Author's Note: This deviates slightly from "Failure of a Necromancer," mainly because in that fic I had Orochimaru's parents die when their apartment fell on them, and here the building is still around and I had his parents killed a different way. I don't think it contradicts my other young-sannin fics though. I'm not finished with this; while it was originally intended to be a one-shot, I don't think a 12,000 story works well all posted at once, so here is the first third.
He was seven when he first met his teammates. Orochimaru had known, intellectually, that you had to have a team to enter the Chuunin Exams, but he had graduated a year ago from the academy after only six months of instruction and had hoped they would make another exception. People, as a rule, bothered him, and teammate all too easily translated in comrade, and a comrade was someone eulogized about at funerals with downcast eyes and a general aura of guilt and depression. Orochimaru was seven years old, but he had accomplished his first assassination a month ago and hadn't found the experience very stimulating. Death in general wasn't very stimulating.
In fact, the whole business had been bloody and disgusting and not nearly as graceful as Sarutobi-sensei had made it look when he had dispatched one of his own would-be assassins in front of Orochimaru's eyes, just a few days after he had taken him on as a student. Orochimaru, at seven, didn't know what he wanted to be, really, but one thing he knew he didn't want was to become an ANBU. If he was going to kill people, he didn't want to do it in the dark, from the back, and not be able to talk about it afterwards. Honor was something you had to have, because people had it, and beasts didn't, and you had to have something that distinguished yourself as a person, because else you weren't one. There was a reason the ANBU wore animal masks. Orochimaru was seven, but he understood symbolism.
He was seven, and he had been a genin for a year, and it was just now he was getting a genin cell. Which made some sense, he supposed, because shinobi work was dangerous, and you couldn't rush two children to their deaths just to speed the progression of one. Even when the one was the Sandaime's protégé.
In truth, Orochimaru had expected to wait longer. He had associated with his classmates as little as possible at the academy, after the first disastrous day when he had been mistaken for a girl and pushed in the mud, all in the first five minutes. None of his classmates had struck him as anything special, all loud, all foolish, all young, in a way he probably should have been, but wasn't. To graduate at six was miraculous. To graduate at seven was still the mark of a genius. Well, at least that meant he wouldn't get stuck with idiots.
He had been reading a scroll giving the basics of summoning contracts (still somewhat beyond him, but extremely interesting), when his teammates had arrived. Sarutobi-sensei had mentioned their names, briefly, but Orochimaru remembered no one from the academy and the information was useless without faces to match it with.
The first one he acknowledged was Tsunade. The granddaughter of the First Hokage, a prestigious bloodline, and she was already well into her medic training. Orochimaru's overall impression of healers had been one of quiet voices and reassuring smiles. The scowl stuck firmly to the girl's face was directly in contrast to this. She might become a hindrance, but Orochimaru doubted it. She was angry, yes (though Orochimaru had no idea why), but it was a controlled fury. Unlikely to rage out of hand. Unlikely to flare up for no reason. He would just have to avoid irritating her, was all.
He noticed Jiraiya second, and already he knew they were going to have problems. The boy was visibly irritated as Orochimaru's attention took at least thirty seconds to shift to him, showing a distinct lack of both patience and sense. But that wasn't the issue. Orochimaru recognized this one, the boy with bushy white hair and lines running down his face, remembered him from the first day of the academy. Jiraiya had pushed him in the mud. Orochimaru already hated him.
"Tsunade, right?"
She nodded. "And you're Orochimaru. I've heard of you."
"Same. You're the healer."
"I'm just starting on the basics. My grandmother is training me."
"You guys, stop ignoring me! I'm part of this genin cell too!" The fierce scowl adorning Jiraiya's face could only be described as comical.
Tsunade shot a look of pure contempt at the boisterous genin before returning her gaze to Orochimaru. "This is Jiraiya. He's an idiot."
"At least I'm not some flat-chested tomboy."
The violence that resulted made Orochimaru wince. He had thought Tsunade capable of restraining her anger, but he had been wrong before. Or maybe she was capable and just disinclined. Orochimaru didn't know which was worse.
It was as bad as he had feared. They were loud and foolish and even worse, childish. And he couldn't do anything to change the way they were, so he wasn't going to bother to try. Orochimaru returned to his scroll, and tried to ignore Tsunade's threats and pleadings of mercy from Jiraiya. He wished he could train alone.
