Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the characters…obviously.

Also I am really tired of this reporting and flaming BS because of Madara being older than Sakura. Alright, fine then. I'll switch it up. ;P

Anyway, onto the story!

He hunched over resting his hands on his knees in a desperate attempt to catch his breath. He was unsure of the number of times he had passed the same tree marked by the blade of a kunai he had recovered from the enemy. Bands of shinobi unrelentingly appeared in waves attacking him for reasons unknown. With each cycle that appeared, he had successfully fended them off. However, he was destined to lose if he were to engage in another confrontation.

The odds definitely were not in his favor. His tattered cloak soiled in dirt and blood was beginning to adhere to his ashen skin. He had not eaten in days considerably exacerbating his fatigue and dizziness. An overwhelming surge of heat seized his body rendering his movements painfully sluggish. He was desperately parched unable to find any source of water in this boundless forest.

Despite his wounds, fatigue, disorientation, fever, and malnourishment the worst of his pains had to have been the irritating stinging sensation plaguing his eyes. Rubbing his eyes provided a brief relief from the stinging. However, he had repeatedly rubbed them to the point of rawness nullifying any persevered sense of relief.

He continued pressing forward through the never-ending forest. It seemed two options remained—die of exhaustion or die in battle.

A shuriken whizzed past his ear before becoming embedded in the trunk of a tree.

Death by battle it seemed.

This group of shinobi was much smaller than he had previously encountered consisting of only five men. He relayed reassuring thoughts to himself— he could take them out effortlessly.

The five men possessed the same musical note symbol etched on their headbands as his previous assailants also had.

"Come quietly or we'll take you by force." The leader of the band brandished a kunai.

He had lost track of the number of times his assailants uttered that same phrase. Evidently, they were determined to capture him for some undisclosed reason. If these particular shinobi were, in fact, dispatched to take him back there again he would simply eliminate them as he had the others.

That was if he could muster the strength to fight back in his current condition.

The sound of battle erupting through the forest canopy had drawn her astray from her path. Sakura had instructed herself not to become involved in the conflict of other shinobi and to return to the village in a prompt manner.

After the Fourth Shinobi World War, the Five Great Shinobi Nations relished a fleeting moment of peace. However, over ninety percent of the Shinobi Alliance perished causing a population bottleneck of the shinobi populace largely consisting of adults and adolescents. All five nations had been devastated economically due to the war. Inflation skyrocketed as resources had grown scarce during the recovery period. Despite the Kages' resolve to preserve peace and maintain amity amongst the nations, the civilians began to lose faith in their leaders amidst the destitution of the economic depression. Rekindled hostility and distrust had seized the nations once again in competition for resources. The vision of worldwide peace that impassioned the hearts of every shinobi fighting on the battlefield, the very notion tens of thousands of shinobi relinquished their lives for…had been nothing more than an evanescent dream.

Most of the Great Nations' highest skilled medics had been devastated in the war resulting in a scarcity of medical resources across the lands. Sakura had been deployed to a small village on the northern outskirts of the Land of Fire in order to provide medical relief in the midst of a flu epidemic. Typically, the flu does not pose a threat in the adult population which is capable of fighting it off without calamity. However, this particular village had lost a large portion of its adult population in the war leading to a significant gap between the age groups. It primarily consisted of children and the elderly who were largely susceptible to the flu. The mortality rate in the village had been alarmingly high and the Hokage depended on her pupil to subdue the epidemic before it spread across the country.

Sakura had spent a long amount of time in this village ensuring the ill had been quarantined and treated. She attempted to address the epidemic as best as she could until more medical personnel had arrived. As the epidemic had reached the cusp of the convalescent stage, her duties had been relieved and she was discharged from the village.

She had insisted on trying to avoid the confrontation befalling the forest until she sighted an inexcusable injustice obliging her to intervene. She had seen the worst of atrocities transpire during the course of the war and she had become acclimated to the horrific cruelties mankind had to offer.

