. She threw herself forward then and they crashed together, her form small and slight against his intimidating red and black frame as his arms curled around her and she buried her face into his neck. Even from high above, Sarada could see the tears that streamed down Sakura’s cheeks and dripped slowly down the red samurai armor that Madara wore. He bent, murmuring in her ear, and her arms snaked around his back and pressed her closer to him.
Shinobi and villagers alike stared at their embrace, standing in small clusters and curious crowds around them; they were careful not to crowd them too closely. Sarada’s heart was pounding at what she was witnessing, and she lifted her hands to her face in her shock as she knew without a doubt that this must be the man who is her father. His hair was like Sarada’s; his eyes, from what she could see through his mane, were like hers; he matched her. He looked more like her than Sasuke ever had, and fascination grew in her mind as she sunk back against the branch. Madara had taken Sakura’s hands as they parted, and she was gazing up at him with conflicted eyes.
She said something to Madara that Sarada could not hear and his eyes widened in shock. Sakura lifted herself up on her toes, her hands resting on his red chestplate, as she planted a soft kiss to the side of his mouth; he curled a hand over her face, his terse expression full of emotion for a moment before he slowly let go of her face and turned his face upward.
Sarada sunk further back against the tree. Her blood pulsed.
Madara’s red Sharingan eye stared up at her where she balanced on the branch, blinking once beneath the massive black mane. Sakura followed his gaze, emerald eyes pinning to their daughter watching them from the tree.
With a squeak, Sarada leapt off the branch and onto the ground - she took off running, panting, her heart pounding painfully against her chest. Oh no. Oh no. She pushed to run as hard as she could, and had a small hope that she had escaped when she skidded to a halt in a pine- needle clearing, where Madara and Sakura stood waiting.
She stared at them in panic, and was about to kick off in another direction when her mother spoke. “Sarada, stay.”
“Sarada?” Madara echoed, and he looked down at Sakura, who smiled tentatively back.
Sarada swallowed, sweat running down her back, and she apprehensively stepped before them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, bowing her head. She was terrified of Madara. His tall frame shadowed the clearing and his aura of power was intimidating; next to her mother’s own aura of authority and strength, Sarada was shivering with fear.
“Look up,” Sakura said softly, and her tone was warm, encouraging. She lifted her eyes to them, her gaze flicking from her mother’s to Madara’s. His dark eye watched her evenly and Sarada swallowed as her mother spoke. “This is Madara Uchiha,” she stated, a slight tremor in her voice, “your… real father.”
Recognition slapped her thoughts across the wall of her head in the form of remembered history texts from her studies. The great Uchiha patriarch, a co-founder of Konoha, the feared ‘Grim Reaper’, and one of the most powerful shinobi to walk the earth. A fierce samurai who single-handedly defeated the entire Shinobi Alliance army, was imbued with godlike power, and brought about the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Her stomach dropped at the sight of him. He’s in all the history books. How did he slip my mind? Then, he is my father?
“Sarada.”
She stared with wide eyes at Madara, who had extended a black gloved hand forward. She stared at the hand and then shook it, her hand enveloped firmly by his before she dashed her eyes to the ground and bowed. “It’s an honor,” she managed, trembling.
Sakura stepped forward and set comforting hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” she scolded. “But I can’t help that you did.” She glanced back at Madara, who was observing them with dark eyes. “I need to speak with him before we go home. But… I don’t want you going back and telling everyone about this. I need you to hang out here for a bit while we go talk, okay?”
Sarada gave her a hug, then flashed her Sharingan at her mother with a small smile. “I suppose I could just train here in the woods while I wait.” Madara blinked with surprise behind Sakura at the sight of Sarada’s red eyes, and a proud smile twitched along his mouth.
“Good.” Sakura patted her and then turned to Madara, who offered her his arm. She took it, and he led her back toward the small village; Sarada watched them go, wondering what her future would like now.
“She looks like me,” Madara commented as they entered the familiar longhouse. Sakura was still recovering from their reunion, and she took a moment to gather her scattered thoughts as she glanced up at him with a small smile. His dark eye held hers. “And… I like the name.”