----
Orochimaru was eleven and he hated everything. The Sand for killing his parents, his parents for dying, Sarutobi-sensei for smiling and pretending to understand, but Orochimaru knew it was all a fake, because if his teacher truly knew how he was feeling, he would have left Orochimaru to his research and his parents would be alive. Most of all, he hated himself, because Sarutobi-sensei might have interrupted, but it was his fault he had lost the scroll, the scroll that could bring his parents back to life, the scroll that could fill the gaping hole where his heart used to be.
He technically lived in the Hokage's tower now, but it wasn't home, and Sarutobi-sensei wasn't his father. His family was dead, and therefore he didn't have a home anymore, but when it got to be too much, Orochimaru could manage to lie to himself, just a little, and tell himself that nothing had changed. He would return to the place where his parents had lived, sit in the kitchen, and wait for his mother and father to return home. But Orochimaru was far too brutally honest with himself to believe in the illusion for long. Before, even when his parents had been at work, their presence could still be felt in every room. Now it was empty. Now it was dead.
It was during one such weak moment that Jiraiya found him, staring at a floral arrangement his mother had put together, the flowers months dead, but Orochimaru refused to throw it away. It was the last thing he had seen his mother touch before he had left, the last time he had seen her alive. The flowers' symbolism could have been argued, dried and fragile as they were, but to Orochimaru they represented the last memory he had of being truly content, and he didn't care about others' interpretations.
"Hey."
Orochimaru didn't bother to look up from his vigil. "What do you want, Jiraiya?"
The white-haired chuunin settled beside him. His tone was uncharacteristically subdued, his voice hesitant and quiet. "I want you to tell me about your parents."
Orochimaru stiffened. "Why?"
"Because I don't remember mine, and Tsunade doesn't understand."
Sometimes it was difficult to remember that Jiraiya had also been orphaned, long before Orochimaru. Jiraiya couldn't truly know what it felt like to lose the most important people in his life, as his parents had died long before he knew their faces, but he had the same void inside him that welled up and grew whenever he saw a mother playing with her child, or watched Tsunade hug her father goodbye before a mission. Jiraiya knew the bitterness, the envy. The emptiness.
But in the end, Jiraiya was Jiraiya, and Orochimaru was Orochimaru. Which meant that Orochimaru never said anything and Jiraiya wouldn't notice if he did. Orochimaru still hadn't bothered to shift his gaze to his teammate when he coldly replied, "If I was going to talk about my parents with someone, it certainly wouldn't be you."
Orochimaru knew that if he looked at Jiraiya just then, he probably would have flinched at the hurt shown so openly on the taller boy's face. So he didn't look. And when Jiraiya finally recovered his composure and snarled back some inane insult before stomping out the door, the whole exchange had managed to go entirely without eye contact.
Orochimaru was still sitting in his parent's apartment two hours later, wondering if it was possible to have regrets before he was even old enough to have opportunities.
----
Orochimaru was fifteen. He wondered what he had done to deserve the inconvenience.
They had just finished a mission, they of course being Tsunade, Jiraiya and himself. In truth, Orochimaru couldn't imagine 'they' being anyone else. Maybe Sarutobi-sensei was part of the 'they' on occasion, but it had been the three of them for so long that the addition of anyone else felt like a violation of something sacred. Though they had never formally gone through the usual childish ceremony, they were all bound together by blood, having spilt each others' and been immersed in each others' life force far too often for them not to be a part of each other on some intrinsic level that transcended mere camaraderie.
Tsunade was trying desperately to get the blood out of her hair before it dried, a difficult task when one had only a bar of soap and a river stemming from a recently frozen glacier to work with. The whole process was complicated by Jiraiya's refusal to act in the manner befitting a full-fledged Konoha shinobi, as he insisted on pushing Tsunade bodily into the river the moment she bent over to immerse her head. Orochimaru could only roll his eyes at the predictable conclusion of his teammate's foolishness.
((And he wonders why he hasn't made jounin yet. Idiot.))
Both of his teammates were acting hopelessly immature, but even so, he couldn't help but smirk a little when Tsunade hauled herself ashore and slugged Jiraiya hard enough in the jaw to knock him off his feet and force him into a rather impressive dive headfirst into the middle of the river, only for the pale-haired chuunin to rise spluttering a few moments later.
"D-damn it Tsunade, this water's f-freezing!"
"You shoved me in first, you dunce."
