Archive of Our Own ^beta

‘today, konohagakure is offically at war with sunagakure and iwagakure.’

i.
The first two weeks are the bloodiest. Tsunade kills twice as many people as she saves (far too much blood spilling, far too many people she cannot save and she should be able to because she can heal anything, anything they throw at her and she kills more people on their side out of mercy than she kills enemies who try to interrupt her work) and collapses on branches to rest, sinking into fitful sleep and nightmares.

Too much blood.

Too much tension.

(Mito once argued with Tobirama, long after her husband had died and Tsunade had gained her hitae-ate, that the tension would only spill over.

It didn’t just spill, it burst like dams after the monsoon and engulfed everything.)

She hates war already.

Nawaki talks about it like it’s an honour to defend his country (grandpa’s legacy! His treasure!) and it quells the disgust that knots in her stomach and brings a smile to her face.

The next day, she pushes harder. She fights death a little more.

ii.
Nawaki’s first mission in the warzone happens about a month in. A c-rank scouting mission, but still Tsunade stiffens, paralysed by his boyish grin and bragging words.

No.

He can’t go in. He’s supposed to be doing village chores and keeping morale up like the rest of the genin.

(Who the hell approved this? They’re children.

She pretends that she hadn’t already killed three people by the time she was twelve because it’s Nawaki and he’s just a kid.)

Nawaki yells after her when she storms off to the Hokage’s office, blonde hair flaring behind her like a mane of fire.

Sarutobi-sensei levels his stare at her in that same way he did whenever she sent Jiraiya flying.

You’re too impulsive, Tsunade.

(Disappointment and exhaustion.)

“What’s going on here?”

“If anything happens to him, I’ll never forgive you.”

She leaves the office before Orochimaru can stop her.

iii.
The news reaches her at the hospital, a chuunin gasping and shaking because this news makes him want to vomit - it always does, never getting any easier - and Orochimaru’s glare is enough to terrify even the ANBU member he (quite literally) ran into on the way out.

Tsunade’s legs stumble their way to the makeshift morgue near the edge of the village and she’s sure everyone’s staring at her but her body’s numb and not enough of them will understand why she’s walking like someone’s scrambled her nervous system

but who cares?

Who fucking cares?

Jiraiya finds her a few feet from the morgue, shaking and refusing to go in (because that makes it real and it cannot, cannot be real because he should have been safe Orochimaru promised he’d be safe) and presses a hand to her shoulder, fingers - body, hair, skin, smile - dirtied from weeks of travelling, and says nothing.

She barely manages to make it into the building without trembling and bile rises in her throat.

(Swallow, swallow.)

Jiraiya holds her back with a hand like a leash, stops her because he’s seen the look in their teammate’s eyes - the flash that betrays just how bad it must be.

Orochimaru hands her her grandfather’s necklace and Tsunade can’t breathe. She will not cry. Not here.

Then he tells her

'we’re at war, after all.’

iv.
Orochimaru only agrees to the scouting mission because Sarutobi says it’s safe enough if he’s there. He got the good team this year, and both of Nawaki’s teammates are good at scouting. He doesn’t need to be told that, he reminds Sarutobi, because he’s their sensei, but still-- Tsunade...

Will understand.

Of course she will.

So Orochimaru accepts the scroll, preparing himself for the delighted screeches of young, impressionable genin who still think this is a noble profession.

(He does his damnedest to squash that idea, but they hope and talk and believe. It’s been six and a half months, and Orochimaru resigns himself to waiting for them to lose hope organically.

It will hurt them.)

v.
His only childhood memory of his parents, just before they died, consists of one sentence, whirring in his head over and over again

'we’re at war, after all.’

and they are. They finally are. Years of political tension are finally too much and they’re at war and it makes bitter laughter stick in his throat until he very consciously has to swallow air like it’s a piece of rations that he didn’t chew properly.

They’d been too young to properly understand the first war, and now the second is doing the same to children only barely older than they were.

(They’re children. They’re growing up too quickly.

Tsunade’s words pierce his thoughts and it takes all his pragmatism to remind himself that it’s what Konoha needs. Killers. Not children.)

He stops, intending to pull his team back but Nawaki is too quick, too excited, and so are his teammates, and Orochimaru doesn’t think too desperately on it because at the end of the day it’s still Fire Country and it’s a c-class--

The explosion sends pieces of them flying for miles and the fact that Nawaki’s necklace survives is nothing short of a miracle.

It’s the only part of his cell that remains in one piece.

He picks up every last scrap of their bodies that he can find and tries to ignore the fact that his throat burns and that other jonin are staring like they can’t quite believe that the genius student of Sandaime is wasting his time recovering the pieces of his students instead of destroying the enemy.

