Chapter 28—Forever
That night, Orochimaru and Tsunade lay together in the comfortable warmth of skin against skin. Tsunade was beginning to fall asleep in Orochimaru's arms when his quiet question stirred her.
"Tsunade… will you be ready for a body transfer when the time comes?" he asked.
"I'll do whatever I can to help," she answered. "Kabuto talked about it before, but the process is still a little unclear to me."
Orochimaru laughed lightly. "No, Tsunade. I meant for you. I intend to live forever and I want you with me."
"Oh…" Tsunade was quiet for a few moments, thinking it over. "I don't know," she finally answered. "I never thought about it before, but I'll be all right with the Genesis Regeneration technique, at least for a while."
"Hm," Orochimaru murmured, but he did not press the issue further. It was quiet again until Tsunade muttered, "There's… something you should know about that technique…" Orochimaru looked down at her with interest. "There's a side effect," she said slowly. "It… shortens my life each time I use it. It's impossible to tell by how much but–"
"Tsunade–"
Tsunade had felt Orochimaru grow tense as she was speaking, and he stared down at her, his eyes wide with alarm. "How many times have you used it?" he demanded.
"Only once really…" Tsunade said.
"Don't use it again."
"Orochimaru…"
Orochimaru sat up, pulling Tsunade with him. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her and held her close against him. "Don't use it again," he repeated. "I'll keep you alive, Tsunade. Don't gamble with your life."
Tsunade was silent, startled by his fervent reaction. Then she allowed herself a small smile and settled her cheek against his chest again. "Okay," she murmured.
She felt him relax and realized just how concerned he had really been as she listened to his heart gradually return to its normal rhythm. Tsunade closed her eyes.
"Forever, huh?" she said. "Sounds good."
[X]
Culmination—Author's Note
Okay guys, let's get the obligatory excuse-making out of the way: I suck at endings! And titles! Cause yeah this isn't actually the last story! Oops!
Oh, and I need to state that the chapter where Sasuke confronts Orochimaru in this story draws HEAVILY on how that encounter actually went in the series. I'm not intending to take credit for it; I just feel that the motives for those characters to behave the way they did in the series still existed here, so it made sense for it to play out in a similar way. I did a lot of research on that sequence from both the manga and the anime (yes, I'm an obsessive freak) so that I could (hopefully) do it justice, so I hope you're all okay with how it turned out.
So, it's actually been a long time since I posted anything new in this series (I've been systematically going through it and trying to clean up what I feel is writing that just falls flat and comes up short and just updating the chapters in that way) but I've actually had three new stories that follow the events of this one sitting on my computer for a long, long time now. Shame on me! Those will be going up as soon as I can get around to cleaning them as well. The next one is called Ninjas in Wonderland. It's a one shot, slightly cracky, but still totally fic-canon for this series… if that makes any sense haha.
Anyway, I do want to take the opportunity to thank you all again for reading and commenting and such. I'm just so glad to know there are some people out there who like what I've written. You're all awesome
~DS
