A way away

10. The coming of the storm

"Tobirama! Oy, Dr Senju!"

Tobirama groaned and forced himself awake. He looked around as he sat up in the unfamiliar bed with the crisp, white sheets in a small but clean wooden room. Where was he?

Then, he remembered, and a soft smile spread across his face.

He stood up, dressed in his T-shirt and trousers still, looked in a mirror and saw his hair was a mess, so at least something was as it used to be.

He walked out to the kitchen, where Izuna was standing on his tip-toes, trying to reach something high up in his cupboard.

"I was making pancakes", he walked. "But I can't reach the flour!"

Tobirama smiled and went and got the bag down for him with ease, placing it on the counter with a satisfying pouf.

"My petite boy", he cooed, kissing his lover on the top of his head.

"Watch it, slender man!" Izuna warned.

"At least I don't need a ladder to make pancakes", Tobirama teased, which was very out of character for him.

"At least I don't need to tie a pillow on my head to get through a doorframe safely!" Izuna retorted and went about mixing his batter with quite some energy.

Tobirama burst out laughing. This little man, turned out, was so unlike anything Tobirama has ever encountered, and he had encountered a lot of people. He was easy-going, and had an aura around him that made it clear he had been granted the gift of loving simple things in his life.

Such as the delicious stack of pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup he made them for breakfast.

They took it to Izuna's couch to eat in front of his little fireplace, and Tobirama had rarely felt so content and never in this new country.

"Don't spill on the couch!" Izuna warned but with a glimmer in his eyes that made Tobirama understand he wasn't all that serious.

"What, is it, like, really expensive?" Tobirama teased. It was, Tobirama has to admit, a beautiful couch, and cream-coloured, making it less than optimal to act as a breakfast table.

"It's one of those couches that you have to beg to come living with you and then make a blood sacrifice for."

Tobirama was quiet for a while, then, when he understood the joke, he burst out laughing again. That little pause made Izuna remember that they didn't share the same mother tongue. Izuna loved that about them.

They both went to their respective work, but Tobirama, usually so focussed on every task put in front of him, found it hard to concentrate. He also found that he was a bit chattier than usual, offering the children sweets, joking softly with his patients. And he found that his patients didn't respond in the wary way he was used to, but actually smiled back.

All of his good mood vanished when he got out of his practice to go home, though. A cluster of dark grey clouds were accumulating in the sky in a foreboding way that made him understand that a storm was coming. Tobirama couldn't read the weather as well as the local fishermen, but after the two years he'd lived here he had learned to predict the weather for the coming hour or so quite well.

But it wasn't only the bad weather that caused him distress. It was also the people he passed on his way home. Because Tobirama had, stupidly enough, decided that he'd walk through the city centre because he was so happy after his night with Izuna, even if they had only kissed, and so confident after the smiles his patient had given him, that he'd thought he'd dare to show himself among people, at least this once.

He regretted it instantly. They pointed and whispered. They went out of their way, behaving as if he could be a terrorist carrying a bomb or a disease unknown to them. One older man even told him to 'go back to your country', which Tobirama took to mean 'I hope you die' because the two of them were equivalent. Tobirama clenched his fists, looked down into the ground, and walked home.

But when he looked up at the front door, he noticed he wasn't at home. His legs had taken him to Izuna's cottage.

He felt his heart burst with glee. Could he really be so brave? Could he knock, and let Izuna take him into his arms, and make him forget his problems as they cooked dinner together?

Something's wrong.

The thought was immediate. Tobirama, a man of science, didn't want to believe it was a sixth sense. No, his subconscious had probably noticed something that made him catch on to this feeling. What was it he had noticed? The clouds has now reached the island, and at some spots in the sky, they were so dense the sky was almost black. Suddenly, the heaviest rain Tobirama has ever experience started to fall. It was truly amazing; it went from zero to one hundred, as if someone had snapped their fingers causing a giant bucket of water to be poured down from the sky. Tobirama felt the terror creep up inside of him. He had never experienced a really rough storm since he was at sea, on a rowing boat too small for its task, fleeing his country. He felt himself freeze into place.

Suddenly, there was a crash, and a blinding light; a lightning bolt that had struck the ocean so close to the island, there wasn't even a millisecond between the light and the sound. There was shouting, and he heard a crash.

Then, Tobirama realised what his subconscious had noticed that made him thing something was wrong. Izuna's lights were off. The cottage was completely dark. And it was too late for Izuna to be at work.

Izuna was out.

Tobirama ran.