Characters: Shizune, Tsunade
Summary: You were like my mother. But sometimes I think the only reason I stayed with you was the waiting.
Pairings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

I wonder if you know what it's like: sitting there, staring. Waiting for something to happen, afraid it never will. I bate my breath, and I wait for you to start really breathing again, because I feel like you've spent every year since that night drowning in your own despair and your own sloth. Standing there in the doorway, seeing you slumped over a bar, drunk out of your mind so you can't remember, I can almost hate you.

But I'm never quite able to manage it. You just look so helpless lying there, so dejected, so small. How can anyone hate that?

I was always waiting. You knew that, but you didn't know what I was waiting for, so you didn't bother to live up to my expectations. Instead, you wrecked them, tore them apart and then smashed them out of existence under your heel for emphasis; you were never one for half-measures, I'll say that, Tsunade-sama.

You were like my mother. More than that, since I can't really remember my mother very well; even jisan's face starts to grow a little fuzzy around the edges, it was that long ago. The best times for me, when we walked together on long, dusty roads with no end in sight, was when you acted, even if just a little bit, like you really were my mother.

God, I lived for those days. Those days when you were sober (I think that's why they were so rare) and instead of telling me not to ask questions you'd just smile tolerantly when I asked them and always give an answer, even if it was a bit sarcastic. We'd actually talk for once, instead of moving on in silence. I remember one time, when I was young; I had gotten a sunburn from walking with you in Kusa no Kuni in the summertime, and you healed the worst spots of it. I lived for those days, when you treated me like I was more to you than just the little girl you forced yourself to take on.

I can't deny it; you taught me a lot. You taught me everything you knew concerning medical ninjutsu and everything besides that. You taught me how to navigate through a city with money and domestic matters in mind.

Of course, not all of the things you taught me were good.

You also taught me how to curse like a sailor and how to drink like one too.

And above everything else, you taught me how to be disappointed.

I suppose I had expected too much out of you. That was always my problem; I expected the world and then I'm actually surprised when I don't get the world. Since I give that much in everything I do—I'm like you; I don't believe in half-measures—I always expect it out of everything else.

The heroine of my childhood… was a drunk and a compulsive gambler. A shiftless vagrant. An utterly irresponsible woman.

You became something else entirely when you became Godaime Hokage, and in that I was able to salvage my dreams a little bit, even if my rose-tinted views of you had been shattered forever. Before then, though, all I could really do was wait, and watch you. Try to change you, and know I never could.

And wait to see if you would change on your own.

Of course, you didn't, not really.

Maybe that's why I never tried to stop you when you got down to your occasional vigilante activities. I remember; the thought of a young girl being raped in some back alley especially offended you. I should have stopped you; your intervention in the commission of crimes always drew far too much attention to us. But instead, I found myself cheering you on, if only silently. It's more than my life's worth to tell you how much the sight of you shaking off apathy, if only for a moment, warmed my blood.

In that, at least, I could see some hint of what you used to be. What you still could be, if you put your heart back into your body and let it beat.

Those hints gave me hope. I followed you everywhere, even when I could barely stand to be in your presence. I had never had a true home, never had any friends—we never stayed anywhere long enough for me to make friends. There was nothing in my life that seemed permanent, not even you—you were always shifting faces and souls, and I could barely recognize one aspect of you when I had seen another for any period of time.

What you gave me in return was not what anyone could call decent payment: long nights spent awake, bruised and aching limbs from dodge training and from fighting off your creditors. Headaches and tears.

But when you smiled at me, a real smile without the faintest hint of acid in your lips, it made just as much a fool as the creditors you tricked into canceling the payments you owed them.

I followed you anywhere. I still will.

Those years of waiting were Hell though.

I thought you'd never start breathing again.