Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Tsunade was going to kill Orochimaru one of these days.

Seriously. Dead bugs.

Not regular dead bugs either. Not like one gross beetle stuck to the side of a sandal or something normal people accidentally carried around. No. He had jars. Multiple jars. Hundreds of bugs. Lined up in his tent like they were important. She also thought she might have seen a dead rat or two. 

Like, what? She was supposed to look at a cloudy bottle full of legs and wings floating in yellow liquid and think, "Wow, incredible, revolutionary science." 

Experiments, he'd called them. Specimen.

Tsunade still felt sick thinking about it.

She'd only gone into his tent because he had her kunai. Her favorite one. Her new one. The balanced one her uncle had given her a couple months ago when she turned fifteen, after she stopped throwing like “a toddler with an arthritic shoulder.”

And Orochimaru, being Orochimaru, had borrowed it three days ago without asking and then forgotten to return it.

So she'd gone into his tent while he was out washing up and immediately regretted every decision she'd ever made in her entire life.

“Did you touch them?” he'd asked, horrified. "I don't want you touching them." 

AS IF. Like she was the disgusting one.

Tsunade shoved the memory away aggressively as steam curled around her face.

She refused to think about jars of dead bugs for one more second today.

The Konoha Hot Springs sat about a mile outside of the village. It was all dark wood hallways and paper lanterns and that clean cedar smell that fancier people probably woke up smelling like every day. The mission had wrapped up that afternoon after nearly three straight weeks of rain, bad food, worse sleep, and enemy shinobi who apparently thought ambushing teenager at dawn made them tough.

Tsunade was exhausted down to her bones.

Which was exactly why this felt so good.

The inn had given them complimentary yukata after they checked in, and Tsunade honestly thought she might die in hers. It was soft. Warm. Clean. She hadn't worn anything clean in days unless she counted still-damp clothing, washed in river water, which she absolutely did not.

She tugged the robe tighter around herself as she walked down the hall toward the baths, still damp from washing her hair. Her braid left cold spots against the back of her neck.

For once, the hallway was quiet. No teammates lurking around corners waiting to annoy her.

Honestly, Jiraiya had also been unbearable lately. He was always annoying, but it was verging on intolerable.

Everything had gotten worse after his summer training trip with the toads because apparently climbing mountains and living in swamps for two months made boys insufferable.

Especially when they came back with some new, cool, half-baked sage powers and about an extra foot in height.

He'd grown so much she barely reached his shoulder anymore, which he thought was the funniest thing that had ever happened in recorded history, and she found absolutely infuriating. 

Every single day it was something.

Tapping her left shoulder and appearing on the right.

Snatching things out of her hands.

Holding stuff over her head where she couldn't easily reach it anymore.

Calling her “Princess” or "Hime" in that stupid, teasing voice he did when he wanted to get a rise out of her.

This morning he'd stolen her shoes before sunrise and made her chase him halfway through camp.

“Beg for them back,” he'd said, grinning like an idiot from a tree branch while dangling them by the straps.

Tsunade had not begged. She'd punched the trunk hard enough to crack it instead.

Jiraiya had fallen out of the tree.

Worth it.

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it, and she immediately frowned harder to compensate.

Glorious visions of her teammate falling from great heights didn't change the fact that the worst part was the staring. The staring had gotten so much worse. He wouldn't stop looking at her.

She reached the entrance to the baths and slid the door open.

Warm air wrapped around her instantly, thick with steam and mineral water.

Perfect.

Finally.

No teammates. No missions. No bugs in jars.

Just silence.

The bathing area was quiet except for the soft drip of water somewhere in the corner and the low murmur of women talking two pools over. She hung up her yukata.

She didn't recognize anyone in the women's pools. Just travelers and village women relaxing after dark, all of them minding their own business.

Perfect.

Tsunade absolutely did not feel like making polite conversation tonight. Or answering questions.

She rinsed off first, quick and efficient, then crossed toward the far pool.

The hottest one, obviously.

Steam rolled thick off the surface, clouding the stone edges. One older woman near the entrance had taken one look at it earlier and immediately gone somewhere else, muttering that it was practically boiling.

Which only made Tsunade want that one more.

She eased one foot into the water.

Hot.

Seriously hot.

The heat bit at her skin instantly, sharp enough to sting all the way up her calf. Her body reacted automatically, muscles tightening, but Tsunade gritted her teeth and stepped in anyway because backing out now would be embarrassing even if literally nobody cared.

The second leg was worse.

By the time the water reached her waist, her skin felt flushed all over, heartbeat kicking harder against the heat. For one brief second she wondered if maybe this had actually been a terrible idea.

Then her body adjusted.

The sting softened first. Then the tension in her shoulders loosened all at once so suddenly it almost made her dizzy.

Every ache she'd collected over the last three weeks started melting apart under the water. Bruises stopped throbbing. The stiffness in her back from sleeping on tree branches eased. Even the cuts along her hands quit pulling every time she moved her fingers.

Tsunade sank lower until the water reached just beneath her chin.

Yeah.

This was worth it. 

She tipped her head back against the smooth stone edge of the spring and shut her eyes.

For the first time in days, nobody needed anything from her, and no one was trying to kill her.

A sound cut through the steam.

Tsunade's eyes stayed closed.

Probably one of the other women moving around. Water splashing. A bucket setting down. Whatever.

She sank a little deeper into the spring.

Then she heard it again.

A muffled snort. Rustling leaves.

And underneath it—

A giggle.

That stupid, breathy, wheezing little creep laugh.

Every muscle in Tsunade's body locked.

A white-hot surge of fury ripped through her so fast it almost made her dizzy.

She knew that laugh.

Jiraiya.

Because apparently the universe had looked down at the one decent moment she'd had in three weeks and decided absolutely-the-fuck-not.

Tsunade opened her eyes slowly.

Very slowly.

The rage hit so hard it almost overpowered the heat from the water itself. Her skin prickled. Her pulse slammed against her throat.

That disgusting idiot.

Trying not to alert the other women, she grabbed the little towel from the side of the bath and held it across herself as casually as possible, even though internally she was moments away from committing homicide.

One careful step out of the water.

Then another.

The cold air hit her skin instantly, but she barely noticed it. She snatched up her yukata just wrapping it tightly around herself before crouching low against the wooden fencing.

Another faint rustle.

Outside the wall. 

Tsunade's eye twitched.

Oh, he was dead. Absolutely dead.

She moved fast and silent along the perimeter, chakra already gathering instinctively in her feet. One hand kept the yukata clutched shut against her chest while she scaled the narrow side wall separating the baths from the outside of the property.

Her heartbeat pounded louder and louder in her ears.

Then she saw him.

Crouched outside the fence in the dark garden brush, one eye pressed to a tiny crack between the wooden slats.

White hair.

The outline of his stupid grin visible.

Jiraiya.

The fucking little pervert.

Rage detonated inside her chest.

This wasn't even the first time she'd caught him doing this. Not the second either. Every few weeks somebody spotted him sneaking and peeping around bathhouses or trying to stare through fences and walls, and every single time he acted like it was hilarious.

Most older shinobi treated it like a joke.

Boys being boys.

Tsunade thought that was bullshit.

And lately it had gotten worse.

Not just generally gross. Specifically gross toward her.

Because while Jiraiya was off getting a foot taller with the toads, she'd been cursed by some kind of second-wave puberty demon, and body decided to suddenly spawn boobs bigger than anyone needed.

Jiraiya, of course, had noticed immediately. 

Ever since then he'd been weird about it in that awful teenage boy way where he acted smug and fascinated and completely incapable of behaving like a normal human being when she was around.

She was so sick of it. Sick of boys staring. Sick of comments. Sick of feeling looked at all the time.

And she was especially sick of Jiraiya ruining everything.

So maybe she overdid it a little.

Maybe channeling chakra directly into her fist had been excessive.

Maybe launching herself off the top of the wall counted as an overreaction.

He looked up. Met her eyes. Tsunade didn't particularly care. He would dodge. This would scare him. Maybe she'd get a few licks in. 

He didn't dodge. 

He just watched with wide eyes as her fist slammed into his ribs with a crack loud enough to echo through the entire garden.

He was supposed to dodge. 

Idiot. 

The ground exploded beneath him.

Jiraiya made one horrible choking sound as he got driven flat into the dirt hard enough to leave a crater in the earth.

Then Tsunade was on top of him.

Jiraiya barely even managed to defend himself. One second he was peeping through the fence and the next Tsunade had become a natural disaster.

Honestly?

It felt incredible.

Every ounce of frustration from the mission. Every stupid prank. Every gross comment. Every second of irritation all month poured straight through her fist.

He deserved it.

He absolutely deserved it.

She thought she might hit him again. 

Tsunade grabbed the front of his shirt, hauling him upward to hit him again, and she froze.

Jiraiya's head lolled.

His body went slack in her grip.

The anger evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold spike of horror.

“…Jiraiya?”

No response.

Oh no.

No no no—

Tsunade shoved him onto his back, hands moving fast now, medical training overriding panic. Blood at the mouth. Breathing shallow. 

Her stomach dropped.

His pulse was barely there.

“Oh my God.”

Her hands lit green immediately.

“You idiot,” she hissed, voice shaking now as chakra poured into her palms. “Why are you so fragile?!”

Which was unfair because she was pretty sure she had just caved in half his ribcage. Jiraiya made a weak, horrible wheezing sound.

Tsunade pressed glowing hands harder against his chest, trying to knit damaged tissue back together while panic clawed up her throat.

She had absolutely beat the piss out of him.

She had definitely gone too far.

And he definitely deserved it.

But also. She was so fucked. 

“Tsunade?”

She jerked so hard she almost punched somebody else on instinct.

Orochimaru stood a few feet away at the edge of the ruined garden path, pale in the lantern light, wearing the inn yukata loosely tied around his waist. His long dark hair hung braided over one shoulder like he'd just come from the baths himself.

Completely calm and completely creepy. His eyes drifted from the crater to Jiraiya's mangled body to the glowing green chakra around Tsunade's hands.

Then he inhaled once through his nose.

“I smelled blood,” he said. “B negative. Wanted to see the source.”

There was a short, horrified silence, if you tuned out Jiraiya's ragged breathing, which Tsunade was desperately trying to.

Tsunade stared at him.

“You cannot say things like that,” she snapped immediately. “What is wrong with you?”

Orochimaru blinked slowly. “Found the source.”

“God, can either of you be normal for a single fucking day!”

Jiraiya made another wet choking sound beneath her hands.

All three of them froze.

Well. Two and a half, considering Jiraiya was barely conscious.

Tsunade looked down at him and felt fresh panic slam into her chest. Blood stained the front of his shirt. One side of his face was already bruising purple. Both of his arms were skewed at unnatural angles.

Oh God.

She had actually almost killed him with one punch. 

“I need help,” she said quickly, the words tumbling out now. “You have to help me get this fucking idiot to a hospital.”

Orochimaru crouched beside her with unnerving calm, studying Jiraiya clinically while Tsunade kept healing chakra pressed against his chest.

“You did this?”

“Yes, obviously I did this!”

“You collapsed his lung.”

“I KNOW. CAN YOU GO GET MY CLOTHES?”

Orochimaru looked genuinely fascinated.

Tsunade wanted to strangle him too. The situation hit her all at once then with full humiliating force.

She was kneeling in the dirt outside a hot spring in a half-falling-apart yukata with wet hair and no shoes while desperately trying to heal the teammate she'd nearly beaten to death for spying on naked women.

This was officially the most embarrassing moment of her entire life.

Tsunade glared at Orochimaru.

“Help me before I cave your ribs in too.”

That at least got him moving. He made a clone to gather their belongings. 

Together they hauled Jiraiya upright, which immediately proved difficult because he was suddenly gigantic now for absolutely no reason. His head lolled against Orochimaru's shoulder while Tsunade kept one glowing hand pressed against his side to stabilize the internal damage.

Jiraiya groaned weakly.

“Oh good,” Tsunade hissed, with something like relief breaking through as well.. “You’re alive enough to suffer.”

One swollen eye cracked open.

“…Tsuna-chan?”

“I hate you.”

“I think,” Jiraiya wheezed painfully, “you broke my spine.”

“Do not speak to me. I should have hit you harder.”

“Literally–” he wheezed, “Don't think- possible.” .

“I was stopping a crime in progress.”

“That distinction may not matter legally.”

“Stay the fuck out of this, Orochimaru.” 

Tsunade made a sound somewhere between a scream and a growl.

People had definitely started noticing now. A woman near the bath entrance gasped loudly at the sight of the crater. Somebody else inside yelled for the staff.

Perfect.

Amazing.

Fantastic.

Tsunade wanted to walk directly into the forest and never return to civilization again.

The room smelled like antiseptic and clean linens and the bitter medicinal scent that permanently clung to Konoha Hospital.

Morning light spilled through the windows in pale gold bars across the floor.

Tsunade sat slouched in the chair beside Jiraiya's bed with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, glaring at him like she could personally force him awake through irritation alone.

It wasn't working.

He was still unconscious.

Annoyingly peaceful-looking for someone who had ruined her entire week.

Bandages wrapped around most of his torso beneath the blanket. One arm was splinted against his chest. Bruises shadowed purple along his jaw and ribs where healing chakra hadn't fully erased the damage.

Tsunade looked away before guilt could settle properly in her stomach.

She wasn't here because she felt bad.

Okay.

She felt a little bad.

Mostly because she'd panicked afterward. Mostly because seeing Jiraiya not moving had been one of the worst feelings she'd ever experienced in her life, which was irritating in its own separate way.

But she was still furious.

So furious she honestly didn't know what to do with it. The worst part was that she worried about him anyway.

Which was pathetic.

Tsunade groaned softly and tipped her head back against the wall.

They'd been teammates since they were seven years old.

Eight years.

Eight years of missions and training and fights and war and scraped knees and camping and sneaking out of the compound and stealing food and getting yelled at together.

Jiraiya had been there for basically every important memory she had.

He'd also been annoying for basically every important memory she had.

At seven he'd eaten dirt on a dare because she told him her grandpa, The First Hokage, swore by it for a secret jutsu. 

At ten he'd pushed her into the river during chakra control training and she'd chased him halfway across Konoha trying to "drown him back."

At twelve they'd both gotten food poisoning from festival squid and thrown up behind the same fence while Orochimaru and Hiruzen-sensei watched them with visible disgust.

He was woven through her entire life so completely that sometimes Tsunade forgot there'd ever been a version of her that existed without him nearby.

Which was why this sucked so much.

Because lately he'd changed.

Not completely. He was still loud and stupid and impossible and somehow weirdly sweet underneath all the chaos. Still the first person to make her laugh when missions went bad. Still the person who always noticed when she was injured before anyone else did.

But over the last year something had shifted into this horrible awkwardness she couldn't escape.

The staring.

The comments.

The gross jokes.

Like suddenly he saw her differently now.

Not teammate first. Not friend first.

Girl first. 

Not even that. Boobs first. 

And Tsunade hated it.

She hated feeling looked at all the time. Hated the sudden self-consciousness that crawled under her skin lately whenever boys her age acted weird around her. Worse when she caught the eyes of anyone older. Hated that her own body had apparently become public discussion material overnight.

But Jiraiya being like that felt worse than anyone else.

Because he was Jiraiya.

Because he was supposed to know better than that.

Because somewhere under all the anger was this awful hurt she didn't really want to examine too closely.

The peeping thing had just—

Good god.

That had crossed so far past funny.

Tsunade rubbed aggressively at her eyes.

Maybe that was why she'd hit him so hard. Not just because she was angry. Because he was supposed to be someone she trusted. 

The thought made something twist unpleasantly in her chest.

From the bed came a weak snuffling noise.

Tsunade looked over immediately.

Jiraiya shifted slightly in his sleep, brow furrowing faintly before settling again.

Idiot.

Even unconscious he looked stupid.

Her anger softened for exactly half a second before immediately returning full force.

Nope.

Still furious.

The door slid open quietly. Orochimaru stepped inside carrying two paper cups of vending machine tea.

“You're still here,” he observed.

He handed her one of the cups. The tea was still hot against her palms.

Orochimaru's eyes drifted immediately toward Jiraiya sprawled unconscious in the hospital bed, then to the IV bag hanging beside him.

That look appeared on his face.

That interested look. 

Tsunade pointed at him immediately. “No.”

“I wasn't going to do anything.”

Orochimaru tilted his head innocently, then relented with a tiny shrug of his pointed shoulders. 

Tsunade narrowed her eyes harder. “Go be creepy somewhere else.”

His gaze lingered one second longer on the IV line.

“And not the morgue,” Tsunade added immediately.

Orochimaru sighed softly through his nose like she was inconveniencing him personally, then turned and drifted back out into the hallway without another word.

Weirdo.

The room settled quiet again. Morning light stretched across the floor in pale gold bands. Somewhere farther down the hall a nurse laughed softly at something.

Tsunade wrapped both hands around the paper tea cup and stared at Jiraiya.

Still unconscious.

Still alive.

Still, somehow, the worst person she could think of right now.

Bandages were wrapped around his ribs beneath the blanket. Bruises shadowed purple along his jaw and neck where she hadn't fully healed everything. One arm was splinted against his chest.

He looked terrible.

Good.

Tsunade took a sip of tea and immediately burned her tongue. Her anger still sat hot and gross in her chest.

From the bed came a rough wheezing sound.

Tsunade looked up immediately.

Jiraiya shifted weakly against the pillows, face scrunching before one eye cracked open. He stared at the ceiling for a few long seconds before grimacing hard.

“…Everything hurts.”

Tsunade leaned back in her chair. “Oh good, you're awake. I've been waiting to yell at you.”

Jiraiya turned his head slightly toward her and instantly regretted it. “Tsunade?”

“You are literally such a creep.”

“That feels mean considering you almost killed me.”

“You were spying on women!”

“You punched me through the ground!”

“You deserved it!”

Jiraiya groaned and slumped farther into the pillow. The movement pulled painfully at his ribs and he hissed through his teeth.

Still didn't feel that bad.

“I said I was sorry,” he muttered eventually.

“No you didn't.”

“I was going to.”

Tsunade folded her arms tighter. “You've been acting so gross lately.”

Jiraiya blinked at her. “What does that even mean?”

“It means you keep staring at me!”

His ears turned pink almost immediately.

“I mean. Yeah.”

Tsunade looked genuinely shocked by how fast he admitted it. “You cannot just say that!”

“Why not?”

“Because normal people don't say that out loud!”

“You're acting like I said something insane.” He shifted slightly and immediately winced again. “You're attractive. I'm a man, obviously I look at you.”

Tsunade felt her whole face go hot instantly.

Not in a good way.

In a horrifying way.

“See? THIS,” she snapped. “You keep saying weird stuff like that now!”

“Because it's true!”

“You never used to act like this!”

“Well you didn't used to have boobs!”

The words hit the room like a bomb.

Jiraiya froze.

Tsunade froze.

Somewhere in the hallway, somebody dropped a clipboard.

Tsunade stared at him in complete horror.

“Oh my God.”

Jiraiya looked like he wanted the hospital bed to swallow him whole. “Okay, that sounded bad out loud.”

"You're such a pervert."

“If it helps, I peeped generally,” he argued weakly. “You just also happened to be there.”

“Why would that help? That is maybe the worst sentence you've ever said to me.”

“Not even top five.”

Which was true, unfortunately.

Tsunade dragged both hands down her face aggressively. “This is exactly what I mean! Everything is weird.”

Jiraiya frowned faintly. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can't even change shirts around camp anymore without you losing your mind!”

“I do not lose my mind.”

“You walked directly into a tree yesterday!”

“That was one time."

“That was three times! Three times just yesterday, Jiraiya.”

Jiraiya opened his mouth. Closed it again.

Which honestly made her more annoyed.

The room went quiet for a second before Jiraiya spoke again, softer this time.

“I wasn't trying to make you mad.”

Tsunade's jaw tightened. “Well you did.”

Another silence stretched between them.

Jiraiya stared down at the blanket over his lap before mumbling, “Sorry.”

This time he actually sounded serious.

Which almost made it worse.

Because Tsunade wanted him to understand why she was upset, but she also knew him well enough to recognize the stubborn look settling onto his face now.

He was apologizing for upsetting her.

Not for staring.

Not for peeping.

Not for any of it.

“Are you ever going to stop?” she demanded.

Jiraiya glanced back at her, completely honest. “Probably not?”

Tsunade made a furious strangled noise and stood so fast her chair screeched against the floor.

Jiraiya flinched automatically before catching himself.

The movement hit her like a punch to the stomach.

God.

She hated this.

Hated how weird everything suddenly felt between them now. Hated that she was still mad enough to scream at him and relieved enough he was okay to feel sick about it.

Mostly she hated that he still didn't really get it.

“You're actually unbelievable,” she muttered, grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair.

Jiraiya watched her carefully now, bruised and exhausted and somehow still dumb enough to look confused.

“Tsunade—”

“No. I'm done talking to you today.”

His mouth twitched faintly. “Today.”

“I don't have the luxury of ignoring you,” she snapped. “We're teammates. It's war. Unfortunately.”

That at least made him smile a little.

Idiot.

Tsunade pointed at him one last time while backing toward the door. “Do not leave this hospital bed. Do not spy on anyone. Do not look through any holes in any fences. Honestly, maybe just stay away from fences forever. And stay away from me for a while.”

“I feel like you're limiting my--”

“Shut the FUCK up!”

Jiraiya laughed once at that and immediately wheezed in pain.

Good.

Tsunade opened the door and stopped there for half a second without turning around.

“…You scared me, by the way,” she muttered quietly, "You're not allowed to almost die, even if it's me killing you." 

When Jiraiya answered, his voice sounded smaller somehow.

“Sorry.”

Tsunade hated that too.

She left before he could say anything else.

Chapter Text

They stopped over for a night in a small village.

It was the kind of place that showed up along the borders. A stretch of muddy roads built around taverns, bathhouses, cheap inns, and enough alcohol to numb whoever passed through next.

Shinobi stopped there on the road between missions. Merchants stopped there because shinobi stopped there. Nobody asked names. Nobody asked allegiances. If you had money and kept your weapons sheathed indoors, people left you alone.

Jiraiya liked it immediately.

Mostly because after two straight weeks of rain, blood, and sleeping on the ground, the tavern smelled like fried meat and cheap perfume instead of wet corpses and whatever dead thing that Orochimaru was hiding in his backpack.

The place was decently busy for a Tuesday night. Lanternlight turned the smoke gold overhead while rain battered the windows hard enough to rattle them. Somebody played cards near the back. Somebody else was getting loudly berated by a prostitute in the hallway.

Normal people problems.

Felt nice.

Orochimaru vanished into the darkest corner available with his drink like he was allergic to joy.

Tsunade went upstairs to take a shower.

Jiraiya went to the bar.

Not with a plan exactly. Just optimism and the pay from three B-Rank missions burning a hole in his pocket.

The first girl smiled at him when he ordered drinks. Jiraiya immediately parked on the barstool beside her. 

Redhead. Pretty mouth. Tiny mole near her collarbone. Cleavage visible every time she leaned forward to grab cups off the counter. Jiraiya forgot what he was saying halfway through introducing himself. 

Then the dark-haired one sidled onto the other side of him. Said they were friends and that he took her seat. 

He said he'd give it back if she asked nicely. 

She didn't.

They were older than him by a few years maybe, confident enough to look directly at him when he talked. The brunette's top hung low across her chest, soft skin visible above the fabric every time she laughed. Jiraiya tried very hard not to stare directly down her shirt.

Tried. Unsuccessfully.

“You’re staring,” she said without sounding offended.

Jiraiya recovered instantly. “I’m appreciating, and that's very different.”

That got him a laugh.

Good laugh too. Low and warm.

Jiraiya was having an excellent night already.

The redhead touched his wrist while asking where he was from and his brain immediately skipped three steps ahead. Lots of booze. Upstairs rooms. Warm bed. One of these women— both, if he played his cards absolutely perfectly.

God, regular civilian women were nice.

“You’re really a shinobi?” the blonde asked.

“Jonin,” Jiraiya said, casually.

Not a lie. It became official two months ago. 

“You seem like, really young.”

“If you consider twenty-two to be young,” he said automatically.

That one was technically a lie. But what was the real difference between "twenty-two" and "so freshly eighteen that the candles were still warm" in the grand scheme of things? 

Across the room, Orochimaru made a disgusted noise into his drink.

Jiraiya ignored him. 

The dark-haired woman tilted her head. “You don’t look twenty-two.”

"A childlike sense of wonder will do marvelous things to combat ageing.”

That line worked way better than it should have. The redhead laughed and leaned closer, chest pressing against his arm for half a second.

Jiraiya was absolutely getting somewhere here.

“We heard fighting’s bad near the rivers,” the redhead said. “Lots of skirmishes recently.” 

Jiraiya settled deeper against the bar. “Bad doesn’t begin to cover it. Last month my squad got surrounded by twenty enemy shinobi under a bridge in Kiri.”

“Four,” Orochimaru corrected flatly, loudly from across the room.

Jiraiya kept going like he hadn’t heard him. “No backup. Three straight days trapped in combat.”

The dark-haired woman was smiling into her drink now. Interested smiling too. Jiraiya knew the difference.

An absolutely shrill voice cut across the tavern.

“Three days of wading through mud, and you screamed because a bug landed on your neck.

Jiraiya closed his eyes briefly. Then, he looked toward the stairwell automatically and briefly forgot that he was supposed to be annoyed.

Tsunade had changed clothes after bathing. No armor now. No blood on her sleeves. Just dark pants and a loose white shirt slipping low off one shoulder. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, the damp blonde strands clung to her neck and collarbone.

Freshly washed Tsunade always looked different, softer at first glance. Then you noticed the way she carried herself and remembered she could punch through buildings.

Half the tavern looked at her when she crossed the room. Jiraiya noticed because suddenly he wanted every man in there dead for no clear reason.

Then Tsunade caught him staring. One eyebrow lifted, in warning. 

Jiraiya immediately remembered the two women sitting beside him.

Right.

Them.

She slid onto a stool a few seats away and ordered a drink.

“You screamed,” she repeated calmly.

“It was poisonous.”

“It was a firefly. And it was dead.”

The girls laughed.

Jiraiya tried to recover ground. He tipped a thumb toward Tsunade. “My teammate. She likes embarrassing me because she’s deeply, pathologically, obsessed with me.”

Tsunade snorted into her sake.

The dark-haired woman looked between them curiously. “Are you two together?”

“No,” Jiraiya said immediately.

"Gross," Tsunade snapped at the same time. 

Orochimaru took another drink across the bar. He sighed so loudly and dramatically that several people turned to look.

Jiraiya pressed onward anyway. He’d come too far to lose now.

“You have to understand,” he told the girls, “traveling with her makes normal social interaction impossible.”

Tsunade looked over finally, golden eyes bright with amusement. “Let me guess, he tell you he fought twenty shinobi?”

“It was close to twenty," Jiraiya said, defensively.

“It was four and one tripped and drowned five minutes in.”

“He still counted.”

The redhead was laughing hard enough now, but she kept leaning against Jiraiya’s shoulder for balance, and honestly he was willing to forgive almost anything for that. It also didn't hurt that her hand kept resting on his thigh.

The girls were still laughing. Not mean laughing, which was important. Warm laughing. Interested laughing. 

Unlike the enemy Shinobi, was not dead in the water yet.

Critical condition maybe. But salvageable. Probably.

Then Tsunade caught his eye over the rim of her drink and smirked.

Not good. Jiraiya knew that look. That was the exact expression she got right before making his life significantly worse for her own personal entertainment.

Absolutely not.

He stood abruptly enough that the redhead blinked up at him. “Where’re you going, Jiraiya-kun?”

“One second,” he said quickly. “Shinobi business. With my colleague.”

The dark-haired woman laughed softly. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is.”

Tsunade looked immediately suspicious when he crossed the bar toward her.

“Why are you walking over here like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to try and put me in time out.”

Jiraiya grabbed her wrist before she could escape and dragged her several feet down the bar into the narrow space beside the stairs where the noise of the tavern swallowed most conversation.

Tsunade stared at him.

Then her expression brightened with immediate, vicious understanding.

“This will be good–”

“Listen to me carefully–”

“I already hate this so much–”

“You have to stop.”

“Stop what?” She put on her best princess fucking pout. He hated that face. 

“This.” He gestured helplessly toward the bar. “Whatever the hell this is. Being a bitch.”

Tsunade blinked slowly, her eyes glimmering dangerously, like a shuriken whizzing directly at his face. “Want to try that one more time, I don't think I heard you.”

“You are sabotaging me.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“I am begging you. Actually fucking begging you here, Tsuna.”

That stopped her cold for half a second. Her eyebrows climbed.

Tsunade looked delighted in the cruelest possible way. “Oh my god.”

“Please.”

“You’re actually begging.”

“I was this close.” He held two fingers barely apart. “Do you understand? The redhead touched my leg. She keeps pushing her tits against my arm”

Tsunade wrinkled her nose. 

“The dark-haired one likes me too.”

“They have functioning eyes?”

“We had momentum, things were moving ‘til you showed up.”

Tsunade pressed her lips together so hard her shoulders started shaking. She crossed her arms over her chest. 

Totally not related but Jiraiya didn't think she was wearing a bra. Not the point. Fuck. Anyway.

Jiraiya grabbed both her shoulders before she could laugh at him loud enough for the entire tavern to hear.

“Please,” he repeated desperately. “I’ll cover your drinks for the rest of the night. Rest of the week. I’ll do your mission paperwork next week. Hell, I’ll carry your pack the rest of the trip and write songs in your honor. Just stop ruining this for me. I might die if I don't get laid.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Jiraiya braced automatically to be punched through the wall.

Instead Tsunade leaned back against the wood paneling, arms folding across her chest while she looked him over like she’d discovered an especially pathetic species of swamp creature. Which, Jiraiya felt like in that moment, under her withering glare.

“You’re really desperate,” she said. “Like, SO desperate.”

“I’m eighteen and I’ve been sleeping outdoors for four weeks in a tent with your tent one side of mine and Orochimaru's on the other." 

“And if I help you?”

Jiraiya stared at her. “You’d help me?”

“I didn’t say I would. I said if.”

“Bar tab and paperwork. Next month.”

“Now we’re negotiating.”

“Tsunade.”

God, this was degrading.

She let the silence drag out just long enough to hurt him before finally sighing dramatically.

“Fine.”

Relief hit him so hard he almost slumped against the wall. Then Tsunade jabbed one finger directly into the center of his chest.

“Three things. In addition to the bar tab and paperwork.”

Jiraiya nodded immediately. “Anything.”

“One. You owe me.”

“Obviously.”

Two. Admit you're disgusting and pathetic."

He waved a hand away. "I am disgusting and pathetic. Next."

Her mouth curved slowly, eyes glittering with ugly amusement.

“And just promise to remember who helped you when you’re upstairs embarrassing yourself later.”

Jiraiya stared at her. His brain, traitorous thing that it was, supplied several horrifying and tantalizing images at once.

She shoved past him toward the bar again, shoulders shaking with laughter while Jiraiya stood frozen beside the stairs questioning every decision he’d made in his life since birth.

Then the redhead called from across the room, “Done fighting with your your girlfriend yet?”

Tsunade barked out a laugh loud enough to turn heads all over again. Jiraiya considered walking directly into the closest river and never returning.

“Not my boyfriend,” she said decisively as she slid back onto her stool. Then she lifted her drink toward the girls. “Did he tell you about the supply caravan in Suna?”

The girls leaned in immediately.

“What happened?” the dark-haired woman asked.

Tsunade took one slow sip of sake, eyes already glittering over the rim of the cup.

“So there we were,” she began, “middle of the desert escorting this supply caravan through Suna territory. Absolute nightmare assignment. Sandstorms every other hour. No water. Half the guards were idiots.”

“And then bandits hit us,” Jiraiya remembered.

It wasn't as recent as she was making it sound. It was something like four years ago. That didn't matter right now

The redhead gasped softly. “Really?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Tsunade said. “Huge group too. Completely surrounded us.”

Jiraiya wisely kept his mouth shut.

The dark-haired woman looked at him curiously. “Weren’t you scared?”

Jiraiya opened his mouth. Tsunade answered for him.

“He stood up on top of the wagon and told everybody to stay calm.”

The girls all looked at him immediately. Jiraiya sat a little straighter. Tsunade had actually been the one to jump on the wagon. 

“I mean,” he said modestly, “somebody had to take charge.”

Tsunade nodded solemnly like she was confirming some sacred history. “Then one of the bandits comes charging straight at the caravan with this massive sword. Like the size of me.”

Now the redhead was staring at him with open interest.

“And Jiraiya jumps right off the wagon at him,” Tsunade continued. “No hesitation. Just straight into the fight. Bare fists.”

Also, technically, Tsunade was the one fighting with bare fists. 

“He knocked the guy clean off his feet,” Tsunade said, "Best punch I've ever seen."

Jiraiya took a thoughtful sip of his drink. “Momentum’s very important in combat.”

The redhead squeezed his thigh under the bar counter. His soul nearly left his body.

“And then,” Tsunade went on, “three more came after him at once.”

“Four,” Jiraiya corrected.

Tsunade waved dismissively. “Whatever. Point is, Jiraiya fought all of them while the rest of us got the civilians clear.”

Jiraiya blinked once. That absolutely had not happened.

But the redhead was looking at him like he was suddenly much larger than he actually was, so honestly maybe truth was subjective.

“What’d you do?” the brunette asked.

Jiraiya leaned back against the bar casually. “Mostly improvised.”

Tsunade downed her drink and ordered another. “You threw a lantern at one of them.”

“It worked.”

“He caught on fire.”

“He shouldn’t have been standing there.”

The girls burst out laughing.

God, this was working beautifully.

Tsunade was clearly warm from the alcohol now. Her cheeks and throat at taken on a bright pink flush. She looked like she was actually enjoying herself, shockingly. 

Every time she looked over at him there was laughter sitting right under her voice, and Jiraiya found himself grinning automatically before he remembered he was supposed to be mysterious and cool and nonchalant.

“Oh- oh! And then the wagon caught fire too,” Tsunade said dramatically.

The blonde covered her mouth. “Seriously?”

“Oh, completely. Flames everywhere. Horses screaming. Total disaster.”

“The horses were fine,” Jiraiya said.

“Because you cut them loose.”

The girls looked impressed again. Jiraiya remembered immediately that yes, actually, he had cut the horses loose. That one was him. Heroic.

Tsunade pointed at him with her cup. “At one point he literally ran into the burning wagon to drag supplies out.”

The redhead leaned against his shoulder laughing. “You’re kinda insane.”

“You have no idea." Jiraiya smiled slowly. “You’d be surprised what adrenaline does.”

Technically Tsunade had been the one carrying crates out of the fire while Jiraiya fought with a panicking horse.

But really, memory was a collaborative process.

Tsunade was already halfway into another embellished aspect of the story now, talking with her hands while the girls hung onto every word.

The bartender kept bringing drinks. Tsunade kept ordering more sake like she intended to bankrupt him personally.

Jiraiya did not care even slightly.

Not when the redhead (he had already forgotten her name) kept touching his leg, and it was moving further up his thigh and he felt like he might explode and die right here.

Not when the dark-haired woman had moved close enough their knees pressed together under the bar.

Every now and then Tsunade would glance sideways at him over the rim of her drink with that smug little look that said remember this later.

Tsunade was drunk enough now that the edges of her words had gone pleasantly lazy. She was warmer somehow. Reclined halfway across the bar like she owned the place and everyone in it.

She squinted at him suddenly over her drink.

“Oh my god,” she said. 

Jiraiya immediately got nervous. “What?”

“Do you still have that art book?” Tsunade waved vaguely at Jiraiya. “He bought it in that awful little shantytown in Valleys.”

The dark-haired woman laughed softly. “What kind of art?”

Tsunade took another sip of sake. “Paintings,” she said finally. “Historical stuff. Landscapes. Nudes.”

The girls burst out laughing.

Jiraiya spread his hands. “Tasteful nudes.”

Tsunade jerked her chin toward the girls. “Go show them the book.”

Everything in Jiraiya’s brain stopped at once.

The redhead laughed first. “You're going to invite us upstairs, hero?”

The dark-haired woman lifted one eyebrow at him over her drink, mouth curling at the corner.

And Jiraiya—

Jiraiya looked back at Tsunade with sudden, overwhelming clarity.

Oh my god.

She'd somehow given him the smoothest opening in recorded human history and she’d done it completely casually, while wasted, like she wasn’t actively engineering the greatest night of his young life.

Tsunade took another drink without looking at him, visibly fighting a smile now that she realized he’d caught on.

Jiraiya almost laughed out loud from pure admiration.

“You know,” he said slowly, recovering all at once, “it would actually be irresponsible not to share the cultural appreciation I've gained in my travels.”

The dark-haired woman laughed and slid off her stool first.

“I definitely wanna see this book now.”

The redhead followed immediately, fingers dragging once across his leg before she stood. Jiraiya grabbed his drink, trying and failing to stop grinning like a complete idiot.

As he passed behind Tsunade’s stool, he leaned down just enough to mutter quietly into her ear:

“You are my best friend. Seriously.”

Tsunade hummed and then she shoved him away by the face without even turning around.

“Get out of here before I kick your ass.”

Chapter Text

The Hyuuga woman snored so loudly it was vibrating the tent poles.

At first Tsunade had refused to admit it was bothering her.

She had survived worse than a noisy campmate. She’d slept through artillery tags detonating. She’d slept in rainstorms and mudslides and one memorable time where Orochimaru had somehow attracted a nest of biting insects large to buzz around the campsite. 

A little snoring should not have been enough to break her.

Another sound tore through the night like a dying bear.

Tsunade’s eyes snapped open.

The canvas above her shivered faintly. She couldn't tell if it was the wind or the snoring.

She swore loudly shoved herself upright on her cot, glaring toward the tent wall as if she could burn through it by force of irritation alone. Somewhere beyond it, in the neighboring tent, the Hyuuga woman continued sleeping peacefully while producing noises that should have qualified as a medical emergency.

They should never have brought her.

This had been a stupid assignment from the start. A simple B-rank escort through well worn territory. Tsunade had nearly laughed when they got the mission briefing. She and Jiraiya could have handled it alone without thinking about it. 

But Hiruzen-sensei, now the Hokage, had insisted that they take someone along to fill Orochimaru's spot while he was off on another mission.

Another choking snore ripped across camp.

How was the woman alive?

Tsunade pressed both palms over her face, breathed once through her nose, then violently threw the blanket aside. Fine. Fine. If the Himiko Hyuuga wanted to impersonate thunder for the rest of the night, Tsunade would simply move her tent farther away.

Problem solved.

Five minutes later she was outside in the cold night air, half dressed, hair a mess, staring at her own tent with deep resentment.

In daylight, moving it would have taken no time at all.

At midnight, exhausted and furious, it looked like impossible engineering.

Another snore rolled across camp.

Tsunade turned slowly toward Jiraiya’s tent on the opposite side of the fire. He was smart. He set up far away from everyone else.

Another snore.

Tsunade was already marching across the camp before her pride could object.

His tent was dimly lit from inside. Of course it was. He was probably awake writing terrible poetry for women he’d met once.

She cleared her throat. 

There was immediate movement inside, followed by Jiraiya’s voice, rough with sleep but already suspiciously pleased. “If that’s a murderer, give me a moment to think up my last words.”

Tsunade yanked the flap open herself.

Jiraiya blinked up at her from his bedroll, hair tousled, one shoulder bare where his shirt had slipped loose. The second he realized it was her standing there in the middle of the night, his entire expression transformed into unbearable smugness.

“Well,” he said slowly. “This is unexpected.”

Another monstrous snore echoed across camp.

Both of them paused.

Jiraiya’s face changed immediately to horror.

“She’s shaking my tent.”

“I fucking believe you, my god.”

The next snore carried through the trees like an animal call from hell.

Tsunade folded her arms tighter against the cold. “Help me move my tent.”

He looked back at her.

Then, with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, “Absolutely not. Why don’t you just stay over here? It's three in the morning."

“Help me move my tent,” Tsunade said, stubbornly.

Jiraiya looked up from where he was sprawled across his bedroll, a brush still tucked loosely between his fingers. Papers were scattered around him in uneven piles, most covered in his awful handwriting. A lantern glowed low beside his elbow.

He blinked at her for a second.

Then he laughed.

“No.”

Tsunade narrowed her eyes. “No?”

“It’s freezing outside, it’s the middle of the night, and I finally got comfortable.” He pointed lazily toward the open flap behind her. “Just come sleep in here.”

Another distant snore rolled faintly through camp.

Even from here it sounded demonic.

Tsunade folded her arms tighter. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Jiraiya.”

“Absolutely not.” He dropped the brush onto one of the papers and flopped backward dramatically. “I want to sleep.”

“You weren’t sleeping.”

“I was about to.”

“You’re writing."

“I can write and fall sleep at the same time. I’m extremely talented.”

Tsunade stared at him flatly.

He stared back with infuriating patience.

Another muffled snore drifted through the trees. Not as loud over here. Still awful, but distant enough that it no longer sounded like active warfare. Jiraiya smirked immediately when he saw her hesitate.

Tsunade crawled into the tent, grabbed the nearest rolled-up paper and threw it directly at his face.

He caught it against his chest, laughing.

“Why are you such an asshole?” she demanded.

“Why are you being weird?” He shot back easily.

Like it was obvious. Like there was nothing strange about it at all.

And maybe there shouldn’t have been. They’d fallen asleep leaning against each other during missions before. Shared blankets in winter. Curled up beside campfires after days without proper rest. But this felt different somehow.

Maybe because they were older now.

