And that was the beginning of the beginning:
Once upon a time there were two clans that were the strongest shinobi clans that existed on all five continents. Nobody could stand against them. When wars broke out and one feudal lord employed the one clan, immediately the other party would hire the other clan because there was no chance to stand against either one of them without the help of the other. Thus, the two clans were constantly warring, every defeat resulting in a seething, cold hate for the other, every victory adding to the fuel of loathing and abhorrence. Every fight resulting in death, every death resulting in hate and hate only turning to more fight. It was into the time of the Age of the Warring Clans that two children were born who knew nothing but the fire of war and the coldness of hate but who learned to see beyond it. One by self-reflection, one by necessity, they realized that there was only one way to stop the eternal cycle of hate: they would have to cooperate. They shared the same dream. They were similar at heart so they stood up and rose against their own clans together and after pain and loss and bloodshed they gained power over their own. Then, they set off to fulfil their dream: Their dream of building a place in which both clans could be at peace. A place in which they could put aside their weapons and work for the good of everyone. Swords were laid aside and sickles and axes were used to clear a place for a settlement. Houses were built. Fields were cultivated. Soon a village began to thrive and because it was hidden from the world behind a thick curtain of forest they called it the Village Hidden Behind the Leaves. As years passed, the village grew. People from the surrounding communities joined the village and added their wealth, their knowledge and their hopes and dreams to it. Those were good times: times of peace and growth. One of the Founders married a foreign princess and protected the village by forging an alliance with a powerful clan. The other Founder worked from the shadows and protected the village from the dangers of the night. And children were born to those who had been children at the time the Upraising had found place, and they, in return, bore children, and the Fates seemed to smile on the village.
And they lived-
…
The little girl had half of her head bandaged by gauze pads and yet she stared at Orochimaru as he passed her in what passed as field hospital these days. She had yet-black hair, just like him. Maybe that was the reason he stopped.
"You're one of the Sannin."
Oh, how he hated the title. The three of them had barely seen seventeen summers and already they had gained a reputation. He wasn't sure whether it was because he was an Uchiha and Tsunade was a Senju and they were measured up against their family's heritage or because they just were who they were: the Sannin, the Great Three, heirs to Leaf's traditions. He preferred to believe the latter, also because Jiraiya would suddenly become all quiet and withdrawn when someone had the guts to compare them to their ancestors. Either way, the moment they had made it back from their mission to Whirlpool they had been called the Sannin, and Orochimaru hated the title with the same passion his two teammates hated it.
"Yes."
The little girl blinked. She seemed disoriented due to the fact that one of her eyes was covered.
"I want to be like you, one day."
Orochimaru laughed. He couldn't help himself. He wasn't good with children, especially not with children who had a hero's complex.
"I pray you won't be."
Surprisingly, the girl didn't start crying or ran off. Instead, she looked at him, half-knowing, half-innocent, and suddenly he couldn't stand her sight.
"What's your name, kid?"
She gazed up at him, unafraid. "Anko."
…
And that was the beginning of the end:
But wealth and happiness calls forth envy and fear. As the feudal lords of the five surrounding countries, who had been looking onto the prospering village with jealousy and mistrust, saw how former enemies were living side by side, they began to fear the combined clans' power. Whispers arose: What it the two clans thirsted for more? More land, more wealth, more power? What if they decided to unite against the feudal lord's power? The two clans always had been powerful but they had kept each other at bay. Now united, there was nothing that could stand in their way should they decide to reach out for the feudal lords' power and land. So the daimyos made a pact: they would lead an army against the two clans, an army made up of all the lords' men. Together, they would easily conquer the village and destroy it. Then, the threat the two clans had always posed would be eliminated once and for all. The lords vowed to kill every last shinobi and every man, woman and child that carried one of the two clan's bloodlines, for people with that much power couldn't be allowed to live. They marched off on a bright spring day, flying banners and armors and swords glinting in the sun, and many minor shinobi clans who wanted to see their old enemies dead marched with them. They came to the forest that surrounded the village, and, after negotiations, sent a delegation of men into the forest. They relayed the news to the two Heads of the Village, the Founders who were known as Fire and Shadow, and demanded complete surrender.
