Author's Note: Another young sannin fic, though this one has almost no Jiraiya. I apologize for not updating "A Fox and a Shark Walk into a Bar" this week. I couldn't get motivated. Again. Anyway, this is the first story beta-ed by my new editor, Kagaya Chou, who did a spectacular job and fixed a lot of the little stuff that I didn't notice.

As Tsunade wearily trudged up the stairs to her cramped and messy apartment, she wondered if her arguments left any impact on her sensei at all. Sometimes, the old geezer really didn't seem to get it. Healers were a necessity Konoha had in short supply, therefore, more had to be trained. For all Sarutobi-sensei's arguments that war didn't leave time to train anything but warriors, for some things, you had to make time.

Damn it.

Where the hell had she put her keys?

Rubbing her face blearily with one hand, Tsunade abruptly remembered she was already holding her keys when one of them stabbed her in the eye. Cursing vehemently, she fumbled her house key into the lock. Gods, what was wrong with her lately?

((Sleep and chakra-deprivation, that's what.)) Which just added to her argument. There were so few competent battle-healers these days. Enemy shinobi tended to go for the medics first, and the recent Cloud-Mist alliance was wearing the Leaf forces paper-thin.

Closing the door behind her, Tsunade slumped against the wall in exhaustion. She was tempted to fall asleep where she stood. It wasn't like her bed would miss her. She hadn't slept in the thing in weeks. Probably the reason she didn't bother with a bigger apartment, since she never spent any time at home anyway. Then a pair of eyes materialized out of the gloom.

It was pure instinct that sent Tsunade hurling three kunai straight at the intruder. The gaze didn't shift from her own, but the sharp clang of metal against metal alerted Tsunade that her opponent was a shinobi, as only one of her kind could block a thrown weapon in the dark. Then she finally noticed the color of the intruder's eyes. Tsunade relaxed with a sigh, and lowered the shurikan she already held at the ready.

"For gods' sake, Orochimaru, don't you ever knock? Or, say, use the door?"

The reply she received was dry. "I would if you ever gave me a house key."

She snorted. "Not a chance in hell. If I gave you one, Jiraiya would somehow weasel a copy out of you, then he would feel entitled to eating all the food out of my fridge whenever he got too lazy to go to the grocery store."

"At least it would get eaten." The lights were flicked on. The sight that met Tsunade's eyes was slightly surreal. Orochimaru, the pride and hope of Konoha, still dressed for battle in his chuunin jacket and hitai-ate headband, in one hand held a half eaten, rotting salami. One side of his mouth quirked.

"Tell me, Tsunade, when was the last time you cleaned out your refrigerator?"

"Give me that!" He held out the salami to her. Up close, it looked even more disgusting, especially since something appeared to be moving beneath the surface.

". . . On second thought, just throw it away." Still smirking, Orochimaru with his usual uncanny accuracy tossed the rotting ground meat over one shoulder into the garbage can the next room over.

Tsunade walked over to her couch and collapsed into it with a pained groan. She closed her eyes and let her head slump back. For a few moments, there was silence.

"You know, I really should be angry at you, you bastard."

The cushions shifted slightly as Orochimaru sat down next to her. His response was quiet, in a tone she seldom heard out of her habitually sarcastic friend.

"For what it's worth, I am not happy your brother died, Tsunade." Apparently Jiraiya's lessons on social interaction hadn't taken. Nineteen years old and the Konoha-prodigy still didn't know how to give a proper apology. Still, the fact that Orochimaru had bothered trying at all was slightly touching. He so rarely attempted to make amends for his all too often caustic words.

"Yeah, well, I'm not ecstatic about it either. And it really didn't help that you couldn't keep your mouth shut for once. Insulting my brother five minutes after his corpse is found is really pushing my leniency towards your usual lack of tact." Her eyes were closed, but Tsunade could still tell the exact moment that Orochimaru shrugged. Even he was occasionally predictable.

"Considering we're in the middle of a war, if I gave people time to grieve, that's all we would be doing."

"Who's we?"

"The people of Konoha." Her friend's reply sounded amused.

"Oh, good. For a second there I thought you actually cared when people died, like us normal people."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "Who's us?"

For gods' sake. Her brother had died two days ago and he still couldn't stop baiting her. "No offense Tsunade, but you are hardly the definition of normal, and neither is Jiraiya. You don't really know anyone else well enough to tell how they think." His tone shifted, became slightly caustic. "Of course, I suppose it is possible you have already fathomed the heart's depths of that pretty-boy you met earlier. What was his name? Dan?"

Tsunade stiffened. "What about him?"

"Quite frankly, I don't believe it's healthy to fall in love with someone just because they remind you of your brother." That hurt, and Tsunade responded before she really thought of what she was saying.

"Oh, like you're one to talk of healthy relationships. You've been in love with Jiraiya for years and he still has no idea." This was blatantly unfair blow, and Tsunade regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth.

This time, it was Orochimaru who froze. But he had long since grown out of the stage when insults were usually met with silence.

"Jiraiya has always made his sexual preferences perfectly clear. I would only be lying to myself if I deliberately misread his numerous one-night stands, especially since all of them were women." His words grew venomous. "And at least I knew him longer than a few hours before my inclinations towards him became less than platonic."

