AN: I know I should be working on some of my other stories, but my motivation level is decreasing by the minute. So nothing new for those drabble series. This is a late mother's day thing, or it can be whatever, idk.

Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine

I don't know went wrong, I can't remember when everything just came tumbling down but it must have been bad.

Because I'm counting nine empty bottles around my feet.

I don't think I let one drop hit the floor; that would just be a waste of good alcohol. No, everything went down the hatch, hot and burning and searing away the memories like acid. But nothing felt like enough, no matter how many bottles I emptied, I could still feel those dark, black scenes of the blood and death creeping behind the whites of my eyes.

So I took another swig.

Nine bottles was ten minutes ago, and now I can't see straight enough to count the others I've emptied.

Should I be concerned?

Should I call someone to help me stop?

Naw.

Ten hours later I wake up with restraint on my wrists and ankles, crisp white hospital sheets covering me from the waist down and a big window in the wall right in front of me.

Great, I'm in the loony bin.

I can hear the voices on the other side of the pane of glass, furiously talking about me most likely.

I lifted my right hand, just to test how tightly they had me confined, and much to my absent surprise, not even an inch gave way.

Shit.

"Whatever it is, I didn't do it!" I knew shouting at them wouldn't get me anywhere, but I was bored, and they were there literally shouting their existence.

Why did people do that? Especially in a hospital when people really needed the peace and quiet, like on soap operas, where everyone crowds into this tiny E.R room, all the women clucking their heads off because the father of their unborn child has just slipped into a mysterious coma, and then everyone starts drinking.

I think that's why I'm here.

But who knows, man. I can barely remember my name.

"Tsunade." That's it.

I could hear the door open and close, some cool air blowing over my face from the other side.

"Are you alright?" Dumb question, doctor. I'm in restraints after what I suppose was a binge drinking trip that must have caused me to pass out naked on some public sidewalk or throw something along the lines of my intestines up and onto some poor guys' lap.

"Do bears shit in the woods?" It was hard craning my neck to be able to see him, but I could tell just by the way he talked that we were not going to be best friends. He sat down in the big chair next to my bed and made eye contact.

Oh god. It's a woman.

"How are you feeling?"

"A tad hung-over, doc." She smiled and nodded, apparently appreciating my humor in the passive-aggressive way shrinks do.

"Well you did have quite the party last night, dear." Dear? Who was she, my grandmother? She didn't even call me dear!

"Do you remember how much you drank?"

"Well, I'm pretty coherent, so it couldn't have been much." Her smile shriveled up into this hard pissy line, and her face took on this mask of solemnity.

"Your teacher counted fourteen empty bottles lying around your passed out body, with the fifteenth lying in your hand half empty." Oh, she was scolding me.

"Please don't tell me he poured it out." She sighed, but I know she wanted to huff, she looks like the kind of lady who would huff at childish things like that.

"He had to resuscitate you twice on the way to the hospital, not to mention the doctors had to shock you back into sinus rhythm another two times once you got here. You were technically dead for over a minute." I started picking at my wrist restraints, hoping the lack of attention would make her give up.

But shrinks are gay that way. They're like hungry dogs; just waiting for you to drop some scrap and then they go ape-shit once something falls on the floor.

"I'll take them off of you if you promise to just answer my questions." Now I sighed, holding back the burp in my chest.

"How many do you have?"

"It all depends on you." I waited there for a second, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting four of them and then rolling my eyes down to watch the window, squinting at the lone shadow behind the dark pane, knowing it was Sarutobi.

"Fine." She stood up, putting her clipboard on her seat and reaching for the strap on my left wrist, undoing it with careful hands.

"Where did you get all the sake?"

"The candy store." She smiled it off, and I had a feeling that was going to get on my nerves in a matter of minutes.

"Did you buy it all at once?" My hand was free and she strode over to the other side of my bed to get to my right.

"Why does it matter?"

"So I can decide if this little episode was premeditated or not. To make sure you're not crazy." She gave me this weird motherly smile as she freed my hand and went to my ankles. I sat up to watch her, quietly scanning the room.

One door: closed and probably has a guard on the other side, ready for me via window man. There was one air vent that was way too small for my ass to get through and the glass could be as thick as a grown mans' hand.

And glass hurts.

