That Night
Orochimaru curled up and stretches his toes as he sat, quietly eating his dinner of rice and egg. Despite usually savouring the flavour of the egg, it being his favourite food, this time he wanted to finish eating as soon as possible, the reason being the two adults who sat before him. They were doing a thing Orochimaru called 'Not Arguing'. It's like regular arguing, but the rules are you can't raise your voice or say any nasty words because Your Son's Here and He's Just a Child. Sometimes it was even worse than Normal Arguing, because Orochimaru's mother was one of those people that needed to scream when they were angry, otherwise they bottle everything up inside and you can feel the energy crackling around the room when she's mad. Orochimaru's father was better at Not Arguing. He should have been on the council, Orochimaru thought, all they do all day is Not Argue.
He was tuning out the words his parents were exchanging as they sat across the table from each other, concentrating on finishing his food so he could leave. The dry, prickling feeling of electricity was already making the hairs on his arms stand up, so he knew it wasn't long before his mother snapped. It was never nice, and at the end his father was usually down a tooth and the kitchen would have to be re-stocked with plates. The last of the rice disappeared between his lips just as wood creaked under fingers.
Silently, he slid his empty bowl onto the table, placing his spoon beside it to avoid making any noise and clanking the pottery together. He got up and made his way out of the sliding doors, barely catching the tail end of "-adulterous man-whore!" directed at his father. He'd have to look those words up later.
Orochimaru's small bare feet pattered across the raised platform as he walked out into the garden.
Well, it was hardly a garden. Despite their small size, the Yashagorou clan had a reasonable amount of land, their home situated on the outskirts of the village, with grass and trees surrounding them. A narrow path lined with traps connected the clan grounds to the village.
Orochimaru ran his hands through the grass – it was another thing his parents Didn't Argue about. His father wanted the grass to be kept trim and tidy, as befitted a powerful clan like them, but his mother liked the grass to grow wild. It provided natural habitat for the local wildlife. They had no need to cut the grass anyway, a neat lawn wasn't going to suddenly make the village respect their family any more. The conversation would suddenly die then, and Orochimaru would be cruelly wrenched away from his word puzzled or drawings and sent to his room. He didn't know why they bothered, he could clearly hear their conversations through the paper walls anyway.
Personally, he liked the grass long too. Even standing, the grass tickled the young boy's jaw, and when he sat down he could be hidden among the grass. Orochimaru did so now, settling down into the soft earth, still damp from the previous night's humid rain. The grass curtained off the world to him, and he could pretend that there was no arguing in his life, Not Arguing or otherwise.
Not that he didn't love his parents. He did, and often they insisted they loved him too. He just wasn't sure they loved each other, and he thought that was what parents were supposed to do. Maybe it was the war; he wasn't entirely sure how war was related, but everyone seemed to be citing it as the reason for anything these days.
He watched a large, hairy spider crawl up his arm in interest. Orochimaru wasn't a delicate child, so instead of screaming or trying to flatten the spider, he just observed as it made its way up his yukata sleeve and to his shoulder, where it jumped and began to spin a web between his shoulder and the knee of his crossed leg. He'd always found wildlife fascinating. In that respect, he took after his mother. Really, Orochimaru took a lot after her – his metallic eyes, yellow to her bronze, the clan tattoos around the eyes and his summoning tattoo, even though at this age he could only call forth a tiny snake that wiggled gleefully in the centre of his palm. His pale skin he took from her, and his habit of falling asleep in spots of warm sunlight. Temperament wise, he took more after his father, he thought. He didn't Crackle like his mother did. And his hair, long and black like tar, was akin to his father's – his mother's was a dull lavender, and styled in a bob cut, sharp like her personality.
Just as the spider, whom he'd decided to call Takumi-sama, started to flesh out its web, a crackling sound reached his ears. Orochimaru looked up, brushing his hair out of his face, expecting perhaps his mother to come and drag him back into the house for company. Instead, his eyes widened.
The house.
The house was on fire.
Orochimaru had been sitting far enough away that the warmth hadn't registered, but now it hit him like the flames themselves. The elegant, one story Yashagorou home was bathed in orange light as the flames danced and cackled through rooms and windows. He thought it looked like demons rampaging through his home (and maybe that form slipping from the roof of the house and into the forests around the house was the real demon, or just a shadow conjured up the flickering fire).
The boy sat in the grass, watching his home go up in flames, paralysed, perhaps by fear, by shock, a mixture of the two or by fate itself, as it pressed him down deeper into the loamy earth. At his sides small white hands ripped chunks of grass out compulsively. Yellow eyes were fixed on the house because any second, any moment, his mother and father would come running out and collect him and-
They didn't.
They didn't come out in the first minute Orochimaru watched the flames, or the second, or the fifteen it took for anyone to see the flames out at the edge of the village and come to investigate. The fire wouldn't burn the grass or soil, the dampness being Orochimaru's only shield in that moment. He just sat, and watched, and waited.
