Title: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Summary: Tribute to Jiraiya. Jiraiya is done for and it's no puzzle why the whole of Konoha mourns his demise. Death fic crap. Oneshot. Tsunade's POV.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto; genius Kishimoto does.
Warning: Possible spoiler. I really do think Jiraiya's finished and I love him. I'm paying him a tribute. This is unedited so expect mistakes every so often. This sucks too. Kinda inspired by Strider's 'Deliverance' which is effing brilliant so feel free to compare if you wanna gauge the difference between a cow and a god.
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Whenever you went away you never said when you'd be back. You'd just brave the road and allow your retreating figure to inform us that though you knew not the schedule of your return, you'd be back safely at any space of time from the moment you left to the second you'd die. Indifference was it? Not quite, but it definitely was nothing less than the absence of attention for our concerned warnings. In the end, you'd always show up, turn over your presence, take hold of our indecisions and unknowingly subject our actions under your unmotivated influence. I don't know if you'd known that all along but what use is there to ask, you're gone, irrevocably lost.
You took on the world at your leisure; entering dangers you yourself might have invented, writing novels no one would dare to start, chasing women whose names you never knew; all of these to fight evil under your own orders as you used to steadfastly insist. A solo-flyer you had always been. In your end, I can only take comfort in the vague hope that you were not alone. Once or twice you'd entertain in your journey (a journey you assigned to yourself and the conditions of which no one could enumerate) the company of someone, a student or a friend. Perhaps you had done so thrice. Or maybe I'm just pushing it; you were a hermit after all. And I was this expectant friend who would unceasingly await a recluse's visits. When you came you were often late but always too early for the afterlife. But you showed up nonetheless. And for a time, that breezed me into such a pitch of happiness. For a time.
I will now recall you in the days of our youth, the times that are long past dusted that recounting such in honest details seems to require a primitive language. No one will write your biography; no tongue can deliver and do justice to your story just as no witness has dared to relay the accounts of your death, perhaps no eye could have braved it. I can only dimly speculate and convince myself that it was too heroic for mortal voice to speak and maybe too painful to be included in history. Your name, it had always been scattered abroad, if only in whispers. That never failed to fuel in me a childish excitement that suggested that somehow, you were lurking near enough to observe us. Didn't you know that when all that I loved took abode beneath the earth, you walked on by and sowed in me the awareness that I was never alone, and that I never had been? That is until you had gone. Now, only your unseen ghost can remind me of that.
There were too many things you sought to accomplish, too many secrets you wished you'd unraveled but not as many as the ones you kept in impenetrable confinement. Now I try to decipher the tasks you left undone. You said you'd correct Orochimaru's wrongs and straighten his course. It was a shame that I never had the same conviction like yours. I had only permitted the sinners' offense and redeemed my looseness by administering punishments. Unlike you, you worked from the roots and finished at the tips. Hereon, I will abide by your patterns and try, though in vain, to establish your continuity. Somehow.
The rain pours now like gunshots hailing from the sky. Its volume only brings back the shadows you left behind. And the mists that will follow through shall produce your phantom I so desire to meet. Perhaps. Haunt me, terrify me, as a wraith would, just show yourself in whatever means. But you were never like that. You never told us where you were; you only led us to find where you were not and with labor at that too. It's true; you had a long span of life, long enough to be described as a brief experience for those who once held you dear. It was a blessing nonetheless, although I wished it lasted longer and fared along slower. But such is uncontested impossibility so we can only weep in mournful silence and beseech reality for less cruelty. You could've been forever. In our minds, that is.
Though I can impart this much about you and your plight, yours was a heart you seldom revealed to any. But this I boldly claim; yours is a story none can challenge, a most beautiful page in my life. I can't help but to believe that in your last breath, your mission sailed in perfect accordance to your plot. Fulfillment. I know because you had always pushed your way not to reason but to succeed only. Hokage, Legendary Nins, what were they to you? I never received the scarcest hints of the things you valued most. Even so, I persevere to ask, was I ever one of them? I guess we'll never know.
I now bury you with bitter sweat and tears in a hallowed secrecy where no malice can stretch to you. You've been gone long enough to be finally put to rest. So many had awaited you and countless were the things that had you waiting. I will quell the tales of your shortcomings, if there indeed were any, so no controversy shall surround your peace, your final remedy. For you were no less than the saint you ought to have been and no more than the devil you shouldn't have become. But you were a man who walked the land farther and explored the world wider than any vagabond would have dared to. You were a man so complex yet so complete for the mind to venture thoroughly. Now you are merely a grief that will never depart.
But rest now and let me remember you by, my classmate, my teammate, my comrade, my ally, my friend, my rock, my beloved.
END