A/N: Intended to be read after chapter 79
"Take my picture now,
Shake it 'till you see it,
And when your fantasies become your legacy,
Promise me a place,
In your house of memories,"
-House of Memories, Panic! At The Disco
Jiraiya thought he had a pretty good idea of what was right and what was wrong.
It was subjective, of course. He met his fair share of ninja with some twisted views of rightness, but it was his own sense of wrongness that made him put his research on hold, return home, and barge into the Hokage's office with a single-minded focus, in a way he hadn't done in decades.
He was angry like only his precious people could make him, stewing in it as he had as he traveled, but when he raised his eyes to the desk at the far end of the room—
He saw Minato, alive and well, hands steepled under his chin, watching him leave with a smile and a shake of his head.
His breath caught for a brief, unnoticed moment, but his anger dispersed like sand in the wind.
Minato was gone when he blinked and sensei sat in that chair with a pipe in hand, shaking his head at him like he'd never left it.
He really was too sentimental.
They weren't alone in the room. A jonin and her genin team stared at him, as did a secretary-looking type in a corner of the room.
Jiraiya responded by laughing a loud, boisterous laugh. "Long time no see, eh, sensei?"
Sensei sighed and made a wavy gesture. Not for the jonin, but the Anbu. "I apologize, but I must ask that you wait outside a moment while I speak with my wayward student."
"We understand," she demurred, ushering her students out as they whispered and asked, who is that? or student? is he the snake one?
The door clicked shut behind the secretary-type, and sensei puffed on his pipe and exhaled smoke. He stood as the presence of the Anbu vanished and faced the window.
Decades between them, and not much had changed. That he was angry was obvious, but what about, sensei seemed to already know.
Jiraiya sat on the edge of the desk, one of many habits he never bothered to break, and thought of how poetic it was, the teacher and student with their backs to each other. It'd make a good cover for a mystery novel.
"How's the kid?" he finally asked. It was only delaying what they both knew was coming.
Sensei blew smoke. "He's too much like Kushina."
A red-headed ghost dragging Minato out of his chair, stealing his hat to put it on herself, or doing her mightiest to drag Jiraiya along with them. He smiled humorlessly.
"Peace is something I've wanted for my whole life," Jiraiya said idly. "That's why the second I learned I was lied to and used to almost start a war, I came to find answers."
Sensei didn't respond. But a Hokage had no need to defend himself, not even to his students.
"A frog, a message delivered to an undercover operative, and a war. Sounds like the plot of something I'd write, eh?" he asked. "I don't know what I would've done with myself if Kusa declared war on Ame, so soon after we finished cleaning up the mess of the last one."
He wanted an explanation. He thought he was owed that, at least.
"What is done cannot be undone," sensei eventually said. "Kusa has declared their support for us, and I hope to cultivate that support for many years to come."
It was a diplomatic non-answer, said by someone guessing at the extent of his knowledge when he hadn't been able to dig up much.
It was in the assumption that he knew more than he did that Jiraiya put together the pieces. "It was ordered and carried out by Shimura, huh?" he asked. "I've lived my life trying to embody what you taught me, but my ideals-using me to spread hate—"
"The plan went how it was supposed to," sensei interrupted him. "As long as I have a say, Kusa will stay in line. It will change nothing to talk in what ifs."
Jiraiya slammed a hand on the desk, losing his patience. "You are the Hokage, not him."
"It is done, Jiraiya," sensei said with finality.
Jiraiya looked back and saw a gulf between them that would never again be bridged.
This was the part where, if this had gone the way he'd hoped it would, but had known it wouldn't, he'd laugh off the serious mood, leave all his scrolls full of coded information on the desk, and be on his way.
He said nothing as he pulled scrolls from the seals in his travel bag and lined them up on the desk, but kept one, just one, on the ame-nin one of his frogs had tailed crossing the border into the land of water.
Jiraiya the Gallant, Legendary Sanin, turned and stormed from the room, thinking of the students he had left, and what measures Shimura might take to stop them.
忠誠
Subject is the only survivor of 002300's experiments on Team 13, known generally as Team Orochimaru.
Hayate's arm was around her shoulder, focusing hard on putting on foot in front of the other as he held his side.
Anko snickered. "What would you do without me, huh? How're you supposed to make special jonin if you can't take a punch?"
