She laughed.

Stood atop a pile of bones, impossibly high, she laughed. Her arms thrown out to the side, her feet planted firmly on the ground, her head tossed back towards the sky, she laughed.

Victory. Glory and ruin. She survived it all.

(Oh? That's good, then.)

She who stood clad in a kimono stained with blood-the sage, the Sannin, the snake-laughed. She looked up at the sky of this world she had been born to and laughed, for she'd done it. Done the impossible, overcome the odds. She stood at the end of it all, victorious over her foes. And yet, still she ached. (Really now? But isn't this what you wanted?) Deep in her soul she ached in away she could not explain. It was a wound on her very being, impossibly deep and unhealing.

This, perhaps, was the reason humans were not meant to be reborn.

She bowed over, clutching her aching gut, and still she laughed. Tears streamed down her face, and still she laughed. Her body, her soul, all her being ached, and still she laughed.

Eventually, you had to wonder why she wasn't screaming instead.

...

Dear God,

All of it, it was for survival.

All of it.

And I survived.

"Chiyo-san tells me you wish to become a shinobi."

Yamata Yuuto crossed his arms and stared down at his only child, a daughter who looked like her mother and had the markings of his clan. She sat with perfect poise, her mother's inky black hair spilling over kimono clad shoulders, and nodded.

"I do, Honorable Father." Her voice was soft, her words firm, and Yuuto knew without a shadow of a doubt that his daughter was afraid.

"Why do you fear, daughter?" he asked. For as long as he's known her, his daughter had always feared. It permeated her being, affected her every action. It was the reason she once fled the family compound, and the reason she eventually came back.

He had asked this question before. Never has he gotten an honest answer.

"I am not afraid," Orochimaru, his daughter of blood, his only child, his legacy, said to him.

Yuuto frowned, but did not comment. Instead what he said was thus:

"You will attend the academy come April. Be prepared, my daughter."

And that, it seemed, was that.

Chiyo was long and wrapped around her shoulders like a scarf. Her scales were dark and dry and smooth against her skin. Orochimru laid one hand upon her muscular body as she walked, as if to cling to the snake summon who served as her teacher, protector, and nurse.

"You're honorable father is kind," she said, a faint hiss in her voice as vocal cords not meant for human speech contorted to produce such sounds.

"Is he?" Orochimaru asked. She walked down the street on her lonesome, all of three years old, with Chiyo her only company. The streets were filled with people-civilians, shinobi, and children with the potential to become either. The air about them was tense, as it had been for as long as Orochimaru could remember, because Konoha was at war.

Or no. That was not quite right. Orochimaru-

Amelia

-can remember longer than that.

"He is," Chiyo insisted. Her tail flicked Orochimaru's cheek, and then pointed to a stand selling takoyaki. "There, look. Buy some for yourself. As celebration."

Orochimaru nodded and walked to the stand. She ordered some, and remained silent as the takoyaki was made, and paid for it without a word when it is done. Then she continued her walk through the streets of Konoha.

"You do not agree," Chiyo noted.

"Hm?"

"You do not agree that your honorable father is kind."

Orochimaru allowed herself a smile.

"He is sending me to war. What part of that is kind?"

...

Well... Never thought I'd get around to posting this, considering how long it's been sitting in my docs.

Consider this a drabble series of sorts. Most chapters will likely be short.