However, no matter how many times she had seen it occur, she could never stomach witnessing a child suffer.

Five Sound shinobi encircled a young raven haired boy clad in a ragged and bloodied cloak. Otogakure was notorious for capturing young children for use in slavery, experimentation, or as an addition to their shinobi ranks.

The boy appeared famished and sickly pale on the brink of fainting any second. Sakura did not waste any time inserting herself into the confrontation.

"Shannaro!" She roared with the fury of a mother bear protecting its cub.

Her fist connected with the jaw of the tallest assailant sending him flying into the trunk of a tree. The tree resounded with a loud crack as it snapped in half from the force of the airborne shinobi.

His comrades turned their venomous gazes to the pink haired kunoichi interfering with their mission. Two men rushed in towards her drawing their blades in concert. She drew a kunai blocking the blow of the blade to reach her first. He engaged her in a shoving match while his associate quickly pulled up alongside him. She grasped her attacker by the wrist yanking him off his feet with tremendous force and hoisted his body in the air. She launched his body straight into the approaching comrade knocking him down.

Before the two piled men had a chance to recover, she bounded into the air and drove her heel into the spine of the man at the top of the stack. The remaining shinobi shielded their faces as her immensely powerful axe kick sent debris in the air creating a large crater in the earth.

"Grab the kid!" She heard one of them call out.

"Like hell!" Sakura hollered lifting the trunk of the tree snapped in half by the first shinobi.

The boy observed the pink haired girl's display of raw, herculean strength as she slammed the tree trunk into the last two remaining assailants decidedly ending the battle.

Sakura heaved her last breath of belligerent fury and instantly switched to nurturing medic mode. She placed a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder bending down to his level.

"Are you alright?" She asked in a higher tone of voice, her emerald eyes ridden with concern.

He scowled pushing her hand off his shoulder. "I don't need your help."

She caught him as he attempted to turn away from her instead fainting into her arms. His body felt even lighter than she had anticipated.

She brushed his dark spiky bangs away and placed a hand on his brow noting seething heat emanating from his skin. In order to cool his fever she would have to backtrack towards the river she had just forded on her way home. She shed her backpack replacing the unconscious boy in its place and carried it in her arms. Determined to nurse the boy back to health she set off towards the riverbed.

Having found shelter in a shallow cavern, she continued addressing the boy's wounds sending chakra to the much deeper, life threatening wounds and patching the smaller, shallower ones with ointment and dressing. His fever had finally broken after washing the blood and grime off his body in the river and rewetting the rag on his brow with cold water each time it became tepid. She had washed his soiled cloak in the river and clothed him in it again after drying it in the sunlight. She draped her own cloak over him which was thick enough to prevent him from chills yet thin enough to prevent him from overheating.

She propped his head up on her lap as he seemed to be waking up and tipped a small bowl of red syrup into his mouth. "Drink."

He sipped the syrup cautiously barely lifting his eyelids open. He jerked violently startling Sakura and suddenly spit the medicine out.

"Gross! What is this?! You're trying to poison me!" His face soured bitterly as he continued trying to spit the syrup.

"Hey! Don't spit it out! That medicine is expensive!" She frowned sternly setting the bowl down. "It's a pain killer and fever reducer made for children. I can assure you it will make you feel better."

He shook his head and threw her a disapproving scowl. He had initially reckoned she was an adult when she fought off those shinobi however, having now seen her up close he realized she was merely a teenage girl.

"I don't trust you. You could be one of them."

Sakura smiled sweetly and poured water in the small bowl. "I promise I won't hurt you. I'm a medic from Konoha."

He accepted the bowl of water wanting to rid the taste of the disgusting syrup from his mouth. "Konoha…? I've never heard of it."

"Well, it's my hometown just south of here. By the way, my name is Haruno Sakura. What is yours?"

