Ouroboros
“If you must die, sweetheart, die knowing your life was my life’s best part.”
- Keaton Henson
Empaths. Curious things. Orochimaru had only met a handful in his life due to the extermination of the Ueno clan during the Second Shinobi War. They had been a force to be reckoned with, capable of reducing an able bodied shinobi to the ground in tears without even looking at them. That made them valuable to their allies, targeted viciously by their enemies.
Feared by both.
So many had been sent to the front lines to great effect until their notoriety lent them to being killed on sight. Until every last Ueno had been cut down mercilessly, man, woman, and child.
Or so it was thought.
Ueno Masumi had made him feel regret. And once he started, he couldn’t stop. It felt like a curse. Like a fire in a cave, it consumed all oxygen, leaving him gasping on the ground, dry heaving in the smoke. It was a choking, burdensome emotion. Silly. He didn’t understand the point of it. What was the use of feeling bad about something after the fact? When there was nothing to be done about it? When the children were already dead, your friends already estranged, and your village far behind you?
It weighed so heavily on his frame that he would rather claw out his own belly than spend a moment longer dragging it all around. It came in waves. One moment he would be reading over lab reports, the next he would be white knuckling the sink basin, sweating and chasing himself around his own skull.
So Orochimaru did what he did best.
(He clung to what was real, what made sense, with the desperation of a drowning man. Logic and tests, figures and plans. Anything to get himself out of his own head for even a second longer.)
Finding her was easy. Approaching her, however-
(Orochimaru wanted nothing more than to flee to Kumo, to Tea country. Anywhere to be away from this being that took a piece of his mind, the only thing he had-)
She was the one who found him . Most likely with whatever terrible, emotion sensing, mind altering power she possessed. She found him and he wanted to kill her. No, he needed to kill her. She couldn’t be allowed to exist, no matter how curious, or vibrant, or-
She had no way of knowing the true extent of his crimes against humanity. Of the way Danzo played off his desires to advance, to prove himself, to take his corrosive grief and anger out on something, to be a part of something again. She didn’t know how many times he had told the rotten old man no, no, no please no. How the first time it had happened, he had woken up mid post-mortem, scalpel an inch deep in a toddler’s chest cavity, the taste of sealing ink sharp on his tongue. How he had had to cut out his own tongue before fleeing the village, wheezing past his own blood, unable to feel the relief of escape, unable to feel anything at all.
Until her.
Orochimaru, the man with the ambition to learn all the world’s secrets, fell to a woman who hadn’t even known he was there. And when he sought her out for more, she unmade him.
And though he didn’t deserve to be, Orochimaru was happy.
(He should have known better.)
He was not above begging. Not anymore. Not now, when he knew what it felt like- Kami, what it felt like- To have something to lose. He had lost before, of course, many many times over, but not like this.
But she couldn’t stay. And he couldn’t make her, didn’t want to force her.
(His past self would scoff, deride, think him a pathetic, base driven, lower life form-)
She said she would wait for him in the village. She would wait until he was ready to return. She wanted to-
She wanted their child to grow up in the same village she had been raised in. To go to the same parks, to be surrounded by her comrades, to be taught how to thrive, and smile, and maybe, just maybe, make the world a better place.
Let it never be said Masumi did not have lofty ambitions.
Lofty, reckless, foolhardy ambitions.
She waited. Longer than he deserved. One year, two. He told her he would make her a new village. One without rotten roots, without clans. She only smiled at him, softly. So softly. Two years became three in the blink of an eye and he still teetered on the fence, adoring her but so full of fear. And guilt. And resentment.
Then he knew only pain.
He didn’t know how people who felt everything survived heartbreak. Surely it would be better to die? To die rather than fall to the ground crying, empty of everything but ache?
She died, and somehow an entire year had passed before he found the strength to even drag himself beyond his quarters. Then another before he left the underground compound.
Meaningless. A pointless death, worthy of genin corp or roadside bandits. Her name had been carved on the memorial stone for weeks before he had even known she was dead. He couldn’t fathom it. With everything he could now feel, how could he not know the moment she had left this world? Hadn’t he loved her?
But she was cremated by the time he even knew he had lost her, and his sorrow, his pain, his regret, were for someone who was already dead and beyond even his vile, morally dubious reach. He still didn’t understand the point of it.
But it was during a trip to visit her grave, mad with mourning, that he made the most important discovery of his second life.
(The irony was not lost on him that he was finally fulfilling her wish of returning to the village too late. It seemed to be a recurring theme of his. Too late.)
A tiny grass snake.