Maybe because lately she’d started noticing things she hadn’t before. The shape of his shoulders when he stretched. How low his voice got when he was tired. The fact that women looked at him now. Not just because he was loud or funny or impossible to ignore, but because he was handsome.

Annoyingly handsome.

And he knew it, which was the worst part.

Maybe all of that was irrelevant, and she just knew him too well.

Jiraiya watched her standing there in the lantern glow, arms folded, visibly losing the argument with herself.

Then his expression softened a little around the edges, a easy grin. “I’m not gonna try anything, if that's what you're worried about, you idiot.”

Tsunade scoffed immediately, mostly because her face had gone warm. "I know that.”

“Do you?” His grin tugged crooked again. “You look nervous.”

“I look tired.”

“Sure thing, Hime.” 

She rolled her eyes hard enough it hurt. Another snore echoed faintly through camp. Tsunade shut her eyes. The memory of it alone made her want to scream.

“Oh my god, fine.”

Victory flashed across Jiraiya’s face so fast he couldn’t hide it.

“That woman belongs in a medical textbook.”

“She belongs in another country.”

Despite herself, Tsunade snorted.

Jiraiya immediately looked unbearably pleased about making her laugh.

“Move,” she muttered.

He shifted sideways on the bedroll, pushing papers and scrolls out of the way. The tent smelled like ink, smoke, and him. Warm in a way hers hadn’t been.

She settled carefully onto the edge of the blankets, keeping an exaggerated amount of space between them.

Jiraiya looked down at the gap.

“Tsunade.”

“What?”

“You’re literally not even on the bedroll.”

“I’m fine.”

He sighed like she was the most exhausting person alive, then reached out and caught her wrist before tugging her farther onto the blankets in one easy pull.

Tsunade nearly elbowed him in the throat out of reflex.

“Relax,” he laughed. “My god. You’re insane.”

She opened her mouth to argue again, then stopped.

They were closer now.

Close enough that she could feel warmth radiating off him through the blankets. Close enough to see the gold-brown flecks in his eyes in the lantern light. His hair was loose from its tie, falling messily around his face and shoulders.

Jiraiya noticed her looking.

Of course he did.

A slow grin spread across his face immediately.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring at me.”

“I’m literally not.”

“You absolutely are.”

Tsunade shoved his shoulder hard enough to make him flop backward into the blankets laughing.

“Turn off the lamp and go to sleep, idiot.”

He grinned up at the tent ceiling for another second before finally blowing out the lantern.

Darkness settled around them. For a while neither of them spoke.

Outside, Himiko Hyuuga snored faintly in the distance.

Not gone entirely, but dulled now by space and canvas and the low crackle of the fire outside and eachothers breathing. 

Tsunade lay on her side staring into the dark, acutely aware of Jiraiya beside her without actually looking at him. The bedroll dipped slightly beneath his weight whenever he moved. Warmth gathered steadily under the blankets.

He still wasn’t asleep.

Neither was she.

“You weren’t even trying to sleep before I got here,” she murmured eventually.

“Mhm.”

“What were you doing?”

“Writing a little.”

Tsunade snorted softly. “Writing what?”

"I don't know. Little bits of everything. Memories, stories. I think I'd like to write a book one day.”

She smiled despite herself.

The silence stretched comfortably again after that. Sleepy. Heavy around the edges.

Then Jiraiya spoke into the dark, quieter this time.

“It’s weird without Orochimaru here.”

Tsunade’s expression softened automatically.

“Yeah.”

There wasn’t much else to say about it.

For years it had always been the three of them somewhere nearby each other. Now Orochimaru was somewhere miles north leading another unit entirely, at the request of the Hokage.

“You think this is how it starts?” Jiraiya asked after a while.

“What?”

“The splitting up part. Everyone going off and doing whatever.”

His voice sounded rougher with exhaustion now. More honest. Tsunade stared at the dark outline of the tent wall.

“Probably.”

Jiraiya sighed softly through his nose.

“When I was little,” he admitted, “I thought becoming jonin would just mean we kept doing missions all together forever.”

Tsunade huffed a sleepy laugh. "I'll probably do missions as long as I can. People always need medical nin." 

After a minute Jiraiya said, “Sensei told me I should think about taking a genin team eventually.”

That made her turn her head slightly toward him.

“You?”

“Wow,” he muttered. “You’re really committed to hurting my feelings tonight.”

“The village doesn't need you to corrupt the genin.”

“I wouldn't corrupt, I’d inspire.”

Tsunade laughed softly into the pillow.

The sound seemed to satisfy him more than it should have.

“I think I’d like it eventually,” he said. “Teaching.”

And the stupid thing was, she could picture it immediately. Not because he’d be especially responsible. He wouldn’t. He’d teach them terrible habits and encourage bad ideas and somehow convince them all they were invincible.

But they’d adore him.

Everybody did eventually.

Jiraiya moved through the world like sunlight sometimes. Loud and warm and impossible not to turn toward. People trusted him before they meant to.

"You'd be a good sensei," she said, finally.

He’d be good at anything, Tsunade thought suddenly.

The realization settled oddly beneath her ribs.

Beside her, Jiraiya shifted deeper into the blankets. His foot brushed lightly against hers beneath them.

Neither of them moved away. The contact lingered there, lazy and accidental enough to ignore if either of them had actually wanted to.

After a minute Tsunade muttered, “You’re like a furnace.”

“Hm?”

“You’re ridiculously warm.”

He sounded pleased immediately. “Thank you.”

Tsunade rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

Then Jiraiya said, almost absent-mindedly, “You smell nice.”

Tsunade blinked once in the dark.

“What?”

“Stuff you use in your hair.” He yawned softly halfway through the sentence. “Smells good.”

Heat crept slowly into her face.

“Weird thing to say.”

“You said I was warm first.”

“Mhm.”

Tsunade could hear the smile in his voice without looking at him.

Outside, the Himiko snored faintly across camp.

Inside the tent, warmth gathered steadily beneath the blankets.

After a while Jiraiya murmured, voice rough with exhaustion, “This is nice.”

Tsunade looked at him properly then, or as properly as she could in the dark.

“What does that mean?”

A lazy shrug moved through the blankets.

“I dunno.” He sounded half asleep already. “I like when you’re close by.”

The words were so simple they almost slipped past her.

Almost.

Tsunade could feel her own heartbeat suddenly, ridiculous and heavy beneath her ribs. Jiraiya, apparently unaware he’d just said something dangerously unfair, only shifted a little deeper into the blankets beside her.

Sleep was catching him quickly now.

“Go to sleep, idiot.”

“Mhm. You too, princess.”

Tsunade settled a little closer beneath the blankets without answering.

Jiraiya made a quiet satisfied sound somewhere beside her and finally, slowly, the tent went still.

The first thing Tsunade became aware of was warmth.

The second was the smell.

Smoke soaked into canvas. Ink. Cold morning air creeping through the seams of the tent. And underneath all of it, annoyingly familiar now, Jiraiya.

She stayed still for a moment with her eyes closed, suspended somewhere between sleep and waking while camp slowly stirred outside. Someone was already feeding the fire. Metal clinked softly in the distance. Birds had started up overhead.

Something heavy shifted against her.

Tsunade frowned faintly.

Then her eyes opened.

Morning light filtered dimly through the tent canvas, pale gold and soft enough that it took her a second to understand what she was looking at.

White hair. A lot of white hair. Jiraiya was practically on top of her.

Somewhere during the night he’d migrated completely across the bedroll like an invasive species. One arm was hooked loosely over her stomach, and his head—

Tsunade stared down at him in disbelief.

His head was resting directly on her chest.

Of course.

Even asleep, this idiot had apparently decided her tits made an acceptable pillow.

The worst part was how comfortable he looked.

His face was turned toward her, relaxed completely in sleep in a way she almost never saw during the day. Hair tangled everywhere. Mouth slightly open against the fabric of her shirt. Warm and heavy across her ribs.

Tsunade felt heat immediately climb into her face.

Unbelievable.

Absolutely unbelievable.

She should shove him off immediately.

Instead she stayed frozen there for another few seconds, staring down at him while her brain struggled uselessly to catch up.

He was warm. Heavy. Breathing slow against her chest.

And, if she was being honest, he was unfairly pretty this close up.

Tsunade narrowed her eyes at the tent ceiling. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to stay in here.

Jiraiya made a small sleepy sound against her shirt and shifted closer somehow, face pressing briefly into her chest like he was getting comfortable.

The absolute nerve.

“Oh my god,” Tsunade whispered.

Jiraiya didn’t wake up. His hand flexed lazily once against her waist beneath the blankets before going still again.

Tsunade stared down at him with as profound betrayal as she could muster. Then, despite herself, her mouth twitched into a smile. Just slightly.

Idiot.

Even unconscious, this idiot had the absolutely audacity.

Then Jiraiya shifted slightly closer in his sleep.

Tsunade shoved him sideways immediately.

Jiraiya rolled onto his back with a confused sound, blinking awake by painful degrees. “What—”

“Move. You’re heavy.”

He frowned at her blearily, still somewhere between asleep and conscious.

His eyes flicked downward briefly, always to her fucking chest.

Then back up to her face.

A sleepy grin spread across his mouth.

“Oh,” he murmured. “That wasn’t a dream.”

Heat climbed instantly into Tsunade’s face.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“In my defense,” he said hoarsely, voice still wrecked with sleep, “it was a really wonderful dream.”

Tsunade grabbed the nearest pillow and hit him in the face with it. As hard as she possibly could. 

Jiraiya laughed immediately, the sound rough and quiet in the morning air.

“Hey, I was asleep! I'm not responsible for my actions.”

“Fuck right off.”

“I move toward comfort naturally. It’s instinct.”

“I hate you.”

“You don't.”

She rolled her eyes, but the irritation had already dissolved somewhere along the way into something softer. Warmer.

His cheek still creased from where he’d spent half the night smashed against her chest.

The realization made her flush harder.

His grin widened lazily.

"Morning, Hime."

“Oh my god,” Tsunade muttered, shoving at his shoulder again before he could say anything worse.

He only laughed harder, catching her wrist for half a second before letting it go as she made her escape from the tent.

Chapter Text

By late afternoon, they were close enough to the Earth Country border that the forests had begun to thin into long stretches of carved trade roads and rocky hillsides.

Their mission briefing had sounded simple enough back in Konoha. Escort assignment. B-rank.

A wealthy Fire Country trader named Gensuke had spent the last several months operating out near Iwagakure, buying mineral contracts and arranging supply routes between smaller villages and Konoha merchants farther south. Somewhere along the line, a rogue shinobi group had apparently decided he looked profitable enough to kidnap.

Hence the escort.

Pick him up outside Iwa territory. Get him safely back across the border into Fire Country. Simple.

Probably.

Travel changed out here. Less rooftop movement. Less flying branch to branch at full speed. Civilian territory meant wagons and checkpoints and merchants clogging the roads, so the team settled into an easier pace beside the caravan route.

Himiko Hyuuga, their temporary partner with a terrible snoring issue, walked ahead in silence, her pale eyes scanning the road lazily. Tsunade walked behind her, very obviously avoiding him.

She had been avoiding him all morning, which Jiraiya thought was hilarious. She wasn't angry at him, though. If Tsunade had actually been angry, he’d currently be embedded six feet deep in a crater somewhere behind them.

No, this was different.

Annoying Tsunade was one of his top three favorite pastimes, and this was peak annoyed. This was Tsunade, suddenly finding roadside geology fascinating whenever he walked too close to her. Tsunade, refusing to look directly at him for more than three seconds at a time. Tsunade, getting weirdly stiff every time he smirked at her.

Honestly, he had no idea what her problem was. He’d fallen asleep. Curse a man for cuddling, apparently.

And sure, waking up with his face buried in her boobs had maybe, potentially, altered his brain chemistry a little. It was hard not to notice her rack now that he had firsthand experience of how it felt. But he was handling that well— respectfully, even— in his opinion.

Look, he was nineteen. He wasn’t a saint.

He jogged to catch up with her. It wasn’t hard; his legs were much longer than hers.

“Hey, so what’s up your ass today, anyway?” 

“Leave me alone, pervert," She said, staring directly ahead. 

Tsunade rolled her eyes and sped up slightly. Jiraiya grinned.

See? Fine. If she was still insulting him normally, everything was fine. 

Jiraiya hooked his thumbs behind his head as they walked. The afternoon sun had gone warm against the back of his neck. Dust kicked up beneath their sandals every few steps. Tsunade still hadn’t looked at him again. Which obviously meant he needed to keep trying. 

“You know,” he said conversationally, “I told you all about my goals last night.”

“Mhm.”

“My goals.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Mentor a genin team. Write a legendary book. Finish sage mode, obviously.” He grinned. “Get a fantastic night’s sleep. Which, by the way, I can officially cross off the list, thanks to your-”

Tsunade groaned loudly without looking at him and crossed her arms again. Jiraiya’s eyes betrayed him immediately. He was not staring.

Okay, maybe staring a little. 

“But you never elaborated,” he continued easily. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your goals.” He nudged her shoulder lightly with his own. “Your dreams. We’re already getting old already, Tsuna-chan. You really just wanna keep punching people and running missions forever?”

Jiraiya glanced sideways at her. The sunlight caught gold through her hair, where it had started slipping loose from its tie during the day. Dirt smudged one sleeve. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted eventually. “I like roaming, I guess. My grandmother,” she continued, “the Uzumaki one, really wants me to take a few years and commit to super advanced medical training. Which I think I'd like.”

Jiraiya blinked. “Seriously?”

“Mhm.”

“What does that even look like?”

That finally got him a real smile. Small at first. Then brighter once she started explaining. “The Byakugō,” she said. “It’s a chakra seal stored here.” She tapped two fingers lightly against her forehead. “Years of chakra control. Compression. Storage. If I can complete it properly, it’s basically an enormous reserve I can access gradually or all at once.”

Jiraiya let out a low whistle.

“That sounds terrifying.”

“It’ll let me keep healing while fighting at full output.” Tsunade’s expression sharpened slightly as she talked, more animated now. “Cell regeneration. Massive chakra release. Transformation techniques. Probably more once I fully understand it. It would be super useful if we went to war like everyone keeps saying. And also, Grandma Mito said that if she wanted to, she could’ve stayed thirty-five forever.”

Jiraiya stared at her. Then looked her up and down deliberately.

Tsunade caught it immediately. “Don’t.”

“Imagine you at thirty-five forever.” Jiraiya put a hand dramatically over his heart. “Civilization collapses. The rest of us don’t stand a chance.”

She rolled her eyes, but that got another laugh out of her.

God, he liked that sound. Her laugh was easy and bright. For a second, she forgot to act weird around him again. Jiraiya found himself smiling automatically.

Tsunade noticed him smiling; she was immediately suspicious. “What?”

“Nothing.” Jiraiya grinned lazily. He was definitely not imagining what she would look like in 15 years, and he was definitely, definitely not imagining what her grandmother would have looked like at 50 years ago. 

She tried to glare at him, reading his mind, but it fell flat. 

“There’s also Shikkotsu Forest,” she continued after a moment, like she regretted encouraging him but wanted to keep talking anyway. “I might spend some time out there eventually. Try to make a deal with Katsuyu-sama.”

Jiraiya straightened slightly. “Your grandmother’s summon?”

“Mhm. I’d have to do it while Ba-chan’s still around.” Tsunade shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think Katsuyu takes kindly to strangers showing up and making demands.”

“Fair.”

“I feel left out,” she admitted, nudging him lightly with her hip this time. “You’ve got the toads, you’re close to mastering Sage Mode, Orochimaru does whatever the fuck he’s doing with those snakes—”

Jiraiya laughed.

Then, before he thought too hard about it, he slung an arm loosely across her shoulders and squeezed once.

“You’ll figure it out, Hime.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”

For a few seconds, they walked like that beneath the warm afternoon sun, shoulder to shoulder, while the trade road stretched endlessly ahead of them.

By the time they reached the trading town outside Iwagakure, dusk had started settling over the stone rooftops in long blue shadows.

The place was smaller than Jiraiya expected. Not poor exactly, but practical in the way Earth Country settlements always seemed to be. Thick stone walls. Narrow streets. Buildings built squat and low against mountain winds that cut through the roads hard enough to sting exposed skin. Merchants clogged the central market with carts full of ore and textiles bound south toward Fire Country.

Their client’s safe house sat near the edge of town behind a textile warehouse with reinforced shutters and civilian guards who looked nervous enough to jump at loud noises.

Tsunade split off almost immediately to gather supplies for the return trip while Jiraiya and Himiko headed toward the safe house entrance.

Honestly, Jiraiya thought he was making a solid effort.

Himiko had to be somewhere in her early thirties, maybe older. Hard to tell with Hyuuga. They all carried themselves like aristocrats attending funerals. She was pretty in a very refined way, they all were. 

Still, he tried.

“You know,” he said as they walked through the alley toward the warehouse entrance, “for someone with a face like yours, you’re wasting a lot of opportunities to be charming.”

Nothing.

Himiko kept walking.

Jiraiya glanced sideways at her. “You're very stoic, Himiko-san. Is that a special Hyuuga training, or is that natural talent?”

“The client received two written threats and one attempted break-in,” Himiko replied calmly. “Stay focused.”

Jiraiya sighed internally. Kunai to his head, he'd never say it to anyone but Tsunade, but he missed Orochimaru. This was why Orochimaru worked better on assignments. Sure, he occasionally disappeared into forests to conduct deeply concerning “research,” and yes, there had been at least one incident involving snakes, an explosion, and a smell that took three days to leave camp.

But Orochimaru had a personality.

A weird one, definitely. Creepy sometimes. But workable.

He was taking a chance and getting ready to lead another group in the next week or so. A traitor, Tsunade had joked when Orochimaru told them. They nerve to take on a new challenge. It was a stealth mission he was leading. Tsunade's younger brother was on the mission too. His first, as a genin. If they made it back fast enough, Tsunade might get to see her brother off. 

Which was all beside the point. Himiko Hyuuga gave Jiraiya absolutely nothing to play off of. No irritation. No reactions. No insults. It was like talking to an especially elegant wall. And he was mad at Orochimaru for putting him in this boring position. 

The trader himself turned out to be compact, sweating profusely, and visibly exhausted despite the cold mountain air. Gensuke bowed three separate times before they even finished introductions.

“You’re from Konoha?” he asked immediately, relief flooding his face.

“As requested!” Jiraiya replied.

Himiko ignored him. “We leave within the hour.”

Gensuke nodded quickly. “Of course. Of course.”

By the time they regrouped with Tsunade near the center market street, the lanterns throughout town had started flickering to life.

She stood beside a supply stall with two fresh packs slung over one shoulder, hair slightly windswept from the mountain air. The second she spotted him, her eyes narrowed automatically like she was preemptively bracing for irritation.

“How’d it go?” Tsunade asked. "Client all set?" 

Jiraiya sighed dramatically and nodded. She threw a small package at him. 

He caught it automatically.

Earplugs. For the snoring. 

Another pair flew toward Gensuke.

“What are these for?” the trader breathed.

Tsunade looked smug. “You’ll need them later.”

With the trader added to the camp, they needed two active watches overnight.

Gensuke looked deeply apologetic about this fact, which honestly just made Jiraiya feel worse for him.

The man was clearly soft. Rich hands. Nervous posture. The kind of civilian who probably considered rain an emergency. Rogue shinobi threatening to kidnap him had apparently scared him badly enough that he startled whenever somebody moved too quickly nearby.

Tsunade drew first watch. Himiko drew second. Jiraiya thanked every deity he could think of for this outcome and went to sleep immediately.

Unfortunately, roughly three hours later, he woke up convinced there was either an earthquake or a large animal dying nearby.

Then Himiko snored again.

The tent poles vibrated faintly. Jiraiya stared at the ceiling of his tent, exhausted and in disbelief.

Another snore ripped through camp. Somewhere outside, Gensuke whimpered awake. Jiraiya heard him looking for the earplugs in his cloak. 

Jiraiya climbed out of the tent, pulling a blanket over his shoulders.

Tsunade sat perched in the crook of a tree overlooking camp, blanket wrapped around her shoulders against the cold mountain air. Moonlight silvered the loose strands of hair around her face. She looked over when he climbed up beside her.

“I don’t know why we bothered dousing the fire; any assassins within five miles can use the snoring as a landmark.”

“I thought you were excited about a full night’s sleep.”

“I was.” Jiraiya settled onto the branch with a sigh. “Then, Himiko started her mating call.”

That got a laugh out of her. Jiraiya grinned automatically and shook out the extra blanket before draping it loosely around both of them. She glanced down at it, then at him, but didn’t protest.

Interesting.

Below them, camp sat quiet beneath the trees except for the occasional monstrous snore echoing from Himiko’s tent.

Jiraiya leaned back against the trunk behind them. “Seriously. I think the rogue ninja are probably avoiding us now.”

“Fear tactic,” Tsunade said solemnly. “Auditory torture.”

“Very effective.”

Another snore rattled through camp. For a while they just sat there listening to the woods around them. Wind moving through branches. The occasional creak of wagon wood from the road. Himiko accidentally terrorizing the sleeping wilderness.

It was nice, if you tuned out the snoring.

Jiraiya glanced sideways at Tsunade. “I’m excited for you, by the way.”

“Hm?”

“The summon thing.” He shrugged one shoulder beneath the blanket. “I definitely think you should go for the contract with Katsuyu.”

Tsunade looked surprised by the sincerity in his voice.

“Having a summon changes everything,” he continued. “It’s like… having something powerful in your corner all the time. Somebody watching your back.”

“Gamabunta mostly insults you.”

“Affectionately.”

“That’s debatable.”

Jiraiya grinned. “You know what I mean.”

She did. He could tell by the way her expression softened slightly.

“I’ll probably do it,” she admitted after a moment. “If Ba-chan thinks Katsuyu will tolerate me. It'll just mean being away a while.”

“And the chakra thing?” Jiraiya continued. “That’s unreal.”

“The Byakugō?”

“I’ve never even heard of anyone doing something like that before.” He shook his head slightly. “If Mito-sama thinks you can pull it off, that’s insane.”

Tsunade looked down toward the dark road below them, quieter now.

“It’ll take a few years. It’ll be hard.”

“So?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I don't know. It's just really advanced. What if I can’t do it?”

Jiraiya blinked at her.

The question sounded strange coming from Tsunade.

Not because she was arrogant. Jiraiya was arrogant. Tsunade wasn’t, really. Just confident in the way strong people tended to get after surviving enough things. And Tsunade was strong. He’d known that since they were kids. He still had scars from learning it firsthand.

“You punch through cliffs when you’re annoyed. I think you can probably handle a forehead seal.”

That got another laugh out of her.

Jiraiya smiled automatically.

The moonlight caught her face when she looked over at him again, softer around the edges now.

Pretty.

Dangerous and pretty. Dangerously pretty lately, honestly. 

And maybe he looked at her a second too long, because Tsunade’s expression shifted immediately into suspicion.

“What?”

Jiraiya shrugged lazily. “Just thinking thirty-five forever is gonna be a real problem for the rest of us.”

Tsunade groaned softly. “Oh my god.”

“I’m serious. You’re already unbearable now.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll become completely insufferable once you’re basically immortal and eternally hot.”

Tsunade laughed despite herself and shoved his shoulder. Then her eyes narrowed.

“Are you fucking flirting right now?”

“Stating a fact isn’t flirting.”

“It is, but whatever, idiot.”

Jiraiya blinked at her, then laughed softly under his breath.

Because that was the thing.

It genuinely wasn’t intended to be flirting.

Jiraiya liked women. That was just objective reality. He noticed pretty hair, long legs, good smiles, and nice butts, the way other people noticed the weather. Women were wonderful. Soft and dangerous and funny and strong and dramatic and impossible. He appreciated most of them on principle.

And Tsunade just so happened to possess a frankly unreasonable amount of his favorite things about women. And she was his friend. 

That wasn’t his fault. 

And okay, yeah, the boobs were becoming a serious issue lately.

But still.

“That’s not flirting,” he repeated, quieter this time. “It’s the objective truth, Hime.”

He turned toward her slightly beneath the blanket.

“If I were flirting with you—”

He stopped there. Mostly because Tsunade was already looking at him now, and she was close. Closer than he’d realized. The pause stretched maybe a second too long.

“You’d know,” he said, simply. “You wouldn't need to ask.” 

Then Himiko snored loud enough to shake the branch beneath them.

Tsunade barked out a startled laugh and leaned forward, breaking whatever that awkward moment had been. 

Jiraiya laughed too, mostly out of relief. 

“Anyway, night, Tsuna-chan, don't let anyone kill us in our sleep!” He swung backward off the tree branch, letting his chakra catch his footsteps on the bark on the way down. 

Chapter Text

Jiraiya had seen dead bodies before. Obviously. That was the stupid thing.

By this point, it stopped being shocking. Being a shinobi had this gross way of making awful things feel normal if you saw them enough times. Bodies zipped into bags. Blood drying black on uniforms. Somebody reading casualty reports over breakfast like they were weather updates.

Still, the morgue smelled different. Felt different. 

The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed constantly, cheap and irritating, while water dripped somewhere farther down the hall in uneven little plinks. Somebody had tracked mud across the tile floor earlier, and nobody bothered cleaning it because there were bigger problems than dirty footprints.

The attendant pulled back the sheet and asked him to confirm his identity, like they were discussing supply inventory instead of a twelve-year-old kid.

Male. Senju, Nawaki. 12. Konoha shinobi identification confirmed.

Jiraiya signed the form because somebody had to.

It was really just checking a box at that point. It was clinical. As cold as the room and the shell of the boy in it. 

Orochimaru had already identified him in the field. Among the body parts, he'd recognized the necklace Tsunade had just given to her brother. She'd worn it around her own neck since the day they met her. 

She wanted to identify the body herself. But Jiraiya couldn't stand there and watch her walk into that room herself. Couldn't watch her look at what the explosion did to her little brother and then ask somebody for a pen after. If Orochimaru, of all people said it was bad, it was bad. 

And it was.  

So Jiraiya signed the forms instead.

Honestly, it barely even looked like Nawaki anymore.

That thought kept replaying in his head no matter how hard he tried to shove it away.

Nawaki had been alive literally yesterday. Loud and annoying and trying too hard to act older than he was. Always talking. Always asking questions. Always hanging around people way above his rank because he thought if he copied jonin long enough he'd magically turn into one.

Last month he'd followed Jiraiya around town for almost two hours asking about summoning techniques and trying to recite all of the names of the toads.

Now he was cold on a metal table under buzzy fluorescent lights.

Orochimaru had seen it happen.

Their unit hit the trap line during retreat just before dusk. One wrong step. One explosion.

Jiraiya could still picture Orochimaru walking down the morgue hallway afterward with blood dried all over the front of his uniform and Nawaki's necklace wrapped around his fingers.

Tsunade had made this horrible sound the second she saw it.

Not crying.

Worse.

Like somebody reached into her chest and ripped something out with their bare hands.

Hours later Jiraiya still couldn't stop hearing it.

Now she sat curled up on the floor beside Jiraiya’s couch with her knees pulled tight against her chest, shaking so hard the tea cup in her hands rattled constantly against its saucer. The apartment lights were still off except for the little kitchen lamp Jiraiya turned on after practically carrying her home from the hospital.

She hadn't really stopped crying since the morgue.

Sometimes it got quieter for a few minutes before starting up again worse than before, like she kept almost getting control of herself and then remembering again.

Jiraiya stood awkwardly near the doorway still half in uniform, staring at her while trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do.

This kind of thing wasn't in training manuals.

Nobody taught you what to say when your best friend looked like she was actively falling apart in front of you.

Outside, Konoha carried on normally anyway.

People moved through the streets below the apartment building. Somebody nearby was grilling meat over charcoal. A dog barked somewhere down the block. Kids laughed outside like there wasn't a war happening at all.

The world kept going.

Tsunade made another horrible choking sound and bent forward suddenly, one hand pressed over her mouth hard enough to leave marks against her skin.

Jiraiya moved before really thinking about it. He crouched beside her just in time for the tea cup to slip from her hands and smash across the floor.

She didn't even react to the sound.

“He’s twelve,” she gasped out.

Jiraiya swallowed hard.

Jiraiya stayed crouched beside her while the tea spread slowly across the floorboards in uneven little rivers.

Tsunade still had one hand clamped hard over her mouth like she was trying to physically hold herself together. Her entire body shook with every breath. The broken pieces of the cup lay scattered near her knees.

Carefully, Jiraiya reached over and pushed the sharpest pieces farther away before she could cut herself on them.

She didn’t react.

“He’s twelve,” she said again, voice shredded raw enough it barely sounded like her anymore.

Like the number itself was impossible. Like saying it enough times might eventually force the world to correct itself.

Jiraiya looked down at the floor because he didn’t know where else to look.

Tsunade bent forward suddenly with a choking sound, both elbows braced against her knees now. “I told him to be careful. I told him the necklace was lucky.”

The words came apart halfway through.

“I know.”

Jiraiya closed his eyes for a second.

He could picture it too easily. Nawaki grinning. Rolling his eyes. Acting invincible because he was so grown up in his own head instead of twelve in reality. A preteen Hokage, his birthright. 

Tsunade made another awful sound and folded in on herself harder.

That was the point Jiraiya stopped trying to think of the right thing to say because there obviously wasn't one.

He moved on instinct instead.

One second he was kneeling beside her and the next he had both arms wrapped around her while she fell against him so hard it nearly knocked him backwards onto the floor.

Tsunade grabbed onto the front of his jacket immediately.

The sound that came out of her against his shoulder made something in his chest feel like it physically tore.

Jiraiya tightened his hold automatically, one hand settling awkwardly against the back of her head while she cried against him hard enough to shake both of them.

“It’s okay,” he heard himself saying.

It wasn’t okay. The words felt stupid the second they left his mouth.

So he tried again.

“I’ve got you,” he said instead, quieter this time. “I’ve got you, Tsuna.”

Tsunade cried into his shoulder until the fabric was damp through to his skin.

Jiraiya stayed there on the floor with her because moving felt impossible now. Because if he let go she might actually come apart completely.

The apartment was dim except for the weak yellow kitchen light behind them. Outside, somewhere down the street, people were still talking and laughing like normal. Somebody slammed a door. A dog barked.

After a long time Tsunade’s crying finally weakened into exhausted shuddering breaths instead of outright sobbing, though she still hadn’t let go of his shirt.

Jiraiya glanced down at her carefully.

Her face was buried against his shoulder now, hair fallen loose. There were dark circles under her red eyes already.

He hated it.

“Tsunade,” he said quietly after a while. “You should try to sleep a little.”

She shook her head immediately against him.

“I can’t.”

Another silence stretched.

Then, muffled against his shoulder, she whispered, “I don’t wanna go home.”

The words hit him strangely hard. Her house suddenly felt very far away. Empty. Full of Nawaki’s things.

Jiraiya looked down at the top of her head for a second before answering.

“Okay,” he said simply. “Then don’t.”

Tsunade’s grip tightened slightly at the front of his jacket.

That was all. No thank you. No argument.

Just that tiny desperate clutch of fabric like she needed to make sure he was actually there.

Tsunade eventually cried herself into exhaustion.

One minute she was still curled against him on the floor, breathing unevenly, and the next her body had simply gone heavy. Her grip loosened slightly against his shirt. Her breathing slowed.

Jiraiya stayed still for another few minutes afterward just to make sure.

Carefully, he shifted enough to look down at her face.

Asleep.

Or close enough to it, anyway.

Her eyelashes were still damp. Every now and then her brow tightened faintly like even unconsciousness wasn't letting her rest properly.

Jiraiya exhaled slowly through his nose.

Then came the problem of figuring out what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Very carefully, trying not to wake her, he maneuvered them both enough to get one arm underneath her knees. Tsunade stirred immediately with a small distressed sound, fingers tightening weakly against him again.

“Hey,” he murmured automatically. “It’s okay.” 

Jiraiya lifted her the rest of the way anyway.

She felt lighter than he expected. Or maybe he was just running too much adrenaline to notice properly anymore. 

The couch cushions dipped beneath her weight when he laid her down. She curled instinctively onto her side almost immediately, one hand still bunched loosely in the front of his shirt until he carefully pried her fingers free.

For a second he thought she might wake up when he stepped away.

She didn’t.

Jiraiya stood there staring at her for a while instead.

His apartment was quiet now except for the faint sounds from the street outside and the soft hum of the kitchen light. Tsunade looked strange asleep on his couch. Smaller. Her hair spilled across the cushion and one of his blankets was tangled loosely around her legs where he'd thrown it over her a few minutes earlier.

He hated this.

With a tired sigh, Jiraiya rubbed both hands down his face before finally turning toward the window.

He bit his thumb.

Smoke burst softly into the apartment.

A tiny orange toad– more of a tadpole, really, there was still a hint of a tail– landed on the windowsill with an indignant croak loud enough that Jiraiya immediately hissed, “Shut up.”

The toad blinked at him. Gamahito, he thought. One of Bunta’s younger brothers. 

“Big bro said you called for an errand,” he informed Jiraiya. “Also he said if this is another weird woman problem—”

“It’s not.”

The little toad eyed the sleeping figure on the couch.

“…looks like a woman problem. You can't keep calling us for personal issues.”

Jiraiya glared at him until the toad finally sighed dramatically.

“What do you need?”

Jiraiya crouched near the window and kept his voice low.

“I need messages delivered.”

The toad groaned immediately. “Why is it always errands—”

“Because you need to practice your reverse summoning, and people don’t scream when they see you crawling through windows, and Bunta said to call you for messages until you're bigger.”

“Fair.”

Jiraiya grabbed a pen off the cluttered kitchen counter along with the nearest scrap papers he could find.

The first note was quick.

 Suzune –

Something came up. Can’t make it tomorrow. Family emergency. 

Sorry.

— Jiraiya

He folded it once before starting the second.

Ayame —

Need to cancel Saturday. Buy you dinner soon. 

Breakfast too, if I'm lucky.

— Jiraiya

The little toad peered at the notes.

“Don’t be nosy.”

Jiraiya hesitated before reaching for a third scrap of paper.

Aiko–

Sorry, gorgeous.

He stared at the blank page for several seconds.

He was supposed to meet her next week. Pretty girl. Smart. A little crazy. Worked in T&I. He'd spent the better part of two weeks trying to convince her to go out with him. 

Under normal circumstances he'd probably still try to go.

But he looked over toward the couch again.

Tsunade shifted faintly in her sleep, face tightening for a second before relaxing again.

Jiraiya looked back down at the blank page.

“…I’ll hold off on this one,” he muttered finally.

The toad snorted. “You’re gonna cancel that too.”

“Probably.”

“Rough week for your love life.”

Jiraiya ignored him.

Instead he pulled another sheet closer and started writing a much more formal message.

Sandaime —

Tsunade and I won’t be available for the border assignment this weekend. Since Nawaki— I don't need to explain to you. If you can take care of it, please do. I’d recommend Sakumo Hatake and Daichi Aburame if they are free. Himiko Hyuuga is very competent as well. If none of them are available, I can go alone.

Let me know if anything is needed to formally pull out of the mission. I've got Tsuna at my place while she figures everything out. 

— Jiraiya

He stared at the note for a second afterward before folding it carefully.

The tiny toad gathered the papers with visible annoyance.

“I’ll tell Bunta you were brave and noble.”

“I was brave and noble.”

“You’ve complained and snooped the whole time.”

The toad stuffed the notes into his little vest anyway. Before disappearing in another puff of smoke, he glanced once toward the couch.

“…She gonna be okay, boss?”

Jiraiya looked over too.

Tsunade had curled tighter into herself at some point while they talked.

He swallowed once.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.

Then the toad vanished.

The apartment fell silent again afterward.

Jiraiya stood alone in the weak kitchen light for a long moment before finally walking back toward the couch and sitting carefully on the floor beside it.

For a while Jiraiya just sat there beside the couch listening to Tsunade breathe.

The apartment had gone properly dark outside the kitchen now. Window glass reflected the weak yellow light back at him in blurry smears. Somewhere upstairs, somebody dragged furniture across the floor loud enough to rattle the ceiling beams.

Tsunade didn’t wake up.

Jiraiya leaned his head back against the couch cushion behind him and stared at nothing.

Now what?

He’d cancelled his plans. Sent the messages. Cleared the mission schedule. Taken care of the immediate practical things because practical things at least had instructions attached to them.

But now she was asleep on his couch and Nawaki was dead and Jiraiya had absolutely no idea what came after that.

Nobody trained shinobi for this part.

He rubbed tiredly at his face.

The stupid thing was that somewhere underneath all the panic over Tsunade, he realized he felt hollow too.

He missed Nawaki already.

The kid had annoyed the hell out of him half the time. Always talking. Always asking questions in the middle of missions. Always wanting to tag along places he wasn't supposed to be.

Last week Nawaki had eaten half of Jiraiya’s ramen without asking and then argued for twenty straight minutes that he technically deserved it because growing boys needed more calories.

Jiraiya had threatened to drown him in the river behind the training grounds.

Nawaki laughed so hard he nearly fell in.

Jiraiya swallowed hard and looked away from the couch.

Right.

Okay.

Do something.

Do anything.

Quietly, he pushed himself up from the floor and headed toward his bedroom.

The sheets were still twisted from before they'd left for the mission earlier that week. One pillow half on the floor. An empty cup balanced dangerously on the nightstand beside a stack of loose papers and old bingo books. A bra and a sock that he couldn't name the owner of if there was a kunai to his throat.

Jiraiya stared at the mess for a second before suddenly feeling vaguely ashamed of it.

He stripped the bed quickly and changed the sheets mostly because it gave his hands something to do.

Fresh linens. Clean pillowcases.

The motions felt weird and automatic.

Halfway through wrestling the blanket back over the mattress, another thought hit him.

There was basically no food in the apartment.

Jiraiya stopped and looked toward the kitchen.

A half loaf of stale bread. Instant ramen. One suspicious onion. Maybe some old rice if he was lucky.

That was fine for him. Usually.

But Tsunade was here, and he had no idea how long she would need to stay.

The realization settled strangely in his chest.

Not bad. Just heavy.

Jiraiya glanced back toward the couch before grabbing his wallet off the counter.

“Don’t leave,” he muttered uselessly toward the sleeping room beyond the hallway before immediately feeling stupid for saying it out loud.

Still, he hesitated at the door another few seconds before finally stepping outside.

The air beyond the apartment building had cooled considerably since sunset.

Konoha was quieter now, though not asleep yet. Warm lantern light spilled from restaurant windows onto the street below. Somebody nearby was grilling fish. A pair of chunin walked past arguing about patrol rotations.

The normalcy of it all still felt wrong.

The market downstairs was small enough that the old woman behind the counter looked up immediately when Jiraiya walked in.

“You look terrible, kiddo,” she informed him.

“Thank you.”

“Long mission?”

Jiraiya paused.

“…Something like that.”

Jiraiya wandered the aisles grabbing things almost absently.

Milk.

Bread.

Eggs.

Tea.

Rice.

A few apples that looked decent enough.

After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey too.

Not for Tsunade. Probably.

Maybe for him.

Maybe for both of them eventually.

By the time he paid and stepped back outside, the paper bags were awkwardly overfilled against his chest.

He should've just gone home then.

Instead he stopped at the small restaurant near the corner and placed an order through the courier counter out front.

Nikujaga.

It would keep well if Tsunade wasn’t hungry tonight. Potatoes, onions, beef simmered long enough everything softened into broth. Comfort food. 

The owner told him it would be delivered within the hour. Jiraiya thanked him automatically and headed back upstairs immediately afterward.

The entire trip couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes.

It still felt too long.

By the time he unlocked the apartment door again, his chest had tightened hard enough that relief hit almost embarrassingly fast when he saw Tsunade still asleep exactly where he’d left her.

One of her hands was curled beneath her cheek now.

Jiraiya exhaled slowly.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself.

Then he carried the groceries into the kitchen as quietly as possible.

By the time the food arrived, the apartment had gone fully quiet.

Jiraiya paid the courier at the door as softly as possible, took the paper bags into the kitchen, and portioned some of the nikujaga into bowls before realizing halfway through that Tsunade was still asleep and probably not waking up anytime soon.

So the food went into the refrigerator instead.

After that, he ran out of things to do again.

Which was how he ended up sitting on the floor beside the couch with a book open in his lap that he hadn’t actually read a single line of in nearly twenty minutes.

The words kept blurring together.

Every few pages he caught himself staring at Tsunade instead.

She hadn’t moved much. Just occasional restless shifts against the couch cushions, her face tightening faintly every now and then before settling again.

Jiraiya checked the clock eventually.

Almost midnight.

He rubbed a hand over his face and tried reading the same paragraph for the fourth time.

A sharp inhale suddenly cut through the silence.

Jiraiya looked up immediately.

Tsunade jerked upright on the couch so fast she nearly tangled herself in the blanket. For one awful second she just sat there blinking wildly around the dark apartment like she had no idea where she was.

Then reality hit her all at once.

Jiraiya saw it happen in her face.

“Oh, shit—”

Tsunade clapped a hand over her mouth and stumbled off the couch hard enough her shoulder clipped the edge of the table.

She barely made it to the bathroom before the sound of vomiting echoed down the hallway.

Jiraiya was moving before he consciously decided to.

By the time he reached the doorway, Tsunade was on her knees in front of the toilet shaking violently, one hand braced against the wall beside her while she retched again.

The sound made his stomach twist.

“Tsunade—”

I’m fine,” she gasped immediately, which was obviously a lie.

Her voice cracked apart halfway through the sentence anyway.

Jiraiya hovered uselessly in the doorway for a second because he still had no clue what the correct response to any of this was supposed to be.

Tsunade leaned her forehead against the side of the toilet seat with a broken little inhale..

He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.

“Take a shower, or something, change” he said after a moment, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “You’ll feel worse if you don’t.”

