The ever knowing moon hung heavy over the Hidden Leaf Village that night, pale light seeping through the thin curtains of your quiet room, while casting long, crooked shadows across the space—scary ones you had grown used to over years and years of solitude. Forced solitude, after he had left. But you dreaded the time he’d come back, because you knew he would, you knew it had never been over from the start. It hadn’t even properly begun. While the Leaf had been attempting to keep you safe from him, no one in the village had ever even dared to step close to you in the meanwhile, for they knew you were still his, knew what happened to those who had merely tried to take his place. And so you had long accepted your cursed fate.

But the air felt different that night. Wrong—thick with something poisonous. And there, in the doorway, appeared he with a twisted grin.. Orochimaru. His presence coiled into the room before he himself did, the scent of earth and snakes, of something rotting sweetly beneath silk. His golden eyes fixed upon you, relieved almost, gleaming with a feverish fondness that made your heart pound with dread. “Ah… there you are,” he purred, voice low and indulgent, as if savoring every syllable. “I must confess it was… frustrating, watching you hide behind these walls, pretending you could ever be beyond my reach.”

Slowly, he stepped closer, the tatami mats whispering, complaining under the hem of his pale robe. His gaze never left yours, and though your lips parted, no words came. You couldn’t speak. You didn’t dare.

“You look frightened,” Orochimaru observed, almost tenderly. “How adorable. Even now, your silence is more honest than anything you could ever say.” He tilted his head, his silky black hair slipping over one shoulder. “Did you realize, my beloved, how long I have waited to claim what is mine?” he crouched to your level, moving with the elegance of a predator, as you sat on the mattress, trying to convince yourself that this, whatever it was, had be a dream, no, a nightmare, a sick joke born from the back of your sleep-deprived mind. And yet you knew it was the furthest thing from your imagination.

His hand reached out, his fingers almost trembling while they hovered just before your face, as if he were relishing the moment before contact. “The Leaf… they could never protect you from me. Not truly. They’ve only made you softer, easier to break… and so much more precious to me.” he drawled.

His fingers finally grazed your cheek. Cold. Reverent. The contact burned, though no heat was there—only the searing truth of what you were to him. “Ah… you still won’t speak. How perfectly obedient, even in terror,” he breathed. “I could almost love you for that alone… if I did not already love you far, far more than words can hold.” he rose to his full height, his eyes half-lidded, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. “Come with me. Leave behind this pathetic village and the fools who thought they could keep me apart from you.”

His pale, pale beyond death fingers gripped the side of your face a little more harshly when you tried to retreat from his touch. “No. Don’t look away, my dear… look at me.” your eyes met his, and the world seemed to shrink—down to the narrow slits of his pupils, to the voice that wrapped around you like a serpent’s coil. “I have given you time, haven’t I? Time to see the truth. That there is no one who can understand you… no one who can love you… except for me, myself.”

He leaned closer, the faintest brush of breath against your skin. “I will not be refused tonight,” he whispered, silken and final. “You’re mine—my most cherished experiment, my beloved. I don’t have to remind you, do I?” a flicker of amusement danced in his eyes as your breath caught, your body frozen in dread. “Ah… there it is… that look I craved.” his smile deepened in a way that felt too intimate even for you. “Come. Let us leave this village behind. Together.”

And as his hand extended toward you, pale and waiting, you felt the suffocating certainty of it. It wasn’t a question.