The air in the little room went wrong before the door moved.
Kakashi straightened from the cot, every lazy line in his body quietly erased. His hand drifted up, two fingers hooking under his hitai-ate.
That chakra.
Even dulled by stone and distance, it was unmistakable. Cold and slick, like oil poured over river rock. It slid along his skin without quite touching, full of old battlefield memories and the stink of experiments gone right in the worst way.
The latch clicked.
The door opened without a sound.
Orochimaru didn't so much walk in as flow into the doorway. He leaned against the frame like they were in some corridor at the Academy and he'd just happened to stop by.
"Kakashi-kun," he said, voice low and amused. "You've grown up."
Pale skin, yellow eyes ringed in purple, hair dark and straight as spilled ink. The Konoha hitai-ate was gone, but the outline of where it had rested might as well have been tattooed on his forehead.
Kakashi slid his hitai-ate up.
Sharingan snapped into focus, taking in everything at once: the way Orochimaru's weight rested on the balls of his feet, the angle of his shoulders, the lazy twirl of his fingers against the doorframe.
The way his chakra filled the room like a gas, invisible and everywhere. And under it, the awareness of Sasuke's sleeping form on the cot behind him, small and vulnerable and branded.
"Orochimaru," Kakashi said. "You're as subtle as ever."
Orochimaru's lips curled. "Says the man who drags a child into a side room to play with seals behind everyone's backs."
His eyes slid past Kakashi toward the cot.
Kakashi stepped sideways, blocking the line of sight without making it a big show. "Professional courtesy," he said. "We put warning labels on dangerous toys."
He could feel the sealed mark under his palm from earlier like phantom heat. Orochimaru's chakra had sunk deep, like rust eaten into steel, and his own seal sat over it like a fresh plate bolted on top.
It would hold. For now.
Orochimaru tilted his head. "You really think you can overwrite my work?"
"I don't have to overwrite it," Kakashi said. "Just keep it from spreading until he's old enough not to let it eat him alive."
"Old enough." Orochimaru's voice went soft and delighted, like someone tasting a word. "You mean, old enough that his body is ready for me."
Kakashi's fingers twitched.
"That boy is my student," he said.
One of Orochimaru's eyebrows arched lazily. "Is he? How… possessive. I don't recall that stopping you from failing the last Uchiha you had such high hopes for."
Heat pricked behind Kakashi's ribs. Obito's face flashed through his mind—the grin, the blood, the crushed half of his body under rock.
The Sharingan whirred, tomoe spinning once before settling.
Orochimaru watched it with an almost tender fascination.
"Such a precious eye," he murmured. "To think you keep wasting it on this village's errands. On little games like this." His tongue flicked out briefly between his teeth. "If you're worried about the boy, you could always give him your other one. Make him stronger. I hear it runs in the blood."
"You don't get to talk about his blood," Kakashi said. His voice stayed even, but the room felt tighter.
Orochimaru's gaze sharpened.
"There it is," he said. "That little iron core they say you have. The Copy Ninja. A thousand jutsu in your head and still you stand between me and what I want with only that eye and some ink."
He pushed off the doorframe with a casual roll of his shoulder, taking one slow step into the room.
Kakashi's muscles screamed move. He pictured a dozen sequences in the span of a breath: Sharingan pre-reading Orochimaru's first lunge, a Raikiri up through that pale chest, smoke bombs, back wall, window—
And then the rest of the math finished.
He was tired.
The sealing had dragged more chakra out of him than he wanted to admit. He'd been coasting on reserves since the Wave mission, since the fight with Zabuza and the clone in the ice. His lungs still remembered nearly drowning.
Orochimaru, by contrast, felt like a deep well that never saw daylight.
If Kakashi started a real fight here, in a box room with one unconscious genin and nowhere for civilians to run, he could maybe cut something important on the way down.
He would also die.
And Sasuke, with his brand and his bright, burning hatred, would be left alone with the man who put the mark on him.
Not an option.
Kakashi let his fingers fall away from his chest, deliberately not making the seal that would start Raikiri crackling in his hand.
"Funny thing about a thousand jutsu," he said, eye half-lidding in what looked like boredom. "You learn which ones not to use."
Orochimaru chuckled. "You always were clever."
His gaze drifted to the floor, tracing the ink pattern of the seal.
"Five Elements, hm?" he said. "Neatly done. Enough to baffle the instructors. Enough to reassure your Hokage. But you know as well as I do—" he raised his eyes again, smile thin, "—you're just putting a lid on a pot that's already boiling."
Kakashi shrugged. "That's still better than letting you play chef."
"Harsh," Orochimaru said lightly. "Don't you want to see how far he could go?"
Kakashi's jaw ached. "I want to see him live long enough to decide that for himself."
"Ah." Orochimaru's expression cooled.
For a moment, the lazy playfulness dropped. The thing looking at Kakashi wasn't a wayward student or a disgruntled ex-Leaf shinobi. It was a predator that had outlived too many prey.