Upon listening to the feudal lords' demand, and understanding that every human being in the village was to walk freely as long as every member of the two clans and the clans that had joined them were to die, Fire and Shadow were quiet for a long, long time. When they offered their own lives in exchange for their peoples' lives, they were denied and mocked. When they offered the people of the village to leave them and flee, though, the people refused. The Founders had been good to them, had helped them settle and had worked side by side in the fields and woods with them. Nobody wanted to leave. So the Founders conveyed their decision to the lords, and the war began.
The treaty the feudal lords had forged later would be known as The Great Treason, and the war would enter the history books as The Dark Time. The name of the two clans was Senju and Uchiha.
…
They burned the dead by nightfall.
There was nothing romantic about a pyre, or even mysterious. It was the opposite: a bizarre unraveling of life, a bright, hot fire that was difficult to breathe in. The scent of burnt human flesh hung in the air, along with ashes and heat like the Uchiha's fire jutsu. There was no cease-fire and no mutual silent agreement. Just the desperate up-rearing of people who were weary of a fight they had not started and could not end, despairing anger and hate mixing with grief as dark as moonless nights. None of the people present were innocent, but none of them were guilty, either. The world did not care. The hot night mixed with the fire's heat and stench.
Somewhere in the darkness a person vomited, the sound of choking and retching echoing through the still darkness that was only broken by the sizzle and crackle of the fire.
Outside the ring of fire, winter gave way to spring but the scent was one of death, not life.
…
Happily ever after and…
…
Perhaps the first casualty was Senju, or Uzumaki, Mito. It was a loss both shattering and quiet that went by almost unnoticed.
The daughter of Whirlpool who had come to forge an alliance between the new shinobi village and the old, small village of Uzushio had been a mother to the entire village. The title Founders had stretched to encompass all three of them but when the people talked about her, especially, she had always and only been called Lady.
Nobody knew much about her except for what everyone knew.
She hailed from the Uzumaki clan, only daughter of the acting clan head. She had come to Hidden Leaf to marry Senju Hashirama. She had born the village a daughter and had died fighting the kyuubi. Her anger, they said, had illuminated the Valley of the End for four days straight, but in the end the monster The Tairo had invoked had been banned. Trapped by the Senju, fought by the Uchiha, sealed by the Uzumaki. The Founders. Three clans. One village.
Senju Mito had looked in death as she had in life: cool, collected and unreachable. She took every single one of her secrets to her grave.
…
The sun beat down viciously. Their only solace was, Jiraiya thought, that the enemy was suffering as much as they were. Probably even less, because they had mercenaries from Wind who were used to this kind of god-forsaken heat. The bridge across the greater brother of the Nakano was the only way to cross the river in spring and fall, when the winter glaciers high up in the mountains melted in the first spring sun. In summer, though, it was a calm river. The oppressing heat had tamed it even more.
In another time – another season – Hidden Leaf would have used the bridge to ambush the enemy.
This time there was no such possibility. The enemy was crossing Leaf's natural defensive line at multiple places at once. There was no way to stop them all and the fact that Tsunade, Jiraiya, Orochimaru and their little corps of shinobi ran into a small enemy troupe was entirely by chance. But then, it felt like pretty much every major fight in this war had happened by chance.
First, they picked the enemy out while they were crossing the river. They were helpless in the water, like sitting ducks. The hailstorm of kunai unleashed made many of the Five Lords' soldiers die immediately or injured them and drowned them. The ones that made it out of the river were immediately engaged. There had been no time to set up a proper genjutsu. Their hands and their weapons were all they had.
