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Chapter one: Tall Grass

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Orochimaru was not a wise man.

He never pretended to and never intended to be one, he found it too synonymous with the old decrepit men with hunched backs and crooked teeth that would leer at him as a genin. The ones who told him he would never amount to much of anything, that he was a waste just like his clan. The men like his teacher, the men like Jiraiya.

The men who died.

Orochimaru would never be like that, he had worked too hard and done too much to give up on who he was for something so mundane. He would not be touched by the cold hands of death, he would avoid it with the stubbornness that he never quite grew out of.

Instead of a wise man Orochimaru was a smart one, he was a man who knew everything. He did not pretend to think he was right or just, he simply knew the secrets whispered behind hands into the ears of the few and many. He was smart and cruel, he had a long list of grievances, of sins and wrongdoings that he cared very little for. Nevertheless, he did not bother to hide behind any guise. He simply was and this was always enough for him.

Until the world, as he knew it ended.

That's what happens when everything you know changes, you have to adapt and if there was nothing else he knew how to do, Orochimaru knew how to adapt to any situation. Maybe if he had the luxury of a future he could hold onto the thought of looking back and laughing at his situation. To reminisce over tea with Kabuto, or something equally stupid that he only wanted to do because it simply wasn't possible anymore.

He crawled on his belly, the shadows of the sun chilling his skin as he shifted through the grass. It was desperate, the need he could feel clawing up from his chest. Orochimaru had seen a lot in his long life, had done a great deal more and it was the first time that he couldn't think of a way out of this mess he managed to place himself in.

The Goddess who once was bound in the moon was a cruel being, eldritch and wild she turned her eyes about the battle-field her fingers outstretched as an entire army was felled. There was no way he could fight that, there was no hope for him to be able to survive Her no matter how much he had prevailed in the past.

No matter what he had done in his life, Orochimaru was still very much mortal.

There was a certain irony to it, that he had no chance to live as he was, so he had to find a way to live through others. It was the sort of sentimental nonsense he never thought he would be ensnared by, disgusting in its own manner. He slid into the cave, barely managing to make it to the meeting place they had agreed on for their last desperate gambit. Naruto and Kakashi stood further in their shoulders slumped as they checked the seals sprawled out on the ground.

"We don't have much more time, I hope that your seals will hold Uzumaki." He hadn't talked in weeks, the croak of his own voice startling in the thick silence between them. The blonde-haired man turned with a tired smile, none of the reservations his sensei seemed to hold against the Orochimaru in his face.

"You can do more than hope, old man, my seals are the best we have right now."

"You have a clone meditating? The nature chakra you can gather is one of the key elements of this plan." He murmured scanning the others work quickly to check for any obvious mistakes.

"You worry too much, everything will be alright."

"You do not worry enough!" He hissed narrowing his eyes in frustration at the other's blind optimism. They didn't get to this point because the world was good or just, they got here because it was cruel, and they were the jokes Gods told each other during family reunions.

"I don't think you have a right to have any opinion Orochimaru," Kakashi cut in sharply in defense of his student.

"I suppose my right was lost when I defected from Konoha then? Where is your precious village now Hatake?" Orochimaru smiled, his teeth flashing in the low light, "It's but a few shinobi in tents patiently waiting to be culled."

"Come on guys, let's not fight. We have jobs to do." Naruto said into the awkward silence.

"No, if the snake has something to say, he should just say it." Kakashi snapped.

He could feel his temper flare for a moment, hot like the chakra before a fire jutsu collecting at the back of his neck. Ultimately there has always been a reason that Orochimaru has never played well with others, they always let their emotions get in the way of what is needed to be done. In the end, they had a job to do, petty emotions did nothing but slow them down.

"My point, child, is that we are doomed. What we are doing now isn't even a fix for the world we are in right now, it's a gamble in the hopes that we can save whatever other dimensions there may be from the same fate, that one of us can live on while the others die to her." Orochimaru closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, "Naruto will not save us as we are, but he can save us as we could have been."

"You are a monster," Kakashi began slowly, stepping around the seals so he could stand within inches of the other man. He had seen better days, the angry scar over his sharingan seemed starker against his much too pale skin, his hair limp and dull compared to what it had once been, "You expect me to trust the word of a monster."

It really was a shame that the other ninja was so against him. Orochimaru wished, for a desperate moment, for him to understand that those choices were made and there was no changing them. He wasn't entirely sure he would change them if given the chance, the possibility of a much worst outcome stilling his hypothetical hand. At least he knew this evil, knew the madness that settled heavily in his own mind.

"I expect you to have no choice," his voice broke cutting him off for a moment before he cleared it, "you have no choice because I am the only one left who can help you. Everyone else is dead Hatake, and soon we will join them."

"You sound rather calm about that considering what you have done to avoid death."

"I am not a fool, this is not a world I wish to live in." He laughed, harsh and bitter, "I suppose death would be pleased to have the full set of Sannin."

They were silent, watching each other for a moment before moving on to finish the preparations for the jutsu. The set of signs, long and difficult considering they had to all be done simultaneously, was Orochimaru's own contribution to the plan. It had taken him months to figure out the signs that would be needed to match Uzumaki's seals, so their chakra would seamlessly meld to power the matrix.

It went shockingly well so he didn't understand why seeing the fallen god standing at the mouth of their cave near the end of their jutsu was so jarring. Nothing ever went well, after all, so why would it be a shock to have the worst possibility happen?

And there she stood, eyes wide and dark a single hand pressed against the stone of their cave wall, her very presence enough to almost bring Orochimaru to his knees. They were all frozen, her chakra filling the very air around them stilling their bodies as they trembled before her, their heartbeats the only sound they could hear.

