A/N: Hey everyone! This took a while. My other updates won't be as long, but Orochimaru was very, very dificult to write. Again, enjoy!
2. Orochimaru's death started with a wish
"It's said that when the gods want to punish you, they grant your wishes."
Jiraiya would tell you that he corrupted, just like his sanity. Tsunade would tell you that he was a dead man walking from the moment his parents died. Sarutobi-sensei would say that Orochimaru's life centered around death, and perhaps he never lived in the first place. All three of them are right and wrong at the same time, like the three blind men who each touched a different part of an elephant. In the end, Orochimaru's life was nothing more than the slow tipping of dominoes, as they made their way to his death.
It was strange to think of Orochimaru as a child, and yet, thought Jiraiya, it fit. He watched Orochimaru yank a rusty sword through a man's arm, and he saw a boy pulling the wings off of flies. Orochimaru stormed out of the room in a fury after the Sandaime refused him once more, and Jiraiya remembered a child at the market, screaming and yelling in desperation, refusing to believe that he could not have everything in the world.
And Jiraiya was twenty-two, and Mitarashi Anko, that little shadow, was darting in front of the path of a kunai, gasping in pain when it struck her shoulder, but still stubbornly standing, shielding a feverish Orochimaru and staring down an Iwa shinobi with a fiery, wild glare, and for a moment, Jiraiya's thoughts flickered randomly to an memory of a woman in the land of Grass, wrapping her arms around her small daughter and daring him to try and harm her child with her eyes as he had burst into the room, adrenaline pumping and covered in blood that was not his.
Jiraiya is the only Sannin who does not fear time or death, and the only one of the trio who willingly grew up, and Tsunade has always admired that. Tsunade was dragged into adulthood by tragedy and was never quite able to forgive life. Orochimaru aged unnaturally, in sudden spurts and stops, like blurred wax that was melted and frozen again and again into different shapes, or like a time traveler that left behind bits of himself in the stream of time-space, never even noticing his loss, so fascinated was he by the strange and wonderful spectacles ahead of him.
The irony was certainly not lost on Jiraiya, and he wondered if Orochimaru had ever noticed his own aging. Perhaps he had never noticed as he grew more and more obsessed, that just as he sawed away at his humanity, he cut the remaining bonds to what he was originally attempting to preserve. Superficially, Orochimaru had retained all the traits of a child, but deep down, only a fear of the metaphysical remained as a proof of innocence. In truth, Orochimaru feared the idea of "forever" almost as much as he feared death.
Jiraiya threw a pebble into a pond, his face a passive mask. It was
sad, he noticed abstractly. Jiraiya couldn't quite actually feel the
sorrow, maybe he was too old and experienced for that. It lapped
faintly at the corners of his mind, like an old spring that had
momentarily welled up again, instead of the flood of misery that had
swept him away so long ago. It seemed so hopeless, he mused. Jiraiya
always had believed in the new generation, and yet they had
been no different at that time, had they?
No, they hadn't been
any different, Jiraiya knew. He could say pretty words and declare
all he wanted to, but the truth was there: everyone else had said the
same things about them. So what made Team 7 any different from
the Sannin? Sasuke sought power desperately, Sakura was another
hot-tempered Tsunade, and Naruto... Naruto could have been Jiraiya's
brother in another reality. The cycle had repeated, just as they had
all hoped it wouldn't.
And yet...
It was a distortion in the otherwise flawless mirror, a ridge where a valley should have been, an extra paragraph of hope in the story that Jiraiya couldn't help noticing. Because Sakura was not Tsunade, who had been thrown into the cruelty of war, she was Sakura and she had willingly walked into a world of darkness for love and loyalty and friendship. Because Sasuke was not Orochimaru, and had forced himself into corruption and power instead of drowning in it. Because Naruto burned brighter than Jiraiya ever could, and had always been the better man. Because all of them had somehow managed to move on, for better or worse, and refused to accept the idea of destiny or hopelessness.
Ripples creased the water, but once more faded, and Jiraiya threw another pebble into the pond, his movements loose but mechanic. And another pebble crashed into the water, more forcefully, and Jiraiya watched the ripples fade once more. Just like the ripples, so too were they ephemeral, he observed impassively. The Sannin were fleeting appearances in time, pictures rather than stories. They were the oft-told story of degradation and ruin, falling from the zenith of their time, and living for the sake of living.
Naruto would never be like him, he thought, and it may have been cruel, but Jiraiya was strangely grateful for the fact. Neither Sasuke nor Sakura would be like his teammates. How he was so sure of it, how he knew for certain that they would never live for the sake of living, Jiraiya could never say, but sometimes, in the strange moments between his waking and his sleep, Jiraiya would think, fleetingly, that perhaps Kakashi's team was the alternate universe in which the Sannin received their happy ending.
Orochimaru was perhaps eight and they were all watching their first kill, and Jiraiya heard it. Just a swift murmur, a slip of the tongue, words that fell out, unbidden, filled with regret.
"Ahh..what was it again?"
Jiraiya felt fear for the first time, and those words seared into his mind, those unnatural, heavy words.
"'And all I loved, I loved alone.'"
Then—
"So be it."
And that was the trigger, the words that set the looms of fate in motion.
A/N: 'And all I loved I loved alone' by Edgar Allen Poe. I claim no credit for either the characters or the quote!
