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Orochimaru was leaving Konoha.
Not forever, obviously. Just for a mission. There hadn’t been one scheduled, but he’d slithered his way into Tsunade’s anyway.
Maybe, in another world, Orochimaru would have spent the week in village instead. He could have holed himself up with some interesting jutsu scrolls. Or dropped by the hospital labs, to perform autopsies on enemy-nin whose bodies had been brought back to ferret out their secrets. Or even considered that tempting offer of funding and test subjects that Elder Shimura kept hinting at.
Well, no. Not that last one. While the offer might have interested him at one point, that was before Sakumo. Given Orochimaru’s entanglement, and his knowledge of Shimura’s discomfiting interest in Sakumo’s son, accepting the offer would be inappropriate.
Possibly?
When he’d consulted Tsunade on the matter – social nuance not being Orochimaru’s strength – she’d turned grim and told him to stay far, far away from Danzō Shimura. She said she would handle it.
It was all very ominous. Orochimaru was fairly sure he’d dodged a kunai there.
Still, Orochimaru could have been doing something more productive with his time – something other than travelling across Fire Country on a mission for which he was utterly superfluous – if it were not for Jiraiya, who had been particularly obnoxious lately.
He had gotten it in his head to write a book.
Well, another book. But this one wasn’t like The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Ninja. That had been a foolishly optimistic, anti-war, political misstep of a book. A sales flop that, shockingly, Orochimaru hadn’t been able to bring himself to mock Jiraiya for. His teammate had put so much of himself into it – so much hope and yearning for better – that Orochimaru had barely been able to finish the story, let alone talk about it.
It felt too… intimate, somehow.
His next book, to Orochimaru’s mixed despair and disdain, was going to be intimate in a completely different fashion. The sort of intimate that apparently required a lot of peeping at hot springs for “inspiration”. While Orochimaru would grant that that was the only way Jiraiya was going to lay eyes on naked women – short of paying professionals for their time – he hardly approved of the behaviour.
Worse, people somehow thought it was his job to corral his letch of a teammate! How, Orochimaru didn’t know. Jiraiya was too hardheaded to learn better. He’d watched Tsunade try, for years, via epic amounts of violence and occasional head trauma, to no avail. Orochimaru’s own underhanded best, and Hiruzen-sensei’s half-hearted appeals to Jiraiya’s non-existent better nature, had been equally ineffective.
The one thing that might curb Jiraiya’s perverse ways was a good gelding, but sensei had forbidden it quite firmly. Said it would be wrong. Orochimaru didn’t know why. Surely it would be an improvement. Even Tsunade agreed, and that was Orochimaru’s usual metric for social and moral acceptability.
He’d do it anyway, but then sensei would give him the disappointed look. Orochimaru hated that look. It struck right at his miniscule, atrophied vestige of sentiment. How inconvenient.
Perhaps if he made it look like an accident?
Hmm, something to ponder.
Returning to the point, however. Orochimaru was a man of sublime patience – Jiraiya had survived to adulthood after all – but even he had his limits. Being cornered by Jiraiya waving about a sheaf of commissioned artworks, and asked to choose which tastelessly lurid illustration would make better cover art, had been the final straw.
In the end, the simple truth was that Orochimaru took the mission to get away from Konoha before he committed a terrible social faux pas – faux pas, unforgiveable taboo, close enough – and murdered his genin teammate in a fit of frustration.
Tsunade, the team lead, had been all sympathy when he explained the situation, and quickly added him to the mission roster.
“I know it’s a bit redundant,” she told Dan when Orochimaru turned up at the gates where the team was assembling. “You and me together is already weighing the odds.” She rolled her eyes when the others grumbled. “Yeah, yeah. And you lot too, you whiners,” she said, in that contradictorily friendly yet acerbic way Orochimaru could never quite replicate. “Orochimaru needs to get away – Jiraiya’s being Jiraiya.”
Dan just shook his head and sent Orochimaru a welcoming smile – he was one of the few who’d never flinched from him. “The more the merrier. Besides,” he added, picture-perfect, sweet-and-harmless smile taking on a slight edge, “every ninja knows the best kill is overkill.”
“Here, here,” the rest of the team chorused – none were particularly exceptional, so Orochimaru didn’t bother getting names, despite knowing Tsunade would disapprove – and they soon set off.
Several days later, Orochimaru resigned himself to learning every one of their names after all. Because even he knew better than to skip the ceremony where KIA teammates had their names added to the memorial stone.
The rest of the team was dead. Very dead.
Fortunately, so too were the enemies.
Orochimaru was mostly uninjured, Tsunade was flawless as always – having healed every slight scrape she’d collected without thought – but Dan was not looking good. He was looking quite dire actually, unconscious on the forest floor, split open from pelvis to ribs, blood everywhere.
