Chapter Text
1.
Hard to say if she was ever surprised by him. It's not that she thought he’d be in every room she’d walk into but she wasn't surprised when he was. The body he’d stripped down for himself was casually stunning skimming close to his own first beauty. Clear pale skin not yet waxy, thin lips and cat pointed eyes a shimmering violet. Very nice.
Of course the dientante established by this being a bar in a missing-nin commune was broken when he started swimming through the crowd towards her. A mouse knew a snake when it passed so all these otherwise nice people knew that a sannin was rubbing his shoulders along theirs, scenting the air. With that thin veneer broken their little heads popped up, little rat noses twitching. For all Tsunade’s awful beauty and drunken stench she never could hide for long. Her shirt was loosely done up and her mouth stank like poor beer but the combined might of two bloodlines pulsed in her skin. She spat on to the table, on her bad hand, and flexed her shoulders. Something ripped in the back and she blearily pushed chakra to stem the itch of a popped stitch. She’d conned herself into believing she was conning the man across from her. His hand was the opposite of hers and she’d thought- well, men are simple and Tsunade thought mostly in body parts and not sex. She’d thought it would be enough. God-fucking- damn her teammates.
All the lechery fell away from her opponents at the table. All the reasonable fear came flooding in. Tsunade’s pink chest became a line, the unsubtle clench of her thighs a hook and her unfocused eyes a sinker. The man about to take her rent for the month disappeared before her piece of shit ex-teammate ascended the stairs to her alcove.
“Oro,” she sulked, “get fucked.”
Orochimaru sank down into the seat across from her. A platter of tea appeared at his elbow, two cups, and Tsunade strongly thinks about killing herself.
If he notices -and he does probably, he does- he ignores it.
Orochimaru releases a palm full of flowers. They smell fresh, like lavender, and the splatter of tight furled orange blooms look harmless. Tsunade feels her breath catch and then she’s standing and hitting Orochimaru so hard his jaw slips out of his mouth.
“You fucking bitch, how dare you- ” some things can’t be borne or forgiven. The spread of an indiscriminate death is one of them. “Has no one ever loved you? You owe something to your own flesh let alone anyone else's, how fucking dare you! ”
“It wasn’t me,” his jaw is marbles but it comes out contrite. “I actually wouldn’t Tsunade.” He presses his lips together and lets the red spit well out the sides. Tsunade has always preferred to see her work and yet her boy keeps it all zipped up, how sweet. Of course he’s heard about her and blood. Of course he’d let her see red. Of course, he’d use his own hurt against her. To show that he could make it worse and won’t because he needs her and she won’t listen angry.
“Stings? Good,” she says sweetly and drinks his stupid tea. “You’re wrecked. Get clean and then bother me. Idiot.”
2.
“It’s not a problem,” Tsunade says again.
Orochimaru stops, the soft skin of his face twisting. “You...sold flowers?”
“Yep.”
“ You did.”
“Sure did.”
“I didn’t,” he hisses.
Wisteria keeps the world going round. When Tsunade’s grandfather ripped concessions out of Clan Leaders and Lords alike and set up his demesne in the forests of Fire Country there was still an older, scarier butcher to the north of him. A Dragon. In the folktales of Lightning where they say he’s from, The Dragon is a stranger on your path, an unlooked for guest who must be appeased lest he take your skin as payment for offence. In Earth he’s a salesman of unusual wares hawking skines of strange liquids and strips of leathered fabrics; the backs of those who tried to short him. In Water it’s a serpent, of course, and he dares little near his seaworthy kin. Little but the stealing of their children and the selling of the secrets they dare only tell their elders and children. In Fire he’s just a man in a market willing to take anything of value from stolen silks to the bodies of your enemies, living or dead. He’s a middleman and every Clan has something to say about him.
When Hashirama set his foot on the world and Madara stood beside him, they went to see The Dragon. The Uchiha had seen centuries of kin go under his knife and for sale in his stalls, the only person competing with the Senju for Uchiha genocide, and Hashirama who already loved his friend beyond sense set terms. The Dragon returned to the little countries between the north and south, the east and the west, and sold only flowers. Secrets and herbs and spells. Anything more and the Gods of Shinobi would have come for him.
He couldn’t die -either literally, or in the sense that whole ways of life relied on him and his networks, but he could be diminished. Not one to forget a slight he set about trying to destroy the God of Shinobi, he sank into the undergrounds of those Villages and had his name in the mouths of its dissidents. He was a step behind shadowing the steps of what was built, blood in the heels of Gods. One day he’d be able to destroy everything with what people had told him. Now when the Villages broke down and when the vengeful needed to buy documents they sold Wisteria in Kemurigakure. All smoke before the fire.
Hashirama never sold any secrets, who would ask him to? Her parents were kept dull and stupid for everyones benefit. The Senju never had any bloodlines that could be fucked out of them and so very little moral concern over the Dragon and his wares. Tobirama told her what to sell almost before he taught her to bring a knife to a fist fight. Almost. She sat in his lap, the only one who could, and drank his god awful tea while he tapped her thin little wrist. Only your own secrets, he said, or ones that can hurt the dead. Then, an amendment, your only duty is to yourself and your kin, return to us and let the flowers grow where they may. Her grandmother was barely any better. She’d been clear about selling flowers. She’d been indicted for it, which only said she’d done something far scarier and they’d settled on treason as the easier answer. She’d given Tsunade a secret every year for her birthday instead of a present then a secret and a jutsu when she turned six. Her grandfather was dead by then, her parents set in their ways and Mito too smart to think she’d outlive Hashirama by much. One world changing present every year until her death as if that would save her.
No. Tsunade stops herself. Her grandmother was a pragmatist. She only ever wanted better odds.
Tsunade sold out her village the second she could -it’s in her blood. But the reason is in her heart. She always wanted to break away from Konoha. No one could live in its secrets the way she did and want it to survive. Her grandfather's wood all around them more proof of godhood than protection. Her parents' weakness bred into them through divine intervention and the moulding of two near-immortals who should have never been parents. Her granduncle, more parent then either and more spymaster than leader, spreading the roots of his fears through the Village, weeds that would strangle anyone too close to them. Her horrible luck and the men she killed are just further testaments to what she must have always known; something is rotten in my homeland, as it is in me.
“You really never sold out?” Tsunade smirks. “I barely waited.”
Orochimaru frowns. She’s never known what to do when she stumps him like this. “Surely the Princess of the Senju, that paragon of bravery has higher standards?”
He’s actually asking. Tsunade laughs -bright, cutting, blinding. She has no standards, she doesn’t deserve standards. She can’t hold anyone to anything, certainly not expectations. She laughs, unkindly, at someone she’s known her whole life, who thinks she has any right to that kind of dignity.