My 'Will of Fire' series is only loosely connected, and not necessarily all the same universe/AU. It is simply a series exploring the different characters living out the Will of Fire, and titled with their role to Konoha. The series includes Jonin, Kunoichi, and Guardian. This installment deals with Tsunade and her life, love, and losses. In the Japanese, she is addressed as Tsundae-Hime, or, Princess Tsunade - hence the title.
Will of Fire
Hime
"How was your first day?"
"Well, one of my teammates is an idiot," she snorts into her bowl. I don't think he can do much. He is loud and full of himself, and annoying. The other one is quiet. I still can't figure out how I ended up on a team with the smartest and dumbest kids from our class."
"It can't be that bad, sister," Nagawaki says, and his eyes are large and round and full and they know nothing but awe for the world of shinobi and his elder sister.
"Spend more than five minutes with Jiraiya and then say that," she scoffs.
The shuriken glide from Orochimaru's fingertips like he commissioned deadly beautiful birds of steel to fly at his will. 'Shuriken Shadow Clone jutsu," he says in that always calm voice of his, and they become a flock of homing darts piercing the heart of the targets.
"Amazing!" Tsunade says, and the pale boy says nothing.
"That isn't so great,' Jiraiya says brashly. 'I can do that – just watch this!' 'Shur..shur...shurikenwhateverjutsu!" he cries, and the glittering metal stars fall like lead from his hands.
Tsunade rolls her eyes at his idiocy.
Orochimaru has no parents. They died when he was younger. She finds him one day at their grave, and hesitates to disturb him.
"Master sent you?" he asks without turning around.
"Yeah, sorry," she mumbles, rubbing her arm absently. "We have a mission."
He murmurs something to the stones, that she doesn't quite hear, before getting up with that fluid silent grace he wears as easily as morning wears mist. She trots after him, and notes the white snake skin wound at his belt.
"That's new,' she says.
'For luck,' he answers.
The first summer comes and goes.
Orochimaru is a little quieter, and a little sharper, and there is something in his eyes that glitters subtly like prey hiding in the shadow.
Jiraiya is brasher, taller, but actually improved, and sincere in his regard for his teammates.
Tsunade's chakra control is better than both of theirs, even if her luck is not. Orochimaru won't gamble with her anymore, but Jiraiya will. When he's won all of her pocket money, he tells her she can just let him look down her top as payment. He proudly wears a black eye until the summer dwindles into nothing.
War is coming. That isn't true. War is already here. It never leaves. It is always just on the periphery. It is peace that is the illusion, and it is dangerous to believe it is anything more than the space between battles.
Their team is strong and fast and quickly gaining notoriety. Nagawaki can't wait to be like his sister, and is impatient to graduate from the academy.
But he sees the children with no parents, and the widows and elderly, and the gifts that they still give to Konoha. The village is precious and they offer their lives. His love of the village is deep and steadfast and he wants nothing more than to protect his grandfather's dream – his legacy.
He tells his sister of his dream, and she kisses his forehead affectionately. He adores her and he will make her proud
And she sees some of the genius of her grandfather, the insight of her genius teammate and the enthusiasm of her brash teammate in his enthusiasm, and realizes her affection runs deeply for them all.
At training, they all hit their targets.
Orochimaru is lean and lithe and deadly. Jiraiya has grown tall and strong, and every inch the shinobi he swore he had always been.
'He's still an idiot,' she mutters to herself, fingering the necklace that rests against a bosom it is useless to try and contain. He says something loud and laughs with too much honesty for a world like theirs. Orochimaru looks at him with tolerant amusement, but even she can see there is an affection between them. He is an idiot. But he is the truest idiot she's ever met.
She is thinking about the dreams and fulfillments of the village, and gives Nagawaki their grandfather's necklace.
She sleeps that night and dreams of a village where Jiraiya is Hokage and Nagawaki is next in line, and she is proud of them both
He is too good and kind and true and pure for this world.
His shinobi career spans less than a year and ends in the cruelest way.
She is told too late, and she runs to find him all goodness and kindness and honesty and dead. Screams wrack her chest. And Jiraiya puts a heavy and warm hand on her shoulder
Orochimaru waits outside, and she knows now they share the bitter poison of the inevitability of death and the unfairness of a life robbed.
And Jiraiya is not a fool, but he remains hopeful where her heart is too broken to even consider such a useless emotion.
And she sees his face in the broken body of her brother, and bats away his warmth and crawls into the bottom of a sake bottle.
She puts the pieces of her heart into the bottom and anesthetizes them where they can cause her no more pain.
They fight side by side, and are the only three standing when Hanzo leaves the battle field. Jiraiya leans heavily on her, and though her heart is broken her body is strong – perhaps to make up for the erstwhile weakness.
Even Orochimaru is out of breath, and Tsunade knows that he has felt fear.
As Hanzo leaves she allows herself one, ridiculous second to half believe there isn't anything that can stand against them when they stand together.
But Jiraiya leans more heavily, for once not because of any attempt to get physically closer, and Orochimaru retreats back inside the coolness of his façade.
And they are standing alone together and she feels like a link between two pieces of the same whole that might not be doing its job
Orochimaru almost betrays them, and for once she sides with Jiraiya. She would have killed Orochimaru and they both know it. He would have killed Jiraiya and they both know it.
Yet Jiraiya trusts them both with his life.
Orochimaru declares him a fool and tries to scoff at the affection he refuses to allow himself to embrace.
She says the same but stays by his side while he sleeps in recovery, and she brushes fingertips gently across the planes of his face.
Steadfast. Kind. He will never desert his village
He will never leave her.
And no one sees the kiss she presses to gentle fingertips that press against his forehead. She silently thanks him for being her rock in a world of tumbling sand, and no one bears witness to the tear that slides down her cheek except for old ghosts and faded memories.
