Floating to the Surface
"I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while." – Haruki Murakami
The streets of Tanzaku were dark, and it was the kind of darkness that permeated lungs, crawled inside bodies and rested there to pull out warmth until only the aftertaste of sake could spread what was left out to her fingers. Tsunade walked quietly, glancing around at the neon shop lights through glazed eyes, pulled along by the warm hand laced in her own.
"Tsunade-sama, please don't go to the gambling places on the other side of the village." Shizune looked back mournfully. "It takes so long to find you, and it's getting colder."
"Silly girl," Tsunade muttered, and her words seemed to slur together in her ears. "You should wear something warmer." Without hesitating, she slipped her hand out of Shizune's, took off her green haori, and wrapped it around the younger woman's shoulders. "There."
"But you'll be cold!" Her student stammered, trying to peel off the cloth. "You're sleeveless underneath."
Tsunade waved a hand dismissively. "Being drunk has its benefits." Sake was like a molten fire that ran through her veins, breaking the chill apart until it fled from her skin. "You wear it."
Shizune looked momentarily worried, but she relented with a nod, and they walked together to their inn down the quiet, flickering street.
.x.
Tsunade would never forget the day she first met Dan's young niece, three days after his death in battle. Seeing her lover's lifeless face broke something fragile inside her, something incapable of hardening after pressure.
She was no Jiraiya, after all. She was unused to failure, and when it came it crashed down onto her shoulders until not even the ground was strong enough to stop her fall.
So she locked herself into Dan's small apartment, forgetting that there was another person who he'd left with nowhere to go, and a locked door staring back at her. But Tsunade couldn't hear the knocking against the door, the small fists pounding and pounding until night had long fallen. She was too caught up in Dan's stash of sake and Dan's scent which stained his pillows and Dan's drawings of him and her because he had been a kind and irreplaceable man.
The next morning, she woke up in with her head painfully tilted on the couch and a bottle of sake still half-clenched in her hand. Before her was Jiraiya, and behind him was a broken door, and peering from behind the edge of the door was a girl.
"Hime!" Jiraiya pleaded, kneeling beside her. "Come on, you can't stay like this. It's over, the war is finished. This is what we've been fighting for, isn't it? Get up and clean off, and maybe I'll take a burden off your hands." He glanced worried at the doorway.
Tsuade followed his line of sight, and the head quickly vanished behind the doorframe before peering back out with large eyes. Slowly, the girl detached herself from the door and walked over. She was a small slip of a kid, but the jonin flak jacket that floated on her form indicated that despite her young look, she was probably at least seventeen. Tsunade sorted through sake-muddled memories before she recognized the girl, and her heart dropped once again.
"Um… you're Tsunade-sama, right?" Shizune asked hesitantly. "Do… do you know where my uncle is? I come to treat him after his missions…"
"She's studying to be a medic-nin," Jiraiya reported gruffly. "I'm sure you recognize her, she was recently promoted to special jonin during the war. Dan's niece."
The name brought with it a sudden lurch of pain, and she had to stop and blink spots from her eyes before looking up at the girl. "He died in battle." She said tonelessly.
Shizune's lips were pressed into a tight line as she sunk down onto the couch and held her head in her hands, but she didn't cry, because it looked like she was stronger than that. And as she watched the girl, and saw her own tearstains on the couch, Tsunade decided that she would take Dan's niece with her. And maybe when she froze once again at the sight of blood, this girl would fill the gaps he'd created.
.x.
When they reached their room, Shizune busied herself with folding the green haori, placing it neatly by their bags, and setting out their futons. Tsunade watched her closely, noting the haste of her movements, the way she bit her lip occasionally and shot glances her way.
Observance was a keen, concentrated skill, and it was hard to apply universally. But when they were alone in the small, dusty room, when the window let in nothing but night, it came with ease. Jiraiya had once said sake made philosophers out of men and women. Only philosophy could distinguish why this girl never left her side.
"Shizune," she slurred. "Stop for a moment."
"Hmm?" Shizune paused in her work and straightened, still holding a blanket in her hand. In the faint moonlight, her plain hair glimmered a deep black.
.x.
Travelling across the country was no easy task, and for a spirited young girl with unknown dreams, it put the kind of happiness meant to be found in normalcy well beyond reach. Tsunade knew this as soon as she found Shizune, at age nineteen, speaking with an inn-owner's son at the borders of Rice Country with shyly downturned eyes, hands newly soft like gossamer silk intertwined.
The man was only a few years older, with hair a wood-dust brown and eyes as blue as the midday sky. He didn't know she was a kunoichi, and as far as Tsunade knew she never told him. Shizune seemed content to kiss him leisurely in the evenings, while her shishou prowled the village for gambling-places.
And when she came back to their room flushed with reddened lips three days later, Tsunade said from pure spite, "we're leaving for Nami."
"Oh," Shizune seemed momentarily confused, but she nodded. "Hold on, I need to go to the market to replenish our stock of ration bars. That's a long travel."
She watched impatiently as the girl packed away the futons, tied their bags, and slung them over one shoulder without a thought of hesitance. A shell-like anger bubbled inside her, drawn on by the sake still in her blood.
