Chapter Text
Orochimaru’s thin lips curled into a smirk, rendering him even more snake-like than usual. Ten-ten Sato – the mouse caught in his narrow eyes – stood paralyzed in the doorway of his sleek laboratory. Swallowing every hateful word about his travesty of a pardon, she bowed her head to thank him for his hospitality. Her manners wouldn’t fade so easily, not after her mother’s years of inculcation.
Ten-ten inched the toe of her boot past the threshold, away from safety. A week ago, Orochimaru had asked whether she was ready to change her life. If so, he invited her to pay him a visit. With Ten-ten ensnared, her host seemed content to stall her with stilted pleasantries.
Fortunately, Orochimaru wasn’t good at casual conversation. And Ten-ten refused to fill the lulls in their exchange with anything but pointed hums and sighs of impatience. Once she finished with a clipped remark about the snowy weather, Orochimaru rubbed his palms before his chest. Finally, she thought. He’d tell her why he now targeted a kunoichi past her peak, now an indebted shopkeeper.
“I didn’t bring you here for idle chit-chat, as much as I enjoy your company.”
“Tell me – what did you mean by change?” she pressed, hissing out the word change like poison from her tongue.
Ten-ten crossed her arms while Orochimaru raised his thin black brow. The upward tilt of his chin confirmed he could see the defeated woman beneath her defiant mask.
Bile gathered on her tongue every time her parents asked about her life. No, Mom and Dad, I haven’t found another boyfriend, she’d said far too many times to count. Ten-ten dated a few men in the years after the war – Kiba, Shino and a civilian accountant. But no relationship lasted more than a year. She suspected they left partly out of reluctance to replace her son’s father.
Of course I’m thinking of Jiro. He’s my son, she’d insist in response to her mother’s reproachful smile. Her father then pressed her into admitting that the debts on her shop still mounted month by month. No, Dad, I’m not closing the shop and moving back in with you, Ten-ten would snap with a bit too much force. In peacetime, a weapons shop had little purpose beyond hosting curiosities for passing children and offering a public restroom.
Adulthood had whittled down Ten-ten’s ambitions. She no longer dreamed of achieving Tsunade Senju’s greatness. Her current dreams only extended to filling the persistent hollow in her chest.
“Oh, forgive me for being so direct, but I’m not unaware of your ongoing woes. Ten-ten Sato. You’ve been awfully empty inside since he died, no?”
A hot flush spread across her cheeks at the sound of her unmarried name, emphasized with a cutting edge. Ten-ten squared her shoulders to assert herself, a trick Might Gai taught his genin in one of their first lessons.
“I can live with my choices, thank you very much.”
Ten-ten turned her back to Orochimaru and huffed. At least he possessed enough tact not to speak his name before her, but the careful omission did little to temper Ten-ten’s outrage. The tatters of her fragile pride asserted themselves. She remained an independent mother, kunoichi and shopkeeper, even if she didn’t exactly flourish on any of those fronts. Change could arrive in its own time, on her terms.
“Will this be all, Orochimaru? I have a son at home and my mom can’t watch him forever –”
“Ten-ten, do you ever wonder what’s possible with the power of science? I believe you would be the perfect pilot for my newest experimental...ah, remedy.”
Her heart beat ever faster at her ribcage, followed by a chill that reached her core. Knowledge of Orochimaru’s terrible human experiments tugged at the back of her mind. With his twisted ideas of perfecting the human form, his “remedy” probably involved unspeakable distortions to her body or mind. Ten-ten rebuked herself for ever entertaining his offer out of willful ignorance of what it would likely involve.
“I’m not interested. Have a good evening.”
Orochimaru dropped his coy act and turned the chill in her bones into an outright freeze.
“Wouldn’t you like to see him again?”
The kunai twisted in her heart, stalling her mid-step. Ten-ten wanted to scream at him, and at herself.
“I’m not going along with whatever sick jutsu you’ve devised now. Certainly not the second hokage’s edo tensei,” she spat.