"No, not all of it at once, I had some of it back at my house." My left foot was starting to fall asleep just as she made her way to it.

"Why did you do it?" I pulled my feet away from her when they were free, tucking them under me and sitting criss-cross.

"Were you upset about something?"

"You don't have to talk to me like I'm about to explode, lady. I'm a big girl." The doctor nodded, returning to her seat and flipping a page on her clipboard, then focusing her bland brown eyes back on me.

Looking over her again, I just started to comprehend how normal this woman was. She was so civilian, so nondescript I wouldn't be able to pick her out of a crowd.

"Okay then, Tsunade. The kid gloves come off." Like she was about to divulge government secrets, she leaned in close to me, strands of dark brown hair falling from out behind her ears.

"Do you drink to burn away your failures?"

"Who doesn't?"

"What are yours?" God, now she was making me think. With emotions and stuff.

"Not investing in my 401k."

"Your deflections speak louder than your facetious remarks, hun." There she goes with the names again.

"I sense some aggression in you, something you don't like about me."

"Spot on doc, you must get that kind of vibe a lot." I rolled my eyes and laid my head back down on my pillow, my patience starting to thin.

"Do you find me insipid? Because I find you rough and jagged, like you've been broken before."

"I fell out of a tree and broke my arm when I was five."

"So you're insecure about discussing your feelings, that shows me you lack emotional maturity. So you hide behind your temper and drinking to keep prodding people out. It's not the most original thing-"

"Should I take up tap-dancing?" I rolled over to face her, eyes angry as they melted into hers, catching her raised eyebrow at my sudden retort.

"Or do you want me to cry you a river?"

"I want you to talk about why you tried to commit suicide." Wait, backup, suicide? This chick it really out there, I wasn't planning on-

"Tell me how that made you feel."

"A little angry." Sorry, the words left my mouth before I realized it. I've just dropped her a scrap. Dammit.

"Why, because I accused you? Do you not like that?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't like having fingers pointed at me." She scribbled that last bit down on her clipboard, tapping the end of her pen against the pad of paper clipped on as she watched me.

"And why is that?" I could feel my brain crunching out ways to get her to shut her mouth, maybe mention the lack of a wedding ring on her finger of maybe the very noticeable face-lift scar adorning the skin under her jaw.

"It just makes me angry?"

"Because the attention annoys you? Are you an introvert?" I heard a soft chuckle coming from the other side of the glass, knowing this had to be the most enjoyable thing in his whole day.

"No, I'm not an introvert. And what does me being bugged by being accused have to do with anything?" Another quick scribble and a flip of the page, muddy eyes scanning the page.

"Does your mother blame you for your younger brother's death?" Bitch, of course she would bring up Nawaki. I gnashed my teeth together until they hurt, refusing to give her that kind of satisfaction.

"Because it says here that you two haven't spoken since his death." She looked to me, searching my face for some kind of an answer. I wanted so bad just to throw something at her, to chuck shards of glass at her face and shove knives down her throat.

"Tsunade?"

"What?" Hissing seemed like the appropriate thing to do, Orochimaru always does it when someone gets on his nerves, and it usually works for him.

Me, not so much.

"Are you blamed for your brothers' death?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think your mother believes you were responsible for not keeping him safe?"

"I don't know."

"Was she angry with you for not being there?"

"I guess."

"Did her being angry with you drive the two of you apart?"

"Yeah."

"Do you miss her?" Oh damn, she got me again. Maybe I should have been a shrink, makes way more money than I do and you get to mess with people's heads all day.

But her words were starting to get to me, and it was really annoying.

"We're too mad at each other to be able for us to miss each other."

"I think she would miss you, you are her daughter."

"And Nawaki was her son, but she liked him more than me."

"How do you know?"

"Parents always like the youngest more. It's like some law of the universe." I put my head in my hands and ran my fingers through my hair, twiddling some loose locks.

"I miss her." The doc nodded sagely, scribbling it down and looking back to me, waiting.

"Why? Besides the obvious of her being mom." That really got me thinking, I mean really, what did I miss bout my mom? It was something kids didn't really have to explain, it was just, kind of natural. I mean, you 're just automatically born with this love for your mom that's beyond words.

"I miss her cooking, she made the best ramen and dango." I felt my mouth water at the thought of shoveling that food down my throat, just totally throwing it down.

