A/N: Written for the /r/NarutoFanfiction writing prompt challenge #7 (you can see the other entries at redd dot it slash 4tu5cx). "Somebody sees dead people."
Warning: unpleasant descriptions of injury and death. This chapter is why I've marked the collection 'M'
The village of the leaf was nestled in the lee of a cliff, surrounded on the other three sides by pristine forest. The few roads that wound their way under the leafy boughs were the exception to the forest's all-encompassing embrace that proved the rule. The buildings were piled high, reaching upwards instead of sprawling out. Red tile roofs were the main colour visible from above. The other splash of colour in the village was a dark purple, looking like a bruise or stain – a rectangle of decay at the heart of a vibrant creature. And in that wound stood six figures, three facing three.
Hiruzen faced his wayward student, while his clones pinned his two predecessors in place. He shuddered as the Death God's had reached through him and grabbed at Orochimaru. His eyes swam for a moment, and then he could see more clearly than he ever had before.
Ghosts! All around him, walking, floating, flying, dying. The shade of the ANBU who'd tried to enter the barrier was the clearest. Over and over, his last moments replayed while he screamed in fear and pain. Jump, hit the barrier, burn, die. Elsewhere there were fainter spectres; the Sandaime recognized one of them as an infiltrator who'd been discovered and made her last stand nearby. The woman's intestines were spilling out of her stomach in endless coils, and she was trying to stuff them back in while stumbling towards the next roof, only to blink back to where she'd been wounded every few seconds. The two weeks since her death had made her outline faded, like clothes that had been washed too often.
There were also some ghosts who were older still. Hazy outlines and not much more, they drew the eye when they moved but might just as well have been invisible when they were still. A man clawing at his eyes after a chemical attack. A child impaled on a spear. An old woman riddled with shuriken, trying to draw one last desperate breath.
In the half a second it had taken the Hokage to see all this, he'd seized Orochimaru's bare soul with his (borrowed) hand. The icy grip of death was close around him, but he could still feel the strange sensation of cold steel sliding through his torso. He knew, though, with a bone-deep surety, that he wouldn't leave his own shade behind. Where he was going, no-one could see.
"I'm going to do what I should have done all those years ago," Hiruzen Sarutobi forced out past the blood flooding his insides. It was spilling out of his mouth and down his front. Orochimaru's eyes were wild, and looking not at him, and not at the Death God, but at...
Was he watching the ghosts?
"You fool! We'll both die," his erstwhile student hissed. Idly, Hiruzen wondered if the man's snake experiments had affected his vocal chords, or if the speech patterns were intentional.
"That, is the, plan." Talking was becoming harder. The strength was leaving him, but there was one task left for him on this windy rooftop, with birds above him and the sounds of death below. "Do you, regret?"
"Madman... look at ghosts. I want to live. Any price."
Hiruzen chuckled. "Then, flee, not fight." I lack the strength to seal him. But...
"I hereby pass punishment. You shall be denied your arms for the rest of your unnatural life," the Third Hokage of Konohagakure said in a voice that, for the last time, sounded out strong and clear. With the downward stroke of the Death God's knife, the decision was made and could not be undone. The dead body, now no more than meat and bones, fell to the ground beside the traitor Sannin's furious form. His arms were decaying before his eyes, flesh rotting and melting away and bones crumbling. The first bloom of pain from the cut would stay with this body for the rest of its life, and the ghosts and ghouls of the dead would accompany his spirit for as long as it remained on this plane. His teacher had managed to pass down one last punishment, one last curse, before slipping away.
