Softly Say Goodnight

-

AN: Chapter Two, in which Chevira has fun with parallels.

Ahem. Ergo! Thanks for reading, everyone, I hope you enjoy

(Note to Kilerkki, you were right, it wasn't supposed to be Manda. It's another summons entirely, and is supposed to be Manda's, er 'mate'. Bwahah?)

-

Jiraiya spends two weeks in the hospital, and short of getting an order from the Hokage, nothing could have held him there any longer than that. Towards the end, several burly nurses had had to forcibly keep him in his room, though he was seldom in bed. He spent most of his time doing pushups or crunches or turning room four-o-eight into a miniature gymnasium. About the same time he developed a technique that managed to turn the walls and sheets pink, everyone on the general staff was glad to see him go, nurses and launderers alike. And it was good riddance to bad, ill-mannered rubbish.

Orochimaru stays a month, and never once tries to leave. They hadn't admitted him because he had suffered any injuries -the few that he had sustained were well-treated by Tsunade and healing fast. Instead, although no one said it allowed, they were worried about his mental state. Around the time he punched Tsunade for suggesting to him that he should get some rest, they'd decided that he was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome.

It's not surprising, one of the nurses had whispered nearby when they'd thought he was asleep. He's from that family, after all.

Orochimaru had kept his eyes closed and pretended he hadn't heard them, but his hands fisted in his sheets under his blanket and he bit his cheek hard enough to taste the coppery tang of blood.

So now he's lying on his bed, and he's looking out the window or at the lone daffodil in a vase beside his bedside. Tsunade's peace-offering. Mostly because after he'd hit her, she beat him into the ground. She didn't say she was sorry, because she didn't like the taste of apologies on her tongue, but she'd snuck a box of his favorite sweets past the reception desk, and brought the flower. She'd made sure she'd done it while he was asleep, but it couldn't have been anyone else.

He doesn't know if he's forgiven her for it or not. He probably won't know for a while, because Orochimaru likes taking time to think things over, dissecting them from every little angle. When he was younger, he assumed he had all the time in the world.

Now…now he knows better.

"Hey, hey, hey, I don't care if you want to let me in or not. Either get out of my way or let me see down your blou - OW, HEY!" the voice drifts in from down the hall, and elicits something an almost-smile from Orochimaru. One would think that Jiraiya had suffered enough for his illicit ways that he would have learned better by now. The wise man knows nothing, or so says the old proverbs. Orochimaru doubts Jiraiya is or will ever be wise.

"Orochimaru-sama is resting, and visiting hours are over, please, return to the reception room!" that comes from right outside his door.

Orochimaru pushes himself up into a sitting position, because it wouldn't do for Jiraiya to catch him vulnerable, and he pushes his hair behind one ear as the other boy shoves the door open, and a harried nurse aside. She's trying to drag him back into the hall, but Orochimaru can tell by Jiraiya's aura that he's got enough chakra molded in his legs to withstand whatever strength she alone can muster. Jiraiya has been afflicted with a mysterious handprint on his left cheek, but that aside, he looks none the worse for wear.

"Heya, buddy!" he calls cheerfully, and he dumps a pile of mismatched flowers in Orochimaru's lap. "Miss me?" Orochimaru notes with amusement that half of them are ones to which he is allergic, and he knows that Jiraiya is well aware of that. Gingerly, he sets the bouquet aside after selecting a single white flower with some silly flowery name. In his mind, he recalls that the sap of the stem can treat poison.

"Not really." He plucks at it and shreds it methodically until the little white petals spiral down into his lap. The nurse makes an aborted effort to sweep them off and into the trash, but she changes her mind at Orochimaru's half-glare in her direction, and returns to stand by the door.

Jiraiya mock-frowns at him, and then ruffles his hair, messing it irreparably. "Ah, well. Can't have the world, I guess." He pulls up a chair, spins it around and sits down, arms draped over the rigid back. The nurse wrings her hands and Orochimaru merely shrugs at her and waves her away. Relieved of her duties, she scampers off, possibly for backup.

Jiraiya, now that the nurse is gone, leans closer and gets serious for the first time since that night on the battlefield. "Orochimaru, these quacks are telling me you're crazy." Ah, yes, and isn't he one for pleasantries?

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow. "And what do you believe?"

