Chapter Text
Sensei is late for their team meeting.
It’s not as though it’s never happened before—Sarutobi-sensei is the Hokage, after all, and has responsibilities far beyond that of the average jounin-sensei—but Sarutobi-sensei also takes his duties as a sensei very seriously. He’s usually very good about giving them notice beforehand, if he can’t make practice for whatever reason. He has never before not sent word and not shown up.
His absence is… troubling.
Of course, Orochimaru is the only one who thinks so; Jiraiya is using the uninterrupted time to pester Tsunade and Orochimaru can actually hear the way Tsunade’s teeth are grinding together. The tendons in her hands jump and flex in a rapid one-two beat as she clenches her fist. Fortunately for Jiraiya, an ANBU operative shows up before she loses hold of her temper, materializing out of nothing and shadows to crouch before them. They pull a slim scroll from somewhere on their person and proffer it to Orochimaru, who is the closest.
“Our meeting has been cancelled,” Orochimaru reports, eyes flying rapidly between characters. The team meeting has been cancelled for the day, the missive says. That, and Orochimaru is to report to the Hokage Tower, alone.
There’s no reason to mention that, and so he doesn’t. Jiraiya starts to say something to Tsunade, but finally takes a good look at her face and, for once, decides not to push his luck. He scampers away in a whirl of long, white hair.
“Ugh.” Tsunade frowns, as the clacking of Jiraiya’s geta fades. “I’m going to grab lunch.”
It’s an invitation without truly being one, and she looks to Orochimaru, who tilts his head in a slight negative. Tsunade snorts inelegantly, but departs all the same, throwing a hand up in farewell. The ANBU operative has long since departed, and now it is just Orochimaru standing in the clearing. He looks down at the scroll and can feel his eyebrows furrow.
He takes his time in walking through the village to the Hokage Tower, if only to give himself a moment to try and puzzle out the reasons behind his summoning. It's not about a mission, or else Tsunade and Jiraiya would be along as well. But the missive had stated for Orochimaru to report in, alone and at his earliest convenience. That means it's likely not related to any shinobi business at all, for things of that nature rarely happen at anyone’s convenience.
Sarutobi-sensei's secretary motions for him to enter the office as soon as he sets foot in the foyer. Her face is no help, either; she looks just as indifferent as she usually does. Which either mean that it's not bad news, or that she doesn't know why he's here any more than he does. He nods at her as he walks by all the same.
He raps on the door once, then twice.
"Come in, Orochimaru." Sensei calls, and he sounds calm enough, so Orochimaru ripples his chakra in acknowledgment and opens the door.
Sensei smiles at him when he steps into the office. "I'm glad that you were able to arrive so promptly," he says jovially.
Orochimaru does a quick scan of the room, with chakra and bodily senses both, and doesn't answer, instead fixing his gaze on the other person within the office.
Lots of scars, is the first thing he notices. The two biggest are on the stranger's face, a deep slash across the bridge of their nose bisected by another thick cut through the left eye. Wild hair, broad shoulders and a placid expression that is entirely ignoring both Sarutobi and Orochimaru in favor of a cup of tea.
"Ah, Orochimaru-kun," Sarutobi-sensei begins and Orochimaru's shoulders hunch of their own accord. Sensei only ever tacks on honorifics when he thinks that Orochimaru will need to be persuaded into doing something. "This is Manji-san, and he has some rather important news for you."
Manji glances up at his name, but doesn't say anything. Instead, he takes a deep sip of tea. Orochimaru stays standing warily by the door. The silence drags on, awkwardly and long enough that even Sarutobi-sensei's smile starts to look strained.
“Well,” he says, after a moment. "I'll leave the two of you alone to talk."
He moves out from behind his desk, dragging the Hokage robes off the high-backed chair and grabbing his pipe of the corner off the bookshelf. With another small smile directed at the two of them, he leaves, drawing the door closed behind him.
Orochimaru watches Manji cautiously and makes no move to approach. Manji continues to drink his tea, his one unscarred eye half-shut. He drinks his tea like the old men who play Go in the parks; slow, long sips and with an air of purposeful leisure. Nearly ten minutes pass before Manji finally sets his cup down. The ceramic clinks against the wood of the table, and it is the only noise to be heard.
“Yer ma’s name was Asano, right?”
Orochimaru’s eyes jump up to meet Manji’s, startled. His parents have only been dead for a little under a month, and out of some strange sense of… propriety? pity? not many talk about them any longer, least of all to Orochimaru’s face.
“Yes.” He answers, after a moment. It couldn’t hurt to admit; his parents’ clans were small and insular even before their union, but if Manji already knows his mother’s surname, then Orochimaru can’t do any harm in confirming it.
“Hn,” is all Manji says in return, and then he goes back to his tea.
Alright, then.
Orochimaru casts his gaze about the office again, looking for something to focus on while Manji finishes his tea. It’s the same as the last time he saw it, a mere few days ago; Sensei has a large number of scrolls, but all of the interesting ones are chakra-sealed and blood-warded, which is a pain. There’s a bonsai tree on the table near the window, a gift from Hashirama-sama when Sensei was inaugurated. Orochimaru doesn’t know much about botany beyond identifying edible plants from poisonous ones, but he’s almost certain that the bonsai was grown with mokuton, given that he’s never seen a single one of its leaves so much as brown, let alone wither.
