Chapter Text
Orochimaru sat slumped over his work desk, half-drowsing in the warmth of his well-heated personal laboratory, Tsunade's laments still ringing in his ears.
The enhancer Orochimaru had started working on in the wake of Nawaki's death was completed, he had intended it as a gift for the children of Tsunade and Dan – but Dan was dead now, and Orochimaru knew Tsunade enough to know that she would never love another.
There will be no Senju children from the last Senju.
He shelved the enhancer and started on the limb-regeneration project requested by Sarutobi-sensei. The Second War was finally drawing to a close, but many shinobi had not survived it whole. And if the Hokage's interest had a personal motivation, in memory of a late friend who was taken off the field young from the lost of a limb and an eye – Orochimaru is private enough with his own sentimentalism not to comment on it.
The initial outcomes were unpalatable – to grow clones of fresh and blood and harvest from them the parts required for those who had donated the DNA. Eventually, Orochimaru had tweaked the process to grow only the parts required, tweaked it to adjust the physical age of the parts, and in private, tweaked it to flip the genders of cloned bodies just to see what would happen. If Orochimaru had been born a woman, he would have had a softer face in adulthood – but like his mother and like he was now – his appearance would overall be androgynous.
Orochimaru could climb onto his mother's desk long before he could stand without wobbling, and he could recognize whispered words written on scrolls heavier than he was – and when they had slipped from his grasp and off the desk, his mother had laughed at his father and said that parenthood was the greatest experiment.
The enhancer sits completed and untouched in a corner of his lab. He wanted so very much to bring back Nawaki, to present a baby Nawaki to Tsunade as she once had presented her baby brother to him – but would the clone really be Nawaki without Nawaki's soul? That ways lies headaches and heartaches.
He looks at the body with the softer face, and remember wishing as a child that he would be as beautiful and brilliant as his mother, a delicate and deadly kunoichi. He remembers their reflection in the mirror over his mother's dresser, her combing out her long dark hair as he sat on her lap clutching her obi, wishing.
As a child, Orochimaru had adored Senju Tobirama. Tobirama was a passionate man who ruled himself with reason, and he was a fearless innovator of half the jutsus in the forbidden scrolls. Tobirama had been a great inspiration for Orochimaru, and he had died tragically young and without an heir.
Once Orochimaru had mastered modifying the Yamanaka clan's mind transfer technique, he could and he would give Tobirama that heir. Though him, the Hebi and the Senju clan would not die.
Omake
Senju Tobirama is dead – he remembers dying quite clearly: The known ambush, coming upon him like an avalanche, falling down to the sound of Hashirama's light laughter, falling away –
He tries to remember more, of what came after, but that memory (of the Pure Lands), is blocked from him here, as if by a wall, here, in the world of the living, where he could see and hear but could not feel, summoned by a sacrifice and held to a form of ash and dust.
A young person is standing before him with crossed arms, eyes downcast, hair as dark and smooth as ink down to the waist line. Tobirama steps forth, and tilts the pale face up to the morning light, studying the golden eyes with the silted pupils, "you are of the Hebi clan, have we met before?" There weren't many of the Hebi clan left.
Arms still crossed, the young person straightens with a gesture of vague familiarity, "My name is Orochimaru, I was a student of Sarutobi Hiruzen, alongside your niece, Tsunade."
Tobirama remembers a brilliant and strange boy he had brought with him to see the body of Uchiha Madara, so small then and already so sure, unflinching and focused as he soaked up Tobirama's lessons on how to extract secrets from the dead. He remembers a boy with a delicate face, and before him stands a woman, androgynous, slender curves hidden beneath her dark blue kimono, but Tobirama was raised alongside many kunoichi who had dressed like men for the road and the softer lines were unmistakeable. He looked pointedly down the young person's chest, hips, and back up to the face, raising his own eyebrow in question.
"You engineered a technique that raised the dead, Tobirama-sama, are the transfer of minds between bodies or their alteration that implausible?" She smiles at him, and flicks a lock of her hair to the back with a sweep by the back of her hand as she raised her head to look up at him – this gesture he recognizes, from a kunoichi that he surmise to be Orochimaru's mother.
Tobirama looks beyond Orochimaru (Orochimari?), to where someone small is hiding behind a cluster of shrubbery at the edge of the clearing, "I gather there is a reason why you've summoned me here?"
Orochimaru clasps her hands behind her back and turns her head to the side, showing off the long line of her neck beneath Tobirama's gaze, "The Hebi clan have always been a small one, and when my parents died, it was just me," she was leaning so close, he imagine he could smell her, tea and roses (roses to hide the scent of wounds and poison), "and the Senju clan had declined to just Tsunade, who was childless when her one true love had died early."
Understanding rose in Tobirama's chest in the form of hysterical laughter – he is dead, he shouldn't be short of breath – but he's in the middle of many impossible happenstances. Orochimaru turns in a huff, have started marching away with her arms crossed stiffly across her chest, but Tobirama has always been fast, and he has her by the obi of her kimono before she is halfway to the shrubs. He leans down to whisper in her ear, not feeling the sleekness of her hair against his cheek, but watching her brush spread down the nape of her neck, "I would be honoured if you would show me, what a child of the Senju and Hebi clans would look like."