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"Orochimaru-san," said Kabuto, "I don't think this is a good idea."
"Nonsense," said Orochimaru briskly, holding out his hand. Kabuto dutifully passed him the pickled arm. "My physique has been heavily modified for years and my health has only improved. This is a relatively minor rearrangement."
"Orochimaru-san, the jutsu required you to transfer between vessels every three years," Kabuto pointed out in as mild and conciliatory a tone as he could muster.
"And I have fixed that little problem, thanks to this very research in which we are currently engaged." Orochimaru's nostrils flared. Kabuto passed him a foot in silence. He knew that expression well: Orochimaru would not be moved. He would also not want to hear that, strictly speaking, it was not he who had fixed the problem.
"Really, it's no more than conventional shinobi medicine, as you should well know. More or less the same procedure has been performed for years, albeit not for this length of time." Orochimaru formed some seals; Kabuto waited politely in case they had an effect, but as usual, the arm and foot did nothing. "This would be so much more effective if we could get them as children," Orochimaru said, squinting impatiently at the severed, pickled limbs.
"Yes, Orochimaru-san." He nearly bit his tongue in correcting the automatic -sama. Orochimaru had at least stopped pursing his lips at every emendation of his title. He tapped his long, manicured nails - attached to long fingers of square, capable hands - on the work surface instead, staring contemplatively at their test subjects.
Kabuto had once managed to create a poison that neutralised Wood Release, but even though it had been involved in the creation of Orochimaru's new vessel, which did not decay or even seem to age, neither of them had yet managed to isolate and replicate the effect. Tenma, or whatever he called himself these days, had proved entirely unhelpful on the subject; and Kabuto was no longer permitted to use his customary techniques to persuade him. He sometimes thought of those glory days wistfully. He had been so good at being bad.
"Really, Orochimaru-san," he said, "there's plenty of time. I do not currently lead a life fraught with danger. Most of my charges are too young to throw a kunai straight."
Orochimaru gave him a sidelong glance that said he was remembering how recently children of their age had been required to do just that, and that Kabuto had been one of them. Kabuto put on his blandest expression.
"Kabuto-kun, you are in constant danger, as you well know. How many attempts have there been this month?"
"Should I count the children leaving out their toys, apparently for the sole purpose of trying to trip me?"
Orochimaru now looked at him directly in the manner of an instructor staring down a misbehaving student. Kabuto met his golden stare. It still turned his bowels to water, as it was meant to, but it was better not to let Orochimaru know that. It would only give him a swelled head. Better for him not to think he could intimidate everyone.
"I wish you'd come and live here with me again," said Orochimaru at last, sulkily. He still hadn't broken eye contact. He did that more often, now: sharing emotional wants with Kabuto, not only practical ones. It would never have occurred to him before the War. Kabuto didn't think he would have felt the need. He still treated Kabuto as a subordinate, but also as something dangerously approaching a friend. Kabuto wondered whether Orochimaru had noticed.
Instead of asking, Kabuto simply raised his eyebrows to convey that he had other commitments that kept him away, and that Orochimaru would simply have to continue to cope with no longer being the sole focus of Kabuto's devotion.
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes to convey that he did not think this was a pardonable offence, but was nevertheless forced to accept this wanton dereliction of duty. Then his mouth curled into his familiar smirk.
"Of course," he said, turning away to sweep their specimens into a stasis scroll, "with this jutsu in progress, I will require the services of my doctor more regularly. I believe once every month, then once a fortnight...?" He resettled the knot of his sash so that the tiny bump of his stomach was displayed to better effect. Kabuto let his eyes settle on it once more, still not able to perfectly comprehend that Orochimaru had altered a jutsu meant for surrogacy and used it to get himself pregnant.
Obstetrics is not my area of specialisation, Orochimaru-san, he thought of saying, washing his hands of the whole ridiculous affair. But as ever there was only one thing - one weary, long-suffering thing - he could say to this violation of nature and common sense:
"Yes, Orochimaru-san."
