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"You can't leave! You just can't!"
The words were angry, hurt, and came from the broken dreams of a boy who thought the world would stay the same forever. Cynicism was its own pain - and it was the naive who ached endlessly from it. Tsunade knew he didn't mean half the things he said, though it still hurt to hear them.
"You bitch. How could you do this...to the team? To me?"
Tsunade wasn't doing anything - and that was the problem. She trusted Jiraiya to find their wayward teammate, she trusted him with everything, if only he'd open his young eyes and understand. In cases like this Tsunade always felt about as useful as a fish in a cooker pot - a fish that was flopping desperately for the sea.
A sea she might reach someday.
The flat bed lurched agonizingly forward, creaking on rotted wheels while the driver bickered with his wife. It was true horses weren't common in Ninja travel - she could walk herself - but they were scattered for the daily use of civilians. Tsunade just felt old at the moment, ever so much more than her twenty-one years, and couldn't make her legs work of their own accord. She didn't even feel like a Kunoichi anymore - she felt more like a woman on her way to something greater than infamy and less than happiness.
Perhaps it was a miserable kind of contentment.
A boy-man with angry bright eyes watched her progress further and further away from him, out of reach, and out of mind. No, Tsunade thought, never out of mind - not really. Jiraiya yelled another cruel word, before ripping off his shoe and chucking it at her. It fell short about a hundred feet.
Despite all their skill, ninja still couldn't conquer that anomaly called distance.
Tsunade wondered, as she buried her tear soaked face in the folds of her cloak, whether she meant the distance of miles or the distance between two hearts.