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Suigetsu was eight the first time he woke up in a tank. He didn’t hate it yet, he was just confused. He blinked around. The water was a comfortable temperature, just above lukewarm, and he could feel his body wanting to relax and come apart in it. Outside the tank, it looked like pictures of hospitals that he had seen. Cool and white and clean. He twisted around in the tank, reaching around to explore every corner of it.
He wondered where his brother was. They had fallen asleep at their campsite last night, and now he was here. Since their parents had died, it had just been the two of them traveling around the land. It was fun.
Suigetsu pushed at the top of the tank, but it was too heavy to move. So, he let himself sink to the bottom and deform slightly, relaxing in the water. Eventually, someone would show up here.
And, eventually, someone did.
He looked like Suigetsu had always pictured a doctor looking like, with a white coat and roundish glasses, and just a little bit balding. Suigetsu pulled himself back together fully and waved. He smiled pleasantly and waved back. Maybe this guy could tell him what was going on.
The doctor, as Suigetsu decided to call him, walked up the stairs next to the tank to lean over the top, looking down through the glass.
Suigetsu waved again.
“So, you’re smaller than the other one.” His voice came through the water blobby and distorted, but calm. He sounded like a person who knew absolutely everything.
Suigetsu nodded. They must be talking about Mangetsu.
“It will certainly be interesting to see how you react, then.”
He tilted his head. React to what?
The doctor strode over to a lever on the platform and flipped it.
Suigetsu was screaming, except it was all just bubbles. His whole body spasmed and shook and it felt like every inch of him was being stabbed with a needle. It was harder to hold form, and he drifted apart in the tank.
Finally, the doctor flipped the switch again.
Suigetsu’s body felt like dissolving on the bottom of the tank. He was sore and distant, his fingers not connected to his hands.
He thought he heard the doctor chuckle.
The next day, it was a woman, looking kinder than the doctor. Suigetsu was hesitant. His body still ached when she came in. But, she didn’t flip the switch. Instead, she opened the top of the tank, kneeling on the platform.
He slowly pulled himself together and poked his head out of the water.
“Hi,” he said, then winced. His throat hurt a lot from all that had happened and from not speaking for the past few days. It sounded rougher too, less like him.
“Hi.” She smiled at him, a strand of her blonde hair just escaping its ponytail.
“What’s your name?” He asked before he could think of anything better to say.
“Aiko. And you must be Suigetsu.”
“Yeah? How’d you know?”
“The other one asked about you, sounded worried.”
Suigetsu’s eyes widened. “Mangetsu! He’s okay too?”
She nodded, repeating the name quietly. “That’ll be good to know. We’ll see if he reacts differently to his name.”
Suigetsu paused, confused. Then the tank snapped shut again, whacking him on the head. He yelped and slumped down on the bottom of the tank, rubbing his head. Aiko left.
The third day, hunger pains were starting to get to him, making him move slower and just drift in the water. A boy about Mangetsu’s age came in and dropped a box of sashimi into the tank like he was feeding a fish. Suigetsu didn’t bother being offended, snapping it up instead.
It was good, better because of the lack of it. The boy left before he could say anything, and he was alone again. In and out, he drifted from being fully formed to being dispersed all throughout the tank.
The fourth day, the doctor came in again. Suigetsu felt a chill go through him. He couldn’t do anything but watch as the lever was flipped again. It felt stronger this time, his body shaking and twitching in jerks of pain.
He started crying this time, salt water mixing with the pure of the tank.
And that was the routine. Aiko asked questions. The boy brought food. The doctor… did what he did. There was a point where he lost track of time, and then a point where he stopped feeling it. It was physical, not just in his head. The movements of his fingers and limbs were a struggle like things were disconnected. It was an uncomfortable numbness.
After a few days of it, he forced himself fully together, sitting on the bottom of the tank. He went through the process of breathing, even though it wasn’t really happening under the water. Slowly, he stitched himself back together, focusing on the little parts that felt wrong.
It hurt. He felt like screaming and sobbing, but he was scared if he didn’t do this now, he’d never fix it.
The next time the doctor came, it hurt so much more. The electricity, Suigetsu knew that was what it was now, coursed through him. His back arched horribly, then split as he failed to keep himself together. A silent shriek left him. He’d forgotten how bad it got.
He stopped talking to Aiko. She didn’t care, and it would be stupid to pretend she did. It was just another part of the experiment.
Maybe a year after he was captured, there was an alarm going off, piercing through the water. He peered out of the front of the tank and could see workers running. Then he saw a flash of white hair, and something jumped inside him.
Mangetsu!
He wanted to shout for him, beg to be rescued. At the same time, he knew he didn’t have to. His brother would come to get him. He would save him.
Mangetsu slid into the room, panting slightly and slightly dripping and unformed. He had about two seconds before the guards giving chase followed him, and he used them to mouth a word at Suigetsu.
‘Sorry.’
He took off out a back door. Suigetsu didn’t like that. His brother didn’t apologize to anyone.
Maybe half an hour later, the alarms stopped. It was too quiet now. Suigetsu didn’t like that either.
Mangetsu would have to come back.
He would.
For two days after, he was left completely alone. Then the doctor came in, looking to be in a poor mood. He shot Suigetsu a look.
“I hope you’re not too upset about being abandoned, shark,” he said, spitting out the last word like a curse.
Another word he didn’t like. He hadn’t been abandoned, he wanted to tell him. Mangetsu would come back. That was his older brother. He would be back to save him.
The doctor spun a dial near the lever and cranked it on. Suigetsu couldn’t breathe through the pain. He was pulled apart into shattered pieces. It lasted far too long.
Finally, the lever was switched again. He crumpled, half-formed to cradle his head in his arms. Maybe this wasn’t an experiment anymore if it ever had been. Maybe it was just torture.
He was alone, abandoned, and hurting more than he could even think or talk about.
He wanted to go home. Be held by his mother again, like he was little. He was nine, he wasn’t little. But he wished he was. Wished he could go back before all this started, when they still looked like a normal, happy family.
One day, no one came. Not the girl or the boy or the doctor. Then he heard screams. It didn’t scare him as much as it should. It was almost comforting, even, like his father was dealing with rouges again.
Dead silence. The water felt heavier.
A boy, almost an adult, walked into the room. His hair was silver, pulled back into a ponytail, his clothes a dark purple contrast. Most of his face was obscured by the glint of his round glasses.
Suigetsu blurred his form into the water so that he wouldn’t see him, but it seemed to be too late already. He strode up the stairs to the platform by the tank. A shock of fear hit him as he irrationally thought that the lever was going to be pulled again.
Instead, the boy pulled up the lid on the tank.
“Hello,” he said pleasantly. “I’m Kabuto, what’s your name?”
He waited for something bad to happen. He didn’t trust him. But nothing happened. Kabuto just waited.
Suigetsu slowly reformed and pulled himself up onto the edge of the tank.
“Why do you wanna know?”
“Isn’t that a thing people usually want to know?”
He met the boy’s gaze through the glasses.
“Why are you here?”
“Are we just going to keep going in circles like this?”
Suigetsu smiled slowly, trying and failing to keep it from being obvious. This boy was kind of fun.
“Maybe.” He hopped out of the tank fully. He didn’t think Kabuto would toss him back in, like the other people who had been by before had when he attempted to escape.
Kabuto chuckled.
“C’mon, let’s head out of here.”
Suigetsu was so distracted by the thoughts of the outside world that he just about missed the sprawled-out bodies of the doctor and his many assistants in the halls. But he didn’t. Instead, he grinned slowly at the smell of their blood, teeth going sharp.
Kabuto seemed like more fun than he had imagined.