"I know I'm frail. You don't have to remind me."
Anko blinked at the bitterness in his voice.
"We were ambushed," Yugao spluttered, waving her hands on Hayate's other side, always the peacemaker. "It's not his fault."
"No, no, that's not what I meant," Anko told him, softer, trying to meet his eyes. "I'm shooting for special jonin too! I didn't mean it like you're weak."
"You say it all the time," Hayate said, staring at her.
"I don't—I wasn't trying to say it like that then either—"
"She's just naturally insensitive. It's how she's always been," Yugao hurried to say, and it stung. "But she wouldn't keep taking missions with us if half the things she said was how she really felt."
Naturally insensitive? Just like her rouge-nin sensei, eh?
"Yeah," Anko forced out. "Yeah, I-I really didn't mean it that way. You're just so easy to tease."
She grinned in the face of his glare.
Subject has been cleared of any suspicion regarding 002300's whereabouts and determined to be fit for duty.
Anko leaned on the glass and stared out her bedroom window. She had a nice view of the past Hokage from here.
The brothers, staring stoically in the same direction like they were watching a friend or family member do something stupid and couldn't do anything about it; she'd never seen the Third as anything but an old man, so she'd never believed that face was actually him; she used to tell her teammates the Fourth was stuck up, if only because she didn't know anything about the guy.
They used to have sleepovers at her place all the time because Akira was an orphan and Kichiro lost his parents to the nine-tails. She used to tell them every opinion she had on those stone faces.
She covered the curse seal on her neck.
They were just kids who wanted to be liked by their sensei and didn't know, didn't really understand—
"I hate you," she said, wiping her eyes aggressively with her sleeve. "I hate you, Orochimaru-sensei."
Maybe if she said it enough times she'd stop wishing he hadn't left her all alone.
She dug her nails into the mark. "Sorry, 'kira, Kichi. You should've had a better teammate than me."
Subject has proven capable and stable. A-rank mission completion has been added to subject's records. No attempts by 002300 to initiate contact while outside.
Anko ate a spoonful of sweat red bean soup and leaned back on her stool, letting out a pleased mmmm. "What's your secret, old man? It's always so good."
"I disappear pipsqueaks who call me old man," Oshan grunted. "Those're the chunks you see in it."
Anko laughed so hard she bent over, slapping the table. "Might take you more seriously if old man Teuchi wasn't running you out of business. I'm your best customer!" she pointed her spoon at him. "You wish you had other customers here to call you an old man like he does."
"Don't mention that name around me," he growled, muttering more unfavorable things about the ramen guy under his breath as he disappeared into the back.
She shrugged, not that he could see it, and swung her legs as she dug into her soup.
At least until she felt eyes on her back.
She twisted around and a woman jumped, gaze jerking up and away. Civilian, she dismissed, then caught the pity in the eyes of the guy holding her hand.
It was then she realized her collar had slipped down a little, showing the world the curse seal on her neck.
She spun back around and jerked it up, trying to focus on her soup, but she could hear them whispering,
poor thing. he marked her like some pet.
how can we be sure he doesn't have some kind of control over her—
shhh, lower your voice!
Anko pushed away from the table and strode away from the stand.
Further observation of subject is deemed unnecessary. Will wait for further instructions...
Anko curled up in bed and clapped a hand over the curse seal, feeling it itch under her fingers.
She squeezed her eyes shut. "Why me?" she asked herself, him, anyone who could answer.
She curled up more. "I-I believed in you. All that time you just-you just wanted—"
"How sad."
Her eyes snapped open. It was the faintly amused tone that starred in every nightmare she'd had since he left, with an added layer of mocking.
She stared at the wall. "No."
She heard a slight, painfully familiar laugh, except at her instead of with her. She could picture his shoulders shaking as she pushed herself up, the way he tilted his head so his hair fell in his face to look more intimidating as she looked behind her.
Her window was open but-but her apartment was in the middle of the village. Her eyes slid to her sensei, standing in the middle of her bedroom.
"Hello, Anko."
He said it like he'd just seen her earlier at the training field, like she was still his favorite student and he was her favorite sensei, and anger clawed up her throat.
She crouched and launched off the bed, weaponless in only her nightwear, and thrust out her right hand. Brown snakes burst out of her sleeves, hissing with just as much fury, and Orochimaru-sensei—
He smiled. Smiled and shook his head as if to say, kids, what can you do?