No. They had more. The Leaf shinobi were fighting for their homes. The enemy army was fighting for five feudal lords.
A Wind shinobi unleashed a storm of sand. It cut through skin and bone like tiny needles, leaving clean bones in its wake. The Earth shinobi tore open the ground, killing five Leaf nin when they were crushed in the rapidly closing ravine. Thunder shinobi and Water shinobi combined their attacks, water bombs exploding with an earth-shaking sound that seemed to suck all oxygen from the air. Two shinobi closest to them collapsed, bleeding from ears and noses. At the end, half of their troupe was dead and two-thirds of the surviving severely wounded, but they had won. There was no satisfaction, not even relief. Halfway back to the village runners overtook them with the newest estimations from the front lines: The enemy had managed to break through at eight positions. Again, the front line shifted, suddenly being closer to Leaf than ever before.
Tsunade stretched out her hands, touching Jiraiya with one and Orochimaru with the other. They gave her their own chakra readily. When Tsunade's reserves at least weren't completely empty any longer and Orochimaru's and Jiraiya's injuries looked like they already were two days old, they set off again.
…
There was a memory buried somewhere in his heart.
I'm sorry. –I am, too.
Hashirama couldn't remember what they had been talking about. Conversations with her had been tedious, on some days, and they had spent weeks without talking to each other. They were two people who had been thrown together by chance and had consoled themselves to whatever little they had in common. It wasn't as if he'd been unhappy. Uzumaki Mito had been an intelligent woman, a strong ally and a good wife and mother. In another life, he might have fallen in love with her.
Once he heard her weeping in the darkness of their shared bed but he had lain still and unmoving, pretending to be asleep. Mito was strong – she wouldn't want him to witness her weakness. But there had been a tiny voice in his mind that whispered that maybe she wanted him to console her. It did not matter, anyway: he had ignored it then, and it was too late for regrets.
Don't fool yourself, Hashirama. Regrets are the only thing you have left.
…
"Don't call me Hime," Tsunade snarled viciously.
Jiraiya lifted both his hands in a placating gesture. "What I wanted to say was…"
"I don't care." Her blue eyes were glaciers. "I said, Don't call me that."
Orochimaru's face didn't move a muscle. "The people gave you that title, not Jiraiya."
"If you call me like that one more time, I will see to it that you die slowly and in agonizing pain."
Tsunade was even scarier when she was calm instead of fiery, and wisely, both her team mates decided not to challenge her further.
…
"Old friend." Hashirama greeted Hiruzen when the younger man stepped through the door. It was a private joke, the name, seeing as Hiruzen was almost half Hashirama's age. "How are you?"
A futile question, both of them knew. The younger jounin collapsed on the armchair that stood facing the large desk.
"What are we doing, Hi-Sama?"
Sighing, Hashirama dropped down in the other chair. "Does anyone know what we're doing?"
"Probably not."
For a while, both men stared at nothing, their thoughts accumulating around them like clouds in the night.
"How are your former students?" Hashirama's question managed to make Hiruzen smile.
"Tsunade's alive, but you know that much. She's strong. And she has Orochimaru and Jiraiya."
"A Senju and an Uchiha, huh." Hashirama shook his head. "Talk about fate." Then, his gaze sharpened. "About Jiraiya…"
"No." Hiruzen lifted his hand in a forestalling gesture. "I won't listen to this any longer. Jiraiya is nothing like his parents were. He has proven his loyalty to Leaf over and over again. He is beyond every shadow of doubt."
"He's loyal to Tsunade, you mean," Hashirama corrected gently. "Only he himself can say where his loyalties lay when it comes to the village."
"I won't listen to you anymore." Hiruzen stood and turned to the door. "I told you when I started training them years ago, when he made chuunin and even when you promoted him to jounin. Jiraiya is a Leaf shinobi with every fiber of his heart. As a matter of fact I don't know why you of all would harbor such continuing reservations against anyone, much less against Jiraiya."