Ten-ten kept her back turned so he couldn’t see her quivering hands. “Fuck you. Neji would never want me to –”
“Oh, but Ten-ten, you misunderstand me,” Orochimaru hummed. “There are no jutsu involved here, only science. You think so little of me – I would never sacrifice another life in the name of what I’ve promised you.”
“Science?”
Ten-ten pivoted, fighting her reluctant muscles every step of the way. The air rang with unstated tension between them. Amusement danced in Orochimaru’s eyes, which tapered at the corners as he grinned.
“Follow me and I’ll show some of my experiments. You see, I’m at the stage where I’ve been able to create a human body from nothing but a few cells of the original. But I’ve yet to bring any to life.”
The cadence of Orochimaru’s words assumed the excited rhythms of an eager child. She heard no malice, no manipulation in his voice – only pride in his achievement.
Against her better instincts, Ten-ten’s boots anchored her to floor. One foot in front of the other. The door’s that way, she urged herself. You haven’t forgotten how to walk, have you? Orochimaru leaned against a stainless steel counter with his hands on his hips. Turned to helpless prey by her morbid curiosity, Ten-ten nodded and followed him toward a walk-in freezer. Thick white fog dispersed into the sterile air of his main laboratory once Orochimaru opened the freezer door.
The intriguing remark about a few cells snagged in her mind. Mulling them over, her resistance eroded just a touch. Ten-ten could supply a few cells from her former lover. After the funeral she refused to attend, Hinata gifted her a lock of clean black hair in a fabric-lined box. It still sat in her closet behind every old team photo and every gift from Rock Lee, Neji or Might Gai.
No. No absolutely not. Hinata didn’t give that to you for some fucked up science project, Ten-ten declared silently.
“Why the hesitation, Ten-ten? You’re dressed for the cold already. It might even be warmer in here than it is outside.”
Orochimaru’s chuckles released white puffs into the space between them.
“Coming,” she answered, her voice drained of venom.
Damn it. Something tugged Ten-ten forward.
She squeezed her eyes shut and followed him down the corridor surrounded by glass cylindrical vats of blue brine. Within the vats, Ten-ten found the limp forms of naked men and women, their shoulders bowed forward and eyes closed. At the corridor’s end, an empty vat loomed over them.
“W-who are these people?” she asked. “Have you been going around offering this to others?”
The glow of faint blue light cast pale shadows across Orochimaru’s angular features. He tilted his head and clucked his tongue at her.
“Oh, no. You’re special, Ten-ten. This is research sanctioned by the village, and these...kind souls donated their bodies to science.”
“The village…!”
“Yes. These cloned bodies are being grown for organ donations from donor cells, to keep the hospital well stocked. They’ll never know a single thought, or a single feeling,” he explained a silky, leisurely drawl.
“What the...seriously, what the hell?”
Ten-ten stared with her jaw hanging ajar. She couldn’t summon anything but shock, though she wished she felt even a trace of disgust.
“Top secret at the moment, to avoid the outrage of small-minded people. But I know you have an open mind. I’ve been searching for ways to take this work a step forward.”
What next steps did Orochimaru imagine? A shudder coursed up her spine once the realization hit her.
“And that’s where your...uh, offer comes in? Bringing back the person’s mind, too? So they’re not just inanimate bodies.”
The image of Neji returning to her swelled Ten-ten’s heart. After the numbing shock dissipated, she envisioned herself rushing to embrace him. Their years apart gave Ten-ten so much to say – especially about their child. Like his father, Jiro Sato twitched his lip to suppress greater expressions of irritation. Neji peeked through in her son’s feathery brows, and in his delicate nose and lips. She pictured the meeting of father and son, the awe-struck grin on Jiro’s face. Jiro knew he resembled Aunt Hinata, Aunt Hanabi and Great-uncle Hiashi. But he had never even seen a photograph of his father.
