Epilogue. come by the highway home

It was spring again.

Senju Hashirama glanced up from his papers long enough to catch a pair of birds gliding over the plaza in front of his window. The soft scent of earth mixed with budding leaves and grass hung in the air. It was spring as Mito would have liked it.

"Stop grinning like an idiot," Madara told him as he entered the room they shared as an office. "It makes me want to punch you."

"Isn't it a beautiful day?" Hashirama smiled widely. He knew his seemingly carefree attitude could piss his old friend off as much as anything else. True to his nature, Madara scowled and dumped a stack of papers on Hashirama's desk.

"Read this and tell me what you think."

Hashirama scanned over the papers. "A restructuration of the genin training plans? And of the team set-up? What's this about?"

"I thought of a few things," was Madara's only comment. "And I know you have, too."

Inwardly, the Senju smiled. It was very much like Madara to make everything sound like it wasn't to his credit when he brought up new plans for the village. As much as they'd been rivals before, Madara disliked to be named as someone who actually liked administrative work. A few points into the paper, Hashirama found something that made him stop.

"A medic in every team?" He read off the parchment. "This again."

"It was a good idea and you know that," Madara said. "It's not that easy, of course. Not every genin team will have one member that will feel an affinity to healing. But since teams are re-shuffled often when the members reach chuunin level…"

"What is this supposed to be?" Hashirama asked, putting the paper down and frowning at Madara. "A homage to my granddaughter?"

"No, a child of necessity. And a product of logic." Madara stayed calm. "And speaking of Tsunade… You know they would never have survived if she hadn't been trained as a medic. They only lasted that long because Tsunade could keep them upright, and then they only survived because there was another medic on the SAR team."

"Yes, yes," Hashirama grumbled. "But it will need some serious reorganization of our resources. And besides…"

"I don't care," Madara said rudely. "Just let's get it on its way. We can't let something like that happen again, Hashirama. This is our village, these are our children out there. We have to do everything to protect them. Mito would have wanted it, too."

Hashirama opened and closed his mouth, his eyes going dark for a second. Then, he sighed. "You are right."

Outside, the birds sang.

"They're our children, after all."

…

Vision of the future:

"Mummy! Mummy! Muuuuummy! Hiro's hitting me!"

The voice of the little girl did not carry the tearful sound one expected to hear coming with those words, especially if it was the younger sister complaining about her elder brother badgering her. Instead, it was loud. A few passers-by on the street startled in alarm at the voice and the following racket inside the house.

"She's lying! I didn't touch her – Kushina, shut up! Mum, don't believe her, she's just-"

"Silence!"

The voice rang like thunder through the air. Everyone who had been eaves-dropping hastily carried on his or her way, shaking their heads and secretly praying they would never have to deal with those children. Inside the house, the mother looked at both her children, her hands on her hips. She was a small, shapely woman with hair as red as cherries and a finely drawn face. Lines surrounded her eyes, both from laughter and from sadness. She was small – but both her children stood still in front of her as if in front of a jury, their heads hung low in shame.

"What did I tell you, Hiro," the woman lectured. "What did I tell you about these things?"

In one hand she held the blunted kunai, four in total. They looked as if they had been used many a times, a favorite toy to many generations of future Uzushio genin.

"Don't throw kunai in the house," Hiro recited, a lecture often rehearsed. He had the dark hair of his father, with flashes of the Uzumaki red shining through stubbornly.

"And what did I tell you, Kushina?" The woman turned to her younger daughter. Kushina, with the same striking hair as her mother, otherwise resembled her brother like a pea in the pod. They could have been twins had it not been for the obvious difference in age.

"I am not to take away Hiro's kunai," she mumbled, scuffing her feet on the ground. "But-"

"Is there a but?" Their mother asked calmly.

Both shook their heads, mutely.

"Good." The woman smiled. "Now apologize to each other and when you're finished I am sure Grandma Mahiro could use your help in the kitchen. She said something about cake. Would you help her?"

With a chorus of happy yells, both disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. The woman smiled fondly and looked after them. "Mother always says they inherited the Uzumaki genes. Can't see why she'd say that."

In the kitchen, voices sprung up.

"I want to do the stirring, Grandma, please!"

"No, I want to!"

The woman shook her head and went back to her interrupted laundry duty, secretly praying that squabbles like these would be the only major confrontations her beloved children would have to deal with in their very own futures.

