A pale child sat curled with his knees to his chest, sobbing on the ground in the hospital hallway. He was wearing only ripped ankle length black pants. Even though the pants were torn and destroyed however, one could still tell they were the expensive ones only an upper class family could afford. The boy was terrified and the only stimulus he could respond to at the moment was his throbbing head and stinging throat.
A passing nurse saw the child and nudged her companion, "Another one," she said. "How sad."
This is what many people said about the war orphans in the hospital. Not because they meant it, no. They were already numb to the numerous fresh orphans that lined the floors of the hospital. The phrase was simply out of acknowledgement. The acknowledgement that they will have another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another child to care for. Many of the people passing in the hallway also stopped to stare at the boy's unusual features; porcelain skin and long jet-black hair, which was currently plastered to the boy's tear-streaked face. The most unnerving features however, were the boy's eyes. Golden snake-like eyes with slit pupils, framed by purple markings.
Two men stood at the busy entrance of the hallway, conversing about the boy.
"That one there, Hiruzen. That is Orochimaru?"
"Yes, Danzo."
Danzo cocked an eyebrow, "You say he has already graduated from the academy. He will be a valuable shinobi for this village."
Hiruzen's stared hard at the floor, angry that Danzo was already sentencing this child to his life sentence.
"His mother is still alive, you know."
"Oh really?" Danzo sounded only half interested.
"Yes. Barley, but she is alive."
"You are so hopeful, Hiruzen. You can't possibly believe she will live, do you?"
Truly and regretfully, Hiruzen didn't believe she would live. But he wanted to see to her last wishes, if she even had any.
"I believe that we should go to her now, and see if she has anything to say." The Hokage walked to a wooden door not far from where they stood.
"In here." He opened the door and the two walked inside.
Although Orochimaru had many observers, one in particular was currently working up the courage to speak to him.
"Hey!" The boy said, maybe just a bit to loudly. "I'm Jiraiya, and Sarutobi Sensei said I can be here because I'm big and strong!"
The pale child didn't respond. Internally Orochimaru didn't even detect that the boy was speaking to him.
"Well… Sarutobi said to stay with the other kids, and… he didn't actually say I was strong like him but… I know he was thinking it!"
No response.
"You know," Jiraiya sat down next to Orochimaru, "my parents died too, and I'm okay now. So soon, you will be just like me."
Whatever comfort Jiraiya was trying to convey only seemed to make the other boy shake even more and sob even louder.
"No! Don't cry!" Jiraiya pleaded, waving his arms frantically trying to get the boys attention. "I'm strong, you can trust me!" Then, out of pure desperation, Jiraiya hugged the boy tight.
"See? I'm strong and I'm not going to let you go." Jiraiya had to admit, the other boy's shivering body was a little hard to hold onto, but he was determined to help this boy, maybe even make a new friend.
The woman's body was completely covered in bandages, save only for her mouth, to which her bottom lip seemed to melt into taut shiny pale skin. Her legs were gone and so were one of her arms, leaving only jagged appendages covered in bloody bandages. Her other arm was completely crippled, the hand now a deadened nub and the bone twisted back at the elbow against the women's chest.
Hiruzen almost turned away at the sight. "This woman," he thought. "This poor woman."
Danzo noticed the guilt and remorse on Hiruzen face, "She's unrecognizable," he thought as he scanned her mutilated body for any signs of communication.
"Uggh…." A un-humanly groan strained from the woman's lips.
"Hiruzen, I don't think she can speak with the bandages covering her face. Hiruzen?"
Hiruzen was shocked. How much could she take? It wouldn't be possible to save her, not like this. But, could they? Would she want to live disfigured for the rest of her life? "If it meant being alive for her child..." Hiruzen thought.
"Get the best medical team we have."
"Hiruzen? What are you—"
"No, she has a child. We can save her."
"Hiruzen, she is gone."
"Move then, I will get them then." Hiruzen pushed Danzo away from the door and disappeared down the hall to retrieve doctors.
"Ughh…" The moan came again.
Danzo knew she wouldn't be able to speak with the bandages around her face, even if her mouth was uncovered. He also realized that by the time Hiruzen came back, it might already be too late. So, he walked over and slowly undid the bandages.