Tsunade’s eyes were wide with horror as she stared across the clearing at her bloody mess of a man. She finally moved, to stride over and heal—
Wait, no, she wasn’t moving. She was falling. She collapsed to her knees, face gone as bloodlessly pale as Dan’s, or Orochimaru’s, with neither blood loss nor genetics to account for it. And then she just… knelt there.
“Tsunade?” Orochimaru prodded. She remained frozen. Battlefield shock? In a medical situation? He looked at said medical situation – at Dan, her lover – and hissed. “Sentiment,” he cursed, and quickly lunged towards Dan, pulling up healing chakra. It was not the gentle mint green of Tsunade’s, but a vicious, acidic green. It would not be pleasant, but it would do the job.
He set hands to Dan’s stomach, and the man screamed.
There was a reason Orochimaru didn’t heal often.
All at once, a blur shoved Orochimaru back, and Tsunade was there in his place, a strangled cry of “Dan!” escaping her. The battle shock was gone, and she was doing what she did best – healing.
Rising to his feet, Orochimaru brushed fingers through his hair. His nose wrinkled when he pulled out stray leaf litter.
“Honestly, that was unnecessary, Tsunade,” he hissed.
She ignored him, all her attention focussed on her patient.
Orochimaru huffed, indignant. No good deed went unpunished. He’d made sure the very worst of it – the arterial cuts – were sealed shut. In return, she’d shoved him aside like some civilian nobody getting in the way by blubbering over a patient. He would know – he’d seen Tsunade do just that, in an identical manner, and it was an offensive comparison on multiple levels. He allowed, however, that she might be emotionally compromised.
That was her lover so close to dying beneath her hands.
“How strange,” Orochimaru reflected. Not too long ago, he might not have grasped that, the gravity of it, but now… he thought of Sakumo in Dan’s place, bleeding out, near lost to him.
Something in him, something visceral, all but shrieked in denial.
No, he understood now.
Still, he mused disdainfully, emotional compromise could only excuse so much.
He threw an absentminded kunai at the only enemy still sluggishly breathing – it lodged in his spine with a heavy thunk, killing instantly.
Tsunade had best not try to chide him for harming her precious flower. She’d never discouraged him from healing jutsu before – the opposite, in fact. She’d been delighted when he’d expressed interest. Her determination to pound all the healing knowledge into his head had verged on terrifying. She’d pushed him to hone his skills to their utmost, even beyond the point that Orochimaru – who, yes, was intensely academically curious, but only when it was relevant to his interests, making his knowledge often quite eclectic and niche – might have lost interest.
“Everyone should know healing,” she’d declared, adamant. “But I know that’s never gonna happen. I’ll settle for knowing there’s at least one medic between you and Jiraiya, whenever you take a mission I can’t be there for.”
So no, she’d never disapproved before. And while Orochimaru’s chakra wasn’t a pleasant sensation, when the difference was between life and death, a patient could stick it and suffer and thank him afterwards.
Or so Tsunade said.
Orochimaru thought that was hopelessly naïve. Rarely had he been thanked for such services, because even the poorest chakra sensor could detect foreign chakra when it was coursing through their body, and Orochimaru’s chakra was… unpleasant.
Glancing around, Orochimaru assured himself the enemies were all very dead. He pushed his chakra sense out with effort – it was not a talent he’d inherited from his mother, sadly – and found nothing of concern. Still, to be safe, there was something of his mother’s that could help.
He bit his thumb and swiped blood down the summoning tattoo on his arm. With a discrete puff of smoke, three snakes appeared, winding their way down his body to the forest floor. They ranged from half a meter to two, and were murky green, black and brown respectively – perfect for camouflage in most places, especially Fire Country. Subtle and quiet and discrete, they were not at all what most would have expected of Orochimaru’s mother’s favoured summons, but the flirty, irrepressibly cheerful face she’d shown the world had hardly been her true self.
“Hello, darlings,” Orochimaru murmured, squatting down to speak with them. “Would you scout for me? We’re not best positioned for another attack.”
The snakes silently looked around – at the dead enemies and allies alike, only two squadmates left, one injured and the other preoccupied with healing – and softly hissed their understanding. They swiftly disappeared into the undergrowth in opposite directions.
Pulling body scrolls from his belt pouch, Orochimaru quickly circled the clearing, sealing away their teammates for return and burial. He then faced a conundrum when he didn’t have enough scrolls for all the enemies. He eventually decided the woman with the interesting earth jutsu was more worthy of study than the mediocre man who did nothing but throw kunai and died quickly.
Bodies dealt with, Orochimaru turned to Tsunade next and gave her an assessing look. Breathing in, the taste of stress hormones touched his tongue beneath the overwhelming scent of blood, but not nearly as thick in the air as it had been earlier. She was glaring fiercely, and there was a carefully controlled steadiness to her hands. It reassured him that she had moved past her lapse and had the situation under control.