"I think they're full of shit, myself," he stretches out his long legs and arms like a particularly laconic dog on a lazy day, and he yawns. "You've always been a little weird, though, no denying that."

"Hm."

"But, eh, seriously. I think it's about time we got you out of here, Tsunade and I. Hospitals could drive anyone crazy, man. I almost went nuts, and I was in here for half the time you've been."

"Sarutobi-sensei came to see me," Orochimaru interrupts, putting a hand up to stop Jiraiya's random psychobabble.

"Eh?"

Orochimaru licks his lips. "My snakes…" he murmurs. "He told me not to summon them any more."

Always slow on the uptake, Jiraiya merely blinks. "What snakes?"

With a sigh, Orochimaru forms the hand seals, bites his thumb and sets his hand atop his raised knee. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu," he murmurs softly. The snake, his little viper, appears in a puff of sulfuric smoke, and Orochimaru gestures at it vaguely. It takes the opportunity to slither up his finger and wrap around his wrist.

Jiraiya stares. "Man. That is awesome. Hey, teach me how to do that, will you? C'mon, Orochimaru!"

"You can't," the other boy returns primly. "You have to be granted a contract first. They wouldn't accept you."

Jiraiya pouts, and then seemingly shrugs it off. Orochimaru knows he'll ask Sarutobi-sensei later, and that was why he'd done it in the first place. There's no fun playing the game when the numbers are uneven.

"Anyways," Jiraiya continues as if the summoning had never happened. The snake still visible at Orochimaru's wrist is a reminder to the contrary. "Tsunade says you're welcome at her place, but I think you'd be better off at mine. Her mom's even more of a bitch than she is, I swear."

Orochimaru smiles, just a little, and just for Jiraiya. "Very well."

"But…you're okay, right?"

Orochimaru's eyes, the color of amber and serpentine unto themselves, drift absently to the other side of the room. He knows what Jiraiya's asking about. The white-haired boy isn't afraid of him and never will be, but he is perhaps…worried. Yes, an apt term. Concerned, although Orochimaru isn't sure why. They've never gotten along particularly well, they've never been close. They've never shared secrets under a canopy of stars, and isn't that what builds a friendship?

Orochimaru's looking out the window when he grabs Jiraiya by the throat. The boy makes a startled noise, almost a squawk, and he immediately fights off Orochimaru's grip. "What the hell was that!" he demands angrily.

Orochimaru glances back at him, coyly, head tilted to one side. "You know, Jiraiya. You should have died."

Jiraiya rubs at his throat. "…the fuck?" he mutters, almost to himself, but his eyes are locked with Orochimaru's. He pales, a little, at that gaze, and moves farther away out of instinct. He's trapped, and he knows it. He's prey, little more than a single morsel, not enough to substitute for a meal, but tasty enough regardless. He can't run, because running would attract the beast and then he knows he's dead.

And then Jiraiya shakes himself like a wolf, eyes narrowing. "Asshole," he growls. "Told you not to use your freaky eyes on me or I'll rip 'em out with my bare hands."

"I should have let you die," Orochimaru continues. "You're alive because of me."

"Actually, it's because of Tsunade, in case you missed it, jerk."

Orochimaru merely shrugs slowly, and he hates the feel of the scratchy hospital gown against his bare back and fights down an immediate longing for his own clothes, so he can feel safe in his own skin once again. "Tsunade was almost out of chakra. I loaned her some of mine."

Jiraiya opens and closes his mouth several times like a fish out of water, and then he sits back suspiciously and his jaw juts to one side like it can sometimes when he's being particularly stubborn. One hand is clasped to his knee and his elbow is askew in the same general direction as his jaw. It's all very asymmetrical. "…That's what this is about? You're being an ass because you had to help a friend in trouble? Fuckin' jackass."

"You're not my friend," Orochimaru tells him firmly.

"Whatever. Be at my house at eight, or you'll miss supper."

"Hm."

Supper, in Jiraiya's terms, consists of whatever can be scrounged from his cupboards. Orochimaru contents himself with a bread-and-butter sandwich, while Jiraiya scarfs down a plate of questionable-looking sushi he'd rescued from somewhere in his refrigerator.

