Here's number eight in The Language of Flowers series, featuring Tsunade.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Absinth means separation and torment of love.
Tsunade recognizes the small, inconspicuous yellow flowers growing in a vase in the window of the funeral home. They are Artemisia absinthium, better known as absinth or wormwood.
She knows that it is one of the main ingredients in an extremely powerful spirit known as absinthe, an alcoholic drink with a poisonous green color.
But this does not matter to her. She has been sitting in that uncomfortable wood pew for eight hours.
There have not been many visitors; Dan's only living relative was his four-year-old niece Shizune who finally fell asleep in exhaustion sometime around eleven p.m., her head against Tsunade's knee. Jiraiya finally returned from his mission about an hour ago, and seeing the little girl there, he, with Tsunade's silent, somber permission, quietly picked her up and took her to his apartment to stay in the care of Minato, Arashi and Kushina; Shizune never woke up, her head nestled against Jiraiya's shoulder. Jiraiya said he would come back for her; he has yet to return.
Tsunade has not moved a muscle in eight hours. If she moves, she will collapse. She can not speak or hear or smell or blink or breathe. Especially not breathe. Death has stolen her breath away, has stolen her heart, her consciousness, her mind, her very essence…
Why did it have to be him? Why him? Her hands clench on her knees; the necklace she is now convinced is cursed weighs like a thousand pounds on her neck.
Life seems determined to steal from her everyone she loves. But Tsunade never thought, never fathomed, that Death's eyes would light on him.
Tsunade has known ever since the death of her brother that love is a double-edged sword. It provides bliss and joy beyond all imagining, and when that love is spirited away, the fall out is unimaginable.
Bliss, joy, happiness… It's all gone. In its place there is nothingness, a black hole with a gaping maw, beckoning souls ever closer so they can be devoured.
Tsunade feels like a raw knife is digging into her soul, reaping heart's blood and soul stuff, stealing it from her, taking away what she has to give, robbing her of the ability to live.
Why was it him?
She can still feel the blood that was encrusted beneath her manicured fingernails. She can still see the life flaring in Dan's eyes than fleeing from them, making his eyes like black marbles. Black and deep, but dull and static, no life within them at all. She can still hear his last words, "I don't want to die, Tsunade." Her eyes screw shut; her shoulders bow; her muscles tense as grief inflames every bone in her body, down to the marrow, searing it.
Why couldn't it have just been me?
It's not fair. She just knows that it's not fair. That other people have felt this kind of grief, deep and earth-shaking, that there are women in Konoha who grieve for lovers every day, it just doesn't seem to occur to her. Tsunade's just aware of her grief, her loss, and how nothing will ever be alright again.
Why…why…why…why…why…
"Tsunade." Jiraiya's voice is even and grim as he returns to the funeral home. He stands alone in the doorway, his face weary and full of bleak reality. "It's time to go."
I never knew love could hurt me so much.
Tomorrow morning when the director of the funeral home returns to discover the front right-hand pew so thoroughly smashed that it's unfit to be used as matchwood, he knows exactly who is responsible.
Tsunade would give anything to drown her love and her sorrows. But the absinth isn't absinthe the infamous Green Fairy. It's just a plant.
I hope I did a good job of portraying Tsunade through her darkest hour. Considering absinth is both a plant and an ingredient in a powerful intoxicant, I thought it fit.