The river was well over a day's travel from Konohagakure, and no one was happy at the prospect of spending yet another day in the woods. The whole situation was made worse by their lack of both towels and the opportunity to light a decent fire, as they were still technically in enemy territory and not even Jiraiya was stupid enough to want to attract attention when everyone was still tired. As a result, both Tsunade and Jiraiya woke up the next day with head colds. The temptation to say "I told you so," was almost irresistible. Almost. But Orochimaru, unlike Jiraiya, had something of the gift of forethought, and it was all too easy to visualize an all too irate Tsunade giving him a broken jaw that would put Jiraiya's to shame. In the end, he decided to keep that particular bit of sarcasm to himself, though he couldn't resist a smirk when Jiraiya ran out of tissues and had to resort to using his sleeve.
Their arrival back in Konoha garnered almost zero attention. Jiraiya (the idiot) almost had a conniption fit when the only person to meet them at the gates was one of Sarutobi-sensei's chuunin assistants until Tsunade reminded him that their mission had been a secret, dimwit. What Orochimaru found odd about the entire business was that their teacher had bothered to send anyone to bring them back to the Hokage's tower at all. Their assignment had been important, but not that important.
He soon found out why. Watching Sarutobi-sensei as Tsunade gave a report of how their mission had gone (powerful but stupid security, killed the target by slitting his throat and left a torn piece of the head concubine's favorite kimono by the body to keep away the suspicion of those who might suspect shinobi, Jiraiya had tripped on a cat and almost ruined everything with the rather large thud that resulted when he hit the wall), Orochimaru couldn't help but notice that though the Sandaime nodded in all the right places, his attention was elsewhere. When he glanced at Jiraiya for the eleventh time in as many minutes, Orochimaru finally called him on it. "Sarutobi-sensei, you seem troubled. Is something wrong?"
Tsunade shot a sharp look in her dark-haired comrade's direction, a look Orochimaru met evenly. It was easy enough to tell what Tsunade was thinking; Orochimaru never asked about someone's well-being unless they had internal damage or were missing a few limbs. Unless of course, Orochimaru had an ulterior motive. Which he did. He was sick of watching their teacher twitch like he had eaten one too many soldier pills and wanted to know what the hell was going on that was bad enough to bother their nigh-unbotherable sensei, because it was obviously something that would worth knowing about.
When the Third Hokage finally spoke, his voice was flat, but Orochimaru could tell when someone actually didn't feel anything or when they were just trying to stay detached, and it was definitely the latter. Someone who truly didn't care wouldn't have the slightest tremor in his hands that made the pen in his grasp waver in small asymmetrical circles, or have that slight pause before any words came out of his mouth. "Kyoshi is dead."
Briefly, the stats of the shinobi in question ran through Orochimaru's head. Jounin, twenty-three, five foot eleven, about one-hundred seventy pounds, white hair, dark green eyes, master of an obscure form of taijutsu mostly involving kicks and throws, terrible at genjutsu. Also Jiraiya's older brother.
Orochimaru watched with some disinterest as Tsunade's eyes widened and Jiraiya stiffened so abruptly that it was almost amusing. Almost. Unfortunately this time around Orochimaru didn't have a bouquet of dead flowers to distract him, and it was all too easy to see the shock in Jiraiya's eyes turn quickly to disbelief, and finally into something Orochimaru could only describe as a deep, soul-wrenching grief. The whole process took less than thirty seconds, which was about one hour shorter than the human norm, but for all his occasional stupidity, Jiraiya was a shinobi, and if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was accept death. However, this didn't mean he accepted it gracefully.
This was made all too apparent when the soul-wrenching grief was quickly shoved aside (but not forgotten. Never that) to make way for an equally soul-consuming fury. Jiraiya's hands convulsed in an obvious effort to avoid reaching for a kunai, and in the end he settled for walking over to Sarutobi-sensei's desk and slamming a fist through the center. Jiraiya was not Tsunade and lacked her strength, but he still possessed it in greater-than-normal abundance, and the desk quite cleanly cracked right down the middle, scattering paperwork everywhere as it collapsed. Standing over the remains of what had been his teacher's most prized (and durable) piece of furniture, the white-haired teen opened his mouth, but he was still far too angry to even attempt to articulate how he felt, so after glaring bloody murder at the Sandaime for several seconds, Jiraiya stalked out of the room, breaking one of the double doors off its hinges as he made his exit.
It was only a moment or two after Jiraiya was out of hearing range that Tsunade turned her own (not inconsiderable) wrath against their teacher. With a rather impressive glare that Orochimaru couldn't help but admire, the blonde medic-nin hissed, "The mission is always the most important thing, isn't it. You had to have our fucking report before you would tell Jiraiya that his only remaining relative had died. What kind of person are you?" When Sarutobi-sensei opened his mouth to reply, Tsunade shook her head violently. "No, don't answer that. I don't want to know." And it was on that note that the daughter of the First Hokage turned on her heel and followed Jiraiya out the doorway.