Jiraiya's house is small, but secure. Far enough away from Konoha that he won't be bothered by people, but still close enough to avoid being cut off completely. He's built it himself, rather than live in the old house of his clan, which he left to his younger brother, with his less-than-gracious blessings. It has one room, and a loft above it where he sleeps. There's a single window overlooking nothing in particular, but it's at the right angle to catch the sunrise, although Orochimaru's sure Jiraiya's never up that early. Jiraiya is very proud of his place, despite the omnipresent clutter. He collects things like a crow, shiny things or pretty things or little bits of lingerie, although Orochimaru isn't going to ask where he's found so much of the latter. He doesn't think he'd like the answer.

Jiraiya is currently in the loft, which extends only halfway across the house, and he's laying on his futon, head and arms dangling down into the main body of the living room/kitchenette, watching as Orochimaru makes a half-hearted attempt at cleaning up.

"Sorry about the mess," he says unapologetically. "We don't spend much time home, eh?"

Orochimaru gives up halfway through a load of dishes and retreats to another futon strategically placed smack dab in the center of nowhere, looks up at Jiraiya and purses his lips in disapproval.

Jiraiya reads his expression effortlessly, pushes himself off of his own futon and leaps down into the living room, landing with a flourish, arms held parallel to the floor. And then he stretches and sinks down to neatly cross-legged, one elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He essays a serious expression and glowers importantly at Orochimaru. Seconds tick by, and then minutes.

"Oy, the flat-chested one is gonna come over later. She said she'd bring food," he says idly, just to break the silence. His hair, spiked by his extended period of hanging upside down, is only just allowing gravity to flatten it back out. Orochimaru bites back a sarcastic comment about hair gel and about how baths are for other uses than spying on women.

Jiraiya fidgets. Looks down at his broad hands. At all his new little nicks and scars and scrapes. At the left thumbnail which has never grown back properly after it was torn out by an interrogator. Back to Orochimaru. Finally, he slams his hands down on the tatami mat in front of him and glares. "What do you want from me? You want me to thank you? Fine, whatever, thanks. If you're going to be this pissy about it, don't ever do it again, all right!"

Orochimaru doesn't look at him, although Jiraiya's posture and attitude are demanding him to do so.

"But if you're going to be like that," Jiraiya continues in a dark, trembling voice. Orochimaru knows it's shaking with rage and not with some weak, lesser emotion. With Jiraiya, either you can't turn him on or you can't turn him off, and now he's stuck in overdrive. "Just keep in mind that I'd save your sorry ass."

The dark-haired boy stiffens imperceptibly, and stands. His hands are fisted at his sides, and his jaw is clenched. Jiraiya stands as well, and he towers over his companion by a hand's span of inches. Jiraiya is broad and gangly whereas Orochimaru is small and sleek; the contrast is made sharper by Jiraiya's ruddy complexion and Orochimaru's pale skin.

There's a knock at the door just then, interrupting their vicious glaring match, and Tsunade barges in without waiting for approval. "Anybody naked?" she calls cheerfully, her arms full of groceries. She pauses as she senses the tension in the room, her healer's intuition not about to fail her just so she can stay blind to her comrade's plight, and then she kicks her smile up another few watts, trots over to Jiraiya and dumps her burden into his arms. "Put it away," she tells him. "Properly. If I find you've put a jug of milk in the cupboard again, I'm going to kick your lazy ass."

Jiraiya makes a face at her and retreats to do her bidding. Tsunade glances sheepishly at Orochimaru, and she rubs the back of her neck with one hand. "Ah…"

"Forget it," he tells her, although he doesn't want her to. If he could, he'd make her live with her guilt at hitting him for the rest of her life. He wants her to bleed for what she did. But he doesn't want to be the one to make it happen.

She smiles tentatively at him just as Jiraiya bounds back out of his kitchenette, sake cups in hand. Tsunade knows and uses a very effective henge to appear legal drinking age, and thus, this is how they spend most of their evenings. Jiraiya and Tsunade will get slobbering drunk and Orochimaru will be left to hold their hair out of their faces as they vomit up the remnants of whatever meal they'd eaten last. In Jiraiya's case, the sushi, it might not be such a bad idea.

Jiraiya avoids looking at him as he pours sake for all of them. They sit on the ragged little tatami mat in the center of his house, and Tsunade slams back the first cup, shuddering at the sour taste. "It never tastes any better, does it?" she asks wryly, as she holds out her hand for another. "Ah! Jiraiya! I bet I can drink twice as much as you and not get half as drunk!"

