A/N: Heyo! Here's the next chapter!


Chapter 18: Dreams of Peace


Jiraiya stopped in early the next morning to surprise Tsunade.

"Hey, Tsu!" He chirped when she walked outside, already having a bowl of porridge in his hands. "Morning, sunshine! Geez, you look like you haven't been sleeping well lately. You good?"

"I'm fine, Jiraiya," she muttered, giving the man a smile when he gave her the bowl. She said 'thank you' and began to eat slowly. "Just... nightmares, crying, worrying about the Uchihas, the usual stuff."

He frowned, the wrinkles underneath his eyes growing more pronounced. She hated them. They were both nearing fifty-seven, and while she hadn't seen Orochimaru in a decade, she still hated that their looks were catching up to their ages.

She, herself, used a technique that kept her looking not a day over twenty-six, but it was more because she wanted to disguise herself just in case she was ever caught.

"Nobody would ever suspect a fifty-year-old woman to look so good, right?" she'd reasoned once with a guffaw. "They'd be suspecting some old grandma, not someone who looks like someone who just earned the right to drink."

Jiraiya hadn't accepted her offer of keeping him looking young, claiming, "Nobody's gonna suspect me of anything! C'mon, I'm Naruto's godfather, for Kami's sake! Fugaku should trust me."

True, at one point in time he had been a mole for Riot, but the day Naruto's parents died, he was dispelled from the castle and made a member of a wandering troop whose only purpose was to sniff out Riot camps to report to the king. Obviously, he bailed as soon as he realized, but unfortunately, that also meant he could never check in on Naruto to see how he was coping.

"Preteenagers are especially susceptible to long-term depression after losing someone they love," Tsunade mused as she swallowed another bite of porridge. "It's a wonder he's been coping at all, what with that brooding Uchiha heir he's friends with."

Jiraiya sat beside her, silently gazing off into the distance towards the forest.

Once Tsunade was done, she set the bowl down beside her knee and leaned into his shoulder. "What are you thinking about?"

He glanced down at her, his eyes soft. "It's amazing, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"That after all this time, after all we've gone through, you've come out of it... so amazing."

She blinked, looking up at him. "That's your takeaway? That I'm tough?"

"Yes and no," he replied. "Do you remember when we were cadets?"

"What, in old man Hiruzen's troop?" She snorted. "Of course I do. You never left that poor man alone."

He chuckled in response. "Yeah, I was a little meathead back then."

She smiled, amused. "I still remember the first time we convinced Orochimaru to play a prank on him. Remember, with the snakes?"

"Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that one!" The white-haired man barked a laugh. "Hey, now before you go blaming me for it, it was just as much your idea as mine once I mentioned the sake."

"I'd have done anything for a drink, and you knew that!" She retorted playfully, nudging him. "I still wish we could've apologized properly."

"Don't go feeling bad about it now." Jiraiya wrapped an arm around her, bringing her in closer. "It's all in the past."

The smile slid off of her face when she remembered. "Yeah... now that he's gone, I guess we won't get to apologize now."

Jiraiya frowned once more, heaving a sigh. "C'mon, Tsunade, where's that tough-as-nails spitfire I remember from our training days? Where's the girl that would punch me over a kilometer away when you caught me peeping?"

"So you do admit it," she remarked dryly.

He rolled his eyes, his face heating up. "I've told you before, and I'll tell you again, Tsunade. I really do care about you. More than you know."

She leaned into his embrace, closing her eyes. A sense of safety washed over her when she smelled the scent of pine in his clothes. "I know, Jiraiya. I know."

"And no matter what happens, I'm loyal to you and only you," he continued, resting his hand gently in her hair. She was a little grimy, but considering the circumstances, it didn't bother him at all. "Even if we never reunite with Oro, I will never leave you."

She merely hummed in response.

The two basked in the moment for a few minutes, before Sakura came around the corner and peeked underneath the awning.

"Oh, Jiraiya-sama!" She quickly bowed at the waist to him when they both looked up at her. "Sorry if I interrupted anything. Uh, Mother, we need help with a couple of children. Reports say that they accidentally fell into some rubble and we need to make sure they don't get ill from their injuries."

"Sure, I'll be right there." She nodded to the pinkette as she left. The blonde woman sighed quietly, looking up at Jiraiya with a grin. "Well, duty calls."

"I'll be back for dinner," he promised, allowing her to stand up. "Expect a full report soon."

"That and some fish," she said, giving him a wink before heading off in the same direction that Sakura had.

He watched her go with an almost forlorn look in his eyes. He got up, grunting at the slight pain in his legs. With another glance towards where she'd gone, he sprinted off into the trees for a quick scout to get his mind off of her.


Noh sang a little tune under her breath as she helped with a small child who'd accidentally spilled boiling water on herself while trying to make breakfast that morning. So far, the burns weren't as bad as they'd initially looked, but the woman still felt awful telling the little girl that it would be weeks before her skin was healed properly, and even then, it would never look or feel the same.

"And I gave you love, so you gave me love," she sang the chorus again as she gingerly patted the girl's back. "There you are. Just be careful, take it easy with the chores for a couple of weeks, and make sure you come check in with me every morning and night so that I can properly change your bandages."

The girl nodded, giving her a small 'thank you' before turning and running off, back to her ragged father. He nodded tiredly to the woman before leading his daughter back inside their ramshackle house.

She sighed to herself. "When we looked to the stars, I said I love you, you said you were mine."


"Are you sure you want to do this?" Kisame asked, mildly concerned, as Itachi lifted up both his pack and the tent bundle.

"I was trained to take over the royal guard on my eighteenth birthday," Itachi replied simply. "This is easy."

"If you say so..." The older man trailed off as they went. "How do you suppose we go about this?"

"It's fairly simple. We must get in, scope out the capital, and report." The soft-spoken man stated monotonously. "If we must take care of any spies, then we shall."

The bigger man shrugged loosely, pausing to adjust the sword on his back.

"Kami forbid I ever be forced to have to betray Itachi," he thought to himself with the slightest shiver up and down his back at the look of those crimson irises. "If he would kill his loved ones for the greater good... I don't even want to think about what he would do to colleagues."


A/N: You finally get some JiraTsu cuteness! It's one of the only ships I cried for at the end of the arc. Jiraiya deserved so much better!

Tell me what you thought, see you guys next week!