And finally, all that were left was the Third Hokage, his prized protégé, and a broken desk. Orochimaru waited for the last vestiges of Tsunade's anger to fade from the room before addressing his teacher. Unlike his comrades, the dark-haired jounin's voice was perfectly even. "Was Kyoshi successful in his mission then?"
Sarutobi-sensei gave a start at the sound of Orochimaru's voice, too focused on his own failings and miscalculations to notice that not all his students had stormed out of his office in their absolute disgust of him. "Hm? Oh, yes, he was." The Sandaime didn't sound as pleased about this as he should have been.
"If the Cloud's position has been confirmed, than the death of Jiraiya's brother isn't meaningless. We will win our next encounter with the Kumo-nin. Take comfort in that, if you can, Sarutobi-sensei." It was then that Orochimaru left as well, but for him it was not out of spite. There was just simply nothing else to say.
----
Orochimaru was still fifteen and he was beginning to see why it wasn't always so wonderful to have a girl as his best friend. Tsunade wasn't bossy, exactly, but when she thought she was right about something she could be incredibly persistent about getting her teammates to agree with her.
"You should talk to him."
Orochimaru was hard put to restrain a sigh as he looked up from his perusal of a rather frail old scroll (one from Kirogakure that detailed the original Hiding in the Mist technique) to meet the gaze of his female comrade. Seeing the determined look in her eyes, Orochimaru considered that it would probably be a good idea to expand his list of usual haunts in the near future, if only to make it more difficult for Tsunade to find him. Though how she had managed to weasel a key out of Sarutobi-sensei to the Hokage's private library was still a mystery that eluded him, since it had taken Orochimaru over five years plus the death of his parents for their teacher to relent enough to give his most talented student access to the most sacred store of information in the entirety of Konohagakure.
(('Just this once' my ass.))
Despite the smallest trace of bitterness regarding Tsunade's seemingly easy admission into what Orochimaru considered his private domain, he was careful to keep his voice neutral. "Why?"
"Because you're both guys, and it would be easier for him to open up to you instead of me."
The stare Orochimaru gave the medic-nin was one of complete and utter apathy. "Do you have me confused for someone who cares?"
Tsunade wasn't impressed. "Jiraiya needs to talk to someone, or else this is going to eat at him for years. You're a terrible option, but sad to say, you're the only option, since he and Sarutobi-sensei currently aren't on speaking terms. And you are going to let him vent on you."
"Give me a reason."
"Because if your positions were switched, Jiraiya would do the same."
Orochimaru flinched; Tsunade's comment hit a little too close to the mark. Tsunade noticed, but she had never been the gentle sort. One thing being the First Hokage's granddaughter had taught her was when to press the advantage. "Besides, you didn't talk to anyone after your parents died and you're even more neurotic than you used to be."
"Tsunade."
"And you're actually more anti-social than you were five years ago, which at the time I quite frankly thought impossible… yes? What is it?"
"I'll talk to him, if you promise to leave this room and never come back."
Tsunade grinned and tossed him a key. "Done. I have all the good books back home anyway." She smirked at Orochimaru's incredulous look. "My grandfather was the First Hokage, remember? He left me all the interesting scrolls in his will when he died. All that's left here is crap."
"…I want to see them."
Tsunade rolled her eyes. "God, you are such a bookworm… but fine. Just talk to Jiraiya. Today, if you can find him. I'm starting to get sick of his brooding and it's going to affect his effectiveness on missions if this goes on too long."
Girl or no, if there was one characteristic that defined Tsunade, it was pragmatic.
----
"Hey."
Jiraiya didn't bother looking away from the river to meet his teammate's eyes. "What do you want, Orochimaru?"
Either Jiraiya was deliberately mocking him or there were some reactions that were just ingrained into human nature, because after only two sentences this situation was already starting to give Orochimaru a severe sense of déjà vu. He almost gave into the temptation to reply, "I want you to tell me about your brother," just to see if Jiraiya reacted appropriately, but held back. Mainly because it wasn't something he would say, and then Jiraiya would probably catch on and think Orochimaru was mocking him. Or something. Orochimaru was never really sure when it came to people.
((And Tsunade wonders why I'm introverted.))
"I don't want anything. Tsunade asked me to talk to you."
Jiraiya snorted. "I'd rather converse with a dead toad than you."