Tsunade didn’t answer.

For a second he thought she might argue.

Instead she just curled tighter into herself on the bathroom floor.

Jiraiya looked at her for another few seconds before turning away toward his bedroom.

He dug through a drawer until he found an old pair of dark sleep pants and one of his softer oversized shirts, both worn enough they’d stopped feeling rough years ago. Then he grabbed a clean towel from the cabinet.

When he came back, Tsunade still hadn’t moved much.

Without making a big deal out of it, Jiraiya set the folded clothes and towel on the bathroom counter beside the sink.

“There,” he said quietly. “You can borrow those.”

Tsunade finally looked up at him then.

Her eyes were red and unfocused from crying and exhaustion. Mascara smeared dark beneath them from earlier in the day. She looked completely drained.

For a second neither of them spoke.

Then she nodded once.

Small. Barely there.

Jiraiya pointed awkwardly toward the hall behind him.

“I’ll, uh. Be outside.”

He pulled the bathroom door mostly closed behind him after that, leaving just enough space so she wouldn’t feel trapped in there alone.

Jiraiya hovered uselessly in the doorway for another few seconds after Tsunade stopped getting sick.

Water turned on eventually.

That was probably a good sign.

He retreated back into the kitchen while steam slowly started filling the crack beneath the bathroom door. The book he'd abandoned earlier still sat open on the floor beside the couch. Jiraiya picked it up, stared at the same unread paragraph again, then tossed it back down after about ten seconds.

His apartment suddenly felt too small.

Too quiet.

The bathroom door finally opened maybe twenty minutes later.

Jiraiya looked up immediately.

Tsunade stood in the hallway wrapped in steam and wearing clothes that absolutely swallowed her whole. His dark shirt hung halfway down her thighs, one shoulder slipping loose where the collar stretched too wide. The sleep pants were rolled messily at the ankles.

Her hair was damp and loose around her face now.

She still looked awful. Eyes swollen raw from crying. Skin pale with exhaustion.

But clearer too, somehow.

Less trapped inside the panic spiral from earlier. More aware of where she was.

For one strange second Jiraiya just stared at her.

She looked heartbreakingly small.

Tsunade rubbed tiredly at one eye and avoided looking directly at him as she crossed the apartment toward the couch again.

Jiraiya blinked out of it.

“Hey,” he said. “Take the bed.”

She glanced at him. “What?”

“The bed,” he repeated, gesturing vaguely toward the hallway. “You should sleep there. I’ll take the couch.”

Tsunade stared at him for a second like he’d said something genuinely stupid.

“Don’t be stupid, Jiraiya.”

He shrugged awkwardly. “It’s my couch.”

“And it’s your bed.”

“Yeah, well.”

Neither of them seemed to know where the conversation was supposed to go after that.

Finally Jiraiya rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “Whatever you want.”

Tsunade opened her mouth like she was about to argue again.

Then her expression crumpled without warning.

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” she admitted quietly.

The words came out small enough they barely sounded like her at all.

Jiraiya felt something in his chest tighten painfully.

Tsunade looked away immediately afterward, blinking hard like she was angry at herself for even saying it.

“Oh,” he said quickly. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”

Tsunade let out one shaky breath and wiped furiously at her eyes before more tears could actually fall.

Jiraiya stood up immediately because watching her cry again suddenly felt unbearable.

“C’mon,” he said gently.

The bedroom still smelled faintly like clean laundry from when he'd changed the sheets earlier.

Tsunade hesitated in the doorway for a second before climbing into bed carefully like she felt strange occupying the space. She settled on one side almost immediately, curling tightly inward beneath the blankets with her back angled toward the rest of the mattress.

Small.

That was the only word Jiraiya’s brain kept supplying tonight.

She looked small curled up there in his clothes and swallowed by his blankets.

Jiraiya turned off the bedroom light before awkwardly circling around to the other side of the bed.

Instead he settled carefully onto the mattress beside her.

The space between them couldn’t have been more than six inches.

It still felt enormous.

Jiraiya stared up at the ceiling in the darkness with both hands folded awkwardly over his stomach, hyper aware of literally everything all at once.

The sound of Tsunade breathing.

The warmth radiating faintly from her side of the bed.

The occasional shift of fabric whenever she moved.

Tsunade made a small sound in her sleep — not quite a sob, not quite words — and curled tighter beneath the blankets.

Without thinking too hard about it, Jiraiya reached across the space between them and rested his hand lightly against her shoulder.

After a few seconds, some of the tension slowly left her body.

Jiraiya stayed awake a long time after that anyway

Chapter Text

The path Lady Mito gave her did not look like a path at all.

Tsunade stood at the edge of a narrow ravine somewhere far north in Fire, staring down through curtains of moss and stone while cold mist drifted upward against her face. There were no markers. No gates or shrines or signs or warnings. Just forest. Ancient, wet, breathing forest.

For a long moment she wondered if Mito had sent her the wrong way on purpose. One final test, or joke, before she passed on to whatever was next. 

Then the wind shifted.

The trees below bent all at once, not with the weather but with recognition, and chakra rolled up from the ravine floor in a pulse so old and heavy it made her stomach tighten.

The entrance revealed itself only after that.

A narrow shelf of stone emerged beneath the moss, hidden runes glowing faintly under her feet as she stepped onto it. The air changed immediately. Cooler. Cleaner. She could taste mineral water on her tongue. The smell of wet bark and medicinal herbs thickened around her until it drowned out the ordinary scent of earth.

The forest opened slowly as she descended.

Shikkotsu Forest was nothing like the woods around Konoha. Nothing like the forests bordering the Land of Fire. It felt older than villages. Older than any shinobi settlement.

The trees rose in impossible shapes, pale trunks twisting upward like exposed bone, their canopies silver-green beneath drifting sheets of fog. Massive shelves of vivid fungi clung to bark wider than houses. Veins of luminous moss threaded across stones and roots, casting dim blue-green light through the undergrowth like submerged stars.

Water existed everywhere.

Thin streams flowed over roots without sound. Clear pools reflected the canopy with mirror-perfect stillness. Entire sections of the forest floor moved softly beneath her sandals because they were not earth at all but centuries of moss layered over shallow water.

Nothing decayed here the like it did elsewhere. It found new life. 

Even fallen trees were overtaken gently by rot and moss, transformed into gardens of pale flowers and medicinal growths instead of rot.

Tsunade passed plants she recognized from hospital storage only in dried powdered form, growing wild in impossible abundance. Ghost orchids curled from tree hollows. Bloodroot clustered beside glowing ponds. Vines heavy with translucent white blossoms climbed toward filtered light high above.

Everywhere she looked, things were healing.

A cracked stone swallowed slowly by moss. Broken bark sealing itself smooth. Water polishing jagged rock into soft curves over years beyond counting.

The beauty of it hurt.

Nawaki should have seen this.

The thought arrived suddenly enough to stop her where she stood.

He would have loved the glowing water. He would have splashed directly into the pools no matter how dangerous or sacred they looked. He would have asked a thousand and one loud questions until the whole forest answered him back out of annoyance.

For one terrible second she could see him clearly beside her, forever twelve years old and grinning.

Then the image vanished.

The silence afterward hollowed her out.

Tsunade pressed the heel of her hand hard against her eyes and kept walking.

The deeper she traveled, the stranger the forest became.

The fog thickened into slow-moving drapes. The trees spread farther apart. She began noticing enormous trails through the moss where something vast had passed silently through the undergrowth. Slime gleamed along stones in pearlescent streaks that shimmered faintly with chakra.

Eventually the forest opened into a basin so enormous it resembled a hidden valley. Pale cliffs curved around its edges, threaded with waterfalls that descended into a lake clear enough to reveal glowing stone far beneath the surface.

And at the center of it sat Katsuyu.

Tsunade stopped breathing for a moment.

The slug dwarfed the trees around her. Her enormous pale body rested coiled across the lakeshore and into the water itself. Blue markings glowed softly along her form, pulsing with calm rhythmic chakra that spread through the entire basin.

Tsunade suddenly understood why her grandmother had spoken of this place reverently.

Katsuyu lowered her head slightly.

“Lady Mito’s hatchling,” she said. "You have her eyes.”

The voice did not echo despite its size. It simply arrived everywhere at once, gentle enough to make Tsunade’s chest ache unexpectedly.

Tsunade swallowed. “You knew my grandmother well.”

“For a very long time.”

The great slug regarded her in silence after that. Simply looking at her.

Tsunade straightened automatically anyway, shoulders tight. “I came because I want a summoning contract.”

Katsuyu hummed softly.

“Perhaps. But that is not why you are truly here.”

Tsunade’s jaw tightened. The forest was quiet. The lake was quiet. Even the air here seemed patient.

“I want to learn medical ninjutsu,” she said after a moment. “Properly.”

“You already possess considerable skill for your age.”

“It isn’t enough.”

The answer came too fast, and her voice broke. Her throat closed immediately afterward.

Katsuyu waited.

Tsunade stared past her toward the glowing lake water.

“I couldn’t save him. I wasn't there. I didn’t even get the chance to try.”

The basin remained silent except for distant falling water.

Katsuyu’s enormous eyes softened.

“Someone dear to you died.”

Anger flared suddenly beneath the grief, hot and familiar and easier to carry than the rest of it.

“He died because nobody had a medic with them. Because everyone treats healing like cleanup instead of treating people like they are worth protecting. I need to be strong enough to make them listen.”

The words spilled harder now.

“If there had been someone there—”

“But there was not,” Katsuyu said gently.

Tsunade looked away.

The slug did not interrupt the silence that followed. Did not offer comfort too quickly. Did not insult her by pretending the wound could be smoothed over with wisdom.

Finally Katsuyu said, “You wish to learn healing because you cannot bear helplessness.”

Tsunade’s laugh came out brittle. “Is that supposed to be a flaw?”

“No.”

Katsuyu shifted slightly in the water, great ripples moving across the lake.

“Healers who cannot accept death destroy themselves trying to bargain with it. You are not the first shinobi to come here grieving.”

Something old moved behind her voice then. Old enough to carry centuries.

“Lady Mito first arrived here with blood on her hands." Katsuyu continued. “She did not come seeking power. She came because she feared the power sealed within her, and what surviving had made of her. Healing was the only thing that quieted the noise.”

Tsunade stared.

It was easy to forget sometimes that her grandmother had once been young. That she had lived through wars and trauma before villages stabilized into something resembling peace.

“She told me,” Katsuyu said softly, “that healing is an act of defiance.”

The forest seemed to breathe around them.

“Not against death,” the slug continued. “Death comes for all living things eventually. Healing is defiance against needless suffering. Against cruelty. Against the belief that lives are expendable.”

Tsunade felt something painful tighten in her chest.

Because that sounded like Nawaki. Bright-eyed and furious and naive enough to believe the world could still be fixed.

Katsuyu lowered herself slightly closer now, immense and impossibly gentle.

“So tell me, little princess, what kind of healer do you wish to become?”

Katsuyu led her deeper beneath the basin through a winding passage carved smooth by underground water.

The tunnels glowed faintly as they walked. Veins of mineral threaded through the stone walls in pale blues and silvers, catching the slug sage’s chakra until the entire cavern seemed softly illuminated from within. The air grew warmer the farther they descended, damp without being unpleasant, carrying the clean scent of rainwater and herbs.

Small slugs rested along the walls and ceilings as they passed. Some slept curled against the stone. Others lifted their heads curiously toward Tsunade before settling again.

None of them seemed afraid of her.

“This was prepared for you,” Katsuyu said at last.

The cave itself sat tucked beside an underground spring, half-hidden behind curtains of hanging moss. It was not large, but it felt lived in.

Comfortable.

A low bed rested against one wall beneath folded blankets stitched from pale woven fibers Tsunade did not recognize. Shelves had been carved directly into the stone, already stocked with jars, bandages, dried herbs, and scrolls. A lantern hung from a hook near the entrance, its flame reflecting through the cavern in scattered shards of light.

Tsunade stepped inside slowly.

The walls glittered.

Tiny crystals embedded in the rock caught the lantern glow and fractured it into hundreds of pinprick stars across the cave ceiling. The stalactites overhead shimmered with mineral deposits that looked almost frozen mid-drip, silver and translucent blue.

Beautiful enough that it barely resembled something underground.

And beside the bed, carved carefully into the stone wall in faded elegant script, was one name.

Mito.

Tsunade stopped.

Her fingertips brushed the carving before she could think better of it.

The grooves were shallow with age.

For one dizzying moment she could picture her grandmother here exactly as she was now: younger, sharp-eyed, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed with ink on her fingers and sealing scrolls piled around her.

The ache hit suddenly enough to make her chest tighten.

Everyone she loved seemed to exist lately only in traces. In empty rooms. In old handwriting. In things left behind.

Katsuyu lingered near the entrance.

“You may stay here as long as you require.”

Tsunade looked back toward her.

“To learn senjutsu?”

“To heal,” Katsuyu corrected gently. “And to learn to heal. The rest will follow.”

The slug sage withdrew after that, leaving Tsunade alone with the sound of the underground spring.

For a while she simply stood there listening to the water.

No battle sounds. No hospital corridors. No village noise. No condolences spoken in hushed careful voices.

Just quiet.

Eventually she crouched beside her bag and began unpacking. The motions were automatic at first. Clothes folded onto the shelf. Rations stacked neatly beside the bed. Her weapon pouch placed within easy reach.

Next came the medical supply belt Mito had pressed into her hands before she left Konoha.

New leather. Reinforced stitching. More compartments than Tsunade honestly knew how to fill yet.

Her grandmother had adjusted the straps herself in silence before Tsunade departed, hands shaking and lingering briefly at her shoulders afterward.

Tsunade exhaled slowly and reached deeper into the bag again.

Her hand brushed something unfamiliar.

She frowned.

Pulled it free.

A book.

The cover was worn soft at the edges, depicting a painted samurai crossing a river beneath storm clouds. One corner had been bent so many times the crease remained permanently white.

Tsunade stared at it. Then, opened the cover. A folded note slipped loose into her lap.

She recognized the handwriting instantly.

Messy. Leaning slightly too hard to the right. Ink blotted in places where he'd apparently written too fast.

Read this while I trained at Mount Myōboku. Thought you might like it. I want to write something like this one day.

Remember to come back and return it someday, when you're stronger than all of us. Don't miss me too much while you're roaming.

— J

For several seconds she could only look at the page.

Then she laughed once.

Of course he had hidden something in her bag.

Of course it was a stupid adventure novel.

And of course he had somehow managed to sound unbearably sincere while pretending not to.

Tsunade lowered her head before she realized she was crying.

The tears landed silently against the paper.

Not violent grief this time. Not the awful hollow devastation that had followed Nawaki's death.

Just homesickness.

For Jiraiya's loud voice. Even for Orochimaru's dry corrections from the corner of the room. For the familiar shape of her life before everything split open.

She wiped angrily at her face with the heel of her palm.

“Idiot,” she muttered thickly.

But she held the book carefully anyway.

After a while, Tsunade climbed onto the bed beneath her grandmother's carved name, opened to the first page, and began to read while crystal-light shimmered softly across the cave walls like stars.

Chapter Text

By noon the training field looked like a small natural disaster.

One practice post had split clean down the middle. Another leaned sideways in the dirt after somebody had detonated a tag too close to the base. There were kunai embedded in three separate trees and, inexplicably, one sandal hanging from a branch twenty feet overhead.

Jiraiya honestly did not want to know.

“Again,” he called from where he sat sprawled on the fence rail.

Three exhausted groans answered him immediately.

“We already did it six times,” Natsumi complained, flat on her back in the grass.

“Seven,” Dekai corrected automatically.

“You’re counting wrong.”

Minato crouched near the ruined post, still examining the scorch marks from the last exercise with distracted concentration. “The angle was off,” he murmured mostly to himself. “If we moved the trigger wire lower, it probably would’ve caught sensei’s ankle.”

Jiraiya pointed at him. “See? This one’s thinking constructively.”

“I almost blew your leg off,” Minato said, looking up.

“Exactly. Growth.”

Dekai scrubbed both hands down his face. “You are a terrible teacher.”

“I’m an incredible teacher. You’re all alive, aren't you?”

“Barely,” Natsumi muttered.

Jiraiya grinned despite himself and tipped his head back toward the sunlight filtering through the trees.

God, he liked these kids.

That had been a real surprise.

He’d expected to tolerate teaching. Maybe even enjoy parts of it. He was good with people when he bothered trying, and children tended to think he was funny before they got old enough to realize he was an idiot.

But somewhere over the last few months, these three had stopped feeling like assignments.

Now Minato stayed behind after training to ask questions about senjutsu and chakra control while pretending not to be asking questions at all. Dekai packed extra ration bars because he’d noticed Natsumi forgot lunch whenever she got distracted. Natsumi climbed trees during lectures and argued with authority on principle and once bit her academy teacher hard enough to draw blood.

Tiny weirdos.

His tiny weirdos.

Which was dangerous thinking if he listened to Fukasaku.

The old toad had warned him about this before he left Mount Myōboku.

If you spend too long looking for prophecy, Jiraiya-boy, every bright child will start looking like a star of destiny.

At the time Jiraiya had rolled his eyes.

Now he understood.

Because Minato Namikaze was brilliant in a way that made Jiraiya’s skin prickle sometimes. The boy noticed everything. Learned frighteningly fast. Was frighteningly fast. Half the time it seemed like he was solving problems three steps ahead of everyone else without realizing he was doing it.

And Natsumi Uchiha—

Well.

Any ten-year-old who could nearly defeat an adult while sparring, with just sheer viciousness and dirty tactics was both concerning and thrilling. 

Even Dekai Akimichi, grumpy and cautious and perpetually exasperated, had instincts that couldn’t really be taught. The kid understood teamwork naturally. He was strong. Knew how to steady the other two in a literal and figurative sense without smothering them.

They were good. Scary good.

And every time Jiraiya caught himself wondering if one of them might be—

He stopped. Forced himself to stop.

Because he’d spent nearly three years wandering the continent chasing shadows already.

Three years sleeping in cheap taverns and nicer brothels and temple guest rooms. Three years trying to write something meaningful. Trying to understand what exactly the Great Toad Sage thought he was supposed to become.

He’d gathered stories. He’d gathered rumors. He’d gathered a truly impressive collection of unpaid bar tabs.

No revelation. No chosen child glowing in heavenly light. No sudden understanding of destiny.

Just hangovers and one night stands and manuscript pages he kept throwing away.

So he’d come home.

And somehow teaching these three genin felt more important than any of the wandering ever had.

Natsumi sat up abruptly. “Can we take a break?”

“Nope.”

“You didn’t even think about it, that's not fair Jiraiya-sensei.” Natsumi complained.

“I did. The answer was no. Stop whining.” 

“Dekai-kun wants a break too, he just won't ask first.”

Minato finally stood from the practice post. “I’m okay with a break, too.”

Dekai pointed toward the riverbank. “You said if we completed the drill in under an hour you’d buy us food.”

Jiraiya narrowed his eyes. “You’ve gotten alarmingly good at turning my words against me.”

“You should talk less if you don't want us to do that, sensei,” Natsumi said solemnly.

“You do talk a lot, sensei,” Minato giggled.

“You are all little sh—” 

A voice drifted from the trees behind them.

“Corrupting children, like I thought.”

Jiraiya froze. For half a second he genuinely thought he imagined it.

Then Tsunade stepped out from the forest edge into the sunlight.

He was moving before his brain caught up.

“Hime!”

She barely had time to brace before he reached her, grabbing her around the waist hard enough to lift her clean off the ground. She barked out a startled laugh as he spun her once in a full circle, sandals leaving the dirt entirely.

“Jiraiya— put me down, you idiot—”

“You’re back!” He set her down anyway, still grinning so hard his face hurt.

Three years.

Three whole years.

And she looked—

Different. Still Tsunade. Same sharp brown eyes. Same mouth that always looked one second away from calling him an asshole. 

There was a confidence in the way she stood now that hadn’t been there before she left for Shikkotsu. Like every uncertain edge had finally been carved smooth.

And there, dark against her forehead, sat the seal.

She fucking did it. 

Jiraiya stared at it openly and pointed to his own forehead. “Holy shit.”

Tsunade smirked immediately. “Yeah. Holy shit.”

The kids were staring openly now.

Minato looked fascinated. Dekai looked cautious. Natsumi looked like she’d just found a new idol. Jiraiya suddenly remembered they existed and hooked an arm around Tsunade’s shoulders.

“Team, this is Tsunade. My teammate. A princess. Terrifying person. Best medic in Konoha. Newly minted Slug Sage”

Tsunade wrinkled her nose. ”Don’t call it that.’

He pointed vaguely westward. “And our other teammate is off somewhere being a deeply unsettling scientist.”

Natsumi raised her hand. “Are you really a princess?”

Tsunade blinked once. “No.”

Jiraiya at the same time said, “Absolutely.” 

Minato stepped forward quickly and bowed with painful politeness. “It’s nice to meet you, Tsunade-hime.”

“Oh no,” Tsunade said immediately, looking at Jiraiya. “You have them trained.”

“I didn’t do anything. He came like that.”

Natsumi was still staring at the diamond mark on her forehead. “What’s that?”

Tsunade touched it lightly. “Something I worked a long time for.”

Jiraiya snapped his fingers suddenly. “Oh! Oh, Tsuna. You should teach them medical basics. Right now.”

Tsunade looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “I just got back.”

“Exactly. Best time’s the present.”

Minato nodded eagerly. “I’d like to learn medical ninjutsu.”

Natsumi pointed at herself. “I get hurt constantly.”

“That is true,” Dekai sighed. “And she hurts other people.” 

Tsunade looked between the three hopeful faces and exhaled slowly through her nose. Then she looked back at Jiraiya.

“Fine… One condition—” she held up a finger at Jiraiya. “Buy me a drink tonight?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then fine.”

The kids cheered loud enough to scare birds from the trees.

And standing there in the middle of the ruined training field with his students yelling and Tsunade beside him again after years apart, Jiraiya felt something settle quietly into place inside his chest.

Like maybe coming home had been the right decision after all.

The rain started sometime after their second bottle.

By the third, (and a few shots later,) the whole bar had gone warm and blurry around the edges. Dice rattled somewhere behind them. Somebody near the door was singing badly enough that it had become impressive through commitment alone.

Tsunade had moved onto the stool beside him at some point without either of them acknowledging it.

Now their knees knocked together every few minutes whenever one of them shifted.

Neither of them moved away.

“And then,” Jiraiya said, gesturing broadly with his cup, “this monk tells me I’ve disgraced the entire temple.”

Tsunade looked deeply unimpressed. “What did you do?”

“In my defense, nobody explained the bathhouse-next-door situation.”

“There were women there?”

“There were naked women there.”

She barked out a laugh and shoved into his shoulder hard enough to rock him sideways.

God, he’d missed that sound.

Three years apart vanished frighteningly fast between them. The rhythm came back immediately. Teasing. Interrupting each other. Arguing over stupid details neither of them actually cared about.

Easy.

Tsunade tipped back the rest of her drink and Jiraiya’s eyes followed automatically before he caught himself.

The seal on her forehead caught the lantern light.

So did everything else.

“You keep staring at me,” Tsunade said.

“Hm?”

“My forehead.”

“Oh.” He shrugged lazily. “It’s impressive.”

A grin spread slowly across her face. “Nice change. You used to just stare at my tits.”

Jiraiya’s eyes dropped completely on instinct.

Tsunade laughed so hard she nearly hit the counter.

“There he is.”

“Well,” he said honestly, “also impressive.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You brought them up.”

“I made one joke, asshole.”

She was drunk enough now that she’d started leaning into him whenever she laughed, shoulder pressing warm against his arm whenever she leaned over to talk.

Jiraiya was trying very hard not to think about the warmth that disappeared when she leaned away. 

“You got smoother while I was gone,” Tsunade informed him. “Or something.”

“That sounds complimentary.”

“It’s so not,”

She squinted at him over the rim of her cup, cheeks flushed warm from alcohol.

Jiraiya grinned back lazily.

Then, because he was drunk and because Tsunade looked sexy tonight in a way that kept catching him off guard every few minutes, he said without really thinking about it:

“Yeah well you got prettier.”

The words landed between them softly. Jiraiya felt his own brain catch up about half a second too late.

Tsunade stared at him for another second, and laughed.

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“You are flirting with me.”

Jiraiya scoffed automatically. “I absolutely am not.”

“You just called me pretty.”

“You called me smooth.”

“That’s not flirting!”

“Exactly, an observation is not flirting.”

Tsunade laughed harder, leaning briefly against his shoulder while pointing accusingly at him with her cup.

“No wonder women fall for you.”

“I would say women fall–.”

“Fall into your bed, then.”

Jiraiya laughed. He spread his hands as if to concede.

“Women fall for you because you say things like that in that- that voice that your do.”

“What voice? 

“The voice! The voice! The one you use. ‘You got prettier’”

She did a horrendously spot on impression of him, her voice lowered two octaves and slower. Jiraiya was still grinning when it hit him suddenly that she was right. 

Because somewhere over the course of the night he had started talking to her differently. Softer. Lower. Watching her mouth too much when she talked.

Oh, shit.

Tsunade saw the exact second realization crossed his face and immediately lost her mind laughing.

“Oh my god,” she wheezed. “You didn’t even know you were doing it.”

“I knew.”

“You absolutely did not. You were accidentally flirting with me. Oh, fuck you.”

Jiraiya laughed helplessly and took another drink.

Tsunade was still grinning at him, eyes bright from alcohol and victory and something else he didn’t want to examine too closely.

“You know what’s really funny?” she asked.

“What?”

“You keep staring at my mouth.”

Well. That shut him up.

Tsunade’s grin widened immediately.

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t.”

“Pervert.”

“Tsuna.”

“You are!”

Jiraiya groaned and dropped his forehead briefly against the counter while she laughed hard enough to clutch his arm.

“You are an impossible woman.”

“This is the funniest thing that’s happened to me in years. I can't wait to tell Hiruzen-sensei.”

“Cruel woman.”

“You started it!”

“What do you want me to say? You’re pretty, fuck off!”

“You said it like you wanted to bite me!”

Jiraiya stared at her for one suspended second too long.

Then, because he was drunk and because Tsunade was flushed and laughing at him in and looking at him like that, he reached out automatically and caught her wrist lightly before she could hide behind her drink again.

“Tsuna,” he said softly.

Her breath caught. A tiny thing. Easy to miss if he wasn't this close.

Jiraiya leaned closer to her.

“If I was actually flirting with you…” he said it low and slow. Intentionally.

Recognition flickered instantly across her face.

Because they’d had this exact conversation years ago, sitting in a tree, on guard duty.

Jiraiya grinned slowly.

“You would absolutely know it.”

And the impossible, evil, cruel, prettyprettypretty woman leaned closer too.

Not laughing now. Not backing down.

Close enough that Jiraiya forgot how breathing worked.

Oh, shit.

Tsunade’s eyes dropped briefly to his mouth.

Jiraiya internally panicked immediately.

Until Tsunade burst into helpless laughter first and Jiraiya folded right after her, both of them laughing so hard they nearly fell off their stools.

“Why the fuck did you lean in!”

“Why did you grab my wrist?”

“Can I get the check?” Jiraiya called to the bar maid.

“Oh, come on.” Tsunade pouted. 

Jiraiya threw enough money onto the counter to cover the drinks and caught Tsunade by the elbow before she could lean too far sideways off the stool laughing.

He was still grinning when he pushed open the bar door and the cool night air hit both of them at once. Rain had dwindled down to a misty drizzle while they’d been inside, the streets dark and slick beneath lantern light. Tsunade stayed tucked against his side as they started down the road together, one hand looped loosely around his arm for balance.

“Hime,” he said after a minute, “you are very drunk.”

Tsunade squinted at him and scrunched her nose and god, she was cute. “You’re drunk.” 

For a little while they talked about nothing at all. The village. The changes since she’d left. The fact that Orochimaru was apparently still alive despite both of them finding him deeply irritating. The conversation wandered easily, slowed pleasantly by alcohol and familiarity.

Then Tsunade got quieter for a stretch, looking ahead through the drizzle instead of at him.

“I think I’m staying for a bit,” she said eventually. “Things feel unsteady. Like in the world, I mean”

Jiraiya glanced sideways at her. “Yeah.”

She hummed. “Like bad politically. Worse than they used to.” Her fingers tightened absently around his sleeve. “If another war starts, Konoha’s medical systems aren’t ready for it. Most villages aren’t.”

There she was. Drunk and strategizing.

The same look she’d had earlier talking to his students. Focused. Certain. Already thinking three disasters ahead of everybody else.

“I’m gonna start attending council meetings again,” she continued. “Push for more medic training. Be a real bitch about it. We need more field medics. Gram and Gramps always said last war was a mess. Too many people died unnecessarily."

Jiraiya nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

“I know.”

He nudged her shoulder with his. “Come help train my team again sometime.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “The little Uchiha girl’s feisty. I like her.”

“Natsumi’s terrifying.”

“She’s tiny.”

“She bit an academy instructor.”

Tsunade laughed. “Good for her.”

“And Minato’s probably the one most likely to actually pick up medical ninjutsu,” Jiraiya added. “Kid’s got incredible chakra control already. But honestly, all three of them are bruisers more than healers.”

Tsunade shrugged one shoulder. “We were all bruisers too.”

“Yeah,” Jiraiya said, smiling sideways at her. “The difference is you can pull double duty.”

She grinned lazily. “I’m just that great.”

Jiraiya looked at her for a second longer than he probably should have.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You really are.”

The smile on her face softened for the briefest moment before she bumped her hip lightly into his.

“What about you?” she asked. “Teaching, being back in Konoha… what else? You seeing anyone?”

Jiraiya looked ahead down the empty street. “I’m seeing people.”

Tsunade scoffed immediately. “People.”

“A few people. I do okay.”

“Gross.”

Jiraiya laughed softly through his nose and glanced sideways at her.

Rain had dampened loose strands of hair against her cheeks. Her face was still flushed from drink and laughter, eyes bright beneath the lantern light. Her shirt was damp and clinging in the most distracting ways imaginable.

He forced himself to look at the road.

“Eh, you know me,” he admitted after a second. “Nothing serious.”

Tsunade hummed.

They rounded the corner onto her street a few minutes later, conversation fading naturally into something quieter and slower around the edges.

Tsunade’s house sat exactly where it always had, tucked behind the same narrow fence and overgrown tree that dripped rainwater steadily onto the porch steps. Small. Dark. Familiar.

She laughed under her breath.

Then they stopped at the gate.

And suddenly the night went still around them.

Rain clung cool against Jiraiya’s skin. Street light caught in puddles along the empty road behind them. Tsunade stood close enough that he could feel warmth rolling off her in the damp air.

Jiraiya looked at her. 

Always her mouth tonight. Her lips. 

And for the first time — well, the first time, seriously — he wanted to kiss her.

God, he wanted to kiss her.

The realization hit him hard enough that his chest actually tightened around it.

Because this was Tsunade. His teammate. His best friend. The girl who’d spent half their lives punching him in the head for being an idiot.

And suddenly all he could think about was what would happen if he leaned down a little further.

Would she let him? Would she laugh? Would she kiss him back?

Very dangerous thoughts.

Tsunade stepped forward before he could do anything catastrophically stupid.

And hugged him. A real hug.

Not drunken leaning or laughing against his shoulder. Her arms wrapped around his middle. Her forehead pressed briefly against his chest.

Jiraiya froze for half a heartbeat before his arms came around her automatically.

“I’m happy you were the first person I saw when I got back,” she said quietly.

He felt her slip something into his back pocket.

Something in his chest folded painfully in on itself.

Jiraiya tightened his arms around her slightly before he could stop himself.

“Yeah?” he said softly.

Tsunade nodded once against him.

He rested his chin lightly against the top of her damp hair and closed his eyes for one dangerous second.

God.

He wanted to kiss her so badly.

Instead he just held her there in the rain a little longer than necessary.

Eventually Tsunade pulled back enough to look up at him again, still close enough that he could see droplets of water caught in her lashes.

“You should probably go home,” she murmured. “Before you start not flirting with me again.”

Jiraiya laughed softly, warm and helpless and maybe a little doomed.

“No promises.”

Tsunade rolled her eyes, but she was smiling when she stepped backward toward the porch.

“Goodnight, idiot.”

“Night, Hime.”

She lingered there for another second before disappearing inside.

Jiraiya stood outside her gate afterward like a complete moron, rain dripping off his hair while his heart beat stupidly hard in his chest. He checked his back pocket, and the book he leant her was there. Returned. She hadn't forgotten.

Chapter Text

The weeks after Tsunade returned to Konoha settled into something routine and steady and easy before she realized it was happening.

Hospital shifts bled into evenings at Training Ground Seven. Council meetings turned into late dinners with Jiraiya because one of them would inevitably complain long enough to miss normal eating hours. The children stopped treating her like a legendary figure and started treating her like part of the team.

Minato began waiting for her outside of the hospital when he knew her shift was ending to follow her and ask questions on the way to the training field. Dekai quietly started carrying extra bandages and antiseptic in his field kit without being asked. Natsumi attached herself to Tsunade persistence of a burr and seemed less interested in learning medicine and more interested in trying to punch as hard as possible. 

Tsunade liked them more than she meant to.

New proximity to Jiraiya was becoming something she did not care for quite as much. More specifically, Jiraiya's stable of women.

The first time Tsunade arrived at the training grounds to teach the kids some medical ninjutsu, she found a woman hanging off Jiraiya's arm, and she hid in the woods.

Stupid. She wasn't sure why she did that.

The kunoichi was beautiful in an over the top sort of way. Bright purple hair, long painted nails, perfume strong enough that Tsunade could smell it from the tree line. She leaned into Jiraiya’s side while he grinned down at her, one hand loose against her waist. 

The woman laughed and kissed his cheek and stroked his chest before finally disappearing back down the path toward the village.

Only then did Tsunade step fully into the clearing.

Jiraiya spotted her immediately and brightened in a way that irritated her further.

“Hime,” he greeted easily. “You stalking me now?”

“I brought tea,” she replied flatly, shoving the extra cup into his chest as she passed him. 

He looked delighted anyway.

“You’re the best.”

“You smell like cheap perfume.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“You’re exhausting.”

Jiraiya just laughed and followed her into the clearing while she pretended not to notice how quickly the woman had vanished from his attention entirely.

That became the strange, unpleasant pattern of the next few months.

Tsunade saw Jiraiya with women constantly. Civilian girls hanging onto his arm downtown. Waitresses touching his shoulder while he flirted shamelessly over drinks. Kunoichi laughing and pressing themselves against him outside bars late at night.

One night after an especially brutal shift at the hospital, Tsunade stopped at the market on her way home. The sun had already set by the time she cut through the residential district carrying two overloaded grocery bags against her hips.

She recognized Jiraiya and his stupid hair and stupid shoes from a block away.

Mostly because he was pressed against the outside wall of his apartment building kissing an auburn haired woman like they’d die if they stopped.

The woman had both hands tangled in the front of his shirt. Jiraiya’s hair was half-undone and falling into his face while she laughed breathlessly against his mouth.

The woman laughed again and dragged him toward the stairwell by the front of his shirt. Jiraiya stumbled after her easily, grinning crookedly while she kissed him again before they disappeared inside.

Tsunade kept walking.

She didn’t care.

The following week they were out drinking together after training. Natsumi had managed to fracture two of her fingers trying to punch through a boulder, and Jiraiya had spent most of the evening laughing about it, while Tsunade tried to use it as a learning opportunity for Minato to learn to set a bone with chakra.

It had been a long morning.

The bartender was pretty. Older than them by several years. Soft-eyed and smiling in that patient way that women often smiled at Jiraiya before he opened his mouth. 

“You know,” he drawled while she refilled their drinks, “I could fall deeply in love with a woman who pours sake like that.”

The bartender laughed.

Tsunade rolled her eyes into her cup.

“You say that to every woman?” the bartender purred.

“Only the beautiful ones.”

The exchange continued while Tsunade sat beside him growing increasingly irritated.

Jiraiya didn’t even seem happy about it. He flirted like breathing. Like an instinct. Like a reflex so deeply wired into him he performed it without thought now.

His smile didn’t reached his eyes.

The bartender touched his arm laughing at something he said and Jiraiya smiled back automatically while his attention drifted elsewhere entirely.

Tsunade suddenly felt tired.

“I’m heading home,” she said abruptly, standing before Jiraiya could respond.

He blinked up at her. “Already?”

“Early shift tomorrow at the hospital.”

“That’s not for another—”

“Goodnight, Jiraiya.”

Something in her tone must have reached him because he stopped talking immediately.

His expression shifted slightly while she gathered her things.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She left before he could ask anything else.

A few weeks later Tsunade arrived at Training Ground Seven for afternoon medical drills and found Jiraiya setting up targets near the far edge of the clearing while the kids practiced chakra control exercises beside the river.

Minato balanced upside down from a branch while maintaining perfect concentration. Dekai stood knee-deep in the water surface attempting to ignore Natsumi repeatedly trying to shove him off balance.

Jiraiya watched them with visible pride.

“They’re getting scary good,” he remarked when Tsunade approached.

She hummed in agreement while setting down her supply pack.

Jiraiya drove another practice post into the dirt before speaking again, casual as anything.

“I think I’m gonna recommend them for the Chunin Exams.”

Tsunade went completely still. The words hit hard enough that for a second she honestly thought she’d misheard him.

Slowly, she turned toward him.

“You’re what?”

Jiraiya glanced up, apparently only now realizing something in her expression had changed.

“They’ll qualify,” he said carefully. “Honestly they were probably ready months ago.”

“No.”

His brows pulled together slightly.

“No?”

“No,” Tsunade repeated sharply. “Absolutely not.”

The force in her voice made him straighten fully.

“Tsuna—”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“They’re ready.”

“That is not the point.”

Jiraiya frowned now, confusion edging toward defensiveness.

“The exams exist for a reason.”

“Yeah,” Tsunade snapped. “To increase military numbers before the war starts.”

Across the clearing the children continued laughing near the river, oblivious.

Jiraiya lowered his voice. “Nobody’s officially declared war.”

“Oh, don’t be naive. Fucking stupid.” 

His jaw tightened immediately. “You think I don’t know what’s happening?”

“I think you’re not thinking hard enough about what happens after they pass.”

Tsunade stepped closer before she could stop herself, anger rising hotter the longer she looked at him.

“They are ten years old, Jiraiya.”

“Eleven now, and they’re shinobi.”

“Huge difference. They are children, Jiraiya.”

“They are older than we were! They won’t stay children forever.”

“No,” she said harshly. “Because this village never lets them.”

The words cracked between them.

Jiraiya stared at her.

Tsunade pointed toward the riverbank where Natsumi had finally succeeded in kicking Dekai fully into the water while Minato laughed hard enough to nearly lose concentration as he dropped from the tree to walk on the surface of the water.

“These are your students.”

Jiraiya’s expression shifted slightly.

“Your students,” Tsunade repeated. “Not bodies to hand over because Konoha’s getting nervous about border conflicts.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing?”

“I think you love how talented they are. And you want to show them off."

Jiraiya loved brilliance. Loved potential. Loved watching people become extraordinary.

Normally she loved that about him.

Right now it made her furious.

“They’re exceptional,” he said quietly.

“Nawaki was exceptional too.”

Jiraiya went still.

Tsunade folded her arms hard across her chest and forced herself to keep talking before the ache in her throat stopped her entirely.

“Do you know what happens to chunin once war starts?” she demanded. “Frontline support. Border patrol. Recon. Field command when casualty rates climb high enough. They fucking die, Jiraiya.” Her voice sharpened further. “Genin stay back longer. Villages still need runners. Escorts. Internal mission rotations. They need people keeping the village functioning.”

Jiraiya looked away first.

“They’ll want to advance.”

“They’ll want to live more.”

Wind moved softly through the trees around them.

The children’s voices carried faintly from the riverbank. Natsumi and Dekai arguing. Minato trying unsuccessfully to mediate.

Tsunade suddenly felt exhausted all over again.

“They trust you,” she said quieter now. “So protect them.”

Jiraiya rubbed both hands over his face slowly.

For a long moment he said nothing. Then finally, a rough and tired, “…fuck.”

Tsunade closed her eyes briefly. “Yeah.”

He looked back toward the riverbank again. Really looked this time at how small they still were. At Minato’s narrow shoulders. Natsumi’s scraped knees. Dekai trying to act older than he actually was.

Children.

Just children.

When Jiraiya spoke again, all the fight had gone out of his voice.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “I won’t recommend them.”

Relief hit Tsunade so hard it almost hurt. She looked away immediately before he could see it on her face. For a while neither of them spoke.

Then Jiraiya huffed softly through his nose and murmured, almost to himself, “They are just so good.” 

Chapter Text

The council chamber emptied slowly around her.

Chairs scraped across the floor. Papers shuffled. Low conversation drifted toward the doors in tired, measured voices. Tsunade stayed collapsed in her seat staring at the ceiling.

Fucking unbelievable.

The jonin meeting had lasted nearly three hours and somehow they’d still managed to say nothing helpful or constructive.

War was coming. Everybody in that room knew it. The blockade in Iwagakure had fallen two days ago and Amegakure would follow soon after. Stone and Rain would declare it soon, if the Leaf didn't make the first move.

Missions were already shifting toward border support and supply movement. Orochimaru had been recalled to the village that morning. Team Hiruzen would be reassembled and deployed toward the front within the month.

And these council idiots were still arguing about resource allocation like they had time to waste.

Tsunade pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes hard enough to hurt.

She'd made a scene, and been shut down. It echoed in her brain.

“Mandatory medical support attached to combat units is unrealistic at current staffing levels,” Homura had said.

“Then train more medics,” she had snapped back.

“We do not have the manpower.”

