Muse
Yugao
Summary: They inspired, in their own way.
Author's Note: This has actually been floating around in my head for a year but I only got around to doing it now, for reasons I'm not really sure of. I was obsessed with Greek Mythology for a while and the idea of comparing the muses to the female characters in Naruto was very alluring, so I decided to go on and do it. This took some research, so thanks to Edith Hamilton whose book I used as a basis for some facts on the muses themselves. I decided to start with Tsunade for no real reason, and the succeeding drabbles will be in no particular order.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Muses, and I do not own Naruto either.
Calliope
I am the beauty of speech, the muse of heroes and their stories.
"You are the best of them."
Tsunade was never sure what they had meant by that, though the people who told her so knew nothing of the others' strikingly similar opinions of her. It was a compliment, to be sure, and whoever it was received either a bright thank-you or a swift, playful punch to the shoulder, depending on who was saying it.
Her grandfather was the first to say it, when she was just a little girl, not even waist-high compared to the man who was the First Hokage. She was four years old and hopeful, and she stood at his side tugging on the end of his shirt (the extent of her reach), her amber eyes glistening as she stared up at him. He laughed as he put a hand on her head and picked her up, carrying her on his shoulders as she giggled. He smiled back up at her blindly (as she had put her small hands over his eyes) and said, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."
Her teacher, Sarutobi-sensei (whom she would later come to know as the Sandaime) was the second. It was true that she had never been his favorite student – such an honor had always gone to Orochimaru, but she never gave up trying, never gave up striving for the respect she wanted from her sensei. He must have noticed that despite the fact she was neither the most intelligent (as Orochimaru was) or the most resourceful (as Jiraiya had always been) in the group, she was the most driven, and after a hard day's training Sarutobi made it a point to come up to her, pat her on the back, and say, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."
Jiraiya (oh, Jiraiya, you fool, she couldn't help but think, with tears in her eyes, as she remembered) was the third. She had somehow been talked into a game of strip poker, and in that adolescent defiance she had tried (and failed, miserably) to beat her teammate and closest friend. He was laughing – still fully clothed – as he put her bets in his bag, not staring openly (or even at all, come to think of it) at her naked figure, as she had half-expected him to. Some time afterward she found herself laughing along with him (when she normally would've punched him straight to Suna), though she couldn't quite remember why, and his back was turned as she dressed herself, but she could hear the smile in his voice as he told her, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."
Dan came next. How could she ever forget? She remembered it the day after he died, the day after that, and the day after that. And she remembered it the day of his funeral, as she put the solitary white rose on top of his coffin just before it was lowered into his grave. She could still remember his eyes, his smile, and the pouring rain outside as his lips touched her forehead and he held her close. She almost missed it because of the sound of the rain splattering across the windowpane, but she was lucky to have heard him when he murmured, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."
Shizune was the fifth. She was just a girl at the time, idealistic but with crushed hopes, after her uncle had died. She had no one else to turn to, no alternate road to take – she wasn't one of the lucky ones born into a clan, or at the very least into a large family. It was just her and her uncle, until the man she had come to look at as a father passed away. She had been following the woman out of Konoha and pleaded for her to take her on as an apprentice, an assistant, as anything, as long as she was something and had something to hope for. And when Tsunade asked why her, why this, Shizune could only reply, "Because, Tsunade-sama, you are the best of them."
Sakura was the sixth. The Fifth Hokage knew as well as anyone else in the village that she was crushed beyond belief when Uchiha Sasuke left, but pity was not the reason she took the candy-haired kunoichi on as a student. She had seen promise in the girl, but above and beyond that she had seen herself – neither the most skilled nor the craftiest in the team, but with enough fire to light all of Konoha if she had to. They had been training in the meadow that day, and the ground was pushed up all around them thanks only to Tsunade's sheer strength, and at first (before she begun to be able to do all this herself) she was only able to say, in awe, "Wow, Tsunade-sama, you are the best of them."
Naruto was the seventh. He had been racked up in his own misery after Jiraiya's death (and who wasn't, Tsunade thought to herself) and had only just found out that Tsunade had lied when she said she was the one who sent him to the mission that killed him (Jiraiya, you idiot, you should have stayed. What did you leave me for; I don't need any more of this on my mind, but I can't help it). They both remembered Naruto's outburst when she had first told him, and he hung his head in apologetics. "I knew you couldn't have done it. I could hardly believe it when you said you did," he had said by way of apology. And when she asked him why he had doubted, he answered, "Because, Tsunade-obaa-chan, you are the best of them."
There were times, now, when she felt that she had not done enough in her life. Here she was, fifty-something and past her prime; her best years were behind her. She was a compulsive drunkard and gambler, with an irritable temper and horrible luck. She was the very epitome of imperfection, though her fresh-faced appearance gave no hint towards that.
They called her the best of them, but she felt like the worst.
She had lost too many people (too many, too many for one to bear, she had sobbed with sake on her lips) to death. She had lost her grandfather, her parents, her brother, her lover, and now… and now… Her eyes welled up with tears as the memory of that moment with her best friend, her closest, her enemy and her confidant, her rival and her ally, played over and over and over in her mind. She was still not immune to the sadness that came with losing someone.
But strong as she was, she wasn't brave enough to cry.
She was the Hokage. The fifth in a line of greats, a line of people who must have heard the same compliment (Tsunade, he had told her, though his back was turned, you are the best of them). Her role now was not to just be Tsunade but to be the Hokage, to be fitting of the praise. In a way Konoha was a child, her child, the one she had sacrificed having a family, having children of her own for. Too many people looked up to her, saw her as the goal they wanted to reach, the paragon they wanted to emulate if they were ever going to grow. Too many people thought she was the best of them.
She wasn't, but she was doing her hardest to try to be.
I am Calliope, and I am the best of them.
Author's Note: Myeah, I probably should have stuck SPOILER across the whole page, but if you didn't know this was going to happen, I am very, very sorry. As for the next piece (if you want me to continue, that is), if you want to, you could suggest which kunoichi I write about xD I still have no idea who I'm doing next. Please review? Only if you wanna.