~*~*~
Entirely contrary to all laws of nature and karma, Orochimaru had the easiest pregnancy Kabuto had ever seen. He was not sick, he was not emotionally imbalanced (at least, no more than normal), he was not swollen in odd places: he was, at most, more easily tired. The child developed in the womb at the proper rate, in the proper way, into a healthy boy. Orochimaru continued in all his usual activities with an aura of palpable smugness. It was tremendously irritating; but he hadn't glowed like this since before the War, so Kabuto supposed he could put up with it for the remaining thirty-two weeks. He vented his feelings by writing geriatric nulliparous on his charts: it was, after all, medically correct.
People, including non-medics, often found pregnancy fascinating: the matter of growing another human being inside oneself naturally provoked interest. Kabuto, though never one to marvel too long at the mysteries of life - too keen to reverse-engineer them - understood that there was a particular human reverence for pregnancy, even among shinobi.
He had never shared it, and after attending numerous childbirths he was quite certain he never would. Yet his eyes were always caught by Orochimaru's protruding abdomen, and he found himself visualising the fetus within, new developments on the sonogram and in his head as Orochimaru grew bigger and bigger and more and more self-satisfied, like a constrictor after consuming a particularly large and tasty antelope.
"I can feel his chakra," he told Kabuto, his hand on his own belly. "It's already exceptionally powerful. Can you feel it, Kabuto-kun?"
Kabuto could. Once he'd felt the fetus' chakra signature during the first ultrasound, he never quite lost the awareness of it. What he didn't tell Orochimaru was that once or twice while he was conducting an experiment, he had increased his awareness of that chakra, ensuring that all was well - and had felt it reaching for him, like a tiny hand.
On reflection, he suspected that Orochimaru already knew this and simply felt no need to talk about it. He probably knew why, as well, which was one up on Kabuto. It was probably part of why he was so smug.
Two weeks before the due date, Orochimaru began to sleep twelve hours a day. Kabuto's rigorous, exhaustive testing found nothing wrong with the child, but ongoing chakra depletion in Orochimaru.
Orochimaru flatly refused - of course - to end the jutsu.
"You do worry, Kabuto-kun," Orochimaru told him from his bed, wiping gel from his taut swollen belly. "Surely you don't find it extraordinary that the last stage takes a great deal of energy?"
Orochimaru could be as blasé about the dangers of experimental jutsu as he liked: he slept a lot during that fortnight, but Kabuto slept little. He left the care of the orphanage to Urushi and stayed at Orochimaru's base, in his old room in their old hide-out.
It was easy to forget that Orochimaru was in fact sixty years old now, despite the youth of his new vessel. The jutsu had originally been designed for and tested on women, and altering it to involve growing an entirely new organ rendered it unpredictable and potentially very dangerous. Kabuto set up constant monitoring and an extensive system of alarms and alerts.
In the end, Kabuto insisted on delivery one day before the original due date. Orochimaru's energy was dropping to dangerous levels, so low that even he had to ungracefully acquiesce.
It was like when Orochimaru's host had had its arms reduced to necrotised flesh, and Kabuto had done everything for him, even bathed him. He remembered the correct way to wash and oil Orochimaru's long, thick hair, working his fingers deep into the scalp, and enjoyed the memory of a different life.
Orochimaru's pregnant belly rose out of the water like a strangely smooth iceberg. Kabuto thought he saw the baby kick a couple of times, but Orochimaru did not move.
The incision was a little higher than it would be on a woman: Orochimaru's body had grown a uterus where it would fit. Kabuto curved his hands over Orochimaru's abdomen, feeling for the baby's chakra. As ever, it reached back for him. Curiosity? Familiarity?
Skin and muscle parted, the flesh reshaping under his hands - and there was a tiny pink hand reaching out. And then there was a whole infant, smooth-skinned and small - a throaty cry - and Orochimaru holding out his hands and a blanket to swaddle him.
"Congratulations," said Kabuto drily, once the infant was settled and Orochimaru stitched back up without thread. "He has his mother's eyes." He was also a shocking shade of pink - he had quite forgotten that newborns were so discoloured. And ugly.
