Damn rain.
Will it ever die?
Ino was living in a Lady Macbeth style world; every action she performed made it look like she did them while sleep-walking, she spoke with brief and toneless sentences, the other two women in the household went ignored, and Ino's already desolating misery started to sink into a deeper pit.
Tsunade couldn't get Ino down the stairs to have another session. She barely could get Ino to do anything any more. Ino's schedule became this within the past week as Tsunade noticed: Come down around nine to grab breakfast, come down at one after noon to grab a quick lunch, and finally at seven for dinner. Her meals were small and varying in nutritional value. Sometimes she got slices of baked chicken between two rye bread slices, and other times a oatmeal cream cookie. Her skin would only get paler if she didn't eat something worthwhile. And Ino's mother did her best to leave healthier foods out, but Ino seemed to have the energy to move stuff around in the fridge to get what she really wanted.
The rain would only serve to further keep Ino in her depressed state. Tsunade needed to do something and fast. Would be easier if she had access to a few medical journals covering depression's symptoms and treatment; but this rain would end with her sick as a soaked dog. Her knowledge on the matter had become even fuzzier over the last week as she tried to rack her mind for anything that could help.
Ino came walking down the stairs just now for her lunch. Today would be salmon paste on two slices of white bread. Filling. Tsunade quickly worked her brain for a solution, and found a rather weak yet plausible solution. As Ino weakly yanked open the fridge door open, Tsunade approached Ino, tapped her on the shoulder to grab her attention and said, "How about we go outside for a bit?"
"What?" Ino said the first word she had said in days.
"For a few minutes, it won't kill us." Tsunade coughed out as she laid a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, what's better than coming inside and drying off? We could wrap towels around each other, sip hot chocolate, and joke about the various diseases we caught."
"If we survive drowning." Ino remarked as she turned back to the fridge to get her second meal of the day.
"It's not that bad now, it's about normal rain." Tsunade went over and parted the curtains to show that the rain outside had at least slowed down to a rate where people can walk outside with umbrellas and not get completely drenched. "No need for umbrellas or anything. We go out, get soaked, come back in?"
"That's stupid." Ino ignored Tsuande in favor of grabbing the plastic Tupperware containing the salmon paste and throwing it onto the counter. "For a medical nin, you should know better than to walk out into a raging rainstorm and just stand there. You catch like, diseases and shit." Ino coughed out a laugh at her own stupid joke before shoving the sandwich into her mouth.
"It's not that stupid if you know what you are doing." Tsunade whistled. She took Ino by the hand and whipped open the door and took the two outside. Ino protested loudly, actually using her voice. As she stepped out into the rain, she dropped the half-eaten sandwich onto the ground, immediately falling apart from the rain. Ino grunted and roared out some noises to get Tsunade to stop dragging her around in the nice and cool rain…
…the rain felt good. She expected to be a tormenting torrent of sheer cold water, but it felt like a nice shower. Sure, her clothes and hair were quickly soaked, but she felt her body relax thanks to the cool rain. She had to keep parting her hair every so often to keep out of her eyes. Ino got her first look of the outside world in long time; the familiar street looked so different after weeks of heavy rain. The trees were stripped of flowers long ago, some of the branches were either floating down the street or had fallen into a area where a new river hadn't formed. The entire street had turned into a river which went up and covered both women's feet. As Ino hadn't time to put on shoes or socks, she could feel the water coursing all over her bare feet. They started to wrinkle, of course, but it felt like a massage!
Ino looked over to Tsunade, standing there in the rain. Her clothes had started to soak and reveal her bare skin underneath the thin clothes. Tsunade started to do a impromptu dance; shaking her body back and forth. Ino had to avert her eyes a brief second to avoid looking at Tsunade's exposing shirt. But she ignored it in favor of joining Tsunade in her little dance. Her body ached a bit from doing something physical after spending a long time cooped up doing nothing, but she worked past the slight pain and danced her heart out. Slowly a smile grew on her face, and it split open to let out a great laugh and then some more.
"You see?" Tsunade giggled as she flipped her neck back to get her own hair out of her eyes. She reached over and draped a arm around Ino's shoulder. "Yes, it's raining non-stop, but it's no excuse to sit around and do nothing. You have a future ahead of you. And I don't want you to throw it away." She panned her hand outward, pointing to the dark grey sky. "That'll go away soon. After that, we'll paint the town red. You and me. I want to help you get over this. You shouldn't wallow away forever…you're too good for that."
She sounded so sincere and true. Ino couldn't help it; the rain poured hard on the ground.
Ino's mother yelled at them for half of a hour as she threw off their water-logged clothes, wrapped them up like mummies in towels and force-fed them bowls of hot chicken soup. But she did that in good humor as she noticed her daughter to be bit brighter after standing outside the grey skies.