Their usual friendly banter had ventured into forbidden territory. After Orochimaru initially let out the bout of sarcasm that alerted anyone who knew him (this list was unfortunately limited to three people) to his hurt, he would clam up and the poisonous words that he refused to bleed out would circulate through his system for days. Tsunade intervened before he got that far.

"Don't you dare give me that stupid silent act. Just tell me what the hell is bothering you so I can refute all your arguments and prove yet again that guys are less intelligent than girls, okay?"

"Jiraiya is hardly a good basis for your thesis." A joke. Jokes were good. "And it's not like I wanted to fall in love with the idiot. He has all the qualifications I specifically don't look for in a prospective lover. Short-sighted, gregarious, overly emotional, has no restraint for anything whatsoever," Tsunade would have argued with him on that one, but she too distinctly remembered dragging their teammate home drunk off his ass more than once, especially since Jiraiya lacked the brain capacity to realize groping the person paying for your tab wasn't such a great idea, "headstrong. . ."

"Straight," Tsunade added. Orochimaru glared at her.

"Well, he is."

"My love life is none of your business." Hypocrite. Worse, hypocrite with mood swings. He had just given her most the details and now he was telling her to shut up?

"And Dan is yours?"

"You shouldn't fall in love with him."

Tsunade rolled her eyes. "Kind of fixated, aren't you?"

"He's naïve and overly optimistic, two characteristics which hardly improve his chances for survival, and Jiraiya, for all his faults, possesses neither quality in any great abundance."

"Orochimaru. . ."

"Naivety and optimism are barely excusable in a twelve year old child, Tsunade. They combined with overconfidence got your brother killed in a battle he should have avoided."

"Will you just-"

"Hear me out for once!" Orochimaru's uncharacteristic outburst quieted Tsunade's angry response. "I've researched your new boyfriend, Tsunade, and I can tell you two things. He's twenty-four years old." Tsunade relaxed.

"If you're trying to persuade me that a five year age gap is a good basis to not pursue a relationship, I knew this one couple that. . ."

"I'm not finished. He's twenty-four, and he's a chuunin." Tsunade forgot the rest of what she was going to say.

"Tsunade, I made jounin at thirteen. You made it at fifteen, Jiraiya sixteen. The only way you can make it past twenty and not be a jounin is to lack the necessary talent. A dearth of leadership skills or experience keeps no one from the rank. We're in the middle of a war, and if a shinobi has anything near the stamina, skill or power necessary to be a jounin, they are a jounin. No exceptions.

"You, Jiraiya and I, we are the elite. We are the premier team of Konoha, we complete missions no one else would have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. You chide me for loving Jiraiya, but at least I'll always be around to protect him, so I will never have to grieve, and if I'm not. . . at least I have the reassurance that Jiraiya, for all his usual stupidity, at least has the survival instincts to not get himself killed.

"Dan doesn't. He's going to get sent out on a mission he doesn't have the skills to complete, and he's going to die trying because he doesn't have the sense to know when to quit. And you aren't going to get there in time to save him." Tsunade finally found her voice.

"Why do you care whether he lives or dies?"

"I don't. He could drown in the river tomorrow and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. But he is going to affect you, and probably get you killed trying to help him. Death means nothing to me Tsunade, but some people do matter. I wish you would get my sense and stop caring about people you don't have the ability to protect."

Orochimaru wasn't entirely correct in his self-assessment. Tsunade had the 'death discussion' with him a few years ago, after he had smirked through the funeral of Jiraiya's older brother. Thankfully, Jiraiya had been too much in shock to notice, but Tsunade had confronted Orochimaru about it later that night, for once sneaking into his apartment instead of the other way around. She had almost gotten bit by three separate snakes before managing to disarm all of her comrade's traps.

It was easy enough to sum up. Tsunade regarded death as a tragedy. Orochimaru thought of death as something mostly wasted, but if it wasn't, there was nothing to grieve about. Jiraiya's brother had died retrieving vital intelligence to the Cloud's position, and as a result had saved many lives, a number of them civilian lives. Orochimaru believed most people died for nothing. Jiraiya's brother had died for something, so his funeral should be a celebration, not somewhere for people to cry. His views weren't shared. They were too pragmatic, and most people couldn't see the deaths of their loved ones as something to be happy over. Tsunade didn't agree with Orochimaru either, but knowing his perspective made it easier to take Orochimaru's attitude when her friend became too flippant surrounded by death and decay.

"Dan isn't going to die. He's going to become Hokage."

"So was your brother."

"Bastard." But the insult was half-hearted, if only because Tsunade knew Orochimaru was making at least some sense, and she herself was better than most at summing up a situation objectively.

"What if I'm willing to take that chance?"

"Then you will have to accept the consequences of your decision." He stood up. Tsunade watched him go. When he had one foot on the windowsill, Orochimaru turned back, and once again met her eyes.

"The salami was rotten, but I left a cheese sandwich for you on the counter." He smirked. "Wouldn't do for the First Hokage's granddaughter to starve just because she was too lazy to make herself dinner." Before Tsunade could chuck something at him, Orochimaru was gone.