"Anything else?"

"I miss her smile. She has this really pretty platinum smile that can just lift you from any mood you were in." I felt myself smiling, and I knew she was just eating this up. Crap, I'm giving her what she wants.

"And I miss how she would flick my nose with her finger and hold me when there were bad thunderstorms."

"She'd sing to me during nights when the storms were really bad. She kind of stopped after Nawaki was born." I went off to stare at nothing in particular as her voice swam back into my head, soft and calming, melting away the fear the gripped me with every clap of thunder, every flash of light.

"Do you think she would be upset with you after what you've done?"

"I guess so. I mean, I'm not her, I don't think like she does, so I wouldn't know." She stared at me like she knew there was going to be something more.

"Try thinking like a mother, and try imagining the hurt you would feel if your child tried killing themself."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself, I was just drinking!" Jeeze, was she deaf or something? I think I said that before.

"Whatever you want to call it, do you think she would be upset?"

"Yes! She would because that's my best guess. She'd be upset because she'd have to pay for the funeral and then she'd have to stand around while they put me in the ground and waste her time burying another baby!" Whoa, I'm kind of out of breath now.

Good, I've got her slack jawed a bit, and now she's starting to scribble it all down, probably noting my guilt and mommy issues, and all that jazzy stuff.

"You really think that's how she thinks of you?"

"I don't know, because I just told you I never know what's going on in that head of hers! I don't wanna talk anymore, I'm done." I flopped over so my back was to her, so completely done with her.

There was silence for what seemed like hours, until I heard her shuffling through her papers and tapping her pen on her clipboard.

"I'm not leaving until I decide we're done.

"Have fun sitting in silence then, doc." I started boring holes in the wall before me, completely forgetting about the big window to my left.

"Tsunade, stop being childish." I froze. The voice coming over the speaker was grainy, but it could have never been clearer. I knew it immediately and shot my eyes over to the dark window, now seeing two shadowed figures standing there, one shorted than the other, with a head of wavy hair.

"Darling, please." I was sitting up now, so focused on the figure in the window, knowing it was her, knowing her oceanic blue eyes were staring into my brown, knowing she was trying not to chew on her thumb nail.

"Mom." The tone of my voice was tricky, not sounding much like a question, nor a statement, more like a vocal spasm.

"I don't know where you got those ideas from, but it's not true. None of it." I could hear the tears clogging up in her throat, and I could hear her effort as she tried hiding them from me. Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

"How long has she been here?" I was basically ready to jump up and rattle the doc's brains if he didn't answer fast enough.

"Long enough to hear you say you think her burying you would be a drag to her day." I looked back to the window; regret filling my face as I stared at my reflection.

"I loved your brother, I still do. And I love you too, Tsunade. You were my first, my little girl, and burying you would absolutely kill me." She was in the doorway, her hand holding her steady on the frame. Just like I thought, those eyes, those deep ocean blue were on me like white on rice, looking over every inch of me.

Blonde hair flowed down her shoulders, curling near the ends and flying wild behind her. She was still so short; I was already a good head taller than her.

"Honey, I could never go a day without you. If I lost you, I'd lose everything."

"Then why didn't you try talking to me?"

"Because I know you, Tsunade. I know you don't like people sharing feelings and expecting you to do the same." She took a step forward, hand resting on her chest over her heart. She always did that when she was nervous, she would rub her chest with her knuckles until the skin was red.

"Mom please."

"And I know you never liked people coming to you and giving comfort, so I stayed away even though it killed me." Now she was standing right in front of me, Miss. Man-shrink was long gone, probably standing outside waiting for the breakthrough.

"Because you were all I had left, and I didn't want to lose you any more than I already had. So I stayed away for you, baby."

She sat down on my bed, hand now long gone from her chest and holding mine, the other smoothing back my hair, her thumb wiping away a tear.

Oh good lord, I was crying. This kind of thing is not allowed.

"I want you to come home and sober up, there's a fresh batch of ramen on the stove waiting for you, and I can make you all the dango you can eat." She smiled, that beautiful smile only my mother can manage, that smile that made me want to be as good as I possibly could just to keep her smiling.

"Come home with me, darling."

So there it is, Tsu's mommy came to bail her out of the loony-bin, it's heart warming!

PEACE :P