🎧 "And from dusk to dawn we suffer from our immortality" or from the same song "After the dead lover's kiss you fall into a dreamBut with your second birth you're a prince in our mournful realm" I simply could not choose between the two. Nagato and Orochimaru
Pale, sickly fingers caress over the contours of a dead jaw. Pads tracing over all the angles of a dead man, marking the features of a cadaver that had once lived, yet now lived again in undeath.
It was a precious item atop God’s lap.One of his many deific masks of which he postured for worship, gathering both the admiration and ire of those who seek either conviction or forgiveness.
God stared down upon its resting face, a body present, his thoughts absent; he was ignoring his guest.
Orochimaru. The Ouroboros. The legendary sannin. Nagato committed the rumored titles well into memory, especially after the sweet fondness his previous master used to speak of it. Though, the old sage spoke of his companion as a man with ambition and personality, yet all God sees is inscrutable living-flesh chasing the supplanted pleasures of accrued knowledge.
Nagato’s companion here felt starved for eternity— seeking immortality with a subtle urgency. To a Layman, the ravenous desire was not obvious, but Nagato was not any man, for his eyes burdened him with far too much.
Insofar, immortality has not graced this man in any divine way other than under the suggestion of a steel scalpel and borrowed technique. And yet, it seems the concept was the connecting bridge between God and this non-believer.
Eternity was of latter concern. God’s work was in the present and will not be finished until his goal is complete. However, he supposes that he could live a life infinite. It only crossed his mind whenever Orochimaru drew near with a golden gaze that itched to swallow Nagato whole and curious hands that longed to drink all such potential from whatever remained of his holy body.
Perhaps he is mistaken. Perhaps, he wishes to be mistaken. The longer the other lingered, the more this meddling feeling troubled his divinity, this idea that what connects these two men was kinship.
Kinship under bloodied, conquered immortality.
God’s doubt deluded him that the white snake found itself an ephemeral match of no comparison. Beings of a higher consciousness with a timeline as generous as a millennium. Orochimaru’s touch was warm against his cool skin, his voice honeyed with deceit and innocuous interest. He touched on him with what felt like envy, but grasped with what tasted like fear. Death chased him like how fire clamored after the wax on a candlestick and while Nagato was not the answer to his solution— he was a step in the right direction.
Deities were iconographies. Ideas to behold, philosophies to be pondered. God did not mind extending his mercy and grace towards this wayward soul, yet it seemeth the more he flayed his dermal flesh towards the snake, the greedier he clung to it, sinking his teeth into the ever-rare warmth in a world so terribly cold.
It was beyond Nagato’s understanding what Orochimaru wanted. Truly wanted. What he had yearned for, nor did he care to know.
“ Orochimaru, “ God breathes, removing his loving hand from his favorite corpse and laying against the sunken cheek on a skull with its flesh strung too tight, “ indulge me your desires. “