"That's where we differ," Orochimaru said quietly. "I don't trust children to make good choices about power."
His gaze slid past Kakashi again, over his shoulder this time, measuring the shape of Sasuke under the blanket without needing to see the brand.
"So," he said. "Allow me to be clear, Kakashi-kun. If you get in my way…" His chakra tightened, just enough that the air felt too thin. "I will kill you."
Kakashi held his eye.
Under the flippant, under the half-smile, his body was coiled to move if anything shifted wrong. Every inch of him was cataloguing: how long Orochimaru's fingers took to curl, how fast his chest rose, the micro-twitches at the corners of his eyes.
No opening.
Not one that didn't come with a matching coffin.
"Good to know," Kakashi said. "I'll put it in my notes. Right under 'Snake freak with bad taste in jewelry.'"
Orochimaru laughed.
It was a small thing, soft and almost genuine. "Still trying to make light of it," he said. "You must be very tired of funerals, Copy Ninja."
Kakashi didn't answer that.
Orochimaru let the moment hang, savoring it like a cat deciding not to pounce.
"Oh well," he said at last. "We have time. I'll let you babysit him a little longer. That brand of mine…" His eyes hooded. "It isn't something you can erase."
He rolled his shoulders, like a snake testing its length.
Then his chakra pulled back.
It was like watching shadow peel away from the walls. Orochimaru stepped backward and simply… wasn't there anymore. One blink, and the doorway held nothing but empty hall and the faint scent of damp earth.
The room felt bigger without him. Colder, somehow.
Kakashi exhaled slowly.
His Sharingan burned. He tugged the hitai-ate back down over it with a practiced motion, grateful for the dull pressure over the eye.
Behind him, Sasuke slept on, oblivious.
Kakashi looked at the boy's face for a long moment. Relaxed, without the usual tension in his brow, he looked younger. Too young for snake brands and Sannin interest and the weight of a clan's ghosts.
"Rust and poison," Kakashi murmured. "I'll clean what I can."
Outside, the distant roar of the arena swelled again, then punctured into scattered cheers. Another match finished.
Kakashi dragged a hand through his hair and straightened.
He had just enough chakra left to get Sasuke back to the others and pretend, for a little while longer, that this was still just an exam.
He turned toward the door—
And paused.
Something was moving in the corridor. Not Orochimaru this time. Smaller. Brighter. Wobbly around the edges.
He felt it before he heard the footsteps.
They kicked me out of the med ward the second my pulse stopped doing jazz solos.
"Up," the nurse said, snapping the chart shut. "You're stable. We need the bed."
I sat up very carefully.
The world tilted anyway. Bandages tugged at my ribs where the seal had backfired through my nerves. My head throbbed with the kind of headache that felt like a grudge.
I swung my legs over the side of the cot, bare feet touching cold stone.
The med ward was a stripped-down version of the hospital—beds in a row, screens half-pulled, the smell of alcohol and sweat and stress. Ino was two beds over, arguing weakly with a different nurse about how she was "fine, really, totally fine, just a little dizzy." Her ponytail looked like it had lost a fight with an electrical socket.
"You can go sit in the stands if you want," my nurse said, already turning away to grab the next chart. "No more fighting today. Take it easy."
"No more fighting," I echoed. My voice sounded like it had been left out in the sun too long.
I found my sandals under the bed, stuffed my feet into them, and slid off the mattress.
The ward door creaked when I opened it. The hallway outside was cooler, quieter. The noise from the arena was a low rumble, like someone shaking a box of rocks far away.
I took a few careful steps. The stone floor felt too solid.
My chakra sense floated up on autopilot, half out of habit, half because every nerve I had was still ringing from having another person in my head. The corridor unfolded as a spaghetti tangle of little presences—medics moving back and forth, other genin dumped in other side rooms, a few chūnin guards posted at corners.
Under all that, something else brushed me.
Cold lilac-gray.
I stopped.
It was faint, like the after-smell of smoke long after the fire's gone out. But the shape of it—the way it ate color instead of giving any off, the way it sat in the air like a wrong note—was familiar.
Forest-floor memory flashed: trees bent like teeth, tongue voice in my ear, chakra like void swallowing the world.
My hand went to the wall without asking me.
The sensation wasn't right next to me. It was… down the hall, around the corner. A kind of residue, like someone had dragged chalk along the air and left dust behind.
I swallowed, throat dry.
You could turn around, some quiet, sensible part of me suggested. Go back. Go sit with Naruto and yell at the board and pretend this is still about kids playing at war.
My feet kept moving anyway.
The corridor turned left. The lilac-gray smear got stronger for a few steps—then suddenly thinned, like someone folding the edge of a blanket away.
It felt like watching a shadow pulled back from a wall. The cold receded in one smooth motion.
By the time I reached the next doorway, the void had mostly vanished.
The door was half-open.
