Tobirama:

I buttoned my shirt up with trembling hands.

Shit, I can't do this.

I can. I can do this.

I must...

I took the bottle of citrusy cologne I loved so much, but couldn't bring myself to use it.

Instead, I looked far back in the cabinet, took out my old one.

The vanilla smell mixed with the imaginary small of blod and gunpowder made me gag.

I put it on my wrists.

My neck.

My collarbones.

My chest.

Me heart.

Please...

I was trembling still, not out of fear but out of stress; there was little time.

Izuna, please survive... Please survive this.

Izuna:

There was something happening to me at work.

My eyes were extremely sensitive to light, and I had to squint. I tried to read several documents, but were unable to. But it seemed to only happen when I sat at my window, with the daylight blasting in, and subsided when I sat in a darker part of the office.

"What's up with you?" Cassandra asked and winked as I held my palm to my eyes. "Still drunk since the wedding?"

"No", I said and smiled. "It's just..."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing."

I'd never suffered from migraine, but maybe, this was it?

I decided to go home an hour earlier than usual as I couldn't focus, and texted Tobirama.

Me (4.01 PM): Omw home! You work from home today, right? I love you, husband ❤️

He hadn't answered when I came home, which was unusual for him. Maybe, he was taking a nap? But I didn't think so; he always wrote to me before he did that so I wouldn't worry.

I put the key in the locker and opened the door. A powerful smell of citrus hit me as soon as I stepped in. What's going on?

"Tobes?"

There was no answer.

I walked around the apartment. I came to the kitchen table, where my husband had left a note for me before going to bed an hour after me for me to read in the morning.

Have a good day at work, Izuna Senju. I love you xx

It had made me cry of happiness. But now, it made me nervous. It was when I came to the ensuite bathroom, I understood where the smell as coming from. On the floor were shards of glass from Tobirama's citrus cologne. It had fallen and shattered into a thousand pieces, and the liquid spreading out on the dark grey stone tiles, emitting its scent. And on the sink stood another bottle, whole, half-full of a darker, amber-colored cologne. I carefully stepped over the shards of glass, opened the lid and smelled it.

And I gagged.

Holy shit, this is...

Vanilla...

Before I had time to analyse the situation, my phone ringed.

It was Keith.

"Hello?"

"Izuna, you have to come." Keith, always the calmest and most collected in all situations, was in full panic. "There's been a kidnapping." What? "It's the mafia. They-" His voice cracked. Shit, NO! "They have her. They have Cassandra."

I drove Tobirama's Mercedes furiously until I reached the station. Keith and some other members met me directly, and threw a bulletproof vest at me. It was the same one that had protected me the night Emil died; I had made it my personal one and refused to change it for the new one's that were ordered last year.

It still had stains of Emil's blood on it.

"Where?"

"It's..." Keith looked at me worriedly. "It's in the warehouse. Where Emil..."

The shock I felt was palpable. I just stopped dead halfway through putting my vest on. No... No, not...

But I shook my head, forced myself to snap out of it.

"Let's go. Cars 11, 34 and 36. Me, Keith and Chen will drive. The rest of you, hop in. You know what to do in kidnapping situations."

It was the first time I was at the warehouse since I went back to give testimony for Emil's death. I felt dread clenching at my heart as I stopped the car outside.

It looked pretty much the same as I remembered it, the building ginormous and red.

I love it when you kiss me...

Emil's words before he died.

I can't do this... I can't do this.

I felt Keith's hand on my shoulder.

"Izuna... Cassandra is in there", he said, knowing what I was thinking about, and I nodded, forced myself to get it together for her.

We stepped into the building, the six of us, guns drawn and ready, clad in civil clothes. As soon as we walked in, it struck us how quiet and dark the place was, seemingly empty. I took some tentative steps in the front, signaling for my team to wait behind me. The place seemed messier than last time I was here, as if it had been used as storage. I crept along the wall on the concrete floor, my breaths coming out in cool puffs.

Suddenly, I felt the ground underneath me change, become sticky, and I looked down.

From the little light that came in through the high windows from the streetlights outside, I saw I'd stepped in something dark. I felt cold sweat break out on my palms, a heat in my stomach that spread out in shockwaves of cold through my skeleton to my extremities.

That's...

And I screamed.

"Izuna!!" It was Keith.

I sunk don to my knees, put my fingers I the dark spot on the ground.

Keith came running to me. "Izuna, are you all right? What happened?"

I looked up at him, tears streaming down my face. "Emil's blood", I said with a trembling voice. "That's Emil's blood."

And before Keith had time to say anything, something hard hit me in the back of my head, and I fell forwards.

I landed with my face on the ground, my cheek to the dry puddle of Emil's blood from his death.

I could feel the old, rusty smell in my nostrils.

"I got you now, fucker", a voice said.

And that voice as coated in a heavy scent of vanilla.