"You're on!"

They're children, Orochimaru decides, as he looks at each of their faces in turn. They're children playing at being adults. They drink because they think it's the only thing they can do. They drink because it's how adults spend their twilight hours. Tsunade's fourteen and she hasn't been a virgin in months. The same would be true of Jiraiya, if he were actually capable of seducing a woman. Or, Orochimaru supposes, a man.

The three of them are children, and they're playing dress-up with masks so finely wrought that only he can see the seams.

He sips at his first cup as Jiraiya goes onto his third. Tsunade's on her fifth, but she shows signs of slowing down at long last.

"I don't want to do this forever," she says quietly. Tsunade is always a deadly sober drunk, as if the alcohol makes her more serious. It's stripped away the first mask, the layer of a cheerful, buoyant and sometimes volatile healer.

Jiraiya squints at her, as if his eyes are having trouble focusing. "Eh?"

Orochimaru starts building a pyramid with their discarded cups.

"This," she repeats. "Fighting. Killing. I like helping people, but I'd rather not have people to help, because this…this is war, right? This is war and there's people dying and I can't…I can't do anything about everyone. Either I want to have the power to change the world, or I want it to stay the same. I don't know anymore. Gimme another." She gestures for the bottle but Orochimaru stills Jiraiya's generous hand.

Tsunade frowns at him. "Don't you interfere, Orochimaru. Jiraiya! 'Nuther one, if ya please."

"I'm not interfering," he says tightly, in controlled annoyance. Under normal circumstances, she'd be able to detect the menace in his voice but now her mind runs roughshod over it. "I'm making sure you're conscious tomorrow. We should have another new mission soon." He takes the bottle away from Jiraiya and sets it down in front of him, daring both his teammates to so much as grab for it. He's broken bones for less.

Jiraiya laughs like a hyena, like there's something particularly funny about what he's said or done, which earns him a glare as well. The tall boy sobers and slouches and sips at his cup, the hilarity stripped from the situation almost as suddenly as it was injected.

"I agree," he says to Tsunade. "Let's make a pact. At thirty, if…" he pauses, and Orochimaru fills in the blanks. If we're all still alive. "Nonono. At thirty, let's get out of this. I'll open a classy brothel, and you two can be attendants!" he announces, slamming his now-empty cup on the mat. Tsunade smacks him and sends him reeling backwards with a whimper. "What?" he asks indignantly. "You're a woman, Tsunade-chan, and Orochimaru…well, he's feminine enough, if you put him in a dress…and he does that funny thing with his tongue…" In evidence, Jiraiya flicks his tongue out and wags it up and down.

Tsunade giggles. Orochimaru merely sighs, and topples the pyramid with a finger.

Jiraiya swings his gaze around lazily and pins Orochimaru like a bug to a display card. "You!" he announces like he wasn't sure who he was talking to. "What do you think, 'bout all this?"

Orochimaru flexes his hands once, looking down at the veins and tendons standing stark against his skin. Years of training have tightened the sinews of his body, leaving him with a gaunt, almost emaciated look that makes his slenderness a grotesquerie instead of a grace.

"I don't know what I want," he says quietly, still staring at his hands. "Power. To change things. To do things. I don't want people to be able to order me around, and I don't want to have to do what they say. I want to do things my way, and damn the consequences! One day I'll have all that, and once I get it, I won't let it go." He'll hold it with his own two hands, and keep it close enough to kiss and his world will be stable and balanced forever.

But forever is only as long as a life. Forever is sometimes only until the next sunrise, or moonrise, or season. Forever is fleeting.

He clenches his hands into fists.

Jiraiya and Tsunade exchange glances that belie their drunkenness.

"I want you both to promise me something," Tsunade says suddenly, snapping the tension like a fine garroting wire, or a neck. Both are equally easy to a ninja. "All right? Promise?"

"Well, you gotta tell us what it is first, eh?" Jiraiya jokes as he elbows Orochimaru in the ribs. The shorter boy grimaces, because Jiraiya doesn't put a leash on his strength when he's had a few drinks, and he hits harder than he knows sometimes.