“You’ll have less manpower when half your shinobi bleed out from treatable injuries.”

She was met with polite dismissal.

Hiruzen-sensei had listened to her the whole time with that infuriatingly calm expression of his. He was patient. Thoughtful. Gentle even while telling her no. She wanted to deck him. 

“We can revisit the proposal once the initial conflict stabilizes.”

Once the initial conflict stabilizes.

As if people conveniently stopped dying while politicians organized paperwork. Death waiting for bureaucracy.

Tsunade slouched lower in the chair and glared murderously at the ceiling beams overhead.

Traitorous old man.

Her proposal hadn’t even been complicated.

Basic field medic assignments. Emergency stabilization training for squads. Evacuation protocols.

Things every village should already have if anyone in power had half a functioning brain.

Instead they wanted to throw everyone into another war and hope things somehow worked out better this time.

One voice, one person, in the room had actually backed her.

Dan Kato. Another jonin. A few years ahead of her in the academy, she thought. 

Alot of good it did.

Tsunade’s irritation sharpened instantly.

If Jiraiya had been here, he would’ve backed her too.

He would’ve argued loudly and obnoxiously and probably insulted three councilors in the process, but he would’ve been on her side, even if it didn't change anything. 

Instead he’d skipped the meeting entirely because apparently he was out drinking with some Yamanaka woman tonight.

Typical.

Typical typical typical.

Tsunade scowled harder.

And now war was here again, just like that.

Tsunade exhaled slowly and pushed herself upright at last, rubbing tiredly at the seal on her forehead.

Whatever.

At least someone in this village seemed capable of understanding basic survival statistics. She'd have to find the Kato guy and thank him for trying. 

Dan walked her home after the meeting.

Tsunade hadn’t asked him to.

One minute they’d both been leaving the tower at the same time, and the next he was matching her pace through the dark streets, hands tucked neatly into his sleeves while he talked quietly about logistics and medical training like they hadn’t just spent three hours arguing with a brick wall.

He walked her home after her hospital shift the next day too.

And the day after that.

It happened naturally enough that Tsunade barely noticed when it became routine.

Dan would appear outside the hospital sometime around dusk, usually carrying two cups of tea. Then they’d walk through the village together talking about her patients or war preparations or the big, wild dreams Dan had for the village.

Tsunade slowly realized she was starting to look for him automatically at the end of the day.

It was strange.

Dan was strange.

Not in a bad way.

He was thoughtful in a way most men in Konoha weren’t. Soft-spoken without being timid. Serious without being cold. He listened when she talked instead of waiting for his turn to speak. He asked questions because he actually cared about her answers.

Orochimaru and Jiraiya might have permanently damaged her understanding of what counted as normal male behavior.

Dan didn’t leer at women. Didn’t raise his voice constantly. Didn’t treat every conversation like a sparring match.

It was kind of insane.

She thought Nawaki would have liked him. Idolized him, maybe.

Maybe it was the optimism. The way he talked about changing systems like he genuinely believed people could be convinced to do better.

They’d talked about grief eventually too, because unfortunately, that was something they shared.

Nawaki came up first.

Then Dan told her his younger sister had died on her first mission too, years ago. Too young. Too inexperienced. A loss that sounded frighteningly close to Nawaki’s in ways that made Tsunade’s chest ache.

After that, conversations between them shifted easier into honesty.

He told her about a younger cousin he practically helped raise after both her parents died. Technically not his niece, but close enough. She lived with a foster family now, but he still visited almost every day.

“She’s six,” he’d said one evening with a helpless smile. “And absolutely convinced that I can solve every problem in the world.”

Tsunade snorted softly. “Can you?”

“Not yet.”

Yet.

That was the thing about Dan.

He said things like that and somehow didn’t sound arrogant. Just hopeful.

Dangerously hopeful.

Three days after the council meeting, Tsunade spent the afternoon training with Jiraiya and Orochimaru for the first time since Orochimaru’s return to the village.

Jiraiya was loud and dramatic and grinning every time she hit him hard enough to crater the ground beneath his feet. Orochimaru smooth and terrifying and impossibly fast after months away.

Team Hiruzen.

Reassembled exactly like they’d never been apart.

Except they were older now. Sharper. Aware of what war actually cost, and they’d be deploying toward the Ame border the following week.

Dan’s unit was going too. Part of the same camp. 

The thought of war lingered unpleasantly in Tsunade’s chest for the rest of the training. 

By the time she left the training grounds the sky had already darkened purple overhead, her muscles sore and her jacket hanging loose around her shoulders.

Dan was waiting.

Leaning against the fence with tea in paper cups balanced carefully in one hand while reading through mission paperwork in the other.

He looked up immediately when he spotted her and smiled.

Good god.

There it was again.

That impossible sunlit quality about him.

Like he genuinely believed the world could become  better and kinder if enough people worked hard enough at it. It shone through him. 

“You look tired,” she said as she approached.

“You look like you beat the shit out of Orochimaru." 

Tsunade laughed softly through her nose and took the tea he offered her. 

They walked slowly through the village shoulders bumping lightly together every few steps.

Dan listened while she told him about Minato letting Natsumi break his finger twice so that he could practice resetting it with chakra because the first time hadn't gone smoothly enough.

“He volunteered for that?” Dan asked, horrified.

“He seemed weirdly excited about it.”

“That feels concerning.”

“That’s what I said.”

He laughed quietly.

They reached her house too quickly.

Dan slowed near the gate.

“So,” he said, hands sliding back into his sleeves, “Will I see you tomorrow?”

Tsunade looked at him.

At the careful calm in his expression. At the quiet hope underneath it. And suddenly she realized he was nervous. That was new for her. 

Something warm unfolded low in her chest.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Tomorrow.”

Dan smiled and he gripped her hand for a brief moment, squeezing her fingers in his. Then, he stared at her like he was going to leave. Instead, he cocked his head to the side. 

“Hey, Tsunade,” he said, more careful now, “can I kiss you?”

The question hit her like a ton of bricks because he asked it so earnestly. No games. No assumptions. No leaning in to see if she stopped him.

It was sweet enough to hurt a little. Like when you eat a piece of candy and it makes your taste buds sting before the sugar settles.

Tsunade stepped closer instead of answering out loud.

Dan’s hand came up slowly against her cheek like he was giving her time to change her mind.

Then he kissed her.

Tsunade felt something in her chest go painfully soft around the edges and melt. 

When he pulled back, he stayed close enough that she could still feel his breath against her mouth.

“You’re very easy to like,” he admitted quietly.

Tsunade laughed softly, a little breathless despite herself.

“That’s objectively untrue.”

“Mm.” His thumb brushed lightly along her cheekbone. “Seems true to me.”

Tsunade looked at him for one suspended second, blissful, torturous second longer.

Then she reached past him, pushed open the gate, and asked if he wanted to come in.

Just enough of the careful politeness between them fell away when the door shut behind them.

Thank God.

Tsunade didn't even have a chance to turn the lights on or lock the door before Dan kissed her again.

His warm hands framing her face while he kissed her, slow at first, almost cautious, like he still couldn’t quite believe she’d invited him in.

Tsunade kissed him harder, greedier, deeper almost immediately.

Dan made a soft surprised sound against her mouth and she felt him smile.

She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him closer until his back hit the wall beside the kitchen doorway hard enough to rattle a hanging pan.

Dan laughed breathlessly into the kiss, hands settling at her waist to steady both of them.

He was sweet.

Earnest in a way she never wanted to get used to. 

Dan kissed her like he already cared too much. He kept touching her gently, thumbs brushing her waist, her cheek, the side of her neck, the hem of her shirt like he was still asking permission every few seconds without using words.

Tsunade melted a little under it despite herself.

He didn't need to ask. Somewhere in the intervening weeks, they'd started belonging to eachother. 

She pushed up onto her toes and deepened the kiss, just to see what happened. How he'd react.

Dan inhaled sharply against her mouth.

Then finally — finally! — some of the composure cracked.

His hands tightened at her hips.

Good.

Tsunade smiled into his mouth and felt him do the same immediately after. They stumbled sideways together laughing softly when her hip clipped the edge of the table.

Dan caught her before she could trip over one of the chairs and she ended up half folded against his chest, both of them grinning like idiots.

“You okay?” he murmured.

Tsunade answered by dragging him back down into another kiss.

That seemed to satisfy him.

The wind rattles softly against the windows while they made out in her kitchen like teenagers home alone for the first time.

Slow kisses turning messy around the edges. Warm hands. Foreheads bumping together when they laughed.

At one point Dan kissed the corner of her mouth and then her cheek and then the edge of her jaw and her neck like he genuinely couldn’t stop himself.

Tsunade wondered at what point she became so, so, so attached. Tried to pinpoint exactly when she fell. 

Terrible development on the eve of war. 

She slid her arms around his neck and Dan folded closer automatically, holding her carefully but firmly enough now that she could feel the heat of him through both their clothes.

And, god.

Nobody had ever kissed her like this. 

Chapter Text

The camp was quiet by the time their watch rotation started. Somebody coughed in their sleep three tents over. One of the Aburame girls was still awake near the supply crates, speaking softly to her beetles as they went out on surveillance.

Twelve Konoha shinobi, hidden along the Ame border, waiting for somebody else to make the first move.

Jiraiya sat tipped back in his chair near the edge of the tower platform, humming absently under his breath while spinning a kunai between his fingers. Across from him, Orochimaru looked up from a reconnaissance report with visible irritation already settling across his face.

“Stop that.”

Jiraiya kept humming.

“I’m not sitting up here with you if you’re going to drone on off-key like that all night.” 

Jiraiya grinned without opening his eyes. “You just don’t appreciate art.”

“I appreciate silence.”

Most of the camp had retreated to their tents. Sakumo Hatake’s team was asleep; they had been on guard duty for the first half of the night. 

Shinnosuke Sarutobi was still awake, reviewing missives from his father.

The flap to Dan Kato’s tent opened.

Ah.

Tsunade stepped out into the cool night air while dragging her flak jacket back onto one shoulder as she headed toward the watchtower ladder.

Jiraiya’s humming cut off automatically. Beside him, Orochimaru noticed the silence first. His eyes flicked toward camp, then back toward Jiraiya, one pale eyebrow lifting almost imperceptibly.

“…Ah,” he said.

Jiraiya pointed at him immediately. “Don’t say any–”

“I said nothing.”

“She’ll fucking murder you if you do.”

The ladder rattled beneath Tsunade’s weight as she climbed.

Jiraiya looked back out toward the tree line before she reached the top platform, suddenly very interested in the forest. Not his business. Entirely not his business.

Still.

Unbelievable that people were apparently finding time to get laid in an active war zone, while Jiraiya was stuck sitting in a wooden perch getting eaten by mosquitoes with only Orochimaru for company. It was unfair, really. 

The platform shifted as Tsunade hauled herself up onto it.

“Nothing interesting yet, I hope?”

Jiraiya looked over automatically. and immediately regretted it. 

Her hair looked a little mussed around the edges. Her lips were pink and swollen. There was a faint mark near the collar of her shirt that she clearly hadn’t noticed yet. All of the unmistakable signs of someone who had just been properly fucked. 

Jiraiya did not need that mental image at the dawn of war.

Really.

Kato seemed like a decent guy. Competent. Smart. Little short for her, maybe, but whatever. If she liked him, she liked him.

And she did like him. That part had become obvious over the last few months.

It wasn’t even really about the physical stuff. Jiraiya had known Tsunade long enough to recognize the difference between her blowing off steam and something that actually mattered to her. She smiled more around Dan. She laughed more, too. The guy clearly adored her. Looked at her like she’d personally invented daylight. Earlier that afternoon, Jiraiya was almost positive he’d spotted Tsunade’s necklace hanging around Dan’s neck during training drills.

Tsunade glanced between both of them suspiciously. “Why’d it get quiet when I got up here?”

“Didn’t,” Jiraiya said immediately.

Orochimaru looked back down at his reports. “You interrupted his humming.”

Tsunade groaned softly. “Please tell me it wasn’t that stupid drinking song again.”

“It’s catchy.”

“It’s terrible.”

She snorted and leaned against the railing beside them, looking out toward the dark tree line surrounding camp, a small smile still present on her face. 

Jiraiya glanced at her again before he could stop himself.

Happy looked good on her.

The dispatch arrived just after dawn. 

By the time breakfast ended, everybody had gathered in the center clearing while Sakumo Hatake broke the seal on the message tube.

Mist still clung low between the trees.

Nobody looked fully awake.

Jiraiya sat on an overturned crate beside Orochimaru, while Tsunade leaned against a nearby trunk with coffee clasped between both hands. Dan stood near her shoulder automatically now.

Still weird to look at. 

Sakumo unrolled the dispatch.

“This communication comes directly from the Hokage,” Sakumo said. “Priority notice regarding hostile action against Konoha assets.”

The clearing quieted immediately. Sakumo scanned the page once before continuing.

“Three nights ago, Ame shinobi operating within the Land of Fire attempted to kidnap the Nine-Tails jinchūriki. The hostage was recovered safely by Konoha genin Minato Namikaze after he independently tracked the enemy extraction route.”

Jiraiya blinked once.

“What?”

“The report states Namikaze independently identified a path left behind by the jinchūriki, tracked the enemy force alone, and returned the kyuubi to Konoha.”

Jiraiya stared at him.

Minato?

His Minato?

He could already picture exactly how this had happened, too. Minato noticing something everybody else missed, deciding he could handle it, then quietly disappearing after the kidnappers. Because Minato had that same awful streak Jiraiya recognized in every genius shinobi he’d ever met: the absolute conviction that if something needed doing, they should just do it themselves.

Jiraiya hated hearing that instinct applied to a ten-year-old.

At the same time, beneath the spike of alarm curling through his chest, something warm flickered there too.

Pride.

Sharp enough to ache a little.

His student had tracked enemy shinobi through hostile territory and helped recover the Nine-Tails jinchūriki alive.

Beside him, Orochimaru leaned back slightly against the tree behind them.

“Well,” he said dryly, “that’s terrifying.”

Jiraiya laughed sharply under his breath because honestly, yeah. Yeah, it was.

Tsunade looked over at him then. There must’ve been something obvious on his face because her expression softened almost immediately.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Jiraiya scrubbed a hand hard across his mouth, still grinning helplessly.

“You don’t understand,” he said, already half laughing again. “That kid—”

He stopped because he genuinely didn’t know how to explain Minato to people sometimes. How absurdly talented he was. How instinctive everything came to him. How Jiraiya would demonstrate a technique once, and Minato would somehow return three days later, having improved it.

And he was eleven.

Twelve, probably by now. 

The old toad’s voice echoed faintly somewhere in the back of his skull.

Your disciple.

A choice.

Jiraiya had delayed Minato’s chūnin recommendation six months earlier because the kid was too young, and Tsunade was right, and she’d bullied Jiraiya trying to keep the kids out of active deployment rotations as long as possible.

A choice. 

Minato, protecting the home front, had somehow ended up stopping the kidnapping of Konoha’s most valuable military asset.

Shinnosuke let out a low whistle from somewhere across the clearing.

“Your genin did all that?”

Jiraiya looked up finally, unable to stop smiling now. “Yeah,” he said. Then, because it felt truer than anything else he could possibly say: “He’s incredible.”

The attack came before sunrise the next morning.

Jiraiya woke to the sound of a wire snapping somewhere beyond camp.

His eyes opened instantly.

The explosion of a dozen paperbombs rattled the forest a second later.  

Then somebody shouted. 

“CONTACT ON THE EAST—”

Explosions again. 

Jiraiya was moving before he fully woke up. Flak jacket half-zipped. Barefoot. Hands already flashing through signs as he burst from the tent into wet gray dawn.

Chaos met him immediately. Smoke rolling through trees. One of the perimeter traps was burning where an earth-style jutsu had ripped through the forest line.

Iwa.

A dozen of them, at least. 

A third explosion tore through the eastern perimeter, sending dirt spraying through the clearing. Sakumo hit the ground almost simultaneously with Jiraiya.

“South ridge!” he snapped. “Two earth users, one sensor—”

A body erupted from the mud beneath them.

Jiraiya reacted automatically. 

“Wild Lion’s Mane!”

The ends of Jiraiya’s hair shot outward like spears and slammed the attacker sideways hard enough to crater him through a supply crate before he could finish surfacing.

Another presence moved behind him, cold and fast and familiar.  

Orochimaru.

A snake flashed past Jiraiya’s shoulder and wrapped instantly around an Iwa shinobi dropping from the trees overhead. The man hit the ground, choking before Orochimaru even fully stepped into view.

Everything moved too fast after that. The camp had woken up, violent and ready. 

Shinnosuke and the Aburame girls locked down the western flank with insects thick enough to darken the air and a bombardment of shuriken. Sakumo vanished through the trees in a blur of grey, and Jiraiya saw a flash of a katana streak through the air as two enemies fell. 

Dan’s squad intercepted another earth-style attack to the north. 

Jiraiya spotted Tsunade near the center clearing just as an Iwa shinobi broke through the smoke toward the center of camp. 

Poor bastard.

He got one look at her before Tsunade drove her fist straight into the ground. The earth rippled and broke. The shockwave ripped outward through mud and stone with enough force to launch two enemy shinobi completely off their feet. Trees shook violently around the clearing.

 Jiraiya laughed breathlessly despite himself.

 An enemy kunai flashed toward her blindside.

 Jiraiya intercepted automatically with Wild Lion’s Mane. 

The attacker twisted immediately toward him under the pull of his hair, and Jiraiya caught sight of an Iwa forehead protector streaked with mud before Orochimaru’s snake struck from the branches above and buried fangs directly into the man’s throat.

The body dropped.

Orochimaru landed lightly beside Jiraiya without even glancing down.

 “You’re drifting left again,” he said calmly. “Leaves your stronger side exposed.” 

“Busy right now.”

“You’re sloppy when you’re excited.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Another earth-style user rose from the mud behind Tsunade.

Tsunade pivoted instantly, caught the guy by the face one-handed, and slammed him headfirst into a tree hard enough that the trunk split down the middle.

Team Hiruzen. 

Years of fighting together moved beneath everything they did. Jiraiya knew where Tsunade would dodge before she moved. Orochimaru reacted to openings the instant Jiraiya created them. Tsunade automatically covered their blind spots while breaking the battlefield apart around them.

There was one more enemy who looked as if he were trying to retreat. Orochimaru’s snakes locked down his legs. Jiraiya’s hair wrapped his arms before he could weave signs. Tsunade crossed the distance between one heartbeat and the next, the ground cratered beneath him.

Smoke drifted between shattered trees. Somebody groaned near the western perimeter. One of the chunin laughed shakily, like he couldn’t quite believe he was still alive.

 Jiraiya stood breathing hard in the middle of the wrecked clearing while adrenaline crackled hot beneath his skin. 

Twenty attackers.

Dead in under four minutes.

Tsunade wiped blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and immediately started moving toward their injured without waiting for orders from Sakumo. 

 Dan appeared beside her a second later her carrying medical supplies before she even asked.

Orochimaru’s pale eyes tracked the ruined perimeter calmly.

“They were testing response time,” he said.

“Yeah.” 

“Next group will be larger.” 

Jiraiya leaned back against the wrecked remains of a supply crate and exhaled hard. The sun was just starting to rise through the trees, pale gray light filtering across the smoke and shattered earth.

The war had reached them, finally. 

And beside him, Orochimaru was wiping blood off a kunai. He murmured quietly, “Well. That was fun.”

Chapter Text

Whoever first said "War is hell" was underselling it.

Tsunade had lost track of exactly how many days they’d been stationed at the border crossing.

Six weeks, or maybe seven. However long was long enough for the exhaustion of it to settle permanently into her bones. 

Their original twelve-man cell had merged with two others almost immediately after the first real engagements with Ame and Iwa began. Reinforcements kept arriving in broken pieces. Chunin squads. Scouts. Field support.

Their numbers should have been close to forty now.

Instead they were down to twenty-eight.

The border crossing behind them was too strategically important to abandon. A narrow stone bridge cutting through a deep gulch between Fire Country and Ame territory. Lose the crossing and Ame forces gained direct movement deeper into the forests beyond the border checkpoints.

So Konoha held it with everything they had.

Tsunade drove her fist into an Ame shinobi’s headband hard enough to cave his face inward and pivoted immediately before the body even hit the mud.

The battlefield roared around her.

Smoke. Fire. Water jutsu turning the ground into sucking sludge beneath hundreds of feet. Explosive tags detonating against the cliff walls hard enough to shake loose rock into the gorge below.

At least two hundred enemy shinobi spread across the field.

Mostly Iwa, with Ame mixed among them.

Too many. Way too many.

A giant blade slammed into the earth where Tsunade had been standing half a second earlier. She twisted sideways through flying dirt and shattered stone and caught the attacker by the wrist before he could recover.

Snap.

Bone punched clean through skin beneath her grip.

He screamed once before Tsunade buried her elbow into his throat hard enough to silence him permanently.

Somewhere to her left Gamabunta shouted loud enough to shake the valley walls.

Tsunade glanced up just long enough to see the giant toad slam his tantō through three Ame shinobi at once while Jiraiya stood balanced atop his head weaving signs fast enough his hands blurred.

Oil flooded across the battlefield.

Fire followed.

The explosion rolled outward in a wall of heat and screaming men.

Further out beyond the smoke she spotted Orochimaru atop Manda, the summoned snake weaving through enemy lines. The serpent crushed shinobi beneath its coils while Orochimaru moved through hand signs almost lazily above the carnage.

A flash of silvery grey crossed the field impossibly fast.

Sakumo.

He ran directly through enemy formation, silver hair streaking through smoke while his blade flashed faster than Tsunade could track.

Closer to the bridge Shinnosuke Sarutobi shouted orders at his remaining squad over the noise of battle.

“LEFT FLANK— MOVE LEFT—”

One of the Aburame girls unleashed a cloud of wasps large enough to black out an entire section of the battlefield.

Tsunade couldn’t see Dan.

She tried very hard not to think about that.

An Iwa shinobi surged up from the mud directly beneath her.

Too slow. Tsunade caught him by the face one-handed and slammed him into the ground hard enough to crater the earth beneath them both.

Blood sprayed hot across her arm.

Another enemy rushed her immediately after.

Tsunade bit down hard against the side of her thumb.

Blood flooded her mouth. Smoke exploded around her.

Katsuyu emerged massive and gleaming pale blue across the shattered battlefield, towering over the bridge as Ame shinobi recoiled visibly at the sight of her.

“Tsunade-sama,” Katsuyu said gently.

“Split apart,” Tsunade ordered immediately. “Small portions to Orochimaru and Dan. Find them. If either of them gets critically injured I want to know immediately.”

“At once.”

Fragments of Katsuyu slid apart instantly and scattered across the battlefield.

Dan, wherever he was.

Tsunade swallowed hard once against the sudden spike of panic in her chest and shoved it away violently.

No time.

“Katsuyu,” she snapped, pointing toward the advancing Ame forces surging toward the bridge. “Acid.”

“Of course.”

The slug inhaled deeply, then corrosive liquid flooded across the battlefield.

Men screamed.

Entire lines of Ame shinobi dissolved almost instantly as the acid tore through armor, weapons, flesh. Smoke hissed upward in thick white clouds while the advancing formation collapsed backward in chaos.

Konoha shinobi surged forward immediately to capitalize on the attack.

Tsunade, still on the ground, grabbed another enemy by the collar and smashed his face repeatedly into the ground until he stopped moving. 

There was movement from above. Her eyes snapped upward instinctively.

Gamabunta turned sharply beneath Jiraiya as a barrage of kunai flew across the battlefield.

One slipped through.

Tsunade saw it hit.

Straight through Jiraiya’s chest. For one impossible second he just stood there.

Then his body toppled backward off Gamabunta’s head and disappeared into the chaos below.

Everything in Tsunade’s body went cold.

“Katsuyu!” she shouted.

Another wave of acid exploded across the battlefield in response, forcing enemy shinobi backward as Tsunade launched herself forward through smoke and blood and shattered earth toward where Jiraiya had fallen.

Tsunade hit the ground beside Jiraiya hard enough to crack stone.

He wasn’t moving.

Blood soaked through the front of his flak jacket in thick dark streaks, several kunai still buried deep across his chest and ribs where they’d punched through on impact.

For one horrible second all Tsunade could see was red.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck—

“BUNTA! COVER!” she screamed upward.

The giant toad turned instantly above her, massive blade sweeping sideways through a wave of advancing Ame shinobi before planting himself directly over their position.

The battlefield shifted around them immediately.

Enemy attacks diverted. Fire slammed against Bunta’s tantō instead of her back. Konoha shinobi surged to reinforce the opening.

Tsunade barely noticed any of it.

Her hands were already glowing green as she healed around the first kunai before pulling it free.

Jiraiya convulsed violently beneath her.

Blood spilled from his mouth.

“Stay with me,” she snapped, pressing chakra hard into his chest. “You idiot—”

Another kunai out.

Another spray of blood. Tsunade’s hands moved automatically now, years of medical training overriding panic by force.

Heart intact.

Good.

One lung punctured. Several broken ribs.

He'd had worse.

Heavy blood loss but survivable if she stabilized him fast enough. She could deal with this.

She could fix this.

Jiraiya coughed wetly again, blood running down the side of his face.

His eyes fluttered halfway open unfocused.

“Tsunade,” he rasped.

“Fuck you, Jiraiya,” she hissed immediately, voice breaking despite herself. “You’re scaring me.”

His mouth twitched weakly like he wanted to laugh.

Idiot.

Tsunade shoved more chakra into the wound, forcing damaged tissue to knit closed beneath her palms while explosions rocked the battlefield around them.

“Breathe,” she ordered.

Another cough, but then air finally started moving more evenly through his chest.

Good.

Good. Goodgoodgood.

A tiny weight landed lightly against her shoulder.

“Lady Tsunade,” the slug said softly. “You asked for a report on Dan-kun.”

For one split second Tsunade almost snapped at her for the timing.

Then she laughed instead. A sharp broken sound dragged out of her by pure stress.

“How’s he doing?” she asked breathlessly, still healing Jiraiya’s lung. “Tell me he’s fine.”

Katsuyu paused before answering.

The battlefield noise around her suddenly sounded very far away.

“He is down, Lady Tsunade.”

Everything inside her went cold.

The chakra in her hands flickered over Jiraiya's chest.He made a rough sound beneath her as the healing faltered.

Tsunade forced the chakra steady again immediately through sheer muscle memory.

“How far,” she heard herself ask, a break in her voice betraying the calm she was trying to convey. 

“Two miles east, Lady.”

Two miles.

Her mind calculated automatically.

Too far to see. Too far to reach instantly. Close enough that he might still be alive if she moved right now.

Somewhere across the battlefield Sakumo shouted new orders.

Shinnosuke surged forward with the remaining Konoha line toward the bridge while Katsuyu’s acid forced Ame shinobi backward in screaming waves.

Tsunade barely registered any of it.

Her hands stayed locked over Jiraiya’s chest.

Heal. Fuck you. Stabilize. Come on, idiot. Heal.

Jiraiya’s breathing finally evened out beneath her palms, ragged but functional. The punctured lung sealed closed. Internal bleeding slowed.

The second Jiraiya’s breathing stabilized, Tsunade stood.

“Finish the lung and keep pressure on the lower wounds,” she ordered the fragment of Katsuyu still attached near his shoulder.

“Of course, Lady Tsunade.”

Jiraiya caught weakly at her wrist before she could move.

“Tsunade—”

“Don’t,” she snapped immediately.

Blood still coated his teeth. One side of his chest rose unevenly beneath the shredded remains of his flak jacket.

He was alive. That would have to be enough.

Tsunade tore her wrist free gently anyway and launched herself east. The battlefield blurred around her.

Mud exploded beneath her feet as she sprinted through smoke and shattered earth at speeds that would have snapped trees apart if she’d hit them directly. Enemy and allied chakra signatures flashed through the forest in violent bursts.

Konoha. Ame. Iwa. Blood everywhere. Two miles. Too far.

Please be alive.

Tsunade bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood and pushed harder.

She crossed a destroyed trench in one leap.

An Ame shinobi lunged sideways through the smoke toward her and Tsunade hit him without slowing down, fist connecting with his jaw hard enough to spin him headless into the trees.

Keep moving.

The eastern ridge came into view through rain and smoke and collapsed earth-style fortifications.

Bodies littered the ground.

Konoha and Ame mixed together in torn flak jackets and blood and mud.

Then she saw the crater.

And the shinobi kneeling around someone at the center.

No.

No no no—

Tsunade hit the ground hard enough to spray mud in every direction and shoved two shinobi aside before they could react.

Dan lay half-submerged in bloody water at the bottom of the crater.

His jacket was gone.

The entire right side of his abdomen was also gone.

Tsunade stopped breathing.

It looked like something had exploded through him. Blood soaked the mud beneath his body black-red. Torn flesh. Ruined muscle. Fragments of shattered metal embedded beneath exposed ribs. The lower half of his torso barely looked like human anatomy anymore.

One of the shinobi nearby had both hands pressed desperately against the wound trying to stop bleeding that physically could not be stopped.

Dan’s eyes fluttered toward her anyway.

“Tsunade,” he breathed.

The sound of his broken voice nearly split her open. She dropped to her knees in the mud and immediately slammed glowing hands against what remained of his side.

“Hey, hey, hey, Dan. I'm here. I'm here. You're going to be fine.” 

Green chakra burst outward violently.

HealHealHeal—

The damage was catastrophic.

Organs shredded. Internal bleeding everywhere. External bleeding everywhere. Blood fucking everywhere. One kidney completely obliterated. Chakra pathways ruptured beyond repair.

NoNoNoNoNo.

She shoved more chakra into him anyway.

One of the shinobi beside her was saying frantically. “Stop it, stop it—”

“I said stop it!” another voice snapped sharply. “He’s already dead!”

“Shut up!” Tsunade screamed. “SHUT UP!”

Her hands shook against Dan’s body. Blood kept pouring between her fingers.

Her chakra sealed one vessel and three more ruptured immediately after. Torn tissue refused to regenerate fast enough. His pulse fluttered weakly beneath her palms like something already slipping away. She was elbows deep, flooding his ruined body with every ounce of healing chakra she could muster. 

Dan looked up at her through rain and smoke and blood.

“…Can’t,” he whispered wetly. Blood slid from the corner of his mouth. “Can’t afford… to die here…”

“You’re not dying,” Tsunade snapped instantly.

Lie. She knew it the second she said it.

Dan coughed hard enough blood sprayed across his chin, and, if she thought about it too hard, onto Tsunade's face as well.

Tsunade pressed harder against the wound, medical chakra blazing bright enough to hurt her eyes.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

She could do this. She had to do this.

“Tsunade,” one of the shinobi beside her said quietly. “His kidney—”

“I know!”

She could feel it, or rather the absence where it should have been.

Blown apart.

You couldn’t regenerate an entire organ. Especially not while the patient was actively bleeding out in your hands. She could transplant one if they weren't on a battlefield. He could live without one, if she could make him stop bleeding. A useless fucking thought. 

So much blood. So much. 

Dan’s fingers twitched weakly against the mud beside her.

Tsunade grabbed them instantly.

“Stay awake,” she ordered.

Dan smiled at her. Soft. Scared underneath it.

“…I’m in the clear now,” he whispered. “You’ll heal me. You've got me.”

The faith in his voice almost destroyed her. She felt broken. Tsunade bent lower over him, pouring so much chakra into the wound her vision started spotting white around the edges.

His pulse stumbled and stuttered again.

One of the shinobi nearby looked away. Another stopped trying to help. 

Tsunade kept going anyway.

Blood soaked through her sleeves. Her hands. Her knees pressed into red mud while rain hammered against the clearing hard enough to wash pink rivers down the crater walls.

Dan inhaled shakily.

“I am healing you,” she said desperately. “Dan, love, you need to stop bleeding. Please.” 

“…Really?” he murmured faintly. “Oh… good…”

Then his eyes unfocused for half a second.

No.

“Dan.”

His breathing hitched wetly.

“Don’t do that,” Tsunade said sharply, gripping his hand harder. “Look at me.”

He did. Barely.

“…Don’t want,” he whispered. “Don’t want to die yet…”

His chest spasmed violently. Blood bubbled between his lips.

“There’s still…” A ragged breath. “So much I want to do…”

Tsunade’s vision blurred.

“Don’t talk.”

Another shinobi crouched beside her finally, face pale beneath streaks of mud and blood.

“…Tsunade-sama,” he said hoarsely. “It’s no use.”

She ignored him.

More chakra. More. MORE—

She released the seal on her forehead. Watched as black lines crept down her wrists and over her hands and the chakra surged from her fingertips.

Her hands trembled violently now.

The wound refused to close.

Dan’s fingers twitched once. Then, they were still.

“No,” Tsunade said immediately.

She shoved more chakra into him.

Nothing.

“No.”

Around them the battlefield noise had started shifting. Konoha forces driving the enemy backward through the ridge. Explosions farther west. Somebody shouting pursuit orders.

Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Tsunade stared at Dan’s lifeless face while rain poured over both of them.

No pulse. No breath. No movement. No hope. 

Her healing chakra flickered uselessly across ruined flesh that would never heal now.

Someone touched her shoulder carefully. Tsunade slapped the hand away hard enough to break fingers.

“Lady Tsunade,” Katsuyu whispered softly from her shoulder.

Tsunade didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her hands stayed pressed against Dan’s body long after the chakra stopped working.

Long after the blood stopped moving. Long after everybody around her realized there was nothing left to save. Rain poured into the crater hard enough to turn the blood thin around her knees.

Tsunade still knelt there with both hands pressed uselessly against Dan’s ruined side.

Warmth fading beneath her palms.

Gone.

Somebody else shouted for pursuit teams. Someone was shouting orders. The sounds reached her strangely warped, muffled beneath the violent ringing overtaking her ears.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Not like this. Not when she was here.

Twenty-eight shinobi holding a border crossing against more than two hundred enemy forces and she was the only medic among them.

This. This was exactly what she had been screaming about in council meetings.

What she’d fought Hiruzen over.

What everyone kept politely dismissing while pretending war could somehow function without medical support.

What Dan believed in too.

Too many wounded.Not enough hands.

And now Dan was dead because she physically could not be everywhere at once.

A hysterical laugh almost clawed its way up her throat.

Instead she shoved more useless healing chakra into his body like muscle memory alone refused to stop trying.

Nothing happened.

“Tsunade!”

Sakumo’s voice cut through the ringing distantly.

“The Ame line’s breaking,” he shouted somewhere above her. “They’re retreating eastward—”

The words blurred apart halfway through.

Tsunade couldn’t really hear him anymore.

Could barely hear anything.

Rain hammered against shattered earth. Smoke drifted through broken trees. Somewhere farther down the ridge wounded shinobi screamed for medics that did not exist.

Her.

They were screaming for her.

Because there was nobody else.

A hand grabbed her shoulder again, more careful this time.

“Tsunade.”

Sakumo now.

She looked up finally.

His face was streaked with blood that could not be all his. One sleeve half-burned away. Silver hair soaked flat by rain.

Alive. He was alive.

Jiraiya too, probably. Alive because she’d gotten there in time.

Dan wasn’t.

Something inside her twisted so violently she thought for one horrible second she might vomit.

“She’s needed at the western line,” somebody said nearby.

“She can’t stay here.”

Tsunade looked back down at Dan’s face.

Rainwater ran over his closed eyes.

His necklace chain — her necklace chain — still hung around his throat beneath the blood.

So much he would never do.

Sakumo crouched beside her fully now.

“Tsunade,” he said quietly, urgently. “We still have wounded.”

The sentence landed like a blade between her ribs.

Of course they did. Of course they fucking did.

War didn’t stop because one person died.

Even him.

Tsunade stared at Dan’s face while rainwater streamed over his skin in thin red lines. Mud clung to his jaw. Blood pooled beneath the curve of his shoulder and diluted slowly into pink around the crater floor.

Her hands were still pressed against his body.

Still trying.

Even though the chakra had stopped flowing minutes ago.

The ringing in her ears had swallowed everything else whole.

Around the edges of her vision the battlefield narrowed strangely. Smoke and movement and rain collapsing inward until all she could really see clearly was Dan lying in front of her.

Sakumo grabbed her shoulder.

Tsunade looked back down at Dan immediately.

So much they could have done together. 

Pinpricks crowded her vision now. Black at the edges.

Her hands started glowing weakly again on instinct alone.

Heal. Heal—

A pale hand reached past her suddenly.

Orochimaru.

He crouched beside Dan’s body without a word, rain running down strands of dark hair plastered against his face. Blood covered almost all of one sleeve.

Tsunade watched him blankly as his fingers caught the chain still hanging around Dan’s throat.

Her necklace.

The chain snapped softly as Orochimaru pulled it free.

The sound cut through the ringing for one horrible second.

Tsunade inhaled sharply.

Orochimaru closed his hand around the necklace once.

Then looked directly at her.

And said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Before Tsunade could process the words, Orochimaru slapped her across the face. 

Enough to hurt. Enough to shock her back into existence.

Pain shot clean through the numbness like lightning. Tsunade jerked violently, breath catching in her throat.

The world slammed abruptly back into motion around her, all of the smoke and blood and screaming.

Screaming wounded.

Sakumo shouting orders.

The smell of blood and burned flesh and mud.

Orochimaru grabbed her shoulder immediately after, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

“Tsunade,” he said sharply. "We have to move."

Her eyes focused on him at last. And whatever Orochimaru saw in her face made something tighten visibly around his mouth.

“We need to move, now,” he said.

Tsunade looked down at Dan again.

Her stomach twisted so hard she thought she might collapse back into the mud beside him.

Orochimaru didn’t let her.

He hauled her upright by the shoulder almost roughly when her knees threatened to buckle.

“Tsunade.”

She couldn’t feel her hands.

Couldn’t feel anything except the horrible hollow pressure inside her chest.

“I can’t,” she heard herself say.

The words sounded small and wrong.

Orochimaru’s grip tightened.

“Yes,” he said. “You can.”

Somewhere behind them Sakumo barked another order.

The ridge still burned. Wounded shinobi still screamed for help.

For her.

Tsunade looked at Dan one last time as Orochimaru pulled her backward through the rain.

Then the crater disappeared behind smoke and broken trees and battlefield chaos swallowed him whole.

Chapter Text

The war moved constantly.

Fronts shifted. Alliances changed. Emergency supply routes collapsed and reformed three valleys over. One month, they were defending the Fire border against Ame advances, and the next, they were knee-deep in flooded marshland, escorting River Country officials through artillery fire from Iwa.

At some point, Jiraiya had stopped asking where exactly they were and just dropped into Sage Mode to sense it. 

Somewhere between the Land of Rivers and the Land of Valleys now. Maybe close to Hot Water. Maybe not, the borders were so unsettled now. The maps changed too often, and half the roads no longer existed.

The battalion camp stretched for acres through the forest around them. There were dozens, if not a hundred, tents now. Konoha shinobi mixed with allied forces from smaller nations that couldn’t survive the war alone. Patrol fires burned low beneath camouflage tarps while wounded soldiers limped between sparse medical stations under dim lanterns.

Their own camp was set up right on the treeline. The first line of defense for attacks from the woods.

Three small tents beneath heavy trees.

Team Hiruzen was still alive, somehow.

Most of the people they’d started with were gone now.

Sakumo and his unit had been reassigned months ago to reconnaissance work. Shinnosuke and the remaining chunin squads had rotated north toward the Iwa front.

Dan’s team—

Jiraiya typically shut the thought down automatically before it fully formed.

Dead. All of them.

The fire crackled softly in front of him.

Across camp somebody was shouting instructions during a training drill. Another shinobi vomited behind the medic tents. Rain dripped steadily from the canopy overhead after another miserable wet afternoon.

Jiraiya sat on a supply crate near the edge of the firelight rolling a ration pill between his fingers.

He didn’t eat it. They tasted like chalk and battery acid. He'd save it for later.

Tsunade lived on the damn things lately.

Food pills. Coffee. Shochu. Adrenaline. Pure stubbornness.

Whatever kept her upright longest.

She emerged from the darkness beyond camp a few minutes later carrying two bottles of liquor by the neck.

Jiraiya watched her cross the firelight quietly.

A year ago Tsunade moved like a person.

Now she moved like an automaton. War had stripped every unnecessary softness off her. She dropped down onto the crate beside him without speaking and twisted the cap off one bottle.

Jiraiya glanced sideways at her.

They were too young for the exhaustion carved into her face.

Tsunade drank half the bottle in one pull.

“You know,” Jiraiya said carefully, “normal people have drinks with dinner.”

“I ate.”

“A food pill isn’t food.”

“It does the job.”

“So does shoe leather.”

Tsunade hummed noncommittally and took another drink.

That was the thing.

She drank now. Not socially. Not for fun. Functionally. Enough alcohol to knock herself unconscious for a few hours at night, because otherwise she didn’t sleep at all.

Jiraiya knew because during the first weeks after Dan died he’d heard her crying through the thin tent walls every single night.

Quietly at first, and then weeping. Then eventually silent again.

He hadn’t heard her cry in months now.

That was scarier.

Across the fire Orochimaru sat cross-legged cleaning blood from a kunai with almost meditative calm.

“Your patient from the night watch survived,” he said without looking up.

Tsunade nodded once.

“Good.”

Jiraiya stared into the fire for a while.

He missed her, which was stupid because she was sitting right there.

But he did.

Missed the way she used to yell at him for being disgusting instead of just staring blankly until he stopped talking on his own. Missed the way she used to argue during strategy meetings like she genuinely believed people could still be convinced to do better.

Now she fought and healed and drank with the same, mindless emptiness. No matter what she was doing, it was blank. 

She was a machine built to keep some people alive, and to kill the others.

