Characters: Jiraiya/Tsunade

Prompt: Three times Jiraiya saw Tsunade without her jutsu

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Character death (Jiraiya), Angst

Three times Jiraiya saw Tsunade without her jutsu.

I. When he was brought into hospital during the Second War and she completely exhausted herself draining the poison from his veins.

He had taken part in a vicious skirmish where Sand had nearly broken through the front lines. All of Konoha's shinobi had been equipped with the counter to every single one of Sand's toxins. However, what none of them had known was that Chiyo used the battle field to test a new generation of neural toxins. The standard antidote Jiraiya used only worsened his condition, and it was a miracle he survived until he could be brought to the hospital. Already exhausted from healing a never-ending stream of wounded shinobi, Tsunade hadn't had a choice but to use every last smidgen of chakra available to her. Even the tiny bit keeping up the genjutsu she had begun erecting around herself after Dan's death.

While she worked around him frantically, he caught glimpses of her through his agony. Her face looked tense and pale, grief lines not vanishing completely anymore when her expression changed. Small wrinkles started showing on her skin, deviating from the peachy smoothness of eternal youth she had created for herself.

She showed first signs of growing old. Jiraiya closed his eyes and decided that the poison was making him hallucinate.

II. When he coincidentally met her on his reconnaissance duty for Hiruzen-sensei, after she had left Konoha.

He had been tracking a lead to a small village on the border to Rice, when he heard a familiar voice. But he hadn't spotted her until he had seen her apprentice, Shizune. The girl was walking with a woman who could have been her mother, grandmother even, if it hadn't been for the ash-blond hair. It had taken Jiraiya several minutes to realize that this middle-aged lady was his princess.

This skin of her hands seemed paper thin, and the clearly visible veins moved on to fingers that had seen decades of extensive chakra molding. Wrinkles and frown-lines crossed her face, years of pain becoming flesh. Although she was walking tall, it was impossible to miss that a heavy weight rested on her shoulders.

She hadn't aged well. Jiraiya left before she couldn't pretend anymore to not have sensed him.

III. When she wished him well the evening before he left to track down the Akatsuki leader.

They both knew that it was very likely that he wouldn't survive his mission, Pein having just shown that he could do what the sannin had never managed during their prime: defeat Hanzou single-handedly. Their night was passion-filled, but also laced with desperation. They weren't getting any younger, and 54 was an age where they couldn't fool themselves anymore that their best years were long gone. Sure, they were still strong, stronger than nearly anyone in the village. But compared to thirty years ago, that was nothing.

For once in his life, he asked to see her true face. And she showed it to him, and he couldn't help but love her more for it. Her hair was graying, her already light color paling until it was only a couple of shades darker than his. Laugh lines crinkled around her eyes that stared at him patient and serious. Despite her age her body was muscular and lean, and she was standing with a silent strength that nobody would expect from her when considering how temperamental she acted under her jutsu.

Becoming Hokage had done her a world of good. Jiraiya couldn't get enough of her looks, thinking her much more beautiful like this than the perfect shell she showed to everybody else.

After Jiraiya's death, Tsunade played with the thought for a while that she give up wearing the jutsu. To commemorate him, like she had done for Dan. In the end though, she decided against it. When they met on the other side, she wanted him to have a reason to ask again.

The End