𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐓𝐎 (𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐒)

Regrets, For She has Many

         She knew this feeling fairly well. That empty kind of numb feeling, void of anything but shock. Her heart had shattered like glass, the crystalline remains left on the wooden floor of her office to be picked up tomorrow. She had expected his death, it didn't surprise her. What surprised her was the guilt, remorse, and feeling of responsibility she had resting on her shoulders for his demise. She couldn't help but feel terribly guilty, while she had sat at her nice wide desk eating lunch, he had been bringing himself back to life with pure willpower to etch a message in a toad sages back with shaking hands. She felt even guiltier for wishing that those shaking hands last action had been to touch her one last time.
    His time had come, and he died a hero. A truly glorious death, one that a shinobi should be proud of. And the problem was that she wasn't. She wasn't proud of his glorious death, and she selfishly wished that he was here for her now, to carry her drunken ass home and sober her up. To make some raucous joke, hinting of the truth she always refused to turn her eyes to. He always knew just what to say to her, whether it was meant to bring tears, a smile, or a wistful remembrance of when she had been a younger woman. She hadn't listened to him then, and she found it funny how people tend to listen to you and remember you more when you've gone.
    His last words to her had been the saddest of the syllables she had ever heard spew out of his mouth on a whim. She had begun a threat to him saying,
"If you don't come back I'll-"
"You'll what? Cry for me?" She still clearly remembered his bittersweet tone ringing through the still twilight air, how it had pierced through her heart like a million senbon. He continued as she began to let her drunken tears flow,
"But not like Dan. Not like Dan."
The last sentence brought more shame to her than grief. He had been right, when Dan died she had been wailing and screaming, she sobbed and let herself waste away. Her resolve for living crumbling like a day old pastry, the jam oozing out like blood. But with Jiraiya's death, she had simply become incapable of anything but daily work, and autopilot instinctive reactions. If an assassin were to barge into the very bar she was in, and slit her throat at the very stool she sat at, she wasn't sure how she'd react. She'd like to think she'd hear him, and kill him before he got the chance. But she doubted that she would, she was barely functioning enough to bring the cup of Sake to her trembling chapped lips, begging for a release of Jiraiya's deathly grip.
But as she continued to reach the end of each burning liquid flowing from the bottle, all she was met with was the memories of his broad square shoulders. His desperation to prove his greatness, to prove that he was strong enough. Strong enough to save her from herself, strong enough to bring Orochimaru back, strong enough to train the Chosen One. Strong enough to save Minato, to save Nagato, Konan and Yahiko. But he had failed. He had failed each and every single one of them. He had failed their old Sensei, Hiruzen Sarutobi. He had failed her, and Orochimaru, and Minato, and Nagato, Konan and Yahiko. He had made the most mistakes, lived the most, and died the most. She was proud of him, oh how proud Tsunade was of her former Teammate, fellow Sannin, and almost lover. Being the proud woman she was, she couldn't admit the last conversation she'd had with him. She had let him make the walk of shame to his former student, and she let him die. He had slipped through her grasp once again. And here she was, crying over the man she loved for the second time in her long lifetime of a Ninja.
She was sorry, so sorry to Jiraiya for being unable to be the wife she could have been to him. She did admit that she loved him, and deeply so. But she couldn't risk it, not as a Hokage, not as a Sannin, and not as a Ninja of the Leaf. She let the guilt curl up in her gut like a cat, turning in a circle for settling to rest for a long nap, and she hoped that one day she'd free herself from this prison she had formed to protect herself from pain, making it impossible to save those she loved from inside her self-imposed prison. She left the bar feeling significantly heavier weights on her shoulders, and she went home to sleep it off, that is if she could sleep.
She dreamed of Jiraiya that night. Dreamed of him and everything they could have had, the children, the students they could have taught. Jiraiya was Hokage of course, and she was his wife, comrade, and his partner. She laughed to herself as she stumbled down the street, thinking of the one child they had together. Minato Namikaze. She had convinced everyone it was Dan's child, and most people bought the lie. But he knew, oh Jiraiya knew. He never told her he knew, but he sought out Minato from the beginning, and trained him to be his best self like the desperate detached father he was. Minato had been the perfect, most wonderful child, and at one point he had even approached her asking for the truth. And as she looked into those eyes, that had the same glimmer of determination like Jiraiya's, and she couldn't lie. She told him.
She told him of the mistake she and Jiraiya had made, and she told him how she convinced everyone it was her dead lover Dan's child. He was sixteen then, and he never said a word to Jiraiya about it. And she thanked for it, and the secret would now die with her. Jiraiya was gone, and she felt no relief of the secret of her child and her broken family. But it was to be expected, it was the price to pay for making as many mistakes as she had, and she had made so, so many.