…

Jiraiya and Orochimaru waited for Tsunade in front of the hospital.

She saw them from far: two tall men, one dark, one light. Black and white, like her very own fairy-tale princes – only that they didn't live in one. Jiraiya looked pale under his mane of white hair, having only slowly recovered. He'd come out of intensive care a few days ago. And Orochimaru – while always pale – looked worn out and still better. She probably wasn't exactly a beauty to look at, either, Tsunade thought and almost pushed the few strands of her hair that had fallen out of her braid back self-consciously. Especially seeing Jiraiya made her want to run into the opposite direction. This was new, too. While she had been working in the hospital for the past weeks she still had managed to avoid him since he had regained consciousness, even though she had spent every second at his side as long as he'd been in a coma. It had been easy – there had been more than enough other patients to take care of. Now, stubbornness won out and she crossed over to meet them, greeting them with a bright smile.

"Don't do that, Hime," Jiraiya said and pulled a grimace as if his teeth were hurting. "You look like you just ate something nasty."

"Don't listen to him," Orochimaru said and elbowed his friend. "You look good."

Good wasn't the verb she'd used to describe her condition. She'd been working a triple shift, she had last showered sixty-two hours ago, her hair was plastered to her head and her clothes were rumpled. But it was a nice lie. "You look horrible yourselves," she shot back and was relieved to see Jiraiya grin.

"Yeah, six weeks of intensive care can even diminish a natural beauty like mine."

"Believe me, you look better now than ever before," Orochimaru dead-panned.

Tsunade laughed. She couldn't help it: the laughter bubbled up in her stomach and made its way up her throat until it bubbled out like something that had been forced down far too often and only now was released. The feeling that remained was a giddy sense of happiness. How strange. She hadn't thought it would be possible to feel anything like it again.

Three years.

Three years of war, three years of fights and combat and battle. She had lost Dan and Nara Mitsuki had lost her husband and little Yuuhi Kurenai had lost her mother, and so many other people in Leaf had lost someone. A whole village had been razed. So many people had died. And still, here they were; smiling, laughing, going on. Not as if nothing had ever happened. No, rather as if they could appreciate what they had because they had lost so much. They had fought and struggled onwards and onwards, always searching for a tomorrow that felt like it would never come because peace seemed impossible from where they had been standing.

And now, it was there.

Tsunade wasn't sure where she stood, exactly. What it was with Jiraiya and her, or Orochimaru and them. She wasn't sure what she was to do next – when you weren't fighting a war, what did you do to get from day to day? It felt like the possibilities were endless. She could take out Nawaki for a trip to one of the surrounding villages. Or just sleep one entire weekend. Or just spar with Orochimaru and Jiraiya, just for the sake of sparring, and enjoy the day. She could go, annoy her grandfather at his office. God, she hadn't done that for such a long time. Or she could do something practical, like organizing the medic nin in the village, there was a lot that could be done in the hospital administration and she already was sprouting a million useless and two or three useful ideas. Or…

"Hime," Jiraiya said and she suddenly realized that the nickname she had hated so much wasn't bad when it came from him. "Hime, where are your thoughts? Spacing out on us again?"

Jiraiya and Orochimaru were both looking at her, half-weary, half-amused. Pulling herself together, she laughed again, not able to completely suppress the giddiness. She was probably high on soldier pills and adrenaline and the lack of sleep but seeing them up and alive – and together – was a better drug than anything else.

"We're alive," she said, finally realizing how much that meant. "Don't you see? We're alive."

They would make it through the next summer, too.

...

..

.

A/N:Storyboard premises.

i) Orochimaru is neither mad nor evil
ii) Development of a relationship between Jiraiya and Tsunade, Orochimaru watches
iii) Mirrored relationships: Hashirama/Mito/Madara vs. Jiraiya/Tsunade/Orochimaru
iv) Hashirama was never in love with Mito but Madara was
v) Madara finds peace in Leaf, learns to love it and works alongside Hashirama
vi) Jiraiya is the odd one out in a team of children of distinguished heritage

If there are five names that sound familiar but clearly don't belong into Naruto that may be because I borrowed the names of the members of The Council of Five Elders (Five Tairo) who were supposed to rule Japan until Toyotomi Hideyoshi's son came of age in the 17th century. (Of course he never did because the Elders decided it was a lot cooler to rule themselves.)

Orochimaru's birthday is on October 27th