Two pairs of slitted golden eyes blinked back at him, both radiating deep contentment with their lot in life. Two Orochimarus, Kabuto thought with a tinge of despair - and a little intrigue.
"Hold him for a moment," said Orochimaru, and passed the bundle over. Kabuto did. He hadn't held a baby in years - all the children at the orphanage had so far been at least toddlers when they arrived - but he remembered the principle of supporting the head.
The baby blinked slowly several times, as if drowsy, but seemed content to fix his gaze on Kabuto's face as well as his weak eye muscles would allow. It was probably the glasses, Kabuto thought absently. Small children, in his experience, were absolutely fascinated with glasses. Especially with whether they could take them off your face and maybe chew on them. He made sure not to lean in too close.
"There," said Orochimaru, and the release of chakra felt like a knot unravelling. And he was Orochimaru once more, belly flat, jutsu released. "Much better," he said, and went suddenly grey and sank back into his pillows.
Kabuto didn't say I told you so or Serves you right, you outrageous egotist as he swaddled Orochimaru as tightly as he had the baby, but he felt he made his feelings plain nevertheless.
The baby, cradled again in his mother-father's arms to be bottle-fed the artificial colostrum Kabuto had made up, merely continued to observe them both with thoroughly un-childlike eyes.
~*~*~
The baby's name was Mitsuki, and he did not sleep.
He didn't cry much, nor did he grizzle. He simply watched everything from his crib, set up in Orochimaru's room or in a lab during a less volatile experiment. And in flagrant defiance of the many books on infant development that Kabuto had read during this pregnancy, he did not sleep. Whenever Kabuto went to check on him, his eyes were open, roving around the room. He had not yet made his first smile - that was not due for another week or so - but privately Kabuto liked to think that Mitsuki was pleased to see him.
It was possibly, he mused, that being around children all the time - and, worse, having to be nice to them - had made him sentimental about them. This was surprising, because if anything Kabuto would have expected long exposure to children to make him less sentimental about them. He had heard what parents said about their children out of their hearing.
When he had given up his old life to dedicate himself to running the orphanage, he had hoped to be satisfied. He had not expected that he might enjoy it.
Kabuto travelled regularly between Konoha and Orochimaru's home - far more regularly than he had in past years. He might have thought more about Orochimaru too, but Orochimaru had been in his thoughts so often for so long that he couldn't honestly tell. And always, in the back of his mind, was Mitsuki.
He would like to have said that this was simply concern for an especially fascinating experiment; but the truth was that while Orochimaru could generally be trusted with delicate and important experiments, Kabuto had little confidence in his natural maternal instincts. In his experience, Orochimaru was marvellously gifted in turning the minds (and heads) of children just entering puberty; this said nothing about his ability to keep an infant alive.
So back and forth Kabuto went. He learnt the names of all the night sentries' wives and children and gained an intimate knowledge of the movements of Fire Country wildlife, losing a great deal of sleep in the process. It felt something like being a real shinobi again, not the soft, defanged half-ninja his forced retirement had tried to make of him.
Mitsuki would, of course, become a shinobi. He would be brought up to it, in the same way as Orochimaru and Kabuto themselves had; the way that there was supposedly no need for in this new great era of Peace. Kabuto thought about that every day when he sent the older children off to the Academy.
"Kabuto-kun," Orochimaru said to him one day as he was washing up after lunch, "I feel it would be expedient to put Mitsuki under the care of Konoha."
"Under the care of Konoha?" Kabuto turned around from the sink. Orochimaru was cradling a just-fed Mitsuki, who let out a few contented gurgles. "Please, Orochimaru-san, explain." He didn't imagine that Orochimaru intended to give the child up.
"For the purposes of socialisation with his peer group." Orochimaru wasn't looking at him, instead tapping Mitsuki affectionately on the nose to make his eyes cross. Kabuto turned back to the washing up.
