Prompt 19: Cold: She was cold and getting colder. /You're not the only one who's suffering, you know./

If you want to see me write about a specific character or character combination, tune into the poll on my profile. Set seven years pre-series. Tsunade is about forty-three, and Shizune is fourteen.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

This was always a bad day for Tsunade-sama. It wasn't exactly a good day for me, either, but she handles grief differently than I do.

I sighed and muttered worriedly to myself as I walked up the night-darkened high street, looking for the seediest bar where she would surely be; I knew how much my mistress drank on this day.

I felt the same way I did every year on this day. I felt like I didn't fit in my skin, like it was crawling and fighting to get off. I felt ill at ease, twitching and miserable, and I knew I wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight.

The fact that the night looked almost exactly like the night Uncle died didn't help anything.

It was cold, with a distinct bite in the air, and I could see fog forming where my breath touched the air. I was filled with a chilly sense of foreboding. Maybe my subconscious had some idea of the night to come, maybe not, but either way, I didn't like it.

It had been ten years, and here I was. Instead of sitting in front of a memorial stone or praying and paying my respects, I was searching the city's bars for Tsunade-sama, who was drowning her grief in alcohol. Though I would later break that vow, I promised myself on that night that I would never drink.

I missed Uncle. I do still miss Uncle. But on that night, the pain was making itself more prevalent than usual. My insides felt like they were on fire; maybe this was what inebriation felt like. If it was, I was sure I didn't like it. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up on the side of the road.

There was the bar. The neon sight blinked in a way that indicated faulty wiring, and the occasional shower of sparks would go flying (I made sure to avoid that), and slipped inside.

We were in the Land of Rivers at the time; normally, no one below eighteen would be allowed into one of their bars, but from the look of this bar, I highly doubt that the law was being enforced too closely, and my habitually dark clothing made me difficult to spot.

Tsunade wasn't hard to pick out; I'd know that platinum blonde head of hair anywhere. She was hunched over the main bar, nursing a glass of what was not sake, but probably hard liquor. I bit my lip. I had my work cut out for me alright.

I didn't bother to greet her as I sat down. I clenched my hands together where they were, on top of the bar, and waited. Tsunade was a talkative woman, even when drunk (or maybe especially while drunk), and she did love to converse. It wouldn't be long.

And it wasn't. "Well, Shizune." She wasn't to the point that she was slurring—yet—, but I knew that she was extremely drunk and it wouldn't be long before she couldn't talk yet. Her voice was dull and strangely slow. "I was expecting you sooner."

I said nothing. I wanted to tell her that I was trying to respect her grief, even if she was disrespecting my uncle in the progress. I wanted to tell her that I knew all the pain that was sending off random impulses from the brain. I wanted to tell her that I didn't like having to track her down to bars I was scared to go into and that—damn it—it was her liver and what she did with it was her own business, but I didn't.

I said nothing, I did nothing. I was too tense and too wary to put any words to the smoke-filled air (if you could call it that; I wondered if the outer layers of the atmosphere were so toxic), and I stared straight ahead, my brown eyes resting somewhere between the row of upside-down glasses and the row of multi-colored liquids glittering sinfully inside of high, narrow-necked bottles.

I said nothing, but Tsunade felt no such restrictions. "Try some of this." She held out her glass to me.

I frowned suspiciously down at it. It was a liquid of a poisonous green shade, bright, hurtful and roiling. My stomach began churning again.

"What is it?"

"It's absinthe." She glowered at me through bloodshot golden brown eyes; there were no tear lines on her face. Tsunade never cried where any could see, and neither did I.

I had never heard of it. And in my ignorance, I hesitantly accepted the outstretched glass and took a sip the way I would when I was dosing myself with the routine poisons.

I nearly spat it out. It was all I could do to swallow it. I am very proud to say that I was able to manage that without my eyes watering. For some reason, it only made me feel worse. Now my head was ringing to match my stomach churning.

Tsunade saw my face. "You don't like it, huh? Well, that's alright. I drink more than enough for the both of us." Her voice began to trail off. "More than enough…"

She trailed off, and I must have been too silent that night for her liking, because soon enough, Tsunade was attempting to fill the empty spaces with words that echoed and bounced off the ceiling. "You're here to take me home, huh?"

I didn't answer, but something in the way my shoulders tensed must have said yes. She laughed harshly. "You can forget about that, Shizune, because I am staying right here." She drained her glass, and called for another round.

For the first time that night, I spoke of my own volition. "Why do you always do this?" I didn't intend for my voice to be so small. I had wanted to come out strong and challenging, and all I could manage was a small, raw, tremulous half-whisper.

Tsunade was not impressed. "Because it seems like I'm the only one who cares. It feels like I'm the only mourning for Dan anymore." The words dripped with grief and self-loathing, but I didn't hear, didn't realize until later. I was stunned.

