Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama and Naruto

Genre: Hurt/Comfort (?)

Warning: Blink and You Miss It Slash

Notes: This is not as funny as the summary might make you think. There's like, zero humor here.

(05/12/21 Crossposted from Ao3)

"Tatsugorou, looks like I'll be seeing you soon"

It was as if Orochimaru changed into a whole other person overnight, Hiruzen mused. His student, ever reticent and always stuck in the labs or out doing S-ranked missions, suddenly retired from the shinobi corps, citing an injury that Hiruzen knew wasn't as bad as he made it out to be.

The Council and the Elders didn't approve, of course. Orochimaru was an asset that the village couldn't afford to lose, especially now that two of Hiruzen's students—two of Konoha's strongest, were out of the village and seemingly had no intentions of returning in the near future.

But Hiruzen has already failed Orochimaru many times. And giving him the same allowance as his other two students was the least he could do.

Wryly, Hiruzen thinks to himself, here he was, known as the Professor, and yet he'd failed all three of his students.

At the very least, Orochimaru didn't have any plans to leave the village. In fact, the Snake Sannin had bought a two-storey building smack-dab in the middle of the busiest and loudest part of the village.

When Ayano woke up, surprise was the first thing she'd felt. She could breathe easily again. She hadn't felt that for a few years now and she relishes in the ease that she could take a lungful of air and not worry about the painful spasm in her chest.

The next thing that registered was the smoothness of her movements. In those last legs of her life, she'd been feeling the creak in her joints every time she moved.

This really must be heaven then, she muses.

That thought is immediately discarded when a startled nurse ran back out of the room immediately after seeing her.

Unless everyone wakes up in a hospital in heaven, Ayano doubts she's in the afterlife.

Bowing her head down to look at her hands, a spill of black hair flows past her shoulders and covers her face.

Rubbing the strands with her young but calloused fingers, she marvels at the silkiness of it.

A doctor comes in with the nurse from before in tow. He calls her 'Orochimaru-sama' and she learns that this 'Orochimaru' had gotten a head injury, so her apparent loss of memories was 'to be expected'.

Ayano doesn't think that's it, but she doesn't know where she was and she wasn't fool enough to go around saying she was someone else.

She may not have wanted to be one of the Four Devas—the whole concept of it was nothing but headache inducing-but she didn't become one of the respected figures in Kabukicho for nothing.

Cat watches the intimidating Snake Sannin in befuddlement. The Elders had tasked her with monitoring the young man, wary of his strange actions. They were obviously worried that the Sandaime's remaining student was up to something, and she couldn't blame them. She has certainly been rather wary of the man long before he'd reportedly started acting "strange".

But regardless, Cat herself had been terrified of the Mission given to her. It was basically suicide! She wouldn't go anywhere within six feet of him on a good day, she certainly wouldn't want to spy on him 24/7! The man was as dangerous, sharp, and venomous as his famed summons, but what could she do? The higher-ups ordered her to do it.

So now here she was, all expectations of her gruesome endings thrown out of the window.

He'd obviously noticed her on the first day of tailing him, but miraculously, he ignored her. He just went about his business, setting up his newly bought. . .snack bar?

This went on for weeks. Cat watches the Snake Sannin as he got closer to being able to open the lower floor as a Snack Bar. Bottles of alcohol lined the cupboards behind the counter while stools appeared in front of it.

Cozy leather couches found themselves sectioned off together in a way that were comfortable, open, yet still retaining the ability to have a sense of privacy.

Interestingly, the second floor remained unused.

Cat entered it once. There was a desk in the middle of the living room with two couches in front of it facing each other and sandwiching between them a coffee table.

The other rooms were barren. Dark and quiet as if waiting for someone to come home. Cat didn't enter the second floor again after that.

(Later, Cat sees the Snake Sannin place a plate of food and a glass of alcohol on the counter before closing shop, leaving only the light behind the bar on. After sniffing it out for poison, Cat eats it.

It was strangely delicious.)

The hospital discharged her the day after she woke up and three days after that, Orochimaru's memories begins to return. It's a disconcerting feeling, and she—he—they find it hard to reconcile the two different lives that they've lived.

There is no denying that AyanOrochimaru is one soul. She is him. He is her. They feel it in their very core, and Ayano thinks that maybe that head injury Orochimaru had gotten knocked over a part of hishertheir soul that remembered, making them remember when Orochimaru shouldn't have known about the life he as Ayano had led.

He was her. She was him.

But there was also no denying that they were two wholly different people with different experiences culminating their respective life's personalities and beliefs.

Orochimaru was strong and intelligent. Ruthless and dangerous. A genius, they say. And he was respected by his peers but was also feared by those same people. And he was all alone. His was a life of solitude with nothing but his research to accompany him.

Ayano in turn, was an old woman who, aside from manhandling her tenant (her son in all the ways that mattered), had no other fighting capabilities to offer. She knew no secret techniques. No knowledge that were world revolutionary.

But she was observant and emphatic. Wise and kind. Rough and caustic, yes, but she was loving and in turn, was loved. She was respected. And she lived a life full of laughter and happiness even in times of grief.

Even when her husband had passed on, leaving her too soon, Ayano wasn't alone, in the end. She'd forged a new family of her own by simply opening her doors and home to people she couldn't be sure she could trust.

Ayano wasn't alone. Orochimaru couldn't help the feeling of jealousy that it brings up.

All those researches. All those knowledges. And none could fill the hole in his heart. He craved and he hungered. And all along, the answer was here.

Love, family, home.

He'd forgotten how it felt. The vestiges of those feelings locked away in a corner of his heart because all it brought him was pain.

But here, feeling what Ayano felt, Orochimaru wanted.

"Orochimaru-san! I didn't know you owned this bar. I heard you retired from the shinobi corps?"

"Ah, yes, my injury will only make me a liability on the field."

"Really?" Sharp eyes watch the fluid motion of his hands pouring alcohol.

A noncommittal hum.

. . .

"What made you open a snack bar, though? I didn't think you were one for it."

A knowing smile.

"The old woman in me insisted."

There are times when Ayano sees echoes of her first life.

A head of white hair would inevitably remind her of either that problematic tenant of hers or that equally problematic old friend of hers.

The Akimichi clan as a whole just reminded her of the monstrous appetite of that little girl Gintoki took in years past—already a young woman then, travelling space and hunting aliens, by the time she'd left.

She'd see polite young men with glasses and be reminded of Gintoki's apprentice, steadfast and brave. Running the Odd Jobs and continuing it in the stead of the man who created it.

She sees cats and think of Catherine. With a wry smile, she thinks of the cat masked ninja hiding in the rafters. She wonders what Catherine would've thought of that.

Machines in general reminds her of Tama and Gengai. Once, she'd seen a green rice cooker. She went home that day carrying a spare rice cooker that she didn't really need.

Every little thing that's remotely related to the people she knew—the people she loved, reminded her of them.

She wonders if they're okay.

She wonders if she'd ever get to see them again.

(She prays she will)

(Years later, when she's once again fifty, a silver haired boy comes in through the shop's doors, dragging behind him a reluctant looking dark-haired boy whose hair shines a vaguely familiar purple in the right light.

"Hey old hag! Got any dumplings for me?")

END NOTES:

Was that GinTaka at the end? You bet it was!