Sunshine

z e r o .

zero. my fantasy of you and i (and what we could have been)

TW: Allusion to drunk driving, mentions of a panic attack.

Notes: I decided to post this after months of it sitting in our drafts. This story is connected to File One however it isn't necessary to read that story to understand this one.

Enjoy!

—

She coughed water onto the ground and stared at the white knuckles of her clenched hands. She could feel the cold sting of the stone against her bare skin. Her party dress was drenched in water and it stuck to her body uncomfortably.

She was sure she had just died. That she had just drowned while holding her best friend's hand in her own, apologies fallen from her lips like the saccharine liquor she'd been drinking only an hour before. She had choked on the cold water as it had flooded her lungs and washed away any hint of the alcohol that lingered on her lips, and she—

Her body felt heavy, unreal even as she pushed herself onto her feet. Water dripped from her figure and splattered against the stone. The sound echoed through the area, and she shivered as a cold draft rattled her bones. She crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing at them in a futile attempt to keep warm.

She was cold and tired and wet and, most importantly, she was dead.

She moved through the room, her feet scraping against the uneven stone beneath her feet. There was nothing but pitch black surrounding her for miles and, despite not being able to see anything, she knew she was going the correct way. Her fingers curled into her arms as she walked through the dark.

She wanted to cry, to scream, to do anything but walk on forever.

Was this is her punishment for causing her friend's death? To walk the abyss forevermore thinking only of what she had done.

She wanted to go home.

A rumble rolled through the area, and a light shone through a small crack that formed on a wall that she was sure hadn't been there before. She wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so she jogged over to the area and ignored the cold sting on her feet.

She kneeled down in front of the crack and pushed her hand through, watching as the light engulfed. Then she crawled through, closing her eyes against the blinding light and flinching at the sound of baritone laughter that echoed around her.

She wanted to go home.

—

Kittens don't open their eyes until seven to ten days after they are born. That was something she had read when preparing to welcome her family's new kitten into the family. (Smores had been a delight to have around. It was terrifying that the kitten she had raised from birth and expected to mourn, had outlived her.)

When she woke up for the first time since she had died, it had been a few days after her initial rebirth. She had woken up screaming. The hospital had been unfamiliar with its white walls and the pungent smell of antiseptic. It wasn't home, and it scared her far more than she would like to admit.

Later, much later, she would be told that she had been labelled comatose for the first four days of her life, and the medics had blamed it on early exposure to malicious chakra. In another timeline, this body would've died when it was exposed to the Kyuubi's chakra, and she would've never existed. As it is, she had been stuck into this body, and she wanted to live, and so, she lived.

A few months after waking up, she was deemed stable and taken out of the hospital and sent to an orphanage. But it would be a couple more months before she truly realized where she was. It was crowded and loud, and the rooms smelt awful, but she had met the one human being in this place that would keep her from losing her cool. Her brother.