Characters: Tsunade, Kushina, Mito
Summary: "Obaasan? Who was that?" "No one you need to worry about, dear." Tsunade thinks about her years later, and wonders.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Nothing to report. Reviews would be greatly appreciated, as they give me an accurate gauge of what you, the readers, think.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
"Obaasan? Are you home?" Tsunade stares at the small, white-washed walls, and wonders why her grandmother chose to live in this tiny little bungalow on the very edge of the village, where there are few comforts or amenities.
She knows, truthfully, that her grandmother will be dead within a matter of days, and though they have never been close, Tsunade wants to see Mito one last time before the end.
"Obaasan? Obaasan?" It doesn't take Tsunade to search the length of the house and come upon the closed door of Mito's bedroom which she, never much of one for excess propriety, opens without knocking, pressing wide open to let the light in.
Tsunade is immediately aware of the presence of two people—unusual, since Mito almost never receives visitors—in the bedroom.
Mito sits on the edge of her bed (her hair is white in old age, face heavily lined, back bowed and bent to the point that she is nearly a foot shorter than she was in her prime), face breaking into a gentle but strangely sad smile. There is a child, a little girl, crying hard into Tsunade's grandmother's lap, who turns, drawing in a gasp of breath that is at once startled and ragged, to stare at Tsunade.
This girl looks more like Mito's granddaughter than Tsunade herself does. She has long fire red hair, vividly scarlet, that falls to her hips in a long, straight river. Her skin is fair and pale, with a soft, rounded face. She looks exactly as Mito was described during her youth, except that her eyes are violet-gray, different from Mito's shade. Her face is awash in tears, hair clinging in tendrils to her cheeks; her eyes are raw and bloodshot.
For a moment, they stare at each other, Tsunade questioning and confused, the girl startled and resembling a deer caught in floodlights.
Then, the girl bolts. In a flash of scarlet, she tears past Tsunade in the doorway, and within seconds Tsunade can hear the sharp slam of the front door being shut as she flees.
Tsunade quirks her head and frowns at her grandmother, who smiles in greeting and holds out a hand, smoothing down the skirt of her kimono that's been saturated with tears. "Hello, Tsunade. This is a treat; you hardly ever come to visit me." Only Uzumaki Mito (the same woman who insisted on keeping her maiden name—and thus her identity—after marrying) could say something like that without any connotation of resentment.
Her blonde granddaughter nods absently and points towards the front door, in the direction from which the younger girl fled. "Obaasan? Who was that?" she asks curiously.
Mito's startling turquoise blue eyes, the final remnant of her once celebrated beauty, soften in a mixture of compassion and kindness. "No one you need to worry about, dear."
Years later, Tsunade wonders. She was so very much like Mito...