The battle had been long and bloody. What else could it have been when two armies collided and only three people made it out.
They had left the battlefield behind, running ten miles diagonally back into familiar territory, not wanting to deal with any possible reinforcements. And now they sat in a circle in the trees watching the dark shadows behind their teammates' backs.
Tsunade's arms were bloody up to the elbows from when chakra-infused punches tore easily through enemy nin. She was running low on chakra and knew that she shouldn't waste any on healing the gash on her cheek, not particularly caring that it would scar.
Along with several burns on his face and arms, she noted that Jiraiya had also been running on a broken ankle but didn't care enough to offer to fix it. He would ask eventually. He was relatively clean all things considered, but that was to be expected from a mid-range fighter. Distance kept your hands clean. Well, cleaner, at least.
In stark contrast, Orochimaru's face was painted with blood, sprayed from slit throats and smeared through his hair from brushing it out of his face. He had a rather deep cut along his right shoulder blade of which he wasn't even aware. Pain was a minor, trivial thing to all of them, no more significant than an itch.
So they sat there, trusting each other to make a move if something came out of the dark at their backs but not enough to sleep in each others presence.
It was a sick joke really. The Legendary Sannin. Like they were some kind of team. Like they actually cared about each other beyond how they could use each other. They could each take care of themselves and in the rare moments that one defended the other it was only because their individual chances of survival were higher with the other two alive and fighting. When it really came down to it, none of them would die for another.
No, in truth, they were the Three-way Deadlock. Strong together only in the way they clashed and completed the triad, how they exposed and filled each other's weaknesses. Each was strong enough to fight another in a battle with no certain outcome. They all cared about their own skins too much to risk it. The only sure fact was that if they fought in a three-way, all-out battle royale they would all die.
This was who they were. Not that the village cared. The village liked the pretty fantasy and the leaders didn't care how their team worked as long as it did. No one cared that Orochimaru's obsession with blood inclined him to lick his kunai clean. No one cared about Jiraiya's wandering hands and lack of boundaries that made him late for most missions. No one cared about Tsunade's tendency to break her teammates more often than she healed them. And no one cared how the distrust and tension and war grated at their minds and souls. It didn't matter how or if shinobi came home as long as they got the job done first.
Well they got the job done. The war was ending and they were all that was left of their generation. They were just waiting for the messenger bird that would confirm what they already new and were officially ordered home.
The message arrived just before dawn and they silently rose to their feet. Not wanting to deal with the hospital, Tsunade quickly and lazily healed Jiraiya's ankle and Orochimaru's shoulder and they ran the two days back to the village without stopping. They walked through the gates of Konoha looking the same as they did at the end of the battle. They didn't care about appearances for the villagers and they had grown accustomed over the years to the feel of blood on their skin. A quick stop at the Hokage's office to check in and they dispersed, all going their separate ways.
Jiraiya and Tsunade weren't surprised when news of Orochimaru's human experiments reached them nor did they particularly care. Similarly, Jiraiya was not surprised when Tsunade disappeared from the village one day without warning, nor was Orochimaru when he heard stories of a drunken gambler destroying the den of a loan shark with one finger. And finally neither Tsunade or Orochimaru were surprised to glance at bookstores and see a series of best-selling smut written by a wandering pervert-hermit. For while there was no love between them, there was understanding. Understanding so deep and true that if they looked at it too closely, it could be mistaken as friendship. They didn't look.
Instead, Orochimaru inserted another needle into the subject and Jiraiya settled in front of another peep hole in the woman's bath and Tsunade ordered another bottle and they all continued to raise the stakes because the quiet was too loud and the peace too boring and no matter how much they hated their pasts if they could they would live in that final battle forever.