Hi everyone!

Of Broken Love here, under my new account as Of Healing Love. Finally getting it up and running!

So, this is my new MadaSaku story. It will also be posted my website, ofbrokenloveofficialwebsite . com. If you have any trouble locating it, feel free to PM me and I will do my best to help you find it. However, if you're reading the story on here, all you will need the blog for is for the lemon scenes.

Yes, I said lemons. As they will be dubious-consent and not *quite* non-consent, this story is my first attempt to add a little willingness/romance to my repertoire of stories. I don't profess to be a romance writer and may never be, I'm attempting to slowly move to a more acceptable genre.

So, all that being said, I will be making my best efforts on this account to follow FF . net's guidelines for posting stories. Again, THERE WILL STILL BE LEMONS, but there will be warnings and I will post the link to find them. As such, the chapters where there are lemons may be entirely omitted and/or rather short. If you want to read them, all the more power to you. If you don't, now you have an easy way to avoid them.

Anyways, enjoy the story!

Chapter One

Lost

"NARUTO!"

Her yell seemed to echo back at her in the strangest of ways. Then, there was a blur of color, flashing images passing by too quickly to discern what they were, and then she was staring up through the leaves of tall, near-ancient trees and hearing the chirping of crickets and other night wildlife.

Haruno Sakura sat up and glanced around at her surroundings. Naruto, beaten and bloodied as he had been, was nowhere to be seen, as well as any trace of Tobi, the masked man they'd been fighting who had almost killed Naruto in the process of trying to weaken him for capture. They had been on their way back from a two-man mission in one of the outer-lying towns on the border of the Fire Nation. They had been probably four or five miles away when Tobi had assaulted them, determined to eliminate Sakura and capture Naruto himself.

After Pein's failed attack on Konoha, the Akatsuki were apparently getting desperate.

Naruto had put up a great fight, but it had been because of her that he'd been so wounded. He'd deflected a killing blow and had, in turn, gotten his right arm cut off. Tobi had been relentless after that and Naruto was quickly bleeding out, so Sakura had found no other option than to save Naruto's life in what was now, admittedly, perhaps not the wisest of decisions.

It was called the Return to Past jutsu that she, Tsunade, and Shizune had been working on perfecting. When executed correctly, it returned the user to their previous state before the injury. It was highly chakra-consuming and had been meant to only be used in life-or-death situations—and it had been, but the difference between its intended use and how she had used it was the fact that it…hadn't really been perfected yet.

She had been performing the jutsu and Naruto's arm had been returned to him…at least she thought so. Tobi hadn't been too pleased, she remembered, because he'd used his time-space jutsu to interrupt the process of channeling her chakra into her best friend's arm. The last thing she'd seen was Naruto bringing up the once-severed arm to attack Tobi, even though her jutsu hadn't completed yet, and then Tobi had interrupted them. She vaguely remembered their chakras clashing before she screamed her friend's name and now…here she was, neither Naruto nor Tobi anywhere to be seen. There wasn't even a sign of a battle, not even a scuffle; the trees obliterated by her chakra-filled punches were just as they had been before they'd been destroyed and there was no blood, no scorch marks from the rasengan, not even a stray kunai stuck in one of the trees to demonstrate a missed attack.

There was nothing, and in some ways that was more terrifying than being at the scene of the battle.

Something was clearly very, very wrong.

Inhaling a deep, calming breath, Sakura noticed that the air here was strangely fresher than it had been before this occurrence, and not just in the sense of not being filled with the stench of blood. It was definitely different; cleaner; the word newer came to mind, but that didn't make sense. There wasn't such a thing as 'old air,' at least not in this context.

She started to take in more of her surroundings. She was in a clearing much like the one she and Naruto had fought in, although again, devoid of battle. The stars were bright and the night sky clear and pristine…which was odd, because the sky had been overcast with a winter storm on the way when they had taken a rest before finishing the trek to Konoha.

Next, she glanced down at herself, assessing her injuries. She had several deep cuts on her arms and plenty of welts all over from blocking. The bandages around her shins were all but obliterated and her sandals were torn in a most uncomfortable way. Her clothes were covered in blood—mostly not hers—and dried flecks of the substance covered most of her upper body as well.