(It will kill them.)

vi.
Jiraiya finds him back at his apartment, collapsed against a wall with a bottle of wine in one hand and half a poisoned senbon in the other. The realisation that he forgot to set up his security measures or even lock the door knocks distantly at his mind, like the muffled sounds of a visitor in next door’s constantly busy home.

“What the hell was that?!” Whispered rage pours out of Jiraiya’s mouth because he cannot contain it, because Tsunade is broken and Orochimaru is thoughtless and cruel. Killing intent doesn’t pour off Jiraiya, because he doesn’t know how to want to kill anyone, but nevertheless, he casts a heavy air across Orochimaru’s living room that makes his teammate stare up at him with bleary, unfocused eyes and a halfhearted attempt at a sneer.

(Because Tsunade is broken and so is he and Jiraiya keeps leaving instead of saving them)

“The truth. We are at war. Casualties are to be expected.” Bland words, repeated like reading from the Academy textbooks. They’re at war. Everyone needs to remember that attachments will only hinder.

(He especially needs to.)

“Why would you say that to her? She just lost her brother!”

“I just lost my entire team!” The words spill out in a cracked shout and the sound of something from next door makes Orochimaru realise that he’d been loud enough to attract the neighbours’ attention.

(He’d never failed at anything before. Every jutsu, every mission a success, completed with ease.)

Jiraiya flops down next to him and wrenches the bottle from his hands, looking for a droplet and finding nothing. He fiddles with the remnants of Moriko’s senbon and it’s so easy to see the way she would grin and fling handfuls of them at targets again and again until she hit bullseye every time.

He’d poisoned the batch she took with her himself, just to be sure she’d protect the boys if something went wrong.

“Why say that, then?” Exhaustion weighs Jiraiya’s voice down to a slow hiss and it won’t be until the morning when - suffocated by headaches and hate - that Orochimaru realises it’s because he’s blaming himself for disappearing. The senbon pierces his finger and if he hadn’t immunised himself against all his creations, Orochimaru would be a frothing mass on the floor in under ten seconds.

Drink makes the reason spill out. His last conversation with his parents, the way that sentence stuck in his mind every day since the war began and how he hadn’t thought at all when he told Tsunade that.

How accidental it all was.

(So many things were accidental, but never in his life has Orochimaru allowed an accident to win out over him. So many options, so many plans and counters for even the force that is Jiraiya.

Powerlessness spills across him like a freezing bucket of water and he cannot breathe, cannot look at the way Jiraiya’s face scrunches in sympathy and misery.)

Jiraiya doesn’t speak for half an hour, and then only to say

’sometimes i think i shouldn’t have left.’

vii.
It takes another month for Jiraiya to get Tsunade and Orochimaru back in the same room. They’d both buried their grief - Tsunade blazing into the Hokage’s meetings with his council like an Uchiha’s fireball and demanding reforms to the system to allow more medical shinobi in combat; Orochimaru working himself half to death with constant missions that drag him as far from Konoha as physically possible - but he can see that each of them obsess over avoiding each other.

He tricks them with the oldest one in the book and feels terrible about it, but when Tsunade enters the private room at the Morino Cafe - Orochimaru already sat down with a cup of tea - Jiraiya activates a seal that even her monstrous strength and Orochimaru’s knowledge couldn’t break.

“You two will talk. Now.” He’s rarely the disciplinarian of the group, and even less often the mediator. It feels strange to watch his teammates glare at each other.

(Shouldn’t this be any other configuration? Orochimaru sighing while restraining Tsunade? Tsunade yelling at both of them while he pouts and Orochimaru huffs? When has he ever been the one keeping them together?)

“You promised.” Tsunade’s voice cracks and she breaks her glower to dip her head towards the table and hide her tears with shoulders she tries to square (and fails).

“I did.” Orochimaru doesn’t flinch, but his eyes unfocus in that same way they did when Jiraiya found him drunk at home and his jaw is all too tight. He turns his face from the table, finding something all too fascinating about the bare wall opposite Jiraiya.

“You mocked me.” Her voice is harder, her fingers digging into the table and her chakra dangerous with intent.

“That... Those words were an accident.” Jiraiya notes the careful choice of words and it seems Tsunade does too, because she removes her hands from the table and the spike of chakra Jiraiya feels disappears back to a pleasant buzz instead of a sharp knife of deathly wishes. Her eyes lock with his, her lips tugged to one side in confusion at the statement and Jiraiya shakes his head just a little.

(Leave it.)

“I-- I’m not going to forgive you,” she decides and Jiraiya’s eyes widen, ready to protest, but

“You don’t have to... Nor would I expect it.”

Jiraiya sighs.

(Is this good enough?)

’sometimes i think i shouldn’t have left.’