[Naruto] Softly Say Goodnight

[rampantrecs]

Title: Softly Say Goodnight
Author: Chevira Lowe
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic violence. Disturbing thoughts, disturbing happenings.
Story Links: FFnet
Author Links: FFnet
Summary: Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade as a Team. How they began, and why they fell apart.

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His dreams are monochromatic, streaked with crimsons and vermilions and pastel-pinks to hide the darkness. Shot through with fire and ice stained red with blood. He dreams about the way he embeds a kunai in someone's eye and how, when he pulls it out, the eyeball comes with it. He dreams about eviscerating someone, and in his dream, it's just a child. Sometimes it looks like his sister.

Those nights, he wakes up screaming.

But he's not screaming now. There's no point, so he merely functions on as low a level as he possibly can without slipping up and dying. Everything is mechanical, cleanly efficient and frighteningly fragile. Time splinters away from him like it's caught up in a shimmering net of spider silk and it's all he can do to just keep moving.

So he kills. He kicks a woman to her knees, grabs up a handful of her long hair and jerks her head back to slit her throat. The spray of blood arcs all the way to Tsunade, who scrubs a hand across her eyes to clear her vision. It's not hard at all to split open the cartilage of a windpipe, and the woman gurgles as she falls. He licks flecks of liquid life from his lips and pretends he doesn't like the taste.

And then he keeps fighting to purge his cenotaph of sins. Maybe if it bleeds enough, maybe it can all wash away.
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Reccer's Notes: Sannin fic! with a focus on Orochimaru, and his fall from grace.