Tsunade beams, drains the dregs of her cup and sets the little vessel atop her head, bobbing about to keep it from falling off. "Promisssssse…" she says, drawing out the word intentionally to keep them steeped in anticipation, as if it could sweeten the flavor. "Promise you'll become the best shinobi you can be. I don't want to lose you guys, either of you. Even though you're stupid…" She glares at Jiraiya. "Or sneaky…" And now at Orochimaru. "You're my team. And we gotta look out for each other. So let's make a pact. To be the best." She holds out her hand and it hovers lightly over Orochimaru's toppled pyramid of sake cups.

Jiraiya, after a moment's hesitation, does the same, and both of them turn expectant faces to Orochimaru.

He sits, and he thinks. He's already made it his goal to become the best he can be. He doesn't need their stupid pact to force himself to achieve his goals. He doesn't need them. They're open and earnest and honest and he's already seen one of them come so close to death that, by rights, he shouldn't be here and breathing. Luck watches out for idiots for fools, and Jiraiya is both, most of the time, when he's not busy pretending he's an adult.

But they both look so hopeful, so young, so much like the children they've never been allowed to be, and so he extends his hand, allows it to hover a moment just beyond theirs, and he takes a breath.

Before he can do anything further, Sarutobi-sensei kicks the door open and bursts inside. "All of you," he pants unevenly, half-collapsing. Tsunade is on her feet immediately, and chakra flares in her hand, which she moves over her chest. Her transformation is a smack to the face, immediately all vestiges of her drunkenness fade, and she darts to Sarutobi and catches him before he falls.

"Sensei?" she yelps, as she takes stock of the blood staining his uniform, and of the kunai lodged into his back near his spine.

"I'll be fine," he grunts in irritation as he reaches around behind him and removes the dagger. "You three are needed, Konoha's under attack."

Orochimaru studies their sensei curiously, as if for the first time. He's never seen him as old, but rather as timeless, because no matter what has happened or what will happen, Sarutobi seems much the same as always. But Orochimaru hasn't failed to notice how that streak of grey near his temples wasn't always there.

It hits him like a load of bricks and if he were standing, he may have fallen down. Their sensei is getting old. Not terribly old, but older. He's a Hokage, and he's aging. He's not nearly as immortal as the stone face carved into the mountains tucked behind Konoha. He's not perfect, not infallible. He's human. A talented one, yes, but his mortality is a pulsing, living, breathing thing and it, unlike the shell it wears, will never stop or cease or need rest.

Orochimaru stands, dusts his clothes off with a careful hand, and he walks past Tsunade and Sarutobi-sensei and towards the battle. He ignores Jiraiya's shout of 'Wait up!' and Sarutobi-sensei's entreaty regarding his promise to keep from summoning his snakes. Tsunade says nothing at all.

Orochimaru is beyond caring. All he wants to do is fight. To fight until time stands still.

Sarutobi escorts them back to Konoha, and they hide a moment in the shadows beside a building that was once an eatery. And like the good little ninjas they are, and they watch and they wait. The enemy has sent a suicide squad, and it's not their first. Their goal is infiltration and as much damage as possible, but every shinobi is expendable. They know no vital information, they have no special techniques. They're talented, but only moderately so. The battle would be nothing, if there weren't so damned many of them.

One of the enemy shinobi ignites an explosive tag around a makeshift bomb of shuriken and lobbies it up and into an apartment building. A Konoha ninja arcs past and takes the hit instead, and his body slams backwards through the apartment's glass windows. There's screams of fear and pain from inside, and the glass streams down in rainbow kaleidoscopes, the shards catching light as they fall.

Sarutobi touches a hand to Orochimaru's shoulder and gestures him off in one direction, indicating that he should take Tsunade with him. Tactically, it's a good decision. Orochimaru will have the healer, because they are nowhere near Sarutobi-sensei's level, and Sarutobi will have the most incompetent, if any of them could be called that, member of the group so he can look out for him. If things go as planned, they'll all come out alive.

Orochimaru grabs Tsunade's wrist and runs in the opposite direction, down one of Konohagakure's alleyways. He skids to a halt just in time to avoid one of the unmarked enemy ninjas, and the both of them spring away simultaneously and in different directions. Tsunade scampers up a wall and to a balcony, and Orochimaru skids backwards along the pavement as the enemy kunoichi takes a swipe at him with some sort of flail.

