Title: In a Rush
Theme: #9, dash
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
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When I was little, I never really though much about my "Prince Charming." I was always dashing here and there, in a rush to grow up and become the strongest and the fastest. I knew what I wanted.
Then I got a little bit older. I met Dan. I was always running here and there with him, still chasing my dreams but without the same focused determination. It seemed okay that I was spending more time with him than with my weapons and targets. I thought I knew what I wanted.
Then I aged eons in a split second. Dan lay dying and my dreams of living with him vanished as fast as I had once dreamed of becoming. Part of my willpower died with him, but all I had ever known was chasing my dreams and I remembered my original goal. I knew what I wanted again, but I knew I could never obtain it while surrounded with ghosts of 'what ifs.'
Then my friends—well, one of them—came after me. I had mused one day at lunch what it would be like to just up and leave it all behind and he hadn't said a word. I had stupidly assumed that he hadn't caught my hint that I was leaving. That night as I proceeded down the path that led to the front gate, hoping to make my escape unnoticed, he appeared behind me and crushed me to his chest, breathing heavily in my ear as though he had just woken from a nightmare. "Please let me go with you," he begged, "I can't live without you."
The tone of his voice made me all the more eager to leave my past—my pain—behind.
"Please, Tsunade," he pleaded, "I want you…I need you with me."
I don't know why I couldn't stand to hear his voice so strained. Maybe it was because Dan had told me the same things: that he wanted me, that he needed me. However, there was one thing Dan had never told me.
"Tsunade…I love you."
Dan had never said he loved me.
"Please…stay…"
Never, ever had he said he loved me.
His grip loosened and I slowly peeled away from him. I stood apart from him a moment, not looking at him. "I have dreams elsewhere," I said before slowly moving forward and through the gate. I half expected him to try and stop me, but he let me go without a fight. I don't know why, but I was sad that he didn't.
The second I was outside of the village walls I broke into a mad dash, and I continued running until he caught me again—this time with that brat of his in tow—to ask me to come back and become Hokage. I accepted because I had come to realize that I truly did want to help the village I had been running from for so long.
I don't mind being back too badly, but when I'm watching him teach Naruto as if the boy was his own son, I can't help but wonder if Jiraiya would have been what he said he wanted to be.
It scares me, but I've realized that I don't know what I want anymore.