Disclaimer: Naruto, all associated characters and ideas are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. I do not claim them in any way, shape or form
She was in the bathtub, dead; blank eyes staring up glassily at the flaking ceiling, gazing at the blossoms of mildew that flowered around the cracks.
Her petite body hung elusively below the surface. If it weren't for the look in her eye you might think that she was alive, playfully lurking beneath the threshold of the water. But she wasn't. She was dead.
He had found her.
He found her first. Pnting from the frantic search, his eyes were wild beneath the thick knit of his brow.
They thought she'd run away.
She ran away often, even though she couldn't run, her spindly legs threatening to snap beneath her own weight. Still, she would run, and then cry, and then scream in agony as the simple pain of living wracked her body.
Cautiously, reverently, he approached the tub. He knew what he would find.
A hauntingly beautiful sight, her hair fanning out about her tiny body, clinging to her pallid, almost transluscent skin.
He ran his shaking fingers through the stagnant water, shivering as he was overcome by nausea.
The water was still warm. Such a tepid temperature against the slick, slimy cool of her body sickened the young boy to his stomach. He could feel the bile rising in his clamped throat as stray strands of black hair wound their way about his fingers.
But what frightened him most was the dryness of his face...
He wondered how it happened.
Not that it mattered. Whether she had deliberately pushed herself beneath the surface, inhaling her death, or slipped out of consciousness, a manifestation of her broken body's final vehement protest against the simplest of functions. Either way it didn't matter. She was still dead.
And his face was still dry.
The tightening noose of shock was accompanied by the jabbing blade of grief, gouging at his twisted gut. This pain, so tangible, it brought the absent pricks of moisture rushing to his parched eyes. Such pain, it hurt so much and then -
He noticed…
He noticed there was room in the bath for two.
It would be so easy to join his sister, his strong limbs entwined with her frail ones, his face covered with the wetness he did not have the grace to grant her.
But would that stop the pain?
No.
No. He would not be like her. Instead, he would harness the pain. If he could desensitise himself to the sensation, enjoy it almost, then he wouldn't have to be afraid of it, like she was. He wouldn't have to feel it like she did.
And so he decided.
His self rule: Pain was his friend.