finally || naruto and tsunade

ii

She blamed the sake...

Tsunade, a veteran shinobi of Konoha, one of the legendary Sannin, the greatest kunoichi to ever walk the planet, was terrified.

The cause of her fear?

A blond-haired, blue-eyed man named Uzumaki Naruto, the Hero of the Fourth.

The man she loved. Her... lover.

Lover... The word was so strange to her. Only one other man had held that title in her long-lived life, and he had been gone for many, many years. Love was all but nonexistent in the medic-nin's life after Dan died.

But then Uzumaki Naruto walked into her life, first as a snot-nosed brat with an overwhelmingly large bark and an admittedly larger bite, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, he turned into a wonderful man who put others before himself. He became a selfless hero, truly and absolutely.

Naruto was loved by all. Konoha worshiped the ground he walked on, revering him as the "savior of humanity." All very true, though Tsunade found the title quite silly. Kakashi, now the Lord Sixth Hokage, had always cherished him, being both the student of Naruto's father, and later Naruto's sensei.

Suna nearly worshiped him just as much as Konoha did. Naruto had saved their Kazekage, Gaara, more times than either would ever admit, first from Gaara himself, and then from the Akatsuki, an organization that tried to force peace upon the world through pain.

Kumo had a strong opinion of Naruto, one that mostly stemmed from Killer Bee, the Cloud's Jinchuuriki. And there was the whole saving the world for the sake of peace alone thing, too.

Iwa and Kiri were of the same mind when it came to the "Orange Hero," yet another silly title, one that Tsunade suspected originated from the blond-haired idiot himself. "A savior of the people." "A true hero." These were used to describe Naruto on a daily bases within these nations.

General consensus?

Naruto was the messiah, sent by whatever god one believed in, to save the world from its worst enemy: hate.

Uzumaki Naruto sought out the hate in everyone's hearts, unburdening them from it with only one encounter. Tsunade herself had witnessed this ability, this phenomenon to connect with people, to completely understand their pain and, somehow, help free them from it.

He had done so with her, after all.

Tsunade had hated... well, life in general.

Life wasn't fair. It took and it took, and it didn't care about the pain it caused the world. She had lost her grandparents, her parents, her brother, her lover, countless friends... life took everything she cared about away, and she hated it for that.

And instead of facing that hatred head on, instead of accepting the help those that were still around offered her, she did the most cowardly thing a person could do. She ran. She ran away from her responsibilities, her remaining friends and family, her home... her duty.

For so long, Tsunade ran away from her past, drowning her sorrows in unhealthy amounts of alcohol, dragging the last person – at the time – in the whole world who she felt like she had left along for the ride.

But then Uzumaki Naruto showed up and decided to change... everything.

| An Equal |

"Why?" Tsunade asked, completely confused by what she saw before her. A boy, no older than Nawaki was when... when he passed away, refused to back down, refused to run away from his obviously superior opponent.