It didn’t take long for the snakes to return and report in.
“All clear.” “Nothing.” “Position secure.”
He nodded, and they dismissed themselves, and only then did Orochimaru truly relax. Dropping to sit leaning against a nearby tree trunk, he watched more of Dan’s wounds slowly seal shut. He didn’t scream during the healing – if anything, he seemed to relax into the sensation, Tsunade’s chakra strong but soothing.
Orochimaru let his mind wander to more thoughts of the nature of chakra.
Most people’s chakra registered as a prickling awareness and source of light, despite providing no illumination. Some thermosensation in accompaniment wasn’t unusual either. Less common were scents. Among the rarest, however, were physical sensations and sounds, or multi-layered sensation.
Orochimaru’s chakra hit all three. It had once been described, by a newly healed Jiraiya, with dubious elegance, as “like blades and acid”.
“Not solid stabs,” Jiraiya had clarified. “A thousand tiny cuts – because you’re a sadist like that. And the whispery noise a sword makes leaving the sheath. And like acid— no like venon burning through your veins, you snake bastard, so you’d better never use it on me again!”
Orochimaru had rolled his eyes and stormed off, leaving Tsunade to chew their ungrateful teammate out. Because really, Orochimaru had gotten a lot of negative reactions to his chakra, but he’d… well not expected better – Orochimaru was the realist on their team, the cool head to the naïve dreamers – but he’d hoped. It had hurt to be proven wrong – perhaps because the incident had come during his brief, ill-advised crush on the oaf. A crush which Jiraiya’s reaction had put a swift and decisive end to, however, so he supposed there’d been a definite upside.
Tsunade, unlike Jiraiya, had worked hard to overcome her aversion to Orochimaru’s chakra. She’d exposed herself to it constantly during their healing lessons, until the sharp edges were no longer cutting, but fondly familiar. It was the sort of bull-headed, soft-hearted thing she did.
She truly was his best friend.
Ironically, the only other people who reacted well to Orochimaru’s chakra – not with the ignorant indifference of those with poor chakra sensing, who needed it to be coursing through their system to force their notice, but with genuine positivity – were superb chakra sensors. Consequence of a refined palate, as it were.
He remembered, with wistful fondness, his one and only meeting with Tobirama Senju.
It had been during his brief time at the Academy. They’d been months from graduation, but already there had been talk of team combinations. Naturally, as Hokage, Tobirama had been involved. Curious about the boys who would be put on his grandniece’s team, he’d wanted to meet them in person, to get a measure of them and a feel of their chakra.
Briefly, Orochimaru wondered how Jiraiya’s meeting with the man had gone. He’d never brought it up, which was telling – Jiraiya was never one not to brag. It couldn’t have gone too badly – he’d still ended up on Team Sarutobi with them – but then again, Tobirama had died not long after, so…
“Orochimaru!” Tsunade called, startling him from his thoughts and back to the present. “Where’s your head at?”
“Oh, miles away and years in the past.” And suddenly wondering, he added silently as it occurred to him, whether his little crush on her granduncle had a more formative effect on his framework of attraction than he’d ever realised.
He’d had three significant romantic interests in his life. Two, Sakumo and Jiraiya, were pale-haired. One, an Uzumaki cousin of Tsunade’s, had red eyes. Two, the Uzumaki and Jiraiya, were skilled at fūinjutsu. And one, Sakumo, was a skilled swordsman.
Wasn’t attraction supposed to be based on your parents? Orochimaru was sure he’d heard some Yamanaka touting that. Unfortunate, he’d thought. And somewhat distasteful. But at least, were that the case, not supportive evidence that he’d let his first crush alter his mind to such a degree in complete ignorance.
Well, Jiraiya did have Mother’s loud, outgoing, flirty personality – albeit his mother hadn’t been an intolerable oaf, nor a letch with no concept of boundaries. Uzumaki had shared Orochimaru’s father’s quiet reserve and sharp mind. Sakumo…
Sakumo probably reflected them both, in his own ways. He was cheerful like his mother and steady like his father, but it was at least in part a mask to hide the wild edge beneath. The same way Orochimaru’s mother had been so over the top to hide her fangs – metaphorical and literal.
“Orochimaru?” Tsunade said again.
He waved a dismissive hand – as much at his own stray thoughts as at Tsunade. He was definitely never telling her about his life-changing crush on her granduncle. Nor that bit about how his love interests reflected his parents. Which, on second thought, how had he thought that would be less awkward to contemplate?
No, better to focus on the traits that were uniquely Sakumo.