She was going to kill him. It was her responsibility as the only one left.
Orochimaru leisurely raised his hand back at her and her snakes were suddenly entangled in dozens of white snakes that sunk their fangs into her summons and held on as they thrashed, yanking her to the ground in front of him.
She coughed and watched as her snakes disappeared or fell around her, dead.
"Are you finished with the theatrics, Anko?"
Anko bit her lip until she tasted blood. She got back to her feet. "I hate you," she said and threw a punch—
—that he caught in his fist, never once losing his smile.
"Here I thought you'd be happy that the sensei you once adored so much came back to get you."
Anko yanked her hand free and stepped back. His words bounced meaninglessly around in her head. She could scream. She should scream, just to see what he'd do.
"Came back for me? You used me. You never-You never cared about us."
He only looked more amused. "Is that the lie they fed you? That I taught you my favorite, secret techniques because I held no positive feelings for you in the slightest?"
"There are no lies," she shouted. What if this was all in her head? What if she'd finally cracked? There was no way-how could he...?
She jerked her collar aside. "This is all you left me with. Two dead teammates and a mark to show I'm cursed."
"Yes, I did," he said matter-of-factly, a hand on his hip, and it took the wind out of her sails.
He'd admitted it. Just like that.
"You were experiments, but nothing I did was without your consent. I never told you three a single lie," he added nonchalantly. "If I truly felt nothing for you, or them, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble of looking for permission."
"We were kids!" she screamed, voice breaking, vision blurry with tears.
"You are a ninja," he said, still infuriatingly casual. "You were old enough to kill, but not to understand liabilities and risks? Come now, Anko, I never took you for a fool."
Anko fell to her knees and sobbed. "Why now?" she gasped.
Orochimaru bent down to her level, like he used to, but it was all wrong. His eyes laughed at her. "You are my greatest scientific achievement. You have no idea the possibilities you've opened to me simply by remaining alive and whole."
Anko sniffed, wiping her nose with her arm. Her other hand closed around the head of her dead summon. "So, that's it, huh? You want to see what made me different, sensei?"
She jammed its fangs into his foot and threw herself at him, knocking them both to the carpet. She used his split-second surprise to shove her hand against his, forcing him to help her finish making a modified snake sign.
The paralytic was working and she breathed out, because this was it. She'd bred her snakes for this moment.
"What do you think you're doing?" he hissed, eyes wider than she'd ever seen them.
She chuckled as huge twin brown snakes surged out of her sleeve to encircle them. "Just a little something you taught me."
He stared at them, pupils shrinking in fear, and then dissolved into snakes.
Anko shot off him. The death snakes disappeared in puffs of smoke.
She spun, heartbeat in her throat, and he sat on her windowsill, legs crossed, shaking his head at her. "Honestly."
"I'm-I'm not a traitor. I won't prove them right," she insisted, hating how it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
He tossed a folder at her feet. "What a silly little jutsu, twin snake sacrifice. I'm surprised you remember it, even if it's a waste of time."
His confidence shook her resolve more than him beating her down could've. She knelt and hesitantly opened the file.
Her own chunin picture stared back at her, clipped to a report... on her.
Slowly, she spread the pages out on the floor, reading her life written out in neat, clinical lines. She understood why they'd watched her. She wasn't an idiot.
She bit down hard on her lip as she read about her interrogation with the Yamanaka and then, on another page, a detached list of what was recommended they do with her. Immediate termination, at the top of the list, was crossed out.
She felt something twist inside of her.
Her grief, her reckless determination to prove herself, her mental state, were either a liability, or fit for duty. Her accomplishments reduced to, no contact from 002300.
Orochimaru watched her with a smile, knowing he didn't have to say a word.
She hated him, was disgusted by him, but couldn't tear her gaze from the reports.
Her teammates were just registration numbers, mentioned only a few times in pages written by different people. She was only seen as worthy to unmonitored because they couldn't get anything useful from her about her sensei. Not because of her efforts to show she was capable, to make them see she was nothing like him.
Why would Orochimaru need to lie when this was the truth?
Anko was too insensitive, too pitiful, too loyal. She felt terribly alone.
She sat back and knew he'd won.
A/N: 忠誠 - Loyalty