It might have connected with him, had not Tsunade intervened. "Kagami no Jutsu!" she half-shouts, and a wall of liquid metal coalesces in front of him from nowhere and shatters with the force of the blow. Her mirror is a nifty trick, but useful only once. Orochimaru himself is unharmed, and he lunges at the startled kunoichi, who doesn't have time to counterattack. His technique, hidden snake hands, pins her to the wall and Orochimaru smiles at her. Smiles and licks the blade of his kunai and presses it to her neck. She struggles and snarls at him, but he's in control here, and she can't escape…

"Orochimaru!" Tsunade calls his name once, and that's enough. He flinches and dispatches the woman immediately, as swiftly as possible, the kunai cutting through her throat and into the base of her spine and her central nervous system. She twitches once and falls limp, and he retracts the snakes and shakes his head to clear it. Tsunade leaps down beside him, wraps an arm around him and leaps back up to her vantage point with him in tow.

"Are you all right?" she asks, noting that he's clutching the side of his head with stark-white fingers.

"Fine. Go!"

She nods once, tersely, because she knows that hesitation here will get them both dead, and then she springs away and races up the side of the half-deteriorated wall to the roof.

After another precious moment spent to gather his thoughts and collect his wits, Orochimaru leaps after her.

She's nowhere in sight when he arrives at the top, and he looks all around and then up, takes note of her position on top of a punctured water tower, spilling its life's blood into the chill autumn air. He joins her a moment later and together they survey the area.

They notice the academy at the same time. All that can be seen from that general direction is a great billowing cascade of smoke spiraling to the sky. "Nawaki-!" Tsunade shrieks, and immediately she lets her heart rule her head. Orochimaru grabs her by a handful of her long hair and she jerks at the end of her tether, twists just enough to glare at him. Her lips are pretty and pink and pressed into a firm line, and she fumbles a kunai out of her weapon canteen. "Don't make me," she growls as she palms the weapon and directs the point at him. Orochimaru merely looks at her.

"Think logically," he says calmly. "At the first sign of attack, the children would have been vacated elsewhere. You aren't needed there."

Tsunade's eyes are hard, and she tries to take another step. She drags Orochimaru with her, but he's not about to let go if he has to take her bloody scalp with him. Then, in one swift, fluid motion that he can't follow with his eyes, she severs the lifeline, and strands of her long blonde hair fan around him and to the ground. She darts off like a jackrabbit, desperate and determined and unthinking.

But, Orochimaru reasons, she's a big sister. Were their situations reversed, he could have done nothing less. So he tosses the ratty handful of hair to the ground and chases her.

Tsunade is already digging through the rubble when Orochimaru gets to her, heaving aside monstrous chunks of cement with next to no effort, at least that she shows. There are tears streaming down her face as she works and Orochimaru stands off to one side and merely watches her, until a well-timed segment of wall forces him to move out of the way or risk being squashed. When he moves, she notices him, and she whips around and stands there, hands clenched into fists.

"Help me!" she yells at him. "Stop being so fucking heartless and help for a change!"

She tips her head down until her ragged bangs shadow her face, but he can see tears dripping off her chin, and her shoulders are trembling. Of course, she's fourteen and she thinks her baby brother is somewhere under tones of rock and rubble, and because she's Tsunade, she's not going to be satisfied until she either finds him or until she's cleared every piece of rock out of the area.

Orochimaru steps closer, catches her up in his arms and holds her awkwardly for a moment. She stiffens against him and stands rigid, trying to hold back her sobs, and then she subsides. Maybe she's not as sober as her hastily-applied medical procedure would have the rest of the world believe.

"Stop," he tells her gently, or as gently as he can, and he holds her at arm's length long enough for her to smudge the tears off her face. "And think a moment. Standard procedure. You were at this academy a few years ago. In the event of an attack, what do they do?"

She sniffs, and rubs her nose on the inside of one wrist. "They take them to the monument."

"Right. Do you really think any of our teachers would let our enemy do this to our school while there were still children inside?" She closes her eyes, and he knows she's thinking of Yamada-sensei and of Uchiha-sensei and remembering how the two of them had sworn not to give up until they were dead. Uchiha-sensei had added, with a smirk and a wink, that he'd come back from the dead if he had to make sure he didn't go back on his word.

"What now?" she asks next, like he has all the answers. Her voice doesn't break, though, and Orochimaru takes that as a good enough sign that this too shall pass.

"Now we fight."

Criticism?