Disclaimer: Characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

AN: Smallish AU piece.

Cease

So writes Hiruzen, on the seventh of Kalimari, to his student Jiraiya.

I have received your letter in time, Jiraiya, and ensured that Kusa will not make unnoticed advances towards the Hayam Delta. Your quick information made this possible, so thank you. I also noticed that your letters get shorter, more to the point. You usually don't put much stock in brevity, so I can only assume that once again you are angry with me for a decision I made.

Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, you are angry with the office I hold, for it continuously pits us against each other on matters of principle where we would agree if it weren't for the hat on my head, and what it means. It is unavoidable, though I wish it weren't so.

The saddest reality of the Hokage, Jiraiya, is that you cease being yourself and become the village. Its needs are yours, just as its losses and wins, the entirety of it, is yours.

When it comes to making a decision, no matter what I, Sarutobi Hiruzen, would have done, my decision will always come from a position of I, the village. In essence, to become Hokage means to cease your prior identity. It also means to live in a twisted state of mind, where you encounter frequently situations that make it harder to live with yourself. As a Hokage I sacrificed others for the village, even those that I as a person would have fought tooth and nail for. That is the sad truth. And every night when I put down the hat for what little time of respite I have, sleep reminds me of my deeds.

Konoha at sunrise, the most beautiful scene I can imagine, is also my greatest nightmare precisely because I know what it symbolizes: every choice I made for the village that hurt someone I love. For the same reason, choosing Minato was the hardest thing I ever did. My last decision for the village was to give it its greatest leader, breaking a happy man out of his family, making him cease to be himself, knowing that this would be what had to happen eventually – it always is – and knowing that I wanted to spare him that at any cost but couldn't.

At the same time, it was my most selfish moment because finally I could be myself again, I had handed down that burden to someone else. But for that, too, I slept less each night.

In a way that made it far easier to accept the hat once more after Minato died. I had lived a few years as myself, knowing that another person was going through this. When I took back the hat I figured it was my repentance for such selfishness. Ultimately, that is what being a shinobi means. To endure. And no one embodies that more than the Hokage who has, for the sake of everyone else, to endure ceasing.

I hope you can forgive me for my choices, Jiraiya. And I wish you would visit more often, even though I understand why you would rather avoid the village. Take care.

Sarutobi Hiruzen

Jiraiya put down the letter. It was yellowed and crumpled, but he had kept it for all those years because at no other time had his late sensei ever been as open to him. How many years had passed since? Twenty? The last time he had read the letter was when he took the hat himself.

There was a knock at the door and Jiraiya called the visitor into his office.

Moegi entered, Jōnin vest snuggling her shape. She had become a young woman, strong, moral, lively. But for once Jiraiya couldn't find pleasure in that. Feeling the by now chronic pain in his back, he told her that he was getting too old for the office, and that he'd chosen her as his successor. And while her eyes grew wide, the letter weighed on Jiraiya's mind, and he couldn't remember another time at which he had felt as relieved yet miserable.

Fin