They are at a bar, the evening is warm, the people are cheerful, the drinks are free, and they are surrounded by familiar and trusted faces. This is no time to be feeling more blue than the curaçao cocktail sitting in front of them. One of far too many in their light weight system. Loosening a tongue that was far too cutting and dangerous to be so honest. But then, they remind themself, they are also only in their twenties, and had already been swept up in the dealings of multiple wars, civil and global. Assignments since they were seven. Orphaned since they were six. So really - what right did any technicality the universe could offer have to tell them they ought to wait for the ‘appropriate time’?
Their golden eyes are watching him, the way his hand fits around the entire glass, the way he so quickly gets through each drink - yet somehow seems to be more sober than the serpent. How the white hair framing his face moves with him when he laughs, the shape of his eyes and lips when he smiles, the little glances he steals between them and Tsunade.
And if they were being fair - which they self admitted they were not, and refused to be - they may realize that for every glance he steals at Tsunade, he gives one to them. That every time he offers her a drink, he offers them one. That if both they and she were cold, he would forfeit his jacket and then his shirt so both of his team mates were content. It should be enough. But when was anything enough for the viper? Especially when they found themself brooding a little too much.
Because that was perhaps, one thing no one had found the trick to saving them from. Not since the day their parents died. Not since they caught a glimpse at the monsters in this world, and became so haunted by the prospect, that they imagined these monsters even when all was peaceful. Tormented by a monster once real and now more commonly fabricated. So as they move the straw in their glass, stabbing at the drink more than indulging it, they can not help their quip. The moment their teammate makes some statement, promise or playful joke about keeping the serpent and Senju princess safe, their golden eyes snap up and away from their drink. Not at all within the realm of festivity as Tsunade and Jiraiya offered. No, their voice, regardless of the smile they offer that shows little more than teeth, is coated in venom and tactless query.
“What if you could only save one of us?”
It isn’t a fun question, it doesn’t hold any playfulness. It is far too real a possibility in their shinobi lifestyle, and it is far too accusing a question. Too timed. It had been plaguing them for the longest while. Not quite who he would rescue, for they are not afraid to protect themself out on the field. But instead, a backwards way of trying to dissect his mind and decisions to find out who he loved the most. And while any sensible person would perhaps find a quiet moment to ask the man such a thing in private, for a true confession, the serpent must set up a trap, and corner him. If they ask him one on one, he may just say he cared for them, to appease them. But how much more blocked in the man is when Tsunade sits beside the serpent, both team mates facing Jiraiya.
Of course, they don’t pose it as something serious. No, they disguise it as one of their mistimed and socially inappropriate jokes. How they are accused of being cold, cruel and weird for their off beat demeanor. An easy hiding place, madness.
“Say we both drank poison, and you only had one cure. Or we were both targeted by enemies, and you could only intercept one attack,” they ask, toying with their drink as they toy with him, acting much like a cat playing with a mouse before eating it, wanting franticness and panic, or there simply wasn’t any fun, “well? Who would you save?”
With a countenance as naturally severe as theirs, it’s always difficult to say whether Orochimaru is even having a good time or not; even with alcohol thrown into the mix, it makes them no more easy to read than if they were stone cold sober. The only thing working in Jiraiya’s favour is many years by their side, of knowing them and their ways, and knowing that periods of watchful silence (a different beast to their regular silence) tends to mean that there’s something unpleasant going on within that unfathomable mind of theirs.
And it’s just like Jiraiya to simply let them lie dormant when first he senses that this silence is indeed one of those silences, figuring that if they want to say something, they no doubt will. No doubt waiting for the perfect time to pipe up amid the pleasant buzz and clatter of patrons and bar staff.
Until then, however, Jiraiya has every intention of maintaining the levity of the evening as well as he possibly can—first of all, because it had been quite some time since they all had a short reprieve home, and second of all because they damn well deserved it. After months spent surrounded by the drab grey of Ame, whose ruined ground was by this point nought but scorched earth, blood and the rot of corpses pounded into a slurry by the relentless downpour… yeah, he very much ached for his home, and wanted to make some good memories here to tide them over once they were sent back into the fray.
Still, it’s only natural that given the state of the world around them and the overall horrific turn their lives had taken, conversation soon turns to lighter recollections of their exploits, the frankly insane things they’d survived so far, and the numerous ways they’d saved each other’s skins. After all, the name Densetsu no Sannin had spread like wildfire, right to the point where it had become very well known at home, where the familiar visages that greeted them were of the utmost awe and (far less familiar) respect.
So it had been a simple thing to stir up some excitement and revelry with wild tales, until the three of them were left alone once more to chat more freely as they were wont to. In hindsight, it’s always easier to play up the theatre of their feats when one isn’t currently in that place of peril, with death reaching out to wrap barbed tendrils around one’s throat and yank them flailing into the underworld—but even then, the tall tales sold to random patrons come with a certain lull afterwards, punctuated more noticeably by the stabbing of a straw against ice and glass than he’d paid heed to so far.
And when Orochimaru speaks up, which Jiraiya had been starting to expect was coming like the most quiet yet brutal storm, he only needs to see the smile before he realises it won’t be good.