Her face was grotesque. Clotted blood tore away along with the removed bandages. Her head shown only patches of thick black hair, which was matted down with blood to her exposed scalp. The woman's ears were reduced to bloody pink nubs, barley hanging onto two silver tomoe shaped earrings that swung ever so slightly from them. Her nose and mouth were reduced virtually to slits and a large gash starting from the corner of her left eye plowed diagonally through the woman's mutilated face and then up again just underneath the other eye.
"Her eyes…." Danzo thought. Her eyes were completely unscathed. Although the eyelids were either gone or melted into the skin, the actual eyes themselves were... "Beautiful." Danzo thought. They eyes shown like golden gems in a torn sheet of pink, white, and red, almost eerily.
"Please…" The woman said almost incoherently. If Danzo had breathed even a bit louder he wouldn't have heard her plea.
As if knowing what she was alluding to Danzo replied, "Yes, Orochimaru is safe."
She let out a choked, shallow breathe.
Hiruzen appeared at the room's entrance and stared at the body, mouth agape in shock.
"She hasn't said anything, and if we get her medical attention soon enough she may live," Danzo lied.
"We must move her to the large infirmary with the other patients. She will be treated there immediately," Hiruzen said.
The two nodded in silent agreement and Danzo covered her body and face with a sheet, her earrings dangling just below the white cloth. Together he and the Hokage lifted the wooden board she rested on out of the room.
Jiraiya still held onto Orochimaru, who shivered and sobbed.
"Look!" Jiraiya pointed a finger at Hiruzen, who carried the stretcher with Danzo. "Sarutobi Sensei!" Jiraiya waved him to come over.
"Jiraiya! What are you doing here? It's too dangerous! Go back to the foyer and take Orochimaru with you. Understand?"
At the mention of his name, Orochimaru looked up, his face red and lips dry. Then he saw them, his mother's earrings dangling from just under the sheet. All movement in his body stopped, and he just stared.
"We must move if we want to save her, Sarutobi." Danzo said impatiently.
"Mother…" Orochimaru whimpered.
He pushed out of Jiraiya's grasp and started running towards the two men, slipping into the infirmary just as the door closed. The large room was packed with wounded victims and reeked of blood and rotted flesh making Orochimaru tense his nose at the smell.
"Stop!" Jiraiya said, bursting through the door behind him. He scanned the room for his sensei, pointing to the two men placing the stretcher on the floor only about ten meters from where they were. "Over there!"
Tears sped down Orochimaru's already soaked face as he sprinted passed the bodies to his mother.
"Wait!" Jiraiya cried, chasing after him. "I want to be responsible for helping you." Jiraiya thought. "I want to see the look on your face. Then you'll owe me one. We can be friends." Jiraiya smiled and ran even faster, crashing into Danzo. Before he could say anything else he was lifted up and his eyes were covered.
"Hey! What's the big idea! Let me go!"
Hiruzen spotted Orochimaru and quickly tried to do the same but the small boy slipped from his grasp. Orochimaru pushed through the nurses that circled the body.
His scream sounded so much of death that the entire room's attention shifted to the boy. In the silence Orochimaru's eyes set upon his mother's silver tomoe earrings. He hyperventilated, face twisted in terror at the realization his mother was now a rotting carcass. Orochimaru's golden eyes instinctively found his mother's, in which his mother agonizingly rolled her eyes to meet her son's. From her eye a tear of blood slithered down her demented pale face onto the wooden stretcher. Her eyes became lifeless then, clouded in unmistakable death.
Hiruzen gabbed Orochimaru and the small boy fainted in the man's arms.
Orochimaru could feel coldness seeping into his body. He looked up and immediately regretted it; his head throbbed immensely and he felt dizzy. Under him was hard wooden ground, with the only source of protection from it being a thin wool blanket.
Around him were bodies, small ones like his. He was in a room with many other orphaned children, all of them sleeping on the wooden floor like him. All of them with the same wool blanket as him. A child let out a cry in his slumber and Orochimaru clutched the blanket up to his pale chest.
"I just want my…."
He started to weep. Not cry. Weep. His body wracked forward in one joint motion and he wept. An almost animal-like moan came from his small frail body, and tears leaked from his already puffy eyes.
"Hey, are you awake?" Said a familiar voice beside him. Jiraiya sounded groggy and tired. He stretched his limbs out but jolted up when he saw Orochimaru crying again.
