[Same Night - Tsunade's Reflections]
The inn was quiet now.
Outside, the mountain winds whispered through pine and stone, stirring the lanterns hung beneath the eaves. The faint light barely touched the figure seated at a low table by the window.
Tsunade poured herself a second cup of sake, gaze distant.
The day had been long — too long — and her mind was anything but still.
She exhaled slowly, letting the warmth of the sake dull the edge of her thoughts.
"You're running out of excuses, hime."
The words still rang in her ears — Jiraiya's voice, lazy and rough, from today's morning.
"Come back to the village," he'd said, leaning against the old inn wall with that familiar grin. "Sarutobi-sensei asked me again to find you. The council keeps circling — they want you as Hokage. He's been holding them off as long as he can."
Tsunade had scoffed."I'm not interested. That seat kills everyone who takes it."
Jiraiya's smile had faded then — replaced by something older, more tired."That's what you keep saying. But the village won't stop needing someone strong."A pause."Especially now."
Tsunade had frowned."Because of the boy."
Naruto.
The name had hung between them.
Jiraiya had nodded. "Yeah. The jinchūriki. Different from what Minato and Kushina would have wanted... but he's here. And the sensei wants someone who can protect him."
Now, hours later, Tsunade still couldn't shake off the conversation.
"That boy..."
Cold-eyed, sharp-tongued, standing apart from the others.Not the wide-grinned little shadow of Minato and Kushina she had imagined all these years.
"Minato always shone too brightly for his own good. And Kushina — she was pure flame, fierce and alive in every step."
"He's nothing like them."
That should have made it easier to look away. But it hadn't.
In him she had glimpsed something raw and brittle — a weight no child should carry.And beneath it, something that frightened her more:
Resolve.
A dangerous, isolating kind of resolve — the kind that either forges legends or buries them.
"He's chosen to fight alone.""And no one is stopping him."
Her fingers tightened around the sake cup.
Naruto was the vessel of the Kyūbi — yes.
But there was the deeper, more unsettling truth — the thread of fate that tied her to him more closely than even most in the village remembered.
"Uzumaki."
That name had meant more, once. Before so much had been lost.
Her grandmother — Mito Uzumaki — the first to bear the Kyūbi within her, had often spoken of the blood they carried.
"You and I, Tsunade — we carry Uzumaki stubbornness. You'll see it in her too."
As a child, Tsunade had not understood it. As an adult, she had learned the cost.
Kushina had come to the village as a child — a distant relative from the dwindling line of the Uzumaki — and for a time, she had lived in the Senju compound, in the same house where Mito had once walked.
"I remember her."
A wild, stubborn girl with red hair that seemed to burn beneath the sun, chasing shadows through the gardens, arguing fiercely with clan members.
She'd grown fast — and somehow captured the heart of Minato.
Tsunade had watched them from a distance — too wrapped in her own grief, too lost after Dan, after Nawaki — to let herself care too deeply.
"And then they were gone."
Minato. Kushina. The Kyūbi... sealed once again.
And now — their son walked the world alone.
"I should have cared more. I should have looked after him. If not as a comrade... then at least as kin."
But the years had passed. Her guilt had hardened into distance, and the boy had grown in the shadows of the village's suspicion.
"What kind of strength has that made him?"
Today, in his eyes — she had caught only a glimpse.
Not hatred. Not weakness.
But something colder.
"He won't be like Minato. He won't be like Kushina. He's carving his own shape out of the stone they left behind."
Tsunade drained the last of her cup.
"And I... I cannot pretend that doesn't matter."
If the boy failed — if the Kyūbi broke loose again — it would not be just his fate, or the village's.
It would stain her clan's name, Mito's legacy, and her own conscience, already too heavy with regret.
"And if he succeeds..."
Perhaps, just perhaps — he could redeem some small piece of what had been lost.
The wind shifted outside. A faint chill touched the paper screens.
Tsunade stood, setting the empty cup aside.
"One last refusal... or maybe not."
She did not know yet what her answer would be.
But as the silence of the night deepened, one thought kept circling back:
If she became Hokage… she could protect him. Perhaps.
But more than that — perhaps she could teach him something none of them could:how to bear the weight of it all… without shattering.
Not with jutsu. Not with power.With endurance. With balance.With hope, where none remained.
Her stomach twisted.
"Damn you, old man.""Damn you, Jiraiya."
The thought left her restless.
But one thing was certain.
"That boy is not just some jinchūriki. He's my blood, too."
And the village would soon see what that truly meant.