Jiraiya couldn’t help laughing at her assertion, thinking it so very like her to tell him how right she is. Hell, he’ll take it. He’d deprived himself of a whole lot of comfort and affirmation in the past, thanks to the way he’d lived the past few decades of his life, and one didn’t pass through death without appreciating things just that little bit more.
Things like being close to a loved one, feeling their tender touches, talking openly. So small, yet so important. They’d missed out on so much of each other.
Jiraiya, too, was feeling pensive at the thought, albeit his reasons were different to Tsunade’s. A different flavour of regret and guilt. Perhaps it didn’t sour his expression at all, in comparison, because right now he still couldn’t help being overwhelmingly happy, even for all those numerous details he still had to process to process. And maybe that was why Tsunade couldn’t keep looking at his smiling face and endlessly warm eyes, always as warm for her as ever they’d been… although he didn’t understand why.
“Hm?” He questioned with a furrowed brow, and reached out to run his fingertips gently from her cheek to her jaw, hinting for her to look at him once more. “Never what, Tsuna?”
Jiraiya’s voice was as soft as could be in his questioning, hopefully reassuring her that she could tell him anything. He’d never be angry or upset at her—couldn’t be, after they’d gone through so much and remained such close friends. He only hoped she had as much confidence in that as he did, enough not to bury things as they always used to.
Tsunade would, of course, always take the opportunity to tell Jiraiya how right she was, especially when it meant affirming him when they were suddenly being so open with each other. Well, mostly, because she hadn’t told him everything, not yet. Because she was still so guilty, for holding back so much, all along, being scared up to the very end.
And it was hard, because she didn’t know what that dream meant. Was it her thoughts and feelings and desires, her true ones, projected in her mind? Or was it just what the Tsukuyomi thought they were? Having that impossible choice in front of her, Dan or Jiraiya, it seemed natural that she would want to choose both of them, together, perhaps wondering and hoping that they would both care for each other, too. But if she really had to pick?
For a long time since Dan had died she had mourned after him, had even fulfilled his dream through her of becoming hokage. And she had loved him, truly, and had thought if only he were by my side now. But Jiraiya--he knew her, perhaps in a way Dan didn’t, because he knew her throughout the years, and he knew her now, and he, well, he was that magnetic force she was kept being drawn back to, she had thought for some inexplicable reason, but it turned out, it was actually, just simply, love. Not that she hadn’t loved Dan--she had, and not in a shallow or less true way. But now, here, she could make her choice.
“I’m sorry I never--” she began stopped, then started again. “I’m sorry it took me so long to choose you over everything--over everyone else. In terms of me--loving you.”