Tsunade cannot remember a time that she did not love him.

She tries, but she always comes up with an ache and the urge to throw back another drink. Willingly, she complies with that wish and tries to decide whether it is better to remember more or forget.

On their genin team, she constantly wanted to strangle both Jiraiya and Orochimaru, but she still loved him. They were her brothers, her friends, and only occasionally her projectiles.

She had only grown closer to him with time. In fact, she had only agreed to date Dan in the first place because of a monstrous argument between the Idiot and herself.

During the time they were together, she pushed Jiraiya to the back of her mind and focused on Dan, but she never really stopped loving him. A person never really stops loving their first love, you know?

When Orochimaru left them, they were broken and no longer able to be together as often or as happily, but she cannot remember her feelings ever waning.

Listlessly, she stares at her desk. On it are pictures, some with other people in them as well, but all containing one particular person.

One causes her to snort and nearly inhale her sake. Jiraiya is being a moron (as if he was ever anything else), holding her pigtails out to the side of her head and trying to kiss her cheek. Her hand is planted against his face, but she is laughing.

She remembers that after that picture was taken, she had quickly acquiesced to his unspoken request and their sensei had found them in a rather embarrassing position. Of course, Jiraiya in all his suavity made an obnoxious and profane excuse and she had been forced to throttle him.

In their adult lives, she fully accepted her feelings for him, but a relationship was never possible. They were both too busy running from their pasts, trying to forget who and what they had lost.

Ironic that he had joined her list…

Tsunade wishes so very much that they could have gotten married, that they could have had children that did not have to lose everyone dear to them, that they could have loved each other as she knew they always did.

She wishes she had told him so many more times exactly how much he meant to her.

She wishes she had gone with him so he would not have fallen alone.

The great and powerful Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure, the Sannin Tsunade, laid her head on her desk and wept bitterly.