"I'll stay up with you. Ya' know, if you want."
Jiraiya moved his hand to touch Orochimaru's but the boy got up and ran. He ran down the hallway, onto the porch and out into the night. The ground was moist and his feet sank into the mud.
"Am I just another number? Another lost child?" He thought.
Orochimaru cried as he thought of his mother and his previous life with her. How she would sing to him and tell him stories. He tried to imagine her sweet face framed by dark hair and her smooth voice comforting him but, her hair falls out and her face melts into a grotesque mask. Her hands turn to ash in his and a tear of blood streaks her pale, scarred face. Then everything turns black. Everything is gone. Everything is nothing.
"I am nothing."
He dropped to the ground, plunging his face into the cold mud.
"Hey! Jiraiya came running out into the dark almost slipping into the mud.
"What do you think you're doing?" Jiraiya squatted down beside Orochimaru and encircled his arms around his middle, dragging the boy's body to the porch stairs. "You're heavy." He said and laid Orochimaru down onto the wooden boards. "And dirty." Jiraiya tried his best to wipe the mud off of the boy's face and legs, using his hands and shirtsleeves. Sitting up while Orochimaru laid down made Jiraiya feel awkward, so he slid down on his back next to him.
"So…" the boy trailed. "I think Sarutobi Sensei said your name was… Orochimaru? I don't know, I can't remember."
Minutes passed and once the silence turned unbearable for Jiraiya he spoke, "You are very quiet. I mean, you're not that quiet, I've heard you scream. Pretty impressive." He cocked a brow and smiled. However his smile vanished when met by muteness comparable to a corpse, the only sound that could be heard being the chirps of crickets in the distance.
"I wish you would talk," Jiraiya said flatly. "And not cry."
Jiraiya then got an idea, "We can stay here all night! Out here on the porch! Away from everyone else! Then we can watch the sun rise together!" Seeming content with his epiphany, Jiraiya settled down even closer to Orochimaru. "When the sun rises everything will be new; the sun, the sky, the grass. And, everything that is bad will just, ya'know, uh… go away."
"Will I go away?"
The response took Jiraiya by surprise because he wasn't expecting it, but also because it was so soft that it was barely audible.
"Are you bad?"
"I don't know."
"Then... Then… well…." Jiraiya didn't know how to respond. So he settled with, "Well, I won't let you go away."
"Why?" Orochimaru said.
"Because!" Jiraiya sat up looking into Orochimaru's eyes, "That's what friends do! Um, ya'know, if you want to…uh…" he scratched the back of his head nervously, "be my friend."
"Do you… have any friends?" Orochimaru asked.
"No," Jiraiya said looking down. "Do you?"
"I guess I do now."
A smile stretched across Jiraiya's face, and he fell down next to Orochimaru, hands crossed behind his head. "Look!" Jiraiya pointed to the graying area just behind the mountains. "The sun is coming up," He looked to Orochimaru who was staring at the part of the sky that was still dark.
"Orochimaru!" Jiraiya said. The boy next to him instinctively turned his head and Jiraiya smiled.
"Jiraiya?" Orochimaru whispered the new name.
Suddenly Jiraiya grabbed onto Orochimaru's hand tight. Orochimaru didn't tense; he just let Jiraiya grab his hand.
"Now, the darkness can't take you away because I'm not letting you go."
For the rest of the sunrise the boys laid in silence, hand in hand. When the sun completely rose Jiraiya sat up, still not letting go of Orochimaru's hand.
"See, Orochimaru? It worked."
Jiraiya helped Orochimaru to a sitting position and laid the pale boy's head down on his shoulder.
"Everything is all right now."
Orochimaru felt tears welling up in his eyes and let out a choked sob.
"You can cry if you want to. I didn't mean what I said about not wanting you to cry. Even I cry sometimes." Jiraiya said encouragingly.
Orochimaru closed his eyes, forcing the last of his tears to fall down his cheeks, and onto Jiraiya's lap.
"Promise me."
"Uh…" Jiraiya was confused by the question. "Promise you what?"
"That you won't leave me."
"You have to promise first," Jiraiya said stubbornly. He was getting tired and laid his head onto Orochimaru's.
"I promise I won't leave you, Jiraiya"
"Then I promise I won't leave you either, Orochimaru."