Like his bone-deep loyalty, with which Orochimaru had been bestowed, and found, to his surprise, that he hoarded like a dragon did their most precious treasures. And the way Sakumo loved his son unconditionally, never balking at the fact that Kakashi, the delightful little monster genius, was not quite normal in a way that struck Orochimaru as kinship. And the fact that, despite having seen Orochimaru at his most inhuman, destroying enemies both physically and mentally without a jot of remorse – with, if anything, cold calculation or analytical glee – Sakumo had never once eyed Orochimaru warily, or flinched or sneered, or any of a million other cowardly, hypocritical reactions others had shown. And…
And the way he looked at Orochimaru.
Suddenly wanting nothing more than for this mission to be done – to return to Konoha and see Sakumo again – Orochimaru rose to his feet, dusting off before stepping closer.
Dan looked much improved. He was still a bit more pale than usual – blood loss took time to recover from, if you survived it – and he was still unconscious, but he didn’t look on death’s door.
“He’ll recover?” he asked.
Tsunade sighed, eyes fluttering shut. She raised her hands to her face, and Orochimaru’s own darted out, grabbing her wrists. Eyes opening, she saw the blood she’d nearly smeared over herself and grimaced.
Orochimaru thought again of Sakumo in Dan’s place, and a rare depth of empathy filled him. “Here,” he said quietly, unsealing a canteen and a towel from the small storage scrolls he kept in his flak jacket pockets. He gently washed and cleaned her hands, then stored the gear away again.
When he looked up, Tsunade was watching him closely, something thoughtful and soft in her eyes that made Orochimaru clear his throat and cross his arms.
“He’s been good for you,” she said.
Orochimaru tossed his hair over his shoulder. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said airily.
Sakumo. She was talking about Sakumo. And she wasn’t wrong.
Tsunade grinned, tired but genuine. “Sure, sure. I’ll corner you for all the juicy details another time.” Ignoring his glare, she glanced again at Dan. “He’ll be fine. Full recovery. Thanks to you.”
“I hardly did much before—”
“You shocked me into action?” Tsunade said, one eyebrow raised. She got that from her granduncle. So had Orochimaru, who had thought it a wonderfully versatile way to express everything from curiosity to disdain. Jiraiya hated that he was the only one on their team who couldn’t do it – his efforts to learn had only resulted in a hilariously cringeworthy skill for suggestive eyebrow waggling.
Orochimaru waved a dismissive hand. “You would’ve acted on your own eventually.”
“But the first few seconds are crucial, and those arteries you closed probably saved his life.” She crossed her arms, planted her feet, and raised her chin defiantly.
It suddenly struck Orochimaru that they were winding up for a completely unnecessary argument. He blinked and released the tension from his shoulders, going languid. “Fine,” he agreed. Because why not. “I am wonderful, and you are, as is appropriate, eternally grateful. You may express that gratitude via rare jutsu scrolls, obscure chakra knowledge, and fending off Jiraiya next time he gets on my last nerve.”
Tsunade laughed loudly. “Deal!”
And then she lunged, before he could think to dodge, and hugged him tightly.
He was all ready to fight free – biting wasn’t out of the question – when he noticed the hitch of her shoulders and froze. Was she… crying? Oh, gods, emotions. From someone he actually cared about and couldn’t dismiss.
Expression twisted into deep discomfort, he patted her back awkwardly for several long minutes, finally saying, “There, there?”
Tsunade snorted into his flak vest – properly snorted, disgusting, he’d have to clean that along with the bloody towel – and let him go. Her eyes were a little red-rimmed, but there was no trace of tears. Orochimaru breathed a sigh of relief.
He watched her heft Dan into a bridal carry – something the man would absolutely be flustered to hear about later – and didn’t offer to help. Jiraiya would have, but Jiraiya, under his bluster, was an insecure, overcompensating chauvinist. Orochimaru, on the other hand, cared not a whit about gender – a clan peculiarity, snakes not having much in the way of sexual dimorphism.
Tsunade was the strongest in their genin team, if not the entire village – let her do the heavy lifting.
“We’ve lingered long enough,” Orochimaru said, taking to the trees. “Let’s get your lover back to Konoha and a proper hospital.”
Tsunade nodded firmly, following him into the lower canopy. “And once we’ve done that,” she called as they set off at a brisk pace, “you can tell me all about your lover.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“We’ll see,” she said, with ominous good cheer.
Orochimaru felt real dread. Maybe he should consider leaving Konoha forever. That definitely wasn’t an overreaction. There was just one problem – convincing Sakumo. It would never work. The man was too damned stubbornly loyal to the village. And Orochimaru… Orochimaru couldn’t imagine leaving his lover, or Kakashi, behind.
His perfect plan, ruined.
Sentiment, he thought wryly, but couldn’t bring himself to regret it.