“Clever. You’re correct. I’ve yet to merge consciousness and body, though not out of my inability or lack of confidence in my science.”
Orochimaru didn’t dole out favors out of compassion. Whatever burning venom the former missing-nin inspired in her, Ten-ten saw him as a self-interested man first and foremost.
“Hm. Bringing him back would be impossible,” she interjected. “I could give you his hair. Him – that’s another matter. Copying his body means nothing to me.”
Unexpected tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as memories rushed past her. Ten-ten recalled the soft smile he reserved for her and their last kiss, given so hastily and without care.
“You misunderstand me, Ten-ten. I know perfectly well that personality isn’t stored in our genetic code. The village collects comprehensive personality profiles on every single shinobi of jounin rank or higher. Memories, too. For optimal teamwork, they say. My theory is that they want to keep tabs on any powerful shinobi who may defect.”
“I had no idea.”
“Neither do most of the subjects. The Yamanaka come in handy,” Orochimaru continued. “Neji Hyuga showed no signs of disloyalty to his dying day.”
“No. He’s not a traitor.”
Bracing his hand on the smooth surface of a vat, Orochimaru ignored the implied slight in Ten-ten’s answer. Then he paced before her, running his slender fingers across every glass vat he passed.
“I have years of data on him. Unfortunately, that data stops at age 18. So while I may be able to age his body to your current level, he won’t be at your level of maturity.”
“He was mature for his age.”
“Indeed. That’s also what his profilers said. Other notes I found – emotionally repressed with few exceptions. Attachment style tends toward fixation on one person as his sole object of romantic love...”
A whimper stalled in Ten-ten’s throat. She covered her mouth with a cupped palm and muttered a curse. I’ll always find my way back to you, he’d said on the war’s eve. I promise you my life. If Neji lost her, no doubt he would attempt every means to restore her to him. In the background, Orochimaru clicked his tongue and hummed, telling Ten-ten that her weakness was no vice.
“That sounds like him, alright.”
Reduced to a shaken mess, Ten-ten curled her shoulders like a little girl abandoned in the cold. The freezing air around her stung her cheek as the hot tears froze.
“Don’t you want him back?”
Orochimaru’s follow-up question sounded almost like a taunt. Ten-ten’s eyes darted sidelong toward one of the vats and lingered. Her stomach turned – the blonde woman in the vat bobbed impassively.
“You’re being awfully insistent. Tell me – why? And don’t give me any of that shit about charity and how you feel bad for a poor soul like me.”
Drawing the halves of her wool overcoat across her chest, she gave Orochimaru a glare through narrowed eyes. He grinned, exposing teeth far too straight and white. His laughter swung his tomoe earrings in little circles. Ten-ten didn’t imagine she looked intimidating with her coat splattered by slush from the street or her bangs tangled atop her forehead. Still, she wanted him to know her disapproval of him and the vile experiments he called science.
“You can’t expect me to be an entirely selfless man, not when I’m expending my own resources and knowledge for your sake. But I am a man motivated by science and discovery, and I need you to accomplish it.”
“Ha, if you say so.”
“According to hidden leaf regulations under our benevolent seventh hokage, I need your consent to attempt this. I get your signature on the consent forms and you get the much greater reward.”
His soft hiss at the word reward elicited shivers across the back of her neck. Ten-ten was his dupe, and Orochimaru had no qualms about disrespecting Neji’s memory. Part of her apparently didn’t hesitate to involve Neji in the twisted scheme either.
“Shut up,” she screamed, directing her boiling anger at Orochimaru and the crush of voices in her mind.
Ten-ten’s pulse thundered against her temple. Despite her deep, rattling breaths, it refused to slow. Run, run, run. This time, her flight instincts overpowered her and cut her free of the lead anchoring her feet down.
“I’ll be here, Ten-ten. Come back to me if you’d like to change your mind.”
Orochimaru maintained his veneer of courtesy, seemingly unaffected by her scorn. He even held the freezer door open and escorted her to the door of his main laboratory.