“You know the Third Form?” Manji asks, just as abruptly as the first question he posed. He has a rough voice, and his accent is the thick, rounded one like the farmers in the south of Hi no Kuni, but he hasn’t raised his voice, and he doesn’t speak to Orochimaru like some adults talk down to children, even ninja ones. His questions are abrupt, and it’s been nearly forty-five minutes and he’s still sipping from the same damn cup of tea, but all things considered, he’s not the most aggravating adult that Orochimaru has been forced to converse with. Which is to say that he’s not entirely opposed to answering Manji’s questions.
The Third Form was—or is—a misnomer for the fifth stage of his clan’s coming of age ritual. The earlier stages involved minor theoretics, like chakra natures and summoning. Then came the weaponry lessons, traditional to both his mother’s and his father’s clans; swords with his mother and senbon with his father. The Third Form was a stage that came solely from his mother’s side of the family, and Orochimaru had not begun it before her death. But she’d told him, briefly and with a frustrating vagueness, that it would’ve involved inheriting the Asano clan heirloom, passed down from Asano Rin, the matriarch who’d singlehandedly brought honor back to the Asano name.
“Not as well as I’d like. It’s is better to say that I know what it’s meant to achieve.” Orochimaru replies, with more confidence and ease to his voice than he truly feels. Manji hasn’t so much as made a threatening move, but something about the way that he’s just sitting there, one hand curled around that damn cup and limbs loose like he’s got all the time in the world, seems more dangerous than if he’d been overtly aggressive.
Manji looks at him for a slow, lengthy moment. It shouldn’t be so unnerving to meet his gaze, but Orochimaru can feel the fission of unrest coiling in the back of his throat and along his temples. It takes real work to keep his shoulders relaxed and his chakra smooth and tranquil.
All of that hard work is undone in a single second, when Manji finally blinks his one unscarred eye, sets the tea cup down and announces: “It’s me.”
His intended meaning isn’t that hard to understand, but the words don’t make any sense. And so Orochimaru says, numbly and with none of his usual poise, “… What?”
“Tried to teach Rin my style once or twice, but she was always better as a long-distance fighter.” Manji continues blithely. Without the cup in his hand, he seems a little bereft and stares down at his hands as though trying to divine secrets from the angle of his wrists. “When she married that punk and started havin’ kids, she asked me to teach ‘em all. Come up with a style unique to the clan, that kinda thing.”
Manji’s voice is even, though his words come brittlely, as though what he’s saying isn’t completely absurd.
“Asano Rin…” Orochimaru repeats, his heart a cacophonous melody in his ears. “The founding matriarch?”
Manji snorts, and finally looks up from his hands. “She hated that. I do, too. She never set out to do anything other than her duty as a daughter, and avenge her parents’ death. She never wanted to… to be praised, not for that bloody mess I dragged her into.”
Orochimaru is sitting in the Hokage’s office, sun streaming brightly through the windows, listening to a man talk about the founding matriarch of his mother’s clan as though he could’ve possibly known her. As though he was there, to witness her actions before the Warring Clans era.
“I used to.” Manji continues, either unaware or completely ignoring Orochimaru’s look of wide-eyed disbelief. His words are coming out shorter now, clipped. Strained. It would all be very emotional if it wasn’t so very preposterous. “Show up, I mean. Teach the kids, all her little grandkids and nieces and—I. Things. … I didn’t, much, after she died.”
Asano Rin died over two hundred and fifty years ago. The Asano clan survived the Warring Clans era by merit of being small and vicious enough that no one wanted to put the effort into fighting them. After the foundation of the Hidden Villages, handfuls of Asano went every which way they pleased, but the Main Branch—Orochimaru’s matrilineal grandparents and his mother, direct descendants of Asano Rin—came to Konoha. Politics dwindled their numbers, as war erupted and never quite stopped and now… now, the only one to remember the Asano name is Orochimaru.
And this scarred stranger, Manji, who is clearly delusional.
“I’m the Third Form.” Manji summarizes after a moment of silence, with a roll of his shoulders that would seem casual but for the way that his eye is once again fixed to Orochimaru like a hound trained on a scent. “Shoulda come sooner, but… I didn’t hear about Ran and Raku ’til I was already in the village.”
Orochimaru can’t help the way he clenches his jaw. No one talks about his parents with him anymore, not even Sensei. They’re dead, but he is not, and some days he wakes up with fear curdling in his stomach, wondering of the abstract day when he will no longer be able to recall his father’s face or the cadence of his mother’s voice. And now, here is this stranger, this man with his irrational made-up fantasies, speaking of Orochimaru’s clan, of Orochimaru’s parents like it’s some kind of game—
He can’t be here for money, because the Asano clan was not one of wealth. But jutsu… Power…
“I’m leaving.” Orochimaru manages to pry his jaw open long enough to spit the words out. His chakra is a buzz under his skin, not quite rippling. Manji doesn’t look intimidated or thwarted in the least. He raises an eyebrow—the one over his scarred eye—and tilts his head, conceding.
“Fair enough. See you ‘round, kid.”
Orochimaru doesn’t deign to respond to that. He doesn’t slam the office door shut behind him, but only just.