Detecting a broken rib or two, Sakura groaned. She didn't have enough chakra to do anything for her wounds at the moment, so she would simply have to grin and bear it.

The only thing next was action. She needed to report to the Hokage right away.

Shakily, the pinkette got to her feet and took a feeble step forward. No good; she was not only out of chakra, but facing chakra-exhaustion as well. Stumbling over to the nearest tree root, Sakura figured that there wasn't much else she could do other than let herself rest. From what she could tell, she was safe. There weren't any chakra signatures in her vicinity and what she really needed was a good nap. Absently Sakura felt for her vial of soldier pills, remembering having given her last one to Naruto. As the vial turned out empty, she knew that at least that much hadn't changed.

She felt rather numb, she noticed as she closed her eyes. Quite frankly, she knew she needed to be a lot more worried than she was, and falling asleep in a clearing and completely exposed wasn't a good idea. In fact, it was a very bad idea. But she couldn't bring herself to care as darkness surrounded her mind and she fell into a deep unconsciousness.

When she awoke next, the sky was pink and orange with the rising sun. She had rested long enough to restore a decent amount of chakra and her first goal was to heal the broken ribs, which were only slightly fractured to her relief, and then quickly got to her feet, prepared to finish the trek to Konoha.

She ran mostly without the use of chakra, still feeling that her reserves were rather low. As she did so, it was beginning to bother her that she wasn't passing the landmarks she was used to and hadn't sensed any border patrol at all. In fact, it seemed very likely that she was completely alone.

That is, until she felt a kunai whiz past her ear—obviously a warning sign rather than meant to kill, because she wasn't moving with particular agility and any decent shinobi could have killed her with that.

Cursing, she sped up and pumped chakra into her legs to assist this goal. She didn't have enough chakra for a fight after healing herself, even if these people didn't necessarily seem to want to kill her. But she had to get to Konoha—especially since enemies were clearly in their borders.

"Halt!" called a masculine voice. It was definitely unfamiliar. Sakura continued forward as fast as she could.

Where was Konoha? She should have seen the walls by now! At the very least the Hokage mountain!

But the trees were too thick to see past—something that was definitely different. She jumped up onto one but the minute slowing of her speed in that moment caused her pursuers to catch up with her.

She was grabbed by her collar and a kunai was held to her throat, the assaulter holding her from behind.

"What are you doing in Uchiha lands, kunoichi?" a voice asked, this time feminine.

"Uchiha lands?" asked Sakura, bewildered. "The Uchiha clan was massacred."

It wasn't meant to come out like that and the moment it did and the kunai was dug deep into her throat, although not enough to kill.

"Who are you, kunoichi and what are your intentions toward the clan?" the female hissed from behind her. Apparently, mentioning the Uchiha massacre hadn't been a good idea, intentional or not.

Sakura grit her teeth at the pain of the blade digging into the sensitive skin of her throat. "I'm just a traveler and my intentions are my own." With that, she elbowed the kunoichi behind her in the gut, only using a minimal amount of chakra, and sent the female from behind her flying back into the quickly approaching ground.

The pinkette whirled around and was faced with a squad of three black-haired shinobi, two male and one female. They were dressed clearly as Uchiha ninja, with the trademark high-collared navy blue shirts, black pants and bandages wrapped around their shins, much as hers had been before they'd been shredded and then discarded. Their sandals were somewhat different from the usual style; their feel was much more…traditional.

When Sakura noticed the spinning tomoe of the sharingan spinning, she knew this was no hoax.

Something was definitely, clearly and most certainly very wrong.

She gaped at them but had the sense not to look into their eyes. "I don't want a fight," she stated clearly at last, knowing that three sharingan users, while she could probably take them on at full chakra with a decent chance of success, were very out of her league at the moment. She noticed, due to avoiding their eyes, that they were beaten up and had probably endured—and the third male had barely survived—a recent battle.

They said nothing, glaring at her with some uncertainty. Sakura decided to play on this; she couldn't fight them and clearly she was somewhere she didn't belong—although she had little intention of figuring what that was, exactly, and perhaps this was a dream but that kunai had felt very real—so she decided to show an effort of goodwill.

"I am a healer," she continued. "And I'm lost. I'm looking for my village but…" saying it didn't seem to exist didn't sound like a good thing to admit. "…but I can't seem to find it. In return for information and an agreement to-" not kill me "to continue towards my village in peace, I will heal all of you to the best of my capabilities." She pointedly glanced at the third, most injured shinobi. "And I will make sure he survives."