You're the only one?, I thought. Do you honestly think that? This was a bitter pill to swallow, and it made what I wanted to say that much more difficult. I felt something grow inside of my stomach, and it wasn't just grief anymore, but intertwined with anger.

I had suffered from the day Uncle had died. I had clearer memories of him than I did of my own parents, and he had been Tousan to me. He was as good as a father; he was…everything.

Dan hadn't deserved to die the way he had, and when I had first heard, there were times when I resented Tsunade. I resented her for being with him at the last, and I resented her for not being strong enough to save him.

The months after his death were hell to me. My brother Seiya had died in the same battle as him. My parents were dead; I had no living relatives. At first, I wanted to stay with Tsunade. She was there, she was familiar, she was safe.

But then she left. She left Konoha, and she left me.

Somehow, somehow in the utter madness of the universe I found myself under the care of Jiraiya and his three students, Minato, Arashi, and Kushina, until Jiraiya eventually got fed up and took me to where he knew Tsunade would be.

I looked at her, drinking her life away, trying her very best to send all of her internal organs into arrest (and it must have been hard, with her healing ability fighting her every step of the way), and for a moment I think I hated her.

Those words… They hurt. They hurt because they weren't true.

My words had to be spoken. I knew that now. It was no time to be scared, I had to be brave.

My voice was low and trembling as I said, "You're not the only one who's suffering, you know."

Tsunade looked up suddenly. Her eyes were bleary, confused, and somewhat wary.

I wasn't done. "Do you think this solves anything?"

I was shaking now. I had gone past the point where I could go back; I just had to ride it out. "Do you have any idea how much it hurts to watch you like this, trying to forget about him?"

Her eyes flashed. "I'm not trying to forget him." Her voice rose as she spoke.

"That's exactly what you're doing! I can't take it anymore! You do this every year. You drink and you drink and you drink, and every time it's so you don't have to think about him. You always run." My voice lost its fire. "You always run," I whispered.

"What makes you think I'm running away from anything?" Tsunade snapped. "Why should I want to run away?!"

The words floated in the air. I could almost hear her voice, in a trembling whisper, asking me, Is it because you blame me as much as I blame myself? Is it because you blame me for not being able to save him?

I almost answered those questions.

I had to move quickly. She was cold, and getting colder. Every year that went by, Tsunade slipped further down the slope. With each anniversary, things just got worse. She was growing a shell that got thicker with each passing year, one that ate away at her insides. With each year, the drinking got worse, and I knew that by next year, she might be gone completely. I knew I couldn't let that happen.

"You have to stop. Stop it, Tsunade-sama! Please, just come back with me, and try to grieve in another way. You're in so much pain, I know it, and I want to help you, but I can't stand to watch you drag my uncle's memory through the mud like this. When you shun life, you don't honor the dead, you fail them."

Her lip curled. "Shizune, how I grieve is none of your business. I have my ways, and you have yours. Why don't you just stick to those textbooks, and keep your head out of these waters? You're painfully unsuited to them."

I have always feared being alone. To me, being alone, absolutely alone, was the most terrifying thing I could think of. And looking at her, her glare driving a stake through my heart, I had never felt so alone in my life.

I felt tears burn around my eyes as my heart rose in my throat, hot and suffocating. I clenched my teeth to keep sound from escaping from my mouth, but I couldn't stop some small tears from trickling with painful slowness down my face. I have always admired Tsunade, despite her vices, and I was vulnerable to her insults with the vulnerability of a young teenage girl's fragile self-esteem.

For a moment, I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed that someone would come, that someone would help me. No one did.

"Fine." The palms of my hands clapped the surface of the bar, the balls of my hands like a hinge. I stood up. "Fine. I'll let you drink, you can drink until morning comes, and when this day comes around again, I won't go looking for you." I couldn't believe myself; I was actually giving up.

I walked towards the door and stood in the open threshold, feeling the cold cuts of winter's early wind upon my flesh. "And maybe—" I hated myself for not being able to keep my voice steady "—maybe someday, you'll see that I was right."

We solved nothing that night. Tsunade continued to drink and drink, and she didn't return to the hotel room until nearly noon of the next day.

Her drinking just continued to get worse and worse every year, and true to word I didn't go looking for her. She fell further along the slope with each turn of the calendar, and it took longer for her to recover each year, and each year there was less of her to recover.

We didn't talk about it. It was one subject that we always avoided. I knew it was happening, she knew it was happening. We just didn't…acknowledge it.

But I knew that each year pieces of Tsunade's heart were being taken out in chunks, and that eventually, it would be gone completely.

Maybe…maybe if I had just tried harder… I gave up too soon, far too soon, I know that. I wasn't persistent enough…I had too much pride when I should have had desperation.

As I stepped back into the chilly street, rubbing the skin of my arms and feeling the tear tracks on my face start to crystallize, I heard a loud, harsh, broken laugh come from the confines of the bar.

Or maybe it was just the death-knell sound of Tsunade's heart cracking.