Orochimaru hadn't even followed the exact script and still the scene was going the same way. It looked like he would have to change tactics. It didn't take long for the dark-haired jounin to come up with a plan. He was called a genius for a reason, after all. After letting his bushy-haired teammate grin at his own wit for a tactful amount of time (about two seconds), Orochimaru closed his eyes and let out the smirk that had been brewing beneath the surface ever since Jiraiya had pushed Tsunade in the river almost a week before. "I suppose it was about time you started seeking out company that thinks on the same level as you."
Not the most subtle way of getting someone's attention, but certainly the easiest, as was made evident by the sound of the tall chuunin shoving himself to his feet and stalking over to Orochimaru's position. Orochimaru opened his eyes to find Jiraiya looming over him, looking somewhat murderous. "What was that?"
"I said you think on the same level as a dead toad."
Jiraiya's eyes narrowed, but just as quickly went slack as the white-haired shinobi just… lost interest. "Orochimaru, I don't really want to fight with you right now."
"Why?"
A fist clenched. "My brother just died! He was the only family I had left and I wasn't even there. I didn't even have a chance to save him. Do you have any idea how that feels?"
Something dark and cold began to run up Orochimaru's spine. He tried to ignore it, but even with all his shinobi training, when the cold began to spread through Orochimaru's skull, he couldn't restrain the shudder. "Yes."
Orochimaru's skin was unusually pale, but all that did was make it easier to tell when all the blood ran out of his face. Jiraiya realized his misstep just in time to regret it. "Orochimaru, I didn't mean-"
"At least your brother died for something." Because his parents had died for nothing, and at the darkest times of night, that ate at Orochimaru like the plague. Orochimaru hadn't known until that moment that it was possible to be jealous of the way someone died, but he couldn't help but wish that his parents had been granted the same honorable death as Jiraiya's brother. While Kyoshi's name would be put on the memorial stone with all the other warriors who had fallen in the service of Konoha, the names of Orochimaru's parents had already been forgotten. The dead may be immortalized, but only if they were remembered. In every sense of the word, Orochimaru's parents were dead to everyone but himself, while Kyoshi would last as long as the earth itself.
But while Orochimaru's wounds ran deep and bitter, Jiraiya's were still all too fresh, and the darker-haired shinobi really didn't have the market on pain. At his teammate's words, Jiraiya laughed, a harsh, broken sound that ran long enough to border hysterical. Jiraiya was still chuckling and wiping tears from his eyes when he finally deigned to answer. "That might very well be, Orochimaru. But you know what? I'd have preferred it if he hadn't died at all. Because I don't really give a shit if some brats a hundred years down the line read his name on that shitty rock. I don't care if he died for something. To die for something is stupid. I'm never going to die for something."
"If you aren't going to die for something, then you'd better just live for yourself."
Jiraiya blinked, jarred momentarily out of his dark mood by Orochimaru's cryptic words. "What?"
But Orochimaru wasn't looking at him at all. Just something in the distance that Jiraiya couldn't see. "If everyone lived for themselves, and if everyone was strong enough, no one would ever die."
Jiraiya laughed again, but this time the sound was more nervous, uncertain. "I just said I wasn't going to die for something. That doesn't mean I'm never going to die at all. I mean, Tsunade isn't something. Sarutobi-sensei isn't something, even if he is a bastard sometimes. You might be something, but even you act human on occasion so I guess it might be okay to die for you-"
"Shut up. You weren't listening. If we all live for ourselves, no one will have to die." Orochimaru finally wrenched his gaze away from nothingness and met Jiraiya's eyes. "The memorial stone might be better than being forgotten, but it would be better to be truly immortal. And then none of us would have to debate the merits of dying for a purpose."
"No one lives forever, Orochimaru. And if I'm going to die, I'd like to do it for a reason. So someone I care about will remember me for my death."
"Stop acting so childish. Only the young want to die young."
"If that's so, you must be older than Sarutobi-sensei, because you're sure acting like a geezer," Jiraiya snapped. He hated it when Orochimaru went into lecture mode.
It was Orochimaru's turn to laugh, and if Jiraiya's had been bitter, Orochimaru's was just dead. "I doubt I'll live that long. With that attitude, you'll get us killed years before I get even close."
"Fine. I'll watch out for me and you'll watch out for you and Tsunade will patch both of us up when that doesn't work and we'll all live together forever and everyone will call Konoha the village of the old senile people. You'll be old, Tsunade will be senile and I'll be the people. Happy now?"
Only after the conversation had died and Orochimaru had walked off did the dark-haired jounin remember his original purpose for seeking out his teammate. In the end, he decided it wasn't worth going back. The discussion had served its intent well enough.