And God, she was good both.

Terrifyingly good.

Jiraiya had watched her on the battlefield that morning crack straight through an Ame shinobi’s ribcage with one punch while healing a sixteen-year-old Konoha chunin missing half his leg with the other. 

She barely looked at the people she healed anymore.

An absolute demon wearing Tsunade’s face.

And it worked.

Their reputations had started to precede them. Enemy forces had started retreating the second they saw toad, slug, and snake. 

“You should sleep for more than four hours sometime,” he muttered.

Tsunade took another drink. “You should mind your fucking business.”

“There she is,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Tsunade looked over.

For one tiny second something almost softened in her expression. Something familiar. Tired and irritated and alive.

Then it disappeared again.

Too fast to hold onto, but Jiraiya felt the loss of it anyway.

Everyone was dead, or close enough that the distinction barely mattered anymore.

The battlefield had collapsed into ruin hours ago.

Bodies everywhere. Konoha shinobi. Ame shinobi. Allied forces from smaller nations caught in the middle of a war between titans. Rainwater flooded the craters in shallow red pools while smoke drifted low across shattered earth.

Hundreds dead.

Maybe more.

Jiraiya stood atop Gamabunta with blood running down one side of his face and tried not to think about how many chakra signatures had vanished over the last hour.

Too many. Far too many.

Below him Gamabunta’s sides heaved with exhaustion, massive tantō dragging trenches through the mud each time the toad shifted his footing.

Across the battlefield Manda coiled through corpses and wreckage like some ancient thing dredged out of hell itself. Orochimaru stood atop the snake’s head pale with exhaustion but still terrifyingly composed, sleeves soaked black-red to the elbows.

And Tsunade—

Tsunade.

Jiraiya’s eyes caught on her instinctively.

Katsuyu towered over the battlefield beneath her, pale blue body streaked with soot and blood while Tsunade stood balanced high above the fighting throwing explosive-tagged kunai one after another into enemy formations with mechanical precision.

No wasted movement, just killing intent.

The explosions rolled across the battlefield in waves. Enemy shinobi scattered every time she moved.

At some point she’d stopped trying to heal people, because there was nobody left to save.

Tiny segments of Katsuyu still clung to all three of them carrying battlefield reports back and forth in quiet steady voices.

At first it had been casualty updates.

Then critical injuries.

Then silence.

Finally Katsuyu had murmured softly against Jiraiya’s shoulder:

“The shinobi I am sheltering are no longer responding, Jiraiya-kun.”

After that, for a brief moment, Tsunade had gone frighteningly still.

Now Katsuyu carried bodies of the dead and dying inside herself while Tsunade fought like she was trying to personally hold the line against an entire nation.

But somehow—

Somehow—

The three of them were winning. 

The battlefield had narrowed over hours of slaughter until only the strongest enemy shinobi remained standing. 

Hanzo of the Salamander across from them atop his massive summon.

The three students of Hiruzen facing him through smoke and rain and corpses.

Jiraiya wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one hand and glanced sideways. Gamabunta was trembling with fatigue below him.

Orochimaru met his eyes briefly from atop Manda, who was shedding a skin to heal injuries.

Then Tsunade looked over too from Katsuyu’s head, rain plastering blonde hair against the sides of her face.

For one second the three of them simply looked at each other across the battlefield.

Smoke drifted slowly apart between them and Hanzo at last.

The battlefield opened fully.

Gamabunta.

Manda.

Katsuyu.

Three summons towering above a field of dead men while rain hammered against broken earth. 

At once, they all dispelled the summonses. The creatures needed to heal themselves. Katsuyu needed to return the bodies to Konoha. 

Jiraiya felt confident they could finish this on foot. He didn't realize how exhausted he was, until he was already slumped into Tsunade’s side.

Hanzo stood opposite them atop his salamander utterly motionless behind his mask.

Then his voice carried across the battlefield.

“You three are very strong.” Hanzo looked slowly between them. “You survived even this battleground.”

Rain poured harder.

Jiraiya tightened his grip on his weapon automatically.

“Oh fuck you,” he screamed. “We’re still here, we can still fight. Are you a cow—” 

“Jiraiya.” Tsunade stomped on his foot. 

Beside him Orochimaru shifted almost imperceptibly into readiness.

Hanzo of the Salamander looked at them for one long moment across the corpses of hundreds.

“I, Hanzo… hereby name you the three Sannin of Konoha.”

Why?

The words landed strangely. Jiraiya could barely feel his arms anymore.

Below them the battlefield groaned with dying men.

Hanzo’s gaze sharpened behind the metallic mask.

“In exchange for your lives,” he said, “I would like to know your names.”

The cave was barely a cave.

More a deep split in the cliffside hidden behind hanging vines and slick black stone, just large enough for the three of them to disappear inside without being spotted from the valley below.

Hanzo had let them live.

None of them entirely understood why.

By the time they finally stopped moving the rain had followed them into the mountains again, cold and relentless against the rocks outside while the three of them collapsed inside the narrow shelter.

No supplies.

No proper food.

Just hardtack biscuits gone soft with moisture, rainwater collected in cracked canteens, and two sleeping bags between three shinobi too exhausted to deal with it.

Orochimaru disappeared sometime near dusk to hunt.

Or scout.

Or kill something.

With him it could honestly be any combination of three.

Jiraiya sat near the mouth of the cave listening to the storm outside while Tsunade slept three feet away wrapped tightly in one of the sleeping bags.

Or tried to sleep.

Even unconscious she looked tense now. Brow furrowed faintly. One hand curled near the kunai beside her hip on pure reflex.

Jiraiya hated it.

The last year had carved something out of her and never given it back.

She barely slept anymore unless exhaustion physically overwhelmed her first. Half the time he’d wake during deployment rotations and see faint green chakra still glowing through her tent walls while she worked on wounded shinobi at three in the morning because there weren’t enough medics and there never would be.

The cave smelled faintly of wet stone and blood.

All three of them still carried injuries they hadn’t fully treated yet.

Jiraiya’s ribs ached every time he breathed too deeply. Orochimaru had a slash wound across his side that probably should’ve killed a normal person. Tsunade—

Jiraiya looked over at her again quietly.

Tsunade had kept fighting long after she should’ve collapsed.

He’d watched her standing atop Katsuyu throwing explosive-tagged kunai with hands shaking from chakra depletion while blood ran down both arms from reopened wounds she hadn’t bothered healing properly.

And she still hadn’t stopped.

The war would end soon.

Or at least this part of it would.

Hanzo letting them live felt like a line drawn somewhere.

A conclusion.

Jiraiya hoped so anyway.

Outside thunder rolled through the mountains.

Tsunade jerked violently in her sleep.

Then screamed.

“STOP STOP STOP—”

Jiraiya moved instantly.

“Tsunade.”

She woke thrashing hard enough the sleeping bag tangled around her legs while panic flashed wild and blind across her face.

“Hey— hey—”

Her breathing came sharp and ragged. Hands glowing green automatically before she even fully opened her eyes.

“the blood—”

The word broke apart halfway out of her mouth.

Jiraiya caught both her wrists before she could accidentally drive chakra-enhanced fists through the cave wall.

“Tsunade.”

Her eyes finally focused on him.

He had the feeling she wasn't really seeing him at first. The battlefield was still trapped somewhere behind her pupils. The rain and the blood and the screaming wounded and the silent dying haunting her, asleep and awake.

Jiraiya felt something twist painfully in his chest.

“You’re safe,” he said quietly.

Tsunade’s breathing stayed uneven.

“The battle’s over. It’s okay,” he said again, softer now. “You’re okay, I'm okay, Orochimaru’s fine, We’re okay.”

That was probably a lie.

Close enough for now.

Tsunade looked away from him immediately after, jaw tightening hard enough he saw the muscle jump.

Embarrassed.

Stupid.

Like there was anything left between the three of them they hadn’t already seen shattered open and held bare by war. 

Without really thinking about it, Jiraiya shifted closer and pulled her gently toward him. For one second he thought she might resist. Instead, Tsunade folded against him abruptly like exhaustion had finally cut her strings.

Jiraiya wrapped both arms around her automatically. Tightly. 

She was freezing.

Rain and sweat and dried blood still clung to her skin beneath the blanket. Her hair smelled faintly like smoke.

Slowly, carefully, Jiraiya started smoothing tangled strands back from her face.

Tsunade shook once beneath his hands. 

“You’re alright,” he murmured.

Her forehead pressed hard against his shoulder. Outside the storm kept raging through the mountains.

Inside the cave everything felt painfully small and quiet. Jiraiya kept stroking her hair gently while she breathed against his chest trying and failing to calm down.

Every breath sounded like it was being torn from her lungs. 

Jiraiya closed his eyes briefly.

There wasn’t anything he could say.

So instead he tightened his arms around her slightly and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

Tsunade made one small broken sound against his shoulder.

“Don’t leave. Not now.”

Jiraiya felt his chest ache so sharply it almost took his breath.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said immediately.

Tsunade must have believed him enough to fall asleep in his arms. He choked back a sigh of relief, and kissed her hair. 

Chapter Text

Mist drifted low through the ruined village's streets.

The rain had shifted to mist sometime before dawn, leaving everything soaked through and silver-gray beneath the clouds. Water dripped, a steady plonkplonkplonk from broken roofs. Somewhere farther off, thunder rolled faintly across the valleys.

Jiraiya stood in the muddy road with his pack slung over one shoulder and watched Tsunade, shivering beside him.

She looked exhausted in ways sleep probably couldn’t fix. There were bruised shadows beneath her eyes that had never really faded. Her damp blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders, tangled from travel and rain and neglect. She had been biting her lower lip like she was forcing words to stay inside for the last day.

Orochimaru stood a few feet away beneath the overhang of a collapsed roof, visibly impatient already.

Behind Jiriaya, near the doorway of the abandoned house, the Ame children waited silently. 

“We should leave,” Orochimaru said at last.

Tsunade ignored him. Her eyes stayed fixed on Jiraiya.

“You really aren’t coming back with us?"

Jiraiya swallowed once. “I'm not.”

Something flickered across Tsunade's face. He almost wished it were anger. She looked raw. Worn thin by grief and exhaustion, and the simple, unbearable fact that the war nearly killed all three of them. That the three of them survived, when so many didn't. And now he was staying behind in Amegakure.

For children he’d known for less than a day.

Jiraiya knew he should feel guilty for keeping himself in danger and keeping her worried. But underneath it, stubborn and immovable, that instinct remained.

Stay.

Teach them.

One choice. It was always one choice.

“I have to,” he said quietly.

Tsunade laughed softly through her nose, but there was no humor in it. Jiraiya smiled weakly. She didn’t smile back. Rainwater slipped from the edge of the roof beside them in slow steady drops.

Orochimaru shifted slightly.

“If you stay much longer, Tsuna,” he said flatly, “I’m leaving both of you here.”

Neither of them looked at him.

Jiraiya couldn’t stop watching her. 

The war had changed all of them. He knew that. But Tsunade, there were parts of her now that felt held together entirely by force of will. He knew she wasn’t sleeping. Not really. Knew she drank herself unconscious most nights because otherwise she woke up screaming. Knew the only decent sleep she’d had in months happened curled against him in that cave after Hanzo spared them.

And now he was leaving anyway.

Tsunade looked away from him briefly toward the flooded road stretching out of the village.

“If I hear by a hawk that you died here, I swear—”

Jiraiya stepped closer before he could think better of it.

“Tsunade, I died, I would send a toad, not a—”

“No.” She shook her head once immediately. “Do not joke right now.”

She looked so tired, like she’d reached the end of something inside herself a long time ago and kept walking anyway.

Jiraiya lifted one hand carefully and touched the side of her neck beneath damp strands of hair.

Tsunade closed her eyes instantly.

“I’ll come back,” he said softly.

“Can you promise me that?”

“No.”

“Good. People keep promising me things and then dying anyway,” Her voice cracked.

Jiraiya felt something twist painfully in his chest.

He slid his thumb lightly along her jaw.

“I’m sorry.”

Tsunade looked furious at herself for how close she sounded to crying. She stepped into him abruptly and wrapped both arms around him hard enough to hurt, like she was memorizing the shape of him.

Jiraiya rested his cheek against her damp hair and closed his eyes hard for one brief second.

He could feel how exhausted she was now that she’d stopped pretending otherwise. Every inch of tension wound too tight beneath his hands. The way she leaned into him was just slightly too much. She was shaking. 

“You'd better come home,” she whispered against his shoulder.

Something in his chest nearly shattered.

“I will.”

Lie.

Promise.

Prayer.

Maybe all three.

Tsunade pulled back after a long moment but kept one hand twisted in the front of his vest like she wasn’t fully ready to let go.

“Don’t make me bury another person I—”

She stopped herself abruptly. Jiraiya stared at her. Before he could respond, she grabbed his face abruptly and kissed his cheek hard enough to sting.

“There,” she muttered immediately, eyes bright now despite how hard she blinked against it. “Goodbye.”

Orochimaru made a soft sound of annoyance somewhere behind them.

“We need to go,” he said.

Tsunade still lingered one defiant second longer, then finally let go of Jiraiya’s vest. She turned before he could see whether or not she was crying, and walked toward Orochimaru through the drifting mist.

Jiraiya watched her go.

Halfway down the flooded road, she stopped once.

Looked back at him over her shoulder, then she disappeared into the rain beside Orochimaru, leaving Jiraiya standing alone in the ruined village with three orphaned children and the terrible aching certainty that he had just told the most important person in his life to leave him behind.

It had been a strange fucking week.

Jiraiya sat cross-legged beside a weak lantern flame, listening to rain drum softly against the patched roof overhead, and tried to process the fact that this was apparently his life now.

Three war orphans, asleep six feet away. A half-destroyed shack somewhere in Ame.

And Nagato had awakened the fucking Rinnegan that afternoon.

Honestly, the fact that the kid had also killed a man with it somehow felt secondary now. Not unimportant exactly. Just buried beneath the increasingly overwhelming realization that Jiraiya had somehow become responsible for three tiny traumatized and terrifying disaster children in less than a week.

Yahiko snored softly from beneath the blankets.

Konan had unconsciously migrated sideways in her sleep until half her weight rested against Yahiko’s shoulder.

Nagato slept, curled tightly inward, like someone expecting to wake up in the freezing cold.

Jiraiya thought they looked healthier already, but he might have been biased. He’d been forcing food into them almost aggressively since staying behind. Actual cooked meals when he could manage it. Fish from the river. Rice. Soup. Whatever they could scrounge. 

The first night, Yahiko nearly cried while eating hot food, and Jiraiya had immediately pretended not to notice.

Rain rolled softly across the roof.

Jiraiya leaned back against the wall with a quiet groan and scrubbed both hands down his face.

He missed Tsunade already. The realization hit him every few minutes in fresh, irritating ways. He missed Orochimaru, too, which was deeply unfortunate to admit even internally. He hadn’t realized how completely used to them he’d become until they were suddenly gone.

Nearly twenty years of always having them nearby somewhere.

Tsunade bitching at him while she stitched wounds closed. Orochimaru making unsettling observations from across campfires. The shape of them beside him had become so constant that Jiraiya apparently stopped noticing it until the absence hollowed everything out. 

The lantern flickered softly beside him.

After another minute, he dragged out paper and a brush.

The first letter was short.

Tsunade,

I keep turning around expecting you to be here, and it’s starting to piss me off—

Jiraiya stared at the words.

Then immediately crumpled the paper and tossed it into the lantern flame.

It curled black almost instantly.

The second attempt went better. Or at least, less insane.

Tsunade,

The kids and I are still alive. Barely. Nagato awakened some kind of dojutsu today that I’m choosing not to think too hard about until I’ve had more sleep and less existential dread.

I’m assuming you and Orochimaru made it back to Konoha already. Let me know before I start assuming he murdered somebody important.

I’ve been force-feeding these kids actual food for the last week and they’ve each gained at least five pounds, so clearly I’m an incredible parental figure.

Yahiko keeps trying to pick fights with grown men twice his size.

Konan already runs this house emotionally.

I know I say this about Minato and the crew, too, but Nagato is either going to save the world or destroy it. Jury’s still out.

…I miss you.

Jiraiya stopped writing.

For a long moment, he just stared at the final sentence, then sighed quietly through his nose.

“Ah, fuck it.”

He folded the letter before he could reconsider. He bit his thumb. A burst of smoke popped quietly beside him a second later as Gamahito appeared beside the lantern, rubbing sleepily at one eye.

“Whatcha need, Jiraiya-kun?”

“Delivery job.”

The little toad accepted the scroll with visible reluctance.

“Konoha’s so far.”

“I know.”

“You owe me snacks.”

“Extortionist.”

“Hungry extortionist." 

Jiraiya snorted softly despite himself and watched the toad disappear again in another puff of smoke with the letter tucked beneath one arm.

Silence settled back over the shack afterward. He exhaled slowly and reached for the stack of messy handwritten pages beside him. His novel was still terrible. Probably always terrible, but writing felt easier here somehow. He dipped the brush into ink again while the storm rolled softly across Ame outside.

He started writing.

Chapter Text

The first time Tsunade stepped back into Konoha Hospital after the war, half the staff looked relieved to see her, while the other half looked guilty enough they could barely meet her eyes. She understood both reactions immediately. The relief came from desperation. The guilt came from watching her leave for the front a different person than the woman who returned.

The village had changed while she was gone. New cracks split old buildings. Fresh names covered the memorial stone. Children she had never seen before ran laughing through streets that still smelled faintly like smoke whenever rain soaked the rooftops hard enough. People bowed deeper now when they recognized her. There was too much reverence in it. Too much sympathy. Every glance lingered a second too long, like they were checking whether the new, legendary sannin had survived the war intact.

She hadn’t.

The war itself was mostly over, at least officially. Shinobi wars never truly ended. They just diminished into smaller cruelties that everyone pretended were manageable. Borders dissolved into skirmishes. Skirmishes turned into retaliations. Patrol units disappeared quietly enough that no one bothered calling them battles anymore.

But Tsunade was finished with the front completely. Her war was over. 

No one argued when she said it.

Orochimaru disappeared into the ANBU almost immediately after they returned to the village. It suited him too well. The mask. The secrecy. The distance. Tsunade saw him only twice during the first month back, and both times he studied her with the detached concentration of someone assessing structural damage after a collapse.

Jiraiya was still in Ame with the orphans.

His letters arrived every few weeks, usually damp around the edges from rain and filled with increasingly domestic complaints about village life in the Land of Rain. One entire page consisted solely of him describing the misery of permanently wet sandals. Another included a horrifying sketch of a lizard that he insisted looked exactly like Orochimaru.

Sometimes he wrote about the children instead. Yahiko talking himself into trouble faster than Jiraiya could drag him back out. Konan glaring at him whenever he forgot chores. Nagato unsettling him so thoroughly that entire paragraphs dissolved into frantic underlined warnings about “ominous eye contact.”

Sometimes he wrote about home. Things he missed, including her. 

Those letters hurt the worst.

Tsunade answered maybe one out of every three he sent. Short responses. Careful responses. Just enough to reassure him she was alive and functional and still alive. 

Never enough to tell him the truth.

Because the truth was humiliating.

The truth was, she barely slept anymore. She wandered Konoha at night for hours because staying still for too long meant remembering things she could not survive. Blood beneath her fingernails. Dan collapsing against her hands. Nawaki grinning across kitchen tables. 

If she closed her eyes, Dan died every single night.

Over and over and over again.

The hospital helped at first. Or maybe she only wanted it to help badly enough that she mistook numbness for improvement. Work remained simple in ways the rest of her life no longer was. Patients arrived injured. She healed them. She had no issues at first, fixing sprained ankles and broken fingers in the emergency clinic. 

For three days, that routine held her together.

On the fourth morning, a chūnin arrived from a border skirmish with his abdomen torn nearly open.

Blood soaked through the sheets beneath him in dark, heavy spurts before the orderlies even got him fully onto the operating table. The smell reached her first, and it was all she could do not to shove a fist in her mouth. Iron and heat and something unmistakably sour underneath it. Then came the sound. That wet, uneven, choking sound, when blood started filling spaces inside the body that were never meant to hold it.

Tsunade froze.

Her hands hovered, shaking uselessly above the wound while the room abruptly tilted sideways around her.

Someone was talking.

No. Shouting at her.

“Tsunade-sama—”

Blood spilled hot between her fingers.

And suddenly it was not the chūnin lying on the table anymore.

Dan.

Dan stared up at her with blood gathering at the corners of his mouth. Dan trying to smile through failing lungs. Dan saying her name while she pressed desperately against a wound she could not close, no matter how much chakra she forced through shaking hands.

Her vision tunneled violently. She swooned but stayed upright. The roar of her pulse drowned out the room. Her hands started trembling hard enough that she could barely feel the patient beneath them anymore.

No chakra came. No light from her fingers. 

“Tsunade-sama!”

Another medic shoved past her shoulder. Older woman. Steady hands. Sharp controlled voice already barking instructions while Tsunade stumbled backward blindly into the instrument tray behind her. Metal crashed against the floor with enough noise to silence the room for half a second.

Nobody looked at her.

The patient survived.

Barely.

Tsunade locked herself inside an empty supply room afterward and wept and vomited until her throat burned raw. When there was nothing left in her stomach, she still kept shaking, curled against the wall with blood drying across her gloves while fluorescent lights buzzed overhead loud enough to split her skull apart.

She sat there for almost an hour staring at her hands.

After that, she stopped taking trauma cases. Then she stopped assisting surgeries entirely.

She stopped going to the hospital unless somebody physically came to drag her there themselves.

Hiruzen summoned her a week later, and Tsunade spent nearly an hour staring at the notice on her kitchen table, debating whether to ignore it entirely. In the end, she went because some habits carved themselves too deeply into a person to disappear, no matter how much damage came afterward. Her sensei called, and she would answer. 

The Hokage’s office smelled exactly the same as it always had. Pipe smoke lingering faintly in old wood. Ink. Sunlight warmed stacks of paperwork. For one disorienting second, it almost felt like being ten again, standing in front of his desk after getting caught fighting Jiraiya in the academy courtyard.

Then Hiruzen looked up at her, and any sentimentality she harbored was squashed. 

He seemed older now in ways she had never noticed before the war. Smaller somehow. The certainty, the infallibility she used to associate with him had worn thin around the edges.

“Tsuna-chan,” he said quietly, gesturing to the chair in front of him.

She stayed standing.

“What do you want?”

His eyes lingered on her face too long. She knew what he saw there. The exhaustion, she no longer bothered hiding it. The sleeplessness. The grief. The pieces of her still visibly unraveling.

“You cannot continue like this.”

The words landed badly enough that she nearly laughed.

As if she had chosen this. Like she woke up every morning deciding to feel hollow. Like she wanted to drink a bottle of sake every night just to numb the impossible, massive, unyielding emptiness that she felt. 

“You think I don’t know that?”

Hiruzen sighed softly, and suddenly she hated the sound because it reminded her too much of childhood. Of scraped knees and failed exercises and gentle lectures afterward. He used to sound like safety. Like certainty. Like if something went wrong badly enough, the Third Hokage, her sensei, would know how to fix it.

Now all she could think about was funerals.

“I think,” he said carefully, “you need purpose again.”

Purpose. The rage arrived instantly. Hot enough to make her vision blur.

Purpose.

Like taking care of Nawaki had not been her purpose. Like loving Dan and letting Dan love her wasn’t a purpose too. Like she had not handed both of them to the village only to get corpses back in return. Like she hadn’t dedicated her life to learning how to fight some people and heal others better than anything else, only to have none of it matter in the end.

She hated him. The thought hit her like a brick. 

“There’s a genin team graduating early this year,” Hiruzen continued. “I’d like you to take them on.”

Tsunade stared at him in genuine disbelief before a harsh laugh tore out of her throat. “You cannot be serious.”

“You were one of the finest jōnin commanders in the war. One of the strongest shinobi in the village.”

“And look what good that did.”

The words snapped out sharper than she intended. Hiruzen flinched almost imperceptibly anyway.

“Tsunade—”

“No.”

Outside the window, birds scattered from the rooftop nearby.

Hiruzen watched her quietly, and that somehow made everything worse. No anger. No orders. Just that same tired patience he had used her entire life whenever she was hurt and refusing help.

“They need experienced shinobi to teach them,” he said eventually. 

“You mean more children for the village to bury.”

His expression tightened, something like shame flickering visibly across his face before he pushed it back down.

“You know it is more complicated than that.”

“Do I?” The question came out raw.

Because suddenly all she could see was Nawaki grinning about becoming Hokage someday. Dan talking about reforming the shinobi system. Kids with impossible dreams marching straight into battlefields built by older men who kept insisting sacrifice was necessary.

Necessary for what? More graves? More memorial stones? More children learning how to kill before they learned how to live?

This was the man who taught her to throw her first punch correctly. The man who praised her intelligence when she was small enough to sit on his desk, swinging her legs while he worked.

The man she once trusted more than anyone.

“You blame me,” Hiruzen said finally.

Tsunade looked away toward the village below, for suddenly she could not bear to look at him directly anymore. Konoha sprawled bright beneath the afternoon sunlight, busy and ordinary and alive in ways that she could no longer bear. 

“Yes,” she said quietly, before turning to leave. 

She hoped that the honesty hurt him. 

After that, she spent even more nights wandering, and eventually even Tsunade stopped pretending the wandering had anything to do with insomnia.

Most nights, she drank first, before she wandered. Not enough to collapse somewhere humiliating. Not enough to lose awareness of herself entirely. Just enough to dull the sharpest edges of memory so she could walk through the village without feeling like every street corner concealed another ghost waiting for her.

It never worked for long.

The village after dark had become familiar in strange ways. Shop lanterns flickering low beneath awnings. Restaurant chatter drifting through nearly empty streets. The distant clatter of training grounds where overeager chūnin still practiced too late because young shinobi always believed exhaustion was temporary.

Sometimes people recognized her.

Sometimes they pretended not to.

Tsunade preferred the second kind.

On that particular night, spring air carried the heavy metallic scent of rain that had not started yet. Tsunade had spent the last hour sitting alone in a narrow bar near the market district, staring into multiple cups of sake. By the time she left, warmth sat low and heavy in her bloodstream. Not enough to completely blur the world. Just enough to soften it around the edges. Enough that for almost half an hour, she had managed not to think about Dan bleeding out beneath her hands.

That alone felt pathetic enough to make her want another drink.

She was crossing a quiet side street to duck into a liquor store when she heard footsteps behind her.

At first, she ignored them, assuming some civilian child was hurrying home before curfew. Then a hesitant voice drifted toward her through the warm night air. But the footsteps were quick. Light. Agile. 

“Senju-sama?”

Tsunade stopped and turned.

The girl standing there could not have been older than seven or eight. Tiny thing. Dark hair hacked unevenly around her face as if somebody cut it carelessly with a kunai and shaking hands. An oversized sweater swallowed her narrow frame almost completely. Nervous fingers twisted tight in the fabric near her stomach.

A genin forehead protector sat crooked around her neck.

But it was the eyes that caught Tsunade immediately.

That awful hollowed-out look, grieving look that she saw in the mirror.

No. The actual eyes, the shape, and the color were familiar.

“Who are you?” Tsunade asked.

The girl straightened visibly, as if she were forcing courage into herself, piece by piece.

“I’m…” She faltered briefly, throat bobbing hard.

For one second, Tsunade thought the child might run away, but then she steadied herself.

“Shizune,” she said quietly. “Shizune Kato.”

Everything stopped.

Kato.

Dan’s niece.

Tsunade felt dizzy. She saw him immediately after that. Around the eyes, for sure. Then the mouth. Tiny familiar fragments of him stitched carefully into the face of a frightened child standing beneath the lantern light.

Her hands started shaking before she could stop them. Tsunade curled them into fists so hard her nails bit painfully into her palms.

Shizune looked terrified now, but kept talking anyway, determination dragging her words forward through obvious fear.

“I want—” She swallowed hard enough that Tsunade could hear it. “He said you were the best. Can you… can you train me?”

Tsunade stared at her blankly.

“I want to heal people,” Shizune whispered.

The words hit somewhere deep enough to hurt physically.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. The street remained quiet around them, while lantern light reflected gold on the damp stone. Somewhere farther down the road, someone laughed outside a restaurant, the sound so ordinary it felt jarring. 

Tsunade could smell sake faintly on herself now.

Could suddenly picture exactly what she looked like through the eyes of this little girl.

Legendary sannin.

Best medic in the village.

Slightly drunk and visibly shaking in the middle of the street because somebody said Dan’s name.

Shizune’s mouth trembled hard enough that she pressed her lips together, trying to stop it. Tears already gathered thick along her lashes despite how desperately she was fighting them back.

And suddenly Tsunade understood everything.

The rehearsed bravery. The careful approach. The way the child stood was like someone expecting rejection before she even finished asking.

Shizune had probably practiced this conversation over and over before finding the courage to say it aloud. Probably lingered outside hospitals and training grounds, trying to convince herself to approach Tsunade. Probably walked home crying afterward every other time she failed.

The kid had lost people too.

Dan was dead. Whatever family remained clearly was not enough to stop a little girl from wandering Konoha alone at night, searching for someone who could teach her how to keep other people alive.

Something inside Tsunade gave way then, like a cracked bone finally splitting fully apart beneath pressure.

She dropped into a crouch in front of the girl so fast her knee slammed painfully against stone.

Tsunade’s vision blurred.

“Can I hug you?” she asked, voice shaking.

Shizune shattered instantly, and she started to weep. The girl nodded frantically before wiping uselessly at her face with the heel of one hand and giving up entirely. Then she stumbled forward all at once.

She hit Tsunade hard in the chest for someone so small.

Tiny arms wrapped around her neck with desperate strength.

And Tsunade broke. Her arms closed around the girl automatically while Shizune started crying against her shoulder in horrible gasping sobs she was trying desperately to suppress. Tsunade buried her face against the top of the child’s head and felt months of barely restrained grief spill out. 

A sound escaped her throat that she did not recognize as her own. Her shoulders started shaking violently.

Blood soaking through gloves. Battlefields full of screaming. Hospital lights burning against exhausted eyes. Funeral smoke curling into gray skies.

Everything she had spent months crushing down inside herself came apart all at once around this tiny trembling child holding onto her like Tsunade was still somebody safe.

That part hurt the worst of all, because she wasn’t safe. She couldn’t save anyone. Not anymore. She was so, so broken. 

Dan died in her hands, and Nawaki died before she even reached him, and somewhere along the way, the greatest medic in the world became a woman wandering drunk through Konoha at night because sleep meant reliving every single failure in gruesome detail.

Shizune cried harder when Tsunade did, like seeing an adult finally fall apart gave her permission to be open and honest and raw in her own grief. 

So they stayed there together beneath dim lantern light in the middle of a quiet Konoha street, outside of a dingy liquor store, clinging to each other for dear life and grieving the same man that they never knew at the same time. 

Tsunade scrubbed hard at her face with the heel of one hand, angry at the tears still clinging stubbornly to her lashes.

Immediately, Shizune copied the motion, like a little mimic. 

The sight almost destroyed her again.

Because she was so young.

Children were not supposed to know grief this intimately. They were not supposed to recognize the sound of someone trying not to sob. They were not supposed to cling to broken adults in empty streets because there was nowhere else left to go.

“Do you have a genin team?” Tsunade asked roughly.

Shizune nodded quickly.

Tsunade could picture it immediately. Tiny missions. D-ranks. Saving cats from trees. Children pretending they were not afraid every time they stepped beyond the village gates because shinobi learned early how to lie about their fear.

“You want to protect them?”

Another nod, fierce and resolute.

“I want to protect everyone,” Shizune whispered.

The words hollowed Tsunade out completely.

Because Dan used to say things like that. Because Nawaki did too. Because once upon a time, she had believed it herself so completely she would have died defending the idea that she could somehow, impossibly save everyone. 

Her face twisted before she could stop it.

“We protect who we can,” she said, voice breaking halfway through.

Shizune watched her carefully, her eyes huge and wet.

Tsunade steadied herself with visible effort before reaching out and squeezing the girl’s shoulder gently.

“You’ll come see me after your training on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for starters, alright?”

Shizune blinked.

Then hope flooded across her face so suddenly and completely that it nearly killed Tsunade where she knelt.

“Okay,” Shizune breathed.

Tsunade nodded once.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

After three years in Ame, the silence woke Jiraiya before sunrise on instinct alone. He opened his eyes to a still room and lay there staring at the ceiling for several seconds, trying to understand what felt wrong. No water was striking the roof overhead. No steady dripping outside the window. No damp chill settling into his clothes and blankets and bones. 

He remembers where he was. The upper floors of an inn— okay, technically a brothel— in the Land of Rivers, just over the boundary with the Land of Fire. 

It took him another moment to realize he could smell sunlight warming the earth through the open window.

It took him one more moment to feel the woman, still sleeping and warm against his side.

He rolled onto his back and laughed softly. He felt like the luckiest fucking bastard in the world.

Five years was a long time to stay away from home. Even for him. Two years fighting a war that had chewed through half a generation of shinobi. Three more spent in Ame because he hadn't been able to walk away from three children standing in the wreckage of a country. 

Nagato with those impossible eyes and that terrifying quietness. Yahiko, throwing himself at the world headfirst every single day. Konan, pretending she wasn't the one holding all of them together

He wondered what they were doing this morning. Probably arguing. Definitely not doing the dishes.

The thought made him smile.

The idea of returning home made him smile more.

He considered sneaking out and letting the woman (He was nearly positive her name was Yoshiko) sleep. 

Then, he remembered that Konoha wasn't going anywhere, wasn’t running away. Beautiful women, on the other hand, had a habit of doing exactly that.

Jiraiya settled back into the pillow with the firm conviction that a responsible shinobi should seize fleeting opportunities whenever possible.

The village spread beneath the Hokage Monument exactly as he remembered it. Red rooftops. Green trees. Smoke curling lazily upward from restaurants, bathhouses, and homes. From this distance, it looked untouched by war.

Not truly untouched, obviously. Too many people never came home for that. Too many names carved into the memorial stone.

The weather alone nearly made him emotional. Warm sunlight soaked through his clothes as he walked closer to the gates. Actual dry air instead of endless cold rain. Somewhere nearby, flowers were blooming, and he’d genuinely forgotten places could smell like flowers instead of mildew and smoke and wet concrete.

One of the gate guards spotted him first and immediately straightened.

“Jiraiya-sama!”

Jiraiya recoiled on instinct.

The younger guard blinked at him and then whispered something to his partner. 

Right. The title. The Sannin. Still awful.

Hanzo had saddled the three of them with it during the war, and apparently, the entire shinobi world had decided to make it a permanent thing afterward. Now, wherever Jiraiya traveled, people looked either impressed or nervous.

Both reactions were deeply uncomfortable.

When he crossed through the gates, conversation spilled from open storefronts. Children shouted somewhere nearby. The distant clatter of construction. Laughter drifting through crowded streets. The ordinary sound of people living their lives instead of surviving them.

His shoulders loosened slowly before he even realized they’d been tense.

Konoha smelled incredible, too. 

Fresh broth from somewhere nearby. Grilled meat. Sweet bean paste. Clean wood and spring air warming beneath the sun. Ame smelled wet all the time. Even indoors. Especially indoors.

He passed a small restaurant and nearly walked in right away because the food smelled so good.

No. Priorities first. Tsunade.

The thought came instantly and with enough force that he almost laughed at himself.

Definitely Tsunade first.

He hadn’t seen her in three years. Three years of letters instead. Most of his embarrassingly stupid. Most of hers were painfully brief. She usually sent four lines total, telling him she was alive and asking whether he was eating enough.

Hiruzen’s letters had been worse.

Come home.

The village needs you.

You’ve stayed away long enough.

Jiraiya had ignored most of them. He’d kept meaning to answer properly, but then training would run late, or supplies needed replacing, or Yahiko would start a fight with someone twice his size again. And eventually enough time had passed that every unanswered letter started feeling heavier than the last.

He should probably see the old man, too.

Eventually.

The geezer was absolutely going to yell at him. Maybe he deserved it. 

Jiraiya rubbed the back of his neck as he wandered deeper into the village.

After Hiruzen, he needed to find his old genin team.

That guilt hit immediately.

He’d abandoned them.

There really wasn’t a kinder way to phrase it. One day, he’d been teaching them tree walking and infiltration tactics, and the next, he was gone to war before any of them were old enough to really understand what that meant.

He trusted Hiruzen. The old man wouldn’t have left them unsupported.

Still.

Five years.

Minato would be what now? Fifteen? Sixteen?

That couldn’t be right. 

Minato had been ten when Jiraiya left. Tiny little kid with terrifying instincts and entirely too much talent already. Sweet too. Bright enough to make adults underestimate how dangerous he actually was.

Apparently, that prediction had aged well. Even in Ame, Jiraiya heard Minato’s name occasionally through passing shinobi and scattered rumors. Fast. Brilliant. One of Konoha’s strongest young shinobi already.

Jiraiya grinned to himself.

He turned down a quieter street lined with trees beginning to bloom for spring and let out a long, slow breath.

He saw Tsunade's house. He walked up the steps and knocked. Movement sounded immediately from inside the house. Quick footsteps across wood.

The door slid open.

A young girl blinked up at him. Thirteen at most. Dark hair shoved back messily from her face beneath a Leaf forehead protector. Something green was smeared across one cheek. She wore an apron over her clothes with a dark stain across the front that was definitely blood. The girl looked him over once, unimpressed.

“You’re not the courier with the samples from the lab,” she said, already beginning to close the door again.

Jiraiya caught it easily with one hand before it shut. Amusement sparked immediately.

Interesting.

“And you,” he replied, grinning down at her, “are definitely not the owner of this house.”

The girl narrowed her eyes at him, but didn’t look particularly intimidated.

“Tsunade-shishou is at the hospital,” she informed him. “I’m training.”

Training.

Then he glanced past her automatically into the house. Medical scrolls stacked near the hallway. A mortar and pestle sat abandoned beside several drying herbs. The entire place smelled faintly like formaldehyde and sake.

His attention snapped back to the kid.

“Training?” he repeated slowly. “Tsuna took a student?”

The girl stared at him like he was an idiot. Maybe he was. 

“Obviously, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of fish blood to clean up before Shishou gets home and throws a fit.”

Jiraiya barked out a laugh before he could stop himself. The girl took advantage of his distraction to slide the door shut in his face with a firm thunk.

Jiraiya stood there grinning at the wood for another second before snorting to himself and stepping back off the porch.

Well, well, well. 

That answered several questions immediately. It also spawned a dozen more. 

He’d bother Tsuna later.

Jiraiya shoved his hands into his pockets and headed back down the street.

Next stop: His genin team.

Jiraiya cut through a quieter stretch of the village near the river and eventually dropped onto a wooden bench beneath the shade of an old tree. The afternoon air was warm against his skin. Somewhere nearby, wind chimes rattled softly.

He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. Sage Mode was easier now than it used to be. After years of practice, gathering nature energy no longer felt like wrestling a hurricane into submission so much as stepping carefully into a current or stream already moving around him.

The vibration of chakra signatures threaded through the village like lanterns in fog.

Jiraiya let himself sink deeper for a moment. Konoha’s chakra network felt almost overwhelming after Ame. Dense. Alive. Thousands of people packed close together. Civilian chakra faint and flickering beside the brighter pulse of shinobi.

Familiar signatures drifted at the edges of his awareness, too. Hiruzen in the Hokage Tower, chakra heavy and honed with age.

Tsunade at the hospital. Her chakra was massive and unmistakable. Stored and controlled, like something coiled and waiting to pounce.

Jiraiya smiled faintly without opening his eyes, then he reached farther outward. Three signatures clustered together at the old training grounds. One tight, powerful, and buzzing. One smaller, but broad and forceful. One sharp and flitting enough to cut like a blade.

Minato. Dekai. Natsumi. At the training ground. Of course.

Still together. Good.

Jiraiya’s chest tightened unexpectedly. He was getting sappy. 

Another signature flickered nearby, too.

An enormous chakra signature, maybe bigger than Tsunade’s reserves. Definitely bigger than Tsunade’s reserves. Dense in a way that made his instincts immediately sharpen. Hot chakra twisted around itself like something alive, something volatile. But, in a way that he could not put his finger on, it seemed constrained, restricted. 

Interesting. Not something familiar.

Jiraiya let Sage Mode fade slowly, exhaling through his nose as the world softened back to normal. He made his way automatically toward the old training grounds, following instinct more than memory. He was very curious about what that mass of chakra was. Or who. Maybe Tsunade had trained someone else to conserve chakra as she did.

But things never changed. If Minato had free time, he was probably training. Sure enough, the familiar sounds of steel striking wood echoed through the trees before the clearing even came into view.

Jiraiya slowed near the edge of the training ground and immediately felt about a hundred years old.

Teenagers, all three of them. Tall too. They’d basically been toddlers the last time he saw them. 

What the hell.

Minato stood near the center of the clearing, laughing at something Dekai had said while spinning a kunai loosely through his fingers. His hair was longer now, shoulders broader, face sharper with age, but Jiraiya still recognized him instantly.

Dekai looked enormous. Natsumi, still feral. 

And there was a fourth kid with them. A girl around their age, standing slightly apart from the others, with the brightest red hair Jiraiya had ever seen in his life. Not auburn. Not brown-red. Actual vivid red, catching sunlight like fire.

All four of them wore chunin vests.

So much time had passed.

The targets scattered around the clearing made it obvious they’d turned training into some kind of competition. Trick-shot kunai throws from impossible angles, judging by the marks carved into trees and posts. Natsumi launched another blade without looking fully balanced on her feet.

Jiraiya immediately cupped his hands around his mouth.

“You’re still favoring your left side, Uchiha!”

