A/N: Well, I'd intended this to be a one-shot, but then I got a couple people adding it to their story alerts, and I didn't want to disappoint them. So, chapter two! Will I continue it past this? I really can't say. I've got too much writing to do for my classes – this is my senior year of college and all, and THOSE pieces of writing have due dates and grades attached!

Another thing: this fic is not beta'd, since I don't have a good beta at the moment. If anyone would like to, drop me a line at neko [dot adela [at gmail [dot com and we can talk

Jiraiya was resting. Alive, and resting. To be honest, Tsunade should have been resting too; she had refused any attempt by other medic-nin to take over the primary work of repairing Jiraiya's savage injuries, with an end result that her chakra was depleted to barely-functional levels and she was exhausted. But she'd clung to the work, because it was touch-and-go, almost to the last moment, and she simply had not trusted anyone else to see to it that everything was handled properly. The shattered femur, if manipulated wrong during setting, could have severed his femoral artery and killed him; the rupture in his stomach had to be sealed before the acid damage to surrounding organs was taken care of; the multiple tears and traumas to his internal organs had to be handled in a specific order, to prevent them from simply sending each other back into catastrophic failure; his lung had to be emptied of blood and fluid before the puncture wound was healed. It had been so much work, but it was done; now, he rested, his body gathering its strength, and she sat beside him, still trying to convince herself that it was real. That he was real. That he'd survived.

You lose. Dear God, would the man never cease to amaze her?

He was asleep, his features relaxed; that grinning mouth still and slack, those sparkling, roving eyes closed. And in that relaxation, he looked very different.

He's old, she realized with a shock, feeling guilty for applying such a demeaning word to him. He's turning fifty-four this year. Most jounin don't make it past thirty in active duty. Her eyes slid closed as she pushed the thought away. Jiraiya had always, always been there – in her mind, he'd taken on a sort of immortality. Not like Orochimaru's perversion, no, nothing like that – simply that there was no one and nothing that could take him down. Intellectually, she knew that was ridiculous, but it didn't stop her from, deep in her heart, believing that he would always be there. And now, she'd come so very close to losing him; he'd beaten the odds for two decades, and they had come within a hair of catching up with him.

She reached out a hand and stroked his forehead gently, her fingertips caressing his warm skin. Warm, but not hot; he hadn't developed a fever. His injuries were closed up, his bones knitting, his cuts, stab wounds, and ruptures sealed. He was recovering. Jiraiya's immortality could last a little longer.

He stirred under her hand, and his aspect changed. If she hadn't been watching him intently, she would have missed it, taken the motion for a natural shift in sleep. It was a very good sign. A shinobi who was just barely clawing his way to consciousness would wake up normally; a shinobi in good condition would not let it be known that he was awake until he was ready. Jiraiya's eyes were still closed, the rate and depth of his respirations unchanged, his body still completely relaxed, but she knew he was mentally cataloguing the room, the touch on his forehead, his last memories before falling asleep.

"It's all right," she said warmly. "You're back home in Konoha, you old pervert."

He abandoned the pretense and opened his eyes, grinning. "I feel like someone dropped a mountain on me," he announced, his voice softer than usual and slightly rusty-sounding.

"You looked like it, when your toad dumped you on the floor," she informed him. "I think I'll make you scrub the bloodstains out of the floor." Relief coursed through her all over again; he really was home, and he really was okay.

"So cruel..." He tried to gesture dramatically, but broke off with a wince.

"You know the drill. We don't heal to you a hundred percent, so you're fragile for a while," she informed him. Better that way; if you healed the body too much, it forgot how to heal itself. But referring to him as fragile reminded her too much of how close he'd come to dying, of how fragile his life was. She didn't like it.

"Miss me?" he asked, grinning at her in that cheeky way. Sometimes, it made her want to slap him.

Right now, it made her want to kiss him.

So she did.