Hypocrite
Orochimaru looked up. Experiments took a while, he knew, but no matter how much the knowledge itself filled his brain with new possibilities, with new ideas and beauty and potential, he still hated waiting. Pitter patter, went the leaky ceiling, pipes dripping drop, after drop, after drop. He focused on it, thought on the steady slow pace, the rhythm, the constant.
It was pointless. All had been thought before, all possible ideas, all possible interpretations. He couldn't get anymore from the water than he could from himself, and he had been afraid to look for so long, fear at what abomination he had twisted into. He was too scared to see wherever he would hate it, or worse, like it.
He was roused from his egoic introspection, by the faint weight of heavy footsteps, like a silenced stampede, accompanied by chakra signatures, one much higher than the rest. Orochimaru knew he should have expected this, expected Danzo to betray him or leak his location, the opportunist trying to find anyway to distract from his crimes. People called him a snake, but they were prey to vultures it seemed, and the old war hawk wasn't deserving of such a regal title, his beak feating on the bodies of the mutilated and aborted. One eyed and envious he would crawl through shit just to see his 'friend' Hiruzen ejected off the seat, so sure he is of himself and his brain, filled with propaganda like all the rest.
Bending in with ease, the wooden, nearly rotten door crashed with a thud, as a small army of ninja, headed by their 'king' finally arrived. Orochimaru didn't spring to action, didn't need to. He had already figured out how he would leave.
"My student, what is this? What have you done?" Came a voice, deep and raspy, raising from a quieted doubt to a thunderous, apish roar!
The snake sage could have put on his mask as he did for any fool who underestimated him. It was usually a villain, a fool, chuckling with an insidious smile, using their biases to scare them, to make them fear him, play on that legend, but he decided against it. Hiruzen was aged enough to see past it, so Orochimaru decided to peel it back, let him see through it instead.
"Nothing special" he said, pale skin and luscious black lips deadpan, his androgenous face almost looking bored at the crowd of heavily armed and hostile shinobi. He wanted to get along with this charade, slaughter them already.
"Orochimaru! These are children! Dead too! Have you been using them, experimenting on them?"
"Yes. Around 60 dead if I recall correctly."
The third hokage recoiled. "You are so flippant about this." His face turned red, wrinkles hardened. "These are dead children, so many of them. How could you do this?"
Orochimaru laughed. Not his usual chuckle, but a sad one.
"Pretending like you weren't my sensei?"
"What is that meant to mean?" The older man said, confusion evident.
"The children here, 60, that pales in comparison to the hundreds you send out to die every year. How do you deal with it, I wonder? Indoctrinating and radicalising so many to be loyal to you above all, to love you like a father, then sending that same child to a battlefield."
His lips turned, rage and hate now more present on the old monkey's face than ever.
"Do not make this about me, Orochimaru. This is about you, the horrible things you have done here."
"I would argue it has always been about you. I used to be a nice little boy. I was starry eyed and wanted nothing else but peace, to remove all of the pain in the world so nobody would have to feel the hell I felt after my parents died. You took me in, made me your student, and taught me how to be cruel. How to run a village, how to kill people. How to kill children.
What you see here, Sarutobi, is your mirror. Corrupting children year after year to fit your own agenda, to protect yourself!"
The monkey smashed his fist against a wood pillar, the whole base shaking.
"I am nothing like you Orochimaru!"
"Oh, really? I share your cruelty, you level of honesty, which isn't that much to be honest. Even your philosophies.
It is almost funny. When it came time for you to retire, I was certain you would pick me. All my life, I wanted to repay you, to protect the village after you left, after you died maybe. Not for it, haha, the people who feared and hated me, even from childhood? But no, I would have sacrificed all of that for you. I trained to run it, how to make alliances, contingency after contingency, even trying to make allies and friends and socialise like a good little hokage, yet you chose Minato. And now he is dead, and still, you ignore me. That, is the question. Why was I never good enough?"
Orochimaru hadn't smiled the entire time, yet it got worse, his face was murderous now, scary even, the lines on his face harsh, dark, painful, clear white skin and stark shadows making him look monochromatic, more real than anything else in the room.
Hiruzen didn't answer. He couldn't, so Orochimaru answered himself.
"It is because Hiruzen, you are so much more like me than you want to admit. You hate those around you, despise weakness, want power and control. More than anything, you hate yourself, the multitudinous failures you propagated. You hate me because I reflect yourself. That is why I was never good enough. I wanted to be the successor to the 3rd hokage, but you knew the 3rd was evil, fated to be a ruinous husk of a man, so you chose his opposite. The cheery happy blond, not the sour hate filled man, willing to make ever sacrifice he would need to.
You decided to abandon the successor to the third, and create the fourth."
Silence for a while. The ANBU escort wondered when the room was going to erupt, the tension that palpable.
Orochimaru began again. "Danzo told me to do this, if you didn't know, but I suspect you did. He leaked his plans to you, told you to clear this up with a team so you had witnesses which would destroy my repute, have none loyal to me fight for me once I leave. I get that, it is what I would have done. It is smart, but what you don't seem to understand, is that for all our similarities, I am far more smart and reckless than you have ever been."
Then, for the first time, Orochimaru smiled.
And the entire base exploded.
…
Sarutobi Hiruzen and his student, Orochimaru, would be reported missing and presumed dead in the aftermath of the base ignition. All of the evidence involving Orochimaru was destroyed, though a warrant was issued for his execution, treason, for the assassination of the third and acting hokage.
Shimura Danzo would later die of an overdose of Hashirama cells in his old clan home, froth spilling from his mouth. He would never enact his plans to take over the village, never destroy the Uchiha clan.
Years after, the hidden leaf, still weak from its major losses in the past times, would discover a new ninja village in the land of rice. It would be called Otogakure. And the sole fact any knew about its leader, would be that in every sighting, his black lipstick mouth would be smiling.
A/N: Little one shot I made to expand on Orochimaru as a character. I have always been interested in writing him as a tragic circumstantial character, considering in the story he is presented as basically being mega evil for no reason. I think the idea that Hiruzen is just as bad as Orochimaru and the only reason he doesn't let him become hokage is because he reminds him of himself too much, and his hatred for himself and his failures in his life overrides his other thoughts for the ninja.
Again, this is a one shot, though I might make a follow up if this gets enough support, idk lol. Have fun.