“I’m not coming back. Find someone else.”
He gave her a little wave as she returned to the icy streets outside. Fucking bastard, Ten-ten thought. Though she quickly put distance between herself and the laboratory, an invisible tether tugged at her back. Its pull remained with her all the way back to her apartment, a run-down brick annex upstairs of a teahouse. She pulled the doorknob just-so while twisting her key in the lock. From experience, Ten-ten knew the rusted old lock’s teeth wouldn’t align otherwise.
With a shrill groan, the door opened along rusty hinges, alerting Jiro, who ran to greet her in a flurry of footsteps. Ten-ten’s face split in an involuntary grin when her son collided with a squeal and a hug.
“Mom!”
“I’m home, dear. Hopefully you didn’t give Grandma too much trouble, hm?”
“No, I’d never. Grandma’s on the couch if you want to talk to her.”
No, I don’t think I do, she wanted to tell him.
“I’d love to, but I think she has to get going soon.”
You would love him, Neji, Ten-ten whispered in her mind. Maybe he’d get you to stop being so damn uptight all the time.
“Aunt Hinata showed me a picture today,” Jiro whispered. “A picture of my dad.”
Every ounce of air rushed from Ten-ten’s lungs before her son’s reproachful, accusing gaze. Reserved, shy Jiro wasn’t the kind of boy who vented his temper in explosive bursts. Normally, Ten-ten thanked the gods she didn’t suffer the tantrums that plagued other parents of 11-year-old boys. But today, she just wanted him to scream, call her a terrible mother and stomp to his bedroom.
He slouched back into the couch cushions and clutched his shins. Skinny arms looped across the knobby peaks of his knees. Wrapped in a defensive little ball, he closed himself off from his mother’s probing eyes.
“Oh, I see,” Ten-ten breathed out. “Do you...have anything you want to talk about?”
That was what good parents did, Ten-ten reminded herself. After their children approached them in crisis, they provided an ear to listen, console and advise. Truthfully, she wanted to do none of that. She wished she could erase Jiro’s memory with a jutsu or send him back to Hinata or her parents. But Jiro already spent too much time shunted between a rotation of volunteer babysitters. All because Ten-ten’s business left her unable to pick him up from the ninja academy during the week.
“No, nothing. I’m okay, Mom.”
“Are you sure? I’m here for whatever you want to say. Promise I won’t get mad, okay?”
Ten-ten could read Jiro well enough to know everything he wouldn’t say. In the fine wrinkle between his brow, Jiro concealed far too many thoughts to comfortably express. Or he wanted to preserve her peace of mind. He heard far too much about how the debts and taxes piled up while customers stayed away. When the loneliness and boredom of her daily routine became unbearable, Ten-ten could only ramble to her utterly bewildered son. Yet according to every convention, good mothers didn’t unload their burdens on their children either.
Listing out all her faults led Ten-ten to conclude she wasn’t a good mother – but she could play the role for Jiro’s sake.
“It’s not fair. Boruto has a dad and so does everyone else.”
A flash of heat rose in Ten-ten’s core. Anger flickered across her face, and Jiro tucked himself into a corner of the couch.
“Well, I didn’t choose for your dad to die.”
Your dad chose to die and leave us. A good citizen of the shinobi world would have celebrated Neji Hyuga’s sacrifice, praised him for saving the world as they knew it. A good woman would lend charity to Neji even if she didn’t exalt his choice or forgive it. Selfish, petty Ten-ten wasn’t a good woman either. She figured she needed to pretend so Jiro could grow up into the person she couldn’t be.
“Your dad was a hero, Jiro,” she added. “He saw there were more important things than me...than us, alone.”
Jiro’s hands splayed on either side of his face, a low groan sounding from the base of his throat. His mother’s equivocations seemed to frustrate him more, rather than offering the comfort she expected.
“I know you didn’t choose for dad to die, Mom. Never mind. I’m going to read in my room.”