"I'm sorry, old friend," Hashirama said, but Hiruzen had already left the room.
…
Fire, Shadow and Heart.
…
Sometimes Orochimaru felt like laughing when he watched their lives unfold, especially when watching Tsunade.
He had long ago accepted the fact that she would never look at him. Why would she? He was an Uchiha, but that didn't make him special. In fact, he was just one of many. Orochimaru merely had had the luck – or misfortune, depending – to be of the same age as the granddaughter of one of the Founders – and therefore had attended Academy at the same time. They had been put on the same team. Tsunade was the loud-mouth, Jiraiya was the idiot and Orochimaru was the calm one, and all of them were geniuses in their own right but that didn't give anyone the right to call them Sannin. They did, nevertheless. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, it had been as unavoidable as his feelings for her had been. In the long run it did not matter, because she never once looked at him like he wanted her to.
There were disadvantages in sharing everything in the way they did.
Tsunade's first kiss was with a chuunin called Who-the-fuck-cared, around her fifteenth birthday. Her first boyfriend was Dan, Dan-whose-name-Orochimaru-remembered because Dan was responsible for a lot of their pain. Dan-whom-Tsunade-loved-like-he-was-the-only-one, Dan-who-was-stupid-and-intelligent-and-had-a-real-chance -becoming-something-one-day. Dan, the blond, tall guy who was nice to the point that even Orochimaru couldn't find a fault in him (except for his niceness, of course) and funny enough he could make Tsunade laugh (not a small task, she tended to punch whose ever jokes she could not understand) and who had just the sprinkle of perverseness that was necessary to get along with Jiraiya. Dan whom Tsunade met when they were sixteen, with whom she went out for two years and came close to marrying. And all the while – despite her appearance of flattery – she did not look at any other man, and that was everything Orochimaru needed to know.
God, they had been so young.
That was the problem, perhaps. They were shinobi: they fell in love early and married early, had children early and died early. And for what? Dan died on day thirty three of the war. Tsunade never mentioned him again.
It wasn't as if Orochimaru loved her. Knowing her as well as he did, he knew she wouldn't fall in love with him. Jiraiya looked at her the same way he caught himself looking at her, sometimes. And it was perhaps the greatest tragedy of all tragedies that had brought them together in the first place.
"Don't give away your heart to someone you can't have," his uncle had told him. Orochimaru wasn't stupid; he knew whom they were talking about.
Senju Hashirama's voice was clear and strong. "Always protect what is worth protecting to you."
"Love in a way that will change your life," Senju Mito whispered on the wind.
Orochimaru smiled as he remembered and quickly schooled his expression back into his trademark stoic one when he felt Tsunade's and Orochimaru's gazes on him. There was sadness in Tsunade's eyes, grief so deep he sometimes felt like drowning in it. And surrender in Jiraiya's, like he had already given up on everything. Don't stay sad, he wanted to tell her. One day, you'll find happiness again. It seemed difficult in the midst of a war but he would do whatever was necessary to see her smile again one day. Don't give up, Jiraiya. It was harder, cheering him on. We still have to discuss this. It wouldn't be enough to fool them but for now, they had other things to worry about.
"Are you making fun of us?" Jiraiya asked, his voice barely a whisper. "Don't smile like that, stupid idiot. Just focus on getting better."
Tsunade collapsed next to him, drained from the healing procedure but visibly relieved. "He'll make it."
"The two of you, sleep," Jiraiya commanded and settled down next to them. "I'll keep watch."
Before Orochimaru fell asleep, he caught the glance Jiraiya gave Tsunade and him, and thought what an utter idiot Jiraiya was to put himself second everywhere and for Tsunade to always give everything when it came to saving everyone. One day it would kill her, as it would kill Jiraiya to sit back and watch everyone find happiness except for himself.
One year and two hundred twelve days into the war.