Work Text:
Don’t you dare walk away from this, Orochimaru thinks. He thinks it because there’s no point saying it aloud for deaf ears. You irresponsible oaf. All lost to the wind and the rain.
He and Tsunade return to the camp one man down, because as they both know, there’s no arguing with Jiraiya. It was inspiring sometimes, certainly. At others it hurt. Stubbornness to the point of idiocy was a tragedy in its own way— that’s what Orochimaru thought. People were 70% water. They should act like it.
Take care of these kids until they can stand on their own. What nonsense. More likely they’d all die in a raid, or survive that and end up being killed by fellow countrymen in a struggle for food or clean water. War was brutal. It wasn’t fair. Idealism was a disease and Jiraiya was a carrier rat. A carrier rat that Orochimaru would likely never see again.
“Where’s Jiraiya?” Hatake questions as they trudge past the makeshift borders, feet bruised, aching, and caked in mud. When Orochimaru and Tsunade exchange looks, the White Fang’s brow furrows, and he casts them a worried look. “He’s not …?”
“Forget him,” Orochimaru says stiffly, and takes to his tent.
“What’s up with him? Jiraiya’s not …”
“ … Deserter. Lord Third wouldn ’t stand for it, if it was anyone else other than those three …”
“I never thought he ’d turn his back on his comrades.”
“Well, bad blood…”
Orochimaru muffles his ears with his hitai-ate, turns with his back to the rest of the party, and tries to sleep. The sound of Tsunade’s soft weeping can’t be drowned out by any amount of noise. It rains all night.
In all likelihood, Orochimaru’s better off without friends, he’s sure. After all, friends were unreliable. Friends were irresponsible. Friends had no consistence.
Danzo is not his friend, that much he knows.
ANBU has little room for sentiment. Among their masked ranks there weren’t bonds beyond their common cause of the mission. The Root soldiers, naturally, had no names or pasts; the agents who did weren’t inclined to speak of their lives back in Konoha. Up top, they’d called it. Unlike the troops, who’d been one in themselves with their camaraderie and lingo, ANBU agents weren’t men of words; beyond briefings and clandestine reports, they spoke little between themselves. Up top was the exception, the single common denominator, as if it was something too horrifying to refer to by its name.
And it was achingly familiar, like this.
It’s always more pronounced when they’re not around— Jiraiya on another one of his travels, Tsunade on a mission or holed up for days in the medical centre. Of course, there was always an aspect of certainty to those times— they would always come back eventually. Not this time, though.
It might have been his imagination, but Orochimaru was sure the gazes of the villagers were different somehow. They’d grown harsher the more he’d grown, but without Tsunade and Jiraiya to distract him with their nonsense, the rest of Konoha became far more visible in his eyes. Little things he’d always seen but never looked at; hushed whispers between old women. Averted eyes as he passed.
With his team-mates, they were the Legendary Sannin; Konoha’s best and brightest of the age, war heroes, met with awe and glory. Orochimaru alone, only shadows; shadows, and fear. You should not be here, those eyes whispered.
On occasion, when Orochimaru’s benched on involuntary leave for overwork or given some petty domestic mission because Sarutobi doesn’t want him on the field when he’s like this, he brings offerings to the graveyard in place of Tsunade. Dan and Nawaki are ever unresponsive, as are his crumbling parents. That grave is not often-visited any more. It doesn’t feel natural for Orochimaru to stand in a resting place of the dead, not when so many have been put in the ground by his hand.
‘No simple soldier ’, Danzo had called him, and unfortunately Orochimaru agreed. However distasteful the geezer was, without Tsunade and Jiraiya there as his buffers, there was no need for Orochimaru’s talent in war to be wasted on the front-lines as canon-fodder. In some ways, ANBU suits him more; the shinobi there are alike in the sense that none of them belong anywhere else. That wasn’t to say that they belonged here, though— but then, Orochimaru wasn’t there to belong. He was there to help end the war. Nawaki and Dan, he’s sure, would agree.
ANBU could be summed up in two words: cold and clinical. Like Orochimaru himself, Tsunade would likely have remarked, were she still present. Danzo says the words in her place, and it’s spoken like a compliment, which — unlike any insult (serious or teasing) that his friends could have thrown at him — makes his skin crawl. Even in the place where shinobi had no names or feelings, he was something other. A fancy. Unbelonging.
”I did not agree to this,” Orochimaru says bluntly, after a glance over the papers Danzo’s put in front of him. The kanji at the top read: APPLICATION FOR POSITION OF HOKAGE. At the bottom, his signature, forged. He leans back in his seat, arms folded and eyebrow raised.
”Regardless, you’re a better option than that Namikaze,” Danzo supplies, and the last word is dripping with contempt. “You run for Hokage under my tutelage, and you are sure to get the position.”
”You could at least try to disguise your intent to have me be your puppet, old man. Though I doubt it matters. You couldn’t get yourself that job, let alone me—“
“Silence,” Danzo says, and Orochimaru’s already felt the slap before it comes, eyes closed in the brace for impact. His fists clench, but he doesn’t retaliate, though the anger bubbles in his throat. A retaliation would be foolish. However much he hates it, he needs Danzo. It’s too late to back out at this stage.
”Don’t you speak to me that way, boy,” Danzo growls, his sickly-white, newly transplanted arm retreating back into its sling. Orochimaru’s been slapped before, friend and foe alike, but it’s a new kind of sting to be struck by flesh he himself created. Price he paid for unsavoury jutsu, he supposes. Unsavoury sponsors. “Don’t you forget, I am your superior. Your activities depend on my approval, and mine alone. Your foothold in this village is shaky, and can be taken from you any time I give the word.”
Orochimaru snorts. “Is that a threat, Danzo?”
“Merely a warning.”
Apparently, Orochimaru can’t hold his tongue today, because he’s speaking when he ought to know better.
“Any blackmail material you have on me could backfire on you. After all, you’re the one funding this research. I could be anyone, but your involvement …? Well, the evidence is … quite literally attached to you. If the time came, it would not be easy for you to deny any of my claims … it would be your word, a withered old man, against mine … a war hero.” An icy mark of silence punctuates Orochimaru’s words, before he twists his lips into a falsely amicable grin. “This is all hypothetical, of course.”
Danzo doesn’t smile.
“Don’t push your luck, boy,” the geezer says, tidying the papers— they shifted when Danzo had struck him. “Sannin of Konoha… bah. Sannin implies three, Orochimaru. Tell me, where are the other two?”
For that, Orochimaru has no answer.
Now, Danzo smiles, and it goes without saying that Orochimaru’s lost this particular arms race as Danzo gathers up the Hokage application papers, turning to leave.
”I’ll give the council the good news,” he says with a gentle, venomous old smile, and steps out of the light. Orochimaru remains seated at the table, and feels boxed in in more ways than one. The footsteps and tap of the walking stick fade and stop when Danzo pauses at the door, not glancing back. “Sarutobi has no time for former students who have long since become jounin, Orochimaru … and while the graveyard might comfort you, it won’t support you when the day comes. I am your only ally in this village … do your best not to displease me when I have done so much for you.”
The dust floating through the rays of daylight block out Danzo’s silhouette, as the tapping of the walking stick fades away through the dark winding corridors of Root.