I wrote this at 01:00 after an eight hour shift so don't expect anything grand and spectacular. This is mostly drabble from a tired mind; I wasn't sure what I was thinking when I finished it.

Music : James Blake - Retrograde

"What did you expect to change? How long could you keep a deception so blatant in nature secretive, especially as time passed on? Surely you can see such decisions as broken conjecture of a hopeful old man, too fragmented and hopeful for his own good."

"I have seen horrors and lived too long, it is as simple as that. A life within the shinobi world is cursed enough as it is, but to live one - and as a key figure - for as long as I have is truly a curse. I could not bring myself to care, for any better term of the word, but to have hope. I could not bring myself to do as many more horrors as I had already committed."

"Then you are selfish."

"You could make that argument, and you'd be within right, but then what of my entire life? Have I not given enough?"

"You knew what you had to give when you signed up for the job. Giving up, no matter how much time has passed, is breaking your will and makes you selfish."

"I didn't know what I was signing up for. Hell, how could anyone? I was barely twenty when I was made Hokage, and had barely just experienced the worst of war. It is different now, when I have seen as much as I have, from the person I thought I could have been so long ago. If that makes me a bad person, as selfish as you claim, then I do not have the energy to refute you. The only thing that compels me to continue as it is, is duty. A broken procedure within me to continue despite everything."

"... very well, but that does not beguile a reason for your failings. There would have been better options, had you had the willpower and energy to follow through. Did you not think of that?"

"Did I not try to retire? To alleviate my control to someone else, younger and more capable of making the right decisions? Was it my fault, that then, a demon attacked and forced me to once again take the mantle, despite being too scarred and marred to make the correct, hard decisions?"

"Then it was your fault for not preparing well enough in the event your successor dies."

"If you are making that argument, then you can argue that point for almost anything - in any scenario. Every single thing would have to have a back-up plan, every single thing. Nobody can contemplate that much."

"But in a shinobi world, you must be perfect. Especially if you perceive yourself to be a leader, stronger than the others and capable of leading."

"Do not be a fool. Nobody is perfect."

"Then the system is doomed to fail, and it is only a factor or time until this world ends in suffering."

AN: Ok, this is quite hard to follow and understand so I'll explain it as much as I can without ruining the spectacle.

This is meant to be a conversation between Hiruzen and an unidentified third party, (I'd like to imagine either Itachi or Danzo, but who it is isn't important to the meaning).

This is a critique into Hiruzen's decisions within his career and how it can be perceived, but also a defence of his actions to a certain degree. I think we've all read fanfics with either Hiruzen bashing or something similar, and it's hard to agree with some of his decisions after Minato died, but I'd also like to rectify the point that he is as human as any one of us.

So now… an excuse for not writing anything for almost an entire year? I'm going to be completely honest, I'm shit at completing fanfics, and after starting about fifty and only getting as far as eighty pages on a bare few of them, I realise that if I wanted to start anything long and meaningful I'll have to be completely committed.

It led to me having a new appreciation and understanding of those who fully commit and complete fanfics of their own design, and authors as a whole. This shit is hard, and as much as I love doing it, it's going to be a highball to think that I'll ever make anything of the same level.

This isn't me saying I'm going to give up, I'm still going to try, but until then I've decided that I'm much more suited for writing one shots and drabbles similar to this. There are fanfics that I have written and half completed with about ten pages of interesting dialogue that I was going to turn into a full length fanfic, but didn't have the energy or commitment - I'm going to start publishing these as edited one shots.

I realise this AN is almost as long as the drabble itself now so I'm going to cut this short, thanks for all the encouragement and positive feedback :)