"So?" She grumbled. "Are you just going to say yes, then? And give up? What about that kid – Taro, or something?"
"Oh, you knew about that?" Shizune's nervous laughter tinkled through the room. "It's fine, Tsunade-sama. It's not him in particular that I like. I just felt like… trying, just once."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed. "Why would you be worried about something silly like that, anyway? You're a kunoichi. You've already missed your chance at that sort of boring life."
Shizune shook her head, and the smile still played at her lips. "No, not like that. I already have the most interesting life I could hope for, and I've learned more about the world in these past years that I would have if I had stayed in Konoha. It was simply an experiment, and it didn't work out anyway." She looked back from the doorframe.
"Are you coming to the market with me, Tsunade-sama? You can choose the ones you like, since you're always complaining that the ration bars I find are too icky to eat."
Tsunade nodded and followed her out the door, but she didn't completely understand.
.x.
When she saw Shizune a year later standing by the rocky shores of Nami at night, arms entwined around one of the pearl divers whose name was Midori and shivering hands slipping under rough seaside cloth to run over firm breasts, dark hair tangled with light, mouths pressed together and kissing with desperate fervor as if the girl would be snatched away by the raging tides if she let go for even a second, Tsunade understood.
And this time, she saw the slight wetness in Shizune's eyes when she suggested leaving for Suikazura.
.x.
"Just… stay still," she said. "Stand there. Your moving around is hurting my head." That, at least, was true. Everything spun in her sight, a whirl of darkness and moonlight in the inn room, embodying the slow realization that stirred in the pit of her stomach.
"Oh, I see. I'll wait until your head clears." Shizune dropped the blanket gently to the floor and sat down in front of her, knees pulled to her slight chest. The flickering street-lanterns were turned on, and they filtered through the window to play streaks of light across her dark hair. Only the occasional set of footsteps in the hall outside disrupted their quiet.
"Tsunade-sama, do you think we could go west of Fire Country one day, maybe to the marshes? I've heard that there's a land where the rain never stops, where Amegakure is," she said after a while.
"You want to go to a horrid place like that?" Tsunade muttered as she leaned back against the wall. "What's the point?"
Shizune seemed momentarily offended. "It doesn't sound horrible at all! It's sounds romantic, actually."
The weariness seeped into her mind. Tsunade felt like a leashed animal leading its owner, older and wiser than any human, yet tugged unwillingly into human emotion. "Forty years ago, I lived in those lands," she said softly. "My teammates and I were sent on reconnaissance there, to report on Hanzo the Salamander. Trust me, it's a horrible place. It's the kind of place where the rain washes away the taste of food and the tang of sake, and you're stuck in some sort of never-ending bath because the sky thinks you're never clean enough."
More tingling laughter filled her ears. "Woah, Tsunade-sama, you've never been a philosophical drunk before. I think I like it."
.x.
Somewhere between twenty and twenty-one Shizune had come to the startling realization that she would be forever small-chested, and for reasons Tsunade never managed to comprehend, she was saddened by this. So when they rested leisurely in an onsen within the village of Suikazura, she sunk down and rested her chin mournfully against the glittering surface of the water, shamed to show her chest in the air.
"Shizune," she finally sighed. "Get over it."
The girl shot a secretive glance at her chest through the distorting water.
"Oh come on, these things just get in the way," Tsunade explained patiently. "Trust me, you're better off without them. They called me the most beautiful kunoichi in the Five Countries even back when I was flat-chested."
"But you have so many other things they like you for, Tsunade-sama," Shizune mumbled as she held her hands over her breasts while reaching for the foamy soap. "I don't."
And it was true, she was an unremarkably plain young woman, with no particular faults, yet nothing exceptional that men would call her a beauty for. Her dark hair hung straight to her shoulders, and her eyes were a typical brown. But it was strange that she would be troubled by it, because she was a kunoichi, and kunoichi had no reason to cling to beauty. Only the best shinobi could ever hope to take lovers in their work.
"You're pretty, and you're skilled at what you do." Tsunade said finally. "You're a nice girl, and there's no reason to be anything else. If you ever want to take a man, he should have no problems with you." Shizune didn't yet know she knew, and Tsunade wasn't sure if she was supposed to know, so for now she would pretend she'd never seen that sight within the darkness of Nami's shore, that she hadn't unwittingly glimpsed that secret.
Shizune seemed somewhat appeased, but she still shot back inquisitive glances. "Tsunade-sama… what exactly is your size? Just out of curiosity."
She shrugged. "I don't have time to do silly things like measuring. Though Jiraiya has a knack of telling just by looking, the pervert."
But her student's eyes lingered a little longer, and Tsunade noticed.
And remembered Midori.
And wondered.
.x.
"I'm always a philosophical drunk," Tsunade grunted. "When you're my age, philosophy comes naturally. It's practically meant for old people." The words tumbled out without her meaning to say them and for one irreplaceable moment she wanted to take them back, wanted to be young again, and then she knew.
Shizune shook her head. "No, you're not old. You look younger than me."
