Jiraiya sucked at his teeth, dumbfounded by the reaction his old friends' students had shared. The teenagers had scurried out of the room, down in the direction of the courtyard. He'd half-expected them to hold hands and damn well skip down the hall, but the two of them were rigid and wide-eyed as if the whole ordeal had shaken them to their core. "What the hell was that about? They hadn't met before, had they?"

"I would know!" Tsunade huffed. When she put her hands on her hips, her breasts bounced beneath her kimono in a way he had to fight to ignore. An entire month with her had done little to calm his excitement at seeing her after so long. "She's been living at my side since she was an infant!"

"How very interesting," Orochimaru said with a hum. "No chance she's ever slipped away when you weren't looking?"

"And went all the way to Fire Country? You should've seen her face when the palace shot up over the horizon. I don't think she could fake something like that. Hell, she didn't react that way to your Naruto!" She gestured towards Jiraiya with a hand, the sleeves of her robes fluttering with the motion.

"You care for her very much," Orochimaru said while fiddling with a flask at the table. His young assistant—Kabuto, was it?—handed him a vial filled with something pungent, and Jiraiya crinkled his nose at it. "There's a spark in your eyes I haven't seen since well before you left home."

"She's all I've had these last few years."

"Few?" Jiraiya balked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the doorframe. He smirked, trying to keep his tone teasing—though of course it was no secret how deeply he'd been hurt by her departure. "Sixteen years is well more than a few."

"You were gone for quite some time as well, Jiraiya."

Orochimaru was the last person he wanted to be criticized by; it was that attitude of his that kept Jiraiya from visiting in the first place. At least, that was the easiest excuse he could come up with. "A man must go through certain motions when his heart is broken so carelessly."

But Tsunade waved her hand like such a response was merely a bad smell. "I don't recall ever leading you to believe you'd have a chance with me. Isn't thirty-nine a bit too old to still be pining over your childhood crush?"

"The poor soul is a victim of unrequited love." Orochimaru snickered, jotting down a note in an old, well-worn pad of plain stationary. "I know from experience it's a wound not easily recovered from."

"Haa? So do I!" Tsunade had pursed her lips in distaste. "It's a miracle we haven't torn each other's throats out already. I don't know why I missed either of you so much."

"Too late for you to back out now, Princess," Jiraiya teased.

"You're just begging for punishment, aren't you?" she hit back, a look of smugness coming over her features. Orochimaru watched from the corner of his eye in intrigue. "Here's your first assignment as my Chief Spy—"

"You can't make any appointments until you're—"

"Heavens." Orochimaru turned, resting his hands on the table behind him. The collar of his robe had fallen in such a way that the thin, delicate muscles and tendons of his neck were exposed as he cocked his head towards the both of them. Jiraiya glanced away, tense. "Just do as she says. You only delay the inevitable at best, and exacerbate your suffering at worst."

"Precisely! Still sharp, I see," she said with a smile. "Jiraiya, keep an eye on those three. If Naruto really does host the Nine-Tailed Fox as you've said, then there's not much I'm willing to chalk up to coincidence. Get to the bottom of it."

Though he sighed, he could not help his smile. To be bossed around by her was nostalgic indeed, and no matter how much they bickered, he was glad he'd been able to convince her to come home. He offered no reply for so long that Orochimaru crossed the room to stand by Tsunade's side, his hand coming to rest affectionately on her shoulder as they narrowed their eyes at him. They looked so much like the teenagers they used to be—judging him all the while—that his smile burst into his roaring laughter instead.

"What's so funny?" she demanded, blushing slightly.

Jiraiya ran his palm across his face to calm himself, then took the few steps to stand before the two of them and pull them into a bear hug. All was still for a long moment, the gesture a shock to his friends, he was sure, until she leaned her head into his chest, Orochimaru's arm looping around his neck. Everything from the feel of them and the smell of them touched him through to his bones, so much that his heart ached.

He hoped to goddamn heaven the rumors he'd heard were false. If Orochimaru had killed their master, if he'd had any involvement in this Uchiha Massacre...well, Jiraiya could only shake his head against such worries. There was little more he wanted than for this, the three of them together, to again be the norm; he had underestimated how deeply their distance had impacted him, after all.

"You sounded so much like Sarutobi-sensei," he answered, "that I thought you might've been possessed by his ghost."

"Don't joke like that!" she fussed, wriggling in his hold as the sweetness of the moment crumbled with his off-color joke. "And cut it out! We just spent a damn month together—I'm getting sick of you!"

"Yeah, yeah." He released them both, situating his robes from where she'd pushed at them. "You were singing a different tune back at Shikkotsu."

"Do keep me updated, though, won't you?" Orochimaru asked as he turned back to his table. "Sasuke-kun is my most treasured apprentice. Should there be any fantastical undercurrents surrounding him, well, I'd like to know what exactly they are, especially at such a low point in his young life."

Jiraiya stared, assessing all of the things he could possibly mean by that.

"You have my word," he offered, then nodded and excused himself from the room. Lazily he raised one hand in the air, waving once before calling, "I'll see you both at the coronation!"