Konoha Bar-
Seated at one of the many tables surrounded by people, in the corner sat the woman many kunoichis aspire to be. She was the granddaughter of the first Hokage, considered the deadliest woman in Konoha. She was one of the legendary Sannin, Tsunade Senju, renowned as the best medic in the Fire Country, capable of healing almost any injury given enough time to do so. However, all of that seemed insignificant to her now. While many saw her as the pinnacle of kunoichis due to her power and lineage, those who knew her past understood that she had sacrificed much to reach her current strength. From her perspective, she was tired of paying more to maintain her strength and help the village her grandfather had created with so much effort, among others.
Like other ninjas, she had served the village in its time of need, participating in the Second and Third Great Ninja Wars, aiding Konoha to emerge victorious. However, in each of those wars, she lost someone dear to her. In the Second War, she lost her only blood relative, Nawaki, her younger brother, who died on his first mission outside the village, along with his lover, Dan, leaving her alone in that dark world. Her only support was her comrades from the village, her teammates, and the people who supported her when she mourned the deaths of those she cared about.
In the months following the end of the Third Great Ninja War, she contemplated leaving the village to wander through the Elemental Nations after fulfilling her role as the hospital director. However, that idea dissipated like a leaf in the wind when she met the new student of the perverted Jiraiya, who turned out to be the son of her former student, Minato Namikaze, who was still being considered a candidate for Hokage along with his other teammate, Orochimaru, before he deserted upon discovering his experiments.
Upon meeting the brat, she initially thought he would be just like his father when he was a child, overly respectful when it came to his elders. However, she was greatly mistaken. The boy presented an extremely proud and haughty personality before her, making her laugh until she couldn't anymore. The brat appeared to be a copy of his father in appearance, but in personality, he was anything but similar. He had a faint resemblance to Kushina's personality when she was a child, but at the same time, he was unique. In all her years of life up to that point, she had never met anyone so proud to the point of defying orders from his superiors without caring about the consequences.
As she got to know him over time, she realized that he was a genius like his father, graduating at an age that very few achieved, ascending through the ranks of the village like an unstoppable wave. She understood why Jiraiya was so fascinated every time he trained him, talking about him whenever he could. Who wouldn't want to boast that their student was a damn genius, creating his own taijutsu with the sole purpose of messing with the Sharingan users, challenging them to see if they could steal it as they had done several times in the past with their enemies?
She was more than sure that the brat was special among all the others because even his body, when found injured by Kakashi, had the chance to examine it while healing him, finding that his body was, in a few words, perfect for combat. Another way of saying it was that he had a body capable of performing demanding physical tasks but also able to move with grace and elegance.
However, despite being someone special, he remained a human being, having his flaws capable of becoming like any other. She saw firsthand how little by little that young man was mentally deteriorating with each mission after being promoted to Jonin. He was sent on S-rank missions when they were needed, mostly assassination missions or explorations when unknown events in the Fire Country required his attention.
In each mission, those strange events that he was sent to investigate with a group of chunin under his command resulted in barely half or none of them returning, something that alarmed the higher-ups, leading to a meeting to discuss those events, one in which she attended as the head of her clan. For the most part, that meeting was merely blaming other villages or renegade ninjas from their villages. However, things took a turn when someone from the civilian council mentioned a possible conspiracy, suggesting that Naruto himself could be the cause of all that because out of the shinobi who returned with him from the mission, he was the least injured when examined. This brought her the disapproving looks from the majority of the clan heads along with the Hokage himself.
It was well known Naruto's unquestionable loyalty to the village, having the support of the majority in the room, ending the meeting at that moment. However, she left with a bad taste in her mouth for hearing a foolish villager question the loyalty of someone she considered her younger brother after having lost hers in the war, something that weighed on her mind because as time passed with Naruto, their relationship grew stronger to the point where she gave him her grandfather's necklace, one that her brother Nawaki wore to protect him.
For that reason, she decided to see him that afternoon after the meeting, taking some time to find him until she found him sitting on training ground 7 on a stump with his back turned, preparing to scare him. However, she saw him whispering to himself, wanting to hear out of curiosity but unable to see his face, only hearing his murmurs while looking at something in his hands.
"Who am I? I am the son of the great King of Knights. I am the arrogant knight of betrayal. I am both, and both are myself. However, when I wear this helmet, I am neither of the two. I can only think that I am like any other living being. One that you can find anywhere, worthless and frantically trying to stay alive. So just like they breathed their last, I suppose. that surely I will perish as they did. That's why before I find my last moments, I want to know. Who the hell was I?"
She didn't understand those words, much less knew what he had in his hands at that moment before showing herself to him, finally able to see his face, something that remained etched in her brain to this day because his eyes that day were sunken and tired. The eyelids were drooping, and the eyebrows were furrowed, reflecting a look of sadness and resignation, as if he had lost hope.
She should have known that day that something had changed within Naruto because from then on, he wasn't the same until the day he deserted, leaving her only with the bitter reminder of her moments with him, the necklace of her grandfather that she had given him, which now, looking at it, was just a bitter reminder that she had lost a loved one again, but there was little she could do now. The past could not be changed, and going to look for him was beyond her reach because nothing was known about him until the day he deserted.
And end of chapter.