Natsumi’s kunai flew completely off course. She whipped her head around, and Jiraiya saw even at a distance that her eyes glowed red before fading back to black. Sharingan. 

All four teenagers snapped toward the treeline instantly. For one beautiful second, their expressions all matched exactly.

Complete shock. Then, utter chaos.

“Jiraiya-sensei?!”

Minato moved first. One second, he was across the clearing, and the next, he slammed into Jiraiya hard enough to nearly knock him over entirely, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Dekai arrived a few seconds later, laughing loud enough to scare birds out of nearby trees while Natsumi looked torn between crying and punching him.

“You inconsiderate old bastard!” she yelled instead.

“There’s the welcome I deserve.”

“You disappeared for five years!”

“I don't know if you heard, but there was a war on.” 

Natsumi actually did punch him then. Hard. 

Jiraiya laughed so hard his chest hurt. Minato finally pulled back enough to look at him properly, blue eyes bright with disbelief. “When did you get back?”

“This morning.”

The redheaded girl still hung slightly apart from the reunion, watching him curiously while the others talked over each other all at once. She was fidgeting, as if it took significant effort not to also launch herself at him. 

Jiraiya noticed Minato glancing toward her automatically. 

Before he could say anything, the redheaded girl suddenly stepped forward with the unstoppable energy of somebody who had decided she was done waiting for their emotional reunion to wrap up.

“You’re Jiraiya-sensei? Like the Sannin guy?”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

“Can you actually use Sage Mode?” she demanded. “Like, really use it? Because Minato-kun says you trained at Mount Myoboku, but he also says the control requirements are insane, ya know, and nobody’s explained properly how balancing natural energy works because every scroll just says don’t turn into a frog… or toad? Whatever, which honestly feels like important information to elaborate on, ya know—”

“Kushina,” Minato muttered quietly.

“—and also how long did it take you, Jiraiya-sensei? Because Minato-kun thinks he could probably learn eventually, but can you believe he says he needs better reserves first? Like that’s ridiculous, ya know, his reserves are already terrifying—”

“Kushina,” Minato tried again, this time with a helpless little smile and an apologetic glance toward Jiraiya.

“—and what actually happens if you mess it up? Do you partially transform first, and just get gross or whatever, or do you just turn into a toad immediately? Because somebody told me once your skin gets slimy first, but then somebody else said your eyeballs pop out, which honestly sounds fake, but also shinobi are weird, ya know—”

Jiraiya stared at her for two full seconds before bursting into laughter.

Whoever this kid was, she was incredible. And also, he sensed, the source of the massive chakra he detected earlier. His curiosity was piqued. 

Natsumi was already laughing too. Dekai looked exhausted, like this happened regularly.

Kushina either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“And another thing,” she continued at full speed, “Minato says Sage Mode makes you stronger and faster and everything, but if it uses nature chakra, does that mean plants like… like you more? Because there’s this guy near the market whose tomatoes are huge and I’m pretty sure he’s fixing it somehow, ya know—”

Dekai leaned down toward Jiraiya slightly while the girl kept talking a mile a minute.

“That’s Minato’s girlfriend,” he whispered.

“Ah,” Jiraiya whispered back immediately. Everything made sense now. The way Minato kept looking at her automatically. The fondly doomed, lovesick expression currently spreading across his face.

Minato heard them anyway and went red instantly. “We’re not officially—”

“They are.” Dekai interrupted.

“Minato-kun,” Natsumi interrupted sweetly, “you carved both your names into a training post last week. Little heart around it and everything.”

Minato was turning as red as his girlfriend’s hair. Kushina finally paused long enough to notice the conversation happening around her.

“What are you idiots talking about?”

“Nothing,” Minato said way too fast.

Jiraiya was grinning so hard his face hurt. Five years ago, Minato had been ten years old and obsessed with perfecting his basic stance forms.

Now, he was basically an infamous chunin with a loud, pretty, redheaded girlfriend, who was interrogating Jiraiya about senjutsu theory before introductions were even complete.

Time was horrifying.

Kushina stuck her hand out toward him with complete confidence.

“I’m Kushina,” she announced. “Uzumaki, by the way, and I'm going to be Hokage—” 

“If Minato doesn't get there first,” Dekai and Natsumi said in unison, like they were so tired of this speech that they could recite it in their sleep. 

Jiraiya shook Kushina’s hand solemnly.

“Ambitious,” he said. “I respect it.”

“She says that to literally everyone with any measure of authority,” Dekai informed him, in a stage whisper.

“Because someday they’ll all work for me, ya know.”

Minato was still pink around the ears, though there was an unmistakable fondness creeping into his expression now every time he looked at her. Jiraiya caught it immediately.

The kid had it bad. Good for him.

Before anybody could continue embarrassing Minato further, Jiraiya clapped his hands together loudly.

“Alright,” he announced. “Enough. I’ve been eating Ame food for three years. Let me buy everyone some ramen somewhere before I die of hunger.”

Dekai brightened immediately. “Oh! My mom’s brother just opened a place.”

The ramen shop turned out to be small and tucked between two older storefronts near the market district. Fresh paint still covered parts of the exterior, and the noren hanging above the entrance looked almost brand new.

Warm smells hit Jiraiya the second they stepped inside. He nearly got emotional on the spot.

A man, unmistakably Dekai’s uncle, stood behind the counter and looked up immediately, and broke into a grin at the sight of Dekai.

“There you are! I was wondering if your team got lost.”

“My sensei came back from the dead,” Dekai announced, pointing at Jiraiya with his thumb.

“I was at war, you little asshole.”

“Same difference.”

The man behind the counter laughed loudly. “Well then, anybody returning from war eats for free their first night.”

Jiraiya could have kissed him. Instead, he dropped onto one of the stools with a groan of relief while the others crowded in around him, still talking over each other.

Everything smelled incredible. Steam curled warmly through the air. Pots rattled in the kitchen behind the counter. Somebody farther down the shop was arguing passionately about pickled bamboo.

Home.

Jiraiya hadn’t realized how badly he missed this kind of noise.

Minato settled beside him while Kushina immediately claimed the stool on Minato’s other side. Natsumi and Dekai took the remaining seats on Jiraiya’s other side, still bickering about something as they told Jiraiya about a recent mission. 

Jiraiya looked down at them quietly for a second.

His first team.

He felt giddy.

Jiraiya’s stomach hurt from laughing.

Apparently, Minato was already angling to get a jonin recommendation. Dekai specialized in tracking now. Natsumi’s sharingan came in last year when she learned that her aunt had been killed in battle. Kushina wasn’t originally from the village, but she loved taijutsu, talking, and teasing Minato. 

Jiraiya liked her immediately.

Before they split off for the evening, he made arrangements to meet all of them throughout the week. Sparring. Tracking exercises. Chakra control work. Minato tried to pretend he wasn’t thrilled when Jiraiya mentioned fuinjutsu and Sage training in the same sentence.

“One bowl extra spicy miso to go,” Jiraiya told the owner. He’d try for Tsunade again.

Konoha Hospital smelled exactly the same. Antiseptic. Herbs. A metallic tang to the air. Jiraiya slowly wandered the hallways, the ramen in a bag, tucked over one arm, nodding absently at medics and nurses who recognized him. Most of them pointed him instinctively toward the trauma wards when he asked. 

That’s where she always was. Had always been.

But she wasn’t there.

One exhausted medic finally blinked at him and said, “Oh. No, Tsunade-sama moved to research almost two… three years ago. Downstairs.”

Research?

Jiraiya frowned slightly as he followed directions deeper into the hospital, farther down, past surgery and inpatient recovery, into quieter corridors beneath the main hospital, where the air grew cooler and smelled sharply of chemicals and old paper, rather than blood.

The research wing sat nearly empty this late in the evening. Most doors stood dark behind narrow windows. One still had light beneath it.

A small plaque beside the frame read:

Tsunade Senju — Antidote Development

Jiraiya stopped.

Antidotes?

Confusion flickered through him unexpectedly. Tsunade hated desk work. Hated research confinement. She liked patients. Combat medicine. Hands-on work. The trauma ward had practically been her kingdom before the war.

Slowly, he knocked once against the open doorframe.

Inside, Tsunade stood bent over a cluttered worktable covered in notes and glass vials. Her hair was twisted into a loose bun at the base of her neck, sleeves rolled to her elbows beneath a stained white apron.

“Fancy seeing you here, hime,” Jiraiya said lightly.

“It's been three years, Jiraiya,” She sounds tired. She didn’t look up.

Jiraiya lifted the ramen bag slightly. “I brought ramen.”

“Three fucking years. You made it sound like it would be three weeks.”

Ouch. Jiraiya winced reflexively before raising the bag a little higher.

“…Extra spicy ramen.”

That finally earned the faintest huff of breath from her. Tsunade gestured vaguely toward a stool at another worktable without lifting her attention from whatever she was grinding carefully beneath a mortar and pestle. Jiraiya took the invitation immediately and started unpacking the food.

The lab felt strange around her. Shelves lined with poisons and antidotes. Scrolls piled high in uneven stacks. Drying herbs hanging from hooks overhead. No chaos of emergency medicine. No blood. 

“Research, Tsuna?” he asked eventually. “I thought you liked to be more hands-on.”

“Well,” Tsunade replied dryly, “a lot has changed since you’ve been gone.”

There it was again. That tone. A fact stated as if it were a kunai to his chest. 

Jiraiya leaned back slightly against the stool. “Enough that you completely changed specialties and took on a student?”

That made her glance up briefly.

“You met Shizune?”

“I tried your house first.” He grinned faintly. “She slammed the door in my face.”

“She’s a good girl.” There was immediate warmth in her voice when she said it.

“So why the research?” Jiraiya asked more quietly. “Why poisons?”

Tsunade sighed heavily. For the first time since he walked in, she stopped working entirely.

Slowly, she untied the stained apron from around her waist and hung it over the back of her chair. Without the bulky fabric, Jiraiya realized immediately how much weight she’d lost.

Something unpleasant twisted low in his stomach. 

Tsunade crossed to a small refrigerator tucked beneath one of the shelves and pulled out two beers. She tossed one toward him automatically without looking. Muscle memory. Then she leaned back against the counter, cracked hers open, and finally let her hair loose from its bun. Blonde strands spilled down around tired shoulders.

“I can’t work in the trauma ward anymore,” she said.

Jiraiya went still.

Tsunade took a long swallow of beer before continuing. “I also think my battlefield days are over.”

“Tsuna—”

“I can’t.” Her voice stayed calm. Matter-of-fact. Somehow, that made it worse. “I can’t look at blood, Jiraiya. I can’t see blood — mine, anybody else’s — without having a panic attack.”

For a moment, Jiraiya genuinely thought he’d misheard her. This was the woman who had once operated for nineteen straight hours during the war with blood up to her elbows. The medic who walked through battlefield tents without batting an eye. The best damn doctor he had ever met. 

“I thought I was dying the first time it happened,” Tsunade admitted quietly.

She still wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she turned the beer bottle slowly between her hands while fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead.

“A chunin came in from a border skirmish a few months after we got back. Abdominal rupture. Internal bleeding. Nothing I couldn’t normally handle in my sleep.” Her mouth twisted faintly. “But then I looked down, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.”

Jiraiya stayed very still.

“I froze,” she continued. “Completely. Couldn’t access my chakra properly. Couldn’t think. Another medic had to shove me out of the way to save him.”

Something ugly tightened in his chest.

Tsunade took another drink before continuing more evenly. “At first, I thought it was temporary. Shock. Stress. Whatever.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Tried again, happened again, can’t risk it, so I quit.”

“Does Shizune know?”

Tsunade snorted softly into her beer. “God, yes. She figured it out after my second panic attack.” The corner of her mouth twitched faintly. “Kid practically studies harder because of it now. Thinks she can compensate for me if she gets good enough. She handles the dirty work for me now. Anything with blood was the priority to teach her, so I don’t need to look at it.”

Jiraiya looked around the lab again. Shelves lined with antidotes. Poisons carefully labeled in Tsunade’s sharp handwriting. Scrolls piled everywhere. Research notes half-open beside drying herbs.

“Tsunade—”

Tsunade hummed once in acknowledgment.

“I’m waiting for your Natsumi Uchiha to get good enough at genjutsu and see if she can hypnotize it out of me,” she said dryly.

Jiraiya barked out a startled laugh despite himself.

Tsunade slapped one hand flat against the table suddenly, more energy entering her voice for the first time since he arrived.

“But,” she declared, “I’m also better at antidotes than anyone else alive.”

There she was. 

Jiraiya felt relief bloom unexpectedly in his chest, watching irritation finally spark properly behind her eyes.

“And,” Tsunade continued, leaning forward slightly now, “from what I hear, there’s some old bitch in Suna who’s better at making poisons than anyone else alive.”

Jiraiya blinked. Tsunade’s grin appeared sharp and humorless around the edges.

“So fucking with her is my new life goal.”

He stared at her for exactly one second before laughing hard enough that he nearly spilled his beer.

She’d changed, yes. She was clearly exhausted. But she was still Tsunade underneath it all. Still vicious enough to pick a fight with an internationally feared poison master purely out of spite.

“She has a name?” he asked once he caught his breath. “This old bitch?” 

“Chiyo.” Tsunade rolled her eyes. “Apparently, she’s terrifying.”

“You sound excited about that.”

“I am excited about that.” She finally reached for the ramen and pointed her chopsticks at him accusingly. “Do you understand how boring most poison is? She’s killing people in truly visionary ways. It’s awful, but at least she’s interesting.”

“A true artist of the craft.”

“Exactly.”

“You sound like Orochimaru.”

“Take that back.” 

Jiraiya grinned into his beer while she finally started eating properly.

Three years still sat there between them. But for the first time since walking into the lab, Jiraiya felt like he was sitting beside his best friend again instead of some exhausted ghost wearing her face.

Chapter Text

The summer Jiraiya returned to Konoha was one of the hottest years anyone in the village could remember.

Heat settled over the streets before sunrise and stayed there long after dark, thick and heavy enough to make civilians irritable and shinobi reckless. Hospital windows stayed propped open around the clock.

The lab stayed cooler than the rest of the hospital, especially once evening settled in. Most days, she disappeared into research before sunrise and emerged long after dark with stained fingers and headaches from staring at antidote formulas under flickering lights for too long.

It suited her, or the fucked up version of herself that she'd become since Dan.

Poisons were cleaner than battlefield medicine. Venom entered the body. The body responded. She counteracted it.

Less screaming. No blood pumping hot across her hands while somebody begged her not to let them die.

Shizune helped constantly now.

The girl had turned into an excellent assistant. Quick hands. Good chakra control. Strong stomach. She handled blood draws and tissue samples for Tsunade without complaint and spent most of her free time hovering nearby, absorbing information like a sponge.

Jiraiya drifted in and out of the lab constantly that summer, whenever he wasn’t training his former genin team into the ground.

He always had food.

Tsunade genuinely did not understand how he kept getting past hospital security carrying multiple restaurant meals and boxes of beverages like some kind of determined raccoon, but at least three times a week, he appeared in the doorway of her lab, balancing multiple takeout containers beneath one arm.

Ramen. Dumplings. Barbecue skewers. Once, bizarrely, an entire watermelon.

For some reason, Jiraiya seemed completely fixated on making her eat.

At first, Tsunade assumed it was temporary guilt. The natural overcorrection of somebody returning home after years away and discovering one of his oldest friends looked half-starved and permanently exhausted.

Some days, he didn’t even stay long. He’d drop food beside her notes, steal one of her beers, say something obnoxious, and disappear again.

Working together again had happened naturally enough that they never really spoke about it. Tsunade needed field data and toxin samples. Jiraiya had a team full of increasingly terrifying teenage bruisers eager to prove themselves useful.

More importantly, the overlap in their work suddenly made sense again.

Jiraiya’s kids broke each other on a daily basis. 

Shizune helped patch them up and called it training. 

Minato was practicing Tsunade's uncle's flying raijin technique, but he misjudged distances and caught a kunai in the shoulder on the first few tries. Shizune ran in, tiny and eager to heal, while Tsunade shouted instructions from a safe distance. 

Dekai dislocated his shoulder during taijutsu drills badly enough that Shizune got to practice repairing ligaments for a full two hours, testing her chakra control and limits. 

Natsumi got headaches a few times a week when she practiced more advanced genjustu techniques with her Sharingan. She had a habit of knocking on Tsunade's door and accepting healing from whoever was there. She said hospitals made her itchy. 

Jiraiya threw himself back into teaching with alarming intensity. Minato spent nearly every waking hour preparing for Mount Myoboku now. Chakra control drills. Meditation. Endurance training. 

“If he masters Sage Mode within a year,” Jiraiya said one evening, “I’ll recommend him for jonin immediately.”

Tsunade believed him.

Minato had always been exceptional. His experience had finally caught up with his instincts. He moved through Konoha these days with the calm confidence of someone twice his age. 

Dekai and Natsumi weren’t far behind.

Jiraiya trained them differently. Tracking work for Dekai. Counterintelligence and genjutsu resistance for Natsumi. Both of them came back from sessions exhausted and furious and visibly improving every week.

Kushina technically belonged to another jonin instructor entirely, some member of the Yuuhei clan that Tsunade had met maybe twice.

In practice, the girl spent so much time attached to Minato’s side that Jiraiya had essentially adopted her, too.

Not that Kushina waited for anyone's permission before inserting herself into situations. The girl blew into Tsunade’s lab several times a week like a natural disaster in human form. Loud. Sweating. Usually sunburned. Sometimes bleeding. Tsunade sent her up to trauma if she was bleeding. 

Always talking. Asking a million questions about Mito.

Especially about fuinjutsu.

The girl had inherited the Adamantine Sealing Chains from the Uzumaki clan. The first time Tsunade saw them emerge during training, glowing chakra chains ripping through the air behind Kushina like living things, the resemblance to Tsunade's grandmother nearly stole her breath.

Same chakra.

Same terrifying potential.

Jiraiya had reacted even more dramatically than she thought he would when Tsunade finally let the truth slip.

“Kushina’s the Nine-Tails jinchuriki,” she’d mentioned casually over drinks one evening.

Jiraiya nearly dropped his cup.

“She’s what?”

Tsunade stared at him flatly. “Did you think Konoha just misplaced the Nine-Tails after Mito died?”

In retrospect, he apparently had not thought about it at all.

"I knew there was something special about that weirdo!" He'd barked with a laugh. 

Afterward, he started paying closer attention during training sessions. It wasn't obvious enough for the kids to notice. Jiraiya was better at surveillance than that.

But Tsunade noticed the way his gaze lingered when Kushina lost control of her temper, and red chakra flickered sharply around her shoulders for half a second before vanishing again. The way Minato instinctively repositioned himself beside Kushina every single time the kyuubi chakra flared, without seeming aware he was doing it.

The heat that summer was oppressive.

The kind of heavy, suffocating heat that made civilians mutter darkly about curses and divine retribution while shinobi abandoned dignity entirely and walked around half-dressed whenever possible.

Even now, well after dark, the apartment felt sticky and overheated despite every window being shoved open as far as possible. Cicadas screamed outside loud enough to qualify as psychological torture. Hot air drifted lazily through the rooms, carrying the smells of the village at night: grilled meat, hot pavement, river water, burning leaves.

Tsunade was fairly certain her brain had melted two hours ago.

She sat cross-legged on the floor in loose shorts and an oversized tank top with dispatches from Suna spread around her in increasingly disorganized piles while another empty beer bottle sweated onto the table beside her knee.

Across the room, Jiraiya had barely moved in almost an hour.

Normally he paced while writing. As if the act of producing literature required the full body. Tonight, he stayed hunched over his notebook in near silence except for the occasional scratch of his pen.

His team was due back at the village tomorrow morning from their first unsupervised A-rank mission. Their last mission together before Minato left for Mount Myoboku.

Tsunade let him have his dignity and pretended not to see how anxious he was. She didn't want him to worry alone, though, so she had him come over. 

Instead of focusing on him, she focused on the dispatch in front of her.

Or she tried to.

“She used fucking nutmeg again,” Tsunade muttered darkly, squinting down at the report. 

“Hm?”

“That old granny bitch from Suna.” Tsunade stabbed one finger aggressively against the page. “One of our undercover operatives died because she has some kind of compound that is indistinguishable chemically from fucking baking spices.”

Jiraiya snorted softly without looking up from his notebook.

“She sounds creative.”

“She sounds like a smug bitch.”

Jiraiya laughed. 

The report blurred slightly when Tsunade looked back down at it. She was officially too drunk for medicine, probably a beer past useful.

A comfortable silence settled, with Jiraiya in one corner writing. Tsunade at the table. Open windows. Empty bottles. The sound of Konoha humming quietly around them while the night stretched on.

A few minutes later, Jiraiya made a frustrated sound under his breath.

Tsunade glanced over immediately. “What now?”

“I’m stuck.”

“That’s because you insist on writing pornography like it’s high literature.”

Jiraiya looked deeply offended. “First of all, I'm wounded. Second of all, this one isn’t smut.”

She shot him a look. 

“It’s true.” He hesitated briefly before holding the notebook out toward her. “Read this for me?”

Tsunade narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “If there’s one line about tits, I’m setting your manuscript on fire.”

“There are no boobs. I’m serious this time, hime.”

With a sigh dramatic enough to satisfy both of them, Tsunade reached over and took the notebook from his hands.

The pages were densely filled with Jiraiya’s slanted handwriting.

She expected melodrama.

Or sex.

Or both.

Instead, she found herself reading quietly for several minutes without interruption.

The passage centered around a boy.

Too young to carry the things he'd been saddled with. Lonely in the specific way war left too many children. The kind that hollowed people out early and left them staring too hard at the world around them.

The boy talked about becoming strong enough to stop the cycle of violence entirely someday. Strong enough to create a world where children stopped inheriting hatred from the generations before them.

There was grief threaded through the writing.

But underneath it sat something warmer.

Hope, maybe.

Or stubbornness.

Tsunade could see pieces of all of them buried inside it if she looked carefully enough.

The Ame orphans.

Minato.

Nawaki. 

Jiraiya himself.

Especially Jiraiya.

Not the loud idiot version he performed for most people. The quieter person underneath all of that. The one who kept collecting broken children and believing in impossible things long after the rest of the world gave up.

The affection in the writing caught her off guard most of all.

He cared so much about all of them.

About the future. About people. About this ridiculous, impossible dream of peace, he’d somehow carried through the war without losing entirely. She hadn't been so lucky. 

Something warm shifted unpleasantly low in Tsunade’s chest.

She finished the passage and looked up slowly.

Jiraiya was watching her now with a strange sort of nervousness she almost never saw on him.

“Well?” he asked.

Tsunade stared at him for another second before looking back down at the notebook in her hands.

“It’s good,” she admitted quietly. “Really good.”

Jiraiya blinked.

“You think so, Tsuna?”

She nodded. 

Relief spread across his face so openly it almost made something inside her ache.

Idiot.

“Your hero’s named after a ramen topping, though,” she informed him.

Jiraiya shrugged lazily, taking the notebook back.

“Glad you liked it,” he said, quieter now. “Means a lot.”

Tsunade snorted softly and reached for her beer before he could notice that something about the sincerity in his voice had lodged itself awkwardly beneath her ribs.

Somewhere down the street, drunk civilians argued cheerfully outside a restaurant. The ceiling fan above them rotated with a useless determination. 

Jiraiya eventually returned to writing, though more slowly now.

Tsunade tried to reach for the dispatches scattered around her knees. The reports blurred together uselessly after a few minutes. Poison compounds. Patrol routes. Sand shinobi movements along the border.

Across the room, Jiraiya sighed and rolled one shoulder with a grimace, muttering something about the heat. Without much thought, he tugged his shirt up and off, tossing it vaguely toward the couch beside him.

Tsunade’s eyes lifted automatically.

Jiraiya had always been big and broad, but age had carved him up differently than she remembered. A harder build now. Less lanky movement and awkward limbs than when they were younger. War and travel sculpting a definition she wasn't familiar with. 

There were new scars, too.

One near his ribs that she didn’t recognize.

One on his chest that she definitely had given him herself when they were fifteen.

Another one crossed shoulder that she remembered healing during the war.

His skin looked sun-darkened from months of training outside with the kids. His hair hung slightly damp around his face from the heat.

Very suddenly, sharply, Tsunade became acutely aware that Jiraiya was good-looking. It was a vague awareness blooming low and warm in her chest before she could shove it down.

As if sensing her attention, Jiraiya glanced up from the notebook.

Caught her staring immediately.

Then Tsunade snapped back into herself hard enough it almost hurt.

“Put your shirt back on,” she said flatly. “You look like a pervert.”

Jiraiya barked out a startled laugh.

“Hime, I am a pervert.”

Chapter Text

The tavern was already loud by the time Tsunade arrived.

Heat rolled through the open windows in heavy waves carrying the smell of grilled meat, alcohol, and hot pavement still radiating warmth from the day.

Jiraiya spotted her immediately from the back corner booth and lifted one arm dramatically over his head.

“Hime!” he yelled over the noise. “Come celebrate my genius mentorship.”

Tsunade snorted and slid into the empty space beside him.

Minato, Dekai, and Natsumi looked exhausted, but happy. Dust still clung faintly to their clothes, indicating little to no effort to clean up after returning. 

Before Tsunade could even ask about the mission, Jiraiya shoved an enormous cup of sake directly into her hand.

“Drink first,” he advised solemnly. “Then hear the story. You’re gonna love this.”

Minato sighed loudly. 

Tsunade took a long drink while the kids launched into a detailed recap of the assignment.

Weapons cache hidden inside a cave network outside of Sunagakure. Retrieval mission that turned uglier once they realized the smugglers had hired missing-nin for protection.

Apparently Minato had improvised most of the operation halfway through. Apparently this gave Jiraiya unbearable amounts of pride.

“He used Flying Raijin inside the cave,” Dekai said, sounding faintly impressed.

“It was the fastest option,” Minato replied.

“It was psychotic behavior.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Natsumi leaned back against the booth with a snort. “Barely.”

Jiraiya was glowing. 

Before Tsunade could think too hard about that, the front door burst open hard enough to rattle nearby lanterns.

Kushina.

“Minato!” she yelled, stomping through the tavern.

Every single head turned. Kushina either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She crossed the room in a straight line and dropped into the booth beside Minato hard enough to jostle the entire table.

“You all started without me.”

“You were training.”

“That’s not the point, ya know. I want to hear how the mission went! How bad was it?” 

Minato shrugged one shoulder lightly. “Not too bad. Pretty fun.”

Natsumi immediately betrayed him.

“Dekai got stabbed.”

“It barely counted as stabbed.”

Kushina gasped dramatically while leaning halfway across the table toward him. “You got stabbed? Where? Show me! Unless it was somewhere gross.”

Tsunade kept drinking while Kushina immediately started demanding details about the mission rapid-fire between bites of food stolen directly off Minato’s plate.

“How many missing-nin?”

“Wait, how big was the cave?”

“Did Minato-kun really use Flying Raijin?”

“Why are men always getting stabbed, ya know?”

By the kids finished recapping their successful mission, Tsunade was pleasantly, heavily, completely drunk.

Warmth settled through her limbs while the tavern noise blurred softer around the edges.

Kushina had, at some point, ended up halfway in Tsunade’s personal space, leaning against her shoulder while complaining loudly about Minato leaving for Mount Myoboku in a few days.

“It’s stupid,” she informed Tsunade seriously. “He’s gonna come back all weird and enlightened and powerful, ya know.”

“He’s already weird.”

Minato looked offended. “I’m sitting right here.”

“Well, I'll miss you and I don’t want you to come back all toady,” Kushina shot back. 

Across the table, Jiraiya was heartily laughing now. He'd drank at least as much as Tsunade did, and he had that glowy expression again. Relaxed. Warm. Looking at all of them like this—this loud messy table full of kids and alcohol and overlapping conversation—was something precious. Something his. 

Tsunade hated a little how much she liked seeing that look on him.

Then, a small movement beside Jiraiya caught her attention. Natsumi, apparently believing herself subtle, leaned over and stole a quick sip directly from Jiraiya’s sake while he was distracted listening to Kushina rant.

Tsunade watched Jiraiya notice immediately out of the corner of his eye.

And then deliberately ignore it.

Natsumi leaned back looking deeply pleased with herself.

A second later Jiraiya glanced across the table toward Tsunade and caught her watching him

He lifted his own drink slightly in silent acknowledgment that yes, he’d seen it too. Something warm twisted low in Tsunade’s stomach unexpectedly.

God.

This was becoming a problem.

The kids peeled away from the tavern in a wave of noise and exhaustion. Kushina was still yapping loud enough to wake the dead, while Minato tried unsuccessfully to steer her home. Dekai looked half-conscious already, like the second Tsunade had healed the wound beneath his jacket, he’d lost whatever adrenaline was keeping him awake. Natsumi stole the last of the chicken skewers off of Tsunade’s plate as she laughed her way out the door. 

Then suddenly it was much quieter at their table.

Well, not quite quiet. The tavern still roared around them with late-night conversation and clattering dishes, and drunken shinobi somewhere in the back, attempting karaoke.

Tsunade watched the kids leave down the road before exhaling softly through her nose and reaching for the check.

Jiraiya caught her wrist automatically. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Hime, I’m not letting you pay after my kids ate enough to feed a small nation.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Tsunade snorted while slapping his hand away. 

“Fair.”

She closed out the bill before he could argue further and stood, slightly unsteady from the alcohol.

Jiraiya noticed immediately. That annoying little line appeared between his eyebrows.

“You good?”

“I’m drunk, not dying.”

“Yet.”

Tsunade rolled her eyes and grabbed the unfinished sake bottle off the table.

“You wanna come over and lose some money playing cards?”

Jiraiya grinned instantly. “With you? Sounds fun.”

“You’re already annoying. Might as well make you broke too.”

By the time they reached her house, Tsunade was warm with alcohol all the way down to her bones.

Together they went through the house, throwing every window open. Warm night air rolled through immediately. Curtains billowed inward in lazy waves while distant lantern light painted gold across the walls.

"Better," Tsunade declared.

"Barely," Jiraiya laughed.

The kitchen floor turned out to be the coolest place in the house. So, they ended up sitting cross-legged on the stone tiles with a deck of cards between them and the unfinished sake bottle beside Tsunade's knee, and a freshly opened bottle of shochu at Jiraiya’s side. 

"No cheating."

"Hime." Jiraiya looked offended. "You wound me."

"You cheat at literally everything,” Tsunade snorted and dealt the cards.

The first hour disappeared easily. More sake. More cards. Gambling increasingly stupid amounts of money that neither of them cared about losing, nor had any intention of actually forking over. 

Or thought she did. The distinction became increasingly difficult after the second bottle.

"You're palming cards."

"Hime, if I were cheating, I'd be winning."

"You are winning."

Jiraiya looked down at the piles of bronze coins, a few paper bills, and a piece of paper that just said “firstborn son,” and another that said “a piece of my liver” between them. His pile was significantly larger than hers. 

He looked up to her. 

"Excellent point. Good for me, then."

Tsunade threw a card at his head.

The next hand went worse. She opened with a pair of eights. Drew three. Finished with absolutely nothing.

Jiraiya laid down two pair and immediately looked unbearably pleased with himself.

"Oh, come on."

"What?"

Instead, she took a drink. The alcohol wasn't helping her judgment or her skills. Or her luck. But her mood was improved significantly. 

A few hands later, she stared suspiciously at her cards. Three kings. Actually good, finally.

"Ha."

Jiraiya looked up.Tsunade ignored him and tossed two coins into the middle. Jiraiya matched them. She raised. He matched again.

Smug bastard.

Tsunade immediately sat up straighter as she laid down her three kings. Jiraiya calmly laid down a full house.

For a second, she just stared. Then she slapped both palms against the floor.

"Bullshit!"

Jiraiya laughed so hard he nearly spilled his drink, "It is not bullshit. You’re just terrible at this.” 

The loose strap of Tsunade’s shirt slipped slowly down one shoulder while she leaned over to grab the cards and shuffle. 

She noticed immediately. So did Jiraiya. His eyes caught on the exposed skin of her shoulder and chest automatically before jerking back upward toward her face.

Usually, Tsunade would’ve smacked him by now.

Instead, she ignored it.

She couldn't force herself to care.

That was the first dangerous thing.

The second dangerous thing was how much she liked watching him try not to stare at her. 

Jiraiya got quieter every time he caught himself looking as she dealt the cards. His neck was red, but that could have been from the alcohol. The fact that she was making Jiraiya flustered did something deeply satisfying to her drunk brain.

She kept the conversation going as if nothing had happened.

The strap slipped lower down her arm.

Jiraiya stared at it for a long second before finally reaching over with obvious frustration and sliding it back up onto her shoulder.

His fingers brushed warmly against her skin.

“There,” he muttered.

Tsunade looked down at herself. Then back at him. “You’re very invested in the structural integrity of my shirt.”

“One of us has to be if you want my eyes to stay on your face, Tsuna.”

Something curled sharply through her stomach at the roughness of his voice. 

“It’s never stopped you before.”

Jiraiya barked out a laugh and dropped his head briefly. “Very, very fair.”

Tsunade grinned into her drink. God, she was drunk. Drunk enough to feel reckless. Drunk enough to enjoy this far too much.

“Would you say it distracts you?” she asked.

“Hime,” he warned.

Oh, she was absolutely drunk. Because instead of stopping, Tsunade tilted her head slightly and asked, “Does this strap distract you enough that I might actually be able to win this fucking game?”

Then, deliberately, she hooked two fingers beneath the strap and shrugged her shoulder.

The fabric slipped slowly down her arm.

Jiraiya made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a hiss.

“You are such a pain in the ass.”

The room felt too hot and too hazy around the edges. The curtains drifted lazily in the breeze. The cards were scattered across the floor between them. Jiraiya was still looking at her like he was trying very hard not to just that.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that he was actually, totally distracted.

Tsunade looked down at the coins and bills and scraps of paper and had one of the drunkest thoughts that she had ever conceived.

The kind of thought that only happens when it’s 104 degrees, and she stopped counting her drinks hours ago, and she's also in the mood to be a menace. 

“We should make this more interesting,” She said, slowly, prodding a bronze coin on the top of the pile. 

Jiraiya took a long sip directly from the shochu bottle and then laughed at her. 

“Hime.”

“What?”

“You are losing.”

“So?”

“So this is usually the point where people make the game less interesting. I’m very interested in how I’ve cleared out your pocketbook in under ninety minutes. Game’s been very interesting for me,” he said. 

She pulled the bottle from his hand and took a long sip of her own. 

“We should change the stakes.”

“You’re already wagering pieces of your organs and any future offspring, Tsuna-chan.” Laughing, he took the cards from her, ready to deal for their next game. 

“Winner of each hand gets to pick something that the other is wearing for the loser to throw into the pot.”

He just stared at her. And then at the strap that was still hanging off her shoulder. 

“Oh, as enticing as this offer is, Tsunade, I think you might be so drunk that you are not understanding how badly you’re losing this game.” 

“I think I understand perfectly that every time you look at my chest, you forget how cards work.” The grin that spread across Tsunade's face was immediate. “And that's much more interesting to me than money."

"Hime."

"Deal the cards, Jiraiya."

"Tsunade."

"Deal the cards."

Still muttering under his breath, Jiraiya complied. 

The next hand went badly for him almost immediately.

Tsunade leaned forward at the precise moment that he was discarding two of his cards. She led with her chest and watched his eyes travel from his hand, down her body. He discarded the cards and then drew more. 

He frowned. 

Then looked down at his hand again and swore. 

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

Jiraiya rubbed a hand over his face.

"I threw away the wrong card."

"You’re actually an idiot."

Jiraiya groaned. Tsunade practically snatched the cards from his hand.

A pair.

Nothing else. Total garbage.

Meanwhile, she laid her own hand down.

Three queens.

The silence lasted approximately half a second. Then Tsunade held out her hand.

"Shirt, please."

Jiraiya stared at her. "Horrible woman."

"Shirt."

Still shaking his head, Jiraiya reached for the hem. The shirt caught briefly on his shoulders before he pulled it free and tossed it across the kitchen.

Tsunade watched it land by the cabinets.

Then looked back.

Oh. 

She immediately regretted the plan. Jiraiya caught the look on her face immediately. A slow grin spread across his own.

And the asshole fucking flexed.

"Oh, now who's distracted?"

Tsunade took a long drink and tried very hard not to look at him again.

The attempt lasted maybe three seconds. Jiraiya noticed. He definitely noticed. The grin never left his face as he gathered the cards and dealt the next hand.

Bastard.

Her next hand sucked.

“Left sock.” He said, a little too quickly.

“Weirdo.” She said. 

“One of us needs to have a little sense of self-preservation.” 

She dropped the sock in the middle of the pile. 

He asked for her hair tie when she lost the next hand. 

She lost again. The right sock.

It occurred to her, distantly, that this was likely Jiriaya’s way of humoring her whilst remaining gallant or chivalrous or some shit like that. Maybe it was annoying. Maybe it was unbearably sweet. She could not tell. It could have been both. 

Still laughing. Still teasing her. Still making absolutely certain she had every opportunity to stop this if she wanted.

A thought occurred to her.

A terrible thought.

The worst kind of drunk thought. 

She kept wondering why she felt compelled to do this in the first place. To challenge him. To flirt. 

Worse-

She kept wondering what it would feel like to kiss him.

Not romantically, definitely not romantically, this was Jiraiya. Just an... acute temporary curiosity.

Jiraiya slept with other women constantly. Beautiful women. Easy women. Women who laughed at his jokes and climbed into his bed without expecting anything afterward. He seemed happy.

All of the girls seemed happy. 

Tsunade missed being happy. 

Maybe Tsunade could survive being one of Jiraiya’s girls for a little while.

Maybe she could survive wanting something small from him.

Something warm enough to quiet the hollow ache in her chest for a few hours. It already felt duller than normal. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was him.

And the awful thing was that she liked his attention. Liked the heat in his eyes. Liked watching him lose composure by inches every time she leaned a little closer. Liked the flirting. 

She kept looking at him too.

At his mouth.

That was the problem. Not the stupid card game.

His mouth, she decided.

The curtains drifted softly through the open windows.

Jiraiya laughed at something and took another drink. Tsunade watched his mouth wrap around the neck of the bottle.

This was a terrible idea. A catastrophically bad, no-good line of thinking.

Which, unfortunately, did nothing to stop her from wondering what would happen if she kissed him right now, anyway.

And worse—

Jiraiya was still staring.

A few minutes later, he laid down his hand.

She blinked. She’d not been paying any attention to the card game and had just been staring at him. Tsunade looked down at her own cards.

She genuinely had no idea what she was holding.

"What've you got?" Jiraiya asked.

"No clue."

"Hime."

"I'm serious," She turned the cards over. "No good."

Jiraiya laughed, and it was a golden sound with alcohol threaded deeply through it. The sound settled low in her stomach. For a moment, neither of them said anything, and the curtains shifted softly in the warm breeze.

"You lose."

There was something different in his voice.

His eyes dropped briefly. To her shoulder, the strap, her chest, her face. He chewed his lip, and the silence stretched on, and neither of them seemed particularly interested in breaking it.

Finally, Jiraiya cleared his throat.

"Hime."

"What?"

“Shirt,” He said softly. 

The word seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he dragged a hand through his hair.

“Or we can be finished playing. Your choice. I don’t fucking care, I’m drunk. You can even hit me if you want.” 

“Not going to hit you,” she said, “My stupid idea, my stupid rules.” 

She didn’t break eye contact with him until her shirt was over her head, then she tossed it onto the pile, along with enough cash to buy a couple of pork buns and a promise of a piece of her liver if he ever needed it. 

He looked like he might have had a stroke. 

Not knowing what else to do in that moment, Tsunade kissed him before she could think herself out of it.

It was fast and deep and messy, like all the tension between them snapping at once.

Jiraiya made a startled sound against her mouth before kissing her back immediately, one hand catching hard at her waist like instinct had taken over faster than thought.

God.

He kissed her like he’d been holding himself back for hours.

Warm and sloppy from alcohol, laughter still caught between them even as it turned into something rougher.

Tsunade shifted closer without thinking, knees sliding across the kitchen tile until she was halfway in his lap.

Jiraiya helped instantly. Both hands locked onto her waist and pulled her fully down onto him in one strong movement that made her gasp softly into his mouth.

An unmistakable heat and hardness was already pressing against her through his pants. Jiraiya groaned quietly when she settled against him properly, forehead knocking briefly against hers while both of them laughed breathlessly at the same time.

“Hime,” he muttered, sounding a little wrecked already.

Tsunade kissed him again instead of answering.

Her fingers slid into his hair while his hands spread wide against her waist like he couldn’t get enough of touching her.

Then one of them moved upward almost helplessly.

His palm closed over her breast. He made another rough sound against her mouth, hands tightening instinctively at her waist as she shifted against him.

Everything about this felt overheated, reckless, and a little out of control already.

Exactly what she wanted.

Then suddenly she pulled back just far enough to breathe. Jiraiya immediately dropped his forehead against her shoulder before sliding lower, burying his face against the curve of her neck with a groan that made her laugh softly under her breath.

Warm breath against her skin.

His hands still spread possessively at her waist. The feeling of him hard beneath her. Tsunade threaded one hand lazily through his hair while both of them tried unsuccessfully to remember how breathing worked.

“We should probably go upstairs,” she whispered eventually.

Jiraiya laughed quietly against her throat first.

Then lifted his head just enough to look up at her.

“Are you sure?” he asked softly.

The question hit her unexpectedly hard.

Because even now, drunk and half out of his mind, Jiraiya was still giving her room to stop this if she wanted.

Tsunade smiled slowly, then leaned down just enough that her mouth brushed lightly against his, and she said, “Unless you wanna fuck me on the kitchen floor.”

