Kabuto does not return for days, and the time spent waiting is agonising for Sakura. Her room is small and uninspiring; a bed, a chest of drawers, and a tiny, attached bathroom. She takes to lying on her bed and staring at the grey ceiling, trying to imagine patterns in the grain of the concrete. Her mind starts out slowly, thinking about what she has done, the people she's fixed. She wonders if they realise yet that she has helped them? Wonders if, when they do, perhaps she might be allowed to come home? She pushes this thought aside whenever it rears its unlikely, naive head. That is not a thought for now. In fact, none of the thoughts she has are thoughts for now.

Her frustration grows as the days pass and the only stimulation she has is the groan of the door opening and her food being slid inside. One of the people responsible for feeding her is none too careful with the sliding of the tray, and sometimes half her meal ends up on the floor. She cleans it up out of sheer boredom, and because she figures that the people who are feeding her probably assume she is some kind of dangerous criminal. No way they'll come in just to clean up spilled food.

When that thought first crosses her mind, that they seem afraid of her, it stirs something deeply uncomfortable in her mind. That she is, in fact, a criminal, and they may be right to fear her. She has done some terrible (wonderful) things. The thought brings tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She wants to not be here, to not have done the things she has done. She wants to be home, wants to see her friends and family, and be seen again. Seen as Sakura. As who she is, and always has been, not as some dangerous criminal, as the monster who changed people.

Saved people.

She blinks away the tears. Yeah, she saved people, but at what cost? They never wanted the things she did to them, never gave their permission for her to change them that way. Maybe some of them will be grateful, but she's certain that others will hate her for what she has done to (save) them.

Anger swirls in her then. Frustration, that they won't see her brilliance, her innovation, only the terrible steps she took to get there.

Her heart feels heavy and violent as it beats against the cage of her chest, and the immense pressure that builds behind her eyes makes her think they might burst from her skull and drain down her face. Her body shudders and the room begins to quake around her, though she thinks that is simply her mind unpicking itself, neurons unwiring, unfiring. Reality feels as though it is folding in on itself, as though her entire being is about to explode in a bloody corona of molecules and chakra.

She thinks it has happened, she has broken into incalculable numbers of pieces, though she can't have, surely, if she can locate a sensation on a part of her body? There is pressure on her chest, from the outside now, not just the inside, and she gets the impression that she is horizontal. The cacophonous roaring in her ears parts just so, to allow a hissed "enough!" to reach her conscious mind, and she feels a curious obeisance from the overwhelming rush of chakra hurtling through her body. It slows, just enough for her vision to clear of the black and static lightshow she had been experiencing, just enough for her to see narrowed golden eyes. They look angry, she thinks, and maybe a little uncertain?

She watches his thin lips move, sound reaching her slowly through her overloaded synapses. "Enough, Sakura."

She heaves a great sigh as the burning pressure in her body eases to a merely unbearable tingling. It makes her twitch and she is grateful when he draws his elegant hands down her arms, rubbing the patchwork static from her flesh.

She hunts out his eyes with her own, and once they are caught, asks "more?" in a tiny, pleading voice.

He looks strangely like a trapped animal for a moment, but then huffs out a raspy, annoyed breath, and presses his palms to her hands with a curt, "where?"

"Everywhere," she whispers, squinting her eyes against her own discomfort at the situation, but she cannot process this many sensations at once; she thinks she might go crazy. The tingling hurts, makes her want to claw her own skin off, but he makes it better somehow. His touch is like a magnet, drawing all the tiny bursts of energy into a point, and then dissipating it. She doesn't care how or why it works at the moment, she's just immeasurably grateful that it does.

His face twists into a displeased frown, lips thinning into a line, and he continues to press his hands to her only when her entire body twitches and spasms and her face contorts into a rictus of pain. "Please," she groans through clenched teeth.

She keeps her eyes closed, trying to spare them both some discomfort, and focuses on the receding sparks of arcing sensation. He focuses mostly on her arms and lower legs, lays his hand on her forehead once, and she almost cries with relief as the itching, dancing energy drains from her brain, through her skin where his palm makes contact.

She is utterly drained, and drifts off to sleep at some point when most of the erratic hurt is gone.

She doesn't see the disconcerted golden eyes glaring at her, nor hear the muttered "Kabuto you arrogant little cretin."