AnkoOro
The mission she'd dreaded (nausea spells and sweaty palms and headaches and all of it) most of all ended up changing everything.
Land of the Sea. Orochimaru. Her sensei.
She always hated that she was just too damn weak. Strong enough to be made his student, to be given and survive the seal, but not strong enough in ways that mattered. She'd striven for his attention, to be like him and he'd abandoned her. She hadn't even been strong enough to leave him of her own volition but had clung to him even after he could have quite easily killed her. And he wouldn't have even cared. But she'd stayed anyway. Until he ditched her because she wasn't good enough for him (the obsessive, manipulative, megalomaniac, self-absorbed, twisted, unscrupulous, brutal, callous, bastard). Wasn't strong enough to face him upon his return.
Only she was! It had all been lies, (well not all of it, because you need the truth mixed with lies so you can swallow it all down, years in the profession had taught her that) but so much of it was slight alterations here and there just so to give a completely different impression. Now she understood why Tsunade sent her on this mission (she might just come to like the woman more after all) and it was an amazing feeling to know that she wasn't weak—or at least not that weak, after all. She'd still kill him of course, he was a traitor to her and the village, but she'd left him. She hadn't been as sickeningly puppyish as she'd thought. He had altered her memories. And while it still burned that he could, that he'd been able to, the choice, the splitting, was HER choice. And that made all the difference somehow. He hadn't made her his puppet, he couldn't. And maybe he had valued her, like his old team, that little bit. Not seeking out to kill them, (just his own sensei and the village they'd left behind) though he could have. Maybe it was something of the man he used to be.
But she'd hated him too long and too strongly to stop now (and he'd still killed them, the others, her almost friends with the same seal she survived by… what? Luck? A strong constitution? Willpower?) Ultimately many things and details didn't matter. No one else would care about what she'd learned but her. And it was enough.
..
A/N: as cannon complaint as I could make it. According to my sources most of the stuff here is true (see the anime land of the sea arc) and i just went with it.
Also someone earlier asked for AnkoOro so hopefully this suffices. I'd try his perspective but he's a tricky bastard to write and i've read an amazing piece featuring the two of them and i just can't get anywhere near that. The mix of cunning manipulative ninja bastard mixed with for your own good and so many other emotions was wonderful. I am sure the story's in my favs and community.