So That's the
Life
Author: gelfling
Pairing: OroSasu, but no romance.
Challenge: Oxymoron, 58 minutes
Disclaimer: Standard Disclaimer Applies—niether characters nor series are mine,
sadly enough.
Summary: Sasuke and Orochimaru have an angry-medium conversation about life,
death, and people. Exploring
Orochimaru's character in this one; his whole grip on the I'm Going To Possess
You And Live Forever Deal.
Second-hand sophistication…quiet darkness rumbling by while the water of children bones fell and fell and fell from the skies dotting the earth like zits or measles, leaving tiny explosions of dust and water in their wake.
Wake. Now there was a word Sasuke had heard all too often, knew far too well. He had been in shock during the wake of his clan, and that had taken several days as the family members were remembered individually, then finally as a whole. Oh, that had taken time…it wasn't the sort of thing to be proud of. Nothing to be proud of.
As Orochimaru had said with that dirty crooked smile of his, hatefully careless and not caring that it was hateful, there was nothing proud in death. The weak died, the strong lived—even the ants knew that, and they were only bugs. Only people—and here Orochimaru would sneer, at humanity and Sasuke and Kabuto and everyone but himself—were stupid enough to give Death a value.
Death had no value, just as the ones who died had no worth. They left nothing, took nothing, and after they died did nothing. The dead were lower than trash.
Sasuke folded his arms as the rain came down harder, obscuring his vision with gray-green sheets of water and chill. He was running out of time. He was dressed in black—he always was now. It just worked.
Near to him but never close to him the devil made Hell in human flesh and draconian eyes slanted dressed in white. He knew he made Sasuke uncomfortable, so he never passed up the opportunity to spend time with him.
"You mortals are destined to die. You'll always be lower than trash," he said with the second-hand plain sophistication he stained everything with.
Orochimaru who had been spared by the Third. Orochimaru who had run away, like a child when he wasn't given Konohagakure as the toy he wanted—the Yondaime had received it instead. Orochimaru who was fighting a losing battle, and they both knew it. Orochimaru who never intended to die, who never would die.
Sasuke wanted to kill him. Sasuke wanted to keep his skin—he needed it as badly as Orochimaru wanted it, probably more. He didn't really like the idea of playing Frankenstein to another man's script, especially when he was the corpse the monster was resurrected in, and his spirit was just thrown away like a soda can.
"Do you envy me?"
"No," Sasuke answered quietly. Just as Orochimaru didn't intend to die, Sasuke didn't intend to give up his body while his damned brother walked.
"You don't have a choice. And you're running out of time." Orochimaru liked the sound of his own voice, Sasuke knew. It was an open secret, but he never actually said more than he wanted to be heard. Snakes had created lying, but humans, oh humans—humans had perfected the art of lying.
"You give me what I want, and I'll give you what you want."
That was the Arrangement—that was the Agreement. That was the final Contract signed by Sasuke that had cut the Leaf out of his life forever—Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi too. They were strangers to him, and he an enemy to them. He didn't trust Orochimaru, didn't like him, wanted him dead, but he needed him at his side. Needed his brain and tact and cunning.
Orochimaru only needed one thing from Sasuke, and he made sure it never got too far away.
"My brother still lives."
"Yes. Yes he does. You're too weak to kill him—you've been too weak all your life. This shouldn't be any surprise to you now."
"You're afraid of him."
There was a silence. If he had been any one else, Kabuto or even another of the Sannin, even Orochimaru's equal, he would've been killed or attacked for a remark like that. Dirty gray spears rained down, impaling the dry earth and wooden overhang, nailing into it frantically as a drowning man. Finally, Orochimaru spoke.
"You should be too."
"You're too stupid to carry the title of an Uchiha."
"You don't deserve it."
"But," Orochimaru sounded thoughtful again, pale skin and perfect features for a bare fleeting second seeming almost honest. "I would like to know why he left you alive. Of all the ones to leave…"
Sasuke looked away, angrily.
"Humans have always been…fickle. They fear death, but hate life. Never happy where they are, but too afraid to go anywhere else…"
"Aren't you human as well?"
"No," there was an unshakeable certainty in Orochimaru's voice—there wasn't room for doubt, not even the classic Sasuke sarcasm. "I am a god."
"No man has ever lived as long as I have, no man has ever lived as I have. I was alive before your parents were old enough to copulate, and I'll be alive long after you're dead. I have not only cheated death, I've rearranged the rules…"
As Sasuke had noted earlier with a growing but useless contempt, Orochimaru enjoyed the sound of his own voice.
"Even gods can die."
"Not me. Not I."
"You need a human body to exist in—not very divine, that."
"This mortal coil…" the rain came close to drowning out his words as his voice lowered—deep, seductive, and very hateful. Very easy to hate Orochimaru's voice, Sasuke thought. Very easy to hate all of Orochimaru, actually. "It's just a temporary requirement—even gods need their churches. And you don't consider yourself equal to the cotton plants," again, that all-knowing confident smirk, "Do you, Sasuke-kun?"
The rain was infinitely more pleasing to the eye—it never lied or hurt or did anything tricky or sweet. It was cold and unfeeling as aluminum paint, drizzling down with that rushing chaotic sound that set Sasuke's nerves on end and his skin chilly as scales.
Cotton plant…so now I'm a cotton plant…
"I hate you," Sasuke said quietly.
Of that statement, Sasuke had no fear, only dread.
"They would hate you too…all your groupies, if they knew what you really were."
Orochimaru snaked his arm around Sasuke's shoulders—he didn't flinch.
"Sasuke-kun, if you didn't hate me, you would never have come to me, now, would you? After all…for as long as I'm near you, for as long as it's my taste in your mouth, my words leading your actions…"
Sasuke dropped his eyes to the floor.
"Everything you've done doesn't seem so bad, does it? Not when there's someone to hate so close by, you feel that much better about yourself."
Sasuke said nothing--silence his guide and guardian and only true mother and lover and father, eyes on the floor, pressure and weight around his shoulders but no warmth in the arm, anymore than there was warmth in his stomach, only the old cold still acids and nuclear waste, slowly decomposing there.
"Hatred…"
There was grudging admiration in Orochimaru's voice.
"Your brother really was a genius."
"But why he loved you, I'll never understand."
End