A/N: yeah it's 6:04 AM…I had an impulse to write. One of the characters who's grown on me, at first, I couldn't stand her but something about the Sennin really gets to me now.
As always: read, review, and make my day!
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.
x
x
x
Life is a river, they said. It was cliché now. Useless adage. Just like: the world will one day crumble.
Sitting by their local river, the most irrelevant things came to mind.
Teams of fours, she had once suggested, for safety precautions. But what of the teams of threes? They were still used, she recalled, although not for higher ranked mission.
Teams of threes had a legacy though. Trios were something—are something…long before Sarutobi-Sensei's team with her, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya existed, and even after Kakashi's team of Uzumaki Naruto, that pink-haired brat, and the arrogant Uchiha boy would grow up and apart.
Three was a magic number and always would be.
Three like the number of Sennin.
Three like those people she lost, that she would never forget, because of messy ties such as love and in one case hate. Both, she sighed and corrected herself. For the last one, both.
Despite how heartless and vicious the man had become, simply hating him would not have done justice to the years of that something resembling friendship, or camaraderie, at least. Orochimaru hadn't been born evil. Even after his death, it was slightly comforting.
So where were we? Ah yes, rivers and crumbling. Well let's see…
Tsunade, your past crumbled and Orochimaru's future crumbled.
Jiraiya…well dear Jiraiya seems whole enough, in terms of past and future, in any case.
In terms of present, however, the man crumbled day by day, everyday.
Losing his sanity, as he had once kidded, but Tsunade knew it to be the truth. She pitied him for it but loved him too. Not like a brother and not like Dan. Maybe more, maybe less.
But she loved him too, the old man, and not only for his perverted, light-hearted humour, for providing her with a drinking buddy, for taking some of the burdens off her, but for the only piece of her past that remained, that he had salvaged for her, himself.
She wondered if love was enough though.
Because we have crumbled and are crumbling, and still, the river flows.
It wasn't something she thought about often.
The Fifth had other, more important things to occupy herself with.
x
x
x
End