The first nin to arrive was either a chuunin or a jounin. Orochimaru didn't turn around to check, because then he'd miss his parents running away from the fire. But he heard the deep shout of a man past puberty, the alarmed yelling, and suddenly the man was running towards the fire, hands flashing through seals. He took a deep breath and Orochimaru watched in mild fascination as he blew an enormous gust of wind at the fire. But it wasn't enough, and instead of extinguishing it, the wind fanned the flames more, oily black plumes of smoke rising into the sky.
Orochimaru pulled up another handful of grass, winding it around his fingers, careful not to destroy Takumi-sama's work. As he breathed, he thought he could smell ash on the breeze.
Soon there were more people, some who were there to stare, few who were there to help. The nin was joined by more, two, three, who were still trying to put out the inferno that was raging. Their wind attacks only seemed to bat the fire around, and Orochimaru thought it would be better if they didn't do anything at all. His father, with his home country's natural water affinity, could have had the fire out in seconds. Orochimaru wondered what was taking his parents so long.
Still nobody saw the boy among the wild grass, eye fixed on the burning building. And then, then there was a Presence. It was different from the rest, Orochimaru could tell. He flicked his tongue out like his mother did when she was thinking, and he could almost taste the Crackle of power. He came running up from behind the other shinobi, and with one simple water-jutsu, dowsed the fire.
Orochimaru had to blink – after staring at the fire for so long, the early evening seemed black as night to him, and without the cackling of the fire demons, so quiet, too. Another handful of grass was sacrificed.
Immediately, shinobi shouted out orders to their fellows; a few volunteered to go inside the house, despite even Orochimaru being able to hear the ominous creaking of damaged wood. They disappeared into the dark shadow of the house, and Orochimaru could only wait. He would need to pay attention to what his mother and father did to survive the fire, it must be a very useful and powerful skill. He nodded to himself. Takumi-sama continued to happily spin his web.
He didn't have to wait long – the three ninja who volunteered soon returned, baring two bundles. They gently laid them out on the ground, and from where Orochimaru was sitting, he could clearly hear the report.
"The parents are dead, but he haven't found the child."
No.
No.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no-
His chest hurt. It hurt like a hammer slamming into his heart, sending out peals of pain through his body and he curled in on himself a little. He fisted a hand in his yukata, trying to protect himself from that hammer, but nothing could stop the waves wracking his body. An involuntary whimper escaped his throat and he didn't know why because those ninja were lying, they were liars and incompetent and and-
And he was crying, fat tears rolling down and face as he bit his trembling lip. His parent's weren't dead, they weren't. Death happened to other people. Death belonged to abstract concepts like War or Missions, it didn't belong to days after rain or afternoons spent Not Arguing. Death had no right to waltz in after rice and eggs, to make itself at home in Orochimaru's home, to leave him sitting in the wild grass, just watching.
His tears dripped and make dark splodged on his yukata top, but he made no sound. Absently, his ears listened to the shinobi outside his home, but it seemed to come from so far away, muffled under layers of water, maybe. He couldn't concentrate much on anything but his blocked nose, and his throat that had closed up so much he thought he might die of suffocation.
Takumi-sama had decided he was done with his canvas moving, and abandoned his half-spun web, crawling down Orochimaru's yukata and into the dark grass. His hand twitched involuntarily.
"Don't leave me." He whispered, at the spider, at his parents, at that concrete future he thought would stretch before him for decades but was now no more than burned ash on the wind.
"Kid?"
Orochimaru looked up. It was Him, the Crackling man, who had put out the fire like his father should have. He hiccupped as another sob tried to crawl up his throat. Up close, the Man looked surprisingly normal – spiky brown hair, early lines around his eyes, the weak beginnings of a goatee, and a face full of shocked compassion. He looked down at Orochimaru with so much sorrow, Orochimaru almost thought it was His parents that had died. The Man crouched down beside him, the grass coming only up to his shoulder even then. Orochimaru tried to wipe his cheeks with his sleeve.
"Oh, son." He said, and before either of them could really think this through, he's pulled the boy into a rough hug. Instead of hissing like he usually did when mishandled, Orochimaru froze for a second, before burying his face in the man's hard flak jacket, hands fisted at the sides. The tears had stopped, and his eyes felt dry and itchy, like sandpaper every time he blinked.
He felt numb. Even the sensation of this man's hard jacket under his cheek felt like it was wrapped in a hundred layers of wool. His fingers were cold, and the ringing in his chest sent only the faintest of throbs through his limbs now. Orochimaru's head hurt.
"C'mon, kid, it's been a long day." The shinobi murmured. He seemed to hesitate a second, before scooping the small boy up, black hair tangled against his shoulder. The world began to fade around him, and Orochimaru's eyes felt heavy. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was the bones of the Yashagorou clan's house, yawning like the skeletal jaw of some ancient monster, the blackened forms the shinobi called his parents, and the final snippets of the shinobi's conversation that would mark the beginning of his new future.
"He's the last Yashagorou, he'll have to go to the orphanage."
"Very well, Sarutobi-san."