The stirring of the drink, whose colour was dimming thanks to the ice melting faster than they were imbibing, creates a little whirlpool in the glass that Jiraiya finds himself equally as mystified by as the question at hand. Oh, how he feels like he’d somehow been shrunk down and trapped in that boozy vortex, being spun endlessly around by a cruel and relentless hand! The unfortunate fact of the matter is, he has no idea what they’re really thinking while asking this, which is probably clear in the suspicious quirk of his eyebrow, and yet his own tipsiness is enough that despite gripping his glass a little tighter, he’ll rise to the challenge.
He won’t let himself flounder and sweat, and he certainly won’t let whatever game was being played get under his skin… and yet it still rankles him enough that the atmosphere becomes tinged with a certain… frost.
Most of the time, he thought it was Tsunade that really had no problem hurting him. But times like this come as an unpleasant reminder that she simply isn’t as subtle about it as they are. She’s straightforward. She doesn’t test him. Whereas when it comes to Orochimaru, the needles come so subtly in the dead of night, in the form of some question or comment, and without even the moonlight to afford him that warning flash. He’s had it before, where a casual conversation somehow ends with him feeling like he’s fucked up—so it sets in rather quickly that there’s nothing cute or fun about this line of questioning whatsoever, for all he gives a hum of amusement into the next swig of sake, before setting his glass bluntly down again.
“Are you forgetting how not ordinary we are? Surely not, my dear friend,” the sage says coolly, in that irritatingly old-and-wise tone of his—the one reserved for moments of profound wisdom and bullshitting such as these. “What’s poison, after all, to the finest medic the world has ever seen? Or to a disciple of Ryūchidō whose blood is said to match that of the most deadly viper itself?”
That was one of the more wild rumours that had surrounded Orochimaru, for sure, but Jiraiya is ever one for playing up the mystery. He knows damn well they’re a B type—just like him, just like Tsunade. Sometimes he wonders whether that was a purposeful choice on Sensei’s part… or a grave oversight. Putting that matter aside in his mind, Jiraiya taps his chin thoughtfully, trying to maintain the illusion that this is a well-meaning expression of Orochimaru’s characteristic curiosity rather than a test of… well, he’s not sure what, because he refuses to ease up on the illusion, you see.
“Well, Tsunade’s more likely to save herself from a mortal wound,” he continues, inclining his head towards her, “and you’re more likely to evade an attack in the first place…” Having nodded towards Orochimaru, he stares somewhere above and between them for a moment. “As for me? Well I’m as tough as a cockroach, not to mention quite wily, aren’t I? But I’m only one guy. Can’t I say I’d send my body to one, and my protective shield of hair to the other? I’ve got about a hundred tricks that means I don’t hafta choose…”
It’s a cop-out, and he knows it. Plus, that illusion… it really isn’t holding up that well. He just knows that saying the wrong thing will get him in trouble, or perhaps even come across as some grave betrayal… and that includes refusing to give a conclusive answer.
One or the other, Jiraiya. Think about it, think about it—would saying I’d just off myself for the two of them be acceptable? No no, probably not…
“Urgh, fine. In a situation where there was absolutely no option, no wiles or nothin’ that would help, just straight up choosing… I guess I’d simply have to go for the least annoying one.” He shrugs matter-of-factly, then spares a sneering side-eye and irritating lean towards their dearest medic, who is fast nearing drunken belligerence. “Sorry Tsuna!~”
His subsequent jolly guffawing is cut short with an ‘agh, ouch!’ as he is rather predictably socked in the arm for such a comment, not that Tsunade really seems to care. Mind games like this aren’t exactly her thing, and certainly not while drunk. In fact, in her drunkenness she slurs something or another about ‘not needin’ t’be saved by no-one, much less you, idjit’… which in part, may have impacted his choice to go that way at all.
Because really, how does one answer such a question in all seriousness? And what would they say, more pertinently, if asked the same ruthlessly unfair question? They’d never know, because neither of them ever would.
And Orochimaru should see it, how unfair it really is, in the way Jiraiya turns his teasing gaze from Tsunade to them—and how in that most minute of movements it takes to refocus his attention onto them, his overall demeanour shifts from merry to overcast, no matter how his lips try to hang on to that signature cheeky curl. There isn’t a particular message he’s trying to convey in that look, no specific reprimand or indication of exactly how serious his answer had been… just a certain wounded discomfort, marred with something else. Something that he himself can’t place, not even with the benefit of inhabiting his own thoughts.
What he does know, however, is that there’s certainly more truth in it than his skilfully casual approach to the answer, in the end, had let on… something that may not be as simple as a measure of love, which they were deviously trying to weed out of him, but of his fiery protectiveness for them in particular, which was admittedly a shade stronger than what he felt towards Tsunade. And maybe that is, in and of itself, reflective of his love for them… or, perhaps, what he feels he is to them. What value he has to them, in comparison to her. It’s far too much to figure out on such a pleasant night, the first in months, with the alcohol flowing and emotions hastily smothered beneath tall tales.
Whatever it is though, he just hopes that they recognise it somehow, lurking in his soft, subdued eyes, and that they’re satisfied.
