There were scars along his arms. Some old, some new but each telling the story of the man who'd wielded them. His hands were big, palms wide and finger long with joints broken so many times the knuckles were knobs of flesh and scar tissue. There was a softness in their touch that belayed the fierce look; I could feel it as he traced my cheek. There was a trembling there as well, though it wouldn't be spoken of. In fact words wouldn't be spoken at all the dark room, a fear grabbing us both that this waking dream would be shattered by them.

Instead we spoke with looks, subtle touches and then more lingering ones.

Chakra melded- my darkened one so weighed upon pressing into his light. It wasn't something done lightly, this trust of letting someone touch you more intimately than flesh, but he held still as I pushed onward to the very core of him. I held it there, the great weight of my power. I wanted him to feel it, writhing and strong against his own. A breath, another until slowly and leaving pieces of myself behind I pulled it back.

This is me. I said without speaking a word. You'll take me all or not at all.

He answered with hands gone steady and lips turned fierce. He took me, all my doubts, all my fears, even the nameless ones that only lurked in my mind. He took them all and in return gave brimming optimism of a better tomorrow. He gave himself, every bit of him fierce Shinobi and hopeless dreamer.

"Please"

"Jiraiya please"

How gratifying it must be to have me begging. This woman who denied him for decades finally come home and wanting that last bit of merger. Of course a lesser man would have reveled in it, but not him. Jiraiya, my Jiraiya at least for, now simply murmured words that were lost against sweat covered skin and raised himself above me.

The mechanics of sex, despite how people tried to vary them, stayed reasonably the same. The man filled. The woman took. It was a dance as old as time. Still even with steps familiar to me, even with words begging for him, I wasn't prepared.

A part of me scrambled back, desperately trying to hold myself aloft. He was consuming me with long slow strokes, forcing that acknowledgment that this wasn't sex. This was making love and I would in no way come out unscathed.

Love had broken me before, and the bastard damn well knew it. Knew it and still forced me bare.

"Say it Tsunade…"

"Damn it Jiraiya."

"Say it"

He was relentless. My eyes filled, perhaps in relief of that final barrier between us breaking.

"Idiot toad, bastard Sannin… I love you and only Will of Fire knows why."

His throaty laughter answered me before those big hands gripped my fingers and he pushed us both over the edge.

We slept or I slept, worn out from my feelings. There were moments through the night when in a half stupor I'd move reaching out to comfort him. Was he crying? The vaguest memories crossed my mind. Jiraiya muffling his mouth against the skin of my back and sobbing as if I were his confessor, did he do that? Did he stop when I'd wake and soothe me back to sleep before taking up the litany again?

A life time of battles and missions confessed out in a single night, only with no deity to absolve him.

"Well, I'll be going now." Words spoken with an accompanying kiss to the rhombus that centered me. "Don't forget our bet Hime. You'll be a taken woman when I come back."

"Baka," you've already got me.