"I see, Orochimaru-san." He did not see. Or rather, he understood perfectly that children generally required interaction with their peer group to learn appropriate behaviour and confidence; he did not understand why Orochimaru would suggest it for his offspring.
"The new generation should excel the old, Kabuto-kun," Orochimaru explained, in the tone of one who enjoyed pointing out other people's lack of vision to them. "Micchan will need to form bonds with shinobi of his age in order to reach his full potential. The effect of stunted social development is so...unsightly."
Kabuto, thinking of the numerous shinobi he had known who fitted that description precisely, had to conceed. Some would have put Orochimaru into that category too; but Kabuto knew quite well that Orochimaru's unique charm was not down to a lack of social understanding, but rather a lack of interest in performing it.
"He may even," Orochimaru continued, "find it expedient to pretend to be normal." He said this in the same tone as anyone else might have said 'imbecilic'.
"Orochimaru-san," said Kabuto with particular mildness, "you will forgive me if I say that any offspring of yours will find it very difficult to appear normal." Especially with those striking eyes, he thought but did not say. Orochimaru would only preen.
There was the touch of a purring laugh in Orochimaru's voice when he replied:
"Why, Kabuto-kun, isn't that excessively hard on our child?"
Kabuto did not break the bowl he was scrubbing. He put it down carefully instead.
"Our child? Orochimaru-san, I have of course been involved with Mitsuki's upbringing in an advisory capacity - like an uncle, if you will - but he is clearly your child." There was no way to give more explanation of just how true that was without being impolite.
Orochimaru snorted and Kabuto heard him shift Mitsuki to a more comfortable position in his arms. "Where do you think the other half of his DNA comes from, then?"
Kabuto took his hands out of the soapy water, wiped them, and turned around. Mitsuki was staring at him, unblinking. "I was under the impression that you had used a variety of genomes along with your own to produce Mitsuki, including a certain amount of Uchiha." There was something of Sasuke about the nose, he felt.
Orochimaru snorted again. "And just how Uchiha does he look, exactly? With that hair? Of course you're Mitsuki's other parent."
There was a delicate pause.
"Orochimaru-san," said Kabuto, "are you telling me that I am Mitsuki's father?"
Orochimaru frowned. "Kabuto-kun, I'm sure I told you this already. Yes, I used your genetic material to impregnate myself. I would hardly have chosen anyone else's."
Kabuto sat down. After a moment's consideration, he put his head between his knees.
"Uchiha genes were the other option," Orochimaru continued, "but upon consideration I felt that Uchiha Sasuke has certain defects that I would prefer not to be passed onto my child."
"Defects," Kabuto echoed, slightly muffled, recalling the teenaged Sasuke's training in the Land of Sound. Defects was a good way of putting it.
"In fact, all of the current bloodlines were unsuitable. Too much inbreeding, if you ask me. What's needed is some hybrid vigour. We'll have to see how the Uchiha girl turns out." Orochimaru's voice suggested he was seeing far into the future. "If she develops the Sharingan and an acceptable temperament, she'd do admirably for Mitsuki."
"A breeding program already, Orochimaru-san?" Kabuto asked. He had managed to sit upright again. Mitsuki was looking at him as if to say, What strange things adults do.
"Naturally." Orochimaru waved his free hand dismissively. "I realised that if all the current bloodlines were unsuitable, I would have to create my own!" He cast a fond look at Mitsuki. "Such an obvious solution, really."
"I suppose that makes me foundation stock," said Kabuto, having recovered his equilibrium. "Orochimaru-san, I'm flattered." That was only half-sarcastic. He had once taken Orochimaru's cells into himself, but he had never imagined that Orochimaru might want to do the same for his.
"As you should be," said Orochimaru proudly - and favoured him with the same look he'd just given Mitsuki.
Kabuto hadn't blushed without meaning to in years, and he didn't start now; but he did leave his chair and bend down to press a dry kiss to Orochimaru's smiling cheek.
"Upon reflection," he said into Orochimaru's ear, "I suppose we have been effectively married for quite some time."