Jiraiya made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

“Hime,” he muttered against her mouth, “you cannot say things like that to me right now.”

Tsunade laughed helplessly, still half tangled around him on the kitchen floor.

The rest of the trip upstairs blurred almost immediately after that.

Too much sake.

Too much heat.

Tsunade was laughing again while dragging him upstairs by the wrist, nearly tripping twice in the process while Jiraiya followed close behind her with one hand steadying her hip every time she stumbled.

“Hime,” he said through his own laughter, “you are in absolutely no condition to seduce anybody.”

“And yet,” she informed him over her shoulder, “you seem very seduced.”

His voice alone was enough to make heat curl through her stomach now. By the time they made it into her bedroom, both of them had stopped even pretending they were thinking clearly anymore.

Jiraiya caught her around the waist the second they crossed the doorway and kissed her hard enough, walking backward that she laughed against his mouth from sheer momentum.

Then suddenly, he grabbed her properly and tossed her backward onto the bed.

Enough force to make her bounce against the mattress with a startled burst of laughter while her hair spilled across the blankets.

Jiraiya froze for half a second afterward, looking deeply pleased with himself.

“Woah,” he said, flushed and breathless, “that was unbelievably smooth. Why are we not talking about how unbelievably smooth I am?”

“That was absolutely not smooth.”

“You looked impressed.”

Tsunade grinned up at him, warm and reckless and wanting him badly enough now that her entire body felt overheated.

“Get over here, idiot.”

That seemed to finish off whatever remained of his self-control. Jiraiya climbed onto the bed immediately, kissing her before she could laugh again.

Everything after that turned greedy fast. Years of familiarity collapsing into something physical all at once. His weight settled between her legs while her hands slid into his hair, tugging hard enough to pull another rough sound from him.

Jiraiya kissed like a man starving.

Tsunade could feel how badly he wanted her in every movement now. In the way he kept dragging her closer beneath him even when there was nowhere left to go. In the way his hands roamed her body like he genuinely couldn’t decide where he wanted to touch her most.

Her waist.

Her thighs.

Her chest.

God, his hands were big.

Warm and broad against her body in ways that made coherent thought increasingly impossible.

“Hime, you’re—”

Jiraiya stared down at her for one suspended second afterward, like he’d forgotten how language worked entirely.

“Fuck.”

Tsunade felt heat climb all the way up her throat under the weight of that expression. Jiraiya touched her like he still couldn’t quite believe she was real beneath his hands.

“So fucking beautiful,” he whispered, kissing her again immediately after, like he couldn’t stand being farther away than this.

“Hime, you’re so fucking sexy.”

Jiraiya was flushed and wrecked and staring at her like he thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the way his hands kept roaming over her skin like he couldn’t stop. Maybe it was years of grief and loneliness cracking open beneath warmth and want and familiarity.

But lying there beneath him, with his mouth against hers and his voice rough in her ear, Tsunade felt closer to whole than she had in years.

Chapter Text

Jiraiya could not stop touching her. His hands on her body were the only evidence he had that she was real and that this was really happening.

Every time he pulled back far enough to look at her, some stubborn part of his brain insisted this had to be a dream. A particularly cruel one, probably. The sort that would vanish the second he woke up with a headache and a hangover.

Then Tsunade smiled at him with those fucking lips. She kissed him, and she stuck her fucking tongue in his mouth, and the dream theory would suffer another serious setback.

Years of friendship. Of partnership. Of putting their bodies on the line on missions and battlefields. Years of knowing exactly how her voice sounded after too much sake. Years of being hopelessly aware that she was beautiful and deciding, eventually, at a point that he couldn’t quite nail down, that it simply wasn't worth wanting something that was never going to happen.

At some point, he had accepted it.

At some point, he had filed the idea away alongside other impossible things.

Tonight, she’d ripped her shirt off, and she had kissed him.

What the fuck?

Now his brain was trying to catch up, and it was doing a very, very poor job, because Tsunade was messing with his belt, and the fact that her hands were drunkenly fiddling with something inches from his cock was consuming the last brain cell he had left.

He pressed his lips to the hollow spot above her collarbone and traced the outline of her ribs with his hand. His knuckles traced the underside of her breast, and he could not help but smile like an idiot when he felt her arch her back into his touch.

He wished he had a photographic memory. A camera, A fucking sharingan, or an oil painter to help him capture this image of her forever. Her lips were pink and swollen. Her golden eyes were heavy-lidded. Her tits, good god. More perfect than he’d ever imagined and even more beautiful under his hands. She was a fucking vision out of his dirtiest dreams, and she was actually here, under him, right now.

He dragged his lips along her neck. Across her chest. Let his teeth catch on a nipple. She moaned, and the noise hit him somewhere deep, below the belt, which brought his attention back to the fact that Tsunade was still fumbling with his fucking belt, and he cursed himself for wearing it in the first place.

He made short work of his pants. Then her shorts. He pushed them both down – his, then hers – and the next thing he knew, Tsunade’s hand was on his cock, and any capability that he had to think was eradicated from his body. His head, very conveniently, was tucked just between her tits, and he groaned and buried his face there for a moment.

Buried. 

This is how he’d like to be buried. He’d die so happy. A bottle of shochu deep and smothered in his best friend's boobs. It was so fucking ridiculous, he kept thinking he’d wake up, or realize this was some kind of horny genjustu. 

He kissed her down the middle of her chest. Down her stomach, flat and muscled and strong. He wanted to lick and bite and kiss every plane, every inch of skin that she would allow him to.

He pushed her shorts the rest of the way down her legs and pressed a kiss on her hipbone. And on the other side. He wanted to taste her. To feel that she was as turned on as he was. Her hand wrapped lazily into his hair. With what he assumed to be a fraction of her strength, she pulled his face back up to hers.

He tried to put on his best pout.

She cut that off immediately with her lips on his. Her other hand snaked between them, settling between his legs again.

He was positive that he’d never been this hard in his life.

He started to whisper to her, “Are you s—”

Another kiss swallowed the rest of his sentence, all tongue and teeth; she tasted like sake.

His focus narrowed to just her hand, moving up and down on his cock, guiding him closer, closer to her. He braced himself over her with one hand and brought the other to her clit. The sound she made was indecent. It was obscene. It was potentially his new favorite noise. He kissed her again, and she bit his lip and then asked him to fuck her.

He was so, so fucking happy to comply.

When he sank into her, he had to close his eyes and focus on her nails on his back to keep from losing it immediately. He was about to ask if she was alright when her hips bucked up and met his.

“Go,” she said, her voice rasping and lower than he’d ever heard it before, “Keep going, you idiot.”

“Hime,” he muttered in response, kissing her hair as he thrust into her, “You’re so tight. You feel so good.”

She hummed something back at him.

For a few seconds, neither of them managed anything more coherent than that. The room had narrowed down to warmth and tangled limbs and the sound of each other breathing. 

He came with a hard shudder, nipping at her neck and whispering words that he would not remember saying tomorrow into her ear. 

He kissed her, slowly, greedily, desperately, while he rubbed rough circles onto her clit and teased her to her climax, and they both lay there, breathing heavily. 

At some point after, she slipped away to clean up. At some point after that, she came back. Jiraiya registered both events only vaguely through the haze of alcohol and exhaustion. By the time she settled beside him, sleep was already dragging him under.

The mattress shifted. Warmth settled against his side. He made a small, contented noise and turned toward her automatically. His body felt heavy. Boneless. Somewhere between awake and asleep.

His thoughts drifted lazily for a few moments longer.

Tsunade.

What the fuck.

Even that was too much effort. He felt himself drifting off to sleep.

Chapter Text

Tsunade woke up feeling like death. She had the kind of hangover that settled behind her eyes and wrapped around her skull and squeezed with both hands. Her mouth tasted awful. Her head felt worse. Her stomach rolled unpleasantly somewhere deep inside her. It was a familiar sensation these days, but not a welcome one. 

Tsunade closed her eyes and gathered chakra in her hand. She covered her eyes. 

The headache vanished first, then the nausea and the dizziness that had been lingering behind her eyes.

The relief was immediate, but her looming anxiety and the hollow feeling in her stomach remained.

Tsunade exhaled slowly through her nose.

For a few moments, she simply lay beneath the blankets, suspended in the strange fog that always followed a particularly bad hangover. Thoughts drifted lazily through her head without quite connecting.

Then memory arrived, and the previous night slammed into her all at once.

The sake. Cards scattered across the kitchen floor. Jiraiya laughing. The heat.

Tsunade opened her eyes, and for several seconds she stared at the ceiling.

Then, very abruptly, she became aware of two additional, indisputable facts.

The first was that she was naked.

The second was that Jiraiya was asleep beside her.

Tsunade pressed the heel of her hand briefly against her forehead. The headache was gone. Unfortunately, medical ninjutsu had never discovered a cure for whatever she was feeling. 

The mattress shifted again.

Tsunade barely registered it at first. Her thoughts were still sluggish from sleep, drifting through the unpleasant aftermath of the hangover. Then something warm pressed against her side, and she went completely still. Jiraiya had rolled toward her in his sleep. One arm settled heavily across her waist while his face found its way against her shoulder. He let out a quiet sigh and relaxed further, apparently content with wherever his unconscious brain had decided to put him.

The reaction that hit her was immediate and deeply unpleasant. She suddenly felt trapped inside the reality of what she'd done. Last night had been easy. Last night had been sake and heat and loneliness and bad decisions made one after another until thinking had stopped entirely. 

She stared at the ceiling and felt the hollow ache in her stomach deepen. This had been her idea. Her stupid card game. Her stupid flirting. Her stupid decision to keep escalating things was because it had felt good to be wanted for a few hours. It felt good to feel good. It had felt good not to think. Now she was awake, and there was nowhere to put any of it. Just the weight of Jiraiya's arm around her waist and the uncomfortable certainty that she had gotten exactly what she'd asked for.

The contradictions tangled together until she couldn't tell which impulse was winning.

Stay. Leave. Pretend none of this had happened. Burn the house down and run away. Figure out what the hell had happened. Figure out why she'd slept with him. Figure out why some awful part of her already wanted to do it again. Figure out why she simultaneously wanted to tear her skin off and crawl deeper beneath the blankets. The thoughts chased each other in frantic circles until she couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.

Beside her, Jiraiya shifted slightly in his sleep.

Tsunade stared at the ceiling.

The room felt too small. Her skin felt too tight. Every second that passed seemed to press her further into the reality of the situation. She had slept with Jiraiya. Worse, she had wanted to. Last night hadn't been an accident. It hadn't been a mistake born entirely from sake and bad judgment. Some part of her had wanted him long before she'd kissed him.

The hollow feeling in her stomach twisted.

Beside her, Jiraiya made another quiet sound and settled more comfortably against her shoulder.

Tsunade stared at the ceiling for several more seconds before finally reaching over and jabbing him sharply in the ribs.

Jiraiya grunted and curled more tightly around her.

She jabbed him again.

This time, one eye cracked open. He stared at her blearily for a moment, visibly annoyed at the interruption. His face was pressed into her shoulder, his arm still around her waist, and for several seconds, he looked like a man trying very hard to remember why he was awake.

Tsunade immediately regretted waking him.

"You are the fucking worst," he muttered.

"You're sleeping on me."

"I was having an incredible dream," His voice was rough from sleep. He sounded genuinely offended by the forced consciousness. Then he squinted at her suspiciously.

"Where have I heard that before?" 

Jiraiya let out a long, pained sound. "My head hurts."

"Good."

"My mouth tastes like death."

"Good."

"I think I'm actually dying."

"We can only hope."

Jiraiya made a dissatisfied noise and buried his face more firmly against her shoulder.

"Fix it,” He said, as Tsunade looked down at him, "My hangover."

"No."

"You already fixed yours," He pouted, his face in her hair, “You always do, it’s not fair.” 

Despite everything twisting around inside her chest, Tsunade felt the corner of her mouth threaten to move. His head lifted just enough for him to look at her. Sleep still lingered heavily around his eyes. His hair was a complete disaster. There was a crease across one cheek from the pillow.

"You drank an entire bottle of shochu. Deal with it."

He winced and pressed the heel of his hand against one eye.

"You are horrible."

The idiot sounded so genuinely aggrieved that she finally relented.

"Move."

"No."

"Jiraiya, I cannot heal you if you do not move, you moron."

With another dramatic sigh, he rolled onto his back. Tsunade gathered chakra into her palm and placed her hand over his eyes. The familiar glow illuminated the space between them. Immediately, the tension left his face. The line between his brows disappeared. His shoulders relaxed into the mattress, and he let out a small sigh of relief.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke.

Morning sunlight spilled through the curtains. Though some of the heat had broken overnight, it was still unbearably warm in the house, especially beneath the blankets. 

"Better?" she asked.

"Much."

His voice had gone all soft and sleepy and content.

Jiraiya opened one eye and looked up at her.

Then he smiled.

“Thanks, Tsuna.”

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Tsunade became abruptly, painfully aware that they were now both fully sober and still naked in the bed. 

She grabbed the nearest blanket and wrapped it around herself before climbing out of bed.

“Well, that seems unnecessary."

Tsunade closed her eyes as she stopped by the dresser. Her hand closed over the closest projectile she could find. A hairbrush from the dresser. 

“Now, Tsuna,” Jiraiya began, his voice still rough with sleep, “it's not like there's anything there I haven't already seen bef—”

The hairbrush hit him before he finished the sentence.

Jiriaya groaned in protest. When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw his familiar shit-eating grin.  

“I am going to take a shower. If you value your life, don't be in my bed when I get back.” 

Jiraiya did a little salute, “Coffee duty for Jiraiya, gotcha loud and clear.” 

The shower helped a little. 

Tsunade stood beneath the water longer than necessary, letting it pound against the back of her neck while she tried unsuccessfully to stop thinking. She scrubbed away the sweat and the lingering smell of alcohol. She washed her hair. By the time she stepped out, her skin was pink from the heat and the knot in her stomach remained exactly where she'd left it.

She brushed her teeth.

Then brushed them again.

When she finally emerged downstairs, the kitchen smelled like coffee.

“Careful where you step, Hime.”

Jiraiya had pulled on yesterday's clothes and somehow taken it upon himself to clean. A broom rested in one hand while he swept up shards of broken glass from the kitchen floor. The sight stopped her for a moment.

"What broke?"

Jiraiya glanced over his shoulder.

"The sake bottle."

Tsunade frowned.

"I don't remember breaking a sake bottle."

"You broke it sometime around whenever you bet me a piece of your liver."

"Huh.”

Jiraiya snorted and returned to sweeping.

The cards were still everywhere. Scattered forgotten across the kitchen floor. She crouched down and started gathering them. They didn't speak for a while. The only sounds were the broom scraping across the tile and the occasional rustle of cards sliding against each other as she rebuilt the deck.

After several minutes, Jiraiya leaned the broom against the counter and looked over at her.

"So."

Tsunade didn't even bother looking up.

"No," She found a joker beneath the table and added it to the stack in her hands.

Then Jiraiya sighed. "So, we aren't going to talk about it?"

Tsunade closed her eyes for a brief moment. The knot in her stomach tightened.

"I'd really rather not, actually."

Jiraiya winced in a very dramatic fashion. 

"Oof, was I that bad?" he asked. "You wound me."

"I'll actually wound you if you don't shut the fuck up."

"Message received."

"Good."

"We won't talk about it."

"Great."

"Alllll good."

"Jiraiya."

"I'm done."

He made a show of returning to the broom. 

"Fun night, though."

She groaned loudly and squeezed her eyes shut. "Yeah. Sure. Fun. But really, shut—"

"Relax, Hime." He emptied the dustpan into the trash and rinsed his hands in the sink. "We were drunk. It was fun,” he shrugged, "Anyway."

He crossed toward the back door and grabbed his sandals.

"I promised Minato I'd help him with a couple of things before we head out to the toads in a few days. I'll get out of your hair. I know you have a lot on your plate at work with the Poison Sand Bitch, or whatever."

Tsunade nodded, "Right."

"Try not to murder anybody today."

“You'd be the first to know."

"Not sure if that's an honor or a threat," A faint grin tugged at his mouth. The familiar one. The one she'd seen a thousand times. He pushed the door open. "I'll see you later, Tsuna."

After a few seconds, Tsunade shook her head, picked up the rest of the cards, and started getting ready for work.

Four hours later, Tsunade was in the lab fuming.

The old bitch had somehow managed to create a neurotoxin that destabilized chakra pathways in ways that should have been impossible. Tsunade had spent most of the afternoon hunched over notes and sample slides, trying to untangle exactly how it worked while composing increasingly creative insults toward Sunagakure's entire population.

Her office door burst open. She could hear Shizune’s tiny voice protesting.

Kushina Uzumaki stormed inside.

Shizune followed several steps behind, carrying a paper bag and looking distressed.

"Hiya, Auntie, I need a favor. Maybe two favors."

Tsunade didn't look up. "I’m not your aunt, and no."

Kushina ignored her and dropped into the chair across from the desk.

"So I've been thinking about fuinjutsu."

Tsunade tried to block out the sound of the girl’s voice while she continued with her notes. 

"Kai-sensei doesn't really know that much about seals, ya know. Every time I ask him questions, he gets this look on his face like he wants to run away. I figured maybe you could lend me some of Mito-sama's old scrolls. You don't even have to teach me if you don't want to, I’d read ‘em myself, ya know. I want to get really good with seals so I can deal with…”

Tsunade finally looked up. 

She trailed off, her eyes falling briefly to Shizune. 

“...Important stuff. Anyway, I’ve got loads of chakra, and it would be cool to seal some away, ya know. And to block some of it. Like I said, you don't need to help unless you want to, I wouldn’t say no to trying to learn the diamond thingy, either, but the scrolls would really help—” 

Tsunade opened her mouth to answer, but Kushina kept going.

“I just want to get really good at sealing so I can rub it in Minato’s face when he gets back. Also—” she held up a hand, with what looked like great effort. “I'm pretty sure my arm is broken. Can one of you help me with that? It really hurts, ya know?’

Kushina's right upper arm was swollen and purple. 

“You could have led with that, kid,” Tsunade said, beckoning her forward so she could get a better look at the bruised monstrosity. “What– How the hell did you snap your humerus?”

“It’s kind of a funny story.”

“Was that a pun?”

“I dunno, but I was racing Natsumi up the Hokage faces and broke one of your uncle’s massive teeth and fell.” 

Tsunade flooded chakra into Kushina’s upper arm. “You fell over a hundred feet?”

“Minato says that I basically bounce.”

“Did you win, at least?”

“I was winning,” she huffed. “We’re doing a rematch next week. ‘Sumi has to stay with her brother and her new nephew for a couple of days, but she's toast after that. You'd better believe it.” 

Shizune piped up, “And the bag you made me carry in here?” 

Kushina fidgeted under Tsunade’s hands, “Oh, oh, oh yeah!”

“Have you ever sat still once in your life?” Tsunade complained as she braced Kushina to finish the healing. 

“Not really, no, anyway. That—” she pointed at the bag that Shizune had set down, “Is from Jiraiya-sensei. I think it's tempura. He asked me to give it to you if I was heading to the hospital anyway.” 

Tsunade blinked. “Jiraiya saw you with a shattered arm and asked you to bring me lunch?” 

“Pretty much, yeah. The whole race was his idea in the first place. He asked me to bring it because he said you might not want to see him today, whatever that means.” 

“It means you should mind your business,” Tsunade said, before she finished the last healing touches.

“That’s the same thing he said before he called me a brat.” 

She rolled her arm and stretched it across her body.

“So, do you think I can borrow the scrolls?” She said, hopping from the chair. “I’ll be super, super, super careful, ya know. I just want to get trained up, and I’ll need something to do while Minato’s off in toad town.”

Tsunade groaned. “I have them at home. Maybe Shizune can show you later when she’s done here.”

Kushina let out a whoop.

“Thanks, Auntie.” She said, turning on her heel and starting toward the door.

“I’m not—”

Kushina flashed a smile over her shoulder as she walked out the door. “I know, not my aunt. Thanks again, Tsunade-san.”

When Kushina finally disappeared down the hallway, the room settled back into silence. Shizune closed the door behind her and immediately dragged a stool over beside Tsunade's workstation.

"How can I help, Shishō?"

Tsunade didn't look up from the microscope.

"Figure out where the degradation is starting on the three blood samples in the back office."

Shizune straightened immediately. "Really? By myself?"

"If I knew where it was starting, I wouldn't be asking."

The answer seemed to delight her. She hurried toward the back laboratory, then paused in the doorway.

“Are you—”

“I’m not hungry, take the food.” 

Shizune smiled and disappeared into the back room with the paper bag. Tsunade frowned and looked back at the microscope. The old bitch was not going to outsmart her because she got distracted by her personal life. Or tempura.

By the time Tsunade got home, it was well past midnight.

The house was dark.

She dropped her bag by the door, poured herself a glass of sake, and wandered aimlessly through the rooms without turning the lights on.

The poison and her antidote had refused to cooperate. It was unbelievably frustrating. She’d be back at it tomorrow.

The sake disappeared quickly. She poured another.

At some point, she found herself standing in her bedroom doorway. The bed was still unmade. Tsunade stared at it for several seconds before setting her glass down and yanking the sheets free.

The fitted sheet came off first, then the pillowcases. Within minutes, the entire bed was stripped bare. She dug fresh linens out of the closet and remade the bed anyway. She put the rumpled, dirty sheets into the hamper.

When she finished, she sat down on the edge of the mattress.

The room felt wrong. Tsunade stared at the opposite wall for nearly a minute before finishing the sake and standing again.

She figured the couch would be better. She stretched across the cushions and sipped her third cup of sake. Her eyes drifted shut.

Behind her eyelids, immediately and unwillingly, she was back with Dan. In a tent, somewhere damp and drab and on the way to Ame. His smile. His voice. His hands on her. His lips. In her dream, she pulled away, and they were on a battlefield, and he was dying in her arms, and she was covered in his blood.

She snapped awake and felt tears on her face. 

Three years, and the ache still lived inside her like an old injury that never healed correctly. Like a bone that never set. 

Guilt twisted through her chest. The feeling was irrational. She knew it was irrational. Dan had been dead for years. But knowing that did absolutely nothing to stop the ugly feeling crawling through her stomach.

Tsunade opened her eyes.

The room blurred slightly around the edges.

She made her way to pour another drink. 

The hollow place inside her felt different tonight. She wasn’t sure if it was bigger or smaller. She wasn’t sure if her evening with Jiraiya had begun to stitch her closed as she’d hoped, or if she was pulling on a string that would cause her to unravel. 

Chapter Text

Two weeks later, Jiraiya sat on the broad branch of an ancient, twisted tree overlooking one of Mount Myōboku's training grounds.

Minato make a mistake. It was always so fleeting to see the kid mess up, that Jiraiya actually liked the reminder that he was human. 

His student stood atop a stone pillar barely wide enough for both feet, eyes closed as he gathered natural energy. Fukasaku circled him slowly with his cane tucked behind his back, watching every fluctuation in the boy's chakra.

A ripple disturbed the balance for the briefest instant. Orange pigmentation spread too far across Minato's eyelids, and the fingers of his left hand thickened into unmistakably amphibian proportions.

Jiraiya snapped a photo, and tucked it away, laughing to himself. 

"Too much," Fukasaku barked, slapping Minato on the back with a stick, "Again."

Minato exhaled once, and shifted his footing no more than an inch, closed his eyes again. This time, his balance was better.

Fukasaku nodded once. "Better. Cross."

Minato stepped from pillar to pillar without hesitation.

Lean too heavily into natural energy and the transformation began. Too little, and nothing happened. Jiraiya had spent years struggling to find that balance.

Minato had corrected it after a single mistake.

Fucking genius little shit show-off. 

He was SO proud. 

Jiraiya had intended to leave for Konoha two days ago.

Instead, he'd somehow found reasons to stay.

Part of it was that Mount Myōboku had always felt like a second home. The old toads had raised him almost as much as Konoha had. It felt like hime.

Part of it was watching his student become even more extraordinary. Showing him off to the toads.

"He's really something, Jiraiya-boy," Shima said, when she'd observed training, "You've done well preparing him. It's good that he's staying here."

Another month, maybe less, and Minato would master Sage Mode completely.

Jiraiya never really had been immersed in the training the way Minato would be. 

Jiraiya had learned it all in fragments between missions, grabbing a week here, three days there, a few weeks back to back over a summer if he was lucky, before being called back to the real world.

Eventually, he'd forced senjutsu through sheer stubbornness. It worked. It helped. But the balance had always been imperfect and unbalanced. Hold it too wrong for too long, and the toad began creeping in around the edges. 

Jiraiya had never quite mastered keeping the “toadiness” at bay. It was, in a word, unattractive. 

The third reason he'd lingered so long was considerably harder to admit to himself. He was weirdly nervous about the the next time he'd see Tsunade. 

He'd played everything so cool the morning after.

Coffee. Cleaning. A few jokes. An easy exit before either of them had to acknowledge what had happened. It had seemed like the smart move.

His brain had spent the last two weeks proving itself spectacularly uninterested in focusing on Minato's training.

Every quiet moment circled back to Tsunade. He'd seen more tits in his life than he cared to count. He considered himself something of a connoisseur of breasts. Tsunade had, in a single evening, rendered every previous opinion, daydream, and fantasy obsolete.

Meditating was impossible. He closed his eyes and saw her, felt her skin on his skin, heard echoes of her moaning in his ear. 

He found himself wondering, against his better judgment, whether it would ever happen again.

Probably not. She hadn't exactly seemed eager to see him after they'd sobered up.

Still.

Something liquid exploded across the left side of his body. 

Jiraiya lurched sideways, catching himself before he tumbled out of the tree as thick toad oil dripped from his hair onto his shoulder.

From the training ground below, Minato lowered his hands and grinned.

"I've been trying to get your attention for almost a minute, Sensei. Welcome back to earth."

Jiraiya wiped oil from one eye and stared down at his student.

"You always told me awareness is part of Sage training."

Jiraiya looked at the oil coating his sleeve, then back at the teenager trying—and failing—not to laugh.

"...Congratulations, kid" he sighed. "You're officially a pain in my ass."

The giant toad landed with a thunderous crash in one of Konoha's training fields, flattening half the grass and startling a flock of birds into the air. Jiraiya held onto the ridge along Gamabunta's neck until the reverse summoning finished and he was certain he wouldn't fall off.

Before the smoke had even begun to clear, three familiar voices shouted at once.

"Jiraiya-sensei!"

He looked down to find Kushina sprinting toward him with Dekai and Natsumi close behind.

"So?" Kushina demanded before she'd even reached Gamabunta. "How'd he do? Like, when's he coming back, ya know? Is he doing well, or is he messing it up? Did he really eat bugs like you said? Did—"

"Kid."

She stopped just long enough to inhale.

"...What?"

"Slow the fuck down. Breathe, Uzumaki."

Gamabunta snorted. "Human children are exhausting."

Kushina planted her fists on her hips.

"We're standing right here, ya know."

The giant toad gave a dismissive wave with one webbed hand. With a puff of smoke, Gamabunta vanished back to Mount Myōboku.

The three kids closed in immediately.

"Well?" Natsumi asked.

Jiraiya reached into his vest.

"I brought you all a souvenir."

He unfolded the photograph.

Three heads leaned in at once.

Minato stood atop one of Mount Myōboku's stone pillars, looking profoundly offended by his own face. His nose had widened into something distinctly toad-like, his cheeks had puffed out, and the beginnings of warty skin framed his eyes while Fukasaku stood beside him ready to strike with his stick.

Kushina wrinkled her nose.

"...It goes back, right?"

"It goes right back," Jiraiya said, laughing. "That was about thirty seconds after he pulled in more natural energy than he'd meant to. Pretty much the only time he made a mistake in two weeks of training. Glad I had the camera ready."

"Perfectionist brat," Natsumi muttered.

"That's exactly what I said."

Jiraiya let Kushina pull the photo from his hands. She tucked it in her pocket. 

"He won't be up there much longer. Another month, maybe six weeks, I bet.” 

Kushina's shoulders relaxed.

Jiraiya took the steps to the Hokage Tower two at a time, grinning to himself like an idiot. 

He hadn't been this excited to deliver a report in years. 

It wasn't a real report. It hadn't been a real mission. He wanted to make sure The Sandaime know about Minato. About how absolutely impressed Jiraiaya felt. Simply, Jiraiya wanted to brag to his own teacher about his incredible, incredible student. 

He pushed open the Hokage's office door without knocking.

"—I don't give a damn if the council thinks it's expensive."

Jiraiya stopped in the doorway.

Tsunade stood planted in front of Hiruzen's desk, one hand braced against the polished wood while the other jabbed emphatically toward a stack of reports.

Hiruzen sat opposite her with a weary expression. He didn't acknowledge that Jiraiya had come in.

"You know we didn’t have enough medics in Ame," Tsunade said, her voice clipped with frustration. "We haven’t trained anyone new at the hospital in years. Years, Hiruzen. I have one student. Shizune’s twelve. She's brilliant, but she's a child. Now, Kushina Uzumaki has attached herself to me because nobody else in this village knows enough of Mito's sealing techniques to teach her properly, I don't think I need to tell you why that is critical. I still have an entire division of the hospital to run. I need help. We need more medics. Meanwhile, every intelligence report crossing your desk says the same thing. We are still burying dead from the second war, and it seems we need to prepare for a third.” 

Hiruzen opened his mouth.

"Tsunade—" 

Tsunade steamrolled over him.

"I need more people. I need dedicated medical training for shinobi in the field. This village needs resources allocated before we're burying another generation of children."

Silence settled over the office.

Only then did Tsunade notice Jiraiya standing in the doorway.

"...Oh. You're back. What do you want?" She snapped. 

For just a second, she looked caught off guard.

Jiraiya looked from her to Hiruzen, then to the mountain of paperwork covering the Hokage's desk.

"...Should I come back later?"

“Yes.” Tsunade glared at him. 

“No,” Hiruzen sighed, exasperated. “Tsuna, unfortunately, this is still my office. What do you need, Jiraiya?” 

Jiraiya hummed, leaning against the doorframe.

"Clearly not as important as whatever you two were talking about. I just came to brag about Minato."

That, finally, got Hiruzen as close as he ever came to a smile.

"He's doing well?"

"So well, he's embarrassing me."

"That sounds promising."

"Kid's going to master Sage Mode in no time.  Fukasaku's already running out of things to correct."

Hiruzen's eyebrows climbed.

“I’m not shocked. Namikaze is certainly the stand-out of all the chunin,” Hiruzen pressed his fingers to the desk and stood up. "I'll look forward to your jonin recommendation when he returns," Hiruzen said dryly. Then his attention shifted back to the mountain of paperwork covering his desk.

He sighed.

"Unfortunately, I have neither the time to hear about your student today, nor the patience to continue arguing with Tsunade."

"Arguing?" Tsunade shot back. "I've spent the last half hour explaining exactly why this village is going to be caught flat-footed the next time we're at war."

"And I've spent the last half hour explaining that I cannot conjure instructors and funding out of thin air." Hiruzen let out a long, slow breath. "Tsunade—"

She huffed again and turned on her heel to storm out of the room. 

Jiraiya gave Hiruzen a quick look and then followed her out.

By the time Jiraiya caught up to her, Tsunade had already made it halfway down the tower stairs.

"Hey," he called after her.

She didn't slow down.

"Hey." He repeated.

"...What?"

He fell into step beside her.

"What the hell was all that?"

She kept her eyes forward. "What was what?"

"The yelling. The glaring. The 'I'm about to throw the Hokage out his own window' thing." He scratched the back of his neck. "I disappear for two weeks and come back to hear you talking about another war. Did I miss something?"

Tsunade was quiet until they reached the bottom of the stairs. She pushed through the front doors of the tower into the afternoon heat.

"I really don't want to talk about it right now."

Jiraiya studied her for a moment. She wasn't just irritated. She was vibrating.

"I want to punch something," she said flatly.

"Okay."

"...I need to punch something."

Jiraiya nodded once.

"Fine. Punch me."

She finally looked at him.

"...What?"

"Come on." He jerked his thumb toward the training grounds. “I feel fresh. You look homicidal."

"Jiraiya."

"I'm serious," A corner of his mouth twitched. "Come beat the shit out of me."

She continued staring at him for another second before shaking her head.

"...You're an idiot."

"That's not a no," He started walking again. "I've gotta dump my pack at home. Give me twenty minutes."

Behind him, after just enough hesitation to make him grin, she called, "...Don't be late."

Tsunade hit him before he'd fully settled into his stance. Her heel crashed into his ribs with enough force to send him skidding several yards across the packed earth. Jiraiya turned with the impact on instinct, letting his momentum carry him instead of fighting it. His sandals carved a shallow trench through the dirt before he caught himself.

She was already coming at him again.

Thankfully, it was just taijutsu. If she loaded chakra into those fists, the spar would last six seconds and end with him embedded in the nearest hillside.

She jabbed toward his throat. He slapped the strike aside and answered with a hook toward her shoulder. His hit landed at the junction where her shoulder and collarbone came together and immediately threw another punch his way. He ducked under it, caught her wrist, and tried to turn the motion into a shoulder throw.

She had always been a little bit better than him.

Jiraiya had a foot and about ninety pounds of muscle on her, sure. He had a longer reach, enough size to make up for speed.

But Tsunade didn't rely on size. 

She spun into another combination.

Left.

Right.

Left. 

He parried the first two blows. The third skimmed his shoulder.

She stepped in again. Jiraiya met her with his forearm, redirecting the punch away before reaching instinctively for her wrist.

Her thin shirt stretched across her chest as she twisted out of his grip.

His eyes dropped. 

Just for a second. Her fist landed squarely against his cheek.

His head snapped sideways, and pain exploded across his jaw. She drove a kick into his thigh that nearly buckled his leg before practically dancing back out of range of his fists. 

She always caught him.

She'd been catching him staring since they were teenagers.

The corner of her mouth twitched so slightly he almost convinced himself he'd imagined it.

Then she was moving again.

This time, he kept his goddamn eyes on her fists, where they belonged.

Sandals scraped through loose dirt. Fingers caught wrists only to slip away again before either of them could capitalize. They'd fought each other often enough that every feint had a counter, every counter another answer.

She swept low.

He hopped over it.

He answered with a kick toward her ribs.

She caught his ankle against her hip and shoved.

He planted one hand against the ground, spun through the fall, and came back to his feet already moving. He drove forward, forcing her backward a step, then another, only for her to plant her weight and stop him cold.

There.

That was the opening he'd been looking for. He caught her off guard with a strike at her shoulder.

Then, he abandoned the exchange of strikes altogether.

Instead of throwing another punch, he stepped inside her guard and wrapped both arms around her waist.

Her heels left the ground for the briefest instant before she hooked one leg behind his knee and twisted her hips. The momentum of the lift died immediately. His own balance vanished with it.

They went over together and tumbled to the ground. 

Jiraiya turned as they fell, taking the worst of the impact across his shoulder. The breath rushed from his lungs as they rolled once through the dust, neither willing to surrender position. Tsunade was already peeling one of his arms away from her waist. He caught her wrist before she could break free, planted a knee, and tried to pin her. 

She rolled her body hard enough to throw him sideways.

He barely caught himself. It lasted all of two seconds before her legs scissored around one of his, stealing his base from under him.

She reacted before he could.

One of her knees slid across his thigh, pinning his leg. Her other foot found the dirt beside his hip. She caught one of his wrists with both hands and drove it overhead while her weight settled squarely across his waist. 

"You're predictable," she said between measured breaths, panting over him. 

He looked up at her, his own chest rising and falling. 

"...Alright, Tsuna."

She didn't answer.

He let his head fall back into the dirt with an exaggerated sigh.

"You win."

Still, she didn't move.

For another few seconds, he halfheartedly tested her hold. Her restraint never shifted. One hand still pinned his wrist overhead. Her knee remained firm across his thigh.

He stopped struggling.

"I said you win, Tsuna."

A strand of blonde hair had worked loose and fallen across her face. Sweat glistened faintly at the base of her throat. The rise and fall of her chest caused every breath to press subtly against the thin fabric of her shirt.

His eyes betrayed him again.

When he looked back up at her face, it was nearly unreadable. She was looking at him as if she were studying one of her poisons. 

Jiraiya swallowed.

"If you're deciding whether to hit me again," he said quietly, "I'd appreciate a little warning."

She said nothing. 

Like he was approaching a nervous wild animal, he kept eye contact as he carefully moved his free hand to her hip. 

He could feel the heat radiating from her where she straddled his hips. Felt the quick rhythm of her breathing beginning to slow. 

His thumb moved before he consciously decided to.

A small stroke against her hip.

Her breath caught.

It was tiny. If he hadn't known her for twenty years, he would have missed it. His pulse kicked hard in his ears. 

"Tsuna..."

Her gaze flicked to his mouth. The hand pinning his wrist loosened. 

He didn't move.

He remained exactly where he was, looking up at her.

A grin tugged slowly at the corner of his mouth.

"You know," he said, keeping his voice carefully even, "I am perfectly happy to stay like this all day. In fact..." He looked thoughtfully toward the sky. "I'm pretty sure I had this exact daydream when I was fourteen, except you were wearing—"

Tsunade closed her eyes.

"...Unbelievable.”

She let out a long, exhausted groan, released his wrist completely, and rolled off him onto the grass beside him. She landed flat on her back, one forearm draped over her eyes.

She laughed. He reveled in the sound. 

"You are such a pervert."

Jiraiya sat up on one elbow, rubbing the feeling back into his arm.

"I'd like the record to show," he said with complete seriousness, "That you are the one who pinned me to the ground and held me there for an uncomfortable amount of time.”

“You seemed pretty comfortable.” 

“Oh, I've always been very comfortable with a woman on top.” 

Tsunade snorted.

Jiraiya rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow so he could watch her. She was still staring at the sky, one knee bent, loose strands of blonde hair stirring in the breeze. The fury she'd carried out of the Hokage Tower had bled away somewhere between the first punch and the last throw.

After a long while, she spoke without looking at him.

"...Thanks."

He smiled.

"For what?"

"For letting me beat the shit out of you."

"It was my honor, as always, Hime."

Another tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

She sat up with a quiet grunt and brushed the dust from her shorts. Jiraiya watched her for a moment before climbing to his own feet, rubbing absently at the bruise forming along his ribs.

"Need anything healed?" She asked, without looking at him. 

"Nah." He said, brushing some dust off his arm. 

Neither of them moved from the dirt. 

The afternoon breeze drifted across the empty training ground.

Finally, Tsunade cleared her throat.

"I'm going home to shower."

She looked at him for a moment, as though waiting for him to catch up to something.

"You can come."

His brain, traitorous thing that it was, stopped functioning entirely.

Tsunade's expression shifted the instant she realized how that had sounded

"Over, I mean...Later," she corrected, just a fraction too quickly. "For dinner."

"...Oh."

"Unless you've got somewhere else to be."

"Nope."

"Good."

Then she started walking toward the village. Jiraiya stood there for another moment before hurrying after her.

Jiraiya spent the walk home arguing with himself.

He'd replayed the whole afternoon at least twenty times before he'd made it halfway across the village.

You can come.

Over, I mean... Later. For dinner.

It had been an accident.

Hadn't it? Obviously? 

Except she'd looked so flustered when she said it. He'd never known her to be flustered.  

He rubbed the back of his neck.

She'd stayed on top of him long after the spar had been over. She'd looked at him like...

No.

He wasn't even going to try and figure out what Tsunade was thinking.

This was Tsunade.

Even after twenty years, half the time she remained nearly impossible to read when she wanted to be.

Still...

In his relatively expert opinion, there was at least a chance Tsunade wanted to sleep with him again.

The thought made his stomach perform an acrobatic routine normally reserved for teenagers.

He wasn't about to assume anything. The ball was entirely in her court.

He also wasn't about to pretend he'd say no.

Her door swung open before he reached the top step of her stairs.

Not for the first time that day, he found himself thinking about how attractive she was. 

She'd showered. Her damp blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders. Her skin retained a faint warmth from the bath, soft pink lingering across her cheeks. Near the base of her neck, just above her collarbone, a purple bruise had begun to bloom where one of his better punches had landed.

His eyes caught on it for a moment.

"...Sorry about that." He reached out and skimmed the mark with his thumb.  

She glanced down at the bruise.

"You should see your jaw."

"...Fair."

The corner of her mouth lifted.

"So, how hungry are you?"

He shrugged. "You know I can always eat, but not especially hungry. Why?"

Instead of answering, she stepped forward. Her hand closed around the front of his shirt.

She tugged him down and kissed him.

His brain went blank. 

Chapter Text

Tsunade hadn't planned on kissing him.

She'd honestly planned on dinner. On taking a shower. On an afternoon of beating the hell out of her best friend until she'd worked the anger out of her system.

Instead, the front door had barely clicked shut before her hands caught the front of his shirt and she pulled him toward her. 

Her mouth crashed into his like she was launching an attack. Fierce, hot, and hungry. 

Jiraiya made a startled sound that vanished almost as quickly as it came, and he kissed her back.

The force of it surprised her. Heat rushed through her so quickly that it almost made her dizzy. For the first time all day, the ache in her chest wasn't the loudest thing in the room.

She kissed him harder, chasing the feeling before it could disappear. If she kept moving, kept feeling, maybe the ache wouldn't catch her again. Maybe, just for tonight, she wouldn't have to carry it for a bit. 

Jiraiya’s enthusiasm only fed her desperation. Every time he answered her lips with another kiss, every time he drew her a little closer, the hollowness inside her seemed to retreat another millimeter.

She knew it wouldn't last. She knew tomorrow morning she'd probably wake up with the aching hole waiting where she'd left it. It had lived inside her for so long she could barely remember what it felt like to wake up without it.

