Characters: Mito, Tsunade
Summary: She's too old for everything.
Pairings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

When the little girl is five, Mito decides to take some vacation time and take her granddaughter to the eastern coast of Hi no Kuni for Tsunade to see the ocean. A beach trip will do them both good and Mito has been missing the water and the smell of salt in the air—she has been for what feels like an eternity now.

Mito sighs as she catches sight of her face in a tidal pool. Her once-scarlet hair has gone to silver and her face is starting to show deep furrows. Good God, to think I am one of the Uzumaki. My great-grandmother's hair didn't start to lose its color until she was past ninety, and look at me; I'm not even seventy. Other Uzumaki women my age still seem as young women; instead, I am a crone, and I appear as their grandmother.

The Kyuubi, Mito supposes, can be blamed for this. If she had not sealed the Kyuubi into herself and thus exposed herself to the effort keeping it restrained involved, she would more resemble Tsunade's older sister than her grandmother.

Oh, well. Mito manages to smile as she feels the salt water crash against her toes. She knows Tsunade must be happy to be here as well; that little pale gold head bobbed up and down the whole trip there, and even though Tsunade may not end up liking the ocean very much, she's been impatient to reach their destination. Mito would have preferred to take Tsunade to Uzu no Kuni itself, but the Konoha council wouldn't stand for that, afraid she was going to abscond with the Kyuubi. Again, oh well.

She's plucking up the hem of her yukata and wading out maybe knee-deep in the water, listening to the boom and crash of the tide against the rocks. "When I was little, Tsunade, my grandfather…"

Her turquoise eyes dart to her side, looking for the little one who was at her side just a moment before.

And no longer is Tsunade at her side.

Instead, the little one is laughing wildly, maybe fifty feet down the shore. She can't hear her grandmother's voice over the crash of breaking waves and is raptly absorbed in the business of wading further and further out into the water, occasionally coming up with a whelk or a scallop shell.

Mito bites her lip, and does not bother to sigh.

She comes back to the shore and settles herself where the sand is dry, and watches her granddaughter at her play, making sure she doesn't wander out past her depth.

Like this, again? To be ignored and forgotten, again?

This time, Mito can't restrain her sigh.

How she wishes she could do that. How she wishes she still possessed limbs supple enough for swimming.

She's too old for everything.