Story: The Oddity
Title: Twice-Cursed
Summary: "She is, like Uchiha Sasuke, the last of her kind."
Character: Tsunade
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Notes: SPOILERS for chapter 405. I mean, if you're up to date until 404, nothing too bad. Because you already know. But just in case.
He's . . . nice.
Hey, 'Nade, want to go out with me tonight?
It's odd. Odd enough that she says yes and they go out and they dance and they drink and they shimmy like they're both teenagers. He kisses like she's breakable and she fucks him like he isn't.
They're both liars.
(So is the necklace. She gives it to him and hopes that he'll last.)
In the end she doesn't know how to feel about his death. So for a little while she doesn't bother feeling at all. She simply acts and moves through life. She dreams about tiny things in a sea of fog. She remembers fucking him, she remembers drinking with him, she remembers stumbling home after a mission, The Mission, when she knew that that stupid purple-tongued idiot wasn't coming home, and his arms locking behind her.
She remembers slipping the chain over his neck, kissing his collarbone, whispering in his ear Come home.
She wakes up screaming at lot, for those first few months. Then she learns to cry.
After a while she forgets how to cry, too. She is a Wanderer, with all that entails. She doesn't make friends and have lovers; she just floats from village to village, eternally young and wise. She has acquaintances and one night stands and drinking buddies. There are four people that really, truly know her, and two of them are asses and one of them is dead. The fourth is off in the Land of Bureaucracy and doesn't have time to answer her petty questions.
She never bothers writing letters home, because she's not quite sure where home is.
Some days, home isn't there at all, and most days it's nestled between her breasts on a long chain.
Seeing him again is like hitting herself in the stomach (all chakra, no holding back). She is hiding, watching him and some short blonde with spiky hair that reminded her of another idiot kid she used to know (Don't worry, you can give me a love letter later). She doesn't know if the tree she wants to uproot is for hitting him or herself, so she settles for running away.
When they meet again, she is prepared.
She's gone through this once before.
She was younger and blonder and less experienced, and she was still going on missions. She couldn't name the members of the Council and their immediate family members, she couldn't schmooze, she drank (a little) less.
But there is something familiar about looking into his eyes and realizing that she would do a lot for this man – that she hated him almost as much as she loved him.
"I hate you," she tells him as she slams his back into the wall. I love you, she thinks as she runs her fingers through his hair and her tongue down the stripes on his face.
Even if she still had the necklace, she wouldn't give it to him. He doesn't need the luck or the protection or the thought beneath them. He's just him.
The kid is still spiky and blonde but he's not as short as he used to be; there is something in his eyes that she can't bear seeing. It's like meeting judge, jury, and executioner in one fell stroke, and they're all screaming that she's so fucking guilty she should be combusting under this glare.
If the kid could channel it into a jutsu, it could probably decimate any S-class he came across in his future.
Depending, that is, on how long his future is. Her spiky-haired idiot lasted a lot longer than either of them expected – hell, there must have been something in the drinking water on one of those genin missions because all of them, even the Third, lasted ridiculously long.
The thought that she's the only one left hits her suddenly. She doesn't know why it took her so long to realize.
She's fifty and she's been in love twice. Once was sweet and short. The other was longer and violent and twisted. Both are, in essence, herself. She is twisted and occasionally nice and usually a bitch. She found love in Dan but she found her soul in Jiraiya and now that stupid, stupid man has died and left her behind.
They all left her behind.
She is, like Uchiha Sasuke, the last of her kind.
It is for this she weeps.
Right, so, I told myself that none of these were going to be about the men in the life of the women I'm chronicling. Heh, look how that turned out. This was supposed to be about the necklace . . . but it ended up not. Sort of. Aaargh. Thoughts? Help? I don't know who to do next. I wasn't even going to do Tsunade . . . except chapter 405 hit me like a lead balloon.