It was in that moment that Orochimaru would later try to justify to himself. He had to do it, he would say in the dark of the night, he had to, or She would have won.

Orochimaru would never be a wise man.

The sealing matrix glowed, the jutsu finishing itself at the moment before She struck.

No, he would never be a wise man but, oh, was he a selfish one.

He stepped forward into the matrix and meeting eyes, so blue they hurt, gleaming with betrayal and then nothing.

The first thing that he knew was pain, pain so strong he forgot for a moment who he was. Forgot everything but the singular throbbing horror.

There is a theory about reincarnation that the pain of being born into the world is what makes you forget your past life, that in it your mind is cleansed so you can start anew.

Maybe the pain would cleanse him, maybe he could forget.

Orochimaru did not remember many things about his mother. In some moments he would remember silken hair brushing over his shoulder, eyes as golden as his own gleaming as fingertips grazed his features. He remembered sharp barbs and crooked smiles, a mouth full of dull teeth and a kunai in hand.

Above all else, he remembered every saying his mother passed onto him. In those moment's that he did not think he could move on, when the weight of the world seemed the lean on his narrow shoulders he remembered how she would sigh, running her fingers through his hair, and recite to him something he was sure was said to her by her own mother.

His Favorite, when he was younger, was 'ten people, ten colors.' It was a rather odd way of saying every person was different, with their own colors and ways of being.

He wondered now what color he may be.

He thought, at the moment at least, he would be rather muddied. Like the banks near where a sea met a river, brackish and unsure. He was probably an ugly color, stained by the things he had done and had yet to do.

Now, however, all that he was is that of a snake devouring itself, never feeling full, self-mutilation and desperation mixing in with the animalist need to continue. To survive. Forever begging to whatever god still listened to his pleas, greedy for more.

The only thing left to do was continue, to settle into the pain and be reborn on the other side.

The hospital bed he was on smelled like antiseptics and soap.

He didn't particularly know how he got here, the fact he was in a hospital at all suggested the jutsu was a success. The pain he vaguely remembered still seared behind his eyes, his body sore from the struggle he faced with something not unlike himself. Wrapped around that something he remembered the taste it left in his mouth as he consumed it, taking it into himself, the pain of merging, the sudden clarity of old memories and then the yawning nothing that came after.

He shifted, his head pounding as he pressed the tips of his fingers to his temple. He knew his body enough to know that the pain he was feeling wasn't all the odd spiritual ache. He remembered how Tsunade told him once that medics were always strange about headwounds, only the best were allowed to heal them and even then, they preferred to leave it to natures discretion.

What a shame.

"Oh!" A voice called from the doorway, a nurse probably half Orochimaru's height stood there nervously shuffling her feet. "It's good to see you are awake."

"What is today's date?" His voice rasped oddly for a moment, he felt raw and uneven, strange in his own skin like those moments after he took a new body. It had been so long since he was himself, it was strangely like coming home.

"It's the same day, you were only out for a few hours. You gave everyone in the lab quite the scare sir, just falling unconscious like that. The Doctor will be by soon to talk to you about any test results, so we know what might have caused it." She bustled into the room quickly checking his vitals and then flashed lights in his eyes to check the dilation of his pupils before smiling nervously down at him, "Why don't you try to get some more sleep in the meantime, you had a nasty knock on the head so that must hurt, and you could definitely use the rest. We will have someone come in and wake you up every few hours if the Doctor probably won't be able to get to you until tomorrow morning."

"Thank you."

"Of course, sir! Let us know if you need anything."

And just like that he was alone again.

He slept in the silence.

He was released from the hospital that night, they believe him to have mild amnesia, which is fine with him. There was nothing more they could do and his abilities as a shinobi was not affected so it didn't really matter.

He managed to establish where he was in the timeline at least. It was ten years before the Kyuubi would be released, he was 28 years old, Tsunade had already left the village, Jiraiya at her heels while he stared at their backs. It stung a great deal more than it should, the wound left by their abandonment fresher than he remembered it being.

The only bright side he could think of was that Naruto wasn't the one to step through the seal, the fact that he had been thrown back so far into the past showing that they had miscalculated somewhere and all they would have done was killed the blonde-haired boy.

There was so much he had to do, he was already tired.

His first act of business would be figuring out a way to kill Zetsu, the original plan was to burn the creature with a corrosive jutsu that utilized the Kyuubi's chakra but that wasn't really an option anymore.

If he were to be completely honest he wasn't even sure if he would follow through with what he originally did and end up a missing-nin. It would get him access to Zetsu and it would be a good way to experiment with different ways to kill Zetsu since the creature was partially composed of Hashirama's DNA and the only way he would be able to get to such a sample would be to work with Danzo once again.

Orochimaru sighed, there were so many options that he could pursue, none of them particularly glamorous. Once upon a time, the answer would have been simple, and he wouldn't even be questioning what he should be doing. Now all he ever will be is a tired old man, unbalanced, wanting nothing more than a moment to catch his breath and rest.

"This is why it should have been you who was sent back, Naruto, you are far nobler than I ever could dream to be." He paused pulling his own hair back in a high ponytail as he gazed evenly at the mirror, "Nevertheless I will do anything to ensure she is never a problem you have to face."

The boy inspired loyalty in anyone he spoke to, Orochimaru was certainly not immune to such charisma.

Notes:

This is my personal characterization of Orochimaru, I feel like he is a deeply misunderstood character. I'm not saying he's a good person or anything but I think he became the way he was for a number of reasons. Part of what this story will be is trying to understand those reasons, the other part is because black. is a cruel goddess of rare pairs and after reading A Snake In the Grass, A Wolf At the Door I ship Oro and Sakumo.