Sakura closed her eyes and leaned against his arm as he led her down a side hall and into a larger room than they had been in before. As she looked around, seeing the scattered dark clothing, dishes, draped Uchiha banners and armor racks around a large unmade bed, she knew these were his private quarters. They sat down together on the covers, and her heart was pounding harder as his large, warm hand rested on her knee and he shifted to stare at her intently.
“So Sarada is why you left.”
Sakura turned her face to escape his dark gaze, but his gloved hand tipped her chin back up so she was forced to look at him. She could not hide the pain in her eyes. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” He let go of her face, looking away, and years of questions began to stir from the depths of Sakura’s memories as she gazed back at him with a troubled expression. She could tell that he was still processing that he had a daughter, and she decided to be the quiet one this time that awaited his spoken thoughts.
“You should have come to me about this sooner.” Madara turned to her a dark look that shattered her guilt, sending its shards through her chest; she cringed as forced herself to keep her eyes on his. “I know,” she whispered, “I know.”
“All these years…” Madara’s eyes were wistful then, and he exhaled as he frowned deeply, his disappointment clear. “Why did you wait so long?”
Sakura looked away, her throat tightening with her shame, and she closed her eyes. “Look, I…” Her frustration rose, and her fingers curled into the mattress. “Because you’re you, Madara. Because how could I assume you would want her in your life?” She searched his impassive face. “And… and you never sought me out, either.”
She looked away, the pain in her chest constricting her tightly. “You’re the most dangerous thing to ever shadow my life. I do not know how or why you are here again, and I don’t know what you want. But…” Her green eyes were distant as she watched the Uchiha banners on the far wall drift restlessly. “I kept my word.” She closed her eyes. “Regardless of my vows to my village and to my friends I kept my word to you.” Sakura rose from the bed then, running her hands through her hair; she couldn’t bear to look at Madara, couldn’t bear the tension between them. She looked to the door, feeling him watch her. Then she turned, green eyes ablaze. “Tell me what you want, Madara.”
His face was cast in shadow as he leaned forward, his elbows leaning on his knees as his hair fell around his features and hid his expression. The silence hung in the air; she felt her heartbeat slow as he remained unresponsive and still. When she turned to leave, his voice emerged from the mass of dark hair. “Don’t. Not this time.”
Hesitantly, Sakura turned to Madara; her eyes softened then as she beheld his hunched form. She stepped forward, her fingers threading through his dark hair. She stood between his knees; her hands fell from his hair as he lifted his head, and her fingers splayed gently along the sides of his face. Her heart clenched in her chest as their eyes met, and she frowned; Madara watched her evenly for a long moment. She felt his gloved hands rest lightly on her back and she turned her face into his neck as she sighed into his warm skin. “Sometimes it all feels like an endless dream.”
“Hmm.” His rumble made her skin tingle where her face was pressed into his skin; she breathed him in. His hands tightened around her; she wound her arms around his shoulders.
“Maybe we’re all just trapped in the Infinite Tsukuyomi and this is my ideal life.”
“Ideal life?” Madara’s fingers tightened around her sides as he watched the tattered Uchiha banner on the wall flutter behind her. “I stopped believing in the possibility of that a lifetime ago.”
“Perhaps it’s still possible,” Sakura said then, pulling back to look into his eyes, and he grew still beneath her as her meaning clicked in place. Her blood rushed to her cheeks as her heart thundered in her chest; Sakura then slowly moved out of his arms.
Madara stared at her with wide eyes. Never had she seen him be speechless, and as her own words echoed in the space between them, she began to realize just how much she had just expressed in so few words. The words had come out of her lips before she had given conscious thought to it, and her heart was slamming to break free as she began to wonder what he would say in response.
“Think about it,” Sakura said, her eyes full of vivid color as she turned and walked quickly out of the room, running her hands through her hair.
The thoughts were so multiplicitous in her head that their pressure caused her a headache. Sakura stepped out of the longhouse, running her hands over her temples, and she turned to a curious-eyed guard that stood at the doors. “Tell him to come find me when he has his answer for me,” she said, knowing that multiple people could hear her words, and then she strode off and into the woods, calling Sarada’s name as she went.
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A Living Secret