He is staying in Ame.
He is staying to help train the children, to give them hope.
Three rag-tag urchins with nothing to believe in, and he will be that for them.
He is leaving her.
And she and Orochimaru return to the village without him and she once again declares him an idiot.
Orochimaru glances at her before parting ways. "I'll miss him, too."
She pours herself into the work or the village. She needs to do her apart while he is away and her part is healing. She voices her concerns at the meeting, and is approached afterward by the gentle man.
He is quiet like Orochimaru but gentle. He is earnest like Jiraiya but tempered.
He speaks to both sides of her shattered heart, and she places her trust in his hands
And he lost a sister where she lost a brother and she falls in love and sets on a path where she is wanted an needed.
And he won't leave her.
She loves Dan.
But now and then her heart aches to think of her teammate.
She chalks it up to affection and turns her eyes back toward the present and the future
There is nothing for her in the past.
Hands covered in blood, pressed desperately to the chest trying to pump life back into the heart that has entwined with her own.
But all of her skill and power is useless and he is gone.
And the necklace is returned.
And she couldn't save her brother.
And she couldn't save Dan.
And there is no strong hand to assure her that anything waits for her in this world other than more heart break.
And she won't admit that she misses him terribly, and is too stubborn to go look for the friend that can hold her together.
She can't admit that in loving another she was still loving him, and her world is nothing but betrayal.
She leaves what is left of her heart to dissolve in the bitterness of tears and sake, and gambles because no matter what the rumors say, she has nothing left to lose. Or maybe she gambles to prove that she has something left to win or lose, but she knows there is nothing now.
She teaches Shizune and they mourn Dan. They travel.
She pieces together what she can of her heart even if it isn't really functional
She is haunted by blood and nightmares and refuses to believe in dreams.
There is only one person left in this world that can hold and shelter and protect ideals, and she never sees him.
Fractured and scattered, her team is no more.
Rumors tell her that Jiraiya's student is to become Hokage and Orochimaru Is angry.
Their master chases him from the village, and he is nowhere to be found, having left with his atrocities.
And she is one of the only people left alive that know the boy that became the monster, and she knows why sensei let him escape.
And oddly it is one more thing gone from Konoha that means her home will never exist again.
She cannot believe in dreams, and that is all the village is.
For his love of science and power and method, Orochimaru is still the construct of an aching genius boy that lost what he loved.
And in this they are the same.
"At least," she reflects, downing another bottle, "the only life I am gambling with is my own."
He finds her.
Years have passed and he finds her
Or what is left of her.
He tells her of her duty and that the village needs her, and brings around a loudmouthed brat that must have been cloned from him. No, she reminds
herself pouring another drink. It is Kushina and Minato's brat. They're dead, too.
And she is angry that he has come to tell her about duty to a village he left so long ago, even though she knows he has worked tirelessly for Konoha the whole time.
She is ashamed of her own weakness and needs her pain to feel alive and literally can only think of one thing she has left to lose.
And somewhere beneath the reluctance and sake and everything else, she is hiding a dark secret.
He is the only thing left that she can lose
So she anesthetizes the pain and pretends he doesn't matter and buries memories and loyalties and regrets of the past to prevent the pain of the future.
And that boy.
That boy that is so like her brother.
She hates him.
No.
She wants to hate him.
She needs to hate him because he is going to spell the end of her hiding and she isn't ready.
But his eyes are so like Nagawaki's.
And Jiraiya's are the same
And she hates that he still can reach her when she has tried so hard and for so long to bury that person he knew.
So she resurrects and puts her trust in the future that Jiraiya sees and takes the biggest gamble of her life.
And he assures her he is there and that familiar warm hand is on her shoulder
She hates that she believes him
And that it resonates in the fractures of her heart.
He takes Naruto to train but keeps her informed. She is doing the job he says he cannot do – which she doesn't believe – but she will do her part and make him proud.
She visits their sensei's grave and sighs.
"Looks like we have to trust in the idiots again," she murmurs, and imagines his wry smile around the pipe between his teeth.
Naruto returns and he does not.
His letters still come, though, and she knows he is searching
Her heart buoyed by hope is still anchored in loss, and she thinks of him often.
Dan was the love of her youth, but he is the love of her life, no matter how often she denies it
He is leaving.
They sit in the Konoha sunset with the inevitability of his departure making a chasm of the small space between them.
"Bet against me," he teases her. "You always lose."
And he doesn't know how much that statement is true.
But if there is anything left for her to win it is because of him and the faith he has always had in her
And she realizes he has never left her – and that she has to let him go
And she thinks her heart will break but it has been reforged in hope.
When he returns, there will be no more hiding.
He doesn't return
They can't even retrieve his body
And she knows there is nothing left of her past to love – it has passed to her to protect the future.
But she allows herself one night to weep for him and the love she could never quite face, resolving to safeguard his dream.
And Naruto is all of their dreams now.
She is revived by Orochimaru.
And they both know why
He is still the bond between them.
Even in death.
He is in her perfect world and is laughing and alive. There is no rift in their team, her brother is there and Dan is Hokage.
And he has stepped aside to make her happy once again.
But in the dream Dan doesn't need her anymore and that is alright.
She lives to see Nagawaki take over as Hokage and Dan settle down elsewhere.
And she is by Jiraiya's side.
Like always.
"It has been years," she says, staring into her cup of tea.
"And we are both young," Orochimaru says, his face one she remembers in years gone by.
"Speak for yourself," she mutters
"You should try it," he says idly. "You can't live forever - not the way you are going about it."
"That is alright," she half smiles. "I don't want forever. There are people waiting."
It is silent and Orochimaru sits back and watches her carefully before admitting
"I miss him, too."
Thank you for reading!
-Giada