Tsunade learned how to count when she was five years old. She had long before learned how to throw a kunai and how to mold chakra and the best angle from which to cut a throat. Numbers came later. They just didn't seem that important for a ninja from a famous clan in the middle of a war. Still they had to be taught before the Academy, where she would be expected to do complex physics in her head.
She didn't like numbers and numbers didn't like her. She learned to count quickly and easily, and physics was not much more engaging. What Tsunade hated was probability and subtraction. The rest was fine, but, for her and her alone, the gambling outcomes never seemed to agree with their probabilities and she hated how often and irrevocably her money subtracted.
Tsunade was fifteen when she taught herself to count cards. She'd been gambling basically her whole life, but soon she would officially be allowed into the casinos. It was going to be legendary. She wanted to start with a bang so she learned to count cards.
It was technically against the rules, but what were rules to ninja, let alone the granddaughter of the First Hokage? Plus her usual performance was so poor that it seemed very fair and reasonable to her that she be allowed to improve her abysmal luck. It was easy enough to learn with the proper motivation, and she was sure that this, in addition to her new good luck routine, would finally tip the scales in her favor. She was wrong.
Somehow she kept losing and it increasingly seemed that the odds weren't adding up properly and, sweet Kami, she hated probability.
Tsunade could count the people she loved on one hand. Nawaki, Dan, Mito-baachan, Uncle Tobirama, Grandpa Hashi. She couldn't really remember her parents so it didn't feel right to have them on the list. At one point, she thought about adding her teammates and sensei but quickly decided that those idiots didn't deserve it.
She could count the people she loved on one hand. But her fingers were being systematical cut off.
One: Grandpa Hashi. He had to go off and be a hero and save the village and die in the war. Tsunade didn't really understand what or why. Mostly, she was mad at him for leaving.
Two: Uncle Tobirama. He had to go and follow in the footsteps of his older brother. Tsunade understood it more now that she was older, but she wasn't quite ready to forgive them.
Three: Nawaki. Everything broke into tiny, sharp pieces that she couldn't fit back together. But she had to. For Nawaki. So she did, barely, with bleeding hands and thousands of new cracks.
Four: Mito-baachan. Her death wasn't a surprise. She was so old and her burden was so heavy. Tsunade was not angry or broken this time. This one felt like a gentle letting go, like going home. But she was still sad.
Five: Dan. There was blood everywhere. Dark and red and staining; so much much of it that she'd still see it on her hands decades later. What was the point of ninja and her healer's skills when she couldn't save the only person she had left?
She had lost everything. There was nothing worth counting anymore. She left.
Tsunade taught a three-year-old Shizune how to count out of necessity. Hell, if the girl was going to tag along she might as well be useful. So the first thing Tsunade did was teach the small girl to count so that she could help with the casino winnings (but more often the debts) and do the grocery shopping and such.
But more than the ability to count, Tsunade tried to teach her what not to count. She could count money and kilograms and meters, bottles and cards and slots, days and towns and jutsus, but she should never count people, especially important ones. Numbers had ghosts and curses just like everything else.
Shizune picked up counting easily. It was the second lesson she never quite learned.
"What's Ame like, Tsunade-sama? Everything is so secretive these days. Didn't you spend a few years there during the war? Maybe we could visit there next?"
They were at a small dive bar after a rather long day. They had spent the week working at a local hospital in order to pay off some debts owed the town leader. Tsunade diagnosed and Shizune treated. Now that their penance was paid (and because she was banned from all the casinos in this town) Tsunade decided that it was the perfect evening to get raging drunk. Two hours and four bottles in, she was well past the happy and fun stage and was wading into honesty and philosophy.
"It's the kind of place where the rain drowns the taste of food and the burn of sake, and you're stuck in this perpetual shower because the sky seems determined to wash the blood off your hands. It never stops raining and it never will. Because the sky knows you'll never be clean again."
Her voice seemed far off, like her mind was far away in a different place and a different time. She kept staring sadly at her hands, eyes glazed and seeing things that were no longer there. Shizune knew that Tsunade still saw it, all of it, all of the blood that had once dripped there. She could measure the dead in gallons of blood running through her fingers, and, not for the first time, Shizune wished there was such a way to measure the living, to count the lives saved.
Something about Naruto's blatant honesty and simple being made him an enigma. She would try to guess how many more promises he would make during the mission briefing, how much longer he could keep talking without pausing for a breath, how many bowls of ramen he could eat in the fifteen minute break between training. She was always wrong.
Nothing about him could be counted or numbered in the usual way. He defied all of it simply because that's what he did. He would have been one-of-a-kind if such a description could truly encompass who he was.
He called her baachan because it annoyed her and because he loved her. He did it so easily, like she wasn't the first woman to fit in such a category in his heart, like it wasn't dangerous.
She knew that he counted. He counted every friend and every loved one and kept each number in a special place within him because he remembered a time when that number was zero. And unlike her, his number didn't shrink but grew exponentially. She couldn't help but think that he was brave. There was nothing scarier or more dangerous than counting people. But maybe that was just her.
Naruto almost gave her the courage to add him to some forgotten, now-empty list buried in her soul from long ago. It was so easy to believe in him when he smiled in his insane way and believed in himself so completely. She just almost maybe started to count him as one of her people...but she couldn't. She didn't have any more fingers to spare, and she wouldn't risk him like that anyway.
Sober Tsunade couldn't pinpoint what in life made her happy. Hungover Tsunade couldn't figure out what about Jiraiya made her so happy. Horny Tsunade couldn't think of a single thing about him that didn't make her happy. Drunk Tsunade didn't care about any of it as long as he was there.
"How long?"
It was a fair question. She had spent forty long years denying him so she couldn't blame him for being curious as to what changed and when. Hell, she was curious herself.
It was a hard question, harder than it should have been. She tried to remember how long ago she started loving him, stretching her thoughts back through time. It felt like forever and not nearly long enough. She finally decided that there was no decisive moment. It crept up on her slowly and sat there and waited for her to notice and then waited some more for her to accept it. It was something she could not count. And this, at the very least, she was thankful for.