Thank Kami. Shizune had finally left. Tsunade thought her apprentice-turned-assistant would never stop nagging her about finishing her work. "Well if she wants me to finish she should stop brining me more," Tsunade grumbled as she reached underneath the desk. She popped open the secret compartment built into the desk in which she hid her sake. This was her only hiding place Shizune hadn't yet discovered. As she poured a glass, she stared at the dark sturdy wood of the desk her grandfather made all those years ago.
It is the desk at which her grandfather started the war that killed him and her granduncle. It is the desk on which her sensei signed the mission order that killed her little brother. It is the desk that signed Dan's death certificate and labeled her teammate a missing nin. And it is the desk from which she knowingly sent her best friend to die.
She took another sip and tried not to remember that she could have said no. She could have walked away from this job and this village and all the curses entangled in them. She could have turned away from the loud blond child who dared to believe. She could be drunk off her ass in a gambling hall instead of sneaking sips in between stacks of paper.
She tries to ignore the fact that she could have been living in a world in which the only blood staining her hands was still only Dan's and not that of the countless shinobi who trusted her to lead them and who she repaid by ordering to their deaths.
She could feel the warm blood dripping through her fingers. The harsh sake couldn't cover up the taste of the copious iron in the air. Her ears were filled with the mourning cries from funerals and the painful screams of the dying that not even the mocking rain could drown out. She could smell the sulfur from paper bombs mixed with the ink she used to sign her name. But all she could ever see was white, endless white and paper that never ends and most definitely does not bear good news.
The blood dripped from her fingers. It leaked out of the pen with ever signature. Shizune carried stakes of it in with threats of no sake until she waded through it all. It arrived in waves in the eyes of teams who reported back a member short and in floods when no one returned to report at all. It fell from the sky with the rain in her worst nightmares and memories. But it never stained the pristine white paper. No the desk absorbed all the blood so the white pages could collect neatly and swallow her whole.
After all these years the blood was soaked deep into the grain of the wood. And still it kept absorbing more, if only to allow her to keep signing papers, if only to allow the blood to keep flowing.
The glass was empty too soon and Shizune would shortly return with arms full of white. Tsunade put the bottle away.
There were papers to sign.