Even when his anger spilled over, Jiro kept his voice level and slid from the couch with a muted whump.
“Wait! Jiro, I’m sorry –”
“I get that he’s dead and it’s not your fault, and I should just accept it. But I feel like I don’t have a dad at all. I didn’t even know what he looked like. Nobody tells me anything because of you.”
“Me?”
Yet again, the world conspired to remind Ten-ten of her mistakes, and their reverberations in Jiro’s life. The boy nodded once, driving spikes into his mother’s heart.
“Today Aunt Hinata felt bad for me and showed me some of her pictures of Dad when he was a kid. She stopped me before I flipped to the ones from his funeral, though.”
“Oh, I actually didn’t go to your dad’s funeral,” Ten-ten sighed, the words slipping before she could consider them. She twisted her fingers in her lap. “I couldn’t take it. I already saw him dead once and that was enough to give me nightmares for weeks.”
“Aunt Hinata told me you loved Dad a lot. She thinks...that’s maybe why none of your boyfriends wanted to stay.”
“I did, yes. After he died...well, I put everything about your dad behind me so I wouldn’t think of him. You make it hard, though.”
Still being a bad mom, as usual, Ten-ten sighed to herself. Blaming an 11-year-old for her enduring grief was the least constructive way to explain her struggle. Then Jiro – the wonderful, sometimes puzzling child that he was – giggled into his hands. His brown eyes peeked over the tips of his fingers at Ten-ten’s bewildered expression.
“Dad looked mad in all the pictures, though. Even the ones with you.”
The corners of her lips pinched. The few photographs Hinata kept weren’t Jiro’s best introduction to his father, who almost never smiled before cameras. But Ten-ten still recoiled from showing the ones in her collection, photographs taken at team outings and celebrations.
“Hm. He hated cameras, even when he was your age. He also didn’t...well, he didn’t have a happy life when he was a kid. So there wasn’t much reason for him to smile most of the time.”
A mere mention of the Hyuga clan’s dark past was enough to make him dip his chin in acknowledgment. Even a generation earlier, the clan would have punished a bastard child’s existence by ensuring he never drew breath outside his mother’s womb.
“Oh. I hope Dad was happy before he died.”
“He was, dear. We were happy, even if...uh, we didn’t have long.”
A rush of affection prompted Ten-ten to run her hand through Jiro’s clipped hair – black and fine like his father’s. Her son bowed his head to let her rub behind his ears the way she did in his younger years. Mother and son shared a quick laugh. The easy affection in Jiro’s eyes made Ten-ten dare hope that she wasn’t a completely terrible mother. She supposed he couldn’t help loving his mother in the pure way only children could. Most days – after Ten-ten locked the shop and Jiro finished academy homework, they only had each other’s company.
“I wish Dad could see you, Jiro. He’d smile if he saw you, how much you look like both of us. Your dad’s smiles were so rare that I’d sometimes ask if I was dreaming.”
“Then we could be happy together. That sounds nice.”
Jiro’s lips pursed.
His eyes drifted over to the empty far side of the couch. The old couch from Shikamaru’s house was meant to seat a family of three or four. The vacancy occasionally reminded Ten-ten of the third person who would bookend their son or sit next to her with his arm around her shoulder.
“I know. I know, dear.”
Jiro settled on the couch with Ten-ten’s hand entangled in his hair, their soft breaths filling the air between them. If Jiro had a father, he wouldn’t need to send his Father’s Day crafts to Ten-ten’s father, who accepted them with more pity than gratitude. He’d no longer face the teasing of classmates who spread rumors about his mother or asked where his father was.
Ten-ten considered telling Jiro that someone had offered a way to raise his father. Or – an imitation of his father created by a borderline insane ninja scientist. She also thought of the pictures in her closet – the ones where Neji smiled and even a few snapshots where he flashed his teeth. Swallowing the bitter guilt on her tongue, Ten-ten embraced Jiro from behind and kissed the top of his head.