Through the crack, I saw Kakashi.
He stood with his back angled toward me, one hand on the frame like he'd just finished bracing himself. His hitai-ate was down, but the eye visible above his mask looked… different.
Hard. Sharper than the usual sleepy half-moon. Like all the softness had been scraped off, leaving only wire underneath.
He turned his head a fraction and saw me.
In one blink, his expression shifted from razor-edged to lazy-and-bored, like someone flipping a sign from CLOSED to OPEN.
"Ah," he said. "Sylvie. Walking already."
His voice wasn't quite right either. Just a hair too level.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way.
The room matched the med ward decor theme of "we put the bare minimum in here so no one gets attached." Cot, small table, single chair. Smell of ink still hanging in the air.
Sasuke lay on the cot, out cold. His shirt collar had been tugged up, but not before some ink had dried on his skin; faint lines showed around the edge where Kakashi had drawn something.
His chakra felt… smoother. Tired, yes, but not jagged the way it had when the curse mark was gnawing at it. Underneath, buried deep, there was still that dark twist of Orochimaru's brand. I could sense it pulsing like a bruise trying to bloom.
Kakashi shifted slightly, blocking a clearer view of Sasuke's neck without making it obvious.
"You should be resting," he said mildly.
"I was," I said. "They kicked me out. Bed shortage."
He hummed, like that was a completely normal sentence.
"I felt something," I added, before I could talk myself out of it. "Out there." I jerked my chin toward the hall. "Like the forest. Just now."
His eye held mine for a long moment.
There was something like regret in it, maybe, way down under the layers of professionalism and habit. And something like apology.
Then it was gone.
"I took care of everything," he said, perfectly casual. "Just needed to adjust a seal, that's all. Sasuke overdid it with his eyes. He'll be fine after some rest."
He said it like someone talking about a strained muscle. Like he hadn't just wrestled with the spiritual equivalent of rusted barbed wire wrapped around a twelve-year-old's spine.
My stomach went ice-cold.
"Right," I said.
Kakashi's chakra brushed against mine—light, testing. He wasn't pushing, just… checking. Measuring how rattled I was, maybe.
"I need you to do two things for me," he said.
There it was. The shift from "lazy sensei" to "actual jōnin under the mask."
"Okay," I said slowly.
"One," he held up a finger, "keep what you felt to yourself. No telling the other genin, no dojo gossip. Especially not to Sasuke. When he wakes up, he doesn't need more fuel for whatever narrative he's building in his head."
I thought of Sasuke's eyes on the Sound trio. The tight anger when he'd asked me about Zaku's arms. The way his voice had sounded when he'd said, I'll do what I have to.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Okay."
"Two," he held up another finger, "go back to the others and support your team. And the rest of your class. This is still an exam. They're still up there thinking the scariest thing in the building is each other."
"It's not," I said.
"No," Kakashi said. "It's not. But until they have to know that, their job is to fight hard and survive. And your job, for the moment, is to stand behind them and make sure they come back in one piece. Emotionally included."
"Emotionally included," I echoed, because my brain had decided repetition was safer than screaming.
He watched me for another heartbeat, making sure it was landing.
I glanced back at Sasuke.
He looked oddly fragile like this. Without the frown, without the constant tension in his shoulders, he was just a kid on a cot. The seal on his neck pulsed once under my perception, then sank back down under whatever Kakashi had painted over it.
"You'll bring him back?" I asked. "Later?"
Kakashi's eye softened. "Of course. Once he wakes up and I'm sure the seal is stable. For now, he's benched."
"Benched," I said. "He'll hate that."
"I'm counting on you and Naruto to distract him with loud bragging when he gets grumpy," Kakashi said dryly. "Maybe argue over who's going to win their matches so he has someone else to glare at."
A small, unwanted puff of laughter escaped me. It felt rusty.
"I can do that," I said.
"Good." He stepped aside, giving me a clearer path to the door. "Back you go, then."
I lingered one more second, letting my senses brush the room again.
The Lilac-gray void was gone, but its absence felt like a thumbprint pressed into the air. Orochimaru had been here. In here. Inside the village, within arm's reach of my teammate, talking to my sensei.
I nodded once and slipped out into the hall.
The noise from the arena got louder as I walked, like someone was slowly turning up a radio. My sandals scuffed the stone in uneven rhythm. Grown-ups lying to protect you and grown-ups lying to control you felt the same in my stomach. My head still pounded, but the pain helped anchor me in my own skin.
Don't talk about it, I told myself. Support your friends. Pretend, for a little while longer, that the only monsters you have to worry about are kids with bugs and puppets and mirrors.
Up ahead, the corridor opened onto the staircase that would spit me back out near the stands.
I put my hand on the rail.
From beyond the walls, through layers of stone and shouting, I heard the board spin up again.
Click-click-click.
Names blurring. Futures being shuffled.
I took a breath that didn't quite reach my stomach and started climbing.