A/N: Written for the June round of Naruto Flashfics.
The day of Dan's funeral, it rained. Tsunade wasn't the type to draw the comparisons from it – to make a claim that the sky wept with her or anything so melodramatic. That was Jiraiya's flair, not hers – and to say that the sky wept with her was to say that she was not alone in her grief, and as far as she was concerned, she was.
Dan's family… oh, they grieved, all right, but it wasn't the same. His parents still had each other to lean on – but she had no one now. Her parents were long gone, Nawaki dead, and Dan… Dan was dead too, leaving her all alone in the cruel, dark, raining world. The downpour soaked her black clothes – the only ones she had, since black wasn't a good color on her anyway. She never wore it if she could help it, and it was only for this – only for funerals, only to acknowledge and mourn the passing of those she loved – that she would be seen in the color.
Long after the funeral was over, long after even Dan's parents had drifted away, going back to their daily lives now childless, now lacking either daughter or son – long after everyone was gone, Tsunade remained, tears indistinguishable from the rain rolling down her face as she wept for the pain of his passing. Dan… Dan whom she should have married, instead she mourned.
All the plans they'd had, all the hopes for the future – dashed now, dead and buried with the fiancé she'd lost. All their dreams… She remembered sitting with him, curling against his side and talking about what they would do after the war ended. Get married… Tsunade would start work at the hospital, Dan would take on a genin team… Maybe they'd eventually have children of their own…
Gone. She wasn't a happily expectant bride-to-be now; she was nearly a widow. Dan… Dan… why did you leave me? Why… why couldn't I save you? Her hands trembled at the memory of his lifeblood splattered about him on a battlefield in Ame; why had that fate had to strike at him? Why, of all the shinobi who were fighting, did he have to rank among the fallen?
Her fingers curled around the necklace. The curse. I was the one who killed him. By giving him this… by giving him my heart, my hopes… I cursed him to die. And she took a long, shuddering breath and fought the urge to wail aloud. Dan… her Dan… her handsome, wonderful, strong, intelligent Dan… would still be alive if it weren't for her. Her foolishness, her idiocy, in letting the curse claim another of her loved ones.
It took a long time before she realized she wasn't alone. The pounding rain and her own agony had covered the sound of someone approaching, if indeed there had been any sound; with shinobi, that was a toss-up. Of course, it was polite not to sneak up on people, but she had no way of knowing if he'd snuck up or if she'd simply been too tuned out.
Not, of course, that that would sweeten her mood any. "What the hell are you doing here?" she snarled, wiping her eyes ineffectually before turning to glare at her teammate. "I thought you and Orochimaru were supposed to be still on patrol!"
"We ran into trouble," Jiraiya said simply, shrugging a little. His hair had fallen victim to the rain; it was plastered wetly to his forehead, cheeks, neck, and back, flattened with water instead of spiked with its typical irrepressible pride. It made Jiraiya look smaller, older somehow even though he was barely to his mid-twenties, highlighting the tiredness in his eyes. "Oro-snake took more damage than I could take care of with a field medpack."
We should make sure every team has a med-nin, Tsunade had argued, and Dan had stood and said, I agree with what she says. She swallowed hard, suddenly seeing the stiffness in the way Jiraiya stood, the way he held his body – he'd been hurt too. He had the stance of someone who was in pain and trying not to be in more pain.
"Anyway," and here Jiraiya looked past her to the new-planted memorial. "I… heard about what happened. Wanted to make sure you're all right."
Of course she wasn't all right. How could she be all right? Dan was dead! He'd died under her hands, with her chakra still pouring into him, trying to knit his body back together and failing! But Tsunade's anger couldn't rouse. She felt leaden, dull, heavy, bogged down by the rain like Jiraiya's hair. Flattened. There was no space for rage, just for the tired, painful emptiness of grief.
Jiraiya's eyes lingered on her, and he seemed to see that. "Ah, Tsunade-hime," he muttered, and stepped forward, pulling her into his arms.
He was as wet as she was, but Jiraiya had always been one of the most ridiculously warm people she'd ever met, and she could feel the heat of his solid, muscular body even through the sopping chill of his clothing. He'd left off the standard armored vest, and wore only the lightweight ninja blacks, thin garments that dried quickly and didn't do much to hold in the simple warmth of Jiraiya's embrace.
Jiraiya, who – Tsunade realized abruptly – hadn't hit on her once since Dan had proposed. And now… now he was holding her, but he wasn't groping her. Wasn't trying to get anything from her. The simplicity of his arms around her didn't ease her grief one whit, but he was her teammate, someone whose life she'd saved more than once, and who had saved her life in return.
He wasn't Dan and could never ease the pain of that loss, but he was offering her what he could – he was offering her a surcease from loneliness. Nothing more, nothing less. She could let herself be, standing there in the rain-soaked field where the memorial stood, wrapped in the arms of her teammate, and maybe there was something to that.
She didn't know how long they stood like that, but finally, Jiraiya shifted a little, and in his sudden tension she could hear a repressed gasp of pain. Whatever had happened to him, she had a feeling he hadn't gotten treated for it – probably had shoved Orochimaru off on the nurses and then sneaked out while they were too busy paying attention to the snake summoner. It was so very typical of Jiraiya.
"Let's go in," he said quietly. "This rain's not going to let up anytime soon."
She drew back, looking into his face and studying him intensely. The red tear-marks that ended now just above his jawline – they'd been growing steadily since he was sixteen, since he'd gotten back from… from wherever he'd gone that he wouldn't talk about. The veiled tiredness, the dark circles under his eyes that had been there almost solidly since the beginning of the war.
The genuine, honest concern in his dark eyes. She couldn't accept it. Couldn't let him look at her that way.
"You go on," she said, her tone listless. "Orochimaru probably wants a word with you. I… I'm going to stay out here."
She could see him wanting to protest, could see his desire to drag her away from the memorial, away from the ghosts and the might-have-beens and the memories. To pull her away from the dead and back into the world of the living.
But she wasn't ready yet. Maybe she never would be.
Thirty-some years later – how many exactly, Tsunade didn't care to count, the only number she needed to know was "too damned many" – she stood in front of another memorial, with more tears rolling down her cheeks. But this time, there was no damp, wounded teammate waiting to warm her with an undemanding, simple embrace; no teammate to hold his arms out to her and show her that the world of the living still needed her.
Now, it was him she'd gotten killed, and she didn't know what to do.