He seemed to brood for a moment as if he almost didn't know the answer to her question. "It's Madara."

"Madara?!" She exclaimed loudly in alarm.

He contorted his face having taken offense to Sakura's response. "Is there something wrong with my name?"

"It's just…well…" She waved her hand nervously noticing the boy's indignant scowl.

What kind of loving parents would name their child Madara? There were parents out there who named their children after objects, food, and infamous criminals simply for the cruel fun of it. This boy seemed to be in his preteen years but even before the Fourth Shinobi War the name Madara had long been retired from use due to the notoriety it had garnered. The boy had been in poor condition severely neglected and malnourished. Was he an orphan? Had he been rejected by his mother? It was uncommon for reluctant mothers in the hospital to give birth to an unwanted child and bequeath the child with a terrible name as if to curse its very existence.

She couldn't fathom calling the child Madara. Uttering such a poisoned name was as painful and uncomfortable as chewing on glass shards.

"Can I call you Mada-kun instead?" She asked forcing a smile. It still didn't feel any less uncomfortable.

"My name is Madara!" He raised his finger at her furiously reprimanding her for the unsolicited nickname.

"Mada-kun it is."

"Don't call me that!"

She tittered softly into her hand. "Judging by your spirit, I'd say you're starting to feel better, huh."

"I guess." He pouted rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Don't rub your eyes. You have an eye infection. You'll just introduce more microbes into your eyes." Sakura unscrewed the tops of two ophthalmic drop bottles. "Don't move. I'll rinse out your eyes first."

Madara squirmed as she forced his head still with one arm and drew the edge of the dropper closer to his eye.

"Hold still! It's just saline." She hissed and clamped his head in place between her arm and thigh.

First, she flushed his eyes with saline then instilled a drop of antibiotic in each eye. Madara's hands immediately snapped up to rub his eyes.

She slapped his hands startling him.

"Rub your eyes one more time and I'll tie them behind your back!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" He shouted at her dropping his arms back down to his sides.

Sakura narrowed her verdant green eyes in a foreboding manner. "I'm the medic here and if you want to get better you'll do as I say!"

He said nothing as she fished through her backpack and unwrapped a crumpled sheet of foil containing several dark spherical balls.

"What is that?" Madara curiously scrutinized the strange spherical food.

"They're food pills made from medicinal herbs, rice, flour, and vegetables. They'll help replenish your chakra." She handed him a single pill.

He split the pill in half with his teeth drawing one half into his mouth. His face immediately soured upon tasting the pill and yet again he spit up the pill desperate to rid the offensive taste from the palate of his mouth.

"You're trying to poison me again!"

"Stop wasting my medicine!"

He stood at the bank of the river hurling rocks into the running waters. Sakura observed him from a distance. A short while ago, he had been skipping rocks across the brim of the water but now it seemed like he was taking his anger out on the river. Now that he had regained his strength it was the perfect timing to further inquire about his situation.

Sakura approached him from behind. He snapped around toward her and yelled clenching his fingers around a rock. "Don't sneak up behind me!"

"Relax." Sakura raised her hand in an attempt to assuage his temper. "You're seem troubled. Is something bothering you?"

He turned away from her and flung the rock into the water.

"It's just that…" His brow knit in frustration. "I can't remember anything. I don't know where my family is…I don't know where my home is…I don't know where anything is. All I have is my name and nothing else."

"You don't remember anything? Did you hit your head?" Sakura asked placing her finger to her lip speculating the source of his amnesia.

He shook his head and retrieved another rock from the shore. "I don't remember."

Sakura watched him cast the rock into the river spraying water on the shafts of her boots. Judging by his weak and emaciated condition, the poor child must've endured severe abuse, neglect, or a traumatic incident which also instigated his amnesia. She was able to heal his wounds and nurse him back to health but there was nothing she could do to cure amnesia.

The only thing she could do now was find the nearest village to care for the child.

A/N: Thanks for reading and please review!