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"I come here often." She said, with a mysterious, albeit fitting, smirk on her heart shaped face. Jiraiya thought she couldn't have been more beautiful had he dreamed her up - which was funny, because technically he was. She was clothed all in white, soft ruffles of silk lace falling to her bare ankles that he suspected wouldn't be so alluring if he wasn't in some sort of drunken black out. After all, he was one of the legendary Sannin, the frog prince himself (what?). He considered hips and a well-endowed bust line more to his tastes, and not bare feet. Bare feet were for husbands, thinking of pretty wives at home, pacing about kitchens with damp curls on their foreheads.
Certainly not capable nin, who could give a girl a run for her money.
His eyes shifted over rolling hills of silver and crystal, cringing at the amount of damage someone like him could do to such a place.
An elephant in a glass store, he thought bitterly. Why did she always make him feel like that? It should've been the other way around he decided, glancing curiously at a hand he lifted in front of his face.
The lines he'd grown accustomed to were gone, the slashing scar he remembered from one particular fight missing.
It'd been a long time since Jiraiya had looked in a mirror, but he suddenly wished for one.
"We're all how we remember ourselves." She murmured, brushing her toes against a blade of silver grass.
He remembered himself as the same person, he thought, except perhaps a decade or so younger with not so many women under his belt. His face hadn't been so broad with worries then, or the usual wear of the insanely strong. He'd had more fun pitting himself in contests with Nin who had no idea who he was, or what village called him there's.
He remembered the love he carried for a particular teammate hadn't dulled to such an aching sadness yet - and he'd only wished she'd call him her's.
"...Was I ever anything more than a friend to you, Lady Tsunade?" Jiraiya asked, a little surprised by the higher tone that brushed past his lips. He hadn't heard that voice in such a long time.
She angled her face towards him, tilted on a graceful, swan like neck. Her deep, burned amber eyes curved and she smiled.
He wondered when he'd ever see something so beautiful again.
The glare of silver and crystal brightened to that of the sun and he couldn't hear what she said over the rush of blood in his ears. Or was it water, he thought, before the brightness flicked to black and he was left staring at an empty bottle of sake.
The clear, glassy bottle he'd finished the night before.
A/N - my apologies, I will make some longer ones, but these are mostly pieces that strike me at some of my more depressing moments. From the length, you can tell, me depressions are never very long. I really like Jiraiya, and I hope I haven't tortured him too much for you guys. When I write these, I have to listen to that song by Stevie Nicks, you know, the one from Practical Magic? Laughs. Please review.