The two healthiest ninja glanced at each other, communicating with their eyes, and then at their injured comrade, who had chosen a very convenient time to cough up coagulated blood onto the grass. The first male, obviously the leader, looked up at her resolutely. "Deal. Now come down here and attend to him."

Sakura did so without hesitation to show them her willingness to keep up her end of the deal. She jumped lightly to the ground and, just as the third member stumbled after another bloody cough, caught him and laid him down gently onto the ground.

"What's your name," she asked, certain that good bedside manner would get her points and convince the shinobi, who were clearly at an advantage in this deal, to not go back on their word.

It wouldn't be the first time a shinobi demonstrated a lack of honor. It wasn't exactly in the job description.

With that in mind, she decided to only take care of the life-threatening injuries and not return the Uchiha to their full capacity. She might be desperate, but she wasn't stupid.

"Our names are classified," the leader said sternly. Sakura glanced up at him and then nodded in understanding before assessing the man before her.

Ascertaining that her most urgent patient had a punctured lung—how he'd gotten this far was beyond her—she immediately began to heal the ruptured tissue and mend the three broken bones. Then, she ordered him to get on his hands and knees while she pushed chakra into his lungs. On her word, he coughed up the remaining blood in his lungs onto the grass. For good measure she scanned the rest of his body for injuries and healed his sprained wrist and the two broken fingers on his left hand.

"There, all better," she said with finality. The shinobi took a deep breath and flexed his hands, then nodded to her in appreciation.

"Thank you, healer-san," the shinobi said gratefully before standing up and walking to his partners. The female shinobi approached her second, sitting down on the grass and showing Sakura a deep cut on her forearm.

Sakura immediately went to work healing the wound, ignoring the two men talking in hushed tones several yards away from her. It was just barely wide enough to not need stitches; another few millimeters of the cut and chakra wouldn't have been enough to heal it. Nonetheless, the fact that it was so wide made it a bit of a challenge to heal with her remaining chakra.

Just as she finished with the kunoichi's wound, there was the loud screeching of a hawk. Sakura looked up immediately with wary eyes, but the hawk seemed harmless enough as it landed on the leading shinobi's shoulder. As Sakura watched in interaction and saw the leader's eyes widen minutely, glance at her, and then animal and shinobi's eyes met in a moment of some kind of communication, she felt a tingling of suspiciousness fill her. However, she tamped it down as the hawk flew away and motioned for the leader to get healed.

"Your services are no longer needed by us," the leader said, his voice colder than before. "However, our leader is in need of healing and you are the nearest healer to the clan. You will come with us."

"Oh no you don't, we had a deal," Sakura said, instantly at her feet.

"I see no contract. You should know better than to make verbal agreements with strangers," the leader replied. He nodded at his subordinates and they moved to grab her.

Sakura was having none of it. Pumping chakra into her hand, she slammed her fist into the ground, creating a large, rocky crater as the shinobi advanced. They jumped back out of the way and that was plenty of time to run for it.

But where, exactly, was she running to?

They were in hot pursuit of her and Sakura cursed that she had made the deal. It wasn't really that she'd had any other choice, but perhaps she had gone about it the wrong way. Strengthening enemies, which they clearly were to her, and thereby weakening her already-weak self hadn't really been a good idea after all.

The pursuit was not going in her favor. In order to change things up, she jumped created shadow clones that had equal amounts of chakra and sent them off in seven different directions. That, in the very least, would buy her time.

She had underestimated the sharingan, however, and found herself face to face with the shinobi whose life she had saved only minutes ago.

"I apologize, healer-san," he said, sounding genuinely unhappy with the situation. "You can be assured that after to heal our leader, you will be allowed to leave."

"I'm not going to heal your fucking-" But Sakura had made the mistake of making eye contact with the shinobi in her anger. Even though she blamed herself, it had been awhile since she had trained with a sharingan user and therefore was not really used to avoiding eyes.

The moment they made eye contact, he sent her into a genjutsu that put her to sleep near instantly.

The chapters of this story will be many, but I warn you that they are not always very long. I apologize.

Cheers!

Of Healing Love