"It's… it's an illusion, Shizune. Don't fall for it, it wasn't meant for you to fall for," she replied quietly.
But maybe it was the quiet of the room, the flickering lights, and the half-consciousness that Shizune had that almost challenged her own drunken state. Maybe it was the lull of languid tranquility that plagued them more and more, slowly inching towards an edge until Tsunade couldn't help but do more than wonder. More, more, far more.
.x.
There had only ever been one time when Tsunade wished she looked her age.
It was a summer night at the borders of Oto, one of the rare times where she'd relented to setting out tents because the nearest village was too far and she was taken over by the sort of weary tiredness that clasped at every bone and dragged her to the ground.
But she still slept a fitful sleep against the ground with only a thick blanket between her and the rocky soil, and she spent most of the night wondering how Shizune could sleep so deeply in the tent beside her. The girl – young woman, now, but Tsunade couldn't help but think of her as a girl – had too must trust and it could kill her.
It happened sometime between midnight and morning, in that timeless hour between when her eyes drifted close with half-consciousness and woke with full consciousness, and she'd never affirmed whether it was a dream. It felt like a dream; it had all the ethereal aspects of one. Shizune's pallid face above hers was cloaked by secretive wonder and when she leaned down, Tsunade could peer out through half-opened half-consciousness eyes and see every glimmering, gossamer strand of her irises in the moonlight, like the fine strands of dragonfly wings and with an expression just as delicate.
The touch of her mouth was half-real, half-dream, a hesitant butterfly's kiss, and though she'd seen Shizune kissing Nami's Midori with all desperation in the world she still kissed like it was her first, like a girl not yet on the verge of femininity. The warmth was gone almost before it came and the touch receded just as hesitantly. Within seconds her student's form was once again in the other blanket beside her, as if nothing had ever happened, as if she hadn't noticed Tsunade's half-open eyes, and maybe she really hadn't.
The most Beautiful Kunoichi in the Five Countries.
Sleep fell onto her again, and Tsunade thought, and wondered if Shizune would have done it if she'd looked her age. But it was useless to wonder because she'd grow out of it soon and maybe find herself a girl her own age to kiss playfully under the summer moon.
And it was probably all a dream anyway.
.x.
"I know that it's an illusion," her student explained with an undying patience, and Tsunade conceded that it did take that much to deal with her so often. "But that doesn't mean it can't be for me, can it?" She inched forward still, until they sat right before each other in the small inn room.
"No, I guess it doesn't. How long have you felt like this, exactly?" Tsunade asked calmly. The question was a hammer to the keystone of a dam but it slipped out as naturally in her sake-slurred voice. Their dénouement was a continuum of thought, neither black nor white. Simply grey, and it settled onto their shoulders with slowly increasing rigidity.
Shizune looked away nervously, and nervous laughter threatened to spill, along with nervous words that she held in. Nervously. Finally, she said, "you don't need to look at me like that. I'm twenty-five. I'm not a kid anymore, and I notice things."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed. "I told you, it's an illusion. Twenty-five," she sighed. "God that's young. Frighteningly young."
Her student seemed displeased. "Why should that matter?"
"Sixty and twenty-five, do you know what you're saying, Shizune?"
"I like spending time with you, Tsunade-sama," she insisted. "There's no one else I want."
"You wanted Midori pretty damn much. I saw."
Shizune looked away. "Her hair was like yours."
Tsunade sighed again, deeply, a breath that filled the room. "Listen, despite how I look, I am sixty. You can't stumble into something like this without thinking. I'm going to die a hell of a lot sooner than you are, and you can't deny that."
"I know," she crept forwards, lacing their fingers together. "I know, and I don't mind. Shinobi and kunoichi rarely keep lovers, and it's not something I expect. If I have this much, it's fine."
"Shizune-"
"Wait, you never said you didn't want-"
She didn't say, because she wanted.
"It's ridiculous. I've known for longer than you think, and I've waited for it to pass, and maybe I shouldn't have acknowledged it but-" She couldn't go on, because there was hurt in her student's eyes.
Shizune's words died in her mouth as she stood, and quietly resumed spreading their futon. As the sake's haze had finally settled, leaving her bare to her own thoughts now that they no longer floated aimlessly in her mind, Tsunade watched.
Love was no longer tentative smiles and hesitance fingers twined together in a desperate semblance of normalcy, like it was with Dan. It was something almost unknowably deep that developed over months, years, clawing its way deep into her and settling there and refusing to move. It was looking at a person and knowing that she would willingly die for her. And she wanted her.
She wanted Shizune who had grown up under her watchful eye and now laid out her futon with stiff shoulders like a girl on her first date, even while her hastily averted eyes held the same quiet yearning that had been so familiar over the years.
She wanted Shizune like she wanted Konoha, something she denied from pure pride but wanted to take so badly it slowly wore away at her heart.
She wanted them both.
"Shizune?"
Tsunade's words were met with silence. But somehow, it didn't seem too late, it never did. Shizune raised her eyes hesitantly, and there was a question there, and it asked to be answered.
"Alright."
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