She'd lost Nawaki.

Then she'd lost Dan. 

She'd lost herself, piece by broken piece, until she was nothing but a facade of herself with a bleeding, aching hole where her heart should have been. 

The sake quieted the ache. It blurred the edges until she could almost pretend the hole in her chest was manageable.

But it never lasted. It never took it away entirely. 

Morning always came.

The ache was always waiting.

She decided at some point in the last two weeks that the other night had been different. This afternoon had been different. Somewhere between kicking Jiraiya’s ass across the training ground and pinning him in the dirt, she'd realized something that deeply unsettled her.

For a few precious minutes, she hadn't felt it.

She'd remembered herself. Who she was and how she felt before the world came crashing down on her head. Before she’d buried two of the people she'd loved the most in the world. 

If there was even the slightest chance that being with him like this could make her feel that again, she needed it like oxygen. 

So she kissed him.

She wanted to outrun the emptiness. He had always helped her be her best.

She kissed him again before he could pull away. Bit down on his lower lip when he tried to say something. 

He matched her urgency instead of questioning it.

She slid her hands into his damp white hair, fingers threading through it. He leaned into the touch without thinking, and something in her chest eased the smallest fraction.

There it was again.

That impossible, fleeting feeling.

The ache, replaced with something different. Relief, maybe. Or hope. The hope that maybe her best friend held the secret antidote to her misery. Like maybe Jiraiya could loosen the band that had been wrapped around her ribs for years.

She started leading him into the house; her goal was to reach the sofa. She worked at undoing his belt while they stumbled through the den. 

The buttons were much easier than they had been when she was shitfaced and tried to take his pants off two weeks ago. She pushed them down his legs the second the fastenings were free. 

He laughed softly against her mouth.

"Tsuna—"

She answered by placing both hands against his chest and giving him a firm shove. Jiraiya dropped onto the cushions with an undignified grunt, blinking up at her in surprise.

She could feel his eyes on her.

The room was quiet, except for their breathing and the fading warmth of the afternoon sunlight spilling through the windows.

She leaned down, cupped his face in both hands, and kissed him again, slower this time, as she lowered herself on the couch so that she was straddling his lap. 

Tsunade ground her hips down into his, dragging herself along the length of him. 

With a low groan, his fingers pressed into the soft skin of her thighs, slipping beneath the hiked-up fabric of her skirt. 

He kissed her collarbone, resting his lips along her pulse. He laughed quietly against her throat, the sound warm enough that she felt it as much as she heard it.

One of his hands traveled from its spot on her hip, over, over until his fingers snaked beneath the thin fabric of her underwear. 

Between his lips on her neck, the growing hardness beneath her, and his touch on her clit, something persistent and aching inside her unclenched. 

She was having fun. 

Jiraiya’s teeth grazed her earlobe, and she ground down again onto his cock.

“Hime,” he said, breath hot on the side of her face, “Hime, can I–”

She lifted her hips, just slightly, and pulled her underwear to the side. She lowered herself onto him, focusing on the slight stretch, the fullness of it all, before she started rocking against him. 

Jiraiya bit down on her shoulder and muffled a moan. 

His hands settled beneath her shirt and ran along the planes of her stomach. His rough hands traced along her sides before tracing the shape of her breasts under her shirt. That lasted all of five seconds before he pulled her tank top off, with a desperately happy look in his eyes. 

He wasted no time burying himself in her cleavage. 

Tsunade focused on the movement of her own hips. The thrust of her hips in concert with Jiraiya’s hands on her chest. The feeling of his cock inside of her. The pleasure grew as her clit found blessed friction against his skin.

The crest of it all, breaking over her, as she came, panting into his hair. He followed soon after. 

She untangled herself from him and slid onto the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling. 

Without saying anything, Jiraiya joined her.

They lay there, beside each other, in opposite states of undress. 

His hand idly traced the line of her waist, fingers walking over her stomach, along her left breast, then to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. It was a strange and tender gesture, and if she let herself think about it, incredibly sexy. 

But he opened his mouth a second later. 

“Are you ready to talk about—” he gestured to the couch, “Whatever brought this on?”

Tsunade threw an arm over her eyes. 

“So, no, then?” Jiraiya said, flatly, “I mean, I'm not complaining, or anything. It's just kind of an about-face from the last… I don't know, fifteen years?” 

“Don’t get a big head,” Tsunade said, with a small whine. “I have been fucking miserable for years, and this helps.” 

It was mostly true, though it belittled the magnitude of her grief. 

She lowered her arm to look at him. 

His eyes, predictably, were on her tits. 

“Hey, I'll take it, Princess,” he said, flicking his eyes back to her face. “It was only a matter of time before you realized you were missing out.”

“I fucking hate you,” she said, pulling a pillow off the couch and whipping his face with it. 

He laughed. 

“You don't, Tsuna.” He said, a smile warm on his face. “Now, I seem to recall you mentioning dinner.”

Over the last warm weeks of summer, the pattern repeated itself.

Morning always came. The ache always came with it.

Some days it stayed in the background, a dull pressure behind her ribs. Other days, it settled over her shoulders the moment she opened her eyes. More often than she wanted to admit, it settled like a fist-sized, bleeding hole in her chest.

Then Jiraiya would appear.

And for an hour or two, she could breathe.

The ache always found her again, but now she knew it could wane. Something about Jiraiya made its presence lessen.

Jiraiya still appeared outside her office at the hospital around noon whenever his schedule allowed, balancing paper bags or takeout containers and announcing to her in a stage whisper that, having now conducted a firsthand examination, he could confidently confirm that Tsunade was entirely too skinny.

She always took the food.

She always called him a moron.

He still volunteered her and Shizune to patch up Natsumi after particularly brutal missions. 

He still dragged her out to the training grounds to spar.

And a few times a week, one way or another, they found themselves alone together. Sometimes it was her bed. Sometimes, the forgotten corner of her office in the hospital basement. Once in the woods behind the training fields.

By the time summer began giving way to autumn, neither of them spoke about the arrangement. Jiraiya tried every now and then, usually with the subtlety of a brick through a window. Tsunade shut him down every time.

She only knew that, whenever the ache became too much to carry, somehow he always made it lighter.

"I think we nicked an artery this time!"

Kushina's voice carried clear across the training field with entirely too much enthusiasm. Even slowed by blood loss, she somehow managed to sound excited about it.

Shizune, looking exasperated, was already on her feet before the sentence had finished, snatching up her medical satchel as she hurried toward the two battered teenagers in the middle of the field. This was the third time in under two hours that she’d had to treat one of the teenage girls for an injury that would have been mortal without healing. 

Tsunade stayed where she was.

Arterial bleeds were messy, and Shizune had long since proven she didn't need hovering over every patient.

Besides, Tsunade still couldn't stomach blood.

A moment later, Natsumi wandered over to where Tsunade sat in the tree line, brushing dirt from the front of her shirt.

One side of her face was already swelling beneath her left eye. Both forearms were covered in fresh scrapes, and angry bruises were beginning to bloom beneath the collar of her shirt.

"You got anything bleeding more than a papercut?" Tsunade asked, staring determinedly at a bird sitting on a branch while she waited for an answer. 

Natsumi glanced down at herself.

"Nah. Mostly little scrapes."

She rubbed both temples with the heels of her hands and grimaced.

"My head, though." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Feels like it's gonna explode."

"Your eyes?"

Natsumi nodded.

"Sit."

Natsumi lowered herself onto the grass without complaint.

Across the field, Shizune's voice drifted over the breeze.

"If you could stop trying to bleed to death every other week, I'd appreciate it."

"You love the practice, squirt!" Kushina laughed. 

Tsunade rested a glowing hand over Natsumi's closed eyes.

Jiraiya had been gone for three days, having taken Dekai out on an A-rank reconnaissance mission. Minato was still away at Mount Myōboku, and Jiraiya had decided the other boy deserved his undivided attention for once. Tracking. Infiltration. Reconnaissance. The sort of lessons that were easier to teach without Namikaze accidentally mastering them in half the time.

Kushina and Natsumi had decided to use his absence to spar and, for reasons known only to them, had felt the need to warn Tsunade beforehand.

"Training" meant something different when it came to Jiraiya's most feral student and Minato's unhinged girlfriend.

For the two of them, it was generally closer to friendly attempted homicide.

Warm chakra seeped gently through Natsumi's optic nerves.

Ordinary headaches were simple. Migraines weren't much harder. Dōjutsu strain was another matter.

She knew enough to ease the strain and reduce the inflammation, but the finer workings of the Sharingan had never been part of Tsunade’s education.

After her parents had died when she was ten, she'd been raised by her grandparents and her great-uncle, Tobirama. Tobirama had never trusted the Uchiha, and he'd seen little reason to spend time letting Mito teach her the finer points of a bloodline he regarded with suspicion.

Tsunade had never inherited that particular prejudice.

If anything, she'd taken after Hashirama in that regard. Her grandfather had looked at the Uchiha and seen neighbors. Tobirama had looked at them and seen a problem waiting to happen.

Tsunade smiled faintly to herself. Natsumi was a problem, but a very, very good one. Jiraiya called her “plucky.” 

They'd known the girl's older brother back at the Academy. He'd been a few years behind Team Hiruzen, graduating early on talent alone. Quiet. Serious. The sort of boy who seemed born with perfect posture and a permanent frown. He'd grown into one of Konoha's finest jonin before stepping away from regular field duty to command the village's Police Force. Barring catastrophe, he'd almost certainly become the next head of the Uchiha Clan.

Natsumi had inherited every ounce of freedom that came with being the second child. 

The Uchiha girl fought like she had a demon inside of her, and Kushina, well, had a demon inside of her. The two of them made a great match one-on-one. Natsumi was sharp, fast, and vicious. Kushina was strong, blunt, and violent. They often asked for Shizune to sit in on their matches so that they didn’t have to worry about bodily harm.

It was annoying, but honestly? Tsunade loved it. She would have loved to have more chunin sit in while the girls trained to learn more medical ninjutsu.

It was exactly the sort of thing Tsunade kept trying to convince Hiruzen to formalize. Every chūnin should know enough medical ninjutsu to stabilize a teammate. Jiraiya's team had learned the basics in a matter of weeks. Shizune wasn't even a teenager yet, and after a year of patching up these idiots, she could already embarrass half the hospital staff. 

When she finished healing Natsumi’s eyes, she withdrew her hand.

Thinking too much about Hiruzen, about the lack of medical care, about the people they’d lose, made her chest hurt. 

She wanted a drink. She reached for the small flask in her bag and took a long sip. The liquor burned

“Thanks,” Natsumi said, rubbing her tired eyes. “Much better.”

Natsumi blinked a few times before opening her eyes.

"The headache's mostly gone."

"Good. Give it a little bit before you activate it again."

"...Fine, fine.” 

Across the field, Shizune finished wrapping the last bandage around Kushina's thigh before helping the redhead back to her feet.

"Try to just rest while your blood recirculates, wait at least—"

Kushina was already jumping up and down, like she was pumping herself up, testing the leg. 

"—five minutes," Shizune finished to nobody in particular, crossing her arms across her chest. 

Shizune gathered the last of her supplies with a sigh and wandered back beneath the shade of the tree, dropping down beside Tsunade with all the exhaustion of someone twice her age.

"The femoral artery was fine," she reported. "Just a vein. She got lucky."

Tsunade hummed approvingly around a long pull from the flask. 

"Good."

Shizune glanced sideways. She studied Tsunade for a second, as though weighing whether to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

"...Kushina's frustrating to learn on."

"Hm?"

"She heals too fast."

Shizune was young, but she was frighteningly perceptive. Annoyingly perceptive. 

"It's an Uzumaki thing. Grandma Mito was the same way."

Shizune seemed content to leave it at that. 

"I suppose that's a nice problem to have."

Before either of them could say anything else, Kushina’s voice rang across the field. 

"Natsumi!"

She pointed dramatically with one hand while the fresh bandage on her leg fluttered in the breeze.

"Round four!"

Tsunade took another long drink. 

The knocking worked its way into her dreams first.

Steady. Patient. Whoever stood outside seemed perfectly content to rap against the front door until morning if they had to.

Tsunade rolled her head against folded arms and ignored it. She'd intended to review patient charts over dinner. Instead, somewhere between her fourth cup of sake and the stack of surgical notes waiting for her attention, she'd apparently fallen asleep at the kitchen table.

The knocking stopped.

She let herself drift back toward sleep.

Something hard settled into the hollow beneath her jaw.

Her eyes snapped open.

For one disorienting instant, nothing made sense. Dark shadows were spread across the kitchen. Patient charts were scattered beneath her cheek, one corner soaked through with spilled sake. Her neck screamed from sleeping bent over the table, her mouth tasted like stale alcohol, and a porcelain ANBU mask hovered inches from her face.

A kunai rested against her throat.

The room lurched as she shoved herself backward. The chair shot out from beneath her, crashing onto its side while her left hand caught the stranger's wrist on instinct. Her right fist came around with enough force to cave in a ribcage.

The masked shinobi slipped just outside the punch and caught her forearm before it landed.

"Tsunade."

The voice cut through the haze.

She blinked hard, but something in her relaxed. 

"...Fuck."

The ANBU released her immediately and reached up to remove the mask.

Long black hair spilled over pale shoulders. Golden eyes regarded her with their usual calm, as though breaking into a house and waking a drunk woman at knifepoint was a perfectly ordinary way to spend an evening.

"Orochimaru. What the fuck—"

"I knocked."

His eyes drifted toward the half-empty sake bottle on the table.

"You were too drunk to answer."

She rubbed one temple with a wince.

"So your solution was a kunai to my neck?"

"Just the handle."

"You're an asshole."

"And you were a sitting duck."

She opened her mouth with every intention of telling him to get the fuck out of her house. 

Then she noticed his hand. It trembled.

Just enough that she almost convinced herself she'd imagined it.

Orochimaru did not normally shake.

She tried to focus on the rest of him. 

His breathing was slow and deliberate. Sweat clung to his temples despite the cool night air filtering through the open doorway, and his already pale complexion had taken on a gray, waxy cast she recognized immediately, even though it had been several years since she’d last seen her other teammate.

Her irritation disappeared.

"...Sit down."

He obeyed without argument.

Tsunade crossed to the cabinet where she kept her medical supplies, nearly tripping over the overturned chair before catching herself on the edge of the counter. 

"What happened?"

"Poison. Shoulder."

"What happened exactly?"

"I was poisoned."

She looked up.

"...By?"

"We won't be discussing that."

She stared at him for a long moment before sighing.

"Is this one of your experiments?"

"If that explanation satisfies you."

She cut away his sleeve. The puncture wound itself was unimpressive. The skin surrounding it was not.

Dark veins crept beneath the surface of his shoulder in branching lines, spreading slowly toward his collarbone.

"How long ago?"

"Forty-six minutes."

"What have you done?"

"I stopped the bleeding, as you taught me."

He reached into one of the pouches on his vest and produced a thumb-sized glass vial. Thick amber liquid clung stubbornly to the inside.

"I also recovered the toxin."

She took it immediately, holding it toward the kitchen light. 

"You know what poisoned you."

"Yes."

"You brought me the poison."

"Correct."

"And you still won't tell me what happened."

"No."

She let out a slow breath through her nose. She ignored him. Uncorking the vial, she held it just beneath her nose and drew the faintest breath. Sharp. Metallic. Something sweet beneath it. Floral. Basic. 

She corked it again.

"Easy, but you really should be at the hospital."

"I require more discretion."

"...Why?"

"Does it matter?"

She stared at him.

He stared back.

She set to work building an antidote and a poultice to cover the injection site. Luckily, it was one she could throw together drunk and with her eyes closed. 

She set the vial beside the burner and began pulling ingredients from the shelves. Dried herbs. Activated charcoal. Three different venoms. Mortar. Pestle. Distillation flask.

Orochimaru watched her work in silence. His nose crinkled.

“Your house smells differently than it used to,” he said sagely. “Not entirely like you.”

She huffed, turning up the heat on her stove.

“I took a student. Dan Kato’s niece. She’s here a lot.”

“Dan Kato,” He said, as if he was rolling the name around in his mouth, “Your dead lover’s niece.”

She pointed the pestle at him, “Don't fucking start.” 

He held up a hand, “I’m not one to comment on ironies. I’m glad you have a student. It would be nice if you had more.”

She returned to the ingredients in front of her.

"But, I was going to say that it smells like Jiraiya."

She stopped again, setting the pestle down.

She opened her mouth and closed it again immediately. There wasn't a lie she could think of that Orochimaru wouldn't smell straight through.

"...So what have you been up to for, what has it been, three years?" She settled on adding the final ingredients to the bowl. 

Orochimaru watched the pot begin to simmer.

"Working."

Tsunade snorted.

"I gathered that."

"For the last month, I've been moving between the Suna and Iwa borders."

She glanced over.

"How bad is it?"

He was quiet for a moment. Orochimaru was never in a rush to speak. Every word he chose was careful and precise.

"It reminds me of five years ago."

Any humor drained from her face as she walked over and applied the poultice she’d been working on to his shoulder. It was supposed to draw out residual poison. She gave him a liquid antidote, too, and he drank it down. She set to work, pushing healing chakra into his arm. 

"...You’re saying it feels like it did before Ame?"

He nodded once.

"It feels as though we survived the last war only to spend the interim preparing for the next. Sometimes," he continued quietly, "I wonder whether any of it accomplished anything."

She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. 

Her hands fell away from his shoulder.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Orochimaru flexed his fingers experimentally. The poison had stopped spreading.

"...Effective," he murmured.

"I know."

She barely heard herself say it. He reached for the discarded sleeve of his uniform and pulled it back over the fresh bandages.

"You're welcome," she said. 

As he fastened the last buckle on his flak jacket, Tsunade asked the question that was burning on her tongue. 

"Hiruzen knows how bad it is?"

"Yes." Orochimaru pulled the porcelain mask back onto his face. "The Hokage prefers to act when assumed certainty outweighs perceived cost."

"And by then?"

He looked at her through blank white porcelain.

"The cost has usually increased."

Orochimaru opened her back door.

“Thanks, Tsuna,” He said, measured. “I’d appreciate you not telling anyone I was here.” 

Orochimaru slipped into the darkness without another word. The door clicked shut behind him. The house became impossibly quiet.

Tsunade stood exactly where he'd left her. The remaining antidote still simmered gently on the stove. The sake bottle sat beside the scattered patient charts. Somewhere outside, crickets chirped as though the world hadn't just shifted beneath her feet.

It feels like five years ago.

Her hands moved without her. She reached for the sake bottle.

This time, she didn't bother with a cup. She drank the rest of the bottle down. It didn’t touch the searing gash that Orochimaru’s visit had opened up.

I wonder whether any of it accomplished anything.

Her heart was beating too fast. She could feel every individual beat against her ribs, hard enough that it almost hurt. It seemed to echo into her throat, into her temples, into the tips of her fingers.

She swallowed.

Her mouth had gone dry. 

She tried to take a breath. It caught halfway down.

Five years ago. Five years ago. Five years ago. 

Her lungs refused to fill. Her vision narrowed. The edges of the kitchen blurred.

She reached for the counter and missed. The floor caught her knees hard. Pain radiated through her knees and up her thighs. 

Her hands shook violently. She looked down. They were covered in blood.

She knew they weren't.

She knew exactly where she was. She was kneeling in her own kitchen. Orochimaru had just walked out the back door.

It didn't matter. She could still feel it. Warm. Thick. Slipping between her fingers as she poured chakra into a body that refused to stay alive.

Her face was wet.

Rain.

No. Tears.

Something rational, buried beneath the panic, recognized them for what they were. She was crying.

She folded in on herself instinctively, one hand pressed against the center of her chest as though she could physically hold her heart together.

Air came in short, useless gasps. 

Chapter Text

For a little while, everything in the world was exactly as Jiraiya thought it ought to be.

The bedroom was warm with the sleepy heat of early afternoon. Sunlight drifted through the open window in broad, bright bands that stretched across rumpled blankets. A breeze blew lazily through the room, stirring the curtains just enough to bring in the scent of early autumn leaves. 

Jiraiya's attention remained entirely on Tsunade, who lay against him.

The sex, as usual, had been incredible. Hot. Inspired, really. And afterward, she’d fit herself against his side, head over his chest, ear over his still pounding heart. Her hair spilled over his shoulder in a tangled golden mess that smelled faintly of soap and sunlight.

He couldn't stop touching her if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. 

His hand wandered lazily over the curve of her back, tracing slow circles with his thumb before drifting lower to rest against her hip. He moved it lower, along her backside, down her thigh, and back to her hip. 

A circuit, repeating. 

He was quietly obsessed with this newfound permission. To touch her. Hold her. Explore her body in ways that, not so long ago, she'd have clobbered him for even suggesting.

She made a quiet, absent sound somewhere between a sigh and a hum.

He smiled.

It had been good week. 

The mission with Dekai had gone well.

Better than well, really.

The kid had a knack for reconnaissance and tracking that couldn't be taught, and with Minato away at Mount Myōboku, there hadn't been another prodigy around to accidentally master every lesson before Dekai had the chance to try.

He’d made a beeline for Tsuna's place as soon as he passed through the village gates. He promised he’d meet her for lunch when he got back. 

He'd told himself that was all it was. Lunch with a friend. 

As always, it was more. 

He'd shown up dusty from the road, tossed his pack by the front door, stolen half the food she'd been making before she'd had the chance to yell at him for it, and spent a thoroughly enjoyable twenty minutes telling increasingly embellished stories about Dekai falling face-first into a swamp.

She'd smiled.

Then she'd crossed the kitchen, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and kissed him hard enough that the meal and the mission had been forgotten entirely.

Not that he was complaining.

His thumb drifted idly over the small of her back again.

It was becoming dangerously easy, spending time with her like this. 

A couple months ago, he'd never have imagined himself sprawled across Tsunade's bed in the middle of the day, well-fed and well fucked, lazily tracing circles against her skin while the rest of the village carried on outside.

It was comfortable.

More comfortable than anything in his life had any right to be.

He let out a slow breath and closed his eyes for a moment, content to listen to the steady rhythm of her breathing beneath the murmur of the village outside.

But something tugged at the edge of his thoughts, and his contentment faded just a fraction.

She'd hardly spoken since he'd arrived. Not really. She'd listened to his stories. She'd smiled in all the right places.

He knew her well enough that he could tell that her mind was somewhere else.

He opened his eyes again and looked down at the top of her head. Only now, in the quiet after everything else had faded away, did he realize something was wrong.

Some part of her was still somewhere else entirely.

"Hey, Hime."

She answered with another absent hum into his chest.

His hand completed another slow circuit over the curve of her hip before settling there again. He could feel the warmth of her skin beneath his palm, the steady rise and fall of her breathing. She'd never been especially affectionate before all of this had started. Now she barely seemed capable of keeping an inch of space between them.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

The answer came too quickly. Too flat. Too robotic.

"You don't seem fine. You haven’t said two words all afternoon."

"I said I'm fine."

He let the silence linger, hoping she'd fill it herself. Normally, she would've. She would've called him an idiot, told him to mind his own business, and thrown something at his head. Instead, she simply lay there, staring somewhere he couldn't see.

"...Did I do something wrong?"

Her eyes closed.

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes. Leave it."

"Then what's going on?"

She sighed, long and tired enough that he felt it through his chest.

"I've had a rough couple of days."

Something inside him relaxed.

"...Okay, and?"

"And I don't want to talk about it."

He nodded slowly.

He'd known Tsunade long enough to understand that forcing a conversation usually guaranteed you wouldn't have one. If she wanted space, he'd give her space. His hand resumed its lazy path over her hip, and for another minute neither of them spoke.

The silence should have felt comfortable.

Instead, it kept growing heavier.

He couldn’t let it be. 

He cleared his throat.

"If..." He hesitated, choosing the words with unusual care. "If this is getting to be too much..."

She frowned.

"What?"

He gestured vaguely between them.

"This. Us. If I'm crowding you... if we need to slow this down for a little while..."

She pushed herself up just enough to look at him properly.

"What are you talking about, idiot?"

"I don't know." He laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm just talking."

Her expression tightened.

"You're making it weird."

"Am I?"

"You are."

"How?"

She rubbed a hand across her face before letting it fall back onto the mattress.

"You're acting like this has to be something. Let it be easy."

He blinked, "I just asked if you were okay."

"And I answered."

"You really didn't."

Another weary sigh escaped her.

"I told you. I'm miserable most days. You make me feel better. Can we leave it at that? We have lunch, we have drinks, we have sex, and I forget about the shit of real life for a few minutes. That's it.”

He searched her face, trying to understand what she meant.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

The answer landed strangely. He'd expected relief. Instead he found himself more confused than before.

"So..." He hesitated. "This is just..."

He gestured between them again.

"Me helping you feel better?"

She looked almost puzzled by the question.

"...Yeah."

She settled back against his chest, closing her eyes as though the conversation had already run its course.

"Can we just leave it there? Please?"

Jiraiya stared at the ceiling for a long moment, his arm tightening around her almost unconsciously.

He'd started the conversation trying to figure out if something in particular was bothering her.  Instead, he'd learned something else. Whatever this was between them, Tsunade seemed determined to keep it as small as possible.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to come out of her mouth, but it wasn’t that. 

Jiraiya stared at the ceiling for a while after she'd drifted off again, his hand still resting against the small of her back.

The conversation sat uneasily in his chest.

We have lunch. We have drinks. We have sex.

It sounded so... clinical.

He wasn't sure why that bothered him.

He'd never been the sort to demand grand declarations. Hell, most of his relationships had lasted somewhere between a night and a handful of weeks. Casual had never frightened him.

So why did this feel different?

His thumb traced another slow circle against her skin.

Because this wasn't just anyone, it was Tsunade. Because when she'd said he made her feel better, some silly part of him had wanted to believe she'd meant him, not just sex or whatever this was to her. 

The thought gave him a little bit of a hollow feeling. 

She'd had a rough few days. She'd said as much.

From being her best friend, from watching her over the years, he knew better than anyone what grief and war and loss could do to a person.

He'd watched it hollow her out, piece by piece, and if all she could offer him right now was afternoons like this—lunches, laughter, stolen hours between missions and hospital shifts—then maybe asking for anything more was selfish.

He wasn't going to ruin this by forcing a conversation she clearly didn't want to have.

He pressed a kiss into the top of her hair and let the matter go.

Or at least, he told himself he had.

Hiruzen was already halfway through his lunch when Jiraiya arrived.

When the Hokage invited him to lunch in the office, Jiraiaya assumed that he'd wait for him. 

The old man looked up from a stack of mission reports, smiled around the rim of his teacup, and gestured toward the chair opposite his desk. 

"You're late, Jiraiya."

Jiraiya dropped into the chair with a overblown sigh and reached into the satchel slung over his shoulder.

"I was helping Tsuna with something."

"Is that so?" Hiruzen said, lifting an eyebrow. 

Jiraiya chuckled. 

He withdrew three mission logs, a reconnaissance report, and a neatly tied bundle of evaluation notes before setting them on the desk.

"The A-rank went smoothly. Dekai did well. We got back yesterday."

Hiruzen accepted the papers with an approving nod.

"I've been looking forward to reading this. I’ve always found that your written reports contain considerably less fabrications than when you tell me about the missions."

Jiraiya looked offended.

"I'll have you know I only exaggerate the boring parts."

Hiruzen untied the bundle and rolled his kohl-lined eyes.

"I know you wanted to talk about something, but before we dive in, I'm going to need some jonin recommendation forms."

Hiruzen looked up.

"Oh?"

"Minato."

Hiruzen nodded immediately. "I suspected as much."

"And Dekai. The kid's ready."

Hiruzen made a small note in the margin of one report.

"Natsumi too, but I'll leave that to Fugaku," Jiraiya shrugged. "I'd recommend her in a heartbeat, but she's his sister. Feels like one of those situations where I should keep my nose out of Uchiha business."

"Always a wise decision."

Jiraiya hesitated.

"I'd like to recommend Kushina Uzumaki too."

Hiruzen looked up suddenly.

"No."

Jiraiya frowned, "...No?"

"There are different plans for the Uzumaki girl."

"What plans?"

Hiruzen met his eyes for only a moment before returning to the papers.

"Plans I can't discuss."

Jiraiya didn't like that answer, but he recognized the tone. The conversation had crossed into territory above his clearance.

He let it go for the moment.

Hiruzen initialed something on the last page before setting the reports neatly aside and pulling two sets of jonin recommendation forms from a drawer and handing them to Jiriaya. 

He folded his hands on the desk.

"Jiraiya." Something in his voice made Jiraiya sit up straighter. "Can I speak candidly?"

"You've never had an issue being candid, sensei."

"I mean in confidence."

Jiraiaya nodded.  The Hokage looked toward the window.

"When the Second War ended, I thought we'd bought ourselves a peaceful generation. I'm no longer certain. The reports coming across my desk have become... familiar."

"Suna?" Jiraiaya asked, wincing. 

"And Iwa."

Jiraiya nodded slowly, "I've heard the same."

"Border probes, skirmishes, supply raids, missing patrols."

War.

Hiruzen didn't say it, but Jiraiya could read between the lines. Hiruzen cleared his throat, unceremoniously. 

"Not to mince words, Jiraiya, I intend to remain Hokage another five years." Hiruzen's gaze stayed on the village outside his window. "Perhaps ten."

He smiled faintly.

"Wars have a way of interfering with well-laid plans."

Jiraiya felt his stomach tighten.

"I've begun thinking seriously about succession."

He blinked.

"...Already?" Jiraiaya asked. Hiruzen had been Hokage for barely a decade. Had it been longer? His sensei was what, fifty? If that? 

"I'd rather choose my successor than have one chosen for me. I’d feel better, if something were to happen. That the village is in good hands."

That made sense. It just wasn't a conversation Jiraiya had ever imagined having.

"When I think about the Fourth Hokage..." Hiruzen paused. "I always find myself returning to my students."

Jiraiya couldn't help himself. He laughed.

Hiruzen did not.

"...You're serious."

"I am."

“Which student, sensei?” Jiraiya said, perhaps a bit naively. 

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow and gestured to the space between them. 

"Oh, absolutely not,” Jiraiya barked out a laugh. "I'd be miserable. You know me, I'm barely qualified to manage my own finances."

"Konoha has accountants."

"Could you really picture me sitting in meetings all day?"

"The Hokage has advisors."

"I like disappearing for six months at a time. I need to wander."

Jiraiya spread his hands. Hiruzen shrugged, defeated. 

"Sensei, Tsunade is the best of us. If it were me, I’d pick her."

Hiruzen's expression was flat. 

"Tsunade has significant troubles,” the Hokage said, sagely, as if it should close the matter.

“She’s a little mean, sure—” Jiraiya started.

“She’s got a temper and a serious drinking problem.”

The words felt harsh and untrue to Jiraiya, and he felt much more defensive than the situation demanded. 

“That’s not fair, Hiruzen. She cares more about this village than anyone I know. You know the war was harder on her than most.” 

Hiruzen let loose a deep sigh, and stared back out the window. 

“You're letting affections color your judgment."

Jiraiya shook his head.

"No, sensei. Is this about the argument you two had? She's right about the medics. You know she is."

Hiruzen clicked his tongue softly.

“Tsunade can't see the forest for the trees.”

It wasn't funny, but Jiraiya barked a laugh. 

“Have you ever considered that maybe you can't see the trees for the forest?” 

After a long moment, Hiruzen sighed. "I want you to think seriously about this, Jiriaya."

Jiraiya rubbed the back of his neck.

"I can rattle off a list of people who would be better at the job than me. I'll do it now.” 

He ticked off on his fingers. 

“It should be Tsuna. Fugaku Uchiha. Orochimaru, even. That new jonin, the smart one, Nara. Hell, I think the kids would even be better at it. Minato and Kushina both tell me twice a week that they want the job.”

Hiruzen just sighed. 

He reached across the desk and rested a weathered hand over Jiraiya's.

"This is a conversation, Jiraiya." He tapped the back of Jiraiya's hand once before letting go. "Not a coronation. I'm planting a seed and I'm asking you to stop saying no before you've even allowed yourself to imagine it.”

Jiraiya laughed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

"I'm imagining taking easy missions for you for the next twelve years and retiring on my fortieth birthday with all my limbs intact and a twenty-two-year-old with enor—"

The Hokage flicked his forehead. 

"You're as impossible as you were at ten."

Jiraiya rubbed his forehead with exaggerated offense.

"That's the gratitude I get after a flawless reconnaissance mission?"

"That's the gratitude you get for making juvenile jokes in the Hokage's office."

Hiruzen sighed, though there was the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Think about what I said."

Jiraiya opened his mouth, another joke already forming. It died before it reached his lips.

Something in Hiruzen's expression stopped him. The old man wasn't humoring him anymore. 

He was asking… really asking.

Jiraiya's grin softened into something smaller.

"...I'll think about it before I formally decline.”

Hiruzen seemed satisfied. 

“Now, I have a meeting in ten minutes, but tell me about your novel.” 

Jiraiya beamed.

Days later, Jiraiya arrived at the hospital just after noon with three paper-wrapped cartons of dumplings tucked beneath one arm.

He slipped through the front doors, exchanged a few absent nods with nurses who recognized him, and made his way downstairs without breaking stride. No one stopped him anymore. No one asked who he was there to see. Somewhere along the way, he'd apparently become part of the furniture.

The laboratory smelled of antiseptic, herbs, and the stench of whatever unpleasant experiment happened to be underway that day.

Today, it was an absolutely brutalized rodent of some sort. 

Shizune sat alone at one of the steel worktables with her sleeves rolled to her elbows, methodically dissecting something that had probably been scurrying that morning. Organs were arranged in neat little rows beside an anatomy textbook covered in her tidy handwriting.

Jiraiya stopped several feet away and peered over her shoulder.

"...Should I ask?"

"You should not."

She didn't even look up.

He grinned and set one of the paper bundles on the table behind her. 

"For you, whenever you're done… whatever you're doing."

"We're documenting the gastrointestinal effects of a hemotoxic compound." She adjusted a pair of forceps with surprising delicacy. "It causes progressive necrosis of the intestinal lining, followed by uncontrolled peristalsis, catastrophic fluid loss, and terminal hypovolemic shock."

The huge words coming out of the small girl should not have surprised Jiriaya, but they always did. 

“Are you saying we have shinobi out there shitting themselves to death?”

Shizune looked up at him and wrinkled her nose. 

“Don’t be gross, senpai.” 

Her eyes flicked from the dumplings to him, and a small smile appeared.

"Thank you. Dumplings again?"

"Chicken," he nodded. “If you can stomach having any lunch after dealing with all of that.” 

She shrugged, like she hadn't thought about it. 

He nodded toward the door at the back of the lab. 

"Boss lady around?"

Shizune's smile faded.

"...Yeah. Back office."

"Everything alright?"

Shizune was quiet for a moment.

Finally, she shrugged again. 

"She's in a mood."

He snorted.

"So... it's Tuesday."

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"I mean..." She seemed to be searching for the right words. "I think she probably needs food."

Hiruzen's words from a few days earlier drifted uninvited through his thoughts. He still thought the old man had been unnecessarily harsh.

Even so, he found himself tightening his grip on the paper bag.

"I'll go bother her."

Shizune nodded, already reaching for another dumpling.

"You're good at that."

There was no teasing in her voice. Jiraiya smiled to himself and headed through the lab to the back office. 

The office looked as though Tsunade had been living in it.

Medical journals lay open across every available surface. Loose pages covered in chemical formulas spilled off the edges of the desk. Half-filled vials sat in careful rows beside stained pipettes, mortars, pestles, and enough scribbled notes to make his eyes hurt.

She sat in the middle of it all without looking up.

Her hands moved with practiced precision, drawing a pale lavender solution into another tiny vial before corking it and reaching immediately for the next.

Only then did he notice the rest.

Yesterday's clothes. Hair coming loose around her face. A pot of coffee burned nearly black on the warmer to her right. Two empty sake bottles sat in the wastebasket beneath the desk, and one half-full in front of her workstation. 

His stomach tightened.

He set the paper bag of dumplings down beside her elbow.

"Brought lunch."

"Thanks."

Her eyes never left the vial.

"You should eat it."

"When I'm done here."

Jiraiya looked around the room.

"...When's that?"

"I'm close."

"To what?"

She finally glanced up, but only for a second. She swirled something in a test tube.

"The foundation of it all."

He frowned.

"What foundation?"

"The foundation of the poisons, the cunt from Suna." She sounded irritated, like she didn’t want to be explaining this right now. Her voice was a little bit slurred. He couldn’t tell if it was the exhaustion or the sake.

She reached for another vial. "Every poison she builds starts from the same methodology. Same assumptions. Same chemistry. I've almost got it."

"You've almost got... what?"

"The framework. The base, are you listening?" She rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand before immediately returning to work. "If I can figure out how she thinks, how she works, I can start predicting compounds before she invents them."

"That’s incredible,” He said, trying to sound more optimistic than concerned. If she cracked it, it would be a huge boon to Konoha.

But a question still prodded at the front of his brain.

“Have you slept since the last time I saw you?"

"I'm so close."

"You said that already."

"Because I am."

He studied her for another moment. It wasn't excitement. It was an obsession. It was avoidance. It was manic. 

"...Are you okay?"

Her hands stopped.

"I wish you'd stop fucking asking me that."

The words were rushed together.

She resumed working, extracting something from a vial and transferring it onto a microscope slide.

His expression softened.

"You're my friend, Tsuna, and you're not acting like yourself."

She let out a sharp breath through her nose and slapped the desk hard enough to rattle the glass containers.

"For fuck's sake, Jiraiya." Now she looked at him. "Are you this nosy with all your girls?"

He blinked.

"...All my girls?"

"Yeah." She leaned back in her chair. "Do you stick your nose into their business after you've stuck your dick in them, too? Or is it just me?"

The words hung in the room, dripping acid between them. He stared at her for a long moment. Whatever response he'd expected, it wasn't that.

"What the fuck do you mean by that?"

"You heard what I said."

"No." He shook his head. "I heard you take a cheap shot."

She shrugged.

He laughed once, but there wasn't any humor in it.

"Tsuna." He rubbed a hand over his face before looking back at her. "If you have a problem with the way I date or something..." His voice had gone quieter. "You've had more than fifteen years to say something. Anything. And I would have—”

He didn't know how to finish that sentence.

“I don’t give a shit what you do.” She said, simply, turning back to her work, biting her lip while she messed with a glass tube.

He looked at the untouched dumplings and then back at her. 

“Whatever,” He said, coldly for a moment, before feeling bad. "...I'm gonna go. Please eat something. And drink some water.” 

"It’s not your fucking business what I do."

Something inside him snapped.

"Oh, go fuck yourself, Princess."

"Fuck you. Don't call me that." 

"Maybe we do need that space. I won't fucking bother you anymore. Let me know when you pull your shit together." 

He turned and walked out before she could answer, and slammed the door behind him.

He crossed the laboratory in long strides before slowing beside Shizune's worktable.

She looked up from the rat she'd been dissecting. What Jiraiya was fairly certain was that its bladder hung delicately from a pair of forceps. She studied his face for a moment before speaking.

"...I did tell you she was in a mood."

He let out a tired breath and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah. You did."

He glanced back toward the closed office door.

"Just... try to make sure she eats something."

Shizune nodded.

"...After she goes and fucks herself."

Jiraiya froze.

He closed his eyes. Of course, she'd heard the whole argument; he hadn't closed the goddamn door.  

His forehead met the wooden doorframe with a soft thunk.

"...Right."

Silence settled over the laboratory, broken only by the quiet clink of metal against glass somewhere farther down the room.

Finally, he looked back at Shizune. She was twelve, and yet he was about to ask too much of her. 

"If she..."

The words caught in his throat.

"If her work starts getting messy… If she gets worse..."

Shizune didn't make him finish.

"I'll notice. I spend more time with her than anyone.” 

There wasn't any pride in the observation. 

"I'll tell you. If things get bad."

Jiraiya held her gaze for another moment before nodding.

"...Thanks, kid."

He lingered only long enough to convince himself there was nothing more he could do before turning and making his way toward the stairs.

He lingered at the bottom of the hospital steps, staring out across the village without really seeing it.

It's not your business what I do.

Fine.

She was right.

He had been making it his business.

Whether she'd eaten. Whether she'd slept. Whether she'd been drinking too much. Whether she was working herself into another collapse because she'd decided the only way to beat death was to stop living herself.

She hadn't asked him to worry.

In fact, she'd been pretty fucking clear that she didn't want him to.

His jaw tightened.

Fine.

If she wanted to run herself into the ground, that was her decision. She was twenty-eight years old, one of the most brilliant shinobi the village had ever produced, and more than capable of making her own mistakes.

He wasn't her keeper. He wasn't her boyfriend. Hell, by her own admission, he wasn't anything more than someone she had lunch with, drank with, and slept with whenever the world became too heavy.

He'd done casual before. 

It had never been difficult.

You had a good time. You enjoyed each other's company. Then life carried you in different directions, and that was that. No hard feelings. No expectations. No pretending you had any claim over another person's choices.

So this should have been easy.

It was what she'd wanted from the beginning.

The thought should have brought relief.

Instead, it just made him angry.

Angry that she'd looked him in the eye and acted like asking if she was okay was an intrusion. Angry that she'd rather bury herself beneath coffee, sake, and work than let someone carry even a fraction of the weight with her. Angry that she'd decided needing another person—even a little—was somehow worse than destroying herself one miserable day at a time.

He scrubbed a hand over his face.

He let out a slow breath.

It didn't matter.

She'd made herself perfectly clear.

If she wanted easy, he'd give her easy.

No more hovering. No more questions. No more trying to help her if she didn’t want helping. 

No more talking for a while.